Definition
An Anglo-Norman (Law French) legal term meaning memory, mind, or understanding. In medieval and early modern legal usage, *memorie* referred specifically to the mental faculty of reason and comprehension, particularly as it bore on a person's legal capacity to act. The term appears most directly in doctrines governing the validity of legal transactions — a person who lacked "right memorie" at the time of a legal act (such as a feoffment, or conveyance of land) was deemed incapable of effectuating it.
The term is encountered almost exclusively in Law French legal formulae and pleadings of the medieval and early modern English common law period. It does not function as a standalone doctrine but as a component of capacity-based challenges to legal acts.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): An obsolete spelling of "memory."
Historical common usage: The ordinary English word "memory" in its familiar sense — the faculty of recalling past events and information.
The gap between common and legal meaning is significant here. In ordinary usage, "memory" suggests the ability to recall. In the legal context of *memorie*, the term encompasses the broader faculty of rational understanding and legal competence — closer in meaning to "sound mind" than to mere recollection. A person could retain biographical memory while still being found to lack sufficient *memorie* to execute a valid legal instrument.
Common Confusion
*Memorie* is closely associated with, but distinct from, the maxim *actus non facit reum, nisi mens sit rea* — the criminal law principle that an act is not culpable without a guilty mind. Burrill cites this connection, but researchers should not conflate the two. *Memorie* in its primary legal usage is a civil capacity concept (was this person mentally competent to convey property or make a legal commitment?), while *mens rea* is the criminal law concept of culpable mental state. They share a concern with mental condition but operate in entirely different legal domains.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers encountering *memorie* in historical sources — particularly in English common law pleadings, Year Books, or early chancery records — should treat it as a signal of a capacity challenge, not merely a memory-related issue. The formula *ne fuit mie en droit memorie en temps du feffement* ("he was not in his right mind/memory at the time of the feoffment") was a standard pleading device to void a conveyance on grounds of mental incapacity. Recognizing this formula is essential to correctly parsing the legal issue being raised.
The term becomes effectively invisible after Law French fell out of formal use in English courts (largely abolished by statute in 1731). Post-1731 sources replace it with English equivalents — "of sound mind," "non compos mentis," "lunacy," "idiocy" — none of which are exact translations. Researchers tracing the historical development of mental capacity doctrine must bridge this terminological gap consciously.
One practical trap: *memorie* and *memoria* (its Latin cognate) appear interchangeably in some sources. Both carry the same legal sense. Neither should be read as referring to record-keeping or documentary memory (as in "memorial" or "memorandum") — an easy misreading given the surface similarity of the words.
Because the term surfaces primarily in pleadings and formularies rather than treatises, it is underrepresented in the historical dictionaries. Researchers working in the primary sources will encounter it more than dictionary literature suggests.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary provides the core entry, correctly identifying *memorie* as Law French derived from Latin *memoria* and glossing it as "memory; mind or understanding." Burrill's connection to *mens rea* is useful but compressed — he gestures at the criminal law dimension without fully separating it from the civil capacity context where *memorie* most frequently operates.
Burrill does not provide the full formulaic pleading context. The entry *Ne fuit mie en droit memorie en temps du feffement* (cross-referenced in his dictionary) carries more substantive information and should be consulted alongside this entry for a complete picture.
No other shelf dictionaries in the current corpus provide independent entries for *memorie*. The absence is not surprising: the term's useful life was confined to Law French practice, and by the time major English law dictionaries were compiled (Bouvier, Black), it had been superseded by English-language equivalents.
Jurisdictional Note
*Memorie* is a term of English common law and has no direct counterpart in American legal usage. Its doctrinal descendants — mental incapacity as a ground for voiding contracts and conveyances — are universal in American law, but the terminology is entirely different. Researchers in Scottish or continental legal history should note that *memoria* carries comparable usage in civil law traditions, though the procedural context differs.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
Law Mind Encyclopedia — MENTAL CAPACITY
Law Mind Encyclopedia — NON COMPOS MENTIS
Law Mind Encyclopedia — LAW FRENCH