Remensnyder, 'Book of Sainte Foy', Bryn Mawr Medieval Review 9507
URL = http://hegel.lib.ncsu.edu/stacks/serials/bmmr/bmmr-9507-remensnyder-book

@@@@95.7.6, The Book of Sainte Foy

The Book of Sainte Foy. Translated with an introduction and notes by
Pamela Sheingorn. University of Pennsylvania Press: Philadelphia, 1995. 
	Reviewed by Amy G. Remensnyder -- Brown University

	When discussing possible research paper topics with
undergraduates, so often I have wanted to say: "Go read the Liber
miraculorum sancte Fidis!  It would be perfect for what you want to work
on". But until now there has been no English translation of this justly
famous eleventh-century text relating the posthumous miracles of Foy, a
female child martyr. My students have had to content themselves with
looking at pictures of Sainte Foy's statue-reliquary, housed today, as in
the Middle Ages, at the abbey of Conques in southwestern France. Pamela
Sheingorn's elegant translation of the Liber miraculorum means that my
students will no longer be frustrated. At long last medievalists will be
able to use this extraordinarily rich text in the context of undergraduate
teaching. Sheingorn's Book of Sainte Foy will enhance the reading list of
courses dealing with topics as diverse as medieval piety, saints' cults,
gender roles, images of women, eleventh-century society and culture, and
the history of monasticism. 

	In large part, the utility of this translation is due to the
nature of the Liber miraculorum (the first two books of which were
composed by the cleric Bernard of Angers between 1013 and sometime after
1020, and the third and fourth books by an anonymous monk or monks
probably from Conques between 1020 and the mid-eleventh century). This
text records a very broad range of miracles, some quite unusual, others
the ones to be expected from an eleventh-century saint.  Sainte Foy could
fill the role of a typical monastic patron saint, performing punitive
miracles of protection and vengeance. But she could also play teasing
practical jokes (joca) upon her devotees, release prisoners, cause a
much-longed for pregnancy, heal physical illnesses, deliver souls from the
grasp of demons in episodes recalling Marian miracles of intercession, and
resurrect dead (and even already skinned) animals. As the Liber
miraculorum depicts these (and other types of miracles), it paints a vivid
picture of the eleventh-century background. Filling the pages of this text
are pilgrimages, expeditions against the Muslims, violence perpetrated by
milites, threatening castles, monastic lordship, and vignettes of family
life. 

	The versatility of the Book of Sainte Foy is also due to
Sheingorn's inclusion of other eleventh-century hagiographic texts
pertaining to Foy's cult. Accompanying the Liber miraculorum are
Sheingorn's translations of a version of the Passio composed sometime in
the tenth century, and the earliest version of the translatio (composed
between approximately 1020 and 1060) relating Sainte Foy's arrival at
Conques in the ninth century. Robert L. Clark's translation of the
Provencal Chanson de sainte Foy (circa 1065-1070, also probably composed at
Conques) concludes this extremely useful volume. These assembled texts
form a libellus, a book of texts entirely devoted to one saint (hence
Sheingorn's choice of title). The Book of Sainte Foy thus shows the reader
a saint's cult in all its hagiographic aspects -- and, to my knowledge,
this is the only collection of primary sources translated into English
that does so.  Furthermore, Foy was not just any saint, but one of the
very few female child saints venerated in the eleventh century, if not
during the entire western Middle Ages. The Book of Sainte Foy thus permits
the reader insight into the cultural construction of both childhood and
femininity in the Middle Ages. 

	Sheingorn has rendered these hagiographic texts accessible to both
scholarly and student audiences by providing an excellent contextual
introduction. Here she succinctly discusses the development of the cult of
the saints, and provides an overview of the intertwining of Sainte Foy's
history with that of Conques, and the abbey's resulting rise to fame as a
pilgrimage shrine on the route to Compostela. Furthermore, she situates
Sainte Foy's cult in the more general social context of eleventh-century
southern France, examining briefly the peace movement and the friction
between milites and unarmed members of society. Sheingorn also considers
the material conditions of the cult: the abbey church, and the statue
reliquary. Scattered throughout the introduction are excellent, legible
photographs of Conques, its surroundings, and various artifacts relating
to Sainte Foy. 

	Sheingorn orients her readers also through her judicious and
copious notes to the translations. These notes demonstrate Sheingorn's
extensive knowledge of the primary and secondary materials relevant to
Sainte Foy, the cult of the saints, and southwestern France. But it is
greatly to Sheingorn's credit that the primary function of the notes is to
serve the reader. In these notes, Sheingorn not only identifies locations,
and provides biographical information for people mentioned in the texts;
she also provides explanations for references which would seem obscure to
the average undergraduate (Prudentius's Psychomachia, for example, or
Indiction). The notes will also be of interest to the scholarly reader of
Sheingorn's translation, for in them she raises matters such as
ambiguities in the language of the text, and alternate possibilities for
translation. 

	Sheingorn's translations are generally excellent and accurate. 
Her style is to translate freely, rather than literally; for some passages
where she translates more freely than elsewhere, I would propose different
readings. But as Sheingorn writes in her introduction, "a translator
offers one reading from what often seems a bewilderingly large number of
choices. Only by consulting the text in its original language can the
reader judge whether these choices represent a consistent and reasonably
faithful rendering of the author's words" (p. 31). Sample comparisons I
made between Sheingorn's work and the original texts show the Book of
Sainte Foy to be indeed a "reasonably faithful rendering". Sheingorn's
highly readable translations even capture the eloquence that some of these
texts have in the original. 

	The Book of Sainte Foy is a considerable scholarly achievement --
and one for which all medievalists faced with the task of teaching
students who do not read Latin will be enormously grateful.