IMBREVIATURA. - In medieval terminology, it is the draft drawn up by the notary recording the act on a separate sheet and sometimes also on the verso of the parchment itself intended to contain the document, or, later, in the protocol register, sometimes itself called, by extension, i. It was usually written in summary form, omitting the fixed parts of the formulary, which the notary supplied in the final drafting. In the earliest periods the i. were normally destroyed after the document had been drawn up; but from the age of the Communes they were preserved by the recording notary himself and constituted the material of notarial archives (v. NOTAIO).
A special case is that of the carta augustana (11th-15th centuries), that is, the documents issued by the chancery of the city of Aosta, where the dorsal note, which constitutes evidentiary documentation, follows the notarial i. and precedes the writing on the recto, which represents the dispositive document.
pp. 177, 207. For the carte augustane cf. L. Schiaparelli, Charta augustana, in Archivio stor. ital., 5ª serie, 39 (1907), pp. 353-351; F. G. Frutaz, La Charte d'Aoste, in Augusta Praetoria, 1 (1919), pp. 76-83. Alessandro Pratesi