ABSTRACT
In the summer of 1912 Hertz spent six weeks (20th July to 1st September) in the Cogne valley in Aosta, north-west Italy, a trip that counts as the Annee's only productive stint of fieldwork. Hertz's purpose was to study the cult of St Besse, a Roman legionary soldier who had been converted to Christianity and was subsequently martyred and beatified. The result of his visit was a long article entitled 'Saint Besse: etude d'un culte alpestre', first published in the Revue d 7Histoire des Religions in 1913 and reissued by Mauss in 1928 along with other works of Hertz's in Melanges (reissued 1970). More recently, the article has been translated by Stephen Wilson and made the banner article of a collection edited by him entitled Saints and their Cults (Wilson ed. 1983).1
