ASSISA

4 definitions found across Law Mind sources

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ASSISAAuthored
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Definition
Assisa is a Latin term from old English and Scots law with a broad range of meanings that shifted depending on context. It is the Latin form of the word now rendered in English as "assize" and appears throughout medieval legal records and treatises in at least six distinct senses: 1. A jury or inquest. Most commonly, an assisa referred to a body of sworn men convened to determine a question of fact — what Fleta described as a recognitio xii hominum juratorum, a recognition of twelve sworn men. In this sense, it is the ancestor of the modern jury. 2. A sitting or session of a court. The term could denote the court session itself, particularly a court convened to hear real property disputes or criminal matters. 3. A writ. Assisa names the writ used to commence certain real actions, particularly those involving land. 4. A real action. In property law, the assisa was the form of action used to try title to freehold land, distinct from the later common law ejectment. 5. An ordinance or statute. The term was used for royal enactments, regulations, or official orders — particularly those fixing standards of trade or requiring military preparedness. The assisa armorum (Assize of Arms) is the leading example: a statute commanding subjects to maintain arms for the common defense. 6. A fixed standard. Assisa could denote a prescribed quantity, quality, price, weight, or measure — as in the assize of bread and ale, which regulated the weight and price of staple goods. In this sense it shades into the meaning of a tribute, fine, or tax set at a fixed rate.
Common Confusion
Because assisa carried all these meanings simultaneously in medieval usage, readers of historical sources must determine from context which sense applies. An entry referencing assisa in a property dispute almost certainly means the writ or real action. An entry in a criminal or military record likely means the court session or the ordinance. An entry in a commercial or regulatory context usually means the fixed standard or price. Conflating these meanings produces serious misreadings. Modern readers sometimes further confuse assisa with the English word "assize" as it survives in the phrase "Courts of Assize," which refers to the itinerant court system — a usage that descends from, but is not identical to, any single meaning of the Latin term.
Recognized Forms
/SUBTYPES Assisa armorum — Assize of Arms. An ordinance requiring subjects to keep arms for public defense. The phrase appears in Hale's History of the Common Law. Assisa cadere — to be nonsuited; to fall in the assize, meaning to lose one's standing in the action. Assisa panis et cervisiae — Assize of Bread and Ale. A regulatory ordinance fixing the price and weight of bread and ale according to the price of grain. One of the oldest continuous regulatory enactments in English legal history. Assisa venit recognitura — the assize comes to recognize; a formulaic phrase appearing in plea rolls when the jury is summoned to determine a question.
Why It Matters in Research
Assisa is a term that demands interpretive caution because its meaning in any given document is entirely context-dependent. Researchers working with medieval plea rolls, Year Books, or Scots criminal records will encounter assisa in all six senses within the same collection, sometimes within the same document. Misidentifying which sense applies can lead to fundamental errors about what type of proceeding is being described. The term also marks a significant boundary in legal history. The real actions initiated by assisa — the Grand Assize, the Assize of Novel Disseisin, the Assize of Mort d'Ancestor — were the dominant land law mechanisms of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. They were systematically displaced by the action of ejectment by the early modern period. A source describing assisa as a form of action is almost certainly pre-Tudor; finding the term used in that sense in a later document is a signal worth investigating. In Scots law, the term persisted longer and with somewhat different procedural contours than in English practice. Researchers using Pitcairn's Criminal Trials or Skene's De Verborum Significatione will find assisa used in Scottish criminal proceedings in ways that do not map cleanly onto contemporaneous English usage. The regulatory sense of assisa — fixed price, weight, or standard — is important for legal historians working on commercial regulation, market law, and the history of administrative authority. The Assize of Bread and Ale in this sense is one of the earliest examples of state price regulation in English law.
