One of the most entertaining saints in the biz, Sainte Foy was known as the trickster saint (a reliquary holding some of her remains is on the second slide). She had all the usual chops to star in a holy cult centered around her: allegedly killed by Romans when she refused to do pagan sacrifices, generally the accounts of her death (written much later than her alleged existence) state that she was roasted over a brazier. She was so important that when the monks of Conques (her Abbry-church is on the first slide) wanted her body, they carefully planned a heist and stole it from another Abbey– they justified it by arguing that the saint would never had allowed the theft if she hadn’t wanted.
Her nickname “trickster” comes out of the fact that many of her miracles recorded by an 11th- century churchman have a jesting quality. And I would like to share one of these, which happened to a soldier with a horrible condition: A bodily ailment had occurred so that “a portion of his intestines left its proper place and ruptured into his scrotum,” goes the account. Well, then. After consulting with his wife, the poor man prayed to Sainte Foy for help. The advice she gave him was nothing short of brutal. She revealed in a dream that the man should go to a blacksmith and ask him to take a hammer and “put the part of you that is suffering on his anvil and tell him to strike his most powerful blow.” The saint promised the man a cure.
Dismayed but obedient, the man set up the anvil – he had to really persuade the blacksmith, who was worried about being charged for murder. Let us read what the account says happened next: “What more is there to say? His swollen scrotum was stretched out over the anvil and his diseased genitals were prepared for the blow. Soon the blacksmith flexed his muscular arms and swung the enormously heavy hammer high into the air. When the warrior saw what awaited him he was struck with incredible terror, slipped backwards, and lay prostrate . . . ” And then — holy miracle! — the man woke up completely healed! Hahahaha.
Gotta love these saints.
Source(s): Images from wikicommons. The Miracles of saint Foy are pages 216-217 of _The Book of Sainte Foy_, trans with intro and notes bu Pameka Sheingorn, 1995, Univ of Penn Press, 1995.
