Prefatory and Explanatory Materials

While the index and glossary that accompany Oresme's translation of the Ethics and the Politics are relatively novel features in contemporary book compilation, other elements designed to direct the reader through the books were standard for the time. Chapter headings for each book precede the text, while numbers at the top of the folio called running titles indicate the number of the book. Written in the margins, chapter numbers direct the reader to specific subdivisions within the text. Summary paragraphs in rubrics usher in new books, while text endings clearly demarcate one unit from another. Among the most important features to direct the reader through a text are the division into chapters and the summary list of chapter headings at the beginning of each book or text division. Oresme apparently increased the number of chapters, shortening and rearranging the Latin translations, since smaller units of difficult subject matter are easier to grasp, especially when they are accompanied by summaries of their contents.^[43] Oresme also summarized the content of each entire book in a short introductory paragraph.

Oresme offered guidance to the reader, unusual for the time, in his lengthy "Proheme" to the Ethiques and in the accompanying "Excusacion et Commendacion de ceste Oeuvre."^[44] While the prologue to the Politiques is much shorter than that of the Ethiques , Oresme gives more specific instructions to the reader for the use of the book. As previously noted, this short text explains the system of compi-

lation Oresme used. Furthermore, MS B , Charles V's first copy of the Politiques , contains an apparently unique second instruction to the reader.^[45] In it, Oresme explains the meaning of the bifolio frontispiece. All the prefatory materials indicate Oresme's awareness of linguistic problems in translating the complex Latin texts into a less-developed language and the necessity of directing the reader to the glossaries and indexes that will clear a path through these difficult works.