TRACTARE - The Law Mind Legal Dictionary

TRACTAREAuthored

The Law Mind • 860 words

Definition

A Latin verb used in old English legal sources meaning to treat, handle, or deal with a person or thing. In its most common legal application, the term appears in formulaic pleading phrases describing mistreatment of a person — most notably in the phrase verberaverunt et male tractaverunt (they beat and ill-treated), a standard allegation in actions for assault and battery in medieval and early modern common law pleading. More broadly, tractare could encompass any manner of dealing with or managing a subject, whether a person, property, or matter before a court.

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Common Language

Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Tractare is not a current English word; it is classical Latin meaning "to handle," "to manage," "to treat," or "to drag repeatedly."

Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Not listed as an English entry; recognized as Latin root of "treat," "tractable," and related English derivatives.

The gap between the Latin root's general meaning and its English legal usage is significant: in ordinary Latin, tractare covers a wide range of handling and management. In old English legal pleading, the term was narrowed into quasi-technical formulaic use, particularly in tort allegations, where male tractare became a fixed phrase of art signaling physical mistreatment rather than mere mishandling.

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Common Confusion

Tractare should not be confused with tractatus, a related Latin noun meaning a treatise or formal discussion, which appears in legal and ecclesiastical literature as a title for written works. The verb tractare denotes action — treating or handling — while tractatus in legal bibliographic contexts denotes a written product. Researchers encountering tractatus in a source index are looking at a document title, not a pleading formula.

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Why It Matters in Research

Tractare matters almost exclusively to researchers working in medieval and early modern English legal records, Latin plea rolls, or the history of common law pleading. Its importance is largely formulaic: the phrase male tractaverunt (or verberaverunt et male tractaverunt) appears with great regularity in trespass and assault declarations and must be recognized as a pleading set-piece rather than a descriptive account of specific conduct. A researcher reading a Latin plea roll who does not recognize this phrase as formulaic may mistakenly treat it as particularized factual allegation.

Two traps exist in historical sources. First, the phrase appears in nearly identical form across centuries and jurisdictions without any necessary variation in underlying facts — its presence signals the cause of action, not unique circumstances. Second, because tractare is a common verb root underlying multiple English legal words (treat, tractable, intractable), early legal dictionaries sometimes fold discussion of the term into broader etymological entries rather than treating it as a discrete legal term, making it easy to miss in reference searches.

Researchers tracing the history of battery or trespass vi et armis pleading will encounter tractare repeatedly. Its formulaic pairing with verberare (to beat) is one of the most durable phrase-pairs in the Latin pleading tradition and survives into printed form books well into the early modern period.

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Historical Dictionary Support

Burrill's Law Dictionary is the primary shelf source to address tractare, though its treatment is fragmentary — the entry as preserved is interrupted and conflated with unrelated material on villa and the Anglo-Saxon settlement vocabulary, suggesting either a printing error or an editorial collation problem in the digitized text. What survives confirms the basic association: tractare in old English law appears in the context of physical mistreatment (male tractare), and the dictionary situates it within the formulaic pleading tradition.

Other historical law dictionaries do not give tractare a standalone entry. Spelman's Glossarium Archaeologicum, which covers Anglo-Latin legal terms in depth, does not treat tractare as a term requiring definition — reflecting the fact that it was understood as common Latin rather than specialized legal vocabulary, despite its formulaic legal deployment. This is itself instructive: the absence of dictionary treatment confirms that medieval legal practitioners treated tractare as transparent Latin, its legal meaning visible from the formula rather than requiring separate gloss.

Modern scholarship on common law pleading (e.g., Milsom's work on trespass and the forms of action) provides better context for the male tractaverunt formula than any historical dictionary entry.

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Jurisdictional Note

Tractare as a pleading term is specific to English common law Latin practice. It does not appear as a term of art in Scottish, civil law, or canon law traditions in the same formulaic sense, though the underlying Latin verb appears in those contexts with its ordinary meaning.

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TRACTAREmain

Burrill's Law Dictionary • 1870

Lat. In old English law. Male tractare; to Verberaverunt et The corresponding Latin word villa seems to have undergone, in England, changes of signification similar to those of the English town. Spelman observes that villa, among the Anglo-Saxons, was used in its Roman sense of a farm or private country residence, (pro prædio unius alicujus in rure,) provided with suitable buildings for laying up the fruits raised upon it, (cum idoneis ædibus ad reponendos ejusdem fructus honestato;) and that it was not originally employed in the sense of a collection or neighborhood of several mansions, (the proper signification of the Latin oppidum,) though in the course of time it came to be. SpelTo treat, or handle. man, voc. Villa. Bracton, in explaining the origin in England, of the word villa, throws some light on the primitive meaning of town. Et unde videndum est, quid sit mansio et quid sit villa. Et sciendum quod de jure gentium agris sunt termini positi, ædificia sunt collata sive vicinata, et ex qua collatione fiunt civitates et villæ, et ex pluribus ædificiis collatis et vicinatis, et non ex uno ædificio constructo. Ut si quis in agris unicum faciat ædificium, non erit ibi villa, sed cum ex processu temporis inceperint coadjuvari [coadunari?] et vicinari plura ædificia, incipit esse villa, &c. (We must see, then, what a mansion is, and what a town or vill is. And it is to be understood that according to the law of nations, [that is, the public or general law of states, certain limits are marked out in lands, and houses built together, [within them] or erected into a neighborhood, out of which cities and towns are formed, which are thus composed of several buildings erected together, and not of a single edifice. Hence where a man builds a single house in the fields, it will not be a town or vill; but when, in process of time, several buildings have become united together for common safety, and formed into a neighborhood, it begins to be a town, &c.) Bract. fol. 211. From what the same author has said in another passage, it would appear that two houses standing in the neighborhood of each other would not constitute a vill, or town, but any larger number would. See Bract. fol. mal-treat, or ill-treat. male tractaverunt; beat and ill treated. Bract. fol. 57. To draw or drag (to execution.) Tractari et suspendi; to be drawn and hanged. Fleta, lib. 1, c. 22, § 6.