Definition
A Latin term appearing in old English writs meaning wares or goods. Used in legal documents of the medieval and early modern periods to denote movable property held for trade or commerce. The phrase mercimonia et merchandizas — wares and merchandises — appeared as a fixed formula in writs addressing commercial disputes or the recovery of traded goods.
Common Confusion
Mercimonia is sometimes loosely treated as synonymous with merchandizas in historical sources, but the pairing of the two terms in writ formulae suggests a distinction was recognized, even if not sharply maintained. Merchandizas carried a broader commercial connotation, while mercimonia referred more specifically to the physical goods themselves. Researchers should not assume interchangeability when interpreting the scope of a writ.
Why It Matters in Research
This term appears almost exclusively in the formulaic language of old English writs and registers, not in substantive legal doctrine. Its primary research value is identificatory: when encountered in a medieval or early modern writ, it signals that the action concerned the recovery of, or rights in, traded goods. Researchers working with the Registrum Brevium or similar writ registers will meet this term in standardized phrases rather than as a developed legal concept.
The term does not evolve. It has no modern statutory or common law successor under its own name. If a researcher is tracing the lineage of commercial law concepts — what counted as goods, how wares were distinguished from other chattels, what remedies attached to commercial property — mercimonia is a starting point for the writ-era vocabulary, not a destination. The substantive doctrine those writs enforced is what demands further investigation.
No meaningful jurisdictional variation exists because the term belongs to a historical stratum of law predating the divergence of common law systems across jurisdictions.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary (both editions) and Burrill's Law Dictionary are in complete agreement on this term, which is unsurprising given that all three draw from the same narrow source: the Registrum Brevium Appendix, page 10. The convergence reflects the term's fixed, formulaic character rather than any independent analysis. None of the three dictionaries attempt to develop the term beyond its writ context or trace its relationship to broader commercial law concepts. Burrill's entry is marginally more precise in its Latin formatting but substantively identical.
The historical dictionaries collectively signal that this term was already archaic by the time it was being catalogued — it belongs to a stratum of legal Latin that practitioners encountered in old precedents rather than in living practice.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
See Law Mind Encyclopedia: Writs, Common Law; Goods and Chattels; Medieval Commercial Law