consistory

Noun

consistory (plural consistories)

1. A solemn assembly or council.
   • To council summons all his mighty peers, / Within thick clouds and dark tenfold involved, / A gloomy consistory.1671, John Milton, “The First Book”, in Paradise Regain’d. A Poem. In IV Books. To which is Added, Samson Agonistes, London: […] J[ohn] M[acock] for John Starkey […], →OCLC
2. The spiritual court of a diocesan bishop held before his chancellor or commissioner in his cathedral church or elsewhere.
   • In 1551 we find Bertholier excommunicated by the consistory because he would not allow that he had done wrong in asserting that he was as good a man as Calvin1860-1876, Walter Hook, Lives of the Archbishops of Canterbury
3. An assembly of prelates; a session of the College of Cardinals at Rome.
   • Pius […][was] then hearing of causes in consistory.1627 (indicated as 1626), Francis [Bacon], “(please specify the page, or |century=I to X)”, in Sylua Syluarum: Or A Naturall Historie. In Ten Centuries. […], London: […] William Rawley […]; [p]rinted...
4. A church tribunal or governing body, especially of elders in a Reformed church.
5. (Early, Modern, obsolete) A civil court of justice.
   • And so were many greate and heighnous maters Obiected against S. Ambrose, because he refused to haue the cause betwene himselfe and the Heretike Auxentius, to be tried in the Consistorie of the Emperour, before Secular Iudges.1566, John Rastell, The Third Book, Declaring by Examples out of Ancient Councels, Fathers, and Later Writers, that it is Time to Beware of M. Iewel, Antwerp, folio 23ʳ