In the canon law of the Catholic Church, a notary (Latin: notarius) is a person appointed by competent authority to draw up official or authentic documents. These documents are issued chiefly from the official administrative bureaux, the chanceries; secondly, from tribunals; lastly, others are drawn up at the request of individuals to authenticate their contracts or other acts. The public officials appointed to draw up these three classes of papers have been usually called notaries. Etymology Etymologically, a notary is one who takes notes. Notes are signs or cursory abbreviations to record the words uttered, so that they may be reproduced later in ordinary writing. Notaries were at first private secretaries, attached to the service of persons in positions of importance. It was natural for the science of notes to be in high esteem among those employed in recording the transactions of public boards, and for the name notary to be applied to these officials; so that before long the word was used to signify their occupation. History The title and office existed at the Imperial Court (cf. Cod. Theod., VI, 16, "De primicerio et notariis"), whence they passed into all the royal chanceries, though in the course of time the term notary ceased to be used. This was the case also with the chanceries of the pope, the great episcopal sees, and even every bishopric. There are grounds for doubting whether the seven regional notaries of the Roman Church, one for each ecclesiastical district of the Holy City, were instituted by St. Clement and appointed by him to record the Acts of the martyrs, as is said in the "Liber Pontificalis"; they date back, however, to an early age. Primicerius and secundicerius Not only were there notaries as soon as a bureau for ecclesiastical documents was established, but in very ancient days we find these notaries forming a kind of college presided over by a primicerius; the notice of Pope Julius I in the "Liber Pontificalis" relates that this pope ordered an account of the property of the Church, intended as an authentic document, to be drawn up before the primicerius of the notaries. The notaries were in the ranks of the clergy and must have received one of the minor orders, for the notariate is an office and not an order. At intervals the popes entrusted the notaries of their curia with various missions. Their chief, the primicerius,