Cryptography Reference
In-Depth Information
production were developed which proved acceptable to both traditionalists and to
experts in literacy. There was no straight and simple line of progress from memory
to written record. People had to persuade
—
and it was difficult to do
—
that docu-
mentary proof was a sufficient improvement over existing methods to merit the
extra expense and mastery of novel techniques which it demanded.
3
Indeed, the history of written evidence can be understood only in its
relationship to the technology it supplanted: witness testimony. In Roman
law, writing functioned merely as a memorandum of testimony and as
record of the witnesses' presence at the scene of contract; in the Early and
High Middle Ages, writing stood subordinate to the oral contract, a mate-
rial sign whose evidential value remains dependent on its recognition by
witnesses. Even then, “the expression of a grant in writing was often less
important to the parties than the performance of ceremonial acts of which
the charter itself makes no record. The writing was of secondary impor-
tance, and was hedged about with repetitious clauses, because less confi-
dence was placed in it than in the oaths and public ceremonies which had
traditionally sanctioned conveyances.”
4
In France, it is only between the
fourteenth and the sixteenth centuries that writing severed that depen-
dence and testified in and of itself under the condition that it be produced
and preserved following specific rules.
5
Separate rules evolved for two
important categories of written documents: private acts and registers.
In the French southern legal tradition, several kinds of scribes, empow-
ered by various authorities, were able to confer a presumption of authent-
icity to their written acts: at first by a simple attestation that the acts were
written of their own hand; later by the apposition of a registered personal
mark; and still later by the fact that notaries signed as delegates of public
authority.
6
In the North, authentication of private acts evolved from Ger-
manic and Carolingian traditions of declarations by parties in front of a
public tribunal, so as to later benefit from the testimony of privileged wit-
nesses (i.e., professional judges). Such declarations were gradually shifted
to representatives of public and moral authorities
—
for example, munici-
pal, royal, or ecclesiastic.
A broad range of material and institutional technologies were leveraged
in the service of authentication: acts in multiple copies, chirographs,
deposits in trusted repositories, registration with authorities, transcription
in special registers, and many combinations of these. With the 1554
Fontainebleau ordinance, Henri II established the notary's signature as the
