Enrollment

ENROLLMENT. - It is the right by which, through compensation in land and money, during the communal age, a private individual could rectify the boundaries of his property and obtain for it an access onto a public road.

It was created by the communal governments for the purpose of eliminating the excessive fragmentation of property, procuring for it, by means of a better shape, a lesser burden of servitudes. For the protection of those expropriated, public officials called "ingrossatori" or "estimators" were appointed, entrusted with the operations of appraising the lands to be expropriated, and whose reports had executory force.

They were regarded as on a par with the electors of the podestà and had a notable economic position, deriving for them from the exercise of the profession of dealers in real estate. They in fact also had their own notaries, who had to take an oath with them for those appraisals of which they received assignment from the Commune. Of the i. there is record as early as the 12th century, and its usefulness is recognized by a great part of the city statutes of the following century. Such an institution is found still in force in the Modenese legislation of 1772 and in that of Lucca of 1802.

Giovanni Donna