Irina V. Smetanina: A Review of David L. Gitomer, “Dialogues of the Carmelites as Witness: Patterns of Christian Martyrdom in Scripture, History and the Arts,” Logos: A Journal of Catholic Thought and Culture (12/2 2009), 40-61.
Dialogues of the Carmelites by French composer Francis Poulenc is one of the most widely celebrated operas of the latter half of the twentieth century. It is based on a Georges Bernanos play of the same name. The opera presents a fictionalized version of the story of the sixteen Carmelite women of the community at Compiègne, France, who were executed by guillotine during the French Revolution in 1794. They are venerated as saints and martyrs of the Church, having been beatified in 1906 and finally canonized in 2024 by Pope Francis. Inspired by this dark, yet beautiful opera, David L. Gitomer’s article “Dialogues of the Carmelites as Witness” seeks to “animate an empathic sense of the history, culture, and spirituality of martyrdom” as a way of upholding the notion that “the opera itself should dispel any preconception that Catholic martyrdom is a form of Catholic masochism”.[1] Moreover, he offers a learned and broad-scoped reflection concerning how martyrdom has been understood throughout Christian history so as to elucidate the way in which the Dialogues is an aesthetic expression of the root definition of a martyr as one who is a “witness” (Greek: μάρτυς/martys) to truth.
Gitomer understands the deaths of the sixteen martyrs of Compiègne as following “a tradition absolutely essential to the Christian faith, a tradition whose patterns go back to the beginning of the Church,” namely, dying “in imitation of Christ and as witness to Christ’s saving power”.[2] The idea of a “noble” or “good” death is a very ancient one. As Gitomer notes, Sophocles’ Antigone provides a classical Greek analogue for the Compiègne martyrs on two levels in that, on the one hand, “it pits a woman against the power of the state,” and on the other, “Antigone’s way of asserting the truth is to die for it”.[3] In the New Testament, the death of Jesus is in part “a nonviolent witness to oppression” insofar as He could have saved Himself, but did not in order to save the rest of humanity.[4] Thus, the martyrs of Compiègne imitated Christ in that they “died in witness to the truth of God’s love” and did not “deny their faith, or violently oppose their oppressors”.[5] That said, despite its centrality in the history of Christianity, the concept of martyrdom is not always readily intelligible to us, especially in modern contexts where the persecution of Christians is not commonplace. As Gitomer notes, the protagonist of the Dialogues, Blanche, “neurotically oscillates between a yearning to be open to God and a selfish dismissal of the possibility of grace, a dismissal that covers the terror at the loss of life and self that a Christian sacrifice demands”.[6] Thusly, Gitomer emphasizes that aligning one’s will perfectly to God’s in the act of martyrdom like the sisters of Compiègne is both an affirmation that “the inescapable example of Jesus’s sacrifice” is “a theological truth endorsed by a church,” while also something that constitutes “a risk and a leap into the unknown”.[7] Moreover, Christian martyrdom is a well-documented phenomenon, but the mere recording of it throughout history by no means exhausts its theological mystery and import.
Gitomer then recalls Jesus’ words in the beatitudes, “Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven […] Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven” (Mt 5:10-12). He cites this passage by way of reminding contemporary readers how these words may have struck early Christians in periods of persecution in Rome or North Africa under emperors such as Nero.[8] In such times, martyrdom was not a spiritualized ideal, but a real possibility and a meaningful way to be united to Christ through bodily suffering. Gitomer asserts that this principle is not reflective of masochism but rather is a scripturally grounded and theologically sound principle (1 Pt 4:1-2, Col 1:21-27), despite how “in worldly terms, the idea of publicly choosing to present oneself for mutilation and death seems pathological”.[9] Hereafter, Gitomer proceeds to show how the connection between “faith, torture, and death” codified in the age of early Christian martyrdom has significant corollaries in other faiths, such as in the Abrahamic religions of Judaism and Islam, as well as among Asian traditions including Hinduism and Buddhism.[10]
Likewise, Gitomer draws additional connections between the themes of early Christian martyrologies, especially those of women martyrs, and later Catholic thought, including the writings of Teresa of Ávila (d. 1582), herself a Carmelite saint and Doctor of the Church. He notes that St. Teresa “very strongly associated physical pain, womanly sexuality, and transfiguration” and that her famous account of her transverberation contains “echoes of the ancient stories of women martyrs”.[11] At this juncture, I would add that Thérèse of Lisieux, another Carmelite saint and Doctor of the Church, was deeply interested in the idea of martyrdom. She describes in Story of a Soul how she fervently desired to die in service of Christ so as to be united with Him. These thematic resonances between the early Christian martyrs and the writings of later Carmelite saints only adds to the operatic work of the Dialogues. They help to contextualize the opera as something that accords with Carmelite spirituality, as well as to enrich our sense that it expresses truths about martyrdom that originated in Scripture and have been reflected throughout the Tradition of the Church. Therefore, Gitomer is right to state that Dialogues of the Carmelites “is not simply a report of the events that befell the Carmelite sisters of Compiègne from 1789-1794, but a work of religious art that engages the aesthetic and religious sensibility in a demanding mode of risk and vulnerability”.[12]
Gitomer next outlines three registers in which religious art, literature, and music tend to present martyrdom: the austere, the romantic, and the comic/absurd, noting that these categories are not mutually exclusive. He identifies the Dialogues as belonging predominantly to that of the austere, which “attempts to recover the horror and mystery of the martyrdom experience”.[13] Gitomer offers examples that illustrate all three of these categories, which positions him to offer a point of profound insight. As he argues…
The very possibility of parody is an emblem of the risk of martyrdom, almost a kind of proof that austerity, sentimentality, and the ridiculous are inextricably intertwined in the risk of the cross. ‘But we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to the Gentiles’ (1 Cor 1:23). Stripped of their habits in the final scenes of the opera, the sisters of Carmel appear not as spiritual heroines, but poor ordinary women vulnerable to the dictates of the new order.[14]
Relatedly, Gitomer argues that the sisters’ decision is in part genuinely a political one, but it is also much more than that. The opera presses us as the audience to examine “the more existential mysteries of personal motivation and personal fate”.[15] In the Dialogues, Blanche’s decision to die with her sisters “is that of the martyr, who offers her life as a gift to the living,” though she could have chosen differently.[16] However, “the nature of martyrdom in the Dialogues of the Carmelites is never completely resolved”.[17] As the audience of the opera, we are left with many questions about the precise meanings and implications of the deaths of the various sisters. However, Gitomer asserts that what is certain is that the power of the Dialogues can help to “transform us […] into a community of witness”.[18] All in all, Gitomer’s article offers an insightful drawing out of the conceptual complexities of martyrdom, as well as how the Dialogues of the Carmelites is a profound aesthetic expression of its enduring mystery.