Definition
De peregrinatione is a Latin phrase meaning "of pilgrimage" or "concerning pilgrimage." In medieval English law, it appears as a term of art within the doctrine of essoins — formal excuses for non-appearance in court — specifically identifying the variety of essoin known as essoin of ultra mare (beyond the sea). A litigant or defendant who had undertaken a religious pilgrimage, or who was otherwise abroad on such a journey, could offer de peregrinatione as a recognized legal excuse for failing to appear before a court on the appointed day.
The full phrase de peregrinatione et passagio generali — "of pilgrimage and general passage" — appears in Fleta (lib. 6, c. 8, § 1) as a subspecies of the ultra mare essoin. It distinguished the case of a person absent on a recognized religious pilgrimage from other forms of overseas absence, signaling both the destination and the sanctioned purpose of the journey.
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Common Confusion
De peregrinatione is one of several essoin subtypes that historical sources group together under ultra mare, and researchers sometimes conflate it with essoin de malo lecti (essoin of illness in bed) or the general essoin de service du roy (of the king's service). These are distinct excuses for non-appearance. De peregrinatione specifically requires absence due to pilgrimage or sanctioned religious passage, not illness, military service, or general overseas travel. The distinctions mattered procedurally: each essoin carried different rules governing the length of the allowed delay, the vouchers required, and the conditions under which a party could be held in default.
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Why It Matters in Research
This term is principally encountered in sources dealing with medieval English common law procedure, particularly the law of essoins. Researchers working in:
— Early Year Books and plea rolls, where essoin pleas are entered as formal procedural records;
— Treatises such as Fleta, Bracton's De Legibus et Consuetudinibus Angliae, and Glanvill, which systematize essoin doctrine;
— Histories of ecclesiastical and canon law, where the status of pilgrimage as a legally cognizable condition intersected with church authority;
will encounter this phrase and related terminology. By the time of the later common law reporters and the seventeenth-century institutional writers, essoin practice had substantially contracted, and de peregrinatione had become a historical curiosity rather than a living procedural device. Researchers should not expect to find it in post-medieval practice materials or modern procedural codes. Its presence in a source is a strong indicator that the document addresses early or medieval English procedure.
The phrase also signals the broader intersection of canon law, pilgrimage culture, and secular court procedure in the medieval period. Courts had to grapple with the fact that recognized pilgrimages — to Rome, Jerusalem, Santiago de Compostela — could keep a litigant absent for months or years. The law's accommodation of this absence, under conditions, reflects both the religious authority of pilgrimage and practical procedural necessity.
Trap for the unwary: Sources that list essoins may organize them differently. Fleta uses the full phrase de peregrinatione et passagio generali; Bracton and Glanvill may treat the same concept under slightly varying terminology or organizational schemes. Cross-referencing across treatises is essential to confirm you are reading the same procedural category.
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Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary provides the foundational entry: "L. Lat. Of pilgrimage" — confirming the literal translation and identifying the essoin context, with a citation to Fleta, lib. 6, c. 8, § 1. Burrill connects the term directly to the full phrase de peregrinatione et passagio generali and characterizes it as one of the essoins of ultra mare. The entry is brief, functional, and accurate for its purpose.
What Burrill does not supply — and what the term requires to be fully understood — is the procedural context of essoin doctrine as a whole. The mechanics of how an essoin of ultra mare was entered, the time allowances granted, the procedural consequences if pilgrimage could not be verified, and the gradual obsolescence of the doctrine as English procedure modernized are not treated in the single-line entry. Researchers should supplement Burrill with Bracton (De Legibus, Book IV on procedure) and Fleta directly, as well as Maitland's historical work on early English procedure, to situate the term properly.
No substantive divergence among historical legal dictionaries exists on this term — it is too narrow and archaic for competing interpretations to have developed. The term is definitionally stable; the complexity lies entirely in its procedural context.
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