Definition
A Latin term from medieval ecclesiastical and legal usage meaning to give the tonsure — the ritual cutting or shaving of hair from the crown of the head — as the ceremony by which a man was admitted to clerical status. Because the tonsure was performed on or in the shape of a crown (corona), the act of conferring it was called coronare. In its broadest sense, to coronare was to make a man a priest or, more precisely, to admit him to the first degree of clerical orders. The term appears in old English records in connection with the privileges and legal disabilities that attached to clergy under the medieval common law.
Sub-definitions drawn from historical sources:
1. Coronare filium: To cause one's son to receive the tonsure; to make one's son a clerk or priest. The phrase appears in manorial and estate records where a tenant's act of placing a son in holy orders had legal consequences for tenure obligations.
2. Homo coronatus: A man who had received the first tonsure as preparation for superior orders. This preliminary tonsure, cut in the form of a corona or crown of thorns, conferred clerical status sufficient to invoke benefit of clergy before it was extended or abolished.
Common Confusion
Coronare should not be confused with coronare in the sense of crowning a monarch, though both derive from corona. In legal records, coronare almost always refers to tonsure and clerical admission, not royal coronation. The Latin term for coronation of a sovereign is typically coronatio. Researchers encountering coronare in old English plea rolls, manorial surveys, or ecclesiastical court records should assume the clerical tonsure meaning unless context clearly indicates otherwise.
Why It Matters in Research
The practical significance of coronare in legal research lies in its connection to benefit of clergy — the medieval doctrine allowing clergymen to claim exemption from secular criminal jurisdiction. Because clerical status was established by the tonsure, records of coronare or of a man's status as homo coronatus could determine whether a defendant could plead the clergy and be transferred from the King's courts to ecclesiastical jurisdiction.
Researchers working in Year Books, early plea rolls, or manorial records will encounter coronare most often in two contexts: first, in disputes over whether a defendant qualified as a clericus for purposes of benefit of clergy; and second, in tenure cases where a tenant's act of placing a son in orders affected villein status, wardship rights, or heriot obligations. The lord's interest in a villein's children meant that coronare filium without permission could be contested.
The term drops out of active legal usage after the gradual statutory curtailment and eventual abolition of benefit of clergy in English law (substantially completed by 1827), which is why it survives only in the "old records" stratum of the historical dictionaries. Researchers should not expect to find it in post-medieval pleading or in American materials except as a learned historical reference.
A secondary research trap: the Rapalje & Lawrence entry in the source material does not contain a definition of coronare at all — the text present is a fragment from an unrelated entry (Crepps v. Durden on the quashing of a conviction before suit). This confirms that coronare was not independently treated by Rapalje & Lawrence and that Black's and Burrill are the operative sources for this term.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary (1st and 2nd editions) and Burrill's Law Dictionary are in full agreement on the core definition, all three tracing the meaning to Cowell's Interpreter — John Cowell's 1607 glossary of legal terms, a standard authority for Anglo-Latin and law-French vocabulary in old English records. The reliance on Cowell across sources signals that coronare was already archaic by the early modern period and that the definition rests on antiquarian rather than living legal usage.
The 2nd edition of Black's usefully adds the sub-entries for coronare filium and homo coronatus, which are absent from the 1st edition and from Burrill. These additions give the term its practical research value, connecting it explicitly to the mechanics of clerical qualification and benefit of clergy. Burrill's entry is substantively identical to Black's 1st edition, including the parenthetical etymology from corona — notable because Burrill generally provides more etymological depth than Black's and yet adds nothing here beyond what Cowell supplies.
None of the historical dictionaries situate coronare within the broader doctrine of benefit of clergy or explain the tenure consequences of coronare filium. Researchers needing that context must look beyond the dictionary sources to treatises on medieval English ecclesiastical law and villeinage.
Jurisdictional Note
Coronare is a term of English ecclesiastical and common law with no counterpart in American legal usage. American jurisdictions abolished any residual benefit of clergy doctrine early in the republic, and the concept of clerical tonsure as a legal status marker has no domestic application.