Definition
A Latin term from Roman and medieval law with two related but distinct applications:
1. Roman civil law: A runaway slave. The fugitivus was a slave who had fled from his master's control, whether temporarily or with the apparent intent to remain at large. Roman law treated the fugitivus as a specific legal category of property, with detailed rules governing recovery, sale, and liability. The Digest addressed the term extensively, including debate among Roman jurists over what conduct actually made a slave a fugitivus — mere absence was not always sufficient; intent to flee mattered.
2. Old English law: A fugitive, specifically a person who fled after committing a felony. The term encompassed both free persons who absconded to avoid criminal liability and, in the feudal context, villeins or bondmen who abandoned their lord without license. The Saxon equivalent was flymen (plural: flymen). Departure of a villein without the lord's permission had legal consequences regarding status and the lord's right to reclaim the bondman.
Common Confusion
The two senses of fugitivus — the Roman runaway slave and the English criminal fugitive — overlap in form but arise from entirely different legal systems and carry different consequences. A researcher encountering the term in a medieval English source should not assume the Roman civil law rules apply, and vice versa. The connecting thread is the act of unauthorized flight, but the legal framework governing status, recovery, and punishment differed substantially between Roman law and English feudal and criminal law.
Why It Matters in Research
Fugitivus is a term researchers will encounter in Latin legal texts, annotated digests, and treatises on Roman law, as well as in English sources dealing with villeinage, outlawry, and the forfeiture of a felon's goods.
The critical navigational issue is context. The Roman law sense appears in citations to the Digest (Dig. 11.4 on the recovery of fugitive slaves; Dig. 21.1.17 on the various jurist definitions of the term; Dig. 50.16.225 on general definitions). These Digest passages represent genuine juristic controversy — Roman lawyers did not agree on whether a slave who left temporarily with intent to return was a fugitivus, or whether only those intending permanent flight qualified. Researchers working on Roman property law, slavery, or the law of sale (since a concealed fugitivus status was a latent defect affecting the sale of a slave) will need to trace these distinctions carefully.
The English law sense connects to bona fugitivorum — the goods of a fugitive — which were subject to forfeiture to the lord or the Crown. Researchers tracing forfeiture doctrine, outlawry, or the legal consequences of felony in medieval English sources will encounter fugitivus and its vernacular cognates (the Law French futyf, the Saxon flymen) as near-synonyms. The villein context adds a further layer: a bondman's unauthorized departure was a separate legal wrong from criminal flight, and the remedies differed.
Burrill's entry is the most complete of the historical dictionaries for this term, preserving both the Roman and English senses along with vernacular equivalents that Black's omits. Researchers relying solely on Black's will miss the villein/bondman dimension and the connection to bona fugitivorum.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's (1st and 2nd editions) treat fugitivus narrowly, limiting the definition to the Roman civil law sense of a runaway slave with citations to the Digest and Code. Both editions direct readers to Dig. 21.1.17 for the "various definitions" of the term — an accurate pointer to Roman juristic debate, though neither edition unpacks what those definitional disputes were.
Burrill's Law Dictionary is more comprehensive. It preserves both the Roman and English meanings, supplies the vernacular equivalents (Law French futyf, Saxon flymen), and connects the term to bona fugitivorum — a cross-reference that materially aids understanding of the term's English legal life. Burrill also notes the villein dimension, identifying the bondman who left his lord without permission as a recognized subtype of fugitivus in English usage. This is the most useful historical entry for a researcher working across both Roman and English sources.
None of the historical dictionaries unpack the Digest's internal juristic controversy over the definition, which is the most substantively interesting legal question the term raises. For that, the Digest itself (particularly Dig. 21.1.17) must be consulted directly.
Jurisdictional Note
As a Latin term of Roman origin, fugitivus has no modern jurisdictional life in common law systems. Its relevance is historical: Roman civil law contexts across European legal traditions, and medieval English law dealing with outlawry, villeinage, and forfeiture. Modern fugitive law uses entirely different terminology and statutory frameworks.