Definition
Putagium is a term from old English law denoting fornication committed by a woman. The term appears in medieval legal texts primarily in contexts involving inheritance, legitimacy, and the legal status of children born outside of marriage. Its significance in historical legal proceedings arose where the circumstances of a child's birth — and specifically the conduct of the mother — bore on questions of bastardy and succession rights.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers encountering putagium in medieval English legal sources should understand it as a gender-specific term: it refers to the woman's act, not the couple's conduct. This asymmetry is legally meaningful. Medieval law treated the sexual conduct of the mother as directly relevant to determinations of bastardy and to the husband's ability to disavow paternity. The term surfaces in contexts involving inheritance disputes, dower claims, and the legal capacity of offspring.
The primary sources citing putagium — Glanvill, Bracton, and Fleta — are foundational texts of early English common law. Researchers should note that these texts are not always internally consistent and that later commentators, including Spelman, occasionally read back anachronistic precision into early medieval usage. When tracing how putagium interacts with bastardy doctrine, the parallel term adulterinus (a child born of adultery) is often encountered nearby, and the two concepts are closely linked but not identical.
There is no modern statutory or common law successor term. The concept dissolved into broader bastardy and illegitimacy doctrine, which itself has been substantially reformed or abolished in most jurisdictions. A researcher encountering putagium in a primary source should treat it as a signal that questions of legitimacy, inheritance capacity, and the husband's presumption of paternity are in play in the surrounding text.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary provides the core entry: "Fornication on the part of a woman," citing Glanvill (lib. 7, c. 12), Bracton (fol. 88), Spelman, and Fleta (lib. 1, c. 15, § 4). This is a narrow, accurate definition that reflects the term's appearance across the major medieval common law authorities.
The cluster of citations is significant. Glanvill's treatment (circa 1187–1189) is among the earliest systematic expositions of English common law and addresses legitimacy in the context of dower and inheritance. Bracton (mid-thirteenth century) elaborates the doctrine further. Fleta (late thirteenth century) largely follows Bracton. The convergence across these three texts confirms that putagium was a term of art with recognizable legal meaning across the formative period of English common law, not a one-off usage.
Historical dictionaries do not address putagium in the context of comparative or civil law traditions, and Burrill does not distinguish between putagium and related Latin terms such as fornicatio or adulterium. Researchers should be cautious about assuming these terms were used interchangeably in primary sources; the distinction between simple fornication and adultery carried legal weight in questions of bastardy.
Jurisdictional Note
Putagium is a term of medieval English common law with no equivalent in modern Anglo-American statutory law. It does not appear in American legal materials as a term of art. Researchers working in ecclesiastical law contexts should note that canon law also addressed female sexual conduct in legitimacy proceedings, sometimes using overlapping but distinct terminology.