Definition
A Latin term of medieval legal usage meaning to harbor or to entertain another person — that is, to receive, lodge, or shelter someone on one's property. The term appears in older writs, plea rolls, and feudal instruments where the act of providing shelter carried legal consequence, particularly in contexts involving fugitives, outlaws, or persons whose harboring was prohibited by law or royal command.
Why It Matters in Research
This is a term researchers will encounter almost exclusively in medieval English legal records, early common law treatises, and transcriptions of Latin writs or plea rolls. It does not survive into modern legal vocabulary in any operative sense. A researcher encountering herbergare in a primary source should treat it as a marker of feudal or early common law context, likely touching on harboring liability, sanctuary, or the obligations of a lord or householder with respect to persons on his land.
The critical research trap is the truncated entry in Rapalje & Lawrence, which mid-sentence pivots to a definition of corporeal hereditaments — an apparent typesetting or compilation error in the source volume. Researchers relying on that entry for the meaning of herbergare should disregard the latter half entirely; the definition belongs to a different headword. This kind of artifact is common in nineteenth-century legal dictionaries that were typeset in dense double-column formats.
Because herbergare carries criminal and quasi-criminal implications — harboring a wrongdoer was actionable and in some contexts treasonous — the term may appear alongside entries on accessory liability, maintenance, and the early law of outlawry. Researchers tracing the historical roots of modern harboring statutes (including those covering fugitives, undocumented persons, or escaped criminals) may find herbergare a useful entry point into the older conceptual lineage, though the doctrinal line is not direct.
Historical Dictionary Support
All four source dictionaries agree on the core definition: to harbor; to entertain. Black's (both editions) and Bouvier's are identical in substance, offering no elaboration beyond that two-word gloss. This uniformity reflects the term's narrow and settled meaning — there was no doctrinal dispute about what herbergare meant, only about when it mattered.
Rapalje & Lawrence is the anomaly. The entry begins correctly — "To harbor; to enter" — but the text immediately breaks into a definition of corporeal hereditaments, referencing livery of seisin, lands, houses, and related concepts. This is almost certainly a printing error: the herbergare entry was truncated and the next headword's definition ran into it without a proper break. Researchers should not attempt to reconcile the two passages as a unified legal concept; they are unrelated.
None of the historical dictionaries provide illustrative case references, writ forms, or statutory context for herbergare. This is consistent with how nineteenth-century American legal lexicographers treated terms of purely historical Latin provenance — catalogued for completeness, not for active use. The absence of elaboration signals that by the time these dictionaries were compiled, herbergare had no living role in American or English practice.