Definition
An ocollybista (also rendered *ocollybistes* or *kollybistes*) is a money-changer or exchanger of currency — a person whose trade consists in receiving one form of coin or currency and returning another form, typically charging a premium or commission for the exchange. In Roman and ecclesiastical legal contexts, the term refers specifically to those who conducted money-changing as a recognized commercial occupation, distinct from general merchants or bankers.
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Common Confusion
Do not conflate *ocollybista* with *argentarius* (a Roman banker who conducted a broader range of financial transactions including loans and deposits) or *nummularius* (a coin-assayer or coin-dealer). The three terms describe related but distinct commercial roles in Roman law. An ocollybista's defining function is the act of exchange itself; an argentarius operated more like a modern private banker; a nummularius evaluated the quality and authenticity of coinage.
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Why It Matters in Research
The source material supplied for this entry does not contain a definition of *ocollybista*. The historical dictionary text provided under Black's Law Dictionary (2nd Ed.) belongs to a different entry entirely — it describes collusion in divorce proceedings, a wholly unrelated concept. Researchers encountering the term *ocollybista* in historical legal sources should be aware of the following:
First, the term is principally a term of Roman and canon law, appearing in ecclesiastical sources and glossaries of Roman commercial practice rather than in common law materials. It will not appear meaningfully in standard Anglo-American legal dictionaries of the 18th or 19th centuries.
Second, if you are tracing the term through ecclesiastical court records or glossed Roman law texts (particularly in the context of canonical prohibitions on usury and currency speculation), the relevant corpus is canon law and the glossators of the Corpus Juris Civilis, not English common law reporters.
Third, the apparent mismatch in the source material for this entry — where Black's 2nd Ed. text on collusion in divorce was supplied — suggests a possible indexing or retrieval error in the Law Mind corpus. Researchers should treat any corpus result linking *ocollybista* to divorce or collusion doctrine as a data artifact and verify independently.
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Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary (2nd Ed.) does not appear to contain a substantive entry for *ocollybista* based on the source material available. The text supplied references California Civil Code § 114 and *Beard v. Beard* in the context of collusion in divorce proceedings — this content belongs to the entry for COLLUSION (or a related divorce-doctrine term) and has been associated with this entry in error.
No synthesis across historical shelf sources is possible for this term from the materials provided. Researchers requiring a rigorous historical treatment should consult Du Cange's *Glossarium Mediae et Infimae Latinitatis*, which covers the term in its medieval Latin form, and Berger's *Encyclopedic Dictionary of Roman Law* (1953) for the classical Roman commercial law context.
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Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
No Law Mind Encyclopedia entry has been identified as a direct match. Researchers may find relevant context in encyclopedia entries treating Roman commercial law, usury in canon law, or the regulation of money-changers in medieval and early modern legal systems.
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