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Carmelite martyrs of Compiègne and the strength of the Holy Spirit

Before their execution, the sisters knelt and sang the Veni Creator and renewed their baptismal and religious vows.

Martyrs of Compiègne depicted in the stained glass of Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church, in Quidenham, Norfolk. (Image: John Salmon / Wikipedia)

Today marks a historic day in the Catholic calendar: it is the first time in history that Thérèse de Saint-Augustin and her companions, the Carmelite martyrs of ç, have their feast day as canonized saints.

On December 18, 2024, Pope Francis added these sixteen nuns to the official lists of saints by what is called “equipollent canonization.” When an individual (or, as in this case, a group) has a long history of veneration among the faithful, with clear historical testimony to his heroic sanctity of life and miracles attributed to his intercession, the pope can curtail the normal processes and give the Church’s official sanction to his popular veneration. Pope Benedict XVI did this with St Hildegard of Bingen in 2012, and Pope Francis did so for the Martyrs of Compiègne.

The story of the Martyrs of Compiègne has been immortalized in story and song, so I will be brief in my summary of it here. In 1790, shortly after the French Revolution began (likely in a grab for capital not unlike the English Reformation), the revolutionary government outlawed religious life in France. A convent of Carmelite nuns in the town of Campiègne, roughly 50 miles from Paris, decided that they were going to do their best to live their vows even outside of their convent. In the bloodiest period of the Reign of Terror in 1794, the sisters were arrested in the houses in which they resided, charged with various crimes including “anti-revolutionary sentiments” (lamenting the death of the king) and “fanaticism” (living as religious sisters), brought to Paris, and eventually guillotined.

There are many moving details of their final days, not all of which we can get into here. The prioress, Mother Thérèse, had a sentiment of how things would go some time before their arrest, and she resolved with the sisters to offer their sufferings for their nation. A couple of the women martyred were novices at the time of their arrest, as the French government had decreed that no religious order could receive any new professed members. Mother Thérèse received the novices’ vows in prison, so they would die as professed nuns.

On the way to the guillotine, one of the sisters bartered a coat for several mugs of hot chocolate from a bystander, the only sustenance the sisters had had all day. They sang songs en route to their execution, though there is some disagreement in the sources as to exactly what was sung; certainly psalms, including the Miserere, perhaps Compline, or texts from the Office of the Dead. Most of the assembled crowd mocked them as they sang. Before their execution, the sisters knelt and sang the Veni Creator and renewed their baptismal and religious vows. Starting with the youngest and finishing with the prioress, the sisters were guillotined one by one. Most accounts relate that the sisters, one by one, asked permission to die from the prioress as they were lined up.

As she climbed the steps to her execution, the first sister began to chant the psalm Laudate Dominum, only to have her singing cut short by the fall of the killing blade. The other sisters took up the song until the guillotine silenced all sixteen. This fact of their martyrdom gave the title to the English translation of German Author Gertrude von Fort’s famous account of their martyrdom, The Song at the Scaffold. The event has also been commemorated in stage plays, film, and even an opera by Francis Poulenc, where the chorus of the sisters falls silent one by one.

There is something so very captivating about the martyrdom of the sisters of Compiègne, and it’s not just because it happened so close to our own day. Mother Thérèse de Saint-Augustine received an answer to her prayers. Ten days after the martyrdom, the Reign of Terror came to an end with the execution of Robespierre on July 28, 1794. Though the struggle of the Church in France was by no means over, one wonders if the blood of the martyrs again was the seed of the Church, for in the nineteenth century, one finds such glories in French Catholicism as St Jean Vianney, St Bernadette Soubirous, St Théophane Vénard, and St Thérèse of Lisieux.

Yet the fruits of the French Revolution are with us as well, giving impetus to every subsequent atheistic uprising, including every Marxist revolution and the imposition of “wokeness,” which is nothing more than metastasized Marxism. The history of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries are piled high with the skulls of the victims of the ongoing revolt. Although their example is not an easy one, the Martyrs of Compiègne point a way forward in our times.

When forced out of their Carmelite convent, the sisters made a convent in their hearts, though they never gave up communal worship to the extent that they could live it. The liturgy of the Church became their comfort on the way to their deaths, suggesting to us the strength and value to be found in singing the psalms and great hymns of the Church. The more revolutionary forces try to take our faith from us, the more we need to root that faith deep within ourselves and those closest to us.

Finally, I want to note how fascinating it is that the feast of the Martyrs of Compiègne occurs one day after the feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, the patronal feast of the Carmelite order. The prayer for their feast day in the Carmelite Liturgy of the Hours (given below) suggests that it is precisely their lives as Carmelites that prepared them to receive the crown of martyrdom. Our Lady protected them with her mantle, even in the face of such cruel deaths. Let us all pray that, aided by the prayers of Mary, we remain faithful in our times:

Lord God,
You called Teresa of Saint Augustine and her companions
to go on in the strength of the Holy Spirit
from the heights of Carmel to receive a martyr’s crown.
May our love too be so steadfast
that it will bring us
to the everlasting vision of your glory.
We ask this through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,
who lives and reigns with you
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
God forever and ever. Amen.


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About Donald Jacob Uitvlugt 17 Articles
Donald Jacob Uitvlugt writes from Little Rock, Arkansas. You can find some of his theological musings at "Drops of Mercy".

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