Conques is now regarded as an icon of medieval art, but is it so? With this talk, I would like to show how the "salvation" of the site by Prosper Merimée, or its renovation by Camille Formigé are but stages of a real invention. Thus, to understand the reasons for such a situation, French nationalism, but also the aspirations of the Catholic Church during the anticlerical Third Republic, must be taken into account.