JEAN BO DI N

‘T HI S PRE - E MIN E NT MA N O F F R A NC E ’
 Jean Bodin
‘This Pre-eminent Man of France’
An Intellectual Biography

HOWELL A. LLOYD

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 Preface

‘Ce premier homme de la France’: the phrase is Gabriel Naudé’s (1653: 127),
bibliophile, political thinker, and leading light among those challengers of orthodoxy
in seventeenth-century France who are known by the collective name of libertins
érudits. The phrase tallies with opinions of Jean Bodin expressed by distinguished
writers of comparable intellectual orientation to Naudé’s both before and after his
time. It was anticipated by the essayist Michel de Montaigne who considered Bodin
‘far superior in judgement’ to the contemporary ‘crowd of scribblers (la tourbe des
escriuailleurs)’ (Montaigne 1580: II. 532 no. 32). It was echoed by the philosopher
Pierre Bayle who held him to have been ‘one of the most able men in France in the
sixteenth century’ (Bayle 1740: I. 588). And almost three centuries later it resounded
in the judgement pronounced by one of the most distinguished of modern historians,
a thinker of equally iconoclastic tendency. In Hugh Trevor-Roper’s view, Bodin was
‘the Aristotle, the Montesquieu of the sixteenth century, the prophet of comparative
history, of political theory, of the philosophy of law, of the quantitative theory of
money, and of so much else’ (Trevor-Roper 1967: 122).
But other men of powerful intellect formed different impressions of Bodin.
According to Justus Lipsius, ‘the most learned man now living’ in Montaigne’s
opinion, Bodin was ‘learned in various ways, but varied too in judgement (vir sane
doctus varie)’ and in his best-known work ‘a promoter of several unsound opinions’
(Lipsius 1727: I. 30). Lipsius’s successor, and rival, at Leiden University, the great
classicist Joseph Scaliger was more severe, pronouncing Bodin ‘very ignorant, that
he wrote many things which he did not understand’—sentiments which found a
slightly more indulgent echo in the verdict of the political and moral philosopher
Hugo Grotius, sometime pupil of Scaliger’s, who felt that Bodin tended to ‘distance
himself from the truth (il s’éloigne de la vérité)’, though ‘rather from negligence than
from malice’ (Teissier 1715: IV. 272). It seems evident that Bodin provoked
antagonism as readily as he evoked admiration. Yet what does appear certain is
the interest that his principal writings generated, if the frequency with which his
major works were republished during his lifetime and beyond is any guide. The first
of them, the Methodus, had run by 1650 to a dozen editions; his best-known book,
the République with its Latin version and other translations into European ver-
naculars, to twenty-six by the time of its appearance in English in 1606; and his
most notorious work, the Démonomanie, to twenty-two including translated
versions by 1698, a century after its author’s death. Of course, such calculations
are not to be taken at face value, involving as they do issues of what counts as an
‘edition’, as distinct from a reprint, perhaps even pirated and beyond the control of
the author and his chosen publisher. But as it surely is unlikely that either
authorized or clandestine printers would have chosen to produce time and again
books that would not sell, there was evidently a lively and continuing domestic
and international market for works by ‘Iean Bodin Angevin’ as he insistently signed
himself.
viii Preface

Not surprisingly, so controversial and so significant a writer has attracted to an

exceptional degree the attention of modern scholars. No decade goes by without
fresh colloquia in which the subject of Bodin figures either among the contribu-
tions or as the theme of the entire event. Especially noteworthy are the outputs of
the conferences held in 1973 in Munich; in 1984 in Angers, Bodin’s birthplace; in
1996 in Lyon and in Turin to mark the four hundredth anniversary of his death;
and in 2006 in Toulouse where he spent some of his formative years. There have
been many more, and meanwhile papers dealing either primarily or incidentally
with areas of Bodin’s thought have proliferated and continue to proliferate in
academic journals and collective volumes. In addition to secondary writings on
this or that aspect of his ideas, fresh scholarly editions of his principal works have
appeared in recent years, the most distinguished amongst these being the Italian-
language edition of his République by Margherita Isnardi Parente and Diego
Quaglioni (1964–97). But thanks to modern technology, especially—though by
no means exclusively—as exploited by France’s Bibliothèque nationale through its
Gallica programme, digitized versions of the original editions of most of Bodin’s
writings have become available. Copies of his works in digitized format as well as
other materials relevant to Bodinian studies are accessible via the Bodin Project now
hosted at Harvard University (projects.iq.harvard.edu/bodinproject/home). The
website includes cumulative bibliographies which complement the superb compil-
ation of almost 1,500 items published in 2001 by Marie-Dominique Couzinet
under the title Jean Bodin in the series ‘Bibliographie des Écrivains français’ (2001).
That volume, it is safe to say, is indispensable to any serious study of its subject;
certainly, the present book could not have been undertaken without its aid.
In view of scholars’ unflagging interest in Bodin and his thought, and given the
means now available to pursue that interest, it is not surprising that the subject has
generated many and varied disagreements and debates. Some of these relate to
details of his life. These are in important respects uncertain or obscure, as is so often
the position even with leading figures in the cultural history of the Renaissance and
early modern period. The difficulties are especially pronounced in the case of
Bodin, who bore an unhelpfully common name. He himself provoked controversy
at every turn. He did so through the vigour with which he expressed his ideas,
through the readiness with which he castigated those whose opinions differed from
his own, and above all through the sheer range of his concerns, his intellectual
ambition, his universalizing agenda which went far beyond the omnivorousness
characteristic of so much humanist learning. Bodin’s agenda was driven by his
manifest conviction that if remedies to the profound problems of contemporary
France were to be found, this could be only through discovery of and deference to
universal truths. And this meant above all the truths of religion. But what view did
he take of them? From Bodin’s own time until the present day, questions about his
religious stance have excited debate. Roman Catholic preachers were denouncing
him publicly within a decade of his death, activities that prompted even Scaliger to
wonder why they attacked him ‘so shrilly (tam acerbe)’, with such ‘detestation
(odio)’ (Botley et al. eds 2012: VII. 85). Perhaps the answer lay in his having been a
Judaizer: so the Leiden scholar was advised, an interpretation of the Angevin’s
 Preface ix

religious viewpoint that has continued long afterwards to find favour (see especially
Rose 1980a). But the question remains open.
An important reason why this and other Bodinian issues remain unsettled may
be that so few attempts have been made to approach this challenging thinker on a
broad front, to consider his ideas contextually and in the round. Conversely, those
very uncertainties about so many elements in his life and his positions may explain
both the proliferation of narrowly focused discussions and the relative absence of
comprehensive studies in his remarkable case. Only a few approximating to the
latter genre have been attempted, apart from summary outlines in biographical
dictionaries and encyclopaedias. Four are noteworthy: a richly documented account
published a century ago by Roger Chauviré (1914a), but with its focus mainly on
the République; a brief but well-informed essay by Kenneth D. McRae (1962)
introducing his edition of the only English translation of Bodin’s République, by
Richard Knolles (1606); another concise and penetrating essay by Ivo Comparato
(1981a), introducing a valuable anthology of Bodin’s ‘political’ writings; and a
resolutely argued thesis by Paul Rose (1980a) with Bodin’s religious position as its
chief concern, supplemented by the same author with essays and edited texts on
other key components of his career and thought (Rose 1976, 1978, 1980b).
A twentieth-century scholar who wrote extensively on Bodin and might have
produced a definitive study was Paul Mesnard, who, in the course of forty years,
in numerous publications laid extensive foundations for precisely such a work, but
never completed it.
All in all, the present book is an attempt to fill what is plainly a gap in the
available literature on one of France’s most significant thinkers. It could not have
been undertaken without the support of many institutions and individuals. They
include the indispensable resources of major libraries: in London the British Library
and the Warburg Institute Library; in Cambridge (where I enjoyed the hospitality
of Churchill College) the University Library, and in Oxford (where I relished that
of Jesus College) the Bodleian; in Paris, the Bibliothèque nationale and the
Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal; above all, the resources of the University of Hull’s
Brynmor Jones Library, now magnificently refurbished. A grant from that invalu-
able body the Leverhulme Trust enabled me to spend more time than would
otherwise have been possible in French repositories and in other locations where
Bodin himself had lived and worked. As the work proceeded the encouragement
and support of various friends were invaluable and, at certain junctures, vital.
Without the help of two classicists, Michael Walton and Stephen Deas, I should
not have ventured to offer some critical evaluation of Bodin’s first published work,
his edition of Oppian’s Κυνηγετικων. Without the advice of a learned theologian,
Lester Grabbe, I should have hesitated to pronounce on that remarkable philoso-
pher and exegete, Philo Judaeus. An expert in sixteenth-century French literature,
Tim Chesters, not only helped me to identify a source of Bodin’s, but also
participated in two illuminating workshops, funded by the Arts and Humanities
Research Council, that resulted in the collection of essays titled The Reception of
Bodin (2013). I derived much benefit from the input of all twenty-six of the
participants in those workshops, and especially the sixteen whose contributions
x Preface

figure in the final volume. Two of them, Virginia Krause and Christian Martin,
were exceptionally generous first in supplying me with a draft of their splendid
edition of Bodin’s Démonomanie and then in giving me a copy of the published work
(2016). Another, even more generous, was Kenneth McRae who gave me early
access to the indispensable Bodin Sources Index developed under his leadership.
To four of those workshop participants I am especially indebted. It was Colin
Davis and Glenn Burgess who suggested Bodin to me as a project for research, and
they have been unfailing—I am tempted to say, unrelenting—throughout in their
encouragement and their interest in my progress. Both of them were also good
enough to read and to comment at length on a draft of my work. So, too, was Ann
Blair, who amid a host of other commitments performed the additional service of
taking over responsibility for the Bodin Project website, one of the outputs of the
Reception workshops. To a fourth friend my obligations are great indeed: Mark
Greengrass has advised and helped me at every stage, with suggestions, corrections,
clarifications, references, to say nothing of off-prints and copies of unpublished
papers, as well as weighty comment on every chapter. None of these four, nor any
of my other creditors, is in any way responsible for any deficiency in the final
product, for I have often failed—wilfully, doubtless foolishly—to follow their
advice. Greater even than these obligations are my debts to the members of my
family, to one of whom the book is dedicated. And of these the greatest of all is
what I owe to my wife, Gaynor, my companion on our tour of France to places
where Bodin had lived and worked—a memorable episode, but a mere digression
in the course of our far longer journey together.
HAL
Hull
September 2016
 Contents

A Note on Citations and Referencing xiii

I Angers 1
II Educational Pursuits 6
1 Paris 6
2 Learning 8
3 Ramus 12
4 Heretic? 14
III Humanist Engagements 17
1 Toulouse 17
2 Oppian 24
3 The Oratio 37
IV Law and History 49
1 Avocat 49
2 The Juris universi distributio 53
3 The Lettre à Bautru 62
4 The Methodus 66
V Getting and Spending 90
1 Financial Prospects and Career Concerns 90
2 Money 95
3 The Debate with Malestroit 99
4 Polish Constitutionalists and French Monarchomachs 107
VI République 115
1 Context 115
2 Editions and Sources 117
3 Structure and Themes: The Private Sphere 129
4 Citizen, Sovereignty, and State 133
5 Magistrates and Government 142
6 Religion, Justice, and Harmony 149
VII Estates and Demons 159
1 Académie and King 159
2 The Blois Estates, 1576, and the Aftermath 162
3 The Démonomanie: Context and Content 171
4 The Démonomanie: Critique 181
xii Contents

VIII ‘Propositum Meum Retardarunt’ 189

1 Foreign Ventures and Professional Pursuits 189
2 Laon and the League 196
3 Pedagogy 205
IX Vita Contemplativa 210
1 A Shift of Focus 210
2 The Theatrum 212
3 The Paradoxon 232
X Coda: Colloquium 239
1 Authorship and Background 239
2 Mode of Exposition 243
3 The Quest for Common Ground 247
4 The Stumbling Block 253
Conclusion 257

Appendix: Identifying Bodin 263

Bibliography 265
Index 299
 A Note on Citations and Referencing

The method of referencing employed throughout this book is the author–date

(Harvard) system. It is used in two ways. Brief or simple references, generally to single
works, are presented in-text. Longer or more complex ones, often with additional
comment or information, are provided in footnotes. This dual arrangement has two
advantages. In-text referencing enables readers to identify sources without interrupting
their reading, given that the references are concise. It also enables reduction in the
number of notes which, in consequence, can be presented conveniently and without
excessive clutter at the foot of the page rather than as endnotes.
The system’s effectiveness depends upon concision, consistency, and strict
correlation between the basic identifiers provided in the body of the work and
the data presented in the Bibliography. As far as possible, punctuation marks such
as parentheses are discarded from in-text and footnoted references as are abbrevi-
ations such as ‘pp.’ or ‘vol.’. Sources are identified by author’s or editor’s surname
followed by date of publication. The latter in turn is followed, as appropriate, by
page numbers separated by means of a colon from the publication date. Cross
reference to the Bibliography reveals authors’ initials, titles of works, and further
publication details. For example, an in-text or footnoted reference to
Bruyère 1984: 71–83
signifies the dozen specified pages in
Bruyère, N. (1984), Méthode et dialectique dans l’oeuvre de La Ramée: Renaissance
et âge classique (Paris: Vrin).
In cases of multi-volume works the punctuation differs slightly with the relevant
volume number preceded by a colon and separated from the page numbers by a full
point, thus:
Wolfson 1948: I. 315
refers to
Wolfson, H. A. (1948), Philo: Foundations of Religious Philosophy in Judaism,
Christianity and Islam, 2 vols (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press).
Roman numerals are used in upper case for references to parts of multi-volume
works, and in lower case for volumes of periodicals.
In all references bar one the author’s or editor’s name figures as the key identifier.
The sole and important exception is Bodin’s works. These are separately listed at
the beginning of the Bibliography in a sequence determined by their respective
dates of first publication (rather than alphabetically by title), and references to them
in the body of the book are, apart from isolated instances, by date alone. Thus,
1583: 69
refers to the Bibliography entry
(1583) Les Six livres de la République de I. Bodin Angevin (Paris: Iacques du Puys)
xiv A Note on Citations and Referencing

This edition of Bodin’s best-known work, described by its finest modern editor
as ‘the most complete of the French editions’ (Isnardi Parente 1964: 128), has been
treated here as the master text, though with reference in places to variations in other
editions, and especially to the Latin translation of 1586 which he himself produced.
As with other authors, citation is again by page numbers. On the face of it, this
might not suffice for readers wishing to trace cited passages to the République
without having immediately to hand a copy of the particular edition cited, for
format and pagination with it differ from edition to edition. Nor would citation by
book and chapter solve the difficulty, for after its first publication Bodin made
substantial changes to his work, not only by adding or modifying content, but also
to its structure, notably altering the chapter sequence and inserting new chapters.
However, readers wishing to consult some specific edition as well as many other
materials relevant to Bodinian studies including an extensive bibliography now
have available electronically the texts and links accessible via the Bodin Project
website: <http://projects.iq.harvard.edu/bodinproject/home>.
In general, ancient Greek and Latin sources are cited from the well-established
Loeb editions, with the important exception of Aristotle’s works. For these the
source is the Revised Oxford Translation of The Complete Works of Aristotle edited
in two volumes by Jonathan Barnes (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,
1984), and cited throughout this book by Bekker numbers (for example, Nicoma-
chean Ethics 1099b25–1100b21). Apart from these sources, translations from
foreign languages are my own, with the translated extracts accompanied by the
original passages either partim or omnino.
Cross-references within the book are entered by chapter and section numbers
with page numbers in parentheses: for example,
Cf. Chapter VII.3 (p. XXX).
 I
Angers

The rue Valdemaine lies some four hundred metres to the north-east of Angers’
gothic cathedral with its twin Renaissance spires, both erected in the decade prior
to Jean Bodin’s birth.1 This was the street of Bodin’s boyhood home. One of
the oldest in Angers, it was a street which to a degree—though not entirely—
exemplified the segregation of rich and poor characteristic of late medieval city
centres (Duby 1980–85: II. 502–3). The hovels of a number of poor weavers still
stood adjacent to it, near the ruins of a chapel named after a thicket of willows
bordering a stream which ran down to the River Maine. But in 1529 the site of the
chapel was bought by one of Angers’ leading citizens, Pierre Poyet, who built there
his ‘superb’ hôtel des Granges, a ‘vast construction’ in Renaissance style (Saillot
1975: II. 179). Several times mayor of the town and ultimately lieutenant-général of
the bailliage of Anjou, Poyet was the elder brother of Guillaume Poyet, subse-
quently Francis I’s chancellor. Poyet was also step-uncle of Gabriel Bouvery, the
son of a merchant and sometime mayor of Angers, who was Bishop of Angers from
1540 to 1572.2 The street boasted, too, the hôtel de La Jaille, property of an
Angevin branch of the illustrious family of that name, members of which had
held and continued to hold key offices in the locality and region—the governorship
of Angers, the seneschalship of Anjou. In the sixteenth century the rue Valdemaine
was sometimes known as the rue de La Jaille. Long before then it had been called by
yet another name, that of a tower which still stood there: ‘Écachebreton’, battle-cry
of the bloodthirsty Foulques-Nerra, eleventh-century count of Anjou (Saillot 1975:
II. 351). It was an historic street, a distinguished street—a street also of successful
businessmen and their residences. One such businessman was Guillaume Bodin.
Guillaume Bodin was a younger son of Jean Bodin, sieur de La Vaux, bachelor of
laws, and avocat at Angers. Guillaume’s elder brother, Roland, was likewise a law
graduate; his uncle, Guillaume, a priest, almoner of the Carmelite order at Angers
and, in all likelihood, Guillaume Bodin’s godfather. The younger Guillaume
became a prosperous master-tailor. In or around 1522 he married Catherine
Dutertre, seemingly (for no marriage certificate is extant) a daughter of Michel,
sieur du Mothay, of the village of Foudon, some ten kilometres east of Angers along

1 The question of Bodin’s birthplace, and indeed his identity, has been much debated. For a

summary review of the options that have been mooted see the Appendix in this volume. Perhaps Bodin
has himself provided the best confirmation of Angers as his native town, in his Oratio (1559: fo. 30):
‘Andegavum de patria etiam confitendum opinor’.
2 Porée 1897–8: 1. 211; Mesnard ed. 1951: XII–XIII; J.-F. Bodin 2002: 645; DBF VII (1956):

col. 73.
2 Jean Bodin

the Loire valley. At about the same time Guillaume acquired a house with a small
courtyard, opening at the front on to the rue Valdemaine (an important consider-
ation, status-wise) and backing on to the town’s partly demolished ninth-century
walls. One side of the house abutted on the hostelry Saint-Julien, owned in Bodin’s
day by the grandfather of François Jourdain who, for twelve years at the end of the
sixteenth century, held one of two professorships of Hebrew at the Collège de
France (Lefranc 1893: 382). The property on the other side belonged to a member of
the Cerizay family, leading businessmen and aldermen (échevins) of Angers, another
of whose members had served as clerk to the Parlement of Paris, secretary to Louis XI
and, by royal appointment, mayor of the town (Lebrun et al. eds 1975: 40–1).
Comfortably installed in their slate-roofed house with its three chimneys, Guillaume
and Catherine Bodin had four daughters and three sons. Two of the sons were
christened Jean; the younger of these, who habitually described himself as ‘Jean
Bodin Angevin’, was nonetheless the only one of the seven to gain a role and a
reputation beyond the province of Anjou. Even so, their father was sufficiently well-
to-do to be able to guarantee each of his children an endowment of 300 livres tournois,
and to lend to a neighbour a substantial sum from a property which he and his wife
retained in her native village (Levron 1950; Saillot 1985). Jean Bodin’s was a
comfortable childhood, and his family had sufficient means and connections useful
enough to enable them to steer an academically talented boy towards a good education
and a professional career.
The means derived from Guillaume Bodin’s role in the textile trade. A principal
feature of Angers’ economic activity, that trade drew upon an extensive hinterland,
from Laval to the north to Maulévrier to the south and, to a lesser degree, upon
manufacturing within the town itself. Merchants from Angers had direct or indirect
dealings with all the kingdom’s principal towns and fairs, including international
exchange through the Atlantic ports (Lebrun et al. eds 1975: 46–7). Not surpris-
ingly, they complained against and sought the suppression of the levy known locally
as the cloison, a duty levied at all the main points of access to the city and payable
upon all merchandise entering it or passing through. They complained no less in
response to royal tax demands which fell especially upon prosperous commerçants
while privileged members of municipal society escaped scot free. The privileged
included clergy and members of that ‘fiscal paradise’, the University (Viguerie
1977: 141). They also include coiners at the mint; in the first half of the sixteenth
century the Angers Hôtel de la Monnaie was among the most productive in western
France, and the monnayeurs’ exempt status can scarcely have been viewed benignly
by the rest of the citizenry (Spooner 1972: 113; Le Mené 1989: 93).
In the Bodin household, taxes, trade, and money were no doubt frequent enough
topics of domestic conversation. But Angers, as the pattern of tax liability reveals,
was far more than a financial and commercial centre. The organization of proces-
sions through the city furnished regular reminders of the importance of the clergy
and their involvement at the heart of municipal life. So, too, did their cathedral,
towering on its eminence within four hundred metres of the rue Valdemaine, a focal
point for pilgrimage and through its senior members a powerful presence over many
centuries in municipal government as well as in cultural affairs (Matz 1995: 362).
 Angers 3

In a litigious era, municipal government needed participants with at least a measure

of legal expertise. It was a quality which, at Angers, high-ranking clerics were able to
supply. Bishop Hubert de Vendôme, responsible in the eleventh century for the
cathedral’s reconstruction after fire and founder of the cathedral school from which
the university developed, had been a noted canonist (Lens 1876–7: xvii. 277).
Between 1350 and 1510, 45 per cent of the canons of the cathedral held higher
university degrees, of which only 6 per cent were degrees in theology, the rest being
all in canon law (13 per cent), in civil law (47 per cent) or in both, in utroque jure
(35 per cent) (Matz 2002: 24). Such a disciplinary predominance is scarcely
surprising. Until 1432–5 Angers University had had no faculties of theology,
medicine nor arts, and for over a century after these were created the faculties of
canon and civil law continued to regard themselves not only as the superior
element, but even as constituting the entire University (Lens 1875–6: xv. 84–5).
As for senior members of the University itself, professors of law attracted censure for
their readiness to combine academic posts with the office of judge in the secular
courts (Lens 1875–6: xv. 93). Of these there were plenty: as a provincial capital
Angers accommodated an array of royal courts as well as financial institutions with
judicial authority. Office-holders proliferated. It was they who dominated munici-
pal government, with clerical personnel and academic lawyers alongside them, and
with only a handful of representatives of the merchant community figuring in the
corps de ville (Lebrun et al. eds 1975: 42).
Some fifty years before Bodin’s birth the University was installed in new build-
ings near the church of Saint-Pierre, a few streets distant from the rue Valdemaine
(Lebrun et al. eds 1975: 49; Viguerie 1977: 145). Its students were notorious for
their ornate mode of dress and assertive behaviour towards local worthies (Lens
1875–6: xvi. 212–13). Not long after Bodin’s birth, a royal official denounced a
public performance by a group of law students ‘on the square of the pillory’,
declaring ‘that the king was governed by oppressive [ foul ] counsel which broke
the people (mectoyt les gens en piesse) through exactions of salt-taxes, with many
maledictions on those concerned in them’ (Hamon 1994: 491). Boisterous students
notwithstanding, some of France’s most distinguished jurists graduated from or
taught in the Angers law faculty.3 Among them for five years from 1537 was
Éguiner Baron (c.1495–1550), exponent of a comparative and historically informed
approach to legal studies (Kelley 1981: 268–9)—‘the Varro of France’ according to
Jacques Cujas, himself widely regarded as the greatest of French humanist jurists
(Arabeyre et al. eds 2007: 39, 221). Among them too were Pierre Ayrault
(1536–1601), author of a standard and frequently republished work on judicial
procedure;4 François Grimaudet (1520–80) whose numerous works included a
treatise on movements in money-values;5 and, in his career’s closing years, William

3 A record to which Bodin would not fail to draw attention in his own most celebrated work, citing

from the University’s founding letters patent: that the city of Angers was accustomed to ‘produce as if
by natural propagation men of the highest learning (viros alti consilii solet ab antiquo propagatione quasi
nuturali providere)’ (République (1583): 682; cf. (1586): 506).
4 De l’ordre et instruction judiciaire (1576).
5 Des monnaies, augment et diminution du prix d’icelles (1576).
4 Jean Bodin

Barclay (1546–1608), author of the much-discussed De regno et regali potestate

(On kingship and royal power) (1600), who ended his days as Dean of Laws at Angers
(Collot 1965: 64). Academics apart, the town was prosperous enough in the early
sixteenth century to attract numerous writers, musicians, and artists, some of them
connected with the cathedral once more. This engagement with the arts is, again,
scarcely surprising: it was in some respects a legacy of René, Duke of Anjou
(1431–1480), ‘le Roi René’, a major patron of the arts and precursor of the French
Renaissance, who was born at the château of Angers and from 1443 onwards made
it his principal residence (Lecoy de La Marche 1875: I. 3; II. 4, 6). Within the
lifetime of the Roi René, Angers became the fifth town in France to accommodate
printing, the first work produced from the presses of Jean de La Tour being, in
1477, Cicero’s De Oratore. This was, in sum, a lively city, prosperous, with an
impressive complement of noblemen, but with its clerical and academic citizens
well to the fore.
In this vibrant cultural setting the movement for Protestant reform found some
early response and, at first, some indulgence on the part of the ecclesiastical estab-
lishment. During Bodin’s early boyhood the Bishop of Angers was Jean Olivier,
brother of a premier président of the Paris Parlement who had links with the
evangelical humanism represented by Guillaume Briçonnet, Bishop of Meaux, and
Jacques Lefèvre d’Étaples, France’s leading humanist scholar, editor, and translator of
scriptural and key philosophical texts, with works by Florentine Neoplatonists
conspicuous amongst them.6 But Olivier’s successor did not endorse his predeces-
sor’s relatively sympathetic attitude towards would-be reformers. While Angers had a
Protestant congregation prior to the spread of the Genevan discipline into France
in the 1550s, it also had martyrs, notably following the assizes (grands jours) held
there by magistrates of the sovereign courts in 1539 (see Crespin 1885–9: I. 341, 527).
In 1543 Bishop Bouvery published in his diocese the wholesale reaffirmation of
Catholic doctrine expressed in a decree of Paris University’s Faculty of Theology,
and followed it up with further denunciations of heretics. These and subsequent
measures of intensified severity did not prevent the formation of an église dressée, a
‘gathered church’ on the Genevan model, in the town, where ‘the gospel was
received with great avidity’ according to Calvin’s successor and the movement’s
historian Théodore de Bèze (Lebrun et al. eds 1975: 51; Lebrun ed. 1981: 105).
But there is no evidence that such sentiments were shared by the members of
Jean Bodin’s family.
On the contrary: probably in the year that the Bishop published the Theology
Faculty’s decree, Guillaume Bodin entrusted the education of his academically
gifted son to the Carmelites, whose order he entered as a novice at about the age of
fourteen (c.1543).7 The Carmelite friary was situated on the western side of the

6On Lefèvre see especially Bedouelle (1976).

7As Bodin’s entry into the Carmelite order has been questioned, it seems noteworthy that he
named his son Hélie, presumably after Élie (aka Elijah), the spiritual father of the Carmelites who were
first established near the fountain at Mount Carmel which bears the prophet’s name (see Pillorget
1995: 19).
 Angers 5

Maine, easily accessible from the rue Valdemaine across the Grand Pont built by
Foulques-Nerra, the oldest crossing-point of the river (see also Comte 2000). Its
church housed the tomb of Blessed John Soreth, a major Carmelite reformer who
died at Angers in 1471, his tomb becoming a shrine (Smet 1975–82: I. 119). Its
membership included one René Dutertre who became, eventually, procureur of
the Angers house (Pasquier 1933: 461). The Carmelites claimed as their founder the
prophet Elijah; and the order’s Rule of St Albert stressed the paramount importance
of striving for ‘purity of heart’ and practising ‘contemplation’ (Waaijman 1999:
49–50; cf. Egan 1988: 56). Thereby the order cultivated an intense spirituality, its
practitioners aspiring to ‘illumination’, a mystical and ultimately ecstatic experience
of God.8 But such an experience was attainable only through Christ, the ‘Alpha and
Omega of the Carmelite Rule’, whom the order’s initiates served by ‘meditating on
the law of the Lord, instant in prayer’ (Hendriks 1973: 69).
Also important in the Carmelite system were ‘virtuous works’. These included
education, especially facilitated from the thirteenth century through an international
study house established in Paris alongside northern Europe’s leading university
(Copsey in Ribot 2005: p. viii). Others of the order’s houses offered educational
provision to varying levels. That of Angers had ranked as one of its general studia,
receiving students and lecturers appointed by the general chapter (Smet 1975:
I. 203). However, its status in that regard appears not to have survived the visitation
and reforms of the order carried out by Nicholas Audet from 1523 onwards.9 The
house at Paris, amongst others, was more favourably treated, and for it in 1530
Audet ‘drew up statutes for the studium which the general chapter approved’ (Smet
1975–82: I. 203). This done, Audet charged every ‘local prior’ with responsibility for
instructing novices ‘in bonis litteris et solida Theologia’, and furthermore directed every
house to send ‘at least one student at its own expense to some studium generale’
(Wessels 1912: I. 390, 393). Hence, it would appear, Jean Bodin’s nomination in
1544 to proceed from Angers to Paris, there to study philosophy under Guillaume
Prevost. That Bodin was selected may have owed something to the influence not only
of Procureur Dutertre, but also to that of his bishop, Gabriel Bouvery, to whom he
would later offer his first published work with a fulsome dedicatory epistle. He went
in company with several others who proceeded in due course to their doctorates in
theology and confirmation of their religious vows (see Ponthieux 1928: 57–8). These
were not career developments which the young Jean Bodin proved disposed, in the
event, to follow.

8 Rose 1980a: 80–1. Cf. Rose’s emphasis upon the prophetic element in Carmelite theology, and

the affinities between Bodin’s position on this and other issues with the version of Jewish theology
propounded by Philo Judaeus: see Rose 1980a: 81–9.
9 For Audet’s reforming activities see Staring 1959; also Smet 1975–82: I. 176–214.
 II
Educational Pursuits

I I . 1 PARIS

When Jean Bodin arrived there in 1545, manifestations of Paris’s standing as the
capital of France were multiplying apace. With the number of its inhabitants
approaching 300,000 (Le Roy Ladurie 1996: 12), the city was among the most
populous in Europe. Through its array of public buildings Paris was in the process
of demonstrating afresh the authority and capability of royal and municipal
government: the refurbished grand’ chambre of the Palais de Justice, dubbed
‘chambre d’or’; the Chambre des Comptes in the courtyard of the Sainte-Chapelle,
its staircase admired even by Rabelais; the innovative designs for the rebuilding of
the Louvre and the new Hôtel de Ville, both in process of construction; the new
Pont Notre-Dame, a bridge ‘without parallel in the world, so beautiful is it and so
rich’ according to the Messin cloth merchant and prosifier Philippe de Vigneulles
(q. Babelon 1987: 116). As Francis I and his court now spent more time in Paris
than his predecessors had done for over a hundred years, members of the hereditary
and the office-holding nobility, d’épée and de robe alike, set about providing
themselves with residences appropriate to their perceived status. Their presence
attracted high-quality craftsmen and tradespeople: goldsmiths and silversmiths,
dealers in silks and satins, inventive drapers and tapestry workers—and, as striking
a development as any, printers, proliferating in a city fast becoming Europe’s
leading centre of book production. Well might the publisher and polymath Gilles
Corrozet eulogize in verse Paris’s standing in the world of learning:

Dedans Paris les sciences florissent

Et gens scauans en ce lieu resplendissent
Plus quen nul lieu car pallas y octroye
Autant ou plus quen Athenes ou Troye
Le sien seiour, & les muses scauantes
Sont en ce lieu leur demeure tenantes
Plus que iamais ne furent sur le mont
De Aonias1

1 Corrozet 1539: fos xxxiiivo–xxxiiii. Aonia, a district of Beotia in ancient Greece, contained Mount

Helicon, reputedly the muses’ original home.

 Educational Pursuits 7

And yet, while Paris might resemble ‘a tapestry studded with a number of
Renaissance jewels’, the tapestry itself remained ‘medieval’ (Jones 2004: 133). Its
streets were narrow and congested, rendered dangerous by the passage of horses and
foul through the roaming of domestic animals, many destined for the slaughter-
houses and central markets, and all adding copiously to the pervasive filth. Paris
was notorious for its stench (Babelon 1987: 286). In such conditions plague and
pestilence throve, infesting the crowded dwellings and spreading rapidly through
the teeming public spaces. In 1544 public spectacles were banned for fear of plague;
in 1548 an outbreak of plague in the prison of the Conciergerie compelled the
Parlement to abandon the Palais de Justice for safer quarters. In the over-populated
capital, poverty was rife. Real wages were falling. In a city echoing to the sounds of
building, the purchasing power of building workers in the first half of the sixteenth
century fell by 50 per cent (Babelon 1987: 300). Crime flourished. In a violent age,
institutions furnishing assistance for the poor and destitute multiplied apace, their
sponsors motivated ostensibly by considerations of Christian charity, but hardly
less by apprehension that the city’s badly lit streets were unsafe, by fear of theft, of
assault, of murder at the hands of desperate people.
As crowded a square as any in the city, and as malodorous too,2 was Paris’s main
place of execution on the left bank, the Place Maubert. It was there that, in 1546,
the disorderly printer and Ciceronian scholar Étienne Dolet, sometime law student
at Toulouse, was executed by strangling and his body then burnt, for publishing
heretical books. Even if Bodin did not personally witness the execution, he can
scarcely have failed to be aware of it. The Carmelite house where he resided was
located in the Place Maubert, at the north end of the rue des Carmes. Now
populated mainly by minor tradespeople, the square had formerly been the centre
of academic life. Well before Bodin’s arrival this had dispersed southwards and
westwards, though no great distance away, to colleges where educational provision
was now chiefly located (Tuilier 1998: 379; Lécrivain 2006: 30). At the southern
end of the rue des Carmes stood the Collège de Navarre with its splendid library.
Close by was the Collège de Sainte-Barbe, Paris’s centre of geographical learning
thanks to the presence of many Iberian students, among them in the early 1530s
Ignatius Loyola and Francis Xavier; it was the place, also, where at around the time
of Bodin’s birth the great Scottish humanist George Buchanan had taught and the
extraordinary linguist and enthusiastic Hebraist Guillaume Postel had studied, the
latter subsequently the author of a De orbis terrae concordia (1544), regarded by its
author as his most important book.3 For four years to 1542 Postel, another of
Gabriel Bouvery’s protégés (Mesnard 1951: XIII), held one of the handful of royal
lectureships which Francis I had created for the teaching of Greek, Hebrew, and
mathematics. Precursors of the Collège de France, the lectureships were supported
by no physical provision, and so their holders taught wherever they could find a
room free for the purpose (Lefranc 1893: 113). In Bodin’s time Hebrew was taught
by the learned and quietly Reform-oriented François Vatable, mainly at the Collège

2 Witness Erasmus’s adage: ‘he stinks like the Maubert sewer (olit ut cloaca Mauberti)’.
3 Babelon 1987: 89; Bouwsma 1957: 3–4, 9–10, 57–8.
8 Jean Bodin

Cardinal-Lemoine in the rue Saint-Victor, to the east of the rue des Carmes.
Commentator on the Old Testament and ‘rigorously philological’ in his approach
to the Hebrew text, Vatable was tutor to John Calvin and also taught Jean Mercier,
one of his successors in the royal lectureships and a specialist in the Aramaic
translation of the Bible (the Targum). Mercier, it seems, could count Jean Bodin
among his pupils, whilst among Vatable’s was Pierre de La Ramée (Peter Ramus).4
And in close proximity to the Carmelite house itself stood the Collège de Presles
where in 1545 Ramus began his own teaching career to become, not long after-
wards, its principal (McRae 1955: 309; Ong 1958: 25).

II.2 LEARNING

As a novice of a regular order and seconded to a studium generale, Bodin would have
been expected to study philosophy as taught by that institution’s appointed master.
At the Carmelites’ Paris house this was Guillaume Prévost, an obscure figure,
reputedly assiduous in his teaching and a ‘devout and eloquent man’ (Ponthieux
1928: 58; Chrom Jacobsen 2000: 55). The course of study prescribed by the order’s
general chapter for young men commencing in arts before proceeding to theological
studies, consisted of logic, broadly approached in the scholastic manner, combined
with physics and ethics. Apart from some introductory exposure to Peter Lombard’s
Sentences, ‘in no way should they be allowed to approach other readings . . . except
possibly some reading of disputations and questions or that sort of scholastic
theology’.5 And official prescription did not end there. Just as other mendicant
orders had each identified one of their order’s most distinguished scholars as official
doctor—Aquinas in the case of the Dominicans, Duns Scotus for the Franciscans—
so too had the Carmelites, whose choice by the time of Bodin’s arrival was the early
fourteenth-century philosopher John Baconthorpe (Chrysogone 1932: 362; Chrom
Jacobsen 2000: 56–7). In many respects, Baconthorpe was a remarkable choice.
Possessing one of the sharpest critical intelligences among the thinkers of his time, he
had not hesitated to challenge the views of doctors of his own order, nor to dissent on
key points from any and all of the leading scholastic thinkers, to say nothing of
Aristotle. Persistently citing—and challenging—Duns Scotus as well as Aquinas in
philosophy, he revered Augustine’s authority on theological matters, whilst none-
theless practising a kind of ‘rational eclecticism’, the outcomes of which defy
classification into any specific philosophical school (Chrysogone 1932: 346). In
common with his fellow scholastics he took regular account of arguments and
perspectives developed by Arab philosophers, and especially by Averroës; but his
readiness to include Averroist positions in his critical assaults scarcely warrants his
entitlement to the appellation ‘princeps averroistarum’ which some accorded him

4 Farge 1992: 44, n. 67. On Vatable see Barthélemy 1982; Kessler Mesguich 2013: 40–3, 49,

173–4, 182–4, 227–8. See also Kessler Mesguich 1998: 357–74.

5 ‘nullo modo permittantur accedere ad alias Lectiones . . . nisi forsitan ad Lectionem Quodlibettorum

aut eiusmodi Theologiae Scholasticae’ (Zimmerman 1912: 428; cf. Rose 1980a: 80).
 Educational Pursuits 9

(Xiberta 1931: 213–21). Although known as the doctor resolutus, he seems by and
large to have been more disposed to evaluate the thought of others than to construct
theses of his own.
What Bodin’s intellectual development owed to Prévost’s teaching and to
Baconthorpe’s ideas must remain matters of conjecture; certainly, he never cited
either of them in his own writings. Yet three points warrant consideration. First,
throughout his work Bodin evinced an independence of mind and a critical and
questioning attitude reminiscent of the approach of the Carmelite doctor. Secondly,
studying Baconthorpe would have brought him at an early stage of his intellectual
development face to face with an array of the central questions of scholastic logic
and metaphysics, so many of them ultimately derived from Aristotle and elaborated
over eighteen centuries by the Stagyrite’s interpreters, including Arab commenta-
tors: whether essence and existence were distinguishable in terms of degrees of
being; whether the soul was immortal, whether it was corporeal, and whether it
could be deemed a substantial form of the body; whether the intellect was a part of
the soul, and if so in what sense; how far the intellect was divisible into multiple
powers; whether those powers were reducible to two, with the ‘agent’ differentiated
from the ‘possible’ (or potential) intellect; whether individuals perceived external
realities through the operations of the ‘agent intellect’ which ‘illuminated’ the
‘possible intellect’; whether unicity characterized the ‘possible intellect’ such that
for all humankind it was singular and universal; whether the will was free or bound
by necessity or by the dictates of reason; whether the world was eternal
(Chrysogone 1932: 346–61; Xiberta 1931: 206–21). All these issues were to figure
somewhere and to some degree in Bodin’s writings. None of them was peculiar to
Baconthorpe’s thinking. All of them formed part of the common currency of
scholastic debate. And almost all of them had figured with others in the famous
Condemnations initially of thirteen and then of 219 philosophical and theological
propositions by Bishop Étienne Tempier of Paris, in 1270 and 1277, that landmark
event in the history of medieval thought.6
Yet, thirdly, among the philosophers of his day the Carmelite doctor was
remarkable for his ambition to synthesize philosophical not only with theological,
but, exceptionally, with juristic matters too. Relatively proficient in the field of
canon law, he applied his mind to key questions concerning the papal office and its
monarchical status. How comprehensive was the office’s alleged ‘plenitude of
power’? Was the pope justiciable? Could he designate his own successor? Could
he dispense from the binding effects of an oath? Above all, in the sphere of law-
making was it the case that other ecclesiastical authorities such as the cardinals
were dispensable—that any law, ‘general and particular alike’ which the pope
might make ‘with the cardinals’ he was able to make ‘by himself ’? On this last
question, and on a good many more, Baconthorpe firmly endorsed papal claims
to monarchical authority untrammelled by anything other than divine law
(Ullmann 1976). It was a position which in important respects had affinities

6 Gilson 1955: 408. For an English translation of the text of the 1277 Condemnation with the

propositions reordered, see Lerner and Mahdi 1963: 335–54; useful comment by Wippel 1977.
10 Jean Bodin

with conclusions which Bodin in his political writings was eventually to formulate
in relation to secular monarchy, though the Angevin was certainly no slavish follower
of the doctor resolutus.7
Themselves major purveyors of scholastic philosophical and theological instruc-
tion, the religious orders sought to restrict their members’ exposure to university
teaching (Emery Jr et al. 2012; Le Gall 2003: 87, 92). However, the Carmelites, in
common with the other principal mendicant orders, had been assigned a teaching
post in the Faculty of Theology (Tuilier 1994: 339–40). Immensely prestigious,
widely regarded as the custodian of orthodox religious doctrine, and notoriously
conservative in its stance, the Faculty nevertheless had to take some account of
the surge of enthusiasm for humanist studies at the court of Francis I. It did so to
the extent of adopting in 1536 four new lectureships on the Bible. Some of the
appointees shared with holders of the king’s royal lectureships expertise in biblical
languages and even evinced sympathy with the new modes of textual exegesis
favoured by humanist scholars (Farge 1992: 43–4). Evidently, the lecteurs royaux
were not to be left to offer tuition in such fields as these according to their own
lights. Authorized provision from an alternative source was to lie firmly under
faculty control. In fact, the strictly linguistic elements were acceptable enough.
From the twelfth century onwards scholars had shown interest in and knowledge of
Greek, Hebrew, and the other languages of Scripture. Attention to these was by no
means as novel in the era of the Renaissance as is often supposed (Dahan 1998: 355).
What was new was the increased availability in print of materials for linguistic study
(Irigoin 1998: 402), coupled with the rigorous philological approach demonstrated
by teachers such as Vatable and exemplified not only in classrooms, but also in
published lectures. The approach coupled deployment of linguistic techniques with
revised modes of exegesis. Scholastic theologians were roused to denounce its
practitioners as charlatans, ‘sciolists’ (Rummel 1995: 12), or worse. Their cardinal
offence was to exercise their skills upon sacred texts and in doing so to emphasize
the relevance even to biblical commentary of non-Christian exegetes, Jewish
amongst them. Hence the appeal of Noël Béda, Syndic of the Sorbonne, to the
Paris Parlement to prohibit the lecteurs royaux ‘from interpreting any part of Holy
Scripture in Hebrew or Greek’ on the grounds that they were ‘simple grammarians
or rhetoricians who had not studied in the faculty of theology’ (Rummel 1995: 91).
Rhetoric was indeed suspect, even to radical theologians: had not Calvin felt
bound to warn that, while the works of Demosthenes and Cicero were able ‘even to
ravish the spirit (ravir mesme l’esprit)’, by comparison with Scripture ‘all the power
of rhetoricians and philosophers’ amounted ‘merely to smoke (ne sera que fumee)’
(Calvin 1562: I.8.1, 29)? But students of language could subvert the established
structures of learning in other ways. Competence in Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Syriac,
and Arabic had led the Italian scholar Giovanni Pico della Mirandola down abstruse
paths of cabbalistic and mystical philosophies, while the Platonism expounded by his

7 For instance, on the question whether property (proprietas) had a basis in natural law, a

proposition from which Baconthorpe dissented (cf. Ullmann 1976: 235).

 Educational Pursuits 11

teacher, Marsiglio Ficino, had remained an essential feature of his thought—

thought which aimed at a novel reconciliation of all the major sources of wisdom.
Admirers of both Pico and Ficino were numerous in the colleges of Paris (Lebègue
1954: 334), among them in the decades prior to Bodin’s arrival there the extraor-
dinarily productive Jacques Lefèvre d’Étaples. Before Bodin’s departure the distin-
guished humanist Adrien Turnèbe arrived to take up a royal lectureship and in due
course to lecture on texts which included attempts by Philo of Alexandria (Philo
Judaeus) to harmonize Jewish theology with Platonic philosophy, and also included
Plato’s own Timaeus with its peculiar treatment of such time-honoured and
fundamental questions as the world’s existence in relation to time and the com-
position of the soul with its properties of reason and harmony (Lewis 1998: 171–5;
Plato, Timaeus 35–7). In the 1540s and 1550s translations of works attributed to
Plato into vernacular French came thick and fast, including one pair of dialogues8
issued by Dolet who, two years before his execution, informed the king that he
intended to translate the whole of Plato in a single year (Lebègue 1954: 336).
Already, thanks not least to Lefèvre’s labours, Latin versions of the works of the
Neoplatonist philosophers Iamblichus, Plotinus, Porphyry, and Proclus had appeared
in France, as well as an edition of Ficino’s translation of the corpus of mystical writings
by Hermes Trismegistus, alleged contemporary of Moses, together with Ficino’s own
treatise on astrology and numerology, the De triplici vita (Bedouelle 1976: 13). All
this was unsettling to minds schooled in the centrality of Aristotelian tenets and
methodologies. Most suspect of all were Epicurean ideas as communicated in
Diogenes Laertius’s Lives of the philosophers and available in numerous editions
since their first appearance in print in 1472: ideas which canvassed the mortality
of the soul, denied divine providence, offered a doctrine of self-moving atoms in
explanation of the physical world. Small wonder that so great a hubbub of
discordant philosophies should have prompted a measure of scepticism towards
them all. Truth was unknowable except through revelation: ‘a sure and solid faith’,
observed Omer Talon in 1548, ‘will have more weight than all the demonstrations
of all the philosophers’ (Busson 1957: 237).
Yet Talon’s observation was levelled not at the generality of philosophies, but
specifically at the demonstrative syllogism of scholastic logic. The aim of demon-
stration was to arrive at incontrovertible conclusions: as Aristotle himself had
pronounced, ‘if something has been demonstrated it cannot be otherwise’ (Posterior
Analytics 74b14). Humanists took another view. In contrast to the morcellating
dissection of propositions and texts to which demonstrative methodology gave
rise, they favoured a holistic approach oriented towards more flexible outcomes.
Demonstration should give way to dialogue with ancient authors. ‘Read the books
which they have written, read those which you prefer, they will speak to you and
you will speak to them’: thus the celebrated Franciscan preacher St Bernardino of
Siena (d. 1444) whom his near-contemporary Matteo Vegio, distinguished poet,

8 The Axiochus and the Hipparchus, both spurious. The decades in question saw eighteen such

publications, almost 50 per cent of all those recorded as having appeared in the sixteenth century: see
Pettegree et al. eds 2007: II. 574–5.
12 Jean Bodin

humanist, and theorist of education, had so admired (Garin 1968: 96, 81). One
means of engaging overtly in dialectic of that order was through commentary,
designed not to submerge a text with glossa, but sympathetically to correct, amplify,
develop, elucidate, paraphrase, or summarize, as another great humanist educator,
Juan Luis Vives, explained.9 Another was the genre of dialogue itself, strongly
favoured and much practised by humanists, which flourished so impressively in
Renaissance France. Constructed on the classical model around a central question,
dialogue enabled exploration of such questions through sustained interrogation, or
through juxtaposition and interaction of competing views (see Vulcan 2000).
A vehicle of argument, it accommodated varieties of subject matter, factual,
propositional, hypothetical. Scholars habitually collected potentially usable mater-
ials in commonplace books, there in due course to be found afresh and redeployed
in accordance with the rhetorical process of inventio, discovery of topics, or places,
where cognate materials could be appropriately assigned (Margolin 1999: 199).
Unlike scholastic logic, humanist versions of dialectic whether in dialogue or in
other expository forms aspired not to certainty, but to persuasion. They bred
judgement in all spheres; in the political they served to cultivate that most valuable
of qualities, prudence, or practical judgement.

I I . 3 RAMUS

In France, the merits of dialectic were advocated with greatest vigour by Vatable’s
erstwhile pupil at Cardinal-Lemoine, Peter Ramus. Yet the object of his advocacy
was distinctive once more: not to promote holistic literary encounters of the kind
favoured by such as Bernardino, so much as to preserve something of the analytical
effectiveness of demonstration by means of reformed methodological tools.
According to Ramus’s biographer Nicolaus Nancelius,
there was no student of good literature, no one skilled in the liberal arts (nullus
bonorum artius peritus), no one well and methodically educated. no one with solid
and serious schooling in Greek and Latin, who was not a product of Ramus’s
workshop, be he theologian, doctor, lawyer, president, councillor, advocate, or finally
anyone either famous in the liberal professions or capable of fulfilling the office of
magistrate. (Sharratt ed. 1975: 189)
To Ramus, son of a peasant, risen in Paris’s educational hierarchy by dint of
unremitting effort, education should furnish pupils with practical training above
all else (Skalnik 2002: 540–1). It was a purpose of which proponents of established
curricula had plainly lost sight. Antiquated pedagogic procedures were surely
unserviceable to students who, confronted by multiple philosophies and a hetero-
geneous array of disciplines, had to wrestle with complexities of grammar and logic
rendered pointlessly abstruse by scholastic dogma (Clérico 1986: 54–5). What
Ramus devised was a simplified procedure, frequently revised and re-presented, and

9 Céard 1991: 178–9, 187–8; cf. on early humanist commentary, Grafton 1983: 15–18.
 Educational Pursuits 13

at key junctures drawing upon Plato.10 Elaborations and reworkings notwithstand-

ing, it was reducible to a single fundamental principle coupled with a set of basic
rules. According to the principle, one should proceed always from the general to the
particular. The rules were threefold: definition, distribution, disposition. Defin-
ition, the proper starting point of any dialectical inquiry, ‘ought to correspond to
the entire substance of the subject [res] and what the subject is in itself, according to
its own genus and species’.11 The definition once properly formulated, distribution
should enable one to proceed from the general to the specific by dividing at every
stage along the way: thus, ‘animal’ might be divided into ‘human’ and ‘beast’,
‘human’ into ‘male’ and ‘female’, and so on. Thirdly, disposition involved the
exercise of judgement to ensure the proper deployment of precepts and other
materials within the framework now constructed. This in turn involved three
‘laws’: the law of ‘truth’, that all precepts so accommodated must be true; the law
of ‘justice’, that all precepts assigned to a certain point of distribution must be
relevant to it and to each other; and the law of ‘wisdom’ which determined the
order in which precepts so disposed should be arranged. Taken all together, this was
Ramus’s famous ‘method’. It was, he insisted, applicable to all subject areas, all
disciplines: indeed, it was ‘natural’ in that the ordering of knowledge that resulted
from its use tallied with the very structure of the world itself, and indeed of the
human mind as well (Goulding 2006: 66). Such grand claims excited the scorn of
one of his leading critics, and, in due course, Bodin’s too.12
A superb self-publicist, Ramus claimed for his ideas much more originality than
in fact they warranted. Definition as the starting point of pedagogic discourse had
long since loomed large amongst teachers in medieval schools and particularly in
law faculties (Coleman 2000: II. 209). As for dialectical method in general,
humanist scholars had reviewed and proposed revisions of it over decades before
Ramus intervened, and with educational purposes firmly in view (see Vasoli 1968:
549). Few had reviewed it more critically than the Spanish-born Juan Luis Vives,
trained in Paris in the very methods which he derided in his Adversus pseudodia-
lecticos (1519). Ramus himself acknowledged a particular debt to scholars and
teachers not of Italian, but of Germanic extraction: the Frisian Rudolph Agricola,
author of the highly influential De inventione dialectica; and Johann Sturm of
Schleiden in the North Eifel, founder of a distinguished school in Strasbourg,
who had lectured in Paris during Ramus’s student years.13 From Agricola, Ramus

10 For what follows cf. especially Plato, Philebus 16d sqq., on proceeding from universal or general

to particular; Phaedrus 265d on definition, and 265e sqq on division. Cf. also Bruyère 1984: 71–83;
and Couzinet 2015 on the philosophical and pedagogic implications of Ramism.
11 ‘definitio ad totam rei substantiam, & quid res sit penitus exponendam, constare debet ex genere &

differentia propria’ (Ramus 1569/1970: 545).

12 ‘What could be more remote not only from philosophy, but also from common sense (Quid non

solum à philosophia, sed etiam à sensu communi magis alienum)?’ (Turnèbe 1600: 7–8). For comment on
Turnèbe’s views on this topic, Couzinet 1996a: 83–91. Discussions of Ramus’s method are numerous.
For a fuller account of his version of dialectic see Ong (1958), esp. ch. ix; cf. Hotson (2007): 44–9;
simplified account in Skalnik (2002): 43 sqq.; brief assessment in Kusukawa (2010).
13 For Ramus’s own acknowledgement of these influences, see his preface to Ramus (1569/1970).

The impact must also be noted of Philip Melanchthon’s frequently reissued Questions of dialectic
14 Jean Bodin

derived inter alia his famous dichotomizing approach,14 while, despite his relentless
attacks upon Aristotle’s interpreters, the three laws amounted to little more than a
reworking and elucidation of principles which the Philosopher himself had adum-
brated in the course of discussing demonstration.15 None the less, Ramus succeeded
in advocating his ideas to sensational effect. Students flocked to his classes at the
Collège de Presles. By his eloquence he could incite them to riot.16 By his authority
he could, according to the English scholar Gabriel Harvey, have settled all differ-
ences between religious opponents: ‘Had Ramus’ Treatise of Discipline come to
light, they would long ere this have been ashamed.’17
Whether Bodin encountered Ramus and his teaching directly during the
Angevin’s Parisian student years must remain a matter of conjecture.18 In principle
all colleges of the University imposed strict disciplinary controls upon their students
whilst maintaining rigorous routines of daily study. Over and above such norms,
Carmelite students were subject to regulation and surveillance in accordance with the
order’s rule (Zimmerman, aka Sainte-Croix 1935: 21). Yet, the order would hardly
have established and maintained its Paris house without some intention of creating
opportunities for study alongside, and to some extent in conjunction with, provision
by the University and its colleges. In any case, however restricted the movements
of a monastic novice may in principle have been, the possessor of so curious an
intelligence as Jean Bodin’s can scarcely have remained oblivious to the intellec-
tual turbulence occurring within a stone’s throw of the house where he resided.
Indeed, his awareness of and responsiveness to that turbulence may have got him
into trouble.

I I . 4 HERETIC?

In August 1548, a ‘Jehan Baudin’, Carmelite, was incarcerated in the Conciergerie

with five other clerics, initially on a charge of heresy. Following scrutiny before the
Chambre ardente, the court which Henri II had created within months of his
accession in 1547 as a second criminal chamber of the Paris Parlement to intensify
prosecution of religious suspects, the case was initially referred as a cas privilégié to
the Bishop of Paris to determine, through his official, the heretical nature or

(Erotemata dialectices) and Method of dialectical reasoning (Compendiaria dialectices ratio), both
published soon after their author’s appointment in 1518 at the age of twenty-one to the new chair
of Greek at Wittenburg.
14 Ong (1958): 199. For comparison between analytical procedures in Agricola and Ramus

respectively, Vasoli (1968): 377. See also my discussion of Bodin’s Oppian in Chapter III of this
volume.
15 Aristotle, Posterior Analytics 73a24–74a2; cf. Skalnik (2002): 43.
16 Babelon (1987): 85, citing Poète (1927): 148; cf. Tuilier (1994): i. 353.
17 Harvey 1593: 87.
18 Evidence to support the conjecture has been discerned in what appear to be Bodin’s signature on

and annotations to copies of a set of works including Talon’s Rhetorica (1550) ‘with which Ramus was
closely connected’ (Barber 1963: 365).
 Educational Pursuits 15

otherwise of the opinions allegedly expressed. However, such a referral depended

upon the accused’s being able to produce proof in writing of his status as a tonsured
or otherwise ordained cleric. Failing this, the charge would be redefined as a delict
commun and subject to the jurisdiction of royal justices, in accordance with a decree
of 1537 by the Parlement itself.19 This being so, Jean Bodin of Angers could not
have been the ‘Jehan Baudin’ thus accused unless he had already taken holy orders.
A year later one of the six accused, Florent Venot, who had been under arrest since
1545, suffered the death penalty, reportedly after extensive torture. The names of
the others disappeared from the record of the criminal court.20 If ‘Jehan Baudin’
was indeed Jean Bodin of Angers, he was evidently released, perhaps following
intervention by his Angers bishop and patron, Gabriel Bouvery. As Bodin’s
bishop, Bouvery would certainly have been aware of his status, the requisite
proof of which had to be endorsed by the relevant episcopal secretary or registrar.
It seems unlikely that Bouvery would otherwise have intervened, given his
attitude towards Protestantism in his diocese (cf. Chapter I (p. 4)). If a charge
of heresy had been sustainable against the young novice at a time of intensified
campaigning against religious deviants, it seems no more likely that such influ-
ence as Bouvery might have been able to bring to bear upon the Bishop of Paris,
the humanist and diplomat Cardinal Jean Du Bellay, would have sufficed to
procure Bodin’s release. It may nonetheless be that he had associated, or con-
sorted, with persons of unconventional or questionable opinions in defiance of
his order’s disciplinary regime: that Bodin defied Carmelite regulation to the
extent of exposing himself at least in the environs of the Place Maubert to
learning and ideas beyond the boundaries which his order had laid down. And
it is scarcely surprising that, having done so and no doubt suffered disciplinary
consequences, he decided soon afterwards to renounce the vows of his novitiate
(De Thou 1734: XIII. 34).
No longer a Carmelite nor an accredited student under the order’s aegis, Bodin
left Paris. It is likely that he returned to Angers. In 1549 he was at Nantes, taking an
interest in the conduct of a case of witchcraft there (Démonomanie (1580): fo. 92).
It may be that the reputation of the local university in the field of law had prompted
him to commence a course of study there. The field as it was developing in France
afforded exciting opportunities for merging pursuit of the humanistic learning to
which Paris had exposed him with prospects of a non-ecclesiastical professional
career. This was a time when humanistic jurisprudence was gathering pace in
France, exemplified in the comparative mode of study which Baron had earlier
expounded at Angers and in 1548 demonstrated in his Methodus ad Obertum
Ortensem de beneficiis, an analysis of custom in the form of a commentary on the

19 Schnapper 1974: 279, n. 76; Imbert 1606: 696. In his République Bodin would comment on the

relative powers of the bishop and the Parlement in Paris (1586: 277; passage not in 1583 edition).
20 Droz 1948: 78–9. An unusual conflation of secular and ecclesiastical jurisdictions was brought to

bear on the case of Venot, tried by two of the Parlement’s clerical conseillers whom the Bishop of Paris
had authorized on the Parlement’s instructions: Farge 2015: II. 1178–9. I owe this reference to the
kindness of Mark Greengrass.
16 Jean Bodin

work of the twelfth-century Italian judge Obertus de Orto. Baron was now at
Bourges, a distinguished law school; if Bodin as a known former Carmelite should
feel uncomfortable at Angers, he could have pursued his studies there, or even at
Orléans, where Pierre de l’Estoile, tutor of François Connan and of Jean Calvin,
had taught. But it was to Toulouse that he decided to make his way.21

21 On the hypothesis that Bodin spent a year in Geneva before his arrival in Toulouse, see

Appendix: ‘Identifying Bodin’.

 III
Humanist Engagements

III.1 TOULOUSE

The Toulouse to which Bodin made his way in or around 1550 was a place of
contrasts and ominous tensions. Prosperous, international in outlook, the city
accommodated a dynamic cultural life replete with humanist elements. Yet it also
harboured a rigid conservatism. Consequently, inter-institutional, cultural, and
religious antagonisms rumbled continually in the background, with contestation
erupting from time to time into acts of violence. So, despite much invoking of
concepts of ‘municipal republic’ and ‘civil concord’ on all sides, friction persistently
disturbed relations between authorities at various levels and between social and
academic groups.
Supporting a population of some 50,000 by one estimate, Toulouse’s economy
depended first and foremost upon well-established industries which drew on the
city’s hinterland of rural Languedoc—textiles and leather goods, flour-milling, the
marketing of cereals. But from the late fifteenth century onwards environmental
factors coupled with market conditions had fostered a remarkable growth of the
pastel industry. Pastel yielded dyes of exceptional quality for luxury cloth. The
growth of the industry and expansion of the pastel trade required substantial funds.
Merchants who had access to such funds flourished, while financial mechanisms to
support the activity developed apace. In 1549 Henri II authorized Toulouse to
create a bourse des marchands, on the model of the great Italian commercial cities.
Construction of more public buildings followed apace: a new fish market, an
arsenal, while work continued on a new bridge across the Garonne,1 an enterprise
supported in the 1550s by new taxes—the pontonnage levied on all merchandise
arriving by water, and extended to cover all merchandise entering the town (the
commutation) (Taillefer 2000: 22). Such levies evoked grumbling; but the citizens
were poorly placed to complain about taxation for public works. Since 1463
Toulouse had enjoyed a century-long exemption from the taille, a concession
granted by Louis XI in the wake of a devastating fire which, beginning in a bakery
located near the Carmelite house, had destroyed almost a quarter of the city.
Despite this and subsequent conflagrations, it was not until 1555 that the Toulouse
authorities finally ruled that all new buildings should be constructed of brick or
stone (Wolff 1961: 205). Hence the emergence, over time, of the ‘ville rose’, with

1 Begun in 1541, construction of the Pont Neuf took eighty-eight years to complete.
18 Jean Bodin

the houses of rich pastel merchants—the Assézat, the Bernuy, the Boysson—
among the finest examples of domestic architecture in the city.
But merchants’ houses were matched in splendour by those of the city’s leading
holders of governmental and judicial office. Municipal government was formally
the concern of the capitoulat, a body of eight members annually elected and
consisting of lawyers, minor nobles, and merchants. The capitouls claimed noble
status; to signify as much they adorned their houses with towers and themselves
with splendid robes. Their powers extended over four important areas: police in the
sense of maintaining public order and matters associated with it, such as regulation
of markets, control of the poor, and education below university level; justice,
especially in matters of public order once more; maintenance of public buildings
and thoroughfares; and provision of hospitals for the sick and the destitute
(Schneider 1989a: 59–68). Proper discharge of these large responsibilities required
a well-developed sense of civic duty. Guillaume de La Perrière, minor nobleman,
historian of Toulouse, and head of the municipal Collège de Saint-Mathurin, urged
as much in a work replete with humanist learning: ‘The good and true république is
that in which the governors attend to the public utility and to the good of the whole
of civic society’.2
In fact the capitouls’ role was subject to controls beyond their own commitment
to the bien publique, and to regulatory mechanisms other than their own electoral
and other procedures. Judicial and administrative institutions proliferated, and
office-holders with them. Insofar as breaches of public order sprang from issues
of religious belief and practice, they involved the ecclesiastical jurisdiction as
exercised, in Toulouse as in Paris, through the archbishop’s official, supported by
a range of officers, including royal procureurs. In relation to non-judicial secular
affairs, three municipal councils other than the capitoulat deliberated from time to
time: the conseil général, the conseil de bourgeoisie, and the conseil des seize. As
for secular justice, the presence of royal courts circumscribed the capitouls’ func-
tions. The long-established court of the seneschal, now with multiplying lieutenants
and other officers, was joined from 1552 by a présidial, likewise exercising both a civil
and a criminal jurisdiction. Over and above them all, at least by its own reckoning,
stood the Toulouse-based Parlement of Languedoc, a body sufficiently sensible of its
standing to question even the capitouls’ entitlement to noble status, to intervene from
time to time in specific areas of capitoul responsibility, to interfere increasingly in
municipal elections, and to oversee university teaching appointments to boot.
Structured on the Paris model with distinct chambers for investigations (enquêtes)
and for criminal justice (tournelle),3 the Toulouse Parlement’s complement of senior
members—présidents and conseillers—grew swiftly during the first half of the six-
teenth century, with procureurs, avocats, and other officials adding to the curial throng
(Doucet 1948: I. 211; Schneider 1989b: 199). Symptomatic of the litigiousness of
the age, the growth also owed not a little to the practice of venality coupled with

2 Le Miroir Politique, a work redrafted 1549–51 and published in 1555; quotation from edition

published in Paris (1567), fos 2ro–2vo. On La Perriére see Cazals 2006.

3 Curiously, the Toulouse Parlement lacked a chambre des requêtes (Viala 1953: I. 79; II. 307).
 Humanist Engagements 19

heredity of judicial offices (Wolff 1961: 199). Yet the practice did nothing to
diminish the Parlement’s self-regard, as the province’s prime seat not only of justice,
but even of royal authority itself (Mailles 1996: 511). Learned commentators
pronounced as much, deploying time-honoured analogies for the purpose. Was
not the parlement ‘a part of the prince’s body (pars corporis ipsius principis)’? Were
not its members ‘senatores’ on the classical Roman model? And was it not they who
ensured ‘the safety of the entire common weal (totius rei publicae saluti)’?—thus, in
1515, said Nicolas Bertrand, himself at once an avocat in the Parlement and professor
of canon law in the University of Toulouse (Krynen 2006: 48–9).
Poet as well as canon lawyer and historian, Bertrand was also a leading light in
the company of the Floral Games (Arabeyre et al. eds 2007: 80). Originating in
1324 (Dawson 1923: 3), revived and supported by the semi-legendary heiress and
poetess Clémence Isaure, these annual poetry competitions favoured verse forms
which had evolved from the troubadour style to that of the northern rhétoriqueur
poets, and showed signs of evolving farther towards that of the Pléiade itself. The
progression was implicit in the award of a silver statue of Minerva in 1554 to no less
a figure than Pierre de Ronsard who responded with a copy of his Hymne de
l’Hercule Chrestien (Yates 1947/88: 68, 191 n. 6; Gélis 1912: 109). In contempor-
ary perception the games served to promote not merely assonant versifying nor even
philosophical discourse on the model of Ronsard’s hymnes, but a very spirit of civic
concord (Luciani 2006: 330–2). Certainly, they attracted the active support of
Toulouse’s leading humanists. Prominent among them were members of the
distinguished Du Faur family, two of whom4 served successively as chancellors of
the games during Bodin’s Toulouse years, while a third, Guy du Faur, seigneur de
Pibrac, succeeded his uncle in the office of the games’ maînteneur (Dawson 1923:
75). All three Du Faur held high judicial office in Toulouse, as did another of
Guy’s uncles, Jacques du Faur, in the Parlement of Paris. But humanist circles
recruited persons from all of Toulouse’s leading institutions, church, and parle-
ment, capitoulat and university alike. Among them were Jean de Pins, Bishop of
Rieux (see Cormary 1933), and Georges d’Armagnac, Bishop of Rodez and future
Archbishop of Toulouse. The Du Faur apart, office-holders of the Parlement
included the président Jacques de Minut, patron of the radical Ciceronian and
publisher Étienne Dolet, and younger conseillers such as Arnaud du Ferrier, whose
pupils during his tenure of a chair in civil law at Toulouse University included some
of the leading legal scholars of the age, Jacques Cujas amongst them.
Not surprisingly, the humanist presence was especially evident in university circles,
most notably amongst the numerous Toulousains who had studied in Italy, and above
all at Padua. Students there were exposed to a remarkable diversity of intellectual
streams. At Padua explanatory methodologies were earnestly re-examined, notably
the relation between cause and effect, a subject area to which philosophers such as
Agostino Nifo and, later, Jacopo Zabarella contributed significantly through their

4 Pierre du Faur, father of Guy, and Michel du Faur de Saint-Jory, Pierre’s brother (Cabos 1922:

10 sqq.).
20 Jean Bodin

accounts of the ‘demonstrative regress’.5 Padua was noted for the teaching of medi-
cine, and particularly for the recovery of Greek medical source materials, coupled with
Aristotle’s works on natural philosophy, from their medieval Arab interpreters,
specifically Avicenna. Yet Padua was also a major centre for the pursuit and dissem-
ination of Averroïst ideas, characterized as secular Aristotelianism. At the same time,
the university provided copiously for the teaching of Christian theology and meta-
physics, again in modes which differed on fundamental issues. Dominican professors
explained from a Thomist standpoint how God ruled by reason and had ordered
degrees of being throughout the created universe; while from a Scotist perspective
Franciscan teachers ascribed precedence rather to the divine will and affirmed the
unicity or homogeneity of being, ens qua ens. Such differences underlay seemingly
interminable arguments over issues of peculiar sensitivity, amongst which none
continued to excite fifteenth- and sixteenth-century philosophers to keener debate
than the questions of the immortality of the soul and the eternity of the world. Few
publications contributed more penetratingly to the debate than the Tractatus de
immortalitate animae (1516) by the highly influential Pietro Pomponazzi—the author
also of a treatise on miracles, magic, and the alleged activities of demons, De
naturalium effectuum causis sive de incantationibus posthumously published in 1556.
According to the physician and astronomer Augier Ferrier, Jean Bodin had at
some point visited Italy. If so, it is unclear where he went there. The remark was
prompted by dismissive remarks of Bodin’s on an erroneous astronomical hypoth-
esis of the mathematician Girolamo Cardano. By Augier Ferrier’s account, Cardano
had admitted the error in his lectures and to his friends, as Bodin should have
known.6 No doubt the information had circulated beyond Pavia, where Cardano
had taught, whereas Ferrier himself had studied and taught at Padua. Among his
associates there was the future chancellor of France, Michel de L’Hospital, who
studied law at Toulouse before embarking in 1523 upon a prolonged Italian
peregrination.7 The extensive circle which L’Hospital formed during his time in
Toulouse and his six years’ stay in Padua included the Du Faur, Dolet, the
distinguished Ciceronian Pierre Bunel who would serve as tutor to Guy du Faur
de Pibrac, and Jean de Boyssoné, professor of law, friend of the poet Clément
Marot, of the physician and satirist François Rabelais, and of the philologist Denis

5 See especially Randall 1961: 42–56. The ‘demonstrative regress (regressus demonstrativus)’, derived

from Aristotle’s scientific writings, involved a threefold procedure: identification of an ‘effect’ by way of
sense data; conjectural—or ‘resolutive’—reasoning from the effect to a cause; and confirmatory—or
‘compositive’—reasoning in the other direction. A cause, object of the ‘resolutive’ phase, was deemed
‘prior’ in nature, but ‘posterior’ to the human intellect which necessarily began from observation of an
effect. For the relevance of the procedure to Bodin’s ‘method’ see Chapter IX.2 (p. 221).
6 Ferrier 1580: 27. I am grateful to Mark Greengrass for drawing this point to my attention. Bodin

himself was not shy about referring in his works to personal experiences and claimed more than once to
have consulted materials in the Vatican Library, but said nothing about visiting Italy for other
purposes.
7 L’Hospital was imprisoned, and then released by Francis I’s express command, upon the disgrace

of his father, physician and financier to Charles, Constable de Bourbon, following the failure of the
latter’s rebellion in 1523.
 Humanist Engagements 21

Lambin who undertook law studies at Toulouse. Father-in-law of the Toulouse

Parlement’s most celebrated jurist, Jean de Coras, Boyssoné corresponded with
leading humanists throughout southern France and beyond, such as the poet
Maurice Scève at Lyon and his cousin Guillaume, the latter an alumnus of
Toulouse and of Padua too (Margolin 2006). And yet, in Toulouse exponents
of humanist ideas encountered opposition from colleagues in the very centres of
influence which they themselves had penetrated. The anti-humanists included
numerous legal luminaries such as the king’s procureur-général and several présidents
in the Parlement—among them Blaise d’Auriol who held also a chair in law at the
University and was maînteneur and a leading prize winner of the Floral Games.
They included also the assesseur of the hôtel de ville, Julien Tabouet, the inquisitor
Raymond de Gossin, the archbishop’s vicar-general and chancellor of the University
Jean d’Illiers, and his brother Christophe, régent of the local Collège d’Esquile.
Behind figures such as these clustered principals and priors of the town’s numerous
other colleges amid a ‘clamorous multitude of maîtres, regents, doctors, avocats’—in a
word, everyone who owed his position to entrenched social and intellectual conven-
tions, including mastery of established modes of learning (Santi 1906: 32).
Dolet himself famously denounced Toulouse as ‘a town more barbarous than the
country of the Scythians’ (q. Santi 1906: 28), while Rabelais’s Pantagruel ‘did not
stay there long when he saw that they had their professors burnt alive like red
herrings (comme harans soretz)’ (Rabelais 1975: 328 [Pantagruel II.v]). Both had in
mind the fate of Jean de Caturce, a victim of Toulouse’s 1532 campaign against
subscribers to Lutheran opinions (Crespin 1885–9: I. 283–4; Febvre 1968: 57).
A licentiate in civil law, Caturce was condemned to death after torture, publicly
degraded and burnt alive at the Place du Salin, Toulouse’s traditional place of
execution where a statue of Cujas now stands. Twenty others were condemned
with him, some to suffer death, some to public penance. In the same year Jean de
Boyssoné himself was tried by a tribunal with Jean d’Illiers presiding and sentenced
to confiscation of his goods after publicly confessing his errors (Brunet 2006: 494).
Two years later, allegations of Lutheran sympathies and links with Caturce and his
associates sufficed to remove the Dominican Arnaud de Badet from his office as
inquisitor Gossin’s successor (Montagnes 1985: 243–4). And in 1539 another
inquisitor, Louis de Rochette, was charged with heresy and ultimately burned
(Hempsall 1971: 243). Repression intensified from the end of the 1530s when
jurisdiction over heresy offences involving public scandal or unrest was assigned
exclusively to the royal courts. Between 1540 and 1548 the Parlement of Toulouse,
reputedly ‘the most sanguinary in France’ (Baum and Cunitz 1883–9: I. 114),
initiated judicial process against two hundred suspects and condemned eighteen to
execution by burning (Brunet 2006: 495). Into the 1550s efforts by Calvinists to
penetrate the seats of Toulouse authority proved relatively unfruitful, despite their
relative success in Languedoc at large. Even so, Boyssoné was restored to his university
chair in 1552 and would appear to have had none other than Jean Bodin amongst his
pupils (Toulouse 1960: 170).
Given the Parlement’s role in university appointments, Boyssoné’s reinstatement
is significant. It would seem that the court’s concern was less with matters of faith as
22 Jean Bodin

such than with considerations of public order. The campaign of the early 1530s had
coincided with public disturbances on a large scale, involving student riots—a
phenomenon with which Toulouse citizens were all too familiar. Rival student
bodies had resorted to arms, attacked the watch, even assaulted the persons of
capitouls, owing ostensibly to municipal attempts to impose taxes on the University.
But material issues were by no means all. Intellectual considerations were also at
stake—above all, confrontation between proponents of humanist methodologies
and defenders of traditional modes of learning. Students of the latter persuasion had
not hesitated to ‘set fire to the Schools’ and had even burned the lecture rooms of
Arnaud du Ferrier and Jean de Coras (q. Gadavé ed. 1910: 59). This is unsurpris-
ing. The Faculty’s main purpose was, after all, to train potential office-holders,
perhaps in the very court of the Parlement that oversaw its affairs and the appoint-
ment of its teaching staff; and traditional pedagogic methodologies seemed appro-
priate enough for that, whatever the intellectual predilections of their practitioners.
For centuries Toulouse’s Law Faculty had enjoyed a brilliant reputation, through
its teaching initially in canon law and then civil law as well. In both its provision
was ostensibly grounded in the established texts: the Corpus iuris canonici and the
Corpus iuris civilis, the latter studied principally by the scholastic method known as
the mos italicus and associated particularly with the great Italian jurist, Bartolus of
Sassoferrato. A mode of exegesis whereby opinions, maxims, and comparative
observations were brought cumulatively to bear upon fragments of the texts
themselves and subjected systematically to processes of dialectical evaluation, it
‘enabled medieval jurists to reshape the Corpus juris to the needs of medieval
Europe while still maintaining its traditional authority’. That authority was rooted
in the time-honoured status of Justinian’s law. It was rooted as well in belief in its
inherent and universal rationality (Franklin 1963: 14; Ribeiro de Barros 2003: 57),
a rationality recoverable by scholastic means. Such provision was peculiarly suited
to a major law school in the French Midi where legal practices were ostensibly
rooted in Roman precedent. But by the sixteenth century the Faculty was in
decline. The revival of its reputation, in mid-century, owed not a little to the
presence of some outstanding exponents of legal humanism. Inspired by the efforts
and adjurations of scholars of the standing of Guillaume Budé, they denounced the
distorting apparatus of scholastic commentary and its corrupting impact upon the
sources of the law. They sought by means of philology and source criticism
informed by literary and historical expertise to relocate and reinterpret the laws of
Rome in their true context. To them Justinian’s law was historically specific, the
product of a particular civic setting. Some of them, most notably Jacques Cujas,
made such contextual reconstruction their overriding scholarly aim. But for other
proponents of that same mos gallicus iura docendi, belief in the law’s inherent
rationality remained a watchword and a prime concern. It was this quality of
recta ratio that ensured the universal character of jurisprudence and therefore its
status as potentially a scientia, an ars as distinct from its treatment as an instance of
the prudentia and as such an arena for the exercise of human judgement. Inspired
by Cicero, Budé himself was an advocate of iure civili in artem redigendo. By means
of dialectical ‘method’, properly applied, law would be revealed as ‘organic and
 Humanist Engagements 23

co-ordinated’, no longer ‘an agglomeration of fragmentary learning’ (Piano Mortari

1978a: 340–1). It would also confirm afresh the harmonious interrelationship of all
disciplines which Vitruvius had recognized long before, as law took its place within
‘the circle [of the arts and sciences] of the members of which one body is
composed’.8
With the exception of Boyssoné, the evidence does not suggest that more than a
very few of the occupants of chairs in the Faculty in Bodin’s time measured up to
the criteria which he himself would later specify for ‘jurisconsults worthy of the
name’ (cited Gilles 1985: 316; cf. Quaglioni 2007: 351–2). One who did was
Étienne Forcadel. A poet of some accomplishment, Forcadel was also innovative in
his approach to learned discourse, combining a humanist’s attention to legal
terminology and to the philosophical and contextual dimensions of the law with
expertise sufficient to warrant posthumous collection and republication of his
works (Mesnard 1950d: 441–55). Given the practice-oriented stance of his faculty
and its parlementary overseer, Forcadel must also have been an accomplished
teacher—surely a weighty factor in the competition which unfolded in 1553 for
a newly vacated chair in civil law. Although the previous incumbent had resigned in
favour of Jacques Cujas, who was soon to emerge as one of France’s most
distinguished jurists, it was Forcadel’s candidature that proved successful. Subse-
quent acrimony between Cujas and Bodin prompted later commentators to sup-
pose that the latter had organized a ‘cabal’ to obstruct the former’s election to the
chair, a view to which elements of correspondence between philosophical ideas
espoused by both Forcadel and Bodin might appear to lend some credence (Rose
1980a: 21–2). But the view seems ill-founded. Bodin’s position in the Faculty in
1553–4 was scarcely influential enough to enable him to play so significant a role.
Indeed, he may never have progressed beyond the status of ‘hallebardier’, an
intermediate position between those of student and fully accredited teacher
(Vasoli 2008: 16)—though by his own account he seemed to his students ‘exceed-
ingly wise (valde sapiens)’ (1583: ‘Epistola’, sig. b iiij). Further, Cujas—mentioned
by name in that same account—had been tutor to Guy de Pibrac and remained
intimate with the Du Faur, whose patronage Bodin himself proved eager to
cultivate, though Forcadel, too, had been at pains to earn their good graces.
Above all, the vacancy occurred too early in Cujas’s career for his claims to have
outweighed those of Forcadel. Cujas may have despaired of the elaborate proced-
ures which the Parlement had put in place, whereby each of the five eventual
candidates was required to prepare and publish opinions on set themes and to
defend his positions over several days before Faculty members of all descriptions
and representatives of the Parlement too. Material considerations in the form of
salary improvement may have counted as well: modestly reimbursed for his services

8 ‘Encyclios enim disciplina vti corpus unum ex his membris est composita’ (Budé 1535: 6). In addition

to Budé, the following have been held to have anticipated or coincided with Bodin’s quest for a
universalist-systematizing approach to the law: Connan, Duaren, Coras, Baudouin, Doneau
(Wolodkiewicz 1985: p. xxii); and, implementing methods of tabulation similar to his in his Juris
universae distributio, Antoine Le Conte of Bourges (Mesnard 1951: 70).
24 Jean Bodin

at Toulouse, Cujas accepted an invitation to the University of Cahors and left

Toulouse to his rivals and others.9 Among them was one avid to establish his
credentials both as a jurist of weight and substance and as an exponent of humanist
learning.10
Such, then, was the setting in which Bodin made his early living as an academic
and embarked upon his writing career. While the competition for the chair in civil
law was getting under way, a royal licence was sought and obtained to publish his
Latin translation and edition of a Greek poem, Κυνηγετικων (Cynegetica), Latinized
to De venatione (On Hunting).11

III.2 OPPIAN

Why did Bodin choose to publish a work in that genre? In France enthusiasm for
and productivity in Greek studies scaled unprecedented heights in the mid-
sixteenth century, as devotees of the studia humanitatis strove to surpass the
achievements of their Italian counterparts (Grafton 1983: 75, 80). The movement,
driven on by such activists as Ramus and Lambin (Stevens 1969: 182–3), was one
to which Bodin would certainly have been exposed at first-hand in Paris and again
in Toulouse. By editing the Cynegetica he staked his claim to public recognition of
his scholarly credentials, and in particular to the regard of past and prospective
patrons. More particularly still, he sought to gratify the volume’s dedicatee: Bishop
Bouvery, ‘my most generous antistes’12 to whom ‘I am bound to devote not only
these very modest fruits of my labours, but also myself ’. It was a bold and, on the
face of it, a curious venture: bold in view of the standards of textual criticism in
which Parisian scholars were contemporaneously engaged (see Grafton 1983: 80,
102 sqq.); curious at first glance in his choice of subject for the purpose. The
Cynegetica was not a poem of the first rank. Now known to be the work of Oppian
of Apamea in Syria, it was credited in Bodin’s time to Oppian of Cilicia, whose
Halieutica (On Fishing) was a poem of similar type but superior quality (Trypanis
1981: 370; cf. Mynors 1949: 278). But two considerations enhanced the appeal of
both works, and especially the Cynegetica, to French scholars of the time.
The first was the noble passion for hunting, a passion gratified nowhere more
strongly than at the royal court and by no one more devotedly than by Henri II. To
write on hunting was to cultivate possibilities of patronage, even in works of
scholarship which the King himself was unlikely to read (Baumgartner 1980:

9 Mesnard 1950b: 46–7; Mesnard 1950c: 524–5; Toulouse 1929: 119; also Gilles 2006: 62–3.
10 Cf. Goyard-Fabre 1985: 92, suggesting that the Bodin–Cujas quarrel sprang from what became
their fundamental differences over the study and application of Roman law—Cujas focusing on that
law in its historical context, Bodin on deriving from it by means of analysis and simplification the
universal law which was a principal object of his life’s work.
11 The licence, conferring exclusive rights to print and sell the work, was granted to the printer,

Michel de Vascosan, a year before its publication date. Modern commentaries on the poem list Bodin’s
edition for bibliographical purposes whilst making little use of his own commentary: see, for instance,
Wolfgang Schmitt 1969.
12 A skilfully chosen term signifying both master in a disciplinary sense, and priest.
 Humanist Engagements 25

7–8, 64–5). The second consideration was such poems’ didactic character.
Composed in the aftermath of the Hellenistic age when didactic verse was much
admired, both works combined elements of different poetic forms—descriptive,
lyric, narrative, even epic—and were seemingly replete with information about
animals and how to hunt and fish. In fact they scarcely furnished manuals of
instruction on blood sports, any more than Virgil’s Georgics constituted a handbook
on farming—despite Ramus’s characteristically emphatic opinion that poetry was
an appropriate medium for teaching scientific subjects.13 In common with his far
greater Latin predecessors, Oppian approached his subject rather for its poetic than
for its scientific potential, and nature itself as a theatre of life and manners, imitatio
vitae et morum (Pantin 1999: 23; Kolde 2006). French interest in this genre of
writing was of long-standing (Kay et al. 2003: 33–4; Kay 2007: 2). Elsewhere too
Oppian was regarded as a poet who warranted attention:14 references to him and
his works occur in some eighty English publications of the sixteenth and seven-
teenth centuries. According to Bodin himself, the Cynegetica was especially note-
worthy: while other writers of the classical era had written on hunting, ‘no one
before Oppian wrote a poem’ on the theme. Others evidently took a similar view.
No fewer than three editions of the Cynegetica were published in Paris in 1555.
In addition to Bodin’s Latin translation and commentary, the lecteur royal Adrien
Turnèbe published an edition of both poems in Greek, while the latter’s friend
and publisher Guillaume Morel reissued as a separate volume the pair of Latin
translations produced towards the end of the fifteenth century by Lorenzo Lippi
and previously published together in 1517.15 The versions of 1555 had been
preceded by the appearances of another Greek edition by an unknown editor in
1549,16 and a volume of Annotationes in 1552 by the highly productive scholar
Jean Brodeau of Tours.
Context and the poet’s reputation aside, the Cynegetica was well suited to
Bodin’s purposes. The text available to him contained a variety of rare words and
archaisms in addition to a number of outright linguistic errors. Rich in literary and
in other allusions, it offered peculiar opportunities for an aspiring scholar eager to
impress. But opinions arose that Bodin had been too eager. The source of such
opinions was none other than Turnèbe himself, widely respected as France’s most
distinguished Greek scholar. At the end of a composite list of printer’s errors and
variant readings in his edition of Oppian which appeared in the same year as
Bodin’s translation, Turnèbe alleged, ‘Seven years ago I lightly corrected Oppian’s

13 See Ramus 1557: 20, recommending for the purpose Virgil, Ovid, and Lucretius in particular

(Tota Maronis Georgica physica sunt; tota Metamorphosis Ovidij physica sunt; totus Lucretius physicus est).
In his commentary on Oppian, Bodin cites Virgil forty times (including eleven specific references to
the Georgics), Ovid thirty-eight times (Metamorphoses eleven), and Lucretius on seven occasions.
14 For lists of early modern scholars interested in Oppian, see Rittershausen 1597: sigs γ vo, {{8 vo;

also Schneider ed. 1776: pp. xii–xiii.

15 Lorenzo Lippi (?1442–85) was one of two professors of grammar and rhetoric at Pisa and a

diligent producer of verse and other works: see Giustiniani, ed. 1964. His translation of the Halieutica
was first published in 1478. The 1517 edition included his Latin version of the Cynegetica as well.
16 No editor is identified in the volume itself. Schneider 1776: p. viii considers it to have been

Turnèbe. For unspecified reasons the British Library catalogue credits it to Bodin.
26 Jean Bodin

De venatione, partly by inference and conjecture, partly with the help of an ancient
book. Someone took those emendations for his own use and conferred them on
himself.’17 Several of Europe’s most distinguished scholars seized upon the allega-
tion and identified Bodin as the culprit. One extant copy of Turnèbe’s publication
bears in the margin alongside the allegation a manuscript note, apparently in the
hand of the leading classicist Isaac Casaubon: ‘It is Bodin of whom Turnèbe
complained [and] I understand that Turnèbe told the truth.’18 ‘We all know how
he [Bodin] published Turnèbe’s readings in Oppian as his own’, wrote the French
diplomat and scholar Jacques Bongars in a letter to the German jurist, classicist, and
philologist Conrad Rittershausen who had himself brought out an edition of
Oppian’s poems.19 One of Europe’s most highly respected textual critics, Joseph
Justus Scaliger, reiterated the charge and added that ‘over many years whatever
doctrines [Bodin] pursued he copied from the labours of others’. Scaliger himself
was one of the victims: had not Bodin ‘most impudently made entire pages of my
little Latin book on Varro his own’ and in doing so ‘reduced them as if to chaos,
writing many things which he did not understand (in unum velut chaos congessit,
plurima scribens quae ipse non intelligit)’?20
However, such allegations must be viewed with caution. Bodin himself may have
provoked, or exacerbated them, with his claim some ten years after his Oppian’s
publication that ‘some grammarian . . . taking as much as he pleased from my work
(quidem grammaticus . . . quantum libuit de me labore detrahens)’ had then ‘pub-
lished it anew (iterum peruulgauit)’ (Bodin 1566: 94). Scaliger in particular was
parti pris. Devoted to the memory of his father Julius Caesar Scaliger, and ready to
belabour with abusive language anyone who had offended him, he accused Bodin
of having ‘attempted to show by falsehood’ that the elder Scaliger was incompetent
in mathematics.21 Worse, had not Bodin in his Methodus charged Scaliger himself
with ‘ignorance (ignorantia)’, indeed with ‘falling childishly into error (quidem
pueriliter lapsus est)’ (1566: 383)? Surely such insults were not silently to be
borne. Casaubon, who seems from their extant letters to have corresponded more
frequently than anyone else with Scaliger, may well have derived his ‘understand-
ing’ of Bodin’s culpability from that prejudiced source.22 As for Rittershausen, the
confidence in Bodin as one of France’s ‘most brilliant luminaries’ (Rittershausen
1597: sig. a4), which had underwritten his readiness to preface his own edition
with Bodin’s Latin epigrams on Oppian and then to fill its margins with the
Angevin’s suggested emendations, may or may not have been shaken by Bongars’

17 Turnèbe 1555: [214]: ‘Septem abhinc annis leuiter emendaueram Oppianum de venatione partim

animi coniectura, partim libri veteris ope. Eas emendationes quidam vsurpauit, & sibi donauit’. The
allegation seems unconnected with the list which, running from pp. 207–14, contains 225 items on
the Halieutica and 133 on the Cynegetica.
18 ‘Is est Bodinus qui tu soc [sic] negat et de Turnebe conqueritur. Ego Turn. verum scio loqui’ (Turnèbe

1555: [214] (British Library 832.h.12.(1)).

19 Bongars to Rittershausen (April 1600), in Chauviré 1914a: 536.
20 Des Maizeaux ed. 1711: II. 31; Ménage 1690: I. 64–5 [= Part I, cap. xix].
21 ‘Patrem Jul. Scaligerum falsò ignorantiae Matheseos arguit’ (Des Maizeaux ed. 1711: II. 31).
22 Though this conjecture is disappointingly not substantiable from their extant correspondence (in

Botley and Van Miert eds 2012).

 Humanist Engagements 27

allegation. But, given that Rittershausen had adopted and so in effect endorsed
them, the distinguished classicist and lexicographer Johann Gottlob Schneider
was content to take account of Bodin’s emendations almost two centuries later in
yet another edition of Oppian’s poems.23 As Schneider observed, ‘what on earth
could there have been in the first Turnèbe edition24 that Bodin would prize so
greatly as to run the risk of disgrace’ for the offence ascribed to him (Schneider ed.
1776: p. viii)?
In Schneider’s time, moreover, the conventions of scholarly propriety and the
discredit attendant upon breaching them were not those of Bodin’s day. Even the
most distinguished of Bodin’s contemporaries borrowed without acknowledgement,
a practice scarcely discouraged by the cult of imitation in classical aesthetics as
propagated in Renaissance classrooms.25 Meanwhile, jealousies between rivals
coloured critical judgement. In the course of another dispute which rumbled on
for decades, Turnèbe accused Ramus of claiming credit for a work on rhetoric
published under the name of the latter’s colleague Omer Talon, and earned for his
trouble a response of twenty-four folios berating him for inadequacy as a teacher
and for other scholarly deficiencies.26 For the very commentary on Varro which he
censured Bodin for plagiarizing, Scaliger had borrowed significantly more than
he chose to acknowledge from the work of none other than his own former teacher,
Turnèbe (Grafton 1983: 109–11). Others borrowed more freely still. For ideas and
material in his religious and philosophical writings, most notably his widely read
De la sagesse (1601), Pierre Charron shamelessly plundered others’ works, including
those of Montaigne and Lipsius—and especially Bodin.27 Such a mode of literary
composition had attracted by Schneider’s time serious scholarly inquiry. Almost
coincidentally with the appearance of Schneider’s edition of Oppian, Jakob
Thomasius, philosopher and historian of ‘unwearying diligence as well as outstanding
integrity of mind’ (q. Hochstrasser 2000: 20) according to his now better-known son
Christian, presided at a formal disputatio concerning a Philosophical dissertation on
literary theft (plagio literario). In it Bodin’s name kept company with none other than
that of Cujas, in a lengthy and substantial schedule of writers shown in considerable
detail to have plagiarized or been plagiarized in their turn.28
‘Borrowing’, then, and allegations of borrowing were common features of literary
practice. In so far as Bodin engaged in it, he was in excellent company. It seems
possible, indeed likely that he did engage in it at least for a particular editorial

23 See, for instance, Schneider 1776: 379, re verse 422, where a reading of Bodin’s is preferred to

those of both Turnèbe and Rittershausen.

24 I.e., the 1549 edition produced by Michel de Vascosan, printer to the University of Paris and

eventually royal printer of Greek texts. Schneider credits Turnèbe with this edition on the strength of
correspondence between the textual emendations which it bears and those listed by Turnèbe in his
edition of 1555. Vascosan was also the publisher of Bodin’s 1555 edition.
25 Cf. Randall 2001: 34. See also Bjrnstad 2008 for interesting remarks on the question of

‘plagiarism’ amongst writers in early modern Europe.

26 Talon 1556; Sharratt 1975: 219–21. For the scope and tone of the wider Ramus–Turnèbe

dispute see Demonet 2004.

27 Sabrié 1913: 262–7; Battista 1966: 86–93, 113–19, 123–8.
28 Reinelius 1673, } 347 sqq.; Bodin at } 373, XXII; Cujas at } 398, XXXVIII.
28 Jean Bodin

purpose. But the extent to which he did so is by no means certain. His Commen-
tarius is peppered with emendations to an unspecified version of the Greek text. It is
these verbal emendations that Turnèbe and his sympathizers would seem to have
had in mind. Bodin presents each of them in the form, ‘for x read y’: for example,
‘τριέτησι lege τριέτη σε’.29 Comparison of texts discloses that in this instance and in
most others Turnèbe’s Greek text of 1555 exhibits precisely the corrected form
which Bodin proposes. Furthermore, the 1549 Greek text contains, in the case of
‘τριέτησι’ and in most other instances, the form which Bodin proposes to correct.
But not in all. In the case of the very first of Bodin’s emendations, ‘Α’ηδαϊς lege
ἀοιδαϊς’, signifying ‘singer’,30 the amended form figures not only in Turnèbe’s
1555 edition, but also in that of 1549. Again, in respect of Cynegetica III.13 Bodin
directs ‘Α’γαυνοὺς lege ἀγαυοὺς’ (illustrious), a recommendation which again tallies
with Turnèbe’s 1555 edition and with that of 1549. Yet elsewhere Bodin proposes
emendations which do not occur in Turnèbe’s 1555 edition. Thus, for Oppian
II.48 Bodin advises ‘Πεφρίκεν’ (tremble) to replace ‘Πεφρίκει’, whereas Turnèbe
(1555: 150; 1549: 11vo) and Lippi (1517: 75) both have the latter form. For
Oppian I.164 where Turnèbe (1555: 135), as in both the 1549 and 1517
(fo. 67vo) editions, offers ‘ἀίοντες’ (breathing), Bodin (fo. 50vo) ‘for the sake of
the verse (propter carminis ratio)’ proposes ‘ἀιόντ’ αὐδὴν’. For Oppian II.466, ‘αὐτίκ
ἄρ αἲη’(straightway to the earth) Bodin offers several variant readings. For Oppian
II. 453 and 454, ‘ἀρείότεραι’ (superior), ‘κονεοἰς’ (dust) he provides explanations
on points of grammar. None of this figures in Turnèbe 1555, nor indeed in the
1549 and 1517 editions.
It seems no more likely that in preparing his Commentarius Bodin omitted to
make use of Vascosan’s 1549 edition than that, in making his emendations, he
failed to draw upon the work of the leading Greek textual scholar of the France of
his day, Adrien Turnèbe. That both scholars made critical use of the 1517 edition
which contained Lippi’s translation seems also highly probable. But what is also
clear is that Bodin did not simply follow his several predecessors and merely present
their work as his own. As his Commentarius abundantly demonstrates, the Angevin
was a sufficiently capable Greek scholar to comment on Oppian’s use of language
on his own initiative, to discover verbal inaccuracies or infelicities for himself—and
sufficiently sure of his own ground to draw attention at an early stage to how
Oppian had built others’ formulations into his poem.31 As Schneider was to
observe, it made no sense that in a work intended to impress the cognoscenti
Bodin should have courted infamy through dependence to a degree beyond the
lax conventions of his time upon the discoveries of so well-known and well-
connected a scholar as Turnèbe.

