Definition
A Latin adjective meaning without loss, harm, or damage — held harmless. In legal usage, *indemnis* describes the condition of a person who has suffered no injury or detriment, or who has been made whole so that no loss falls upon them. The term appears most often in Roman and civil law contexts, where it characterizes the status of a party protected from adverse consequences arising from another's act, obligation, or liability.
The word functions both descriptively — a party who in fact suffered no harm — and normatively — a party who ought to be kept free from harm by operation of law or contract. These two senses are closely related: the legal obligation to hold another *indemnis* is the instrument by which the descriptive condition is achieved or preserved.
Common Confusion
*Indemnis* should not be conflated with *indemnitas*, which refers to the abstract legal concept of indemnity or the right to compensation for loss. *Indemnis* describes the condition of the person; *indemnitas* describes the legal right or remedy. A party may hold an *indemnitas* claim without yet being *indemnis* — that is, they may have the right to be made whole without yet having been made whole. Similarly, *indemnis* should be distinguished from *innoxius* (free from guilt or fault), which concerns blamelessness rather than freedom from loss.
Why It Matters in Research
*Indemnis* is a term of art in Roman and civil law sources rather than a term of everyday common law usage. Researchers encounter it almost exclusively in three contexts: (1) Latin maxims and brocard collections; (2) civil law treatises and glossators drawing on the Digest; and (3) historical equity materials where Roman law concepts informed the development of indemnification doctrine.
The navigational trap is terminological: common law sources addressing the same substantive concept — being held harmless from loss — will not use *indemnis* at all. They will use "harmless," "indemnified," or "saved harmless." If you are tracing the conceptual lineage of indemnity obligations through the Law Mind corpus, you must follow two parallel tracks: *indemnis* and its cognates in the civil and Roman law materials, and the English-language "hold harmless" and "indemnify" vocabulary in the common law materials. The two tracks converge in equity and in American contract law, but they rarely use the same words.
Burrill's citation to Brissonius (Barnabé Brisson's *De Verbis Juridicis*, a 16th-century lexicon of Roman legal vocabulary) is a genuine research lead. Brissonius defines *indemnis* by reference to the experience of loss — *qui damnum non sentit* — which underscores that the Roman law concept was experiential and practical, not merely formal. A party was *indemnis* not because they had a contractual promise of protection, but because no loss had actually reached them.
The Digest references in the Latin dictionary sources (Dig. 17, 2, 23 and Dig. 50, 8, 9) place *indemnis* squarely in the law of partnership (*societas*) and municipal obligations — contexts where the duty to preserve a partner or a municipality from financial harm was a recognized legal obligation. Researchers working on the history of partnership law or municipal finance will find these Digest passages directly relevant.
Historical Dictionary Support
The three source dictionaries are in close agreement on the core meaning: without harm, loss, or damage; harmless. Black's (both editions) offers the stripped-down translation without elaboration. Burrill's is the most useful of the three for research purposes: it identifies the Latin root structure (*in* privative + *damnum*, loss), supplies the Brissonius gloss, and distinguishes the experiential dimension of the term — one who *experiences* no loss — from a purely definitional rendering.
What the historical dictionaries collectively miss is the doctrinal context in which *indemnis* actually operated. None explains where in the Roman law the term did work, what obligations it triggered, or how it connected to the broader structure of indemnity in civilian systems. The Latin dictionary entry fills part of this gap by pointing to the Digest passages and to Seneca's non-legal usage, which confirms that the word carried the sense of "escaped unhurt" in classical Latin more broadly before it acquired its specifically legal valence in post-Augustan juridical writing.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
See Law Mind Encyclopedia: INDEMNITY; HOLD HARMLESS AGREEMENT; ROMAN LAW SOURCES IN EQUITY