According to Jean-Clément Martin ... "Martyrs" of the Revolution

 To add to my posts on the Carmelites of Compiègne, the following translates / summarise a  paper by Jean-Clément Martin on the Revolution and the concept of martyrdom, first published in 2012 (and now available on Academia). In J.-C. M.'s view,  the language of sacrifice and commemoration was central to the common experience, and to subsequent memory, on both sides of the Revolutionary struggle. 

Martyrs et Révolution française, autour du sacré

The Revolutionary period offers an exceptional opportunity to observe the workings of memory and religion in human society. The Revolutionary decade overturned established relations with the sacred and created memories which formed the foundation of new political, social and regional identities.  However, the complexity of events makes it difficult to move beyond traditional secular and political interpretations to give due weight to this dimension. 

The find an appropriate vocabulary also remains problematic, for example whether to distinguish "victims" from "martyrs", or to talk about "religion" in general... Rival traditions have their different emblematic figures:  Marat, Robespierre, Bara on the one hand, the Royal family and the "martyrs of the faith" on the other... What follows offers only a sort of "Japanese path", laying down a few stepping stones to suggest a possible route.  

I want to understand why this era was obsessed with sacrifice, why different movements and groups vied with each other to claim the glory of martyrdom; and above all why this glory has been "awarded" in national memory only to representatives of the Catholic religion.

The Martyrs of Compiègne - towards a new hagiography

The documentary Les Bienheureuses, on the Martyrs of Compiègne, was created in 2023 by journalist and independent filmmaker François Lespes.  The film was originally broadcast on the French language Catholic television channel KTO TV and, in July 2024, was reissued on the KTO TV website, as well as on YouTube. Although the project started life as an independent initiative - indeed a labour of love - it been widely endorsed in Catholic media in the run up to the canonisation of  December 2024.  It is an impressive accomplishment, especially for its insights into the lives of the modern nuns.  It also, in a certain sense, represents the current state of Catholic attitudes towards the Revolution and its legacy of violence.

Here is an English summary, concentrating on the historical analysis, with a few comments and notes, mainly based on the additional information taken from William Bush's To Quell the Terror: the true story of the Carmelite Martyrs (1999).

The Martyrs of Compiègne and Revolutionary violence

Paul Delaroche, Guillotine/ The Martyrs of Compiegne. Painted in the first half of the 19th century.
Private Collection (Auctioned in New York in 2017)

MARTYRS WITHOUT PERSECUTORS?

The canonisation of the Carmelites of Compiègne in December represents a significant testing point in relations between modern French Catholics and the legacy of the French Revolution. 

One of the few non-Catholic historians to comment so far is the Paul Chopelin, Maître de conférence at the University of Lyon III, president of the Société des études robespierristes and a specialist on the relationship between society and religion.  For Chopelin, the canonisation represents "an affair at the heart of a long conflict between memory and history, which is not yet extinguished" x.com @ChopelinP, post of 18.12. 2024 ] 

In Chopelin's view, after two centuries of hostility, the Church has made its peace with the Republican regime, but has yet to formulate a consistent attitude towards the legacy of the Revolutionary aggression.  The canonisation throws this omission into relief:  "The  memory [of the Carmelites] raises a very French problem; that of the anti-religious violence by the Revolutionaries and their reception to day.  It is a question that is largely taboo, both socially and in the histories.  [Commenting to La Vie, 21.12.2024 ]

Is this a fair analysis?  Here are a few preliminary thoughts. 

In search of the Martyrs of Compiègne

Even for assiduous relic hunters, there are pathetically few material reminders today of the martyred sisters of Compiègne.  However, the website of the French Carmelites offers a short "pilgrimage", which I have tried to follow (not in real life, just on Google Maps!).  We start off with a "promenade in Compiègne"

Le Carmel de France, "Les Carmélites martyres de Compiègne - Faire le pélerinage"
https://www.carmel.asso.fr/Faire-un-pelerinage.html

In Compiègne

The site of the 18th-century Carmel

The dominant feature of 18th-century Compiègne, as today, was the great royal château.  The Carmel was close by; the substantial site stretched as far as the Oise, covering the approximate area bounded by the modern roads rue d’Ulm, rue Othenin, cours Guynemer and rue du Fours (formerly rue des Carmélites). 

Quite literally, not a stone remains.

Where the nuns once had their chapel, there now stands the splendid Théâtre Impérial: a memorial plaque was erected in the entrance in 1994.  The area that accommodated the sisters' living quarters, until recently occupied by the  École d’État-major, is now the subject of a major urban regeneration project. 

On 7th August 1792 the National Assembly ordered the municipalities to verify the official inventory made two years previously.  The verification, seizure and removal of the convent's entire furnishings was only actually carried out on 12th September.  All items were seized and transported to the former St. Corneille Abbey, the general depot for Compiègne’s confiscated church goods... Madame Philippe mentions, in particular, the disappearance at this time of the large collection of fine, life-size wax figures composing the monastery’s celebrated “crèche.” Its numerous spectacular tableaux of richly dressed images were set up not only at Christmas, but also at other times by royal request. With an indignation rare for her, Madame Philippe opines that those magnificent wax figures had all been melted down to make the candles illumining the works of darkness fomented by revolutionary committees during their sinister nocturnal meetings.  It was  on September 14, with their housing assured and their civilian clothing acquired, that the community finally emerged from their stripped monastery... (William Bush, To Quell the Terror, p.91-92)

The contents of the Carmel were definitively sold off in November 1794, by which time the buildings had already been transformed into a military hospital.

The Martyrs of Compiègne

On 18th December the Pope announced the canonisation of  the "martyrs of  Compiègne",  sixteen Discalced Carmelite nuns executed by order of the Revolutionary Tribunal on 17th July 1794.  A procedure known as "equipollent" or "equivalent" canonisation dispensed with the need for intercessory miracles and instead recognised the long-standing veneration enjoyed by the nuns, who are held to have met their deaths with inspirational courage and unwavering faith.  At the time of their beatification in 1906 they had been declared as martyred "in odium fidei" ("in hatred of the faith"). The nuns' story is well-known through art and literature.  It was the subject of a  novella written in 1931 by the German Catholic Gertrud von Lefort and also of Georges Bernanos's Dialogues des carmélites, which provided the libretto for the highly successful opera by Francis Poulenc, first performed in 1957.

G. Molinari (1906), The Carmelite martyrs mount the scaffold, 1906. Carmel de Compiègne

 

What were the circumstances surrounding the condemnation of the nuns of Compiègne and what do they tell us about the religious policies of the Revolution?

The following is translated from an essay published in 2009 in the Annales of the Historical Society of Compiègne, by Jacques Bernet, a historian who has researched and written extensively on Revolutionary dechristianisation in the local area.  In his preface, he emphasises the need to move beyond hagiography to uncover the historical context.  In his view, the Carmelites were victims of a tragic conjunction of personalities and political circumstances rather than a generalised ideology of anti-religious violence.