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Cremation

Cremation is a method of final disposition of a dead body through burning.

Cremation may serve as a funeral or post-funeral rite and as an alternative to burial. In some countries, including India, Nepal, and Syria, cremation on an open-air pyre is an ancient tradition. Starting in the 19th century, cremation was introduced or reintroduced into other parts of the world. In modern times, cremation is commonly carried out with a closed furnace (cremator), at a crematorium.

Cremation leaves behind an average of 2.4 kg of remains known as ashes or cremains. This is not all ash but includes unburnt fragments of bone mineral, which are commonly ground into powder. They do not constitute a health risk and may be buried, interred in a memorial site, retained by relatives or scattered in various ways.

Ancient
Cremation dates from at least 17,000 years ago in the archaeological record, with the Mungo Lady, the remains of a partly cremated body found at Lake Mungo, Australia.

Alternative death rituals which emphasize one method of disposal – burial, cremation, or exposure – have gone through periods of preference throughout history.

In the Middle East and Europe, both burial and cremation are evident in the archaeological record in the Neolithic era. Cultural groups had their own preferences and prohibitions. The ancient Egyptians developed an intricate transmigration-of-soul theology, which prohibited cremation. This was also widely adopted by Semitic peoples. The Babylonians, according to Herodotus, embalmed their dead. Phoenicians practiced both cremation and burial. From the Cycladic civilization in 3000 BCE until the Sub-Mycenaean era in 1200–1100 BCE, Greeks practiced burial. Cremation appeared around the 12th century BCE, probably influenced by Anatolia. Until the Christian era, when inhumation again became the only burial practice, both combustion and inhumation had been practiced, depending on the era and location. In Rome's earliest history, both inhumation and cremation were in common use among all classes. Around the mid-Republic, inhumation was almost exclusively replaced by cremation, with some notable exceptions, and remained the most common funerary practice until the middle of the Empire, when it was almost entirely replaced by inhumation.

In Europe, there are traces of cremation dating to the Early Bronze Age (c. 2000 BCE) in the Pannonian Plain and along the middle Danube. The custom became dominant throughout Bronze Age Europe with the Urnfield culture (from c. 1300 BCE). In the Iron Age, inhumation again becomes more common, but cremation persisted in the Villanovan culture and elsewhere. Homer's account of Patroclus' burial describes cremation with subsequent burial in a tumulus, similar to Urnfield burials, and qualifying as the earliest description of cremation rites. This may be an anachronism, as during Mycenaean times burial was generally preferred, and Homer may have been reflecting the more common use of cremation at the time the Iliad was written, centuries later.

Criticism of burial rites is a common aspersion by competing religions and cultures, including the association of cremation with fire sacrifice or human sacrifice.

Hinduism and Jainism are notable for not only allowing but prescribing cremation. Cremation in India is first attested in the Cemetery H culture (from c. 1900 BCE), considered the last phase of Indus Valley Civilisation and beginning of the Vedic civilization. The Rigveda contains a reference to the emerging practice, in RV 10.15.14, where the forefathers "both cremated (agnidagdhá-) and uncremated (ánagnidagdha-)" are invoked.

Cremation remained common but not universal, in both ancient Greece and ancient Rome. According to Cicero, burial was considered the more archaic rite in Rome.

The rise of Christianity saw an end to cremation in Europe, though it may have already been in decline.

In early Roman Britain, cremation was usual but diminished by the 4th century. It then reappeared in the 5th and 6th centuries during the migration era, when sacrificed animals were sometimes included on the pyre, and the dead were dressed in costume and with ornaments for the burning. That custom was also very widespread among the Germanic peoples of the northern continental lands from which the Anglo-Saxon migrants are supposed to have been derived, during the same period. These ashes were usually thereafter deposited in a vessel of clay or bronze in an "urn cemetery". The custom again died out with the Christian conversion of the Anglo-Saxons or Early English during the 7th century, when Christian burial became general.

Middle Ages
In parts of Europe, cremation was forbidden by law, and even punishable by death if combined with Heathen rites. Cremation was sometimes used by Catholic authorities as part of punishment for accused heretics, which included burning at the stake. For example, the body of John Wycliff was exhumed years after his death and burned to ashes, with the ashes thrown in a river, explicitly as a posthumous punishment for his denial of the Roman Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation.

The first to advocate for the use of cremation was the physician Sir Thomas Browne in Urne Buriall (1658) which interpreted cremation as means of oblivion and reveals plainly that "'there is no antidote against the Opium of time...". Honoretta Brooks Pratt became the first recorded cremated European individual in modern times when she died on 26 September 1769 and was illegally cremated at the burial ground on Hanover Square in London.

Reintroduction
In Europe, a movement to reintroduce cremation as a viable method for body disposal began in the 1870s. This was made possible by the invention of new furnace technology and contact with eastern cultures that practiced it. At the time, many proponents believed in the miasma theory, and that cremation would reduce the "bad air" that caused diseases. These movements were associated with secularism and gained a following in cultural and intellectual circles. In Italy, the movement was associated with anti-clericalism and Freemasonry, whereas these were not major themes of the movement in Britain.

In 1869, the idea was presented to the Medical International Congress of Florence by Professors Coletti and Castiglioni "in the name of public health and civilization". In 1873, Professor Paolo Gorini of Lodi and Professor Ludovico Brunetti of Padua published reports of practical work they had conducted. A model of Brunetti's cremating apparatus, together with the resulting ashes, was exhibited at the Vienna Exposition in 1873 and attracted great attention Meanwhile, Sir Charles William Siemens had developed his regenerative furnace in the 1850s. His furnace operated at a high temperature by using regenerative preheating of fuel and air for combustion. In regenerative preheating, the exhaust gases from the furnace are pumped into a chamber containing bricks, where heat is transferred from the gases to the bricks. The flow of the furnace is then reversed so that fuel and air pass through the chamber and are heated by the bricks. Through this method, an open-hearth furnace can reach temperatures high enough to melt steel, and this process made cremation an efficient and practical proposal. Charles's nephew, Carl Friedrich von Siemens perfected the use of this furnace for the incineration of organic material at his factory in Dresden. The radical politician, Sir Charles Wentworth Dilke, took the corpse of his dead wife there to be cremated in 1874. The efficient and cheap process brought about the quick and complete incineration of the body and was a fundamental technical breakthrough that finally made industrial cremation a practical possibility.

The first crematorium in the Western World opened in Milan in 1876. Milan's "Crematorium Temple" was built in the Monumental Cemetery. The building still stands but ceased to be operational in 1992.

Sir Henry Thompson, 1st Baronet, a surgeon and Physician to the Queen Victoria, had seen Gorini's cremator at the Vienna Exhibition and had returned home to become the first and chief promoter of cremation in England. His main reason for supporting cremation was that "it was becoming a necessary sanitary precaution against the propagation of disease among a population daily growing larger in relation to the area it occupied". In addition, he believed, cremation would prevent premature burial, reduce the expense of funerals, spare mourners the necessity of standing exposed to the weather during interment, and urns would be safe from vandalism. He joined with other proponents to form the Cremation Society of Great Britain in 1874." They founded the United Kingdom's first crematorium in Woking, with Gorini travelling to England to assist the installation of a cremator. They first tested it on 17 March 1879 with the body of a horse. After protests and an intervention by the Home Secretary, Sir Richard Cross, their plans were put on hold. In 1884, the Welsh Neo-Druidic priest William Price was arrested and put on trial for attempting to cremate his son's body. Price successfully argued in court that while the law did not state that cremation was legal, it also did not state that it was illegal. The case set a precedent that allowed the Cremation Society to proceed.

In 1885, the first official cremation in the United Kingdom took place in Woking. The deceased was Jeanette Pickersgill, a well-known figure in literary and scientific circles. By the end of the year, the Cremation Society of Great Britain had overseen 2 more cremations, a total of 3 out of 597,357 deaths in the UK that year. In 1888, 28 cremations took place at the venue. In 1891, Woking Crematorium added a chapel, pioneering the concept of a crematorium being a venue for funerals as well as cremation.

Other early crematoria in Europe were built in 1878 in the town of Gotha in Germany and later in Heidelberg in 1891. The first modern crematory in the U.S. was built in 1876 by Francis Julius LeMoyne after hearing about its use in Europe. Like many early proponents, he was motivated by a belief it would be beneficial for public health. Before LeMoyne's crematory closed in 1901, it had performed 42 cremations. Other countries that opened their first crematorium included Sweden (1887 in Stockholm), Switzerland (1889 in Zurich) and France (1889 in Père Lachaise, Paris).

Western spread
Some of the various Protestant churches came to accept cremation. In Anglican and Nordic Protestant countries, cremation gained acceptance (though it did not yet become the norm) first by the higher classes and cultural circles, and then by the rest of the population. In 1905, Westminster Abbey interred ashes for the first time; by 1911 the Abbey was expressing a preference for interring ashes. The 1908 Catholic Encyclopedia was critical of the development, referring to them as a "sinister movement" and associating them with Freemasonry, although it said that "there is nothing directly opposed to any dogma of the Church in the practice of cremation."

In the U.S. only about one crematory per year was built in the late 19th century. As embalming became more widely accepted and used, crematories lost their sanitary edge. Not to be left behind, crematories had an idea of making cremation beautiful. They started building crematories with stained-glass windows and marble floors with frescoed walls.

Australia also started to establish modern cremation movements and societies. Australians had their first purpose-built modern crematorium and chapel in the West Terrace Cemetery in the South Australian capital of Adelaide in 1901. This small building, resembling the buildings at Woking, remained largely unchanged from its 19th-century style and was in full operation until the late 1950s. The oldest operating crematorium in Australia is at Rookwood Cemetery, in Sydney. It opened in 1925.

