CONSISTORY, a term which, like many other expressions, has undergone a regular evolution in the course of centuries. It was first applied (from Lat. consistorium, literally, a standing place, hence meeting place) to the audience-chamber in which the emperors received petitions and gave judgment ; it soon came to mean also the persons who took part in the deliberation, and, by an extension of meaning, a tribunal or jurisdiction (see Du Cange, Glossarium, s.v.). But the expression has now long been exclusive ly applied to gatherings of ecclesiastical persons for the purpose of administering justice or transacting business.
In the Western Church the episcopal consistory was simply the bishops' tribunal, the proceedings of which took a more or less strictly judicial form. But the name has disappeared almost everywhere; the only episcopal consistories outside England (see CONSISTORY COURTS) which survive are in Austria and in certain dioceses of Bavaria and Germany (see Vering, Kirchenrecht, § 149). Thus the name has come to be applied almost exclusively to meetings of the college of cardinals with the pope as president, f ormerly for deliberative purposes, but nowadays purely formal and ceremonial, the business upon which they are supposed to meet being discussed and decided previously; they are now merely a kind of solemn promulgation.
There are three kinds of consistory : the secret consistory, in which only the cardinals take part ; the public consistory, to which are admitted persons from outside and a fairly large audience; and finally, the semi-public consistory, in which the bishops pres ent in Rome take part with the cardinals, and are allowed to state their opinion. The last form is only used in the case of the con sistory preceding a canonization. The public consistory is now only held for the ceremony of conferring the hat on newly created cardinals; formerly the popes used to receive in public consistory sovereigns and certain other great persons, but in this case the consistory was not deliberative in form.
Finally, in secret consistories were discussed matters of general interest, such as the creation of cardinals, the provision of cathedral churches and other higher benefices,—hence called consistorial,—the creation, union or division of dioceses, the con ferring of the pallium (q.v.), and other matters of importance. The custom is for the pope to open the meeting by a discourse, or "consistorial allocution." Such, for example, were the allocutions of Pius IX. against the successive invasions of his temporal do main, or that of Pius X. against the breaking of the Concordat by the French government.
See the Catholic Encyclopaedia, art. "Consistory," and for full his torical information, Bouix, De Curia romana, pt. ii. c. 1. (Paris, 185o) ; Plattenberg, Notitia congregationum, cap. 3 (Hildesheim, 1693) ; Cardinal de Luca, Theatrum veritatis, lib. xv. p. 2 (Rome, 1670.