Definition
Iglise is a Law French term meaning "church." It appears in historical legal documents, particularly those of Anglo-Norman origin, as a variant form of eglise. The term carried the same meaning and legal weight as its alternate spelling and referred to the institutional church as a legal entity — capable of holding property, asserting rights, and appearing in legal proceedings in the ecclesiastical and common law traditions of medieval England.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers working in early English legal records — plea rolls, ecclesiastical court documents, monastic charters, and Year Books — may encounter iglise and eglise interchangeably. Neither spelling was standardized in the Law French period, and scribal variation was common. A search limited to one spelling risks missing relevant documents. When tracing property disputes, advowsons, tithes, or other matters touching ecclesiastical institutions, researchers should treat iglise and eglise as functional equivalents and search both forms.
The term's relevance is almost entirely historical. It does not appear in modern legal usage and carries no independent doctrinal significance separate from the underlying concept of the church as a legal institution. Its value in the Law Mind corpus is as a finding aid — a term that unlocks older sources and connects to the broader body of ecclesiastical and property law that shaped English common law.
Historical Dictionary Support
All three source dictionaries — Black's Law Dictionary, Black's Law Dictionary (2nd Ed.), and Burrill's Law Dictionary — provide identical entries, each citing Kelham's Dictionnaire de la Langue Franque as authority and identifying iglise as another form of eglise. The consistency across sources confirms the term's status as a simple orthographic variant rather than a term with independent or contested legal meaning. No source attributes any specialized legal definition to iglise distinct from what eglise conveys.
The shared reliance on Kelham reflects the relatively narrow documentary basis for Law French lexicography generally. Historical dictionaries do not elaborate on the legal contexts in which iglise appeared, leaving researchers to draw on primary sources and broader ecclesiastical law scholarship for substantive content.