Definition
A Latin term from medieval English law meaning one who may be moved or displaced. Used in early legal texts to describe a person subject to removal from a place or position, and also applied to describe a vagrant — one who wanders without fixed habode or settled residence. The term appears in Fleta, the thirteenth-century Latin legal treatise, in the context of persons whose legal status or physical situation was characterized by mobility or instability of domicile.
Common Language
This is pure legal Latin with no meaningful counterpart in ordinary modern or historical English usage. The COMMON LANGUAGE section is omitted.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers encountering motibilis in primary sources should approach it with two distinct readings in mind: the term functions both as a descriptor of legal displacement (a person removable from office, land, or status) and as a social-legal category approximating the vagrant. These two meanings, while related by the underlying concept of physical or legal instability, carry different legal consequences in medieval and early common law contexts.
The term appears almost exclusively in Latin legal texts of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Its practical significance diminishes rapidly after the medievalperiod as English law developed more precise vocabulary for vagrancy, tenure, and removal. Researchers working in early Year Books, Bracton-era materials, or Fleta itself may encounter motibilis where later sources would use terms like vagabond, tenant at will, or person subject to ejectment. Do not assume the term carries the same force in one context as in another — the displacement of a tenant differs structurally from the wandering of a vagrant, even if medieval Latin collapsed them under one word.
Fleta, the primary source cited for this term, is a late thirteenth-century English legal treatise heavily influenced by Bracton. Because Fleta survives in manuscript and was printed in early modern editions of varying quality, textual variations exist. When locating Book 1, Chapter 6 — the source passage for motibilis — confirm the edition being used. The Selden Society edition (1953–1984) is the standard modern reference for Fleta.
Historical Dictionary Support
Rapalje and Lawrence give a compact but useful entry: "one that may be moved or displaced; also, a vagrant," citing Fleta, Book 1, Chapter 6. This is the only historical legal dictionary in the Law Mind corpus to define the term, and no further elaboration or divergent authority is available from the shelf sources.
The dual definition Rapalje and Lawrence offer reflects genuine ambiguity in the medieval usage. The passive sense — one who may be displaced — suggests a legal vulnerability in tenure or status, while the vagrant sense emphasizes social mobility and absence of fixed settlement. Historical sources do not draw a clean line between these meanings, and Rapalje and Lawrence make no effort to resolve the tension. That ambiguity is itself informative: it signals that motibilis operated in legal practice as a flexible descriptor rather than a term of art with fixed technical meaning.
No further historical dictionary support is available for this term within the Law Mind corpus.
Jurisdictional Note
Motibilis is a term of medieval English legal Latin and has no meaningful presence in American, Scottish, or civil law sources. Its relevance is confined to English common law materials predating the early modern period.