Definition
In old English and medieval law, *sarcina* is a Latin term meaning a pack, bundle, or load — specifically a packaged unit of goods or cargo. The term appears in early English legal records in the context of commercial and customs law, where goods in transit were measured, taxed, or regulated by the pack as a standard unit.
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Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): No standard entry in general modern English. The term survives primarily in biological nomenclature, where *Sarcina* is a genus of bacteria whose cells divide into cubical clusters — the name derived from the Latin word for bundle or package, reflecting the clustered appearance of the organisms.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Webster's 1913 treats *Sarcina* exclusively as a biological genus, describing bacteria that divide along two perpendicular partitions to form groups of four cubical cells found in organic fluids including those of the stomach.
The legal meaning is entirely distinct from the biological usage. In legal records, *sarcina* is not a living organism but a commercial unit — a physical bundle or pack of merchandise. Researchers encountering the term in early English legal manuscripts or customs rolls should not allow the familiar scientific usage to obscure its mercantile legal sense.
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Why It Matters in Research
*Sarcina* is a narrow term of medieval mercantile and customs law with limited but specific application in early English legal sources. Researchers working in pre-modern English commercial records, port books, customs accounts, or plea rolls may encounter it as a unit of measure or a descriptor for packaged goods. Its significance is primarily archival: the term helps identify the form in which cargo was presented, taxed, or disputed.
Several practical cautions apply. First, the term appears almost exclusively in Latin-language legal records. Researchers relying on translated or abstracted versions of such records may find the term rendered inconsistently — as "pack," "load," "bundle," or simply omitted. Second, *sarcina* belongs to a family of Latin terms used in medieval English commerce to denote standardized units of goods, alongside terms like *balla* (bale), *fardellus* (fardel), and *trussus* (truss). These terms were not always used with precision, and their exact meanings could vary by commodity and locality. Third, the modern scientific connotation of *Sarcina* as a bacterial genus creates a false-familiarity trap: database searches across historical legal corpora may return false positives from later scientific literature, and vice versa.
The single Burrill citation — *Comb. 295* — refers to Comberbach's *Reports*, a collection of English common law cases from the late seventeenth century. Researchers should treat that citation as a pointer to the term's survival in relatively late legal usage, not as evidence of an elaborated legal doctrine.
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Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary provides the entirety of the historical legal dictionary record for this term, offering a one-line entry: "L. Lat. In old English law. A pack." The sole authority cited is Comberbach's *Reports* at page 295.
The entry is characteristic of Burrill's treatment of archaic Latin legal terms: accurate and precise in its core meaning, but offering no elaboration on commercial context, units of measurement, or the range of legal proceedings in which the term appeared. No other major historical legal dictionaries — not Black's, not Bouvier's, not Jacob's — appear to carry a dedicated entry for *sarcina*, which confirms its status as a term of narrow archaic usage rather than a term of living legal doctrine.
Historical legal dictionaries in the Burrill tradition drew heavily on Latin-English legal glossaries and on the work of earlier lexicographers such as Spelman and Du Cange, whose *Glossarium* provided the Continental and ecclesiastical Latin context for terms like *sarcina*. Researchers requiring fuller philological grounding should consult Du Cange for the broader medieval Latin usage.
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Jurisdictional Note
This term is specific to early English legal usage. There is no evidence of equivalent technical usage in American law, and it does not appear in the legal vocabulary of civil law jurisdictions under this form.
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