Caput lupinum
{{Short description|English legal system term}}
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Caput lupinum ({{Translation|wolf's head}}) or caput gerat lupinum ({{Translation|may he wear a wolfish head}}) are terms used in the English legal system and its derivatives. The terms were used in Medieval England to designate a person pronounced by the authorities to be a dangerous criminal, who could thus be killed without penalty.
Meaning
The Latin term caput lupinum literally means "wolf's head" or "wolfish head", and refers to a person considered to be an outlaw, as in, e.g., the phrase caput gerat lupinum ("may he wear a wolfish head" / "may his be a wolf's head"). Black's Law Dictionary, 8th edition reads "an outlawed felon considered a pariah – a lone wolf – open to attack by anyone."{{Cite book |last=Garner |first=Bryan A. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=bZmhngEACAAJ |title=Black's Law Dictionary |publisher=Thomson/West |year=2004 |isbn=978-0-314-15199-5 |edition=8th |pages=225 |language=en}}
Use
Caput lupinum or caput gerat lupinum are used in the English legal system and its derivatives.Southern Portland Cement v Cooper (Rodney John) (An Infant by his next friend Peter Alphonsus Cooper) Privy Council (Australia), 19 November 1973 The terms were used in Medieval England to designate a person pronounced by the authorities to be a dangerous criminal whose rights had been waived, who could thus be legally harmed or killed without penalty by any citizen.{{cite book |last=Menuge |first=Noël James |date=2001 |title=Medieval English Wardship in Romance and Law |location=Cambridge, UK |publisher=Boydell & Brewer |page=72 |isbn=9780859916325}}
The term caput lupinum is first recorded in the text Leges Edwardi Confessoris as a law attributed to the 11th century ruler Edward the Confessor. This law stated that a man who refused to answer a summons from the king's justice for a criminal trial would be condemned as a Caput lupinum.{{cite book |last=O'Brien |first=Bruce R. |date=2015 |title=God's Peace and King's Peace : the Laws of Edward the Confessor |location=Philadelphia |publisher=University of Pennsylvania Press |page=165 |isbn=9780812234619}}
The thirteenth-century writer on law, Henry de Bracton, wrote in his book De Legibus et Consuetudinibus Angliae that outlaws "gerunt caput lupinum"- "bear the wolf's head." Bracton added that this meant that outlaws could thus be killed without judicial inquiry.{{cite book |last=Jones |first=Timothy Scott |date=2016 |title=Outlawry in Medieval Literature |location=New York |publisher=Palgrave Macmillan |page=63 |isbn=9781349536832}}
The fourteenth-century English legal textbook The Mirror of Justices stated that anyone who was accused of a felony, who refused three times to attend county courts, would be declared Caput lupinum or "Wolfshead". The book added ""Wolfshead!" shall be cried against him, for that a wolf is a beast hated of all folk; and from that time forward it is lawful for anyone to slay him like a wolf."