Prelude

In the wake of ample fictional material surrounding the Martyrs of Compiègne, the historical figures risk being obscured by the prevailing mythos. Fortunately, this article flows forth as a narrative from the Compiègne Carmel itself, shedding light on the real women of the story and the events in which they were caught up. This is an edited and abridged version of an original article penned in French by Sister Alix-Anne OCD from the said Carmel. It has been carefully translated by Father John Hughes OCD of Boar’s Hill Oxford. With the gracious permission of Sister Line-Marie, the prioress of Carmel of Compiègne, it is now presented here.

Far from being an accident of history and the result of unfortunate chance, the martyrdom of the Carmelites of Compiègne was actually the consecration of their whole lives as Carmelites, which was lived out within the confines of ‘that little college of Christ’ – the beautiful expression of St Teresa of Jesus. In considering the depths of terror in which these Carmelites had grounded their decision, we shall try here to discern the steps which led to their own act of consecration in 1792, its nature and how it was accomplished.

A Foremost Manuscript Consideration

In a manuscript which gathers together the writings of the historical superiors of the French Carmel, there are about a dozen pages in the handwriting of Sister Teresa of St Augustine (Madame Lidoine). They are about the Canonical Visitation of Abbé Rigaud on September 13, 1780 to the Carmel at Compiègne:

Show your concern and gratitude to the Church by your zeal for Her interests.  This is what animated your Holy Mother [St Teresa of Avila]. She was so much afflicted by the progress of heresy and this was the motive which impelled her to begin her reform, so that you should pray continually to deflect all these things from the Church, and which brought such bitterness to her heart.  Yes, that generous heart of your Mother which was so firm and unflinching in the face of adversities, that heart in which there was no weakness, and which stood firm, but when attacked, made her shed floods of tears (…)

You are still obliged to the same fidelity my daughters, through the remembrance and love of your Order.  It cost your holy Mother so many tears and hardships so as to bind it in the state of perfection in which you found it. (…)

How many difficulties had she to overcome for the work of the Reform?  How much did those who brought Carmel to France have things also to suffer? What did your previous Prioresses have to go through at the beginnings of this new Order? In every one of your houses, my daughters, what did those first nuns have to suffer, so that those monasteries could actually have been founded?  (…)[1]

In the actual documents which have come down to us, this is a particularly interesting text: it is the very first one we possess in the handwriting of the future Prioress of the Martyrs of Compiègne; and her insistence on the Apostolic mission of Carmel; the goal for which the Lord has brought us together, was included in each of the four accounts about the act of consecration, bequeathed to us by Marie of the Incarnation.[2]

The French Carmels and the Revolutionary Climate of the time

Abbe Rigaud combines his exhortation with a rather sombre view of the situation of the faith in France at the time; was this maybe to encourage a spirit of fervour? This leads us to ask ourselves the question about information: how did it circulate at the time? How did it get to the community, enabling them, in some way, to follow and understand how political and religious life was managing in those times? We have very few witnesses. However, the postal system did function and correspondence with the Carmel of Saint-Denis in particular was assiduous – a reciprocal recognition linking Madame Louise [3] and the Carmel of Compiègne. The Carmel of Saint-Denis was quite a centre of information. With messengers, visits from Prelates, Religious Superiors of one kind or another, and news about what had been happening in the town, how could the Community of Compiègne not have been aware that tension was rising between the party of the devout ones and that of the ‘philosophers’ who were grinding their teeth in the background? 

In 1783, this state of affairs on the European scene was going to come crashing down on the Community. Following a decree of Joseph II,[4] the brother of Marie Antoinette,[5] a somewhat enlightened despot, but who suppressed monastic Orders in all parts of his country, Madame Louise searched for Carmels to welcome sisters from The Netherlands, and Sister Caroline, from the Carmel of Vilvoorde [6] arrived at Compiègne [7] where the sisters opened their arms to her. It is certain that she stayed there for two or three years.  This Carmelite princess was under no illusions and foresaw that the turn of France itself could come.

