Dominicum

DOMINICUM. - The oldest places where Christians held their assemblies and celebrated the divine mysteries were private domus, which were designated in various ways: οἶκος, domus Ecclesiae, domus Dei, domus orationis.

D. (κυριακόν = "that which belongs to the Lord") perhaps implies the word conventiculum or something similar. Like the word ἐκκλησία, it means assembly and, subsequently, the place of the meeting. The concept it expresses is the same as that of the domus Dei. This meaning ceases at the end of the 4th century, when the name is used to indicate everything that is the property of the Emperor or pertains to him. St. Cyprian, in the treatise De opere et eleemosyna (Opera, I, Vienna 1868, p. 384), writes: « In dominico sine sacrificio venis ». The Itinerarium Hierosolymitanum (CSEL, XXXIX, p. 23), written around 333, regarding the Constantinian basilica of the Holy Sepulchre, states: « Ibi modo iussu Constantini imperatoris basilica facta est, id est d., mirae pulchritudinis » (to explain the word basilica, recourse is had to the better-known synonym). Still in the Chronicon of St. Jerome (PL 27, 678 and 682) one reads: « in Antiochia d., quod vocatur aureum, aedificari coeptum ».

As the only example in the field of epigraphy, with regard to this term, mention should be made of a Roman inscription engraved on the collar of a slave, attributed by De Rossi to the first half of the 4th century.