Definition
In Saxon law, to violate or transgress a law or legal obligation. The term appears in legal Latin formulations of the Anglo-Saxon period, functioning as a verb meaning to transgress or break the law — as in the formulaic phrase *qui leges apostabit* ("whoever shall violate the laws"). It is a term of historical jurisprudence with no surviving operative use in modern legal systems.
Common Confusion
Do not confuse *apostare* (Saxon law: to transgress a law) with *apostasy* (canon and ecclesiastical law: the renunciation or abandonment of religious faith or holy orders). Despite sharing a Latin stem, they are doctrinally unrelated. Apostasy generated centuries of canon law doctrine, ecclesiastical court proceedings, and eventually English statutory treatment. *Apostare* in the Saxon law sense is a generic term for legal transgression and carries none of that religious dimension. Conflating the two in historical research will send a researcher into entirely the wrong body of sources.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers encountering *apostare* will almost certainly meet it in Latin texts drawn from Anglo-Saxon legal sources, dooms, or early Norman-period compilations that carried forward Saxon terminology. The word appears in prescriptive legal formulas of the type common to early medieval codes, where conduct was condemned through broad prohibitory clauses rather than element-by-element definition.
The primary research trap is confusing *apostare* with *apostasy* (the religious or ecclesiastical offense of abandoning a faith or religious order), which has a substantial independent doctrinal history in canon law and English ecclesiastical courts. The two words share a Latin root but name entirely different concepts in legal history. A researcher searching ecclesiastical records for apostasy will not find *apostare* in the Saxon law sense, and vice versa.
Because the term's corpus footprint is narrow — largely confined to glossaries of Saxon law and dictionaries of legal Latin — researchers should not expect to find it in case law, equity pleadings, or common law treatise literature. Its natural habitat is early medieval codes, antiquarian legal scholarship, and Latin-English legal dictionaries of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary provides the only substantial entry among standard legal dictionary sources, defining *apostare* as a Latin verb used in Saxon law meaning to violate or transgress, and preserving the illustrative phrase *qui leges apostabit*. Burrill correctly situates the term in the Saxon legal context and does not conflate it with the ecclesiastical offense of apostasy, which is a meaningful editorial choice.
Other major historical legal dictionaries — including Black's early editions and Bouvier's — do not carry a dedicated entry for *apostare*, suggesting the term was recognized as sufficiently specialized or archaic even by the mid-nineteenth century that general legal lexicographers left it to historians of Saxon law. Cowell's *Interpreter* and Spelman's *Glossarium* would be the natural scholarly sources for further treatment, though researchers should verify whether those works treat the term before relying on them.
The absence of broader dictionary coverage is itself informative: *apostare* was not a term of living legal practice even when Burrill was writing. Its inclusion in his dictionary reflects his characteristic thoroughness with Latin and historical terms rather than any ongoing practical utility.
Jurisdictional Note
*Apostare* is a term of Anglo-Saxon legal history and has no jurisdiction-specific meaning in any modern legal system. Its relevance is confined to the law of pre-Conquest England and the Latin textual tradition that preserved Saxon legal formulas.