AUX ORIGINES DU SYSTÈME DE MÉRITE. FORMATION, RECRUTEMENT ET SÉLECTION DES OFFICIERS DE CHANCELLERIE DE QUELQUES GRANDES MAGISTRATURES PUBLIQUES ITALIENNES XVIIE‐XVIIIE SIÈCLES

Abstract

This article is based on research into the procedures of competitive examinations for the enrolment of chancellery assistants in Milan, Venice and Bologna in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The growing success of candidats from the middle classes was the result of attempts to improve the quality of the office administration as well as to reduce the influence of the aristocracy. Quality, however, was only used as a selection criterion in the beginning of the candidates’ career; not when it came to promotion. So merit and political patronage were very closely related in this kind of “mixed system”. They were not only the main characteristics of the new Italian administrative machine, but also conditioned its subsequent development.