The Carmélites of Compiègne in the 17th and 18th centuries
The Carmel of Compiègne was founded in 1641 and accommodated at first by Anne of Austria in a wing of the royal château until the construction of the convent nearby in 1648, consecrated to Notre-Dame de l'Annonciation. Until the Revolution the sisters led a peaceful existence under the protection of the royal family. Louis XIV was brought up in close proximity to the convent; Madame de Maintenon and later Marie Leczinska took them under their protection and made frequent visits. No doubt this royal connection did them no favours during the Revolution.
In 1790 the house comprised thirteen professed nuns, a novice and three lay sisters, aged between 26 and 75. The majority came from outside Compiègne, mostly from the Paris region, and were of good family. This was especially true of the nuns of the choir. Sister Marie of the Incarnation, Mme Françoise-Geneviève Philippe (1761-1836), author of the manuscript which forms the basis of the hagiography, was the natural daughter of the Prince de Conti; the congregation's Prioress, Mother Thérèse de Saint-Augustin (Mme Lidoine) had been given her dowry in 1773 by the dauphine Marie-Antoinette.
Soeur Marie de l’Incarnation, La relation du martyre des seize Carmélites de Compiègne, Edition critique par W. BUSH, Paris, Le Cerf, 1993.
The Carmelites were an enclosed and austere order, faithful to traditions. The house in Compiègne had a reputation for devotion, discipline and charity. According to the formal declaration of March 1791, for 1790 it enjoyed an annual revenue of 5000 livres, a middling figure among the religious establishments of the town.
The beginning of the Revolution
The initial religious reforms of the Revolution - the nationalisation of church property in November 1789 and the suppression of monastic vows in February 1790 - were particularly directed against the regular clergy. On 5th August 1790 the administration in Compiègne drew up an inventory of the Convent's property and interrogated the nuns as to their intentions; unlike their masculine counterparts, but in line with their fellow sisters in the town, they declared unanimously that they "wished to live and die in their Holy House". This included the young novice Constance who had not yet taken her vows,(and was indeed never destined to do so).
As a result, the Carmelites of Compiègne were given permission to remain peacefully in their convent, living on the pensions that the law allowed them and which, in August 1791, they duly claimed: 478 livres annually for each of the professed nuns and 239 livres for the three lay sisters. This represented a total of 7423 livres, a sum significantly larger than the 5000 livres in revenue they had declared for 1790. Moreover, on 11th February 1791 the authorities of the district presided over the regular election of a superior for the house (Mme Lidoine, who had been prioress since 1787 was relected) and of a bursar (Mme de Croissy).
The first conflicts between the Revolution and the Catholic hierarchy, over the oath to the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, had little direct impact on the nuns, since involved only the secular clergy. In Compiègne, there was little resistance and the parish clergy of Compiègne collectively took the civic oath on 9th January 1791.
However, the sisters were doubtless confirmed in their hostility towards the religious policies of the Constituent by their Director of Conscience, the former Jesuit Jean-Baptiste Courouble (1730-1803). The latter was exiled to Liège on 23rd November 1792, together with the abbé Carlet, chaplain to the Visitandines; both were considered "agitateurs réfractaires", even though they had taken the oath of loyalty to the regime - the so-called "serment Liberté-Égalité" - on 19th September 1792 along with their congregations.
In her account, which first appeared in 1836, Sister Marie of the Incarnation, the only one to escape the drama of 1794, reports that it was just before Easter 1792 that a "premonitory dream of martyrdom" came to one of the sisters. In response, the entire community "offered themselves up as a holocaust to appease the anger of God and to bring divine peace to the Church and the State". This "act of consecration", taken up by Bernanos, strongly echoes the wording of the spiritual vocation of the reformed Carmelite order as articulated by St. Teresa of Avila and St. John of the Cross.
William Bush clarifies: Shortly after the September massacres, Madame Lidoine had united the nuns in offering a daily "Act of Consecration" whereby they offered themselves as "victims of holocaust" to God", that their sacrifice might restore peace to France and the Church. Offered daily for 22 months, and went to the scaffold praising God for confirming his mercy on them in allowing them to be sacrificed.
