Marbre de Thorigny

About

Thorigny marble is the stonestone base of a statue discovered in Vieux, France, in the Norman department of Calvados; And not Thorigny as his name might suggest. The inscriptions on it describe the political career of a high Gallo-Roman character, Titus Sennius Sollemnis, "one of the few notables known in the Armo-American part of Gaul Lyonnaise" according to Pascal Vipard. The decision to build the monument was taken by the members of the Council of Gauls in Lugdunum.

This stone, discovered according to a tradition poorly documented in 1580, but more likely in the seventeenth century, is the main epigraphic document of Normandy. The monument carried in the current department of the Manche is preserved in the Château des Matignon, located in Torigni-sur-Vire, then in Saint-Lô where it is seriously damaged during the bombings that destroyed the city in 1944. He was taken to the University of Caen in the 1950s and returned to Saint-Lô in the late 1980s.

The text he wears is described by Henri Van Effenterre as "one of the most beautiful and curious inscriptions of Roman Gaul". The fame of the monument is due to the...