Apennines (Apennis, Adpennes)

APENNINES (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 interested parties in replacement of originals lost for whatever reason.

The a. (from appendere) take their name from the fact that a copy of them was posted for three days in a public place for common knowledge, so that anyone who possessed one could assert any claims to the properties being reclaimed. Such a procedure, which the Franks inherited from the Romans and which has been handed down to us by formularies 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 instrum., I, 5).

Toward the end of the Merovingian era the a. were replaced by the so-called "praecepta de chartis perditis," consisting of diplomas issued by the royal chancery, which often preserve, along with the substantive characteristics, also the name of a. Finally, from the 9th century, the practice arose of replacing the lost document with a simple royal declaration, which, relying on the authority of the issuing person, rendered the public appensio unnecessary. The name of a., improperly attributed by some treatise writers (Th. Sickel, J. Havet) also to these latter documents, was then replaced by that of "pancharta" (v.), to which, however, other meanings are also connected.

The importance of these acts lies above all in the fact that they make it possible to know the content of older documents that were destroyed or lost.

Niccolò del Re