Definition
A commissary is a person or officer entrusted with a delegated charge, duty, or jurisdiction on behalf of a superior authority. The term carries two primary legal meanings that operate in largely separate domains:
1. Ecclesiastical law: An officer appointed by a bishop to exercise spiritual jurisdiction in remote or outlying parts of a diocese — areas too distant for the bishop to supervise directly. The commissary acts as the bishop's representative, hearing matters of ecclesiastical cognizance within that territory.
2. Military law: An officer responsible for supplying an army or military unit with provisions, food, and stores. The commissary function gave rise to the formal subsistence department of the armed forces, headed by a commissary-general of subsistence.
In modern usage, the term has largely migrated from the officer or person to the institution or facility itself — particularly the store or supply point that serves soldiers, prisoners, or other institutional populations.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): A store primarily serving persons in an institution, most often soldiers or prisoners; an account used by a prisoner to purchase provisions; also a cafeteria at a film or television studio.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): One to whom is committed some charge, duty, or office by a superior power; a commissioner. Also an officer of the bishop exercising ecclesiastical jurisdiction in outlying parts of a diocese, and an officer responsible for provisioning an army.
In ordinary modern speech, commissary almost always refers to a physical place — a store, canteen, or cafeteria. In legal and historical sources, commissary refers to a person holding delegated authority. Researchers reading historical legal texts should not assume the institutional or retail meaning; the person-as-officer meaning dominates in law through at least the nineteenth century.
Recognized Forms
/SUBTYPES
Commissary (ecclesiastical): The bishop's delegate exercising jurisdiction in a designated portion of the diocese. Sometimes styled commissary-general when the jurisdiction was broader or the delegation more comprehensive.
Commissary (military): The officer managing subsistence for troops. Bouvier identifies a formal organizational hierarchy: commissary-general of subsistence (rank of brigadier-general), assistant commissaries-general (rank of lieutenant-colonel), and commissaries of subsistence (rank of major).
Commissary (prison/institutional): The facility or account through which incarcerated persons purchase goods. This is purely modern usage and appears in correctional law, prison regulations, and civil rights litigation concerning conditions of confinement.
Why It Matters in Research
The term's meaning shifts dramatically depending on the century and the legal domain. Researchers working in ecclesiastical or canon law materials from the seventeenth through nineteenth centuries will encounter commissary as a jurisdictional officer — the key question there is the scope of delegated authority and how it compares to the ordinary jurisdiction of the bishop or the chancellor. Burrill's truncated entry gestures toward this jurisdictional complexity without fully resolving it; researchers should treat Burrill with caution on this point and cross-reference ecclesiastical law sources directly.
In military law contexts, particularly antebellum U.S. materials, commissary refers to a specific rank and function within the army's supply structure. Bouvier provides the most operationally useful description of that hierarchy, though it reflects a pre-Civil War statutory structure that was subsequently reorganized. Researchers tracing the evolution of U.S. military supply law should not assume Bouvier's rank structure remained static.
The modern prison-law use of commissary — as an account or store — is entirely absent from the historical dictionaries. Civil rights litigation under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, administrative law challenges to prison conditions, and correctional policy documents use commissary in this institutional sense. Researchers moving between historical and contemporary materials need to be alert to this semantic divide; a nineteenth-century source about a commissary officer and a twenty-first-century case about commissary access are discussing categorically different things.
There is also a latent connection to civil law and agency concepts: the commissary as a delegated officer shares conceptual ground with the commissioner, the mandatory, and the procurator. Researchers building arguments about delegated authority, apparent authority, or the scope of a representative's powers may find the ecclesiastical commissary useful as a historical analog, even outside strictly religious legal contexts.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's (1st and 2nd editions) and Bouvier agree on the two core meanings — ecclesiastical delegate and military supply officer — without significant divergence. Both treat the person, not the facility, as the primary referent. Bouvier is the most detailed on the military side, supplying the actual rank equivalencies embedded in nineteenth-century U.S. law.
Burrill's entry is incomplete as preserved — the text breaks off mid-discussion and pivots into an unrelated passage about assize commissions, which appears to be a transcription or compilation error in the source. Researchers should not rely on Burrill for commissary and should treat his entry as effectively absent.
Rapalje & Lawrence's entry is similarly truncated, cutting off after establishing the ecclesiastical jurisdictional rationale. What survives confirms the standard definition without adding analytical depth.
None of the historical dictionaries address the modern institutional meaning (the prison commissary store or account), which developed through correctional practice and regulation rather than through doctrinal legal development. This is a genuine gap in the historical record as represented on the Law Mind shelf.
Jurisdictional Note
The ecclesiastical meaning retains relevance primarily in jurisdictions with established churches or active ecclesiastical court systems — historically England and its colonies, and in modified form, jurisdictions recognizing canon law. In the United States, the military meaning governed federal law until the army's supply and subsistence functions were reorganized in the twentieth century. The prison commissary meaning is now a creature of state and federal correctional regulation and constitutional conditions-of-confinement doctrine, varying considerably by jurisdiction.