In the Netherlands, the foundation of the Association for Optional Cremation in 1874 ushered in a long debate about the merits and demerits of cremation. Laws against cremation were challenged and invalidated in 1915 (two years after the construction of the first crematorium in the Netherlands), though cremation did not become legally recognised until 1955.

World War II
During World War II (1939–45), Nazi Germany used specially built furnaces in at least six extermination camps throughout occupied Poland including at Auschwitz-Birkenau, Chełmno, Belzec, Majdanek, Sobibor and Treblinka, where the bodies of those murdered by gassing were disposed of using incineration. The efficiency of industrialised killing of Operation Reinhard during the most deadly phase of the Holocaust produced too many corpses, therefore the crematoria manufactured to SS specifications were put into use in all of them to handle the disposals around the clock, day and night. The Vrba–Wetzler report offers the following description. "At present there are four crematoria in operation at B IRKENAU, two large ones, I and II, and two smaller ones, III and IV. Those of type I and II consist of 3 parts, i.e.,: (A) the furnace room; (B) the large halls; and (C) the gas chamber. A huge chimney rises from the furnace room around which are grouped nine furnaces, each having four openings. Each opening can take three normal corpses at once and after an hour and a half the bodies are completely burned. This corresponds to a daily capacity of about 2,000 bodies... Crematoria III and IV work on nearly the same principle, but their capacity is only half as large. Thus the total capacity of the four cremating and gassing plants at B IRKENAU amounts to about 6,000 daily."

The Holocaust furnaces were supplied by a number of manufacturers, with the best known and most common being Topf and Sons as well as Kori Company of Berlin, whose ovens were elongated to accommodate two bodies, slid inside from the back side. The ashes were taken out from the front side.

Modern era
In the 20th century, cremation gained varying degrees of acceptance in most Christian denominations. William Temple, the most senior bishop in the Church of England, was cremated after his death in office in 1944. The Roman Catholic Church accepted the practice more slowly. In 1963, at the Second Vatican Council Pope Paul VI lifted the ban on cremation, and in 1966 allowed Catholic priests to officiate at cremation ceremonies. This is done on the condition that the ashes must be buried or interred, not scattered. Many countries where burial is traditional saw cremation rise to become a significant, if not the most common way of disposing of a dead body. In the 1960s and 1970s, there was an unprecedented phase of crematorium construction in the United Kingdom and the Netherlands.

Starting in the 1960s, cremation has become more common than burial in several countries where the latter is traditional. This has included the United Kingdom (1968), Czechoslovakia (1980), Canada (early 2000s), the United States (2016) and Finland (2017). Factors cited include cheaper costs (especially a factor after the 2008 recession), growth in secular attitudes and declining opposition in some Christian denominations.

Modern process
The cremation occurs in a cremator, which is located at a crematorium or crematory. In many countries, the crematorium is a venue for funerals as well as cremation.

A cremator is an industrial furnace that is able to generate temperatures of 871 – to ensure the disintegration of the corpse. Modern cremator fuels include oil, natural gas, propane, and, in Hong Kong, coal gas. Modern cremators automatically monitor their interior to tell when the cremation process is complete and have a spyhole so that an operator can see inside. The time required for cremation varies from body to body, with the average being 90 minutes for an adult body.

The chamber where the body is placed is called a cremation chamber or retort and is lined with heat-resistant refractory bricks. Refractory bricks are designed in several layers. The outermost layer is usually simply an insulation material, e.g., mineral wool. Inside is typically a layer of insulation brick, mostly calcium silicate in nature. Heavy duty cremators are usually designed with two layers of fire bricks inside the insulation layer. The layer of fire bricks in contact with the combustion process protects the outer layer and must be replaced from time to time.

The body is generally required to be inside a coffin or a combustible container. This allows the body to be quickly and safely slid into the cremator. It also reduces health risks to the operators. The coffin or container is inserted (charged) into the cremator as quickly as possible to avoid heat loss. Some crematoria allow relatives to view the charging. This is sometimes done for religious reasons, such as in traditional Hindu and Jain funerals, and is also customary in Japan.

Body container
In the United States federal law does not dictate any container requirements for cremation. Certain states require an opaque or non-transparent container for all cremations. This can be a simple corrugated cardboard box or a wooden casket (coffin). Another option is a cardboard box that fits inside a wooden shell, which is designed to look like a traditional casket. After the funeral service, the box is removed from the shell before cremation, permitting the shell to be re-used.

In the United Kingdom, the body is not removed from the coffin and is not placed into a container as described above. The body is cremated with the coffin which is why all British coffins that are to be used for cremation must be combustible. The Code of Cremation Practice forbids the opening of the coffin once it has arrived at the crematorium, and rules stipulate that it must be cremated within 72 hours of the funeral service. Therefore, in the United Kingdom, bodies are cremated in the same coffin that they are placed in at the undertaker's, although the regulations allow the use of an approved "cover" during the funeral service. It is recommended that jewellery be removed before the coffin is sealed, for this reason. When cremation is finished, the remains are passed through a magnetic field to remove any metal, which will be interred elsewhere in the crematorium grounds or, increasingly, recycled. The ashes are entered into a cremulator to further grind the remains down into a finer texture before being given to relatives or loved ones or scattered in the crematorium grounds where facilities exist.

In Germany, the process is mostly similar to that of the United Kingdom. The body is cremated in the coffin. A piece of fire clay with a number on it is used for identifying the remains of the dead body after burning. The remains are then placed in a container called an ash capsule, which generally is put into a cinerary urn.

In Australia, reusable or cardboard coffins are rare, with only a few manufacturers now supplying them. For low cost, a plain, particle-board coffin (known in the trade as a "chippie", "shipper" or "pyro") can be used. Handles (if fitted) are plastic and approved for use in a cremator.

Cremations can be "delivery only", with no preceding chapel service at the crematorium (although a church service may have been held) or preceded by a service in one of the crematorium chapels. Delivery-only allows crematoria to schedule cremations to make best use of the cremators, perhaps by holding the body overnight in a refrigerator, allowing a lower fee to be charged.

Burning and ash collection
The box containing the body is placed in the retort and incinerated at a temperature of 760 to 1150 °C. During the cremation process, the greater portion of the body (especially the organs and other soft tissues) is vaporized and oxidized by the intense heat; gases released are discharged through the exhaust system.

Jewelry, such as necklaces, wrist-watches and rings, are ordinarily removed before cremation, and returned to the family. Several implanted devices are required to be removed. Pacemakers and other medical devices can cause large, dangerous explosions.

Contrary to popular belief, the cremated remains are not ashes in the usual sense. After the incineration is completed, the dry bone fragments are swept out of the retort and pulverised by a machine called a Cremulator—essentially a high-capacity, high-speed blender—to process them into "ashes" or "cremated remains", although pulverisation may also be performed by hand. This leaves the bone with a fine sand like texture and color, able to be scattered without need for mixing with any foreign matter, though the size of the grain varies depending on the Cremulator used. The mean weight of an adult's remains is 2.4 kg; the mean weight for adult males is about 1 kg higher than that for adult females. There are various types of Cremulators, including rotating devices, grinders, and older models using heavy metal balls. The grinding process typically takes about 20 seconds.

In most Asian countries, the bones are not pulverised, unless requested beforehand. When not pulverised, the bones are collected by the family and stored as one might do with ashes.

The appearance of cremated remains after grinding is one of the reasons they are called ashes, although a non-technical term sometimes used is "cremains", a portmanteau of "cremated" and "remains". (The Cremation Association of North America prefers that the word "cremains" not be used for referring to "human cremated remains". The reason given is that "cremains" is thought to have less connection with the deceased, whereas a loved one's "cremated remains" has a more identifiable human connection. )

After final grinding, the ashes are placed in a container, which can be anything from a simple cardboard box to a decorative urn. The default container used by most crematoria, when nothing more expensive has been selected, is usually a hinged, snap-locking plastic box.

Ash weight and composition
Cremated remains are mostly dry calcium phosphates with some minor minerals, such as salts of sodium and potassium. Sulfur and most carbon are driven off as oxidized gases during the process, although about 1–4% of carbon remains as carbonate.

The ash remaining represents very roughly 3.5% of the body's original mass (2.5% in children). Because the weight of dry bone fragments is so closely connected to skeletal mass, their weight varies greatly from person to person. Because many changes in body composition (such as fat and muscle loss or gain) do not affect the weight of cremated remains, the weight of the remains can be more closely predicted from the person's height and sex (which predicts skeletal weight), than it can be predicted from the person's simple weight.

Ashes of adults can be said to weigh from 876 to 3784 g, with women's ashes generally weighing below 2750 g and men's ashes generally weighing above 1887 g.

Bones are not all that remain after cremation. There may be melted metal lumps from missed jewellery; casket furniture; dental fillings; and surgical implants, such as hip replacements. Breast implants do not have to be removed before cremation. Some medical devices such as pacemakers may need to be removed before cremation to avoid the risk of explosion. Large items such as titanium hip replacements (which tarnish but do not melt) or casket hinges are usually removed before processing, as they may damage the processor. (If they are missed at first, they must ultimately be removed before processing is complete, as items such as titanium joint replacements are far too durable to be ground.) Implants may be returned to the family, but are more commonly sold as ferrous/non-ferrous scrap metal. After the remains are processed, smaller bits of metal such as tooth fillings, and rings (commonly known as gleanings) are sieved out and may be later interred in common, consecrated ground in a remote area of the cemetery. They may also be sold as precious metal scrap.

Retention or disposal of remains
Cremated remains are returned to the next of kin in different manners according to custom and country. In the United States, the cremated remains are almost always contained in a thick watertight polyethylene plastic bag contained within a hard snap-top rectangular plastic container, which is labeled with a printed paper label. The basic sealed plastic container bag may be contained within a further cardboard box or velvet sack, or they may be contained within an urn if the family had already purchased one. An official certificate of cremation prepared under the authority of the crematorium accompanies the remains, and if required by law, the permit for disposition of human remains, which must remain with the cremated remains.

