Imprimi potest
Enable an agent to recognize an Imprimi potest, establish which religious superior authorized which writing, and determine the permission's documented scope and remaining publication requirements.
Bundle → Layer → Finding → Questions Filled
5 bundles · 9 layers · 14 findings · 22 questions
Permission identity Recognize the superior's permission and distinguish its legal function from neighboring approval terms.
Formula and act
Connect the observed wording to a specific permission.
Declaration identification
Record the exact notice and evidence that it represents a superior's grant rather than a quotation, template, or editorial assertion.
- What exact wording identifies this notice as an Imprimi potest? definition
- Where is the notice recorded, and is it an issued declaration or merely a reproduction or reference? provenance
Neighboring approvals
Distinguish permissions and review judgments appearing alongside the declaration.
Separate authorization functions
Keep the censor's assessment, the superior's permission, and any local ordinary's authorization as separately evidenced acts.
- Which accompanying notices are censor judgments, and which are grants by an ecclesiastical authority? boundary
- What additional authorization must be investigated before treating publication as permitted? action
Superior and applicability Establish who may grant permission and why the requirement applies to this author and writing.
Institute authority
Record the author, institute, issuing office, and applicable constitutional provisions.
Competent major superior
Canon 832 requires members of religious institutes to obtain their major superior's permission, according to their constitutions, for writings on religion or morals. [Code of Canon Law, canon 832](https://www.vatican.va/archive/cod-iuris-canonici/eng/documents/cic_lib3-cann822-833_en.html)
- Which records establish the author's institute membership and the issuer's relevant office when permission was granted? provenance
- Which provision of the institute's constitutions establishes competence or procedure for this grant? boundary
Subject and governing regime
Identify the writing's relevant subject and the rules applicable at the time.
Applicability basis
Record the grounds for applying the permission requirement; do not project contemporary Latin canon law automatically onto historical or other ecclesial contexts.
- What aspects of this writing place it within questions of religion or morals? boundary
- Which dated canonical and institute rules governed this author and grant? provenance
Review and grant evidence Connect examination of the writing to the superior's documented decision.
Prior examination
Identify evidence of the assessment supporting the superior's decision.
Censor judgment
The 1992 instruction directs the competent religious superior to obtain a prior judgment from at least one trusted censor and satisfy himself that the writing contains nothing harmful to faith or morals. [Instruction, article 17](https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_19920330_istruzione-pccs_en.html)
- What evidence identifies the censor's judgment and the text examined? provenance
- Were revisions requested, and what evidence connects the revised text to the subsequent grant? action
Decision record
Capture the grant independently of reviews and printed claims.
Documented superior decision
Preserve the decision's wording, issuer, date, reference identifier, conditions, and available corroboration.
- Which issuing record or publication notice supplies the decision, date, and signatory? provenance
- Does the evidence establish a grant, a conditional grant, a refusal, or only a request? definition
Textual scope and reliance Determine whether a proposed publication falls within the documented permission.
Authorized version
Bind the permission to identifiable textual and publication boundaries.
Version correspondence
Compare the text proposed for publication with the grant's identified manuscript or edition, flagging translations and revisions for assessment.
- Which manuscript, language, edition, or revision does the grant explicitly identify? boundary
- What evidence establishes whether the proposed text's changes fall within the permission's scope? action
Reliance decision
Assess conditions and later evidence before relying on the permission.
Permission use assessment
Report whether reliance is supported, conditional, or unresolved, while preserving distinctions between this grant and the full set of publication requirements.
- Which express conditions remain unmet, and is there evidence of a later modification or withdrawal? action
- What can the agent conclude from this permission alone, and which conclusions require separate authorization records? boundary
Evidence and external alignment What the world already says about this thing, gathered so the model can be checked against it.
Reported evidence
Findings from the breadth pass, kept separate from the structural claims.
Check these first
Recalled without web access and unsourced; every item is a lead to verify.
- Which of these check these first hold for the sense of Imprimi potest this model covers, and on what evidence? provenance
Standards and regulation
Recalled without web access and unsourced; every item is a lead to verify.
- Which of these standards and regulation hold for the sense of Imprimi potest this model covers, and on what evidence? provenance
Real-world use
Recalled without web access and unsourced; every item is a lead to verify.
- Which of these real-world use hold for the sense of Imprimi potest this model covers, and on what evidence? provenance
Failure modes and hazards
Recalled without web access and unsourced; every item is a lead to verify.
- Which of these failure modes and hazards hold for the sense of Imprimi potest this model covers, and on what evidence? provenance
Regional variation
Recalled without web access and unsourced; every item is a lead to verify.
- Which of these regional variation hold for the sense of Imprimi potest this model covers, and on what evidence? provenance
Neighbouring kinds and how to tell them apart
Recalled without web access and unsourced; every item is a lead to verify.
- Which of these neighbouring kinds and how to tell them apart hold for the sense of Imprimi potest this model covers, and on what evidence? provenance
Classifiers Filled
- Family
- Thing Registry
- Category
- Cross-cutting context
- Entry kind
- thing
- Plane
- XCT
- Domain
- XCT.QLT
What it is Filled
Imprimi potest is an authorization, conventionally expressed in Latin as "it may be printed," given by the competent religious superior for a member of a Catholic religious institute to publish a work, distinct from any required approval by the local ordinary.
