court Christian in the English laws, is a council of ecclesiastical persons, or the place of justice in an ecclesiastical or spiritual court. Every archbishop and bishop has a consistory-court, held before his chancellor or commissary, either in his cathedral, in some chapel, aisle, or portico, belonging thereto; or in some other convenient place of his diocese, for ecclesiastical causes. The spiritual court was anciently, in the time of the Saxons, joined with the county or hundred court; and the original of the consistory court, as divided from those courts, is found in a law of the conqueror, quoted by lord Coke. From this court there lies an appeal to the archbishop of each province respectively.