In the early ninth century, a group of three men and one woman were reported to have come down from “aerial ships” to the city of Lyon. The mob that gathered accused the visitors of being evil magicians who wanted to ruin their crops. But the visitors insisted that they were ordinary, peaceful people from the same country who had been abducted by magical men and taken to a place in the sky called Magonia. Before the mob became violent, Bishop Agobard of Lyon (June 6) came running to the scene. He dismissed the story of the visitors as complete fantasy. Since Agobard was a greatly respected man, the townspeople accepted his skepticism and the strangers were left unharmed.
