MANGONELLUS - The Law Mind Legal Dictionary

MANGONELLUSAuthored

The Law Mind • 538 words

Definition

A medieval siege engine used to hurl stones against the walls of a castle or fortification. The mangonellus appears in historical legal texts primarily in the context of feudal obligations, the law of war, and the regulation of arms and military equipment under medieval English and European law. As a defined instrument of warfare, references to the mangonellus in legal sources generally concern the duties of lords and vassals to furnish or maintain siege equipment, the liability for destruction caused by its use, or inventories of military property subject to forfeiture or grant.

Why It Matters in Research

This term is encountered almost exclusively in medieval legal records, feudal charters, chronicle-adjacent legal texts, and the works of legal antiquarians who drew on those sources — most prominently Cowell's Interpreter (1607), which is the sole authority cited by all three historical dictionaries for this entry. Researchers encountering mangonellus in a primary source should treat it as a signal that the surrounding text concerns feudal military tenure, the law of siege warfare, or inventories of armaments, rather than any continuing common law doctrine.

The term has no operative legal meaning in modern law and no surviving doctrinal function. Its appearance in Black's (both editions) and Rapalje & Lawrence is a product of those dictionaries' ambition to capture the full sweep of legal Latin and terms of art found in historical records — a feature that makes them valuable research tools for medievalists and legal historians but can mislead researchers who assume every defined term retains legal significance.

One practical trap: if you encounter mangonellus in a digitized Latin legal or administrative record, standard legal database searches will not help. The relevant corpus is medieval Latin documentary sources — pipe rolls, exchequer records, and feudal surveys — rather than case reporters or statutory compilations.

Historical Dictionary Support

All three source dictionaries reproduce, nearly verbatim, a single definition tracing to John Cowell's Interpreter: "a warlike instrument for casting stones against the walls of a castle." No dictionary adds independent analysis, and none attempts to situate the term within a broader legal framework. The uniformity of the entry across sources is itself informative: it signals that the compilers of these dictionaries were transmitting antiquarian vocabulary rather than reporting a term in active legal use.

Cowell's Interpreter, as a reference work of the early seventeenth century, drew heavily on medieval Latin sources and glossed terms that had already become archaic by his time. The mangonellus entry is representative of a class of Cowell entries — alongside catapulta and similar siege-engine vocabulary — preserved in legal dictionaries more as historical completeness than as practical legal reference.

No meaningful divergence exists among the three source dictionaries on this term. The Rapalje & Lawrence entry is notable only for placing the mangonellus definition immediately adjacent to entries for MANHOOD, MANIA, and MANIA A POTU, a juxtaposition that reflects alphabetical organization rather than any doctrinal relationship.

MANGONELLUSmain

Rapalje & Lawrence • 1883

-A warlike instrument for casting stones against the walls of a castle. Cowell. MANHOOD, (defined). 1 Dev. & B. (N. C.) Eq. 585. ΜΑΝΙΑ. - Mental alienation (q. v.) See, also, INSANITY; LUNACY. MANIA, (defined). 2 Abb. (U. S.) 507. ΜΑΝΙΑ A POTU. - Otherwise denominated delirium tremens (q. v.), a disease induced from the intemperate use of spirituous liquors or certain other diffusible stimulants. MANIFEST.-In commercial navigation, a document signed by the master, containing the names of the places where the goods have been laden, and the places for which they are destined, the name and tonnage of the vessel, the name of the master, and the place to which the vessel belongs, a particular description of the packages on board, marks, numbers, &c., the goods contained in them, and the names of the shippers and consignees, as far as known. The manifest must be made out, dated and signed by the captain, at places where the goods, or any part, are is directed is commanded to do the act required of him; the mandatory part of a statute is that part which must be obeyed or the act done is void, as distinguished taken on board. -Wharton. from the "directory" part of the law, disregard of which is not necessarily fatal. granted). 20 Am. Dec. 390 п., 396 п. MANIFEST, (in a statute). 71 Ν. Υ. 481, 486. Manifesta probatione non indigent MANDATORY INJUNCTION, (when may be (7 Co. 40): Things manifest do not require proof.