Saint Faith
Gallo-Roman saint

Saint Faith, Saint Faith of Conques or Saint Faith of Agen (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. 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 Diocletianic Persecution beginning in 303. She is listed as "Sancta Fides, Virgin and martyr", in the martyrologies.
The center of her cult 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.
Legend
A number of legends exist regarding Faith, 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.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 21, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q972874. VIAF identifies the subject as 6628390. The Library of Congress control number is n94083292. 3 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank.
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This entry incorporates text from “Saint Faith” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.