Mancipation

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A solemn ancient Roman legal ceremony in which property or a person was formally transferred to a new owner
2. In Roman law, the formal procedure, witnessed and performed with a symbolic bronze and scales, by which ownership was conveyed
3. The archaic Roman legal act of conveying ownership of goods or persons through a ritual sale before witnesses

Etymology: Ancient Roman property transfer was not a signed document but a ceremony. The buyer grasped a bronze scale (the "libra") and struck it, while a set of five witnesses stood by, and the act was performed with the formula "mancipium" in front of them. The whole procedure rested on the Latin phrase "manus capere," meaning "to take into the hand," and the word "mancipatio" is built from "manus" (hand) and "capere" (to take). The name captured the physical act of seizing something with one's hand as a token of ownership. The surprise is that the sense of the root did not stay tied to the hand alone. The term was used for transferring slaves, livestock, land in Italy and other valuable items, and it carried a formal legal weight that made the transfer binding under Roman civil law. Over time the procedure was simplified and eventually overtaken by other forms of conveyance, so the word survived mainly as a term of legal history.