Jacob Soll Information Master Jean-Baptiste Colberts Secret State Intelligence System Cultures of...

t h e

Information Master

The Information Master

jean-baptiste colbert’s

secret state intelligence system

Jacob Soll

The University of Michigan Press / Ann Arbor

Copyright © by the University of Michigan 2009

All rights reserved

Published in the United States of America by

The University of Michigan Press

Manufactured in the United States of America

c Printed on acid-free paper

2012 2011 2010 2009 4 3 2 1

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored

in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form

or by any means, electronic, mechanical, or otherwise,

without the written permission of the publisher.

A CIP catalog record for this book is available from the British Library.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Soll, Jacob, 1968–

The information master : Jean-Baptiste Colbert’s secret state

intelligence system / Jacob Soll.

p. cm. — (Cultures of knowledge in the early modern world)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN-13: 978-0-472-11690-4 (cloth : alk. paper)

ISBN-10: 0-472-11690-8 (cloth : alk. paper)

1. Colbert, Jean Baptiste, 1619–1683. 2. Colbert, Jean-Baptiste,

1619–1683—Political and social views. 3. Public administration—

France—History—17th century. 4. Government information—France—

History—17th century. 5. Knowledge management—France—History—

17th century. 6. Records—Political aspects—France—History—17th

century. 7. Archives—Political aspects—France—History—17th

century. 8. France—Politics and government—1643–1715. 9. France—

Intellectual life—17th century. 10. Statesmen—France—Biography.

I. Title.

DC130.C6S68 2009

944'.033092—dc22 2008051142

ISBN13 978-0-472-02526-8 (electronic)

This book is dedicated to the memory of the reading

room of the old Bibliothèque Nationale de France, with its

arches, pillars, domes, and smell of wood and old books.

This temple of learning was built on the foundations laid by

Jean-Baptiste Colbert in 1666, across the street from his

house. Those who knew and loved this place miss it.

Andromaque, je pense à vous! Ce petit ›euve,

Pauvre et triste miroir où jadis resplendit

L’immense majesté de vos douleurs de veuve,

Ce Simoïs menteur qui par vos pleurs grandit,

A fécondé soudain ma mémoire fertile,

Comme je traversais le nouveau Carrousel.

Le vieux Paris n’est plus (la forme d’une ville

Change plus vite, hélas! que le coeur d’un mortel). . . .

—Baudelaire, Les Fleurs du Mal, “Le Cygne”

Preface

Historians are often nagged by the suspicion that they could have

spent more time studying their subject. The French scholar

Prosper Boissonnade noted with no irony that he had studied

Jean-Baptiste Colbert for thirty-six years “without overlooking any

source of information.” He expressed fears that his work was

“super‹cial” and that he had not had enough time to research. Indeed,

it would be possible to spend decades analyzing all of Colbert’s corre-

spondence, for he wrote it for hours on end, with the help of teams of

secretaries, research assistants, and agents. Yet it is hard to assess whether

spending a lifetime on a project or ‹nishing it within a few years is the

best approach. Both have their merits. Having spent only six years study-

ing Colbert, I share Boissonnade’s concerns. Although I read through

thousands of pages of printed and manuscript sources, I cannot make the

claim of having the ambition or the capacity to make a total, four-decade

study. I thus gratefully followed the footsteps of nineteenth- and early

twentieth-century scholars such as Pierre Clément, Léopold Delisle,

Georges Depping, René Memain, Boissonnade, and others who be-

lieved that studying seventeenth-century government was important

enough to dedicate their lives to it. They used research teams to catalog,

organize, and reprint the massive archives of early modern government.

Their work has guided my trek through the giant and sometimes un-

charted archival forest of Colbert’s paperwork.

To handle and interpret such a massive set of sources, I have also re-

lied on the aid of my colleagues. While some works of scholarship are

written in seclusion, this has been, from the beginning, a collaborative

effort. I am privileged to say that this book is the product of their work

and learning as much as mine. I ‹rst discussed the project with Ted

Rabb, over lunch at Palmer House at Princeton. It was here that we

worked out the initial concept of the book. Ted has since read countless

versions of the text and aided me with his remarkable ability to see the

big historical picture and to explain it in the clearest terms possible. His

is a rare and disappearing art to which I can only aspire. Anthony

Grafton has never wavered in his friendship and generosity. He offered

to this project his unparalleled scope of knowledge, mixed with his care-

ful scienti‹c spirit of analysis. His in›uence has shaped this book as well

as my own belief in the primary importance of the culture and tradition

of research. Ann Blair also worked with me from the beginning, helping

to hone and tighten various versions, and offering her rich erudition and

advice. Peter Burke’s work inspired this book, and I am grateful for the

time he spent with me discussing it. He has never stopped being my the-

sis advisor. Roger Chartier has been a constant source of inspiration and

support, for which I am ever grateful. Margaret Jacob has given unwa-

vering support and the power of her learning to the project. Her emails

from all corners of Europe at all hours kept me going through the hard

days of writing and revising. Christian Jouhaud, Richard Kagan, Peter

Miller, Barbara Shapiro, Justin Stagl, and Peter Stallybrass read early

drafts, gave useful advice, spent much time discussing the project and

writing letters recommending it, for which I am very grateful. Enzo Bal-

dini has been a great help, discussing and circulating news of the project

in his wide network in the republic of letters. From beginning to end,

Keith Baker and Dan Edelstein have helped and inspired me to develop

the central ideas of the book, and have managed to do so with wine

present at all times. Randolph Head and Orest Ranum worked very pa-

tiently with me to pull together the ‹nal draft. Jean Boutier, Pierre

Burger, Marc Fumaroli, Antoine Lilti, Paul Nelles, Diogo Ramada-

Curto, Emma Rothschild, and J. B. Shank generously read drafts of the

book and offered priceless commentary.

I am particularly grateful to Richard Dunn and the American Philo-

sophical Society, who ‹rst showed interest in this project and gave it

funding. Their generous Franklin Grant got the book off the ground. A

fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities allowed

me to spend a year working on the book. Without this funding, I would

viii pre face

not have been able to do the project. I am also grateful for the support

of my colleagues at Rutgers Camden and New Brunswick, as well as at

the European University Institute in Florence. Many thanks go to Ben-

jamin Bryant for his skilled editing of the bibliography, and for his loyal

friendship. Thanks to my parents and in-laws for babysitting. Thanks to

my father as always for helping to support my research and helping me

to purchase the necessary computers. Special thanks go to Chris Hebert

and the team at the University of Michigan Press. They supported this

book from its earliest beginnings and have patiently and skillfully

worked with me toward a ‹nal project.

It goes without saying that without the aid of librarians, this book

would never have been done. Special thanks to the conservateurs of Salle

des Manuscrits of the Bibliothèque Nationale; the Archives Nationales;

the Archives du Quai d’Orsay; the Bibliothèque Mazarine; the Biblio-

thèque de l’Arsenal; Rutgers University Library, and in particular the

Paul Robeson Library in Camden; the Firestone Library at Princeton;

Cambridge University Library; the Archivio di Stato di Torino; and the

Biblioteca Nazionale di Firenze. Thanks also to the journals French His-

torical Studies and Archival Science. Finally, I would like to thank John Pol-

lack and the librarians of the Annenberg Rare Books Room of the Uni-

versity of Pennsylvania’s Van Pelt Library. John has made their reading

room my base laboratory, helping to ‹nd documents, offering useful

analysis, and tracking down and copying texts and images. They make

the access to information easy and collaborative, providing ideal research

conditions.

Thanks also go to Blaise Aguera y Arcas, Richard Bonney, Gian-

franco Borelli, Harald Braun, Arndt Brendecke, Paul Cohen, Robert

Darnton, Robert Descimon, Francesco Di Donato, Vitorio Dini, Paul

Dover, Marcus Friedrich, Susanna Friedrich, Tim Harris, Lynn Hunt,

Matt Jones, Ben Kafka, Marie-Pierre La‹tte, Donald Kelley, Kirstie Mc-

Clure, Martin Mulsow, Geoffrey Parker, John Pocock, Aysha Polnitz,

Laurence Pope, Sophus Reinert, Antonella Romano, Rob Schneider,

Phil Scranton, Will Slauter, Paul Sonnino, Erik Thomson, Filippo di

Vivo, Wolfgang Weber, Richard Yeo, and Cornel Zwierlein.

I would like to make special mention of those who provided intel-

lectual, moral, and culinary support over the years, essential to the writ-

ing of this book. As they know, I see research and intellectual activity as

inextricably intertwined with la gourmandise. Thanks to Manu Barrault

and Anne Rohart for making their spare couch my base for research,

Vespa riding and late-night eating in Paris. Françoise Choay generously

Preface ix

housed me in Paris on many occasions, thus making possible my re-

search. Thanks to Alessandro Arienzo for his interest in my work, dis-

cussions, intellectual and soul empowering powwows and feasts in

Naples, singing with Borelli and passing long evenings at the Enoteca

near Gesù Nuovo. Bill Connell has been a sturdy rock of support and a

true friend in research, conferencing, and dinners at home and across the

world. John McCormick seems to show up at key moments offering ad-

vice, support, and an inspiring con‹dence in the link between very good

wine and intellectual activity.

Roger O’Keefe has been a constant source of wisdom on my own

work, international law, and the biological origins of Vaudeville. He ap-

peared miraculously both in Amsterdam for a memorable feast of won-

derful ›at, round Dutch barrier oysters, and in Florence for a Christmas

notable for the six hours spent in the emergency room of the children’s

hospital, as well as for a memorable tortelli in brodo and pork stewed with

fennel in Poppi. Thanks to Carrie Weber for all the friendship, late-night

emails, pep talks, inspiration, and the brilliant, hard work on the manu-

script, without which I could not have ‹nished it; and to Tom Stegeman

for unwavering moral support, discussions about the merits of account-

ing, marathon feasts in New York, Paris, and Philadelphia, and a truly

inspiring pancetta- and Sangiovese-fueled, and possibly cardiac-threat-

ening, culinary odyssey through Tuscany that ended in the valley of

Rignana, with a ‹reworks of Tuscan eggs, fresh truf›es, and olive oil

washed down with Chianti Classico. Maurie Samuels was always there,

at all hours, to discuss the project and keep the boat of scholarship a›oat.

He is a true comrade in arms. I must thank Colin Hamilton for frankly

critiquing and discussing my work, as he has done since we were in high

school, which now seems to be a century ago, as well as for an inspiring

voyage through Italy highlighted by a boat ride in Venice jusqu’au but de

la nuit, and a grand pranzo at the Diana in Bologna. Thanks to Richard

Serjeantson for therapeutic brainstorming and feasting expeditions in

Paris at the Grand Véfour, and at the Zygomates under the care of

Patrick Frey; as well as in Burgundy, the Perigord, and lastly Piemonte,

where, buoyed by a wave of Barolo from 1981, we reached for the

gourmet sky.

A special thanks and farewell goes to Alexander Lippincott for fuel-

ing this project when it ran out spiritual of steam, on the wintry Thurs-

day evenings in Philadelphia, with bottles of Bordeaux and slabs of

restorative steak from North Dakota. Colbert liked Rhine valley white

wines; but this book was fed with red, most notably from Lippincott’s

x pre face

once endless streams, which ran upward from Château de La Huste, to

Léoville-Las Cases, Mouton Rothschild, Palmer, Vieux Château Cer-

tan, Cos d’Estournel, Château Pavie, Cheval Blanc, Margaux, and on-

ward to Petrus. His cellars, once a liquid library, are now dry and those

days are over. This book stands in memory to Eat Club in Philadelphia.

Most of all, this book owes an enormous debt to Ellen Wayland-

Smith. She supported its research and writing; discussed it over and over

again to the point of humoring me; read and reread it; and lived through

the pressure of its constant deadlines and related travel engagements, all

during the very active early youth of our marvelous daughters Sophia

and Lydia. During the last days, we ‹nished the book together in Flor-

ence, in the house of the Bartoli family on the via Fra Paolo Sarpi, cor-

recting drafts, roasting truf›ed pork with bread crust and sage, and tak-

ing care of the children between trips up the hill to Fiesole to the villa

Schifanoia, walks to the Biblioteca Nazionale, lunch at Il Giova, jaunts

on the byways of Chianti and through the clouds of the Val d’Aoste, and

Sundays spent together at the mercato Saint’Ambrogio, and at the court

of the Ramada-Curtos at the Teatro del Sale. They have been happy

days for which I am grateful. Rien sans la belle Hélène.

Studying dusty archives can be both lonely and tedious. Yet if they

happen to be situated in the lands of the former Roman Empire, and if

they give up their treasures, there is nothing more satisfying than lea‹ng

through parchment, reading lost texts, solving old mysteries, and then

walking home to dinner through ancient streets, with the smell of cool

old stone, hungry from the knowledge gained from a hard day’s work.

The world changes, but from what I can tell, this pleasure has remained

a constant.

Preface xi

Contents

1. Between Public and Secret Spheres

the case of colbert 1

2. Colbert’s Cosmos

the expert and the rise of the modern state 13

3. The Accountant and the Coups d’État 34

4. Royal Accountability

louis xiv and the golden notebooks 50

5. The Rule of the Informers 67

6. Managing the System

colbert trains his son for the great intendancy 84

7. From Universal Library to State Encyclopedia

colbert’s house of solomon 94

8. Jean-Baptiste Colbert’s Republic of Letters

the state control of knowledge 120

9. The Information State in Play

archives, erudition, and the affair of the régale 140

10. The System Falls Apart, but the State Remains 153

Notes 169

Bibliography 243

Index 269

Illustrations following page 146

c h a p t e r 1

Between Public and Secret Spheresthe case of colbert

In 1698, the Cambridge-trained naturalist and royal physician

Martin Lister wrote an account of his trip to Paris.1 Lister de-

scribed birds, hedges, ›agstones, housing materials, architectural

and antiquarian treasures, and French traditions, clothing, and diet.2 He

measured the wheels of carriages, “not above two Foot and a half Di-

ameter; which makes them [carriages] easie to get into.”3 He visited mu-

seums and the workshop of the great gardener of Versailles, André Le

Nôtre.4 Most of all, Lister visited libraries. Part book and manuscript

collections, part antiquarian and natural history museums, Parisian li-

braries were famed storehouses of erudition and science, and thus oblig-

atory stops on any grand tour.5

Among the libraries he visited was that of Louis XIV’s famed minis-

ter, Jean-Baptiste Colbert (1619–83). A block from the Royal Library,

on the rue de Richelieu, it was still the ‹nest private collection in Paris.

Here Lister found something unique among the Parisian collections.

Colbert had died in 1683, and his son, the marquis of Seignelay, had fol-

lowed his father to the grave in 1690, but their old family librarian, Éti-

enne Baluze, still stood guard over the collection.6 Once the hub of Col-

bert’s administration, the library was now slowly turning into a private

museum. With Baluze as his guide, Lister toured the library:

I saw the Library of the late Monsieur Colbert, the great patron of

Learning. The Gallery, wherein the printed Books are kept, is a

Ground-Room, with Windows on one side only, along a ‹ne Garden.

It is the neatest Library in Paris, very large, and exceedingly well-fur-

nish’d. At the upper-end is a fair Room, wherein the Papers of State

are kept; particularly those of the Administration of Cardinal Mazarin,

and his own Accounts, when he was in Employment. These make up

many hundred Folio’s, ‹nely bound in Red Maroquin and Gilt. The

Manuscript Library is above-stairs, in three Rooms, and is the choicest

of that kind in Paris: It contains 6,610 Volumes. The Catalogue of

them Monsieur Baluze shewed me: which he said was designed shortly

for the Press.7

Entrance to Colbert’s library had once been guarded, for his ‹nancial

registers held extensive accounts and administrative papers of Louis

XIV’s France, the largest European state of its time.8 For almost thirty

years (1654–83), Colbert had built his own private library in tandem

with the semipublic royal collection, creating one of the biggest library-

archives in Europe.9 It was an encyclopedia of the state.10 What Martin

Lister saw during his tour was the nerve center of Colbert’s immense ad-

ministrative project. On the ‹rst ›oor, Colbert kept a humanist library

with classical works, ancient Bibles, medieval manuscripts, rare editions,

prints, scienti‹c texts, and naturalist collections. Upstairs, in ‹nely

bound double-book accounts, he kept his internal government reports,

administrative correspondence, state statistical reports, and the informa-

tion of industry and administration, such as reports on the quality of

cloth, and sketches of winches and sails.11 Colbert had consciously inte-

grated a traditional humanist library and practical state and industrial ad-

ministrative archive on a large scale on a single site, with one catalog,

and one primary librarian.12

Colbert believed that all knowledge had practical value for politics.

Though himself a relentless man of affairs, he believed antiquarian and

classical learning to be as important as engineering and accounting. He

was convinced that a ruler or minister of state could learn essential

lessons from the most unlikely of sources, such as the price lists of nails,

astronomical mathematical research, or studies on Ciceronian poetry.

Fusing the cultures of library and archival management, the world of

natural science, ‹nance, merchant learning, and industrial technology,

he began asking questions basic to encyclopedists and archival and library

managers, as well as to Google information technicians today: how to

compile, copy, and store a mass of eclectic documents and render them

2 the information master

searchable for topics.13 He managed his multifaceted administration

through his library, developing a system to use archives, state research

institutes, internal reports, and trained teams of specialists to develop

high policymaking in areas of colonial expansion and diplomacy, as well

as to micromanage industrial production and matters as mundane as the

policing of intellectuals, book printers, prostitutes, and the butcher’s

guild.

The object of this book is to bring to light the traditions that Colbert

harnessed for government, and how he did it. It seeks to go beyond the

debate over Colbert’s mercantilist, centralized model of state regulation,

and to examine in detail the intellectual tools he used as the patron of the

Grand Siècle, the builder of Versailles, and the architect of Louis XIV’s

administrative state.14 The rise of the modern administrative state has

long been associated with Max Weber’s teleology of rationalization, sec-

ularization, and the rise of bureaucracy. Louis XIV’s government has

been seen by historians as a rational form of state administration, inspired

by Cartesianism and the Scienti‹c Revolution.15 Yet the building blocks

of Colbert’s intelligence system and administration were neither modern

nor purely secular. Although Colbert believed in Louis XIV’s claims to

absolute monarchy, Colbert’s approach to learning for government grew

neither from theory, nor from pure mercantilist ideology, nor from sci-

enti‹c tradition, but rather from his own brand of curiosity and an astute

recognition that myriad traditions of knowledge that had roots in hu-

manist, ecclesiastical, ‹nancial, military, and naval culture could be used

to build a state.16

In editing Colbert’s papers in the nineteenth century, Pierre Clément

described them as not simply an archive, but as a testament to Colbert’s

obsession with the mastery of information and its connection with gov-

ernment, noting the “excessive care with which Colbert conserved the

documents relative to his administration and the attention he applied to

correct himself in the margins of all his own letters.”17 Philippe de

Champaigne’s famous 1655 portrait of Jean-Baptiste Colbert shows him

early in his career, as Cardinal Mazarin’s personal accountant, dressed in

black, holding a folded piece of paper (see ‹g. 1). Oddly, Colbert is smil-

ing, or at least smirking. What was it that made an obsessive ‹nancier—

a man apparently never happier than when ‹lling out account ledgers—

develop the astonishing view that all knowledge was useful for political

affairs? From the accounts we have of Colbert, and from his own hu-

morless and often brutal correspondence, this smile is quite remarkable,

for he was not known for joviality. Madame de Sévigné famously called

Between Public and Secret Spheres 3

him “Le Nord,” or the north, for his cold demeanor.18 It was Colbert’s

‹rst biographer, Courtilz de Sandras, who recognized both Colbert’s

stern disposition and his interest in using information to govern: “He

spoke rarely, and never responded to questions immediately, wanting to

be further informed by reports [before doing so].”19

Ezechiel Spanheim (1629–1710), the German antiquarian and diplo-

mat who had visited Louis XIV’s court, described Colbert’s “rigor” and

“austerity,” and was also sensitive to Colbert’s particular reliance on pos-

sessing and handling information. He reveals a clue as to Philippe de

Champaigne’s portrayal of Colbert smiling with a piece of paper in his

hand:20

He never was content, as were those who preceded him in this direc-

tion, to learn about high government business, and then to avail him-

self of the commissioners, intendants, controllers, or other people of

‹nance that were customarily employed; he wanted to take it all on

himself, to enter into every detail, as much in regard to income as to

expenditure, as well as the expedients to furnish these funds in the fu-

ture, wanting only to depend on his own skills, precise information

that he collected, and in relation to them, to develop methods for han-

dling this information, in exact and particular registers that he kept

himself.21

Files, correspondence, reports, historical documents, account books,

legers, and paperwork in general made the otherwise cantankerous Col-

bert happy, not least because he recognized them as a source of power,

but also, as we shall see, because he simply reveled in the various activi-

ties involved in handling paperwork, which others often found dull and

even odious.

Adam Smith, who warned against mercantilism, recognized Col-

bert’s aptitude for informing himself: “Mr. Colbert, the famous minister

of Lewis XIVth, was a man of probity, of great industry and knowledge

of detail; of great experience and acuteness in the examination of pub-

lick accounts, in short, every way ‹tted for introducing method and

good order into the collection and expenditure of the publick rev-

enue.”22 Diderot and d’Alembert’s Encyclopédie (1751–72) mixed politi-

cal criticism and calls for scienti‹c reason and political liberty with a rev-

olutionary valorization of practical, everyday knowledge.23 It is,

therefore, not surprising that it called Colbert a “great statesman” and “le

grand Colbert.” It painted him as an innovator and the able builder of

the learned holdings of the Royal Library.24


Diderot and his enlightened collaborators credited Colbert with

building the state’s ‹nancial, industrial, and colonial apparatus and, at the

same time, with developing basic research and learning. In their eyes,

Louis XIV’s minister was a glorious genius, for he established the En-

lightened ideal of practical knowledge while also systematizing the old

world of scholarship. The Encyclopédie’s entries under “Inspector,” “Tax-

ation,” “Loan,” “Subsidy,” “Luxury,” “Measure,” “Iron,” “Grains,”

“Paper Industry,” “Cloth Dying,” “Engraving,” and “Tapestry,” as well

as “Académie Française,” “Académie Royale des Sciences,” “Académie

de Peinture,” “Archival Diplomatica,” “Cabinet of Natural History,”

“Letters,” and “Library,” all discuss Colbert. Indeed, the Encyclopédie

contains 143 references to him. This is an impressive showing. Louis XIV

has 614 mentions, Richelieu 120, Newton 783, Descartes 506, Voltaire

313, Pierre Bayle 274, Spinoza 200, Francis Bacon 172, and John Locke

116. Colbert is present in all ‹elds of the Encyclopédie: artistic, learned, sci-

enti‹c, political, ‹nancial, industrial, and legal. Colbert was not an ency-

clopedist, but the philosophes recognized in him a precursor to their own

interest in harnessing and mixing both formal learning and practical

knowledge.

The most detailed entry in the Encyclopédie on Colbert is that on li-

braries, and describes how he made the Royal Library and the Académie

Royale des Sciences a world center of learning and erudition.25 Colbert

may not have been a Latin scholar, but he built the Latin holdings of the

library. Vision and even pretension count for something if they inspire

curiosity and innovation. Colbert was no scholar, but rather a political

administrator who did not hesitate to trample France’s ancient constitu-

tion. Yet he was, in his own way, a major ‹gure in the history of learn-

ing. Echoing the Encyclopédie, the Cambridge Modern History notes: “We

stand amazed at the different subjects which came under the survey of

Colbert and at the minute attention which he was able to bestow on

them.”26

A century earlier than Diderot, Colbert grew up in a merchant

household and trained on the shop-room ›oor. Though neither ency-

clopedist nor scholar, he saw before Diderot many of the elements that

would characterize the new practical learning of the eighteenth century.

Studying with the Jesuits and as an accountant, and then working as a

‹nancial manager and military contractor, he saw the connection be-

tween these cultures and their usefulness for state administration.

Humanist encyclopedic scholars, churchmen, state administrators, and

accountants had much in common: they categorized subjects and devel-


oped methods of data collection and assessment.27 Colbert recognized

and bridged these cultures and integrated them into his governmental

system. Ernest Lavisse remarked that Colbert’s education was as

“mediocre as his birth,” and yet Colbert was able to see new applications

for disciplines outside the respective ‹elds.

Rather than a paragon of rationality or Cartesianism, Colbert often

sounded more like a medieval Italian banker, or an enlightened, hard-

driving Scottish merchant manager.28 “My natural inclination to work is

such,” stated Colbert, “that every day . . . it is impossible for my spirit to

support leisure and moderate work.”29 Colbert was a Jesuit-trained ac-

countant and state administrator, whose education had its roots in me-

dieval ‹nancial culture and Counter-Reformation pedagogy, and as such

he was skilled in methods of data gathering and practical learning.30 His

state information system shows that curious learning and encyclopedism

are not necessarily critical and corrosive to autocratic political authority.

Indeed, political absolutism and methods from critical scholarship could,

under particular circumstances, mutually serve each other. Louis XIV

and Colbert may not have succeeded in instituting complete absolute

government, yet the early decades of Louis’s reign show the extent to

which an able minister such as Colbert could use administrative and

‹nancial tools not only to dominate France’s politics, society, and cul-

ture, but also to build his centralized state information system, a feat im-

possible in the days of more balanced constitutional power-sharing.31

Louis XIV claimed the innovation of the “métier du roy”: governing

his large kingdom himself. Yet he relied on the administrative tech-

niques and methods of learning and information handling designed by

Colbert. Louis gave the orders, but he depended on Colbert to build an

administrative machine and show Louis how to use it. Colbert’s biogra-

pher Pierre Clément insists on this point: Louis le Grand was trained by

the Grand Colbert.32 The abbé de Choisy points out Colbert’s role as

Louis XIV’s personal informant and teacher:

He presented to the King, every ‹rst day of the year, an agenda in

which his revenues were marked down in detail; and each time the

King signed laws, Colbert made him remember to write them in his

agenda, so that he could see when it pleased him how many funds he

had left (as opposed to past times when he [Louis XIV] could never

know how much he had).33

Without Colbert, Louis XIV, the most powerful king in Europe, had

not the slightest knowledge of how his ‹nances worked. Louis XIV


credited his minister with the feat of directing the royal ‹nances, noting

that he trusted him with the “register” of state funds.34 He needed not

only a minister who could inform him about his kingdom, but also a

technical instructor to help him build and use his innovative, absolutist

state apparatus. Colbert showed Louis how he could dominate and use

the world of learning not only as a source of public propaganda, but also

as a tool of secret government. As much as mercantilism, this was Col-

bert’s contribution to state governmental culture.

With the resources of a nation-state at his disposal, Colbert the bib-

liophile administrator, accountant, and founder of academies amassed

enormous libraries and state, diplomatic, industrial, colonial, and naval

archives; hired researchers and archival teams; founded scienti‹c acade-

mies and journals; ran a publishing house; and managed an international

network of scholars.35 By Colbert’s death in 1683, the Royal Library,

which became in part a state archive, contained around 36,000 printed

books and 10,500 manuscripts, and Colbert’s own collection numbered

some 23,000 printed books and 5,100 manuscripts.36 It was one of the

largest collections in the world.

Aside from scholarly curiosity and the advancement of the cultural

prestige of the French monarchy, the focus of this new collection was to

defend national interests in the con›icts over the Dutch annexations, the

régale, and Spanish rights; to compete with Dutch and English trade; and

to assert royal prerogative over the parlements.37 Colbert thus set out to

create a national, legal, and ‹nancial database. He sent his agents to the

various document depots of France—charterhouses, parliamentary reg-

istries, monasteries, and episcopal archives—to copy and often seize liter-

ally tons of documents for both the royal and his own policy archives.38

Colbert sought to become a scholar of state learning: not simply a bu-

reaucrat but an expert. With the help of his librarian Étienne Baluze

(1630–1718), he created reference systems, as well as series of extracts

and glossaries designed to connect catalog headings to collections of ex-

cerpts and summaries of documents. In some cases, excerpts of refer-

enced documents were strung together in thematic narratives, and cross-

referenced with call numbers, but also with search codes, which

cross-referenced related documents. In hindsight, these book catalogs

paired with glossaries and textual extracts look like primitive, though ef-

fective, computing techniques or Google search engines.39 Church

scholars had long used glossaries and reference systems, but Colbert used

them for daily, practical political use. Thus Colbert’s practices consti-

tuted a scholarly, systematized approach to administering the state. In his


history of Louis XIV, Ernst Lavisse describes how Colbert used his col-

lection to govern:

For each subject, he composed “a portfolio,” a dossier as we say today.

Here he classed his data by “species.” In relation to an ocean ship ac-

cident, he listed all preceding accidents, and, he said: “I then immedi-

ately wrote them down.” In the same fashion, he listed all the abuses,

all the faults that he observed, examining causes, determining reme-

dies. Then, for all order of questions, he looked for historical an-

tecedents, to understand their raison d’être and the force of resistance

to one thing or another, that offended or bothered him. Thus in-

formed, he set himself to “think with re›ection,” to “continually

think,” to “think well and meditate,” with “application,” and “pene-

tration.” These words are his, and he repeated them often. As soon as

he saw matters clearly, he took to his pen and paper.40 Colbert’s per-

sonal archive and the collections he acquired for the Royal Library

continue to comprise the very heart of the manuscript collection of the

modern Bibliothèque Nationale, as well as numerous other state

archives.41

Colbert was not “the man who knew everything.”42 But he could

‹nd someone to give him answers and provide reports on a wide range

of topics, drawing on his massive state library and on archives, as well as

on networks of scholars and agents. As the founder of the learned, sci-

enti‹c, artistic, and technical academies, as well as of Cassini’s Royal

Observatory in Paris, Colbert the government minister asked many of

the same questions about research posed by scientists and scholars such as

Galileo, Robert Cotton, Francis Bacon, Paolo Sarpi, Jacques-Auguste de

Thou, and Athanasius Kircher. With the help of Christian Huygens, the

Dutch mathematician and clockmaker, he sponsored research projects

that led to the creation of the pendulum clock, and the team of Cassini,

Picard, and La Hire created a machine to establish longitude.43 Colbert

conceived of these state research projects. He followed and directed

their progress, organized research groups, found funding for them, and

pushed them to fruition. Whether such projects would have happened

in France without Colbert’s patronage is impossible to surmise. In cer-

tain cases, such as that of the colonies, Colbert’s and perhaps Louis’s lack

of curiosity held them back. Whatever limitations Colbert’s system had,

his ministerial heirs would not share his global vision of knowledge and

his personal involvement in these manifold administrative, bibliophilic,

literary, and scienti‹c endeavors.44


In this light, it is striking that there is no intellectual biography of

Colbert. Indeed, aside from studies of the English statesman and inven-

tor of experimental method, Francis Bacon (1561–1626), there are few

intellectual biographies or histories of government and administrative

‹gures.45 Yet politicians and state administrators were, and still are, the

very ones who could, and can, hinder or drive learned endeavor. In the

case of government ministers, the task of intellectual biography is daunt-

ing. Whereas scholars create de‹ned bodies of work, a minister like Col-

bert, working with teams of secretaries, scribes, scholars and agents, pro-

duced entire archives’ worth of material. Unlike of‹cial scholarly works,

much of this state writing—ferreted away in personal ministerial collec-

tions—was not meant to be studied or at least to be seen in the context

of scholarship. It does not constitute a clear corpus. Indeed, Colbert

wrote few formal works de‹ning his actions as minister and as an infor-

mation handler.

In his groundbreaking study of Philip II of Spain’s state paperwork,

Geoffrey Parker was one of the ‹rst scholars of politics to study the rela-

tionship of high state policy to archival information-handling practices.46

Parker had his eye on politics and Philip’s “grand strategy”; he stopped

short of situating Philip within a larger context of learned culture. In

spite of Parker’s work, there has been very little attention paid to the

convergence between traditional learning and ‹nancial and administra-

tive state culture, or what is called in German Staatenkunde.47

The great nineteenth-century French archivist Arthur de Boislisle

(1835–1908), looking for a word to characterize learning at the service of

state administration, called it érudition d’État, or state erudition. English

does not have a term for state erudition or learning. Michel Foucault

called this genre of knowledge “le savoir de l’État,” or state knowledge.

Trying to connect formal learning with the state, some historians of sci-

ence have compared the “little tools of knowledge” used by scholars,

scientists, and administrators alike.48 And yet aside from works by James

E. King, Kevin Sharpe, R. J. W. Evans, and Blandine Barret-Kriegel,

historians of scholarship and knowledge have not generally examined

the nature of early modern state knowledge culture.49 Thus a biography

of Colbert opens the door to a new history of knowledge and politics.50

Knowledge, Secrecy, and Government

There are reasons that intellectual and cultural historians have not stud-

ied the intellectual history of the state. Following the work of the Ger-


man sociologists Reinhard Koselleck and Jürgen Habermas, historians of

information have predominantly studied the concept of the “public

sphere” of information and opinion.51 Studies of the public sphere focus

on journalism, clandestine literature, and printing; as well as sites of so-

ciability, such as academies and the Republic of Letters, public and pri-

vate communication networks, art markets, salons, learned societies,

Masonic lodges, societies, coffeehouses, and lending libraries. These so-

cial and cultural phenomena are often used as illustrations of a civic,

bourgeois opposition and counterbalance to arbitrary, secretive absolute

monarchy and its modes of censorship during the eighteenth century.52

An enormous corpus of scholarship on the public sphere has emerged.

Stéphane Van Damme has identi‹ed as least 12,112 articles concerning

the public sphere in the eighteenth century alone.53 In spite of the

plethora of works on the public sphere, few scholars have examined the

relationship between the public sphere and the state.54 Indeed, in the

schema focused on the public sphere, the state has been reduced to an al-

most impotent actor, trying and failing to turn the inexorable, teleolog-

ical tide of public information, opinion, and political liberty.55

And yet the history of information is more complex than a tension

between the public sphere, bourgeois private secrecy, and absolutist

states. Civil society not only had secret elements, but it was also highly

in›uenced by the state, which often sought to enlighten and politically

repress at the same time.56 Institutions such as salons and the Republic of

Letters are now seen as less in›uential motors of civil society than previ-

ously thought. Salons often worked as motors of aristocratic class domi-

nation over more humble social groups like the scholars of the Repub-

lic of Letters.57 The state also played a more important role in

in›uencing the public sphere than historians have recognized. Enlight-

ened despots such as Grand Duke Pietro Leopoldo of Tuscany (1761–

90) abolished capital punishment and torture, sponsored the world of

learning and salons, and gave lessons in science to the general populace

of Florence, while also strictly policing learning and public life.58 Pub-

lic life and learning could foster, but did not necessarily mean political

freedom.

Furthermore, the Republic of Letters itself was neither a truly public

entity, nor was it always polite and run by clear rules.59 It was a world of

esoteric knowledge, with its own codes of conduct, learned languages,

and elite networks, and of course, strong ties to various states and noble

patronage networks.60 Thus to understand the Republic of Letters and

the emergence of a civil society in France, and indeed, in Austria, En-


gland, the German and Italian states, Portugal, Sweden, Spain, and oth-

ers, the role of the state must now be taken into account. In the case of

France, the world of learning set the foundations for civil society yet,

paradoxically, provided the cultural building blocks for the French abso-

lutist monarchy. And the absolutist monarchy in turn built and con-

trolled many institutions of civil society.

Colbert is a key to untangling this paradoxical process of civilization.

What his case reveals is the extent to which the public sphere not only

competed with the secret state sphere of learning and information circu-

lation; it was sometimes the product of it, as learned state agents used

classi‹ed document troves to create public propaganda. Secrecy existed

in private, among citizens, but it also existed within the state and its

large, in›uential bureaucracy.61 The state kept semipublic libraries,

closed collections, massive archives, and information networks while

also trying to control the public world of knowledge and opinion.

Therefore, to understand the history of information, the public, and the

state, it is necessary to study the history of state secrecy.

In an article entitled, “Removing Knowledge,” Peter Galison has ar-

gued that the modern “classi‹ed universe” of information is “much

larger than the unclassi‹ed one.”62 Galison claims that open societies

paradoxically create vast realms of classi‹ed state documents, and this se-

cret sphere of information is bigger in sheer volume than the public

world of information. Thus open societies do not have completely open

archives, nor are their governments completely open. In nineteenth-

century republican France, manipulated state paperwork played a central

role in false accusations of treason against the Jewish army of‹cer Alfred

Dreyfus. The Dreyfus Affair spectacularly illustrated that state secrecy

would be a key problem for democratic government. In 1955, Edward

Shils called the tension between democratic society and state security ap-

paratuses “the torment of secrecy.”63 Today, high-level lawsuits brought

by Congress against the of‹ce of the president and vice president of the

United States, and numerous arguments within the branches of Ameri-

can government, in the press, and in academe about the extent of exec-

utive state secrecy, attest to the continuing centrality of the secret state

sphere even in an age of mass public information and the Internet.64

Prominent historians, such as Robert Dallek, have recently testi‹ed be-

fore Congress, and the American Historical Association has brought a

lawsuit against the executive branch, both claiming that contrary to the

Freedom of Information Act (1966), the Presidential Records Act (1978)

has become “the Presidential Secrecy Act,” expressing the concern that


concealing state records skews historical understanding and public de-

bate, a point denied by the executive branch.65 Whether good or bad,

the fact is that only 10 percent of the records from Ronald Reagan’s

presidency have been released, and Bill Clinton’s presidential archives

remain in great part inaccessible.66 Open state information is not a given

of democratic government. Indeed, to be effective, government must

rely on a certain degree of secrecy. The question remains, how much?

England only voted a Freedom of Information Act in 2000, and in

France, presidential documents were not collected systematically by the

national archives until 1974 and are sealed for sixty years.67 Even in the

age of the Internet, the rise of a complex public sphere driven by multi-

ple forms of media and communication has not resolved the challenges

posed by state secrecy. Major American policies stumble as internal secret

bureaus such as the CIA and FBI fail to communicate internally and ex-

ternally, or collect bad intelligence.68 If anything, the relationship be-

tween public and private has become more complex, and the stakes of the

state’s intelligence management and information handling ever greater.

Colbert’s story is thus one of an unprecedented entrepreneur and in-

novator of state intelligence and information handling, who harnessed

many of the techniques of scholars, churchmen, and merchants and sys-

tematically applied them to government. Colbert was an accountant, a

merchant and industrial manager, a policeman, and a master librarian.

He trained with Jesuits, lawyers, merchant ‹nanciers, accountants, mili-

tary out‹tters, religious scholars, and state administrators. He closely ex-

amined the bureaucratic and legal workings of the church, conversed

with architects, mathematicians, and humanist and ecclesiastical scholars.

At the same time, he was un homme de con‹ance: in practice, Louis XIV’s

personal valet, guarding royal family secrets and even raising Louis’s bas-

tard children in his own home.

The case of Colbert’s information system shows the extent to which

a public sphere and Republic of Letters coexisted in a symbiotic and

competitive relationship with the growing sphere of state information

and knowledge. It also shows the growing role of experts and how the

state played a central and innovative, as well as repressive, role in the

growth of modern information culture.69 A well-informed state could

wield great power, but with this power came dangers and limitations.

Most of all, it shows that open modern societies, with their governments

integrated with state and ‹nancial intelligence and research systems, have

lessons to learn from Colbert’s absolutist project.


c h a p t e r 2

Colbert’s Cosmosthe expert and the rise of the modern state

The ancien régime was just that: a government born of myriad an-

cient and often disparate traditions, knotted together like ivy so

old it is impossible to discern the original root. The French gov-

ernment had no manual or single written constitution. It was the sum of

layers of legal sediment that manifested itself in the stacks of feudal char-

ters found in churches and monasteries, royal and parliamentary charter-

houses, ‹les of diplomatic correspondence, and the charter room of each

feudal manor. The French monarchy had grown from the deep soil of

feudalism, the ancient constitutions of Germanic kingship, the organiza-

tion of the Catholic Church, and administrative traditions from north-

ern Italy and Spain.

Louis XIV and Colbert set out to transform the ancient monarchy of

France, and to do so, they shook these traditions. As radical as their quest

for political absolutism was, it was not the revolutionary break from tra-

dition of 1789, when the giddy apostles of the modern age ended feu-

dalism and its authority, founded in the parchment records of chivalric

vassalage. Louis and Colbert instead not only maintained the feudal con-

stitutions that they altered, but looked to other preexisting traditions to

drive their absolutist reforms. Thus before examining Colbert’s state in-

formation and intelligence system, we must ‹rst become familiar with

his cosmos and the building blocks of his cultural universe. Max Weber

13

pointed out that state paperwork engendered the need for bureaucracy,

which he de‹ned as “the exercise of control on the basis of knowledge,”

and impersonal government through the “rule of of‹ce.”1 In reality, the

emergence of administrative government did not work in this simple

schema. If we are to understand Colbert’s role in the rise of bureaucratic

government and the evolution between feudalism and centralized ad-

ministration, we must ‹rst take a voyage through the traditions of gov-

ernment, expertise and the administration of state information. To cen-

tralize a government, one ‹rst had to identify and centralize its archives.

From the Middle Ages onward, power was about the mastery of paper-

work.

Scribes and Rulers: Archives and the

Rise of the Medieval State

Archives have always been synonymous with administrative govern-

ment. From antiquity through the Middle Ages, archival specialists in

the form of ecclesiastical scholars, lawyers, and merchants managed de-

centralized banks of information and records essential to state-building.

These included formal libraries, archives containing legal and historical

records, and ‹nancial, census, tax and proto-industrial information. In

many cases, those who managed the information vital to states were not

one-dimensional bureaucrats, but rather elites, part of the great hierar-

chical chain of medieval government, and their power was often linked

to a corporative body such as the church or a court of law. Thus state pa-

perwork and archives were part of a complex relationship of states to

multiple traditions of learning and information collection and manage-

ment. And yet the interests of the scholars and bureaucrats who managed

state archives did not always match those of their nominal rulers.

As the Roman Empire crumbled and its rubble became the founda-

tion for the Catholic Church, the church took over what had been state

administration, becoming the center of knowledge and record-keeping

in the West. During the Carolingian Renaissance (circa 790) that fol-

lowed the chaos of the Frankish invasions and violent Merovingian rule,

Charlemagne founded the Aachen palace scriptorium and monasteries,

sometimes connected to libraries, which became storehouses of the rem-

nants of ancient knowledge, preserving classical and theological works

and of‹cial capitularies, that is, imperial legislative and administrative

acts. State and church archives were inseparable, and information circu-

lated between monastic archives and other centers of early medieval


learning in Fulda and Northumbria. In spite of the central role of the

church, Charlemagne nonetheless asked ecclesiastical scholars such as

Alcuin to draw on capitularies and canon law to negotiate questions of

authority with the papacy. This tradition of legal negotiation and

polemic through legal documents continued, forming the basis of late

eleventh-century investiture crises that pitted secular kings against the

authority of the pope.2

Here was the Weberian germ. As church archives grew, so did the

skilled staff trained to manage them. The church and its network of

monasteries collected the knowledge of both the ancients and the fathers

of the church in sites such as Fulda and Cluny.3 The bases of monastic li-

brary archives such as Fulda, scriptoria were multifunctional sites of in-

formation collection in which knowledge was preserved (and often

altered), and then stored.4 Attached to palaces, cathedrals, and monaster-

ies, they were writing and information-gathering centers, libraries, and

‹nancial archives. However, the copyists who reproduced texts were

neither philologists nor linguistic historians. Medieval archives preserved

information, yet at the same time they altered it by producing inaccurate

texts and proliferating forgeries.

Learning from the ecclesiastical government and from the tradition of

feudal land contracts, secular rulers also began to collect documents that

concerned their interests. The Doomsday Book (1086) most dramatically

represents this legal, feudal tradition of recording lists of property rights,

legal privileges, obligations, and ecclesiastical rights. Kings often re-

quired records of duties and dues from the vassals and bishops, and of

course the monarchies kept copies of treaties. M. T. Clanchy has out-

lined what he calls the “proliferation of documents” in medieval En-

gland: charters and chirographs, certi‹cates, letters, writs, ‹nancial ac-

counts, ‹nancial surveys and rental contracts, legal records, yearbooks,

chronicles, cartularies (feudal and ecclesiastical deeds), registers (legal or

administrative, often held by courts and parliaments), learned and liter-

ary works.5 With ever more regularity in the fourteenth and ‹fteenth

centuries, the English monarchy, like its French, Spanish, and central

European counterparts, kept watch over records that concerned its in-

terests. While the feudal monarchies kept records of lands, privileges,

and dues, they were less apt to keep large archives than were church in-

stitutions. State documents were kept not only in chancelleries, but also

in legal and parliamentary charterhouses, where they were more open to

consultation by lawyers.6 Records had long been kept of conciliar and

synodic meetings. Beginning in the twelfth century, with revival of Ro-

Colbert’s Cosmos 15

man law, Inquisitorial records sat alongside taxation documents, parish

records of births, deaths, and marriages, legal archives and libraries, and

the theological collections of the scriptorium.7

Humanists and Bureaucrats: The Renaissance of Paperwork

Between the twelfth and fourteenth centuries, the documentary cultures

of canon law, administrative and diplomatic of‹ces of the church, and,

increasingly, urban governments slowly evolved into complex adminis-

trative and legalistic statecraft that would form the underpinnings of

humanist governmental culture. All administrative minutes as well as

‹nancial, legal, and diplomatic documents were kept in the central

chancellery archives of central and northern Italian cities. Inspired not

only by commerce and internal administration, but also by relations with

the church, chancery, diplomatic, legal, and state records were stored in

the halls of civic administration: Signorias, podestás, chancelleries, senate

houses, or doge’s palaces located in the central squares of cities such as

Florence, Milan, Sienna, Genoa, and Venice. Cities across Europe had

kept central archival banks since the Middle Ages.8 In these Italian civic

centers during the Quattrocento, a historical expertise emerged out of a

convergence of bureaucratic, diplomatic, and ecclesiastic archival man-

agement with the epistolary arts and philological Latin—creating new

cultural links between governing and historical, scholarly knowledge.9

The rebirth of Rome—the humanist, classical Renaissance—began

in great part in the Vatican, and in the chancelleries and diplomatic corps

of northern Italy during the Middle Ages.10 The proliferation of of‹cial

forms of documentation in medieval and early Renaissance Europe had

produced a world of learned bureaucrats, Francesco Petrarch (1304–74)

foremost among them.11 They were diplomats, scribes, record keepers,

and secretaries who had to know Latin prose, religious literature, poetry,

legal procedure, clerking, and accounting.12 Not bureaucrats in a mod-

ern sense, many of these learned clerks, secretaries, and ambassadors

would become the pioneers of philology and the classical Renaissance.

The Renaissance was neither simply the ideal of the classical rebirth of

Rome, nor a political ideology. Latin philology—the collation and es-

tablishment of de‹nitive, accurate versions of biblical, legal, and classical

texts—was also about information collection and management beyond

the scholastic learned traditions and the early scholarship of canon law.13

For the great diplomat, classical humanist pioneer, and book hunter

Poggio Bracciolini (1380–1459), this meant ‹nding ancient texts, copy-


ing them, collating them for errors and inconsistencies, creating script,

‹nding copyists, and then creating authoritative editions, collections, and

libraries.14 Figures like Poggio were not simply interested in ancient phi-

losophy and canon law. They were also interested in the forms of writing

and paperwork. They pioneered the use of Roman script copied from

stone engravings, and also copied ancient Latin style for their own of‹cial

correspondence. Rome was also the European center for diplomatic

training, which entailed learning the structures of of‹cial letter-writing,

reports, and ciphers, and managing documents and communication net-

works. Much of this culture was developed by humanists who created a

Renaissance Latin philological culture within the diplomatic corps.15

Thus humanist philology and bibliophilia were tightly linked with the

medievalist paperwork and information culture of the chancelleries.16

With the growth of northern Italian civic culture between the late

Middle Ages and the Quattrocento, erudite bureaucratic expertise be-

came ever more fundamental.17 Notable among early humanist secre-

taries were the Simonetta brothers, Giovanni (d. 1491) and Cicco

(1410–80), who served the Sforza dukes of Milan, in particular, Duke

Ludovico il Moro (1480–1500).18 Trusted to manage the diplomatic

Consiglio Segreto of Milan, they helped to formulate policy and admin-

ister the Sforza state. This consisted of managing the paperwork of the

state: overseeing copyists, ordering secretarial assistants and scribes to

copy and dispatch secret diplomatic correspondence, making and break-

ing ciphers, and keeping accurate records, ‹les (or ‹lza), and well-or-

dered diplomatic and legal archives in order to use them as tools of ne-

gotiation and propaganda.19 “The secretary,” writes Gary Ianziti, “was

the assembler of his master’s right to wield power, levy taxes, grant ‹efs,

raise armies, wage war, form alliances.”20 Even more, these chancellors,

diplomats, and secretaries used state documents to write histories and de-

veloped the “Renaissance sense of the past,” that revived secular con-

sciousness, as well as an interest in the scholarly veri‹cation of biblical,

patristic, and papal authority.21 It was this tradition that produced the

most famous of Florentine chancellors, Niccolò Machiavelli (1459–

1527), who, like Coluccio Salutati and Francesco Guicciardini, managed

state documents and used them to write his History of Florence, The Dis-

courses, and The Prince.22 Guicciardini and Machiavelli showed that his-

torical scholarship was not only the basic act of political prudence; it was

also that of state administration.23 Thus the early humanism of Salutati,

Poggio, Guicciardini, Bartolomeo Scala, and Machiavelli was based not

only on the mastery of classical Latin, but equally on the management of


historical, legal, administrative, and diplomatic paperwork. Renaissance

learning was also Renaissance state administration.

Merchants and Scholars: The Learning of Finance

The church and civil government were not the only centers of informa-

tion and archival innovation during the Renaissance. The rise of the

Medici family illustrates the close links between international banking,

civic administration, learned humanism, and bibliophilia. Cosimo de’

Medici (1389–1464) not only controlled the chancellery; he made the

patronage of humanist art, literature, philology, and book collecting into

a tool of political prestige and politics by personifying the humanist ideal

of the scholar-statesman.24 This mix was the particular culture of Italian

government. Cosimo’s own great library was a representation of his

knowledge and authority. Along with his personal fascination with

learning and bibliophilia, Cosimo used the tools of banking to maintain

political power. Like Vatican diplomats, Medici bankers maintained a

wide European network. They maintained ‹nancial as well as semi-

diplomatic paperwork, and were leading book collectors.25 Medici

power thus emerged from several traditions: international banking; the

papacy and diplomacy; the administrative tradition of Salutati; the his-

torical humanism of Guicciardini; and of course, from civic artistic and

artisanal life in Florence.

From the late Middle Ages to the sixteenth century, humanism, in-

ternational trade and banking, and civic administration developed to-

gether. From Florence, Venice, and Genoa, to Paris, Lyon, Seville,

Castille, Flanders, Holland, England, and the German cities, merchant

houses grew, and with them grew a rich culture of accounting and

record-keeping.26 While few outside Italy and the Holland had the op-

portunity to build governments, merchants also kept legal archives, bills

of exchange, and the various forms of paperwork necessary for doing

business.27 To aid in the management of international trade, merchants

created books of ars mercatoria—guides to merchant work, travel, cur-

rency, shipping, roads, and international forms of legal and merchant pa-

perwork.28 They also kept ‹nancial archives necessary in double-entry

bookkeeping. Like church of‹cials, they carried with them numerous

formularies, but also their inventory, stock and capital archives, note-

books, journals, account books, registers, agendas, and ledgers.29 As mer-

chants evolved into civic leaders, they brought this culture of ‹nance

and record-keeping with them into the public administration of cities


and with it began building early apparatuses of central government as

they managed public debt, kept records private declarations of wealth

and property, and collected taxes.30

By the sixteenth century, the Fuggers of Augsburg emerged as the

foremost banking family in Europe, and their merchant house, a great

center of book and information collection. To manage their interna-

tional operations, the Fugger family created an information and news

bureau and archive, housed alongside its humanist library in their house

on the Maximilianstraße in Augsburg.31 The Fuggers received daily

newsletters, learned works, and technical reports from their trading em-

pire across the globe. The Fuggers also had a massive accounting of‹ce.

As bankers, they needed to be able to respond to volatile ‹nancial and

trade markets. Like the Medici, they had their branches all over Europe.

And as they invested in Spanish imperial enterprises, they sent along

scholars and naturalists with the banking missions. As great humanist pa-

trons, but also as traders in an age of discovery, their business ventures

were also knowledge missions. When Anton Fugger’s son Jakob traveled

to Lisbon in 1563, he was accompanied by the great Dutch humanist

Carolus Clusius, who bought books and looked for natural specimens as

trophies, and even possible investment opportunities for the Fugger

business. Rare books, manuscripts, plants, shells and other objects found

their way back to the libraries, archives, and museums of the Fugger

Haus in Augsburg. This brought prestige and satis‹ed Jacob Fugger’s

humanist curiosity, but it also brought ‹nancial advantages, as the Fug-

gers got the ‹rst reports of plants and goods from around the world—es-

sential commercial information with which they could make decisions

about major investments.32

Innovation and Decline in the Early Information States:

Spain, Venice, and Rome

The Fuggers were sophisticated in their information collection and cen-

tralization, but they could not match the sheer volume of information

collected by their masters in Spain. City states and merchant houses

could innovate in ‹nance, government, and record-keeping, but they

could not maintain the scale of centralized information acquisition of a

major nation-state. By the sixteenth century, only the church, northern

Italian states such as Venice, Florence, and Milan, and Philip II’s Spain

had come close to creating large-scale, semicentralized and systematized

information states. Under Philip II (1527–98), imperial Spain, the pri-


mary client of the Fuggers and the ‹rst grand-scale model of a central-

ized state, had gorged itself on administrative paperwork under the prin-

ciple that Philip, el rey papelero, or “the paperwork king,” could, in se-

cret, handle, read, and sign every document of a planet kingdom.33

Philip II was the ‹rst hands-on bureaucrat king of a massive empire

and certainly the forerunner of his Bourbon heirs in France. His infor-

mation system was so vast, so intricate, and in some cases so ef‹cient,

that even the Venetian ambassador sent his relazioni back to Venice via

Spanish royal messenger posts. Yet this Planet King, on whose empire

the sun never set, was not a traveler, but rather inhabited his own virtual

world, enclosed in the halls of his monastery palace, the Escorial, which

he ‹lled with mountains of dispatches and reports. To house his paper

empire, he created massive archives, most notably in the walled castle of

Simancas, as well as in a rapidly expanding imperial trade and industry

archive in Seville, the Casa de Contratacíon.34 The Escorial was a cav-

ernous center of power, at once a monastery and library, from which the

king worked at his desk, trying to read and respond to every report writ-

ten from his international network of agents.35 It was a week’s ride away

from Simancas. In the end, Philip’s information system was as cumber-

some as the empire it tried to manage. He was the king of a composite

monarchy, comprising semiautonomous states and regions over which

he did not always exercise direct control.36 Even more, his dominion

was so large that it sometimes took seven years for him to respond to

correspondence from such far-›ung posts as the Philippines.37 Studies of

Spanish administration show the frustration engendered by one man’s

control of too many minutiae.38 Philip managed to keep general control

over his system, but there were many issues and projects to which he

could not give his attention.

He issued his immense program of relaciones topográ‹cas, ‹nancial, sta-

tistical, institutional and cultural surveys, but local of‹cials often did not

answer them correctly or quickly. And he himself read the responses, of-

ten keeping them secret from his government once they had made the

long journey back to his of‹ce in the Escorial.39 He once claimed to

have 100,000 documents on his desk that he needed to process.40 As Ge-

offrey Parker illustrates, without a managerial system of delegation, and

without a personal interest in cataloging systems, Philip was over-

whelmed by the in‹nite strands of his imperial worldwide web.41 His

innovative information system was hampered by his penchant for se-

crecy and his obsessive personal centralization. At the same time, Philip

did not directly manage the state archives. Although he did have anti-


quarian scholars, such as Ambrosio de Morales, write historical reports

and relaciones, and the polymath Benito Arias Montano worked as his

learned librarian and diplomat during the Dutch Revolt, Philip II did

not effectively install a team in the Escorial for the processing of state in-

formation for his use.42

The oldest of the centralized secular states, the republic of Venice,

had set the standard for modern state archives with its library of records

at San Marco, containing senatorial minutes and ambassadorial dis-

patches, and whose ef‹ciency was admired by all of Europe. By the six-

teenth century, Venice had long been the merchandise entrepôt be-

tween East and West, and the information exchange and book-printing

center of Europe.43 The Venetian republic kept strict historical, diplo-

matic, and political archives in the Biblioteca San Marco.44 It developed

an international network of spies and political information gatherers and

a system of ambassadorial reports called relazioni, which, like newsletters,

came in from wherever the Venetians sent ambassadors or spies.45 The

Biblioteca San Marco contained a mix of legal, historical, and adminis-

trative archives. Venice’s state archive was a propaganda weapon in the

battle over papal authority during the Interdict crisis of 1606, when the

cleric, legal scholar, and scientist Paolo Sarpi, representing the republic

as a de facto information minister, published historical documents from

the republic’s archives to bolster Venice’s case against Rome in public

international opinion.46 It was an extraordinary moment, for it showed

how a state archive could be organized and used for political and ad-

ministrative ends when a scholar was a leading state minister. Sarpi har-

nessed the archives not only to extract useful documentary propaganda,

but also to write his History of the Council of Trent (1619), which attacked

the political motivations of the church.47 Needless to say, Rome, guided

by pope Paul V, responded in kind, sponsoring Cardinal Sforza Pallavi-

cino to use church archives against Venice in this virulent and ultimately

pyrrhic battle over the Interdict.48

Philip II’s debacle of the Spanish Armada (1588), and the consequent

decline of Iberia, paralleled the period of Venice’s decline into the be-

ginning of the seventeenth century. Remarkably, while the political for-

tunes of Italy and Spain sunk, the Vatican became a center of bureau-

cratic and state innovation.49 The Catholic Church had long used its

legal archives not only for canon law, but also in the battle over concil-

iar rights and doctrine. The church was assailed from all sides during the

Reformation, and its defenders and its critics mounted an information

arms race. For example, English Henrician reformers of the 1540s, such


as John Bale and Matthew Parker, used antiquarian archives to formulate

historical claims over the independence of the English church.50 The

German Protestant Mathias Flacius’s archival research team made heav-

ily documented attacks on church rights with its massive anti-Catholic

historical work The Magdeburg Centuries (1559–74).51 The Vatican librar-

ian and historian Cardinal Caesar Baronius (1538–1607) responded in

kind, fending off Protestant claims with his own archivally based Annales

ecclesiastici (1588–1607).52 Baronius and those involved with the histori-

cal battle over church rights worked from an ancient tradition of source-

based defenses that had begun in late antiquity with ecclesiastical philo-

logical scholars such as Origen (184–254 CE), and emerged again during

the Renaissance in works by scholars and antiquarians such as the Bene-

dictine Johannes Trithemius (1462–1516).53 International law and rela-

tions grew out of ecclesiastical archives.54

To defend its old rights, the church needed to modernize its ancient

archives. Between the papacies of Paul V and Urban VIII (1605–44), the

church was the leading center of state information gathering, organizing,

and handling.55 At the beginning of the seventeenth century, the

church’s state information system and governmental structure was in

many ways the most centralized and systematized in the world.56 A

Borghese and a canon lawyer, Paul V responded to Sarpi by creating a

centralized and secret Archivio Segreto at the heart of the Vatican, in

1609 commissioning Michele Lonigo da Este to create the ‹rst central

catalog of the Vatican collections, making data organization innovations

one year before the Venetians made a ‹rst catalog of their own secret

archives. These were necessary reforms in the wake of the legal and pro-

paganda battles of the Venetian Interdict, but also of the claims made by

French scholars about Gallican monarchical rights over church lands and

the appointment of bishops.

After Paul’s death in 1621, Gregory XV, a Jesuit, founded the Sacra

Congregatio de Propaganda Fide, the central information organ of the

church, regulating all questions pertaining to foreign missions.57 Urban

VIII, a learned Barbarini with a bibliophile nephew, set out not only to

create the greatest humanist library in the world in the walls of the Vat-

ican; he also speci‹cally led a charge in the collection of eastern manu-

scripts, the stuff of ancient learning and the ammunition for ideological

wars inside and outside the church.58 Jesuit-trained in the Collegio Ro-

mano (an information center in its own right), Urban VIII continued

Paul V’s reform of the Vatican library and archives, but also reformed the

internal workings of the state information system and the Secretariat of


Briefs. More consciously than Paul, he linked formal learning with prac-

tical administration.59 On his death in 1644, the Vatican—the seat of the

Index librorum prohibitorum, the Inquisition, and the Archivio Segreto—

was also the greatest existing collection of information, books, manu-

scripts, and antiquities. It was the nerve center of the world empire of

the church with its information missionaries, the Jesuits, masters of pious

reading and information-handling techniques, who meticulously com-

posed empirical “relations” that they sent back to their headquarters in

Rome.60 Indeed, the Jesuit Order had formed in 1540 not only to

counter the teachings of Protestants and to evangelize, but also to train

Catholic leadership and bureaucracy in both technical skills and

morals.61 Jesuit learned culture in the sixteenth and early seventeenth

centuries was situated between piety, techniques of power, and knowl-

edge management, and trained generations of the Catholic elite to read

and write, master Latin, take notes, write formularies, and make com-

monplace books.62 Books such as Francesco Sacchini’s De Ratione libros

cum profectu legendi libellus, deque vitanda moribus noxia lectione, oratio Fran-

cisci Sacchini (Sammieli: F. Du Bois, 1615), or, according to its French ti-

tle, How to Read Fruitfully, showed students the techniques of reading,

information collection, formulation, categorization, handling, and man-

agement. As Ann Blair has shown, it was not only naturalist philoso-

phers, but often ecclesiastical scholars who honed the techniques of early

modern archiving and information management.63 Polyhistors, encyclo-

pedists, and naturalists such as Conrad Gesner (1516–65) used lexicons,

indexes, and reading aids to write books that not only compounded

knowledge, but also helped readers master large amounts of information

through reading, note-taking and commonplace techniques, and by de-

signing ‹ling and drawer systems—scrinium literarum, or literary ‹le

chests—to hold notes and data.64

More often than not, this information management technology was

invented or used by members of the church. At the very moment that

the church was losing its grip on earthly political power, it had achieved

a symbolic dominion over the world and the disciplines of knowledge in

its meticulously locked cabinets, vast libraries, and guarded secret corri-

dors. Embodied by the grandiose encyclopedic project of Athanasius

Kircher, Rome emerged as the museum of the past and the present, the

temporal embodiment of all the knowledge in the world. The papacy

had great archives, but how centralized and accessible they all were, and

to what extent archives, such as that of the Jesuits, were proactively used

by the papacy has not yet been conclusively established.65 And although


Rome was still a center of learning, the execution of Giordano Bruno

(1600) and trials and punishments of Galileo (1633) there showed that it

would not long dominate splintered Christendom, and a world of

knowledge increasingly focused on the natural sciences; practical, em-

pirical learning; and merchant empires.

Information Exchange

In spite of the different size and relative centralization of states such as

Rome, Venice, and Spain, they were all in decline by the mid-seven-

teenth century. Indeed, it was Holland that grew not into the premier

economic power of this period and became the world’s most important

information exchange. Economic historians have placed Holland, and in

particular, Amsterdam, at the center of the world economic system.66

With the Dutch stock exchange and the East India Company as its mo-

tors, reports to merchant and imperial trading houses ›owed in from

across the world, assessing political climates, trading routes, the price

›uctuations of commodities, and works of scholarship.67 Amsterdam and

The Hague were at the center of a local civic information web. Both

of‹cial and unof‹cial information ›owed in from all of Holland as well

as its neighbors in England, France, Germany, and the Baltic states. Am-

sterdam was not just the center of civic administration and business in

Holland. It also ruled world trade by warehousing, which meant that

much of the world’s merchandise—even that of its close neighbors—

was carried by Dutch ships and passed ‹rst through Holland before be-

ing resold or processed.68 Information ›owed in this massive, global

market as merchants traded in goods, and also in information. Holland’s

wide-ranging trading operations produced masses of correspondence as

merchants sent form letters back to their main branches listing political

information, trade routes, and the prices of commodities.69 Dutch con-

suls from around its world trading empire sent reports from Dutch whale

oil factories in the Arctic, the West Indies, Europe, Brazil, Surinam,

Manhattan, and Arden.

The Dutch printing industry exploded as information ›owed into

Holland. With its religious tolerance and freer censorship policies, Am-

sterdam supplanted Venice as the world printing capital.70 While mer-

chant and political information ›owed into Amsterdam and The Hague,

printers started producing mass runs of pamphlets and books disseminat-

ing this information—from exchange rates to secret court intrigues. As

opposed to centralized states such as Spain and Venice, the Dutch state


was fragmented and basically federated.71 This had rami‹cations in in-

formation ›ow and archiving. The Dutch state did not have tight con-

trol over state information. Many Dutch archives were in the hands of

the Spanish, who were their nominal lords.72 At the same time, the sheer

volume of information passing through Holland added to its in›uence

and its potential to threaten the interests of other countries. In short,

Holland had a public sphere and it affected the rest of Europe. The

Dutch state had a very effective system of international diplomatic re-

porting, yet it was not particularly secretive as a result of a relatively open

government culture.73 Information collected by embassies quickly found

its way into the Amsterdam information exchange. The same happened

with its colonial trade companies, the East India Company and the Di-

rectorate of Levant Trade. The reports from their own communication

networks quickly made their way to the stock exchange and print shops.

Thus both its central position and porousness made Amsterdam a diplo-

matic capital, for if a government wanted to know what was going on,

it did not simply rely on its own diplomatic intelligence. Foreign states

also sent special ambassadors to Holland to collect information in the

open marketplaces of the Dutch ‹nancial and information exchange.74

Antiquarians and the Information State

While monarchs had long employed lawyers, diplomats, theologians,

and historical chroniclers, Renaissance government saw the emergence

of the antiquarian scholar as a major participant in Western governmen-

tal culture. Rather than bureaucrats simply being scholars as they were

in Italy, a tradition emerged in which rulers sought scholars—medieval

legists and classical humanists—not only as ornaments to their courts and

aids in learning, but also to work as freelance state researchers and ex-

perts who used antiquarian skills to ‹nd legal and historical documenta-

tion to legitimate state undertakings.

The Hapsburg Holy Roman Emperor Rudolph II (1552–1612) cre-

ated a remarkable environment of scholarly activity around his throne in

Prague. Humanists from Holland, Italy, Germany, and France ›ocked to

his court, which became a center of literary, historical, medical, and nat-

ural humanism.75 While scholars such as the Hungarian János Zsámboky

(Sambucus) and the Italian Octavio Strada wrote antiquarian histories

defending Rudolph’s claims, the emperor never created an of‹ce of his-

torical research for political purposes.76 Many state archives were local,

held in various imperial seats across its semifederated, provincial em-


pire.77 The Hapsburg Empire had always been an odd mix in terms of

information culture. It had a massive humanist imperial library, but its

state archives were kept in national capitals such as Prague, Brussels, or

Budapest. This was the heritage of Charles V’s pan-European dynastic

web. Italian scholars and Belgians would, therefore, often have to track

down the origins of Hapsburg rights that spanned from Belgium, Hol-

land, the Franche-Comté, Spain, Bavaria, and Italy, to Austria, Bo-

hemia, and Galicia.

In a world of competing feudal and ecclesiastical rights, historical cul-

ture—both ancient and medieval documentary antiquarianism—became

a pillar of legitimizing authority. From religious to secular and colonial

governments, states sought scholars not only to ‹nd or produce histori-

cal documentation proving their rights, or their interpretation of the

Scriptures; they also sought historians who would help them understand

the political, religious, and natural history of their domains.78 Scholars

could become ministers or major administrators, such as Ambrosio de

Morales, who was Philip II’s royal chronicler, a church administrator,

and also the author of ecclesiastical, antiquarian relaçiones of Spain.79

With its “mixed” constitution, the English monarchs had archives

and scholars, but also worked with allies in Parliament. In terms of state

information culture, England stood somewhere between monarchical

Spain and the freer, decentralized Holland. Neither the English monar-

chy nor Parliament had a monopoly on information. There were vari-

ous government secretarial of‹ces, depots, stores, and libraries, but not a

central archive.80 The English crown certainly maintained troves of se-

cret information from the cabinet, from Privy Counsels, and from spy-

ing networks and diplomatic correspondence.81 However, the ability of

the crown to collect massive and all-encompassing stores of state infor-

mation was limited by the constitution of mixed government. Both the

crown and Parliament had their secret domains within the state, as Par-

liament sought to keep its discussions secret from the king and the pub-

lic.82 Both branches of government competed to ‹nd and keep political

secrets.

Parliament in turn not only had archives, which could be consulted

by opposing forces, but also relied on legally trained members who

placed considerable store by careful record-keeping. A case in point is

the lawyer, parliamentarian, and organizer of the Virginia colonies, Sir

Edwin Sandys (1561–1629), who led the move to create a daily journal

of proceedings in the House of Commons and to have it checked by a

special committee.83 If Sandys worked in the legal tradition of state ser-


vice, Sir Robert Cotton (1586–1631) is also a revealing example of how

antiquarian scholars served the English state. Cotton was a leading

scholar and ancient and medieval manuscript collector.84 He was a free-

lance state scholar and also a state expert.85 He was the great English cor-

respondent of the French and Dutch Republics of Letters, in which in-

formation and rare documents were circulated. Yet Cotton was not just

a scholar; like his correspondents in France, such as the Dupuy brothers,

Nicolas Fabri de Peiresc, and Jacques Auguste de Thou, or Grotius in

Holland, Cotton also served the state in various bureaucratic modes.86

He was a state administrator, and he used his collections to solve state

problems and write reports. As a legal of‹cer, he wrote reports at the di-

rect request of members of Parliament. In the end, he never worked ex-

clusively for the crown. When he died, his collection of manuscripts and

books, seen as essential to government, was preserved as a parliamentary

archive. Mixed government meant mixed interests. In a world of me-

dieval constitutions, scholars could work for the state without necessar-

ily serving the crown itself.

The French Information Entente:

The Republic of Letters and the Royal Library

It is here that we cross the threshold into Colbert’s world. More than in

England and Holland, at the beginning of the seventeenth century, the

French state played an increasingly central role in the sponsorship and

organization of antiquarianism. Under Colbert’s institutional steward-

ship, Louis XIV would continue what centralizers such as Henry IV and

Richelieu had begun. Yet the early seventeenth-century monarchy re-

lied on outsiders to manage its archives and information. It did not yet

have an internal bureaucracy to the extent of the church.

One reason sixteenth and early seventeenth-century monarchs

sought to hire scholars to serve the state was the old tradition of Galli-

canism, a continuation of the conciliar con›icts of the Middle Ages and

a cultural element of the Reformation. Gallican legal historians had long

claimed French royal precedence over the powers of the papacy and

worked in earnest against the legal edi‹ce of ultramontane church pow-

ers. In simple terms, this meant matching document with document in a

historical propaganda war, and in legal and diplomatic wrangling, most

of which was done not by clerics, who were sometimes lukewarm to

secular claims, but more often by protonationalist, Gallican magistrates.87

From the mid-sixteenth to the beginning of the seventeenth century,


the Gallican movement had coalesced around a group of legal scholars,

librarians, prelates, and historians such as René Choppin, Pierre de

Marca, Gilles Le Maistre, Charles Dumoulin, Théodore Godefroy,

Pierre Pithou, and the Dupuy brothers. The most notable work to

emerge from this tradition was Pithou’s Les libertez de l’Église gallicane (2

vols., Paris, 1639), later reedited by the Dupuy brothers, based on their

rich archival research and document collection and their work as royal

librarians. They were independent scholars, members of the parliamen-

tary magistracy and the Republic of Letters who, by an ancient tradition

of service to the crown worked to defend the monarchy with their legal

and historical expertise and used their great document collections and

learned networks to defend Gallican and royal rights.88

Cotton, Grotius, and Heinsius drew their inspiration from the

French Gallican scholars, who formed a remarkable corps of state schol-

ars around the French crown and Parlement.89 Far beyond Cotton and

Heinsius’s freelance state service, French antiquarians of‹cially built the

Royal Library, managed propaganda and diplomacy, and laid the foun-

dations of a sophisticated and relatively open state information culture.

They created a more systematized form of state erudition and scholarly

political service. With an ancient monarchy, numerous parlements, great

centers of church culture, and a massive feudal framework, France had a

long and complex tradition of legal scholarship that acted as an inspira-

tion to the Republic of Letters at large. While France did not have a

clear-cut mixed constitution like England, the crown and Parlement

worked together in a politique arrangement left over from the Wars of

Religion.90 With the advent of the seventeenth century, however, the

Parlement was increasingly unable to de‹nitively maintain its indepen-

dence vis-à-vis the absolutist ambitions of the monarchy.91 Thus, in this

massive European entity of twenty million subjects, an entente emerged

in which parliamentarian legal scholars converged around the absolutist

crown and served it as state scholars, librarians, archivists, historians, and

diplomats.

Although Medici queens had brought with them some Italian gov-

ernmental traditions, in particular ‹nancial advisors and book-collecting

traditions, sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century France lacked the

central administrative entities found in Italy and Spain. France had nei-

ther a Biblioteca San Marco, a Simancas, a Casa de Contratación, nor an

Archivio Segreto. Government information was dispersed in various de-

pots: the Trésor des Chartes, the Chambre des Comptes, the archives of

the Conseil du Roi, parliamentary registers, privately held ministerial


archives, local feudal documents and patents, and monastic ecclesiastical

bene‹ces were all scattered throughout the kingdom.92 State ‹nancial

information remained in the hands of ministers such as Henry IV’s state

intendant, Sully, who, following administrative tradition, kept the ‹-

nance records from his ministry—the “Papiers Sully”—which became

the basis for his heirs’ work on state ‹nance, Oeconomies royales (1638).93

State Information and the Ancient Constitution

Owing to their role in the ancient constitution of France, most legal

documents and state archives were kept by parliamentarians or by eccle-

siastics. The crown did not have a large internal archival bureaucracy.

Royal secretaries had existed since the Middle Ages, evolving from the

more personalized of‹ces of the “king’s clerks,” or the “king’s no-

taries.”94 Medieval French kings developed a relatively complex bureau-

cracy around their courts (curia regia).95 Saint-Louis and Philip the Fair

employed secretaries, clercs du secret, who handled private royal papers

and correspondence.96 By the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the

of‹ces of the secretary of state emerged, and the functions of the secre-

taries expanded. They were still responsible for handling state secrets:

sealing documents and guaranteeing secret correspondence.97 They kept

Richelieu in contact with various parts of the government and helped

him in the decision-making process.98

The secretaries of state’s job had been to work for the chancellor to

write all royal edicts and pronouncements and issue charters, while also

keeping secret and diplomatic correspondences. They had the rights

over various seals and stamps.99 They managed the king’s papers in the

chancery, but they were not scholars per se. Independent nobles still

dominated state administration and kept the paperwork from their min-

istries. Even under Richelieu, France did not produce a state bureau-

cracy in the Weberian sense: a large, internal cadre entirely devoted to

state service, whose administrative papers belonged to the state and not

to the individual of‹ceholder.100 The great ministers of the early seven-

teenth century—Sully, Richelieu, de Brienne, and Mazarin—all kept

personal possession of their ministerial archives, as did their families after

their death, until the ministries of Colbert and Louvois partially brought

them back into the permanent state archives. This hampered the cen-

tralization of administrative government in the northern Italian or Span-

ish style.

Indeed, for all its absolutist rhetoric, the administration of the six-


teenth- and early seventeenth-century French monarchy was remark-

ably diffuse and personal, considering the monarchy claimed absolute

prerogative. Culture had not yet caught up to ideology. The Parlement

of Paris was supposed to uphold absolute royal legislation, but not to leg-

islate. It could inform, criticize, ratify, and even reject royal law, yet all

the while it was subject to the king’s ultimate authority. With a relatively

weak monarchy, the Parlement was able to use its right of remonstrance

for negotiating purposes, such as in the case of the Edict of Amboise

(1563), which restored some rights to Protestants. Parliament also at-

tempted to expand its own rights during the minority of Charles IX, as

well as the rights of Protestants.101

To the bene‹t of the monarchy, a bridge formed between it and the

Parlement in the realm of state information management. The monar-

chy depended on semi-independent legal scholars who worked for the

crown, keeping royal registers, while also organizing the royal charter-

house and publishing historical propaganda. While royal secretaries han-

dled secret daily correspondence, the royal archives—the Trésor des

Chartes—were managed by magistrate archivists such as Jean Du Tillet,

a parliamentary secretary (gref‹er).102 From Guillaume Budé’s organiza-

tion of François I’s library in 1520 to the administration of the Dupuy

brothers from 1635 to 1656, a venerable line of Gallican scholars—legal

defenders of the monarchy’s rights over the French church—served the

crown as librarians, of‹cial historians, and propagandists.103 Inspired by

the mutual interests of civil peace, French nationalism, and Gallicanism,

scholars such as de Thou served both power and the ethics of scholar-

ship; or as Donald Kelley puts it, they balanced “‹delity to truth” with

“civic humanism.”104 Jean Du Tillet, Jacques-Auguste de Thou, Pierre

Pithou, Nicolas Rigault, the Dupuy brothers, Théodore Godefroy, and

the ubiquitous Bignons were all lawyers, or were closely aligned with

the milieu of the Robe, the Harlay, Seguier, and de Thou families. They

were famed for their libraries, as well as their role in learned societies and

the elite Republic of Letters, connected by the epistolary network of

Nicolas Fabri de Peiresc.105 In thus serving the crown, these parliamen-

tarians set aside many of the traditional constitutional claims to counter

royal power to help the monarchy manage its library, archives, and in-

formation apparatus with the goal of stabilizing a state wracked by reli-

gious and civil war.

The ‹rst to catalog the royal charterhouse was the secretary of the

Parlement of Paris, Jean Du Tillet the elder (?–1570). During the same

period, Jean Bodin (1520–96) acted as the theoretician of the parliamen-


tarian entente with absolutism, insisting on a strong, well-informed

monarchy served by legal scholars such as himself.106 By the reign of

Henry IV (1589–1610), the tradition strengthened, with leading scholars

from prominent families managing the royal libraries and archives. A

president of the Parlement, famed scholar and book collector Jacques-

Auguste de Thou (1553–1617) used his documentary skills as a diplomat

and a legist for the crown. From 1593 to 1656, he and his family served

as Gardes de la Librarie royale.107 He personi‹es the entente, for he was

relatively independent vis-à-vis royal power: a person of great prestige,

a leader of the Putean Academy, a central hub for the international Re-

public of Letters, an internationally renowned scholar, and one of Eu-

rope’s leading book and manuscript collectors.108 Although a servant of

the state, and not above politics, de Thou was a wealthy, in›uential pub-

lic ‹gure in his own right and a parliamentarian.

With de Thou, the Dupuy brothers Pierre (1582–1651) and Jacques

(1591–1656), created the academy—the Cabinet Dupuy, or Putean

Academy—which operated from de Thou’s library as the French central

point of the Republic of Letters and erudite scholarly life.109 Though

connected to the crown, the academy was relatively independent, form-

ing a news and information bank, and producing daily nouvelles, or

newsletters for its members.110 Sanctioned by the state, yet independent

within the strictures of the Republic of Letters, this academy was the

precursor to of‹cial scienti‹c academies. The Académie Française had to

report to, and work under the supervision of, crown ministers. The

Putean academy, on the other hand, was relatively independent, it did,

when requested, serve the interests of the crown and even foreign pow-

ers, such as the papacy, the Dutch, and the English. It also aided German

and Italian scholars and scholarly bureaucrats.

While running their academy, Pierre Dupuy—formerly the archivist

of the Parlement of Paris—and his brother Jacques also managed the

Royal Library, building the collection through their network of contacts

in the Republic of Letters and the Parlement of Paris. Thus there was a

formal link between the learned institutions of the Republic of Letters

and those of the crown. They assembled works on French royal prece-

dence and Gallican rights, collaborating with a number of French jurists

who worked for the Royal Library such as Pierre Pithou and Théodore

Godefroy (1580–1649).111 The Dupuys even bequeathed their own mas-

sive collection to the Royal Library.112 They echoed sixteenth-century

legists such as Du Cange who claimed that in the ancient constitution,

the law courts, or parlements, represented the interests of the crown: cu-


ria representat regem.113 Pierre Dupuy cited this precedent in 1639 in his

Traité des preéminences du Parlement de Paris. Yet there was a deep contra-

diction in the relationship between the monarchy and these scholars,

members of a Parlement that contentiously claimed the right to revise,

ratify, or even reject royal laws.114

Under Richelieu, the crown had taken steps to wrest the control of

of‹cial information and news management away from the Parlement.

While Cardinal Richelieu did have a sophisticated policy for harnessing

arts and letters and using scholars as propagandists, he never created a

central, secret state archive, under his control, to be used to produce

works of policy and propaganda. Through the founding of the Aca-

démie Française in 1634, he sponsored historians to write propagandistic

works to bolster claims of absolutist prerogative.115 He outsourced infor-

mation collection and propaganda to Théophraste Renaudot’s

(1586–1653) Bureau d’Adresse (1629), which acted as the base for his

Gazette (1631), a protonewspaper comprised of “relations,” or eyewit-

ness reports, which supported the positions of the crown. This was an ir-

ritation to the Parlement of Paris, which, according to constitutional

practice, considered the circulation of news in the capital as one of its

prerogatives.116

Richelieu understood the power of propaganda. In response to the

›urry of antigovernment pamphlets, he sponsored a campaign of pub-

lishing responses, news reports, and literary, political, and historical

works that bolstered the policies of the crown.117 While many scholars

worked for Richelieu, the cardinal himself did not personally oversee

the actual historical research that was at the basis of legal negotiation and

propaganda.118 Richelieu neither enacted a serious campaign of censor-

ship and literary oppression, as Colbert later did, nor worked to create a

large secret archive so that he could micromanage propaganda, in spite

of his penchant for secrecy. Indeed, while many of Richelieu’s propa-

gandists were part of his clientele network, key legal and Gallican schol-

arship still often came from the ranks of semi-independent parliamentar-

ian scholars.

Gallicanism aligned the interests of the parlements with the increas-

ingly absolutist monarchy. There occurred between these competing

though complimentary powers an entente in the sphere of information

management. Such was the nature of feudalism and the separation of

powers of the ancient constitution in the budding absolutist state. Legal,

ecclesiastical, and feudal document management was one of the primary

functions of the parlements, the primary service provided to the crown


by Gallican scholars. Figures such as Jean Du Tillet and the Dupuy

brothers not only kept royal registers, they used them as sources for de-

fense in national and international disputes over precedence, tax rights,

and dominion.119 Remarkably, the crown allowed elements of foreign

policy, propaganda, and legal policies to be managed by independent

scholars from the ranks of the magistracy—a corps that often resisted and

rebelled against royal authority. While the Parlement worked with the

monarchy during crises such as the Wars of Religion, it did not work for

the monarchy completely subservient as a branch.

Even as these scholars worked for the crown, they still insisted on

their own freedoms, and therein lay a potential con›ict. How could in-

dependent members of the Republic of Letters and the parlements serve

an increasingly authoritarian crown? There was a deep contradiction in

the relationship between the monarchy and these scholars, members of

the Robe, who worked for the crown but sympathized with the parlia-

mentary claim of the right to revise, ratify, or even reject royal laws, and

who were arbiters of both public and secret spheres of information.120 In

the end, these traditional scholars were not fully suited to serve as chief

state information masters in an age when power lay increasingly in trade

and empire. With the noble and parliamentarian rebellion of the Fronde

(1648–53), the constitutional and information entente collapsed.121 The

control of state archives by legal scholars had become incompatible with

the interests of the rising absolutist state.122 After Mazarin crushed the

Fronde, he and Louis XIV moved to subject the parlements to royal au-

thority, and Colbert was the man in charge of what was effectively a

coup d’état. Disarming the parlements meant depriving them not only of

political authority, but also of the very legal and political information

through which they wielded and de‹ned it. For this, a new kind of in-

formation master was needed.


c h a p t e r 3

The Accountant and the Coups d’État

In another time and place, the Colberts might have been patricians

in the mold of the Medicis.1 Jean-Baptiste Colbert came from a

merchant banking family from Reims, the great cathedral and

cloth town, and capital of the Champagne region. Seventeenth-century

France, however, was not Renaissance Italy, and bourgeois patricians

did not become the princes of their cities. In a culture dominated by

wealthy nobles, and increasingly by a centralized monarchy, the primary

avenue of social ascension for an ambitious ‹nancier or merchant was

through service to a great aristocrat, or, inevitably after the failed noble

rebellion of the Fronde, to the crown.2 Colbert’s father began his career

not as a simple cloth merchant, as the cliché goes, but as a négociant: an

international wholesale merchant and ‹nancier. Part of the international

world of Reimois and Lyonnais ‹nance and trade, the Colberts were

connected to the in›uential Franco-Italian banking family, the Particelli,

into which Colbert’s sister married.3

Colbert himself trained to be a négociant. He attended the Jesuit

school in Reims. Taking the pretheological cycles of the curriculum,

Colbert did not receive a full classical education, but rather the rudi-

ments necessary for international trade. Aside from grammar, humani-

ties, and rhetoric, Jesuit pedagogy focused on skills useful for a merchant:

mathematics, reading comprehension, note-taking, ‹ling, and the for-

mal organization of one’s reading and lecture notes into notebooks.4

With the rise of geography in the Jesuit curriculum, Colbert was also ex-

34

posed to the new Jesuit focus in practical and natural science, as well as

in the writing of natural description and reports—all skills useful for a

budding merchant trader or banker.5

After the Jesuits, he followed a typical itinerary for a member of a

high merchant family. In his midteens, Colbert apprenticed in the Lyon

of‹ce of family associates, the Italian banking family, Mascranni, where

he not only learned international banking, but also some Italian.6 He

then went on to take a clerkship at the Parisian accounting house, “l’é-

tude Chappelain,” and at the law ‹rm of Biterne, where he learned

‹nancial law.7

Work in merchant houses and accounting ‹rms provided speci‹c

sorts of training. First, an apprentice would learn the ars mercatoria, or

mechanics of running a ‹rm. These methods had not changed drastically

since the Middle Ages, though the use of double-entry book accounting

had become more prevalent and was the basis of ‹nancial and mercan-

tile management.8 In order to manage a trading house, the merchant

would need constantly to inventory both stock and all exchanges. This

meant diligent record-keeping at all levels. As for actual trading itself, it

required a mastery not only of merchandise—from cloth, metals, plants,

and spice to slaves—but also of its evaluation and measurement. Mer-

chants carried with them reference books, but many personally made

notebooks that contained currency exchanges; customs forms and rules;

the translation of basic ‹nancial terms in major European languages; a

schedule of tides, sunsets, and sunrises; merchandise descriptions; and

maps, navigation information, and city descriptions.9 As shall become

clear, Colbert was particularly skilled in paperwork handling, the laws

and procedures of exchange and trade, and administrative archiving.

Colbert’s initial training opened the way to his purchase of a position

in 1639 under the great builder of Richelieu’s army, Sublet de Noyers,

in the Ministry of the Army.10 This was his ‹rst position in royal admin-

istration, and it was as a commissary (commissaire ordinaire des guerres) that

he traveled across France, writing administrative reports and managing

regimental ‹nance.11 Working under the next army minister, Michel Le

Tellier, a distant cousin, between 1643 and 1648, his job was to collect

information on troop numbers and supplies.12 Decades earlier, this might

have been the end of the story: Colbert would have remained a wealthy

bourgeois ‹nancier, or simply a bureaucrat. But he arrived on the scene

at a propitious moment. In 1650, Le Tellier posted Colbert as his inten-

dant to Cardinal Mazarin during a military stage of the Fronde. This

meant Colbert was Le Tellier’s administrative assistant in Mazarin’s en-

The Accountant and the Coups d’État 35

tourage and army. His stated job was to decipher Le Tellier’s daily cor-

respondence, read it to the cardinal, and then take his responses.13

Monseigneur, this morning I showed Mgr the Cardinal the two arti-

cles in code from your memo yesterday. On the second, His Eminence

ordered me to write you. . . . For the surplus of orders that it has

pleased you to send me by your letters and memos from yesterday, His

Eminence has given me until this evening or tomorrow morning [to

respond]. I will hurry as much as I can to resolve everything, and to let

you know [the responses] as soon as I can.14

Colbert was not just responsible for decoding—which he probably

learned on the job—writing, and communicating; he also collected var-

ious correspondence and documents. He would often make copies, ‹le

them and then present them as organized packets to Le Tellier or

Mazarin.15 In the role of an administrative secretary, Colbert was Le Tel-

lier’s eyes and ears, an archiver and ‹ler. But more than that, he also

maintained an intraministerial secret news and intelligence bureau. He

was to inform Le Tellier in coded letters of the events concerning

Mazarin’s court and army. His letters to Le Tellier were accompanied by

formal news reports, which he called mémoires or relations, detailed de-

scriptions of battles or important political meetings. He would summa-

rize other correspondence sent to Mazarin by various important per-

sons.16 In many cases, he would analyze and clarify both reports and

events that took place around him, to explain them in detail.17

In spite of Colbert’s proximity to power and his skill at accounting

and managing information, his position was technically still quite mod-

est. Indeed, Colbert complained to Le Tellier in 1650 about his salary,

which was supposed to be 3,000 livres, of which only 1,700 livres were

actually paid.18 This was a decent sum for those who had outside in-

come, such as Louis XIV’s gentlemen of the chamber, that is, dukes and

counts who earned between 2,000 and 3,500 livres, but who had vast

personal fortunes. Colbert’s salary was more than that of a simple secre-

tary, but it was equal to that of the court dancing master, and much

lower than that of the court mathematician, who made 4,500.19 Col-

bert’s ambitions were ministerial, and for that, he needed more money.

He made a shrewd marriage to Marie Charron, daughter of a member of

the king’s council, from a large family of wealthy military contractors. It

brought with it a dowry of 100,000 livres tournois.20 While he com-

plained to his masters that he had no money, Colbert nonetheless ad-


mitted to his in-laws that he had amassed 50,000 livres himself.21

Through his management of Mazarin’s funds, he had secretly, and in

some cases illegally, begun investing in agricultural schemes, tax farming,

and monetary speculation.22 Not only a collector of books and manu-

scripts, Colbert was to prove very good at collecting money.

