ASINORUM SEPULTURA

The use of this term in the denunciation against Jehoiakim, more than six centuries B.C., and the previous enumeration of crimes in the 22nd chapter of Jeremiah, would seem sufficiently to account for its origin and use in regard to the disposal of the dead bodies of excommunicated or notorious malefactors, by the earliest Christian writers or judges. The Hebrew name of the ass, says Parkhurst, is "derived from its turbulence when excited by lust or rage;" and the animal was also made the symbol of slothful or inglorious ease, in the case of Issachar, B.C. 1609: Genesis, xlix. 14. It is thus p…