La chancellerie municipale lyonnaise et la construction d’une information politique urbaine à la fin du 16e siècle

Abstract

Information was considered a full-fledged government tool for 16th century urban elites. Its written forms obeyed specific rules which aimed to make it official and valuable enough to be accepted as such by society. Municipal powers relied on actual chancelleries and a vast array of employees ranging from secretaries and scriveners to clerks, all striving to lay down political information on paper. The study of Lyon’s consulat allows us to understand the work and the inner organisation of these small urban chancelleries and their essential input in the creation of a local information network. This paper analyses these networks, the physical dimension of information in written form and the new media used to convey it in order to explore the emergence of a common culture of political information shared by the municipal powers.

Keywords

• information
• chancellery
• epistolarity
• printed matter
• consulate