The Carmelites of Compiègne
Sixteen Carmelites guillotined singing, ten days before Robespierre fell.
- 19th century
- France
- Feast day July 17
- Martyr
- Nun
Driven from their convent in 1792, the Carmelites of Compiègne went on living their rule in four apartments in the town, in lay clothes. Their prioress, Teresa of St Augustine, had proposed as early as 1792 an act of offering that peace might return to the Church and to France; all had signed it. Arrested in June 1794 for "fanaticism", they were taken to Paris and condemned on 17 July. They climbed the scaffold on the Place du Trône-Renversé singing the Veni Creator, the youngest going first and the prioress last; the sixteen were executed one after another, in a silence every witness remarked upon. Ten days later Robespierre fell and the Terror ended. Beatified in 1906, they were canonised in December 2024. Gertrud von Le Fort drew from them a novella, from which Bernanos made the *Dialogues of the Carmelites*, and Poulenc his opera.
Recognising
A file of nuns in brown habit and white mantle climbing a wooden stair; sometimes sixteen palms, or sixteen stars.