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Switzerland canton (state) of Valais (Wallis) Town and abbey of Saint-Maurice. After the Celts the Romans used this narrows of the Rhone Valley as a defendable station on the way to the Great Saint Bernard pass. A legion garrisoned here that had espoused Christianity was (towards the end of the 3rd c) slaughtered when the soldiers and their leader, Mauritius, refused to worship the old Roman gods - and Saint-Maurice became Switzerland's oldest center of Christianity. (KEYSTONE/Georg Gerster)