Illustrated Companion to the Latin Dictionary/Cancellarius

This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Rich, Anthony (1849). The illustrated companion to the Latin dictionary, and Greek lexicon. p. vi. OCLC 894670115. https://archive.org/details/illustratedcompa00rich. 

CANCELLA'RIUS. A word introduced at a late period of the empire, and applied either to an officer who kept guard before the emperor's tent, or his sleeping apartment, the approach to which was closed by gratings (cancelli), as we learn from Cassiodorus (Var. Ep. ii. 6.), whence the appellation: or to a sort of chief clerk presiding over a body of juniors who assisted the judges in a court of law, the tribunes of which, where the judges and their officers sat, were in like manner separated from the body of the court by an iron railing. Hence we derive our term of "chancellor." Vopisc. Carin. 16. Cassiodor. l. c.