Word Finder - consistory

definition

A place of standing or staying together; hence, any solemn assembly or council.

definition

The spiritual court of a diocesan bishop held before his chancellor or commissioner in his cathedral church or elsewhere.

definition

An assembly of prelates; a session of the college of cardinals at Rome.

definition

A church tribunal or governing body, especially of elders in a Reformed church.

definition

A civil court of justice.

It was felt to be a political necessity that he should return, and in 1541, somewhat reluctantly, he returned on his own terms. These were the recognition of the Church's spiritual independence, the division of the town into parishes, and the appointment (by the municipal authority) of a consistory or council of elders in each parish for the exercise of discipline.

Their business was to supervise daily life, to warn the disorderly, and to give notice to the consistory of cases requiring discipline.

To form the consistory all the elders with the ministers were to meet every Sunday under the presidency of one of the syndics or magistrates.

Each synagogue is served by a rabbi assisted by an officiating minister, and in each consistory is a grand rabbi.

At Paris is the central consistory, controlled by the government and presided over by the supreme grand rabbi.

In August 1498, Cesare in the consistory asked for the permission of the cardinals and the pope to renounce the priesthood, and the latter granted it "for the good of his soul."

The latter was treated as a mere delegate, from whom an appeal could be made to the bishop. The former had one consistory with the bishop, so that appeals from him had to be made to the court of the metropolitan.

In York there are two courts, one called the consistory for the diocese, the other called the chancery for the province.

This court is called the " consistory " court, but is not the old consistory.

Matrimonial matters and those relating to wills and succession (called in Scotland " consistorial " causes) were in 1563 taken from the old bishops' courts and given to " commissaries " appointed by the crown with an appeal to the court of session, which by act 1609, c. 6, was declared the king's great consistory.

In 1771 their headquarters were fixed at Moscow, in the Rogoshkiy cemetery assigned to them during the plague; here they had a monastery, seminary and consistory, until they were ejected by the emperor Nicholas I.

In 1865 he was made a counsellor to the consistory, in 1871 canon of Meissen cathedral, and in 1887 a privy councillor to the church.

Napoleon, after the report of the assembly, established the consistorial system which remained in force, with its central consistory in the capital, until the recent separation of church and state.

His patron's successor, Frederick III., made him (1559) a privy councillor and member of the church consistory.

He was a strong Lutheran and exercised a powerful influence in that direction as court preacher in Dresden and as president of the Protestant consistory at Munich.

A crisis was brought on by his sermon on the resurrection, preached at Easter 1771; and in November 1773 a prosecution was instituted against him in the consistory court of Gloucester.

Dorner, becoming also in 1860 counsellor to the consistory.

During those critical times the government of the state was strengthened by a new executive magistracy called the balia, which from 1455 began to act independently of the priors or consistory.

A lieutenant-general was appointed as representative of his authority; the council of the balia was reconstituted with twenty members chosen by the duke; the consistory and the general council were left in existence but deprived of their political autonomy.

But at last, in 1718, his talents were recognized by his appointment as professor of metaphysics at the university of Copenhagen; and in 1720 he was promoted to the lucrative chair of public eloquence, which gave him a seat in the consistory.

Here he was held in high esteem, and in 1715 became Primarius of his faculty and member of the Consistory.

Eventually, after having threatened to bring an action for wrongful imprisonment, Legate was tried before a full Consistory Court in February 1612, was found guilty of heresy, and was delivered to the secular authorities for punishment.

Munich is the seat of the archbishop of Munich-Freising and of the general Protestant consistory for Bavaria.

The engagement as tutor did not prove an agreeable one, and he soon threw it up (1771) in favour of an appointment as court preacher and member of the consistory at Biickeburg.

Meanwhile he had gained a high reputation as a preacher, and especially as the advocate of religious freedom; but his teaching became more and more offensive to the orthodox party, and on the appearance (1864) of his article on Renan's Vie de Jesus in the Nouvelle Revue de theologie he was forbidden by the Paris consistory to continue his ministerial functions.

He received an address of sympathy from the consistory of Anduze, and a provision was voted for him by the Union Protestante Liberale, to enable him to continue his preaching.

The Arches court was also the court of appeal from the consistory courts of the bishops of the province in all testamentary and matrimonial causes.

The archbishop exercises the ordinary jurisdiction of a bishop over his diocese through his consistory court at Canterbury, the judge of which court is styled the commissary-general of the city and diocese of Canterbury.