Following the fall of the monarchy, the Legislative Assembly, by its decree of 18th August 1792, suppressed all remaining convents; all the nuns of Compiègne were obliged to leave their establishments, the Carmelites on 12th September; on 19th September they took the new oath "Liberté-Égalité" to which all functionaries and pensioners of the State were now subject. (According to Marie of the Incarnation they retracted this in the course of the trial - but this is doubtful.)
In September 1792 the local authorities continued to show their goodwill towards the Carmelites. On 4th September the administrators of the district wrote to warn them that "prudence dictated" they leave their house, abandon their habits and assemble together as little as possible: the sum of £18.50 livres was awarded to each of them for new clothes, the Carmelites being a particular case, since "their habits of the cloister can be of no use in the world". With official approval, they moved to three adjoining houses, near the Church of Saint-Antoine. In these "refuges" they were able discreetly to continue their communal life without harassment.
The Drama of Spring 1794
, Catholicism survived Within the framework of the official Constitutional Churchsurvived in Compiègne without difficulty. It was only in the Autumn of 1793 that the situation really deteriorated, due to almost entirely to external influences. Within the context of dechristianisation, the Popular Society of Compiègne and local radicals launched a brutal offensive, closing churches or converting them to the cult of Reason, and forcing priests to abdicate their functions. A systematic anti-religious iconoclasm associated Catholicism with the absolutist and feudal Ancien Régime.
The Revolutionary Committee of Compiègne nonetheless limited its repressive measures to the internment of a few suspect priests; it made no moves against former ecclesiastics or their congregations merely for their private religious views Nor did it take action when a few isolated voices in the Paris Jacobin Club denounced "the fanatical and aristocratic agitation" of "former nuns who remained illegality in their communities, like the Bernardines de
Monchy-Humières or the Carmelites of Compiègne". Whether sincere or forced, the sisters offered pledges in support of the war effort; the Popular Society recorded a civic mention for a package of bandages from "the citoyennes, former Carmelites" - a gift destined for the military hospitals of the town.
The subsequent fate of the Carmelites of Compiègne was the result of "a tragic combination of local and national circumstances". The train of events can be followed in the archives. In Jacques Bernet's assessment, the affair was the result less of a systematic will to persecute ecclesiastics, which did not represent the reality of Year II, than the disastrous effect of a "distressing mixture of fear, cowardice and political manipulation", all of which were ingredients of the exception political climate of France in the Spring of 1794, with its climate of psychosis, paranoia, circulating rumours and plots, exemplified in the speeches of Saint-Just to the Convention.
As a foretaste of what was to come, on 16 Ventôse Year II (6th March 1794), the dechristianising Representative on Mission André Dumont, warned a public session of the Popular Society, that even in the interior of their commune there existed in the interior of this very commune, there existed a bed of Counter-Revolution".
Let us try to follow the train of events which led to the perquisition of 2 Messidor Year II (21st June 1794) the arrest of the nuns, their trial in Paris and finally their condemnation and execution on 29 Messidor (17 July 1794).
The leading radical of the district in the Year II, was the national agent and printer Bertrand-Quinquet, the "Mirabeau of Compiègne". Noting the return of Catholicism and the limitation, if not check of the dechristianisation of Autumn 1793, above all in the countryside. He had the imprudence to send to the Committee of Public Safety at the end of April 1794 a vague text in which he attributed the "flickering of the flame of Reason" to evil-doers who wished to mislead the people. In response he received a stinging rebuke from the Committee condemning the vagueness of his denunciation. The local Jacobins meanwhile struggled to modify the cult of Reason, to which they had given a atheist interpretation, into the civic cult of the Supreme Being laid down by the Decree of 18 Floréal.
