Definition
In old English and medieval Latin legal usage, to suspect, accuse, or charge a person with a crime. The term appears in Latin records of early English law, most often in the passive construction retatus (accused, charged), as in retatus de murdro (accused of murder) or de furto retatus (charged with theft). It is a term of pleading and criminal process, not of judgment — retare describes the act of bringing a formal accusation or suspicion to bear against a person, not the finding of guilt.
Common Language
No common English counterpart exists for retare. The term is pure Latin legal vocabulary drawn from the records of early medieval English courts and has no meaningful presence in ordinary English usage. It does not appear in Wiktionary or Webster's 1913. COMMON LANGUAGE section omitted accordingly.
Why It Matters in Research
Retare and its derivatives appear almost exclusively in Latin legal records from the Norman and early Plantagenet periods — primarily in the Assizes, pipe rolls, and related administrative instruments of Henry II's reign and after. Researchers working in this corpus need to recognize the inflected forms: retatus (masculine singular), retata (feminine), and retati (plural) are the constructions actually encountered in sources. The base verb retare is largely a grammatical abstraction; what appears in documents is the participial form.
The Assize of Clarendon (1166), cited by Burrill, is the key documentary context. Its provisions established a systematic accusatory process through juries of presentment — a forerunner of the grand jury — and retatus de murdro or de latrocinio (accused of murder or robbery) is the operative status a person held once presented by that jury. Understanding retare thus connects directly to understanding the early architecture of English criminal procedure: accusation, not yet conviction, as the trigger for further process.
Do not conflate this Latin term with later English indictment vocabulary. A person retatus had been accused or suspected; the legal consequences that followed depended on the procedural rules of the particular assize or court, including compurgation or trial by ordeal in the earliest period. The term drops from active use as Latin gives way to Law French and then English in legal records, so its appearance is a strong signal that a source dates to the twelfth or thirteenth century.
Burrill's cross-reference to Spelman and Cowell points researchers toward two essential secondary sources for this layer of vocabulary: Spelman's Glossarium Archaiologicum and Cowell's Interpreter, both of which handle medieval Latin legal terms that Burrill summarizes rather than expands upon. For any serious work with primary sources using retare, those glossaries should be consulted directly.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's entry is brief and accurately captures the core meaning. He gives two well-chosen examples — retatus de murdro from the Assize of Clarendon and de furto retatus from Cowell — that bracket the term's primary application to serious criminal charges (murder and theft being the paradigm felonies of early English law). His note to "See Rettatus" signals that variant spelling is an issue in the sources; researchers should search both forms in any index or database.
Burrill does not elaborate on the procedural significance of the accusation — what followed from being retatus, what defenses were available, or how the term interacted with the oath-based processes of the period. That context must be drawn from legal historical scholarship rather than dictionary sources alone. No other dictionary on the Law Mind shelf carries this term in independently useful form; Burrill's entry, thin as it is, is the primary dictionary resource.
Jurisdictional Note
Retare is specific to early English legal history and has no parallel development in other common law jurisdictions, which came into existence after this Latin vocabulary had already become archaic. It is of no practical relevance to modern law in any jurisdiction.