The Notary as existing in Italy belongs to the “latin (o roman) notarial system”.
The “latin notary” system is largely spread around the world, adopted by approximately 71 countries, mostly belonging to the civil law system.
Although the same word “public notary” is used within the “common law” legal systems, it must be underlined very clearly from the beginning that the concept (the meaning) behind the word in the civil law system and in the common law system is completely, absolutely different.
So when the words "Latin Notary" are used it is necessary to forget every notion that links it to the anglo-american “public notary”.
The “latin notary” finds his origin within the Roman culture; they were Emperor clerks who did the writing for the emperor; then there were the tabelliones, who did draft the deeds among private subjects, to give them legal form and strength. From the VIII century the notary deeds were given the same execution strength of a judicial sentence.
And from the XI century (year 1.000) the notary deed was given a privileged “public faith”, a particular strength. In this period the notary was equalized to the knight and to the judge within the noble professions.
The roots of the modern latin notary system, however, are to be found in the values of humanism, of the search of justice and protection of the weakest subjects.
Through this system, by using the notaries as qualified legal professionals, the State wants to guarantee certainty in the legal trading and commercial exchanges and protection of individuals.
Nowadays, the Latin notary is present in most European Countries (2/3, 30.000 notaries), including the East Europe countries, in Africa, South America, far East (Japan and China).
Some common law countries, such as Malta and Maurice Island, use the latin notary system as well.
In Europe there are approx. 30.000 notaries, in Italy 5.400, in Germany 11.000, in France 7.600.
The presence of a professional with the role of the Latin Notary within the civil law systems is based on two reasons:
1) the civil law system privileges the written evidence. This means of course that the reliability of what is written in a document has the utmost importance;
2) the civil law system stands upon a variety of public registers where almost all and all the most relevant deeds and legal situation are entered to make them "public". This means that they can be accessed to anybody and the data recorded in them are deemed too be legally true and trustworthy. Clearly the reliability of the of their records depends entirely upon the trustworthiness of the deeds entered.