Collaborative Practice and Its Interpretation

The illustrations for Book VII reveal valuable information about the roles and cooperation of the translator and scribe in the production of Charles V's copies of the Politiques . The choice of the illustration of Book IV from MS B as a conceptual and pictorial model for Figure 74 and a shift to the frontispieces of MS D for Figure 75 probably represent such a collaboration. A similar working together results in the insertion of a revised introductory paragraph and external inscriptions for Figure 75. The credit that Raoulet d'Orléans bestows on himself for his graphic solutions to problems caused by an altered visual structure reveals the important role of the scribe in correcting and supervising the execution of the manuscript. Raoulet's status is amplified by the prominence he gives himself in the colophon at the beginning of D and his recording of his adjustment of Oresme's additional gloss to Book III. This evidence of Raoulet's importance ac-

cords with our knowledge from other manuscripts of his self-confidence and independent literary activity.^[38] The revised introductory paragraph in D sheds further light on Oresme's role as inventor of the program of illustrations. His motives for these explications may have been prompted by the importance of the concepts defined in these illustrations, as well as by the changes in their formats.

Perhaps the difficulty Oresme experienced in translating Aristotle's generic terms for polis and citizenship made the visual structures of either Figure 74 or Figure 75 inadequate in themselves to construct parallel social and political equivalents signified by the French words cité and citoien . The need for the reinforcements of the internal and external inscriptions suggests a disjunction between the complex verbal arguments of Aristotle's text and Oresme's lengthy commentaries and the inherently limited visual means available for the translation of such concepts.

The question of how the primary audience understood the illustrations of Book VII is also difficult to answer. Part of the problem is how they perceived the six classes in social and political terms. Except for the larger inscriptions of the upper register in Figure 74, the miniaturist's treatment of the citizens and noncitizens is evenhanded. The changes in the depiction of the six groups in Figure 75, however, emphasize the power of the citizen groups and the social inferiority of the noncitizens. A certain menacing quality in the representation of the politically powerless groups emerges from a modern reading of the illustration. As always, it is impossible to evaluate such an interpretation as an instruction from Oresme to the Master of the Coronation Book, an intentional or accidental consequence of the miniaturist's style, or a subjective reaction. Since for the most part Oresme's glosses do not contradict Aristotle's negative comments about the noncitizens, it is reasonable to assume that the illustrations convey a continued justification for the hierarchical organization of society and the exclusion of these three groups from political life.