What is "cenacle"

c.1400, from Old French cenacle, variant of cenaille (14c., Modern French cénacle), from Latin cenaculum "dining room," from cena "mid-day meal, afternoon meal," literally "portion of food," from PIE *kert-sna-, from root *(s)ker- (1) "to cut" (see shear (v.)). Latin cenaculum was used in the Vulgate for the "upper room" where the Last Supper was eaten.

n. 1 a dining room, especially one on an upper floor (traditionally the room in which the Last Supper took place) 2 (context by extension English) a small circle or gathering of specialists (writers etc); a clique

The Cenacle (from Latin cēnāculum "dining room", later spelt coenaculum and semantically drifting towards "upper room"), also known as the "Upper Room", is a room in Jerusalem traditionally held to be the site of the Last Supper. The word is a derivative of the Latin word cēnō, which means "I dine". The Gospel of Mark 14:15 employs the Greek anagaion, the Acts of the Apostles 1:13 hyperōon, both with the meaning "upper room." Jerome used the Latin coenaculum for both Greek words in his Latin Vulgate translation. In Christian tradition, the "Upper Room" was not only the site of the Last Supper (i.e. the Cenacle), but the room in which the Holy Spirit alighted upon the eleven apostles after Easter. It is sometimes thought to be the place where the apostles stayed in Jerusalem and, according to the Catholic Encyclopedia, "the first Christian church".

Cénacle is the name given to a Parisian literary group of varying constituency that began about 1826 to gather around Charles Nodier. The group sought to revive in French literature the old monarchical spirit, the spirit of medieval mystery and spiritual submission. The chief members were Vigny and the brothers Deschamps. They were soon joined by Lamartine, Hugo, and Sainte-Beuve, who describes the group as "royalists by birth, Christians by convention and a vague sentimentality." Their organ was La Muse Française. Musset, Mérimée, and the elder Dumas were involved within the Cénacle, too. Time and the revolution of 1830 wrought changes in the attitudes of the members of Cénacle. Théophile Gautier and Gérard de Nerval were attracted to the group at the time of the revolution, but the reasons for the existence of the Cénacle dissolved. The group lost its reason for existence with the triumph of Hugo's Hernani (1830).