29 Commentarius, fo. 43vo, relating to Cynegetica I.24: ‘a triennial feast’; cf. Turnèbe 1555: 130,

line 6; Oppian 1549: fo. 2, line 21.

30 Commentarius, fo. 43vo, relating to Cynegetica I.21.
31 For example, commenting on ‘ἀμφιδύμους’: ‘Homerica locutio quam saepe usurpat Oppianus’

(Commentarius, fo. 47vo).

 Humanist Engagements 29

Verbal emendations aside, Bodin larded his commentary with citations from an
extraordinary range of sources. The commentary contains over 1,800 citations from
some two hundred separate sources on a poem of 2,124 lines.32 Poets, philo-
sophers, and historians provide almost one half of them, with classical writers
furnishing far and away the lion’s share; writers of or immediately before Bodin’s
own era number fewer than a score of those cited by name. Not surprisingly,
Homer is the poet who figures by far the most frequently, and Aristotle the
philosopher; the latter’s Historia animalium (History of Animals) was still the
accepted starting point for zoological studies. Also cited are numerous other
specialist writers relevant to the subject of Oppian’s poem and to Bodin’s task:
agronomists and various writers on rural affairs, natural historians and geographers,
translators and rhetoricians, grammarians and lexicographers. Varro, Bodin’s use of
whom was so sharply to excite Scaliger’s hostility, figures by name thirty-four times,
sometimes explicitly from the De lingua Latina and the De re rustica, though more
often without noting the particular source. But around these cluster a host of
others: architects, astronomers, biographers, emperors, lawyers, mythographers,
physicians, playwrights, theologians, topographers, even a demonologist and an
Egyptian high priest. Bodin’s reading was omnivorous; all, it seemed, was grist to
his mill.
How the grist came there, and how discriminatingly he used it, are not easy
questions to answer. An obvious possible source was the recently published Anno-
tationes of the remarkably learned Jean Brodeau, whom Bodin cites fifteen times,
sometimes approvingly, sometimes otherwise. But the two commentaries differ far
too widely for the one to have informed the other.33 In common with all his
contemporaries, Bodin made use of compendia, florilegia, and polyhistories.34
Thus, some thirty of his references are to Gaius Julius Solinus whose third-century
compilation Collectanea rerum memorabilium consisted largely of material derived
without acknowledgement from the works of Pliny the Elder and the first-century
geographer Pomponius Mela. Yet Bodin also cites, or claims to cite, both Pliny and
Mela directly from their respective works. He cites Pliny’s Natural History no fewer
than eighty-six times; as for Mela, his Cosmographia, itself a compilation, was
available to the Angevin in another compendium of 1518. Published in Venice

32 For the data that inform my assessment of Bodin’s sources and his use of them I am deeply

indebted to the Bodin Sources Index compiled and edited by Kenneth D. McRae, Alastair D. McCann,
and Catherine Andrea, and now made freely available online to researchers through the generosity of
Professor McRae and his team.
33 Compare, for instance, Bodin’s substantial discussion of the term δαίμονες singled out from

Oppian’s ‘δαίμονες Α᾿ μϕιτρίτης’ (Opp.I, line 77; Bodin 1555: fo. 47) with Brodeau’s two-word
dismissal of the phrase as simply signifying ‘marinij dij ’, sea gods (Brodeau 1552: 11); or Bodin’s four-
page discussion of horses and reason with Brodeau’s summary view that while the sounds which the
animals made might vary and might signify different things they had no words and so could not be
credited with reasoning powers (Opp. I, lines 219 sqq.; Brodeau 1552: 27; Bodin,1555: fos 52vo–54vo).
On Brodeau see also Hutton 1967: 98–101.
34 Including such compilations as the Δειπνοσοφισταί (Deipnosophistae) of Athenaeus of Naucratis

(fl. AD 200) whom Bodin at one juncture recommended as preferable to Erasmus (Commentarius,
fo. 92). Elsewhere he refers explicitly to his own use of ‘dictionaries’ and to Robert Estienne’s Thesaurus
lingua latinae (1532) (Commentarius, fos 71vo, 89).
30 Jean Bodin

by Aldus Manutius, it contained Solinus’s work as well as the second-century

Alexandrian Dionysius Periegetes’s De orbis situ, a popular text written in Greek
hexameters. Dionysius figures in Bodin’s Commentarius fourteen times; the former’s
principal source, the remarkable polymath Erastothenes, head of the Alexandrian
Library in the second century BC, is cited by name only for displaying too much
credulity, a fault for which he was, we are told, ‘justly censured’ by Strabo (Bodin
1555: fo. 106vo). But Bodin, too, is credulous. Authors of works now known to
have been invented or otherwise questionable—by Dictys the Cretan, Dares the
Phrygian, Manetho the Egyptian—are cited unhesitatingly in the Commentarius,35
as are the names of writers—Capitolinus, Lampridius, Spartianus—who them-
selves had no existence outside the pages of the Historia Augusta with its team of
fictional contributors and array of forged documents.36 In treating such materials as
authentic Bodin simply shared the assumptions of almost all his contemporaries.
Less excusable is his disregarding the reservations of the very authorities upon
whom he most heavily relies. Thus, he credits Aristotle as his source for Ctesias’s
report of the fabulous ‘manticore’ whilst ignoring the misgivings with which the
Stagyrite had presented the Greek doctor’s account.37
Eagerness to display his learning was a powerful driver of his remarks. Yet the
display involved more than a mere parade of learned references. Trained in rhetoric
and in dialectic, Bodin brought techniques of that order to bear upon Oppian’s
presentation. He notes, albeit not systematically, Oppian’s use of rhetorical figures:
anaphora and periphrasis,38 apostrophe, exclamatio and epiphenomena,39 apothegm
and hypotyposis,40 epithet and metaphor,41 metonymy and synechdoce.42 He
invokes the familiar tools of traditional dialectic to some critical effect. A comment
of Aristotle’s on elephants is held to rest unpersuasively on an ‘assumption’—the
minor premise of a syllogism43—ostensibly warranted on grounds of efficient cause
(confirmatio assumptionis . . . ex causis efficientibus) (fo. 81vo). Aristotle, again, is held
to have relied ‘solely on the differentia of magnitude’ for his description of two kinds
of lynx, whereas Oppian executes his distributio of wild beasts on the firmer basis of
‘actions and adjuncts (distributio ferarum ex factis et adiunctis)’ (fos 90, 102). And it
is indeed distributio that tallies with a concern of Bodin’s throughout the Commen-
tarius. Over and above other concerns, he attended especially to the detection of loci.
To a trained lawyer and rhetorician loci communes signified maxims, and adages,

35 Commentarius, fos 73vo, 88vo. Dictys and Dares were each nominally responsible for a supposedly

first-hand account of the Trojan War titled, respectively, Ephemeridos belli Trojani and De excidio Trojae
historia; Manetho, a high priest under the Ptolemys, for the Aegyptiaca, a history of Egypt that survived in
corrupted and fragmented form.
36 Capitolinus, Lampridius and Spartianus in Commentarius, fos 43, 58vo, 60vo, 68, 80. On the

Historia Augusta see the searching critique by Syme (1983).

37 Commentarius, fo. 98vo; cf. Aristotle, 501a26–31—‘if we are to believe Ctesias’.
38 For example, fos 48vo, 74, 93. 39 For example, fos 55vo, 65, 74, 80, 93vo.
40 For example, fos 49vo, 55vo, 80, 93.
41 For example, fos 44vo, 48, 50, 56, 60vo, 61vo, 65, 92vo.
42 For example, fo. 44vo.
43 For Ramus’s view of the syllogism as a component of dialectic note 57 in this chapter.
 Humanist Engagements 31

widely accepted principles deployable in forensic or other modes of argument to

enhance their persuasiveness. They tallied with Aristotle’s concept of opinions that
were generally approved (ἒνδόξα) (Topics 100a20), the starting points of deductive
reasoning and treated at length in his Topics and again in Rhetoric. Cicero had
defined them as ‘arguments which can be redeployed in numerous cases’ (De
inventione II. 48; see also Skinner 1996: 111–19). Bodin was both lawyer and
rhetorician, but his interest as commentator was not in courtroom oratory. Rather,
he applies himself to revealing how Oppian marshalled items of factual information,
the poem’s didactic substance. He does so by an approach derived for the purpose
from the doctrines of Agricola and Ramus, the leading reformers of dialectic of his
day, and practitioners also of commentary. It was their precepts that prompted and
informed two of his main aims in his Commentarius: to expose the poem’s argumen-
tative structure, and to assess in dialectical and rhetorical terms the poet’s deployment
of his material.44
The Commentarius begins with an overall assessment of Oppian’s technique in
the poem’s opening passages: ‘He strives for favour through [stressing] the mag-
nificence of the prince’s race and imperial majesty which he amplifies by various
adjuncts’ (fo. 43).45 By line 34 Bodin has identified ‘the proposition of the entire
work where [the poet’s] method may be seen (ubi spectanda methodus est)’. Oppian’s
‘method’ is again commended in Bodin’s comment on the beginning of Book III:
Behold the easy method of this poet in writing: up to this point in his first and second
books he has dealt in turn with nets, dogs, horses and horned beasts; in the third book
his subject is beasts without horns (for so Celsus calls them) which have either
protuberant or serrated teeth. Those who have distinct teeth in uniform rows (as
men do), apart from the horse, the camel, the mule and the ass, bear horns. This
division, by the adjuncts of teeth, covers all quadrupeds.46
And, commenting early in Book IV on Oppian’s account (IV, lines 39–42) of how
each kind of wild animal (θηρσὶν ἒκάστοις) should be hunted in a certain way while
some things are common to all (ξυνἀ), Bodin observes, ‘Here he grasps the most
certain method of teaching (certissimam tenet docendi methodum) from universals to
particulars by analysis (per ἀνάλυσις)’ (fo. 102). The observation echoes one of
Ramus’s fundamental precepts: ‘Method, if a way of teaching is sought, is the
disposition of things by deduction from universal and general foundations to
subjects and particular parts.’47 And to the Cynegetica’s ‘particular parts’ Bodin

44 Cf. Vasoli 1974; Cogan 1984; Bruyère 1984; Mack 1985; Grafton 1981; Blair 1990; Goyet

1996: 700 sqq.; Mack 1998.

45 Fo. 43. The ‘prince’, the poem’s addressee, was the emperor nicknamed Caracalla (AD 211–17).
46 ‘Specta mihi facilem huius poetae in scribendo methodum: hactenus retia, canes, equos & feras

cornigeras primo & secundo libro expediuit: liber tertius excornes feras habet (sic enim Celsus appellat)
quae sunt vel exertis, vel serratis dentibus. Quae vero dentes aequabili serie distinctos habent (ut homo)
praetor equum, camelum. mulum & asinum, cornua gerunt. Ea diuisio, ex adiunctis dentium omnia
quadrupedia complectitur’ (fo. 87). Cornelius Celsus was the most distinguished Roman writer on
medicine.
47 So stated in the version of his Rhetorica which Ramus dedicated to Henri III (Ramus 1593, III:

40: ‘Methodus, si ad docendum via quaeratur, est dispositio rerum ab universis & generalibus principiis, ad
32 Jean Bodin

pays considerable attention, in pursuit of the second of the aims prompted by his
dialectical and rhetorical training.
Here Bodin exercises inventio not to the end of locating and discovering forensic
arguments in a poem such as Oppian’s, but for the purpose declared by Agricola in
what has been termed a ‘semantic revolution’. According to Agricola, a locus in
dialectic was ‘nothing other than some distinguishing feature common to several
things, at the instance of which it is possible to discover what is credible about
anything whatsoever’.48 The redefinition altered the scope of dialectic, ‘from being
a logic of disputation to being a logic of inquiry’. The role of the locus shifted
accordingly, to serve as ‘a consistent set of empty locations’ available to ‘become
filled with particular information’ (Cogan 1984: 182, 186). As distinct from a
repository of cognate arguments, it was to be treated simply as, in Ramus’s words,
‘the subject of things placed within it . . . as is properly observed by Virgil in the
Georgics, declaring the place (lieu) proper to whatever one wishes to describe, such
as grain, trees, pasturage’.49 Thus instructed, Bodin seizes at an early stage upon
Oppian’s specification of ‘three kinds of hunting’ (line 47) and analyses his account
of them in terms of a set of loci identified ‘by adjuncts and affinities (subiectis) of
persons, places and times’ (Commentarius fo. 45). Thereafter, the Commentarius is
regularly punctuated by identifications of loci, as Bodin draws on a limited range
from the models compiled by both Ramus and Agricola (cf. Vasoli 1968: 377). He
finds allocations in plenty by adjunct and by comparatio in terms of similitude and
dissimilitude,50 whilst also discerning loci determined by genus, by subiecta,51 and
by other ‘modes of discovery (modi inveniendi)’. Even so, the analysis is by no
means uncritical. From time to time Bodin offers strictures on loci discovered from
Oppian’s organization of his material as ‘corrupt’—in one instance so corrupt ‘that
no poetic nor rational meaning can be extracted from it’.52
Sometimes prompted by the dictates of his own analysis, Bodin readily indulges
in excursions beyond remarks warranted by the poem’s actual content, showing
himself a willing exponent of what Juan Luis Vives in his work on literary style (De
ratione dicendi) termed the ‘long or developed (diffusus) commentary’ (see Céard
1991: 184). In the process, he not infrequently misrepresents his own sources. In
response to Oppian’s observation that the lion sleeps in the open, Bodin seizes on
the term ‘εΰδει’ to adduce the opinions of Democritus, Eustathius, Plutarch, and
Claudius Aelianus, together with those of the egregious Manetho and the extremely
dubious Orus Apollo, some saying that lions sleep with their eyes open, others that

subjectas & singulares partes deductarum’. Elsewhere he describes the procedure as ‘most faithful to
Aristotelian method (Aristotelicae methodi germanissima)’ (Ramus 1594, IX.ix: 409). For his advocacy
and account of ‘analysis’ see Ramus 1557: fos 16 sqq.
48 Agricola 1535, I.ii: 11–12.
49 Ramus 1555: 22; cf. p. 122 where Ramus describes ‘method’ as the ‘certaine voye de collocation

[my italics]’. Cf. also Aristotle, Topics, especially Books II–VII, expounding the composition and uses
of loci (τοποι): see Le Blond 1996: 22.
50 For example, fos 64, 79vo, 90vo, 93.
51 For example, fos 50vo (varia genera . . . pro locorum subiectis); 57 (ab adiunctis roboris &

pernicitatis); 59ro (ex variis locorum subiectis); etc.

52 ‘Corruptus est hic locus ut nec carminis nec sensus ratio elici possit’ (fo. 99).
 Humanist Engagements 33

they do not sleep at all, others again that they keep watch with their eyes closed.53
The urine of the lynx, he pronounces, does not congeal into amber as numerous
sources suggest. In fact the ones he adduces do not all suggest it, and Oppian
nowhere mentions such a phenomenon.54 Oppian does observe that the spotted
hyena changes gender annually, from male to female and back again. The propos-
ition is dismissed by Pliny as a vulgar belief, while Aristotle observes merely that
hyenas have both male and female sexual organs. Bodin cites both philosophers,
neither of whom warrants his attendant remarks on metamorphosis and lycan-
thropy, relevant though such matters might prove to be to future concerns of his
own.55 In relation to Oppian’s account of elephants, a familiar subject in older
dialectical textbooks (Mack 1985: 23), and in particular his contention that their
tusks are not teeth but horns, Bodin identifies two schools of thought, grouping
Herodotus, Aristotle, Solinus, and Philostratus together on the one side, and Iuba,
Pliny, Dionysius Afer, and Pausanias on the other.56 In fact Philostratus takes a
neutral view of the matter, while Pliny, by his own account, agrees with Herodotus
and not with Iuba.57 Aristotle had argued in his Parts of Animals (663a5–7) that as
elephants have enough bulk to protect them they do not need for self-defence
weapons of the kinds that other animals develop. This Bodin identifies as a
syllogism58 and sets out to disprove it. He does so partly by devising counter-
syllogisms, but more especially by invoking an opinion of Galen’s derived, seem-
ingly, from observation and described by Bodin as the ‘greater argument’: that the
roots of what are regarded as elephants’ teeth ‘do not lie in the upper mandible’
whereas it is ‘from the mandible’ that ‘every tooth comes forth’ (fos 81vo–82ro,
citing Galen in libris anatomicis).
Given the purpose of his Oppian, the degree to which he distorts his sources and
the nature of those distortions—a recurrent feature of his discourse throughout his
career—it seems probable that their origin in Bodin’s case lies rather in his method
of working than in deliberate misrepresentation and misapplication of material. In
common with his educated contemporaries, he had a memory highly trained no
doubt in accordance with principles of loci recommended by Quintilian (Yates
1966: 18). Doubtless he would have been accumulating his own collection of
books to nourish it, though the private library of a man who had spent most of his
twenty-five years as a student prior to the publication of his Oppian could scarcely
have been extensive. That library was partly destroyed in the closing stages of his

53 Oppian III, line 50; Commentarius fo. 88vo. Compiled in AD fifth century, Horus Apollo’s

Hieroglyphica, which offered imaginative explanations of ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, was translated
and amplified by Nostradamus some twenty years before the publication of Bodin’s De venatione.
Bodin cited the work nineteen times, treating it as a reliable source.
54 Commentarius, fo. 90–vo. Cf. Oppian III, lines 84–106; Aristotle Meteorology 389a11.
55 Oppian III, lines 288–92; Commentarius, fos 95–vo. Cf. Pliny VIII.xliv.105; Aristotle History of

Animals 579b16–30.
56 Oppian II, lines 491–5; Commentarius, fos 81vo–82.
57 Philostratus, Apollonius, II.xii (‘tusks or horns, whichever you want to call them’); Pliny, VIII.

iv.7.
58 A component of dialectic which Ramus analysed exhaustively and described as ‘a law of reason

more true and just than all the laws of Lycurgus and Solon’ (Ramus 1555: 118).
34 Jean Bodin

career, and its remnants have long since been dispersed; so, the means no longer
exist in the form of marginal or other annotations to discover how Bodin read his
books. But the likelihood is that he practised what he himself would later preach:
‘to support the memory’ by ‘bringing together commonplaces (loci communes) of
remarkable things in some certain order’ (Bodin 1566: 24; cf. Blair 1997: 69). In
this context ‘commonplaces’ were simply general headings which the reader himself
might devise and under which he would note information for future reference—
above all, passages extracted from authoritative texts. The passages themselves were
not necessarily recorded in extenso, but might incorporate incidental summaries and
abbreviated forms of words. The usefulness of such a practice for an ambitious
scholar is self-evident. So too, however, are the hazards which it entailed. Equipped
with his ‘arsenal’ of fact and opinion, ‘tidbits of knowledge which he divorces from
their original context in order to suit his own purposes’, the scholar in question
stood at risk of perpetrating upon his own readers in turn no more than a kind of
‘systematic bricolage’ (Blair 1992: 545; Grafton 1983: 183). Certainly, in the case
of Bodin his reliance upon the practice tended to induce at best a loss of nuance, at
worst outright distortion and misrepresentation.
Yet his use of evidence was sufficiently dispassionate and his thinking sufficiently
elevated in these early years to steer his opinions towards positions on issues which
he would treat very differently at a later stage of his career. Commenting on
‘δαίμονες’ (Oppian I, line 77), Bodin juxtaposes the term with others to signify
benevolent deities or household gods. Dismissing the views of the eleventh-century
Byzantine Michael Psellus who ‘considered all δαίμονες to be maleficent’, he cites a
series of philosophers, including Plato at his most metaphysical in the Phaedo, and
concludes that ‘δαίμόνιος is to be understood in the better sense’ (Commentarius
fo. 47). Nowhere is his mind’s metaphysical orientation more evident than in his
comment on the phrase αἰόλον ἦτορ (a lively heart) (Oppian I, line 222; Commen-
tarius fo. 52vo), a quality which Oppian discerns in horses. Prompted by the poet’s
ascribing to horses human emotions and ‘language resembling a man’s (γλὧσσαν
ὁμήιον ανθρώποισιν)’ (line 228), Bodin embarks upon a discussion fully three
pages long (fos 52vo–54vo) of the time-honoured questions, traceable to Aristotle,
whether animals have reason and the sense in which they may be said to have
souls—and so to the doctrine of metempsychosis as expounded by Pythagoreans
and others. ‘All of these opinions’, declares Bodin, ‘I have always reckoned un-
worthy not only of a Christian, but also of a philosopher’. Animals do possess
imagination and memory, and these are transferred by semen. But the mind of man
transcends mere reason and is divinely implanted. This leads to an extended
reflection, lavishly illustrated from conflicting philosophical opinions, on the
nature of perception in animals and in humankind, involving differentiations,
between the ‘possible’ and the ‘agent intellect’, such as Bodin would have been
accustomed to ponder since his Carmelite days.59 In animals, imagination, or

59 The passage contains (fo. 53vo) Bodin’s first use in his published work of the terms συμφωνία

(harmony) and methodus, the former to describe the relation of the intellect to the parts of the soul, the
latter to distinguish Plato’s approach to the subject from Aristotle’s.
 Humanist Engagements 35

perception of images, derives from ‘common sense’. Such images are dimly per-
ceived, and are analogous to the ‘species’ received by the ‘sensitive’ or ‘possible
intellect (intellectus παθητικός)’ which exists in man. What the latter experiences
and the former can never enjoy is the ‘illumination’ which comes via the agent
intellect.60 ‘For indeed the possible intellect in man receives light from the agent
intellect, such that the agent is illuminated by the supreme intellect of the world, and
so both of them must necessarily be immortal’. All this, observes Bodin, warrants
fuller treatment: having wished to ‘prove the Platonists and the Peripatetics largely
to agree’, he had had to ‘omit here many things which at some time I shall explain
more subtly and more clearly’.61
The Commentarius at this juncture is redolent of ancient arguments to which
thirteenth- and fourteenth-century philosophers and theologians had devoted
much attention. Yet it includes no reference to either Augustine or Aquinas,
from their differing standpoints two of the seminal contributors to the development
of illuminationist discourse. While Bodin does cite with approval the third-century
Alexander of Aphrodisias in company with the twelfth-century Averroës, his
observations in relation to divine illumination reveal no explicit trace of other
accounts of cognition such as that of Duns Scotus, nor even the views of Henry of
Ghent, a decisive participant in the illuminationist debate (Noone 2010: 381–2)
and influential also upon the Nestor of the Carmelites, Baconthorpe. The Angevin’s
disquisition amounts to a rudimentary rehearsal of long-standing propositions
on a major metaphysical topic in terms lavishly embellished by the literary and
philosophical learning of a Renaissance humanist. The leading later medieval
participants in that debate remain largely disregarded, even though Bodin can
scarcely avoid alluding to their ideas in the course of pursuing his line of argument.
Yet the contrast is stark between his treatment of Oppian’s remarks on equine
sensibilities and that of his contemporary Brodeau and successor Rittershausen.
Commenting on the phrase ήμερίων κραδίην (gentle heart) (Oppian I, line 222),
Brodeau rapidly dismisses notions of equine reason whilst reflecting at somewhat
greater length on horses’ voices (see note 33 in this chapter). As for Rittershausen,
the response of this jurist writing at the century’s end to Oppian’s remarks on
horses’ quasi-human behaviour is conducted purely by reference to natural law and
reflects none of the metaphysical propositions that so attracted Bodin’s attention
(see Rittershausen 1597: Commentarius, p. 28).
Bodin’s Commentarius, then, is richly illustrative of the range of the commen-
tator’s learning, exemplifies his working methods, and reveals something of his
intellectual development by his twenty-sixth year. What it does not itself convey is
his sensitivity and creativity as a literary artist in his own right. That he possessed

60 Cf. the Thomist position on phantasms being rendered intelligible through the light of the agent

intellect (Kretzmann 1999: 370). The doctrine of illuminatio is associated principally with Augustine;
cf., however, the Gnostic view of inner illumination through revelation as distinct from reason as the
source of knowledge and the key to salvation (Jonas 2001: 34–5). Cf. also Averroës on the ‘universal
intellect’, a position which Bodin was in due course emphatically to reject.
61 Cf. his later pronouncement that ‘there could be no juridical society between man and beast

(homini vero cum belluis nulla iuris societas esse potest)’ (Bodin 1580a: 10).
36 Jean Bodin

such qualities is evident from his translation of the Cynegetica. He produced it at a

time when in France interest in ‘the art of translation assumed massive proportions’
(McFarlane 1974: 136). An offshoot of the approach to poetry developed by the
rhétoriqueurs, the interest gained expression in part through the publication of
numerous booklets by leading literary figures offering precepts and instruction, in
the light not least of the views of ancient Rome’s prime authorities on rhetoric,
Cicero and Quintilian. According to the latter, would-be orators or rhetoricians
should practise translation as one amongst several ways of imitating a model and so
of developing their own skill.62 Sixteenth-century French writers amplified and
modified such adjurations. Good Latinists all, some of them combined advice on
translating with celebration of the potential of the vernacular as a poetic medium.63
In Bodin’s case the most significant influence is likely to have been that of Étienne
Dolet, that turbulent presence in Toulouse in the 1530s and afterwards in Lyon.
In a manual specifically on the translator’s art, La manière de bien traduire d’une
langue en aultre (1540), Dolet stated a key principle which epitomized both classical
and contemporary views of how a translator should proceed. Translation was
interpretatio. It was not, therefore, a slavish rendering of a composition ‘line for
line or verse for verse’ in another language. The effect of literal translation was to
‘deprave the author’s meaning’, to erode ‘the grace and perfection’ of both the
languages concerned. The translator’s task was to separate out the substantive
meaning (res) contained in the original from the words (verba) through which it
had been conveyed. ‘Interpretation’ was achievable by proceeding not word by
word, but entire sentence by entire sentence, the translator bearing continually in
mind differences between the idioms of the languages concerned, and seeking
always to produce a version distinct from but at least equal in quality to the original
itself (Rener 1989: 208, 215, 257, 277; Worth 1988: 51–7).
There were near-contemporary critics who professed to find Bodin’s perform-
ance in his Oppian unconvincing. Among them was none other than Hugo
Grotius, a pupil of Scaliger’s, one of the few whom that great classicist took
under his wing, and a highly accomplished Latinist and poet in his own right.
According to Grotius, Bodin was ‘far from completely polished in his use of Latin’
and ‘childishly unskilful in reading metre’.64 The strictures seem to spring from a
curious commitment on so great a scholar’s part to the requirements of literal
translation.65 By comparison with the literalism of the later Rittershausen, who
insists on the same count of lines in Latin as in Oppian’s Greek, Bodin is often

62 See Cicero, De oratore, I.xxiv.154–5; Quintilian, Institutio oratoria, x.v.

63 For instance, Thomas Sébillet (1548/1988: 187–8); Jacques Peletier du Mans 1930: 105–11.
But cf. Joachim Du Bellay 2001: 85–9, arguing that while ‘faithful translators can greatly serve’ those
ignorant of foreign languages, it is impossible for them to render their versions ‘with the same grace’ as
the author of the original.
64 ‘Latinate utentem haud plane nitida, metricarum legum pueriliter imperitum’ (Grotius 1687: 127,

writing in 1634 to Jean Descordes, canon of Limoges). For Grotius’s relationship with Scaliger and his
qualities as a classical scholar see Eyffinger 1983a: 9; Eyffinger 1983b: 90–1.
65 I owe everything in the rest of this paragraph to the scholarship and kindness of the Revd Stephen

Deas and Professor J. Michael Walton—who have, of course, no responsibility for the use I have made
of their advice.
 Humanist Engagements 37
ingenious in his metrical precision whilst appreciating the need to vary the lengths
and numbers of lines as occasion demands. His interpretatio is clear and readable,
whereas the wording of the original Cynegetica is often obscure and on occasion
even coarse. For example, his rendering of Oppian’s account of the congress of
stallion and mare is saved by Bodin’s skill and taste from mildly obscene bathos. In
offering ‘cantu celebrans’ for Oppian’s ‘ύμὴν ὑμέναιον’ (bridal song) (Oppian I, line
341) he even contrives to create a kind of echo of the poet’s original alliteration.
Yet, while Oppian provides him with the material upon which to exercise his art,
his ‘model’ (to invoke the classical authorities’ precept) is not the Syrian—or, as he
supposed, the Armenian—poet. Bodin’s model is the didactic poet’s exemplar: the
Georgics of Virgil, a work, moreover which owed much to Hesiod whom Oppian
had plainly had in mind. Bodin cites Hesiod a dozen times in his Commentarius;
Virgil he cites forty times. But such is his familiarity with Virgil that he seems to
quote him almost involuntarily. Thus, the phrase lethalis arundo with which he
embellishes his rendering of Oppian’s δόνακες (reed) (Oppian I, line 349) is in fact
the end of line 73 of the fourth book of the Aeneid. Here, perhaps, is another
instance of ‘borrowing’ or, rather, an indicator of the extent to which Bodin with
his extraordinarily retentive memory and ear for the evocative expression was
steeped in the works of his literary masters and reflected them more closely than
his critics could countenance.
Whatever its deficiencies in hostile critics’ eyes, Bodin’s Oppian furnished ample
proof of his command of the literary learning which humanist scholars rated so
highly. By the same token it demonstrated his credentials for engaging in public
advocacy of the case for that very mode of learning as the main constituent of
educational provision by the citizens of Toulouse. This was the theme of the
Oration which in 1559 he delivered ‘to the Senate and people of Toulouse’, at a
gathering which evidently included the capitouls as well as representatives of the
Parlement together with other distinguished members of the local community.

I I I . 3 THE ORATIO

If Greek and Roman literature and philosophy were central to the humanist vision,
then the means to actualize that vision lay above all else in education. So much was
evident from the profusion of educational publications that appeared in the era of
the Renaissance, ‘one of the most important parts of the publishing industry’
(Pettegree 2010: 179). On the one hand education, properly pursued, was the
means of realizing human potential. On the other hand, to neglect education was to
fail to counter the degeneration towards which human beings were naturally
inclined (Petris 2002: 80–1). Plainly, therefore, education had first and foremost
a moral purpose, and the disciplines which humanists favoured offered the most
likely means of achieving it. As the influential Italian teacher Pier Paolo Vergerio
put it in his much-cited De ingenuis moribus (c.1402–3), it was through ‘liberal
studies’ or ‘honourable arts (honestae artes)’ that ‘virtue and wisdom are either
practised or sought, and . . . the body or mind is disposed towards all the best
38 Jean Bodin

things’.66 The proof was not merely propositional, but historical: was it not
learning humanist-style that had enabled early Christianity to survive centuries of
persecution?67 But while its moral and spiritual purpose might be paramount,
humanist education had other objectives too. The equipping and conditioning of
mind and personality which it provided were useful, as Ramus himself insisted.68 It
afforded a training serviceable even to pupils heading for careers in commerce,69
and indispensable—as Ramus once more maintained—for those aiming to proceed
via the higher university faculties to professional roles in medicine, in jurispru-
dence, in theology (Ramus 1557: fos 48vo–49). And furthermore, such training
afforded a reliable means of promoting active and responsible citizenship. Indeed,
the studia humanitatis were the source of excellence in the body politic itself.
Scholars of local and of international standing alike hammered the point home.
Education of the young by teachers proficient in such studies was the ‘glory’ of a
‘well-ordered city’, declared Jean Rainer of Lyon (Rainerius 1532: sig. B2r–vo).
‘What is planted in the minds of children’, observed Thomas More in a work with
which Bodin was certainly acquainted, ‘lives on in the minds of adults and serves to
strengthen the commonwealth’ (More 1989: 102). In the words of Guillaume
Budé, the leading Hellenist of early sixteenth-century France and much admired by
Bodin, ‘From the liberal disciplines, or humane as they are also called because they
are reckoned to improve the morals of men, spring beauty, grandeur and majesty in
the form of the respublica’.70
Precisely how did humanist educators hope to achieve these outcomes? Once
more the answer lay in the doctrines and priorities of classical pedagogy, and
primarily in the fields of grammar, literature, and rhetoric as specified in the
precepts of Cicero and Quintilian. According to Cicero, rhetoric in the hands of
the ‘accomplished orator’ commanding knowledge of ‘all important subjects’
furnished the principal guarantor ‘not only of his own merit, but of the safety of
countless persons and of the entire respublica’ (De oratore I.vi.20; viii.34). According
to Quintilian, the ‘orator’ properly taught in those same subjects would be a ‘true
citizen, fit for the administration of private and public affairs, and better equipped
than anyone to guide cities by his counsels’ (Institutio oratoria I.proemium.x). While
grammar, according to Quintilian, was ‘the art of speaking correctly (ars recte
loquendi)’, rhetoric was ‘the art of speaking well (ars bene loquendi)’, and itself a

66 Kallendorf, ed. 2002: 2, 28–9. See also Robey 1980; Grafton and Jardine 1986: 142.
67 ‘A typical apologetic topos of humanist tradition’ (Vasoli 2008: 22).
68 Ramus 1557: fo. 39: ‘A philosopher linked with use is the daylight of philosophy; use divorced
from philosophy is the darkness of philosophy (Philosophus coniunctus usus, philosophiae dies est: á
philosophia disiunctus usus, philosophiae nox est)’. Note also Ramus’s insistence upon ‘the union of
philosophy and eloquence’ which, for him, ‘in its simplest terms . . . meant teaching philosophy by
illustrating it from literary texts’ (Sharratt 1976: 6).
69 Renzi 1991: 2–4. Grendler 1989: 319 discerns some ‘methodological similarity’ between the

teaching of Latin and the classics on the one hand and the ‘abbaco pedagogy’ furnished for prospective
commerçants in the vernacular schools of Renaissance Venice.
70 Budé, De philologia, q. Garin 1968: 158 n. 23; cf. Budé 1532 [original 1527]: fo. IXvo: life not

directed by these disciplines ‘can be said to be not humane, but inhuman (non humana sed immanis vita
dici potest, quae nec literarum humanitate condita est)’.
 Humanist Engagements 39

‘virtue’ (Institutio oratoria I.ii). Curricula ought therefore to be organized so that

pupils progressed from the former to the latter. No less important, however, was the
art of reasoning well. This should be inculcated through the study of dialectic, the
cultivation of modes of argument fundamentally different from the rigorous demon-
strative logic expounded by Aristotle and central to the scholastic system of the
medieval universities. As explained by Lorenzo Valla on the authority of Cicero and
Quintilian once more, ‘demonstration’ need not be restricted to what was necessarily
the case (as with the syllogism). There could be another mode of demonstrative
reasoning, aimed at showing what was credibly the case—the aim in particular of
forensic argument (Camporeale 1972: 40). Even so, it required the support of
propositions and materials orderly organized and presented. Hence the importance
of τοποι or loci where ideas of universal or of particular relevance—and, as we have
seen, matters of fact—could be collected and recovered for use as appropriate in the
course of argument designed to persuade. Topics or (common) places were ‘pigeon-
holes in the mind’ (q. Lechner 1974: 66) and managed by the art of memory—or,
perhaps more reliably, via sections and sub sections in commonplace books. Either
way, western Europe’s most influential teachers, Rudolph Agricola and Peter Ramus
prominent among them, were powerful advocates of precisely such ratiocinatory and
supportive ‘method’ as vital to the training of young minds.
Such, then, was the intellectual background to the case for which Bodin offered
himself as advocate. There were other, more immediate considerations. The case
was for a truly public institution, a college, to educate the sons of Toulouse citizens.
It was addressed to, amongst others, the mercantile component of Toulouse society
from whose coffers a good proportion of the revenues to support the proposed
institution must surely come. Himself the offspring of a trading family, Bodin was
reasonably alert to arguments that might appeal to merchants. He was also, from his
earlier student days, acquainted with colleges of the Parisian type, France’s model
for instruction in the disciplines of the liberal arts and their dissemination in the
kingdom at large. Very likely he and members of his audience were aware of how, in
the earlier decades of the century, colleges of various kinds had been proliferating
on a remarkable scale in other French provincial towns, some of them new
establishments, others developing from older municipal schools and charitable
foundations (Huppert 1984: xiv–xv). Several had emerged at Angers itself, one a
collège de plein exercice providing the full array of humanist disciplines, including
philosophy, and another offering instruction in rhetoric as well as grammar (Com-
père and Julia 1988: II. 39–54). Prior to 1560 at least a score of collèges de plein
exercice appeared in towns of the Midi, apart from the much larger number of
colleges and régences with more modest curricula (Compère and Julia 1984). Bodin
himself referred to those of Auch, Montauban, Rodez, Viviers, and Nîmes, and
made particular mention of Bordeaux.71 The experience of Bordeaux was indeed as
impressive as any. Linked with Toulouse by the Garonne, it was where the jurade

71 1559: fos 62vo, 61 sqq.; 1951: 27 B21–2, A24 sqq. Of the institutions noted by Bodin,

Compère and Julia (1984) identify only Auch, Rodez, and Nîmes as collèges de plein exercice
functioning as such by the time of his Oratio.
40 Jean Bodin

launched in 1533 what would become the illustrious Collège de Guyenne. That
enterprise had run rapidly into difficulties owing above all else to a sad lack of
financial groundwork to support its early leaders’ high ambitions (Trinquet 1964:
especially 518). The capitouls and bourgeois of Toulouse, with its links to Bordeaux
via the Garonne, can scarcely have been unaware of their neighbours’ experience.
No doubt they also shared the civic sense which informed the latter’s initiative: a
sense recently promoted by Guillaume La Perrière’s Miroir politique with its
celebration of a civic ethic held to be admirably exemplified in Toulouse itself
(Cazals 2006: 88).
One feature of that ethic was concern for educational provision. This was an area
for which, in Toulouse, secular authorities, notably the capitoulat and the Parle-
ment, assumed particular responsibility. It had also attracted considerable private
patronage. The city contained numerous colleges of private foundation. Originally
established to provide living accommodation and a measure of financial support for
handfuls of students, such establishments had achieved varying status over time.
Some had degenerated into mere residences for self-indulgent clerics who exploited
their endowments to live in relative ease. Some could sponsor members for
ecclesiastical benefices, a capacity especially noteworthy in the case of the Collège
de l’Esquile. A considerable number had attracted larger endowments and increased
their functions, from delivery of rudimentary instruction to the teaching of gram-
mar and even other subjects in the sphere of the liberal arts; while some again were
linked with the University and with particular professors there (Corrazé 1936: xiv.
237; Santi 1906: 30). In the early decades of the sixteenth century, municipal
authorities showed themselves increasingly disposed to engage directly with edu-
cational provision. The disposition culminated in 1527 in the foundation of the
Collège de Saint-Exupéry envisaged, in common with ambitions manifested at
Bordeaux at virtually the same time, as an institution of more than local significance
under the headship of a scholar of national standing.72 The initiative was promoted
particularly by Jean Bertrandi, a protégé of Anne de Montmorency, Constable of
France. Himself a prominent member of the Parlement and later the kingdom’s
garde des sceaux, Bertrandi argued that the new college could be established ‘in
place of (prout)’ half a dozen ‘useless (inutile)’ existing colleges, and supported
through redeploying their resources (Brown 1969: 182). By the mid-1540s,
however, the head of the college had long since departed and its buildings had
fallen into disrepair. At this juncture, a sizeable group of leading citizens met with
representatives of the Parlement and the capitoulat to consider how education in the
liberal arts might best be provided in Toulouse, and to consider specifically an offer
by the Archbishop of Toulouse, Odet de Châtillon-Coligny, and his vicar-general,
Jacques du Faur, of revenues and teachers (regents) for a school to be constructed by
the municipality itself. With the Collège de l’Esquile identified for the purpose
when suitably enlarged, it was even proposed that the new school should be headed

72 Brown 1969: 162. Throughout this account of events and developments at Toulouse that

furnish the immediate background to Bodin’s Oration I am greatly indebted to Dr Brown’s thesis.
 Humanist Engagements 41

by none other than that highly distinguished classical scholar Adrien Turnèbe
(Brown 1969: 237–43).
From the outset, the initiative ran into substantial local opposition. Numerous
interests were at stake. Educational provision in provincial France was notoriously
a scene of tension between civic and ecclesiastical authorities, the latter jealous
of their traditional role as sponsors and overseers of colleges and schools. Tensions
were now exacerbated in Toulouse as proponents of humanist innovations con-
fronted committed defenders of traditional modes of education in university,
parlement and capitoulat alike. These combined with parties that had specific
interests in components of the existing collegial structure, including certain
religious orders and even neighbouring towns, notably Carcassonne. As significant
as any was opposition from the business world, the merchant élite of Toulouse
society alert to the likely costs of the initiative in question. The initiative’s
promoters countered by exercising influence at the royal court to secure in 1551
a royal edict for the suppression of a number of minor colleges and appropriation
of their revenues to support the new college. This was now grandly conceived on
the model of a collegium trilingue, the edict itself affirming that in relation to the
disciplines of the higher university faculties there could be ‘no perfect knowledge
without knowledge and understanding of the Hebrew, Greek and Latin languages
and the liberal arts’ (Corrazé 1937: xv. 157). Yet resistance persisted. The arrival of
royal letters patent in 1552 commanding publication of the edict and implemen-
tation of its provisions even triggered an application by the syndic of the clergy of
Toulouse to the Estates of Languedoc to procure the restoration of the suppressed
colleges.73
The prolonged tussle over the creation and resourcing of the new college exposed
afresh divisions within Toulouse society as well as conflicts between the commu-
nity’s governing institutions. It seemed that assertion of the royal will itself could be
obstructed or at least delayed by parties adroit enough to play those institutions off
against each other. Yet as important a factor as any was the unwillingness of the
commercial sector to be drawn into footing the bill. Local taxes were already being
raised to pay for the building of the new bridge across the Garonne as well as for the
town’s contributions to meet the crippling costs of royal wars. No readier than their
counterparts at Angers to accept fresh levies on the movement of merchandise
(commutation), the merchants of Toulouse consolidated their resistance and
lobbied accordingly through the Bourse. With building work on the new college
having got under way in 1554, Jacques du Faur and others convened two years later
yet another meeting of local worthies to appeal for the means to bring their project
successfully to completion for the sake of ‘the profit and assistance of the whole

73 De Vic and Vaissete 1872–92: XI (1889), 311–12. Bodin had some first-hand knowledge of

business at the Languedoc Estates. In his République (IV.iv and VI.ii) he records that he was himself
present at an assembly ‘at Montpellier’ in 1556 when matters concerning kinship among judges and
procedures for collection and delivery of taxes were considered. At that time the question of the
Toulouse colleges was still exciting debate, but Bodin does not note whether this question was
discussed at that assembly—which, in any case, seems not to have been held in Montpellier (1583:
585, 911).
42 Jean Bodin

commonwealth (respublica)’. This was tantamount to an acknowledgement that

completion of the physical infrastructure, let alone recruitment and payment of
teachers and other running costs, could not be achieved simply by plundering
existing colleges. Hence the appeal conveyed through Bodin’s Oratio, a harangue
announced in the language of Roman precedent ‘to the senate and people of
Toulouse (senatus populusque Tolosae)’ and evidently delivered—surely in an
abbreviated version—at some point between the 1556 meeting and the publication
of the entire 71-folio text in 1559.74
Why was Bodin chosen to deliver such an oration? Perhaps the appearance of his
edition of the Cynegetica had boosted at least his local standing in relevant fields of
scholarship. But what must have mattered most was his standing in the eyes of the
Du Faur, among the region’s most active and distinguished families, long-
established in the fields of diplomacy, the church, and the law, and now leading
promoters of the educational initiative. In his peroration, he took care to eulogize
the leadership of Jacques and Michel du Faur together with ‘the entire house of Du
Faur’ in bringing the enterprise to fruition (1559: fos 70vo–71; 1951, 30B4–18).
Much of his subsequent career was linked with that of Guy du Faur de Pibrac with
whom he was certainly acquainted before publishing the Oratio, and to whom
seventeen years later he dedicated his most important work.75 Even so, as Bodin
himself emphasized at the opening of his discourse, he was a ‘stranger amongst
citizens (peregrinum apud cives)’, a ‘foreigner amongst natives (externum apud
domesticos)’, albeit of sufficient standing to have been charged with recruiting
from Toulouse jurists for his native town of Angers.76 Yet that very attribute
qualified him to remind his listeners from the outset of how the significance of
the issues at stake extended far beyond Toulouse itself. The education of the young
bore directly upon the benefit of the commonwealth at large (Reipub. commodis). It
followed that education was a public concern and could not be left to the whims of
private individuals. This perception, with the public interest construed in terms of
interplay between the interest of the kingdom and that of the civitas of Toulouse
itself, furnished the orator with a recurrent theme for his discourse.
His introduction pronounced, Bodin proceeded to re-emphasize the national
perspective with a eulogy of Francis I whose merits the Angevin had doubtless
heard celebrated when he was in Paris at the time of the late king’s funeral. Had not
King Francis, prompted by Budé, achieved the revival of ancient learning in France?
Was not the perpetuation of that revival ensured through the king’s creation of a
college (gymnasium) with the aim of instructing the flower of French youth in ‘all
the sciences and virtues (ad omnes scientias ac virtutes erudire)’ (1551: fo. 7vo; 1951:
9A23–4)? The phrase prepared the ground for a further theme: that ‘all instruction
of boys consists in the sciences, or liberal education, and morals (Versatur puerorum

74 References in what follows are to the 1559 edition coupled with Mesnard’s 1951 parallel-text

edition cited by page, column, and line numbers.

75 République 1576: sig. aiij vo: ‘Et pour la cognoissance que I’ay depuis dixhuit ans de vous auoir veu

monter’.
76 1559: fos 2, 30; 1951: 7A2–3, 16B33–7.
 Humanist Engagements 43

eruditio omnis in literis & moribus)’ (1559: fo. 41vo; 1951: 20B7–9). Through the
teaching of letters (cum literis doceamur) the young could learn not only to master
everything desirable to man (omnino quae sint homini expetenda), but also to
distinguish the shameful from the honourable, the true from the false (quid turpe,
quid honestu; quid verum, quid falsum), and so to recognize ‘what were the virtues,
the best laws, the best commonwealths (quae virtutes, quae optimae leges, quae
optima Respub.)’ (1559: fo. 26vo; 1951: 15B7–12). But whilst developing this
line of argument Bodin had to deal with the two main sets of the scheme’s
opponents: on the one hand, those who resisted the proposition on grounds of
cost; on the other, those hostile to the very kind of education proposed. The former
he had already reminded that the building of the new college was more or less
complete. What remained was provision of sufficient emoluments for a principal
and teaching staff of appropriate erudition, who had yet to be recruited. This, he
announced, was the main aim of his discourse (hic meae orationis exitus) (1559:
fo. 14; 1951: 11A30–40), and he addressed the reluctant bourgeois of Toulouse
accordingly, with challenging rhetoric:
Gird your city with walls, build houses, construct bridges, supply water, bring in
revenues, make yourselves rich; yet never, never shall you have a happy commonwealth
if the most, I dare say the only, important things are wanting—the best instruction and
education of the young.77
In any case, those cities where literary studies flourished were precisely the most
powerful and the most abundantly endowed (1559, fo. 27; 1951, 15B23–26).
Having thus discredited the priorities and the judgement of the excessively money
conscious, Bodin could turn his attention to the ‘most ferocious’ and ‘barbarous’
opponents of humanist learning itself, intemperate detesters of letters who lan-
guished in dull ignorance, ravagers of all culture, abdicators from all reason (1559:
fos 18vo, 24vo; 1951: 12B44, 14B47–9).
Surely, people such as these were sufficiently disarmed by the glories of the
‘sciences’ and the wonders thereby disclosed (1559: fos 20–1; 1951: 13A45–B29).
They seemed to favour utilitas over honestas, the expedient over the morally right.78
But the distinction was false. What could be more useful than mastery of the Latin
language, the customary medium of intercourse throughout Europe (quae per
omnes Europae tractus exaudiri solet) (1559: fo. 44; 1951: 21A50–1)? Or why
should the young be denied command of so useful a science (tam utilem scientiam)
as dialectic which opened the door to all others (quae ad caeteras aditum patefacit)
(1559: fo. 42; 1951: 20B32–4)? As for utility in relation to public offices, it was
humanistic education, delivered by the means which the orator urged, that would
produce men appropriately equipped and at the right age to assume the direction of

77 ‘Cingite sane vestram ciuitatem moenibus, domos extruite, pontes erigite, aquas deriuate, merces

aduehite, opibus abundate; nunquam tamen, nunquam Rempublicam beatam habebitis si vobis quae
praecipua sunt & penè sola, iuuentutis, inquam, optima institutio & educatio, desint’ (1559: fo. 17vo;
1951: 12B2–8).
78 1559: fos 22vo–23; 1951: 14A39–40. For the utilitas/honestas antithesis, much discussed by

humanist scholars, see Cicero, De officiis, I.iii.9.

44 Jean Bodin

public affairs (1559: fos 23vo–24; 1951: 14B19–22). Moreover, those same means
would serve to enlarge the pool of potential recruits by casting educational oppor-
tunities more widely and thereby improving social mobility whilst enabling the city
to make full use of the talents of its youth: talents that so often languished
undiscovered amid the offspring of the poor.79 All in all, no city could prosper if
it were to rely ‘solely on its affluence without knowledge of letters’ (1559: fo. 24vo;
1951: 14B40–2); while, conversely, the very cities where learning flourished were
seen equally to ‘flourish in numbers of citizens, in authority and power, in
abundance of all things’.80 Utilitas and honestas were inseparable: the one could
not subsist without the other (1559: fo. 29; 1951: 16A48–50).
Himself steeped in the very learning which he urged, Bodin was at pains to keep
practical considerations in the forefront of his listeners’ minds. He offered vivid
accounts of the options available to parents who would see their sons educated by
means other than those he recommended. The brutal fate endured by boys sent to
school in Paris was well known, miserable corroboration of the adage, ‘Before
setting out for Paris, first make your will!’81 But boys educated privately at home
scarcely fared better. Their fathers were rarely able to recruit sufficiently able tutors.
Given the requisite standards of knowledge and probity, no school and no master,
but only God and nature could produce such rarae aves (non in scholis factus, sed
à natura imbutus; non à magistro institutus, sed à Deo subornatus) (1559: fo. 39;
1951: 19B34–6). The able were likely to be intent upon their own time-consuming
studies, upon laying foundations for successful careers, notably in law (1559:
fos 39vo–40; 1951: 20A2–11). Quite possibly Bodin’s personal experience of
student employment lurks behind such observations, together with his complaint
that private tutors were poorly reimbursed, or even not paid at all and treated like
slaves (1559: fo. 47vo; 1951: 22B22–3). Meanwhile private pupils became bored
and discouraged whilst their personal development was stunted (1559: fo. 43vo;
1951: 21A19–26), especially when the women of the household had oversight of
their education—a prospect that drove the orator to fresh heights of censorious
eloquence (1559: fos 49 sq.; 1951: 23A7 sqq.). In any case, privately taught boys
were denied major and invaluable dimensions of the learning experience. How
could one master rhetoric if one’s practice of it were confined to a domestic setting
(1559: fo. 44; 1951: 21A59–B3)? How could a single tutor introduce his pupil to
such diversity of knowledge as that which collective educational institutions made
available as a matter of course? How in the privacy of domestic tutoring could one
learn to interact positively and amicably with other boys? Beyond individual pupils,
the benefits of social integration extended to the community at large (1559:
fos 58–9; 1951: 26A25–B6). Just as so many social and political evils including
civil conflict flowed from diversity in the education of the young (1559: fo. 56vo;

79 ‘qui propter obscuritatem ac humilitatem nullos honores, nullas opes, nisi doctrina ac virtute partas

sperent, mira scientiarum auiditate feruntur, quas cum semel adepti sunt, in claros homines euadere, ac
Respub. sapienter administrare videmus’ (1559: fo. 60; 1951: 26B32–7).
80 ‘ciuium frequentia florere, imperio & potentia florere, rerum omnium vbertate & copia florere’ (1559:

fo. 27; 1951: 15B24–6).

81 1559: fos 35 sqq., qn at 37vo–38; 1951: 18A41 sqq.; qn at 19A42.
 Humanist Engagements 45

1951: 25B4–8), by the same token nothing could so effectively strengthen social
bonds in the community at large as ‘the common and identical education of the
children’—including and especially, education in religious doctrine.82 Indeed, it
was private education that spawned diversity of religious sects (1559: fo. 56vo;
1951: 25B25).
Throughout the oration religious considerations regularly accompanied by
invocations of the divine came insistently to the fore. Those who opposed the
humanist programme were oblivious to how ‘knowledge and understanding are the
servants of truth, of light, of the divine, whereas the companions of ignorance are
darkness, superstition, impiousness’.83 Conversely, it was men rendered wise by
that same programme who ‘understood how the mind’s immortal and concentrated
power was derived and flowed from the eternal mind (sapientes homines, immorta-
lem & in se collectam animi vim, ex aeterna mente deriuari ac fluere intellexerunt)’,
and how ‘the most certain knowledge of the one God (certissimam vnius Dei
scientiam)’ could be derived ‘from the first principles and hidden causes of nature
(ex naturae initijs, & abditis caussis)’.84 Even so, in the interests of social tranquillity,
the principal end of civil life, it was ‘necessary that in the sphere of divine concerns
there should cohere the strongest sense of unanimity among the citizens (de rebus
quidem diuinis necesse est in ijs vt summa conspiratione ciuium sensus inter se
congruant)’.85 Therefore, it was vital that the magistrates ‘who wield authority in
the commonwealth take care lest the young be drawn away from one and the same
religion and divided amongst several, if we should hope to have a commonwealth of
any kind (qui clauum Reipub. tenent, dare operam, ne iuuentus ab una & eadem
religione in varias distrahatur, si nos ullam Rempub. habituros speramus)’.86 But to
make the case for religious uniformity was not to argue for any particular confession
or sect. On the contrary: apart from noting how fourth-century Christians had
found the liberal arts (liberales disciplinas) sufficient to sustain them in the face of
persecution (1559: fo. 25vo; 1951: 15A30–7), nowhere in the Oratio did Bodin
prescribe any particular version of religious faith. What mattered above all else was
concord, harmony, the social harmony generated by public education, the intel-
lectual harmony exemplified by the disciplines in question: ‘all the arts are linked
and joined together in a sort of mutual relationship, such that from various kinds of
voices they bring about a marvellous consonance and symphony (omnes artes
quadam inter seipsas affinitate connectuntur & colligantur, miramque quasi ex diuersis
vocum generibus harmoniam & concentum efficiunt)’ (1559: fo. 33; 1951: 17B26–9).
Most important of all was the harmonious relationship of city and realm at large,

82 1559: fo. 58vo; 1951: 25A41–45; 25B58–26A.

83 ‘intelligentiam ac scientiam, veritatis, lucis, diuinitatis esse administram; ignorantiam verò, tenebras,
superstitionem, impietatem comites habere’ (1559: fo. 26; 1951:15A44–5).
84 1559: fo. 26; 1951: 15A48–52. Cf. Rose 1980a: 27, construing these contentions as evidence of

Bodin’s having by 1559 ‘arrived at a partial belief in natural religion’.

85 1559: fos 55vo–56; 1951: 25A45–7. Cf. Vasoli 2008: 35–6, relating this passage to views

expressed in Marsiglio Ficino’s De Christiana religione (1476) and to Thomas More’s Utopia (1516), as
well as to Bodin’s own Colloquium Heptaplomeres, q.v. Chapter X.
86 1559: fo. 56vo; 1951: 25B21–3. On religion in the Oratio cf. Rose 1980a: 153–9.
46 Jean Bodin

each an instance of res publica,87 with the citizens of each and all potentially
enlightened and rendered concordant by the same educational provision which
Bodin and his fellow proponents of the studia humanitatis so earnestly prescribed.
Yet there were those who saw little congruity between the studia humanitatis and
the civil law (1559: fo. 32; 1951: 17A48–9)—the law upon which the reputation of
the Toulouse Law Faculty was so firmly grounded. Such a view was hopelessly
misguided. It was true that the city’s University was accounted a ‘temple of
jurisprudence’ (in hoc ciuilis sapientiae templo) (1559: fo. 30vo; 1951: 16B42),
that students had flocked there, that leading professors of law had studied there—
though its celebrity had owed not a little to the material support provided by earlier
citizens of Toulouse. But the discipline had moved on. This was owing to humanist
scholars who had expertly investigated the ‘origin and source of the law (iuris ortum
ac stirpem)’, had ‘diligently revisited its ultimate foundation (diligenter & ab vltimo
principio repeterent)’ (1559: fo. 33vo; 1951: 17B50–2), had explored the history,
the institutions, the philosophies from which the law had sprung. The burdensome
futility of glosses and commentaries with which erstwhile scholars had encumbered
the legal texts was now exposed (1559: fo. 32vo sq.; 1951: 17B9 sqq.), in common
with the ‘most fruitful sources of the civil law (vberrimi ciuilis scientiae fontes)’
which, ‘by the crime of Tribonian (Triboniani scelere)’, had been obscured. 88
Thanks to all this, legal studies were now more attractive to young men than ever
before, and more useful to the commonwealth too. Insofar as Toulouse had been
disturbed by student rioters, this was precisely because of the rioters’ despair of
those ignorant and inarticulate lovers of the old barbarism who still occupied
Faculty classrooms.89 The new college and what it offered would indeed be the
University’s salvation.
Not surprisingly, Bodin’s Oratio was peppered with legal allusions and legal
terminology. He grounded his thesis on the Roman law concept of ‘causa pub-
lica’.90 Neglect of or departure from this principle would inevitably result in
damage to the public weal. Hence the vigour of the orator’s attack on private
education, on merchants who gave precedence to their personal commercial
interests above all else. A causa publica ought always to be preferred to res privatae,
and was best served when citizens observed the dictates of ‘right reason (recta ratio)’
and ‘the light of the mind (mentis lumen)’ (1559: fo. 49; 1951: 23A19). It was
especially well served in Solon’s legislative act which elevated a father’s obligation in
the public interest to educate his son above even ‘the son’s duty towards his parent
by natural law (quam filius parenti jure quodammodo naturae atq. humanitatis debet)’

87 The reciprocity of Respublica (signifying the realm) and civitas is a feature of the Oratio.
88 1559: fo. 9vo; 1951: 9B42–3. Bodin’s comments, which exemplify juridical humanists’ attacks
on the commentators and on Tribonian, sixth-century editor of the Corpus iuris civilis, recall the
strictures which Ramus levelled at commentators on the Aristotelian texts, as distinct from Aristotle
himself.
89 ‘at iuuentus eos, qui veterem barbariem amant, defugit, indoctos metuit, indisertos abhorret’ (1559:

fo. 34; 1951: 18A13–15).

90 1559: fo. 15; 1951: 11B18. See definition by Vasoli 2008: 19–20: affairs helpful to all and

damaging to no one, but injurious to the commonwealth if neglected. The phrase is translated as ‘raison
d’état’ by Mesnard (1951: 39B32–3).
 Humanist Engagements 47

(1559: fo. 16; 1951: 11B57–9). Even so, the legal apparatus stood conjoined with
ideas of concord derived from ancient metaphysics and coloured above all else by an
acute religious sensibility.91 There was nothing gratuitous in Bodin’s repeated
dismissal of ‘the Epicureans’, those seeming atheists who held that mere chance
had brought the universe into being, and even denied the immortality of the soul,92
nor in his distrust even of Stoic opinions when adduced ‘not as subjects for
intellectual discussion, but as guides for living (non disputandi animo sed ita
viuendi)’.93 Yet in matters of education uncritical reliance upon the particular
doctrines of any one philosophical school was potentially ‘destructive to the
commonwealth, to the laws, to sound morality (quid Rebuspublicis, quid legibus,
quid bonis morib. exitiosius)’ (1559: fos 53vo–54; 1951: 24B32–3)? To these
principles of omnigenous learning Bodin would continually revert throughout
the remainder of his career.
The case which he argued was grounded in the model of humanist education
propagated by such luminaries as Rudolph Agricola, Desiderius Erasmus, and
Peter Ramus. It was designed to produce citizens not only cultured, but useful,
with skills applicable outside the classroom, relevant to the needs of the real
world.94 In presenting his case Bodin showed some political sensitivity. He took
care to flatter his listeners. He drew attention to the Parlement’s standing, noted
the Law Faculty’s reputation, celebrated the Floral Games and the memory of
Clémence Isaure (1559: fos 63vo–65; 1951: 27B59–28A50). With merchants’
financial interests at stake, he took care to remark in repeated phrases on the town’s
prosperity and its sources, and so implicitly on their good fortune—‘fertile soil, a
fortunate diversity of agricultural products, ready means of trade’ (1559: fos 4vo,
63; 1951: 8A22–3, 27B35–6). He ventured into controversial territory: at one
level, the new bridge (1559: fo. 69; 1951: 29B35); at quite another, the dangers of
religious division. But many Toulousan undercurrents would have eluded an
untutored listener or reader, however attentive to Bodin’s words. He said nothing
about the city’s remarkable multiplicity of authorities and sectional interests,
nothing about their representatives’ ostentatious lifestyles, nothing about how
conflicts between them had impeded educational development. He gave no hint
of the extent to which student and popular disturbances had disrupted town and
university, and none whatsoever of the Parlement’s sanguinary reputation. Avoid-
ance of such sensitive issues on such an occasion was doubtless understandable. But
what informed Bodin’s presentation of his case was a hope—even a belief—that

91 On the compatibility of legal studies with the harmonizing of all arts which Budé had stressed

and Bodin reaffirms explicitly in Oratio (1559: fo. 33; 1951: 17B26), see Piano Mortari 1985: 257,
and 1989: 249. The move to systematize universal law is thus an offshoot of the perceived unity of the
studia humanitatis.
92 1559: fo. 26 vo; 1951:15A57–B6. Cf. Maimonides 1963: II.32 (p. 360): ‘I shall not pay

attention to the opinion of Epicurus, for he does not believe in the existence of a deity and all the
more does he not believe in prophecy’.
93 1559: fo. 54; cf. 1951: 24B29–30. The strictures echo the views of the Christian apologist

Lactantius Firmianus (fl. AD third century) whom Bodin cited seven times in his edition of Oppian,
four times in his Methodus, and again in his République.
94 See Grafton and Jardine 1986: 16, 168; cf. Skinner 1978: I. 241–3; Najemy 2000: 100–1.
48 Jean Bodin

provision of humanist education aimed at harmonizing all the disciplines and

coupled with enforcement of religious uniformity would enable a wholesale actual-
ization of concord, social and political too. Influential members of the orator’s
audience would quite possibly have subscribed to such a credo. Vastly idealistic, it
ran clean counter to what he and his colleagues had experienced in their University
and would have observed in Toulouse at large. Certainly, the presence of exponents
of humanism in Languedoc and elsewhere did nothing to avert the calamities of the
following decades.
And yet, the Oratio bore fruit. Within two years of its delivery Toulouse’s
new college had opened its doors under the principalship of a doctor of laws,
supported by six regents. For a time they exercised what amounted to a monopoly
of education at college level in the city—‘a full-scale liberal arts education in the
best Parisian style [which] was now made available to all residents, even the
poorest’ (Huppert 1984: 59). But the time was brief and the monopoly soon
challenged. Within a further two years Toulouse acquired a second collège de plein
exercice, established in the buildings and from the endowments of an Augustinian
house suppressed owing to the friars’ misconduct, and three years later was handed
over to Jesuit management (Compère and Julia 1984: I. 689). But by then the author
of the Oratio had moved on.
 IV
Law and History

I V . 1 AVOCAT

At some date after delivering his Oratio Bodin left Toulouse for Paris.1 He travelled
across an increasingly troubled kingdom. Not least in Toulouse itself, but also
elsewhere in urban France religious tensions were becoming more acute. Notwith-
standing efforts at repression, Protestantism was growing from a minor movement
to a major force, penetrating even the highest governmental and judicial circles.
Meanwhile, by comparison with the prosperous years of the early sixteenth century,
economic difficulties were mounting. Their complex origins included the structures
of rural landholding and inheritance patterns, widespread peasant poverty linked to
the morcellation of landholdings, variable productivity, and fluctuating food sup-
plies, all of which impacted not only upon rural dwellers, but also, in effect, upon
the growing urban populations. Yet to many contemporaries the most obvious
manifestation of economic difficulties was price inflation, a phenomenon apparent
to differing degrees in virtually all vendible goods, commodities, and services. It was
apparent also in the condition of public or royal finance. Despite intensified
taxation and resort to dubious fiscal devices such as office-selling, the crown had
for decades been drifting more and more deeply into debt, and by 1557 had
reached the point of defaulting on interest payments due on its borrowings. It
could reasonably be argued that responsibility for the disturbing consequences of
religious persecution, financial extravagance, and international war lay firmly at the
monarch’s door. But the death of Henri II in a jousting accident in 1559 exacer-
bated the kingdom’s difficulties still further. France was now in the charge of a
fifteen-year-old boy, a political development that exposed it to the inherent
vulnerability of hereditary monarchy, to a degree which the kingdom had not
experienced for over a hundred years.
Precisely when and why Bodin travelled northwards at all is, once again, uncer-
tain. He was well connected in the capital of Languedoc, well reputed enough to
have been put up to harangue its leading citizens on a contentious subject, and
sufficiently self-assured to have presented his case in quite forthright terms. But at
the end of that disquisition he himself provided two explanations for his departure,

1 His use of a Paris printer for his Oppian coupled with his claim (in Theatrum 1596: 370; cf.

Theatre 1597: 531) that he had heard over sixty birds sing together at the court of Henri II indicates
that he paid visits to Paris in the 1550s prior to his final departure from Toulouse. Cf. Chauviré 1914a:
26, note 1.
50 Jean Bodin

one negative, the other positive. On the one hand, he admitted, ‘I know well enough
that I am poorly equipped to be burdened with the education of the young
(instituendae juventutis oneri minime aptum esse me satis intelligo)’. By such an
admission he seemed voluntarily to disqualify himself from taking on not only a
principal’s or a schoolmaster’s responsibilities in the proposed college, but even a
university teaching post. On the other hand, he announced, ‘I am entering upon
such a course of life that I could in no way withdraw from it without reproach (in
eam sum ingressus vitae rationem à qua discedere mihi nullo modo est integrum)’. The
‘course of life’, it transpired, was that of avocat in the Parlement of Paris. Later, in his
Methodus he would insist that for a proper understanding of law and how to
interpret it, practical experience in the courts was indispensable (1566: sig.
[*ivvo]). There is no reason to disbelieve that he meant what he said. So, he went
to Paris by deliberate choice, seeking to improve his professional capabilities as an
avocat in the highest court in the land. How did he gain such a position, and what
was the nature of the obligation to which he referred?
By Philip VI’s ordinance of 1345, prospective avocats must be ‘capable and
sufficient (idonei & sufficientes)’ (Ordonnances II (1729): 225). This implied not
only that they must be of mature age, but also that their sufficiency might be
subject to examination. Unlike some others of France’s governmental institutions,
the Parlement appeared to rely upon examinations conducted elsewhere. Thus, it
required proof of capability through possession of the degree of licentiate in either
civil or in canon law, reiterating by decree in 1555 that a candidate should tender
his letters of graduation to the senior avocat whom he wished to present him. This
was because it had emerged that candidates were simply presenting themselves
without such testimonial and indeed without degrees, or at least without academic
qualifications earned through study as distinct from monetary payment. Once
presented, and if no one opposed them, the sponsored and qualified candidates
were to take the oath as specified again in the 1345 ordinance, and pay a fee. They
had also to profess the Catholic faith. In 1562 the court required all its avocats in
common with other legal personnel to confirm their religious standing by oath, in
accordance with an edict of Francis I’s and a formula composed by the University’s
Faculty of Theology. The timing of the requirement may have been prompted by
the example set by the chapter of Notre-Dame and other Parisian corporate bodies
which in the previous year had imposed oaths to similar purpose upon their respective
members in the wake of religious disturbances in the capital.2
So much for formal requirements. In practice, personal relationships were
important considerations, in the Parlement as in other institutions. For recruitment
purposes, it mattered that members of the Paris court interact individually and
collectively with professional and academic colleagues elsewhere in France. The
interaction was considerable between the Parisian legal elite and Toulousain legal
circles. One notable exemplar and promoter of that interaction was Henri de
Mesmes, son of a professor of law at Toulouse, himself a graduate of that university,

2 Ordonnances II (1729): 225–7; Delachenal 1885: 14–29; Boucher 1983: 34.

 Law and History 51

and subsequently provider of a meeting place for humanist and legal scholars at the
library of his house in Paris.3 De Mesmes was appointed in 1551 a conseiller in the
Cour des Aides after being ‘examined and found capable’ (Frémy1886: 146–7),
and then was promptly admitted to the Grand Conseil ‘with dispensation of age and
without examination’. This he ascribed partly to the ‘diligence, intervention and
means’ of his father-in-law, Oudart Hennequin, city councillor, a maître des comptes
and a man ‘of singular probity’; and partly to the fact that ‘several of the Conseil had
testified to my disputations and lectures at Toulouse which they had attended on
various occasions’.4 Here was patronage openly at work. One of de Mesmes’s patrons
was Jean Bertrandi, erstwhile président in the Toulouse Parlement, protector of
humanists there, and an early supporter of proposals for a new college.5 Having
risen to the office of keeper of the seals (garde des sceaux), Bertrandi had in 1560 to
give way to Michel de L’Hospital, himself a former law student at Toulouse and now
appointed Chancellor of France, owing not least to the patronage of the Guise and in
particular the support of the highly influential Cardinal of Lorraine.6 Once a member
of the group of migrants to Padua, L’Hospital had close links with the Toulouse
humanist circle. Among his protégés were Cujas and Turnèbe,7 neither of them a
friend of Bodin. For his part, the Angevin did not emulate the substantial number of
distinguished scholars who dedicated works to L’Hospital. In 1576, however, he
would dedicate his own most important book to Guy de Pibrac, claiming in doing so
that he had known the latter and observed his career over eighteen years. The form of
words which end the dedication coupled with the concluding remarks of the Oratio
furnish substantial clues to how Bodin became a Paris avocat.
The patron–client relationship in Renaissance France functioned on a basis of
reciprocal obligations to which the parties regarded themselves as honour-bound.
The relationship was seen as one of service and also of amity, with the client
customarily describing himself as his patron’s or protector’s ‘servant’.8 The idea of
obligation is clearly conveyed in Bodin’s declaration that from the new ‘course of
life’ which had opened up for him he could not withdraw ‘without reproach’. In the
dedication to Pibrac he described himself explicitly as the latter’s ‘very affectionate
servant’. Here, plainly, were a client’s acknowledgements of duty owed and services
rendered. And for a man eager to advance his fortunes Pibrac would have been in
many respects an excellent choice. Himself a distinguished lawyer, he had already
acted with others as sponsor in launching a friend of his student years, the same Henri
de Mesmes, upon a career which in the 1560s would involve de Mesmes in working
closely with L’Hospital (Frémy 1886: 149, 165–6). Extremely well connected,
Pibrac had himself gained L’Hospital’s friendship thanks initially to his uncle Jacques

3 Espiner-Scott 1936: 355–8. Cf. Chapter IV.2, for links between Bodin, the De Mesmes, and

other Parisian avocat families.

4 Frémy 1886: 147–9; Diefendorf 1983: 41.
5 Busson 1957: 76; Brown 1969: 162.
6 Petris 2002: 16. ‘Royal policy at this time [1560], formulated largely by the cardinal de Lorraine,

was designed to defuse religious tension’ (Carroll 1998: 104).

7 Turnèbe was also a member of De Mesmes’s circle.
8 Jouanna 1989: 66–74; Kettering 1989: 419, 433.
52 Jean Bodin

du Faur, a président des enquêtes in Paris since 1546 and recently appointed a maître
des requêtes (Cabos 1922: 40). No patron was without blemish from a client’s point of
view. Pibrac, a former pupil of Cujas’s, had lately run risks of censure through
appealing to the Cardinal de Lorraine on behalf of his brother, Louis, a conseiller
in the Parlement, who in the very presence of King Henri II had spoken against
the capital punishment of heretics (Cabos 1922: 47–51). But by 1560 that King
was dead. A spirit of compromise at least temporarily prevailed. Louis du Faur was
reinstated in the Parlement; and Jean Bodin joined him there as an avocat.
In terms of legal learning his capability and sufficiency for the role would have
been easily demonstrated. Whether he could gain enough work as a barrister to
make a living is another question. In two hundred years the numbers of avocats in
the court had increased tenfold, from fifty entered on the Parlement’s roll temp.
Philip VI to at least four hundred by the middle of the sixteenth century.9 The estat
d’aduocat continued to be held in high esteem, the platform where the best-trained
young men hoped to show their mettle. But litigants solicited the services of the
most reputed among established practitioners, many of whom enjoyed the security
of regular employment as avocats pensionnaires for frequent litigants; and so, junior
or less reputable barristers ‘were not much employed’.10 How Bodin was reputed
and how he fared are, once again, uncertain. He himself conceded that when he
joined the Paris bar he had a great deal to learn. As a teacher in Toulouse, he
observed, ‘I would have seemed extremely wise to the assembled youngsters’; but it
was only after being ‘initiated into the mystery of the bar’ that he understood ‘the
true and solid wisdom of the law’, an understanding attainable ‘not in the dust of
the schools, but on the battlefield of the forum’ (Bodin 1583: n.p. [?sig. b ro–vo]).
Yet it seems that ‘understanding’ was not enough. Bodin, his contemporaries
agreed, was very learned. Whether he could present his arguments in appropriate
fashion was another matter. According to the distinguished advocate Étienne
Pasquier, for all his command of ‘great and exquisite doctrine’ Bodin ‘never
succeeded in pleading a case’ (Loisel 1844: 131). By Antoine Loisel’s account ‘he
was a man of great science and eloquence’ (Loisel 1652: 639), but his may not have
been the type of eloquence which the parlement favoured. The accustomed style du
parlement was ‘severe, austere’, preferring ‘precision to ornamentation, gravity to
elegance’.11 In one of his celebrated addresses at the opening of a law term, Bodin’s
patron Pibrac warned his colleagues of the Parlement against attending rather ‘to
words and the beauty and ornamentation of language than to science and doctrine’
(Cabos 1922: 116). Yet Pibrac himself was admired for his ‘most lively eloquence
and erudition’, as Pasquier observed (Loisel 1844: 89); and indeed, by the later
sixteenth century, avocats’ style of presentation was being ‘transformed’ as more
personal modes of discourse embellished by humanist learning and modelled on

9Delachenal 1885: 398–407; Houllemare 2011: 179.

10 Loisel 1652: 503; cf. Porée 1897–8: 1. 219–21.
11 Céard 1991: 161. Cf. Lot and Fawtier 1958: II. 399, on avocats’ tendency to over burden their

orations, to multiply citations, to accumulate ‘proofs which prove nothing’.

 Law and History 53

Ciceronian rhetoric were increasingly adopted (Houllemare 2011: 202–3, 259, 300
sqq.). Perhaps the development suited Bodin who, to judge by his published works,
was not given to brevity. Yet he himself was to laud the desirability of ‘the naked
truth simply presented’ and to denounce ‘the licence given to tub-thumpers’ whose
effusions served only as a ‘disguise of truth, an artifice to make the bad appear good,
the wrong appear right’ (Bodin 1576: 300; 1583: 660). However, this was written
long after he had attempted to make advocacy his career: a career in which, it would
seem, he failed to strike the appropriate oratorical note—or, perhaps for other
reasons, to commend himself sufficiently to prospective clients and to the judiciary.12
Nevertheless, he managed once more to keep himself on the right side of France’s
deepening religious divide. The death of the boy-King Francis II in December 1560
was followed on the part of the crown by a year of efforts at compromise and
conciliation through consultation by means of estates-general and colloquy. They
would be followed by attempts at rebalancing interests within the realm through
administrative and judicial reform. A programme driven by ‘the new Solon’,13
Chancellor L’Hospital, it would include proposals to reduce municipal and ecclesi-
astical privileges, to promote merchant and trading interests through the creation of
commercial tribunals, to challenge magistrates’ alleged irremovability from office—
above all, to undermine the capacity of the parlements to obstruct royal legislation
whilst themselves exercising quasi-legislative powers (Kim 1993; Petris 2002:
54–64). Such endeavours, a mixture of the bold, the uncertain and the inconsistent,
would not suffice to stem what was already a rising tide of religious and political
unrest. Following the Paris Parlement’s refusal to register the so-called January Edict
of 1562, which afforded limited licence to worship to Calvinist Protestants, now
known as Huguenots, the kingdom drifted via riot and high-level faction-fighting
towards outright civil war. It was immediately prior to that edict that the court had
decreed that its members must solemnly reaffirm their religious orthodoxy or be
debarred.14 Among the names of 402 avocats in all who took the requisite pledge,
the name of ‘Jehan Bodin’ occurs twice as having made the profession de foy on the
appointed day (Delachenal 1885: 405, 406).

I V . 2 THE JURIS UNIVERSI DISTRIBUTIO

Either during his years in Toulouse or soon after his return to Paris, Bodin
composed a series of treatises on fundamental aspects of Roman institutions and
judicial procedure. These treatises were later destroyed on his own instructions,
perhaps because he judged their contents to have been sufficiently absorbed into his
more mature works, or possibly because he no longer subscribed to the approach to

12 Cf. Chauviré 1914a: 30, for other opinions on Bodin’s capability as an avocat. If Bodin did fail in

that capacity, this may conceivably relate to his self-confessed inadequacy as a teacher.
13 François Hotman’s description of him (Hotman 1972: 27).
14 The Edict of Saint-Germain is dated 17 January 1562; the arrêt of the Parlement, 6 January

(Boucher 1983: 34).

54 Jean Bodin

legal and institutional studies which they represented.15 Their composition may
have sprung from Bodin’s efforts as a teacher of law and an aspiration on his part,
subsequently abandoned, to gain a university teaching post. It may, alternatively,
have been prompted by his self-confessed response to the mode of legal learning
which he encountered upon joining the ranks of Parisian avocats. As he noted in the
preface to Pibrac in his République, the ‘true and solid wisdom of the law’ involved
familiarity with ‘princes of the science of law’—Bartolus, Baldus, Du Moulin, and
others—whose works in his Toulouse days ‘I considered scarcely worth sampling
(nihil aut parum admodum sapere arbitrarer)’ (1583: sig. [c vo]). This implies that
he had come eventually to regard such authorities as the great scholastic masters and
the celebrated French legist as to some degree exponents of the universalist
approach to juristic learning, the ‘art’ or ‘science’ of law, which he had grown to
favour—and to which he began seriously to apply himself in the interstices of his
seemingly intermittent employment at the Paris bar.
He explained how he set about it in the dedicatory letter to Jean Tessier,
président des enquêtes,16 with which in 1566 he prefaced the first of his major
published works, the Methodus ad facilem historiarum cognitionem.17 Describing
Tessier as both patron and friend, Bodin recorded how from the outset of his
forensic career he resolved to devote to legal studies all the time he had free from
curial business, and thereby make some return ‘to the respublica to which, after
immortal God, we owe everything’. But he had no intention of merely adding to
the allegedly monstrous, disjointed, and inept accumulation of writings on the
civil laws. Those laws were essentially the laws of Rome, specifically ‘of one
particular civitas’; and, furthermore, they had changed over time. Here was an
insight informed by an historical perspective of the kind with which Cujas was
especially associated. But Bodin’s ambitions went far beyond such an approach.
His aim was to treat law explicitly as a member of ‘the arts and the sciences (artes
et scientiae)’ (cf. Chapter III.1 (pp. 22–3) and accordingly to identify its universal
properties. For this, to deal simply with the laws of one particular society plainly
would not do.18 There were in France other jurists—François Connan, Charles
Du Moulin, even Du Faur—from whom much of value was to be learned ‘on
debating and adjudicating civil causes’. But no one, it seemed, had properly
followed Plato’s prescription: to bring together the laws of the most famous
respublicae, to compare them, and ‘from them produce the best kind’. By his own

15 De decretis; De imperio; De jure imperio; De jurisdictione; De legis actionibus. See Ménage 1675:

143; Brown 1939: 23–4; cf. Moreau-Reibel 1933: 24. The dating of the treatises’ composition is
complicated by the fact that, whereas Bodin explicitly mentions three of them in the 1572 edition of
his Methodus (pp. 249, 255, 261–2), none of them figures in the 1566 edition.
16 Relatively undistinguished despite his high office; cf. mention in Popoff 1996: 499 (no. 1155).
17 Method for the Easy Examination of Histories. Note the specific resonance of the term ‘cognitio’

which in lawyers’ parlance signified ‘judicial examination’.

18 Cf. Cicero, De legibus, I.v.17: ‘in this debate our concern is entirely with universal ius and law,

and so our civil law, as it is called, should be confined to some small and narrow place (in hac
disputatione tota causa est universi iuris ac legum, ut hoc civile, quod dicimus, in parvum et angustum locum
concludatur)’.
 Law and History 55

account, Bodin had been alone in setting out ‘to establish universal right (de
universo iure statuere)’.
In principle, such a task was feasible: did not all, or at any rate most, peoples have
systems of public and of private law with generically common elements to ensure
orderly intercourse amongst their respective members (1580a: 12)? In practice, it
was surely beyond the capabilities of any individual, however industrious and
however learned. As for Bodin’s claim for the uniqueness of his vision, this was
overstated. The urge to universalize characterized humanist scholarship: was not
Ramus with his universally applicable method a typical example? In respect of legal
studies, jurists in France and elsewhere had undertaken to realize Cicero’s declared
intention of ‘reducing the civil law to an art (iure civili in artem redigendo)’ (Piano
Mortari 1978b: 307–8) and to bring philosophical, historical, and systematic
perspectives to bear upon that objective. Prominent among them in Germany
were Sebastian Derrer of Freiburg,19 Johann Apel of Wittenberg and Nuremberg,20
and Konrad Lagus of Wittenberg and Danzig;21 Lagus’s Juris utriusque methodica
traditio ([Manual for the] Methodical teaching of civil and canon law) (Frankfurt,
1543) had a particular influence upon Johann Thomas Freigius (1543–83) of
Freiburg and Basel, whose Partitiones juris utriusque (Orderly divisions of civil and
canon law) (Basel, 1571) demonstrated in tabulated form the application of Ramist
methodology to legal materials treated on a broad front. To jurists such as these,
pursuit of the Ciceronian objective meant discerning with the Stoics the rational
elements that furnished the ‘ruling principle of the world (principatus mundi)’,22
the recta ratio that must inhere in any system of law worthy of the name, and
unquestionably must inform the laws of Rome. In itself such a proposition was
well honed in Renaissance Europe: had not the prince of humanists, Erasmus
himself, iterated and reiterated how justice qua justice was informed by reason and
so by the law of nature in conjunction with the will of God (Thireau 1987: 64)?
Some of those who had attempted to bring such precepts to bear upon legal
scholarship were among the very jurists whom Bodin named. Perhaps the most
notable was François Connan who grounded his Commentarii iuris civilis libri X
(1553) upon principles of natural law discernible in ‘the nature of man which we
call right reason’.23 Bodin had rubbed shoulders with others in his student days.

19 Fl. 1512–40: author, Jurisprudentiae liber primus instar disciplinae institutus et axjomatibus magna

ex parte conscriptus (The first book of jurisprudence provided for instruction and composed for the most part
in the form of axioms) (Lyon, 1540); see Stintzing 1880–4: 1. 256–8.
20 B. 1546: author Methodica dialectices ratio ad jurisprudentiam accommodata (Reason accommodated

to jurisprudence by dialectical method) (Nuremberg, 1535); see Stintzing 1880–4: 1. 287–96.

21 D. 1546: also author of the polemical Protestatio adversus improbam suorum commentariorum

(Basel, 1544); see Stintzing 1880–4: 1. 296–305, and pp. 440–6 for Freigius.
22 Balbus, representing the Stoic philosophy, in Cicero, De natura deorum, II.30; cf. Schofield

2005: 451–2.
23 For this and his other definitions of law see Connan 1553: I.i–iii; cf. Piano Mortari 1978b: 315.

Note also the Aristotelian basis of Connan’s definition of ius: ‘whether prescribed by nature or by
law, ius concerns those things which affect another (Est igitur ius, naturae vel legis praescriptum, de
iis rebus quae ad alterum pertinent)’ (Connan 1553: fo. 9vo; cf. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics
1129b27–1130a11).
56 Jean Bodin

Jean de Coras, sometime holder of the senior chair of civil law at Toulouse, went
further, explicitly invoking the Ciceronian objective in the very title of his De jure
civili in artem redigendo (1560) and directing his readers to ‘the principles and
elements of the law’, objectives unattainable ‘unless you hold fast to method and
reason (nisi . . . viam et rationem teneas)’.24 But Bodin’s ambition went beyond all
these. Much of his life was devoted to realizing that ambition; and the first fruit of
his labours was his Juris universi distributio.
In his preface to the Methodus he stated that it was ‘when I had arrived in the
lawcourt (cum in forum venissem)’ that he embarked upon that work.25 But the
indications are strong that he had been inspired to undertake it and had in fact
begun it before leaving Toulouse.26 Two versions of his efforts’ results eventually
appeared in print. By Bodin’s account, he first produced them ‘as a table (in tabula)’
which he described as ‘a form of universal ius’. The description is misleading in so
far as it designates the subject matter of his work at this stage. This was almost
entirely the civil law of Rome (cf. Methodus 1566: sigs *iij-vo) as it had evolved over
the centuries in the French Midi, the pays du droit écrit with its courts and
academies, chief among them the law school of Toulouse. So many of the treatises
and manuals published in sixteenth-century Europe originated as lectures or other
forms of teaching vehicle, and the table which Bodin showed to Tessier before 1566
is no exception. It was an enormous ‘branching diagram’ suitable for display on the
walls of a law classroom as a visual aid for a lecturer and his pupils.27 A product of
his years at Toulouse, it furnished the skeletal basis for the much more expansive
work to which Bodin, once in Paris, proposed to apply himself, drawing for the
purpose—as he recounted—upon the laws of the Persians, Greeks, Egyptians,
Hebrews, as well as the principal countries of Europe at large. All this, he claimed,
was added to the diagrammatic construct from Roman law with which he had
begun. Yet it was essentially the basic construct that saw publication almost twenty
years later,28 first in the same diagrammatic form and then, in 1580, as a treatise of
some fifty pages in continuous prose.
He dedicated the work in both its forms to Jean Nicolai, recently appointed a
conseiller in the Paris Parlement. Long-standing holders of major judicial offices
especially in the Chambre des Comptes, the Nicolai were allied by marriage to two
of Paris’s leading families of office-holders in the Hôtel de Ville and the sovereign
courts, the Luillier and the Hennequin, the latter including the patron of Henri

24 Q. London Fell 1983: 64, n. 29. For examples of other French jurists who undertook ‘projects of

systematisation of the law’ for didactic purposes, see Chrom Jacobsen 2000: 94.
25 Cf. Vasoli 2008: 106. Cf. also Thireau 1990 on how development of French law was driven by

praticiens while academics dragged their Roman feet.

26 For possible sources of such inspiration, see Quaglioni 2007, particularly on Matteo Gribaldi

Mofa’s De methodo ac ratione studi (1558).

27 Cf. Vasoli 2008: 112; also Ferguson 1987: 13 on ‘non-figural tabula’. On the ‘branching

diagram’ as ‘one of the most distinctive features associated with the organisation of knowledge in the
early modern period’ and by no means specifically Ramist, see Blair 2010: 144 sqq.
28 The relatively few amplifications of non-Roman substance include a note on social divisions in

French, Egyptian, Greek, and a number of Italian communities (1580a: 17).

 Law and History 57

de Mesmes.29 All three families were based in a quartier of Paris where the Guise
were the dominant presence; yet members of the Hennequin were also to hold
important offices in the household of the Duke of Alençon/Anjou.30 Jean Nicolai,
Bodin observed, had been striving in the same field of research as had he, and so, ‘in
grateful acknowledgement of the friendship (benevolentia) which your excellent
father31 and you yourself have shown me’, Bodin offered him his own findings as
‘a sort of ground-plan [ἰχνογραφίαμ] of your forthcoming work’ (1580a: 4). There is
no record that Nicolai ever did produce his projected analysis of universal law, and
Bodin’s own development of the ‘ground-plan’ as such, if development there was,
has not survived beyond the second version of his Distributio.32 Before 1578 he had
left far behind the approach represented there, proceeding from that skeleton
analysis with its relatively limited range of legal reference to the vast comparative
survey of institutions presented in his République. At present, there is no answer to
the obvious question, why did he choose to publish first the table and then the
narrative version of the Juris universi distributio so soon after the appearance of the
altogether more ambitious and more mature study that had superseded it?
The title of the work provokes further questions. Prima facie the term ‘juris
universi’ could not simply mean ‘universal law’, given Bodin’s repeated insistence in
this work and persistent pronouncement thereafter that law is ‘nothing other than’
the act of a legislator33 and therefore must be specific to that legislator in relation to
the community subject to him. What he sought were the elements in law that
signified its universality. These were identifiable through recta ratio, the reason
rooted in nature by which ‘the seeds of jus and justice planted by immortal God in
the soul of each one of us are aroused’.34 Thus ‘jus’ was distinguishable from justitia
and certainly from law, or lex, as such.35 To highlight the term in this way was to
allude to long and discordant traditions of speculative philosophy of which Bodin,
with his background, was unquestionably well aware. Two principal strands,
distinct but overlapping, are discernible in the debates of scholastic philosophers
and theologians in this area,36 debates driven on all sides by reassessments of

29 For links between these families see Popoff 1996: nos 108 (pp. 94–5), 121 (pp. 143–4), 276

(p. 217), 1745 (p. 722), 1857 (pp. 752–3).

30 Aubert de la Chenaye des Bois: X (1866). cols 541–2; XII (1868). cols 542–4; XIV (1869). cols

948–50. See also Diefendorf 1984: 61, 20; Holt 1984: 315, 321.
31 Antoine de Nicolai, premier président in the Chambre des Comptes since 1553, married first to

Jeanne Luillier and secondly to Anne Hennequin, the mother of Jean (Aubert de la Chenaye des Bois:
XIV (1869). col. 948).
32 It should be noted that the dedicatory preface is identical in both versions, with two minor

exceptions: 1580a omits ‘margine’ from the phrase ‘in margine duplici’ (1580a: 4, line 20); and the
phrase ‘arte nulla’ (1578) appears as ‘nulla arte’ in 1580a: 5, line 7.
33 ‘Law is nothing other than the command or sanction of the supreme authority (lex nihil aliud sit

quam summae potestatis iussum siue sanctio)’ (1580a: 11).

34 ‘juris & justitiae semina in animis uniuscuiusque nostrum ab immortali Deo insita a ratione

excitantur’ (1580a: 7; cf. Horowitz 1998: 22).

35 Cf. République (1583: 155): ‘il y a bien difference entre le droit & la loy: l’un n’emporte rien que

l’equité, la loy emporte commandement: car la loy n’est autre chose que le commandement du souverain,
usant de sa puissance’.
36 Brett 1997, especially chs 2 and 3, provides the most searching account of these debates. For a

valuable overview see Quaglioni 2003.

58 Jean Bodin

Aristotelian ethical and scientific propositions. In particular, Franciscan thinkers

had interpreted ius as a power for action residing in the individual and so ‘subject-
ive’. Activation of that power must accord with right reason; in that sense ius was a
natural right, governed by the law of nature and, certainly, the divine will. Yet a ius
could be established through an explicit act by a human legislator, and in that sense
was ‘objective’. By comparison, a Thomist strand conceived of jus primarily in terms
of objective right—‘the right thing’, with ‘right’ conceived as the object of justice. This
tallied with the distinction which Aristotle had drawn between ‘justice and the right
(δικαιοσύη και τὸ δίκαιον)’, justice being what prompts persons to ‘wish for what is
just (βούλονται τά δίκαια)’ (Nicomachean Ethics 1129a3, 10). Further, Aristotle had
also argued in respect of ‘justice in human society (πολιτικοΰ δικαίου)’ that ‘part is
indeed by nature and part by law (τὸ μὲν φυσικόν ὲστι τὸ δὲ νομικόν)’ (Nicomachean
Ethics 1134b18). Again, Aquinas had by and large endorsed the argument (Aquinas,
Summa, IIaIIae, q. 57, a. 2). The view which Bodin advanced was plainly informed by
these debates, and just as plainly rooted in Aristotelian propositions. If it were the case
(as Stoic philosophers expressed it), he commented, that ‘the right is not by lawgiving,
but only in nature (τὸ δίκαιον οΰκ εἶναι θέσει, ἀλλὰ μονὸν φύσει)’ (1580a: 6), then
jurisprudence would be nothing but ‘a science’. It would no longer enable its
practitioners to distinguish ‘the useful from the useless or the shameful from the
honourable’, but ‘only the true and the false’. This, however, was not so. By Bodin’s
account, the quest for ‘the right’ (jus) involved human judgement which appertained
to the prudentia. While jus was indeed ‘τὸ δίκαιον, the just or right thing’ which
existed ‘in nature’, it was also implanted by God in human souls to await arousal.
Thus, in Aristotelian terms, jus had both an objective and a subjective existence as a
potential to be activated by reason. For ‘when reason matures in us and attains
perfection, it creates this judgement (prudentia) of ius which we seek [and] which
finally by use and art is demonstrated (concluditur) in this way’ (1580a: 7)—that is,
through the exercise of rationally informed judgement.
Ius prudentia, then. The position tallied with the definition of that term at the
opening of Justinian’s Institutes: ‘Jurisprudence is knowledge of whatever may be
the subject of rights, divine and human; the science of the just and the unjust’.37
Pace the title of his own work, it was upon jurisprudence thus interpreted that
Bodin brought his analysis to bear. And although he credited Plato with inspiring
the methodology exemplified in the table he showed to Tessier, it was from
fundamental propositions of Aristotelian logic that he derived the four analytical
‘questions’ stated in his own opening definition.38 The methodology, characterized
by internal reciprocity, combined use of ‘causes’ with processes of division39

37 ‘Iurisprudentia est divinarum humanarumque rerum notitia, justiti atque iniusti scientia’ (Institutes

1.1; cf. Digest 1.10.2).

38 Conventionally summarized as ‘an sit, quid sit, qualis sit, cur sit (does it exist, what is it, of what

kind is it, why is it)?’; cf. Posterior Analytics 89b23–4.

