4P Li gç(' TRANSACTIONS

792 LE LIVRE DE YCONOMIQIJE D'ARISTOTE [TRANS. AMI:R. PHIL. Soc.
heliocentric s ystem, rejected b y Aristotle, was revived
by Jean Buridan in his Quacsfiones super libris de coelo
et mundo "I and, according to modern standards of
scholarship, Oresme should have acknowledged this borrowing
in his gloss. His originality in this connection
is thus reduced to the fact that he was first to give expression
to the concept in a modern language. Something
of his enthusiastic love of learning as well as his
pride of authorship is revealed in the colophon of this,
perhaps his greatest work:
And thus with God's help, I have finished the Book of the
heavens and the earth by command of the excellent prince
Charles V, by the grace of God king of France who has
made me bishop of Lisieux as my reward. And in order
to enthuse, excite and move the hearts of those young men
who have subtle and noble minds and a desire for knowledge,
so that they may be moved to challenge me and reply
to my arguments out of love and desire for truth, Iventure
to say and maintain that no mortal man has ever seen
a finer or better book of natural philosophy than this one,
either in Hebrew, in Greek, in Arabic, in Latin or in
French.4
The Livre du ciel at du monde was completed in
August, 1377. Oil 8 of that year he was paid
two hundred francs from the royal treasury, and a few
weeks later Pope Gregory XI confirmed his nomination
by the king to the bisho1)ric of Lisieux. The ceremony
of elevation was performed in Rouen Cathedral on
August 3, 1378. The long collaboration between king
and cleric ended when Charles V died in September,
1380. Oresme survived his generous royal patron by
less than two years. I-Ic (lied in the bishop's palace
at Lisieux on July 11, 1382, and was buried in his
cathedral church. No trace of his tomb exists today.
2. THE TRANSLATION AND THE COMMENTARY
In his Preamble to the Livre de Etli-iqucs Oresme
states clearly his conception of the translator's role: "I
must be excused" he wrote, "if I do not express myself
as clearly, as precisely and as methodicall y as might he
desired; for I do not dare depart from Aristotle's text,
which is often obscure, lest I miss his meaning and misinterpret
him." With this as his guiding principle, we
should expect a very literal rendering of the Latin ver-
1. Double tra-i-siation:
YCONOM IQUE
Et donques convient vcoir at considerer de vconomie et
queUe est le cevre de elle. (fol. 330h).
Et pour ce, ii convient bien disposer at ordonner las
C/loses qui stint quant a traic far de la famine, ce est
assavoir quelle elle doit estre faicte par bonne instruction
et par enseignentens ( 330b)
Rook II, Quaestio 22. ed. Moody. pp. 226 233.
Idein, Mediaeval Sfudis 3: 231, 1943; fol. 203c.
sions he employed. Actually, however, Oresme was
motivated primarily by his desire to reproduce Aristotle
in such manner that the complex ideas could be easily
and readily grasped and understood by French readers
previously unschooled in such highly intellectual exercise.
Therefore, although he followed his principle in
general, his translations cannot be rightly called literal
the exceptions are too frequent and too notable.
In the first place, he devised the idea of dividing the
original Books into relatively short chapters, supplying
a descriptive title for each. At the beginning of each
Book he placed a complete list of these chapter headings
to serve at once as a table of contents and as an
index for the reader's convenience; this scheme he
adapted from the similar practice used by the Sclioolnien
in their Latin commentaries. At the end of the Politiques
and the Litre du ciel et dii nwnde he added a
table de notables, a simple summary of the subjects
treated in each Book; in the Ethiques and Politiques he
drew up an alphabetical glossary of the difficult and
rare words—a Table dc fors inots—with definitions and
place references. The combination of these several aids
to the reader was a definite innovation in fourteenthcentury
bookmaking; for it Oresme deserves more than
the scanty notice he has received from the historians of
the art of the hook. In the case of the }7conomiqu.e he
explains that the omission of a glossary is due to the
close similarity of its vocabulary to that of the Politiques
and he refers the reader to tile Table de fors mots in this
latter work.
These are, of course, purely external changes from the
arrangement found in his Latin originals. When we
examine his rendering of the Latin original of the
Ycononuque, we find him deviating from the Latin text
chiefly in three ways : ( 1 ) double translation—one Latin
word is rendered by two or niore French equivalents of
synonymous meaning; (2) occasional interpolations of
short phrases or clauses to render an idea more clearly
or more full y ; (3) rare omissions of a phrase or a
sentence in the original, usually explainable as the
avoidance of all
or concept totally alien to a four-
teenth-century French reader. A fe w exanipies of these
departures front literal translations will demonstrate
their nature:
OECONOMIcA
l-'idenduin ergo de oeconornica, et quid opus ipsius.
Propter quod decet ea, quae stint de co-n junctione uxoris
bene ordnare: hoc autem est qiialeni eani (lecet esse
praevidere.