Definition
A cistern; a subterranean or enclosed receptacle designed to collect and store rainwater or other water. In Roman civil law and early English law, cisterna referred to a physical water storage structure, and the term appears in legal contexts primarily in relation to property rights, servitudes, and the obligations or privileges attached to water collection on land. The term is Latin and appears in legal sources without translation, reflecting its direct carry-over from Roman jurisprudence into medieval English legal practice.
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Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): In modern biological usage, cisterna refers to membrane-enclosed compartments within organelles such as the Golgi apparatus and endoplasmic reticulum — a meaning confined entirely to cellular biology.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): A cistern; an artificial reservoir or tank for holding water, beer, or other liquids; also, a natural reservoir.
The common-language meaning of cistern — a tank or reservoir for water storage — tracks closely with the legal meaning in most respects. The relevant gap is contextual: in legal sources, cisterna carries specific property and servitude implications that the ordinary word "cistern" does not. A cisterna in Roman and early English law was not merely a container but a fixture that could give rise to legal rights and duties between neighboring landowners, including rights of access, maintenance obligations, and the regulation of water flow from adjacent properties.
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Why It Matters in Research
Researchers encountering cisterna in historical legal sources should treat it as a property-law term, not merely a descriptive architectural one. Its appearances in the Digest and in Fleta situate it within the Roman and English law of servitudes — specifically the rules governing water-related rights between parcels of land (aquae ductus, aquae haustus, and related servitudes). A cistern on one parcel could anchor a neighbor's right to draw water or could define the limits of drainage obligations.
The term will appear almost exclusively in Latin in primary sources. It is unlikely to appear in English-language statutory texts; researchers should look for it in treatises, Romanist commentaries, and early common-law texts that drew heavily on civilian learning. Fleta (ca. 1290), cited by Burrill, is an early English legal treatise written in Latin and influenced by Roman law; its use of cisterna reflects this civilian inheritance. The Digest citation (Dig. 43.22.4) places the term squarely within the Roman interdictal procedure governing water channels and their structures, which regulated disputes over the obstruction or alteration of water infrastructure.
For researchers working on the history of water rights, riparian law, or the reception of Roman law in England, cisterna is a useful marker of civilian influence in a text. Its presence in a source suggests the author was drawing on Roman jurisprudence rather than purely native common-law tradition.
One trap: do not conflate the regulatory context of cisterna in Roman law (governed by specific interdicts) with later English common-law rules about water, which developed independently. The structural similarity of the concepts does not mean the legal rules are identical.
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Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's entry is brief but accurate: it identifies cisterna as a term of civil and old English law, correctly glosses it as a cistern or rainwater receptacle, and provides the two key primary source citations — Digest 43.22.4 and Fleta book 4, chapter 27, section 8. Burrill does not attempt to expand on the servitude doctrine surrounding the term, which limits the entry's utility for substantive research but makes it reliable as a pointer to sources.
The Latin dictionary tradition (Lewis and Short) confirms that cisterna was used in classical Latin not only for water storage but also, in legal contexts, for the preservation of wine, citing Digest 47.2.21.5 — a passage in a theft context rather than a servitude context. This breadth of application is worth noting: the term was not technically restricted to water law even in Roman sources, though that is overwhelmingly its significance in property and servitude discussions.
No major historical English law dictionary beyond Burrill engages substantively with this term, reflecting its status as a learned borrowing retained in technical Latin usage rather than absorbed into vernacular English legal vocabulary.
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Jurisdictional Note
Cisterna as a legal term has no active significance in modern American or English law. Its relevance is historical and comparative. Researchers in civil law jurisdictions (Louisiana, Quebec, and jurisdictions with Roman-law heritage) may find closer analogues in living doctrine when researching water servitudes, but modern sources will not use the Latin term.
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