Sacramental Certificates

1 · Which certificate

2 · The details

What you type appears on the certificate beside this, as you type it. You can also click any line on the certificate itself and write there. Anything left empty simply prints as a blank line.

3 · What it is for

Commemorative is the certificate alone, one sheet, for a family to keep. Official is issued from the register and carries the line attesting that. Baptism takes a second page with it — the notations belonging to the baptismal entry, to be printed on the back of the same sheet; the other three are one sheet either way, since it is against a baptism that later sacraments are written.

4 · The notations

What has been written against this baptism since — the sacraments received afterwards. These print on the back of the sheet. A block left empty prints No notation. rather than a blank line, which is what an official record wants: a rule left blank can be filled in afterwards by anyone.

5 · How it is set

Ruled is the printed form: the parish's words in the office's upright face, a rule to write each entry on, and small caps naming what the rule is for. Calligraphy is the made-out document, for a certificate the app fills and prints whole — two hands, no rules and no under-text, with the register's entries in red.

Colour is the gilded frame and capitals struck for the page. Black & white is the same illumination in line — the ornamental border and capitals the office wears in e-reader mode — for a plainer sheet or a printer with no colour.

The border of the colour frame: the certificates' own, with the four evangelists at the corners; Black Hours, gold on blue, as the office wears at Compline; Travers, black strapwork with its crosses drawn into it; Travers plain, the same with none of the colour — no gold rules, no gold ring, the woodcuts in their own black rims; or Pugin's gold and blue diaper, with his painted tiles at the corners — the crowned monogram, the red rose or the fleur-de-lys, the same at all four.

The capitals opening the title and the name are the office's own illuminated versals — red or blue on the blue manuscript ground, gold on the darker gilded one — or its black & white capitals, the ones it wears in e-reader mode. A black-and-white certificate always takes those.

6 · Print

One certificate to a sheet of Letter, with the design set a quarter inch in from the paper's edge so no printer clips the corner miniatures. Print with background graphics on, or the frame will not appear. Save PDF opens the same sheet in your browser's print window — choose Save as PDF as the destination to download it, named for the certificate.