The Ursulines of Valenciennes were founded at the end of 1653 on the initiative of two local notables, Charlotte and Marie d'Oultreman, with seven sisters from the monasteries of Mons and Namur. Confirmed by the prince-bishop of Cambrai, François Van der Burch, on 13 December 1653, the community settled in the city and devoted itself to the Christian education of girls. In their external classes they taught hundreds of poor children free of charge; their Sunday school formed young servants and workers; their boarding school drew pupils even from beyond the French border. By 1790 the house numbered thirty-two religious under Mother Marie-Clotilde of Saint Francis Borgia, and it was the foremost school for girls in Valenciennes.
When the National Assembly suppressed monastic vows and most regular orders in February 1790, the Ursulines were allowed to continue temporarily because of their public teaching. On 20 September 1790 every sister, including the two novices who had been forbidden final profession, declared before the mayor that she wished to remain in the state and house she had chosen. They refused the oath to the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, rejected the constitutional bishop, and continued to obey the exiled Archbishop Ferdinand-Mériadec de Rohan. Fined for keeping their chapel open and accused of harboring a refractory priest, they also refused the decree of April 1792 that banned the religious habit, regarding it as a sign of baptismal consecration.
Dissolved by the decree of 1 October 1792, most of the community withdrew two weeks earlier, with municipal passports, to their sister house at Mons in the Austrian Netherlands. There, on 28 October, they enrolled in the Confraternity of Saint Ursula and the Eleven Thousand Virgins, praying to obtain a holy life and a happy death under her protection. After the Austrian victory at Neerwinden in March 1793 and the reconquest of Valenciennes, the townspeople and the archbishop recalled them. In November 1793 they reoccupied their convent, re-elected Mother Clotilde, and received three new members: the former Poor Clare Joséphine Leroux and two Brigittines, Marie Erraux and Liévine Lacroix. The novice Angélique (Emerante Lepoint) made her solemn vows on 23 April 1794.
When the French retook Valenciennes after Fleurus (26 June 1794), many citizens fled, but the Ursulines stayed, declaring that they had promised God to remain in the convent until death. On 1 September the representative on mission Jean-Baptiste Lacoste ordered the arrest of clergy and religious. The sisters were imprisoned—some in their own convent, others in the church of Saint-Jean—under harsh conditions marked by disease. Eleven were charged with emigration for having gone to Mons and returned. Three others were spared that charge.
Brought before a military commission, they answered that they had left with passports, returned to instruct the children of Valenciennes when the city was no longer French, and had acted only to save their religion and avoid apostasy. Five were condemned on 16 October and guillotined the next day on the Place d'Armes: Mothers Marie-Nathalie, Marie-Laurentine, Marie-Ursule, Marie-Louise, and Marie-Augustine. The night before they prayed the Office of the Dead, the Passion according to John, and the penitential psalms, and cut one another's hair. Marie-Nathalie cried, "Come, the day of glory has arrived!" Augustine ran joyfully to the scaffold, saying she feared nothing.
The remaining six—Mother Clotilde and Mothers Anne-Joseph, Marie-Scholastique, Marie-Cordule, Anne-Marie, and Françoise (with Joséphine)—wrote farewell letters expressing their desire for martyrdom. On 23 October, the thirty-eighth anniversary of Mother Clotilde's profession, she was executed first after the executioner tore away the little crucifix she wore. She told the crowd: "Citizens, we are much obliged to you; this day will be the most beautiful of our lives; we will pray God to open your eyes." Scholastique publicly forgave the judges, the executioner, and all their enemies. The others followed with the same courage.
Beatified by Pope Benedict XV on 13 June 1920, the eleven Ursuline martyrs of Valenciennes are commemorated liturgically on 23 October. Relics of five of them, discovered in 1925, are venerated in the church of Saint-Géry in Valenciennes.
May these blessed martyrs obtain for us the grace of steadfast fidelity to our baptismal and religious promises, and let us imitate today their joyful courage in confessing Christ even unto death.
