The Information Master: Jean-Baptiste Colbert's Secret State Intelligence System

8. Jean-Baptiste Colbert's Republic of Letters

c h a p t e r 8 Jean-Baptiste Colbert’s Republic of Letters the state control of knowledge T he 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 phenomenon 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 patronage , 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 librarian , Don Jean Mabillon (1632–1707), who had developed a methodology 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 Mabillon ’s fame and in›uence only grew. Mabillon’s skills of ecclesiastical erudition had a profound effect on Colbert’s approach to learned administration . 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, Colbert sent Mabillon to Burgundy to search for documents relative to royal rights.2 In 1683, Colbert sent Mabillon through Switzerland and Germany to look for documents relative to the rights of the Gallican church, which were central to fortifying Louis’s power and claims over ecclesiastical bene‹ces. Mabillon trained a number of highly accomplished document gatherers 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 Jesuittrained 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 library . 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 Colbert , 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 Colbert ’s orders were its modus operandi. Baluze’s main responsibility was to manage historical documentation for Colbert’s daily political uses...