VIDIMUS

VIDIMUS. — Formula for giving probative value to copies of documents.

Among the methods used in the Middle Ages to give probative value to copies of documents, so that they would be valid for all purposes on an equal footing with the originals, one was widely employed: having them made and authenticated by a public authority vested with jurisdictional power. The text usually begins with a formula in which the word V. occurs, which subsequently came to designate the document itself, and bears the seal of the authority, whether the sovereign or one of his officials, the prince, the municipal magistrate, or even the bishop or an official of his curia.

The Pope and the papal Chancery rarely issued acts of this nature. The use of V. was especially common in the 13th and 14th centuries and outside Italy, where the notariate was less developed. When the copy was thus vi-

(phot. Enc. Catt.)
VIDIMUS — V. of the official of the episcopal curia of Le Puy, dated 23 October 1383, containing the text of a decree of the Papal Chamberlain, in favor of the monastery of St-Hostien, dated 16 February 1383. The word V. is the penultimate word of the first line. The wax seal, pendant by a simple tail, has been lost — Vatican Secret Archives, Instr. Misc. 3160.

When the copy thus authenticated derives from the very authority that had issued the original, or from another superior authority, the V. also implies recognition or confirmation of the content; apart from this particular case, V. documents correspond in value to authentic notarial copies, except for the difference in form, which derives from the fact that they are emanations of a broader jurisdictional power, not of a specific faculty such as that of notaries.