Mother Teresa of St Augustine and her Sisters

While faithfully and silently embracing life as a Carmelite, working in poverty, abnegation and joyfulness, Sister Teresa of St Augustine appreciated all these as various calls which she kept in her heart, and which spurred her on to greater generosity.  Her artistic gifts enabled her to paint pictures and decorate porcelain vessels for which Madame Louise had to find lids and plugs…[8] On feast days she willingly used her talents, for example on the Prioress’s feast day, at elections, jubilees, special permissions; and she very readily loaned her pen or paintbrush to an awkward postulant… In these simple ways, of a Carmelite’s day, she made her own the exhortation of Abbé Rigaud and the advice of St Teresa herself:

Oh, my sisters in Jesus Christ, help me in appealing to Our Lord.  It is for this that He has brought you all together in this place.  It is your vocation – your business is here.   He it is who should be the object of your desires and the reason for your tears and the reason for your prayers… (Life 1, 5)

In 1786, a new pathway opened up for her.  She was elected as head of the Community and would remain so until the end. She stood at the head of a united and fervent community, which had an acceptable level of cultural and social standing, the members of which, however, came from often distant places around the country. They came from Belfort, la Sarthe, le Lot, and from wherever Providence had assembled them; and also, they differed one from another greatly in their personalities. From the outset, Sister Euphrasie[9] made them feel her annoyance at not having been chosen at the elections and kept asking permission to do penances. She would prove to be a scourge and cross to her Prioress right up to the end. What a joy, therefore, the Prioress would have felt, when sometime in the Spring of 1794, the Sister became more agreeable and finally threw herself at the feet of the Prioress to ask pardon![10]

In 1787, the community welcomed the arrival of the delightful Élisabeth Vérolot from l’Aube, who took the habit of a lay Sister and the name of Sister St François-Xavier. The Prioress also gave the habit to Françoise-Geneviève Philippe – Marie of the Incarnation – who had recently been cured at Pontoise of a nervous illness, at the tomb of Madame Acarie.  However, in December, the death of Madame Louise sent all the French Carmels into mourning, and the one at Compiègne felt like orphans. The following year, Mother Teresa opened the monastery doors to two young women: Marie-Geneviève Meunier (Sister Constance of Jesus) and Louise de Grand Rut who would only remain in the Carmel for about twelve months. She entrusted this little group as well as that of the young, professed sister, Marie-Henriette de La Providence (Anne Pelras) to the guidance of Mother Henriette, the Prioress who had left office.  The two women would work together with no hindrances.

However, the zeal which animated Mother Teresa of St Augustine, and fortified her daily fidelity and abnegation, passed from the singular to the plural.  Maybe she would give a thousand lives to save one soul, but she had the responsibility of supporting these Sisters while respecting the grace which each one possessed.  Marie of the Incarnation tells us how much she urged them to recall just why the reform of Carmel took place. In this way, she grew in heart as a woman ardent in desiring to help Christ and his Church.

Drawing upon Historical Cues

It seems that it was about this time in the eighteenth century that many Carmels had the desire to gather together all the written accounts of the French monasteries, since their introduction in 1604.  This would eventually result in the publication of the Chronicles of the French Carmels at Troyes in 1865.  On the eve of the Revolution, the community of Compiègne took up this task for which the very best authors were enlisted.  It is noted that among them were several future martyrs.  This compilation of two centuries of saintly Carmelite history was enough to light the flame of a great love of the Order and nourish a common intent.

The Prioress decided to review the history of the fifty-third foundation, i.e., Compiègne, made in 1641.[11] She did this by consulting the most significant circulars and, judging by the place she gives it, seemed to attach particular importance to that of Sister Élisabeth-Baptist of Turpignant who was received in the seventeenth century as a benefactress. This Sister had a dream in 1693 ‘in which she saw the Community ascend into heaven, all dressed in white mantles, with the exception of two or three Sisters whom the angel set at one side, because they were not following the angel’.[12]

What was happening deep in her heart? Perhaps an intuition, the presentiment of an eventual community martyrdom?  It’s possible.  But the account of a dream at no time pointed to this event. And the ‘precedent’ created by Joseph II concerning religious orders had happened with no shedding of blood. The notion of following the Lamb, and doing it together, as a community, was one which shed much light on the Prioress’s responsibility, so that she herself became the ‘animator’ of the community and set it on the path to its eventual accomplishment. So, the symbolism of that dream recalls, actually, chapters 7 and 14 of the Book of the Apocalypse, of the great tribulation undergone by those who had washed their clothes in the blood of the Lamb and followed him wherever he went.

