APPARITOR

APPARITOR, or Apparitour, or Apparator, a Beadle in a University, who carries the Mace before the Masters and the Faculties. See BEADLE and UNIVERSITY. Apparitors are also Messengers, who cite Men to appear in the Ecclesiastical Courts. See SUMMONS, SUMMONER, CITATION, etc.



Among the Romans, Apparitors were the same with Sergeants or Tip-staffs among us; or rather Apparitor was a general Term, and comprised under it all the Ministers and Attendants of the Judges and Magistrates, appointed to receive and execute their Orders—And hence, they say, the Name was derived, viz. from apparere, to be present, to be in waiting.

Under the Name Apparitores were comprehended the Scribae, Accensi, Interpretes, Precones, Viatores, Lictores, Servi Publici, and even the Carnifices or Hangmen. See SCRIBA, ACCENSI, etc.

They were usually chosen out of the Freed-Men of the Magistrates and their Condition was held in so much Contempt, that as a Mark of Ignominy, the Senate appointed a City that had revolted from them, to furnish them with Apparitors.

There were also a kind of Apparitors of Cohorts, called Cohortales, or Conditionales, as being attached to a Cohort, and doomed to that Condition—The Apparitors of the Praetors, Praetoriani, were those who attended the Praetors, or Governors of Provinces; and who, on their Master’s Birthday, were always changed and preferred to better Posts.

Add, that the Pontifices had also their Apparitors, as appears from an Inscription of an ancient Marble in the via Appia:
APPARITORI
PONTIFICUM
PARMULARIO.

APPARITOR