In 406 AD, the Pax Romana was fragile in Gaul. Following the rivers, as so many had done before them, new conquerors, the Goths and Alans, came to settle in Aquitaine.

A little later, in the reigns of King Clovis' successors, a new society came into being under the growing influence of Christianity. The new faith was spread by evangelizing monks who founded a monastery at Lucaniac, near Saint-Emilion. Their work came to a brutal end in 732 with the arrival of the Saracens. Originally from Africa, the troops of Abd-er-Rahman pushed on to Poitiers, where they were vanquished by Charles the Hammer. The memory of the Moors' passage through Saint-Emilion has been kept alive in the name of a hamlet, Villemaurine, probably so called because it had been the site of a camp set up either by the Saracens themselves or to hold them prisoners.

 

St. Emilion is no legendary character. The latest studies show that the cult of the saint has twin roots: in Brittany, near Lannion, where a lovely church and a stream bear his name and, of course, in Saint-Emilion. The life of the hermit Emilion was first mentioned in the 12 th century. Leaving Vannes, in Brittany, where he had been appointed Intendant-General because of

his work with the poor, he is thought to have planned to go to Santiago de Compostela in Spain.We next hear of him in Saujon, near Royan, where he spent some time in a monastery. Then, resuming his journey to the south, he settled "two miles from the Dordogne in Ascumbus" – was this the Roman Cumbus? – where he fixed himself up a shelter and a "church" in the rock. Around him, a small religious community grew up. After his death on 16 January 787, his disciples carved out, above the initial sanctuary, the monolithic church that still makes for a wonderful visit today. In the 11 th century, a Benedictine monastery was set up on the site, giving rise to the religious town. Saint-Emilion was born.