Definition
Res corporales (Latin: "corporeal things") is a Roman and civil law classification referring to things that have a physical existence — objects that can be touched and perceived by the senses. Land, animals, buildings, and goods are classic examples. The category stands in direct opposition to res incorporales, which encompasses intangible things such as rights, obligations, and inheritances that exist only as legal concepts rather than physical matter.
The distinction originates in Justinian's Institutes (2.2) and the Digest (1.8.1.1), where Gaius drew the foundational line between things corporeal and incorporeal. Bracton carried the framework into medieval English common law, making the classification one of the earliest organizing principles for property analysis in both civil and common law traditions.
Common Confusion
Res corporales is frequently encountered alongside — and confused with — res incorporales. The two are not merely opposites; they anchor an entire taxonomic system for classifying the objects of property rights. A servitude (right of way), for example, is res incorporales even though it is exercised over land that is res corporales. Researchers working in property law sources must track which category is being discussed, because rights and remedies often turned on this distinction. A second source of confusion is the broader term res itself, which in Roman and civil law simply means "thing" or "matter" and carries no implication of corporeality on its own.
Why It Matters in Research
This term is a gateway concept in the civil law property tradition and appears wherever common law writers borrowed Roman categories — which is often, and not always consistently.
Historical sources diverge on scope. Bracton's use of the corporeal/incorporeal distinction in the folios cited by Black's and Burrill's does not map perfectly onto the Roman original. Bracton adapted the Gaian taxonomy to fit English tenure, where the "thing" in question was frequently a freehold interest rather than a discrete physical object. Researchers reading Bracton through a Roman law lens may misread what he means by corporeal.
The distinction shapes real property analysis. In English common law, the corporeal/incorporeal divide became the organizing principle for hereditaments — corporeal hereditaments (land itself, physically possessed) versus incorporeal hereditaments (rights issuing out of land, such as easements and rents). These terms survived long after the Roman vocabulary that produced them faded from daily legal discourse. A researcher encountering "corporeal hereditament" in a 19th-century deed or treatise is looking at the direct descendant of res corporales thinking.
Scottish and Louisiana sources require particular care. Both jurisdictions drew directly on civilian property doctrine, and res corporales appears in their sources with greater technical precision than in English common law materials, which often used the term loosely or decoratively.
Cross-corpus alert. The corporeal/incorporeal framework underlies discussions of property that appear across tort, property, and contract materials. When a 19th-century treatise writer distinguishes a "right" from a "thing," they are almost always invoking this Roman distinction, whether or not they name it.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's, Bouvier's, and Burrill's agree on the core definition — things perceptible to the senses — and all three cite Justinian's Digest (1.8.1.1) and Institutes (2.2) as the originating authority. The alignment here reflects a concept that entered common law dictionaries fully formed from the civil law tradition, leaving little room for interpretive drift at the definitional level.
Bouvier's adds a valuable gloss that the others underemphasize: Cicero's characterization of corporeal things as res quae sunt ("things which are"), contrasted with incorporeal things as res quae intelliguntur ("things which are understood"). This philosophical framing — existence versus conception — helps researchers understand why the distinction mattered doctrinally, not just taxonomically. It is the difference between what a person holds and what a person possesses as a legal entitlement.
Burrill's is the most technically precise of the three, citing Fleta (lib. 3, c. 1, § 4) in addition to Bracton and the Roman sources. This citation chain is useful for tracing how the concept traveled through medieval English jurisprudence. Researchers working in Bracton or Fleta will find Burrill's the most useful of the three entries as a starting point.
None of the historical dictionaries address the tension between the Roman original and its common law adaptation — a gap that matters for anyone tracing the term through English property sources.
Jurisdictional Note
The term is native to civil law jurisdictions (Louisiana, Quebec, Scotland, and mixed-law systems) and Roman law scholarship. In common law jurisdictions, the concept survives primarily through the corporeal/incorporeal hereditament distinction in property law, rather than under the Latin label itself.