At this same time, the former Carmelites were conducting an extremely imprudent correspondence, both among themselves and with the outside world, in which they did not trouble to hide their hatred of the Revolution. These exchanges did not escape the vigilance of Claude-René Chambon, maître de poste, a militant Jacobin and member of the Revolutionary Committee, who took to denouncing the "fanatical agitation" of the nuns; it is not hard to see his hand behind the perquisition of 21st June. Suggestive fragments uncovered during the search of 21st June, were sufficient to credit the totally disproportionate thesis "royalist and fanatical plot". The arrest of the Carmelites on 22nd June.
One may deduce that the Committee and Revolutionary authorities seized and took advantage of the affair in order to credit the idea of plot, to bolster their own credentials, prove their patriotic zeal and vigilance in the eyes of the superior authorities that seemed to cast doubt on it.
Their arrest was justified by the "counter-revolutionary" content of the writings seized, favourable to royalists, émigrés, the coalition against France and refractory priests. A closer confirms indiscreet but harmless. The archives of the Revolutionary Tribunal conserve a document of 59 pages against the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, together with several letters hoping for a Coalition victory. The sisters were also found to be in possession of a portrait of Louis XVI, an image of the Sacred Heart (the symbol of the Vendéan rebels!) In addition, there were some anti-Jacobin verses addressed by Claude Louis-Denis Mulot de la Ménardière, a bourgeois of the town whose political ambitions had been thwarted. Little is known about Mulot de la Ménardière. According to Jacques Brunet, he was a correspondent to Bertrand's journal Affiches
de Compiègne et du Beauvaisis in 1786-87.)
Louis-Denis Mulot de la Ménardière was executed in Paris on 17th July 1794, with the sixteen nuns of Compiègne as a "refractory priest who said mass with them, and even acted as their confessor". He was a married man, aged 60 who, having been born in Compiègne, exercised the profession of bookseller there. He had always lived by the philosophical systems of incredulity; and no-one could be less suspected of what the impious called fanaticism. But since he was first cousin to one of the nuns, Marie-Catherine-Charlotte Brard, he often visited the community to see what services he could render. This was a sufficient pretext for the Revolutionary Committee of Compiègne to arrest him as the nuns' confessor, though they knew very well that he was not a priest and that his wife was still alive. She had just been arrested as a royalist suspect and imprisoned in the chateau at Chantilly. Nonetheless La Ménardière was imprisoned with the nuns and taken to Paris with them to be judged by the Revolutionary Tribunal. Fortunately for his soul, he was incarcerated with them. He still adhered to his incredulity, but one of the nuns - the prioress Teresa of Saint-Augustine - undertook, with success, to return him to the principles of faith.....He marched to the scaffold with the sixteen sisters, showed the same courage and made the same profession of faith.
Les martyrs de la foi pendant la Révolution française ... par Aimé Guillon de Montléon - Volume 3 - 1821
https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/Les_martyrs_de_la_foi_pendant_la_r%C3%A9volu/IdsuAAAAMAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=Mulot&pg=PA419&printsec=frontcover
Other local congregations - the sisters of Charity in Compiègne or the Bernadines of Monchy - were searched but, perhaps forewarned, no compromising material was found.
The arrest of the Carmelites, moreover, took place at a critical moment in the Revolution's history, which caused the affair to move rapidly beyond local politics to become collateral damage in the tortuous manoeuvrings of the Revolutionary Government. After the fall of the "factions" Robespierre attempted to rally the people to the cult of the Supreme Being. His opponents, spearheaded by Vadier of the Committee of General Security had used the mystic Catherine Théot - who saw in Robespierre a new Messiah - to discredit him. It seems that the Revolutionary Committee of Compiègne was well appraised of this affair; they submitted that there has been greater activity among the nuns and their female followers since "l'arrestation de la femme Théos, la soi-disant mère de
Dieu" and suspected them of conducting a possible criminal correspondence with "the fanatiques of Paris".
Mulot and the nuns were immediately imprisoned. They were held in the former house of the Visitandines, now serving as a gaol, which they shared with the English Benedictines of Cambrai interned in Compiègne. (These were released in 1795; indeed they embarked from Calais in the lay clothes left behind by the Carmelites) The dossier for the case was sent to the Committee of General Security of the Convention which ordered, on 22 Messidor (10th July) the transfer of the 16 nuns and Mulot to Paris, to appear before the Revolutionary Tribunal on 17th July.
