Definition
A writ directed to the sheriff commanding the restoration of the temporalities of a bishopric to a bishop who has been elected and confirmed. The temporalities of a bishop — the secular lands, revenues, and possessions held in connection with the episcopal office — were historically in the custody of the Crown during a vacancy in the see. Upon election and confirmation of a new bishop, the writ of temporalium compelled the sheriff to deliver those secular holdings back to the incoming bishop, enabling him to take full possession of the office's material endowments.
The writ operates at the intersection of ecclesiastical appointment and feudal property law: the spiritual office was conferred by church authority, but the temporal possessions attached to it were held of the Crown and restored only by royal act or writ.
Common Confusion
Temporalium is easily confused with the broader concept of "temporalities" as a general term, and also with the writ of restitution of spiritualities. The distinction matters: spiritualities (the right to exercise ecclesiastical functions) were restored by the archbishop or metropolitan upon confirmation; temporalities (the secular revenues and lands of the see) were restored by the Crown through a separate process. The writ of temporalium addresses only the latter. A researcher who conflates the two processes will misread the chronology of a bishop's assumption of full authority — spiritual and temporal rights were often restored at different moments, by different authorities, through distinct instruments.
Why It Matters in Research
This term surfaces almost exclusively in medieval and early modern ecclesiastical and feudal legal sources. Researchers should be aware of several navigational points:
The writ belongs to a cluster of instruments governing the relationship between Crown and Church over episcopal appointments. Any research into the investiture controversy, the practice of royal custody of vacant sees, or the administrative mechanics of episcopal succession will encounter temporalium alongside related writs and procedures.
Fitzherbert's Natura Brevium (cited in Black's) is the primary classical source for the form and function of this writ. Researchers working in pre-modern English ecclesiastical law should treat Fitzherbert as the essential companion text when temporalium appears in their sources.
The term will appear in Latin in primary sources and in anglicized or translated form in secondary commentary. Variant spellings and forms — including "restitution of temporalities" as a descriptive phrase rather than a formal writ name — are common. The writ itself may be referenced obliquely in royal writs, patent rolls, and episcopal registers without being named explicitly.
Temporal/spiritual bifurcation in episcopal governance declined as the relationship between Crown and Church was reshaped by the Reformation, the Henrician ecclesiastical settlement, and subsequent legislation. The writ's practical significance diminishes sharply after the sixteenth century, though the underlying concept of temporalities as distinct from spiritualities persists in ecclesiastical law and in discussions of church property.
Researchers should not expect this term in American legal sources. It is squarely a feature of English ecclesiastical and common law history.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary provides a compact and accurate definition, citing Fitzherbert's Natura Brevium at folio 169 as authority — a reference to one of the foundational treatises on the forms of writs in English practice. The definition in Black's is functionally complete for identifying what the writ does, though it offers no analysis of the broader legal and political context in which the writ operated.
The note appended in the source material following the temporalium definition ("have the same meaning — that of the effect of superior force...") is textual debris from an adjacent entry and has no bearing on temporalium. Researchers should disregard it.
Historical legal dictionaries are broadly consistent on this term: it is treated as a narrow, technical writ of restoration rather than a doctrine or principle with contested boundaries. The term does not appear to have generated significant interpretive disagreement in the secondary literature. Where historical dictionaries are silent or thin, the gap is context rather than definition — they identify the writ but do not situate it within the larger mechanics of feudal ecclesiastical tenure or the political history of Crown-Church relations over episcopal vacancies.
Jurisdictional Note
Temporalium is a term of English ecclesiastical and feudal law. It has no direct counterpart in American law, where the separation of church and state forecloses Crown-style oversight of episcopal succession and church property. Researchers encountering the term in any American context will be dealing with historical or comparative material, not operative doctrine.