The registration of papal spendings : Calculations and Accounting Practices in Avignon in the XIVth century[L’enregistrement des dépenses pontificales : calculs et pratiques comptables à Avignon au XIVe siècle]

This article aims to explore what the final state of the Apostolic Chamber's accounts can teach us about the accounting know-how of its staff. Rather than drawing up an assessment of the knowledge and the know-how of an institution, it focuses on the contribution to this field of a particular source : the Great Books studied through the archives of Innocent VI's pontificate (1352-1362), with a special focus on the building accounts. In order to do so, it was necessary in a first instance to go back over the different kinds of documents which composed the "writing chain" leading to the redaction of the Great Books. Once the exact nature of the Great Books is better defined, the article focuses on the calculation techniques that it employs : the choice of calculation units, the resulting data and its reliability. This study reveals an important measure of simplification of the accounting system, which leads the Great Books to present transactions in way that is not entirely realistic. Although the entries of the Great Book bear validation marks and endorse a probatory value, they do not appear to have been thoroughly checked. This result leaves open the question of what control accounts could exert over these transactions.