Buffering Institutional Differences: the Case of Lyon (17th Century)

On 29 November 2023 Marta Lupi will defend her doctoral dissertation at Tilburg University, with the title Insolvent merchants and royal jurisdictions in Early Modern Lyon (1600-1660): the role of royal notaries and the Conservation des privilèges royaux des foires.

This dissertation zooms in on the jurisdictional aspects of mercantile insolvency in the city of Lyon, for the first half of the seventeenth century. Marta Lupi demonstrates that insolvency by then had become a negotiated affair. Merchants were mostly seeking agreements with their creditors when facing financial difficulties. The institutional landscape supported this approach, even though it was highly complex.

The merchants’ court of Lyon, the Conservation des privilèges, heard cases that related to the fairs and had gradually received a general jurisdiction in mercantile affairs. Insolvents did not first go to this court, but rather addressed a notary. In seventeenth-century France, notaries boasted jurisdiction themselves, in amicable agreements, and therefore they were the ones who drafted insolvency agreements. Marta Lupi shows that the cooperation between the Conservation and the notaries in the city could occasionally be strained, but was mostly easy.

By contrast, another court did not accept the extending jurisdiction of the Conservation. The Sénéchaussée, which was competent for attachment and public sale of assets, lobbied for more jurisdiction, also in insolvency cases. Particularly interesting is that the strife between the two courts was happening under the umbrella of royal authority. Both the Conservation and Sénéchaussée were royal courts, not municipal ones. Marta Lupi argues that in spite of the tensions and the regulations which the courts issued in competition with each other, there was a culture of infrajustice, which made smooth insolvency negotiations possible. The agency lay with the creditors, not with the institutions. This to the point that even fraudulent insolvents could receive agreements of postponement from their creditors. The strict legislation could be put aside.