story elevation, and undulant piers of Saint-Étienne, Beauvais, for the churches of Saint-
Pantaléon, Saint-Jean-au-Marché, and Saint-Nicolas. Martin Chambiges died on August
29, 1532, and was buried west of the crossing in Beauvais cathedral.
Michael T.Davis
[See also: BEAUVAIS; GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE; PARIS; SENS; TROYES]
Murray, Stephen. Building Troyes Cathedral: The Late Gothic Campaigns. Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 1987.
——. Beauvais Cathedral: Architecture of Transcendence. Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1989.
——. “The Choir of Saint-Étienne at Beauvais.” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians
36 (1977):111–21.
Sanfaçon, Roland. L’architecture flamboyante en France. Laval: Presses de l’Université, 1971.
Vachon, Marius. Une famille parisienne de maîtres maçons aux XVe, XVIe, XVIIe siècles: les
Chambiges. Paris: Librairie de la Construction Moderne, 1907.
CHAMBRE DES COMPTES
. The French monarchy long lacked a central auditing agency like the English exchequer
to monitor collection of its “ordinary” or domainal revenues. The Chambre des Comptes
finally filled this need. From the mid-12th century, the crown entrusted its finances to the
Knights Templar, who maintained a banking establishment in Paris. This tradition caused
the royal treasury to be organized like a bank in which the king had the largest account.
The receipt of revenues and the payment of salaries often involved simply the transfer of
funds from one account to another. Except in the case of Normandy, where the French
government inherited an exchequer established by the Anglo-Norman kings, royal
officers in the field, who sent revenues to the Temple, had their accounts audited by the
royal council, which had special clerks assigned to work at the Temple. By the late 13th
century, these financial specialists were being called the curia in compotis. From ca.
1297, they audited accounts twice a year, after St. John’s (June 24) and Christmas.
In 1295, Philip IV removed his treasure from the Temple and placed it in the fortress
of the Louvre. He returned it to the Temple in 1303 but ordered its final removal in 1307.
Between 1295 and 1307, the royal financial administration was dominated by the Guidi
brothers of the Florentine firm of Francezi. Their deaths coincided roughly with the final
removal of funds from the Temple, and Enguerran de Marigny became effective head of
royal finances. The financial specialists received accounts for audit in a room of the royal
palace that became known as the Chambre des Comptes, and they began to be identified
collectively by the same name, although still only a sub-commission of the royal council,
consisting of about sixteen people.
Several years after the fall of Marigny, Philip V issued the important ordinance of
Vivier-en-Brie (1320), which first gave official structure to the Chambre des Comptes,
requiring it to audit accounts, judge cases arising from accountability, and maintain
registers of documents bearing on finance. For the next twenty-five years, under Henri de
Sully and then Mile de Noyers, the Chambre des Comptes became an important organ of
the government, and for a time in the 1340s the leaders, or “sovereigns,” of the Chamber
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