CONSISTORY (Lat, consistorium), properly, a place of assembly, but in the later Latin ity the word came to signify the particular place where the privy council or cabinet of the Roman emperor met, and after the time of Diocletian and Constantine, the council itself. The assessors of this council were partly the ordinary members (romites consisto riani), such as the imperial chancellor and seneschal, partly extraordinary; and their duty was to deliberate on all the important affairs of legislation, administration, and justice. The form of the imperial C. passed over into the early Christian church. The bishops established their cousistories; and the highest ecclesiastical court, composed only of cardinals (the college of cardinals), which, meets in the Vatican, under the presidency of the pope, to determine all such matters as the appointment of cardinals, archbishops, bishops, etc., still bears this name, as do also the private councils which the pope can call at his pleasure. The Protestant church of Germany was induced to perpetuate the consistorial courts principally because the episcopal authority passed into the hands of territorial princes (Ger. Landesfarsten) not familiar with ecclesiastical affairs. The first Lutheran C. was established at Wittenberg in 1542. After 1555, when the peace of Augsburg secured the recognition of the Protestant religion, similar consistories were gradually formed in other places. The Lutheran consistories exercise a supervision and discipline over religion and education, over the clergy and the schoolmasters, and examine the theological candidates on their trials for license and ordination. They have
the regulation of divine worship, the administration of church property, and at an ear lier period possessed a certain jurisdiction in regard to marriage.—In the French Protes tant churches, the C. possesses a more restricted jurisdiction than in Germany. It exercises authority over a circonscription—Le., a division of the church containing 6,000 souls—and is composed of all the pastors of the circonscripCon, together with from 6 to 12 lay-elders elected by a certain number of the people. In that portion of the French Protestant church which has adopted the Augsburg confession, the authority of the French monarch is more recognized than in the reformed church, for it has a consistoire general, composed of delegates, lay and clerical, of the various circonscriptions, the president of which is a layman nominated by the • emperor.—In England, the word is used to denote the court Christian, or spiritual court. Every archbishop and bishop has a consistorial court, held either in his cathedral or other convenient place, before his chancellor or commissary for ecclesiastical causes. In Scotland, the consistorial courts have lapsed into the commissary courts. See COINIMISSARY.