Livre de Politiques

There is no evidence for the reception or translation of Aristotle's Politics by Arabic philosophers during the Islamic Golden Age.[2] It was introduced to the Latin West by William of Moerbeke's Latin translation from the Greek original in the 1260s. Soon after the translation was finished, Albert the Great and Thomas Aquinas wrote commentaries on it, trying to illuminate its sometimes obscure meaning and to reconcile it with Christian doctrine. Thomas' unfinished commentary was continued by Peter of Auvergne. The first known French translation of the Politics by Pierre de Paris is lost.[3]

Before starting work on his own translation, Oresme was already a distinguished academic. Having probably studied the artes liberales with Jean Buridan at the University of Paris, he was admitted into the Collège de Navarre at the same university in 1348. In 1356, he acquired a master's degree in theology and become grand-maître of the Collège, before receiving a doctorate in theology in 1362. While studying and teaching there, he had contacts with Pierre Bersuire, Jean de Muris, Philippe de Vitry, and Guillaume Machaut. It is unclear whether Oresme was officially commissioned to come up with a solution for the financial crisis of the French monarchy in the 1350s, or whether he gained the royal family's attention by presenting said solution of his own accord. In 1355, he published his Tractatus de mutatione monetarum,[4] followed a year later by a French translation (known as the Traictié de la Monnoie).[5] In this work, he used Aristotelian thought to promote an end to the constant debasement of coinage practiced by King John II to pay for the Hundred Years' War.

In the turmoil following John II's capture at the Battle of Poitiers, Oresme appears to have supported the dauphin and newly appointed regent in the absence of the king, Charles (later King Charles V). Charles' and his father's right to rule was being challenged by several factions within the French kingdom: King Charles II of Navarre questioned the Valois' dynastic legitimacy and tried to mobilise the French nobility and the citizens of Paris and other bonnes villes in order to seize the French throne for himself. At the same time, the merchants of Paris, under their leader Etienne Marcel, tried to limit royal power, especially in financial matters, by having the Estates-General pass the Great Ordinance of 1357. Meanwhile, a peasants' rebellion in Northern France known as the Jacquerie challenged the nobility's right to rule. While the noblemen suppressed the peasants, Charles of Navarre discredited himself by joining ranks with the partly violent merchants of Paris who not long after murdered their leader Marcel. Thus the resistance against Valois rule collapsed mostly of its own accord.[6]

After this major crisis and after ascending the throne in 1364, Charles V started a cultural programme of scientific writing and translations to support his dynasty's fragile legitimacy and to facilitate governing. The target audience of this programme were his councillors and courtiers whose Latin was mostly insufficient to easily read the original texts.[7] Between 1370 and 1377, at the behest of Charles V, Oresme translated and annotated Aristotle's moral works, namely the Nicomachean Ethics, the Politics, and the pseudo-Aristotelian Economics, into French. Probably as a reward for this accomplishment, he was appointed bishop of Lisieux in 1378, where he died in 1382.[8]

A printed version of the Politiques was published in 1489 by Antoine Vérard. Oresme's translation was later replaced by Louis Le Roy who in 1568 published his French translation from the Greek original.[9]

Oresme justified his translation from Latin, the savant language of his time, to the more vulgar Middle French as part of the translatio studii. He coined numerous French neologisms still used today by giving originally Greek terms a French ending and sounding.[10] In his glosses, he not only tried to explain Aristotle's thoughts, but also developed his own political ideas, especially concerning the political stability and durability of the relatively young Valois dynasty.[11]

Oresme makes use of earlier commentaries written by Albert the Great, Thomas Aquinas and Peter of Auvergne, and also quotes Marsilius of Padua's Defensor pacis (1324). Oresme among others was accused of having written a French translation of this highly controversial work in 1375, but was acquitted of this charge.[12]

Like his predecessors Albert the Great, Thomas Aquinas and Peter of Auvergne (and quite unlike Aristotle), Oresme favours monarchy as the best form of government.[13] His criterion for good government is the common good. A king (by definition good) takes care of the common good, whereas a tyrant works for his own profit. A monarch can ensure the stability and durability of his reign by letting the people participate in government. This has rather confusingly and anachronistically been called popular sovereignty.[14] Like Albert the Great, Thomas Aquinas, Peter of Auvergne and especially Marsilius of Padua, whom he occasionally quotes, Oresme conceives of this popular participation as rather restrictive: only the multitude of reasonable, wise and virtuous men should be allowed political participation by electing and correcting the prince, changing the law and passing judgement.[15] Oresme, however, categorically denies the right of rebellion since it endangers the common good. This is possibly a consequence of his witnessing the crisis of 1356–1360 and its subsequent rebellions.[16] Unlike earlier commentators, Oresme prescribes the law as superior to the king's will.[17] It must be changed only in cases of extreme necessity.[18] Oresme favours moderate kingship,[19] thereby negating contemporary absolutist thought, usually promoted by adherents of Roman law.[20] Furthermore, Oresme doesn't comply to contemporary conceptions of the French king as sacred, as promoted by Évrart de Trémaugon in his Songe du vergier or Jean Golein in his Traité du sacre.[21] Although he heavily criticises the Church as corrupt, tyrannical and oligarchical, he never fundamentally questions its necessity for the spiritual well-being of the faithful.[22]

There are 18 known manuscripts of the Politiques in three redactions.[23] The individual copies usually contain Oresme's translation of the pseudo-Aristotelian Economics (Livre de Yconomique)[24] and often form a set with Oresme's translation of the Nicomachean Ethics (Livre de Ethiques).[25] Léopold Delisle considered Ms. 223 from Avranches, Bibliothèque municipale, to have been Oresme's personal copy as it contains the first redaction and subsequent changes as well as the Yconomiques, although a corresponding copy of the Ethiques is not extant.[26] The richly illuminated library copy presented to King Charles V is currently in possession of the Comte de Waziers in Paris and therefore not available to the public.[27] The equally lavishly illuminated private copy of Charles V is preserved at the Bibliothèque royale de Belgique in Brussels, Ms. 11201–02 (formerly Ms. 2904).[28]

The Château du Louvre, where the illuminated library copies of the Livre de Politiques were kept, as depicted in the 15th-century Très riches heures du duc de Berry.

Oresme's Aristotelian translations may have had a major influence on King Charles V's policies: Charles' laws concerning the line of succession and the possibility of a regency for an underage king have been accredited to Oresme, as has the election of several high-ranking officials by the king's council in the early 1370s.[29] Oresme may have conveyed Marsilian and conciliarist thought to Jean Gerson and Christine de Pizan.[30]

• List of medieval Latin commentators on Aristotle