Saint Faith
Virgin and martyr of AgenDied c. 303
Feast · October 6, at Conques
- Patron of
- Invoked since the Middle Ages for prisoners, the blind and women in childbirth, after the miracles told at Conques.
Life
Faith, Foy in French, from the Latin Fides, was a girl of Agen, in southwestern Gaul. She was born in the third century to parents of the Gallo-Roman upper class who were probably pagans, and a Christian nurse raised her in the faith.
In 303, during the persecution of Diocletian, she refused to sacrifice to the idols. She was about twelve years old. According to her story, her judges tried in vain to burn her alive, and she was then beheaded. The Christians of Agen came to her tomb each year on October 6, the anniversary of her death, and Bishop Dulcidius built a basilica over it; the abbey of Conques places him in the sixth century, other historians in the fifth.
In the second half of the ninth century, by the usual reckoning in 866, a monk of Conques carried her relics away from Agen. The account of the translation, written in the eleventh century, tells how the monk, Arinisdus, opened the tomb on the feast of the Epiphany. Historians still debate whether the transfer was a theft or a way of protecting the relics from the Norman raids.
Her miracles brought pilgrims to Conques from all over the West. Early in the eleventh century Bernard of Angers began the Book of Miracles of Saint Faith, which tells of the blind and the lame healed, women helped in childbirth and prisoners set free. Those who heard the stories called them badinages, playful wonders, because they made the listeners smile.
Further reading: Conques: A Pilgrim’s Guide to the Abbey of Saint Faith; Romanesque France: Cluny and the Churches of the Pilgrim Roads; The Way of Saint James from Le Puy: A Pilgrim’s Guide.
Cult and relics
Churches dedicated to Sainte Foy spread across the West. In Alsace, Hildegard of Büren, great-grandmother of the emperor Frederick Barbarossa, gave a chapel at Sélestat to the abbey of Conques in 1094, and monks from Conques built the Romanesque priory church of Sainte-Foy there in the twelfth century. At Conques, on April 21, 1875, workers restoring the choir found the reliquary chest of Abbot Boniface walled up with her relics. On May 25, 1879, Bishop Bourret of Rodez gave part of them back to Agen, where they were carried in procession from the cathedral of Saint-Caprais to the church of Sainte-Foy. The canons who keep the abbey of Conques celebrate her solemnity each October and receive the walkers on the road to Compostela.
In art
The Majesty of Sainte Foy, the reliquary statue of Conques, was made in the ninth and tenth centuries. Its body is carved in yew and covered with gold, silver, gems and enamel, the gold head was cut from an antique bust of the fourth or fifth century, and the arms and hands were remade in the sixteenth century. It holds a relic of the top of her skull. The treasury also keeps a silver statuette of the saint made in 1493 and 1494. The goldsmith Goudji made a new reliquary for the abbey church, crowned by a dove for the Holy Spirit, which holds a relic of her body.
Patron of
Invoked since the Middle Ages for prisoners, the blind and women in childbirth, after the miracles told at Conques.
Where to pray
- ConquesThe abbey church of Sainte-Foy, with the recent reliquary by the goldsmith Goudji; the treasury that holds the Majesty is closed until further notice for safety reasons.
- SélestatThe Romanesque church of Sainte-Foy, built by monks of Conques in the twelfth century, open to visitors outside the times of Mass.
- AgenThe city of her martyrdom, to which part of her relics returned from Conques on May 25, 1879.