Faculty
Webster's Dictionary [1]
(1): ( n.) Power; prerogative or attribute of office.
(2): ( n.) Ability to act or perform, whether inborn or cultivated; capacity for any natural function; especially, an original mental power or capacity for any of the well-known classes of mental activity; psychical or soul capacity; capacity for any of the leading kinds of soul activity, as knowledge, feeling, volition; intellectual endowment or gift; power; as, faculties of the mind or the soul.
(3): ( n.) Special mental endowment; characteristic knack.
(4): ( n.) Privilege or permission, granted by favor or indulgence, to do a particular thing; authority; license; dispensation.
(5): ( n.) A body of a men to whom any specific right or privilege is granted; formerly, the graduates in any of the four departments of a university or college (Philosophy, Law, Medicine, or Theology), to whom was granted the right of teaching (profitendi or docendi) in the department in which they had studied; at present, the members of a profession itself; as, the medical faculty; the legal faculty, ect.
(6): ( n.) The body of person to whom are intrusted the government and instruction of a college or university, or of one of its departments; the president, professors, and tutors in a college.
Cyclopedia of Biblical, Theological and Ecclesiastical Literature [2]
in England, is a special privilege or dispensation granted by favor and indulgence to enable a person to do that which he is not permitted to do without it. There is a court of the Facultie the chief officer of which is master of the Faculties, under the archbishop of Canterbury that has power, by 25 Henry VIII, 21, to grant dispensations to marry, to hold two or more incompatible benefices, and the like; and in it are registered the certificates of peers to their chaplains to qualify them for pluralities and non-residence. The last gives authority to grant such dispensations "for any such matters, not being repugnant to the holy Scriptures and the laws of God, whereof before such dispensations, etc., had been accustomed to be had at the see of Rome. Up to the time of passing this act, the pope, notwithstanding the statutes which had been passed restraining his authority, continued tou exercise his powmer, and to draw a commsiderable revemamme for indmilgences, etc. the sittings of the court have always been held at Doctors' Commons" (q.v.).
