82 EARLY MEDIEVAL SPAINMartin of Tours. At any rate, Martin of Braga did have a crucial role
to play in helping shape the Church in the Suevic kingdom after the
conversion, with effects on the special characteristics of the Galician
Church lasting well into the Visigothic period. Martin was originally
granted land at Dumio, near Braga, by the king, probably Charraric,
and he set up a monastic community there, most likely along the
lines of monastic life as he had experienced it in Egypt. There the
norm was for groups of aspiring ascetics to gather around a spiritual
guide and leader, the 'abba' or father, to receive direction and teach-
ing. The intention of this was the furtherance of the spiritual devel-
opment of the individual, and the communal life was not regarded as
an end in itself; ideally the aspiring ascetic should be strengthened by
his experiences, not so much of living with others as of the spiritual
direction of his 'abba', to be able to go on to the higher life of the
solitary, even if only for a time. The charismatic abbots were often
figures of considerable power and influence in Egypt in these centu-
ries, sometimes coming into conflict with the established hierarchy of
the Church in the form of the bishops. On the other hand in Gaul,
especially in the south where monastic ideas and institutions from
Egypt and Syria had been making themselves felt since the late fourth
century, it became increasingly common for bishops of aristocratic
descent to be drawn from amongst the ranks of those who had spent
some time leading the monastic life in a community. Interestingly,
the role of the communal life in monastic formation came increas-
ingly to be emphasised and more vigorous episcopal control of mon-
asteries was exercised in the West than in the East. Galicia, however,
was somewhat unusual. It was an area penetrated by Roman civilisa-
tion at effectively little more than the military level, and it is unclear
how developed the ecclesiastical organisation of the province was by
the end of the Roman period. It was certainly still subject to the
metropolitan authority of distant Merida in southern Lusitania. With
very few towns, and a greatly under-Christianised countryside, it looks
as if established urban bishoprics were relatively slow in coming into
existence, whereas in most other parts of the Roman world they
were created, often at an early stage, around the pattern of the pro-
vincial centres employed by the civil government.^53 But in odd under-
urbanised and under-Romanised areas such as southern Numidia in
Africa, or Galicia in Spain, alternative forms of organisation had to be
sought. It seems that there were more of the 'country bishops', so
much a cause of contention in the African Church, in Galicia, than