8 were put into final written form by a secretary, college decisions were to be signed by all members of the board participating in their adoption. Contrary to practices in medieval administrations, minutes were to be kept of all meetings of the board. Through the minutes, it became possible to monitor the activities of the collegial boards and their individual members. Activities in the executive-administrative sections of the colleges were organized according to a strict division of labor, the idea of which was to guarantee a more efficient and more rapid processing of the growing administrative work load. In each of the colleges it was possible to find a series of different office holders with titles such as accountant, bookkeeper, recording secretary, registrar, actuary, copyist, archivist, and so on. The subalterns had no part in the decision-making process of the college, their work consisting, instead, of executing the board’s decisions and performingthe regularly recurring administrativetasks of thecollege. The internal workings of the colleges were carefully regulated by acts of administrativelegislation referred to as collegial instructions or regulations. The collegial administration differed from the medieval administration in this manner, too, since the latter’s activities had instead evolved on the basis of developments in common law. In order for the administration to meet the high demands for efficiency placed on it by the expanding state apparatus, however, it was necessary for all of its functionaries to receive detailed instructions concerning the performance of their duties. With the highly developed division of labor that dominated the administrative colleges, each officeholder had to carry out his special tasks on a regular basis if the college were not to subside into disorder and, eventually, into chaos. The legal definition and regulation of the content of the various administrative positions thus established regular operating procedures. In addition, the division of labor meant that the colleges had to maintain a permanent staff, which again was something that had not existed in medieval administrations, where the size of the personnel had shifted according to current needs. In formulating the regulations for standard operating procedures, it was possible to utilize and expand upon the administrative tradition that had emerged in the larger cities during the medieval period.^^ One example of the urban administrative influence was the register, which constituted one of the most central office routines in the college. The registrar was not only to maintain a regular record of the communications received and sent by the college, but he was also to collect all original documents and letters received by the college and copies of all letters and documents issued by the college, and then to catalogue them and keep them at the disposal Heinrich Otto Meisner, Verfassung, Verwalttmg, Regierung in neurer Zeit (Berlin, 1962), 29.
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