Definition
A Latin term from old English law meaning an agreement or contract between parties. The term is an archaic legal form encountered in early English legal manuscripts, writs, and pleadings. It carries no technical meaning distinct from agreement in general; it is simply the Latinate rendering of that concept as used in medieval and early modern legal records.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers encountering this term will find it exclusively in pre-modern English legal sources — Latin-language court records, writs, and legal instruments from the medieval and early modern periods. It does not appear in modern legal usage and carries no independent doctrinal weight. Its sole research significance is as a term of identification: when you see agreamentum in a primary source, it signals that the document is describing a contractual arrangement, and you should look to the surrounding context for the nature and terms of that arrangement.
Researchers working with Spelman's Glossarium Archaiologicum or similar glossaries of medieval legal Latin will encounter agreamentum as a headword. The historical dictionaries trace the term directly to Spelman, and his gloss is the primary authority cited across sources. Researchers should not expect to find agreamentum as a term of art in case law or statute; it is a scribal and notarial convention, not a term of legal doctrine.
Because medieval English legal records frequently mixed Latin, Law French, and Middle English, researchers should be alert to variant spellings and parallel terms. Agreamentum may appear alongside or interchangeably with conventio, pactum, or concordia depending on the period and the drafting practice of a particular court or scrivener.
Historical Dictionary Support
The three historical dictionary sources are in close agreement. Black's Law Dictionary (both the first and second editions) defines the term concisely as "agreement; an agreement" in old English law, citing Spelman as authority. Bouvier's adds a useful nuance: Spelman regarded agreamentum as equivalent in meaning to aggregatio mentium — the meeting of minds — though Bouvier notes that the term is not etymologically derived from that phrase. This is the most substantive gloss any of the sources provides, and it connects agreamentum to the conceptual core of contract formation as understood in the common law tradition.
None of the historical dictionaries go further. There is no discussion of recognized subtypes, no reference to specific writs or forms of action, and no indication that the term ever acquired a technical meaning beyond its plain sense. Researchers should treat the historical dictionary entries as confirmatory rather than analytical: they establish what the word means but do not illuminate how it was used in practice. For that, primary sources in Spelman's own Glossarium or in edited collections of medieval English legal records are the appropriate next step.