39 The principal source of division in Plato is the Phaedrus, 263B, 265E–266D, and especially

277B: ‘a man . . . must be able to define everything separately; then when he has defined them he must
know how to divide them by classes until further division is impossible’. See Bruyère 1984: 71–3, on
the centrality of Plato in Ramus’s thought.
 Law and History 59

descending from genus ‘to the least (ad infima)’, an operation, driven by reason
(‘ratione’), such that ‘all parts are in appropriate harmony with each other (omnia
membra inter se apta cohaerent)’. This procedure, averred Bodin, was applicable ‘to
all the sciences’, a contention which echoed the view expressed in the second
century AD by Galen in his study of Platonic doctrines (Couzinet 1996a: 89).
But in conjunction with the ‘four questions’ it was Aristotelian causation theory as
espoused by Ramus, coupled with the latter’s dichotomizing approach, that fur-
nished the basic structure of the Distributio (Vasoli 2008: 114).
As Ramus had explained, ‘cause is first in the foundations of argument’, its ‘parts’
being four: ‘final, formal, efficient, material’ (Ramus 1543: 9; cf. Aristotle, Physics
194b16–195a3). For Bodin’s purposes the final cause, or end, of jusprudentia was
‘to give everyone his own (suum cuique tribuere)’; and the ‘cause’ in question was
indeed ‘ius itself, without which jurisprudence would be nothing’.40 The efficient
cause consisted of the action of the law (legis actio) together with the judge’s office
(iudicis officium). As for the material cause, this comprised the famous threefold
classification of Roman private law credited to Gaius—persons, things, and actions,
though Bodin substituted ‘facta’ for the Digest’s ‘actiones’, explaining that in
addition to actions as such he proposed to include ‘the verbal statements (dicta)’
and ‘writings (scripta)’ of persons.41 The formal cause was again jus, ‘without which
there could be no jurisprudence (sine quo iurisprudentia nulla sit)’ (1580a: 9). As for
the dialectical divisions within this structure, these were populated with ‘concise
and clear precepts, as it were rules’ distributed ‘each in its place and order (suo loco
& ordine)’ (1580a: 4). The phrases exemplified three basic components of Ramist
dialectic: the discovery, or inventio, of the precepts; their location in accordance
with the ‘doctrine des lieux’ to which Bodin had plainly subscribed in his commen-
tary on Oppian; and their arrangement (dispositio) in order.42
Coherent enough in principle, the procedure presented daunting difficulties
when applied to so complex a field as that of universal jurisprudence. While Bodin’s
application of it in the Distributio’s surviving versions ventured in terms of subject
matter barely beyond the civil law, this was itself a sufficiently challenging subject
area for such an analysis. The balance and structure of his analysis as well as the
remarkable degree of clarity which he achieved are much more readily evident from
the original, tabulated version than from the narrative version of 1580. Of the four
‘causes’, it was to the material cause that he devoted most space and most ‘precepts’,
and the sub heading facta that commanded the lion’s share within that category. As
to structure, in the diagrammatic version the details of the analysis and relationships
between its parts were apparent more or less at a glance, whereas in the prose
version they required explicit elucidation through regular insertion of explanatory
terms and phrases, and even then were not easy to follow. For example, a reader

40 1580a: 9; cf. Institutes 1.1: ‘ius suum cuique tribuens’. Further on the significance of the short-

hand term suum in such a connection, see Brett 1997: 92.

41 Digest 1.5.1; Distributio 1580a: 19. The distinction between legis actio and iudicis officium is

Bartolist (Comparato 1981b: 204).

42 Cf. Ramus 1555: 5. On distributio cf. Couzinet 2013: 47, 51, 57.
60 Jean Bodin

wishing to understand from Bodin’s ‘table’ the place of furtum manifestum (theft
where the thief was caught in the act) in the context of facta could identify it with
relative ease as one of a score of voluntary acts committed with perfidious intent
(pravo concilio peccatur). He could then trace it without difficulty to one of the three
sub divisions of delictum, a wrong committed contra ius and itself one of the two
divisions of facta nuda as distinct from actions linked to a specific legal right such as
acquisitio or obligatio. A reader attempting to use the 1580 version for the same
purpose would find facta nuda defined on page 20, delictum on page 28, and
furtum . . . manifestum buried in a paragraph on pages 30–1 where literally dozens
of types of wrong were noted. Loss of clarity apart, the content of the original
version was moulded into that of 1580 with few significant changes. There were
some incidental mistranscriptions,43 one or two misalignments of references to the
Roman texts, and a handful of minor corrections.44 At least one correction, or
amplification, was far from minor.45 Occasionally useful information was lost.46
But, by and large, all that was gained through publishing the Distributio as a book
in octavo was that thereby Bodin’s original analysis became available in a physically
more manageable format.
Cutting through the details of Roman law whilst deriving from its minutiae larger
categories or rational principles capable of accommodating the rules and practices
of other legal systems—these measures characterized his analytical approach.47 He
explained it in an extensive note to his treatment of conventiones, the other division of
facta nuda. Here Bodin bewailed the ‘confusion’ and ‘obscurity’ into which the
subject had fallen. For his purposes, he specified three forms of conventio: consensu
(by simple consent), stipulatione (by question and answer), and contractu synallagma
(by contract imposing mutual obligations). The third of these was further divisible
on the one hand into dealings reliant upon trust (credita), and on the other into
transactions (negotia) involving considerations which might be wholly or partly or not
at all in monetary form. In the 1580 version, the distinction was plainly noted
between contracts where the obligation was specified explicitly (nominata) and where
it was not. But a key phrase did not feature in the earlier, tabulated version: ‘according
to whether the contracts are nominate or innominate (versatur circa hos contractus
nominatos & innominatos)’.48 Consequently, in that version the culminating portion
of the analysis was shown as relating to transactions ‘which have the legal reason of
giving or doing (quod dandi ac faciendi causam habe[n]t)’—in effect, the nominate
variety. This was seriously misleading. In compiling the portion in question Bodin
relied, sweepingly, upon the four classes of innominate contracts identified by the
Roman jurist Paulus: ‘I give so that you should give, I do so that you should do, etc.

43 For example, ‘pactionem’ (1578) rendered as ‘nomen’ (1580a: 21).

44 For example, ‘oblatione’ (1578) corrected to ‘obligatione’ (1580a: 37).
45 Cf. at note 47 in this chapter.
46 Thus, in analysing transfer of dominium (property) ‘for just cause’, 1580a: 33, omits—and

1985a: 51 misinterprets—a reference to Justinian’s Code (1.2) where a particular option is forbidden.
47 The fullest and best discussion of the legal and philosophical content of the Distributio is Goyard-

Fabre 1985.
48 1580a: 22.
 Law and History 61

(do ut des, facio ut facias, facio ut des, facio ut facias)’.49 Yet in that agreeably
dialectical schema the Angevin included a heterogeneous multiplicity of transac-
tions, nominate as well as innominate.50 The arrangement, it can be argued,
exemplifies how Bodin’s ‘radical rationalisation’ was capable of accommodating
even so complex a juridical system as the law of Rome within a logical schema
‘astonishingly simple’ and universally applicable (cf. Goyard-Fabre 1985: 126–7).
But the exercise was not accomplished without distortion, though it remains a
remarkable analytical achievement.
The urge to simplify entailed rough treatment for many of the principal cat-
egorizations in the civil law. In Justinian’s Institutes the principal factor distinguish-
ing between categories of res consisted in rights over things, essentially rights of
property. The key differentiation lay between res in patrimonio (things which
belonged to someone) and res extra patrimonium such as things publicly owned,
or belonging to a collectivity, or indeed to no one at all (res nullius) (Institutes 2.1.
pr. sqq.; see Buckland 1975: 182 sqq.). For his own purposes Bodin simply swept all
these into a single category (ex adiunctis). He then concentrated his analysis upon
rights ‘ex subiectis’—that is, rooted in the natures of the things concerned: corporeal
and incorporeal, movable and immovable, and so on. Such a distributio, which
culminated in transfer of rights by testament, by agreement, and so on (1580a:
26–8, cf. 119), he evidently deemed more readily applicable than Justinian’s
categories to non-Roman legal systems. Yet, while simplifying on the one hand,
he adopted on the other an approach to legal exposition of a breadth which few
contemporaries chose to attempt. Even the much-admired Connan, like Bodin a
seeker after law’s inherent rationality, confined his Commentarium iuris civilis to the
three classical divisions of Roman private law, persons, things, and actions, apart
from a preliminary discussion of the sources of law. By comparison, Bodin’s
adoption of the ‘four causes’ in quest of the universal licensed him to identify
‘human law’ as a division of the ‘formal cause’, and so to dwell upon those laws
which ‘all peoples find serviceable’. Thereby, he introduced into his analysis
concepts that were to be of cardinal significance in his later works.
Building upon Ulpian’s differentiation between private and public law, Bodin
ascribed to the latter iura—‘promulgating laws, creating magistrates, declaring and
concluding war’ (1580a: 20)—which would later be reformulated, portentously,
as ‘rights of sovereignty’.51 Alongside these he declared that what is ‘called law
(lex appellatur)’ was ‘the command of the prince or supreme authority in the
respublica’, a command either ‘common to all (universalis)’ or addressed to some
‘particular person (singularis)’. Law, so defined, was indispensable. Yet the ‘action of
the law’, one of the two divisions of the ‘efficient cause’, involved much more than
simply the sovereign’s legislative acts. Law derived its causal function as much from
its ‘execution’ as from its status as the sovereign’s command; for unless, on the one

49 Digest 19.5.5—possibly an insertion by Justinian’s editor, Tribonian: see Buckland 1975:

522–3.
50 See comment by René-Marie Rampelberg in Bodin 1985b: 35, n. 31.
51 République I.ix: ‘marques de souveraineté’ (1583: 161); ‘iura maiestatis’ (1586: 107).
62 Jean Bodin
hand, it were made known through publication, and, on the other there were
means of putting it into effect, even such a command would lack ‘force and power
(vis ac potestas)’. The apparatus of execution lay in the procedures of the law itself,
and in attendant processes of adjudication. These were necessarily the business of
judges and magistrates. And beyond such strictly regulated instruments there lay the
judge’s office, the other division of jurisprudence’s efficient cause. Through the
judicis officium law was clarified, corrected, supplemented, adjusted in the light of
equity in relation to particular cases (1580a: 37–8, 49). Without law, ius might be a
mere cipher; yet law in turn would be merely nominal and of little effect without the
apparatus associated with it and the roles of those charged with its administration.
His thesis being grounded in the raw material of the Roman law and inspired by
a combination of ethical, logical, and metaphysical propositions derived from the
philosophies of Aristotle, Plato, and the Stoics, Bodin brought it to a resounding
conclusion. The final cause of iusprudentia, its τέλος or fulfilment, was iustitia,
justice. This he defined initially in precisely the same terms as iurisprudentia itself:
‘suum cuique tribuens’, giving to each his own (1580a: 49, cf. 9). But justice, in
Bodin’s perception, amounted to more even than the jurisprudential science. It
consisted in the ‘reciprocity (τὸ ἀντιπεπονθός)’ or concordant interaction of three
proportions, arithmetical, geometrical, and harmonic. These he identified with
three of the daughters whom Zeus had fathered on Themis, the goddess of law:
Eunomia, Dike, and Eirene. They represented, respectively, equality before the law
(aequa lex), justice, and peace—justice itself being ‘the synthesis of law and equity’.
All this was explained more fully in the concluding chapter of his De republica. So
Bodin observed in concluding the 1580 version of his Distributio—an observation
that did not figure in the tabular version published in 1578.

I V . 3 THE LETTRE À BAUTRU

Neither appeals to the goddess Eirene nor the regency government’s efforts to frame
a formula to disarm religious antagonisms could achieve for France ‘concord’ of the
reciprocal kind where Bodin believed justice to reside. Certainly, the regime had no
intention of enabling Catholics and Protestants to function in perpetuity side
by side in distinct yet interacting systems of doctrine and observance. In so far as
co-existence could be envisaged at all, it must at best be provisional. Rather, the hope
was to identify reforms and concessions sufficient to entice the Protestants back
into the Catholic fold. Such adjustments might include a strengthening of episcopal
discipline, a downgrading of icons and their significance, even a modification of the
central ritual of the eucharist. But ideas of that nature served only to provoke
outrage amongst Catholics whilst exposing how their opponents’ leaders had quite
different ends in view. In any case, the preamble of the Edict of St Germain of
January 1562, promulgated in the wake of stressful consultative exercises at Poissy
and elsewhere, spoke plainly of ‘unity’ as well as ‘concord’. Such concessions as it
contained were explicitly badged as an interim arrangement, pending the conven-
ing of a general council; and the ‘Déclaration interprétative’ that followed a month
 Law and History 63

later made it clear that the edict was not meant to recognize two religions.52 All too
plainly, the regime’s thinking was utterly remote from the position canvassed at the
same time by the Savoyard Sebastian Castellio, that in order to resolve its difficulties
France should allow freedom of conscience in matters of religion, within the limits
of belief in Christ and acceptance of the Bible’s authority.53
Within a month of the Déclaration France plunged into the first of a series of civil
wars: in this instance a year-long set of conflicts, characterized on all sides by acts of
desecration and brutality punctuated by massacres and exacerbated through the
interventions of foreign troops. Typical of developments in many localities were
events at Angers, which had been among the first of French towns to experience the
formation of an organized Protestant church (église dressée).54 In March 1562
Protestants seized control of the town and held it for a month, with the aim chiefly
of securing observance of the January Edict. Their ascendancy did not survive
intervention by agents of the Duke of Montpensier, gouverneur of Anjou. There
followed a phase of violent repression lasting into the following year and involving
summary hangings as well as formal executions (Baum and Cunitz II (1884):
637–68). In July. the municipal authorities, prompted by Montpensier and in
emulation of the example of the Paris Parlement, directed all judges and royal
officials to make public declaration of their religious faith (Baum and Cunitz II
(1884): 664). Among those so directed were François Grimaudet, king’s avocat
in the présidial court of Angers, whose career shows interesting parallels with
Bodin’s;55 and Maurice Bautru, sieur des Matras, lieutenant to Jehan Bonvoisin,
judge of the prévôté. They were required to present themselves within fifteen days or
be suspended from their functions (Moizard 1930: 162).
The conduct of Maurice Bautru des Matras has some direct bearing upon the
vexed question of Bodin’s religious persuasion at this critical time. A month after
the municipality’s and gouverneur’s directive Bautru seems not to have complied
with it and indeed to have left Angers. In due course he returned, swore that he had
always been a good Catholic, and was then reinstated in his office (Moizard 1930:
163). The oath tallied with the one which Bodin had been required to swear in
Paris, while Bautru’s delay suggests a degree of heart- or conscience-searching on his
part. At or around this very time Bodin was himself engaging in a critical evaluation
of religious persuasion. He did so in a letter addressed to Maurice Bautru des
Matras’s son, Jean, Bodin’s junior by a decade and considered by competent judges

52 See Crouzet 1998: 483 sqq.; Turchetti 1991: 21. The consultations in the Colloquy of Poissy

(September 1561) as well as much else are admirably explored and elucidated in Turchetti 1984.
53 Castellio 1562: 92–3: ‘la cause de ton mal ô France est forcement des consciences . . . le conseil que ie te

done ô France . . . c’est que tu cesses de forcer consciences . . . ains permettes qu’en ton pays il soit loisible à ceux
qui croyent en Christ & recoiuent le uieux & nouueau testament de seruir Dieu selon le foy non d’autruy
mais la leur’.
54 Formed in 1555, the year when missionaries from Geneva began their work in France: Crespin

1885–9. II (1887): 536; Baum and Cunitz 1883–9: I. 129.

55 Scion of a bourgeois family of Angers, Grimaudet attracted some notoriety through his attack on

the privileged orders on the eve of the Orléans Estates of 1560. In 1573 he became a maître des requêtes
to the Duke of Anjou, and afterwards published a treatise on price inflation (Grimaudet 1576; see
Moizard 1930: 158–61, 166, 220, et passim).
64 Jean Bodin

to command the most characteristically ‘Angevin’ eloquence of Parisian avocats.56 It

was an opinion which Bodin endorsed at the opening of his letter, observing how
their friends had been ‘greatly excited by your eloquence and polished legal
doctrine’, and adding that ‘no one could be dearer than you to me’. In the
circumstances of the time, the sentiments expressed in the body of the letter put
friendship, regard, and affection to the test. They did so the more especially in the
light of Bautru’s father’s hesitations, and of the fact that the name of Jean Bautru de
Matras does not figure in the list of Paris avocats who reaffirmed their allegiance to
the Catholic faith in 1562 (cf. above, p. 53; Delachenal 1885: 399–406).
‘We differ’, acknowledged Bodin, ‘in our opinions on religious matters’. He had
previously urged Bautru not to be ‘deceived by differences in religious sentiments’:
for was not ‘true religion (vera religio)’ simply ‘the turning of the purified mind
towards the true God’?57 But Bautru had now written ‘privately to inveigh against
my religion, or, rather, that of Christ (ut meam vel potius Christi religionem latenter
increpare)’ as the cause of the civil war, the ‘first principle’ from which conflict had
erupted. Yet, Bodin argued, there could be no stronger proof of true religion than
the fact that ‘the forces of men conspire to assail it’. Had not Christ himself warned
that he came ‘not to unite in peace, but to disseminate wars’: wars in a world which
had suffered so long from ‘possession by a demon (κακοδαὶμονα)’?58 That same
possessor’s overthrow and the effort to achieve it were the real causes of war. On the
other hand, ‘we are agreed on this (illud autem constat inter nos)’: that man created
by God with such splendid virtues had fallen so far into disgrace that through no
incentives nor fears could his condition be remedied. So, God resorted to men of
the highest virtue (summam virtutem) to rescue errant humankind. Hence, over two
thousand years the roles of prophets from the generation of Adam onwards, to say
nothing of an array of Greek and Roman philosophers and statesmen. Indeed, none
other than Plato had declared that the cult of one God and the power of human-
kind’s immortal souls should be believed ‘until somebody pre-eminent presented
himself in more holy fashion (se praestantior sacratius aliquid afferret)’. And ‘this was
Christ who, descending from heaven to earth and securing sacred fires as from the
fennel of immortal Athena, breathed upon chosen men of unpolluted life’59 so that
he might eliminate superstition and lead corrupted humankind ‘to the true cult of

56 Bayle 1740: I. 483, citing Antoine Loisel. Scholars have mostly dated the famous letter to

1561–3: see Chauviré 1929: 434; Mesnard 1929: 79 agreeing with Bayle 1740; and Mesnard 1951:
XVI. See also Caprariis 1959: 328. A case for redating it to 1569 is made by Rose 1976, on the grounds
(a) that in it Bodin deviated from his customary refusal to sanction religious war; (b) that its
composition in 1569 would have coincided with Bodin’s alleged refusal of the oath of catholicity in
that year; and (c) that the later date would also coincide, roughly, with his alleged ‘spiritual conversion’
in 1567. These arguments are to a degree circular. For further comment on the refusal of the oath and
Bodin’s ‘conversion’ or ‘sacrifice’ of his soul see Chapters V.1 (p. 94) and VI.6 (p. 156).
57 ‘purgatae mentis in Deum verum conversionem’ (Chauviré 1914a: 522). Cf. Rose 1980b: 79,

where ‘verum’ is replaced by ‘veram’.

58 Cf. Rose 1980a: 188, n. 134, on the term’s frequent occurrence in the writings of Philo Judaeus,

and others too.

59 ‘is erat Christus qui, caelo delapsus in terras, quasi ferula Palladis aeternae sacros ignes arripiens

selectos vitae purioris homines afflavit’. Bodin’s association of fennel with Athena seems erroneous: cf.
Mesnard 1929: 85.
 Law and History 65

the most powerful God (ad verum praepotentis Dei cultum)’. Although he and his
followers ‘suffered the most cruel and humiliating form of torture’, such was the
strength of the teaching he established that it survived three centuries of persecu-
tion. Finally, Constantine and his converted legions overthrew Christianity’s
enemies. Before him, Moses and Judas Maccabaeus had not hesitated to do
likewise, destroying the most flourishing temples and towns in order, with God’s
permission, to extirpate idolatry.
Here then, insists Bodin, is the cause of holy war. Yet ‘those who oppose us (qui
nos oppugnant)’ point to fifteen hundred years’ promotion of the cure of souls
through the cult of images, the mass, the eucharist, the doctrine of purgatory. All
this, declares the Angevin, is error, and impious error at that. There were no such
images before the eighth century, no άρτολατρεία60 for six centuries, no canoniza-
tion of mortals for four hundred years; and Greeks and Asiatics have always
abhorred the flames of purgatory. The fact is, he continues, that for six centuries
men have lived in impious superstition. Should responsibility for that crime be laid
upon God? Did God permit all humankind to live ‘in servitude to demonic
possession (κακοδαιμο̉νων λατρεια̉ καὶ δουλεία)’ for thousands of years before
Christ? The proposition is riddled with contradictions and, clearly, absurd. Recog-
nizing as much, Proculus, who argued for the eternity of the world, denied that the
eternal God could for so long have begrudged humankind the many benefits now
to be seen around us.
The Letter to Bautru, one in a series of private communications constituting an
ongoing debate between the correspondents, is obviously not to be construed as a
rounded statement of Bodin’s religious beliefs. The one indisputable feature of it is
that he chose to air uninhibitedly to Bautru opinions seriously antagonistic towards
the rites and rituals of the Roman Catholic Church. In much of the rest of it his
meaning seems veiled, or deliberately ambiguous. His definition of the expression
‘vera religio’ may refer to the teaching of Jewish, to Neoplatonist, or to Christian
authorities.61 The phrase ‘Christi religionem’ may signify Christianity—or even, if
taken literally, the religion to which Christ himself subscribed. The account of
Christ is extraordinarily equivocal. On the face of it, he appears as the culmination
of a sequence of prophets, philosophers, and statesmen, in a passage which may
reflect Carmelite teaching on the biblical prophetic tradition (Rose 1980a: 189).
Scrutinized more closely, the account does not in fact present him as simply
another prophet. Christ is ‘pre-eminent’, ‘most holy’, ‘descended from heaven’,
bringer of fire, and ‘the breath of life’. The imagery appears to link him explicitly
with the myth of Prometheus who stole fire from the gods in a giant fennel stalk,
suffered thereafter torments sometimes deemed akin to crucifixion, and, according
to some versions of the myth,62 created man. Yet the same imagery has biblical

60 Literally, ‘service by bread’—a dismissive reference to the eucharist.

61 The case for Jewish reference, in particular Philo, is insistently argued by Paul Rose (1980a: 159
sqq.). For a Neoplatonic origin, see Kristeller 1953: 230–4, 323–7; cf. Rose 1980a: 163, n. 34. But cf.
also Augustine, De vera religione, repeatedly emphasizing the ‘purified mind’ (e.g. ss. 8, 39, 129),
though in Augustinian theology the requisite conversion springs from divine grace.
62 For instance, Ovid, Metamorphoses, i.81.
66 Jean Bodin

resonances, from the account in the Old Testament of the creation of Adam, to the
narrative in the New Testament of the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the
apostles.63 The seeming justification of religious war in the name of Christ turns
into an explanation of it in terms of humankind’s inherent sinfulness, in turn
explained demonologically. The allusion to original sin, a topic upon which Bodin
and Bautru apparently agree, distinguishes their position from that of Judaism and
gives it again an Augustinian colour. But entirely absent from the letter are key and
controversial elements of the leading reformed creeds. There is no mention of
justification by faith, of predestination, of free will—nor even of will at all,
astonishingly in the light of leading ideas around which Bodin constructed so
much of his reasoning elsewhere. A product of Bodin’s restless intelligence and
enthusiasm for debate, this letter shows him darting almost at random around a
variety of theological and philosophical traditions and positions whilst settling
definitively upon none.

I V . 4 THE METHODUS

Still ruminating on theological and philosophical questions, still pondering the

properties of universal law whilst in the meantime formulating professional opin-
ions and offering counsel on legal issues,64 Bodin in 1566 published the first of his
five major works, the Methodus ad facilem cognitionem historiarum. In dedicating it
to Jean Tessier, président des enquêtes, he declared his purpose in producing it:
in history the best part of universal law lies hidden; and from it are derived what is of
great weight and moment for the best adjudication of laws, the customs of peoples, and
the beginnings, growths, conditions, changes, ends of all commonwealths.65
Insights of that order were not to be derived simply through contemplation of laws
as such, and least of all from the effusions of authorities who ‘seem to have spent all
their time in writing and reserved none for reading (omne suum tempus in scribendo
posuisse, nihil ad legendum reservasse videantur)’ (1566: sig.[iiij vo]). There was
more. In Bodin’s view, the study of history, writ large, furnished a means whereby
‘we may return to that original relationship which we once had with God (ad eam,
quae nobis est cum Deo, cognationem ac generis stirpem aliquando redeamus)’ (1566:
11). The phrase echoed the objective associated with ‘true religion’ and elevated to
a new plane the potential ascribed to the outcomes of historical study.

63 Thus Genesis ii.7: ‘the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his

nostrils the breath of life’; and Acts ii.2: ‘there appeared unto them cloven tongues, like as of fire’.
64 See, for instance, Garosci 1975; Quaglioni 1999b.
65 ‘in historia iuris universi pars optima latet: quodque ad leges optime diiudicandas magni ponderis est

ac momenti, mores populorum, ac rerum omnium publicarum initia, incrementa, status, conversiones, exitus
ab ea deriuantur’ (1566: sig. **aij vo). In what follows the 1566 edition is treated as the base text with
reference as appropriate to that of 1572. All translations are my own, but I must acknowledge my
indebtedness to the English translation by Beatrice Reynolds (1969) from which, in common with all
Anglo-Saxon students of Bodin’s Methodus, I have derived invaluable guidance.
 Law and History 67

Long before Bodin, others had sought means of organizing the entire range of
knowledge along ‘encyclopaedic’ lines. And in airing enthusiasm for historical
study, the Angevin was far from alone (see Levi 1976: 174; Stegmann 1976:
224). Treated, more or less from Aristotle onwards, as a mode of rhetorical writing
with descriptive and persuasive rather than explanatory power, history had devel-
oped in humanist hands into a subject better-equipped for the elevated role Bodin
envisaged.66 Whilst still widely seen as concerned with ‘truthful and lucid narration
(vera narratio)’, as a storehouse of exempla with moral significance and didactic
capacity, its scope and purposes were interpreted more broadly. In general, scho-
lastics had categorized it as suited to the recounting of events or civil affairs,
concerned with particulars rather than universals, and therefore inferior to phil-
osophy. Now, however, writers were prepared to recognize the uses of historia as a
distinct mode of ‘enquiry’, a recognition as ancient as Herodotus’ interpretation of
the term (ἱστορία). Those uses might not include imaginative reconstruction of
past events and circumstances considered ‘for their own sake’. They did include
study of natural phenomena; and historical enquiry could also yield insights into
the human condition in its cosmic setting beyond those attainable through the
mere recounting of events (narratio res gestae) on the one hand or simply through
ratiocination on the other. Perhaps the grandest claims of all were expressed not by
Bodin, but by his contemporary and compatriot François Baudouin, fellow advo-
cate of the importance of history for the proper interpretation of law and of much
else besides. In Baudouin’s words,
To speak of history is to speak of the complete and perfect: in which I say knowledge of
divine providence is to be had, in order that we may rightly observe the greatest matters
in the whole world, and indeed divine intermingled with human [matters] in admir-
able order and method [ratio].67
Hand in hand with elevation of its purposes and enlargement of its scope went
closer attention to and refinement of the techniques of historical study. The origins
of these developments lay to a large degree in the subject’s disciplinary associations,
its status in relation to rhetoric and the latter’s counterpart, dialectic.68 If history
was an ars, the ars historica, this meant, as Aristotle had taught, that its concern was
after all with the general, or universal, and not with the particular, or individual. It
was also creative, concerned with making (ποιητική) in accordance with reason
(λόγου),69 and so had much in common with other artes. Thus, the ars dictaminis
specified the techniques of letter-writing; the ars poetica, those of verse compo-
sition; the ars memoriae, those of ordering, storing, and recalling information. The

66 For a challenging evaluation of the relation between classical rhetoric and historiography in the

Middle Ages, Kempshall 2011; and, for fresh perspectives on early modern developments, Pomata and
Siraisi 2005.
67 ‘cum de historia loquor, de integra & perfecta loquor: in quo dico divinae providentiae rationem

habendam esse, ut recte spectemus res in orbe terrarum maximas, & quidem divinas cum humanis
admirabili ordine atque ratione commixtas’ (Baudouin 1561: 9). On Baudouin see especially Kelley
(1964).
68 See Aristotle, Rhetoric, 1354a1: ‘Rhetoric is the counterpart of dialectic’.
69 Aristotle, Metaphysics, 981a15–16; Nicomachean Ethics, 1140a20–1.
68 Jean Bodin

educational orientation of such skills emerged plainly enough from the account of
the ars iuris civilis offered by Jean de Coras, perhaps the most influential teacher in
the Toulouse Law Faculty during Bodin’s student years. Coras explained how,
having found the civil law ‘scattered and diffuse’, he had ‘sorted it into clear
categories (in certa genera coacturum)’ furnished likewise with ‘clear markers and
notes (evidentia signa talesque notas)’, and so had ‘rendered it into an ars’, such that
anyone might be able to find his way through it ‘with little labour and no error
(parvo labore nulloque errore)’. The emphasis lay firmly upon clarity and order. And
beyond ars as such there was ‘method (methodus)’, which Coras explained as
‘nothing other than a concise and compendious mode of teaching by means of a
rational system through which all parts of the art are plainly discovered, separated
out, and correctly and judiciously taught’.70
Coras’s prescription was geared to the arranging of material by topics, or loci,
techniques sufficiently familiar to rhetoricians as also to dialecticians.71 While
versions of recommended loci might differ from authority to authority, from
Aristotle to Cicero, from Rudolph Agricola to Peter Ramus, the methodology itself
was warmly advocated on all sides and diligently practised by the latter’s contem-
poraries.72 It was a methodology to the use of which Bodin warmly subscribed, as
his work on Oppian had already shown, and as his Methodus both advocated and
demonstrated afresh.73 It tallied with the techniques of the ars memoriae, again a
branch of classical rhetoric. Mnemonic techniques, deployed architecturally in
terms of the construction and stocking of loci, were developed by Renaissance
thinkers through the image of the theatre into a vehicle not only for the recall of
‘historical spectacles (historica spectacula)’ as Baudouin observed, but even for
correlating the microcosm of the human mind with the universal or cosmic
macrocosm.74 In respect of history, they tallied also with a shift of pedagogic
emphasis, from training in the construction of historical narrative in emulation
of classical models, to instruction on how to organize, to assimilate, and to assess
the materials of which the historical record was constructed, as well as to discern
the factors that informed it. When Bodin observed that too much energy had
been expended, especially by legal commentators, upon writing and too little
upon reading, he had in mind orderly and critical reading. For the latter purpose
history was now furnished with rules which embraced critical evaluation of
source materials.75 In the middle decades of the sixteenth century such a message
was vigorously canvassed (Kelley 2005: 217). According to the Lyon scholar

70 ‘methodum aliud esse nihil quam brevem quandam et compendiosam cum ratione docendi viam,

qua omnes artis partes subtiliter inveniuntur et inventae recto iudicio distinguuntur et docentur’ (Coras
1582: I.ix (p. 29)).
71 Examples in Grafton 2005. Notable amongst them was, the Rostock Professor of Rhetoric,

David Chytraeus, in his De lectione historiarum recte instituenda (1563).

72 On comparative treatment of loci see Vasoli 1968: 377; Mack 1993: 147.
73 Advocacy of the method is explicit in the third chapter: ‘De locis historiarum recte instituendis’.
74 Yates 1966: 3, 157–8. Cf. Bernheimer 1956: 230; Baudouin 1561: especially 9, 76–7, alluding

to the seating of spectators in the Roman theatre.

75 Franklin 1963; Kessler 1982, quoting (p. 71) Giovanni Antonio Viperano, De scribenda historia

liber (1569); cf. Cotroneo 1971: 15.

 Law and History 69

Christophe Milieu, it was ‘by observation, reading and listening’ that knowledge
was to be gained. Discipline, selectivity, and conciseness were essential: it was all
too easy ‘to fill up boundlessly in many particular loci the kinds of things from so
many writers which today can be found in all varieties and abundance’. And no less
important was it that in reading recommended writers ‘I should have discerned by
the most trustworthy evidences of our elders the best that could be verified
(locupletissimis veterum atque nostrorum hominum testimoniis optime comprobari
posse deprehendissem)’.76
Repeatedly stressing the uses of historical studies, Milieu classified them in three
principal modes, to be pursued progressively: nature, practical judgement (pruden-
tia), and wisdom (sapientia).77 It was a model to which Bodin’s account in his
Methodus partly conformed. Beginning in approved Ramist fashion with a defin-
ition (quid historia sit), he too identified three kinds (genera) of history: human,
natural, and divine. Each of these yielded a particular virtue—respectively, pru-
dence, knowledge, (scientia), piety (religio); and together they created ‘true wisdom
(vera sapientia)’.78 In his present work Bodin proposed to deal mainly with human
history, an area of study which, it seemed, would disclose how institutions were
shaped and affairs driven ‘by human will (ab hominum voluntate)’, and how error
would ensue unless will were guided ‘by correct reasoning (a recta ratione)’ (1566:
10–12). But there was more to the method of the Methodus than simply a
delineation of subject areas and identification of the principal determinants of
human affairs.79
Method had its distinctive agenda, its specific procedures.80 In accordance with
the artes which it served, its concern was with universals: ‘someone writing a
method ought to master universals, not particulars’.81 An orderly approach was
essential, owing to the sheer quantity and variety of historical materials and
writings. This meant resorting to ‘that pre-eminent mistress of the teaching of
the arts, analysis (praestans illa docendarum artium magistra, quae dicitur analysis)’
(1566: 15). Analysis, which ‘shows how to cut into parts’ and then redivide with a
view to revealing ‘the cohesion of the whole and the parts in, as it were, mutual
harmony (partium coherentiam & quasi concentum inter ipsa)’ (1566: 15), was
closely akin to method itself.82 It was not, however, method’s point of departure.

76 Milieu 1551: 306, 307, 309. On note-taking see Blair 2010: 62–106.
77 Cf. humanist ideas of philosophia triformia: sapientia, scientia, and prudentia (Rice Jr 1958: 79).
78 Cf. in this chapter (p. 73) for an alternative account of these virtues in relation to the ‘ordering of

souls’.
79 The most searching and informative study of ‘method’ in the case of Bodin and more widely too

is Couzinet 1996a.
80 Cf. Melanchthon 1547/1846: XIII. cols 573–8, treating method as a component of dialectic and

on the basis of ten Aristotelian questions; also Aconcio 1558/1582, approaching it as a branch of logic
and in terms of the same set of questions. My view differs to some extent from that of Vasoli 1974 in
his richly learned survey of the origins of method in relation to humanist views of rhetoric and dialectic.
81 ‘quoniam methodum scribentem decet universa non singula complecti’ (1566: 283). Cf. 1566: 412:

‘pursuit of details is not for someone who would write a method (singula persequi non est eius qui
methodum scribat)’.
82 Cf. Ramus 1594: 187–8: ‘In methodo . . . methodi analysis est’.
70 Jean Bodin

In line with Bodin’s approach to history, it was definition that furnished his
method’s starting point and also was regularly invoked afresh as he proceeded
from topic to topic.83 Nowhere was definition more overtly employed than in the
chapter ‘on the condition of commonwealths (de statu rerumpublicarum’). Thus,
‘having dealt with “citizen” by definition, we should also define “magistrate”’; then
‘let us come to the definition of supreme authority [sovereignty]’; and so on.84
By Coras’s account, method also involved discovery (inventio) of materials. But
in Bodin’s opinion there were in the fields of law and history alike far too many
would-be ‘discoverers of things (rerum inuentores)’ (1566: sig. *ijvo). In any case,
that function was inherent to the very nature of history itself, the ‘discoverer and
preserver (inuentrix & conseruatrix)’ especially of those arts ‘which are located in
[the topic of] doing or performing (quae in agendo positae sunt)’.85 For Bodin’s
purposes, therefore, the materials of history were already discovered, or given, in the
histories to which he proposed to apply his method. What was needed was
organization of those multitudinous and diffuse materials: their arranging in
order (ordine) and ‘proper placing by topics (locis recte instituendis)’ (1566: 15,
24). In terms of rhetorical and dialectic method, this was principally an exercise in
dispositio, a procedure which according to Ramist principles should consist of
definitions and divisions and should involve progression from the general to the
particular (Mack 1993: 338). The procedure was exemplified, first and foremost, in
the ‘method of nature’ which took as its point of departure ‘that which is absolutely
the most evident and best known’ and yielded inter alia knowledge of ‘causes’
(Ramus 1555: 120). Repeatedly airing his concern with ‘universals’, advocating
explicitly the merits of ‘descending by degrees from the general to the particular (ab
universis paulatim ad singula delabemur)’ (1566: 17), Bodin appeared to declare a
preference for this approach. In fact, this was not so. In relation to human history, a
simple deployment of the ‘method of nature’ would not do.
Human history, flowing largely from the self-contradictory and inconclusive will
of men, was riddled with errors and false perceptions, a seemingly confused and
confusing mass of particulars. A reader might familiarize himself with such material,
but owing to ‘the weakness of our senses (sensuum impedimentis)’ could arrive at an
understanding of it only with ‘the guidance to be found in nature, to wit right
reason (a natura duce, id est recta ratione)’ (1566: 12). But the guidance of natural
reason was not to be equated with the ‘method of nature’, Ramist style. What
informed Bodin’s thinking at this juncture was a specifically Aristotelian procedure:
that the ‘natural way’ of seeking understanding was ‘to start from the things which

83 The procedure, of definition accompanied by division, is closely akin to Socrates’s

recommendation in Plato’s Phaedrus, 265c–266c. It must be noted, however, that concern with
definition ‘was characteristic of medieval schools in general, and of law faculties and practising
lawyers in particular’ (Coleman 2000: II. 209).
84 ‘Explicata definitione ciuis, magistratum quoque definiamus’; ‘Veniamus ad imperij summi

definitionem’ (1566: 195, 199).

85 The allusion is to actus, one of the loci tabulated by Rudolph Agricola 1535: I.iv (p. 26), and

described in I.xii (pp. 54–7). The topic actus does not figure in the tables compiled by Ramus (see, for
instance, Ramus 1569/1970: 609).
 Law and History 71

are more knowable and clear to us and proceed towards those which are clearer and
more knowable by nature’, the latter being the ‘causes or first principles’ of the
objects of enquiry. As Aristotle had explained,
what is to us plain and clear at first is rather confused masses, the elements and
principles of which become known to us later by analysis. Thus we must advance
from universals to particulars; for it is a whole that is more knowable to sense-
perception, and a universal is a kind of whole, comprehending many things within
it, like parts.86
Such were the ‘universals’ from which Bodin aimed to begin, as distinct from the
‘principles’ at which, by ‘analysis’, he hoped in due course to arrive as he progressed
through the various levels of history. Yet this acceptance of Aristotelian postulates
did not entail abandonment of Ramist methodology. On the contrary: dialectic
Ramist-style offered an alternative to the ‘method of nature’. This was the ‘method
of prudence’, to the application of which history with its uncertainties and plethora
of information was peculiarly suited. Unlike that of ‘nature’, the ‘method of
prudence’ relied not upon absolute ‘precepts of doctrine’, but upon ‘judgement
of opinion’—and for Bodin this signified cultivation of iudicium in a manner
highly relevant to the needs of persons who engaged in public affairs.87
In Bodin’s view, the reading of history, properly pursued, furnished through the
use of natural reason a link between the sphere of the senses (where untutored
humankind must flounder) and the sphere of causes (where the higher intelligences
held sway). It could be argued that his position entailed implicit acceptance of
objections raised to Ramist claims by none other than Adrien Turnèbe: that
Ramus’s insistence upon the sufficiency of a single, universal ‘method’ for the
ordering of knowledge was unsound and misleading, that there were ‘three ways of
teaching which would pursue and deliver order (tres esse docendi vias, quae ordinem
sequantur & seruent)’ (Turnèbe 1600: 3). But more significant than questions of
unity or plurality of method was the centrality of ‘reason’ to Bodin’s approach.
Again and again he declared that in debate reliance should be placed rather upon
reason than upon authority, that one must ‘show by reasons, not by authority,
whether anything is the case (rationibus oportet quare quicque ita sit docere, non
auctoritate)’ (1566: 218, cf. 178–9). A pervasive humanist contention reverberated
in such assertions; yet even here echoes of the voice of Aristotle might still be heard,
that ‘when there is demonstration, a man who has not got an account of the reason
why does not have understanding’ (Posterior Analytics 74b27). Of course, what
Bodin had in view was scarcely demonstratio in the Aristotelian sense, a strict mode
of logical reasoning, best exemplified in the syllogism, which the Angevin sardon-
ically disparaged.88 But to discount modes of reasoning which aimed at absolute

86 Aristotle, Physics, 184a22–26; cf. Posterior Analytics, 71b34–72a6. Cf. Kessler 1997: 116;

Couzinet 2013: 52.

87 For the ‘methode de prudence’, Ramus 1555: 128, (where ‘science’ in line 12 should evidently read

‘prudence’); Bodin 1566: 13, for play on the key term ‘prudentia’.
88 ‘For demonstrations permit no one to doubt, but are by their own light so clear that they extort

agreement from the unwilling as if they were put to the question [i.e. torture] (demonstrationes enim
72 Jean Bodin

certainty as inappropriate to the Methodus’s purposes was not one whit to deny the
indispensability of reason both in the conduct of human affairs as such and in their
historical analysis.
Plainly stated, the purposes of the Methodus were to equip readers to bring
‘a perfect judgement (integrum iudicium)’ (1566: 91) to bear in selecting and
evaluating works of history. This meant attending to the sources of the materials
upon which historians drew (cf. Kessler 1982: 73). Reliance could reasonably be
placed upon testimony grounded in personal experience, the statements of people
who had spent much time on practical or military affairs (1566: 43–4). Such
evidence was especially persuasive when collected at first-hand. It was through
meeting the Swede Gaspar Holster, a red-haired man of medium stature with a
ruddy complexion and ‘sparkling eyes (oculis admodum glaucis)’ (1566: 96), that
Bodin had had his doubts confirmed about beliefs that north Europeans were
characteristically tall, thin, and pale. But, beyond such prima facie or accidental
indicators of trustworthiness, the cultivation of judgement required readers consist-
ently ‘to weigh the truth of histories in reliable scales (historiarum veritatem iustis
ponderibus examinare)’ (1566: 91). And it was those who could claim to have
themselves collected their materials ‘from the public records (e publiis monumentis)’
whose writings warranted ‘the greatest confidence (maior fides)’ (1566: 48). Among
them was Bodin himself: had he not taken certain laws ‘from the record in the originals
(ex archetypis descriptam)’?89 Unfortunately, Bodin’s own scales were not reliable, or
the use he made of them was not consistent. Commenting on information derived
from ‘Berosus the Chaldean’, ‘Manetho the Egyptian’, and ‘Megasthenes the Persian’,
he noted that of their works ‘only small fragments survive, even if these were written by
them (exigua fragmenta restant si modo ab his scripta sunt)’ (1566: 384; cf. Franklin
1963). This did not deter him from citing them repeatedly, and especially on
questions of chronology, on grounds which included their authors’ having had access
as priests to public records and ancient texts.90 Regrettably, the works credited to them
were in large measure forgeries, the inventions of the fifteenth-century Dominican
Giovanni Nanni (Annius) of Viterbo—the very authority from whom Bodin derived
without acknowledgement his principal rules for the evaluating of histories, chief
among them the importance of public records.91
Even so, history, with its components selected, sifted, ordered, and evaluated by
the method of the Methodus, could afford the reader remarkable intellectual and
spiritual benefits. Bodin summarized these as a series of triads. They included the
ability to perceive the unity and harmony of the three modes of history itself,
human, natural, and divine; the three varieties of humankind (triplex hoc hominum

neminem dubitare patiuntur, sed sua luce tam perspicuae sunt, ut velut adhibita quaestione ab inuitis
extorqueant assensionem’ (1566: 364).
89 1572: 403. For comment on differences between the editions of 1566 and 1572 see

Chapter IV.4 (p. 87 sqq.).

90 1566: 48. Cf. Republica 1586: 422: ‘Berosus verissimus Caldaicarum antiquitatum interpres’.
91 Grafton 1990 passim; Grafton 1991: 80; Grafton 1993: 83–4; Grafton 2007: 166. Baudouin,

whose work had appeared five years before Bodin’s Methodus, was sufficiently distrustful of both
Annius and Berosus: Baudouin 1561: 48; see Grafton 2007: 99–101.
 Law and History 73

genus), respectively in the northern, southern, or ‘middle regions’; and the ‘three-
fold order of souls (triplex animorum ordo)’. These orders had each its specific
power: knowledge or wisdom (vim scientiae) which enabled ‘the turning of men’s
purified minds towards God (puras hominum mentes in Deum conuertere)’; prudence
(vim prudentiae) which facilitated political management (republicas moderari); and
the arts (vim artis), here equated with productive activity (effectio) which embraced
such fundamental considerations as matter and form.92 The key to an historical
understanding of the interrelations of all these lay again in method, but beyond the
dialectical. If any art was essential to history, then ‘geography should indeed be seen
as supremely necessary (profecto geographia summè necessaria videatur)’ (1566: 21).
No less important was the relationship of history to cosmography, a relationship so
intimate ‘that the one would seem to be part of the other (ut aliena alterius pars esse
videatur)’ (1566: 21). As for mathematics, the ‘innermost philosophy’93 (1566:
230), here was a method ‘free from the admixture of matter (a concretione materiae
libera)’ and so, it would seem, closest to the divine.94 Unlike dialectic, all these were
representational: all were deployed accordingly by Bodin, even though in the
Methodus the theory of representation was not explicitly discussed.95 It nevertheless
underpinned his presentation in several of the key areas of his philosophy as
expounded there.
For the Methodus was, amid much else, a philosophical and a theological treatise.
True, while Bodin aspired ultimately to recover through history humankind’s
relationship with God (1566: 27), his declared intention here was to leave ‘the
divine to the theologians . . . until we shall have been concerned at length with
human actions and their direction (divinum quidem theologis . . . dum in humanis
actionibus earumque praeceptis diu multumque fuerimus exercitati)’ (1566: 13). The
direction of human affairs was a matter of government and politics, subjects with
which he was indeed greatly concerned and to which he devoted his book’s longest
chapter. Yet in treating those very subjects he was driven to offer key observations
on the ultimate and overriding role of God. Against Epicureans who held human
affairs to be governed by chance (temere), against Stoics with their deterministic
belief in an inexorable fate (inviolabili fata), Bodin levelled his conviction that those
same affairs were ‘governed by God’s majesty and practical judgement (Dei maies-
tate ac prudentia gubernari)’—were subject, inescapably, to the direction of ‘divine

92 1566: 136. For other philosophical triads cf. Plato, Republic, ss. 429–42; and p. 69 in this

section.
93 For the expression ‘ex intima philosophia’ cf. Cicero, De legibus, I.v.17, where Atticus observes

how Marcus derives the ‘science of law’ not from laws such as ‘the praetor’s edict’ or the ‘twelve tables’,
but ‘from the deepest mysteries of philosophy’. Evidently, for Bodin it is in mathematics that these
‘deepest mysteries’ reside.
94 1566: 14; 1572: 18. For the flourishing of mathematics in mid-sixteenth-century France and

Ramus’s role in promoting it, Desan 1987: 23, and Desan 1993: 150–2.
95 See Couzinet 1996a: 253–67, for discussion of the Stoic doctrine of φαντασία (imagination) in

relation to verbal or graphic representation of phenomena; cf. Bodin, on how historians taking proper
account of cosmography need ‘an image of the whole universe (mundi totius imaginem)’ captured ‘in a
small picture (brevi tabula)’ (1566: 21).
74 Jean Bodin

practical judgement (prudentia divina)’.96 The terminology, thus reiterated, was

profoundly revealing. Bodin’s God, by the Angevin’s own account, was no discon-
nected entity, but actively directed human affairs in the manner of a ruler exercising
the very quality (prudentia) derivable through engagement with human history.
Furthermore, that same God was the ‘father of nature (naturae parens)’ and ‘ordains
the laws of nature (naturae leges ipse iusserit)’; yet he himself was ‘released from the
laws of nature (naturae legibus solutum)’ and could in fact ‘alter these at will
(voluntate arbitrioque suo interdum mutat)’.97 Awareness of the Being who exercised
the divine will, who exploited its freedom and its interventionist capability, lay—
and continued to lie—at the heart of Bodin’s cosmic and political vision.98
That vision, erected upon propositions of divine voluntarism and intervention-
ism, embraced questions of fundamental importance to universal history writ large:
the origin of the universe and the nature of time.99 Recurrences and regularities in
time’s passage might, it was widely supposed, disclose something of the pattern of
divine governance. The supposition was worth testing, and Bodin, by no means
immune to the ‘passion for calculating’100 to which humanist scholars were much
given, was eager to test it. He indulged that passion in the context of his chapter
‘On the condition of commonwealths (De statu rerumpublicarum)’, before expati-
ating explicitly upon the issue of chronology in his work’s penultimate chapter, ‘On
the computation of universal time (De temporis universi ratione)’. In the former he
examined ‘whether governmental changes could be interpreted on the basis of
Pythagorean numbers (utrum ex numeris Pythagoricis conversiones imperiorum haberi
possint)’ (1566: 261), concluding that ‘human affairs do not occur fortuitously as
the Epicureans contend nor by inviolable fate as the Stoics [hold], but by the
practical wisdom [prudentia] of a divinity’ which, however orderly its arrangements,
‘nevertheless changes them voluntarily and by its own free will (nihilominus eas
voluntate arbitrioque suo interdum mutat)’ (1566: 279). In the latter, he undertook
in a comparative exercise conducted with characteristic vigour and acerbity to
expose discrepancies and contradictions between the calculations of an array of
ancient authorities. These he juxtaposed with evaluative comments about the
opinions of an ecumenical selection of contemporary scholars, remarking respect-
fully on the Lutheran Johann Funck and the Augustinian Onofrio Panvinio,
dismissively on Joseph Scaliger who ‘was often ignorant of such matters and indeed
erred childishly’ (1566: 383). His object in this chapter was to determine the dates

96 1566: 265, 279. For Bodin’s earlier disparagement of the Epicureans and Stoics cf. above,

Chapter III.3 (p. 47). For comparison of Bodin’s views on chance or fortune with those of Machiavelli
and Montaigne, see Couzinet 2008.
97 1566: 336, 279.
98 Cf. the interventionist Hebrew God of the Torah and the prophets: for example, Isaiah 46:

‘I have spoken and I bring it about. I have planned things and will do them’.
99 On such questions, vigorously debated in scholastic circles since the Condemnation of 1277

(see Chapter II.2 (p. 9), Bodin’s opinion stands in an Augustinian line of descent, as distinct from
Aristotelian/Averroist positions holding the world eternal, denying creation ex nihilo, denying the
immortality of individual soul, and positing unicity of the intellect.
100 ‘cacoethes computandi’: Anthony Grafton’s adaptation of a phrase of Bernard Guenée’s (Grafton

1985: 131).
 Law and History 75

of some principal events in human history, and above all to discover the age of the
world. This he estimated to be 5,527 years from the origin of the universe to 1565,
the date of writing (1566: 392). But such a finding rested upon a controversial
premise: that the universe had in fact begun within measurable time or at least
coincidentally with time’s own commencement.
On this question Plato had offered an elaborate and influential myth, recounting
how universe and time were alike created by acts of divine will whereby the physical
or material world, modelled on an immaterial world of ideas, was contained within
an invisible, rational, and harmonious soul (Plato, Timaeus, 27D–38C). Aristotle
had presented a different view: ‘the heaven as a whole neither came into being nor
admits of destruction . . . but is one and eternal, with no end or beginning of its
total duration, containing and embracing in itself the infinity of time’ (On the
Heavens 283b27–9). Grounded as it was rather upon opinion than upon logical
demonstration, the Aristotelian position excited vigorous comment and debate, in
Christian Europe and in the Arab world. Two treatises in particular stimulated the
discussion afresh in the decades following their appearance in the thirteenth
century: the Latin version of the Guide of the Perplexed (Dux neutrorum sive
dubitorum) by the twelfth-century Jewish philosopher and physician Moses
Maimonides; and Thomas Aquinas’s On the Eternity of the World (De aeternitate
mundi). Himself highly influential, Aquinas had attended closely to Maimonides’s
analysis, as did virtually all the leading scholastics of his day. Other prominent
participants in the debate were the neo-Augustinian Henry of Ghent and the
resolute Aristotelian Godfrey of Fontaines, thinkers whose views had engaged the
attention of John Baconthorpe, the Carmelites’ official doctor.101 The debates had
precipitated turmoil in the University of Paris, and continued to rumble on into the
sixteenth century. In the course of his student career Bodin can scarcely have
avoided exposure to the views of the later medieval participants (cf. Isnardi
Parente 1973). But, apart from a single reference to Aquinas, those participants
received no explicit mention in the treatment of the questions concerning creation
and time to which he devoted the eighth chapter of his Methodus, and scarcely any
in the entire work.102
His responses to those questions shed further light upon his view of God,
upon his thinking in relation to basic theological and philosophical issues at this
stage of his development, and upon his mode of argument. As with so much else, he
presented much of his view in the form of a debate with Aristotle, cited almost a
hundred times in the Methodus as a whole, including sixteen in the chapter in
question. By Bodin’s account, Aristotle held not only that the universe was eternal
(1566: 363–4), but that it was ‘ruled not by [divine] will, but by necessity
(necessitate mundum, non voluntate regi)’ which bound both nature and God

101 On the medieval debates see especially Davidson 1987; Dales 1990; Dales and Argerami 1991.
102 Cf. Grafton 1985 on Scaliger’s contribution and the debates on chronology that preceded his
pioneering work of 1583 in the field (Opus novum de emendatione temporum). Bodin’s efforts on
chronology in Methodus viii may well have contributed to stoke the contempt which Scaliger expressed
towards him.
76 Jean Bodin

(1566: 365), and yet was the creation of an infinite God even though ‘the infinite
cannot flow from the infinite (infinitum ab infinito fluere non potest)’ (1566: 375).
Others had argued, from the principle that ‘nothing is born of nothing (ex nihilo
nihil gigni)’, that the form of the universe and its component parts originated in
matter which itself had no beginning (1566: 366–8). Others again had maintained
that while creation had occurred within time the universe and time itself would
continue indefinitely (1566: 374, 379). All this and more Bodin deemed to be false.
He supported his position partly through reasoned argument coupled with polemic,
discerning contradictions and absurdities in the propositions of those whom he
would refute; partly through vouching to warranty those same thinkers in other
connections, as well as other authorities; and partly through offering opinions
derived from sources not explicitly cited. The result, of an exercise introduced
with the desideratum ‘that we should contemplate the sacred histories with great
confidence (maiore fiducia sacras historias amplectemur)’ (1566: 363), was an eclectic
array of theological and philosophical assertions often credited to ancient writers
whose own views in turn had been informed by a diversity of intellectual traditions.
In addition to Maimonides, Philo of Alexandria (c.15 BC–45 AD) lent a con-
spicuous Jewish presence to the chapter at issue here. Theirs, however, were no
untrammelled Hebrew contributions. Both exemplified in different ways the
enduring impact of Greek philosophy upon thinkers in the Mediterranean world:
Philo’s thought was powerfully infused by Platonic, Neoplatonic, and Stoic ideas,
whereas for Maimonides the works of Aristotle, products of ‘the extreme of human
intellect’, rendered Plato’s ‘dispensable’ (q. Pines, in Maimonides 1963: lix). Other
influences too informed their ideas in both cases: thus, Maimonides owed to the
central tenet of the Muslim Almohads, under whose rule he spent in Cordoba his
formative years, his own insistence upon ‘the negation of the doctrine of the
corporeality of God and the denial of His having a likeness to created things’.103
Even so, the positions of both of them tallied with Bodin’s fundamental credo, in
divine voluntarism and interventionism, in a God not bound by necessity, a being
at once immanent and transcendent.104 While Philo’s view of the origin of matter
was ambiguous, Maimonides held plainly that it was God, originator of form, who
brought matter ‘into existence from nothing’.105 Yet for Philo and Maimonides
alike the material universe came to be within time, by the will of a benevolent
God:106 a God also of reason to Maimonides’s mind, who continued to ‘watch’
over at least the ‘human species’, while for Philo ‘it stands to reason that what
has been brought into existence should be cared for by its Father and Maker’.107

103 See Stroumsa 2009, especially 53–4, 59, 70–1, quoting Guide of the Perplexed I.35.
104 Wolfson 1948: I. 315; Radice 2009: 128–30; Maimonides 1963: II.17 (p. 297), II.48 (p. 410),
III.17 (pp. 471–2).
105 Radice 2009: 134; Maimonides 1963: I.68, 69 (pp. 165, 169), II.17 (p. 297).
106 Radice 2009: 131–3; Philo, ‘On the account of the world’s creation given by Moses’. 7, 26, 29,

36, 44, in Works I (1929): 8 sqq.; Maimonides (1963) I.74 (pp. 215–22), II.18 (p. 301), III.17
(p. 469), I.68 (p. 165). For a critique of Maimonides’s assessment of Scriptural, Aristotelian, and
Platonic accounts of creation, Davies 2011: ch. 2.
107 Maimonides 1963: III.17 (p. 471); Philo, ‘On the Account of the World’s Creation given by

Moses’. 10 (in Works I (1929): 11).

 Law and History 77

Such indeed was Bodin’s God, a God ‘occupied with caring for the world (in mundi
procuratione versatur)’ (1566: 372) which was created ‘in time (tempore)’ (1566:
381) by ‘the divine will of that most excellent intellect (numen illud praestantissime
mentis)’, the incorporeal being that was creation’s ‘eternal efficient cause (causa
effectrice sempiterna)’.108
That on issues central to his understanding of universal history Bodin should
have attended to the positions of Jewish philosophers need occasion no surprise. In
the universities of Renaissance Europe Hebraism underwent ‘a great flowering’, as
he himself had had ample opportunity to observe during his student days.109 Yet,
frequency of citation notwithstanding, it is easy to overestimate the degree to
which Bodin relied specifically upon Jewish masters.110 The view that the universe
originated not in necessity but in an act of creation was well established amongst
medieval thinkers (Kretzmann 1999: 146). Concepts of the interrelation of will and
intellect or reason, and of God as ‘effective cause’, were the common currency of
scholastic debate, and central to the account of the created world developed by that
most influential of scholastic thinkers, Aquinas (Kretzmann 1999: 34, 240, 250;
Dales 1990). They were debates upon which Bodin implicitly appointed himself
adjudicator whilst omitting to acknowledge scholastic precedents: thus, Aquinas—
whose own indebtedness to Maimonides was considerable—figured only once
amongst citations in the Methodus. In contrast, Bodin dealt explicitly and at length
with debates among early Neoplatonists, reassessing the arguments of the Athenian
Proclus (AD 412–485) in the light of the critique by the Alexandrian John Philo-
ponus (c. AD 490–570), whom he cited repeatedly and with approval.111 As for
Jewish guidance, itself inconsistent, he responded to it ambivalently in his conclu-
sion on the question whether the universe, and time itself, would end.
Here a key consideration lay in Plato’s much-discussed account of how the
visible, material world (mundus) had been created in accordance with God’s ‘model’
of an ideal universe (Timaeus 28A–31B). Careless of Platonic allegory, Maimonides
had maintained that the universe would exist eternally. Philo, on the other hand,
subscribed plainly to the Platonic distinction between an ‘invisible’ universe, object
purely of ‘intellectual apprehension’, and that which was ‘both visible and perceived
by the senses’.112 The former existed apart from time, the latter within it (Radice
2009: 131). Upon a part of this distinction Bodin erected his conclusion, that the
‘celestial matter’ of the universe had ‘a beginning and would at some time perish

108 1566: 376, 370; and 1566: 375, on the absurdity of ascribing to God a corporeal nature (‘Deum

corpoream habere naturam’).

109 Nelson 2010: 9; Horowitz 1982: 112. See Chapter II.1 (pp. 7–8).
110 See Guttmann 1905, especially pt 2, for details of Bodin’s numerous citations from Hebrew

sources in all his major works.

111 In particular, he seized upon Philoponus’s critique of the Neoplatonist Proclus (which

combined Aristotelian logic with dissent from his physics) to suggest that both form and matter
could have flowed from ‘pure privation’—that is, a condition in each case of not having that which it is
capable of receiving: cf. Bodin 1566: 369; Aristotle, Categories 12a26–13a36; De Haas 1997: 286. For
other mentions of Philoponus, Bodin 1566: 367, 370, 380.
112 Wolfson 1948: I. 322–3; Maimonides 1963: II.29 (p. 346). Philo, ‘On Moses’s Account of the

World’s Creation’. 12, in Works I (1929): 13.

78 Jean Bodin

(ut orta fuerit & aliquando sit interitura)’ (1566: 383). Tallying with his insistence
that the universe was indeed created, the position echoed the central argument
developed in the thirteenth century by Henry of Ghent, that a universe created not
from necessity but by God’s free will must exist within time and so be time-limited
(Dales 1990: 159–60). But in his discussion of creation, a discussion congested by
reference, allusion, and its author’s argumentativeness, Bodin failed to follow
through the logic of the position which he seemed to have in view. In it there
was no mention of Plato’s and Philo’s ideal universe. By Bodin’s account, the
process of creation appeared to be one of sequential motion, of ‘intelligences’ that
moved the ‘celestial spheres’ and were themselves divinely driven. Yet God himself
‘does not move and is not moved’. It followed that the universe’s motive force
‘sprang from a mind other than that of God (ab alia mente quam a Deo moueri)’
(1566: 377). But did this not entail the presence of an entity with divine attributes
other than God himself: the Demiurge of Plato or of the Gnostics, the ‘divine logos
(θεοῡ λόγον)’ of Philo,113 the Holy Spirit of Christian theology? These were options
which the Bodin of the Methodus elected not to pursue.
In the course of the work he touched upon more issues which he clearly deemed
important, but upon which, for all his readiness to ascribe opinions to others and to
comment upon them, he declined at this stage of his thinking’s development firmly
to pronounce. One was the question of the nature and status of beings intermediate
between the celestial and terrestrial realms. In addition to ‘the order of those which
are called minor intelligences (ordinem earum quae dicuntur intelligentiarum min-
orum)’ (1566: 376) to which the universe purportedly owed its motive force, the
world might seem ‘to be full of immortal spirits like servants of whom God made
use (plenum esse animorum immortalium quorum ministerio veluti servorum Deus
utatur)’. So Christ ‘wished to signify (innuere voluit)’ (1566: 372), but for the time
being Bodin offered no further comment. Some said that there were evil demons in
northern regions and greater numbers of witches too, but Bodin would ‘pass over
the nature of the demons of each region about which many learned men disagree
(Omitto quam multa magi de natura daemonum utriusque regionis disputant)’ (1566:
149). Most teasing of all was his repeated, if inconsistent, use of a phrase which had
already figured in his letter to Bautru: ‘the turning of the purified mind towards the
true God’.114 Replete with Neoplatonic as well as Judaic resonances, the phrase
appeared to capture the irreducible essentials of religious belief and thereby the
elements of universal religion. But religion of that order required no ‘civil science

113 ‘On the account of the world’s creation given by Moses’. 24 in Works I (1929), p. 20.
114 Cf. Chapter IV.3 (p. 64): ‘purgatae mentis in Deum verum conversionem’. In Methodus (1566) the
phrase figures three times: p. 21 (with neither ‘verum’ nor ‘veram’), and p. 32 (where, perhaps more
significantly, ‘verum / veram’ is replaced by ‘recta’, suggesting the purified mind’s turning ‘directly
towards God’; and on p. 136 without adjectival or adverbial embellishment (‘puras hominum mentes in
Deum conuertere’). The phrase ‘purgata mente’ occurs elsewhere too: e.g., at 1566: 127 (bis), and 163.
For the idea of ‘purification’, or κᾴθαρσις, in Neoplatonist thought, see Plotinus, Ennead 1.2.3.9; cf.
Plato, Phaedo, 69 b; also Porphyry (in Dillon and Gerson 2004: 182 sqq.). NB Bodin’s observation that
the soul ‘is free from all materiality (ab omni concretione libera)’ (1566: 112–13); cf. his later and
distinctive view of the soul’s corporeality (see Blair 1997: 140 sqq.); and cf. Aristotle’s obscure remarks
in On the Soul, 412b10–413a10, but cf. 414a19–21. See also my Conclusion.
 Law and History 79

(sine civili scientia)’ and was best practised ‘in solitude (in solitudine)’ (1566: 32)—
even though a man should endeavour to maintain ‘whatever religion he might have
judged to be true (quancunque religionem veram iudicaret)’ and ‘to overthrow the
contrary (contrarias evertere)’ (1566: 75).
The Methodus, it has been said, was the work ‘of a powerful mind gripped by
enormous visions of intellectual investigation, but as yet unsure of the direction in
which it will ultimately move’ (Baxter 1973: 13). In respect of Bodin’s treatment of
some religious and metaphysical questions, the judgement has merit. In other
respects, it is less persuasive. Second in importance only to his consciousness of
God was his vision of the unity and coherence of the created universe. ‘Particular
histories’ must remain incomprehensible without a grasp of ‘the relation of the whole
universe and the several parts to each other and with the whole (totius universi orbis
partiumque singularum inter se & cum toto rationem)’ (1566: 23). This required a
marriage of geography with cosmography. In reviewing the geography of the parts
and comparing them, Bodin drew heavily upon classical sources. Aristotle, as so
often, had shown the way with his proposition about ‘the distribution of races’ and
their respective capabilities in the differing conditions of the ‘habitable world’
(Politics, 1327b 23–38). Ample material was available in, especially, Hippocrates,
Herodotus, and Diodorus Siculus’s Bibliotheca universalis historiae (Library of uni-
versal history), supplemented from the works of contemporary travellers and histor-
ians such as Leo Africanus or the Venetian Marcus Antonius Sabellicus. In
characteristic fashion, Bodin made far from uncritical use of these, whilst referring
only fleetingly to material derived from the transatlantic discoveries of non-European
peoples—perhaps surprisingly, in view of his readiness to take account of Asiatic and
African conditions and societies in the course of his analysis.115
The analysis deployed several methodologies, two of them identifiable with a
particular classical authority. The first was descriptive. In common with others,
notably the German Sebastian Münster, Bodin found in Strabo a model for a
descriptive approach to the study of regions and their peoples. Such description
might involve an historical perspective: its practitioners, indeed, were dubbed
‘geographistorians (geographistoricos)’ (1566: 86). But this was not enough: witness
Münster’s work, where ‘almost nothing in the world is left to the universe (nihil fere
orbi terrarum universo reliquum sit)’ (1566: 87). Cosmographical analysis must
attend to factors present not only throughout the terrestrial ‘parts’, but also the
cosmos beyond them. Here a second methodological approach came into play. Its
principal exponent was Ptolemy who, early in his Cosmographia, had explained how
it was ‘from mathematical demonstrations (ex mathematicis demonstratonibus)’ that
the correspondence of ‘the whole of the earth (totius terrae)’ with ‘the spheres of the
heavenly bodies (cum sphera caelestium)’ could be shown (Ptolemy 1482: I.ii fo. 3).
Such demonstrations were predominantly geometrical, or spatial. True, both
Strabo and Ptolemy had begun from a broad division of the northern hemisphere
into ‘four territories (quatuor huius hemispherii fines)’ (1566: 93). Bodin aimed for

115 Cf. his adherence to the traditional conception of a geocentric universe despite paying lip service

to the Copernican hypothesis (1566: 136).

80 Jean Bodin

greater precision, dividing and then subdividing ‘the region from the equator to the
pole (regionem ab Aequatore ad Polum)’ into thirty-degree units and subdividing
each of these again ‘because the tropics and the polar circles cut fifteen degrees this
way, seven the other (quod Tropici et Polares circuli quindecim gradus hinc inde
septem secant’ (1566: 95–6). Location within a particular unit in conjunction with
the influence of celestial bodies had vital effects upon the inhabitants (1566: 92).
Hence they exhibited distinct characteristics of all varieties, physical and intellec-
tual, political and moral—characteristics that might arguably be associated, region
by region, with ‘celestial constellations (siderúmque coelestium)’ (1566: 124). To a
critical review of peoples and localities Bodin devoted virtually all the Methodus’s
lengthy fifth chapter. Yet the concerns of cosmographical history were not only
spatial, but chronological. For universal purposes, it was important to establish the
age of the world as well as the precise dates of key events in human history. Despite
contradictions in the records and disagreements between authorities, the objective
was attainable through critically evaluating such evidence and correlating its indi-
cations with ‘the motion of the heavenly spheres (orbium coelestium moto)’. Guid-
ance in this regard was again available from the tables presented by Ptolemy in the
Almagest (1566: 398–9).
But in cosmography even Ptolemy was far from a sufficient guide.116 He and
others erred in supposing that ‘the nature of peoples (populorum naturam)’ could be
discerned simply by ascribing ‘the parts of the zodiac and the triplicities (Zodiaci
partes ac triplicitates)’ to ‘each region (cuique regioni)’ (1566: 169). Ptolemy, indeed,
was prone to error: ‘profoundly perverted in meaning (penitus inversa)’ are his
characterizations of northern and southern Asiatics (1566: 137), and he is able to
explain neither ‘the motion of the fixed stars and of the trepidation (inerrantium
siderum & trepidationis motum)’ nor ‘all the motions of the sun (Solis quidem motus
omnes)’.117 It was not through reliance upon Ptolemy and the astrologers that the
unity and coherence of the created universe could be discerned. Rather, one must
attend to the universally pervasive elements of the material creation—fire, air,
water, earth itself. The quality of these, in terms of temperature and hydrology,
anemography, and geography in the shape of topography or maritime proximity or
mineral resources, did indeed shape the environments and even the physical
characteristics and temperaments of peoples in their respective localities. The
same factors served to link the terrestrial with the celestial sphere. Thus,
the elements are driven about by the power of the celestial bodies. The human body is
held together in the elements, the blood in the body, the spirit in the blood, the soul in
the spirit, the mind in the soul.118

116 The case for Ptolemy’s significance in Bodin’s cosmographical approach is perhaps overstated in

Lestringant 1993: 134, 138; cf. Couzinet 1996a: 212–22.

117 1566: 389. The remark on the movement of the sun comes immediately after a favourable

reference to Copernicus. The comment on ‘trepidation’—a theory concerning variation in the eliptic
longitudes of the stars—seems a curious formulation; cf. North 2008: 194.
118 ‘elementa vi coelestium corporum agitantur. In elementis vero corpus humanum continetur, sanguinis

in corpore, spiritus in sanguine, anima in spiritu, mens in anima’ (1566: 112).

 Law and History 81

Again, it could be argued that particular humours which conditioned human

behaviour were associated with particular organs of the human body, and these
linked in turn to particular planets: ‘Saturn to the spleen, Jupiter to the heart, Mars
to the gall bladder (lieni Saturnum, cordi Iovem, Cystifelli Martem)’ (1566: 135).
In sum, between terrestrial environment, body, soul, and celestial sphere there
obtained a continuum. In this way the unity and coherence of the created universe
were disclosed, and the design through which its component parts would function
harmoniously together.
This, then, was Bodin’s so-called theory of ‘climates’, a term of Greek origin
(κλίμα) signifying ‘region’. While the concept was essential to his analysis, it
involved a great deal more than that. But, despite its emphasis upon the effects of
‘climatic’ considerations and material factors upon the conduct of human beings
and the course of history, his was not a deterministic exposition. ‘I hold’, he
declared, at the opening of the chapter at issue, ‘that the power of locations or
celestial bodies is not such as to generate the inevitable’.119 It was possible by means
of ‘instruction (disciplina)’ to some extent ‘to alter the nature of men (ad immu-
tandam hominum naturam)’ (1566: 166). Furthermore, human beings were not
trapped within their localities: there was ample evidence of migration, of the
intermingling of peoples over time, a consequence which ‘none except the Jews
(nulli praeter Hebraeos)’ had managed to elude (1566: 437). Implicit in such
opinions was a doctrine of human free will which corresponded to the freedom
of the will of the divinity himself. Such a view, increasingly evident in Bodin’s later
works, was also present in the longest chapter of his Methodus, ‘on the condition, or
constitution, of commonwealths (de statu rerumpublicarum’ (1566: 177)—the field
of enquiry with which his name would ultimately be most closely associated.120
Bodin announced his intention in this chapter as being ‘to compare the dispu-
tations of philosophers and historians about the respublica (philosophorum &
historicorum de Republica disputationes . . . comparare)’ (1566: 178). The non-
inclusion of jurists might seem curious, given his abiding concern with ‘universal
law’. To contemporary practitioners, however, law was itself the ‘true philosophy
(vera philosophia)’, even the ‘true theology’—a scientia which, in common with
every true science, dealt in causes and could disclose a universal pattern (Kelley
1976: 274–5). Thus, the engagement of a lawyer such as Bodin with ‘philosophers’
would necessarily embrace juristic evidence and juristic standpoints. Materials of
this kind figured in the chapter at issue to a high degree. It was informed as well by
ethical and judicial themes which Bodin had declared earlier in his work: prudence,
the ‘bond of virtues and knowledge in general (virtutum ac scientiarum commune

119 ‘statuo nullam esse locorum aut caelestium siderum tantam vim quae necessitatem sit allatura’

(1566: 92). Cf. the opinions of the legists Charles de Grassaille and Barthélemy de Chasseneuz
(Kelley 1970: 196).
120 I must reluctantly draw attention to Beatrice Reynolds’s somewhat cavalier treatment of key

terms in this chapter. See, for example, 1969: 155 where imperium is variously translated as ‘power’ and
‘sovereignty’, republica as ‘state, ‘nation’, and ‘government’, and ciuitas as ‘citizenry’, ‘citizen body’, and
‘city-state’; cf. 1566: 180; 1572: [2]33. Even so, it is fair to note inconsistencies in Bodin’s own usage
of the terms at issue.
82 Jean Bodin

vinculum)’; the role of will in universal and human affairs; nature and reason, the
rule of which was ‘the culmination of the whole of justice and all laws (iustitiae
totius ac legum omnium summa)’ (1566: 39, 12, 29). Throughout the chapter
considerations of justice furnished a dominant refrain. In that refrain, and in
contrast to the relative absence of scholastic contributions from his treatment of
debates about creation and time, the concepts and terminology of medieval
jurisprudence featured recurrently. Their presence was predictable enough in the
case of a writer steeped for most of his adult life in the legal lore of Toulouse and the
Parisian courts. Their significance was especially pronounced at key junctures in
Bodin’s discourse: his treatment of the question of the distribution and degrees of
power and authority within the république (see especially Chapter VI.4, 5).
Characteristically combining Ramist and juristic methodologies, Bodin launched
into the chapter with a series of definitions of key terms, regularly citing and
challenging Aristotle’s definitions in the process. He began by defining ‘citizen’, a
topic which Aristotle regarded as of fundamental importance for interpreting the
type and functioning of a political entity (Politics, 1275a1 sqq.). To the Stagyrite the
mark of citizenship was participation in government (1566: 179; cf. Politics,
1276a3–5). The Angevin would have none of that. To him, a citizen, while a
free man, enjoyed ‘the protection of authority (imperii tutela)’ and was subject to its
‘union and conjunction (imperii societas & coniunctio)’.121 This cast citizens rather
as subordinates to rule than as active participants in it. Yet even more significant
than that in Bodin’s schema was the unity without which a respublica could not be.
Thus, a federation of ciuitates could not qualify as a respublica, for the essential
ingredient of ‘union under the same authority (eiusdem imperii coniunctio)’ was
lacking (1566: 194). With its stress on unity the position echoed a key element in
fourteenth-century jurists’ assessments of what constituted a political entity at a
level above that of a merely local group.122
Unacknowledged by Bodin, more affinities between his thought and theirs lay
ahead. To the Angevin lawyer the bonds of ‘unity’ signified law. Political entities of
all descriptions were held together by ‘nothing other than the authority of reason
and the common law of nations’ (non alio quam rationis imperio ac gentium
communi iure)’ (1566: 194). He had therefore to define the indispensable agent
of this cohering component: the magistrate, key player in the Bodinian theatre of
politics and government. Wielding ‘a part of the public authority (imperii publici
partem)’, magistrates had the power of ‘command’, in the form certainly of issuing
ordinances if not of promulgating laws stricto sensu. At the highest level of magis-
tracy, they exercised ultimate authority short of outright rulership: the ‘right of the
sword (gladii ius)’, which ‘jurisconsults’ considered the mark of ‘pure authority
(merum imperium)’ (1566: 195–6). Chief among the jurisconsults in question was

121 1566: 183, 192; cf. 1969: 158, and 166 where Bodin’s ‘imperii societas & coniunctio’ emerges as

‘the common control and centralization of power’.

122 For example, Bartolus commenting that ‘the entire civitas is one person and one artificial and

imaginary man (tota civitas est una persona et unus homo artificialis et ymaginatus)’ (Bartolus 1983: 154).
 Law and History 83

Ulpian whose definition of merum imperium123 had attracted learned gloss and
comment over the centuries, from Azo in the thirteenth through to the great
fourteenth-century commentators Bartolus and Baldus and then to the contem-
poraries and near-contemporaries of Bodin’s whom he most admired, Budé and
Charles Du Moulin amongst them (Gilmore 1941). The key issues revolved
around the scope of magisterial authority in relation to law, and whether the
magistrate held his authority by virtue of delegation or as of right. To these issues
Bodin responded partly by attempting to specify in emulation of Bartolus a
hierarchy of magisterial capacities, and partly by adducing afresh, again from
Bartolus (Comparato 1981b: 204), the distinction between, on the one hand,
‘the action of law’ and, on the other, ‘the office of judge’ which equated to ‘equity’.
Upon this distinction, which, he claimed, no one else had explained, he himself had
dilated in his Distributio. All in all, it was in the hands of magistrates that ‘the
exercise (exercitium)’ of justice lay (1566: 201). While magistrates ought not to be
too numerous (1566: 330), neither should they be removable from office ‘unless for
crime (sine scelere)’ (1566: 304). With their powers to command, to administer law
and to exercise equitable discretion, they above all others were equipped to
demonstrate the validity of a striking proposition, modified from Aristotle: that
‘the more one takes from the power of the prince (plus detraxeris imperio principis)’,
then ‘the more just is the rule (iustus est imperium)’.124
Imperio principis: here was the holder of summum imperium which the French
termed ‘sovereignty (suuerenitatem)’ and Bodin had now to define. The concept, he
observed, was crucial to understanding ‘many obscure and difficult questions about
the république (multae de Republica quaestiones obscurae ac difficiles)’ (1566: 199).
Yet defining it and applying the definition consistently proved problematical,
owing above all else to the significance of the role of magistrates and the centrality
of law and justice in Bodin’s perception. Sovereignty, he urged, consisted in five
functions. First and especially important was creating magistrates and defining each
one’s office (una est ac praecipua in magistratibus creandis & officio cuiusque defi-
niendo); secondly, making and annulling laws; thirdly, declaring and terminating
war. Fourthly, the sovereign was the final adjudicator of appeals (prouocatione), and,
finally, the ultimate arbiter of clemency in capital cases where possibilities of
remission through the ordinary processes of law were exhausted (1566: 200; cf.
1572: 261). Ostensibly a lawyer’s definition, it was derived from a conflation of
propositions advanced by Aristotle, Polybius, and Dionysius of Halicarnassus.125

123 Digest 2.1.3: ‘merum est imperium habere gladii potestatem ad animadvertendum facinorosos

homines, quod etiam potestas appellatur (pure authority is to have for the punishment of criminals
power of the sword, which is also called potestas)’. This meant the right to inflict capital punishment.
124 1566: 305. Cf. Aristotle, Politics, 1313a20–2: ‘Royalty is preserved by the limitation of its

powers. The more restricted the functions of kings, the longer their power will last unimpaired.’
Aristotle’s unacknowledged influence upon much of Bodin’s discussion in this chapter is noteworthy.
Cf. also Goyard-Fabre (1996: 123), on the ‘ambiguity’ of Bodin’s position in the Methodus vis-à-vis
‘the two correlated concepts of sovereignty and magistracy’.
125 See Chrom Jacobsen 2000: 120–1; cf. Franklin 1973: 32–3.
84 Jean Bodin

Even so, it involved degrees of imperium specified principally in terms of the actual
exercise of judicial powers. Only in respect of declaring war and making peace did
the sovereign’s sphere appear categorically distinct from that of the magistrates—
and even in that regard considerations of justice might have been deemed implicitly
to apply.126 Even powers of taxation and coinage could be granted to magistrates,
seemingly without infraction of sovereign rights as such (1566: 200; 1572: 261).
Source of magisterial offices and of positive law, the sovereign stood plainly above the
agents of ordinary justice, and yet scarcely apart from them. Indeed, in the case of
France, the prestige of the collectivity of magistrates in the Paris Parlement where
Bodin himself practised law was such that the king himself ‘agrees to its laws and
judgements (legibus & iudiciis acquiescit)’, while ‘many (plera)’ royal ‘edicts (rescripta)’
were ‘cast out by the magistrates (a magistratibus respuantur)’ on grounds of their not
‘agreeing with equity and truth (aequitati ac veritati consentanea)’ (1566: 303).
Here, then, was a conception of sovereignty as supremacy within law which the
magistracy guaranteed. The position was rooted in a long-vexed issue, traceable to
the inconsistent usage of the relevant terminology in the Roman lawbooks. In the
thirteenth century the great Bolognese jurist Azo had offered to elucidate matters by
defining imperium in terms of divisions of iurisdictio, with plenissima iurisdictio
ascribed to the prince alone (Perrin 1972: 92–9). Subsequently, his medieval
successors had endeavoured to formulate a distinction between imperium ‘plainly
understood’ and iurisdictio ‘strictly understood’.127 The distinction implied at least
an analytical separation of judicial functions from those of rulership’s other com-
ponents within the structure of a body politic. How far such a separation figured in
Bodin’s treatment of the topics in others of his treatises cannot now be known
(cf. Chapter IV. n. 15). If such a separation figured at all in the thinking of the
Bodin of the Methodus, it was quite obscured in his treatment of sovereignty in
relation to magisterial powers.128 Having reduced his five-point definition to a
single element—‘who could give authority to magistrates and remove it (quis
imperium magistratibus dare & adimere possit)’129—he set about evaluating the
constitutions of actual polities in the light of their respective histories and the
location of sovereignty thereby disclosed. The exercise aimed initially to establish,
city by city, country by country, whether the political entity in question was an
instance of aristocratic or popular (democratic) rule. Apart from monarchy, no
other constitutional form was, in his view, possible—and certainly not the mixed
form which so many distinguished writers had postulated. This Bodin demon-
strated to his own satisfaction, making little secret of his antipathy towards

126 Perhaps surprisingly, however, just war arguments figured not at all in Bodin’s Methodus, and

only fleetingly in his République: for instance, 1583: V.v (pp. 759–60).
127 ‘Imperium simpliciter sumptum’ and ‘iurisdictio stricte sumpta’: see Comparato 1981b: 200, citing

in particular Bartolus’s tutor Cynus da Pistoia (1270–1336/7). See also Calasso 1953.
128 The separation noted here does underlie Bodin’s later emphatic distinction between ‘state’ and

‘government’ as well as the prince’s exclusion from judicial process: see Chapter VI.6 (p. 144). Further
on the medieval background cf. Berman 1983: I. 291.
129 1566: 207. In the 1572 version (p. 271) Bodin added the second of his original five elements:

‘who could make or repeal laws (quis leges iubere aut abrogare possit)’—the legislative power which he
was subsequently to stress as the prime component of sovereignty.
 Law and History 85

democracy.130 The demonstration involved applying to historical evidence case by

case different elements of the original sovereignty definition, coupled with a
recognition that constitutional forms might change through time. Thus, Venice
‘formerly was popular, but gradually began to be changed into an aristocracy (antea
popularem fuisse, sed paulatim in Aristocratiam mutari coepisse)’ (1566: 231). The
theme of change was of prime importance, and to it he would shortly return. But
first he must attend to the third constitutional form: monarchy.
Here the discussion, which revolved predominantly around the relationship of
king and law, became extraordinarily ambivalent. The prince ‘decrees law (legem
iubet)’, but law once decreed was ‘approved by the highest consent of everyone
(summo omnium probata consensu)’ (1566: 237). When princes argued that the laws
did not bind them, they ‘used sophistry against the people (sophismate adversus
populum utebantur)’ (1566: 238)—and yet, it was ‘not contrary to nature’ that a
‘prince should be master of all things and of the laws in the république (neque enim
contra naturam est . . . ut princeps in Republica rerum omnium ac legum dominus sit)’
(1566: 239). While Roman precedent offered the control of the lex digna vox that
princes should voluntarily defer to the laws, ‘few princes reckon this law intended
for them (pauci principes legem hanc sibi latam putant)’.131 And yet, while some
kings were bound by laws and others ruled freely, all were ‘ruling justly’.132 The
freedom of the prince’s will remained, it would seem, paramount, subject only to
the law of nature and that of God. But there was one major category which those
‘all things’ over which rulers might hold mastery did not include. The category was
property. Here Bodin’s position was unequivocal and tallied precisely with the
pronouncement of the Stoic Seneca which he cited: ‘To the king belongs power
over all; to individuals, properties (Ad reges potestas omnium pertinet, ad singulos
proprietates)’.133
For between the public and the private, the differentiation was fundamental (see
1566: 195). The urge to own property was ‘ordained by nature (natura comparatum
est)’. Material goods might originally have been used in common, but ‘not for long
had nature tolerated usage by all and sundry (non diu tulit natura promiscuos rerum
usus)’ (1566: 250). The natural basis of property was a juristic position of long
standing. Individual property rights were a product of ‘natural reason’: thus, in the
thirteenth century, Accursius in the Ordinary Gloss to the Digest, a view widely
endorsed by his civilian successors (Post 1964: 546 sqq.). As Bodin described it,
again consistently with Accursius’s analysis, the process of privatization had gone

130 See especially 1566: 320–1. Cf. Quaglioni 1992b: 1157, on ‘the profound, incurable Bodinian

distrust of the popular state’—a common enough position amongst medieval and Renaissance
thinkers.
131 1566: 238. The lex digna vox is at Code 1.14.4: ‘Digna vox maiestate regnantis legibus alligatum se

principem profiteri (An utterance worthy of a ruler’s majesty is that a prince declare himself bound by
the laws)’.
132 ‘sit igitur hoc discrimen regum inter ipsos qui iuste imperant, quod alteri legibus obligantur, alteri

sunt omnino solute’ (1566: 240).

133 1572: 315. Cf. 1566: 240, where the sentiment occurs, but without the quotation from Seneca

De beneficiis VII.iv.2, noted by Beatrice Reynolds (see Bodin 1969: 205).

86 Jean Bodin

hand in hand with the evolution of society itself, and in particular its political
institutions. Even so, that latter process, which embraced the entire human
species, was one of ‘almost infinite degrees and changes (infinitos prope gradus &
conversiones’ (1566: 248). It was traceable—as Aristotle, again unacknowledged by
Bodin, had observed (Politics 1252a25 sqq.)—from the union of man and wife
and the embryo of the family through communities of village, town, and city to
attain ultimately the dimensions of ‘nations (nationes)’ (1566: 182, 250). Natural
also was the human tendency towards conflict: hence the surrender of natural
liberty to a single protector, either the strongest or the ‘most just (iustissimos)’,
though the former ‘could not retain authority without justice (imperia . . . sine
iustitia retineri non possent’ (1566: 251). And natural, too, were the oscillations of
monarchies from legitimacy and virtue to tyranny and back again, as was the
development of democracies and aristocracies, where they occurred, ‘into legit-
imate monarchies consistent with universal nature (in monarchias legitimas uni-
versae naturae congruentes)’ (1566: 253–4). Change was thus inherent in the
political condition. While it might spring either from internal weakness or from
external force (1566: 259), its immediate causes were various. They included the
abolition of slavery, for emancipation gave rise to extreme poverty, ‘that pitiable
want which is wont to overthrow républiques (miseranda illa, quae Respublicas
euertere solet, inopia)’ (1566: 261). They included also ‘variety in religion (religio-
nem quoque varietas)’ from which derived ‘countless changes of républiques
(infinitae Rerumpublicarum conuersiones)’ (1566: 261). Indeed, such were the
‘strength and majesty of religion (religionis tanta vis est ac majestas)’ that Bodin
accounted its importance in the sense of ‘the true worship of God . . . than which
nothing is greater for the maintenance of rule (verum Dei cultum . . . nulla re magis
imperium retineatur)’ (1566: 344–5).
Change, then, was pervasive. So, too, was variety of constitutions. For all Bodin’s
insistence that only three main forms were possible, the histories of respublicae
yielded abundant evidence of the diversity and instability of particular polities
within that general framework (1566: 280–317). Perhaps consistency and con-
stancy could be found in mathematics, the discipline advocated by Ramus with
especial fervour and vigorously propagated by others in mid-sixteenth-century
France.134 Had not Plato urged the relevance of a mathematical training to the
education of the philosopher ruler, that ‘this branch of learning should be pre-
scribed by our law and that we should induct those who are to share the highest
functions of our polis’ (Plato, Republic 525b)? Although Bodin, following Aristotle,
treated dismissively Plato’s attendant thesis that the causes of change could be
found in specific numbers, this did not deter him from exploring in numerical
terms possible correlations between the lifespans of individuals and the durability
‘of every supreme power (cuius imperii)’ (1566: 278). Such correlations were surely
inherent to the unity of the cosmos, the harmony of the created universe. Yet
harmony did not entail uniformity: on the contrary, and pace Plato once more, it

134 Ramus 1567; Desan 1993: 150–1.

 Law and History 87

sprang from difference, from the blending of the multifarious components of

the political as of the created world into the concord where justice must ultimately
reside. Even so, that same harmony was not, after all, reducible merely to numerical
combinations and correspondences. True, the course of human affairs was ‘not
driven fortuitously and by mere chance as the Epicureans boast, nor by inviolable
fate, as the Stoics say (non temere ac fortuito ferri, ut Epicurei iactant, nec inuiolabili
fato, ut Stoici)’. Rather, it was shaped by an interventionist deity, ‘made manifest
by immortal God (fatendum est ab immortali Deo)’ and ‘divine judgement
which, while it binds all things together in admirable order, motion, number,
harmony and form, nevertheless it sometimes changes these by its own will and
power (prudentia diuina quae tametsi res omnes admirabili ordine, motu, numero,
concentu, figura colligauit; nihilominus eas voluntate arbitrioque suo interdum mutat)’
(1566: 278–9).
Mindful as ever of ‘the disputations of philosophers’ from the classical era
onwards, Bodin had finally to specify ‘the best constitution of a république (optimus
status reipublicae)’ (1566: 318–45). Machiavelli, who had favoured ‘democratic
constitutions (status populares)’, members of the Platonic Academy who had
preferred ‘rule by optimates (optimatibus imperium)’, Aristotle who had thought
‘royal power (regiam potestatem)’ best in principle, but with the rider that no single
ruler of appropriate qualities could ever be found—all were in error (1566: 318,
322–3). The soundest guidance resided in the natural order: to ‘inspect nature
more closely’ was to see monarchy everywhere (si naturam propius inspiciamus,
monarchiam ubique intueri licebit videmus) (1566: 323). Here was a very well-worn
opinion. Less conventional was Bodin’s reading of the position vis-à-vis the
Hebrews amongst whom the biblical record by his interpretation showed, pace
Josephus, that God had expressly intervened in favour of monarchy.135 Of course,
monarchy was most stable where heredity and not election determined succession
to the throne, where rule was conducted ‘by the best laws (optimis legibus)’, and
where the prince had undergone ‘the best education (optimam principis institutio-
nem)’ (1566: 343). Such laws should include provision as in France whereby the
prince ‘is prohibited from alienating the royal domain without the consent of the
estates (publicos agros alienare prohibetur sine ordinum consensu)’ (1566: 302), a
condition of utmost importance in Bodin’s view, as his subsequent career would
demonstrate. The education in question was exemplified in the case of Francis I of
France, already commended to the citizens of Toulouse and now paraded afresh for
the admiration of Europe at large (1566: 344). And it was indeed France that was
held to enjoy the best constitution among the many which Bodin reviewed, a
constitution which he lauded with remarkable insouciance in his Methodus’s second
edition—an edition evidently prepared in the wake of the Peace of St Germain of
August 1570 and published before the Massacre of St Bartholomew exactly two
years later: ‘No greater proof of a stable république exists than in the religious war
that recently erupted throughout all France’ when ‘all wars and tumults were

135 1566: 332; cf. 1572: 442–3 where a quotation from Philo is added in refutation of Josephus.
88 Jean Bodin

quietened in a short time by an edict of the best of kings (Neque vero Reipub
inuiolabilis argumentum maius extitit quam nuper bello sacro, quo Gallia tota con-
flagrauit . . . deinde paulo momento tot bella tantique tumultus, optimi Regis edicto . . .
quierunt)’ (1572: 407).
In terms of page length, the 1572 edition is approximately one-third longer than
that of 1566.136 In terms of content, the changes fall into several categories. First,
Bodin evidently re-read and amended his references to the works of a good many
authors previously cited and added still more examples to reinforce his arguments.
Secondly, he introduced new material gained partly from fresh archival researches,
and partly from private conversations, notably with the English ambassador, the
Earl of Rutland, a man of ‘exceptional excellence (virtute clarissimo)’ (1572: 246).
Thirdly, he inserted references to some recent historical events, both domestic—
such as the St Germain treaty—and international, such as the extension of Ottoman
power in the Mediterranean (1572: 383). Fourthly, there were some significant
alterations of substance. These included indications of a hardening of his attitude
towards religious dissidents: thus, a benevolent phrase crediting converts to
Protestantism with ‘absolute faith, integrity and piety (summa fide, integritate ac
religione)’ disappeared from his text (1566: 142; cf. 1572: 184–5). Perhaps more
noteworthy are signs of some development in his thinking about the key concept of
sovereign authority. The development is by no means radical: Bodin’s interpret-
ation of the concept was to change far more strikingly in the four years following
the appearance of his Methodus’s second edition. Yet change there was, notably in
his view of sovereign power as indivisible:
the Senate has no authority nor jurisdiction unless by the indulgence of the Prince or
the people who appear to approve acts of the Senate which they do not disapprove. But
if there is something more weighty which relates to maiestas it is customary to refer it to
the prince.137
Even so, that formulation constitutes no abandonment of the correlation of
imperium with iurisdictio which Bodin had inherited from his jurist predecessors.
Bodin’s Methodus has been characterized as a ‘strange, semi-ruinous mass’,
oscillating between inconsistency and incoherence with passages of brilliant insight
along the way.138 Such a verdict is to some extent justifiable, but, in relation to the
work as a whole, it seems too severe. Certainly, Bodin was congenitally argumen-
tative, able to leave few avenues unexplored, few authorities unchallenged, few
examples unpresented from his vast store of learning. In consequence, the Methodus
appears often ill-digested and disorderly, and more especially so as in this work and
in others his use of evidence is frequently inaccurate—indeed, in some respects,

136 For the comparative comments that follow I have drawn heavily upon Dr Sara Miglietti’s

‘Introduzione’ to her parallel text (with Italian translation) edition (2013: especially 22–44).
137 ‘Senatus nullum imperium, nullam habet iurisdictionem: nisi Principis aut populi patientia, qui acti

[sic] Senatus probare videtur quae non improbat. sed si quid gravius est quod ad maiestatem pertineat, ad
principem referri solet’ (1572: 267; cf. 1566: 205).
138 Grafton 2007: 165–79, quoting (p. 167) Pocock 1957.
 Law and History 89

‘thoroughly cavalier’.139 And yet, the Angevin remained in the Methodus largely
true to the purpose he initially declared: to continue his quest for ‘universal law’ by
marshalling and examining the evidence of history, writ large. Historical evidence
was central to his purpose: witness, in particular, the survey of constitutional
histories which underpinned his argument for the ‘best form’ of rule, a mode of
argument fundamentally different from the speculations of his philosophically
minded predecessors in such enquiry. Certainly, his perspective was less original
than he supposed. For all his evident mastery of classical sources and eagerness to
parade it, so many of the issues upon which he pronounced had been the subjects of
long-standing scholastic debates which he frequently omitted to acknowledge. In
much of his political thinking he implicitly revaluates the idea of monarchy under
the law canvassed by so many medieval thinkers. It can even be argued that the
proposition of an interventionist God which underlay his basic thesis was not far
removed from principles which canon lawyers had long since devised: ‘a belief in a
God of justice who operates a lawful universe, punishing and rewarding according
to principles of proportion’ (Berman I (1983): 529). Even so, his discourse was
illuminated by another belief, in the superior wisdom and potential of the age in
which he lived.
In one of his book’s most polemical chapters, Bodin ridiculed claims based on
the prophecies of Daniel that Germany was the successor to the Roman Empire,
and that humanity had lived long before through a now irrecoverable ‘golden age’.
By comparison with other empires, both ancient and modern, Germany was as ‘a
fly to an elephant (muscam elephanto)’ (1566: 348). As for ‘golden age’ hypotheses,
the plain fact was that in no previous age had there been ‘such brilliance of all forms
of knowledge (tantus subito scientiarum omnium splendor)’ coupled with ‘such
fertility of talents (tanta fertilitas ingeniorum)’ (1566: 359): witness the invention
of printing (typographia), the revealing of the ‘hidden secrets of nature (occulta
naturae arcana)’, the voyages that traversed the entire world, the establishing of
colonies, the ‘abundant and profitable commerce (mercatura . . . abundans & quaes-
tuosa)’ that flowed therefrom (1566: 359–61). It remained to be seen whether the
mood of optimism that infused the Methodus would survive the travails of its
author’s later career amid the tribulations of later sixteenth-century France.

