Civil Law Notary - History - Late Middle Ages

Late Middle Ages

Imperial Ravenna retained separate scholae of imperial notaries, ecclesiastical notaries, and tabelliones. However, with the fall of the Exarchate, imperial notaries disappeared with unauthorized tabelliones absorbing most of their legal jurisdiction and function. During the 11th century and the early 12th century, attempts to bring the tabellionate under imperial purview were resisted and failed at Ravenna, though by the 13th century many professionals styled themselves notarius et tabellio, combining both functions in their practice. By the 13th century, even the Ravennati adopted the title "notary by imperial authority," and the retrograde tabellionate slowly dissolved. The ecclesiastical notariate in Ravenna retained its position until the 12th century, but did not interfere in the sphere of the secular notariate. During the 12th century, the lay tabellionate absorbed most of the functions of the church notary, even running Ravenna's episcopal chancery by 1127. Elsewhere in Italy, where it had survived, the independent ecclesiastical notariate likewise slowly disappeared: in Lucca, the comital notariate replaced it during the Carolingian period; and in Bologna, home of the revived imperial legal tradition, the bishop's last clerical notary died in 1133. Even in Rome, lay notaries gained in importance, and in 1211 Pope Innocent III declared that no notary in a church court could hold major orders.

In southern Italy, many areas that fell to the Arabs lost the Lombard notarial tradition, while some, e.g., Puglia, Calabria, and Lucania, held to Greco-Byzantine practice. Areas retaining Latin-Lombard traditions used the notarius, but he may have been attached to and authorized through a palace, church, monastery, or even city; or sometimes he was itinerant and without official authority. During the 10th century, Naples maintained a clear organization of notaries (curiali) in a collegio under a primarius aided by a tabularius. Documents were often drawn up by discipuli ("apprentices"), but only the notary could apply the eschatocol. Amalfi followed a looser organization: scribae civitatis ("scriveners") were called curiali by c. 1000, many may have worked only part time, and there was no clear caste of discipuli. Gaeta retained the scriba civitatis, though mixing Greek with Latin traditions and clerical with secular functions and statuses. In the 10th and 11th centuries, titles included presbyter ("priest") et notarius civitatis and Leo greco-latinus presbyter et scriba civitatis, though by the early 12th century a simple notarius civitatis would do. The southern Italian tradition was for the most part replaced by the Carolingian tradition when the region was conquered by the Normans.

As northern Italy came to free itself in the late 11th century from imperial rule and episcopal authority, it established municipal authorities (known as consulates) who, with the increase in literacy, came to rely heavily on the lay notary to produce, archive, and standardize public instruments under municipal seal. In addition, the Venetian pillaging of Byzantine libraries revived bookish learning and led to the founding of law schools, such as at the University of Bologna which trained notaries-at-law. Similarly, as schools for notaries relied on Byzantine law and came to determine the development of the notarial corps, by the 10th century, the Carolingian and the Byzantine traditions were no longer distinguishable. The Italian notarial profession was transmitted from Lombardy to southern France through trade, first to Languedoc, and eventually northward to Bruges (Flemish Belgium), and on to the eastern Mediterranean.