CATHEDRAL) .
The chancellor of an order of knighthood discharges notarial duties and keeps the seal. The chancellor of a university is an official of mediaeval origin. The appointment was originally made by the popes, and the office from the first was one of great dignity and originally of great power. The chancellor was, as he remains, the head of the university ; he had the general superintendence of its studies and of its discipline, could make and unmake laws, try and punish offences, appoint to professorial chairs and admit students to the various degrees. In England the chancellorship of the universities is conferred on noblemen or statesmen of distinction, whose principal function is to look after the general interests of the university, especially in its relations with the government. The chancellor is represented in the univer sity by a vice-chancellor, who performs the administrative and judicial functions of the office. In the United States the heads of certain educational establishments have the title of chancellor. In Scotland, the foreman of a jury is called its chancellor. In the United States the chancellors are judges of the chancery courts of the states, e.g., Delaware and New Jersey, where these courts are still maintained as distinct from the courts of common law. In other states, e.g., New York since 1847, the title has been abolished, and there is no federal chancellor.
In diplomacy generally the chancellor of an embassy or lega tion is an official attached to the suite of an ambassador or minister. He performs the functions of a secretary, archivist, notary and the like, and is at the head of the chancery, or chan cellery, of the mission. The functions of this office are the tran scribing and registering of official despatches and other documents, and generally the transaction of all the minor business, e.g., marriages, passports and the like, connected with the duties of a diplomatic agent towards his nationals in a foreign country.
The country in which the office of chancellor fol lowed most closely the same lines as in England is France. He had become a great officer under the Carolingians, and he grew still greater under the Capetian sovereigns. The great chancellor, summus cancellarius or archi-cancellarius, was a dignitary who had indeed little real power. The post was commonly filled by the archbishop of Reims, or the bishop of Paris. The cancellarius, who formed part of the royal court and administration, was offi cially known as the sub-cancellarius in relation to the summus cancellarius, but-as proto-cancellarius in regard to his subordinate cancellarii. He was a very great officer, an ecclesiastic who was the chief of the king's chaplains or king's clerks, who administered all ecclesiastical affairs; he had judicial powers, and from the I 2th century had the general control of foreign affairs. The chan cellor in fact became so great that the Capetian kings, who did not forget the mayor of the palace, grew afraid of him. Few of the early ecclesiastical chancellors failed to come into collision with the king, or parted with him on good terms. Philip Augustus sus pended the chancellorship throughout the whole of his reign, and appointed a keeper of the seals (garde les sceaux). The office was revived under Louis VIII., but the ecclesiastical chancellorship was finally suppressed in 1227. The kings of the 13th century employed only keepers of the seal. Under the reign of Philip IV. le Bel, lay chancellors were first appointed. From the reign of Charles V. to that of Louis XI. the French chancelier was elected by the royal council. In the 16th century he became irremovable, a distinction more honourable than effective, for though the king could not dismiss him from office he could, and on some occasions did, deprive him of the right to exercise his functions, and en trusted them to a keeper of the seal. The chancelier from the 13th century downwards was the head of the law, and performed the duties which are now entrusted to the minister of justice. His office was abolished by the Revolution. The smaller chanceliers of the provincial parlements and royal courts disappeared at the same time. But when Napoleon was organizing the empire he created an arch-chancellor, an office which was imitated rather from the Erz-Kanzler of the Holy Roman empire than from the old French chancelier. At the Restoration the office of chancellor of France was restored, the chancellor being president of the House of Peers, but it was finally abolished at the revolution of 1848. The admin istration of the Legion of Honour is presided over by a grand chancelier, who is a grand cross of the order, and who advises the head of the state in matters concerning the order. The title of chancelier continues also to be used in France for the large class of officials who discharge notarial duties in some public offices, in embassies and consulates. They draw up diplomas and prepare all formal documents, and have charge of the registration and preservation of the archives.
In Spain the office of chancellor, canciller, was intro duced by Alphonso VII. (1126-57), who adopted it from the court of his cousins of the Capetian dynasty of France. The canciller did not in Spain go beyond the king's notary. The chan cellor of the privy seal, canciller del sello de la puridad (literally the secret seal), was the king's secretary, and sealed all papers other than diplomas and charters. The office was abolished in 1496, and its functions were transferred to the royal secretaries. The cancelario was the chancellor of a university. The canciller succeeded the maesescuela or scholasticus of a church or monas tery. Canciller mayor de Castilla is an honorary title of the arch bishops of Toledo. The gran canciller de las Indies, high chan cellor of the Indies, held the seal used for the American dominions of Spain, and presided at the council in the absence of the pres ident. The office disappeared with the loss of Spain's empire in America.
