consistory

These moral tribunals--known variously as consistories, kirk sessions, presbyteries, or Kirchenrat--have been of particular interest to social historians, who have found in disciplinary records a rich deposit for understanding popular belief and daily life in the age of Reformations.

Both movements, also named the Wittenberger and Helmstedter School, fought about filling vacant ministries and the election of members of the consistories. At the end of the seventeenth century the Dutch School appeared to have gotten the upper hand.

The Cardinals assist the Pope in his governance of the Church collegially, particularly in consistories, (8) and individually, in the holding of various offices.

In preceding consistories, the Holy Father has already surpassed the limit.

When dignitaries of the Reformed Church briefly gave attention to such matters, they merely castigated wayward parishioners for a want of faith inducing their irrational credence in "illusions." Church authorities did not proceed to consider how such "illusions" might compromise ministerial vocations or lead to popular defamation of pastors as evil magicians working in league with the devil.(7) And French Calvinist church consistories, responsible for local policing of the faithful, issued remarkably few censures against brethren dabbling in sorcery, although ethnographic studies clearly indicate that popular fascination with the supernatural was just as pronounced in Protestant enclaves as in preponderantly Catholic regions of France and Europe.(8)

Indeed, the discussion of specific offenses that were brought to the attention of, and pursued by, the consistories clearly demonstrates the broad impact that Calvin's views had.