MAGNA AVERIA - The Law Mind Legal Dictionary

MAGNA AVERIAAuthored

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Definition

Magna averia (Law Latin: "great beasts") is an archaic pleading term denoting large domestic working animals — principally horses and oxen — as a distinct legal category from smaller livestock. The term appears in old common law pleadings where the species or size of an animal was legally significant, particularly in actions involving damage to crops, distress, or liability for the acts of animals.

Common Confusion

Magna averia should not be confused with averia (or averium) generally, which could encompass livestock of any size. The modifier magna carried legal weight in pleading contexts: claims, defenses, and damages could turn on whether the animals at issue qualified as great beasts or fell into a lesser category. A researcher encountering averia alone in a historical document cannot assume the narrower magna averia category is intended.

Why It Matters in Research

This term is almost exclusively a pleading artifact. It surfaces in early English common law actions — particularly in writs and pleadings involving distress, pound breach, trespass by cattle, or damage feasant — where specifying the class of animal was necessary to state a proper cause of action or defense. By the time of American legal practice, the term had effectively disappeared from active use, surviving only in historical pleading forms and the treatises that catalogued them.

Researchers working in pre-19th century English common law records, Year Books, or early colonial American pleadings should be alert to the term's appearance in writs of replevin and distress proceedings. The classification of animals as magna averia versus lesser stock could affect the procedural path of a case and the measure of damages or value assessed. In property and agricultural records from the medieval and early modern periods, the distinction between great beasts and other averia may also reflect actual valuation practices.

The term has no continuing doctrinal life in modern law. Its research value is primarily contextual: understanding it helps decode archaic pleading language and illuminates the degree to which early common law procedure demanded precise factual categorization of property.

Historical Dictionary Support

Black's Law Dictionary (both the 1st and 2nd editions) gives identical, minimal treatment: "great beasts, as horses, oxen, etc.," with a single citation to Cro. Jac. 580 (Croke's Jacobean reports). Burrill's Law Dictionary matches this definition and citation before proceeding immediately to Magna Carta, suggesting the editors treated magna averia as a brief transitional entry requiring little elaboration. All three sources agree on the core meaning and cite the same authority. None offer analysis of how the term functioned in pleading practice or trace its development. The Croke citation is the only historical legal authority these dictionaries point to, and researchers seeking fuller context would need to consult the original reports directly.

The consistency across sources is notable for its narrowness: no source disputes the definition, but none expands it. The absence of further commentary likely reflects the term's status as a pleading fossil even by the time these dictionaries were compiled — useful to define for purposes of reading old reports, but no longer alive in practice.

Jurisdictional Note

Magna averia is an English common law term with no independent American doctrinal history. It may appear in early colonial and post-revolutionary pleadings that borrowed English forms, but it carries no special meaning in any U.S. jurisdiction distinct from its English usage.

MAGNA AVERIAmain

Burrill's Law Dictionary • 1870

L. Lat. In old pleading. Great beasts, as horses, oxen, &c. Cro. Jac. 580. MAGNA CHARTA, (or CARTA.) L. Lat. [L. Fr. la Graunde Chartre.] The Great Charter. The celebrated charter of English liberties, called by Spelman, augustissimum Anglicarum libertatum diploma et sacra anchora, granted by King John, June 15, 1215, at Runningmede or Runemede, and confirmed, with some alterations, by Henry III. in the 9th year of his reign. This charter of Henry III. is the Great Charter which is always referred to as the basis of the English constitution; the charter of John being only remembered as a monument of antiquity. 1 Reeves' Hist. Eng. Law, 209, 231. Crabb's Hist. 133. The charter of Henry is the oldest printed statute now extant in England. 1 Bl. Com. 85. The original charter of John is still preserved in the British Museum. Spelman, who has given a sketch of its history in his Glossary, observes that it was called Magna (Great) from its superiority in size to the Charta de Foresta, which was granted about the same time. Other reasons for the name have, however, been given. Cowell. Lord Coke has written an elaborate commentary upon it in his Institutes. 2 Inst. According to the same author, it has been confirmed above thirty times. Co. Litt. 81. 5 Co. 64. Magna fuit Magnæ quondam reverentia Chartæ. Great was the reverence formerly paid to the Great Charter. 2 Inst. proœm.