|
Seneschal
The word ''seneschal'' () can have several different meanings, all of which reflect certain types of supervising or administering in a historic context. Most commonly, a seneschal was a senior position filled by a court appointment within a royal, ducal, or noble household during the Middle Ages and early Modern period – historically a steward or majordomo of a medieval great house. In a medieval royal household, a seneschal was in charge of domestic arrangements and the administration of servants, which, in the medieval period particularly, meant the seneschal might oversee hundreds of laborers, servants and their associated responsibilities, and have a great deal of power in the community, at a time when much of the local economy was often based on the wealth and responsibilities of such a household. A second meaning is more specific, and concerns the late medieval and early modern nation of France, wherein the seneschal (french: sénéchal) was also a royal officer in char ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bailiff
A bailiff (from Middle English baillif, Old French ''baillis'', ''bail'' "custody") is a manager, overseer or custodian – a legal officer to whom some degree of authority or jurisdiction is given. Bailiffs are of various kinds and their offices and duties vary greatly. Another official sometimes referred to as a ''bailiff'' was the '' Vogt''. In the Holy Roman Empire a similar function was performed by the ''Amtmann''. British Isles Historic bailiffs ''Bailiff'' was the term used by the Normans for what the Saxons had called a '' reeve'': the officer responsible for executing the decisions of a court. The duty of the bailiff would thus include serving summonses and orders, and executing all warrants issued out of the corresponding court. The district within which the bailiff operated was called his ''bailiwick'', even to the present day. Bailiffs were outsiders and free men, that is, they were not usually from the bailiwick for which they were responsible. Througho ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bailli
A bailiff (french: bailli, ) was the king's administrative representative during the ''ancien régime'' in northern France, where the bailiff was responsible for the application of justice and control of the administration and local finances in his bailiwick ('). Name ''Bailli'' (12th-century French ''bailif'', "administrative official, deputy") was derived from a Vulgar Latin term ''*bajulivus'' meaning "official in charge of a castle", i.e. a royal castellan. History In the late 12th and early 13th century, King Philip II, an able and ingenious administrator who founded the central institutions on which the French monarchy's system of power would be based, prepared the expansion of the royal demesne through his appointment of bailiffs in the king's northern lands (the '' domaine royal''), based on medieval fiscal and tax divisions (the "") which had been used by earlier sovereign princes such as the Duke of Normandy. In Flanders, the count appointed similar bailiffs ( nl, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
France In The Middle Ages
The Kingdom of France in the Middle Ages (roughly, from the 10th century to the middle of the 15th century) was marked by the fragmentation of the Carolingian Empire and West Francia (843–987); the expansion of royal control by the House of Capet (987–1328), including their struggles with the virtually independent principalities (duchies and counties, such as the Norman and Angevin regions) that had developed following the Viking invasions and through the piecemeal dismantling of the Carolingian Empire and the creation and extension of administrative/state control (notably under Philip II Augustus and Louis IX) in the 13th century; and the rise of the House of Valois (1328–1589), including the protracted dynastic crisis against the House of Plantagenet and their Angevin Empire, dominated by the Kingdom of England, cumulating in the Hundred Years' War (1337–1453), compounded by the catastrophic Black Death epidemic (1348), which laid the seeds for a more centralized ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Court Appointment
Court appointments are the traditional positions within a royal, ducal, or noble household. In the early Middle Ages, when such households were established, most court officials had either domestic or military duties; the monarch's closest advisers were those who served in the household. However, as time went by, most of these positions became hereditary, and their role in the running of the household was gradually eroded. In England, for instance, the Lord Great ChamberlainBruce, Alistair, ''Keepers of the Kingdom'' (Cassell, 2002), and the Earl Marshal were originally responsible for the running of the royal household and the royal stables respectively; however, from the late medieval period onwards, their roles became largely honorary, their places in the household being taken by the Lord Chamberlain The Lord Chamberlain of the Household is the most senior officer of the Royal Household of the United Kingdom, supervising the departments which support and provide advice t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Late Latin
Late Latin ( la, Latinitas serior) is the scholarly name for the form of Literary Latin of late antiquity.Roberts (1996), p. 537. English dictionary definitions of Late Latin date this period from the , and continuing into the 7th century in the Iberian Peninsula. This somewhat ambiguously defined version of Latin was used between the eras of Classical Latin and Medieval Latin. Scholars do not agree exactly when Classical Latin should end or Medieval Latin should begin. Being a written language, Late Latin is not the same as Vulgar Latin. The latter served as ancestor of the Romance languages. Although Late Latin reflects an upsurge of the use of Vulgar Latin vocabulary and constructs, it remains largely classical in its overall features, depending on the author who uses it. Some Late Latin writings are more literary and classical, but others are more inclined to the vernacular. Also, Late Latin is not identical to Christian patristic Latin, used in the theological writings ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Scholae Palatinae
