Et alia manu : Les notes non autographes dans les actes pontificaux antérieurs à 604

Abstract

Drawing on Karl Silva-Tarouca’s work on what is commonly referred to as « chancery notes » in Diplomatic Studies, especially his Nuovi studi sulle antiche lettere dei papi (1931), this paper proposes to reconsider these notes, which are generally attributed to the ancient period of the chancery of the Roman Church. The following notes are analysed (by going back each time to the sources) : 1. epistula uniformis ; 2. et alia manu and its derivatives ; 3. a pari(bus) ; 4. Et subscriptio and the annotations related to it ; 5. data ut supra, per illum and the related forms ; 6. usque hic illi or ad illum ; 7. contuli ; 8. accepta or acceptum ; 9. notavi. Following this analysis, there is a small excursus on the abbreviation GL, since it is also associated by specialists with the ancient chancery practices. The goal here is not to provide solutions to the innumerable unanswerable questions arising from all of these elements, but rather to establish hypotheses, via an up-to-date status quaestionis, in order to measure the effectiveness of their link with the ancient offices of the papal chancery.