Historical Dictionary Support
The four source dictionaries are in close agreement on the core range of meanings, drawing on the same body of medieval sources. Black's (both editions) and Rapalje & Lawrence offer nearly identical enumerations. Burrill adds texture by quoting Fleta's definition of the jury sense directly — recognitio xii hominum juratorum — and cross-referencing Skene and Pitcairn, which is the most useful signal for researchers working on Scots materials. None of the historical dictionaries adequately address the interpretive problem of distinguishing among these meanings in practice, and none provides a chronology of which meanings were dominant in which periods. Burrill's cross-reference to Assisus is also worth following: the adjectival form assisus (meaning "fixed" or "set") underlies the regulatory and commercial senses and appears in distinct legal contexts from the noun. The historical dictionaries uniformly treat this as a purely historical term — which it is for practical purposes — but none flags how dramatically usage diverges between English and Scots sources, a gap that matters for corpus researchers.
Jurisdictional Note
Assisa functioned differently in English and Scots law even during the medieval period when both systems used the term actively. Scottish criminal procedure retained assisa in recognizable form longer than English practice. Researchers should not assume that an analysis of English assize procedure applies without modification to Scottish sources using the same Latin term.
Related Terms
Assize — the English-language form of the same term; used for both the historical court sessions and the procedural forms descended from assisa Grand Assize — the specific assisa form allowing a tenant to put title to land to a jury rather than trial by battle Novel Disseisin — the assize addressing recent wrongful dispossession of freehold land Mort d'Ancestor — the assize addressing inheritance disputes following a death Ejectment — the common law action that displaced the real assisa forms Recognizance — shares the sense of a sworn acknowledgment; connected to the jury-recognition meaning of assisa Jury — the modern descendant of the assisa in its inquest sense Real Action — the category of property actions to which assisa belonged before their abolition
ASSISAmain
Black's Law Dictionary • 1891
In old English and Scotch law. An assise; a kind of jury or inquest; a writ; a sitting of a court; an ordinance or statute; a fixed or specific time, number, quantity, quality, price, or weight; a tribute, fine, or tax; a real action; the name of a writ.
ASSISAmain
Rapalje & Lawrence • 1888
In old English and Scotch law, an assize; a kind of jury or inquest; a writ; a sitting of a court; an ordinance or statute; a fixed or specific time, number, quantity, quality, price or weight; a tribute, fine or tax. The word frequently appears in the old writers in such phrases as, assisa armorum, a statute ordering the keeping of arms for the public defence; assisa cadere, to be nonsuited; assisa continuanda, a writ to continue the assize so that papers may be produced; assisa de Clarendon, the statute of Clarendon, passed 10 Hen. II.; assisa de foresta, a statute concerning the royal forests, passed 34 Edw. I.; assisa de mensuris, a rule of weights and measures, adopted 8 Ric. I.; assisa de nocumento, an assize of nuisance; assisa fusce fortie, (see ASSIZE OF FRESH FORCE); assisa juris utrum, a writ for the recovery of church lands; assisa mortis antecessoris, (see ASSIZE OF MORT D'ANCESTOR); assisa novæ disseisine, (see AsSIZE OF NOVEL DISSEISIN); assisa panis et cerevisiæ, a statute regulating the sale of bread and ale, passed 51 Hen. III.; assisa proroganda, a writ staying proceedings in certain cases; assisa ultimæ præsentationis, (see ASSIZE OF DARREIN PRESENTMENT); assisa venalium, a regulation of the sale of necessaries, fixing quality, quantity, price and weight. ASSISE, or ASSIZE.-NORMAN-FRENCH: assise, from Latin assidere, to sit together, either as a legislative or as a judicial assembly. Assise, or assize, anciently signified a legislative enactment; some old statutes and ordinances are still so called, e. g. the assize of bread, the assise of Clarendon, the assise of the forest, &c. Litt. § 234. See the extracts in Stubb's Charters 137 et seq. 1. Assises of land.