Definition
*Siasticis* is an abbreviated reference to the Latin phrase *de bonis ecclesiasticis* — a form of writ of fieri facias directed to a bishop or archbishop rather than to a sheriff. The full writ commanded the ecclesiastical authority to cause satisfaction to be made out of the ecclesiastical goods and chattels of a judgment debtor who was a beneficed clerk (a clergyman holding a church living) and who possessed no lay fee from which a standard execution could be satisfied.
The writ arose as a procedural remedy when the ordinary writ of fieri facias (*fi. fa.*) against lay goods and chattels failed. If the sheriff returned *nulla bona* — that the defendant had no goods — and further certified that the defendant was a beneficed clerk without any lay fee, the plaintiff could pursue ecclesiastical property through this alternative writ. Because a clergyman's income and goods derived from his benefice were held to lie outside the reach of lay execution, a separate command to the bishop was required to reach them. During a vacancy in a bishopric, the writ ran to the archbishop of the province.
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Common Confusion
*Siasticis* is not itself a standalone legal term; it is a fragment or contracted form of the phrase *de bonis ecclesiasticis*, occasionally appearing in abbreviated writ references and older pleading texts. Researchers encountering *siasticis* in a historical source are reading the tail end of that Latin phrase, often in a running passage of Latin writ text. Do not treat it as a separate writ distinct from *de bonis ecclesiasticis*; the two references point to the same instrument.
The standard *fi. fa.* (fieri facias) should also be distinguished from this writ. The standard *fi. fa.* runs to the sheriff and operates against lay property. The *fi. fa. de bonis ecclesiasticis* runs to the bishop and operates solely against ecclesiastical goods. The procedural trigger — a prior *nulla bona* return combined with the defendant's status as a beneficed clerk without lay fee — is what separates the two.
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Why It Matters in Research
Researchers working in ecclesiastical law, early common law procedure, or the history of judgment execution will encounter this term almost exclusively in pre-nineteenth-century English sources. Several research traps deserve attention.
First, the term almost always appears mid-phrase, not as a standalone headword. Searches in historical corpora should run on *de bonis ecclesiasticis* rather than on *siasticis* alone; the fragment appears only because early legal texts were often copied, abbreviated, or printed in truncated Latin form.
Second, the writ reflects a procedural world in which ecclesiastical and lay jurisdictions operated as parallel systems with their own property regimes. A beneficed clerk's income from his living was not simply "church money" in a loose sense — it was legally distinct from lay fee and required a different enforcement mechanism. Understanding this jurisdictional division is essential for reading any action for debt or execution against a clerical defendant in the medieval or early modern period.
Third, the writ traces the intersection of royal courts and episcopal authority. The command ran to the bishop, but it issued from the royal court — a point that matters for understanding how the common law courts gradually extended control over ecclesiastical property without formally invading ecclesiastical jurisdiction.
Fourth, the practical utility of this writ diminished substantially after the reforms of clerical property holding and the decline of benefice-based income structures in the nineteenth century. By the time most American and colonial legal systems were codified, the writ had no operative domestic counterpart. Researchers should treat it as a writ of English ecclesiastical procedure with no direct American analog.
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Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary is the primary source carrying this term, and its entry confirms the core procedural account: the writ issued after a *nulla bona* return, was addressed to the bishop (or archbishop during vacancy), and commanded satisfaction from ecclesiastical goods and chattels. The entry is necessarily incomplete as preserved — the text is truncated — but the operative framework is clear enough.
Historical dictionaries of English law, including those of Termes de la Ley and Rastell's legal glossaries, treat *de bonis ecclesiasticis* in the broader context of writs of execution and clerical privilege. What older dictionaries tend to understate is the constitutional tension embedded in the writ: by routing execution through the bishop rather than around him, the common law courts acknowledged episcopal authority while simultaneously subordinating it to the judgment of a royal court. This was not merely a procedural nicety but a negotiated boundary between secular and ecclesiastical power that was contested throughout the medieval period.
No American legal dictionary of authority treats this term as operative domestic law, which is consistent with its character as a relic of English ecclesiastical jurisdiction.
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Jurisdictional Note
This writ is a product of English ecclesiastical and common law procedure and has no recognized equivalent in American, Scottish, or civilian legal systems. Research into its operation is necessarily confined to English legal history and to jurisdictions that inherited the full apparatus of English ecclesiastical law before disestablishment reforms.
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