Little Saint.

Little Saint
Hannah Green
Random House, $25.95, 272 pp.

Late in the process of writing Little Saint, Hannah Green saw that what she was writing was not history or art history or hagiography. Little Saint is more like a "novel, a literary work" that would draw on her experiences living in the French village of Conques in the 1970s, and on the cult of Sainte Foy, whose ancient image was guarded in the village. Saint Foy, an early third-century martyr, is best known for the magnificent reliquary, made in the tenth century and kept in the village. Conques was a celebrated stop, all through the Middle Ages, on the pilgrimage route to Saint James in Compostela. The pilgrims and crusaders who visited Conques spread devotion to Foy around the world. There were well-developed cults all over Europe, Latin America, and even in this country where she is honored under the name of Santa Fe in New Mexico.

Green, an Episcopalian, recognizes the numinous quality of the veneration of this saint and its influence in the ancient village. She investigated the historical background of the cult and, in the process, became a good friend of those who live in the modern village of roughly two hundred people. She not only gives us a sense of village life but in the process reconstructs its ancient, pre-Christian roots. In passing we learn about the thousand-year-old hagiographical tradition about Saint Foy, the patois spoken in the area (whose origins are in the Celtic and Occitan tongues), medieval poetry recited in Saint Foy's honor, the reliquary donated by Charlemagne in the ninth century, the great tympanum over the church's door done in the fantastic form of the Romanesque, and the dolmens found in the larger region. These wonderful details are intertwined with descriptions of daily life in the village and the occupations of its inhabitants. Because she started writing the book in the 1970s, Green was able to converse with men who had done forced labor in Germany during the war and those who had worked with the French resistance. She vividly captures the villagers' closeness to the soil but also the slow intrusions of modernity.

Green did not set out to write hagiography, but I think this is hagiography at its best. She has an empathetic eye that allows her to see the power of the saint. However, that same instinct led her to do serious research that puts the saint's cult into historical context. The result is a book that seamlessly blends ethnography, culinary history, the milieu in which the village developed, and the enduring piety of those who were nourished for over a millennium by the spiritual power of the virgin saint. This is one of the best books I have ever read on a saint. I cannot recommend it too highly, both for the beauty of the writing and the deep sensibility that informs every page. This work is a quantum leap beyond those dreary bestsellers in which expatriates go on and on about the joys of Tuscany or Provence. There is a thickness to Little Saint--a density that comes from eminent sympathy for the subject, a good historical sense, and a keen religious sensibility.

Lawrence S. Cunningham teaches theology at the University of Notre Dame.