CELLA. — I. This is a word with the most varied applications. In a Christian inscription from Rome mention is made of a c. binara (= vinaria) belonging to Sextus Petronius Probus (consul in 371) and to Anicia Faltonia Proba. In general, however, it is synonymous with sepulchral monument, as in the well-known will of Basel (CIL, XIII, 5708).
Thus it is found used in the very well-known inscription of the Christian area of Caesarea in Mauretania: cellam struxit suis cunctis sumptibus (CIL, VIII, 9585, 20958); it is called c. aeterna in a Christian inscription from Rome now in the Lapidary Gallery in the Vatican (E. Diehl Inscriptiones latini christiani veteres, II, Berlin 1931, no. 3697). Later, however, c. is found used in another sense, as, for example, c. Sanctae Mariae in the monastery of Córdoba and in the sepulchral poem of Abbot Victorianus (in 560), also in Spain, mention is made of the c. of the monks: Iberian Galliasve replebit cellis (G. B. De Rossi, Inscriptiones christianae, II, 1, Rome 1888, p. 294).
Enrico Josi
II. A term which, besides its religious meaning of a small rural church kept open for worship by one or more monks detached from a priory or abbey, has also by extension come to denote a small agricultural holding of the Benedictine order, whether on level ground, a hill, or a mountain. It generally depends on a grange or directly on a monastery. It does not always have a prior for religious oversight, 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 entered into many place names.