CONVOCAZIONI (CONVOCATIONS). - This is the name given in the Anglican Church to the ecclesiastical assemblies of the Upper House (bishops) and the Lower House (lower clergy). With due reservations, they may be regarded as the continuation of the provincial ecclesiastical synods in use in England before the schism. Since 1885, a House of Laity has also taken part in these assemblies as an advisory body.
The c. have very limited powers because of the subjection of the Anglican Church to the authority of the king also in matters of faith and discipline. It is the king’s prerogative to convene them; in fact, until the Bangor controversy (v.) of 1717
they were convened only intermittently. Thereafter they were suspended until 1852, when they were re-established, while the prohibition against promulgating any decree or canon without the king’s permission always remained in force.
BIRL.: J. Wayland Joyce, Handbook of the Convocation of Provincial Synods of the Church of England, Londra 1887; S. L. Ollard, Convocation, in A Dictionary of English Church history, Londra 1912, pp. 140-45.