Notitia Dignitatum
The Notitia Dignitatum is a late Roman list of senior civil and military offices, their departments and subordinate units. It describes the eastern and western empire at differing chronological stages. It is not a roster of hundreds of thousands of individual officials or an exact statement of army strength.
Creating a Notitia Dignitatum
The eastern section mainly reflects conditions near the end of the fourth century; the western section incorporates changes from the first third of the fifth. Some entries could retain outdated information, so the document is not a simultaneous snapshot of the entire administration.
Its compilation is associated with imperial bureaux; primicerius notariorum designated the head of imperial notaries. The Notitia includes offices, departments, military commands, unit names and drawings of insignia, shield emblems and stylised cities.
Surviving late medieval and Renaissance copies descend from the lost Codex Spirensis, formerly at Speyer. Publication in 1542 did not date the codex’s creation. Copyists preserved illustrations but could alter details; shield designs should be compared across manuscripts.
Page of a medieval copy of the Notitia Dignitatum featuring shields of the Magister Militum Praesentalis II,a list of Roman military formationsLists of troops
Notitia Dignitatum contains 2 lists of troops of field armies (comitates). The first list lists the combat units (numeri)and their commanders (magister peditum in infantry formations and magister equitum in cavalry), and the second list lists the locations of these units and their high command. But questions are raised by the number of troops, since in the Notitia Dignitatum it is said that there is no data on the number of units and troops in total, and in a number of places in the Notitia Dignitatum, the relevance of the location of certain units in the specified deployment zone also raises questions and doubts.
Document structure
Sections are organised around offices and their subordinate departments or forces. Illustrations may show official insignia, stylised forts, cities and unit emblems; they are not all accurate plans of real places.
Formulas such as sub dispositione viri spectabilis indicate subordination to an official of a specified rank. Dux and comes denote commands or ranks in context, not interchangeable names for every army commander. The officium lists departmental staff. Floreas inter alios comites ordinis primi wishes prosperity among counts of the first rank; comes does not mean an ordinary travelling companion here.
One of the copies of the Codex Spirensis,at the end of which is presented Notitia Dignitatum
Notitia Dignitatum presented in a copy of Codex SpirensisRelated topics
Literature and sources
1. Tkachenko A. A. "Notitia Dignitatum" kak istochnik po pozdneantichnoi emblematike ["Notitia Dignitatum" as a source for late antique emblematics]. Signum: Scientific and Informational Bulletin of the Center for Herbological and Genealogical Research of the IVI RAS], Moscow,2000, issue 2, pp. 33-40. Archived from the archive on April 23,2013. 2. Heather P. The Fall of the Roman Empire, Moscow: AST,2011, pp. 380-383. 3. Bury J. B. The Notitia Dignitatum // Journal of Roman Studies. N 10. 1920. P. 131—154. 4. Polaschek E. Notitia Dignitatum // Realencyclopädie der Classischen Altertumswissenschaft. 17. 1. 1936. Coll. 1114—1116. 5. Jones A. H. M. Notitia Dignitatum // Jones A.H.M. The Later Roman Empire,284—602. A social, economic, and administrative survey. V. 1 — 3. Oxf.,1964. (Appendix II. P. 347—380)
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