Seneschal

The word seneschal (ˈsɛnəʃəl) 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 (sénéchal) was also a royal officer in charge of justice and control of the administration of certain southern provinces called seneschalties, holding a role equivalent to a northern French bailiff (bailli). In the United Kingdom the modern meaning of seneschal is primarily as an ecclesiastical term, referring to a cathedral official. The Medieval Latin discifer (dish-bearer) was an officer in the household of later Anglo-Saxon kings, and it is sometimes translated by historians as seneschal, although the term was not used in England before the Norman Conquest. The term, first attested in 1350–1400, was borrowed from Anglo-Norman seneschal "steward", from Old Dutch *siniscalc "senior retainer" (attested in Latin siniscalcus (692 AD), Old High German senescalh), a compound of *sini- (cf. Gothic "old", "oldest") and "servant", ultimately a calque of Late Latin senior scholaris "senior guard". The scholae in the late Roman Empire referred to the imperial guard, divided into senior (seniores) and junior (juniores) units. The captain of the guard was known as comes scholarum.