Definition
In feudal law, averrare denotes a customary duty imposed on certain tenants requiring them to transport goods by wagon or on loaded pack animals for their lord. The obligation was a form of labor service owed as a condition of tenure rather than a payment in money or kind. Tenants bound by averrare were typically villein or customary tenants whose land-holding carried defined service obligations, of which cartage and carriage duties were among the most common.
Common Confusion
AVERRARE vs. AVERSIO: These are distinct Latin terms with no substantive legal relationship. Averrare describes a feudal cartage service. Aversio is a civil law term with two separate senses: (1) a sale in gross or bulk rather than by individual item, and (2) in the law of marine insurance, the diversion or warding off of peril. Bouvier's decision to run both terms together in a single passage without clear visual separation has led some secondary sources to treat them as related concepts. They are not. Researchers encountering either term should verify which concept the source actually addresses before drawing any conclusion.
Why It Matters in Research
Averrare is a term of historical feudal practice with no modern legal application. Researchers encounter it almost exclusively in two contexts: medieval tenure records and treatises on English feudal land law, and historical legal dictionaries attempting to catalog the vocabulary of customary tenure. It belongs to a cluster of Latin service terms — alongside averia, boon-work, and carriagium — that appear in manor court rolls, surveys, and early common law pleadings concerning villein services.
The principal research trap is scope creep in Bouvier's entry, which folds a partially related term, AVERSIO, into the same passage without clearly distinguishing the two. A reader scanning Bouvier may conflate averrare (a service obligation) with aversio (a civil law concept concerning bulk sale or the turning away of peril in insurance), which are substantively unrelated. See the COMMON CONFUSION section below.
Because averrare describes a feudal service rather than a cause of action or legal right, it rarely appears in reported case law. Researchers tracing land title disputes or historical tenure questions will more likely find the underlying concept described in narrative rather than by this Latin term, particularly after the 12th and 13th centuries when such services were increasingly commuted to money payments.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's (both editions) and Bouvier's converge on the same core definition: a duty of cartage owed by customary tenants. Black's keeps the definition compact and feudal in framing. Bouvier's is marginally broader, noting the carrying of goods "in a wagon, or upon loaded horses," which captures the two modes of transport — wheeled vehicle and packhorse — that the duty could take in practice. Neither source situates averrare within the broader taxonomy of feudal services (villeinage, serjeanty, socage) or explains how such duties were enforced, commuted, or extinguished. Historical sources from the 19th century that discuss feudal tenure in more depth — such as Blackstone's Commentaries or Pollock and Maitland's History of English Law — do not index averrare by name but address the underlying class of service obligations extensively.
No significant divergence exists among the three source dictionaries on meaning. The divergence worth noting is Bouvier's structural problem of appending the definition of AVERSIO immediately after averrare without a separate heading, which has caused confusion in secondary sources citing Bouvier.
Jurisdictional Note
Averrare is a term of English feudal law. It has no parallel application in American law, and American legal dictionaries that include it do so purely for historical reference. Civil law jurisdictions did not employ the concept.