Did Mother Teresa of St Augustine share her discovery at that time with the Sisters?  It is probable; in any case, as regards 1792, the collective memory of the Community referred them straightaway to their own destiny, for it was a time when one could only fear the worst.

Our Mothers, under the influence of a dream experienced by one of our elderly Sisters,

in which she had seen…. etc.…

Is Heaven, our Mothers used to say, keeping the glory of martyrdom for us?

What!  All of us at once! ….

Oh! What joy if we could find ourselves all united and together like that![13]

The Decline of Religious Tolerance

Let us return to 1789.  In January, the profession of Sister St François-Xavier took place.  This young lay Sister was illiterate.  The Prioress thought that she should warn the young Sister that the future looked uncertain for religious orders. This Sister replied to the Prioress:

Ah dear Good Mother, you can rest at peace, because since I shall have been consecrated to My God, this is all that I ever wanted!  So don’t worry in any way about me; The Good God will take care of me![14]

The same year (or at the beginning of 1790), Mother Teresa of St Augustine was re-elected as Prioress and they were looking forward to the profession of Sister Constance in December.  Alas! Things began to happen: the Bastille fell on July 14, and on October 29 the Constitutional Assembly provisionally suspended all monastic vows.  The Prioress thought it best not to risk anything and so Sister Constance had her profession postponed in the hope that things might improve in the future.  However, on February 13, 1790 a decree suppressed all Religious Vows and also Orders with solemn profession, which did not undertake any ministry either in teaching or nursing.  Thus, any hope of being able to make a profession of vows just disappeared.

On August 4and 5, 1790, the Directory of the District of Compiègne descended on the Carmel.  They generously offered the Sisters their ‘freedom’ – at which each of them without exception, and each one in her own way, declared that they wished to live or die as Carmelites:

Madame Piedcourt, who in the religious life was known as Sister of Jesus Crucified, said that she had been a nun for fifty-six years and that she wished more than anything else that she could have the same amount of time to consecrate herself to the Lord: and she signed her name, ‘Piedcourt, Sister of Jesus Crucified.’

Madame Brard [sic], in the religious life known as Sister of the Immaculate Conception, declared herself a Sister who lived in the community of her own free will and that she had the firm intention and desire to keep her religious habit, even if she had to purchase this good fortune at the price of her blood.  She signed herself; ‘Brard, Sister Euphrasie of the Immaculate Conception.

Madame Vérollo (Sister François-Xavier) said that a well born wife stays with her husband and that nothing could entice her to abandon her Divine Spouse, Jesus Christ.  She said that she couldn’t sign her name, as she did not know how to write.[15]

In the face of such ‘fanaticism’, the magistrates had seen and heard enough!  Not far from Compiègne there was the Cistercian Monastery of Ourscamp, where some of the monks had chosen the ‘freedom’ offered by the State, so that they returned to lay life and several of them got married.  On January 11, the Municipality of Compiègne, annoyed over the liberty of the Sisters (!), arranged for the Community to have fresh elections, under top security: Mother Teresa of St Augustine was elected unanimously as Prioress with Mother Henriette as Bursar and also Director of Novices.[16]

Acknowledging the Call to Martyrdom

In 1792 the political and religious situation became even more worrying. ‘This worthy Mother, upon seeing the troubles and disasters which had fallen upon France, never ceased from impressing upon her Sisters, helping them to understand the destiny set before them, by our Holy Mother, St Teresa of Avila in her reform and the conversion of heretics.’[17]

However, at this time Mother Teresa was not well: she suffered from haemorrhoids; but especially, her soul was going through a period of darkness which was profound, full of searing anxiety for Sister Euphrasie…. Her little troupe, in its situation, weighed heavily on her shoulders. We have a few pieces of writing from this time which speak of a nostalgia for heaven and the rough trials of the present battles where they hoped that Jesus had gone before them and upheld their courage:

A priest of great wisdom and devotion became for her, at this time, a highly treasured person who helped to revive her confidence.  There are letters which have come down to us and date from the February to the May.

