Applying the anthropological concept of the "trickster" to the miracles of Sainte Foy?

This paper discusses the application of the anthropological concept of the trickster to Bernard of Angers' Liber miraculorum sancte Fidis in Kathleen Ashley and Pamela Sheingorn's Writing Faith (1999). Many of the interesting questions formulated by the scholars could not have been raised without the heuristic value of an anthropological grid that denaturalized the text and drew forth its less obvious aspects. Subsequently, the use of the concept of the trickster to analyse Bernard of Angers' writing has been too widely absorbed by research and too little discussed despite its flaws. Indeed, Bernard's Liber miraculorum is strongly anchored in local reality and environment, even if the facts are stylised by the hagiographer. It is argued here that, much more than a "trickster" position, the contradictions in the Liber miraculorum may be better explained by its complex genesis and editorial process and by the impact of living witnesses. To fully comprehend certain aspects of the text, it is necessary to consider the eleventh-century cultural and theological context. St Foy's humor, in this frame, should be attributed to the way in which the local Rouergat laity viewed the saint and their relationship with her (and her "jokes").