**Stenography**
Stenography (from Greek ταχύς "rapid" and γραφή "writing"), modernly called "stenography," is an abbreviated writing system using appropriate signs and rules, designed to save time and space and to record speech.
The first abbreviations (q.v.) of writing are traced back to the Egyptians and Hebrews (c. 1000 B.C.).
Stenography — Stele from the Acropolis of Athens (350 B.C.) — Athens, National Museum.
It is said that the early Christians made use of stenography. St. Cassian of Imola (q.v.) is said to have been martyred by the young students to whom he taught stenography. St. Cyprian, Bishop of Carthage, adapted the notes for use in the Church, and they were later widely employed in the propagation of the Christian faith.
It is not unlikely that stenography contributed to the composition of the Gospels, and it is believed that St. Paul dictated to stenographers (cf. L. De Grandmaison, *Jésus Christ*, I, Paris 1929, p. 1; G. Ricciotti, *Paolo Apostolo*, Rome 1946, ch. 8 and elsewhere). More reliable information exists regarding the Church Fathers, both in the East and West, who sometimes allude to it in their works; especially St. Jerome (J. de Ghellinck, *Sulle orme dei primi scrittori cristiani*, in *Civ. Catt.*, 1934, II, pp. 43-56) and St. Augustine, who used it for his conferences, writings, and disputations (P. Gorla, *S. Agostino*, Milan 1936, pp. 483, 487, 614, 693). A stenographic service was organized, with the involvement of St. Augustine himself, for the Conference of Carthage (411). It is also known that notaries were employed in various councils and synods of the Church, beginning with the Council of Nicaea (325).
Under the Byzantine Empire and during the barbarian rule in Italy, notaries held offices and colleges at the courts, from which the notariate (q.v.) originated. Likewise, at the Papal Court, under Popes Gelasius, Vigilius, Pelagius, and St. Gregory the Great—whose works were preserved by his stenographer, Emiliano—stenography was used. In this period, examples of stenographic oratory are rare; stenographic signs, interspersed with abbreviations of common writing, are instead quite frequent in documents and, as *signum recognitionis*, in royal and imperial diplomas, especially those of the Merovingians and Carolingians, as well as in papal bulls. Meanwhile, the greater use of Tironian notes for brachygraphic purposes is found in manuscripts produced by monastic scribes (Monte Cassino, Bobbio, Fulda, Corbie, Reims, Tours, St. Gall); so much so that the abbreviations of writing often conform to those of stenography, many of which remain in current use.
From the 6th to the 11th century, a syllabic Greek stenographic system developed and came into documentary use (the Byzantine-Egyptian system and the Grottaferrata system, attributed to St. Nilus the Younger), as well as a Latin one (the latter is believed to have originated in the Lombard chancery following the decline and transformation of Tironian notes). Schiaparelli distinguishes two types (ancient and modern), and in 1887 J. Havet discovered samples of them in the bulls of Pope Sylvester II.
Among the manuscripts preserved with Greek stenographic notes are the *Nomus* codex (Brit. Mus., *Add.*, 1823) from 972, the ms. *Par. 3032* of the *Ars rethorica* by Hermogenes, and the *Vat. gr. 1809* codex in Grottaferrata characters. Manuscripts with Tironian notes include the *Breviarium Alaricianum* and the *Capitularia* of the Frankish kings, published in Paris in 1747.
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**STENOGRAPHY**
- Passage in Tironian notes (9th century) — Vatican Library, Reg. lat. 191, f. 56r.
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**STENOGRAPHY — Ars Notaria Aristotelis with stenographic notes.**
Florence, Laurentian Library, codex Laurent. XXX, 29 (13th century).
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From the Benedictine P. Carpentier (*Alphabetum Tironianum*), a manuscript from St. Martin of Tours containing Virgil’s *Eclogues* and *Georgics*, a text by St. Isidore found in Venice, a *Mass* entirely in notes from the monastery of St. Remy and now in the Vatican Library (codex Reg. lat. 191), the *Psalters* of Paris and Bern. Stenography saw a revival in England through the monk J. Tilbury (1115–90), credited with the *Ars notaria* (1174), an attempt at a new system based on grammatical criteria, which departed from Tironian notes (cf. V. Rose, *Ars notaria*, in *Hermes*, 8 [1874], pp. 303–26), though it does not appear to have been practically applied. Two manuscript copies survive, in London and Oxford, as well as a 12th-century codex (Plut. XXX, 29) in the Laurentian Library of Florence, titled *Ars notaria Aristotelis*.
