CELLA. - I. It is a term with the most varied applications. A Christian inscription in Rome mentions a binara (= cinaria) c. belonging to Sesto Petronio Probo (consul in 371) and to Anicia Faltonia Proba. In general, however, it is synonymous with a sepulchral monument, as in the well-known will of Basilea (CIL, XIII, 5708).
It is thus used in the very well-known inscription from the Christian area of Cesarea di Mauretania: cellam struxit suis cunctis sumptibus (CIL, VIII, 9585, 20958); it is called an aeterna c. in a Christian inscription from Rome, now in the Lapidary Gallery in the Vatican (E. Diehl Inscriptiones latin. Christ. veteres, II, Berlin 1931, no. 3697). Later, however, c. is found used in another sense, as, for example, Sanctae Mariae c. in the monastery of Cordova; and in the sepulchral poem of Abbot Vittoriano (d. 560), likewise in Spain, mention is made of the c. of the monks: Iberiam Galliavæ replebit cellis (G. B. De Rossi, Inscriptiones christianae, II, 1, Rome 1888, p. 294).
Enrico Josi
II. A term which, besides the religious meaning of a small rural church, kept open for worship by one or more monks detached from a priory or an abbey, has also acquired by extension that of a small Benedictine agricultural holding on the plain, hill, or mountain. It generally depends upon a grange or directly upon a monastery. It does not always have a prior for religious care, nor a resident steward or granger. This depends on its importance and on its greater or lesser distance from the grange or monastery. The word c. has become part of many place names.