G. Molinari (1906), Les Carmélites montant à l’échafaud
(Carmel de Compiègne)
Trial and execution
The trial of the 16 Carmelites and Mulot took place at the height of Revolutionary repression in June-July 1794, when the Revolutionary Tribunal despatched merely 1,400 victims in 46 days. The arrivals from Compiègne were part of a heterogenous group of thirty-four persons, judged hastily and without witnesses. The nuns appeared in their religious habits, their civilian clothes having been left behind at the laundry. The act of accusation, drawn up by Fouquier-Tinville, and read by his deputy Lindon, accused the Carmelites of "having formed counter-revolutionary confabulations ("conciliabules") and of having in their hearts the desire to see the people returned to the chains of tyrants and the slavery of sanguinary priests; to have continued to live under their rule and their superior". Condemnation of religious fanaticism was strongly implied. According to Marie of the Incarnation, the accuser condemned the nuns' "attachment to puerile beliefs and stupid religious practices" at which Sister Marie-Henriette Pelras turned to her companions and cried out, "We are going to die for God."
Mother Theresa, speaking in the name of the group, tried in vain to take the blame upon herself and save the sisters. The unfortunate Mulot was accused of complicity and qualified as a "refractory priest", despite the fact that he had been married for fifteen years - as could easily have been attested by the President of the Tribunal, Toussaint-Gabriel Scellier, whose brother was the mayor of Compiègne. It seems that the Parisian jurists assumed that Mulot was the Carmelites' Jesuit confessor in disguise - having allowed this confusion was the only reproach made against the Revolutionary Committee of Compiègne after Thermidor.
During this parody of a trial the Carmelites showed a courage and dignity which left a lasting impression. The same was also true of their conduct at the moment of execution. An employee of the prison recounted to Sister Marie: "One could not believe the respect commanded by the devotion of these generous victims; all of them longed for the moment of their sacrifice; they exhorted one another to remain firm and forgiving in the final combat...they gave the impression of going to their weddings.". Such are the words given to them in their last moments, as the sinister cart carried them to the place du Trône renversé, dressed in their white religious robes and singing canticles. It was reported that the crowed was so impressed that they watched in silence as the nuns mounted the scaffold one by one, to the Veni Creator. Mother Theresa was allowed to die last; she had hidden in her palm a tiny terracotta Madonna which each of the sisters kissed in turn, singing the Laudate, before they went to the guillotine. Their bodies were buried in the great communal pit near the cemetery of the convent of Picpus.
The fall of Robespierre on 9 Thermidor came only ten days later. According to Catholic mythology, this was the "miracle" accomplished by the nuns, whose courage had turned popular opinion against the tyrant.
From legend to beatification
More than a century passed between the execution the Carmelites in .... and their beatification in May 1906 - a long intellectual journey. The point of departure was the "relation" of Sister Marie of the Incarnation, the sole survivor of the community. The latter returned briefly to Compiègne in March 1795 to collect the sisters' effects and to gather testimony; she also retracted her oath of September 1792 on the municipal register.
he was in Paris on business when her community was arrested in Compiègne, but she by no means lingered in hopes of joining her sisters on the guillotine. Rather, she immediately fled, vainly hoping, as first cousin of the Duke of Orleans, to join members of his family in Switzerland. Unable to cross the Swiss border, she survived alone and frightened in post-Terror France before returning to Compiègne in the latter half of 1795. Amassing a unique collection of documents left by the martyred community, she would wait almost forty years before setting down her memories of her martyred sisters, then die in 1836 as a paying guest at the Carmel of Sens.
