The transformation of Gallic society may have been very influential in shaping medieval Christendom; but it was untypical of what was going on elsewhere in Western Europe, notably in Italy, and in North Africa, in the fifth and sixth centuries. To appreciate the contrast, we may begin by returning once more to Eucherius, monk of Lerins and bishop of Lyon (see above, ch. 11). For all his dedication to the life of renunciation and his love of the Desert, Eucherius was not out of line with Cassian, or his colleagues and successors at Lerins, in giving the ascetic ideal a profoundly social bearing. His treatise, On the contempt of the world, can be read as a plea for the spiritual renewal of the leading classes of Roman Gaul; and his pamphlet on the martyrs of the Theban legion is a tour de force, uniting apparent contraries in a single image: the martyrs are turned into champions of the empire that persecuted them. The work is a startling endorsement of the imperial establishment by an ascetic turned bishop. Eucherius' Desert was from the start intended to make its mark on Gallic society.

This presents a vivid contrast with a monastic tradition such as that of the Jura monasteries. There a different ascetic ideal was being kept alive.