curia

In medieval Europe, a court, or a group of persons who attended a ruler at a given time for social, political, or judicial purposes. The ruler and curia made policy decisions (as on war, treaties, finances, church relations), and under a powerful ruler the curia often became active as a court of law. Indeed, curiae became so loaded down with judicial work that they were gradually forced to delegate it to special groups of judges. In England the Curia Regis (King's Court) began at the time of the Norman Conquest (1066) and lasted to about the end of the 13th century. It was the germ from which the higher courts of law, the Privy Council, and the cabinet were to spring. Seealso Roman Curia.

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Group of Vatican bureaus that assist the pope in exercising his jurisdiction over the Roman Catholic Church. The work of the Curia is traditionally associated with the College of Cardinals. A cardinal named as secretary of state coordinates the activities of the Curia, and various sacred congregations handle administrative matters—for example, the Sacred Congregation for the Causes of Saints is concerned with beatification and canonization and with the preservation of relics. The judicial branch of the Curia consists of three tribunals, of which the highest is the Apostolic Signatura.

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A Curia in early Roman times was a subdivision of the people, i.e. more or less a tribe, and with a metonymy it came to mean also the meeting place where the tribe discussed its affairs. Etymologically it is derived from the Old Latin term "co-viria," literally an "association of men." This archaic pronunciation - note that in Classical Latin "v" is always pronounced as "w" - eventually evolved into the more recognizable word.

The curia per antonomasia was the Curia Hostilia in Rome, which was the building where the Senate usually met. The Senate, initially just a meeting of the city elders from all tribes (its name comes from "senex", which means "old man"), saw its powers grow together with the conquest that brought a town of humble origins to rule a large Republic (and then decrease steadily with the advent of the Empire).

During their expansion, the Romans exported the model to every city that gained the status of Municipium, so that it had its own Senate and its own officials charged with local administration (although they weren't usually elected but nominated by the central government; the only place where officials were actually elected by the people was Rome itself, and by Imperial times even those elections, although kept for the sake of tradition, had no more significance). Senators themselves were not elected since the early Republic, having been transformed into a hereditary nobility.

By the Imperial period, a curia was any building where local government held office, i.e. judicial proceedings, government meetings, bureaucracy, etc., and shortly afterwards the term started to refer also to the people making up the local administration (see curiales). The Curia situated in the Roman Forum functioned as a senate house for meetings and discussions over the Roman Empire to be held. It was to the north of the Forum, and was particularly used to conduct the affairs of the government when under the rule of an emperor. It is one of the few buildings in the Roman Forum that is still standing and we are able to visualise what it would have been like at the time of the Romans.

During the late Roman Empire, the government assumed a dual character, secular and religious. The fall of the Western Roman Empire ended the secular curia, but not the religious one, which has continued to the present day. After the end of the Roman Empire, the term, Curia, was used to designate the administrative apparatus of the Roman Catholic Church, and more specifically, the Vatican.

See also

• Constitution of the Roman Republic
• Roman Curia