ABSTRACT
Historians and social scientists have sought to discern the parameters of corruption in the early modern period, arguing that some standards of public behavior existed. Robert Harding and Linda Levy Peck have clearly shown that English and French grandees spoke of corruption when favorites—i.e., brokers that did not belong to well-established families—used gift, patronage and venality to build factions through the diversion of royal grants. Despite the evidence of the perception of corrupt practices, historians argue that early modern definitions of corruption differed from ours. British and French aristocrats did not think that gift, patronage, and venality were inherently corrupt. The chapter shows that the choice of vocabulary used when speaking of early modern corruption represented a political stance. The image of "corruption" that emerges from the Academy's definition was structured around two levels of understanding. Judicial corruption was understood as one aspect of moral corruption while moral corruption emanated from the original and physical understanding of the term.
