Permission To Die? Go, My Child!
The final scene is so brutal, so disturbing, so beyond words that it grabs you by the throat and puts such weight on your chest that, for fifteen minutes, it is almost impossible to breathe.
Truly, the closing moments are so ghastly, so breath-stealing that we fear offering the information someone might use to find (and see) them.
Written and directed by Raymond Leopold Bruckberger and Philippe Agostini, the 1960 black-and-white, French and Italian Dialogue with the Carmelites strikes (or should strike) to the most sensitive neurons of the heart and the place where our souls abide.
Dialogue is based on the 1949 play by Georges Bernanos, adapted from the novella The Song at the Scaffold (1931) by Gertrud von Le Fort.
What could be so terrifying about a novella/play/black-and-white movie?
July 17, 1794.
The famous (and largely symbolic) storming of the Bastille (it held only seven prisoners but a large quantity of gunpowder) occurred on July 14, 1789; the date would be recognized as the beginning of the French Revolution. The following month the National Assembly adopted the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, largely drafted by Lafayette (of the American Revolutionary War and the Siege of Yorktown in 1781 fame). On November 2, the Assembly placed the properties of the Roman Catholic Church at the disposition of the Nation. The following month the Assembly decreed that Protestants – but not Jews – were eligible to hold public office.
On February 13, 1790, the Assembly forbade the taking of religious vows and initiated the suppression of contemplative communities (cloisters and monasteries). Women religious were, temporarily, allowed to remain in their houses – under severe conditions and provided they abandon their religious habits (clothing) and adopt secular dress. In November, the Assembly passed legislation requiring that all members of the clergy swear an oath to the Nation, the Law and the King.
Louis XVI was found guilty of conspiracy against public liberty by a National Convention vote of 707 to zero on January 15, 1793; he was beheaded six days later at the Place de la Revolution. (The commander of the execution ordered a drum roll to drown out his final words.)
France devolved into the Reign of Terror.
Approximately 1,200 prisoners, including 220 priests who refused to accept the Revolutionary reorganization of the French Church, were killed in prisons throughout France between September 2 and September 6, 1792 – the “First Terror” of the French Revolution.
Here our story begins.
The community of cloistered Discalced (“without shoes” - a referenced to their going barefoot or in sandals) Carmelite Sisters was founded in Compiegne, 45 miles north of Paris, in 1641. The nuns – eleven vowed Sisters, including Sister Constance, a novice; three lay Sisters; and two “externs,” who interacted with the world outside the cloister walls - refused the government’s demand that they abandon their vows of poverty, chastity and obedience and, as persecution and hostilities increased, the convent’s prioress, Mother Teresa of St Augustine, suggested that the Sisters commit themselves to execution as a sacrifice for France and the French Church.
Despite being evicted from their convent on September 14, 1792, the Sisters made a collective act of consecration, offering their lives on behalf of the Church in a period of suffering. Disobeying the law, they lived outside their convent in four apartments and dressed as simple French women, still meeting in common prayer and never abandoning their fidelity to the Carmelite Rule. Disguised, a new chaplain, Jesuit Father de la Marche, S.J. met the nuns secretly at the parish church and offered Masses for them.
On July 12, Paris was treated to the spectacle of sixteen religious women being led to the infamous Conciergerie, the prison of Reign of Terror, where 2,780 prisoners were held, tried and sentenced to execution by guillotine at sites across Paris. The nuns were charged with counter-revolutionary activities, especially being “royalists” and keeping writings of members of the old regime (ancien regime).
“You are to die because you insist on remaining in your convent in spite of the liberty we gave you to abandon all such nonsense,” the judge declared.
“We have now heard the true reason for our arrest and condemnation,” one nun spoke out. “It is because of our religious beliefs that we are to die.”
Mother Henriette of Jesus demanded that “attachment to your Religion and King” be added to the charges and declared triumphantly to the Sisters, “We must rejoice and give thanks to God for we die for our religion, our faith, and for being members of the Holy Roman Catholic Church.” [EDITORS’ NOTE: It’s never smart to mess with Mother Superior.]
The late William S. Bush, Ph.D., University of Western Ontario professor emeritus of French Literature, offers the most thorough account of what happened next in To Quell the Terror: The True Story of the Carmelite Martyrs of Compiegne.
Witnesses and records unanimously report that the Carmelites wore parts of their religious habits in their Via Dolorosa to the guillotine. They did not have veils because their necks needed to remain exposed to the guillotine’s blade. There is evidence that their prioress, Mother Teresa of St. Augustine, had prepared haircuts and head coverings for her sisters ahead of time – to keep the women from being touched by a man until the absolute last moment.
The sixteen Carmelites were drawn through the streets of Paris in a tumbrel, an open cart that allowed for the public to mock, abuse and jeer at them as the journeyed the two miles to the Place du Trone Renverse (Palace of the Toppled Throne) and the guillotine.
Bush conjectured:
“[T]hroughout the Terror priests in disguise would either escort the prisoners from the Conciergerie or place themselves along the route…Thus, even at the height of the Great Terror in Paris, a discerning eye might somewhere have detected along the long route to the Place du Trone, if not at the scaffold itself, the slightly raised hand of the priest disguised as a ferocious sans-culotte [generally a peasant or lower class urban supporter of the Revolution, “the mob”], blessing and absolving.”
