Saint-Bertrand-de-Comminges (, literally Saint-Bertrand of Comminges; Gascon: Sent Bertran de Comenge) is a commune (municipality) and former episcopal see in the Haute-Garonne department in southwestern France. It is a member of the Les Plus Beaux Villages de France ("The Most Beautiful Villages of France") association. History In 406, Saint Jerome wrote that the Roman General Pompey, while on the way back to Rome after a military campaign in Spain, founded a Roman colony there, presumably to defend the passage to the Aran Valley in the Pyrenees and the Iberian peninsula. However, extensive archaeological investigations have failed to find any evidence of this. The colony, built on the valley floor below the current hilltop village, was named Lugdunum Convenarum. This roman town dates from the Augustan period and had reached around 30,000 people at its highest point. It belonged to the Roman province of Novempopulana and had a growing Christian community, which by the late fourth century got its own Diocese of Comminges, which was suffragan of the Metropolitan Archdiocese of Eauze. It is claimed to have been the place of exile from 39 AD of Herod Antipas, with his wife Herodias, under Emperor Caligula's orders, although this is based on an unclear point in Josephus. In 405 the Vandals sacked the city and forced the peasantry to move to the citadel. In 585 another Germanic invasion, by the Burgundians under king Guntram, attacked the city in the course of their pursuit of Gundoald. It remained in decline for nearly five centuries. The bishopric however persisted under the name of Comminges and was transferred in the ninth century to the ecclesiastical province of the Metropolitan Archdiocese of Auch. In 1083 a knight related to the Counts of Toulouse, Bertrand de l'Isle-Jourdain, canon of Saint Augustine in Toulouse, was nominated bishop of Comminges. He ordered the construction of the cathedral and of the Romanesque cloister. The place became used by pilgrims as a stage on the route to Santiago de Compostela. Bertrand de l'Isle was canonised and became known as Saint-Bertrand in the 13th century and Lugdunum Convenarum became known as Saint-Bertrand-de-Comminges. The term Comminges itself comes from the Latin word "Convenae", meaning "those who came together" at Pompey's new settlement. On July 19, 2012, during the 99th edition of Tour de France, it was one of the villages which cyclists passed by. Sights Aside of the former cathedral, the village has