Abstract EN:

The collector general of the french clergy was placed at the top of the financial pyramid of the whole order which was set up in 1561 to guarantee a regular participation on the part of the clergy to the expenditure of the monarchy. Initially in charge of collecting from the beneficiaries the "decimes" that were used for paying the interests of the national debt, he soon found himself in charge of the numerous disposals of ecclesiastical property under the last valois. Choosen by the clergy among the wealthy bourgeoisie, he had to be at the same time a faithfull servant of the church, a sound guarantee for the paris "rentiers" and had also to be the king's man, someone om whom the sovereign could rely. Associating those three roles proved to be far from easy. If in the xviith century the relative weight of the contribution from the clergy to the royal budget declined, it nevertheless kept increasing in absolute terms. Form then on the voluntary gifts become the main concern of the collector general. Collecting those was a particularly difficult task during the thirty years and the spanish succession wars. To meet the expenditure involved, the clergy had first to create parasitic provincial offices, then to issue its own bonds. Thanks to an increasingly rational approach, which meant planning the internal expenditures, the extinction of the debt and the redemption of the new taxes, poll tax and "dixieme", the institution went throught the last years of louis xiv's reign without too much dammage. The different holders of the collector's office, one the most prominent financial office of the realm, were all wealthy financiers. Their fortune was due not so much to their wages as to the interests from the advances they granted to the clergy, hence to the king. They were important money-lenders to the rich aristocratic clients. They practised classic investments in offices, bonds, land and real estates. They belonged in every way to the world of finance so necessary for the smooth running of the tax