The meeting of Colbert and Mazarin brought together two comple-

mentary spirits. Mazarin had amassed a colossal fortune, functionally

larger than that of the crown, but he did not have the expertise to man-

age it. Colbert, on the other hand, had spent his entire youth training to

manage large fortunes, but he did not have one. Instead, he was now

getting ever closer to the largest fortune in France. The cardinal’s cellars

were ‹lled with treasures, a massive collection of artworks, antiquities,

and jewels.23 Even more, Mazarin’s wealth was contained in enormous

and unorganized piles of feudal contracts and deeds to various sorts of

landholdings, industries, and dubious ‹nancial schemes.24 Mazarin stated

frankly that he had no idea how much wealth he actually had, or how

much he could raise to fund his armies. In any case, as the Fronde drew

on, Mazarin needed ever more funds. Thus he needed a good accoun-

tant not only to put his ‹nances in order, but also to raise money quickly

for the war effort.

Colbert’s persistence was boundless and he began the hard job of in-

gratiating himself to the cardinal and rendering his services indispensable

to the de facto ruler of France. As Mazarin’s ‹nancial needs became

more pressing in 1650, Le Tellier recommended his skilled intendant as

the permanent manager of Mazarin’s household. Colbert began to sit in

Mazarin’s archives, pouring over the mounds of paperwork and feudal

deeds; ‹nding untapped revenue and unpaid debts; managing industrial

projects, and illicit sources of income, along with his massive ecclesiasti-

cal landholdings.25 During the years 1650–53, the detailed correspon-

dence between the two men reveals the extent to which Colbert man-

aged Mazarin’s affairs. In a report on the cardinal’s ‹nances, dated

September 31, 1651, Colbert informs his master that he has indeed re-

ceived “all the papers” and that he is working to “terminate the dif‹cul-

ties” in bringing order to the cardinal’s ‹nances.26 In 1652, working with

the queen’s treasurer, Jacques Tubeuf, president of the Chambre des

Comptes, Colbert was still trying to obtain all of Mazarin’s papers and

bring to term the cardinal’s various business ventures.

I must work one of these days with Monsieur Tubeuf to ‹nish the ac-

counts that he must give to Your Eminency. According to my calcula-


tions that I have made with the documents that I have collected, which

are quite trustworthy, I have found that your debt has been reduced to

four hundred thousand pounds and the business in Auvergne and

Longuedoc included, he [Tubeuf] is basically in agreement, the latter

for two hundred thousand pounds, and that Your Eminency is owed

one hundred thirty nine thousand ‹ve hundred and eighty three

pounds, as well as and above the thirty-six thousand pounds that Your

Eminency has already received and a promise from Mssrs the [farmers

general] of the gabelles of twenty thousand pounds that I will take out

and we must ‹nd a way to have them paid promptly; I beg you to be-

lieve that I have not made any notable errors. [Marginal note]: It will

be necessary that the Cardinal has a search made of all the papers and

memoirs of Mr. Tubeuf; the only dif‹culty in clearing them up con-

cerns an error of twenty thousand pounds for the rent of your houses,

an error that is to the advantage of the Cardinal.27

More than just handling masses of papers, Colbert made contacts and

worked with all the ‹gures involved in the Mazarin’s ‹nancial dealings,

such as the queen regent, Ann of Austria, the wealthy Tubeuf, the duke

de Guise, the cardinal’s Roman agent Elpidio Benedetti, the cardinal’s

household and military agents Euzenat, Bartet, and de La Vieuville, as

well as the his librarian and archivist, Gabriel Naudé.28 He also had to

run industrial projects and negotiate with those to whom the Mazarin

owed money, and vice versa.29 He even guarded his valuable jewels. At

every step, using strong-arm tactics when necessary, he extracted wealth

from the cardinal’s holdings:

I have the pearls in my hands, more or less in the condition which I

described to you. Monsieur Ménardeau did not ask for any interest on

his money, and Monsieur Tubeuf did not want to ‹nish the business

that he had started before on the eighteenth, which comes out to 4,128

pounds 17 sols, and the principal 62,220, bringing everything to 66,348

pounds 17 sols. . . . This is going to require patience. I have sent a man

expressly to the Limousin to force Tabouret to pay; I hope to get

something out of this, because of the way I handled the affair.30

Although he had initially found Colbert vulgar and presumptuous,

Mazarin now wrote Colbert complimentary letters.31 Within a year,

he had become indispensable. Even more, Colbert’s work bore fruit.

In 1658, after the Fronde, Mazarin had 8 million livres in cash. By the

time of the cardinal’s death in 1661, Colbert had turned this sum into


35 million, a great part of which would be Mazarin’s legacy to Louis

XIV.32

As much as Colbert succeeded in building and managing Mazarin’s

fortune in the 1650s, he nonetheless remained a household servant. As

the favorite’s accountant, he was close to the center of the new royal

state, but he was not yet a part of it.33 If he were to realize his ambitions,

which were often the subtext of his imploring letters to Mazarin, he

would need to rise above his household servant status. The opportunity

would soon present itself. Remarkably, the road from accountant to

statesman led through Mazarin’s library.

The Fall of the Humanist

In 1649, Cardinal Mazarin faced a crisis. As ‹rst minister, Mazarin’s au-

thority was challenged by nobles and the cardinals during the Fronde.

The cardinal, however, had other problems besides simply war and

money. He was assailed by a barrage of negative political pamphlets—

the Mazarinades—which both ridiculed him and questioned his and the

crown’s legal prerogatives.34 Losing the propaganda war, Mazarin had to

respond to these dangerous attacks.

To take on the parlements, which fueled the constant ›ow of pam-

phlets, Mazarin turned to his librarian, the internationally renowned hu-

manist Gabriel Naudé (1600–1653), to formulate a propaganda response.

Naudé was the sort of man the Italian cardinal would trust. Naudé

claimed expertise in the late humanist, libertine Machiavellian art of pru-

dence, or reason of state. Naudé’s Considérations politiques sur les coups d’é-

tat (1639) drew on passages from the Roman historian Tacitus and the

Dutch humanist Justus Lipsius’s Politica, with the express intention of

teaching the art of statecraft through political secrecy and dissimula-

tion.35 He was thus a proponent of neostoicism and an idea to which

Cardinal Richelieu and much of Europe’s educated elite subscribed.

Strong states were built with the political wisdom afforded by reason of

state, or the art of mastering political expediency through prudence

based on experience and the knowledge of historical precedent.36

Educated in Italy, where he had studied medicine and worked as li-

brarian to the Cardinal Bagni, Naudé had written a tract against political

pamphlets, Le Marfore (1620); a famous work on library management and

theory, Advice on Establishing a Library (1627); and a list of books neces-

sary for the knowledge of politics, his Bibliographie politique (1642).


Naudé was doubtless an expert on reason of state, but how good was he

at applying his methods of statecraft in the arena of real politics? Indeed,

was the old culture of reason of state up to the task presented by the

crises of the Fronde?

As the head of Mazarin’s library, the ‹nest in France, Naudé had be-

come the state’s top information expert, and established himself as the

heir to the long line of legal scholars who worked for the crown as li-

brarians, archivists, and historical and legal propagandists.37 But with the

advent of the Fronde, Naudé found himself ‹ghting the Parlement,

which had once supplied librarians, scholars, and propagandists to the

monarchy and formed the backbone of the Republic of Letters. How

could he now serve the interests of scholarship and the Republic of Let-

ters, while remaining loyal to the crown? The old entente between legal

humanists and the crown, the very cement of the French Republic of

Letters, was collapsing.

A self-styled expert in secrecy, Naudé recommended Mazarin spon-

sor a publishing campaign against the Frondeurs. He published his own

long-winded response to the pamphlets, Le Jugement de tout ce qui a esté

imprimé contre le Cardinal de Mazarin (Paris: anon., 1650), but still the ›ow

of Mazarinades did not abate.38 In a letter to Mazarin, dated July 15,

1651, Naudé complained that the cardinal had let his enemies occupy

the sphere of public discourse and opinion.39 He begged him to respond

by writing public responses, and to muster his literary friends to work to

“detromper le peuple.”40 Most of all, he suggested that publishing veri-

table documents from the cardinal’s own archives would prove the Car-

dinal’s “good intentions” to the public. Ten days after Naudé wrote his

letter, the cardinal directed him to consult with Colbert to obtain the

necessary papers.41

Perhaps because he himself had come from a family of low-level

‹nanciers, Naudé did not like Colbert, and resented having to deal with

him, perhaps because his social origins were even lower.42 This paragon

of the Republic of Letters and the universities, librarian to princes, and

friend to the pope, mocked Colbert’s apparent bourgeois vulgarity,

making fun of his merchant’s collar, calling him “Berticol.”43 Colbert

came from the tradition of family business, loyalty to one’s patron, dou-

ble-entry book accounting, warehouse inspections, backrooms, and

lockboxes.44 This was no noble man of letters. Indeed, he hardly knew

Latin, the lingua franca of humanists. When Naudé met Colbert in 1651,

the latter was deep in Mazarin’s accounts, looking for new sources of in-

come for this embattled minister now at war.45 Yet at one level, Naudé


and Colbert did have something in common: they both served the state

as information masters. The humanist managed Mazarin’s semipublic li-

brary with its books, manuscripts, and political pamphlet collections,

while the accountant managed the cardinal’s private archive, that of his

‹nancial papers.

From the beginning, Colbert expressed doubts about Naudé’s idea of

publishing secret documents:

I will furnish to Mr. Naudé all that he demands. However, on this sub-

ject, I am obliged to tell you that not all of your friends and servants

believe that anything should appear in public, it being absolutely nec-

essary for you to let be the humor of our nation. Which is of the great-

est inconsistency in its hates and its friendships, and when the object of

which is absent, it does not excite itself. The disorders and the civil

wars in which we are falling will indubitably play into your hands; and

if you continue your behavior in the same manner as in the past, we

have some real hope. . . . It is true that one must always prepare papers,

which can be taken from the general state of your accounts, which is a

convincing piece; but again, one must neither stir things up, nor pub-

lish anything before the hatreds of the public are dampened.46

Naudé, in turn, insisted that the cardinal ignore Colbert’s advice. Col-

bert was forced to give in, rendering a trove of secret ‹nancial docu-

ments.47

Although initially rebuffed, Colbert continued whispering his philos-

ophy of state secrecy into the cardinal’s ear.48 He also treacherously

claimed to the cardinal that Naudé was stealing from him.49 In this

con›ict, Naudé would ‹nd himself the loser. Civil war had changed not

only the state, but also the world of learning. The rebellion of the

Fronde was waged on the battle‹eld of books and libraries as the Par-

lement took over Paris, and attacked the institutions controlled by

Mazarin. Naudé watched helplessly, clutching a few last books, as the

magni‹cent library he had created for his master was dismantled and

gleefully auctioned off by members of the Parlement of Paris. After this

traumatic loss, Naudé went on to lose the cardinal’s con‹dence and his

job. Although he hoped to get his position back, Naudé died like

Descartes and Grotius, en route back from Sweden, where he too had

answered the siren call of the ever-curious Queen Christina.50 He was

the last of‹cial court humanist in France, and his failure marked the end

of the entente between the semi-independent scholars and the crown.

The self-styled master of secret state maneuvers had been beaten handily


at his own game.51 Naudé the great scholar failed, while Colbert the ac-

countant rose to power.

Thus it was that in 1653, Jean-Baptiste Colbert, the son of a failed

‹nancier with no scholarly training, became head of the French Royal

Library. In a matter of months, Colbert bought back much of Mazarin’s

library restoring it to its past glory. In a report to Mazarin, Colbert noted

not only the ‹nancial aspects of rebuilding the collection, but also his

methods in putting pressure on those who had bought the cardinal’s

books at a low price. “They will give up their books without dif‹culty,”

mused Colbert ominously, “but they will pay dearly for it.”52 Colbert

liked books, and with them, a keen taste for repressing the very world

that produced them.

Colbert outlined his strategies in dealing with collectors and book

dealers. Colbert knew how the world of the book worked, with its hid-

ing places, false bookkeeping, and inaccurate catalogs. He knew the

principal book dealers and had a sense of where the missing books had

gone.53 From the registers of the sale, Colbert also knew which parlia-

mentarians had obtained the most books. Police were duly sent to the

houses of the parliamentarians Pithou, Peteau, and Portail to “make an

exact search of their libraries and other places in their houses for all the

books that were in Your Eminence’s library . . . to take all that is recog-

nized to have been part of the library of Your Eminence.”54 The Pithou

family had once been a pillar of the world of royal scholarship, but they

took sides against the crown during the Fronde. Now their family library

was ransacked by Colbert’s men.

Colbert had shown that he not only knew the world of books and

learning, he also knew how to put it under the boot of royal power.

Mazarin was convinced that this was the man to run not only his library,

but that of the king as well. In 1654, Colbert’s brother became guardian

of the Royal Library, under Colbert’s control. It was a remarkable oc-

currence; for it was the ‹rst time a nonscholar and a man of such low so-

cial rank had risen to such a prestigious post. But it was more than just

prestige that appealed to Colbert. As we shall see, he would use his new

central position in the world of learning as a basis for political power that

lay in the old legal, ‹nancial, and diplomatic documents that sat on

shelves of archives.55 Colbert controlled Mazarin’s ‹nances and library,

as well as the Royal Library, and was essentially the information minis-

ter of the administration. Now his multiple talents would come into play

as Mazarin and Louis XIV moved to grab power and build a new royal

state.


The Mechanics of an Information Coup: The Crushing of

Fouquet and the Muzzling of the Parlement

As early as 1654, at the head of the state’s censorship and information ap-

paratus, Colbert began a campaign to take control of vital political in-

formation held by the parlements.56 When in 1656, the Parlement of

Paris argued that the king did not have the authority to use évocations to

overturn lawsuits, Colbert lamented to Mazarin that the Parlement con-

trolled the legal archives with which to make such arguments, and was

thus a threat to royal power:

A number of counselors have already sought in their registers examples

and reasons which can serve their interests. . . . I have thought that per-

haps Your Eminence would agree if I did my own research on what

has been said on this matter, from the same legal documents used by

the Parlement of Paris, which the kings have never really kept, and

which they use to justify their enterprises, and never provide remedies

to help with the projects of kings, and thus keep them unknown. I

would be happy if my little research into the archives could be agree-

able to Your Eminence. . . . I could on numerous occasions render this

service.57

The cardinal replied to Colbert that he was puzzled that no one had

ever “kept a register of what kings have done to repress the enterprises

of the Parlement of Paris . . . as well as the clergy,” and directed Colbert

to go the archives and ‹nd the documents to rebut the Parlement.58

Colbert acted immediately, writing a secret, internal report: “Consid-

érations sur l’Arrest du Parlement de Paris, du 18 aoust 1656, concernant

les évocations,” in which, with the aid of an assistant, probably Joseph-

Nicolas Foucault, he provided a series of archival documents proving the

king’s right to overturn decisions of Parlement.59 This legalistic, histori-

cal text on the history of évocations is based on archival materials starting

from the time of François I.

As Colbert moved against the parlements, he showed himself to be a

key player in the establishment of royal power after the Fronde. Louis

XIV wanted to take power from the parlements, and with his knowl-

edge of paperwork, law and government, Colbert was to be the archi-

tect of this policy. Mazarin saw Colbert as an indispensable asset, both

‹nancially and politically. In his last will and testament, made on his

deathbed, Mazarin recommended Colbert to the young monarch. Now

in personal control of government, Louis XIV would not take a prime


minister. But as shall become clear, Colbert helped Louis conceptualize

the mechanics of his new state. In 1661, as the king and his minister

worked to form their ‹rst government, Colbert wrote to Louis on how

to organize and manage the Royal Council. The ‹rst lines of this secret

memo to Louis give a clear sense of the driving principle behind Col-

bert’s idea of government:

You must require all to make individual pledges of loyalty and secrecy.

The King must declare that he wants secrecy rigorously observed; . . .

and that he will absolutely expel anyone at all who would be capable

of this weakness.60

Louis evidently agreed with Colbert’s advice, for he allowed Colbert to

draft his ‹rst speech to be read at the opening of the Council of Fi-

nances. Louis read the words of Colbert to his new cabinet of ministers:

The ‹rst thing I desire from you is secrecy; and as I consider it impor-

tant and necessary for the sound management of my affairs, I am at ease

telling you that if I learn that someone has dared tell anyone anything

at all that has happened here, I will ‹nd out the origin of this leak, and

I will expel from my council him who has been capable of this weak-

ness. . . . Once I have taken the resolution to give an order, it must be

executed and supported with resoluteness, sincerity, and secrecy.61

Secrecy meant not only the discretion of ministers and secretaries; it also

meant keeping state information within royal control. To do this, Louis

and Colbert had to disarm potential noble factions, and undermine the

power of the Parlement.

Fouquet: Information Casualty

Essential to this plan was the overthrow of Mazarin’s and Louis XIV’s

early superintendent of ‹nances, Nicolas Fouquet. By all accounts, he

was brilliant, dashing, greedy, and paranoid. Madame de Sevigné, li-

belists, and modern historians alike have painted Fouquet as the victim

of Colbert’s ambition, and of Louis XIV’s dictatorial tendencies.62 But

Fouquet was presumptuous. He made the infamous mistakes of assum-

ing that Louis XIV wanted and needed a prime minister, and thinking

that he would ‹ll that role. In August 1661, at the moment Louis had

taken personal rule after the death of Mazarin, he threw an ostentatious

party at his chateau of Vaux-le-Vicomte. Louis was humiliated by his


minister’s sophisticated opulence and patronage of high society and cul-

ture. Vaux was grander than any abode Louis possessed. Like all inten-

dants of ‹nance before him, Fouquet pilfered money from royal funds;

this was an understood advantage of the position.63 Not only did Fou-

quet steal, however; he managed royal funds badly, and he made the er-

ror of using them to outshine the king, whose personal ‹nances were

still shaky after the Fronde.64 Had Fouquet only spent his money on cul-

ture and parties, perhaps Louis might not have been so bent on destroy-

ing him. But Fouquet also used massive sums to maintain a small army

and to fortify his Island of Belle-Isle off the southern coast of Brittany,

which protected the mouth of the Loire River and thus was the key to

controlling western France. With the help of his cousin, Colbert de Ter-

ron, Colbert had placed a spy dressed as a ‹sherman off the coast of Fou-

quet’s island, who provided a detailed map of the island, as well as a re-

port that detailed ‹fteen hundred laborers, two hundred garrisoned

soldiers, four hundred canon, and “munitions for six thousand men.”65

Even more, du Terron reported that Fouquet had made plans to take

over the Caribbean island of Martinique and to use his own coastal is-

land to receive all the goods produced there.66 In short, Fouquet was

building a miniature kingdom and a small empire. With strong ties to

the Parlement, Fouquet possessed all the elements of a Frondeur, be-

coming an independent and wealthy noble, with an army and fort held

outside of royal authority.

In September 1661, Louis and Colbert moved to arrest Fouquet and

exile his family and friends. Colbert wrote several detailed plans for the

arrest.67 Colbert’s main interest was executing the coup with secrecy, so

that no documents could be removed. All of Fouquet’s of‹ces would be

sealed, and state lawyers would invest the premises and con‹scate all pa-

pers. Colbert’s memo reads:

Do everything to observe secrecy, so that all news comes from the

King, to take all the necessary precautions. For this effect, send three or

four loyal musketeers on the two roads to stop all ordinary or extraor-

dinary couriers from passing without orders from the King, counter-

signed by Monsieur Le Tellier. At the same time as the arrest, also ar-

rest all the [Fouquet’s] assistants and put seals on overything, while also

blocking all visits.68

Colbert insisted that maitres des requêtes be present not only to seal docu-

ments, but to rush them back to his own of‹ce:


It is necessary to assign to this task a maître des requêtes to seal all the cas-

settes and to put them in a safe place; likewise, he should do an exact

research of all the papers that are found in the house and seize them.

Order another of‹cer to arrest all the assistants and make sure that no

papers are transported. If there are two maîtres des requêtes, we could

send one with the commissary to seal the papers. With all these orders

executed, it is necessary to work to speed up the couriers.69

Unprepared and outmaneuvered, Fouquet was stunned by the coup.

He made no moves to destroy his personal archives, which could be

used either to defend or to indict him. Fouquet’s brother, the abbé Fou-

quet, considered destroying the archive by burning down Fouquet’s

chateau at Saint-Mandé, but this, it was thought, would bring further

retribution from Louis XIV.70 As the captain of the king’s musketeers,

Charles d’Artagnan led the arrest of Fouquet and the following search of

his house. Directing the operation was Colbert. Fouquet’s friends no-

ticed a disturbing thing: Colbert was meticulously collecting Fouquet’s

papers. The conseiller d’État de la Fosse wrote to Chancellier Seguier that

he was concerned that Colbert, Fouquet’s obvious enemy, was collect-

ing papers to use politically.71 There was reason to worry. Fouquet had

been trying to win over Louis’s friends, family, and mistresses with gifts

and bribes. As a letter from one of the queen’s ladies in waiting to Fou-

quet surfaced, Colbert began to smell the scent of ammunition to use

against his foe. De la Fosse writes, “I am pained and I tremble as I write

you this, and I believe we must take this letter very seriously, that M.

Poncet has separated to show to M. Colbert.”72 The letter, he warned,

had to be destroyed before it reached the king.

This was, however, impossible. Colbert and his agents were now in

Fouquet’s library and archives, with the letter in their possession. Poncet

and his commissaries ransacked Fouquet’s of‹ce. Behind his armoire,

they found a massive, bound folio notebook, the Cassette of Fouquet.

This compilation of manuscripts revealed Fouquet’s plans, and Colbert

intended to use them as evidence and as propaganda against him.73

With the Cassette, Colbert had the key to Fouquet’s system. It con-

tained Fouquet’s correspondence with various ladies who served as

lovers and informants, as well as information pertaining to payments,

gifts, and bribes.74 It also listed all of Fouquet’s agents and spies, many in

the royal court and administration, and revealed his ‹nancial dealings, as

well as his plans and ‹nances for building his fortress in Belle-Isle.

Among his other papers were plans for a civil war in the case that Louis


XIV evicted him from power—the “Plan de Saint Mandé”—along with

a number of testimonials of loyalty from various ‹gures, such as the par-

liamentarian Maridor, in case of such an event.75

Colbert had hoped that these documents would help indict Fouquet

and impose a death sentence. Even more, Colbert had expected that the

revelation of this secret cache of plans and purloined letters would sway

public opinion in favor of the crown. However, with the irregularities

of the trial, reluctant judges, and the suspicions of the Parlement of Paris

and public, convincing the public was harder than expected.76 In 1663,

Colbert’s powerful uncle, the judge Pussort, shocked the magistracy by

leading an “extraordinary” proceeding, which was, in spite of the legit-

imately damning documents, an ominous and procedurally illegal show

trial.77 Colbert asked the president of the Parlement, Malesherbes de

Lamoignon, to decide Fouquet’s fate before the termination of proceed-

ings, to which the indignate magistrate replied with an epigram: “Un

juge ne dit son avis qu’une fois et sur les ›eurs de lys.”78

Colbert was rightfully perceived by the public as acting in secret,

pulling the strings of the trial behind the scenes, giving new meaning to

his family crest’s symbol, the couleuvre, a climbing snake.79 Echoing the

disgust of public sentiment, Lamoignon noted the “ferocity” of the Col-

bert family to his friend, Mme de Sevigné.80 Even if the trial did not

convince the public of Fouquet’s guilt, it made clear the intention of the

crown to act above the law. It also revealed something essential about

Colbert: he thought about power in terms of information. Colbert

rightly saw the keys to power in Fouquet’s Cassette, which revealed his

network, his ‹nances, and all his plans. Colbert tried to in›uence public

opinion by leaking the incriminating documents, but his actions more or

less back‹red.81 In spite of protests and public opinion, in what was truly

a coup de théâtre, Louis and Colbert got their man. They imprisoned

Fouquet in solitary con‹nement for the rest of his short, miserable life,

and perhaps more importantly, showed to all that the crown had full au-

thority over powerful nobles, legal procedure, and the Parlement itself.

Legislating Secrecy

In the 1660s, Louis and Colbert continued their assault, acting to neu-

tralize the Parlement’s information arsenal by copying its archives of reg-

isters of legal codes.82 As the site where laws were registered, the Par-

lement controlled part of the state’s archive of state legal and ‹nancial

information. Colbert saw the Parlement’s documentary arcana juris, or


secret knowledge of legal affairs, as potential arcana imperii, or state se-

crets, outside the grasp of the monarchy. The idea that the Parlement

held secret knowledge was unacceptable to Louis’s totalizing concept of

royal power. The ancient constitution of France had to be undermined.

In a memo dated October 1, 1665, unambiguously entitled, “Means for

putting the Parlement in the state where it should naturally be, and to

take away once and for all the maxims with which this Company has un-

dertaken to trouble the State, by taking over its administration,”83 Col-

bert recommends “making a declaration to ban them from ever having

access and knowledge of State documents.”84 He then attempted to re-

move vital administrative and legal documents from parliamentary

hands, by rewriting the legal code himself. In a 1664 “Mémoire” to

Louis XIV on judicial reforms, he notes that “secrecy is necessary in

these grand plans,” to avoid obstacles, gain glory, overcome opposition,

and “bring the project to perfection without anyone realizing it is hap-

pening.”85 These are not the words of reform, but of a constitutional

coup d’état, and a frontal assault to control the political public sphere and

classify legal information.86 Here drawn out were the steps to the path to

power.

In 1667, Colbert and his uncle Pussort set about secretly codifying

the legal system, which has quite rightly been seen by historians as one

of the great achievements, though un‹nished, of Colbert’s centralizing

project.87 It stamped out legal corruption and centralized procedure, but

at the same time, it placed strict limits on the parlements’ rights of re-

monstrance against royal legislation.88 It was also a continuation of the

antiparliamentary assault of 1663. In a series of notebooks, Le Procès Ver-

bal de l’Ordonnance de 1667, Colbert’s loyal agent, Nicolas Foucault, tran-

scribed the extraordinary proceedings of their rewriting of the legal

code, essentially a disputation between the Colberts and Lamoignon,

ever resisting their plans, whom the king had allowed to participate in

the Colbertian conclave. On one side, the Colberts tried to institute

closed interrogations, remove the testimony of witnesses, and pare down

procedure and “unduly long” trials, while on the other, Lamoignon

protested against closed trials and lack of legal procedure.89

Lamoigon’s efforts were to no avail, and Colbert managed to have his

way. He began to institute his new legal code with the goal of rendering

the Parlement a simple stamp for royal legislation. It represented a suc-

cess for institutional absolutism, and sealed the rupture between the old

information masters and the crown. Colbert had shown that controlling


information was an essential element in undermining the ancient feudal

constitution of France and the establishment of Louis XIV’s more ag-

gressive form of royal absolutism. Yet his project was not just about re-

moving or controlling existing knowledge. Colbert now sought to make

this innovative though sinister culture of political information-handling

the basis of a new royal statecraft.


c h a p t e r 4

Royal Accountabilitylouis xiv and the golden notebooks

In 1663, Colbert gained the of‹cial title of controller of ‹nances. In

this period of peace between 1662 and 1671 Colbert reformed

‹nancial administration, increasing state revenue by more than

one-third and managing to keep de‹cits slightly above revenue.1 He be-

gan improving revenue through the royal Chambre de Justice, tax re-

forms, and ‹nancial reorganization of the kingdom. Fouquet had been

imprisoned, and the parlements humbled. With income ›owing in,

Louis could focus on pleasure, culture, building, and his absolutist, ad-

ministrative reforms. His powers consolidated in his superministry, Col-

bert set out on his own projects, building his personal library along with

that of the king, and founding his royal academies. With a great part of

the resources of France under his control, Colbert was one of the most

powerful ‹gures in the world. He organized the building of Versailles, as

well as France’s industrial, colonial, and architectural projects.2 It was a

period of achievement for both Louis and Colbert, who worked in con-

cert.3 Louis gave broad policy goals; Colbert would work out their me-

chanics and then Louis would go over the administrative and political

blueprints. It was an opportunity for the young king to learn from his

skilled accountant and minister. It was also the moment in which Louis

and Colbert worked to transform the culture of statecraft, making

archival and managerial cultures from accounting central to kingship.

50

Colbert was Louis’s most important con‹dant and the keeper of his

secrets. Indeed, he helped Louis write two major sections of the Mé-

moires for the Instruction of the Dauphin (1665). Louis entrusted his minis-

ter with raising Mlle de Blois and the count de Vermandois—his bastard

children by Louise de La Vallière—in his own house, caring for them

when they were sick.4 In 1667, when Louise ›ed to a convent in jeal-

ousy and fear over Louis’s infatuation with Mme de Montespan, Colbert

was the go-between, sent to bring her back to Versailles. Colbert also

looked after the royal family, and mediated between Louis and his ex-

travagant brother, Philippe d’Orléans.5 He was careful to take care of

personal business for Louis, just as he had done for Mazarin. Thus he be-

came indispensable at all levels. Colbert literally kept an agenda that “set

the king’s days.”6 A nonchalant note from Louis to Colbert in 1661 il-

lustrates how his services combined the of‹cial and the personal:

As I believe there is nothing pressing today, I will not do any work.

Bring the papers we were to discuss this evening to tomorrow’s

council of ‹nance, so I can ‹nish up what needs to be done before

Mass.

The Queen doesn’t want the ruby box; she has nothing that ‹ts

it.

If anything urgent comes up, let me know.

LOUIS7

In his Mémoires for the Instruction of the Dauphin, Louis stated that he

would rule without a prime minister.8 Yet Colbert’s status partially con-

tradicts this claim, as does the fact that he helped write the Mémoires.

Louis noted to the Dauphin that his undertakings had been so grand that

he had not been able to do everything himself. “I was personally often

relieved in this work by Colbert, whom I entrusted with examining

things that required too much discussion and into which I would not

have had time to go.”9 Colbert did not make ‹nal policy, and he had to

share power with the foreign minister, Hugues de Lionne, and the min-

ister of war, Le Tellier. He was, nonetheless, the leading minister during

the ‹rst two decades—arguably the most glorious—of Louis’s reign.

Louis made policy decisions, but he did so with Colbert’s advice. How

could he do otherwise? It was Colbert who received all the reports of

the intendants and managed much of the workings of the state. Louis

could not master ‹nancial and other complex policy without a guide

through the labyrinth of his medieval administration and the new insti-

Royal Accountability 51

tutions created by his forebears. Thus Colbert emerged as Louis’s teacher

in the workings of ‹nance and government. Colbert created, in essence,

what was an ongoing course in administration and information handling

for Louis that continued until his death in 1683.

Breaking with French royal tradition, Louis XIV did not hire court

humanists as advisors, as Henry IV and Richelieu did. Instead, scholars

were simple servants in his library, working under Colbert. Louis pre-

ferred that his personal accountant serve as his learned advisor in most

branches of statecraft. Colbert not only controlled the Royal Library and

culture complex; as Louis’s information master, he also took over the

role of chief royal counsel and teacher in nonspiritual affairs. In addition

to the sections he contributed to the Instructions for the Dauphin, he wrote

numerous other pedagogical guides for Louis’s heir.10 This had formerly

been traditional activity for humanists such as Guillaume Budé. Louis

asked Colbert for reports and instructions on questions necessary to the

management of the state. What emerged was a unique training course in

government administration that re›ected Colbert’s system of informa-

tion gathering. Colbert’s program was a departure from the ancient tra-

dition of royal pedagogy. If Cardinal Richelieu had preached political

science in his Political Testament (1624), Colbert’s approach represented

the rise of a new technical type of governmental expertise.

What Kings Need to Know to Rule

Old Italian mercantile, administrative culture had fostered humanism,

and it was steeped in an ethic of technical expertise. Humanist engineers

mastered the learning of the ancients to literally rebuild Rome, and mer-

chants and artisans developed double-entry bookkeeping, managed city

government, sponsored erudite projects, and also wrote their own histo-

ries and memoirs using their commercial registries and archives as

sources of memory.11 At the same time, as humanist traditions evolved,

they had less and less mercantile content. What had been a merchant and

bureaucratic-inspired tradition of learning became increasingly literary

and scienti‹c as humanist philologists translated ancient texts and copied

their content. Humanist political theory became grounded in ancient

history and legal scholarship. Yet at the very moment that Tacitist hu-

manists claimed that statecraft could be learned through classical ethics

and history, it became increasingly clear that these forms of political

learning were not suf‹cient for managing a large, industrial, colonial,

and militarized state.


In his Political Testament, Richelieu wrote his own work of Machi-

avellian, Tacitist maxims, paired them with essays on Christian morality,

and made references to medical culture.12 Richelieu the Catholic prelate

practiced reason of state: he mastered secrecy, built his administration,

and even made secret treaties with Protestants against Rome and Spain.13

To survive in the world of religious strife and the horrors of the Thirty

Years War, civic politics, as Justus Lipsius had said, was an ethic unto it-

self, and reason of state and the learning of history were thus seen as

methods for survival. This was the culmination of Counter-Reform

princely prudence, steeped in Jesuit moral casuistry and historical max-

ims necessary in the fallen world of shattered Christendom in which one

sought the dif‹cult balancing act of crushing one’s enemies, while at the

time, as the Spanish Jesuit Balthasar Gracián recommended, “remaining

saintly.”14

As sophisticated as late humanist political culture was, it did not en-

compass all forms of practical learning. Erasmus had insisted that kings

become scholars, and Henry IV’s doctors recommended they be system-

atic empiricists; however, these humanists did not ask their kings to be-

come experts in the minutiae of state administration and ‹nance.15 This

was left to ministers like Sully and Richelieu. Sully pioneered many of

the budgetary, statistical, industrial, and military reforms later taken up

by Colbert, and, although there is no evidence he ever learned double-

entry bookkeeping, he kept state account books.16 Yet he never taught

his craft to Henry IV. Richelieu took an active role in ‹nancial man-

agement and taxation through his superintendents of ‹nance, but he

never attended a meeting of the Counsel of Finances. He admitted to his

superintendent of ‹nances, Claude de Bullion, that he had “no knowl-

edge of ‹nances [but] sought the advice of those to whom the King has

given their direction.”17 Machiavellians and Tacitists such as Bodin,

Botero, and Richelieu recognized that money was the “sinews of

power.” At the same time, they did not seek to study the artisanal and

mercantile traditions of early humanism that had ›ourished in the banks

and workshops of Florence.18

Double-Entry Bookkeeping, Archiving,

and the Political Economy of Statecraft

In the 1590s, the Dutch mathematician and engineer Simon Stevin

(1548–1620) became both tutor and advisor to Prince Maurice of Nas-

sau. The author of works on mathematics, physics, nautical mechanics,


language, and music, Stevin represents a branch of humanism different

from that of literary philologists and lawyers like Erasmus, the late hu-

manist political historian Lipsius, and Jacques-Auguste de Thou.19

Grotius, whose father was a friend of Stevin, was said to have admired

both his theories and his nautical inventions, so crucial for the existence

of a nation that survived below sea level, and from seaborne trade.20

Stevin would go on to be state engineer, superintendent of ‹nances, and

chief of the all-important Dutch waterworks. As a scholar, Stevin de-

scended from Florentine mathematicians, inventors, and engineers in the

tradition of Brunelleschi, Leon Battista Alberti, and Leonardo da Vinci.

While he wrote works on formal learned subjects such as language and

mathematics, he mostly focused on engineering and practical learning.

This was re›ected in his work on mathematics, which, following old

Italian tradition, considered accounting and double-entry bookkeeping

a branch of the mathematical sciences.

Stevin tutored Prince Maurice in the art of double-entry bookkeep-

ing and kept a journal of his interactions with the prince. The idea of a

prince learning accounting was an anathema in a world of Christian,

chivalric, and courtly princes. It is impossible to imagine the Neopla-

tonist, elitist Castiglione recommending that a courtier, or his friend the

emperor Charles V, learn the minutiae of keeping account and receipt

books.21 It would be hard to keep one’s sprezzatura while toiling over

balance sheets. Yet Stevin taught Prince Maurice exactly these skills. He

explained to him credits, debits, capital, and entry keeping. The prince

noted how dif‹cult it was to understand.22

The basic principle of double-entry bookkeeping is the veri‹cation

of two calculations made in relation to the sum of capital. Credits are a

plus value to the capital, while any purchase is both an addition of goods,

but also a debit to capital used to pay for them. Comparing the credits

and debits and coming up with the same sum for ‹nal capital holdings

ensures proper management of the general account of capital. Prince

Maurice was an apt pupil, for he understood that the most complex con-

cept within double-entry bookkeeping centered on capital and its dou-

ble relationship to credits and debits: “The entries stand in my ledger as

debits and credits. Which of these two stand to my advantage and which

to my disadvantage?”23

Stevin had based his own writings and pedagogical program on the

founding work on accounting, the famous Tuscan Franciscan mathe-

matician Luca Pacioli’s Summa de Arithmetica (Venice, 1494), in which is

found the treatise “The Particulars of Accounting and Their Record-


ing.” Immortalized in a portrait by Jacopo de’Barbarbi (1495) now in

Naples, a possible translator of Piero della Francesca’s writings on per-

spective, and a collaborator of Leonardo, Pacioli (1445–c. 1517) was cer-

tainly not the ‹rst to understand double-entry bookkeeping. There is

evidence that a branch of the Medici family under Averardo di

Francesco di Bicci used double-entry bookkeeping at their bank branch

in the 1390s.24 However, Pacioli was the ‹rst to explain the mechanics

of accounting in a printed book, which would become the basis of liter-

ature on accounting therewith. One reason Maurice of Nassau found

the concept of capital—or household or business inventory—complex

was because inventorying and capital assessment entailed a massive

archival undertaking. To understand his accounts, a king would have to

understand his records, and this took a certain level of archival skill to

keep track of capital.

Pacioli’s treatise focuses primarily on accounting the forms of record-

keeping necessary to management of inventorying. Double-entry book-

keeping is based on the keeping of three primary books:

Immediately after the Inventory, you need three books to make the

work proper and easy. One is called Memorandum (Mémoriale), the

second Journal (Giornale), and the third Ledger (Quaderno).25

The memorandum book is a “scrap book, or blotter.”26 In this book, all

transactions are kept in real time, as they happen, and original records are

‹led. Paccioli insists that this record-keeping is the basis for accounting.

Indeed, it was the foundation of the ars mercatoria. Everything must be

recorded: hours and dates, as well as measurements and types of cur-

rency. The memorandum could be huge, and a business would have nu-

merous ones for different parts of the business: household expenses, ac-

quisitions, sales, and different branches of the business. Indeed, for a

large business, memoranda could number into the dozens per month.

The memoranda would have to be summarized and transferred to the

journal.27 Once all three books are ‹lled out, they must be taken to civil

of‹cials to be veri‹ed. The clerk who veri‹es should make a written

record of veri‹cation and mark it in the account books.28

Thus the merchant had to be skilled in handling numbers, books, in-

ventories, and archives.

In this Journal, which is your private book, you may fully state all that

you own in personal or real property, always making reference to the


inventory papers which you or others may have written and which are

kept in the same box, or chest, or ‹lza, or mazzo, or pouch, as is cus-

tomary and as is usually done with letters and other instruments of

writing.29

To record all inventory was a massive undertaking: houses, lands, stores,

commercial inventory, cash, receipts, and promissory notes. The inven-

tory for one large house alone could entail numerous record books.30 To

handle this information, the merchant needed to master the discursive

and indexing tools necessary for writing, summarizing, and making ac-

counts accessible for easy reference. In the chapter entitled “Summary of

the Rules and Ways for Keeping a Ledger,” Pacioli lists all the rules for

writing and keeping records necessary to create a ledger book.31 He de-

scribes abbreviations, shorthand markings, and other note-taking tools

necessary for navigating large rolls of accounts.32

Pacioli’s book had a wide impact throughout Europe, inspiring ac-

counting books called “Merchant’s Mirrors” by John Mellis, Richard

Dafforne, Jan Ympyn, and Stevin.33 With the rise of bookkeeping came

merchant writing: travel reports and narratives, family and urban histo-

ries, as well as genres of ars mercatoria handbooks, which could be printed

or personal manuscript notebooks listing rates of exchange, the schedule

of tides, and legal paperwork for trade in various nations. Standard mer-

chant training entailed complex archival and note-keeping skills. In his

manuscript ars mercatoria notebook, Robert Williams, a seventeenth-

century English merchant, recommended traveling with a trunk full of

twenty-one different forms of notebooks and account books. His man-

uscript “Notes Concerning Trade 1632–1654” contains “A Catalogue of

ye Bookes necessary for ye punctuall Marchant to Keepe Acco[un]ts”

for a long merchant voyage:

1. A Cash-booke 2. A Write or Acquittance Booke 3. a booke for

charges Merchandize 4. a Coppie booke of Letters 5. a Remembrance

or Note Booke 6. a ffreight booke 7. a booke of Inv[en]toires sent 8. a

booke of Inv[en]toires received 9. a Coppie-booke of Acco[un]ts sent

10. a Coppie booke of acco[un]ts rec[eive]d 11. a bill of lading booke

12. a booke of orders given & rece[ieve]d 13. a Cates-booke for house-

hold exp[enc]es 14. a Wast or day booke 15. a Journall 16. a Lidger 17.

a Quadaranecra [quadernàccio, a rough workbook] of Goods rec[eive]d

& cons[igne]d 18. a Custome-house booke 19. a booke of Cargoes of

ships arrived & dep[ar[ted 20. a Month booke 21. a booke et Coppie

in partitos.34


This was in essence a traveling business archive inspired by the Italian

tradition, revealing Williams’s formal knowledge of accounting tradi-

tion, by now standardized throughout trading nations by the circulation

of Pacioli’s work. Note-taking, bookkeeping, and archiving were com-

mon for traveling merchants as well for any merchant or naval ship.35 At

this time, being a successful merchant meant being a ‹nancier, an

archival manager, and a record-keeper, as well as something of a natu-

ralist who observed and collected. Stevin was able to make the Dutch

state use double-entry bookkeeping. It is said that he made the same rec-

ommendation to Sully, who did not take his advice.36 In the 1650s, Jean

Roland Mallet kept single-entry bookkeeping, simply comparing rev-

enue and expenditure.37 But there is no evidence of royal involvement

in bookkeeping. Indeed, Jacques Savary’s Le Parfait Négociant ou Instruction

générale pour ce qui regarde le commerce (1679), commissioned by Colbert,

discusses double-entry bookkeeping and the handling and archiving of

commercial paperwork, but only in the context of private business, not

for state administrators (see ‹g. 4). In France, the ars mercatoria would take

longer to enter into royal culture.

In 1615, Antoine de Montchrétien dedicated his Treatise on Political

Economy (1615) to the regent, Marie de Medici, and her son, Louis XIII.

Addressing the monarchs, he begged the Queen Mother to teach her

son the technical side of manufacturing, as well as about merchandise

and new natural products from the colonies. The king would need to

understand shipbuilding, metalworking, manufacturing, and even how

to run a forge.38 He would also have naturalist knowledge about sandal-

wood, materia medica, tobacco, and rhubarb.39 Montchrétien cited med-

ical theory, and called for the kind of knowledge from the marketplace

associated with Petrus Ramus, traveling medical humanists such as Gar-

cia da Orta, Jesuits travel writers, and the older artisanal humanism of

Brunelleschi, Alberti, and da Vinci.40 Late humanism, both Erasmian

and Tacitist, relied on rhetoric, history, and law. Montchrétien was de-

manding additions to the royal curriculum that included the basic ele-

ments of the ars mercatoria. He insisted that the king acquire a working

knowledge of ‹nance. He would have to study indendants’ reports, un-

derstand the tax codes, and try to reform corruption. Doing this entailed

an understanding of how ‹nances worked and the making of “a true

revenue account,” the keeping of a royal ledger.41

In spite of the economic works of Bodin, Laffemas, and Montchré-

tien, and in spite of Marie de Medici’s personal connections with bank-

ing families, she did not heed Montchrétien’s advice. Financial and in-


dustrial training never entered into Louis XIII’s pedagogical program,

designed by the humanist doctor Jean Hérouard.42 Louis XIII would

never have studied account books. He might have looked at the pictures

in Conrad Gessner’s Historia animalium, but as Hérouard complained, the

young prince did not really read the traditional humanist books he rec-

ommended to him.43 Equally, while industrious and reforming ministers

such as Sully and Richelieu were deeply in›uenced by the mercantilist

and absolutist ideas of Bodin and Montchrétien, there is little evidence

that these ministers sought to understand the mundane workings of ac-

counting.44

Royal Accountability

Due to the tumult of the Fronde during the ‹rst decade of his life, Louis

XIV’s formal education was neglected.45 In 1650, Mazarin and Anne of

Austria ‹nally found an odd set of tutors for the young king.46 His pri-

mary teacher was the skeptical philosopher François de La Mothe Le

Vayer (1588–1672). La Mothe Le Vayer was an heir to Montaigne and

Pierre Charron—indeed, he owned a part of Montaigne’s library. By the

1630s, he had already written essays on skepticism and pyrrhonism,

questioning the Cartesian system and the very possibility of knowledge

itself.47 Along with Naudé, he was a pioneer of the radical skepticism

that would open the doors for ‹gures like Spinoza.48 He would go on to

write The Lack of Certitude There is in Historical Works (1668), and later di-

alogues on skepticism.

From a parliamentary family, Le Vayer created for Louis a series of

pedagogical works concerning sciences necessary for statecraft: Géogra-

phie, Rhétorique, Morale, Economique, Politique, Logique, and Physique du

prince (1651–58). These royal manuals of pedagogy stand out as examples

of the sort of late humanism of libertines like Gabriel Naudé. They are

historical and ethical, with ample references to classical sources, yet are

dry and offer little practical advice. His essays on ‹nance and economy

discuss the historical and ethical role of the prince in taxing fairly. Con-

sidering the rise not only of political economy but also of Cartesianism,

it is remarkable that Louis received formal training neither in ‹nance nor

in mathematics.

His other tutor was the churchman Hardouin de Péré‹xe, the abbé

of Beaumont, who taught the young king statecraft some Latin and Ital-

ian. In his catechisms and Institutio principis ad Ludovicum XIV (Paris: A.

Vitré, 1647), Péré‹xe set out the pious Latin maxims that Louis would


copy by hand in a notebook now at the Bibliothèque Nationale de

France.49 In the ‹rst lines, Louis exhorted that “the ‹rst duty of a Chris-

tian prince is to serve God,” and “I wish to render honor to priests.”

Whatever the libertine La Mothe Le Vayer thought of this, he did not

say. Although he never played a political role, Le Vayer continued pub-

lishing skeptical works and was given a good pension by Louis.

Along with a thin bookish education and the pious exercises of his

religious preceptors, Louis learned Spanish piety, etiquette, and elabo-

rate Spanish court ceremonial from his mother, Anne of Austria, daugh-

ter of Philip III and granddaughter of Philip II of Spain. Added to this,

Cardinal Mazarin gave his young godson Louis another sort of educa-

tion. He allowed him to sit in on council meetings, including those of

‹nance.50 Louis learned the workings of the state and its multifarious in-

stitutions. To sit in council was to receive reports, discuss war and taxa-

tion, and to learn how to digest the paperwork that ›owed to the sum-

mit of the state.51 The cardinal would test the young king, asking him to

make decisions based on the reports received in council.52 While his hu-

manist education was poor, his formation as a prince was extensive.

Louis thus learned the métier of being king, and he gained a taste for it.

When Louis took power in 1661, he had been well trained by Mazarin

in ruling by a state council of ministers. There is ample evidence in the

Instructions that Louis had read Machiavelli and Justus Lipsius. He had

learned the basic lessons of reason of state.53 At the same time, he knew

his own de‹ciencies in his knowledge of the workings of the govern-

ment and its most detailed aspect: its ‹nancial apparatus.

Like his pupil, Mazarin had no formal training in accounting. This is

why he hired Colbert as his personal accountant. It was as a young man

that Louis met Colbert, his stepfather’s accountant. On his deathbed,

Mazarin not only left Louis as his legacy most of the thirty million

pounds Colbert helped him acquire; he also quite literally left him Col-

bert.54 In his will, of which Colbert and Fouquet were executors,

Mazarin simply states, “I ask the king to hire him [Colbert], for he is

trustworthy.”55

In the Instructions of 1665, Louis XIV boasted to his heir that success-

ful kingship lay in being

informed of everything, listening to the lowliest of my subjects, always

knowing the number and character of my troops and the condition of

my strongholds, constantly issuing orders for all their needs, dealing di-

rectly with foreign envoys, receiving and reading dispatches, drafting


some of the replies personally and giving the substance of the others to

my secretaries, regulating the collections and the expenditures of my

state, having those whom I place in important positions report directly

to me, maintaining greater secrecy in my affairs than any of my prede-

cessors, distributing graces as I choose, and keeping my servants, unless

I am mistaken—although showered with graces for themselves and

their families—in modesty far removed from the loftiness and from the

power of prime ministers.56

Although Louis clearly set out the problem of managing his large-scale

administrative state, the Instructions hardly give the technical knowledge

needed to manage the state administration. Indeed, Louis’s own early

education did not prepare him to take on this new government. How

then did Louis conceive of and manage a large-scale administrative state?

Louis exhorted his son never to trust a prime minister, except in

questions of ‹nance, where kings need experts. “I took the precaution

of assigning Colbert . . . with the title of Intendant, a man in whom I had

the highest con‹dence, because I knew that he was very dedicated, in-

telligent, and honest; and I have entrusted him then with keeping the

register of funds that I have described to you.” Along with sections of

the Instructions for the Dauphin, Colbert also wrote manuscript instruc-

tions for Louis’s heir that contain information pertaining to ‹nances.57 In

them, he discusses the need to master ‹nance through the handling of

account books and the “disposition of registers.”58

Colbert recommended to the young prince that he “note by hand all

the accounts in the state ‹nancial registers of funds at the beginning of

each year, and also the registry of spending from the past year. He should

go over and sign with his hand all the roles of Savings, all the account-

ing reports, and all the status claims that have been veri‹ed.”59 He

should never stop doing this work, for it is so delicate, warns Colbert,

that it can be left to no other. In short, Colbert felt it necessary that, to

be king, the young prince learn the basics of accounting and inventory

management.

What Colbert wrote to the Dauphin in 1665, he had already taught

Louis in 1661. The “registers” mentioned by both Louis and Colbert

were not just traditional account books. Instead, they represented an ex-

traordinary step in the counsel of kings. If Louis claimed that he knew all

things about his kingdom at all times—accounts, troop numbers, diplo-

matic information—it was because twice a day for more than two hours,

he went over dispatches and reports.60 His chief reporter was Colbert,


who presented his summaries to the king more than twice a week, but

most importantly, on Friday, when he presented an overview of all the

information he had received.61

From their correspondence, it is clear that Louis asked Colbert not

only to take care of his personal and extraordinary business; he also asked

Colbert speci‹c questions about how the state worked. It was stagger-

ingly arcane—a feudal web of laws and taxes. Colbert was the master of

the internal report, of the dossier. Colbert’s henchmen set about writing

explanations of how the state worked: the history of law, tax relations

with the church, and how Louis could gain power over the par-

lements.62 At Louis’s request, in 1666, Colbert wrote a historical and le-

gal history of how the crown ‹nanced and out‹tted its household

troops. Colbert quoted not only ancient texts in this historical report,

but also legal documents from the time of François I and Henry IV.63

The same is the case in his “Mémoire sur le règlement des taxes pour la

décharge de la Chambre de Justice” (1661–62).64 Finance and taxes were

historical and legal questions that were illuminated not only by current

data, but also by historical research into the archives of the kingdom.

In 1663, Colbert began writing a history of royal ‹nance entitled

“Mémoires sur les affaires de ‹nances de France pour servir à l’his-

toire.”65 There is only one copy of this text, written in Colbert’s hand.

Un‹nished, it is Colbert’s longest and most detailed single work, and it

functioned at several levels.66 It was meant to inform Louis of ‹nancial

precedent of past kings. Its detail of royal accounts suggests it was meant

for Louis alone. A biased pedagogical text, it both explains to the king

how to manage his ‹nances, and celebrates royal achievement, opposing

it to the crimes of Fouquet, while, with studied understatement, point-

ing out the modest, hard work of Colbert himself.

The text explains the functions of the intendants; how much kings

such as Henry IV taxed; and how much revenue they earned.67 Colbert

begins his essay by noting that royal ‹nances had constantly been mis-

managed, to the point where past kings were only con‹rming ‹nancial

policy that had been done by their ministers.68 He went over past errors

and “pernicious maxims” that had driven royal ‹nances into bank-

ruptcy.69 He also discusses institutional history, such as the role of Par-

lement, the indendants, and the Chambre de Justice.70 Colbert’s system

of intendants and agents permitted him to write this history. He had at

his disposal up-to-date ‹gures on royal ‹nances, taxes, manufacturing,

and seaborne trade.71 Thus Colbert could inform the king while also fur-

thering his own interests. He produced ‹gures from royal accounts dur-


ing the time of Fouquet to illustrate the fallen minister’s errors and “dis-

sipation.”72 He discussed the methods of handling ‹nance, explaining to

the king the best way to manage his accounts through a Council of Fi-

nances, with Colbert at its head.73

Colbert’s history of royal ‹nance exposes the in›uence of the culture

of accounting and how Colbert presented and taught it to Louis, the ‹rst

French king to learn the mechanics of accounting. In a long passage that

comes from Pacioli, the minister describes the practices of the accoun-

tant king he has trained:

Then, His Majesty will have delivered the reports of the state of

‹nances, including the [tax] farms as well as the general receipts, in

which there will be found an in‹nity of considerable examples that the

corruption of past centuries has established, and which consumed a

great part of the most evident revenues of the king.

Beginning with the ‹rst council, His Majesty had ordered that an

exact register be kept of the entire receipts of expenditure of the State

for each year; and as this had not been done by the preceding admin-

istration, and as those books that had been kept before were extremely

confused, it was impossible to keep them in a way that was clear and

intelligible. But as His Majesty had them [the registers] presented to

him every eight days, and as he gave his orders to reform them so that

he could perceive any error they contained, he managed, in ‹ve or six

months time, to make them so clear and so sure as to what was put in

them, that this method covered any possibility of theft or dissipation,

not only during his reign, but as long as these orders will be given.

The ‹rst [of these registers] is called the Journal, in which are writ-

ten all the orders that are signed day by day, and, in the margin, the

funds from which they have been allocated. The ‹rst council after the

end of the month, His Majesty has this register brought to him, and has

all the recent expenditures of which it contains records, and has the ac-

counting of funds done in his presence and signed with his hand.

The second is the Register of funds, in which is recorded, by sepa-

rate chapters, all the funds, that is to say all the receipts of the State,

which are written on the back (verso) of the page; and on the front

(recto) the entire con‹rmation, which is to say the payments made to the

Savings fund or the expenditures that are allocated from these funds.

And, from time to time, at the opening of this register, His Majesty

veri‹es the funds and con‹rmation, which he calculates and signs with

his own hand.

The third is the Register of expenditures, in which is recorded all


the expenditures of the State; and in the margins, are the funds from

which they have been allocated. And from time to time, at the open-

ing of this register, His Majesty veri‹es the nature of expenditures,

such as extraordinary ones made for war, royal houses (buildings and

others), sees all the funds from which they have been taken, and has

them calculated in his presence, and signs them with his hand.

These three registers each contain that which the others contain,

and can be easily veri‹ed one by the other.

In the Journal that contains expenditures, the allocation is in the

margins and [also] the page where the article of expenditure and the al-

location have been written in the two registers of funds and expendi-

tures, which are classi‹ed.

The same thing [happens] in the Register of funds, that is to say the

record of expenditures that have been allocated and that have the ref-

erence number of the register-journal and [of the register] the expen-

ditures which have been mentioned. The same [is true] for the Regis-

ter of expenditures; so that all three of these registers serve to control

each other and so that there can be no fault in one that cannot be

justi‹ed by another.

By this clear and easy method, His Majesty has placed in himself all

his own security, and has reduced his reliance on those who have the

honor to serve him in this function.74

There is evidence that Louis took a strong interest in state accounts

at the instigation of his accountant minister. In 1661, Louis wrote to his

mother, “I have already begun to taste the pleasures to be found in

working on ‹nances myself, having, in the little attention I have given

it, noted important matters that I could hardly make out at all, but no

one should doubt that I will continue.”75 Louis and Colbert corre-

sponded constantly on questions of ‹nance, with Colbert sending the

king requests to be authorized.76 Colbert would leave half the page of his

letters to the king empty so that he could respond on them. Louis re-

mained interested in ‹nancial minutiae into the 1670s, such as when he

wrote in response to a letter from Colbert complimenting the king on

forcing the provinces to pay extraordinary taxes, “It is very agreeable to

hear you speak of my ‹nances in the way you do.”77 Colbert and Louis

discussed ‹gures and speci‹cs. Louis veri‹ed and signed, but it is clear

that in the end, he deferred to Colbert. In matters of ‹nance, Louis

mostly responded to Colbert in the margins of his letters, “It is for you

to judge what is best.”78 Though at times Louis gave direct orders, his


correspondence with Colbert shows that he mostly left the details of

‹nance to his minister.79

In spite of the fact that true double-entry bookkeeping was not done

at an of‹cial level, the veri‹cations of the “États de la Dépense et Re-

cette du Trésor” (1662–81) show that a sophisticated form of state ac-

counting emerged during the ministry of Colbert. Louis, Colbert, and

other ministers of the Council of Finances—Séguier, Villeroy, D’Aligre,

and de Sève—signed off on the tallied account books. If these ‹nal ac-

counts were tallied in the presence of the king and his council, the more

complex preliminary bookkeeping and veri‹cation was clearly done by

Colbert for Louis. In any case, Colbert set up the books so that they

would be easy to verify. These account books thus represent an ideal of

kingly ‹nancial information handling that Colbert used not only to sell

his talents, but also to exhort Louis to become a roi comptable, which, to

a certain extent, Louis did.

The Price of Monarchy: Louis XIV’s Golden Notebooks

Colbert’s balancing act of reforming administration, informing himself

and the king while also cementing his own power, was based on his

giving the king the sense, real or not, that Colbert was helping him

master the dossiers of state. Colbert had to collect information, but he

then had to ‹nd a way to present it to the king. If Colbert kept state

account books and one hundred, thematic administrative scrapbook

folios, it was not simply to master information, but also to show to

Louis that he could do his job of recording data, tallying it, and mak-

ing ‹nal reports.80 Louis sometimes wanted to see Colbert’s various

compendia, but more often, he wanted the ‹nal report. As a good ac-

countant, Colbert kept vast inventories, scrapbooks, journals, and

ledgers for each tax farmer, region, different tax, and different royal ex-

penditure. He maintained ledgers of state accounts, but he did not sim-

ply have Louis verify them. What Colbert does not mention in his his-

tory of ‹nance is that he also created a new pedagogical and practical

tool never before used in the history of royal counsel. Colbert created

for Louis pocket notebooks, which contained state ledgers and expla-

nations of how accounts worked.81 Colbert made and kept the ac-

counts and he presented them to Louis in an easy-to-use, pocket form.

These notebooks are the most dramatic manifestation of how Colbert’s

handling of information turned into reports and pedagogical, adminis-

trative tools for Louis XIV.


The Bibliothèque Nationale has thirty notebooks under the headings

“Carnets de Louis XIV.”82 During or after each ‹scal year, one or two

were made for Louis, summing up various accounts and giving the ‹nal

budget tally for the year. They are bound in red maroquin, with gold ti-

tles, and held closed by two gold pop clasps. They measure one hundred

by seventy ‹ve millimeters (four by three inches), and were made to be

kept in Louis’s pocket for easy reference. In the ‹rst edition from 1661

the manuscript writing is standard, on paper. However, it is clear that

these simple ledgers were distasteful to Louis’s sense of personal

grandeur. If Louis were going to carry account ledgers on him, he was

going to do so in a manner be‹tting the Sun King. Colbert appears to

have sought the aid of Nicolas Jarry and his workshop in creating new

vellum notebooks with illuminations (see ‹gs. 5 and 6). Starting in 1669,

the notebooks contain richly adorned illuminated frontispieces. One

1670 notebook has ›eur-de-lys on the spine of the binding. By the late

1670s, even after Jarry’s death in 1674, the notebooks are illuminated,

and even simple accounts are written out in gold and colored paint and

decorated with ›owers reminiscent of Jarry’s 1641 masterpiece, the

Guirlande de Julie. Thus Colbert created ledgers ‹t for the Sun King,

themselves treasures, which Louis kept in his pocket and probably con-

sulted during meetings with counselors and secretaries, as well as while

going through state dispatches and intendant reports.

It was through Colbert’s “abridgements” of ‹nance and reports on

state matters that Louis had found his method of delegating the manage-

ment of government and state information. Like his predecessors, Col-

bert kept account books, summaries from the Chambre des Comptes,

comprising revenue and expenditure books as well as inventory registers

of the king’s wealth and holdings.83 He also kept scrapbook-style books

like those described by Pacioli. Colbert’s folio scrapbook cataloged un-

der the title “Recueil de Finance de Colbert” is ‹lled with brouillons, or

scraps of various information: revenues, receipts, texts of feudal tax law,

the revenue of overseas companies, loan and expenditure receipts, all ap-

parently thrown together in real time.84 As described by Lister, most of

the major account books were located in the same library complex as

Colbert’s more formal collections. Colbert’s information collection

played directly into his creation of account books for the king. Only

Colbert’s collection was larger and more complex, as were his ‹nancial

and industrial enterprises. Bigger business and bigger government meant

more money, thus more information.

The notebooks were called different names, though they all meant


the same thing: Abrégés, or “Agendas de Finance,” as Colbert called

them, or “registers,” to use Louis’s term. They only listed expenditures

and earnings, and they also detailed and compared the income from each

tax-farmer.85 They gave ‹nal single-entry tallies of spending as com-

pared with cash on hand.86 They gave comparisons, such as tax-farmer

income between 1661 and 1665, so Louis could see change over time.

For example, the Abrégé of 1680 compares revenue between 1661 and

1680.87 They would list all the revenue, and all the names of the local ac-

countants who produced accounts in a given provincial capital or pays

d’état. Some of the agendas contain inventories of purchases, such as the

“State of Acquisitions” from the Abrégé of 1671 (fol. 26r.). Many of the

data tables of Pacioli’s accounting schemas formed the basis of Colbert’s

pocket reference books.

While humanist kings made commonplace books of Tacitist and Li-

vian maxims in their pockets, Louis kept in his pocket Colbert’s ledgers

with their golden, illuminated calligraphy. What is signi‹cant here to the

history of knowledge and royal pedagogy is that the notebook and

archiving culture of accounting moved ever closer to the central prac-

tices of royal statecraft. Louis mixed his traditional, late humanist educa-

tion with the practical and legal knowledge that Colbert and his house

scholars, intendants, and agents provided him. Humanist education was

clearly useful, but it was not enough to run a state effectively. Diderot

was not yet born. However, it was here, in the administrative project of

Louis XIV and Jean-Baptiste Colbert that emerged the idea that practical

knowledge from the shop-room ›oor, and ‹nancial expertise, were as

useful as classical learning, and that, indeed, they could be used together.


c h a p t e r 5

The Rule of the Informers

Scholars of the early modern state such as Ernest Lavisse and Em-

manuel Le Roy Ladurie have long painted Colbert as the inven-

tor of a modern type of government in which one minister cen-

trally managed various branches of government.1 Colbert could order

that a massive factory be built in a swamp, and it happened. He could

micromanage religious life in Canada and sponsor scienti‹c projects in

Paris, while overseeing garden sculpture at Versailles. To do this, Col-

bert needed to be well informed. He thus worked to create a corps of

bureaucratic informers: the state intendants.

To rein in the power of the parlements and reform the legal system,

Colbert began bolstering the of‹ce of the intendant, an of‹ce born from

ancient feudal ‹nancial administration. The intendants were offspring of

feudal ‹nancial and legal administration, as well as merchant traditions.

They applied royal law, managed the ‹nancing of troops, and regulated

taxes. They traveled, took notes, kept account books, and sent reports

back to the central of‹ce. In the middle ages, centralizing monarchs such

as Philippe-Auguste (1165–1233) continued the administrative traditions

of the English in establishing inventories through inquisitiones, or en-

quêtes, which sought, much like the Doomsday Book, to register feudal

and ecclesiastical rights and property, while establishing royal authority

and regulating abuses.2

In the sixteenth century, the French parlements provided lawyers,

67

maîtres des requêtes, from the Cour des Aides, part of the provincial ad-

ministration of the royal treasury, who would receive commissions as in-

spectors to oversee taxation, such as the implementation of the taille, and

to pay troops and oversee military funding.3 In essence, they were venal

missi domini, or traveling royal representatives, who purchased their po-

sition and whose principal function was to oversee taxes and to stamp

out abuses. As such, they were despised by local powers. Richelieu ex-

panded the function of the intendants, ‹rst to be permanent state repre-

sentatives, but also to evolve from inspectors to statistic gatherers and

record keepers. In 1634, he issued the reforms of Ef‹at, which estab-

lished the permanent role of intendants to write enquêtes. These ques-

tionnaires were in the same administrative spirit as Philip II’s relaciones

topográ‹cas of the mid-1500s. Intendants wrote reports on population

size; architectural, industrial, and natural resources; political and religious

institutions; and the number and status of their of‹cers.4 The intendants

also acted as representatives of royal justice and as such came into

con›ict with the jurisdiction of the Parisian and provincial parlements.

During the Fronde, with the power of the crown weakened, the Par-

lement of Paris looked to regain its prerogatives and abolished the of‹ce

of intendant on July 4, 1648.5

With the return of Mazarin and his assistant Colbert in 1653, the in-

tendancy was effectively reestablished, giving the maîtres des requêtes—

state tax lawyers—new of‹ces of intendancy to reestablish royal power

and crush the Frondeurs.6 As Colbert’s control over the ‹nancial ad-

ministration grew, the intendants came under his jurisdiction. Indeed,

they would quickly become not only his principal administrative tool,

but also an essential element in his attempts to create a state information

system.7 Although the intendants were not formal or recognized schol-

ars, Colbert intended them to be information masters in their own right.

Daniel Dessert has meticulously traced what he calls “the Colbert

lobby,” a web of familial, social, and professional connections that al-

lowed Colbert to rise to power, and to hold it.8 Colbert maintained an

extensive network of ‹nanciers and ‹nancial agents who informed him,

helped him in business ventures, and helped him undermine enemies

such as Fouquet. As Colbert’s power grew, he assigned his loyal friends

and contacts to major posts in justice, tax collecting, and administration.

Indicative of this pattern is his choice of intendants, who often came

from his family, or his old network of associates.9

These trained, loyal representatives formed a corps of information

collectors and informants answerable to Colbert. In terms of major ques-


tions, such as taxation, the legal reforms took power away from the Par-

lement and placed it with the intendants. They worked to apply his ad-

ministrative codes, which centralized legal practice and stamped out

costly local corruption. Colbert’s reforms also required new of‹cial pa-

perwork, much of it written or managed by intendants. Local of‹cials

were to send registers of baptisms, marriages, and deaths to the census-

taking intendants, much of it in duplicate.10 Many of these reforms ren-

dered the royal legal process more secretive.11

In September 1663, Colbert wrote the “Instruction pour les maîtres

des requêtes, commissaires départis dans les provinces,” a text that was in

fact a formulary in which he outlined the information that commissaries,

maîtres des requêtes, and intentants would have to collect for the great

enquête begun the following year.12 They would ‹rst have to collect

maps and information about their various regions.13 They were then to

take notes, collect documents, and write reports on four main topics of

ecclesiastical, military, legal, and ‹nancial government. They had to re-

search bishops’ rights and bene‹ces; military government, the state and

‹nancing of troops; justice and local law enforcement; ‹nances, includ-

ing detailed reports on taxes such as the taille and gabelle; and royal rev-

enue and debts owed to the crown in general. They wrote reports on

crown lands and the general geographical and natural state and wealth of

each province, and on commerce and manufacturing; the state of

the navy, army, roads, canals, forage areas; and ‹nally, on counterfeit

money. These statistical reports and geographical studies predated

William Petty’s great project of Political Arithmetic (1690). Colbert as-

signed the intendants to reform the nobility by con‹rming their titles

and regulating their activities and abuses. This required collecting all pa-

perwork having to do with their feudal rights and genealogical claims.

Colbert wrote regular memos to the commissaries and intendants, and to

each, he wrote particular orders concerning how they were to regulate

law, taxes, industry, and culture.14 They were also ordered to regulate

and control the parlements. Colbert noted that the king himself asked

that they “carefully examine” each sovereign company, “in general and

in detail, and those who compose them.”15

From Scholar and Scientist to State Informer

Colbert and his intendants relied on humanist traditions that mixed nat-

ural observation and state management, thus blurring the lines between

scholarship and state expertise. One of the most potent tools of learning

The Rule of the Informers 69

across the professional and ideological spectrum of early modern Europe

was the mix of travel, observation, and description. Indeed, this tripar-

tite practice, which Brian Ogilvie calls “the science of describing,”

would form one of the central elements of natural learning and serve as

the foundation of modern science.16 Colbert would turn the cultures of

traveling and describing into an arm of informing and state intelligence

collection that would be the driving force of his method of government.

From the time of the Italian Renaissance in the 1400s, and with the

‹rst discoveries in the New World in 1492, European scholars, diplo-

mats, explorers, and missionaries had taken basic statistics and written

natural and national descriptions. Situated between traditions of learning

and politics, the art of writing travel descriptions was central to the de-

velopment of early humanism and the Republic of Letters.17 Diplomats

wrote empirical observations of the states they visited, and collected in-

formation and intelligence. Inspired by the Venetian diplomatic re-

lazioni, or relations, ambassadors would describe the political life of the

courts they visited, as well as military, economic, and geographical situ-

ations.18 Jesuits were known for writing descriptions of their trips—of

people, plants, places, buildings, and government.19 Artists began paint-

ing not just allegories but also realistic studies of nature and life.20 Build-

ing on the technical literature and travel reporting of the Middle Ages,

humanist scholars developed the ars apodemica (the art of knowledgeable

travel), and the prudentia peregrinandi (the prudent voyage) from the pere-

grinatio academica. What had begun as tours of the visiting various uni-

versities turned into a formal method of learning from travel and obser-

vation.21

Encyclopedic scholars like the Swiss Theodore Zwinger (1533–88)

and Hugo Blotius (1575–1608), a Dutchman living in Vienna, recom-

mended travel as a form of learning for personal and religious develop-

ment. Indeed, the ideal traveler was to keep several notebooks: one to

write everything notable as the traveler saw it and another to organize

these notes into useful commonplaces or facts.22 In his method of travel,

the Methodus apodemica in eorum gratiam qui cum fructu in quocunque tandem

vitae genere peregrinari (1577), Zwinger mixed moral development with

geographical description, providing information on geography, history,

antiquarian knowledge, and the comparative history and description of

great cities.23 Others, such as Sebastian Münster, mixed geography with

proto-political economy and ethnography and developed a method for

writing local or national surveys in his ongoing work, the Cosmographia

(1544). Learned travelers, such as Montaigne, now wrote journals of


their travels. In the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, travel

literature became ever more technical. In his Six Books of the Republic

(1576), the great humanist and legal polymath Jean Bodin (1530–96) dis-

cussed political and legal theory alongside geographic, climatic, natural,

statistical, and monetary information.24 Making reference to ancient ge-

ography and medical scholarship, Bodin considered it necessary for

rulers to make surveys of their peoples as well as their natural and indus-

trial wealth.25

The growing interest in geography, politics, and political economy,

as well as in the natural sciences, produced the genre of chorography. It

was a genre, writes Barbara Shapiro, that

combined history, geography, topography, natural history, antiquities,

and genealogy with socioeconomic, political, and cultural description

of a particular region. Typically, it followed a preexisting pattern of

topics that included soil, climate, agricultural products, manufactures,

rarities, monuments, architecture, and remains of antiquity and thus

tended to focus on “things” available to the eye both of human and

natural origin.26

Chorographs proliferated in the seventeenth century. General works,

such as Pierre d’Avity’s Les estats, empires, et principautéz du monde (1614),

discussed geography, ethnography, and economic information. In the

realm of education, there was an explosion of geographical manuals dis-

tributed by the Jesuits.27 Technical and naturalist travel logs focused on

local and foreign description and data collection. Universities, libraries,

and Kunstkammern, or cabinets of wonders, became sites of recording

and collecting information and objects—often exotic or antique—from

travel. Great kings such as Philip II of Spain, the Holy Roman emperors

in Prague and Vienna, and merchants such as the Fuggers, kept human-

ist staff, libraries, gardens, and Kunstkammern as sites of prestige, to illus-

trate their mastery over the historical, religious, and natural world.28

Aside from the Jesuits, ambassadorial corps, and spies, however, no state

had ever formed a centralized, internal corps of professional state ob-

servers whose writings would have concrete results.29

Mapping Power

To create a functional state information system, Colbert could not rely

on outside informants. It was necessary to build an internal cadre of


agents whose job was to collect information related to government and

report it only to him. Rather than rely on external informers, he ordered

intendants, inspectors, and geographers to collect systematically natural,

economic, and cultural data while traveling through their provinces. In-

deed, it became a primary element of their of‹cial functions. Scholars

worked for Colbert, who integrated them into his administration. To his

cartographer, the chevalier de Pène, Colbert wrote,

After having made observations of the entire length of the Seine River

up to Le Havre, His Majesty wants him to continue the same recon-

naissance until Tréport, his intention being to have, from la Hogue to

Tréport, very exact maps of all the sinuosity of the banks and all the

openings of rivers, with precise remarks and measurements of all the

places, without telling anyone of the ‹ndings; of all the protected bays,

high- and low-water marks of the tide, dunes, cliffs, estuary openings,

and inlets, and all the possible places where enemies might be able to

attack if they are strong enough to make a landing; with speci‹c de-

signs of each place where they would be able to it, and plans and copies

of all the works that could be made [concerning them].30

Colbert micromanaged the work of cartographers; integrating it into the

larger project of the intendants was to transform the state into a giant

collector of economic, historical, legal, natural, political, and religious

data. Rather than simply training bureaucrats, or simply collecting data,

Colbert was integrating different traditions of learning into the internal

system of the state apparatus.

The originality of Colbert’s reestablishment of the of‹ces of inten-

dancy was that he insisted that they use many of the same empirical prac-

tices as scholars. He transformed their function from provincial tax-

collectors, into professional observers, statistic-takers, and, as Anette

Smedley-Weill calls them, “informers.”31 The intendants were trained

observers whom Colbert told to take notes only on what they had seen

with their own eyes, and not rely on the accounts of others.32 Philip II

of Spain sent his formularies, the relaciones, to untrained local of‹cials.

They thus often went unanswered, or were unclear. Even if his provin-

cial administrators, the Corregidores, collected information for the rela-

ciones, they were not trained speci‹cally to be observers and enforcers of

centralized royal power.33 Colbert’s innovation was to expand the duties

of the intendants, making them primary agents and managers in his state

data-gathering project, giving them many functions of learned and curi-

ous merchants and scholars.


As it was for Philip II, the result of Colbert’s program of professional

observers and report-writers was a massive bank of information that the

crown could use not only for reform and state-building, but also for

strengthening its own power in the long struggle against the indepen-

dent power of traditional nobles and the parlements. With Colbert’s

project of intendants’ enquêtes and reports, his ministry became a secret

central of‹ce for collecting such information at the summit of the

French state. The intendants also collected legal, historical, and eco-

nomic information, which had once been the purview of the par-

lements, and as we have seen, was used to demand extraordinary taxa-

tion and verify rights.34

Colbert received detailed information on population numbers; the

extent of holdings of church lands, as well as church buildings and

schools; militias, troop numbers, and their cost; lists of local seigneurial

rights, titles, courts, and feudal seats of justice. Finally, he received mas-

sive lists of crown landholdings, debts, industries, companies, the pro-

duction numbers for speci‹c mills, and the enormous amount of infor-

mation concerning various taxes. Detail even extended to counting the

number of cows in a given locale, or the types and number of fruits and

trees.35 From his maritime intendants, Colbert de Terron and Arnoul, as

well as resident informants such as Courtin in Stolkholm, he received

merchandise lists, port records, and even shipping schedules.36

One of Colbert’s main interests was the port of Rochefort.37 It was

his pet project at the center of building the royal navy and colonies.

Rochefort was a massive information undertaking to which he assigned

his trusted cousin, the intendant Colbert de Terron. Rochefort was a gi-

ant industrial encyclopedia where all the information was recorded on

how to build and manage a fort and industrial city. This included de-

tailed building plans and managerial instructions for various factories,

shipyards, housing, a chateau, and formal gardens.38 A map from 1688

shows an entire planned grid city within walls, its massive factories span-

ning miles down the Charente River.39 While it is arguable whether the

industrial project to compete with the Dutch and English navies em-

bodied by Rochefort was successful or not, the scale of Colbert’s project

is impressive even today.

As intendant, Terron’s job was daunting. First, he had to master all

state regulations and administrative laws. Then he had to organize all the

paperwork for industrial production—giant inventories, from factories

and shipbuilding, to the paperwork for the maintenance of sailing ships.

A steady stream of dispatches went to Colbert.40 Agents would collect


records from churches, industries, local record-keepers, and ships’ logs.

Many of these reports accompanied ships and merchandise back and

forth between port depots, such as Rochefort. At this point, one of Col-

bert’s close agents would intervene and write a summary report of infor-

mation, and collate it with records by the scribes of the port. This report

would then be sent to Colbert, who would often rewrite it, send it back,

or integrate it into a bigger ‹le or report that he would use, whittle

down into an account or an inventory, or perhaps eventually show the

king. Finally, all reports were ‹led with a call number system. Those that

he thought he would use regularly appear to have been placed in his per-

sonal policy archive, as I shall show in chapter 7. As with all his admin-

istrative correspondence, Colbert, like the king, would respond in the

margins of dispatches with reactions, or simply “bon.”

In the summer of 1671, he sent out form letters to the intendants of

the Royal Marine ports of Rochefort, Toulon, and Brest, and to his

brother, Colbert de Croissy, now ambassador in London. He asked all to

inspect boats—French and English—to understand construction tech-

niques, so that the king could understand the costs of shipbuilding.

In order to give him this information, it is necessary to examine how

much wood enters into the construction of ships of each class, formu-

late the price according to that of the ordinary cost, do the same with

iron and all the materials that go into the construction; examine ‹nally

the number of days of all the workers and their price; and ‹nally make

the calculation from all this as to what is the cost of the construction of

the hull of the ship. Then do the same with all the rigging, apparatuses,

masts, ornaments, artillery and generally of all that which makes up a

ship and places it in a state of readiness for the sea.41

In his “Mémoire sur le règlement à faire pour la police générale des

arsenaux de marine,” from October 1670, Colbert outlined not only all

the aspects of industrial production and knowledge necessary for a port,

but also the necessary information collection and management.42 He lists

all the aspects that will have to be measured and recorded: merchandise,

wood, arms, ammunition, magazines, constructions, all industry in-

volved in making the port, and then the products made by the port, such

as iron, rope, sales, anchors, cannon, and so forth. Beyond simple in-

spections, Colbert established a system of information collection and

record-keeping within his ports and industrial projects. In particular,

naval intendants such as de Terron and Arnoul employed large num-


bers—often twenty per port—of “magazine writers,” or scribes of naval

inventory.

Here was Colbert’s system in action. The intendants managed naval

ports through internal foremen of‹cers, and masters of inventory, the

garde-magazin, or the guardian of the magazine. The job of the garde-mag-

azin was to take inventories of all the magazines of the port. The 1670

of‹cial papers of commission of the sieur Tanguy Ellez, a garde-magasin,

describe him as being responsible for knowing everything in the port

and managing the information gathering and archiving of the port.43 To

ful‹ll his functions, the guardian had an internal system of scribes:

The garde-magasin is assigned the care of all the general and particular

magazines, and to have writers [écrivains] under him who are charged

by him [to keep records of] all the particular magazines of each vessel,

as well as the powder magazines, those of rope, the forges, the sails, the

barrels and generally all that he cannot do himself. And the writers,

who will be necessary to him for all these functions, must keep books

that relate to his large daybook kept in double-entry.44

Thus the “writers,” or écrivains, were scribes, accountants, and inspectors

of the magazines of the port.45 They kept “registers” of all the merchan-

dise necessary to construct a boat, as well as the “roles,” or books of em-

ployees, their place in factories, their functions, production, and wages.46

There were around twenty “writers” in a port, and eight ready to work

on board ships.47

The chain of information led to ships, where roles of sailors were

kept in books, and an inventory of the ship’s goods was kept by the

ship’s commissary, who was responsible for reviewing and recording in-

ventory.48 As de Terron reported to Colbert, these record keepers were

assigned to ships to manage them as small companies:

The establishment of writers strongly contributes to keeping the cap-

tains in order, and to ensure the outcomes of their intentions, you must

please on all occasions that present themselves, let the captains know

that the establishment of the writers is agreeable to the King and that

His Majesty wants them to be able to carry out their duties to their full

extent, and with complete liberty.49

Thus Colbert oversaw the complete chain of information, from his own

long lists of rules and guidebooks and technical plans, to the direction of


the intendants, inventory collectors, scribes, accountants, mapmakers,

and archivists.50 This then led to Colbert’s virtual management of sites

such as Rochefort through correspondence with his intendant, who

would summarize and make packets of all the internal paperwork of the

port in regular dispatches that took three days to reach Paris, Saint-Ger-

main, or Versailles. They would then be annotated by Colbert, summa-

rized or presented to the king, then be put into archival registers, or de-

stroyed.51 Colbert’s information system was not simply about learning; it

also was a powerful, concrete tool of industrial production and political

power.

The Mastery of State Information: Techniques and Pitfalls

The writing of massive enquêtes required numerous skills. Intendants

would have to know geography, history, law, and the paperwork in-

volved with the administration of royal authority and taxation, as well as

ecclesiastical versus royal rights and the feudal labyrinth of genealogical

archives. They were also supposed to verify old maps themselves. The

information they sent back to Colbert would be shared with Sanson and

Cassini, who were leading an innovative national mapmaking survey.52

The work of the intendants thus intertwined with the work of Colbert’s

scienti‹c academy and archives.

As surveyors of the kingdom, intendants were required to have a fa-

miliarity with industry, ‹nance, and trade and to work alongside Col-

bert’s industrial inspectors, who had many of the same functions.53

Colbert wrote to his agent, the in›uential Inspector General of Manu-

factures, Francesco (or François) Bellinzani, that during his visits to fac-

tories in Meaux and La Ferté-sous-Jouarre, he should “observe” if the

company was useful, well run, and better than those in Flanders.54

Bellinzani would have to “verify” the number of different kinds of arti-

sans, the number of male and female workers, and if the factories were

following new state rules.55 Like a naturalist or explorer, Colbert uses the

terms observe and examine. His agent would have to compare “intelli-

gence” with local royal of‹cials to try to make these cloth factories work

at a higher standard than Dutch competitors, as well as organize an en-

tire distribution network.56 At the same time, this inspector would have

to do other more sinister tasks for Colbert: he was asked to discreetly

mark down the number of Protestants working in each factory: “Ob-

serve at the same time, secretly, if Catholics and Huguenots are allowed

to work without differentiation in this factory.”57


Colbert sent his questionnaires with trained observers and informa-

tion collectors, such as Nicolas-Joseph Foucault, who had helped Col-

bert understand the arcane mechanics of state administration. In the case

of Colbert’s brother, Charles Colbert de Croissy (1629–96), between

1653 and 1663, Colbert meticulously trained him to write enquêtes, and

thus to prepare him for future state administration.58 Croissy was “In-

tendant en pays et armée de Provence et de Catalogne,” and “Conseiller

au Parlement de Metz” in 1656. He would go on to have numerous

hands-on administrative positions: commissary, maitre des requêtes, and

intendant of provinces such Lorraine et Metz Touraine (1663), Anjou et

Maine (1663), Amiens et Soissons, and Flanders. In 1668 he began his

diplomatic work, which led to him becoming ambassador to Berlin,

Rome, and London and ‹nally foreign minister following the disgrace

of Pomponne in 1679.

Following the outlines of Colbert’s “Instructions,” in 1665 Croissy

wrote one of many enquêtes, or mémoires, about Bretagne. In it he de-

scribed geography, the state of ecclesiastical power, and the state of the

nobility, and he was to “stop at all important houses in the province,”

examining “justice, ‹nances, forti‹cations, and forests.”59 Even more

detailed were his mémoires on Alsace Lorraine, which he compiled with

the help of assistants.60 Colbert trained his family for high state of‹ce

through travel and practice in collecting information and writing state

reports and formularies.

The intendants were supposed to be expert in triaging information.

This way, Colbert helped the master of Versailles avoid Philip II’s infor-

mation overload. Intendants were not supposed to make important deci-

sions themselves, but rather to decide what was important and inform

Colbert and Louis.61 Colbert could not personally handle all the raw ma-

terials they collected to do their research. He ordered the intendants to

summarize and to guarantee the quality and regularity of the information

›owing toward the center. When verifying noble rights in local charter-

houses, parlements, and treasuries, intendants were to go over all the le-

gal historical documents and make a manageable packet out of them,

which was to be sent back to Colbert. The enquêtes and other of‹cial

correspondence had to be well written, for not only did Colbert need to

go through them quickly and easily, he sometimes showed them to Louis

XIV, who would respond himself, or more often through Colbert.62 Al-

though Louis would insist on seeing reports himself, intendants were the

ones who collected what information they could, and Colbert rewrote,

polished, and summarized the reports before sending them to the king.63


Even Colbert’s closest friends and most skilled agents were not ex-

empt from his stinging critiques, for indeed, Colbert had to answer for

the quality of their work to Louis. He constantly demanded that his

cousin, Charles Colbert de Terron (1618–84), send him reports more

quickly.64 And he berated him for sending faulty merchandise account

calculations, which he himself had to verify.65 Colbert admitted that this

failure by a member of his own family had “touched” him in the

strongest possible way. “Think of your part in all this, as I think of my

own,” he admonished de Terron.66 He passed on Louis’s criticisms of an

enquête written by the ever loyal Foucault in 1682:

I have communicated to the King the memoir you sent me concern-

ing the tour of your administrative county; but as you do not describe

it electoral borough by electoral borough, it is in fact a generalized mé-

moire. His Majesty is not satis‹ed, his intention being that you take

your time to visit each borough of your county, and that you explain

to him in detail the state in which you ‹nd it according to the points

contained in my dispatches.67

Colbert’s orders were curt: ‹nish all your accounting, ‹nish the maps,

and “take care that it is [all] very exact.”68 Colbert told Foucault that he

would write him back in detail when he received a proper enquête.

Louis’s dissatisfaction did not mean that Foucault lost his job or fell out

of favor; he would go on to have a long and successful career in royal

service. Louis and Colbert coldly and simply tried to control the quality

of the information they received.

To the inspector Moulinet, Colbert dryly complained, “You must

make sure to write in large letters, or to have your dispatches transcribed,

because I am having a lot of trouble reading them.”69 Colbert chafed at

bad paperwork and did not hesitate to reprimand work he saw as shoddy.

Thus, when masses of disorganized, unreadable documents or reports

landed on his desk, he was furious. It should be noted that Colbert’s clos-

est collaborators, Foucault and Baluze, had remarkably clear handwriting,

while Colbert himself scrawled his orders in illegible shorthand.

There were more pitfalls. Colbert’s system of professional informers

often foundered on the mediocrity of his agents, many drafted through

loyal family networks and nepotism. A frequent victim of Colbert’s im-

patience was the incompetent son of his trusted intendant of galleys,

Arnoul, known as “Arnoul ‹ls, Naval Intendant.”70 Colbert’s regular

complaints to the young intendant reveal his desire for clarity, punctual-

ity, and regular news reports. Colbert tells Arnoul that he is stunned that


he has not reported basic news of ship and personnel arrivals, and that

Arnoul must make weekly reports.71 Later that same summer, he berates

Arnoul for exaggerations and expresses the king’s displeasure with his in-

competence.72 “I always ‹nd, whenever I have time truly to examine

what you do, that your lack of exactitude throws us into great embar-

rassment.”73 Like Louis, Colbert cross-checked reports to ‹nd errors.

Colbert warned Arnoul that he was verifying his reports himself.74 De-

termining that he was sending bad information on a regular basis from

Rochefort, Colbert reprimanded the young Arnoul:

You yourself must see that rather than speaking clearly in your letters

and telling the real state of things, you have caused the King to repri-

mand a high of‹cer who did not deserve it; and, as I have already given

you an in‹nity of warnings on this subject, make sure that this is the

last one; reread your dispatches and learn to explain yourself so clearly

and so truthfully that I am not forced to search for the truth by com-

paring your letters to others.75

He not only insisted that intendants’ reports be detailed, but at the

same time that they be summarized to save him time. He insisted to

Rouillé, intendant at Aix, that his letters be broken down into three sep-

arate subject headings concerning each topic he was supposed to exam-

ine.76 Colbert complained to de Marle, the intendant of Riom, that he

had not properly triaged his reports, and thus had caused unnecessary ex-

tra work:

But I beg you, once and for all, to avoid forcing me to write you such

long letters to teach you the full extent of your job and your responsi-

bilities, because assuredly, the quantity of work that I have makes it re-

ally impossible for me to take the trouble to write such long letters.77

Colbert’s managerial style was concise and to the point. The intendants

were powerful and often learned. However they worked not for the

sake of learning, but in strict service to the state, and Colbert dealt with

them as such. Thus Colbert tried to make the intendants’ reports easy to

manage as they ›owed to his central archive and, in many cases, on to

Louis XIV.

Learning, Paperwork, and the Culture of Political Power

Intendants were not simply administrators. They often climbed the ad-

ministrative ladder from the ranks of the merchant class, ‹rst training as


tax lawyers, or maîtres de requêtes, becoming administrative masters of

legal paperwork. They could work in tandem with, or in opposition to,

local parlements. Some intendants, such as Foucault and the former

maître des requêtes La Reynie, knew both canon and civil law and thus

could deal with heresy, sedition, taxes, industry, and Parlement, all at the

same time. Their collecting of information was meant to help assert

royal authority over nobles and parlements. Indeed, the intendants were

both informers and informants.

