BREVE. — Name given in the Middle Ages to various types of documents, still used today to designate a special form of pontifical document.
The most common meaning in the centuries preceding the thirteenth Notitia (v.), a document of proof generally drawn up at the request of the recipient and lacking the author’s signature; it was also used for “letter” and, especially in Tuscany in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, for “charter of oath,” and hence came to designate “statute” as well, insofar as this was the object of an oath. The notarial terms “imbreviare” and “imbreviatura” derive from b. (v.).
The b. bolla (v.) by a set of external and internal characteristics that give it a much lesser degree of solemnity. It is distinguished first of all by the quality and color of the parchment, which is very fine and white; by the type of script, which follows the development of ordinary scripts—that is, Gothic cursive in the fourteenth century and the first decades of the fifteenth, humanistic cursive in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, with modern derived forms in more recent times; and by the seal, which is of red wax bearing the impression of the ring (v.) of the fisherman or, from 1842 onward, in red ink with a similar representation. As for the text, b. documents bear at the top the Pope’s name, followed by his title and ordinal number (e.g., Martinus pp. V); at the end of the text, the date is indicated in the modern manner, with the year according to the style of the Circumcision. The most characteristic element is represented by the formula of authentication sub anulo piscatoris, added in the date after the place (in the fourteenth century and the first half of the fifteenth also: sub anulo fluctuantis navicule or capitum Principum Apostolorum or nostro secreto). B. documents of some importance bear the signature of the cardinal secretary of State, while in other cases the signature of the chancellor of the b. is affixed.
The oldest pontifical b. known to date is one of Boniface IX (17 October 1390), preserved in the State Archive of Mantua; they are rare until the middle of the fifteenth century.
B. documents originated with the character of litterae secretae, that is, written by the apostolic secretaries for matters of political or administrative inte-
rest, but they were later widely used for every kind of concession; at first they were sent only closed, and the closure was secured by a wax seal suitably placed on the outside over the folded edges; from the seventeenth century onward, b. documents were also sent open in a more solemn form (with the formula at the beginning of the text ad futuram rei memoriam), and in that case the seal was placed on the back merely as a sign of validation.
As their powers expanded, the apostolic secretaries also dispatched documents in the form of a bolla, known as brevia sub plumbo. At present, brevi are drafted and dispatched by the Chancellery of the Apostolic Brevi, which constitutes the third section State (v.), even when the measure in question has been issued by another dicastery.
Benedict XIV, in the bull Gravissimum of 26 November 1745, provided a long list of cases in which the b. was to be used; at present, apart from the more important matters dealt with by means of a bolla, the use of the b. is very frequent: for example, the erection and alteration of apostolic vicariates and prefectures until 1933 (after that date such erections are carried out by means of bulls, and alterations of boundaries by decrees of Pro-
paganda); the dispatch of cardinal legates to congresses; the granting of indults or privileges to private individuals or juridical persons; appointments to prelatures and honors; and greetings and congratulations to sovereigns or heads of State. In the past, other matters of broader scope were also regulated by b., such as the suppression of the Society of Jesus decreed by Clement XIV on 21 July 1773 and the restoration of the Hierarchy in England, carried out by Pius IX on 1 September 1850.