EXCOMMENGEMENT

Definition

An archaic Anglo-French legal term for excommunication — the formal act by which a person was cast out of the Church and, by extension, stripped of certain civil and legal capacities. In medieval English law, excommunication was not merely a spiritual sanction; it carried temporal consequences, including the inability to sue in the king's courts, to serve as a witness, and to perform other legal functions. The term appears primarily in early English procedural and ecclesiastical law contexts, where it was treated as a status with defined legal consequences. ---

Common Confusion

EXCOMMENGEMENT vs. EXCOMMUNICATION: These terms are interchangeable in substance. Excommengement is the Anglo-French form found in early common law pleading texts; excommunication is the Latin-derived term used in ecclesiastical and later civil sources. Researchers should not read separate doctrinal content into the two forms — the distinction is linguistic and historical, not substantive. Burrill's Law Dictionary treats excommengement as a direct equivalent, cross-referencing both forms without distinction. ---

Why It Matters in Research

This term is a navigational placeholder more than a working legal concept. Researchers encountering excommengement in a primary source — a plea roll, a treatise passage, or a Year Book reference — should understand immediately that the operative doctrine is excommunication and should redirect research to that entry in historical sources. The term's appearance in Coke's Littleton (Co. Litt. 134a), cited by all four source dictionaries, anchors its usage to early common law pleading. Coke treated excommunication (in either form) as a disqualifying legal status, relevant in particular to questions of parties' competency and standing in court proceedings. Researchers working in pre-19th century English law, ecclesiastical law, or early American colonial legal materials should be alert to this status doctrine and its procedural consequences. One research trap: the civil law material in Burrill's entry is technically a separate matter. Burrill runs the Anglo-French excommengement entry directly into a Latin civil law entry on excusatio (excuse or release from obligation), which begins "Lat. [from ex, from, and causa, cause]." These are distinct concepts that Burrill presents in sequence under the same headword block. Researchers should not conflate excommengement (excommunication) with excusatio (civil law excuse from duty). This is an artifact of Burrill's dictionary structure, not a legal connection between the terms. The term has no modern operative legal significance in American law. Ecclesiastical discipline is today entirely outside civil court jurisdiction in the United States, and the temporal legal disabilities historically attached to excommunication were abrogated long before American legal independence. ---

Historical Dictionary Support

All four source dictionaries treat excommengement as a simple Anglo-French equivalent of excommunication, with no independent doctrinal content. Black's (both editions) and Rapalje & Lawrence give one-line cross-references pointing to excommunication and citing Co. Litt. 134a. Burrill provides the most textured entry, adding references to Britton (c. 49), Brooke's Abridgment (Excommengement), Stat. 23 Hen. VIII c. 3, and Gilbert's Common Pleas. This suggests the term had a modest body of procedural authority around it in early English practice, though not a doctrine distinct from excommunication itself. No historical dictionary in the Law Mind corpus assigns excommengement a meaning that diverges from excommunication. The consistent treatment across sources supports reading the term purely as a linguistic variant. ---

Encyclopedia Cross-Reference

See Law Mind Encyclopedia: Excommunication (Civil Effects of); Ecclesiastical Law in the Common Law Tradition. ---

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