Early in his ministry, Colbert gave the intendants a special task. They

were to write a personality pro‹le of each member of Parlement in their

respective circumscriptions. The political ambitions of absolutist policy

are evident in these ‹les. The “Secret Notes on the Personnel of all the

Parlements and Courts of the Kingdom” is essentially an archive of ‹les

to be used to put pressure on magistrates.78 The most detailed and the

most important of these ‹les is the dossier concerning the Parlement of

Paris. Each parliamentarian was characterized in terms of personality,

political docility, and fortune. Colbert was apparently trying to further

his own ambitions, for the report on Lamoignon, his antagonist in the

trial of Fouquet, was little more than a smear:

LAMOIGNON, through the affectation of great morality and great in-

tegrity, hides a great ambition, and for it, he cultivates wide-ranging li-

aisons with all the dévots of all possible scheming parties and cabals.79

Clearly trying to weaken Lamoignon’s hand, the report claims that he is

a part of the various intrigues that irritated Louis early in his reign. The

report lists Lamoignon’s contacts and friends and notes that he has ac-

quired his wealth honestly. In the case of de Longueil, the report notes

that he is openly ambitious and has “little conscience,” likes to gamble

and has friends who use him for their own interests.80 Here, in its early

form, beyond traditional spy reports, could be perceived the germs of

modern totalitarian government growing into webs of informants and

‹le-systems.

Weaknesses were always noted, as they could be of use in pressuring

or manipulating magistrates.

DOUJAT, makes a good show on the outside, but is fundamentally

nothing; weak, timid, he is a slave to the court and self-interested;

Monsieur de Maupeou, his son-in-law, has great power over him;

Herbinot, a high bailiff, governs him.81


Those who were perceived to serve the interests of the crown, such as

Catinat, were characterized as men “of honor, very capable, without ul-

terior motives, etc.”82 These sinister ‹les on every parliamentarian could

lead to major policy. In his report, the intendant Pellot at Montauban

considered the Cour des Aides there so corrupt and incompetent that

Colbert purged it.83 Louis XIV never truly succeeded in wielding ab-

solute power, relying on local elites in the provinces to wield power.84

Yet the king now had the political advantage and Colbert was using the

intendants to press royal authority over the parlements.

Although there were severe limits on the crown’s ability to collect

taxes, the commissaries and intendants were often successful at demand-

ing funds from localities. Colbert wrote to his brother, commissary in

Brittany, to make the local estates, or representatives, accept the “impo-

sitions” that the crown was demanding and pay their taxes.85 Colbert

later told his brother that the king was “surprised” that the estates had

agreed to give the king a “free gift,” but that it would be a “bonne af-

faire” for them in the long run.86 However, forest foraging and transport

rights still needed to be negotiated. There were refusals, subterfuges, and

uprisings, as in Provence, where the bishops used pastoral meetings to

organize resistance with the deputies of the estates and parliamentarians

against the intendants’ attempt to impose a 500,000-pound annual gift to

the crown.87 This was fairly typical and nothing new, though Louis’s de-

mands for large “gifts” and “extraordinary donations” became ever more

frequent as the crown needed more funds. They inspired popular re-

volts, such as in Bordeaux in 1675, when a rebellion occurred against the

intendant d’Aguesseau and the Parlement, which had to agreed to his tax

measures.88 Colbert had to count on intendants like Foucault to put

down such uprisings and to use violence if necessary.89 He also needed

the cooperation of the parlements when he could get it, and noted that,

when possible, care should be taken not to alienate the magistrates. In

1672, Colbert told the intendant of Rouen, de Creil, neither to overstep

openly the jurisdiction of the Parlement nor to show his motives.90 This

was a delicate game of power.

It was not just taxation that caused political strife. The collection of

noble genealogical information caused discontent, even unrest.91 Col-

bert’s program of information collection was absolutism in action, dig-

ging into the once private ‹nancial ‹les of nobles and thus curtailing

their ancient liberties. It was a powerful tool of control, and Louis’s re-

venge for the noble treason of the Fronde. He was not just trying to co-

opt nobles into a court system that made them into ›atterers rather than


independent warriors and potential rebels. He was also using Colbert’s

prowess at organizing administrative research campaigns and archives,

thus harnessing massive amounts of paperwork to destabilize the nobles

by making their authority predicated on royal veri‹cation. Such med-

dling from the crown, and from a minister of questionable ancestry, in-

furiated the nobility, but also divided it, as high nobles were exempt

from such humiliating controls.92 The intendant De Marle caused a furor

by demanding too many genealogical documents from local nobles and

Colbert was forced to back off.93

In accordance with the reform of the legal code, Colbert was look-

ing to verify the legal justi‹cations of nobility, and their tax-exempt sta-

tus.94 In 1666, Colbert wrote a long memo to the intendants concerning

the usurpation of noble titles and privileges.95 Continuing the veri‹-

cations that embodied the Grands Jours d’Auvergne, Colbert explains

how to do archival research to verify titles.96 Each noble claiming ex-

emption was to produce documented titles, which were to be cross-

checked in parish archives as well as in the Cour des Aides. Once the re-

search done, the intendant was to make

an abridged inventory, containing the quality of each act and its con-

tents, with the date, and the quality and names of those who are men-

tioned. This inventory should be made of separate notebooks that

should be organized by call numbers according to bailiwicks, and at the

head of each should be put: “Such and such, of such and such bailiwick, has

appeared on the given day, and declares himself of such and such a house, and

carrying such and such arms, recognizes such and such branches of his own fam-

ily, and has produced the following documentation of titles . . .” And to pro-

ceed with the inventory of documents, one must begin by the one that

justi‹es the ‹liation of the party in question, so as to verify it by de-

grees, to the oldest document. If one does not have the liberty of mak-

ing this inventory in the ‹eld, one should keep the title documents to

work with them leisurely, and one will give the party a date to come

and retrieve them, after having heard the pronouncements and signing

the inventory. … It would be good to make copies of all these inven-

tories, organized by bailiwicks and to send them to … [the Royal Li-

brary] signed Monsieur the Intendant, to put them in order and to

make genealogies in which will be attached reports made from other

acts that will serve to justify their quality in the form stated above, and

it will be written at the top of each inventory: “Such and such resident in

such and such city, as above.”97


Colbert ordered the intendants to make a documentary, genealogical

‹le on each noble. Even more, he wanted to create a central archive on

all nobles to be held within the Royal Library:

Once all this has been put in order, we will make very interesting com-

pilations for the Royal Library in which one will see all the nobles of

the kingdom, their arms and true genealogies, adding the research

made by all interested parties.98

In response to the disgruntlement such machinations inspired among the

nobility, however, Colbert was forced to tread more lightly. In 1670,

Colbert cautioned the intendants not to make charges without ‹rst do-

ing “research,” and con‹rming it with the king.99 Although he angered

too many notables and was forced to abandon the full implementation of

his reform in 1679, Colbert complained that there were as many “false

nobles as real ones,” and his central genealogical archive continued to

grow.100 With the help of the d’Hozier family of royal genealogists, Col-

bert’s assistants began the task of centralizing genealogical data within

the Royal Library. Many of these reports, along with enquêtes and Col-

bert’s enormous administrative correspondence, found their way into

the library complex, described by Lister, that Colbert had started build-

ing in 1666.

At every step of his rise to power, Colbert had focused on the col-

lection and organization of formal information: archives, ‹les, and re-

ports. What he needed, however, was a system to harness all this infor-

mation for daily government. The closest thing he enunciated to a

blueprint for how to manage his information system would be the train-

ing course in administration he designed for his son.


c h a p t e r 6

Managing the Systemcolbert trains his son for the great intendancy

In 1670, Colbert sent his eighteen-year-old son, the marquis de

Seignelay, to the port of Rochefort. There, alone with his father’s

cousin, Colbert de Terron, the intendant of the port, Seignelay

was to complete an apprenticeship in administering a naval port. Like an

intendant, he possessed a set of written orders from his father: work from

dawn till dusk; spend three hours early in the morning reading all naval

codebooks, rules, and treatises. Having acquired the “general knowl-

edge” found in these books, he was to “descend into the particulars” of

the construction and maintenance of ships.1

He was to make a “survey plan” of the arsenal, visit and make a list

of all the ships, sketch different parts of ships and munitions, write the

names of all the of‹cers and their responsibilities, and take down the

measurements of each ship (see ‹g. 7). He was to visit the munitions

magazine and look at all the inventories in the presence of the manager.

Finally, he was to write his own inventory and make a list of all mer-

chandise. He had to do the same with each workshop: the rope factory,

the drying rooms, the foundries, and the shops of sail-making, caulking,

carpentry, barrel-making, gun powder, and so forth.2 Colbert ordered

his son to learn hydrography, navigation, piloting, the drawing up of

maritime routes, and the reading of ocean maps. Showing his empirical

bent, Colbert ordered his son to “observe,” “examine,” and “see.” In a

84

response dated August 8, Seignelay assures his father that he has indeed

seen all, and that he has begun to transform his notes and his inventories

into an “article” that he will be able to keep “in his pocket” as a guide

to naval affairs and administration.3 Colbert’s son thus collected infor-

mation, took notes, and boiled them down into personal manuals, or

“memoirs,” as Colbert called them.

The trip to Rochefort was rough on Seignelay, who fell ill. The cli-

mate of the salt marsh, the long hours, and the dif‹cult work conditions

apparently contributed to the fever of the young apprentice. This was

typical training for most professional administrative families, but Seigne-

lay was not the son of a typical minister. Though Seignelay recovered,

Colbert expressed concern that the Rochefort apprenticeship was possi-

bly too much for a young man accustomed to Parisian life.4 It was cer-

tainly an unusual event in Seignelay’s privileged existence. We are left

with the striking image of the son and heir of Louis XIV’s great minis-

ter—one of the most powerful men in the world, at the summit of his

in›uence—Seignelay, future husband to a cousin of the king, already in

possession of a great fortune, far from the glories of the court, now sick,

covered in dust, struggling to take notes and write reports in a store-

house (see ‹g. 3). This is a stark contrast to the common image of power

and privilege in the grand court society presided over by Louis XIV,

with its prudent, powdered, and politically impotent courtiers.5 Colbert

was training his son to take his place, and for this, the younger man

would have to dirty his hands on the workshop ›oor of Rochefort.

The complexity of this culture is evident in the paintings of Colbert’s

son. Colbert was always represented in black, but his son wore the bright

ribbons of an aristocrat.6 In the best-known portrait of Seignelay, by

Marc Nattier the Elder (1673), he is depicted dressed as a Louis-quatorz-

ian courtier, at a writing desk, quill in hand, writing of‹cial dispatches.

If ministers and high of‹cials had long trained their progeny to follow in

their professional path, Seignelay was an extreme case. He was a notable

personage at court, an administrator, and an information master in train-

ing. The goal of this tough training was not simply to place him in a high

government position, but rather in that of Colbert.

Much as he trained his brother, and even the great engineer Vauban,

Colbert closely oversaw Seignalay’s education, in effect creating a

decade-long course to prepare his succession as the great intendant of the

state.7 To become the king’s foremost minister, Seignelay would have to

learn to be the kingdom’s chief informer. In dozens of letters, Colbert

outlined his vision of the skills needed to govern, and of the very essence

Managing the System 85

of government itself. What emerges from this father-son correspondence

is a blueprint of how to create, use, and control a state information sys-

tem. Colbert imagined his governmental creation as a virtual machine.

He saw the state as sets of lists and documents collected by his agents,

which would form a practical tool for the governing of the kingdom of

France and its new colonial empire. It will become clear that when he

thought of political action, he thought in terms of the mechanics of state

paperwork and his information system.

The Merchant’s Book

In June 1679, Jacques Savary dedicated his book Le parfait négociant, ou

Instruction générale pour ce qui regarde le commerce to Colbert, who had com-

missioned it. The frontispiece shows a man sitting in front of a desk, in

the middle of a maritime port, with an account book in front of him, a

quill in one hand, taking a piece of paper from the hand of another man.

Under the image is the title, “The Perfect Negociant.” The merchant

world offered many technical tools to the Colbert family, and the Savary

frontispiece gives some impression of the world Seignelay inhabited in

Rochefort.

Savary made his fortune serving the king under Fouquet, and then he

de‹nitively quit all ‹nancial management to write an of‹cial “Mer-

chant’s Code” in 1670 under Colbert’s orders. The code was to be basis

of his book. The Parfait Négociant is a compilation of documents, which

show how to function as a merchant. It contains copies of formularies,

registers, rules and regulations, banking notes, currency exchange, and

lending papers.

Savary also outlined the proper education for a business career. He

recommended above all that the négociant know how to write well.8

From the age of seventeen years old, children would have to do the fol-

lowing professional exercises for this profession; “that is to say, to write

well, have a good knowledge of Arithmetic, and to keep Books, in dou-

ble and simple.”9 Furthermore, the young merchant would have to learn

how to travel and do business in foreign countries.10 Thus he would

need to write clearly and vividly, in many cases about his travels, which

were related to investment and trade.

As Savary described, medieval and early modern merchants traveled

to make contacts and establish relationships, if not of loyalty, at least of

trust, as well as to discover foreign products, goods, technologies, and

the working of states and economies. They kept notes in special-made


and often manuscript notebooks that contained agenda-like sections for

foreign weights and measures, currencies, daylight times, and the regu-

larity of tides.11 In doing business, a merchant would have to carry his

account books with him. If one followed the recommendations of

Savary, then much of a merchant voyage would be taken up by various

forms of paperwork: describing foreign merchandise, keeping account

books, ‹lling out bills of exchange, and noting weights and currency

rates.

As the apparent heir to Colbert, Seignelay’s educational needs would

be complex. Like princes of the royal blood, and even Molière before

him, Seignelay attended the Jesuit Collège de Clermont (later Louis-le-

Grand). He did a thesis in natural and military mathematics.12 As his

son’s personal preceptor, Colbert chose the Jesuit rhetorician, the père

Bouhours, who, after having been tutor to the children of the duke de

Longueville, had become chaplain to the Dunkirk garrison. Colbert

chose Bouhours neither for his poetic prowess, nor for his erudition, but

rather due to his expertise in geographical description.13 The Jesuit had

written a description of the port of Dunkirk, precisely the sort of text

Colbert would send his son to write in Rochefort. Thus at the Collège

de Clermont, Seignelay would come in contact not only with the tradi-

tional humanist curriculum of the ratio studiorum, but also with the new

Jesuit focus on the description of nature, navigation, and geography.14

Jesuits were known for writing descriptions of their trips, “relations” of

people, plants, places, buildings, and government.15

If his trip to Rochefort had concerned naval and industrial informa-

tion, Seignelay’s following trips mixed merchant, ambassadorial, and

learned, antiquarian traditions of traveling.16 In 1671, Colbert sent his

son to visit Italy. He wanted Seignelay to examine governmental struc-

ture, shipbuilding, art, and architecture and to write a “relation”—the

same as a mémoire—of his trip. The young Colbert was to meet the pope,

visit the palaces, observe neoclassical architecture and art, learn the con-

stitutions of the old city-states, and visit Venice’s Arsenale. In a set of in-

structions to his son, Colbert outlined his expectations for the trip:

Seignelay was to observe and write a relation much in the style of an en-

quête. In each place, Seignelay was to

look at, principally, the city, its situation, its military forces, the num-

ber of its peoples, the greatness of the state, the number and size of

cities, towns, and villages, the quantity of the peoples that compose the

whole; the form of State government, and if it is aristocratic, he will


inform himself of the names and the status of noble families that have

taken or will take part in governing the Republic; their different func-

tions; their general and particular councils; who represents the State, in

whom the sovereign power lies and who resolves peace and war, who

makes laws; etc.: the number and names of all who have the right to

enter [into government deliberations?]; and in what manner proposi-

tions are made; the suffrages collected and the results taken and pro-

nounced; the particular councils for the militia, the admiralty, justice,

for the city and for the rest of the State; the laws and the customs un-

der which they live; in what consist the militias meant to guard the

main square; idem for the maritime forces.

Visit the public works, maritime and on ground, all the palaces,

public houses, and generally all that is remarkable in the said city and

in all the State.17

At one level the marquis de Seignelay, son of the ‹rst minister of the

king of France, traveled in the style of a young prince, meeting heads of

state and witnessing the workings of government and power; at another,

he traveled as learned gentleman, or antiquarian, capable of reading an-

cient inscriptions and describing rare plants, beautiful paintings, and Re-

naissance doorways; and at third level, Seignelay’s trip was the training

mission of an industrial merchant, who carried his books with him, writ-

ing down names and inventories and inspecting factories.18 Yet whereas

authors such as the antiquarian Ezechial Spanheim, author of a famous

1690 relation on court life at Versailles, sought a certain notoriety from

their published relations, Seignelay’s goal was to keep his knowledge and

expertise secret for his father and his family’s bene‹t.

Managing a Paperwork Palace

Colbert kept an almost daily correspondence with his son, the driving

theme of which was writing style and descriptive technique. Indeed, the

exchange of letters between father and son resembles more that of a

teacher and student, for Colbert covered his son’s letters with correc-

tions and criticisms. At the end of the year 1671, Colbert dictated a new

set of instructions that Seignelay dutifully wrote down. It was the nine-

teen-year-old’s ‹rst royal assignment, as designed especially by his father.

Looking over his son’s shoulder, Colbert corrected the dictation, mak-

ing marks on the page, and even writing criticisms in the margins of his

son’s manuscript. For Colbert, governing was about writing clearly and

organizing writing into easy-to-use notebooks. The evolving humanist


culture of the commonplace notebook and the Jesuit schools, along with

mercantile book keeping, now became the basis of governmental peda-

gogy.19

Colbert’s “Instructions to my son for following me in my charge as

minister” (1671), is the closest thing we have to a blueprint of Colbert’s

vision of how to govern. In his memoirs, Louis XIV remarked that he

learned to govern by sitting in on Mazarin’s councils. Seignelay too

would be exposed to Royal Council meetings at a young age. But as we

have seen, his apprenticeship was technically more hands-on, and more

oriented toward the functions of intendancy. Along with his princely

education at the Collège de Clermont, there was much about his educa-

tion that resembled that of a négociant, or an intendant. Colbert insisted

that his son travel across France and Europe, but also required that he

spend many hours behind his desk, learning the textual practices that

controlled the machinery of the state. If Seignelay were to follow Col-

bert as superintendent of ‹nances and industry, he would have to master

his own information network, and to do this, he would have to learn

how to handle the paperwork machine invented by his father.

The “memoirs,” “registers,” “lists,” “‹les,” and “agendas” that Col-

bert ordered his son to write were not just memorization exercises.

These lists of of‹cers, cities, nobles, laws, rights, ports, and ships were to

be kept on hand, and carried in the pocket for practical use. The French

government, with its arcane and often unwritten rules, was complicated.

There were neither guides nor maps to the functioning of the royal

household. Thus the notes taken by Seignelay and put in Colbert’s reg-

ister books were to be guide maps of the internal workings of Louis’s

kingdom and government.

In 1670, Colbert commissioned a series of manuscript books from

trusted jurists for the education of his son. These bound folios, found in

the manuscript collection of the Bibliothèque Nationale, are entitled

“Mémoire sur les Ordonnances en general de Mr. Colbert,” and appear

to date from 1670.20 On the binding is written “Manuscrit Originel du

Cour des Hautes Études du Fils de Colbert.” The ‹rst of three volumes

contains legal texts concerning Gallican rights. The third volume con-

tains a section entitled “Traité des états” that contains the lists of royal

custom taken in great part from compilations by Jean Du Tillet and

Théodore Godefroy. Most fascinating is an anonymous chapter called

“Du Conseil du roy,” which is a description of how this institution

works, outlining the function of each member.

With the expectation of inheriting his father’s positions, Seignelay


would have to defend the rights of the monarchy and guarantee the

smooth functioning of governmental of‹ces. For this, he would need to

learn the minutiae of arcane state institutions, and learn the speci‹c pa-

perwork needed for each governmental function. Volume 4 contains a

chapter by Nicolas-Joseph Foucault, called “Il y a différence entre Loix,

Ordonnances, et Edits.” Foucault’s text is a glossary of every type of

government paperwork. It resembles Savary’s compilation for business-

men; however, this manuscript was for Seignelay’s eyes only. Foucault’s

treatise explains how to write and properly sign documents. It lists types

of documents, of‹cial seals, and the documentary practices and respon-

sibilities of each of‹cer. Next to the section on seals, in the margin, Fou-

cault writes an exercise for the young marquis:

Assignment for Monseigneur. Write a succinct memoir of all the dif-

ferent forms of chancellery letters, their forms and the essential clauses

of their distinctions from which all the different names and letters

which are sent under each form. For example. Patent letters. . . . Dec-

larations, commissions, . . . arrests.21

Each exercise concerned a speci‹c type of of‹cial document. With this

training manual, Seignelay became an expert in paperwork. Seignelay

would understand every sort of document that made up the machinery

of state. This facilitated Seignelay’s ability not only to understand how

the state worked and to manage it, but to serve the king effectively and

inform him.

Volume 4 of the “Ordonnances” also contains a study of the Cham-

bre des Comptes, the ‹nancial archival administration of the kingdom,

which was a documentation center for accounting orders and receipts.

Once again, it is a workbook that explains each sort of of‹cial docu-

ment.

What is a “Comptant”: It is a receipt in Parchment, signed by the

King’s hand, of the End of the Month accounts which have recently

been paid to him by the Savings Treasury and of which no mention is

made of the Cause of expenditure.22

Seignelay memorized the names and styles of documents and copied

them as practice. He wrote lists, inventories, and reports. His father cor-

rected this work, making him rewrite.

Seignelay could not afford an error in his own paperwork, for the

‹nished product—the boiled-down extracts and reports—would, in


many cases, go before the king.23 Colbert reminded his son that every

Friday morning, each of‹cial report would have to be ‹nished and pol-

ished, for that was when Louis took the time to read his ministers’ re-

ports and dossiers. The information that Colbert collected was a virtual

representation of the kingdom. It was the embodiment of his family’s

competency and usefulness of the services they offered. Therefore, the

‹nal preparation of documents for the king was a complicated process.

Colbert writes,

As soon as I have seen all the dispatches, if they have arrived on time,

I will send them to my son for him to see them, and promptly and ex-

actly take extracts, which will be written on the back of each letter and

returned at the same time to my table; I will write a word with my

hand on each article of the extract, containing the response that should

be made immediately; my son should write responses with his own

hand, and then show them to me so that I can correct them, and when

everything is ready, on Friday we shall bring to the King all the letters,

we will read him the extracts, and at the same time the responses; if His

Majesty orders any changes, it will be done; otherwise, the responses

will be cleaned up, signed, and sent out. And so, in observing these or-

ders with exactitude, without ever departing from them, it is certain

that my son will put himself in a state to acquire esteem in the King’s

opinion.24

Here was a solution to information overload, and the presumptive road-

map for Colbert’s family legacy within the state. Seignelay learned each

link in the chain of information: the choice of subject, the collection, the

writing, the organization, and the presentation to the king. Even more,

he would have to oversee archival management and the general func-

tioning of the state paperwork machine, assisting his father in his massive

task.

Thanks to his father’s political and social ascent, Seignelay was one of

the richest men in the kingdom, with a famous art collection, a privi-

leged place in Versailles, and the respect of even Saint-Simon, yet his life

often resembled that of a beleaguered Dickensian clerk. His father’s let-

ters are ‹lled with scathing critical tirades, sometimes lasting for pages,

such as this virulent passage: “One sees rather clearly that you never

write minutes of your dispatches, which is, between us, something ab-

solutely shameful, and which denotes a negligence and a default of ap-

plication that cannot be excused, or even expressed.”25 Here is the raw

grit with which Colbert mercilessly trained his son, destroyed enemies


such as Fouquet, held off the Le Tellier family as long as he could, and

tried to concentrate power for himself and his family.

In 1671, Seignelay wrote an exercise aptly titled “Memoir on that

which I propose to do every week to execute the orders of my father

and to make me more capable of relieving his worries,” in which he

concedes his shortcomings and assures his father he will apply himself to

the management of his paperwork:

I will make myself copy down the records Tuesday; after dinner, I will

‹le them after having read them, and I will write on the side the min-

utes written by my father.

Above all, I will not fail, when I have to send of‹cial correspon-

dence, of whatever nature it might be, to search in the register books

of my father that which has been done in a similar occasion, and I will

give myself the time to read and examine the said registers, in order to

form my style by that of my father.

I will visit every night my table and my papers, and I will expedite,

before going to bed, that which I can, or I will put aside and send later,

before marking, in my agenda that I will keep exactly on my table, the

affairs that I will have sent out [to my correspondents], so as to be able

to hold them accountable if they take too long in responding.

I will write all my current affairs in the aforementioned agenda, and

I will cross them out when each of‹cial letter has been sent.

. . .

In making my principal points, I will write them all with my own

hand, and I will make notes on the side of the points that I must ad-

dress in my letter, and I will attempt to follow the style of my father,

in order to save him the trouble, where possible, of having to correct

and redo these letters, even entirely, which happens quite often.

Saturday morning will be spent examining and signing ordinary

letters, to be sent to the Friday council, and working on current affairs.

Saturday after dinner, I will not fail to examine the agenda, and

look in the register of ‹nances to see if there are any new funds that

have been omitted from the register of orders given to the treasurer; if

I have omitted none, during the week, I should record those that have

been given; and I will apply myself to be so exact in the keeping of the

said agenda, that I will not need to have recourse to the treasurer to

know what funds he has in his hands.26

One did not have to be Protestant to have a serious work ethic.

While contemporaries admired Seignelay as a hard worker, Colbert

was never satis‹ed. Indeed, it appears that Seignelay lacked his father’s


obsession with organization and ‹ling. In 1676, after almost a decade of

training, Colbert was furious to ‹nd his son’s desk in disorder. Had all

his lessons been in vain?

You must still take care to look after your papers, particularly the

important ones, which you should keep under lock and key, such as

all the treaties and memoirs I asked you to do, and which I still do

every day, for you, and which I now ‹nd rolled in a desk, in the

worst state of ‹lth, in spite of the fact that they contain the

quintessence of the spirit of the most accomplished people in the

kingdom;

Your portfolios;

The Decrees, by call numbers and dates;

All the treatises, the books, the instructions and all that concerns

the fundaments and the maxims taken, that you should know

perfectly.

Take care that all your memoirs and letters are well organized by

reference numbers.

That none escape your attention, that there are none that you

miss, that you examine, and that you give orders on that which they

contain. . . . That neither any paper passes through your hands, nor

letter, without seeing and examining them and giving your

resolution, and without asking about what you do not perfectly

understand.27

Was Seignelay’s messy desk a sublimated ‹lial rebellion? In 1674, in the

margins to his “Instructions,” Colbert had expressly reminded his son,

“You must put call numbers on all your sheets, divide these maxims by

date and by chapter, and only make a precise extract.28 Observation and

note-taking were not enough. Seignelay needed the skills of an accoun-

tant and archivist to handle the register books made from notes and re-

ports, and only by these means, assured his father, would he never have

to worry about information overload. Thus, as chief intendant, Seigne-

lay would have to master the information arcana of the state, data col-

lection through industrial management and accounting, as well as

archiving. It was this ‹nal task that Colbert considered essential, for

keeping a well-organized administrative archive and library were the ba-

sis of Colbert’s managerial method. Through the reports of his son, in-

tendants, and agents, Colbert was in the process of creating a new sort of

state library the likes of which Naudé had never imagined, as well as a

new ideal of royal government.


c h a p t e r 7

From Universal Library to State Encyclopediacolbert’s house of solomon

In 1666 Colbert found a new home for the itinerant and neglected

Royal Library. A block from his house on the rue Vivienne, Col-

bert bought the Hôtel Beautru.1 It was here that he settled the

Royal Library.2 In the Plan Turgot of 1739, Colbert’s house on the cor-

ner of the rue de Richelieu and the eponymous rue Colbert is clearly

visible.3 He regularly sent archivists to retrieve books and manuscripts

from the king’s library.4 In reality, he completely controlled the Royal

Library. Louis, whose library it was supposed to be, would make only

one symbolic visit there in 1681.5

The creation of this dual library was an act of great signi‹cance. Col-

bert physically brought the library under his control and connected it to

his own. What this meant was that the Royal Library was neither an ex-

tension of the Republic of Letters, nor of a wider, semipublic world of

learning, as it had been. It was now a part of Colbert’s administration.

Where famed scholars had once managed the royal collection, Colbert

now not only oversaw new acquisitions, but tightly controlled the hir-

ing of personnel for both libraries, placing his brother, the abbé Nicolas

Colbert (1628–76), later archbishop of Luçon (1661), at the head of the

Royal Library upon Jacques Dupuy’s death in 1656.6

Once in control of the state library complex, Colbert set out to cre-

94

ate a collection designed for the needs of politics and state administra-

tion. Not only would his library contain the formal works of learning

outlined in Naudé’s Advice on Establishing a Library, but also like Philip II

of Spain, Colbert kept the papers of the colonial administration: naviga-

tional papers, maps, trade routes, and treaties.7 Intendant’s reports, sur-

veys, and account books came back to Colbert’s central archive to be

veri‹ed and ‹led.8 But whereas Philip took no interest in ‹nancial mat-

ters, Colbert, the merchant ‹nancier, also kept price lists of nails, winch

designs, hand-drawn pictures of rope types, ships’ cargo logs, and arsenal

inventories. This is how Colbert managed not just learning, but also the

military and industrial sector of the state from his library. Colbert single-

handedly directed the building of the Ludovician Louvre and Versailles,

and he therefore kept sketchbooks of arches, doorways, fountains, ceil-

ing molding, architecture models, and garden perspectives.9 He also kept

a vast archive of state account books, mentioned by Martin Lister, called

États de ‹nances, or États de la recepte et despense.10 In this grand-scale li-

brary complex, Colbert had brought the charterhouse, the humanist le-

gal library, and the state administrative archive together with the ac-

counting of‹ce.11 It had a call-number system and was easily accessible

to the librarians and to Colbert. While independent, Colbert’s library

could draw on the wealth and even the funding of the Royal Library. A

documentary collection based on the interests of administering the state,

it had many of the practical characteristics that fascinated philosophes

and physiocrats, and would later characterize Chambers and Diderot’s

great encyclopedic projects.

From the biblioteca selecta to the House of Solomon

Paragons of the Republic of Letters such as Peiresc and de Thou saw

their libraries and their research as extensions of themselves, manifesta-

tions of personal virtue. Theirs were biblioteca selecta: carefully chosen

treasures, which represented the scholarly, individual virtuosity of their

owner to a public of friends and trusted scholars.12 The idea that a well-

chosen library was a mark of the learned, well-bred honnête homme was

the basis for private collecting for scholars, political ‹gures, and dilet-

tantes alike.13 When Hugo Blotius began building the Austrian Imperial

Library (1575–1608), he not only envisioned it as an extension of the

public world of learning; he also looked to create a formal, universal li-

brary beyond the lines designed by Conrad Gesner in his Biblioteca uni-

versalis (1545), which attempted to list and categorize all extant books.

From Universal Library to State Encyclopedia 95

For Blotius, this meant formal works of learning from various disci-

plines, along with uncataloged state papers, news reports, and gazettes.14

Even more, Blotius had hoped to create an encyclopedic museum on

knowledge, politics, the arts, and sciences. In a letter from 1575, Blotius

outlined his revolutionary project of mixing formal and informal, tech-

nical knowledge:

At the end of December I ‹nally decided to write a booklet which will

contain an idea I have dreamt about for some years, that is to establish

a library and a museum of the human being. If the Emperor, as I hope,

will support my project and if I live another twenty years, then I will

be able to af‹rm that I was the creator of the most important world’s

institutions, which will ‹nally outstrip the Vatican, the Florentine or

the French libraries. And this because I am not going just to establish a

universal library, which will contain all kinds of books—in Jewish,

Greek, Latin, Italian, Spanish, French, German, English, Croatian,

Muscovite, Bohemian, Turkish and in all the languages I can ‹nd—

but also a Universal Museum, which will contain portraits of emper-

ors, nobles, musicians, poets, men of learning, namely portraits of us as

we will be in the future. I will gather the clothes of all the populations

of the world, the measures and weights, the ancient and modern coins,

weapons, means of transport, ships, buildings, instruments used by all

the populations, in every period of the history (wood, iron or paper’s

tools).15

While he succeeded in creating one of the largest and best-cataloged

collections in Europe, Blotius never realized his own ideal and make his

library more than a storehouse of formal, selected information.16 The

Austrian library was a center for learning about politics, yet it was not

the all-encompassing archive of ethnography, administration, and indus-

try that he had originally envisioned.

Rather, the model of the biblioteca selecta remained the model of a po-

litical library. While the Swedish chancellor Axel Oxenstierna (1583–

1654) created a personal library, he did not connect it to the Swedish

state policy archives. Like Cardinal Richelieu (1585–1642), Oxenstierna

kept a limited number of great books of formal learning from which he

extracted commonplace books of political maxims.17 Both conscious of

a hierarchy of knowledge, Oxenstierna and Richelieu neither sought

massive, universal collections, nor united their great books with the pa-

perwork of the state.


This was Colbert’s great innovation. In creating his state information

system, Colbert sought to do something that no administrator of a large-

scale state had attempted: he built his interdisciplinary library and state

information archive together, from the ground up, in response to his

policy needs. Obviously, a biblioteca selecta—even a political one—would

not do for Colbert. Built from a merchant’s hunger for monopoly and

practical knowledge, his universal library would go beyond existing con-

cepts of formal knowledge. It went beyond Blotius’s encyclopedic uni-

versal library, resembling more a state research institute of the kind dis-

cussed by Francis Bacon in his New Atlantis (1627).

The former English chancellor and inventor of the experimental

method, Francis Bacon had suggested that the sort of information col-

lected by scholars, scientists, bureaucrats, and industrialists could be for-

malized within the state itself. Bacon envisioned the state as a center of

research and collection, which constantly acquired new information by

discovery and experiment. Like Thomas Hobbes, Bacon believed that

the monarch should rule over knowledge. What Bacon envisioned was

not simply formal, university learning or a library, but rather a state-con-

trolled depot of information of all sorts, constantly renewed, and poten-

tially secret, which gave the state the monopoly on the information of

politics, trade, and science.

It was a physical theory of worldly sovereignty that he spelled out in

his utopian vision of a state based on knowledge and trade in his New At-

lantis. He called this depot of state learning “Solomon’s House,” and

Solomon was James I of England:

You shall understand (my dear friends) that amongst the excellent acts

of that king [of the New Atlantis], one above all hath the preeminence.

It was the erection and institution of an Order or Society, which we

call “Solomon’s House”; the noblest foundation (as we think) that ever

was upon the earth; and the lantern of this kingdom.18

Bacon’s House of Solomon was a research institution dedicated to the

collection of various sorts of knowledge for the well-being of the state,

collected from all over the world. The king ordered that

Every twelve years there should be set forth out of this kingdom two

ships, appointed to several voyages; That in either of these ships there

should be a mission of three of the Fellows or Brethren of Salomon’s

House; whose errand was only to give us knowledge of the affairs and


state of those countries to which they were designed, and especially of

the sciences, arts, manufactures, and inventions of all the world; and

withal to bring unto us books, instruments, and patterns in every

kind.19

Solomon’s House was a “college”: a center for the compilation of infor-

mation, historical and scienti‹c inquiry, natural experiments, and the

creation of miraculous cures, but also for the invention of industrial

products such as weapons, new sorts of clothing material, paper, glass,

and food.20 The Brethren of Solomon’s House were technical experts in

each ‹eld, who could travel, and collect information, but also manage

information and create new knowledge.21 Anthony Grafton has called

this the ‹rst model of a research institute of arts and sciences.22 It would

be a great store of wisdom and creative capacity to “join humanity and

policy together,” bringing great prosperity to Atlantis.23 There was a de-

cidedly mercantile character to this project, created by a king, main-

tained by the state, and dedicated to learning, but also to industry. It

would also serve the production of arms and munitions, which were one

of the primary scienti‹c and industrial interests of states at this period of

new military growth. Thus Bacon envisioned an encyclopedic policy,

scienti‹c, industrial military research institute.

By the mid-seventeenth century, no state in Europe had followed

Bacon’s model, though Florence, Spain, and the Vatican, in disparate

ways, almost did. Spain was in decline and the Vatican was less and less

interested in the New Science that Galileo had shown could be so

threatening to religious orthodoxy. In spite of the advances made by

Mersenne, or by the Jesuits, the Vatican never connected formal re-

search labs with its library complex into a single institute-like entity. In

England, scholars began meeting to discuss Bacon’s scienti‹c ideas in a

society formed in the 1640s that evolved into the Royal Society of 1660,

privately founded by prestigious scientists as a “Colledge for the Pro-

moting of Physico-Mathematicall Experimentall Learning,” and sup-

ported by a royal charter in 1663. As remarkably successful as this soci-

ety was—it created the basis of modern science—it did not match the

scope of Solomon’s House. The English state was neither capable of, nor

willing to, create a centalized state-controlled learned, scienti‹c, indus-

trial complex. Nor did it create a true House of Solomon—a central data

bank and research institute on all things for the use of the state. This

would be Colbert’s ambition.24


The Library as Research Institute: From the Republic of

Letters to the State Academies

Colbert’s public patronage of the arts and letters is well known. He

in›uenced the Republic of Letters with the creation of French state

academies and research centers. In 1663, Colbert named his own librar-

ian, the mathematician Pierre de Carcavy (1600–1684), royal librarian,

consolidating the link between his collection and the Royal Library.25

This was a departure from tradition, since Carcavy, while a book collec-

tor and a former counselor to the Parlement of Lyon, was the son of an

Italian banker and not issued from the old world of Gallican historians.

Still, as a friend of leading scientists and mathematicians such as

Descartes, Pascal, Fermat, and Huygens, Carcavy was a useful liaison be-

tween the library, the Republic of Letters, and the world of the natural

sciences.26 Carcavy was not an independent librarian, as, for example,

Leibniz would become several decades later, when he became head of

the Wolfenbüttel Library and oversaw its reorganization and rebuild-

ing.27 Colbert was the builder of the library, and Carcavy’s job was to

follow Colbert’s orders to run the tandem collections as a machine of

public administration.

Colbert also hired famous international scholars, and scientists such as

the astronomer and geographer Giovanni Domenico Cassini. He was in-

terested in the sciences and their application to his plans. Cassini ran the

Royal Observatory that Colbert founded in 1666, and helped collect not

only astronomical, geographical, and other scienti‹c data, but also infor-

mation that could be used for mapmaking and hydrography, ‹elds es-

sential to Colbert’s maritime projects.28 Colbert hired the Dutch math-

ematician, physicist, astronomer, and clockmaker Christian Huygens

(1629–95), who developed the pendulum clock and a “table of cumula-

tive equality” based on measuring the sun’s passage by the running of the

clock. Huygens’s table was not only a mathematical work of paramount

importance; it could also be used as a navigation device to ‹gure longi-

tude, and thus had important mercantile rami‹cations.29 Colbert corre-

sponded with Huygens and even appeared to understand his work, per-

sonally annotating some of Huygens’s data on gunpowder, force, and

vacuums, and asking the scientist pointed questions.30 He asked the

French ambassador to Rome to personally look into a telescope there

and describe what he saw.31

With Carcavy, Huygens, and Cassini, Colbert had brought to France


major scienti‹c ‹gures both to run his library and observatory and to

lead the Royal Academy of Sciences, founded with the library in 1666 as

a major research center for natural sciences, astronomy, mathematics,

and mapmaking.32 The same year, Colbert founded the Royal Gar-

dens—a site of botanical and natural learning as well as public experi-

ments—under the aegis of the Academy of Sciences.33 Colbert founded

other academies, such as the Petite Académie, or Académie Royale des

Inscriptions et Médailles (1663), which would later become the Aca-

démie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, a center for antiquarian scholar-

ship. He controlled the Academies of Beaux-Arts, Painting and Sculp-

ture and the Académie Française, and was the patron of numerous

provincial academies. He founded the royal academies of music and

dance; and he founded the Royal Academy of Architecture (1671) as he

personally took over the royal projects of building the Louvre and Ver-

sailles. To harness Italian artisanal and artistic expertise, Colbert corre-

sponded with Bernini and founded the French Academy in Rome

(1666). Indeed, with the help of Bernini and through a detailed corre-

spondence in which plans and descriptions were exchanged, Colbert and

the great baroque architect began the project to build the Louvre in

1668.34 Colbert’s assiduousness did not always guarantee success, and

culturally, he was a neophyte, as his failure to build Bernini’s plans for

Louvre illustrate.35

His project was to bring the world of learning under the control of

the French state, and his library complex was central to this aim. Begin-

ning in the sixteenth century, the French academies had been the center

of late humanist learning and the Republic of Letters.36 The founding of

the Académie Française (1634) represented Richelieu’s attempt to make

humanist eloquence serve the interests of the state in a systematic way.

Colbert’s project was a massive expansion of Richelieu’s own imitation

of Italian, papal, and Spanish cultural patronage. It was an unparalleled,

mercantilist state academic program, which brought scholarship, science,

and the arts under the control of the state. Integrated with the expansion

of his library, it changed the relationship of the state to learning, science,

and culture. In 1663, with the fears of the Fronde still in mind, Colbert

banned non-state-sanctioned academies—an unthinkable act in the days

of Peiresc and Dupuy.

Colbert tried to in›uence and ultimately control the public market of

ideas and scholarly work. Beyond academies, Colbert helped found the

Journal des Savants in 1665, with the help of his loyal scholars Denis de

Sallo and the abbé Jean Le Gallois. Its goal was to occupy the sphere of


public scholarly discussion and advertise the discoveries and work of his

academies and learned allies: “That which goes on in the Republic of

Letters.”37 The public dimension of Colbert’s project operated at several

levels, producing work, publishing academic ‹ndings, but also regulat-

ing the world of learning through reviews. It would inspire independent

major journals of the Republic of Letters, the Acta Eruditorum (1682) and

Pierre Bayle’s counterjournal, the Nouvelles de la Republique des Lettres

(1684), which discussed science, but criticized politics rather than work-

ing as a branch of propaganda.38

Colbert sought to control the Republic of Letters in France and

wherever he could, not just by hiring the best scholars, but also by giv-

ing pensions to foreign scholars, such as German erudite Herman Con-

ring.39 The poet and academician Jean Chapelain (1595–1674) became

Colbert’s agent, searching for scholars, both French and foreign, willing

to take Colbert’s money in return for royal service, and possibly propa-

ganda.40 Chapelain proposed that Conring write panegyrical history for

the king.41 Even more, Colbert had hoped that Conring would scour

German archives to ‹nd legal and historical documents that could be

used as state propaganda to bolster French dynastic claims against the

Hapsburgs.42 Colbert did not hesitate to get involved personally with the

recruitment of foreign scholars. He corresponded with the Polish-

Lithuanian Protestant astronomer Johannes Hevelius (1611–87), telling

him that he would receive a cash gift from Louis XIV on the merit of his

work alone. This was unprecedented international ‹nancial enticement

to serve and honor the patronage of the French crown.43

The Universal State Archive

Colbert’s librarian, Baluze, outlined the concept of Colbert’s new col-

lection in his Histoire des capitulaires des Rois François (1677), essentially a

history of royal archival administration. In this work, Baluze claims that

a complete sampling of the archives makes his royal legal science more

sound.44 Closely tied to Mabillon and the Benedictine scholars of St.

Germain, Baluze insisted on a new approach to archiving, seeking the

mass management of diplomatica.45 Colbert and his librarian understood

the rami‹cations of having, or claiming to have, the most complete doc-

ument bank in Europe, which could be used in questions of interna-

tional law, precedence, ecclesiastical rights, and theology.46 Colbert

sought to build up the Royal Library’s book collection and manuscript

archives, to bring it to the level of the Wolfenbüttel Library, or the Im-


perial Library in Vienna, both of which contained more than 100,000

books and manuscripts.47 He went about building his collections in a

new way. Book and manuscript collection was a gentlemanly practice,

based on the commerce of ancient manuscripts between learned and

powerful people through letter-writing and trading. Once the currency

of the Republic of Letters, the trade and interest in manuscripts and

books had driven humanist relationships since the days of Poggio Brac-

ciolini and Niccolò Niccoli in Quattrocento Florence.48 For Peiresc and

his circle, the search for rare historical manuscripts was the action that

de‹ned their learned friendships, but also brought them patronage and

income. It was a semipublic exchange of knowledge and information.

Colbert sometimes looked at his manuscripts with the personal warmth

of a bibliophile; but mostly he perceived them in the cold light of rea-

son of state. They were means to an end: chips on the bargaining tables

of international relations and internal power grabs, and the currency of

his own power. And for the most part, they were to remain secret. Here

was a major tension in the internal logic of the Republic of Letters,

which was somehow supposed to serve disinterested learning and poli-

tics at the same time.

Colbert had no time for the formalities of the Republic of Letters,

such as openness and the ethics of information exchange. His collecting

techniques both disregarded the integrity of individual collections and

were devoid of ethics in acquisition. Indeed, he offered to buy the

Wolfenbüttel Library outright, but the Brunswicks cannily refused this

offer.49 He bought other entire collections for the Royal Library, 10,000

books at a time. In 1668, Colbert essentially robbed the Bibliothèque

Mazarine, proposing an “exchange” of books in which Colbert sent his

book agents, two royal printers, Frédéric Léonard and Sebastien Marbre

Cramoisy, to choose the choicest books and manuscripts possible. In

particular, Colbert coveted a number of Oriental manuscripts and pre-

cious books once owned by Peiresc, Naudé, and Du Tillet.50 The ex-

change amounted to a theft from Naudé’s library, which Colbert him-

self had reconstituted after the Fronde.51 In 1667, with no little irony,

Colbert sent the new royal librarian, the mathematician Pierre Carcavy,

to purchase a large chunk of Fouquet’s impressive manuscript collection

(his library in the Chateau de Saint-Mandé numbered more than 30,000

printed books and 1,050 manuscripts). It was the trophy of a kill. The

royal printer Frédéric Léonard helped to direct the Fouquet auction, and

Colbert’s scholarly agent, Denis II Godefroy, annotated a copy of the

Fouquet catalog.52 Carcavy later acquired Trichet du Fresne’s large col-


lection of Italian manuscripts for well under their fair value.53 Although

in 1669, Colbert missed the chance to buy de Thou’s library, now

30,000 books strong, he obtained for the king and for himself a string of

prominent humanist collections. He directed the purchases of the library

of the humanist doctor and rhetorician Jacques Mentel, whose 10,000-

book collection specialized in works on eloquence, a number of which

were inherited from Gabriel Naudé, as well as the medieval manuscripts

of Alexandre Petau.54 He managed to acquire Gaston d’Orléans’s mag-

ni‹cent collection with its rare botanical prints.

Colbert sought not only books, but also policy archives that shed

light on the workings of government. Colbert’s interest in the archives

of Henri-Auguste de Lomémie (1594–1666), count de Brienne, known

as the “Collection Brienne,” illustrates the political aspect of how he

viewed archives. Brienne’s father, Antoine de Loménie, a counselor of

state under Henry IV and Louis XIII, had sent Pierre Dupuy into the

Trésor des Chartes and to other major legal and administrative archives

where he was to make a choice of useful documents to be copied for the

collection, resulting in a massive collection of 358 folio volumes of com-

piled documents on mostly contemporary state history. The collection

was envisioned as a pedagogical tool for his son, Henri-Auguste: “J’ay

donné à mon ‹lz tous les livres manuscriptz et papiers contenus en ce

présent inventaire, par un contract de donation du XIXe jour de l’année

1627.”55

The mastery of diplomacy entailed being a ‹ne connoisseur of diplo-

matic and political records.56 However, the papers were seen as so im-

portant to the state that Richelieu forced the younger Brienne to sell

them back to him in 1638 for 36,000 pounds.57 When the Parlement of

Paris sold off Mazarin’s collection in 1652, under the helpless watch of

Naudé, the Brienne papers were not dispersed because they belonged to

the king, and, to his great pleasure, Mazarin recuperated the documents

at the end of the Fronde, in yet another bibliophilic revenge.58 Fouquet

had made his own copy of the papers, but under Colbert, the papers and

Fouquet’s copy ‹nally ended up in the Royal Library. The Brienne Col-

lection was seen to be so valuable that the archduke of Brunswick man-

aged to obtain a full copy for his library at Wolfenbüttel, as did the king

of Prussia. Above all, Colbert was careful to make his own copy, along

with several copies of the collection’s catalog.59

By Colbert’s death in 1683, the royal collection had tripled in size, con-

taining around 36,000 printed books and 10,500 manuscripts.60 Colbert’s

personal collection, some of it pilfered from the Royal Library, or pur-


chased with state funds, numbered around 23,000 printed books and 5,100

manuscripts, not including his administrative correspondence and ar-

chives.61 Colbert was able to do something that humanist encyclopedists

such as Kircher could not dream of: to quickly build a practical library of

tens of thousands of books and manuscripts in just a few years, and digest

the great French bibliophile tradition into the vast entrails of the state.

Power in the Archives

Colbert not only collected more than others; he also used the power of

the state to collect in ways that scholars could not.62 For scholars like

Peiresc, book collecting entailed a strict ethos of learning and honesty.

For others, learning was competitive business, and collecting could be ad-

dictive. For example, Sir Henry Wotton simply stole the books he

wanted while visiting Vienna.63 Colbert had little of Peiresc’s old ethic of

learning. He purchased, seized, or copied what he needed. In 1665, Col-

bert sent Jean de Doat to the Languedoc region nominally to copy, but

in reality to collect systematically, every pertinent feudal or ecclesiastical

document he could ‹nd.64 With Carcavy directing Colbert’s orders,

Doat and his assistants copied, bought, cajoled, and sometimes took

books, making doubles of the documents of many of the ancient south-

ern archives of monasteries, cities, and parlements. They shipped these

documents back to Paris by the ton, by which, in some cases, as Léopold

Delisle notes, many rare works were saved from destruction or provincial

oblivion.65 Colbert’s initial approach was aggressive, and Doat was fre-

quently barred access to archives, such as at the abbey de Gimont, where

a monk refused to use his key to open the door.66 Local nobles, rightfully

fearful of encroachments on their privileges, rioted, and Doat’s secretary

was murdered in the street outside his window in Carcassonne.67

The fact that Colbert assigned great importance to these acquisitions,

giving them the status of an affair of state, illustrates the crown’s sense of

absolutist prerogative. Colbert’s archival interests were related to con-

crete political goals.68 Doat’s mission partly pertained to Louis’s sover-

eignty over the Pyrenees. Colbert ordered him to ‹nd documents con-

cerning the royal domain and ecclesiastical bene‹ces in what amounted

to potentially huge sums of income for Louis XIV.69 During wars with

German states and Spain, Colbert employed Denis II Godefroy and

Baluze to ‹nd documents that backed Louis’s dynastic claims.70

For Peiresc, nothing had been more central to his own antiquarian

project than the quest for Eastern, or Oriental manuscripts. They were


particularly rare, and often the fruit of archeological and ethnographic

missions to the East, in which scholars traveled in camel trains and

rummaged through the ancient rolls of the shelves of Orthodox and

Coptic churches, mosques, and synagogues.71 He was proud of his abil-

ity to procure them through his web of contacts in the ambassadorial

corps.72 It was the ability to travel to the East and return with marvels

and treasures of learning that had made the names of the Flemish anti-

quarian, diplomat, and Austrian imperial librarian, Ogier Ghislain de

Busbecque (1522–92), and Athanasius Kircher. If the quest for Eastern

manuscripts was elemental to humanists, it was the same for state li-

brarians. Before Peiresc, Jacques-Auguste de Thou had used his con-

tacts to obtain them for the Royal Library.73 This trend continued, and

there were always contacts between scholars in the East and the Royal

and Mazarine libraries.

Colbert received reports on the riches, laws, and political structures

of India and Asia in 1668 from François Barnier, naturalist and doctor to

the Moghul emperor.74 With not only a large web of contacts, Colbert

also had more power and money than past collectors. Most of all, he

coveted ecclesiastical documents from the East.75 He asked Baluze to use

his contacts to search for ecclesiastical documentation on sancti‹cation

to regulate the observation of saints’ days, on heresy, and on Louis XIV’s

con›ict with the papacy over the appointment of bishops, and for doc-

uments pertinent to arguments over Protestantism and Jansenism.76 Col-

bert always asked French ambassadors to the East to procure him rare

manuscripts, and he used his knowledge of diplomatic reports as well as

his power to pressure or pay churchmen to give up rare manuscripts:

You know the curiosity that I have for good manuscripts to enrich my

library, and I am very persuaded, by the friendship that you have for

me, that, during all the time you will be at Constantinople, you will

take care to search for them and send them to me; let me know, now

and then, what you spend for this, so that I can have you repaid.

Furthermore, I am happy to inform you that the sieur Sauvan,

Consul on Cyprus, has written me that the archbishop of Cyprus, who

is presently at Constantinople, had quite beautiful manuscripts that one

might be able to acquire from him. See if I am right about this and if

you can turn this into something, at the same time, without making

any commitments.77

In the 1660s, Colbert commissioned the great linguist Charles du

Cange (1610–88) and Jean-Baptiste Cotelier (1629–86), the cataloger of


Greek manuscripts in the Royal Library and future professor of Greek at

the Collège Royal, to create a state formulary, not unlike those for the

intendants, to systematize the research, assessment, and purchasing of

Greek manuscripts. In what is a perfect example of the bureaucratization

of scholarship, it explains how to spot fakes, and how to date manu-

scripts by looking at writing and the presence of Latin in the text.78 This

analytical guide recommends rejecting nonecclesiastical works if they do

not have “marks of antiquity,” and that copies of the Old Testament

were rare, and thus better to procure than New Testaments. Above all it

warns, “You must not let escape any historical book, or any book on

civil or ecclesiastical law, that is to say the canons.”79

Working with his trusted agent, Arnoul père, the intendant of galleys

in Marseille, Colbert out‹tted and helped organize the Jesuit Orientalist

antiquarian Johann Michael Wansleben’s four-year expedition (1671–

75) to Egypt, the Greek islands, and Constantinople.80 Arnoul would

also collect the manuscripts on their arrival and send them to Colbert.81

Wansleben was not simply required to ‹nd rare manuscripts. He was also

to make an intendant-style enquête of his journey, noting political and

religious structures, geography, architecture, wealth and trade, outlined

in an antiquarian version of Colbert’s “Instructions to the Intendants,”

entitled, “Instructions pour M. Vanslèbe s’en allant au Levant,” dated

March 7, 1671.82 He was to ‹nd rare books and manuscripts, by slipping

into churches and mosques, while also collecting naturalist information:

He should look for all things that can be used in the composition of the

natural history of each country, such as animals of all species, minerals

and marcasites, particularly those which have extraordinary qualities,

such as mineral fountains and other waters, plants, fruits, that grow in

the countryside as well as in gardens, observing those which grow

more easily in one country than another.83

Colbert asked Wansleben to bring back specimens and any other curios-

ity.84 When reading Wansleben’s descriptions, it is understandable why

Colbert took the time to respond to Wansleben personally on numerous

occasions: the German did his job well, and described his trip in good

administrative detail, while ‹nding masses of rare documents. Colbert

was con‹dent about the information Wansleben collected.

Colbert sponsored a long string of missions and agents in the East.85

The leader of missions in the 1670s, the père Besson wrote a “Design for

an illustrious Library composed on ancient Oriental manuscripts” in


1673 that Colbert read and annotated.86 Besson had been chosen to lead

the royal expedition after wisely giving Colbert seventy long Hebrew

and Arab manuscripts as a gift.87 His “Design for a Library” outlined the

reasons for such an Eastern manuscript collection. Besson noted its use-

fulness in acquiring ancient and religious knowledge. In the spirit of

Counter-Reform humanism, he noted his methodology would serve

scholarship and philology and help correct textual errors and decipher

the Bible. Most of all, it could be used as a tool of religious authority:

I have written these re›ections, in spite of ‹nding them hardly useful

to accomplish a design, the execution of which will contribute much

to the honor of the Gallican Church, to con‹rm namely against the

heretical sects the Catholic truths of the Eucharist, concerning the

priesthood, the sacri‹ce of the Mass, the Reality and the Transubstan-

tiation, prayers for the dead, purgatory, the visible head of the Church

and the primacy of the Roman Church, and similar points that the

eastern Church has in a thousand places in her ancient manuscripts.88

As it had been from the time of the Renaissance, antiquarianism re-

mained at the center of questions about political authority. However,

with his research teams, massive archive, and policy of secrecy, Colbert

had made something new: a centralized system of information for inter-

national relations and political legitimacy.

A State Information Archive: Colbert’s Policy Portfolios

Considering the size of Colbert’s library, it is impossible to know what

he did and did not read. What is possible to discern, however, is what

information he thought was essential for government. Colbert collected

legal, political, and economic information on the major states of Europe.

From shipbuilding, canon-making, and trade in Venice, Holland, and

England, to the constitutions of Poland and the wealth and landholding

of Spanish peers, Colbert tried to teach himself the workings of Europe.

He collected documents on diplomacy, trade, and treaty making. Col-

bert called his document compilations “portfolios,” or “registers,”

which contained on average seven hundred folio pages.89 Each portfolio

comprises numerous texts, some copies, some originals, of documents

Colbert deemed useful. They are cataloged in the modern Bibliothèque

Nationale as the “Mélanges Colbert” and the “Cinq-Cents Colbert,”

part of which were sold to the crown by Colbert’s grandson, the third


marquis of Seignelay. The rest were con‹scated during the Revolution

under what appears to be some duress, in retribution for Colbert’s per-

ceived thefts from the Royal Library.90

The “Mélanges Colbert” contain not only Colbert’s extensive corre-

spondence, organized chronologically, and his medieval document col-

lection, but also one hundred portfolios that were compiled speci‹cally

to suit daily administrative needs, which Colbert referred to as the “reg-

istres concernant mes affaires.”91 On the back of each document, Baluze

and sometimes Colbert himself wrote its title, in some cases adding,

“Extremely Important,” “bon,” or other notes.92 Colbert and Baluze

added to each compilation regularly, keeping them up to date, and

adding useful texts.93

In part, this collection looked like a vastly expanded version of par-

liamentary archives and the old ministerial libraries, such as that of ear-

lier ministers, Sully and Brienne, or of great parliamentarians such as

Harlay, de Mesme, and Molé.94 It contained standard charters and

treaties of law, government, and foreign affairs. Colbert had extensive

collections of medieval charters;95 ‹les on French royal and parliamen-

tary history and rights;96 foreign affairs;97 and church matters.98 The li-

brary also contained portfolios with secret histories, reports, and docu-

ment compilations, such as those by Baluze and Bourzeis on current

affairs, negotiations over royal marriages, lists of secret code keys, and a

collection of different forms of royal panegyrical poems.99

Along with typical royal and legal documents, Colbert shelved doc-

uments of state administration: administrative formularies—the en-

quêtes—designed by Colbert, and carried out by his agents, as well as the

administrative reports he commissioned, such as one written by the abbé

de Bourzeis on legal reforms, to which Colbert attached his own

notes.100 He also kept ‹les concerning the parlements, provincial rights,

and the assemblies of the clergy and estates. He furthermore collected

the papers of former ministers, like Sully.101 Part of Colbert’s totalizing

ambition was his collection of library catalogs, of his own library and any

other he could obtain. If he couldn’t own a collection, he wanted to

know what was in it for reference and collation.102

State Information in the Public Sphere

Like Naudé, Colbert saw the natural sciences as an open-ended source

of useful information, constantly expanded by the discoveries brought

by experiment.103 But he went further than Naudé, connecting the


learned library, the administrative, ‹nancial, and industrial archive, to

the library of the natural sciences. New information was discovered by

experiment, and thus Colbert founded the Académie Royale des Sci-

ences on site in 1666, to have their experiments and archives in the

Royal Library.104 The Petite Académie, later the antiquarian Académie

des Belles Lettres et Inscriptions, met across the street, in Colbert’s li-

brary, or in his Chateau at Sceaux.105 Colbert kept ‹les of mathematical

treatises,106 as well as the astronomical data from the observatory that

Colbert founded and hired Cassini to run. This was part of a more gen-

eral program of favoring subjects with practical and ‹nancial interest to

the state and centralizing them in his archive.107

While many of Colbert’s archives were used in the secret of internal

ministerial and familial deliberations, other document collections and re-

search projects were destined for publication, in an attempt to have the

French state occupy the public sphere of learning. There was thus a sym-

biotic tension between the secret sphere of state information collection,

and the world of learning, diplomacy, and propaganda. The practical,

naturalistic, and industrial focus of Colbert’s collection and research pro-

gram was re›ected in his sponsorship of public scholarship. Colbert con-

trolled the Royal Press at the Louvre, and through it, he printed and

published works that re›ected the interests of his own projects, acade-

mies, and libraries. The Royal Press no longer published political his-

tory, or even philological, classical humanist scholarship, but rather pan-

egyric works and works on the natural sciences and industry, and royal

propaganda.108 This re›ected Colbert’s interest in the natural and tech-

nical sciences, and possibly a distaste for the traditional humanism of

scholars such as Naudé. From 1640 to 1661, the Royal Press at the Lou-

vre published traditional late humanist works—scholarly editions of clas-

sical authors, such as Terence and Suetonius, and of eastern and mostly

Byzantine manuscripts, and antiquarian medievalism, such as works by

Jean Chif›et (1646). It also reedited standard religious texts, such as

psalm books and St. François de Sales’s Instruction à la vie dévote (1641).

Led by Sublet de Noyers, it published the works by Richelieu on reli-

gion (1642), and Philip de Commines’s histories of the reigns of Louis

XI and Charles VIII (1649).

In 1666, at the moment Colbert took over and began in earnest his

cultural program, a striking change took place. The old works of classi-

cal philology and scholarship disappeared. The Royal Press now favored

in-house, naturalist scholars and engineers from the Royal Academy,

such as Claude Perrault, whose works included Mémoires pour servir à


l’histoire des animaux (1676) and Observations sur les eaux minérales de

plusieurs provinces de France (1675). Also published were Denis Dodart’s

Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire des plantes (1679) along with works by

Cassini and Picard.

It was not only works of science that replaced the old literary hu-

manism. The press became a site of Louis and Colbert’s theatrical pro-

paganda. In 1679, along with Richer’s description of his travels, the press

published André Félibien’s Les plaisirs de l’isle enchantée, describing Louis

XIV most splendid party at Versailles. Indeed, more than 50 percent of

the books appearing during the 1670s concerned Versailles, the king’s

collection of artworks, or parties. What had once been a top humanist

press was now a mouthpiece for the state. During Colbert’s tenure, no

literary works appeared, and only historical works that served direct po-

litical interests were published. In 1677, along with Le labyrinthe de Ver-

sailles the press published Colbert’s Édits, déclarations, règlemens et ordon-

nances du roi Louis XIV sur le fait de la marine. When works of scholarship

appeared, they were directly related to political questions, such as Louis’s

claims to dynastic rights, in Lecointe’s serial historical project, the An-

nales francorum.

Outside the con‹nes of the Royal Press, Colbert sponsored both di-

rectly and tacitly the publishing of works that resembled the practical

chapters that would ‹ll Diderot’s Encyclopédie, many of them by inten-

dants and commissaries: F. Dassié’s L’Architecture navale, contenant la

manière de construire les navires, galères et chaloupes et la dé‹nition de plusieurs

autres espèces de vaisseaux (1677); François Blondel’s Traité de l’art de jeter

les bombes (1683); Jacques Savary’s Parfait Négociant (1670); Philippe Bar-

rême’s Les comptes faits ou Le Tarif Général de touttes monnoyes (Avignon,

1762); also Les Tarifs et comptes faits du grand commerce où l’on y fait les

changes d’Angleterre, d’Hollande, de Flandre, d’Allemagne etc. (Paris: chez

l’auteur, 1670).109

In essence, Colbert was helping to create works to ‹ll ideal libraries

on the topics he felt most useful for the state, in terms of propaganda and

public knowledge. It is hard to measure the effects of this program.

What is clear though is that, from this point on, in order to govern, a

new curriculum was necessary. Those who wanted to govern would

have to know what Colbert knew.

If one wanted simply to understand the state, it was clear that it was

necessary to be expert in multiple ‹elds: medievalist legal scholarship, li-

brary sciences, the natural sciences, administrative and industrial infor-

mation management, navigation, architecture, rhetoric, and shipbuild-


ing. This new naturalist vision of state knowledge is outlined in a memo

written to Colbert by his uncle Pussort in 1663:

The Latin colleges have created procurers, clerks (gref‹ers), sergeants

and clerks for the palace of justice, priests and monks. If we could con-

vert some of these places into colleges of commerce, of marine map-

making, piloting, hydrography, etc., the kingdom would be in no time

as knowledgeable in naval affairs and in long-range voyages, in com-

merce and liberal arts, as it already is in chicane [legal harangues and long

trials].110

Colbert followed through, opening hydrography schools and fostering

natural sciences and mercantile studies.111

Colbert’s library, and its mirror in a new state curriculum, would

change the nature of library collections. The biblioteca selecta of the honnête

homme or of the gentleman scholar still existed. But the collections of pro-

fessionals increasingly re›ected the technical functions of the state. Col-

bert’s brother Charles de Croissy’s library re›ects the evolution toward

technical, practical libraries for state administrators. Croissy’s personal li-

brary was a direct product of his technical training and positions in state

administration and diplomacy. Of the books it contained, 30 percent

were on law and political science, and customs books; 50 percent were on

history, mostly that of France, with a distinct focus on Middle Eastern

history, which possibly re›ected an antiquarian bent.112 Only 10 percent

concerned classics and religion. Croissy’s library was a biblioteca selecta, but

one for state administration. Administrators such as Vauban created tech-

nical and political libraries for themselves and their children as tools of

their state functions.113 These were personal erudite appendages of the

larger state archives created by Colbert and other ministers.

Using the Archive for Politics

The collection of documents and management of the library were di-

rectly linked to external political concerns. Colbert’s policy archive was

used in daily government and kept up to date. Colbert insisted that

Baluze be certain of what was in the library at all times, and that all pa-

pers and maps be well ‹led, ready for quick consultation.114 He warned

Baluze never to lend his books, or let anyone in the library without his

“express orders.”115 In 1672, he asked Baluze to ‹nd him a ‹le of

French-English trade treaties with his own notes:


In my library there must be a portfolio in which are found the treaties

made between our kings and England, with diverse memoirs written

in my hand on these treaties and on commerce. I beg Monsieur Baluze

to ‹nd me this portfolio and to send it to me; in the case that he does

not ‹nd it, he must nonetheless send me all the treaties concerning En-

gland.116

Papers in Colbert’s thematic portfolios, such as the one dedicated to

English treaties, would be used to write policy papers.117 As Colbert had

made clear to Baluze, these were policy dossiers and had to be both se-

cret and in order for ready consultation. The dossier contained historical

documents, past treaties, of‹cial studies, such as a report on the “balance

of trade between France and England,” as well as of‹cial correspondence

and internal memos.118 On the back of a memo outlining the project of

a new trade treaty with England, Colbert wrote, “To Monsieur Baluze,

to guard with the greatest of care.”119 Colbert’s “Projet du traité de com-

merce entre la France et l’Angleterre, October 9, 1669,” contained an

exchange of annotated commentary between Colbert and his brother, de

Croissy, ambassador to London.120

I will closely examine the project for a commerce treaty that you have

sent me, and I will then let you know my sentiments concerning each

of the articles that compose it. . . . It would please me to see the re-

marks that you have made about the treaty project in relation to the

advice you have taken from the most skilled French negotiants who

are in England; and with the manuscripts and mémoires that I sent you

before, you will learn how to carry out the discussions of the articles of

this treaty.121

Once he worked out the project and veri‹ed it with the archival dossier,

Colbert wrote a report to Louis on the trade treaty, along with the of-

fers made by the English, which Louis XIV in turn could read with Col-

bert’s report, and then copiously annotate, correct, and corroborate.122 A

summary of his work with de Croissy, the report to the king contained

information from Colbert’s English trade portfolio. Following royal

con‹rmation of the project and the parameters of trade negotiation, a

string of negotiations with the English followed with demands, re-

sponses, and the ‹nal treaty, copies of which would become part of the

portfolio.123 Thus Colbert’s manuscript collections allowed him to per-

sonally lead major negotiations with England, rather than relying on


outside scholars and diplomats, while also enhancing the capacity of the

French state to deal with its northern neighbor.

Seeing Like an Archive:

Colbert’s Collection and the Colonies

While Colbert’s library and research facilities produced knowledge and

appeared to be practical, they also created constraints on Colbert’s gov-

ernment. One of the most revealing elements of Colbert’s policy archive

are the ‹les concerning colonial enterprises.124 Colbert’s interest in

France, Italy, Holland, England, and the East far outweighed his curios-

ity in the New World, for while he certainly kept his large colonial ad-

ministrative correspondence, he did not integrate it into his archival sys-

tem for daily government. This undermined his ability to effectively

manage his Canadian policy. Colbert’s lack of interest in information

from the New World seems striking for a man after whom the Missis-

sippi was named the “Colbert,” and the Ohio River, the “Seignelay.”

Why would one so interested in information ignore many aspects of the

riches of his colonial empire? Indeed, the French colonies were small,

yet Colbert invested not only great administrative effort in them: he also

invested his own money. Colbert could not comprehend a world with-

out ancient laws and charters. He saw the world in terms of traditional

paperwork, and in his eyes, America had none.125

In 1669, Colbert wrote a set of orders to his agent leaving to Canada,

the sieur Gaudais. Once at his destination, Gaudais was to write a de-

scriptive relation, providing statistical, industrial, political, and social in-

formation.126 In the style of administrative formularies, such as Philip II

of Spain’s relaciones topográ‹cas, he asked Gaudais to collect geographic

details, the length and effects of the seasons, the perceived possibilities

for agriculture, the number of inhabitants, the amounts of industrial pro-

duction and trade, lists of charters that had been established, and what

food was fed to children.127 Gaudais was charged with making a plan for

deforestation and the maintenance of the colonies.128 Even more, Col-

bert asked Gaudais to devise a plan to protect inhabitants from the Iro-

quois, who have “had no trouble in cutting their throats.”129

Aside from this last gory detail, Colbert’s orders to Gaudais look

much like his other administrative orders to intendants in France. They

were dry and technical. Remarkably, Gaudais received no instructions to

consult local experts or collect local artifacts and treasures. Where Philip


II sent out his formularies to be ‹lled in by locals with varying results,

Colbert trained his information collectors to produce standardized re-

ports.130 This worked quite well in France; but the strict framing of in-

formation collection in the colonies limited what Colbert learned about

the lands he was trying to develop for trade. Colbert’s primary job was

to inform Louis XIV and to carry out his orders. Neither Louis nor his

minister saw local, eyewitness knowledge of the Americas as an essential

tool for administration, and this, in turn, limited Colbert’s administrative

effectiveness in the colonies.131

In examining his correspondence with colonial administrators such as

de Baas, governor and lieutenant general of the French West Indies; Jean

Talon, intendant of Canada; and the directors of his colonial companies,

it becomes clear that, although it was limited, Colbert did have a colo-

nial policy.132 Certainly in Canada, he had trouble carrying it out,

though he was able to achieve industrial feats in the sugar and slavery de-

pot of the West Indies. But Colbert neither really invested himself in the

project nor built a suf‹cient administrative apparatus to manage such a

complex project. This appears to be due in part to a lack of curiosity

about the colonies themselves. Thus it was not simply mercantilism, or

problems with royal government, that undermined his colonial efforts. It

was a problem of perception.

Throughout Colbert’s colonial correspondence, his lack of curiosity

in local knowledge is marked. Colbert received reports from the West

Indies, maps and navigational calculations, and even a minimalist en-

quête from Souchu de Rennefort that discussed local inhabitants and

customs. He also received reports from the governor-general of Canada,

but he never corresponded with La Salle, or kept a working ‹le with his

agent’s observations of the New World. These reports amounted to less

information than he received from the port of Rochefort.133

Why is it that Colbert, famed for his curiosity, expressed minimal in-

terest in knowing his colonies? The Portuguese, Spanish, English,

Dutch, French Jesuits, German merchants, and other explorers had

made an industry of local, ‹rsthand reports and expertise. Curiosity and

the ars apodemica were ‹rmly linked with the interest in the marvels of

the New World.134 In the mid-sixteenth century, the Portuguese relied

heavily on explorers’ accounts and Arab and Indian contacts to organize

their geographic charts and colonial enterprises. In the sixteenth century,

Juan de Ovando created information collection projects for New Spain,

and Fernandez de Oviedo wrote a natural and ethnographic history of

the Spanish colonies with a particular curiosity for local knowledge.135


During the 1680s, Robert Boyle, head of the English East India Com-

pany, made active use of ‹rsthand naturalist and ethnographic accounts

of the East.136

In the French context, there was no lack of local information about

Canada. The Jesuits sent numerous eyewitness reports back to France.137

They were an essential tool of administration. Why then didn’t Colbert

use local knowledge as an administrative tool in the Americas, as he did

in France and the East? For Colbert, it was not a question of making the

New World conform to the authority and history found in ancient texts,

as Juan de Sepúlveda had done. The New World did not inspire the

same level of interest as did France, Asia, or the Levant. There was no

attempt to make connections between the Bible, Rome, and new peo-

ples, or, indeed, to look for Montaigne’s noble savage. Once his royal

colonial charters were established, Colbert did not treat the New World

as new or separate from Europe. If all authority emanated from ancient

Frankish kingship, Rome, the church, and monarchies, then there was

no original authority in the New World. Indeed, authority could only

be established once charters were established, “seigneuries” founded,

and legal codes brought into force. The paperwork generated by placing

the New World in the context of European and French authority made

it real. Thus there was a truly virtual character to this New World that

could not exist until it was enshrined in French legal paperwork. Colbert

spoke of the New World as connected to England, Holland, Spain,

France, and their colonial holdings and concessions. In his eyes, legally,

this is what they were. Colbert never describes the colonies as part of the

“Atlantic” or constituting a “world” unto itself. Rather, these territories

came to life in documents of authority and sources of wealth inserted

into the ancient constitutions of Europe.

In his study of Australian and aboriginal treaties, the bibliographer

Donald McKenzie showed that Australian aboriginals had neither a con-

cept of property nor of textual authority.138 When they signed treaties

giving away their land, there was no cultural context in which this oral,

physical tradition could comprehend what was a textual act de‹ning the

possession of property. The treaties, argue McKenzie, had to be held

null and void. For Colbert, we must turn this model around. For him,

oral, aboriginal knowledge could have no authority and no connection

to his traditions of authority unless bestowed by legal and diplomatic

measures by Europeans. If Colbert viewed the New World as devoid of

intrinsic authority—authority based on dominion over land, law, and

holy writ spelled out in of‹cial charters—how then did this affect his


colonial policy? In all of Colbert’s colonial correspondence, there are no

detailed questions about local knowledge.139

Colbert’s working ‹les on the colonies pertain mostly to European

questions of treaties and rights.140 Colbert’s biggest ‹le on the colonies is

the “Recueil des relations et mémoires sur l’Espagne (1606–1666), les

Indes Orientales (1628–1669), l’Amérique (1624–1669), les Antilles

(1668–1671).”141 This large portfolio of 639 pages contains texts on

Spanish dynastic rights; texts and treaties concerning international rela-

tions between France, Spain, England, and Portugal; works concerning

the founding of businesses and factories in the colonies; as well as several

different eyewitness accounts by Spaniards of the Antilles, the River

Plata, and the Peruvian Amazon. It has two memoirs by French gover-

nors in the Antilles. Finally, the compilation contains translations of two

English relations: one by Thomas Modifort, governor of Jamaica, and

another a manuscript translation of George Gardiner’s Description of the

New World, or Islands and continents of America, as they were in the year 1649

(London, 1651).

Colbert also assembled three portfolios on international trade, with

Girard Malynes’s Lex mercatoria (1622);142 charters accorded by the king

of England to English merchant companies in Holland and Turkey; and

a collection of “Chartes des privilèges aux Compagnies de Navigation

par les rois d’Angleterre en anglais (1555–1670)”;143 as well as a collec-

tion of the royal English charters of the American and West Indian

colonies.144 Finally, he kept collections concerning French trade treaties

with England and Holland, and documents about the navy, including

two original captain’s journals.145 Colbert valued certain ‹rsthand ac-

counts, especially those made by people who worked for him. He val-

ued trade route reports and maritime maps, and owned manuscript maps

made by ship captains. For example, he kept a hand-drawn map of “In-

dia Oriental” by the Portuguese explorer Damiao Vieira (c. 1668).146 Yet

in his personal portfolios, there are few manuscript maps of his colonies,

and no accounts of marvels, wonders, or treasures. Colbert did write to

the director of the West India Company asking him to “always send me

all that you ‹nd in these islands that is rare and extraordinary in plants,

animals, wood, and other things.”147 Yet this was not systematic. There

are few ‹rsthand accounts of natural or cultural information, compared

to his administrative reports. In all his letters to Jean Talon and the in-

tendant Bas, there is no mention made of trying to ‹nd artifacts or to ac-

tively acquire series of histories or accounts of local peoples and tradi-

tions. Baluze, an ecclesiastical medievalist, ran his library. Thus in


discussions about the library and the collection of information, no men-

tion is ever made of new peoples or new lands.

Colbert left most details of administration in the hands of his colonial

companies and governors. If his colonial governors had local contacts

and sources of information, they did not discuss them with Colbert. His

training of those who were supposed to manage the colonies was based

primarily on the mastery of French law and administration. While Col-

bert hired ship captains for their expertise and intendants such as

Bellinzani for their knowledge of ‹nance and industry, his choice of

colonial managers was not based on their ‹rsthand knowledge of the ter-

rain. To prepare directors of his colonial companies, he told them to ex-

amine the papers of the companies to ‹nd out what had happened in

previous colonial administration.148 He did not require them to read ge-

ographical or natural histories. Colonial agents had to master the knowl-

edge of production, merchandise, and shipping.149 They were to study

complaints and uprisings; but neither knowledge of indigenous peoples

nor ‹rsthand accounts from nongovernmental agents were required. In

his quest to create a legal framework in the colonies, Colbert ordered his

agents to establish traditional noble patents, and urban, monastic, and

guild charters. He wanted to create the paperwork and legal documen-

tation missing from this new world—from religious and feudal charters

to the Code Noir—so that he could perceive his colonies in the papers

in his hands.

In a letter to the Jesuit-educated Jean Talon (1625–94), intendant of

Canada in 1671, Colbert writes that he has received the “portfolio” of

administrative reports and correspondence and that he and the king have

gone over them. Their sole interest is the establishment of commerce.

Colbert responds that he wants to know more about the business of the

colony: its inhabitants and products; the con‹rmation of titles of nobil-

ity; the transport of prostitutes to raise population; new livestock, defor-

estation, and agriculture; and the conversion of native populations.150 In

spite of his interest in the establishment of Catholic institutions, Colbert

showed none of the interest in historical learning that is present in his

administrative correspondence with agents in Europe and the Orient.

For each of his European projects, Colbert created parallel scholarly

studies. The New World did not have the formal antiquarian informa-

tion of the old. And yet, as Jefferson’s great collection of Americana and

Native American maps showed one hundred years later, there was a host

of local information that Colbert could have collected for his project of

imperial domination. Innovative though he was, Colbert was set in his


formal ways. There was little or nothing he saw worthy for his library

from the colonies, besides European-made maps, natural histories, and

the new European paperwork his agents designed for the colonies. It was

the enterprising Talon who read, approved, and out‹tted the Jesuit ex-

plorer La Salle’s expedition down to western North America, which

would claim the Mississippi as the “Colbert” in 1682.151 Talon had local

knowledge and read La Salle’s reports, but there is no evidence that Col-

bert was interested in what, with hindsight, seems essential.

When one considers the amount of correspondence Colbert had with

Wansleben, the antiquarian, as opposed to the discoverer of the Missis-

sippi, it exposes the dramatic limitations of how Colbert conceived the

New World and its importance. Unlike Thomas Jefferson, the local,

ethnographic collector, or the Jesuits, Colbert only wanted intendant re-

ports about French things in America—population, products, and

cities.152 In spite of his Jesuit education, he had no sense of ethnography.

He appears to have resisted the realities of the empire he tried so hard to

build. Despite all protestations from his agents in Canada, he applied his

mercantilist policies, forcing French traders to limit their business to the

French colonies only, in essence boycotting the English so that they

would not receive French goods and gold. This was a fatal policy, for

there were only around 2,000 French colonialists and around 150,000 in-

habitants in the Thirteen Colonies.153 In spite of Colbert’s repeated at-

tempts to ship prostitutes to Canada, the colony’s population dwindled

with its inbred economy. European mercantilist regulation did not work

in the dynamic, dangerous, and freer world of North America, though it

did produce results in the Caribbean’s slave-fueled sugar factories.

Colbert was Louis’s lens to the kingdom and empire. He saw the

world through paperwork, and paperwork was either ancient, from the

East, holding the authority of the church and antiquity; or it was eccle-

siastical, medieval and feudal. In collecting paperwork, curiosity played

a central role. Colbert had a mercantilist hunger for information that

aided him in his grandest achievements. In this sense, mercantilism was

an effective tool. Yet the essential desire for information was missing

from his colonial policy. This perhaps helps explain why Colbert created

an extraordinary enterprise, but one that was fundamentally ›awed.154

For Colbert, there was no Atlantic world, only the weak re›ection of

ancient Europe, its laws and its hierarchy of power and knowledge, all of

which was seated in paperwork and archives.155 In the end, as with

Philip II, paperwork took a certain toll on Colbert. While he used his

archives to build and create state ventures with great success in many


‹elds, his archives both re›ected and limited his vision of the world. It

was not simply French government and mercantilism that kept Colbert

from fully engaging with his colonial project. Colonial policy was also

was rooted in a particular vision of what constituted the proper knowl-

edge for government. Colbert’s paperwork system was effective when

used in certain realms. No doubt the system had glitches, blind spots,

and unintended consequences. However, when Colbert did not use his

information system, and when he did not apply his curiosity to state ad-

ministration, he was certainly less effective in his government.


c h a p t e r 8

Jean-Baptiste Colbert ’s Republic of Lettersthe state control of knowledge

The fact that Colbert mixed the worlds of state administration and

scholarship so closely makes it hard to de‹ne exactly what he

created. Were his intendants and agents bureaucrats in a modern

sense? Or were they subservient versions of the humanist secretaries that

had ‹lled the ranks of papal and Italian administrations since the late

Middle Ages? What becomes clear is that Colbert was creating a new

sort of agent loyal only to the state. He actively trained information

managers who could ‹nd, copy, catalog, and bring him documentation

as he needed it for his day-to-day affairs. In other agents, he sought

scholars to teach him how better to handle the historical materials he

used for government. They were masters of that little understood phe-

nomenon of learning: the internal government report.

By the late 1660s, he had created a cadre of in-house, state scholars

who worked only for him. Colbert preferred above all churchmen for

their expertise in medieval charters and, perhaps, for their discretion.

Whereas Rudolph II of Bohemia had surrounded himself with scholars

and librarians who had semi-independent literary careers based on pa-

tronage, Colbert preferred those with institutional loyalty. Colbert did

not want his scholars looking for patrons; he wanted them as permanent

employees of his administration. He found the skills of the Benedictines

particularly appealing. These churchmen were expert textual handlers

120

who saw it as their responsibility to organize ecclesiastical archives. In

particular, Colbert sought out the services of the famous archivist and li-

brarian, Don Jean Mabillon (1632–1707), who had developed a method-

ology of “Diplomatics,” a critical approach to authenticating documents

and exposing spurious ones.1 Working with a number of lay scholars in

his Société de Saint Germain, Mabillon’s dedication to conscientious

methods of critical philology worried some in the church because of his

rationalizing approach toward authoritative church documents. Yet Ma-

billon’s fame and in›uence only grew. Mabillon’s skills of ecclesiastical

erudition had a profound effect on Colbert’s approach to learned ad-

ministration. Mabillon’s masterwork of documentary analysis, De re

diplomatica (1681), not only won him Colbert’s admiration, numerous

state pensions, and support for the monastery; the following year, Col-

bert sent Mabillon to Burgundy to search for documents relative to royal

rights.2 In 1683, Colbert sent Mabillon through Switzerland and Ger-

many to look for documents relative to the rights of the Gallican church,

which were central to fortifying Louis’s power and claims over ecclesi-

astical bene‹ces.

Mabillon trained a number of highly accomplished document gath-

erers and critics, experts in ancient languages, among them Baluze and

Robert Cotelier.3 One of the ‹nest bibliophiles and archivists of his

time, the former secretary to Archbishop Pierre de Marca, the Jesuit-

trained Étienne Baluze helped manage both the Colbertine and Royal

libraries, as his massive personal collection of manuscripts copied from

both libraries illustrates.4 Baluze ran the day-to-day workings of the li-

brary. He managed its ‹nances, acquisitions, and staff, down to the

purchasing of reams of paper (the greatest expenditure besides books,

used for copying, the main process of manuscript acquisition), as well

as brooms, maps, locks, coal, rags, rugs, cabinets, armoires, maps,

globes, curtains, and most importantly, repairs on the clock, for Col-

bert, trained as an accountant, liked all his employees in both his and

the king’s library to clock their hours.5 It is hard to imagine the old

royal librarians punching in and out on a work clock; but Colbert liked

ef‹ciency.

Baluze stood midway in the evolutionary chain between scholar and

expert bureaucrat. Colbert hired him not only because his erudition was

internationally renowned, but also, as Colbert mentions himself in his

correspondence, because of the skills he had honed with the Jesuits and

Mabillon. Baluze was a quick copyist with good handwriting, a master

cataloger, and a capable handler of account books.6 And clearly, he was

Jean-Baptiste Colbert’s Republic of Letters 121

trustworthy. He answered to Colbert’s ethic of scholarship and his logic

of bureaucracy and state secrecy.7 The library and the administrators

who worked for it constituted a quasi-bureaucracy of letters, and Col-

bert’s orders were its modus operandi.

Baluze’s main responsibility was to manage historical documentation

for Colbert’s daily political uses.8 Like the Fuggers before him, Colbert

insisted his collection be up-to-date. Baluze was to acquire all new pub-

lications and archival discoveries, in particular in relation to topics of im-

mediate concern, such as Jansenism.9 The library’s organizational and re-

trieval system was facilitated by large cataloging projects, organized by

Baluze and Nicolas Clément in the Royal Library. Colbert mostly oper-

ated through Baluze’s personal familiarity with the collections, and his

own collection of textual extracts that Baluze used to handle vast num-

bers of documents, often copied from outside Colbert’s collection.10

Baluze authored numerous internal reports: secret histories and reading

and archival guides to help Colbert not only master historical and legal

policy questions, but also handle his own archives.11 Baluze went be-

yond scholars such as Mabillon who worked outside the state adminis-

tration, and refused direct payment for his work for Colbert.12 Baluze

was not an independent ‹gure of learning, but rather a state scholar on a

salary, and Colbert employed others like him.

An early member of the Académie Française and former secretary to

Richelieu, the abbé Aimable de Bourzeis (1606–1672) was another Col-

bertian state scholar trusted to handle secret papers of state relative to

Louis XIV’s claims to the inheritance of the Spanish Netherlands. He,

too, produced secret internal histories and legal reports for Colbert, such

as his giant ‹le on the inheritance rights of Louis XIV’s Spanish wife,

Marie-Thérèse, relative to the Dutch War. The ‹le is ‹lled with secret

historical reports, useful documents, and the fruits of a wide scholarly

correspondence concerning the crown’s claims over Spanish Nether-

lands.13 Bourzeis’s secret ‹le for Colbert also contained information that

remained secret: reports by ambassadors, legal memos, and minutes of

strategy discussions, such as “Designs that his Majesty has to take parts of

these countries, over which he has rights,” as well as collections of legal

evidence and arguments backing the French royal case.14 Bourzeis in-

formed Colbert about legal questions, Spanish responses, and general

strategy. Parts of this ‹le were eventually uni‹ed into a work of public

propaganda. While delicate internal memos and diplomatic reports re-

mained secret, Bourzeis’s Traitté des droits de la Reyne tres-chrestienne sur

divers Estats de la monarchie d’Espagne is a discussion of legal documents


Colbert saw ‹t to publish on the Royal Press at the Louvre in 1667, to

backing the French crown’s claim.

The Foucault Files: Power, Information, and Archeology

The emblematic ‹gure of Colbert’s information system was neither a

churchman, nor a librarian, although he had essential training in ecclesi-

astical scholarship. Nicolas-Joseph Foucault (1643–1721) was an erudite

maitre des requêtes and of‹cial whose career spanned and oven outlasted

Louis XIV’s reign.15 Foucault began his career as Colbert’s secretary,

compiling a legal and administrative manual for Colbert’s son, a glossary

of state paperwork and of the archives that allowed him to learn the me-

chanics of state administration. He helped in the trial against Fouquet

and led the acquisition campaign for both libraries, ‹nally rising to the

powerful post of intendant of Montauban, where he implemented re-

pressive measures against Protestants.16 As Baluze evolved from scholar

to bureaucrat, Foucault grew from lowly tax collector, to grand state in-

tendant, writer of enquêtes, and noted erudite and antiquarian, founder

of the Académie des Belles Lettres de Caen. By the end of his life dur-

ing the regency of the duke d’Orléans, Foucault was a celebrated anti-

quarian and archaeologist. Foucault straddled both the strong-arm poli-

tics of Louis’s regime and the world of erudition.

Foucault’s father, Joseph Foucault (1612–?), was a secretary of the

Chambre des Comptes, and a protégé of Colbert. He went on to be a

clerk in the Parlement of Paris and wrote the of‹cial report of the pro-

ceedings of Fouquet’s arrest.17 Nicolas-Joseph was educated by the Je-

suits. He was ‹rst in his class (empereur) several times and won the ‹rst

prize in prose at the Collège de Clermont, where Colbert’s sons would

later attend school.18 Foucault studied philosophy and obtained the de-

gree of maître des arts. In 1662, he studied theology for a year, was

con‹rmed, received the tonsure, and was going to receive a position in

the clergy. However, his father and Colbert decided that he should

study law, and in 1664, he received a degree in canon and civil law at

Orléans. Colbert named him secretary in 1665. He now had the pre-

requisite skills to become one of the leading ‹gures in Colbert’s admin-

istration. He was trained in classical studies, ecclesiastical history, and

canon and civil law.19

Colbert had plans for his skilled protégé. Foucault entered royal ad-

ministration with a venal commission as a procurer general of genealog-

ical research. His ‹rst job was thus to work as a support to Colbert’s


project of pressuring the nobility to prove their ‹nancial rights. In 1674,

he became a maître des requêtes, the road to being an intendant. In

1678, Colbert found a new use for his talents. He made Foucault part of

Baluze and Doat’s manuscript gathering operation. Working with

Baluze, Foucault went to the abbey of Moissac and noted that Doat had

missed many documents relevant to asserting royal, secular power over

the church. With the help of the abbé de Fouillac, Foucault went

through the manuscripts and had Fouillac make a catalog for Baluze.20

Concerning their discoveries, Foucault wrote to Baluze,

Monsieur, I did not want to respond to the last letter that you took the

trouble to write me, as I was not yet able to send you the catalog of

manuscripts that are in the abbey de Moissac. To examine them, I re-

lied on the aid of Monsier Fouillac, canon of Cahors, who spent seven

days just to go over a part of them, the archives of this monastery be-

ing in such a great confusion and the majority of its papers rotten or

eaten by rats. Monsieur le président Doat quickly looked over them,

and there is a large number of books and cartularies that he did not see.

