Definition
A Latin and Law Latin term drawn from medieval commercial and insurance law, meaning risk, hazard, or peril — specifically the exposure of property or venture to potential loss. In historical legal usage, *risicum* referred to the assumption of danger by an underwriter or insurer in exchange for a premium, forming the conceptual foundation of the insurance contract. The term appears most frequently in early treatises on marine insurance, where it described the operative subject matter of the agreement: the insurer accepts the *risicum* (the risk of loss) so that the insured is protected against it.
The term is not in active use in modern English-language legal practice, having been entirely displaced by the English word "risk" and its derivatives. Its significance today is almost entirely historical and philological — it marks the doctrinal lineage connecting modern insurance law to medieval Mediterranean commercial practice.
Common Confusion
*Risicum* is occasionally encountered alongside *periculum*, another Latin term for peril or danger appearing in insurance and contract contexts. The two are not synonymous in all uses. *Periculum* carries a broader classical Latin sense of danger or trial, and appears in Roman law contexts (including *periculum rei venditae*, the risk of a sold thing). *Risicum*, by contrast, is a medieval coinage — likely derived from Arabic or Greek commercial vocabulary through Italian intermediaries — and its use is substantially confined to insurance law and maritime commerce. Researchers finding *periculum* in a source should not assume it carries the specialized insurance-law meaning that *risicum* typically signals.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers working in the historical development of insurance law, particularly marine insurance, will encounter *risicum* in pre-modern treatises and glossaries. Its presence signals that a document or passage is operating within the tradition of medieval and early modern commercial law — most likely Italian in origin or influence — rather than the common law tradition. The term is a reliable marker for sources drawing on the Genoese, Venetian, or broader continental European insurance practice that predates and shaped Anglo-American marine insurance doctrine.
The two authorities Burrill cites — Straccha and Emerigon — are foundational texts in this tradition. Benvenuto Straccha's *De Assecurationibus* (1569) is among the earliest systematic treatments of insurance law in Western legal literature. Balthazard Marie Emerigon's *Traité des Assurances et des Contrats à la Grosse* (1783) is a monumental French treatise that heavily influenced English marine insurance law, including Lord Mansfield's jurisprudence and eventually the Marine Insurance Act 1906 (UK). Encountering *risicum* in either work or in sources citing them places the researcher squarely within this continental lineage.
In corpus research: when indexing or searching historical insurance documents, *risicum* may appear as a variant spelling or Latinized heading even in English-language sources copying continental models. Variant forms (rischo, risigo, risico) appear in Italian originals. Do not expect consistent orthography across sources.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's entry is spare but accurate: "risk; hazard; peril," confined to "old insurance law," with direct references to Straccha and Emerigon. The brevity is appropriate given the term's narrow function — it is a technical term of art in a specific historical context, not a contested or multi-layered concept.
What Burrill's entry does not address, and what researchers should supply from other sources, is the term's etymological significance. Legal historians — including those working on the history of insurance and commercial law — have traced *risicum* as evidence of the Arabic-to-Italian-to-Latin pathway by which maritime commercial vocabulary entered European legal writing. This is not merely antiquarian: it explains why the term appears in Latin treatises but carries meaning unavailable from classical Latin dictionaries. A researcher who looks up *risicum* in a classical Latin lexicon will not find it; it is a medieval formation.
No common-law English dictionaries of comparable vintage (Bouvier, Black's early editions) give significant independent treatment to *risicum*, reflecting the term's absence from the English common law tradition as a term of art. Its appearance in Burrill — a dictionary attentive to Law Latin and civil law forms — is itself informative about the scope of Burrill's coverage relative to more common-law-oriented competitors.
Jurisdictional Note
*Risicum* has no current jurisdictional significance in any English-speaking legal system. Its relevance is exclusively historical. Researchers in civil law jurisdictions, or in the history of admiralty and maritime law, may encounter it more frequently given those systems' closer ties to Roman and medieval commercial law sources.