Rest in peace united in Christ." The abbreviation R.I.P., meaning "Requiescat in pace" "Rest in peace", continues to be engraved on the gravestones of Christians, especially in the Catholic, Lutheran, and Anglican denominations. In the Tridentine Requiem Mass of the Catholic Church the phrase appears several times. To satisfy a vogue for rhyming couplets on tombstones, the phrase has been parsed ungrammatically as: This verse has been found inscribed in Hebrew on gravestones dating from the 1st century BC, in the graveyard of Bet Shearim. It speaks of the righteous person who died because he could not stand the evil surrounding him. A
Latin syntax main action: Participles are much commoner in Latin than in English. Sometimes multiple participles can be used in a single sentence: The phrase "strīctō gladiō" (lit. 'with drawn sword') above is an example of a common idiom in which a noun and participle are put in the Ablative case to represent the circumstances of the main event. This idiom is referred to as an "ablative absolute" and is comparable to the Greek genitive absolute or the English nominative absolute. Other examples are: The present participle can also be used in an ablative absolute: The verb "sum" ('I am') has no