Notarius Publicus

The text is in French. During the last 100 years, many legal historians have contributed to an elucidation of 'legal reception', i.e. the receipt and adoption of foreign law, in order to supplement or replace local law. The principal problem has been to clarify the reason why Roman and Canon law have been able to lay the groundwork for a real common European law. This text makes a contribution to this explanation by pointing out and elucidating the function of the notaries, which was to elaborate and certify documents with the purpose of giving them evidential weight in matters taken into temporal and ecclesiastical courts in the Middle Ages and later on. 'Ars notariae', the notorial art, has not previously been treated in a complete and comparative exposition, of which Danish conditions have been a constituent part. It becomes apparent that the role of the notaries according to the Danish letter material conforms exactly to the European pattern.