Driven to extremities, Clement consented to call a Consistory to consider the step, but on the very eve of the day set for its meeting he died (2nd of February 1769), not without suspicion of poison, of which, however, there appears to be no conclusive evidence.

His increasing ill-health and a certain moral laxity (as shown in his judgment on Sappho) led to a quarrel with the consistory.

In 1787, after an unsuccessful application to the consistory for pecuniary assistance, he seems to have been driven to miscellaneous literary work.

He now devoted himself to the discharge of his duties as a member of the consistory.

The civil power (the duke of Wurttemberg was a Roman Catholic) was disposed to have recourse to measures of repression, while the members of the consistory, recognizing the good effects of such meetings, were inclined to concede considerable liberty.

Bengel exerted himself on the side of the members of the consistory.

The Genevan town councils were quite ready to re-enact all the old police regulations common in that age in regard to excessive display, dancing, obscene songs, &c. It was arranged too that town government should listen to the " Consistory," made up of the " Elders," but the Small Council was to choose the members of the Consistory, two of whom should belong to the Small Council, four to the Council of Sixty, and six to the Council of Two Hundred.

The Consistory was thus a sort of committee of the councils, and it had no power to inflict civil punishment on offenders.

Thus " we ought," as Lindsay says, " to see in the disciplinary powers and punishments of the Consistory of Geneva not an exhibition of the working of the Church organized on the principles of Calvin, but the ordinary procedure of the town council of a medieval city.

In 1767 Teller, whose attitude had made his position at Helmstedt intolerable, was glad to accept an invitation from the Prussian minister for ecclesiastical affairs to the post of provost of Kolln, with a seat in the supreme consistory of Berlin.

The Evangelical-Lutheran, or State, church has as its head the minister de evangelicis so long as the king is Roman Catholic; and its management is vested in the Evangelical Consistory at Dresden.

The Consistory rules the Established Protestant Church, and is now composed of 31 members, 25 being laymen and 6 (formerly 15) clerics, while the "venerable company of pastors" (pastors actually holding cures) has greatly lost its former importance and can now only submit proposals to the Consistory.

Printing was introduced in 1478 by Steinschaber of Schweinfurth, and flourished much in the 16th century, though the rigorous supervision exercised by the Consistory greatly hampered the Estiennes (Stephanus) in their enterprises.

Customs vary in different states; thus in Schleswig-Holstein the state nominates but the parish elects; in Alsace-Lorraine the directorium or supreme consistory appoints, but the appointment must be confirmed by the viceroy; in Baden the state offers the parish a selection from six names and then appoints the one chosen.

He studied theology at Jena, and eventually became (1841) pastor, member of the consistory, and superintendent at Hanover.

Campeggio's mission failed in its immediate object; but he returned to Rome, where he was received in Consistory on the 28th of November 1519, with the gift from the king of the palace of Cardinal Adriano Castellesi, who had been deposed, and large gifts of money and furniture.

These, though more recent, have taken precedence of the former, the work of which they have, moreover, greatly relieved; they are indeed composed of the highest dignitaries of the church, the cardinals (q.v.), and are, as it were, subdivisions of the consistory, a council in which the whole of the Sacred College takes part.

Among the Protestants the highest authority is the general consistory of Munich.

The upper house of the Bavarian parliament (Kammer der Reichsrdte) is composed of (I) the princes of the blood royal (being of full age), (2) the ministers of the crown, (3) the archbishops of Munich, Freising and Bamberg, (4) the heads of such noble families as were formerly "immediate" so long as they retain their ancient possessions in Bavaria, (5) of a Roman Catholic bishop appointed by the king for life, and of the president for the time being of the Protestant consistory, (6) of hereditary counsellors (Reichsreite) appointed by the king, and (7) of other counsellors appointed by the king for life.

Georg Michael Weiss (c. 1700-c. 1762), a graduate of Heidelberg, ordained and sent to America by the Upper Consistory of the Palatinate in 1727, organized a church in Philadelphia; preached at Skippack; worked in Dutchess and Schoharie counties, New York, in 1731-46; and then returned to his old field in Pennsylvania.

Here he has also held the appointments of chief university preacher, councillor to the consistory (from 1881) and abbot of Bursfelde (1890).

He became also president of the consistory of the French and German Protestant churches.