Definition
In Roman law, feriae (used only in the plural) were days or periods during which ordinary legal and political business was suspended. Free-born Romans did not conduct lawsuits or transact public affairs on feriae; slaves were entitled to rest from labor. All feriae were classified as dies nefasti — days on which it was unlawful to administer justice or hold assemblies.
Feriae were divided into two main categories:
1. Feriae publicae: Public holidays observed throughout Roman society, declared by state or religious authority.
2. Feriae privatae: Private observances kept only by individual families or persons, typically in commemoration of specific domestic events.
The term is Latin and appears in the Digest and the Justinian Code. It is not used in English common law and has no direct equivalent in modern American or English legal systems, though the concept informs the general legal principle that certain designated days suspend the running of deadlines and court proceedings.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): A holiday.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): "A holiday." Marked as obsolete.
The gap between common and legal meaning here is narrow in substance but significant in precision. In ordinary English, "holiday" suggests a day of celebration or rest. In Roman legal usage, feriae carried a specific procedural consequence: legal proceedings could not be initiated or continued on such days, and time computations in law might exclude them. The term is not merely descriptive of rest — it is a classification with jurisdictional and temporal legal force within the Roman system.
Recognized Forms
/SUBTYPES
Feriae publicae — Public holidays binding on Roman society at large, including annual religious festivals and days declared by state authority.
Feriae privatae — Private observances limited to families or individuals, such as anniversaries of births or deaths within a household.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers encountering feriae in legal sources should keep three things in mind.
First, scope. This term appears almost exclusively in sources treating Roman or civil law. It will surface in discussions of Roman procedure, the Digest (Dig. 2.12), and the Justinian Code (Cod. 3.12), and in early modern treatises drawing on the civil law tradition. Do not expect it in common law materials.
Second, the dies nefasti connection. Feriae were a subset of dies nefasti — days on which legal acts were prohibited. Researchers tracing the history of court holidays, dies non juridici, or judicial recesses in civil law jurisdictions will find feriae a necessary conceptual anchor. The Roman classification system underlies much of the civil law procedural tradition, including rules about tolling and suspension of legal time periods that persist in modern civilian codes.
Third, plurality. Burrill notes explicitly that the term is not used in the singular. If you encounter feria (singular) in a source, treat it with caution — it may reflect imprecise usage, a non-Roman context, or a transcription irregularity.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's and Burrill's entries converge on the same core definition: feriae are Roman law holidays suspending legal and political business. Black's provides the richer treatment, distinguishing feriae publicae from feriae privatae and noting the dies nefasti classification. Burrill's entry is spare — two sentences and two citations — but usefully flags the plurality rule that Black's omits.
Neither source addresses whether analogues to feriae appear in medieval canon law or in early English legal practice, where the church calendar similarly suspended certain proceedings. Researchers interested in that transition should look beyond these dictionaries to specialized civil law and canon law scholarship. Historical dictionaries in this space treat feriae as a pure Roman antiquity rather than as a living concept with downstream influence, which somewhat undersells its relevance to comparative procedural history.
Jurisdictional Note
Feriae is a concept of Roman and civil law with no formal counterpart in the English common law tradition. Civil law jurisdictions historically inherited Roman rules about dies non juridici, which descend conceptually from the feriae framework. Modern civilian systems (France, Spain, Louisiana, Quebec) have their own statutory rules about court holidays that trace this lineage, but the term feriae itself is not operative in any modern jurisdiction.