Definition
In civil law, the great-aunt: specifically, the sister of one's grandfather (the father's father's sister). The term is Latin and belongs to the Roman system of classifying cognate and agnate relations for purposes of intestate succession and guardianship. As a degree of kinship, amita magna placed the great-aunt in a defined position within the descending table of collateral relatives, determining her eligibility to inherit or to serve as a guardian in the absence of closer relations.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers encounter amita magna almost exclusively in two contexts: Roman civil law sources and medieval English common law texts that borrowed civilian terminology, particularly in matters of inheritance and consanguinity. The term appears in Bracton's treatise on English law, which drew heavily on Justinianic sources, and researchers working through medieval English succession disputes or readings of Bracton should recognize that the civilian kinship vocabulary — amita, amita magna, proamita, and their masculine counterparts — does not map cleanly onto later common law categories.
The primary trap in historical sources is assuming that Roman-derived kinship terms in English legal texts carry the same succession consequences they carried in Roman law. By the time Bracton employed this vocabulary, English common law had developed its own inheritance rules; the civilian terminology served descriptive rather than directly operative purposes in most English contexts.
Researchers tracing intestate succession doctrine should also note that the civil law distinguished sharply between agnates (relations through the male line) and cognates (relations through either line). Amita magna, as a female relative in the collateral line, occupied a subordinate position to male agnates under the older Roman scheme, though Justinian's reforms softened this distinction. The relevant Digest and Institutes passages cited by Burrill (Inst. 3.6.2; Dig. 38.10.1.6; Dig. 38.10.10.15) are the primary loci for understanding exactly where this relative fell in the succession order and under which reformed rules she could inherit.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary provides a concise and accurate entry, defining amita magna as "a great aunt; a grandfather's sister, (avi soror)" and citing directly to the Institutes of Justinian and the Digest, as well as to Bracton. The entry is reliable as a starting point but offers no analytical depth on succession consequences or the distinction between agnate and cognate succession that governed this relative's position in Roman law.
No divergence exists among historical dictionaries on the core meaning — the term is precise and technical enough that variation is unlikely. What historical dictionaries uniformly omit is any practical guide to how civilian kinship terminology was absorbed, adapted, or set aside in English common law practice.