Definition
A Latin term from feudal law meaning to attorn; to transfer or turn over; or to appoint an attorney or substitute in one's place. The term carried two related but distinct operational meanings in feudal practice:
1. In its general sense, to transfer a legal relationship, obligation, or allegiance — particularly the acknowledgment by a tenant that a new lord had acquired the tenancy, thereby binding the tenant to the new landlord.
2. In its specific form — attornare rem — to turn over money or goods; that is, to assign or appropriate specific property or funds to a designated use or service.
The term is the Latin root from which the English words "attorn," "attorney," and "attornment" directly derive.
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Common Confusion
ATTORNARE should not be read as a simple synonym for appointing legal counsel in the modern sense. While the term does carry the meaning of appointing a substitute or representative, its primary feudal usage concerned the transfer of tenant allegiance upon a change of lordship — a transaction with no direct equivalent in modern legal practice. The surface resemblance to the modern word "attorney" can mislead researchers into treating ATTORNARE as an early form of legal representation, when it more fundamentally describes a feudal act of transfer and acknowledgment.
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Why It Matters in Research
This is a term a researcher will encounter almost exclusively in feudal land law sources — particularly in materials dealing with tenure, conveyance, and the obligations running between lord and tenant. Its importance is largely historical and etymological: understanding ATTORNARE clarifies the original meaning of **attornment**, a doctrine that remained live in landlord-tenant law well into the modern period and still appears in commercial lease contexts.
Two traps for researchers working with historical sources:
First, the word's visual and phonetic similarity to "attorney" can cause misreading of medieval Latin texts. When ATTORNARE appears in a feudal instrument, the operative question is whether it signals a transfer of property or obligation (the more common usage) or an appointment of a representative (the secondary usage). Context — particularly whether rem follows — is determinative.
Second, the specific phrase ATTORNARE REM (to turn over a thing) is sometimes encountered in glossaries and digests without adequate explanation of its function as an assignment or appropriation of goods to a particular purpose. It is not a conveyance in the full property-law sense but rather a direction or earmarking of assets.
Researchers tracing the history of the attorney-client relationship or the doctrine of attornment should treat ATTORNARE as a conceptual origin point, not a functional predecessor. The doctrine it most directly feeds is attornment — the tenant's formal acknowledgment of a new landlord — which survived in modified form into modern leasehold law.
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Historical Dictionary Support
Both editions of Black's Law Dictionary agree on the core meaning: feudal law, to attorn, to transfer or turn over, to appoint a substitute. The second edition adds the gloss on ATTORNARE REM that the first edition omits, providing the useful clarification that the phrase specifically concerns the turning over of money or goods for a particular use or service.
Neither edition explores the term at length, which is consistent with its status as a Latin root rather than an independently operative legal concept in the periods those dictionaries primarily addressed. The second edition's formulation — "to assign or appropriate them to some particular use or service" — is the more precise and useful articulation for researchers, capturing the directed or earmarked character of the act.
What both editions leave unaddressed is the feudal procedural context: the act of ATTORNARE in the tenure sense was not merely informal acknowledgment but a required legal step that gave effect to a transfer of lordship. Without the tenant's act of attornment, a conveyance of the seignory could be ineffective as against the tenant. This structural importance is lost in the brief dictionary treatments.
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Jurisdictional Note
As a feudal Latin term, ATTORNARE has no modern jurisdictional application. Its relevance is confined to English common law history and the historical legal systems derived from it. Researchers working in Scottish, continental European, or canon law sources may encounter variant forms but should not assume identical meaning.
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