Contenu du sommaire

Theodosius II, Constantinople and the Empire: a new reading of the Notitia Urbis Constantinopolitanae

Until now, the Notitia urbis Constantinopolitanae (now NuC) has been studied mainly for its contributions on the topography and administration of Constantinople in the first half of the 5th century. Its writing –between 424 and 427– is however located at a pivotal moment of the reign of Theodosius II (408-450). Indeed, a few months after the death of Honorius (423), the primicerius notariorum John proclaimed himself Augustus in Rome. Theodosius II reacted by declaring war on him and, after having eliminated him, elevated his cousin Valentinian to the rank of Augustus for the western part of the Empire. Considered in this context, the Notitia appears much more than a document intended for the use of the urban prefecture. Indeed, the text contains a notable ideological content, centered on the status of Constantinople as the capital of the Roman Empire of the East, and on the glorification of the Theodosian dynasty, notably by the use of the topoi of the panegyric of city. Thus, the NuC affirms the central role –and now preponderant in relation to Rome– of Constantinople within the Empire.

A public bank? 1936 or the uncomplete mutation of the Bank of France
This article shows how the 1936 law led to some decisive transformations on the Bank of France. This law, promoted by the government of the Popular Front led by the socialist Léon Blum, consisted in particular in a modification of the composition of the General Council of the Bank. The most powerful shareholders – whose family sat in for some of them on the General Council since the creation of the Bank in 1800 – have been evicted in favour of new members, nominated directly by the government.
This intrusion of the government in the governance of the Bank of France was the signal of a deeper shift in the organization of this institution. It represents the starting point of a nationalisation process that has been achieved a decade later, when the government took the control of the Bank's capital, becoming its unique shareholder.
This law has both endogenous and exogenous factors. If it corresponds to the political program of the Popular Front, which even promised to nationalize the Bank of France in order to subtract it from private interests, it was also contemporary to a parallel evolution of the other central banks in the industrialized world. But this evolution also had a strong impact on the activities of the Bank of France. The institute of issuing was understood as a public service of money, which could not only be driven by considerations of financial profitability. The inclusion of the Bank of France in the public sphere led, for instance, to a reducing of its banking activities. As the Bank became to be “the bank of banks” with its duties of banking and financial supervision, it can no longer compete with the commercial banks the central bank had to control.
Moreover, this transformation reveals the important links existing between the internal and external governance of the financial institution. For instance, the growing influence of the government in the administration of the Bank of France had several consequences for the employees of the Bank. Their status has been modified in 1937, in order to follow the legislative transformation of the preceding year and to adapt it to the new era opened by this public revolution (Singleton, 2011). This new status reinforces the social democracy inside the Bank, recognising the existence of several trade unions, and represented an equilibrium between the status of civil servants and the banking profession.

Pierre Loyer, itinerary of a reactionary technocrat of Vichy
Pierre Loyer is the man who directed the artisanal policy of the Vichy regime. After the war, technocracy imposed itself as an avant-garde of modernization, causing all other approaches to be forgotten. But Pierre Loyer was a reactionary technocrat. Looking at his career allows the observer to understand this particularity. As a Catholic engineer, Loyer was able, from the end of the 1920s, to develop a small reputation as an expert in the business world, a partisan of corporatism. After 1934, he enrolled in the ligues. He became a writer for the Catholic, anti-Semitic and anti-Masonic extreme right. In 1940, Jean Bichelonne chose him to lead the Artisan Service which Vichy had just created. As a defender of the national revolution dear to Marshal Pétain, he led at the same time a policy of authoritarian direction of craftsmanship which resulted in failure and a rupture with artisans. He was equally involved in a policy of zealous collaboration with the occupying Germans. Forgotten as an expert after the war, he refocused his energies on religion. His career path illustrates that of the traditional Catholic right in the 20th century.