Definition
A Latin phrase from Old English ecclesiastical and legal practice referring to the grand or high feast days on which cathedral and collegiate choirs were customarily robed in copes — the ornate liturgical vestments also rendered in historical sources as "caps" or "cappis." These were solemn feast days of the first rank, distinguished from lesser observances by the ceremonial dress of the choir and the fuller performance of the liturgical office. The term belongs to the vocabulary of medieval ecclesiastical administration and, by extension, to the legal governance of church institutions, including questions of obligatory attendance, performance of duties, and the reckoning of time in ecclesiastical calendars.
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Why It Matters in Research
This term will appear almost exclusively in medieval and early modern sources touching ecclesiastical law, canon law as received in England, and the internal governance of cathedral chapters, collegiate churches, and similar institutions. Researchers are unlikely to encounter it in a litigation context but may meet it in disputes over ecclesiastical duties, canon positions, and the obligations attached to prebends or chantries, where the distinction between feast-day grades affected what a canon, vicar, or chorister was required to do and when.
The principal research trap is the word "cappis" itself. Translators and later copyists sometimes rendered this as "capes" or "caps" rather than the liturgical term "copes," potentially obscuring the ecclesiastical meaning entirely. A researcher reading a modernized abstract or calendared summary may miss the significance of the phrase if the translator was unfamiliar with the vestment vocabulary.
The term also touches the broader question of how the English common law interacted with canon law and ecclesiastical custom before and after the Reformation. In the pre-Reformation period, questions about feast-day observance had practical legal significance for the administration of church property and the enforcement of clerical obligations. Post-Reformation, such terminology survives chiefly in historical sources and in disputes before ecclesiastical courts that continued to apply modified canon law well into the modern period.
Corpus researchers should note that Bouvier cites Jacob's Law Dictionary as his authority. That chain of citation — Jacob through Bouvier — is characteristic of many arcane ecclesiastical entries in American legal dictionaries of the nineteenth century, where the term was preserved as a matter of completeness rather than practical utility. The term has no American legal application.
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Historical Dictionary Support
Bouvier's Law Dictionary defines festas in cappis as "grand holidays, on which choirs were accustomed to wear caps," citing Jacob's Law Dictionary. This is the primary channel through which the term entered American legal lexicography, and the definition, while accurate in substance, compresses what was in medieval English ecclesiastical practice a carefully graded hierarchy of feast days. The use of "caps" for the Latin "cappis" reflects a loose translation; the vestment at issue is the cope, a semi-circular liturgical cloak of considerable ceremonial weight, not a head covering.
No other dictionary in the standard historical shelf expands materially on Bouvier's entry. The term does not appear to have attracted independent treatment in American sources beyond this derivation. Researchers requiring fuller treatment should consult primary canon law sources and scholarship on the Use of Sarum or other pre-Reformation English liturgical traditions, where the gradation of feast days and their associated obligations is documented in detail. Bouvier's entry preserves the term faithfully but cannot be treated as an authoritative account of its full ecclesiastical significance.
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Jurisdictional Note
This term has no operative meaning in any modern common law jurisdiction. Its relevance is confined to historical research into English ecclesiastical law and the medieval canon law tradition as applied in England prior to and during the English Reformation. Disputes touching on such material, if they arise at all, would be resolved by reference to historical canon law sources rather than to dictionary definitions.
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