Cremated remains can be kept in an urn, stored in a special memorial building (columbarium), buried in the ground at many locations or sprinkled on a special field, mountain, or in the sea. In addition, there are several services in which the cremated remains will be scattered in a variety of ways and locations. Some examples are via a helium balloon, through fireworks, shot from shotgun shells, by boat or scattered from an aeroplane. One service sends a lipstick-tube sized sample of the cremated remains into low earth orbit, where they remain for years (but not permanently) before reentering the atmosphere. Some companies offer a service to turn part of the cremated remains into synthetic diamonds which can then be made into jewelry. This "cremation jewelry" is also known as funeral jewelry, remembrance jewelry or memorial jewelry. A portion of the cremated remains may be retained in a specially designed locket known as cremation jewelry, or even blown into special glass keepsakes and glass orbs.

Cremated remains may also be incorporated, with urn and cement, into part of an artificial reef, or they can also be mixed into paint and made into a portrait of the deceased. Some individuals use a very small amount of the remains in tattoo ink, for remembrance portraits. Cremated remains can be scattered in national parks in the United States with a special permit. They can also be scattered on private property with the permission of the owner. The cremated remains may also be entombed. Most cemeteries will grant permission for burial of cremated remains in occupied cemetery plots that have already been purchased or are in use by the families disposing of the cremated remains without any additional charge or oversight.

Ashes are alkaline.  In some areas such as Snowdon, Wales, environmental authorities have warned that the frequent scattering of ashes can change the nature of the soil, and may affect the ecology.

The final disposition depends on the personal preferences of the deceased as well as their cultural and religious beliefs. Some religions will permit the cremated remains to be sprinkled or retained at home. Some religions, such as Roman Catholicism, prefer to either bury or entomb the remains. Hinduism obliges the closest male relative (son, grandson, etc.) of the deceased to immerse the cremated remains in the holy river Ganges, preferably at one of the holy cities Triveni Sangam, Allahabad, Varanasi, or Haridwar in India. The Sikhs immerse the remains in the Sutlej, usually at Kiratpur Sahib. In southern India, the ashes are immersed in the river Kaveri at Paschima vahini in Srirangapattana at a stretch where the river flows from east to west, depicting the life of a human being from sunrise to sunset. In Japan and Taiwan, the remaining bone fragments are given to the family and are used in a burial ritual before final interment.

Reasons
Aside from religious reasons (discussed below), some people find they prefer cremation over traditional burial for personal reasons. The thought of a long and slow decomposition process is unappealing to some; many people find that they prefer cremation because it disposes of the body relatively quickly.

Other people view cremation as a way of simplifying their funeral process. These people view a traditional ground burial as an unneeded complication of their funeral process, and thus choose cremation to make their services as simple as possible. Cremation is a more simple disposition method to plan than a burial funeral. This is because with a burial funeral one would have to plan for more transportation services for the body as well as embalming and other body preservation methods. With a burial funeral one will also have to purchase a casket, headstone, grave plot, opening and closing of the grave fee, and mortician fees. Cremation funerals only require planning the transportation of the body to a crematorium, cremation of the body, and a cremation urn.

The cost factor tends to make cremation attractive. Generally speaking, cremation is cheaper than a traditional burial service, especially if direct cremation (also known as bare cremation) is chosen, in which the body is cremated as soon as legally possible without any sort of services. For some, even cremation is still relatively expensive, especially as a lot of fuel is required to perform it. Methods to reduce fuel consumption/fuel cost include the use of different fuels (i.e. natural gas or propane, compared to wood) and by using an incinerator (retort) (closed cabin) rather than an open fire.

For surviving kin, cremation is preferred because of simple portability. Survivors relocating to another city or country have the option of transporting the remains of their loved ones with the ultimate goal of being interred or scattered together.

Environmental impact
Despite being an obvious source of carbon emissions, cremation does have environmental advantages over burial, depending on local practice. Studies by Elisabeth Keijzer for the Netherlands Organisation for Applied Research found that cremation has less of an environmental impact than a traditional burial (the study did not address natural burials), while the newer method of alkaline hydrolysis (sometimes called green cremation or resomation) had less impact than both. The study was based on Dutch practice; American crematoria are more likely to emit mercury, but are less likely to burn hardwood coffins. Keijzer's studies also found that a cremation or burial accounts for only about a quarter of a funeral's environmental impact; the carbon emissions of people travelling to the funeral are far greater.

Each cremation requires about 28 usgal of fuel and releases about 540 lbs of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Thus, the roughly 1 million bodies that are cremated annually in the United States produce about 270,000 short ton of carbon dioxide, which is more CO2 pollution than 22,000 average American homes generate in a year. The environmental impact may be reduced by using cremators for longer periods, and relaxing the requirement for a cremation to take place on the same day that the coffin is received, which reduces the use of fossil fuel and hence carbon emissions. Cremation is therefore becoming more friendly toward the environment. Some funeral and crematorium owners offer a carbon neutral funeral service incorporating efficient-burning coffins made from lightweight recycled composite board.

Burial is a known source of certain environmental contaminants, with the major ones being formaldehyde and the coffin itself. Cremation can also release contaminants, such as mercury from dental fillings. In some countries such as the United Kingdom, the law now requires that cremators be fitted with abatement equipment (filters) that remove serious pollutants such as mercury.

Another environmental concern is that traditional burial takes up a great deal of space. In a traditional burial, the body is buried in a casket made from a variety of materials. In the United States, the casket is often placed inside a concrete vault or liner before burial in the ground. While individually this may not take much room, combined with other burials, it can over time cause serious space concerns. Many cemeteries, particularly in Japan and Europe as well as those in larger cities, have run out of permanent space. In Tokyo, for example, traditional burial plots are extremely scarce and expensive, and in London, a space crisis led Harriet Harman to propose reopening old graves for "double-decker" burials. Some cities in Germany do not have plots for sale, only for lease. When the lease expires, the remains are disinterred and a specialist bundles the bones, inscribes the forehead of the skull with the information that was on the headstone, and places the remains in a special crypt. In Singapore, cremation is preferred by most Singaporeans because burial there is limited to 15 years.

Christianity
In Christian countries and cultures, cremation has historically been discouraged and viewed as a desecration of God's image, and as interference with the resurrection of the dead taught in Scripture. It is now acceptable to some denominations, since a literal interpretation of Scripture is less common in modern reformist traditions.

Catholicism
Christians preferred to bury the dead rather than to cremate the remains, as was common in Roman culture. The early church carried on Judaism's respect for the human body as being created in God's image, and followed their practices of speedy interment, in hopes of the future resurrection of all dead. The Roman catacombs and Medieval veneration of relics of Roman Catholic saints witness to this preference. For them, the body was not a mere receptacle for a spirit that was the real person, but an integral part of the human person. They looked on the body as sanctified by the sacraments and itself the temple of the Holy Spirit, and thus requiring to be disposed of in a way that honours and reveres it, and they saw many early practices involved with disposal of dead bodies as pagan in origin or an insult to the body.

The idea that cremation might interfere with God's ability to resurrect the body was refuted by the 2nd-century Octavius of Minucius Felix, in which he said: "Every body, whether it is dried up into dust, or is dissolved into moisture, or is compressed into ashes, or is attenuated into smoke, is withdrawn from us, but it is reserved for God in the custody of the elements. Nor, as you believe, do we fear any loss from sepulture, but we adopt the ancient and better custom of burying in the earth." A similar practice of boiling to remove flesh from bones was also punished with excommunication in a 1300 decree of Pope Boniface VIII. And while there was a clear and prevailing preference for burial, there was no general Church law forbidding cremation until 1866. In Medieval Europe, cremation was practiced mainly in situations where there were multitudes of corpses simultaneously present, such as after a battle, after a pestilence or famine, and where there was an imminent fear of diseases spreading from the corpses, since individual burials with digging graves would take too long and body decomposition would begin before all the corpses had been interred.

Beginning in the Middle Ages, and even more so in the 18th century and later, non-Christian rationalists and classicists began to advocate cremation again as a statement denying the resurrection and/or the afterlife, although the pro-cremation movement often took care to address these concerns. Sentiment within the Catholic Church against cremation became hardened in the face of the association of cremation with "professed enemies of God." When Masonic groups advocated cremation as a means of rejecting Christian belief in the resurrection, the Holy See forbade Catholics to practise cremation in 1886. The 1917 Code of Canon Law incorporated this ban. In 1963, recognizing that, in general, cremation was being sought for practical purposes and not as a denial of bodily resurrection, the choice of cremation was permitted in some circumstances. The current 1983 Code of Canon Law, states: "The Church earnestly recommends the pious custom of Christian burial be retained; but it does not entirely forbid cremation, except if this is chosen for reasons which are contrary to Christian teaching."

There are no universal rules governing Catholic funeral rites in connection with cremation, but episcopal conferences have laid down rules for various countries. Of these, perhaps the most elaborate are those established, with the necessary confirmation of the Holy See, by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops and published as Appendix II of the United States edition of the Order of Christian Funerals.

Although the Holy See has in some cases authorized bishops to grant permission for funeral rites to be carried out in the presence of cremated remains, it is preferred that the rites be carried out in the presence of a still intact body. Practices that show insufficient respect for the ashes of the dead such as turning them into jewelry or scattering them are forbidden for Catholics, but burial on land or sea or enclosing in a niche or columbarium is now acceptable.

