Definition
STATUTUM (Latin) carries two distinct legal meanings depending on the legal system and period in which it appears.
1. Civil law usage: "Established" or "determined." Used as a descriptive term applied to judicial action — specifically, the act of a court or magistrate settling or resolving a matter. The word derives from the Latin statuere (to set, determine, or establish) and signals finality or authoritative resolution in a procedural sense.
2. Old English and medieval law usage: A statute; an act of Parliament. In this sense, statutum is simply the Latin term for what English law calls a statute — a formal legislative enactment. This usage dominates medieval legal records, where parliamentary acts were routinely enrolled and cited in Latin. The term appears in the titles and texts of early English statutes well into the period when English law was still recorded and argued in Latin.
A third, narrower usage appears in monastic and manorial records: a store or stock of cattle, occasionally encountered in accounts of ecclesiastical establishments. This meaning is archival rather than strictly legal, but researchers working in medieval property or ecclesiastical records may encounter it.
Common Confusion
The civil law and English law meanings of statutum are superficially compatible — both relate to authoritative determination — but they describe fundamentally different acts. In civil law sources, statutum describes a judicial determination: something a court does. In old English law, it describes a legislative enactment: something Parliament does. Researchers should not carry one meaning into the other context. A passage in a medieval English legal text citing a "statutum" almost certainly refers to a parliamentary act, not a judicial finding.
The cattle-stock meaning is entirely unrelated to either legal sense and should be treated as a distinct archaic usage found only in non-legal administrative records.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers working in Latin legal sources — whether Roman law texts, medieval English plea rolls, or early modern statutes — will encounter statutum frequently and must read it in context. The shift in meaning between civil law and English law usage is not flagged in the source documents themselves; the reader must supply the interpretive frame.
For English legal history: The great medieval statutes are identified in historical sources by their Latin names beginning with Statutum — Statutum de Mercatoribus, Statutum Hiberniae, and others. These are legislative acts of Parliament or royal council. When Black's 2nd edition cross-references Statutum de Mercatoribus to the Statute of Acton Burnell, it is tracing a named parliamentary act through its Latin and English forms. Researchers must be comfortable moving between the Latin title and the English designation, as the same statute may be cited either way depending on the source's date and register.
For civil law research: The Digest citation at 50.16.46 — the standard title on the meaning of legal words and phrases — is the anchor for the judicial-determination sense. Any researcher working in the Roman law tradition who encounters statutum in a doctrinal or procedural context should consult this locus.
A trap in historical sources: Because statuere underlies both "statute" (in the legislative sense) and "established" (in the judicial sense), a careless reading can make it appear that a source is discussing legislation when it is in fact describing a court's action, or vice versa. The grammatical form and surrounding syntax are the reliable guides.
The monastic cattle-stock usage is narrow but real. Burrill flags Spelman and Cowell as the supporting authorities. Researchers in ecclesiastical property records or manorial accounts who encounter the term in inventory or accounting contexts should treat this as a distinct meaning rather than a scribal error or metaphor.
Historical Dictionary Support
All three source dictionaries agree on the core civil law and old English law meanings. Black's (both editions) and Burrill are in alignment: civil law — "established; determined," applied to judicial action, supported by Digest 50.16.46; old English law — statute or act of Parliament.
Burrill adds two features the Black's editions lack: the explicit derivation note (from statuere) and the cattle-stock meaning drawn from Dyer and corroborated by Spelman and Cowell. This third meaning is silently omitted from Black's, which is appropriate for a general law dictionary but represents a real gap for researchers working in ecclesiastical or manorial records.
Black's 2nd edition adds specific named statutes under the headword — Statutum de Mercatoribus and Statutum Hiberniae coheredibus — that Black's 1st edition groups under the maxim entry rather than developing independently. The 2nd edition's cross-reference structure is more useful for identifying the named medieval statutes by their Latin designations.
The maxim Statutum affirmativum non derogat communi legi (an affirmative statute does not derogate from the common law), cited in Black's 1st edition from Jenk. Cent. 24, represents a distinct but related usage: here statutum is deployed in a doctrinal proposition about the relationship between statute and common law. This maxim sense belongs to the English law tradition and is worth noting because it shows the term operating in an argumentative, not merely descriptive, register.
Jurisdictional Note
The old English law meaning is specific to English and Anglo-Irish legal history. The civil law meaning is operative wherever Roman law sources are consulted — continental European legal traditions, ecclesiastical law, and Scots law. Researchers should not assume either tradition's usage in the other's sources.