CARNUNTUM. – City of Upper Pannonia (Austria) in the Danubian valley, an extremely ancient road center of great commercial and strategic importance for communications with the north. From the time of Tiberius and Claudius it had a fortified camp, the station of a legion (XV and, subsequently, XIII), destroyed between 375 and 400; it had two amphitheaters: one, larger, in the city, the other, smaller, in the Castrum. Hadrian granted it the designation municipium Aelium, assigning it his tribe (Sergia). Septimius Severus transformed it into Colonia Septima.
Christianity in C. is attested by monumental remains, including a baptistery situated at the southern entrance of the city amphitheater, and by terracotta lamps, rings, engraved stones, and medals bearing Christian signs or formulas such as Dro vivas, discovered there; one of its bishops in the fourth century is documented by a bronze votive plaque found in Rome near the Ponte Sisto, now in the Pio Lateran Christian Museum; it formed part of a disk or crown in gold or silver (gabata) which the gens Carnuntum, as the epigram engraved upon it states, had offered through Mandronius, venerando nomine, to one of the Roman basilicas, probably the Vatican Basilica. The monogram of Christ is engraved in the small upper pediment; the style and paleography of the epigram reveal the fourth century.