(Poor) accounting for God: the tracking and monitoring of cash flows in the Custody of the Holy Land’s network (1650s–1680s)

This study investigates the issues of accountability and solvency in the early modern period by focusing on a religious entity, the Franciscan Custody of the Holy Land, and on its peripheral branches, the commissariati. The Custody was a sort of long-distance international proto-corporation that had to periodically prove its good administration to the Roman Curia while keeping a certain margin of autonomy and independence. The analysis of the commissariati’s accounting records, which registered all transactions and were periodically sent to Rome for scrutiny, shows how these documents were crafted to serve the friars’ own narrative of their tenure, to promote their endeavours, and to reach a precarious balance between economic solvency, administrative flexibility, and decisional autonomy. The drafting of their balances, for instance, was partially altered to show always minimally positive values. The flexibility of the charge-and-discharge system helped to reach this goal. The research is based on the records of the commissariati of Naples, Messina, and Genoa that were sent for auditing between 1654 and 1687. The Custody’s sources of revenues, along with the credit instruments in play, shed further light on the multiple entanglements between religious and secular authorities on local and global scales in this period.