curia

Curia, curiae, f., first declension, and the meaning migrates with the institution. It begins as one of the thirty divisions of the early Roman people, then becomes the building where such a division met, then the Senate House itself: the Curia Iulia still standing in the Forum.

Medieval Latin reuses it for any court that governs. A king holds his curia regis, a lord his manorial court, and above all there is the Curia Romana, the papal administration, which is what this corpus almost always means. It has nothing to do with cura, "care", despite the look; the older etymology takes it back to co- plus vir, an assembly of men. The adjective curialis, "belonging to the court", survives in English curial and in decurion, the town councillor.