Definition
In old English law, a term used to designate a period of fifteen days, measured from a specified feast day or other fixed point. The quindena functioned as a standard unit of procedural time in medieval English courts, particularly for calculating return days — the dates on which parties, writs, or proceedings were required to appear or be completed.
Two closely related but subtly distinct usages appear in the historical sources:
1. The fifteenth day after a feast (quinzième). Under this usage, quindena denotes not the span of fifteen days but the specific terminal day — the day on which the period expires, analogous to the modern concept of a deadline or return date.
2. A fortnight (fourteen nights). Under this usage, quindena denotes the full interval of approximately two weeks, parallel to the term septimana (seven nights, or one week), of which it is the double.
The apparent discrepancy between these two usages — fourteen nights versus fifteen days — reflects a counting convention of the period. Medieval reckoning commonly included the starting day itself, so "fifteen days" inclusive of the feast day from which counting began would expire on what modern reckoning would call the fourteenth day following. Bacon's observation captures the essential distinction: the French and law phrase counted fifteen days inclusively, while the English vernacular phrase "this day fortnight" excluded the starting day.
Common Confusion
The relationship between quindena, septimana, and octava (the eighth day, or octave, after a feast) is a persistent source of confusion in reading medieval legal instruments. These were all standardized return days used by English courts, but they measured different intervals and attached to different feast days. A researcher encountering any of these terms should determine which feast day serves as the anchor before calculating the actual calendar date. Additionally, quindena should not be conflated with the tax term quindecima or quinzieme (a fifteenth part of goods or income levied as a tax), which is etymologically related but functionally entirely different.
Why It Matters in Research
Quindena appears almost exclusively in pre-modern English legal materials — statutes, plea rolls, writs, and procedural records dating roughly from the thirteenth through seventeenth centuries. Researchers working in this corpus need to understand several navigational points:
Return day calculations are the primary context. Medieval English common law courts scheduled proceedings by reference to feast days and fixed intervals after them. Identifying a return day expressed as "quindena" of a given feast requires knowing both the feast date in the applicable year and which counting method governs. Errors in this calculation can misplace a procedural event by one or two days, which in some historical disputes over jurisdiction or default has legal significance.
Statute of Westminster II is the anchor text. Burrill cites Stat. Westm. 2 (1285) as a primary location for quindena in statutory usage. Researchers reading that statute or materials that cite it will encounter the term in its jurisdictional and procedural sense.
Fleta is the key treatise source. Burrill cites Fleta, a late-thirteenth-century treatise on English law, for both usages of quindena. Fleta lib. 1, c. 24, § 5 addresses the fortnight meaning; lib. 2, c. 35 addresses the return-day meaning. Researchers consulting Fleta directly should note that the treatise draws on Bracton and may reflect idealized rather than universally practiced procedure.
The term becomes functionally obsolete after the procedural reforms of the nineteenth century. Courts of the modern era do not use feast-day return days, so quindena will not appear in any live procedural context. Its relevance is entirely historical and archival.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary is the primary historical dictionary source for this entry, and it provides the most complete treatment available in the Law Mind corpus. Burrill identifies both principal meanings — the fifteenth day after a feast and the fortnight — and acknowledges the inclusive/exclusive counting distinction through the Bacon quotation. That quotation from Bacon's Argument on Jurisdiction is particularly useful because it explains, in period voice, exactly why modern readers find the arithmetic confusing.
Burrill's entry is compact and does not attempt to trace the term's procedural history across specific court systems or document types. Researchers wanting a fuller account of how return days functioned in medieval English procedure will need to look beyond dictionary sources to treatises such as Fleta itself, to Blackstone's Commentaries discussion of terms and returns, or to secondary scholarship on the common law calendar.
No significant divergence among historical dictionary sources is observable here, as the term is narrow and technical enough that variation in treatment is unlikely. The main limitation of historical dictionary coverage is the absence of worked examples showing how quindena appeared in actual writ language or plea roll entries.
Jurisdictional Note
Quindena is a term of English law specifically. It does not appear as a term of art in Scots, Irish, or civil law traditions in the same procedural sense, though cognate terms appear in continental European legal practice reflecting the shared influence of the ecclesiastical calendar on court scheduling.