Revolutionary martyrdom

by Chris Chatteris SJ

There are revolutions and revolutions.

While at the Carmelite convent in Benoni, I read an account* of the Carmelite martyrs of the French Revolution. In 1794, at the height of the Reign of Terror (la Terreur), sixteen sisters from the Compiègne Carmel were guillotined in Paris. They were accused of keeping weapons in their house (false), being enemies of the people (sound familiar?), being fanatics  (defined as being fervent Catholics), and being critical of the Revolution (they were). They were tried, convicted, and executed in a single day. 

The guillotine is often described as a more humane and democratic manner of executing people than previous methods. It was certainly swifter, once you arrived, but it took two hours in an open cart through the Paris streets and its yelling, ordure-flinging mobs to get there. 

The scene upon arrival was terrifying—that was the idea. The fearsome angled blade silhouetted against the sky, the hostile mob, and the stench of putrefying blood are not always mentioned in the history books. The guillotine’s very efficiency facilitated the mass killings of the Terror. A four-bladed version of this fearsome instrument was planned to eliminate more ‘enemies of the people’ more rapidly!

The Carmelite sisters faced all this with extraordinary courage and dignity, singing the office of the dead en route and the Te Deum at the scaffold. For once, the mob was silent. They had prepared themselves well; for almost two years, they had made a daily offering of themselves to God for the peace of France and the Church.

They lost their lives, but their whole world and worldview were also destroyed by those delirious with the ideas of the French philosophes. That they did not despair is in itself a miracle of grace.

The author’s unprovable theological thesis is that the nuns’ sacrifice miraculously quelled the Terror. It is a fact, however, that one Revolutionary week (ten days) after the sisters’ death, a principal architect of the Terror, Maximillian Robespierre, was himself guillotined, a victim of the revolutionary political infighting. Soon after that, the Terror stopped. 

Obviously, the author is a critic of the Revolution. He rightly points out the terrible disconnect between the values the revolutionaries were touting—human rights and universal brotherhood—and the daily butchery of innocent people. If this moral darkness was the fruit of the Enlightenment, then something must have gone seriously wrong.

He also reminds us of the revolutionaries’ attempts to annihilate faith. They imposed a ten-day week, in a pagan calendar, to suppress Sunday. They outlawed religious life and murdered clergy. Vast liturgies to the ‘Goddess Reason’ and the ‘Supreme Being’ were choreographed by the artist David. Ironically, the revolutionaries fell out partly over religion, with some advocating for an officially atheistic French Republic, while others favoured a deistic approach. But they were united in their hatred for Christianity and other faiths.

We, too, have had our revolution, and there was also bloodshed and terror. By comparison to others, such as the Russian Revolution (and ensuing civil war) or the Irish one (another civil war), ours ended relatively well, with a fledgling constitutional democracy, a country at peace with its neighbours, led by Nelson Mandela. In contrast, France became a militant imperial state under Napoleon, who led the country to military defeat and caused up to a million deaths.

There are revolutions and revolutions. A deeper and clearer understanding of our historical context might make us more grateful, forgiving, generous, and energetic in dedicating ourselves to building up our beloved country. 

*William Bush: To Quell the Terror: the true story of the Carmelite Martyrs of Compiègne. ICS Publications:1999.