Definition
A Latin legal verb meaning to coin money. In old English law, *monetare* denoted the act of minting coin — the physical and legal process of producing lawful currency under royal authority. The term belonged to the specialized vocabulary of medieval English public law governing the royal prerogative over coinage. It was not a term of private law or common transaction; it operated in the domain of sovereign power.
Related nominal forms appearing in the same legal sources:
1. MONETARIUM — a mint; the physical place or institution where coining was performed.
2. MONETARIUS — a moneyer or coiner; the person authorized or employed to strike coin.
Common Confusion
*Monetare* is sometimes loosely associated with *moneta* (the coin itself or the mint as an abstract institution) and *monetagium* (a tax or tribute historically connected with coinage rights). These are related but distinct terms. *Monetare* is specifically the verbal form — the act — while *moneta* and *monetagium* refer, respectively, to the object or institution and to a fiscal imposition. Researchers encountering any of these terms in medieval English records should treat them as distinct entries and not read one definition across to another.
Why It Matters in Research
The primary research value of *monetare* lies in its jurisdictional and doctrinal context: the proposition embedded in Burrill's entry — *monetandi jus comprehenditur in regalibus quæ nunquam a regio sceptro abdicantur* — is a statement of constitutional principle, not merely a definition. It records the English common law position that the right to coin money is an inalienable royal prerogative. Researchers working in the history of sovereign power, the royal prerogative, or early monetary regulation will find *monetare* and its derivatives functioning as markers for that broader doctrinal claim rather than as terms of ordinary commercial or criminal law.
Because *monetare* appears in medieval Latin legal sources, researchers should expect the term to surface in Year Books, early plea rolls, and treatises such as Fleta — not in later common law reporters where English had displaced Latin. Burrill's citation to Fleta (lib. 1, c. 22, § 6) for *monetarius* and to Townsend's Pleas (pl. 180, 260) for *monetarium* grounds these forms in identifiable medieval English legal literature. Researchers should go directly to those sources for procedural context; Burrill conveys the vocabulary but not the full doctrinal texture.
One practical trap: *monetarius* in some medieval contexts referred to a person with royal authorization to coin, carrying significant legal privileges and corresponding liability for debasement. That status-bearing dimension of the term is not fully captured by the bare translation "moneyer or coiner." Criminal records and inquisitions touching debasement of coin may use *monetarius* in ways that require attention to whether authorization, fraud, or punishment is the operative concern.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill is the sole dictionary source available for this term in the Law Mind corpus, and his entry is efficient rather than expansive. He provides the core verb, the constitutional maxim from Davies's Reports, and the two nominal derivatives with citations to Fleta and Townsend. The entry does exactly what a mid-nineteenth-century law dictionary was designed to do for terms of this kind: translate the Latin, anchor it to a legal principle, and point to the medieval sources.
What Burrill does not provide — and what no standard historical English law dictionary fully supplies — is the comparative context: how *monetare* and the coinage prerogative operated in relation to continental ius commune treatments of *moneta*, or how the prerogative evolved from medieval to early modern English constitutional practice. Researchers needing that dimension will need to look beyond dictionary sources to constitutional histories and monetary history scholarship.
The Davies citation (*Dav. R. 18*) refers to the reports of Sir John Davies, the early seventeenth-century Irish law reporter, suggesting the maxim was invoked in a context at least partly touching Irish legal practice under English rule — a nuance that may matter depending on the research question.
Jurisdictional Note
*Monetare* and the prerogative it describes were English common law concepts, but the royal coinage prerogative was a feature of most European medieval legal systems, each with its own Latin vocabulary. Researchers working in Scottish, Irish, or continental sources should not assume English definitions carry across without verification.