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The small caves that can be found in the old monastery of Suso (San Millán de la Cogolla) speak of history: they are the silent witnessses of the life of those anachorites that dwelt there during the 6th century in grottos in the mountains. These holes in the ground were habitation, and in the hour of death, the sepulchre of those anachorites. They themselves cleaned amongst the undergrowth, opening ways and building a small chapel where their communal services took place. These fashioned cracks in the rocks suggest that from the fame of San Millán originated a reduced community located at about the place where Emiliano passesd his last years and stimulated the hermatic vocation of other men. Nevetheless it´s difficult to prove that this really happened from the death of the saint in 574 until the birth of the first constructed monastery:Suso (924). The Iberic pennisula, along with La Rioja, was occupied by the muslims at the beginning of the 8th century. The change had a fundamental result, the Bann Qasi controlled the Ebro valley until the 10th century. Would this muslim invasion permit the religous activities in the valley of San Millán or the contrary the Arab occupation interrupt it until the reconquering? As it was, the King of Pamplona, Sancho Garcia I regained La Rioja in the year 923 and returned the lands back to the christian characteristics. This then, from the 10th century when it can be sure that around the burial of San Millán an intense hermatic life was organised that gave place to the construction of a monastery.
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