Definition
A Latin term from Roman and old English law meaning incorporeal — that which has no physical body or substance, cannot be touched, and cannot be seen. The term is drawn directly from the classical civil law distinction between things that exist as physical matter (res corporales) and things that exist only as legal abstractions (res incorporales). Rights, obligations, servitudes, and causes of action are the paradigmatic examples of res incorporales. The term appears most prominently in Bracton and Fleta, the foundational treatises of medieval English common law, where it was used to classify the nature of property and legal entitlements.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Not a standard English word; encountered almost exclusively in legal and ecclesiastical Latin contexts.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Not listed as an English entry; treated as a Latin term of art.
Editorial note: Because incorporalis has no life outside legal and Latin scholarly usage, there is no meaningful gap between common and legal meaning to navigate. Researchers encountering the term in historical sources should treat it as a technical classifier, not a descriptive English adjective.
Common Confusion
Incorporalis is sometimes read as interchangeable with intangible in modern legal writing, but the correspondence is imprecise. Intangible is an economic and property-law category used to describe assets lacking physical form (patents, goodwill, brand value). Incorporalis is a jurisprudential classifier rooted in the Roman law of things: it describes the ontological status of a legal right itself, not the economic character of an asset. A modern intangible asset may be incorporalis in the classical sense, but not everything classified as incorporalis under Roman or medieval law maps cleanly onto modern intangible property categories.
Why It Matters in Research
The primary research significance of incorporalis is as a gateway into the Roman and medieval English law of property classification. Researchers working in early common law sources — particularly Bracton's De Legibus et Consuetudinibus Angliae or Fleta — will encounter the term as part of the foundational taxonomy dividing res corporales from res incorporales. Understanding this division is essential for interpreting how medieval lawyers conceived of rights such as advowsons, rents, franchises, and profits à prendre: these were not merely non-physical assets but legally distinct categories of things subject to different rules of acquisition, transfer, and protection.
Two research traps are worth flagging. First, the res incorporales category in Roman law included obligations and actions alongside property rights; English common law adopted the property dimension of the taxonomy but handled obligations separately, so the term's scope narrows when moving from civil law into common law sources. Second, historical dictionaries consistently define incorporalis by what it is not (no body, no substance, cannot be touched or seen) rather than by what it includes. Researchers relying solely on dictionary definitions will miss the practical content: the working list of res incorporales in Bracton and Justinian's Institutes is the more useful source for understanding what the term actually covered in legal practice.
The term also appears in ecclesiastical and canon law contexts, where spiritual offices and rights in church property were classified as incorporeal. Researchers in ecclesiastical law should be alert to this parallel tradition, which runs alongside but is not identical to the common law usage.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill and Bouvier agree precisely on the core definition: incorporeal, lacking body or substance, incapable of being touched or seen. Burrill, characteristically more thorough, supplies the Latin formula from Bracton (quæ tangi non potest, nec videri) and cross-references Bracton, Fleta, and Justinian's Institutes — the three primary authorities for the term's use in English legal writing. Bouvier's entry is a bare-bones gloss.
Neither dictionary engages substantively with the Roman law taxonomy that gives the term its intellectual weight. For that, the Institutes of Justinian (2.2) and Bracton (fol. 7b, 10b, 13b) are the essential primary sources; the historical dictionaries function only as first-pass identifiers that the term is in play, not as guides to its doctrinal content. Researchers should not rely on either dictionary entry alone when the distinction between corporeal and incorporeal things is legally operative in the source being analyzed.