Les deux baptistères de Sidi Jdidi (Tunisie)

Abstract

The Christian topography and architecture of Sidi Jdidi (Tunisia), possibly identified as the city of Aradi, has been studied for ten years. Three churches have been completely excavated, two of them, at the northern limit of the little town, are part of the ‘episcopal group’. The third church, in the south part of the city, has been understood to be a church devoted to the cult of relics. The aim of this contribution is to describe the two baptisteries found near the apse of each basilica belonging to the ‘double church’ and to look for their meaning. Further it gives the occasion to describe the becoming of an episcopal group between the end of the fourth century and the sixth century. During the Byzantine period, a baptistery appears to have been erected near the western basilica : it has quite large dimensions and its shape, a Latin cross ended by an apse, seems original too. The piscina, at the crossing of the arms, was planned as a polylobe. An analysis of the masonry work shows that this baptistery was rebuilt partly from a previous one which occupied part of the place normally destined to a sacristy ; a funerary chapel, which became the nave of the new monument, was also erected for it. Therefore, dimensions and shape must be understood as dependent on what existed before and as a result, cannot be strictly compared with other buildings of the same family. The previous baptistery has been built together with the church at the end of the fourth century ; traces of it can be detected on the floor and in some upper parts of the Byzantine building. The neighbouring basilica, which runs parallel on the east side, was separated from the other one by an insula which contained domestic items for the needs of the church, such as two mills, one for oil, the other one for corn, and a great oven. This insula and the second church were built at the same time as the first one. The eastern sacristy of this second church contained another piscina placed in the north-west corner of the room, decorated with two lobes. This shows that this polylobe shape can be attributed to an older period than the sixth century to which most of the instances found in Africa belong. The symbolic meaning of the shapes is certainly less important than the simple decorative purpose either for polylobes or for cruciform plans. Originally, in this city, it seems that both baptisteries were used together but it is impossible to know what their respective functions were. Both churches were destroyed during the second half of the fifth century and the east one was never rebuilt. So the cathedral was restricted to the west church, the new architecture of which was significant of its main functions, first with the very large baptistery and secondly with the turris erected on the two first southern bays as a shrine for a martyrological cult. This new monumentality, however, which firmly expressed the main functions of the new basilica cannot hide the failure to cope with the old plan with both churches and the insula which, too, was abandoned. [Authors]