If we were to take the title of this chapter literally, our treatment could not begin prior to the 19th century. Indeed, throughout the course of the Middle Ages and the early modern age, not only had it never entered anyone's mind that administration could constitute the object of a specific 'science," but moreover, the very terms of "administration" and "to administer" did not at all occupy an important place in the vocabulary of legal doctrines. Although these expressions had been used quite frequently by jurists since antiquity, they had no particular technical connotation. In fact, in order to express what was being administered each time, they were mostly accompanied by an object (administration of a house, of a feud, of an office, of a tax, of a sacrament, and so on).