It will be possible to ‹gure out what is in this abbey with the help of

the above mentioned sieur Fouillac, who is very able in these matters,

and under whose eyes nothing will escape that merits to be noticed.

But as he will lose his revenue as canon during the time he will do this

research and although he has offered to work for free, it would be,

Monsieur, necessary to give a royal commission to the chapterhouse of

Cahors for him while he works on this search. It would be a way to

gain a total knowledge of that which is of interest in the churches of

this province, and you would be, Monsieur, informed on all that you

desire to know. Monsieur the Bishop of Cahors is in Paris for a lawsuit

he is making against the University, and I am persuaded that he will

not refuse you the manuscript of Radulphe, archbishop of Bruges,

which you have made clear you need.21

Here Foucault explains that he has found a learned priest without an in-

come who will essentially raid the archives and write a catalog so that

Baluze and Colbert can assess which documents needed to be copied.

No member of the abbey of Moissac was willing to do so. Foucault also

points out that the bishop of Cahors was having legal problems, and if

Colbert helped him, he might be able to use this pressure to obtain a rare

manuscript.

Nicolas-Joseph Foucault is not considered an erudite author, al-

though his works are varied and substantial. He wrote major parts of the


Ordonnances (c. 1670), or legal and administrative lessons for Colbert’s

son Seignelay; he was Colbert’s and Lamoignon’s scribe during the legal

reforms, writing the Le Procès Verbal de l’Ordonnance de 1667, the internal

minutes of Colbert’s legal reforms. He wrote the of‹cial description of

the arrest of Fouquet.22 He wrote a secret, internal history of the func-

tions of the royal secretaries, also for Seignelay, to once again describe the

workings of state administration.23 He prepared drafts of his own inten-

dant’s enquête on Caen for the Mémoires sur les Généralités collected to in-

struct Louis XIV’s grandson and erstwhile heir, the duke de Bourgogne,

in 1698.24 He wrote numerous enquêtes, letters to Colbert, as well as a

set of Mémoires, not published until the nineteenth century. He also

worked as a scholar, writing numerous speeches for both the Académie

des Belles-Lettres de Caen, and the Académie Royale des Inscriptions et

Belles-Lettres, which made him an honorary member in 1701.25 During

this same period, Foucault and the famed antiquarian and Orientalist

translator of One Thousand and One Nights, Antoine Galland, sent a “re-

lation” of their ‹ndings from their archeological dig of the ancient cities

of Alauna and Viducassiens to the Académie des Inscriptions.26

Montfaucon eulogized Foucault in the preface to his founding work

of antiqurianism, L’antiquité expliquée et représentée en ‹gures (1719–24).

He considered Foucault to be one of the greatest archaeologists of the

age, whose position as an intendant gave him advantages that he applied

toward learning:

Monsieur Foucault, Counselor of State, has furnished me with more

antique pieces than any other. The charge of intendant, which he ex-

ercised in several provinces, gave him the means to discover [many

pieces] that would have been destroyed had they fallen in other hands.

As he has marvelous taste, he has created one of the most beautiful [an-

tiquities] cabinets in the kingdom, and perhaps all of Europe. Always

attentive to please learned people, he keeps those who work on antiq-

uity informed, and, like another Peiresc, he has offered them with

pleasure, all that he has collected for public utility.27

Montfaucon’s comparison of Foucault to Peiresc shows how much had

changed since the beginning of the seventeenth century. Foucault was

learned, and shared his ‹ndings with the world of the Republic of Let-

ters, but only in his retirement. In the days working for Colbert, Foucault

did not share information among public scholars. In fact, he was known

for seizing books, and for the coerced conversions of Protestant nobles.28


Indeed, Foucault could be seen as the antithesis of Peiresc, for he was

erudite, but he used his learning to advance his administrative career and

enforce Louis XIV’s aggressive absolutist policy. In the affair of the ré-

gale, in which the bishop of Pamiers refused to obey royal orders, and

which we shall examine in more detail in chapter 9, Foucault seized

documents, sequestered charterhouses, and produced numerous reports

and document packets that he sent back to Baluze and Colbert.29 He

searched the papers of the renegade priest, Pére d’Aubarède, the vicar

general of Pamiers, and found a secret journal about the régale, and found

names of churchmen involved in the ecclesiastical rebellion.30 He

worked with the loyal archbishop of Toulouse, who looked over papers

for him and veri‹ed the names of conspirators. The very same year,

1680, Foucault also sent Colbert substantial administrative reports con-

cerning politics, legal reform, church affairs, and tax collection in Mon-

tauban, as well as making a map of the area.31 In all cases, he used his

scholarly expertise to assert absolutist royal authority.

Colbert asked Foucault to mix his duties as intendant with his schol-

arly service. He was also a hands-on governor and administrator. In the

same letter in which he asks Foucault to “inform yourself always on all

that concerns commerce, manufacturing, and the feeding of livestock,”

he also asks him to continue his state scholarly activity: “In the differ-

ent visits that you have made all over your districts, you would give me

pleasure if you would look in the churches, cathedrals, and in the prin-

cipal abbeys to see if there are considerable [collections] of manuscripts,

and, in this case, to look for the means to have them without using the

heavy hand of authority, but rather with sweetness and by purchasing

them.”32

Clearly Colbert had learned lessons from the problems encountered

by his aggressive document hunters, although he never hesitated to ap-

ply state pressure to acquire his desired papers. He regularly asked inten-

dants, commissaries, ambassadors, and agents to ‹nd him materials for his

library and archives. To the intendant Tubeuf he wrote,

I have heard that the Messieurs [the monks] of the chapter of Saint-Ga-

tien were thinking of sending me some of their manuscripts to put in

my library. Please tell them for me, when you see them, that I would

be much obliged by this present, as I take great pleasure in collecting

manuscripts that might serve as the basis for literary projects that I have

undertaken on [Louis XIV’s] reign.


I also ask that you let me know what you have done to get a copy

of the manuscript entitled: Gesta Aldrici, which belongs to the chapter

of the cathedral of Le Mans; and in the case that you have been able to

acquire it, you will please sent it to me as quickly as possible.33

There were numerous cases of intendants making contact with religious

institutions, and asking for manuscripts, rare works, and veri‹cations.34

Colbert also asked the ambassador to London to scour the London book

markets, looking for new editions for his personal collection.35

Colbert drafted ‹gures of international humanism for his sometimes

public, sometimes secret information hub.36 The academician Jean

Chapelain (1595–1674) became Colbert’s agent, searching for scholars

willing to take Colbert’s money in return for royal propaganda. A man

who once kept a correspondence with other members of the Republic

of Letters for his own interests now used his address book for Colbert.

Chapelain wrote Conring, asking him to work for the French crown by

assembling historical documents that could be used as French propa-

ganda.37 He did the same with Heinsius, whom he ›attered by listing

other great scholars, such as J. G. Vossius and Huygens, who had ac-

cepted royal service.38 Chapelain ›attered Vossius by telling him that

Louis XIV himself had taken a personal interest in his works.39

Chapelain also proposed his own services in developing a form of pane-

gyrical history for the king of a sort that would not reveal political secrets

to the king’s enemies.40 The object here was blatant propaganda.

Chapelain explained that he understood Colbert’s project of keeping

documented political history secret:

History should serve only to conserve the splendor of the King’s en-

terprises and to detail his miracles. At the same time, history is like a

fruit that is not good out of season. For if it does not analyze the mo-

tives of the things it explains, and if it is not accompanied by prudent

commentaries, then it is nothing but a pure, undigni‹ed relation. . . .

However, this sort of history should not be used during the reign of

the Prince who is the subject of the history, for if one were to write

this history, it would render public the secrets of the Prince’s Cabinet;

it would warn his enemies, nullify his policy, and betray those who

work with him in secret and in the shadow of a profound silence.

Therefore, I think that we should produce a history in a manner that

the work is kept hidden until no inconvenient remarks can be used

against his Majesty and his allies.41


Colbert’s agent understood that his job was not to write serious docu-

mented history. The royal archives were to remain closed.

When Denis II Godefroy, Colbert’s agent in the stacks of the Cham-

bre des Comptes at Lille—an archive essential for documents pertaining

to Louis’s claims to the Netherlands—asked Colbert if he could write a

history with the documents he was collecting under Colbert’s orders,

Colbert told him that he paid him to keep his medieval documents for

the state, not to publish them.42 He told the disappointed Godefroy to

stick to his secret, archival task.43

When one of the assistants in the Royal Library, Antoine Varillas, re-

vealed to Colbert that he was using the documents of the royal collection

to write a Secret History of the House of Medici—“I leave off where Machi-

avelli began,” he imprudently boasted—Colbert was horri‹ed, and ‹red

him and evicted him from his lodgings at the library.44 When Colbert’s

brother protested that Varillas had nowhere to go, Colbert retorted that

he had found Varillas “insupportably ugly” (“une mine plus désavan-

tageuse qui se puisse voir”), and that he didn’t care.45 He showed the same

businesslike impatience with the old Royal historiographer, François-Eu-

des de Mézéray.46 When the latter published a passage in his history that

was in contradiction with Colbert’s claims of royal tax prerogatives, Col-

bert ‹red him as well, ignoring the entreaties of a long-serving old man

with a family to support.47 These scholars misunderstood their role, which

was closer to that of Foucault, the intellectual policeman.

With the Foundation of the Petite Académie, later the Académie

Royale des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, Colbert organized a historical

research team for political propaganda.48 The team, which included

Chapelain, François Charpentier, Claude Perrault, the Président de

Périgny, and later, Paul Pellison-Fontanier, had begun by helping for-

mulate Louis’s Instructions for the Dauphin, and had corrected works of

propaganda. The team wrote Latin inscriptions for public buildings and

medals, and took part in writing collective works of propagandistic his-

tory.49 The most illustrious of this group was Charles Perrault, the great

author of fairy tales, who acted as permanent secretary for the Petite

Académie. Perrault writes in his Mémoires that he had Charpentier write

down the work of the group in a small notebook (cahier), which would

be sent to Colbert, who would write his comments on it, much as he did

with the reports of his son and the intendants.50 Colbert had tested Per-

rault for the position of secretary by having him write a description of a

naval siege. Perrault’s job was then to record Louis XIV’s utterances into

a register, so that sententiae and great phrases of the king could later be


quoted. Colbert also dictated the entire story of the fall of Fouquet,

which Perrault diligently wrote down in the register.51

However, there were problems with Colbert’s historical research

team. Perrault notes that the team worked not from primary historical

documents, but rather from of‹cial gazettes and public sources.52 After

Charpentier approached Colbert, asking for secret memoranda with

which to write his histories, the minister rebuffed him, not wanting to

open the royal archives. Charpentier resigned. When Pellison began

writing his history of the War of Devolution, he also asked for direct

access to Louis XIV and state archives. He got access to the king, but

apparently not to state papers. They were two separate things. Louis

did not reveal secrets, but his papers did. Colbert wanted Pellison for

the same reasons he hired Chapelain: to write panegyric, not to do re-

vealing research.53 Thus, Pellison was commissioned to write about

Louis’s Dutch Wars, and followed Louis on his military campaign,

writing observations and a purely descriptive history that could be used

as propaganda.

One scholar who pleased Colbert was Benjamin Priolo, a former spy

and adventurer who had worked for Mazarin, and who, in 1661, pro-

posed to write a history of the ministry of Mazarin in the style of Taci-

tus or Livy in exchange for payment.54 He even asked Colbert for doc-

uments for his history, and Pierre Bayle claimed that Colbert had given

him access to information concerning rival ministers.55 Whether or not

Colbert actually gave Priolo sensitive documents to bolster his claims,

Priolo’s history clumsily attacked Colbert’s rivals and praised Mazarin.

Describing Mazarin’s last will and testament, Priolo noted, “At this time

especially he recommended by particular Character Jean Baptiste Col-

bert, in whom as he possessed many qualities, so especially his faithful-

ness and his industry, and with his most piercing Judgement, sincerity

unknown to the most of men.”56 Priolo noted that Colbert could never

be deceived, nor deceive anyone, and he lamented that his book was

both ridiculed and disdained. Colbert may not have liked base ›attery,

but he did like political loyalty, and Priolo received payments and kept

his pension.

If he supported propaganda and suppressed critical histories, Colbert

also sti›ed and controlled the publication of genuine historical docu-

ments if they did not serve the strict role of propaganda. In 1666, the

parliamentarian Guillaume Ribier complained of the rising tide of state

secrecy and government control over state documents, in which more

and more historical documents were deemed “secret intelligence.”57 It


was dangerous for historians, Ribier noted, to publish historical docu-

ments with political signi‹cance,58

where one discovers the secrets of the Court of a Prince, the mysteries

of the Cabinet, the power and authority of the Favorites, the jealousies

and competitions of the Grands etc. . . . Even now it is considered an

attack against the well-being of the state, & the Honor of Princes and

their Ministers, to give the means to Strangers and Enemies of the State

to use our documents (adresses) & to know our most secret intelli-

gence.59

Secrecy and censorship had always existed in government affairs. It was

now clearer than ever that this secrecy was extending in new ways into

the world of learning. This did not just mean keeping secret archives and

manipulating the public world of learning; it also meant creating a vast

censorship campaign. It was precisely the sort of policy that was missing

during the Fronde. Colbert, in contrast, used his state agents to identify

and repress information deemed threatening to Louis’s royal power mo-

nopoly.

Policing the Republic of Letters:

Nicolas de La Reynie and Information Crackdown

As a minister who made his career during the days of the Fronde, libels,

clandestine street literature, and printing were of primary concern to

Colbert. Here was another aspect of the world of information and of the

Republic of Letters that he wanted to control. Throughout his ministry,

Colbert wrote to his Lieutenant general of police, the intendant Gabriel-

Nicolas de La Reynie (1625–1699), of the king’s and his own concern

with libels.60 Colbert saw libels as a direct threat to royal authority. He

wanted not only to punish printers of libelous tracts and banned books

with stays in the Bastille or in the galleys; he also sought to create a sys-

tem to tightly control printing throughout France. In 1661, at the be-

ginning of Louis’s reign, Colbert sought to strengthen the state’s control

over the printing of books in France. There had long been a system of

royal “permissions” that printers needed to publish a given work, that

followed the “approbation” of the royal censor, called the approbation du

roy.61 Colbert wanted to expand this by bringing print shops themselves

under state control.

In 1666, Colbert created the Council of Police and asked them to


come up with a system for controlling the book trade.62 Working under

La Reynie, with the assistance of the erudite police commissary Nicolas

Delamare, the council designed a mercantilist plan to reduce the num-

ber of printers to only a sanctioned few. Colbert helped the council de-

sign a familiar system of controlled visits, much like those of intendants.

La Reynie and Delamare were not simple policemen, but rather presti-

gious, former maîtres de requêtes, and La Reynie was technically an in-

tendant himself. The position of lieutenant general of police in Paris was

a newly created post, a high of‹ce that was tantamount to a ministry of

the interior, though focused on Paris. It brought La Reynie into daily

contact with Colbert and often Louis XIV.

The job of the police was to visit print shops and verify that they

were following regulations and only publishing sanctioned books. La

Reynie would list all material in each print shop to make sure the state

could account for each printing press.63 He wanted lists of workers in the

printing industry, and lists of those who made and distributed movable

type. In 1667, Colbert closed thirteen of the seventy-nine existing print

shops in Paris for not complying with state regulation.64 The decision

was taken to limit the number of royally sanctioned printers to thirty.

They would receive mercantilist monopolies and advantageous contracts

to publish royal materials, from books to legal codes, and of‹cial an-

nouncements that were posted on walls. It was a lucrative business. In

order to maintain their privilege, printers would have to pass each book

through La Reynie’s censorship of‹ce to receive an of‹cial stamp of ap-

proval. Failure to do so would incur corporal punishment.65 While fa-

vored state-sanctioned printers prospered—Frédéric Léonard became a

millionaire with his royal and church printing monopolies—small inde-

pendent printers and bookbinders slowly went out of business. Colbert’s

state regulation succeeded in strangling the once great Parisian book in-

dustry. However, censorship is always a tricky game. Printing in nearby

Holland ›ourished even more, outside of Colbert’s control, and royal

printers, such as Frédéric Léonard, often printed subversive works on

foreign presses, smuggling them back to Paris for pro‹t.66

Gabriel-Nicolas de La Reynie was not a Parisian by birth. Born in

Limoges in 1625, from an important parliamentary family, his grandfa-

ther was president of the Parlement of Burgundy and a member of the

Royal Council. He received a Jesuit education and went on to study

philosophy, theology, and canon and civil law. At the age of twenty-

one, he became a president of the Parlement of Bordeaux. During the

Fronde, he became intendant to the duke d’Épernon, and, although


wealthy himself, went on to manage the d’Épernon family fortune and

household in Paris.67 In 1661, having had the support of Mazarin, La

Reynie was able to purchase the important position of maîtres des re-

quêtes for the considerable sum of 320,000 pounds. With good political

connections, he was on the path to an intendancy.

From a distinguished legal family, La Reynie was cultivated. His mar-

riage contract reveals the valuable contents of his library of 1,537 vol-

umes in the early 1660s.68 His library was ‹lled with works of literature

and eloquence, theology, history, canon and civil law, philosophy and

the natural sciences, as well as a considerable collection of eighty-one

volumes of prints. Here was the perfect agent for Colbert: cultivated,

professional, with legal and ecclesiastical expertise, and loyal to the

crown. La Reynie was not only a well-educated and rich lawyer; he also

chose the right side in the Fronde. Best of all, he aimed to serve.

As a test of his skills, Colbert had him write several reports on trade

and tax farms, and also asked him to manage a system of informers and

to report their ‹ndings.69 La Reynie passed the tests, and soon after, Col-

bert had him write a report supporting royal authority over ecclesiastical

courts.70 In 1667, Colbert appointed La Reynie the ‹rst lieutenant gen-

eral of police in Paris, in a move to take policing away from the Par-

lement of Paris, transferring this power to the crown, and to Colbert’s

ministry.71

La Reynie’s responsibilities were multiple. He was to police Paris and

guarantee security in the city. He was to manage the city itself—from

lighting and ‹re‹ghting to signs, water distribution, and ›ood manage-

ment. He was to handle vagabonds, hospitals, prisons, abandoned chil-

dren, and prostitutes, as well as oversee health and the management of

the medical profession, hygiene, and epidemics in the capital. He also

managed commerce in the city and regulated the guilds, from butchers

to wig-makers. Finally, he was to police moeurs: roughly put, morals,

which also meant ideas, learning, and printing.72 He was essentially the

mayor of Paris and manager of all that went on in this capital of the Re-

public of Letters.

Colbert had asked La Reynie if it would be possible to completely

ban the importation of foreign books and pamphlets. The astute and

ever realistic La Reynie pointed out the dif‹culties in controlling clan-

destine and foreign literature. In 1664 he wrote Colbert that

high and low of‹cers of customs make everything confused, by the li-

cense they take to give to booksellers, before they have been visited


‹rst by the Collège Royal, by the syndics of the printing trade, the

books they receive in boxes in their of‹ces [from outside France]. . . .

It is useless to constrain the king’s subjects to obedience, if foreigners

are free to ‹ll the kingdom with scandalous doctrines. It is in this way

that kings and governments have been slandered in the past.73

La Reynie tried various methods of searching incoming packages from

Holland, and even though he was slowing down illicit traf‹c, he knew

that banned books were still making it through.74 The bookseller Ribou

was caught with a reading room with a stock of banned, seditious reli-

gious works on Protestantism and Jansenism, and was sent to the galleys.

On his return, he was caught selling more banned books, and this time

Delamare wrote La Reynie that he would threaten him with a life sen-

tence in the galleys if he were caught again.75

Censorship had once been the purview of the university, but during

the reign of François I, the crown took over censorship from the church,

as well as the Parlement, which delivered the approbations to publish le-

gal texts. Colbert and La Reynie now tried to use their control over the

book trade to sti›e the wave of antigovernment pamphlets, placards, and

factums, printed descriptions of trials and legal proceedings, as well as

seditious songs.76 After nearly twenty years in power, La Reynie com-

plained to his old friend, Étienne Baluze:

I do not understand how it is possible that there are still people insolent

and stubborn enough to compose and sing in public such extravagant

things. We have imprisoned many of these miserable people, seized all

their papers, and have also threatened all these small printers.77

La Reynie had the authority to censor and repress, but it was not enough

to control sedition completely. Nonetheless, the state played a larger role

than ever both in›uencing and repressing the public world of knowl-

edge, learning, and politics.

Policing Radical Enlightenment

La Reynie was not simply worried about popular culture and pamphlets.

He was also concerned about the world of formal learning, and Baluze

helped him in his quest to repress philosophical, political, and most of

all, religious sedition.78 Almost half of the books seized by the police in

seventeenth-century Paris concerned theology and canon law.79 During


this period, which some would later call the Radical Enlightenment,

Colbert and the king saw a major threat in the undermining of royal au-

thority through Protestantism, Jansenism, papal authority, and atheism.80

In 1672, La Reynie sent a report to Baluze concerning the anonymous

book Le Tombeau des Controverses ou le Royal Accord de la Paix avec la Piété

(Amsterdam: J. Lucas, 1672):

The author of this treatise claims that the king wants to unite the two

religions, that it is in his interest to tolerate one single [religion], and

that he has the authority to do so. He makes reference to several im-

portant examples, from which he draws extraordinarily strong conclu-

sions, that it would be dangerous to authorize and that it is perhaps not

prudent to condemn, as they express certain truths, which are impor-

tant to the king and the kingdom.81

Note La Reynie’s subtle reading of the Tombeau de Controverses. He re-

marks that since the book favors bringing Catholicism and Protes-

tantism together, it might be used to the advantage of the monarchy,

and, in spite of being published in Holland, might be well received by

Rome.82

However, in his following letter to Colbert, La Reynie explains that

he has done a closer reading of the book. He now realizes that the book

means not to show the path to reunited Catholicism and Protestantism,

but rather is a critique of Catholicism. The owner of the bookshop

where the book has been found must be brought to trial.83

La Reynie had his ‹nger on the pulse of intellectual life. He was es-

pecially concerned about the circulation in France of Richard Simon’s

Histoire critique du Vieux Testament (Rotterdam: Ranier Leers, 1685).

After a raid on the bookshop of Billaine where the book was found, La

Reynie recognized the danger of this key book that examined the Old

Testament according to veri‹able, historical criteria, bringing the

Scriptures into the realm of historical veri‹cation. If the Scriptures

were not immutable, but rather open to historical and rational inter-

pretation, this undermined the fundaments of religion, and divine right

monarchy. La Reynie took immediate action, tracing the itinerary of

the book; seizing it; and making sure copies were procured for the

Royal Library:

How many copies of this book have been printed? Does he have a

royal privilege? Find out. Seize all the copies, see if copies have been


sold to other bookstores. Which ones? How many? Find out who is

the author of this work. Keep three bound copies if possible. Put the

seized works in sealed packages. Destroy the pages currently being

printed.84

During his search of the shop of the book dealer, the widow Savreux,

on June 6, 1673, La Reynie found an inventory of all the books the shop

had printed or sold.85 In order to ‹gure out which of the large number

of ecclesiastical, historical, and philosophical works on their list were

forbidden, La Reynie sent the catalog to Baluze, asking for his analysis.

While I have not found Baluze’s response, this letter reveals that Col-

bert’s state scholars and police worked in concert.

Colbert himself wrote La Reynie, asking him to obtain and read

books that he suspected were seditious. He asked him to obtain a copy

of an Italian history of Mazarin’s ministry in order to decide if it should

obtain a privilege to be printed. He asked La Reynie

to mark the passages that seem important so that after showing them to

His Majesty, he can take the action he judges most advantageous for

him; but if they are not yet printed, you can delay the printing until

our return to Paris.86

La Reynie duly obtained and annotated the book in question, pointed

out passages that could be considered critical, and sent them to Colbert.

Colbert then went over these annotations and presented them to the

king, who made a ‹nal decision about whether the book should be pub-

lished.

Louis XV’s famous philosophe censor (later the ill-fated defender of

Louis XVI), Lamoignon de Malesherbes (1721–94), did not repress sub-

versive authors. He is famous for reading the authors of the Enlighten-

ment, and using his powers as royal censor instead to protect them.87 His

predecessor La Reynie also knew his authors, but he did not want to

protect them. He served the crown without question. It was not just

works on religion that worried La Reynie and Colbert. Well-docu-

mented, historical works and even translations of classical authors were

of major concern. La Reynie was well read enough not only to be fa-

miliar with most historical and political authors, such as Paolo Sarpi; he

also recognized editorial tricks, such as when Amelot de La Houssaye

translated passages by Tacitus to disguise his own proto-republican phi-

losophy.88 A sophisticated reader, La Reynie was also realistic about his


own powers, and he knew that if authors such as Amelot were prose-

cuted too much, they would ›ee to Holland, and would be much more

dangerous there.

It was in Holland that authors such as Pierre Bayle began using schol-

arly journalism to attack religious and political authority. La Reynie had

long been aware that the bourgeoning world of clandestine journalism

was a threat to the attempted royal monopoly on news and the Repub-

lic of Letters. He worried that rogue newspapers and gazettes would

threaten the monopolies of the Renaudot family, and Denis de Sallo’s

Journal des Savants.89 The descendant of Théophraste Renaudot, Jacques

Renaudot, who still owned the state monopoly to publish the Gazette de

France, complained that many printers were opening reading rooms in

direct competition to the Bureau d’Adresse, and in them, they were cir-

culating nonsanctioned books, journals, and news sheets.90 La Reynie

worked to protect state-supported news sources, as well as Colbert’s aca-

demic journals. La Reynie managed to repress a number of clandestine

Parisian journals and gazettes that were particularly seditious.91 But the

competition from Holland was getting ever more threatening.

I received this afternoon the letter you did me the honor of writing me

along with the letter from the comte d’Avaux. This letter con‹rms that

the judgment concerning the man named Bayle was just in all its con-

siderations. His Lettre sur les Comètes, Critique du Calvinisme, and

the Nouvelles de la République des Lettres testify to his skill, but the

‹nesse and delicacy of these same works do not render them less sus-

pect and, even though the author was forced to restrain himself in his

Journal to have them received in France, he was nonetheless unable to

hide his ill will and design so well that Monseigneur the Chancellor

was not able to perceive it and its printing was stopped on his orders.

Finally, Monsieur, if this man has more esprit and discretion than oth-

ers, this makes him all the more dangerous, as does the place where he

lives in the Hague, the esteem he enjoys from the Prince of Orange,

and the fact that his father and brother are ministers of the so-called re-

formed religion in France, must render his actions suspect.92

La Reynie worked tirelessly, but he had a sense of the philosophical and

scholarly threat that was posed by the growing implantation of a rela-

tively freer Republic of Letters in Holland. For the moment, however,

Colbert’s team of learned police had the upper hand.

By the 1680s, Colbert deputized his son, Seignelay, to work with La

Reynie on policing the world of learning.93 He clearly saw this as neces-


sary training for his heir. His team of scholarly police continued work

even after the death of Colbert in 1683. La Reynie and Baluze would

work together during the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes (1685),

when Seignelay was in charge of religious affairs, supported by his fa-

ther’s loyal information agents, as well as Nicolas-Joseph Foucault.94

Internal Communications

La Reynie was not just Colbert’s information man in the sense that he

managed intelligence and information in France; he and Colbert also

had an advanced communication system of their own. The police

archives of the ancien régime were kept in the Bastille.95 On July 14,

1789, when the Bastille was raided, many of these archives were burned

or thrown out into the street. What is left of La Reynie’s correspon-

dence is found scattered throughout the Parisian libraries and archives,

and other archives throughout the world.96 A large corpus of correspon-

dence between Colbert and La Reynie is found in the special collections

at the University of Pennsylvania, which were acquired from a German

provenance. It contains seventy-nine unpublished letters, mostly by

Colbert to La Reynie, and reveals the workings of Colbert’s police

state.97 Certainly not a complete set, for responses and letters are clearly

missing, the set is rich enough to show how Colbert communicated

with La Reynie on a daily basis, sometimes even twice a day.98 The cor-

respondence reveals how La Reynie worked with Colbert and Seignelay

not simply to police and regulate the guilds of Paris, but also to act as a

censor and policeman of the world of letters. The king also entered into

discussions now and then, as Colbert sought to micromanage the all-im-

portant Paris, in which French intellectual life and political power were

relatively centralized.99

Letters ›ew back and forth on economic questions, policing, and

diplomatic and philosophical questions, usually within the same day.

During the spring and summer of 1675, letters 7–20 show daily commu-

nication between the minister and his police chief. Some of these letters

are small, handwritten by Colbert, containing no more than a scrawled

paragraph—he was writing quickly—and were folded to a size of 3.5 by

1.5 inches (89 mm × 38 mm) (see ‹g. 8). These small orders, memos, or

dispatches could be held in the cuff of a jacket (see ‹g. 9). They contain

simple orders, such as letter 19, on August 7, 1675, in which Colbert asks

La Reynie to bring papers to be stored at the Bastille. An undated letter

from 1675 orders the annulment of the publishing privilege of the père


du Certre: “Reformed Jacobite [monk] for the book that he composed

a short time ago on the history of the Antilles islands of America, which

I forbade him to do.”100 Colbert could not have his colonies converting

to Protestantism.

Other letters, often written by Colbert’s secretaries, then annotated

by him in the margins, are larger, folded to 4.5 by 2 inches (11 cm × 5

cm). They are usually more formal and saved as unof‹cial lettres de ca-

chet, such as those written on on December 6, 1675, in which Colbert

con‹rmed the embastillement of the printer “Rou” and the annulment of

his publishing privilege. In a letter dated June 22, 1678, we see how the

king would communicate to Colbert his displeasure with an author—

probably brought to his attention by Colbert or the king’s confessor, the

père Lachaise—and then Colbert would send the order directly to La

Reynie: “Order to put the named Jaillot in the Bastille, the King wants

you to act so as to surprise the man, so that when you get him, it is pos-

sible to seize all his papers.”101 La Reynie would create packs of docu-

ments for Colbert, in this case not only subversive writings, but seized

of‹cial government minutes, copies of which a group of clandestine

book dealers had been selling:

I opened the seals that had been put on the papers of the writers who

were arrested last Friday night, and there was found, particularly in

those papers of the named Thubeuf and Pigeon, a very large number

of manuscript pieces, and in general all that has been written without

exception during the past few years of the most infamous and slander-

ous nature. It would be dif‹cult to decide at present if they are the au-

thors or not, or of some of these writings; but as there is skill and learn-

ing and among their manuscripts there are certain that appear to be

original copies, and as in addition, the criminals admit to having sold

several copies, the suspicions against them do not appear to be base-

less.102

Colbert thus read for himself the con‹scated materials, formulating his

own readings and comparing notes with La Reynie. The king and Col-

bert were clearly aware of the detailed methods of censorship and polic-

ing. On the twenty-eighth, a following order was sent telling La Reynie

to ‹nd papers that proved Jaillot was printing libels. The personal in-

volvement of Colbert in the policing of intellectual life is evident in the

letter of August 29, 1678, in which he asks La Reynie for a list of all Paris

printers who know Greek or Latin. He orders La Reynie that no further

printing apprentices will have the right to be trained in languages with-


out his being informed ‹rst. As the cases of the Bible critic Richard Si-

mon, or of Amelot de La Houssaye showed, scholars, translators, copy-

ists, and print-shop correctors could be dangerous agents of subversion.

The information chain could lead from Grub Street to La Reynie,

Colbert, and all the way to Louis XIV himself.

It is important that I inform His Majesty of all the reasons and of all the

documents that you can bring in order to halt, by a decree, the disor-

ders that these privileges have caused up till now for the police. As

there were only ‹ve or six arrests based on speci‹c facts joined to your

reports, you will take the time to examine if there are not any other

documents that you might add to those you have already given me,

and if you have any more reasons to add to those already contained in

your report.103

In the end, the job of censorship never stopped. La Reynie complained

about sedition until the end of his career. And yet Colbert’s thought po-

lice were, to a certain extent, effective.104 La Reynie shut down the cir-

culation of much of the libelous pamphletry that circulated in Paris, and

was even successful in muzzling authors such as Amelot de La Houssaye,

who either had to hide their intentions or ›ee to Amsterdam. More than

stopping Parisian subversive printing, Colbert changed the French Re-

public of Letters, damaging its traditions. Part of the world of scholarship

and philosophy moved to Holland, where Pierre Bayle would lead the

clarion call of Radical Enlightenment. Those who stayed, and had their

freedoms curtailed, no longer felt the nationalist and monarchist loyalties

that had driven Peiresc and de Thou. Colbert still had his world of bu-

reaucrat scholars, but this splintered the relationship between scholarship

and the state in France. Some accepted the choice posed by Colbert and

worked for the state. Other members of the Republic of Letters refused,

and found themselves adversaries of the monarchy.105

By the 1670s, Colbert’s machine for collecting, producing, manag-

ing, and policing information was in place. He had his archives, his

agents, and his librarians and information managers. He could now ef-

fectively use his information in the arena of high policy.


c h a p t e r 9

The Information State in Playarchives, erudition, and the affair of the régale

In 1679, Nicolas-Joseph Foucault, now the intendant of Mon-

tauban, went to the town of Pamiers, in the County of Foix on the

edge of the Pyrenees in France, to censor the local bishop,

François-Étienne Caulet, who had refused to recognize the royal régale.1

In 1673, Louis XIV had made his declaration of the right of régale the

culmination of the long Gallican movement against the powers of the

papacy. In it, Louis declared that he had the right to collect revenues

from vacant bishoprics, and that only he, and not the pope, had the right

to name bishops:

The right of Régale has been judged inalienable, imprescriptable, and

owed to us in all the archbishoprics and bishoprics of our kingdom,

lands, and regions bound to us; and our intention being that our right

be universally recognized.2

These prelates of the church would have to make an oath of ‹delity to

the king.3 Whether the clergy liked it or not, the king and his par-

lements—which had voted the king the right of régale in 1608—had

temporal control over the French church.

From the time of Charlemagne and the later twelfth-century investi-

ture crises, there had been open disagreement about how much author-

140

ity secular rulers had over the church in their lands.4 The question cen-

tered on papal claims of the right to grant imperium and royal authority;

claims of legal jurisdiction over the church in lands outside the Vatican

states; and the right to appoint bishops, who could collect tithes, which

represented huge revenues. When Philip the Fair (ruled 1285–1314)

challenged these jurisdictions in France, Boniface VIII responded with

the bull Unam Sanctum (1302), which claimed church authority over the

spiritual and secular “swords.”5 This in turn inspired Marsilius of Padua’s

foundational work on secular authority, Defensor pacis (1324), the ‹rst

detailed legal defense of secular royal rights of imperium. In 1438,

Charles VIII made the Pragmatic Sanction of 1438, insisting that kings

in›uence the nomination of bishops and collect bene‹ces from vacant

of‹ces. One hundred years later, during the Reformation, the same is-

sues helped inspire the German princes to follow Luther (1525), and also

sparked Henry VIII to break England from the authority of Holy See

(1531). By the reign of Louis XIV (1643–1715), the papacy still wielded

legal and feudal rights, as well as great moral authority, but it could not

exert true political or military power. Only the bishops of Pamiers and

Alet resisted Louis XIV’s claim to the right of régale, and Pope Innocent

XI had few concrete means with which to defend these holdouts of an-

cient papal power.

The régale was a point on which the crown and parlements worked

together. Bowing to royal pressure, the French clergy, during its assem-

blies, voted their fealty to the French monarch and his magistrates in

these earthly questions of the workings of the church. Even Bossuet

downplayed the régale, calling it “légère dans son fond.”6 In spite of the

intervention of the activist pope Innocent XI, elected in 1676, the

French monarchy had managed a cold war with the papacy, quibbling

over rights, but avoiding schism.

Foucault was in Pamiers because in 1677 the formerly Jansenist

bishop Caulet had sent a letter to Louis asserting his own rights and pa-

pal authority over his bishopric. Drawing on a list of documentary legal

and historical justi‹cations, Caulet questioned Louis’s understanding of

the canons of the church and the legality of the régale.7 Yet Caulet was

helpless to resist Foucault. In 1679, Innocent XI put Caulet under his

special protection, sent a number of briefs to Louis asserting his rights,

threatened excommunication, and waited for the French king’s re-

sponse. The divinely anointed Louis disingenuously remarked that he

had no rights in spiritual matters, but where the temporal powers of his

crown were concerned, he was forced to assert his legal, Gallican rights.8

The Information State in Play 141

Of course he would refuse the pope. But he needed to do so with the

appearance of respect and legality, providing unassailable documentation

so as to avoid open con›ict. This is where Colbert’s information agents

came into play. In the giant battle over the régale, which had raged for

centuries, the crown now took the advantage using the information sys-

tem created by Colbert to assert central royal authority beyond what had

been possible before.

Colbert sent Foucault to the County of Foix, which since the time of

medieval Catharism had been a hotbed of resistance to religious and

royal authority.9 With his well-honed methodical approach, Foucault

immediately sequestered the episcopal chapterhouse and all the papers

and correspondence of the bishop and his allies. He annulled their ad-

ministrative acts and took control of the diocese’s ‹nances, leaving the

bishop nearly starving.10 The violent seizure of his bishopric apparently

took a physical toll on Caulet, who published a scathing “libel” entitled

Traité de la Régale (Pamiers, 1680) and then died.11 In September 1680,

Foucault returned to Pamiers, arrested the printer of the Traité, and ar-

rested clergy loyal to Caulet with lettres de cachet.12

Foucault had ‹red his public volleys and reaf‹rmed royal authority.

Now he got down to what he was trained to do: the real work of de-

fending the crown’s prerogatives against Rome. This meant sending all

the relevant paperwork and literature back to Paris so that Colbert could

formulate a legal framework to respond to the church.13 The weight of

divine right rested on legal tradition and the dusty shelves of episcopal

and legal archives. In the end, imperium and the constitutional bases of

statehood were rooted not in the word of God, but in authentic legal

deeds, historical documents, and of course, military might. The question

of the régale, therefore, required a legal information apparatus for col-

lecting authentic documents to negotiate with Innocent’s canon lawyers.

Tracing the paperwork trail and the archival apparatus designed by

Colbert and his agents, librarians and archivists reveals how Colbert used

his archives, information system, and trained agents as tools of political

power and government. The régale was only one subject among many in

the state archives, yet it left a particularly rich trove of documents and

correspondence about archival management. Indeed, from the begin-

ning of Louis’s administration, it was a primary source of concern for

Louis and his chief minister. The régale illustrates the political importance

of manipulating documentary evidence for public polemics about polit-

ical authority. It reveals the interaction between Colbert and his ecclesi-

astical antiquarian archivists, who worked with the minister, matching


their expertise to his to build a state administrative apparatus.14 This

mixture of administrative, ‹nancial, and ecclesiastical learned culture de-

veloped into a state science of information-handling techniques neces-

sary for collecting, ‹ling, and retrieving up-to-date information in a

massive state policy archive to be used for day-to-day political opera-

tions and rapid political response.

Étienne Baluze and the Mechanics of Searching

for Information in a Policy Archive

It was precisely for his mastery of the documents pertaining to the régale

that in 1666 Colbert hired Étienne Baluze as his chief librarian. Baluze

had worked as the secretary of Bishop Pierre de Marca. A Gallican par

excellence, de Marca was from an old legal family, versed in ecclesiasti-

cal erudition. He was president of the Parlement of Pau, in the Protes-

tant Béarn region on the Pyrenees, where he worked against the Re-

formed faith with such zeal that Richelieu appointed him royal

intendant of the region in 1631. Louis XIII and Richelieu had asked de

Marca, an expert in canon law, to defend Gallican claims. He became a

member of the Conseil d’État in 1639 and ‹nally bishop of Couserans in

1641 and archbishop of Toulouse in 1652. In 1641, he published his

learned defense of regalian rights and an explanation of the relations be-

tween the church and the French state, the Concordia sacerdotii et imperii

seu de libertatibus ecclesiae gallicanae, which formed the basis of Louis’s fu-

ture Gallican declarations.

De Marca was not only politically astute, rising through the ranks of

Parlement, the church, and royal hierarchy; he was also an avid collec-

tor of manuscripts, which he used to formulate his historical and eccle-

siastical treatises, a necessity in the litigious world of Counter-Reforma-

tion theological and legal sniping, as well as to negotiate episcopal

landholdings. De Marca hired Baluze to manage his papers and help him

compose his works. When de Marca died in 1662, Colbert hired Baluze

to bring the papers and his expertise to the service of Colbert’s bur-

geoning information apparatus in the new library complex.15

Baluze had helped write de Marca’s Concordia sacerdotii et imperii, do-

ing the archival labor for the great prelate, and managing his library and

papers.16 It was this work that caught Colbert’s eye. The book bore

Baluze’s erudite mark, and mustered detailed documentary evidence,

clear textual references, and citations of capitularies, charters, and eastern

and Hebrew manuscripts in defense of royal rights. This was precisely


the sort of legal and historical scholarship that Louis XIV needed to de-

fend his rights. When Baluze did it for de Marca, it was ecclesiastical an-

tiquarianism. When he used it to organize Colbert’s policy archive, it

became what Arthur de Boislisle called “erudition d’État,” or state eru-

dition: the methods and practices of antiquarian historical philology now

tailored for state administration.17

Colbert needed Baluze to do for him what he had done for de Marca

on a much larger scale and in the context of practical government. He

needed Baluze to carry out document searches in the archives to assure

that French documentation of claims was superior to all others. He also

needed internal inventories and secret histories, glossaries, and reading

guides that would not only inform Colbert in his negotiations and re-

ports to the king, but which also allowed him to weed through the tons

of ecclesiastical diplomatica in his new archives.18 Actively overseeing

Baluze and his research assistant, the abbé Gallois, Colbert became rela-

tively skilled in ecclesiastical law and history, and wrote Louis XIV’s

Déclaration pour la Régale in 1673 with the aid of his assistants. In short,

Colbert was learning from these ecclesiastical scholars, transforming their

practices into tools that he could use for government.

Colbert organized his library into an up-to-date information and

propaganda machine.19 Like the Fuggers, he insisted his collection be

up-to-date. The library was to acquire all new publications and archival

discoveries, in particular in relation to topics of immediate concern, such

as Jansenism.20 Baluze’s job was to be familiar enough with this library to

‹nd documents at short notice.21

But there were glitches. Colbert became angry when documents he

needed were not readily available. And he railed at Baluze when books

were not on their place on the shelves.22 “Every three months, repri-

manded Colbert, “you must give me a memoir of all the books that have

left my library.”23 He then asked Baluze to track every book and manu-

script that had left his library, even those lent to his brother, the ambas-

sador to England. Colbert even put a carriage at Baluze’s disposal to ex-

pedite the project.24

The demand that the collection be constantly intact was mixed with

the desire for totality. If Colbert was to create the most complete and

up-to-date information archive, it had to be usable, and total. Therefore

nothing could be missing and all references had to be immediately ac-

cessible. Colbert sent Baluze to ‹nd relevant legal documents that per-

tained to speci‹c religious and legal questions, such as in 1672, when


Colbert sent Baluze document hunting in two of the richest monastic

archives in Paris to ‹nd materials for Foucault:

I beg Monsieur Baluze to research with care all the papal bulls and let-

ters of patent from the two congregations of Sainte-Geneviève and

Saint-Maur, and put them in my library. I will send him those that I al-

ready have, so he can look for similar ones, and when he ‹nds them,

he will give them to Monsieur Foucault.25

Baluze’s mission was different from past Gallican document collectors

working for the crown. Figures such as the Dupuy brothers had created

large collections. Colbert, however, did not want to farm out the ad-

ministration of state information to extraroyal institutions and scholars.

Indeed, to his bane, in the realm of ‹nance, Colbert was obliged to rely

on external and unreliable tax-farmers.26 In the realm of the state

archives, however, he could impose direct ‹eld administration. He

wanted a total collection controlled and sealed by the state; and he

wanted the scholars to answer directly to his orders. If Colbert could not

possess papers, he asked Baluze to go ‹nd the documents, copy, or cat-

alog them. In 1677, when Baluze published his study of medieval royal

capitularies, History of the Capitularies of the French Kings of the First and

Second Dynasties, he boasted about the new totality of the collection that

outstripped the efforts of earlier Gallican scholars, listing all the libraries

and archives he had visited to research, and explaining how he veri‹ed

and collated as many documents as he could.27 He only complained that

the Austrians had not let him into the Imperial Library of Vienna, which

is not surprising considering their con›icts with Louis and their obvious

awareness of Colbert’s archival project.28

Baluze used this mastery of the archives to enter into a long histori-

cal argument, attacking the great defender of papal authority, the Vati-

can librarian and historian, Cardinal Caesar Baronius. Working for the

Catholic French king, Baluze now represented the antiquarian tradition

of ecclesiastical scholarship that had once been dominated by the great

Gallicans, such as Pierre Pithou and the Dupuy brothers. Using the

methods of medievalist philology, he attacked Baronius and justi‹ed the

claims of the régale while insisting that the publication of laws was the

secular prerogative of princes.29 He also clearly enunciated a point about

historical information, one that had become clear in the struggle around

the Magdeburg Centuries: capitularies, he maintained, were the legal


essence of imperium, the arms with which to win such disputes, and

therefore had to be preserved by kings in response to the archival mas-

tery of the papacy.30 The legal and historical information arms race

sparked by the Reformation and Counter-Reform had now evolved

into the basis of modern state administration and a cornerstone of state

archival systems. This is precisely the reason Leibniz, on becoming head

librarian in Wolfenbüttel, visited Baluze in 1690; to learn his methods of

‹ling, cataloging, and document retrieval.31

Once Baluze found the necessary documents, he would ‹rst verify

them, then either have copies made by the Benedictine scribes, or copy

them himself. He was a master scribe with mercifully impeccable hand-

writing, which Colbert, who read his thousands of extracts, copies, and

letters, must have appreciated (in a ‹tting dialectic, Colbert wrote in il-

legible shorthand).32 But more than that, Baluze had a method to collect

this information. If he was not allowed to make a full copy, or did not

have the time, he would make “extracts” of the useful sections.33

The Order that we have always kept for the registers of the Trésor des

Chartes is that we mark in the margin of each register the pieces that we

consider worth being copied. In the past, when I followed the order that

Monsieur de Carcavy had established, I marked down the ennoble-

ments, the Marriage Contracts between the Great Lords, the Treaties of

Peace or alliances, the concessions and donations made by our kings to

the families of the popes, the privileges accorded to the foreign mer-

chants dealing in the kingdom, the privileges accorded to Churches,

provinces, cities, and to diverse professions, and ‹nally the remission

where there was some considerable clause, and some legitimations of

bastards of which the names and the families were known. I still observe

the same order, but with more moderation, since the time Monseigneur

[Colbert] did me the Honor of explaining to me the subject.34

Baluze the erudite and scholar followed Colbert’s orders. Colbert had

not only to direct the negotiations concerning the régale, he also had to

report to Louis XIV. This meant that he had to be informed. This is why

he organized a massive, personal archive. Before he could understand

the régale to manage state and foreign affairs, he ‹rst needed to under-

stand and master his archive. As a librarian and a historian, Baluze was

not in a position to analyze documents in the secret context of state mat-

ters, although he too needed a huge personal archive to master these

questions. He had to collect, organize, and make these documents avail-

able for Colbert’s instant access, understanding, and use.


Fig. 2. Claude Lefebre, d’après Marc Nattier, père, Jean-Baptiste Colbert, mar-quis of Seignelay, minister-secretary of state of the navy, c. 1683. Colbert’s son, Seignelay (1651–90), poses, like his father before him, with official dispatches and correspondence. While Col-bert always kept to his rather bourgeois costume in black, Seignelay, who was married to a cousin of Louis XIV, dressed as a high aristocratic courtier. The contrast of the high noble posing with the tools of professional activ-ity is notable. (Courtesy of the Musée de Versailles et de Trianon, Réunion des Musées Nationaux/Art Resource, New York.)

Fig. 1. Jean-Baptiste Colbert by Philippe de Champaigne, 1655. At the beginning of his career as the household intendant of Cardinal Mazarin, Colbert (1619–83) reveals a smile while holding a folded letter in his hand. The paper resembles the folded correspondence found in the manuscript collection of the University of Pennsylvania Library, and reproduced in fig. 8. (By permission of the Metropoli-tan Museum of Art.)

[To view this image, refer to

the print version of this title.]



Fig.

3. C

harl

es-N

icho

las

Coc

hin

père

, c. 1

760,

cop

y of

a 1

698

engr

avin

g by

Seb

astie

n Le

cler

c, L’

Aca

dém

ie d

es S

cienc

es e

t des

Bea

ux A

rts. T

he h

ouse

tha

t C

olbe

rt

built

. Thi

s en

grav

ing

of t

he A

cade

my

of S

cien

ces

and

Bea

ux A

rts

give

s a

sens

e of

the

mul

tiple

lear

ned

activ

ities

tha

t to

ok p

lace

in C

olbe

rt’s

Roy

al L

ibra

ry.

Not

e th

e ce

ntra

l pla

ce o

f ant

iqua

rian

ism a

nd g

enea

logy

. In

the

back

grou

nd is

the

ent

ranc

e to

the

boo

k st

acks

und

er t

he t

opic

of t

heol

ogy.

(Cou

rtesy

of t

he E

. F.

Smith

Col

lecti

on, R

are

Boo

k an

d M

anus

crip

t Lib

rary

, Uni

vers

ity o

f Pen

nsyl

vani

a.)



Fig. 4. Jacques Savary, Le parfait négociant, 2 vols. (Paris: Veuve Estienne & fils, 1749), vol. 1, p. xxxv. The box on which the “perfect merchant” is writing might not be simply decorative. It could very well be a merchant archive of receipts, bills of exchange, and account books. The ideal activity of a “perfect” merchant appears to be handling paperwork and correspon-dence. (Author’s private collection.)



Fig. 6. Cahiers de Louis XIV, MS Fr. 6782, fol. 8. This is the first page of the “Project of State Expenditures for the Year 1680,” from the “Abregé des finances du roy de l’Année 1680,” which lists sums for each project such as “The King’s Personal Funds,” “Buildings,” and “Swiss Guards.” (Courtesy of the Bibliothèque Natio-nale de France.)

Fig. 5. Cahiers de Louis XIV, MS Fr. 6782, fol. A: adorned title page of the “Abrégé des finances du roy de l’Année 1680.” Col-bert had these small notebooks containing figures made for Louis XIV by the finest callig-raphers in France. (Courtesy of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France.)





Fig. 7. Mélanges Colbert 84, fol. 11v. Drawing by Colbert’s son, the marquis de Seignelay, from his reports from the port of Rochefort in 1671. This drawing is accompanied by further sketches of sails, winches, and anchors, as well as magazine accounts and lists of officers. (Courtesy of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France.)



Fig. 9. The same letter folded. It does not contain a seal and appears to have been sent by a personal courier. All of Colbert’s working correspon-dence with La Reynie was folded into small squares for easy delivery and possibly to be kept in the large cuff of a seventeenth-century jacket. (MS Coll 578, courtesy of Rare Book and Manuscript Library, University of Pennsyl-vania Library.)

Fig. 8. A letter dated June 13, 1677, from Colbert to Gabriel-Nicolas de La Reynie, the lieutenant général du Châtelet, or chief of police of Paris. This letter concerns the regulation of “académies publiques de jeux,” or gambling dens. This letter was part of the daily cor-respondence sent by Colbert to La Reynie. (MS Coll 578, courtesy of Annenberg Rare Book and Manuscript Library, University of Pennsylvania Library.)





Fig. 10. MS Mélanges Colbert 3, fol. 5v. “De la Régale,” written by Étienne Baluze for Colbert between 1681 and 1683, is a glossary of arguments concerning the French crown’s rights over certain ecclesiastical appointments and benefices. The letters in the margins refer to textual, archival references related to each argument. Colbert used this text as a tool to master his archives and apply them according to political need. (Courtesy of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France.)



Fig. 11. MS Collection Baluze 177, fol. 262r. This document, entitled “Right of Régale over Monasteries,” is a crib sheet in Colbert’s hand from 1675 with arguments for and against (“pour et contre”) French royal authority. This document appears to have been used by Col-bert for memorization or for quick reference. (Courtesy of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France.)



Baluze performed a number of functions that permitted Colbert to

search his archive and understand its contents. First, Baluze cataloged; or

more precisely, he made registers, rudimentary lists of manuscripts, some

for Colbert’s medieval manuscript collection, and some for his own

archive.35 If Colbert could not purchase a collection, he wanted a copy of

its catalog.36 Indeed, he showed a great interest in catalogs. With his assis-

tant, the abbé Gallois, Baluze also made catalogs of printed or secondary

works on the régale. For example, Colbert requested a small bibliography

on all writers who had studied the question, and Gallois produced a refer-

ence sheet, which Colbert copied in his own hand, and kept in his work-

ing ‹le on the régale.37 Colbert would come to Baluze and Gallois with

demands for them to search for speci‹c materials. He asked the abbé Gal-

lois for a series of documents pertaining to speci‹c points about the régale.

He wanted textual references pointing to the most clear and useful pas-

sages that he could go to directly for reference:

If there is any trace of the right of régale that was established in England

before the conquest, cite the authors and the passages in which it is dis-

cussed. You must bring me all the memoirs I have written you with all

the responses. Above all, you must see if there are proofs of this right

[of régale] in the ‹rst and second dynasties [of kings]. You must ‹nd

some examples of bishops and priests who have served the kings of the

two ‹rst dynasties in their armies. . . . You must learn for which sub-

ject the parlement of Paris made remonstrances to King Louis XI for

the right of régale. You must search in the ‹rst book of Capitularies of

Louis le Debonnaire chapter LXXXIV. . . . Examine in the memoirs

of the clergy if, around the year 1644, the clergy did not ask the king

to make a declaration for the granting of dependent bene‹ces of vacant

abbeys.38

Colbert was speci‹c in his orders. In one letter to Baluze, entitled

“Points of Exemptions to Examine,” he listed the kind of documents he

wanted, the precise questions he wanted answered by these documents,

and the places where Baluze should look for speci‹c documents.39 In re-

sponse, Baluze and Gallois often corresponded, helping each other ‹nd

documents.40

The Mechanics of a Political Information War Room

Baluze and Gallois created long registers of medieval documents for

Colbert, who looked at and even marked them. Certain texts were made


part of the working ‹le Colbert kept at all times on the clergy, which

had to be kept up-to-date and in good working order.41 Colbert insisted

that Baluze be certain of what was in the library at all times, and that all

papers and maps be well ‹led, ready for quick consultation:

I return to you the memoir written in your hand. Let me know if the

copies of these titles have been sent to me or if it is only an extract of

an inventory of which I have no copy, so that I can ask for them from

Godefroy. Keep with care the piece that I sent you: you must put it in

the ‹rst volume of manuscripts that you will have bound. On the list

of marriage contracts, you must keep a good [inventory] of all the con-

tracts that I have in my library, and in time research all those that I

don’t have to obtain them. You must do the same thing for the testa-

ments.42

In the end, Colbert saw he could generalize his requests and Baluze

could still cope with them, providing detailed documentary overviews

on generalized topics. Colbert asked Baluze to start writing topical sum-

maries of documents, based on bibliographical inventories:

I beg Monsieur Baluze to write me a succinct summary of all that con-

cerns the sancti‹cation of the Saints. . . . By which authority the prin-

cipal Saints have been recognized; by universal consent; councils; or by

the authority of the popes. . . . What is necessary for this, and which

documents are concerned?43

Following orders like this, Baluze set about writing a number of exten-

sive reading and archival guides that would allow Colbert to navigate the

documents on a given subject. Baluze wrote a number of histories on

questions pertaining to the régale, such as the remarkable document en-

titled “De la Régale,” in which, probably with the help of Gallois,

Baluze wrote a point-by-point description of the régale and its histories

(see ‹g. 10).44 It contains a glossary of thematic headings such as “Where

one sees the guard of vacant churches given in the ‹rst instance to

kings.”45 In the margin next to this heading is the letter Z. Throughout

the text, wherever the subject of medieval kings arises, a Z is in the mar-

gins next to a series of references to documents as well as citations

( preuves), containing call numbers from Baluze’s registers. This way,

Colbert could look up a topic, ‹nd the relevant documents, while also

having the topic contextualized in a historical narrative that more or less

explained the documents. Another similar document is a short, heavily


footnoted historical work by Baluze entitled “Mémoire sur les differens

entre la cour de Rome et la Cour de France.”46 This key document—

clearly for Colbert’s eyes only, and never published—is a play-by-play of

relations between the papacy and the crown during the contentious pe-

riod spanning 1680–81. In the style of legal scholarship, it is a guide and

summary of all relevant documents in chronological order. Baluze cre-

ated the same sort of document on the question of parliamentary docu-

ments, again written in the form of a succinct history, with full docu-

ment references in the margins.47

Baluze also created a series of abridged reading notes from longer

Latin texts, so Colbert could read them quickly, with Baluze focusing on

the points requested by Colbert. Colbert’s personal ‹le on the régale con-

tained drafts of of‹cial statements, with marginal reference notes, and

further historical treatises covered with marginal references to docu-

ments in the Colbert collection.48 Baluze was Colbert’s reader: he would

read Latin works, such as Caulet’s Traité de La Régale, or long treatises,

translate them into French, and cut them down to passages, describing

each chapter, numbering the chapters and often noting corresponding

documents, which could then be veri‹ed.49

Baluze and Gallois worked together, ‹nding references to put in the

margins of texts to make them useful for Colbert. In a letter from Baluze

to Gallois on August 2, 1675, Baluze explains to Gallois what they both

need to be looking for in the archives: the rights of bishops and abbots;

the rights of ecclesiastical visitation; and most of all, rights of royal ex-

emption. Baluze gives his own list of examples and of‹cial acts and doc-

uments. In response, in the margins of the letter, Gallois gets immedi-

ately to work providing ample references illustrating royal rights.50

These annotations helped him form his response, and he ‹led it among

texts that were prepared for Colbert.51

When in 1682 the Assembly of the Clergy produced their “Declara-

tion Concerning Ecclesiastical Power,” Baluze made a copy for Colbert

with French explanations of the Latin passages, which also contained

historical explanations and references to primary documents.52 Baluze

translated many of the of‹cial correspondences between the French

court and Rome, such as the pope’s ‹nal con‹rmation of the clergy’s

“Declaration.”53 Indeed, Colbert’s ‹le on the régale was rich with docu-

ments and reports prepared by Baluze. In one report, Baluze suggests

that Colbert increase the pay of the Sorbonne professors whose ultra-

montane sentiments were a form of revenge for low salaries.54 Baluze

then provides a policelike list of loyal and disloyal professors with sum-


maries of their opinions. But mostly, this information management ‹le

served as a key to the archives. It contains lists of reports on how to ‹ll

vacant bishop’s seats, parliamentary decrees and documents, and reports

on Rome’s reactions.

Colbert was not simply dependent on his scholars for knowledge. He

learned from them and used them to master the dossier of the régale,

which he did quite impressively for someone without formal training as

a scholar. Colbert had become an erudit d’état: a master of legal and his-

torical information and scholarship pertaining to the French state and

European constitutional matters. He would go on to write his own work

notes as well as detailed reports to Louis XIV on the régale. These reports

would eventually be published as of‹cial policy. In 1675, exactly the

date of much of the previously mentioned correspondence between

Colbert, Baluze, and Gallois, Colbert wrote a crib sheet on the régale in

his own hand, entitled “Droit de Régale sur les Abbayes.” The docu-

ment contains a list of points “pour et contre” the régale (see ‹g. 11).

Each point is paired with document references, so that if Colbert needed

to make a point, he had the argument and the proof handy. He might

have used this thematic and documentary guide when going over pa-

pers, writing reports and proclamations, or drawing up his reports for the

king.

In 1675, Colbert wrote the detailed “Mémoire au roi sur le Régale,”

which was the fruit of the work he had done with his assistants that year.

This was basically a report to Louis XIV not only on the history of the

régale, but also on the work Colbert and his team had done, as well as the

importance of archival collections in such work.55 He provides to the

king a reading summary of all the opinions and documents supporting

the right of régale, listing the opinion, the author, and document:

The king Philip de Valois, in the ordinance of 1334, principally bases

the régale on this possession [the principle of long possession], and

Choppin follows in part his opinion.56

He mentions documents that he requested from the abbé Gallois, now

presented as ‹ndings that would form the foundation of of‹cial policy:

The eighth opinion uni‹es all the others and leads us to believe that

the right [of régale] comes from the sovereignty of guard, patronage,

and possession of a ‹ef altogether. . . . There are a large number of

proofs of this in Gregory of Tours and in the compilation of formula-


ries of Marculphe. It is the opinion of Monsieur Dupin and of father

Sirmond in the preface of a Collection of ancient formularies concern-

ing elections. It says that Louis le Débonnaire was the ‹rst king who

restored to the Church the power to elect its pastors, and that the or-

dinance is found in the ‹rst book of his Capitularies, chap. LXXXIV

[which should be read].57

Colbert goes on to list the documentary and historical justi‹cations of

the régale in great detail. He even notes that if “His Majesty” would like

more “justi‹cations,” they could be found in the archives of the Cham-

bre des Comptes.58 This was certainly a hint that more funds would be

needed for more research. But here, boiled down in clear historical re-

ports were the ‹ndings of Colbert’s research team’s efforts from 1673–75

made for Louis XIV.

In the following years, until his death late in 1683, Colbert had many

occasions to use his knowledge of the régale, and his quick and easy ac-

cess to ‹nding justi‹cations.59 With the help of the archbishop of

Rouen, François de Harlay de Champvallon III, Colbert negotiated

with the pope, and led the campaign to organize the Assembly of the

Clergy of 1682. With the help of the famed Bishop Bossuet and Champ-

vallon’s brother, Achilles de Harlay, the procurer general of the Par-

lement of Paris, he cajoled and threatened French prelates into adopting

the Four Articles of the Gallican Church, often using legal arguments and

references to documents.60 He forced them to issue the 1682 Edict of Ré-

gale, which Colbert not only helped write, but also micromanaged

through its reception, obliging the recalcitrant faculty of the Sorbonne

to comply.61 Thus Colbert showed that a central state apparatus could

formulate policy from within the state, not counting on outside scholars

and lawyers.

Bossuet himself noted that Colbert and his henchmen had all but

drawn up the Four Articles and that “above all since [the ministry of]

Monsieur Colbert, there has been this policy of humiliating Rome, and

to impose [France’s rights] against her, and that all of the Council had

this attitude.”62 Colbert’s agent, the former parliamentarian legist and in-

tendant of Soissons, Roland Le Vayer de Boutigny, made a defense of

the Four Articles, Le Droit des souverains touchant l’administration de l’Église

(1682) clearly written from Colbert’s archive with the aid of Baluze.63 Le

Vayer was an expert in the documentation of taxation; using a plethora

of medieval documents, he made a strong case for royal rights.64 Thus at

the moment when the crown needed to act, Colbert’s information ma-


chine began turning: informing the king, providing ammunition for

bullying and organizing the Assembly, and providing the tools for nego-

tiating at various levels, censoring, and drawing up policy and propa-

ganda. If events called for documents, Colbert and his research team

could quickly produce them. In the end, Colbert’s information machine

worked. He built his reference system from various sources and had his

librarians catalog them and render them accessible. He then could man-

age the system himself on the stage of politics, appearing knowledgeable,

and able to write policy in a legalistic and historical context. Through his

autodidactic system, Colbert had become an antiquarian of the state.

Colbert’s state information system had translated into political power

and prowess. But was it to last?


c h a p t e r 1 0

The System Falls Apart, but theState Remains

Jean-Baptiste Colbert fell ill on August 20, 1683, in great pain and

with a fever, and died September 6. While some rumored that a

partial disgrace had led to his illness, his autopsy revealed a “giant

stone” in his kidney, blocking his ureter.1 No one expected him to dis-

appear from the scene so suddenly. Indeed, he himself had not made im-

mediate political plans for his own death, aside from placing his family

and friends in as many key positions as he could. If he had any long-term

view as to how his archive was to work in relation to the state, he did

not say. He clearly expected it to be used by his son and family.

As Colbert’s health worsened, Seignelay dutifully did the job his fa-

ther taught him, keeping Louis informed of his father’s state. On Sep-

tember 2, he sent a letter to the king concerning the seriousness of his

minister’s condition. He promised to keep Louis XIV appraised of Col-

bert’s illness and imminent death.2 While Louis was clearly upset to lose

an old friend and his closest political con‹dant, he had become increas-

ingly irritated with this harbinger of bad news, and his all-too-clear in-

formation updates on the state of French politics, ‹nance, and industry.

For almost a decade, Colbert had complained to Louis about his wars and

expenditures as they bankrupted the ‹scal state Colbert had built through

his accounting and strong-arm tactics. Louis had grown tired of Colbert’s

nagging and the unbalanced ‹gures in the notebooks in his pocket.

153

Louis did not choose to replace his chief informer. The notebooks

stopped. He broke up Colbert’s grand ministry centered in the Ministry

of Finances and the Royal Library. With this move, Louis undermined

the development of a true state apparatus to emerge beyond his personal

control. “L’État c’est moi” was quite literal and in stark opposition to the

Weberian ideal of the impersonal centralized state. Louis ultimately saw

a well-oiled state bureaucracy and central archive as a threat to his per-

sonal power monopoly. More than he wanted to be informed, Louis

wanted to have the sense that he was in control. By closing down Col-

bert’s central of‹ce within the state, and the information state that sup-

ported it, Louis could divide and rule his ministers.

After Colbert’s death, no minister under Louis XIV would again

have as much power and as much information. The limits of absolutist

government were, in part, the limits imposed by Louis himself. Indeed,

Louis XIV did not leave his heirs a centralized state, but a very messy set

of strong, competing ministries, with no single administrative core. By

breaking Colbert’s system, Louis hobbled the French state in the long

run. The endless failures of eighteenth-century French governments

were due not only to the secrecy and folly of royal ‹at and terrible ‹nan-

cial management, but also to Louis’s splintering of the state apparatus. It

helps explain why with all its possibility, genius, and might, France

stalled and began to crumble, while small neighbors, and former client

states like Savoy, prospered and grew.

The Breakdown of Colbert’s Information System

As soon as Colbert died, Louis took the management of the Royal Li-

brary away from his family and agents, and gave it to their adversaries,

the Louvois family. In doing so, Louis XIV showed that he understood

how Colbert’s system worked and that he wanted it shut down. The

collapse of Colbert’s information system hampered the effective admin-

istration of the state, as the Colbert and Louvois clans tried to undermine

each other’s abilities to govern. Colbert and the Le Telliers had com-

peted during his lifetime, but the government more or less functioned.

Now interministerial con›ict hindered the workings of the government.

Colbert’s all-powerful post of controller general of ‹nances did not go

to his son or to his nephew Nicolas Desmaretz, who both had access to

the family archive. Instead, it went to Claude Le Pelletier, a member of

the Le Tellier–Louvois family circle.3 Against this counter-Colbertian

coup, the great minister’s heirs now used the family archive as a defen-


sive weapon. Saint-Simon recounts that Desmaretz had received orders

from Colbert’s brother, Édouard François Colbert, count de Maulévrier

(1633–93), to keep family information out of the hands of the Louvois

lobby:

When they [the Louvois family and Le Pelletier] ask you in particular

for a clari‹cation on the nature of a speci‹c matter, the opinion of

Monsieur de Croissy and myself is that you respond to them with good

grace. But, concerning general information on royal ‹nances, we think

you can dispense with them.4

Le Pelletier in turn complained to Louis XIV that he was unable to un-

derstand the state’s ‹nancial workings, for Colbert had kept them secret,

and the family was not forthcoming with information:

I realized that Monsieur Colbert had enclosed in his very self the di-

rection of ‹nances, and that there was no one initiated in these affairs

or in a state to instruct me. . . . I had thought that the registers in which

your majesty wrote would surely teach me the precise state of the

Royal Treasury; but I found that the relations between the registers

and the Royal bank were not exact. And in the papers of Monsieur

Colbert, neither could I ‹nd the instruction that I needed, nor would

anyone give me more papers or explanations.5

Thus began an information arms race. On one side, Colbert’s son

Seignelay began a furious program of state enquêtes, to collect adminis-

trative information to be stored in his ministry of the navy, as well as in

the foreign ministry run by Colbert de Croissy.6 He continued to make

use of the collection: for example, the dossier on religious affairs contin-

ued to grow as he managed the legal aspects of Louis XIV’s Revocation

of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, adding new documents to his father’s old,

but still useful, compilations.7 Colbert’s brother, Colbert de Croissy,

worked as an intendant, and became minister of foreign affairs from 1680

to 1696.8 A year before becoming foreign minister, under Colbert’s or-

ders, he began the ‹rst systematic foreign affairs archive, the ‹rst of‹cial,

nonpersonal depot for diplomatic correspondence and historical

archives.9 He personally showed his assistants how to write diplomatic

minutes and instructions, and in many cases rewrote their communiqués

before they were presented in the Royal Council. Above all, he oversaw

and organized all diplomatic correspondence.10 It was said that he in-

sisted that all papers pass through his hands. Croissy used Colbert’s man-

The System Falls Apart, but the State Remains 155

agement system through techniques of information collection, record-

ing, and organization. In creating the ‹rst systematic archive of diplo-

matic documents, Croissy was essentially reproducing on a smaller scale

what his older brother had done in the family and state archives and

Royal Library. While much of the new archive consisted of traditional

diplomatic documents, Croissy reformed it by keeping all minutes and

correspondence, as well as by obtaining the personal archives of minis-

ters and ambassadors.

Croissy’s son, Jean-Baptiste Colbert, the marquis de Torcy, foreign

minister from 1696 to 1715, continued the Colbertist tradition, strength-

ening the diplomatic archives by creating an independent Dépot des

Archives at the Louvre in 1709, and moving to create a “corps of pro-

fessional historians,” administrative experts trained in the organizing and

analysis of historical documents.11 These miniature Colberts were edu-

cated in a school funded within the ministry of foreign affairs, called the

Académie Politique. While the Académie Politique did not last, de

Torcy’s organization of the French diplomatic archives and its staff made

it one of the most important central sites of French government.

Most signi‹cantly, Louis also removed the Ministry of Finance from

the Colbert family, breaking their hold on the central of‹ce of state ad-

ministration. The Ministry of Finance was not only the source of fund-

ing other ministerial projects—Colbert would have had a hard time

funding his naval ministry without it—but it was also the seat of the in-

tendancy and largest information collection apparatus of the state. The

Colberts still had ministerial power, but not the central seat in govern-

ment. Without the complementary set of ministries—‹nance, the navy,

building, industry and culture—Colbert’s encyclopedic state informa-

tion system could not continue. Seignelay could not effectively run the

navy without control of the purse strings of the state. Without ‹nancial

records and reports and without the means to purchase and copy infor-

mation on a grand scale, he could not continue his father’s program of

being the best-informed man in the kingdom. The Colbert library now

only received documents from Seignelay’s ministries of the navy and re-

ligious affairs, as well as from Baluze’s continuing scholarly activity

within what was now the Colbert family library.

Seignelay’s heirs would hold no government of‹ce, nor show any

real interest in the library they inherited. It was widely known that Col-

bert had purchased many of his books and manuscripts with royal funds,

or had just plainly stolen them from the royal collection he managed. In

1728, when Colbert’s grandson asked the crown for 600,000 pounds


for the collection, Louis XV simply responded by saying, “Good.

300,000.”12 The second marquis Colbert de Seignelay grumbled, but af-

ter ‹ve years of negotiation, handed over cartloads of manuscripts for

half of his asking price.13 Louis XV was eager to retrieve the bibliophilic

riches he considered rightfully his. Yet the bulk of Colbert’s administra-

tive papers remained in the hands of the Colbert family. In an ultimate

irony, Colbert’s state papers sat untouched until the Revolution, when

during the fury of the Terror, most were con‹scated and brought to the

central storehouse of the Jacobin state, to become a pillar of the collec-

tion of the new Bibliothèque Nationale, built on the foundations of the

Royal Library laid by Colbert.14

With the death of Colbert, the Louvois family was now the leading

ministerial faction in Louis’s splintered government. François Michel Le

Tellier de Louvois (1641–91) was the son of Colbert’s old patron and ri-

val, Michel Le Tellier. With Louis’s clear blessing, Colbert and Louvois

had fought each other as the two rival clans within the French govern-

ment. Louis allowed Louvois to try to implicate Colbert in the Affaire of

the Poisons, which ended with the disgrace of Louis’s mistress and Col-

bert’s friend and ally, Madame de Montespan, in 1682. With the rise of

Louis’s war machine, Louvois’s military information system took on new

proportions. Louvois controlled the much coveted and ever more pow-

erful post of the secretary of state of war, and the French postal system.15

With Colbert dead, the war ministry became the central administrative

of‹ce of the state. If Colbert had represented Louis’s early ambitions,

Louvois, now chief among his ministers, represented his new ones. His

speed and ability at industrial management and the movement of infor-

mation and goods surpassed that of Colbert.16 Even more, he moved not

the goods of industry, but rather those of war, which so thrilled Louis.17

Louis’s military advisor, the marquis of Chamlay, also became a major in-

formation manager, collecting intelligence, writing military reports and

propaganda, and organizing military campaigns, reforms, and diplomatic

missions.18 The Louvois military machine created massive armies and

supply lines, but it did not always win wars or formulate successful pol-

icy, as Louvois’s active support and implementation of the Revocation of

the Edict of Nantes in 1685 and his military and humanitarian ‹asco in

the Palatinate in 1688–89 so dramatically illustrate.19

As de Croissy and de Torcy created the archives of the Ministry of

Foreign Affairs, Louvois built new permanent state archives in the In-

valides in the 1680s. Le Pelletier continued Colbert’s work of taking

royal accounts and administrative paperwork away from parliamentary


control by creating a central archive of all feudal lands controlled by the

king. It became the “Dépôt général des Terriers de la couronne” under

the Pontchartrain ministry in 1691, continuing the progression of per-

manent ministerial archives.20 Indeed, Pontchartrain started his own net-

work and information system, though on a smaller scale than that of

Colbert.21 While Louvois was a master administrator, he overlooked the

Royal Library and its trove of historical documents as potential tools of

government. He gave the direction of the library to his nine-year-old

son, the future abbé de Louvois.22 Librarians and agents such as Carcavy

and the Godefroys were unceremoniously ‹red.23 The abbé de Louvois

would emerge as an erudite and able librarian, but without Colbert’s vi-

sion of constant expansion, few new acquisitions were made in the

decade after Colbert’s death.24 Even more, he did not use his control of

the library as part of Louvois’s military program.

Colbert’s project had been predicated on a vision of encyclopedic,

universal knowledge of the state. Louvois was a master of the informa-

tion of war, and he saw his system through the lens of the military. He

did not use scholarship or the world of learning as primary, integrated

tools of government. He certainly paid for propaganda and sought sym-

pathetic scholars, but he did not seek to occupy, control, and use the

world of scholarship. His control of the Royal Library and his own min-

isterial information bank were not integral pieces in a larger information

system, but rather distinct bases of power and prestige.25 The possible

danger of mixing learning and political power might have been evident

to Louvois, or perhaps he believed he could run his war machine with

his own system. Or perhaps he simply did not understand Colbert’s

grand project.

The ministerial archives that under Colbert had been relatively cen-

tralized were now dispersed among what Arthur de Boislisle called the

ministerial archival dépôts.26 Indeed, a massive nineteenth-century

archival project sought to catalog and centralize these disparate ministe-

rial archives of the ancien régime.27 In 1874, Boislisle, an undersecretary

of the Ministry of Finances, great bibliophile, and author of the found-

ing work on the French state archives, noted that

to follow the administrative history of a given province of the king-

dom, one had to, and indeed, one must still today successively address

one’s self to the archives of War, those of the Navy, those of Foreign

Affairs, without even speaking of those of the ministries, who have no

curator, or representative, and of which the papers have been dispersed

with out rule or reason.28


Boislisle had hoped to show the “genius” of France’s government, but

inadvertently revealed how decentralized the Bourbon archives actually

were. Although after Colbert’s death, Louis XIV’s ministers were col-

lecting more information than before, the motive behind the collection

was clearly not the rational, centralized functioning of the state, but

rather a complex set of competing interests between various ministerial

lobbies, which had been, to varying degrees, the nature of European

state administration since the Middle Ages. In any case, while often

managed by experts, Louis XIV’s state was not effectively centralized.

Public versus Secret Spheres: Financial Information, Trust,

and the Crisis of Civil Society

In 1698, a group of reformers around Fénelon, the duke de Chevreuse,

and the duke de Beauvilliers—all connected to the Colbert lobby—

implicitly recognized the monarchy’s dif‹culty in making use of the

administrative information in the enquêtes when they produced

the Tables de Chaulnes, a new, practical education for the son of

the Dauphin, Louis’s grandson, the duke de Bourgogne.29 It was a true

founding act of enlightened despotism. They commissioned a massive

series of state enquêtes to teach the young prince administration and

the handling of state reports.30 As pragmatic as this project was, it was

based simply on showing the presumptive heir a set of enquêtes and le-

gal and historical documents. While it was a step to bring back the

in›uence of Colbert’s state information system under the intendants, it

did not represent a signi‹cant return to Colbert’s style of information-

driven government.

As limited as Fénelon’s project was in comparison to that of Colbert,

and as reformist as it was in its intentions, it nonetheless sparked the ire

of parliamentary critics, emboldened by their reinstated authority under

the regent, Philip d’Orléans (ruled 1715–23). State secrecy and the dan-

gerous competition between ministerial information banks was the dri-

ving complaint of the count de Boulainvilliers’s L’état de la France, writ-

ten in 1701, but only published after Louis XIV’s death in 1727. A leader

of noble critics of absolute rule, Boulainvilliers pointed out that com-

peting ministers, with their troves of administrative enquêtes, usurped

public power, and went against the interest of the state, and even of the

prince: “The spirit of servitude is generally spread through these Writ-

ings [enquêtes],” he insisted. “Passions have mystery and secrets; a legit-

imate Government has none.”31 Boulainvilliers describes a secret sphere


of state knowledge within the royal res publica, which threatened noble,

parliamentarian power, and even the authority of the prince.32

In his Histoire de l’ancien governement de France (written 1701, published

Amsterdam, 1727), Boulainvilliers argued not only that the intendants

were unconstitutional, but that their secrecy and stranglehold on infor-

mation destroyed the ability of the state and nation to administer its

‹nances. Thus Boulainvilliers was a prophet of the concept of public state

accountability and an early critic of enlightened despotism. Who would

critique incompetent or dishonest administrators if only one minister and

the king read his reports? How could reform occur without an open dis-

cussion of state administrative and status reports? Good policy, he in-

sisted, was based on open discussion and assessments of state documents.

With moving passion, he called the mission of the intendants to secretly

gather the vital information of the state “morally impossible.”33 Without

public supervision, they would only serve their own interests, and in-

deed, create an internal culture of incompetence. He insisted that the se-

cret, internal writings of “servile” ministers needed to be exposed to pub-

lic criticism and irony to show how “absurd” they could be.34 State

secrecy destroyed both method and political science.35 Even more, it

hampered the effective creation of a ‹nancial credit market in France. If

the state kept its ‹nances secret, how could investments be made in trust?

This mismanagement meant that the state itself had no credit system,

and this in turn hampered investment in state projects. The crisis of

French ‹nancial trust was made worse by the terrible failure of John

Law’s attempt to create a French royal Banque Générale with the au-

thority to issue unchecked paper currency based on a colonial invest-

ment pyramid swindle. As it came crashing down in 1720, so too did

French trust in government ‹nance, and the project of a French national

bank died—indeed, the term bank was long distrusted in France after

this—thus hampering its industrial development. In 1781, during the

‹nancial torments that preceded the French Revolution, even Jacques

Necker—minister of ‹nance and an admirer of Colbert—effectively

conceded that the secret state knowledge system had undermined gov-

ernmental effectiveness and stunted economic growth. For the ‹rst time

in history, he published a version of the French state’s ‹nances. Lauding

the open, constitutional government of England, he suggested that

France follow its model and publish the state’s yearly budget:

But another cause of the great credit of England, is, and we do not

doubt it at all, the public notoriety to which is submitted the state of


its ‹nances. Each year this report is presented to Parliament, it is then

printed; and all creditors thus regularly know the proportion main-

tained between revenues and expenditures; they are never troubled by

these suspicions, false fears, and maneuverings behind the scenes.

In France, we have made a constant mystery of the state of our

‹nances; or, if they have been discussed, it has been in the preamble to

edicts, and always at the moment that one sought to take loans; but

these words, though different, were too often the same, and therefore

necessarily lost their authority, and men of experience no longer be-

lieved in them, except with the guarantee . . . of the moral character of

the minister of ‹nances.36

Necker’s eloquence, however, was in vain. Many accused him of not

only acting too late; they didn’t believe his ‹gures. As he himself had

pointed out, how could there be con‹dence in a state that had operated

outside its constitution, by royal ‹at and lettres de cachet, for more than

one hundred years?

State Information Crisis: Redux

As royal authority crumbled in the eighteenth century, the old constitu-

tional rivalry between the monarchy and the Parlement of Paris re-

emerged. And so did the old battle over the authority of state informa-

tion. Following Boulainvilliers and Le Laboureur, the parliamentarian

scholars of the mid-eighteenth century, Sainte-Palaye, Durey de

Meinières, and Louis-Sébastien Le Paige took up many of the com-

plaints of the Fronde. They would show that the old historical, legal

documents so coveted by the Dupuys and Colbert, but ignored later by

Louis XIV’s later ministers and their heirs, were indeed essential tools of

governance, legitimacy, and propaganda, and that they proved the Par-

lement’s right to regulate the monarchy.37 In the 1750s and 1760s, led by

Malesherbes de Lamoignon—the grandson of Colbert’s parliamentary

nemesis, future censor and defender of Louis XVI—the Parlement of

Paris waged a relentless information campaign against the monarchy,

in‹ltrating Colbert’s old institutions and undermining absolutism with

the publication of medieval, feudal legal documents as ideological pro-

paganda.38 The crown had no information policy, and parliamentary

of‹cers such as Lamoignon were not co-opted by the state, but re-

mained free to use their scholarly and informational skills to attack its au-

thority. In one tragic irony after the next, the crown not only attempted


to ban the pro-Colbertist Encyclopédie; it lost its opportunity to harness

and focus encyclopedic knowledge, which Colbert had seen as essential

to his own modernizing state apparatus. In the end, without a trained

corps of medievalist archival agents, the crown was helpless in the face of

the parliamentarian onslaught of published historical remonstrances.

Royal authority was undermined by the proliferation of documents

plucked from the archives and used as propaganda to prove historical

parliamentary rights.

Whereas, from the Fronde onward, Colbert had worked for decades

to crush the Parlement’s ability to wage information war against the

crown, Louis XV found himself with no effective political archive and

no information masters to press his case. He would have to turn to the

parliamentarian scholar Jean-Jacob Moreau to re-create Colbert’s arsenal

of manuscripts. The French state had come full circle, back to the old in-

formation masters. But it was too late. Colbert’s secret sphere had crum-

bled, and the antiquarians, with all their might of historical legitimacy,

were now on the side of the Parlement. It was Colbert’s nightmare

come true.

Enlightened Despotism and Information Management

While Colbert’s absolutist government and information system failed in

France, this did not mean that it was an impossible dream. Across Eu-

rope in the eighteenth century, enlightened despots used Colbert’s

method of government by experts and the centralized administration

and collection of information by intendants. From Frederick the Great’s

Prussia, Bourbon Spain, and Hapsburg Austria and Tuscany, to Portugal

under Pombal and Russia under Peter the Great and Catherine II, many

built comparable systems of mercantilism, centralization, and informa-

tion collection.39 Even in the more open system of England, empire

would increasingly demand the central and encyclopedic sort of archives

developed by Colbert.40 Colbert’s legacy was not necessarily mercantil-

ism, but rather his vision of learned administration.

Louis XIV’s grandson, Philip V of Spain (ruled 1700–1746), brought

with him not only the system of the intendants, but also a French taste

for bibliophilia, and set in motion the creation of a new Spanish Royal

Library along French lines.41 Similarly, in the decades following Col-

bert’s death, the kingdom of Savoy would create a permanent state li-

brary and archive apparatus that looked like a small-scale, ideal version

of what Colbert had tried to achieve. Although Savoy had kept well-or-


ganized, centralized state archives since the Middle Ages, its interactions

with the bellicose French inspired it to create a defensive state archival

system.42 Under constant threat of annexation by France, Savoy not only

managed to build an effective ‹scal and military apparatus to defend it-

self from Louis XIV’s aggression; it also built on the scholarly adminis-

trative tradition and achieved something France never did.43 By 1720

Victor Amadeus II had managed to take over parliamentary and legal

archives and bring them under the central control of the state in a mas-

sive Archivio di Stato in Turin that was housed in the same building as

the Royal Library, linked to the royal palace by a long hallway, and

managed by state scholars.44 In this case, the bureaucratic tradition based

on a centralized information state aided the Francophone Savoyards in

their long conquest of the Italian peninsula.

The Information Master: A Despot of Letters

under the Shadow of Republics

More than anything, however, what remained of Colbert’s legacy was

not a permanent state information system or even tradition. Rather,

Colbertism should be de‹ned as the idea that a large-scale state would

need to centralize and harness encyclopedic knowledge to govern effec-

tively, and that all knowledge, formal and practical, could be used to-

gether in one archival system to understand and master the material

world. At ‹rst glance, this seems pioneering, and, to a certain extent, it

was. Modern states, both democratic and despotic, centralize informa-

tion, and hire internal teams of experts to sift through, manage, and use

information for government. Indeed, the questions Colbert asked about

information handling—in terms of collection, organization, and search-

ing for information within a system—were visionary in their concept

and application. His mixing of formal and practical knowledge and data

predated the ›owering of the Enlightened encyclopedic tradition. In-

deed, Colbert can be roughly compared to Bill Gates in his prescient

harnessing of existing traditions of information culture for large-scale in-

dustrial projects. Colbert’s administrative and cultural model of learned

enlightened despotism is, in some ways, still applicable not just to gov-

ernments, but also to modern corporations, with their internal, secret re-

search and information collection programs.

Even more, institutions such as the intendancy, while still a site of state

secrecy until the Revolution, would, in the eighteenth century, produce

ambiguous ‹gures such as Jacques Turgot (1727–81): a philosophe critic


of Colbert’s mercantilism, but also an advocate of state-imposed free

markets and the kind of economic observational administration cham-

pioned by Colbert. His Éloge de Gournay (1759), which inspired Adam

Smith, assailed the Colbertist model, complaining of “these rules, in-

spectors, and of‹ces” that sti›e trade and add pointless cost to mer-

chandise.45 Yet Turgot had taken a tour of France with Vincent de

Gournay, examining the countryside in a style that Colbert would have

admired. In 1761 Turgot, a former maître des requêtes, became the in-

tendant of Limoges, and designed state programs to spur industry.

Philosophically, he was against mercantilism, but culturally and practi-

cally he was an heir to Colbert: a state expert, gatherer of information,

and economic planner.

There were inherent contradictions in Colbert’s project. In creating

his information state from the world of learning and trying to fuse the

two, Colbert was a product of the mercantile world, state administra-

tion, and the culture of the Republic of Letters. As much as he tried to

make the state intellectually independent, he relied on exterior traditions

of learning and information handling. Many of the glories of learning as-

sociated with the French state were appropriated in from the Republic

of Letters. As the British Royal Society showed, learning could use state

legitimacy, but it neither needed state funding nor state control. Colbert

sought to crush the very world from which he drew his power and

which fascinated him to the point that he thought obsessively about

books and questions of state erudition. Had Colbert truly succeeded in

controlling the Republic of Letters more than he did, he might have

sti›ed his own state projects. In any case, his policies of repression fed re-

publican Holland and constitutional England, which became the sites of

exile and of the radical Enlightenments that would challenge despotism

and provide and dynamic political countermodel.

Thus Colbert built parts of what would be the modern governmen-

tal tradition, but he misunderstood the nature of his own project. Learn-

ing and government were intertwined, but repression could have a dan-

gerous effects. A balance would have to be sought, and Colbert never

revealed that he considered this balance.

If the Republic of Letters set the model for early civil society—

through its ethos of discussion across national and religious lines—Col-

bert, as a major arbiter of the Republic of Letters, shows that the abso-

lutist state played a central role in in›uencing the emergence of civil

society. This does complicate the telos of progress without taking away


from the value and importance of civil society. Indeed, it shows the

fragility of the balance between effective government, civil freedoms,

and repression. Colbert developed many institutions that furthered

learning and that worked to expand the world of learning and commu-

nication. At one level, they could be used for political repression. At an-

other, making the state a center of learning linked it to possibly inde-

pendent elements of civil society. Many of the institutions that Colbert

created—from his academies to the of‹ce of the state censor—became

sites of antiabsolutism in the eighteenth century. Under Louis XV and

XVI, administrative archives expanded, but the secret royal sphere atro-

phied into the world of spying, failed ‹nance, and despotic ‹at. The

king stored his secret ‹les in a casketlike secret armoire, which was spec-

tacularly opened during Louis XVI’s trial in 1792 to reveal the moribund

politics of the former monarchy. In what is now a permanent wake of

French monarchy, it sits open to all viewers in the Musée Carnavalet in

Paris.

