Definition
Pro lucrari is a Latin law phrase meaning "for gain" or "for the purpose of gaining." It appears in medieval and early common law texts to describe an intent or purpose directed toward profit or advantage. The phrase was used to characterize the motive behind an act — particularly in contexts where the law distinguished between acts done for gain and acts done for other purposes, such as safekeeping, necessity, or gratuitous service.
Why It Matters in Research
This is a narrow, archaic Latin phrase with a limited footprint in the legal literature. Researchers encountering pro lucrari will almost certainly find it in medieval Latin legal texts, particularly the treatise literature of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries — Fleta being the principal source. Burrill traces it directly to Fleta, lib. 6, c. 7, § 12, which places it in the context of early common law discussion of bailment or related obligatory relations, where the profit motive of the party holding another's property could affect the degree of care required and thus liability.
The key research trap here is terminological: pro lucrari is not a term of art that evolved into a modern doctrine under the same name. Its conceptual work — identifying profit-seeking as a basis for heightened duty — migrated into other doctrinal language. Researchers tracing the history of bailment law, the duty of care owed by bailees for hire, or early common law treatment of economic motive will need to follow that thread through Bracton, Fleta, and Glanvill, and then track how those ideas were reformulated by Holt C.J. and later Blackstone without necessarily preserving the Latin phrase itself.
Because the phrase is tied to Fleta specifically, researchers should be cautious about generalizing its usage. It is not a term appearing broadly across the Year Books or later case law in the way that phrases like pro tanto or pro rata do. Finding it outside Fleta or direct quotation of Fleta should prompt source verification.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary provides the only entry among the Law Mind shelf sources, defining pro lucrari as "for to gain" and citing Fleta, lib. 6, c. 7, § 12. The entry is minimal — a translation and a single citation — which is itself informative: the phrase did not attract substantial independent treatment in later legal lexicography. This suggests it functioned as a technical descriptor within a specific textual tradition rather than as a freestanding term of widespread application.
The citation to Fleta is significant. Fleta is an anonymous thirteenth-century Latin treatise closely modeled on Bracton, and its sixth book treats procedural and substantive matters in early common law. The phrase pro lucrari in that context almost certainly relates to the distinction between gratuitous and compensated custodians — a distinction with lasting doctrinal consequences for the law of bailment. Burrill's terse entry does not elaborate this connection, which means researchers must go directly to Fleta to recover the operative legal context.
No other historical dictionary in standard use — not Black's early editions, not Tomlin's, not Bouvier's — appears to carry a dedicated entry for this phrase, further confirming its specialized, source-specific character.