Definition
An Old French phrase from early English legal practice meaning, literally, "to go to God." In its procedural sense, it signified that a defendant was dismissed from court without further obligation — discharged from the action, free to depart. The phrase appears in Year Book records as a formulaic conclusion to proceedings in which the plaintiff failed to recover, effectively recording that the defendant "went without day" — that is, was given no future court date and owed no further appearance. The term is functionally equivalent to a judgment for the defendant resulting in full dismissal.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): No standard entry. The phrase is not in general modern use.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Not listed. The phrase was already archaic legal vocabulary by the nineteenth century.
The words "aller" (to go) and "Dieu" (God) are ordinary French, but the legal phrase carries no theological content. Its meaning is procedural and formulaic: a defendant who "goes to God" has been released from the court's jurisdiction in the matter. The religious register of the words is incidental to a purely technical dismissal formula.
Common Confusion
ALLER A DIEU is easily confused with SINE DIE dismissal and with the related phrase WITHOUT DAY (French: sans jour), which is its closest English equivalent. The distinction worth noting: "without day" describes the procedural consequence — no further date set, no further appearance required — while aller a dieu was the specific Old French formula used in the Year Books to record that consequence as to a defendant who prevailed. Researchers encountering either phrase in historical materials should treat them as functionally synonymous records of defendant discharge.
Why It Matters in Research
This term will appear only in Year Book materials and in secondary works drawing on them — primarily dictionaries, abridgements, and treatises from the fifteenth through seventeenth centuries. It is not a term of art in any modern jurisdiction and does not survive in contemporary procedural vocabulary.
Researchers working in early English common law records should recognize aller a dieu as a terminal formula: when it appears, the case is over and the defendant has prevailed. The phrase marks the end of a procedural record, not a substantive legal holding. Its significance is navigational — it tells the researcher that no further proceedings follow in that matter.
Because the phrase is embedded in Law French, researchers unfamiliar with that register may misread it as a religious or non-legal expression. Kelham's Law French Dictionary is the standard reference for the broader vocabulary in which this phrase sits. Burrill draws directly on the Year Book citation (Mich. 8 Hen. VI, f. 36) to illustrate the formula in context.
Researchers should also be alert to variant spellings. Law French was not standardized, and the phrase may appear in variant forms across different manuscript traditions and printed abridgements.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary is the sole source dictionary represented here and provides the essential components: the Law French label, the procedural gloss ("to be dismissed from court; to go quit"), and a direct Year Book citation. Burrill also supplies the vernacular translation — "the defendant went without day" — which anchors the phrase to the familiar common law dismissal formula.
Burrill's entry notably appends a separate definition of ALLIANCE immediately following, suggesting the entry block was organized alphabetically without thematic connection. Researchers should not infer any relationship between aller a dieu and the alliance/allegiance cluster that follows it in Burrill.
What historical sources do not address: the phrase receives no entry in Bouvier, Black's early editions, or most American legal dictionaries, reflecting its status as a purely archaic English procedural formula with no application in American practice. Its presence in Burrill is primarily of antiquarian and historical interest.
Jurisdictional Note
ALLER A DIEU has no application in any modern jurisdiction. It is exclusively a formula of early English common law, documented in the Year Books and relevant only to historical legal research in that tradition.