Definition
A Latin term from medieval English legal usage meaning "to authorize." The term appears in the records and legal literature of old English law, where it designated the act of conferring authority, sanction, or legal power upon a person or instrument. The past participial form, *auctorizati*, signifies those who have been authorized — persons upon whom authority has been formally conferred.
Why It Matters in Research
AUCTORIZARE is a term of pure historical and paleographic significance. Researchers encountering it will do so almost exclusively in Latin legal manuscripts, plea rolls, formularies, or treatises of the medieval English common law tradition. Its practical importance is navigational: recognizing the term and its conjugated forms prevents misreading or skipping past passages in which the authority of an agent, officer, or instrument is being described or contested.
The term appears in Fleta, a legal treatise of the late thirteenth century written in Latin and modeled on Bracton. Burrill cites Fleta lib. 6, c. 10, § 29 as the authority. Researchers working in Bracton-era sources or early Year Book materials may encounter the term in proximity to discussions of agency, wardship, or the power of officials to act on behalf of the crown or a lord. In those contexts, AUCTORIZARE and its derivatives signal a formal grant or recognition of legal competence, not merely informal permission.
Be aware that Burrill's entry runs AUCTORIZARE together with the Law French term AUCUN (meaning "some" or "someone") in a single compressed passage, which reflects the printing conventions of older dictionaries rather than any conceptual connection between the two terms. Researchers reading Burrill in the original must parse these as separate entries.
No modern English legal term descends directly from AUCTORIZARE in form, though the concept maps cleanly onto AUTHORIZE and AUTHORIZATION in contemporary usage.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary is the sole source in the Law Mind corpus treating this term. Burrill defines it concisely as meaning "to authorize" under old English law, with the participial form *auctorizati* meaning "authorized," citing Fleta. The entry offers no further elaboration and transitions immediately to the Law French term AUCUN, which is unrelated.
No other historical dictionaries in the corpus — including Jacob's Law Dictionary, Tomlin's Law Dictionary, or Bouvier — appear to carry a dedicated entry for AUCTORIZARE, which reflects the term's narrow scope as a paleographic curiosity rather than a term of active doctrinal significance even in its own era. Its importance was procedural and scribal: Latin remained the language of formal legal record in England from the Norman period until the mid-eighteenth century, and correct identification of authorization language in instruments and writs was essential to establishing the validity of an agent's acts.
Jurisdictional Note
AUCTORIZARE is specific to the Latin legal tradition of medieval England. Researchers working in Scottish, continental, or ecclesiastical Latin sources may encounter cognate forms, but the term's documentary home is the English common law record.