Console yourselves, he wrote, and rejoice.  In the midst of even the most dense shadows, a light will appear which will blow them all away. Up from the very depths a spring of life will well up.  This living water which springs up to a happy eternity.  No sadness ever overcomes it, no fears ever disrupt it, never any doubts or anxieties can make it fail. Divine love, yes, for you alone; you will be the greatest, the unique object of my wishes.  Divine love! burn me, consume me, purify me, enflame me, so that I die… A Carmelite Prioress should have only this burning longing, this kind of longing, this kind of death.[19]

It was precisely during the time of Easter that the Community thought of the dream of 1693 and interpreted it in a really spontaneous way as an invitation to martyrdom. Was it a shock for the Prioress? A call from above? No doubt it was a moment for taking a stand: has the time come? Would martyrdom present itself as an invitation to look upon their Carmelite consecration as a way of helping Christ and His Church? The very reason why the Lord had gathered them together?

August 10 saw the capture of the Tuileries and the fall of the monarchy, followed quickly by the massacres of September, news of which soon spread to Compiègne. From then on, the spiral of violence increased and continued on to its logical conclusion.  Ten days later, the community were informed that they should leave the monastery.  The time and organisation of the very swift departure and removal of the sisters to families who were well disposed to them, near the church of St Anthony, was described by Marie of the Incarnation:

We were forced to get rid of all our holy books, dress in secular clothing and leave our beloved solitude on 14 September, 1792, the feast of the Exaltation of the Cross.  This made us think of the words of Our Lord, through the sacrifice which He asked of us, or at least permitted, which was going to enrich us in a very powerful way.[20]

Five days later, in order to obtain access to their pension and because the Church had not yet said anything about its legality, the Sisters swore the Oath of Liberty/Equality.[21]

Adapting to Unusual Living Circumstances

So, there they were – a kind of ‘diaspora’.  The Sisters divided into four separate groups, two of which were at the same address: that of the Prioress and that of the Sub-Prioress; and then the novitiate, which was under the leadership of Mother Henriette, with a second group also depending on her.  Sister Pierre of Jesus, who was very unwell, was also of this group.  She died on October 31.

From September 18, 1792, Mother Teresa took appropriate steps which would last until December so as to obtain opportunities to go out and buy civil garments; but what happened was that she ended up receiving things from the families and friends of the nuns, who procured what was needed for wearing and being clothed in a suitable way.

For two months they were still able to receive Holy Communion every day: their chaplain, Abbé Courouble, who had been a Jesuit, obtained from the Curé [parish priest] of St Anthony’s parish and one who had sworn the ‘Oath’, for Mass to be offered in his church, close to where Mother Teresa was staying.  Unfortunately, Abbé Courouble was expelled as being a non-juror at the end of November; and from then on, the sacraments became a rare privilege which they could only obtain perchance, when a priest was passing by, and even this not without some danger when the sisters gathered together in the gardens or in some other safe place.  In one of them, they set up a small oratory, and maybe it would have been there that they met together when possible. As daughters of St Teresa, they were diligent in celebrating feast days, even if these were marked by a certain tone of gravity.

The Sisters kept in their prayers ‘our poor priests’: those who had taken the ‘Oath’ and were therefore regarded as apostates; as well as those who were persecuted during this period of darkness: ‘the captives’, who had become ever more numerous. Nor did they forget the ‘wrongdoers’: ‘Those unfortunate people!’ cried Sister of Jesus Crucified. ‘We really have to pray for them, because they are blind and don’t know what they are doing’.[22]

Meals were taken where the Prioress was staying.  Then they were taken to other houses by means of carts which also took messages.  Sisterly charity expressed itself very delicately:

I am quite worried, my Sister, at what you might have in your room for the night; maybe some furniture which doesn’t smell too good (…) Can you allow a couple of our stronger sisters to get rid of any stuff like that and just tell Teresa that someone will go, willingly (…) I wish you a good night and won’t you wish me the same and also that you agree, so that everything can be done properly.

