Oresme's Life
Nicole Oresme was born c. 1320-1325 in the village of Allemagne (today's Fleury-sur-Orne) in the vicinity of Caen, Normandy, in the diocese of Bayeux. Practically nothing is known concerning his family. The fact that Oresme attended the royally sponsored and subsidized College of Navarre, an institution for students too poor to pay their expenses while studying at the University of Paris, makes it probable that he came from a peasant family.
Oresme studied the “artes” in Paris, together with Jean Buridan (the so-called founder of the French school of natural philosophy), Albert of Saxony and perhaps Marsilius of Inghen, and there received the Magister Artium. He was already a regent master in arts by 1342, during the crisis over William of Ockham's natural philosophy.
In 1348, he was a student of theology in Paris, in 1356, he received his doctorate and in the same year he became grand master (grand-maître) of the College of Navarre. In 1364 he was appointed dean of the Cathedral of Rouen. Around 1369 he began a series of translations of Aristotelian works at the request of Charles V, who granted him a pension in 1371 and, with royal support, was appointed bishop of Lisieux in 1377. It was in this city that he died in 1382.
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