 To train the "dictatores", as they were known, specimens of public and private acta were placed before them, and they had to listen to commentaries thereon.Thus arose the yet extant formularies, between the 5th and the 9th centuries.These models were sometimes of a purely academic nature, but their number is small; in almost every case they are taken from real documents, in the transcription of which the individualizing references were suppressed so as to make them take on the appearance of general formulæ; in many instances nothing was suppressed.