Almanach de la Cour

Résumé du livre

The Almanach de la Cour, Troisieme Édition, is composed of two sections. The first presents the royal and princely households at the court of Versailles, provides notices concerning the functions and benefits of the offices and lists the officers and employees. The second section provides an alphabetical list of the officers and employees, their birth and death dates, and titles, followed by their lodging at the court, their profits, pensions and fortunes as well as quotes from the anecdotal literature. The information is based almost entirely on archival and manuscript documentation.

The third edition completes the cursus honoeum of many officers by adding the names of their predecessors and successors and expands the details of the benefits they received such as pensions, gratifications, brevets de retenue and d’assurance. Selected texts provide details of means by which the payment of the price of the office was secured through loans and family covenants. These details have been amassed from the sequential review of the registers of the secretariat of the Maison du roi and provide new insights to the role of venality of office as the economic foundation of the court at Versailles.