Definition
Heremones is an archaic legal term denoting the followers of an army — that is, the non-combatant persons who accompanied a military force, such as sutlers, servants, camp followers, and others traveling in the train of armed troops. The term appears in early English legal texts in contexts concerning the legal status, liabilities, and governance of persons attached to a military expedition but not formally enrolled as soldiers.
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Why It Matters in Research
This term belongs to a narrow stratum of archaic military and feudal legal vocabulary that surfaces almost exclusively in early English legal records, treatises on the law of arms, and historical commentary on military discipline. Researchers encountering it in primary sources should be alert to a few practical points.
First, the term is terminologically isolated: it does not carry forward into modern military law, where the functional category it once described is addressed under concepts such as "persons accompanying the force" or "civilians subject to military jurisdiction." A researcher tracing the legal treatment of camp followers or non-combatant attachments across periods will need to shift vocabulary significantly when moving from medieval and early modern sources into the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Second, the two available dictionary sources — both editions of Black's Law Dictionary — offer identical, minimal definitions. This signals that heremones was treated as a known but uncommon historical term requiring only brief acknowledgment, not as a concept with active doctrinal life at the time either edition was compiled. Its presence in Black's reflects the tradition of preserving archaic common-law and feudal vocabulary for reference rather than practice.
Third, researchers working in the Law Mind corpus on topics such as the law of war, feudal military obligation, martial jurisdiction, or the legal status of non-combatants will find heremones most relevant as a period-specific descriptor when reading older English legal sources. It is unlikely to appear in case law or statutes by name; its importance is lexical and contextual rather than doctrinal.
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Historical Dictionary Support
Both consulted editions of Black's Law Dictionary define heremones identically as "followers of an army," offering no elaboration on etymology, legal consequences attaching to that status, or the historical sources from which the term is drawn. The two editions are in complete agreement, but that agreement reflects brevity rather than thoroughness — neither entry situates the term within a broader legal framework or cites supporting authority.
The historical sources for this term likely lie in early English treatises on military law and the law of arms, as well as in Latin and Anglo-Norman legal texts where variations of the word may appear. The consistent brevity across both Black's editions suggests the term was already archaic when the dictionary was first compiled and was included for completeness rather than practical utility. Researchers should not expect the dictionary record alone to illuminate the legal consequences that attached to the status of heremones in their original context.
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