It represents long efforts to bring into the document all necessary and useful elements in their most appropriate order, and to use technical expressions suited to the case, some of them more or less essential, others merely as a matter of tradition.
; with documents relative to legal processes and the administration of justice; or with private deeds drawn up by a notary: sales, exchanges, gifts to churches and monasteries, transference of ecclesiastical property, the manumission of slaves, the settlement of matrimonial dowries, the execution of wills etc.
Cassiodorus, secretary and afterwards prime minister of King Theodoric, included in his "Variarum (epistolarum) libri XII", particularly in books six and seven, and, as he says, for the guidance of his successors, a great number of acta and letters drawn up by him for his royal master.
The best manuscript of the "Liber diurnus", written at the beginning of the 9th century, comes from the Roman monastery of Santa Croce in Gerusalemme and was discovered in the Vatican Library.
About the middle of the 17th century, Lucas Holstenius used it when preparing an edition of the work which was officially stopped and suppressed on the eve of its appearance, because it contained an ancient profession of faith in which the popes anathematized their predecessor Honorius.
In 1680 the Jesuit Jean Garnier, using another manuscript of the College of Clermont (Paris), brought out an edition of the "Liber diurnus" not approved by Rome (P. L., CV).
Then follow models for the official correspondence on the occasion of a vacancy of the Holy See and the election of a pope, also directions for the consecration and the profession of faith of the pope-elect; finally a group of formulae affecting various matters of ecclesiastical administration.
In their stead, special treatises of instruction are prepared for these officials, and manuals of epistolary rhetoric appear, with examples scattered here and there throughout the text, or collected in separate books.
Such treatises on composition, artes dictaminis, have hitherto been only partially studied and classified, notably by Ludwig von Rockinger [de] in "Briefsteller und Formelbücher des XI.
The most ancient of these manuals known to us is the "Breviarium de dictamine" of Alberic of Monte Cassino, about 1075; in the 12th century treatises of this kind become more frequent, first in Italy, then in France, especially along the Loire at Orléans and at Tours.
At the papal chancery, in general very faithful to its customs and its "style", after the reform of Innocent III many formularies and practical treatises appeared, none of them possessing an official value.
Lastly, in a different order of ideas it may be well to mention a collection of formulae for use in episcopal courts, the "Formularium legalepracticum" of Francesco Monacelli (Venice, 1737), re-edited by the Camera Apostolica (3 vols.
The formularies of the Poenitentiaria have a higher interest for us; they appear during the 12th century when that department of Roman administration was not yet restricted to questions of conscience and the forum internum, but served as a sort of clearing-house for lesser favours granted by the Holy See, especially for dispensations.
These interesting documents, including the formularies, have been collected and edited by Göller in "Die papstliche Poenitentiarie bis Eugen IV."
The "Summa de absolutionibus et dispensationibus" of Nicholas IV is also important; of particular value also is the formulary of Benedict XII (1336 at the latest), made by order of that pope and long in use.
Attention is also directed to the list of "faculties" conferred, in 1357, on Cardinal Albornoz, first edited by Lecacheux in "Mélanges d'Archéologie et d'Histoire des écoles françaises de Rome et d'Athènes", in 1898; and to later texts in Göller.