(curiales). But as a religious unit the curia had more individual activity. There were, it is true, ceremonies (sacra) performed by all the curiae to Juno Curis in which each curia offered its part in a collective rite of the whole people; but each curia had also its peculiar sacra and its own special place of worship. The religious affairs of each were conducted by a priest called curio assisted by a flamen curialis. The thirty curiae must always have comprised the whole Roman people; for citizenship depended on membership of a gens (gentilitas) and every member of a gens was ipso facto attached to a curia. They therefore included plebeians as well as patricians (q.v.) from the date at which plebeians were recognized as free members of the body politic. But, just as enjoyment of the full rights of gentilitas was only very gradually granted to plebeians, so it is probable that a plebeian did not, when admitted through a gens into a curia, immediately exercise all the rights of a curialis. It is unlikely, for instance, that plebeians voted in the Comitia Curiata at the early date implied by the authorities; but it is probable that they acquired the right early in the republican period, and certain that they enjoyed it in Cicero’s time. A plebeian was for the first time elected curio maximus in 209 B.C. The curia ceased to have any importance as a political organization some time before the close of the republican period. But its religious importance survived during the principate; for the two festivals of the Fornacalia and the Fordicidia were celebrated by the Curiales (Ovid, Fasti, ii. 527, iv. 635).
The term curia seems often to have been applied to the common shrine of the curiales, and thus to other places of assembly. Hence the ancient senate house at Rome was known as the Curia Hostilia. The curia was also adopted as a state division in a large number of municipal towns; and the term was often applied to the senate in municipal towns (see Decurio), probably from the name of the old senate house at Rome.
Authorities.—Mommsen, Römisches Staatsrecht, iii. p. 89 ff. (Leipzig, 1887); Römische Forschungen i. p. 140 ff. (Berlin, 1864, &c.); Clason, “Die Zusammensetzung der Curien und ihrer Comitien” (Kritische Erörterungen i., Rostock, 1871); Karlowa, Römische Rechtsgeschichte, i. p. 382 ff. (Leipzig, 1885); E. Hofmann, Patricische und plebeische Curien (Wien, 1879); for the Fornacalia, &c., Marquardt, Staatsverwaltung, iii. p. 197 (Leipzig, 1885); for local names of curiae, Pauly-Wissowa, Realencyclopädie, iv. p. 1822 (new edition, 1893, &c.); O. Gilbert, Geschichte und Topographie der Stadt Rom (Leipzig, 1883); for municipal curiae, Mommsen, in Ephemeris epigraphica, ii. p. 125; Schmidt, in Rheinisches Museum, xlv. (1890) p. 599 ff. On the Roman comitia in general see also G. W. Botsford, Roman Assemblies (1909). (A. M. Cl.)
In medieval Latin the word curia was used in the general sense of “court.” It was thus used of “the court,” meaning the royal household (aula); of “courts” in the sense of solemn assemblies of the great nobles summoned by the king (curiae solennes, &c.); of courts of law generally, whether developed out of the imperial or royal curia (see Curia Regis) or not (e.g. curia baronis, Court Baron, curia christianitatis, Court Christian). Sometimes curia means jurisdiction, or the territory over which jurisdiction is exercised; whence possibly its use, instead of cortis, for an enclosed space, the court-yard of a house, or for the house itself (cf. the English “court,” e.g. Hampton Court, and the Ger. Hof). The word Curia is now only used of the court of Rome, as a convenient term to express the sum of the organs that make up the papal government (see Curia Romana).
See Du Cange, Gloss. med. et inf. Lat. (1883), s.v. “Curia.”
CURIA REGIS, or Aula Regis, a term used in England from
the time of the Norman Conquest to about the end of the 13th
century to describe a council and a court of justice, the composition
and functions of which varied considerably from time
to time. Meaning in general the “king’s court,” it is difficult
to define the curia regis with precision, but it is important and
interesting because it is the germ from which the higher courts of
law, the privy council and the cabinet, have sprung. It was,
at first the general council of the king, or the commune concilium,
i.e. the feudal assembly of the tenants-in-chief; but it assumed
a more definite character during the reign of Henry I., when its
members, fewer in number, were the officials of the royal household
and other friends and attendants of the king. It was thus
practically a committee of the larger council, and assisted the king
in his judicial work, its authority being as undefined as his own.
About the same time the curia undertook financial duties, and
in this way was the parent of the court of exchequer (curia regis
ad scaccarium). The members were called “justices,” and in
the king’s absence the chief justiciar presided over the court. A
further step was taken by Henry II. In 1178 he appointed five
members of the curia to form a special court of justice, and these
justices, unlike the other members of the curia, were not to follow
the king’s court from place to place, but were to remain in one
place. Thus the court of king’s bench (curia regis de banco)
was founded, and the foundation of the court of common pleas
was provided for in one of the articles of Magna Carta. The court
of chancery is also an offshoot of the curia regis. About the time
of Edward I. the executive and advising duties of the curia regis
were discharged by the king’s secret council, the later privy council,
which is thus connected with the curia regis, and from the privy
council has sprung the cabinet.
In his work Tractatus de legibus Angliae, Ranulf de Glanvill treats of the procedure of the curia regis as a court of law. See W. Stubbs, Constitutional History, vol. i. (Oxford, 1883); R. Gneist, Englische Verfassungsgeschichte, English translation by P. A. Ashworth (London, 1891); A. V. Dicey, The Privy Council (London, 1887); and the article Privy Council. (A. W. H.*)
CURIA ROMANA, the name given to the whole body of administrative and judicial institutions, by means of which the pope carries on the general government of the Church; the name is also applied by an extension of meaning to the persons who form part of it, and sometimes to the Holy See itself. Rome is almost the only place where the word curia has preserved its ancient form; elsewhere it has been almost always replaced by the word court (cour, corte), which is etymologically the same. Even at Rome, however, the expression “papal court” (corte romana) has acquired by usage a sense different from that of the word curia; as in the case of royal courts it denotes the whole body of dignitaries and officials who surround and attend on the pope; the pope, however, has two establishments: the civil establishment, in which he is surrounded by what is termed his “family” (familia); and the religious establishment, the members of which form his “chapel” (capella). The word curia is more particularly reserved to the tribunals and departments which actually deal with the general business of the Church.
I. In order to understand the organization of the various constituent parts of the Roman Curia, we must remember that the modern principle of the separation of powers is unknown to the Church; the functions of each department are limited solely by the extent of the powers General remarks. delegated to it and the nature of the business entrusted to it; but each of them may have a share at the same time in the legislative, judicial and administrative power. Similarly, the necessity for referring matters to the pope in person, for his approval or ratification of the decisions arrived at, varies greatly according to the department and the nature of the business. But on the whole, all sections of the Curia hold their powers direct from the pope, and exercise them in his name. Each of them, then, has supreme authority within its own sphere, while the official responsibility belongs to the pope, just as in all governments it is the government that is responsible for the acts of its departments. Of these official acts, however, it is possible to distinguish two categories: those emanating directly from the heads of departments are generally called Acts of the Holy See (and in this sense the Holy See is equivalent to the Curia); those which emanate direct from the pope are called Pontifical Acts. The latter are actually the Apostolic Letters, i.e. those documents in which the pope speaks in his own name (bulls, briefs, encyclicals, &c.) even when he does not sign them, as we shall see. The Apostolic Letters alone may be ex cathedra documents, and may have the privilege of infallibility, if the matter admit of it. There are also certain differences between the two sorts of documents with regard to their penal consequences. But in all cases the disciplinary authority is evidently the same; we need only note that acts concerning individuals
