96 EARLY MEDIEVAL SPAINdevotion. The relationship was one of patron and client in the tradi-
tional Roman manner. The bishop sought benefits from the saint,
who was his peculiar patron, for the good of the community over
which he exercised his episcopal authority. Masona was particularly
successful in this. For one thing he had been in the service of Eulalia
for many years prior to his elevation to the episcopate and had lived
in the basilica dedicated to her, probably either as deacon or lay-
ascetic. Thus his relationship with the martyr was held to be unusu-
ally strong. This and the personal sanctity of Masona's own life made
his intercession especially powerful. It is described in the Lives of the
Fathers thus: 'In his time the Lord in answer to his prayers and be-
cause of the merits of the holy virgin Eulalia drove far away and
banished from Merida and all Lusitania the pest of disease and want
due to scarcity of food and bestowed upon all the people such good
health and so great an abundance of all good things, that no one,
even though poor, ever lacked anything or was harassed by any need;
but the poor, like the wealthy, abounded in all good things and all
the people rejoiced on earth with a sort of celestial joy at the merits
of so great a bishop.>I4
The influence of the saint and the work of the bishop were in no
way restricted to the city itself, although this was the main focus of
their activity. Lusitania as a whole was encompassed within the bounds
of Eulalia's authority, while the bishop's spiritual influence as well as
his charity was extended to the countryside. Unlike Baetica, where
Cordoba might match Seville, or Tarraconensis, where Barcelona
might rival Tarragona, in Lusitania and Galicia there was no other
city that could equal Merida in size or economic and political impor-
tance. All too little is known of the relationships between the metro-
politan bishops in Merida and their suffragan bishops in the other
sees of the province or of the strength and distribution of other
saints' cults, but it is unlikely there was any serious challenge to the
dominance of the provincial capital and its patron saint before the
Muslim invasion of 711.
Precise details of the interaction of town and countryside, not only
for Lusitania, but for Visigothic Spain as a whole, tend to elude us.
Clearly there was much interpenetration and the horizons of most
social classes must have been highly localised. As can be seen from
the Lives of the Fathers and a few inscriptions, there were powerful
aristocratic families with landed wealth to be found in southern
Lusitania, some older, of Roman origin, others, more recently