The ''Scholae Palatinae'' (literally "Palatine Schools", in gr, Σχολαί, Scholai) were an elite military guard unit, usually ascribed to the Roman Emperor Constantine the Great as a replacement for the '' equites singulares Augusti'', the cavalry arm of the Praetorian Guard. The ''Scholae'' survived in Roman and later Byzantine service until they disappeared in the late 11th century, during the reign of Alexios I Komnenos. 4th–7th centuries: imperial guards History and structure During the early 4th century, '' Caesar'' Flavius Valerius Severus attempted to disband the remaining units of the Praetorian Guard on the orders of Galerius. In response, the Praetorians turned to Maxentius, the son of the retired emperor Maximian, and proclaimed him their emperor on 28 October 306. When Constantine the Great (), launching an invasion of Italy in 312, forced a final confrontation at the Milvian Bridge, the Praetorian cohorts made up the most prominent element of Maxentius' ar ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Roman Empire
The Roman Empire ( la, Imperium Romanum ; grc-gre, Βασιλεία τῶν Ῥωμαίων, Basileía tôn Rhōmaíōn) was the post- Republican period of ancient Rome. As a polity, it included large territorial holdings around the Mediterranean Sea in Europe, North Africa, and Western Asia, and was ruled by emperors. From the accession of Caesar Augustus as the first Roman emperor to the military anarchy of the 3rd century, it was a Principate with Italia as the metropole of its provinces and the city of Rome as its sole capital. The Empire was later ruled by multiple emperors who shared control over the Western Roman Empire and the Eastern Roman Empire. The city of Rome remained the nominal capital of both parts until AD 476 when the imperial insignia were sent to Constantinople following the capture of the Western capital of Ravenna by the Germanic barbarians. The adoption of Christianity as the state church of the Roman Empire in AD 380 and the fall of the Western ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Comitatus
''Comitatus'' was in ancient times the Latin term for an armed escort or retinue. The term is used especially in the context of Germanic warrior culture for a warband tied to a leader by an oath of fealty and describes the relations between a lord and his retainers, or thanes (OE þegn). The concept is generally considered by scholars to be more of a literary trope rather than one of historical accuracy. Scholars Bruce Mitchell and Fred C. Robinson describe the ''comitatus'' more fully:An heroic warrior brought up in this 'comitatus''tradition would show a reckless disregard for his life. Whether he was doomed or not, courage was best, for the brave man could win ''lof'' lory among menwhile the coward might die before his time. This is the spirit which inspired the code of the ''comitatus''. While his lord lived, the warrior owed him loyalty unto death. If his lord were killed, the warrior had to avenge him or die in the attempt. The lord in his turn had the duty of being gener ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Old English
Old English (, ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages. It was brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers in the mid-5th century, and the first Old English literary works date from the mid-7th century. After the Norman conquest of 1066, English was replaced, for a time, by Anglo-Norman (a relative of French) as the language of the upper classes. This is regarded as marking the end of the Old English era, since during this period the English language was heavily influenced by Anglo-Norman, developing into a phase known now as Middle English in England and Early Scots in Scotland. Old English developed from a set of Anglo-Frisian or Ingvaeonic dialects originally spoken by Germanic tribes traditionally known as the Angles, Saxons and Jutes. As the Germanic settlers became dominant in England, their language replaced the languages of Roman Britain: Com ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Vulgar Latin
Vulgar Latin, also known as Popular or Colloquial Latin, is the range of non-formal registers of Latin spoken from the Late Roman Republic onward. Through time, Vulgar Latin would evolve into numerous Romance languages. Its literary counterpart was a form of either Classical Latin or Late Latin, depending on the time period. Origin of the term During the Classical period, Roman authors referred to the informal, everyday variety of their own language as ''sermo plebeius'' or ''sermo vulgaris'', meaning "common speech". The modern usage of the term Vulgar Latin dates to the Renaissance, when Italian thinkers began to theorize that their own language originated in a sort of "corrupted" Latin that they assumed formed an entity distinct from the literary Classical variety, though opinions differed greatly on the nature of this "vulgar" dialect. The early 19th-century French linguist Raynouard is often regarded as the father of modern Romance philology. Observing that the R ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gothic Language
Gothic is an extinct East Germanic language that was spoken by the Goths. It is known primarily from the ''Codex Argenteus'', a 6th-century copy of a 4th-century Bible translation, and is the only East Germanic language with a sizeable text corpus. All others, including Burgundian and Vandalic, are known, if at all, only from proper names that survived in historical accounts, and from loanwords in other languages such as Portuguese, Spanish, and French. As a Germanic language, Gothic is a part of the Indo-European language family. It is the earliest Germanic language that is attested in any sizable texts, but it lacks any modern descendants. The oldest documents in Gothic date back to the fourth century. The language was in decline by the mid-sixth century, partly because of the military defeat of the Goths at the hands of the Franks, the elimination of the Goths in Italy, and geographic isolation (in Spain, the Gothic language lost its last and probably already declining ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Retinue
A retinue is a body of persons "retained" in the service of a noble, royal personage, or dignitary; a ''suite'' (French "what follows") of retainers. Etymology The word, recorded in English since circa 1375, stems from Old French ''retenue'', itself from ''retenir'', from the Latin ''retenere'': to hold back or retain. Employment Such retainers were not necessarily in the domestic service or otherwise normally close to the presence of their lord, but also include others who wore his livery (a kind of uniform, in distinctive colours) and claimed his protection, such as musicians and tutors. Some were a source of trouble and abuse in the 15th and early 16th century. Often their real importance was very different from their rank: on the one hand, sinecures and supernumerary appointments allowed enjoying benefits without performing full service. On the other hand, 'having the ear' of the master can allow one to act as a confidant in an informal capacity; or in some cases, even ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
.jpg "Click for more on -> Bailli")
.svg "Click for more on -> France In The Middle Ages")
