ARCOSOLIUM. - Solium in Latin means, besides throne, seat, also basin, and like other analogous terms it came later to designate the tomb. Thus an a. was called a tomb placed beneath an arch, both built in masonry or cut into the tufa. Christians took this custom from the pagans (among whom it is frequent in the mausoleums of the 2nd and 3rd centuries) and practiced it frequently in the catacombs. The solium, or tomb properly so called, received the deceased through the upper opening, which was then closed with a marble slab or with walled-in tiles. The lunette and the vault of the arch (sometimes also the front) were often decorated with paintings. In Rome beneath an arch there is only one burial (very rarely two); in Sicily, on the other hand, very deep a. are common (like ovens), in which beneath a single arch or barrel vault up to thirty distinct solia or tombs follow one another. Sometimes above the tomb, instead of a vault, an oblong space is made.

ARCOSOLIUM - Cemetery of the Via Latina (4th century) - Rome.(phot. Pont. Comm. di Arch. Sacra)

Bibliography3 works

BIBL.: G. B. De Rossi, Roma sotterranea, III, Rome 1877, pp. 419 and 492; F. X. Kraus, s. v. in Realencycl. der christl. Altertümer, I, Freiburg im Br. 1882, p. 89; H. Leclercq, s. v. in DACL, II, col. 2774 ff.

Antonio Ferrua

@incollection{ec1_arcosolio, author = {Ferrua, Antonio}, title = {Arcosolio}, booktitle = {Enciclopedia Cattolica}, volume = {I}, pages = {1846--1847}, note = {Cited by column}, publisher = {Ente per l’Enciclopedia Cattolica e per il Libro Cattolico}, address = {Città del Vaticano}, year = {1948}, url = {https://azioneromana.com/article/arcosolio} }

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Arcosolium

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