Swedish models displaying the latest in fashionable, secretarial wear, 1952. A black and white photo of nearly identically dressed women sitting at typewriters.
22 September 2021
In current usage, one sense of secretary is that of a person who handles correspondence or clerical duties for an executive or an office. It is not considered a particularly prestigious position. But a secretary can also be a nation’s or state’s cabinet official, the person who heads a government department. That is a rather prestigious and high-ranking position. How did this dichotomy arise?
The word secretary is related to secret. It comes from the medieval Latin secretarius, which could mean a sanctuary or hiding place, a person in charge of a church’s vestments, or a confidential advisor or agent. We can see this last sense in Roger Bacon’s thirteenth-century edition of the Secretum secretorum, a treatise on a range of topics relating to governance and science. It purports to be a letter by Aristotle to Alexander the Great but was probably composed in Arabic in the tenth century CE. It was first translated into Latin in the twelfth century. Bacon’s table of contents includes this:
Capitulum .16. de eleccione nunciorum dignorum, sive de nunciis et secretariis eligendis.
(Chapter 16. Regarding the choice of a worthy ambassador, or regarding the ambassador and secretary to be chosen.)
Secretary makes its English appearance in the sense of a ruler’s confidential advisor or subordinate who could be trusted with tasks that had to be kept secret. We see it in John Trevisa’s c.1387 translation of Ranulf Higden’s Polychronicon, a chronicle of history and theology. Higden, a Benedictine monk, wrote the work in the early fourteenth century. Secretary appears in a passage that relates a story Herodotus told about the Persian king Cyrus the Great. Trevisa’s translation reads:
Þat dreem rederes undrede þe sweuene, and seide þat his douȝter schulde haue a childe þat schulde be lorde of Asia, and putte hym out his kyngdom. Þan þe kyng dradde, and ȝaf his douȝter to a symple knyȝt þat was priuileche i-bore, for his douȝter schulde bere noon nobil childe; and also whan his douȝter was with childe he took hire to hym, and whan þe childe was i-bore he took it to oon Arpagus, þat was his secretarie, for he schulde slee þe childe.
(The dream interpreters unlocked the vision and said that his daughter would have a child who would be lord of Asia and put him out of his kingdom. Then the king became afraid and gave his daughter to a lowly knight of humble birth, so his daughter would not bear any noble child; and also when his daughter was with child, he took her to him, and when the child was born, he took it to one Harpagus, who was his secretary, so that he would slay the child.)
Higden’s Latin uses secretarius.
You may guess the outcome, as the plot has been recycled since time immemorial. The child was left in the forest, to the ravages of the elements and of predators. But he was found by a cottager, who raised him as his own son. The boy would go on to become Cyrus the Great and to depose his grandfather, King Astyages. Modern historians discount this story as a fabrication.
A later, anonymous fifteenth-century translation uses the spelling secretary:
By whiche dreame hit was seide by coniecture, that his doȝhter scholde haue a son, which scholde be lorde of Asia, and scholde expelle Astiages from his realme. Astiages dredenge this, mariede his doȝhter to a poore knyȝte, that a childe of nobilite scholde not be getten of his doȝhter. Whiche knowenge his doȝhter to be with childe, toke the childe to Arpagus to be sleyne; for he was secretary to the kynge.
(By which dream was said by interpretation that his daughter would have a son, who would be lord of Asia and would expel Astyages from his realm. Astyages dreading this, married his daughter to a poor knight, so that a child of nobility would not be begotten from his daughter. And knowing his daughter to be with child, took the child to Harpagus to be slain, for he was secretary to the king.)
Around the same time as this latter translation of Higden, the sense of secretary as one who assists in correspondence of an important person arises. We see it in one version of the Romance of Sir Bevis of Hamtoun. The Romance dates to c.1330, but this particular manuscript is from the fifteenth century:
Tho seyde kyng Armyne:
“As þou haste seyde, so schall hyt byn!”
And cawsyd hys secretory a lettyr to make
All for syr Befyse sake.
So, we start to see the senses of secretary diverge. On one hand you have a high-level advisor or agent, and on the other a personal assistant.
The modern use of secretary in the title of high-level government officials dates to the sixteenth century. This use makes sense when you think of a secretary as the agent of the sovereign, one empowered to act on behalf of the crown or president. The use of secretary as a government title can be seen in a 1583 passport. Originally written in Italian, it was translated by Richard Hakluyt in 1589:
Dated at Algier in our kingly palace, signed with our princely signet, and sealed with our great seale, and written by our Secretarie of State, the 23. of Januarie, 1583.
The Italian reads nostro reggio Secretario.
But the personal assistant sense of secretary was not always low-level. For centuries, to be the secretary to an important person was a coveted position, and often given to young men who were being groomed for important work. Working closely with a senior official was considered to be training for eventually assuming a similar position. It wasn’t until the twentieth century, when women started to be hired for secretarial work, that the position started to be coded as menial and unimportant and the dichotomy between office secretary and Secretary of State started to become obvious.
Sources:
Bacon, Roger. Secretum secretorum. Opera, vol. 5. Robert Steele, ed. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1920, 34. Internet Archive.
Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources. R.E. Latham, D.R. Howlett, and R.K. Ashdowne, eds. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2013, s.v. secretarius. Brepols: Database of Latin Dictionaries.
Hakluyt, Richard, ed. “Passeport in Italian granted to Thomas Shingleton Englishman, by the king of Algier. 1583.” Principal Navigations, Voiages and Discoveries of the English Nation. London: George Bishop and Ralph Newberie, 1589, 189. Early English Books Online (EEBO).
Lumby, Joseph Rawson, ed. Polychronicon Ranulphi Higden, vol. 3. London: Longman, et al., 1871, 3.4, 139. HathiTrust Digital Library. Oxford, Bodleian Library, Christ Church MS 89 (Higden), Cambridge, St. John's College MS H.1 (Trevisa). London, British Library, Harley MS 2261 (Anon, 15 cent).
Middle English Dictionary, 2019, s.v. secretarie, n.1.
Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s.v. secretary, n.1 and adj.
The Romance of Sir Beues of Hamtoun. Early English Text Society, extra series 46, 48, 65. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner, 1885–84, 58. Google Books. https://books.google.com/ Cambridge, University Library, MS Ff.2.38.
Image credit: Erik Holmén, 1952. Nordiska Museet. Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license.