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Nicole Oresme. Tractatus de origine, natura, jure et mutationibus monetarum. Analisi introduttiva, trascrizione, traduzione e apparato critico
2020
Editor(s)
Brollo, Tommaso
Evangelisti, Paolo
Abstract
The Tractatus de origine et natura, iure et mutationibus monetarum of Nicholas Oresme, written in Latin in 1355-1356 and later translated in French by the author himself, might be seen as one of the most important works to read in perspective the late-medieval thought on the nature of money and the role of the sovereign and the political body of the community. This work, here offered in a newly revised Italian edition, built on some manuscripts preserved at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, appears from the onset as having a particularly marked political vocation, as it is addressed to the king of France Charles the Fifth, of whom Oresme was an advisor. The Norman magister has often been portrayed as a fervent supporter of a metallist view of the nature of money, as if its value were nothing more than the market value of the gold or silver it was made of, a perspective that might be characterised as one of private-law. However, a thorough reading of Oresme’s monetary writings, that takes good stock of their historical contextualisation in the troubled monetary anarchy of the 1350s and of the interpretative links pointing to Aristotle’s Politics and Ethics – known, translated and glossed by Oresme –, reveals a more complex analysis, that cannot be confined to the all-out defence of the intrinsic metallic stability of money. Rather, the proposed interpretation will qualify Oresme as a political advisor that perceives and appreciates the nature of money as a social institution, whose value and role is determined by those, the whole body of the political community, that are sovereign over money and resort to it in negotiations. In this political dimension of the government of the monetary institution emerges the structural role that Oresme attributes to the faith that must rest with those tasked with governing money: thus, the accent posed on the importance of preserving its value assumes a procedural dimension that aims at granting that the institution of money continues to fulfil its social metric role.
Series
Rei Nummariae Scriptores
Publisher
EUT Edizioni Università di Trieste
Source
Tommaso Brollo e Paolo Evangelisti (a cura di), "Nicole Oresme. Tractatus de origine, natura, jure et mutationibus monetarum. Analisi introduttiva, trascrizione, traduzione e apparato critico", Trieste, EUT Edizioni Università di Trieste, 2020, pp. XI, 219; ill..
Languages
it
•
la
Rights
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 Internazionale
File(s)