ACELDAMA, (the field of blood,) a small field, lying south of Jerusalem, which the priests purchased with the thirty pieces of silver that Judas had received as the price of our Savior's blood, Matt, xxvii. 8; Acts i. 19. Pretending that it was not lawful to appropriate this money to sacred uses, be cause it was the price of blood, they purchased with it the potter's field, to be a burying-place for strangers. Helena, the mother of Constantine, had part of the field covered in, for the purpose of receiving the dead, and it was formerly thought, that such was the sareophagous virtue in the earth, that the bodies were consumed within the space of two or three days. It is now used as the sepulchre of the Armenians, who have a magnificent convent on mount Zion.