HIPPO. - A city on the coasts of the Mediterranean, in Numidia (north Africa), today situated 2 km southwest of present-day Bona in Algeria.
It was a Phoenician colony; its name of Hippo Regius has been in use since the time of Julius Caesar, creator of the Kingdom of Numidia; Augustus made it a Roman municipium, Trajan a colony. But still at the end of the 4th century and the beginning of the 5th, part of its inhabitants spoke Punic and St. Augustine was forced to seek priests who spoke it.
Christianity flourished there from the middle of the 3rd century, as its bishops and two groups of martyrs attest. It was afflicted by the Manichaeans and the Donatists, against whom St. Augustine struggled strenuously. It was assailed by the Vandals, who penetrated it in 430, and Genseric remained there until 439, at the conquest of Carthage. Justinian recovered it in 533, with the conquest by Belisarius. The Arabs abandoned I. and settled on the sea where Bona now is.
Known bishops of I. are: Theogenes in 256, present at the Council of Carthage; Leontius ca. 303, who built the Basilica called Leontiana (St. Augustine, Sermones, 260 and 262; P. Monceaux, Histoire littéraire de l'Afrique, III, Paris 1910, p. 152); Florentius or Fidentius, one of the twenty martyrs during the Diocletianic persecution (St. Augustine, Sermones, 148, 325-26; De civitate Dei, XXII, 8, 4); Valerius in 388; St. Augustine (393-430). The bishops of I. after the Vandal invasion and during the Byzantine domination are unknown.
St. Gsell, from the works of St. Augustine, has derived the notice of the following churches existing in I. (Monuments antiques de l'Algérie, II, Paris 1901, pp. 212-14).
The Basilica maior (St. Augustine, Serm., 325) also called the Basilica Pacis (id., Ep. 213). It had a raised apse (De civitate Dei, 22, 8, 22); near it was the Chapel of the protomartyr Stephen with his relics under the altar (Serm., 318).
The Basilica Leontiana founded by the same bishop and martyr Leontius (Sermones, 260 and 262).
The Chapel ad viginti martyres (De civitate Dei, 22, 8), whose memory «est apud nos celeberrima» affirms St. Augustine (ibid., 148), held «ad sanctos viginti martyres» (PL 38, 799), as in the other two Sermones 325 and 326 (ibid., 1447 and 1449) and in the Sermon in honor of St. Eulalia (G. Morin, in Miscellanea Agostiniana, I, Rome 1930, p. 595). Of the twenty martyrs, St. Augustine recalls only the names of the bishop Florentius or Fidentius and of Valeriana and of Victoria; the others, whose names are recalled in the Jeronymian Martyrology on 15 Nov. (p. 600, n. 9), although betraying their African origin, it is not certain that they belong to the same group.
The Basilica ad octo Martyres (Serm., 356, 10).
In the surroundings of I. St. Augustine likewise recalls: a Memoria martyrum (De civit. Dei, 22, 8, 19); a chapel dedicated to Sts. Gervasius and Protasius in the locality Victoriana Villa (ibid., 8, 7); an oratory with the earth of the Holy Sepulchre at Fussula (ibid., 8, 6); a basilica at Hasna whose altar the Circumcellions demolished (Ep., 29, 12); a church at Andurus with relics of St. Stephen (De civitate Dei, 22, 8, 15).
Finally from St. Augustine is derived the existence of a monastery founded by him (Serm., 355, 2); of the domus episcopii (ibid.), of two other male monasteries (ibid., 356, 10 and 15) and of one or more female monasteries (Ep., 211). He also held, on 28 Aug. 392, his controversy with the presbyter Fortunatus of the Manichaeans in balneis Sossii, praesentia populi (PL 42, 111-12).
Of the ancient Christian monuments of I. very little is known so far and the discoveries have been until 1949 limited to Christian sepulchral inscriptions known through manuscripts, such as the acrostic one of the deacon Nabor, killed by the Donatists (G. B. De Rossi, in Bull. arch. crist., 4th series, 4 [1886], pp. 8-10; P. Monceaux, Enquête sur l'épigraphie chrétienne d'Afrique, in Revue archéol., 4th series, 7-8 [1906], p. 473, n. 191) and of a poet contemporary with St. Augustine (P. Monceaux, ibid., p. 473, n. 192); or from sporadic discoveries (St. Gsell, Les inscriptions latines de l'Algérie, I, Paris 1922, pp. 1-9 and 393).
One must also recall ampullae with the image of the martyr Menas (G. B. De Rossi, in Bull. arch. crist., 5th series, 5 [1894], p. 56); a fragment of a comb with Daniel among the lions (J. Straygowski, Der Algerische Damstianum, in Oriens Christianus, new series, 1 [1911], pp. 83-87); a group of jewels of the Vandal age (J. de Baye, Bijoux vandales des environs de Bane, in Mém. de la Soc. nation. des antiquaires de France, 48 [1887], pp. 179-82).
Only in 1949, from a communication of R. Leschi, director of the Monuments of Algeria, came the news of the discovery of a Christian building with three naves from the Vandal era or earlier than that age and subsequently reused by the Arians. The floor is mosaic with numerous Christian sepulchral inscriptions; among these one in marble contains the epitaph of a Suebian woman (Suaba) named Ermengon, wife of an Ingomar.