Definition
In Roman and civil law, a stepson — specifically, the son of a husband or wife by a former marriage. The term is a Latin designation used in civil law texts to identify the relationship between a child from a prior union and the current spouse of that child's parent. The feminine form, privigna, denotes a stepdaughter in the same relational context.
Common Confusion
Privignus is occasionally encountered alongside related civil law kinship terms that describe blended or step-family relationships, such as vitricus (stepfather) and noverca (stepmother). Researchers unfamiliar with Roman family law vocabulary may conflate these terms or mistake privignus for a term denoting adoption or agnatic kinship. The privignus relationship is not a legal adoption; it carries no presumption of inheritance rights equivalent to those of a natural or formally adopted child under Roman law. The distinction matters when tracing succession rules in Digest sources.
Why It Matters in Research
This term appears almost exclusively in civil law and Roman law contexts. Researchers will encounter privignus primarily in texts drawn from Justinian's Digest — particularly Book 38, Title 10, which addresses degrees of cognation and the rules governing succession among relatives — and in learned commentaries and glossaries derived from that tradition.
Several practical research points:
First, privignus does not translate cleanly into modern common law categories. Common law systems developed their own vocabulary for stepfamily relationships, and English equity and statutory materials rarely use this Latin term. If a researcher is working in common law sources, encountering privignus almost certainly signals the author is drawing on Roman or civil law authority, citing a continental jurist, or writing in a learned legal tradition (such as ecclesiastical law or early Scots law) that relied heavily on the Digest.
Second, the term's significance in the Digest context is largely for purposes of delimiting degrees of relationship in succession and intestacy. Roman law drew careful distinctions about which relatives could inherit, in what order, and to what extent. The privignus occupied a specific — and often subordinate — position in these calculations. Researchers tracing the historical development of step-parent/stepchild legal relationships, inheritance rights in blended families, or the civil law foundations of family law doctrine will find this term a useful anchor into Digest Book 38 and its commentators.
Third, because the term is Latin and confined to civil law usage, it is largely invisible in common law case reporters and statutes. Its primary research utility is in: (a) reading Roman law sources and their translations; (b) understanding the vocabulary of early modern learned legal writing in England, Scotland, and continental Europe; and (c) tracing how civil law concepts of family relationship influenced later codified systems.
Historical Dictionary Support
The four source dictionaries are in complete agreement on the core definition. Black's (both editions) and Rapalje & Lawrence define privignus identically as "a son of a husband or wife by a former marriage; a step-son," each citing Digest 38.10.4.6 as authority. Burrill's is the most expansive entry, adding the feminine form privigna (stepdaughter) with citation to the same Digest passage, and additionally referencing Brissonius (Barnabé Brisson's legal lexicon) and Cooper's edition of Justinian's Institutes. The citation to Calvin (Calvinus's Lexicon Juridicum) appears in Black's, and Burrill cites it as "Calv. Lex." — both pointing to Johannes Calvinus's early seventeenth-century civil law dictionary, a standard reference work for this class of term.
No source dictionary offers substantive analysis of the legal consequences attaching to the privignus relationship; they treat the term as definitional rather than doctrinal. Researchers needing the substantive rules — what rights, duties, or disabilities attached to the privignus in Roman succession law — must go to the Digest directly or to treatises on Roman family law.
Jurisdictional Note
Privignus is a term of Roman and civil law with no direct equivalent in English common law vocabulary. It remains relevant in jurisdictions whose private law descends from the civil law tradition (Louisiana, Quebec, Scotland, and continental European systems) where Digest sources retain historical authority. In purely common law research contexts, the term functions as a signal that the source is drawing on civilian learning.