ABSTRACT
The goal of constructing and maintaining Sainte Foy’s cult dominates activity by the abbey at Conques throughout many centuries, while the agenda of the Catholic Church to create and broadly disseminate ecclesiastical institutions, texts and practices focused on the saint. The reality of saints’ cults is, of course, far more complex than this heuristic model might suggest. The surge in donations to the Conques monastery registered in the late tenth century cartulary testifies to the drawing power of the abbey’s miracle-working saint. There is more evidence after the twelfth century that Foy was especially associated with petitions for fertility by devotees. Devotion to Foy as a protector of fertility appears to have survived well into the twentieth century. A sociological questionnaire on popular devotion to the saints in the Rouergue conducted in the 1980s by Jean Delmas yielded responses that pilgrims still came to Conques to resolve their sterility issues, requesting a child or a fruitful harvest.
