The gilded reliquary at Conques was described in Bernard of Angers's " Book of Miracles of Sainte Foi", about 1010. Bernard of Anger's " Book of Miracles of Sainte Foy" provides an insightful testimony of his reaction towards Sainte Foy as a Medieval cleric and his ambivalent attitude towards reliquaries in general. His change in attitude came when he witnessed an "economically charged " in which another cleric, Odalric, claimed he was beaten by Sainte Foy. Thus, Bernard of Angers believed that Sainte Foy punishes non-believers, and, despite previously attacking the statue, he justified his newfound devotion by stating that the idol was a "vehicle to the saint and not the saint herself." It has since been repeatedly adapted and enriched, into the nineteenth century. The head itself, made of a different gold from the body—which is fashioned of thin plates over a yew wood—has been tentatively identified as an imperial portrait of the Later Roman Empire. Thomas Hoving, former director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, has alternately theorized that the life-size golden face is a portrait or death mask of Charlemagne.