seat of the first Christian bishopric north to the Alps. Despite a legend assigning its foundation to an alleged Briton king, St. Lucius, the first known bishop is one Asinio in AD 451. In the aftermath of the Gothic War (535-554), the Byzantine Empire found itself unable to prevent the Germanic tribe of the Lombards from invading Italy and founding a kingdom there. The territory left behind by the Lombards in Pannonia was subsequently settled by Slavs (with the help of their Avar overlords) in the last decades of the 6th century . In 588 they reached the area of the Upper Sava River and in 591 they arrived in the Upper Drava region, where they soon fought the Bavarians under Duke Tassilo I. In 592 the Bavarians won, but three years later in 595 the Slavic-Avar army gained victory and thus consolidated the boundary between the Frankish and the Avar territories. By that time, today's East Tyrol and Carinthia came to be referred to in historical sources as Provincia Sclaborum (the Country of Slavs). In the 6th century Chur was also conquered by the Franks. Between the 9th and 10th centuries, the Alpine Slavs, who are reckoned to be among the ancestors of present-day Slovenes, settled the eastern areas of the Friuli region. They settled in the easternmost mountainous areas of Friuli, known as the Friulian Slavia, as well as the Kras Plateau and the area north and south from Gorizia. Slavic settlement in the Eastern Alps region is assumed to be connected to the collapse of local dioceses in the late 6th century, a change in population and material culture, and most importantly, in the establishment of a Slavic language group in the area. The territory settled by Slavs, however, was also inhabited by the remains of the indigenous Romanized population, which preserved Christianity. Slavs in both the Eastern Alps and the Pannonian region are assumed to be originally subject to Avar rulers (kagans). After Avar rule weakened around 610, a relatively independent March of the Slavs (marca Vinedorum), governed by a duke, emerged in southern Carinthia in the early 7th century. Historical sources mention Valuk as the duke of Slavs (Wallux dux Winedorum). The year 626 brought an end to Avar dominance over Slavs, as the Avars were defeated at Constantinople. In 658 Samo died and his Tribal Union disintegrated. A smaller part of the original March