Definition
Sauvagine is a Law French term meaning wild animals, used in medieval and early common law to denote game, waterfowl, and other creatures existing in a state of nature. The word encompasses both the animals themselves and, in certain usages, the quality of wildness — the condition of being undomesticated and free — that determined their legal status as property.
In early English law, legal rights over sauvagine depended critically on whether an animal retained its wild nature (fera natura) or had been sufficiently tamed or confined to become property subject to ownership. An animal could be possessed temporarily, but if it escaped and "resumed its sauvagine" — returned to its natural, uncontrolled state — the possessor's property interest extinguished with it.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): A particular oligopeptide that functions as a neuropeptide.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Not listed. The term did not circulate in general English usage.
The gap here is absolute. The modern scientific term "sauvagine" — a peptide isolated from frog skin — shares only its French root (sauvage, wild) with the legal term. Researchers encountering "sauvagine" in a legal corpus should treat it as Law French referring to wild animals and their legal condition, with no connection to the biochemical usage.
Common Confusion
Sauvagine is sometimes loosely equated with the concept of fera natura, but the two operate at different levels. Fera natura is the legal doctrine — the principle that wild animals by nature belong to no one (res nullius) until captured. Sauvagine is the descriptive term for the animals themselves, or for the wild condition that triggers the fera natura analysis. Additionally, researchers should not conflate sauvagine with "venison" or "pannage," which are related but distinct categories of forest law relating to deer and mast feeding, respectively.
Why It Matters in Research
Sauvagine appears almost exclusively in Law French sources predating the full transition to English legal writing, placing it primarily in materials from the thirteenth through sixteenth centuries. Researchers working in the Law Mind corpus on topics of forest law, game rights, royal prerogative over wildlife, or the law of property in animals will encounter this term in contexts where its dual meaning — the animals themselves and the legal quality of wildness — matters to interpretation.
The Burrill citation to Britton (c. 33, fol. 85) is the most useful anchor. Britton, the late thirteenth-century treatise attributed to John le Breton, uses sauvagine in the context of payments into the exchequer related to wild game, situating the term within the fiscal and administrative dimensions of royal forest rights. This is distinct from the purely philosophical fera natura discussion found in later natural law and common law writing.
A key research trap: the term's dual sense. When Burrill notes "the wild disposition of an animal (fera natura)" as a separate meaning, he is pointing to sauvagine used adjectivally or abstractly — not just naming the creature, but describing its legal condition. The passage he quotes from Britton captures the practical consequence: an escaped animal that resumes its sauvagine is no longer anyone's property. Researchers must read context carefully to determine which sense is operative.
Jurisdictional variation is minimal for this term because sauvagine belongs to a pre-jurisdictional stratum of Anglo-Norman law applicable broadly across the early English common law sphere. Its relevance is historical rather than contemporary.
Historical Dictionary Support
All three source dictionaries agree on the core gloss — wild animals — and do not diverge. Black's (both editions) offer the bare translation. Burrill adds the most useful material by quoting Britton directly and distinguishing the substantive from the dispositional sense of the term.
What the historical dictionaries collectively miss is the fiscal and administrative context in which sauvagine operated. The Britton reference to payments into the exchequer suggests sauvagine had practical significance in royal revenue administration over forest game, a dimension none of the dictionaries develop. Researchers should not treat the dictionaries' terse entries as capturing the full legal significance of the term in medieval practice.
Jurisdictional Note
Sauvagine is a term of early English common law derived from Anglo-Norman French. It has no direct counterpart in modern American, English, or Commonwealth statutory law. Its relevance is confined to historical research in medieval English legal materials.