Coemeterium (

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...

for "cemetery", from the Ancient Greek, κοιμητήριον, ''koimeterion'' = "bedroom, resting place") was originally a free-standing, multi-roomed Early Christian

gravesite A grave is a location where a dead body (typically that of a human, although sometimes that of an animal) is buried or interred after a funeral. Graves are usually located in special areas set aside for the purpose of burial, such as grave ...

. Bodies were buried in wall niches and under the floor. In later times ''coemeterium'' became synonymous with ''cemetery'', which, like the French ''cimetière'', was derived from the Latin word.

Literature

* Hugo Brandenburg: ''Coemeterium. Der Wandel des Bestattungswesens als Zeichen des Kulturumbruchs der Spätantike.'' In: ''Laverna'', No. 5, Scripta Mercaturae, St. Katharinen, 1994, pp. 206–233, . * Steffen Diefenbach: ''Römische Erinnerungsräume: Heiligenmemoria und kollektive Identitaten im Rom des 3. bis 5. Jahrhunderts n. Chr''. De Gruyter, 2007, (= ''Millennium Studien,'' Vol. 11; ''Zu Kultur und Geschichte des ersten Jahrtausend'', a dissertation at the

University of Münster The University of Münster (german: Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster, WWU) is a public research university located in the city of Münster, North Rhine-Westphalia in Germany. With more than 43,000 students and over 120 fields of stud ...

, 2004). Cemeteries {{Christianity-stub