139 The phrase is Malcolm’s 2006: 118, citing Chauviré 1914a; Letruit 1995. On Bodin’s use of

evidence in relation to classical (especially Greek) polities see Cambiano 2007: 133–67. As Sara
Miglietti has observed, some mistakes may be printer’s rather than author’s errors: see Miglietti in
Bodin 2013: 22.
 V
Getting and Spending

V. 1 FINANCIAL PROSPECTS AND CAREER CONCERNS

The citizens of France, as litigious a people as any in sixteenth-century Europe, had

ample opportunities to resort to law. Justice in various guises was administered
through a bewildering array of courts which proliferated at multiple levels—
seigneurial, municipal, ecclesiastical, royal. Thanks to conflicts and uncertainties
of jurisdiction and of laws, thanks also to the slowness of judicial procedure
especially in the upper reaches of the curial hierarchy, lawsuits could drag on
interminably as litigants sufficiently motivated and able to bear the expense pursued
their opponents from level to level, court to court. In such a system, legal
practitioners could grow rich. But not all of them prospered. Their numbers
were too great. At the level of the Paris Parlement, the highest level of all, no
fewer than 367 avocats took on the appointed day the oath of Catholicity prescribed
in 1562, and there were others again who failed to take it (Delachenal 1885:
399–406). For all the Parlement’s distinction and the mighty volume of legal
business, there was not enough work to go around, especially as litigants with the
means to pay sought out only the most reputable avocats. And Bodin, profoundly
learned though he might be and deeply conscious of the magistracy’s standing,
seems to have lacked the qualities of oral eloquence and engaging personality that
would have equipped him fully to compete in the market for forensic employment,
despite spending most of his mature years in it, as he would claim in 1579.1
How, then, was he to live? He had at his disposal a small amount of capital,
thanks to his father who died in the very year of the Methodus’s publication. That
sum, of 300 livres tournois, was augmented by a further 50 l.t. through the
settlement of a dispute between four of Guillaume Bodin’s children over their
late father’s property in Angers’s rue Valdemaine.2 Jean Bodin may have put
together modest savings in other ways, though his complaints about the remuner-
ation of private tutors do not suggest much scope for accumulation from that
quarter (cf. Chapter III.3 (p. 44). All in all, it seems improbable that he had
substantial financial resources. Nor were his literary endeavours likely to have
yielded much financial return, if any. Insofar as sixteenth-century authors made
money, this was rather through producing new editions of established texts than

1 ‘ceste echole soueraine de Iustice [i.e. the Parlement] . . . où i’ay employé la meilleure partie de mon aage’

(Démonomanie 1580: sig. āij). Cf. Chapter IV.1 (p. 52).

2 Pasquier 1933: 459–60; Levron 1950: 22–3; Saillot 1985: 114. Cf. Chapter I (p. 2).
 Getting and Spending 91

through publishing original works of their own (Pettegree 2010: 58). The young
Bodin had indeed applied himself to translating and commenting on a Greek poem
which possessed some contemporary appeal. But the Cynegetica did not rank with
the great classics that furnished many printers and more teachers with much of their
staple fare. Only one edition of Bodin’s version appeared in his lifetime, and only
one of his Oratio at Toulouse, the latter a pièce d’occasion of limited appeal. Yet the
Methodus did much better. It ran to five editions from 1566 to 1595 and was also
included as the lead item with special mention (‘Io. praecipue Bodini libris Methodi
historicae’) in the title of an anthology on the artes historicae produced by the
German jurist Johann Wolf in 1576, a collection of thirteen treatises enlarged three
years later to eighteen (Wolf 1579; cf. Grafton 2007: 21). As printer/publishers
would undertake a new edition of a work only when the previous edition was
exhausted, it would seem that the Methodus sold out repeatedly. The ars historica
was indeed a popular theme amongst students and scholars. Even so, information is
lacking on the size of each edition of Bodin’s treatise. Some five hundred copies of
the Oppian, the Oratio, and all seven editions of the Methodus, taken together, have
been traced in the libraries of the western world.3 But the incidence of surviving
copies is scarcely a reliable indicator of the number originally published. A best-
selling author such as Erasmus could instruct his publisher that no edition of his
work should consist of fewer than 1,500 copies (Pettegree 2010: 84). Bodin was no
Erasmus, and it seems unlikely that his Methodus would have been produced on
such a scale. Yet printer/publishers had to sell significant numbers of copies in order
even to recover their costs, and so a print-run of 1,000 copies may be a not
unreasonable estimate (see Blair 2010: 52).
The Methodus, then, may have reached a relatively wide readership. Whether
financial benefit resulted for its author is quite another matter. Information is scarce
as to the prices of books; sales catalogues did not normally include it. Prices
unquestionably rose in accordance with the quality of materials used. Works printed
on expensive paper and handsomely bound would obviously have cost more than
lower-end productions. But even reference books in high demand could be got for
relatively modest sums. Copies of that extremely successful florilegium, the arch-
priest Nani Mirabelli of Savona’s Polyanthea (1503 and many subsequent editions),
were listed in 1581 in the inventory of the deceased Bishop Richard Cox of Ely at 16
pence apiece, equivalent to approximately £10 at present-day currency values.
A century later a copy of the Adversariorum (1604) by none other than Adrien
Turnèbe was sold for 3s.1d—nowadays, approximately £13.50 (Blair 2010: 234–5).
Even so, sixteenth-century authors, unlike their present-day successors, did not
publish with a view to remuneration determined by price and volume sales. On
the contrary: publication was likely to cost them money. Books might be printed
entirely at the expense of the author who, in effect, commissioned a printer, supplied

3 Compiled from Crahay, Isaac, and Lenger 1992: 19–37. By comparison, a search of online library

catalogues has traced only 332 copies of Mirabelli’s Polyanthea (1503) which by 1600 had run to a
score of editions (Blair 2010: 180). It should be noted that the Methodus continued to be published
after Bodin’s death, five more editions appearing between 1598 and 1650.
92 Jean Bodin

the paper and saw the work through the press. More usual was a ‘party’ arrangement,
with the author undertaking to purchase a stipulated number of copies and advan-
cing for these the funds which the printer would then use to produce the book.
There were other, optional costs, perhaps met by the printer, perhaps chargeable to
the author. The Methodus was published ‘cum privilegio’, a licence acquired for a fee
and suggestive of status, though valid only within the French kingdom and for a
limited length of time. All in all, few writers could hope to publish without incurring
some financial outlay (Charon-Parent 1982: 237–42), though Bodin does appear to
have been among those authors ‘patronized’ by publishers owing to their works’
combining ‘saleability and public benefit’ (Maclean 2012: 51).
For their own part, authors were motivated to publish in order to have available
tangible proofs of their abilities to offer their dedicatees and other patrons. Authorship
was rewarded far less through yielding a direct financial return than through
indirectly facilitating career advancement. Bodin had already benefited by the
support of Bishop Bouvery and the Du Faur, and, as his dedicatory letter prefacing
the Methodus showed, had cultivated the friendship of a high-ranking judge, Jean
Tessier. The standing of his publisher mattered too, and again Bodin had placed his
works adroitly. His Oppian was published by Michel de Vascosan, printer to the
University of Paris and, from 1560, the king’s printer for Greek. His Methodus
went to one of Paris’s most enterprising and scholarly publishers, Martin Le Jeune
(Martinus Iuvenis), an early venturer into Hebrew typography, publisher, inter alia,
of a standard Hebrew grammar, the De re grammatica Hebraeorum (1556) by the
royal lecturer and leading authority on that language Jean Cinqarbres, and of
Maimonides’s Symbolum fidei Iudaeorum (1569). Such considerations had a bearing
not only upon the distribution and reception of the work itself, but also upon
possibilities of reissue and acceptance of future works. But it was reputation that
mattered. It was sought especially by members of the learned professions. Hence, at
least in part, the growing proportion of law books amid the increased volume of
scholarly publications of all kinds in Europe in the later sixteenth century.4
Even so, the financial fruits of authorial reputations took time to ripen, if they
ripened at all; and meanwhile an author must live. Reputations for legal learning
were potentially more rewarding. A jurist relatively unsuccessful in court but
known to be learned could offer consulting services and earn fees thereby. Con-
sultation was a necessary part of judicial process, one of an avocat’s principal
functions.5 Among the facilities of the palais de justice was a chambre de consultation
where avocats could meet their clients. In 1562 the Parlement formally warned
under-employed avocats not to cluster around that chambre’s doorway in the hope
of being invited in (Delachenal 1885: 58). In general, consilia tendered by other
than a litigant’s principal legal representative were recorded in writing to form part

4 See Maclean 1992: 19–20, 36. Fuller investigation of this subject than ever before is now feasible,

thanks to the creation of the online Universal Short Title Catalogue hosted by the University of
St Andrews.
5 Dupin 1830–2: I. 104; see also Ferrière 1787: I: 409 sqq.; Houllemare 2011: 180, 186. See

Walter 1976 for an enlightening discussion.

 Getting and Spending 93

of the dossier compiled for submission in civil suits. Such advice could serve to
alleviate jurists’ notoriously conservative stance, though avocats would be well-
advised not to advance ‘extravagant opinions’ (Conti 1975: 344). Consilia might
also be solicited to give weight to a case in place of a client’s actually embarking
upon legal process (Garosci 1975: 562). In expert hands consilia were a principal
means whereby judicial interpretation developed—a ‘veritable bridge between the
science and the praxis of the law’ (Quaglioni 2003: 113). Certainly Bodin was well-
versed in consilia—also termed responsa)—and in their construction. A responsum of
his survives, composed on behalf of a Croatian adventurer, the so-called Paul
Scalich of Zagreb (Conti 1975; Garosci 1975). References to consilia would
populate the margins of his most celebrated work, the structure of which in
extensive passages, notably the early discussion of slavery (République I.v), closely
resembled the mode of juristic consilium developed in the scholastic era (Quaglioni
1999b: 366–8; Isnardi Parente 1964: 25–6).
Yet, while Bodin’s reputation for learning might have prompted clients and
even colleagues to consult him, it would scarcely have been enough to earn him
the status of a fully fledged consultant advocate. According to Guy du Faur de
Pibrac, the ‘aduocats consultans’ commanded the place of ‘jurisconsults of old’,
giving advice not only on particular cases, but on the ‘principal affairs and dealings
of good, honourable and illustrious houses’ (Pibrac 1609: 38). In due course
Bodin did indeed offer some of that (see Chapter VIII.1 (p. 191)), but in the
1560s he scarcely commanded the prestige and deference owed to senior counsel
formally designated avocat consultant after gaining—as Charles Loyseau would later
observe—‘more capacity and experience through years spent continuously amid
affairs’, and so earning the privilege of sitting on the fleurs de lys benches, the most
coveted position in the Parlement’s grand’ chambre (Loyseau 1610/1994: 173;
Delachenal 1885: 84). For Bodin and others like him, career advancement meant
above all appointment to public office. This required the support of an influential
patron, and in that regard Bodin by the mid-1560s appeared to have positioned
himself well. His connection with the Du Faur seemed promising, especially in
view of their friendship—and in particular Pibrac’s—with Michel de L’Hospital,
chancellor of France since 1560 and keen to draw personnel of the parlements into
implementing his programme of judicial reform. In 1565 Pibrac was appointed
avocat-général in the Parlement, responsible for representing the king’s interests
there and, by extension, those of the chancellor as long as the latter retained the
monarch’s confidence. But from the middle decades of the sixteenth century the
avenue to office for such aspirants as Bodin became much narrower. To contem-
poraries the explanation was obvious. Offices were being bought and sold: among
them—despite L’Hospital’s strictures—judicial offices. The higher the office, the
higher the price. According to the distinguished avocat and historian Étienne
Pasquier, men were no longer promoted on the basis of their ‘merits and worth’,
but ‘through money: otherwise, they will wallow in the dust of the palais de justice’.6

6 Loisel, in Dupin 1830–2: II. 204, quoted in Karpik 1995: 54. See Houllemare 2011: 185,

193–4.
94 Jean Bodin

And money was precisely what Bodin would appear to have lacked. As for
patronage, at the highest level political circumstances conditioned its value. The
outcome of contestations within the royal court, a scene of deteriorating relations
between the Chancellor with his moderate Catholicism and the markedly less
moderate Cardinal Charles de Lorraine, spelled setbacks for L’Hospital’s associates.
In 1568 L’Hospital resigned.
Disappointed in his hopes of office, Bodin had to settle for commissions or
equivalent positions, roles by no means insignificant, but insecure, held, as he later
observed, ‘by sufferance’ (République 1583: 378). One such role was that of
substitut, or assistant, to the king’s proctor (procureur du roi), an important function
soon to be erected into a fully fledged office, but for the time being dependent upon
and answerable to the appointee’s principal. In 1567 Bodin was serving at Poitiers
in that capacity at the Grands Jours, assizes whereby from time to time the Paris
Parlement dispensed justice by commission or delegation in provinces within its
jurisdiction.7 Three years later he was appointed commissioner to reform the royal
forests in Normandy, a role which prompted him to bring an action against the
entire corporation of the city of Rouen ‘for the rights which they pretended
against the king’ (République 1583: 381). In his opinion, recovery of the forests
and reassertion of the crown’s domainal rights were necessary preconditions of the
refurbishment of the royal finances—a view consistent with one of L’Hospital’s
declared policy positions (Devèze 1961: II. 192). But, far from endorsing Bodin’s
stance, his royal master responded to the emotions provoked in Normandy with
an edict alienating the rights in question in the case of the province’s wood-
lands, and set at naught his commissioner’s opposition to such a measure (Ménage
1675: 146).
Appointments of that order doubtless fell short of Bodin’s aspirations. Even so, it
is surely remarkable that he gained them at a time of religious upheaval and
recurrent war when, it has been argued, he fell under suspicion to the point of
incarceration for his own religious stance. On 6 March 1569 a ‘Jehan Baudin, soy
disant aduocat en la C. de parl., natif d’Angers’ was imprisoned in the Conciergerie
on grounds of being ‘dela nouv[elle] opp[inion]’ (Weiss 1923: 89). If this was indeed
the Jean Bodin of the Methodus, it may be that he had failed to renew the
declaration of faith which in 1568 the avocats were again required to swear.8
Other avocats were likewise detained. It seems noteworthy that none of them is
recorded as having taken the oath previously, as Bodin had done in 1562. Further,
persons so detained were normally dealt with expeditiously and either released upon
conditions or expelled from Paris. Yet ‘Jehan Baudin’ was held for over fifteen
months, and released only by virtue of the Peace of St Germain of August 1570. It
seems scarcely credible that such a man should so soon have secured a royal
commission almost bound to bring him into conflict with powerful interests in a
part of France where religious, social, and political antagonisms were acute and

7 Démonomanie 1580: fo. 57v; Ferrière 1787: II. 795–6. On the development of the substitut see

Storez-Brancourt 2000.
8 Boucher 1983: 36; cf. Rose 1980a: 190.
 Getting and Spending 95

compounded by the presence of leading families—in particular the affinity of the

house of Guise—rendered discontented by their dealings with the royal court.9
By then Bodin had drawn attention in other ways to his ability to serve both king
and kingdom. He did so by entering into debate with an opponent far more
successful than he in the competition for office, a former royal secretary, then
maître ordinaire in the Chambre des Comptes, and afterwards général des finances in
Brittany (Servet 1985). All these were offices of profit. Bodin may well have
sharpened his pen with especial keenness as he prepared to take issue with Jehan
Cherruyer, seigneur de Malestroit, on the problem of money and prices.

V .2 MONEY

It was a problem of long standing—as old, predictably, as Aristotle. According to

the Stagyrite, money is a measure which facilitates exchange. In order for exchanges
of dissimilar goods and services to satisfy the prime Aristotelian requirement of
justice, they should be proportionate. If the proportions of exchanges between
parties—builders and shoemakers, farmers and clothiers—are all to be measured in
terms of money, it is clearly desirable that the measure itself, the medium of
exchange, be reasonably stable. Yet as money (νο̂μισμα) exists ‘not by nature, but
by law (νο̂μος)’ it is possible ‘to change it and make it useless’. Again, money itself
may function not simply as a measure, but, as a commodity in its own right, be
treated in the same way as other goods, and so be ‘not always worth the same’
(Nicomachean Ethics 1133a8–1133b14). Clearly, variability in the value of money
tends to disturb its stability as a measure of exchange, and so to impact disruptively
upon exchange processes themselves.
As with so many other questions, Aristotle’s analysis set an agenda for discussion
that persisted in the following centuries and intensified in later medieval Europe.
Scholastic philosophers and theologians debated his propositions and elaborated
upon them without departing from his basic tenets. They conducted the discussion
overwhelmingly in ethical terms with heavy emphasis upon considerations of
justice and the common good. That arch proponent of the common good, Aquinas,
observed that commercial dealings might be deemed just in so far as they were
conducted with a view to equality of the exchange contracted between the parties
‘measured according to the price (pretium) given, the object for which money was
invented’ (Aquinas, Summa, IaIIae, q. 77, a.1). In Duns Scotus’s view, a price
expressed in money terms ought in justice to include compensation to the vendor
for costs incurred through improving the item offered for sale and making it

9 See Carroll 1998 for a searching analysis of society and politics in later sixteenth-century

Normandy, if not of the precise position c.1570 (see Carroll 1998: 132–5). The question of Bodin’s
religious stance is considered in Chapter VI.6 and Chapter X. Cf. Démonomanie 1580: fo. 72vo, where
Bodin reports how in 1569 ‘I’ay veu un ieune home prisonnier’ who suffered nightly beatings by the
spirit of his murdered wife; also fo. 129 (‘I’ay veu un Sorcier d’Auvergne prisonnier à Paris l’an mil cinq
cens soixante & neuf ’). It may perhaps be questioned how far such statements will serve as evidence that
a practising lawyer and frequenter of the courts was himself a prisoner.
96 Jean Bodin

available.10 In the view of that remarkable fourteenth-century philosopher Nicolas

Oresme, money, ‘a balancing instrument for the exchange of natural wealth
(instrumentum equiualens permutandi diuitias naturales)’, was made by the prince
‘for the community (pro communitate)’. Its ‘value (pretium)’ ought to be fixed by
law and not altered ‘except perhaps from manifest necessity (nisi forsan emineret
necessitas)’; its alteration simply for profit would be ‘deceitful, tyrannical and unjust
(dolosum, tyrannicum et iniustum)’. Circumstances where monetary mutation might
be admissible included relative scarcity or surplus of precious metal: thus, if ‘less
gold were being found than before, then it would have to be dearer in comparison
with silver and would be changed in price and value (minus inueniretur de auro
quam ante, tunc oporteret quod esset carius in comparacione ad argentums, et quod
mutaretur in precio et ualore)’. But any alteration should be determined ‘by the
community or the better part of it (per communitatem aut per ualenciorem eius
partem)’, not by the prince alone.11 The position was warmly endorsed by the
fifteenth-century theologian Gabriel Biel: ‘whoever corrupted money, whether in
substance, form or weight, committed a mortal sin (falsificans monetam in sub-
stantia, forma vel pondere, peccat mortaliter)’; nor should the prince himself alter it
‘without his subjects’ consent (sine consensus subditorum)’ (Biel 1574: fos 3vo, 8).
Into the sixteenth century, thinkers continued to attend closely to the ethical
aspect of monetary concerns. But pragmatic considerations, always present in the
monetary sphere, now grew more obtrusive. They sprang from two prime sources
of tension. The first, noted explicitly in Aristotelian doctrine, was the relation
between money as measure and money as commodity. The relation, or distinction,
manifested itself in the practical differentiation between ‘money of account’ and
‘real money’. In the case of France the accounting unit, the livre tournois (l.t.) with
its subdivisions of sol and denier, existed as an abstraction for the purpose of
reckoning and was not itself a circulating medium in the form of actual coins. Its
value was determined by royal legislative act and expressed in terms of the marc, a
unit of grams of silver. In line not only with scholastic opinion, but also with the
interests of everyone whose assets and revenues were reckoned in l.t., it was
desirable that this valuation be kept stable. The same desideratum applied to
monnaie réelle, which took a multiplicity of forms, most notably the gold écu (écu
à la couronne, écu au soleil, etc.), the silver teston and demi-teston, and billon coins
consisting of mixtures of silver and copper. Stability in this connection meant
maintaining the currency’s precious metal content. For obvious reasons, this was
problematic. Issuing authorities were continually tempted to reduce that content
and so enable their stocks of gold and silver to go further. Such practices, in the
judgements of moral philosophers, were scarcely less reprehensible than those of
counterfeiters and clippers of coins. But exposure to moral and even legal censure
did not suffice to protect the money of account from devaluation in terms of silver
equivalence, nor the currency from debasement through admixture of alloy.

10 Schumpeter 1954: 93. See Dempsey 1948: 151–2, for comment on Scotus’s position by later

Spanish scholastics.
11 Oresme 1956: caps. v, vi, viii, x, xxii–xxiv (pp. 10, 13, 15, 35–9).
 Getting and Spending 97

Moreover, coins minted in other countries, and often of questionable quality,

circulated freely within France, whilst French coins migrated no less freely abroad.
The consequence was a market in specie with disturbing implications for prices,
those supposed registers of the proportionality, or justice, of exchanges in the
generality of other goods.
These circumstances exacerbated the second source of tension: the relationship
in terms of value, or price, between the precious metals themselves. Stocks of gold
and silver available for minting varied respectively from country to country and
from time to time; and dealers adjusted their transactions accordingly. As Oresme
had observed, and as the Spanish canonist and theologian Martín de Azpilcueta
Navarro recognized afresh, ‘if there is a shortage of gold coins their value may well
increase, so that more coins of silver or other metal are given in exchange for
them’.12 Yet despite, or because of, market fluctuations, monetary authorities and
moral philosophers insisted on the merits in principle of a stable ‘bimetallic ratio’.
A ratio of approximately one weight of gold to twelve of minted silver was
advocated as ‘natural’, a manifestation of ‘harmonic justice’ (Boyer-Xambeu
et al. 1994: 56, also n. 11). Some took a more hard-headed view: thus one of
Bodin’s most admired predecessors, Guillaume Budé, in his major work on
Roman coinage recognized how the proportion might from case to case fluctuate
within a range of 1:10–1:15.13 But only reluctantly did official opinion move
away from the concepts of ‘just price’ and ‘natural’ ratios to follow such leads as
that of Nikolaus Copernicus on monetary relativity: that ‘as the prices increase
of all things that concern human sustenance and usage, money loses value’
(q. Harsin 1928: 41, n. 1).
In the law-governed world of leading French jurists, what should determine
currency values, again in keeping with Aristotelian doctrine, was neither precious
metal content nor the interplay of supply and demand, but formal prescription by
competent authority. Hence the opinion of Charles Du Moulin, whose juristic
learning Bodin consistently admired. In his pronouncements on money Du Moulin
was especially anxious to safeguard the integrity of contractual obligations, a
concern, central to relationships in medieval society, which Bodin shared (see
Chapter VI.3 (p. 133)). Justice required that the monetary commitment expressed
in such an obligation at the time it was agreed must be kept stable, no matter what
might subsequently happen to the currency. Accordingly, and as Du Moulin put it,
employing a juristic term, what made money money was its ‘valor imposititius
(prescribed value)’. Popular opinion notwithstanding, this value ‘should be regard-
ed not as its ‘extrinsic’, but its ‘intrinsic good quality, its own specific, substantial
and formal goodness and essence which gives it being’.14 But the difficulty of

12 Comentario resolutorio de usuras (1556), trans. Grice-Hutchinson 1952: 95.

13 Cited in ‘Mémoires sur le faict des monnoyes proposez & leus par le maistre des
comptes. . . . 1567’, in Einaudi ed. 1937: 108.
14 ‘non est ipsius bonitas extrinseca, vt vulgo putant, sed bonitas intrinseca, patet, quia est eius propria

specifica, substantialis & formalis bonitas & essentia, quae dat ei esse’ (Du Moulin 1555: 692). Cf. Boyer-
Xambeu et al. 1994: 190, also n. 29.
98 Jean Bodin

adhering to such a doctrine became increasingly apparent as the sixteenth century

wore on. As Du Moulin himself observed, from the time he became an avocat, in
1522, ‘the prices of all things began markedly to increase, not temporarily, but
persistently’ (q. Hauser 1932: p. XX). Modern research has vindicated his obser-
vation. Between 1500 and the early 1560s wheat prices in Paris and in Toulouse
increased more than threefold. Varying but comparable price movements are
discernible in respect of other foodstuffs and industrial products as well as urban
rents (the price of living space), while wages in general grew more slowly and in
some sectors, in the same decades, scarcely at all.15 During the century prices
appear to have increased most rapidly between 1561 and 1575. And in these
circumstances it became increasingly apparent, at least to some observers, that,
unlike law itself, the exchange value of money was not just what legislators and
jurists said it was, but, as much as with other commodities, a function of relative
availability and relative scarcity—in modern parlance, market forces.
Those mid-century decades were precisely when France’s central governmental
authorities attempted to deal decisively with the phenomenon of price inflation
and its attendant monetary fluctuations. The phenomenon was multifaceted
especially as far as royal interests were concerned. On the one hand, reckless
management to meet the costs of war had landed the crown on a grand scale with
debts expressed and serviced in terms of money of account, but payable by means
of specie or bullion.16 On the other hand, all members of the kingdom’s
governing elites relied to a high degree, directly or indirectly, upon landed and
other revenues assessed in terms of money of account and paid in specie.
A particular feature of the problem was that gold coins seemed a diminishing
presence in the French economy by comparison with silver and billon currency,
just as Azpilcueta Navarro had observed (Desan 2004: 295). In 1561 a major
edict on monetary reform attempted to restore stability, by excluding a range of
foreign coins from the kingdom, launching a new gold écu au soleil, and restoring
the 1:12 ratio between the mint price of gold and that of silver bullion.17 And
official activity did not end there. In 1563 the Chambre des Comptes was
instructed to conduct an inquiry into price increases. During the following two
years, local representatives repeatedly drew the young King Charles IX’s attention to
the problem during his tour of the kingdom. Meanwhile the Parlement of Paris
instituted a consultation exercise on the same issue with representatives of every
quartier of the capital (Hauser 1932: p. XXIV). This was the immediate background
against which Jehan Cherruyer de Malestroit produced his Paradoxes . . . sur le faict
des Monnoyes.

15 Baulant 1968, 1976; Le Roy Ladurie 1970: 1020.

16 The scale and implications of the problem incurred most notably through the Grand Parti de
Lyon are reviewed by Mark Greengrass in an admirable paper regrettably unpublished hitherto, ‘ “C’est
tousiours une responce: qu’ilz y feront pourvoir.” Vivre la banqueroute royale en France à la deuxième
moitié du XVIe siècle’.
17 See Spooner 1972: 152. The official change was from gold at 172 l.t. the marc and silver 15 (ratio

11:47) to gold 182 and silver 15.15 (ratio 12:0).

 Getting and Spending 99

V .3 THE DEBATE WITH MALESTROIT

Malestroit addressed his Paradoxes directly to the king. Adopting a term from
rhetoric for the title of this short treatise,18 he presented a twofold argument.
He argued, first, that the seeming rise in prices over the past three hundred years
was in fact illusory. The illusion sprang from the practice of expressing prices in
terms of money of account. If instead they were expressed in terms of precious
metal equivalents, it would be seen that ‘for the purchase of all things no more gold
and silver has now to be given than had to be tendered before’ (Malestroit 1568: sig.
a 3ro). This was owing to the progressive devaluation of the accounting unit. The
second paradox was in effect the converse of the first. Because of the upwards
revaluation of real money in terms of money of account, a rentier or vendor seeking
payment in terms of the latter would now receive far fewer coins than formerly.
A related problem was disruption of the bimetallic ratio owing to the overvaluing
of gold coins ‘from which there necessarily follows the lowering and enfeebling of
silver monies’ (Malestroit 1568: sig. c[2]).
Hard on the heels of Malestroit’s observations came a memorandum prepared
and presented by Jean Colas, an officer of Paris’s Cour des Monnaies, and titled
‘Secret des Monnoyes’. According to Colas, the very composition of money gave
rise to problems of reconciling the different values represented by all coins: the face
value or official rate, the market value or price when traded, and the intrinsic value
or weight indicative of precious metal content. These should be properly aligned, as
far as possible in accordance with the time-honoured ratios. Obstacles impeding
such realignment included the inflows and outflows of foreign and French currency
as well as the impact of the market price of bullion upon the operations of royal
mints. A year after offering these assessments, Malestroit and Colas were sum-
moned before the royal council to explain their opinions more fully. In lengthy
presentations they re-emphasized the corrosive effect of the operations of the
international money market upon France’s economy. In particular, they pointed
on the one hand to the importing of debased foreign coins, and on the other to the
exporting of billon coins with substantial silver content. In consequence, France
suffered from a variant of what has been inaccurately designated ‘Gresham’s law’
(O’Brien 1997: 28–9): an outflow of good money coupled with insufficient
availability of the low denomination specie vital to the conduct of low-level trade.19
Why did Bodin choose to intervene? There are several possible answers. In his
Methodus he had already signalled his interest in economic matters. ‘The principal
activities of men’, he had announced, ‘combine for the maintenance and utility of
their common society (in communi societate tuenda tot ac tantarum utilitatum
effectrice, praecipuae hominum actiones conspirant)’; and these principal activities
included ‘hunting, livestock-breeding, agriculture, building’ as well as ‘selling, piloting,

18 From Greek παράδοξος: presenting a conclusion, or apodosis, contrary to what the reader

expects.
19 ‘Mémoires sur le faict des monnoyes proposez & leus par le maistre des comptes . . . 1567’, in

Einaudi ed. 1937: 99–130; Parsons 2001; Greengrass 2007b: especially 174–5.
100 Jean Bodin

weaving and the arts of the artificer (venatio, pecuaria, agricultura, aedificatio . . .
institoriam, gubernatoriam, lanificia, & fabriles artes)’ (1566: 29, 28). Some of these
items relate to his father’s business interests, and the question of prices had no doubt
figured in conversations at the parental dinner table, possibly in conjunction with the
activities of the mint at Angers (cf. Chapter I). Among the contemporary scholars
and jurists whom he most admired were Budé, one of whose finest works was a
wide-ranging study of Roman coinage from a humanist’s standpoint, and Du Moulin
who had published authoritative opinions from a jurist’s perspective on precisely the
issues currently at stake. Perhaps most important was the fact that those issues had
emerged as major political concerns, commanding the attention of king and council.
Here was an opportunity for a relatively unsuccessful jurist to parade technical
knowledge greater than that of presumed—and paid—experts in the field, and so to
impress patrons afresh. Bodin’s actual and prospective patrons included Bernard
Prévot, président in the Parlement, to whom he addressed his work, and two of the
court’s most respected luminaries, Baptiste du Mesnil and Guy du Faur de Pibrac.
Both of these received flattering mention in the opening lines of Bodin’s treatise; and
both were credited with having ‘endeavoured to remedy’ the problem now addressed
in his Response . . . au paradoxe de monsieur de Malestroit (1568).
The term ‘response’ in the title of the work itself lent it a juristic flavour. Some of
Bodin’s material was indeed drawn from legal sources: the ancient statutes of the
town of Amiens, recognizances (anciens aveux) deposited in the Chambre des
Comptes, the coûtumes of his native province of Anjou and of the Auvergne, of
Bourbonnais, La Marche, and Troyes in Champagne. He cited administrative
records, such as the tax assessments (cadastres) of Toulouse or the registers of the
Châtelet in Paris. While evidence from such sources may have been fruits of his
own researches, he acknowledged guidance and information given him by friends
and acquaintances: Claude Fauchet, antiquary and président in the Cour des
Monnaies; Dominique Bertin, abridger of Vitruvius’s De architectura libri decem;
Nicolas de Livre, barrister in the Parlement during the 1560s, whom Bodin would
later describe as a ‘man of singular erudition’ especially on earthquakes (Blair 2001: 9).
Characteristically, however, he was soon juxtaposing such evidence with copious
citations from his extensive reading, in the classics and in more recent histories of
various kinds. Caesar and Cicero, Plato, Pliny, and Plutarch were all vouched to
warranty, keeping evidential company with information gleaned from the Mémoires
of Philippe de Commynes, from Francisco Álvares’s recently published Historiale
description de l’Ethiopie—even from Guillaume Rondelet’s natural histories of fish.
Yet while the data which Bodin presented were extensive, his reading was less so
than he pretended. A good deal of the information which he credited to Roman
authors seems to have been taken from ‘the learned Budé’ and, not infrequently,
distorted in the process. In a number of respects his Response à Malestroit shows him
time and again at his worst, his use of sources unreliable, his readings careless, his
critical practices intermittent, his references disingenuous. One example must
suffice. In the course of recounting the impact of increases in supplies of gold
and silver upon prices in imperial Rome, he noted how Caesar ‘brought forty
million écus to the treasury’, but
 Getting and Spending 101
Mark Antony surpassed him, if what Plutarch and Appian write is true, for he gave his
army two hundred thousand talents for its pleasing services: which amounts to six
[times] twenty million écus. This is by no means credible (aucunement croyable), given
that the Emperor Hadrian, who was a sensible manager, gave ten million écus in order
to have the good will of his legions which numbered forty.20
Far from a gift (donativum) of unbelievable largesse to the army, however, the sum
of 120 million écus was in fact identified by Plutarch as tribute already paid by the
province of Asia to the Empire before Mark Antony formulated fresh demands.
Bodin’s error, or confusion, seems to have sprung from a superficial reading of a
paragraph in De asse where Budé does in fact speak of a donativum of Mark
Antony’s; but this is not the incident recounted here. Bodin’s comment ‘ce qui
est aucunement croyable’ at this juncture clearly echoes Budé’s phrase ‘quod an
credibile sit’; but the latter uses the phrase in reference to his attempt to convert
200,000 talents into écus, not in relation to the incident which Bodin has, in effect,
invented, whatever its relevance to the argument he seeks to make.21 And just as his
use of evidence was erratic, his arguments were overstated and inconsistent, as we
shall see.
What, then, were Bodin’s arguments? Having begun by showing from a variety
of chronological perspectives that prices in France had indeed risen, he announced
that the phenomenon had three causes and promptly proceeded to list four. In
reverse order, the fourth of these was the inflationary impact of demand by ‘kings
and great lords’ for ‘the things they like’. The third cause was ‘scarcity (la disette)’
induced through a combination of trade and ‘waste (le degast)’. The second cause
was ‘monopolies’. But the ‘principal and almost the only one (which no one until
now has mentioned)’, Bodin claimed, ‘is the abundance of gold and silver, which
nowadays is greater in this kingdom than it has been for four hundred years’ (H 9;
T & D 59). It was an extraordinary claim. Others before him had certainly drawn
attention to the relationship between supplies of precious metals and prices
(cf. Harsin 1927: 331–2; and cf. Chapter V.2 (p. 97)). Bodin may have intended
to suggest that they had considered the relationship simply in theoretical terms,
whereas he was concerned with the actual position in contemporary France. In that
case the claim was inadequately expressed. It was also crudely worded. As his other
causes signalled, much of Bodin’s argument revolved around not an absolute
increase in the supply of precious metals so much as an implicit concept of relative
scarcity, the relation of money in circulation to the volume of goods made freely
available for purchase in an open market. Such a concept applied to the supply of
precious metals themselves, gold on the one hand and silver on the other. The
significance of changes in their relative availability had long since been highlighted

20 Response, in Hauser 1932: 25. Except where otherwise stated, all quotations from Bodin’s text in

what follows are taken from this edition of Hauser’s, cited as H followed by page number, and
accompanied hereinafter by references to the translation and edition by Tudor and Dyson (T & D)
(1997) which shows changes made by Bodin in his second edition—the Discours of 1578.
21 I take this example from Buddruss 1987: 108; the article provides detailed examples of Bodin’s

frequent dependence upon Budé for classical source materials which he cites, and his not infrequent
inaccuracy in using these materials.
102 Jean Bodin

by Bodin’s predecessors in the field, Malestroit himself amongst them. In his

treatise’s closing passages he himself would emphasize it; yet throughout much of
the work he persisted in writing indiscriminately of ‘abundance of gold and silver’
with only passing regard to bimetallic considerations which had so exercised
previous commentators.
Having introduced his thesis, Bodin proceeded to show from the historical
record that ‘there was not so much gold and silver in this kingdom three hundred
years ago as there is now’ (H 10; T & D 60). One explanation of the commodities’
previous scarcity lay in the machinations of Italians, in Bodin’s view an exploitative
people about whom in this treatise he had little good to say (for instance, H 11–12;
T & D 63). But there were more substantial explanations. One was the growth of
international and particularly maritime trade, with the Spanish and Portuguese
acquiring from overseas and distributing, especially to France, great quantities of
precious metals in exchange for the primary and manufactured products so copi-
ously available there. French salt in particular, the ‘manna which God gives us as a
special grace’, was greatly coveted in northern countries too (H 13; T & D 65).
Secondly, over the previous hundred years the French people, ‘active and obliging
(serviable)’ as they were, had multiplied remarkably (H 14; T & D 66). Thirdly,
interest charges pushed up prices owing to the operations of financial institutions
which sought their profits in the money market. Far better, in Bodin’s opinion, to
promote ‘the mechanical arts and merchandise’, but these were ‘hindered by the
current trade in silver’ (H 15; T & D 67).
His other causes were rapidly reviewed. Monopolies were ‘not so important’ after
all, thanks to ‘good laws’ in relation to which Bodin’s fellow townsman, the former
Chancellor Guillaume Poyet, received special commendation (H 16; T & D 68).
A much more important factor and, indeed, paradoxical if Bodin had chosen to
present it as such was a consequence of France’s extraordinary fertility and mineral
wealth; for outputs from these resources were so heavily exported—a circumstance
which, from the domestic perspective, ‘causes the abundance of silver and the high
price of corn’ (H 17; T & D 68–9). But a cause warranting a longer disquisition lay
in the waste and extravagance generated by the ‘pleasure of princes’ and of ‘great
lords’ (H 17, 20; T & D 69, 72). They indulged in conspicuous consumption of
every kind. They and their imitators ‘wallow in every pleasurable sensation’; they
are ‘the source of all the vices and calamities of the commonwealth’ (H 21; T & D 73).
The latter might not be the Angevin’s immediate concern; but what was his concern
was how elite prodigality in conjunction with easy access to credit had the effect of
driving up the price of food. The history of late Republican and Imperial Rome was
rich in examples of the impact of profligate behaviour. It had led to Rome’s decline
and fall—the culmination of every commonwealth’s lifecycle as Bodin himself had
shown in his Methodus (H 25; T & D 77).
Pace Malestroit, then, prices had certainly risen and the phenomenon’s causes
were plain. And Malestroit was also mistaken in his calculations and misleading in
his conclusions on the specific topic of ‘the fineness (titre) of the monies minted in
this kingdom during the last three hundred years’ (H 25; T & D 77). Bodin offered
some detailed calculations showing fluctuations of money values over time and
 Getting and Spending 103

confirming overall that while debasement of the currency had taken place this was
not to a degree that would account for the rise in prices.22 So what remedies could
in fact be proposed for the inflation that had unquestionably occurred? It would be
pointless to try to control monopolies and extravagance. It would be not only futile,
but morally wrong and politically and economically improvident to attempt to
restrict and reduce foreign trade. Trade was reciprocal: it involved imports as well as
exports of necessary goods and commodities. Thanks to divine bounty France might
be exceptionally well endowed; but ‘by his admirable prudence’ God had created
circumstances of mutual dependency among the nations of the earth, such that
‘there is no country in the world so lavishly provided for as not to lack many things’
(H 34; T & D, 85–6). Even so, there were limits to the desirability of freedom of
trade. Insofar as export of grain induced local dearth, it should be countered through
the creation of public granaries. If food in general and meat in particular were priced
beyond prospective purchasers’ reach, there was much to be said for promoting
consumption of fish (H 37–41; T & D, 89–93). A case could also be made for
imposing duties on the export of essential primary products as well as cloth, linen,
and wine (H 36–7; T & D, 88). Foreign demand for these was strong enough to
ensure desirable inflows ‘by weight of silver (au pois d’argent)’ in exchange (H 36;
T & D, 88). For it must not be overlooked that ‘abundance of gold and silver’
constituted ‘the wealth of a country’ (H 32; T & D, 84). It followed, to Bodin’s
mind, that government policies should aim to maximize the presence in France of
the very commodity identified by him as the principal cause of the price increases
which he insisted really had taken place and were so widely found injurious.
There remained a set of measures which Bodin recommended at considerable
length as a means of ending ‘the current abuses (les abus qui se font)’ (H 41; T & D,
93). The remedial means lay in ensuring ‘the stability of money’ by attending to its
physical configuration and material content (H 41; T & D, 93). The circulating
medium ought to consist of only three kinds of coin: gold, silver, and ‘refined
copper (cuivre rosette)’. All should be manufactured by casting or milling (forgée au
moulin) (H 42; T & D, 95) as opposed to hammering (monnoye du marteau) (H 45;
T & D, 98); and all should be of a strict standard of purity. These measures would
prevent clipping and counterfeiting. As for billon coins with their variable alloy,
they were all too easily counterfeited, clipped and overvalued (H 50–1; T & D,
124). They should be discontinued (décrié ) and replaced by the new copper variety;
but this should be done gradually, for ‘billon is the only wealth that the poor have’
(H 50; T & D, 102). From the proposed measures various benefits would accrue.
Indeed, they were the only way to ‘exterminate counterfeiters (faux monnoyeurs)’,
to frustrate financial speculators whom Bodin dubbed ‘flateurs’ and ‘courtizans’
(H 41,46; T & D, 93–4, 98), to secure revenues and rents, to stabilize prices—‘in
short, to facilitate trade’ (H 41; T & D, 94).
In respect of prices, the remedy sat uneasily alongside its proposer’s view that
inflation sprang principally from ‘the abundance of gold and silver’. Without

22 H 25–31; esp. 29–31; T & D 77–84, esp. 81–3.

104 Jean Bodin

increases in their supply, arguments for the restoration of sound money through
improving its precious metal content could scarcely have been other than hypo-
thetical.23 The proposed remedy kept uneasy company too with Bodin’s assertion
along the way that ‘it is not through alteration of the coinage that everything is dearer
(ce n’est pas pour avoir altéré les monnoyes que tout est enchéri)’ (H 29; T & D, 81). Yet,
despite its dubious logic as well as its questionable use of evidence, Bodin’s treatise
has been widely regarded as a seminal contribution to the development of economic
thought. Its author was, we are told, ‘the most influential exponent’ of the
explanation of the sixteenth-century price rise that linked the phenomenon with
‘the influx of American bullion’ (Wilson 1967: 524). In fact, transatlantic gold and
silver imports figured only belatedly in Bodin’s Response, and even then were far
outweighed by other explanatory factors.24 The significance subsequently ascribed
to the work, with its various inconsistencies, owes much to perceptions of its author as
a forerunner of later economic thought. Thus, the Bodin who denounced monopolies
and commented that ‘the flow of commerce’ should be ‘unhindered and uncon-
strained’ (H 35; T & D, 87) has been regarded as an apostle of free trade, his ideas
‘stamped with the spirit of freedom of modern times’ (Baudrillart 1853: 176); while
the Bodin who identified a country’s wealth with bullion and argued for export
tariffs as an instrument of commercial policy emerges rather as a proponent of
protectionism, an early advocate of mercantilist ideas.25 The same Bodin has been
credited with pioneering status in relation to the quantity theory of money. In this
regard it is certainly true that he ventured a far more searching assessment of
available data than any previous thinker on the topic had begun to attempt. Yet
his interpretative propositions scarcely represented a conceptual advance on the
formulations offered by Copernicus or Navarro. It could be argued that the data he
presented so copiously did serve to illustrate factors in what subsequently consti-
tuted quantity theory: specifically, fluctuations in the supply of goods and services,
the role of credit, the velocity of monetary circulation. But it would be straining the
evidence to credit the Bodin of the Response with a grasp of such a theory, for all his
delight in the minutiae of monetary technicalities.26
For all its technical content, Bodin’s views in his Response continued, much in
the vein of his scholastic predecessors, to be shaped by ethical considerations. His
declared aim was to end ‘the abuses that currently prevail (les abus qui se font)’
(H 41; T & D, 93). It followed that his chief targets were the sources of those
abuses—courtiers and counterfeiters on the one hand, waste and extravagance on

23 On contradictions in Bodin’s thesis cf. Chiriotti 1938: 322–3.

24 For example, while in 1568 Bodin noted the ‘terres nefues pleines d’or & d’argent’ which ‘le
Castilian’ had ‘mis soubs sa puissance’ and ‘en a rempli l’Espaigne’, he seemed to locate those new lands in
Africa (1568: sig. c3; H 12–13; T & D, 64). Some remarks on gold and silver imports from Peru were
subsequently inserted at this juncture, sandwiched between the African reference and comment on the
‘incredible profit that the king of Portugal makes in the Moluccas’ (T & D, 64).
25 See Hauser 1932: LIII–LIV; Chiriotti 1938: 304–7; Berriot 1984: 40. For a summary account of

French ‘mercantilist’ thinking, Harsin 1928: 11–21.

26 Thus, while he noted some ‘particular changes which make things dearer than their ordinary

price, such as food in times of famine, arms in times of war . . . all these particular cases are not relevant
(considérables) to the case at issue, which is general’ (H 31; T & D, 83).
 Getting and Spending 105

the other. Even the king was not immune to stricture: for was it not the ‘pleasure of
princes which determines the price of things (plaisir des princes qui donnent le pris
aux choses)’ (H 17; T & D, 69)? And in this treatise, as elsewhere, Bodin’s
overriding concern was with justice. The bimetallic ratio turned out to be ‘a
necessary and convenient justice’, and deviation from it by royal act ‘a barbarous
injustice’—the worst, indeed, of all abuses, for ‘the sovereign right to command
and do justice’ was ‘the greatest gift of God and the greatest honour that man can
receive on this earth’ (T & D, 85). More heinous than mere abuse, debasement of
the currency was a kind of sacrilege. Money was ‘a holy thing which ought not to be
altered (une chose sainte qui ne doibt estre altérée)’ (H 53; T & D, 126)—an opinion
which implicitly challenged Aristotle’s that money did not exist ‘by nature’ whilst
reiterating his observation on the verbal cognation of νο̂μισμα (money) and νο̂μος
(law).27 It was therefore incumbent upon the jurist to show how the integrity of
money might be restored as law and justice required, even if his manner of doing so
were to cost him the goodwill of personages who held his prospects of advancement
in their hands. This was the challenge to which Bodin responded in his Response.
Even before the treatise’s publication a senior office-holder had disputed upon
empirical grounds one of the principles which Malestroit had espoused and, in the
cause of justice, Bodin had eventually decided to stress. The central observation in a
memorandum by Alexandre de La Tourette, newly appointed premier président of
Paris’s Cour des Monnaies, tallied with Budé’s observation decades before: that the
gold–silver ratio of 1:12 was simply not observed as a general rule. In La Tourette’s
words, the ‘proportion of twelve . . . is subject to variation according to the change in
time, as when gold is found to be scarcer than silver’. This amounted to explaining
alterations in bullion prices in terms of market fluctuations.28 A comparable position
was stated not long afterwards by François Grimaudet, like Bodin a child of Angers
and a jurist too. Grimaudet began by affirming that ‘the essence of money’ consisted
‘not in the material’, but ‘in the assigned value (la valeur imposée), which depends on
the Prince’s will’ (Grimaudet 1576: 34). But he then revised his view on the strength
partly of an appreciation of the realities of the case and partly of the Roman
jurisconsult Julian’s opinion on the force of public acceptance in relation to law
itself. As Grimaudet commented,
the value of money should be understood to be that according to which it has currency
among merchants and in commerce by common usage and observance, and the
opinion that the value of money depends upon public authority, ought to be under-
stood rather as the value at which money is stated among merchants and other persons
than as the value prescribed by the Prince.29

27 ‘[T]he Greeks call money and law by the same name (les Gregeois appellent la monnoye et la loy

d’un mesme nom)’: H 52–3; T & D,126; cf. Chapter V.2 (p. 95).
28 Though La Tourette added that such fluctuations might owe more to other ‘accidents’, such as

‘sterile seasons’ and wars (Response du Sr de La Tourette, in Einaudi ed. 1937: 133–4).
29 ‘la valeur du denier doibt estre entendue celle, selon laquelle il a cours entre les marchands, & au

commerce par commun vsage & obseruance, & ce qu’est dict, que la valeur du denier depend de l’auctorité
publique, doibt estre plus entendu de la valeur à laquelle la monnoye est exposee entre les marchands & autres
106 Jean Bodin

The comment tallied with the fact of price fluctuations which, under the current
monetary regime, were plainly not controllable through seeking to fix currency
values by royal decree. High-level discussions throughout the early 1570s had
acknowledged that uncomfortable fact. Prompted partly by the vexed question of
contractual obligations to which Du Moulin amongst others had long since called
attention, the royal Conseil des Finances drafted in 1571 a memorandum which
implicitly accepted one of Malestroit’s key contentions: the disruptive consequence
of conducting transactions by means of real money whilst expressing prices in terms
of money of account (cf. Chapter V.2 (p. 99)). The council recommended that
contracts might be drafted with the gold écu rather than the livre tournois as the unit
of account. The recommendation took root. On the eve of the convening of the
Estates-general at Blois in 1576, the Cour des Monnoies extended it to cover all
transactions.30
Bodin served at the Estates-general as deputy for the Third Estate of Vermandois,
ranking—as he repeatedly affirmed—next in seniority to the Paris deputies (Recueil
1577: 6). In the course of the Estates’ proceedings, he played a leading role in a
committee on monetary issues, owing presumably to his status and to the prom-
inence he had gained in relevant debates. He produced a report which has survived
in manuscript,31 and the essence of his views is also recorded in his chef d’oeuvre,
published shortly before the Estates assembled.32 The views tallied with those
expressed in the Response: inter alia, that coins should be cast rather than ham-
mered; that the 12:1 ratio, the ‘just proportion of gold and silver’, be maintained;
that transactions among the poor necessitated the availability of small coins (though
as copper prices were uncertain that metal might not be suitable for the purpose
after all). And the governing principle of Bodin’s diagnosis and prognosis remained
unchanged. France’s monetary difficulties sprang from ‘abuses’. Their ‘root’ in turn
lay in ‘the confusion of the three metals, gold, silver and copper’. Therefore, the
remedy lay in ensuring that coins be cast rather than hammered, and above all
minted of ‘pure metal’.33 There were one or two fresh recommendations, still in
line with the ‘abuses’ theme: notably that the royal mints be centralized, their
operations be strictly overseen, and their officers be paid rather than take their
cut through ‘over-alloying (escharcetant)’ (1583: 929). But royal policy makers
remained unpersuaded. Lengthy deliberations during much of 1577 culminated
in an ordinance which formally replaced the abstract livre tournois with the real écu
as France’s accounting unit, banned the circulation of foreign specie apart from

personnes, que de la valeur imposee par le Prince’ (Grimaudet 1576: 143). The reference to Julian, cited
by Grimaudet as ‘l. de quib. } de legib’, is to Digest 1.3.32.
30 For these recommendations, an account of the relevant context and the information that follows

below on Bodin at the Estates-general see the valuable article by Greengrass (2007b: 179–83).
31 The report is identified and summarized in Greengrass (2007b: 182). According to Jonathan

Parsons, the report’s ‘utter impracticality . . . consigned it to immediate irrelevance’ (Parsons 2003: 7).
32 République VI.iii (1576: 657–73; 1583: 913–37). The first edition lacks the concluding sixteen

lines added to the chapter, to record Bodin’s contribution at Blois.

33 ‘The root of the abuse is the alloyage of the three metals, gold, silver, and copper (La racine de

l’abus est la confusion des trois metaux, or, argent, & cuyver)’; whereas it ought to be everywhere ordained
‘that monies should be of simple metals (que les monnoyes soyent de metaux simples)’ (1583: 928, 914).
 Getting and Spending 107

Spanish gold and silver coins, and set a maximum value to the settling of transac-
tions by means of billon currency.
In some ways, the 1577 ordinance resembles an exercise in reconciling conflict-
ing advice. Yet it was rather with Malestroit’s than with Bodin’s analysis that its
main provisions tallied. It was Malestroit in his original Paradoxes who had stressed
the desirability of accounting in precious metal equivalents, while Malestroit and
Colas together had highlighted the undesirability of importing debased foreign
coins. There was, it seemed, no prospect of implementing radical reforms of royal
mint locations, operations, and personnel in the ways which Bodin had prescribed.
This did not deter the Angevin from dilating further upon his recommendations. In
a second edition of his Response, published in 1578,34 the position established a
decade earlier was modified and amplified to some degree. To his set of four causes
of price movements he now added a fifth, to accommodate devaluation of the
money of account: ‘the price of money, lowered from its old valuation (le pris des
monnoyes, ravalé de son ancienne estimation)’ (H. 65; T & D, 59). He supplied more
information on bullion imports from the Americas, elaborated further on import
and export tariffs, re-emphasized the importance of settling contracts and purchases
at the currency values prevailing at the time agreements were made, whilst con-
ceding that copper was after all an unsuitable metal for minting. But the overriding
theme remained the same: that abuses lay at the heart of France’s monetary
difficulties, and that purity of coinage offered the means to overcome them. ‘The
cause of all the counterfeiters, scourers, clippers, debasers, and of the over-alloying
and adulterating of money’, declared Bodin, ‘springs only from the mixing of
metals (Le fondement de tous les faux monnoyeurs, laveurs, roigneurs, billonneurs, et
des escharcetez, et foiblages des monnoyes ne vient que de la meslange qu’on fait des
métaux)’ (H 70; T & D, 103).35

V. 4 POLISH CONSTITUTIONALISTS AND FRENCH

MONARCHOMACHS

France’s continuing difficulties in the 1570s sprang from problems far beyond
the monetary, and from admixtures of quite other than metallic ingredients. The
decade began with the Peace of Saint-Germain, an edict designed to stabilize the
kingdom after three civil wars by establishing a juridical framework for co-existence
between proponents of rival doctrines and modes of religious observance. Extend-
ing freedom of conscience to both sides, it offered to Catholics restoration of
church property and other rights; to Protestants, security to practise their faith in

34 Under the title Discours . . . sur le rehaulsement et diminution tant d’or que d’argent, & le moyen d’y

remedier, & Response aux Paradoxes de Monsieur de Malestroict.

35 Bodin prepared his revised and enlarged discussion of the topic for inclusion in his République

(1576: VI.iii). That revised version then replaced its predecessor in the 1578 edition of Response and
survived in the 1583 edition of the République. However, for the 1586 Latin edition of the latter he
revised and abbreviated it again, omitting much technical detail. See Kenneth D. McRae’s comment in
his edition of the Knolles English translation of the République (1962: A161).
108 Jean Bodin

specified locations as well as a measure of equality before the law. Negotiated on the
Protestant side by none other than Henri de Mesmes, the agreement failed in its
intended purpose. For its failure the reasons are many.36 As important as any was
the detestation in which the leaders of the contending factions held each other,
attitudes that intensified religious feeling on both sides. Stressful economic condi-
tions served further to exacerbate socio-religious strains. Bad harvests accelerated
food price inflation with consequent impacts upon royal and seigneurial revenues,
while landlord exploitation brought peasant communities in parts of France ever
closer to revolt. International tensions mounted as Protestants in the Netherlands
resistant to rule by the agents of the Most Catholic king of Spain looked elsewhere
for support. They looked on the one hand to England, and, on the other, to their
presumed co-religionists in France. Plans by Huguenot leaders to intervene pro-
voked their enemies within the kingdom to explore possible counter-measures.
These included negotiations for a marital alliance with England in the person of
that country’s queen. Every faction meanwhile schemed and lobbied for royal
endorsement of its own stance. And therein lay the greatest risk of all to the French
kingdom’s peace and stability: the uncertainties which, in the twilight phase of the
house of Valois, surrounded the monarchy itself. Its weaknesses in these dangerous
times were embodied in their differing ways by all three of Henri II’s surviving sons,
Charles IX, Henri d’Anjou, and François d’Alençon.
The fragile peace shattered sensationally in the immediate aftermath of an
attempt by the Queen Mother, Catherine de’ Medici, to reconcile the hostile groups
by dynastic means through marrying her own daughter in August 1572 to the
Huguenot leader, Henri of Bourbon and Navarre. Within a week of their wedding
France erupted in the massacres precipitated on the eve of the feast of St Bartholomew
by the Paris militia, acting on royal instructions (Jouanna 2007). The slaughter of
Huguenots lasted in the capital throughout that day and spread to parts of the
provinces, notably Angers on the explicit instructions of Henri, Duke of Anjou
(quoted Knecht 1996: 427–8). Whether Bodin was in Paris at the time is uncertain,
though the possibility has stimulated dramatic accounts of his evading prospective
assailants. They include his taking refuge in the house of the Parlement’s premier
président Christofle de Thou, leading reformer of provincial coûtumes and would-be
conciliator of the opposing factions. By one account Bodin jumped through a
window to escape from a bloodthirsty mob that had broken into De Thou’s
residence.37 Predictably, the slaughter excited applause in Catholic circles whilst
scandalizing Protestant Europe. Among the victims was Ramus, converted to

36 For a sophisticated interpretation of peacemaking efforts amid resentments and aspirations in the

context of local communities see Foa 2015.

37 Devisme 1801: 44; Guhrauer 1841: XVII; Chauviré 1914a: 35. No trace of the incident occurs

in De Thou’s Histoire universelle, nor in his Mémoires. In his critical reappraisal of De Thou’s account
of the Saint-Barthélemy Bourgeon (1988) says nothing about Bodin’s adventure. Bodin himself makes
no mention of it, and this may discredit the report as in the course of his works he notes plenty of other
incidents involving himself, including threats to his life. However, in his République the events at Paris
receive only passing mention, linked with a remark on what triggered the Revolt of the Netherlands
(insertion in 1586: 477; not in the corresponding passage in 1583: 647).
 Getting and Spending 109

Protestantism a decade earlier. Among the scandalized regions was Poland where,
following the death of the last Jagiellonian king in 1572, the Commonwealth’s
political leaders were subscribing to a formal pledge of toleration ‘among those who
disagree on religion (inter dissidentes in religione)’ (Friedrich 2007: 209). Ironically,
the death of Zygmunt II August enabled the same duke of Anjou who had ordered
the Saint-Barthélemy’s extension to Angers to emerge as a candidate for the elective
Polish throne.
There were other, formidable contenders—among them King John III of
Sweden, the Tsar Ivan IV of Russia, and the Archduke Ernest of Austria. But
Anjou’s case was skilfully presented by the French ambassador, Jean de Monluc,
who had initially proposed Bodin’s patron Pibrac for the ambassadorial role.38 By
that time Pibrac stood high in favour at the Valois court. Anjou had appointed him
chancellor of his duchy; the Queen Mother, likewise for her county of Lauraguais,
south-east of Toulouse (Cabos 1922: 132). As Anjou’s Polish candidature ran into
difficulties, Pibrac’s services were called upon after all, to compose a justification of
the Saint-Barthélemy. He did so in the form of a letter ostensibly addressed, in
Latin, to a Polish nobleman, Stanislaus Elvidius. According to Pibrac, the
Massacre—which he deeply deplored—sprang from an eruption of public emo-
tion, triggered when the king attempted, reluctantly, to take pre-emptive action
against conspirators threatening the lives of members of the Guise and the royal
family itself.39 The Epistola, elegantly composed in epigrammatic style, certainly
did Pibrac’s career at court no harm. Among the responses it evoked from the
divided ranks of its Polish readers were denunciations of the French court’s
bloodthirsty and ‘Turkish-style behaviour (conduite à la turquesque)’ (Noailles
1867: II. 157–8); yet energetic lobbying secured Anjou’s election and the despatch
of ambassadors to France with an offer of the throne. They were greeted by a
delegation led by Charles de Pérusse des Cars, Bishop of Langres, and armed with a
Latin address which combined a eulogy of Poland itself with a celebration of Henri
d’Anjou’s virtues in even grander terms.
Presumably in order that it might reach as wide a readership as possible among
Anjou’s compatriots, the oration was translated into French. The task was assigned
to Pibrac’s would-be protégé, Jean Bodin, ‘sent to Metz to assist those who received
the ambassadors of Poland’.40 To the task Bodin brought the combination of
linguistic skills, scholarly self-assurance, and independence of mind already exhib-
ited in his earlier work. Faithful for the most part to the original text, his
interpretatio none the less modified it in places, embellishing certain passages whilst
omitting others, occasionally parading the translator’s classical learning, gratuitously
offering here and there an explanatory gloss, and introducing terms of key signifi-
cance in Bodin’s Weltanschauung.

38 For Monluc’s conduct of the embassy see the memoir by his secretary Jean Choisnin (ed.

Dumaih, 2006), who credits Pibrac with only an incidental role (p. 90).
39 Du Faur de Pibrac 1922; translated version in Noailles 1867: II. 146–56.
40 Bodin 1576: 428; cf. p. 702. Conceivably Bodin, joined the reception committee on Pibrac’s

recommendation and may even have had a hand in composing the Latin original of the oration.
110 Jean Bodin

For example, a dismissive half-sentence in the Latin version on Julius Caesar’s

having publicly claimed to be descended from the gods was elaborated at Bodin’s
hands into a satirical passage:
And although Caesar dared to boast before the Roman people that he sprang from the
race of gods on his father’s side and of kings on his mother’s, nevertheless he fed the
people a fine tale warranting mockery. But as much could truly be said of the French
royal house.41
Again, a reference in the Latin text to ‘the ancient treaty which the Romans once
concluded with the Hedui’ was refined into ‘the ancient treaty made between the
Romans and the dwellers and inhabitants of the town of Autun’.42 In contrast, the
French version, observing that ‘There is no need to recount here in great detail his
[Anjou’s] victories and the so-happy success of his affairs’,43 excluded even the
Latin author’s summary characterization of Anjou’s deeds:
howsoever he kept from the lives, dwellings, fortunes and bodies of his citizens carnage,
conflagrations, rapine, lust, [deeds] which are so great as not to be dismissed without
disgrace, and so numerous as no oration could fully embrace them.44
Perhaps this native of Angers fought shy of appearing so blatantly to exculpate Anjou
from his share of responsibility for the carnage of the Saint-Barthélemy. Perhaps he
balked at so generously extolling the qualities of a commander whose most recent
military experience was his leadership of the royal armies that had suffered immense
losses in the disastrous siege of La Rochelle (1573). Certainly, Bodin’s choice of
terminology at key junctures was carefully considered. In the French translation, God
and justice figured at every opportunity. In the Latin version Anjou ‘had under the
King’s salutary auspices saved [the kingdom] from ruin (salutaribus Regis auspiciis ab
interitu vindicauit)’. In the French he had ‘saved it from inevitable ruin under the
banners of his king, after God (soubz les enseignes de son Roy l’a sauué apres Dieu de sa
ruïne ineuitable)’.45 The phrase ‘diuino testimonio’ signified, for Bodin, ‘un iuste
iugemant [sic] de Dieu’.46 The juristic phrases rooted in Roman law (summa potestas,
princeps legibus solutus) which the Latin text adduced in characterizing royal authority

41 ‘Et quoy que Cesar osast se vanter deuant le peuple Romain, qu’il estoit extraict de la race des dieux du

costé paternal, & des roys du costé maternel, neantmoins il passoit le people d’vne belle fable, & digne de risee.
Mais on le peult dire à la verité de la maison de France’ [La Harangue de messire Charles des Cars (Bodin
1573: 10]. The Latin version reads simply, ‘Nam quod fabulose Caius Caesar in concione populi Romani
a diis ortus sui primordia repetere ausus est, id verissime ac optimo iure praedicere possumus de gente
Valesiorum’ (Des Cars 1573: 9).
42 ‘antiquo foedere quod Romani cum Heduis olim percusserunt’ (Des Cars 1573: 17); ‘l’ancien traicté

faict & passé entre les Romains & les manans & habitans de la ville d’Autun’ (Bodin 1573: 18). The
Hedui, a Gallic tribe, were settled by treaty with Augustus in a new town (Augustodunum),
subsequently named Autun.
43 ‘Il n’est pas besoin de raconter icy par le menu ses victories, & le succez tresheureux de ses affaires’

(Bodin 1573: 9).

44 ‘quoque modo caedem, incendia, rapinas, libidinem, a ciuium suorum vita, tectis, fortunis, corporibus

arcuerit: quae tam magna sunt, vt neque praetermitti sine flagitio, ac tam multa, vt nullius orationis
vbertate contineri possint’ (Des Cars 1573: 8).
45 Des Cars 1573: 4; Bodin 1573: 4. 46 Des Cars 1573: 4; Bodin 1573: 7.
 Getting and Spending 111

were rendered in French as ‘to reign is nothing other than to command in sovereignty
with an absolute power’,47 a juxtaposing of terms which anticipated Bodin’s por-
tentous formulation in what would be his most famous work. Respublica found a
French equivalent in ‘estat’, or ‘state’, the Latin text’s resounding declaration in favour
of ‘universae Reipublicae Christianae salutem’ being rendered as ‘celle qui concerne
l’estat vniuersel de la Chrestienté ’.48 And Anjou’s alleged habituation from his youth to
fight ‘for the safety of his native land (pro patriae salute)’ re-emerged as zeal ‘for the
defence of the public weal (pour la defense de la chose publique)’.49
Even in the sensitive role of official translator at a high diplomatic level, then,
Bodin could not refrain from alluding to deep-seated issues that were to preoccupy
him more and more. But for the time being there were lessons to be learned from
the immediate political scene. Generously eulogized, Anjou entered Poland with
Pibrac in attendance in January 1574 to claim his crown, and soon ran into
difficulties. No combination even of Monluc’s diplomatic, Pibrac’s rhetorical,
and Bodin’s translating skills could suppress Polish misgivings over the reliability
of an incoming ruler known to have won military laurels through defeating
religious opponents in the shape of his own countrymen, and reported—rhetorical
flourishes to the contrary notwithstanding—to have played a deeply questionable
role in the Saint-Barthélemy. A proviso of his election was that he subscribe on oath
to an array of newly drafted conditions set out as specific undertakings by the
incoming monarch (the pacta conventa) and underpinned by more far-reaching
articles, the articuli Henriciani. The latter amounted to constitutional laws, the
effect of which was severely to constrain royal powers. They guaranteed freedom of
religious belief and practice. They restrained the Polish king from imposing taxes
and declaring war unilaterally. The articuli Henriciani stipulated that the royal
power be exercised under continual surveillance by a committee of senators
appointed by the diet (Sejm). Here was the prime institutional manifestation of
Poland as a Ständestaat, a corporate body, in effect a polity of secular and ecclesi-
astical elites. Not content with simply reducing the monarch to the position of
partner alongside the two houses of the Sejm in what amounted to a mixed
constitution, the articuli formally registered his subjects’ right to withdraw obedi-
ence should he fail to observe these laws (Noailles 1867: II. 331–41). In Paris,
Henri had pledged himself accordingly to the ambassadors who offered him the
throne on explicitly stated terms: that ‘you shall swear or you shall not reign (jurabis
aut non regnabis)’ (Noailles 1867: II. 362). In Cracow opponents of his election
called for a formal reaffirmation of the pledge under oath in the sacred setting of the
coronation ceremony itself. Not surprisingly, Henri had second thoughts and
seemed on the point of reneging. Finally, he swore that he would ‘uphold and
maintain peace among those who disagree on religion’.50 It was enough to gain him

47 ‘regner n’est autre chose que commander en souueraineté avec une puissance absolue’ (Bodin 1573: 8).

Cf. Des Cars 1573: 7: ‘quid autem aliud est regnum, quam summa Principis legibusque soluta potestas?’
48 Des Cars 1573: 16; Bodin 1573: 18. 49 Des Cars 1573: 8; Bodin 1573: 9.
50 ‘pacem inter dissidentes de religione tuebor et manutenebo’ (Noailles 1867: II. 417; cf. Cabos 1922:

164–6).
112 Jean Bodin

the crown; but his subsequent conduct soon revived suspicions that he had little
intention of honouring such an oath. Finally, the death of Charles IX in May 1574
drew him hotfoot back to France, to claim a crown less trammelled by constitu-
tional constraints.
Yet constitutional constraints were precisely what thinkers in that kingdom were
canvassing too. In 1572 Anjou’s own secretary, Bernard de Girard, seigneur du
Haillan, had described how France enjoyed a mixed constitution combining
monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy, in which the king was ‘loved, revered,
feared and obeyed; and although he has every power and authority to command
and to do whatever he may will, yet this great and sovereign liberty is regulated and
bridled by good laws and ordinances’.51 The constitutionalist case was made most
substantially by François Hotman, erstwhile student of Roman law at Orléans,
admirer of Du Moulin and, above all, of John Calvin. The first edition of
Hotman’s Francogallia appeared in the very year of Anjou’s election to the Polish
throne. Drawing principally upon historical materials, Hotman argued that
France’s contemporary political institutions amounted to perversions of those
originally established and of the principles that had informed the latter. In line
with the prescriptions of the greatest philosophers, ‘our ancestors have most wisely
created a mixed constitution from three kinds of commonwealth (mixtam a tribus
generibus Reipublicae temperationem Maiores nostri secuti sapientissime constituer-
unt)’ (Hotman 1972: 296). That constitution’s guarantor was the ‘public council’;
and it was there that ‘the entire power of administering the kingdom plainly lay
(omnem plane Regni administrandi potestatem penes publicum Concilium fuisse)’
(Hotman 1972: 342). Matters resolved in the public council included creating and
deposing kings, determining war and peace, approving public laws, awarding the
commonwealth’s highest honours, offices and charges, apportioning the royal patri-
mony: in sum, ‘all those things which the public now call in common parlance Affairs
of States (de iis rebus omnibus quae vulgus etiam nunc Negotia Statuum populari verbo
appellat)’ (Hotman 1972: 332). Had such institutions been maintained, this, it
seemed, would have been greatly to France’s advantage. But owing especially to the
corrupt influence of hosts of lawyers and the intrusion of clergy to boot, France’s
constitution had degenerated into rule by kings, courtiers, and their acolytes.
Hotman’s position was reinforced by another graduate of the Orléans law
faculty, Théodore de Bèze. Like Hotman, Bèze had studied there under one of
France’s leading exponents of juridical scholasticism, Pierre de l’Estoile. Again like
Hotman, Bèze had proceeded via Paris to Geneva from where anxious Polish
Protestants sought advice in 1573 about the credentials of the Duke of Anjou
(Kingdon, in Bèze 1971: XVIII–XX). Evidently, he and Hotman drew on each
other’s legal and historical expertise in developing their respective theses. In Bèze’s

51 ‘le Roy qui est le Monarque, aymé, reuere, craint et obey: & bien qu’il ait tout puissance & authorité de

commander, & faire ce qu’il veut, si est-ce que ceste grande & souveraine liberté est reglee, limitee & bridee
par bonnes loix & ordonnances’ (Du Haillan 1572: III. 3). Du Haillan’s formulation clearly echoes the
account of La grant monarchie de France which Claude de Seyssel had presented to Francis I in 1515, at
the outset of his reign.
 Getting and Spending 113

case it took the form of his Du droit des magistrats.52 Clear echoes of Hotman’s
opinions in his work included Bèze’s position on the historical role of the estates.
French kings were originally ‘elected by the consent of the Estates’, and that body’s
‘authority’ had extended to ‘establishing and deposing the Crown’s principal
officers or at least to overseeing what their kings did vis-à-vis the imposing of
taxes and other principal affairs of government in peace and war’. How great the
deterioration from such satisfactory constitutional arrangements, thanks to ‘the
impudence of flatterers who daily aggrandise themselves to the destruction of so
well ordered a kingdom’ (Bèze 1575: 74; 1971: 41)! But more striking than such
contentions as these were Bèze’s views on resistance to ‘manifest tyranny’, views
which modified the position of his mentor, Calvin, on that problematic theme.
Ascribing to ‘inferior magistrates’ the right to resist,53 Bèze ostentatiously identified
as the repository and source not only of that right, but of all political authority
within the kingdom, ‘sovereignty (souveraineté)’. ‘Sovereignty’ he initially defined
as ‘that highest imperium or power and authority of the realm (summa imperii
seu regni δυνάμει et authoritate)’ (Bèze 1971: 19, n. 16). Between ‘sovereignty’ and
the ‘sovereign’ he drew a firm distinction. While the ‘sovereign’ might appoint the
‘inferior magistrates’ they ‘depend properly not from the sovereign, but from the
sovereignty’; and although the ‘sovereign’ die ‘the sovereignty remains entire’. Yet
‘sovereignty’ was not simply authority as such. The ‘sovereign’ himself ‘swears
fidelity to the sovereignty’. Thereby he assumed a contractual obligation, ‘founded
upon equity and natural reason’, or natural law. Hence his answerability to ‘the
maintainers of the sovereignty’, to ‘those who represent the sovereignty’.54 It
followed that that ‘highest imperium’, sovereignty itself, took the form of a ‘contract
or convention’. Here was a concept as portentous as any that jurists had extended
from the private sphere of Roman law into the arena of public jurisprudence.
What Bèze had in mind was specifically a contract of rulership grounded in
history and sustainable in law, rather than a social contract of the kind which
others were portentously to ponder (see Höpfl and Thompson 1979). Even so, the
so-called ‘monarchomach’55 standpoint was anathema to rival thinkers. Among
them were two of France’s leading humanists, both colleagues of the late Ramus at
the Collège Royal. Louis le Roy, professor of Greek, devoted the final, substantial
section of his De l’Excellence du gouvernement royal (1575) to refuting those who
would argue that the French monarchy was ‘elective’ and the realm better admin-
istered ‘by the advice of the people’. Such arguments were derived from ‘ancient
histories written mostly by monks and envious foreigners’. The estates upon which

52 Heidelberg, 1574; Latin translation as De iure magistratuum in subditos (1576). I have used the

1575 (s.l.) edition, in conjunction with the modern edition by Robert M. Kingdon (Geneva, 1971).
Evidence of Hotman/Bèze collaboration is especially apparent at Bèze 1575: 69–74; 1971: 38–41.
53 For Bèze’s advocacy of the role of ‘inferior magistrates’ see Bèze 1971: 53 sqq. For Calvin’s

position on resistance, Lloyd 1981: 65–7.

54 Bèze 1575: 32–3, 79–81, 88, 94–5; 1971: 19, 44, 48, 52. The phrase ‘ceux qui representent la

souveraineté’ would appear to allude to agency (representation) in Roman law, though such a role was
admissible in respect of physical entities incapable of acting for themselves—minors, corporate
bodies—rather than of incorporeal res such as relationships between parties.
55 The term coined decades later by William Barclay 1600.
114 Jean Bodin

their exponents so sanguinely relied were merely ‘a multitude, useless for govern-
ment’. No better proof could be found of how ‘calamitous’ a system they advocated
than the kingdom of Poland, ‘continually afflicted by grievous misfortunes, civil
and foreign’ (Le Roy 1575: fos 25v, 27r, 28v, 29v). Yet these were mildly worded
propositions by comparison with the terms in which Le Roy’s associates among the
defenders of the Valois cause had greeted the Saint-Barthélemy itself. One of them,
Jean Dorat, admired Hellenist and teacher of Ronsard, had extolled in assonant
verse that day ‘when the violence of weaponry raged (cum saeuiit ira machaerae)’
and ‘all the [Huguenot] nobility were slaughtered like pigs (Omnes, ut porci, sic
cecidere proci)’ (Demerson 1983: 293, 291). Pace his fondness for Latin verse and
cultivation of patronage amongst associates of the Valois, these were not sentiments
of a kind that Jean Bodin could endorse. Even so, it was against an immediate
background of controversy conducted in heated terms amid violent political unrest
that he completed and published his Six Livres de la République.
 VI
République

V I . 1 CONTEXT

Controversy and unrest intensified with Henri III’s return from Poland. Faction-
alism infested the royal court. The King’s remaining brother, François d’Alençon,
was detained there to all intents and purposes under house arrest, in company with
Henri of Navarre. In the country at large, Protestant uprisings multiplied, their
leaders seeking and finding assistance from abroad whilst canvassing support at
home—most ominously in Languedoc where in September 1574 the powerful
governor, Henri de Montmorency-Damville, agreed a military alliance with the
Huguenots almost coincidentally with the new king’s arrival in his realm. Thus was
formed a confederacy, joined a year later by Alençon. Escaping from court, he cast
himself as the movement’s leader and headed negotiations on its behalf. The
negotiations were conducted amid calls for reform, as urgent as any of those from
the notables of a Paris fearing siege by mercenary forces which the Huguenots had
brought in from Germany. The calls were loudest on the need to ameliorate the
crown’s fiscal policies and to eradicate government corruption (Greengrass 2007a:
32–4). But little of that figured in the terms which Alençon, backed by a confed-
eracy of princes and Protestants, negotiated with his brother’s administration, to be
ratified in May 1576 in the Edict of Beaulieu (aka paix de Monsieur)—terms which
in separate letters patent included concessions to Alençon himself in the shape of
rich apanages in the region of the Loire as well as the title Duke of Anjou.
What did figure in the edict itself were extraordinary concessions to the Prot-
estants. True, the edict continued to echo the concern expressed in its predecessors
‘to reconcile’ the King’s subjects ‘in a perfect union and concord (les réconcilier à
une parfait union et concorde)’, and to envisage that ultimately ‘all our subjects’
might through a ‘general council’ be ‘reunited in one and the same faith, religion
and creed’. But the regime’s view of admissible arrangements for relations between
the rival religious groups appeared drastically to have altered (cf. Chapter IV.3
(p. 62)). Described as ‘perpetual and irrevocable’, the Beaulieu edict granted
Protestants rights and immunities not far short of equality with Catholics for the
public practice of their religion (Haag 1846–59: X. 127–41). Indeed, it has been
argued that the Beaulieu provisions, if implemented to the full, would have
established in France ‘a genuine religious pluralism, unrestricted by place and
unfettered by legal definition’ (Greengrass 2000: 51). Far beyond ‘concord’ of
the kind envisaged in 1562, this seemed to amount to ‘toleration’ in the sense of
‘the legitimate co-existence of the reformed alongside the catholic religion’
116 Jean Bodin

(Turchetti 1984: 12). But the spirit of toleration was remote from the aspirations
of the contending parties, and certainly insofar as it implied freedom to follow
one’s conscience in religious practice. Already the leading Protestant theologian
Théodore de Bèze had described the very idea that ‘one may worship God in any
way one will’ as ‘a diabolical dogma’ (q. Rigolot 2000: 27–8). While the terms of
the Beaulieu edict fell well short of such a dogma, they sufficed to provoke on the
Catholic side the formation of leagues to oppose it: a movement which originated
in Péronne in Picardy, spread rapidly in northern France, presented a counter-
weight to the confederacy with which Alencon had aligned himself, and threatened
to disrupt arrangements for a key element in the edict’s implementation—an early
convening of the Estates-general.1
Amid all this Jean Bodin, at forty-six years of age, took a wife. His bride,
Françoise Trouillart, was the daughter of an élu based at Laon, and widow of a
contrôleur of the royal domain in the bailliage of Vermandois, also based at Laon.2
Her brother, Nicolas, like Bodin an avocat in the Paris Parlement, held offices as
king’s proctor (procureur du roi) in Laon and proctor in Vermandois too. Bodin
himself was a conseiller in the Laon présidial court, a major jurisdiction—the largest
ressort, indeed, in northern France.3 In addition to reinforcing his connections in a
significant centre of provincial government, Bodin acquired through his marriage
potential links with Alençon/Anjou’s entourage. Several of Françoise Trouillart’s
kinsmen held offices in the Duke’s extensive household (Boucher 1983: 41–2).
In due course Bodin’s stepson would become a secretary there. However, there is
no evidence that at this stage of his career Bodin himself was already gravitating
towards the Duke. What does seem likely is that interaction with fellow profes-
sionals, whether as a domainal commissioner or as a legal practitioner at a senior
level, led him initially to the Trouillart circle and in due course rendered him at
least acceptable and in all likelihood desirable as a family member. His election
towards the year’s end as deputy for the Third Estate of Vermandois at the Estates-
general confirms the status he enjoyed in that locality as well as his own appetite for
political engagement in critical circumstances.
But before the estates assembled he had placed in the public domain weighty
testimony to that appetite. So ‘tormented’ was the ‘vessel of our commonwealth’
by such a ‘violent storm’, he observed, so ‘worn down’ were the commander himself
and the pilots too, that ‘the passengers must lend a hand, whether with the sails, the
ropes, or the anchor’.4 With these opening words of a dedicatory letter to Guy du
Faur de Pibrac, Bodin introduced in 1576 the first edition of his Six Livres de la

1 Further on reactions to the ‘Peace of Monsieur’ see Chapter VII.1 (p. 160).
2 Chauviré 1914a: 37 suggests that through his marriage Bodin acquired only a modest amount of
property. But cf. Baldwin 1937: 163, noting him as lessor with his wife of an apparently substantial
landed holding. In view of his wife’s paternal and former marital connections, it seems likely that she
was tolerably well-resourced.
3 Ponthieux 1928: 59–60; Devisme 1822: 9–10.
4 ‘depuis que l’orage impetueux a tourmenté le vaisseau de nostre Republique, auec telle violence que le

Patron mesmes & les pilotes sont comme las & recruds d’un trauail continuel, il faut bien que les passagers y
prestent la main, qui aux voiles, qui aux cordages, qui à l’ancre’ (1576: sig. ā ij).
 République 117

République. Presenting it as a response to the urgent needs of crisis-torn France, he

chose to enter an arena increasingly populated with comparably intended effusions
of various kinds: harangues and recommendations by leading figures in French
public life, remonstrances from secular and religious communities, historical,
constitutional, and political-theological disquisitions by thinkers of differing per-
suasions. The kingdom, and especially its royal and noble households, was vibrant
with political debate about issues on which Henri de Valois himself had stated his
views before his departure for Poland.5 In the year of the République’s appearance
Pibrac was the dedicatee of another apologist for the Saint-Barthélemy. This was
Pierre de Dampmartin who offered in a Ciceronian dialogue another metaphor in
explanation of the kingdom’s tribulations: ‘like a musical instrument where too
great or too little tension in one of the strings changes the harmony and fills it with
dissonance and discord’.6 Yet Bodin’s work was no mere thèse de circonstance, even
though another candid friend from a section of the nobility with experience of
government at a high level had encouraged him to produce it (Blair 2001).7 As he
himself repeatedly indicated, it grew out of his earlier publications, and in particular
the Response à Malestroit, the Iuris universi distributio—above all, the Methodus.8
And, beyond these, it was also a contribution from a fresh perspective and by way of
fresh priorities to deliberations and debates pursued over nearly two millennia at the
highest levels of moral philosophy and jurisprudence, from Plato and Aristotle,
through Polybius, Cicero, and many more, on how a political society might best be
organized on earth.

V I .2 EDITIONS AND SOURCES

Grandly conceived and grandly executed, the République9 proved to be far and
away the most successful of Bodin’s publications. It was a work of astonishing
scope, a wide-ranging analysis of contemporary and ancient constitutions presented
within a weighty theoretical framework. Of all his works, it was also the most
modified. In the course of the two decades from its first publication in 1576 to the
year of its author’s death, it went through eleven distinct editions, some of which
were issued more than once. Seven of these editions were published at Paris by

5 Greengrass 2007a: 20–8, provides a useful summary of this ‘Discours presente au Roy par le Roy de

Poullongne son frere . . . concernant le bien et repos de son Roiaulme’.

6 ‘comme d’un instrument de musique ou l’une des cordes qui est plus ou moins tendue change l’harmonie

et la remplit de dissonance & desaccord’ (Dampmartin 1576: fo. 8). Dampmartin seems not long
afterwards to have acted as an agent for the Duke of Anjou (Holt 1986: 101, 109; Berriot 1988).
7 1576: sig. ᾶ iijvo. The friend was Nicolas de Livre, bailli of Senlis.
8 For examples of Bodin’s explicit references to these works, see République 1576: 519 (Methodus),

636 (Malestroit), 723 (Distributio). On the République as repository of the ‘vasta strutturazione storico-
erudita delle opera precedenti, della Methodus sopratutto’, see Isnardi Parente (1964): 17.
9 Modern annotated editions by Margherita Isnardi Parente and Diego Quaglioni, in Italian

translation (3 vols, 1964–97); and by Mario Turchetti, bilingual (French/Latin) version (Book I,
2013), in progress.
118 Jean Bodin

Jacques du Puys, apparently under authorial oversight, and two more at Lyon. Two
further editions emerged from Geneva, the first of these in 1577 as a clandestine
publication with no place specified on the title page, and the second in 1588/93—the
date is unclear on the title page—ostensibly from Lyon once more. In 1586 Bodin
published, again through Du Puys, the first Latin version of the entire work in his own
translation, incorporating extensive revisions. Four more editions of this version
appeared during his lifetime, including one clandestine publication from Geneva
falsely ascribed to the Du Puys publishing house. All these were preceded by the
publication at Magdeburg in 1581 of a literal rendering into Latin of Book II of
the work, credited to Johannes Schröder as translator—a relatively early indication of
the République’s international appeal. Translations into vernaculars other than
French also appeared in due course: one edition in Italian by Lorenzo Conti
(1588), one in Spanish by Gaspar de Añastro Ysunza (1590), and one in German
by Johann Oswaldt (1591/2). Although the work seems to have attracted wide-
spread attention in England within a few years of its initial publication, not until a
decade after Bodin’s death did an English-language translation appear, in the shape
of Richard Knolles’s ambitious attempt to combine the French and Latin versions:
an exercise which Oswaldt had already, albeit more modestly, essayed.10
Bodin had soon embarked upon modifications of his text. The second of the
authorized editions underwent numerous minor additions and emendations, and one
major adjustment with the chapter ‘On security of alliances and treaties among
princes’ being moved from [Book] I [chapter] 8 in the original version to become
V.6 in that of 1577. By the following year, additions and emendations had become
markedly more extensive. A second letter of dedication to Pibrac sought to refute
criticisms, notably those of Cujas: most of these were ‘too trivial to merit rebuttal’,
though Bodin unbent sufficiently to concede a point of linguistic usage to France’s
most distinguished exponent of the grammatical approach to jurisprudence. But in
the body of the text criticisms emanating from Geneva evoked, in effect if not in
acknowledgement, greater deference on the author’s part. Confronted by Bodin’s
numerous observations on their city and its institutions, the Genevan authorities had
promptly ordered the pastor Simon Goulart to correct the Angevin’s mistakes and
misunderstandings. The resultant rectifications were built into the clandestine edition
of 1577. For his third authorized edition of 1578 Bodin silently adopted many of
them together with material from other recently published Genevan sources.11 But

10 Crahay 1981; Crahay et al. 1984 and 1992 present thorough analyses of the sequence of

publication with much bibliographical information and careful discrimination between editions and
reissues of the work. The contemporary scholar Gabriel Harvey provides evidence of English awareness
of the work (Scott ed. 1884: 79).
11 The corrections ranged from points concerning the composition of Geneva’s councils and its

diplomatic relations with Berne to issues of broader implication such as the status of citizens and the
case for tyrannicide. In addition to adopting emendations emanating from Goulart, Bodin was now
sufficiently scrupulous in his researches, or sufficiently wary of censure, to draw on such recent works as
Josias Simmler’s République des Suisses (1576) and the 1576 version of Geneva’s Ordonnances
ecclésiastiques. For all this see Müller 1980. For adjustments in Bodin’s judgements on Venice and
his inconsistent use of the Florentine Donato Gianotti’s Dialogi de republica Venetorum (1540), see
Cadoni 1981.
 République 119

deference was, for him, not a comfortable posture. Two years later he returned to
the counter-attack with his Apologie de René Herpin pour la République de
I. Bodin, an essay for the composition of which he assumed a fictional persona.
The so-called Herpin’s so-called ‘apology’, first issued in 1580 as a freestanding
publication and from 1583 as an annexe to French editions of the République,12
affected to reaffirm its author’s position on such inflammatory questions as that
of religious diversity, before rebutting in turn opinions recently published by
four of his critics. Two of these—the historian Andreas Franckenberger and the
philosopher Pierre de l’Ostal—were treated relatively courteously; another, ‘un
certain personage qui se fait nommer [Michel] de la Serre’, ostensible author of a
polemical Remonstrance addressed to the King on Bodin’s ‘baneful discourse’, was
dismissed contemptuously; while to the fourth, Augier Ferrier, physician of
Toulouse, friend of Jules-César Scaliger, and author of a vigorous critique of
Bodin’s arguments from astrology, ‘Herpin’ devoted in antagonistic terms fully
three-quarters of the tract.13
Even so, it was to the Latin version of the work that Bodin made his most
extensive revisions. Aimed originally at his fellow countrymen, it was now intended
for an international readership. The challenge posed by such a shift of address
prompted changes of organization, of substance, and of style.14 Organizational
changes included, beyond redistribution of illustrative matter between chapters, the
reconstruction of entire passages, sometimes along overtly dialectical lines—for
instance, at the end of III.iii where Marcus Varro’s ‘division’ of magistrates into
‘two kinds’, described in the French version as ‘rather brief ’, is elaborated into a
series of dichotomies.15 Most obtrusive were the creation of a new chapter ‘On the
classes of citizens (De ordinibus civium)’ (III.8); a reversal of chapter order, on
rewards and punishments, and on disposal of the property of convicted persons
(V.3 and 4); and additions of two more chapters, on military matters and on treaties
(V.5 and 6).16 Changes of substance were threefold. There were numerous add-
itions and revisions of points of detail, often the fruits of reconsiderations prompted
by experiences of Bodin’s since 1576. There were elaborations and modifications of
positions previously mooted. And there were adjustments amounting to alterations
of position on major thematic issues.

