France
The word prévôt (provost) applied to a number of different persons in pre-Revolutionary France. Following its historical meaning (from Latin praepositus), the term referred to a seignorial officer in charge of managing burgh affairs and rural estates and, on a local level, customarily administered justice. Therefore, at Paris, for example, there existed the Lord Provost of Paris who presided a lower royal court and the Provost of Merchants (prévôt des marchands), or Dean of Guild, headed the burgh council and the burgh's merchant company. In addition, there were Provost Marshals (prévôts des maréchaux de France), the Provost of the Royal Palace (prévôt de l'hôtel du roi), otherwise known as the Lord High Provost of France (grand prévôt de France), and the Provost General (prévôt général) or High Provost of the Mint (grand prévôt des monnaies).
Read more about this topic: Provost (civil)
Famous quotes containing the word france:
“While learning the language in France a young man’s morals, health and fortune are more irresistibly endangered than in any country of the universe.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)
“It is not what France gave you but what it did not take from you that was important.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)
“The bugle-call to arms again sounded in my war-trained ear, the bayonets gleamed, the sabres clashed, and the Prussian helmets and the eagles of France stood face to face on the borders of the Rhine.... I remembered our own armies, my own war-stricken country and its dead, its widows and orphans, and it nerved me to action for which the physical strength had long ceased to exist, and on the borrowed force of love and memory, I strove with might and main.”
—Clara Barton (1821–1912)