CONSISTORY (Consistorium), signifies as much Consistory as praetorium, a tribunal: it is commonly used for a council-house of ecclesiastical persons, or place of justice in the spiritual court; a session or assembly of prelates. And every archbishop and bishop of every diocese hath a consistory court held before his chancellor or commissary in his cathedral church, or other convenient place of his diocese, for ecclesiastical causes. The bishop's chancellor is the judge of this court, supposed to be skilled in the civil and canon law; and in places of the diocese far remote from the bishop's consistory, the bishop appoints a commissary to judge in all causes within a certain district, and a register to enter his decrees, &c.