Definition
The revenues, dues, and profits received by a bishop in his strictly ecclesiastical capacity — that is, by virtue of his spiritual office rather than his secular position. These included fees arising from the ordination of priests, the institution of clergy to benefices, and similar acts performed as head of a diocese. Spiritualities were distinguished from temporalities, which were the bishop's income derived from his temporal standing as a baron and lord of parliament, including lands, lay fees, and other secular revenues.
The distinction was not merely descriptive. Under English ecclesiastical and constitutional law, spiritualities and temporalities were treated as legally separate categories of episcopal property, with different rules governing their custody, administration, and treatment during a vacancy in the see.
Common Confusion
SPIRITUALITIES vs. TEMPORALITIES: These two terms define each other by opposition and are best understood together. Temporalities are the bishop's secular holdings — lands and revenues held by reason of his position in the feudal and parliamentary hierarchy. Spiritualities are everything else: the income and rights flowing from his purely spiritual functions. The practical importance of the distinction appeared most sharply when a see fell vacant. The Crown typically asserted custody over the temporalities during the vacancy (a right rooted in feudal lordship), while the spiritualities passed to the guardian of the spiritualities — usually the archbishop of the province or the dean and chapter — to be administered for ecclesiastical purposes. Researchers conflating the two terms will misread sources on episcopal vacancy, royal prerogative, and church-state relations in historical English law.
Why It Matters in Research
This term belongs to a cluster of historical ecclesiastical law concepts that surface in English legal sources from the medieval period through the nineteenth century. It rarely appears in modern legal materials except in historical or comparative contexts.
Several research traps apply. First, the term is exclusively a product of English ecclesiastical constitutional law and has no operative equivalent in American law, which inherited no established church and no system of episcopal temporalities enforceable by civil courts. Researchers working in American sources will not find this term used as a live legal category. Second, the word "spiritualities" appears in the singular form "spirituality" in some older sources, occasionally with a slightly different shade of meaning — referring to the office or jurisdiction itself rather than the revenues flowing from it. Third, the interaction between spiritualities and temporalities is central to understanding guardianship of the spiritualities, the custody of vacant sees, and royal prerogative claims during episcopal vacancies — topics that appear with some frequency in English ecclesiastical law treatises and parliamentary records. Any research into the legal status of the Church of England, the powers of the Crown over ecclesiastical appointments, or the history of church property law will require comfort with this distinction. Fourth, the reference in Rapalje & Lawrence to Staunford's Pleas of the Crown (Staund. Pl. Cor. 132) signals that the term had enough practical legal weight in English courts that it appeared in criminal and common law pleading contexts, not solely in ecclesiastical court materials.
Historical Dictionary Support
All three source dictionaries — Black's (both editions) and Rapalje & Lawrence — reproduce nearly identical definitions, each tracing back to Cowell's legal dictionary. The uniformity across sources reflects the term's fixed historical meaning rather than any evolution in usage: by the time these dictionaries were compiled, the term was already an artifact of English ecclesiastical law rather than a living operative concept requiring fresh interpretation.
The Cowell attribution is consistent with the term's origins. John Cowell's Interpreter (1607) was an early systematic English legal dictionary with substantial coverage of ecclesiastical law terms, making it a natural primary source for a concept rooted in the medieval relationship between church and Crown.
What the historical dictionaries do not address: none of the three sources explains what happened to spiritualities during a vacancy in the see, how disputes between Crown and chapter over custody were resolved, or the procedural mechanisms by which spiritualities were collected and accounted for. Researchers requiring that level of detail must go beyond the dictionary entries to treatises on English ecclesiastical law — Burn's Ecclesiastical Law and Phillimore's Ecclesiastical Law of the Church of England are the standard historical references.
Jurisdictional Note
This term is operative only in the historical law of England and, by inheritance, in other jurisdictions that maintained an established episcopal church under Crown authority. It has no application in United States law and limited application in modern English law, where the practical financial distinction between spiritualities and temporalities has largely lost its legal significance.