At the village's centre, dominating the landscape, stands the renowned Romanesque church of Ste-Foy
, whose giant pointed towers are echoed in those of the medieval houses
that cluster tightly about it. Begun in the eleventh century, its plain
fortress-like facade rises on a small cobbled square beside the tourist
office and pilgrims' fountain, the slightly
shiny silvery-grey schist prettily offset by the greenery and flowers
of the terraced gardens.
In startling contrast to this plainness, the elaborately sculpted Last Judgement
in the tympanum above the door admonishes all who see it to espouse
virtue and eschew vice. Christ sits in judgement in the centre. On his
right hand are the chosen, among them Dadon the hermit and the emperor
Charlemagne, while his left hand directs the damned to Hell, as usual
so much more graphically and interestingly portrayed with all its gory
tortures than the boring bliss of Paradise, depicted in the bottom left
panel.
The
inside of the church was designed to accommodate the large numbers of
pilgrims and channel them down the aisles and round the ambulatory.
From here they could contemplate Ste Foy's relics displayed in the
choir, encircled by a lovely wrought-iron screen, still in place. There
is some fine carving on the capitals, especially in the triforium
arches, too high up to see from the nave: you need to climb to the
organ loft, which gives you a superb perspective on the whole interior.
This is also a good place to admire the windows, designed by the
Abstract artist Pierre Soulages, which consist of plain plates of glass
that subtly change colour with the light outside.
The unrivalled asset of this church is the survival of its medieval treasure of extraordinarily rich, bejewelled reliquaries , including a statue of Ste Foy, bits of which are as old as the fifth century, and one known as the A of Charlemagne
, because it is thought to have been the first in a series given as
presents by the emperor to monasteries he founded. Writing in 1010, a
cleric named Bernard d'Angers gave an idea of the effect of these
wonders on the medieval pilgrim: "The crowd of people prostrating
themselves on the ground was so dense it was impossible to kneel down ?
When they saw it for the first time [Ste Foy], all in gold and
sparkling with precious stones and looking like a human face, the
majority of the peasants thought that the statue was really looking at
them and answering their prayers with her eyes." The treasure is kept
in a room adjoining the now ruined cloister (daily 9am-1pm & 2-6pm;
€4.73); the second part of the Conques museum, displayed on three
floors of the house containing the tourist office, consists of a
miscellany of tapestries, furnishings and architectural relics.
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