Definition
Sbscriptum is a Latin term meaning "a writing" or "thing written." In its classical legal usage, it refers to any written instrument or document, particularly those bearing legal significance. The term appears in early common law and civil law sources as a general designation for written materials, but it carries specific force in its recognized compound forms.
Two principal compound forms appear in historical legal usage:
1. Scriptum indentatum — A writing indented; technically, an indenture or deed. The reference is to the historical practice of writing two copies of an agreement on a single sheet, then cutting or tearing the sheet along an irregular (indented) line so that the matching edges could later be fitted together to verify authenticity.
2. Scriptum obligatorium — A writing obligatory. The formal technical name for a bond in old common law pleading. Any written instrument under seal by which a party bound themselves to perform an obligation or pay a sum of money.
---
Common Confusion
The term as it appears in Black's 2nd Edition is almost certainly a typographical corruption of SCRIPTUM, with the initial "Sc" rendered as "Sb" in the source printing. Researchers encountering "sbscriptum" in digitized or transcribed texts should treat it as scriptum. This matters because keyword searches in historical legal databases will fail to surface the relevant authorities if the corrupted form is used exclusively.
---
Why It Matters in Research
This term is primarily a research hazard rather than a living legal concept. It survives in Law Mind's corpus almost entirely through its compound forms, and its independent appearance signals one of two things: either an early common law or civil law source dealing with written instruments generally, or a transcription artifact from a corrupted printing of Black's or a related dictionary.
Researchers working with early pleading records, particularly those involving bonds or indentures, need both compound forms in their search strategy. Scriptum obligatorium appears in old pleading books as the formal designation for what modern practice simply calls a bond; courts treated the distinction between a writing obligatory and other instruments as carrying procedural and substantive consequences in the forms of action. Scriptum indentatum connects directly to the history of the deed and indenture, a line of research that runs through conveyancing practice into modern deed law.
The digitization of historical law dictionaries has created a class of ghost terms — words that exist in searchable databases only because of printing errors or OCR misreads. Sbscriptum is a clear example. A researcher who indexes this form without recognizing the corruption will miss the full body of authority collected under scriptum and its compounds.
---
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's 2nd Edition is the sole dictionary source here, and its entry is brief — essentially a cross-reference anchor for the two compound forms rather than a substantive discussion of scriptum itself. The entry cites Fleta (Book 2, c. 60, § 25), a 13th-century English legal treatise, for the base term. That citation is consistent with scriptum's role as foundational Latin legal vocabulary carried into early English common law from Roman and canon law sources.
Black's does not discuss the civil law background of scriptum in depth, and no other shelf source in the Law Mind collection provides a competing or supplementary definition for this specific entry. The historical dictionary record is thin because scriptum was understood as basic Latin — legal writers assumed readers would know it — while the compound forms received more doctrinal attention in treatises on pleading and conveyancing.
---
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
See Law Mind Encyclopedia: Indentures and Deeds (for scriptum indentatum); Bonds and Written Obligations (for scriptum obligatorium).
---