COSTANTINA, DIOCESE OF
It is the ancient city in Numidia (now Algeria) that had a bishop’s see in the 3rd century, restored on 25 July 1866 by Pius IX, who assigned it the territory of the present-day administrative department of Constantine.
The diocese borders Tunisia to the east, the archdiocese of Algiers to the west (of which it is a suffragan), and to the south the Apostolic Vicariate of Ghardaïa in the Sahara. The bishop also bears the title of Hippo. The diocese comprises 7 vicariates or districts, has 89 parishes, 96 diocesan priests, 23 regular priests, and about 200,000 Catholics.
---
### ARCHAEOLOGY
From the nearby Unguas, the deacon Iacobus and the reader Marinianus were taken to Constantine and sent by the local magistrates to Lambesis, where they were condemned to death by the governor. Their names, together with those of other martyrs, were later inscribed on the rock near the banks of the Rummel stream. The inscription can be dated to the Byzantine period on account of the shape of the letters and abbreviations, the presence of the cross, and the indiction. The date of the epigraph, IIII non. sept., however, does not match that of 6 May recorded in the *Martyrologium Hieronymianum* and the Calendar of Carthage.
In the *Gesta apud Zenophilum* (in CSEL, XXVI, pp. 185–97) from the year 320, a procès-verbal is preserved of what occurred in Constantine on 19 May 303, when the curator Munatius Felix, in compliance with imperial decrees, was to seize the books and sacred vessels and confiscate the *domum ubi christiani conveniebant*.
From the procès-verbal one can reconstruct the importance of the Christian community in Constantine at the beginning of the 4th century. Six bishops are mentioned: Bishop Paulus, four priests, two deacons, four subdeacons, then readers, fossors, etc. The Christian meeting-house is described as having a library, a hall for agape meals, and an inventory of liturgical utensils, vestments, footwear, and food for the poor. After the death of Bishop Paulus in 305, the Christians gathered in the *domus maior*, located in the *area martyrum*, i.e., in the cemetery where the martyrs were buried; it was equipped with an episcopal chair. At that time, basilicas had not yet been restored. From the above, it emerges that the Christian community of Constantine possessed more than one place of worship at that period, though their locations remain unknown.
Remains of a Christian building of the Byzantine period, incorporated into a Roman temple, were noted in 1844 but were destroyed; likewise were the remains found at Sidi-Mabrouk. In the great mosque, a reused capital bearing the so-called Constantinian monogram was discovered. A music hall, now destroyed, bore in its center the inscription *Iustus sibi lex est*, which Monceaux considers Donatist. The Donatists were powerful in Constantine in the 4th century. They had seized the church built by Constantine for the Catholics. In a letter from the year 330 (PL 8, 531–32), addressed to the *rationalis*, Constantine orders the construction of a basilica at public expense. Against the Donatist bishop of Constantine, Petilian, St Augustine wrote *Contra litteras Petiliani* and *De unico Baptismo contra Petilianum*.
On a relief preserved at Kroub, depicting a victory with a crown and palm, three Greek crosses and the inscription *A Deo datur victoria* were added later. Among the clay lamps found, one depicts the angel and the three youths in the furnace.
The museum of Constantine preserves a terracotta reliquary with an inscription commemorating a *memoria sancti Iuliani*, deposited by the well-known Bishop Emiliano around the mid-6th century. (L. Leschi, *Reliquaires chrétiens du VIe*)