Definition
An archaic legal and record term appearing in old English historical records, denoting a renegade or apostate — specifically, a person who had renounced Christianity and converted to Islam. The term was used descriptively in administrative and chronicle records rather than as a term of legal art carrying defined rights or consequences in the common law tradition.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers encountering RENEEZ in medieval or early modern English records should treat it as a status descriptor, not a term of legal procedure. Its significance in historical documents is primarily social and religious rather than doctrinal: it marks a person's perceived departure from the Christian faith community, which in the medieval period could carry real legal and civic consequences — loss of standing, property disabilities, or exclusion from certain protections — but these consequences flowed from general ecclesiastical and feudal law, not from the term itself.
The term's appearances are concentrated in chronicle and administrative sources from the late twelfth century onward. Researchers consulting Hoveden's chronicle (Chronica Rogeri de Hoveden), from which Burrill draws his reference to Richard I's reign (c. 1192), should be aware that such sources blend narrative history with embedded legal and quasi-legal records. Terms appearing in this context may not translate directly into operative legal vocabulary.
Spelling variation is a significant trap. Medieval and early modern scribes rendered this concept inconsistently. Researchers should search variant forms including RENEGADO, RENEGADE, RENEGATE, and APOSTATA when working through manuscript records, calendars of state papers, or printed editions of chronicle sources. RENEEZ appears to be a phonetic or scribal rendering rather than a stable term of art.
Cross-reference to Spelman's Glossarium (cited by Burrill) is advisable for researchers needing to trace the term's usage across Latin and vernacular sources. Spelman provides broader contextual support than Burrill's brief entry conveys.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary is the sole shelf source to record RENEEZ, and its entry is deliberately spare: a two-source citation pointing to Hoveden and Spelman, with no elaboration of legal consequences. This brevity is itself instructive — Burrill treats RENEEZ as a vocabulary item useful for decoding old records rather than as a term with active doctrinal content.
The reference to Spelman aligns with standard nineteenth-century lexicographic practice: when a term's primary authority was a specialized medieval glossarist rather than case law or statute, Burrill deferred to that secondary source. Researchers should not infer from the Burrill entry that RENEEZ had any specific common law definition beyond its descriptive meaning.
No comparable entry appears in Bouvier, Black (early editions), or other standard law dictionary sources consulted for the Law Mind corpus, suggesting the term had passed entirely out of operative legal use well before American legal lexicography developed.
Jurisdictional Note
RENEEZ is exclusively a historical English term rooted in medieval record practice. It has no modern operative meaning in any common law jurisdiction and carries no current legal significance. Research use is limited to historical and archival contexts involving English records from approximately the twelfth through sixteenth centuries.