Definition
A contracted form of the Latin term *specialis*, meaning "special" or "particular." In legal usage, *spialis* appears in older ecclesiastical and clerical instruments as an abbreviated rendering of *specialis*, which was used to distinguish a particular or individual grant, commission, mandate, or appointment from a general one. The term carries no independent legal meaning of its own; its significance is entirely as a scribal shorthand for *specialis*.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers working in early English ecclesiastical records, writs, and clerical instruments will encounter *spialis* as a contracted Latin form. The practical risk is misreading it as a distinct term rather than recognizing it as an abbreviation. Because Latin contractions were common in medieval and early modern legal drafting, the appearance of *spialis* in a manuscript source should prompt the researcher to read it as *specialis* and interpret the surrounding instrument accordingly — asking whether the grant or commission at issue was intended to be special (limited to a specific matter or person) rather than general. The Burrill reference to *1 Inst. Cler. 13* points to the Institutio Clericalis, a guide to clerical and chancery practice, confirming that the contraction was a recognized feature of formal drafting conventions rather than a scribal error. Researchers consulting manuscript records or transcriptions of writs should be alert to variant contractions in this family of terms.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary is the only historical shelf source to record this term, and the entry is deliberately spare: *spialis* is defined solely as a contraction of *specialis*, with a single reference to *1 Inst. Cler. 13*. There is nothing to synthesize across sources, as the term does not appear independently in Tomlin's, Jacob's, or Bouvier's. That absence is itself informative — *spialis* was never a term of independent legal art and was not considered sufficiently significant for separate treatment by American or most English lexicographers. Its inclusion in Burrill reflects his more thoroughgoing attention to Latin contractions and clerical Latin usage than was typical of contemporaneous dictionaries. Researchers should treat this as a scribal and paleographic reference point rather than a substantive legal concept.