Quotation from: Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period

Written by: Paul Lacroix


This name was apparently chosen because the hand, "considered the symbol
of power and the instrument of donation," was deprived of movement,
paralysed, in fact struck as by death. It was also nearly in this sense,
that men of the Church were also called men of mortmain, because they
were equally forbidden to dispose, either in life, or by will after death,
of anything belonging to them.


There were two kinds of mortmain: real and personal; one concerning land,
and the other concerning the person; that is to say, land held in mortmain
did not change quality, whatever might be the position of the person who
occupied it, and a "man of mortmain" did not cease to suffer the
inconveniences of his position on whatever land he went to establish
himself.

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