This article presents some reflections about the possibilities and difficulties in the study of religious festivals. It does so by reinterpreting a text written by Robert Hertz, one of the researches of the French School of Sociology. It is a text about Saint Besso’s festival, originally published in 1913. The aim of the article is to stress some of the clues that Hertz opened with his work and to suggest how his insights can be useful for our own analyses about festivals.
ritual and symbolism; popular festivals; cult of the saints; French Sociological School