MADAUROS (MDAOUROUCH).
- In Algeria, from the end of the 1st century, a Roman colony of veterans under the name of Colonia Flavia Augusta Veteranorum. It formed part of Numidia until the 3rd century A.D. It was the birthplace of Apuleius, and s. Agostino studied grammar there (Confess., 1, 13, 21; 19, 30). Christianity became established there at an early date, as attested by its four martyrs (v. sotto).
It was an episcopal see. Among its bishops are known Placentinus, mentioned in the records of the Conference of Carthage of 411, a fragment of whose epitaph has been found (P. Monceaux, in Comptes-Rendus de l'Acad. des Inscriptions et belles lettres, 1915, p. 32), and Pudentius of 484. M. was still largely pagan in the time of s. Agostino (Ep. 232 ad Madaurenses idololatros: PL. 33, 1025-29).
To the north-west of the settlement, a Christian basilica surrounded by tombs has been discovered. In the Byzantine fortress erected by Solomon around the year 539, a bilingual inscription with Greek crosses remains (CIL, VIII, 1686). Among the rich harvest of Christian epigraphic material, the following may be mentioned: the inscription of a presbyter Donatianus, who died in 540 at M., «per fide catolica... relegatus» in exile (S. Gsell, Inscriptions latines d'Algérie, I, Parigi 1922, n. 2759), like his colleague Liberatus (loc. cit., n. 2760); they perhaps belonged to the clergy of Carthage, like «Flavianus presbiter, serbus Dominicus sedis Kartaginensis» of the year 539 or 540; that of a Peregrinus «presbiter religionis catolicae» (n. 2762); and that of a deacon Theodore, killed «a Mauris» between the end of the 4th and the beginning of the 5th century (loc. cit., n. 2764). Characteristic are the inscriptions of a Felix, preceded by the letters I P & A M, interpreted in various ways (loc. cit., n. 2774), and of Cecilius Aemilianus, a veteran «catholicae legi fidelissima mente inserviens» (loc. cit., n. 2766).
From the text of the letter, in which Namphano is called «archimartyr», some have thought that the four, or at least the first, were the protomartyrs of Africa; no evidence, however, exists for this. On the other hand, the opinion that they were fanatical Donatists executed in the fourth century for having taken part in the crimes of the Circumcellions is even less well founded. Namphano and Miggin are in fact commemorated in the Hieronymian Martyrology, respectively on 18 December and on 16 May and 15 June. St. Agostino, moreover, in his letter of reply to Maximus, while defending the Punic character of the name Namphano, makes no mention—though he could have done so—of the alleged heresy of the martyrs.