This afternoon I shall go and I can stay with Sister of the Resurrection or go for a walk with her.[23]

The Inception of the Act of Consecration

From the time of expulsion from their monastery in September 1792, there was no doubt in the mind of Mother Teresa: The hour has come, and it would last from Holy Thursday until the Eternal Easter.  The Community was scattered, monastic practices and customs could no longer be observed. The Sisters’ families did their best to protect their loved ones and get shelter for them… Sisters Julie Louise and Constance, in particular, had courageously to resist the solicitation and fussing of their families.  The vocation of each one of them and of that little College of Christ remained intact.  It was not the time to defect.  And the conversations which they had over Easter assured the Prioress of the maturity of the Community.  Guided by the Holy Spirit, she was able to gather up into a garland everything that she had experienced over the years and which, little by little, had enriched the core of her initial intuitions. It was in this manner that she was able to perceive the workings of the Holy Spirit in the Community. A plan began to emerge from the depths of her prayer, that is, to mobilise all their spiritual energy; and so, from the end of September or the beginning of October, she brought her plan to four Sisters in her own community and then to all of them:

An act of special consecration by which the Community would offer itself as a holocaust to appease God’s anger and that peace would return both to the Church and to the country. (…) My thought, she said, [is] to centre entirely on the reason why Our Holy Mother established the Reform: which was the cessation of the evils which were afflicting the Church and the Kingdom of France.[24]

One can hardly be more explicit as to the meaning she gave to her words.

By means of a testimony dating from the end of November 1792, it is clear that the Sisters pronounced this Act of Consecration every day. From then on, martyrdom was seen clearly as a very probable consequence of their vocation as Carmelites; and the perspective was assumed as such. We can notice the unifying role of the Prioress and her own initiative, but equally the unanimity which the Community showed in the face of the tumultuous events which were unfolding – the spiritual liberty of each and everyone.

The Significance of their Act of Consecration

What exactly did the Act of Consecration mean – what was it all about?

Firstly, it was a community act and decision which each of the Sisters remained free either to accept or to reject. When the two elderly Sisters shuddered at the thought that this might lead them to the guillotine their Mother said, ‘my good Sisters, I don’t make it an obligation for you to recite this Act. Do believe me when I say that I am being very careful if I could foresee the effect it would produce in you.’[25] But both Sisters would go the same evening and thank the Prioress for keeping them united.

Catherine and Thérèse Soiron were pious lay people who attended to the outside business of the monastery and saw to the practical needs of the sisters who had been dispersed. Catherine, learning that ‘the Sisters offered themselves in sacrifice to Our Lord, felt great sorrow to be separated from the Community and asked for the tremendous grace of being able to offer herself as well.  This was granted.’[26] For Thérèse too, there was no more honourable a path, and both of them eventually formed a part of the group of sixteen martyrs.

The lives and deaths of the Martyrs of Compiègne fit in very well in the line of the great biblical intercessors: Moses, Samuel, Jeremiah… and finally Jesus: ‘Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do’ (Luke 23:34).  ‘My friends,’ said Sister of Jesus Crucified to the cartmen, ‘I forgive you with all my heart, just in the same way that God forgives me.’[27]

We have to emphasise the holocaust aspect of this sacrifice, where everything is consumed in the fragrance of appeasement (cf. Exodus 29:18). Consider the following prayer from Sister Julie-Louise and Mother Teresa of St Augustine:

For the reconciliation of these times with God, who is the source of all real peace. We stand before a choice in living, something totally paradoxical, which only demonstrates its power and meaning in the Easter of the Lamb and in ‘a firm and generous’ trust in God the Father’s Love.

The original text of this prayer has unfortunately not come down to us.  The four copies made by Marie of the Incarnation come to us indirectly. So, considering its formulation, we identify that it is about an act of consecration (a particular act), by which the Community offered itself as a holocaust, and so it is expressed essentially in two forms:

For the cessation of the evils, which devastate the Church and our unhappy Kingdom, which afflict the Church and the Royal State of France (Ms I and III)

To appease God’s anger and that peace this divine peace, for which His Beloved Son came into the world was rendered to both the Church and the State (Ms II and III)

Another Sign

On several occasions in Paris, Marie of the Incarnation went to visit the Prioress’s mother, the elderly Madame Lidoine who very much wanted to see her again.  Her husband had died towards the end of the previous year (1793) and she found it necessary to have the signature of her daughter in order to ratify her husband’s will and then to be able to depart to live in the Doubs region with her husband’s family. So many convincing reasons…. Marie of the Incarnation pleaded her cause, but it took nothing less than an order from Abbé Rigaud for Mother Teresa of St Augustine to consent to leaving her little community in these circumstances…

She did not realise that in Paris another sign of God’s plans would be made clear to the community. During the week from June 13-21, 1794, Mother Teresa had the opportunity to ‘contemplate’ a cartload of victims on their way to the guillotine: she was completely amazed at the serenity on their faces.  The next day she was overcome with emotion when hearing of the account of the final moments of a young girl, who, just before dying, had a vision of a religious community, mowed down by the false revolution… I saw them dressed in white mantles with a palm in their hands; and heaven opened to receive them.