In central and northern Europe, and in Italy, the office had different fortunes. In southern Italy, where Naples and Sicily were feudally organized, the chancellors of the Norman kings, who followed Anglo-Norman precedents very closely, and, at least in Sicily, employed Englishmen, were such officers as were known in the West. The similarity is somewhat concealed by the fact that these sovereigns also adopted names and offices from the imperial court at Constantinople. Their chan cellor was officially known as Protonotary and Logothete, and their example was followed by the German princes of the Hohenstaufen family, who acquired the kingdoms of Naples and Sicily. The papal or apostolic chancery is dealt with in the article on the Curia Romana (q.v.).
The title of arch-chancellor (Erz-Kanzler) was borne by three great ecclesiastical dignitaries of the Holy Roman empire. The archbishop of Mainz was arch-chancellor for Germany. The arch bishop of Cologne held the dignity for Italy, and the archbishop of Trier for Gaul and the kingdom of Arles. The second and third of these dignities became purely formal with the decline of the empire in the 13th century. But the arch-chancellorship of Ger many remained to some extent a reality till the empire was finally dissolved in 1806. The office continued to be attached to the archbishopric of Mainz, which was an electorate. Karl von Dal berg, the last holder of the office, and the first prince primate of the Confederation of the Rhine, continued to act in show at least as chancellor of that body, and was after a fashion the predecessor of the Bundeskanzler, or chancellor of the North German Con federation. The duties imposed on the imperial chancery by the very complicated constitution of the empire were, however, dis charged by a vice-chancellor attached to the court of the emperor. The abbot of Fulda was chancellor to the empress.
The house of Austria in their hereditary dominions, and in those of their possessions which they treated as hereditary, even where the sovereignty was in theory elective, made a large and peculiar use of the title chancellor. The officers so called were of course distinct from the arch-chancellor and vice-chancellor of the empire, although the imperial crown became in practice heredi tary in the house of Habsburg. In the family states their adminis stration was, to use a phrase familiar to the French, "polysynodic." As it was when fully developed, and as it remained until the March revolution of 1848, it was conducted through boards pre sided over by a chancellor. There were three aulic chancellorships for the internal affairs of their dominions, "a united aulic chan cellorship for all parts of the empire (i.e., of Austria, not the Holy Roman) not belonging to Hungary or Transylvania, and a sepa rate chancellorship for each of those last-mentioned provinces" (Hartig, Genesis of the Revolution in Austria). There were also a house, a court, and a state chancellor for the business of the imperial household and foreign affairs, who were not, however, the presidents of a board. These "aulic" (i.e., court) officers were in fact secretaries of the sovereign, and administrative or political rather than judicial in character, though the boards over which they presided controlled judicial as well as administrative affairs. In the case of such statesmen as Kaunitz and Metternich, who were house, court and state chancellors as well as "united aulic" chancellors, the combination of offices made them in practice prime ministers, or rather lieutenants-general, of the sovereign.
the modern German empire the Reichskanzler was the immediate successor of the Bundeskanzler, or chancellor of the North German Confederation (Build). But the Bundes kanzler, who bore no sort of resemblance save in name to the Erz-Kanzler of the old empire, was in a position not perhaps actually like that of Prince Kaunitz, but capable of becoming much the same thing. When the German empire was established in 1871 Prince Bismarck, who was Bundeskanzler and became Reichskanzler, took care that his position should be as like as possible to that of Prince Kaunitz or Prince Metternich. The con stitution of the German empire is separately dealt with, but it may be pointed out here that the Reichskanzler was the federal min ister of the empire, the chief of the federal officials, and a great political officer, who directed the foreign affairs, and superintended the internal affairs, of the empire.
In these German states the title of chancellor is also given as in France to government and diplomatic officials who do notarial duties and have charge of archives. The title of chancellor has naturally been widely used in the German and Scandinavian States, and in Russia since the reign of Peter the Great. It has there, as elsewhere, wavered between being a political and a judi cial office. Frederick the Great of Prussia created a Gross-Kanzler for judicial duties in 1746. But there was in Prussia a state chan cellorship on the Austrian model. It was allowed to lapse on the death of Hardenberg in 1822. The Prussian chancellor after his time was one of the four court ministries (Hofdmter) of the Prussian monarchy.
F. Stumpf, Die Reichs Kanzler (Innsbruck, Bibliography.-K. F. Stumpf, Die Reichs Kanzler (Innsbruck,
; P. Hinschius, Kirchenrecht (1869) ; Du Cange, Glossarium, s.v. "Cancellarius" ; W. Stubbs, Const. Hist. of England
G. Seeliger, Erzkanzler and Reichskanzleien (ib., 1889) ; Rudolph Gneist, Hist. of the English Constitution (Eng. trans., 1891) ; A. Luchaire, Manuel des institutions f rangaises (1892) ; L. 0. Pike, Const. Hist. of the House of Lords (1894) ; Sir R. J. Phillimore, Eccles. Law (1895) ; P.
Cours de droit diplomatique, ii. 542 (1899) ; Sir W. R. Anson, The Law and Custom of the Con stitution, vol. ii. part i. (1907) .
