Saint-Bertrand-de-Comminges

France

5 / 5 (1)

Description

In 72 B.C. the Roman General Pompey, while on the way back to Rome after a military campaign in Spain, founded a Roman colony there. The goal was to defend the passage to the Aran Valley and the Iberian peninsula. The colony was named Lugdunum Convenarum and had reached around 30,000 people at its highest point. It belonged to the Roman province of Novempopulana and had a growing Christian community, which by the late fourth century got its own Diocese of Comminges, which was suffragan of the Metropolitan Archdiocese of Eauze. It is believed to have been the place of exile from 39 AD of Herod Antipas, with his wife Herodias, under Emperor Caligula's orders. In 405 the Vandals sacked the city and forced the peasantry to move to the citadel. [Source Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint-Bertrand-de-Comminges).