Consistory (Protestantism)

In Protestant usage, a consistory designates certain ruling bodies in various churches. The meaning and the scope of functions varies strongly, also along the separating lines of the Protestant denominations and church bodies.

Starting in 1539 the term was used for a body taking over the jurisdiction in marital matters, and later also church discipline, so that Protestant can be regarded as successors not to the papal consistory in Rome but rather to the courts of Roman Catholic bishops. In the Lutheran or Reformed states of imperial immediacy in the Holy Roman Empire episcopal offices were not staffed any more and the secular government assumed the function of the bishop (summepiscopate, summus episcopus), looked after by the consistories.

Not all Protestant churches adopted consistories, especially not collegially governed churches, often of Reformed or Presbyterian confession. Consistories were either bodies of local churches (mostly in the Reformed tradition), or parastatal entities, like in the French model, or they were governing bodies as part of the administration of Protestant state churches (Lutheran, Reformed and United Protestant alike). The rather governmental character of the consistory is the reason why the term was given up in many church bodies after the separation of religion and state and the concomitant abolition of the status as state church and the assumption of church independence.

In countries under French influence the Protestants, Calvinists and Lutherans alike (and the Jews as well, see Israelite consistories), made use of the term in the beginning of the nineteenth century with the enactment of the Organic Articles, when the movement for political emancipation demanded the creation of a representative body, whereas Napoleon's government simultaneously aimed at gaining influence onto the non-Catholic religious bodies. Roman Catholicism in Napoleon's realm was subject to the Concordat of 1801. The consistories in the French Empire could transact official business with a government in the name of the Protestants and vice versa. Furthermore, the desire for reform among the educated classes demanded the creation of a body vested with authority to render religious decisions.

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