Definition
Fanatio (Latin: mensis fanationis) is a medieval English legal term referring to the fawning season in royal forests — the period during which deer gave birth to their young. During this season, the forest was closed to hunting and certain other activities to protect the does and their fawns. The fanatio corresponds closely to, and is often used interchangeably with, the "fence month," a formally recognized period of approximately one month (traditionally mid-June to mid-July) during which forest law imposed heightened restrictions on entry, movement, and activity within royal forests.
The term belongs to the body of medieval forest law that governed the English royal forests as distinct legal territories, operating under the Forest Charter and related enactments rather than common law.
Common Confusion
Fanatio and fence month are closely related but not perfectly synonymous. Fanatio refers specifically to the biological season of fawning and carries the sense of the natural event justifying the legal restriction. Fence month is the formal legal designation for the closed period itself. Rapalje & Lawrence direct readers from fanatio to "fence month" as the operative legal term, suggesting that by the time of those dictionaries, fence month had become the standard usage and fanatio was treated as the Latin antecedent. Researchers encountering fanatio in primary sources should cross-reference fence month entries for the full legal framework.
Why It Matters in Research
Fanatio appears almost exclusively in medieval and early modern sources dealing with English forest law. Researchers will encounter it in glossaries, forest eyre records, and treatises on royal prerogative over forests rather than in common law case reporters or equity records. Because forest law operated as a parallel legal system — with its own courts (the forest eyre and attachment courts), its own officers (verderers, regarders, foresters), and its own body of custom — standard common law dictionaries often give only a passing entry or redirect to fence month, as Rapalje & Lawrence does here.
The term is essentially obsolete by the post-medieval period. Any appearance of fanatio in a source dated after the mid-seventeenth century likely signals either an antiquarian treatise, a glossary, or a document being interpreted from an earlier era. The practical legal significance of the fawning season ended as the English royal forest system declined.
Researchers working in forest law records should note that the restrictions associated with fanatio extended beyond hunting: movement through certain forest areas, allowing dogs to run free, and various agistment activities were also subject to regulation during the fawning season. The scope of the prohibition is therefore broader than hunting law alone, and conflating fanatio solely with a hunting prohibition would be an error in reading historical documents.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary provides the most substantive entry, identifying fanatio as Latin, placing it in old English law, glossing it as "the fawning season, or fence month (mensis fanationis)," and citing Kennett's Glossarium as the source — a credible seventeenth-century antiquarian authority on Anglo-Saxon and medieval legal terminology. Burrill's treatment is brief but accurate in connecting the Latin term to its English counterpart.
Rapalje & Lawrence simply redirect to fence month without providing an independent definition, which is editorially telling: by the late nineteenth century, the term had so little independent legal currency that the editors treated it as a mere cross-reference. The surrounding entries in Rapalje & Lawrence — farandman, fardel of land, farding-deal — confirm the cluster of archaic and Scots law terms being catalogued in this section, placing fanatio in appropriate company as a term of historical rather than living legal significance.
Neither source provides substantial detail on the forest law machinery surrounding the term. For a fuller treatment of the legal regime within which fanatio operated, researchers should consult primary antiquarian sources such as Manwood's Treatise and Laws of the Forest (various early modern editions) or the secondary literature on English forest law.
Jurisdictional Note
Fanatio is a term of English royal forest law and has no recognized equivalent in Scots common law, American law, or civil law systems. It has no operative legal meaning in any modern jurisdiction.