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 Library  Home > Catholic Encyclopedia > M > Mortmain    (Old
Fr., morte meyn), dead-hand, or "such a state of possession of
land as makes it inalienable" (Wharton, "Law Lexicon", 10th ed.,
London, 1902, s.v.), is "the possession of land or tenements by
any corporation" (Bouvier, "Law Dictionary", Boston, 1897,
s.v.), or "where the use came ad manum mortuam, which was when
it came to some corporation" (Lord Bacon, "Reading on the
Statute of Uses"), alienation of lands or tenements to a
corporation being termed alienation in mortmain (Stephen, "New
Commentaries on the Laws of England", 15th ed., London, 1908, I,
296). The alienation was formerly expressed by the now obsolete
words amortization and amortisement, the person so alienating
being said to amortize (Murray, "New English Dictionary", Oxford
and New York, 1888), a verb used by Chaucer in connexion with
good works "amortised by some following" (The Persones Tale). In
Old French amortissement was