Feast July 17 Name Marie-Genevieve Meunier | Role Martyr | |
Venerated in Roman Catholic Church
(Carmelite Order) Beatified May 27, 1906 by Pope Pius X Died July 17, 1794, Place de la Nation, Paris, France | ||
Marie-Geneviève Meunier, O.C.D., (28 May 1765 – 17 July 1794), also known as Sister Constance, was a Carmelite novice and one of the Carmelite Martyrs of Compiegne. She has been beatified by the Catholic Church as a martyr.
Life
A native of Saint-Denis, a suburb of Paris, Meunier entered the monastery of the nuns of the Discalced Carmelite Order in Paris and took the religious habit on 16 December 1788. Arrested along with most other members of the monastery during the Reign of Terror, she was condemned to death and transported to the Place du Trône Renversé. There she mounted the platform singing the psalm Laudate Dominum before being guillotined.
Along with the other members of her monastery who died that day, Meunier was declared a martyr for the faith by the Catholic Church and was beatified on 27 May 1906 by Pope Pius X. Their deaths were commemorated in the novel Song at the Scaffold by Gertrud von Le Fort, which was the source of the opera, Dialogues of the Carmelites, by Francois Poulenc.