Definition
Temporalty has two related but distinct meanings, both rooted in the distinction between the sacred and the secular:
1. The laity collectively; secular persons as distinguished from the clergy. In this sense, the temporalty refers to the non-ecclesiastical portion of a community or institution — those who hold no clerical office and are subject to temporal rather than spiritual authority.
2. A secular possession or temporal holding, particularly property or revenues held by or belonging to a church, ecclesiastical body, or clergyman in a secular (non-spiritual) capacity. In this sense, temporalty is closely synonymous with temporality (or temporalities), referring to the worldly estates, lands, tithes, and revenues attached to a religious office rather than derived from its spiritual functions.
The two meanings connect logically: temporal things belong to the secular world, whether that world is understood as a class of persons (the laity) or a category of property (secular holdings).
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): The laity; secular people. Also, a secular possession; a temporality.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): "The laity; secular people. [Obs.] … A secular possession; a temporality."
Webster's 1913 marks the first sense as obsolete in general usage by the nineteenth century. In legal and ecclesiastical contexts, however, the term survived far longer than in ordinary speech. A researcher encountering temporalty in legal sources should not treat it as a mere synonym for "laity" in the modern sociological sense — in legal instruments, it almost always carries the property sense (meaning 2), referring to the temporal estates of a church or bishop rather than to the lay population as a social category.
Common Confusion
TEMPORALTY vs. TEMPORALITY: These terms are used interchangeably in many historical sources and are substantively equivalent in most legal contexts. Temporality (or temporalities, plural) is the more common form in English ecclesiastical and legal writing; temporalty is the less frequent variant. Neither is more technically precise than the other. Researchers should search both forms when canvassing historical records.
TEMPORALTY vs. SPIRITUALTY: The natural counterpart. Spiritualty (or spirituality) refers to the ecclesiastical revenues and functions of a religious office that derive from its spiritual character — the cura animarum, the purely ecclesiastical jurisdiction. Temporalty refers to everything else the office holds in a secular, proprietary capacity. The distinction mattered enormously for questions of royal versus papal jurisdiction, taxation, and forfeiture.
Why It Matters in Research
This term surfaces primarily in sources concerning English ecclesiastical law, the law of the established church, and the historical relationship between crown and church. Researchers should watch for several traps:
First, spelling instability. Historical sources alternate freely between temporalty, temporality, temporalties, and temporalities. Index and full-text searches should account for all variants, including Latin-influenced spellings in older records.
Second, the property sense dominates legal instruments. When temporalty appears in a deed, writ, episcopal register, or parliamentary record, it almost certainly refers to secular possessions — lands, manors, tithes, and revenues held by a bishop or religious house in a non-spiritual capacity — not to the lay population. The first definition (the laity) appears more often in theological and descriptive writing than in strictly legal instruments.
Third, the temporalty/spiritualty distinction carries jurisdictional weight. In English ecclesiastical law, disputes over temporalties often fell within royal jurisdiction (the common law courts), while spiritualties remained within ecclesiastical court authority. Whether a particular revenue or right was classified as temporalty or spiritualty could determine which court heard the case and what remedies were available. This distinction is essential context for reading any pre-nineteenth-century ecclesiastical property dispute.
Fourth, the term is almost entirely absent from American legal sources. The disestablishment of religion and the constitutional separation of church and state mean that American law had little use for the temporalty/spiritualty framework. Researchers working in American sources are unlikely to encounter this term outside of historical or comparative contexts.
Historical Dictionary Support
Rapalje & Lawrence define temporalty simply as "the laity; secular people," which captures the first meaning but underweights the property sense that dominates in legal instruments. The entry as it appears in the source material seems to have suffered a transcription artifact — text from a tenancy-in-common definition appears appended to the temporalty entry, which is clearly erroneous and should be disregarded. Webster's 1913, while not a legal dictionary, is more complete, recognizing both the personal sense (the laity) and the proprietary sense (a secular possession), and usefully flagging the first sense as obsolete in common usage by the nineteenth century.
No major American legal dictionary gives this term extended treatment, which itself signals something important: temporalty is fundamentally a term of English ecclesiastical law and is best researched through English sources — canon law treatises, Blackstone's Commentaries (particularly on ecclesiastical persons and property), and the records of the established church — rather than through American legal materials.
Jurisdictional Note
Temporalty in its legal sense belongs almost exclusively to English and Anglican ecclesiastical law. Jurisdictions with established churches (historically England, Ireland before disestablishment) developed the temporalty/spiritualty distinction most fully. American law has no substantive equivalent framework; the term does not appear as a term of art in U.S. jurisdictions.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
Law Mind Encyclopedia — Church and State
Law Mind Encyclopedia — Ecclesiastical Property
Law Mind Encyclopedia — Spiritualty