the name of an ecclesiastical court of Rome, composed of 12 prelates, of whom one must be a German, another a Frenchman, and two Spaniards; the other eight are Italians, three of whom must be Romans, and the other five a Bolognese, a Ferrarese, a Milanese, a Venetian, and a Tuscan.—This is one of the Rotaceae, the most august tribunals in Rome, which takes cognizance of all suits in the territory of the church, by appeal; as also of all matters, beneficiary and patrimonial.

ROTACEAE (from rota, "a wheel"), the name of the 26th order in Linnaeus's Fragments of a Natural Method; consisting of plants with one flat, wheel-shaped petal, without a tube. See Botany, p. 461.

in botany; a genus of the monogyne order, belonging to the triandra clas of plants. The calyx is tridentate; there is no corolla; the capsule is trilocular and polyspermous.