THE SIXTEEN CARMELITE MARTYRS OF COMPIEGNE

[Dawn Marie]

July, the month dedicated to the Most Precious Blood
J.M.J.

THE SIXTEEN CARMELITE MARTYRS OF COMPIEGNE

    The French Revolution reveals the titanic struggle between good and evil.
During the terror, over 40,000 Frenchmen were executed just for holding
fast to the Catholic Faith and objecting to the worst excesses of the
Committee of Public Safety. The blood lost in the years of 1792-1794
staggers the imagination even in the retelling and the campaign against the
Church was as diabolical as it was cruel.

    Contemplative religious communities had been among the first targets of
the fury of the French Revolution against the Catholic Church. Less than a
year from May 1789 when the Revolution began with the meeting of the
Estates-General, these communities had been required by law to disband. But
many of them continued in being, in hiding. Among these were the community
of the Carmelite nuns of Compiegne, in northeastern France not far from
Paris -- the fifty-third convent in France of the Carmelite sisters who
followed the reform of  St. Teresa of Avila, founded in 1641, noted
throughout its history for fidelity and fervor. Their convent was raided in
August 1790, all the property of the sisters was seized by the government,
and they were forced to discard their habits and leave their house. They
divided into four groups which found lodging in four different houses all
near the same church in Compiegne, and for several years they were to a
large extent able to continue their religious life in secret. But the
intensified surveillance and searches of the "Great Terror" revealed their
secret, and in June 1794 most of them were arrested and imprisoned.

 They had expected this; indeed, they had prayed for it. At some time
during the summer of 1792, very likely just after the events of August 10
of that year that marked the descent into the true deeps of the Revolution,
their prioress, Madeleine Lidoine, whose name in religion was Teresa in
honor of the founder of their order, by all accounts a charming
perceptive, and highly intelligent woman, had foreseen much of what was to
come. At Easter of 1792, she told her community that, while looking through
the archives she had found the account of a dream a Carmelite had in 1693.
In that dream, the Sister saw the whole Community, with the exception of 2
or 3 Sisters, in glory and called to follow the Lamb. In the mind of the
Prioress, this meant martyrdom and might well be a prophetic announcement
of their fate.

Mother Teresa had said to her sisters: "Having meditated much on this
subject, I have thought of making an act of consecration by which the
Community would offer itself as a sacrifice to appease the anger of God, so
that the divine peace of His Dear Son would be brought into the world,
returned to the Church and the state." The sisters discussed her proposal
and all agreed to it but the two oldest, who were hesitant. But when the
news of the September massacres came, mingling glorious martyrdom with
apostasy, these two sisters made their choice, joining their commitment to
that of the rest of the community. All made their offering; it was to be
accepted.

    After their lodgings were invaded again in June, their devotional objects
shattered and their tabernacle trampled underfoot by a Revolutionary who
told them that their place of worship should be transformed into a dog
kennel, the Carmelite sisters were taken to the Conciergerie prison, where
so many of the leading victims of the guillotine had been held during their
last days on earth. There they composed a canticle for their martyrdom, to
be sung to the familiar tune of the Marseillaise. The original still
exists, written in pencil and given to one of their fellow prisoners, a lay
woman who survived.

Give over our hearts to joy, the day of glory has arrived,
Far from us all weakness, seeing the standard come;
We prepare for the victory, we all march to the true conquest,
Under the flag of the dying God we run, we all seek the glory;
Rekindle our ardor, our bodies are the Lord's,
We climb, we climb the scaffold and give ourselves back to the Victor.

O happiness ever desired for Catholics of France, To follow the wondrous
road
Already marked out so often by the martyrs toward their suffering,
After Jesus with the King, we show our faith to Christians,
We adore a God of justice; as the fervent priest, the constant faithful,
Seal, seal with all their blood faith in the dying God....

Holy Virgin, our model, August queen of martyrs, deign to strengthen our
zeal And purify our desires, protect France even yet, help; us mount to Heaven,
Make us feel even in these places, the effects of your power. Sustain your
children, Submissive, obedient, dying, dying with Jesus and in our King believing.

