Definition
Banni nuptiarum is a Latin legal phrase meaning the banns of matrimony — the public announcement or proclamation of an intended marriage, made in advance of the ceremony to allow any person with a lawful objection to come forward and oppose it. The term derives from medieval ecclesiastical practice and appears in old English law sources as the formal Latin designation for what common usage calls "reading the banns." The purpose of the proclamation was to expose impediments to the marriage — such as a prior undissolved marriage, consanguinity, or lack of consent — before the union was solemnized.
Common Confusion
Banni nuptiarum is the plural Latin form. Bracton uses the singular bannum; Fleta uses bannus. These variant forms appear in different primary sources and refer to the same institution. Researchers encountering any of these forms in a historical text are looking at the same underlying concept. See also BANNUM and BANNUS.
Why It Matters in Research
This term is encountered almost exclusively in medieval and early modern English legal sources. Researchers tracing the law of marriage formation, impediments, or ecclesiastical jurisdiction will find the concept embedded in canon law materials, ecclesiastical court records, and early common law treatises rather than in parliamentary statutes or later case reports.
The principal trap in historical sources is variant spelling and grammatical form. Bracton (fol. 307b) uses the singular bannum; Fleta (lib. 5, c. 30, § 3) uses bannus; the plural banni nuptiarum appears in Spelman and Cowell. A corpus search limited to one form will miss material indexed under the others. Any comprehensive research into this concept requires searching all three variants.
The institution of banns also sits at the intersection of ecclesiastical and common law jurisdiction, which creates a second research complication. Disputes about whether banns were properly read, or whether an objection was validly lodged, were handled in ecclesiastical courts — not common law courts — for most of English legal history. Marriage law was not substantially secularized in England until the Marriage Act 1753 (Lord Hardwicke's Act) and subsequent legislation. Researchers using common law reporters will find little directly on point; the relevant materials are in ecclesiastical court records and canon law commentary.
For American legal research, the concept has marginal direct relevance. American marriage law developed along statutory lines, and the formal requirement of banns was largely replaced by the license system. The term appears in American legal dictionaries primarily as a historical reference point for understanding marriage impediments and the origins of public notice requirements.
Historical Dictionary Support
All three source dictionaries provide near-identical brief entries: a Latin-language label, a note that the term belongs to old English law, and a gloss translating it as "banns of matrimony." Black's first and second editions add nothing beyond this core. Burrill adds meaningful primary source support — citing Spelman, Cowell, Bracton (fol. 307b), and Fleta (lib. 5, c. 30, § 3) — and flags the variant singular forms bannum (Bracton) and bannus (Fleta), directing the reader to those entries.
What the historical dictionaries do not address is the procedural and jurisdictional context: how the proclamation was made, what happened when an objection was lodged, or how the requirement evolved over time. For that, the dictionaries function only as a gateway; Spelman's Glossarium Archaiologicum and Cowell's Interpreter are the logical next step in the historical sources, followed by Bracton and Fleta themselves.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
See Law Mind Encyclopedia: Marriage (Formation and Impediments); Ecclesiastical Courts; Canon Law in English Legal History