4P Li gç(' TRANSACTIONS

796 LE LIVRE DE YCONOMIQUE DARISTOTE [TRANS. AMER. PHIL. SOC.
The rather frequent errors in his quotations suggest that
he often cited them from memory, without checking
their accuracy, but at least some of the errors must be
attributed to the ignorance of the scribes.
An examination of the originality of Oresme's glosses
yields results that are, from the standpoint of modern
scholarship, both startling and revealing. In the Yconomique,
he mentions by name only one of the earlier
Latin commentators of the Economics, of whom there
were several. Yet when we turn to these Latin expositions—commentaries
or quaestiones—we notice two
striking features: (1) the passages glossed by Oresme
are in many instances the same as those previously
glossed by his Latin predecessors and these Latin glosses
are in turn closely patterned on the earliest of the expositions,
that of Durandus de Hispania; (2) Oresme's
glosses are often little more than paraphrases of these
Latin glosses, frequently , greatly abbreviated or occasionally
augmented with new material interpolated by
Oresme himself. If this methodical transmission of
earlier exegesis, usuall y unacknowledged, seein g reprehensible
today—"a whole pedigree of plagiarism," it has
been called 27—the fact is that Scholasticism was essentially
a method of instruction for university students,
a pedagogical system designed to preserve a uniform
teaching of universally accepted truth, upon which the
individual scholar infringed at his peril. Deviations do
occur, of course; but tradition is a stern mistress and
any notable irregularity was likely to give rise to charges
of heresy, greatest of all sins. The great scarcity of
books generally favored the repetitiousness of mediaeval
scholarship; readers were usually too glad to welcome
the appearance of any new work to be much concerned
with the originality of its contents. Under such circumstances,
"even the plagiarist was a public benefactor."
28
Thus it is possible to trace the substance of several
glosses in the Ycono;nique back through the Latin expositions
of the Economics by Jean Buridan (Quacshones),
William of Occam (Quaeshiones), Ferrandus
de Hispania (Scholia), Barthélemy de Bruges (Cornmentum
and Quaestiones), Albertus Magnus (Expos'itio)
and finally, the prototype of all of these. Durandus
de Hispania (Cons;nentarium). Doubtless there are still
other unidentified expositors included in Oresme's
blanket references to une al4tre exposition, les exposileurs,
etc. (343a, 345a, 346a, etc.). His attitude towards
expositors in general is shown in a significant
remark in the Pofitiques: " No one should marvel if I
do not always follow the expositors, for I find them often
contradicting one another and at odds with the text
itself." 29 We can hardly censure him, surely, for de-
Synsmachus, Ef,istolae, 1; Vergil, Aeneid, 2, Georgics, 2;
Vitruvius, Dc Architectura, 1; Ysopet-Arionnef, 1.
By G. G. Coulton, Medieval panoranw, 450, New York,
Meridian Books, 1955.
Ide,n, 580.
Polithjucs, Avranchcs, BihI. Municipaic, 31s. 223, fol. 103d.
pending upon his predecessors for historical or geographical
references, for these commentaries were the
tools of learning with which he worked in full confidence
of their trustworthiness; their authors were among the
most distinguished scholars of the age and Oresme
utilized their works as we use an encyclopedia today.
Of all these Latin expositors, why Oresme should have
singled out only Barthélemy (le Bruges to mention by
name remains something of a mystery. This Flemish
master of arts and doctor of medicine wrote a cornmentarv
and also Quaestiones on the Economics, both
in 13O9,° when he began his long though intermittent
service as lecturer at the Sorhonne. He was court
physician to the French king Philip VI, and made frequent
benefactions to various colleges of the University
of Paris. Since he was still living in 1356, it is not tinlikely
that Oresme knew him personally. Oresme liked
to enliven his glosses with occasional exempla or apposite
anecdotes, and Rarthéleniy's account of the son
condemned to the gallows who blames his mother for
his plight (342b) may have struck him as worthy of
special acknowledgment, although this c.rcotpiunz was
not original 31 with Barthélemy and Oresnie must have
accredited it to Hartliélemy simply because he had the
latter's work in hand at the moment.
Merely because Oresme depended so often upon his
predecessors, it must not be inferred that his glosses
contain nothing of his own invention. On the contrary,
the majority of his glosses are wholly or in part original.
His numerous cross references to parallel passages in
30 According to the explicit in Venice, Bib!. Marciana, Class.
XII, cod. 9, if. 130-154, which contains lsth works. Barthélemy
wrote commentaries on Galen, Hippocrates and Avicenna, as
well as on several Aristotelian treatises. Copies of his commentary
on the Economics—called Scriptum in the manuscripts
—and Quoestiones on the same work are preserved at Bologna,
Cracow, Erfurt, Paris, Venice, and Vienna. His short medical
tract Re,nediurn epidemias (oil the Black Plague) has been
published by Karl Sudhoif, Archiv für Geschiclztr der 3ledi:iu
5: 39-41, 1912. Barthélemy lectured at the Sorbonne from
1308-1330 and again from 1342-1354. The best account of
his life and writings is the article by Charles V. Langlois,
Barthélcmy de Bruges, maitre ès arts et en médecinc, Hisfoire
lie téraire de ha France 37: 238-250, Paris, Imprimerie Nationale,
1938. On his contribution to medicine, cf. Ernest Wickersheimer,
Dictionnaire biagraJ'hiquc des médecins en France au
snoycn-âge 1: 60, Paris, Droz, 1936.
31 Paul Meyer traced the original version of this exem/'lurn
to an anonymous tract of the late twelfth century, Dc scolariurn
disciphinis, Migne, Patrologia latina 64: 1227, It appears in at
least four thirteenth-century writers—Eudes of Chcrington,
Jacques de Vitry, Vincent de Beauvais and finally in Philippe
de Novarre. Cf. Paul Meyer, L'Enfant gãté devenu crisninel,
Romania 14: 581-583, 1885. Barthélemy's account reads as
follows in Bib!. Nat., .11's. lat. 14704, fol. 46v: "Audivi de quodam
prope terrarn nostrarn qui, instigatus a(l furturn a matre, cum
duceretur ad patibulum, dixit matri quod vellet cans osculari,
et, cuin tangeret earn, arnordebat sibi nasum, dicens: 'Vos
fecistis me suspendi, teneatis sallarium vestrurn.' " This follows
almost verbatim the story in Jacques de Vitry's Sermones, no.
26. It is hardly credible that Orcsrne discLz'crcd this oft-told
talc in Barthélcrn y's ()uu'sto;i,'s.