Bene Valete

BENE VALETE. - A salutation formula derived from Roman epistolary usage (Cicero uses in his letters: Vale, Valete), which acquired a special diplomatic value in pontifical 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 the dispatch of the document, not as a greeting and mark of validation.

It appears for the first time in the oldest surviving original pontifical document, a privilege of Paschal I for the church of Ravenna (year 819), and it remained a characteristic of the most solemn documents or privileges, written on the right, below the text, in the space between the latter and the date. In the 9th century and for much of the 10th it is in capital letters, mostly uncial, in two lines, preceded and followed by a cross, traced with calligraphic care, and therefore it must be excluded that it was written by the Pope himself; later it changes form, being written in a single line with a more or less shaky character that cannot be the work of a calligrapher, for which reason it is considered autograph of the Pope. With Leo IX (1049) the sign of the cross that preceded it was transformed into the rota (v.) and the b. v. was reduced to a monogram, executed entirely by a calligrapher of the chancery. Sometimes it is followed by a group of signs that diplomatists designate by the name of comma. The last known privilege in which the b. v. appears is that of Urban V.

Giulio Battelli