Anglicanism and Lutheranism
In 1917, Volume 6 of the American Lutheran Survey stated that "The Lutheran clergy as a rule refuse" and that "Episcopal pastors often take a stand against it." Indeed, in the 1870s, the Anglican Bishop of London stated that the practice of cremation would "undermine the faith of mankind in the doctrine of the resurrection of the body, hasten rejection of a Scriptural worldview and so bring about a most disastrous social revolution." In The Lutheran Pastor, George Henry Gerberding stated:

Some Protestant churches welcomed the use of cremation at a much earlier date than the Catholic Church; pro-cremation sentiment was not unanimous among Protestants, as some have retained a literal interpretation of Scripture. The first crematoria in the Protestant countries were built in the 1870s, and in 1908, the Dean and Chapter of Westminster Abbey—one of the most famous Anglican churches—required that remains be cremated for burial in the abbey's precincts. Today, "scattering", or "strewing," is an acceptable practice in some Protestant denominations, and some churches have their own "garden of remembrance" on their grounds in which remains can be scattered. Some denominations, like Lutheran churches in Scandinavia, favour the urns being buried in family graves. A family grave can thus contain urns of many generations and also the urns of spouses and loved ones.

Methodism
An 1898 Methodist tract titled Immortality and Resurrection noted that "burial is the result of a belief in the resurrection of the body, while cremation anticipates its annihilation." The Methodist Review noted in 1874 that "Three thoughts alone would lead us to suppose that the early Christians would have special care for their dead, namely, the essential Jewish origin of the Church; the mode of burial of their founder; and the doctrine of the resurrection of the body, so powerfully urged by the apostles, and so mighty in its influence on the primitive Christians. From these considerations, the Roman custom of cremation would be most repulsive to the Christian mind."

Since at least 1992, the United Methodist Church does not have a specific official statement that either endorses or condemns cremation, leaving the choice to individuals and families. Resources within the official ritual refer to the possible use of an urn and the interment of ashes.

Eastern Orthodox and other opposition
Some branches of Christianity entirely oppose cremation, including non-mainstream Protestant groups and the Orthodox churches. Most notably, the Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox Churches historically forbid cremation, but not dogmatically. Exceptions are made for circumstances where it cannot be avoided (when civil authority demands it, in aftermath of war or during epidemics) or if it may be sought for good cause, such as the discovery of body already in the state of decomposition. But when a cremation is specifically and willfully chosen for no good cause by the one who is deceased, he or she is not permitted a funeral in the church and may also be permanently excluded from burial in a Christian cemetery and liturgical prayers for the departed. In Orthodoxy, cremation is perceived as a rejection of the temple of God and of the dogma of the general resurrection.

Most independent Bible churches, free churches, Holiness churches and those of Anabaptist faiths will not practice cremation. As one example, the Church of God (Restoration) forbids the practice of cremation, believing as the Early Church did, that it continues to be a pagan practice.

Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) has, in past decades, discouraged cremation without expressly forbidding it. In the 1950s, for example, Apostle Bruce R. McConkie wrote that "only under the most extraordinary and unusual circumstances" would cremation be consistent with LDS teachings.

More recent LDS publications have provided instructions for how to dress the deceased when they have received their temple endowments (and thus wear temple garments) prior to cremation for those wishing to do so, or in countries where the law requires cremation. Except where required by law, the family of the deceased may decide whether the body should be cremated, though the Church "does not normally encourage cremation."

Hinduism
Indian religions such as Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, and Sikhism practice cremation. The founder of Buddhism, the Buddha, was cremated.

A dead adult Hindu is mourned with a cremation, while a dead child is typically buried. The rite of passage is performed in harmony with the Hindu religious view that the microcosm of all living beings is a reflection of a macrocosm of the universe. The soul (Atman, Brahman) is the essence and immortal that is released at the Antyesti ritual, but both the body and the universe are vehicles and transitory in various schools of Hinduism. They consist of five elements – air, water, fire, earth, and space. The last rite of passage returns the body to the five elements and origins. The roots of this belief are found in the Vedas, for example in the hymns of Rigveda in section 10.16, as follows:

The final rite in the case of untimely death of a child is usually not cremation but a burial. This is rooted in Rigveda's section 10.18, where the hymns mourn the death of the child, praying to deity Mrityu to "neither harm our girls nor our boys", and pleads the earth to cover, protect the deceased child as a soft wool.

Ashes of the cremated bodies are usually spread in rivers, which are considered holy in the Hindu practice. The Ganges is considered to be the holiest river, and Varanasi, situated on the banks of the river, is regarded as the most sacred site for cremation.

Balinese
Balinese Hindu dead are generally buried inside the container for a period of time, which may exceed one month or more, so that the cremation ceremony (Ngaben) can occur on an auspicious day in the Balinese-Javanese Calendar system ("Saka"). Additionally, if the departed was a court servant, member of the court or minor noble, the cremation can be postponed up to several years to coincide with the cremation of their Prince. Balinese funerals are very expensive and the body may be interred until the family can afford it or until there is a group funeral planned by the village or family when costs will be less. The purpose of burying the corpse is for the decay process to consume the fluids of the corpse, which allows for an easier, more rapid and more complete cremation.

Islam
Most Muslims believe Islam strictly forbids cremation. Its teaching is that cremation is not in line with the respect and dignity due to the deceased. They believe Islam has specific rites for the treatment of the body after death.

Judaism
The first reference to cremation in the Hebrew Bible is found in 1 Samuel 31. In this passage, the dead bodies of Saul and his sons are burned, and their bones are buried.

Judaism has traditionally disapproved of cremation in the past, as a rejection of the respect due to humans who are created in the image of God. Judaism has also disapproved of preservation of the dead by means of embalming and mummifying, as this involves mutilation and abuse of the corpse. Mummification was a practice of the ancient Egyptians, among whom the Israelites are said in the Torah to have lived as slaves.

Through history and up to the philosophical movements of the current era Modern Orthodox, Orthodox, Haredi, and Hasidic movements in Judaism have maintained the historical practice and strict Biblical line against cremation and disapprove of it, as Halakha (Jewish law) forbids it. This halakhic concern is grounded in the literal interpretation of Scripture, viewing the body as created in the image of God and upholding a bodily resurrection as core beliefs of traditional Judaism. This interpretation was occasionally opposed by some Jewish groups such as the Sadducees, who denied resurrection. The Tanakh emphasizes burial as the normal practice, for instance Devarim (Deuteronomy) 21:23 (specifically commanding the burial of executed criminals), with both a positive command derived from this verse to command one to bury a dead body and a negative command forbidding neglecting to bury a dead body. Some from the generally liberal Conservative Jewish also oppose cremation, some very strongly, seeing it as a rejection of God's design.

During the 19th and early 20th centuries, as the Jewish cemeteries in many European towns had become crowded and were running out of space, in a few cases cremation for the first time became an approved means of corpse disposal among emerging liberal and Reform Jewish movements in line with their general rejection of literal scripture interpretation and traditional Torah ritual laws. Current liberal movements like Reform Judaism still permit cremation, although burial remains the preferred option. The Central Conference of American Rabbis has issued a responsa stating that families are permitted to choose cremation, but Reform rabbis are allowed to discourage the practice. However, Reform rabbis are instructed not to refuse to officiate at cremations.

In Israel religious ritual events including free burial and funeral services for all who die in Israel and all citizens including the majority Jewish population including for the secular or non-observant are almost universally facilitated through the Rabbinate of Israel. This is an Orthodox organization following historical and traditional Jewish law. In Israel there were no formal crematories until 2004 when B&L Cremation Systems Inc. became the first crematory manufacturer to sell a retort to Israel. In August 2007, an orthodox youth group in Israel was accused of burning down the country's sole crematorium, which they see as an affront to God. The crematorium was rebuilt by its owner and the retort replaced.

Baháʼí Faith
The Baháʼí Faith forbids cremation. A letter written on behalf of Shoghi Effendi to a National Spiritual Assembly states, "He feels that, in view of what 'Abdu'l-Bahá has said against cremation, the believers should be strongly urged, as an act of faith, to make provisions against their remains being cremated. Bahá'u'lláh has laid down as a law, in the Aqdas, the manner of Baháʼí burial, and it is so beautiful, befitting and dignified, that no believer should deprive himself of it."

Wicca
Both burial and cremation are practiced by Wiccans and there is no set directive on how the body should be disposed of after death. Wiccans believe that the body is merely a shell for the spirit so cremation is not viewed as irreverent or disrespectful. One tradition practiced by Wiccans is to mix the ashes from cremation with soil which is then used to plant a tree.

Zoroastrianism
Traditionally, Zoroastrianism disavows cremation or burial to preclude pollution of fire or earth. The traditional method of corpse disposal is through ritual exposure in a "Tower of Silence", but both burial and cremation are increasingly popular alternatives. Some contemporary adhererents of the faith have opted for cremation. Parsi-Zoroastrian singer Freddie Mercury of the group Queen was cremated after his death.

Chinese
Neo-Confucianism under Zhu Xi strongly discourages cremation of one's parents' corpses as unfilial. Han Chinese traditionally practiced burial and viewed cremation as taboo and as a barbarian practice.

Traditionally, only Buddhist monks in China practiced cremation because ordinary Han Chinese detested cremation, refusing to do it. But now, the atheist Communist party enforces a strict cremation policy on Han Chinese. Exceptions are made for Hui who do not cremate their dead due to Islamic beliefs.

The minority Jurchen and their Manchu descendants originally practiced cremation as part of their culture. They adopted the practice of burial from the Han, but many Manchus continued to cremate their dead.

Pets
In Japan, more than 465 companion animal temples are in operation. These venues hold funerals and rituals for dead pets. In Australia, pet owners can purchase services to have their companion animal cremated and placed in a pet cemetery or taken home.

