Definition
Collections of fixed legal forms, procedural templates, and documentary instruments used in forensic and transactional practice. In historical legal scholarship, the term refers specifically to compilations of standard forms employed among the Franks and other early continental European peoples, recording how legal acts — conveyances, grants, donations, oaths, judicial proceedings — were to be properly executed and expressed.
The term functions as the plural of "formulary," which in legal usage denotes both (1) a single collection of such forms, and (2) any individual form contained within such a collection.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Plural of formulary. In general use, "formularies" refers most often to approved lists of pharmaceutical drugs, particularly in health insurance and hospital administration contexts.
Historical common usage: Not distinctly defined in Webster's 1913 as a legal term of art; the entry for "formulary" tracks the sense of a set form or prescribed model, with pharmaceutical and ecclesiastical applications alongside the general meaning.
Editorial note: The modern everyday encounter with "formularies" is almost exclusively pharmaceutical — a drug formulary is an approved list of medications covered under an insurance plan. The historical legal meaning is unrelated to medicine entirely, referring instead to collections of legal procedural forms. A researcher encountering the term in legal sources prior to the twentieth century should not import the pharmaceutical sense.
Common Confusion
"Formularies" is sometimes loosely equated with codes, digests, or statutory compilations. The distinction matters: formularies were not statements of substantive law but practical workbooks of form — how a legal instrument should be drafted and executed, not what the law commanded. They functioned closer to modern form books or pleading guides than to legislative codes or law reports. The Frankish formularies, for instance, record customary transactional usage rather than enacted rules.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers working in early medieval legal history, comparative law, or the history of legal instruments will encounter "formularies" as a term of art pointing to a specific body of primary source material. The formulary tradition is foundational for understanding how law was practiced on the ground in post-Roman Europe, distinct from Roman law texts, canonical compilations, and the barbarian law codes (leges barbarorum).
The most significant corpus reference point is the Formulary of Marculphus (Marculf), a seventh-century Frankish collection cited by name in all four source dictionaries. Burrill identifies it as "the most curious" of such collections. Researchers should understand that Marculphus is a primary source, not a secondary legal authority — it documents form usage, not doctrine.
The term appears in historical legal dictionaries in the context of early European legal antiquities. It is rarely encountered in common law sources as a term of art, because the formulary tradition was predominantly a continental and civil law phenomenon. English legal practice developed its own parallel tradition of precedent books and form books, but these were not conventionally called "formularies" in English legal literature.
A research trap: modern corpus materials using "formularies" almost always mean pharmaceutical approved-drug lists, a meaning that post-dates the legal historical sense entirely. Context is essential. A nineteenth-century legal treatise citing "formularies" means Frankish form books; a twentieth-century health law document means something categorically different.
Historical Dictionary Support
All four source dictionaries are in agreement on the core definition: formularies are collections of forms (formulæ) used in forensic proceedings and legal instruments among the Franks and other early continental European peoples. The phrasing across Black's (both editions), Burrill's, and Bouvier's is nearly identical, suggesting a shared underlying source — most likely Butler's notes to Coke on Littleton (Co. Litt. Note 77, lib. 3), which all four dictionaries cite either directly or indirectly.
Burrill's adds the most texture, characterizing Marculphus as "the most curious" of the formularies and citing both Butler's Co. Litt. and Butler's Horæ Juridicæ (Hor. Jur. 87, 88). Bouvier is the most compressed, offering only the definition and the Coke citation. Black's second edition matches the first edition substantively but adds the qualifier that the Marculphus formulary is "of considerable interest," tracking closely with Burrill's assessment.
None of the historical dictionaries address the pharmaceutical or administrative uses of "formularies" that dominate modern usage — an expected gap given that those meanings postdate the relevant editions. None offer guidance on the relationship between formularies and the Roman actiones or the barbarian leges, a gap researchers should fill through specialized secondary literature in legal history.
Jurisdictional Note
Formularies in the historical legal sense are a feature of continental European legal history, not of common law jurisdictions. English and American legal researchers encounter the term primarily in comparative law scholarship, legal history, and treatises engaging the civil law tradition. Modern health law usage of "formularies" is primarily a U.S. regulatory and insurance law concept, governed at the federal level by statutes including the Affordable Care Act and Medicare Part D regulations.