On July 17 the sixteen sisters were brought before Fouquier-Tinville. All
cases were now being disposed of within twenty-four hours as Robespierre
had wished; theirs was no exception. They were charged with having received
arms for the emigres; their prioress, Sister Teresa, answered by holding up
a crucifix. "Here are the only arms that we have ever had in our house."
They were charged with possessing an altar-cloth with designs honoring the
old monarchy (perhaps the fleur-de-lis) and were asked  to deny any
attachment to the royal family. Sister Teresa responded: "If that is a
crime, we are all guilty of it; you can never tear out of our hearts the
attachment for Louis XVI and his family. Your laws cannot prohibit feeling;
they cannot extend their empire to the affections of the soul; God alone
has the right to judge them." They were charged with corresponding with
priests forced to leave the country because they would not take the
constitutional oath; they freely admitted this. Finally they were charged
with the catchall indictment by which any serious Catholic in France could
be guillotined during the Terror: "fanaticism." Sister Henriette, who had
been Gabrielle de Croissy, challenged Fouguier-Tinvile to his face:
"Citizen, it is your duty to respond to the request of one condemned; I
call upon you to answer us and to tell us just what you mean by the word
'fanatic.'" "I mean," snapped the Public Prosecutor of the Terror, "your
attachment to your childish beliefs and your silly religious practices."
"Let us rejoice, my dear Mother and Sisters, in the joy of the Lord," said
Sister Henriette, "that we shall die for our holy religion, our faith, our
confidence in the Holy Roman Catholic Church."

While in prison, they asked and were granted permission to wash their
clothes. As they had only one set of lay clothes, they put on their
religious habit and set to the task. Providentially, the revolutionaries
picked that "wash day" for their transfer to Paris. As their clothes were
soaking wet, the Carmelites left for Paris wearing their "outlawed"
religious habit. They celebrated the feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel in
prison, wondering whether they would die that day.

It was only the next day they went to the guillotine. The journey in the
carts took more than an hour. All the way the Carmelite sisters sang: the
"Miserere," "Salve Regina," and "Te Deum." Beholding them, a total silence
fell on the raucous, brutal crowd, most of them cheapened and hardened by
day after day of the spectacle of public slaughter. At the foot of the
towering killing machine, their eyes raised to Heaven, the sisters sang
"Veni Creator Spiritus." One by one, they renewed their religious vows.
They pardoned their executioners. One observer cried out: "Look at them and
see if they do not have the air of angels! By my faith, if these women did
not all go straight to Paradise, then no one is there!"

    Sister Teresa, their prioress, requested and obtained permission to go
last under the knife. The youngest, Sister Constance, went first. She
climbed the steps of the guillotine "With the air of a queen going to
receive her crown," singing Laudate Dominum omnes gentes, "all peoples
praise the Lord." She placed her head in the position for death without
allowing the executioner to touch her. Each sister followed her example,
those remaining singing likewise with each, until only the prioress was
left, holding in her hand a small figure of the Blessed Virgin Mary. The
killing of each martyr required about two minutes. It was about eight
o'clock in the evening, still bright at midsummer. During the whole time
the profound silence of the crowd about the guillotine endured unbroken.

    Two years before when the horror began, the Carmelite community at
Compiegne had offered itself as a holocaust, that peace might be restored
to France and the Church. The return of full peace was still twenty-one
years in the future. But the Reign of Terror had only ten days left to run.
Years of war, oppression and persecution were yet to come, but the mass
official killing in the public squares of Paris was about to end. The Cross
had vanquished the guillotine.

    These sixteen holy Carmelite nuns have all been beatified by our Holy
Father, the Pope, [Pope St. Pius X, 27 May 1906] which is the last step
before canonization. Blessed Carmelites of Compiegne, pray for us!


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For the month of July

Visit our Store (http://olrl.org/mm5/merchant.mvc) for devotions we
offer to The Most Precious Blood:

[Alley]

God Bless God in His Angels and in His Saints!

Praying....with love+

[Gloria]

Blessed Carmelites of Compiegne, pray for us that we will stay true to our Catholic Faith when we are tested.

[Dawn Marie]

I'm not sure if one would be more overcome with edification, love and joy at the holiness of what the nuns were doing or more overcome by horror at what was being done to them. 

If God has any plans of allowing such a grace of martyrdom I have often asked Him to make sure I go before He takes any priests or nuns, because I don't know that I could handle seeing them killed or even knowing about it and not seeing it.  But who knows what grace is given in that moment?  We won't know I guess until it comes.

Praying....