This archival trophy of the Revolution was not the great royal state

information and intelligence system Colbert had envisioned. Revolu-

tionaries discredited the king by exposing his armoire, but real royal

government was still in the ministerial archives that the Revolution ap-

propriated. The secret sphere of state power would rear its head again

during the police states of the Terror and Napoleon and nestle itself into

the administrative republics of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It

was the world of state paperwork and the bordereau—military and indus-

trial intelligence, state correspondence, and secret evidence—that pro-

duced the Dreyfus Affair and, elsewhere in Europe, the world of secret

police and the Stasi. Crimes of state are not always dramatic, but often

take place in the mundane ‹le rooms and archives of governments.

Yet, as mundane and as sinister as state paperwork can appear, a lack

of paperwork poses other threats. In October 1793, Saint-Just, the apos-

tle of the Terror, pointed out that true political terror took place opti-

mally under a total dictatorship with no paperwork. In his call for the

dictatorship of the Committee of Public Safety he made a plea for cur-

tailed bureaucracy and an unfettered executive power:

The ministry is a world of paper. I don’t know how Rome and Egypt

governed without this resource; one thought a great deal and wrote lit-

tle. The sheer volume of the government’s correspondence and orders

is a sign of its inertia; government is impossible with too many words.


Representatives of the people, generals, administrators, are surrounded

by of‹ces like former men of the palace; nothing is done, and expen-

diture is nonetheless enormous. Bureaucracy has replaced monar-

chism; the demon of writing makes war on us, and government

stops.46

Any slowing of government by bureaucracy, he warned, “will be pun-

ished as a crime against liberty.” And so it was: with too much paper-

work government stops, or becomes a self-serving machine; and with-

out it, things fall apart and terror can take the place of institutions.

Conclusion

What conclusions can we then draw from this odd story of innovation,

originality, great achievement, and ultimate failure? Colbert shows the

extent and limits of the early modern governmental sphere of informa-

tion, both public and secret, and how they interacted. While the public

sphere grew, elements of Colbert’s secret sphere of institutional infor-

mation also ›ourished. They interacted and competed, creating a tense

symbiosis present to this very day. While some modern governments

claim to eschew Colbert’s mercantilist, centrally controlled form of eco-

nomics, they do not hesitate to maintain vast, centralized, encyclopedic,

powerfully digital, and sometimes dysfunctional information systems.

Even in an age of computers, cell phones, satellites, and massive public

and secret stores of information—accurate and inaccurate—individuals

and states are capable of great feats. Yet they are often remarkably misin-

formed, and thus, in some realms, capable of greater achievements and

grander follies than those of Philip II and Louis XIV. The stage of poli-

tics and ‹nance is now truly the globe.

Rulers and governments need central and secret archives for daily

government, and yet few willingly call for more secret archives or for

“more red tape.” And thus with the rise of the public sphere also comes

Colbert’s legacy, the remnants of the system he created, a monumental

realization of Machiavellian culture, a mercantile dark shadow of hu-

manism and the Enlightened world of knowledge. Modern society is still

left with the unresolved problem that even for the most open of democ-

racies, the culture of state secrecy is necessary and potent, but at the same

time, in its very essence, perverse and dangerous. How will we resolve

the conundrum that Colbert helped create for the modern state? In

1822, as political absolutism returned in Europe and some doubted the


American republic, James Madison described the tension between gov-

ernment and knowledge as a dramatic struggle:

A popular Government without popular information or the means of

acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy or perhaps both.

Knowledge will forever govern ignorance, and a people who mean to

be their own Governors, must arm themselves with the power knowl-

edge gives.47

In an age when society and economy are increasingly dependent on

computerized information technology and on giant governmental enti-

ties and global corporations and banks, this struggle seems ever more rel-

evant and dauntingly complex. It is not only a question of the public be-

ing well informed and aware of the workings of the state and ‹nance. A

well-informed expert, curious and open government seems preferable to

the mysteries of the secret sphere.


Notes

chapter 1

1. Jérôme Delatour, “Le Cabinet des frères Dupuy,” Sciences et Techniques en

Perspective 9 (2005): pp. 287–328.

2. Martin Lister, A Journey to Paris in the Year 1698, ed. Raymon Phineas Stearns

(Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1967). For introductions to the history of travel

literature and learning see Peter Hulme and Tim Youngs, eds., The Cambridge Com-

panion to Travel Writing (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), in particu-

lar chaps. 1 and 14. Also see Justin Stagl, Eine Geschichte der Neugier: Die Kunst des

Reisens 1550–1800 (Vienna: Böhlau Verlag, 1983), English translation: A History of

Curiosity: The Theory of Travel, 1550–1800 (Chur, Switzerland: Harwood Academic,

1988), pp. 1–90; and Barbara J. Shapiro, A Culture of Fact: England, 1550–1720

(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2000), pp. 63–85.

3. Lister, Journey to Paris, pp. 2–13.

4. Ibid., p. 37. On the places and people visited by Lister see Alice Stroup, A

Company of Scientists: Botany, Patronage, and Community at the Seventeenth-Century

Parisian Royal Academy of Sciences (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of Califor-

nia Press, 1990).

5. Denise Bloch, “La Bibliothèque de Colbert,” in Histoire des bibliothèques

françaises, ed. Claude Jolly, 4 vols. (Paris: Promodis, 1988), vol. 2, pp. 156–79.

6. Charles de La Roncière and Paul-M. Bondois, eds., Catalogue des Manuscrits

de la Collection des Mélanges Colbert (Paris: Éditions Ernest Leroux, 1920), introduc-

tion, p. xv.

7. Lister, Journey to Paris, p. 128.

8. Ibid., pp. 108–13. Lister was, however, disappointed when the librarian pro-

duced a magni‹cently bound copy of an early, incomplete copy of his history of

conch snails, the Synopsis Conchyliorum (1685). Lister promised to send the library an

169

up-to-date edition. Simone Balayé, La Bibliothèque Nationale des origines à 1800

(Geneva: Droz, 1988), pp. 74–75; Roger Hahn, The Anatomy of a Scienti‹c Institution:

The Paris Academy of Sciences, 1666–1803 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of

California Press, 1971); John Milton Hirsch‹eld, The Académie Royale des Sciences,

1666–1683 (New York: Arno Press, 1981), pp. 168–69; Denise Bloch, “La Colber-

tine,” in Colbert 1619–1683 (Paris: Ministère de la Culture, 1983), pp. 401–26; “La

bibliothèque de Colbert”; Stewart Saunders, “Public Administration and the Li-

brary of Jean-Baptiste Colbert,” Libraries and Culture 26 (1991): pp. 283–300.

9. And it continued to grow after his death, though at a much diminished rate.

See Léopold Delisle, Le Cabinet des Manuscrits de la Bibliothèque Nationale, 2 vols.

(Paris: Imprimerie Impériale, 1868), vol. 1, p. 440.

10. It is not easy for the modern historian to characterize Colbert’s practices or

how exactly he saw his library and archives, for he never wrote a treatise about them

in any analytical way. In his letters to his son and to his agents, he constantly insists

that they “observe,” “examine,” “see,” and then “inform” him through clear “re-

ports” and “memoirs.” Richelet’s Dictionary of 1685 de‹nes the term intelligence,

among other things, as political wisdom: “is said also of a great man, who through

his talents and his wits [lumières] is above all others (he was the intelligence of the

Council, of the State).” This wisdom could be gained by “secret Communications,”

meaning spying, or simply being well informed. The term information derived from

the Latin term erudire, to enlighten or instruct, and from legal usage. Richelet also

de‹ned it as meaning to learn about something, for example “commerce,” or the

“court.” Thus intelligence and information system seem the most accurate modern

terms we can use to describe the system Colbert built.

11. See Roncière and Bondois, Catalogue des Mélanges Colbert, ‹les 1–100. On

the importance of Colbert and the connection between practical industrial knowl-

edge and the natural sciences see Margaret C. Jacob, Scienti‹c Culture and the Making

of the Industrial West (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), pp. 47–50, 165–86.

12. The literature on the history of libraries, their ambitions, forms, and content

is extensive. For a synthetic overview, see Roger Chartier, L’ordre des livres (Aix-en-

Provence: Alinea, 1992). On the history of knowledge, information, and govern-

ment see Peter Burke, A Social History of Knowledge from Gutenberg to Diderot (Cam-

bridge: Polity Press, 2000), pp. 116–48.

13. On the persistence of methods for searching for information see Anthony

Grafton on the concepts of Google, “Future Reading: Digitization and Its Discon-

tents,” New Yorker, November 5, 2007, pp. 50–55.

14. For critiques of Colbert and “Colbertism,” see Daniel Dessert, Colbert ou le

serpent venimeux (Paris: Éditions Complexe, 2000). For more recent and less histori-

cally accurate criticisms of economic Colbertism, see The Economist’s editorials, De-

cember 1996: “After Thomson: the long, slow death of Colbertism in France is be-

ing accompanied by worrying bouts of xenophobia and indecision; but it is dying

nonetheless,” December 2006 and “The State as Owner: Re-bonjour, Monsieur

Colbert,” October 2008.

15. This is the thesis of James E. King’s Science and Rationalism in the Government

of Louis XIV, 1661–1683 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1949).

16. On the innovations of the absolutist state see Robert Descimon and Alain

170 notes to pages 2–3

Guery, “Un État des temps modernes?” in Seuil Histoire de la France. La longue durée

de l’État, ed. Jacques LeGoff (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 2000), vol. 1, pp. 209–503.

Also see James B. Collins, The State in Early Modern France (Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 1995).

17. Pierre Clément, Histoire de la vie et de l’administration de Colbert (Paris: Guil-

laumin, 1846), p. ix: “Pour ceux qui connaissent le soin excessif avec lequel Colbert

conservait les documents relatifs à son administration et l’attention qu’il avait de

viser lui-même en marge la copie de toutes ses lettres.”

18. Madame de Sévigné, Lettres, ed. M. Monmerque, 14 vols. (Paris: Hachette,

1862), vol. 3, p. 331. Guy Patin called him the vir marmoreus, or “the man of mar-

ble.” Guizot cites this commonplace in his History of France, trans. Robert Black

(Boston: Aldine, 1886), vol. 4, p. 511. Author of a long portrait of Colbert, the abbé

de Choisy noted his “naturally sullen face” and “austere expression.” François-Tim-

oléon, l’abbé de Choisy, Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire de Louis XIV par feu M. l’abbé

de Choisy de l’Académie française suivis de Mémoires de l’abbé de Choisy habillé en femme,

ed. Georges Mongrédin (Paris: Mercure de France, 1966), p. 68. Choisy uses the

terms “renfrogné” and “mine austère.”

19. Gatien Coutilz de Sandras, La vie de Jean-Baptiste Colbert, ministre d’état sous

Louis XIV (Cologne, 1695).

20. Ézéchiel Freiherr von Spanheim, Rélation de la cour de France en 1690, ed.

Charles Shefer (Paris: Libraries Renouard, 1882), p. 174.

21. Ibid., p. 175.

22. Adam Smith, Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, 2

vols. (London: W. Strahan, 1777), vol. 2, p. 533.

23. Robert Darnton, The Business of Enlightenment: A Publishing History of the

Encyclopédie, 1775–1800 (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press,

1979); Kathleen Hardesty, The Supplément to the Encyclopédie (The Hague: Nijhoff,

1977); Hardesty, “L’Encyclopédie méthodique et l’organisation des connaissances,”

Recherches sur Diderot et sur l’Encyclopédie 12 (1992): pp. 59–69; Hardesty, “The Yver-

don Encyclopédie,” Studies in Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century 315 (1994): pp.

85–116; John Lough, Essays on the “Encyclopédie” of Diderot and d’Alembert (London:

Oxford University Press, 1968); Raymond F. Birn, Pierre Rousseau and the

Philosophes of Bouillon, Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century, 29 (Geneva:

Institut et Musée Voltaire, 1964).

24. Denis Diderot, ed., Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire raisinné des sciences des arts et

métiers, par une société de gens de letters, 17 vols. (Neufchâtel: Samuel Faulche, 1765).

See the articles “Gloire,” and “Homme d’état.”

25. Ibid., see the entry “Bibliothèque.”

26. A. J. Grant, “The Government of Louis XIV,” in The Cambridge Modern

History, ed. Lord Acton, 13 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1934),

vol. 5, p. 15.

27. On the humanist encyclopedic tradition see Francis A. Yates, The Art of

Memory (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1966); Cesare Vasoli, L’enciclope-

dismo del Seicento (Naples: Bibliopolis, 1978); Fritz Machlup, Knowledge: The Branches

of Learning (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1981). For an overview of

Italian Renaissance encyclopedic and naturalistic culture see Giuseppe Olmi, L’in-

Notes to Pages 3–6 171

ventario del mondo: Catalogazione della natura e luoghi del sapere nella prima età moderna

(Bologna: Il Mulino, 1992). On late-Renaissance encyclopedism see Ann Blair, The

Theater of Nature: Jean Bodin and Renaissance Science (Princeton, NJ: Princeton Uni-

versity Press, 1997); and her special issue of the Journal of the History of Ideas on the

concept of the “Early Modern Information Overload,” 64 (2003); Richard Ser-

jeantson, “Introduction,” in Meric Casaubon, Generall Learning, ed. Richard Ser-

jeantson (Cambridge: Renaissance Texts from Manuscript, 1999), pp. 1–80. Robert

Darnton has illustrated the decline of theology and the rise of practical knowledge

in the eighteenth-century Encyclopédie: “Philosophers Trim the Tree of Knowledge:

The Epistemological Strategy of the Encyclopédie,” in The Great Cat Massacre and

Other Episodes in French Cultural History (New York: Vintage, 1984), p. 198. Richard

Yeo also traces the rise of natural and practical knowledge in the eighteenth-century

encyclopedic movement, connecting earlier tradition and Enlightenment: Encyclo-

pedic Visions: Scienti‹c Dictionaries and Enlightenment Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 2001), p. 3, and his “John Locke’s ‘New Method’ of Common-

placing: Managing Memory and Information,” Eighteenth-Century Thought 2 (2004):

pp. 1–38. On the encyclopedism and the smaller scale data-bank aspect of the hu-

manist library, see William H. Sherman, John Dee: The Politics of Reading and Writing

in the English Renaissance (Amherat: University of Massachusetts Press, 1995), pp.

29–52. On the uses and evolution of the library in France, see Jolly, Histoire des bib-

liothèques françaises, vol. 2, in general; and Roger Chartier, Lectures et lecteurs dans la

France d’Ancien Régime (Paris: Seuil, 1987), chap. 5.

28. Ernest Lavisse, Louis XIV. Histoire d’un grand règne (1908; rpt. Paris, 1989),

pp. 131–32.

29. Ibid., p. 131.

30. Robert Bireley, The Counter-Reformation Prince: Anti-Machiavellism, or

Catholic Statecraft in Early Modern Europe (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina

Press, 1980).

31. For an overview of the limits and successes of French absolutism as well as

the extensive historiography on the topic see Guy Rowlands, The Dynastic State and

the Army under Louis XIV: Royal Service and Private Interest, 1661–1701 (Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 1–31.

32. Pierre Clément, “Avertissement,” in Jean-Baptiste Colbert, Lettres, instruc-

tions et mémoires, ed. Pierre Clément, 7 vols. (Paris: Imprimerie Impériale, 1861–70),

vol. 1, p. ix.

33. Choisy, Mémoires, pp. 68–69: “Une application in‹nie et un désir insatiable

d’apprendre lui tenaient lieu de science: plus il était ignorant, plus il affectait de

paraître savant, citant quelquefois hors de propos des passages latins qu’il avait appris

par coeur, et que ses docteurs à gages lui avaient expliqués. . . . Il présentait au Roi,

tous les premiers jours de l’an, un agenda où ses revenus étaient marqués en détail; et

à chaque fois que le Roi signait des ordonnances, Colbert le faisait souvenir de les

marquer sur son agenda, a‹n qu’il pût voir quand il lui plairait combien il lui restait

encore de fonds (au lieu que dans les temps passés il ne pouvait jamais savoir ce qu’il

avait).”

34. Louis XIV, Mémoires for the Instruction of the Dauphin, trans. and ed. Paul


Sonnino (New York: Free Press, 1970), p. 34; Madame de Maintenon, Lettres (Paris:

Léopold Collin, 1806), p. 286.

35. Encyclopédie, “Bibliothèque”: The Encyclopédie recognized Colbert’s foray

into the world of learning and antiquarianism: “It was not only in Paris and in

neighboring countries that Monsieur Colbert ordered the purchase of books for the

King; he ordered the ‹nest ancient manuscripts in Greek, Arab, Persian, and other

Oriental languages be sought in the Levant. He established correspondents in dif-

ferent courts of Europe by which this vigilant minister procured treasures of all

kinds for the King’s library.”

36. On the relationship between Colbert’s library and the Bibliothèque Royale

see Jean Boivin, “Mémoire pour l’histoire de la Bibliothèque du Roy,” 1687–88,

Bibliothèque Nationale de France (hereafter BNF) MS Fr. 22571, fols. 438–91; Bal-

ayé, La Bibliothèque Nationale, pp. 71–145; and Denise Bloch, “La bibliothèque de

Colbert.” The most nuanced study of Colbert’s library and its relationship to policy

is Saunders, “Public Administration.”

37. It should be noted that England and Holland never established large, cen-

tral, secret state archives. Whether or not this was bene‹cial, ‹gures such as Samuel

Pepys watched the growth of Colbert’s state archival apparatus with some envy. On

the English royal administration and the limits of centralization and secrecy, see

Jonathan M. Elukin, “Keeping Secrets in Medieval and Early Modern English Gov-

ernment,” in Das Geheimnis am Beginn der europäischen Moderne, ed. Gisela Engel,

Brita Rang, Klaus Reichert, Heide Wunder, and Jonathan Elukin (Frankfurt am

Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 2002), p. 126. Still the ‹nest source on the topic is Pe-

ter Fraser, The Intelligence of the Secretaries of State and Their Monopoly of Licensed News,

1660–1668 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1956), p. 10.

38. On the centralization of administrative archives see Nico Randeraad, ed.,

“Formation and Transfer of Municipal Administrative Knowledge,” Yearbook of Eu-

ropean Administrative History 15 (2003), in particular, Wolfgang Weber, “Herrschafts-

und Verwaltungswissen in oberdeutschen Reichsstädten der Frühen Neuzeit,” pp.

1–29.

39. These reference documents are found in BNF MS Baluze 177. On ad-

vanced library catalogs connected to laboratories as a precursor to computing see

Alex Wright, “The Web That Time Forgot,” New York Times, June 17, 2008, pp.

F1, F4, on the Belgian Paul Otlet’s “Mundaneum” information catalog and net-

work.

40. Lavisse, Louis XIV, pp. 131–32.

41. See Delisle, Le Cabinet des Manuscrits, vol. 1, p. 440.

42. Paula Findlen, “Introduction. The Last Man Who Knew Everything . . . or

Did He? Athanasius Kircher, S. J. (1602–80) and His World,” in Athanasius Kircher:

The Last Man Who Knew Everything, ed. Findlen (New York: Routledge, 2004),

p. 5.

43. Michael S. Mahoney, “Christian Huygens: The Measurement of Time and

of Longitude at Sea,” in Studies on Christian Huygens, ed. H. J. M. Bos (Lisse: Swets,

1980), pp. 234–70.

44. Stroup, A Company of Scientists, p. 51.


45. On Bacon’s many facets see, for example, Markku Peltonen, ed., The Cam-

bridge Companion to Francis Bacon (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).

The most recent intellectual studies focus on learning and ‹gures of learning. See

Anthony Grafton, Joseph Scaliger: A Study in the History of Classical Scholarship, 2 vols.

(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983); Grafton, Cardano’s Cosmos: The Worlds and Works

of a Renaissance Astrologer (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999); Grafton,

Leon Battista Alberti: Master Builder of the Renaissance (New York: Hill and Wang,

2000); Sherman, John Dee; Nancy Siraisi, The Clock and the Mirror: Girolamo Cardano

and Renaissance Medicine (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997); Blair,

The Theater of Nature; Casaubon, Generall Learning; Peter N. Miller, Peiresc’s Europe:

Learning and Virtue in the Seventeenth Century (New Haven: Yale University Press,

2000); most recently, J. G. A. Pocock has painted a detailed tableau of Gibbon’s

world, in›uences, and uses of tradition in his ongoing study, Barbarism and Religion,

3 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999–2003). Also see Michael

Hunter, Archives of the Scienti‹c Revolution: The Formation and Exchange of Ideas in Sev-

enteenth-Century Europe (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell Press, 1998); and Jacob Soll, ed.,

“The Uses of Historical Evidence in Early Modern Europe,” special issue of the

Journal of the History of Ideas, 23 (2003). Also see Peter Burke, “A Social History of

Knowledge Revisited,” Modern Intellectual History 3 (2007): p. 524.

46. Geoffrey Parker, The Grand Strategy of Philip II (New Haven: Yale Univer-

sity Press, 1998).

47. On the term Staatenkunde see Hans Erich Bödeker, “On the Origins of the

‘Statistical Gaze’: Modes of Perception, Forms of Knowledge, and Ways of Writing

in the Early Social Sciences,” in Little Tools of Knowledge: Historical Essays on Academic

and Bureaucratic Practices, ed. Peter Becker and William Clark (Ann Arbor: Univer-

sity of Michigan Press, 2001), p. 172. Michel Foucault uses the term le savoir de l’é-

tat in Il faut défendre la société: Cours au Collège de France. 1976 (Paris: Hautes

Études/Seuil/Gallimard, 1997), cours du 11 février, p. 113.

48. Graham Burchell, Colin Gordon, and Peter Miller, eds., The Foucault Effect:

Studies in Governmentality (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), pp. 92–93.

On practices of governmental knowledge see Becker and Clark, Little Tools of

Knowledge, pp. 19–24. For a reading of the preceding texts in the context of Swiss

cantonal records, see the pioneering work by Randolph Head, “Knowing Like a

State: The Transformation of Political Knowledge in Swiss Archives, 1450–1770,”

Journal of Modern History 75 (2003): pp. 745–82.

49. King, Science and Rationalism; Kevin Sharpe, Sir Robert Cotton, 1586–1631:

History and Politics in Early Modern England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979),

pp. 3–8. R. J. W. Evans has studied Rudolf II as an intellectual patron, but not as a

state information manager, in Rudolf II and His World: A Study in Intellectual History,

1576–1612 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973); and see Blandine Barret-Kriegel, Les

historiens et la monarchie. Jean Mabillon, 4 vols. (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France,

1988).

50. The history of research is now emerging in works such as William Clark’s

Academic Charisma and the Origins of the Research University (Chicago: University of

Chicago Press, 2006).

51. For the paradigmatic concept of the public sphere, see Jürgen Habermas,


The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois

Society, trans. Thomas Burger and Frederick Lawrence (Cambridge: MIT Press,

1989), pp. 51–56. On news, information, and public opinion in the sixteenth cen-

tury see Brendan Dooley, A Social History of Skepticism: Experience and Doubt in Early

Modern Culture (Baltimore: Johhs Hopkins University Press, 1999). For France in

particular see Jean-Pierre Vittu, “Instruments of Political Information in France,” in

The Politics of Information in Early Modern Europe, ed. Brendan Dooley and Sabrina A.

Baron (London: Routledge, 2001), pp. 160–77.

52. Habermas, Structural Transformation, pp. 51–56. The bibliography on Haber-

mas and the public sphere is too large to list here. For a reading of Habermas’s the-

ory in the eighteenth-century French context see Roger Chartier, The Cultural Ori-

gins of the French Revolution (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1991), pp. 20–37.

An early overview of the Habermasian paradigm can be found in Craig Calhoun,

ed., Habermas and the Public Sphere (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1992). For a recent

overview, see Stéphane Van Damme, “Farewell Habermas? Deux décennies d’é-

tudes sur l’espace public aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles,” in Questions posées à l’espace

public, ed. Patrick Boucheron and Nicolas Offenstadt (Paris: Publications de la Sor-

bonne), forthcoming. The exception to this rule is in the ‹eld of colonial history,

which has produced a number of signi‹cant studies of state information systems.

Historians of later colonialism have studied the history of such systems, though

oddly, without examining their European origins. See C. A. Bayley, Empire and In-

formation: Intelligence Gathering and Social Communication in India, 1780–1870 (Cam-

bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996); and Bernard S. Cohen, Colonialism and

Its Forms of Knowledge: The British in India (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University

Press, 1996), pp. 3–15.

53. Van Damme, “Farewell Habermas?” This sub‹eld has its own recently

founded journal, Public Culture (Duke University Press). On the journal Public Cul-

ture see the Times Literary Supplement, November 3, 2006, pp. 23–24. Richard Sen-

nett’s work parallels Habermas’s schema of the decline of the public sphere: The De-

cline of Public Man (New York: Vintage, 1978).

54. James van Horn Melton has recognized this dialectic, or symbiotic relation-

ship, referring to it as “secrecy and its discontents,” or “opacity and transparency.”

James van Horn Melton, The Rise of the Public in Enlightened Europe (Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 2001), pp. 45–77. While it hardly rivals the interest in

the public sphere, there is a rich and old tradition of the study of secrecy in the study

of reason of state. See Louis Marin, “La logique du secret,” Traverses 30–31 (1984):

pp. 60–69; Robert A. Schneider, “Disclosing Mysteries: The Contradictions of

Reason of State in Seventeenth-Century France,” in Engel et al., Das Geheimnis am

Beginn der europäischen Moderne, p. 176; and no discussion of learning in the early sev-

enteenth century can ignore the persistence of elitist Neoplatonic attitudes, and

their in›uence on neo-Stoic philosophy. Also see Rosario Villari, Elogio della dis-

simulazione: La lotta politica nel seicento (Rome: Editori Laterza, 1987); A. Enzo Bal-

dini, ed., Aristotelismo politico e ragion di stato (Florence: Olschki Editore, 1995), in

particular the chapters by Enzo Baldini, Gianfranco Borelli, Vittorio Dini, and

Diego Quaglioni. On the paradoxical nature of reason of state, as an art of secrecy

and a method of unmasking see Anna Maria Battista, “Morale ‘privée’ et utilitarisme

Notes to Page 10 175

politique en France au XVIIe siècle,” in Le pouvoir de la raison d’état, ed. Christian

Lazzari and Dominique Reynié (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1992), pp.

208–14; Peter Burke, “Tacitism, Scepticism, and Reason of State,” in The Cambridge

History of Political Thought 1450–1700, ed, J. H. Burns and Mark Goldie (Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 1991), pp. 479–98; Vittorio Dini, Il governo della pru-

denza: Virtù dei privati e disciplina dei custodi (Milan: Franco Angeli Editore, 2000);

Marcel Gauchet, “Létat au miroir de la raison d’état: La France et la chrétienité,” in

Raison et déraison d’état: Théoriciens et théories de la raison d’état aux XVIe et XVIIe siè-

cles, ed. Yves-Charles Zarka (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1994), pp.

195–97; Christian Jouhaud, ed., “Miroirs de la raison d’état,” special issue of the

Cahiers du Centre de Recherches Historiques 20 (1998); Jean-Pierre Cavaillé, Dis/simu-

lations. Jules-César Vanini, François La Mothe Le Vayer, Gabriel Naudé, Louis Machon et

Toquato Accetto: Religion, morale et politique au XVIIe siècle (Paris: Honoré Champion,

2002), pp. 231–40; Schneider, “Disclosing Mysteries,” pp. 162–64; Jacob Soll,

“Healing the Body Politic: French Royal Doctors, History and the Birth of a Na-

tion 1560–1634,” Renaissance Quarterly 55 (2002): pp. 1259–86; this is also the gen-

eral theme of Soll, Publishing “The Prince”: History, Reading, and the Birth of Political

Criticism (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2005).

55. Hélène Merlin has shown that there is a deep ambiguity in the historical no-

tion of the word public, which often described the state—the res publica—that ide-

ally worked for communal good. Hélène Merlin, Public et littérature en France au

XVIIe siècle (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1994), pp. 90–105. For pan-European history

of public information, see Dooley and Baron, Politics of Information. For the context

of public information in France see Vittu, “Instruments of Political Information.”

Also see Dooley’s study of public information in early modern Italy, A Social History

of Skepticism. Robert Darnton has made a pathbreaking study of both secret and

public information networks, “Philosophy under the Cloak,” in his The Forbidden

Best-Sellers of Pre-Revolutionary France (New York: Norton, 1995), pp. 3–21. On the

public sphere see his “An Early Information Society: News and the Media in Eigh-

teenth-Century Paris,” American Historical Review 1 (2000): pp. 1–35, which does not

examine the role played by secret state information in society, as he does in his early

work on the topic: “A Police Inspector Sorts His Files: The Anatomy of the Re-

public of Letters,” in Darnton, Great Cat Massacre, pp. 145–89. James van Horn

Melton has claimed that this scholarly embrace of Habermas’s narrative of Enlight-

ened progress through the rise of a critical public stems from a late-twentieth-cen-

tury optimism about open society. Van Horn Melton, Rise of the Public, pp. 9–10.

56. Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (San Diego: Harcourt Brace

Jovanovich, 1979).

57. For the most important critique of the idea that salons and the Republic of

Letters were connected and, therefore, a driving force of a proto-civil society, see

Antoine Lilti, Le Monde des salons. Sociabilité et mondanité à Paris au XVIIIe siècle

(Paris: Fayard, 2005).

58. On Pietro Leopoldo’s program of enlightened reforms and political control

see Simone Contardi, La Casa di Salomone a Firenze: L’Imperiale e Reale museo di ‹sica

e storia naturale 1775–1801 (Florence: Olschki, 2002); and Emmanuelle Chapron,

“Bibliothèques publiques et pratiques bibliophiliques au XVIIIe siècle: La collection

176 notes to page 10

d’incunables de la bibliothèque Magliabechiana de Florence,” Revue Française d’His-

toire du Livre 118–21 (2004): pp. 317–33.

59. On the limits of openness in the Republic of Letters see Noel Malcolm,

“Private and Public Knowledge: Kircher, Esotericism, and the Republic of Letters,

in Findlen, Athanasius Kircher, p. 299. On secrecy, rules, and bad behavior in the

Republic of Letters see Marian Füssel, Gelehrtenkultur als symbolische Praxis. Rang,

Ritual und Kon›ikt an der Universität der Frühen Neuzeit (Darmstadt: Wis-

senschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2006); and Martin Mulsow, Die unanständige

Gelehrtenrepublik. Wissen, Libertinage und Kommunikation in der Frühen Neuzeit

(Stuttgart: Metzler, 2007).

60. On the complexity of the Republic of Letters see Delatour, “Le Cabinet des

frères Dupuy”; Schneider, “Disclosing Mysteries,” p. 176; and Hans Bots and

Françoise Waquet, La République des letters (Paris: Belin, 1997). On the relationship

between political power and the world of learning, see Christian Jouhaud, Les pou-

voirs de la literature: Histoire d’un paradoxe (Paris: Gallimard, 2000), chap. 3.

61. On private secrecy see Michael McKeon, Secret History of Domesticity: Pub-

lic, Private, and the Division of Knowledge (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press,

2005); and Margaret Jacob, Strangers Nowhere in the World: The Rise of Cosmopoli-

tanism in Early Modern Europe (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006),

chap. 4.

62. Peter Galison, “Removing Knowledge,” Critical Inquiry 31 (2004): p. 1.

63. Edward Albert Shils, The Torment of Secrecy: The Background and Consequences

of American Security Policies (Glencoe, IL: Free Press, 1955).

64. On the Freedom of Information Act and its numerous exemptions, see the

useful website kept by the National Security Archive: http://www.gwu.edu/

~nsarchiv/nsa/foia.html. It contains the act and its amendments, as well as related

works. Britain enacted its own Freedom of Information Act in 2000. See

www.foi.gov.uk. On the secrecy policy of the Bush administration in relation to

war, see John C. Yoo, “The President’s Constitutional Authority to Conduct Mil-

itary Operations Against Terrorists and Nations Supporting Them,” Memorandum

Opinion for the Deputy Counsel to the President, September 25, 2001: “Constitu-

tional Structure. Our reading of the text is reinforced by analysis of the constitutional

structure. First, it is clear that the Constitution secures all federal executive power in

the President to ensure a unity in purpose and energy in action. ‘Decision, activity,

secrecy, and dispatch will generally characterize the proceedings of one man in a

much more eminent degree than the proceedings of any greater number.’ The Fed-

eralist No. 70, at 392 (Alexander Hamilton). The centralization of authority in the

President alone is particularly crucial in matters of national defense, war, and foreign

policy, where a unitary executive can evaluate threats, consider policy choices, and

mobilize national resources with a speed and energy that is far superior to any other

branch. As Hamilton noted, ‘Energy in the executive is a leading character in the

de‹nition of good government. It is essential to the protection of the community

against foreign attacks.’ Id. at 391. This is no less true in war. ‘Of all the cares or con-

cerns of government, the direction of war most peculiarly demands those qualities

which distinguish the exercise of power by a single hand.’ Id. No. 74, at 415

(Alexander Hamilton).” In relation to the secret formulation of U.S. energy policy


by Richard Cheney, the vice president, see the Government Accounting Of‹ce

Report to Congressional Requestors, Energy Task Force: Process Used to Develop Na-

tional Energy Policy, August 2003. On secrecy and the Bush administration and the

sustained interest of the U.S. press in this question see Mark Danner, The Secret Way

to War: The Downing Street Memo and the Iraq War’s Buried History (New York: New

York Review of Books, 2006); New York Times, op-ed, December 23, 2005, “Mr.

Cheney’s Imperial Presidency,” and New York Times, op-ed, June 24, 2007, “White

House of Mirrors.”

65. This term was used by Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) and cited by Lee

White, “Scholars Present Testimony to House Subcommittee on Presidential

Records,” Perspectives 45 (2007): p. 11. In the same issue also see Barbara Weinstein,

“Let the Sunshine In: Government Records and National Insecurities,” Perspectives

45 (2007): pp. 3–6.

66. On secrecy in the Clinton Presidential Archives see Michael Isikoff, “Pa-

pers? I Don’t See Any Papers. He says he’s ‘pro-disclosure,’ but Bill has kept

Hillary’s White House ‹les under wraps,” Newsweek, October 29, 2007.

67. Michel Duchein, “La communication des archives contemporaines: Droit a

l’information ou droit au secret?” Vingtième Siècle. Revue d’histoire 8 (1985): pp.

123–25.

68. Tim Weiner, Legacy of Ashes: A History of the CIA (New York: Anchor,

2008).

69. For the most informative overview of the culture and functioning of the

state in early modern France see the encyclopedic and authoritative overview by

Descimon and Guery, “Un État des temps modernes?” For a view of the early mod-

ern state as small and generally dysfunctional, see John Brewer and Eckhart Hell-

muth’s thoughtful, Rethinking Leviathan: The Eighteenth-Century State in Britain and

Germany (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999); and Hullmuth’s analysis in “En-

lightenment and Government,” in Martin Fitzpatrick, Peter Jones, Christa Knell-

wolf, and Iain McCalman, The Enlightenment World (London: Routledge, 2004), pp.

442–54.

chapter 2

1. Burke, Social History of Knowledge, p. 24.

2. Francis Oakley, The Conciliar Tradition: Constitutionalism in the Catholic

Church, 1300–1870 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), chap. 1.

3. Sidney L. Jackson, Libraries and Librarianship in the West: A Brief History

(New York: McGraw-Hill, 1974), pp. 52–99. Also see Jolly, Histoire des bibliothèques

françaises, vol. 2, Les bibliothèques médiévales du VIe siècle à 1530; Sebastien Barret, La

mémoire et l’écrit: L’Abbaye de Cluny et ses archives (Münster: Lit, 2004).

4. Mary A. Rouse and Richard H. Rouse, Authentic Witnesses: Approaches to

Medieval Texts and Manuscripts (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press,

1991), pp. 409–24; Jean Favier, Les Archives (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France,

1965), pp. 12–18.

5. M. T. Clanchy, From Memory to Written Record: England, 1066–1307 (Cam-

bridge: Harvard University Press, 1979), pp. 2–87.


6. See Robert-Henri Bautier’s chapter concerning “Chancellerie et culture au

moyen age,” in his Chartes, sceaux et chancelleries: Études de diplomatique et de sigillo-

graphie médiévales, 2 vols. (Paris: École des Chartes, 1990), vol. 1, pp. 47–75.

7. Oakley, The Conciliar Tradition, pp. 13–21; R. W. Southern, Western Society

and the Church in the Middle Ages (London: Penguin, 1970), pp. 98–169; Emmanuel

Le Roy Ladurie, Montaillou: The Promised Land of Error, trans. Barbara Bray (New

York: Vintage, 1979), p. xvii.

8. Randolph Head has studied the long-term archival practices of the Swiss

cantons in “Knowing Like a State.”

9. Isabella Lazzarini, “Materiali per una didattica delle scritture pubbliche di

cancelleria nell’Italia del Quattrocento,” Scrineum 2 (2004): pp. 1–77.

10. Gary Ianziti, “A Humanist Historian and His Documents: Giovanni Si-

monetta, Secretary to the Sforzas,” Renaissance Quarterly 4 (1981): pp. 491–516.

11. Petrarch and Poliziano’s sense of the past went beyond that of medievalists

who had already begun to question textual authenticity. See Anthony Grafton, De-

fenders of the Text: The Traditions of Scholarship in an Age of Science, 1450–1800 (Cam-

bridge: Harvard University Press, 1991), pp. 42–75.

12. On humanism, history, archives, and civic consciousness in Florence see

Felix Gilbert, Machiavelli and Guicciardini (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,

1965); and Gary Ianziti, Humanistic Historiography under the Sforzas: Politics and Propa-

ganda in Fifteenth-Century Milan (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988). For more general

detail see Marcello Simonetta, Rinascimento segreto: Il mondo del segretario da Petrarca a

Machiavelli (Milan: F. Angeli, 2004). For an extensive bibliography and analysis of

chancellery archives see Lazzarini, “Materiali per una didattica.”

13. On the transformation of canon law into humanist legal philology see

Jacques Cujas, Paratitia in libros IX. Codicis Iustiani repetitæ prælectionis (Paris: Jean Jost,

1541); and Tribonian, Iustiniani perpetvo avgvsti institutionum iuris ciuilis compositarum

per Tribonianum virum magni‹cum & exquæstore sacri Palatij, & Theophilum & Dorotheum

viros illustres & antecessores Libri Quatuor (Lyon: Gulielmum Rouillium, 1571). For

the speci‹city of humanist scholarship as opposed to scholastic scholarship see L. D.

Reynolds and N. G. Wilson, Scribes and Scholars: A Guide to the Transmission of Greek

and Latin Litterature (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991); and Ian Maclean, Interpretation

and Meaning in the Renaissance: The Case of Law (Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press, 1992).

14. See in general Poggio Bracciolini, Two Renaissance Book Hunters: The Letters

of Poggius Bracciolini to Nicolaus de Niccolis, trans. and ed. Phyllis Walter and Gordan

Goodhart (New York: Columbia University Press, 1974).

15. For an overview of diplomatic and paperwork practices, see Lazzarini, “Ma-

teriali per una didattica,” pp. 15–38. On diplomatic paperwork, see Garrett Mat-

tingly, Renaissance Diplomacy (London: Jonathan Cape, 1955), pp. 108–11.

16. Anthony Grafton, “Teacher, Text and Pupil in the Renaissance Class-

Room: A Case Study from a Parisian College,” History of Universities 1 (1981): pp.

37–70; Paul F. Grendler, The Universities of the Italian Renaissance (Baltimore: Johns

Hopkins University Press, 2001), pp. 199–475. For studies of the pan-disciplinary

humanist practices of the commonplace see Ann Blair, “Humanist Methods in Nat-

ural Philosophy: The Commonplace Book,” Journal of the History of Ideas 53 (1992):


pp. 541–51; Francis Goyet, Le sublime du “lieu commun”: L’invention rhétorique dans

l’antiquité et à la Renaissance (Paris: Honoré Champion, 1996); Ann Moss, Printed

Commonplace Books and the Structuring of Renaissance Thought (Oxford: Clarendon

Press, 1996); and Jan Waszink, “Inventio in the Politica: Commonplace-Books and

the Shape of Political Theory,” in Lipsius in Leiden: Studies in the Life and Works of a

Great Humanist, ed. K. Enenkel and C. Heesakkers (Voorthuizen: Florivallis, 1997),

pp. 141–62. On the centrality of Erasmus to humanist learned culture see Lisa Jar-

dine, Erasmus, Man of Letters: The Construction of Charisma in Print (Princeton, NJ:

Princeton University Press, 1983).

17. Alison Brown, Bartolomeo Scala, 1430–1497, Chancellor of Florence: The Hu-

manist as Bureaucrat (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1979).

18. Ianziti, “A Humanist Historian,” p. 500.

19. Ibid., pp. 494–96; Mattingly, Renaissance Diplomacy, p. 248.

20. Ianziti, “A Humanist Historian,” p. 501.

21. Peter Burke, The Renaissance Sense of the Past (New York: St. Martin’s Press,

1969).

22. Nicolai Rubenstein, “The Beginning of Niccolò Machiavelli’s Career in

the Florentine Chancery,” Italian Studies 9 (1956): pp. 72–91.

23. On the connection between historical political prudence and state adminis-

tration see the pioneering work on political antiquarianism by Sharpe, Sir Robert

Cotton, pp. 3–8.

24. Mark Jurdjevik, “Civic Humanism and the Rise of the Medici,” Renaissance

Quarterly 52 (1999): p. 1000.

25. On the innovative business practices as well as the pan-European web of the

Medici bank see in general Raymond de Roover, The Rise and Decline of the Medici

Bank, 1397–1494 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1963); and de Roover,

Business, Banking, and Economic Thought in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe, ed.

Julius Kirshner (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974), pp. 260–74.

26. On the pan-European web of merchant banking in the sixteenth century

see Richard Ehrenberg, Capital and Finance in the Age of the Renaissance: A Study of

the Fuggers and Their Connections, trans. H. M. Lucas (Fair‹eld, NJ: Augustus M. Kel-

ley, 1985).

27. Ibid., chap. 3.

28. On early modern merchant handbooks, both manuscript and printed, see

Jochen Hoock and Pierre Jeannin, eds., Ars Mercatoria: Handbücher und Traktate für

den Gebrauch des Kaufmanns, 1470–1820 (Paderborn: Schöningh, 1991). Also see de

Roover, Medici Bank, pp. 39–119. On merchant culture see Daniel Roche and

Franco Angiolini, eds., Culture et formation négociantes dans l’Europe moderne (Paris:

Éditions EHESS, 1995).

29. On double-entry bookkeeping see Lucas Pacioli’s treatise as well as other

technical works in John B. Geijsbeek, Ancient Double-Entry Bookkeeping (Denver:

J. B. Geijsbeek, 1914). I will discuss this topic in more detail in chapter 4.

30. Anthony Molho, “The State and Public Finance: A Hypothesis Based on

the History of Late Medieval Florence,” Journal of Modern History 67 suppl. (1995):

p. 112.

31. See Victor von Klarwill, ed., The Fugger News-Letters, trans. L. S. R. Byrne,


2 vols. (New York: G. P. Putnam and Sons, 1926). On the remarkable humanist

Fugger library and its network see Paul Lehmann, Eine Geschichte der alten Fuggerbib-

liotheken (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1956). Johannes Kleinpaul, Die Fuggerzeitungen

1568–1605 (Walluf bei Wiesbaden: M. Sändig, 1972). For an outline of the giant

Fugger network, see Ehrenberg, Capital and Finance; Mark A. Meadow, “Merchants

and Marvels: Hans Jacob Fugger and the Origins of the Wunderkammer,” in Mer-

chants and Marvels: Commerce, Science, and Art in Early Modern Europe ed. Pamela H.

Smith and Paula Findlen (New York: Routledge, 2002), 182–200. Also see the light

but useful compilation, George T. Matthews, ed., News and Rumor in Renaissance

Europe: The Fugger Newsletters (New York: Capricorn Books, 1959).

32. On the Fugger knowledge and information network and commerce, see

Hermann Kellenbenz, Die Fugger in Spanien und Portugal bis 1560: Ein Großun-

ternehmen des 16. Jahrhunderts (Munich: Ernst Vögel, 1990).

33. Philip II also maintained royal archives in Barcelona as well as in Rome. See

Parker, Grand Strategy, pp. 21–66; Burke, Social History of Knowledge, p. 119. For a

very brief study of the organization and cultural practices within the Spanish royal

library see Fernando Bouza Álvarez, “Leer en palacio. De aula gigantium a museo de

reyes sabios,” in El libro antiguo español, ed. María Luisa López-Vidriero and Pedro

M. Cátedra (Salamanca: Ediciones Universidad de Salamanca, 1996), pp. 29–42; on

Simancas, its origins, and its organization see José Luis Rodríguez de Diego and

Francisco Javier Alvarez Pinedo, Los Archivos de Simancas (Madrid: Lunwerg Edi-

tores, 1993); and Rodríguez de Diego, ed., Instrucción para el gobierno del archivo de

Simancas (año 1588) (Madrid: Dirección General de Bellas Artes y Archivos, 1989),

and “La formación del Archivo de Simancas en el siglo xvi. Función y orden in-

terno,” in López Vidriero and Cátedra, pp. 519–57. Also see Fernando Bouza Ál-

varez, El escribano a la biblioteca: La civilizacíon escrita europea en la alta Edad Moderna

(siglos XV–XVII) (Madrid: Síntesis, 1992), pp. 71–93; Richard Kagan, “Arcana Im-

perii: Mapas, Sabiduría, y Poder a la corte de Felipe IV,” in El atlas del Rey Planeta,

ed. Fernando Marías and Felipe Pereda (Madrid: Editorial Nerea, 2002), pp. 49–70.

In spite of Juan de Ovando’s theories, Philip’s approach to information handling was

more reactive than proactive. I am grateful to Ted Rabb for this point. See Juan de

Ovando, Ordenanzas para la formacion del libro de las descripciones de Indias (1573). See

Stafford Poole, Juan de Ovando: Governing the Spanish Empire in the Reign of Phillip II

(Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2004). On information and industry in

Spain see David C. Goodman, Power and Penury: Government, Technology, and Science

in Philip II’s Spain (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), chap. 4.

34. Philip II also maintained royal archives in Barcelona as well as in Rome

(Parker, Grand Strategy, p. 66).

35. Ibid., p. 21.

36. J. H. Elliott, “A Europe of Composite Monarchies,” Past and Present 137

(1992): p. 60.

37. Ibid., p. 50.

38. Goodman, Power and Penury, chap. 4.

39. Kagan, “Arcana Imperii,” p. 29.

40. Ibid.

41. Ibid., p. 41.


42. Sebastián Sánchez Madrid, Arqueología y Humanismo: Ambrosio de Morales

(Córdoba: Universidad de Córdoba, 2002); Aubrey F. G. Bell, Benito Arias Montano

(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1922); and B. Rekers, Benito Arias Montano,

1527–1598 (London: Warburg Institute, 1972), pp. 1–12.

43. Peter Burke, “Early Modern Venice as a Center of Information and Com-

munication,” in Venice Reconsidered: The History and Civilization of an Italian City

State, 1297–1797, ed. John Martin and Dennis Romano (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins

University Press, 2000), pp. 389–419.

44. Filippo de Vivo, Information and Communication in Early Modern Venice: Re-

thinking Early Modern Politics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007). On the

Venetian archives and their uses see Armand Baschet, Les Archives de Venise: Histoire

de la Chancellerie secrète (Paris: Henri Plon, 1870).

45. Donald E. Queller, “The Development of Ambassadorial Relazioni,” in

Renaissance Venice, ed. John R. Hale (London: Faber, 1974), pp. 174–96. The great

printed collection of relazioni is found in Luigi Firpo, ed., Relazioni Ambasciatori

Veneti (Turin: Fondazione L. Firpo, 1975).

46. Filippo de Vivo, “Le armi dell’ambasciatore: Voci e manoscritti a Parigi du-

rante l’Interdetto di Venezia,” in I luoghi dell’imaginario barocco, ed. Lucia Strappini

(Naples: Liguori Editore, 1999), pp. 189–201; and “La publication comme enjeu

polémique: Venise au début du XVIIe siècle,” in De la publication, ed. Christian

Jouhaud and Alain Viala (Paris: Fayard, 2002), pp. 161–75.

47. Venice also mixed administrative information and mapping in its archives.

See Camillo Tonino and Piero Lucchi, Navigare e descrivere. Isolari e portulari del

Museo Correr di Venezia XV–XVIII secolo (Venice: Marsilio, 1997).

48. William J. Bouwsma, Venice and the Defense of Republican Liberty: Renaissance

Values in the Age of the Counter Reformation (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of

California Press, 1968), chaps. 6–10; Paolo Prodi, The Papal Prince: One Body and

Two Souls; The Papal Monarchy in Early Modern Europe, trans. Susan Haskins (Cam-

bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), p. 172.

49. On the church as the origin of the administrative information state see

Clanchy, From Memory to Written Record, chap. 2. Peter Burke places the church at

the center of a history of the modern information state: Social History of Knowledge,

pp. 120–23. Also see his earlier “Sacred Rulers, Royal Priests: Rituals of the Early

Modern Popes,” in Historical Anthropology of Early Modern Italy (Cambridge: Cam-

bridge University Press, 1987), pp. 168–82; Jean Delumeau, “Rome: Le progress de

la centralization dans l’État ponti‹cal au XVIe siècle,” Revue Historique 226 (1961):

pp. 399–410; Wolfgang Reinhard, Papst‹nanz une Nepotismus unter Paul V.

(1605–1621): Studien und Quellen zur Struktur und zu quantitativen Aspekten des päp-

stlichen Herrschaftssystems (Stuttgart: A. Hiersemann, 1974); Peter Partner, The Pope’s

Men: The Papal Civil Service in the Renaissance (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), pp.

40–46. Also see Prodi, The Papal Prince, pp. 1–16.

50. Sharpe, Sir Robert Cotton, pp. 7–9.

51. Grafton, The Footnote: A Curious History (Cambridge: Harvard University

Press, 1997), p. 160. Also see Gregory B. Lyon, “Baudouin, Flacius, and the Plan for

the Magdeburg Centuries,” Journal of the History of Ideas 64 (2003): pp. 253–72.


52. On the uses of humanist philology and history in defense of Anglican rights

see Sharpe, Sir Robert Cotton.

53. Anthony Grafton and Megan Williams, Christianity and the Transformation of

the Book: Origen, Eusebius, and the Library of Caesaria (Cambridge: Harvard Univer-

sity Press, 2006), pp. 1–7.

54. On history and antiquarianism as political weapons, see Anthony Grafton,

What Was History? The Art of History in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 2007).

55. Baschet, Les Archives de Venise, pp. 178–81. On Paul V’s government see

Birgit Emich’s ‹nely documented Bürokratie und Nepotismus unter Paul V.

(1605–1621): Studien zur Frühneuzeitlichen Mikropolitik in Rom (Stuttgart: Anton Hi-

ersemann, 2001); the original source on the Archivio Segreto is Gaetano Marini,

“Memorie istoriche degli archivi della S. Sede,” in Monumenta Vaticana, ed. Hugo

Laemmer (Freiburg: Herder, 1861), pp. 433–53; for a basic history see M. Gachard,

Les Archives du Vatican (Brussels: C. Muquardt, 1874); for the ‹rst catalog of the

Archivio Segreto and the ‹nest primary source bibliography on its conception see

Franceso Gasparolo, “Constituzione dell’Archivio Vaticano e suo primo indice

sotto il ponti‹cato di Paolo V. Manoscritto inedito di Michele Lonigo,” Studi e Doc-

umenti di Storia e Diritto 8 (1887): pp. 3–64; also see Louis Guérard, Petite Introduction

aux Inventaires des Archives du Vatican (Rome: Libreria Spithöver, 1901); for a ‹ne

catalog of catalogs see Karl August Fink, Das vatikansche Archiv. Einführung in de

Bestände und ihre erforschung (Rome: W. Regenberg, 1951); for a light but informa-

tive overview of information, libraries, and the papacy see Maria Luisa Ambrosini,

The Secret Archives of the Vatican (Boston: Little, Brown, 1969). For the most recent

overview on the foundations and holdings of the Archivio Segreto see Terzo Na-

talini, Sergio Pagano, and Aldo Martini, eds., Archivio Segreto Vaticano (Florence:

Nardini Editore, 1991); Ludwig, Freiherr von Pastor, History of the Popes, trans.

Dom Ernest Graf, 40 vols. (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1952), vol. 27, pp.

129–53; on Jesuit ideology and information see Harro Höp›, Jesuit Political Thought:

The Society of Jesus and the State c. 1540–1630 (Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press, 2004), pp. 23–52. On the learned information bank of the papacy see An-

thony Grafton, ed., Rome Reborn: The Vatican Library and Renaissance Culture (Wash-

ington, DC: Library of Congress, 1993). On Urban VIII’s government see Pastor,

History of the Popes, vols. 28–29; Judith Hook, “Urban VIII: The Paradox of a Spir-

itual Monarchy,” in The Courts of Europe: Politics, Patronage and Royalty 1400–1800,

ed. A. G. Dickens (London: Thames and Hudson, 1977); and Laurie Nussdorfer,

Civic Politics in the Rome of Urban VIII (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,

1992). On the Barbarini library, papacy, and relations with the Dupuys and the Re-

public of Letters, see the detailed and important work by Jérôme Delatour,

“Abeilles thuaniennes et barberines: Les relations des savants français avec les Bar-

berini sous le ponti‹cat d’Urbain VIII,” in I Barberini e la cultura europea del Seicento

(Rome: De Luca Editor, 2007), pp. 155–72.

56. Peter Burke has studied the church in the context of a history of the mod-

ern information state. See “Rome as a Centre of Information and Communica-

tion,” in From Rome to Eternity, ed. Pamela Jones and Thomas Worcester (Leiden:


Brill, 2002), pp. 253–69, and The Social History of Knowledge, pp. 120–23. Also see his

earlier “Sacred Rulers, Royal Priests: Rituals of the Early Modern Popes,” in his

Historical Anthropology of Early Modern Italy (Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press, 1987).

57. Pastor, History of the Popes, vol. 27, pp. 129–53; on Jesuit ideology and in-

formation see Höp›, Jesuit Political Thought, pp. 23–52.

58. Grafton, Rome Reborn.

59. On Urban VIII’s government see Pastor, History of the Popes, vols. 28–29;

Hook, “Urban VIII”; and Nussdorfer.

60. Burke, “Rome as Centre.”

61. The notable case of Balthasar Gracián, author of L’Homme de cour (1647),

shows the casuistical methods of how Catholic princes could rule effectively. See

Robert Bireley, SJ, The Counter Reformation Prince: Anti-Machiavellism or Catholic

Statecraft in Early Modern Europe (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press,

1980).

62. Francois de Dainville, L’éducation des Jesuites XVI–XVIIIe siècles (Paris: Les

Éditions de Minuit, 1978); Grafton, “Teacher, Text and Pupil”; Anthony Grafton

and Lisa Jardine, “Studied for Action: How Gabriel Harvey Read His Livy,” Past

and Present 129 (1991): pp. 30–78; Ann Blair, “Humanist Methods,” and “Reading

Strategies for Coping with Information Overload ca. 1550–1700,” Journal of the His-

tory of Ideas 64 (2003): pp. 11–28. On the general concept of the commonplace see

Moss, Printed Commonplace Books, p. 7; Goyet, Le sublime; Terence Cave, The Cor-

nucopian Text: Problems of Writing in the French Renaissance (Oxford: Clarendon Press,

1977); Jean Céard, “Les mots et les choses: Le commentaire à la Renaissance,” in

L’Europe de la Renaissance: Cultures et civilizations, ed. Jean-Claude Margolin and

Marie-Madelaine Martinet (Paris: J. Touzot, 1988), pp. 25–36; Nancy Streuver, The

Language of History in the Renaissance: Rhetoric and Historical Consciousness in Florentine

Humanism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1970), pp. 82–143; and Paul

Grendler, Schooling in Renaissance Italy: Literacy and Learning, 1300–1600 (Baltimore:

Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989).

63. Blair, “Information Overload,” p. 17.

64. Ibid., p. 20.

65. On early seventeenth-century Rome as an information bank and on Jesuit

knowledge, see Delatour, “Abeilles thuaniennes et barberines.” Also see Anthony

Grafton, “The Ancient City Restored: Archeology, Ecclesiastical History, and

Egyptology,” in Anthony Grafton, with Nancy Siraisi and April Shelford, New

Worlds, Ancient Texts: The Power of Tradition and the Shock of Discovery (Cambridge:

Harvard University Press, 1992), pp. 1–10, 87–124; Ingrid D. Rowland, The Culture

of the High Renaissance: Ancients and Moderns in Sixteenth-Century Rome (Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 1998); Paula Findlen, “Scienti‹c Spectacle in Baroque

Rome: Athanasius Kircher and the Roman College Museum,” in Jesuit Science and

the Republic of Letters, ed. Mordechai Feingold (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2003), pp.

224–84; Daniel Stolzenberg, “Egyptian Oedipus: Antiquarianism, Oriental Studies,

and Occult Philosophy in the Work of Athanasius Kircher,” Ph.D. diss., Stanford

University, 2003, chap. 2; and for more early context see Charles L. Stinger, The Re-

naissance in Rome, 3rd ed. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998), pp.


282–91. On the closed, Jesuit nature of Kircher’s learning see Malcolm, “Private and

Public Knowledge,” p. 299. On Jesuit travel and church information culture see

Steven J. Harris, “Mapping Jesuit Science: The Role of Travel in the Geography of

Knowledge,” and Dominique Deslandres, “Exemplo aeque ut verbo: The French Je-

suits’ Missionary World,” in The Jesuits: Culture, Sciences, and the Arts, 1540–1773, ed.

John W. O’Malley, Gauvin Alexander Bailey, Steven J. Harris, and T. Frank

Kennedy (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999), pp. 212–40, and 258–73.

66. Fernand Braudel, Civilisation materielle, économie et capitalisme, XV–XVIIIe

siècle, 3 vols. (Paris: Armand Colin, 1979), vol. 2, p. 80; Woodruff D. Smith, “The

Function of Commercial Centers in the Modernization of European Capitalism:

Amsterdam as an Information Exchange in the Seventeenth Century,” Journal of

Economic History 154 (1984): p. 986.

67. Michel Morineau, “Or brésilien et gazettes hollandaises,” Revue d’Histoire

Moderne et Contemporaine 25 (1978): pp. 3–30.

68. Braudel, Civilisation, vol. 2, pp. 75–80.

69. Smith, “Function of Commercial Centers,” p. 992.

70. Peter Burke, Venice and Amsterdam: A Study of Seventeenth-Century Elites

(Cambridge: Polity Press, 1994), p. 66.

71. On Holland’s federated form of government, without a true information

center, see Jonathan Israel, The Dutch Republic: Its Rise, Greatness, and Fall, 1477–1806

(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), p. 725. Also see Burke, Social History of Knowledge,

pp. 157–68.

72. Geoffrey Parker, Guide to the Archives of the Spanish Institutions in or concerned

with the Netherlands, 1556–1706 (Brussels: Association des Archivistes et Biblio-

thèquaires, 1971).

73. Smith, “Function of Commercial Centers,” pp. 985–96.

74. Ibid.

75. Evans, Rudolf II, chap. 4.

76. Ibid., pp. 123–30.

77. Walter Goldinger, Geschichte des österreichischen Archiwesens (Vienna: Druck

und Verlag Fernand Berger, 1957).

78. The founding work on the history of state building and antiquarianism is

J. G. A. Pocock, The Ancient Constitution and the Feudal Law (Cambridge: Cam-

bridge University Press, 1957). On this topic see Miller, Peiresc’s Europe, chap. 3.

79. Ambrosio de Morales, Viage de Ambrosio de Morales por orden del Rey D. Phe-

lipe II. Para reconocer Las Reliquias de Santos, Sepulcros Reales, y Libros manuscritos de las

Cathedrales y Monasterios (Madrid: Ediciones Guillermo Blázquez, 1985).

80. England and Holland were also less centralized in terms of state information.

On state information in England before the Restoration see Elukin, “Keeping Se-

crets,” p. 126. Still the ‹nest source on the topic is Fraser, Secretaries of State, p. 10.

Also see Steve Pincus, “From Holy Cause to Economic Interest: The Study of Pop-

ulation and the Invention of the State,” in A Nation Transformed: England after the

Restoration, ed. Alan Houstein and Steve Pincus (Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press, 2001), pp. 272–98. On Holland’s federated form of government, without a

true information center, see Israel, The Dutch Republic, p. 725. Also see Burke, Social

History of Knowledge, pp. 157–58.


81. Mattingly, Renaissance Diplomacy, p. 66; Burke, Social History of Knowledge, p.

123. During the period of the Civil War, the Parliament sent out its own ambas-

sadors. See James Westfall Thompson and Saul K. Padover, Secret Diplomacy: Espi-

onage and Cryptology, 1500–1815 (New York: Frederick K. Ungar, 1963), p. 93.

82. Elukin, “Keeping Secrets,” pp. 124–25.

83. See Maurice F. Bond, “The Formation of the Archives of Parliament

1497–1691,” pp. 118–29, and Thomas G. Barnes, “The Archives and Archival

Problems of the Elizabethan and Early Stuart Star Chamber,” pp. 130–49, in Prisca

Monumenta: Studies in Archival and Administrative History Presented to Dr. A. E. J. Hol-

loender (London: University of London Press, 1973). On Sandys see T. K. Rabb, Ja-

cobean Gentleman: Sir Edwin Sandys, 1561–1629 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University

Press, 1998).


85. On the political role of historians in seventeenth-century Britain see Philp

Styles, “Politics and Historical Research in the Early Seventeenth Century,” in En-

glish Historical Scholarship in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, ed. Levy Fox (Ox-

ford: Dugdale Society and Oxford University Press, 1956), pp. 49–72.

86. Miller, Peiresc’s Europe, pp. 77–81.

87. One exception to the rule is the Gallican archbishop of Toulouse, Pierre de

Marca, who will be discussed in further detail. William F. Church, Constitutional

Thought in Sixteenth Century France (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1941);

Franklin Ford, Robe and Sword: The Regrouping of the French Aristocracy after Louis XIV

(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1962). On Gallicanism see Jotham Parsons,

The Church in the Republic: Gallicanism and Political Ideology in Renaissance France

(Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2004); and Donald Kelley,

“Historia Integra: François Baudouin and His Conception of History,” Journal of the

History of Ideas 25 (1964): pp. 35–57, “Jean Du Tillet, Archivist and Antiquary,” Jour-

nal of Modern History 38 (1966): pp. 337–54, and “Fides historiae: Charles Dumoulin

and the Gallican View of History,” Traditio 22 (1966): pp. 347–402; and J. H. M.

Salmon, “Clovis and Constantine: The Uses of History in Sixteenth-Century Gal-

licanism,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 41 (1990): pp. 584–665.

88. For the most detailed study of the mechanics of the Republic of Letters and

its service to the state and Gallican causes under the Dupuy brothers see Delatour,

“Le Cabinet des frères Dupuy.”


90. Michel de Waele, Les relations entre le parlement de Paris et Henri IV (Paris:

Publisud, 2002), pp. 191–248; Sylvie Daubresse, Le parlement de Paris, ou la voix de la

raison 1559–1589 (Geneva: Droz, 2005), pp. 21–24.

91. John Hurt, Louis XIV and the Parlements: The Assertion of Royal Authority

(London: Palgrave, 2002).

92. Balayé, La Bibliothèque Nationale, pp. 54–55.

93. David Buisseret, Sully and the Growth of Centralized Government in France,

1598–1610 (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1968), p. 93.

94. Anon., “Mémoires de l’establissement des Secrétaires d’Estat et des Clercs,

Notaires et Secrétaires du Roy et Secrétaires des Finances qui faisoient le fonction

des Secrétaires d’Estat, avant l’establissement desdicts secrétaires d’Estat en titre


d’of‹ce, et leur reproduction au nombre de quatre faitte par le roy Henry 2 en l’an-

née 1547. Avec la suitte des Secrétaires d’Estat selon la datte de leurs provisions et

receptions, depuis ladicte année 1547 jusques à present 1647,” BNF MS Cinq-Cents

Colbert 136, fols. 347 ss. and MS Fr. 18236, fols. 87 ss. I am using a transcription

made by Patricia M. Ranum and edited by Orest Ranum in 2006, found on their

website: http://www.ranumspanat.com/secretaries_intro.htm. See Ranum’s de-

tailed introduction and bibliography. Also see Adolphe Chéruel, Histoire de l’admin-

istration monarchique, 2 vols. (Geneva: Slatkine-Megariotis Reprints, 1974), vol. 2, p.

116.

95. On the evolution of French secretaries of state see Chéruel, Histoire de l’ad-

ministration monarchique, vol. 1, p. 147. Also see Chéruel’s De l’administration de Louis

XIV (Geneva: Slatkine-Megariotis Reprints, 1974), pp. 122–23. For an overview of

histories of the French administration see Donald Kelley, Foundations of Modern His-

torical Scholarship (New York: Columbia University Press, 1970), p. 212. One major

original source on institutional history is Vincent de la Loupe, Premier et second livre

des dignitez, magistrats, & of‹ces du royaume de France (Paris: Guillaume Le Noir, 1556).

96. “Mémoires de l’establissement des Secrétaires d’Estat & des clercs, notaires

et Secrétaires du roy,” BNF MS Cinq-Cents Colbert 136, fols. 347 ss., fol. 349r,

fols. 483r–485v.

97. On the secretaries of state see Orest Ranum, Richelieu and the Councillors of

Louis XIII: A Study of the Secretaries of State and Superintendents of Finance in the Min-

istry of Richelieu 1635–1642 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963), pp. 45–99. On state pa-

perwork in the sixteenth century and the role of the secrétaires see Hélène Michaud,

La Grande Chancellerie et les écritures royales au XVIe siècle (Paris: Presses Universitaires

de France, 1967), pp. 127–63. On the role of the secretaries see Nicolas Schapira,

“Occuper l’of‹ce. Les secrétaires du roi comme secrétaires au XVIIe siècle,” Revue

d’Histoire moderne et contemporaine 51, no. 1 (2004): pp. 36–61; and “Les secrétaires

particuliers sous l’Ancien Régime: Les usages d’une dépendance,” in Cahiers du

Centre de Recherche Historique, October 2007, pp. 111–25.

98. Ranum, Richelieu, p. 96.

99. Ibid., fols. 375–77.

100. On the beginnings of state bureaucracy in France see Ranum, Richelieu;

also see Robert Descimon, Jean-Frédéric Schaub, and Bernard Vincent, eds., Figures

de l’administrateur: Institutions, réseaux, pouvoirs en Espagne, en France, et au Portugal,

XVIe–XIXe siècle (Paris: EHESS, 1997); and Erik Thomson, “Commerce, Law, and

Erudite Culture: The Mechanics of Thédore Godefroy’s Service to Cardinal Riche-

lieu,” Journal of the History of Ideas 3 (2007): pp. 407–27.

101. Daubresse, Le parlement de Paris, pp. 65, 127–31.

102. Du Tillet was the ‹rst to catalog the royal charters. Elizabeth A. R.

Brown, “Jean Du Tillet et les archives de France,” Histoire et Archives 2 (1997): pp.

29–63; Jean Du Tillet, Sieur de la Bussière, Recueil des roys de France, leurs couronne et

maison, 2 vols. (Paris: Jean Houzé, 1607), vol. 1, pp. 1–2 of dedication. Also see Du

Tillet’s Pour la majorité du roi treschrestien contre les escrits des rebelles (Paris: G. Morel,

1560). On Du Tillet see Kelley, “Jean Du Tillet,” p. 348.

103. On legal scholarship and politics also see Donald Kelley, “Legal Human-

ism and the Sense of History,” Studies in the Renaissance 13 (1966): pp. 184–99. On


Gallicanism see “Historia Integra,” p. 41; “Guillaume Budé and the First Historical

School of Law,” American Historical Review 72 (1967): pp. 807–34; “The Rise of Le-

gal History in the Renaissance,” History and Theory 9 (1970): pp. 185–92; and ‹nally

the Foundations of Modern Historical Scholarship. On the role of legal scholars in the

Royal Library, see Simone Balayé, “La naissance de la Bibliothèque du Roi,

1490–1664,” in Jolly, Histoire des bibliothèques françaises, vol. 2, pp. 78–79; and Jérôme

Delatour and Thierry Sarmant, “La charge de la bibliothèque du roi aux XVIIe et

XVIIIe siècles,” Bibliothèque de l’École des Chartes 2 (1994): pp. 465–75. On the his-

tory of the Parlement of Paris as the archival body of the monarchy, see Daubresse,

Le parlement de Paris, pp. 21–24.

104. Donald R. Kelley, “History as a Calling: The Case of La Popelinière,” in

Renaissance Studies in Honor of Hans Baron, ed. Anthony Molho and John Tedeschi

(Florence: G. C. Sansoni, 1971), p. 781; Jean Bodin, Les six livres de la République,

ed. Gérard Mairet (Paris: Livres de Poche, 1993), book 3, chap. 4, pp. 280–83; book

6, chap. 2.

105. On Peiresc’s network, see in general Peter N. Miller’s authoritative

Peiresc’s Europe. Also see René Pintard, Le libertinage erudite dans la première moitié du

XVIIe siècle (Geneva: Slatkine Reprints, 1983), pp. 88–99; Marc Fumaroli, “Nico-

las-Claude Fabri de Peiresc: Prince de la République des Lettres,” in IVe Centenaire

de la naissance de Gassendi. Conference organisée par l’Association Pro-Peyresq dans la mai-

son d’Erasme à Anderlecht le mercredi 3 juin 1992 (Brussels, 1993), pp. 22–26; Henri-

Jean Martin, Livre, pouvoirs et société à Paris au XVIIe siècle, 2 vols. (Geneva: Droz,

1969), vol. 2, pp. 924–25.

106. Bodin, Les six livres, book 3, chap. 4, pp. 280–83; book 6, chap. 2.

107. Jérôme Delatour, “Abeilles thuaniennes et barberines,” p. 171: “À ce

niveau hiérarchique supplémentaire s’ajoutait en France une tendance à la transmis-

sion héréditaire des charges et à la vénalité des of‹ces. Transmise de Jacques-Au-

guste de Thou à son ‹ls en 1617, la charge de grand maître tendait à devenir hérédi-

taire; vendu par Nicolas Rigault aux frères Dupuy en 1645, l’of‹ce de garde tendait

à devenir vénal. Dans ces conditions, le roi perdait la plus grande part de son con-

trôle sur la Bibliothèque. Pendant toute la période de leur administration, les de

Thou et leurs clients, les Rigault et les Dupuy, purent agir sur la Bibliothèque à leur

guise, conformément à la parrhêsia.”

108. On de Thou’s library and career in the Republic of Letters and politics see

Delatour, “Abeilles thuaniennes et barberines,” in general; Ingrid A. R. de Smet,

Thuanus: The Making of Jacques-Auguste de Thou, 1553–1617 (Geneva: Droz, 2006);

Samuel Kinser, The Works of Jacques-Auguste de Thou (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff,

1966); Grafton, The Footnote, chap. 5; Soll, Publishing “The Prince,” pp. 41–43; and

the important work by Antoine Coron, “ ‘Ut prosint aliis’: Jacques-Auguste de

Thou et sa bibliothèque,” in Jolly, Histoire des bibliothèques françaises, vol. 2, pp.

101–26.

109. Miller, Peiresc’s Europe, pp. 68–70; Harcourt Brown, Scienti‹c Organizations

in Seventeenth-Century France, 1620–1680 (New York: Russell and Russell, 1934), pp.

1–16; Also see Delatour, “Le Cabinet des frères Dupuy,” pp. 288–94.

110. Delatour, “Le Cabinet des frères Dupuy,” pp. 301–2.

111. Pierre Pithou, Les libertez de l’Église gallicane, 2 vols. (Paris, 1639); Pierre


Dupuy, Traité de la majorité de nos rois et des régences du royaume, avec les preuves tirées

tant du Trésor des chartes du roy que des registres du parlement et autres lieux; ensemble un

traité des prééminences du parlement de Paris, par M. Dupuy (Paris: chez la Vve Du Puis

et Edme Martin, 1655); Théodore Godefroy, Traitez touchant les droits du roy très

chrestien sur plusieurs estats et seigneuries possédées par divers princes voisins et pour prouver

qu’il tient à juste titre plusieurs provinces contestées par les princes estrangers. Recherches pour

monstrer que plusieurs provinces et villes du royaume sont du domaine du roy. Usurpations

faites sur les trois éveschez, Metz, Toul, Verdun, et quelques autres traitez concernant des

matières publiques . . . Par M. Dupuy et T. Godefroy (Paris: A. Courbé, 1655). Gode-

froy also worked as a diplomat and wrote Le cérémonial françois . . . contenant les céré-

monies observées en France (Paris: S. Cramoisy et G. Cramoisy, 1649).

112. Pierre Dupuy’s 1651 Testament, in which he donates his books to the king,

is found in Delisle, Le Cabinet des Manuscrits, vol. 1, p. 263.

113. Pierre Dupuy, Traité de la majorité de nos rois et des regences du royaume avec les

preuves tirées, tant du Tresor des Chartes du Roi, que des Registres du Parlement, & autres

lieux, et un Traité des preéminences du Parlement de Paris, 2 vols. (Amsterdam: Jansons

à Waesberge, 1722), vol. 2, p. 421: “Ce Parlement conserve en soi la dignité Royale,

& si quelqu’un a à chercher la Majesté Royale en quelque lieu, il ne la peut ren-

contrer qu’en cette Compagnie, qui defend la reputation du Roi contre ses enne-

mis, qui les fait punir comme rebelles.” The idea that the Parlement represented the

king is found in numerous texts and ordonnances. See Daubresse, Le parlement de

Paris, p. 46; Jacques Krynen, “Qu’est-ce qu’un Parlement représente le roi?” in Ex-

cerptiones iuris: Studies in Honor of André Gouron, ed. Bernard Durand and Laurent

Mayali (Berkeley: Robbins Collection, 2003), p. 356.

114. Church, Constitutional Thought; Gaston Zeller, “L’administration monar-

chique avant les Intendants, Parlements, et gouverneurs,” Revue Historique 197

(1947): pp. 180–215; Roland Mousnier, “Comment les français du XVIIe siècle

voyaient la constitution,” XVIIe Siècle 29 (1955): pp. 9–36, and also his Institutions of

France under the Absolute Monarchy, 1598–1789, 2 vols. (Chicago: University of

Chicago Press, 1979), vol. 1, chaps. 4 and 6; Monique Cubells, “Le Parlement de

Paris pendant la Fronde,” XVIIe Siècle 35 (1957): pp. 173; Albert N. Hamscher, The

Conseil privé and the Parlements in the Age of Louis XIV: A Study of French Absolutism

(Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1987); and Daubresse, Le parlement

de Paris, p. 65.

115. Etienne Thuau, Raison d’État et pensée politique à l’époque de Richelieu (Paris:

Armand Colin, 1966). For the relationship of the French crown to Tacitism and

reason of state scholarship and propaganda under Henry IV and Richelieu see Jacob

Soll, “Amelot de La Houssaye and the Tacitean Tradition in France,” Translation

and Literature 6 (1997): pp. 186–98; and “Healing the Body Politic,” pp. 1269–72.

116. For an example of the early news pamphlets or relations from the Bureau

d’Adresse, see Théophraste Renaudot. Pièces Historiques contenant les Couriers, Mer-

cures, Relations, et autres semblables Observations curieuses sur l’Estat et gouvernement de

France, comme il est en la présente année, 1649. C’est comme une notice générale pour servir

de fondement à toute l’Histoire du temps (Paris: Sebastien Martin, 1649). On Renaudot

see Howard M. Solomon, Public Welfare, Science, and Propaganda in Seventeenth Cen-

tury France: The Innovations of Théophraste Renaudot (Princeton, NJ: Princeton Uni-


versity Press, 1972); and Kathleen Wellman, Making Science Social: The Conferences of

Théophraste Renaudot,1633–1642 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2003).

117. Orest Ranum, Artisans of Glory: Writers and Historical Thought in Seven-

teenth-Century France (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1980), pp.

149–96; and Nicolas Schapira, Un professionel des letters au XVIIe siècle. Valentin Con-

rart: Une histoire sociale (Seyssel: Editions Champ Vallon, 2003), p. 81.

118. Jouhaud, Les pouvoirs de la literature, pp. 191–217. On Richelieu’s lack of

direct involvement with the actual scholarship of state itself see Jacob Soll, “Empir-

ical History and the Transformation of Political Criticism in France from Bodin to

Bayle,” Journal of the History of Ideas 64 (2003): pp. 308–9.

119. See Delatour, “Abeilles thuaniennes et barberines,” in general.

120. Even more, the crown lost faith in de Thou and the Dupuys when their

friends and family were implicated in the Cinq-Mars conspiracy.

121. Ford, Robe and Sword, pp. 93; A. Lloyd Moote, The Revolt of the Judges: The

Parlement of Paris and the Fronde, 1643–1652 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University

Press, 1971), p. 364.

122. Joël Cornette, La mélancolie du pouvoir: Omer Talon et le procès de la raison d’é-

tat (Paris: Fayard, 1998), p. 344.

chapter 3

1. On Colbert, see Dessert, Colbert, p. 44. On the Colbert family’s slow rise

to power, see Jean-Louis Bourgeon, Les Colbert avant Colbert: Destin d’une famille

marchande (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1973); on the rise of the Le Tel-

lier family see Louis André, Michel Le Tellier et Louvois (Geneva: Slatkine, 1974). For

a modern overview of Colbert across various spectrums see Roland Mousnier, ed.,

Un nouveau Colbert (Paris: SEDES, 1985). For biographies of Colbert, see Inès Mu-

rat, Colbert, trans. Robert Francis Cook and Jeannie Van Asselt (Charlottesville:

University Press of Virginia, 1984), which contains research on family documents

never before seen; and Jean Meyer, Colbert (Paris: Hachette, 1981). Aside from these

standard modern biographies, Pierre Clément’s classic work remains useful, Histoire

de la vie et de l’administration de Colbert. For the ‹nest work on Colbert’s government

see Daniel Dessert and Jean-Louis Journet, “Le lobby Colbert,” Annales 30 (1975):

pp. 1303–29. Also see Colbert 1619–1683, the compilation of documents and refer-

ences in the catalog of the exposition celebrating the tercentenary anniversary of

Colbert’s death. The major studies of Colbert’s industrial and colonial policies ig-

nore his information apparatus. See Stewart L. Mims’ classic Colbert’s West India Pol-

icy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1912); René Mémain, La marine de guerre

sous Louis XIV. Le matériel. Rochefort, arsenal modèle de Colbert (Paris: Hachette, 1937);

Charles Woolsey Cole, Colbert and a Century of French Mercantilism, 2 vols. (New

York: Columbia University Press, 1939), vol. 1, pp. 356–532, and French Mercantil-

ism: 1683–1700 (New York: Octagon, 1971). Philippe Minard examines the question

of information culture, but only later, as Colbert’s heritage in the eighteenth cen-

tury: La fortune du colbertisme: État et industrie dans la France des Lumières (Paris: Fayard,

1998). On the importance of Colbert’s bureaucracy of observers, see Daniel Roche,

La France des Lumières (Paris: Fayard, 1993), pp. 15–37.


2. Douglas Clark Baxter, Servants of the Sword: French Intendants of the Army,

1630–1670 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1976).

3. Dessert, Colbert, p. 43.

4. Grafton, “Teacher, Text and Pupil”; Blair, “Information Overload,” pp.

14–15; Soll, Publishing “The Prince,” pp. 97–99.

5. de Dainville, L’éducation des Jesuites, pp. 315–22.

6. Dessert, Colbert, pp. 44–45.

7. Ibid., p. 45.

8. See Geijsbeek, Ancient Double-Entry Bookkeeping. This topic will be dis-

cussed in detail in chapter 4.

9. Pierre Jeannin, Merchants of the Sixteenth Century, trans. Paul Fittingoff (New

York: Harper and Row, 1972), pp. 91–103; Braudel, Civilisation, vol. 3.

10. On the role of ‹nancial managers and families such as the Particelli in the

new French army see David Parrott, Richelieu’s Army: War, Government, and Society

in France, 1624–1642 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), pp. 370–75.

11. Murat, Colbert, p. 8.

12. Ibid.

13. Colbert to Le Tellier, June 23, 1650, Lettres, vol. 1, p. 14.

14. Ibid., Colbert to Le Tellier, June 12, 1650, p. 12: “Monseigneur, j’ay fait

voir ce matin à Mgr le Cardinal les deux articles en chiffre de vostre mémoire du

jour d’hier. Sur le second, Son Eminence m’ordonne de vous écrire. . . . Pour le

surplus des ordres qu’il vous plaist me donner par vos lettres et mémoires du mesme

jour d’hier, Son Eminence m’a remis à ce soir ou demain matin. Je la presseray au-

tant que je pourray de résoudre le tout, pour vous le faire savoir aussytost.”

15. Ibid., Colbert to Mazarin, February 17, 1651, p. 66: “Monseigneur, j’en-

voye à Vostre Éminence un inventaire de tous les papiers que M. Longuet m’a remis

entre les mains depuis don départ, et luy rends compte en mesme temps de tout ce

que j’ay pu faire jusqu’a présent pour ce qui regarde les affaires dont Vostre Émi-

nence m’a chargé.”

16. Ibid., Colbert to Le Tellier, April 19, 1650, p. 8: “Monseigneur, je crois

n’avoir rien à ajouter ce que je me suis donné l’honneur de vous écrire par mes

précédentes, touchant l’affaire de Brisach, n’ayant rien appris de nouveau depuis ce

temps. Celle-cy sera seulement pour vous donner avis de la capitulation de Belle-

garde, comme vous verrez par la relation cy-jointe, et de ce qui s’est passé de prin-

cipal et en quoy vous pouvez avoir quelque inérest, depuis quelque temps, dans la

chambre de Mgr le Cardinal.”

17. Ibid., Colbert to Le Teller, August 9, 1650, pp. 24–26.

18. Ibid., Colbert to Le Tellier, August 29, 1650, p. 38.

19. These numbers come from the État de la France en 1658, reedited in the Let-

tres, vol. 1, p. cv.

20. Dessert, Colbert, p. 49.

21. Ibid., p. 48.

22. Jean Villain, La fortune de Colbert (Paris: Ministère de l’Économie, 1994), pp.

65–72.

23. Jean Villain, Mazarin, homme d’argent (Paris: Club du Livre d’Histoire,

1956).


24. Gabriel-Jules, comte de Cosnac, Mazarin et Colbert, 2 vols. (Paris: Plon,

1892), vol. 1 in general; Murat, Colbert, pp. 22–25.

25. Dessert, Colbert, p. 52; J. A Bergin, “Cardinal Mazarin and His Bene‹ces,”

French History 1 (1987): pp. 3–26.

26. Colbert to Mazarin, September 31, 1651, Lettres, vol. 1, p. 132.

27. Colbert to Mazarin, September 14, 1652, in Cosnac, Mazarin et Colbert, vol.

1, p. 324: “Je dois travailler l’un de ces jours avec M. Tubeuf à terminer les comptes

qu’il doit rendre à Votre Éminence. Je trouve par le calcul que j’en ai fait sur les mé-

moires que j’ai recueillis, qui sont assez sûrs, que sa dette réduite à quatre cent mille

livres et les affaires d’Auvergne et de Languedoc comptées pour achevées comme il

en demeure en quelque sorte d’accord, la dernière pour deux cent mille livres, il de-

vra de reste à Votre Éminence la somme de cent trente-neuf mille cinq cent quatre-

vingt-trois livres, outre et par-dessus les trente-six mille livres que Votre Éminence

a déjà reçues et une promesse de MM. des gabelles de vingt mille livres que je retir-

erai et qu’il faudra trouver moyen de faire payer promptement; et je la supplie de

croire que je ne peux pas m’être mescompté notablement. (marginal note) Il serait

nécessaire que le Cardinal fît la recherche de tous les papiers et mémoires de M.

Tubeuf; la seule dif‹culté à éclaircir concerne une erreur de calcul de vigt-cinq

mille livres pour le loyer des maisons, erreur qui serait au pro‹t du Cardinal.”

28. It should be remembered that Mazarin and Ann of Austria were secretly

married.

29. Colbert to Mazarin, September 31, 1651, Lettres, vol. 1, pp. 128–240.

30. Ibid., Colbert to Mazarin, December 11, 1651, p. 178: “J’ay les perles entre

les mains, moyennant les conditions que je vous ay écrites. M. Ménardeau ne

vouloit pas d’intérests de son argent, et M. Tubeuf n’a pas voulu terminer l’affaire

qu’il n’en ayt pris au denier dix-huit, ce qui s’est touvé monter à 4,128 livres 17 sols,

et le principal 62,220, revenant le tout à 66,348 livres 17 sols. . . . Il faut donner un

peu de patience. J’ay envoyé un homme exprès en Limousin pour obliger Tabouret

de payer; j’en espère quelque chose, de la manière dont j’ay tourné l’affaire.”

31. Ibid. On Mazarin’s spat with Colbert see Mazarin to Le Tellier, June 5,

1650, and Colbert’s explanation and apology from June 23, p. 14 n. 3. On de La

Vieuville’s “dif‹culties in working with” Colbert, see pp. 130–38.

32. Daniel Dessert, Argent, pouvoir, et société au Grand Siècle (Paris: Fayard, 1984),

p. 294.

33. Ibid., Mazarin to Colbert, July 27, 1654.

34. On the Mazarinades, see Celestin Moreau, Bibliographie des Mazarinades, 3

vols. (Paris: Renouard, 1850–51); Christian Jouhaud, Les Mazarinades: La Fronde des

mots (Paris: Aubier, 1985); Pierre Barbier, La Fronde et des Mazarinades (Paris: Galli-

mard, 1956); Hubert Carrier, Les Mazarinades, 2 vols. (Geneva: Droz, 1989–91);

Roger Chartier, “Pamphlets et gazettes,” in Histoire de l’Édition Française, ed. Roger

Chartier and Henri-Jean Martin, 2 vols. (Paris: Fayard/Promodis, 1989), vol. 1, pp.

501–26.

35. Like Pierre Charron, Naudé discusses passages on Lipsius’s ideas of pru-

dence and dissimulation from the Politica in his Considérations politiques sur les coups

d’Estat (Rome, 1639), pp. 55–59.

36. This de‹nition of reason of state comes from Maurizio Viroli, From Politics


to Reason of State: The Acquisition and Transformation of the Language of Politics,

1250–1600 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), p. 4. On the history of

reason of state see Friedrich Meinecke’s classic, Machiavellism: The Doctrine of Raison

d’État and Its Place in Modern History, trans. D. Scott (London: Routledge and Kegan

Paul, 1957). For a useful overview see Burke, “Tacitism, Scepticism”; and see

Michael Stolleis, “Machiavellismus und Staatsräson: Ein Beitrag zu Conrings Poli-

tischem Denken,” in Hermann Conring (1606–1681): Beiträge zu Leben und Werk, ed.

Michael Stolleis (Berlin: Dunker & Humblot, 1983), p. 208. Most studies of Machi-

avellian political theory do not examine the second half of the seventeenth century.

Etienne Thuau’s important work, Raison d’État et pensée politique à l’époque de Riche-

lieu, stops after the reign of Louis XIII, as does René Pintard. Other relevant con-

textual literary histories such as Jean Jehasse’s La Renaissance de la critique: L’essor de

l’Humanisme érudit de 1560 à 1614 (Saint-Etienne: Publications de l’Université de

Saint-Etienne, 1976); William F. Church’s Richelieu and Reason of State (Princeton,

NJ: Princeton University Press, 1973); and Marc Fumaroli, L’âge de l’éloquence (Paris:

Albin Michel, 1980), also ignore the later part of the seventeenth century. Also see

Anna Maria Battista’s Alle origini del pensiero politico libertino: Montaigne e Charron (Mi-

lan: Giuffrè, 1966). From the Cambridge school of the history of political thought,

Q. R. D. Skinner’s The Foundations of Modern Political Thought, 2 vols. (Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 1978), also stops before the reign of Louis XIV, as does

Viroli’s From Politics to Reason and Richard Tuck’s Philosophy and Government,

1572–1652 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993). For a history of libertine

thought during the reign of Louis XIV see J. S. Spink, French Free-Thought from

Gassendi to Voltaire (London: Athlone Press, 1960). Also, see Lionel Rothkrug, Op-

position to Louis XIV: The Political and Social Origins of the French Enlightenment

(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1965), p. 385.

37. On Naudé’s problematic position as a humanist at the end of a period of tra-

ditional political humanism, as well as on the birth of a new style of royal library, see

Paul Nelles, “The Library as an Instrument of Discovery: Gabriel Naudé and the

Uses of History,” in History and the Disciplines: The Reclassi‹cation of Knowledge in

Early Modern Europe, ed. D. R. Kelley (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester

Press, 1997), pp. 41–57; Jacques Revel, “Entre deux mondes: La bibliothèque de

Gabriel Naudé,” in Le pouvoir des bibliothèques. La mémoire des livres en Occident, ed.

Marc Baratin and Christian Jacob, (Paris: Albin Michel, 1996), pp. 243–50. On

Naudé’s own readings see Estelle Bœuf, La Bibliothèque parisienne de Gabriel Naudé en

1630. Les lectures d’un libertin erudit (Geneva: Droz, 2007).

38. On Naudé’s dilemma, as a master of secrecy engaged in publishing, see in

general Louis Marin’s authoritative study, “Pour une théorie baroque de l’action

politique,” in Gabriel Naudé, Considérations politiques sur les coups d’état, ed.

Frédérique Marin and Marie-Odile Perulli (Paris: Éditions de Paris, 1988), pp. 1–64;

Cavaillé, Dis/simulations, pp. 16–31. Naudé had long complained of popular politi-

cal pamphletry in his early and prescient Le Marfore ou Discours contre les libelles (Paris:

Louys Boulenger, 1620), pp. 1–3: “Puisque contre la nature d’une populace la-

quelle le plus souvent s’abandonne à autant d’opinions que la mer est agitée de di-

verses bourasques et tempestes, chacun conspire maintenant à coucher la médisance

[p. 2] sur le papier des nouveautez, pour l’ampraindre plus facillement ès esprits de


ceux qui allechez par ce miel de curiosité ne recognoissent le venin de ces perni-

cieux effets qu’au préalable ils ne taxent leur peu de iugement et mecognoissent leur

trop grande inconsistence; sans toutefois que personne jusque à presnt se soit ontré

pour faire boulevart et resistance à ce torrent de callomnie, ou qui ait eu la hardiesse,

s’armant de la raison, de s’opposer à ceste multitude de libelles, et à eslever un phare,

lequel conduisant au port de la verité, dissipât les tenebres de l’ignorance, soubs la

faveur desquelles ces escrips medisans croians savoir. . . . [p. 3] Je romperay mon si-

lence, et pour n’estre veu asymbolos & sans dicton parmi ceste multitude d’e-

scrivains, ou comme disoit Diogène: Inter tot operarios cessator, courant au plus

prompt remède qui est la plume, ‹delle messagère de nos conceptions, ie prepareray

un remede cordial & antidote pour résister au souf›e de ces basilics, lesquels s’ac-

commodant à nos passions comme le polype et cameleon font aux couleurs, ou les

feus folets au mouvant de nostre corps, nous conduisent en ‹n dans des abismes de

folles opinions et maximes eronees.” Also see Robert Damien, Bibliothèque et état:

Naissance d’une raison politique dans la France du XVIIe siècle (Paris: Presses Universi-

taires de France, 1995), p. 308.

