Definition
An obsolete Law French term meaning to absolve. Used in early English legal proceedings to denote the act of releasing or acquitting a person from an obligation, charge, or ecclesiastical censure. The term appears in medieval legal records and dictionaries as a functional equivalent of the Latin absolvere, carrying the sense of formal discharge or clearance from liability or guilt.
Common Language
This is pure legal jargon from the Law French vocabulary of medieval English courts. There is no meaningful common-language counterpart, and the term has no current usage outside historical legal texts.
Why It Matters in Research
ASOUDRE is a term a researcher will encounter only in medieval and early modern English legal records or in dictionaries that catalogue Law French vocabulary. Its practical significance in corpus research is primarily as a key to unlocking adjacent terminology. The term appears in Burrill alongside ASOYNE (essoin), indicating that Kelham's Law French dictionary is the authoritative lexicographic source for both; researchers working in this area should treat Kelham as the primary glossary reference.
The principal trap for historical researchers is conflation with the procedural vocabulary of essoin (excused non-appearance) and with the substantive vocabulary of absolution in both ecclesiastical and secular contexts. These are related but distinct concepts. Absolution discharged a person from an obligation or finding; essoin excused an absence. A record that uses asoudre should be read carefully to determine whether a formal discharge or merely an excuse is intended.
Because Law French persisted in English legal records well past its use as a spoken language, researchers will find the term in documents ranging from the twelfth through the seventeenth centuries. Spelling variants are common in manuscript sources; forms approximating asourdre, asoudre, or asoudray may appear depending on the scribe and period. Cross-referencing with Latin equivalents (absolvere, liberare) in the same document can help confirm meaning.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary provides the sole dictionary entry in the Law Mind corpus for this term, and it is brief: "L. Fr. To absolve. Kelham." The entry immediately follows with ASOYNE (essoin), and Burrill groups the two without elaboration, suggesting he treated asoudre as a relatively transparent translation term requiring no extended analysis. The authority he cites, Kelham's Dictionary of the Norman or Old French Language (1779), is the foundational reference for Law French vocabulary in English legal records; researchers who cannot resolve a usage question from Burrill's entry should proceed directly to Kelham.
No other historical dictionary in the Law Mind corpus addresses asoudre independently. The brevity of treatment across sources reflects the term's status as a translation equivalent rather than a term of art with contested or evolving legal content. There is no recorded doctrinal controversy about what asoudre meant; its obscurity is a function of the decline of Law French rather than any complexity in the concept.
Jurisdictional Note
Asoudre is specific to the English common law tradition as practiced under Law French conventions. It has no counterpart in Scots law or in the civil law systems of continental Europe, though the underlying concept of absolution is universal. Researchers working in colonial American records are unlikely to encounter the term, as Law French was effectively defunct by the time of sustained English settlement in North America.