APPENNES (apennis, adpennes). — This designation is customarily used to distinguish a particular type of document that feudal authorities, both lay and ecclesiastical, issued at the request of the interested parties in place of originals lost for whatever reason.
The a. (from appendere) derive their name from the fact that a copy of them was posted for three days in a public place for general information, so that anyone who possessed a claim might assert any rights concerning the goods in question. This procedure, which the Franks inherited from the Romans and which has been transmitted to us by formularies of the sixth and seventh centuries, is undoubtedly ancient and dates back to the third century, more precisely to the emperor Gordian (Cod. Iustin., De fide instrum., I, 5).
Toward the end of the Merovingian period, the a. were replaced by the so-called « praecepta de chartis perditis », consisting of diplomas issued by the royal chancery, which often preserved, together with their substantive characteristics, also the name of a. Finally, from the ninth century onward, the practice arose of replacing the lost document with a simple royal declaration which, resting on the authority of the issuing person, rendered the public appensio unnecessary. The name a., improperly attributed by some treatise writers (Th. Sickel, J. Havet) to these latter documents as well, was then replaced by that of « pancharta » (v.), to which, however, other meanings are also attached.
The importance of these acts lies above all in the fact that they make it possible to ascertain the contents of older documents that have been destroyed or lost.