From the article:
"Dialogues tells the story of the (fictional) Blanche de la Force, an intensely fearful French aristocrat who joins a Carmelite community as a way of hiding from the world....Mother Marie of the Incarnation, the sub-prioress, convinces all the nuns to take a vow of martyrdom, from which Blanche recoils and then flees. This vow is fulfilled when the sisters (except, painfully, Marie) are caught by the police secretly meeting together. Blanche returns at the eleventh hour, joining her sisters as they go singing to the guillotine."
"...Like Poulenc himself, Dialogues is the product of a particular French Catholicism, one that spiritualized suffering and emphasized the possibility of suffering in someone else’s place. What it means to suffer or to be spared suffering, to be granted or refused martyrdom, is at the heart of the drama of Dialogues. The martyrdom of the sixteen Carmelites has always existed as an act of spiritual and political significance. So, too, does its artistic legacy."
"...The story of the martyrs of Compiègne was revived, initially, by a German novelist named Gertrud von le Fort. In 1931, she published Die Letzte am Schafott, in which the story of Blanche de la Force first began. Observing the rise of the Nazis, she wanted to remind fellow Catholics of the duty to accept martyrdom—a calling some would accept and others refuse."
B.D. McClay's article is worthwhile reading. The Carmelite martyrs of Compiegne have long interested me. Full disclosure: I have not read Gertrud von le Fort's novel based on their lives and death, nor have I seen Poulenc's opera. My information about them is based on reading William Bush's nonfiction account, To Quell the Terror ; which he exhaustively researched.
There really were 16 nuns who died at the guillotine, including two extern sisters who were not in solemn vows. The prioress was Mother Teresa of St. Augustine, and unlike the opera or the novel, she did die along with the other nuns. William Bush's account details the lives of each of the 16. The sole survivor was Sister Marie of the Incarnation, who was not treated very sympathetically by Bush. He implies that she wimped out of martyrdom by arranging to be out of town at the time of the arrest and death of the other nuns, even though she was helping the prioress' 78 year old mother at the time. She was the one who recorded the memory of events leading up to the deaths, it may be said that their story would not have been recorded if not for her.
The nonfiction account was unsparing in the account of the gore and horror of the Reign of Terror, and the Place du Trone, where the executions took place. It is said that the ground was soaked in blood, which ran more than 50 feet from the site of execution, and that the stench of death was overwhelming.
The issue which nagged at me was abuse of authority. Does a religious superior have the right to coerce those who are bound in obedience to her to commit to martyrdom? That seems very much a stretch to me, since the nuns had the opportunity to leave Paris before their arrest.
William Bush is an Orthodox Christian and professor emeritus of French literature at the University of Western Ontario in London, Ontario. The information on his book says that he was known especially for his works on Georges Bernanos, and Orthodox spirituality.
Just as a footnote and a bit of trivia, the nuns actually sang Laudate Omnes Gentes on the way to their deaths, which was in the breviary readings of the day, rather than Salve Regina, as in the opera and the novel.
Update: I forgot to provide the links to the Commonweal article and the book, To Quell the Terror. That has been fixed.
I just noticed a somewhat confusing detail. In both the fictional and and the historical accounts, the surviving nun was named Marie of the Incarnation. However in the novel and the opera she was the Superior, who wanted to die a martyr and didn't get to. In the factual account she was one of the other nuns, and definitely didn't want to be a martyr. Others who weren't Jonesing for martyrdom, at least at first, were the two oldest members of the community, who were nearly 80, and the two extern lay sisters. But in the end they stayed with the community and shared their fate.
ReplyDeleteThe story of the Tibhirine Trappists martyred in Algeria in 1996 and beatified last year with 12 other victims of the Algerian Civil War has some good compare-and-contrast elements. I doesn't have Poulenc, but it did have a thoughtful (mostly French) film version titled "Of Men and Gods." One obvious comparison: They knew it was coming. Two obvious contrasts: The monks decided individually but in a group to remain with their Muslim neighbors when the outcome was clearly in sight. The heart of the picture is the complexity of the decision-making at that meeting. The second contrast is that they were killed by Muslim kidnappers, not ex-Catholics. (There is also a possibility that they were killed by the government by mistake and their deaths were made to look like they were at the hands of the abductors.)
ReplyDeleteThe prior of the group, Christian de Cherge left a last testament that is a gem of the literature of martyrdom:
https://www.americamagazine.org/content/all-things/dom-christians-testament
Thanks for that link, Tom. Makes me think also of Bl. Stanley Rother. I will have to check out "Of Men and Gods". It appears that both Bl. Stanley and Christian de Cherge and companions freely made their decision to stay and risk likely death, but were not bound under obedience to do so.
