Definition
A Latin phrase meaning "goods and chattels." Bona et catalla denotes the totality of a person's movable personal property — all tangible things capable of ownership that are not real property or fixtures. The phrase functioned as a comprehensive term of art in common law pleading and conveyancing to sweep in the full range of personal possessions belonging to an individual.
Common Confusion
Bona et catalla should not be confused with bona fide (in good faith) or bona vacantia (ownerless goods escheating to the crown), despite sharing the word bona. These are distinct phrases with entirely different legal functions. Bona et catalla concerns the scope of personal property; bona vacantia concerns property succession when no owner or heir exists; bona fide is a standard of conduct, not a property category.
Why It Matters in Research
This term is a marker of historical legal drafting, not modern usage. Researchers encountering bona et catalla in primary sources — pleadings, writs, wills, letters of administration, or early equity proceedings — should treat it as the functional equivalent of "all personal property" in contemporary instruments, but should not assume that equivalence is exact. The common law categories of personal property were more technically subdivided than their modern counterparts, and what qualified as a chattel for purposes of a writ or estate administration could turn on distinctions (e.g., choses in action versus choses in possession, or things personal versus things real) that the phrase itself does not resolve.
The phrase appears with particular frequency in:
— Writs of execution and judgment enforcement, where seizing a debtor's bona et catalla was the standard formulation for reaching personal assets.
— Letters of administration and probate contexts, where an administrator was authorized to collect and manage the deceased's bona et catalla.
— Medieval and early modern pleadings, where precise Latin formulae were mandatory and departures could be fatal to the action.
Researchers working in English ecclesiastical court records, early American colonial records, or any common law jurisdiction before the mid-nineteenth century procedural reforms will encounter this phrase regularly. The citation shared by both Black's and Rapalje & Lawrence — 16 Mees. & W. 68 — is a reference to Meeson and Welsby's Exchequer Reports, an English series covering 1836–1847, which helps situate the phrase's active legal use in that period and suggests the courts were still defining its scope as late as the early Victorian era.
Modern researchers should note that the phrase dropped out of pleading practice following the reforms that replaced common law forms of action with code pleading and, later, notice pleading. Its appearance in any document after the mid-to-late nineteenth century is likely either a deliberate archaism or a carry-over clause in instruments drafted from older precedents.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary and Rapalje & Lawrence are in complete agreement on this term, both rendering it as "goods and chattels" and both characterizing the scope as movable property. Black's adds the formulation "all personal things that belong to a man," which underscores the comprehensive sweep intended by the phrase. Rapalje & Lawrence amplifies this slightly with "of every description," reinforcing that the phrase was not limited to any subset of moveables. Both sources cite the same Exchequer authority, indicating reliance on a common line of English case law.
What neither source addresses, and what researchers should supply from context, is the phrase's relationship to the distinction between bona (goods in the broader civil law sense) and catalla (chattels in the technical common law sense). The pairing of the two terms was not redundant — it was additive, ensuring that property described by either concept was captured. This doubling construction was typical of legal Latin and Law French drafting conventions designed to prevent interpretive gaps.