326 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



hundred years old, inscribed with the name of a Jewish rabbi, and 

 inlaid in the ancient wall of London as if to intimate that the law 

 would pi'otect from injury that venerable piece of antiquity. 



But at this point the courts of the common law stopped, and held, 

 in humble deference to the ecclesiastical tribunals, that the heir could 

 maintain no civil action for indecently or even impiously disturbing 

 the remains of his buried ancestor, declaring the only remedy to be- 

 long to the parson, who, having the freehold of the soil, could main- 

 tain trespass against such as should dig or disturb it. The line of 

 legal demarkation established in this subject, between the ecclesi- 

 astical and the common-law courts, is thus defined by Coke: "If a 

 nobleman, knight, esquire, etc., be buried in a church, and have his 

 coat-armor and pennons, with his arms, and such other insigns of honor 

 as belong to his degree or order, set up in the church, or if a grave- 

 stone he laid or made for memory of him., albeit the freehold of the 

 church be in the parson, and that these be annexed to the freehold, 

 yet cannot the parson, or any, take or deface them, but he is subject 

 to an action to the heire and his heires, in the honor and memory of 

 whose ancestor they were set up" (1st Inst., 4, 18 h). In the "Third 

 Institute," page 203, he asserts the authority of the Church, as follows : 

 " It is to be observed," says he, " that in every sepidchre that hath a 

 monument, tw^o things are to be considered, viz. : the monument, and 

 the sepulture or buriall of the dead. The huriall of the cadaver, that 

 is caro data vermihus'''' (flesh given to worms), "is nullius in bonis, 

 and belongs to ecclesiastical cognizance ; but as to the monument, 

 action is given, as hath been said, at the common law for the defacing 

 thereof." 



With all proper respect for the legal learning of this celebrated 

 judge, we may possibly question both the wisdom and the etymology 

 of this verbal conceit, this fantastic and imaginary gift, or outstanding 

 grant to the worms. In the English jurisprudence, a corpse was not 

 given or granted to the worms, but it was taken and appropriated by 

 the Church. In Latin, it was a ''cadaver'''' only because it was some 

 thing falleyi (a cadendo), even as the remains of fallen cities, in the 

 letter of Sulpicius to Cicero ("Lit. Fam,," 7), are denominated '"'' cada- 

 vera oppidorum.'''' 



The learned lexicographers and philologists Martinius and the 

 elder Vossius, botli of them contemporaries of Coke, wholly dissent 

 from his whimsical derivation. Martinius derives "cadaver" from 

 ''cadendo, quia stare non potest,^'' "Lexicon Philologicum Martinii," 

 1720; while Vossius unequivocally reproves the derivation in ques- 

 tion, as an act of pleasant but inflated trifling. " jSuaviter nugantur^'' 

 says he, " qui cadaver conflatum aiunt, ex tribus vocibus, caro data 

 vermibus " (" Etymologicon Linguae LatiuiB," Amsterdam, 1 662). And 

 yet this inflated Latin trifle, the ofispring only of Coke's characteristic 

 and inordinate love of epigram, has come down through the last three 