The cost of pet cremation depends on location, where the cremation is done, and time of cremation. The American Humane Society's cost for the cremation of a pet weighing under 22.5 kg (50 lb) costs $110, while a pet weighing over 23 kg (51 lb) is $145. The cremated remains are available for the owner to pick up in seven to ten business days. Urns for the companion animal range from $50 to $150.

Though pet cremation has accelerated in recent years, Americans are still burying their pets by a 2:1 ratio.

Tri-State Crematory incident
In early 2002, 334 corpses that were supposed to have been cremated in the previous few years at the Tri-State Crematory were found intact and decaying on the crematorium's grounds in the U.S. state of Georgia, having been dumped there by the crematorium's proprietor. Many of the corpses were decayed beyond identification. Some families received "ashes" that were made of wood and concrete dust.

Operator Ray Brent Marsh had 787 criminal charges filed against him. On 19 November 2004, Marsh pleaded guilty to all charges. Marsh was sentenced to two 12-year prison sentences, one each from Georgia and Tennessee, to be served concurrently; he was also sentenced to probation for 75 years following his incarceration.

Civil suits were filed against the Marsh family and a number of funeral homes who shipped bodies to Tri-State; these suits were ultimately settled. The property of the Marsh family has been sold, but collection of the full $80-million judgment remains doubtful.

Rates
The cremation rate varies considerably across countries with Japan reporting a 99.97% cremation rate while Romania reported a rate of 0.5% in 2018. The cremation rate in the United Kingdom has been increasing steadily with the national average rate rising from 34.70% in 1960 to 78.10% in 2019. According to the National Funeral Directors Association, the cremation rate in the United States in 2016 was 50.2% and this was in 2017 expected to increase to 63.8% by 2025 and 78.8% in 2035.

title: Cremation


text:
Basil of Caesarea

Basil of Caesarea, also called Saint Basil the Great (, Hágios Basíleios ho Mégas; Ⲡⲓⲁⲅⲓⲟⲥ Ⲃⲁⲥⲓⲗⲓⲟⲥ; 330 – 1 or 2 January 378), was Bishop of Caesarea Mazaca in Cappadocia, Asia Minor. He was an influential theologian who supported the Nicene Creed and opposed the heresies of the early Christian church, fighting against both Arianism and the followers of Apollinaris of Laodicea.

In addition to his work as a theologian, Basil was known for his care of the poor and underprivileged. Basil established guidelines for monastic life which focus on community life, liturgical prayer, and manual labor. Together with Pachomius, he is remembered as a father of communal monasticism in Eastern Christianity. He is considered a saint by the traditions of both Eastern and Western Christianity.

Basil, together with his brother Gregory of Nyssa and his friend Gregory of Nazianzus, are collectively referred to as the Cappadocian Fathers. The Eastern Orthodox Church and Eastern Catholic Churches have given him, together with Gregory of Nazianzus and John Chrysostom, the title of Great Hierarch. He is recognized as a Doctor of the Church in the Roman Catholic Church. He is sometimes referred to by the epithet Ouranophantor (Greek: Οὐρανοφάντωρ), "revealer of heavenly mysteries".

Early life and education
Basil was born into the wealthy Cappadocian Greek family of Basil the Elder, and Emmelia of Caesarea, in Cappadocia, around 330. He was one of ten children, and his parents were known for their piety. His maternal grandfather was a Christian martyr, executed in the years prior to Constantine I's conversion. His pious paternal grandmother, Macrina, a follower of Gregory Thaumaturgus (who had founded the nearby church of Neocaesarea), raised Basil and four of his siblings who also are now venerated as saints: Macrina the Younger, Naucratius, Peter of Sebaste, and Gregory of Nyssa.

Basil received more formal education in Caesarea Mazaca in Cappadocia (modern Kayseri) around 350–51. There he met Gregory of Nazianzus. Gregory went to Alexandria, while Basil went to Constantinople for further studies, including the lectures of Libanius. The two later met again in Athens and became fast friends. There they met a fellow student who would become the emperor Julian the Apostate. Basil left Athens in 356, and after travels in Egypt and Syria, he returned to Caesarea. For around a year he practiced law and taught rhetoric.

Basil's life changed radically after he encountered Eustathius of Sebaste, a charismatic bishop and ascetic. Abandoning his legal and teaching career, Basil devoted his life to God. In a letter he described his spiritual awakening: "I had wasted much time on follies and spent nearly all of my youth in vain labours, and devotion to the teachings of a wisdom that God had made foolish. Suddenly, I awoke as out of a deep sleep. I beheld the wonderful light of the Gospel truth, and I recognized the nothingness of the wisdom of the princes of this world."

Annesi

After his baptism, Basil traveled in 357 to Palestine, Egypt, Syria and Mesopotamia to study ascetics and monasticism. He distributed his fortunes among the poor, and went briefly into solitude near Neocaesarea of Pontus (modern Niksar) on the Iris. Basil eventually realized that while he respected the ascetics' piety and prayerfulness, the solitary life did not call him. Eustathius of Sebaste, a prominent anchorite near Pontus, had mentored Basil. However, they also eventually differed over dogma.

Basil instead felt drawn toward communal religious life, and by 358 he was gathering around him a group of like-minded disciples, including his brother Peter. Together they founded a monastic settlement on his family's estate near Annesi (modern Sonusa or Uluköy, near the confluence of the Iris and Lycos rivers ). His widowed mother Emmelia, sister Macrina, and several other women, joined Basil and devoted themselves to pious lives of prayer and charitable works (some claim Macrina founded this community).

Here Basil wrote about monastic communal life. His writings became pivotal in developing monastic traditions of the Eastern Church. In 358, Basil invited his friend Gregory of Nazianzus to join him in Annesi. When Gregory eventually arrived, they collaborated on Origen's Philocalia, a collection of Origen's works. Gregory decided to return to his family in Nazianzus.

Basil attended the Council of Constantinople (360). He at first sided with Eustathius and the Homoiousians, a semi-Arian faction who taught that the Son was of like substance with the Father, neither the same (one substance) nor different from him. The Homoiousians opposed the Arianism of Eunomius but refused to join with the supporters of the Nicene Creed, who professed that the members of the Trinity were of one substance ("homoousios"). However, Basil's bishop, Dianius of Caesarea, had subscribed only to the earlier Nicene form of agreement. Basil eventually abandoned the Homoiousians, and emerged instead as a strong supporter of the Nicene Creed. His ability to balance his theological convictions with his political connections made Basil a powerful advocate for the Nicene position.

Caesarea

In 362, Bishop Meletius of Antioch ordained Basil as a deacon. Eusebius then summoned Basil to Caesarea and ordained him as presbyter of the Church there in 365. Ecclesiastical entreaties rather than Basil's desires thus altered his career path.

Basil and Gregory Nazianzus spent the next few years combatting the Arian heresy, which threatened to divide Cappadocia's Christians. In close fraternal co-operation, they agreed to a great rhetorical contest with accomplished Arian theologians and rhetors. In the subsequent public debates, presided over by agents of Valens, Gregory and Basil emerged triumphant. This success confirmed for both Gregory and Basil that their futures lay in administration of the Church. Basil next took on functional administration of the city of Caesarea. Eusebius is reported as becoming jealous of the reputation and influence which Basil quickly developed, and allowed Basil to return to his earlier solitude. Later, however, Gregory persuaded Basil to return. Basil did so, and became the administrator for the Diocese of Caesarea.

In 370, Eusebius died, and Basil was chosen to succeed him, and was consecrated as a bishop on 14 June 370. His new post as Bishop of Caesarea also gave him the powers of exarch of Pontus and metropolitan of five suffragan bishops, many of whom had opposed him in the election for Eusebius's successor. It was then that his great powers were called into action. Hot-blooded and somewhat imperious, Basil was also generous and sympathetic. He personally organized a soup kitchen and distributed food to the poor during a famine following a drought.

His letters show that he actively worked to reform thieves and prostitutes. They also show him encouraging his clergy not to be tempted by wealth or the comparatively easy life of a priest, and that he personally took care in selecting worthy candidates for holy orders. He also had the courage to criticize public officials who failed in their duty of administering justice. At the same time, he preached every morning and evening in his own church to large congregations. In addition to all the above, he built a large complex just outside Caesarea, called the Basiliad, which included a poorhouse, hospice, and hospital, and was compared by Gregory of Nazianzus to the wonders of the world.

His zeal for orthodoxy did not blind him to what was good in an opponent; and for the sake of peace and charity he was content to waive the use of orthodox terminology when it could be surrendered without a sacrifice of truth. The Emperor Valens, who was an adherent of the Arian philosophy, sent his prefect Modestus to at least agree to a compromise with the Arian faction. Basil's adamant negative response prompted Modestus to say that no one had ever spoken to him in that way before. Basil replied, "Perhaps you have never yet had to deal with a bishop." Modestus reported back to Valens that he believed nothing short of violence would avail against Basil. Valens was apparently unwilling to engage in violence. He did however issue orders banishing Basil repeatedly, none of which succeeded. Valens came himself to attend when Basil celebrated the Divine Liturgy on the Feast of the Theophany (Epiphany), and at that time was so impressed by Basil that he donated to him some land for the building of the Basiliad. This interaction helped to define the limits of governmental power over the church.

Basil then had to face the growing spread of Arianism. This belief system, which denied that Christ was consubstantial with the Father, was quickly gaining adherents and was seen by many, particularly those in Alexandria most familiar with it, as posing a threat to the unity of the church. Basil entered into connections with the West, and with the help of Athanasius, he tried to overcome its distrustful attitude toward the Homoiousians. The difficulties had been enhanced by bringing in the question as to the essence of the Holy Spirit. Although Basil advocated objectively the consubstantiality of the Holy Spirit with the Father and the Son, he belonged to those, who, faithful to Eastern tradition, would not allow the predicate homoousios to the former; for this he was reproached as early as 371 by the Orthodox zealots among the monks, and Athanasius defended him.

