,
until it became an intolerable grievance to his subjects. In vain did
the Pope thunder against Philip;[1] in vain did the greatest poet of
the age denounce

'him that doth work
With his adulterate money on the Seine.'[2]

[Footnote 1: Le Blant, _Traite historique des Monnaies de France_, p.
184.]

[Footnote 2: Dante, _Paradiso_, xix.]

Matters continued to grow steadily worse until the middle of the
fourteenth century. During the year 1348 there were no less than
eleven variations in the value of money in France; in 1349 there were
nine, in 1351 eighteen, in 1353 thirteen, and in 1355 eighteen again.
In the course of a single year the value of the silver mark sprang
from four to seventeen livres, and fell back again to four.[1] The
practice of fixing the price of many necessary commodities must have
aggravated the natural evil consequences of such fluctuations.[2]

[Footnote 1: Wolowski's Introduction to Oresme's _Tractatus_, p.
xxvii.]

[Footnote 2: See Endemann, _Studien_, vol. ii. p. 34.]

This grievance had the good result of fixing the attention of scholars
on the money question. 'Under the stress of facts and of necessity,'
says Brants, 'thinkers applied their minds to the details of the
theory of money, which was the department of economics which, thanks
to events, received the earliest illumination. Lawyers, bankers,
money-changers, doctors of theology, and publicists of every kind,
attached a thoroughly justifiable importance to the question of money.
We are no doubt far from knowing all the treatises which saw the light
in the fourteenth century upon this weighty question; but we know
enough to affirm that the monetary doctrine was very developed and
very far-seeing.'[1] Buridan analysed the different functions and
utilities of money, and explained the different ways in which its
value might be changed.[2] He did not, however, proceed to discuss the
much more important question as to when the sovereign was entitled
to make these alterations. This was reserved for Nicholas Oresme, who
published his famous treatise about the year 1373. The merits of this
work have excited the unanimous admiration of all who have studied it.
Roscher says that it contains 'a theory of money, elaborated in the
fourteenth century, which remains perfectly correct to-day, under the
test of the principles applied in the nineteenth century, and that
with a brevity, a precision, a clarity, and a simplici