page_title: Castellum Tingitii
section_title: Basilica of Reparatus
hierarchical_section_title: Castellum Tingitii / Basilica of Reparatus
caption_attribution_description: English: Map of Orléansville (Chlef), Algeria
context_page_description: Castellum Tingitii, also called Castellum Tingitanum, was a Roman colonia in Mauretania Caesariensis, and corresponds to present-day Chlef in Algeria.
context_section_description: Under Emperor Constantine the Great in the 4th century, a Christian basilica  was built in 324 AD, just before the First Council of Nicaea. A century and a half later, in 475 AD, a counter-apse to the west was added to honour the tomb of Bishop Reparatus, whom an inscription states died in that year. 
  The floor was completely covered with mosaics. One mosaic inscription gives the dates 424 and 475 AD as the dates of construction and of the death of Reparatus. Two other funerary inscriptions in mosaic gives the dates 468 and 474 AD.
  The pavement contained a labyrinth design near the northwest entrance, probably the earliest extant example of Christian use of this motif.
  The labyrinth itself is much simpler than others found in Roman buildings in North Africa and elsewhere, such as the labyrinth at Susa, Tunis illustrated as figure 37 in W.H. Matthews's Mazes and Labyrinths. That in the Castellum Tingitanum church might be thought to be another pre-Christian one but for the inclusion in the centre of a set of letters that can be read from the centre in any direction except diagonally as "Sancta Ecclesia", making it possible to read this phrase in it more than 3,000 times.
  One writer interprets the combination of the diagram labyrinth with that of the letters in terms of polemics against the Donatist heresy; another as representing "the difficult progress (symbolized by the labyrinth), with all worldly 'ambages' awaiting to trap the wanderer, a progress leading towards the holy refuge of the Ecclesia and, eventually, towards the salvation of the soul".
  The basilica of St Reparatus, discovered in 1843, was allowed to be used as a public stable and has been completely destroyed. There was in it a beautiful mosaic of which, fortunately, drawings exist. From this it appears that the church was built in A.D. 324, and that St Reparatus, bishop of the diocese, was buried in it in 475. Orleansville occupies the site of the Roman Castellum Tingitanum. Dictionary of Arts in Encyclopedia Britannica
caption: The Christian Basilica of Reparatus was located in the heart of colonial French Orleansville, the "place Paul Robert" near the Cheliff river, as can be seen in this old map
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