marie seong-hak kim functions, the monarch availed himself an important source of income. One must remember that the notion of public office as distinct from patrimony was not yet firmly established in premodern Europe. The venality of offices was practiced in most European countries but no country had developed a system on the French scale.81 Selling judicial posts was condemned by moralists for causing judicial corruption and decline in administrative efficiency. As long as there was continuing demand, however, the crown was disposed to create more offices and put them on sale. A contemporary noted, “every time it pleased the king to create an office to sell, it pleased God to create a fool to buy it.”82 The judicial corps in France consisted of judges of the parlements, and members of the inferior jurisdictions of prévotés, bailliages andsénéchaussees, and présiduaux, including the Châtelet de Paris.83 The judgeships in these courts were readily open to well-off merchants or urban rentiers. Offices became an alluring investment option for them, whose descendants could aspire, over time, to purchase an ennobling office in a sovereign court. Established judges at the parlements were motivated to protect and augment the value of their investment by making them more exclusive. They opposed the creation of additional posts for sale, fearing that such expansion would decrease the value of their own offices. At the same time, they needed to sustain the market in which their investment would appreciate. Access to high-ranking offices was increasingly in the possession of tightly interwoven families of judges,many of whom formed powerful judicial dynasties. Strong corporatist culture reigned among the parlementaires. The 1560s saw a full-blown practice of selling offices. The number of new judgeships in the Parlement of Paris was more than doubled. Since the inception of the venal system, the king did not advocate the practice in itself but justified it on the grounds of financial necessity. When the government’s lack of money made it impossible to launch an all-out abo81 The sale of offices was widely practiced in Spain and theNetherlands. See Swart, K.W. 1949. For the sale of offices in Britain, see Allen, Douglas W. 2005 p. 57-79. For patrimonialism and bureaucracy, see Gorski, Philip S. 2005 p. 267-296. 82 Marion, Marcel 1923 p. 40. See Giesey, Ralph E. 1977 p. 284. 83 Barbiche, Bernard 1999 p. 105-110, 335-358. 151
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