Definition
A Latin term from Roman civil law meaning to be absent or to be away from a place. The term carried three distinct applications in the civil law tradition:
1. Personal absence: A person was said to abesse when they were extra continentia urbis — beyond the suburbs or immediate environs of the city. Within that boundary, a person was not legally considered absent even if away from their home, unless they were actively concealing themselves.
2. Absence of property: A thing was said to abesse when it was out of the possessor's control, as when lost or stolen.
3. Non-existence: Abesse also extended to describe something as being out of existence entirely.
Why It Matters in Research
Abesse is a term of the Roman civil law, not a term of common law, and researchers will encounter it primarily in two contexts: Latin-language Digest citations and early English legal scholarship drawing on the civil law tradition. The Burrill entry is the most substantive source, preserving the Digest references (Dig. 50.16.173.1; Dig. 50.16.199.pr.; Dig. 3.3.5–6; Dig. 50.16.13–14) that give the term its operational precision — particularly the rule that concealment within the city boundary could trigger the legal consequences of absence even without physical departure.
Researchers tracing concepts of legal absence — for purposes of prescription, agency, guardianship, or procedural default — should recognize that abesse is a definitional term in the civil law sources from which those doctrines descend. When a historical treatise or pleading uses "absence" in a technical civil law context, abesse and its associated Digest passages are the upstream source.
The three-part structure of the term (personal absence, property out of possession, non-existence) is not always preserved in later secondary literature, which tends to collapse the term into simple personal absence. Researchers should consult Burrill directly for the fuller civil law meaning.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's (both editions) and Burrill agree on the core definition: to be absent, to be away from a place, measured by the extra continentia urbis boundary. The editions of Black's offer only the first meaning — personal absence — without the property or existence senses. Burrill is the richer source, preserving the Digest citations and the qualification about concealment, and adding the two secondary meanings relating to property and existence. Researchers relying solely on Black's will receive an incomplete picture of the term's civil law scope. None of the historical dictionary sources elaborate on how abesse connected operationally to consequences such as the appointment of a curator or the tolling of prescription periods — for that, the Digest passages themselves are necessary.