Definition
A Latin term of medieval English law meaning, broadly, to make something one's own — to take, assign, or annex property to a particular person, body, or purpose. The term appears in two principal contexts in old English legal usage:
1. General appropriation of property: The act of setting apart or claiming a thing as one's own, or transferring it to the exclusive use or ownership of a particular party.
2. Ecclesiastical appropriation: More specifically, the permanent annexation of a benefice or church living to a religious house, corporation, or lay person, so that the appropriator received the tithes and profits of the living, leaving only a perpetual vicar (or nothing more than a stipend) for the performance of spiritual duties. This was the dominant legal sense in which appropriare appeared in English legal records and proceedings.
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Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): "Appropriate" as a verb means to take something for one's own use, typically without the owner's permission; or to set aside funds or resources for a specific purpose.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): "To appropriate" means to set apart for a particular use or person; to take to oneself in exclusion of all others; to make peculiar.
The gap between common and legal meaning here is not radical, but the precision matters for historical research. In ordinary English, "appropriate" carries a neutral or mildly negative connotation (taking something for oneself). In medieval English ecclesiastical law, appropriare described a formal, legally recognized transaction — the annexation of a benefice to an institution — that was far more structured than mere taking. A researcher encountering the term in a legal record should not assume mere possession or seizure; the term often signals a recognized legal arrangement with specific rights, obligations, and canonical or royal authorization behind it.
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Why It Matters in Research
Appropriare is a term of art in the ecclesiastical law dimension of old English legal records, and researchers approaching it through modern usage alone will miss its most important meaning in context.
The ecclesiastical appropriation of benefices was a significant legal and economic institution in medieval England. When a monastery, cathedral chapter, or other corporation had a benefice "appropriated" to it, that institution became the rector in law and collected the great tithes. This generated extensive documentary records — including papal bulls, episcopal registers, royal licenses, and Chancery proceedings — in which appropriare and its derivatives (appropriatio, appropriatus) appear routinely.
Researchers working in:
- Ecclesiastical records (bishops' registers, visitation records)
- Monastic cartularies and charters
- Chancery rolls (particularly regarding licenses in mortmain, which were required for ecclesiastical appropriations)
- Tithe disputes and commutation proceedings
...will encounter appropriare as a term with specific legal consequences, not merely descriptive language.
A key trap: post-Reformation sources use the term in degraded form. After the dissolution of the monasteries, many appropriated benefices passed to lay impropriators, and the term "impropriation" (rather than appropriation) became the technical word for lay possession of tithes originally appropriated to religious houses. Burrill treats appropriare in its older, pre-Reformation form; sources from the sixteenth century onward may use appropriation and impropriation in ways that require careful distinction.
The term also appears in non-ecclesiastical property contexts in old English law — for instance, in records concerning the appropriation of commons or waste land. Researchers should not assume the ecclesiastical meaning automatically; context in the surrounding record is essential.
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Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary traces appropriare to the Latin ad + proprius (to one's own) and situates it firmly in old English legal usage, noting its ecclesiastical dimension. Burrill's treatment is consistent with the broader picture found in canonical and common law sources of the medieval period: appropriatio was a recognized legal category requiring authorization (typically episcopal, and from the thirteenth century onward often requiring a royal license as well), and it produced a distinct bifurcation between the appropriator (who held the rectory and tithes) and the vicar (who performed the cure of souls).
What historical dictionaries — including Burrill — tend to underemphasize is the procedural complexity behind any given appropriation: the requirement of mortmain licensing, the bishop's inquiry into the adequacy of the vicar's endowment, and the eventual effect on tithe law. Researchers who need to trace an appropriation in the historical record will find Burrill a useful starting point for the term's meaning but will need to consult ecclesiastical legal history sources for the full institutional context.
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Jurisdictional Note
Appropriare in its ecclesiastical sense is a term of English canon and common law and has no direct equivalent in civil law or American legal tradition. American law uses "appropriation" in entirely different senses (public appropriations of funds; water rights appropriation in western states). Researchers should not attempt to map the English ecclesiastical meaning onto any American legal context.
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