Definition
An Old English legal term denoting the winter season during which deer could lawfully be killed. Fermisona was one of two recognized hunting seasons in the forest law of medieval England, governing the taking of deer within royal forests and protected hunting grounds. It stood in contrast to tempus pinguedinis — the summer season for deer — which governed the period when deer were fat and prime for hunting. Together, these two seasons structured the temporal framework of forest law, dictating when and under what conditions deer could lawfully be taken.
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Why It Matters in Research
Fermisona is a term of pure historical interest; it has no living legal application. Researchers will encounter it only in sources dealing with medieval English forest law, game law, or the history of royal hunting rights.
The primary research trap is treating fermisona as a standalone rule rather than one component of an elaborate regulatory system. Forest law was among the most complex and jealously enforced bodies of medieval English law, governing not just hunting seasons but rights of entry, the classes of persons permitted to hunt, specific species of deer protected at particular times, and the jurisdiction of specialized forest courts. Fermisona tells you when the winter season applied; it does not tell you who could hunt, what could be taken, or before what tribunal violations were adjudicated.
Researchers working in pre-modern English sources should be alert to the pairing of fermisona with tempus pinguedinis. Bouvier is the most explicit of the historical sources in naming this contrast directly. When one term appears in a historical document, the other is likely part of the same regulatory framework.
The term also appears in proximity to related forest-law vocabulary — regarders, verderers, the assize of the forest, and the distinction between venison (the deer themselves) and vert (the woodland cover protecting them). Sources that use fermisona are typically sources engaged with forest law as a system, not merely as a curiosity, and those surrounding terms are likely to appear nearby.
No American legal application exists. This is exclusively an English legal institution predating common-law transplantation to the colonies.
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Historical Dictionary Support
All four source dictionaries agree on the core definition: fermisona is the winter season for killing deer under old English forest law. There is no meaningful divergence on substance.
Black's Law Dictionary (both editions) provides the definition without elaboration. Rapalje & Lawrence is equally brief, but usefully places fermisona adjacent to fernigo (waste ground where ferns grow) and ferrator (a farrier), suggesting the compilers treated these terms as part of a cluster of archaic English land and forest vocabulary.
Bouvier's is the most instructive of the four, explicitly pairing fermisona with tempus pinguedinis as the complementary summer season and attributing the contrast to Tomlin — a reference to Thomas Edlyne Tomlins's Law Dictionary, an early nineteenth-century English source. This cross-reference confirms that the seasonal pairing was a recognized feature of the doctrine, not an inference.
What the historical dictionaries collectively omit is substantial: none explains the institutional machinery of forest law within which fermisona operated, the specific deer species or forest jurisdictions to which the season applied, or how violations of seasonal restrictions were prosecuted. Researchers wanting that context must look beyond dictionary sources to treatises on forest law and the historical records of forest courts.
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Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
See Law Mind Encyclopedia: Forest Law (Medieval England); Game Law; Royal Forests.
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