-An assise passed in the reign of Henry II. (probably the assise of Northampton, 1176) provided for the trial of questions of seisin and title to land by a recognition or inquiry of twelve men sworn to speak the truth: hence the proceedings, and the jurors themselves, became known as the "assises." Some assises were called from the objects for which they were brought (such as the assise of common of pasture, to recover seisin of a common of pasture), but more often from the occasions which gave rise to them, e. g. the assises of novel disseisin, mort d'auncestor, &c. Litt. § 234; 1 Reeve Hist. Eng. Law 86, 342 et seq.; Digby Hist. R. P. 79. See the following titles. 2. Trials at the assizes.-Magna Carta provided that assises of novel disseisin and mort d'auncestor should only be taken in the shires where the lands lay, and for this purpose justices were sent into the country once a year: hence they were called "justices of assize." Afterwards the Statute of Nisi Prius (13 Edw. I. c. 30) enacted that the justices of assize should try the issues in ordinary actions in the counties in which they arose, and return the verdict to the court at Westminster. Hence trials before judges on circuit are said to take place at the assizes (see CIRCUIT; NISI PRIUS), where also are held trials under commissions of "oyer and terminer" and "gaol delivery" (q. v.) (1 Reeves Hist. Eng. Law 245; Sm. Ac. (11th edit.) 134. Justices of assize, oyer and terminer and general gaol delivery, also have jurisdiction in criminal matters formerly within jurisdiction of the High Court of Admiralty. Stat. 7 and 8 Vict. c. 2.) The assizes, therefore, are for criminal as well as civil business. The judges also sit under a commission of the peace. The assizes are usually held twice a year, after the Hilary and Trinity sittings, but in some parts of the country winter assizes are also held in the vacation after Michaelmas sittings, chiefly for criminal trials. (3 Steph. Com. 351; Winter Assizes Act, 1876; Spring Assizes Act, 1879.) The jurisdiction of the courts created by commissions of assize, of over and terminer, and of gaol delivery, is now vested in the High Court of Justice. (Jud. Act, 1873, 2층 ​16, 29.) The judges of assize for each county are appointed by special commission from the crown, and are hence also called "commissioners of assize;" they must be selected from the judges of the High Court and the Court of Appeal, or from the serjeants-at-law and queen's counsel. Id. § 37. DE ASSISA PROROGANDA.-See
ASSISAcrossref
Burrill's Law Dictionary • 1867
See Assisus. L. Lat. [L. Fr. assise, assis.] In old English and Scotch law and practice. An assise; a species of jury or inquest. Called by Fleta, recognitio xii hominum juratorum; a recognition of twelve sworn men. Fleta, lib. 4, c. 1, § 7. Skene de Verb. Signif. 1 Pitc. Crim. Trials, part 2, p. 55. Assisa venit recognitura, or ad recognoscendum; the assise comes, or came to recognise. Litt. sect. 234. 7 Co. 1. 9 Id. 1. Distinguished from the common jurata, or jury; though it was often turned into it. Vertitur assisa in juratam; the assise is turned into a jury. Bract. fol. 210 b. Fleta, lib. 4, c. 16. 3 Bl. Com. 402. Cadit assisa, nec est capienda ut assisa, sed vertitur in juratam; the assise falls, nor is it to be taken as an assise, but is turned into a jury. Bract. fol. 192 b. Videndum erit utrum assisa capiatur in modum assisæ vel in modum jurata; it must be considered whether the assise be taken in the manner of an assise, or in the manner of a jury. Id. fol. 215 b. See Assise. Britton has a chapter entitled "De assises tournes en jures." Britt. c. 51. Magna assisa; the grand assise, (q. v.) Distinguished by Bracton from the inquisitio patria. Bract. fol. 15 b. A fixed or specified time, (tempus definitum). Glanv. lib. 13, c. 32. Spelman. A fixed or certain number. Spelman. A specified or determinate quantity, quality, weight, measure, price, &c., required by law in certain commodities. Spelman. Skene de Verb. Signif. See Assisa venalium. A tax or tribute, as fixed by law. Spelman. A fine or mulct. Id.

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