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n film and in literature, medieval life seems heroic, entertaining, and romantic. In reality, life in the Middle Ages, a period that extended from approximately the fifth century to the fifteenth century in Western Europe, was sometimes all these things, as well as harsh, uncertain, and often dangerous.  What was it really like?

Agaunum (Saint-Maurice) squeezed into a narrow defile between the Rhone and the mountains, has a strategic vocation built into its very nature. Celts, followed by the Romans, appreciated it and established there a military, administrative and religious station. The Theban soldiers and their commander Maurice underwent martyrdom there at the end of the 3rd century.The churches built in their honor as from the end of the third century contributed to make this little spot an important spiritual center of the West under the Merovingians, Carolingians, Burgundians, Savoyards and emperors of the Holy Roman Empire