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In contrast to the conventional focus on social exclusion in studies of the accountancy profession, this paper examines the race-based expulsion of a group of established practitioners. It does so by analysing the removal of Jews from the profession in Fascist Italy. Drawing on Foucault’s concepts of biopolitics and race, and an array of primary and secondary sources, the paper explores the apparatuses of biopower deployed to cleanse the professional population of Jews. These included anti-Semitic legislation to define the offending population, a census to identify and locate it, and bureaucratic mechanisms to secure its removal. It is shown that following their fascistization, accountancy organisations in Italy functioned as agencies for the purification of the profession. Although the object to ‘kill’ through expulsion was activated in most cases, the existence of transitional ‘let live’ provisions indicated the complexities of activating a biopolitical project on the basis of biological racism. When parts of Italy came under German control in 1943, ‘indirect murder’ through expulsion was supplanted by the actual murder of a number of Jewish accountants.

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.

The Papal States represent a unique and long period in Italian government and in the government of the Roman Catholic Church prior to Italy's unification in 1870. The 25-year period prior to unification was a particularly tumultuous period when the Papal States struggled for survival, faced military and popular challenges and became increasingly indebted. Accounting could become an important tool to assist decision-making and enhance the Papal States' sustainability, as shown by the governance reforms promulgated by Pope Pius IX in this period. Nevertheless, accountants chose what to make visible and emphasised secular, rather than the sacred aspects of the Papal States. Despite reforms, there was a disconnection between the leaders and the accountants. This research therefore examines the role of accounting in such an institution, and extends the concept of a sacred-secular divide to a state government beset by resource constraints and challenged to fulfil its spiritual aims.