Definition
A term from old European and medieval Latin legal practice referring to the summoning of a party to appear in court on a specific assigned day. Adjurnamentum denotes both the act of formally designating a day for court appearance and the summons itself by which that appearance was commanded. It is essentially the procedural instrument by which a court fixed the time at which a person was required to present themselves before it.
The term is obsolete in modern legal usage, having been supplanted by contemporary procedural terminology governing notices, summonses, and court scheduling orders.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers working in medieval English law, early common law records, or continental European legal history will encounter adjurnamentum in plea rolls, register entries, and procedural treatises where it describes the mechanics of compelling court appearance. It belongs to a family of related Latin procedural terms — diei dictio, citatio, in jus vocatio, monitio — and Burrill's entry lists these as functional equivalents, which is a useful navigational anchor when reading across sources that use different terms for the same procedural act.
The practical trap for researchers is treating adjurnamentum as merely synonymous with a modern summons. The term carries a specific emphasis on the assignment of a day certain, not simply on the act of compulsion or notice. The day-fixing function — diei dictio — is the conceptual core. This distinction matters when reading records that differentiate between the initial summons and the formal scheduling of appearance.
The entry also has a textual hazard: Burrill's surviving text for this term is partially corrupt or incomplete, with the printed entry drifting mid-passage into what appears to be material concerning dower (referencing Reg. Orig. 171a, F.N.B. 148, Termes de la Ley, and 2 Bl. Com. 136). Researchers should treat Burrill's entry as damaged at that point and not read the dower-related content as definitionally connected to adjurnamentum itself.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary is the primary source available for this term, and it renders adjurnamentum as deriving from adjurnare and identifies it with the summoning of a party to court at a certain day. Burrill equates it with diei dictio (the naming of a day), citatio (a citation or summons), in jus vocatio (a calling into court), and monitio (a warning or notice to appear). This cluster of Latin equivalents establishes that adjurnamentum was understood as a procedural summons-type instrument, not a substantive legal concept.
The entry is notably brief and the printed text as preserved is partially garbled, suggesting that complete treatment in the original source was either limited or damaged in transmission. No other major historical law dictionaries — not Jacob's Law Dictionary, not Tomlin's, not Black's early editions — appear to treat adjurnamentum as a primary entry, which indicates it was recognized as a learned Latin term of limited practical currency even by the time the English legal dictionary tradition was maturing. Its appearance in Burrill reflects his characteristically comprehensive treatment of civil law and medieval Latin terminology rather than any active use of the term in nineteenth-century practice.
Jurisdictional Note
Adjurnamentum is a term of old European law without jurisdiction-specific modern application. Researchers are most likely to encounter it in records connected to medieval English common law courts, ecclesiastical courts, and continental civil law practice before the rationalization of procedural terminology in early modern legal systems.