Definition
Dies feriati (Latin: "festival days") is a civil law term for holidays — days set apart by law or custom on which courts did not sit, legal proceedings were suspended, and certain legal acts could not be validly performed. Under Roman law, these days were distinguished from dies fasti (days on which courts could conduct business) and dies nefasti (days on which no legal business could be conducted for religious reasons). Dies feriati functioned as a recognized category of non-judicial days, their observance grounded in religious festival calendars that structured the Roman legal year.
The practical consequence was that acts required to be performed on a dies feriatus — service of process, appearance in court, commencement of a limitation period — were generally excused or tolled, with the obligation carrying over to the next lawful day.
Common Confusion
Dies feriati is one of several Latin dies compounds that researchers encounter in civil law sources and older English legal materials, and the distinctions among them matter:
- Dies fasti: Days on which the praetor could lawfully pronounce the three key words of legal proceedings (do, dico, addico). Judicial business was permitted.
- Dies nefasti: Days on which those words could not be spoken; courts were closed for religious reasons.
- Dies feriati: Holidays specifically — festival days set apart by public observance, distinct from the nefasti category though often overlapping in effect.
- Dies juridici / dies non juridici: The later common law adaptation of this framework, distinguishing days on which courts sit from those on which they do not.
Confusing dies feriati with dies non juridici is easy and understandable — both describe non-court days — but the terms belong to different legal systems and carry different theoretical foundations. The civil law classification is religious and calendrical in origin; the common law distinction is procedural and administrative.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers encounter dies feriati primarily in three contexts:
1. Roman and civil law sources. The Digest citation (Dig. 2, 12, 2, 9) that both Black's and Burrill's reference is genuine and locatable. Researchers working in Roman law materials, canon law texts, or the civilian tradition will find the term used with technical precision there. Understanding the Roman calendar of fasti and nefasti is prerequisite context.
2. Early English legal history. English common lawyers were aware of the Roman framework and occasionally invoked the dies feriati concept when discussing non-juridical days, Sundays, and holy days on which courts would not sit. Crabb's English Law (referenced obliquely in Black's) discusses the division of days in the medieval English legal calendar. Researchers using early English legal sources — Year Books, Fitzherbert, Coke — will find this vocabulary in discussions of when process could issue and when limitations ran.
3. Limitations and tolling questions in historical sources. Because dies feriati suspended legal obligations, the concept has downstream relevance for understanding how medieval and early modern lawyers thought about tolling of statutes of limitations, dies non, and the legal effect of Sundays and holy days. Modern tolling doctrine inherits some of this conceptual architecture, though the terminology has largely been displaced.
The term itself appears infrequently in American legal materials. When it does appear, it is typically in academic or historical discussion rather than operative legal documents.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's and Burrill's entries are nearly identical in substance, each pointing to Dig. 2, 12, 2, 9 as the authoritative source — a real citation to the Digest title governing days on which someone can be summoned to court (De in ius vocando). Both treat the entry as a brief, confirmatory gloss rather than a developed discussion, reflecting the term's status as established civil law vocabulary requiring little elaboration for the intended audience of practicing lawyers who had Latin training.
Burrill adds the cross-reference to dies gratiæ with a citation to Coke on Littleton (Co. Litt. 134b, 135a), which is instructive: it shows how English legal writers of the period moved fluidly between the civil law dies vocabulary and analogous English practice concepts. The dies gratiæ (day of grace) — sometimes called the quarto die post, the fourth day after a return day — was a procedural indulgence in English courts that echoed the civil law's sensitivity to calendar-based exemptions, though it operated on different principles.
Neither dictionary develops the Roman calendar background or distinguishes dies feriati from the overlapping categories of dies nefasti and dies fasti. Researchers who need that fuller picture must go to the Digest itself or to civilian commentators.
Jurisdictional Note
Dies feriati is a civil law term with no direct operative meaning in American or English common law. Its relevance in U.S. research is historical and comparative. Jurisdictions with mixed civil law heritage — Louisiana, Quebec, and systems derived from Roman law — may deploy the underlying concept more directly, though the Latin term itself has largely been replaced by statutory language governing court holidays and non-judicial days.