Definition
Catallis (also rendered *catalla* or *catallum*) is a term from medieval and early English law referring to chattels — movable personal property of any kind. The word encompassed goods, livestock, money, and other personal possessions distinguishable from real property in land. In its broadest medieval usage, catallis could include virtually any movable asset belonging to a person, and it appears frequently in pleadings, writs, and records concerning the seizure or forfeiture of a defendant's goods alongside land.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers encountering catallis in medieval writs, plea rolls, or early common law records should treat it as a functional synonym for chattels, but with important nuance: the scope of catalla in early sources was sometimes broader than the later, refined category of "chattels personal" as understood in post-medieval equity and common law. In early forfeiture and attainder proceedings, the phrase *terras et catalla* — lands and chattels — was the standard formula covering the full reach of a convicted person's property subject to crown seizure. Researchers working in Year Books, early plea roll abstracts, or Norman-influenced records will encounter this term frequently in that pairing.
Because the term appears almost exclusively in Latin legal records and formulaic pleading contexts, it rarely migrates into English-language secondary sources from the seventeenth century onward. Researchers who encounter the word in an anglicized form (e.g., "catallis suis" in a translated writ) should cross-check against the original Latin to confirm the sense intended — livestock-specific usage was common in manor court records, while broader goods-and-chattels usage dominated criminal and attainder contexts.
There is no meaningful modern statutory or common law survival of the term catallis as a live legal word. Its research value is essentially historical and paleographic.
Historical Dictionary Support
Rapalje & Lawrence do not carry a dedicated entry for catallis, and the source material provided captures an adjacent entry (Casus Federis / Casu Consimili) rather than the term itself — a gap that reflects the tendency of nineteenth-century Anglo-American legal dictionaries to omit purely Latin formulaic terms that had long since been replaced by their English equivalents. This is itself instructive: by the time Rapalje & Lawrence compiled their dictionary, catallis had effectively dropped from active legal vocabulary, absorbed entirely into "chattels."
Earlier English legal lexicographers were more attentive to the term. Cowell's *Interpreter* and Blount's *Nomo-Lexikon* both treat catalla or catallis as the Latin root of the English "cattle" and "chattels," noting the etymological unity of the two words — a point of genuine legal-historical significance, since in early medieval law livestock were the paradigmatic form of movable wealth, and the word carried that concrete meaning before expanding into the general personal property sense. Jacob's *Law Dictionary* similarly traces the term while noting its equivalence to chattels in common law pleading.
The overlap between catallis and the later English "chattels" is essentially complete in legal function, though the Latin form persists in original records well past the period when English had displaced Latin in most court proceedings — a product of the conservative formulaic drafting of writs and indictments.
Jurisdictional Note
Catallis is a term of English common law origin and appears primarily in English legal records. It has no independent development in American law, where "chattels" was the operative term from the colonial period forward. Researchers in Scottish or civil law-influenced jurisdictions will encounter related but distinct terminology.