In scope
- Identification of a declaration as Imprimi potest
- The issuing major superior's relationship to the author and religious institute
- The writing and version covered by the permission
- Evidence of examination, grant, conditions, and subsequent decisions
- Distinction from other ecclesiastical publication permissions
Out of scope
- The complete governance model of a religious institute
- The manuscript's theological argument and substantive doctrinal assessment
- Nihil obstat and imprimatur as independently issued acts
- Copyright licenses, publishing contracts, and civil publication rights
- General certification of a work's factual accuracy or literary quality
Why it exists Filled
Enable an agent to recognize an Imprimi potest, establish which religious superior authorized which writing, and determine the permission's documented scope and remaining publication requirements.
Distinguishing features Filled
- Identifies permission from a religious author's major superior to publish religious material; the term's conventional meaning is documented in the [Catholic Culture dictionary](https://www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/dictionary/index.cfm?id=34129).
- Tests the issuer's capacity in relation to the author's institute, rather than recognizing any cleric's signature as sufficient.
- Separates the superior's permission from a censor's favorable judgment and from the local ordinary's publication authorization.
- Requires an identifiable writing within the grant's scope; a publisher's generic approval statement is insufficient evidence.
- Records an authorization to publish without inferring endorsement of every opinion, factual claim, or proposed use.
What robots and AI may and may not do Filled
Must not
- Fabricate or add an imprimi potest to a work that did not receive one.
- Present it as a declaration that a work is free of error or endorsed in all its content.
- Use it to misrepresent an author's standing with their religious order.
Only with a human decision
- Requesting or issuing such authorization on behalf of a member of a religious institute.
May
- Explain what an imprimi potest is and how it differs from a nihil obstat and an imprimatur.
- Record the imprimi potest printed in a work with its date and the authorizing superior.
Moral aspects Filled
- The authorization belongs to a religious community's own governance and should be described respectfully.
- False claims of approval can mislead readers about a work's standing.
Who is affected
- Authors who are members of religious institutes
- Readers
- Religious communities
Owners Filled
Steward
The competent major superior of the religious institute who grants it.
Links to other meta-models Filled
parent
- Q7169333 - registry parent class
What else AI and robots need to interact with it Filled
Identity and identifiers required Filled
- Vercy registry: vr.tr.imprimi-potest
- Wikidata: Q2672555 (https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2672555)
Direct properties not applicable Not applicable
- Declaration wording: Exact transcription; explicit Imprimi potest formula; alternative formula requiring interpretation
- Issuing authority: Named issuer, office, religious institute, and documented competence at grant date
- Author's institute relationship: Author, institute, membership evidence, and relevant date
- Authorized textual object: Title, author, language, manuscript identifier, edition, and revision identifier where available
- Grant evidence state: Unverified assertion; printed notice located; issuing record located; conflicting evidence
- Documented disposition: Requested; granted; refused; subsequently modified; subsequently withdrawn; unknown
- Express conditions: Transcribed conditions; expressly unconditional; conditions not established
- Related ecclesiastical acts: Linked censor judgment, nihil obstat, imprimatur, or other required authorization
Plane XCT: no invented physical properties.
Recognition optional Filled
- The Latin words imprimi potest on the copyright page, with the name of a religious superior and a date.
- Often printed together with nihil obstat and imprimatur.
Capabilities and actions required Filled
- Extract an Imprimi potest notice and link it to its source page and corresponding writing.
- Check the issuing office against the author's institute relationship and applicable rules.
- Compare the proposed publication text with the text identified in the grant.
- Identify missing evidence, unmet conditions, and separate permissions requiring investigation.
- Explain precisely what the documented permission supports and what remains unestablished.
Hazards and failure modes required Filled
- Forged or misattributed approvals deceive readers and communities.
Standards and interfaces required Filled
- Canon 832 of the Code of Canon Law, promulgated by the Holy See, requires members of religious institutes to obtain their major superior's permission according to their constitutions before publishing writings on religion or morals.
Context of use required Filled
- Imprimi potest is encountered in Catholic publishing when a member of a religious institute obtains permission from the competent superior to publish a work.
- It can appear in a book's preliminary pages or accompanying authorization records to document the superior's permission.
- Its scope is assessed alongside any separate ecclesiastical approval required for the work.
Sources Filled
- Wikidata item Q2672555: Imprimi potest - identity and sense of the item
- Wikipedia: Imprimi potest - general description of the item
Open questions
- Should the registry's XCT / XCT.QLT placement represent the permission's normative status, or should an authorization-act model elsewhere own the underlying act?
- Which historical and institute-specific uses of Imprimi potest differ from the contemporary Latin canonical framework?
- Under which documented rules may an issuer act through delegation, and what evidence establishes that delegation?
- How do applicable institute rules treat translations, revised editions, digital publication, and reuse of a printed permission notice?
- Which procedures govern modification or withdrawal, and how can later decisions be verified when the original grant survives only in a printed book?
Machine files
Provenance
thing registry research (pass 2) · unreviewed
Built from: models/things/publications/thing-q2672555/spec.json