Their faith would not let them speak those words. Not because they hated freedom. But because swearing that oath meant accepting a government that had banned their God.
Inside those prison walls, something beautiful began.
These women from different orders did what they had never done before. They became one community. They elected Sister Sylvie Agnès de Romillon as their leader. They divided the day into prayer times just like in their old convents.
They turned a prison into a monastery.
Outside, the killing machine was running at full speed. The Popular Commission had set up their guillotine in the ancient Roman theater. A building from the first century. Where gladiators once died for entertainment, nuns would now die for faith.
Between June and July 1794, three hundred and thirty-two people lost their heads on that blade. Priests. Nobles. Ordinary citizens who said the wrong thing to the wrong person.
And thirty-two nuns who refused to say two words.
July 6th, 1794. The first name was called.
Sister Suzanne Deloye. A Benedictine nun. Sixty-eight years old. She had spent her entire life copying sacred texts by candlelight. Now she walked from her cell to face a tribunal that had already decided her fate.
The questions were always the same. Will you swear the oath? Will you renounce your fanaticism?
Her answer was always the same. No.
Guilty. Death.
She never came back to the prison that night.
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