Economic Counsel
Under these circumstances of extreme civil unrest, about 1356 or 1357 Oresme wrote the first version of his influential treatise De moneta (On the Debasement of the Coinage),[6] the first medieval treatise on economics. Heated in tone and outspokenly critical, De moneta states that the coinage is not the property of the sovereign but belongs to the entire community.[7] Regulation of it, therefore, is not the prerogative of the monarch alone but of a gathering of the kingdom's inhabitants. Furthermore, the coinage cannot be altered without the consent of the people's representatives. In this treatise, Oresme borrows essential arguments from both the Nicomachean Ethics and the Politics . From the Politics come the distinction between tyranny and monarchy and the warning that power should not be unduly concentrated in any one segment of the community. Oresme's argument that the king's economic powers are subject to regulation by law and custom also derives from the Politics .[8]
Drawing on the authority of these citations from Aristotle, Oresme wrote a second Latin version of De moneta , seemingly in response to the mood of crisis caused by the defeat at Poitiers and John the Good's captivity. Although the tone of the tract is unfriendly to monarchy, the advice offered may have attracted the attention of the Dauphin. In any case, the wording of the reference to a reader in the conclusion of a French translation of De moneta —called the Traictié des monnoies —attributed to Oresme suggests that the vernacular version was addressed to Charles.[9] Although the date of this translation presents problems, the final section suggests that between 1357 and 1360 personal ties existed between Oresme and
the Dauphin.[10] This does not mean that the Traictié des monnoies was necessarily Oresme's first writing in French. Oresme himself named the Livre de divinacions as his earliest work in the vernacular. If, as some scholars propose, this treatise dates from between 1356 and 1357, the Traictié des monnoies could follow it in the last few years of this decade.[11]
In any case, historians generally accept that Oresme's suggestions in the De moneta for reforming the currency were followed in December 1360 by John the Good.[12] Emile Bridrey points out that the language in preambles to a series of royal ordinances dealing with financial policy derives from key terms used by Oresme in De moneta and its French translation.[13]
Another type of evidence confirms Oresme's political and intellectual influence with Charles while he was acting as regent. In 1359 Oresme was secretary of the king and had direct access to members of the royal family, including the sovereign—or in this case, the regent Charles. If commanded to do so by the king, a secretary was entitled to sign acts, and Oresme did so in 1359 (document now lost).[14] Although at this time the rank of secretary was less powerful than in later periods, the holder of this position was nonetheless an intimate officer of the king.[15] Further corroboration of the Dauphin's faith in Nicole Oresme's acumen can be found in a document of 1360. According to Bridrey, in that year Oresme was given the delicate mission of obtaining a substantial loan from the city of Rouen.[16] Oresme's advice to Charles in a period of great crisis forms a practical basis for his relationship with the future king. In this connection, the relevance of Aristotelian ideas advocated by Oresme as a basis for reform constitutes a precedent for his translations of the Ethics and the Politics .