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A burial society is a form of friendly society. These groups historically existed in England and elsewhere, and were constituted for the purpose of providing by voluntary subscriptions for the funeral expenses of the husband, wife or child of a member, or of the widow of a deceased member. Some also allowed for insuring money to be paid on the death of a member. Not-for-profit burial societies still exist today. For-profit companies also provide funeral insurance. Jewish communities often include a burial society known as the ''chevra kadisha'', which also covers performing the necessary Jewish funerary rituals and ceremonies. ==In antiquity== In ancient Greece and Rome, various associations of a fraternal nature, as well as religious groups, political clubs, and trade guilds, functioned as burial societies. Terms for these include ''hetaeria'', ''collegium'', and ''sodalitas''. The by-laws of one burial society are preserved by an inscription dating to A.D. 136. Discovered at Lanuvium, the ''lex collegia salutaris Dianae et Antinoi'' ("By-laws of the Society of Diana and Antinous") details the cost of joining the society, monthly fees, regulations for the burial of members, and the schedule for the group's meetings and dinners. Another example at Rome was the College of Aesculapius and Hygia, founded by a wealthy woman in honor of her dead husband. Inscriptional evidence exists for burial societies throughout the Empire, not just in the city of Rome.〔Maureen Carroll, ''Spirits of the dead: Roman funerary commemoration in Western Europe'' (Oxford University Press, 2006), pp. 45–46.〕 One of the ways that the Romans made sense of the earliest Christian groups was to think of them as associations of this kind, particularly burial societies, which were permitted even when political conflict or civil unrest caused authorities to ban meetings of other groups; Pliny identified Christians collectively as a ''hetaeria''.〔Robert Louis Wilken, ''The Christians as the Romans Saw Them'' (Yale University Press, 1984, 2003), pp. 31–47 (online. )〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Burial society」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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