Melchior von Osse, 1506-1556.

Melchior von Osse (also spelled Ossa, but he signed himself "Osse"), was an early German Cameralist at Leipzig, Saxony

Born at Ossa, near Geithen, Saxony, Melchior von Osse studied law at Leipzig.  After a brief stint in the army, he returned to the university and became professor of law at Leipzig in 1536.  Around 1537, Osse became a counselor to the Albertine dukes of Saxony (Saxe-Meissen), before switching, in 1541, to the Ernestine Elector George Frederick I of Saxony (Saxe-Thuringia), the champion of the Protestant party in Germany.  From 1542, Osse served as the chancellor of the elector and his successors, resigning in 1549, possibly as a result of a falling-out with the powerful Lutheran theologian Phillip Melanchthon.  He served the counts of Henneberg as a court judge. He nonetheless represented the Elector at the Diet that eventually produced the 1555 Peace of Augbsurg.  Much of the legal code of the Saxon state is due to his work.

Melchior von Osse's principal contribution to economics is his Testament, composed in the last year of his life, as a memoir delivered to the Elector Augustus I of Saxony, and intended as a government manual.   Throughout Osse attempts to distinguish the different obligations of the prince, on the one hand to further the "well-being" of his subjects, on the other hand to raise revenues for his treasury.  His concern was principally fiscal, advising the elector to organize a central budget, limiting his expenditures to the revenues of the seigneural demesne, and avoiding taxation except in extraordinary cases (such as wars).  He also discusses tariff restriction and price controls.  He stresses the importance of a properly-trained bureaucracy (ruminating on the conditions of the schools in Saxony), and traces the drawbacks of relying on amateur nobles and favorites.

Melchior von Osse's Testament fell almost immediately into obscurity, and was re-discovered only in the early 18th, by the Halle scholar Christian Thomasius.  Current editions of Osse's Testament are usually derived the Thomasius's 1717 edition, which includes extensive commentaries from the editor.

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