administration in financial matters. They took the place of the généraux des finances and the “treasurers of France,” who became provincial functionaries in the various généralités. The intendants des finances existed until the end of the ancien régime; they were at first under the authority of the surintendant, and subsequently under that of the contrôleur général des finances. The intendants des provinces date from the last thirty years of the 16th century. They were commissaries sent by the king with wide powers to restore order in the provinces after the civil wars. Their functions were at first extraordinary and temporary, but a few were retained as permanent state officials, and in course of time they came to be fairly generally distributed over the whole kingdom. The existing territorial divisions were not disturbed, each intendant being placed over a généralité, save in some cases where slight modifications were necessary for administrative purposes. In their functions, however, there is another element worthy of notice. In the 13th and 14th centuries the monarchy had organized a species of inspection (chevauchée) over the provincial functionaries, which was performed by the maîtres des requêtes, and this the reform ordinances of the 16th century sought to revive. This inspectorate passed to the intendant, who became the resident local inspector and supervisor of all the other functionaries in his district; its connexion with the old chevauchée is plainly shown by the fact that the intendants were almost invariably selected from the maîtres des requêtes. The early intendants had naturally been largely concerned with the troops; eventually special military intendants (the only ones that exist in modern French law) were created, but the intendants des provinces retained certain military duties, notably those relating to the housing of the troops.
The early intendants were called indifferently intendants de justice or intendants de finances, their full official title being intendants de justice, police et finances, et commissaires, départis dans les généralités du royaume pour l’exécution des ordres de Sa Majesté. This title shows the wide range of their duties, the word “police” in this connexion connoting general administration. Not being officers of the king, but merely commissaries, they could always be recalled, and their powers were fixed by the commission they received from the king. As their functions became pre-eminently administrative the laws of the 17th and 18th centuries referred many questions to their decision, and, in this respect, their powers were determined by law. They became the direct general representatives of the king in each généralité, with authority over the other officials, whom they were empowered to censure, suspend or sometimes even replace. They were in constant touch with the king’s council, with which they were connected by their original rights as maîtres des requêtes. In the first half of the 17th century they encountered some opposition from the governors of provinces, who had formerly been the direct political representatives of the crown, and also from the parliaments, which traditionally intervened in the administration, especially by means of arrêts de règlement (decisions, from which there was no appeal, regulating questions of procedure, civil law or custom). The intendants, however, were energetically supported, and so complete was their triumph that in the 18th century governors of provinces could not enter upon their duties without formal lettres de résidence.
The intendants had wide powers in the drawing by lot of the militia and in the royal corvées for the making and repair of the high roads, and were largely concerned with the administration of the taille, in which they effected useful reforms. They were the sole administrators of the principal direct and indirect imposts created in the second half of the 17th century and in the 18th century, and had full powers to settle disputes arising out of these taxes. Owing to the vast size of the districts allotted to the intendants (there were no more than thirty-two intendants in 1788), they often felt the need of assistants. As commissaries of the king, they could delegate their powers to sub-délégués, who were, however, not royal officials, but merely mandatories of the intendant. Decisions of the intendant could be carried to the king’s council, and those of the sub-délégué to the intendant.
See Gabriel Hanotaux, Origines de l’institution des intendants des provinces (1884); D’Arbois de Jubainville, L’Administration des intendants d’après les archives de l’Aube (1880); P. Ardascheff, Provintzalnaya administratsiya vo Frantsii ve poshednoyo porou starago poryadka: provintsialny Intendanty (St Petersburg, 1900–1906). (J. P. E.)
INTENT (from Lat. intendere, to stretch out, extend, particularly
in the phrase intendere animum, to turn one’s mind to, purpose),
in law, the purpose or object with which an act is done. The
question of intent is important with reference both to civil and
criminal responsibility. Briefly, it may be said that in criminal
law the constituent element of an offence is the mens rea or the
guilty intent. The commission of an act without the intent
is not, as a general rule, sufficient to constitute a crime, nor,
on the other hand, does the existence of a guilty intent without
commission of the act amount to the legal conception of a crime
(see Criminal Law). In the case of civil wrongs, in general,
the opposite holds good. A wrongful act done to the person or
property of another carries with it legal liability, irrespective
of the motive with which the act was done (see Tort). In reference
to the construction of contracts, wills and other documents,
the question of intention is material as showing the sense and
meaning of the words used, and what they were intended to effect.
INTERAMNA LIRENAS, an ancient town of Italy in the
Volscian territory near the modern Pignataro Interamna, 5 m.
S.E. of Aquinum; the additional name distinguishes it from
Interamna Praetuttianorum (mod. Teramo) and Interamna
Nahartium (mod. Terni). It was founded by the Romans
as a Latin colony in 312 B.C. as a military base in the war against
Samnium, no fewer than 4000 colonists being sent thither.
It was among the Latin colonies which in 209 B.C. refused to
supply further contingents or money for the Hannibalic war.
It became a municipium with the other Latin colonies, but we
hear no more of it—mainly, no doubt, because it lay off the
Via Latina. Livy’s description of it as on the Via Latina is not
strictly accurate, and cannot be used as an indication that the
former course of the Via Latina was through Interamna. The
city lay on a hill on the N. bank of the Liris, between two of its
tributaries, thus lacking natural defences on the N. side alone.
Many inscriptions have been found, and there are considerable
remains of antiquity. One inscription bears the date A.D. 408,
and the site was occupied in the middle ages by a castle called
Terame or Termine. (T. As.)
INTERCALARY (from Lat. intercalare, to proclaim, calare, the insertion of a day in the calendar), a term applied to a month, day or days inserted between other months or days in order to adjust the reckoning of time, based on the revolution of the earth round the sun, the day, and of the moon round the earth, the lunar month, to the revolution of the earth round the sun, the solar year (see Calendar). From the meaning of something inserted or placed between, intercalary is used for something which interrupts a series, or comes between two types. In botany, the term is used of growth which is not apical but somewhere between the apex and base of an organ, such as the growth in length of an Iris leaf, or of the internode of a grass-haulm.
INTERCOLUMNIATION, in architecture, the distance between
the columns of a peristyle, generally referred to in terms of
the lower diameter of the column. They are thus set forth by
Vitruvius (iii. 2): (a) Pycnostyle, equal to 112 diameters;
(b) Systyle, 2 diameters; (c) Eustyle, 214 diameters (which was
the proportion preferred by him); (d) Diastyle, 3 diameters;
and (e) Araeostyle or wide spaced, 4 diameters, a span only
possible when the architrave was in wood. Vitruvius’s definition
would seem to apply only to examples with which he was
acquainted in Rome, or to Greek temples described by authors
he had studied. In the earlier Doric temples the intercolumniation
is sometimes less than one diameter, and it increases gradually
as the style developed; thus in the Parthenon it is 114, in the
Temple of Diana Propylaea at Eleusis, 114; and in the portico
at Delos, 212. The intercolumniations of the columns of the
Ionic Order are greater, averaging 2 diameters, but then the
relative proportion of height to diameter in the column has to
be taken into account, as also the width of the peristyle. Thus
