Sister Charlotte de la Résurrection was one of sixteen nuns from Compiègne who died as martyrs during the Great Terror of the French Revolution.

They were all beatified at the same time, in tribute to their courage and love of Christ. Blessed Charlotte and her sisters are venerated on July 17, the day of their martyrdom.

 

Biography of Blessed Charlotte

Sister Charlotte de la Résurrection, whose birth name was Anne-Marie-Madeleine-Françoise Thouret, was born on September 16, 1715 in Mouy, in the diocese of Beauvais.

Fatherless, she resented her stepfather and regularly defied parental authority. She was a lively, dynamic young woman.

She entered the Carmelite convent at Compiègne in 1736, at the age of 21.

The five years between her entry into the convent and the pronouncement of her final vows were difficult for the young woman.

When she became a Carmelite nun, she took the name Sister Charlotte of the Resurrection. She was in charge of the infirmary, and later worked as a painter and bursar in the convent.

Sister Charlotte put her heart into her work.

At the age of 74, she was the dean of the Carmelite convent in Compiègne when the French Revolution broke out.

The decree of February 13, 1790 abolished all religious orders.

The Carmelites had to decide whether to leave or remain in the convent. The 21 nuns declared, as a unit, that they “wished to live and die in this holy house”.

In 1792, the Mother Prioress proposed that her community recite a daily act of consecration to God, in which they “offered themselves for the divine peace that her dear Son had come to bring to the world, to be restored to the Church and to the State”. They were expelled on September 14, 1792.

They then lived with the families of Compiègne's inhabitants, in small groups. Although under police surveillance, the nuns continued to live according to the rule of Saint Teresa of Avila, secretly attending mass. They regularly renewed their faith in God and their vows as nuns.

Sixteen of them, including Sister Charlotte of the Resurrection, were arrested on June 23, 1794, during the Great Terror, and imprisoned in the former Visitation convent, now a prison.

They were tried on July 12, 1794 by the Revolutionary Tribunal.

The nuns were condemned to be guillotined in Paris on July 17, 1794. Sister Charlotte's body and those of her sisters were thrown into a mass grave in Picpus cemetery.

Sister Charlotte and her fifteen sisters were beatified on May 27, 1906 by Pope Pius X.