The De Moneta of Nicholas Oresme and English Mint Documents Nicole Oresme

Nicole Oresme has been called the most brilliant scientist of the 14th century: mathematician, musicologist, physicist, philosopher, and economist. On top of that, he was a Bishop and a theologian. His writings of money bear much in common with Carl Menger. Oresme's treatise on money, De Moneta, provides a detailed account of the function of money and the effects of inflation. And as Guido Hulsmann argues in The Ethics of Money Production, Oresme was the first theorist to present a fully worked out ethics of money, one that shows the sheer immorality of government monopoly over money and the social effects of debasement.