39. Naudé to Mazarin, July 15, 1651, in Considérations politiques sur la Fronde. La

correspondance entre Gabriel Naudé et le Cardinal Mazarin, ed. Kathryn Willis Wolfe

and Phillip J. Wolfe (Paris: Papers on French Seventeenth Century Literature,

1991), pp. 38–40: “le silence si obstiné des ministres qui se laissaoient accabler, et l’e-

stat avec eux, soubs mesdisance et soubz la calomnie sans se justi‹er de vive voix ny

par escrit, au lieu que les ennemis du public tiroient de grands avantages et met-

toient tousjours les peuples de leur costé par le dernier de ces moyens là.”

40. Ibid., p. 40: “Mais, Monseigneur, outre ces deux moyens qui requiert les

plumes et l’attention de V. E., il faudroit encore employer celles de tous les amis de

V. E. qui ont le don d’escrire, a‹n de faire paroistre son innocence en diverses

façons, soubz divers jours, par plusieurs moyens pour detromper les peuples le plus

qu’il seroit possible et sinon par tels et tels livres, au moins par tels et tels autres, de-

quoy si vous pouviez venir à bout il n’y auroit plus ny princes ni parlementaires qui

vous pussent prejudicier ny mesme qui osa songer à le faire.”

41. Ibid., Mazarin to Naudé, July 25, 1651, pp. 51–52: “Je suis plus persuadé

que jamais qu’il faudrait escrire et j’imprimeré continuellement pour desabuser les

peuples des fausses impressions que par ce mesme moyen on leur donne. . . .

Cependant je vous conjure de conférer avec Mr. Colbert sans en parler à d’autres et

de faire travailler au lieu où vous estes par des personnes affectionnées et capables, et

ce qu’il faudra pour la despense, ledict sieur Colbert le fournira avec ponctualité et

secret. Je vous ay desja escrit conformement depuis peu. Certains feuillets volants

fouron bon effect parmy le peuple.”

42. Pintard, Le libertinage erudite, p. 156.

43. Naudé to Mazarin, July 15, 1651, in Wolfe and Wolfe, Considérations poli-

tiques, pp. 38–45.

44. Jacques Savary, Le parfait négociant, ou Instruction générale pour ce qui regarde le

commerce, 2 vols. (Paris: Veuve Estienne & Fils, 1749), vol. 1, p. 30.

45. On the ‹nancial and political context of the period see Julian Dent, “An As-

pect of the Crisis of the Seventeenth Century: The Collapse of the Financial Ad-

ministration of the French Monarchy (1653–1661),” Economic History Review 20


(1967): pp. 241–56; and “The Role of Clienteles in the Financial Elite of France un-

der Cardinal Mazarin,” in French Government and Society 1500–1850: Essays in Mem-

ory of Alfred Cobban, ed. J. F. Bosher (London: Athlone Press, 1973), pp. 40–69;

Meyer, Colbert, p. 164; and Richard Bonney, The King’s Debts: Finance and Politics in

France, 1589–1661 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981), pp. 242–71; and his Political

Change in France under Richelieu and Mazarin, 1624–1661 (Oxford: Oxford University

Press, 1978).

46. Colbert to Mazarin, July 28, 1651, in Colbert, Lettres, vol. 1, pp. 109–10: “Je

fourniray à M. Naudé ce qu’il demandera. Mais, sur cela, je suis obligé de vous dire

que tous vos amis et serviteurs ne sont nullement d’avis de faire quoy que ce soit qui

paroisse en public, pour vous, estant absolument nécessaire de laisser agir l’humeur

de nostre nation. Qui est de la dernière inconstance en ses haynes et en ses amitiés,

quand l’objet en est absent, et qu’on ne l’excite point. Les désordres et les guerres

civiles où nous allons tomber indubitablement travaillent pour vous; et pourvu que

l’on change la conduite que l’on a tenue par le passé, on doit avoir quelque es-

pérence. [Je ne sçais pas si ce discours est fondé sur la raison; mais je sçais bien

qu’une très-faschuese expérience, et pour vous, en vostre particulier, et pour tous

vos amis, et pour la Reine encore plus, le justi‹e fort.] Il est vray qu’il faut toujours

préparer les matières, ce qui se peut faire par le moyen de l’estat général de vos

avances, qui est une pièce convaincante; mais il ne faut rien remuer ni publier que

la hayne publique ne soit amortie.”

47. Naudé to Mazarin, August 19, 1663, pp. 62–63; and September 9, 1663, in

Wolfe and Wolfe, Considérations politiques, p. 78.

48. Colbert had long emphasized secrecy in his relationship to Mazarin. See

Colbert to Mazarin, June 9, 1651, in Lettres, vol. 1, pp. 87–88: “Je ne fais aucune

dif‹culté de vous écrire toutes ces choses qui regardent la disposition de vos affaires,

avec une sincérité toute entière, croyant bien que Vostre Éminence me fera la grâce

de tenir la chose très-secrète et que qui que ce soit n’aura connoissance de ce que je

luy écris, soit en cette occasion, soit en tout autre.”

49. Ibid., Colbert to Mazarin, July 28, pp. 111–12. In this letter Colbert ex-

plains that he will not only take over the management of Mazarin’s papers, but he

will keep them in more secrecy than his predecessor, Euzenat. Even more, he de-

mands secrecy in his interactions with the Cardinal himself: “il est bon que vous

sçachiez que celuy qui travailloit avec ledit sieur Naudé à vostre bibliothèque (et

tous vos domestiques disent assez haut qu’il en a détourné une très-grande quantité,

dont il a composé une bibliothèque particulière pour luy, et qu’il pretend cacher ce

vol en avouant qu’il en a détourné quelques-uns des meilleurs, crainte que vostre

palais ne fust pillé) a toujours esté dans des sentimens très-contraires à vos intérests,

et qu’il prétend par son industrie, vous obliger à fonder un revenu pour l’entretien

de vostre bibliothèque. Vous verrez s’il y a de la vraysemblance à cela.” There is no

existing evidence that Naudé stole books from Mazarin, though this letter implies

that Colbert has his own evidence that he will reveal to the cardinal. Colbert often

demands secrecy from his correspondents. See Colbert to Loménie de Brienne, June

8, 1682, in Lettres, vol. 6, p. 170.

50. Jack A. Clarke, Gabriel Naudé, 1600–1653 (Hamden, CN: Archon, 1970), p.

129.


51. On Naudé’s concept of the coup d’état and secrecy see Marin, “Pour une

théorie baroque,” pp. 31–41; and Cavaillé, Dis/simulations, pp. 199–265.

52. “Mémoire de Colbert pour le Cardinal de Mazarin,” March 3, 1654, in

Cosnac, Mazarin et Colbert, vol. 1, p. 450.

53. Ibid., p. 451.

54. Ibid.

55. James E. King was the ‹rst to examine knowledge culture and politics dur-

ing the reign of Louis XIV in his pioneering work, Science and Rationalism in the Gov-

ernment of Louis XIV. Also see Rothkrug, Opposition to Louis XIV, pp. 124–233.

56. For examples of Colbert’s functions as Mazarin’s paperwork master, see his

letters to Mazarin, September 16 and October 7, 1651, Lettres, vol. 1, pp. 128–40. On

Colbert reconstituting and managing Mazarin’s library, see Colbert to Mazarin,

March 3, 1654, pp. 215–17. Though not a true modern police state, the effectiveness

Colbert’s censorship campaign and its long-term rami‹cations for the book trade

should not be underestimated. See Martin, Livre, pouvoirs et société, vol. 2, pp.

667–762; David T. Pottinger, The French Book Trade in the Ancien Régime, 1500–1791

(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1958); Anne Sauvy, Livres saisis à Paris entre

1678–1701 (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1972), pp. 8–9; Joseph Klaits, Printed Pro-

paganda under Louis XIV: Absolute Monarchy and Public Opinion (Princeton, NJ:

Princeton University Press, 1976), pp. 35–55; Bernard Barbiche, “Le régime de l’édi-

tion,” in Histoire de l’édition française, vol. 1, pp. 457–71; Jean-Dominique Mellot,

L’Édition rouennaise et ses marchés vers 1600–vers 1730 (Paris: École des Chartes, 1998),

pp. 388–90. Although Colbert and La Reynie were not completely successful in reg-

ulating the book trade, he and La Reynie aggressively prosecuted pamphleteers,

sometimes sending them to the galleys. See “Lettre de M. Colbert à M. de La

Reynie, 25 avril, 1670,” in Lettres, vol. 6, pp. 28–29: “Sa Majesté désire que vous

continuez de faire une recherché exacte de ces sortes de gens et que vous passiez

punir sévèrement ceux que vous avez fait arrester, estant très-important pour le bien

de l’Estat d’empscher à l’avenir l;a continuation de pareils libelles.” Also see note 5

on the same page. As in many domains, Colbert followed in the footsteps of the

church: Paul F. Grendler, The Roman Inquisition and the Venetian Press, 1540–1605

(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1977) and his collection of essays, Culture

and Censorship in Late Renaissance Italy and France (London: Variorum Reprints, 1981).

57. Colbert to Mazarin, August 30, 1656, in Lettres, vol. 1, pp. 251–52: “plusiers

conseillers recherchent desjà dans leurs registres les exemples et les raisons qui peu-

vent les servir sur cette matière. . . . J’ay cru que peut-estre Vostre Éminence ne

désagréeroit pas que je ‹sse une recherche de tout ce qui a esté fait et dit sur cette

matière, tant par les mesmes ordonnances qu’en ce qui s’est fait dans le parlement de

Paris, à quoy les roys ont toujours ce qu’il a mal fait et s’en sert pour autoriser la suite

de ses entreprises, et n’allègue jamais les remèdes que les roys y ont apportés, qui

souvent demeurent inconnus. Si j’étois assez heureux que cette petite recherche

pust agréer à Vostre Éminence, je m’estimerois bien récompensé du tempts que j’y

employeray, et, en d’autres occasions, je m’efforcerois de rendre le mesme service à

Vostre Éminence.”

58. Ibid., p. 252. Mazarin to Colbert, September 9, 1656: “Je vous conjure de

faire travailler à la recherche que vous me proposez; elle sera fort utile, et je vous


seray obligé. Il est étrange qu’on n’ayt jamais pris le soin de tenir un registre de ce

que les roys ont fait pour réprimer les entreprises des parlemens, a‹n d’avoir de quoy

les confondre quand ils apportent des exemples de ce qu’ils ont fait. Il en est de

mesme du clergé, qui ne met dans les procès-verbaux qui se font chaque assemblée

que ce qui luy plaist.”

59. Ibid., pp. 253–58. Colbert took special interest in obtaining parliamentary

registers for himself. BNF MS Mélanges Colbert 32 contains a number of Colbert’s

documents on this subject, most notably, “Registres secrets du parlement de Mets,

depuis son establissement de 1633 jusques au mois d’aoust 1672 (fol 216),” with a

manuscript note in Colbert’s own hand: “Pour ma bibliothèque.”

60. Colbert to Louis XIV, “Au Roi. Pour le Conseil Royal,” in Lettres, vol. 2,

part 1, p. cci.

61. Ibid., “Discours de Louis XIV à l’ouverture du Conseil des Finances

(Minute autographe de Colbert), 1661, p. cciii.

62. See Mme de Sevigné’s letters to Pomponne between November 17 and

December 10, 1664, in Mme de Sevigné, Lettres, ed. M. Suard (Paris: Firmin Didot,

1846), pp. 44–67.

63. Dessert, Arget, pouvoir et société, p. 300.

64. Ibid., pp. 210–37.

65. Cited in Murat, Colbert, p. 61.

66. Ibid., p. 63.

67. Jean-Baptiste Colbert, “Arrestation de Fouquet; Mésures préparatoires,”

1661, in Lettres, vol. 2, pp. clxxxix–cxcix.

68. Ibid., p. cxc: “Disposer toutes choses pour observer du secret, et que les

premières nouvelles viennent du Roy pour empescher toutes les précautions. Pour

cet effet, envoyer tois ou quatre mousquetaires ‹dèles sur les deux routes pour em-

pescher qu’aucun courrier ordinaire ou extraordinaire de passe sans un ordre du

Roy, contre-signé de M. Le Tellier. Dans le mesme temps de l’arrest, arrester aussy

tous les commis et sceller partout, et empescher visites.”

69. Ibid., p. cxcvi: “Il faut joindre à cet exempt un maistre des requestes pour

sceller les cassettes et les mettre en seureté; comme aussy qu’il fasse recherche exacte

de tous les papiers qui se trouveront dans la maison pour les saisir. Ordre à un autre

exemt pour arrester les commis et prendre garde qu’aucuns papiers ne soyent trans-

portés. S’il y a deux maistres des requestes, on pourra en envoyer un avec les com-

mis pour sceller les papiers. Tous ces ordres donnés et exécutés, il faut travailler à de-

pescher les courriers.”

70. De la Fosse to Seguier, September 23, 1661, in A. Chéruel, ed., Mémoires sur

la vie publique et privée de Fouquet, Surintendant des ‹nances. D’après ses lettres et des pièces

inédites conservées à la Bibliothèque Impériale, 2 vols. (Paris: Charpentier Éditeur, 1862),

vol. 2, pp. 272–74.

71. Ibid.

72. Ibid., p. 277.

73. A table of contents of the Cassette is found at in the annexes of Chéruel (Mé-

moires, vol. 2, pp. 481–576), with a number of transcriptions. The original papers of

the Cassette are now found in the manuscript collection of the BNF, Collection

Baluze 149–50.


74. Chéruel, Mémoires, vol. 2, p. 489.

75. Lettres, vol. 2, part 1, pp. xxvi–xxx.

76. Albert Borowitz, A Gallery of Sinister Perspectives: Ten Crimes and a Scandal

(Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1982), pp. 62–73.

77. To understand the basis of the “Chambre de Justice,” as an extraordinary

body to maintain royal dominance over issues of taxation see Jean Bourgoin, La

chasse aux larrons, ou avant-coureur de l’histoire de la Chambre de Justice. Des livres du bien

public, et autres oeuvres faits pour la recherche des ‹nanciers, & de leurs fauteurs (Paris,

1618), as well as his report to Marie de Medici, Les desirs du peuple françois pour le bien

de l’Estat. Et les moyens pour reprimer les abus, & les Mal-Versations qui se commettent au

maniement des Finances (1625).

78. See M. Gaillard, Vie de M. le Premier Président de Lamoignon, in Vie ou Éloge

Historique de M. de Malesherbes (Paris: Xhrouet, Déterville, Lénormant et Petit,

1805), p. 170.

79. Dessert, Colbert, p. 34. One anonymous poem characterizes Colbert this

way:

“Ministre avare et lâche, esclave malheureux, / Qui gémis sous le faix des af-

faires publiques, / Victime dévoué aux changrins politiques, / Fantôme respecté

sous un titre onérique; / Vois combine des gandeurs le comble est dangereux! /

Contemple de Fouquet les funestes reliques; / Et tandis qu’à sa perte en secret tu

t’appliques, / Crains qu’on ne te prepare un destin plus affreux.” Colbert, Lettres,

vol. 7, anon., p. cxcvi.

80. Gaillard, Vie ou Éloge, p. 170.

81. The papers from Fouquet’s Cassette are preserved, like a trophy, in the

Baluze manuscript collection of the BNF, MS Baluze 149–50. For a detailed cata-

log of the Cassette as well an account of Colbert’s role in the trial, see Chéruel, Mé-

moires, vol. 2, pp. 253–440, 481–86. On the public’s reaction to Colbert’s illegal

procedure see pp. 386–440. Also see Joseph Foucault’s parliamentary notes on the

trial: BNF MS 500 Colbert, 235–45. The parliamentarian and memorialist Olivier

Lefèvre d’Ormesson documents the trial of his friend, Fouquet, and his own reac-

tions and interactions with Colbert and Pussort in volume 2 of his Mémoires, 2 vols.

(Paris: Imprimerie Impériale, 1861). Also see Stewart Saunders, “Politics and

Scholarship in Seventeenth-Century France: The Library of Nicolas Fouquet and

the Collège Royal,” Journal of Library History 20 (1985): pp. 13–19; and Dessert,

Colbert, p. 34.

82. In 1673, he had Carcavy copy seventy-three large register books of docu-

ments for his own library. Delisle, Le Cabinet des Manuscrits, vol. 1, p. 440.

83. Colbert, Lettres, vol. 6, p. 15: “Moyens de parvenir a remettre le parlement

dans l’estat où il doit estre naturellement, et luy oster pour toujours les maximes sur

lesquelles cette Compagnie entrepris de troubler l’Estat, en voulant prendre part à

l’administration d’iceluy.”

84. Ibid.: “Faire une déclaration pour leur interdire à jamais la connoissance des

matières d’Estat.”

85. Ibid., pp. 3–4. In Colbert’s “Mémoire” to Louis, October 22, 1664, he rec-

ommends a strategy to initiate long-term legal reforms.

86. David Parker, “Sovereignty, Absolutism, and the Function of the Law in


Seventeenth Century France,” Past and Present 122 (1989): pp. 36–74. On the con-

nection between scholarship, antiquarianism, and the functioning of the French an-

cient constitution, see Miller, Peiresc’s Europe, pp. 92–95.

87. See Marguerite Boulet-Sautel, “Colbert et la legislation,” in Mousnier, Un

nouveau Colbert, pp. 119–32.

88. Hamscher, Conseil privé, p. 158.

89. BNF MS Fr. 7216, fol. 240r: “Proces Verbal de l’Ordonnance de 1667.” On

Lamoignon’s horror in reaction to Colbert’s plan see Colbert, Lettres, “Plan de la

Chambre de Justice et des principales affaires qui s’y traitent,” vol. 7, p. 213. On

Colbert’s attempt to exclude Lamoignon from the legal reforms see Lefèvre

d’Ormesson, Mémoires, vol. 2, p. 27; also see the document in Colbert, Lettres, part

1, vol. 2, p. 56. At Lamoignon’s request, Louis XIV allows Lamoignon into the se-

cret Colbert meetings: “M. Colbert emploie actuellement M. Pussort à ce travail;

voyez M. Colbert et concertez vous ensemble.” Gaillard, Vie ou Éloge, pp. 191–92.

For Colbert’s personal papers on the procedural reform, see BNF MS Mélanges

Colbert 33, “Recueil de mémoires formé par Colbert sur la Réforme de la Procé-

dure (1665–1679).”

chapter 4

1. By the time of the War of Spanish Succession (1702–14), the de‹cit would

run 371 percent. On Colbert’s tax collection see Bonney, Political Change, 424–7;

and on royal expenditures see Bonney, The King’s Debts, p. 325, table 11. Also see

Richard Bonney, “The Secret Expenses of Richelieu and Mazarin, 1624–1661,”

English Historical Review 91 (1976): p. 834.

2. On Colbert and the early period of Louis XIV’s reign, see Dessert, Colbert,

pp. 1–20.

3. Peter Burke, The Fabrication of Louis XIV (New Haven: Yale University

Press, 1992), pp. 49–59.


5. Ibid., p. 85.

6. Ibid., p. 70.

7. Unpublished document cited in Murat, Colbert, p. 78.

8. Louis XIV, Mémoires for Instruction, p. 64.

9. Ibid., p. 65.

10. See Paul Sonnino’s introduction to the Instructions, p. 5.

11. Christian Bec, Les marchands écrivains: Affaires et humanisme à Florence

1375–1434 (Paris: Mouton, 1967), p. 51.

12. Armand du Plessis, Cardinal Richelieu, Testament Politique, ed. Françoise

Hildesheimer (Paris: Société de l’Histoire de France), p. 253.

13. Gerhard Oestreich, Neostoicism and the Early Modern State, ed. Brigitta

Oestreich and H. G. Koenigsberger, trans. David McLintock (Cambridge: Cam-

bridge University Press, 1982), pp. 2–9.

14. Baltasar Gracián, L’Homme de cour, trans. and ed. Abraham-Nicolas Amelot

de La Houssaye (Paris: Veuve Martin and Boudot, 1684). The ‹nal chaper is enti-

tled “En‹n, être saint.” Also see Bireley, The Counter-Reformation Prince.


15. Soll, “Healing the Body Politic.”

16. Buisseret, Sully, pp. 74–86.

17. Cited by Ranum, Richelieu, p. 136: “aucune cognoissance des ‹nances

[mais] il s’en rapportoit à ceux ausquels le Roy en avoit donné la direction.” Also

see Richard Bonney, “Louis XIII, Richelieu and the Royal Finances,” in Richelieu

and His Age, ed. Joseph Bergin and Laurence Brockliss (Oxford: Clarendon Press,

1992), pp. 99–133; Bonney, Political Change, p. 8.

18. On the relationship of scholarly, philological humanism to technical, artisan

culture, see in general Grafton, Leon Battista Alberti.

19. On Stevin see Simon Stevin, Principal Works, ed. Ernst Crone, E. J. Dijk-

terhuis, R. J. Forbes, M. G. J. Minnaert, and A. Pannekoek, 5 vols. (Amsterdam:

C. V. Smets and Zeitlinger, 1966). See vol. 5 on engineering.

20. Ibid., vol. 1, pp. 3–6.

21. Peter Burke, The Fortunes of the Courtier (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1995), p.

29.

22. A transcript of Stevin’s journal and discussion with Prince Maurice is found

in Geijsbeek, Ancient Double-Entry Bookkeeping, pp. 15–16.

23. Ibid., p. 15.

24. De Roover, Medici Bank, pp. 37–38.

25. Cited in Geijsbeek, Ancient Double-Entry Bookkeeping, p. 89.

26. Ibid.

27. Ibid., p. 39.

28. Ibid., p. 41.

29. Ibid., p. 43.

30. Ibid., p. 78.

31. Ibid., p. 77.

32. For more examples of discursive record-keeping tools, see p. 45.

33. Ibid., p. 9.

34. The notebook in question is a personal, manuscript journal, or agenda

found in the Rare Books Collection of the University of Pennsylvania, MS Codex

207: Robert Williams, “Notes Concerning Trade 1632–1654.” Special thanks to

Peter Stallybrass who helped me decipher this list.

35. On the rise of information culture in the sphere of merchant, church, and

state culture, see Burke, Social History of Knowledge in general. On naval information

see Mémain, La marine de guerre, pp. 502–13.

36. Buisseret, Sully, p. 85.

37. Bonney, The King’s Debts, pp. 304–5. In his appendix 2, pp. 297–325, Bon-

ney provides an extraordinary reproduction of account balances for the seventeenth

century.

38. Antoine de Montchrétien, Traicté de l’oeconomie politique (Rouen: J. Osmont,

1615), pp. 11–51.

39. Ibid., pp. 323–24.

40. Ibid., p. 18.

41. Ibid., p. 358.

42. On Louis XIII’s education see Soll, “Healing the Body Politic,” p. 1279.

43. Ibid.


44. Cole, Colbert, vol. 1, p. 138. Franklin Charles Palm, The Economic Policies of

Richelieu (1922; reprint, New York: Johnson Reprint, 1970). On Montchrétien’s

in›uence on Richelieu and his milieu see Thomson, “Commerce, Law, and Eru-

dite Culture,” p. 421.

45. On Louis XIV’s education see John B. Wolf, Louis XIV (New York: Nor-

ton, 1968), pp. 56–82.

46. Ranum, Artisans of Glory, pp. 265–67.

47. Pintard, Le libertinage erudite, pp. 595–612.

48. Jonathan Israel, Radical Enlightenment: Philosophy and the Making of Modern

Modernity 1650–1750 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), p. 15.

49. Cited in Wolf, Louis XIV, p. 58. Also see BNF MS Fr. 4926.

50. Robert Lacour-Gayet, L’éducation politique de Louis XIV (Paris: Hachette,

1898).

51. Wolf, Louis XIV, p. 70.

52. Ibid.

53. The following passage from the Instructions (p. 30) is typical of the pruden-

tial and reason-of-state topos of the king as an all-seeing eye. For a passage that has

strong echoes of the introduction to Lipsius’s Politica, see p. 24: “Disorder reigned

everywhere. . . . People of quality, accustomed to continual bargaining with a min-

ister who did not mind it, and who had sometimes found it necessary, were always

inventing an imaginary right to whatever was to their fancy; no governor of a

stronghold who was not dif‹cult to govern; no request that was not mingled with

some reproach over the past, or with some veiled threat of future dissatisfaction.

Graces exacted and torn rather than awaited, and extorted in consequence of each

other, no longer really obligated anyone, merely serving to offend those to whom

they were refused.”

54. Ibid., pp. 152–55.


56. Louis XIV, Instructions to the Dauphin, pp. 35–36.

57. See Paul Sonnino’s introduction to the Instructions to the Dauphin, p. 5.

58. Colbert, “Mémoire pour l’instruction du Dauphin,” manuscript in Col-

bert’s hand, 1665, in Jean-Baptiste Colbert, Lettres, vol. 2, part 1, p. ccvx.

59. Ibid., p. ccxvii.

60. Louis XIV, Instructions to the Dauphin, p. 29.

61. Also see Richard Bonney, “Vindication of the Fronde? The Cost of Louis

XIV’s Versailles Building Programme,” French History 21 (2006): p. 12.

62. See Jacob Soll, “The Antiquary and the Information State: Colbert’s

Archives, Secret Histories, and the Affair of the Régale 1663–1682,” French Historical

Studies 31 (2008): pp. 3–28.

63. Colbert, “Mémoire au Roi,” July 22, 1666, in Lettres, vol. 2, part 1, pp.

ccxvii–ccxxvi.

64. Colbert, “Mémoire sur le règlement des taxes pour la décharge de la Cham-

bre de Justice,” 1661–2, in Lettres, vol. 2, part 1, sec. 2, pp. 1–3.

65. Colbert, “Mémoires sur les affaires de ‹nances de France pour servir à l’his-

toire,” 1663, in Lettres, vol. 2, part 1, sec. 2, pp. 17–68.

66. See Dessert’s analysis of this text in Colbert, pp. 17–37.


67. “Mémoires sur les affaires,” p. 19.

68. Ibid., p. 19.

69. Ibid., p. 20.

70. Ibid., p. 23.

71. Ibid., p. 51.

72. Ibid., pp. 30–32.

73. Ibid., p. 40.

74. Ibid., pp. 44–45.

75. Louis to Anne of Austria, 1661, cited by Murat, Colbert, p. 69.

76. For this correspondence see Lettres, vol. 2, part 1, pp. ccxxvi–cclvii.

77. Ibid., Louis XIV, marginal notes on letter, May 24, 1670, Colbert to Louis

XIV, May 22, 1670, p. ccxxviii.

78. Ibid., Colbert to Louis XIV, May 24, 1673, with Louis’s undated marginal

responses in parentheses, p. ccxxxii.

79. Ibid., Colbert to Louis XIV, August 1, 1673; Louis’s response in the mar-

gins, August 3, p. ccxxxiv.

80. For Colbert’s administrative folios, see the Catalogue des Manuscrits de la Col-

lection des Mélanges Colbert, pp. 1–100.

81. On the genealogy of the personal agenda and notebook, see Peter Stally-

brass, Roger Chartier, J. Franklin Mowrey, and Heather Wolfe, “Hamlet’s Tables

and the Technologies of Writing in Renaissance England,” Shakespeare Quarterly 55

(2004): pp. 379–419.

82. BNF MS Fr. 6763–92. The ‹gures from the notebook for the year 1680 are

reproduced in the Lettres, vol. 2, part 2, pp. 771–82.

83. See BNF MS Mélanges Colbert 311–17.

84. BNF MS Fr. 7753, “Receuil de Finance de Colbert.”

85. “Abrégé des ‹nances 1665,” BNF MS Fr. 6771, fols. 4v–7r.

86. “Abrégé des ‹nances 1671,” BNF MS Fr. 6777, ‹nal “table.”

87. Lettres, vol. 2, part 2, pp. 771–83, contains all the ‹gures from the agenda of

1680, yet with no mention of their remarkable decoration.

chapter 5

1. For Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie’s excellent synthesis of Colbert’s contribu-

tion to French government, see The Ancien Regime: A History of France, 1610–1774,

trans. Mark Greengrass (New York: Wiley-Blackwell, 1998), pp. 126–79.

2. Daniel Nordman and Jacques Revel, “La formation de l’espace français,” in

Histoire de La France, ed. André Burguière and Jacques Revel, 5 vols. (Paris: Seuil,

1989), vol. 1, p. 108.

3. Edmond Esmonin, Études sur la France des XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles (Paris:

Presses Universitaires de France, 1964), p. 25.

4. Louis Trénard, “Les enquêtes statistiques au XVIIe siècle origine de L’En-

quête des Intendants,” in Les Mémoires des Intendants pour l’Instruction du Duc de Bour-

gogne (1698), ed. Louis Trénard (Paris: Bibliothèque Nationale, 1975), p. 12.

5. Esmonin, Études sur la France, p. 33. On the intendants during the Fronde,

see Bonney, Political Change, chaps. 2 and 3.


6. Esmonin, Études sur la France, p. 35.

7. Bonney, Political Change, pp. 424–32.

8. Dessert and Journet, “Le lobby Colbert”; Dessert, Argent, pouvoir et société,

pp. 322–35; and Dessert, Colbert, pp. 85–92.

9. See Bonney, Political Change, pp. 72–73. Among the most powerful inten-

dants, Colbert placed his brother, Charles Croissy de Colbert, as intendant of Brit-

tany; his cousin Colbert du Terron became intendant of Rochefort and Toulon,

major naval ports; the ubiquitous Joseph Foucault became intendant at Montauban;

Bezons became intendant at Toulouse; Pellot, intendant at Bordeaux and Mon-

tauban; Bouchu, intendant at Dijon; Arnoul, intendant at the massive naval galley

operation; and d’Herbigny, intendant at Moulins.

10. Michel Nassiet, La France du second XVIIe siècle 1661–1715 (Paris: Belin,

1997), p. 51.

11. Hamscher, Conseil privé, p. 158; BNF MS Fr. 7216, fol. 240r: “Proces Ver-

bal de l’Ordonnance de 1667.” On Lamoignon’s horror in reaction to Colbert’s

plan see Colbert, Lettres, “Plan de la Chambre de Justice et des principales affaires

qui s’y traitent,” vol. 7, p. 213. On Colbert’s attempt to exclude Lamoignon from

the legal reforms see Lefèvre d’Ormesson, Mémoires, vol. 2, p. 27; also see the doc-

ument in Colbert, Lettres, vol. 2, part 2, p. 56. At Lamoignon’s request, Louis XIV

allowed Lamoignon into the secret Colbert meetings: “M. Colbert emploie

actuellement M. Pussort à ce travail; voyez M. Colbert et concertez vous ensem-

ble.” Gaillard, Vie du premier président, pp. 191–92. For Colbert’s personal papers on

the procedural reform, see BNF MS Mélanges Colbert 33, “Recueil de mémoires

formé par Colbert sur la Réforme de la Procédure (1665–1679).”

12. Colbert, “Instruction pour les maîtres des requêtes, commissaires départis

dans les provinces,” in Lettres, vol. 4, pp. 27–43. On the transformation of inten-

dants from tax collectors to state observers see Esmonin, Études sur la France, p. 25;

and Trénard, “Les enquêtes statistiques,” p. 12. It was rumored by Jacques Savary

that Colbert had learned of the enquête formularies in the papers he con‹scated

from Fouquet. See Rothkrug, Opposition to Louis XIV, pp. 160–61 n. 45. This seems

unlikely in the face of Colbert’s early knowledge of state paperwork and correspon-

dence with maitres des requêtes.

13. Esmonin, Études sur la France, p. 28. On the relationship of the royal map-

maker with the intendants see Josef W. Konvitz, Cartography in France, 1660–1848:

Science, Engineering and Statecraft (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985),

p. 2.

14. For the most extensive collection of orders to the commissaries and inten-

dants see BNF MS Mélanges de Clairambault, 426–33. F. Baudry reproduces many

of them in his compilation, “Dépêches de Colbert à Foucault et aux Intendans du

1er janvier 1679 au 19 août 1683,” in Nicolas-Joseph Foucault, Mémoires, ed. F.

Baudry (Paris: Imprimerie Impériale, 1862), pp. 409–501.

15. “Instruction pour les maîtres des requêtes, commissaires départis dans les

provinces,” p. 31.

16. See Brian Ogilvie, The Science of Describing: Natural History in the Renaissance

(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006).

17. See Stagl, A History of Curiosity, in general.


18. Antoine Furetière’s Dictionary of 1690 de‹nes relation as observations made

by a voyager; or as a testimony made by a public ‹gure, or in a court of law.

19. On the proliferation of literary knowledge genres such as the relation, see

Shapiro, A Culture of Fact, pp. 63–85. For reproductions of Jesuit relations see Alan

Greer, ed., The Jesuit Relations: Natives and Missionaries in Seventeenth-Century North

America (London: Bedford / St. Martin’s Press, 2000).

20. Svetlana Alpers, The Art of Describing: Dutch Art in the Seventeenth Century

(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984).

21. Shapiro, A Culture of Fact, p. 70.

22. Ibid., p. 79.

23. Ibid., p. 58.

24. Bodin, Les six livres, book 6, chaps. 2 and 3.

25. Ibid., book 5, chap. 1.

26. Shapiro, A Culture of Fact, p. 65.

27. De Dainville, L’éducation des Jesuites, pp. 442–62.

28. Evans, Rudolf II, pp. 125–31; Stagl, A History of Curiosity, pp. 112–47; An-

thony Grafton, “Believe It or Not?” New York Review of Books, November 5, 1998,

pp. 14–18; Also see Meadow, “Merchants and Marvels.”

29. Even the French proto-journalist Théophraste Renaudot’s state-sponsored

Bureau d’Adresse never amounted to a truly systematized state information of‹ce,

though it had some of those qualities.

30. Colbert, “Instruction au sieur de Pène, Ingénieur géographe, pour faire les

cartes des côtes de la Normandie,” February 5, 1678, in Lettres, vol. 3, part 1, ad-

dition, p. 78. “Après avoir fait des observations sur toute la rivière de Seine

jusqu’au Havre, Sa Majesté veut qu’il continue les mesmes reconnoissances jusqu’à

Tréport, son intention estant d’avoir, depuis la Hogue jusqu’à Tréport, des cartes

fort exactes de toutes sinuosités de la coste toutes les entrées des rivières, avec les

remarques exactes et prises sur les lieux sans s’en ‹er au rapport de personne, de

toutes les rades, hauteurs et bassesses de la mer, dunes, falaises, anses, et entrées dans

les terres, ensemble de tous les lieux où les ennemis pourroient aborder s’ils es-

toient assez forts pour faire des descentes; avec des desseins particuliers de chacun

endroit où ils peuvent les faire, et des plans et devis de tous les ouvrages qui pour-

roient estre faits.”

31. Esmonin, Études sur la France, p. 71. Anette Smedley-Weill, Les intendants de

Louis XIV (Paris: Fayard, 1995), pp. 133–54. Also see Jacob, Scienti‹c Culture, pp.

47–50.

32. Colbert to the chevalier de Pène, p. 78.

33. When Louis XIV’s grandson became Philip V of Spain, he replaced the cor-

regidores with the administration of French-style, centralizing intendentes on July 4,

1718. See Fabrice Abbad and Didier Ozanam, Les intendants espagnols du XVIIIe siè-

cle (Madrid: Ediciones Casa de Velázquez, 1992); and François-Xavier Emmanuelli,

Un mythe de l’absolutisme bourbonien: L’Intendance, du milieu du XVIIeme siecle a la ‹n

du XVIIIeme siecle: France, Espagne, Amerique (Aix-en-Provence: Publications de

l’Université de Provence, 1981).

34. Colbert’s correspondence (1663–70) with Claude Bouchu and other royal

representatives in Burgundy is reproduced in William Beik, Louis XIV and Abso-


lutism: A Brief Study with Documents (Boston: Bedford / St. Martins, 2000), pp.

130–46.

35. For the most detailed analysis of the enquêtes, as well as the reproduction of

major examples albeit dating from after Colbert’s death, see Arthur de Boislisle’s in-

troduction to the Mémoires des Intendants sur l’État des généralités (Paris: Imprimérie

Nationale, 1881).

36. Colbert to Courtin, August 18, 1662, in Lettres, vol. 2, part 2, p. 413. Col-

bert asks Courtin to verify Dutch merchandise in Sweden.

37. Mémain, La marine de guerre, pp. 271–93.

38. Ibid., pp. 77–260.

39. Ibid., p. 258.

40. Ibid., p. 291.

41. Colbert to Terron, Matharel and Seuil, in Lettres, vol. 3, part 1, p. 373. I

take this translation from King, Science and Rationalism, p. 111.

42. Colbert, “Mémoire sur le règlement à faire pour la police générale des arse-

naux de marine,” October 1670, in Lettres, vol. 3, part 1, pp. 287–90.

43. Cited by Mémain, La marine de guerre, p. 502: “Se faire rendre un compte

exacte par les escrivains préposés aux corderies, fonderies et forges, à la réception des

bois, masts et autres marchandises et munitions, et à la garde des agrès sur nos vais-

seaux qui seront dans le port, pour sçavoir en tout temps l’estat de nos magasins, et

estre toujours prest à nous informer.”

44. Colbert, “Mémoire sur le règlement à faire pour la police générale des arse-

naux de marine,” p. 287: “Le garde-magasin doit avoir le soin de tous les magasins

généraux et particuliers, et avoir des écrivains sous luy qui soyent chargés envers luy

de tous les magasins particuliers de chacun vaisseau, ensemble des magasins à

poudre, de la corderie, estuve, fonderie, voilerie, fustailles et généralement de tout

ce qu’il ne pourra pas faire par luy-mesme. Et les écrivains qui luy seront nécessaires

pour toutes ces fonctions doivent tenir des livres qui ayant rapport à son grand livre

de raison en partie double.”

45. Mémain, La marine de guerre, pp. 506–7.

46. Such responsibility led to cases of corruption among the “writers.” Ibid., p.

511.

47. Ibid., p. 509.

48. Ibid., p. 289: “Le commissaire doit faire ses revues fréquentes et les envoyer

de tous les endroits d’où il pourra avoir communication avec la terrre.” Mémain has

a chapter on the “écrivains entretenus,” La marine de guerre, pp. 502–13.

49. De Terron to Colbert, April 25, 1669, in Mémain, La marine de guerre, p.

512: “L’establissement des escrivains contribue fort à tenir les capitaines en règle, et

pour assurer l’essort des vos intentions, il faut s’il vous plaist que dans toutes les oc-

casions qui se présenteront vous fassiés connoistre aux capitaines que cet establisse-

ment d’escrivains est agréable au Roy et que sa Majesté veut qu’ils fassent leur fonc-

tion dans toute son estenduë, avec toute liberté.”

50. On Colbert’s massive production of naval rules and regulations see Mé-

main, La marine de guerre, pp. 263–82.

51. Ibid., pp. 287 and 1005. Colbert’s naval dispatches are found in the series B2

of the Archives de la Marine.


52. See the section “Cartes” in Colbert’s “Instruction,” p. 28.

53. “Mémoire pour M. Bellinzani, Inspecteur Général des Manufactures,” Oc-

tober 8, 1670, in Lettres, vol. 2, part 2, pp. 560–63.

54. Ibid., pp. 560–61.

55. On Ballinzani and his mission, see Cole, Colbert, vol. 2, pp. 416–17.

56. Ibid., p. 562.

57. Ibid., p 561.

58. Jean Kerhave, François Roudot, and Jean Tanguy, eds., La Bretagne en 1665

d’après les rapport de Colbert de Croissy (Brest: Centre de Recherche Bretonne et Cel-

tique, 1978). For a sense of Croissy’s remarkable library and archive see “Inventaire

des biens de feu Monseigneur de Croissy, Ministre et Secrétaire d’Etat du 7 août

1696,” Archives Nationale de France (hereafter AN) Minutier Central, étude

CXLIII, liasse 20. This library shows de Croissy’s technical training and interest in

state administration: 30 percent law and political science, including works by Cujas,

and customs books; 50 percent history, French, foreign, with an oriental bias. Only

10 percent concerned classics, and religion only a small portion of his various other

books.

59. Ibid., p. 23.

60. See BNF MS Mélanges Colbert 6, fols. 38–47.

61. Ibid., pp. 155–56. See Colbert’s memo to the intendants of June 15, 1682.

For one of the more insightful accounts of the information role of the intendants see

King, Science and Rationalism, chap. 4.

62. On Louis’s close reading of the intendant’s correspondence see Colbert to

Bezons, intendant at Toulouse, February 6, 1671, in Lettres, vol. 4, p. 53.

63. On Louis insisting to see reports even before they are sent to Colbert see the

tripartite correspondence between Louis, Colbert, and the colonial lieutenant gov-

ernor of the Isles of America, M. de Bass, in Lettres, vol. 3, part 2, pp. 453 and

590–91.

64. Colbert to de Terron, December 11, 1671, in Lettres, vol. 3, part 1, p. 408.

65. Ibid., Colbert to de Terron December 26, 1671, p. 409.

66. Ibid.

67. Colbert to Foucault, intendant at Montauban, July 14, 1682, in Lettres, vol.

2, part 1, p. 199.

68. Ibid.

69. Colbert to du Moulinet, July 3, 1682, in Lettres, vol. 2, part 1, p. 98: “Vous

devez observer d’écrire en plus gros caractère ou de faire transcrire vos dépesches,

parce que j’ay beaucoup de peine à les lire.”

70. King, Science and Rationalism, pp. 112–13.

71. Colbert to Arnoul ‹ls, June 21, 1676, in Lettres, vol. 3, part 1, addition, p.

18.

72. Ibid., Colbert to Arnoul ‹ls, July 4, 1676, pp. 24–25.

73. Ibid., Colbert to Arnoul ‹ls, September 18, 1676, p. 73.

74. Ibid., Colbert to Arnoul ‹ls, December 28, 1675, p. 574.

75. Ibid., p. 574–75: “Vous voyez bien que, faute de parler clairement par vos

lettres et de dire véritablement l’estat auquel sont les choses, vous estes cause que le

Roy fait une réprimande à un of‹cier principal ne la mérite pas; et, comme je vous


ay desja donné une in‹nité d’avis sur ce sujet, prenez garde que ce soit icy le dernier;

relisez vos dépesches et apprenez à vous expliquer si clairement et si véritablement

que je n’aye pas la peine de rechercher la vérité par la comparaison des autres lettres

avec les vostres.”

76. Colbert to M. Rouillé, December 23, 1672, in Lettres, vol. 4, p. 84.

77. Colbert to M. de Marle, intendant à Riom, September 23, 1672, in Lettres,

vol. 4, pp. 75–76 at 75: “Mais je vous prie, une fois pour toutes, de m’éviter la peine

de vous faire d’aussy grandes lettres pour vous apprendre l’estendue de vostre employ

et ce que vous y devez faire, parce que, assurément, la quantité d’affaires que j’ay ne

convient point avec le peine qu’il faut prendre pour faire d’aussy grandes lettres.”

78. “Notes secrètes sur le personnel de tous les parlemens et cours des comptes

du royaume, envoyées par les Intendans des provinces à Colbert, sur sa demande,

vers la ‹n de l’an 1663,” in Correspondance administrative sous le règne de Louis XIV, ed,

G. B. Depping, 2 vols. (Paris: Imprimérie Nationale, 1851), vol. 1, pp. 33–132.

79. Ibid., pp. 33–34: “LAMOIGNON, soubz l’affectation d’une grande probité

et d’une grande intégrité, cache une grande ambition, conservant pour cet effet une

grande liaison avec tous les dévots de quelque party et caballe que ce soit.”

80. Ibid., p. 34.

81. Ibid., p. 36: “DOUJAT, a de l’extérieur et est de peu de chose au fonds;

foible, timide, dévoué entièrement à la cour, intéressé; M. de Maupeou, son gen-

dre, a grand pouvoir sur luy; Herbinot, huissier de la cour, le gouverne.”

82. Ibid., p. 37.

83. Ibid., Pellot to Colbert, April 25, 1664, pp. 135–36.

84. William Beik, Absolutism and Society in Seventeenth-Century France: State

Power and Provincial Aristocracy in Languedoc (Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press, 1985).

85. Colbert to Charles Colbert de Croissy, August 10, 1663, in Lettres, vol. 4, pp.

16–19. On the limits of the royal tax administration see Richard Bonney, “Le secret

de leurs familles: The ‹scal and social limits of Louis XIV’s dixième,” French History 7

(1993): pp. 383–416; and “Les intendants de Louis XIII et Louis XIV: Agents de la ré-

forme ‹scale?” in L’administration des ‹nances sous l’Ancien Régime (Paris: Comité pour

l’histoire économique et ‹nancière de la France, 1996), pp. 197–217.

86. Ibid., Colbert to de Croissy, September 17, 1663, Lettres, vol. 4, p. 26.

87. Ibid., p. 63 n. 2.

88. On anti‹scal revolts during the reign of Louis XIV see Pierre Clément,

L’Histoire de Colbert et de son administration, 2 vols. (Paris: Guillaumin, 1846). vol. 1,

chap. 11: “Les émeutes en province”; William Beik, Urban Protest in Seventeenth-

Century France: The Culture of Retribution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,

1997), pp. 146–59. For the correspondence with Colbert concerning the uprisings

inspired by the Bordeaux revolts see BNF Clairambault 796.

89. Colbert to Foucault, August 25, 1674, Lettres, vol. 4, p. 109.

90. Colbert to de Creil, intendant at Rouen, December 23, 1672, Lettres, vol.

4, p. 85.

91. The historian Jean Le Laboureur wrote to Colbert in August 1665 to com-

plain about these researches, noting that unrest would stop when honest nobles

were no longer harassed. See Lettres, vol. 6, p. 369.


92. Ibid., p. 23.

93. Ibid., p. 76: “J’ay reçu les lettres que vous m’avez écrites les 12 et 14 de ce

mois. . . . À l’égard des péages, je vous répéteray encore ce que je vous ay dit beau-

coup de fois, que vous avez trop envie de faire des recherches générales dans vos

emplois, et que ces grandes recherches ne tendent qu’à vexer les peuples, les faire

venir du fond des généralités où vous servez vous apporter leurs papiers dans vostre

greffe, et vous charger d’une in‹nité de papiers et de discussions qui ne peuvent ja-

mais convenir au bien du service du roy ni au soulagement des peuples. . . . Je vous

avoueray franchement mesme que je ne puis croire ce que vous dites, que tous les

seigneurs particuliers lèvent des péages dans leurs terres. Ce seroit un trop grand

abus, et une négligence qui ne pourroit estre pardonnée aux of‹ciers des justices

royales, joint qu’il est impossible de croire que la Chambre des grands jours eust

laissé impunie une vexation sur les peuples aussy considérable que celle-là.”

94. Genealogical veri‹cation was a major element of legal code of 1665. See

Lettres, vol. 6, p. 377.

95. Ibid., Colbert to the intendants, April 30, 1666, 6, pp. 22–24.

96. On the justice reforms of noble abuses see Esprit Fléchier, Mémoires sur les

Grands-Jours d’Auvergne, ed. Yves-Marie Bercé (Paris: Mercure de France, 1984).

97. Colbert to the intendants, pp. 22–23: “Un inventaire par abrégé, con-

tenant la qualité de chaque acte et son énoncé, avec la date, la qualité et les noms de

tous ceux qui y sont mentionnés. Cet inventaire se fera par cahiers séparés qui seront

cotés par bailliage, et à la teste d’iceux sera mis: ‘Un tel, d’un tel baillage, est comparu

le tel jour, lequel se dit estre de telle maison et porter telles armes, reconnoistre telles et telles

branches pour estre de sa mesme famille, et a produit les titres suivants. . . .’ Et pour

procéder à l’inventaire des pieces, il faudra commencer par celuy qui jusiti‹e la ‹li-

ation de la partie appelée, et ainsy remonter les degrés jusqu’au plus ancien. Si l’on

n’a pas le loisir de dresser cet inventaire sur-le-champ, on retiendra les titres pour y

travailler avec plus de loisir, et on donnera jour à la partie pour les venir retirer, après

avoir ouÿ la lecture et signé l’inventaire. . . . Il sera bon de faire des copies de tous

ces inventaire rangés par baillages et de les envoyer à . . . signées de M. l’intendant,

pour les faire mettre par ordre et pour en dresser des genealogies où l’on joindra la

connoissance qu’on en a par d’autres actes qui serviront pour en justi‹er de leur

qualité en la forme cy-devant énoncée, et il sera dit en teste de l’inventaire: ‘Un tel

résidant dans une telle ville, comme dessus.’”

98. Ibid., p. 24: “Et de tout cela mis en ordre, on fera des recueils très-

curieux pour la bibliothèque du roi, où l’on verra toutes les noblesses du royaume,

avec leurs armes et genealogies véritables, en y ajoutant les recherches de tous les

curieux.”

99. Ibid., Colbert to the intendants, December 1, 1670, vol. 2, part 1, pp.

77–78.

100. Ibid., Colbert to Rouillé, intendant at Aix, August 17, 1679, p. 113.

chapter 6

1. Jean-Baptiste Colbert, “Mémoire pour mon ‹ls sur ce qu’il doit observer

pendant le voyage qu’il va faire à Rochefort, Saint-Germain, 11 juillet, 1670,” in


Lettres, vol. 3, part 2, p. 2. The original manuscripts of Colbert and Seignelay’s cor-

respondence, as well as Seignelay’s “relations,” are found in the manuscript collec-

tion of the Bibliothèque Nationale, Mélanges Colbert, 84. Unless otherwise stated,

I will refer to the printed versions in Clément.

2. Ibid., p. 3.

3. Ibid., p. 8.

4. Ibid., pp. 18–19, Colbert to Terron, August 29, 1670.

5. This is certainly not the image given by Norbert Elias in his classic The

Court Society, trans. Edmund Jephcott (New York: Pantheon, 1983), in which he

describes courtiers as principally concerned with a struggle over symbolic prestige.

6. For the classic painting of Colbert dressed in a black suit with a white col-

lar see Claude Lefebvre’s 1666 portrait at Versailles. See Marc Nattier the Elder’s

painting, Le marquis de Seignelay, 1673, in the collection at Versailles. Seignelay is

also dressed in gilded Louis quatorzian garb while working at an arsenal in Jean-

Baptiste de La Rose’s painting, Le marquis de Seignelay et le duc de Vivonne général des

galères et amiral de la marine du Levant, visitant la Galère Réale en construction à l’arsenal

de Marseille en 1679, also found at Versailles.

7. Colbert helped train Vauban in his early days. See Michèle Virol, “Les car-

nets de bord d’un grand serviteur du roi: les agendas de Vauban,” Revue d’Histoire

Moderne et Contemporaine 48 (2001): pp. 50–76. On the wider context of Vauban and

the Colbertian knowledgeable state see Virol, Vauban: De la gloire du roi au service de

l’état (Paris: Champ Vallon, 2003), pp. 130–50.

8. Savary, Le parfait négociant, vol. 1, p. 29.

9. Ibid., p. 30. “Dès l’âge de sept à huit ans, dit-il, il faut “apprendre [aux en-

fants] les exercices nécessaires pour cette profession; c’est à dire, à bien écrire, bien

sçavoir l’Arithmétique, à tenir les Livres en partie double & simple.” See pp.

297–99, and vol. 2, p. 73, for descriptions of how to keep books.

10. Ibid., vol. 1, p. 30: “Je voudrauis encore dans les heures où ils ne sont point

employés à ces sortes d’exercices, leur faire lire les Histoires, tant de France, qu’E-

trangères, & les Livres qui traitent des Voyages & du Commerce; parce que ces

sortes de lectures forment merveilleusement le jugement des jeunes gens; & ils y ap-

prennent par théorie, ce qu’ils doivent pratiquer quand ils feront le Commerce dans

les Pays étrangers; car ils apprendront les moeurs & les coutumes des Peuples, avec

lesquels ils auront à traiter.”

11. On early modern merchant handbooks, both manuscript and printed, see

Hoock and Jeannin, Ars Mercatoria.

12. Not listed in any bibliography, a copy of this text is found in the Biblio-

thèque Mazarine, call number A. 1544018e: Positiones mathematicae de mundi system-

ate/Positiones mathematicae ex architectura militari (Paris: Anon., 1668), essentially a

simple set of mathematical, astronomical exercises set in Latin.

13. Laurent Dingli, Colbert, Marquis de Seignelay. Le ‹ls ›amboyant (Paris: Perrin,

1997), p. 24.

14. On the rise of geography in seventeenth-century Jesuit pedagogy, see

Dainville, L’éducation des Jesuites, pp. 25–150, 427–63; and Antonalla Romano, La

Contre-Réforme mathématique: Constitution et diffusion d’une culture mathématique jésuite

à la Renaissance (Rome: École Française de Rome, 1999), chap. 9.


15. On the proliferation of literary knowledge genres, such as the relation, see

Shapiro, A Culture of Fact, pp. 63–85.

16. On ambassadorial practices and spying see Mattingly, Renaissance Diplomacy,

pp. 111–18; and Lucien Bély, Espions et ambassadeurs au temps de Louis XIV (Paris:

Fayard, 1990), pp. 235–88. On the functions and responsibilities of Venetian am-

bassadors see Donald E. Queller, Early Venetian Legislation on Ambassadors (Geneva:

Droz, 1966).

17. “Instruction de Colbert au marquis de Seignelay pour son voyage d’Italie,

January 31, 1671,” in L’Italie en 1671. Relation d’un voyage du marquis de Seignelay, ed.

Pierre Clément (Paris: Didier et Cie., 1867), pp. 96–99:

Il verra principalement la ville, sa situation, sa force, le nombre de ces

peoples, la grandeur de l’État, le nombre et le nom des villes, bourgades et

villages, la quantité des peoples dont le tout est composé; la forme du

gouvernement de l’État, et comme il est aristocratique, il s’informera des

noms et de la qualité des familles nobles qui ont ou qui peuvent avoir part

au gouvernement de la republique, distinguant l’ancienne d’avec la

nouvelle noblesse; de toutes les dignités de la République; leurs différentes

functions; leurs conseils tant généraux que particuliers; celui qui représente

l’État, dans lequel le pouvoir souverain reside et qui résout la paix et la

guerre, qui peut faire des lois, etc: les nombres et noms de tous ceux qui

ont droit d’y entrer; par qui et de quelle façon les propositions en sont

faites; les suffrages recueillis et les resultants pris et pronounces; les conseils

particuliers pour la milice, pour l’amirauté, pour la justice, tant pour la ville

que pour le reste de l’État; les lois et les coutumes sous lesquelles ils vivent;

en quoi consistent les milices destinés pour la garde de la place; idem pour

les forces maritimes.

Visiter tous les ouvrages publics, maritimes et terestres, ensemble les

palais, maisons publiques, et généralement tout ce qui peut être

remarquable en ladite ville et dans tout l’État.

18. Seignelay’s trips to Holland and England were much more of the industrial

sorts, and the reports he wrote for his father are less formal than the relation of the

trip to Italy, and resembled more the work he did in Rochefort.

19. On commonplace books see note 17, chap. 2.

20. There are two different editions of the “Mémoire sur les Ordonnances en gen-

eral de Mr. Colbert.” The ‹rst, BNF MS Fr. 7213, contains only two volumes. The

second, MS Fr. 7497–7500, not mentioned by Pierre Clément, contains four volumes.

21. “Ordonnanes,” vol. 2, fol. 471: “Mémoire de Monseigneur. Faire un Mé-

moire succinct de toutes les formes différentes des letters de chancellerie, leurs

formes et leurs clauses essentielles de leur distinctions duquel mémoire de tous les

différents noms et letters qui s’expédient sous chaque forme. Par exemple. Lettres

patentes. . . . Declarations, commissions, . . . arrests.”

22. Ibid., vol. 3, fol. 175: “Qu’est ce qu’un Comptant: C’est un acquit en Par-

chemin, signé de la main du Roy des Derniers qui luy ont été payee nouvellement

par le Tresorier de l’Epargne et auquel n’est fait aucune mention des Causes.”

23. Colbert to Seignelay, April 17, 1672, Lettres, vol. 3, part 2, p. 80.


24. Ibid., p. 62: “Instruction . . . ma charge,” “Aussytost que j’auray vu toutes

les dépesches, à mesure qu’elles arriveront, je les enverray à mon ‹ls pour les voir,

en faire promptement et exactemen l’extrait, lequel sera mis de sa main sur le dos de

la letter et remis en mesme temps sur ma table; je mettray un mot de ma main sur

chaque article de l’extrait, contenant le réponse qu’il faudra faire aussytost; il faudra

que mon ‹ls fasse les réponses de sa main, que je les voye ensuite et les corrige, et

quand le tout sera dispose, le vendredy nous porterons au Roy toutes les letters,

nous luy en lirons les extraits, et en mesme temps les réponses; si Sa Majesté y or-

donne quelque changement, il sera fait; sinon, les réponses seront mises au net,

signées et envoyées. Et ainsy, en observant cet ordre régulier avec exactitude, sans

s’en départir jamais, il est certain que mon ‹ls se mettra en estat de s’acquérir de l’es-

time dans l’esprit du Roy.”

25. Ibid., p. 80, Colbert to Seignelay, April 17, 1672. Colbert’s tirade goes on

for three pages. For the rest of his life, into Seignelay’s thirties, Colbert continued

to regularly harass his son in his letters.

26. Ibid., Seignelay to Colbert, pp. 71–74:

Je me feray représenter les enregistremens le mardy, après le disner, je les

coteray après les avoir lus, et marqueray à costé les minutes de la main de

mon père.

Surtout, je ne manqueray pas, lorsque j’auray quelque expédition à

faire, de quelque nature qu’elle soit, de chercher dans les registres ce qui

aura esté fait en pareille occasion, et je me donneray le temps de lire et

examiner lesdits registres, a‹n de former mon style sur celuy de mon père.

Je visiteray tous les soirs ma table et mes papiers, et j’expédieray, avant

de me coucher, ce qui pourra l’estre, ou je mettray à part et enverray,

avant de marquer, sur l’agenda que je tiendray exactement sur ma table, les

affaires que je leur auray renvoyées, a‹n de leur en demander compte en

cas qu’ils les différeraient trop longtemps.

Je mettray sur ledit agenda toutes les affaires courantes, et je les rayeray

à mesure que leur expédition soit achevée.

J’employerai le mercredy à travailler aux affaires courantes, que je

n’auray pu achever le mardy, et en cas qu’il y eust quelques affaires

pressées, dont il fallust donner part dans les ports de Brest et de Rochefort,

j’écriray par l’ordinaire qui part ce jour-là.

Je liray toutes les lettres à mesure qu’elles viendront, feray moi-mesme

l’extrait des principales, et enverray les autres au commis qui a le soin des

dépesches. [Colbert writes in the margin: “Il faut lire et faire l’extrait des

principales lettres, et, à l’égard des autres, l’extrait des principaux points.”]

Je prendray le mercredy après le disner pour examiner tous les

portefeuilles, ranger les papiers suivant l’ordre mis à costé par mon père, y

remettre les nouvelles expeditions qui auront esté faites, et les maintenir

toujours dans l’ordre prescrit par mon père.

Je feray le jeudi matin un mémoire des orders à demander à mon père

sur les dépeches de l’ordinaire, a‹n de commencer ensuite à y travailler.

Je travailleray le soir au conseil, feray les extraits des affaires auxquelles


il y aura quelques dif‹cultés, a‹n d’estre en estat d’en render compte le

lendemain matin à mon père.

Je feray en sorte d’achever dans le vendredy toutes les dépesches de

l’ordinaire.

En faisant les principales, que je feray toutes de ma main, je mettray à

costé les points desquels je dois parler dans le corps de la letter, et tascherai

de suivre le style de mon père, a‹n de luy oster, s’il est possible, la peine de

les corriger ou de les refaire mesme tout entières, ainsy qu’il arrive souvent.

Le samedi matin sera employé à examiner et à signer les letters de

l’ordinaire, à expédier le conseil du vendredy et travailler aux affaires

courantes.

Le samedy après le disner, je travailleray sans faute à examiner l’agenda,

à voir sur le register des ‹nances s’il n’y a point de nouveaux fonds qui

ayent esté omis sur le register des orders donnés au trésorier; si je n’ay

point omis, pendant la semaine, d’enregistrer ceux qui ont esté donnés; et

je m’appliqueray à ester si exact dans la tenue dudit agenda, que je n’aye

pas besoin d’avoir recours au trésorier pour sçavoir les fonds qu’il a entre

les mains.

J’enregistreray aussy le samedy toutes les ordonnances sur le register

tenu par le sieur de Breteuil.

Le dimanche matin sera employé à veri‹er la feuille des lieux où sont

les vaisseaux, et à travailler aux affaires qui seront à expédier.

J’auray toujours l’agenda des vaisseaux, des escadres et des of‹ciers dans

ma poche.

Je feray surtout en sorte d’exécuter ponctuellement tout ce qui est

contenu dans le mémoire cy-dessus, en cas qu’il soit approuvé par mon

père, en de faire mesme plus sur cela que je ne luy promets.

27. Ibid., pp. 172–73, Colbert to Seignelay, October 24, 1676:

Vous devez encore prendre garde à bien conserver vos papiers,

particulièrement les importans, que vous devez garder sous vostre clef,

comme tous les traités et les mémoires que j’ay fait faire et que je fais faire

encore tous les jours pour vous, que je trouve à présent roulés dans un

bureau et estant dans la dernière saleté quoyque ce soit la quintescence de

l’esprit des plus habiles gens du royaume;

Vos portefeuilles;

Les Arrests, par cotes et par dates;

Tous les traités, les livres, les instructions et tout ce qui concerne les

fondemens et les maximes des prises, que vous devez sçavoir parfaitement.

Prendre soin que tous vos mémoires et lettres soyent bien cotés.

Qu’il n’y ayt aucun qui s’échappe que vous ne voyiez, que vous

n’examiniez, et que vous ne donniez vos ordres sur ce qu’il contient. . . .

Qu’il ne passe jamais aucun papier par vos mains, ni aucune lettre, sans les

voir, les examiner et donner vostre résolution, et sans demander ce que

vous ne sçaurez pas parfaitement.


28. Ibid., p. 64, “Instructions”: “Il falloit coter les feuillets, diviser ces maxims

par date et par chapitre, et faire seulement un extrait précis et s’appliquer à en exe-

cuter quelque partie ou quelque article.”

chapter 7

1. Boivin, “Mémoire pour l’histoire de la Bibliothèque du Roy,” fol. 491; for

original documents on this purchase see Colbert, Lettres, vol. 7, pp. ccii–cciii; and

Balayé, La Bibliothèque Nationale, pp. 80–81.

2. Colbert had written to Bernini about plans to build a grand royal library,

which never materialized. Balayé, La Bibliothèque Nationale, p. 83.

3. Balayé, “La bibliothèque du Roi,” p. 209.

4. BNF MS Baluze, 362, fols. 60–281. When he was refused access by the

Achille de Harlay III, the procurator of the Royal Archive and a parliamentarian, he

had Carcavy copy seventy-three volumes of documents for his own library. BNF

MS Baluze 100, fol. 8v; Delisle, Le Cabinet des Manuscrits, vol. 1, p. 440; Saunders,

“Public Administration,” p. 289.

5. Boivin, “Mémoire pour l’histoire de la Bibliothèque du Roy,” fol. 491;

Balayé, “La Bibliothèque du Roi,” p. 209. After Colbert’s death, there were public

complaints that he had stolen many materials from the public library, and a pam-

phlet written denouncing Carcavy and Baluze for working against the public inter-

est. See S. Solente, “Nouveaux détails sur la vie et les manuscrits de Pierre de

Carcavy,” Bibliothèque de l’École des Chartes 111 (1953): pp. 136–39. Published

anonymously in 1683, the pamphlet is entitled, “Mémoire concernant la Biblio-

thèque du Roy.” It was met by responses by both Carcavy and Baluze. See Bloch,

“Bibliothèque de Colbert,” p. 175.

6. Old Jérome Bignon had long since stopped working for the library, though

he retained the title of “Maître de la Bibliothèque Royale.” BNF MS Baluze, 297.

Also see Jean Boivin, another of Colbert’s library technicians, whose manuscript

history of the Royal Library is the most revealing source on its inner workings:

“Mémoire pour l’histoire de la Bibliothèque du Roy,” fol. 469. On Colbert de

Luçon’s activities and Gallican interests see BNF MS Baluze 362, fols. 22–31, 349;

MS Baluze 297, fol. 7r.

7. Numerous sketches and inventories are found in the correspondence from

Seignelay [83–84]. [62] “Recueil de pièces sur la Marine de Guerre (1640–1683).

“Journal de pilotage du vaisseau la Force, envoyé dans l’Océan Indien (1668–70).”

[31] “Recueil de relations et mémoirs sur l’Espagne (1606–1666), les Indes Orien-

tales (1628–1669), l’Amerique (1624–1669), les Antilles (1668–1671),” containing

“Propositions pour faire une compagnie en France pour les Indes Occidentales,”

“Discours sur le passage des gallions et des ›otes de la Nouvelle Espagne dans

l’Amérique et sur leur retour en Europe,” “Une tradition anonyme, [double from

the royal collection MS Fr. 19032] G. Gardyner, Description of the New World, or

Islands and continents of America, as they were all in the year 1649 (London,

1651).” [34] “Recueil de documents annotées par Colbert pour un traité de com-

merce avec l’Angleterre et pour le création de la Compagnie des Indes (1667–1674).


Traduction française de la Lex mercatoria de Girard Malynes (1622).” [38–40, 48]

Trade with England and Holland. [53] “Chartes de fondation des Colonies

Anglaises en Amérique et dans les Indes Occidentales, en anglais et en latin

(1620–1670).”

8. On the centralization of natural knowledge and reports see Lettres, vol. 3,

part 2, p. 66. To Seignelay on what the intendants are supposed to do with infor-

mation.

9. [55] “Receuils de motifs d’Architecture et de pièces sur le Cabinet des Mé-

dailles et sur la Navigation ›uviale en France.”

10. [177–343].

11. Henri-François, comte Delaborde, Les Archives royales depuis la mort de saint

Louis jusqu’à Pierre d’Étampes (Nogent-le-Rotrou: Daupeley-Gouverneur, 1908),

and Étude sur la constitution du Trésor des Chartes (Paris: Plon-Nourrit, 1909).

12. On the biblioteca selecta and its evolution, see Jean Viardot, “Livres rares et

pratiques bibliophiliques,” in Roger Chartier and Henri-Jean Martin, Histoire de

l’édition française, 3 vols. (Paris: Fayard, 1984), vol. 2, pp. 583–614; Helmut Zedel-

maier, Bibliotheca Universalis und Biblioteca Selecta: Das Problem der Ordnung das

gelehrten Wissens in der frühen Neuzeit (Cologne: Böhlau Verlag, 1992), pp. 119–21;

and Neil Kenny, “Books in Space and Time: Bibliomania and Early Modern His-

tories of Learning and ‘Literature’ in France,” Modern Language Quarterly 61 (2000):

pp. 253–86.

13. Jean-Marc Chatelain, La bibliothèque de l’honnête homme: Livres, lecture et col-

lections en France à l’Âge classique (Paris: Bibliothèque Nationale de France, 2003).

14. On Blotius and the Imperial Library, se Paola Molino, “Hugo Blotius:

From a Universal Project to the Establishment of the Imperial library,” European

University Institute, June Paper, 2005, pp. 15–19.

15. Ibid., p. 28. Cited and translated by Paola Molino: Hugo Blotius to a friend,

Vienna, August 8, 1575, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, HSS, Cod. Ser. Nov.

363, fols. 27r–28v.

16. Molino, “Hugo Blotius,” p. 41.

17. Erik Thomson, “Axel Oxenstierna and Books,” Sixteenth Century Journal,

38 (2007): pp. 705–29.

18. Francis Bacon, New Atlantis, in Francis Bacon, A Critical Edition of the Major

Works, ed. Brian Vickers (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), p. 471.

19. Ibid.

20. Ibid., pp. 484–89.

21. R. W. Serjeantson, “Natural Knowledge in the New Atlantis,” in Francis

Bacon’s New Atlantis, ed., Bronwen Price (Manchester: Manchester University

Press, 2002), pp. 82–105.

22. Anthony Grafton, “Where Was Salomon’s House? Ecclesiastical History

and the Intellectual Origins of Bacon’s New Atlantis,” in Die europäische Gelehrtenre-

publik im Zeitalter des Konfessionalismus/The European Republic of Letters in the Age of

Confessionalism, ed. Herbert Jaumann (Harrassowitz Verlag/Wolfenbütteler For-

schungen: Wiesbaden, 2001), p. 21.

23. New Atlantis, pp. 467, 471.


24. While there is no concrete evidence that Colbert read the New Atlantis, he

knew who Bacon was.

25. Delisle, Le Cabinet des Manuscrits, vol. 1, pp. 439–40.

26. Pierre Héliot, “Nouveau details sur la vie et les manuscripts de Pierre de

Carcavi,” Bibliothèque de l’École des Chartes 111 (1953): pp. 124–39.

27. Leibniz was in›uenced by his visit to the French loyal library, where he met

with Baluze and Clément. See W. Leibniz, “Suggestions for the Perfection and Ex-

tension of the Far-famed Library at Wolfenbuttel,” in L. M. Newman, Leibniz

(1646–1716) and the German Library Scene (London: Library Association, 1966); A. L.

Clarke, “Leibniz as a Librarian,” The Library 3 (1914): pp. 140–54.

28. For Colbert’s correspondence with Cassini and Charles Perrault, see Lettres,

vol. 5, especially the notes by Perrault about Colbert’s role in its building, p. 515.

Also see Charles Joseph Étienne Wolf, Histoire de l’Obervatoire de Paris de sa fondation

à 1793 (Paris: Gauthier-Villars, 1902), which contains original documents and shows

Colbert’s involvement in the minutiae of founding the observatory; Stroup, A Com-

pany of Scientists, pp. 43–45.

29. Alice Stroup, “Christian Huygens et l’Académie royale des Sciences,” La

Vie des Sciences: Revue de l’Académie des Sciences 4 (1996): pp. 333–41; also see Stroup

on Colbert’s shadow republic of letters: “Nicolas Hartsoeker, savant hollandais as-

socié de l’Académie des Sciences et espion de Louis XIV,” Cahiers d’Histoire des Sci-

ences et Techniques 47 (1999): pp. 201–23.

30. Christian Huygens, “Note de Huygens avec des Observations de Colbert,”

ca. 1670, in Colbert, Lettres, vol. 5, p. 523.

31. Colbert, Lettres, vol. 5, p. lxvi.

32. See Hahn, Anatomy of Scienti‹c Institution; and Hirsch‹eld, Académie Royale

des Sciences, pp. 168–69.

33. On the program of public experiments to be performed at the Royal Gar-

den, see Colbert, Lettres, vol. 5, p. 545, “Déclaration du roi pour la continuation des

leçons au Jardin Royal des plantes,” January 20, 1673; Stroup, A Company of Scien-

tists, pp. 38–39.

34. For Colbert’s correspondence with Bernini and the preliminary plans for

Versailles see Lettres, vol. 5, pp. 452–82.

35. Hillary Ballon, Louis La Vau: Mazarin’s Collège, Colbert’s Revenge (Princeton,

NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999), pp. 128–30.

36. Frances Yates, The French Academies of the Sixteenth Centuries (London: War-

burg Institute, 1947).

37. Denis de Sallo, Le Journal des sçavans (Paris: J. Cusson, 1665), p. 1. On the

founding of the Journal des Savants and its connection to the Petite Académie, see

Hirsch‹eld, Académie Royale des Sciences, pp. 6–7.

38. Eugène Hatin, Histoire politique et littéraire de la presse en France, 2 vols. (Paris:

Poulet-Malassis rt de Broise, 1859), vol. 1, pp. 152–82.

39. On Colbert’s creation of a parallel Republic of Letters, see volume 5 of his

Lettres, which contains his correspondence with cultural ‹gures. On Chapelain’s re-

lationship with Colbert see Soll, Publishing The Prince, pp. 48–50. On Huygens in

France see Stroup, “Christian Huygens.”


40. George Collas, Un poète protecteur des lettres au XVIIe siècle, Jean Chapelain,

1595–1674 (Paris: 1912); Ranum, Artisans of Glory, pp. 188–96.

41. Jean Chapelain, Lettres, ed. Philippe Tamizey de Larroque, 2 vols. (Paris:

Imprimerie Nationale, 1880–83), vol. 2, p. 275.

42. Chapelain to Colbert, November 1662, in Colbert, Lettres, vol. 5, p. 619.

43. Ibid., Colbert to Hevelius, June 20, 1663, pp. 239–41.

44. Étienne Baluze, Histoire des Capitulaires des Rois François sour la première et sec-

onde Race sur l’édition de 1677 (The Hague, 1755), p. 144.

45. Jean Mabillon worked for Colbert as a state medievalist, through his close

relationship with Baluze. See for example BNF MS Baluze 214, fol. 10. Émile Fage,

Étienne Baluze: Sa vie, ses ouvrages, son exil, sa defense (Tulle: Crauffon, 1899), p. 91;

Emmanuel de Broglie, Mabillon et la Société de L’abbaye de Saint-Germain des Près, 2

vols. (Paris: Plon, 1888), vol. 1, pp. 55–57; Barret-Kriegel, Les historiens et la monar-

chie, vol. 1, pp. 52–54.

46. Colbert to Baluze, October 13, 1673, in Lettres, vol. 7, p. 73.

47. The correspondence concerning acquisitions for both libraries is found in

BNF MS Baluze, 364–66, with records kept by Baluze.

48. The classic documents on the origins of scholarly sociability and manuscript

hunting is found in Walter and Goodhart, Two Renaissance Book Hunters.

49. Chapelain to Colbert, February 11, 1667, in Colbert, Lettres, vol. 5, p. 620.

50. Delisle, Le Cabinet des Manuscrits de la Bibliothèque Nationale, vol. 1, pp.

279–85; Balayé, La Bibliothèque Nationale, p. 89.

51. Balayé, La Bibliothèque Nationale, p. 89. On Colbert’s quick and thrifty re-

constitution of the Bibliothèque Mazarine see Colbert to Mazarin, March 3, 1654,

in Lettres, vol. 1, pp. 215–17.

52. Delisle, Le Cabinet des Manuscrits, vol. 1, p. 274. See the “Mémoire des man-

uscripts de le bibliothèque de M. Fouquet, qui se vendent à Paris chez Denys

Thierry, Frédéric Léonard, Jean Dupuis, rue Saint-Jacques, et Calude Barbin, au

Pallais,” Bibliothèque de l’Institut, MS AA 1862.

53. Delisle, Le Cabinet des Manuscrits, vol. 1, pp. 270–74; Balayé, La Bibliothèque

Nationale, p. 87.

54. Delisle, Le Cabinet des Manuscrits, vol. 1, p. 286.

55. Cited by Delisle, Le Cabinet des Manuscrits, vol. 1, p. 215.

56. On the younger de Brienne’s central place in politics during three reigns,

and on the secret royal state “cahiers,” and the registers kept by Parlement see

Henri-Auguste de Loménie de Brienne, Mémoires, 3 vols. (Amsterdam: Jean-

Frédéric Bernard, 1719), vol. 1, pp. 21–25.


58. Ibid., p. 216.

59. Ibid.

60. Balayé, La Bibliothèque Nationale, pp. 100–101.

61. Bloch, “La Colbertine,” p. 403.

62. On the constitution of the royal manuscript collection, see Delisle Le Cabi-

net des Manuscrits, in general. For a general history of the Bibliothèque Nationale see

Balayé, La Bibliothèque Nationale, pp. 71–145. For a history of the state archives, see

the introduction to Boislisle, Mémoires des Intendants, vol. 1, pp. i–lix.


63. On Wotton the book thief, see Molino, “Hugo Blotius,” p. 19.

64. Foucault, Mémoires, pp. cxviii–cxxi; Balayé, La Bibliothèque Nationale, p. 91.

Baluze worked with Foucault on these document hunts, which Colbert closely

oversaw. See Baluze’s 1680 memo to Foucault: “Mémoire sur les livres à retirer de

l’Abbaye de Moissac,” in Colbert, Lettres, vol. 6, pp. 377–78. Henri Omont, “La

Collection Doat à la Bibliothèque nationale, documents sur les recherches de Doat

dans les archives du Sud-Ouest de la France de 1663–1670,” Bibliothèque de l’École

des Chartes 77 (1916): pp. 286–336; Lothar Kolmer, “Colbert und die Entstehung

der Collection Doat,” Francia 7 (1979): pp. 463–89; Jean-Loup Le Maitre, “Les cat-

alogues médiévaux et le pillage des bibliothèques languedociennes,” in”Livres et

bibliothèques XIIIe–VIe siècles,” ed. Jean-Louis Biget, in Cahiers de Fanjeaux 31

(Paris: Privat, n.a.), pp. 36–40.


66. Omont, “La Collection Doat,” p. 292.

67. Ibid., pp. 290–93 and 307. The threat to nobles was real. One of Colbert’s

plans was to form a register of noble titles to combat noble tax fraud, or what was

called the “recherche et punition de faux nobles,” which was one of the speci‹c re-

sponsibilities of the intendants and an element of Colbert’s judicial reform. See Col-

bert’s “Orders to the Intendants,” April 3, 1666, in Lettres, vol. 6, pp. 22–24. Al-

though it initially failed under strong opposition, this project inspired Clairambault’s

genealogical registers.

68. Saunders, “Public Administration,” pp. 293–96.

69. “Note de Carcavy sur les recherches de Doat en Béarn, Guyenne et

Languedoc,” in Omont, “La Collection Doat,” p. 327.

70. Colbert to Godefroy, October 19, 1668, and January 11, 1669, in Lettres,

vol. 5, pp. 274–76; Saunders, “Public Administration,” pp. 291–92.

71. On Peiresc’s orientalist antiquarianism and Kircher see Peter N. Miller,

“Copts and Scholars: Athanasius Kircher in Peiresc’s Republic of Letters,” in Find-

len, Athanasius Kircher, pp. 133–48. For the speci‹c description of riding in a camel

train and rummaging in the archives of various Eastern houses of prayer see the re-

markable correspondence of the Jesuit Johann Michael Wansleben, or “Vansleb” in

French, with Pierre Carcavy and Colbert in which a remarkable adventure of learn-

ing is described.

72. See Peiresc to Holstenius, July 27, 1630, in Nicolas Fabri de Peiresc, Lettres,

ed. Tamizey de Larroque, 7 vols. (Paris, 1888–98), vol. 5, pp. 350–51.

73. Henri Omont’s Missions archéologiques en Orient aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles

(Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1902), p. ix. Omont reproduces de Thou’s corre-

spondence concerning Eastern manuscripts with the ambassador to Constantinople,

Harlay de Sancy, a fellow erudite (pp. ii–ix).

74. François Bernier, “Lettre à Monseigneur Colbert sur l’étendue de l’Hin-

doustan, circulation de l’or et de l’argent pour venir s’y abîmer, richesses, forces et

cause de la décadence des États d’Asie,” in his Voyage dans les États du Grand Mogol,

ed. France Bhattacharya (Paris: Fayard, 1981), pp. 143–76.

75. See Henri Omont’s rich source collection, which contains all of Colbert’s

correpondence on the topic: Missions archéologiques en Orient, p. 101. Also see Pierre

Burger, “ ‘Quand il en trouve qui savent quelque chose. . . .’ Sur les informateurs


orientaux en Europe aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles,” in Les orientalistes sont des aven-

turiers: Guirlande offerte à Joseph Tubiana par ses élève et ses amis, ed. Alain Rouaud

(Paris: INALCO, 1999), pp. 55–60.

76. See Colbert to Seignelay, April 17, 1672, Lettres, vol. 3, part 2, p. 80.

77. Colbert to M. de Guilleragues, ambassador to Constantinople, April 4,

1680, in Lettres, vol. 7, p. 104: “Vous sçavez la curiosité que j’ay d’avoir de bons

manuscrits pour l’ornement de ma bibliothèque, et je suis bien persuadé, par l’ami-

tié que vous avez pour moy, que, pendant tout le temps que vous serez à Constan-

tinople, vous prendrez quelque soin d’en faire chercher et de me les envoyer; faites-

moy sçavoir, de temps en temps, la dépense qu’il faudra faire pour cela, a‹n que j’y

puisse pourvoir. Cependant, je suis bien ayse de vous donner avis que le sieur

Sauvan, consul de Chypre, m’écrit que l’archevesque de Chypre, qui est à présent à

Constantinople, a d’assez beaux manuscrits que l’on pourroit peut-estre tirer de luy.

Vous verrez si cet avis pourra produire quelque chose, sans toutefois rien hasarder ni

vous commettre.”

78. Jean-Baptiste Cotelier, “Remarques sur les manuscrits grecs,” ca. 1667, in

Omont, Missions archéologiques en Orient, pp. 30–32. The original is found in BNF

MS Latin 18610, fols. 65–66.

79. Ibid., p. 31: “Il ne faut point laisser échapper aucun livre historique, ny au-

cun livre de loix civiles ou ecclésiastiques, c’est à dire canons.”

80. For Colbert’s correspondence with Arnoul concerning the out‹tting of the

expedition see Colbert to Arnoul, April 1, 1671, in Omont, Missions archéologiques en

Orient, p. 63.

81. Ibid., p. 250.

82. Ibid., pp. 58–63.

83. Ibid., p. 61: “Il remarquera tout ce qui peut entrer dans la composition de

l’histoire naturelle de chaque pays, comme des animaux de toutes espèces, des

minéreaux et des marcassite, particulièrement de ceux qui ont quelque chose d’ex-

traordinaire, des fonteynes minéralles et autres eaux, des plantes et fruits, tant de la

campagne que de celles qui se cultivent dans les jardins, observant ce qui croît plus

facilement en un pays qu’un autre.”

84. Ibid., p. 62.

85. See Omont for later missions, Missions archéologiques en Orient, pp. 222–50.

86. Ibid., pp. 224–27.

87. Ibid., p. 228. The catalog of this batch of manuscripts is found in BNF MS

Latin 9363, fols. 90–99v.

88. Besson, in Omont, Missions archéologiques en Orient, p. 227: “J’ay escrit ces

ré›exions, bien que je m’estime peu habile pour servir à l’accomplissement d’un

dessein, dont l’exécution contribueroit beaucoup à l’honneur de l’Église gallicane,

pour con‹rmer nommémant contre les sectes hérétique les véritéz catholiques de

l’Eucharistie, touchant le sacerdoce, le sacri‹ce de la Messe, la Réalité et la Tran-

substantiation, les prières pour les morts, le purgatoire, le chef visible de l’Église et

la pimauté de l’Église romaine, et semblables poincts que l’Église orientale confesse

en mille endroicts de ses anciens manuscrits.”

89. Richelet’s 1686 Dictionary de‹nes portfolio, or portefeuille: “C’est un ou-

vrage de Relieur, composé de deux ais de carton, couverts de parchemin, de veau,


de mouton, ou de maroquin, avec quelques enjolivements de doreur sur la couver-

ture.” Register or, registre, is de‹ned as “C’est un livre qui n’est pas pas imprimé,

où sont enregistrez les actes publics & autres choses. Coucher sur le registre. C’est-

à-dire, écrire sur le registre. Tenir le registre. Garder le registre.”

90. The crown managed to retrieve many of the Colbertine manuscripts

bought at its expense during the reign of Louis XIV. In 1728, when Colbert’s

grandson, the comte de Seignelay, tried to sell Colbert’s state manuscripts on the

open market, the king intervened. Seignelay demanded 600,000 pounds for the en-

tire collection. In the margins of his letter to Louis XV demanding this sum, the

king noted with his own hand, “Good. 300,000,” half of the value assessed by the

appraisers. Delisle, Le Cabinet des Manuscrits, vol. 1, p. 485.

91. Colbert, January 5, 1673, Lettres, vol. 7, p. 71. The current bound folios

were organized in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, but appear to corre-

spond to Colbert’s original thematic portfolios.

92. For an example see BNF MS Mélanges Colbert 33, fol. 5.

93. I have not been able to ascertain to what extent he removed documents

from these notebooks.

94. All the following reference numbers refer to the BNF MS Mélanges Col-

bert.

95. [46–47].

96. [12] “Recueil de pièces sur l’Histoire de France: Description du royaume

(1607), traités, états de la maison royale, protocole au temps de Henri IV, Chancel-

liers de France, hôpitaux de Paris, titres du duché d’Alençon, etc.” [14] “Documents

divers, relatifs au règne de Louis XIII (1611–1643).” [15] “Mélanges sur l’Histoire

de France, pendant les règnes de Louis XIII et Louis XIV,” containing documents

such as the “Pièces relatives au rôle du Parlement, lors de la Fronde (1648–1649),”

and “Les crimes du Cardinal,” et autres pièces pour ou contre Mazarin, pami

lesquelles des actes et des délibérations des Cours souveraines.” [27] “Recueil de

mémoires et instructions donnés par Louis XIII aux lieutenants généraux des armées

de terre et de mer, aux amdassadeurs et envoyés de la France à l’étranger

(1640–1643).”

97. [5] “Recueil de pièces relatives aux relations de la France avec la Turquie,

Alger, et Italie,” containing documents such as “Affaire de la Valteline: traités de

Madrid, signé par François de Bassompièrre, 25 avril 1621, et d’Occagna, 1622 en

Italien (fols. 62–75).” [8] “Recueil de pièces, traités et correspondances orginales

d’ambassades sur les rapports entre la France, la Pologne et la Suède (1627–1683),”

containing contemporary documents such as the “Instruction du Roy au sieur Col-

bert [de Croissy] s’en allant de la part de sa Majesté en la court de Vienne (fol 688).”

[10] “Recueil de mémoires et de lettres originales sur l’Allemagne (1554–1664).”

[11] “Recueil de pièces diplomatiques, la plupart en copies, sur les rapports de la

France avec le Danemark, les Pays-Bas espagnols (1499–1655) et hollandais

(1597–1657), l’Angleterre (1215–1654), l’Écosse (1295–XVIIe siècle et l’Irlande

(1624).” This portfolio contains a long subcollection on English law, court, Parlia-

ment, and French relations, starting at fol. 288 with a French original of the Magna

Carta, “Grande charte des libertés anglaises, en français, 1215.” [13] “Copies de

Corrspondances diplomatiques, relatives à l’histoire de France, des XVIe et XVIIe


siècles.” [16–26, 28] More diplomatic correspondance from the time of Henri

II–IV.

98. [2–4, 7], [85].

99. [29] “Receuil de mémoires sur les droits de la reine Marie-Thérèse

d’Autriche à la succession d’Espagne et des Pays-Bas espagnols.” [30] “Recueil de

mémoires, formé par l’abbé Amable de Bourzeis et remis à Colbert sur les droits de

la Reine Marie-Thérèse d’Autriche à la succession des Pays-Bas, et sur la nullité de

sa renonciation successoriale (1664–1667).” [37] “Recueil d’odes et de poèmes

latins, français et italiens composés à la louange du règne de Louis XIV, par boileau-

Despréaux, l’abbé de Bourzeis, Cl. Boyer, l’abbé Jacques Cassagnes, Jean Chapelain,

François Charpentier, Thomas Corneille, l’abbé Cotin, Jacques Cousinot, etc.”

[54], fols. 1–94, “Clefs d’écritures secrètes.” [54]. “Mélanges relatifs à l’Histoire Lit-

téraire, oraisons funèbres, épitaphes, lettres, etc, XVIe et XVIIe siècles.”

100. [56] “Receuil de lettres pouvant servir de modèle de style épistolaire, tiré

de la correspondance de secrétaires d’État, entre autres de Richelieu, d’ambas-

sadeurs, etc. (1617–1625).” [35] “Escrit sur les Ordonnances du royaume, par l’abbé

Amable de Bourzeis.” [36] “Escrit sur les Ordannances du royaume, par Bourzeis.”

101. [32] “Recueil de pièces relatives aux Parlements et à la Justice, aux Cou-

tumes de Metz et Verdun, etc. Réponse du surintendant Fouquet à l’acte d’accusa-

tion de D. Talon,” in which, “Droictz appartenans à la grande chambellanie de

France, avec une note de Colbert adressée a M. Baluze.” [33] “Recueil de mémoires

formé par Colbert sur la Réforme de la Procédure (1665–1679).” [64] “De la Loy

Salique,” anonymous report made for Colbert. Notable among Colbert’s antiparlia-

mentarian ‹les are the “Notes secrètes sur le personnel de tous les parlemens et cours

des comptes du royaume, envoyées par les Intendans des provinces à Colbert, sur sa

demande, vers la ‹n de l’an 1663,” in Depping, Correspondance administrative, vol. 1,

pp. 33–132. This gives an earlier though less sophisticated sense of what Robert

Darnton discusses in “A Police Inspector Sorts His Files: The Anatomy of the Re-

public of Letters,” in Great Cat Massacre, pp. 145–89. At the beginning of the sev-

enteenth century, Henry IV’s minister, Sully, meticulously collected economic data

and kept a large historical archive, which remained in the hands of his family. Sully’s

famous work, part memoir, part compilation of economic data and documents, is

Mémoires des sages et royalles oeconomies d’Estat, domestiques, politiques et militaires de

Henry le Grand, l’exemplaire des roys, le prince des vertus, des armes et des loix et le père en

effet de ses peuples françois: et des servitudes utiles, obéissances convenables et administrations

loyales (Amsterdam: Jacques Bouquet, 1632). On this work and on his use of eco-

nomic information see Buisseret, Sully, pp. 17–20, chap. 3.

102. BNF Mélanges Colbert 61, “Mélanges relatifs à différentes bibiothèques et

à l’Histoire ecclésiastique au XVIIe siècle,” is ‹lled with inventories and catalogs.

