Definition
In civil and old European law, notz (also encountered as *notæ* or shorthand marks) refers to systems of abbreviated characters or marks of contraction used by imperial secretaries to record dictated pronouncements, edicts, and correspondence of Roman emperors. The term describes the physical notational system — shorthand symbols — rather than the documents produced from them.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers working in Roman law, medieval civil law, or the history of legal records will encounter this term primarily as a descriptor of documentary form rather than legal substance. The practical significance is archival: texts transmitted through notz may bear irregularities, abbreviations, or scribal interpolations that affect the reliability of a given passage as a statement of imperial law. When consulting early printed editions of the Corpus Juris Civilis or related civilian sources, awareness that portions were originally taken down in shorthand — and later expanded by copyists — is relevant to textual criticism of those sources.
The term appears rarely in Anglo-American legal literature, and its presence in Black's 2nd edition reflects the dictionary's deep coverage of civil and continental law concepts. Researchers using later editions of Black's or purely common-law dictionaries may not find it at all. Its appearance signals that a source is engaging with the classical Roman administrative record-keeping tradition, not common-law doctrine.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary (2nd Ed.) defines notz concisely as "short-hand characters or marks of contraction, in which the emperors' secretaries took down what they dictated," citing Spelman and Calvin. This entry represents essentially the full extent of historical legal dictionary coverage for this term in English-language sources. The definition is narrow, accurate, and uncontested — there is no meaningful divergence across sources simply because the term's usage is confined and technical.
Spelman's *Glossarium Archaiologicum* and Calvin's *Lexicon Juridicum* are the underlying civilian reference works Black's draws upon here, both being standard early-modern authorities on Roman and continental legal vocabulary. Neither source treats notz as a term of legal doctrine; both treat it as a term of legal administration and paleography.
What historical dictionaries do not address is the downstream consequence for legal historians: the notz system connects to the broader tradition of Roman *notarii* (secretaries) and the reliability problems that shorthand transmission posed for later editors of imperial rescripts and constitutions.