How could it be possible not to refer back to the dream of 1693?  Was not the Lord’s mercy surely keeping an outcome like this for her own community?  She experienced a deep inner peace but no high emotion:

May God keep me from desiring to die for love of Him yet making me commit the least imprudence….[28]

When she arrived at Compiègne on June 21, some of the Sisters were waiting for her when she stepped down from the carriage.  They had just rented and equipped three houses, yet the very next day they were all arrested and imprisoned in the monastery of the Visitation.

The Storm of Doubts

In March 1794, four months prior to the arrest, as tension was rising at Compiègne, three of the Sisters departed from the Community: ‘when I think,’ one of them wrote, ‘of all the shocks you have experienced for such a long time, I don’t know how you can endure it.’  On the contrary, there was, growing ever stronger among all who remained, a desire for martyrdom. Nevertheless, interior struggles with doubt were not lacking.

After witnessing fellow souls, Sisters Charlotte of the Resurrection and Sister of Jesus Crucified, pray for a long time and return pacified to implore the grace of uniting themselves with the Act of Consecration, each in their own turn would recognise her hour of anguish and the combat to come.  As for Sister Thérèse Soiron who had taken many risks at Compiègne as ‘a liaison agent’ between the different groups, it was a storm of doubts that rose in her mind while on the way to the Conciergerie.[29]  Mother Teresa of St Augustine had to calm her down gently.  When Sister Thérèse Soiron actually fainted while waiting for the death sentence, the community made a marvellous mug of chocolate at the last minute!

We are the victims of the century, declared Sister Julie-Louise, and we have to sacrifice ourselves for a reconciliation with God.  An eternity of happiness awaits us! So let us make haste, let us run to this and suffer willingly for a few moments of this short life.[30]

Father, it is for this that I have come to this hour! (cf. John 12:27)

One of the novices, worried about her fragility, said:

All my confidence rests entirely on the promises of Our Lord Jesus Christ.  I hope (…) that having been helped by His all-powerful presence, I cannot fail.[31]

And in fact, just when the Sisters were quietly making their way on the road, in ‘the unity of obedience, and the communion of hearts and minds’, we were going to see the community increase their desire for the configuration of each one of them with their Crucified Lord.

The Final Days

July 12, 1794 was the day of their hasty departure for Paris, booed on by the rough crowd of gawpers, although greatly loved and esteemed at Compiègne.  But the passing of the days from Good Friday was going to be very short…. They arrived at the Conciergerie in hot and humid weather.

Sister Charlotte who was aged and infirm was thrown to the ground like a parcel.  She got up with difficulty with blood all over her face and said gently to the carters:

I am very grateful to you that you have not killed me, because if I died at your hands I wouldn’t be going to the glory of the martyrs![32]

Ecce Homo!

On the 16th, the feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, Sister Julie-Louise composed a canticle to the tune of the Marseillaise, in which she put her fear and self-abandonment: it contains no trace of boasting…

The kindness of Sister of Jesus Crucified to the ‘wicked men’ is very touching:

Can we pray for the men who are going to open the gates of Heaven?

Let us pray for them…[33]

Daughters of Jerusalem don’t shed tears over me!

Shed them rather for yourselves and for your children!

On July 17, a mock trial took place.  Mother Teresa of St Augustine stood up like a Good Shepherd confronting the wolf:

Weapons? We have never had any other than the cross of Jesus Christ.

Then, in defence of her lambs: she insisted they could do nothing without their superior’s permission:

If you have to have a victim, here is one; it is I alone whom you should strike.  My Sisters are innocent. As for the Sisters of the Turn, their status as women who have promised obedience means that they do as they are asked.[34]

If it is myself for whom you are searching, allow them to depart.

Courageously, Sister Marie-Henriette called on the Prosecution to explain the meaning of the word ‘fanatic’, which he had used, and obliged the judge to correct him: their clinging to their faith and the religious life was the real accusation which they brought…

We have just one law and according to it, He ought to die:

for He has made Himself the Son of God!

