AMORTIZATION. - In current commercial language, this word has various meanings which agree in indicating the extinction, for the most part gradual, of a debt or of an income or pension and the like (in this sense it is used in CIC, can. 536 § 5); or else the reinstatement, ordinarily gradual and progressive, of a capital. In several acceptations the term ammortamento is more up to date.
In medieval language the word a. served to signify the passage or the resting of the ownership of immovable goods in the hands of moral persons or corporations, especially ecclesiastical ones, called manomorta (v.), insofar as such goods were withdrawn from the exactions of princes and from free circulation, since their alienation was prohibited or rendered extremely difficult by law or by circumstances of fact. Subsequently the payment of the indemnity which princes imposed in the act of authorizing the establishment of the manomorta was called prezzo or diritto di a. Thus to the laws of manomorta there were opposed the laws of a., more or less just and legitimate with regard to the Church, according as they were promulgated and applied with the express or tacit consent of the competent ecclesiastical authority, or without it.
Later such a right was imposed and exacted by means of true and proper tasse di a. (or also taxes or imposts of manomorta), intended to compensate the treasury for the alleged damages of the manomorta. Aentangelo da Langasco