volume 3, page 627.

"In the year [1061] after King Henry's death [Henry I. of France], in a Synod held at Caen by the Duke's authority [Duke William of Normandy, who became in 1066 the Conqueror, and King of England], and attended by Bishops, Abbots, and Barons, it was ordered that a bell should be rung every evening, at hearing of which prayer should be offered, and all people should get within their houses and shut their doors. This odd mixture of piety and police seems to be the origin of the famous and misrepresented Curfew. Whatever was its object, it was at least not ordained as any special hardship on William's English subjects."

_E. A. Freeman, History of the Norman Conquest of England, chapter 12, section 3 (volume 3)._

CURIA, Ancient Roman.

See COMITIA-CURIATA.

CURIA, Municipal, of the later Roman empire. Decuriones.

"It is only necessary in this work to describe the general type of the municipal organization which existed in the provinces of the Roman Empire after the time of Constantine. ... The proprietors of land in the Roman provinces generally dwelt in towns and cities, as a protection against brigands and man-stealers. Every town had an agricultural district which formed its territory, and the landed proprietors constituted the municipality. The whole local authority was vested in an oligarchical senate called the Curia, consisting probably of one hundred of the wealthiest landed proprietors in the city or township. This body elected the municipal authorities and officers, and filled up vacancies in its own body. It was therefore independent of the proprietors from among whom it was taken, and whose interests it ought to have represented. The Curia--not the body of landed proprietors--formed therefore the Roman municipality. The Curia was used by the imperial government as an instrument of fiscal extortion."

_G. Finlay, Greece under the Romans, chapter 2, section 1._

"When the progress of fiscal tyranny had almost sapped the vigor of society, the decuriones [members of the municipal curiæ, called, also, curiales] ... being held jointly responsible for the taxation, became the veriest slaves of the empire. Responsible jointly for the taxes, they were, by the same token, responsible for their colleagues and their successors; their estates were made the securities of the imperial dues; and if any estate was abandoned by its proprietor, they were compelled to occupy it and meet the imposts exigible from it. Yet they could not relinquish their offices; they could not leave the city except by stealth; they could not enter the army, or the priesthood, or any office which might relieve them from municipal functions. ... Even the children of the Curial were adscribed to his functions, and could engage in no course of life inconsistent with the onerous and intolerable duty. In short, this dignity was so much abhorred that the lowest plebeian shunned admission to it, the members of it made themselves bondmen, married slave-women, or joined the barbaric hordes in order to escape it; and malefactors, Jews and heretics were sometimes condemned to it, as an appropriate penalty for their offenses."

_P. Godwin, History of France: Ancient Gaul, book 2, chapter 8._

ALSO IN: _T. Hodgkin, Italy and her Invaders, book 3, chapter 9._

_F. Guizot, History of Civilization, volume 2 (volume 1, France), lecture 2._

See, also ROME: A. D. 363-379.

CURIA, Papal. College of Cardinals. Consistory.

"The Court of Rome, commonly called the Roman Curia, consisted of a number of dignified ecclesiastics who assisted the Pope in the executive administration. The Pontiff's more intimate advisers, or, as we should say, his privy council, were the College of Cardinals [see PAPACY: A. D. 1059], consisting of a certain number of cardinal bishops, cardinal priests, and cardinal deacons. The cardinal deacons, at first seven and afterwards fourteen in number, were originally ecclesiastics appointed as overseers and guardians of the sick and poor in the different districts of Rome. Equal to them in rank were the fifty cardinal priests, as the chief priests of the principal Roman churches were called; who, with the cardinal deacons, formed, in very early times, the presbytery, or senate of the Bishop of Rome. ... According to some authorities, cardinal bishops were instituted in the 9th century; according to others not till the 11th, when seven bishops of the dioceses nearest to Rome--Ostia, Porto, Velitrae, Tusculum, Præneste, Tibur, and the Sabines--were adopted by the Pope partly as his assistants in the service of the Lateran, and partly in the general administration of the Church. In process of time, the appointment of such cardinal bishops was extended not only to the rest of Italy but also to foreign countries. Though the youngest of the cardinals in point of time, cardinal bishops were the highest in rank, and enjoyed the pre-eminence in the College. Their titles were derived from their dioceses. ... But they were also called by their own names. The number of the cardinals was indefinite and varying. The Council of Basle endeavoured to restrict it to 24. But this was not carried out, and Pope Sixtus V. at length fixed the number at 70. The Council called the Consistory, which advised with the Pope both in temporal and ecclesiastical matters, was ordinarily private, and confined to the cardinals alone; though on extraordinary occasions, and for solemn purposes of state, as in the audiences of foreign ambassadors, &c., other prelates, and even distinguished laymen, might appear in it."

_T. H. Dyer, History of Modern Europe, volume 1, page 38._

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CURIA REGIS OF THE NORMAN KINGS.

"The Curia Regis [under the Norman Kings of England], the supreme tribunal of judicature, of which the Exchequer was the financial department or session, was ... the court of the king sitting to administer justice with the advice of his counsellors; those counsellors being, in the widest acceptation, the whole body of tenants-in-chief, but in the more limited usage, the great officers of the household and specially appointed judges. The great gatherings of the national council may be regarded as full sessions of the Curia Regis, or the Curia Regis as a perpetual committee of the national council."

_William Stubbs, Constitutional History of England,