From this time on, it was the time of truth.  The sentence would be imposed: they would all be condemned to death and their execution would take place that very evening. Happiness radiated from the Sisters’ faces: The Bridegroom was very near and the wedding hall all prepared!  However, Sister Thérèse staggered… then recovered:

The Good God has allowed my nervous state to be seen so as to humiliate me; but He knows my joy at dying so as to possess Him in Heaven.[35]

Like the Virgin Mary at Cana, Mother Teresa saw and understood everything: the Sisters should not become exhausted before the final combat.  She found a way of getting them cups of warm chocolate!

So, it was with invigorated bodies and hearts at peace that they climbed into the carts for their final liturgy.

We know about their singing as they trundled along. We know of their arrival at the Place du Trône Renversé [Place of the Toppled Throne]. The crowd was silent with wonderment… When they stepped down from the carts, a woman offered a glass of water to one of the Sisters: Sister Marie Henriette intervened.   It was no longer the right time:

To Heaven, to Heaven.  We shall drink deeply there![36]

The Lamb will be their shepherd: He will lead them to the flowing springs of life!

The Sisters renewed their Baptismal Promises and their religious vows.  Would Constance have finally pronounced them ‘in articulo mortis’[37]? At the head of the procession of Virgins and after she had had a final look around, and her last kiss of confidence and love on the statue of the Blessed Virgin which was held by the Prioress, she mounted the scaffold with the air of a queen, while singing: ‘Praise the Lord all you peoples, exult in His love towards us which is so strong, eternal is the faithfulness of the Lord!’

The Terror had reached a paroxysm during the month of July 1794. Then another novena of prayer to Heaven, before the One Who sits at the Right Hand of the Father, and always interceding for us, little by little opening the way to peace…

In His own flesh

He has abolished hate…

He has made peace by the Blood of His Cross….

Let us be joyful and light-hearted

And give glory to God,

For the marriage of the Lamb has come,

And His bride has made herself ready:

He has given her to wear bright, shining linen.

Closing Critical Gaps in Appreciating the Compiègne Martyrs

In understanding the story of the martyrs, two critical questions remain unresolved.

First, if they freely embraced martyrdom, did the sisters then retract the oath taken on September 19, 1792?  Whatever Marie of the Incarnation might have reported, this matter worried and upset them a lot.  But it seems that they did not and there is no mention of it. Would not the prudence of Mother Teresa of St Augustine have prevented their situation so as to be able to save what could be saved, particularly at what might happen to the Extern Sisters?  She was the shepherdess of the lambs and would show that she was just that.  But might she not be playing with the truth?  What was important was that it was obedience that would dictate Mother Teresa’s conduct: while the Church in France had acquiesced in the matter of the lawfulness of the ‘Oath’, she relied on the authority of Abbé Rigaud, their superior, who, in the Spring of 1794, had not retracted his previous opinion, and so he could be trusted with a good conscience.[38]

Second, did the Sisters depart for Paris wearing their habits, and were they wearing their habits when being executed? This remains a controversial question.  However, what witnesses report is persuasive: the English Benedictines of Cambrai, their neighbours at the Visitation, had come into possession of the Carmelites’ secular clothes after their deaths; they washed and ironed these.  So, on the guillotine platform, the people were moved by the chanting of the nuns, all robed in white…. The spiritual impact of the dream of 1693 on the imagination of the Prioress and her community cannot be forgotten; of the vision of the young Parisian girl and the coming to pass of the Apocalypse which it evoked. It was important for them to surrender themselves to martyrdom clothed in white mantles and be standing upright before the throne of the Lamb, dressed in white robes and carrying palms in their hands!  This was the sign that they, of their own free will, were entering upon a destiny which exceeded their imaginations and to which they knew they were destined, after having, little by little, deciphered the will of God and borne it in their hearts. Those events of their time and their deep call as Carmelites – for whom the Glory of God and the salvation of souls were their only preoccupation.

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[1] Stéphane-Marie Morgain. Les Carmélites Martyres of Compiègne – ‘L’Amour sera toujours vainqueur’ – Pensées et témoignages (Toulouse: Éditions du Carmel [ExistenCiel[, 2000), pp. 83-86.

