[L. cūria, in sense 1.]
1. Antiq. a. One of the ten divisions into which each of the three ancient Roman tribes were divided; hence used of the divisions in other ancient cities. b. The building belonging to a Roman curia, serving primarily as its place of worship. c. The senate-house at Rome. d. A title given to the Senate of ancient Italian towns, as distinguished from that of Rome.
1600. Holland, Livy, V. 209. Camillus should be called back again out of exile by a Ward-leet, or the suffrages of the Curiæ.
1626. Massinger, Rom. Actor, I. i. Lets to the curia, And, though unwillingly, give our suffrages, Before we are compell’d.
1656. J. Harrington, Oceana, 76 (Jod.). The people … are first divided into thirty curias, or parishes.
1852. Grote, Greece, II. lxxxi. X. 549. There is reason for believing that the genuine Carthaginian citizens were distributed into 3 tribes, 30 curiæ, and 300 gentes.
2. A court of justice, counsel or administration; used esp. of the royal and other courts of the feudal organization.
In mediæval L., curia was the word regularly employed to render F. cour, COURT, and it is so used by modern historians, esp. in Curia regis, the King’s Curia, or King’s Court, of the Norman kings of England.
[c. 1178. Glanville, 1. Hic incipit liber primus de placitis quae pertinent ad curiam regis.]
1706. Phillips (ed. Kersey), s.v., In our Common Law, Curia signifies a Court of Judicature.
1861. Pearson, Early & Mid. Ages Eng., 414. Historically, the court of exchequer … was developed out of the curia, or great court of the king’s tenants-in-chief.
1874. Stubbs, Const. Hist., I. xi. 376–7. Whereas under William the Conqueror and William Rufus the term Curia generally … refers to the solemn courts held thrice a year or on particular summons, at which all tenants-in-chief were supposed to attend, from the reign of Henry I we have distinct traces of a judicial system, a supreme court of justice, called the Curia Regis, presided over by the king or justiciar.
1890. Guardian, 28 May, 868/1. The Archbishop of Canterbury … without a curia, without traditions, without committees of experts and theologians … is going to settle … some most difficult points.
3. spec. The Curia: the Papal court.
‘In the stricter sense, the authorities which administer the Papal Primacy; in a wider acceptation it embraces all the authorities and functionaries forming the immediate entourage or Court of the Pope’ (Cath. Dict.).
1840. Sarah Austin, Ranke’s Hist. Popes (1847), I. 237 (Stanford). Still more important to the curia was the second article, concerning the plurality of benefices.
1878. Stubbs, Const. Hist., III. xix. 352. It was a curious coincidence that the great breach between England and Rome should be the result of a litigation in a matrimonial suit, one of the few points in which the Curia had continued to exercise any real jurisdiction.
