Today, the Church honors the Carmelite martyrs of Compiègne, French Carmelites who were executed during the French Revolution.

With the Storming of the Bastille in July 1789, the revolutionary movements stirring in eighteenth-century France caught international attention. The galvanized revolutionaries began to topple the Ancien Régime, and—along with the monarchy, aristocracy, and feudal system—the wealthy and powerful Catholic church of France.

At first, secular parish priests received fair amounts of protection—provided they swore allegiance to the new revolutionary government by taking the Oath to the Civil Constitution to the Clergy. Many, of course, resisted, their consciences barring them from giving their allegiance to the anti-Christian men who ran France’s new Jacobin republic and paved the streets red with blood fresh from the guillotine. And anti-clerical sentiment soon swelled, leading to the murder and execution of many priests and bishops, as in the September Massacres.

Many of the leaders of the aptly-named Reign of Terror despised religious orders as religious sanctuaries for the wealthy offspring of the aristocracy. So, while parish priests were simply sworn to allegiance, convents and priories were disbanded, the land snatched back for the people, and the religious brothers and sisters imprisoned.

One of these convents was the Carmelite convent at Compiègne, a small town to the northeast of Paris. The Carmelite sisters, led by Mother Thérèse of Saint Augustine, their prioress, maintained communal life together after their arrest and imprisonment in 1794. They were imprisoned with a group of Benedictine nuns from France, and they encouraged each other in remaining true to their vows and vocations.

The Carmelites were transferred to a prison in Paris’ île de la Cité, where they awaited trial—although the conclusion was mostly foregone. They were condemned as traitors and sentenced to death. Their accusers mocked their insistence on clinging to their childhood beliefs and superstitious religious practices. On July 17, 1794, the sisters, stripped of their religious habits—symbols of oppression—were clothed in secular clothing and carted off to the Place de la Nation. Joyfully and bravely, they sang hymns—the Salve Regina, Laudate Dominum, Veni Creator Spiritus—throughout the streets of Paris, up to the final moment. They sang as each one of them approached the guillotine, until, finally, Mother Thérèse was led behind the last of her daughters to the blade, and the day was silent.

Their powerful story was memorialized in a German novel by Gertrud von Le Fort, which novelist Georges Bernanos adapted into a play Dialogues des Carmélites. The composer Francis Poulenc used Bernanos’ script as the basis for his opera by the same name. In the famous final scene of Poulenc’s opera, the nuns walk to the guillotine one-by-one, singing the Salve Regina. Video footage of this scene can be watched here.

The Carmelites were proclaimed Venerable by Pope Leo XIII in 1902, and beatified by Pope St. Pius X on May 13, 1906. Ten days after their death, Robespierre was overthrown and his Reign of Terror came to an end.

Martyrs of Compiègne, who fearlessly gave their life for their faith during the Reign of Terror—pray for us!

Image Credit: Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church, Quidenham, Norfolk, photograph by John Salmon via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0)