The Carolingian religious culture of the diocese of Orléans had deep roots in the Gallo-Roman and Merovingian past. When the Romans defeated the local tribe of the Carnutes in 52 BC they latinized the native name of the town to Cenabum. By the fourth century the official name of the city had become civitas Aurelianorum. The earliest recorded Christian bishop was one ‘Diclopetus Aurilianorum’ who took part in the Council of Cologne (346). In addition to a bishop, the city had acquired a defensive wall, a theatre, and many other features of a Gallo-Roman civitas. According to a text of relatively early date, Bishop Anianus was forced in the mid-fifth century to rebuild the city's virtually ruined cathedral, an act which indicates that the history of the early Christian community was not an unbroken record of success. At that time the cathedral was probably dedicated to St Stephen, whose relics had been discovered and distributed widely through the western empire in the early fourth century.

Bishop Anianus was famed for miraculously saving the city from an attack by the Huns in 451. As early as 478 Sidonius Apollinaris wrote to Anianus' successor apologizing for not having completed an account of the virtutes of this man whose prophetic powers were praised by the people (ilia vulgata sacerdotis vaticinatio). Such an account of the bishop's life was contained in the Vitas. Aniani I (BHL 473), probably written in the sixth century and thus the earliest extant hagiographic work from the Orléanais.