Basil corresponded with Pope Damasus in the hope of having his aid and encouragement against triumphant Arianism; the pope, however, cherished some degree of suspicion against the Cappadocian Doctor.

Death and legacy
Basil died before the factional disturbances ended. He suffered from liver disease; excessive ascetic practices also contributed to his early demise. Historians disagree about the exact date Basil died. The great institute before the gates of Caesarea, the Ptochoptopheion, or "Basileiad", which was used as poorhouse, hospital, and hospice became a lasting monument of Basil's episcopal care for the poor. Many of St. Basil's writings and sermons, specifically on the topics of money and possessions, continue to influence modern Christianity.

Writings

The principal theological writings of Basil are his On the Holy Spirit, an appeal to Scripture and early Christian tradition to prove the divinity of the Holy Spirit, and his Refutation of the Apology of the Impious Eunomius, which was written about in 364 and comprised three books against Eunomius of Cyzicus, the chief exponent of Anomoian Arianism. The first three books of the Refutation are his work; his authorship of the fourth and fifth books is generally considered doubtful.

He was a famous preacher, and many of his homilies, including a series of Lenten lectures on the Hexaemeron (also Hexaëmeros, "Six Days of Creation"; Hexameron), and an exposition of the psalter, have been preserved. Some, like that against usury and that on the famine in 368, are valuable for the history of morals; others illustrate the honor paid to martyrs and relics; the address to young men on the study of classical literature shows that Basil was influenced by his own education, which taught him to appreciate the propaedeutic importance of the classics. In one of his Homilies, he describes, in one of the earliest descriptions of desalination, how sailors in his time obtain fresh water by hanging sponges over a vessel with boiling seawater and collecting and condensing the water vapor.

In his exegesis Basil was an admirer of Origen and the need for the spiritual interpretation of Scripture. In his work on the Holy Spirit, he asserts that "to take the literal sense and stop there, is to have the heart covered by the veil of Jewish literalism. Lamps are useless when the sun is shining." He frequently stresses the need for Reserve in doctrinal and sacramental matters. At the same time he was against the wild allegories of some contemporaries. Concerning this, he wrote:

"I know the laws of allegory, though less by myself than from the works of others. There are those, truly, who do not admit the common sense of the Scriptures, for whom water is not water, but some other nature, who see in a plant, in a fish, what their fancy wishes, who change the nature of reptiles and of wild beasts to suit their allegories, like the interpreters of dreams who explain visions in sleep to make them serve their own end."

His ascetic tendencies are exhibited in the Moralia and Asketika (sometimes mistranslated as Rules of St. Basil), ethical manuals for use in the world and the cloister, respectively. There has been a good deal of discussion concerning the authenticity of the two works known as the Greater Asketikon and the Lesser Asketikon.

According to Orosius, Basil taught apocatastasis entailing the restoration of all sinners to Christ after purification. This doctrine is most evident in his Commentary on Isaiah. On the other hand, he vehemently opposed the view that hell has an end in his short Regulae, even claiming that the many people who hold it are deceived by the devil. However, the notion of a finite hell was also espoused by his siblings Macrina and Gregory of Nyssa, and it is possible that the relevant passage in Regulae was interpolated.

In his book De Spiritu Sancto, Basil lists some who for him are illustrious men of the church and quotes them; these are Irenaeus of Lyon, Clement of Rome, Dionysius of Rome, Dionysius of Alexandria, Eusebius, Julius Africanus, Gregory Thaumaturgus, Firmilian and Origen.

Basil also stresses the complete equality of both genders, deriving from the same human 'lump' (φύραμα), both in the image of God, endowed with the same honour and dignity (ὁμοτίμως), in perfect equality (ἐξ ἴσου). Men even risk being inferior in piety (Homily on Julitta 241B). Likewise, in Homilies on Psalms 1, PG 29.216–17, he insists on the Socratic and Stoic tenet, here Christianized, that man and woman have 'one and the same virtue' and 'one and the same nature' (φύσις). Their common creation was of equal honour and dignity (ὁμότιμος); they have the same capacity and activity (ἐνέργεια), and will be given the same reward. Similarly, in Letter to Amphilochius 188, Basil again uses ἐξ ἴσου in reference to the equality of women and men.

Basil faced the slavery issue in De Spiritu Sancto 20 in the context of a Trinitarian debate. Basil recognizes that no human is "a slave by nature". This principle countered Aristotle's conviction and was consistent with Gregory of Nyssa view and with that of many other patristic thinkers; even Augustine and Theodoret conceded this. Basil, indeed, viewed slavery as a result of the Fall, a principle that was shared by Augustine, Theodoret, and many other Fathers. Sometimes slavery is a boon to the enslaved person, Basil maintained (in Moral Rules 75 he recommended, that Christian slaves work harder than non-Christian slaves). This view is opposed to Gregory of Nyssa, and is reminiscent of Aristotle's argument and of Theodoret's.

It is in the ethical manuals and moral sermons that the practical aspects of his theoretical theology are illustrated. So, for example, it is in his Sermon to the Lazicans that we find Basil explaining how it is our common nature that obliges us to treat our neighbor's natural needs (e.g., hunger, thirst) as our own, even though he is a separate individual.

Basil's three hundred letters reveal his character. They show his observant nature, which, despite the troubles of ill-health and ecclesiastical unrest, remained optimistic, tender and even playful. Basil is honoured as the chief architect of monastic life in the Greek Church.

Most of his extant works, and a few spuriously attributed to him, are available in the Patrologia Graeca, which includes Latin translations of varying quality. Several of Basil's works have appeared in the late twentieth century in the Sources Chrétiennes collection.

A famous quote of Basil is the below: "'The bread you store belongs to the hungry. The clothes you accumulate belong to the naked. The shoes that you have in your closet are for the barefoot. The money you bury deep into the ground to keep it safe, belongs to the poor. You were unfair to as many people as you could have helped and you did not.'"

Liturgical contributions
Basil of Caesarea holds a very important place in the history of Christian liturgy, coming as he did at the end of the age of persecution. That St. Basil composed a liturgy, or rather reformed an existing liturgy, is beyond doubt, since besides the constant tradition of the Byzantine Church there are many testimonies in ancient writings to establish the fact. Basil's liturgical influence is well attested in early sources.

Most of the liturgies bearing the name of Basil are not entirely his work in their present form, but they nevertheless preserve a recollection of Basil's activity in this field in formularizing liturgical prayers and promoting church-song. Patristics scholars conclude that the Liturgy of Saint Basil "bears, unmistakably, the personal hand, pen, mind and heart of St. Basil the Great".

One liturgy that can be attributed to him is The Divine Liturgy of Saint Basil the Great, a liturgy that is somewhat longer than the more commonly used Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom. The difference between the two is primarily in the silent prayers said by the priest, and in the use of the hymn to the Theotokos, All of Creation, instead of the Axion Estin of John Chrysostom's Liturgy.

The Eastern Churches preserve numerous other prayers attributed to Basil, including three prayers of exorcism, several morning and evening prayers, and the "Prayer of the Hours" which is read at each service of the Daily Office.

Influence on monasticism
Through his examples and teachings, Basil effected a noteworthy moderation in the austere practices which were previously characteristic of monastic life. He is also credited with coordinating the duties of work and prayer to ensure a proper balance between the two.

Basil is remembered as one of the most influential figures in the development of Christian monasticism. Not only is Basil recognized as the father of Eastern monasticism; historians recognize that his legacy extends also to the Western church, largely due to his influence on Saint Benedict. Patristic scholars such as Meredith assert that Benedict himself recognized this when he wrote in the epilogue to his Rule that his monks, in addition to the Bible, should read "the confessions of the Fathers and their institutes and their lives and the Rule of our Holy Father, Basil. Basil's teachings on monasticism, as encoded in works such as his Small Asketikon, was transmitted to the west via Rufinus during the late 4th century.

As a result of Basil's influence, numerous religious orders in Eastern Christianity bear his name. In the Roman Catholic Church, the Basilian Fathers, also known as the Congregation of St. Basil, an international order of priests and students studying for the priesthood, is named after him.

Commemorations
Basil was given the title Doctor of the Church in the Western Church for his contributions to the debate initiated by the Arian controversy regarding the nature of the Trinity, and especially the question of the divinity of the Holy Spirit. Basil was responsible for defining the terms "ousia" (essence/substance) and "hypostasis" (person/reality), and for defining the classic formulation of three Persons in one Nature. His single greatest contribution was his insistence on the divinity and consubstantiality of the Holy Spirit with the Father and the Son.

In Greek tradition, Basil brings gifts to children every 1 January (St Basil's Day). It is traditional on St Basil's Day to serve vasilopita, a rich bread baked with a coin inside. The tradition is attributed to St. Basil, who when a bishop, wanted to distribute money to the poor and commissioned some women to bake sweetened bread, in which he arranged to place gold coins. Thus the families in cutting the bread were pleasantly surprised to find the coins.

It is customary on his feast day to visit the homes of friends and relatives, to sing New Year's carols, and to set an extra place at the table for Saint Basil. Basil, being born into a wealthy family, gave away all his possessions to the poor, the underprivileged, those in need, and children.

According to some sources, Basil died on 1 January, and the Eastern Orthodox Church celebrates his feast day together with that of the Feast of the Circumcision on that day. This was also the day on which the General Roman Calendar celebrated it at first; but in the 13th-century it was moved to 14 June, a date believed to be that of his ordination as bishop, and it remained on that date until the 1969 revision of the calendar, which moved it to 2 January, rather than 1 January, because the latter date is occupied by the Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God. On 2 January Saint Basil is celebrated together with Saint Gregory Nazianzen. Novus Ordo services use the revised calendar while traditionalist Catholic communities continue to observe pre-1970 calendars.

The Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod commemorates Basil, along with Gregory of Nazianzus and Gregory of Nyssa on 10 January.

The Church of England celebrates Saint Basil's feast (Lesser Festival) on 2 January, but the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada celebrate it on 14 June.

In the Byzantine Rite, 30 January is the Synaxis of the Three Holy Hierarchs, in honor of Saint Basil, Saint Gregory the Theologian and Saint John Chrysostom.

The Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria celebrates the feast day of Saint Basil on the 6th of Tobi (6th of Terr on the Ethiopian calendar of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church). At present, this corresponds to 14 January 15 January during leap year.

There are numerous relics of Basil throughout the world. One of the most important is his head, which is preserved to this day at the monastery of the Great Lavra on Mount Athos in Greece. The mythical sword Durandal is said to contain some of Basil's blood.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Basil of Caesarea


text:
Rudolf Clausius

Rudolf Julius Emanuel Clausius ( 2 January 1822 – 24 August 1888) was a German physicist and mathematician and is considered one of the central founding fathers of the science of thermodynamics. By his restatement of Sadi Carnot's principle known as the Carnot cycle, he gave the theory of heat a truer and sounder basis. His most important paper, "On the Moving Force of Heat", published in 1850, first stated the basic ideas of the second law of thermodynamics. In 1865 he introduced the concept of entropy. In 1870 he introduced the virial theorem, which applied to heat.

Life
Clausius was born in Köslin (now Koszalin, Poland) in the Province of Pomerania in Prussia. His father was a Protestant pastor and school inspector, and Rudolf studied in the school of his father. In 1838, he went to the Gymnasium in Stettin. Clausius graduated from the University of Berlin in 1844 where he had studied mathematics and physics since 1840 with, among others, Gustav Magnus, Peter Gustav Lejeune Dirichlet, and Jakob Steiner. He also studied history with Leopold von Ranke. During 1848, he got his doctorate from the University of Halle on optical effects in Earth's atmosphere. In 1850 he became professor of physics at the Royal Artillery and Engineering School in Berlin and Privatdozent at the Berlin University. In 1855 he became professor at the ETH Zürich, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zürich, where he stayed until 1867. During that year, he moved to Würzburg and two years later, in 1869 to Bonn.

In 1870 Clausius organized an ambulance corps in the Franco-Prussian War. He was wounded in battle, leaving him with a lasting disability. He was awarded the Iron Cross for his services.

His wife, Adelheid Rimpau died in 1875, leaving him to raise their six children. In 1886, he married Sophie Sack, and then had another child. Two years later, on 24 August 1888, he died in Bonn, Germany.

Work
Clausius's PhD thesis concerning the refraction of light proposed that we see a blue sky during the day, and various shades of red at sunrise and sunset (among other phenomena) due to reflection and refraction of light. Later, Lord Rayleigh would show that it was in fact due to the scattering of light.

His most famous paper, Ueber die bewegende Kraft der Wärme ("On the Moving Force of Heat and the Laws of Heat which may be Deduced Therefrom") was published in 1850, and dealt with the mechanical theory of heat. In this paper, he showed there was a contradiction between Carnot's principle and the concept of conservation of energy. Clausius restated the two laws of thermodynamics to overcome this contradiction. This paper made him famous among scientists. (The third law was developed by Walther Nernst, during the years 1906–1912).

Clausius's most famous statement of the second law of thermodynamics was published in German in 1854, and in English in 1856.

During 1857, Clausius contributed to the field of kinetic theory after refining August Krönig's very simple gas-kinetic model to include translational, rotational and vibrational molecular motions. In this same work he introduced the concept of 'Mean free path' of a particle.

Clausius deduced the Clausius–Clapeyron relation from thermodynamics. This relation, which is a way of characterizing the phase transition between two states of matter such as solid and liquid, had originally been developed in 1834 by Émile Clapeyron.

Entropy
In 1865, Clausius gave the first mathematical version of the concept of entropy, and also gave it its name. Clausius chose the word because the meaning (from Greek ἐν en "in" and τροπή tropē "transformation") is "content transformative" or "transformation content" ("Verwandlungsinhalt"). "I prefer going to the ancient languages for the names of important scientific quantities, so that they may mean the same thing in all living tongues. I propose, accordingly, to call S the entropy of a body, after the Greek word 'transformation'. I have designedly coined the word entropy to be similar to 'energy', for these two quantities are so analogous in their physical significance, that an analogy of denomination seemed to me helpful."He used the now abandoned unit 'Clausius' (symbol: Cl) for entropy.
 * 1 Clausius (Cl) = 1 calorie/degree Celsius (cal/°C) = 4.1868 joules per kelvin (J/K)

The landmark 1865 paper in which he introduced the concept of entropy ends with the following summary of the first and second laws of thermodynamics:

Leon Cooper added that in this way he succeeded in coining a word that meant the same thing to everybody: nothing.

Tributes

 * Honorary Membership of the Institution of Engineers and Shipbuilders in Scotland in 1859.IESIS Institution of Engineers and Shipbuilders in Scotland
 * Iron Cross of 1870
 * Fellow of the Royal Society of London in 1868 and received its Copley Medal in 1879.
 * Member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in 1878.
 * Huygens Medal in 1870.
 * Foreign Member of the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei in Rome in 1880
 * Member of the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina in 1880
 * Poncelet Prize in 1883.
 * Honorary doctorate from the University of Würzburg in 1882.
 * Foreign Member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1886.
 * Pour le Mérite for Arts and Sciences in 1888
 * The lunar crater Clausius named in his honor.
 * A memorial in his home town of Koszalin in 2009

Publications

 * English translations of nine papers.

title: Rudolf Clausius


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Anton Denikin

Anton Ivanovich Denikin (Антон Иванович Деникин, ; 16 December 1872 – 7 August 1947) was a Russian military leader who served as the acting supreme ruler of the Russian State and the commander-in-chief of the armed forces of South Russia during the Russian Civil War of 1917–1923. Previously, he was a general in the Imperial Russian Army during World War I.

His forces' implementation of the White Terror was known for pogroms.

Childhood
Denikin was born on 16 December 1872, in the village of Szpetal Dolny, part of the city Włocławek in Warsaw Governorate of the Russian Empire (now Poland). His father, Ivan Efimovich Denikin, had been born a serf in the province of Saratov. Sent as a recruit to do 25 years of military service, the elder Denikin became an officer in the 22nd year of his army service in 1856. He retired from the army in 1869 with the rank of major.

In 1869, Ivan Denikin married Polish seamstress Elżbieta Wrzesińska as his second wife. Anton Denikin, the couple's only child, spoke both Russian and Polish growing up. His father's Russian patriotism and devotion to the Russian Orthodox religion led Anton Denikin to the Russian army.

The Denikins lived very close to poverty, with the retired major's small pension as their only source of income, and their finances worsened after Ivan's death in 1885. Anton Denikin at this time began tutoring younger schoolmates to support the family. In 1890, Denikin enrolled at the Kiev Junker School, a military college from which he graduated in 1892. The twenty-year-old Denikin joined an artillery brigade, in which he served for three years.

In 1895, he was first accepted into the General Staff Academy, where he did not meet the academic requirements in the first of his two years. After this disappointment, Denikin attempted to attain acceptance again. On his next attempt he did better and finished fourteenth in his class. However, to his misfortune, the Academy decided to introduce a new system of calculating grades and as a result Denikin was not offered a staff appointment after the final exams. He protested the decision to the highest authority (the Grand Duke).

After being offered a settlement according to which he would rescind his complaint in order to attain acceptance into the General Staff school again, Denikin declined, insulted.

Denikin first saw active service during the 1905 Russo-Japanese War. In 1905, he won promotion to the rank of colonel. In 1910, he became commander of the 17th infantry regiment. A few weeks before the outbreak of the First World War, Denikin reached the rank of major-general.

World War I
By the outbreak of World War I in August 1914 Denikin was chief of staff of the Kiev Military District. He was initially appointed quartermaster of General Brusilov's 8th Army. Not one for staff service, Denikin petitioned for an appointment to a fighting front. He was transferred to the 4th Rifle Brigade, which was transformed into the 4th Rifle Division in 1915. This was one of the formations cited by Brusilov in his Order No. 643 of 5 (18) April 1916, which sought to end fraternization between Russian and Austrian troops.

In October 1916, he was appointed to command the Russian 8th Army Corps and lead troops in Romania. Following the February Revolution and the overthrow of Tsar Nicholas II, he became Chief of Staff to Mikhail Alekseev, then Aleksei Brusilov, and finally Lavr Kornilov. Denikin was concurrently commander of the Southwestern Front from 20 July (2 August) to 16 (29) August 1917. He supported the attempted coup of his superior, Kornilov, in September 1917 and was arrested and imprisoned with him. After this Alekseev would be reappointed commander-in-Chief.

Civil War

Following the October Revolution both Denikin and Kornilov escaped to Novocherkassk in the Northern Caucasus and, with other Tsarist officers, formed the anti-Bolshevik Volunteer Army, initially commanded by Alekseev. Kornilov was killed in April 1918 near Ekaterinodar and the Volunteer Army came under Denikin's command thanks in part to the support of fellow general Sergey Markov. Kornilov's disastrous attempt to take the city was finally cancelled and the army retreated towards the north-east, evading destruction and ending the campaign which would become known as the Ice March. There was some sentiment to place Grand Duke Nicholas in overall command but Denikin was not interested in sharing power. In June–November 1918, Denikin launched the highly successful Second Kuban Campaign which gave him control of the entire area between the Black and Caspian Sea.

