Definition
A Latin term from the civil law and old English law meaning "to seal" or "to affix a seal." The term derives from *sigillum* (a seal) and appears in legal texts primarily as an action verb describing the physical act of impressing or attaching a seal to a document, thereby giving that document legal force or authentication. The past participial form *sigillatum* means "sealed" — a document so described has had a seal affixed to it. In the contexts where the term appears, sealing was not merely ceremonial; it was the operative act that completed and authenticated formal legal instruments such as deeds, charters, and writs.
Common Confusion
Burrill's entry for *sigillare* contains what appears to be a typographical or compositional error in its surviving text, running the entry together with fragments from an unrelated entry (involving "Per seculum" and "Age" from Kelham, which belong to a separate headword). Researchers consulting Burrill's should be alert to this corruption and not treat the trailing material as part of the definition of *sigillare*. The reference to *1 Salk. 141* and the discussion of "actual underwriting of the name" at *26 Wendell's R. 341* and *2 Selden's R. 9* belongs to adjacent source text and concerns the interpretation of the act of signing, not sealing — a distinct legal act that was frequently confused or conflated in early modern practice as the seal gradually yielded in primacy to the signature.
Why It Matters in Research
This term matters primarily as a key to interpreting Latin phrases and recitals in old English and civil law instruments. Researchers working with pre-modern deeds, royal charters, writs, and ecclesiastical documents will encounter *sigillare* and *sigillatum* as operative words establishing that a document has been formally executed by sealing. Understanding the term clarifies the distinction between sealing and signing — two acts that in English legal history were not synonymous. For much of the common law's early development, sealing was the dispositive act for deeds; signing was secondary or irrelevant until the Statute of Frauds (1677) and subsequent developments elevated the signature in importance.
The corruption in Burrill's entry is itself a research trap. A researcher who reads Burrill's text as printed may encounter the material on "actual underwriting of the name" and mistakenly associate it with the concept of sealing. The references to Wendell's Reports and Selden's Reports concern signature practice in American and English courts respectively — valuable for other research but not directly illuminating *sigillare*. Researchers should cross-check Burrill's against Calvinus's *Lexicon Juridicum* (cited by Burrill as "Calv. Lex."), which is the primary authority Burrill invokes for the definition itself.
For corpus researchers, *sigillare* and its cognates (*sigillum*, *sigillatus*, *sigillatum*) form a cluster of terms worth searching together. Documents using these terms are likely to be formal instruments of consequence — not informal memoranda — and their sealing will often have been the legally operative act establishing validity, delivery, or the commencement of a limitations period.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary is the sole shelf source for this entry. Burrill defines *sigillare* succinctly and correctly as "to seal; to affix a seal," supporting the definition with a citation to Calvinus's *Lexicon Juridicum* and to *1 Salk. 141* (Salkeld's Reports, an English common law reporter from the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries). The Calvinus citation is appropriate: *Lexicon Juridicum* was a standard reference for Latin legal terminology in the civil and ius commune tradition, and *sigillare* in that context carried precisely the meaning Burrill gives it.
What Burrill does not provide — and what historical dictionaries of this genre generally omit — is any account of the legal significance of the sealing act itself: why affixing a seal transformed a writing into a deed, or how the requirement of sealing interacted with the development of signature requirements. For that context, researchers must look beyond the dictionary to treatises on the law of deeds and to the broader history of formal requirements in English contract and conveyancing law.
Jurisdictional Note
As a Latin term of the civil and old English law, *sigillare* has no modern jurisdictional home. It appears in historical sources drawn from both the English common law tradition and the continental civil law tradition, reflecting the shared Roman substrate of formal instrument practice across both systems. American courts and practitioners will encounter it only in historical documents or in scholarly treatments of early legal formalism.