Saint Rocco came into the world during a very somber period. The great black plague, which spread throughout the West between 1348 and 1350, killed a third of the population! Montpellier was not spared... five years later, the city avoided being sacked. But only just in time! In fact, the terrible Black Prince, at the head of the English amies, destroyed all of Languedoc...as far as the gates of the town. And when the troops were demobilized after the treaty of Brittany, they began to pillage and burn and spread terror everywhere. So the people recovered from these problems when the plague reappeared in the town. In 1362, a new large scale slaughter: nearly 500 dead each day!

The visit of Pope Urban V on October 1, 1364, marks a respite in the struggles: that's the day when he placed the first stone for a monastery dedicated to Saint Benedict. He will come back to January 9, 1367, a few months before Roch's departure, to consecrate the altar of the abbey church.

Except for this gothic monument, Montpellier has retained nothing of the medieval city. Today the abbey is occupied by the school of medicine. And the church Mageulonne was transferred to Montpellier in 1538.