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Metropoliti Cum

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Mets, Laurent Re

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is the name of the archiepiscopal ordinariate and consistory, a sort of ecclesiastical supreme court, or second court of appeals, in the Church of Rome, installed by the metropolitans or archbishops. Occasionally it has the special power conferred which constitutes it also a third court of appeals, but, as a rule, this court hears all appeals in matters of discipline and matrimonial difficulties. As the duties of the archbishop are both to attend to the management of his own diocese and the dioceses of his subaltern bishops, the metropolitan council is divided into two boards or senates, one of which constitutes the court in cases of discipline and matrimonial differences of the archdiocese, the other hearing appeals from the ordinaries and consistories of the assistant bishops. But it is against the nature of archiepiscopal jurisdiction that the metropoliticum can also take the appeals against the sentence of the archiepiscopal vicary and ordinary and decide upon those. An appeal ab eadem ad eundem is not admissible, for it cannot be thought of that the general vicary or the archiepiscopal ordinary represents the archbishop as common bishop in propria dicecesi, the metropoliticum representing him as such, inasmuch as the archbishop is in his own archdiocese as ordinarius. The archbishop certainly cannot fill the offices of two dignitaries; the cognition or decision of appeals from sentences of archiepiscopal general vicaries and metropolitan courts should therefore be sent to other, hence to the metropolitan court of another archbishopric. Appeals from the decisions of the metropolitan courts in second instance are usually presented to the pope himself, securing acquittal at Rome by the Curia Romana, unless his holiness may please to order a judices in partibus, i.e., confer upon the metropoliticum the power of acting as a court of appeal of the third instance. See Wetzer und Welte, Kirchen-Lexikon, s.v.