[81] “Recueil d’analyses de Titres scellés, avec la description des sceaux (XIV–XVIe

siècle). [88–100] “Catalgus librorum bibliothecae illustrissimi domini D. Jacobi

Nicolai Colbert,” “Catalgue des manuscrits de la Collection Dupuy,” “Catalgue de

la collection formée sur les affaires étrangères et l’administration de la France, par

Antoine de Loménie de Brienne.” “Inventaire des Chartes du Thrésor du Roy es-

tant en la Saincte Chapelle du Palais à Paris, faict par Messieurs Dupuy et Godefroy,


advocats en Parlements, suivant l’arrest du Conseil d’Estat de sa Majesté, du 21e

may, 1615.”

103. Gabriel Naudé, Advis pour dresser une bibliothèque (Paris: Rolet Le Duc,

1644), pp. 163–64; Pintard, Le libertinage erudite, 168–74; Chartier, L’ordre des livres,

pp. 71–73. On Naudé’s library as a site of new knowledge see Nelles, “Instrument

of Discovery,” pp. 41–57; also Damien, Bibliothèque et état, pp. 301–6. On Naudé’s

library project and the new philosophies of the universal library see Jonathan Israel’s

chapter, “Libraries and Enlightenment,” his Radical Enlightenment, pp. 119–41.

104. Hirsch‹eld, Académie Royale des Sciences, pp. 168–69. On Colbert and the

Académie des Sciences see Stroup, “Christian Huygens,” in general. On Colbert’s

personal collection see Bloch, “La Colbertine”; also see Bloch, “La bibliothèque de

Colbert”; Saunders, “Public Administration,” pp. 283–99.

105. Brown, Scienti‹c Organizations, pp. 135–60; Claude Gros de Boze, Histoire

de l’Académie Royale des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, 3 vols. (Paris: H-L Guerin, 1740),

vol. 1, p. 2. Also see David S. Lux, Patronage and Royal Science in Seventeenth-Century

France: The Académie de Physique de Caen (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press,

1989), pp. 105–25; Barret-Kriegel, Les historiens et la monarchie, vol. 3, pp. 171–301.

106. BNF Mélanges Colbert 58–60, “Recueil de différents traités de Mathéma-

tiques et d’Astronomie,” “Geometricorum elementorum Euclidis libri I–VI, avec

‹gures à l’encre . . . ,” “Recueil de Tables Astronomiques.”

107. Auguste Bernard, Histoire de l’Imprimerie Royale du Louvre (Amsterdam:

Verlag P. Schnippers, 1966), pp. 123–54. This work contains a very revealing cata-

log of published books. During Colbert’s lifetime and after his death, the press fo-

cused mainly on ‹ndings by the Académie Royale des Sciences. Also see Brown,

Scienti‹c Organizations, pp. 185–207.

108. See the catalog, which speaks for itself, in Bernard, Histoire de l’Imprimerie

Royale, pp. 123–63.

109. A list is in Prosper Boissonnade, Colbert. Le Triomphe de l’Étatisme. La Fon-

dation de la Suprématie industrielle de la France. La Dictature du Travail 1661–1683 (Paris:

Marcel Rivière, 1931), p. 32.

110. Colbert, Lettres, vol. 6, pp. xxv–xxvi n. 2. On this citation and Colbert’s

attempts at educational reform, see Dainville, L’éducation des Jesuites, p. 38.

111. H. Didier-Neuville, Les établissments de l’ancienne marine (Paris: Berger-

Levrault, 1882); Dainville, L’éducation des Jesuites, pp. 219, 315–22; François Russo,

“L’hydrographie en France aux XVIIe et XVIII siècles. Écoles et ouvrages d’en-

seignement,” in Roger Hahn and René Taton, Écoles techniques et militaires au XVI-

IIe siècle (Paris: Hermann, 1986), pp. 419–40.

112. For the catalog of Croissy’s library see Archives Nationales Minutier Cen-

tral, étude CXLIII, liasse 20: “Inventaire des biens de feu Monseigneur de Croissy,

Ministre et Secrétaire d’Etat du 7 août 1696.”

113. For Vauban’s reading catalog for his son’s library see Virol, Vauban, annex.

114. Saunders, “Public Administration,” p. 292.

115. Colbert to Baluze, July 1672, in Lettres, vol. 7, pp. 63–64.

116. Colbert to Baluze, March 23, 1672, in Lettres, vol. 7, p. 59. This request

was related to the legal, historical minutiae of trade negotiations with England in


1672. See the “Demandes faites pas les commissaires de la Grande-Bretagne pour le

traité de commerce, et réponses du Roy de France,” Lettres, vol. 2, part 2, p. 828.

For Colbert’s correspondence with Baluze concerning bibliographical references see

BNF MS Baluze 362, fols. 60-282.

117. BNF MS Mélanges Colbert 34.

118. Ibid., fols. 82v–84r. Also see the corresponding ‹le on English documents

concerning their colonies and their charters: BNF MS Mélanges Colbert 40.

119. Ibid., fol. 9.

120. The portfolios Colbert refers to are BNF MS Mélanges Colbert 11, fols.

288–55; 34, 38, 39, and 40. The “Projet du traité de commerce entre la France et

l’Angleterre, avec les remarques de l’ambasssadeur de France à Londres et quelques

notes de Colbert, October 9, 1669,” is a working copy of the trade treaty written

from these documents, in Lettres, vol. 2, part 2, pp. 803–32. Also see Colbert’s let-

ter to de Croissy, January 3, 1670, pp. 815–16.

121. Colbert to Colbert de Croissy, September 26, 1669, in Lettres, vol. 2, part

2, pp. 492–93. “J’examineray exactement le projet de traité de commerce que vous

m’avez envoyeé, et je vous feray sçavoir ensuite mes sentimens sur chacun des arti-

cles dont il est composé. . . . Je seray bien ayse de voir les remarques que vous ferez

sur ce projet de traité en conséquence des avis que vous prendrez des plus habiles

négocians français qui soyent en Angleterre; et comme les manuscrits et mémoires

que je vous a cy-devant envoyés vous instruiriront de la conduite que vous aurez à

tenir dans la discussion des articles de ce traité, vous pouvez sans dif‹culté les garder

pour vous servir de règle dans tout ce qui concernera le bien du service du roy et

l’avantage de ses sujets.” The portfolios to which Colbert refers are BNF MS

Mélanges Colbert 11, fols. 288–55; 34, 38, 39, and 40. The “Projet du traité de com-

merce entre la France et l’Angleterre, avec les remarques de l’ambasssadeur de

France à Londres et quelques notes de Colbert, October 9, 1669” is a working copy

of the trade treaty written from these documents, in Lettres, vol. 2, part 2, pp.

803–41; for Colbert’s correspondence with Baluze concerning bibliographical ref-

erences see BNF MS Baluze 362, fols. 60–282.

122. For Colbert’s report and Louis’s annotations see “Mémoire au Roy servant

de réponse au Projet de traité de commerce entre la France et l’Angleterre mis en-

tre les mains di sieur Colbert, ambassadeur de Sa Majesté près de la Grande-Bre-

tagne, par mylord Arlington,” in Lettres, vol. 2, part 2, pp. 816–18.

123. Ibid., pp. 818–32.

124. For Colbert’s “Correspondance à d’Arrivée en Provenance du Canada,”

see AN Col. C11A 1–4.

125. On how internal cultural practices of government affect and warp policy

see James Scott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Con-

dition Have Failed (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998); Bödeker, “Origins of

Statistical Gaze,” pp. 165–72; and Head, “Knowing Like a State.”

126. “Colbert to the sieur Gaudais,” May 1, 1669, in Lettres, vol. 3, part 2, pp.

443–48.

127. Ibid., 444.

128. Ibid.

129. Ibid., p. 445.


130. On Philip’s formularies see Kagan, “Arcana Imperii,” pp. 49–70.

131. See Mims, Colbert’s West India Policy; Mémain, La marine de guerre; and

Cole, Colbert, vol. 1, pp. 356–532, and French Mercantilism: 1683–1700 (New York:

Octagon Books, 1971). Also see Glenn J. Ames, Colbert, Mercantilism, and the French

Quest for Asian Trade (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1996). On Col-

bert’s mercantilist Canadian failures see Kenneth J. Banks, Chasing Empire across the

Sea: Communication and the State in the French Atlantic, 1713–1763 (Montreal: McGill-

Queen’s University Press, 2002), pp. 24–25; and James Pritchard, In Search of Empire:

The French in the Americas 1670–1730 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,

2004), pp. 234–37.

132. See in general Colbert, Lettres, vol. 3, part 2.

133. One of the most useful sources on Colbert’s colonial enterprises is Ernest

Benoît, Recherches sur la politique coloniale de Colbert (Paris: A. Pedone Éditeur, 1902).

It includes this small enquête (pp. 120–24).

134. Anthony Pagden, European Encounters with the New World: From Renaissance

to Romanticism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993); Ogilvie, The Science of

Describing; James Delbourgo and Nicholas Dew, eds., Science and Empire in the At-

lantic World (London: Routledge, 2007).

135. Kathleen A. Meyers, ed., Fernandez de Oviedo’s Chronicle of America: A New

History for a New World (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2007).

136. Miles Ogborn, Indian Ink: Script and Print in the Making of the English East

India Company (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007); also see Miles Ogborn

and C. W. J. Withers, “Knowing Other Places: Travel, Trade and Empire,

1660–1800,” in A Concise Companion to the Restoration and the Eighteenth Century, ed.

Cynthia Wall (Oxford: Blackwell, 2004), pp. 14–36.

137. Greer, The Jesuit Relations.

138. Donald McKenzie, Oral Culture, Literacy and Print in Early New Zealand:

The Treaty of Waitangi (Wellington, NZ: Victoria University Press, 1985).

139. AN Col. C11A 1–4.

140. See New World ‹les in note 7.


142. Ibid., fol. 38.

143. Ibid., fols. 39–40.

144. Ibid., fol. 53.

145. Ibid., fol. 71.

146. Ibid., fol. 299.

147. Colbert to Pélissier, Directeur de la Compagnie des Indes Occidentales,

November 4, 1671, in Lettres, vol. 3, part 2, p. 527: “Envoyez-moi tousjours tout ce

que vous trouverez de rare et d’extraordinaire dans les isles, en plantes, animaux,

bois, et autres choses.”

148. Colbert, “Mémoire pour les directeurs de la Compagnie des Indes occi-

dentales envoyés en amérique,” February 26, 1670, in Lettres, vol. 3, part 2, p. 472.

149. Ibid., p. 474.

150. Colbert to Talon, February 11, 1671, in Lettres, vol. 3, part 2, pp. 512–15.

151. Francis Parkman, La Salle and the Discovery of the Great West: France and En-

gland in North America (Williamstown, MA: Corner House, 1980), p. 15.


152. John W. Olmsted, “The Voyage of Jean Richer to Acadia in 1670: A

Study of the Relations of Science and Navigation under Colbert,” Proceedings of the

American Philosophical Society 104 (1960): pp. 612–34.

153. Benoît, La politique coloniale de Colbert, p. 208; Cole, Colbert, vol. 2, pp.

122–31.

154. Cole, Colbert, vol. 2, p. 131.

155. On the importance of historical language and the perception of empires

see Emma Rothschild, “Language and Empire, c. 1800,” Historical Research 78 (May

2005): pp. 208–29.

chapter 8

1. Jean Mabillon worked for Colbert as a state medievalist through his close

relationship with Baluze. Broglie, Mabillon, vol. 1, pp. 55–57; Barret-Kriegel, Les

historiens et la monarchie, vol. 1, pp. 52–54.

2. On Mabillon’s in›uence on English political scholarship and English po-

litical antiquarianism see H. A. Cronne, “The Study and Use of Charters by English

Scholars in the Seventeenth Century: Sir Henry Spelman and Sir William Dug-

dale,” in English Historical Scholarship in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, ed.

Levi Fox (Oxford: Society and Oxford University Press, 1956), pp. 73–91.

3. On Mabillon’s relationship with Baluze and Colbert see BNF MS Baluze

214, fol. 10. On his relations with Baluze see Fage, Étienne Baluze, p. 91.

4. Lucien Auvray and René Poupardin, Catalogue des Manuscrits de la Collec-

tion Baluze (Paris: Éditions Ernest Leroux, 1921), p. XVII.

5. BNF MS Baluze 100, fols. 1–57.

6. Boivin, “Mémoire pour l’histoire de la Bibliothèque du Roy,” fol. 443;

Saunders, “Public Administration,” p. 290. In BNF MS Baluze, 100, fol. 8v, Baluze

explains to Colbert how he extracted material according to Colbert’s orders. Delisle

remarks that the library registers still contain the marks made on them by Baluze and

Colbert. Much of the Baluze collection is comprised of “extracts”—copied portions

of documents from the royal collection. See MS Baluze 63, “Extraits de manuscripts

de la Bibliothèque du Roi.” For an example of Colbert demanding quick extract

copying, see “Colbert à Baluze,” August 12, 1675, in Lettres, vol. 7, pp. 80–81. On

Baluze’s function as an erudite administrator see his correspondence with Colbert in

the same volume, pp. 371–78, in particular Baluze’s progress report to Colbert,

April 14, 1671, pp. 374–75: “Le travail qu’on fait présentement ne consiste quasy

que dans la continuation des copies des registres du Trésor des Chartes, dont on

verra bientost la ‹n.” Also see Colbert’s letter to Baluze, August 19, 1675, Lettres,

vol. 7, p. 81. On Baluze managing state account books see Lettres, vol. 7, p. 52,

“Colbert à Baluze,” March 16, 1671.

7. On Colbert’s creation of a parallel Republic of Letters, see volume 5 of his

Lettres, which contains his correspondence with cultural ‹gures. On Chapelain’s re-

lationship with Colbert see Soll, Publishing “The Prince,” pp. 48–50.

8. Saunders, “Public Administration,” pp. 290–97.

9. Colbert to Baluze, October 18, 1673 in Lettres, vol. 7, p. 73: “Je prie M.

Baluze de veri‹er si j’ay dans ma bibliothèque tous les livres qui ont esté annoncés


par le Journal des Savans, depuis cinq ou six ans, et de m’en envoyer un mémoire

bien exacte Je serais ayse aussy d’avoir une copie du catalogue de tous les livres qui

sont dans ma bibliothèque qui ont esté faits pour et contre le Jansénisme, avec un

mémoire de tous ceux qui me manquent, en cas qu’il le sçache.”

10. On the philosophical in›uences on the movement of mass cataloging and

collecting, Baluze and the Benedictines, see Barret-Kriegelm, Les historiens et la

monarchie, vol. 2, pp. 205–25. Also see Claude Jolly, “Les bibliothèques béné-

dictines,” in Jolly, Histoire des bibliothèques françaises, vol. 1, pp. 29–39.

11. For examples of Baluze’s internal histories and reports see BNF MS Colbert

3, in general. For speci‹c examples of Baluze’s internal reports and secret histories

see “Mémoire sur les differens entre la cour de Rome et la Cour de France (fol’s

1–4),” and his “Traité de la Régale (fol’s 9–41).”

12. Payments of some sort were probably made to his order. Paul Nelles,

“L’érudition ecclésiastique et les bibliothèques de Paris au XVIIe siècle. Étude de

catalogage et de classi‹cation,” Revue française d’histoire du livre 104–5 (1999): pp.

227–52.


14. Ibid., fols. 1–311, 326–34, 547.

15. On Foucault see the excellent biography by F. Baudry, in Foucault, Mé-

moires, pp. i–clxxvi. On the paperwork functions of a maitre de requête, see the

“Procès-Verbal des conférences tenues devant Louis XIV pour la réformation de la

justice,” September 25, 1665, in Colbert, Lettres, vol. 6, p. 371; Mousnier, The In-

stitutions of France, vol. 2, pp. 140–43. Also see François Bluche, ed., Dictionnaire du

Grand Siècle (Paris: Fayard, 1990), p. 945.

16. On the rather unique career of Foucault see Antoine Schnapper, Le géant, la

licorne at la tulipe: Collections et collectionneurs dans la France du XVIIe siècle (Paris: Flam-

marion, 1988), pp. 297–301.

17. Baudry, in Foucault, Mémoires, p. xii.

18. Ibid., p. xv.

19. Ibid., pp. xv–xvi.

20. Ibid., pp. cix–cxx. Reproduced by Baudry.

21. Foucault to Baluze, February 9, 1678, in Foucault, Mémoires, p. cxviii: “Je

n’ai point voulu, Monsieur, faire réponse à la dernière lettre que vous avez pris la

peine de m’écrire, que je n’aie été en état de vous envoyer le catalogue des manu-

scrits qui sont dans l’abbaye de Moissac. Je me suis servi pour les examiner de M.

Fouillac, chanoine de Cahors, qui a demeuré sept jours à en parcourir seulement

une partie, les archives de ce monastère étant dans une très-grande confusion et la

plupart des actes pourris ou mangés des rats. M. le président Doat y a passé assez

légèrement, et il y a beaucoup de livres et de cartulaires qu’il n’a point vus. Il est aisé

de connoître parfaitement ce qui est renfermé dans cette abbaye, par le moyen du-

dit sieur Fouillac, qui est très-habile en ces matières et aux yeux duquel rien

n’échappera de tout ce qui mérite d’être relevé. Mais, comme il perdroit le revenu

de canonicat pendant le temps qu’il travailleroit à cette recherche et qu’il offre d’y

travailler gratuitement, il seroit, Monsieur, nécessaire d’avoir une commission du roi

qui enjoignît au chapitre de Cahors de le tenir présent pendant qu’il seroit occupé

dans sa perquisition. Ce seroit u moyen d’avoir une connoissance entière de tout ce


qu’il y a de curieux dans les églises de cette province, et vous serez, Monsieur,

d’abord éclairci de tout ce que vous voudrez savoir. M. l’évèque de Cahors est à

Paris à la poursuite d’un procès qu’il a contre l’Université, et je suis persaudé qu’il

ne vous refusera pas le manuscript de Radulphe, archevêque de Bruges, dont vous

marquez avoir besoin.”

22. BNF MS Cinq-Cents Colbert, 235–45. Also see the appendix in Adolphe

Chéruel, Histoire de L’Administration Monarchique depuis l’avènement de Philippe-Au-

guste jusqu’à la mort le Louis XIV, 8 vols. (Paris: Dezobry, 1855), vol. 2.

23. See Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal, MS 5298.

24. Baudry, in Foucault, Mémoires, p. xcvii. This enquête is reproduced in

Henri, Comte de Boulainvilliers, État de la France, 7 vols. (London: T. W. Wood

and S. Palmer, 1737), vol. 4. Also see the modern edition, Nicolas-Joseph Foucault,

L’Intendance de Caen en 1700 . . . pour l’instruction de M. le duc de Bourgogne, ed. Pierre

Gouhier (Paris: Éditions du CTHS, 1998).

25. See Joseph-Nicolas Foucault, Lettres patentes avec les statuts pour l’Académie

des belles-lettres établie en la ville de Caen. (Janvier 1705.)—Discours de M. Foucault à

l’ouverture de la première séance, le 2 mars 1705.)—Réponse de M. le président de

Croisiles . . . au discours de M. Foucault (Caen: A. Caveller, 1705). Also see Gros de

Boze, in particular see his “Éloge de M. Foucault,” in Histoire, vol. 1, pp. 223–42,

239–41.

26. Gros de Boze, Histoire, vol. 1, p. 240.

27. Bernard de Montfaucon, L’antiquité expliquée et représentée en ‹gures, 5 vols.

(Paris: F. Delaulne, 1719–24), vol. 1, p. xix: “M. Foucault, conseiller d’état, m’a plus

fourni de pièces antiques que nul autre. La charge d’intendant, qu’il a exercée dans

plusieurs provinces, lui a donné moyen d’en decouvrir beaucoup qui auraient peut-

être péri si elles étioent tombées en d’autres mains. Comme il a un goût mer-

veilleux, il a fait un des plus beaux cabinets du royaume, et peut-être de l’Europe.

Toujours attentif à faire plaisir aux gens de lettres, il a prévenu ceux qui travaillaient

sur l’antiquité, et, comme un autre Peiresc, il leur a offert avec plaisir ce qu’il n’avoit

ramassé que pour l’utilité publique.”

28. Baudry, in Foucault, Mémoires, p. cliii.

29. Foucault, Mémoires, pp. 57–64.

30. Ibid., p. 62: “J’ai trouvé parmi les papiers du P. d’Aubarède un mémoire en

forme de jounral de ce qui s’est passé au sujet de la régale depuis le 12 janvier 1680.

. . . Il y est fait mention de deux évêques que M. l’archevêque de Toulouse assure

être MM. de Rieux et de Lectuore, étant les seuls évêques qui fussent à Toulouse le

jour marqué dans ledit journal.”

31. Ibid., Colbert to Foucault, July 25, 1680, p. 453.

32. Colbert to Foucault, December 12, 1680, in Foucault, Mémoires, p. 459:

“Dans les différentes visites que vous faites dans l’étendue de votre généralité, vous

me ferez plaisir de rechercher dans les églises, cathédrales et dans les principales ab-

bayes s’il y auroit quelques manuscrits considérables, et, en ce cas, chercher les

moyens de les avoir sans y employer aucune autorité, mais seulement par douceur

et par achat.”

33. Colbert to Tubeuf, intendant at Tours, February 3, 1679, in Lettres, vol. 7,

p. 84:


J’ay appris que Messieurs du chapitre de Saint-Gatien de Tours avoient

dessein de m’envoyer quelques-uns de leurs manuscrits pour mettre dans

ma bibliothèque. Tesmoignez-leur, s’il vous plaist, en mon nom, lorsque

vous les verrez, que je leur seray fort obligé de ce présent, prenant un

grand plaisir de ramasser des manuscrits pour servir aux ouvrages de

littérature qui sont entrepris pour illustrer ce règne.

Je vous prie aussy de me faire sçavoir ce que vous avez fait pour tirer

copie du manuscrit intitulé: Gesta Aldrici, qui appartient au chapitre de

l’église cathédrale du Mans; et en cas que vous l’ayez fait tirer, vous me

ferez plaisir de me l’envoyer le plus tost que vous pourrez.

34. See Colbert’s request to Bouchu, Intendant at Dijon regarding the manu-

scripts of the abbey of Fontenay, March 9, 1679 (Lettres, vol. 7, p. 87).

35. Colbert to Barillon, ambassador to London, May 16, 1682, in Lettres, vol. 7,

pp. 134–35.

36. On Colbert’s creation of a parallel republic of letters, see volume 5 of his

Letters. On Chapelain’s relationship with Colbert see Soll, Publishing “The Prince,”

pp. 48–50.

37. Chapelain to Colbert, November 1662, in Colbert, Lettres, vol. 5, p. 619.

38. Chapelain to A. M. Heinsius, June 1, 1663, in Chapelain, Lettres, vol. 2, p.

305.

39. Chapelain to J. G. Vossius, July 31, 1665, ibid., pp. 406–7.

40. Ibid., p. 275.

41. Chapelain to Colbert, September 18, 1662 in ibid.: “Je viens à l’histoire

qu’avec beaucoup de raison vous avez jugée, Monsieur, un des principaux moyens

pour conserver la splendeur des entreprises du Roy et le détail de ses miracles. Mais

il est de l’histoire comme de ces fruits qui ne sont bons que gardés et pour arrière-

saison. Si elle n’explique point les motifs des choses qui y sont racontées, si elle n’est

pas accompagnée de ré›exions prudentes et de documents, ce n’est qu’une relation

pure, sans force et sans dignité. De les y employer aussy, durant le règne du Prince

qui en est le sujet, cela ne se pourroit sans exposer au public les ressorts du Cabinet,

donner lieu aux ennemis de les prévenir ou de les rendre inutiles, et trahir ceux qui

auroient des liaisons avec luy, lesquelles ne subsistent que par le secret et à l’ombre

d’un profond silence. Ainsi, j’estime que si vous faites travailler à l’histoire de Sa Ma-

jesté en la manière qu’elle doit estre que pour tenir l’ouvrage caché jusques à ce que

les inconvénients remarqués ne puissent préjudicier à ses affaires et à ses alliés.”

42. D. C. Godefroy-Menilglaise, Les savants Godefroy: Mémoires d’une famille

(Paris: Didier, 1875), pp. 112–13. For a full archival bibliography concerning this re-

lationship see Soll, Publishing “The Prince,” pp. 52–56.

43. Colbert to Godefroy, March 6, 1669, in Lettres, vol. 5, p. 274.

44. Varillas to Colbert, October 17, 1663, in Boivin, “Mémoire pour l’histoire

de la Bibliothèque du Roy,” fols. 476 and 479. The original documents concerning

literary disputes between Colbert and Varillas, as well as his literary correspondance

with Godefroy and Chapelain are in BNF MS Baluze 362, fols. 38–59. Varillas pub-

lished his book and many others drawn from his privileged knowledge of the royal

and Colbertian manuscripts only after Colbert’s death: Antoine Varillas, Les Anec-


dotes de Florence, ou l’Histoire secrète de la maison de Médicis (The Hague: chez A. Leers,

1685).

45. Boivin, “Mémoire pour l’histoire de la Bibliothèque du Roy,” fols. 476–78.

46. Steve Uomini, Cultures historiques dans la France du XVIIe siècle (Paris: L’Har-

mattan, 1998).

47. On Colbert’s sanctioning of Mézéray for implicitly criticizing Colbert’s tax

policies see Ranum, Artisans of Glory, p. 222; and Soll, “Empirical History,” pp.

297–98.


49. Ibid., pp. 260–61.

50. Charles Perrault, Mémoires (Paris: Librarie des Bibliophiles, 1878), p. 27.

51. Ibid., p. 26.

52. Ibid., p. 27.


54. Priolo to Colbert, June 4, 1661, in Benjamin Priolo, Lettres inédites, ed.

Tamizey de Larroque (Tours: Bouserez, 1877), p. 3.

55. Ibid., p. 6, Priolo to Colbert, June 6, 1661.

56. Benjamin Priolo, The History of France under the Ministry of Cardinal

Mazarine, trans. Christopher Wase (London: John Starkey, 1671), p. 419.

57. Rothkrug, Opposition to Louis XIV, pp. 195–212; Lynn Wood Mollenauer,

“Justice versus Secrecy: Investigating the Affair of the Poisons, 1679–1682,” in En-

gel et al., Das Geheimnis, pp. 179–205.

58. Guillaume Ribier, Lettres et Mémoires d’Estat, des Roys, Princes, & Ambas-

sadeurs (Paris: François Clouzier & la Veuve Aubouyn, 1666), p. 5 of the preface.

59. Ibid.

60. For a model letter see Colbert to La Reynie, April 25, 1670: “J’ay rendu

compte au Roy du contenu de la lettre que vous m’avez écrite sur le sujet des

gazettes à la main. Sa Majesté désire que vous continuiez de faire une recherche ex-

acte de ces sortes de gens et que vous fassiez punir sévèrement ceux que vous avez

fait arrester, estant tres-important pour le bien de l’Estat d’empescher à l’avenir la

continuation de pareils libelles.” Colbert would continue writing this same sort of

letter to La Reynie and the intendants until his death. For a later example from 1682

see Lettres, vol. 6, p. li.

61. Martin, Livre, pouvoirs et société, vol. 2, p. 691.

62. Pierre Clément, La Police sous Louis XIV (Paris: Didier & Cie., 1866), pp.

73–79; and Martin, Livre, pouvoirs et société, vol. 2, p. 679.

63. Ibid., p. 695.

64. Ibid., pp. 678–82.

65. Ibid., p. 683.

66. On Léonard’s clandestine printing see Jacob Soll, “The Hand-Annotated

Copy of the Histoire du gouvernement de Venise, or How Amelot de La Houssaye

Wrote His History,” Bulletin du Bibliophile 2 (1995): pp. 279–93.

67. On La Reynie see Jacques Saint-Germain, La Reynie et la police au grand siè-

cle (Paris: Hachette, 1962), p. 19.

68. The reference to La Reynie’s library catalog is found in ibid., p. 22: A copy


of La Reynie’s marriage certi‹cate is in the Bibliothèque Mazarine, Fonds Tralage,

Catalogues T3 ZZ 379, fol. 97.

69. BNF MS Mélanges Colbert 132, fol. 188r: “J’ai appris que, pour ménager

du temps bien plus que pour votre soulagement, vous permettez à vos serviteurs de

vous informer par écrit des choses dont ils doivent vous rendre compte. Et comme

je dois prétendre que vous m’avez fait l’honneur de me mettre en ce rang, après tant

de témoignages de votre protection, je prends la même liberté et, si elle vous est

agréable, je me donnerai l’honneur de vous expliquer par la même voie ce que je

pourrai penser sur quelques matières importantes, où il vous a plu de me donner

quelque part. . . . Je vous envoie un mémoire des fermiers du roi, dans lequel vous

verrez leur contestation beaucoup plus nettement que je ne l’ai expliqué et sur

lequel votre justice pourra beaucoup plus nettement s’assurer.”

70. Saint-Germain, La Reynie, p. 25.

71. Orest Ranum, Paris in the Age of Absolutism: An Essay (New York: John Wi-

ley and Sons, 1968), pp. 272–92.

72. Saint-Germain, La Reynie, pp. 26–27.

73. La Reynie to Colbert, May 21, 1664, in Lettres, vol. 6, pp. 28–29 n. 5: “Les

of‹ciers et commis de la douane mettoient toutes choses en confusion, par la licence

qu’ils prenoient de rendre aux libraires, avant qu’ils eussent esté préalablement vis-

ités au Collège Royal, par les syndics de l’imprimérie, les livres qui arrivoient em-

ballés a leurs bureaux. . . . Il est inuntile de contenir les sujets du roy dans l’obéis-

sance, si les estrangers ont la liberté de remplir le royaume de doctrines scadaleuses.

C’est par ce moyen que les rois et les gouvernemens de l’Estat ont esté calomniés par

le passé.”


75. Cited in ibid., pp. 166–67.

76. La Reynie and his assistant Delamare’s folio ‹les of seditious materials are

found in massive folios at the Bibliothèque Nationale. See BNF MS Fr. 21626 and

21742. On La Reynie’s role in providing material for and helping write the Traité de

la Police see Saint-Germain, La Reynie, pp. 38–39. In his Traité de la Police, 4 vols.

(Paris: M. Brunet, 1719–38), book 1, title 12, chap. 6), which La Reynie helped him

write, Nicolas Delamare wrote of the police commissaries of the book trade who

worked on the rue St. Jacques: “Ils font recherche de tous les livres ou libelles im-

primez contre la Religion, ou ceux même sur cette matière qui ne sont que suspects,

pour avoir été imprimez sans approbation des Docteurs, et sans privilège ou permis-

sion. Ils les font saisir; et après que sur leur rapport le Magistrat en a ordonné la sup-

pression, ils les font déchirer en mettre au pilon, c’est à dire, livrer à un Cartonnier

qui le jette en leur présence dans une cuve d’eau, où il les pile pour en faire du car-

ton./Pour faire cette découverte et celle des autres mauvais livres, ils visitent les Im-

primeries. S’il s’en trouve quelques uns de cette qualité sous la presse, ils en dressent

un Procès-verbal, font saisir les formes et les exemplaires; et en certains cas graves,

ou en matière de fréquente récidive, ils ont quelquefois d’of‹ce fait emprisonner

l”imprimeur, l’ont interrogé, et ont informé contre lui; mais ordinairement ils en

réfèrent d’abord au Magistrat, qui ordonne, sur leur Procès-verbal, la procédure ex-

traordinaire, ou renvoye à l’Sudience, selon que la matière s’y trouve disposée./S’ils


découvrent les auteur de ces mauvais livres, ils en réfèrent au Magistrat. Et à l’égard

des distributeurs, comme ce sont ordinairement gens vils et don’t l’évasion est à

craindre, ils les font arrêter, les interrogent, en informent contre eux.”

77. La Reynie to Baluze, January 17, 1684, BNF MS Collection Baluze 180, fol.

141r–v: “Je ne comprends pas comment il se peut encore trouver des gens assez in-

solents et hardis pour oser entreprendre de faire et de chanter en public de pareilles

extravagances. On a emprisonné plusieurs de ces misérables, on a saisi toutes leurs

feuilles et on a aussi menacé tous ces petits imprimeurs.”

78. See La Reynie’s catalog of seized books and general lists of seized books in

seventeenth-century Paris in Sauvy, Livres saisis à Paris, pp. 23–30.

79. Ibid., pp. 11–14.

80. Sergio Bertelli, Rebelli, libertini, ortodossi nella storiogra‹a barocca (Florence: La

Nuova Italia, 1975); Paul Hazard, La crise de la conscience européenne (Paris: Arthème

Fayard, 1961); Margaret C. Jacob, The Radical Enlightenment: Pantheists, Freemasons,

and Republicans (London: Allen and Unwin, 1982); and Israel, Radical Enlightenment.

81. BNF MS Collection Baluze 336, fol. 82: “L’auteur de ce petit traité prétend

insinuer que le roi veut réunir les deux religions, qu’il est de son intérêt de n’en

souffrir qu’une, et qu’il a autorité et droit de la faire. . . . Il se sert de plusieurs ex-

emples considérables, d’où il tire des conséquences extraordinairement fortes, qu’il

serait dangereux d’autoriser et qu’il n’est peut-estre pas aussi à propos de condamner

à cause des quelques vérités qu’elles enferment, qui sont importantes au roi et au

royaume.”

82. Ibid.

83. Ibid., fol. 86v–r.

84. BNF MS Fr. 21743, fol. 172: “Combien a-t-il tiré d’exemplaires de ce livre?

A-t-il un privilège: le voir. Saisir tous les exemplaires. Savoir s’il en a été vendu à

d’autres libraires. Lesquels? Combien? Savoir qui est l’auteur de l’ouvrage. Prélever

trois exemplaires reliés si possible, sinon en blanc. Mettre les ouvrages saisis en pa-

quets scellés. Détruire les feuilles en cours d’impression.”

85. BNF MS Collection Baluze 367, fols. 137–47.

86. Colbert to La Reynie, June 29, 1671, in Depping, Correspondance administra-

tive, vol. 2, pp. 561–62: “de marquer les endroits qui vous ont paru de conséquence,

af‹n qu’après en avoir rendu compte à S. M., elle puisse prendre la résolution

qu’elle estimera plus advantageuse pour son service; mais en cas qu’il ne soit point

encore imprimé, vous pouvez en faire retarder l’impressoin jusques à notre retour a

Paris.”

87. Darnton, The Business of Enlightenment, pp. 9–13.

88. On La Reynie, Seignelay, and the censorship of the works of Amelot de La

Houssaye, see Soll, Publishing The Prince, pp. 18–19. Also see Pierre-François

Burger, “Deux documents sur Amelot de La Houssaie,” Dix-Septième Siècle 131

(1981): pp. 199–202.

89. See Seignelay to La Reynie, November 27, 1676, in Lettres, vol. 6, p. 46:

J’ay rendu compte au Roy du mémoire que vous avez donné à mon père

au sujet du journal des Affaires de Paris que le nommé Colletet s’est ingéré

de faire imprimer.


Sa Majesté m’a ordonné de vous dire qu’elle veut que vous en

défendiez le débit et l’impression.

90. Cited in Saint-Germain, La Reynie, p. 166.

91. Ibid., p. 184.

92. La Reynie to Louvois, 1685, cited from the Archives de la Guerre in Saint-

Germain, La Reynie, pp. 179–78: “J’ay reçu cette après-dinée la lettre que que vous

m’avez fait l’honneur de m’écrire avec celle de M. le comte d’Avaux. Cette lettre

justi‹e en‹n que l’avis donné touchant le nommé Bayle était juste en toutes ses cir-

constances. Sa Lettre sur les Comètes, la Critique du Calvinisme, et les Nouvelles de

la République des Lettres peuvent bien faire jusger de son habilité, mais la ‹nesse et

la délicatesse de ce mêmes écrits ne les rendent pas moins suspects et, bien que cet

auteur se soit beaucoup contraint dans son Journal pour le faire recevoir en France,

il n;a pu cependant si bien cacher sa mauvaise volonté et son dessein que Mgr le

chancellier ne s’en soit apreçu et que le débit n’en ait été ici arrêté par ses ordres.

En‹n Monsieur, si cet homme a plus d’esprit et de discrétion que les autres, il en est

un peu plus dangereux et le lieu où il loge à La Haye, la considération où il est

auprès du prince d’Orange, et son père et son frère qui font actuellement la profes-

sion de ministres de la religion prétendue réformée en France, doivent rendre sa

conduite suspecte.”

93. For further examples of Seignelay and La Reynie repressing rogue printers

see Seignelay to La Reynie, February 12, 1676, in Lettres, vol. 6, p. 43.


95. Clément, “Introduction,” Lettres, vol. 6, p. li.

96. Some were collected by Russian nobles who thought they might be im-

portant, and thus sent them to St. Petersburg. Had this correspondence survived, La

Reynie would perhaps be more famous today.

97. University of Pennsylvania Rare Books, MS Coll 578, 6 folders: 1667 (10

letters), 1672 (4 letters), 1675 (28 letters), 1677 (9 letters), 1678, 1 (18 letters), 1678,

2, (10 letters), for a total of 79 letters.

98. There are two letters from August 5, 1675.

99. For reproductions of the remnants of this correspondence see Saint-Ger-

main, La Reynie, in general; Lettres, vol. 6, pp. xlix–li; and Depping, Correspondance

administrative, vol. 2, pp. 561–71.

100. University of Pennsylvania, MS Coll 578, Colbert to La Reynie, June 22,

1678, “Jacobin reformé pour le livre qu’il a composé depuis peu de l’histoire des

isles Antilles de l’Amérique que je luy avois fait deffence de poursuivre.”

101. “Ordre pour faire mettre le nommé Jaillot à la Bastille, le Roy veut que

vous fassiez ensorte que l’on surprenne cet homme la, ensorte que l’on trouve s’il est

possible de saisir tous ses papiers.”

102. Ibid., p. xlix, La Reynie to Colbert, April 23, 1670: “J’ay levé le scellé qui

avoit esté mis sur les papiers des écrivains qui furent arrestés la nuit de vendredy

dernier, et il s’est trouvé, particulairement dans ceux des nommés Thubeuf et Pi-

geon, un très-grand nombre de pièces manuscrites, et en général tout ce qui a esté

fait sans exception d’infâme et de meschant depuis quelques années. Il seroit dif‹cile

de juger présentemet s’ils en sont les auteurs on non, ou de quelque partie; mais


comme ils on de l’esprit et quelque estude, et qu’entre leur maunscrits il y en a qui

ressemblent extrêmement à des minutes originales, et qu’avec cela les malheureux

demeurent d’accord d’en avoir vendu plusieurs copies, le soupçon qu’on peut aussy

à cet égard contre eux n’est pas sans fondement.”

103. Colbert to La Reynie, April 1, 1680, in Lettres, vol. 6, p. 62: “Il est impor-

tant que j’informe Sa Majesté de toutes les raisons et de toutes les pièces que vous

pouvez avoir pour porter à empescher, par un règlement, les désordres que ces priv-

ilégiés ont causés jusque’à present dans la police. . . . comme il n’y avoit que cinq ou

six arrests sur des faits particuliers joints à vos mémoires, vous preniez la peine d’ex-

aminer s’il n’y a aucunes autres pièces que vous puissiez joindre à celles que vous

m’avez desjà données, et vous n’aviez rien à ajouter aux raisons contenues dans vos

mémoires.”

104. Sauvy, Livres saisis à Paris, p. 5.

105. Martin, Livre, pouvoirs et société, vol. 2, pp. 732–56.

chapter 9

1. On Foucault’s role in the régale, see his Mémoires, pp. 57–73, which con-

tain his notes and correspondence concerning the affair.

2. Louis XIV, Déclaration pour la Régale, February 10, 1673, registered in the

Chambre des Comptes de Paris, July 27 of the same year, in Lettres, vol. 6, pp.

339–40: “le droit de Régale auroit esté jugé inaliénable, imprescriptable, et nous ap-

partenir dans tous les archeveschés et éveschés de nostre royaume, terres et pays de

nostre obéissance; et nostre intention estant que nostre droit soit universellement re-

connue.”

3. Ibid., p. 340. On the Régale see Charles Gérin, Louis XIV et le Saint Siège,

2 vols. (Paris, 1894).

4. On the general question of the church’s rights see Oakley, The Conciliar

Tradition, chap. 1.

5. Boni‹ce VIII had erected a monastery in Pamiers in an attempt to assert

papal control of the city in opposition to Philip the Fair. Thus the bishopric was of

symbolic value in the ancient con›ict of jurisdiction. Pierre Dupuy, Histoire du dif-

férend d’entre le pape Boniface VIII et Philippes le Bel roy de France (Paris: Sebastien et

Gabriel Cramoisy, 1655), pp. 627–66; and Georges Digard, Philippe le Bel et le Saint-

Siège de 1285–1304, 2 vols. (Paris, 1936), vol. 2, pp. 49–51. For a detailed literary his-

tory of sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century French Gallicanism see Parsons,

Church in the Republic.

6. Cited by Lavisse, Louis XIV, p. 384.

7. Caulet’s 1679 letter to Louis XIV is cited in Charles Gérin, Recherches his-

toriques sur l’Assemblée du clergé de France de 1682 (Paris: Lecoffre, 1869), pp. 47–49:

“d’ailleurs l’étude que vous avez faite des saints canons qui défendent, sous les

dernières peines, aux prelates qui sont à la cour des princes de causer aucun préju-

dice non-seulement à leurs confrères, ou à leurs églises, mais encore aux ecclésias-

tiques inférieurs, ce que l’on peut voir en termes exprès dans le 25e canon du con-

cile d’Avignon tenu en l’an 1326 par le pape Jean XXII, renouvlé par le 30e du

concile tenu en la meme ville l’an 1337 sous le pape Benoît XII, sont des motifs as-


sez puissants pour vous obliger à embarasser le parti de l’Église, nonobstant tous les

intérêts et les respects humains qui pourrait vous en détourner.”

8. Ibid., p. 386: Louis XIV to his ambassador to Rome, the duke of Estrées,

March, 1678: “Je témoigne au nonce combien j’étais surpris que le Pape entrât avec

moi sur une matière qui était purement des droits de ma couronne; que dans toutes

celles qui regardent l’Église et la religion, j’écoutais toujours ce qui me venait de lui

avec un profond respect, mais que je ne pouvais rien entendre sur ce qui touchait

mon État et ma couronne, qu’ainsi je n’avais aucune réponse à lui rendre sur une af-

faire dans laquelle je ne pouvais entrer.”

9. The famous account of the Inquisition and its archival holdings in Pamiers

is Le Roy Ladurie’s Montaillou.

10. Nicolas-Joseph Foucault, Mémoires, pp. 57–58. Caulet wrote Louis, begging

for food and food to be distributed to the poor.

11. Foucault calls this work a libel. Ibid., 59.

12. Gérin, Recherches historiques sur l’Assemblée, pp. 59–62. When the pope ap-

pointed the père Cerles as vicar general, a temporary successor to Caulet, Foucault

had the Parlement of Toulouse condemn him to death in absentia, and he was

forced to escape and go into hiding. With the fervor used to persecute Protestants,

Foucault applied regalian rights to excommunicate renegades such as Antoine Char-

las, preceptor to the Caulet family and author of an attack on the régale, who

promptly ›ed to Rome and stayed for the remainder of his life, vociferously de-

fending the pope’s rights against those of his king. See Colbert’s letter to the Chan-

cellier LeTellier, ‹rst president of the Parlement of Toulouse, seeking to repress

Cerles, March 13, 1681, in Depping, Correspondance administrative, vol. 4, pp.

131–32. Also see Antoine Charlas, Causa regaliae penitus explicata (Toulouse, 1679).

Charlas became a leading anti-Gallican theologian, and died in Rome in 1698.

13. Foucault, Mémoires, p. 58. Foucault lists the documents he is sending back

and how he is using them to make his case against Caulet.

14. On the use of documentary evidence for politics see Miller, Peiresc’s Europe,

p. 85.

15. A few de Marca documents are found in the Colbert collection, but the rest

are in the Collection Baluze. It is clear that Baluze used his collection integrally with

that of Colbert as long as he worked for the Colbertine until the death of Seignelay

in 1691. In BNF MS Mélanges Colbert 3, fols. 310 onward are documents from the

time of Seignelay.

16. He makes detailed reference to it on a number of occasions. See Colbert,

“Mémoire au roi sur la Régale,” 1675, in Lettres, vol. 6, p. 105.

17. Boislisle, Mémoires des Intendants, vol. 1, pp. xxi–xxii.

18. Colbert, “Mémoire au roi,” in Lettres, vol. 6, p. 116.

19. See Saunders,”Public Administration,” in general.

20. Colbert to Baluze, October 18, 1673, in Lettres, vol. 7, p. 73: “Je prie M.

Baluze de veri‹er si j’ay dans ma bibliothèque tous les livres qui ont esté annoncés

par le Journal des Savans, depuis cinq ou six ans, et de m’en envoyer un mémoire

bien exacte Je serais ayse aussy d’avoir une copie du catalogue de tous les livres qui

sont dans ma bibliothèque qui ont esté faits pour et contre le Jansénisme, avec un

mémoire de tous ceux qui me manquent, en cas qu’il le sçache.”


21. Colbert to Baluze, March 23, 1672, in Lettres, vol. 7, p. 59.

22. Colbert reprimands Baluze for lending manuscripts to Colbert’s son

Seignelay without express permission and without noting this fact. Colbert to

Baluze, July 1672, Lettres, vol. 7, p. 63: “Vous jugerez vous-mesme assez facilement

qu’il faut qu’une bibliothèque périsse avec le temps, si elle n’est pas mieux et plus

soigneusement conservée.”

23. Ibid., note 2.

24. Ibid., p. 64.

25. Ibid., p. 62, Colbert to Baluze, June 14, 1672: “Je prie M. Baluze de

rechercher avec soin toutes les bulles et lettres patentes des deux congrégations de

Sainte-Geneviève et de Saint-Maur, pour les mettre dans ma bibliothèque. Je luy

envoye celles que j’ay, pour en chercher de pareilles; et quand il les aura trouvées, il

rendra celles-cy à M. Foucault.”

26. Cole, Colbert, vol. 1, p. 425; Dessert, Argent, pouvoir et société, pp. 325–38.

27. Étienne Baluze, Capitularia regum Francorum (Paris, 1677). I refer to the

translation: Histoire des Capitulaires des Rois François sous le premier et seconde race sur

l’édition de 1677 (The Hague, 1755), pp. 164–65: “Manuscrits des Bibliothèques du

Roi, du Vatican, de Colbert, de Thou, Bigot, Mazarin, du Tillet, Alby, Poitiers,

Corbye, Moissac, St. Lomer, St. Gal, S. Vincent de Metz, S. Vincent de Laon, S.

Remi de Reims, des Monastères d’Aniane et de Rivipullensis, de Philibert de la

Marre, Conseiller à Dijon, du Collège de Navarre à Paris, de l’Académie d’Helm-

sted, de laquelle Hermand Conringius, Joachim, Jean Maderes ont ces varietés, et

m’en ont grati‹é, j’ai disséqué plusieurs excellens Manuscrits du Collège de Louis le

Grand; j’ai pro‹té de ceux de Pierre Pithou et Jerôme Bignon; l’exemplaire de ce

dernier avait d’abord appartenu à Jean-Antoine l’Escure et acheté de ses heritiers par

Claude d’Expilli: plusieurs passages de du Tillet décélent qu’il lui a été fructueux,

son habitude étant d’écrire de sa main au dessus des lignes les corrections qu’il sub-

stituait au texte. J’ai en‹n mis au jour et purgé les Réglemens de Charlemagne et

Louis le Debonnaire, accordés aux espagnols à l’aide d’un Manuscrit antique qui re-

pose dans les Archives de Narbonne.”

28. Ibid., 168.

29. Baluze, Capitulaires, pp. 39–44.

30. Ibid., 97.

31. Clarke, “Leibniz as a Librarian,” pp. 140–54.

32. On the humanist reading and note-taking methods for handling enormous

amounts of information, see Blair, “Information Overload,” pp. 11–40.

33. On Baluze’s extracts see in general the Catalogue des Manuscrits de la Collec-

tion Baluze. Also, on the philosophical in›uences on the movement of mass cata-

loging and collecting, Baluze, and the Benedictines, see Barret-Kriegel, Les historiens

et la monarchie, vol. 2, pp. 205–25. Also see Jolly, “Les bibliothèques bénédictines,”

pp. 29–39.

34. Baluze to Colbert, February 17, 1671, BNF MS Baluze, 100, fol. 8v: “L’Or-

dre qu’on a toujours tenu pour les copies des registres du Thresor des Chartes est

que l’on marque à la marge de chaque registre les pieces qu’on croit valoir la peine

d’estre copiées. Autrefois, lorsque je suivois l’ordre de M. de Carcavy y avoit es-

tably, je marquois les ennoblissments, les Contrats de Marriages entre les Grands, les


Traictez de Paix ou d’alliances, les concessions & dons faits par nos Roys aux parens

des Papes, les privilèges accordez aux Eglises, aux provinces, aux villes, & à divers

mestiers, & en‹n les remissions où il se trouvoit quelque clause considerable, &

quelques legitimations de bastards dont les noms & familles estoient connus. J’ob-

serve le mesme ordre, [fol. 9r] mais avec plus de modération depuis que Mon-

seigneur m’a fait l’Honneur de s’expliquer à moy sur ce sujet.” Delisle remarks that

the library registers still contain the marks made on them by Baluze and Colbert (Le

Cabinet des Manuscrits, vol. 1, p. 440). See also “Extraits de manuscripts de la Biblio-

thèque du Roi,” BNF MS Baluze 63.

35. Catalogue des Manuscrits de la Collection Baluze, p. xvii. This catalog com-

prises an immense amount of “extracts” made from Baluze’s archival research. Col-

bert’s medieval manuscript collection is today called the “Cinq-Cents Colbert.”

36. For Baluze’s inventories of Colbert’s and other libraries, see BNF MS

Mélanges Colbert 88–100. For example, Baluze made an inventory of the Trésor

des Chartes de Paris (Mélanges Colbert, 92–100).

37. Colbert’s ‹le on the régale is found in BNF MS Mélanges Colbert 3. For the

list prepared by Gallois but written by Colbert see “Liste des auteurs qui ont traité

de la Régale,” 1675, BNF MS Baluze, 177, fol 268. For Colbert’s request to Gallois,

see fol. 14. They are reproduced in Colbert, Lettres, vol. 6, p. 441.

38. Colbert to the abbé Gallois, 1675, BNF MS Baluze, 177, fol. 16. Also see

Lettres, vol. 6, p. 103: “S’il y a quelque trace que le droit de régale fust estably en

Angleterre avant cette conqueste, citer les auteurs et les passages qui en parleront. Il

faut me rapporter tous mes mémoires avec les réponses. . . . Il faut surtout examiner

s’il y a des preuves de ce droit dans la première et dans la seconde race. Il faut avoir

quelques exemples des éveques et abbés qui ont servy les rois des deux premières

races dans leurs armées. . . . Sçavoir pour quel sujet le parlement de Paris ‹t des re-

monstrances au Roy Louis XI sur le droit de régale. Il faut chercher le premier livre

des Capitulaires de Louis le Débonnaire, chapitre LXXXIV. . . . Examiner dans les

mémoires du clergé si, environ l’an 1644, le clergé ne ‹t pas instance au roy de don-

ner une déclaration pour la collation des béné‹ces dépendans des abbayes vacantes.”

39. Colbert to Baluze, August 1, 1675, Lettres, vol. 6, pp. 114–15: “Points des

Exemptions à Examiner. Par quells termes de bulles, constitutions et autres, les

évesques sont empeschés d’entrer dans les églises exemptes avec leurs crois et autres

marques de leur dignité, donner la bénédiction au peuple, of‹cier ponti‹calement.

. . . Examiner les privilèges de la juridiction quasy épiscopale à l’égard des cathé-

drales, des abbayes et autres qui pourvoyent à des curés sujettes à cette juridiction.

. . . Véri‹er par quel édit ou ordonnance, à cause des troubles à la religion et des pil-

lages des églises et abbayes, les ecclésiastiques ont esté dispensés de rapporter leurs

titres.”

40. Baluze to Gallois, August 2, 1675, BNF MS Baluze 177, fol. 25v.

41. The ‹le is BNF MS Mélanges Colbert 3.

42. Colbert to Baluze August 12, 1675, in Lettres, vol. 7, pp. 80–81: “Je vous

renvoye ce mémoire écrit de vostre main. Faites-moy sçavoir si les copies de ces

titres m’ont esté envoyées ou si c’est seulement l’extrait d’un inventaire dont je n’ay

point les copies, a‹n que je puisse les demander à M. Godefroy. Gardez avec soin la

pièce que je vous envoye: il faudra la mettre dans le premier volume de manuscrits


que vous ferez relier. Sur la liste des contrats de mariage, il faudroit en faire une fort

exacte [inventaire?] de tous les contrats que j’ay dans ma bibliothèque, et rechercher

avec le temps tous ceux que je n’ay point pour les avoir. Il faudrait aussy faire la

mesme chose des testamens.”

43. Colbert to Baluze, November 25, 1672, Lettres, vol. 6, p. 98: “Je prie M.

Baluze de me faire un agrégé succinct de tout ce qui concerne la sancti‹cation des

Saints, sçavoir: L’usage de la primitive Église sur cette matière, les sentimens des

Pères et des quatre premiers conciles généraux; En quel temps les festes des Saints

ont commencé; Par quelle autorité les principaux Saints ont esté reconnus; si par le

consentement universel; par les conciles; ou par l’autorité des papes; En quel temps

les papes ont commencé de sancti‹er. Qu’est-ce qui est nécessaire pour cela, et quels

en sont les mémoires?”

44. BNF MS Mélanges Colbert 3, fols. 9–41.

45. Ibid., fol. 36v: “Z—L’on voit la garde des églises vacantes con‹ée en 1er

lieu aux roys.”

46. Ibid., fols. 1–4.

47. Ibid., fol. 81.

48. Ibid., fols. 81 to 96 contain short heavily referenced histories of the régale.

Fol. 105 contains what looks to be the draft of a royal proclamation, covered with

marginal reference letters so it could be dissected and used quickly.

49. Ibid., fols. 97–103 are a summary of a treatise on the régale, with chapter

summaries and text references.

50. BNF MS Baluze, 177, fol. 25v.

51. Baluze might have sent this back with his own set of questions and docu-

ment queries for Colbert (ibid., fol. 71).

52. BNF MS Mélanges Colbert 3, fol. 139.

53. Ibid., fol. 114.

54. Ibid., fols. 153–56.

55. Colbert, “Mémoire au roi sur la Régale,” Lettres, vol. 6, p. 104: “Et comme,

en toute sorte de droits, on recherche toujours le titre et la possession . . . c’est-à-

dire ce qui peut avoir attaché ce droit à la couronne de Vostre Majesté, ç’a esté, Sire,

la matière de la recherche et de la curiosité des plus habiles hommes du royaume

depuis plusieurs siècles.”

56. Ibid., p. 105: “Le roy Philippe de Valois, dans son ordonnance de 1334,

fonde principalement la régale sur cette possession [principle of long possession], et

Choppin a suivy en partie cette opinion.”

57. Ibid., pp. 106–7: “La huitième opinion rassemble toutes les autres et croit

que ce droit vient de la souveraineté de garde, de patronage, de possession de ‹ef

tout ensemble. . . . Il y en a des preuves certaines en grand nombre dans Grégoire

de Tours et dans le recueil des formules de Marculphe. C’est l’opinion de M. Dupin

et du Père Sirmond en la préface d’une Collection d’anciennes formules concernant

les élections. Il dit que Louis le Débonnaire fut le premier roy qui restitua à l’Église

la puissance d’élire ses pasteurs, et que son ordonnance se trouve au premier livre de

ses Capitulaires, chap. LXXXIV [à lire].”

58. Ibid., pp. 112–13.

59. He also used his knowledge of the literature on the régale to help him cen-


sor works. See Colbert to the Lieutenant of Police, Le Reynie, May 25, 1682, in

Depping, Correspondance administrative, vol. 4, p. 119.

60. Aimé-Georges Martimort, Le Gallicanisme de Bossuet (Paris: Éditions du

Cerf, 1953), pp. 361–516.

61. See the “Declaration du Clergé de 1682,” in Documents relatifs aux rapports

du clergé avec la royauté de 1682 à 1705 ed. Léon Mention (Paris: A. Picard et ‹ls,

1893–1903), pp. 27–31. Colbert personally oversaw the organization of the Assem-

bly of the Clergy and made sure that his intendants would crush any opposition (see

Colbert’s orders to the intendants in Gérin, Recherches historiques sur l’Assemblée, pp.

125–27). On Colbert’s management of the clergy’s reception of the edict of 1682,

see Colbert’s “Mémoire” on the edict in Depping, Correspondance administrative, vol.

4, pp. 126–31. See Colbert’s letters to the duke of Estrées, ambassador to Rome be-

tween 1677 and 1680 in Gérin, Recherches historiques sur l’Assemblée, pp. 182–83. See

Colbert to d’Estrées, bishop of Laon, March 8, 1682, in Lettres, vol. 6, pp. 160–61

and his letter to Harlay of March 20, on the following pages, 161–62. On Colbert’s

involvement with the negotiation with the papacy see his letters to the papal am-

bassador, Gérin, Recherches historiques sur l’Assemblée, pp. 184–86. While negotiating

with the pope, Colbert also manages to get the pope to grant his son an of‹ce in the

church.

62. François, abbé Ledieu, Mémoires & Journal sur la vie et les ouvrages de Bossuet;

publiés pour la première fois d’apres les manuscrits autographes, et accompagnés d’une introd.

et de notes par M. l’Abbé Guettée, 4 vols. (Paris: Didier, 1856–57), vol. 1, p. 161:

“surtout depuis M. Colbert, on avait eu cette politique d’humilier Rome, et de

s’af‹rmer contre elle, et que tout le conseil avait suivi ce dessein.” Joseph de Maistre

insists on this point in his ultramontane defense, De l’Église gallicane dans son rapport

avec le souverain Pontife (Louvain: Vanlinthout et Vandenzande, 1821), p. 96. Also see

Gérin, Recherches historiques sur l’Assemblée, p. 16.

63. Colbert had corresponded with Le Vayer concerning documentation on re-

ligious matters in 1682, Lettres, vol. 6, p. 174.

64. Ibid., vol. 2, part 1, p. 207.

chapter 10

1. Clément, in Lettres, vol. 7, p. xxxviii.

2. Seignelay to Louis XIV, September 2, 1683, in Lettres, vol. 7, pp.

xxxviii–xxxix.

3. Colbert’s reasons for choosing Desmaretz as his ministerial successor were

clearly complex. He was known to be lazy, was despised by Seignelay, and Colbert

apparently disavowed him on his deathbed. Saint-Simon, Mémoires, 41 vols., ed. A.

de Boislisle (Paris: Hachette, 1890), vol. 7, p. 132.

4. Ibid., pp. 513. Cited in Rothkrug, Opposition to Louis XIV, pp. 212–13:

“Quand ils vous demanderont en particulier quelque éclaircissement sur quelque

nature d’affaire particulière, l’avis de M. de Croissy et le mien est que vous leur don-

niez de bonne grace. Mais, pour les instructions générales sur les ‹nances, nous

croyons que vous vous en pouvez dispenser.”

5. Claude Le Pelletier, “Mémoire présenté au Roi par M. Le Pelletier, après


avoir quitté les ‹nances, par lequel il rend compte de son administration,” June

1691, in Correspondance des Contrôleurs Généraux des Finances avec les Intendants, ed.

Boislisle, 3 vols. (Paris, 1874–97), vol. 1, p. 544: “Je reconnus que M. Colbert avoit

renfermé en luy-mesme toute la direction des ‹nances, et qu’il n’y avoit personne

qui fust dans la suite des affaires et en estat de m’en instruire. . . . Je crus que les reg-

istres sur lesquels V. M. écrivoit m’apprendroient sûrement et précisément l’estat du

Trésor royal; mais je trouvay que le rapport n’estoit pas exact entre les registres et la

caisse du Trésor royal. Je ne rencontray pas non plus dans les papiers de M. Colbert

que l’on me remit toute l’instruction dont j’avois besoin, et je ne pus me faire don-

ner ni plus de papiers ni plus d’éclaircissemens.”

6. Lionel Rothkrug describes this interministerial con›ict in detail: Opposition

to Louis XIV, pp. 212–25. Mémain shows explicitly that after the death of Colbert,

Seignelay was unable to effectively manage naval industrial projects without the

control and cooperation of the ministry of ‹nance (La marine de guerre, p. 265).

7. See Lister, Journey to Paris, p. 128.

8. Colbert brie›y managed the Ministry of Foreign Affairs from 1679 to 1680.

9. Croissy’s archival ‹les look just like Colbert’s document compilation note-

books. See Armand Baschet, Histoire du Dépot des Archives des affaires étrangères (Paris:

Plon, 1875), pp. 75–82.

10. Kerhave, Roudot, and Tanguy, La Bretagne en 1665, p. 23.

11. Baschet, Dépot des Archives des affaires étrangères, p. 83; Jean Baillou, ed, Les

Affaires étrangères et le Corps Diplomatique Francais, 2 vols. (Paris: CNRS, 1984), vol.

1, p. 109; Guy Thuillier, La première école d’administration: L’Académie Politique de

Louis XIV (Geneva: Droz, 1996). The Académie Politique was disbanded after the

death of de Torcy. Also see Klaits, Printed Propaganda in general on de Torcy’s secret

information system and its relationship to propaganda. On the espionage informa-

tion network during the ministry of de Torcy see Bely, chap. 2.

12. Delisle, Le Cabinet des Manuscrits, vol. 1, p. 485; La Roncière and Bondois,

Catalogue des Mélanges Colbert, introduction, p. iii.

13. La Roncière and Bondois, Catalogue des Mélanges Colbert, pp. xv–xxii.

14. What remained is held in four boxes in the Luynes Family collection dis-

cussed by Inès Murat.

15. John A. Lynn, Giant of the Grand Siècle: The French Army, 1610–1715 (Cam-

bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997).

16. Thierry Sarmant and Mathieu Stoll, “Le style de Louvois. Formulaire ad-

ministratif et expression personnelle dans la correspondance du secrétaire d’État de

la guerre de Louis XIV,” Annuaire-bulletin de la Société de l’histoire de France (1999): pp

57–77.

17. Boislisle, Correspondance des Contrôleurs Généraux, vol. 1, p. iv.

18. Ronald D. Martin, “The Marquis de Chamlay, Friend and Con‹dential

Advisor to Louis XIV: The Early Years, 1650–1691,” Ph.D. diss., University of Cal-

ifornia at Santa Barbara, 1972; and Jean-Philippe Cénat, “Le Marquis de Chamlay,”

Mémoire de DEA, Université de Paris I.

19. Andé Corvisier, Louvois (Paris: Fayard, 1983), pp. 235–40, 326–31.

20. Charles Frostin, Les Pontchartrain, ministres de Louis XIV. Alliances et réseau


d’in›uence sous l’ancien régime (Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2006); Bar-

ret-Kriegel, Les historiens et la monarchie, vol. 4, pp. 104–6. Rothkrug, Opposition to

Louis, XIV, chap. 3, describes this process. Italian states had a tradition of insisting

that ministerial documents remain the property of the state, as in the case of the

Venice, where ambassadors and ministers had to give their papers to archives. State

documents were also readily available on the black market. On the career of a

Venetian diplomat and his state papers see Aidée Scala, Girolamo Rorario: Un uman-

ista diplomatico del Cinquecento e i suoi Dialoghi (Florence: Olschki Editore, 2004), pp.

25–41.

21. Frostin, Les Pontchartrain.


23. Godefroy-Ménilglaise, Les savants Godefroy, p. 165.


25. Ibid., pp. 298–301.

26. Boislisle, Correspondance des Contrôleurs Généraux, vol. 1, p. iii.

27. Pim den Boer, History as a Profession: The Study of History in France,

1818–1914 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998), pp. 78–85; Jennifer

Milligan, “Making Archivists: History and the State in the Archives of the Second

Empire,” Ph.D. diss., Rutgers University, 2007. On the culture of the French

archives and Bibliothèque Nationale see Lara Moore, The Ecole des Chartes and the

Organization of Archives and Libraries in France, 1820–1870 (Duluth, MN: Litwin

Books, 2008).

28. Boislisle, Correspondance des Contrôleurs Généraux, vol. 1, p. xx.

29. Fénelon, Écrits et lettres politiques publiés sur les manuscrits autographes, ed. Ch.

Urbain (Paris: Éditions Bossard, 1920), pp. 101–5.

30. Madelaine Danielou, Fénelon et le duc de Bourgogne. Étude d’une éducation

(Paris: Bloud & Gay, 1955).

31. Boulainvilliers, État de la France, vol. 1, p. 54: “L’esprit de servitude est

généralement répanduë dans ces Escrits; mais au fond qu’entendoient-ils, ces Inten-

dans, par le nom vague de Secret de l’Etat? Ce terme peut être d’usage par raport à

une négociation & à une entreprise, qui sont des secrets, mais le Gouvernement

n’en a point, & n’en peut avoir; les ressorts en sont connus de tous les hommes; en

est-il d’autres que l’Etablissement des Loix & leur observation? Le pouvoir &

l’obéissance? L’amour ou la crainte? Les passions ont des mistéres & des secrets; un

Gouvernement légitime n’en connoit point; mais si les Ministres pillent, s’ils ont des

intérêts particuliers, j’avouërai pour lors qu’il y a des secrets inconnus dans le Gou-

vernement, & qu’ils ont une espèce de raison d’employer & la force & le mistére

pour en dérober la vûë autant au Prince qu’aux sujets, également intéressez à ceux

qu’il n’y en ait point.”

32. Ibid., p. 49: “les ambitions et les mouvemens intriguans, de ces pratiques se-

cretes qui conduisent à la fortune par des routes justement suspectes; en‹n ceux [les

Intendants] qui se ›attent d’une plus grande protection.”

33. Henri, Count de Boulainvilliers, Histoire de l’ancien governement de France

(Amsterdam: Aux Dépens de la Compagnie, 1727), p. 20.

34. Ibid., p. 17: “C’étoit une nécessité indispensable de redresser de tels Mé-


moires, tantot par le changement du texte & des matiéres, tantot par une réfutation

sérieuse des erreurs qu’ils contiennent, tantot par la voye de l’ironie & de la réduc-

tion à l’absurdité: métode la plus aisée à l’égard de tels Ecrivains, qui ont abusé or-

dinairement des notions les plus communes pour faire servilement leur cour.”

35. Ibid., p. 21.

36. Jacques Necker, Compte rendu au roi, (Paris, 1781), pp. 3–4:

Mais une autre cause du grand credit de l’Angleterre, c’est, n’en doutons

point, la notoriété publique à laquelle est soumis l’état de ses ‹nances.

Chaque année cet état est presenté au Parlement, on l’imprime ensuite; et

tous les préteurs connaissent ainsi regulièrement la proportion qu’on

maintient entre les revenues et les dépenses, ils ne sont point troublés par

ces soupçons et ces craintes chimériques, campagnes inséparables de

l’obscurité.

En France, on a fait constamment un mystère de l’état des ‹nances; ou

si quelquefois on en a parlé, c’est dans des préambules d’édits, et toujours

au moment où l’on vouloit emprunter; mais ces paroles, trop souvent les

mêmes pour être toujours variés, ont dû nécessairement perdre de leur

autorité, et les homes d’experience n’y croient plus que sous la caution,

pour ainsi dire, du caractère moral du minister des ‹nances.

37. On the emergence of royal opposition and even radical philosophy in the

world of parliamentary scholars see Lionel Gossman, Medievalism and the Ideologies of

the Enlightenment: The World and Work of La Curne de Sainte-Palaye (Baltimore: Johns

Hopkins Press, 1968). On the monarchy’s attempts to reorganize its chartes, see Di-

eter Gembicki, Histoire et politique à la ‹n de l’Ancien Régime: Jacob-Nicolas Moreau

1717–1803 (Paris: Nizet, 1979). On the archival con›ict between the Parlement and

the monarchy, and the essential point that feudal legal documents were a source of

political ideology, see Keith Michael Baker, Inventing the French Revolution (Cam-

bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 31–85. On the parliamentarian use

of medieval legal archives as a source of secret knowledge to be used against the

monarchy and the rise of eighteenth-century constitutionalism, see the essential

work by Francesco Di Donato, L’ideologia dei robins nella Francia dei Lumi: Consti-

tuzionalismo e assolutismo nell’esperienza politico-instituzionale della magistratura di antico

regime 1715–1788 (Naples: Edizioni Scienti‹che Italiane, 2003), and his “Constitu-

tionnalisme et idéologie de robe: L’évolution de la théorie juridico-politique de

Murard et Le Paige à Chanlaire et Mably,” Annales HSS 4 (1997): pp. 821–52. On

the status of legal culture in the eighteenth century, see David Avrom Bell, Lawyers

and Citizens: The Making of a Political Elite in Old Regime France (Oxford: Oxford

University Press, 1994). Also on the same dynamics in England, see Alessandro

Arienzo, Alle origini del conservatorismo politico inglese: Geore Savile e la Retaurazione

Stuart (Florence: Centro Editoriale Toscano, 2004).

38. Darnton, The Business of Enlightenment, pp. 9–13.

39. On enlightened despotism and its ever paradoxical role in the rise of moder-

nity see Fritz Hartung, “Der aufgeklärte Absolutismus,” Historische Zeitschrift 180

(1955): pp. 15–42; John G. Gagliardo, Enlightened Despotism (New York: Harlan


Davidson, 1967); Leonard Krieger, An Essay on the Theory of Enlightened Despotism

(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975); Charles Ingrao, “The Problem of

‘Enlightened Absolutism’ and the German States: Politics and Society in the Holy

Roman Empire, 1500–1806,” Journal of Modern History 58 suppl. (1986): pp. 161–80;

Hamish Scott, ed., Enlightened Absolutism: Reform and Reformers in Later Eighteenth-

Century Europe (London: Macmillan, 1990).

40. See Bayley, Empire and Information.

41. On the in›uence of Colbert’s Intendants in Bourbon Spain see Abbad and

Ozanam, Les intendants espagnols; and Emmanuelli, Un mythe de l’absolutisme bour-

bonien. On the emergence of a French-style royal library and system of scienti‹c

academies within it in eighteenth-century Spain see Fernando Alvarez Bouza and

Elena Santiago Páez, eds., La Real Biblioteca Pública 1711–1760 de Filipe V a Fernando

VI (Madrid: Biblioteca Nacional, 2004), p. 48.

42. Marco Carassi and Isabella Massabò Ricci, “Gli archivi del principe. L’or-

ganizzazione della memoria per il governo dello Stato,” in Il Tesoro del principe.

Titoli, carte, memorie per il governo dello Stato, ed. Marco Carassi, Angela Griseri, Is-

abella Mossabò Ricci, and Elisa Mongiano (Turin: Archivio di Stato di Torino,

1989), pp. 21–39. This article also contains the ‹nest description of how, reacting to

the French state, Victor Amadeus II built his state archives. See p. 21 for Victor

Amadeus’s enunciation of his new centralized archival policy: “Nous marquons la

con‹ance que nous avons en vous, en vous commettant la garde et la direction de

nos Archives Royalles qui sont le depôt des Chartres et papiers principaux de nôtre

Couronne, étant persuadé que vous observerez non seulement une ‹delité invio-

lable dans la garde de ce trésor mais aussy une attention toute particulière à bien

conserver les papiers, Bulles, Brefs, Diplomes, Investitures, Traittés, Contracts de

mariage, Testaments et autres titres qui sont contenus dans les dictes Archives et qui

y seront remis de tems à autre.” On the mingling of a printed book library as a man-

agement tool for the state archive see in the same work, Francesco Malaguzzi, “La

Biblioteca Antica,” pp. 40–48. Also see Chris Storrs, War, Diplomacy, and the Rise of

Savoy, 1690–1720 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), p. 177

43. Geoffrey Symcox, Victor Amadeus II: Absolutism in the Savoyard State,

1675–1730 (London: Thames and Hudson, 1983). For the use of medieval charters,

historical consciousness, and an administrative archive in Piedmont, see Giuseppe

Ricuperati, Le avventure di uno stato “ben amministrato”: Rappresentazioni e realtà nello

spazio sabaudo tra Ancien Régime e Rivoluzione (Turin: Editrice Tirrenia Stampatori,

1994), chaps. 1–2; “Carlo Emanuele I: Il formarsi di un’immagine storiogra‹ca dai

contemporanei al primo Settecento,” in Politica e cultura dell’età di Carlo Emanuele I,

ed. Mariarosa Masoero, Sergio Mamino and Claudio Rosso (Florence: Olschki,

1999), pp. 3–22; and Lo stato sabaudo nel settecento: Dal trionfo delle burocrazie alla crisi

d’antico regime (Turin: UTET Libreria, 2001), p. 121.

44. Symcox, Victor Amadeus II, p. 57.

45. Anne-Robert-Jacques Turgot, Éloge de Gournay, in Turgot, Oeuvres, ed.

Eugène Daire, 2 vols. (Osnabrück: Otto Zeller, 1966), vol. 1, p. 274.

46. Saint-Just, “Report to the Convention on Behalf of the Committee of Pub-

lic Safety, October 10th, 1793,” in The Old Regime and the French Revolution, trans.


Caroline Ford, ed. Keith Michael Baker (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,

1987), pp. 360–61.

47. James Madison, “Letter to W. T. Barry,” August 4, 1822 in The Writings of

James Madison, ed. Gaillard P. Hunt (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1910), vol. 9,

p. 103.


Bibliography

primary sources

Manuscript

Archives Nationale de France, Série B2

Archives Nationale de France, Col. C11A 1–4

Bibliothèque Nationale de France, MS Collection Baluze

Bibliothèque Nationale de France, MS Mélanges Colbert

Bibliothèque Nationale de France, MS 500 Colbert

Bibliothèque Nationale de France, MS Français

Bibliothèque Nationale de France, MS Latin

Anon. “Mémoires de l’establissement des Secrétaires d’Estat et des Clercs, Notaires

et Secrétaires du Roy et Secrétaires des Finances qui faisoient le fonction des Se-

crétaires d’Estat, avant l’establissement desdicts secrétaires d’Estat en titre

d’of‹ce, et leur reproduction au nombre de quatre faitte par le roy Henry 2 en

l’année 1547. Avec la suitte des Secrétaires d’Estat selon la datte de leurs provi-

sions et receptions, depuis ladicte année 1547 jusques à present 1647.” Biblio-

thèque Nationale de France, MS Cinq-Cents Colbert 136, fols. 347 ss. and MS

Fr. 18236, fols. 87 ss.

Boivin, Jean. Mémoire pour l’histoire de la Bibliothèque du Roy. 1687–88. Bibliothèque

National de France, MS Fr. 22571, fols. 438–91.

Colbert, Jean-Baptiste. Correspondence. University of Pennsylvania Rare Books,

MS Coll 578.

Foucault, Nicolas-Joseph. “Histoire des secretaires.” Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal, MS

5298.

“Inventaire des biens de feu Monseigneur de Croissy, Ministre et Secrétaire d’Etat

du 7 août 1696.” Archives Nationale de France, Minutier Central, étude

CXLIII, liasse 20.

243

“Mémoire des manuscripts de le bibliothèque de M. Fouquet, qui se vendent à Paris

chez Denys Thierry, Frédéric Léonard, Jean Dupuis, rue Saint-Jacques, et

Calude Barbin, au Pallais.” Bibliothèque de l’Institut, MS AA 1862.

Williams, Robert. “Notes Concerning Trade 1632–1654.” University of Pennsyl-

vania, MS Codex 207.

Printed Sources

Bacon, Francis. A Critical Edition of the Major Works. Ed. Brian Vickers. Oxford: Ox-

ford University Press, 1996.

Baluze, Étienne. Capitularia regum Francorum. Paris: François Muguet, 1677.

Baluze, Étienne. Histoire des Capitulaires des Rois François sour la première et seconde

Race sur l’édition de 1677. The Hague, 1755.

Bernier, François. Voyage dans les États du Grand Mogol. Ed. France Bhattacharya.

Paris: Fayard, 1981.

Bodin, Jean. Les six livres de la République. Ed. Gérard Mairet. Paris: Livres de Poche,

1993.

Boislisle, Arthur de, ed. Mémoires des Intendants sur l’État des généralités. Paris: Im-

primérie Nationale, 1881.

Boulainvilliers, Henri, Comte de. Histoire de l’ancien governement de France. Amster-

dam: Aux Dépens de la Compagnie, 1727.

Boulainvilliers, Henri, Comte de. État de la France. 7 vols. London: T. W. Wood

and S. Palmer, 1737.

Bourgoin, Jean. La chasse aux larrons, ou avant-coureur de l’histoire de la Chambre de Jus-

tice. Des livres du bien public, et autres oeuvres faits pour la recherche des ‹nanciers, & de

leurs fauteurs. Paris, 1618.

Bourgoin, Jean. Les desirs du peuple françois pour le bien de l’Estat. Et les moyens pour

reprimer les abus, & les Mal-Versations qui se commettent au maniement des Finances.

1625.

Bracciolini, Poggio. Two Renaissance Book Hunters: The Letters of Poggius Bracciolini to

Nicolaus de Niccolis. Trans. and ed. Phyllis Walter and Gordan Goodhart. New

York: Columbia University Press, 1974.

Casaubon, Meric. Generall Learning. Ed. Richard Serjeantson. Cambridge: Renais-

sance Texts from Manuscript, 1999.

Chapelain, Jean. Lettres. Ed. Philippe Tamizey de Larroque. 2 vols. Paris: Im-

primerie Nationale, 1880–83.

Charlas, Antoine. Causa regaliae penitus explicata. Toulouse, 1679.

Choisy, François-Timoléon, l’abbé de. Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire de Louis XIV

par feu M. l’abbé de Choisy de l’Académie française suivis de Mémoires de l’abbé de

Choisy habillé en femme. Ed. Georges Mongrédin. Paris: Mercure de France,

1966.

Colbert, Jean-Baptiste. Lettres, instructions et memoires. Ed. Pierre Clément. 7 vols.

Paris: Imprimerie Impériale, 1861–70.

Colbert, Jean-Baptiste, marquis de Seignelay. Positiones mathematicae de mundi syste-

mate/Positiones mathematicae ex architectura military. Paris: Anon., 1668.

244 bibliography

Cujas, Jacques. Paratitia in libros IX. Codicis Iustiani repetitæ prælectionis. Paris: Jean

Jost, 1541.

D’Alembert, Jean, and Denis Diderot, eds. Encyclopédie, ou Dictionnaire raisonné des

sciences des arts et des métiers, pour une société des gens de letters. 17 vols. Neufchâtel:

Samuel Faulche, 1765.

de Maistre, Joseph. De l’Église gallicane dans son rapport avec le souverain Pontife. Lou-

vain: Vanlinthout et Vandenzande, 1821.

de Sandras, Gatien Coutilz. La vie de Jean-Baptiste Colbert, ministre d’état sous Louis

XIV. Cologne, 1695.

Delamare, Nicolas. Traité de la Police. 4 vols. Paris: M. Brunet, 1719–38.

Depping, G. B., ed. Correspondance administrative sous le règne de Louis XIV. 2 vols.

Paris: Imprimérie Nationale, 1851.

Du Tillet, Jean, Sieur de la Bussière. Pour la majorité du roi treschrestien contre les escrits

des rebelles. Paris: G. Morel, 1560.

Du Tillet, Jean, Sieur de la Bussière. Recueil des roys de France, leurs couronne et maison.

2 vols. Paris: Jean Houzé, 1607.

Dupuy, Pierre. Histoire du différend d’entre le pape Boniface VIII et Philippes le Bel roy de

France. Paris: Sebastien et Gabriel Cramoisy, 1655.

Dupuy, Pierre. Traité de la majorité de nos rois et des régences du royaume, avec les preuves

tirées tant du Trésor des chartes du roy que des registres du parlement et autres lieux; en-

semble un traité des prééminences du parlement de Paris, par M. Dupuy. Paris: chez la

Vve Du Puis et Edme Martin, 1655.

Dupuy, Pierre. Traité de la majorité de nos rois et des regences du royaume avec les preuves

tirées, tant du Tresor des Chartes du Roi, que des Registres du Parlement, & autres lieux,

et un Traité des preéminences du Parlement de Paris. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Jansons à

Waesberge, 1722.

Fénelon. Écrits et lettres politiques publiés sur les manuscrits autographes. Ed. Ch. Urbain.

Paris: Éditions Bossard, 1920.

Fléchier, Esprit. Mémoires sur les Grands-Jours d’Auvergne. Ed. Yves-Marie Bercé.

Paris: Mercure de France, 1984.

Foucault, Nicolas-Joseph. Lettres patentes avec les statuts pour l’Académie des belles-lettres

établie en la ville de Caen. (Janvier 1705.)—Discours de M. Foucault à l’ouverture de la

première séance, le 2 mars 1705.)—Réponse de M. le président de Croisiles, . . . au dis-

cours de M. Foucault. Caen: A. Caveller, 1705.

Foucault, Nicolas-Joseph. Mémoires. Ed. F. Baudry. Paris: Imprimerie Impériale,

1862.

Foucault, Nicolas-Joseph. L’Intendance de Caen en 1700 . . . pour l’instruction de M. le

duc de Bourgogne. Ed. Pierre Gouhier. Paris: Éditions du CTHS, 1998.

Furetière, Antoine. Dictionnaire Universel. Rotterdam: A & L Leers, 1690.

Godefroy, Théodore. Le cérémonial françois . . . contenant les cérémonies observées en

France. Paris: S. Cramoisy et G. Cramoisy, 1649.

Godefroy, Théodore. Traitez touchant les droits du roy très chrestien sur plusieurs estats et

seigneuries possédées par divers princes voisins et pour prouver qu’il tient à juste titre

plusieurs provinces contestées par les princes estrangers. Recherches pour monstrer que

plusieurs provinces et villes du royaume sont du domaine du roy. Usurpations faites sur les

Bibliography 245

trois éveschez, Metz, Toul, Verdun, et quelques autres traitez concernant des matières

publiques . . . Par M. Dupuy et T. Godefroy. Paris: A. Courbé, 1655.

Gracián, Baltasar. L’Homme de cour. Trans. and ed. Abraham-Nicolas Amelot de La

Houssaye. Paris: Veuve Martin and Boudot, 1684.

Gros de Boze, Claude. Histoire de l’Académie Royale des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres. 3

vols. Paris: H-L Guerin, 1740.

Guizot, History of France. 8 vols. Trans. Robert Black. Boston: Aldine, 1886.

François, abbé Ledieu. Mémoires & Journal sur la vie et les ouvrages de Bossuet; publiés

pour la première fois d’apres les manuscrits autographes, et accompagnés d’une introd. et

de notes par M. l’Abbé Guettée. 4 vols. Paris: Didier, 1856–57.

Lister, Martin. A Journey to Paris in the Year 1698. Ed. Raymon Phineas Stearns. Ur-

bana: University of Illinois Press, 1967.

Loménie de Brienne, Henri-Auguste de. Mémoires. 3 vols. Amsterdam: Jean-

Frédéric Bernard, 1719.

Louis XIV. Mémoires for the Instruction of the Dauphin. Trans. and ed. Paul Sonnino.

New York: Free Press, 1970.

Madison, James. The Writings of James Madison. Ed. Gaillard P. Hunt. New York:

G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1910.

Madame de Maintenon. Lettres. Paris: Léopold Collin, 1806.

Montfaucon, Bernard de. L’antiquité expliquée et représentée en ‹gures. 5 vols. Paris: F.

Delaulne, 1719–24.

Morales, Ambrosio de. Viage de Ambrosio de Morales por orden del Rey D. Phelipe II.

Para reconocer Las Reliquias de Santos, Sepulcros Reales, y Libros manuscritos de las

Cathedrales y Monasterios. Madrid: Ediciones Guillermo Blázquez, 1985.

Naudé, Gabriel. Le Marfore ou Discours contre les libelles. Paris: Louys Boulenger, 1620.

Naudé, Gabriel. Considérations politiques sur les coups d’Estat. Rome: 1639.

Naudé, Gabriel. Advis pour dresser une bibliothèque. Paris: Rolet Le Duc, 1644.

Naudé, Gabriel. Considérations politiques sur les coups d’état. Ed. Frédérique Marin and

Marie-Odile Perulli. Paris: Éditions de Paris, 1988.

Necker, Jacques. Compte rendu au roi. Paris, 1781.

Peiresc, Nicolas Fabri de. Lettres. Ed. Tamizey de Larroque. 7 vols. Paris, 1888–

98.

Perrault, Charles. Mémoires. Paris: Librarie des Bibliophiles, 1878.

Pithou, Pierre. Les libertez de l’Église gallicane. 2 vols. Paris, 1639.

Renaudot, Théophraste. Pièces Historiques contenant les Couriers, Mercures, Relations, et

autres semblables Observations curieuses sur l’Estat et gouvernement de France, comme il

est en la présente année, 1649. C’est comme une notice générale pour servir de fondement

à toute l’Histoire du temps. Paris: Sebastien Martin, 1649.

Ribier, Guillaume. Lettres et Mémoires d’Estat, des Roys, Princes, & Ambassadeurs.

Paris: François Clouzier & la Veuve Aubouyn, 1666.

Saint-Simon. Mémoires. Ed. A. de Boislisle. 41 vols. Paris: Hachette, 1890.

Sallo, Denis de. Le Journal des sçavans. Paris: J. Cusson, 1665.

Savary, Jacques. Le parfait négociant, ou Instruction générale pour ce qui regarde le commerce.

2 vols. Paris: Veuve Estienne & Fils, 1749.

Sévigné, Madame de. Lettres. Ed. M. Suard. Paris: Firmin Didot, 1846.

Sévigné, Madame de. Lettres. Ed. M. Monmerque. 14 vols. Paris: Hachette, 1862.

246 bibliography

Smith, Adam. Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. 2 vols. Lon-

don: W. Strahan, 1777.

Stevin, Simon. Principal Works. Ed. Ernst Crone, E. J. Dijkterhuis, R. J. Forbes,

M. G. J. Minnaert, and A. Pannekoek. 5 vols. Amsterdam: C. V. Smets and

Zeitlinger, 1966.

Sully, Maximilien de Béthune, duc de. Mémoires des sages et royalles oeconomies d’Es-

tat, domestiques, politiques et militaires de Henry le Grand, l’exemplaire des roys, le

prince des vertus, des armes et des loix et le père en effet de ses peuples françois: et des servi-

tudes utiles, obéissances convenables et administrations loyales. Amsterdam: Jacques

Bouquet, 1632.

Spanheim, Ézéchiel Freiherr von. Rélation de la cour de France en 1690. Ed. Charles

Shefer. Paris: Libraries Renouard, 1882.

Tribonian. Iustiniani perpetvo avgvsti institutionum iuris ciuilis compositarum per Triboni-

anum virum magni‹cum & exquæstore sacri Palatij, & Theophilum & Dorotheum viros

illustres & antecessores Libri Quatuor. Lyon: Gulielmum Rouillium, 1571.

Turgot, Anne-Robert-Jacques. Oeuvres. Ed. Eugène Daire. 2 vols. Osnabrück: Otto

Zeller, 1966.

Varillas, Antoine. Les Anecdotes de Florence, ou l’Histoire secrète de la maison de Médicis.

The Hague: chez A. Leers, 1685.

Yoo, John C. “The President’s Constitutional Authority to Conduct Military Op-

erations Against Terrorists and Nations Supporting Them.” Memorandum

Opinion for the Deputy Counsel to the President, September 25, 2001.

secondary sources

Abbad, Fabrice, and Didier Ozanam. Les intendants espagnols du XVIIIe siècle.

Madrid: Ediciones Casa de Velázquez, 1992.

Alpers, Svetlana. The Art of Describing: Dutch Art in the Seventeenth Century. Chicago:

University of Chicago Press, 1984.

Álvarez, Fernando. El escribano a la biblioteca: La civilizacíon escrita europea en la alta

Edad Moderna (siglos XV–XVII). Madrid: Síntesis, 1992.

Álvarez, Fernando, and Elena Santiago Páez, eds. La Real Biblioteca Pública 1711–1760

de Filipe V a Fernando VI. Madrid: Biblioteca Nacional, 2004.

Ambrosini, Maria Luisa. The Secret Archives of the Vatican. Boston: Little, Brown,

1969.

Ames, Glenn J. Colbert, Mercantilism, and the French Quest for Asian Trade. DeKalb:

Northern Illinois University Press, 1996.

André, Louis. Michel Le Tellier et Louvois. Geneva: Slatkine, 1974.

Arendt, Hannah. The Origins of Totalitarianism. San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jo-

vanovich, 1979.

Arienzo, Alessandro. Alle origini del conservatorismo politico inglese: Geore Savile e la Re-

taurazione Stuart. Florence: Centro Editoriale Toscano, 2004.

Auvray, Lucien, and René Poupardin. Catalogue des Manuscrits de la Collection

Baluze. Paris: Éditions Ernest Leroux, 1921.

Baillou, Jean, ed. Les Affaires étrangères et le Corps Diplomatique Francais. 2 vols. Paris:

CNRS, 1984.

Bibliography 247

Baker, Keith Michael. Inventing the French Revolution. Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-

versity Press, 1990.

Baker, Keith Michael, ed. The Old Regime and the French Revolution. Chicago: Uni-

versity of Chicago Press, 1987.

Balayé, Simone. La Bibliothèque Nationale des origines à 1800. Geneva: Droz, 1988.

Baldini, A. Enzo, ed. Aristotelismo politico e ragion di stato. Florence: Olschki Editore,

1995.

Ballon, Hillary. Louis La Vau: Mazarin’s Collège, Colbert’s Revenge. Princeton, NJ:

Princeton University Press, 1999.

Banks, Kenneth J. Chasing Empire across the Sea: Communication and the State in the

French Atlantic, 1713–1763. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2002.

Barbier, Pierre. La Fronde et des Mazarinades. Paris: Gallimard, 1956.

Baratin, Marc, and Christian Jacob, eds. Le pouvoir des bibliothèques. La mémoire des

livres en Occident. Paris: Albin Michel, 1996.

Barret, Sebastien. La mémoire et l’écrit: L’Abbaye de Cluny et ses archives. Münster: Lit,

2004.

