Definition
A term from old English law referring to the revenue, profit, or emolument that a thing yields to its owner. The word carried two related but distinct senses in medieval legal usage: (1) something brought or carried to another as a profit or benefit — particularly provisions or support carried to a religious person holding a church cure — and (2) anything carried out of a country. The term was most commonly applied to a corody or pension, meaning the allowance of food, clothing, or money to which a person might be entitled from a religious house or similar institution.
Common Confusion
Apportum is occasionally conflated with apport, its French root and a related term appearing in some of the same source texts. Apport refers more broadly to the act of bringing or carrying, while apportum denotes the specific thing brought — particularly in its character as revenue or emolument. Researchers should also be careful not to confuse apportum with appurtenance, a superficially similar-sounding term that concerns rights or things annexed to property rather than income flowing from it.
Why It Matters in Research
Apportum is an archaic Latin term that appears almost exclusively in medieval English legal records, ecclesiastical documents, and early common law treatises. Researchers will encounter it primarily in contexts involving church benefices, corodies, and monastic pensions — areas of law that generated substantial documentary records but are rarely treated in modern secondary sources.
Two research traps are worth flagging. First, the dual meaning of the term — something brought to a person versus something carried out of a country — means that context is essential to interpretation. Burrill's entry draws both senses from different source texts (Ducange and Reg. Orig. respectively), and a researcher who encounters the word in a writ or plea roll must read surrounding material carefully before concluding which sense applies. Second, the term is tied closely to the corody, a form of legal right that itself evolved considerably across the medieval period and into the early modern era. Understanding apportum in ecclesiastical records requires familiarity with the mechanics of corodies, pensions, and the obligations of religious houses to their patrons and founders.
The Law Mind corpus is unlikely to surface apportum in cases or statutes from any period after the seventeenth century. It belongs to a layer of legal vocabulary that survived in dictionaries and treatises long after it ceased to appear in active legal proceedings. Its presence in a document is therefore itself a dating clue.
Historical Dictionary Support
The three source dictionaries are in close agreement on the core definition, all tracing the term to Blount and applying it most commonly to corodies and pensions. Black's (both editions) offers the more compressed account: revenue or profit that a thing brings to its owner, with the corody application noted. Burrill adds meaningful depth in two directions. First, he supplies the Latin gloss from Ducange — quicquid apportatur ad sustentationem illius qui ecclesiæ curam habet (whatever is brought for the support of one who has the care of a church) — which grounds the term firmly in ecclesiastical usage and clarifies why it appears so often in church-related legal instruments. Second, Burrill alone captures the secondary meaning from Reg. Orig. 193b, under which apportum could describe anything carried out of a country, suggesting a use in customs or export-related writs entirely distinct from the pension context.
None of the source dictionaries offers a worked example from case law or a specific writ form, which reflects both the term's antiquity and the limits of nineteenth-century legal lexicography when dealing with pre-common law terminology. Researchers needing deeper engagement with the term's medieval usage will need to consult Ducange's Glossarium Mediae et Infimae Latinitatis directly, as it remains the most comprehensive source for the ecclesiastical Latin sense.
Jurisdictional Note
Apportum is specific to the English legal tradition and has no recognized counterpart in Scots law, civil law systems, or American law. It does not appear in colonial American legal instruments or any domestic statute. Research use is confined to English ecclesiastical and common law history.