Definition
A Roman law plea asserting that money was never received by the defendant. Where a party was sued on a promise to repay money — typically arising from a loan or similar obligation — merate was the defensive exception available to deny that the funds were ever actually paid over. The plea functioned as a denial of the foundational fact of receipt: no money received, no obligation to repay.
The term derives from Roman civil procedure and appears in Justinian's Institutes (4.13.2), where it is catalogued among the exceptions available to defendants in personal actions.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): In mathematics and physics, a merate is one of the independent quantities composing a holor — a generalized mathematical object that subsumes vectors, matrices, and tensors.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Not recorded. The term did not enter ordinary English usage.
The mathematical and legal senses share no conceptual ancestry. A researcher encountering "merate" in a legal manuscript or treatise should treat the term as exclusively procedural Roman law vocabulary. The mathematical usage is a modern coinage with no bearing on legal sources.
Why It Matters in Research
Merate is a narrow Roman law term of limited direct application in modern common law research, but it appears in foundational civil law digests, institutional treatises, and early equity writings that draw on Roman procedure. Researchers working in the following areas should be alert to its presence:
Roman and civil law sources. The exception appears in the Institutes of Justinian and is reproduced in commentaries on Roman civil procedure. Any research into the development of contractual defenses in the civil law tradition may encounter merate as a historical ancestor of the non-receipt defense.
Early common law and equity. English legal writers drawing on Roman law — particularly in the development of assumpsit and the action for money had and received — sometimes referenced Roman exceptions, including merate, to explain the theoretical basis for defenses grounded in failure of consideration or non-delivery of funds. The connection is analogical rather than doctrinal; merate did not migrate intact into English common law, but traces appear in civilian-influenced treatises and early equity pleading manuals.
Pleading history. Understanding merate helps contextualize the evolution of the plea of non est factum and related defenses. Where a party sought to deny the underlying fact that triggered a promise to repay, the Roman model provided the vocabulary. Researchers tracing the genealogy of defenses to debt actions will find merate cited as a civilian precursor.
Corpus navigation caution. Because merate appears almost exclusively in Latin passages or in Latin-inflected legal writing, it may be indexed inconsistently across historical corpora. Search variants should include the full phrase "exceptio non numeratae pecuniae" — the fuller Roman law term for the same defense — which will yield substantially more source material than merate alone.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary and Burrill's Law Dictionary are in close agreement, both defining merate as the exception or plea of money not paid, available where a defendant was sued on a promise to repay money never received, and both citing Justinian's Institutes 4.13.2 as the authority.
Neither dictionary elaborates on the procedural mechanics of the exception — how it was raised, what burden it placed on the defendant, or how Roman courts evaluated it. Researchers requiring substantive treatment should consult primary Roman law sources and civilian commentators rather than relying on the brief dictionary entries.
Burrill's phrasing ("a defence allowed a party") is slightly more explicit than Black's in signaling that this was a recognized procedural right rather than a mere informal argument, though the difference is minor. Neither source addresses the relationship between merate and the broader Roman doctrine of non numeratae pecuniae, which is the fuller doctrinal context from which the exception arose.
What historical dictionaries miss: Neither entry explains that the exception was subject to time limits under later Roman law — Justinian's reforms restricted when the exception could be raised after a document evidencing the loan had been executed — a point of procedural significance if researching the Roman law background in depth.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
See Law Mind Encyclopedia: Roman Law Procedure; Defenses in Contract and Debt Actions (Historical).