Mensa

MENSA. - The term is sometimes used as a synonym for the altar (v.) erected on the tomb of a martyr. Thus St. Augustine, speaking of the altar erected on the site of the martyrdom of St. Cyprian, explains: «in eodem loco mensa Deo construcuta est et tamen mensa dicitur Cypriani, non quia ibi est unquam Cyprianus epulatus, sed quia ibi est immolatus» (Sermo 310, 2: PL 38, 1413).

At Rome a certain Eusebius built me(n)sas at the martyrs in St. Paul's (A. Bosio, Roma sotterranea, Rome 1632, p. 148). In Africa, however, and more often in Mauretania Sitifensis and in Numidia, the places where the brandea that had touched the tombs of martyrs were deposited were called mensae martyrum, like those called reliquiae of St. Menna and of St. Sebastian deposited by Bishop Revocatus, according to the inscription of Henchir-Fellous (P. Monceaux, Enquête sur l'épigraphie chrétienne d'Afrique, in Mémoires présentés par divers savants à l'Académie des Inscriptions, 12 [1908], pp. 199-202). At Ain-el-Ksar a m. martyrum Felicis, Naboris was placed (CIL VIII, 20573); near Boukirka on a sarcophagus lid one reads Petite me(n)sa Marturorum Renatus et Optata (P. Monceaux, Martyrs de Boukirka, in Comptes rendus de l'Acad. des Inscr. et belles lettres, 1920, pp. 122-27). The expression menso sanctorum is also found in two inscriptions near Satafi (Ain Kebira, today Peritgoville), one from the year 324, and the other quite mutilated (CIL, VIII, 20314).

M. was sometimes also a synonym for tomb (CIL, VIII, 20480). A certain Elia Secundina calls m. the marble table placed on her daughter's tomb for setting food there for the refrigerium (CIL, VIII, 20502). West of Tebessa at Youks-les-Bains (Aquae Caesaris) there is a me(n)sa Pontiorum (P. Monceaux, Sur une table funéraire chrétienne decouverte à Youks-les-Bains, in Bulletin archéologique du Comité, 1917, pp. 241-61). At Guellal (Castellum Dianense) the me(n)sa Miggini Subjaconi (subdiaconi) (E. Albertini, ibid., 1925, p. 172). It is customary to call m. of the oils the marble, clay or glass dish (lanx) arranged for the most part on a masonry base, often covered with marble slabs, in which was placed the often perfumed oil in which little pieces of papyrus were lit and burned near the tombs of martyrs or of simple faithful. Numerous examples of these have been found near the tombs, for example, of St. Cornelius in Callixtus and of St. Crescention in Priscilla and in some cubicula of the cemetery inter duas lauros; the devout carried a little of it away as a pledge of blessing or eulogia (v.).

Enrico Josi