Word.ws English Dictionary

decretalists

decretalists is the plural of decretalist.

Meaning of decretalist

Noun

decretalist (plural decretalists)

  1. (historical) A member of a 13th-century school of interpretation of canon law that emphasized the decretals (letters issued by the Popes on matters of church discipline) in preference to the Decretum Gratiani (1141), which their rivals, the decretists, favoured.
    • If the decretalists were concerned that prospective spouses be able to carry out their moral obligations, they were no less interested in preserving spousely rights after the conjugal knot was tied.1990, Julia Bolton Holloway, Constance S. Wright, Joan Bechtold, Equally in God's Image: Women in the Middle Ages, page 135

Questions about decretalists

What is decretalists the plural of?
Decretalists is the plural of decretalist.

Words near decretalists in the dictionary

  1. Decrescenzo
  2. Decrescenzos
  3. decretal
  4. decretalism
  5. decretalist
  6. decretalists
  7. decretals
  8. decretion
  9. decretions
  10. decretist
  11. decretists

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: decretalists (page history and authors); decretalist (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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