12 On the date of the Apologie’s first publication see Crahay et al. 1984: 110.
13 Ferrier’s Advertissemens à M. Jean Bodin sur le quatriesme livre de sa Republique appeared in 1580.
For comment on Bodin’s adoption of the Herpin persona see Blair 2013. According to ‘Herpin’, the
Remonstrance au Roy . . . sur les pernicieux discours contenus au livre de la Republique de Bodin (1579)
almost earned incarceration for its author, a personage otherwise unknown to history.
14 For much of the following paragraph I rely upon Kenneth McRae’s ‘Introduction’ to his edition

of Richard Knolles’s English translation of Bodin’s work (Bodin 1962) which offers a useful
preliminary analysis of differences between the French and the Latin version; and upon Diego
Quaglioni’s remarkable notes in vols II (1988) and III (1997) of the Isanardi Parente/Quaglioni
edition, which include Italian translations of variant passages in the 1586 (Latin) from the 1583
(French) edition.
15 1583: 408–9; cf. 1586: 286.
16 On the structure of the République see further Chapter VI.3.
120 Jean Bodin

Points of detail ranged from omission of a previously flattering reference to

Elizabeth of England17 to much adjusting of figures on money matters coupled
with radical revision of passages relating to finance, including excision of a bold
recommendation for suppression of ‘tous les officiers des monnoyes’.18 Among elab-
orations of positions previously introduced was extensive revision of the chapter on
magistrates (III.iii), including lengthy advocacy of the authority of the Parlement in
relation to the Gallican church. Bishops and their agents might pronounce on
spiritual matters, but the ‘power of command’ involving enforcement of penalties
was reserved to the secular arm:19 magistrates exercising powers the roots of which
lay, evidently, in the sovereignty of the république, the overriding theme of the
entire work. There was more to be said by 1586 on the question of succession to the
throne of France; more also on the seemingly intractable problem of religious
orientation which Bodin now linked more plainly to his much-paraded ‘climate’
theory.20 Major themes explored more fully in the Latin version included amplified
remarks on the question of free will, both divine and human, as the Angevin
wrestled more strenuously than ever with the problem of how far numerological
approaches might serve to elucidate a universe structured harmoniously and yet
subject to the will of an interventionist deity. That will was exercised through the
agency of intermediate beings whose presence at every level was emphasized afresh
in Bodin’s final peroration.21 But ambivalence crept into his treatment of other
major themes. On the one hand, he offered in his Latin version a revived and more
pervasive advocacy of justice as the proper determinant of political and govern-
mental action. This thematic trend seems curiously at odds with signs of a
diminishing confidence in the possibility of universal law, especially when moral
considerations were at stake. Even in 1576, and prior to publishing his Juris universi
distributio, in discussing the question of slavery Bodin had acknowledged the
diversity of men and of natural humours to be so great that scarcely any man
would be ‘so ill-advised’ as to propose on such a question ‘one edict, one law, one
general rule’.22 Ten years later, in the new III.8, he added the observation that ‘the
law of the shameful and the honourable, the beneficial and the injurious, is not
everywhere the same (turpium & honestorum, utilium ac inutilium, non sit ubique lex
eadem)’ (1586: 360). The commitment to justice does, however, chime with a
revealing stylistic change: a recrudescence of ‘the political lexicon of the common
law juridical tradition’, whereby such key expressions as ‘estat’ or ‘gouvernement et
administration’ were ‘reclothed in juridical Latin’ (Quaglioni 1996: 167)—the

17 ‘une Princesse douce & paisible’ by whom the formerly intractable English had been ‘tamed

(apprivoisés)’ (1583: 697). The remark, with its attendant comparative assessment of the effect of civil
wars upon the French, is wholly absent from the corresponding passage in 1586: 518.
18 Compare 1583: 926–30 with 1586: 688–9; the recommendation is at 1583: 929.
19 Compare 1583: 397–8 with 1586: 275–7.
20 Compare 1583: 698 with 1586: 520–2; also with Methodus 1566: 127–9, 155–6.
21 Compare the concluding sentences of 1583: 1,060 with 1586: 779, which recovers the

contention previously contained in the preface addressed to Pibrac (1583: sig. ăiiij—vo). On
‘intermediate beings’ cf. Chapter VII.3 (p. 175).
22 ‘il ya si peu d’hommes qui se ressemblent, & au contraire que la varieté & naturel des humeurs est

infinie, qui sera l’homme si mal advisé qui en face un edict, une loy, une reigle generale?’ (1576: 47). In
contrast to human law, divine law on the matter was, of course, universally applicable.
 République 121

Latin of Bodin’s much-admired ‘princes of juristic science (iuris scientiae principes)’

(1583: ‘Epistola’ [p. v]).
First and foremost a lawyer, Bodin drew heavily upon legal sources to support his
arguments.23 The extent to which he did so is evident from the references that
populate the margins of the République’s pages.24 Of course, the incidence of
explicit citations in an author’s work is an insufficient indicator of his thought’s
intellectual underpinning. There are, as we shall see, grounds for adjudging Bodin
less than candid in acknowledging his sources and unreliable in citing them,
whether through incautious dependence upon memory, unsound note-taking
methods, or sheer carelessness.25 In any case, it scarcely needs saying that his
ideas and their expression were conditioned by the culture of his time: a time
when avocats at the Paris bar were incorporating into their pleadings an increasingly
historicized vision of Roman law coupled with comparative use of other juridical as
well as non-juridical source materials.26 Bodin shared the mental furniture of
contemporaries who, moreover, would have been far more alert than later readers
to allusions and implications delitescent in his writing. Nevertheless, it seems
reasonable to claim that the volume and distribution of explicit references that
populate, however unevenly, the pages of the République do furnish some guide to
the range and balance of the materials upon which its author drew, or at least those
upon which he wished to represent himself as having drawn.
The République contains approximately 780 sets of legal references, each set
identified by a number replicated in the body of the text. They consist chiefly of
direct citations from Roman or canon law, but also from feudal law and from
customs together with references to legislative acts of varying provenance, such as
French ordinances or those of other kingdoms. With sets consisting sometimes of
single and often of numerous citations, the total number of citations runs, on the
face of it, to thousands.27 However, the total includes frequent duplicates, the same
law being cited more than once. For instance, in presenting and reiterating his

23 For the materials upon which the following analysis is based I am greatly indebted to Professor

Kenneth D. McRae and his team at Carleton University Canada who generously provided me with a
copy of the ‘Bodin Sources Index—République/De Republica: Provisional pre-release data’. To the
extent that work was still at a draft stage, my own analysis should be treated as provisional, and my
numerical calculations as approximate. They suffice to indicate the relative frequencies if not the
precise incidence of different sources acknowledged in Bodin’s discourse. Fuller information is
available in Diego Quaglioni’s notes (see this chapter, n. 9) which correct citations of Bodin’s and
trace statements of his to sources which are not identified explicitly in the text or marginalia. These
identifications amplify the ‘Sources Index’ without invalidating the balance evident there between the
types of material upon which the Angevin drew. See also comments on Bodin’s use of sources in the
Démonomanie, discussed in Chapter VII.4 (p. 182 sqq.).
24 The marginal references are present from the first (1576) edition onwards. They are, of course,

lacking in Richard Knolles’s English translation of 1606. The edition chiefly used by the compilers of
the Sources Index is the Du Puys (Paris) of 1583 supplemented from the 1586 (Lyon) Latin edition.
All modern students of the République are indebted to the learned and detailed work on Bodin’s
sources, especially by Diego Quaglioni, presented in the magnificent edition by Margherita Isnardi
Parente and Quaglioni (1964–97).
25 Cf. Chapter III.2 (p. 34). 26 See Houllemare 2011: 247–8, 280, 284–95.
27 ‘The République as a whole has perhaps six thousand legal citations’ (Giesey 1973: 168). This

estimate evidently includes comments and opinions credited by name to individual jurists, treated here
as a separate category; see Chapter VI.2 (p. 122).
122 Jean Bodin

opinion that a sovereign prince cannot be bound by his predecessors’ laws nor by
his own, Bodin repeatedly vouches to warranty pronouncements in the Digest on
promises and wills, to the effect that a subsequent declaration negates a previous
statement of intention or wishes on a promissor’s or a testator’s part.28 This use of
evidence illustrates as well how he finds in private law grounds for propositions
concerning the public sphere—in this instance, a point of critical importance to his
principal thesis. It is a feature of his methodology to which we shall return.
Intermingled with direct references to legal sources are the opinions of jurists
and canonists cited especially from consilia as well as from commentaries, trea-
tises, and other published works. Bodin draws, or appears to draw, on the views of
no fewer than ninety-three individuals yielding in all some 1,087 references.
Extremely prominent among them—as others have observed (Isnardi Parente
1964: 23–5; Giesey 1973: 168)—are later-medieval and Renaissance civilians
and canonists. Among these in turn, Italians constitute far and away the largest
number of contributors: the marginal notes contain no fewer than 894 references
to fifty-five Italians, 28.8 per cent of the total number of Bodin’s citations of
named individuals. Even so, a large proportion of these references are to three
jurists: Bartolus (Bartolo) di Sassoferrato (129), Baldus de Ubaldis (Baldo degli
Ubaldi) (153), and Alexander (Alessandro Tartagni) da Imola (66), all three of
them reckoned by the Angevin to rank among those ‘princes of juristic science’.
He cites another half-dozen individuals more than twenty times apiece, among
them Alexander’s brother Giovanni (25), Bartolus’s teacher Cino (Cynus) da
Pistoia (24), and a distinguished pupil of Baldus, Paolo di Castro (Paulus
Castrensis) (29). Thus, almost one half of his references in this juristic sub-
group are to six individuals of essentially the same scholastic background, though
by no means identical opinions.29 The balance of source materials in his work
plainly suggests that much of his thesis revolved around issues central to learned
debate throughout the previous three centuries and still, no doubt, earnestly
discussed in the Toulouse Law Faculty of Bodin’s day. They included the
question of law and the ruler’s will, whether a prince was bound by contracts
he had made, his authority in relation to due legal process and to private property,
the alienability or otherwise of domainal rights—and, by extension, the very
question of the nature of civil society.30

28 1576: 133, 145, 360; = 1583: 132, 149, 443–4. In accordance with the conventions of his day,

Bodin cites by titulus, lex, and incipit. Thus, for example, his repeated references on the above-noted
pages to ‘l. à Titio } nulla obligation de ver.’ and ‘l. si quis in principio de legat’ equate, respectively, to
Digest 45.1.108.1, and Digest 32.22, the key proposition in the latter being that ‘suprema voluntas
potior habetur (the last will is to be preferred)’.
29 The group also includes Baldus’s brother Angelo degli Ubaldi, commentator on various parts of

the Corpus iuris civilis and author of numerous consilia; but Bodin’s references to him are in large
measure indistinguishable from those to the more illustrious Angelo Gambiglioni (Angelus de Aretio)
whose Tractatus de maleficiis was especially of interest to the Angevin.
30 See Pennington 1993: 8–9, 276–84, esp. 279; Canning 1996: 162–73; Canning 1987, and 1996:

162–73); Giesey 1973: especially 174–5, for key issues in these jurists’ thinking, later discussed afresh by
Bodin. See also Ullmann 1965: 164, 214, on the Roman concept of a citizen as bearer of rights; and
Coleman 2000: II. 167 on fusion of ‘state’ and ‘civil society’ in ‘medieval corporation theory’.
 République 123

Paraded most densely in respect of issues such as these and otherwise unevenly
distributed about the work, Bodin’s legal and juristic references are presented very
largely as marginal citations in abbreviated form. Others of his sources are cited
either in the margins or in the body of his text. They include documentary
materials of various kinds: manuscript sources, correspondence, treaties and diplo-
matic materials, arrêts and other curial pronouncements culled from the registers of
the Paris Parlement and other courts. Over 240 such references are identifiable, to
sources that provide vital underpinning to Bodin’s assessments of politics and
society throughout contemporary Europe.31 His documentation also includes no
fewer than sixteen citations from the Vatican registers, extracts from which Bodin
had consulted whilst occasionally implying that he had seen the originals; although
he was said to have visited Italy, there is no evidence that he was ever in Rome.32
There are, further, some sixty references to what may be termed oral sources,
information provided by acquaintances of Bodin’s or products of his own first-hand
experiences (see Greengrass 2013). A further forty-two references are to what may
be termed ‘anonymous’ sources, such as histories of unspecified authorship or
information of non-legal collective provenance—for instance, ‘les sages Hebrieux’
(1583: 897). Finally, the République contains no fewer than 207 references to
books of the Bible. Of these, 199 are to the Old Testament. The New Testament
with eight references (seven of them to the epistles) is not completely neglected, and
Jesus Christ receives at least one explicit mention (1583: 82). But Bodin’s biblical
attention is directed first and foremost to the Pentateuch, the five books of Moses
(112, or 54 per cent, of all the Old Testament references). That these principal
repositories of the lex divina should figure prominently among this jurist’s sources is
scarcely surprising, given the importance of divine law in his Weltanschauung.
Yet, in his presentation of his master-work Bodin relied also upon other than
legal, juristic, and documentary materials. To judge by frequency of citation,
coupled with the balance of narrative and discussion in his text, he leaned heavily
upon historians of the classical era, including antiquaries and biographers. Again,
the number of named individuals cited—thirty-eight in all—seems impressive.
Again, a few play a dominant role. There are 243 references to Plutarch, and 239 to
Livy. Suetonius Tranquillus is cited 78 times, Dionysius of Halicarnassus 67, and
Tacitus 63. The selection tallies almost exactly with the set of five ‘most brilliant
writers (clarissimi scriptores)’ whom Bodin had particularly recommended ten years
previously in his Methodus. The only exception is Plutarch who, while not included
in that particular set, was nevertheless described as one of the ‘great men (magnorum
virorum)’ on ‘civic science (in urbana disciplina)’,33 a subject highly relevant to

31 Bodin’s use of contemporary source materials is examined by Stegmann 1985.

32 Cf. the claims ‘comme i’ay leu au registre du Vatican’ (1583: 173, 181, 197) with the statement
elsewhere that ‘i’ay veu la copie en vn registre du Vatican extraict par mandement du Chancelier du Prat,
lorsqu’il estoit Legat’ (1583: 165). For Augier Ferrier’s reference to an Italian visit of Bodin’s see
Chapter III.1 (p. 20).
33 Methodus (1566: 47, 55). By 1576 the fifth member of the original set, Flavius Arrianus

(fl. second century AD), had evidently been displaced in Bodin’s estimation by Plutarch as an authority
on Alexander.
124 Jean Bodin

Bodin’s arguments in the Methodus and the République alike. Several of his most
favoured writers, Livy and Suetonius amongst them, were well established in the
medieval canon. Even so, the improved availability both of Plutarch’s and of Livy’s
works to Renaissance readers had owed much to the engagement of Petrarch, that
seminal Renaissance figure, with their texts. Coupled with Bodin’s relatively early
enthusiasm for Tacitus, their prominence might seem, prima facie, to suggest a
more ‘humanist’ orientation in his choice of historians by comparison with his
juristic preferences.34 In contrast, Sallust, so strong a presence in medieval histori-
ography, figures scarcely more than incidentally in Bodin’s work.35 In general,
classical writers of history in various forms are conspicuous in the latter, another
half-dozen of them being cited between twenty-five and fifty-four times apiece.36
All in all, at least 1,076 of Bodin’s citations are to Greek and Roman historians
and writers in cognate fields, 34.6 per cent of all his sources specified by personal
name. In contrast, he cites historians of his own era relatively infrequently, and
French ones scarcely at all. Only Philippe de Commynes with seventeen refer-
ences figures significantly in an assortment of twenty-nine individuals yielding
125 items. Amongst these, Italians predominate once more; but even Guicciardini,
characterized in the Methodus as ‘the very father of history (ipse historiae parens)’
(1566: 63), is cited in the République fewer than a dozen times. By comparison, there
are over twice as many citations from Leo Africanus, historian and geographer of
the Maghreb—an extra-European region in which, together with the Ottoman
Empire, Bodin displays a level of interest in sharp contrast to his relative indifference
towards the transatlantic world.37 Even so, Bodin’s preference for ancient historians
is revealing. It tallies with his usage of historical materials which is not explanatory or
elucidatory in the sense of investigating causal relationships between cognate or
proximate events. Rather, his is an instance of a mode of usage that has been variously
characterized as ‘exemplar’, ‘analogical’, or ‘aphoristic’, perhaps suited to informing
policy, but in his hands geared rather to the discovery of universal principles, entirely
in keeping with his declared objective at the outset of his first major work.38
Philosophers of the classical era furnish a further significant group of sources
credited to named individuals. Here the position is much simpler. No fewer than

34 Persuasive grounds for discerning ‘the continued strength of a medieval rhetorical tradition in the

“Renaissance” writing of history’ are discovered by Kempshall 2011: 479–535, quotation at 495.
35 Characterized in the Methodus as ‘a very honest writer (integerrimum scriptorem)’ (1566: 58),

Sallust is cited only eight times in the République. On Sallust’s importance in medieval historical
writing see Kempshall 2011: especially 47.
36 Julius Caesar (35 references), Dion Cassius (32), Herodotus (31), Flavius Josephus (27),

Polybius (54), Xenophon (25).

37 On this point see Solé 2004. On the relative roles of biblical, classical, and contemporary

materials in Bodin’s thesis, see the discerning assessment by Stegmann 1975. For Bodin’s views on
Ottoman rule, see Malcolm 2013.
38 Cf Chapter IV.2 (p. 55). For comment on instances of the above-mentioned modes of usage see

Nadel 1964; Grafton and Jardine 1990: especially 60; Woolf 2005: especially 39. The position was
neatly summarized by Sir Walter Ralegh: ‘wee may gather out of History a policy no lesse wise than
eternall, by the comparison and application of other mens forepassed miseries with our owne like errors
and ill deservings’ (Ralegh 1617: sig. A2vo).
 République 125

350 (85 per cent) of upwards of 400 citations in this group, or approximately
13 per cent of the entire category of such sources, are to Aristotle (110), Plato (72),
and Cicero (169). All in all, the contributions of philosophers, with 460 citations or
15 per cent of all named sources, are much less conspicuous in Bodin’s work than
those of jurists and historians. Practitioners of other disciplines are less conspicuous
still. Remarkably, in view of the Angevin’s predilections, theologians are relatively
thin on the ground, thirteen Christian and half a dozen Hebrew being cited by name
and yielding in all some forty-four references. Scientists of various kinds—
mathematicians, astrologers, astronomers, medical practitioners—likewise provide
forty-four citations, with Greek physicians—Hippocrates and Galen—contributing
slightly more than the theologians collectively. References to named Jewish sources
are not numerous: sixty-one in all, or less than 2 per cent of the total. Almost one-half
of these are furnished by Josephus (27 references), that provider of ‘hugely influential’
models for medieval historiographers, whom Bodin had lauded in the Methodus as a
historian of ‘the highest erudition (summa eruditio)’ and ‘uncommon integrity
(eximia integritas)’.39 The presence of Philo and Maimonides, with eleven and
thirteen citations respectively, is markedly less noticeable here than in the Methodus.
The most striking absentees from the République are the names of the prime
contributors to later medieval political theology. Their absences are the more
remarkable in view of the prominence of jurists of that era in Bodin’s intellectual
furniture. Even Aquinas, seminal expositor on fundamental questions concerning
justice, constitutions and the common good, receives only four citations by name,
all on matters concerning punishment and tyrannicide (1583: 300 n. 9, 733, 1,041
n. 2, 1,044 n. 5). The names of his fellow Dominican John of Paris and the
Franciscans John Duns Scotus and William of Ockham are entirely lacking;
likewise those of the great contributors to conciliarist debates, Nicolas of Cusa
and Jean Gerson—while even that of Marsilius of Padua, sometime rector of the
University of Paris itself, figures in Bodin’s discourse not at all.40 Yet thinkers such
as these had made formative contributions to discussion of issues of immediate
relevance to Bodin’s concerns: of law-making in terms of the relative significance of
will and reason, of the distinction between ‘absolute’ and ‘ordained’ power in
relation to the moderating force of law, of the degree of authority vested in the
political community as universitas civium. It may be that opinions of theirs are
sometimes subsumed within collective references to ‘les Theologiens’. Yet as
striking as any omissions from the République are key arguments over rights
(iura) which had greatly exercised those same thinkers, an area of debate to
which Bodin had already paid some attention in his Juris Universi Distributio (see
Chapter IV.2 (p. 58)). In certain influential scholastic hands those arguments had
postulated an equivalence between ius and dominium in terms of lordship or

39 1566: 88. On Josephus’s importance in medieval historical writing, Kempshall 2011: 48–52.
40 The name ‘Marsilius’ occurs once only, as ‘Academicorum omnium acutissimus’ (1586: 412)—in
fact a compliment to the Neoplatonist Marsiglio Ficino, founder of the Florentine Platonic Academy.
On the relevance of later medieval political theology, notably the contribution of Scotus, to Bodin’s
leading ideas see Berns 2005: 32–4.
126 Jean Bodin

mastery over one’s own actions and possessions, a relation construable as one
of property and rooted in natural law (see Brett 1997). While questions of private
property certainly figured significantly in Bodin’s discourse, he declined to
approach them along the intricate domainal route explored by theologians; and
he treated only as incidental the version of dominium formulated in feudal law.41
By comparison, modern writers put in more of an appearance, only to receive at
Bodin’s hands treatment that is often questionable. Three names occur repeatedly:
those of Niccolò Machiavelli, Gasparo Contarini, and Thomas More. In a fit of
irony Bodin declares himself hesitant to challenge ‘the authority of such great
personages’, only to adjudge within a few pages the testimony of a string of classical
writers headed by Herodotus and Thucydides to be ‘at least more credible than a
Florentine, a Venetian and an Englishman’ (1583: 253, 256). The English lawyer
he pronounced as unsound as others in his belief that ancient Rome had a mixed
constitution, while More’s advocacy in his Utopia that there should be community
of goods and that parents should have between ten and sixteen children flew in the
face of nature (‘comme s’il pouvoit commander à nature’) (1583: 703, 705). No more
was Contarini to be trusted in his characterization of the Venetian constitution,
on the allegedly ‘mixed’ structure and composition of which that leading expert on
the subject was ‘greatly deceived (s’estoit bien fort abusé )’.42 This did not deter the
Angevin from regularly citing the Venetian case and drawing repeatedly upon
Contarini’s account for the purpose.43 And no less questionable was Machiavelli’s
treatment at Bodin’s hands.
French interest in Machiavelli’s works had grown in the decades following their
publication, and especially with the availability of the Discorsi and Il principe in
French translation.44 Bodin had made use of all of them in his Methodus, not failing
in the course of it to draw attention to Machiavelli’s errors and misjudgements, but
finding the Florentine ‘greatly to be praised (laudatur)’ on ‘the secrets of princes and
life at their courts (in principum arcanis & aulica vita)’ (1566: 55–6), noting how
‘everyone is talking about’ his pioneering political views (omnium ore circunferun-
tur)’ (1566: 178), and including the Florentine histories in his own list of recom-
mended historical works (1566: 453). But attitudes fractured in the wake of the
Saint-Barthélemy. On the one hand, apologists for that event, Pibrac amongst them,
interpreted the massacre as a pre-emptive strike, implicitly consistent with

41 Thus, in his Latin text he sweeps aside the distinction between dominium utile (actual possession)

and dominium directum (overlordship) with the observation that the terminology and the concepts with
it are nowhere to be found in Roman law: ‘nec utilis aut directi domini verba exaudita fuerant. at ne in
codicis quidem, vel authenticis legibus, vel pandectarum libris usquam leguntur’ (1586: 191).
42 1583: 261. Cf. Contarini 1543: 13, on the formation of a unified commonwealth from a

‘mixtionem omnium statuum’. For adjustments in Bodin’s judgements on Venice and his inconsistent
use of the Florentine Donato Gianotti’s Dialogi de republica Venetorum (1540), see Cadoni 1981.
43 However, he was not—as has been suggested—anticipated by Contarini in differentiating plainly

between ‘state’ and ‘government’. That differentiation occurs in the work of the senator Pier Maria
Contarini (1546–1610), not that of the cardinal, theologian, and diplomat Gasparo (1483–1542). Cf.
Rezasco 1881: 1133, and Chabod 1967: 644.
44 The Arte della guerra was published in 1521, the Discorsi ten years later, and Il principe and the

Istorie fiorentine both in 1532. French translations of all these were available by the early 1550s.
 République 127

Machiavelli’s advice that a successful ruler should ‘neutralise or destroy those who
can or must be expected to injure you’—a position which Catholic polemicists
developed into what has been termed a ‘rhetoric of hate’.45 For their opponents, on
the other hand, Machiavelli was the promoter of all kinds of fraud and tyrannical
behaviour, and had even signalled his values in the very dedication of Il principe, to
the father of Catherine de’ Medici, the dowager suspected of originating the
massacre itself. The most powerful advocacy of this position was that of Innocent
Gentillet, himself an avocat and a Protestant refugee from the Dauphiné, who
published his Contre-Machiavel early in the same year that Bodin’s République
appeared. Dedicating his six-hundred-page treatise to Alençon, Gentillet castigated
the Florentine’s discourse as ‘pure nonsense (une pure bestise)’ and denounced the
substance of his work as ‘his worthless and damnable doctrines (ses meschans &
damnable enseignemens)’ (Gentillet 1576: 3–4).
In his preface to the République Bodin echoed Gentillet’s fulminations. Machiavelli
had been ‘fashionable among the courtiers of tyrants (a eu la vogue entre les couratiers
[sic] des tyrans)’—a remarkable statement in a dedication offered to that most
successful of courtiers, Pibrac. As for the Florentine’s opinions, his Il principe
dripped with a ‘sweet poison (douce poison)’, specifically in his diagnosis as ‘the
two foundations of commonwealths, impiety and injustice (les deux fondemens des
Republiques l’impieté & l’iniustice)’. And yet, as Bodin conceded in the course of his
own work, Machiavelli remained a reliable source for the history of Florence (1583:
528, 946), for all that his judgements on individuals and on constitutions were,
predictably, adjudged unsound (1583: 813, 939, 940). In fact, the Angevin’s
reliance upon the Florentine was markedly greater than he acknowledged. In
some later sections of the République, it has been observed, ‘the classical and
modern sources of the two authors coincide, even in sequence, to the point of
manifesting a systematic utilisation’ on Bodin’s part (Barcia 1997: 352–3). Such
utilization is certainly uneven and inconsistent. On the one hand, the views which
Bodin offered in République II.ii on the time-honoured question of just and unjust
wars were rooted in medieval juristic tradition, his dominant intellectual quarry,
and owed nothing to Machiavellian themes on ‘the naturalistic concept of force’
(Isnardi Parente 1964: 76–7). On the other, his assessment (in 1586: V.v) of
whether a populace should be armed ‘depends in terms at least of examples adduced
and for the most part of general reflections too’ upon identifiable passages in the
Discorsi (Quaglioni 1989: 202; Quaglioni 1992b: 1150). But the parallels extend
beyond specific reusages of illustrative matter and incidental observations. They
emerge most strikingly in Bodin’s chapter (1576: IV.i) on an issue, again much
debated, that was fundamental to his own thesis: the causes of change in common-
wealths (metabolai politeion). And here, in his work’s ‘Machiavellian chapter par
excellence’ (Quaglioni 1989: 202), he achieves a remarkable feat of synthesis,
drawing extensively—and this time with acknowledgement—upon Machiavelli’s
Istorie and other chroniclers and historians of the Italian Quattrocento whilst

45 Machiavelli 1988: 29; Anglo 2005: 243 sqq.

128 Jean Bodin

elaborating, mutatis mutandis, upon positions rooted ‘in later-medieval juridical

and political literature’, the literature of Bartolist and Thomist precedent and
inspiration, to demonstrate the chronic instability of Florentine regimes, where
rejection of tyranny exposed the frailties of popular modes of rule (Quaglioni
1992b: 1157–9).
Viewed simply in terms of volume of scholarly references, then, Bodin’s Répub-
lique seemed to reinforce, and indeed to enhance, the reputation for learning that
he had long since established amongst his fellow-avocats. Yet scholars of standing
had challenged that reputation;46 and the République yields further grounds for
scepticism, even in relation to his own sphere of professional expertise. Offering
dozens of references to certain jurists, he cites thirty-two others—one-third of those
whom he names—no more than once or twice apiece. Such an incidence of very
few citations per individual prompts suspicions that to at least some extent Bodin
was relying upon collections or compendia of juristic materials rather than con-
sulting the authors in question directly and in extenso.47 Prima facie such reliance is
understandable, given the scale of his intellectual enterprises and the evident speed
with which he worked. But other questionable features are not so easily explained
away. An outstanding instance figures in II.viii of the De Republica, the chapter
‘On the orders of the citizens (De ordinibus ciuium)’ added to the Latin version of
the République. Much of the chapter is devoted to the order of nobility, a subject on
which the distinguished jurist André Tiraqueau, friend of L’Hospital, De Thou,
and other leaders of the profession, had published in 1549 an authoritative treatise
‘On nobility and the right of primogeniture (De nobilitate et iure primigeniorum)’.
Modern criticism has shown how Tiraqueau’s well-documented work provided
Bodin, with ‘a constant point of reference and a copious source of citations, not
only of a juristic nature’. He drew from it ‘entire passages’, the fruits not of
‘dependence upon a common source, but of systematic utilisation’ of Tiraqueau’s
treatise, including appropriation of the latter’s references.48 In doing so he perpet-
rated multiple errors, confusing the opinions of different jurists, distorting biblical
quotations, even inventing new laws. And yet, whilst plundering Tiraqueau
unashamedly, he cited the latter explicitly on only two occasions in his entire work:
once on the disciplinary powers of senior members of collegiate institutions (1586:
336 n. 6; = 1583: 437 n. 9), and only once in the chapter at issue, on whether
involvement with trade derogated from nobility (1586: 359 n. 7).
The République, then, offers fresh grounds to indict Bodin for plagiarism. At the
very least he seems to indulge afresh in his ‘habit of slovenly writing or proofread-
ing’49—faults suggestive of a casual approach to the presentation of his work. But
this work’s construction was far from casual. Seeking to elucidate changes intro-
duced in its Latin version, Bodin explained in terms worthy of Ramus himself how

46 For instance, see Chapter III.2 (pp. 54–5). 47 On this point see Reulos (1973), p. 193.
48 Quaglioni 1981: 117, 122, et passim. For Bodin’s use of Tiraqueau I have relied heavily upon
Diego Quaglioni’s article.
49 Giesey 1973: 176. Cf. Chauviré 1914a: 486–502, offering a sweeping indictment of Bodin’s

literary skill: ‘diffusion dans la composition, verbosité dans le style’ (491).

 République 129

they were designed so that ‘matters interrelated and properly brought together
might be connected in the same sequence and so be more easily understood (utque
alia ex aliis nexa et inter se apta colligataque eadem serie cohaererent: sic enim facilius
intelligi posse)’ (1586: sig. ā ijvo). He had in fact observed such considerations to
better effect in the French versions of the République where his attention to the
precepts of ‘method’ was evident from the outset. In the Methodus itself he had
remarked how ‘the ancients (veteres)’ had applied the term ‘architectonic (architec-
tonicen)’ to ‘this civil discipline (civilem hanc disciplinem)’50—the discipline where
the République was now projected to make its mark. It did so in a manner true to
humanist ideals, and true as well to Ramist precepts which in turn echoed
Aristotelian as well as Platonic postulates.51

VI . 3 STRUCTURE AND THEMES: THE PRIVATE SPHERE

The work began, characteristically of Bodin’s approach, with a definition of

république which laid down the conceptual determinants of the ensuing treatment:
‘Republique is a rightful government of many households and of what is common to
them, with sovereign power (un droict gouuernement de plusieurs mesnages & de ce
qui leur est commun, auec puissance souueraine)’.52 The treatment was teleological,
driven by its ‘final cause’: for, as Bodin noted at the outset, ‘a definition is nothing
other than the end of the subject presented’.53 The definition and ensuing discus-
sion were designed to satisfy the three ‘laws’ which Ramus had formulated in
respect of propositions and their component terms that were to be regarded as
axiomatic: ‘necessaria’ (that the propositions should be invariably valid); ‘homoge-
neita’ (that the terms should interconnect); and ‘catholica’ (that all should be
universally applicable).54 Especially in the French versions, the terms of the
definition permeated the work. The opening term, droit, signalled Bodin’s over-
riding concern with right, with law human, natural and divine, and above all with
justice which he promptly stressed as the key differentiator between a république
properly perceived and a community interpreted, Aristotle-style, as having ‘happi-
ness’ as its end. ‘Gouvernement’, which Bodin would consider in relation especially
to magistrates as its principal agents as well as to other numerous aspects of the
république at large, was also discerned in lesser entities—most notably private

50 1566: 31; cf. Goyet 1996: 656.

51 ‘The humanist ideal of knowledge aspired to order, rationality, organic systematisation’ (Piano
Mortari 1985: 258). In the paragraph that follows I owe much to the insights of Cesare Vasoli (2008:
90–5), and those of Dominique Couzinet (2013: 59 sqq.).
52 1576: 1. The definition reappeared unaltered in successive French editions, but in the Latin

version ‘droict gouuernement’ was reduced to the single—and perpetually overburdened—term ‘ratio’:
‘Respublica est familiarum rerumque inter ipsas communium summa potestate ac ratione moderata
multitudo’ (1586: 1).
53 ‘la definition n’est autre chose que la fin du subiect qui se presente’ (1583: 1). Cf. Ramus 1555: 6: ‘la

fin doibt estre considerée deuant toutes autres choses’. Further on the importance of definitions in Bodin’s
methodology, see Chapter IX.2 (p. 216).
54 Cf. Vasoli 2008: 90; Couzinet 2013: 61; Ramus 1584: 72, 74, 80–2.
130 Jean Bodin

households which were regulated by ‘justice’, with the authority of the paterfamilias
paramount and women unequivocally subordinate. Even so, and despite their
structural affinities, ‘ménages’ were differentiated from the république, and in particu-
lar by ‘ce qui leur est commun’. The phrase drew attention plainly, and again
pervasively, to a vital distinction, between the public and the private, a distinction
critical to the pursuit of justice, the exercise of government, and the administration of
law. The legal and ethical differentiation between material assets, concerns and
interests as, on the one hand, essential to the wellbeing of the république as a public
entity, and, on the other, indispensable to the private household or ‘family’ informed
the position on property and taxation upon which Bodin was to insist regardless
of its implications for his own career. Throughout the work, ‘puissance’ was a regular
refrain, figuring repeatedly in chapter headings and recognized as a necessary attribute
of the legal and governmental administration as well as of paternal authority within
the household once more. As for ‘souveraineté’, here was to be the République’s
dominant theme, the principal and necessary defining attribute of every true répub-
lique in all its manifestations.
Other significant themes and issues, while not identified explicitly in the opening
definition, were promptly introduced in the first chapter to be considered at length
later in the work. Among them were the making and observing of peace treaties
(1576: I.viii; cf. 1586: V.vi), the qualities of a ‘good citizen’ (1576: I.vi), the vexed
question of religion (1576: IV.vii)—most notably, the highly topical issue of
political and constitutional change, subject of the opening chapters of both Book
IV and Book V. Confronted by the inescapable ‘changement des republiques’, men
were urged in the opening chapter to engage in contemplation, to ponder ‘the
melodious harmony of this entire universe (‘l’harmonie melodieuse de tout ce
monde)’—this last, the climactic theme of Bodin’s resounding peroration (1576:
VI.vi). Such a man would be ‘bien-heureux’, in common with the république itself
(1576: 5); and so, it seems, Aristotle’s specification of ‘happiness (εὐδαιμονία)’ as
the ‘end’ of ‘political science’ would be satisfied after all.55 But the structuring
influence of classical postulates informed Bodin’s arguments in ways other than
through provision of major points of substance. Thus, and pace Ramus, it was to
combinations of Aristotelian categorical and Platonic dialectical modes of thinking
that he owed his confidently reductionist analysis of types of république:
in order to arrive at true definitions and resolutions in all matters one must not dwell upon
accidents, which are innumerable, but rather [attend] to essential and formal differences.
Otherwise one could fall into an infinite labyrinth where there can be no science.56
Again, the merits of dialectic coupled with those of the mean warranted debate
and disagreement even among magistrates, at least in a monarchical république: for

55 Nicomachean Ethics 1099b25–1100b21.

56 ‘pour auoir les vrayes diffinitions, & resolutions en toutes choses, il ne faut pas s’arrester aux accidens,
qui sont innumerables, mais bien aux differences essentielles, & formelles. Autrement on pourroit tomber en
vn Labyrinthe infini, qui ne reçoit point de science’ (1576: II.1 p. 218). Aristotle examines ‘accident’ and
‘essence’ in relation to ‘definition’ in Topics, 101b37 sqq. On the problem of controlling infinite
possibilities in philosophical inquiry, see Plato, Philebus, 13e–19b.
 République 131

‘truth, the public good and that which is honest are discovered through contrary
opinions and are found in the middle between two extremes’.57 Even when the
introduction of new chapters in the Latin version disturbed the overall structure
of the French République, continued use of modes of argument inherited from
classical dialectic went some way towards sustaining the unity of the work. Hence
disputatio pro et contra, which Bodin recurrently employed, informed afresh his
Machiavelli-inspired discussion of citizen armies, where the chapter (1586: V.v)
opens with arguments against urban fortifications and the subjecting of civilians to
military discipline, before proceeding to observe how ‘many things can be said to
the contrary opinion (in contrariam sententiam multa dici possint)’ (1586: 560) and
to demonstrate as much at length.
The foundation having thus been laid and the key terms of the discourse
specified, Bodin proceeded to elaborate upon his principal themes. He began
with the household, introduced as the ‘true source and origin (vraye source &
origine)’ of the république. He defined it accordingly, in a formula differing from
his opening definition of the latter in only three particulars, ‘mesnages’ being
replaced by ‘sugets’, ‘commun’ by ‘propre’, and, in place of ‘puissance souveraine’,
‘l’obeissance d’un chef de famille’.58 Both the correspondence and the differences
between the definitions were critical. Household and république were conjoined
dialectically, such that their concordant duality determined the unity and wellbeing
of the whole. This echoed, albeit faintly, the duplex ordo of scholastic political
theology, the ordering of individuals ‘both towards the common good and towards
one another’.59 But Bodin, impatient towards the subtleties of scholastic discourse,
had already pronounced, ‘la vraye felicité d’une Republique & d’un homme seul est
tout un’ (1583: 5). Order, felicity, and good all depended in the cases of individual,
household, community, and république alike upon ‘obedience’. Individuals must
obey ‘reason which is always in conformity with God’s will (la raison qui est
tousiours conforme a la volonté de Dieu)’: indeed, this was what ‘natural freedom
(la liberté naturelle)’ signified. By the same token, collectivities must obey whoever
held ‘the power to command (la puissance de commander)’ (1586: 19). In house-
holds that capacity was in the hands of the paterfamilias. Over his sons he had ‘the
power of life and death (la puissance de la vie et de la mort)’. Again, given that
marriage had been properly ‘contracted by words in the presence of the parties
(contract passé par parole de present)’, nothing was ‘more necessary . . . than the
obedience of the wife to the husband’ for the very ‘conservation des Republiques’
(1583: 20, 27). Divorce, however, was possible, and not solely on the husband’s
initiative. It might be open to an abused wife to ‘ask for separation (demander

57 ‘la verité, le bien public, & ce qui est honneste, se decouvre par advis contraires, & se trouve au milieu

des deux extremitez’ (1576: 474). For Aristotle’s discussion of the mean in an ethical context, see
Nicomachean Ethics 1106a25–1107a2. Cf. Kriegel 2002: 18, for a view that Bodin ‘adamantly refused
to adopt the model of common law jurisprudence’, favouring instead ‘administrative decision-making,
established a priori through decrees and commands’.
58 ‘Mesnage est un droit gouuernement de plusieurs sugets, sous l’obeissance d’un chef de famille & de ce

qui luy est propre’ (1576: 8).

59 Kempshall 1999: 116.
132 Jean Bodin

separation)’; and, certainly, no husband should ‘make a slave of his wife (faire une
esclave de sa femme)’ (1583: 24, 27). As for actual slaves, Bodin rejected Aristotle’s
belief in ‘natural slavery’. Unlike philosophers, jurisconsults ‘hold that servitude is
directly against nature and do everything they can to maintain liberty, against the
obscurity or ambiguity of the laws’.60 Yet the existence of slaves was undeniable.
Even so, by divine law perpetual servitude was unacceptable, unless the slave had
consented to it after seven years’ service (1583: 65).
The same consideration of ‘liberty’ underpinned Bodin’s assessment of property
rights. Insistence upon these furnished a recurrent refrain throughout the treatise.
Defence of property, the hallmark of jurisprudence and of justice as the Methodus
had pronounced (cf. Chapter IV.4 (p. 85), was the principal foundation of all
républiques. Conversely, confiscation had always been the hallmark of ‘extreme
tyranny’.61 The correlation of property with natural liberty ran counter to patristic
and Augustinian tradition, according to which property had originated in sin (see
Euchner 1973: 263). Classical moral philosophers took another line; and Bodin,
keen student of their writings and despite his distrust of Stoic opinions, could
cheerfully cite Seneca on individuals’ property rights.62 Firmer footing for this
trained civilian consisted in legal grounds for affirming it to be ‘the law of nature’
that preserved ‘everyone in his liberty and in the lordship of his possessions (chacun
en sa liberté & en la seigneurie de ses biens)’.63 Yet such ‘lordship’ need not signify
outright ownership in the Roman legal mould. The Angevin’s opinions were
informed as well by his practical experience in the courts of those parts of France
where customary laws held sway, the pays de droit coutumier. Hence his recognition
of the distinction between propres and acquêts, the former reserved to family or
lineage, the latter disposable at will by the proprietor for the time being. The
distinction was especially significant in cases of penalty or forfeiture executed by
way of confiscation under the law:
For it seems unlikely that heritable properties reserved to families may be confiscated
where their alienation by will is not permitted, nor in many places by disposal in the
lifetime of the parties; given also that excessive inequality of belongings would thereby
ensue. And for this same reason, it is movables and acquisitions that should be sold.64

60 ‘tiennent que la servitude est droitement contre nature, & font tout ce qu’ils peuvent pour maintenir la

liberté, contre l’obscurité ou ambiguité des loix’ (1583: 49). The position in fact rests unambiguously on
Roman law: Institutes 1.2.2 (‘iure enim naturali ab initio omnes homines liberi nascebantur’; and 1.3.2:
(‘Servitus autem est constitutio iuris gentium, qua quis dominio alieno contra naturam subicitur’). For
discussion of Bodin’s views on slavery see Heller 1994; Nyquist 2013.
61 ‘les fondements de toutes Republiques qui sont principalement establies pour rendre à chacun ce qui luy

appartient’ (1583: 948); ‘le comble de tyrannie extresme a tousiours esté ès confiscations des subiects’
(1583: 725).
62 1583: 157, again quoting Seneca, De beneficiis VII.4.2, slightly inaccurately: ‘Ad reges [recte regem]

[enim] potestas omnium pertinet, ad singulos proprietas [recte proprietates]’. Cf. Chapter IV.4 (p. 85).
63 1583: 278. See, for instance, Gaius’s remarks on transfer of property, in Digest 41.1 (De

adquirendo rerum dominio).

64 ‘Car de confisquer les propres heritages affectés aux familles, il n’y a pas grande apparence, où il n’est

pas permis de les aliener par testament, ny en plusieurs lieux par disposition entre vifs: ioint aussi que de là
s’ensuit l’inegalité de biens excessive. Et pour cette mesme cause il faut que les meubles & acquests soyent
vendus’ (1583: 724).
 République 133

The warning against excessive inequality qualified his hostility towards the case for
communal ownership advanced in Thomas More’s Utopia, and by others also
(1583: 703; cf. Nelson 2006). That warning apart, it remained Bodin’s considered
view that protection of private property was essential to a république’s wellbeing,
and that ‘equality of possessions is extremely dangerous (tres pernicieuse) to répub-
liques’ (1583: 704).
Just as defence of property might be grounded in natural law, so too with
contracts and promises. It was, in Bodin’s judgement, ‘natural equity which
requires that conventions and promises be maintained (l’equité naturelle qui veut
que les conventions & promesses soyent entretenues)’ (1583: 153). Again, the formu-
lation echoed Roman precedents.65 Without good faith between the parties, formal
expressions of mutual obligation would be vacuous. Once more, its legal reference
was not limited to the law of Rome. When Bodin referred repeatedly to the head of
the république as the ‘guarantor’ of his subjects’ ‘mutual obligations’, of their
‘fidelity amongst themselves’, he evidently had in mind concepts inherent to feudal
law.66 In the Latin version of his work he emphasized more firmly still the
importance of ‘fidelity’ and its cohering force within the private and the public
sphere alike: ‘nothing holds républiques together more forcibly than fidelity, and when
this is displaced justice, one of the finest virtues, together with human society itself,
is necessarily destroyed’.67 It followed that that same guarantor was ‘bound by the
contracts which he himself made, whether with a subject or with a stranger (tenu aux
contracts par luy faicts, soit avec son subiect, soit avecques l’estranger’ (1583: 152). And
yet, it did not follow from the careful co-ordination of relations within and between
ménages and république in this respect, that the ruler’s own power and his exercise of
it were contractually based. So much became clear as the Angevin moved from his
examination of the household to his account of the public sphere.

V I .4 CITIZEN, SOVEREIGNTY, AND STATE

The movement hinged upon Bodin’s definition of ‘citizen’, the status of a house-
holder within the public sphere.68 Given the affinity between them in important
respects—the authority of paterfamilias and of ruler, the structuring force of
promise and pledge, the requirement of obedience, together with the household’s
identification as the république’s ‘true source’—the discontinuity that now emerged
might seem surprising. In his opening description of the transition from the one to

65 Cf. Ulpian’s commentary on the law De pactis, in Digest 2.14.1: ‘This edict pertains to natural

equity. For what is so concordant with human good faith than that which [the parties] have resolved
between themselves to observe (huius edicti aequitas naturalis est. quid enim tam conguum fidei humanae,
quam ea quae inter eos placuerunt servare)?’
66 ‘il est garant aux subiets des conuentions & obligations mutuelles qu’ils ont les uns enuers les autres’;

‘[il] est garant formel à tous ses subiects de la foy qu’ils ont entr’eux’ (1583: 152, 153).
67 ‘nulla res vehementius Respublicas continet quam fides, qua sublata, etiam una de pulcherrimis

virtutibus iustitia cum humana societate tollatur necesse est’ (1586: 596; cf. 1583: 802). For discussion of
‘good faith’ in Bodin’s thought and that of his contemporaries see Vaillancourt 199.
68 On the question of Bodin’s interpretation of citizenship see Costa 1999: 73–80; Ferriére (2003).
134 Jean Bodin

the other, Bodin sustained that affinity in quasi-Aristotelian terms. When the head
of the household went forth ‘to be the companion, fellow and associate of heads of
other households (pour estre compagnon, pair & associé auec les autres)’, leaving
family for city and domestic for public affairs, ‘he is called citizen (il s’appelle
citoyen)’.69 But, unlike communities or corporate and collegiate bodies formed by
‘several families allied through friendship’,70 citizenship was not a function simply
of natural human sociability. Summarily defined, a citizen ‘is nothing other than
the free subject [my emphasis] holding from the sovereignty of another (n’est autre
chose que le franc subiect tenant de la souveraineté d’autruy’ (1583: 70). Thus,
‘sovereignty’ would appear to be necessary to the creation of citizens. Furthermore,
its operative ‘source’ lay, after all, not simply in the ménage, but in force and the
threat of force. The conclusion, prompted initially by ‘reason and the light of
nature’,71 was supported empirically by the portentous case of the Israelites. Living
at first ‘each as it might please him in complete freedom’, they were then ‘con-
served’ in ‘communities of families and lineages’, associations ‘without the form of
république nor sovereign power’. But, being ‘pursued by enemies’ and acting
through their representatives (‘les estats des lignees & communautés’), they
appointed a leader to whom they gave sovereign power, namely the one whom God
had inspired: and so from several lineages and families united together they formed a
république by means of sovereign power.72
Without sovereignty, then, there could be no citizen and no république. As Bodin
gleefully noted, his conclusion challenged the views of a host of distinguished
jurists, ‘those to whose findings we are bound to attend (ceux de qui nous devions
attendre les vrayes resolutions)’ (1583: 74 and n. 7). It was, nonetheless, close to the
position of that most distinguished of fourteenth-century Italian jurists, Bartolus of
Sassoferrato: that a citizen is made not ‘by an act of nature, but by the civil law’, the
act of the civitas which is itself princeps and has authority to make laws on matters of
public utility.73 And Bodin’s position as exemplified by the Hebrew case embraced
the emergence of a social grouping with political competence prior to the formation
of a république as such.74
For, to judge by the Hebrew example, sovereign power was initially possessed by
a people capable of acting collectively and of transferring it to a leader divinely
identified, not simply elected by them. The position differed significantly from the

69 1583: 68. Cf. Aristotle, Politics, 1252b13–1253a31, on families, villages, and polities alike as

‘creations of nature’.
70 ‘plusieurs familles alliees par amitié sont membres d’un corps & communauté ’ (1583: 474).
71 ‘La raison & lumiere naturelle nous conduit à cela, de croire que la force & violence a donné source &

origine aux Republiques’ (1583: 69).

72 ‘le peuple Hebrieu . . . vivant chacun à son plaisir en toute liberté: mais ils estoyent entretenus par

communautés de familles & lignees, & lors qu’ils estoyent poursuyuis des ennemis, les estats des lignees &
communautés s’assembloyent & faisoyent un chef, auquel ils donnoyent puissance souueraine, à sçavoir celuy
que Dieu auoit inspire: ainsi de plusieurs lignees & familles unies ensemble se faisoit vne Republique par le
moyen de la puissance souueraine’ (1583: 476).
73 Kirshner 1973: 697–9. Cf. Quaglioni 1992a: 290–1; also Quaglioni 1993: especially 72–3.
74 Note his reference to the lex regia in I.viii (1583: 127); cf. Digest 1.4.1.
 République 135

process which Bodin had described ten years earlier as one whereby ‘the power of
living as you will without laws or imperium’ was ‘transferred (delatam) . . . by
individuals [sic] to one (a singulis ad unum)’.75 Quite how this sovereign power
was generated remained unexplained. How far its transfer entailed some kind of
contract between king and people was treated incidentally.76 In the course of
reviewing the rights of citizens Bodin might characterize their relations with their
ruler as ones of ‘reciprocal obligation’ (1583: 93, 101),77 and observe in the course
of commenting on constitutional arrangements in different countries that ‘the
convention is mutual between prince and subjects, binding both parties reciprocally
(oblige les deux parties reciproquement)’ (1583: 135). But the observation was made
in passing, and the substance of its illustration through the French king’s coron-
ation oath was minimal. In contrast, it was sovereignty that mattered, sovereignty
the concept that would inform his master-work. No one, he claimed, had defined
that concept hitherto, essential though it was to consideration of the république.78
Of course, others before Bodin had debated the question of supreme political
authority and had used the expressions ‘sovereign’ and ‘sovereignty’ with corres-
ponding Latin terminology to which he himself resorted (cf. Chapter IV.4 (pp. 82–3);
Chapter V.4 (pp. 112–13)). But even Charles Du Moulin, one of the ‘princes of
legal science (iuris scientiae principes)’ (1583: sig. [b iijvo]), had not ventured a
general definition of universal relevance, the kind of formulation that Bodin would
have regarded as truly ‘scientific’.79 In order to furnish such a definition and then
develop it, he drew upon virtually his entire range of sources. The concept’s
juridical roots were evident from the terminology he employed.80 In the Latin
version the opening pages of his famous chapter I.viii, ‘On sovereignty (De iura
maiestatis)’, were peppered with expressions drawn directly or constructed from a
variety of legal authorities: imperium, summa potestas, summum ac legibus solutum
imperium, omnia iura maiestatis sine conditione, summum perpetuumque imperium,
potestas absoluta, and more (1586: 78–86). Such expressions conveyed for Bodin’s
purposes a doctrine deployed in conjunction with civilian formulations, but
modelled substantially upon the principle of papal ‘plenitude of power (plenitudo
potestatis)’ developed in canon law.81 Yet his use of juridical terminology was
unstable, and his approach shifting. Bodin had credited his original account of
sovereignty not simply to canonist or publicist, but specifically to philosophical and
historiographical inspiration, and in particular to Aristotle, Polybius, and Dionysius

75 Methodus (1566: 251).

76 For some account of contemporary discussion of such questions see Lloyd 1991.
77 On these see Ferrière 2003.
78 ‘il n’y a ny iurisconsulte, ny philosophe politique, qui l’ayt definie: iaçoit que c’est le poinct principal &

le plus necessaire d’estre entendu au traitté de la Republique’ (1583: 122). For the term’s occurrence in the
correspondence of Henri III himself from 1576 onwards, see Vaillancourt 1992: 286 sqq.
79 Cf. above III.1 (p. 22), IV.2 (p. 54); Thireau 1980: 227–8.
80 Cf. Costa 1999: 71. Cf. also Bouvignies 2006: 150, comparing the importance of ‘legalism of

Roman inspiration’ in Bodin’s political thought with the ‘universalist Judaeo-Christian heritage’ upon
which Protestant ‘monarchomachs’ principally relied.
81 Quaglioni 1992a: 33. Cf. Isnardi Parente 1964: I. 28–9, on the relevance of the Bartolist concept

superiorem non recognescens to the sovereign, in Bodin’s view.

136 Jean Bodin

of Halicarnassus.82 Further, Platonist precepts evidently underlay his determined

insistence now upon the ‘unity’ and ‘indivisibility’ of sovereignty,83 while he argued
his case for these and its other properties on extensive comparative grounds of
ancient and more recent history. But underpinning it all was a view of divine and
natural law rooted in medieval political theology: the law that warranted paternal
authority in the household and sovereign power in the république alike,84 and
guaranteed the integrity of the entire domestic, political, and cosmic system as he
envisaged it.
Limited, it seemed, neither in time (imperium perpetuum) nor in scope (absolu-
tum), where did this sovereignty reside? Again, instability of terminology clouded
the Angevin’s discourse. Even so, its focus was firmly upon the république as such.
It was to the république that all the apparatus of rule belonged; the holder of
sovereignty for the time being had only that power’s exercise.85 The analysis
alluded to the theory of ‘double domain’ in the sphere of private law, devised by
customary lawyers to distinguish between ultimate ownership of capital assets and
rights of use. By invoking it Bodin espoused an idea of the république as a
substantive entity, distinct as much from whoever wielded power for the time
being as from the people at large. And time and again he expressed that idea
explicitly in terms of the ‘state (estat)’.86 Certainly, that term had multiple
meanings: it could refer, variously, to a kingdom’s constitution (‘l’estat du Roy-
aume’), to its financial or budgetary position (‘l’estat de la Republique’), to status
groups within it (‘grands estats’, ‘moindres estats’), to representative assemblies (‘les
estats des lignees et communautés’), or simply to the natural condition of every
created thing which, to whatever change it might be subjected, would inevitably
revert ‘en son premier estat’ (1583: 133, 71, 476, 49). Yet when Bodin wrote of ‘the
state in itself (l’estat en soy)’, of the best means ‘to conserve a state (conserver un
estat)’, of how to ensure ‘conseruation d’ un estat’, or of how not to ‘ruyner l’Estat’, a
phrase equated with ‘ruiner la Republique’,87 he clearly had in mind a political
actuality other than ruler on the one hand and ruled on the other—the repository
of the sovereignty upon which depended the security of them all, as well as the
locus of the means of its implementation.

82 Methodus (1566: 200); cf. Chrom Jacobsen 2000: 134.

83 For comment to the effect that Bodin’s insistence upon indivisiblity was not prompted by ‘the
thougbt of any earlier writer’—for instance, Baldus’s phrase ‘imperium est indivisibile’—see Franklin
1973: 111–13. Cf. Comparato 2013: 363, n. 80, on Tacitus as the source of Giambattista Vico’s later
definition of sovereignty (summum imperium) in terms of indivisibility, in his De uno universi iuris
principio et fine uno (1720).
84 Goyard-Fabre 1992: 214–18; cf. Bodin 1583: 29, 152. See also Quaglioni 1999a: 18.
85 ‘tous les estats, Magistrats & offices appartiennent à la République en propriété . . . demeurant la

provision à ceux qui ont la souveraineté ’ (1583: 436).

86 On Bodin’s usage of the term cf. Marongiu 1981.
87 1583: 339, 760, 235, 882; likewise in 1576: 283, 586, 207, 636. But cf. 1586: 234, 563, 163,

657, where the term ‘status’ is not similarly employed, though the idea of the république as a substantive
entity is manifestly present there. Thus, for example, Bodin’s warning that to implement improvident
or over-austere fiscal measures as mooted in some quarters would be to ‘ruyner l’Estat’ (1583: 882) is
expressed in the Latin version as ‘nec . . . Rempublicam ullam haberemus’ (1586: 657).
 République 137

What, then, was the form of this entity? Such a question was unavoidable by
a philosopher trained in classical metaphysics. Bodin none the less challenged
the answer which Aristotle and so many of his followers had supplied. A ‘state/
république’ could take one of only three possible forms: monarchical, ‘where
sovereignty lies with a single prince (gist en un seul Prince)’; aristocratic, or rule
by ‘a minority of the people (la moindre partie du people)’; and democratic, or
‘popular (populaire)’ where ‘all the people participate in it (tous le people y a part)’
(1583: 251). No other form and, pace Aristotle, no mixture, was possible. The
answer was patently reductionist, a deliberate rejection of views of ‘mixed’ consti-
tutions (cf. for instance Hotman, Chapter V.4 (p. 112). Views of the latter sort
were much more widely espoused, and notably by Polybius upon whom Bodin
heavily drew, not least in respect of the components of sovereignty itself.88 But any
mixed form would be incompatible with his overriding thesis. Mixture would entail
division or sharing of sovereignty and, therefore, negation of the political entity as
he conceived of it. Even so, while each of its possible forms had, prima facie, some
acceptable or desirable characteristics, each was flawed. Indeed, in the nature of
things political change (μεταβολή πολιτείας metabolai politeiôn) was unavoidable.
Monarchy degenerated into tyranny, for ‘there are few virtuous men (il y a peu de
vertueux hommes)’ and therefore few princes not prone to viciousness.89 If virtuous
monarchs were few and far between, how much more difficult was it to discover
and install a collectivity of virtuous individuals to constitute an aristocracy! In
any case, aristocracies soon became riven by faction or disrupted by demagogues
(1583: 953, 529, 532). As for democracies, Bodin reposed even less confidence in
them. The Athenian general and statesman Phocion had had the right of it: how
could a multitude, ‘that is to say a beast with many heads, without judgement nor
reason, provide any good counsel (une beste à plusieurs testes, sans iugement & sans
raison, rien conseiller de bien)’ (1583: 940)? Even so, Bodin’s objection to the
‘popular state’ extended beyond sceptical appraisal of practical politics to consider-
ations of logic, metaphysics, and protocol rooted in feudal law. An incoming holder
of sovereignty must pledge on oath to exercise it appropriately. Such a promise
could properly be made only by a lesser to a greater body. It followed that, while an
aristocratic group could make it to the people at large, the ‘universal body (corpus
quoddam universitas)’ of a ‘popular state’ could not pledge itself to itself.90 A monarch,
on the other hand, might ostensibly oblige himself in a coronation oath, albeit that his
pledge was in reality to God.

88 The République contains fifty-four references to Polybius; the Methodus, forty-two.

89 1583: 514. On tyranny and tyrannicide see Turchetti 2001. Cf. Aristotle, Politics, 1295a2–3
defining tyranny in a Bodinian sense.
90 More firmly than in 1583: 143, the point is made, in 1586: 92: ‘populus universus sibi seipsum

obligare non possit . . . cives quidem singuli iurabant in leges, universi non iurabant: quia singuli
universorum imperio tenebantur. Iusiurandum vero ab universis fieri non poterat: est enim corpus
quoddam universitatis a singulis potestate & natura divisum, deinde Iusiurandum concipitur a maiore
potestate, nihil autem populi universitate in Republica populari maius esse potest: at in monarchiam singuli
cives tum universi iurant in fidem unius Principis, qui post Deum immortalem obligatur nemini ’. On the
relevance of feudal law to the subject–sovereign relationship see Isnardi Parente 1964: I. 47–8;
Quaglioni 1992a: 40–1.
138 Jean Bodin

The analysis was the work of a Bodin wedded to his legal and philosophical
training and yet disenchanted with the political realities around him.91 But the
concept of sovereignty around which his entire work revolved required much fuller
elaboration than simply specification of the république’s several forms. He devoted
considerable portions of it to discussing afresh the ‘marks’ or ‘rights’ of sovereignty
which in his Distributio and his Methodus he had already presented to some degree
(cf. Chapter IV.2 (p. 61) and Chapter IV.4 (p. 83)). Characteristically conflating a
variety of sources including schedules of regalian rights discernible in feudal law, he
now expanded his own list from five to nine items. While there was continuity
between the new and the previous compilation, the differences were far-reaching.
The sovereign’s power of appointing and removing magistrates still figured prom-
inently, but that function no longer headed the list. Still present too were the power
of adjudicating in last resort and the power of pardon, though the latter now
featured merely as a facet of the former (1583: 236–8). Indeed, in the République
Bodin explicitly played down the sovereign’s scope for judicial intervention,
devoting an entire chapter to the question (IV.vi) and concluding crisply that
‘princes ought not to make it their business to be judges (les princes ne doyvent
pas faire mestier d’estre iuges)’ (1583: 632). The power of declaring war and making
peace received repeated consideration, in a discussion that owed something to
Machiavellian inspiration and contributed significantly to Bodin’s subsequent
reputation as a contributor to the development of international law.92 New entries
included entitlement to liege fealty and homage, now described as ‘one of the
greatest rights of sovereignty (l’un des plus grands droits de la souveraineté )’ (1576:
211; 1583: 242) and the subject of an entire chapter (1576: I.x; 1583: I.ix) before
the other powers were discussed. They also included powers of coinage, taxation,
and determining weights and measures, the first two of these, treated in the Methodus
as not necessarily exclusive to the sovereign, now given extensive treatment, and
all three elevated to the status of sovereign rights (cf. Methodus 1566: 200). But the
most important change was the ranking of law-making as not only ‘la première
marque du Prince souverain’, but in effect as the ‘only mark of sovereignty, given
that all the others are comprised within that one (seule marque de souveraineté, attendu
que tous les autres sont compris en cestuy là)’ (1583: 221–3).93
As always, there must be a definition. In defining law, Bodin presented afresh the
formulation which he had offered in the Distributio: law, the making of which

91 For further comment on factors inducing political change, especially succession issues in

monarchies, see Chapter VI.5 (p. 149). For the philosophical basis of Bodin’s position see Isnardi
Parente (1985).
92 1583: V.v and V.vi. Cf. 1576 where Bodin’s examination of the question of peacemaking figured

as I.viii, preceding his account of sovereignty, though subsequently moved to Book V. On Bodin’s
contribution see Gardot 1934; Basdevant 1944; Joubert 2004.
93 1583: 221–2. Again, the idea has religious resonances. Given the central importance of divine

law in Bodin’s schema, it implicitly identifies the sovereign with the divine legislator, and echoes
Philo’s pronouncement: ‘Amongst all the highest powers that attach to God, there is one excelled by
none, the legislative. For He Himself is the lawgiver and the fountain of laws, and on him depend all
particular lawgivers’ (‘On the birth of Abel and the sacrifices offered by his brother Cain’. 131, in Works
II [1929]: 188–9).
 République 139

required no consent on the subjects’ part, was ‘nothing other than the command or
sanction of the sovereign’.94 But when juxtaposed with others of his formulations,
the implications of such a definition now seemed significant indeed. The ‘end’ of
law was ‘justice, which is the principal foundation of a state’.95 In that case, just rule
and political stability must be outcomes induced by the sovereign’s command.
There was more. The sovereign prince was the ‘breathing image (imago spirans)’ of
God, and his laws likewise were ‘modelled on divine laws (exemplar prae se ferant
legum divinarum)’.96 Given so portentous an utterance, the sovereign’s law could
scarcely be a matter of arbitrary exercises of his own ‘will’. Indeed, the terminology
of voluntarism in relation to the terrestrial sovereign is curiously lacking from
passages in the République where Bodin focuses explicitly on the former’s legislative
acts.97 For those acts truly to be law they must not only avoid infringement of
divine and natural law. They must serve positively to actualize the divine will on
earth, through the terrestrial agency of, preferably, a monarch. And what followed,
necessarily, from that was the duty of obedience on the part of agents of govern-
ment and subjects alike, at every level. Observance of that duty was the surest
guarantee of justice and good order throughout the body politic:
For we ought to consider the république happy where the king is obedient to the law of
God and of nature, the magistrates to the king, individuals to the magistrates, children
to fathers, servants to masters.98
All this, then, was inherent to the sovereign’s law-making power. Implicitly it
cast the sovereign in a role and with functions analogous to those of intermediate
beings within the celestial hierarchy. And implicitly it set at naught justifications
of resistance lately advanced by Huguenot theorists, however earnestly they
might erect contrary theses about magisterial duties upon comparable theological
and jurisprudential premises (cf. Chapter V.4 (p. 113); cf. Comparato 1981c:
98–105).
Even so, Bodin’s arguments left his position ambivalent on the question of the
scope of sovereign power. That power was, as he insisted time and again, constrained

94 ‘lex nihil aliud sit quam summae potestatis iussum sive sanctio’ (Distributio 1580: 11). Cf. Republica

1586: 102: ‘Est enim lex nihil aliud quam summae potestatis jussum’. Cf. 1583: 142.
95 Thus 1583: 595: ‘la iustice, qui est le fondement principal d’un estat’. Curiously, the proposition

does not occur in the corresponding passage of 1586: 438 (recte 439).
96 1586: 107; cf. 1583: 161.
97 It figures more conspicuously in the Latin version. Compare, for instance, Bodin’s statement on

custom in 1586: 154 (‘summa omnium voluntate’) with 1583: 222 (‘d’un commun consentement de
tous’); or on the sovereign’s discriminating between laws in 1586: 98 (‘leges huiusmodi utcunque volet’)
with 1583: 151 (‘entre les loix utiles, faire chois des plus utiles’). The gloss on the phrase ‘nostre plaisir’
appended to royal edicts and ordinances (‘qu’elles ne dépendent que de sa pure et franche volonté ’) (1583:
133) is immediately qualified by reference to specific constraints on the sovereign’s freedom to legislate
at will. On the question of voluntarism in Bodin, cf. Isnardi Parente 1973, and Chrom Jacobsen 2000:
82–5, both drawing in this connection rather on the Theatrum than on the République. See also
Couzinet 2007: 83–104.
98 ‘Car nous devons estimer la Republique bien heureuse où le Roy est obeyssant à la loy de Dieu & de

nature, les Magistrats au Roy, les particuliers aux Magistrats, les enfans au peres, les serviteurs aux maistres’
(1583: 754). Cf. 1583: 93 (on the ‘obeissance du franc subiect [the free subject] enuers son Prince
souverain); 1583: 409 (on the ‘obeissance que doit le Magistrat aux lois & au Prince souverain’).
140 Jean Bodin

by the dictates of divine and natural law. To these a sovereign was ‘more tightly
bound than any of his subjects’ and answerable, always, to ‘the judgement of God’
(1583: 149). But how was divine oversight exercised? It could have been argued
that its agency was the Church of Rome, the body of Christ on earth. Such was
not Bodin’s argument. While canonist formulations informed to a degree his
characterization of sovereign power,99 it did not follow that the exercise of
sovereignty was circumscribed by ecclesiastical jurisdiction. At that jurisdiction’s
highest level, had not French kings and their people always rejected papal claims
to ‘not only spiritual but temporal sovereignty over all Christian princes’ (1583:
201)? Yet in other realms such claims had met with greater deference. And even in
France there was a role certainly for the law developed by the church and its
councils, and for the jurisdiction in question too. Himself trained in utroque jure
(both in canon and in civil law), Bodin did not confine to the concept of
sovereignty his reliance upon canonist dicta. He acknowledged how, in the sphere
of curial practice as distinct from jurisprudence, episcopal and other ecclesiastical
courts discharged authoritative functions. They did so vis-à-vis not only matters of
religion, but also the ‘censoring of manners (morum tamen censuram)’.100 This was
a function ‘most necessary’ to any well-ordered république (1583: 854). On the
other hand, clerical morality was far from irreprehensible: indeed, clerical avarice
and inequalities of wealth ensuing from it had been and continued to be ‘the
occasion of troubles and seditions’ throughout Europe (1583: 713). As for natural
law, although ‘true natural justice is brighter than the splendour of the sun’, even
the greatest jurisconsults were often ‘at odds in their opinions’ (1583: 419, 416;
cf. 280). Even so, there were two important areas where natural law admitted of
no equivocation. In both respects Bodin’s position was rooted once more in the
doctrines of later medieval jurisprudence.101 First, a sovereign prince was ‘as bound
as any individual by the just covenants and promises which he has made, whether
under or not under oath’ (1583: 133; cf. 152). Secondly, a sovereign could not take
a man’s private property except for a ‘just and reasonable cause’, such as ‘the
conservation of the state (la conservation de l’estat)’ (1583: 140, 156–7). Juristic
affirmation of private property rights in terms of natural law was enshrined in the
Accursian gloss on the Digest. The position plainly indicated limits to a ruler’s power
to tax his subjects.
Other limits lay in what became known as the ‘fundamental laws’, termed by
Bodin ‘laws which concern the state of the kingdom and its establishment (loix qui
concernent l’estat du Royaume & de l’establissement d’iceluy)’.102 ‘United with the
crown’, on the one hand they affirmed the inalienability of the ‘public domain’,
and, on the other, governed succession to the throne. Of the ‘public domain’, the
revenues of which were ‘holy, sacred and inalienable’ and ‘the république’s strongest

99 See Reulos 1985.

100 1586: 278; cf. 1583: 398–9, where this passage does not occur.
101 Cf. Post 1964: 542–6; Quaglioni 1992a: 73, n.84.
102 1583: 137. For comment on the absence of the term and perhaps even the concept from

relevant discourse in France until towards the end of the sixteenth century, see Höpfl 1986.
 République 141

sinews (les plus fort nerfs de la Republique)’, sovereign princes had only the usufruct:
so Bodin emphasized repeatedly, from his treatise’s first edition onwards.103 The
doctrine of its inalienability illustrates afresh the overlap of the public with the
private sphere. It tallied with the doctrine of the inviolability of the subject’s
property rights and, in common with the latter, was warranted by thirteenth-
century jurists on the basis of natural law (Pennington 1988: 438). The succession
laws included, in the case of France, the Salic law. In Bodin’s view this was one of
the key means to prevent ‘division of the monarchy’ and its negation, in that ‘being
divided it would no longer be a monarchy’—to say nothing of ‘all the inconveni-
ences and absurdities [which] ensue from gynaecocracy’, for in the natural order of
things women had no business in rulership.104 Credited to the Salian Franks, the
Salic law was an instance of feudal law, the origins of which were much discussed,
but generally ascribed in juristic opinion to the customs of the Lombards—a view
which Bodin cheerfully endorsed (1583: 103; cf. Kelley 1970: 184). Yet feudal law
presented his thesis of sovereignty with considerable difficulties. ‘Liege fealty and
homage’ he affirmed to be ‘one of the greatest rights of sovereignty’. But, given that
‘an absolute sovereign is only he who holds nothing of another’ (1583: 242, 168), it
would seem to follow that, sovereign rights amongst European potentates being so
trammelled by obligations of fealty and vassaldom, ‘there are few absolutely
sovereign princes’.105 The position of the Netherlands was especially complex,
involving as it did competing claims to sovereignty amid niceties of feudal law.106
Indeed, it would appear that only ‘lordly monarchs (monarques seigneuriaux)’ whose
subjects were tantamount to slaves could be accounted truly sovereign. For the rest,
feudal obligations necessarily diminished the status of a would-be sovereign ruler;
while such relationships fragmented the unity and totality that, by Bodin’s analysis,
were essential properties of sovereign power.
Given the derivation of feudal law from custom, it might seem that the latter
constrained the sovereign too, in respect of his legislative capacity vis-à-vis the
private sphere. Some held that, if the sovereign made law, it was the people who
made customs, and that custom ‘has not less power than law’ (1583: 222). At the
very least ‘it was not customary’ to alter customs without consultation with the
three estates. This was a position to which the admired Du Moulin had subscribed,
and of which Bodin’s erstwhile protector Christofle de Thou had been firmly

103 1576: 169–70, 619–23, 703. The point figures with still greater emphasis in 1583: 137, 182,

857–64; cf. also 1586: 124, 638–43, 720. For its significant presence in the Third Estate’s stance at the
Estates-general of Blois see Chapter VII.2 (p. 166). On the background to the doctrine of the crown as
proprietor of the domain as expressed in the Edict of Moulins (1566) ‘sur l’inaliénabilité du Domaine de
la Couronne’ see Esmein 1911; and on the doctrine more generally, Rousselet-Pimont 1997.
104 1583: 995, 1,011. As with so much else in Bodin, the position is rooted in Aristotelian tenets.

Cf. Generation of Animals, 775a15: ‘we must look upon the female character as being a sort of natural
deficiency’.
105 ‘on peut iuger qu’il y a peu de Princes absoluement souuerains’ (1583: 180). Greater emphasis in

1586: 122: ‘extremely few or none at all (aut paucissimos aut neminem)’.
106 1576: 166–7; 1583: 177–8. Cf. 1586: 120. For a searching discussion of the point see

Machielsen 2013: 165–7; and see also Chapter VIII.1 (p. 192).
142 Jean Bodin

reminded when principal commissioner for reform of the customs.107 But the
Angevin took a less nuanced view. The historical record showed French kings to
have annulled general customs without such consultation (1583: 137, 142). In any
case, custom had force only as long as it pleased the sovereign (1583: 222) whose
deference to human law itself sprang rather from his sense of what was fitting than
from formal legal constraint.108 A far greater constraint lay in the requirements of
equity. And here the implications of Bodin’s thinking were formidable. Was it not
the case that ‘law without equity is a body without a soul (un corps sans ame)’ (1583:
1,023)? And did not ‘natural equity’ lie ‘in the arbitration of those who know how
to manage affairs of state (l’arbitrage de ceux qui sçauent manier les affaires d’estat)’
(1583: 310)? Indeed, this meant that ‘matters of rightful concern, not only private
but also public, should be left to the good faith, equity, religion, prudence of, in a
word, the magistrates’.109

VI . 5 MAGISTRATES AND GOVERNMENT

Here lay the heart of the matter. The pronouncement echoed Bodin’s position in
the Methodus where he had argued for the magistracy’s role as guarantor of the
rectitude of the sovereign’s legislative acts. In developing that argument he had
alluded to the attempts of medieval jurisprudents to distinguish between imperium
and iurisdictio (cf. Chapter IV.4 (p. 84)). He now devoted no fewer than four
chapters to examining precisely what magistrates might do in relation to one
another, to the law, and above all to the sovereign—chapters (III. ii–vi) which
through successive editions retained their place at the heart of the volume. In
respect of the sovereign’s commands, these the magistrates should examine and
might seek to modify by means of remonstrances addressed to the legislator, but in
the last resort were bound to implement as long as such commands were not
‘contrary to the laws of God and nature’.110 Ultimately considerations of obedience
were paramount: ‘far better to bend beneath the sovereign majesty in all obedience
[ployer sous la maiesté souueraine en toute obeyssance] than in refusing the sovereign’s
commands to set the subjects an example of rebellion’ (1583: 427). And yet, those
same commands were futile and the law itself was ‘dumb (muette)’ unless imple-
mented through the agency of the magistrate, who ‘is the living law (est la vive loy)’
(1583: 429). They exercised that agency partly in the course of the legislative
process itself, through scrutiny and then publication of legislative enactments.

107 For Du Moulin’s position, Thireau 1980: 114, n. 321. For De Thou and opinions conditioning

his approach see Filhol 1937: 64–71. Cf. Lloyd 1983: 76.
108 1583: 149; the allusion is to the law Digna vox (Code 1.14.4).
109 ‘quod interest non modo in privatis, sed etiam in publicis iudiciis, fidei, aequitati, religioni,

prudentiae denique magistratuum relinqui oportere’ (1586: 306). Cf. 1583: 442, where this particular
formulation does not in fact occur.
110 A condition strengthened in 1586: 293 (‘if that law challenges divine or natural laws (si lex ipsa

divinas aut naturae leges oppugnet)’) by comparison with 1583: 421 (‘an iniquitous matter (chose
inique)’).
 République 143

Thereafter they exercised it through enforcement. To that end, and to that extent,
magistrates enjoyed imperium, the power of command, and could enforce not only
the sovereign’s, but also their own commands, under penalty (1583: 444). They
derived that power directly from the sovereign who appointed them, but ultimately
from God (1583: 448–9). And their offices, in common with all offices, belonged
not to the sovereign, but ‘in property to the république itself ’ (cf. Chapter IV, n. 85).
Of course, the sovereign could enforce his own commands. Even so, he would be
wise to leave enforcement in a legal context to the magistrates. Certainly, he should
leave the business of adjudication in their hands: indeed, ‘justice and the subjects’
complaints and grievances [plaintes & doleances des subiects] will always be better
provided for by good and sufficient magistrates than by the prince’ (1583: 619). Of
course, not all magistrates were ‘good and sufficient’: hence the desirability of
means to monitor their conduct in office, and the undesirability of their holding
office in perpetuity (1576: 457–8). But this was essentially a matter of discipline.
More far-reaching was the structural division of functions captured in the distinc-
tion between imperium and iurisdictio which Bodin had long since, in effect,
invoked. He now proceeded to clarify it through more precise use of language,
and thereby developed it into a central pillar of his thought.
The distinction lay between ‘state’ on the one hand and ‘government’ on the
other.111 In so far as it was mooted in the Methodus, terminological imprecision
obscured its presence there, and continued to do so in the 1572 as in the 1566
edition. For example, at the opening of the famous sixth chapter (‘De statu
rerumpublicarum’) Bodin had noted that although some earlier writers had written
lengthily on various aspects of rule they had nevertheless dealt ‘lightly with the state
(leviter tamen de statu)’, and ‘a few others’ had dilated on ‘unsullied semblances of
commonwealths (alij aliquot Rerumpublicarum imagines puras)’. In the present
chapter, he had explained, ‘we shall scorn the deep-seated error of the mixed
state: then we shall speak of the three forms of commonwealth in turn; afterwards
of changes of governments; finally of the best state’.112 In the event, having shown
‘that the states of the commonwealth are no more than three (quid status Reipu-
blicae nec plures esse tribus)’, he had arrived at ‘changes of commonwealths (ad
Rerumpublicarum conversiones veniamus)’, and at length at ‘the best state of a
commonwealth (Optimus Reipublicae status)’.113 Along the way he had discoursed
on changes in a series of political entities, here in terms of ‘conversio status’, there of
‘conversio imperii’, the latter phrase referring in places to acknowledged ‘empires’, in
others to entities with markedly less claim to ‘imperial’ status.114 The discourse

111 See Loughlin 2010: especially 228 on this distinction as fundamental to the emergence of

‘public law’.
112 ‘inveteratum errorem de statu temperato reijciemus: tum de triplici Republica suo ordine dicemus:

postea de conversionibus imperiorum: postremo de optima statu’ (1572: 131–2, recte 231–2).
113 1572: 326, 421. The marginal sub heading at p. 326 reads, ‘Conversiones Rerumpublicarum’.
114 Cf. ‘Conversiones Imperii Romani’, ‘Imperii Atheniensium’, ‘Imperii Lacedaemoniorum’, with

‘Conversiones Imperii Britannici’ where after some 150 years of Danish harassment ‘Edward the
Elder, the Danes having been repulsed, recovered governing authority (Edwardum maiorem, qui
Danis pulsis imperium recepit)’ (1572: 369, 370, 372, 416–17).
144 Jean Bodin

involved disparagement of the doctrine translatio imperii derived from the biblical
prophecies of Daniel, and with it discrediting of the German Empire’s pretensions
to prophetic grounding of its status in that regard—a position that was to generate
vigorous dissent from that quarter.115 In fact, ‘imperium’ at his hands had func-
tioned virtually as a portmanteau term referring as readily to modes of government
as to the extent or nature of the political entity under review.116
Four years later, in the République much greater precision prevailed, and the
Latin Respublica ten years afterwards consolidated the point. Now Bodin roundly
denounced Aristotle and his followers for having ‘taken the form of governing for
the state of a République (a pris la forme de gouverner pour l’estat d’une Republique)’.
He had himself demonstrated the difference: thus, for instance, ‘a state could be a
pure royal monarchy and the government popular (l’estat peut estre en pure mon-
archie Royale, & le gouvernement sera populaire)’ (1576: 281). The point figured
with equal force and neat antithesis in the Latin version:
Atque hae quidem absurditates, ac multo maiores ex eo sequuntur, quod Aristoteles
gubernandae civitatis rationem pro statu Reipublicae usurpauit: cum tamen fieri possit ut
sit regalis status ac nihilominus populariter gubernetur [emphasis mine].117
Of course, ‘state’ and ‘government’ as Bodin construed them did not embrace all
institutions that had to do with public concerns. Some such bodies were separate
from either category. Thus, Bodin challenged the pretensions of senates: these
‘ought not to have power of command’, but only ‘give advice’, if the very ‘overthrow
of sovereignty (euersion de la maiesté)’ were to be avoided.118 Again, although
collegiate bodies and corporations ‘may make such ordinances as they think best’
and support them with penalties, such acts applied only to their own members, not
to the public at large: otherwise, they would ‘derogate from the public laws (deroger
aux lois publiques)’ (1583: 488). Yet the state–government dichotomy proved, in the
end, problematical, even though the areas where they intermeshed were limited in
scope—as indeed, by Bodin’s analysis, was the compass of government itself.
The areas in question he identified summarily as essentially three: military affairs,
justice, and public finance (1583: 596). On the first of these, he dissented from
Machiavellian realism to the extent of endorsing in principle the merits of peace so
urgently canvassed in humanist circles,119 and counselling against the creation of

115 See Goez 1958: 351–63, 373; Krämer 1996: 350–60.

116 For instance, Ragusa, where the account of ‘Status Rhagusiorum’ begins with the statement
‘Ragusan government (imperium) consists of optimates (Est etiam imperium apud Rhagusios ex
optimatibus constitutum’ (1572: 383).
117 ‘And indeed these absurdities give rise to many greater ones, in that Aristotle improperly took

the concept of governing a body politic for the state of a Commonwealth, whereas it could happen that
a state be royal and nevertheless be governed by the people’ (1586: 233).
118 1583: 365, 371. But see also 1583: 346, citing Cicero’s description of the Senate as ‘the soul,

the reason, the intelligence of a république’—a proposition which, by Bodin’s metaphysical schema,
should cast the Senate as equivalent to the sovereign ruler after all.
119 ‘Aussi est-il impossible de voire une Republique florissante en religion, iustice, charité, integrité de vie,

& brief, en toutes sciences liberales & arts mechaniques, si les citoyens ne iouyssent d’une paix treshaute et
asseuree’ (1583: 755).
 République 145

citizen armies (1583: 766). Nevertheless, military forces were necessarily the basis
of any ‘well-founded république’; and ‘whoever is the master of force is master of the
state (celuy est maistre de l’estat qui est maistre de la force)’ (1583: 778). Furthermore,
it was desirable that the sovereign ruler be actively present on the battlefield: witness
the triumphant record of England’s Edward IV, victories gained ‘because he always
fought on foot (parce qu’il combattoit tousiours à pied)’ (1583: 772). All this implied
the creation and maintenance of state armies directly under sovereign control. And
yet, Bodin concluded that military forces should not be managed directly as a
branch either of government or of the state. Rather, a ‘well-ordered république’,
whatever its constitutional form, should protect itself
through some goodly number of skilful and warlike men who have certain
landed estates assigned to military men, albeit only for life, just as fiefs and feudatories
used to be.120
The proposition tallied with his positive view of liege fealty as a mark of sovereignty,
if not with his opinion on the liabilities which feudal relationships entailed. Perhaps
the proposed arrangement would serve to avoid overcharging the république’s
administrative and, above all, its financial capability. Certainly, Bodin’s opinion
of these was not encouraging.
On aspects of public finance he had already discoursed at length, in his Response à
Malestroit to which he explicitly referred (1583: 882). Key points in that treatise
were iterated afresh, especially in respect of coinage: the desirability of preserving
the purity of specie, of maintaining the bimetallic ratio, of minting only three forms
of currency—gold, silver, and copper, the last to facilitate the transactions of the
poor.121 In place of his fourfold explanation of price inflation he now focused upon
the single factor, that since the time of Louis XII ‘gold and silver have come in such
abundance from the new world, even from Peru, that everything has grown ten
times dearer’ (1583: 882). In contrast to this reductionist approach, he offered a
more rounded discussion of public revenue resources. From the sovereign’s
standpoint, there were seven of these. Almost all were in some way deficient;
together they illustrated the political and ethical hazards of rule. The most secure
revenues were those of the domain, but these, in common with magisterial offices
(cf. Chapter VI.4 (pp. 136 (n. 85), 143)), were the property of the république
itself (1583: 659) and attempts by sovereigns to alienate them were grossly
abusive. Whereas the profits of military conquests ought to be available to defray
the costs of war and were in places used accordingly, they tended to be appropri-
ated by the military, and in the case of France ‘there never came an écu to the
treasury’ (1583: 865). Gifts (otherwise known as benevolences) constituted an
uncertain and insecure resource: ‘there are few princes who give them and fewer

120 ‘Et pour conclusion il me semble que la Republique bien ordonnee, de quelque nature qu’elle soit, doit

estre fortifiee aux avenuës & frontieres, & assuree de quelque bon nombre de gents adroits & aguerris, qui
ayent certains heritages affectés aux gents de guerre, & ottroyés à vie seulement, comme estoyent anciennement
les fiefs & feudataires’ (1583: 779–80).
121 1583: 916, 919; cf. Chapter V.3 (p. 103).
146 Jean Bodin

still who receive them without giving as much in return’ (1583: 866), while of
donations by subjects ‘there are at present few or none’ (1583: 868). Pensions or
tribute might be politically useful, but were scarcely profitable to those who paid.
Commercial activity might be profitable, but few princes engaged in it through the
medium of factors; and as for the selling of public offices, this was ‘the most
dangerous and pernicious plague that could be in républiques’ (1576: 572; cf. 1583:
874). By comparison, it was entirely proper and indeed equitable to levy taxes on
merchants’ commercial transactions, and specifically on surplus commodities sold
abroad, though not on imports needed to sustain domestic manufacture. On the
other hand, direct taxes ought never to be levied without the subjects’ or their
representatives’ consent and ‘unless all other means fail (si tous le autres moyens ne
defallent)’ (1583: 877, 880). For, all in all, ‘changes, seditions and ruinations of
républiques have never been more frequent than through excessive charges and taxes’
(1583: 881).
Throughout this discussion the conceptual differentiation between ‘state’ and
‘government’ proved hard to sustain. The greatest of sovereigns had, it seemed,
involved themselves in ‘affaires d’état’, meaning administrative business. Roman
emperors exemplified as much: thus Augustus himself had ‘left three volumes
written in his own hand’, the third of which contained ‘details of the state of
every province, of the military, of finance, fortresses, arms, ships, munitions, with a
diligence worthy of a great monarch’.122 On the other hand, the less power a
sovereign chose to exercise, the more secure his rule (1583: 632). Underlying
Bodin’s arguments lurked a perception that there was too much government.
Certainly, there were far too many government officials: had not the Estates-
general at Orléans indicated as much (1576: 654)? The excess was especially
pronounced in the financial sphere where the costs generated by each administra-
tive unit might amount to a third or more of its receipts. High-ranking officers,
notably those of France’s Chambre des Comptes, enjoyed,
over and above their ordinary wages which are of the highest, their rights of fuel,
clothing, fish, droit de rose,123 stabling, parental feasts, beverages, salt, etc., as well as
paper, parchment, counters, money-bags, candles, torches, red wax, pen-knives, paper-
clips, scrapers, strings, and others of those sorts of things customarily consumed by
magisterial business.124

122 ‘l’estat de tout l’empire Romain, où il avoit compris en particulier l’estat de chacune province, de la

gendarmerie, des finances, forteresses, armes, navires, munitions, avec une diligence digne d’un grand
Monarque’ (1583: 903).
123 The entitlement throughout the month of June to a daily bouquet of red roses, supplied by a

dedicated florist. This particular right was valued at 37 sous 6 deniers, and each member of the gens des
comptes’ entire set of such rights at 40 livres 12 sous 6 deniers—a not insignificant sum (Boislisle 1873:
I. LXXXIIII).
124 ‘stipendia ordinaria quae maxima sunt, iura lignaria, vestiaria, piscaria, rosaria, stabularia,

parentalia, pocularia, salinaria, & caetera quae pro charta, pergameno, calculis, crumena, candelis,
piceis, cera purpurea, gladiolo, acu discriminali, radula, funiculis, caterisque id genus a principe istis
rationum Magistris dependi consueuerant’ (1586: 678). Cf. 1583: 910, for an even more colourful
list. The litany, present also in (1576), p. 655, both anticipates and chimes with sentiments aired at the
Estates-general of Blois: see Chapter VII.1 (p. 161).
 République 147

Nowhere was the position worse than in the mints where officers ‘were paid and did
almost nothing’, apart from perpetrating abuses, which were flagrant. The best
remedy would be to suppress all of them, apart from a single mint closely supervised
and located in one town (1583: 929). All in all, while officiers des finances were ‘a
necessary evil (un mal necessaire)’, the fewer there were of them, the better (1583:
911–12). But the proliferation of offices in general seemed ‘out of control (effrené)’,
and their number irreducible for financial and political reasons: the costs of
repurchasing those that had been sold, the risk of antagonizing persons deprived
of the honours and perquisites gained through their tenure (1583: 579–80). Such
practical considerations aside, it would be better not to treat offices as permanent,
apart from those of senator on the one hand and minor functionary on the other
where experience was obviously desirable (1583: 596). Implicit in much of this was
a case for the uses of commissioners—temporary appointments, limited to the
performance and completion of particular tasks, and so blameless of cluttering to
excess the long-term apparatus of rule (1583: 375).
Nevertheless, it was undeniable that the concerns of state and government were
many and various. They ranged from general legislation, to diplomatic negoti-
ations, to military recruitment and supply, to repair of highways and bridges, to
public health, the cleansing of towns, and the licensing of fairs (1583: 406, 410).
Often it was indeed commissioners, such as ambassadors, or captains, or governors
of towns or provinces, by whom such duties were dischargeable (1583: 390, 765).
The scope of their authority varied from case to case: some had, for instance, ‘power
of command’ without ‘jurisdiction’. But the principal executive officers of répub-
liques were magistrates whose authority encompassed both jurisdiction and ‘power
of command (puissance de commander)’—a power without which jurisdiction
would be impotent. For, in Bodin’s perception, ‘power of command’ meant,
ultimately, the power to enforce judgements (1583: 397); and it was those who
had both that ‘are properly called magistrates (qui proprement s’appellent Magistrats)’
(1583: 405). They ranked ‘after the sovereign’ as ‘the principal person of the
république’ (1583: 409). Roman precedent indicated that not to reverence them
was sacrilege (1583: 448). In common with sovereignty itself, their jurisdiction was
indivisible (1583: 465). And, indeed, their judgements were ‘the means above all
else whereby civil society is preserved’.125
It has been suggested that Bodin’s account of the role of the magistracy marks
an important transitional phase in political thought, with the concept of the
‘administrative and legislative state’ displacing the idea—essentially Aristotelian—of

125 ‘quibus civilis societas maxime continentur’ (1586: 307). Cf. 1583: 444, where no equivalent to

this phrase occurs. Presumably by the time of his Latin translation Bodin considered the proposition
needed greater emphasis. Likewise compare 1583: 1028–9, with 1586: 757 where the potential extent
of magisterial roles in government is again stated more strongly, to the point of merging with the
exercise of sovereign authority: ‘Potestas autem extra ordinem magistratibus à principe data seu iudicandi,
seu belli gerendi, seu civitatis moderandae, seu quid aliud agendi (Moreover, extraordinary power granted
by the prince to the magistrates, whether pronouncing judgement, or managing war, or regulating the
body politic, or any other sort of governing)’.
148 Jean Bodin

justice and the judicial function as the prime defining characteristics of a polity.126
Such a development may indeed be discernible in the République’s account of
sovereignty by comparison with that of the Methodus. But in relation to Bodin’s
assessment of magistracy the suggestion seems hard to sustain. That assessment,
despite extending over several chapters, is oddly incomplete. A remarkable omission
on the part of a commentator writing against a background of urban disturbances is
his failure to comment on the presence of multiple authorities and conflicts of
jurisdiction within municipalities, of the kind which he had witnessed at the very
outset of his career in Toulouse.127 What does seem unmistakable in his analysis of
government is its ethical content and the high moral tone in which it was
conducted, as well as the awareness of social issues, judgementally expressed, that
underlay it. Social comment amplified and reinforced his critique of extravagance
on the part especially of courtiers and financiers, previously expressed in the
Response à Malestroit. Extremes of wealth and poverty were dangerous; but their
alleviation through redistribution of property was quite inadvisable, pace the
arguments of such as Thomas More and others for community of goods (1583:
702–5). For all the benefits it might bring, commercial activity was scarcely
commendable: had not leading philosophers, Plato and Aristotle amongst them,
‘held the trade of merchandise to be incompatible with the virtues (mercaturam
virtutibus inimicam esse statuunt)’, a proposition underwritten no less authoritatively
than by the law of God (1586: 359)? Such a sentiment, expressed by the son of a
craftsman who must also have engaged in trade, seems curious. But Bodin did have
more to say on the subject of urban life.
An ordered society was of the essence, but it was politically hazardous to have
practitioners of the same trades or crafts live side by side in the same urban districts.
Urban artisans were potentially disruptive: far better for ‘citizens of the same craft
to be separated in different quarters, so that they might not easily plot against the
community’.128 Laziness ought not to be tolerated: the idle should be employed on
‘public works (operibus publicis)’, though municipalities should provide appropriate
support and training for the children of the deserving poor (1586: 361). The
undeserving poor were detectable by means of population census, an exercise that
should extend beyond mere recording of numbers to assessment of wealth, thereby
facilitating equitable distribution of taxes—and, beyond that again, to ‘noting
everyone’s life and morals (la vie et les moeurs d’un chacun)’ (1583: 843, 845).
For contemporary society almost everywhere was ‘filled with vagabonds, idlers,
ruffians (remplies de vagabonds, de faineants, de rufiens)’ (1583: 846). Their presence
served to ‘corrupt good subjects’, exposed as the latter also were to a battery of

126 ‘on mésure à quel point le juriste angevin affaiblit la part de la jurisprudence dans le

fonctionnement de la civilité politique, combien il dégrade le rôle de l’État de justice au profit de

l’État administrative et législatif ’ (Barret-Kriegel 1985: 353). Cf. Aristotle, Politics, 1274b33–1275b21.
127 The provincial Estates of Languedoc, a body of the functioning of which he had some first-hand

experience, did gain approving mention: for example, 1583: 501–2.

128 ‘quod eiusdem conditionis ciues diuersis regionibus seiuncti, non ita facile contra Rempublicam

conspirare’ (1586: 363). It may be that Bodin drew here upon recollections of disturbances in Toulouse
during his time there.
 République 149

malign influences: the weakening of the power of the paterfamilias, the decline
of religious observance, the rise of atheism, the neglect of sumptuary laws, the
‘apprenticeship of all lewdness, lubricity, lechery, deceit, artifice, wickedness
(impudicité, lubricité, paillardise, ruse, finesse, meschanceté)’ propagated by ‘troupes
of players and mountebanks (comiques et jongleurs)’, that ‘most pernicious plague’
(1583: 847). All this could be countered to some degree by means of censors on the
Roman model who ‘strive to align the subjects with the true goal of honour and
virtue (s’efforçoyent-ils de conformer les subiects au vray but d’honneur et de vertu)’
(1583: 845).
But what, then, of education—the means, as Bodin himself had long since
argued, of inculcating in the young recognition of ‘the virtues’ together with ‘the
best laws and the best respublica’ (cf. Chapter III.3 (p. 43)? Surely the prominence
of educational provision in the political writings of his most favoured classical
philosophers was inescapable?129 Remarkably, in Bodin’s République the topic
received only a passing mention with a cursory reference to his ‘having dealt with
this point’ in his Oratio (1583: 847). Institutions ‘for education and discipline
(l’institution & discipline)’ (1583: 478) figured only incidentally in his chapter on
‘corporations and colleges’ (III.vii) which was devoted almost entirely to other
kinds of corporate bodies, and mainly to constitutional issues. And yet, ‘discipline’
would seem precisely what was needed to correct the ‘voluptés excessives et bestiales’
which he identified as one of the major threats to political stability, that prime
objective of the sovereign’s legislative authority (cf. Chapter VI.3 (p. 139)). Perhaps
political stability was a chimera. After all, states underwent, in the nature of things,
radical political alteration, metabolai politeiôn (μεταβολή πολιτείας) in Aristotle’s
phrase (Politics, 1301a1; cf. Chapter VI.2 (p. 137)). Its causes included, in addition
to the moral deficiencies of citizens, factors all too familiar to observers of contem-
porary France: failure of royal succession, the ambitions of the great, extremes of
wealth and poverty, unequal distribution of offices and honours, the vengefulness
of offended parties, the intrusion of foreign agencies or powers, changes of laws or
of religion (1583: 511). These causes stemmed from human behaviour, and among
them disputes over religion were especially disruptive.

VI .6 RELIGION, JUSTICE, AND HARMONY

Religion was ‘the principal foundation’ of political, governmental, and social

stability. It was intolerable that religious uniformity, once established in a répub-
lique, should be disturbed ‘by puerile and sophistical controversies (puerilibus ac
sophisticis concertationibus)’ (1576: 509; 1586: 482). How dreadful that in France,
on account of religion ‘for sixty years we have fought so resolutely that no nation in
the whole world had endured such burnings, such lacerations, such tortures, such

129 See Plato, Republic; Aristotle, Politics, 1337a10 sqq.; Cicero, De legibus, III, 29–30.
150 Jean Bodin

civil wars’!130 Plainly, once a form of religion had been received and adopted by the
generality, it was ‘intolerable (il ne faut pas souffrir)’ that that form should again be
challenged (1583: 652)—though it was advisable to seek to maintain it rather by
example than by use of force (1576: 509–10; 1586: 482–3). Above all, in a
kingdom riven by faction the ruler should ‘not show himself at all more sympa-
thetic to the one than to the other (ne se monstre point plus affecté à l’un qu’à l’autre),
for this has been the cause of ruining many princes’ (1583: 642–3; (1586: 474).
As for the citizens at large, tenure of a neutral position was on the whole advisable—
though in circumstances of civil war to be neutral was to be ‘in greater danger than
the prince’ (1583: 656–7; cf. 1586: 486–7). It was advice that would shortly return
to haunt the philosopher (cf. below, Chapter VIII.2 (p. 201)).
Even so, public order was one thing, private conscience another. In the Methodus
Bodin had affirmed that ‘true religion, that is the direct turning of the purified
mind towards God, can exist in the solitude of a single individual, without civil
science, without assembling’.131 In the République’s first edition he offered histor-
ical examples of rulers who had permitted individual subjects ‘to live in freedom of
conscience (de vivre en liberté de conscience)’, noting in particular the dictum of
Theodoric the Great: ‘we cannot command religion, for no unwilling person is
compelled to believe’.132 Three years later he added, somewhat cryptically, that
‘one must fly from the greater evil when the true religion cannot be established’ (Il
faut donc fuir le plus grand mal quand on ne peut establir la vraye religion)’.133 By the
mid-1580s, however, he had clarified his position and stated it much more plainly.
‘No one’, he asserted in the Latin version, ‘should be prohibited the private exercise
of his religious rites’.134 Maintenance of religious uniformity by common consent
was indeed a principal guarantor of domestic peace. Even so, some alternative creed
might be admissible:135
If however the same religion is approved by the opinion of neighbouring peoples and
many of the citizens, not only ought it not to be punished with penalties, but also there

130 ‘annos sexaginta tanta constantia propugnamus ut nulla gens toto terrarum orbe tot ustiones, tot

sectiones, tot supplicia, tot bella civilia pertulerit’ (1586: 520). Cf. 1583: 698, which lacks this
observation.
131 ‘religio vera ipsa, id est purgatae mentis in Deum recta conversio, sine civili scientia, sine coetu, in

unius hominis solicitudine esse potest’ (1566: 32; cf. Chapter IV.4 n. 114).
132 ‘Religionem imperare non possumus, quia nemo cogitur ut credat invitus’ (1576: 510; cf. 1583:

655; 1586: 485).

133 See 1576: 510–12; repeated in all essentials in (1583), pp. 655–7, and in (1579) with the

addition of the quoted sentence in the latter, p. 456.

