Definition
A woman who cohabits with a man as his companion and sexual partner without being his lawful wife. In Anglo-American legal usage, the term denotes a woman living in a state of cohabitation outside of valid marriage, with no formal legal status as a spouse and no entitlement to the rights that flow from marriage.
In Roman and civil law, the term carried a more technically distinct meaning: a concubine was a recognized form of inferior or secondary wife — a woman who lived with a man in a stable, acknowledged domestic arrangement but upon whom the man did not confer his rank or legal status. This relationship was legally distinguishable from both legitimate marriage and mere fornication. Children born of such a union occupied a defined intermediate status and generally could not inherit as heirs.
In historical English common law, the term appeared most often in probate, inheritance, and legitimacy disputes. A woman identified as a concubine before a man's marriage to her was understood as having held no legal marital rights during that period; if the man subsequently married her, she became his lawful wife and her prior status was legally extinguished for most purposes. Children born during the concubinage, however, remained subject to questions of bastardy and legitimacy.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): A sexual partner, especially a woman, to whom one is not or cannot be married; a woman who lives with a man but is not a wife; or a woman kept for sexual service, as in a harem.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): A woman who cohabits with a man without being his wife; a paramour; or, among certain peoples and under Roman law, a wife of inferior condition — lawfully joined to a man but not by the usual ceremonies and of inferior social standing. Children of concubines were not heirs of their father.
The gap between common and legal meaning is significant in the historical direction. Modern common usage reduces the term to an informal or pejorative label for a sexual companion outside marriage, often with connotations of exploitation or subordination. The legal tradition — particularly in Roman and civil law — recognized concubinage as a structured quasi-marital institution with defined rights, obligations, and consequences for the status of children. A researcher encountering the term in historical legal sources must resist reading it through the modern colloquial lens, which strips away the institutional content the term carried in Roman, canon, and early civil law contexts.
Common Confusion
Concubine is sometimes conflated with mistress or paramour in historical legal texts. The distinction matters: a mistress or paramour implies no stable domestic arrangement and carries no legal recognition in any tradition. A concubine, particularly in Roman and civil law sources, existed within a recognized legal framework — concubinage was not merely tolerated but formally categorized. Conflating the two terms in research obscures whether a historical source is describing a woman with a defined quasi-legal status or simply a woman involved in an illicit affair.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers encounter concubine primarily in four contexts within the Law Mind corpus, and the term means something different in each.
First, in Roman and civil law materials, concubinage was a formal institution. Sources drawn from Justinian's Digest, Glanvill, and early civil law treatises treat the concubine as occupying a recognized legal category with implications for inheritance, the status of children, and the parties' mutual obligations. Reading these sources without understanding the institutional character of Roman concubinage will produce misreadings.
Second, in ecclesiastical and canon law materials, concubinage was defined and regulated — and frequently condemned — as a distinct offense. Canon law distinguished concubinage from simple fornication by the element of stable cohabitation. Clergy concubinage was a recurring disciplinary subject. Researchers working in church court records or ecclesiastical treatises will find the term used with this canon law precision.
Third, in common law probate and inheritance records, concubine appears in disputes over legitimacy. The Burrill entry preserves an important usage: a woman was called concubina before marriage to the father and mulier after — a distinction that determined whether a child born before the marriage could claim legitimate status. This precise historical usage is largely invisible in modern legal sources.
Fourth, in American legal records from the 19th and early 20th centuries, the term appears in cases involving inheritance by illegitimate children, claims by long-term cohabitants, and — in some Southern jurisdictions — in records involving enslaved women held in coercive domestic arrangements. In this last context, the legal vocabulary of concubinage was sometimes applied in ways that laundered coercion as quasi-consensual domestic status. Researchers must be alert to this usage.
The term has largely disappeared from modern legal drafting and statutory language, replaced by cohabitant, domestic partner, or unmarried partner. Its survival in legal research is almost entirely historical.
Historical Dictionary Support
The historical dictionaries agree on the core Anglo-American definition: a woman who cohabits with a man to whom she is not married. Black's (both editions) and Bouvier's are substantially identical on this point, offering the simplest formulation. Rapalje & Lawrence mirrors Black's without addition.
Burrill adds the most substantive historical content. His entry preserves the Glanvill distinction between concubina and mulier — between the woman before and after marriage — which has direct bearing on legitimacy doctrine in early common law. This distinction does not appear in Black's or Bouvier's and would be missed by a researcher relying on those sources alone.
All historical dictionaries include the Roman law secondary meaning (inferior wife upon whom the husband does not confer rank), but none develops it with enough depth to serve a researcher working in Roman or civil law sources. For that purpose, the historical dictionaries are a starting point only; specialized civil law treatises and encyclopedias are necessary.
What the historical dictionaries miss almost entirely: the canon law dimension of concubinage as a defined ecclesiastical offense, and the American context in which the vocabulary of concubinage intersected with slavery and racial hierarchy. These silences are significant for corpus researchers.
Jurisdictional Note
American jurisdictions in the 19th century varied in whether and how they accorded any legal recognition to long-term cohabitation relationships denominated as concubinage. Louisiana, with its civil law heritage, maintained a more nuanced treatment of the concept than common law states. In several Southern states, anti-miscegenation statutes directly addressed concubinage across racial lines. Modern American law does not recognize concubinage as a legal status; the term's legal relevance is now exclusively historical.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
Law Mind Encyclopedia — Domestic Relations (historical treatment of marriage, cohabitation, and marital status)
Law Mind Encyclopedia — Roman Law (civil law classification of persons and domestic relations)
Law Mind Encyclopedia — Illegitimacy and Bastardy (legitimacy of children born outside recognized marriage)