Reports are consistent:
The raucous, jeering crowds that mocked the other twenty-four men and women who were killed that day were silent in the presence of the Sisters. “The universal silence greeting the procession has been attested to by witnesses,” Bush noted.
Because…
The Carmelites sang. More appropriately, they chanted: Psalm 51 – the Miserere and, probably, Evening and Night Prayers of the Divine Office, which is chanted in cloisters and monasteries around the world through the course of the day. (They arrived at the place of execution around 8:00 p.m.)
Opening scene of French composer Francis Poulenc (1889-1963) "Dialogues des Carmélites."
Arriving at the place of execution, Sister Charlotte of the Resurrection, who was seventy-eight and could barely walk, was thrown to the ground by one of the guards. She responded with an assurance that she forgave him and would pray for him.
At the foot of the scaffold, they sang the Te Deum:
“Have mercy upon me, O God, after thy great goodness. According to the multitude of thy mercies, do away mine offenses…”
Bush contended they sang Psalm 117:
“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!”
Then…
Each Carmelite renewed her religious vows and received a final blessing, before, hands clasped with those of their prioress and, at their moment to climb the steps to the scaffold, asked “Permission to die?” and were assured “Go, my child!”
As Sister Constance, the youngest, who had made her final profession of religious vows only seconds earlier, climbed the steps to the scaffold, the Sisters collectively began to chant the Veni Creator Spiritus:
Come, Holy Ghost, Creator, come
from thy bright heav’nly throne;
come, take possession of our souls,
and make them all thine own.
The 78-year-old Sister Mary of Jesus Crucified was heard to say to the executioners “I forgive you, my friends. I forgive you with all that longing of heart with which I would that God forgive me!”
The penultimate Carmelite martyr was thirty-four-year-old Sister Henriette, the monastery’s infirmarian, who had assisted her sisters up the steps.
Throughout, the Sisters sang “Come, Holy Ghost, Creator come…” Their voice silenced, one by one, by the executioner’s blade.
Forty-one-year-old Mother Teresa of St. Augustine was the last of the Carmelite Martyrs.
It has been repeatedly reported that, during their executions, the crowd was silent and only after the death of Mother Teresa of St. Augustine did the normally riotous mob disperse – in sepulchral quiet.
The Sisters’ beheaded bodies and those of twenty-four other victims killed that day by executioner Charles-Henri Sanson were stripped, inventoried and conveyed the short distance to Picpus Cemetery, the final “resting place” of the 1306 men and women executed between June 14 and July 27, 1794. The bodies were tossed into two trench-like open graves and covered with quicklime. Only when people of the surrounding neighborhood complained of the stench were the pit-like graves covered.
[French hero of the American Revolution Marie-Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert du Motier de La Fayette, Marquis de La Fayette is buried in the Picpus Cemetery, where he is honored in a special memorial every July 4.]
Ten days later - to mockery of the attendant crowd, Maximilien Robespierre climbed the steps to the guillotine and the Reign of Terror was brought to an end.
On Wednesday, December 18, 2024, Pope Francis exercised the rare procedure of “equipollent canonization” of declare Mother Teresa of St. Augustine and her Companions saints of the Catholic Church. The equipollent canonization recognizes the long-standing veneration of the Carmelite Martyrs and is a unique invocation of papal infallibility in which the pope declares a person or persons to be among the saints. It avoids the formal processes of the Church and becomes effective through the publication of a papal bull – a decree issued and signed by the pope and marked by a leaden seal (bulla) as a form of guaranteed authenticity.
With the beginning of a new presidential administration only days away, many of us will pray:
“Mother Teresa of St. Augustine
Mother St. Louis
Mother Henriette of Jesus
Sister Mary of Jesus Crucified
Sister Charlotte of the Resurrection
Sister Euphrasia of the Immaculate Conception
Sister Teresa of the Sacred Heart of Mary
Sister Julie Louise of Jesus
Sister Teresa of St. Ignatius
Sister Mary-Henrietta of Providence
Sister Constance of St. Denis
Sister St. Martha
Sister Mary of the Holy Spirit
Sister St. Francis Xavier
Catherine Soiron
Therese Soiron
“We implore you on behalf of our nation, the members of the new administration, and the members of the incoming Congress.
“Grant them the Wisdom to know the Truth and the Courage to speak the Truth without concern for personal gain or fear of the displeasure of others.
“Open their eyes and hearts to see and embrace the broken, the fearful, the stranger and the other.
“May they have the personal integrity and Divine Grace to, in the Words of the Prophet Micah, ‘act justly, love tenderly, and walk humbly with our God.’
“May they imitate your Courage and exercise the grace of living without fear – free from concerns about reelection and being primaried; free of party mandates; free of all political pressures from each and every direction.
“May they hear and heed the divine call to live lives Service – to their communities and our nation – always conscious of the admonition of admonition of your Carmelite Sister, Teresa of Avila:
‘Let nothing disturb you
Nothing frighten you.
All things are passing.
God never changes.
Patience obtains all things.
Nothing is wanting for him who possesses God,
For God alone suffices - God alone suffices!’
“Please, our martyred Sisters, pour out your abundant Courage on our nation’s leaders.
“All Gracious and Merciful God, grant, we implore you, the Courage of the Martyrs of Compiegne to the members of our nation’s Congress and the new presidential administration.
“Amen.”