134 ‘sacra tamen privata facere nemo prohibeatur’ (1586: 485). Cf. 1576: 510, and 1583: 655; the

sentiment is discernible in both of these, but expressed much less plainly. Its expression in 1583 is
strengthened through the inclusion of a contention that enforcement of religious uniformity induces
atheism, a proposition absent from 1576.
135 ‘Si tamen eadem religio populorum finitiniorum ac multorum civium opinione probatur, non modo

suppliciis vindicari non debet, sed etiam providendum, quoad eius fieri poterit, ut si publice citra seditionem
non liceat, sacra tamen privata facere nemo prohibeatur’ (1586: 485). Again, 1576: 510 and 1583: 655
both lack such a statement. The phrase ‘populorum finitiniorum’ may refer to the Netherlands provinces
where Bodin served in the Duke of Anjou’s entourage in 1582–3 and discussed related issues with
William of Orange (1586: 421). See Machielsen 2013: 158, n. 6.
 République 151
should be provision, in so far as this may be done without licensing open sedition, that
no one should be prohibited from practising his religious rites in private.
Such a declaration tallied with his position on the vexed question of free will—the
very question with which he opened his chapter on radical political change and
whether it might be foretold.136 Again, by the time of the Latin version his position
had become bolder. A previous half-sentence on ‘the will of men (la volonté des
hommes) which the Theologians confess to be free, at least in civil actions’ (1583: 542)
was now expanded into a severe rejection of Stoic fatalism and an affirmation
on how ‘the Hebrews and more learned Theologians agree that the will allowed
by the gift and favour of God to humankind is free and released from all
necessity’.137 But so ‘inconstant (muable)’ was this divinely conceded will of
man that no judgement could be offered on how to anticipate political changes
induced simply through human agency.
There were also causes of metabolai politeiôn that originated in nature. Upon
these Bodin did feel able to pronounce, at some length and to some degree. None
was more significant than the natural condition of humankind itself, circum-
stances which, as he noted, he had already discussed in his Methodus. He now
emphasized afresh,
perhaps the principal foundation of républiques is to accommodate the state to the
natural condition of the citizens and the edicts and ordinances to the nature of places,
persons and times.138
Here, once again, was the theory of ‘climate’. Bodin presented it with abundant
illustrations of how geographical circumstances—temperature, rainfall, the heights
of habitations above sea level—conditioned not only the physical characteristics,
but also the temperaments, behaviour, and capabilities of inhabitants in the several
regions of the earth. Characteristically drawing upon and frequently disagreeing
with multiple sources, mainly classical, he developed a discussion that was more
judgemental than coherent. Thus, ‘the peoples of the North’ were said to be given
to ‘barbarity and cruelty’; while ‘on the contrary [sic] the people of the South
(le peuple Meridional) is cruel and vengeful (vindicatif )’. In contrast to both, ‘the
peoples of the middle regions (les peuples moyens)’, being ‘more reasonable and less
strong (plus raisonnables & moins forts), have recourse to reason, to judges, to legal
process’ (1583: 679, 686). However, such authorities as Polybius and Galen had
erred in contending that ‘the nature of places necessarily determines peoples’ modes
of life (la nature des lieux emporte necessité aux moeurs des hommes)’ (1583: 666).

136 1583: 504: ‘[a république is established] with the consent of individuals who have voluntarily

subjected their entire freedom to others (du consentement des uns qui assubiectissent volontairement aux
autres leur pleine & entiere liberté )’.
137 ‘Et vero quae Dei munere & concessu tributa est hominum generi voluntas, Hebraeorum ac

Theologorum doctiorum consensione libera est, & omni necessitate soluta’ (1586: 392). Cf. 1583: 542,
unchanged from 1576: 429.
138 ‘peut estre le principal fondement des Republiques est d’accommoder l’estat au naturel des citoyens, &

les edicts & ordonnances á la nature des lieux, des personnes et du temps’ (1583: 666). Cf. 1586: 494,
where ‘principal foundation’ becomes ‘no greater secret (arcanis nullum maius)’.
152 Jean Bodin

Complexity governed what might influence human concerns. Account must be

taken not only of ‘what could be generated by the waters, by the air, by mountains,
by valleys, by the nature of the winds’, but also of ‘what by religions, by institu-
tions, by discipline, what, finally, by the state of républiques’.139 For ‘discipline can
alter the natural disposition of men’.140
Himself ascetically disposed, the appeal to discipline came naturally enough to
Bodin. But transformations of républiques sprang from causes beyond human
agency or natural conditions. The ultimate cause was the will of God, creator of
all things; and, while human will was ‘often variable (varia ac semperque sui
dissimilis)’, God’s will was ‘secret and concealed (occulta & abdita)’141 in relation
even to the cosmos at large, let alone to particular républiques. While Bodin
refrained from rehearsing afresh the arguments of the Methodus on creation and
time, he commented at length, and acerbically, on astrological theories which
others had advanced in relation to that cosmic event and its attendant circum-
stances. Even certain astrological observations of Gerard Mercator’s, a ‘quite
faultless (emendatissimus)’ writer on chronology, were ‘supported by no credible
proof (nulla probabili ratione secutus)’, being contrary to Arab opinion, to ‘the most
ancient customs and practices of all peoples’, and, above all, to ‘the most divine
testimonies of Scripture’ (1586: 406, 395). As for adherents to the opinions of the
distinguished mathematician Girolamo Cardano, they had been deceived ‘by a
most unreliable man (ab homine levissimo)’ (1586: 398). Nevertheless, possibilities
that the study of numbers might disclose not simply the hidden secrets of nature,
but even some indication of divine intentions were not to be discounted without
rigorous evaluation.142
The means to such evaluation lay readily to hand. Thanks not least to Ramus’s
clarion calls, a vogue for the study of mathematics with particular emphasis on the
teaching of arithmetic gathered pace in France from the mid-sixteenth century
onwards (Ramus 1567; Desan 1987: 23–4). Such a vogue, consonant as it was
with the prominence of Plato in Renaissance philosophy, was accompanied in
parts of Europe by what has been seen as a ‘prodigious’ growth of interest in
Pythagoras (Joost-Gaugier 2009: 58). Yet that latter interest seems largely to have
passed Bodin by. Although echoes of Pythagoras’s ideas figure in the République,
including arrangements of numbers in triangular form rudimentally reminiscent
of the tetrakys, Bodin’s interpretation of the symbol is not Pythagorean. In the
manner of Pythagoras and Plato alike, he proposes a number in which ‘the sum of
all the laws of God would appear to be contained’. But the number in question is

139 ‘quid ab aquis, quid ab aëre, quid a montibus, quid a vallibus, quid a ventorum natura, quid a

religionibus, quid ab institutis, quid a disciplina, quid denique ab ipso statu Reipublicae in animis cuiusque
ingenerari possit’ (1586: 523); cf. 1583: 697–8, where the formulation differs while the opinion
remains the same.
140 ‘la discipline peut changer le droit naturel des hommes’ (1583: 666).
141 1586: 393; cf. 1583: 542, where the ‘directive (conseil)’ of God is described as ‘inscrutable’, but

his ‘will (volonté )’ as sometimes revealed ‘par inspiration’.

142 For elucidation of Bodin’s numerology see Goyard-Fabre 1989: 260–6; Dockès-Lallement

2004: 137–46.
 République 153

not the ‘decad’: without reference to the ‘10’ held by Pythagoreans to contain,
alongside the tertrakys, ‘the secrets of cosmic harmony’, Bodin makes a case for the
significance of ‘7’ which had been ‘set apart by the Hebrews as holy (ab Hebraeis
sacer dicatur)’.143 The validity of his case he defends, in typical fashion, with a
blizzard of historical evidence: for the relevance of numbers to human affairs should
be ‘tested by long experience, not by trivial and vain conjectures (diuturna experientia
probati sint, non levibus & inanibus coniecturis)’ (1586: 417). Nevertheless, the focus
of his numerological inquiry is first and foremost Plato above all else. It was Plato who
had pronounced that the ‘destruction (occidium)’ of républiques would ensue if their
‘agreeable order (suavitas)’ were disturbed through deviation from the ‘nuptial num-
ber (numero nuptiali)’ and consequent loss of ‘harmony’ (1586: 410; cf. 1583: 561).
What, then, was this ‘nuptial number’? According to Bodin, no one hitherto had
explained it. He proceeded to apply himself to the task, grappling accordingly with
Plato’s Republic and ‘most obscure Timaeus (Timaeum obscurissimum)’, in a discus-
sion greatly enlarged in the Latin version of his text.144 The question was of key
importance: for ‘harmony’, as Plato and Aristotle agreed, was vital to the ‘force and
power of respublica’. They agreed as well that almighty God who ‘with marvellous
wisdom has integrated the nature of all things (qui rerum omnium naturam mirabilis
sapienta coagmentauit)’, had also so ‘enclosed (circumscripsisse)’ each state ‘by means
of numbers (numeris)’ that, however excellent its institutions, it would perish ‘after
completion of a certain number of years (quodam annorum decursu . . . intereant)’.
This number, for which from the first edition of his work Bodin remained
consistent in arguing on historical and numerological grounds, was sixty-three, a
time-span measured in terms of reigns and linked to seven as a ‘sacred number’ in
men’s destinies.145 Even so, he ‘can see no certain rules for judging the future
alterations and ends of respublica (Nulla . . . de conversionibus futuris interitumque
Rerumpublicarum iudicando praecepta certa videmus)’ (1586: 412). For to subscribe
to such rules would be to perpetrate the error of the Stoics who would bind the ‘free
will of man’ and the ‘supreme power of God’ by ‘fatal necessity’.146
Nevertheless, the question of ‘harmony’ and with it that of divine ‘wisdom’
demanded further examination. They were questions central to the interpretation
of ‘justice’, a theme that pervaded the entire work and now furnished its terminus ad
quem. ‘Justice’ was multivalent. In much-discussed passages Aristotle had described
how one form related to the ‘distribution’ of honours or money within a community;
another, to transactions or exchanges between individuals, a form later termed
‘commutative’. Each form had specific ethical connotations that could be expressed

143 1586: 418–19. On the Pythagorean ‘decad’, Joost-Gaugier 2009: 6. The French version of the

République contains reference to Iamblichus, Pythagoras’s biographer, but none to Pythagoras himself to
whom the Latin version refers explicitly only once, indirectly via Philo (see 1583: 477 n. 1; 1586: 413).
144 1583: 561–5, cf. 1586: 410–17. The basic source in Plato is Republic 546 c and d. For discussion

of the origin of the concept see Barton 1908.

145 ‘a kingdom or empire would come to an end after 63 monarchs (the multiple of 7 by 9) have

reigned there (un Royaume ou un Empire prendra fin après que soixante & trois Monarques (nombre
multiplié de sept par neuf) y auroit regné)’ (1576: 446; cf. 1583: 565–6; 1586: 417).
146 ‘qui causarum in natura seriem ad civitatum conversiones & occasus pertinere putant, hi mentem hominis

voluntate libera spoliatam, ac multo minus praepotentem Deum fati necessitate devinciunt’ (1586: 394).
154 Jean Bodin

mathematically: ‘arithmetical’ in the case of ‘commutative’ justice, ‘geometrical’ in

that of the ‘distributive’ variety. Each had political connotations too: Bodin briskly
linked ‘commutative’ justice to ‘popular’ or democratic modes of rule, ‘geometrical’
to ‘aristocratic’.147 But ‘no ancient Greek nor Latin’ [writer] (pas vns des anciens Grecs
ni Latins)’ had paid due attention to a third form of justice. Invoking afresh a critical
distinction which his predecessors likewise had allegedly overlooked, Bodin identified
‘harmonic’ justice, combining the arithmetical and the geometrical, as the form
most suitable to the ‘government’ of ‘the best state’. It was admissible that ‘govern-
ment’ be ‘mixed’ in such a way, unlike the ‘state’ with its essential unity rooted in the
indivisibility of its key constituent, sovereignty. The state’s ‘best’ form was ‘a royal
monarchy’ which he had long since defined as rulership ‘obedient to the laws of
nature’, leaving to every subject his ‘natural liberty and the property of his goods
(laissant la liberté naturelle & la proprieté des biens à chacun)’. A royal differed
fundamentally from ‘tyrannical’ monarchy. It also differed in fundamental respects
from ‘seigneurial monarchy’ where the ruler was ‘lord of the persons and the goods’ of
his subjects, though if such lordship was the outcome of ‘just war (bonne & iuste
guerre)’ it too had legal warranty by the ius gentium.148 Bodin had devoted the second
book of his work to these key differentiations between forms of state. In his
concluding chapter, he could proceed to describe how a mode of ‘government’
informed by ‘harmonic justice’ served to realize the virtues of ‘royal monarchy’ in
relation to the république at large.
Venturing with characteristic temerity upon controversial ground, he described
how in such a monarchy the principle of ‘harmony’ applied, or ought to apply, to
the distribution of offices, to the administration of justice, and to the overall
structure of society.149 A ‘wise king’ who ‘governs his realm harmoniously’ would
appoint to offices with ‘virtues’ or capabilities in mind, ‘delicately intermingling
nobles and commoners, rich and poor’, though ‘always with such discretion that
the nobles have some advantage over the commoners (quelque avantage sur les
roturiers)’. It followed that
the gentleman as excellent in arms or in laws as the commoner should be preferred to
offices of judicature, or of war: and that the rich, equal in other respects to the poor,
should also be preferred to offices which have more honour than profit, and that the
poor take offices which have more profit than honour.150
For the administration of justice, Bodin invoked afresh concepts already examined
in his Distributio: ‘law, equity, legis actio’ and iudicis officio, now termed ‘officio

147 1583: 1013–15; cf. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 1130a14–1132b20.

148 1583: 274, 279; cf. Malcolm 2013: 206.
149 The thesis was to earn severe critical evaluation in Johannes Kepler’s Harmonice mundi (1619),

the great mathematician observing that ‘Bodin did not sufficiently fortify himself with mathematical
learning’ for such a discourse; if so fortified he might have learnt ‘how to be a better political
philosopher’ (Kepler 1997: 256, 275).
150 ‘le gentilhomme aussi excellent en armes ou en loix comme le roturier soit preferé aux estats de

iudicature, ou de la guerre: & que le riche egal en autre chose au pauure soit aussi preferé aux estats qui ont
plus d’honneur que de profit, & que le pauure emporte les offices qui ont plus de proffit que d’honneur’
(1576: 755; 1583: 1054).
 République 155

magistratus’ (1586: 751; cf. Chapter IV.2 (p. 59). Balance, or harmony, was of the
essence. Laws, plainly, were necessary, for justice dispensed ‘without laws’ and simply
‘by the arbitrary decision’ of those governing would ‘ruin’ républiques. Despite this,
‘the law without equity is a body without a soul (la loy sans l’equité est un corps sans
ame’ (1583: 1021, 1023). So, the magistrate, key figure in judicature as in govern-
ment at large, must ground his conduct upon a combination of legal expertise and
attentiveness to equity, equated with ‘conscience’. Indeed, considerations of equity
seemed well-nigh paramount. In a proposition that tallied with his opinion of
there being too many office-holders and too much government (above, Chapter VI.5
(p. 146)), Bodin declared there were too many laws, certainly in France; and ‘if a
magistrate were upright and prudent’ he could ‘maintain harmony in the state and
amongst the citizens with extremely few laws’.151 As for citizens and governors taken
together, they should be ordered in three estates. Members of all three should
participate in government ‘according to their qualities and merits’. Thereby would
be formed ‘a pleasant harmony (plaisante harmonie) of all the subjects amongst
themselves, and all together with the sovereign prince’ who represented ‘unity’, the
source of all ‘strength and power’ (1583: 1057).
Nothing if not eclectic, Bodin drew upon an array of sources for his model of
‘harmonic’ justice and a harmonious state. He began his chapter by noting two
Hebrew terms: ‘Credata’ which signified lawful distribution of ‘penalties, rewards
and property’; and ‘Tsedaca’ [= Tzedakah] ‘by which we are justified’.152 These were
‘as our guides for entering this most sacred and august temple of justice (ducibus in
hoc religiosissimum & augustissimum iustitiae templum ingrediendum nobis)’.153 The
République was thus designed to culminate on a high religious note. But despite
those initial Hebraisms, the religion in question is not easily identified. While
Bodin cites scholars from various religious traditions by name throughout his
treatise, such references are relatively infrequent in the work as a whole, and sparse
in its concluding chapter.154 Again, in the course of the work he repeatedly invokes
the expression ‘pure mind (pura mens)’ which figured conspicuously in his earlier
writings (cf. Chapter IV.4 (n. 154)). Thus, what ‘would preserve the pure mind
from impiety’ is illustrated from a biblical source of uncertain status; while Elhari
Ibim Esed, of Baghdad, is credited with the ‘doctrine that all religions which

151 ‘si magistratus ea fuerit integritate ac prudentia . . . paucissimis legibus civitatis statum ac civium

concordiam sine magna litium multitudine tueri poterit’ (1586: 756; cf. 1583: 1027).
152 1583: 1014. The latter term refers particularly to the performance of charitable acts, as specified

by Maimonides in his compilation of Hebrew religious law (the Mishneh Torah).

153 1586: 746. How well Bodin knew the Hebrew language is uncertain. In the ‘Preamble’ to his

Methodus he acknowledges assistance—or the prospect of assistance—from two professors of Hebrew,

Cinqarbres and Mercier (1566: sig. * iijvo). While the nature of that assistance is unclear, Hebrew
terms seem to figure in his text almost as cabbalistic signs, culled from ‘the secret language’ of the
Hebrews. Cf. Guttmann 1905: pt. 1, pp. 328–9; cf. also Bouwsma 1957: 105.
154 Cf., Chapter VI.2 (p. 125, sqq.). Citations of Islamic writers include Elhari Ibim Esed (1586:

484). The four marginal references in République VI.vi to Aquinas and Maimonides all relate to
punishments for serious misconduct in office, or crimes (1583: 1037 n. 7, 1039 n. 2, 1041 n. 2,
1044 n. 4).
156 Jean Bodin

proceed from the pure mind would be pleasing to the immortal gods’.155 The
complexity is embedded in Bodin’s boldest statement of his position:
And if it is the case that the true purifying of the mind is performed by the divine light
and by means of contemplation on the most beautiful subject; it may be believed that
the ones most likely to attain it are those with wings which carry the soul to heaven:
which we see happen to persons of a melancholy humour, of sober disposition, and
given to contemplation, which is called by the Hebrews and the Academics a precious
death, because it takes the soul out of the earthly body to spiritual affairs.156
The statement encapsulates the mystical theology which Bodin introduces at the
beginning of the République, to which he alludes repeatedly along the way, and at
which he arrives in its climactic chapter.
It has been argued that in matters of religion Bodin was essentially a ‘Judaizer’,
and that his ‘religious vision stemmed . . . from the Jewish tradition represented by
the works of Philo and Maimonides’ (Rose 1980a: 4). In due course he did indeed
pronounce that in the ‘religion of the Jews’ lay the origin of all other religions, bar
one.157 And certainly, he drew upon both Philo and Maimonides in the Methodus
and in the République, citing the former explicitly in the Methodus on matters of
chronology and as a historical source, and in the Démonomanie explicitly crediting
the Alexandrian with prompting his own ‘sacrifice’ of his ‘purified’ soul to God.158
But on specifically religious matters, indebtedness on his part to Judaism through
the Alexandrian philosopher is by no means as demonstrable as has been
claimed.159 In any case, what Philo ‘represents’ is not so much a ‘Jewish tradition’

155 1586: 484–5. Neither observation figures in 1583: 654–5. The biblical reference in 1586 is

supported from Baruch ben Neriah, a prophet of high standing in the Eastern but not in the Western
church, whose book is included in the Vulgate, but not in the Hebrew Bible. For Elhari Ibim Esed see
Chauviré 1914b: 12.
156 ‘Et s’il est ainsi que la vraye purgation de l’ame se fait par le rayon divin, & par la force de la

contemplation au subiect le plus beau, il est croyable que ceux-là y parviendront plutost qui auront les aisles
qui ravissent l’ame au ciel: ce que nous voyons advenir aux personnes d’humeur melancholique, qui ont
l’esprit posé, & addonné à contemplation: qui est appellee des Hebrieux & Academiques Mort precieuse, par
ce qu’elle tire l’ame hors du corps terrestre aux choses spirituelles’ (1583: 688; cf. 1586: 510).
157 The one exception is devil worship: ‘Iudaeorum religio, a qua caeterae praeter δίαβολο λατρείαν

origines duxisse videntur’ (1586: 344). The pronouncement does not occur in earlier versions: cf., for
example, 1583: 497. The question is reconsidered in the Coda and Conclusion to the present volume.
158 Cf. Chapter IV.4 (p. 76); Démonomanie 1580: fo. 11. See Rose 1980a: 171.
159 For what follows in this note and for the summary assessment of Philo I am deeply indebted to

the generous advice of my colleague Professor Lester Grabbe who scrutinized Rose’s use of Philo at my
request, but has, of course, no responsibility for the use I have made of his advice. At various key
junctures Rose appears to have strained the evidence for his interpretation. Three examples must
suffice. First, in support of the assertion (Rose 1980a: 87) that ‘moral conscience’ is ‘a concept first
defined by Philo’ Rose refers to the latter’s ‘De Virtutibus, 178 ff.’; but the main subject of that passage
(in Philo, Works VIII: 272–3) is ‘repentance (μετάνοια)’, and what term of Philo’s is meant to be
translated by ‘moral conscience’ is quite unclear. Secondly, Rose suggests by implication (Rose 1980a:
88) that the Song of Songs furnished for Philo and Bodin alike ‘one of the major allegories for [the]
natural history of the soul’; but there is no evidence that Philo knew the Song of Songs, no reference to
which figures in authoritative lists of biblical passages in his work. Thirdly, and most importantly, Rose
describes (1980a: 162) Bodin’s much-repeated concept of ‘the turning of a purified soul towards God’
as a ‘Philonic notion’. But while ‘purified soul’ or ‘purification of the soul’ is found in some passages
of Philo’s, the expressions do not stand out: see, for instance, ‘On flight and finding’ 80 (Philo, Works
 République 157

tout court as the Hellenistic Judaism of first-century Alexandria. In terms of

language, Philo wrote in Greek and seems to have known little or no Hebrew; in
terms of ethics, while he subscribed to the requirements of the Jewish law, his was a
Platonic system informed by concepts which likewise furnished key components of
the thought of later admirers of his, such as the Christians Origen and Clement. In
Bodin’s case, the major themes of Plato’s Republic resonate throughout his master-
work: justice as the République’s terminus ad quem, unity as a respublica’s vital
cohering factor and its greatest good (Plato, Republic 462b)—perhaps above all, the
harmonious affinity between the threefold ordering or social classification of the
ideal community and the tripartite structure of the soul.160 A reaffirmation of
precisely such an affinity furnishes the culmination of Bodin’s treatise. In a passage
retained in effect in successive versions of his text, he describes how the ‘three
estates’ and their respective functions form with the ‘sovereign prince’ a ‘pleasant
harmony’ which is replicated in the human soul. The ‘intellect’ in a royal monarchy
represents ‘unity being indivisible, pure and simple’. Beneath intellect and separate
from it comes ‘the rational soul’; then the ‘vengeful appetite’ typified by ‘the
gendarmerie’ in the commonwealth at large; and thirdly, ‘carnal desires’ exempli-
fied in the peasantry and others who supply the commonwealth’s material needs.161
Each has its distinctive ‘moral virtue’, the soul’s constituents below the intellect
being ‘guided’, respectively, by ‘prudence’, ‘magnanimity’, and ‘temperance’. But
the intellect, characterized by purity, is ‘uplifted by divine contemplations’. Again,
the Platonic resonance is unmistakable.162
At the very outset of the République, in a passage berating Aristotle for deviating
from ‘the arguments of his master Plato’, Bodin declares that ‘the highest good’
in human life’ consists in ‘contemplation which the Academics call the joyful and
the Hebrews the precious death: because it conducts the mind, freed and purified
from the earthly fall and the bonds of the body, into heaven’.163 Again, later in the
work, he declares, ‘the true purifying of the soul is done by divine illumination,
and through the power of contemplation’.164 The presence of Platonic as well as

V: 52–3); ‘On the special laws’ I. 257–8 (Works VII: 248–9); ‘That the worst is accustomed to attack
the better’ 21 (Works II: 216–17); ‘On dreams’ II.74 (Works V: 476–7). Certainly, there seems no
attempt on Philo’s part to define true religion in these terms.
160 Plato Republic 415a, 439c–442c, 443d–e.
161 ‘Car l’intellect tient lieu d’unité estant indivisible, pur et simple: puis l’ame raisonnable, que tous les

anciens ont separé de puissance d’avec l’intellect: la troisieme est l’appetit de vindicte, qui gist au coeur,
comme les gendarmes: la quatrieme est la cupidité bestiale, qui gist au foye, & autres intestines nourissans tous
le corps humain, comme les laboureurs’ (1576: 756–7). The statement reappears unaltered in 1583:
1057; 1586: 776, revises it in detail. While Bodin’s model of government suggests that ‘the rational
soul’ and the related ‘virtue’ of ‘prudence’ should have been associated with the magistracy, he had
already, a few sentences earlier, identified the first estate with the clergy.
162 For further comment on Bodin’s religious stance see the Conclusion.
163 ‘hominum vitam utraque egere, summum tamen extremumque bonum in contemplatione versari,

quam Academici iucundam, Hebraei pretiosam mortem appellant: propterea quod mentem labe terrestri &
corporeis vinculis solutam ac purgatam in caelum perducit’ (1586: 7; cf. 1583: 8–9). Bodin notes as his
source for the Hebrew ‘precious death’ ‘Psalm 116’: recte Psalm 115, v.6 in the Vulgate, the verse
adopted as a response in Pope Gregory XIII’s Martyrologium Romanum (1583).
164 ‘la vraye purgation de l’ame se fait par le rayon divin, & par la force de la contemplation’ (1583:

688).
158 Jean Bodin

Neoplatonic ‘arguments’ in these propositions seems undeniable. They are nowhere

more plainly expressed than by Socrates in approaching his own death, as reported
in the Phaedo, a source which Bodin intermittently acknowledges.165 Once freed
from ‘the foolishness of the body’, says Socrates, ‘we shall be pure and hold converse
with the pure, and know of ourselves the clear light everywhere, which is no other
than the light of truth’; and ‘truth’, itself, in common with ‘self-restraint and justice
and courage and wisdom’ is ‘a kind of purification’ (Phaedo 67a–c). Emphasizing
‘purification’ in conjunction with ‘contemplation’ as a recurrent theme, Bodin does
not link it explicitly in the République with the idea of ‘conversion’ as expressed
repeatedly in the Methodus. But the idea of ‘purification’ is clearly associated with the
‘Academics’, in company with a fulsome acknowledgement of Porphyry, ‘the greatest
of all the philosophers of his age.166 It was Porphyry who had written of ‘the internal
conversion [of the soul] towards intellect’, and of ‘justice’ as ‘the fulfilling [by each of
the parts of the soul] of the role proper to it in following upon intellect’. And it was
Plotinus, as edited by Porphyry, who had described how the soul, ‘purified’ from the
body, ‘is ruled by reason and intellect, without opposition—and this is justice’.167
These were themes, theological, metaphysical, and moral philosophical, that would
resonate still more powerfully in Bodin’s later writings.

165 The acknowledgement appears in 1576: 6, and in 1583: 9, but not at the corresponding

juncture in 1586: 7.
166 ‘Porphyrius omnium suae aetatis philosophorum maximus’ (1586: 405). The bouquet to Porphyry

does not occur in the corresponding passage in 1583: 555, nor in 1576: 438.
167 Porphyry, Sentences, }32, in Dillon and Gerson 2004: 184; Plotinus, Enneads, I.2, 3; cf. Aubin

1963: 169.
 VII
Estates and Demons

VII.1 ACADÉMIE AND KING

Moral philosophy was a field of especial interest to Henri III, a gifted orator with
intellectual enthusiasms remarkably sustained in so troubled a reign.1 It furnished
the subjects of the opening lectures of the ‘Académie du Palais’, the post-prandial
gathering of invited members, apparently initiated by Pibrac, which from January
1576 met, initially twice weekly, in the King’s presence and in the intimacy of his
private chamber at the Louvre to hear and to discuss presentations on topics in that
field. Such a gathering exemplified the predilection for academies characteristic of
intellectual circles in Renaissance Europe. In Paris, its immediate predecessor was
the ‘Académie de Poésie et de Musique’ established in 1570 under royal licence by
the poet and member of the Pléiade, Jean Antoine de Baïf (Yates 1947/88: 19–35).
Three years earlier Ramus, in dedicating his Prooemium mathematicum to Catherine
de’ Medici, had commended her Florentine ancestors for the sponsorship they
had given ‘to academies of all liberal arts (ad academias omnium liberalium atrium)’,
and had made particular reference to Marsiglio Ficino whose Platonic Academy
had proved so widely inspirational (Ramus 1567: sigs **vo, **ijvo). It was an
acknowledgement which Bodin himself cheerfully echoed: ‘Marsilius, in my opin-
ion at least, the most sagacious of the Academics (Marsilius Academicorum omnium,
quantumquidem opinor, acutissimus’ (1586: 412).
The early members of Henri III’s Academy were drawn from a circle of literati
and royal intimates. In addition to Pibrac, they included the poets Pierre de
Ronsard, Amadys Jamyn (at one time Ronsard’s secretary), and Philippe Desportes,
regarded at the time, and in common with Ronsard, as an arbiter of taste in
literature. They included also the King’s Latin tutor, Claude Doron, and his
physician, Marc Miron, as well as cultivated and influential courtiers such as
Louis de Gonzague, Duke of Nevers, and his wife, Henriette de Clèves (Sealy
1981: 12–37). The circle was not large, and the Académie’s early purpose seems to
have been rather to complete the King’s education along conventional lines than to
stimulate him with fresh ideas. In due course, however, the membership expanded
and the pattern of activities altered. The changes coincided closely in time with
Henri’s departure from Paris early in November 1576 for Blois where deputies of
the estates-general had been summoned to assemble. Once there, he continued to

1 Neubert 1962; Boucher 2007: 45–50; La Charité 2008.

160 Jean Bodin

hear lectures on moral philosophical topics derived from an Aristotelian prospectus,

but these were now delivered in the company of a greater variety of invited persons
who attended the King as he dined. Among them was Jean Bodin, required by his
own account to act as a kind of rapporteur:
Bodin was commonly at the King’s dinner . . . and the King got him to speak to
the subjects and addresses that were presented, which he had always done since
25 November when the King had sent for him, and, after having favoured him in
the presence of several gentlemen, ordered him to be present at his dinner, for three
days previously he had revived his grandfather’s custom and heard all kinds of serious
and virtuous matters discussed at his table.2
It seems likely that Bodin owed his invitation at least partly to his patron Pibrac, the
Académie’s leading light, as well as to the reputation for learning which publication
of his République earlier in the year would have gained him.3
However, Bodin was present at Blois in his capacity as Third Estate deputy for
the bailliage of Vermandois, a constituency of the gouvernement of the Île de France.
The King had convened the assembly in fulfilment of his pledge in the Edict of
Beaulieu. Implicit in that pledge was a commitment to implement the provisions of
the edict itself. But the commitment was disingenuous. In effect, it had been
extracted from the financially crippled monarch of an ominously disordered
realm riven internally by contending factions and under active threat of foreign
intervention. In such circumstances, it is scarcely surprising to see Henri playing a
double or even a triple game. In letters to different individuals, noble and bour-
geois, he professed himself intent, here, upon delivering the Beaulieu agreement
with its unprecedented concessions to the Huguenots; there, upon upholding
France’s ancient and uniform adherence to Catholicism; there again, upon treating
equally with all his subjects regardless of religious considerations; and there, once
more, upon proceeding above all else by consultative and peaceful means. To Henri
de Bourbon, Prince of Condé and the Huguenots’ ‘chef gouverneur général’, he
wrote of his intention to adhere strictly to the terms of his ‘edict of pacification’. To
Paris’s prévôt des marchands, a city where devotion to Catholicism was dominant
and Henri, Duke of Guise, a popular hero, he announced his purpose ‘to maintain
our estate and to keep faith with (acquitter) the religion of the kings our predeces-
sors and our own’. To his lieutenant in Maine, Nicolas d’Angennes de Rambouillet,
he described how ‘I desire nothing so much as to preserve in peace and union all my
subjects of the one and of the other religion’ without allowing ‘anything injurious
(prejudiciable) to be done’ on either side. To François de Mandelot, gouverneur of
the Lyonnais, he declared himself ‘desirous of nothing so much as to satisfy’ his

2 ‘ledit Bodin estoit ordinairement au disner du Roy . . . & que le Roy le faisoit parler des propos & discours

qui estoyent mis sus, comme il avoit tousiours fait des le xxv Novembre, que le Roy l’envoya querir, & apres
l’avoir gratifié en presence de plusieurs Gentils-hommes, luy commanda d’assister a son disner, parce qu’il avoit
fait trois iours au paravant confirmer la coustume de son ayeul & ouyr discourir à sa table de tous propos graves
& honnestes’ (Recueil 1577: 59 [recte 67]).
3 It may be significant that Henri III appears to have begun to use the terms ‘sovereign’ and

‘sovereignty’ in his own discourse at precisely this time (Tenenti 1987: 286–7).
 Estates and Demons 161

subjects’ wishes that he ‘hear their complaints and grievances in full assembly of the
estates-general’ so that ‘by their advice and counsel I may re-establish my kingdom’
and ‘provide for the security and conservation’ of their lives and families.4 Such a set
of scarcely compatible desires on the monarch’s part did not bode well for the
deliberations at Blois.
Yet King Henri’s tergiversations sprang as much from his position’s complexity
as from irresolution on his own part. During the months between the ratifying of
the Beaulieu edict and the deputies’ arrivals in Blois, the league launched at
Peronne ‘spread like clover in grass’ (Greengrass 2007a: 73). Meanwhile the
Huguenot confederacy persisted in Languedoc, and in Guyenne the gouverneur,
Henri of Navarre, aligned himself publicly with the movement; and rumours
abounded that the newly elevated Duke of Anjou was likely to ally himself, and
by extension France, with the rebels against the rule of Spain’s ‘Most Catholic King’
in the Netherlands (Holt 1986: 72–4). In Paris and elsewhere the citizenry
expressed through riotous demonstrations their opposition to the provisions of
the Beaulieu edict. Yet King Henri had formally reiterated to no less a body than
the Paris Parlement his commitment to implement those same provisions. In these
circumstances the efforts that were made to ensure orderly elections of deputies to
the estates-general and orderly compiling of the cahiers des doléances they would
bring with them seem remarkable. Of course, such efforts were accompanied by
vigorous lobbying and some tampering with process on the part of sectional
interests. In the event, the Protestant interest was barely represented among the
deputies who arrived at Blois. Nevertheless, serious proposals, emanating variously
from deputies of all three orders, were mooted for reforms in most of the key areas
of government, judicial, financial, and ecclesiastical too.
The principal targets of such proposals were government officials, their numbers,
their mode of appointment, and their behaviour once appointed. Monitoring
procedures should be put in place to oversee the conduct of law officers. Likewise,
the operations of tax farmers should be closely scrutinized. The practice of office-
selling should be curtailed. In the case of the judiciary it should be abandoned
altogether. Elections of senior clergy should be reinstated, as distinct from leaving
their nomination in the monarch’s hands. As for reform in general, it was argued
against the dictates of Gallicanism and despite a decade’s resistance that the decrees
of the Council of Trent should be published in France, with their far-reaching
provisions for clerical discipline in conjunction with improvement of liturgical and
spiritual life. Above all, it was proposed that the estates-general should meet
quinquennially, and that its recommendations, if unanimous, and subject to
royal endorsement, should become law without further consideration by the
sovereign courts.5 However, constructive unanimity was precisely what the Estates
at Bois failed to achieve, either severally or collectively. There were too many
in-built divisions, too many irreconcilable interests, sectional and ideological.

4 François ed. 1972: III. 15, 34, 63, 45.

5 Greengrass 2007a: especially 74–122, provides a thoroughly documented account of the
background to and proceedings at the assembly. See also Ulph 1947; Crahay 1983; Holt 1987.
162 Jean Bodin

The concept of ‘union’, repeatedly invoked in edicts of pacification and recurrently

paraded in the course of the debates at Blois, seems in the latter to have been
deployed in support of religious unification by means of force (Crahay 1983: 97).
Leading councillors of the king’s, with Nevers most assertive amongst them, were
intent upon the cause of Catholicity with no compunction about promoting it
through war. Judicial reform as advocated by members of the Second Estate seemed
informed by an urge to revive seigneurial justice, and the case against venality of
offices by an anxiety to exclude foreigners. The latter case chimed with objections
from one quarter or another to every instrument for fiscal remedy which the King
and his advisers sought agreement to utilize. Not surprisingly, such objections were
adamant on the part of Third Estate deputies to proposals for taxation, the burden
of which would fall squarely upon their constituents’ shoulders.
A number of the issues that informed doléances aired by the deputies at Blois had
figured in Bodin’s recently published République, among them the excessive num-
bers of government officials, the need to monitor law officers’ conduct, the abuse of
office-selling.6 Others had not. While questions relating to the conflicting dictates
of Gallicanism and the Tridentine decrees were of great concern to the First Estate,
such matters had interested Bodin only in so far as they impinged upon the
sovereignty of the secular ruler.7 Any suggestion that the estates could be in any
sense partners of the monarch in legislative power ran clean counter to his
declared position (1576: 227). All in all, the grounds are scant for supposing
the République to have set an agenda for the deputies at Blois; rather, Bodin’s
master-work offered in numerous respects an analytical commentary from histor-
ical, jurisprudential, and philosophical perspectives upon some of the matters that
were of serious concern to his fellow citizens. Even so, one of the main sources for
what transpired at the assembly is the journal of the Third Estate’s sessions which
he himself kept.8

VI I . 2 THE BLOIS ESTATES, 1576, AND THE AFTERMATH

This journal is the Recueil de tout ce qui s’est negotié en la compagnie des trois Estats,
published anonymously in French and in Latin translation in 1577.9 There can be
little doubt that Bodin was responsible for the Recueil’s publication. Its title is in
some respects misleading. Far from covering all the exchanges that took place in the

6 See Chapter VI.5 (pp. 145–6).

7 For instance, his repeated insistence that the French king and his kingdom were in no way subject
to papal authority (1576: 175, 183). Not until the Latin version of his text did he offer his sole explicit
reference to a Tridentine decree which, he observed, would have been adopted ‘if the French had not
repudiated that council (nisi concilium illud Gallia [sic] repudiasset)’ (1586: 531–2).
8 For the other main sources see Greengrass 1994: 75–7, and 2007a: 83–4; also Holt 1987. The

1576 assembly has attracted considerable historiographical attention. For contributions with particular
reference to Bodin see Crahay 1983; Marongiu 1981 and 1985; and Ulph 1947.
9 The latter under the title Commentarius de iis omnibus quae in tertii Ordinis conventu acti sunt

generali trium Ordinuum Concilio Blesis, with fictional publication details.

 Estates and Demons 163

Third Estate’s sessions, it omits important matters whilst including information on

matters other than ones considered there. Why Bodin chose to publish it is hard
to explain. The political and career implications of such an action were surely
unfavourable. A partial—albeit insufficient—explanation may be an intention on
his part to show his constituents especially in Laon where he was now personally
based that his interventions had tallied with their instructions and to impress them
with the prominence of his role. Very likely that role was exaggerated in the telling.
Nevertheless, it was far from insignificant.
Differences between Bodin and many of his colleagues surfaced early in the
proceedings, following the election of a president and a secretary of the Third
Estate. That the deputies for Paris should take precedence seemed generally agreed,
and Bodin records, somewhat cryptically, that
pour President fut esleu le Prevost des marchands, President des comptes, deputé avec un
Eschevin, & Versoris advocat pour la ville de Paris, tous trois ne faisoyent qu’ une voix.10
The official record (procès-verbal), kept by the newly elected secretary, Pierre
Boulanger of Rennes in Brittany, notes only the election of ‘Nicolas Luillier, Prévôt
des Marchands de Paris’ as president, ‘pour ses fidélité et experience [sic]’,11 with no
mention of the other parties whom Bodin’s account associates with him. Luillier’s
‘expérience’ as a member of a leading Paris family was beyond dispute, though the
object of his ‘fidélité’ in the circumstances of the time might be questionable
(cf. Chapter IV.2 (pp. 56–7). Elsewhere Boulanger’s record identifies the Paris
deputies by name: the ‘échevin (alderman)’ as the lawyer ‘M[aîtr]e Augustin le
Prevost’, and the ‘Président des Comptes’ as the ‘Président de Saint-Mesmin’
([Boulanger] 1789: 149, 252). The latter does not appear in that record’s initial
registering of deputies by constituency ([Boulanger] 1789: 149), and it would
appear Saint-Mesmin arrived at Blois after the initial registration. Bodin’s comment
seems to indicate concern over precisely how many deputies were authorized to
speak for Paris with all that their status implied, not least for his own role. That
concern was provoked also by the presence of the last-named Paris deputy, Pierre de
Versoris. An avocat in the Parlement, Versoris was chief counsel to the Duke of
Guise (Carroll 2009: 231), and sprang at once to prominence in the Third Estate’s
deliberations (for example, [Boulanger] 1789: 187).
Bodin claimed that as deputy for Vermandois he himself should be regarded as next
in order of precedence and should speak accordingly (‘devoit avoir séance après ceux de
Paris’) (1577: 6). The claim, contested by the Burgundian deputies, had immediate
relevance to the opening debate on a substantial as distinct from procedural issue, and
critical to the success of the entire assembly. For the Paris deputies, led by Versoris,
introduced their cahier by proposing that the King be requested ‘to unite all his
subjects in one Catholic [and] Roman Religion . . . regardless of all edicts (nonobstant

10 Recueil . . . du tiers Estat (s.l., 1577), p. 5. All references are to this edition, cited as 1577, from

which other editions show only slight variations (see Crahay et al. 1992: 203–11).
11 [Boulanger] 1789: 182.
164 Jean Bodin

tous edicts)’. Bodin promptly intervened and ‘read aloud (leut tout haut)’ from the
Vermandois cahier with a counter-proposal:
that it should please the King to maintain his subjects in good peace and within two
years to hold a general and national Council to settle the matter of Religion.12
The intervention was venturesome, given the balance—or, rather, the imbalance—
of religious opinion at the assembly. Undeterred, Bodin presented his proposal at
length, and was interrupted by Versoris. The wrangle evidently became heated and
continued after dinner with others intervening, until one of Bodin’s fellow-deputies
from the Île de France13 offered the emollient suggestion that the phrase ‘by gentle
and godly means (par douces & sainctes voyes)’ be added to the Versoris formulation.
Eventually Bodin agreed to reserve the question of religion until the end of the
Third Estate’s business.14
Pace that agreement, the Île de France deputies resumed discussion of the religious
question twelve days later, in the light of a report that the Second Estate had declared
in favour of enforcing Catholic uniformity. This, said Versoris, was in line with the
King’s wishes. In Bodin’s expressed opinion it meant war. Vouching to warranty his
constituents’ instructions, he presented the case for the ‘edict of pacification’. None
of the other Third Estate deputies supported him. They did, nevertheless, agree to the
addition of the Mantes deputy’s emollient phrase to the Paris proposal, whereupon
Bodin fell silent (1577: 16). Ten days later the Third Estate agreed by majority vote
to include that phrase in a resolution in favour of religious uniformity, but not to a
further amendment that this be pursued ‘without war (sans guerre)’ (1577: 20–1). On
that same day the King, according to Nevers, advised his council that he ‘would
rather die’ than accommodate two religions in his realm contrary to his conscience
and his coronation oath (Nevers 1789: 28), explaining three days later that he had
issued the edict of pacification ‘solely to recover his brother’ Alençon/Anjou and to
rid his kingdom of foreign troops.15 Reliably reported or not, such assertions leaked
readily into the deputies’ fora. They served to validate the position of Versoris who,
however, was urged afresh to include in his presentation to King and council as
spokesman for the Third Estate the recommendation that the realm’s religious
reunification be indeed prosecuted, but ‘by gentle means and without war’ (1577:
44). It seems that he failed to do so. The deputy for Limoges16 subsequently upbraided
him for this, and for his pains was threatened by President Luillier with forcible
ejection from the assembly. By Bodin’s account this was shouted down amid calls for
Luillier himself to be removed from the presidency. The clamour proved abortive and

12 ‘qu’il pleust au Roy maintenir ses suiets en bonne paix, & dedans deux ans tenir vn Concile general ou

national, pour regler le fait de la Religion’ (1577: 9).

13 One of the three deputies from Mantes: Jean Phiseau, lieutenant particulier in the présidial; Jacques

Vion, lieutenant ordinaire; Eustache Piges, bourgeois ([Boulanger] 1789: 171).

14 No trace of these exchanges appears in the corresponding section of the official record, the

compiler of which seems to have been preoccupied by matters of precedence and procedure.
15 ‘seulement pour ravoir son frere et chasser les Reistres et forces estrangeres hors de son Royaume’ (Nevers

1789: 36).
16 Maître Paris Debuat, doctor of medicine ([Boulanger] 1789: 157).
 Estates and Demons 165

for the time being ‘the article on religion remained uncorrected’ (1577: 58–62).
Nevertheless, the Third Estate arrived finally at a majority resolution: that, as Versoris
had been instructed, the King be urged ‘to re-unite his subjects in the Catholic,
Apostolic and Roman religion by all godly and legitimate means, and without war’.17
Why after its earlier resistance did the Third Estate at last agree to that
concluding phrase? The shift surely owed something to Bodinian advocacy.
While others had proposed and defended the formulation eventually adopted, it
was he who had led the challenge to Versoris. As for his own stance, the affinity is
intriguing between his proposal on the religious issue in the opening exchanges and
the advice of no less a figure than the King of Navarre delivered to the assembly at a
later stage. At various junctures, the Estates sent emissaries to three key players who,
for good reason, were not present at Blois: Condé, Montmorency-Damville, and
Henri of Navarre. Bodin reported that he himself was invited by the Bishop of
Autun, one of the emissaries to Condé, to join the mission, and had declined on the
grounds that the weather was bad, that he could not afford the expense, and that his
presence would be suspect as he was so associated with the cause of peace.18 The
mission to Navarre was supplemented by another approach to him, led by the
Duke of Montpensier whose report Bodin recounted at length. By his account,
Navarre had stated that, while he did not mean ‘to approve any other religion than
the Roman Catholic’, his advice was ‘to tolerate [tollerer] and to suffer adherents to
the new opinion’ in certain secure places until reconciliation and restoration of
religious unity could be achieved through ‘a good Council or other session of
Estates’.19 In its main point on the course of action to be followed this tallied with
the report of Navarre’s position delivered by the other envoys to him. It also tallied
very closely with what Bodin had proposed at the Third Estate’s first substantial
session, on the strength of the Vermandois cahier. It may be not entirely beside the
point that Henri of Navarre had a landed interest in Vermandois itself: the lordship
of Marle, adjacent to Laon, where Bodin would be appointed to an office in
September 1587.
However, the Third Estate deputies’ eventual rejection of war as a means to
religious reunification owed less to the adjurations of deviant princes than to that
option’s fiscal implications. King Henri’s increasingly evident determination to
resort afresh to military action could scarcely be reconciled with royal impecuniosity.
Owing not least to royal extravagance as Bodin had long since warned (see

17 ‘de reunir ses suiets en la Religion Catholique, Apostolique & Romaine par tous moiens saints &

legitimes & sans guerre’ (1577: 121, recte 129).

18 ‘il estoit mal dispos pour un tel voyage, attendu la rigueur du temps, ioint aussi qu’il s’estoit trop

affectionné pour la paix, & qu’on le pourroit tenir pour suspect, & en tout evenement qu’il n’avoit ny
chevaux ny moyens d’en acheter’ (1577: 29).
19 ‘approuuer autre Religion que la Catholique & Romaine, mais estant d’avis seulement de tollerer &

souffrir pour quelque temps celle que tiennent ceux de la nouvelle opinion, & la leur permettre en quelques
lieux qu’on connaistra apporter moins de troubles & dommage à ce Royaume, attendant que par un bon
Concile ou autre tenue d’Estats ou par autres bons moyens leurs Maiestez, ayant tellement remis & reconcilié
leurs suiets les uns avec les autres, que Dieu nous face la grace de n’avoir autre Religion regner parmi nous’
(1577: 120, recte 128). While the idea of conciliar resolution was sufficiently well-worn, the
introduction of ‘tollerer’ seems significant—given that Navarre did indeed use that particular term.
166 Jean Bodin

Chapter V.2 (p. 102)), royal debts had become well-nigh unmanageable. Hence
new initiatives by way of taxation. As early as 12 December the Third Estate
deputies’ attention was drawn to moves towards raising ‘nouvelles levees de deniers’
signalled by the activities of commissioners in the country at large ([Boulanger]
1789: 203). ‘Novel’ indeed: the King’s financial advisers’ most striking idea was a
proposal for the so-called ‘taille égalée’ (see Greengrass 1999), a measure to consoli-
date a portfolio of taxes into a single instrument, to be levied on the basis of
reassessments of ‘hearth’-units (the feux fiscals). Precedents for just such an instru-
ment existed in the shape of the octroi of Languedoc, in effect a composite direct tax
assessed initially on the basis of valuations which dated from the mid-fifteenth
century (Doucet 1948: II. 571). Given Bodin’s familiarity with that province and
its estates’ deliberations on fiscal matters,20 this may well explain his use of the term
‘octroi’ to refer to the present royal initative. Its novelty lay in the octroi’s proposed
extension to the entire kingdom coupled with a thorough-going programme of
reassessments. The move proved counter-productive. The Third Estate gave what
Bodin described as ‘l’invention de l’ottroy’ relatively short shrift, on the grounds that
the deputies had no authority ‘to make any offers’ (1577: 58). Bodin himself, as he
later noted, was unimpressed by the proposal, finding it as presented full of errors
and, indeed, mendacious (1583: 890–1). Boulanger’s official record dismissed ‘les
dits inventions’ in still stronger language. They were ‘altogether unreasonable, of evil
and pernicious consequence, and as injurious to the King as to his people (dommage-
ables tant au Roy qu’à son peuple)’ ([Boulanger] 1789: 260).
From the deputies’ standpoint, the King’s case for financial support was not
helped by his officers’ failure to disclose the precise nature and extent of his
predicament (1577: 28–9). In any case, the obvious starting point for putting his
financial house in order lay in eliminating abuses. Among fraudulent practices of
various kinds was the diversion to other uses of monies already earmarked for the
servicing of rentes constituées (in effect, mortgages), and for soldiers’ pay. Disclosure
of such practices stimulated all three estates to a measure of unity that did not long
survive reminders of their differing levels of exposure to royal demands (1577:
31–6, 42–3; [Boulanger] 1789: 232–7, 243–4). Despite pressure from the other
orders as well as from royal councillors, the Third Estate deputies stood their
ground, that they had no authority from their constituents to ‘make any offers
whatsoever’ (for example, 1577: 96, recte 104). Rather, they recommended that the
king seek to extract monies from foreign undertakers and not from ‘his natural
subjects’, ruined as so many had been by the effects of war (1577: 57 bis, recte 59, 65).
Confronted by such obduracy, King Henri declared himself resolved to resort to the
sale of public assets, portions of the domaine. Yet Bodin had argued in his Répub-
lique, and now iterated afresh, that the monarch had no legal right to alienate the
domain, and certainly not in perpetuity (cf. Chapter VI.4 (pp. 240–1)). Repeatedly
the King announced his intention; repeatedly the Third Estate declared its oppos-
ition to any such move.21 By Bodin’s account, two of his colleagues approached

20 République 1576: 459, 655. Cf. Chapter III.3 (n. 73).

21 For example, 1577: 95, 127–8, recte 103, 135–6; [Boulanger] 1789: 278, 283–4.
 Estates and Demons 167

him privately on behalf of others, for advice on whether the estates could endorse
such alienation. In accordance with his own published opinion if not strictly with
recent legislative enactments, he replied ‘that the King had simply the usufruct
(n’estoit que simple usaiger) of the domain’, that the ‘property’ of it ‘belonged to the
people (quant au fons & proprieté dudit domaine, qu’il appartenoyt au peuple)’, and so
that it could be alienated only if the provinces had ‘expressly empowered’ their
deputies (avoyent baillé procuration expresse) to that end. There having been no such
empowerment, no alienation was permissible.22 Whether despite or because of its
implications for the royal capacity to re-engage in warfare, the Third Estate adhered
firmly to this position.
Other matters on which, by his own account, Bodin took an effective lead
ranged from details of administrative practice to large questions of the estates’
constitutional authority. Thanks to him, the Third Estate agreed that in order to
avoid fraud in implementing royal letters patent the dates and times of issue should
always be entered on the documents (1577: 27; 1583: 425–6). Thanks also to him,
the Third Estate refused to participate on a proposed committee of twelve deputies
from each order, to be convened to finalize the general cahier for the kingdom as a
whole. As Bodin presented them, the risks attendant upon such a procedure were
plain (1577: 73–7, recte 81–5). On the one hand, it would involve the estates too
far in the legislative process. As he had argued vigorously and consistently in his
République and would reiterate in the light of his experience at Blois, law-making
was the principal component of sovereign authority: the people might petition the
king, but adjudication and decision upon their representations were entirely
matters for him.23 On the other hand, the effect of the procedure at issue would
be to reduce the entire estates of France to ‘paltry dimensions’ (reduire les Estats de
France au petit pied ), and the Third Estate to a handful of members who might
easily be overawed as well as outvoted by the other estates and the king’s own
councillors. Boldly protested, the position sprang partly from principle and partly
from political astuteness. A comparable mixture of motives informed Bodin’s
refusal to join the mission to Condé, and his willingness to serve on a committee
of experts to remedy monetary abuses whilst continuing to resist the royal clamour
over domain alienation (1583: 935–6). The last of these exposed him to a mounting
degree of personal cost. The King grew increasingly impatient with the obduracy of
the Third Estate and in particular with what he heard of the behaviour of the Île de
France deputies. Bodin, he was told, was the real troublemaker. He at first dismissed
such insinuations, but eventually was warned that ‘Bodin managed the Estates as he
chose . . . which was why the King never afterwards regarded the said Bodin as
favourably as before’.24

22 1577: 96–8. Cf. above, Chapter VI.4 (p. 140) where the domain’s proprietor is identified as ‘the

crown’, rather than ‘the people’ as Bodin seems to have insisted here in defending their representatives’
authority.
23 1576: 136; 1583: 137–8; 1586: 89.
24 1577: 59, 78 (recte 86): ‘Il y eut un Seigneur qui dit en presence du Roy que Bodin manioit les Estats

á son plaisir . . . Ce qui fut cause que le Roy ne regarda pas deslors en avant ledit Bodin de si bon oeil qu’il
avoit accoustumé’. Cf. 1583: 485–6.
168 Jean Bodin

Or so Bodin claimed to have been told. But how reliable is his account—the
principal source of information on the Third Estate at Blois, and yet plainly designed
to highlight its author’s prominence as well as his principled dealing in that
assembly? Boulanger’s Procès-verbal lacks much of the material which the Recueil
contains, notably on the key issues of religion and finance. It also lacks confirmation
of Bodin’s claims to have acted repeatedly as president of the Third Estate. Only
once does Boulanger record his doing so, on 12 February 1577 ‘in the absence of
the Sieur Saint-Mesmin and other Deputies of Paris’ ([Boulanger] 1789: 269).
According to Bodin he himself discharged that function on the afternoon of 18
January following a false move by Nicolas Luillier that morning (1577: 52, cf.
[Boulanger] 1789: 249–50), and again on 2 February when the Paris deputies had
failed to persuade their colleagues to respond positively to the royal demands for
funds (1577: 61, recte 69; cf. [Boulanger] 1789: 265). On significant occasions
when even those who took precedence over him were present, Bodin, by his own
account, performed as spokesman for his order.25 According to him, he was
instrumental in frustrating the willingness of the Paris contingent and others to
facilitate the royal policy for renewal of war. In the telling he may have inflated
his role. Despite his—possibly tactical—insistence throughout his account upon his
position as ‘deputy for Vermandois’, in that capacity he may have exceeded his
instructions. As much was alleged early in the assembly’s proceedings, by three men
who arrived from that bailliage armed ‘with powers of attorney (procurations)’ from
their respective towns. They appealed to the King, whose council dismissed their
contentions (1577: 17). But just as Henri III lost patience with Bodin, so too did
at least some of his fellow deputies. On one occasion towards the end of the
assembly, when the Paris deputies were again absent, he was physically abused
(‘poussé fort rudement’), almost ‘driven from the hall’, and afterwards felt obliged
to carry a sword ‘for fear of being injured (porta toujours espee, craignant d’estre
offence)’ (1577: 123, recte 131).
Much was expected of the Blois Estates-general. Meeting early in a new reign with
reconciliation as its overt aim, it was attended by deputies elected by due process and
armed with carefully compiled cahiers which identified significant areas of govern-
ment that demonstrably required reform. Only the third such assembly to be
convened in France in the entire sixteenth century, it constituted a rare opportunity
to settle differences by negotiation and to initiate needful change. But agreement on
how to piece together a general cahier let alone on its contents seemed unattainable;
and barely had the deputies dispersed than the French were again at war. What had
seemed a genuine opportunity to achieve a measure of concord and amelioration by
consultative means proved, to all appearances, abortive. On key issues Bodin’s
interventions were resolutely negative and obstructive, and so some degree of
responsibility for the assembly’s failures could be laid at his door.

25 Thus on 13 February when Saint-Mesmin was, presumably, the ‘President des Moulins’ whom

Bodin accompanied on a deputation from the Third to the other estates—an occasion which the
Procès-verbal overlooks altogether (1577: 72, recte 80; [Boulanger] 1789: 270).
 Estates and Demons 169

And yet, in important respects the Blois assembly did not fail. Within a year of its
termination, a committee of royal councillors was at work on the cahiers.
Re-examined and re-evaluated, these submissions were to form the basis of the
Ordinances of Blois, sixteenth-century France’s ‘largest single legislative enterprise’
(Greengrass 2007a: 265–84). In over 360 articles, the ordinances pronounced on
aspect after aspect of government, repeatedly invoking on the one hand ‘les plaintes
à nous faites par nos sujets’ (1577: 96, 98), including changes ‘requise par les députez
du tiers estat’ (no. 239),26 and on the other the need to revive provisions of
‘les ordonnances des rois nos prédécesseurs’ (1577: 112, 137) which had evidently
fallen into desuetude. Most extensive and detailed were the articles on the admin-
istration of justice, aimed at eradicating delays, negligence and outright corruption
in the conduct of judicial process (nos 89–209). The articles ranged from detailing
procedures on such matters as the issuing of warrants (nos 174–5) to sweeping
condemnations of usury (no. 202). They embraced ethically informed declarations
of principle and policy on social and economic issues: on widows who ‘foolishly
remarry persons unworthy of their quality’ (no. 182), on perpetrators of bankruptcy
and fraud who should suffer ‘extraordinary and exemplary punishment’ (no. 205),
on the need to ‘stimulate our nobility to apply themselves to the study of the
sciences’ relevant to the tenure of the ‘honours and dignities of our realm’ (no.
262). In places, they echoed concerns upon which Bodin had expatiated in the
République and elsewhere. Article after article aimed at reducing the numbers of
office-holders, in the lawcourts, the royal households, above all the financial
administration, the cost of which consumed ‘the greater part of our revenue’
(no. 242). Measures to improve management of the royal domain were reviewed
at length, with a view to improving the yield to the crown short of outright
alienation (nos 329–40, 353). Just as Bodin had denounced the selling of offices,
so too did the Blois ordinances in unequivocal terms (no. 100; cf. Chapter VI.5
(p. 146). But here, as elsewhere, those legislative actions were informed by the
evidence, recorded in the cahiers, of widespread concerns among the citizenry at
large. Those same concerns were reflected in the Angevin’s master-work—in key
respects not so much a moulder as a mirror of contemporary opinion.
Insofar as the legislative outcome of the Blois Estates realized the King’s
purposes, it was in his communication to Mandelot before the deputies assembled
that Henri III had expressed himself with least dissimulation. However, he was also
true to the intentions he had indicated to Prévôt des Marchands Luillier. As for
Bodin, who had evidently revelled in the Blois experience, his conduct had cost him
Henri III’s regard, had antagonized influential members of the Paris elite, and
perhaps had embarrassed his own patrons. There are no grounds for supposing him
to have lost Pibrac’s support; but, plainly, he would be wise to look elsewhere for
some fresh source of patronage—that relationship of mutual expectations, indeed
rights, indispensable to a would-be participant in public affairs and, by his own
account, ‘more beautiful, more honourable and more magnificent than all others’

26 The Blois ordinances are cited by article number from Isambert 1821–33: XIV/ii. 38–463.
170 Jean Bodin

(1583: 101). He found such a source in the Duke of Anjou. Until recently Bodin
was thought to have associated himself with the then Alençon as early as 1571. That
view is almost certainly mistaken.27 The likelihood is that his alignment with Anjou
was formed at some point between 1577 and 1580 when the Marquis Charles de
Moy, in a letter addressing him as ‘Monsieur de Saint-Amand’, described him as a
‘maître des Requestes’ of Anjou, and so a member of the ducal household
(Ponthieux 1928: 74–7). What has remained unclear is why Bodin chose to align
himself at all with the youngest of Henri II’s legitimate sons, that pock-marked and
unstable character, restive and ambitious, however affable and eloquent.28 Yet the
alignment involves no mystery.
Beyond question, Bodin was profoundly interested in politics. For several years
he had enjoyed active participation in national and also in international affairs.
In those affairs, Anjou was unmistakably a principal player. Much of Henri III’s
manoeuvring before and after the Blois assembly had been calculated to keep his
only surviving brother on-side. Instrumental in procuring the Peace of Beaulieu
which had prompted the assembly itself, Anjou had somewhat hesitatingly declared
himself at Blois in favour of the King’s policies and had subsequently taken part in
the military campaign against the Huguenots. But he had also contributed signifi-
cantly to the ensuing negotiations which resulted in the Peace of Bergerac (1577)
and retention of important components of the Beaulieu treaty (see Sutherland
1980: 270–6). In the meantime, he had engaged in dialogue with the leaders of the
revolt in the Netherlands against the rule of the Most Catholic Monarch, Philip
II. Following the rout of the rebels’ army at Gembloux early in 1578, Anjou—to
his brother’s consternation—entered into a formal alliance with the Dutch, with a
pledge to provide them with substantial armed support. His ability to deliver on
that pledge was uncertain; yet the means at his disposal were certainly impressive,
thanks not least to his brother’s concessions. To his apanage as duke of Alençon
which with additional lordships ‘was so large that it covered a good part of France’,
Henri III had joined several other rich duchies including that of Anjou itself.29
Thus resourced, the Duke had gathered around him a household reportedly ‘much
greater than that of the king’ himself, according to the contemporary memoirist
Claude Haton (quoted Le Roux 2006: 179). Principal offices in that household
would eventually be taken by two of Bodin’s most distinguished friends, Christofle
de Thou and Pibrac himself (Cabos 1922: 421). It was an establishment that
accommodated multiple adherents to both sides of the religious divide. Indeed,
it exemplified a ‘politico-religious interface’ of the kind for which Bodin had called
until an enduring settlement of the kingdom could be reached by consultative
means (Le Roux 2006: 181; cf. Chapter VII.2 (pp. 163–4)). If means could be found
of procuring such a settlement in due course, then, of all the leading players on the

27 See Couzinet 1996b: 240; and, for persuasive exposure of the error, Machielsen 2013: 164,

nn. 27, 28.

28 De Thou (1734): IX. 182, cited by Le Roux 2006: 170; cf. Holt 1986: 13.
29 Holt 1986: 16–17, 67; the quoted phrase is that of the contemporary jurist Étienne Pasquier.
 Estates and Demons 171

politico-religious scene, Anjou, flawed though his character might be, seemed to
offer the most likely prospect.
The attitude that placed political stability above ideological considerations has
been termed ‘politique’.30 It is a term the significance of which changed during
Bodin’s professional lifetime. It was applied at first to moderate opinion seeking
common ground between outright Catholic and outright Protestant allegiance.
Of such moderate or intermediate opinion there were evidently many shades, with
variations coalescing around attitudes towards key elements of doctrine or obser-
vance in the different confessions. The importance of such elements to individual
consciences was all too plain. Yet conscience might be one thing, considerations of
how to couple ‘tranquillity of spirit’ with ‘the sweetness of peace’ quite another.31
It might indeed be acceptable to indulge conscience in private whilst serving civic
tranquillity through conditioning one’s public demeanour accordingly. This was
‘nicodemism’, outward compliance with established forms of worship masking
inward deviation from them. Bodin had long since expressed sympathy with such
a stance (cf. Chapter VI.6 (p. 150)). Not surprisingly, it attracted mounting censure
as the wars dragged on, intransigence intensified on either side of the religious
divide, and ‘politique’ came to be used as a term of abuse. It is in any case applicable
to Bodin only with further nuance.
For, pace his undoubted commitment to ‘civic tranquillity’, religious consider-
ations were of first importance in Bodin’s thinking. Were there any doubts on that
score, he set about eliminating them even whilst he was gravitating towards Anjou.
For in his perception the persistent tribulations of France and its people were not
simply a matter of political and military conflict driven by doctrinal antagonisms
and less elevated motives. The tribulations had many causes, some of them
material. On several of these—extravagance at court, corruption in government,
price inflation—he had written at length. Such causes were in key respects ethical;
but at their root lay, in his perception, a profound spiritual crisis. And the prime
manifestation of that crisis was readily identifiable. In Bodin’s judgement, France’s
spiritual malaise manifested itself most plainly in the incidence and nature of
witchcraft coupled with the insufficiency of the judicial response to that phenomenon.
To an appraisal of these issues he now applied his pen. The result was his most
notorious published work.

VII.3 THE DÉMONOMANIE: CONTEXT AND CONTENT

By publishing in 1580 his De la démonomanie des sorciers (On witches’ devotion to

demons)32 Bodin was in a sense catching a flowing tide. Of course, beliefs in

30 For what follows see especially Wanegffelen 1997; Turchetti 2002; Holt 2002. Cf. also Olivier

Christin 2003: 100.

31 Cf. République 1583: 755: ‘de la douceur de paix & de la vraye tranquillité d’esprit’.
32 Except where otherwise stated, all references to the Démonomanie are to folio numbers in the

1580 edition.
172 Jean Bodin

demons and the occult were nothing new. Such beliefs, coupled with practices
which later generations would consider merely ‘superstitious’, were familiar features
of popular culture.33 Scholars from Aristotle onwards had pondered the significance
of prodigies, monsters, phenomena inexplicable in terms of natural causes.34 Their
occurrence in a world perpetually afflicted by ‘gratuitous accidents’—crop failures,
outbreaks of disease, untimely deaths—provoked theological debate over whether
and how far such events might spring from God’s use of supra-natural beings as
disciplinary agents, as his ‘public executioners’.35 Questions of that order, together
with the extent of the devil’s power and its role in relation to the magical arts, were
live issues in Christianity from its early years. They figured conspicuously in
scholastic metaphysics. Students encountered them at an early stage in company
with answers summarized succinctly in Peter Lombard’s Sentences:
The magical arts are effective by the power and knowledge of the devil. This power and
this knowledge have been granted to him by God either to lead evil men astray or to
admonish or train the good ones. It is also by the knowledge and power of these evil
spirits that the magical arts are practised. And yet, both the knowledge and the power
have been given to them by God, either to deceive the deceitful or to admonish the
faithful or to train and test the patience of the just.36
Aquinas introduced variations on the theme, highlighting such practices as the
demonic pact, stressing that demons, once fallen from grace, were incontrovertibly
evil and, accordingly, that consorting with them was indubitably sinful.37 Such
doctrines merged with recurrent campaigns against heresy involving both ecclesiastical
and secular authorities (see Moore 2012: 274 sqq.). But by and large the incidence of
witchcraft trials in medieval Europe was relatively small, pace some increase in
prosecutions for diabolism in the fifteenth century (Kieckhefer 2002: 25). During
the sixteenth century, however, pursuit of alleged witches by legal process became
more frequent. From about 1560 witchcraft trials multiplied apace. They occurred
amid a widespread mood of dread, the very antithesis of Renaissance exuberance. The
mood was informed by an intensified apprehension of the end times, fear of an
apocalypse that to many seemed imminent. And that same mood was fertilized by
publications of various kinds on the threat to the souls and bodies of men and
especially women presented by the devil, his minions, and his nefarious works.38

33 See, for example, Thomas 1971: 540; Larner 1984: especially 72–5; Ferreiro ed. 1998.
34 The fullest discussion is by Céard 1977. For Philo’s view that ‘souls and demons and angels are
but different names for the same one underlying object’ see his ‘On the Giants’. 16, in Works 1929:
II. 452–3.
35 The phrase is Origen’s: see P. Brown 1972: 132, and 131–8 on demonology in early Christianity.

Cf. Aquinas, Summa theologiae, Ia, q. 63 a.7: ‘tota creatura corporalis administratur a Deo per angelis’. In
Aquinas’s view demons were not corporeal; likewise Maimonides 1963: I. 49.
36 Sententiae in IV libris distinctae, dist. VII, cap. 6, in Lombard 2007–10: II. 30. The proposition

that evil spirits’ power had been ‘given them by God’ was repeatedly invoked by Bodin: see,
for instance, Chapter VII.3 (pp. 176, 178).
37 Summa theologiae Ia q. 64 a.2; IIaIIae q. 90 a.2; q. 95 a.5; etc.
38 Mandrou 1968: 25–59, lists a total of 345 ‘traités de démonologie, libelles polémiques, traités

judiciaires et plaidoyers, mémoires et correspondances’ on relevant subjects published in the sixteenth and
early seventeenth centuries.
 Estates and Demons 173

With all this Jean Bodin was familiar. He had written on how the universe had
been created within time and was time-limited, and so must come to an end
(see Chapter IV.4 (pp. 177–8)). In his youth, he would undoubtedly have seen
in Angers cathedral remarkable stained glass images that illustrated the apoca-
lypse.39 He was familiar with publications on related themes that flowed particu-
larly from Protestant writers’ pens. No less a figure than Philip Melanchthon had
written of ‘this turbulent old age of the world’, and of how, in these its ‘last days’,
the devil’s ‘extraordinary raging’ was ‘permitted by God on account of the dreadful
sins of humankind’.40 But Melanchthon’s fellow humanists were slow to echo his
apprehensions. Indeed, the attitude of leading figures amongst them, including
none other than Erasmus and Andrea Alciato, towards the idea of sorcery was one
of scepticism.41 Ronsard might offer a ‘Hymne des daimons’ (1555) with their
terrifying ability to change their forms at will; but his fellow poets declined to
emulate his choice of theme, let alone his treatment of it (Ronsard 1938: 7). As for
writers in prose, ‘It is very likely that belief in miracles, visions, enchantments and
such extraordinary effects springs principally from the power of the imagination’:
thus Michel de Montaigne, in an essay published in the very year when Bodin’s
Démonomanie appeared.42 Yet, by then there had developed a vigorous counter-
trend with Protestant theologians again to the fore and again with a powerful
apocalyptic dynamic. According to the pastor Lambert Daneau, it followed from
‘the very great and most horrible judgement of God on the world’ that the devil was
exceptionally active, and so ‘in this age where we live there are more sorcerers than
ever’ (Daneau 1579: 35). Catholic churchmen too were alert to the same phenom-
enon, notably the Friar Minor Pierre Nodé, and the distinguished Dean of Paris
University’s Faculty of Theology, René Benoist.43 Meanwhile, that most notorious
of all denunciations of witchcraft, the Malleus Maleficarum, first produced almost
a century earlier, underwent in Europe at large a revival that in the half-century
from 1574 yielded sixteen more editions (Démonomanie 2016: 27). Alongside it
appeared several accounts of one of France’s best-known cases of demonic posses-
sion, that of Nicole Obry, exorcized in 1565–6 at Laon within what would become
Bodin’s own jurisdiction: a case on which, as he observed, ‘many books have
been printed’ (Démonomanie 1580: fo. 154)—including, indeed, an account by
Guillaume Postel (see Backus 1994: 25–44).
And yet, it seemed that such mounting clamour was not enough to bring about
sufficiently sustained measures against witches. In the very decades when anti-witch
prosecutions were multiplying in lower courts and concordant polemics with them,

39 For instance, the south rose window illustrating the elders of the apocalypse. Cf. Delumeau

1978: 210.
40 ‘Singularis furor est ortus a diabolis in hac ultima senecta mundi, Deo permittente propter horribilia

hominum peccata’: Melanchthon 1558/1844: XII. cols 720, 719.

41 Démonomanie 2016: 27; also see Levack 1995: 187. Bodin himself cited Alciato as having

‘softened the heart of the judges’ towards sorcerers (Démonomanie 1580: sig. ē).
42 Montaigne 1580: quotation in the essay ‘De la force de l’imagination’ (1965, ed. Villey: 99). In

Book 3 of the Essais (1588) Montaigne expressed his misgivings about witchcraft more fully, in his
essay ‘On cripples (Des boyteux)’.
43 Nodé 1578; Benoist 1579.
174 Jean Bodin

no less an authority than the Paris Parlement seemed to take a different line. While
unsophisticated officers of justice at village level were ready enough to condemn
witches and to see them burned, France’s senior magistrates seemed not merely
disinclined to engage in such a campaign, but even, as if unpersuaded of the
seriousness of the alleged offence, disposed to deal leniently with the offenders.44
It was particularly with a view to mending magisterial ways whilst simultaneously
discrediting the sceptics that Bodin wrote his Démonomanie—and, bold as ever,
dedicated it in an epistle dated from Laon to none other than the Parlement’s
premier president, Christofle de Thou, distinguished reformer of France’s provincial
customs whom Bodin would have accompanied in reviewing those of Vermandois
(Greengrass 2013: 87).
He began his discourse with the case of Jeanne Harvillier of Verbery near
Compiègne, an alleged witch at whose trial, as he repeatedly noted, he had been
asked to assist (1580: fos sig. āiijvo, 140vo). This was evidently, for him, a
significant event: in the course of his Démonomanie he cited the Harvillier case
no fewer than fourteen times. It illustrated several of what he regarded as witch-
craft’s most distinctive and disturbing features. Harvillier had copulated with the
devil, she bore his mark, and she had been transported great distances to participate
in sabbats. Herself a woman, her criminal condition was the work of women:
in common with the daughters of some other sorceresses, she had been pledged to
the devil by her mother who thirty years previously had been burnt as a witch.
Above all, she was a malefic doer, a perpetrator of injurious acts upon her
neighbours, acts of the kind that has been identified as the very ‘core of witchcraft
beliefs’: for Harvillier had caused men to fall ill and even to die, though she was
unable to cure them.45 To a later edition Bodin added another preface in which he
published an entire interrogatory sent to him from the other end of France. This
was the case of Abel de la Ruë, a leather-worker of Colomiers near Toulouse, who
had been prompted by the devil and taught by a nun to render men impotent
through the dark art of ‘tying the codpiece (nouer l’esguillette)’ (Démonomanie 1587:
sigs *vo sqq.). Instances of this type of maleficium figure frequently in the Démono-
manie (see especially 1580: fos 57–9, 207–8). Thus, from the outset the sexual
element cohabited conspicuously with the misogynistic in Bodin’s treatment of his
inherently salacious subject.
What chiefly informed that treatment, however, were not physical but meta-
physical considerations. To discourse on demons was to evoke issues of ontology, of
form and matter, of cause and effect, of relations between the spiritual and the
material world—issues upon which Aristotle had pronounced and around which
much scholastic debate had revolved (see, for instance, Rosemann 1996). In the
decades before Bodin wrote, prevailing opinion, crisply expressed by the Italian
Aristotelian Agostino Nifo, held that demons could not act beyond the limits of the

44 See Soman, 1992, 1993. According to Soman, ‘except for the period 1580–1600 . . . the

Parlement had an astonishing record of leniency’ (Soman 1978: 344).

45 1580: fos 104vo, 80, 244vo–245 [recte 248vo–249], 190vo, 129; cf. Briggs 1995: 62.
 Estates and Demons 175

laws of nature.46 These issues were fundamental, and Bodin in characteristic

argumentative style set out immediately to make his position clear. The prime
consideration was the essential infinity and incomprehensibility of an incorporeal
God. Limitless in power, greatness, and much else too, He was conditioned by no
physical attributes.47 It followed, as Bodin insisted, that the capabilities of inter-
mediate beings, executors of His will—angels and intelligences, spirits and demons
also—could not be limited by the laws of nature (cf. 1580: fos 183vo–184).
Nor did those laws suffice to disprove the reality of witchcraft. To suppose as
much would be naïve: as naïve, indeed, as Aristotle who knew a great deal but was
ignorant of more, including many phenomena that did occur within the natural
world. Aristotle mistakenly viewed the senses as the ‘sole foundation of all sci-
ences’.48 Pace Aristotle, ‘there are seen in nature effects produced against all natural
reason’—amongst them, ‘the strange actions of evil spirits and witches’ (1580: sigs
ē ijvo, ē iij), on the reality of which there was abundant scriptural and other
authoritative testimony. Yet, unlike the Stagyrite’s empiricism, his metaphysics
had more than the services of a whipping boy to offer the Angevin. In an addition of
some twenty lines to the 1587 edition of his ‘Préface’, Bodin ascribed to that work
of Aristotle’s the opinion that ‘demons are corporeal and of elementary matter (les
Demons soyent corporels & de matiere elementaire)’ and endorsed that opinion from a
range of other leading authorities (Démonomanie 1587: sigs ēvo—ēij). The addition
reinforced his own previously stated view, that actions of the senses were possible
for demons and impossible ‘except by bodies, meaning bodies as physicians
understand the term’ (1580: sig. ĉ- ĉvo). Demons, then, were in some sense
corporeal.49 The ground was cleared for exposure in detail of how they operated
in the world of human beings.
His position stated on these fundamental questions, Bodin proceeded to develop
his thesis. As ever, he began with a definition, to elements of which, true to his
declared method, he would revert at various junctures of his work. ‘A witch
(sorcier)’, he began, ‘is someone who strives to achieve something knowingly
by diabolical means’.50 The terminology was carefully chosen. Thus, the term
‘knowingly (sciemment)’ had significant implications in law for an alleged witch’s
culpability. Those who consorted unwittingly with the devil were less reprehensible
than those ‘who have an express covenant with Satan’ (1580: fo. 43vo). The
distinction tallied with the position of the Catholic church: a passive victim of
demonic possession was not to be equated with someone who entered deliberately

46 In his De demonibus, ad equitem Baldassarum Milanum (1503); cited Clark 1997, at p. 155, in

the course of a discussion of demonology and natural science (151 sqq.).

47 Cf. Maimonides 1963: I. 35, 52. On Bodin’s endorsement of belief in God’s incorporeality as

specified by Maimonides see Chapter IV.4 (p. 76)). Note Bodin’s marginal cross-reference (1580:
fo, 29 vo) to his discussion of creation ‘In Methodo Bodini cap. 6’ (recte cap. 8); cf. above, Chapter IV.4
(p. 75 sqq.).
48 1580: sig. í ij. Here, as elsewhere in this discourse, Bodin echoes Aquinas: cf. Summa Theologiae Ia,

q.50, a. 1 (responsio), rejecting the opinion ‘quod nullum ens esset nisi corpus’.
49 Cf. the view of Maimonides that angels ‘are not endowed with bodies’ (Maimonides 1963: I. 49).
50 ‘Sorcier est celuy qui par moyens Diaboliques sciemment s’efforce de paruenir à quelque chose’ (1580:

fo. 1; cf. 41vo).

176 Jean Bodin

into a demonic pact.51 The latter might bear the devil’s mark, though Bodin held
that Satan marked only those who might renege on the pact at some future date,
not those of whose engagement he could be confident (1580: fo. 79vo). Demons,
too, had to be defined, and long-pondered questions answered as to their nature
and why there were demons at all. That they did exist was recognized by all
philosophical schools, apart from the Epicureans. Developing his earlier observa-
tions, Bodin concluded that they must be sufficiently corporeal to enable copula-
tion with women and so to function as procreators of witches (1580: fos 3vo–4,
104–9). Demons, then, could not be ‘pure intelligences’ or spirits as some had
argued. They ought rather to be understood as ‘of a fifth essence, as is said of the
heavens’ (1580: fo. 6vo)—an allusion to the aether of Pseudo-Aristotelian cosmology
(On the Universe 392a9). As to why they existed and whether they were created evil,
Bodin’s answers were again sufficiently orthodox. Wary of the Manichean heresy
and mindful of Augustine’s view of evil as ‘nothing else than privation of good’,52
he declared demons, the work of God, to have been created good, in common with
the rest of creation. Even Satan, created in order to destroy, performed an essential
function, for corruption was a necessary prerequisite to regeneration. Other
demons had fallen from grace. Thereafter they ‘served to the glory of God’ as
‘executors of his high justice (bourreaux de sa haute justice)’ (1580: fo. 6; cf. note 22
in this chapter).
But how did men and women relate to these ‘ethereal’ beings? Here Bodin
introduced his central theme. The functioning of the universe as a harmonic whole
depended on the presence of ‘means which correspond to the extremes (moyens qui
s’accordent aux extremitez)’. Human beings were such a means, composed as they
were of both body and ‘intellectual soul (l’ame intellectuelle)’ (1580: fo. 7). They
therefore inhabited the world of the flesh whilst also being able to communicate
with the spiritual universe, habitation of angels and demons alike. As human beings
had ‘free will (le franc arbitre)’, they were at liberty to opt for evil, might associate
with demons, and might even become evil. Others could go the other way. A few,
wholeheartedly committed, might attain a transforming experience, by the grace of
God: the purification of their souls, an experience which Averroës had termed ‘the
adeption of the intellect’ (1580: fo. 9). Members of the ‘elect’ and endowed with
‘the gift of prophecy’, they might even enjoy personal angelic support, akin to
Socrates’s daemon.53 Bodin described in detail how an acquaintance of his had since
the age of thirty-seven enjoyed the assiduous attentions of a spirit that had
preserved him from misdemeanours, had encouraged him in spiritual exercises,

51 Levack ed. 2013: 200; on victim status cf. Ferber 2004: 115 sqq.
52 Augustine, Enchiridion xi. 9–10, The view, at root Aristotelian (for example, Metaphysics
1055b20: ‘vice is the privation of excellence’), informs the thinking of Plotinus, Augustine, Aquinas,
and many others on the nature of evil: see, for example, Plotinus, Ennead 1.8.5. Cf. Copleston 1950:
II. 85; Clark 1997: 45–6.
53 See Plato, Apology of Socrates, 31 d2: ‘δαιμόνιον γιγνεται’, literally ‘demon comes to me’. Pace

modern scholars’ scepticism concerning Socrates’ claim to have a personal demon (for example, Burnet
1924: 128, 166), the natural reading by Bodin and his contemporaries in their spirit-populated world
surely was the Socrates did indeed have a ‘daemon’ in the sense of a familiar spirit. Cf. Fernel 2005:
54, 386–9.
 Estates and Demons 177

and had even saved his life.54 Other contacts, likewise attended, had on the other hand
reported to him less agreeable ghostly ministrations (for example, 1580: 78, 155).
Clearly, it was important to distinguish good from evil spirits. But this was
difficult, and distinguished philosophers had been led astray, down avenues of
magic and astrology. Divination was problematical in any of its four modes, divine,
natural, human, and diabolical.55 On the first of these the surest guides were the
Old Testament coupled with ‘the ancient Hebrew theologians’. On the second,
what must be understood above all else was the all-pervasive power of the Divinity.
To Bodin’s mind it could not be sufficiently stressed that God was the efficient
cause that gave being to all things—the creator of matter from nothing, of the
intellect from the soul, and able to do everything Himself at will, though choosing
to operate by means of intermediary beings. His will was ultimately unfathomable;
although astrology might be useful for interpreting ‘l’humeur & disposition naturelle
du corps’, it was futile, indeed impious, to employ astrological, magical, or cabbal-
istic means for predictive purposes in relation to human affairs (1580: I. v). Most
impious was appealing to the devil, worst of all when done directly through a
demoniacal pact, scarcely less culpable when conducted through the medium of a
sorcerer. For the rest, while indulgence simply in superstition might be less
reprehensible in itself, every kind of negotiating with the occult—fortune-telling,
casting lots, divination by the movement of birds, the entrails of creatures, or other
natural phenomena—was comparable to the worship of idols, and patently illicit
(1580: I. vii).
Having dealt with demons and divination, Bodin turned to magical practices,
beginning, as usual, with a definition. ‘Magic’ was a Persian word signifying ‘the
science of divine and natural things’. So, a ‘magician’ was a philosopher, but the
philosophy in question had been corrupted by pagan idolatry into ‘diabolical
sorcery’ (1580: fo. 51). The alleged distinction between white and black magic
was dangerous and must be dismissed.56 All magic was impious. Equally perilous
were attempts to ascribe ‘magical’ effects to natural causes (1580: fos 51vo–52).
Thus, Aristotle’s attempt to explain the Sibylline prophecies in terms of ‘la vapeur
des cavernes’ made no sense.57 It was vital to acknowledge the reality of the demonic
role in perpetrating such phenomena. Witches invited it through the use of images
and incantations which were futile without the presence of demons (1580: fo. 55).
The danger lay in taking such practices at face value. Even the words of God
needed—a lawyer’s point—interpretation (1580: fo. 64vo). How much more so

54 1580: fos 10v–13. The acquaintance has been identified with Bodin himself who, certainly, was

not averse to referring to himself in the third person or to adopting a pseudonymous disguise: cf. Baxter
1973; and, for example, the case of ‘Herpin’ above, Chapter VI.2 (p. 119).
55 1580: fo. 21vo. The first three modes of divination correspond, of course, to Bodin’s three modes

of history and of law.

56 On this distinction’s significance in contemporary thought see Panichi 2008: 317.
57 1580: fo. 74vo. Here Bodin again refers explicitly to the Pseudo-Aristotelian De mundo in which,

however, comment on the effects of ‘vent-holes for wind open in every part of the earth’ contains no
specific reference to the Sybilline prophecies (On the Universe 395b27–30). Even so, that work does
contain passages in line with Bodin’s major thesis, on ‘a single harmony [which] orders the
composition of the whole’ (On the Universe 396a25 sqq.).
178 Jean Bodin

did the practices of witches, which were so widespread in towns, villages, fields, and
even amongst children that ‘it would be impossible for me to note a hundredth part
(la centieme partie) of the impieties thereby perpetrated’ (1580: fo. 54)?
One proof of how witches’ activities defied and perverted the laws of nature lay
in their attendance at sabbats. The evidence of how they got there was incontro-
vertible: the devil transported them through the air (1580: 81–6, 89). While the
adventure was in some ways analogous to ecstatic separation of the soul from the
body (1580: II. V), the fact was that both the night-flight and the sabbat were
experienced physically. At the sabbat the participants engaged in parodies of
religious rituals, including deviant sexual activities, nude dancing, and feasting on
unsalted food. The testimony was abundant that these things did in fact take place
and were not the products of fantasy or diseased imaginings (1580: II. iv). Likewise
lycanthropy, a phenomenon not of supposition on the part of the persons concerned,
but of actual change into lupine form. Supernaturally induced, the fact of trans-
formation was plain, however impossible it might seem to human minds (1580: II.
vi; cf. Methodus 1566: 85–6). Again, physical interaction between witches and
demons did include sexual congress: what took place was indeed copulation, not a
kind of ‘oppilation’ or obstruction in the relevant organ, as some medical practi-
tioners chose to argue (1580: 106vo). As for malefic deeds seemingly perpetrated by
witches themselves—inflicting diseases, inducing hailstorms, deploying poisonous
creatures such as toads to malevolent ends (1580: II. viii)—these again were the
work of demons acting by permission of God who ‘has ten thousand ways of
chastising men’ (1580: fo. 109vo), or of testing them as in the case of Job.
In contrast, benefits promised to humankind by Satan and his demons were
indeed illusory, or at least harbingers of greater evils (1580: III. ii–iii). Devils’
powers were limited. One should not seek to counter them by means of supersti-
tious practices. Thus, the widely held belief that ‘devils are terrified of salt (ont le sel
en horreur) as the symbol of eternity’ was itself idolatrous, as was the position
credited to no less an authority than Albert the Great that spells could be lifted by
means of certain birds (1580: fos 145, 152). On such questions canonist opinion
too was often suspect (for example, 1580: fo, 150). On the other hand, one of the
strongest means of countering ‘evil spirits’ was through music: for the devil liked
only discord, whereas ‘harmony, conspiring with the soul, restores distracted reason
to its pristine condition (l’harmonie conspirant avec l’ame reduit la raison esgaree à son
principe)’ (1580: fo. 159). In general, however, the devil, his wiles and his aides
must be countered directly. The strongest defences against them were study of
Scripture, prayer, preaching—in general, trust in God and observance of His law
(1580: III. i). Carrying this line of reasoning to extremes, Bodin offered in respect
of the alleged witch known as ‘Trois-Eschelles’ the opinion that if in 1571 Charles
IX ‘who was of strong and hardy constitution (une forte complexion & robuste) had
burnt that master-sorcerer and his accomplices, one may assume that for such
executions God would have given him a long and happy life’ (1580: fo. 151vo).
Implicit in this remarkable claim was the king’s responsibility through his agents of
justice to rid the realm of witches and, thereby, of the manifold tribulations which
their presence induced.
 Estates and Demons 179

Although ‘witches can in no way injure officers of justice’ (1580: fo. 104vo),
magistrates who failed to punish them with sufficient severity might suffer stoning
(lapidation) by a populace aware that their presence exposed ‘the entire body of a
commonwealth (tout le corps d’une république)’ to the wrath of God (1580: fo. 166).
A body politic faced ‘inevitable ruin’ unless rewards and punishments too were
appropriately distributed (1580: fo 194vo). Punishment was especially imperative
in the case of witchcraft, an ‘execrable’ crime ‘so detestable’ that it should be dealt
with extraordinarily and otherwise than other crimes (1580: fo. 191vo). To the
instruction of magistrates in the extraordinary lengths to which they could and
should go, Bodin therefore devoted his treatise’s fourth and final book. Owing to
the urgency and complexity of the matter, commissioners should be appointed to
support ordinary judges in detecting witches, though the latter should retain
responsibility for prosecution and adjudication. It was permissible to deviate
from the normal rules and standards of procedure in seeking formal accusations
and supporting testimony. In any case, there remained available no fewer than
seven distinct procedural modes for arriving at an indictment (1580: fos 167–9).
They included ‘the commendable Scottish custom (la coustume loüable de l’Escosse),
also practised in Milan’ of soliciting written accusations to be deposited in ‘a trunk
in the church’ which should be opened fortnightly in the presence of the
key-holders (1580: fo. 168). They also included persuading suspects’ ‘young
daughters’ who ‘at a tender age would be easy to persuade’ to testify to their
mothers’ witchery (1580: fo. 169).
As witchcraft rituals tended to be conducted covertly and under cover of
darkness, eye-witnesses would generally be hard to find: so, the evidence of
accomplices should be admitted. Indeed, a formal accusation might rest upon the
testimony of a single accomplice (1580: fo. 166vo). In general, the law required two
witnesses to warrant sentence, but one would do in such cases as this to license
authorization of torture (1580: fos 166vo, 176vo). The object of torture was to
procure a confession, especially desirable owing, again, to the covert nature of the
crime (1580: fo. 183; on confession see Krause 2013). The accused might be
frightened into confessing. Their sense of vulnerability might be enhanced through
depriving them of their clothes and shaving their heads. Spies masquerading as
fellow prisoners might persuade them to confess. If torture were actually to be
employed, Bodin particularly recommended inserting ‘sharp instruments between
the nails and the flesh of feet and hands, which is the most excellent hell of all
others, and practised in Turkey’.58 All this, he assured his readers, ‘is licit by divine
and human law’ (1580: fo. 171vo).
In witchcraft cases confession was one of three modes of proof. It was less
decisive than ‘manifest fact (faict notoire)’, fruit of a magistrate’s direct observation;
but confession was more secure than depositions of witnesses. Numerous witnesses
would be hard to find ‘in such hateful affairs (choses si detestables), conducted by
night or in caves and secret places’ (1580: fo. 175). Two reliable witnesses were the

58 ‘des pointes entre les ongles & la chair des pieds, & des mains: qui est la plus excellente gehenne de

toutes les autres, & pratiquee en Turquie’ (1580: fo. 171).

180 Jean Bodin

minimum requirement in law to warrant conviction. In Bodin’s view, three

witnesses each offering different evidence would do (1580: fo. 175vo). A rule of
dialectic seemed relevant: by ‘disjunction’, if one of an array of alleged facts were
true, they should all be accounted true (1580: fo. 181vo). Plato and Xenophon had
reckoned truth itself to be pliable in the cause of sound governance: so, was not
lying admissible when the issue concerned so cardinal and covert an offence as this
‘crime of divine lese-majesty’ (1580: fos 172, 178vo)? Of course, some witnesses
were inherently untrustworthy. Women ‘are always less credible than men’.
In canon law the evidence of women in criminal cases was altogether inadmissible,
‘owing to the foolishness and frailty (l’imbecilité & fragilité) of the sex’. By certain
Venetian ordinances and throughout the East, the testimony of two women was
required to match that of one man, and four that of two (1580: fo. 177vo).
Magistrates could rely more confidently upon presumptions grounded in ‘natural
reason’: suspects who frequented the company of known witches, or were discovered
at or near a scene of crime, or had been overheard to cry vengeance, or even failed to
shed tears in circumstances where honest citizens wept. Unlike eye-witnesses, the
varieties of circumstantial evidence were indeed numerous; yet Bodin stopped short
of endorsing the practice favoured by German magistrates of testing whether a
suspect with hands and feet bound would float in water (1580: IV. iv).
It remained to restate the benefits of punishing witches, to summarize their
crimes, and to specify appropriate penalties. There were seven potential benefits,
the first being ‘to appease the wrath of God and his vengeance on the people as a
whole’, and the second to earn ‘God’s blessing on the entire country’ (1580:
fo. 195). There were fifteen major species of witchcraft crime, headed by denial
of the true God, followed by devil-worship. But witches’ crimes were both multiple
and heinous: incest, infanticide, cannibalism, murder, copulation with the devil,
grave-robbing, poisoning of livestock, destruction of crops, and more again. All
these were capital offences; the least of them ‘merite la mort exquise’ (1580: fo.
199vo). Convicted witches might claim to repent, but repentance was not enough
to avert the death penalty. Although those who genuinely repented might escape
burning and be suffocated or strangled instead, any witch who ‘persisted in his pact
with the devil’ must suffer the pains of fire (1580: fo. 213). There were some
qualifications to Bodin’s generally rigorous approach. Paying lip service to the prin-
ciple that ‘it is better to absolve the culpable than to condemn the innocent’ (1580: fo.
204vo), he granted the significance of intention and reiterated the importance of
determining whether the accused had indulged ‘knowingly’ in witchcraft (1580: fos
215, 216). Conversely, the principle of ‘harmonic justice’ dictated that a crime was
aggravated and punishment should be greater in accordance with ‘the quality of
persons’, meaning priests or physicians in particular (1580: fo. 210vo). The conten-
tion had implications for the case which he appended to his treatise.
This was the case not of a witch, but of another analyst whose opinions Bodin
chose not merely to challenge, but to treat with contempt. The object of his
derision was the Dutch physician Johann Weyer, sometime assistant to King
Francis I’s doctor and afterwards personal physician to Duke William of Cleves.
In two works on witchcraft, De praestigiis daemonum (1563) and De lamiis (1577),
 Estates and Demons 181

Weyer had argued that its practitioners were not voluntarily maleficent, but
deluded, and ill. To Bodin such a position was simply inadmissible, and its author
both ignorant and incompetent. Weyer persistently misinterpreted Greek and
Hebrew terms. He misunderstood the Bible. He contradicted himself. He was
incompetent in physics, in metaphysics, in mathematics; his dialectical method was
unsound and his arguments were fallacious. Plainly, he was out of his depth: ‘his
calling is to judge the colour and sediment (hypostase) of urines and such things, and
not to meddle in sacred things nor to venture into divine and human laws’ (1580:
fo. 235, recte 236). Not surprisingly, his basic thesis was simply wrong. Witches
were not the victims of melancholy (1580: fo. 225vo); nor should they be
exculpated on the grounds that their alleged crimes were illusory, or that what
they experienced were drug-induced hallucinations (1580: fos 231–2, recte 232–3).
Arguments that Satan compelled them into witchcraft were a sophistical elen-
chus (1580, fo. 235vo, recte 236vo); Satan, aware that intentionality and voluntar-
ism were ‘the basis of every good and wicked action’, took care not to recruit
his witches through fear or constraint (1580: fo. 246vo, recte 250vo). So flawed
indeed was the case which Weyer tried to present as to provoke doubts about its
advocate’s moral standing. Was not his admission noteworthy, that he himself
was a disciple of Agrippa, the greatest sorcerer of his age—and not only disciple, but
also valet and servant, drinking, eating, and sleeping with his master, after Agrippa
had repudiated his wife (1580: fos 219vo–20)? Plainly, the opinions of such a
person should not be considered without serious reservations. Even so, Bodin’s
attack on Weyer stimulates afresh questions about his own use of sources and his
methodology.

