Definition
A Latin term from medieval European legal usage meaning to interline — that is, to write between the lines of an existing document. The act referred to the insertion of words, phrases, or other text into the spaces between already-written lines of a legal instrument, deed, or record.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers encountering this term will find it almost exclusively in medieval and early modern European legal sources, particularly those dealing with the formal requirements for deeds, charters, and notarial instruments. Interlineation was a matter of serious legal consequence in historical practice: unauthorized or unexplained insertions between lines could render a document suspect, void, or subject to challenge, because they raised the inference of subsequent alteration. Conversely, acknowledged interlineations — noted and initialed or attested before execution — were treated as valid parts of the instrument.
The term itself rarely surfaces in common law materials. It belongs primarily to the civilian and canon law traditions and to the Latin records of Continental and ecclesiastical practice. Researchers working in English legal history are far more likely to encounter the anglicized noun "interlineation" or the verb "to interline" in the same doctrinal context. If a source uses intercharaxare, it is a strong signal that the document originates in or draws upon a Romano-canonical or notarial tradition rather than a native common law framework.
The practical research trap here is terminological: a researcher searching for doctrine on alterations to written instruments must cast a wide net across vocabulary — intercharaxare, interlineation, interlineare, and later English equivalents — because different traditions used different terms for the same underlying problem. Missing any one of these can produce a false impression that a source is silent on the question of insertions when it is not.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary provides the sole historical dictionary treatment identified for this term, defining it concisely as meaning "to interline" in old European law, and citing Spelman as authority. Henry Spelman's Glossarium Archaiologicum is the expected source for a term of this kind, as it is one of the principal repositories of medieval Latin legal and documentary vocabulary from the English and Continental traditions.
Burrill adds nothing beyond the bare definition and citation, which is characteristic of the entry pattern in his dictionary for Latin terms of narrow technical scope. No elaboration on legal consequence, procedural context, or doctrinal treatment is supplied. This brevity reflects the term's status as a term of art within documentary practice rather than a concept with developed common law doctrine attached to it. Other historical dictionaries in the standard legal reference shelf do not appear to carry this term, which underscores its specialized and primarily civilian provenance.
Jurisdictional Note
The term belongs to the medieval European and Romano-canonical tradition and is not a term of art in any modern common law jurisdiction. Its doctrinal content — the legal treatment of interlineations in instruments — survives in both civil law and common law systems under different terminology.