APPENNES (apennis, adpennes). – With this designation one customarily distinguishes a particular type of document that feudal authorities, whether lay or ecclesiastical, issued upon request of interested parties in replacement of originals lost for any reason whatsoever.
The *appennes* (from *appendere*, to affix) derive their name from the fact that a copy of them was affixed for three days in a public place for common knowledge, so that anyone possessing them might assert any claims to the goods in question. A similar procedure, which the Franks inherited from the Romans and which is transmitted to us through formulary collections of the 6th and 7th centuries, is certainly ancient and dates back to the 3rd century, and more precisely to the emperor Gordian (Cod. Iustin., *De fide instrumentorum*, I, 5).
Toward the end of the Merovingian period, the *appennes* were replaced by the so-called *praecepta de chartis perditis*, consisting of diplomas issued by the royal chancery, which often retain, along with their essential characteristics, even the name of *appennes*. Finally, from the 9th century onward, the practice arose of replacing the lost document with a simple royal declaration, which, based on the authority of the issuing person, rendered the public affixing superfluous. The name *appennes*, improperly attributed by some scholars (Th. Sickel, J. Havet) even to these latter documents, was then replaced by that of *pancarta* (q.v.), though this term is also connected with other meanings.
The importance of these acts lies above all in the fact that they allow us to know the content of more ancient documents that have been destroyed or lost.