ASINORUM SEPULTURA

It can hardly have escaped the notice of your Querist (although the instance is not one adduced by Ducange), that the phrase, "burial of an ass" קְבוּרַת חֲמוֹר for "no burial at all," is as old as the time of the prophet Jeremiah. (Vide chap. xxii. 19.) The *custom* referred to being of religious origin, might lead us to the sacred books for the origin of the *phrase* denoting it; and it seems natural for the Christian writers, in any mention of those whose bodies, like that of Jehoiakim, were for their sins deprived of the rites of sepulture, to use the striking phrase already provided for t…