Orientalism 537aristocracy, to describe knightly life and the monastic
world. It is the main and most reliable source for English,
French, and Norman history for the period 1082 to 1141.
See alsoNORMANDY AND THENORMANS.
Further reading:Orderic Vitalis, The Ecclesiastical
History of Orderic Vitalis,ed. and trans. Marjorie Chib-
nall, 6 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969–1980); Mar-
jorie Chibnall, The World of Orderic Vitalis (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1984).
Order of Preachers SeeDOMINICAN ORDER.
ordination, clerical SeeSEVEN SACRAMENTS.
Oresme, Nicholas (ca. 1320–1382) French scholar,
translator
Oresme was born in about 1320 near Bayeaux in NOR-
MANDY. He later became the grand master (1356–61) of
the Collège de Navarre in PARIS. He attended the lectures
of John BURIDAN, and earned a license in the arts and
later a doctorate of THEOLOGY. He was a canon of NOTRE-
DAMEin Paris, dean of the CATHEDRALchapter of ROUEN,
and finally in 1377 bishop of Lisieux. Requested by King
CHARLESV, he translated and commented in French on
Aristotle’s principal works, the Ethics,the Politics,the
Economics,and the On Heaven and Earth.He was a strong
supporter of the use of the VERNACULAR.
Nicholas also wrote original works in LATINand in
French on mathematics, MUSIC, physics, astronomy,
cosmology, and economics. He understood the utility
of coordinates for the graphic representation of things
subject to quantitative variations and took an interest in
the acceleration of falling bodies. He believed that the
Earth moved and was not the center of all movement.
He undertook a vigorous denunciation of ASTROLOGY,
divination, and all forms of MAGIC. In his treatise On
Money from 1360, he protested against the harmful
devaluation of COINAGE. He maintained that MONEY
belonged to the community as a whole and not to the
issuing ruler, even if it was struck with his effigy on it.
He died at Rouen in 1382.
Further reading:Oresme, Nicole, The De moneta of
Nicholas Oresme, and English Mint Documents, trans.
Charles Johnson (London: Nelson, 1956); Nicole
Oresme, Nicole Oresme and the Marvels of Nature: A Study
of His“De causis mirabilium” with Critical Edition, Trans-
lation, and Commentary(Toronto: Pontifical Institute of
Mediaeval Studies, 1985); Nicole Oresme, De proportion-
ibus proportionum, and Ad pauca respicientes,ed. Edward
Grant (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1966); G.
W. Coopland, Nicole Oresme and the Astrologers: A Study
of His “Livre de divinacions” (Liverpool: University Liver-
pool Press, 1952).
Orientalism Orientalism is the defining of people out-
side one’s group or personal experience in a certain way,
usually disparagingly. Latin Christians in the Middle Ages
constructed an image of Muslims and all people outside
Western Europe as different and inferior to themselves in
many ways. This categorizing or stereotyping was soon
applied to Slavic Eastern Europeans and even to Ortho-
dox Greek Christians. Their ways of life and culture were
seen to be enticing, appalling, or both at the same time,
but always different from, and probably inferior to, those
of Western Europe. Often these medieval stereotypical
ideas were further developed in the 18th and 19th cen-
turies and extended to devolve contemporary “backward”
peoples within or near a progressive and modern north-
ern Europe. Cultural exchange was, and could only be,
one way—diffused from the West to the rest of the world.
In the 10th and 11th centuries, as Roman Catholi-
cism and Eastern Orthodox Christianity found them-
selves increasingly at odds over theological, political, and
cultural matters, Byzantium became more and more a
land of strange and irrational people. The perception of
attributing inferiority to outsiders was, of course, not
limited to the Latin West, as in the writings describing
NORMANS by Anna KOMNENE and other Byzantines
demonstrate. Such “Otherness” might be a product of
doctrinal differences, denied desires, political and cul-
tural conflict, and interior feelings or fears of a perceived
inferiority.ISLAM AND FARTHER EAST
Farther east, the exotic world of the SARACENSwas seen
as both more dangerous and even more attractive than
that of the scheming and dishonest Byzantines. Literature
and crusade chronicles ignorantly portrayed the Muslims
as pagans who worshiped golden idols of MUHAMMAD,
one of which was even found by the crusader TANCREDin
a temple at JERUSALEMin 1099 and destroyed. In other
12th-century descriptions, Muslims were said to originate
in strange places where no wheat grew, people had skin
of iron, and demons commonly dwelled. At the same
time there were enticing and fantastic tales of sexual
liaisons between Christian men and Muslim princesses.
The great and successful enemy of the crusaders,
SALADIN, even oddly acquired a reputation for the utmost
chivalric conduct.
The mythical world beyond Islam was the domain of
strange creatures and strange customs, such as men’s shar-
ing their wives and daughters with guests and people’s
washing themselves in their own urine. Dog-headed peo-
ple, cyclopses, and cannibals abounded as the world grew
stranger the farther east one went. Modern scholars have
suggested that on these other peoples and cultures, it was
easier to project, often polemically, fears and fantasies tied
more to defensiveness about European problems and life
than to perceive any genuine reality or positive qualities.