Definition
A Law French phrase from old English practice meaning, literally, "to go to God." Used in medieval court proceedings to signify that a party was dismissed from court and went quit — that is, was discharged from the proceeding without further obligation or liability. A party who was told to aler a dieu was effectively sent away free, the matter against them concluded or abandoned.
The phrase appears in Year Book records primarily in variant spellings, and its practical effect depended on the qualifying language attached. Dismissal could be absolute or conditional depending on context.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): No entry. The phrase has no current common usage in English.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): No entry. The phrase was already archaic by the nineteenth century.
Editorial note: This is pure legal archaism. The phrase survives only in historical legal records and dictionaries. Its component words — derived from Old French aler (to go) and dieu (God) — are intelligible to students of French, but the legal formula carried a precise procedural meaning that no ordinary reading of the words would convey.
Recognized Forms
/SUBTYPES
The Year Books recorded several variant forms, each with a distinct procedural shade:
ALES A DIEU SANS JOUR — Go quit without day. The most absolute form of dismissal; the party was discharged with no return date set, equivalent to a final acquittance from the proceeding. (Yearb. H. 2 Edw. III. 6.)
ALEZ A DIEU TANQUES AL QUART JOUR — Go quit until the fourth day. A conditional or temporary dismissal; the party was released but required to return on the fourth day. (M. 4 Edw. III. 12.)
ADEU SANZ JOUR — A contracted variant of the absolute dismissal formula, meaning quit without day. (H. 3 Edw. II. 75.)
ALEZ ADEU — A shortened, colloquial variant appearing in Year Book records. (T. 5 Edw. II. 173.)
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers working in medieval English legal records — Year Books, plea rolls, or early common law treatises — will encounter this phrase and its variants with some frequency. Several research traps exist.
First, spelling variation is extreme. The same formula appears as aler a dieu, ales a dieu, alez adeu, and adeu sanz jour across different Year Books and copyists. A corpus search on any single spelling will miss significant occurrences. Researchers should search on root components (dieu, sanz jour, adeu) rather than the full phrase.
Second, the qualifying language is dispositive. Aler a dieu alone is ambiguous as to finality; the crucial legal distinction is whether the dismissal was sans jour (without day — final) or carried a return date. Missing the qualifier means misreading the procedural outcome of the case.
Third, the phrase connects directly to the broader Law French concept of sans jour (without day), which has its own independent usage and dictionary presence. Understanding aler a dieu requires understanding the sans jour doctrine.
Fourth, by the time English legal dictionaries were codifying this phrase in the nineteenth century, it had long ceased active use. Black's and Burrill's entries are essentially archaeological — accurate as glosses but offering no guidance on jurisdictional scope or procedural context that the Year Books themselves supply.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary and Burrill's Law Dictionary are in complete agreement: both define the phrase identically as a dismissal from court, going quit, and gloss it literally as "to go to God." Burrill's is the substantially richer source, preserving the Year Book citations and variant forms that Black's omits entirely.
The Year Book citations in Burrill's are the primary value here. They anchor the phrase in real procedural usage across the reigns of Edward II and Edward III — the formative period of common law pleading — and show that the formula was alive, varied, and meaningful in practice, not merely a stylized expression.
Neither dictionary explains the theological resonance of the phrase, which is not merely ornamental. Committing a party to God's keeping on dismissal was a genuine invocation in a legal culture saturated with ecclesiastical form. Researchers interested in the relationship between ecclesiastical and secular court culture in medieval England will find this phrase a useful data point.
Jurisdictional Note
This phrase is specific to medieval English common law practice. It has no counterpart in civilian or ecclesiastical court tradition and did not travel to American colonial practice in any recognizable form. It is a research term for English legal history, not a term with jurisdictional variation in the modern sense.