Definition
In Roman law, peregrini (singular: peregrinus) were persons who fell outside the protections and privileges of Roman citizenship. The term broadly described two distinct but related categories: (1) free persons from foreign nations who had not established formal relations of friendship or alliance with Rome, and (2) by extension, any person lacking legal capacity under Roman law — a category that, in some usages, extended to slaves. Peregrini had no access to the ius civile, the body of Roman law reserved for citizens, and were instead governed by the ius gentium, the law of nations applicable to dealings between Romans and foreigners. More narrowly, Rapalje and Lawrence define peregrini as foreigners commorant or sojourning in Rome itself — persons physically present within the city but not possessed of Roman legal standing.
The term is primarily historical and appears in English legal sources almost exclusively in discussions of Roman law foundations, comparative jurisprudence, and the development of legal personality and capacity.
Common Confusion
Peregrini is sometimes loosely equated with hostes (enemies) or barbari (barbarians), but these are distinct Roman categories. Hostes were formal enemies at war with Rome; peregrini were foreigners at peace but without citizenship. The legal consequence was significant: a hostis had no protected legal standing whatsoever, while a peregrinus, though excluded from the ius civile, could engage in commerce and legal relations under the ius gentium. Researchers should also note that the Black's Law Dictionary entries conflate, or at least juxtapose, slaves with peregrini under the heading of those lacking legal capacity — a conflation that reflects a Roman analytical tendency rather than a precise equivalence. Slaves were a separate juridical category (servi) and not technically peregrini.
Core Elements
The Roman law definition of peregrini rested on two axes:
Status relative to Rome: Whether the person's home nation had concluded a treaty (foedus) or amicable relations with Rome. Nations that had done so might receive limited protections; those that had not were placed in a more precarious legal position.
Capacity in law: Peregrini lacked the ius commercii and ius connubii — the right to engage in Roman-form commercial transactions and the right to contract a Roman marriage — unless specifically granted by treaty or individual grant. They could not hold Roman offices, inherit under Roman testamentary law, or invoke Roman civil procedure.
Why It Matters in Research
Peregrini is not a term that will appear in American or English common law cases as an operative legal concept, but it surfaces regularly in two research contexts.
First, foundational treatises and civil law scholarship use the term when tracing the development of legal personality, the distinction between natural persons and legal capacity, and the origins of conflicts-of-laws doctrine. Researchers working on the history of private international law, the ius gentium, or comparative law will encounter peregrini as a structural concept in Roman law scholarship.
Second, the term appears in historical dictionaries and Romanist commentaries in proximity to discussions of citizenship, status, and capacity — concepts that carry forward, transformed, into medieval and early modern European law. The Savigny citation in both Black's editions (Sav. Dr. Rom. § 66) points researchers toward Friedrich Carl von Savigny's System of the Modern Roman Law, a foundational text in the civil law tradition and a primary source for 19th-century American and English scholars synthesizing Roman and common law concepts.
One navigational trap: the first Black's entry as printed contains a stray passage about unity of seisin and perdurable estates that has no connection to peregrini — this appears to be a typesetting error in the original dictionary, with text from an adjacent entry bleeding into the peregrini entry. Researchers relying on that edition should not treat the seisin language as part of the peregrini definition.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary (1st and 2nd editions) and Rapalje & Lawrence are in general agreement on the core meaning but differ in emphasis. Black's reaches for a broader theoretical frame, drawing on Savigny to capture the full scope of the term: both stateless foreigners and slaves are described as sharing the attribute of lacking legal capacity, with the unifying principle being exclusion from Roman jural relations. Rapalje & Lawrence offer a narrower, more practical definition focused on the concrete situation of foreigners present in Rome — a definition more useful for identifying the term in procedural or administrative Roman law texts.
None of the historical dictionary sources address the distinction between peregrini alicuius civitatis (foreigners belonging to a recognized foreign city with its own legal order) and peregrini dediticii (those who had surrendered unconditionally to Rome and held the lowest possible status among free persons). This is a meaningful subdivision in Roman law scholarship that researchers will need to pursue through Romanist sources rather than standard common law dictionaries.
Jurisdictional Note
Peregrini is a Roman law term with no direct operative equivalent in American or English common law. It appears as a technical term in civil law jurisdictions with Roman law foundations, and in academic comparative law literature, but carries no jurisdictional force in any modern common law system.