Little Saint by Hannah Green
Reviewed by Cindi Di Marzo
As powerful as the telluric forces that pulse beneath the earth and along the roads leading to her adopted home, the village of Conques (pronounced “conk”) in south central France, Sainte Foy has drawn pilgrims since her relics were transferred from Agen (stolen, actually, by a monk from Conques) in 866 to the abbey church in Conques. A cult-like devotion to the saint has spurred the creation of glorious works of art, a two-part history of her miracles (liber miraculorum sante fides), the first part composed early in the 11th century by churchman Bernard d’Angers and the second by an anonymous monk, and a musical epic, the Cançó de Santa Fe, consisting of 593 octosyllabic lines composed during the second half of the 11th century and the earliest work written in the Catalan language.
Sainte Foy, or Saint Faith as she is known in English (Sancta Fides in Latin and Santa Fe in Spanish) was martyred by way of a red-hot brazier filled with burning coals when, as an adolescent girl from a wealthy family living in Agen in Acquitaine, she was arrested by the Romans during Diocletian’s persecutions of the Christians. Her history records that her father, believing his daughter would yield to pressure, allowed her to be taken prisoner. A lively, intelligent girl accustomed to finer things, she is said to have been fond of jewels and practical jokes. Perhaps her father was surprised by her steadfast refusal to recant; perhaps he realized that her behavior compromised his own position close to the ruling elite; but whatever really happened at the end of the third century, Sainte Foy gained a permanent place in hearts and minds from then to the present day.
From the time of her death, Sainte Foy has been a generator of art. Her miracles have caused artists, craftspeople and royalty to make, donate or fund impressive works of architecture, sculpture, painting, metalwork and devotional objects. Among the most famous of her miracles are her generous gifts of sight to a blind man; two sons to Arsinde (Blanche), Countess of Toulouse, in exchange for Blanche’s “golden sleeves” of jeweled bracelets; and freedom to the many prisoners who prayed to her for release. Devotion to her spread from Conques and its surrounding countryside to England, Spain and every place that issues forth pilgrims to the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela in northern Spain. Such pilgrims still stop in the Abbey of Sainte Foy to pray to her for safety as they continue on their way.
Arriving in Conques in 1975 for the first time, Hannah Green (1927-1996) and her husband, artist John Wesley (1928-), discovered far more than the so-called Treasure of Sainte Foy, the gold, the pearls, the crystals, the Romanesque carving of the Last Judgment on the tympanum over the main doors of the abbey church, the screen protecting her relics made from melted-down prison bars of the captives she freed, the ninth-century chest given by King Pepin I (797-838) of Acquitaine and a golden capital letter “A” bestowed by Charlemagne (742-814). (Legend states that Charlemagne commissioned golden letters for 24 monasteries located throughout his kingdom and gave the first, the “A,” to his favorite, Conques.)
Having published in 1972 The Dead of the House, an account of her childhood in Ohio and on Lake Michigan, Green was working on another autobiographical project. Inspired by the ages-old lifestyle and people of the village, she began to envision a book that would praise the gentle beauty and quiet artistry inherent in all she saw in Conques and other small villages as she and her husband explored on their bicycles.
The Dead of the House took Green 20 years to write. At first glance, the slim volume and spare prose cannot convey the subtlety, deep feeling and simple elegance of the work. Similarly, many summer stays and years of study led to Green’s Little Saint, a manuscript she hoped would become three books about Conques, and when she died Little Saint remained unfinished. Thanks to the patient labor and dedication of her husband, a former student of Green’s and an editor at Random House, in 2000 Little Saint was released. A book to savor through slow and multiple readings, Little Saint is one woman’s (a Episcopalian and “stranger to saints,” she admitted) admiration of a stubborn third-century girl attracted to glittery things and fond of practical jokes. For instance, according to legend, Sainte Foy made her displeasure known to the bearers of small offerings and cajoled potential donors, bargaining for specific gifts in exchange for her miracles. Some legends reveal a rather quirky sense of humor; in fact, the Latin word for jokes, joca, is used to refer to many of Sainte Foy’s miracles.
Bohemian artists who lived the rest of the year in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village, Green and Wesley appreciated Conques’s quirky saint and, quite easily, befriended the villages’ idiosyncratic residents, some born and bred there, some fellow artists fleeing the confines and pressures of Paris or large cities in other countries. Although the villagers relished the end of the tourist season and were wary of patronizing outsiders who came briefly to observe and enjoy the quaint ways of a place stuck in time, they soon embraced Green and Wesley, even granting her a notable compliment by helping her to learn a bit of the patois, the Occitan language (also called Provençal or Languedoc) still spoken in Conques.
In Little Saint, readers will meet Rosalie, oldest of 10 children, living in Conques since she was 18 years old and now tender of “magic gardens” that supply her neighbors with herbs, vegetables, fruit and flowers; Rosalie’s husband, who shepherds his two cows, with him nearly two decades and source of the village’s milk; dear, elderly Madame Benoit, who nurtures Green and Wesley with popular history, vervain tea, cookies and vin de noix, made from local walnuts; the profoundly saddened and talented Jean Sègalat, who came to Conques to open a gallery with the love of his life and counts the church bells–more than 600 of them–that ring every day; Marxist Kalia, who fled Paris to raise his son, develop his leatherwork business with his wife, and work on his drawings and wood sculptures; Petite Clémence, also from Paris, described by Green as “our tiny, roughly dressed, copper-forging, jewel-making artist friend in her old blue jeans and boots and long-tailed men’s shirts and thick knitted sweaters…who gets at times results of magical beauty at her anvil–mysterious golden bursts in her bracelets and crosses of copper repoussé; and the saintly Père André, who steadfastly guards Sainte Foy and her treasure, praising and praying to her like gatekeepers from centuries past. Green acknowledges her debt to him: “Ahh, Père André, what gifts he has given me–the gifts of his richly spiritual, loving, intelligence, the gift of his faith, and of his closeness to Sainte Foy.”
The book’s black-and-white photos contribute to the air of timelessness elicited by Green’s nuanced prose; for example, images of M. Rémy, known in the village as Le Diable, or “the Devil,” descending the rue Charlemagne; the chapel of Sainte Foy on a hill above the village; and Green walking along the pilgrim route near Le Puy de Dôme. Each chapter opens with spot art of a shell, reflecting the shape of the land surrounding Conques (from the Latin word concha).1
Like The Dead of the House, Little Saint consists of three sections mirroring the passage of life as conceived of in a day: morning (”Descent into the Treasure”), afternoon (”Ascent to the Dolmen of Lunel”) and evening (”Voyage Around Conques”). In the second part, when Green and Wesley visit the Dolmen (”stone table” in Breton), she writes of the lines, deep within the earth’s crust, that have carved the pilgrimage route and fuel the spiritual power to devotional sites along it. Predating the arrival of Celtic peoples in France and well before the Christian era, the Dolmen and other monuments and standing stones seem to have existed from the beginning of time. Medieval churchmen made intricate calculations as they designed their churches to benefit from this spiritual power. The force that Green feels more strongly with each visit to Conques will resonate in readers as they learn about Sainte Foy, the village she has blessed with her presence and joca, and those who dwell there. Little Saint is a book of telluric force, a gift and grace to all readers ready to follow Green’s pilgrimage.
1 Although the village rests in a shell-shaped gorge, Green explains that Conques was not named for the conch-shell shape of the town, which did not exist in such form when it was named. Rather, she says that the word also describes a container used for holding staples of life, oil and salt, as well as a deep and sheltered place in the mountains.
