Definition
A term from old French feudal law referring to the forfeiture of a fief as a penalty imposed on a vassal for ingratitude toward his lord. Commise was the specific consequence triggered when a vassal violated the fundamental duties of loyalty and service that defined the feudal relationship — essentially, the legal mechanism by which a lord reclaimed land granted to a vassal who had betrayed or dishonored the bond of tenure.
Why It Matters in Research
Commise is an archaic term of art confined almost entirely to continental feudal law, specifically the French feudal system. Researchers are unlikely to encounter it in common law sources, English case reporters, or American legal materials. Its appearance in legal dictionaries signals that a source is engaging with French institutional history, comparative feudal law, or civil law antecedents — not English or American doctrine.
The term is most relevant when researching the theoretical foundations of forfeiture in feudal land tenure, comparative studies of feudal obligation across French and English systems, or historical analyses of how land reverted to lords under the ancien régime. Researchers working through treatises on feudal institutions, particularly those drawing on continental sources, will find commise cited alongside related concepts of attainder, escheat, and seisin.
All three dictionary sources trace to the same authority: Guyot's institutional work on feudal law. Researchers should treat this as a narrow, well-bounded term — its definitional core has not evolved or generated doctrinal dispute across the dictionaries. There is no known English common law equivalent that used this precise term, which means that primary sources in English law will employ different vocabulary (forfeiture, escheat, attainder) to describe functionally similar outcomes.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary (1st and 2nd editions) and Burrill's Law Dictionary are in complete agreement on this term, reproducing nearly identical definitions and citing the same authority — Guyot, Institutions Féodales, chapter 12. This uniformity reflects the term's narrow scope: commise is a closed historical concept with no live doctrinal application in Anglo-American law, leaving no room for interpretive divergence among lexicographers.
What the historical dictionaries do not address is the procedural mechanics of commise — how forfeiture was adjudicated, what conduct counted as actionable ingratitude, or how commise interacted with other feudal penalties. Researchers needing that depth must go beyond the dictionary sources to Guyot directly or to secondary scholarship on French feudal institutions.
The word itself is French, reflecting the term's origin in the feudal customs of France rather than in Roman law or English common law. Its presence in English-language legal dictionaries is a function of nineteenth-century American and English legal lexicography's broad comparative ambition, not any direct transplantation into Anglo-American doctrine.
Jurisdictional Note
Commise is a term of French feudal law with no recognized application in common law jurisdictions. It appears in English-language legal dictionaries for comparative and historical reference only. Researchers working in Louisiana — the American jurisdiction with the deepest French civil law heritage — may encounter feudal law concepts in historical land title disputes, but commise as a live legal term would be exceptional even there.