The town remained silent on the affair until well after the Revolutionary era. The only allusion was the rehabilitation of Mulot de la Ménardière recorded in the proceedings of the local Jacobin club, where it was admitted to his widow that he had been abusively qualified as a refractory priest. It was not until the Restoration and the July Monarchy that there appeared the first accounts, by the abbés Guillon de Mauléon (1821)
and Auger de Compiègne (1835). In 1836 Sister Marie's account was published at the request of her superior the abbé, later Cardinal, de Villecourt, who extensively guided and rewrote the text. The remodelled narrative, which reflected the preoccupations of the post-Revolutionary Church and laid the foundations of the pious legend of the Carmelites. It was reinforced in England where an account had been preserved by surviving seventeen Benedictines nuns who had briefly shared their incarceration. (The Benedictine Abbey of Stanbrook was to serve as the headquarters for the beatification by Rome in 1906; in 1895, Stanbrook Abbey returned many of the “wash tub” clothes as venerated relics to the newly reestablished Carmel Compiegne. Retain some pieces of cloth and a sandal.)
The reestablishment of the Carmel of Compiègne in 1867 revitalised local memory. Commemorative services were held and there was a renewed editorial effort on the part of the clergy and of notable
Catholics in the Historical Society of Compiègne. This production intensified under the Third Republic as the conflict between Church and secular state intensified. The study of the Carmelites' trial by Alexandre Sorel which appeared in the Society's Bulletin for 1878 provided the historical starting point for the beatification.
The process of beatification was initiated by the French bishops. The cause was introduced by Pope Leo XIII in December 1902. A decree of Pius X on 11th June 1905 proclaimed the Carmelites authentic martyrs. This was followed, on 27th May 1906 by a seriese of pompous ceremonies, which may be construed as a ripost to the formal separation of Church and State by the Third Republic in December 1905. The complex drama of 1794 was reduced to a confrontation between the pure faith of the Carmelites and the enemies of religion, the Revolution and its inheritors.
Towards canonisation?
It is in this same spirit that the memory of the Carmelites was kept alive in the 20th century in art and literature. Both the novel by Gertrud von Lefort and Francis Poulenc's opera are incontestably chefs-d'oeuvre, but they "reinforce the myth to the detriment of historical truth". This tendency re-emerged with the bicentenary of the Revolution, when certain Catholics raised the possibility of canonisation. In 2... Jacques Brunet could write that the Church had showed itself hesitant, perhaps advisedly so. The tragic history of the Carmelites should not become embroiled in new partisan quarrels but be allowed to stand as an example for the cause of peace and reconciliation.
Additional notes
The bicentenary commemorations of the execution of the sixteen Carmelites were launched a year and a half early, in January 1993, with the expectation that canonisation would be achieved before the end of the bicentenary year, 1994. On Sunday 17th January a special mass was celebrated by Monseigneur Hardy, the Bishop of Beauvais at the new monastery of the present-day Carmelites in Jonquières. On the following evening, 18th July, the Bishop presided over a lively press conference in Paris. This event had been staged by the publishing house Cerf which had just reissued the classic 1954 reference work on the martyrdom, Le sang du Carmel, by Father Bruno de Jésus-Marie. In addition, the 18th saw the launch of the first critical edition of the Relation of Sister Marie of the Incarnation, the work of Canadian professor William S. Bush then professor at the University of Western Ontario.
The Association of Friends of the Blessed Carmelites of Compiègne. was created on 7th November 1990, at the wish of the current community. Now has about a hundred members.
I. Two current goals
1. To perpetuate the memory of the Blessed Carmelites and disseminate their message, both historical, cultural and spiritual. Worked to set up Mémorial des Carmélites Martyres at the new location. n 1994 the Carmel of Compiègne moved to its present location in the commune of Jonquières. Set up Memorial with the organisation and financial aid of the Association
2. Provide material and financial assistance to the community.
In 1989 the Historical Society of Compiegne had devoted its energies to the Revolution. traced the sixteen Carmelite martyrs from the Conciergerie to the place de la nation to Picpus. Last June (1793) the Historical Society had visited Saint-Denis and the site of the former Carmel, now the municipal museum. Religious celebrations culminated on 10th July with a solemn mass at Saint-Jacques, presided over by the Cardinal Archbishop of Paris in the presence of the papal nuncio, the Archbishop of Reims and a dozen other bishops and ecclesiastical dignitries. The next Sunday, the 17th July, anniversary of the execution, a mass had been said at Picpus, in the presence of the Bishop of Beauvais. Canonisation of the sixteen bienheureuses was hoped for.