Barret-Kriegel, Blandine. Les historiens et la monarchie. Jean Mabillon. 4 vols. Paris:

Presses Universitaires de France, 1988.

Baschet, Armand. Les Archives de Venise: Histoire de la Chancellerie secrète. Paris: Henri

Plon, 1870.

Baschet, Armand. Histoire du Dépot des Archives des affaires étrangères. Paris: Plon,

1875.

Battista, Anna Maria. Alle origini del pensiero politico libertino: Montaigne e Charron. Mi-

lan: Giuffrè, 1966.

Bautier, Robert-Henri. Chartes, sceaux et chancelleries: Études de diplomatique et de sig-

illographie médiévales. 2 vols. Paris: École des Chartes, 1990.

Baxter, Douglas Clark. Servants of the Sword: French Intendants of the Army, 1630–1670.

Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1976.

Bayley, C. A. Empire and Information: Intelligence Gathering and Social Communication

in India, 1780–1870. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.

Bec, Christian. Les marchands écrivains: Affaires et humanisme à Florence 1375–1434.

Paris: Mouton, 1967.

Becker, Peter, and William Clark, eds. Little Tools of Knowledge: Historical Essays on

Academic and Bureaucratic Practices. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press,

2001.

Beik, William. Absolutism and Society in Seventeenth-Century France: State Power and

Provincial Aristocracy in Languedoc. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,

1985.

Beik, William. Urban Protest in Seventeenth-Century France: The Culture of Retribution.

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997.

Beik, William. Louis XIV and Absolutism: A Brief Study with Documents. Boston: Bed-

fords St. Martins, 2000.

Bell, Aubrey F. G. Benito Arias Montano. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1922.

Bell, David Avrom. Lawyers and Citizens: The Making of a Political Elite in Old Regime

France. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994.

Bély, Lucien. Espions et ambassadeurs au temps de Louis XIV. Paris: Fayard, 1990.

248 bibliography

Benoît, Ernest. Recherches sur la politique coloniale de Colbert. Paris: A. Pedone Éditeur,

1902.

Bergin, Joseph. “Cardinal Mazarin and His Bene‹ces.” French History 1 (1987): pp.

3–26.

Bergin, Joseph, and Laurence Brockliss, eds. Richelieu and His Age. Oxford: Claren-

don Press, 1992.

Bernard, Auguste. Histoire de l’Imprimerie Royale du Louvre. Amsterdam: Verlag P.

Schnippers, 1966.

Bertelli, Sergio. Rebelli, libertini, ortodossi nella storiogra‹a barocca. Florence: La Nuova

Italia, 1975.

Bireley, Robert. The Counter-Reformation Prince: Anti-Machiavellism or Catholic Statecraft

in Early Modern Europe. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1980.

Birn, Raymond F. Pierre Rousseau and the Philosophes of Bouillon. Studies on Voltaire

and the Eighteenth Century 29. Geneva: Institut et Musée Voltaire, 1964.

Biget, Jean-Louis, ed. “Livres et bibliothèques XIIIe–VIe siècles.” Special issue of

the Cahiers de Fanjeaux 31. Paris: Privat, n.d.

Blair, Ann. “Humanist Methods in Natural Philosophy: The Commonplace Book.”

Journal of the History of Ideas 53 (1992): pp. 541–51.

Blair, Ann. The Theater of Nature: Jean Bodin and Renaissance Science. Princeton, NJ:


Blair, Ann. “Reading Strategies for Coping with Information Overload ca.

1550–1700.” Journal of the History of Ideas 64 (2003): pp. 11–28.

Bluche, François, ed. Dictionnaire du Grand Siècle. Paris: Fayard, 1990.

Bœuf, Estelle. La Bibliothèque parisienne de Gabriel Naudé en 1630. Les lectures d’un lib-

ertin erudit. Genève: Droz, 2007.

Boissonnade, Prosper. Colbert. Le Triomphe de l’Étatisme. La Fondation de la Supré-

matie industrielle de la France. La Dictature du Travail 1661–1683. Paris: Marcel Riv-

ière, 1931.

Bonney, Richard. “The Secret Expenses of Richelieu and Mazarin, 1624–1661.”

English Historical Review 91 (1976): pp. 825–36.

Bonney, Richard. Political Change in France under Richelieu and Mazarin, 1624–1661.

Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978.

Bonney, Richard. The King’s Debts: Finance and Politics in France, 1589–1661. Oxford:

Clarendon Press, 1981.

Bonney, Richard. “Le secret de leurs familles: The Fiscal and Social Limits of Louis

XIV’s dixième.” French History 7 (1993): pp. 383–416.

Bonney, Richard. “Les intendants de Louis XIII et Louis XIV: Agents de la réforme

‹scale?” In L’administration des ‹nances sous l’Ancien Régime, 197–217. Paris:

Comité pour l’histoire économique et ‹nancière de la France, 1996.

Bonney, Richard. “Vindication of the Fronde? The Cost of Louis XIV’s Versailles

Building Programme.” French History 21 (2006): pp. 205–25.

Borowitz, Albert. A Gallery of Sinister Perspectives: Ten Crimes and a Scandal. Kent,

Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1982.

Bos, H. J. M., ed. Studies on Christian Huygens. Lisse: Swets, 1980.

Bosher, J. F., ed. French Government and Society, 1500–1850: Essays in Memory of Al-

fred Cobban. London: Athlone Press, 1973.

Bibliography 249

Boucheron, Patrick, and Nicolas Offenstadt, eds. Questions posées à l’espace public.

Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 2007.

Bourgeon, Jean-Louis. Les Colbert avant Colbert: Destin d’une famille marchande. Paris:


Bouwsma, William J. Venice and the Defense of Republican Liberty: Renaissance Values

in the Age of the Counter Reformation. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of

California Press, 1968.

Braudel, Fernand. Civilisation materielle, économie et capitalisme, XV–XVIIIe siècle. 3

vols. Paris: Armand Colin, 1979.

Brewer, John, and Eckhart Hellmuth, eds. Rethinking Leviathan: The Eighteenth-Cen-

tury State in Britain and Germany. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.

Broglie, Emmanuel, comte de. Mabillon et la Société de L’abbaye de Saint-Germain des

Près. 2 vols. Paris: Plon, 1888.

Brown, Alison. Bartolomeo Scala, 1430–1497, Chancellor of Florence: The Humanist as

Bureaucrat. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1979.

Brown, Elizabeth A. R. “Jean Du Tillet et les archives de France.” Histoire et

Archives 2 (1997): pp. 29–63.

Brown, Harcourt. Scienti‹c Organizations in Seventeenth-Century France, 1620–1680.

New York: Russell and Russell, 1934.

Buisseret, David. Sully and the Growth of Centralized Government in France, 1598–1610.

London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1968.

Burchell, Graham, Colin Gordon, and Peter Miller, eds. The Foucault Effect: Studies

in Governmentality. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991.

Burger, Pierre-François. “Deux documents sur Amelot de La Houssaie.” Dix-Sep-

tième Siècle 131 (1981): pp. 199–202.

Burguière, André and Jacques Revel, eds. Histoire de La France. 5 vols. Paris: Seuil,

1989.

Burke, Peter. The Renaissance Sense of the Past. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1969.

Burke, Peter. Historical Anthropology of Early Modern Italy. Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 1987.

Burke, Peter. The Fabrication of Louis XIV. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992.

Burke, Peter. Venice and Amsterdam: A Study of Seventeenth-Century Elites. Cam-

bridge: Polity Press, 1994.

Burke, Peter. The Fortunes of the Courtier. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1995.

Burke, Peter. A Social History of Knowledge from Gutenberg to Diderot. Cambridge:

Polity Press, 2000.

Burke, Peter. “A Social History of Knowledge Revisited.” Modern Intellectual History

3 (2007): pp. 521–35.

Burns, J. H., and Mark Goldie, eds. The Cambridge History of Political Thought,

1450–1700. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991.

Calhoun, Craig, ed. Habermas and the Public Sphere. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1992.

Carassi, Marco, and Isabella Massabò Ricci. “Gli archivi del principe. L’organiz-

zazione della memoria per il governo dello Stato.” In Il Tesoro del principe. Titoli,

carte, memorie per il governo dello Stato, ed. Marco Carassi, Angela Griseri, Isabella

Mossabò Ricci, and Elisa Mongiano, pp. 21–39. Turin: Archivio di Stato di

Torino, 1989.

250 bibliography

Carrier, Hubert. Les Mazarinades. 2 vols. Geneva: Droz, 1989–91.

Cavaillé, Jean-Pierre. Dis/simulations. Jules-César Vanini, François La Mothe Le Vayer,

Gabriel Naudé, Louis Machon et Toquato Accetto: Religion, morale et politique au

XVIIe siècle. Paris: Honoré Champion, 2002.

Cave, Terence. The Cornucopian Text: Problems of Writing in the French Renaissance.

Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977.

Cénat, Jean-Philippe. “Le Marquis de Chamlay.” Mémoire de DEA, Université de

Paris I, 2001.

Chapron, Emmanuelle. “Bibliothèques publiques et pratiques bibliophiliques au

XVIIIe siècle: La collection d’incunables de la bibliothèque Magliabechiana de

Florence.” Revue Française d’Histoire du Livre 118–21 (2004): pp. 317–33.

Chartier, Roger. Lectures et lecteurs dans la France d’Ancien Régime. Paris: Seuil, 1987.

Chartier, Roger. The Cultural Origins of the French Revolution. Durham, NC: Duke


Chartier, Roger. L’ordre des livres. Aix-en-Provence: Alinea, 1992.

Chartier, Roger and Henri-Jean Martin, eds. Histoire de l’Édition Française. 2 vols.

Paris: Fayard/Promodis, 1989.

Chatelain, Jean-Marc. La bibliothèque de l’honnête homme. Livres, lecture et collections en

France à l’Âge classique. Paris: Bibliothèque Nationale de France, 2003.

Chéruel, Adolphe. Histoire de L’Administration Monarchique depuis l’avènement de

Philippe-Auguste jusqu’à la mort le Louis XIV. 8 vols. Paris: Dezobry, 1855.

Chéruel, Adolphe, ed. Mémoires sur la vie publique et privée de Fouquet, Surintendant des

‹nances. D’après ses lettres et des pièces inédites conservées à la Bibliothèque Impériale. 2

vols. Paris: Charpentier Éditeur, 1862.

Chéruel, Adolphe. De l’administration de Louis XIV. Geneva: Slatkine-Megariotis

Reprints, 1974.

Chéruel, Adolphe. Histoire de l’administration monarchique. 2 vols. Geneva: Slatkine-

Megariotis Reprints, 1974.

Church, William F. Constitutional Thought in Sixteenth Century France. Cambridge:

Harvard University Press, 1941.

Church, William F. Richelieu and Reason of State. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univer-

sity Press, 1973.

Clanchy, M. T. From Memory to Written Record: England, 1066–1307. Cambridge:

Harvard University Press, 1979.

Clarke, A. L. “Leibniz as a Librarian.” The Library 3 (1914): pp. 140–54.

Clark, William. Academic Charisma and the Origins of the Research University. Chicago:


Clarke, Jack A. Gabriel Naudé, 1600–1653. Hamden, CN: Archon, 1970.

Clément, Pierre. Histoire de la vie et de l’administration de Colbert. 2 vols. Paris: Guil-

laumin, 1846.

Clément, Pierre. La Police sous Louis XIV. Paris: Didier & Cie., 1866.

Clément, Pierre, ed. L’Italie en 1671. Relation d’un voyage du marquis de Seignelay.

Paris: Didier et Cie., 1867.

Cohen, Bernard S. Colonialism and Its Forms of Knowledge: The British in India.

Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996.

Colbert 1619–1683. Paris: Ministère de la Culture, 1983.

Bibliography 251

Cole, Charles Woolsey. Colbert and a Century of French Mercantilism. 2 vols. New

York: Columbia University Press, 1939.

Cole, Charles Woolsey. French Mercantilism: 1683–1700. New York: Octagon, 1971.

Collas, George. Un poète protecteur des lettres au XVIIe siècle: Jean Chapelain,

1595–1674. Paris: 1912.

Collins, James B. The State in Early Modern France. Cambridge: Cambridge Univer-

sity Press, 1995.

Contardi, Simone. La Casa di Salomone a Firenze: L’Imperiale e Reale museo di ‹sica e

storia naturale 1775–1801. Florence: Olschki, 2002.

Cornette, Joël. La mélancolie du pouvoir: Omer Talon et le procès de la raison d’état. Paris:

Fayard, 1998.

Corvisier, Andé. Louvois. Paris: Fayard, 1983.

Cosnac, Gabriel-Jules, comte de. Mazarin et Colbert. 2 vols. Paris: Plon, 1892.

Cubells, Monique. “Le Parlement de Paris pendant la Fronde.” XVIIe Siècle 35

(1957): pp. 173.

Dainville, Francois de. L’éducation des Jesuites XVI–XVIIIe siècles. Paris: Les Éditions

de Minuit, 1978.

Dalberg-Acton, John, ed. The Cambridge Modern History. 13 vols. Cambridge: Cam-

bridge University Press, 1934.

Damien, Robert. Bibliothèque et état: Naissance d’une raison politique dans la France du

XVIIe siècle. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1995.

Danielou, Madelaine. Fénelon et le duc de Bourgogne. Étude d’une éducation. Paris:

Bloud & Gay, 1955.

Danner, Mark. “The Secret Way to War.” New York Review of Books, June 9, 2005.

Darnton, Robert. The Business of Enlightenment: A Publishing History of the Ency-

clopédie, 1775–1800. Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press,

1979.

Darnton, Robert. The Great Cat Massacre and Other Episodes in French Cultural His-

tory. New York: Vintage, 1984.

Darnton, Robert. The Forbidden Best-Sellers of Pre-Revolutionary France. New York:

Norton, 1995.

Darnton, Robert. “An Early Information Society: News and the Media in Eigh-

teenth-Century Paris.” American Historical Review 1 (2000): pp. 1–35.

Daubresse, Sylvie. Le parlement de Paris, ou la voix de la raison 1559–1589. Geneva:

Droz, 2005.

de Roover, Raymond. The Rise and Decline of the Medici Bank, 1397–1494. Cam-

bridge: Harvard University Press, 1963.

Delaborde, Henri-François, comte. Les Archives royales depuis la mort de saint Louis

jusqu’à Pierre d’Étampes. Nogent-le-Rotrou: Daupeley-Gouverneur, 1908.

Delaborde, Henri-François, comte. Étude sur la constitution du Trésor des Chartes.

Paris: Plon-Nourrit, 1909.

Delatour, Jérôme. “Le Cabinet des frères Dupuy.” Sciences et Techniques en Perspec-

tive 9 (2005): pp. 287–328.

Delatour, Jérôme. “Abeilles thuaniennes et barberines: Les relations des savants

français avec les Barberini sous le ponti‹cat d’Urbain VIII.” In I Barberini e la cul-

tura europea del Seicento. Rome: De Luca Editor, 2007.

252 bibliography

Delatour, Jérôme, and Thierry Sarmant. “La charge de la bibliothèque du roi aux

XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles.” Bibliothèque de l’École des Chartes 2 (1994): pp.

465–502.

Delbourgo, James, and Nicholas Dew, eds. Science and Empire in the Atlantic World.

London: Routledge, 2007.

Delisle, Léopold. Le Cabinet des Manuscrits de la Bibliothèque Nationale. 2 vols. Paris:

Imprimerie Impériale, 1868.

Delumeau, Jean. “Rome: Le progress de la centralization dans l’État ponti‹cal au

XVIe siècle, Revue Historique 226 (1961): pp. 399–410.

den Boer, Pim. History as a Profession: The Study of History in France, 1818–1914.


Dent, Julian. “An Aspect of the Crisis of the Seventeenth Century: The Collapse of

the Financial Administration of the French Monarchy (1653–1661).” Economic

History Review 20 (1967): pp. 241–56.

Descimon, Robert, and Alain Guery. “Un État des temps modernes?” in Seuil His-

toire de la France. La longue durée de l’État, ed. Jacques LeGoff, vol. 1, pp. 209–503.

Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 2000.

Descimon, Robert, Jean-Frédéric Schaub, and Bernard Vincent, eds. Figures de l’ad-

ministrateur: Institutions, réseaux, pouvoirs en Espagne, en France, et au Portugal,

XVIe–XIXe siècle. Paris: EHESS, 1997.

Dessert, Daniel, and Jean-Louis Journet. “Le lobby Colbert.” Annales 30 (1975): pp.

1303–29.

Dessert, Daniel, and Jean-Louis Journet. Argent, pouvoir, et société au Grand Siècle.


Dessert, Daniel, and Jean-Louis Journet. Colbert ou le serpent venimeux. Paris: Édi-

tions Complexe, 2000.

Di Donato, Francesco. “Constitutionnalisme et idéologie de robe: L’évolution de la

théorie juridico-politique de Murard et Le Paige à Chanlaire et Mably.” Annales

HSS 4 (1997): pp. 821–52.

Di Donato, Francesco. L’ideologia dei robins nella Francia dei Lumi: Constituzionalismo

e assolutismo nell’esperienza politico-instituzionale della magistratura di antico regime

1715–1788. Naples: Edizioni Scienti‹che Italiane, 2003.

Dickens, A. G., ed. The Courts of Europe: Politics, Patronage, and Royalty, 1400–1800.

London: Thames and Hudson, 1977.

Didier-Neuville, H. Les établissments de l’ancienne marine. Paris: Berger-Levrault,

1882.

Digard, Georges. Philippe le Bel et le Saint-Siège de 1285–1304. 2 vols. Paris, 1936.

Dingli, Laurent. Colbert, Marquis de Seignelay. Le ‹ls ›amboyant. Paris: Perrin, 1997.

Dini,Vittorio. Il governo della prudenza: Virtù dei privati e disciplina dei custodi. Milan:

Franco Angeli Editore, 2000.

Dooley, Brendan. Social History of Skepticism: Experience and Doubt in Early Modern

Culture. Baltimore: Johhs Hopkins University Press, 1999.

Dooley, Brendan, and Sabrina A. Baron, eds. The Politics of Information in Early Mod-

ern Europe. London: Routledge, 2001.

Duchein, Michel. “La communication des archives contemporaines: Droit a l’infor-

mation ou droit au secret?” Vingtième Siècle. Revue d’histoire 8 (1985): pp. 123–25.

Bibliography 253

Durand, Bernard, and Laurent Mayali, eds. Excerptiones iuris: Studies in Honor of An-

dré Gouron. Berkeley: Robbins Collection, 2003.

Ehrenberg, Richard. Capital and Finance in the Age of the Renaissance: A Study of the

Fuggers and Their Connections. Trans. H. M. Lucas. Fair‹eld, NJ: Augustus M.

Kelley, 1985.

Elias, Norbert. The Court Society. Trans. Edmund Jephcott. New York: Pantheon,

1983.

Elliott, J. H. “A Europe of Composite Monarchies.” Past and Present 137 (1992): pp.

48–73.

Emich, Birgit. Bürokratie und Nepotismus unter Paul V. (1605–1621): Studien zur Früh-

neuzeitlichen Mikropolitik in Rom. Stuttgart: Anton Hiersemann, 2001.

Emmanuelli, François-Xavier. Un mythe de l’absolutisme bourbonien: L’Intendance, du

milieu du XVIIeme siecle a la ‹n du XVIIIeme siecle: France, Espagne, Amerique. Aix-

en-Provence: Publications de l’Université de Provence, 1981.

Enenkel, K., and C. Heesakkers, eds. Lipsius in Leiden: Studies in the Life and Works

of a Great Humanist. Voorthuizen: Florivallis, 1997.

Esmonin, Edmond. Études sur la France des XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles. Paris: Presses Uni-

versitaires de France, 1964.

Evans, R. J. W. Rudolf II and His World: A Study in Intellectual History, 1576–1612.


Fage, Émile. Étienne Baluze. Sa vie, ses ouvrages, son exil, sa defense. Tulle: Crauffon,

1899.

Feingold, Mordechai, ed. Jesuit Science and the Republic of Letters. Cambridge: MIT

Press, 2003.

Findlen, Paula, ed. Athanasius Kircher: The Last Man Who Knew Everything. New

York: Routledge, 2004.

Fink, Karl August. Das vatikansche Archiv. Einführung in de Bestände und ihre er-

forschung. Rome: W. Regenberg, 1951.

Firpo, Luigi, ed. Relazioni Ambasciatori Veneti. Turin: Fondazione L. Firpo, 1975.

Fitzpatrick, Martin, Peter Jones, Christa Knellwolf, and Iain McCalman. The En-

lightenment World. London: Routledge, 2004.

Ford, Franklin. Robe and Sword: The Regrouping of the French Aristocracy after Louis

XIV. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1962.

Foucault, Michel. Il faut défendre la société: Cours au Collège de France, 1976. Paris:

Hautes Études/Seuil/Gallimard, 1997.

Fox, Levi, ed. English Historical Scholarship in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries.

Oxford: Dugdale Society and Oxford University Press, 1956.

Fraser, Peter. The Intelligence of the Secretaries of State and Their Monopoly of Licensed

News, 1660–1668. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1956.

Frostin, Charles. Les Pontchartrain, ministres de Louis XIV. Alliances et réseau d’in›uence

sous l’ancien régime. Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2006.

Fumaroli, Marc. L’âge de l’éloquence. Paris: Albin Michel, 1980.

Fumaroli, Marc. “Nicolas-Claude Fabri de Peiresc: Prince de la République des

Lettres.” In IVe Centenaire de la naissance de Gassendi. Conference organisée par l’As-

sociation Pro-Peyresq dans la maison d’Erasme à Anderlecht le mercredi 3 juin 1992, pp.

22–26. Brussels, 1993.

254 bibliography

Füssel, Marian. Gelehrtenkultur als symbolische Praxis. Rang, Ritual und Kon›ikt an der

Universität der Frühen Neuzeit. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft,

2006.

Gachard, M. Les Archives du Vatican. Brussels: C. Muquardt, 1874.

Gagliardo, John G. Enlightened Despotism. New York: Harlan Davidson, 1967.

Gaillard, M. Vie ou Éloge Historique de M. de Malesherbes. Paris: Xhrouet, Déterville,

Lénormant et Petit, 1805.

Galison, Peter. “Removing Knowledge.” Critical Inquiry 31 (2004): pp. 229–43.

Gasparolo, Franceso. “Constituzione dell’Archivio Vaticano e suo primo indice

sotto il ponti‹cato di Paolo V. Manoscritto inedito di Michele Lonigo.” Studi e

Documenti di Storia e Diritto 8 (1887): pp. 3–64.

Geijsbeek, John Bart. Ancient Double-Entry Bookkeeping. Lucas Pacioli’s Treatise (A. D.

1494—the earliest known writer on bookkeeping) Reproduced and Translated with Re-

productions, Notes, and Abstracts from Manzoni, Pietra, Mainardi, Ympyn, Stevin, and

Dafforne. Denver: J. B. Geijsbeek, 1914.

Gembicki, Dieter. Histoire et politique à la ‹n de l’Ancien Régime: Jacob-Nicolas Moreau

1717–1803. Paris: Nizet, 1979.

Gérin, Charles. Recherches historiques sur l’Assemblée du clergé de France de 1682. Paris:

Lecoffre, 1869.

Gérin, Charles. Louis XIV et le Saint Siège. 2 vols. Paris: Lecoffre, 1894.

Gilbert, Felix. Machiavelli and Guicciardini. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University

Press, 1965.

Godefroy-Menilglaise, D. C. Les savants Godefroy: Mémoires d’une famille. Paris: Di-

dier, 1875.

Goldinger, Walter. Geschichte des österreichischen Archiwesens. Vienna: Druck und Ver-

lag Fernand Berger, 1957.

Goodman, David C. Power and Penury: Government, Technology, and Science in Philip

II’s Spain. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988.

Gossman, Lionel. Medievalism and the Ideologies of the Enlightenment: The World and

Work of La Curne de Sainte-Palaye. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1968.

Government Accounting Of‹ce Report to Congressional Requestors. Energy Task

Force: Process Used to Develop National Energy Policy. August 2003.

Goyet, Francis. Le sublime du “lieu commun”: L’invention rhétorique dans l’antiquité et à

la Renaissance. Paris: Honoré Champion, 1996.

Grafton, Anthony. “Teacher, Text and Pupil in the Renaissance Class-Room:

A Case Study from a Parisian College.” History of Universities 1 (1981): pp. 37–70.

Grafton, Anthony. Joseph Scaliger: A Study in the History of Classical Scholarship. 2 vols.


Grafton, Anthony. Defenders of the Text: The Traditions of Scholarship in an Age of Sci-

ence, 1450–1800. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1991.

Grafton, Anthony, ed. Rome Reborn: The Vatican Library and Renaissance Culture.

Washington, DC: Library of Congress, 1993.

Grafton, Anthony. The Footnote: A Curious History. Cambridge: Harvard University

Press, 1997.

Grafton, Anthony. “Believe It or Not?” New York Review of Books, November 5,

1998, pp. 14–18.

Bibliography 255

Grafton, Anthony. Cardano’s Cosmos: The Worlds and Works of a Renaissance As-

trologer. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999.

Grafton, Anthony. Leon Battista Alberti: Master Builder of the Renaissance. New York:

Hill and Wang, 2000.

Grafton, Anthony. “Future Reading: Digitization and Its Discontents.” New Yorker,

November 5, 2007, 50–55.

Grafton, Anthony. What Was History? The Art of History in Early Modern Europe.


Grafton, Anthony, and Lisa Jardine. “Studied for Action: How Gabriel Harvey

Read His Livy.” Past and Present 129 (1991): pp. 30–78.

Grafton, Anthony, with Nancy Siraisi and April Shelford. New Worlds, Ancient

Texts: The Power of Tradition and the Shock of Discovery. Cambridge: Harvard Uni-


Grafton, Anthony, and Megan Williams. Christianity and the Transformation of the

Book: Origen, Eusebius, and the Library of Caesaria. Cambridge: Harvard Univer-

sity Press, 2006.

Greer, Alan, ed. The Jesuit Relations: Natives and Missionaries in Seventeenth-Century

North America. London: Bedford / St. Martin’s Press, 2000.

Grendler, Paul F. The Roman Inquisition and the Venetian Press, 1540–1605. Princeton,

NJ: Princeton University Press, 1977.

Grendler, Paul F. Culture and Censorship in Late Renaissance Italy and France. London:

Variorum Reprints, 1981.

Grendler, Paul F. Schooling in Renaissance Italy: Literacy and Learning, 1300–1600. Bal-

timore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989.

Grendler, Paul F. The Universities of the Italian Renaissance. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins


Guérard, Louis. Petite Introduction aux Inventaires des Archives du Vatican. Rome: Li-

breria Spithöver, 1901.

Habermas, Jürgen. The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a

Category of Bourgeois Society. Trans. Thomas Burger and Frederick Lawrence.

Cambridge: MIT Press, 1989.

Hahn, Roger. The Anatomy of a Scienti‹c Institution: The Paris Academy of Sciences,

1666–1803. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1971.

Hahn, Roger, and René Taton. Écoles techniques et militaires au XVIIIe siècle. Paris:

Hermann, 1986.

Hale, John R., ed. Renaissance Venice. London: Faber, 1974.

Hamscher, Albert N. The Conseil privé and the Parlements in the Age of Louis XIV: A

Study of French Absolutism. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society,

1987.

Hardesty, Kathleen. The Supplément to the Encyclopédie. The Hague: Nijhoff,

1977.

Hardesty, Kathleen. “L’Encyclopédie méthodique et l’organisation des connaissances.”

Recherches sur Diderot et sur l’Encyclopédie 12 (1992): pp. 59–69.

Hardesty, Kathleen. “The Yverdon Encyclopédie.” Studies in Voltaire and the Eigh-

teenth Century 315 (1994): pp. 85–116.

256 bibliography

Hartung, Fritz. “Der aufgeklärte Absolutismus.” Historische Zeitschrift 180 (1955): pp.

15–42.

Hatin, Eugène. Histoire politique et littéraire de la presse en France. 2 vols. Paris: Poulet-

Malassis rt de Broise, 1859.

Hazard, Paul. La crise de la conscience européenne. Paris: Arthème Fayard, 1961.

Head, Randolph. “Knowing Like a State: The Transformation of Political Knowl-

edge in Swiss Archives, 1450–1770.” Journal of Modern History 75 (2003): pp.

745–82.

Héliot, Pierre. “Nouveau details sur la vie et les manuscripts de Pierre de Carcavi.”

Bibliothèque de l’École des Chartes 111 (1953): pp. 124–39.

Hirsch‹eld, John Milton. The Académie Royale des Sciences, 1666–1683. New York:

Arno Press, 1981.

Hoock, Jochen, and Pierre Jeannin, eds. Ars Mercatoria: Handbücher und Traktate für

den Gebrauch des Kaufmanns, 1470–1820. Paderborn: Schöningh, 1991.

Houstein, Alan, and Steve Pincus, eds. A Nation Transformed: England after the

Restoration. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001.

Höp›, Harro. Jesuit Political Thought: The Society of Jesus and the State, c. 1540–1630.


Hunter, Michael. Archives of the Scienti‹c Revolution: The Formation and Exchange of

Ideas in Seventeenth-Century Europe. Woodbridge, UK: Boydell Press, 1998.

Hurt, John. Louis XIV and the Parlements: The Assertion of Royal Authority. London:

Palgrave, 2002.

Ianziti, Gary. “A Humanist Historian and His Documents: Giovanni Simonetta,

Secretary to the Sforzas.” Renaissance Quarterly 4 (1981): pp. 491–516.

Ianziti, Gary. Humanistic Historiography under the Sforzas: Politics and Propaganda in Fif-

teenth-Century Milan. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988.

Ingrao, Charles. “The Problem of ‘Enlightened Absolutism’ and the German States:

Politics and Society in the Holy Roman Empire, 1500–1806.” Journal of Modern

History 58 suppl. (1986): pp. 161–80.

Isikoff, Michael. “Papers? I Don’t See Any Papers. He says he’s ‘pro-disclosure,’ but Bill

has kept Hillary’s White House ‹les under wraps.” Newsweek, October 29, 2007.

Israel, Jonathan. The Dutch Republic: Its Rise, Greatness, and Fall, 1477–1806. Oxford:


Israel, Jonathan. Radical Enlightenment: Philosophy and the Making of Modern Moder-

nity, 1650–1750. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001.

Jacob, Margaret C. The Radical Enlightenment: Pantheists, Freemasons, and Republicans.

London: Allen and Unwin, 1982.

Jacob, Margaret C. Scienti‹c Culture and the Making of the Industrial West. Oxford:

Oxford University Press, 1997.

Jacob, Margaret C. Strangers Nowhere in the World: The Rise of Cosmopolitanism in

Early Modern Europe. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006.

Jackson, Sidney L. Libraries and Librarianship in the West: A Brief History. New York:

McGraw-Hill, 1974.

Jardine, Lisa. Erasmus, Man of Letters: The Construction of Charisma in Print. Prince-

ton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1983.

Bibliography 257

Jaumann, Herbert, ed. Die europäische Gelehrtenrepublik im Zeitalter des Konfessionalis-

mus / The European Republic of Letters in the Age of Confessionalism. Harrassowitz

Verlag / Wolfenbütteler Forschungen: Wiesbaden, 2001.

Jeannin, Pierre. Merchants of the Sixteenth Century. Trans. Paul Fittingoff. New York:

Harper and Row, 1972.

Jehasse, Jean. La Renaissance de la critique: L’essor de l’Humanisme érudit de 1560 à 1614.

Saint-Etienne: Publications de l’Université de Saint-Etienne, 1976.

Jones, Pamela, and Thomas Worcester, eds. From Rome to Eternity. Leiden: Brill,

2002.

Jouhaud, Christian. Les Mazarinades: La Fronde des mots. Paris: Aubier, 1985.

Jouhaud, Christian, ed. “Miroirs de la raison d’état.” Special issue of the Cahiers du

Centre de Recherches Historiques 20 (1998).

Jouhaud, Christian. Les pouvoirs de la literature: Histoire d’un paradoxe. Paris: Galli-

mard, 2000.

Jolly, Claude, ed. Histoire des bibliothèques françaises. Vol. 2, Les bibliothèques sous l’An-

cien Régime 1530–1789. Paris: Promodis, 1988.

Jurdjevik, Mark. “Civic Humanism and the Rise of the Medici.” Renaissance Quar-

terly 52 (1999): pp. 994–1020.

Kellenbenz, Hermann. Die Fugger in Spanien und Portugal bis 1560: Ein Großun-

ternehmen des 16. Jahrhunderts. Munich: Ernst Vögel, 1990.

Kelley, Donald. “Historia Integra: François Baudouin and his Conception of His-

tory.” Journal of the History of Ideas 25 (1964): pp. 35–57.

Kelley, Donald. “Fides historiae: Charles Dumoulin and the Gallican View of His-

tory.” Traditio 22 (1966): pp. 347–402.

Kelley, Donald. “Jean Du Tillet, Archivist and Antiquary.” Journal of Modern History

38 (1966): pp. 337–54.

Kelley, Donald. “Legal Humanism and the Sense of History.” Studies in the Renais-

sance 13 (1966): pp. 184–99.

Kelley, Donald. “Guillaume Budé and the First Historical School of Law.” Ameri-

can Historical Review 72 (1967): pp. 807–34.

Kelley, Donald. Foundations of Modern Historical Scholarship. New York: Columbia


Kelley, Donald, ed. History and the Disciplines: The Reclassi‹cation of Knowledge in

Early Modern Europe. Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 1997.

Kenny, Neil. “Books in Space and Time: Bibliomania and Early Modern Histories

of Learning and ‘Literature’ in France.” Modern Language Quarterly 61 (2000): pp.

253–86.

Kerhave, Jean François Roudot, and Jean Tanguy, eds. La Bretagne en 1665 d’après les

rapport de Colbert de Croissy. Brest: Centre de Recherche Bretonne et Celtique,

1978.

King, James E. Science and Rationalism in the Government of Louis XIV, 1661–1683.

Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1949.

Kinser, Samuel. The Works of Jacques-Auguste de Thou. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff,

1966.

Kirshner, Julius, ed. Business, Banking, and Economic Thought in Late Medieval and

Early Modern Europe. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974.

258 bibliography

Klaits, Joseph. Printed Propaganda under Louis XIV: Absolute Monarchy and Public

Opinion. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1976.

von Klarwill, Victor, ed. The Fugger News-Letters. Trans. L. S. R. Byrne. 2 vols.

New York: G. P. Putnam and Sons, 1926.

Kleinpaul, Johannes. Die Fuggerzeitungen 1568–1605. Walluf bei Wiesbaden: M.

Sändig, 1972.

Kolmer, Lothar. “Colbert und die Entstehung der Collection Doat.” Francia 7

(1979): pp. 463–89.

Konvitz, Josef W. Cartography in France, 1660–1848: Science, Engineering, and Statecraft.

Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985.

Krieger, Leonard. An Essay on the Theory of Enlightened Despotism. Chicago: Univer-

sity of Chicago Press, 1975.

La Roncière, Charles de, and Paul-M. Bondois, eds. Catalogue des Manuscrits de la

Collection des Mélanges Colbert. Paris: Éditions Ernest Leroux, 1920.

Lacour-Gayet, Robert. L’éducation politique de Louis XIV. Paris: Hachette, 1898.

Ladurie, Emmanuel Le Roy. Montaillou: The Promised Land of Error. Trans. Barbara

Bray. New York: Vintage, 1979.

Ladurie, Emmanuel Le Roy. The Ancien Regime: A History of France, 1610–1774.

Trans. Mark Greengrass. New York: Wiley-Blackwell, 1998.

Laemmer, Hugo, ed. Monumenta Vaticana. Freiburg: Herder, 1861.

Lavisse, Ernest. Louis XIV. Histoire d’un grand règne. 1908; rpt. Paris, 1989.

Lazzari, Christian, and Dominique Reynié, eds. Le pouvoir de la raison d’état. Paris:


Lazzarini, Isabella. “Materiali per una didattica delle scritture pubbliche di cancelle-

ria nell’Italia del Quattrocento.” Scrineum 2 (2004): pp. 1–77.

Le Goff, Jacques, ed. La longue durée de l’État. Paris: Seuil, 1999.

Lehmann, Paul. Eine Geschichte der alten Fuggerbibliotheken. Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr,

1956.

Lilti, Antoine. Le Monde des salons. Sociabilité et mondanité à Paris au XVIIIe siècle.

Paris, Fayard, 2005.

López-Vidriero, María Luisa, and Pedro M. Cátedra, eds. El libro antiguo español.

Salamanca: Ediciones Universidad de Salamanca, 1996.

Lough, John. Essays on the Encyclopédie of Diderot and d’Alembert. London: Oxford


Loupe, Vincent de la. Premier et second livre des dignitez, magistrats, & of‹ces du royaume

de France. Paris: Guillaume Le Noir, 1556.

Lux, David S. Patronage and Royal Science in Seventeenth-Century France: The Académie

de Physique de Caen. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1989.

Lynn, John A. Giant of the Grand Siècle: The French Army, 1610–1715. Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 1997.

Lyon, Gregory B. “Baudouin, Flacius, and the Plan for the Magdeburg Centuries.”

Journal of the History of Ideas 64 (2003): pp. 253–72.

Machlup, Fritz. Knowledge: The Branches of Learning. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Uni-


Maclean, Ian. Interpretation and Meaning in the Renaissance: The Case of Law. Cam-

bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992.

Bibliography 259

Margolin, Jean-Claude, and Marie-Madelaine Martinet, eds. L’Europe de la Renais-

sance: Cultures et civilizations. Paris: J. Touzot, 1988.

Marías, Fernando, and Felipe Pereda, eds. El atlas del Rey Planeta. Madrid: Editorial

Nerea, 2002.

Marin, Louis. “La logique du secret.” Traverses 30–31 (1984): pp. 60–69.

Martin, Henri-Jean. Livre, pouvoirs et société à Paris au XVIIe siècle. 2 vols. Geneva:

Droz, 1969.

Martin, John, and Dennis Romano, eds. Venice Reconsidered: The History and Civi-

lization of an Italian City State, 1297–1797. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University

Press, 2000.

Martin, Ronald D. “The Marquis de Chamlay, Friend and Con‹dential Advisor to

Louis XIV: The Early Years, 1650–1691.” Ph.D. diss., University of California

at Santa Barbara, 1972.

Masoero, Mariarosa, Sergio Mamino, and Claudio Rosso, eds. Politica e cultura del-

l’età di Carlo Emanuele I. Florence: Olschki, 1999.

Matthews, George T., ed. News and Rumor in Renaissance Europe: The Fugger Newslet-

ters. New York: Capricorn Books, 1959.

Mattingly, Garrett. Renaissance Diplomacy. London: Jonathan Cape, 1955.

McKenzie, Donald. Oral Culture, Literacy, and Print in Early New Zealand: The Treaty

of Waitangi. Wellington, NZ: Victoria University Press, 1985.

McKeon, Michael. Secret History of Domesticity: Public, Private, and the Division of

Knowledge. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005.

Meinecke, Friedrich. Machiavellism: The Doctrine of Raison d’État and Its Place in Mod-

ern History. Trans. D. Scott. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1957.

Mellot, Jean-Dominique. L’Édition rouennaise et ses marchés vers 1600–vers 1730. Paris:

École des Chartes, 1998.

Melton, James van Horn. The Rise of the Public in Enlightened Europe. Cambridge:


Mémain, René. La marine de guerre sous Louis XIV. Le matériel. Rochefort, arsenal mod-

èle de Colbert. Paris: Hachette, 1937.

Mention, Léon, ed. Documents relatifs aux rapports du clergé avec la royauté de 1682 à

1705. Paris: A. Picard et ‹ls, 1893–1903.

Merlin, Hélène. Public et littérature en France au XVIIe siècle. Paris: Les Belles Lettres,

1994.

Meyer, Jean. Colbert. Paris: Hachette, 1981.

Meyers, Kathleen A., ed. Fernandez de Oviedo’s Chronicle of America: A New History

for a New World. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2007.

Michaud, Hélène. La Grande Chancellerie et les écritures royales au XVIe siècle. Paris:


Miller, Peter N. Peiresc. Europe: Learning and Virtue in the Seventeenth Century. New

Haven: Yale University Press, 2000.

Milligan, Jennifer. “Making Archivists: History and the State in the Archives of the

Second Empire.” Ph.D. diss., Rutgers University, 2007.

Mims, Stewart L. Colbert’s West India Policy. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1912.

Minard, Philippe. La fortune du colbertisme: État et industrie dans la France des Lumières.


260 bibliography

Molho, Anthony. “The State and Public Finance: A Hypothesis Based on the His-

tory of Late Medieval Florence.” Journal of Modern History 67 suppl. (1995): pp.

97–135.

Molho, Anthony, and John Tedeschi, eds. Renaissance Studies in Honor of Hans Baron.

Florence: G. C. Sansoni, 1971.

Molino, Paola. “Hugo Blotius: From a Universal Project to the Establishment of the

Imperial library.” European University Institute, June Paper Diss., 2005.

Montchrétien, Antoine de. Traicté de l’oeconomie politique. Rouen: J. Osmont, 1615.

Moore, Lara. The Ecole Des Chartes and the Organization of Archives and Libraries in

France, 1820–1870. Deluth, MN: Litwin Books, 2008.

Moote, A. Lloyd. The Revolt of the Judges: The Parlement of Paris and the Fronde,

1643–1652. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1971.

Moreau, Celestin. Bibliographie des Mazarinades. 3 vols. Paris: Renouard, 1850–

51.

Morineau, Michel. “Or brésilien et gazettes hollandaises.” Revue d’Histoire Moderne

et Contemporaine 25 (1978): pp. 3–30.

Martimort, Aimé-Georges. Le Gallicanisme de Bossuet. Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1953.

Moss, Ann. Printed Commonplace Books and the Structuring of Renaissance Thought. Ox-

ford: Clarendon Press, 1996.

Mousnier, Roland E. “Comment les français du XVIIe siècle voyaient la constitu-

tion.” XVIIe Siècle 29 (1955): pp. 9–36.

Mousnier, Roland E. The Institutions of France under the Absolute Monarchy,

1598–1789. 2 vols. Trans. Arthur Goldhammer. Chicago: University of Chicago

Press, 1984.

Mousnier, Roland E., ed. Un nouveau Colbert. Paris: SEDES, 1985.

Mulsow, Martin. Die unanständige Gelehrtenrepublik. Wissen, Libertinage und Kommu-

nikation in der Frühen Neuzeit. Stuttgart: Metzler, 2007.

Murat, Inès. Colbert. Trans. Robert Francis Cook and Jeannie Van Asselt. Char-

lottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1984.

Nassiet, Michel. La France du second XVIIe siècle 1661–1715. Paris: Belin, 1997.

Natalini, Terzo, Sergio Pagano, and Aldo Martini, eds. Archivio Segreto Vaticano.

Florence: Nardini Editore, 1991.

Nelles, Paul. “L’érudition ecclésiastique et les bibliothèques de Paris au XVIIe siè-

cle. Étude de catalogage et de classi‹cation.” Revue française d’histoire du livre

104–5 (1999): pp. 227–52.

Newman, L. M. Leibniz (1646–1716) and the German Library Scene. London: Library

Association, 1966.

Nussdorfer, Laurie. Civic Politics in the Rome of Urban VIII. Princeton, NJ: Princeton


Oakley, Francis. The Conciliar Tradition: Constitutionalism in the Catholic Church,

1300–1870. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003.

Oestreich, Gerhard. Neostoicism and the Early Modern State. Ed. Brigitta Oestreich

and H. G. Koenigsberger, trans. David McLintock. Cambridge: Cambridge


Ogborn, Miles. Indian Ink: Script and Print in the Making of the English East India Com-

pany. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007.

Bibliography 261

Ogilvie, Brian. The Science of Describing: Natural History in the Renaissance. Chicago:


Olmi, Giuseppe. L’inventario del mondo: Catalogazione della natura e luoghi del sapere

nella prima età moderna. Bologna: Il Mulino, 1992.

Olmsted, John W. “The Voyage of Jean Richer to Acadia in 1670: A Study of the

Relations of Science and Navigation under Colbert.” Proceedings of the American

Philosophical Society 104 (1960): pp. 612–34.

O’Malley, John W., Gauvin Alexander Bailey, Steven J. Harris, and T. Frank

Kennedy, eds. The Jesuits: Culture, Sciences, and the Arts, 1540–1773. Toronto:

University of Toronto Press, 1999.

Omont, Henri. Missions archéologiques en Orient aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles. Paris: Im-

primerie Nationale, 1902.

Omont, Henri. “La Collection Doat à la Bibliothèque nationale, documents sur les

recherches de Doat dans les archives du Sud-Ouest de la France de 1663–1670.”

Bibliothèque de l’École des Chartes 77 (1916): pp. 286–336.

Pagden, Anthony. European Encounters with the New World: From Renaissance to Ro-

manticism. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993.

Palm, Franklin Charles. The Economic Policies of Richelieu. 1922; reprint, New York:

Johnson Reprint, 1970.

Parker, David. “Sovereignty, Absolutism, and the Function of the Law in Seven-

teenth Century France.” Past and Present 122 (1989): pp. 36–74.

Parker, Geoffrey. Guide to the Archives of the Spanish Institutions in or Concerned with

the Netherlands, 1556–1706. Brussels: Association des Archivistes et Biblio-

thèquaires, 1971.

Parker, Geoffrey. The Grand Strategy of Philip II. New Haven: Yale University Press,

1998.

Parkman, Francis. La Salle and the Discovery of the Great West: France and England in

North America. Williamstown, MA: Corner House, 1980.

Parrott, David. Richelieu’s Army: War, Government, and Society in France, 1624–1642.


Parsons, Jotham. The Church in the Republic: Gallicanism and Political Ideology in Re-

naissance France. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2004.

Partner, Peter. The Pope’s Men: The Papal Civil Service in the Renaissance. Oxford:


Pastor, Ludwig Freiherr von. History of the Popes. Trans. Dom Ernest Graf. 40 vols.

London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1952.

Peltonen, Markku, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Francis Bacon. Cambridge: Cam-


Pintard, René. Le libertinage erudite dans la première moitié du XVIIe siècle. Geneva:

Slatkine Reprints, 1983.

Pocock, J. G. A. The Ancient Constitution and the Feudal Law. Cambridge: Cam-


Pocock, J. G. A. Barbarism and Religion. 4 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press, 1999–2007.

Poole, Stafford. Juan de Ovando: Governing the Spanish Empire in the Reign of Phillip II.

Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2004.

262 bibliography

Pottinger, David T. The French Book Trade in the Ancien Régime, 1500–1791. Cam-

bridge: Harvard University Press, 1958.

Price, Bronwen, ed. Francis Bacon’s “New Atlantis”. Manchester: Manchester Uni-


Pritchard, James. In Search of Empire: The French in the Americas, 1670–1730. Cam-

bridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004.

Prodi, Paolo. The Papal Prince: One Body and Two Souls: The Papal Monarchy in Early

Modern Europe. Trans. Susan Haskins. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,

1987.

Queller, Donald E. Early Venetian Legislation on Ambassadors. Geneva: Droz, 1966.

Rabb, T. K. Jacobean Gentleman: Sir Edwin Sandys, 1561–1629. Princeton, NJ:


Randeraad, Nico, ed. “Formation and Transfer of Municipal Administrative

Knowledge.” Yearbook of European Administrative History 15 (2003): pp. 1–310.

Ranger, F., ed. Prisca Monumenta: Studies in Archival and Administrative History Pre-

sented to Dr. A. E. J. Holloender. London: University of London Press, 1973.

Ranum, Orest. Richelieu and the Councillors of Louis XIII: A Study of the Secretaries of

State and Superintendents of Finance in the Ministry of Richelieu, 1635–1642. Oxford:


Ranum, Orest. Paris in the Age of Absolutism: An Essay. New York: John Wiley and

Sons, 1968.

Ranum, Orest. Artisans of Glory: Writers and Historical Thought in Seventeenth-Century

France. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1980.

Reinhard,Wolfgang. Papst‹nanz une Nepotismus unter Paul V. (1605–1621): Studien

und Quellen zur Struktur und zu quantitativen Aspekten des päpstlichen Herrschaftssys-

tems. Stuttgart: A. Hiersemann, 1974.

Rekers, B. Benito Arias Montano, 1527–1598. London: Warburg Institute, 1972.

Reynolds, L. D., and N. G. Wilson. Scribes and Scholars: A Guide to the Transmission

of Greek and Latin Litterature. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991.

Ricuperati, Giuseppe. Le avventure di uno stato “ben amministrato”: Rappresentazioni e

realtà nello spazio sabaudo tra Ancien Régime e Rivoluzione. Turin: Editrice Tirre-

nia Stampatori, 1994.

Ricuperati, Giuseppe. Lo stato sabaudo nel settecento: Dal trionfo delle burocrazie alla crisi

d’antico regime. Turin: UTET Libreria, 2001.

Roche, Daniel. La France des Lumières. Paris: Fayard, 1993.

Roche, Daniel, and Franco Angiolini, eds. Culture et formation négociantes dans l’Eu-

rope moderne. Paris: Éditions EHESS, 1995.

Rodríguez de Diego, José Luis, ed. Instrucción para el gobierno del archivo de Simancas

(año 1588). Madrid: Dirección General de Bellas Artes y Archivos, 1989.

Rodríguez de Diego, José Luis, and Francisco Javier Alvarez Pinedo. Los Archivos de

Simancas. Madrid: Lunwerg Editores, 1993.

Romano, Antonalla. La Contre-Réforme mathématique: Constitution et diffusion d’une

culture mathématique jésuite à la Renaissance. Rome: École Française de Rome,

1999.

Rothkrug, Lionel. Opposition to Louis XIV: The Political and Social Origins of the

French Enlightenment. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1965.

Bibliography 263

Rothschild, Emma. “Language and Empire, c. 1800.” Historical Research 78 (May

2005): pp. 208–29.

Rouaud, Alain, ed. Les orientalistes sont des aventuriers: Guirlande offerte à Joseph

Tubiana par ses élève et ses amis. Paris: INALCO, 1999.

Rouse, Mary A., and Richard H. Rouse. Authentic Witnesses: Approaches to Medieval

Texts and Manuscripts. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1991.

Rowland, Ingrid D. The Culture of the High Renaissance: Ancients and Moderns in Six-

teenth-Century Rome. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.

Rowlands, Guy. The Dynastic State and the Army under Louis XIV: Royal Service and

Private Interest, 1661–1701. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.

Rubenstein, Nicolai. “The Beginning of Niccolò Machiavelli’s Career in the Flo-

rentine Chancery.” Italian Studies 9 (1956): pp. 72–91.

Saint-Germain, Jacques. La Reynie et la police au grand siècle. Paris: Hachette,

1962.

Salmon, J. H. M. “Clovis and Constantine: The Uses of History in Sixteenth-Cen-

tury Gallicanism.” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 41 (1990): pp. 584–665.

Sánchez Madrid, Sebastián. Arqueología y Humanismo: Ambrosio de Morales. Códoba:

Universidad de Córdoba, 2002.

Sarmant, Thierry, and Mathieu Stoll. “Le style de Louvois. Formulaire administratif

et expression personnelle dans la correspondance du secrétaire d’État de la

guerre de Louis XIV.” Annuaire-bulletin de la Société de l’histoire de France (1999):

57–77.

Saunders, Stewart. “Politics and Scholarship in Seventeenth-Century France: The

Library of Nicolas Fouquet and the Collège Royal.” Journal of Library History 20

(1985): pp. 1–24.

Saunders, Stewart. “Public Administration and the Library of Jean-Baptiste Col-

bert.” Libraries and Culture 26 (1991): pp. 283–300.

Sauvy, Anne. Livres saisis à Paris entre 1678–1701. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff,

1972.

Scala, Aidée. Girolamo Rorario: Un umanista diplomatico del Cinquecento e i suoi Di-

aloghi. Florence: Olschki Editore, 2004.

Schapira, Nicolas. Un professionel des letters au XVIIe siècle. Valentin Conrart: Une his-

toire sociale. Paris, 2003.

Schapira, Nicolas. “Occuper l’of‹ce. Les secrétaires du roi comme secrétaires au

XVIIe siècle.” Revue d’Histoire moderne et contemporaine 51, no. 1 (2004): pp.

36–61.

Schapira, Nicolas. “Les secrétaires particuliers sous l’Ancien Régime: les usages

d’une dépendance.” In Cahiers du Centre de Recherche Historique, October 2007,

pp. 111–25.

Schnapper, Antoine. Le géant, la licorne at la tulipe: Collections et collectionneurs dans la

France du XVIIe siècle. Paris: Flammarion, 1988.

Scott, Hamish, ed. Enlightened Absolutism: Reform and Reformers in Later Eighteenth-

Century Europe. London: Macmillan, 1990.

Scott, James. Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition

Have Failed. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998.

Sennett, Richard. The Fall of Public Man. New York: Vintage, 1978.

264 bibliography

Shapiro, Barbara J. A Culture of Fact: England, 1550–1720. Ithaca, NY: Cornell Uni-


Sharpe, Kevin. Sir Robert Cotton, 1586–1631: History and Politics in Early Modern En-

gland. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979.

Sherman, William H. John Dee: The Politics of Reading and Writing in the English Re-

naissance. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1995.

Shils, Edward Albert. The Torment of Secrecy: The Background and Consequences of

American Security Policies. Glencoe, IL: Free Press, 1955.

Simonetta, Marcello. Rinascimento segreto: Il mondo del segretario da Petrarca a Machi-

avelli. Milan: F. Angeli, 2004.

Siraisi, Nancy. The Clock and the Mirror: Girolamo Cardano and Renaissance Medicine.


Skinner, Q. R. D. The Foundations of Modern Political Thought. 2 vols. Cambridge:


Smedley-Weill, Anette. Les intendants de Louis XIV. Paris: Fayard, 1995.

Smet, Ingrid A. R. de Thuanus: The Making of Jacques-Auguste de Thou, 1553–1617.

Geneva: Droz, 2006.

Smith, Pamela H., and Paula Findlen, eds. Merchants and Marvels: Commerce, Science,

and Art in Early Modern Europe. New York: Routledge, 2002.

Smith, Woodruff D. “The Function of Commercial Centers in the Modernization

of European Capitalism: Amsterdam as an Information Exchange in the Seven-

teenth Century.” Journal of Economic History 154 (1984): pp. 985–1005.

Solente, S. “Nouveaux détails sur la vie et les manuscrits de Pierre de Carcavy.” Bib-

liothèque de l’École des Chartes 111 (1953): pp. 136–39.

Soll, Jacob. “The Hand-Annotated Copy of the Histoire du gouvernement de Venise,

or How Amelot de La Houssaye Wrote His History.” Bulletin du Bibliophile 2

(1995): pp. 279–93.

Soll, Jacob. “Amelot de La Houssaye and the Tacitean Tradition in France.” Trans-

lation and Literature 6 (1997): pp. 186–202.

Soll, Jacob. “Healing the Body Politic: French Royal Doctors, History and the

Birth of a Nation 1560–1634” Renaissance Quarterly 55 (2002): pp. 1259–86.

Soll, Jacob. “Empirical History and the Transformation of Political Criticism in

France from Bodin to Bayle.” Journal of the History of Ideas (2003): pp. 297–316.

Soll, Jacob. Publishing “The Prince”: History, Reading, and the Birth of Political Criti-

cism. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2005.

Soll, Jacob. “The Antiquary and the Information State: Colbert’s Archives, Secret

Histories, and the Affair of the Régale 1663–1682.” French Historical Studies 31

(2008): pp. 3–28.

Solomon, Howard M. Public Welfare, Science, and Propaganda in Seventeenth Century

France: The Innovations of Théophraste Renaudot. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Uni-


Southern, R. W. Western Society and the Church in the Middle Ages. London: Penguin,

1970.

Spink, J. S. French Free-Thought from Gassendi to Voltaire. London: Athlone Press,

1960.

Stagl, Justin. Eine Geschichte der Neugier: Die Kunst des Reisens 1550–1800. Böhlau

Bibliography 265

Verlag: Vienna-Cologne-Weimar, 1983. Translated as A History of Curiosity: The

Theory of Travel 1550–1800 (London: Routledge, 1995).

Stallybrass, Peter, Roger Chartier, J. Franklin Mowrey, and Heather Wolfe. “Ham-

let’s Tables and the Technologies of Writing in Renaissance England.” Shake-

speare Quarterly 55 (2004): pp. 379–419.

Stinger, Charles L. The Renaissance in Rome. Bloomington: Indiana University Press,

1998.

Stolleis, Michael, ed. Hermann Conring (1606–1681): Beiträge zu Leben und Werk.

Berlin: Dunker und Humblot, 1983.

Stolzenberg, Daniel. “Egyptian Oedipus: Antiquarianism, Oriental Studies, and

Occult Philosophy in the Work of Athanasius Kircher.” Ph.D. diss., Stanford

University, 2003.

Storrs, Chris. War, Diplomacy, and the Rise of Savoy, 1690–1720. Cambridge: Cam-


Streuver, Nancy. The Language of History in the Renaissance: Rhetoric and Historical

Consciousness in Florentine Humanism. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,

1970.

Stroup, Alice. A Company of Scientists: Botany, Patronage, and Community at the Sev-

enteenth-Century Parisian Royal Academy of Sciences. Berkeley and Los Angeles:

University of California Press, 1990.

Stroup, Alice. “Christian Huygens et l’Académie royale des Sciences.” La Vie des

Sciences: Revue de l’Académie des Sciences 4 (1996): pp. 333–41.

Stroup, Alice. “Nicolas Hartsoeker, savant hollandais associé de l’Académie des Sci-

ences et espion de Louis XIV.” Cahiers d’Histoire des Sciences et Techniques 47

(1999): pp. 201–23.

Symcox, Geoffrey. Victor Amadeus II: Absolutism in the Savoyard State, 1675–1730.

London: Thames and Hudson, 1983.

Thompson, James Westfall, and Saul K. Padover. Secret Diplomacy: Espionage and

Cryptology: 1500–1815. New York: Frederick K. Ungar, 1963.

Thomson, Erik. “Axel Oxenstierna and Books.” Sixteenth Century Journal 38 (2007)

pp. 705–29.

Thomson, Erik. “Commerce, Law, and Erudite Culture: The Mechanics of Thé-

dore Godefroy’s Service to Cardinal Richelieu.” Journal of the History of Ideas 3

(2007): pp. 407–27.

Thuau, Etienne. Raison d’État et pensée politique à l’époque de Richelieu. Paris: Armand

Colin, 1966.

Thuillier, Guy. La première école d’administration: L’Académie Politique de Louis XIV.

Geneva: Droz, 1996.

Tonino, Camillo, and Piero Lucchi. Navigare e descrivere. Isolari e portulari del Museo

Correr di Venezia XV–XVIII secolo. Venice: Marsilio, 1997.

Trénard, Louis, ed. Les Mémoires des Intendants pour l’Instruction du Duc de Bourgogne

(1698). Paris: Bibliothèque Nationale, 1975.

Tuck, Richard. Philosophy and Government, 1572–1652. Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-


Uomini, Steve. Cultures historiques dans la France du XVIIe siècle. Paris: L’Harmattan,

1998.

266 bibliography

Vasoli, Cesare. L’enciclopedismo del Seicento. Naples: Bibliopolis, 1978.

Villain, Jean. Mazarin, homme d’argent. Paris: Club du Livre d’Histoire, 1956.

Villain, Jean. La fortune de Colbert. Paris: Ministère de l’Économie, 1994.

Villari, Rosario. Elogio della dissimulazione: La lotta politica nel seicento. Rome: Editori

Laterza, 1987.

Virol, Michèle. “Les carnets de bord d’un grand serviteur du roi: Les agendas de

Vauban.” Revue d’Histoire Moderne et Contemporaine 48 (2001): pp. 50–76.

Virol, Michèle. Vauban. De la gloire du roi au service de l’Etat. Seyssel: Champ Vallon,

2003.

Viroli, Maurizio. From Politics to Reason of State: The Acquisition and Transformation of

the Language of Politics, 1250–1600. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,

1992.

Vivo, Filippo de. “Le armi dell’ambasciatore: Voci e manoscritti a Parigi durante

l’Interdetto di Venezia.” In I luoghi dell’imaginario barocco, ed. Lucia Strappini, pp.

189–201. Naples: Liguori Editore, 1999.

Vivo, Filippo de. Information and Communication in Early Modern Venice: Rethinking

Early Modern Politics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007.

Vivo, Filippo de. “La publication comme enjeu polémique: Venise au début du

XVIIe siècle.” In De la publication, ed. Christian Jouhaud and Alain Viala, pp.

161–75. Paris: Fayard, 2002.

Waele, Michel de. Les relations entre le parlement de Paris et Henri IV. Paris: Publisud,

2002.

Wall, Cynthia, ed. A Concise Companion to the Restoration and the Eighteenth Century.

Blackwell, Oxford, 2004.

Waquet, Françoise. La République des letters. Paris: Belin, 1997.

Weiner, Tim. Legacy of Ashes: A History of the CIA. New York: Anchor, 2008.

Weinstein, Barbara. “Let the Sunshine In: Government Records and National Inse-

curities.” Perspectives 45 (2007): pp. 3–6.

Wellman, Kathleen. Making Science Social: The Conferences of Théophraste Renaudot,

1633–1642. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2003.

White, Lee. “Scholars Present Testimony to House Subcommittee on Presidential

Records.” Perspectives 45 (2007): pp. 11–13.

Wolf, Charles Joseph Étienne. Histoire de l’Obervatoire de Paris de sa fondation à 1793.

Paris: Gauthier-Villars, 1902.

Wolf, John B. Louis XIV. New York: Norton, 1968.

Wolfe, Kathryn Willis, and Phillip J. Wolfe, eds. Considérations politiques sur la

Fronde. La correspondance entre Gabriel Naudé et le Cardinal Mazarin. Paris: Papers

on French Seventeenth Century Literature, 1991.

Yates, Francis A. The French Academies of the Sixteenth Centuries. London: Warburg

Institute, 1947.

Yates, Francis A. The Art of Memory. Chicago: University of Chicago Press,

1966.

Yeo, Richard. Encyclopedic Visions: Scienti‹c Dictionaries and Enlightenment Culture.


Yeo, Richard. “John Locke’s ‘New Method’ of Commonplacing: Managing Mem-

ory and Information.” Eighteenth-Century Thought 2 (2004): pp. 1–38.

Bibliography 267

Zarka, Yves-Charles, ed. Raison et déraison d’état: Théoriciens et théories de la raison d’é-

tat aux XVIe et XVIIe siècles. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1994.

Zedelmaier, Helmut. Bibliotheca Universalis und Biblioteca Selecta: Das Problem der Ord-

nung das gelehrten Wissens in der frühen Neuzeit. Cologne: Böhlau Verlag, 1992.

Zeller, Gaston. “L’administration monarchique avant les Intendants, Parlements, et

gouverneurs.” Revue Historique 197 (1947): pp. 180–215.

268 bibliography

Index

269

Aachen, 13

Absolutism, 12

Académie d’Architecture, 100

Académie des Beaux-Arts, 100

Académie des Belles-Lettres de Caen,

123–24

Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-

Lettres, 100, 109, 128

Académie des Inscriptions et Médaillons,

100

Académie des Sciences, 100, 109

Académie Française, 31

Académie Française de Rome, 100

Académie Politique of de Torcy, 156

Accounting, 18, 34, 36, 54–58; and Louis

XIV, 60–66

Agendas, 6, 18; made for Louis XIV,

51–66; of Seignelay, 89

D’Aguesseau, Henri de, intendant, 91

Alberti, Leon Battista, 54, 57

Amelot de La Houssaye, Abraham-

Nicolas, 54, 57

American Historical Association, 11

Amsterdam, 24–25

Ancient Constitution, the, 13, 29, 31,

49

Ann of Austria, Queen of France, 38, 58

Antiquarianism, 25–33; and government,

152; information management, 143–52;

and politics, 142

Archives, 7, 11; archival pillages, 101–8,

126; de Brienne archive, 103; Colbert

and archives, 37, 104–12; colonial

archives, 113–19; Dutch archives, 24;

ecclesiastical archives, 103–6; Fouquet’s

archive, “la Cassette de Fouquet,” 46;

French parliamentary archives, 43–44,

108; French state archives, 28–30,

101–8; Fugger family archive, 19; ge-

nealogical archives, 182–83; medieval

archives, 14–15; nineteenth-

century centralizing state archives,

158–59; openness and archives, 166;

and Orientalism, 105–7; permanent

state archives, 158; Renaissance

archives, 16; and royal authority, 162;

searchable archives, 158; and secrecy,

166; Spanish Archives, 19–21

Archivio di Stato di Torino, 163

Archivio Segreto del Vaticano, 22, 28

Arnoul, Nicolas, intendant, 73–74, 106

Arnoul, Pierre, ‹ls, intendant, 78–79

Ars apodemica, 70–72

Ars mercatoria, 18, 35

Atlantic World, lack of concept of, 115,

118

d’Aubarède, Vincent, Père, 141

Augsburg, 19

d’Avity, Pierre, 71

Bacon, Francis, 5, 8, 9, 97

Bagni, Nicola Guidi di, cardinal, 39

Bale, John, 22

Baluze, Étienne, 1, 7, 101, 108; adminis-

ters Colbert’s library, 111–13; manages

information for the Affair of the régale,

143–52; and New World archives, 116;

serves Seignelay, 156; trains with Ma-

billon, 121–14; works with La Reynie,

133

banking, 18, 24

Barnier, François, 105

Baronius, Cesar, cardinal, 22, 145

Barret-Kriegel, Blandine, 9

Bastille, the prison of, 130, 138

Bayle, Pierre, 101, 136, 139

Beauvilliers, Paul, duke de Saint-Aignan

et de, 159

Bellinzani, Francesco, 76, 117

Benedictines, 120, 146

Bernini, Gian Lorenzo, 100

Besson, Joseph, père, 106–7

bibliophilia, 17–18, 102, 104, 162

Bibliotheca San Marco, 21, 28

biblioteca selecta, 95–97, 111

Bibliothèque Mazarine, 40–43

Bibliothèque Nationale, 8

Bicci, Averardo Francesco di, 55

Biterne, Law Firm of, 35

Blair, Ann, 23

Blois, Françoise-Marie de Bourbon,

mademoiselle de, 51

Blondel, François, 110

Blotius, Hugo, 70, 95–97

Bodin, Jean, 30

Boislisle, Arthur de, 9

Bookkeeping, double-entry, 18, 35,

53–58; naval, 74–76

Boniface VIII, Benedetto Caetani, pope,

141

Bossuet, Jacques-Bénigne, bishop, 151

Botero, Giovanni, 55

Bouhours, Dominique, père de, 87

Boulainvilliers, Henri, comte de, 159–60

Bourgogne, Louis, ‹ls de France, duke

de, 125, 159

Bourzeis, Aimable, abbé, 108, 122

Boutigny, Roland Le Vayer de, inten-

dant, 151

Boyle, Robert, 115

Bracciolini, Poggio, 16, 17

Brienne, Antoine de Loménie, comte de,

103

Brienne, Henri-Auguste de Loménie,

comte de, 29; archive of, 103

Brunelleschi, Filippo, 54, 57

Bruno, Giordano, 24

Budé, Guillaume, 30

Bullion, Claude de, 53

Bureaucracy, 3, 11; Colbert’s reforms of

the intendancy, 67; Foucault’s training

for, 123–26; Jesuit, 23, 29, 31; and

scholarship, 106; Spanish, 20; and the

Terror, 166

Busbeque, Ogier Ghislain de, 105

Call numbers, 93

Cambridge University, 1

Cambridge Modern History, 15

Canada, 113–19

Carcassonne, 104

Carcavy, Pierre, 99

cartography, 71–72, 76

Casa de Contratacíon, 20, 28

Cassini, Giovanni Domenico, 8, 76,

99

Castiglione, Baldessare, 54

Castille, 18

catalogs, 146

categories, 5

Catherine II, the Great, Tsarina of Rus-

sia, 162

Catinat de Vaugelay, Pierre, Président de,

81

Caulet, François-Étienne, bishop,

140–42, 149

censorship, 130–39

the church, and paperwork, 13–14, 16;

scholars of, 120–23

Central Intelligence Agency, 12

Chambers, Ephraïm, 195

Chambre des Comptes, 28, 123, 151

270 index

Chamlay, Jean-Louis Bolé, marquis de,

157

Champaigne, Philippe de, 4

Chapelain, Jean, 101, 157; family ac-

counting ‹rm of, 35

Charlemagne, 14, 140

Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, 54

Charles VIII, King of France, 109, 141

Charles IX, King of France, 30

Charron, Pierre, 58

Chevreuse, Charles Honoré d’Albert,

duke de Luynes, de Chaulnes et de,

159

Choppin, René, 28

chorography, 71

Christina, Queen of Sweden, 41

Cicero, 2

Clanchy, M. T., 15

Clément, Nicolas, 122

Clément, Pierre, 6

clerks, 30

Clermont, Collège de, 87, 89, 123

Clinton, William Jefferson, 12

Cluny, 15

Clusius, Carolus, 19

Coffee Houses, 10

Colbert, Jean-Baptiste: and accounting,

34, 36, 50, 60–66; and archives, 7,

107–12; book collector, 101–8,

126–27; and bookkeeping, 35; collapse

of his ministry, 156; and colonial pol-

icy, 113–19; correspondence of,

137–39; death, 153; education of,

34–36; family, 34; and ‹nance, 34; and

‹nancial management, 38; fortune of,

36–37; and Foucault, 123–26; his son,

88–93; and historiographical culture,

127–29; information management, 7;

information management, blueprint for

his system of, 86; information manage-

ment, collapse of his system, 154–59;

information management, cross-check-

ing, 78; information management and

intendants, 68–73; information man-

agement and navy, 73–75; information

management systems, 12, 41; innova-

tions, 163–65; and Jesuits, 34; and La

Reynie, 133–39; legacy of, 163–65; li-

brary of 1–3, 95–119, 121, 145; library,

sale of, 156; lobby of, 68; and Louis

XIV, relationship to and education of,

51–52, 59–64; and Louis XIV, reports

to, 91; and Mazarin, 35–40; and

Mazarin’s library, 40–43; and merchant

culture, 34–35; and Gabriel Naudé,

39–42; original name of Mississippi

River, 113; and paperwork, 4, 6, 8, 36;

and the Paris Parlement, 43, 47–49;

Paris Parlement, con›ict with, 80–81;

Paris Parlement, regulation of, 69; and

the Republic of Letters, 127; reputa-

tion and historical image, 3–5; rise to

power, chap. 3; Royal Library, 4, 42,

94–101; and science, 98–104; secrecy

of, 44, 47–48

Colbert, Édouard François, comte de

Maulévrier, 155

Colbert, Jean-Baptiste, marquis de

Seignelay, education, 84–88; makes en-

quêtes; and note-taking, 89–93; policy

letters, 138–37; takes over from his fa-

ther, 153

Colbert, Marie Charron, 36

Colbert, Nicolas, archbishop, 84

Colbert de Croissy, Charles, intendant,

Ambassador, 74, 77, 81, 111–12

Colbert de Terron, Jean, intendant, 45,

73–74, 79, 84

Colbert de Torcy, Jean-Baptiste, foreign

minister, archive and information sys-

tem of, 156–57

collecting, 19, 101–8, 127

Collegio Romano, 22

colonies, 113–19

Commines, Philippe, de, 109

Committee of Public Safety, 165

Communication Networks, 10

Congress of the United States, 11

Conring, Herman, 101, 127

Corregidores, 72

Cotelier, Jean-Baptiste, 105

Cotton, Robert, 8, 27–28

Council of Finances, 53, 60

Counter, or Catholic Reform, 53, 143

Cour des Aides, 81–82

Courtilz de Sandras, Gatien, 4

Index 271

Cramoisy, Sébastien Marbre, 102

credit, 160–61

Creil, Jean de, intendant, 81

curia regia, 29

curiosity, 19; Colbert’s lack of in the

New World, 114, 119

Dafforne, Richard, 56

D’Alembert, Jean Le Rond, 4

Dallek, Robert, 11

D’Artagnan, Charles de Batz-Castelmore,

46

Dassié, F., 110

data, management, 23; search, 146–52

de’Barbari, Jacopo, 55

Delamare, Nicolas, 131, 133

Descartes, René, 3, 5, 41

Desmaretz, Nicolas, 154–55

Dessert, Daniel, 68

Diderot, Denis, 4–5, 95, 110

diplomatica, 101, 121

Diplomats, 17–18, 70–71

Doat, Jean, Président de, 104

Dodart, Denis, 110

Doomsday Book, 15

Doujat, Jean, 80

Dreyfus, Alfred, 11, 165

Du Cange, Charles du Fresne, sieur, 31,

105

Dumoulin, Charles, 28

Dupuy Academy, 31

Dupuy, Jacques, 27–28, 31, 94, 100, 145,

161

Dupuy, Pierre, 27–28, 31–33, 100, 145,

161

Durey de Meinières, Jean-Baptiste

François, 161

Du Tillet, Jean the elder, 30, 33, 89,

102

East India Company (VOC), 24–25

Eastern manuscripts, 104–6

Ecclesiastical scholars, 120–23, 144

Edict of Nantes, 155

Encyclopédie, 4–5, 95, 110, 161

encyclopedism, 94–101, 104

England, 18, 21; government and infor-

mation, 26–27; treaties with, 111–13

enquêtes, 67, 69, 77; Seignelay trains to

write them, 155

d’Épernon, Bernard de Nogaret de La

Valette, duke, 131

Erasmus, Desiderius, 57

Escorial, el, 20

Evans, R. J. W., 9

Federal Bureau of Investigation, 12

Félibien, André, 110

Fermat, Pierre de, 95

Fernandez de Oviedo, Gonzalo, 114

Files, 17, 23; Colbert’s ‹les, 116, 122;

Colbert’s ‹le on the régale, 147; of po-

lice, 80; Seignelay’s ‹les, 89–93, 108

‹nance, 18, 34; and openness, or trans-

parency, 159–61

Flacius, Mathias, 22

Florence, Italy, 10, 16–19, 98

Foucault, Joseph-Nicolas, marquis de

Magny, 43, 48, 78, 80, 90, 123–28,

137, 141–42

Foucault, Michel, 9

Fouillac, Antoine Raymonde, abbé de,

124

Fouquet, Nicolas, marquis de Belle-Isle,

vicomte de Melun et Vaux, 43–47;

Cassette, or archive of, 46–47; library,

102

François I, King of France, 30

Frederick II, the Great, King of Prussia,

162

Freedom of Information Act, 11

Fronde, the, 35, 40, 130, 131

Fugger, Anton, 19, 144

Fugger, Jakob, 19

Fulda, 15

Galileo, 8, 24

Galison, Peter, 11

Galland, Antoine, 125

Gallicanism, 22, 27–32, 107, 123–25,

140–42, 145, 151

Gallois, Jean, abbé de 144, 147–50

Gardiner, George, 116

Gates, Bill, 163

Gaudais-Dupont, Louis, 113

genealogy, policy of, 82

272 index

Genoa, 16, 19

geography, 71–72

German states, 18

Gesner, Conrad, 23, 58, 95

Godefroy, Denis II, 128

Godefroy, Théodore, 29–31, 89, 102, 104

Google, 2, 7

government; and paperwork, 6, 22, 60;

and antiquarianism, 25–33, 69

Gracián, Balthasar, 53

Grafton, Anthony, 99

Grands Jours d’Auvergne, 82

Gregory XV, Alessandro Ludovisi, pope,

22

Grotius, Hugo, 26, 28, 41, 54

Grub Street, 139

Guicciardini, Francesco, 17–18

Guise, Henri II, duke de, 38

Habermas, Jürgen, 10

Hague, the, 24

Hapsburg, empire, 25

Harlay, Achilles de, 151

Harlay de Champvallon, François de, 30,

108, 151

Heinsius, Nicolas, 28, 127

Henry IV, King of France, 29, 52–53, 103

Henry VIII, King of England, 141

Hérouard, Jean, 58

Hevelius, Johannes, 101

history, and politics, 127–29

Hobbes, Thomas, 97

Holland, 18; Dutch Revolt, 21; Dutch

Wars, 122; French competition with,

76; radical books from, 136–39; trade

empire, 24–25

d’Hozier, Charles-René, 83

humanism, 16–19; Colbert’s distaste for,

109; decline of political humanism,

39–40; and political pedagogy, 52;

practical humanism and accounting,

54–55

Huygens, Christian, 8, 99, 127

Ianziti, Gary, 17

information, 6; Amsterdam, 24–25; Col-

bert’s orders concerning, 77; Colbert’s

system of, 97; collection, 68; and colo-

nial affairs, 114; cross-checking, 79;

and genealogy, 82; handling and man-

agement of, 23, 41, 52, 56, 62–66; and

ministry of foreign affairs, 156; and

navy, 73–76; networks, 10, 12; over-

load, 77; and the Parlement, 161–62;

and politics, 144–52; retrieval of, 146;

war room, 148–52

informants, political, 80; religious, 15, 76

informers, 69, 72

Innocent XI, Benedetto Odescalchi,

pope, 141

Intelligence, 12, 68, 72, 80; and historical

documents, 129; scienti‹c, 99

intendants, 67; and enquêtes, 77; as in-

formers, 72; and navy, 73–76

investiture crises, 140–41

James I, King of England, 97

Jansenism, 105, 121, 133–34, 144

Jarry, Nicolas, 65

Jefferson, Thomas, 117–18

Jesuits, 5, 6, 12; and bureaucracy, 23; and

education of Colbert’s son, 89–93; and

New World, 114, 117, 118; and sci-

ence, 98; and travel, 70–71

Journal (Giornale), 55–56, 62

Kelley, Donald, 30

King, James E., 9

Kircher, Athanasius, 8, 23, 104–5

Koselleck, Reinhard, 10

Kunstkammern, 71

Laffemas, Barthélemy de, 57

La Fosse, Conseiller de, 46

La Hire, Philippe de, 8

Lamoignon, Guillaume de Malesherbes,

Président de, 47

La Mothe Lavayer, François de, 58–59

La Reynie, Gabriel-Nicolas, lieutenant

général du Châtelet, 8; education, 131;

governing Paris, 132; policing of let-

ters, 130–39; works with Baluze, 133

La Salle, Jean-Baptiste, chevalier de, 114,

118

Lavisse, Ernst, 6, 8, 67

Law, John, 160

Index 273

Lecointe, Charles, 110

ledgers, 54–58

Le Gallois, Jean, 100

Legal reforms, 47–49

Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm, Freiherr

von, 146

Le Laboureur, Jean, 161

Le Maistre, 28

Le Nôtre, André, 1

Léonard, Frédéric, 102

Le Paige, Louis-Sébastien, 161

Le Pelletier, Claude de, 154–55, 157

Le Roy Ladurie, Emmanuel, 67

Le Tellier, Michel, 35–36, 45; family,

154–55

libraries: and the Encyclopédie, 5;

Mazarine library, 102; and science, 1,

98–104. See also Colbert, Jean-Baptiste,

library

Library, Royal, 1, 7, 8, 28, 83, 94–107;

and Louvois family, 158; taken from

Colbert’s control, 154–56

library science, 7

Lionne, Hugues de, 51

Lipsius, Justus, 39, 53–54

Lister, Martin, 1–2, 95

Livy, 129

Locke, John, 5

longitude, 8

Longueil, René de, 80

Longueville, Henri II d’Orléans, duke de,

97

Louis, Grand Dauphin de France, 50,

60

Louis XI, King of France, 109

Louis XIII, King of France, 103, 143

Louis XIV, 5, 6, 12, 13, 33, 39, 43, 44,

47–49; breaks up Colbert’s ministry

and system, 154–59; and clandestine

literature, 139; and colonies, 114; edu-

cation, 58–65; Friday morning reports

from Colbert, 91; patronage, 101, 104;

reading enquêtes, 77; relationship with

Colbert, 50–52; and the right of régale,

140–43

Louis XV, 135; purchases Colbert’s

books, 157, 165

Louis XVI, 135, 161, 165

Louvois, Camille Le Tellier, abbé de, 158

Louvois, François Michel Le Tellier,

marquis de, 157–58

Louvre, palais du, 95; and the royal press,

109

Luther, Martin, 141

Lyon, 18

Mabillon, don Jean de, 101, 121–23

Machiavelli, Niccolò, 17

Malesherbes, Guillaume-Chrétien de

Lamoignon de, 135–61

Mallet, Roland, 57

Malynes, Girard, 116

maps, 71–72, 76, 95; Native American,

117

Marca, Pierre de, archbishop, 28, 121,

143–44

Maridor, Jean, Président de, 47

Marie-Thérèse d’Espagne, Queen of

France, 51, 122

Marle, Bernard-Hector de, intendant, 79,

81

Marsilius of Padua, 141

Mascranni, banking house, 35

Mason Lodges, 10

Maurice of Nassau, 53

Mazarin, Cardinal Jules de, 3, 29, 33; and

Colbert, 35–39, 43–44, 51; and educa-

tion of Louis XIV, 89, 129; library of,

40–43, 102

McKenzie, Donald F., 115

Medici, bank, 18, 54; family, 34

Medici, Cosimo de’, 18

Medici, Marie de’, Queen of France,

57

Mellis, John, 56

Mercantilism, 3, 7, 164

Merchants, 18; culture of, 34–35, 62–66;

code of, 86

Merovingians, 13

Mesme, Henri, président de, 188

Mézéray, François-Eudes, 128

Milan, 16–18

Ministry of Finance, 154; falls out of con-

trol of Colbert family, 156

Mississippi River, originally called the

Colbert River, 113

274 index

Modifort, Thomas, 116

Moissac, Abbey de, 124

Montaigne, Michel de, 58, 115

Montano, Benito Arias, 21

Montchrétien, Antoine de, 57–58, 70

Montespan, Françoise-Athénaïs, marquise

de, 51, 157

Montfaucon, Bernard de, 125–26

Morales, Ambrosio de, 21, 26

Moreau, Jean-Jacob, 162

Münster, Sebastian, 70

Napoléon, Bonaparte, 165

Nattier, Marc, the elder, 85

Naudé, Gabriel, 39–42, 58, 95, 102,

108–9

navy, French, record and information

systems, 73–76

Newton, Sir Isaac, 5

Niccoli, Niccolò, 102

Northumbria, 15

notebooks, 18, 48, 54; of Charles Per-

rault, 129; of intendants, 82; Louis XIV

(Carnets de Louis XIV), 64–66; of

Seignaly, 89

note taking, and accounting, 54–58; and

the Jesuits, 23; and Seignelay’s training,

84–93

Observatory, Royal, 8

Ogilvie, Brian, 70

Openness, ‹nancial, 159–61

Orientalism, 105–7

Origen, Adamantius, 22

d’Orléans, Philippe, duke de, 51

d’Orléans, Philippe, duke de, Regent of

France, 123

Orta, Gracia da, 57

Ovando, Juan de, 114

Oxenstierna af Södermöre, Axel Gustafs-

son, Chancellor of Sweden, 96

Pacioli, Luca, 54–57

Pallavicino, Sforza, 21

Pamiers, 140–42

paperwork, 8, 14; and colonies, 113–19;

and the Italian City States, 16; in

Spain, 20; and secrecy, 45, 59, 79;

Seignelay’s guide to state paperwork,

89–90

Parker, Geoffrey, 9

Parker, Matthew, 22

Paris, 1, 18

Parlement of Paris, 28–33, 43–44, 67–68,

80–81; and information, 161–62; and

censorship, 133

Paul V, Camillo Borghese, pope, 21–23

Pedagogy, 6, 52–54, 57; merchant, 86–87;

project for the duke de Bourgogne,

159

Peiresc, Nicolas Fabri de, 27, 30, 95, 100,

102, 104–5, 125–26, 139

Pellison-Fontanier, Paul, 128

Pellot, Claude, intendant, 81

pendulum clock, 8

Péré‹xe de Beaumont, Paul-Philippe, 58

Perrault, Charles, 128–29

Perrault, Claude, 109

Petrarch, Franceso, 16

Peter the Great, Tsar of Russia, 162

Petty, William, 69

Philip the Fair, King of France, 141

Philip II of Spain, 9, 19–21, 26, 68, 71;

compared to Colbert, 73, 77, 95,

113–14, 166

Philip V, King of Spain, 162

Philippe-Auguste, King of France, 67

philology, 17

Picard, Jean, 9

Pietro Leopoldo, Grand Duke of Tus-

cany, 10

Pithou, Pierre, 28, 30–31, 145

policing, of letters, 130–39; of Parlement,

80

politeness, 10

Pombal, Sebastião José de Carvalho e

Melo, conde de Oeiras, marques de,

162

Pontchartrain, Jérôme Phélypeaux, comte

de, 158

portfolios, 8

The Pragmatic Sanction, 141

Presidential Records Act, 11

printing, 24; regulation of Paris printers,

131–39

Priolo, Benjamin, 129

Index 275

Propaganda, 128

Protestants, 92, 105; policing of, 133–34

Public Sphere, 10–11

publishing, 41

Pussort, Henri, 47–48

radical Enlightenment, 133, 164

Ramus, Petrus, 57

Reagan, Ronald, 12

record keeping, 16–18, 56–58, 74, 107–9,

121–23

reference system, 143–52

Reformation, 21–22, 141

regal, royal right of, 126, 140–51

registers, of state funds, 7, 28, 60–63, 89;

parliamentary, 43

reims, 34

relaciones topográ‹cas, 20, 26, 68, 71,

113

relations, 87

relazioni, 20

Renaudot, Jacques, 136

Renaudot, Théophraste, 32, 136

reports, government, 27, 61; cross-check-

ing of, 79; of intendants, 69, 73; of

Seignelay, 85

Republic of Letters, the, 10, 27–28, 30;

Colbert’s control of, 127, 163–64; and

libraries, 102; policing of, 133–39; and

royal academies, 100

research, 97–104, 151

Revolution, the French, 108, 151, 160,

163

Ribier, Guillaume, 129–30

Richelieu, Armand du Plessis, Cardinal

de, 5, 29, 31, 34, 52–53, 58, 96, 100,

143

Richer, Jean, 110

Rigault, Nicolas, 30

Rochefort, port of, 73–76, 84, 87, 114

Roman script, 17

Rome, 16, 17

Royal Press, 109–10, 123

Royal Society, 98

Rudolph II of Bohemia, Holy Roman

Emperor, 25, 120

Sacchini, Francesco, 23

Sacra Congregatio de Propaganda Fide,

22

Sainte-Palaye, Jean-Baptiste de La Curne

de, 161

Saint Just, Antoine Louis Léon de

Richebourg de, 165–66

Sales, St. François de, 109

Sallo, Denis de, 100, 136

salons, 10

Salutati, Coluccio, 17–18

Sandys, Sir Edwin, 26

Sanson, Nicolas, 76

Sarpi, Paolo, 8, 135

Savary, Jacques, 57, 86, 90, 110

Savoy, 162–63

Scala, Bartolomeo, 17

science, 98–104

Scienti‹c Revolution, 3

scribes, in the navy, 74–75, 146

scriptoria, 13, 16

search engine, 7

secrecy, and archives, 107, 129–30; criti-

cism of, 159–60; and the French

monarchy, 47; and government reports

and memos, 80; and modern govern-

ment, 9–12, 29, 39, 44–45

secret sphere, 33, 168

Secretaries, 29, 36, 44

Séguier, Pierre, duke de Villemor, Chan-

cellier de France, 30, 46

Sepúlveda, Juan Ginés de, 115

Sévigné, Marie de Rabutin-Chantal,

marquise de, 3

Seville, 18, 20

Shapiro, Barbara, 71

Sharpe, Kevin, 9

Shils, Edward, 11

Sienna, 16

Simancas, 20, 28

Simon, Rochard, 134–35

Simonetta, Cicco, 17

Simonetta, Giovanni, 17

Smedley-Weill, Anette, 72

Smith, Adam, 4

Souchu de Rennefort, Urbain, 114

Spain, 20–21, 98; and the Dutch archives,

29

Spanheim, Ezechiel, 4

276 index

Spinoza, Baruch, 5

Staatenkunde, 9

Stasi, the, 165

state information system, 22; Colbert’s

design for, 96; collapse of, 154; criti-

cism of, 159; managing of, 60, 67

state secrecy, 9–12, 29, 39, 44–45, 80

statistics, 72–73, 118

Steven, Simon, 53–55

Strada, Octavio, 25

Sublet de Noyers, Françoise de, 35

Suetonius, 109

Sully, Maximillien de Bethune, duke de,

29; archives of, 108

Tacitus, 39, 53, 57, 129, 135

Talon, Jean, 117–18

Taxation, 68, 126

Terence, 109

The Terror, 165

The Thirty Years War, 53

Thou, Jacques-Auguste de, 8, 54, 95, 105,

139

travel, 70–72; as an element of Colbert’s

training of Seignelay, 87; in the New

World, 114

Trésor des Chartes, 28

Trichet du Fresne, Raphaël, 102

Trithemius, Johannes, 22

trust, 160

Tubeuf, Jacques, intendant, 37–38, 126

Turgot, Ann Robert Jacques, Baron de

Laune, 163–64

University of Pennsylvania, 137

Urban VIII, Maffeo Barberini, pope, 22

Vallière, Louise de, 51

Van Damme, Stéphane, 10

Varillas, Antoine, 128

Vatican, 17–18, 22–23

Vauban, Sébastien Le Prestre, marquis de,

85, 111

Vaux-le-Vicomte, 44–45

Venice, 16, 18; ambassadors, 20, 21; In-

terdict, 21–22; archival catalog, 22

Vermandois, Louis de Bourbon, comte

de, 51

Versailles, 3, 67, 95, 100; publications

about, 110

Vice President of the United State of

America, Of‹ce of, 11

Victor Amadeus II, duke of Savoy, 163

Vieira, Damiao, 116

Vinci, Leonarda da, 54, 57

Vossius, J. G., 127

Wansleben (Vanslèbe), Johann, Michael,

pere, 106

Wars of Religion, 28

Weber, Max, 3, 13, 15, 154

West Indies, 24

Williams, Robert, 56

Wolfenbüttel Library, 99–103, 146

Wotton, Sir Henry, 104

Ympyn, Jan, 56

Zsámboky, Janos (Sambucus), 25

Zwinger, Theodore, 70

Index 277

Jacob Soll Information Master Jean-Baptiste Colberts Secret State Intelligence System Cultures of...

Documents

Transcript of Jacob Soll Information Master Jean-Baptiste Colberts Secret State Intelligence System Cultures of...