In the summer of 1919, Denikin led the assault of the southern White forces in their final push to capture Moscow. For a time, it appeared that the White Army would succeed in its drive; Leon Trotsky, as the supreme commander of the Red Army, hastily concluded an agreement with Nestor Makhno's anarchist Revolutionary Insurgent Army of Ukraine for mutual support. Makhno duly turned his Insurgent Army east and led it against Denikin's extended lines of supply, forcing the Whites to retreat. Denikin's army would be decisively defeated at Orel in October 1919, some 360 km south of Moscow. The White forces in southern Russia would be in constant retreat thereafter, eventually reaching the Crimea in March 1920.

On 4 January 1920, with defeat and capture by the Bolsheviks in Siberia imminent, Admiral Alexander Kolchak named Denikin as his successor as Supreme Ruler (Verkhovnyy Pravitel), but Denikin accepted neither the functions nor the style of Supreme Leader.

Meanwhile, the Soviet government immediately tore up its agreement with Makhno and attacked his anarchist forces. After a seesaw series of battles in which both sides gained ground, Trotsky's more numerous and better equipped Red Army troops decisively defeated and dispersed Makhno's Insurgent Army.

Although Denikin refused to recognise the independence of Azerbaijan and Georgia, in maintaining friendly relations with Armenia he recognised their independence and supplied them with ammunition during the Muslim uprisings in Kars and Sharur–Nakhichevan.

Antisemitism and anti-Masonry
During the Russian Civil War, an estimated 150,000 Jews were killed in pogroms. Ukrainian forces, nominally under the control of Symon Petliura, perpetrated approximately 40 percent of the recorded pogroms, although Petliura never ordered his forces to engage in such activity and eventually exhorted his troops to refrain from the violence. The White Army is associated with 17 percent of the attacks, and was generally responsible for the most active propaganda campaign against Jews, whom they openly associated with communism. The Red Army is blamed for 9 percent of the pogroms.

In the territories it occupied, Denikin's army carried out mass executions and plunder, in what was later known as the White Terror. In the town of Maykop in Circassia during September 1918, more than 4,000 people were massacred by General Pokrovsky's forces. In the small town of Fastov alone, Denikin's Volunteer Army murdered over 1,500 Jews, mostly elderly, women, and children.

The press of the Denikin regime regularly incited violence against communist Jews and Jews seen as communists in the context of treason committed by Red agents. For example, a proclamation by one of Denikin's generals incited people to "arm themselves" in order to extirpate "the evil force which lives in the hearts of Jew-communists."

Religious and faithful to the Russian Orthodox Church, Denikin did not criticise the pogroms against the Jewish population until the end of 1919. Denikin believed that most people had reasons to hate Jews and wished to avoid an issue that divided his officers. Many of them, intensely anti-Semitic, allowed pogroms under their watch, which turned into a method of terror against the Jewish population and served to earn the favour of the Ukrainian people for much of 1919.

Western sponsors were dismayed at the widespread antisemitism in the Whites' officer ranks, especially as the Bolsheviks sought to officially prohibit acts of anti-Semitism. Winston Churchill personally warned General Denikin that:

"[M]y task in winning support in Parliament for the Russian Nationalist cause will be infinitely harder if well-authenticated complaints continue to be received from Jews in the zone of the Volunteer Armies."

John Ernest Hodgson, a British war correspondent with Denikin's forces, said the following of Denikin's and his officers' antisemitism:

"I had not been with Denikin more than a month before I was forced to the conclusion that the Jew represented a very big element in the Russian upheaval. The officers and men of the Army laid practically all the blame for their country's troubles on the Hebrew. They held that the whole cataclysm had been engineered by some great and mysterious secret society of international Jews, who, in the pay and at the orders of Germany, had seized the psychological moment and snatched the reins of government. All the figures and facts that were then available appeared to lend colour to this contention. No less than 82 per cent of the Bolshevik Commissars were known to be Jews, the fierce and implacable 'Trotsky,' who shared office with Lenin, being a Yiddisher whose real name was Bronstein. Among Denikin's officers this idea was an obsession of such terrible bitterness and insistency as to lead them into making statements of the wildest and most fantastic character. Many of them had persuaded themselves that Freemasonry was, in alliance with the Jews, part and parcel of the Bolshevik machine, and that what they had called the diabolical schemes for Russia's downfall had been hatched in the Petrograd and Moscow Masonic lodges. When I told them that I and most of my best friends were Freemasons, and that England owed a great deal to its loyal Jews, they stared at me askance and sadly shook their heads in fear for England's credulity in trusting the chosen race. One even asked me quietly whether I personally was a Jew. When America showed herself decidedly against any kind of interference in Russia, the idea soon gained wide credence that President Woodrow Wilson was a Jew, while Mr. Lloyd George was referred to as a Jew whenever a cable from England appeared to show him as being lukewarm in support of the anti-Bolsheviks."

Exile
Facing increasingly sharp criticism and emotionally exhausted, Denikin resigned in April 1920 in favor of General Baron Pyotr Wrangel, who later established the Russian All-Military Union. Denikin left the Crimea by ship to Istanbul and then to London. He spent a few months in England, then moved to Belgium, and later to Hungary.

From 1926, Denikin lived in France. Although he remained bitterly opposed to Russia's Communist government, he chose to exist discreetly on the periphery of politics, spending most of his time writing and lecturing. This did not prevent the Soviets from unsuccessfully targeting him for abduction in the same effort that snared exiled General Alexander Kutepov in 1930 and General Yevgeny Miller in 1937 (both members of the Russian All-Military Union). White Against Red – The Life of General Anton Denikin gives possibly the definitive account of the intrigues during these early Soviet "wet-ops".

Denikin was a writer, and prior to World War I had written several pieces in which he criticised the shortcomings of his beloved Russian Army. His voluminous writings after the Russian Civil War (written while living in exile) are notable for their analytical tone and candour. Since he enjoyed writing and most of his income was derived from it, Denikin began to consider himself a full-time writer and developed close friendships with several Russian émigré authors—among them Ivan Bunin (a Nobel laureate), Ivan Shmelev, and Aleksandr Kuprin.

Although respected by some of the community of Russian exiles, Denikin was disliked by émigrés of both political extremes, right and left. With the fall of France in 1940, Denikin left Paris in order to avoid imprisonment by the Germans. Although he was eventually captured, he declined all attempts to co-opt him for use in Nazi anti-Soviet propaganda. The Germans did not press the matter and Denikin was allowed to remain in rural exile.

At the conclusion of World War II, correctly anticipating their likely fate at the hands of Joseph Stalin's Soviet Union, Denikin attempted to persuade the Western Allies not to forcibly repatriate Soviet POWs (see also Operation Keelhaul). He was largely unsuccessful in his effort.

From 1945 until his death in 1947, Denikin lived in the United States, in New York City. On 7 August 1947, at the age of 74, he died of a heart attack while on vacation near Ann Arbor, Michigan. Denikin was buried with military honours in Detroit. His remains were later transferred to St. Vladimir's Cemetery in Jackson, New Jersey. His wife, Xenia Vasilievna Chizh (1892–1973), was buried at Sainte-Geneviève-des-Bois cemetery near Paris.

On 3 October 2005, in accordance with the wishes of his daughter Marina Denikina and by authority of the President of Russia, Vladimir Putin, General Denikin's remains were transferred from the United States and buried together with Ivan Ilyin's at the Donskoy Monastery in Moscow.

The importance of Denikin's diary for explaining the relationship between "Great and little Russia, Ukraine" was cited by Putin during his 24 May 2009 visit to the Donskoy Monastery. "He says nobody should be allowed to interfere between us. This is only Russia's right." Putin emphasized that Denikin’s diary was worth reading, especially the passages in which he described Ukraine as an indivisible part of Russia.

Honours

 * Order of Saint Stanislaus Ribbon.PNG Order of St. Stanislaus, 2nd degree with Swords (1904); 3rd degree (1902)
 * Order of Saint Anna ribbon bar.svg Order of St. Anne, 2nd degree with Swords (1905); 3rd degree with swords and bows (1904)
 * Saint vladimir (bande).png Order of St. Vladimir, 3rd degree (18 April 1914); 4th degree (6 December 1909)
 * RUS Order of Saint George 3rd class ribbon 2000.svg Order of St. George, 3rd degree (3 November 1915); 4th degree (24 April 1915)
 * Golden Sword of St. George (10 November 1915)
 * Golden Sword of St. George, decorated with diamonds, with the inscription "For the double release of Lutsk (22 September 1916)
 * Order of Michael the Brave ribbon.svg Order of Michael the Brave, 3rd degree, 1917 (Romania)
 * Croix de Guerre 1914-1918 ribbon.svg Croix de Guerre, 1914-1918, 1917 (France)
 * Order of Glory Ribbon Bar.svg Sign of the 1st Kuban Ice Campaign, 1918
 * Order of the Bath UK ribbon.svg Honorary Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath, 1919 (UK)
 * SRB-SHS-YUG Orden Belog Orla VKrst BAR.svg Order of the White Eagle (Serbia)

Denikin's works
Denikin wrote several books, including:
 * Russian Turmoil. Memoirs: Military, Social & Political. Hutchinson. London. 1922. (only volume 1 of 5 has been published in English.)
 * Republished: Hyperion Press. 1973. ISBN 978-0-88355-100-4
 * The White Army. Translated by Catherine Zvegintsov. Jonathan Cape, 1930.
 * Republished: Hyperion Press. 1973. ISBN 978-0-88355-101-1.
 * Republished: Ian Faulkner Publishing. Cambridge. 1992. ISBN 978-1-85763-010-7.
 * The Career of a Tsarist Officer: Memoirs, 1872-1916. Translated by Margaret Patoski. University of Minnesota Press. 1975.

title: Anton Denikin