Theatrical events, notably a staging of Bernanos, Dialogues des Carmélites, at splendid Théâtre Impérial in Compiègne in September. The municipality added a plaque in the rue du Four indicating "anciennement rue des Carmélites
There was also a visit to the new Mémorial des Martyres (salle de Souvenir et crypte oratooire) at Jonquiere.
By May 1994, when hope for a bicentenary canonisation had begun to vanish, the Historical Society of Compiègne organised an international colloquium centred on the martyrs and other aspects of Carmelite history. According to one historian, French political realities opposed Rome's canonisation in 1994. The conference was accompanied by exhibitions in the local library and musée Vivenel. and films were screened. On 8th May, following the conference, three plaques were inaugurated on the houses where the Carmelites had taken refuge from 14th September 1792 to 22nd June 1794. The participants were joined by the mayor of Compiegne, M.Marini and finished their pilgrimage at the adjascent church of Saint-Antoine. There was also a visit to the new Mémorial des Martyres (salle de Souvenir et crypte oratooire) at Jonquiere.
"Béatifiées le 27 mai 1906, nos seize religieuses seront peut-être un jour canonisées. Lors du colloque organisé les 7/8 mai 1994 pour leur bicentenaire par la Société Historique de Compiègne, Monseigneur Adolphe-Marie Hardy, évêque de Beauvais, exprimait le souhait que sainte Thérèse de l’Enfant Jésus intervienne pour leur canonisation. En écho, Monseigneur Guy Gaucher, évêque auxiliaire de Lisieux, souhaitait à son tour que les Bienheureuses intercèdent pour la reconnaissance de Sainte Thérèse comme Docteur de l’Eglise, reconnaissance que Jean-Paul II a proclamée en 1997, lors des XIIèmes Journées mondiales de la Jeunesse à Paris.
La question est maintenant de savoir auquel de ses successeurs il incombera de donner de la part du Ciel une réponse officielle à la mission que Monseigneur Hardy a confiée à Sainte Thérèse.Website has prayers for intercession and supplies a proforma to be sent to the Vice-Postulate for the cause to supply details of any cures or signs of grace received as a result.
What more upto date?
En 1906, en présence de l’évêque de Beauvais Monseigeur Célestin Douais, le pape Pie X béatifie à Rome les seize carmélites de Compiègne.
En novembre 2021, l’assemblée plénière des évêques de France adopte la résolution de Monseigneur Jacques Benoit-Gonnin, évêque de Beauvais. Il sollicite la procédure par équipollence en vue de la canonisation des Carmélites de Compiègne. En février 2022, le Saint-Père donne son accord pour l’ouverture d’un procès de canonisation équipollente.
post of 15.12.2024. Saturday 14th September the opera of Francis Poulenc based on the Dialogues des staged at the Theatre Imperial. A premiere at the theatre.
Welcomed by officials of the town
https://www.oisehebdo.fr/2024/12/19/carmelites-compiegne-canonisees/
https://www.persee.fr/doc/rhef_0300-9505_1997_num_83_211_1291
Notice on the Hagiography Circle:
http://newsaints.faithweb.com/martyrs/MFR01.htm
http://newsaints.faithweb.com/martyrs/MFR01.htm
Website for the cause
http://martyres.carmelites.free.fr/
http://martyres.carmelites.free.fr/
Bulletin on Vatican News
Jacques Bernet
"Les carmélites de Compiègne".Société Historique de Compiègne website
Les Carmélites de Compiègne, victimes de la Révolution légende et histoire", Annales historiques Compiégnoises, No. 113-114, 2009 [available online from the website of the Société Historique de Compiègne]
https://histoire-compiegne.com/wp-content/uploads/ANNALES/AN113-1.pdf
https://histoire-compiegne.com/wp-content/uploads/ANNALES/AN113-1.pdf
Alexandre Sorel, "Les Carmelites de Compiègne devant le Tribune Revolutionnaire"
Bulletin de la Société historique de Compiègne, Vol. 4 1878, p.133-239
https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k411672b/f133.item
Bulletin de la Société historique de Compiègne, Vol. 4 1878, p.133-239
https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k411672b/f133.item
Actes du colloque: Mort et renaissance du Carmel de France: commémoration des Carmélites, Martyres de Compiègne, 7-8 mai 1994. Bulletin de la Société historique de Compiègne, January 1995
William Bush, To quell the Terror: the True Story of the Carmelite Martyrs of Compiègne, 1999
