Definition
In the civil law, a maternal aunt — specifically, a mother's sister. The term belongs to the Roman kinship vocabulary incorporated into civil law systems to describe degrees of relationship for purposes of succession, inheritance, and guardianship.
Recognized Forms
/SUBTYPES
Matertera magna: A great-aunt; the sister of one's grandmother (aviae soror). Designates the second-degree collateral maternal aunt.
Matertera major: A greater aunt; the sister of one's great-grandmother (proaviae soror), or equivalently, the matertera magna of one's father or mother (patris vel matris matertera magna). Designates the third-degree collateral maternal aunt.
Matertera maxima: A greatest aunt; the sister of one's great-great-grandmother. Designates the fourth-degree collateral maternal aunt, the outermost extension of the series in the classical civilian sources.
Why It Matters in Research
Matertera arises almost exclusively in texts concerned with Roman civil law inheritance and degrees of consanguinity. Researchers working with pre-modern succession law, civil law treatises, or ecclesiastical courts applying canon law rules of affinity will encounter it when authorities trace the precise degree of kinship between a decedent and collateral heirs.
The critical navigational point is symmetry: Roman law distinguished carefully between the paternal-line aunt (amita) and the maternal-line aunt (matertera). Sources that translate both simply as "aunt" collapse a distinction that mattered for inheritance calculations under the Institutes and the Digest. When a historical source cites a degree of relationship for intestate succession, identifying whether the aunt in question is an amita or matertera can shift the applicable rule.
The graduated series — magna, major, maxima — tracks Roman law's method of computing collateral degrees by counting generational steps through the common ancestor. Researchers working with Bracton or later common law writers who borrowed civilian terminology should be alert to the fact that common law did not adopt this nomenclature operationally; its appearance in English sources is typically explanatory or comparative rather than governing.
Historical Dictionary Support
The historical dictionaries converge completely on the core definition: a maternal aunt, a mother's sister. There is no disagreement among Black's (either edition), Rapalje & Lawrence, Bouvier, or Burrill on the basic term.
Burrill adds the Greek equivalent (μητραδελφή) and the Latin gloss matris soror, confirming the meaning through parallel terminology. Bouvier is characteristically terse.
The most substantive content across the dictionaries lies in Black's 2nd edition, which preserves the graduated subtypes with Digest citations (Dig. 38, 10, 10, 15 and 38, 10, 10, 16), giving researchers direct pathways into the Corpus Juris Civilis. The Institutes citation (Inst. 3, 6, 1) appears consistently and is the standard locus for the base term. Bracton folio 68 (cited variously as 68b or 68d across editions, reflecting manuscript variation) is the canonical English-law reference point.
What the historical dictionaries do not address is the functional legal context: why the distinction between matertera and amita mattered, how the graduated forms were used to calculate the order of intestate succession among collaterals, or how these terms were received — and largely set aside — in common law practice. Researchers should treat the dictionary entries as terminological anchors and consult the primary civilian sources for substantive doctrine.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
See Law Mind Encyclopedia: Consanguinity and Degrees of Relationship; Intestate Succession under Roman and Civil Law; Amita (for the parallel paternal-line term).