ECCLESIASTICAL COURTS are courts specially devoted to the consideration of mat ters relating to the clergy and to religion. For the origin of these courts we must go. back to the first days of Christianity, when the early Christians, acting upon the injunc tion of St. Paul—" Dare any of you having a matter against another go to law, before the unbelievers and not before the saints"—had established courts, apart from those pro vided by the heathen governors, for the settlement of their own disputes. These courts were presided over by the bishops, who took cognizance of all matters, temporal as well as spiritual, arising among the brethren. As Christianity advanced. and was acknowl edged as the revelation of theAlmighty, these bishops' courts acquired an independent position, and were suffered to exist concurrently with courts of civil jurisdiction (Code lib. i. tit. 4, de episc. aid.), and gradually special matters were assigned as the subjects of their peculiar jurisdiction—viz., questions of tithes, and matrimonial and testament ary causes.
All writers on the early constitution of England are agreed in the opinion that, in this kingdom, there existed no separate E. C. before the Norman conquest. Pre vious to that time, all matters, civil and spiritual, were in use to be heard before the county court, in which the bishop and the earl sat together. But by a charter of Wil liam I. a distinction was made for the first time between courts civil and ecclesiastical. By this charter, authority was given to the bishops to hear causes ecclesiastical accord ing to the canon law. The bishops' courts having been thus established in England, they became h fruitful source of dispute between the crown and the see of Rome. the
latter claiming supreme jurisdiction in appeal in all causes ecclesiastical. This claim was from time to time conceded by the weakness or necessity of individual sovereigns. to be as frequently retracted when the emergency was past; in particular, by 27 Ed. III. c. 1 and 16 Rich. II. c. 5, all persons were prohibited, under penalty of pramzunire (q.v.), from resorting to the court of Rome or elsewhere. At the reformation, by 24 Hen. VIII. c. 12, on the recital that the king is, under God, the head of the church, and again, by 25 Hen. VIII. e. 21, the authority of the pope in matters ecclesiastical was finally excluded. In Bacon's Abridgment of the Law, there are enumerated ten E. C.—viz., convocation, the court of arches, the prerogative court, the court of audience, the court of faculties, the court of peculiars, the consistory court, the archdeacon's court, the court of delegates, and the court of commissioners of review. (For a full account of these courts, reference is made to the several heads, and also to the article DOCTORS' COMMONS.) Under the regulation of public worship act of 1874, a new ecclesiastical judgeship was called into existence, with cognizance mainly of offenses in the matter of ritual.
The chief E. C. which have at various times existed in Scotland are the general assembly, the commissary court, and the court of teinds. The former is the tribunal for the consideration of questions of doctrine and discipline according to the Presby terian usage, and has existed since the reformation. See ASSEMBLY, GKNERAL ; COM MISSARY; TEINDS.