_____, "The Last One at the Scaffold", Playbill, post of 01.12.2002.
review by lefebvre
https://www.jstor.org/stable/41929559?seq=1
https://www.tfp.org/moving-god-moving-history/
https://www.pdcnet.org/renascence/content/renascence_1995_0048_0001_0003_0009?file_type=pdf
https://www.persee.fr/doc/ahrf_0003-4436_1982_num_248_1_4465
Discussion
Through Gertrud von Le Fort's modern novella, Song at the Scaffold, and Francis Poulenc's famed opera, Dialogues of the Carmelites, (with its libretto by Georges Bernanos), modern audiences around the world have become captivated by the mysterious destiny of these Compiègne martyrs, Blessed Teresa of St. Augustine and her companions
https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2021/04/28/what-is-equipollent-canonization-and-why-do-we-need-it/
http://catholicapologetics.info/library/onlinelibrary/martyrs.htm
https://france3-regions.francetvinfo.fr/hauts-de-france/oise/ils-etaient-decides-a-les-executer-les-carmelites-de-compiegne-guillotinees-sous-la-terreur-dont-le-martyre-a-inspire-l-opera-le-plus-joue-au-monde-3073276.html
https://www.thetablet.co.uk/diary/word-from-the-cloisters-13/
Is this the discussion?
Article in Catholic Herald
https://catholicherald.co.uk/french-revolutions-singing-martyrs-of-compiegne-canonised-despite-lack-of-miracle/
X Canonisation des carmélites de Compiègne, guillotinées à Paris pour "fanatisme" le 17 juillet 1794. Elles avaient été béatifiées comme "martyres de la foi" par Pie X en 1906. Une affaire au coeur d'un long conflit de mémoire et d'histoire, qui n'est toujours pas éteint.
Thread on La France Catholique
https://www.france-catholique.fr/carmelites-de-compiegne-martyres-de-la-revolution.html
https://www.facebook.com/francecatholique
Documentary: X Un documentaire réalisé pour les 230 ans de l'exécution des Carmélites illustre bien la confusion qui s'est opérée au fil des ans entre histoire et mémoire de la persécution religieuse révolutionnaire, persécution dont les enjeux restent mal compris. "Bienheureuse" la veritable histoire des carmelites martyres de compiegne. https://x.com/ChopelinP/status/1869457030123290854
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0JaL-k_XQpE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0JaL-k_XQpE
https://larhra.fr/member/pchopelin
https://parisianfields.com/2013/06/09/the-nuns-tale/
Graphic novel
BD: https://www.editionspleinvent.fr/product/129371/les-carmelites-de-compiegne/
https://www.credofunding.fr/fr/bd-carmelites-de-compiegne
https://shs.hal.science/halshs-01759309
Paul Chopelin.
At the request of the Bishops of France, Pope Francis reopened their cause in 2022, using a special procedure called "equipollent canonization" which removes the necessity for a recognised miracle. The blessed are recognised as saints by a simple declaration by the Pope, without further ceremony. This is what Francis did on 18th December.
The nuns were convicted by the Revolutionary Tribunal of plotting against the Revolution and guillotined on the Place de la Nation on 17th July 1794. Catholic memorialists report that they sang canticles in the tumbrils that conveyed them to the scaffold. They became symbols of fidelity to the faith and courage in the face of uncertain death.
