The Papal States was a longstanding nation ruled by the Pope, the Head of the Roman Catholic Church. Its accountants included priests and laymen who were employed as bureaucrats. Despite an expectation that the finances would be carefully managed, this research from the mid-nineteenth century shows that incompetence and fraud dogged the Papal States’ latter years, contributing to it losing most of its territory in the Second War of Italian Independence from 1859, and its final demise in 1870. This prosopography of three men who held high bureaucratic positions, analyses their approach to accounting in the Papal States. It shows that waste and deficient accounting arose from individuals undertaking fraud and from organisational (and individual) incompetence. In doing so, it elucidates how the Papal States could be a ‘vehicle for fraud’, and in particular, how it was used as a shield to enable both fraud and incompetence to go unpunished.

教皇国是一个长期由罗马天主教会领袖教皇统治的国家。它的会计师包括受雇为官僚的牧师和外行。尽管期望财务会得到谨慎管理，但这项 19 世纪中叶的研究表明，无能和欺诈困扰着教皇国的晚年，导致它在 1859 年的第二次意大利独立战争中失去了大部分领土，并最终于 1870 年消亡。这本由三位担任高级官僚职位的人组成的散文分析了他们在教皇国的会计方法。它表明浪费和有缺陷的会计是由个人进行欺诈和组织（和个人）无能引起的。通过这样做，它阐明了教皇国如何成为“欺诈工具”，