Definition
De claro die is a Latin and Law Latin phrase meaning "by daylight" or "in clear day." It appears in legal contexts to indicate that a particular act, service, or obligation was to be performed during daylight hours, as opposed to at night. The phrase carried operational significance in medieval English law, where the distinction between acts performed in daylight and those performed after dark could affect legal rights, duties, and liabilities.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers encountering de claro die in historical sources are most likely to find it in the context of feudal services, writs, or procedural requirements where the timing of performance—specifically its occurrence within daylight—was a legally material fact. The phrase is a marker of the practical, daylight-bounded world of medieval common law, where many rights and obligations were tethered to natural light: service to a lord, the execution of process, or the performance of labor.
The sole substantive reference anchoring the phrase across all three source dictionaries is Fleta, lib. 2, c. 76, § 8. Fleta is a late thirteenth-century English legal treatise (circa 1290), written anonymously and drawing heavily on Bracton. It is not widely digitized in full-text searchable form in modern databases, so researchers working from secondary dictionary sources may need to consult Latin editions directly. The Fleta reference situates de claro die in the context of villein services and agricultural obligations—a point none of the historical dictionary entries make explicit, but which is consistent with the chapter structure of that treatise.
Because the phrase is a descriptor rather than a freestanding legal doctrine, it will rarely appear as a headword or index term in case reporters or statute compilations. Researchers should treat it as a qualifying phrase embedded within broader discussions of feudal tenure, service obligations, or early procedural law, and search accordingly.
Historical Dictionary Support
All three source dictionaries—Black's (1st Ed.), Black's (2nd Ed.), and Burrill's—give identical or nearly identical entries: the Latin phrase, its English translation ("by daylight"), and the citation to Fleta. There is no divergence across sources, which reflects that the term had a narrow and stable use rather than a contested or evolving legal meaning.
What the historical dictionaries do not supply is any contextual explanation of why daylight mattered legally. The omission is not unusual for the period's dictionary format, but it leaves the modern researcher with the translation and nothing more. Burrill's identification of the phrase as "L. Lat." (Law Latin) is a useful clarification: the term belongs to the specialized vocabulary of the English legal system borrowed from Latin, as distinct from classical Latin usage, and it should be understood within that tradition rather than read for broader Roman law significance.