Saint Faith

Saint Faith
Medieval depiction of the martyrdom of St. Faith
Born	3rd century Agen, Gallia Narbonensis, Western Roman Empire
Died	3rd–4th century Gallia Narbonensis
Venerated in	Eastern Orthodox Church Roman Catholic Church Anglican Communion
Major shrine	Conques
Feast	October 6
Attributes	gridiron; rods; sword
Patronage	pilgrims; prisoners; soldiers

Saint Faith or "Saint Faith of Conques" (Latin Sancta Fides, French Sainte-Foy, Spanish Santa Fe) is a saint who is said to have been a girl or young woman of Agen in Aquitaine. Her legend recounts how she was arrested during persecution of Christians by the Roman Empire and refused to make pagan sacrifices even under torture. Saint Faith was tortured to death with a red-hot brazier. Her death is sometimes said to have occurred in the year 287 or 290, sometimes in the large-scale persecution under Diocletian beginning in 303. She is listed as Sainte Foy, "Virgin and Martyr", in the martyrologies.

The center of her veneration was transferred to the Abbey of Sainte-Foy, Conques, where her relics arrived in the ninth century, stolen from Agen by a monk from the Abbey nearby at Conques.

A number of legends later grew up about her, and she was confused with the three legendary sisters known as Faith, Hope, and Charity. She is recorded in the Martyrologium Hieronymianum under October 6, but the date of her death is not given. A Passio, now lost, once existed, and appears in summarized form in the ninth-century martyrology of Florus of Lyon.

Her legends portray her as a patron who could turn against those who only gave small donations to her church at Conques.

Her popularhagiography, liber miraculorum sancte fidis, attributed to the churchman Bernard of Angers (composed between ca 1013 and after 1020), calls miracles associated with Faith joca—Latin for "tricks" or "jokes", the kind that "the inhabitants of the place call Sainte Foy's jokes, which is the way peasants understand such things." One such joke was the following story: a local castellan holds onto a ring that his dying wife had promised to the saint. The castellan, whose name is Austrin, uses the ring, however, to wed his second wife. Saint Faith causes the finger of the second wife to swell up in unbearable pain. Austrin and his new wife visit the saint's shrine, and on the third night, "when the sorrowful woman happened to blow her nose, the ring flew off without hurting her fingers, just as if it had been hurled from the strongest siege engine, and gave a sharp crack on the pavement at a great distance."