A CHURCH TRIUMPHANT 81seventh century. 50 One of Aemilian's own hermitages developed into
an important monastic community in the opening decades of the
seventh century, taking its later name San Millan de la Cogolla from
his. This monastery indeed grew in importance after the collapse of
the Visigothic kingdom and was a m~or centre of learning for several
centuries. Another foundation of roughly the same period, probably
exceeding San Millan in contemporary importance, but which seems
to have disappeared with the Visigoths, is Asan, whose location is
unknown but probably in the Pyrenees. Its founder was Victorian us.
Unfortunately no early Life of this monk survives, unlike the case of
Aemilian, and all we have is a fourteenth-century one written in the
vernacular.^51 Although this may be based upon or even be a transla-
tion of an earlier Latin original, the peculiarities of the work suggest
that it is of no earlier date than the tenth or eleventh centuries.
Indeed the very existence of Victorianus might be doubted but for
the survival of a contemporary poem by Venantius Fortunatus dedi-
cated to the abbot.^52 This certainly proves his existence and is further
evidence of the contacts that took place between northern Spain and
western Gaul in the later sixth century, but tells us little else. It cer-
tainly does not establish Asan as the 'nursery of bishops' that some
have seen it to be, very much along the lines of the monastery of
Lhins in the fifth century. Such a view, deriving as it does from the
anachronistic Life, cannot, unfortunately, be substantiated for Asan.
But the poem at least shows Victorianus as a figure of some sub-
stance, at least in the eyes of some of his contemporaries.
Another important figure in the monastic history of the peninsula
in the sixth century, who is also attested to in Gallic as well as Spanish
sources, is Martin of Braga. Born in the province of Pannonia in the
Balkans in the early sixth century, Martin experienced monasticism
in its original home in Egypt, spending several years there amongst
the solitaries and the cenobites or ascetics who dwelt in communities.
Subsequently, c. 550, he made his way to Galicia. His intentions in
going to a place so remote by the standards of his own day are un-
known. However, he arrived at a peculiarly crucial time, as soon after
his appearance there the Suevic kingdom renounced the Arianism it
had held to for the past century and reverted to the Catholicism of
its fifth-century king Rechiarius. Some responsibility for this has been
attributed to Martin, but in the Gallic tradition recorded by Gregory
of Tours in his hagiographical writing it is also explained by the
arrival at Braga, the Suevic capital of relics, of his namesake, Saint