Historical Associations

Among the contemporary historical associations that the readers of Oresme's translations of the Politics might have made, one deserves particular emphasis. As noted above, the money bag in Figures 46 and 48 highlights the argument that, unlike the king whose concern for the welfare of his subjects motivates his reign, personal financial gain drives the tyrant. This distinction had long been a leitmotif of Oresme's writings. In his influential treatise De moneta , written by 1356, he discusses the debasement of the coinage as a method of the tyrant.^[25] This subject of contemporary debate became urgent during the monetary crisis of the 1350s and was particularly acute because of the ransom demanded for the captured King John the Good. In chapters 25 and 26 of the De moneta , Oresme quotes the Politics in warning against debasement of the coinage, since "whenever kingship approaches tyranny it is near to its end, for by this it becomes ripe for division." Oresme further warns that "neither can a kingdom survive whose prince draws to himself riches in excess as is done by altering the coinage." To make his points more clearly, Oresme explains that "the prince should not enlarge his dominion over his subjects, should not overtax them or seize their goods, should allow or grant them liberties and should not interfere with them or use his plenary powers but only a power regulated by law and custom."^[26]

In the conclusion to the De moneta , Oresme mentions the specific dangers to the French monarchy, if by debasing the coinage, it becomes a tyranny. At the time Oresme was pleading for monetary reform in the context of the political crisis of the 1350s and meetings of the Estates General during which opposition to the monarchy was evident:

Whoever, therefore, should in any way induce the lords of France to such tyrannical government, would expose the realm to great danger and pave the way to its

end. For neither has the noble offspring of the French kings learned to be tyrannous, nor the people of Gaul to be servile; therefore if the royal house decline from its ancient virtue, it will certainly lose the kingdom.^[27]

Charles V was certainly familiar with the distinction between tyranny and kingship drawn by Oresme in the De moneta and its French translation, the Traité des monnoies . Thus the Aristotelian framework of these treatises could have formed the link with the Philosopher's theoretical classifications of the regimes. Such associations would have recalled the crises threatening the French monarchy that inspired Oresme's treatises and enframed them as references to a dangerous past, a paradigmatic present, and admonitions for the future. In this respect, the allusion to the French monarchy (particularly in Fig. 47) as the incarnation of the best type of the good regimes that seeks the commun proffit shares a common theme of political writing during Charles V's reign: his devotion to the chose publique .^[28]

The communication among members of Royaume and Aristocracie in Figures 47 and 49 might also have recalled particular political events associated with the production and reading of the Politiques . Scholars have suggested that the election by Charles V's council in 1371 and 1372 of a royal chancellor, previously appointed by the king, was an innovation influenced by Aristotle's advocacy of public participation in the selection of high officers of the state.^[29]