On 22 January 1900, a dozen members of the Assumptionist Order were tried before the Paris Correctional Tribunal. Unlike the crooks and prostitutes who normally sat on the defence benches, these twelve ‘apostles’ were a picture of piety. They wore long black soutanes belted at the waist with leather strings and hooded capes, and the younger among them had tonsured heads, a sign of humility that associated them with medieval monks...
