22 BALCH— THE LAW OF ORESME, 



[April 23, 



of his kingdom, justly surnamed the Wise. This honorary title, 

 Charles the Fifth, who was a capable and sagacious man, was enti- 

 tled for in great measure to the fact that he surrounded himself 

 and relied upon the services of men of first rate ability who had 

 strengthened their natural capacities by hard work, such generals 

 as the Breton, Bertrand du Guesclin, such scholars as the Norman, 

 Nicole Oresme. It was Charles the Wise, too, who, in beginning 

 the first collection of manuscripts in the Louvre, that afterwards 

 became the Bibliotheque Royale, then the Bibliotheque Imperiale, 

 and to-day is known as the Bibliotheque Nationale, was the founder 

 of what is to-day the largest depository of learning in the world. 



The chief cause of the unhappy state in which the French people 

 found themselves when Due Charles became king in 1364 was in 

 large measure due to the tampering by their rulers with the weight 

 of the value of the coins of the realm. Many of the French kings 

 had thought to raise revenue by forcing their people to accept a 

 debased coinage. Of these royal false coiners, Dante flays Philip 

 the Fair (1285-1314) in the Paradiso in these words: 



" La si vedra il duo! che sopra Senna 

 Induce, falseggiando la moneta." ^ 



In addition to debasing the coinage, the French sovereigns again 

 and again changed the mint price of gold and silver. In the reign 

 of King John the Second, the value of the livre tournois was changed 

 between 135 1 and 1360 no less than seventy-one times.* And what 

 made the resulting confusion from this unjustified and foolish med- 

 dling with the measure of commerce still worse was that sometimes 

 the value of the livre tournois was raised and sometimes it was low- 

 ered. As a result, far from filling the coffers of the king, this 

 policy prostrated commerce, and the wealth in the realm of France 

 shrank. When Charles the Fifth, upon his father's death, ascended 

 the tlvone, he called upon Nicole Oresme, in order that he might 

 reform the coinage of France, to shed light upon the confused cur- 

 rency of the kingdom. And thus it was that Oresme prepared his 

 most important work, already referred to, the first comprehensive 



' " There shall be seen the woe that he shall pour 



Along the Seine by debasing the coinage." 

 * Wolowski. 



