Seneschal

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Seneschal is the historical name for a courtly office . In the Carolingian Frankish empire it was the highest court office. Under the German kings and emperors of the Holy Roman Empire, he was the equivalent of the office of dish food .

Etymology and Development

The word seneschal was borrowed from old French seneschal ( new French sénéchal ), this in turn from old Lower Franconian siniskalk , from the adjective sena for "old" and skalk for "servant" (cf. marshal or Schalk ). So originally the "old servant", whereby "old" does not stand for the age, but the seniority ( seniority ). The Seneschal was the most experienced and the highest, the superior of the other servants, not a “retired servant”.

The Carolingians referred to the highest court official, the head of the royal household, as a seneschal . From this the highest grand office in the Kingdom of France developed : The Seneschal of France was not only head of the royal house, but also the commander-in-chief of the army. This great power ultimately led to the abolition of the office in 1191. This court office also continued to exist in other former Carolingian areas. B. in the county of Barcelona , where the House of Montcada was the Seneschal for a long time.

In the late Middle Ages in France the royal court administrator or the highest court clerk of a district was referred to as a seneschal ( sénéchal judiciaire ).

See also

literature

  • Article Seneschall in Trübner's German Dictionary . Volume 6 ( S ), De Gruyter, Berlin 1954, p. 336.
  • Article Seneschal . In: Lexicon of the Middle Ages (LexMA). Volume 7, LexMA-Verlag, Munich 1995, ISBN 3-7608-8907-7 , Sp. 1751-1754.
  • Werner Rösener : Court offices at medieval princely courts . In: German Archive for Research into the Middle Ages , Volume 45, 1989, pp. 485-550.
  • Stewart Scoones: Les noms de quelques officiers féodaux des origines à la fin du XIIe siècle . Klincksieck, Paris 1976 (= Bibliothèque Française et Romane , A 37).

Web links

Wiktionary: Seneschall  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Friedrich Kluge : Etymological dictionary of the German language. De Gruyter, Berlin / New York 1975, Lemma Seneschall.