Legal Terms: Contesseration, Grith, Waif

A few weeks ago I ran into angary--an old legal term designating a right to take possession of neutrals' vessels. Then, I followed up this with lagan, goods which the law recognizes as discarded from a shipwreck. Today I explore four other words that have a legal "ring" to them in the common law tradition or Roman antiquity. Let's get started right away.

Grith

Grith is an Old English and Old Norse term which means domicile or home and, by extension, truce, peace, pardon, sanctuary or asylum. It is a wonderfully suggestive word, incorporating in its euphonious sound an imaginative-sounding description of harmony and peace. The word literally burst into English through the laws of Cnut, the early 11th century monarch of England; it appears at least a dozen times in that legal code. Cnut assembled a parliament or "witan" before whom he proclaimed laws in the interest of both the church and the secular powers. After declaring the necessity of worship of the Christian God in the first law, he went on:

"2. And to hold 'in grith' and 'in frith' [peace, freedom from molestation, protection; safety] and frequently to seek God's churches, for the salvation of souls and the behoof [i.e., use, benefit, advantage] of ourselves. Every church is by right in Christ's own "grith," and every Christian man has great need that he show great reverence for that "grith"; because God's "grith" is of all "griths" the most excellent to merit, and the best to preserve, and next thereto, the king's. Then is it very right, that God's church-"grith" within walls [i.e., security within the precincts of a church], and a Christian king's hand-"grith" [i.e, protection under the king's hand] stand equally inviolate; and let him who infringes either forfeit land and life, unless the king will be merciful to him."

Thus, we see that the word "grith" has a sort of all-encompassing signification as the "peace" which should reign in various realms of human existence. A person who breaks God's church-"grith," by committing homicide within the church walls, then becomes "botless" [i.e., bootless--without help or remedy. That is, he is not to be expiated or recompensed by a "bote,"--compensation paid for injury or wrong-doing; reparation or amends], unless the king directly intervenes. I see I could quickly descend (or would it be to ascend?) into the depths (heights?) of pre-Conquest Anglo-Saxon law and become acquainted with a whole vocabulary of terms which actually, in many cases, have come down to us today. Who can forget Shakespeare's reference to "bootless" in his 29th Sonnet ("and trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries"], for example?

Before leaving "grith," let's look at law 3 for a second. If no one is slain in the church, but if the church-"grith" be broken,

"Let 'bot' be strictly made, according as the deed may be: be it through fighting, be it through robbery...First, let 'bot' be made for the 'grith-bryce' to the church [i.e, the "breaking the peace" of the church]....

Waif

Oops. I am going much too slowly here, if I want to get through all these terms in this essay. When I was growing up we used the word waif to describe an orphan or stray boy, but that usage isn't attested until 1784. But the word goes back at least 500 years before that, and means a "piece of property which is found ownerless and which, if unclaimed within a fixed period after due notice given, falls to the lord of the manor..." Examples are articles washed up on shore or an animal that has strayed. The phrase waif and stray or the word straif suggest a stray animal or thing. Blackstone, that great systematizer of the common law of England, could write in the first volume of his Commentaries (1765): "Wrecks, treasure trove,...waifs, and estrays, may be granted by the king to his subjects, as a royal franchise: and indeed they are for the most part granted out to the lords of manors."

Contesseration

A contesseration is something going back to Roman antiquity, and is a contraction of friendship by means "of the tessera or other symbol of union." Tertullian, the early 3rd cent. CE Church Father, uses the term in that sense (de Praescriptiones 20). The Latin word tessara is related to the Greek word tessares, which means "four" [i.e., the first harmony of the Four Gospels in Greek is called the Diatessaron], but when the word came into Latin as tessara/tessares, it emphasized on the cube or die, which has four sides, rather than the "fourness" of it all. Thus, a tessera is "a small piece of hard material, generally square in plan, used in combination with others of similar characteristics for making mosaics." But it also could be a small tablet used for purposes of establishing a covenant of hospitality or friendship with others. Thus, a "tessera hospitalis" is "a pledge of mutual friendship, which was broken in twain, as is a coin by modern lovers, and one half retained by each person. It served as a means of recognition as well as a pledge of admission to hospitality between the families and descendents of the friends" (Century Dictionary, s.v.).

So the contesseration is the making of friends through this tessera or other symbol of union. But, as you no doubt immediately see, this "friendship" character to it was an immensely attractive feature to English divines. John Donne could write, "Beloved, baptism in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, is this contesseration; all that are truly baptized are of this household..." And, Jeremy Taylor, a generation later, wrote, "The holy symboles of the Eucharist were intended to be a contesseration, and an union of Christian societies to God, and with one another." The word could also be used synonymously with "mosaic." Oley, the biographer of George Herbert, could speak of "that person of his, which afforded so unusual a contesseration of elegancies and singularities to the beholder."

Conclusion

I guess I need one more essay--for purpresture. And, guess what? I think I have discovered another old legal term, estrepement, which cries out for recognition...[oops--note from 7/24/08...Julie Golden, an excellent speller, missed estrepement at the Multnomah County Library spelling bee on July 19. I could have told her....]

3326