V I I . 4 THE DÉMONOMANIE: CRITIQUE

Let us provisionally assume, as in our analysis of the République (see Chapter VI. 2
(p. 121 sqq.)) that the sources which Bodin chose explicitly to identify in the
Démonomanie were those upon which he actually drew to support his arguments.
Again, his heaviest reliance in the Démonomanie as in the République would appear
to have been upon legal sources.59 Again, he places heavy reliance on later medieval
and Renaissance Italian jurists and canonists. His citations include a total of 367 to
forty-five such sources, 24.5 per cent of all his references to named individuals.
A large proportion of these references are again to the three jurists who figured most
prominently in the République: Bartolus (36), Baldus (58), and Alexander da Imola
(41). Other jurists and canonists conspicuous in the earlier work have significant
presences once more. Assessed quantitatively overall, the juristic and canonist
sources attributed to named individuals in the Démonomanie furnish almost
25 per cent of all citations there, a proportion not far short of that of the same
component in the République. In addition, the Démonomanie contains some

59 In what follows I am again deeply indebted to the Sources Index compiled by Professor Kenneth

D. McRae and his team: see Chapter VI, n. 23.

182 Jean Bodin

210 legal references, many of these involving multiple citations, as well as more
than fifty references to sources of a juridical or curial nature, and some seventy to
trial records, including confessions. It should be noted, however, that in the
Démonomanie the bulk of technical legal citations tends to occur in the work’s
final section where Bodin focuses his attention on issues of adjectival (i.e. proced-
ural) as well as substantive law, for the edification of judicial personnel.
However, in contrast to the République, Bodin draws in the Démonomanie much
less heavily upon classical Greek and Roman historians and antiquaries. Writers of
that era, with 136 citations between them (Plutarch with forty-three being far and
away the most cited), continue to furnish no less than 70 per cent of the total in the
relevant category even when this is expanded to include biographers, geographers,
and antiquaries of all kinds and of every period. Yet total citations in the enlarged
category constitute only 10 per cent of all references credited to named individuals
in the entire work, by comparison with almost 35 per cent in the République.
Far more conspicuous in the Démonomanie is the presence of theologians and
ecclesiastical writers. These furnish 15 per cent of all references to named individuals
as sources, in contrast to their minuscule (less than 0.5 per cent) contribution to the
République. The contribution of mathematicians, astronomers, and astrologers is now
far more pronounced as well, rising to almost 10 per cent from less than 1.5 per cent in
the earlier work.
As in the République, philosophers continue to furnish the third most significant
category of sources cited, with Aristotle (53 citations) and Plato (32) again to the fore.
Then come Philo (23) and Maimonides (24), almost matched by the Neoplatonists
Iamblichus (21) and Porphyry (22). By comparison with his prominence in the
République, Cicero’s presence is now remarkably reduced, to seventeen references.
On the other hand, references to named Jewish sources are more numerous than
before: a total of sixty-nine in addition to twenty-three to rabbinical writers—in all,
some 6 per cent of sources identified by name.
Among the most striking increases are biblical citations. In the République these
total 208, over half of them (112) to the Pentateuch. In the Démonomanie the total
rises to 367, an increase of 76 per cent. The Five Books of Moses supply 122, or
one-third, of these, and, given the importance of divine law in Bodin’s thinking, the
incidence of citations from Deuteronomy in both works (39 in République, 37 in
Démonomanie) is unsurprising. More noteworthy is the increase of references to the
prophets, especially Isaiah (22), Jeremiah (22), Job (28), and Samuel (22), with the
Psalms (22) and a string of minor prophets figuring as well. Although from time to
time Bodin sprinkles his texts with Hebrew terms, it seems evident that at least
for citation purposes he is not working from the Hebrew Bible. The books of
Wisdom (9 citations), Tobit (5), and Maccabees (1) were not included there, but all
three were pronounced canonical by the Council of Trent. As for books of the
New Testament, these furnish the Démonomanie with merely 4.6 per cent of its
Scriptural references.
In addition to written authorities, Bodin’s sources in the Démonomanie include a
good deal of material communicated to him by legal officials and others of his
acquaintance. As Mark Greengrass has observed, such reported episodes ‘often serve
 Estates and Demons 183

a rhetorical function’ in his text, bridging comment and information derived from
published works (Greengrass 2013: 88). His own experience of sitting in judge-
ment upon witches seems to have been very limited, a consideration that may
account for the frequency with which he cites the Harvillier case (see Chapter VII.3
(p. 174). ‘Experiential’ testimony apart, quantitative analysis of his written sources
gives at least a prima facie indication of the extent to which he relied upon each of
the principal categories of materials available to him. What the results do not
disclose is his own reliability or otherwise in using these materials, and the cogency
with which he presented the arguments seemingly grounded upon them. His
performance in his République is questionable in both respects, as has already
been discussed. In the Démonomanie it is markedly more dubious.
Misgivings are provoked from the very outset of the work. A detailed examin-
ation of Bodin’s ‘Préface’ has revealed ‘numerous errors of detail, an archaic mode
of working, and, more seriously, a general loss of rigour as soon as this bookish
man moves out of his true territory, that of juristic thought’ (Crahay and Isaac
1987: 150). Bodin’s method is disingenuous. He cites authorities at second hand
without acknowledging his real sources. The appearance he cultivates of having
consulted materials in the original Greek, Arabic, or Hebrew is to a marked degree
deceptive: his ‘cultural apparatus’ is in fact ‘massively Latin’. His method of exegesis
is ‘cavalier’; careless of the definitions upon which he overtly insists, he lumps all
kinds of idolatry and deviant religious practice in with ‘sorcellerie’. His mode of
reasoning is arbitrary: opinions that do not tally with his preconceptions he treats
with scepticism; those that do, with remarkable credulity. Often his readings seem
superficial, suggestive of his having relied upon collections of extracts as distinct
from studying his authorities in extenso (Crahay and Isaac 1987: passim). The same
weaknesses are discernible throughout the work. In the course of it he cites the
Malleus maleficarum and its author’s fellow inquisitor Jakob Sprenger60 no fewer
than forty-three times, invariably for ‘factual’ material which he habitually presents
so summarily and so carelessly of context as persistently to court distortion. Thus,
he purports to report ‘word for word (de mot à mot)’ an account by ‘Spranger’ of the
case of ‘a Bohemian priest named Dachon’. The Malleus discusses it over several
pages. Bodin covers it in a few lines (Schnyder 1992: 342; cf. Démonomanie 1580:
157). Even his use of scriptural material cited chapter and verse is questionable.
In his own chapter on ‘express invocations of evil spirits’ (1580: II.iii) he notes how
St Paul in Corinthians epistle I chapter 15 advises that someone who had committed
incest should be banned from the church so that, his body being delivered into Satan’s
power to be tormented, his spirit might be saved on the day of judgement.61

60 Formerly treated as co-author of the Malleus; the work is now credited solely to Heinrich Institor

whom Bodin does not in fact mention by name.

61 ‘sainct Paul aux Corinthiens epistre 1.chapitre 15 conseille de banner de l’Eglise celuy qui auoit

commis un inceste à fin que son corps estant deliure en la puissance de Sathan pour l’affliger, son esprit fust
sauvé au iour de iugement’ (1580: fo. 71).
184 Jean Bodin

Eighty-five folios later he repeats the observation with some embellishment:

St Paul in First Corinthians, speaking of someone who had abused his mother-in-law,
It is, says he, expedient that that man should be handed over to Satan, so that his spirit
may be saved on the day of judgement.62
But no trace whatsoever of this Pauline advice, with or without the mother-in-law,
is to be found in I Corinthians xv, even in the Vulgate which appears to have been
Bodin’s preferred version of Scripture.63
His heedless handling of his sources is exemplified in the blanket mode of
reference to which he frequently resorts. Time and again he summarizes positions
allegedly held by ‘all the Philosophers and Theologians’, by ‘all the Theologians and
Philosophers’, by ‘the ancient Hebrew Theologians’, by ‘Saint Augustine as well as
Thomas Aquinas and [Guillaume] Durand, Aegidius Romanus [i.e. Giles of Rome],
& the other Theologians by common consent’ (1580: fos 28, 30, 22vo, 43). He
comments dismissively, even contemptuously, on scholars upon whose writings at
various junctures he has manifestly relied. Drawing extensively and yet without
acknowledgement on Giovanni Pico della Mirandola’s Strix (see Vasoli 2008: 132,
n. 3), he repeatedly rejects the same author’s views as expressed ‘in his positions
magiques’ on topics such as the supposedly magical properties of certain words and
‘figures’ (for example, 1580: fos 37vo, 55, 236 recte 237). Quite likely Bodin used
the work in question, Giovanni Pico’s Conclusiones nonagentae of 1486, in
the edition by the Florentine scholar Angelo Poliziano, a compendium which
conveniently contained not only Pico’s ‘apologia’ on natural magic and Hebrew
cabbala, but also the positions on comparable issues of Albertus Magnus, Aquinas,
Giles of Rome, and others whose names Bodin adduced in the course of his own
treatise to lend verisimilitude to his views. Most flagrant of all was the extent to which
he seized for his own purposes upon factual evidence from the works of none other
than the contemptible Johann Weyer. Indeed, in a major area of demonology the
Angevin’s and the Dutchman’s views were in effect compatible, though Bodin
resolutely refrained from acknowledging as much. This was the area of demonic
possession, for examples of which Bodin drew upon Weyer’s publications unashamedly,
without qualification, and without acknowledgement.64
And yet, did not the cause surely warrant such stratagems? The cause, as Bodin
saw it, was the wellbeing not only of France, but of human society at large.
Of course, there could be no prospect of eliminating demons through human
action. Demons had been created and were even used by the only being who could
penalize them directly and eradicate them too, if he so chose. God was that
omnipotent and eternal Being, God Who had created the universe within time
and would terminate it too, at a time of His deciding. But His creation was

62 ‘Sainct Paul en la premiere des Corinthiens parlant de celuy qui auoit abusé de sa belle mere, Il est, dit il,

expedient que cest homme-là soit liuré à Sathan, à fin que son esprit soit sauué au iour du iugement’ (1580: fo.
152, recte 156).
63 Cf. Crahay and Isaac 1987: 143–4; and see Chapter VI.6 (n. 155).
64 See Martin 2013, for persuasive documentation of the point.
 Estates and Demons 185

conceived as a harmonious entity, the interpretation of which called for deploy-

ment of ‘conceptual strategies associated with opposition and inversion’.65 Upon
such strategies, inspired at least in part by Peter Ramus, Bodin had relied in all his
major writings. He deployed them again in his attack upon witches, pronouncing
their spells and incantations futile without the presence of demons, and correlating
the latter with the binary structure of the universe itself:
God has placed in the heavens contrary movements and the effects of the stars and
planets and the contrary elements, and throughout nature an antipathy on the one
hand and sympathy on the other, and in this opposition and pleasing struggle (ceste
contrarieté & plaisant combat) the harmony of the universe is maintained.
(1580: fo. 19vo)
Even such antithesis, at once verbal and structural, did not make evil any the less
evil nor diminish the need to hound those seduced by it, in the name of justice and
true religion. Such pursuits were the responsibility of magistrates. And the task of
alerting magistrates to their duty fell to those few who had ‘the gift of prophecy
(le don de Prophetie)’ (1580: fo. 10), itself bestowable through the agency of a ‘good
angel’ (1580: fo. 9vo), and thereby the capacity to discern mysteries otherwise
hidden from humankind, without succumbing to or exploiting them in the manner
of the Delphic oracle.66
All this was informed by tenets from multiple theological and philosophical
streams, variously credited—the posture of a savant who fought shy of aligning
himself plainly with any particular school of thought. Incessantly invoking divine
law as set out in the Pentateuch, Bodin was eager to present himself both as expert
in the views of Hebrew authorities and as discriminating between them. Thus,
on ‘the law of God’,
Philo Judaeus is admirable in his interpretations on the moral aspect (le moral),
and Leo and Maimonides for the natural (la nature), and the book of Zohar, which
is not yet translated from the Aramaic (n’est encore tourné du Caldean), for both.
(1580: fo. 66)
The statement is remarkable. Basic to the interpretation of the Hebrew cabbala, the
commentary known as the Zohar on the Torah or five books of the Mosaic law had
been ‘discovered’ by the thirteenth-century Jewish intellectual Moses de León who
had ascribed its authorship to a second-century Talmudic scholar, Simeon ben
Yohai (Hayoun 1999/2005: 27). The ‘Leo’ to whom Bodin referred at this juncture
seems, rather, to have been the Portuguese Jew Judah Leon Abravanel known as
‘Leo Hebraeus’ whose Dialoghi d’amore the Angevin had cited explicitly in the
République. It is striking that Bodin appears to have considered the mysticism of
the Zohar to have afforded a more rounded interpretation of moral theology than
the philosophical approach of Maimonides to whom he otherwise devoted a score

65 Clark 1997: 30.

66 1580: fos 21 sqq., cf. 73vo–74. On the Delphic ‘Pythia’, instance of a ‘demonic engastrimyth’,
see Ossa-Richardson 2013: 47.
186 Jean Bodin

of references. But what is egregious is his claim to a reading ability in Aramaic

sufficient to equip him to discriminate between the views of moral philosophers
and theologians.67 Remarkable too were his pronouncements on Platonist and
Neoplatonist thinkers whose ideas also informed much of his work. The Démono-
manie was peppered with Neoplatonist concepts and terminology. Injunctions of
Plotinus’s, on harmony, concord, and order, reverberated in Bodin’s overarching
thesis as well as his methodology.68 His principal bêtes noires, ‘the Epicureans’, had
the ‘foundations’ of their ideas ‘destroyed’ by the leading ‘nouveaux Academiques’,
Iamblichus, Proclus, and Porphyry (1580: sig. e j). Yet he denounced those same
Neoplatonists for having adopted and defended fundamental positions through
‘ignorance’ and ‘error’, and so for having ‘drawn ten million men into their impiety’.69
All in all, Bodin’s pronouncements in the Démonomanie combine boldness and
allusiveness to a startling degree. Early in the work he invokes ‘the opinion of
Theophrastus’ on the Aristotelian idea of the ‘common sense (sens commun)’ which
he describes as ‘the mean between the senses and the intellect’ (1580: sig. ī ij). This
tallies with his own thesis on the intermediary function of the ‘intellectual soul’
(cf. Chapter IX.3 (p. 235); cf. Clark 1997: 678). But the formulations beg a host of
questions, as Bodin must have been aware. Questions concerning the ‘active’, the
‘passive’, the ‘acquired’ intellect, their relation to the human soul, to the universe at
large and to its divine creator had figured centrally over many centuries in meta-
physical debates. Through his scholastic training, Bodin must have been perfectly
familiar with these. Indeed, within a few pages he describes how the human ‘soul
purified by a divine grace’ may achieve ‘intellectual virtues’ in a process ‘which
Averroës calls the adeption of the intellect’ (1580: fo. 9)—a reference which echoes
an attribution offered in conjunction with other philosophical sources by no less an
authority than Albert the Great. 70 Three chapters later he announces baldly that
‘God made the intellect from the soul (Dieu de l’ame a faict l’intellect)’ and credits
the pronouncement to a rabbinical source (1580: fo. 29vo). All in all, his entire
handling of such concepts in the Démonomanie amounts to a larding of arguments
with adumbrations of the debates of ancient and medieval philosophers, theolo-
gians, and jurists, presumably in order to lend weight and substance to his
contentions. The approach is far removed from the much more considered analysis
which he brought to bear upon comparable issues in his Methodus and, to a lesser
degree, his République too.
Yet, despite its polemical character, the Démonomanie occupies an important
place in the Bodinian canon. It complements and reinforces the themes of the

67 On the complexities of the Zorah see Giller 2000. The Dialoghi d’amore is cited in République

1583: 9, marginal n. 5. Cf. the reference to ‘Leon Hebrieu’ (1580: fo. 61vo).
68 For example, Plotinus, Enneads III.ii.3: ‘one must consider the parts in relation to the whole, to

see if they are harmonious and in concord with it’; again, III.2.4: ‘It is because there is order that
disorder exists’.
69 1580: fos 20, 52vo. On the presence of Neoplatonist in conjunction with Aristotelian ideas in

the Démonomanie see Vasoli 2008: 131–67, especially 136–7.

70 See Davidson 1992: 216; Hellmeier 2011: 195; and Nardi 1960: 149, on the presence of

Averroist as well as Peripatetic and Neoplatonist ideas in Albert’s thinking.

 Estates and Demons 187

République in particular, partly through heightened emphasis and partly through

antithesis (cf. Quaglioni 1999a: 33). On the one hand, it hammers home its
author’s opinion of women, a sex driven by ‘the power of bestial lust (cupidité
bestiale)’ (1580: fo. 225), naturally and properly subordinate to male authority in
household and state, and, unless vigorously controlled, a danger to social and
religious stability. It reinforces also his view of the vital role of magistrates upon
whose diligent and discerning discharge of their duty the maintenance of political
and social order depends (see Opitz-Belakhal 2008). On the other hand, the
Démonomanie presents the converse—or, better, the corollary—of the position
expounded in the République. In 1576 Bodin had set out his positive vision of the
structures of political society and the necessary functions of its component parts.
In 1580 he dwelt on the negative side of that vision, its counterpart as prompted by
his binary world view. That view would be incomplete, indeed ‘untenable without
demons and those who covenanted with them, since the presence of both was
required for its completion’ (Clark 1997: 679). But to recognize the dialectical
interdependence of good and evil was not to tolerate manifestations of the latter.
On the contrary: just as the idea of ‘purification’ coupled with ‘harmony’ had
furnished the République’s terminus ad quem, so, four years later, Bodin marshalled
rhetoric and evidence to the task of alerting his fellow citizens to the need to purify
the realm of the greatest threat to its moral and spiritual fabric, and thereby
re-establish concord. The wholehearted pursuit of such an objective was not to
be constrained by excessive scrupulousness in the use of evidence or in the
deployment of conceptual resource. And the result was what proved to be the
most immediately successful of all his works.
Between 1580 and 1616 the Démonomanie went through a total of twenty-two
editions, thirteen in the French language, three in Latin translation, three in Italian
and three in German.71 It is probable that Bodin himself oversaw the half-dozen of
the French version that appeared under the imprint of his favoured publisher
Du Puys; and he undoubtedly prepared the last of these, the revised and augmented
edition of 1587. That edition incorporates some 470 changes from the 1580
Démonomanie, and over sixty more from the original Refutation des opinions de
Iean Wier.72 From these changes it is evident that Bodin worked through his text
with a fine-tooth comb. A high proportion of them are relatively minor verbal
amendments or corrections. Some changes amplify and reinforce key philosophical
and theological points introduced in the ‘Préface’ and reaffirmed thereafter: on God
as creator, on demons’ inability to do anything without His permission, on the real
as opposed to illusory nature of their interventions’ effects, and so on.73 The
work gained in substance through the addition of examples of witchcraft cases in

71 Isaac 1985; Crahay, Isaac, and Lenger 1992: 221–84, for invaluable bibliographical details.

Three more German texts, based variously upon Bodin’s, which appeared in the course of the
seventeenth century are illuminatingly discussed by Schütz 2013.
72 These estimates together with indications of the amendments noted in this paragraph are derived

entirely from the edition by Professors Krause and Martin (2016), to whose generosity in making a
draft available to me prior to publication I am very deeply indebted.
73 For instance, 1587: fos 32–32vo, 113–113vo, 115vo.; cf. 1580: fos 30, 102vo, 104.
188 Jean Bodin

considerable numbers, with Weyer’s treatise a notable quarry. It also underwent

some ideological adjustment. At one juncture Bodin appears to credit leading
Neoplatonists with inserting the name of ‘Jesus-Christ’ into a list of ‘good demons
and other petty Gods & demi-gods’ (1587: fo. 57vo; cf. 1580: fo. 53). At another
he ends an addition of some fresh examples with the assertion that ‘the greatest
sorcerers were Priests or Monks or Jews (les plus grands Sorciers ont esté Prestres, ou
Moynes, ou Iuifs’ (1587: fo. 93vo–94; cf. 1580: fo. 85vo)). Adjustment of legal
content included addition of a few references to the Blois ordinances (for example,
1587: fo. 35vo; cf. 1580: fo. 32vo). Verbal amendments here and there seem to
have sprung from belated realizations, possibly prompted by warnings from fellow
lawyers, that even in respect of witches procedural proprieties must be observed.
Thus, Bodin qualified his original contention that in cases of that kind the evidence
even of someone convicted of perjury was admissible as long as ‘he had no mortal
hatred of the accused’, by belatedly acknowledging this to be so only ‘if his
deposition tallies with others’ offered by ‘irreproachable witnesses’.74
But, despite such modifications, the thesis itself and the vigour with which it was
argued remained unaltered. Widely disseminated, it met with a mixed reception on
the part of Bodin’s peers.75 By his fellow Angevin Pierre le Loyer, conseiller at
Angers and himself the author of Trois livres des spectres et apparitions (1586),
Bodin’s exposition was virtually ignored. By the witch-hunter Henri Boquet it was
cited at length, apart from its author’s views on the reality of lycanthropy (Démo-
nomanie 2016: 48, 50). In that connection the physician Jacques Nynauld
mounted on theological, philosophical, and other grounds an explicit attack on
Bodin’s case (Nynauld 1615). In Germany, where the latter’s work attracted much
attention, the jurist and diplomat Johann Georg Godelmann treated Bodin’s
treatise as authoritative, though not necessarily unchallengeable, throughout his
own, substantial work, especially on the legal and judicial aspects of the matter
(Godelmann 1591). That treatise was certainly challenged by representatives of the
Catholic church. Heterodox in religion if not worse, demonstrable disciple of
Machiavelli, did not Bodin merit denunciation? Accordingly, the short-lived
Pope Innocent IX (1591) instructed Antonio Possevino to expose him, a task
which the Jesuit and diplomat discharged comprehensively, finding Bodin’s
demoniacal opinions in particular to be grounded upon rabbinical sources ‘to
which he is seen so to have surrendered himself that he resorts more often to
them than to the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, the son of God’ (Possevino
1593b: 94). In the year following that attack the Démonomanie was placed on
the Index of prohibited books, thereby joining the République which had been
condemned two years previously (see Valente 1999 and 2013). But long before
then the author of those offending treatises had moved on.

74 ‘Et iaçoit que le tesmoing en autres causes soit conuaincu de pariure, & qu’il doyue estre reietté, si est-ce

qu’en ce crime il sera recue auec d’autres tesmoins sans reproche si sa deposition est conforme aux autres, s’il n’a
haine capitale contre l’accusé’ (1587, fo. 200–vo. cf. 1580: fo. 179vo; I have underlined changes in 1587).
75 On the Démonomanie’s ‘impact’ see the Krause/Martin introduction to their edition (2016: 43–52).
 VIII
‘Propositum Meum Retardarunt’

VIII.1 FOREIGN VENTURES AND

PROFESSIONAL PURSUITS

Just as Bodin’s stance at the Blois Estates on issues such as alienation of the royal
domain had done his standing with the King no favours, so too can he hardly have
commended himself to the magistrates of the Paris Parlement through his critique
of their procedures in the concluding section of his Démonomanie.1 Obstacles
which he himself had placed in his career path, whether political or curial, had
served to steer him towards the entourage of the Duke of Anjou. A promising
location for a man still eager for a role in public affairs, it was scarcely trouble-free.
As much by accident as by design, Anjou had emerged as a pivotal figure in western
European political affairs. He had concluded his agreement of August 1578 with
the rebellious States-General of the Netherlands in the course of a disorderly
expedition to Hainault. In the following summer he followed this up with proposals
of marriage to Elizabeth of England to whom, during a brief visit to her kingdom,
he professed devotion ‘so constant that nothing on earth can alter it’.2 Back in
France, he reopened with representatives of the states tortuous negotiations at
Plessis-lès-Tours which resulted in the rebels’ placing themselves by formal treaty
‘under the lordship and government of his most serene prince, the Duke of
Anjou’.3 But the Duke, though exceptionally wealthy, lacked means sufficient to
exercise such lordship. Certainly, the means at his own disposal were considerable (see
Chapter VII.2 (p. 170)). During the following year, he strove to exploit them,
demanding financial contributions from the members of his apanage and related assets
whilst seeking to recruit from elsewhere military support, including German cavalry
(reiters). But responses even from his own lordships were disappointing. Subventions
were refused by Angers itself, its people no doubt mindful of their expenditure on the
Duke’s solemn entry into their town earlier in 1578 and his followers’ riotous
behaviour at a dinner to celebrate that event (J.-F. Bodin 2002: 372). All in all,
there could be no question of Anjou’s confronting the power of the King of Spain
without substantial assistance from his brother of France or his hoped-for bride of
England—and, preferably, both, as the States themselves desired. In October 1581,

1 ‘[Various events] have hindered my plan’ (1586: sig. ᾰ ijvo).

2 Cal Salis MSS II (1888): 264: Anjou to the Queen, 19 August 1579.
3 Kossmann and Mellink ed. 1974: 226. The treaty in question, that of Plessis-lès-Tours,

was finalized on 19 September 1580.

190 Jean Bodin

having striven for a year to boost his own resources whilst cultivating allies, he was back
in England, encouraged by the Queen’s seemingly positive response to his courtship,
and with Jean Bodin now in his train.
It might be supposed that Bodin with his expertise in law and in constitutional
matters could have played a useful part in the deliberations that led to the treaty of
Plessis-lès-Tours. A critical point on which the negotiations came close to foun-
dering was Anjou’s wish that his lordship over the Netherlands be designated
‘sovereign’—the central concept of Bodin’s République where he had discussed
the case of the Netherlands at some length (see Machielsen 2013: 165–8), but a
term rejected by the Dutch negotiators as unknown in their language and irrelevant
to their body politic. Even if the Angevin attended the negotiations, however, his
presence was not recorded.4 Indeed, the position that Bodin enjoyed in Anjou’s
entourage even by 1580 is unclear. Despite the Marquis de Moy’s reference to him
as a maître des requêtes, no payment to him in that capacity nor in any other appears
in a contemporary inventory of Anjou’s household servants (Nevers 1665: I.
577–99). The name ‘Bodin’ does in fact occur in a letter concerning the Duke’s
financial affairs from one Gardet, agent of Pierre Clausse, seigneur de Marchau-
mont, a prominent member of Anjou’s household.5 Writing from Paris, Gardet
reported to Marchaumont that ‘the controller Bodin came on Sunday to [La] Fère
from the reiters who were nearly joining the army’.6 Perhaps the Bodin in question
was another of the Angevin’s namesakes, or possibly Jean Bodin’s stepson—though
it seems not altogether impossible that Jean Bodin himself, self-proclaimed expert
in matters monetary and experienced in dealing with foreign representatives, had
found a niche in Anjou’s service as a comptroller in the management of his finances.
Even so, by his own account he accompanied Anjou and the latter’s impressive
entourage to the English court as the Duke ‘had summoned me to his council (me ad
consilium accersierat)’ (1586: sig. ā ij vo). The statement tallies in part with infor-
mation relayed to King Philip II by Bernardino de Mendoza, Spanish ambassador to
the English court, that on a mission on Anjou’s behalf to Queen Elizabeth in
February 1581, prior to the Duke’s return there eight months later, Marchaumont
was accompanied by ‘Councillor Jean Bodin as his secretary’. The latter, added
Mendoza disparagingly, ‘is a great heretic, as is proved by the books he has written’.7
Secretary or comptroller, councillor, or factotum, Bodin’s reputation as a man of
learning had certainly preceded him, as he himself had taken steps to ensure. Several
years earlier he had struck up an acquaintance with William Waad, protégé of Lord

4 Griffiths 1970: 71; van Gelderen 1992: 180; Machielsen 2013: 164–5.
5 Marchaumont became chamberlain of Anjou’s household and secretary to his council. In 1581 he
served on a commission appointed by Henri III to negotiate a marriage contract between Anjou and
the English Queen (DBF VIII (1959): col. 1396).
6 Cal Salis MSS II (1888): 412: Paris, 11 August 1581.
7 CSP Simancas III (1896), Elizabeth (1580–6): 84: Mendoza to Philip II, 27 February 1581.

Mendoza’s reference to ‘councillor’ as ‘secretary’ seems to merge two posts and two people. Cf. below,
VIII.1 (p. 194); cf. also Ménage 1675: 144, writing long afterwards, and ascribing to Bodin tenure
of several offices in Alençon’s household. In a later letter prior to Anjou’s arrival Mendoza reported
that many English councillors thought he ought not to come with so large a train of followers
(CSP Simancas III (1896), Elizabeth (1580–6): 91, no. 76).
 ‘Propositum Meum Retardarunt’ 191

Treasurer Burghley and himself a secretary of some description to the English

ambassador in Paris (Oxford DNB s.n. ‘Waad’). In 1577 Waad reported from Saint
Dié that Bodin, who ‘is accompted verie lerned’ and had been ‘constrayned to retire
him selfe from the practise’ of the ‘Cyvill law . . . for his safety beinge of the Religion
and therfore his Estate is poore’, had asked him to send Burghley a newly revised
edition of ‘his booke’—evidently, the République.8 As Bodin himself recorded in
the Latin version of that work, he was alerted to the need of such a version first
through meeting in London with some ‘distinguished men’ in ‘private apartments’,
and then at Cambridge University where he ‘was convinced of the difficulty of
translating our République into English’.9 But the Angevin did not restrict himself
to exchanges with fellow scholars and the conventional duties of ducal service.
On one occasion, he took it upon himself to instruct the Queen herself in Anjou’s
presence, praising her divinely endowed ‘grace, perfection and heroic virtues’, and
then warning her of what ‘the world would say’ should the marriage proposal fail
and ‘such solemn promises’ be broken. To these effusions the Queen responded by
casting her interlocutor as a rumour-monger, calling him by implication a liar and a
fool, and so terminating the audience.10 Unabashed, Bodin on another occasion
volunteered his advice on the question of succession to the English throne, despite
discussion of the subject’s being debarred at Elizabeth’s court, as he himself
observed (1586: 723). The subject drew him into remarks incautious to the
point of recklessness at a private dinner, conceivably at Oxford, with ‘an English
lord’ where he spoke of ‘a certain Princess (vne certaine Princesse)’ as ‘heiress
presumptive (heiritiere presomptiue)’—surely an allusion to Mary Stuart.11 On yet
another occasion he addressed ‘the Queen, nobles and senators of England’ on the
subject of religious accommodation. Speaking in the wake of the execution of the
Jesuit Edmund Campion, he urged that, while there could be only one religious
truth promulgated by the word of God, a ruler of subjects ‘divided by variety of
opinion’ into numerous sects ought not to resort to force in seeking to assert a
particular religious position, however convinced such a ruler might be of where the
truth lay (1586: 483; cf. 1583: 655). That opinion may have been better-judged, at
least as far as the Queen herself was concerned. But Bodin did not record his
listeners’ reaction to his harangue.
After three months’ wooing rewarded only by some financial and other gestures
of goodwill, Anjou and his party left England for the Netherlands. Bodin and
others had advised against the expedition. In the Angevin’s opinion the Dutch were
unreliable and the Duke’s resources insufficient to sustain military intervention of
the kind envisaged (Nevers 1665: I. 558). The latter objection tallied with the view

8 National Archives, SP 70/143, ff. 47–8.

9 ‘apud Cantabriges in ipsa Academia difficili ac molesta ratione Anglis Rempublicam nostrum
interpretari comperissem’ (1586: sig. ā ij vo).
10 ‘Scavez-vous ce que l’on dira, Monsieur Bodin? Que vous aura creu un menteur, & qu’un sot l’aura

escrit’ (Nevers 1665: I. 555).

11 Jean Hotman de Villiers (1604): fos 51vo–52. Son of the jurist and political philosopher François

Hotman, de Villiers was a recent graduate of Oxford and a protégé of Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester,
chancellor of the University at the time of Anjou’s English mission.
192 Jean Bodin

he had stated in the République, that ‘never would a foreign prince be safe to
command in a foreign country unless he has garrisons and fortresses, whereas, if he
is master of the armed forces, he will be master of the state’ (1576: 724). Anjou, as
Bodin later recorded, ‘had no fortified camps, no citadels, no towns’; nor, ‘regard-
less of my pleas (for I had foreseen the future), was he able to get any’, and so ‘great
calamity ensued’ (1586: 743).12 Later he supplemented his warnings by invoking
the Netherlands’ ill-formed constitution, an issue already identified in his Répub-
lique and upon which commentators seemingly other than he had subsequently
seized in conjunction with other Bodinian ideas.13 To all appearances a ‘mixed’
state and therefore incompatible with the Bodinian model, the Netherlands
through their rebellious representatives proved unable to marshal their resources
sufficiently to supply Anjou in accordance with their treaty commitments. As for
funding from the Duke’s hoped-for inamorata in England and his apprehensive
brother in France, the sums forthcoming, though not inconsiderable, fell far short
of what he needed. In consequence, the expedition subsided into penury and
miserable failure.
It reached its nadir on 17 January 1583 in the so-called ‘French fury’ when
soldiers under Anjou’s command and allegedly on his authority attempted abort-
ively to seize several towns, including Bruges, Nieupoort, and Antwerp where the
Duke himself was stationed. Bodin was present in the town, and in a letter to his
brother-in-law at Laon14 described himself as having been ‘for the thirteenth time
within an instant of death without dying (pres vng point de la mort sans mourir)’.
‘Ie reste prisonnier’, he announced dramatically, but his was evidently a privileged
incarceration:
I can say that I have received all possible courtesies not only from my host, but also
[have been] visited by three avocats, the avocat fiscal and two councillors of the privy
council no less, who have visited and consoled me and have assured me of their
assistance.15
When in England he had, he claimed, predicted this disaster to the leading Dutch
diplomat, Philippe Marnix de St Aldegonde, and Anjou’s representative, Roch des
Pruneaux. The Duke, he argued, had been gravely misled, by advisers who took no
account of fundamental considerations, notably the cultural and religious

12 ‘Car iamais Prince estranger ne pourra estre asseuré de sa vie pour commander au pays d’autruy,

s’il n’a gardes, & forteresses: & s’il est maistre des forces, il sera aussi maistre de l’estat’ (1576: 724). Anjou,
‘cum nulla praesidia, nullas arces, nullas urbes haberet, nec meis rogationibus (qui futura prospexeram) id
effici potuisset, ingens secuta clades est’ (1586: 743). For discussion of the point see Machielsen 2013:
160. Cf. Bodin’s letter of 5 March 1582 from Antwerp to Walsingham, noting the writer’s warning to
Anjou, ‘en Angleterre que jamais prince conquerant eleu et appelle par les sugets dautruy nestoit alle sinon
auec une bonne et puissante armee’ (National Archives SP 83/15, fo. 43).
13 Cf. Chapter VI.4 (p. 141). Examples of other commentaries are discussed in Jan Machielsen’s

illuminating paper (2013) to which in what follows I have had frequent recourse.
14 Bodin to Trouillart, 23 January 1583; transcribed from BN Collection Dupuy in Chauviré

1914a: 524–9.
15 ‘ie puis dire auoir recue toutes les courtoisies qui lest possible non seulement de mon hote, mais aussi

visité de trois aduocats mesme de l’aduocat fiscal et deux conseillers du priué conseil qui me sont venus visiter
et consoler & masseurer de leur assistance’.
 ‘Propositum Meum Retardarunt’ 193

differences between the peoples concerned.16 In particular he stressed how division

of sovereignty between a prince and his subjects ‘would cause the ruin of a state
(causeroit la ruine dun estat)’. The Netherlands were especially at risk, for there
the nobility, in principle ‘the chief raison between prince and people in every
monarchy’, were ‘too few and they have neither voice nor any credit in the
estates’.17 As stated here, the principle reflected Bodin’s taste for mean terms in
political analysis whilst incorporating terminology surely designed to allude to the
position at which he had arrived in the République’s concluding chapter. Yet the
formulation distorted to a considerable degree the socio political structure so
resoundingly recommended there.18
Disillusioned with Anjou, despairing of the Netherlands and yet still drawn to
high politics, Bodin began to cast about clumsily—even recklessly—for an alter-
native engagement. Continuing to cultivate representatives of English interests and
affecting an intimate knowledge of French policies, he advised Audley Danett, an
agent of Elizabeth’s spymaster Francis Walsingham, that French support would not
have been forthcoming for recent plots allegedly laid by Esmé Stewart, newly
created Duke of Lennox, on behalf of the imprisoned Mary Queen of Scots.
According to Danett, Bodin ‘desireth my means to helpe he may be permitted to
go to England’; and yet ‘he expecteth from the Queen of Scots some greate matter for
his own advauncement which I thinke is to be her Chancellor in France’.19 Some
three weeks after the ‘French fury’ he himself wrote to Walsingham on the pretext
of wishing to make amends for having apparently offended Elizabeth the previous
year through ‘some word which I had slipped into my letter’, apparently to her.
Recent events had ‘compelled me to write to her’ again:
as you can see by the letters which I am writing to her Majesty which I send you to
judge whether it is expedient to present them to her, and if it pleases her Majesty to
send for me, I shall not fail on receiving your letter to obey her as I ought, and will let it
be understood that I have been obliged to pass into England in order to go to France to
avoid the danger I might incur if I went directly to France.20

16 He would later amplify his examination in the République of the causes of sedition and civil war

by citing issues of religious coercion and taxation in the case of the Netherlands revolt (1586: 477, 657;
cf. 1576: 504–5, 635–6, and 1583: 647, 881, that example figuring in neither of the latter two).
17 ‘il ny a plus ou fort peu de noblesse au païs et nont voix ne credit aucun aux estatz. Neantmoins cest la

principale raison entre le prince et le people en toutte monarchie’.

18 Chauviré 1914a: 528. Cf. the transcript in Gachard 1859: 465, reading ‘raison’ as ‘liaison’. Use of

the term ‘raison’ lends the observation a mathematical resonance (‘ratio’), alluding to Bodin’s thesis on
‘harmonic justice’. Compare the role assigned to the nobility in that context in the République’s
concluding chapter (see Chapter VI.6 (p. 154)).
19 Danett to Walsingham, from Antwerp, 20 January 1583 (National Archives SP 83/18, f. 30;

italicized phrases in cipher, decoded in the margin, perhaps by Walsingham). Mary’s last chancellor in
France was in fact a well-connected Paris avocat, Jean de Champhuan, sieur du Ruisseau: see Greengrass
1988: 177.
20 ‘loccasion qui sest presentee depuis peu de iours ma constraint de luy escrire, comme vous pouvez voir

par les lettres que iescri à sa maieste, lesquelles ie vous envoye pour iuger sil est expedient de les luy presenter,
et sil plaist a sa maieste me mander ie ne ferai faute, ayant recue vostre lettre de luy obeir comme ie doibs, et
feray entendre par de la que iay este constraint de passer en angleterre pour aller en france pour euiter aux
dangers que ie pourrois courir allant droit en france’ (National Archives SP 83/18, fo. 42: Bodin to
Walsingham, from Antwerp, 9 February 1583). Evidently considering the overland route to France
194 Jean Bodin

The letter evoked a reply, presumably from Walsingham, following receipt of

which Bodin set off by sea for Calais after all.21 His departure preceded by several
months Anjou’s own return to France where the Duke died the following year.
Back at Laon, Bodin had to pick up the threads of his professional career.22 One,
unreliable source of income consisted of fees for legal services to landed proprietors
in the Vermandois bailliage. In particular, he served as ‘superintendant’ of the
Marquis Charles de Moy’s substantial landholdings and other affairs, duties for
which he appears to have been poorly rewarded. Towards the end of 1587 he was
appointed avocat and counsel for Henri of Navarre’s county of Marle within that
same jurisdiction (Ponthieux 1928: 61–3). Meanwhile, he managed his own far
more modest property portfolio whilst advising his stepson on the relative returns
to be expected from office and from land.23 Improved official status came his own
way when, again in 1587, he at last succeeded his brother-in-law as procureur du roi
in the well-staffed présidial court of Vermandois, one of the more important of
France’s présidiaux, where he already served as a conseiller. The specific duties of a
procureur du roi were to control and to expedite criminal procedure: thus, in a rare
glimpse of Bodin in professional action we see him both initiating and overseeing
the prosecution of a dealer in grain and wine charged with extortion and fraud and
ultimately condemned in the king’s name to a fine of 150 écus coupled with a threat
of corporal punishment for any future offence.24
But in the meantime, Bodin had persisted in pursuing what he still saw as his
Scottish option. Increasingly out of touch and by now disenchanted with the
English regime, he wrote in 1585 to Michel de Castelnau, Sieur de Mauvissière,
recently returned from a ten-years’ embassy in England. Advising the recipient to
seek a Scottish mission, Bodin bemoaned the Scottish Queen’s incarceration,
remarked that Elizabeth should replace her in prison, and asked Castelnau to
help his stepson, Nicolas Bayard, to a post as secretary to Queen Mary, Bayard
having previously served the late Anjou in that capacity.25 A year later Walsingham
was advised from Paris that Bodin might have been privy to the Babington plot to
assassinate the English Queen, intelligence based, as the Venetian ambassador too

hazardous, he soon afterwards failed to travel to Calais by sea (CSP For. Jan–June 1583, ed. A. J. Butler
(1913): 153 (no. 138).
21 CSP For. Jan—June 1583, ed. A. J. Butler (1913): 153 (no. 138): Danett to Walsingham,

24 February 1582/3.
22 As Mark Greengrass advises me, allied bombing of Laon in 1944 devastated archives from which

so much might otherwise have been learnt of Bodin’s professional experiences there.
23 Ponthieux 1928: 64–7, 74–90.
24 Devisme 1801: 57; Devisme 1822: II. 107; Combier 1874–6: I. 435. The présidial jurisdictions

ranked below the parlements but above simple bailliages in the kingdom’s curial hierarchy. The
personnel of the court at Laon might include ‘suivant le temps’ as many as eighteen conseillers
together with a procureur and an avocat du roi, one or two présidents, a lieutenant-général, a bailli, a
chancelier, as well as clerks and other functionaries (Combier 1874–6: I. 28). The duties of a procureur
du roi are specified in articles 145–8 and 156–7 of the Ordinance of Villers-Cotterets, 1539 (Isambert
1821–33: XII (1828). 630–2; see also Doucet 1948: II. 535).
25 Chauviré 1914a: 529–30; Ponthieux 1928: 64. On Castelnau’s role as ‘the medium of exchange

for Mary Stuart’s secret correspondence’ see Read 1967: II. 376. See also Bossy 1991: 12–13 et passim.
 ‘Propositum Meum Retardarunt’ 195

informed the doge and senate, on the Angevin’s having in letters to his friends
referred in advance to the August date of the intended assassination as the ‘last day
of the Queen of England’.26 Perhaps Bodin had indulged too far his taste for
‘prophecy’ in the sense of prediction on the strength of numerical calculation;
certainly, no evidence exists to confirm his involvement with the plotters. What
do exist are indications that by the mid-1580s he had come increasingly to despair
of actual monarchs. Whereas in the original République he had observed that
absence of vice in princes might be accounted a virtue ‘although the path between
virtue and vice may be wide and spacious’, in the Latin version ten years later
the passage was altered to assert that ‘in every age tolerable princes are scarcely to
be found’.27
In the case of Henri III, Bodin’s disenchantment was evidently mutual.
Despite his previous involvement in royal deliberations and his acknowledged
expertise in relevant fields, the Angevin’s name had not figured among those
whom the King invited to Saint-Germain-en-Laye in November 1583 to par-
ticipate in an Assembly of Notables convened to consider comprehensively the
reform of the kingdom; nor among the commissioners whose inquiries into the
provinces’ condition had preceded the Assembly’s deliberations (see Greengrass
2007a: 312–64). Even at the local level further exclusion came his way: Bodin
was not one of the deputies elected from Vermandois to the estates-general that
an increasingly desperate King Henri convened to Blois in December 1588. But
those elections were powerfully influenced by the League formed in 1584 under
the leadership of Henri Duke of Guise and his brother, Charles de Mayenne,
for the defence of ‘the true and holy Catholic religion’. It was a movement
that Castelnau, to whom Bodin professed profound devotion, refused at great
personal cost to join (Castelnau 1823: 15). Bodin himself had reason to be wary
of it. In May 1587 the League’s leaders had challenged his appointment as
procureur du roi, on the grounds that he subscribed to the ‘new opinion’ in
religion. A few days later he was subjected on orders emanating from the Paris
Parlement to a search, again apparently with religious deviance in view, only
for two priests and several Laon notables to intervene on his behalf.28 In May
1588 he had escaped real danger in Paris thanks to ‘M. Dauger’, an avocat in
the Parlement, who reportedly ‘saved Bodin’s life at the Barricades’, when the
Guise-favouring populace defied the King and his troops in the ‘day of the
barricades’ (L’Estoile, 1875–83: V. 231). Yet it was not in terms of personal
resentment or insecurity that he explained the alignment to which he eventually
committed himself in Laon.

26 National Archives SP 78/16, fo. 110: Edward Stafford to Walsingham, 26 September 1586.
27 ‘Mais posons le cas que le prince ne soit point vicieux (chose qu’on repute à grand vertu: combien
qu’entre la vertu & le vice le chemin soit large & spacieux)’ (1576: 482); ‘Demus tamen vitiosum non esse
principem (rarum mortalibus ac Dei concessu tributum donum, quum vix singulis aetatibus singulis
principes tolerabiles reperiantur)’ (1586: 454).
28 Ferriére et al. eds 1905: IX (1586–8). 453; Chauviré 1914a: 77.
196 Jean Bodin

V I I I. 2 LAON AND THE LEAGUE

An important town despite its relatively modest size in population terms, Laon was
historically a major centre of commerce and religious activity. Its market hall was
reckoned one of the grandest in France. Its viticulture was celebrated: Laonnais
wines were reputed among the kingdom’s finest. Crowned by a cathedral that
ranked among France’s oldest and most notable, the town and its suburbs had
contained in the fourteenth century as many as sixty-two churches and religious
establishments, staffed by corresponding numbers of clergy. At that time the town’s
constitution had been modified through the creation of the prévôté, an office the
crown-appointed holder of which was to appoint his own council as distinct from
the previous council of elected échevins, though the town retained an elected
council in a subordinate role. So well-established did the provostship become
that Charles IX’s attempt in the reforming Ordinance of Orléans (1560) to simplify
the kingdom’s administration by absorbing all prévôtés into the bailliages was
resisted successfully by the Laonnais, as was a subsequent move to comparable
purpose by the officers of the présidial. Given his years in Toulouse, Bodin was
surely no stranger to the frequently friction-laden interaction of municipal and
royal governmental institutions. But this can scarcely have prepared him for the
circumstances which he was now to face.29
Those circumstances were recounted in the first-hand—though by no means
dispassionate—record of events compiled by Antoine Richart, an administrative
officer in the Laon financial division (élection).30 By Richart’s account, Laon’s
troubles began amid popular disturbances manipulated by ecclesiastical and other
‘fraudsters (seduisants)’, following the return of the deputies from the Estates-
general assembly in January 1589. They brought news of events at Blois where in
December Henri III had orchestrated the assassinations of Henri, Duke of Guise,
and his other brother, Louis, Cardinal of Guise. Initially it was agreed in an
assemblée particulière that the town should be preserved in ‘obedience to God and
the King’, and that anyone who ‘spoke ill of him should be reprimanded’ (Richart
1869: 10). Bodin later claimed that it was he who on that occasion had been
instrumental in making ‘all the inhabitants or most of them swear fidelity and
obedience’ to Henri III.31 But the position did not hold. According to Richart, its
opponents were already at work on persuading the citizenry to declare for the
League, exploiting the ‘timidity’ of the town’s governor, a man ‘better suited to
fawn upon ladies with his blond head of hair than to defend an important place’
(Richart 1869: 10). By mid-February, driven on by interventions from the Paris
movement, by spreaders of rumours, by preachers of ‘open sedition’, the League’s
supporters had won over a majority of the Laonnais, while ‘the King’s servants

29 Melleville 1846: I. 75, 85–6, 97, 242, 262–3, 273–4.

30 For an assessment of Richart and a perceptive examination of his book I am much indebted to
Mark Greengrass’s kindness in providing me with a copy of his regrettably unpublished paper,
‘Rumour and the Common Good’.
31 ‘ie feis iurer fidelité & obëissance au feu Roy par tous les habitans ou la pluspart’ (Lettre de Monsieur

Bodin, in Rose 1980b: 87; on the Lettre see further Chapter VIII.2 (p. 197, sqq.).
 ‘Propositum Meum Retardarunt’ 197

were without leaders’, having been rendered ‘pusillanimous’ by the governor’s

inadequacy (Richart 1869: 20). That worthy was even compelled on 17 February
to arrest those who might, or ought to, have led: Richart listed the names of some
twenty-five persons, mostly law officers of various kinds; Bodin’s was not amongst
them (Richart 1869: 35–7). By then their opponents were in effect running the
town. A month later, on 21 March, ‘the people’ were summoned to Laon’s ‘great
church’ to hear a fiery Franciscan preacher denounce King Henri in a sermon
immediately followed by an assemblée générale held ‘before the cross’. There, in the
presence of the town’s leading ecclesiastics and secular officers, Adrien de Fer,
Lieutenant-General of Vermandois, who had also been one of the deputies at the
recent estates-general, called upon the Laonnais formally to swear and to testify in
writing to the town’s adherence to the League. To this harangue Bodin offered a
veiled response. He began by designating himself ‘procureur du publicq et de lestat
royal et non du Roy’, thereby dissociating himself and his office from the regnant
king. He then attempted to indicate that responsibility for the directive to sign the
Leaguer oath and for initiating judicial proceedings against persons who the
previous night had attempted to break into the prisons lay with ‘the lieutenant
general’. But his address, ‘lengthy and confused’, was greeted with calls for a gallows
to be erected and for Bodin to be the first to mount it. Then the dignitaries present
took the required oath and arranged for signatures to be collected throughout the
town, with penalties specified for anyone who refused to sign.32
This was the immediate background to a missive written within days of the
assembly and subsequently published in Paris as the ‘Letter of a provincial lieuten-
ant general to one of France’s premier magistrates’.33 Although Bodin was by no
means averse to disguising his own identity, it seems quite improbable that on this
occasion he chose to masquerade as one of his immediate colleagues, and a
potentially antagonistic one at that. From internal evidence it is nonetheless clear
that the letter itself, as distinct from its published address, was written by him.
It constitutes a complete reversal from the position which he claimed to have
defended two months previously. This may be understandable, given the threats
with which the League’s advocates had sought their fellow townspeople’s formal
endorsement of the ‘holy union of Catholics’, and the worse threats to which the
Angevin himself had been subjected. Although the letter’s intended recipient was
not specified, he was probably the distinguished avocat Barnabé Brisson, a ‘friend
and colleague’ of thirty years’ standing. Brisson had participated in Henri III’s
Académie du Palais, had assisted significantly in the Assembly of Notables at
St Germain, and had been a member of Anjou’s entourage in England where he
had addressed Queen Elizabeth’s Privy Council.34 In January 1589 he had been
installed as premier président in the Parlement of Paris, the Leaguers having arrested

32 Richart 1869: 66–7; p. 8 for identification of the lieutenant-general, who was also a président in

the Laon présidial.

33 The letter, published under the title Lettre . . . and again as Avis d’un lieutenant géneral is printed

in Moreau-Reibel 1935: 425–30; p. 430 for identification of its recipient.

34 Barnavi and Descimon 1985: 111–13; the Privy Council address is printed in Daniel-Lacombe

1888.
198 Jean Bodin

and imprisoned his predecessor in the wake of the capital’s defiance of the King in
the ‘day of the barricades’ (May 1588). Apparently, it was to him that Bodin,
whether voluntarily or under constraint, stated his new position.
He grounded it on a combination of high principle and the evidence of events.
The delay in Laon’s signing up to the League was owing the people’s ‘natural
affection’ for their ‘sovereign Prince’, and unwillingness to believe that he ‘wished
to ruin the flower of the whole world’, namely Paris itself. But it seemed that King
Henri was indeed intent upon ‘destroying all the people’. Therefore, upon receipt
of the Parlement’s explicit directive Bodin had summoned the magistrates who had
begged him to ‘pronounce an admonition (faire remonstrance)’ to the people at
large. He had done so, and had convinced more people than he had expected to
persuade. He had cited the Ciceronian maxim, ‘let the safety of the people be their
highest law (salus populi suprema lex esto)’.35 He had pointed to the stance adopted
in unison by the parlements, France’s ‘mighty defences (fortes barrières)’. He had
argued that, as the rebellion which the King had provoked was ‘universal’, it ‘ought
not to be called rebellion at all (une rébellion universelle ne se doyt appeler rebellion)’:
rather, it was a ‘union’ formed for ‘the conservation of the religion and the state of
this kingdom (l’Estat de ce Royaume)’. Accordingly, in Laon ‘the oath of the Union
has been sworn by all the inhabitants of this town and signed in the following days’.
As for Paris, a city distinguished by fear of God and charitable exercises, God would
preserve it whilst eliminating the King and the ‘vermin’ of his courtiers (la vermine
des courtisans) who had proved themselves hypocritical violators of all rights and
laws, perpetrators of the most sordid crimes against morality and religion alike,
offences which had culminated in ‘a double parricide and even against the person of
a holy man and minister of God’. Henri III was the 63rd king of France, and
that number was ‘critical (climactérique)’, as the writer had shown elsewhere
(see Chapter VI n. 145). The claim of Henri of Navarre to succeed him was futile:
he ‘will never touch the crown for reasons which you know better than I’. But what
mattered was the judgement of God who ‘confers and removes sceptres whenever
and to whomsoever he may choose’.
For all its invocations of the Deity and its moralistic tone, Bodin’s letter seems in
the light of Richart’s account of the events of 21 March less a declaration from
conviction than an exercise in self-vindication. And notwithstanding the letter’s
tenor and substance, the erstwhile proponent of monarchy had not yet abandoned
his earlier loyalty altogether. On 4 April ‘M. Le Sueur’, leader of a delegation from
Paris’s Grand Conseil de l’Union and a président in the Paris Parlement,36 harangued

35 De legibus 3.3.8; cf. République 1583: 576, linking the Ciceronian maxim to the time-honoured

concept of ‘necessitas’ which Bodin repeatedly invoked—for example, in 1583: 140, 877.
36 Almost certainly Nicollas Le Sueur, one of the 402 avocats who took the oath of catholicity

(profession de foy) in June 1562, thirty-two of them—including Le Sueur—a week later than the
appointed day (Delachenal 1885: 407; cf. above, Chapter IV.1 (p. 94)). Le Sueur was received conseiller
in the Parlement two years later, and nominated a président in the court’s chambre des enquêtes on 4
February 1591, shortly before his appearance at Laon (Popoff 1996: 234, no. 369). For Le Sueur’s
ascent from the Paris merchant bourgeoisie to magisterial status through ‘judicious alliances (families of
Hennequin and De Mesmes)’ and astute land acquisitions, as well as his scholarly credentials, see Girot
 ‘Propositum Meum Retardarunt’ 199

a meeting of Laon’s assemblée genérale on the duty of obedience to magistrates,

those holders of ‘incomparable dignities’ ordained by God—who ‘alone removes
and establishes kings’—and charged with administering justice, ‘the soul of the
république’. Stirred by such sentiments, Bodin rose to thank the Grand Conseil and
its representatives, and added: ‘if perchance the King should afterwards be
re-established and placed afresh in authority . . . ’. But the procureur du roi was
howled down by ‘rebellious voices (mutins)’ with such menaces that ‘he did not
know where to put himself (qu’il ne scavoit que devenir ny ou se renger)’, even though
for a while he kept on trying to be heard so that he might clarify his views (Richart
1869: 80–4). By the end of the month he had cast off even a residual allegiance to
Henri III. Summoned by letters under seal to appear in his private capacity before
the Parlement for a hearing in remedy of appeal (relief d’appel), he reproved the court
usher on the grounds that a command issued ‘by the name and authority of Henri,
erstwhile King of France (nagueres Roy de France)’ had no force. He himself stood
ready to obey an order made ‘under the name and authority of Charles de Lorraine’,
Duke of Mayenne, ‘lieutenant general de lestat et couronne de France’—and now
leader of the League (Richart 1869: 131).
Of course, as agent of royal authority with particular responsibility for maintaining
the public interest in criminal matters, Bodin’s situation was deeply problematic at a
time when the normal processes of urban life were seriously disrupted. By Richart’s
account, Laon was ‘full of idleness, true justice buried (ensevelie), trade and commerce
stopped, the soundest of the inhabitants given over to malice and the inventing of all
sorts of false news’ (Richart 1869: 117). It was one thing for the League to replace
municipal office-holders with politically more reliable men, quite another to enable
them to exercise authority in the established manner de haut en bas. Alert to the
difficulties, Le Sueur delivered on 7 May another homily, to a general assembly in
Laon’s marketplace. This time his theme was the merits of monarchy ‘as approved and
implemented by the wise’, in contrast to the deficiencies of democratic and aristocratic
rule, ‘whatever the reasons and arguments of the philosophers’ (Richart 1869: 134–5).
Laon could not be properly managed by conciliar or collective means. A new governor
should be appointed, and the speaker had a suitable candidate to propose. Uproar
ensued, ‘to the great astonishment of the gentlemen from Paris’ who eventually fled
the scene. There followed, to the accompaniment of much rumour spreading and
disorder as well as military manoeuvres within and beyond the walls, days of argument
for other candidates for the governorship, or indeed for no governorship at all. Finally,
it was announced that Mayenne had appointed Le Sueur’s nominee to that office.
A few days later the Lieutenant-general De Fer departed furtively from Laon to join
the party of the King.37
Of course, at times of civil strife no less than in other circumstances, certain
interests conditioned the conduct of individuals and groups. In Laon, financial
concerns were a critical consideration. They extended to the question of public

2002: 190–1; cf. above, Chapter IV.1 (p. 51) and 2, (pp. 56–7). I am grateful to Mark Greengrass for
drawing my attention to these sources.
37 Richart 1869: 154. De Fer subsequently returned to Laon.
200 Jean Bodin

finance in time of war: how on the one hand to pay for the town’s garrison, and on
the other to contribute to the maintenance of the League’s forces commanded by
Mayenne and his noble colleagues. The problem intensified with the assassination
of Henri III in July 1589. The royal succession was now an immediate issue that
brought with it an intensification of the war. Measures were repeatedly mooted to
sequester and sell the goods of persons held prisoner in or absent from the town.
As money ran short it was proposed to manufacture coins and to requisition the
necessary metals in the shape of objects ecclesiastically or privately owned.
A goldsmith was commissioned to produce coins inscribed with the title of the
League’s claimant to the throne, Charles, Cardinal of Bourbon, as ‘Carolus decimus
francorum rex’ (Richart 1869: 235, recte 295). It was a formula with which Bodin,
who in his official capacity was one of the authorizers of the work, must have been
content, whatever his opinion of the attendant invasion of private property rights.
But the project soon ran into difficulties, and among ‘many inventions to find
money’ it was eventually proposed to sell the Lieutenant-general’s goods, though
the sum yielded thereby would be ‘a small matter’ in relation to ‘what was needed to
calm the soldiers’ cries’ (Richart 1869: 364 recte 424).
Material considerations apart, however, it was ideology above all else that drove
Laon’s fortunes and those of Bodin with them. The driver was partly political and
partly religious. As Le Sueur’s interventions had exposed, tensions were acute
between proponents here of a hierarchical, there of a collective or communal
approach to the conduct of municipal affairs. Such tensions merged with friction-
laden interaction between the several conduits of the League—aristocratic, parle-
mentary, urban. Paradoxically in the context of France at large, religion, that
inherently divisive force, furnished the supporters of the League with the tool to
compel cohesion. In its managers’ hands that instrument took various forms.
Processions increased in frequency, in the wake of the dispute over the guberna-
torial appointment and the Lieutenant-general’s departure.38 In view of the evident
need for discipline, suggestions were aired to introduce the procedures of the
Spanish Inquisition, recommended as ‘a veritable lens of rock crystal (une vraye
lunette de cristal de roche)’ for detecting heretics (Richart 1869: 123, 225 recte 285).
Greeted at first with horror, the suggestion was later revived alongside measures to
impose strict censorship, to create a ‘secret council’, and to boost preaching through
recruiting, on advice from Paris, the services of an energetic Jesuit, Maître Anthoine
of Toulouse (Richart 1869: 227 recte 287, 261). It was even proposed to establish a
Jesuit college in the town, a move dismaying to Richart who recalled the famous
action in the Paris Parlement when the Society was represented by none other than
Pierre Versoris, Bodin’s antagonist at Blois (Richart 1869: 227 recte 287, 268).
By Richart’s account, the preacher Anthoine, who was persuaded by a ‘flatterer’ to
believe that Bodin had spoken against him upon his arrival in Laon, took his
revenge by informing the ‘secret council’ that the Angevin ‘had in his house a great

38 Richart 1869: 134 sqq. On processions as vehicles of ‘civic religion’ in the case of Angers during

Bodin’s boyhood, and of popular enthusiasm for the League in Paris, see, respectively, Matz 1995;
Richet 1984.
 ‘Propositum Meum Retardarunt’ 201

many censored books (infiniz livres censurez) even of magic’, the presence of which
in the town exposed it to ‘the wrath of God’ (Richart 1869: 228 recte 288).
In consequence, the procureur du roi was summoned before the bishop, in a procedure
‘for the censorship of morals and religion’ of which he himself had previously written
with approval (République 1583: 852–3). His house was searched. In it ‘were found
some censored books which were publicly burnt’—an event ‘that caused a great
scandal because the word was throughout the town that these were all books of
witchcraft (sortilège)’. Also discovered was a sheaf of papers recording the genealogy
of Henri of Navarre, now the putative Henri IV. Fortunately for Bodin, this was
written in someone else’s hand (Richart 1869: 229 recte 289). He escaped with a
warning ‘on pain of death’ not to do nor to write anything against the League. In
Richart’s opinion, the members of the ‘secret council’ used him ‘like a stick to beat
imbeciles (comme dun baston a ruer aux noix)’: he would have done better to leave the
town at the outset of the wars as had others of his status, without seeking ‘to be a
trimmer (nager entre deux eaues) as he tried to do’, and thereby losing ‘all the honour
and reputation which he had long since gained’.39
Even so, Bodin continued to carry out his official responsibilities. In April 1593
he recovered his reputation in Richart’s eyes through his conduct in the case of
Jehan Collart, a young man whom an influential confidant of Laon’s acting
governor had falsely accused of a range of capital offences. The accused was
about to be summarily executed when the procureur du roi intervened and insisted
that proper judicial procedures must be followed (Richart 1869: 412–15 recte
472–5). The intervention was no more than his official duty; yet in Bodin’s
circumstances it was a courageous act. News had previously reached Laon that
Brisson and others had been arrested in Paris and hanged in the Place de Grève.40
Three months after the Collart case news of a critical development reached the
Laonnais: that Henri of Navarre had converted to the Catholic faith. A year later
they learned that he had entered Paris without resistance (Richart 1869: 421, 435
recte 481, 495). For Bodin it was enough. Within days he had attempted by
spreading information against the League to contrive his own eviction from
Laon. The ploy failed; so he left the town voluntarily with a companion and
made his way to the royalist side (Richart 1869: 437 recte 497). Thereby he escaped
the siege of Laon which ended in capitulation to Henri IV at the end of July 1594.
Why did Bodin change sides? There are good grounds for holding that in
relation to the question of the royal succession his behaviour in fact tallied
sufficiently, albeit tardily, with a thesis which he had developed over the previous
decade. He had summarized his conclusions in the course of a letter published in
January 1590 over his name, the so-called Lettre de Monsieur Bodin.41 In another

39 Richart 1869, 280 recte 290. There were other episodes of book-burning: for instance, Richart

1869: 273 recte 333. For Bodin’s advice on maintaining a neutral position in circumstances of civil war,
cf. Chapter VI.6 (p. 150).
40 Richart 1869: 392 recte 452; cf. the account of Brisson’s execution, on 15 November 1591 in the

Petit Chatelet, Place de Gréve, in Barnavi and Descimon 1985: 15–25.

41 I have used the text printed from the 1590 (Paris) edition in Rose ed. 1980b: 87–93. Comments

by modern scholars on the Lettre include discussions by Carta 2000 and by Jouanna 2002.
202 Jean Bodin

missive he had complained that letters were being published ‘under my name
without my knowing what they say’ (q. Moreau-Reibel 1935: 434), and it is
entirely possible that the published versions of the Lettre had been modified in
some respects.42 Its thrust was nonetheless consistent with its alleged author’s ideas
as expressed elsewhere, while its unauthorized publication testifies to Bodin’s
distinction and the credibility which League propagandists hoped to enhance by
parading him as a validator of their case. Religious considerations aside, in Bodin’s
perception the crucial element in that case was its legal basis. That was the basis
upon which sovereignty, a concept which he had defined chiefly in terms of law
and had presented as the vital component of a viable political entity, must rest.
It followed that in the interests of political stability the acquisition of sovereignty
ought likewise to be grounded in law. This was certainly so in the case of France,
pace the arguments of those who held on historical grounds that the crown was
conferred by election.43 As Bodin had repeatedly affirmed in the République,
French kings succeeded not by election nor even by inheritance, but ‘by virtue of
the law of the realm (en vertu de la loy du Royaume)’.44 So the core and bulk of the
Lettre, amounting to some 40 per cent of its content and rehearsing arguments
developed in successive versions of his masterpiece, was devoted to points of law
relating to the succession—a live issue owing to the childlessness of Henri III, and
very much so since 1584 when the death of his only remaining brother, Anjou,
marked the end of the royal line of the house of Valois and opened the door to a
successor from the house of Bourbon.
The core of the argument lay in the principle that the claim of any successor
rested on descent from Louis IX, the genearch of both houses.45 Alongside Henri of
Navarre, son of the deceased Antoine de Bourbon and irredeemably tainted
in Leaguer eyes by his Protestant alignment, the other plausible claimant was
Antoine’s younger brother, Charles, Cardinal of Bourbon. As Navarre’s uncle,
the Cardinal stood nearer than he to the genearch by one degree, in terms of
consanguinity. On the other hand, Navarre was the son of an elder son and might
therefore be preferred on grounds of primogeniture. An argument in his favour
seemed also to be available in terms of ‘representation’, a rule of private law
involving a kind of legal fiction whereby a son was deemed to ‘embody’ his deceased
father. In 1583 Bodin appeared to toy with this notion, only to settle somewhat
guardedly for the primogenital:
setting aside the terms of representation, when two cousins german, or an uncle and a
nephew, come to the crown of a King dead without male offspring, the one descended
from the eldest, even though he may be younger, will prevail over the older, even

42 Doubts concerning the Lettre’s authenticity and possibilities of its having been amplified from a

briefer original differently dated are aired by Hauser 1906–1915: IV. 139–40.
43 As François Hotman, to whom Bodin referred in another connection as a ‘most highly skilled

antiquary (antiquitatis peritissimus)’ (1586: 282), had argued in his Francogallia to have been originally
the case in France. Like Bodin, Hotman had to adjust his thinking in the light of Anjou’s death.
44 1583: 160, cf. 984; 1586: 105, cf. 724.
45 For much of what follows in this paragraph I draw upon the astute analysis by Rose 1978.
 ‘Propositum Meum Retardarunt’ 203
though he may be fifty degrees removed [from the genearch]: as can happen and has
happened in this kingdom often enough.46
Only theoretical in 1583, in the wake of Anjou’s death this could certainly be
interpreted in favour of Navarre. But by 1586 Bodin had altered his position.
Concluding a much-modified discussion of the issue replete with an array of
historical and legal references and with the imminence of succession to the French
throne now explicitly in view, he offered the opinion that
We have treated these matters somewhat more carefully on account of that succession
of the French kingdom which seems to be not far hence. If cousins german or the
children of brother or sister should wish to settle collateral inheritances by their right
with no fictitious assumption, the divisible inheritances should be shared between each
person in order. If, however, a kingdom, a duchy or a county or some other feudal
dignity should be indivisible, the elder will be preferred to the younger, even if by right
of the first-born the younger should be the head of the house.47
The differentiation was clear between the private and the public sphere. The
imperative of safeguarding the kingdom’s integrity dictated that the rule of primo-
geniture give way to that of consanguinity. By that reckoning, the Cardinal of
Bourbon had the better claim—though Navarre, of course, still stood next after
him in line of succession.
All this was rehearsed afresh and at length in the Lettre de Monsieur Bodin.
But, alongside considerations of lineage, the Lettre’s legal component extended also to
the religious issue. What mattered here was not simply that the Catholics appeared to
be the stronger party with more support than their Protestant rivals in France and in
Europe at large. The key consideration was the length of time they had been ‘in
possession’. Here the Toulouse-trained procureur du roi alluded to a combination of
three modes of vindicating acquisition of title, or dominium, all rooted in Roman law.
By referring to three years’ possession (‘en possession plus que trienniale’) he implicitly
invoked warranty of title by usucapio—that is, through possession for a certain time.
By adducing the term ‘prescrire’ he explicitly reinforced such a claim on the basis of
praescriptio longi temporis, and supplemented this in turn by citing the possessory
interdict (‘l’interdict commun’) which underwrote a possessor’s peaceful enjoyment of
contested premises until judicial settlement of a dispute. The Catholics had been ‘in
possession for sixteen hundred years (en possession depuis tantost seize cents ans)’.48

46 ‘hors les termes de representation, quand deux cousins germains, ou l’oncle et le neveu viennent a la

couronne d’un Roy mort sans enfans masles, soit quil fust esloigné de cinquante degrés, neantmoins celuy qui
est venu des plus aisnés, ores qu’il soit plus ieune, l’emportera par dessus le plus vieil: comme il pourroit
advenir, & est advenu en ce royaume assez souvent’ (1583: 994).
47 ‘Quae a nobis aliquanto accuratius disputata sunt propter eam quae proxime abesse videtur regni

Francorum successionem. Sed si sobrini aut consobrini suo iure nulla fictione hereditates obliquas cernere
velint, eodem ordine in capita partientur haereditates dividuas: sin regnum, ducatus aut comitatus, aut alia
feudi dignitas sit individua, senior iuniori anteferendus erit, etiamsi à primogenitis iunior stirpem ducat’
(1586: 733).
48 ‘qui doute que les Catholiques ne soient en possession depuis tantost seize cents ans? N’est ce pas assez

pour prescrire, quant lon voudroit debattre leurs tiltres de nullité? Ne sont ils pas bien fondez en l’interdict
commun? & qui sont les Iuges non suspects qui ne donnent arrest à leur proffict, & qui ne disent que pendant
204 Jean Bodin

Their title was therefore unimpeachable, and Navarre and his supporters ‘ought not to
trouble’ them, but should submit—as the claimant had indeed undertaken—to ‘the
judgement of the Church’ as expressed by a ‘free Council’. If he ‘wished to be crowned
King’, then by ‘making public profession of the Catholic Religion in good faith and
without fraud’ and ‘being reconciled to the Church (s’estant reconcilié à l’Eglise)’, he
would ‘assure the Establishment of his house (l’Estat de sa maison) after the death of his
Uncle’. This was precisely the course upon which Navarre seemed firmly to have
embarked by the time Bodin departed from Laon. Previously he had in effect endorsed
the Cardinal of Bourbon’s title to the throne, notably in the affair of Laon’s coinage.
The death of ‘Charles X’ in May 1590 and his nephew’s conversion released Bodin to
align himself with the latter.
The rest of the Lettre explained that the writer had ‘supported the late King’s
party’ as long as he could, given the pressures upon him, including personal attacks
by armed men. Indeed, it was he who, a month after the Guise assassinations
at Blois, had made the Laonnais ‘swear fidelity and obedience to the late King’.
So Bodin claimed; but he had had to recognize that not only he, but France itself
was being subjected to ‘a true judgement of God’ the impact of which would not
cease until ‘everyone from the greatest to the least’ had ‘been punished in his person
or in his possessions’. He foresaw
that this war will not end for five years, and that most of the nobility will fall; and that
the Kingdom will be so enfeebled and reduced that everyone will be amazed; and in the
end God, who has always loved this Kingdom and will not abandon it, will give us a
King at his pleasure, quite other than men expect.49
All this might seem ‘a dream’ or ‘an oracular and prophetic utterance (un oracle &
prophetie)’; yet it was, Bodin insisted, grounded in ‘judgement and reason’, and so
in law. It was futile to expect the leaders of the contending parties to reach some
agreement of their own accord: ‘for God is above and will do as he will’. It was ‘by
the hand of God’ that the ‘late King’, a treacherous murderer and thus dreadfully in
breach of divine law, had quite unexpectedly met his death, an event that trans-
formed the League’s rebellion into a ‘well-founded’ cause. Even so, Bodin had
himself predicted that death. He had also drawn attention in his République to
the significance of the number sixty-three for the duration of political entities
(see Chapter VI.6 (p. 153)). Now he observed that, counting from Pharamond
(the first Frankish king), Henri III was the 63rd French monarch. Utterly profligate,
that ruler had left his government in disarray, his people ‘bereft of hope for anything
other than poverty and want (Nous ne pouuons esperer que pauvreté & famine)’. And

la vuidange du procez ils ne doivent estre troublez? . . . [Navarre] ne doit point troubler ceux qui en sont en
possession plus que trienniale.’
49 ‘que cette guerre ne finira de cinq ans, & que la pluspart de la noblesse y tumbera: & que les forces du

Royaume seront tellement affoiblies & diminuees; que chacun s’en esbahira: & en fin Dieu, qui tousiours a aymé
ce Royaume & ne l’habondonnera point, nous donnera un Roy a son plaisir, tout autre que les hommes ne
pensent. Ce que ie dis semble peut estre un songe, & toutefois ie prevoy que ce sera, peut estre, un oracle &
prophetie, d’autant que mon opinion est fondee en grand iugement & raison: laquelle donne loy à toutes choses’.
 ‘Propositum Meum Retardarunt’ 205

in view of the misery and uncertainty which the last of the Valois had left in his wake,
God and God alone could determine who should wear the crown.

V I I I. 3 PEDAGOGY

God determined much else too. Ever-present in Bodin’s thinking, consciousness of

the divinity informed other subjects to which he applied his pen during the difficult
years in Laon. They included matters of education, a field that had commanded his
attention afresh, two decades after his oration to the Senate of Toulouse. In the late
1570s or early 1580s he composed, originally in French, and presented, apparently
to a gentleman of the Saxon court, A Plan for the Education of a Prince or Other
Person of Superior Ability (Consilium de institutione principis aut alius nobilioris
ingenii).50 Precedents for such effusions on the part of humanist philosophers
were ample, none better known than Erasmus’s Education of a Christian Prince
(Institutio principis christiani) written sixty years before Bodin’s contribution to the
genre. But the Angevin’s contribution had some distinctive features.
Bodin’s programme begins conventionally enough. It declares at the outset and
takes as its guiding precept that the prince should ‘be brought up in the fear of God,
from whom are derived wisdom, knowledge, judgement, memory, happiness of
disposition, bodily health, and all good things that can be wished for, in this life or
another’. He should pray, morning and evening as well as before and after meals,
emulating ‘the prayers of the Holy Prophets’. His prayers should have a fourfold
structure. First, he should beseech God for ‘forgiveness of trespasses (veniam
delictorum)’.51 He should then beg that ‘light and wisdom’ be bestowed upon
him, that his soul be infused with ‘fear and love’, and that a good angel draw him to
obedience to God’s ‘most holy laws’. Next, he should give thanks for blessings
received. Fourthly, he should offer praise in musical form, by singing, possibly with
musical accompaniment. There follows advice for the prince’s physical wellbeing
and for fellow pupils to attend him on his educational way.
Bodin’s distinctive imprint emerges from the programme’s academic content.
The prescription commences by recommending that the prince’s ‘governor
(moderator) teach him Latin vocabulary according to the order of nature (secundum
naturae ordinem)’ (Consilium A7 vo). The proposed order commences, intriguingly,
with an approximation to the sequence of creation itself: ‘darkness, light, spirit, angel,
form, matter (tenebrae, lux, spiritus, angelus, forma, materia)’, the universe with various
heavenly bodies and meteorological phenomena. Next come biological and metallic
items, followed by animal species, avian, piscine, insectile, quadrupedal. Finally, but

50 This account follows the second edition, published at Erfurt in 1603 and republished by Rose

1980b.
51 Here Bodin’s choice of terminology is interesting: delictum, signifying a wrong or offence in

law (delict), rather than peccatum, signifying a breach of religious or moral principle (sin). For
discriminating usage of these terms in the Vulgate see, from among many possible instances,
Leviticus vi.17, vii.37 (‘pro peccato atque delicto’). Noteworthy also is Paul Rose’s observation
(1980a: 56) that the plea for forgiveness includes no mention of redemption through Christ.
206 Jean Bodin

presented much more fully, come ‘Man who was created last, and woman made from
man’, the focal points of the rest of creation. Their ‘parts’ are to be ‘recounted in
minute detail (minutim enarrandae sunt)’, in terms that implicitly engage the Aristo-
telian categories: the substantial components of the human organism such as limbs
and organs, and the accidental properties of objects that render the latter sensible to
human perception—quantity ‘to the number of one hundred’, and qualities such as
colours, sounds, odours. Other classes of knowledge to be terminologically reviewed
include divisions of time, and physical attributes such as health, beauty, and their
contraries. With these the programme moves on from the material world to more
elevated considerations.
The prince has now to acquaint himself with ‘the virtues and defects (vitia) of the
soul’, both of which require attention via their linguistic identifiers. Thus, the
‘intellectual virtues’, a designation evidently intended to cover ‘vitia’ together with
‘virtutes’, include ‘obtuseness (stoliditas)’ as well as the liberal and mechanical arts
and ‘political judgement (prudentia)’, while the ‘moral virtues’ embrace ‘thought-
lessness (temeritas)’ as well as magnanimity, ‘fear (pavor)’ and ‘wastefulness (prodi-
galitas)’ as well as generosity and temperance. A series of actions follows, again a
mixture: ‘observing by scent (olere)’ and ‘lamenting (plorare)’ as well as thinking,
speaking, laughing, and other desirable functions. Having acquired the essential
vocabulary in these and other groups, the pupil must move on to learn the Latin
declensions and conjugations. He should now be equipped to read specified works
of classical literature, and above all those of Cicero whose writings and the benefits
of studying them occupy several folios of Bodin’s text. A number of subject-specific
recommendations follow: history and geography, music and arithmetic, geometry
and rudimentary astronomy to be studied by means of the sphere. As for manuals of
instruction, Bodin recommends ‘Ramus’s Dialectica, the best of all (omnium
optima)’, and his own patron Pibrac’s ‘moral verses (versiculi morales)’, meaning
that poet and courtier’s much-admired Quatrains. Finally, having reached the age
of seventeen, the prince should be sent to study laws in the academies of Italy and
Germany.
By and large this programme tallied with the proposals on education which Bodin
had presented some two decades previously in his Oratio to the ‘senate and people of
Toulouse’. Broad-based instruction, humanist-style, continued to furnish his
model: a comprehensive approach, embracing all branches of knowledge, dialectic-
ally ordered, and with mastery of the Latin language at its core (cf. Chapter III.3).
But there was some shift of emphasis. Whereas religious considerations were
sufficiently conspicuous in the earlier presentation, spiritual objectives moulded
by fear of God were now paraded prominently as the discourse’s termini, both a quo
and ad quem. Whereas preparation of pupils for public service had been stressed to
the Toulousains as a definite benefit of the programme, comparable advantages for
their prince were not urged upon the recipients of the later Consilium. What the
latter prescription did spell out in much greater detail was a curriculum grounded in
the linguistic or verbal foundations of knowledge. The key to unlocking every portal
to learning was the relevant Latin terminology, which the pupil must assimilate
and then ponder at every turn. It was a doctrine to be followed not merely by
 ‘Propositum Meum Retardarunt’ 207

its proponent’s clients, but by his most intimate associates. In 1586 Bodin recom-
mended it afresh, writing from Laon to one of his nephews and describing how he
had applied it to his own two sons: Hélie, named after the prophet Elijah, alleged
founder of the Carmelite order where Bodin’s own education had begun
(cf. Chapter I (p. 4)); and Jean, his father’s namesake.52
He had begun to instruct them from the ages of four and three respectively,
luring them ‘with nuts and cherries’ to learn the Latin names of everything they
saw. Then, as they responded well, he turned their attention by the same procedure
to cosmic and natural phenomena, to spatial dimensions and geometric forms, to
‘virtues and vices’. Every day ‘before dinner’ they repeated what they had learned
and did some Latin grammar. During dinner their father ‘spoke Latin with them’,
and after dinner they were required ‘to practise handwriting (façonner la main)’.
Having acquired all these skills, they learned each day in both French and Latin a
fresh ‘moral sentence’ from a collection of three hundred which Bodin had
compiled for them from ‘the best authors in verse and in prose’. Having mastered
these, they studied and translated Cicero, and so progressed to ‘six hundred
questions in Latin without French on all the beauty of nature’. And amid all this
their minds were perpetually exposed to the religious imperative: for their daily
practice in grammar, that prime determinant of an ordered mind, was to be
prefaced by the refrain, ‘I yearn ardently to praise the excellent and most powerful
maker of the universe, for his greatness’.53
Two years later the ‘moral sentences’ appeared in print with the title Sapientiae
moralis epitome, and under the imprint of the Du Puys publishing house.54 The
volume consisted of 210 Latin maxims, fewer than the three hundred sentences
previously mooted. Each maxim was accompanied by a free French translation in
rhyming couplets. According to the title page they had been ‘collected by Hélie
Bodin, son of Jean (Ab Helia Bodino Io. F collecta)’, and were now dedicated ‘to the
youth of Laon’. It is, of course, improbable that the twelve-year-old Hélie saw this
seventeen-page volume through the press. On the other hand, he and his brother
had been set to memorize the sentences in both Latin and French, and had also
been given practice in translating Cicero. While the likelihood is that their father
had prepared the couplets for mnemonic purposes, his sons may well have had
some input. Intent though he certainly was upon instructing his offspring and
intellectually ambitious for them, his approach was that of an affectionate parent
rather than a domineering pedagogue, as is evident from the tone of his Lettre à son
neveu. So, in some measure, the learning operation that yielded the ‘Epitome of
moral wisdom’ may be regarded as a collaborative venture between father and sons.
In it he also showed himself a practitioner of what he preached. Over two decades
before, he had urged the merits of collecting loci communes especially as mnemonic

52 Épitre (1586), ed. Rose (1980b), 3–4, For Bodin’s children see Ménage 1675: 147. On the

significance of Élie for the libertins spirituels associated with the circle of Marguerite de Navarre and
denounced by Calvin, see Demerson 1974.
53 ‘Ego cupio vehementer laudare opificem mundi optimum et potentissimum omnium pro dignitate.’
54 Paris (1588), ed. Rose 1980b: 19–31.
208 Jean Bodin

aids, a procedure manifest in his own working methods (cf. Chapter III.2 (p. 34)).
Widely implemented, such procedures had long since yielded throughout Europe
florilegia of various kinds and various dimensions (see Blair 2010: 124 sqq.). The
present collection was a sufficiently modest example of the genre. It was nonetheless a
product of its principal compiler’s lifelong reading; and, given the importance of its
initial recipients to him, it may reasonably be held to encapsulate his ethical priorities.
The sentences are grouped into thirty sets each containing seven maxims—a
number the significance of which Bodin had discussed at length in his République.55
Each set is headed by an observation that indicates its particular content and its
status in the overall schema, and is then illustrated by the set’s other components.
Thus, the opening set begins by announcing that ‘nothing is more praiseworthy
than the instruction of youth (Nil prius est disciplinae puerilis honore)’, a proposition
then supported with such adjurations as, ‘Let him inspire tender minds with the love
of virtue (Imbuito teneras mentes virtutis amore)’. Successive sets contend, progres-
sively, that virtue is engendered by nature, itself the work of God, but moral failings
stand in the way of attaining it. Health and friendship are recommended. Wealth is
preferable to poverty, but avarice is denounced. Peace is preferable to war, and civil
war unjustifiable: ‘there can be no pretext for war against one’s own country (in
patriam nulla esse potest occasio belli)’. While liberty is better than servitude, the latter
is better than anarchy; in this connection, the Ciceronian maxim salus populi
suprema lex is invoked once again (cf. Chapter VIII.2 (p. 198)). Physical appetites
are to be controlled. The four cardinal virtues—temperance, courage, prudence, and
justice—are presented in that order of precedence; yet charity, one of the three
theological virtues, surpasses justice, and is followed by comment on faith, though
the third, hope, does not figure explicitly in the series. Wisdom is preferred to
charity, and contemplation to action—a judgement reaffirming the position assert-
ed so emphatically in the République (cf., for instance, Chapter VI.6 (p. 157)). Even
so, it is with religion, defined as a ‘turning by the created being to the veneration of
the creator (aversio a creatura ad cultum creatoris)’, that the sentences reach their
climax. Even religious observance as such is subordinate to divine law (‘praestat lex
divina religioni’); and ‘no one grasps the law unless light has shone forth upon him
(nemo capit legem nisi lux effulserit illi)’. Contemplation and illumination are thus
paramount; and the culmination of the entire series is the eternity that is God.
Classical poetry figures prominently among the sources of these maxims. In
humanist circles, many of the lines quoted would have been abundantly familiar.
From Ovid come adages with scriptural resonances: the complaint that ‘the poor
man is everywhere despised’;56 the injunction, echoing Mosaic law, ‘Do not
deceive, let your hand be withheld from murder’.57 Horace proves a copious, and
sometimes a gloomy quarry. The student is warned, ‘You may drive out nature with
might and main, yet it will continually return’.58 The hopeful maxim, ‘Good men

55 See Chapter VI.6 (p. 153): the number ‘set apart by the Hebrews as holy’.
56 ‘pauper ubique iacet’ (sentence no. 51): Ovid, Fasti, I.218; cf. Proverbs xiv.20.
57 ‘fraus asbsit, vacuas caedis habete manus’ (no. 159): Ars amatoria, I.642.
58 ‘naturam expellas furca, tamen usque recurret’ (no. 9): Horace, Epistulae, I.x.24.
 ‘Propositum Meum Retardarunt’ 209

hate to sin owing to their love of virtue’, is immediately paired with its antithesis.59
Further gloomy aphorisms are adapted from major writers: for instance the obser-
vation that ‘good things are considered evil, and base things beautiful’.60 From
other writers, less popular though highly reputable, come lines that chime plainly
with Bodin’s Weltanschauung: among them, Claudian’s ‘the highest light permits
no secret to remain hidden’.61 Other observations implicitly challenge positions
which he steadfastly rejects. The Epicurean denial of divine government of nature
gets short shrift: ‘God is the originator of nature, man of art’.62 What comes through
strongly, in the ordering of the sentences and especially in the French translations, is
their compiler’s religious preoccupation, a feature far less evident in the Lettre à son
neveu. And yet, the precise orientation of his thinking remains unclear.63 Although
neither the name of Christ nor the key Christian concept of redemption figures in the
Sapientiae, the sentences culminate in formulations tinged with a Christian and even
a Protestant colouring: that faith is ‘the highest point of law’, that divine law is ‘the
holy law of grace (la sainte loy de grace)’ (nos 190, 196). Indeed, a Thomist might
have put together the final set with its summary characterization of the nature of
eternity and of God: ‘one, simple, infinite, incorporeal’.64 Even in instructing his
sons, Bodin’s approach in religion, insofar as he chose to disclose it in the years of the
League, remained eclectic.

59 ‘oderunt peccare boni virtutis amore’ (no. 80); ‘oderunt peccare mali formidine poenae’ (no. 81). Cf.

Horace, Epistulae I.xvi.53.

60 ‘et bona quae mala sunt & turpia pulchra putantur’ (no. 19). Cf. Plato, Minos, 316a–b: ‘pulchra

quippe ut videtur, ubique pulchra putantur: turpia contra, turpia: non autem pulchra turpia, vel turpia
pulchra’.
61 ‘lux altissima fati occultum nihil esse sinit’: Panegyricus de quarto consolatu Honorii Augusti, 74–5.
62 ‘au[c]tor naturae sit Deus, artis homo’. Cf. Lucretius, De rerum naturae, II.1090–1104.
63 Cf. Rose 1980a: 58–62, arguing that the ‘Consilium and the Sapientiae reflect the accelerating

pace of Bodin’s Judaising’.

64 ‘est unum, simplex, immensum, corporis expers’. Cf., for instance, Aquinas, Summa theologiae, Ia,

qq. 3, 7, 11, considering the nature of God in precisely these terms. On the infrequency of occurrences
of Christ’s name, cf. the case of Montaigne as analysed by Alain Legros 1996.
 IX
Vita Contemplativa

I X .1 A SHIFT OF FOCUS

Some four months after Bodin’s escape from Laon, Henri IV entered the town.
Throughout the siege this affluent commercial and administrative centre, located
on a site reputed to be one of the strongest in France and with impressive ramparts
to protect it, had suffered severe disruption and discord together with damage,
disease, and mounting deprivation. The disruption sprang partly from the unruly
behaviour of soldiers introduced by the League’s national leader, Charles de
Mayenne, to reinforce the citizens’ garrison and to keep them loyal to his cause.
It sprang also from mounting opposition to the local Leaguer faction driving
resistance to the Bourbon succession. Spies were hanged, prominent citizens
imprisoned, processions held and public assemblies harangued, all for the purposes
of shoring up that resistance and bringing the increasingly unwilling to heel. But
attempts to inspire them through rhetoric and invoking heroic precedents—such as
Josephus’s account of Jewish resistance to Roman rule—drew, finally, the response
that the Laonnais had no wish ‘to follow the Jews in their stubbornness (nensuivre
les Juifs en leur oppiniastreté)’ (Richart 1869: 472–3). With fever spreading, food
supplies diminishing, costs rising, and royalist batteries inflicting more and more
damage upon walls and dwellings, articles of capitulation were at last agreed. The
costs of rebellion proved indeed to be heavy. The collective sum incurred during
the siege and including financial penalties imposed in its immediate aftermath
amounted, according to Richart, to over 55,000 écus, roughly equivalent on the
basis of the official rate set in 1577 to 165,000 livres tournois. The cost to private
individuals might be more onerous still. Following the surrender, persons who had
absented themselves or been evicted from the town returned to find their houses
stripped bare of furniture (Richart 1869: 478). In all probability, one of them was
Bodin. Whether or not he kept his furniture, there is no reason to doubt that
he retained his office and resumed his official duties, though in the circumstances he
had to step gingerly. The procureur du roi, was careful to refrain from opposing the
Laonnais’s resolve to elect a procureur syndic to represent their interests to the king.
Even so, a few months after Laon’s capitulation Bodin’s name appears as counter-
signatory on a pair of leases, most likely in his continued capacity as administrator
for the county of Marle (Richart 1869: 507; Combier 1874–6: I. 28).
But while Bodin’s professional activities continued, his career ambitions were
exhausted. Now his preoccupations lay increasingly with scholarly pursuits, despite
his declaring to a colleague in the Paris Parlement, that he wished he had ‘never
 Vita Contemplativa 211

published so many books’.1 In 1595 he was writing to congratulate Pierre Ayrault

of Angers on the latter’s study of paternal authority and to offer its author comment
peppered with references to Roman law and public offices.2 Apart from his
unflagging urge to parade his learning, his motives in writing were twofold.
Ayrault’s arguments endorsed the principle of the rights and authority of the
paterfamilias within the family which Bodin had advanced as basic to his thesis
in his République (cf. Chapter VI.3, (p. 131)). Secondly, he welcomed Ayrault’s
book as an explicit attack on ‘those cheats (ces pipeurs)’ the Jesuits. One of them had
‘tried to make me lose my life in this town’, a statement painfully close to the truth
(cf. Chapter VIII.2 (pp. 200–1)). Another, whom he identified by name, had
impugned his ‘honour’. This was Antonio Possevino whom Innocent IX had
asked in 1591 to confront and denounce the circulation of ideas which, in the
estimation of that short-lived pope, threatened to undermine the integrity of
Christendom.
Possevino had identified three prime targets, all supposedly closet Machiavellians.
The selection placed Bodin in interesting company. Machiavelli apart, it included
two leading lights of the Huguenot movement: the diplomat and intellectual
Philippe du Plessis Mornay, and the soldier François de La Noue. Mornay had
more than once masqueraded as a Catholic;3 but in his De la vérité de la religion
chrestienne,4 the work singled out for censure, he had written vigorously enough
against Jews and ‘Mahumedistes’ as well as ‘Epicureans’ and ‘atheists’ whilst striving
neither to attack the Roman church nor explicitly to defend the reformed faith.
La Noue had in fact declared that the ways of Machiavelli led to ‘dishonour and
grief ’. However, he had also warned against the interventions of popes, the pro-
nouncements of Catholic clergy, the dangers that emanated from Spain; and early in
his work he had recommended Bodin’s Démonomanie and the République (La Noue
1587: 9, 18, 39, 133). Both of those books, together with the Methodus, had
attracted Possevino’s searching attention. The Démonomanie had got off relatively
lightly: witches, after all, deserved exposure and punishment. But while Possevino
found that Bodin had often contradicted himself, he also found that the Methodus
and the République exhibited discreditable features in common. Their author drew
far too frequently upon Protestant writings as well as rabbinical sources. In contrast,

1 Letter (? 1595) to Roland Bignon, in Chauviré (1914a), p. 534.

2 De la puissance paternelle, contre ceux qui, sous couleur de religion, vollent les enfans à leurs pères et
mères (Tours: first published 1589, second edition 1593). Bodin’s letter is reproduced in Ménage 1675:
249–50. A better lawyer than Bodin, Ayrault was also the author of well-regarded works on
jurisprudence and on criminal procedure, published respectively by two of Bodin’s publishers,
Martin Le Jeune and Jacques Du Puys: De la nature, variété et mutation des loix, prefacing a second
edition of François Grimaudet’s study of local variations in customs of inheritance (1567); and
De l ’ordre et instruction judiciaire (1576) which linked French with classical judicial procedure.
3 For instance, in Mornay 1576, addressing the Estates-general of Blois with arguments,

essentially on pragmatic grounds, for accommodation of Protestants.

4 Written in the Netherlands and published at Antwerp in 1581, the year of Anjou’s first and brief

incursion to the Provinces, when Mornay was serving as Henri of Navarre’s ambassador (Patry 1933: 59).
Mornay himself produced a Latin translation of the work: De veritate religionis Christianae, a title
inaccurately recorded by Possevino as De perfectione Christiana.
212 Jean Bodin

he was ignorant of Catholic doctrine and paid no heed to the benefits brought to
Christendom by the Roman Church. Indeed, ‘a serpent skulks in this De Republica
book of Bodin’s (latet ergo serpens in istis de Republica Bodini libris)’ (Possevino
1593b: 108): he had challenged not only papal authority, but Christianity itself.
Invoking the law of nature often enough, he nowhere called to mind Christ’s law of
grace. All too plainly, he ‘knows more about ancient law than the grace of the New
Testament (Sed verum est, Bodino plus sapere veteris legis quam novum gratiae
Testamentum)’ (Possevino 1593b: 114–15). The implication was plain: Bodin
would be well advised to stay in his juristic sphere and leave religious matters to
persons equipped to expound them.5
But Bodin had no intention of taking such advice. He had already applied his
mind not only to natural law, but to nature itself, and had instructed his sons
accordingly. The ‘six hundred questions in Latin without French on all the beauty
of nature’ which he had compiled for them marked the culmination of an educa-
tional programme with a clear moral and religious orientation (see Chapter VIII.3).
Those questions heralded an encyclopaedic survey on which he had been at work
since at least 1590, the year when ‘we had two eclipses’.6 Six years later a Lyon
printer, Jacques Roussin, was engaged to publish the results in Latin as the
Universae naturae theatrum (Theatre of Universal Nature) and to procure a French
translation as well.

