AURIOL. - French town in the department of Bouches-du-Rhône, famous for two early Christian altars of singular shape, destroyed along with their church by the Revolution in 1792, but accurately reconstructed from their fragments.

The first (now in Marseilles in the Borély Museum) is a marble slab measuring 102x57x10 cm, with a hollow in the upper face of about 4 cm, and carved on the side edges with vine branches, and on the front edge with twelve doves (the Apostles) moving toward Christ represented by his monogram (v. MOSKGRAMMA COSTANTINIANO). The second (now totally destroyed by ignorant masons) was a parallelepiped formed by four superimposed square limestone blocks; the last, which served as the table, had its upper face slightly hollowed and at its center a small cavity for relics; on the front edge of the same was the Christological monogram within a circle or crown with the usual letters A Ω and on both sides stylized flowers.

These two altars must belong to the 5th-6th century.

Bibliography3 works

BIBL.: G. Rohault de Fleury, La Messe. Etudes archéologiques, I, Paris 1883, p. 125, pls. 47 and 51; H. Leclercq, s. v. in D'ACL, I, coll. 3151-55; J. Braun, Der christliche Altar, I, Munich 1924, pp. 264 and 286, pl. 41.

Antonio Ferrua

@incollection{ec2_auriol, author = {Ferrua, Antonio}, title = {Auriol}, booktitle = {Enciclopedia Cattolica}, volume = {II}, pages = {412--413}, note = {Cited by column}, publisher = {Ente per l’Enciclopedia Cattolica e per il Libro Cattolico}, address = {Città del Vaticano}, year = {1949}, url = {https://azioneromana.com/article/auriol} }

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