To quell the terror

THE JUSTIFICATION FOR TREATING ONCE AGAIN the story of the Carmelites is found, therefore, in a need to elucidate the simple historical facts about this rather unusual community holocaust, a number of which have only come to light with the French publication of Marie of the Incarnation's manuscripts. What is surprising is that the mystery of the vocation of the Carmelites seems more resonate when we consider it apart from the unifying thread of Blanche de la Force's fictitious drama. While concentrating on two stark historic facts alone-the 16 nuns did offer themselves in holocaust, and they did sing as they climbed the steps of the guillotine-the fictitious versions remain firmly centered on the imaginary drama of Blanche de la Force, not upon the mystery of the Christian vocation of the 16 historic martyrs, offering themselves to quell the Terror.

Even a glance at the facts provides readers who know the opera with a difference which strikingly accentuates the profound Christian implications behind this mysterious community sacrifice. For though the Carmelites did sing the Salve Regina on the way to the scaffold, Francis Poulenc's choice of this hymn as the climactic one in his opera for the actual execution is totally nonhistorical, whatever may be the composer's theatrical genius in raising it by a half-tone when the blade of the guillotine crashes down. Certainly the dramatic impact of such an operatic ending is beyond dispute. But the Salve Regina did not actually accompany the decapitations. As their final song at the scaffold-for there were several-it was Psalm 117, Laudate Dominum omnes gentes, which proclaims the mystic truth couched at the heart of the Christian experience of salvation: God's mercy is at the center of all things, even of being guillotined.

O praise the Lord all ye nations!

Praise him all ye people!

FOR HIS MERCY IS CONFIRMED UPON US

And the truth of the Lord remaineth forever!

Praise the Lord!

Spontaneously bursting from the lips of Sister Constance as she, designated as first to die, started up the scaffold steps, the austere chanting of the Psalm was in fact taken up and carried forward by the others until the end. Thus as the implacable blade cut short each nun's voice and her head dropped into the executioner's leather bag with an efftision of blood, the chanting of women's voices insistently proclaimed before men and angels (I Cor 4:9) that God's mercy was being confirmed upon them.

Such was their final statement, their final word, their final witness. No protest was lodged against the new totalitarian terrorist government, no denunciation of its disgusting daily cult of blood sacrifice. No complaint at this ultimate moment came from these defenseless, dispossessed, and unjustly persecuted Christian women that their most basic human rights were being grossly violated even as the new order celebrated its Declaration of the Rights of Man. Naught but their austere chant of high, solemn joy that, after some twenty months of daily consecrating themselves for this hour, God's mercy was allowing them to make their act of holocaust to restore peace to France and her church.

Thus, historically, the nuns' vocal witness to God's mercy constituted an integral part of the mystery made incarnate in Paris on the evening of July 17, 1794. As they offered up to the Lord and Giver of Life the one mortal life He had given them, their voices announced that God's mercy to His creatures is great, and that whatever may be the vicissitudes accompanying human destiny in this fallen world, within the mystical Body of Christ all remains subservient to the mystery of that mercy.

To this chanted, collective witness, provided by the sacred words of the psalm, was also added the unique and very personal visual witness of each transfigured face. Those present could behold with their eyes that the nuns were living out the mystery of the mercy of God to the end. With their own ears those watching heard them proclaim His goodness. That final chant rising so boldly from the Carmelites' lips indeed proclaimed what the spilling of their life-blood graphically confirmed: the good estate of the church of God in France.

To such Christians was it given to quell the Terror (pp. 14-16).

A DOCUMENT ATTRIBUTED TO MADAME LIDOm, discovered by the author in 1985 among the papers of Madame Philippe in the archives of the Carmel of Sens, has considerable bearing on the mystery behind the now-lost act of holocaust. A four-stanza Christmas carol, composed "to be sung at the creche," it goes far in revealing Madame Lidoine's deep mystical orientation as she contemplated the guillotine. Mother Teresa of Saint Augustine's bold, Christocentric spirituality is there revealed as rooted in a burning, loving intimacy binding her to Him whom she addresses as the "Infant God." In it are echoes not only of St. Teresa of Avila, but also of St. John of the Cross's Living Flame of Love. Like her Spanish forebears, Madame Lidoine longed to be clasped faster still within His heart, aflame with love for men.

