Yes, Minister

Originally, a minister was a lesser official, as opposed to a magister — a word which has come down to us as both 'master' and 'magistrate'. The magister was a greater official, a big-wig, an important person, a chief, a boss, a director. The Latin word ministerialis meant somebody who had some menial official duties, but by the Middle Ages, the ministerialis was a person whose task was to entertain his employer by singing and telling tales, and soon the ministerialis took on the role that we now describe by the term 'minstrel'.

The sense of minstrel we now have can also be fitted to the label 'troubadour', which comes from the Provençal trobador, and which is related to the French trouver, meaning 'to find', because it was the task of the troubadour to find, invent and compose in verse, much like the skalds of the Norsemen — or today's rap performers, who, like their predecessors, usually have a range of rhymes prepared in advance, ready to use as a refuge when the going gets tough.

Despite what we sometimes see in Hollywood depictions of Merrie England, the troubadours were inhabitants of the patch from Spain, through southern France to northern Italy, though at the eastern end, the troubadour became il trovatore. England had to make do with minstrels, and these folk were certainly among those who ministered to the needs of the local lord.

The minister in a church is a priest by another name, and while the clergy of an area may be referred to collectively as 'the local ministry', there are still some churches in which the term is avoided, perhaps because it seems to have its roots in a saying of Calvin. One Albert Babinot, who had studied at la Ministerie in Poitiers, and who was addressed by Calvin as "Mr. Minister", a name which then was transferred to other clergy in the Calvinist tradition.

The low position of a minister was clear to the translators who created the King James Version: in Matthew 20, Jesus reminded his disciples that the Gentiles allowed their princes to exercise authority, but then he says "but whosoever will be great among you, let him be your minister; And whosoever will be chief among you, let him be your servant." (Matthew 20: 26-27).

Shakespeare knew this meaning of 'minister' as well, for in the first part of Henry VI, we find the Duke of York calling 'La Pucelle' (Joan of Arc) "Thou foul accursed minister of hell".

Indeed, the sense of a minister as a servant can still be seen in the term 'cabinet minister', for these high and mighty officials are conceived as the servants of the government, carrying out its will, and as long as nobody reminds them of this, then probably all will be well. For the most part, these ministers do not sing like minstrels, but when they write their memoirs, they often sing like canaries, to the embarrassment of some of their former colleagues.

So how much difference is there between a magister and a minister? In Venice, where people are worried about the rising sea levels, the Magistrato alle Acque, the Water Magistracy, is the body responsible for planning a set of gates that may help stop tidal and storm surges pouring into the Venetian lagoon. To all intents and purposes, this appears to be the equivalent of a Water Ministry in a country following the Westminster system.

And that raises another question: York has a Minster, not a Cathedral, and what is Westminster itself? The name now indicates not only the seat of the Mother or Parliaments, but also the location of Westminster Abbey. This, however, is a different word, coming from the Old English mynster, which later would become monastery, while the nunnery or convent in Old English was a nunmynster.