Definition
A receptator (Latin) is a person who receives, harbors, or conceals a robber, felon, or other criminal, thereby shielding that person from justice. The term belongs to the civil law tradition and to early English common law, where it designated what modern law would recognize as a harborer or accessory after the fact. The receptator did not commit the underlying offense but rendered assistance to the offender following its commission — most characteristically by providing refuge, concealment, or protection.
The concept is closely linked to the broader Latin verb receptare (to receive habitually, to harbor), from which it derives. In medieval legal usage, the receptator occupied a recognized category of criminal liability distinct from the principal offender, the accessory before the fact, and the mere passive bystander.
Common Confusion
RECEPTATOR vs. RECEPTOR: These two Latin-derived terms are easily conflated, and Burrill's own entry runs them together at the margins. They are not synonymous. Receptor (from recipere, to receive) referred in old English law to a court officer or receiver who took possession of property — either a defendant's assets or property in litigation. Receptator, by contrast, is a criminal law concept focused on harboring a felon. One term is procedural and property-oriented; the other is penal and person-oriented. Historical sources occasionally blurred this line, making careful attention to context essential when working in medieval or early modern legal texts.
RECEPTATOR vs. ACCESSORY AFTER THE FACT: Modern common law replaced the receptator concept with the doctrine of accessory after the fact, and later with statutory offenses such as harboring a fugitive or obstruction of justice. The receptator category was broader and less technically defined than the modern accessory doctrine; it could attach to habitual concealers as well as one-time helpers, and did not always require proof of specific knowledge of a completed felony in the precise modern sense.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers encountering receptator in primary sources should treat it as a historical term of art that does not map cleanly onto any single modern offense. Its appearance signals a criminal law context involving post-offense assistance to a felon, but the exact liability rules varied across the civil law, the Bractonian common law tradition, and later English practice.
The term appears most frequently in sources drawing on Roman law (the Digest), in Bracton's De Legibus et Consuetudinibus Angliae, and in Fleta — the three authorities Burrill cites. Researchers working in those texts will find receptator used with some consistency, but the precise consequences attached to the status (whether treated as equivalent to the principal, or as a lesser offender) varied by period and jurisdiction. In the Digest tradition, harboring thieves and robbers carried distinct treatment depending on the nature of the underlying offense.
In English legal history, the receptator concept fed into the development of accessory-after-the-fact doctrine, and eventually into the statutory law of receiving stolen goods (which focused on property rather than persons). These are related but not identical lines of development. A researcher tracing the history of complicity doctrine, obstruction offenses, or receiving stolen property should note that receptator belongs to the harboring-of-persons branch, not primarily the receiving-of-goods branch, though some historical sources treated both under the same conceptual umbrella.
The truncated Burrill entry — which runs into the separate RECEPTOR entry mid-sentence — is a known artifact of that dictionary's typesetting. Researchers relying on Burrill should consult the underlying sources (Bracton, Fleta, the Digest) directly for full doctrinal context.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary provides the primary dictionary treatment and is the main shelf source available. Burrill correctly identifies receptator as a civil and old English law term, correctly derives it from receptare, and correctly links it to the harboring of robbers and felons. The citations to Digest 47.16, Bracton folio 115b, Fleta lib. 1 c. 38 § 16 and lib. 2 c. 52 § 9, and the Feudal Law lib. 2 tit. 53 § 8 are standard references for this concept in the medieval legal tradition.
What Burrill does not address: the evolution of the concept into modern accessory doctrine, the distinction between harboring persons and receiving property, or the procedural consequences that attached to receptator status in different legal systems. The entry is also physically incomplete as printed, running into the adjacent RECEPTOR entry — a textual defect researchers should flag.
No other shelf dictionaries in the current corpus provide independent entries for this term. Researchers needing fuller treatment should proceed directly to Bracton and Fleta, both of which address the receptator with greater doctrinal specificity than any secondary dictionary source.
Jurisdictional Note
As a term of Roman and medieval English law, receptator has no current operative meaning in any modern Anglo-American jurisdiction. Its functional descendants — harboring a fugitive, accessory after the fact, obstruction of justice — are governed by modern statutes that vary significantly by jurisdiction. Researchers should not assume that the elements or consequences of receptator liability translate directly into any modern legal standard.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
Law Mind Encyclopedia — Accessory Liability
Law Mind Encyclopedia — Receiving Stolen Goods
Law Mind Encyclopedia — Complicity Doctrine (Historical Development)