Mancipatio

In Roman law. A certain ceremony or formal process anciently required to be performed, to perfect the sale or conveyance of res mancipi, (jand, houses, slaves, horses, or cattle.) The parties wera present, (vendor and vendee,) with five witnesses and a person called “tibripens,” who held a balance or seales. A set form of words was repeated on either side, indicative of transfer of ownership, and certain prescribed gestures performed, and the vendee then struck the scales with a piece of copper, thereby symbolizing the payment, or weighing out, of the stipnlated price. The ceremony of mancipatio was used, in later times, in one of the forms of making a will, The testator acted as vendor, and the heir (or familie emptor) as purchaser, the latter symbolically Guying the whole estate, or succession, of the former, The ceremony was also used by a father in maktng a lictitious sale of his son, which sale, when three times repeated, efiecluated the emancipation of the son.