The Clerks of the Secretaries of State in Renaissance France. Between domesticity and the structuring of an administration

The creation of the secretaries of State in 1547 engenders the development of an administration whose purpose is to help the secretary in performing his growing tasks. The commis are representative of this phenomenom and have been seen as the incarnation of the birth of a modern administration. The study of the commis of the first secretaries of State in the second half of the 16th century invites to reconsider this question, by investigating the links between the commis and the secretaries. The purpose of this article is to highlight the singularity of those first administrations, between the development of a bureaucratic system and the permanence of an household government, characterized by close and personal links with a patron.