Definition
A Latin and Law Latin verb meaning "to raise," "to lift up," "to set up," "to cast up," "to build or construct," or "to levy." In old English law, levare did not denote a single discrete legal act but functioned as a operative term appearing in writs, register entries, and pleading formulas across a range of contexts involving the physical raising or construction of something — a house, an embankment, a pond — or the formal legal act of levying. The term is best understood as a root word generating a cluster of specific legal phrases, each with its own technical application.
Principal compounds include:
1. Levare domum — to raise or erect a house or building.
2. Levare fossatum — to throw up, cast up, or construct a dyke or ditch; an act with property and nuisance implications in early land law.
3. Levare stagnum — to make or construct a pool or pond; appearing in early writs concerning water rights and interference with neighboring land.
4. Levare nocumentum — to levy a nuisance; the act of creating or committing a nuisance cognizable in law.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers encounter levare primarily in two contexts: transcription of medieval and early modern writs from the Registrum Omnium Brevium (Reg. Orig.) and related formularies, and in commentary passages within Blackstone, Fleta, and similar authorities that explain the content of nuisance and real property writs.
The critical research trap is treating levare as interchangeable with "levy" in the modern fiscal sense. When levare appears in real property or nuisance contexts — particularly in writs concerning fossata (dykes) or stagna (ponds) — it means physical construction or raising, not financial exaction. The fiscal sense of "levy" comes through a different line of usage and should not be read back into these older formulas.
Researchers working with writs in the Reg. Orig. will find levare embedded in standardized pleading phrases. The word itself is seldom defined in the writ; its meaning is carried by the compound phrase and the category of writ. Cross-referencing with Fleta and Bracton is often necessary to establish what the raising of a particular thing — a ditch, a pond, a building — meant in terms of cognizable harm and available remedy.
The levare nocumentum phrase connects the term directly to nuisance doctrine. Blackstone's treatment at 3 Bl. Com. 221 uses the phrase in the context of abating nuisances, and researchers tracing the development of the nuisance action in equity and common law should note how this construction formula bridges the physical act of creating a nuisance with the legal remedy of levying (removing or abating) it.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary provides the core entry, correctly identifying levare as both Latin and Law Latin and listing its principal compounds with register references. Burrill's treatment is essentially a glossary entry rather than a doctrinal one: it catalogs compounds without developing the underlying legal relationships. The Reg. Orig. references (at 199) and the Fleta reference (lib. 4, c. 1, § 19) are the primary sources behind these compounds, and researchers should consult those directly for the writ formulas in full.
No competing or divergent definition appears in the available source material. The term is not contested — it is archaic and technical, surviving primarily as a building block of writ Latin rather than as a living legal concept. What historical dictionaries do not capture is the nuanced way that the physical-construction meaning and the fiscal-levy meaning of the root could coexist in the same era, occasionally creating ambiguity in records where context is incomplete.
Jurisdictional Note
Levare is a term of English law specifically, rooted in the writs and register practice of the English common law system. It has no direct American statutory or common law counterpart as a term of art, though the concepts it describes — levying a nuisance, constructing a ditch, making a pond — are fully represented in American law under modern terminology.