Definition
A Latin term of medieval legal usage carrying two related but distinct meanings:
1. (Adjective) Forfeited. Describes property or rights that have been lost through offense, breach, or legal judgment. The phrase bona forisfacta (forfeited goods) applies this sense to tangible property.
2. (Noun) A crime or offense; specifically, the wrongful act that triggers forfeiture. In this sense, forisfactum names the transgression itself, not merely its consequence.
The two meanings are connected by cause and effect: the forisfactum (offense) produces the forisfactum (forfeited thing). Context in historical legal documents determines which sense is operative.
Common Confusion
The dual function of forisfactum as both the wrongful act and the thing forfeited can confuse readers of medieval and early modern legal texts. A passage describing bona forisfacta refers to forfeited goods — the consequence. A passage using forisfactum standing alone often refers to the offense — the cause. Researchers encountering the term should identify whether the surrounding text concerns property status or criminal conduct before assigning meaning.
Why It Matters in Research
Forisfactum is a term researchers encounter almost exclusively in pre-modern sources: medieval plea rolls, early treatises on feudal tenure, and commentary on the common law of forfeiture. It is not a working term in modern legal practice and will not appear in contemporary statutes or judicial opinions under this name.
Several research traps are worth flagging:
First, the noun-adjective ambiguity described above is compounded in documents that use forisfactum elliptically — sometimes referring to the forfeiture proceeding, sometimes to the forfeited res, and sometimes to the underlying wrong. Readers of Du Cange's Glossarium (a primary authority cited in the historical dictionaries) and Spelman's Glossarium Archaiologicum will find extended treatment of the feudal context in which forisfactum operated, where lords could claim property of tenants who committed offenses against them.
Second, forisfactum sits at the intersection of criminal law and property law in the feudal system in a way that has no clean modern equivalent. The automatic passage of property to a lord or the Crown upon commission of a felony — attainder and its consequences — is the downstream concept. Researchers tracing the history of forfeiture doctrine in Anglo-American law should treat forisfactum as an entry point into that broader history, not as a self-contained doctrine.
Third, Blackstone's Commentaries (1 Bl. Comm. 299), cited in both editions of Black's, uses bona forisfacta in the context of discussing forfeiture as a consequence of conviction. That passage is the anchor reference for the term in the English common law tradition and should be consulted directly to understand how Blackstone situated the concept within his broader account of property rights and criminal punishment.
Historical Dictionary Support
The three source dictionaries are tightly aligned, with Black's first and second editions carrying identical entries and Rapalje & Lawrence confirming both meanings without elaboration. None of the entries provides a definition that exceeds three clauses, and none situates forisfactum within a broader historical or doctrinal narrative.
What the historical dictionaries do not supply is any guidance on how forisfactum related to cognate terms in the medieval legal vocabulary — forfeitura, eschaeta, and attinctura — each of which describes overlapping but distinct mechanisms by which property passed from subject to lord or Crown. Researchers relying solely on dictionary entries will miss this network of related concepts. The citation to Du Cange and Spelman in Black's is the most useful signal in the entries: both glossaries treat forisfactum at length in the context of feudal obligation and are the appropriate primary sources for anyone doing serious historical work with this term.
Jurisdictional Note
Forisfactum is a term of English feudal and common law origin. It does not appear as a technical term in Scottish, Irish, or Continental civil law traditions under this form, though functional equivalents exist. American legal sources inherited the forfeiture doctrine but not the Latin terminology, which dropped from use in practice as English replaced Latin in legal proceedings following the Proceedings in Courts of Justice Act 1730.