A sacellum is a small shrine in ancient Roman religious contexts. The word is a diminutive of sacrum (neuter of sacer, "belonging to a god").Aulus Gellius, Attic Nights 7.12.5, discounting the etymology proffered by Gaius Trebatius in his lost work On Religions (as sacer + cella). The numerous sacella of ancient Rome included both shrines maintained on private properties by families, and public ones. A sacellum might be square or round.
Varro and Verrius Flaccus describe sacella in ways that at first seem contradictory, the former defining a sacellum in its entirety as equivalent to a cella,Varro, Res Divinae frg. 62 in the edition of Cardauns. which is specifically an enclosed space, and the latter insisting that a sacellum had no roof.Verrius Flaccus as cited by Festus, p. 422.15–17 L: sacella dicuntur loca dis sacrata sine tecto. "Enclosure", however, is the shared characteristic, roofed over or not. "The sacellum", notes Jörg Rüpke, "was both less complex and less elaborately defined than a temple proper".Jörg Rüpke, Religion of the Romans (Polity Press, 2007, originally published in German 2001), pp. 183–185.
The meaning can overlap with that of sacrarium, a place where sacred objects (sacra) were stored or deposited for safekeeping.Ulpian, Digest I.8.9.2: sacrarium est locus in quo sacra reponuntur. The sacella of the Argei, for instance, are also called sacraria.Ittai Gradel, Emperor Worship and Roman Religion (Oxford University Press, 2002), p. 10. In private houses, the sacrarium was the part of the house where the images of the Penates were kept; the lararium was a form of sacrarium for the Lares. Both sacellum and sacrarium passed into Christian usage.
Other Latin words for temple or shrine are aedes, aedicula, fanum, delubrum and templum, though this last word encompasses the whole religiously sanctioned precinct.
Cult maintenance of sacella Each curia had its own sacellum overseen by the celeres, originally the bodyguard of the king, who preserved a religious function in later times.Dionysius Halicarnassus II 64, 3. These were related to the ritual of the Argei, but probably there were other rites connected with these sacella.
A case tried in September 50 BC indicates that a public sacellum might be encompassed by a private property, with the expectation that it remain open to the public. It was alleged that the defendant, Ap. Claudius Pulcher, a censor at the time, had failed to maintain public access to a sacellum on his property.The plaintiff was Marcus Caelius Rufus, a curule aedile in 50 and two years later a praetor. Cicero, Ad familiares 8.12.3, and Livy 40.51.8; Michael C. Alexander, Trials in the Late Roman Republic, 149 BC to 50 BC (University of Toronto Press, 1990), p. 169.
List of public sacella and sacraria The following is an incomplete list of deities or groups of deities who had a known sacellum or sacrarium in the city of Rome. Sacellum of Janus, supposed to have been built by Romulus, which was square, contained the god's image, and had two gates.Ovid, Fasti 1.275. Sacellum of the Lares,Solinus 2. one of four points in the sacred boundary of Rome (pomerium) as established by Romulus.Tacitus, Annales 12.24. Sacrarium of Mars, which held the spear of Mars, in the Regia. Sacellum or aedes of Hercules, in the Forum Boarium.Solinus 1; called an aedes by Pliny, Natural History 10.29. Sacellum of Caca,Servius, note to Aeneid 8.190. the sister of Cacus whom Hercules defeated. Sacella or sacraria of the ArgeiVarro, De lingua latina 5.54 Sacellum of Diana, on the lesser Caelian Hill, where a number of senators offered annual sacrifices.Described by Cicero, accurately or with exaggeration, as maximum et sanctissimum ("most holy and great"), Har. Resp. 32; "it may have been nothing more than a Compital shrine," observes Steven H. Rutledge,"The Roman Destruction of Sacred Sites," Historia 56.2 (2007), p. 182. Sacellum or delubrum of Minerva capta, "Captive Minerva", a shrine on the Caelian Hill that contained a statue of Minerva plundered from Falerii when that city was taken by the Romans in 241 BC.The use of the word capta may imply that Minerva was held prisoner, in contrast to deities that were transferred to Rome by the ritual of evocatio, which invited a deity to change sides with the promise of superior cult; Robert Schilling, "Minerva," Roman and European Mythologies (University of Chicago Press, 1992, from the French edition of 1981), p. 137. Sacellum of Jupiter Fagutalis, in the Lucus Fagutalis ("Beech Grove") on the Esquiline Hill.Roger D. Woodard, Indo-European Sacred Space: Vedic and Roman Cult (University of Illinois Press, 2006), p. 254, note 6. Sacellum of Naenia;Festus, entry on Naeniae deae. Sacellum of Pudicitia Patricia.Livy 10.23. Sacellum of Dea Murcia, at the foot of the Aventine Hill.Festus excerpted by Paulus, p. 135 in the 1997 Teubner edition.
Provincial and later usage In a manuscript from the Abbey of Saint Gall, sacellum is glossed as Old Irish nemed, Gaulish nemeton, originally a sacred grove or space defined for religious purposes, and later a building used for such.Bernhard Maier, Dictionary of Celtic Religion and Culture (Boydell Press, 1997, 2000, originally published 1994 in German), p. 207. In Christian architecture, rooflessness ceases to be a defining characteristic and the word may be applied to a small chapel marked off by a screen from the main body of a church, while an Italian sacello may alternatively be a small chapel or oratory which stands as a building in its own right.
References Leonhard Schmitz,‘Sacellum’, in William Smith, A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities (London: John Murray, 1875). James Stevens Curl, ‘sacellum’ in A Dictionary of Architecture and Landscape Architecture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000).
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