ARCA. – The Latin term used as a synonym for *sarcophagus* (v.), situated above ground in ancient Christian cemeteries. It appears, from the late 4th to the 5th century, rarely in Christian inscriptions from Milan, Brescia, Vercelli, Ravenna, Oderzo, and Aquileia; more frequently in Concordia (Portogruaro) and Salona in Dalmatia; twice in Pannonia, at Sirmium and Siscia. Only once in Latium, on a lost sarcophagus from Velletri (CIL, X, 6608). It is never found in inscriptions from underground cemeteries.
The author of the *Palatine Anthology* (cod. Pal. Vat. 591) employs it to denote the burial place of St. Peter (G.B. De Rossi, *Inscript. Christ.*, II, 1, Rome 1888, p. 54, no. 7).
In non-funerary epigraphy, it appears on the ancient altar of the basilica of St. John the Evangelist in Ravenna, where the apostle is called *arca Christi* (CIL, XI, 277). For the liturgical use of the term, V. PISSIDE.
Later, the term *arca* is reserved for monumental sarcophagi such as the *Arche Scaligere* in Verona, or for monuments containing the relics of a saint. Notable among these is the one for St. Dominic in Bologna, executed by Fra Guglielmo at the end of the 13th century, adorned with scenes from the saint’s life and supported by caryatids, completed in the 15th century by Niccolò da Bari, known, due to the fame of this work, as Niccolò dell’A.; it served as a model for the 14th-century sarcophagus of St. Peter Martyr by Giovanni di Balduccio (Milan, S. Eustorgio), from which derives, with greater complexity of design and decorative excess, the sarcophagus for St. Augustine in S. Pietro in Ciel d’Oro, Pavia.
Much simpler, however, is the 14th-century sarcophagus for St. Cerbonius (Massa Marittima) by Goro di Gregorio, with reliefs framed by an elegant and restrained motif. Still dependent on this simple chest-like type is the fine sarcophagus of the Blessed Marcolino (Forlì, Museo), executed by Bernardo Rossellino in 1458. In contrast, the sarcophagus of St. Bernardino of Siena (L’Aquila, S. Bernardino), from the early 16th century, takes the form of a small building whose architectural structure and reliefs envelop the wooden chest and the small chamber in which it is preserved. Also noteworthy, and integrated into the architecture of the buildings near which they stand, are the so-called “sarcophagi of the glossators,” beside the apse of S. Francesco in Bologna, and those within the arched side chapels of the Tempio Malatestiano in Rimini.
The type of *arca* with a canopy was revived with excessive frequency in the emphatic funerary architecture of late Romanticism and Neoclassicism. Among the last examples are the sarcophagi arranged in the Vittoriale by the architect Maroni. – Vedi Tav. CXXVIII.