Article I: Of the Nature and Credibility of Instruments

In any kind of judgment proof by documents, both public and private, is admitted.

§ 1. The principal public ecclesiastical documents are these:

1° Acts of the Supreme Pontiff and of the Roman Curia and of Ordinaries, drawn up in authentic form in the exercise of their offices, and likewise authentic attestations concerning the same acts given by them or by their notaries.

2° Instruments prepared by ecclesiastical notaries.

3° Ecclesiastical judicial acts.

4° Entries of baptism, confirmation, ordination, religious profession, marriage, and death, which are had in the registers of the Curia or parish or religion, and written attestations taken from the same and prepared by pastors, or Ordinaries, or ecclesiastical notaries, or authentic copies of them.

§ 2. Civil public documents are those which according to the laws of each place are considered such by law.

§ 3. Letters, contracts, testaments, and any writings prepared by private persons are held in the number of private documents.

Public documents, whether ecclesiastical or civil, are presumed genuine until the contrary is proved by evident arguments.

Recognition or impugnment of a writing can be proposed in judgment both incidentally and after the manner of a principal cause.

Public documents make faith concerning those things which are affirmed in them directly and principally.

A private document, whether acknowledged by a party or recognized by the judge, proves against the author or signer and those having the cause from them, just as a confession made outside judgment; but of itself it does not have the force of proving against outsiders.

If documents are shown to have been affected by erasure, correction, interpolation, or another defect, it belongs to the judge to estimate whether and how much documents of this kind are to be valued.