Stenography became widely established in medieval universities for recording the lectures of jurists and was also practiced by St. Thomas Aquinas, of whom an autograph stenographic page of his *Super Boetium de Trinitate* is preserved in the Casanatense Library in Rome. Dante also alludes to it (*Par.*, XIX, 133–35). Though by then it had moved away from Tironian notes and merged with secret writing or conventional abbreviations of the time, it was still used in religious oratory (13th–15th centuries), as seen in the collected vernacular sermons of St. Bernardino of Siena, compiled by the cloth shearer Benedetto di Mastro Bartolomeo (1427), the sermons of Fra Girolamo Savonarola, recorded by the notary Lorenzo Violi (1492–98), and the discourses of Martin Luther.
With the invention of printing and the abandonment of many abbreviations, one direction of stenography developed anew, while another current of study and research emerged concerning ancient Tironian notes, whose rediscovery was due to Abbot G. Trismius (q.v.). He was followed by learned scholars, including P. Bembo, who in 1513 was commissioned by Pope Julius II to decipher the *De sideribus* of Gaius Julius Hyginus in Tironian notes; the Belgian Joest Lips (1574–1606), the Dutchman G. Gruter (1560–1627), who made the first collection of notes and initiated studies on Tironian
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**STENOGRAPHY — Samples of modern Italian stenographic systems.**
a) Gabelberger-Noe; b) Taylor-Delpino; c) Pitman-Francia; d) Marchionni; e) Meschini; f) Cima. Text: Stenography is an extremely ancient art. Modern science attributes its invention to the Romans.
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The new direction of shorthand, determined in England by political and parliamentary developments, manifested itself at the beginning of the 17th century with the system of the priest J. Willis (1602), who introduced the term “stenography,” adopted a geometric alphabet and the criterion of selecting the essential elements for constructing words. He was followed by countless authors, among whom the most notable were S. Taylor (1786), who completely geometrized the system by omitting vowels, and I. Pitman (1877), who developed the concept of “phonography.” The geometric school spread especially in France (Th. Bern, 1792; I. Prevost, 1866; E. Duploje, 1867, a system that is still the best known there) and in Spain (F. Marti, 1800), while in Germany the cursive system of F. X. Gabelberger (1789–1849) gained recognition for its rational and scientific merits. In Italy, particularly due to the impetus of political events, geometric systems of Franco-English imitation became widespread as early as 1797 (Molina, Amanti, Taylor-Delpino), and from 1883 the Pitman-Franci system. However, the application of Gabelberger’s system by Enrico Noe (1835–1914), published in 1863, prevailed and remains the most widely used. Meanwhile, mixed systems emerged in England (J. Gregg, 1888, widely used in America in addition to Pitman), in Italy (Meschini, 1906 and 1916; Cima, 1911), and were unified in Germany (Einheitskurzschrift, 1924) and in Hungary (Radnai, 1927), while shorthand extended its applications to every field (politics, journalism, schools, commerce and industry, the military, courts).
Shorthand has also achieved notable successes within the life of the Catholic Church. It is worth recalling the shorthand service for the Vatican Council (1869–70), organized on the orders of Pius IX and entrusted, under the direction of Fr. Virginio Marchese (1831–1917), to 23 clerics of various nationalities (Th. Granderath, *Geschichte des Vatikanischen Concilii*, French trans., I, Brussels 1907, p. 476; II, ibid. 1907, p. 438 and elsewhere; F. Giulietti, *Un testamento stenografico e il Concilio Vaticano del 1870*, Florence 1950).
Shorthand has had and continues to have many practitioners in the modern ecclesiastical world. Among the authors of systems are to be counted: for France, Mons. Villecourt (1787–1867) and Abbot Emil. Duploje (1883–1912); for Germany, the Benedictine Hieronymus Gratzmüller (1853); for Italy, Fr. Salvatore Moros (1813), Abbot Luigi Caterino (1822), Canon Taddeo Consoni (1826), the Dominican Ludovico Roleti (1853), the Augustinian Serafino Marchionni (1903); for England, Rev. Philip Gibbs (1736) and the Jesuit William Tatiock (1913), who applied the Pitman system to Latin. The missionary J. Le Jeune (1890) used a shorthand system of his own invention to disseminate religious writings in the Chinook language. His fellow missionaries and the Indians evangelized in British Columbia (J. Mooney, *Shuswap Indians*, in *Cath. Enc.*, XIII, p. 764). — See pl. CXX.