Definition
A Latin term appearing in two distinct legal contexts:
1. (Civil law) A crowd, mob, or tumultuous assembly of persons. The term denotes a disorderly gathering large enough to constitute a threatening or riotous body. Historical authorities placed the minimum number at ten to fifteen persons.
2. (Old English law) A turf or sod — a piece of ground cut from the earth. Used in records concerning rights to cut turf, a form of common or profit appurtenant recognized in early English land law.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Not in general modern English use; survives primarily in technical or ecclesiastical Latin.
Historical common usage: The Latin root denotes turmoil, uproar, disorder, or commotion — a crowd in a state of agitation. Old French tourbe and the English turf share the same root only by phonetic coincidence; etymologically they diverge.
The gap matters because turba arrives in legal sources carrying two entirely separate meanings from two separate linguistic streams. The civil-law crowd meaning derives from Latin turba (disorder, tumult). The Old English land-law meaning derives from a cognate of Old French tourbe and Middle English turf, meaning a piece of cut earth. Researchers encountering the term in a text must first identify which tradition the source belongs to before interpreting the word.
Common Confusion
The two meanings of turba are easily conflated when a source is not clearly situating the term in either Roman civil law or Old English land law. Burrill is the only standard dictionary to record both meanings in a single entry, making it the essential reference for disambiguation. A researcher encountering turba in a medieval English record concerning common rights should immediately consider the turf meaning; the same word in a Digest commentary or a civil-law treatise on delict will always carry the crowd or mob meaning.
Turba in its civil-law sense is also related to but distinct from tumultus. Tumultus carried stronger connotations of armed or political uprising; turba described the raw phenomenon of a disorderly mob, without necessarily implying organized insurrection.
Recognized Forms
/SUBTYPES
Civil-law tradition: Burrill notes that two kinds of turba are mentioned by Spelman in the land-law context, though the entry in Burrill's text is truncated and the distinction is not fully developed. Researchers consulting Spelman's Glossarium Archaiologicum directly may find the subdivision elaborated.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers face a threshold ambiguity: the same Latin word means different things depending on the legal system being discussed. Misreading the land-law sense as the civil-law sense — or vice versa — will produce a fundamental misunderstanding of the source document.
For civil-law research: turba is the operative term in the Digest's treatment of the actio de turba, the praetorian action available where loss was caused by a mob. The Digest passage referenced by Burrill (Dig. 47.8.4.2–3) is the anchor text. Researchers working on Roman delict, mob liability, or the praetor's edict on vis will encounter turba as a technical threshold element — the question of whether a gathering met the minimum-number requirement (ten to fifteen) controlled whether the actio de turba was available at all.
For Old English land-law research: turba appears in records of common rights, particularly turbary — the right to cut peat or turf from another's land for fuel. The word in this context is essentially interchangeable with cespes (sod) in some records but not others. Distinguishing turba from cespes in a given grant can affect the scope of the right claimed. Spelman's Glossarium is the primary secondary source for the English land-law usage.
Historical sources are thin on the English land-law meaning. Black's (both editions) omit it entirely, recording only the civil-law sense. Burrill's is therefore the critical reference for any researcher encountering turba in a medieval or early modern English land document.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary (both the primary edition and the second edition) present identical entries: turba as a civil-law term for a mob or tumultuous assembly, with the minimum-number gloss attributed to Calvin (Johannes Calvinus, Magnum Lexicon Juridicum). Neither edition acknowledges the Old English turf meaning.
Burrill's Law Dictionary is the outlier — and the more complete source. Burrill records both meanings, cites Dig. 47.8.4.2–3 for the civil-law usage, and attributes the crowd definition to Calvinus, Hotoman, Prateus, and Spiegelius, a richer array of civilian authorities than Black's provides. Burrill also flags Spelman for the English land-law meaning, though the entry is truncated in the surviving text. Burrill's dual-meaning treatment reflects the broader philological tradition he brought to the dictionary project; where Black's was content with a functional legal gloss, Burrill traced the term's dual institutional life.
The Latin dictionary entry confirms the classical sense: uproar, tumult, commotion of a crowd — a pre-legal meaning the jurists absorbed and gave a technical threshold number to activate legal consequences.
Jurisdictional Note
The civil-law meaning of turba is relevant primarily to sources in the Roman law tradition and jurisdictions whose private law derives from it. The English land-law meaning is relevant to English common law research, particularly records concerning rights of common and turbary. The two streams do not overlap in practice.