Definition
Bigamus is a Latin legal term drawn from civil and canon law designating a man who has been twice married. The term carries three historically distinct applications that operated simultaneously in legal usage:
1. A man who has successively married two or more wives at different times — whether or not both marriages subsisted concurrently.
2. A man who has two wives living at the same time — that is, a man presently in two subsisting marriages.
3. A man who has married a widow — a meaning specific to canon law and the doctrine of benefit of the clergy, in which marriage to a previously married woman was treated as a disqualifying condition.
The Latin maxim appearing in Coke's Institutes captures the term's scope: Bigamus seu trigamus, etc., est qui diversis temporibus et successive duas seu tres uxores habuit — "A bigamus or trigamus, etc., is one who at different times and successively has married two or three wives." (4 Inst. 88.)
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Common Confusion
Bigamus and bigamy are related but not identical. Bigamus is the person — a status designation applied to an individual under civil or canon law. Bigamy is the offense — the criminal or canonical act of contracting a prohibited marriage. In modern legal systems, the criminal charge is bigamy; bigamus survives primarily as a term of historical analysis. Researchers should also note that bigamus in canon law extended to men who married widows, a meaning with no counterpart in modern bigamy statutes, which focus exclusively on concurrent marriages.
A second confusion: the entry for BIGAMUS in some editions of Black's Law Dictionary is immediately followed by an unrelated note that the word was used in ancient records to mean any cart, wain, or wagon. That usage is etymologically distinct (from the Latin biga, a two-horse vehicle) and has no legal significance for marriage law. The proximity of these entries in historical dictionaries is an artifact of alphabetical arrangement, not conceptual relationship.
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Why It Matters in Research
Bigamus is a term researchers will encounter almost exclusively in pre-modern sources — English statutes from the reign of Edward III and Edward VI, ecclesiastical court records, and treatises drawing on Coke's Institutes. Its primary significance in Anglo-American legal history lies in the benefit of the clergy doctrine, where bigamus status operated as a bar to clerical privilege. A defendant who had married twice, or who had married a widow, could be denied the benefit of the clergy that would otherwise have reduced or avoided criminal punishment. This made the determination of bigamus status a live procedural question in criminal proceedings through the early modern period.
Researchers working in ecclesiastical records should be alert to the canon law meaning of bigamus that includes marriage to a widow. This usage appears in sources like Termes de la Ley and in Burrill's citation to 2 Inst. 273, and it can produce apparent anomalies — a man labeled bigamus who was, by any modern understanding, monogamous.
For statutory research, the term appears in 18 Edw. III, c. 2 and 1 Edw. VI, c. 12. These statutes address benefit of the clergy qualifications and are the primary English legislative anchors for the term's legal use.
Modern bigamy statutes do not use the term bigamus, and its appearance in contemporary legal writing would signal deliberate historicism. Corpus researchers should not expect to find bigamus in post-nineteenth-century case law or legislation except as a quotation from older sources.
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Historical Dictionary Support
The historical dictionaries agree on the core civil law meaning — successive marriages to two or more wives — and cite to the same authority (4 Inst. 88). Black's Law Dictionary and Burrill's reproduce the Latin maxim from Coke. Bouvier adds the canon law specification that marriage to a widow was included, and ties the practical significance explicitly to benefit of the clergy. Rapalje & Lawrence provide the most useful statutory anchors (18 Edw. III, c. 2; 1 Edw. VI, c. 12; 2 Inst. 273) for researchers tracing the English legislative history.
All sources treat bigamus as primarily a status term rather than an offense term. None of the historical dictionaries fully disentangle the three distinct meanings — successive marriages, concurrent marriages, and marriage to a widow — with analytical clarity. Burrill comes closest by noting that the term was "applied originally, in the canon law, to clerks or ecclesiastical persons, who were forbidden to marry a second time," which correctly identifies the doctrinal origin. The conflation of successive and concurrent marriage meanings in several entries reflects genuine historical ambiguity in source texts rather than dictionary imprecision.
What the historical dictionaries do not address: the procedural mechanics of how bigamus status was established in court, or how the widow-marriage rule interacted with the more familiar successive-wives rule in actual litigation. Researchers needing that level of detail should look to the ecclesiastical court records and Coke's treatment in 2 Institutes directly.
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Jurisdictional Note
Bigamus as a term of art is primarily English and civil law in origin. It has no operative meaning in modern American, English, or Commonwealth statutes, which address the underlying conduct through bigamy provisions. The term may appear in Louisiana legal materials influenced by the civil law tradition, but even there its modern usage is historical rather than operative.
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Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
Law Mind Encyclopedia — Bigamy
Law Mind Encyclopedia — Benefit of the Clergy
Law Mind Encyclopedia — Canon Law in English Courts
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