Notaries of the Practice
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The Notaries of the Practice are the direct records of the lectures and aphorisms of the Prophet of Vaestism. The title Notaries derives from the fact that each text opens with a brief statement of the identity of the transcriber—the eponymous notary—along with a list of various others who vouch for its authenticity. This is then followed in each case by the sentence 'Let him [the Prophet] speak and command the faithful' introducing the main text, now a Formula in its own right and adopted as the motto of the Prysostaic Council. Until well into the 17th century, it was indeed traditional for every authenticated manuscript copy of the Notaries, whether or not in translation, to also carry the seals of at least five Scholars who had verified its reliability, though the general adoption of the printing press reduced this practice to the inclusion of a mere printed sentence conveying the names of the Scholars who had approved the edition, which itself was eventually reduced to a statement of approval by the Prophet-Emperor and subsequently the local Standard-Bearer and governing Universal Prophet (or, more recently, Interrex).
The 'Troborine Notaries', prepared under Ostrobor the Pious and published in 1570, were the first translation of the Notaries into High Secote to be prepared and promulgated under Neritsovid auspices, and contributed to the development of High Secote into a Vaestic koine. These largely remain the standard edition of the Notaries in High Secote, used by the Prysostaia itself, and outside certain regions of the Joriscian Lowlands they have virtually displaced the Classical Argote originals in non-philological contexts.1 Standard editions also exist in the various languages of the Banners. The Rashimic 'Movarine Notaries', approved in 1463 by a set of Scholars that included the second Standard-Bearer of the Greater West, Movar, were the first application of the Vladykast script, and remain among the earliest translations that continue to be used—albeit mostly for poetic purposes, since they have liturgically been replaced by various more recent translations in each of the Rashimic-speaking Banners.
Notes
- ↑ Various relatively minor emendations of the Troborine translation used by the Prosystaia itself were approved by Prophets Yambor (1784) and Tarmo (1881) so that the currently used edition is sometimes distinguished as the 'Third-Form Troborine'. Most current Western editions of the Notaries are based on the Third-Form Troborine owing to its official status, though so-called 're-sourced' (ressourcé) scholarly translations based on the Argote original are also common in academic contexts.
External links
- "The Lesson of the Stars" – Extract from the Notaries of the Practice with summary gloss