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Regarding the Beatification of the Thirty-Two Nuns Guillotined in Orange in 1794
The Provençal of Paris, in a recent issue, mentioned the beatification ceremonies, celebrated in Rome on May 17, of the thirty-two nuns guillotined in Orange in 1794. Perhaps this news has awakened in some of its readers, who are unaware of this point of local history, a desire to know the circumstances of the martyrdom of these noble and holy victims of their faith. I would be remiss if I did not satisfy this legitimate curiosity.
The thirty-two nuns, to whom the Church has just recognized the right to external worship, are usually referred to as the thirty-two nuns of Bollène, since the majority of them made their profession in that city. They were executed pursuant to judgments, if one can call them that, rendered by the exceptional tribunal that was the People's Commission of Orange. Created by decree of the Committee of Public Safety, dated 20 Floréal of the year II, signed by Robespierre, Carnot, Collot d'Herbois, Billaud-Varennes, B. Barrère, R. Lindet, Couthon, A. Prieur, the People's Commission of Orange had the mission of "judging the enemies of the Revolution, who would be found in the surrounding countries and particularly in the departments of Vaucluse and Bouches-du-Rhône". Only one Orangeois, let us hasten to say, for the good name of Orange, was part of it. All the other members were foreigners: two from Lyon, one from Paris, one from Dié. Under the high leadership of Maignet, "representative of the people and delegate of the Convention" in the two departments of Bouches-du-Rhône and Vaucluse (1), the Popular Commission accomplished its sinister task in 44 sessions, from June 19 to August 4, 1794.
It sat in the St. Louis Chapel, now owned by a Catholic girls' institution and reduced to about half its size. Brought before her from the Cirque prisons (Roman theater), the convent of the Nuns of the Infant Jesus (present-day courthouse), the Chièze house (14, rue Victor-Hugo), the presbytery (adjoining the cathedral), the Temple of the Supreme Being (Saint-Louis boarding school), the Baroness's mansion (Dumonchau house), and the Cordeliers convent (Saint-Florent church), the defendants, with a few exceptions no older than twenty, were, despite their denials and the lack of evidence, mercilessly condemned.
Execution followed the sentencing during the day. It took place at six o'clock in the evening on the Cours St-Martin. The guillotine stood almost exactly on the site of the present municipal theater. The condemned were brought there from the Cirque prison, where they all spent their final hours. Their escort shouted: "Long live the Nation!" Long live the Republic!" and marked the "step of death" executed by the drum. Their executioner, unfortunately a Vauclusian, Antoine Paquet, placed them on the fatal machine so that "as they fell, their heads saluted the mountain." Irony thus combined with cruelty.
After the execution, the corpses, about ten at a time, were transported on a cart to the Gabet district where they were thrown, covered with a layer of lime, into the pits prepared in advance to receive them. It was there that Mr. Millet, who had acquired the property for this purpose since 1799. of the Laplane estate, had a funerary chapel built in 1832, the restoration of which, thanks in particular to the initiative and efforts of Father A. Vaysse, was completed in 1909. One of the paintings adorning this chapel bears the names of the thirty-two nuns now beatified, and another bears those of the 300 other victims of the Popular Commission.
This pious tribute is not the only one that the people of Orange have paid to the venerated memory of the thirty-two nuns and other martyrs of revolutionary despotism. Before Gabet's chapel, another had been built on the site currently occupied by the municipal theater, and it was its stones, after its demolition, that were used to build the boundary wall of part of Cours St-Martin. Thus, the people of Orange, as soon as the bloody era ended, were keen to erase, as much as they could, the traces of the crimes that, despite their indignation and anger, they had been unable to prevent.
A. Yrondelle,
Former Principal of Orange College
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