1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Oresme, Nicolas

ORESME, NICOLAS (c. 1320–1382), French bishop, celebrated for his numerous works in both French and Latin on scholastic, scientific and political questions, was born in Normandy at the opening of the 14th century. In 1348 he was a student in the college of Navarre at Paris, of which he became head in 1356. In 1361 he was named dean of the cathedral of Rouen. Charles V. had him appointed bishop of Lisieux on the 16th of November 1377. He died in that city on the 11th of July 1382. One of his works, of great importance for the history of economic conceptions in the middle ages, was the De origine, natura, jure et mutationibus monetarum, of which there is also a French edition. Oresme was the author of several works on astrology, in which he showed its falseness as a science and denounced its practice. At the request of Charles V. he translated the Ethics, Politics and Economics of Aristotle. In December 1363 he preached before Urban V. a sermon on reform in the church, so severe in its arraignment that it was often brought forward in the 16th century by Protestant polemists.

See Francis Meunier, Essai sur la vie et les ouvrages de Nicole Oresme (Paris, 1857); Feret, La Faculté de théologie de l’Université de Paris (Paris, 1896, t. iii. p. 290 sqq.); Émile Bridrey, Nicole Oresme. Étude des doctrines et des faits économiques (Paris, 1906).