Saints, Sinners and Sacred Theft: An Evening at the Montauk Library

The Montauk Library will host a free illustrated lecture, “Heaven, Hell, Pilgrims & Stolen Relics: The Abbey Church of Sainte-Foy (Conques, France),” on Wednesday, August 20, at 6 p.m. in the Suzanne Koch Gosman Room.

Led by Jane Weissman — a cultural historian, lecturer, and director of the community mural collective Artmakers Inc. — the talk chronicles her March 2025 trip to the Romanesque Abbey Church of Sainte-Foy in Conques, France. Her four-day journey included studying the church’s famed “Last Judgment” sculpture, walking two segments of the medieval pilgrimage road known as the chemin and sharing meals with monks and modern-day pilgrims.

The abbey’s story is rich with religious drama, medieval politics, and one very famous act of holy thievery. In the 9th century, monks at Conques secured the bones of Sainte Foy — a 12-year-old martyr — by prieu larcene (sacred theft), hoping the relic would draw pilgrims and preserve their monastery. It worked. The arrival of the relic in 866 shifted the pilgrimage route and transformed the tiny mountain village into a spiritual and economic hub.

But it was the extraordinary “Last Judgment” relief — a 12th-century tympanum sculpture 22 feet wide and packed with angels, demons, saints and sinners — that first drew Weissman to the site. Depicting a vivid separation of the blessed and the damned, the carving is as fearsome as it is awe-inspiring. Her lecture explores this artwork’s iconography, spiritual symbolism, and social implications, with insights from Brother Gudefroy, one of the monks who oversees the site today.

Weissman is co-author of the cultural history “On the Wall: Four Decades of Community Murals in New York City” and a frequent lecturer in the U.S. and abroad. She has also curated exhibitions including “Images of the African Diaspora in New York City Community Murals” and “La Lucha Continua: The Struggle Continues.”

The event is free and open to the public. Registration is available at montauklibrary.org/programs. The Montauk Library is located at 871 Montauk Highway in Montauk.