Definition
In law, spirituality refers to that which belongs to the church, to a religious institution, or to a person in their ecclesiastical capacity — as distinct from temporalities (secular or material possessions). The term operates almost exclusively in ecclesiastical law and canon law contexts, where the line between spiritual and temporal jurisdiction was a foundational organizing principle.
Two related but distinct legal senses:
1. Ecclesiastical property or rights: Revenue, jurisdiction, or privileges held by a cleric or church institution by virtue of spiritual office, including tithes, oblations, and certain advowsons. These could not ordinarily be alienated or treated as ordinary property.
2. The collective ecclesiastical body: In older usage, "the spirituality" referred to the clergy as an estate or order — the clerical body as a whole, set against "the temporality," meaning the lay body or secular possessions.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): The quality or state of being spiritual; concern for that which is unseen and intangible, as opposed to the physical or mundane; appreciation for religious values.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): The quality or state of being spiritual; incorporeality; heavenly-mindedness. Webster's also captures the legal sense: "that which belongs to the church, or to a person as an ecclesiastic, or to religion, as distinct from temporalities."
The gap between common and legal meaning is sharp and historically significant. In modern usage, spirituality is an interior, personal, and psychological quality — a disposition of mind or soul. In law, it was an external, institutional, and jurisdictional category. A medieval or early modern lawyer asking about the "spiritualities of a benefice" was asking about property rights and ecclesiastical entitlements, not about anyone's inner religious life.
Common Confusion
SPIRITUALITY vs. TEMPORALITY: These terms form a pair and must be read together. Temporalities are the secular possessions held by a bishop or church — lands, rents, manors held by feudal tenure from the Crown. Spiritualities are the ecclesiastical entitlements held by virtue of holy orders or spiritual office. The distinction mattered enormously for jurisdiction: temporal courts governed temporalities; ecclesiastical courts governed spiritualities. Confusing the two in a historical source will misdirect a researcher entirely.
SPIRITUALITY vs. SPIRITUALITIES: The singular form often refers abstractly to the category or quality of being ecclesiastical. The plural, spiritualities, more commonly refers to the specific revenues, rights, or properties themselves. Both appear in historical legal sources; context determines which is meant.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers encountering spirituality in pre-nineteenth century legal texts — English ecclesiastical law, colonial American church-state materials, or civil law sources touching canon law — should treat it as a technical jurisdictional term, not a descriptive or devotional one.
The critical research trap: A source discussing the "spirituality of the office" or "matters of spirituality" is almost always addressing jurisdictional competence or the nature of ecclesiastical entitlements, not theological character. Misreading the term in its devotional sense will produce fundamentally wrong interpretations of jurisdictional disputes, church property cases, or the powers of ecclesiastical courts.
The maxim embedded in Rapalje & Lawrence — spoliatus debet ante omnia restitui (one who has been despoiled must first be restored) — signals that the entry appears in the context of ecclesiastical spoliation: the wrongful deprivation of a cleric's spiritualities. This was a recognized cause of action in ecclesiastical courts and connects to the broader body of canon law governing restitution of ecclesiastical rights.
Historical sources across this area thin out sharply after the nineteenth century as ecclesiastical courts lost jurisdiction in England and American law largely severed church-state entanglement. Corpus searches for spirituality in a legal sense will retrieve almost nothing from twentieth-century American sources — the term migrated entirely into its common devotional meaning in that period.
Historical Dictionary Support
Rapalje & Lawrence define spirituality as "that which belongs to one as an ecclesiastic" and append the spoliation maxim, placing the term squarely in the canon law tradition of ecclesiastical property and restitution. The entry is compact to the point of being skeletal, which reflects how settled and technical the concept was for practitioners of the time — it required no elaboration because its meaning was understood within the ecclesiastical law framework.
Webster's 1913, unusually for a general dictionary, captures both the devotional and legal senses, and its legal gloss largely matches Rapalje & Lawrence. This alignment suggests the legal sense was still sufficiently current in 1913 to merit inclusion in a general reference, though it was already becoming archaic in American practice.
What the historical dictionaries do not address: the jurisdictional machinery that gave the term its operational meaning. The spirituality/temporality distinction was not merely definitional but structural — it determined which court heard a case, which authority could attach property, and whether the Crown or the church held the relevant jurisdiction. Neither Rapalje & Lawrence nor Webster's explains that architecture; researchers must consult ecclesiastical law treatises for the full context.
Jurisdictional Note
This term is primarily relevant to English ecclesiastical law and jurisdictions that inherited or mirrored the English church-state framework. In American law, the spirituality/temporality distinction never took root with the same institutional force, given the constitutional separation of church and state. Researchers working in Scottish, Irish, or Commonwealth legal history will find the term operative longer and with greater procedural significance than in American sources.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
See Law Mind Encyclopedia — Ecclesiastical Law; Church Property; Benefit of Clergy