Definition
A vidimus (Latin: "we have seen") is a formal exemplification or authenticated copy of an enrolled charter, deed, or other non-record instrument, certified by an official or court as a true representation of the original. The document takes its name from its opening Latin formula — *vidimus quoddam scriptum* ("we have seen a certain writing") — which identifies both the authenticating authority and the document examined.
A vidimus functioned in medieval and early modern English practice as a means of officially certifying the content of a document without producing the original. It is closely related to the innotescimus, and the two forms were used interchangeably in practice. Crucially, the vidimus applied to instruments that were not of record — such as charters of feoffment — as distinct from exemplifications drawn from court rolls or official records.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): A preliminary drawing of something to be designed and constructed; or, an inspection or audit.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Webster's 1913 does not carry a general-language entry for vidimus, reflecting its status as a term confined to legal and ecclesiastical Latin usage through the modern period.
The gap between ordinary and legal usage is wide and potentially misleading. The Wiktionary senses — a design draft or an audit — share no substantive connection to the legal meaning. A researcher encountering "vidimus" in a historical legal document should discard any modern general-language associations entirely. The term in legal sources refers exclusively to a certified copy function, not inspection in any abstract or commercial sense.
Common Confusion
Vidimus is frequently treated as synonymous with inspeximus and innotescimus, and for most practical research purposes the three forms overlap. The distinction Burrill draws is useful: both innotescimus and vidimus apply to instruments not of record, while inspeximus (from "we have inspected") is the broader term sometimes used for record-based exemplifications as well. Black's (2nd Ed.) effectively collapses the distinction by cross-referencing vidimus to inspeximus without elaboration. Researchers should not assume that a source using one term excludes the others — the forms were treated as functionally equivalent in much of the case law and treatise commentary.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers working in medieval English land law, chancery practice, or ecclesiastical records will encounter vidimus as a document type rather than a legal concept with ongoing doctrinal development. Its significance is archival and procedural: a vidimus in a chain of title or a monastic cartulary is evidence of how original instruments were authenticated and circulated before modern notarial and recording systems.
Several traps await the researcher. First, because Black's (2nd Ed.) gives only a bare cross-reference to inspeximus, researchers relying on Black's alone will miss the functional detail that Burrill preserves. Second, the term largely disappears from common law sources after the early modern period — its absence in later dictionaries does not mean the underlying authentication practice ceased, only that the Latin formula gave way to different forms. Third, the Wiktionary sense of "audit" or "preliminary drawing" circulates in architectural and design literature; a researcher running a corpus search on "vidimus" without filtering for legal context will generate significant noise from non-legal sources.
In the Law Mind corpus, vidimus is most likely to appear in primary sources (plea rolls, cartularies, chancery filings) and in treatises on conveyancing and land records. When it appears, it signals that the document at hand is itself a certified copy, not the original instrument, which has direct implications for evidentiary weight and chain-of-title analysis.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill provides the most substantive treatment, preserving the operative Latin formula, identifying the document class to which vidimus applied (non-record instruments, specifically charters of feoffment), and distinguishing it from the inspeximus. The citations to Coke (5 Co. 54a, Page's Case) and Littleton (225b) ground the term in recognized authority.
Black's (2nd Ed.) offers only a cross-reference — "An inspeximus" — with a citation to Barring's Ob. St. 5. This minimalism is notable: by the time of Black's second edition, the term had become sufficiently archaic that a brief redirect was deemed sufficient. Researchers should treat the Black's entry as a pointer, not a definition.
Neither source addresses the vidimus as it appeared in ecclesiastical or continental practice, where the form had a parallel existence in canon law and papal document authentication. That gap is worth flagging for researchers working in church history or comparative legal history.
Jurisdictional Note
Vidimus is a term of English and continental European legal history with no active doctrinal application in modern American or British law. Researchers will encounter it almost exclusively in historical sources. Civil law jurisdictions developed analogous authentication forms under different terminology.