BENE VALETE. – A form of greeting derived from Roman epistolary usage (Cicero uses in his letters: *Vale, Valete*), which acquired special diplomatic significance in papal documents, representing the Pope’s *subscriptio*. In the documents of the Merovingian kings (7th century) a similar formula was used (*bene valiat*), but it served as an order for dispatching the document rather than as a greeting and sign of validation.
It first appears in the oldest surviving original papal document, a privilege of Paschal I for the church of Ravenna (819), and remained a feature of the most solemn documents or privileges, written to the right of the text, below it, in the space between the text and the date. In the 9th and much of the 10th century it was written in majuscule, mostly in uncial script, in two lines, preceded and followed by a cross, executed with careful calligraphy, and thus it is unlikely that it was written by the Pope himself; later it changed form, being written in a single line with a more or less shaky hand that could not be the work of a calligrapher, and is therefore considered autograph. Under Leo IX (1049) the preceding cross was transformed into the *rota* (q.v.), and the *b. v.* was reduced to a monogram, executed entirely by a chancery calligrapher. Sometimes it is followed by a group of signs which diplomatic scholars designate by the term *comma*. The last known privilege in which the *b. v.* appears is that of Urban V. BIBLICA.: A. Melampo, *Attorno alle bolle papali da Pasquale I a Pio X. Parte I. Da Pasquale I a Leone IX*, in *Miscellanea di storia e cultura ecclesiastica*, 3-4 (1904-07); P. Kehr, *Die ältesten Papsturkunden Spaniens* (*Abhandlungen der preuss. Akademie der Wissenschaften, Phil.-Hist. Kl.*, 2), Berlin 1926. Reproductions in: *Pontificum Romanorum diplomata papyracea quae supersunt in tabularis Hispaniae, Italiae et Germaniae*, Rome 1929; some examples in G. Battelli, *Acta Pontificum* (*Exempla Scripturarum*, 11), Vatican City 1933. Giulio Battelli
BENE VALEITE – BENEVENTAN SCRIPT