Definition
An archaic Latin term appearing in old legal records, meaning relics — physical remains or objects of veneration, particularly those associated with a deceased person or saint. The term appears in historical ecclesiastical and property records where such objects were subject to legal disposition, custody disputes, or inventory.
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Why It Matters in Research
Researchers encountering EXTUMAZ in historical records should treat it as a signal that the document originates in an ecclesiastical or medieval property context. The term does not survive into modern legal usage and will not appear in contemporary statutes, codes, or case law. Its presence in a record typically indicates a pre-Reformation or early common law document touching on church property, burial rights, or the disposition of sacred objects.
The principal research trap is confusing EXTUMAZ with terms related to human remains in a strictly biological or forensic sense. In the records where it appears, the term carries the specifically religious and institutional weight of relics as objects of custody and sometimes of significant monetary and symbolic value — church disputes over relic ownership were genuine legal controversies in medieval ecclesiastical courts.
Because Black's 2nd Edition attributes the definition to Cowell — that is, John Cowell's *Interpreter* (1607) — researchers following this term back through the dictionary chain should go directly to Cowell rather than treating Black's entry as an independent authority. Black's is here functioning as a relay for a much older glossary tradition. Cowell's *Interpreter* is the primary source, and its definitions reflect the legal vocabulary of Elizabethan and Jacobean-era legal practice, itself drawing on even older ecclesiastical Latin usage.
Researchers working in Law Mind's historical ecclesiastical law materials, medieval property records, or early English legal glossaries are the most likely to encounter this term in context. It has no meaningful presence in American legal materials at any period.
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Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary (2nd Edition) provides the only readily accessible modern legal dictionary treatment of EXTUMAZ, offering a spare two-word definition — "relics" — and attributing it directly to Cowell. The entry is illustrative of how Black's 2nd Edition handles archaic Latin terms of ecclesiastical origin: minimal definition, single-source attribution, no contextual elaboration.
The adjacent entry in Black's 2nd Edition — EXUERE PATRIAM, meaning to renounce one's country or native allegiance — is entirely unrelated and should not be read as contextually connected to EXTUMAZ. The two entries appear in sequence only as an artifact of alphabetical arrangement.
No other major historical legal dictionaries in the standard Law Mind shelf (Bouvier, Tomlin's, Jacob's) appear to carry an independent entry for EXTUMAZ. This absence reinforces that the term was already archaic by the time the great nineteenth-century legal dictionary projects were underway, and that even Black's treatment represents a retrieval from an older glossary tradition rather than a living legal concept.
The term's legal significance was always narrow: confined to ecclesiastical property law, primarily in contexts where the physical custody, transfer, or inventory of sacred relics required formal legal documentation. With the dissolution of the monasteries in England and the broader disruption of ecclesiastical property structures in the sixteenth century, the practical occasions for using the term in active legal practice largely disappeared.
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Jurisdictional Note
EXTUMAZ has no current jurisdictional significance. Its historical use was confined to ecclesiastical legal contexts in England and, more broadly, in medieval continental European church law. American jurisdictions never adopted the term, and it has no analog in American statutory or common law.
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