Definition
Latin. "To buy blood" or "to purchase blood." In feudal law, the act by which villeins redeemed their blood or tenure — that is, paid for release from the legal disabilities attached to villein status — in order to become freemen. The transaction was, in essence, a formal purchase of personal liberty, by which a villein bought out the servile condition that attached to him and his bloodline under the feudal tenure system.
The phrase describes both the act and the legal mechanism: the villein paid consideration (often to the lord) to extinguish the hereditary taint of serfdom and acquire the standing of a free person. Once accomplished, the individual and, depending on the terms, his descendants were no longer subject to the burdens and incapacities of villeinage.
Common Confusion
SANGUINEM EMERE vs. SANGUIS: The two Latin terms appear in adjacent dictionary entries and share a root, but describe unrelated legal concepts. Sanguinem emere is a transactional term describing a villein's purchase of freedom. Sanguis, in its feudal jurisdictional sense, describes the lord's power to adjudicate cases involving bloodshed. Neither term implies the other, and conflating them misreads both the villein's act and the lord's authority.
SANGUINEM EMERE vs. MANUMISSION: Though both result in a villein or slave becoming free, sanguinem emere involves a purchase — a bilateral transaction in which the serf pays for release. Manumission in the classical and later English sense was typically a unilateral act of the lord or master. The legal character of the freedom obtained may differ, though the historical sources do not elaborate the downstream consequences.
Why It Matters in Research
This term appears almost exclusively in historical and feudal law contexts. Researchers encountering it in medieval English legal records, charter documents, or treatises on tenure should understand it as signaling a manumission-adjacent transaction — not an outright grant of freedom by the lord, but a purchased redemption, implying the villein retained enough economic capacity to negotiate and pay for release.
The distinction matters: sanguinem emere represents a consensual commercial act within the feudal framework, whereas outright manumission was a unilateral grant. Researchers tracing the legal status of individuals in historical records should note which mechanism is described, as the two had different implications for the freedman's subsequent legal standing and for the rights of third parties (including creditors and heirs).
The term also appears in proximity to SANGUIS, which has a distinct meaning in a different context — the lord's jurisdictional power over bloodshed cases — and that adjacency in the historical dictionaries creates a trap for readers scanning entries. Do not conflate the two.
No modern statutory or common law application survives. The term is a research artifact, relevant to historical legal analysis, property history, and the study of feudal tenure rather than to any living legal doctrine.
Historical Dictionary Support
All four source dictionaries agree on the core definition: a redemption by villeins of their blood or tenure to become freemen. The formulations are nearly identical across Bouvier, Rapalje & Lawrence, and both editions of Black's, suggesting these entries derive from a common root rather than independent analysis.
Black's (both editions) appends a related maxim — Sanguinis conjunctio benevolentia devincit homines et caritate ("A tie of blood overcomes men through benevolence and family affection") — immediately following the sanguinem emere entry. This placement is potentially confusing: the maxim is independent and concerns family loyalty and consanguinity, not the purchase of blood or villein redemption. The 2nd edition attributes it to Steere v. Steere, 5 Johns. Ch. (N.Y.) 1 (1821), a New York chancery case involving family relations, which confirms the maxim belongs to a separate body of doctrine entirely.
Rapalje & Lawrence offers the most useful supplementary context by separately defining SANGUIS as "the right or power which the chief lord of the fee had to judge and determine cases where blood was shed," with a citation to Monasticon Anglicanum. This clarifies that sanguis in its standalone form described a lord's jurisdictional privilege, not bloodline status — a meaningfully different concept from what sanguinem emere describes.
None of the historical dictionaries address the economic mechanics of the transaction, the form it took in practice, or what legal consequences followed from successful redemption. Researchers seeking that depth must look beyond the dictionary shelf to treatises on feudal tenure, including Littleton's Tenures and Coke's commentary thereon.