The same legends represent Martial as having brought to the Soulac coast Saint Veronica, who is still especially venerated in the church of Notre-Dame de Fin des Terres at Soulac; as having cured Sigebert, the paralytic husband of the pious Benedicta, and made him Bishop of Bordeaux, and as having addressed letters in Latin to the people of Bordeaux, where he left the pastoral staff now treasured as a relic by the Chapter of Saint-Seurin.

By the close of the fourth century Christianity had made such progress in Bordeaux that a synod was held there (384), summoned by the Emperor Maximus, for the purpose of adopting measures against the Priscillianists, whose heresy had caused popular disturbances.

In the 6th century, Bordeaux had as its bishop Leontius II (542–564), a man of great influence who used his wealth in building churches and clearing lands and whom the poet Fortunatus calls patriae caput.

During this Merovingian period the cathedral church, founded in the fourth century, occupied the same site that it does today, tight against the ramparts of the ancient city.

The cemetery of Saint Seurin was full of tombs of the Merovingian (early dark ages) period around which the popular imagination was to create legends.

In the high noon of the Middle Ages it used to be told how Christ had consecrated this cemetery and that Charlemagne, having fought the Saracens near Bordeaux, had visited it and laid Roland's wonderful horn Olivant/Oliphant on the altar of Seurin.

This question has been closely investigated by modern scholars, and it has been ascertained that a certain letter from Nicholas I to Rodolfus, which purports to date the existence of the primacy of Bourges from the ninth century, is not authentic.

Most of the archbishops were conspicuous as agents of English policy in Aquitaine, notably: Guillaume Amanieu (1207–26), on whom King Henry III conferred the title of seneschal and guardian of all his lands beyond the sea, and who took part in Spain in the wars against the (Muslim) Saracens; Gerard de Mallemort (1227–60), a generous founder of monasteries, who acted as mediator between Louis IX of France and Henry III, and defended Gascony against Simon de Montfort, 5th Earl of Leicester.

He was born in Villandraut near Bazas, where he had built a beautiful collegiate church, and was Archbishop of Bordeaux (and political adviser to King Philip the Fair) from 1300-05.

In 1214, an important church council was held in Bordeaux by Cardinal Robert de Corzon, the Papal Legate in France,[3] against usurers, highwaymen, and heretics.

[5] A diocesan synod, held on 13 April 1255 by Archbishop Gerard de Malemort, legislated mostly on matters of clerical discipline, relics, and taxation.