Let thy blade cut, completing all my offerings,

For nothing but thy will for me is sweet.

My one desire is that thy hand be hovering

O'er me thy bride, the sacrifice complete!

Would a soul less consumed by such a dynamic, burning love for the divine Lover-a love stronger even than the fear of death-have been able to preside over the oblation of her entire community with such maternal grace?

The prioress's carol could have been sung either for their first Christmas outside the cloister in 1792, or for their final Christmas in 1793. In either case it could only have centered on a very poor creche. Unfailingly some of the community, inwardly at least, would have compared the present creche's poverty to the grandiose and elaborate display of their old cr6che with its various tableaux composed of magnificent, richly clad life-sized wax figures.

For Madame Lidoine, however, the image of the Infant God was the essential one, not only for the feast, but for the whole Christian faith. Almighty God, the Creator of heaven and earth, of all things visible and invisible, had taken on human flesh. God thus lay there on the straw at the mercy of his creation. Come to bestow upon man His divine life which is beyond death and suffering, He was the "Lamb slain from the foundation of the world" (Rev 13:8), destined for sacrifice.

Mother Lidoine had plunged deeply into the mystery encompassing the Incarnation of the Divine Logos of the Father. She had found in Him the origin and end of all things (Rev 1:8), the answer to all that the human heart seeks or desires (Rev 21:6). Having put off His glory to become man (Ph 2:6-7) and save the fallen, twisted race of Adam, her divine Bridegroom had consented to be slain and buried by those He had not blushed to call his brothers (Heb 2:11).

Madame Lidoine's commitment to the Divine Logos is revealed in her carol as being both total and unequivocal. She there speaks of making His ineffable and eternal "martyrdom of love" her own that she, through His Spirit, might also become a participant in His eternal redemption of the human race.

O Infant God, naught else can fill my longing,

Yea, nothing else can satisfy my heart!

It's settled then, henceforth I'm thy belonging,

And of thy love, I've now become a part.

My criminal soul, heal of its sin so shameful,

Wound thou my heart, with pain or love's delight.

Let wounds divine, wounds for my soul most gainful,

Martyr my heart to suffer day and night!

O Love divine, I now with all my being

Here at thy creche abandon all my soul.

I thus yield up my reasoning and my seeing

From this time forth: my faith in thee is bold!

Thy heart alone! Thy heart shall be my master!

Thoughts and desires I sacrifice as weak.

Within thy heart, I would now be clasped faster,

The mart rdom of love alone I seek.

Oh! fix my hope, oh fix it all on dying!

Truly I die from not dying for thee.

And hasten, Lord, the end of all my sighing

Freed from these chains to thee alone I'll flee!

Let thy blade cut, completing all my offerings,

For nothing but thy will for me is sweet.

My one desire is that thy hand be hovering

O'er me thy bride, the sacrifice complete!

Thy shepherd's crook, let it rule as the master

O'er this thy flock entrusted to my care.

Here at thy creche, I yield to thee, 0 Pastor,

Mother and flock, abandoning all I dare!

O loving Queen, Mother of might most holy,

O deign to place us all within thy breast!

For in thy power, thy children all, though lowly,

Do set their hope, trusting in thy behest.

The answer of her Bridegroom to her oblation of love as He claimed her for his own would be the fall of that blade "completing all [her] offerings."

For the peace of France and its church, for the quelling of the Terror with its thousands of victims, and for the salvation of her body and soul, let this witness of love be offered then to the Divine Majesty (pp. 113-116).

These excerpts are taken from the recently published book To Quell the Terror: The True Story of the Carmelite Martyrs of Compiegne by William Bush and published by ICS Publications, Washington, DC.

William Bush, Ph.D., is professor emeritus ofFrench literature at the University of Western Ontario in London, Ontario. He received his doctorate from the Sorbonne in 1959.

Copyright Spiritual Life Winter 1999
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved