St. Augustine's Basilica
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The St. Augustine Basilica is a Roman Catholic church with the title of a minor basilica and is a procathedral of the diocese of Constantine-Hippone . It is located south of the city of Annaba (formerly known as Hippo Regius , then Bone until 1962) in Algeria . It is dedicated to the Doctor of the Church and Saint Augustine of Hippo , who founded a monastery here and was Bishop of Hippo from 396 until his death in 430. Augustine died in the city while it was besieged by vandals and is buried in San Pietro in Ciel d'Oro in Pavia, northern Italy .
history
The basilica is located on a hill above Annaba Bay near the remains of the Pacis Basilica, which was built by Augustine of Hippo. A Ba'al temple is said to have stood here before. Bishop Antoine Dupuch proposed construction in 1839, which began in 1881 in French-occupied Algeria, and Bishop Barthélémy Clément Combes laid the foundation stone. On March 29, 1900, the church was completed and consecrated by Frédéric-Henri Oury , Archbishop of Algiers , and Jules-Étienne Gazaniol, Bishop of Constantine . The church was elevated to a minor basilica on April 24, 1914 by Pope Pius X.
After the Algerian War and the withdrawal of the French in 1962, the church fell into disrepair. In 2010 it was restored for over 4.5 million euros, provided by Algeria and France and through a personal donation from Benedict XVI. were applied. The roof, the vaults, the wooden ceilings and the walls were repaired. The painted windows were restored according to the original French templates in the workshop of Vincent Peugnet, which was relocated on site. The renovated basilica was consecrated on October 19, 2013. The basilica is open from time to time for liturgical celebrations and is rarely open to the public.
architecture
The architect Joseph Pougnet (1829-1892) designed the church in a neo-Moorish- Byzantine style. Based on the plan of a Latin cross , it has the shape of a basilica with a dome over a drum as a crossing tower . The naves have wooden coffered ceilings and clerestory . The semicircular apse with apse dome completes the building. The arches in the transition to the crossing were kept in neo-Romanesque style. A two-tower facade rises above the entrance area , the bells of which have not been rung since 1962. The building was built with stones from all over France, the interior decorated with Carrara marble . A specialty of the basilica are the 140 painted leaded glass windows , which show the life of the Doctor of the Church Augustine.
The reclining statue of St. Augustine in the basilica shows an embedded cubit as a relic . This was brought from Pavia to Annaba in 1842 in anticipation of the church building.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Basilique Saint-Augustin on gcatholic.org
- ↑ Monseigneur Barthélémy Clément Combes ( Memento of the original from December 1, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. on piedsnoirs-aujourdhui.com (French)
- ↑ Annaba: restauration de la basilique Saint-Augustin (French)
- ↑ a b Algérie: découvrez la "nouvelle" basilique Saint-Augustin on blog.lefigaro.fr (French)
- ↑ Inside view
Coordinates: 36 ° 52 ′ 55 " N , 7 ° 44 ′ 41" E