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The Notory Art of Shorthand (Ars notoria notarie): A Curious Chapter in the History of Writing in the West , introd., ed., and trans. John Haines, Dallas Medieval Texts and Translations 20 (Paris, Leuven, and Walpole, Mass.: Peeters, 2014). xiv-190 pp. ISBN 978-90-4293068-1. euro45.00. The Ars notoria occupies a position between tachygraphy and magic. On the one hand, it reflects, with the change of a single vowel, the art of the notary, who records the proceedings in the law court. On the other hand, it refers to a process of meditating on symbolic figures in order to learn the subjects taught in university in a wonderfully short time. The common denominator between ars notoria and ars notaria is the art of mastering a body of knowledge very quickly, and one means to do this is to use abbreviated writing. The text edited and translated here is thus devoted to teaching a certain form of tachygraphy which, the author has argued in more detail elsewhere (Scriptorium 62 (2008), 46-73), was addressed by an unknown author to Henry III, King of England (rather than by John of Tilbury to Henry II as has been previously thought). Haines gives a detailed account in the introduction of the various forms of abbreviated writing or shorthand in the Latin West, and of the ars notoria as a genre of magic (now...