Definition
A plea in ecclesiastical law asserting that the deceased validly executed the will at issue and was of sound mind at the time of its making. When a party to probate proceedings in an ecclesiastical court filed a libel challenging a will, an opposing party could respond with a condedit — a formal pleading that affirmed the testamentary act itself and the testator's legal capacity to perform it. The plea functions as an affirmative defense, putting the validity of the will squarely before the court while conceding that a dispute exists.
Common Confusion
Condedit is sometimes loosely grouped with other ecclesiastical pleas without appreciating its specific function. It is not a general denial of the libel's allegations, nor is it a plea going only to procedural defects. It is substantive: it affirmatively asserts both the fact of the will's execution and the testator's testamentary capacity. Researchers should not conflate it with a simple traverse or with pleas directed at the court's jurisdiction.
Why It Matters in Research
This term appears almost exclusively in pre-Reformation and early modern English ecclesiastical court records, particularly in the consistory and prerogative courts that exercised jurisdiction over probate and testamentary matters before the Probate Act 1857 transferred that jurisdiction to civil courts in England. Researchers working in English ecclesiastical court records from roughly the medieval period through the mid-nineteenth century will encounter condedit in the context of will contests.
Two research traps deserve attention. First, the term is Latin and may appear in court records without translation or gloss; researchers unfamiliar with ecclesiastical pleading vocabulary may not recognize it as a distinct plea type. Second, because ecclesiastical probate jurisdiction was abolished in England in 1857 and never took the same form in most American jurisdictions, condedit is almost entirely a term of English legal history. American legal dictionaries include it for completeness, but researchers are unlikely to encounter it in American primary sources outside of the earliest colonial period, and even then its appearance would be exceptional.
The corpus connection to testamentary capacity doctrine is significant. The condedit plea addresses the same substantive question — was the testator of sound mind? — that modern probate law handles through undue influence and testamentary capacity challenges. A researcher tracing the history of capacity doctrine will find condedit an early procedural marker of how that question was framed and litigated.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary (both the first and second editions) and Bouvier's Law Dictionary agree on the core definition: condedit is the plea in ecclesiastical court asserting that the deceased made the will in question and was of sound mind. Bouvier cites to volumes 2 and 6 of the English Ecclesiastical Reports; Black's second edition cites the same reporters (with a slight variation in volume and page references between editions, likely a transcription variance rather than a substantive disagreement).
None of the historical dictionaries elaborate on the procedural posture in which condedit arose — who entered it, at what stage, or how the court evaluated it. They treat it as a term of art requiring only identification, not explanation. This is characteristic of ecclesiastical law entries in nineteenth-century American legal dictionaries generally: the terms are preserved but the procedural context is thin, reflecting that American compilers were working from English sources about a court system that had no American equivalent. Researchers needing more than a definition should consult specialized works on English ecclesiastical court practice and the English Ecclesiastical Reports directly.
Jurisdictional Note
Condedit is a term of English ecclesiastical law with no meaningful American jurisdictional application. English ecclesiastical probate jurisdiction ended with the Court of Probate Act 1857. American jurisdictions vested probate jurisdiction in civil courts from their earliest organization and did not replicate ecclesiastical pleading forms.