ECCLESIASTICAL COURTS are various; as the ARCHDEACON'S, the CONSISTORY, the COURT OF ARCHES, the PECULIARS, the PREROGATIVE, and the great court of appeal in all ecclesiastical causes, viz. the COURT OF DELEGATES. See these articles.
As to the method of proceeding in the spiritual courts, it must (in the first place) be acknowledged to their honour, that though they continue to this day to decide many questions which are properly of temporal cognizance, yet justice is in general so ably and impartially administered in those tribunals (especially of the superior kind), and the boundaries of their power are now so well known and established, that no material inconvenience at present arises from this jurisdiction still continuing in the ancient channel. And, should any alteration be attempted, great confusion would probably arise, in overturning long established forms,
Ecclesiastical Courts. forms, and new-modelling a course of proceedings that has now prevailed for seven centuries.
The establishment of the civil-law process in all the ecclesiastical courts was indeed a master-piece of papal discernment, as it made a coalition impracticable between them and the national tribunals, without manifest inconvenience and hazard. And this consideration had undoubtedly its weight in causing this measure to be adopted, though many other causes concurred. In particular, it may be here remarked, that the pandects, or collections of civil law, being written in the Latin tongue, and referring so much to the will of the prince and his delegated officers of justice, sufficiently recommended them to the court of Rome, exclusive of their intrinsic merit. To keep the laity in the darkest ignorance, and to monopolize the little science which then existed entirely among the monkish clergy, were deep-rooted principles of papal policy. And as the bishops of Rome affected in all points to mimic the imperial grandeur, as the spiritual prerogatives were moulded on the pattern of the temporal, so the canonical process was formed on the model of the civil law; the prelates embracing, with the utmost ardor, a method of judicial proceedings, which was carried on in a language unknown to the bulk of the people, which banished the intervention of a jury (that bulwark of Gothic liberty), and which placed an arbitrary power of decision in the breast of a single man.
The proceedings in the ecclesiastical courts are therefore regulated according to the practice of the civil and canon laws; or rather to a mixture of both, corrected and new-modelled by their own particular usages, and the interposition of the courts of common law. For, if the proceedings in the spiritual court be ever so regularly consonant to the rules of the Roman law, yet if they be manifestly repugnant to the fundamental maxims of the municipal laws, to which, upon principles of sound policy, the ecclesiastical process ought in every state to conform (as if they require two witnesses to prove a fact, where one will suffice at common law); in such cases, a prohibition will be awarded against them. But, under these restrictions, their ordinary course of proceeding is, first, by citation, to call the party injuring before them. Then by libel (libellus, "a little book"), or by articles drawn out in a formal allegation, to set forth the complainant's ground of complaint. To this succeeds the defendant's answer upon oath; when, if he denies or extenuates the charge, they proceed to proofs by witnesses examined, and their depositions taken down in writing by an officer of the court. If the defendant has any circumstances to offer in his defence, he must also propound them in what is called his defensive allegation, to which he is intitled in his turn to the plaintiff's answer upon oath, and may from thence proceed to proofs as well as his antagonist. The canonical doctrine of purgation, whereby the parties were obliged to answer upon oath to any matter, however criminal, that might be objected against them (though long ago over-ruled in the court of chancery, the genius of the English law having broken through the bondage imposed on it by its clerical chancellors, and asserted the doctrines of judicial as well as civil liberty), continued till the middle of the last century, to be upheld by the spiritual courts; when the legislature was obliged to interpose, to teach them
a lesson of similar moderation. By the statute of Ecclesiastical Corporations, 13 Car. II. c. 12. it is enacted, that it shall not be lawful for any bishop, or ecclesiastical judge, to tender or administer to any person whatsoever, the oath usually called the oath ex officio, or any other oath whereby he may be compelled to confess, accuse, or purge himself of any criminal matter or thing, whereby he may be liable to any censure or punishment. When all the pleadings and proofs are concluded, they are referred to the consideration, not of a jury, but of a single judge; who takes information by hearing advocates on both sides, and thereupon forms his interlocutory decree or definitive sentence, at his own discretion: from which there generally lies an appeal, in the several stages mentioned in the articles above referred to; though if the same be not appealed from him in 15 days, it is final, by the statute 25 Hen. VIII. c. 19.
But the point in which these jurisdictions are the most defective, is that of enforcing their sentences when pronounced; for which they have no other process but that of excommunication; which would be often despised by obdurate or profligate men, did not the civil law step in with its aid. See EXCOMMUNICATION.