Definition
An archaic Latin term appearing in early English legal texts, meaning a demise or lease — a grant of an estate in land for a term of years or at will. DIMISSIO is an older orthographic variant of DEMISSIO, used in Bracton's thirteenth-century treatise on English law but largely displaced by the more standardized form in subsequent legal writing. The term denotes the act of conveying or letting land by lease, and by extension the instrument or legal relationship created by such a letting.
Common Confusion
DIMISSIO should not be confused with DIMISSIO in ecclesiastical or general Latin usage, where the word carries meanings related to discharge, dismissal, or release from a bond or office. In legal contexts, the term is confined to its conveyancing sense — the granting of a term or estate in land — and has no connection to the broader Latin sense of sending away or releasing a person. Researchers encountering the word in non-legal medieval Latin texts should not assume the conveyancing meaning applies.
Why It Matters in Research
This term matters primarily as a paleographic and philological trap. Researchers working in early common law manuscripts, Year Books, or Bracton-era materials may encounter DIMISSIO where later sources would write DEMISSIO or simply use the anglicized DEMISE. Failure to recognize the equivalence can cause a researcher to miss relevant passages or misread the legal transaction being described.
The orthographic shift from DIMISSIO to DEMISSIO reflects a broader pattern of Norman-Latin legal vocabulary settling into more regularized forms across the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Because Bracton's De Legibus et Consuetudinibus Angliae is a foundational source for early property law, this variant spelling appears in one of the most-cited texts of the medieval common law, making it more than a trivial curiosity.
Researchers tracing the history of leasehold estates, demises, or landlord-tenant doctrine back to their common law origins will encounter this term as they move into primary sources predating the standardization of legal Latin. Cross-referencing with DEMISSIO and DEMISE is essential — the substantive doctrine is identical; only the spelling differs.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary is the principal authority cataloging this term and is direct in its treatment: DIMISSIO is simply an older spelling of DEMISSIO, cited to Bracton folio 23b, with no independent doctrinal content. Burrill treats it as a cross-reference entry rather than a substantive one, which is appropriate — the term carries no legal meaning beyond what DEMISSIO conveys.
Historical dictionaries generally fold this variant under DEMISSIO or DEMISE without independent treatment, reflecting the consensus that DIMISSIO had no distinct legal life of its own. It appears as an artifact of Bracton's Latin rather than as a term of art that circulated independently in legal practice or pleading. No significant divergence among historical sources has been identified on this point.
Jurisdictional Note
DIMISSIO is exclusively a term of early English common law and appears only in Latin texts of that tradition. It has no recognized analog in civil law, canon law, or Scots law sources, where lease and grant terminology follows different Latin conventions.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
Law Mind Encyclopedia: DEMISSIO; LEASE; BRACTON AND EARLY COMMON LAW SOURCES