Definition
A Latin phrase meaning "Roman man" or "a Roman." In legal usage, *homo Romanus* refers to a designated legal status applied to the former Roman provincial inhabitants—particularly in Gaul and other territories—after those regions came under the rule of Germanic successor kingdoms following the collapse of the Western Roman Empire. The term survived in the law codes of the so-called barbarous nations (the Franks, Visigoths, Burgundians, and others) as a formal category distinguishing inhabitants of Roman descent or Roman legal tradition from the Germanic conquerors who lived under their own tribal customary law.
A secondary usage, preserved in Burrill, extends the term to describe any tenant of lands—a meaning that reflects the gradual erosion of the status category into a more generalized social and tenurial designation as the distinction between Roman and Germanic populations faded over centuries of coexistence.
Why It Matters in Research
This term belongs to the literature of early medieval legal pluralism—specifically the system of *personality of laws*, under which law followed the person rather than the territory. In the Frankish kingdoms and elsewhere, a *homo Romanus* was governed by Roman law (or its post-classical provincial remnants) while his Frankish neighbor was governed by Salic or Ripuarian custom. Researchers working in sources spanning the fifth through ninth centuries will encounter this term as a marker of that legal duality.
Two traps await the researcher in historical sources. First, the term can appear to denote ethnicity when it is in fact a legal status designation—Roman descent and Roman legal subjection did not always coincide by the later Carolingian period. Second, the secondary meaning in Burrill (tenant of lands) represents a semantic drift that occurs in later medieval sources; conflating the two meanings can produce significant misreadings when tracing land tenure or social status arguments across different periods.
The Salic Law citations in Burrill (*Lex Salica*, tit. 34, § 3; tit. 43, §§ 6–8) are primary sources directly on point and worth examining in context: they set different wergild values for the *homo Romanus* than for the Frankish freeman, a telling illustration of how legal status translated into concrete legal consequence. Researchers working on comparative legal history, the survival of Roman law in the early Middle Ages, or the origins of feudal tenure should treat this term as a gateway into the personality-of-laws literature rather than an isolated curiosity.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's and Burrill are in close agreement on the primary definition, both drawing on Spelman's *Glossarium Archaeologicum* as their common authority. The core meaning—a designation for Roman-origin inhabitants retained in barbarous law codes—is consistent across both sources.
Burrill adds substantive content that Black's omits: the direct citations to the *Lex Salica* and the secondary meaning relating to land tenancy. The land-tenant gloss in Burrill likely reflects the compiler's engagement with a broader range of medieval sources in which *homo* as a term of art for a dependent tenant or vassal had absorbed the older ethnic-legal content. Neither dictionary contextualizes the *personality of laws* system that gives the term its operational meaning, which means researchers relying solely on these entries will have the label but not the framework.
Neither source addresses the term's treatment in Visigothic or Burgundian law, where analogous distinctions appear under related terminology. Researchers should not assume the Frankish context captured by Black's and Burrill exhausts the term's usage across the barbarian law codes.
Jurisdictional Note
This term is not operative in any modern jurisdiction. Its relevance is entirely historical, confined to the law codes of the post-Roman Germanic successor kingdoms—primarily Frankish, Visigothic, and Burgundian sources from roughly the fifth through ninth centuries. Researchers in comparative legal history or Roman law reception should note that the degree to which *homo Romanus* status retained practical legal content varied significantly by region and period.