Definition
*Pateat universis per praesentes* is a Latin phrase meaning "let it be known to all by these presents" or, in its more familiar English rendering, "know all men by these presents." It was the formal opening formula used in letters of attorney and other legal instruments, serving as a solemn announcement that the document was intended to convey notice to all who might encounter it. The phrase functions as a ceremonial invocation of public notice — a declaration that the instrument speaks to the world at large, not merely to named parties.
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Common Language
The phrase has no meaningful modern common usage in English. Its English translation, however — "know all men by these presents" — survives as a fixed legal idiom still encountered in deeds, powers of attorney, and other formal instruments. Ordinary readers encountering this phrase today typically treat it as archaic boilerplate without appreciating its roots in a distinct Latin formula with its own documentary history.
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Common Confusion
The phrase is sometimes rendered in truncated or corrupted form in historical records — the "Prm-Sentes" variant in the source material reflects a scribal abbreviation or printing compression of *praesentes* (meaning "presents" or "the present writing"). Researchers should not treat this as a separate formula. It is the same phrase, and variant spellings or abbreviations in manuscript and early print sources all point to the same opening clause. Do not confuse *pateat universis per praesentes* with *noverint universi*, another Latin opening formula meaning "let all men know," which served a similar but formally distinct function in different classes of instruments.
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Why It Matters in Research
This phrase is primarily a finding and identification tool for researchers working in historical records. Encountering *pateat universis per praesentes* — or its English equivalent "know all men by these presents" — signals that the document in question is almost certainly a letter of attorney (power of attorney), a deed, a bond, or another instrument intended to operate as a formal public act.
Researchers working with pre-modern English legal manuscripts, early printed form books, or colonial American instruments should be alert to this formula as a structural marker. It appears in *Registrum Omnium Brevium* (the Register of Writs), where Black's cites it at folios 305b and 306, confirming its presence in the standard formularies that trained medieval and early modern English lawyers. The formula fell out of active Latin use as legal instruments shifted to English, but its translated equivalent persisted in common law practice for centuries and remains in use today.
A key research trap: because this phrase is pure opening formula, its presence tells you what type of document you are reading but nothing about its substantive content. Do not treat the presence of this formula as evidence of any particular legal transaction beyond the general category of instrument. The substance is in what follows the formula, not in the formula itself.
For corpus researchers working with early English or colonial American instruments, the phrase may appear in varying states of abbreviation. The form "Pateat Universis Per Prm-Sentes" in the source material is a compressed rendering — likely a typographic or scribal abbreviation — of the full *pateat universis per praesentes*. Historical dictionaries and form books will index this under the full Latin phrase or under the English equivalent.
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Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary (2nd Ed., Supplemental) provides the only direct entry in the Law Mind corpus for this phrase. The entry is brief but precise: it identifies the phrase as the words with which letters of attorney "anciently commenced" and cross-references the *Registrum Omnium Brevium* at folios 305b and 306. This is a reliable pointer to the phrase's documentary home in medieval English legal practice.
What the historical dictionaries do not provide is any discussion of how the phrase transitioned into English-language instruments as "know all men by these presents," or how that English formula came to be treated as effectively equivalent. That evolution is implicit in the record but not narrated by the dictionary sources. Researchers should be aware that by the time most American legal form books were produced, the Latin original had largely disappeared from active use, replaced entirely by the English calque — yet the functional and structural role of the phrase remained identical.
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Jurisdictional Note
The phrase in its Latin form is specific to English common law tradition and its derivatives. Researchers working with civil law jurisdictions or non-English legal traditions will encounter different opening formulae. Within the common law world, the English translation persists across American, English, and Commonwealth jurisdictions in instruments of conveyance and agency.
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