a tomb or place destined for the interment of the dead. This term is chiefly used in speaking of the burying-places of the ancients, those of the moderns being usually called tombs.

Sepulchres were held sacred and inviolable; and the care taken of them has always been held a religious duty, grounded on the fear of God, and the belief of the soul's immortality. Those who have searched or violated them have been thought odious by all nations, and were always severely punished.

The Egyptians called sepulchres eternal houses, in contradistinction to their ordinary houses or palaces, which they called imat, on account of the short stay in the one in comparison of their long abode in the other. See Tomb.

Regular Canons of St SEPULCHRE, a religious order, formerly instituted at Jerusalem, in honour of the holy sepulchre, or the tomb of Jesus Christ.

Many of these canons were brought from the Holy Land into Europe, particularly into France, by Louis the Younger; into Poland, by Jaxa, a Polish gentleman; and into Flanders, by the counts thereof; many also came into England. This order was, however, suppressed by Pope Innocent VIII. who gave its revenues and effects to that of our Lady of Bethlehem: which also becoming extinct, they were bestowed on the knights of St John of Jerusalem. But the suppression did not take effect in Poland, where they still subsist, as also in several provinces of Germany. These canons follow the rule of St Augustine.

Knights of the Holy Sepulchre, a military order, established in Palestine about the year 1114.

The knights of this order in Flanders chose Philip II. king of Spain, for their master, in 1558, and afterwards his son; but the grand-maître of the order of Malta prevailed on the last to resign; and when afterwards the duke of Nevers assumed the same quality in France, the same grand-maître, by his interest and credit, procured a like renunciation of him, and a confirmation of the union of this order to that of Malta.