They had already been recognised in 1906 as martyrs "in odium fidei" (killed in hatred of the faith) at the time of their beatification by Pius X. But their memory, transmitted notably in the Dialogues des carmélites by Georges Bernanos (and the opera b Francis Poulenc) raises a very french problem; that of the antireligious violence by the Revolutionaries and their reception to day. It is a question that is largely taboo, both socially and in the histories.
4th December, France Catholique reported that the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints had finished its examination of the dossier for the cause and passed it to Pope Francis. It now only remained for the Pope to authorise the promulgation of the decree announcing their canonisation. This was a formality. Francis had given his agreement in 2022 for the procedure by equipollence.
postulator during canonization, Rev. Marco Chiesa, OCD
On nuns
Vatican news
https://www.vaticannews.va/fr/pape/news/2024-12/carmelites-compiegne-france-canonisees-decret-pape-francois.html
CHOPELIN
https://international.la-croix.com/news/religion/the-martyrs-of-the-french-revolution/4075
https://classiques-garnier.com/la-revolution-francaise-et-le-monde-d-aujourd-hui-mythologies-contemporaines-bienheureux-martyrs-feroces-bourreaux-en.html
https://classiques-garnier.com/la-revolution-francaise-et-le-monde-d-aujourd-hui-mythologies-contemporaines-presentation-des-auteurs-et-resumes.html?displaymode=full
Gregoire book
https://shs.cairn.info/revue-annales-historiques-de-la-revolution-francaise-2016-3-page-VIII?lang=fr
https://www.lavie.fr/idees/histoire/canonisation-des-carmelites-de-compiegne-la-persecution-religieuse-angle-mort-de-la-revolution-97490.php
christ-roi blog
https://christroi.over-blog.com/2016/10/saint-salomon-leclercq-premier-saint-de-la-revolution.html
https://christroi.over-blog.com/2016/10/saint-salomon-leclercq-premier-saint-de-la-revolution.html
Bienheureuses Charlotte et ses compagnes, carmélites de Compiègne, martyres (1794)
https://christroi.over-blog.com/article-33903964.html
https://christroi.over-blog.com/article-33903964.html
https://france3-regions.francetvinfo.fr/hauts-de-france/oise/ils-etaient-decides-a-les-executer-les-carmelites-de-compiegne-guillotinees-sous-la-terreur-dont-le-martyre-a-inspire-l-opera-le-plus-joue-au-monde-3073276.html
https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b84110405.item
Jean de Viguerie, "La résistance des religieuses à la persécution révolutionnaire", Bulletin de la Société Historique de Compiègne, 1995, p. 75-105.
https://histoire-compiegne.com/wp-content/uploads/BULLETINS/34-19.pdf
https://histoire-compiegne.com/wp-content/uploads/BULLETINS/34-19.pdf
And comments:
https://www.fairobserver.com/region/europe/jean-yves-camus-jean-de-viguerie-france-counter-revolutionary-movement-french-news-78915/
https://cths.fr/co/communication.php?id=4142
Corinne Gressang, "Breaking Habits: Identity and the Dissolution of Convents in France, 1789-1808" [PhD dissertation, 2020
“Useful Nuns and Revolutionary Possibility,” Age of Revolutions [blog] post of 11.11.2019, https://ageofrevolutions.com/2019/11/11/useful-nuns-and-revolutionary-possibility/
Mémorial des Carmélites Martyres, Carmel of Jonquières
Museum: Mémorial des Carmélites Martyres,
https://www.oisehebdo.fr/2024/12/19/carmelites-compiegne-canonisees/
https://www.oisehebdo.fr/2023/08/18/expo-carmelites-compiegne-canonisation/
https://www.leparisien.fr/oise-60/grace-a-laccord-du-pape-francois-les-carmelites-martyres-de-loise-seront-bientot-canonisees-23-04-2022-7VXFZOWIONBZXOO7557IBWZUSQ.php
https://france3-regions.francetvinfo.fr/hauts-de-france/oise/ils-etaient-decides-a-les-executer-les-carmelites-de-compiegne-guillotinees-sous-la-terreur-dont-le-martyre-a-inspire-l-opera-le-plus-joue-au-monde-3073276.html
No comments:
Post a Comment