Definition
Latin: "Know all men" or "Let all men know." A formal opening phrase used in legal instruments — particularly deeds, bonds, and other conveyances — to address the document to all readers universally. Functionally equivalent to the English phrase "Know all men by these presents," which later became the standard opening formula in common law instruments across England and its successor jurisdictions.
The phrase signals the beginning of a formal operative instrument and identifies the document as a public declaration of legal consequence, directed not merely to named parties but to all who might encounter it.
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Common Confusion
NOVERINT UNIVERSI is often treated as interchangeable with "Know all men by these presents," but they are not identical. The Latin phrase is the older form; the English rendering became dominant in practice as documents shifted from Latin to vernacular drafting. A researcher encountering one should expect the other to appear in parallel documents from adjacent periods. Neither phrase carries independent legal operative effect — both are purely introductory and their presence or absence does not affect the validity of the instrument.
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Why It Matters in Research
This term is a navigational marker in archival and historical legal materials rather than a substantive legal concept. Its significance to corpus researchers is almost entirely dating and document-type identification:
**Dating instrument**: NOVERINT UNIVERSI appears predominantly in medieval and early modern English instruments drafted in Latin. Its presence reliably indicates a document predating the widespread adoption of English-language drafting, which accelerated after the Statute of Pleadings (1362) and became near-universal in formal instruments by the 17th century. A document opening with this phrase is almost certainly pre-modern.
**Document type indicator**: The phrase anchors a document within the tradition of formal bilateral instruments — deeds of conveyance, bonds obligatory, letters patent, and similar records. It should prompt a researcher to look for the characteristic structure that follows: identification of the grantor or obligor, the operative words of transfer or obligation, consideration, and the testimonium clause.
**Corpus connections**: Researchers working through deed registries, cartularies, or early plea rolls will encounter this phrase repeatedly as a header. Because it is purely formulaic, it requires no interpretation, but recognizing it immediately locates the document within a specific formal tradition and prevents confusion with narrative or epistolary records that open differently.
**Transition materials**: In jurisdictions that shifted from Latin to English drafting, there are hybrid instruments that open "Know all men by these presents" in English but retain other Latin formulae internally. Tracking when NOVERINT UNIVERSI disappears from a given jurisdiction's practice can help date the transition in local drafting conventions.
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Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary provides the essential identification: the phrase means "Know all men" and served as the introductory words of conveyances in England from a very early period, citing Fleta (Book 2, Chapter 64, Section 3). Fleta is a late 13th-century legal treatise, and Burrill's citation to it confirms the phrase was already conventional by that era — not a late innovation but an inherited formula by the time of systematic legal writing.
Burrill's entry is accurate but spare, treating the phrase as self-explanatory to a 19th-century legal audience that would still have encountered "Know all men by these presents" in regular practice. Modern researchers need the additional context that the Latin form was the original, the English form the successor, and that neither carries more legal weight than a recital.
No divergence among historical dictionary sources is apparent because the term is purely formulaic. Its meaning has never been disputed; only its prevalence has changed over time.
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Jurisdictional Note
In American practice, the English successor phrase "Know all men by these presents" persisted in deed and bond drafting well into the 20th century, particularly in Southern and Mid-Atlantic states where older conveyancing forms were preserved by custom. The pure Latin NOVERINT UNIVERSI is essentially absent from American instruments except in the earliest colonial records, where English settlers sometimes carried forward the older forms.
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