Stamps of the Convent of Conque issued in France in 1947 and 1948 were designed and carved by the famous master carver Gundon.
Goethe once said that "Europe was built on the pilgrimage road to the city of Santiago de Compostela".
Spain's "Santiago Route" is the most famous of the world's three pilgrimage routes, a cultural journey that is renowned in the Western world. Legend has it that St. James, one of Jesus' twelve disciples, returned to Jerusalem and was martyred seven years after his Spanish missionary sermon, which was still very remote at the time, and his disciples transported his bones back to the Spanish burial he loved ten minutes before his death, and the coffin was placed in what is now Santiago.
In 813 AD, pelayo, a religious hermit, followed the stars and was guided by angels to discover the long-hidden tomb of St. James. The city has since gained fame and spread across the European continent, gradually forming an 800-kilometer-long road over time, attracting more than 200,000 pilgrims and tourists a year, and eventually becoming one of the three sacred sites of Catholicism on a par with Jerusalem and the Vatican.
Although Conc is a small village, it is an important cultural and historical town in France. Located in the heart of the Lôte Valley, conques de Compostela's pilgrimage route hides countless treasures: the buildings surrounding the wooden walls stand the Abbey of Saint-Foy, built in the 11th and 12th centuries, with 250 columns, modern flower windows designed by Pierre-Surage and 12 statues representing the Final Judgment, as well as the Treasure House of the Convent of Saint-Foix, a box of holy relics covered with gold and precious stones.
At the end of the eighth century, the monk Dadong chose to retreat in this wilderness. Years later, he abandoned the place of practice to a small group of Benedictines. The Convent of Conque was born and soon under the protection of the Carolingian rulers, and in 866 AD, after a "relict retreat", the abbey acquired the relics of Saint Fowa, a martyr of a young girl in the city of Agen, which has since attracted many pilgrims and has since become a stop on the pilgrimage route of Santiago de Compostela from the eleventh century.
