CHAPTER V
OF CEMETERIES AND OTHER PLACES, SACRED AND RELIGIOUS
Holiness of Places; its Origin—Difference between Sacred, Holy, and Religious—Different Names for Cemetery—First use of Cemeteries—Who are not to be Buried in the Church—Ancient Method of Burial—Who are to be Buried in a Cemetery.
1. Now we will Speak of cemeteries and other sacred and religious places. Of consecrated places, some be appropriated to human necessity, others to prayers. Those of the first sort be a xenodochium or xenostorium, which is the same: a vasochonium, a gerontocomium, an orphanotrophium, a brephotrophiuin. For holy fathers and religious princes have founded places of this kind, where the poor, the pilgrims, old men, orphans, infants, men past work, the halt, the weak, and the wounded should be received and attended. And note that geronta in Greek is the same as senex in Latin.
But of places appropriated to prayer, there be that are sacred, there be that are holy, and there be that are religious.
2. Sacred be they which by the hands of the bishop have duly been sanctified and set apart to the Lord, and which be called by various names, as hath been said in the section on Churches. Holy be they which have immunity or privilege: and be set apart for the servitors or ministers of the Church, concerning which, under threat of condign punishment, either by the canon law or by special privilege, it is ordained that no man shall presume to violate them. Such be the courts of churches, and in some places the cloisters, within which be the houses of the canons. To which when criminals of whatever kind betake themselves they have safety. And so according to the statutes of the civil law be the gates and theatres of cities.
3. Religious places be they where the entire body of a man, or at least the head is buried: because no man can have two sepulchres. But the body or any member without the head doth not make the place wherein it is buried religious. But according to the civil law the corpse of a Jew, or paynim, or unbaptised infant maketh the place of its sepulchre religious: yet by the Christian religion and the canonical doctrine the body of a Christian alone maketh it so. And note that whatever is sacred is religious; but the contrary holdeth not. But the afore-named religious place hath divers appellations: such be cemetery, polyandrum, or andropolis (which is the same thing), sepulchrum, mausoleum (which is also the same), dormitorium, tumulus, monumentum, ergastulum, pyramid, sarcophagus, bustum, urna, spelunca.
4. Cemetery hath its name from cimen which is sweet, and sterion, which is a station: for there the bones of the departed rest sweetly, and expect the advent of their Saviour. Or because there be therein cimices, that is reptiles of intolerable odour.
5. Poliantrum, from pollutum antrum, on account of the carcases of men therein buried. Or poliantrum signifieth a multitude of men, from polus, which is a plurality, and andros, which is a man; and therefore a cemetery is so called on account of the number of men therein buried.' [Footnote 368]
[Footnote 368: It has been thought right to give a few of the bishop's derivations, lest his translators should be accused of concealing a circumstance which may weaken, with some, his testimony on other points (though, as we have before shown, most unjustly): it has not, however, been thought necessary to follow him through all his names of a cemetery: since to do so would be a mere waste of the reader's time.]