DeleteIn my view, yearning for martyrdom to avert God's wrath is a wicked idea because it turns God into a bloodthirsty s.o.b. who loves the silice, the hair shirt, the scourge, and feeds off the pain of the sick and miserable.
ReplyDeleteI will never be Catholic enough to want to understand that type of thing or to encourage it.
However, this was interesting: "Vicarious suffering, much like prayer, is one way of seeing how people are mystically and tangibly connected to one another. It is a rebuke to self-protective fear, to self-preservation, to anything that distinguishes between those we suffer for and those we suffer from."
There is a reporter in the last Utne Reader who wrote about working at a Big Box garden center and the way that work dehumanizes people. Initially forced into the job because it was the only one he could find after a job layoff, his bio notes that he has made a decision to live as a poor person, working low-wage jobs. He is currently renting a room from a family in a trailer park.
So I guess I can see some forms of martyrdom as uplifting of all of us.
Jean, I am in basic agreement with you about yearning for martyrdom, or other types of suffering. I don't think God in any way "needed" the deaths of these nuns as a sacrifice necessary to stop the Reign of Terror in France. I do think perhaps the witness of them going bravely to their deaths singing psalms may have softened hardened hearts and made people think, "For God's sake, what have we become?" Because the Reign of Terror did end soon after their deaths.
DeleteThat is interesting about the man who made a decision to live as a poor person, working low wage jobs. Makes me think of Barbara Ehrenreich in "Nickled and Dimed". Though I'm sure the motivation was different. For her it was temporary, and she was writing a book about it.
DeleteKatherine, yes, I'll buy the idea that perhaps martyrdom softens hearts. I understand it that way.
DeleteI have long been a fan of Ehrenreich, despite her sometimes aggressive atheism, and she helped start a foundation for underreported stories as a result of Nickel and Dimed. The reporter in Utne (yoga class today and too pooped and space to dig out my copy to get the particulars) is committed to writing about these stories as he lives them.
The idea that God "needs" martyrs is heretical. The idea that God needs anything is heretical, come to think of it.
DeleteWhen "obedience" was part of the "discipline" of convents, I imagine that no one was thinking about the teaching that no one can order another person to perform a heroic virtue. One may encourage, but one may not command. That is the simple answer to the question: Why didn't Pope Pius XII order German Catholics to refuse to serve Hitler? (and let them take the consequences). That is practical as well as logical. On a mass scale, I can't see many obeying an order like that, and good leaders don't demand what they know they won't get. In the already mentioned cases of the Tiberhine Trappists and Father Rother, feelings of solidarity with others whom they knew were going to suffer seem to have been the prime motivator, not some misguided theology of atonement.
Also this: "[The] potential pathologies [of vicarious suffering] have been well explored, including the reasons they can form a large part of women’s spirituality. Suffering, self-denial, and self-excoriation are presented to women as their own particular burden to bring through the world, and in that way are naturalized."
ReplyDeleteThere is a whole area of discussion in that little passage. In an earlier discussion I opined that the Church has, to some extent, failed to understand women when handing down various teachings about sex and procreation.
I wonder to what extent Jews and Christians understand the "naturalization" (normalization?) of women's suffering and how it affects women's understanding of faith and suffering vs. that of men's.
The Church Ladies, for example, like to tell stories about how tough their mothers had it, not as a caution that we should alleviate similar suffering now, but to shame others who aren't suffering enough. The implication is that if you don't have 10 kids and an indifferent husband with an inadequate income to deal with, you should be making yourself miserable in some equivalent way. Their efforts to ceaselessly stand guard against irregularities in the rubrics, supervise every funeral lunch, and tell at every kid in CCD for wiggling around seem, to me, aimed at addressing their guilt over not suffering enough.
"...guilt over not suffering enough", I actually think that is a pretty common emotion. I know I feel it sometimes. Such as when we hear accounts of war torn and famine-ridden places in the world. And then I think, here I sit, in a comfortable house, with more than enough food. Hopefully such feelings motivate us to do what we can to alleviate suffering, but sometimes we just sit in our discomfort.
DeleteI wonder if this idea of not suffering enough is sometimes behind the feeling of micro-persecution that some Christians in this country perceive, when what they are actually experiencing is inconvenience or embarrassment.
That's a really interesting and perceptive question!
DeletePerhaps there is a spiritual urge to share suffering that gets misdirected at times.
I feel empathetically when someone else physically suffers but it doesn't relieve the other's suffering. So what is the point? Sharing suffering would be great if the other person felt a little better but it doesn't work that way. There was an old Star Trek episode in which it did, and that was cool. I guess empathy motivates one to do what one can for the other, if there's something that can be done.
Delete