[2] Marie of the Incarnation (Françoise-Geneviève Philippe) is one of the three nuns who were away from the Compiègne community at the time of the arrests and, therefore, not executed along with the others. She later wrote an account of the execution, History of the Carmelite Nuns of Compiègne, taken to the Scaffold on 17 July 1794, which was published posthumously in 1836.

[3] Madame Louise was the royal princess (daughter of King Louis XV) who joined the Carmel of Saint-Denis in 1770.

[4] Joseph II was the ruler of the German Habsburg Monarchy from 1780 until 1790.

[5] Marie Antoinette was Queen Consort of France from May 1774, when her husband, Louis XVI, ascended the throne, until her execution in October 1793 during the French Revolution.

[6] The Carmel of Vilvoorde is in present-day Belgium and is currently the oldest extant Carmel of the nuns.

[7] Bernard Hours. Madame Louise, Princesse au Carmel (Paris: Cerf-Histoire, 1987), pp. 255 (note 61) and 257.

[8] Ibid., p. 236.

[9] Sister Euphrasie (Claude-Cyprienne Brard) possessed remarkable intelligence. She was a friend of Louis XV’s queen, Marie-Leszczynska, who liked to refer to her as ‘my charming philosopher’. See Edward Bannon. Refractory Men, Fanatical Women: Fidelity to Conscience During the French Revolution (Leominster: Gracewing Publications, 1992), p. 137.

[10] Sœur Marie de l’Incarnation. La relation du martyre des seize Carmélites de Compiègne. Les documents originaux inédits publiés par William Bush (Paris: Cerf), Ms II, p. 145 et Ms III, p. 234.

[11] Archives du Carmel de Sens. Fondations des Carmélites en France. Vol. 8, pp. 295ff. On this subject, see: Relation, pp. 30-35 and 333-35.

[12] Relation, Ms II, pp. 163-64.

[13] Ibid.

[14] Relation, Ms II, pp. 173-74.

[15] Bruno de Jésus-Marie, OCD. Le Sang du Carmel ou la Veritable passion des seize carmélites de Compiègne (Paris: Cerf [Epiphanie-Carmel], 1992), pp. 94-97.

[16] Ibid., pp. 244-45.

[17] Relation, Ms I, pp. 81-82.

[18] Stéphane-Marie Morgain. Les Carmélites Martyres of Compiègne,p. 69.

[19] Letter from an unknown director of May 11, 1792, in Sang du Carmel, op. cit., p. 25.

[20] Relation, Ms I, p. 70.

[21] Sang du Carmel, op. cit., p. 263.

[22] Relation, Ms II, p. 138.

[23] Mère Henriette de Jésus, undated notes, probably from the Spring of 1794, in Le Sang du Carmel, op. cit., p. 271.

[24] Relation; see a synopsis of the four accounts by Marie de l’Incarnation: Ms I, p. 82; Ms II, pp. 122-23; Ms III, pp. 204-05 and pp. 222-24.

[25] Ibid., Ms III, p. 223.

[26] Sang du Carmel, op. cit., p. 263, note.

[27] Relation, Ms III, p. 217, but we also find (Ms II, p. 138): ‘Comment pourrions-nous leur en vouloir eux qui nous ouvrent la porte du Ciel? Ah! puisse-t-[ ] les regarder en pitié et leur pardonner comme nous-même leur pardonnons de tout le cœur. Mais dans une recension comme dans l’autre, on trouve le même ton de fraternité ingénue…’ [‘How can we blame them for opening the door to Heaven for us? Ah! may we look upon them with pity and forgive them as we ourselves forgive with all our hearts. But in one view as in the other, we find the same tone of ingenuous fraternity…’]

[28] Relation, Ms II, p. 127.

[29] The Conciergerie was the courthouse and prison in Paris, where those imprisoned were tried, sentenced and sent to different locations to be guillotined.

[30] Relation, Ms I, p. 110.

[31] Relation, Ms I.

[32] Relation, Ms II, p. 141.

[33] Ibid., Ms III, p. 217.

[34] Ibid., Ms I, pp. 89-90.

[35] Ibid., Ms II, p. 177.

[36] Sang du Carmel, op. cit., p. 477, note.

[37] The phrase ‘in articulo mortis’ means ‘at the moment of death’.

[38] Letter of Marie de l’Incarnation to her prioress, May 7, 1794, in Sang du Carmel, op. cit., pp. 295-96.