Under the later empire the “curiales” exercised many important and very diversified functions, which Jacobus Gothofredus gives a catalogue of under twenty-two heads (see Animad. in Cod. Theod., lib. xii. tit. i.). Bingham speaks of these offices of the “curiales” as synonymous with “municipal” offices. The holders of them were by special ecclesiastical constitution made incapable of receiving holy orders. And, on the other hand, clerks—or at least such as had no property of their own apart from that derived from any ecclesiastical benefice—were exempted from the duty of accepting the office of “curialis.”

Papal Court.— At a later period, probably not earlier than the 12 th century, the phrase curia Romana came to be synonymous with corte Romana, and was used tosignify the entire body of persons employed in attendance on the Pope and in transacting the business of the Roman see. It seems indeed to have been at that time occasionally used in a sense equivalent to the “Holy See,” comprising, in the idea signified, the Pontiff himself.

In process of time, however, a distinction seems to have established itself between the “corte Romana” and the “curia Romana.” The former phrase is declared by Lunadoro in his Relazione della Corte di Roma, first published in 1641, to mean the whole body of cardinals, bishops, and prelates of all ranks who hold office in the Papal court and government; whereas at that period aħd for some time previously the curia Romana had come to signify what we should call “the bar” practising in the Papal courts of justice. But it is curious that the old wider and less precise signification of the term is found surviving long afterwards in the writings of Lutherans and Jansenists, who found its larger signification convenient to them in attacking and satirizing the Roman Papal system. Thus in modern writings the phrase “curia Romana” will be found very ordinarily to mean different things, according to the sympathies and in some degree to the country of the writer using it. In the mouth of a Lutheran, a Calvinist, a Jansenist, or even perhaps of a Gallican, it will mean the whole ecclesiastical and administrative system of Rome. In the mouth of the friends of the Papacy, especially of the Italians, it will be found to signify the body of lawyers practising in the Roman courts. The latter is of course, at all events in recent times, the more correct use of the term; and it will probably be found that in the mouth of a learned writer, even among Protestants, this will be the sense attached to it. Thus Bingham, in a curious passage illustrating the change in the signification of the word “curia,” where he is treating of the meaning of the phrase “curiae tradi” as an ecclesiastical punishment (Orig. Reel., lib. 17, ch. 2, sec. 8), shows that the more accurate significance of the word was an entirely legal one. The celebrated controversialist Bergier, on the other hand, in his Theological Dictionary, defines “corte Romana” as “a phrase used in our days by modern newfangled writers in contempt of the dogmatic constitutions and pontifical briefs of the holy Roman apostolic see. If I remember rightly this phrase was first used by Calvin and his followers.” Now all the writers thus twitted by the French theologian would have used “curia” as synonymous with “corte.” And modern anti-ecclesiastical Italian writers will be found using the word similarly. But the proper present ecclesiastical sense of the term is most accurately rendered in English by the “Roman bar ”—the body of those privileged to practise in the different pontifical courts of justice.

It will be seen, in short, that the use of the term has been shifting and uncertain to a singular degree,—shifting both, as the meaning of other words shifts, by lapse of time, and also not only according to the nationality but according to the views and prejudices of the person using it.

It may be added that the building now occupied by the Italian Chamber of Deputies, was called the Curia Innocenziana, having been built by Innocent XII. for the reuniting of the various “curiae” before existing in the city.

For a detailed account of the officials who were at different times comprised in the idea of the Curia, of the duties, orders, and hierarchical distinctions and privileges of these, of the story of the pious confraternity into which they formed themselves under the patronage of St Ivo the Briton, &c., the curious inquirer must be referred to Lunadoro, Corte, di Roma; Compendio Istorica del pio istituto, congregazione, e venerab. arciconfratemita sotto Γinvocazione del! Immacolata Cσncezione, e di S. Ivo avocato de’ ρoveri oppressi ; Bernini, Del tribunale della Rota; Cancellieri, Possesse de’ Pontifici; and Moroni, Diet., de Erudit. Eccles.