Oresme's Role as Designer
Oresme's greater involvement with the program of B may have resulted from his or his patron's dissatisfaction with the cycle of A . As mentioned above, Oresme's second instruction to the reader in B affords proof of his design of the Politiques ' programs.[14] Two other aspects of his involvement also deserve comment. First, he created visual links to the Ethiques cycles in two of the Politiques miniatures, where the illustrations of Books III and IV contain references to the concepts of the mean and proportionality established in Books II and V of the Ethiques . Second, unlike the marked revisions between the programs of A and C , those of B and D show relatively minor differences that result mainly from the smaller size and the more regular, simpler format of the second manuscript (D ).
Evidence of Oresme's increased personal and textual authority emerges from several features of the Politiques translation. Already noted is the expansion of his explanatory glosses to include his individual opinions and critical observations, either separately or in relation to disagreement with previous commentaries. Like Oresme's commentaries, the illustrations of the Politiques also had the important
function of making Aristotle's text intelligible in terms of the political life of his own day. Essential to this process is imagery that updates and concretizes Aristotelian concepts.[15] Also relevant as a sign of the translator's authorial identity is the feature in D (as in C ) of the scribe's designation of Oresme's glosses and commentaries by abbreviated (O or Or ) or full references to his name instead of the more customary use of the impersonal G for "Gloss."
Confirmation of Oresme's increased self-confidence is found in the first sentence of his prologue, in which he refers to his official ecclesiastic positions and his relationship to the patron:
A tres souverain et tres excellent prince Charles, quint de ce nom, par la grace de Dieu roy de France: Nicole Oresme, doyen de vostre eglise de Rouen, vostre humble chapellain: Honeur, obedience et subjection.
(To the very sovereign and very excellent prince, Charles, fifth of this name, by the grace of God king of France: Nicole Oresme, dean of your church of Rouen, your humble chaplain—honor, obedience, and subjection.)[16]
An analogue to Oresme's increased visibility is the first of two portraits that accompany the introductory matter in B . Although Figure 44 is a conventional likeness of the translator, Oresme is pictured alone, in his function as a writer; his visual identity does not depend on his relationship to the king. In this respect, the portrait follows a medieval iconographic tradition in which the translator of a text, and not its original author, is the subject of the portrait. The appropriation of language seems to create a visual analogue in the transfer of authorial identity to the translator.
Also by Perrin Remiet, Figure 45 is an intimate dedication portrait like that of A (Fig. 6), on which it is modeled. The occurrence of Figure 45 in the text after the prologue, the two instructions to the reader, the bifolio frontispiece, the table of contents, and the chapter headings for Book I reinforces the translator's didactic position as master of the text. The dedication portrait also may allude to the longstanding mentor relationship between Oresme and Charles V. In this connection, a passage in Oresme's prologue mentions another work by Aristotle (Liber de regno ), written for his pupil Alexander the Great, that has the specific function of teaching the latter how to rule.[17]
Oresme's greater involvement with the illustrative program for the Politiques may also have resulted from the difficulties of finding both a suitable representational mode and an existing iconographic tradition. The context of the Politics focuses on collective social and political relationships and institutions of ancient Greece. There were no readily available, comprehensible visual and verbal equivalents for these in contemporary France. The translator had to develop concrete and updated imagery related to the contemporary historical experience of his readers. Unlike the moral and spiritual imagery of the Ethiques , for which the rich iconography of virtues and vices provided an accessible typology, existing models
Figure 44
Nicole Oresme Writing. Les politiques d'Aristote, MS B.
Figure 45
Nicole Oresme Presents the Book to Charles V. Le s
politiques d'Aristote, MS B.
for the Politics in the Mirror of Princes literature and relevant examples from legal iconography were less abundant. Although simplified in content, a precedent for the representation of certain political themes exists, however, in the Morgan Avis au roys .
Moreover, the didactic purpose of the Politics translation called for a more diagrammatic and lexically oriented program of illustrations. As indicated in the first instruction, Oresme was concerned with the reader's understanding of generic and specific terminology. It is not surprising, then, that the inscriptions, which mark the intersection of the verbal and visual languages of the translation, play a prominent role in Oresme's strategies for re-presenting Aristotle's text. The glossary of difficult words contains explanations of essential terms of Aristotelian logic, such as difference, diffinition , and gerre (genus).[18] This emphasis on definition, a primary task of the translator, carries over into the programs of illustrations. Oresme's frequent citation of Aristotle's Rhetoric in his translation of the Politics shows his awareness of the various strategies that writers employ in enlightening and per-
suading their audiences. As the probable oral commentator on the text, Oresme would have known how to convey his interpretation by means common to verbal and visual exposition. Certain rhetorical devices such as parallelism, contrast, juxtaposition, paradox, and irony are combined with visual definitions of both generic and specific terms in the cycles of the Politiques and Yconomique .[19] Always concerned with inventing effective mnemonic structures, Oresme provides special architectural enframements that set apart the most important illustrations. In several cases, he also carries over from the Ethiques programs the triadic scheme of organization connected with Aristotle's theory of the mean. More broadly, Oresme seems conscious of how sequence and order within images play important roles in the reader's association and recollection of complex verbal and visual concepts.
In contrast to the more allusive representational modes of personification and allegory chosen for the Ethiques cycles, Oresme adopts a paradigmatic type for the Politiques . The term paradigm or example is defined by Aristotle in the Rhetoric (I.2 1356b) as one of two main types of persuasion or argument. As a rhetorical figure, a paradigm has a double sense of serving as both model and illustration.[20] Compared to the cycle of C , in which scenes drawn from everyday life serve as examples of individual virtues and vices, in the Politiques cycles Oresme uses a paradigmatic mode in both ways. Like the operation of language, the paradigmatic mode is appropriate for transferring meaning between verbal and visual language. Oresme's application of paradigms was essential in providing both contemporary models and specific examples of the various bodies politic so carefully defined in Aristotle's text. Indeed, the persistent and powerful metaphor of the state as a physical body was certainly well known to Oresme's politically aware readers.
Another challenge in presenting a coherent overall program of illustrations is the confusing order of the books and the overlapping subject matter of all versions of the Politics text. Where, how, and in what order to present and visually highlight key concepts was as demanding a task as constructing verbal aids for the readers. On the plus side, the varied subject matter gives the program great diversity and range. Using the various verbal and visual strategies mentioned above, Oresme needed to apply Aristotle's text to the historical experience of his readers. Sometimes the relationships are overt; on other occasions, potentially dangerous references are disguised. Of course, the translator was again dependent on the imaginative and expressive resources of the illuminators entrusted with carrying out his verbal instructions. Oresme also had the considerable help of Raoulet d'Orléans, whose intervention in clarifying the textual and visual program of D reveals his crucial role in supervising the production of the manuscript.
Although the differences between the programs of B and D are not as great as they are between A and C , the method of discussing the illustrations of the former group, established in Part II of this study, remains the same. Comparing the cycles of B and D will again offer further insights into the dynamics of contemporary Paris book production. The revisions, editing, and reformating of King Charles's manuscripts of the translations of Aristotle's Politics and Economics illuminate the different functions and uses of text and image by their primary readers.