AURIOL. - A French town in the department of Bouches-du-Rhône, famous for two Early Christian altars of singular form, destroyed together with their church during the Revolution in 1792, but accurately reconstructed from their fragments.
The first (now in Marseilles, in the Musée Borély) is a marble slab measuring 102 × 57 × 10 cm., with a hollow about 4 cm. deep in the upper surface, and carved on the lateral sides with vine tendrils, on the front with twelve doves (the Apostles) proceeding towards Christ represented by his monogram (v. MOSKGRAMMA COSTANTINIANO). The second (now completely destroyed by ignorant masons) was a parallelepiped formed of four superimposed square limestone blocks; the uppermost, which served as the mensa, had its upper surface slightly hollowed and, in its centre, a small cavity for relics; on its front side was the Christological monogram within a circle or crown, with the customary letters A Ω and, on either side, stylized flowers.
These two altars must belong to the 5th-6th centuries.