Definition
In ecclesiastical and canon law, postulation is a formal petition addressed to a superior ecclesiastical authority — historically the pope — requesting the appointment or translation of a person to a church office when an ordinary election was canonically unavailable or prohibited. The term is distinct from election proper: where election was available as of right, postulation was the remedy when the preferred candidate was legally incapable of being elected under the existing rules of canon law yet was nonetheless sought for the position.
The paradigm case was the translation of a bishop. A bishop in canonical theory was "married" to his diocese. Because that spiritual marriage could not be dissolved by the chapter or ordinary electors, they could not simply elect him to a new see. Instead, they postulated him — petitioned the pope to dissolve the prior bond and effect the appointment. The pope's consent completed the act; without it, the postulation had no effect.
Outside the ecclesiastical context, postulation carries a broader, looser meaning: any formal petition or solicitation to a competent authority, though this usage is rare in Anglo-American legal practice.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): The act of postulating something; also something self-evident assumed as the basis of an argument; or the act of claiming something for oneself by solicitation.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): "The act of postulating, or that which is postulated; assumption; solicitation; suit; cause."
The gap here is significant. In ordinary and philosophical English, postulation most often means the assertion of a premise or axiom — something assumed without proof as the foundation of reasoning. In legal usage, particularly canon law, it means the opposite of a unilateral intellectual act: it is a formal, relational petition directed to a superior authority whose consent is required for the act to take effect. A researcher encountering postulation in a legal or ecclesiastical source should resist the philosophical reflex and read for the petitionary, procedural meaning.
Why It Matters in Research
This term appears almost exclusively in sources touching canon law, ecclesiastical history, or the pre-Reformation English church. Researchers working in early English legal history, church records, or comparative religious law should be alert to the following:
First, the term marks a specific procedural distinction. Sources will sometimes contrast postulation with election. Where election was available, postulation was not the proper form; the distinction matters for determining whether a particular appointment was challenged on procedural grounds.
Second, the role of papal authority is inseparable from the classical meaning. In the pre-Reformation English context, postulation presupposed that the pope retained the power to dissolve the episcopal bond and ratify the translation. After the English Reformation and the break with Rome, the procedural mechanics changed, and the term's strict canonical sense becomes historically bounded. Post-Reformation sources using the word may be using it in a looser, generic sense of petition.
Third, the term is virtually absent from American legal sources. Researchers in the Law Mind corpus who encounter postulation in American legal texts should treat it either as a borrowing from ecclesiastical or comparative sources or as the common philosophical meaning (assumption, axiom) rather than a term of domestic legal art.
Fourth, cross-reference to simony and canonical impediment materials may be necessary. The conditions that triggered postulation rather than election — prior appointment, episcopal orders, canonical incapacity — connect to the broader architecture of canonical disability law.
Historical Dictionary Support
Rapalje & Lawrence provide the most complete legal definition available in the standard reference shelf. Their entry correctly identifies the core mechanism: that translation of a bishop required postulation to the pope because the fiction of spiritual marriage to the first see precluded ordinary election under the maxim electus non potest eligi (one already elected — or rather, already bound — cannot be elected again in the same sense). The dictionary's framing treats this as a settled, historical doctrine rather than a live controversy, which is appropriate given the post-Reformation perspective from which most Anglo-American dictionaries wrote.
Webster's 1913 covers the term at a high level of generality — "assumption; solicitation; suit; cause" — without engaging the canon law specifics. This is the expected pattern: a general dictionary serving a Protestant American audience in 1913 would have little reason to develop the ecclesiastical precision. The entry is useful as a reminder of the word's breadth in ordinary English but insufficient for legal research purposes.
No major gap exists between the historical dictionaries on the canonical meaning; the silence is simply that most Anglo-American legal dictionaries omit the term entirely, reflecting its remoteness from common law practice.
Jurisdictional Note
Postulation as a term of art belongs to the law of the Roman Catholic Church and, historically, to the pre-Reformation Church of England. It has no established meaning in American common law or statute. Researchers working in civil law or comparative ecclesiastical law contexts may find the term in use with its classical canonical sense.