Chapter III · (continued 3)
Reading edition
In conclusion, Oresme insists that no alteration of any of the above kinds can be justified at the mere injunction of the prince; it must be accomplished per ipsam communitatem. The prince exercises the functions of the community in the matter of coinage not as principalis actor, but as ordinationis publicae executor. It is pointed out that arbitrary changes in the value of money are really equivalent to a particularly noxious form of taxation; that they seriously disorganise commerce and impoverish many merchants; and that the bad coinage drives the good out of circulation. This last observation is of special interest in a fourteenth-century writer, as it shows that Gresham's Law, which is usually credited to a sixteenth-century English economist, was perfectly well understood in the Middle Ages.[1]
[Footnote 1: The best edition of Oresme's Tractatus is that by Wolowski, published at Paris in 1864, which includes both the Latin and French texts.]
This brief account of the ground which Oresme covered, and the conclusions at which he arrived, will enable us to appreciate his importance. Although his clear elucidation of the principles which govern the questions of money was not powerful enough to check the financial abuses of the sovereigns of the later Middle Ages, they exercised a profound influence on the thought of the period, and were accepted by all the theologians of the fifteenth century.[2]
[Footnote 2: Biel, op. cit., IV. xv. 11; De Monetarum Potestate et Utilitate, referred to in Jourdain, op. cit., p. 34.]