“The Marseillaise” and Its Carmelite Parody -- in a Contemporary hand

Manuscript copy of “La Marseillaise”, along with two stanzas of its parody, composed by the Carmelite nuns condemned to death in 1794

2 pp. on recto and verso of a single sheet of wove paper. In all, 9 stanzas in a near-contemporary hand, docketed beneath the final stanza of the parod, “Religieuse, de Croisy | en prison 1793”. Folio, N.p. [France]: n.d. [after 1794]. Old folds, slight foxing.

On July 17, 1794, 10 days before the demise of Robespierre and the end of the Terror, 16 Carmelite nuns were guillotined in Paris, having been convicted of “sedition.” During the four days they awaited their trial, Sister Crétien de Neuville and the rest of the nuns composed a 5-stanza parody of La Marseillaise (with charcoal on a scrap of paper) -- which, indeed, they sang as they were boarded the carts taking them to their execution. Their martyrdom has become the stuff of legend. The Catholic Church canonized the 16 nuns, and their story has been dramatized by François Poulenc in his1953 opera, Dialogues of the Carmelites, based on a text by eorges Bernanos. The present copy of the famous Marseillaise, as well that of the two stanzas of the Carmelite parody, has every appearance of being in a contemporary, or near-contemporaary hand

Item #250038       Price: $500.00