Definition of "superintendence"

While the Supreme Being exercises a general superintendence over affairs, the real administration is in the hands of the ancestral spirits.

1906, James George Frazer, Adonis, Attis, Osiris, volume 2, page 189

The Ashby Canal was built under the superintendence of Robert Whitworth, and the whole length was opened in May, 1805.

1939 July, Charles E. Lee, “Swannington: One-Time Railway Centre”, in Railway Magazine, page 5

[…] then the building began, under the superintendence of the pigs.

1945 August 17, George Orwell [pseudonym; Eric Arthur Blair], chapter 6, in Animal Farm […], London: Secker & Warburg