Definition
De Cibariis Utendis (Latin: "of victuals to be used") is the title of an English sumptuary statute enacted during the reign of Edward III (10 Edw. III, St. 3). The statute was designed to restrain excessive expenditure on food and entertainment — regulating, in effect, how lavishly subjects could dine and host. It belongs to the broader category of sumptuary legislation through which medieval English monarchs attempted to control consumption, preserve social hierarchy, and, in some instances, conserve national resources.
The phrase itself functions primarily as a statutory title rather than a term of art with ongoing doctrinal life. Researchers will encounter it in reference works and historical legal commentary as a label for this specific enactment, not as a free-standing legal concept with elements or modern application.
Common Confusion
De Cibariis Utendis is occasionally grouped with other sumptuary statutes addressing dress, fabric, and ornamentation. It is distinct: its subject matter is specifically food and the expense of entertainments, not apparel or luxury goods more broadly. Researchers combing through medieval sumptuary legislation should not assume this statute's provisions extend beyond the table.
Why It Matters in Research
This term is almost exclusively a historical artifact. Researchers are unlikely to encounter it outside of: (1) medieval English legal history, (2) surveys of sumptuary legislation, or (3) historical commentary on the social and economic regulation of the medieval English household.
The principal research trap is treating the statutory title as a generalizable legal doctrine. De Cibariis Utendis was a specific, time-bound parliamentary enactment — not a common law principle that traveled forward into equity or later statutory regimes. Its authority was entirely positive and statutory, meaning it rises and falls with the original enactment and was not the kind of measure courts developed through case law.
For corpus researchers working in Law Mind, the term will appear in historical legal dictionaries and secondary commentary on English legal history rather than in case reporters or modern statutory materials. Its appearance in a source is itself a signal: you are likely working in pre-modern English law, in a treatise written by someone surveying the full sweep of English legislation, or in a historical survey of sumptuary regulation. The Barrington reference cited in Black's (Daines Barrington, Observations on the More Ancient Statutes) is a characteristic secondary source for this stratum of material.
Context matters when dating sources. The 10 Edw. III dating places this statute in 1336. Researchers should be alert to variation in how regnal year statutes are cited across different eras of legal publishing — the same statute may appear under slightly different regnal year notations depending on the edition and editorial conventions of the source.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary (2nd Ed., Supplemental) provides the core entry: the Latin title, the English translation ("of victuals to be used"), the regnal citation (10 Edw. III, St. 3), the subject matter (restraining the expense of entertainments), and a secondary citation to Barrington on the Ancient Statutes.
This is a thin but accurate record. The entry does exactly what historical dictionaries do well for obscure statutory titles: it preserves the citation and translates the Latin. What it does not provide — and what no single dictionary entry could — is the broader legislative context: that De Cibariis Utendis was one of a series of measures in the Edward III period responding to economic pressures, including the disruptions associated with the early phases of the Hundred Years' War and fluctuations in trade. Researchers seeking that context will need to move beyond the dictionary entry to legal history scholarship on medieval English sumptuary regulation.
No meaningful divergence exists among historical legal dictionaries on this term because the term has so little contested content. It is a statutory label with a fixed referent.
Jurisdictional Note
This statute is English in origin and has no application in other common law jurisdictions. It did not form part of the received common law exported to the American colonies and has no American statutory or common law analog.