Word Finder - intendants

definition

Administrator of an opera house or theater.

definition

One who has the charge, direction, or management of some public business; a superintendent.

example

an intendant of finance

definition

A governor in various specific contexts, including certain South American countries, and historically in the kingdoms of Spain, Portugal, and France, and in imperial China.

They came principally from the provincial intendants, or from the tours des aides, which were animated by a liberal spirit.

They were issued by the intermediary on the advice of the intendants in the provinces and of the lieutenant of police in Paris.

At the beginning of that reign Malesherbes during his short ministry endeavoured to infuse some measure of justice into the system, and in March 1784 the baron de Breteuil, a minister of the king's household, addressed a circular to the intendants and the lieutenant of police with a view to preventing the crying abuses connected with the issue of lettres de cachet.

As an historian he published Origines de l'institution des intendants de provinces (1884), which is the authoritative study on the intendants; Etudes historiques sur les X VI e et X VIP siecles en France (1886); Histoire de Richelieu (2 vols., 1888); and Histoire de la Troisieme Republique (1904, &c.), the standard history of contemporary France.

In addition to the prerogatives commonly invested in his office, the president is authorized to supervise the judiciary, to nominate candidates for the higher ecclesiastical offices, to intervene in the enforcement of ecclesiastical decrees, papal bulls, &c., to exercise supervisory police powers, and to appoint the intendants of provinces and the governors of departments, who in turn appoint the sub-delegates and inspectors of subordinate political divisions.

The president is authorized to appoint the governors of departments, the intendants of territories, the judges of the supreme and superior courts, and the diplomatic representatives of the republic. His salary, as fixed by the 1905 budget, is £3600 a year, and his cabinet ministers receive f1200 each.

The intendants and sub-delegates quitted or were driven from their posts.

Provincial and municipal liberties were no better treated when through them the kings subjects attempted to break loose from the iron ring of the royal commissaries and intendants.

In order to establish this absolute despotism Richelieu created no new instruments, but made use of a revolutionary institution Methods of the 16th century, namely intendants (q.v.), employed agents who were forerunners of the commissaries of by Riche- the Convention, gentlemen of the long robe of inferior lieu, condition, hated by every one, and for that reason the more trustworthy.

Despite the queens express prohibition, the insurrectionary assembly of the Chambre Saint Louis criticized the whole financial system, founded as it was upon usury, claimed the right of voting taxes, respect for individual liberty, and the suppression of the intendants, who were a menace to the new bureaucratic feudalism.

The movement attracted even the ministers, Boulainvilliers at their head, who caused the intendants to make inquiry into the causes of this general ruin.

The provincial assemblies of Dauphin and elsewhere gave the signal; and numerous towns, following the example of Paris, instituted munioipalitieswhichsubstituted their authority for that of the intendants and their subordinates.

Soldiers were made available to assist the Intendants if they needed them and local nobles were put under intense pressure to assist them.

In the same way the sous-prefets correspond to the subdelegues of the intendants, with the difference that they are actual officials subordinate to the prefects, while the subdelegues were merely the representatives with whom the intendants provided themselves, and to whom they gave powers.

The intendants, by an exercise of their general or special powers, took the place of the elus, and delegated commissaires aux tailles (commissaries of the taille) for the assessment of the parishes, who guided and supervised the elected collectors - for the most part ignorant and partial peasants.

In certain provinces where the royal taille was levied there were neither elections nor generalites, and the whole administration of the tax was in the hands of the intendants.

These were the provinces of the east and north, which were united to the crown at a period when the power of the intendants was already fully developed; they were sometimes known as pays d'imposition.

The former palace of the intendants of Gascony is now used as the prefecture.