Definition
Decima (Latin plural: decimae) carries two distinct uses in historical legal sources:
1. In ecclesiastical law: The tenth part of the annual profits of a clerical living or ecclesiastical benefice. Originally exacted by the papal see from the English clergy, decimae were later converted into a component of royal revenue following the English Reformation. The term is functionally synonymous with "tenths" in this context and refers to a periodic fiscal levy on church income rather than to any single transaction or transfer of property.
2. In early English records: A variant spelling of decenna — the territorial and administrative unit of ten households at the base of the frankpledge system. This usage appears in the Laws of Ine and other Anglo-Saxon sources and connects decima to the organization of local responsibility for law and order rather than to any ecclesiastical or tithing concept.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): In classical mythology, Decima is one of the three Fates (Parcae), daughter of Jupiter and Justitia. She measures the thread of life and is the Roman counterpart of the Greek Lachesis.
The mythological meaning has no legal force and no connection to the legal term beyond a shared Latin root suggesting the number ten (decem). Researchers encountering Decima in legal manuscripts should not import any mythological connotation; the legal term is purely administrative and fiscal in character.
Common Confusion
Decima, decenna, and decimus are easily conflated in medieval Latin records. Decenna refers specifically to the frankpledge unit of ten households; decimus is an ordinal adjective (tenth); and decima, as Burrill notes, was itself used loosely to mean decenna in some old records. In ecclesiastical contexts, decima overlaps substantially with tithe and with the term "tenths" as used in post-Reformation English revenue law. A researcher who sees decima in a church record may be looking at a papal levy; the same word in an Anglo-Saxon legal text is more likely describing a local administrative unit.
Recognized Forms
/SUBTYPES
Decimae regiae: Tenths appropriated to the Crown following the break with Rome, particularly after the Act of First Fruits and Tenths (1534), by which revenues formerly flowing to the papacy were redirected to royal coffers.
Decimae papales: The original papal tenths — the periodic assessments on ecclesiastical benefice income claimed by the Holy See before the Reformation.
Why It Matters in Research
The term's dual meaning is a genuine trap. Pre-Reformation ecclesiastical records and post-Reformation royal revenue records both use decima, but they describe transfers of money to entirely different recipients under entirely different legal frameworks. Dating the document is essential before interpreting the term.
The frankpledge usage (decima as decenna) appears almost exclusively in Anglo-Saxon and early Norman sources. By the high medieval period, the ecclesiastical-fiscal meaning dominates. Researchers working in the period from roughly 1100 onward can generally assume the tithing/revenue sense unless the record is explicitly concerned with local policing arrangements.
Blackstone's treatment at 1 Bl. Com. 284–285 — cited by Burrill — remains a useful orientation for the English royal revenue context, explaining how tenths were assessed and collected after their conversion from papal to Crown income. Researchers tracing the administrative history of church finance should use that passage as an anchor and work outward to the primary ecclesiastical records.
Jurisdictional variation matters here: decimae as papal tenths were a pan-European phenomenon, but the specific mechanism of their conversion to royal revenue is distinctly English. Researchers working in Scottish, Irish, or continental ecclesiastical records will find the term used similarly but operating under different legal structures and different moments of transformation.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill is the principal historical dictionary source for this term, and its entry is compact but structurally sound. Burrill correctly identifies both the frankpledge variant (citing Spelman's Glossarium on decanus) and the ecclesiastical-fiscal meaning, routing both through their Latin roots. The entry's citation to Blackstone is genuine and reliable.
What Burrill does not supply — and what no single historical dictionary entry fully captures — is the transition narrative: how decimae moved from papal exaction to royal revenue is a matter of Reformation-era statute and administrative history, not dictionary definition. Researchers who need that story must move beyond the dictionary shelf to ecclesiastical history and the legislative record.
Jacob's Law Dictionary and Tomlin's Law Dictionary, not cited in the source material here, treat tenths in similar terms and are worth consulting for confirmation, particularly for the post-1534 usage.
Jurisdictional Note
The ecclesiastical meaning of decima as royal revenue is specific to England following the Henrician Reformation. In civil law jurisdictions and in pre-Reformation European canon law, decimae retained their papal or local episcopal character. The term appears in Scottish records but Scottish ecclesiastical law followed a distinct post-Reformation trajectory.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
Law Mind Encyclopedia — Ecclesiastical Law
Law Mind Encyclopedia — Frankpledge
Law Mind Encyclopedia — Feudal Revenue and Royal Prerogative