Definition
A Latin term denoting an officer charged with managing the correspondence of a superior or sovereign. In Roman and medieval administrative practice, the officer ab epistolis functioned as a secretary or correspondence secretary — responsible for drafting, receiving, and dispatching official letters on behalf of a ruler, magistrate, or high official. The role was one of close administrative confidence, placing the holder in direct communication with the authority of the sovereign.
Why It Matters in Research
This is a term of Roman administrative law that survived into medieval legal Latin and appears primarily in historical and comparative legal sources rather than in common law doctrine. Researchers encountering ab epistolis in primary sources are most likely working with Roman law texts, canonist materials, or early medieval administrative documents rather than English common law records.
The term has no operative legal significance in modern common law jurisdictions. Its appearance in Black's and Burrill's reflects the nineteenth-century practice of including Roman and civil law terminology for reference by practitioners and scholars working with mixed legal traditions, civil law sources, or historical documents. Researchers should treat entries for this term in those dictionaries as glosses on Roman administrative vocabulary, not as definitions of enforceable legal concepts.
One practical trap: the word epistolis (and its root epistola) can appear in Latin legal documents in other contexts — referring to written instruments, letters of appointment, or papal epistles — that do not invoke the ab epistolis office specifically. Context governs interpretation.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's (1st ed.), Black's (2nd ed.), and Burrill's are in close agreement. All three define the term as an officer having charge of correspondence for a superior or sovereign, with Burrill adding the explanatory gloss "a secretary" and citing Calvinus (Johannes Calvinus, Lexicon Juridicum, a standard civil law reference dictionary) and Spiegelius (Hadrian Junius van Spiegel, whose glossary of legal Latin was a common shelf source in nineteenth-century law libraries). Black's 2nd ed. repeats the definition nearly verbatim and appends the phrase "Of old; of an ancient" — a fragment that appears to be a corrupted or incomplete transcription, likely a printer's error or truncation of a longer editorial note. It adds no substantive information.
None of the historical dictionaries provide jurisdictional context, and none situate the term within a broader discussion of Roman administrative hierarchy or the distinctions between related secretarial offices (such as a libellis, who handled petitions, or a studiis, who managed scholarly affairs). For researchers needing that fuller picture, the historical dictionaries are inadequate standing alone.
Jurisdictional Note
The term has no current operative meaning in any common law jurisdiction. It is relevant chiefly to Roman law scholarship, medieval administrative history, and the interpretation of historical Latin documents.