Definition
A writ directed to the sheriff commanding the restoration of the temporalities of a bishopric to a bishop who had been elected and confirmed. Temporalities, in this context, refers to the secular properties, revenues, and possessions held by a bishop in connection with the episcopal office — lands, income, and other earthly assets attached to the see — as distinguished from spiritualities, which were the purely ecclesiastical functions and rights of the office. Upon a bishop's election and confirmation by ecclesiastical authority, this writ operated as the Crown's formal mechanism for returning custody of those secular holdings to the new bishop, completing the investiture process on the temporal side.
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Common Confusion
RESTITUTIONE TEMPORALIUM is sometimes conflated with the broader investiture process generally, but it represents only one stage of that process — the restoration of secular assets after canonical confirmation. It should not be confused with the initial grant of temporalities, which was a separate act of royal prerogative, nor with writs governing spiritualities, which fell under ecclesiastical jurisdiction rather than the sheriff's authority. The writ presupposes both election and confirmation have already occurred; it does not itself confer the office.
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Why It Matters in Research
This term belongs to the intersection of English ecclesiastical law and the medieval and early modern constitutional framework governing the relationship between Crown and Church. Researchers will encounter it primarily in historical sources dealing with episcopal appointments, the investiture controversy's English legacy, and the Reformation-era reorganization of church-state relations.
The critical research trap is temporal displacement: the writ makes sense only within a system where the Crown held temporalities during a vacancy and was obliged to restore them upon valid appointment. Sources from before and after the Reformation treat this mechanism differently. Pre-Reformation sources reflect a complex negotiation between papal confirmation and royal investiture; post-Reformation sources, particularly after the break with Rome, situate the writ entirely within royal ecclesiastical supremacy, with confirmation resting in the Crown's own ecclesiastical hierarchy rather than Rome. A researcher using a pre-Reformation source to interpret a post-Reformation context, or vice versa, risks significant anachronism.
The writ also connects to the broader corpus of medieval English writs dealing with the wardship of temporalities during vacancy — a distinct but related area. During a vacancy (sede vacante), the Crown typically administered and drew revenues from the temporalities; the writ of RESTITUTIONE TEMPORALIUM was the corrective instrument that ended this royal custody. Researchers tracing property disputes involving episcopal lands will often need to account for whether and when this writ issued, as it affects the chain of title and the legal capacity of the bishop to act with respect to those properties.
References in primary sources to Fitzherbert's Natura Brevium (cited in both source dictionaries, with the page references diverging slightly between editions) are the standard doctrinal touchpoint. Researchers should consult Fitzherbert directly for the procedural context rather than relying solely on dictionary summaries.
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Historical Dictionary Support
Both Black's (2nd Ed.) and Rapalje & Lawrence define the writ in nearly identical terms, each tracing authority to Fitzherbert's Natura Brevium. The definitions agree on all substantive points: the writ is directed to the sheriff, concerns temporalities of a bishopric, and issues upon election and confirmation. The only divergence between the two sources is a discrepancy in the Fitzherbert page citation — Black's references page 269, Rapalje & Lawrence references page 169 — which likely reflects different editions of Natura Brevium or a transcription error in one source. Researchers citing Fitzherbert should verify the passage independently rather than relying on either dictionary's page number.
Neither source elaborates on the constitutional history of the writ, its relationship to the investiture controversy, or its post-Reformation character. Both treat it as a settled, technical instrument without engaging the political and ecclesiastical tensions that gave the writ its historical significance. For deeper treatment, researchers should look beyond these dictionaries to ecclesiastical legal history and constitutional history of the Church of England.
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Jurisdictional Note
This writ is specific to English law and the Church of England's relationship with the Crown. It has no direct counterpart in American law, which does not recognize royal or state authority over church appointments or the holding of ecclesiastical temporalities in the English sense. Researchers working in comparative ecclesiastical law or canon law traditions outside the English context should not assume the concept translates.
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