The Appeal to Historical Experience

The updated costumes and attributes of the figures in the illustrations of Book VII raise the question of how closely Oresme wished to tie Aristotle's definitions of cité and citoien to the political life and institutions of contemporary France. As Susan Babbitt convincingly explains, in Book VII Oresme equates Aristotle's identification of the polis and the good life with the kingdom of France and the city of Paris.^[32] As noted above, Oresme states that France has a distinctive heritage, language, and institutions that make it an extended form of the polis.

How then do Figures 74 and 75 reflect Oresme's views on certain of these issues as explained in his glosses? The first question to ask is whether the cité and citoiens pictured in them contain deliberate references to contemporary France. The architectural setting certainly defines an ideal political order, a communitas perfecta . Furthermore, all six classes are represented in the population and social organization of Oresme's time. Yet the identification is complicated by readers' associating the illustrations of Book VII with the medieval theory of organizing the perfect society into three orders or estates. Georges Duby cites a classic formulation of this organization:

Triple then is the house of God which is thought to be one: on Earth, some pray [orant ], others fight [pugnant ], still others work [laborant ]; which three are joined together and may not be torn asunder; so than on the function [officium ] of each the works [opera ] of the others rest, each in turn assisting all.^[33]

Several elements in Figures 74 and 75 suggest a conflation of Aristotle's six classes with the three-orders scheme. First, the external inscriptions use the word estas , or estates, to describe the citizen and noncitizen classes. Second, the three-register

format of Figure 75 suggests adherence to the tripartite scheme of the orders. Then, the hierarchic character of the three estates finds resonance in the Aristotelian system in which the noncitizen classes are subordinate to the politically and socially empowered citizens. Both the two-register and three-register formats encode an analogous hierarchical system, in which the politically powerful inhabit the upper sphere; the powerless, the lower zone. Furthermore, the six Aristotelian classes can be assimilated to the three-estate orders. The warrior class, which had the obligation of offering military aid, can be identified with the gent d'armes ; the clergy, or oratores , with the gent sacerdotal ; and the cultiveurs de terres with the laborers who support the efforts of the other two classes. Furthermore, the other estas in Figures 74 and 75 can be accommodated in later versions of the three-orders system, such as the Policraticus of John of Salisbury.^[34] In this influential treatise, the category of agricultural workers expands to include various ways of earning one's living, such as the arts and crafts.

Despite the similarities between the three-estates system and the representation of Aristotle's six classes in Figures 74 and 75, there are some important differences. Where in the former system do the genz de conseil belong? Furthermore, the order in which Aristotle's six categories is presented in the illustrations does not conform to that of the three estates of the medieval system. In this scheme the clergy comes first and the nobility second. Also, a considerable distance separates the broad, theoretical associations of the three estates and specific royal and political institutions of fourteenth-century France. For example, in terms of French contemporary political practice, the third estate, which included merchants, was entitled to send representatives to the meetings of the Estates General. In short, readers may have associated the three-orders theory in general with the Aristotelian classifications in Figures 74 and 75, but the specifics of the latter remain distinct.

What other clues does Oresme provide in associating the representation of Aristotle's six classes in the ideal cité of Figures 74 and 75 with contemporary France? Such a detail as the royal member of the genz de conseil in Figure 75 aids the reader in associating this group with institutions of the French kingdom. Oresme speaks glowingly in a long commentary on Chapter 32 of Book VI of the advantages to a prince of choosing and listening to virtuous counsellors. As Jean Dunbabin points out, in certain glosses in the Politiques Oresme encouraged widened participation in the legislative process.^[35] Oresme may have been thinking of his own role as counsellor, while the king may have recollected his dependence on the royal council during the crises of 1356 to 1358, as well as the election of the chancellor by this body as a response to the recommendations in his translation.^[36] Likewise, the redefinition of the gent sacerdotal in Figure 75 could encourage an association of the bishops and other high-ranking officials represented (and the absence of the pontiff himself) with Oresme's pleading for a church council as a means of both reform and limiting papal power.

The primary readers of the Politiques could also make negative associations between the groups represented and the threats to royal authority during the political crises of the 1350s. The meetings of the Estates General during this decade presented a potentially very dangerous attack on many areas of royal authority and

prerogative. Particularly in Figure 75, the weighty groups of the noncitizens may have recalled to Charles V and his counsellors the many meetings of the Estates General from 1356 to 1358, the years of greatest crisis. During this time the three noncitizen groups could also evoke thoughts of overt civil rebellion that confronted Charles as regent. For instance, the cultiveurs de terres could recall the peasant revolt of the Jacquerie. The gent de mestier and the marcheans could suggest the resistance of Paris to Charles's rule between 1356 and 1358 under the leadership of the powerful Etienne Marcel, provost of the merchants. Marcel was actively engaged in the wool trade, depicted in Figure 75 as the activity of the marcheans . The menacing representation of the gent de mestier may have recalled their attack on the Dauphin's palace during his near-assassination in February 1358. Again, the presence of the building trades recalls Oresme's mention in a gloss on Chapter 5 of Book VII that masons were among the groups of day laborers who were covetous, malicious, and unjust. As noted in Chapter 19 above, a possible confirmation of these negative associations are Charles V's letters patent of 25 September 1372, in which regulation of the bodies of Parisian craftsmen was vested in a royal official, the provost of the city.^[37]

In short, the visual definitions of cité and citoien in Figures 74 and 75 invite reference to the institutions and class structure of contemporary France. The format of the illustrations (particularly that of Fig. 75) emphasizes the ideal or paradigmatic character of the two concepts. Yet the updating and concretization of the definitions invite both translation of and comparison to contemporary institutions. Despite certain fundamental differences, the six classes represented also suggest an analogy to and assimilation of the hierarchic three-estates organization of medieval society. Oresme may have left to the reader the process of reconciling his definitions of these concepts with their own historical, political, and social experience. Or the occasion of oral explication of Book VII may have afforded an opportunity for him to reconcile the Aristotelian definitions with the very different institutions of his own day.