IX.2 THE THEATRUM

Roussin’s engagement was no doubt owing to the support of a Lyon nobleman and
fresh Bodin patron, Jacques Mitte de Chevrières, to whom in a dedicatory epistle
Bodin explained the purpose of his work.7 Its subject was ‘the science of nature’;
and ‘the science of nature has no other author and master than God himself ’
(Theatrum 1596a: sig. ā.2vo). God, of course, was also the author of nature, the
‘craftsman (opifex)’ as Bodin described him throughout his text. Science and subject
matter were thus conflated into what constituted in effect a theological vehicle.
This was the ‘divina historia’ which Bodin had announced at the opening of his
Methodus thirty years before. It was now presented as a ‘theatre’ wherein ‘we shall
contemplate the majesty, power, goodness, wisdom of the creator (auctor)’ (1596a:
sig. ā.3vo–4). In such a field, contemplation with the aid of reason was of the
essence: in it, ‘the duty of a philosopher is not to pull well-known things crudely

5 Possevino 1593b: 87–121. See also Possevino 1593a, devoting some twelve and a half pages of

vol. 1 to detailed criticism of the same three works of Bodin’s. For a carefully researched and valuable
account of Bodin’s reception in Italy see especially Valente 1999 and 2013.
6 ‘hoc anno 1590, quod haec scribimus, duas habuimus eclypses’ (Theatrum 1596a: 560). Records in

fact indicate four eclipses in that year, two lunar and two solar, one of the latter being total—though it
may be that only two of these were visible from Laon.
7 On Chevrières see pp. 18–19 of Blair 1997, a magisterial work to which, in common with all

students of Bodin’s Theatrum, I am deeply indebted—as will be evident from the pages that follow.
Except where otherwise stated, all references to the Theatrum are to the 1596 Latin edition.
 Vita Contemplativa 213

together, but to proceed by reasons’ (1596a: sig. ā.4). Further, ‘unless the science of
laws were referred back to nature it would be a science of injustices, not of the right’
(1596a: sig. ā.2vo). Bodin had therefore abandoned his project of universal law,
a field he now recognized as full of imprecision, error and uncertainty tantamount
to labouring blindly in a ‘labyrinth’, and had turned his universalizing intentions
instead to nature where ‘nothing is uncertain’ (1596a: sig. ā.3). And through this
work he aspired to ‘banish’ and to ‘bury in oblivion’ the very memory of ‘all the
calamities and injuries’ of the civil wars (1596a: sig. ā.5). In contrast to all that
disorder, the title ‘theatre’ implied harmony, beauty; it signified an aesthetically
pleasing repository of knowledge sequentially arranged, and a mnemonic resource
as well, appropriately enough in view of the work’s educational forerunner.
Yet such a purpose, however large in scope and grand in ambition, was scarcely
original. By the time Bodin wrote, ‘theatre’ was a sufficiently hackneyed meta-
phor,8 even though the profound seriousness that underlay his use of it is indis-
putable. More time-honoured still was the encyclopaedic approach to disseminating
knowledge of the natural world and related subjects. Traceable amongst Latin
writers to Varro, Seneca and above all Pliny the Elder, it was practised for centuries
thereafter by authors who relied mainly on compiling extracts from ancient texts,
but not infrequently combined these with data independently or even experimen-
tally accumulated, and presented their findings with an insistent eye to the moral,
symbolic, and mythological implications of the species they copiously described.9
No less venerable was natural theology in the fullest sense of that term: knowledge of
God not as received through revelation, but as pursued by means of reason focusing
upon nature itself. It was reason, as Cicero had explained through the Stoic character
Lucilius Balbus, that gave human beings an affinity with the divine; and it was
reason brought to bear upon ‘all parts of the world’ that disclosed how those parts
‘could not maintain musical harmony amongst themselves unless they were held
together by one divine and perpetual spirit’ (De natura deorum II.vii.18–19).
Scholastic thinkers had found more problematical the quest for disclosure of the
divine by such philosophical means. Could knowledge attainable through the
exercise of reason be equated with the truths of revealed theology? If not, ought
one simply to allow that knowledge was not univocal, that truth itself was dual;
or might one follow Aquinas in recognizing metaphysics as the means to bridge the
seemingly fundamental difference between knowledge naturally acquired
and theological knowledge? But scholastic niceties were not to everyone’s taste,
especially in humanist circles. In Bodin’s day the classical position straightforwardly
construed continued to attract minds as cultivated even as Du Plessis Mornay’s who
in the very work that had drawn Possevino’s fire declared: ‘We have as object of our

8 For a wide-ranging survey of contemporary uses of the metaphor see Blair (1997: 153–79).

See also Bernheimer 1956; Goyet 1996. And cf. above, Chapter IV.4 (p. 68).
9 See M. de Boüard 1930; brief comment in Vasoli 2008: 171,on ‘encyclopaedism’ in the later

sixteenth century. Examples of the latter are the meticulous descriptions of 1,300 plants in Andrea
Cesalpino’s De plantis libri XVI (1583), and the vast biological and mineralogical collections with
associated publications of Ulisse Aldrovandi (1522–1605)—both of them much more than
enthusiastic accumulators of data.
214 Jean Bodin

faith the Author of Nature’ who ‘is also reason and truth themselves’; and as ‘there is
not nor can there be reason nor truth except in him’, then ‘what is true and
reasonable in Nature cannot be false in Theology’.10
To his dedicatory epistle Bodin added another introductory statement, ‘the
Design of the entire work (Propositio totius operis)’. Here he announced as his
way into the subject a route validated ‘by common consent (summa omnium
consensione)’: to proceed from the easier to the more difficult, from the simple to
the complex, from the known to the unknown. It was a formula that echoed in
diluted and more readily comprehensible style Aristotle’s repeated, much-pondered
and obscurely worded dicta on how to set about intellectual learning—a directive
expressed more openly later in the work.11 But the Propositio promised more
than that. In introducing a work intended to describe the entire universe whilst
demonstrating its inherent order, Bodin was at pains to explain in some detail how
he had ordered his material in accordance with the simple/complex formula. He
had identified ten ‘hypostases’, a term of Greek origin, variously used by different
philosophical schools, but most commonly by Latin philosophers and theologians
to signify ‘substance’.12 Bodin’s ‘hypostases’ are the substantive links in a chain that
begins with prime matter, continues via the elements to deal in turn with plants,
dumb animals, and humankind, and so arrives at intermediate and celestial
beings—angels with, ultimately and beyond them, God. In fact, the material was
organized into five books which diverged from the hypostases’ ascending sequence.
Book I considered the ‘first principle of nature’, namely God. However, it could be
argued that to begin there was to comply with the Aristotelian pedagogic prescription
on grounds rooted in Augustinian and Thomist thought, that ‘the principle of nature
is the simplest of all (quatenus naturae principium est omnium simplicissimum)’.13
Books II and III would deal with the elements, plants, and animals, while Book IV
was devoted to the soul. Book V would arrive at the heavenly bodies and finally, as
Bodin announced with satisfaction, would return to ‘the first Principle, author of all
things’. Comprehensive though all this might seem, he had taken care to confine his
treatment to ‘problems not previously investigated; or, if investigated, not explained;
or if explained, not settled by certain arguments’.14 The claim was surely disingenu-
ous. Few problems had been more warmly debated in scholastic circles than the three
key issues which Bodin announced in concluding his statement: the ‘principles and

10 Mornay 1585: sig. ĉ. Cf. Hugues Doneau in his commentaries on the civil law: ‘nature is God’s

silent law (natura, id est lex Dei tacita)’, quoted in Thireau 1997: 124.
11 1596a: 3, 226–7. The famous distinction between things ‘prior by nature’ and ‘prior in relation

to us’ (Aristotle, Posterior analytics, 72a1; cf. Physics, 184a16–18). For explicatory comment see
Couzinet 2013: 52. And cf. above, Chapter IV.4 (p. 71).
12 From Greek ‘ὑπόστἅσις’, adapted by Plotinus and applied by early Christian writers to

distinguish the three persons of the Trinity. But cf. its use in that connection by Aquinas, preferring
‘subsistentia’ to ‘substantia’ on the grounds that the latter term ‘is ambiguous amongst us (aequivocatur
apud nos)’ (Summa theologiae, Ia, q. 29, a.2 resp.2). See also Lalande 1926: 427–8.
13 On Aquinas’s position vis-à-vis God’s simplicity and its antecedents among Christian thinkers

see Stump 2003: 92 sqq.

14 ‘problemata . . . quae non antea quaesita sint: aut quaesita, sed non explicata; aut explicata, sed nullis

certis argumentis confirmata’ (1596a: 7).

 Vita Contemplativa 215

causes of nature’, the ‘beginning and end of the world’, and ‘the soul’. What he
undertook was to make them in his treatment ‘clearer and easier’. And, in particular,
he offered to pay closer attention than his predecessors in the field to ‘causes’ (1596a:
6–7)—the analytical tool of Aristotelian provenance upon which he had relied so
heavily in his Juris universi distributio.15
Bodin’s dependence upon Aristotle did not end there. The framework of his
inquiry was fundamentally Aristotelian modified from other philosophical or
theological traditions, Prominent components of that framework were the meta-
physical concepts of form and matter, deployed rather in line with the Stagyrite’s
usage than with Plato’s idealist theory of forms. The latter he explicitly rejected, in
terms evocative of nominalist denials of real existence to universals: ‘the Ideas in us
are nothing other than notions of universals collected from singulars from which
principles, demonstrations, sciences and conceptions are derived’.16 His implicit
endorsement of Aristotle’s position was attended by characteristic criticisms of the
Philosopher and without the qualifications with which the latter had surrounded
them in his own debates with his master.17 Even so, throughout his treatise Bodin’s
discussion invoked ‘principles, causes and elements’, the very topics which Aristotle
had specified at the opening of his Physics (184a10). With the Aristotelian categories
of ‘substance’ and ‘accident’ he made persistent play, his debates with other
philosophers at key junctures, including the Philosopher himself, revolving around
his application of them (for example, 1596a: 38, 118, 258, 445–7). The questions
he announced at the outset of his opening chapter—quid est, quale est, cur sit
(1596a: 12)—were ultimately of Aristotelian provenance. 18 And time and again he
insisted as plainly as Aristotle himself upon the importance of the mean or middle
ingredients of sets of phenomena, components which served indispensably as
‘universal bonds’ in the coherent system of God’s creation.19 These concepts
furnished the scaffolding of Bodin’s arguments, indispensable to his thesis’s
construction. By the time he wrote they had come to feature so commonly in
philosophical discussion as to require no acknowledgement of their source except
for purposes of dissent. Bodin dissented more ostentatiously than most; but his
insistent attacks in the course of his treatise upon particular Aristotelian

15 Cf. Aristotle, Metaphysics, 982a2: ‘wisdom is knowledge about certain causes and principles’.
16 ‘in nobis vero Ideae sunt nihil aliud quam notiones universorum ex singulis collectae, unde principia,
demonstrationes, scientiae, atque notiones deriuantur’ (1596a: 631). Cf. Chrom Jacobsen 2000: 60–71,
linking Bodin’s view of universals rather with Scotist than with nominalist positions.
17 For Aristotle the forms underlay physical realities discernible by the senses, whereas for Plato they

existed perfectly in an ideal world. Bodin lavished strictures upon Aristotle for, amid much else,
equating ‘form’ with no fewer than three of the four causes (1596a: 14, citing Aristotle, Physics II
192b9–200b7).
18 The questions as formulated were variations of scholastic adaptations of the four objects of

inquiry specified by Aristotle in Posterior analytics, 89b24. Typically, Bodin strove to dissociate himself
from the Aristotelian prescription by declaring, ‘there is no fourth question (quartum nihil est)’. Cf.
Blair 1997: 61; also Blair 1997: 134.
19 See, most notably, 1596a: 226–7: examples of ‘vincula universitatis’ following reiteration of the

need to work from the known to the unknown, from the simple to the complex. Cf. Posterior analytics,
90a5–7: ‘in all our searches we seek either if there is a middle term or what the middle term is. For the
middle term is the explanation, and in all cases that is sought.’
216 Jean Bodin

observations ought not to be allowed to conceal his dependence upon their

originator for the constructional apparatus of his discourse.20
He presented that discourse as a dialogue, of a peculiar pedagogic type. Inter-
rogatory in style, it did not involve multiple characters and viewpoints on the
Socratic or the Ciceronian model; and only occasionally did it seek to emulate the
rhetorical genre of balanced exchanges much favoured in contemporary literary
circles (see Vulcan 2000; cf. above, Chapter II.2 (p. 12)). The Theatrum opens with
one of the two characters, Theorus, asking the other, Mystagogus, for guidance ‘in
this earthly city (in hac mundana civitate)’ so that ‘I may understand all things,
higher and lower, first, last and intermediate, and the causes and consequences of
them all (ut supera, infera, prima, ultima, media, omnes denique rerum omnium
causas, earumque consecutiones intelligere possim)’ (1596a: 10). Mystagogus is ‘full of
learning’ gained ‘by infinite labour’; and yet, Theorus is no nescient follower. His
very name, derived from the Greek θεωρία, implies that he is himself a contem-
plator. From time to time he challenges Mystagogus’s pronouncements. Thus, he
debates over several pages a vexed yet fundamental epistemological proposition
rooted in Aristotle, that ‘the intellectual soul perceives singular things by means of
the senses and thereby grasps universals (animam singularis percipere a sensibilis ex
iisque universalis colligere)’ (1596a: 473). At various junctures, his questions are
vehicles for the opinions of philosophers or schools on issues where Mystagogus
wishes to present a contrary view. For instance, Theorus’s request for enlighten-
ment as to whether ‘a natural and sensible body’ and a ‘mathematical body’ can
each subsist of itself is instantly dubbed ‘an ancient opinion of the Academics
(Academicorum opinio vetus)’ and ‘to a high degree fallacious (fallax admodum)’
(1596a: 82). ‘This is an ancient error of theirs’, Mystagogus bluntly replies to
Theorus’s question, ‘Why do the Academics, the Peripatetics, and Averroës, prince
of Arab philosophers, teach that air is warm and humid?’ (1596a: 155). And when
Theorus draws his attention to ‘the precept that things emptied of matter are
changed into a higher form’, Mystagogus dismisses it as ‘Proclus’s utterly fallacious
opinion’ (1596a: 472).
But, by and large, Theorus is cast as an earnest seeker after knowledge and
Mystagogus as his teacher.21 Their exchanges progress topic by topic, each intro-
duced in well-established fashion with a request by Theorus for a definition
(cf. above, Chapter II.3 (p. 13)). The treatment almost invariably assumes the
existence of the phenomenon to be defined, though Mystagogus does express
disbelief in ‘flying serpents or dragons (Serpentes alatos seu Dracones)’ (1596a:
308) and seriously doubts reports of geese being generated from apples (1596a:
298). Even so, Theorus’s requests are sufficiently challenging for, as Mystagogus
remarks, a thing may have several definitions, whereas ‘in a true definition . . . only

20 Cf. Blair 1997: 90–5 on the extent and significance of Bodin’s critique of Aristotle. See Schütz

2015, on Bodin’s reliance on Aristotelian and attendant dismissal of Copernican theories and
methodologies.
21 In the Colloquium (discussed in Chapter X), the name is derived explicitly from the Greek and

interpreted as ‘religious leader and high-priest (religionum duces ac pontifices, quos veteres Graeci
μυσταγωγοὺς appellant)’ (ed. Noack 1857: 118).
 Vita Contemplativa 217

the essence of the thing should be included’ (1596a: 433). The definitions are
regularly followed by exercises in dialectical division. For example, on the key topic
of ‘being’, the ‘ultimate principle of nature’ and ‘as it were, the common genus of all
natural things (ens omnium rerum naturalium quasi genus commune)’ (1596a: 132),
the discussion proceeds:
Theorus: How many fold is natural being (Quotuplex est ens naturale)?
Mystagogus: Twofold, substance and accident (Duplex, corpus & accidens).
Th: How many fold is natural substance (corpus naturale)? M: Twofold,
imperfect and perfect (inchoatum & perfectum) . . . .
Th: How many fold is perfect substance? M: Twofold of course, the element
(itself) and elementary (substance) (Duplex, scilicet elementum & elementare)
Th: How many fold are the elements? M: Twofold: on the one hand light
(leve, [misprinted as ‘lene’]), on the other heavy (grave); earth and water being
included in the one, air and fire in the other. (1596a: 133)
And so on, for several pages, until Theorus asks: ‘Do these genera cover all
substances of nature?’ ‘Why not (Quid ni)?’ responds Mystagogus confidently.
In fact the further series of definitions and divisions that follows is not entirely
dichotomous in structure: for instance, Mystagogus specifies six ‘perfect substances’
and six ‘differences of places’ (1596a: 138). But the overall approach is plain enough.
Bodin’s translator, François Fougerolles, recognized as much in the tables which he
appended to the text. And as Bodin himself observed, ‘the best method for dividing
is by dichotomy (optima ratio dividendi sit in διχότομουσ)’ (1596a: 134).
Even so, the Theatrum is a product of multiple methodologies. In that respect, it
diverged sharply from what had been the recognized route to natural philosophical
‘truth’. Derived from Aristotle once more, that orthodox route proceeded from
‘principles’ or axiomatic propositions by way of reason or logical ‘demonstration’
to inescapable conclusions.22 Of course, for Bodin demonstration remained an
essential mode of proof. It could answer even fundamental questions of theology
which had baffled leading philosophers, among them Scotus and the question of
incorporeality and infinity that appertained uniquely to God.23 It could vindicate
the contention, relevant to all disciplines and contrary to Aquinas’s opinion, that
‘there could be no more than one truth (nec plus uno verum esse potest)’.24 Beyond
dialectical abstractions, it was directly applicable to entities in the physical world. In
this it differed from mathematics which certainly had its uses, but the numerical
components of which existed ‘only in the mind (sola cogitatione)’ (1596a: 82).25
Even when used in combination with empirical findings, mathematical conclusions

22 See Lohr 1999: 280–1; cf. Chapter IV.4 (p. 71).

23 Thus his series of syllogistic arguments (159a6: 512–20) presented in response to Theorus’s
request for ‘demonstrations’ (1596a: 512) concerning the nature of God and the soul: for instance, ‘All
substances contained within the limits of the largest sphere are finite; human, angelic and demonic
souls are so contained; therefore they are finite’ (1596a: 513).
24 1596a: 521. On the ‘double truth’ theory see Chapter X.3 (p. 247).
25 The opinion is Aristotelian in relation to ‘noetic numbers’, as opposed to Plato’s position: see

Gaukroger 1982: 312, n. 3.

218 Jean Bodin

fell short of the certainties of demonstration. Thus, seemingly authoritative

estimates of distances between heavenly bodies must be treated with caution, for
such estimates ‘depend on faith in the senses, not on certain demonstration’.26
In demonstration reason found its clinching mode; and all in all, ‘one must argue
by reasons, not by authority’ (1596a: 446).
Nevertheless, in the Theatrum as in his other major works, deployment of
authorities pro and con figured conspicuously among Bodin’s multiple modes of
argument. Once again he draws upon and regularly cites (or omits to cite explicitly)
authorities of a range and variety remarkable even by the standards of his day.
In doing so he evidently continues to derive information from collections of
‘commonplaces’, at considerable cost to the reliability of his citations. Indeed, it
seems apparent that, owing to ‘his relative lack of expertise in natural philosophy’,
his selection of evidence and arguments, in so far as these are authority based, ‘is
driven by’ such collections.27 As before, writers from the ancient world are cited far
more freely than are those of Bodin’s own era. Whereas a handful of contemporary
or near-contemporary historians—Guicciardini, Leo Africanus, Francisco Àlvares—
earn some mention, Mystagogus instantly responds to Theorus’s question whether
any historians have recorded instances of extreme longevity with the names of no
fewer than fifteen ancient exponents or alleged writers of the art (1596a: 397–8).
Among astronomers, Ptolemy gets as many references as Copernicus, Regiomonta-
nus, and Georg von Peurbach put together, while the name of the Frisian Gemma
Frisius ‘with his astronomical staff ’ figures only once.28 The names of physicians
from the ancient world—Dioscorides, Hippocrates, and especially Galen—are
regularly invoked. Jurists are not, in obvious contrast to the République. In the
Theatrum natural and divine law are treated as the province of philosophers, natural
and moral, coupled with theologians.
Among philosophers, Aristotle with over 170 references is again far and away the
most conspicuous authority cited, though this is owing in large measure to Bodin’s
determination to challenge him as often as possible.29 Prominent also are ancient
commentators on Aristotle, but with them as with others of almost all philosophical
persuasions Bodin resolutely takes issue even in cases of thinkers whose standing he
professes to respect. Thus, Alexander of Aphrodisias is ‘of all the Peripatetics the
most acute’ and ‘the most lucid’ (1596a: 65, 87, 521), but is subject, doubtless
through his fundamentally Aristotelian stance, to errors ranging from an ill-judged
adoption of the Stoic definition of fire to a quite inept interpretation of the faculties
of the soul.30 Stoic opinion in turn is adjudged sound on such particular questions

26 1596a: 595. Cf. the recognition accorded to mathematics, noted in Chapter IV.4 (pp. 73, 86).
27 Blair 1997: 71; 65–81 for a sustained examination of Bodin’s use of the commonplace method in
Theatrum, and 107–15 for a searching account of his use of authorities. On commonplaces in general
see Chapter II.2 (p. 12).
28 ‘Radius astronomicus’, noted by Bodin as if it were peculiar to Frisius, but in fact a generic term for

a variety of navigational instruments such as the sextant.

29 By one reader’s count, 160 of Bodin’s citations of Aristotle are to indict him of error (Lestringant

1999: 90, citing Blair 1996).

30 1596a: 146, 526. Curiously, Bodin’s critical comments on Alexander do not include the latter’s

position on the soul’s mortality.

 Vita Contemplativa 219

as coldness as the defining property of air, but ‘deficient’, ‘redundant’, and

‘self-contradictory’ on the logical procedure of predication.31 The views of Epicureans
are perverse: arguments which they account ridiculous are deemed weighty by
right-thinking men (1596a: 32–3, cf. 521). The Church Fathers gain significant
exposure: most notably St Augustine, cited with approval on such questions as the
presence of evil in the world and freedom of the will, but held to have misled almost
all ‘Latin’ authorities ‘apart from Henry [of Ghent], Thomas [Aquinas] and [Duns]
Scotus’ on the vital issue of the soul’s definition.32 Scholastics are in fact much in
evidence, and by no means only as vehicles for the device of crediting unacceptable
positions to Theorus’s gleanings from ‘the schools’ for Mystagogus to reject (1596a:
578, cf. 524). Scotus in particular is commended ‘for his penetrating mode of
thinking (ab ingenii acumine)’ only to have his views on the presence of the
elements in compound entities instantly challenged, in the course of extended
passages where Bodin wrestles with the question of the seemingly spontaneous
interaction of the elements, how they can interact productively, and what is
generated thereby.33 The presence of Arab philosophers, in particular Avicenna
and Averroës, is distinctly more noticeable than in Bodin’s earlier writings;
the former, mentioned only once in the Methodus and there misnamed ‘Abenreis’
(1566: 370), is cited in Theatrum some thirty times, though by no means always
with approval. An increased contingent of Jewish philosophers and theologians,
often referred to collectively as ‘the Hebrews’, is again headed by Maimonides, one
of the few thinkers to escape explicit Bodinian strictures, and lauded as the ‘most
acute of all Hebrew philosophers (acutissimi Hebraeorum omnium Philosophi)’
for his opinion on the source of sunlight (1596a: 542). Philo’s is now a less overt
presence, but it is with a marginal reference to his ‘Allegor Paradis’ (Allegorical
Interpretation of Genesis) that Bodin supports the telling proposition that ‘the seeds
of all virtues and sciences were divinely implanted in our souls (in animis nostris
virtutum ac scientiarum omnium semina divinitus sparsa fuisse)’34—a reference
attended by the names of a selection of philosophers ranging from Pre-Socratics
to Neoplatonists.
Bodin’s thinking is in fact informed at key junctures by Neoplatonist ideas.
At the outset of his work he finds a clue to ‘the indissoluble coherence of nature
(indissolubilem naturae cohaerentiam)’ (1596a: 6) in the concept of ‘a sort of golden
chain (quasi cathenam auream)’ as a unifying mechanism. As described by Plato,
Proclus, and Plutarch, ‘following Homer (secutus Homerum)’, the chain ‘is sent
down continuously from the highest heaven to the earth (a supremo coelo in terram

31 1596a: 137–8. The issue is the number of accidents predicable of a substance, Bodin

characteristically insisting on two.

32 1596a: 32, 484. By ‘Latin’ in this context Bodin appears to have had in mind philosophers

writing in that language as distinct, particularly, from Greek.

33 1596a: 118–27, also 141–3 on how the interaction of sharply contrasting elements could

produce harmony. The question of compound elements prompted much scholastic debate: see
Maier 1952: 22 sqq.; and 104–9 on the position of Duns Scotus. For the significance of the
elements’ interaction ‘without the intervention of a rational mover’ see the important article by
Kessler 2011, at p. 44.
34 1596a: 475–6; cf. Horowitz 1998: 188–200.
220 Jean Bodin

usque demitti)’ (1596a: 23). And yet, pace the centrality of coherence and harmony
in his Weltanschauung, Bodin declines to follow the image through. It is ‘absurd’ to
suppose with Proclus and other ‘Academics’ that the process of creation emanated
sequentially via such a chain: that the divine ‘first cause’ created the ‘heavenly
bodies’, and the lesser the lesser in descending sequence—as it were, link by link.
Creation was exclusively the function of ‘divine majesty (est enim creatio divinae
maiestatis propria)’, the ‘first principle’, and in no way communicable to lesser
beings (1596a: 93). As Averroës had written, everything ‘descended from the first
cause without intermediary (nullo interiecto medio a prima causa pendere)’ (1596a:
547). But Averroës in turn is unsound on the critical question of the intellect
(see Chapter IX.2 (p. 228)). And on the relation between intellect, soul and
body Plotinus too is ill-advised, in company with Augustine and even ‘certain
philosophers of the Hebrews’ (1596a: 496–7).
And yet, throughout the work it is ‘the Hebrews’ that take pride of place among
Bodin’s cited authorities. Repeatedly described as the ‘wisest interpreters of
nature (sagacissimi naturae interpretes)’ (1596a: 241, cf. 390, 538), they are, to all
appearances a privileged race—even, indeed, a chosen people. It is ‘the philosophers
of the Hebrews who derived the secrets of nature by divine communication
(Hebraeorum philosophi qui naturae arcana divinitus hauserunt)’—secrets conveyed
in their ‘natural language (lingua naturalis)’ which was ‘divinely granted to human
kind (hominum generi divinitus concessa)’ (1596a: 145–6). Again, ‘the secrets of
nature that were unknown to the Greeks must be sought in the sacred springs of the
Hebrews (naturae arcana quae Graecis incognita fuere ab Hebraeorum sacris fontibus
petenda sunt)’ (1596a: 214–15). It is to these that one must turn to refute
Copernicus’s cosmological opinions. Even so, those springs (‘Hebraeorum fontes’)
and secrets (‘Hebraeorum arcana’) turn out to be first and foremost biblical books,
and in particular Exodus, Ecclesiastes, and the Psalms (1596a: 554, 580–2).
Likewise, having invoked the theory of ‘trepidation’ to explain the differential
movements of the heavenly spheres, Bodin eventually cites to warranty ‘the secrets
of divine laws (divinae legis arcana)’ as stated in Leviticus (1596a: 803–4).35 When
Theorus asks ‘whether the planets are fixed in their epicycles (Nonne defixi sunt
planetae in suis Epicyclis)’, Mystagogus refers him to the opening passages of
Ezekiel.36 The incidence of biblical citation certainly increases as the work reaches
its climax. But there can be no doubt that, amid all the sources he cites, it is upon
the irrefutable authority of Scripture and divine law that Bodin principally grounds
his case, if not always reliably.37

35 1596a: 803–4. For the theory of ‘trepidation’, derived from Arab astronomical tables to calculate

changes in star positions in successive sidereal years, see North 2008: 192–4.
36 1596a: 571: the reference is to the celestial chariot, to Maimonides the key to ‘divine science’ and

discussed at length in his Guide of the Perplexed (I.34; III.1 sqq.)

37 See, for instance, one of his infrequent citations from the New Testament: 1596a: 544, a

quotation—‘Erunt sicut angeli’—ostensibly from Matthew xviii to support the contention that
angels are made from souls, whereas Christ’s concern in the relevant passage is with the qualities of
humility and innocence represented (verse 10) by children described as angels who see the face of God.
 Vita Contemplativa 221

Yet alongside written authorities he also relies upon what he terms ‘experimental
knowledge (experientia)’. ‘Experientia rerum magistra’, Bodin repeatedly declares
(1596a: 169, 223, 306, 386, 404), invoking a legal maxim: experientia is
‘the mistress of facts’, and therefore of particulars. True scientia resides in universals;
yet experiential findings feature usefully in the ‘kind of circular reasoning used
in seeking scientia of natural things (rerum naturalium scientiam conquirentibus
circulari quadam ratione utendum est)’ (1596a: 141). The allusion is to the Aristotelian
regressus which proceeds from analysis of phenomena treated as ‘effects’ to hypoth-
eses in terms of principles, and synthesizes the results as ‘causes’ validated by
reference to ‘effects’ once more.38 Clearly, experientiae are valuable contributors
to the stock of analysable phenomena. But experientiae occur in several guises.39
They include direct personal observation, reports by other observers, even experi-
ments in the modern sense. Bodin offers examples of all these and stresses the
importance of such evidence. Ocular observation is more accurate than audial,
though the other senses are relevant too. Writers on nature lack accuracy,
he comments disparagingly, ‘in that they would have had no experientia of particular
things (quod nullam rerum singularium experientiam haberent)’ (1596a: 141). The
comment scarcely applies to a writer of such distinction as Galen, but even his
authority is open to visual correction. Thus, his judgement that only God and
nature can produce true mixtures of substances is confounded simply by observing
the mixing of wine with water (1596a: 122). Experientia may complement know-
ledge obtained by reason: thus the claim that deep sea water is saltier than surface
water (1596a: 199). It may be invoked to endorse the evidence even of Scripture.40
Conversely, it is certainly relevant to disproving popular beliefs—among them, the
belief that beavers bite off their own genitals and leave them for the hunter.
‘Experientia’, remarks Mystagogus, ‘shows to be fabulous many things which are
handed down as true (Multa pro veris plerique tradiderunt quae experientia convincit
esse fabulosa)’ (1596a: 336).
Yet there are limits to Bodin/Mystagogus’s critical judgement. He agrees that by
changing colour precious stones can warn their bearers of imminent danger. He is
persuaded, on the testimony of Dioscorides and also by ‘daily proof in recent
times’, that the ‘eagle-stone’ (aetites) when mixed with flour to make bread-cakes
can expose thieves (1596a: 234–5, 254). He accepts with ‘the Hebrews, the wisest
interpreters of nature’, the therapeutic qualities of bezoar, describing it as a stone grown
in certain animals’ stomachs and effective as an antidote to poisons (1596a: 241).
These instances of unlikely properties possessed by natural objects are drawn at least

38 ‘The Aristotelian regressus i.e. the combination of analysis (starting from the effects, “better

known to us”, arriving at a mere approximate or hypothetical discovery of principles and supplying
knowledge quia) and synthesis (*moving from principles to the effects deriving from those principles,
and supplying knowledge propter quid). Between the two stages there is a reflective pause which should
allow one to determine that the cause found is really the one that is true and necessarily bound to the
effect’ (Algra 2005: 253). See also Häfner 1993: especially 50–1.
39 For a searching account of Bodin’s ‘experiential world’ as discernible throughout his works

see Greengrass 2013; and as evident in the Theatrum see Blair 1997: 95–107.
40 ‘non modo sacris literis testatum habemus, sed etiam experientia comprobatum’—this in relation to

the proposition that the earth rests upon water (1596a: 185).
222 Jean Bodin

initially from trusted sources: notably Dioscorides, as highly regarded an authority

as any on medical matters. But unlikely grounds suffice for challenging Aristotle’s
authority: so his thesis that all birds are bipeds is countered by the alleged case of the
Moluccan manucordiat or bird of paradise which, declares Mystagogus, has no feet
at all and rests ‘by hanging from trees (de arboribus suspendere)’ (1596a: 366). As
for first-hand observation, Bodin/Mystagogus claims that he himself when in
Flanders saw ‘great numbers of mussels (innumerabilem Mytulorum multitudinem)
being germinated from the fibres and stalks of seaweed (Algarum fibras & caules)’
(1596a: 297). Nevertheless, he is wary of information that a stone may be formed
in a period of a hundred years from a tear in the eye of a stag. He has himself seen
such a stone, but has not yet tested it (1596a: 242). And he is not unwilling to test
by means of practical experiment and measurement. In response to Theorus’s
queries about the properties of magnets, Mystagogus advises him to place one on
a floating piece of wood and so observe its turning towards the north (1596a: 246).
And Bodin/Mystagogus recounts how he had himself amplified the findings of
‘François de Foix de Candale, France’s Archimides’, on the weights of different
metals: ‘I collected in small vessels the weights of salt, soil, salt water, fresh water,
wine, ashes, oil: which had been included in the books of no other writers.’41
Such investigations of relative weights had practical implications linked to the
Theatrum’s dominant theme. Experientia showed that it was easier to heal an injury
from a piece of copper than one from a piece of iron, and ‘the cause of healing
(medicationis vero causam)’ was commonly supposed to lie ‘in the lightness of
copper (in levitate aeris)’ (1596a: 266). But in fact, as Mystagogus correctly
observed, copper was the heavier of the two metals, and so the cause of the alleged
phenomenon could not lie there. Even so, the instance exemplified the quest for
causes that pervaded the entire work in accordance with its opening specification
(see Chapter IX.2 (p. 215)). Two of the four causes identified there, the ‘material’
and the ‘formal’, were ‘intrinsic’, while ‘efficient causes’ were partly ‘intrinsic’ and
‘auxiliary’ to those two (1596a: 53–4). It was by reference to the metal’s intrinsic
properties that the capacity of copper as a healing agent was to be assessed: that is,
its capacity to function as the efficient cause of the healing process. And, in line
with the standard explanatory mode of scholastic natural philosophy (cf. Maier
1982: 41–2), it was in ‘efficient causality’ that Bodin’s ‘theory of nature’ was chiefly
grounded.
So much was apparent from his treatment of one of his main topics, motion.
Again, this had been central to his scholastic predecessors’ concerns, building upon
Aristotle’s pronouncement that ‘Nature is a principle of motion and change’.42
Indeed, all change could be described in terms of motion, of transition from one
state of being to another, or to a new from a previous form, or even—as in the case

41 ‘nos vero salis, terrae, aquae salsae, aquae dulcis, vini, cinerum, olei pondera collegimus vasculis, quae

nullis scriptorum libris comprehensa fuerunt’ (1596a: 261). Cf. Blair 1997: 100–1. François de Foix de
Candale, Bishop of Aire, is perhaps less well known as an experimental scientist than as the publisher of
editions of Hermetic texts in Greek (1574) and in French (1579), the latter with a preface which ‘seems
almost to elevate the works of Hermes Trismegistus to the level of canonical scriptures’ (Yates 1964: 173).
42 Physics 200b12. Cf. Theatrum 1596a: 103: ‘in omni corpore physico est aliquid quod mouet’.
 Vita Contemplativa 223

of formless matter—from no form at all. Accordingly, motion occurred in a

comprehensive array of ‘four modes: essence, quantity, quality, place’: so Aristotle
had specified, and so Bodin reiterated without acknowledgement (1596a: 103; cf.
Aristotle, Physics 200b34). But motion itself must first be defined. Prompted by
Theorus, Mystagogus defines it as ‘the act of an agent upon a movable subject (actus
agentis in mobili subiecto)’ (1596a: 99). The formulation prompts protracted
exchanges. It emerges that the agent is not simply to be identified with the subject
itself, nor the act simply ascribed to the form of a subject with the potential for
motion. If that were so, motion would have a formal cause intrinsic to the subject.43
With such a quasi-metaphysical explanation Mystagogus does in fact toy, only to
settle for the established scholastic position that ‘nothing moves of itself (nihil agit
in seipsum)’ (1596a: 102). It follows that motion springs from an external mover:
it brings together ‘the action of an efficient cause and the receptiveness of a subject
(ex actione efficientis & passione subiecti)’ (1596a: 105). This issue having been
resolved, the discussion focuses on motion in the sense of change of location.
Theorus finds the topic frustrating ‘since that which is moved is neither in the place
where it is moved nor in the place where it is not moved (cum id quod movetur neque
in loco sit ubi movetur, neque in loco ubi non movetur)’ (1596a: 108). But his guide
dismisses this remarkable anticipation of modern quantum mechanics as ‘the
sophism of Ephectics of the school of Pyrrho’. Insofar as the observation refers to
entities in transit from one point to another, they are simply in space between those
points. Nevertheless, another suggestion of Theorus’s, that moving entities are
partly in motion and partly at rest, is allowed to have some merit: witness the
revolutions of heavenly bodies which revolve around their axes as well as around the
heavens—a topic to which the Mystagogus promises to return (1596a: 109).
However, attention must first be paid to causation in relation to another of the
modes of motion: change of essence, initially defined as ‘movement or change
through origin and destruction (mutatur ortu & interitu)’, and then construed in
terms of ‘birth and death’, ‘generation and corruption’ (‘ortum & obitum’, ‘generatio
tamen & corruptio’) (1596a: 103, 110). These processes involve passage through
time and so pertain to motion. They are not mutually exclusive: ‘living beings of
the same species may be generated from semen and from putrefaction (eadem specie
animantia ex semine & putrefactione nascuntur)’ (1596a: 115). Yet species that vary
must have diverse origins, in accordance with a rule of causation that evidently
warrants repetition.44 It follows that the forms of such species must likewise differ:
for it is from ‘the forms themselves that the particular qualities of anything are
generated (formas ipsas a quibus accidentia propria cuiusque rei nascuntur)’ (1596a:
117). Such cases evince a convergence of formal and efficient causation. Other
phenomena have multiple causes: ‘It is easy to confuse similar things’, warns
Mystagogus, as with ‘the origin of dew, frost, hail, heavy rain, snows, mists, flashes

43 For the implications of such a ‘fundamental transformation’ evident in fourteenth-century

discussions of gravitation, see Maier 1982: 51 sqq.

44 ‘Quarum rerum diversae sunt causae, diversos etiam effectus esse oportet’ (1596: 115); ‘rerum

contrarii sunt effectus, contrarias causas esse oportet’ (1596a: 118).

224 Jean Bodin

of lightning, thunderbolts, the rainbow (roris, pruïnae, grandinis, imbris, nivium,

nebularum, fulguris, fulminum iridis . . . origo)’. And the dissimilar may just as easily
‘be mixed, as vapour with exhalation (miscentur ut vapor exhalationi)’ (1596a: 208).
But consideration of the action of exhalation gives rise to other issues.
Time and again Mystagogus invokes ‘exhalation’ as the cause of meteorological
phenomena. Exhalations explain why storm clouds appear in different colours and
why they occur at all (1596a: 206);45 why drizzle is accompanied by calm weather
(1596a: 207); why few thunderbolts fall in frozen regions of the earth (1596a:
210–11). The idea is specifically Aristotle’s. It figures throughout much of his
Meteorologica not only in the context of climatology, but also to account for other
phenomena, such as the formation of mineral and metallic substances (378a12–b4).
But while Bodin cites the Meteorologica a dozen times in the margins of his
Theatrum,46 he does so almost invariably in conjunction with dismissals—often
contemptuous—of particular Aristotelian observations; and nowhere does he credit
their author with originating the exhalation idea. Thus, Aristotle’s elaborate explan-
ation of why comets occur (342b25–345a10) is reduced to the effect of ‘a dense
exhalation’ and deemed undeserving of serious consideration (1596a: 217)—even
though Mystagogus explains phenomena often enough in terms of exhalation. But
his use of that explanation is limited by his eagerness to adduce causes of a quite
different order and to disparage Aristotle to boot. For instance, he offers ‘the
movement of air (aeris motus)’ as the best definition of wind and berates Aristotle
for discounting it and proposing nothing better (1596a: 159–60). The stricture is
unwarranted: in the very passage cited Aristotle discusses wind in precisely those
terms, and explains violent wind as ‘the inrush of the external exhalation’ (366a3–4).
By Mystagogus’s account, however, winds of unnatural violence are caused ‘by the
force and power of demons’; and when Theorus asks, ‘Why by demons rather than
by exhalation?’ he is answered: ‘So as to exact vengeance (ad vltionem reposcendam)’
(1596a: 160).
In fact, exhalations and demons occupy similar places in Bodin’s model of
causation. In a passage of fundamental importance, introduced as exemplifying
the proper procedure of inquiry from the known to the unknown (see Chapter IX.2
(p. 214)), Mystagogus includes exhalations as one of the ‘bonds by which the
universe of particular things is held together (quibus vinculis rerum universitas
contineatur)’. In this universe of nature ‘nothing is empty, but all entities are either
continuous or contiguous to each other (vacuum nihil est, sed omnia corpora vel
continua, vel contigua sibi sunt)’ (1596: 226). Upon this basis, which blends the
Aristotelian tenet that nature abhors a vacuum with the Neoplatonic principle of
plenitude,47 Bodin erected a central pillar of his thesis. Nature is a continuum:
its unity and its harmony are ensured by means (in that term’s every sense) which

45 ‘Material changes in earth and water by which portions of these substances ate transformed,

separated from the main body, and transferred to the higher cosmic regions’ (Solmsen 1960: 400, and
sqq. for a sustained discussion of Aristotle’s use of the idea.
46 1596a: 155, 161, 167, 174, 191, 197, 204, 209, 217, 227, 453, 454.
47 See Blair 1997: 131.
 Vita Contemplativa 225

synthesize the properties of the entities they serve to conjoin. Thus ‘zoophytes’ have
the characteristics of both plants and animals; amphibians are at once aquatic
and terrestrial; and ‘exhalations’, being ‘lighter than air and denser than fire’, are
‘the bond of both elements (exhalationes aere leviores, igne densiores utriusque
elementi copulam)’. Such bonds may differ in type, but their cohering function is
everywhere the same. Once more an Aristotelian dictum, in this case the law of
mean terms, seems to inform Bodin’s conceptual thinking.48 As for demons, which
use exhalations for their own purposes (1596a: 211) and ‘of which the air is full
(quibus hic aer plenus est)’ (1596a: 368), they too have the function of intermedi-
ation. For the basis of this proposition the Démonomanie had prepared the ground.
Demons had ‘a kind of corporeal nature, not of bones or flesh, but of some invisible
or aerial essence (ex essentia inuisibili siue aërea)’: in a phrase, ‘a spiritual body,
though still a body (si demus corpus esse spirituale, corpus tamen erit)’. And such a
composite nature with all that it implied was also the nature not only of ‘angels’,
but also of ‘human souls (mentes humanas)’.49
Here was a topic of critical importance. Discussion of the soul furnished the
Theatrum’s centrepiece, the declared subject of the fourth of its five books, and
considered elsewhere in the treatise as well. The soul was the key ‘universal bond’ of
the natural universe, just as the doctrine of the soul ‘should be considered the mean
between natural and divine concerns (doctrinam de anima mediam naturales inter
ac divinas esse arbitratetur)’ (1596a: 432). Recognition of its importance was no
arbitrary judgement. Questions concerning the soul had exercised a comprehensive
range of philosophers and theologians from Plato onwards, ‘Greeks, Egyptians,
Latins, Arabs’, as Mystagogus notes (1596a: 482).50 How should it be defined?
How did it originate? Was it individual or universal? Of what did it consist? How
did it relate to the physical body, and what were its functions in that respect? Was
the soul itself material or immaterial? Was it separable from the body? Did it survive
the latter, and was it therefore immortal? Debate became especially vigorous on the
last of those questions following the publication in 1516 of Pietro Pomponazzi’s
Treatise on the immortality of the soul, in which the Paduan/Bolognese philosopher
argued, contrary to an explicit ruling by the Fifth Lateran Council, that acceptance
of the soul’s immortality was dependent upon faith and could not be demonstrated
by reason.51 With all these questions Bodin proceeded to engage. Thirty years

48 See Posterior analytics, 90a35 (‘everything we seek is a search for the middle term’); also 47a36–8

(‘we must take that term as middle which is stated in both the propositions, for it is necessary that the
middle should be found in both’). Here I venture to dissent from Blair 1997: 134.
49 1596a: 515–16. On such ideas’ roots in Neoplatonic traditions as interpreted by Ficino,

see Scapparone 2001: 85. But cf. Chapter VII.3 (p. 175).
50 He might have added ‘scholastics’ to his list: for the significance of Averroist doctrines on the soul

in the thought of Albert the Great and Aquinas see Nardi 1960: especially 147–50; also the theses
summarized in Hellmeier 2011: 334–40.
51 This conclusion, to a tightly argued discourse, is stated plainly in the final chapter of

Pomponazzi’s Tractatus de immortalite animae (Bologna, 1516): English trans in Cassirer et al. eds
1948: 280–381; see pp. 277–79. On Pomponazzi see Pine 1986: especially pp. 62–123; also Lohr
1988 for his arguments’ significance in relation to the development of natural philosophy. For the
Conciliar decree (eighth session, 19 December 1513) that ‘each and every philosopher’ should counter
226 Jean Bodin

previously he had signalled the soul’s significance in the overall structure of his
actual and projected works, aligning the ‘threefold order of souls’ with the three
varieties of humankind as discerned through his theory of ‘climate’ and with the
three modes of history. Now, in the context of the third of those modes, he gave the
topic due attention.
He begins his account in accustomed fashion with Mystagogus’s response to
Theorus’s request for a summary definition. In so far as such a definition is possible,
he proposes that the soul ‘is a substantial form, giving life (forma substantialis est
vivificans)’ to plants, animals, and humans also (1596a: 432). This triple orienta-
tion corresponds to what might seem three parts of the soul: that which gives life to
plants (anima vegetalis), to beasts sensitivity too (sensualis), and to humans under-
standing as well (intellectualis) (1596a: 436, 485). But this does not mean that the
soul is divided, nor that it resides in different parts of physical entities. On the
contrary: those parts are integrated with each other, such that ‘the soul pervades
everywhere in the entire body, as the form of the matter (animam universo corpori,
quasi materiae formam, usquequaque diffusam)’ (1596a: 507). Equally pervasive are
its functions: within the body ‘the soul is sole cause of action, movement, life and all
sensations (anima sola causa est actionis, motus, vitae, sensuum omnium)’ (1596a: 479).
Unlike the body, however, the soul itself is not generated—though ‘it may well be
that from one soul many souls may be born (fieri potest ut ex una anima plures
animae nascantur)’ (1596a: 442). Around the question of its origin Bodin treads
tentatively. The cause of the soul is shrouded ‘in the most secret mysteries of divine
knowledge (in secretioribus arcanis divinae scientiae)’ (1596a: 534). It may be
divinely ‘infused’, as some have suggested—though, as Theorus observes, if God
created every soul he would do nothing else. What is clear is that no absolute
distinction is to be drawn between material organisms and spiritual souls. In the
Methodus Bodin had described the soul as ‘free from all materiality’, though much
affected by proximity to and association with entities such as body and blood.52
In the Theatrum he abandons this description as he strives to correlate his account
of the soul with his thesis of intermediate beings.
At the heart of the exercise lie two fundamental propositions. They concern the
unique nature of God: that he alone is wholly incorporeal (‘nullam omnino
substantiam praeter Deum incorpoream esse’) (1596a: 512), and that he alone is
simple (‘nihil praeter Deum simplex esse’) (1596a: 517). It follows that all other
substances, or beings, must be corporeal in at least some degree. This, it is claimed,
instantly casts doubt upon the views of almost all Latin philosophers and theologians
who have followed St Augustine in defining the soul purely as ‘spiritual substance’,
though Mystagogus declines to reject their opinions altogether (1596a: 484). But in
so far as the soul is corporeal and its functions engage with the body’s senses, is
it not mortal? Conversely, if the human soul is ‘separable from the human body

assertions of the soul’s mortality and should teach ‘the truth of the Christian religion . . . by convincing
arguments, so far as this is possible’, see Tanner ed. 1990: 605–6.
52 ‘ab omni concretione libera, contagione tamen ex illa cohaerentia plurimum afficitur’ (Methodus

1566: 112–13; cf. Chapter IV, nn. 114, 143).

 Vita Contemplativa 227

(ab hominis corpore segregari)’ as most philosophers hold ‘by irrefutable arguments
(non modo probabilibus, sed etiam necessariis ad assentiendum argumentis)’ (1596a:
431–2), and if the soul is a unity as Mystagogus insists (‘una sit & eadem anima’
(1596a: 487)), surely separation must entail its leaving its corporeal qualities and
capabilities behind? Not so, maintain Mystagogus and Theorus in concert. Echoing
the République, they declare, ‘the soul is ruler of all actions and motions’ of the
body, but is not ruled by them; for ‘that which should command cannot be one and
the same as that which should obey’.53 The human soul is not dependent upon the
body’s senses in order to reason, to contemplate, to distinguish the true from the
false; indeed, being separated from the body, it can continue ‘to observe, hear and
feel and remember everything (animam cadaveri superstitem omnia contueri, audire,
sentire, & rerum earum quas didicerit memoriam habere)’ (1596a: 474–5, 478–9,
506). So at least its quasi-corporeality remains the case, to practical intents and
purposes. Asked by Theorus to defend the position by rational demonstration, a
task claimed to have defeated even the most distinguished authorities, Mystagogus
offers a series of syllogistic arguments. For instance:
Every substance apart from God has finite power
Every finite power occupies circumscribed space (terminatam habet distantiam)
Therefore every finite substance occupies circumscribed space.54
This applies to the soul in its corporeal aspect. But incorporeal substances cannot be
so confined, and the soul’s spiritual character is not to be denied. Hence its
composite nature. The soul is at once material and spiritual, both corporeal and
incorporeal, with even the separated human soul retaining a peculiar corporeality
(cf. section 2 of this chapter (p. 225)). And hence, too, its capacity to function as
uniquely the harmonizing medium between the material world and the world of
the spirit, participant simultaneously in the properties of both.55
While his arguments draw upon Platonic and Aristotelian, Neoplatonic and
Stoic tenets, Bodin’s position is distinctive and subtle. It accounts for ecstatic
experience, the ‘precious death’ mentioned in République, and not to be confused
with demonic possession as described in the Démonomanie.56 It explains how
separated souls, in common with angels and demons, can interact with material
beings—an impossibility according to thinkers such as Pomponazzi, but necessary
to Bodin’s view of the functioning of the spirit world.57 It stresses the individuality
of every human soul and denounces as ‘most pernicious’ Averroist monopsychism,

53 ‘omnium tamen actionum ac motuum moderatrix est anima . . . si quid est in homine pareat & quod

imperet, unum & idem esse non posse’ (1596a: 491–2).

54 1596a: 513. The formulation deploys one of Bodin’s favourite metaphysical concepts; cf., for

instance, Methodus 1566: 374.

55 1596a: 478–9, 498, 539–40. Cf. Blair 1997: 140, on the ‘genuine originality’ of Bodin’s

argument. Note also that the argument has implications for Christ’s incarnation, though Bodin does
not draw them at this juncture.
56 1596a: 502, where Bodin refers explicitly to his Démonomanie. For his reference in the

République to what ‘Hebraei pretiosam mortem appellant’ see Chapter VI.6 (p. 156).
57 ‘Spiritual beings such as angels and demons cannot bring about the “miraculous” effects which

are attributed to them, since, as immaterial substances, they are incapable of having any physical
228 Jean Bodin

‘one and the same soul distributed in every man (unum & eamdem animam in
singulos homines distributam)’ (1596a: 521–2). Others including Aquinas had
dismissed doctrines of a universal soul, but without drawing as firm distinction as
Bodin draws between the soul and its faculties.58 The soul is known by its faculties
and the faculties by their action, but the soul itself is neither action nor faculty
(1596a: 446). Yet Bodin’s argument is nuanced almost to the point of self-
contradiction. On the one hand, he seems to deny the soul immortality: ‘nothing
is eternal except God, the first cause (nihil autem aeternum esse praeter primam
causam)’ (1596a: 444). On the other hand, he insists upon ‘the immortal power of
the soul’ in contrast to ‘the perishable nature of the senses (immortalis animi vis &
sensuum fluxa natura)’ (1596a: 481). It could be argued that the power at issue is a
property not of the soul, but of its faculties, generators of action. But faculties are
accidents: separable accidents, seemingly, but scarcely appropriate candidates for
sempiternal status such as would align them with God Himself.
An escape from the dilemma, though not an entirely satisfactory one, lies in
qualifying the idea of the integrity of the human soul (cf. Chapter IX.2 (p. 226)).
Having indicated that its intellectual capability is what distinguishes it from the
souls of lesser creatures, Mystagogus resorts to the Aristotelian distinction, variously
interpreted by subsequent thinkers, between the intellect’s creative or active aspect
(νόος ποιητικός, intellectus agens) and its sensitive or passive aspect (νόος
πάθητικός, intellectus patibilis). It is the sensitive intellect, distinguishing compo-
nent of the human soul, that is separable from the body. It becomes active ‘when it
is illuminated by the agent intellect’.59 The latter, of course, is not the universal
intellect of Averroist and Neoplatonist thought.60 Bodin’s ‘agent intellect’ is an
angel or demon, a member of the host of spiritual beings with corporeal properties
that serve as cohering forces throughout the great theatre of nature. Such a being is
divinely assigned ‘to every man (singulis hominibus)’ (1596a: 539). It may be
malevolent or benevolent, and, in some instances, may become ‘so familiar and
domestic as very often to make its presence known’ by physical contact with the
person concerned (1596a: 529). Conversely, the soul rendered active may itself
become an angel, an outcome most evident in cases of illustrious men, outstanding
in justice (1596a: 537). Even so, the ‘power of the soul’ and thence its immortality
would seem to stem from its response to the intervention of the agent intellect. But

contact with material objects’ (Kraye 2010: 104, citing Pomponazzi’s De incantationibus, written
1520, posthumously published, 1556/7). Cf. Chapter VII.3 (p. 176).
58 Specifically, in his De unitate intellectus contra Averroistas where, following Aristotle, Aquinas

treats the soul’s powers and activities (potentiae animae, operationes animae) as themselves ‘parts of the
soul (partes animae)’.
59 ‘The sensitive intellect is nothing other than the human soul called sensitive when illuminated

with clear and divine light by the agent intellect (intellectus patibilis nihil est aliud quam anima humana
quae tum patibilis dicitur cum perspicua ac divina luce illustratur ab intellectu agente)’ (1596a: 523);
‘What is the nature of the sensitive intellect separated from the dead body? From the passive intellect
the active is made (Qualis est intellectus patibilis a cadavere segregari conditio? Ex intellectu patibili fit
actuosus)’ (1596a: 544).
60 Cf. Plotinus: ‘Intellect is not the intellect of one individual, but is universal; and, being universal,

is the Intellect of all things’ (Ennead III.8.8).

 Vita Contemplativa 229

the clinching proof of the soul’s immortality lies simply in its being so widely
acknowledged as to amount to ‘a kind of natural law (quommodo naturae lex)’
(1596a: 538), with only the Epicureans adopting a dissentient stance.
And yet, the immortality at issue, so tortuously examined, turns out to be relative
after all. For, as Mystagogus observes in response to Theorus’s misgivings over the
ceaseless multiplication of immortal souls, the universe itself is not ‘sempiternal’
and ‘will at some time be annihilated (mundum aliquando interiturum nec sempi-
ternum fore)’ (1596a: 537). The observation invokes afresh the position on the
origin and duration of the world and its contents which Bodin had defended so
vigorously in his Methodus (see Chapter IV.4 (p. 75 sqq.)). Once more he
identifies three sets of contrasting opinions on the world’s origin and duration
(1596a: 62; cf. Methodus 1566: 373–4). Once more he declares that as God is its
efficient cause the world is dependent on the divine will and so cannot be eternal.
But although the basic features of the thesis remain the same, the presentation
differs in detail. The voluntarism of the world’s efficient cause is now expressed
syllogistically, and with positive reference to Scaliger (1596a: 37). In the Methodus
the process of the world’s emergence is described mainly in terms of motion. In the
Theatrum Bodin dwells rather on the distinction between ‘creation’ and ‘gener-
ation’, a differentiation obscured in Methodus where his use of terminology is less
precise. The world was ‘created’ from matter which itself was created, not generated
(1596a: 44). Creation is ex nihilo; before it there is nothing, ‘pure privation’;
whereas ‘generation’ is ‘a beginning from something (ortus secundum quid)’,
as when existent matter takes a new form (1596a: 52). But it is in the attention
paid to chronology that the two works differ most noticeably. Unlike the Methodus,
the Theatrum provides—albeit diffidently—a definition of time, as ‘a finite part of
infinite eternity (partem definitam aeternitatis infinitae)’.61 Yet unlike the Methodus it
offers no counterpart to the lengthy disquisition on chronology presented in the earlier
work, a topic allegedly indispensable to historical understanding.62 Perhaps Bodin
considered that in a work of ‘natural science (naturalis scientia)’ (1596a: sig. ā 2vo)
there was no need to dwell on the age of the world. Perhaps he thought he had said
enough about it in the earlier work—though this did not deter him from enlarging
afresh on other issues debated there. But there is another explanation.
In 1583 Joseph Scaliger had published his New work on the correction of times
(Opus novum de emendatione temporum), a work which ‘transformed the study of
time almost as sharply as its title claimed’ (Grafton 1985: 102). In the course of it
he demolished the credibility of Bodin’s use of evidence at key junctures, notably
the latter’s false identification of the Babylonian king Nabonassar with the biblical
Salmanassar, or his parade of ancient authorities—the Chaldean Berosus, the Egyptian
Manetho, the Persian Metasthenes—whose histories had turned out to be forgeries

61 1596a: 88. The definition follows some brief comment on Aristotelian propositions concerning

the relationship of time and motion, an inconclusive assessment that does not extend to consideration
of time as a mental construct, an action of the soul. On contemporary discussions of these questions see
Edwards 2013: especially ch. 1.
62 ‘Qui sine ratione temporum historias intelligere se posse putant, perinde falluntur ut si labirinthi

errores evadere sine duce velint’ (Methodus 1566: 362).

230 Jean Bodin

(Grafton 1985:123; Grafton 2007: 99–100). All these had figured prominently in
Bodin’s chapter ‘On the computation of universal time’ (see Chapter IV.4 (p. 74
sqq.)), a treatment now far superseded by Scaliger’s own work. No doubt their
presence there, coupled with its author’s sardonic remarks on Scaliger himself, served
to lubricate the latter’s subsequent contemptuous dismissal of the Methodus as a work
where ‘the discourse no way matches its title (ut titulo suo nullo modo respondeat oratio)’
(Des Maizeaux 1711: II. 31). Of course, such an exposure did not deter Bodin from
continuing in the Theatrum to challenge the opinions of others, and above all the
alleged errors and misapprehensions of Aristotle. But while his style in the Theatrum
remains vigorous enough, the tone of the work is generally more restrained than that
of the Methodus in relation to scholars of his own time.
Earlier scholars, however, come in for plenty of acerbic comment, and especially
in a key area where Bodin presents judgements that lead him once more into
debatable land. This is on the topic of the will and its relation to other capacities.
Called upon to define the will, Mystagogus offers, ‘It is the assent of the soul using
free power’—a definition reaffirmed within a few lines amid claims that it will
‘settle innumerable Scholastic questions’.63 But the definition alludes to complex
scholarly controversies and affords no ready resolution. If the soul ‘assents’, this
would seem to involve some particular stimulus. The obvious agent of such a
stimulus is the intellect, which is itself a part of the soul. According to Aquinas, the
will is moved by the intellect, the act of which (actus intellectus) precedes the action
of the will (actus voluntatis) (Summa Ia, q.26, a. 2 resp. 2). But the question of the
relation between will and intellect was fraught with controversy. Franciscan
scholars, with John Duns Scotus to the fore, had rejected the Thomist position.
In their view, the will is free to follow or not to follow the intellect’s directive.
By Mystagogus’s account, intellect and will have different provinces, different objects,
as do the faculties of sight and hearing (1596a: 469). In any case, the intellect is
stimulated involuntarily.64 Data reach it unbidden via the senses. Between the
intellect and other impulses, such as appetite or desire, conflict perpetually obtains.
Certainly, the intellect can correct the errors of the senses (‘contra sensuum errorem
iudicat ac deprehendit intellectus’) (1596a: 474). What it cannot do is nullify the
freedom of the will. And it is by the will that human appetites are regulated. Here
the moral implications are profound. Twice Augustine is quoted with approval for
his doctrine that sin springs from the action of the will, that actions reckonable as
sinful must be voluntary (1596a: 32, 492). And yet, when Theorus continues to
wonder ‘whether the will has dominance over the soul, given that the force of the
intellect is in its power’, the response is unequivocal. Having already been advised
that the undivided soul drives everything, activating the senses, motive force of all
corporeal functions,65 he is told afresh that ‘the ruler of all actions and motions is
the soul, whether the actions proceed from human nature [i.e. involuntarily] or

63 ‘Est assensio animae libera potestate utentis . . . voluntas nihil sit aliud quam actus animae libere

essentientis’ (1596a: 468).

64 For instance, ‘intellectio cadit etiam in invitum’ (1596a: 470).
65 ‘anima sola causa est actionis, motus, vitae, sensum omnium’ (1596a: 479).
 Vita Contemplativa 231

from the will’.66 For nothing must detract from the status of the integrated soul,
not only as ruler of the entire organism, but as the intermediary between that
organism and God Himself.
In that function the role of the intellect is, after all, paramount. For contempla-
tion of God is the highest mode of activity among created beings (1596a: 272–3,
392, 633). Bodin had written this book of nature so that ‘from it we may gain some
semblance of knowledge of the Creator’ (1596a: 633, cf. 6). Of course, and pace
Neoplatonist propositions, there can be no direct knowledge of God Who is
ultimately incomprehensible (1596a: 50).67 First principle of the universe, he
can be known, if at all, only by that principle’s effects. Chief among those effects
is the harmony of the created whole, though the benevolence and wisdom of the
supreme Craftsman (Opifex) are observable amongst nature’s particular compo-
nents at every level. Thus, ‘we see the laws and decrees of nature on the positions,
motions, harmony, shapes of the celestial orbs to be most certain and always the
same (certissimas naturae leges ac decreta in caelestium orbium situ, motu, concentu,
figura, semper sui similes videmus)’ (1596a: 603–4). But those laws do not bind God.
Indeed, events ‘contra naturae leges’ (1596a: 206, cf. 283) are to be construed as
manifestations of the divine will, a will constrained neither by necessity nor by fate
(1596a: 339, 609). That will is interventionist. God controls population numbers
(1596a: 398). He uses locusts as instruments of his vengeance (ultione divina) on
the impious (1596a: 313). Extraordinary natural phenomena testify to his active
engagement with his creation. But while that engagement is manifest, it may not be
direct. So much emerges from Bodin’s account of thunderbolts, an account especially
illustrative of how his thinking is informed at key junctures not by some dominant
doctrine, but by multiple intellectual strands—in this instance, classical philosoph-
ical, historical, Neoplatonist, mythological, astrological, scriptural. Invoking Seneca
and Pliny, Porphyry, and the book of Job, planetary conjunctions as well as ‘the
priests and theologians of Jupiter by whom the most secret mysteries are concealed’,
he states that
God, founder of the world, inflicts misfortune or injury on no one, but avenges crimes
through inferior powers, whether on an entire city, or family, or individuals: for we
have the clearest testimony of this in scripture, by the occurrence of thunderbolts.68
It was a statement that not only conveyed key features of his thinking. It captured
as well the initial grounds upon which he presented his Paradoxon, where God
chose to occupy the judgement seat and Bodin cast himself in the role of a sort of
inferior power.

66 ‘omnium tamen actionum ac motuum moderatrix est anima, sive ab humana natura, sive a voluntate

actiones proficiscantur’ (1596a: 491). But cf. Bodin, Paradoxon (1596b), p. 53 where it appears that will
commands intellect.
67 For the Neoplatonist position, and Ficino’s in particular, on such knowledge as ‘the supreme act

of contemplation’ see Kristeller 1953: 359.

68 ‘Deum mundi conditorem nulli cladem aut exitium irrogare, sed ab inferioribus potestatibus scelerum

vltiones reposci, siue de tota ciuitate, siue de familia, siue de singulis: id enim sacris literis disertissime
testatum habemus de fulminum casu’ (1596a: 209).
232 Jean Bodin

IX.3 THE PARADOXON

The French civil wars wreaked destruction on all sides, tearing apart the social fabric,
turning the military on the people, the people on the clergy, the clergy on the nobility,
the nobility on the magistracy, while ‘the most prosperous cities abandoned them-
selves continually to all kinds of spectacles and senseless debauchery (urbes etiam
florentissimae . . . omnibus voluptatum generibus et luxu ad insaniam usque difflue-
bant)’. Such calamities, so ominous for the future, set at naught the normal processes
of law. With ‘God occupying the judgement seat abandoned by the princes (Deus
tribunal desertum occupans a principibus)’, Bodin had turned from legal writing to
composition of a kind that might be ‘of some use in shaping people’s morals’.69
Thus, in a dedicatory letter to Bernard Potier, possibly a son of Nicolas Potier de
Blancmesnil, magistrate of the Paris Parlement, he introduced the original Latin
version of his ‘Paradoxon, that no virtue can exist in mediocrity, nor man’s highest good
in the process of virtue’. Written in 1591, in the dismal setting of war-torn Laon, it
was eventually published after five years, in effect a companion piece to the
Theatrum. Two more years later the same printer, Denys du Val, published a French
version which Bodin himself had translated and amended before his death.
The French version bears a slightly different title, discarding the term ‘actio’ with
its legal connotations, and reinforcing the Aristotelian allusion by substituting the
phrase ‘mid-way between two vices’ for the original’s reference to the ‘highest’ or
‘sovereign’ good.70 It also lacks the original’s heated letter of dedication. There is a
new dedicatee, Claude de Lisle, governor of Laon; and a new dedicatory letter,
largely more restrained in tone, but now castigating those who ‘flay the people,
drink their blood, gnaw them to the bone’. Other differences between the texts of
the Latin and French versions are numerous. Many are stylistic and presentational,
variations introduced mainly in order to heighten emphasis or to improve clarity.
Some of these are trivial; some have philosophical or theological implications. The
question ‘If there is no God, whence can the good flow?’ is embellished in the
French version with an aside, ‘as the atheists say’.71 Conversely, the response in
the Latin version to the question, ‘What is the subject of moral discipline?’ is
supplemented with a phrase on the conventions of disciplinary discussion which
the French version discards.72 ‘Good men’, says the Latin version grandly, ‘are
instructed in dreams and visions so that they may discern wisdom and foretell the
future by most certain prophecies’—a purpose expressed in the French version as
‘to warn the princes and the people of the will of God’.73

69 ‘me a forensibus literis ad hoc scriptionis genus contuli ut . . . moribus hominum conformandis

utcunque prodessem’ (1596b: 4–5).

70 Io Bodini Paradoxon quod nec virtus ulla in mediocritate nec summum hominis bonum in virtutis

actione consistere possit (1596b); Le Paradoxe de Iean Bodin Angevin qu’il n’y a pas une seule vertu en
mediocrité, ny au milieu de deux vices (1598); both versions published at Paris by Denys du Val.
71 ‘Si Deus non est, unde bona fluere possunt?’ (1596b: 10); ‘s’il n’y a point de Dieu, comme disent les

atheistes, d’où vient le bien?’ (1598: 9).

72 ‘id enim praecipue constituendum est cum de finibus artium disputatur’ (1596b: 20; cf. 1598: 19).
73 ‘ut sapientiam hauriant ac certissimis oraculis prospiciant futura’ (1596b), pp. 33–4; ‘& avertir les

Princes et les peoples de la volonté de Dieu’ (1598: 31).

 Vita Contemplativa 233

Here and there the text is reordered and simplified: for instance, in an analysis of
the four ‘natural’ virtues, wisdom (sapientia), knowledge (scientia), practical judge-
ment (prudentia), and practical or creative skill (ars), the French translation discards
the Greek terms (θεωρητικὸν, πρακτικὸν, and ποιητικὸν) used in the Latin for the
categories, or genera, into which the specific virtues are distributed (1596b: 72;
1598: 69). Changes occur seemingly at random in citations of authorities. In place
of a bald marginal reference to Psalm xvi, the French version provides a substantial
quotation both from that particular source and from Psalm xlii as translated in verse
by Theodore de Bèze, a source quoted again at the very culmination of the French
text.74 In the French version three substantial quotations from Horace replace the
Latin’s reliance on another bald marginal reference to three psalms in support of an
explanation why virtue is not to be defined as flight from vices (1596b: 47; 1598:
45–6). A reference to Philo on the virtues is silently removed from the French
version, whereas in the latter Maimonides replaces Isaiah in a reference concerning
the eagle as a symbol of wisdom (1596b: 78, 86; 1598: 77, 85). In discussing
courage (fortitudo) Bodin replaces a comparison of Greek and Latin terms with a
comment from Tacitus on Augustus (1596b: 82; 1598: 80), perhaps with a view to
making his text more digestible; yet the French version contains more Hebrew
terms than the Latin (1596b: 27, 92; 1598: 15, 21, 25, 89). The greatest difference
between the two versions occurs in the concluding passages where Bodin has
extensively rewritten his text (1596b: 95 sqq.; 1598: 93 sqq.). But despite all the
amendments in detail, the message as well as the structure and methodology of
the work remain the same throughout.
Like the Theatrum, the Paradoxon takes the form of a dialogue, but this time the
exchanges are between a father (Pater) and his son (Filius), the latter a more
innocent seeker after instruction than Theorus of the Theatrum. Filius begins by
asking Pater to explain the propositions in the treatise’s title, and—in characteristic
Bodinian style—calls at once for definitions, of ‘good’ and ‘evil’. The response
immediately introduces a major theme: that as God is the source of everything
good, and indeed of everything tout court, evil as such can be nothing other than
privation of good, just as darkness is simply privation of light or illumination. This
leads to a series of differentiations revolving around distinctions between the
supreme or sovereign good and the good specifically of human beings,75 and
between the good of the latter and their end in the Aristotelian sense of their
final cause. A further differentiation between the sovereign good and human well-
being is that the former is the subject area of theology, the latter the concern of

74 Les Pseaumes mis en rime francoise par Clement Marot & Theodore de Beze ([Geneva]: Jean

Crespin, 1563, pp. 41, 105); also published at La Rochelle in that same year, though Bèze’s
translation, a continuation of Marot’s, is dated 1553, as I am advised by Dr Tim Chesters to whom
I am much indebted for identifying this source. Bodin quotes from it again on the final page of the
French version.
75 A well-worn distinction, not least amongst humanists: cf., for instance, Valla 1519: III.xii (fol.

91vo): God ‘has made us suitable for enjoyment of the good (nos produxit bonis fruendis aptos), but “while
God is the good . . . our felicity is not God himself, but descends from God” (Haec autem bona deus ipse
est . . . beatitudo nostra non est ipsemet deus, sed a deo descendit)’.
234 Jean Bodin

moral science. That concern, however, is not with the good as such, but with how
humans are conditioned to gain it (homo beandus), just as the business of medicine is
with the body rather than simply with medicaments. We are once more in the
territory of dialectic and—as the Latin formulations make clear—of ‘causes’ too.76
How, then, are humans to be appropriately conditioned? This is certainly not
through sensual pleasure, Epicurean-fashion. The means lie ‘in the act of reflec-
tion’, to experience ‘the most excellent and most beautiful of all, in full enjoyment
(plena fruitione)’. Here was a pregnant term—juristic (the enjoyment of fruits
(fructus) by the assent of the dominus, not their possession), but with other
resonances too.77 It reinforces a fundamental point which, in response to Filius’s
puzzled reaction, Pater explains more fully. What he has in mind is not ‘reflection
as in a mirror (a speculis)’, nor even in ‘contemplation as many still suppose’.
Contemplation, an ambiguous term, is applicable to earthly things and is passive.
Reflection in the sense that Pater intends is ‘for the active intellect (ad intellectum
actuosum)’: it is ‘an act reflective of the divine essence, that is in the clearest effusion
of light towards us’.78 This does not mean ‘union’ with the inviolable unity that is
God. It means that humans may approach God if they love him ardently, a love
that equates to wisdom and this in turn to justice (1596b: 32). The most blessed,
enjoying illumination and ‘with soul purified (purgata mente)’, may ‘foretell future
things by most certain prophecies (certissimis oraculis prospiciant futura)’ (1596b:
33–5). As the Latin version describes it, this is an ecstatic experience: such a person
‘will be freed from the slavery of the body (nexibus corporeis solutus erit)’ to
experience ‘that most blessed life which is in enjoyment of one eternal God
(beatissimam illam vitam quae est in unius aeterni Dei fruitione)’ (1596b: 35). Less
Platonically, and now with reference to Averroës, the French version expresses this
as ‘the vision of God’ gained by ‘the active intellect . . . which is the Angel of God’
(1598: 32–3).
The way to attain ‘that most blessed life (beatissimam illam vitam)’ (1596b: 35) is
through obeying God’s commands. It is within the power of human beings to do
this: ‘the principle of our actions is the will (est autem actionum nostrarum princeps
ipsa voluntas)’ (1596b: 36), meaning ‘free will (libera voluntas)’.79 What matters—
again the jurist speaks—is the actor’s purpose, or ‘intention (sententia)’ (1596: 41).
The dialogue now becomes a virtual catechism (1596b: 41–5) as Filius seeks to
understand what is the ‘most perfect (perfectissimum)’, the ‘excellent (praecipuus)’,
the most ‘ardent (ardentius)’ way of serving and loving God. It emerges that the
divine light shines most abundantly upon ‘those who have accumulated most heaps
of virtues (qui maiores virtutum acervos in unum collectos accumularint)’ (1596b: 45).

76 For instance, ‘homo ipse beandus cuius causa salutaria praecepta quaerenda sunt’ (1596b: 21).
77 Cf. Digest 47.2.62.8. Cf. also its use by Valla (above, n. 64); and in 1596b: 33, 34, where Bodin
supplies scriptural references.
78 ‘nec in contemplatione ut plures etiam arbitrantur: sed in actu reflexo divinae essentiae, id est in

clarissima lucis erga nos effusione’ (1596b: 26, 32). The French version adds, a touch less technically,
‘when he [i.e. man] has the vision of God’ (1598: 24).
79 1596b: 37. The proposition is supported predictably from Augustine and also from Giovanni

Pico and from Plato. For its implications in the thought of Giordano Bruno see Gatti 2015: 60–1.
 Vita Contemplativa 235

Filius promptly asks for a definition of ‘virtue’ and then of ‘vice’. The former, he is
advised, is ‘a praiseworthy quality of the soul (laudabilis animi habitus)’, and the
latter simply the soul’s privation of virtue (1596b: 46). Not surprisingly, Filius
requests clarification and so is instructed in the four ‘natural’ virtues and their
genera (cf. Chapter IX.3 (p. 233)), ‘contemplation’ and ‘action’ (1596b: 48).
Beyond these there is a still greater virtue, ‘enjoyment of the divine light (fruitionem
divinae lucis)’ (1596b: 50); but the focus for the time being is on the ‘natural’
virtues themselves.
All virtues, says Pater, are intellectual: hence his refusal to follow Aristotle in
separating out the moral from the intellectual variety. It is the intellectual soul, or
mind (mens), that commands human beings’ animal impulses, and these are bound
to obey. Yet the intellect in turn is subordinate to the will: there is no sin otherwise
than by an act of will freely performed, and no understanding unless the will
comply. Again, as all virtue is intellectual virtue cannot be defined as a quality
(habitus) lying in the midst of vices (in medio vitiorum) and distinguishable
from them (1596b: 55). As the treatise’s very title affirms, there is no virtue in
‘mediocrity’: for example, in ‘moderate’ exercise of temperance or justice (1596b:
59–60). However, among the ‘intellectual’ virtues there is an order of precedence.
Wisdom (sapientia) and scientia are species of contemplation, with scientia, which
concerns the works of the creator, quite separate from prudentia which deals with
human activities. Prudentia in any case is a species of action, in company with ars,
the least of the virtues as it produces statuary than which ‘nothing more sordid nor
less useful to humankind (nec ulla sordidior aut hominum generi minus utilis)’ can be
imagined (1596b: 69–72; cf. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 1139b15–17). Even so,
all the virtues were exemplified in Bezaleel, the biblical architect of no less holy
a work than the Tabernacle.80 Bezaleel received them by inspiration of the
Holy Spirit, and so was an instance of how ‘the seeds of all the virtues are divinely
sown in all of us (ingeniis nostris omnia omnium virtutum semina divinitus insita)’
(1596b: 67).
But if all the virtues are accommodated within these four, what of justice,
fortitude, temperance? Fortitude and temperance, explains Pater, fall ‘under
prudentia’; indeed, Plato ‘would have called all the virtues prudential (Plato virtutes
omnes prudentias appellaret)’ (1596b: 75), an acceptable position if wisdom and
scientia are excluded. Of prudentia, itself a species of action, there are in turn
two species: actions relevant to ‘morals (mores)’, and actions relevant to ‘praxim’
(from Gk πρᾱξις), the latter in effect signifying applied knowledge as distinct from
pure knowledge which appertains to scientia. As for justice, this, according to Plato,
is ‘nothing other than the harmony and agreement (concordiam & concentum) of
prudentia, fortitude and temperance’, the ‘moral virtues’ (1596b: 77–8). The Latin
text adds a reference to Philo as holding that ‘justice is that which embraces all the
virtues’, but this is discarded from the French version which instead explains
‘harmony’ more fully in terms of music (1596b: 78; 1598: 76). However, this

80 The Tabernacle housed in its inner sanctum the Ark of the Covenant between God and the

Hebrew people (Exodus xxxi.1–11).

236 Jean Bodin

is still to do with justice as a virtue in the soul: what of ‘that which lies externally
(ea vero quae foras exit) and maintains harmony among the citizens’ (1596: 79)?
This, says Pater, ‘pertains to the discipline of the law which is called jurisprudence’.
But the most powerful part of prudentia is called politica, which pertains to ‘public
authority (imperium publicum)’ (1596b: 80).
Further discussion follows of relations between the moral virtues, elucidated
audially on the basis of musical analogies (the diapason, the diapente, the diates-
saron), and visually by reference to the prophet Ezekiel’s celestial chariot
(cf. Chapter IX.2 (p. 220)). Other putative virtues such as truth and friendship
are evaluated, until Filius raises the question of the status of the ‘theological virtues’,
‘faith, hope and love (caritas)’ (1596b: 89). Caritas, construed as loving the creator
God ‘with all the passion of one’s soul (toto mentis impetu)’, is of prime importance:
all virtues are imperfect unless grounded in love of God, the summum bonum.81
But the theological virtues are accommodated within the intellectual or natural
virtues; even caritas may be deemed a kind of wisdom (1596b: 91). What matters
above all else is that observance of the virtues spring from the exercise of ‘free will
(a libera voluntate)’: thus, faith ‘ceases to be faith if it should be imparted from
without (fides esse desinit si fuerit extrinsecus infusa)’ (1596b: 90). Nevertheless, it
emerges that the requisite conditioning of the will may be acquired. The means,
Filius is advised, lie in nature, precepts and practice; in keeping good company; in
prayer; and, above all, in learning not simply to love, but to fear God (1596b: 98).
It is a conclusion hammered home more vigorously in the French than in the Latin
version, and in terms directly relevant to the civil wars:
For if the princes and great lords had feared only the magistrates whom they command,
who was there to prevent them from wrong-doing? And if the wretched subjects had
feared only judges and witnesses, who would have restrained them from perpetrating
with impunity a thousand abominable and wicked acts?82
It was a lesson, at once moral, theological, and political, directly relevant to
explaining France’s experience in the civil wars: hence Bodin’s purpose in writing
his Paradoxon, as he had explained at the outset.
That purpose was in a sense obscured by the title he chose for the work.
Any reader seeking paradoxes would have found in it ample entertainment: that
the evil is not contrary to the good; that, evil being privation of good, doing nothing
is culpable; that animals striving by nature to avoid death do good by being killed
for human consumption (1596b: 9, 15, 17–18). The title signalled an overt attack
on Aristotle, as if the author’s governing intention were to challenge the Stagyrite’s

81 The position approximates to that of Scotus in relation to natural law: ‘One of the most striking

differences between the metaethical theories of Aquinas and Scotus is that Scotus holds that the first
principle of natural law is not that good should be done, but that God should be loved’ (Cross 1998:
183).
82 1598: 98: ‘car si les princes & grands seigneurs n’auoyent crainte que des magistrats, ausquels ils

commandent, qui est-ce qui les empescheroit de mal faire? & si les meschans sujets ne craignoyent pas que
les iuges & tesmoings, qui les retiendroit de faire mille mechancetez execrables à couuert?’ Cf. 1596b: 98,
which lacks an equivalent expostulation.
 Vita Contemplativa 237

doctrine of the mean.83 Yet, as always, Bodin’s relationship with Aristotle was more
positive than he pretended: indeed, the germ of his leading idea on reflection and
the separated intellect is traceable, ultimately, to the latter’s account of the soul.84
Again as ever, and to a degree especially noticeable in this relatively short work,
Bodin’s Paradoxon represents a mélange of intellectual components, philosophical
and theological above all else. Pythagorean, Platonic, and Neoplatonic elements
resonate in his views on the unity of the Godhead or on the relevance of musical
analogies to elucidate the harmony of the world and of the virtues, the latter kept in
concord through a hierarchy of command and obedience under the aegis of reason.
In conjunction with other ingredients those elements inform as well his thoughts
on illumination and purification.85 While the ‘seeds’ analogy which he uses in the
Paradoxon as in the Theatrum is of Stoic provenance, Bodin presents it in disguised
fashion, deploying it in Neoplatonist garb and thereby avoiding appearances of
adopting a deterministic stance (Horowitz 1998: 199). Christian thinkers serve to
support his arguments at important junctures. Augustine is vouched repeatedly to
warrant the definition of evil as privation of good, the proposition that God permits
no evil unless good comes of it, above all the contention that only sins voluntarily
committed are culpable. For the last of these positions he is coupled with Scotus
who, in turn, is paired with Pico as suggesting that the intellect can believe what
it chooses pace the will—a deployment of authorities studiously indifferent to
discrepancies between their respective positions.86
Contemporary readers can scarcely have failed to connect Bodin’s treatment of a
fundamental topic, central to his thesis in Paradoxon, with its significance in the
debates of the Protestant Reformation and over many preceding centuries. This was
free will, that most vexed of topics, controversies over which are traceable in line of
ascent from the 1520s confrontation between Erasmus (Diatribe seu collatio de libero
arbitrio) and Luther (De servo arbitrio), through the anti-Thomist nominalism of
Occam and the voluntarism of Scotus to the Pelagian heresy of Augustine’s time,
and beyond. Bodin does not examine it from a Christian perspective, just as core
concepts of Christian doctrine—grace, salvation, justification, the Trinity—escape
his attention in this work. Regardless of much-pondered tensions between human
free will and divine foreknowledge, he declares his belief that faith born of the former
‘without any arguments or any reason (sine ullis argumentis, sine ulla ratione)’ is the
more meritorious, and so he careers down a path towards mysticism: ‘solely by the

83 Cf. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1107a2–3, defining ‘excellence’ as ‘a mean between two vices,

that which depends on excess and that which depends on defect’.

84 Cf. Aristotle, On the Soul, 413b25–6, on how ‘the power of reflection . . . seems to be a different

kind of soul, differing as what is eternal from what is perishable; it alone is capable of being separated’.
Cf. Chapter IX.2 (p. 234).
85 For harmony in the soul (1596: 77–8) see Plato, Republic, 430d sqq. For illumination etc., Plato,

Phaedo, 67 a–b, 69 b–c, 79 c–d; Plotinus, Ennead I.2. 10 sq. Cf. Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, Oratio
de hominis dignitate (1496, ed. Borghesi et al. 2012): paragraph 70, citing Dionysius the Areopagite;
also Kristeller 1953: 230–4, 273. It must be stressed, however, that Bodin’s account deviates from the
Neoplatonist model by denying the soul direct access to or unification with God. See the Coda and
Conclusion to the present volume for further discussion of these issues.
86 1596b: 9, 13, 19, 28, 37, 39, 52, 54, 89.
238 Jean Bodin

goodness of God’, he pronounces, ‘we are ravished in his love (sola Dei bonitate in
eius amorem rapimur)’ (1596b: 92). That belief, together with much else, has been
interpreted as an instance of Judaizing on his part,87 and it is certainly the case that in
the Paradoxon he once more draws heavily upon Hebrew sources. References to the
Bible, above all to the Old Testament and the prophets, are again conspicuous,
though more so in the Latin than in the French version, and not infrequently
set alongside evidence of other provenance.88 Conversely, it is in the French and not
in the Latin version that Bodin refers explicitly to Hebrew as ‘the holy language (la
langue saincte)’ (1598: 21; cf. 1596b: 22). Even so, such affirmations and the appeal to
Hebraic authority in general seems arguably to spring less from a Judaic religious
persuasion as such than from what had now become his overriding purpose. Earlier in
his career he had set out to discover a system of universal law and had taken Roman law
as his guide. Now his quest was for a universal religion: and where, other than in the
most venerable tradition available to him and that tradition’s ample documentation,
was he to find his principal guide to that?

87 Rose 1980a: 106.

88 For instance, where citations from Genesis are immediately followed by the Greek expression
καλὸν καγαθὸν and this in turn (in the French version) by the Hebrew term mod tova (1596b: 16;
1598: 15). The point is noted by Mesnard 1949: 547.
 X
Coda
Colloquium

X .1 AUTHORSHIP AND BACKGROUND

In the summer of 1596 Jean Bodin died at Laon, by some accounts of the plague,
but according to his daughter Antoinette ‘because of some malady and mental
depression (débilité d’esprit) which had afflicted him’. His wife had predeceased
him. His sons, Hélie, putative author of the Sapientiae moralis epitome, and Jean,
Hélie’s fellow recipient of their father’s instruction as recounted in that work, both
died young. Antoinette, who appears to have been disabled in some way, expired
unmarried at an advanced age.1 According to the acerbic seventeenth-century scholar
Gilles Ménage of Angers who claimed to have seen Bodin’s will, the testator directed
that several treatises of his on matters of law—De imperio, De jurisdictione,
De Decretis, De legis actionibus, De judiciis—be destroyed, ‘which was done in his
presence before his death’ (Bayle 1740: I. 589). The will also contained directions
for his burial in the Franciscan church at Laon. This act of conventional piety
scarcely tallied with a curious report by Jacques Gillot in a letter to Joseph Scaliger
that Bodin was ‘of the League and died a Jew without mentioning Jesus Christ in the
last words which I had from him in verse’.2 Doubts concerning his political
alignment and religious stance were said to be widely entertained amongst scholars
who, by Bayle’s account, included the seventeenth-century Lutheran theologian
Johann Diecmann, reported to have commented on a manuscript apparently of
Bodin’s authorship: ‘It is a well-written book, but very dangerous, because he mocks
all religions, and in the end concludes that there is none at all. Also he had none
himself: he died like a dog, without any sense of piety, being neither Jew nor
Christian nor Turk.’3

1 Ponthieux 1928: 69, 71; Ménage 1675: 147. Cf. Bezold 1914: 279, citing Ménage as saying that

Hélie predeceased his father.

2 Colomiès 1665: 86; Botley et al. eds 2012: VII. 36. A clergyman, an avocat like Bodin, and an

industrious compiler of documents, Gillot was one of the collaborators on the anti-League Satyre
Menippée.
3 Bayle 1740: I. 592, citing Diecmann 1683 as the source; also L’Estoile IX 1881: 104, according to

whom the poem ran to seventy-four verses—quite an achievement by a dying man—and describing
Bodin as ‘a learned man, but quite ignorant as he knew nothing’ of Jesus Christ. Cf. the references by
Pierre Daniel Huet, founder of the first provincial academy of sciences, to ‘Bodinus in pestilenti
Dialogo’, ‘in pestifero opere’, ‘in pestifero & exitiali libro nondum edito’, etc. (Huet 1679: 26, 309, 385).
240 Jean Bodin

The book in question was the Colloquium heptaplomeres de rerum sublimium

arcanis abditis (Colloquium of the Seven on the Hidden Mysteries of Exalted Things).
Deemed ‘dangerous’ in at least some circles and yet admired in others, it remained
unpublished until the nineteenth century whilst circulating quite widely in manu-
script copies. Whether its author was in fact Bodin has become a matter of dispute.
Those who knew of it in the decades after his death assumed it to be his work, but
in recent years it has been argued with some force that the treatise is not the
Angevin’s. Internal and comparative criticism has been held to show that both in
form and in substance the Colloquium differs in particular and significant respects
from others of Bodin’s known works, and that it refers to events and materials
knowable only after his time. Other texts have been identified as kin to the
Colloquium, and other writers as plausible candidates for this book’s authorship.4
However, the principal arguments to these effects have been persuasively refuted,
on negative and on positive grounds. On the one hand, alleged inconsistencies
between this work and the rest of Bodin’s published writings have been explained
away, and alleged anachronisms in the Colloquium disproven. On the other hand,
a ‘huge overlap’ has been discerned between the sources that underpin the
Colloquium and his acknowledged works, while the former exemplifies a ‘degree
of inwardness with Bodin’s thought-processes’ as manifested elsewhere that ‘is
remarkably high’.5 In the light of all this it seems reasonable to accept that Bodin
did indeed write the Colloquium. It is also likely that he worked on it in the course
of the early 1590s perhaps alongside or immediately after the Theatrum.6
Accordingly, it may reasonably be regarded as the culminating work of a phi-
losopher who had announced early in his authorial career an agenda of three
modes of ‘history’ (cf. Chapter IV.4 (p. 72)). The Theatrum represented his
contribution to the second of those modes, focusing as it did on the natural
world albeit treated as a guide to the divine. The Colloquium was concerned
explicitly with the third, the ultimate field of inquiry.
Its author gratified that concern through an exercise in comparative religion.
Exercises of that kind were far from infrequent in conception and had often been
realized in dialogue form. In the twelfth century Peter Abelard had set natural
philosophy alongside Judaism and Christianity in his unfinished Dialogus inter
philosophum, Iudaeum et Christianum. In the following century Ramon Lull had
added Islam to the mix in his Libre del Gentil e los tres savis, written originally in
Catalan and concluding a series of courteous exchanges between the participants
with a resolve ‘each to honour the others (honorer li un l’autre)’ until further

4 The most sustained defence of these positions has been mounted by Karl F. Faltenbacher:

see Faltenbacher 1985, 1988, 1991, 1993, 2002, 2009. See also David Wootton 2002; Jean Céard
2009.
5 Malcolm 2006: quoted phrases at 142, 147. Cf. Bodin 1984, ed. Berriot: XLIV–XLVI.
6 Its composition has been dated to the years 1591–3, chiefly on the strength of an inscription at the

end of some of the manuscript copies: ‘H.E.J.B.A.S.A.AE.LXIII’, construable as ‘Haec ego Johannes
Bodinus Andegavensis scripsi anno aetatis LXIII ’. Bodin was born either in late 1529 or early 1530:
hence the suggested dates of composition. See Malcolm 2006: 97–100. The Theatrum was being
written in 1590: cf. Chapter IX.1 (p. 212).
 Colloquium 241

discussion should yield agreement on a common creed.7 Other attempts in the

Western world at comparing the three great monotheisms were matched within the
sphere of Eastern faiths as well (Bodin 1984, ed. Berriot: XLVI–XLIX). Some
sixteenth-century ventures in the field were still more ambitious: in 1548 the Swiss
theologian and orientalist Theodore Bibliander published as an annex to his
‘Commentary on the common principles of all languages’ a ‘brief exposition’ of
the ‘religions of all nations and peoples’, ranging beyond the recognized western
and eastern traditions.8 But for the most part such exercises with their universal-
izing aspirations were ultimately concerned less to converge on common ground
than to show the superiority of one or other of the creeds at issue and the
deficiencies of the rest. Such an object was sufficiently plain in certain contempor-
ary works in which the quest for ‘truth’ was advertised as paramount. Bodin himself
cited Philippe du Plessis Mornay,9 whose De la vérité de la religion chrestienne
sought among various religions the ‘common principles’ on the basis of which ‘one
may usefully debate with them and often enough by these common principles
prove and verify one’s own’—to wit, ‘the Divinity of Christ and the truth of
our scriptures’.10 Bodin drew material from Guillaume Postel’s De orbis terrae
Concordia which sought ‘proof from selected philosophies of the true religion,
that is the Christian (Verae religionis, id est Christianae probatio, ex philosophia
desumpta)’, whilst in doing so taking account of Islamic, Jewish, and other creeds as
well.11 Among the finest examples of the genre was Nicolas of Cusa’s De pace fidei
(1453); yet this too set out in dialogue form to show that amid the diversity of rites
and ceremonies observable throughout the world there was one religion so powerful
that ‘through it a certain harmony might be gained and thereby a perpetual
peace’—and that religion, too, was Christianity.12
Harmony and peace had long been objects of Bodin’s quest, and Mornay’s
search for ‘principles’ also tallied with his purposes. That search complied with
Aristotle’s dictum, that those who sought knowledge of anything must seek out ‘its
primary causes or first principles’ (Physics 184a13). In respect of religious beliefs,

7 Cited from the medieval French translation Le Livre du Gentil et des Trois Sages, ed. Llinarès

(Lull 1966: 213). On links between Lull’s dialogue and the Colloquium see Courcelles 1999.
8 Bibliander 1548; see Bezold 1914: 304.
9 Bodin 1857, ed. Noack: 270, cited hereinafter as Noack 1857; cf. Bodin 1975, ed. Kuntz: 354,

n. 215. In what follows all quotations from the text of the Colloquium are from the edition which
Ludwig Noack published in 1857 on the basis chiefly of the version reconstituted from five
manuscripts by the German jurist Heinrich Christian von Senckenberg (1704–68). All translations
are my own. However, I must record that in common with all other English-language students of this
work I am greatly indebted to the edition and English translation by Marion Leathers Daniels Kuntz
which contains (pp. lxvii–lxxii) a useful summary account of the manuscript sources, and provides in
the margins throughout the text page references to Noack’s edition.
10 Mornay 1585: Preface, sigs [b.iiij], c. Regardless (or, indeed, in the light) of such principles

Mornay, unusually in the context of the French civil wars, allowed that both Catholics and Protestants
might legitimately worship freely—though such freedom would surely lead them in due course to
distinguish ‘la vraye Religion de la fausse’; see Fragonard 1991: 139.
11 Postel [1544]: 1; cf. Kuntz 1985. Postel himself denounced Bodin for offering on the prophecies

of Daniel remarks ‘to the great danger of the ruin of Jesus’ eternal reign’ (q. Secret 1961: 353).
12 ‘unam posse facilem quondam concordantiam reperiri, ac per eam in religione perpetuam pacem

convenienti’ (Cusa 1959: 4, cf. 7–8).

242 Jean Bodin

this meant investigating their very origins or foundations, beyond—though by no

means disregarding—the structures of inquiry provided by the Greeks. Those
remote origins seemed to many traceable to the prisca theologia, repository of the
‘ancient wisdom’ that had emanated from ancient Egypt, Iran, and Israel, as well
as Greece, through ‘the writings of Moses, Mercurius Trismegistus, Zoroaster,
Pythagoras, Orpheus’, and many more. Thus the Florentine philosopher Marsiglio
Ficino, linking those writings and that wisdom with the teaching of Plato and his
‘Academic’ successors in a series culminating with the name of Thomas Aquinas.13
Still more wide-ranging were the syncretizing endeavours and sources investigated
on an extraordinary scale to the same end by Ficino’s younger friend, Giovanni Pico
della Mirandola, whose Nine hundred conclusions on all kinds of sciences (Conclu-
siones nongentae in omni genere scientiarum), highly controversial and adjudged by
papal decree in part heretical, included ‘five hundred on the philosophy, mathem-
atics, cabbala, magic of the ancients (quarum quingentae sunt in Philosophia veterum,
Mathematics, Cabala, Magia)’.14 Bodin was among Ficino’s many admirers in
French circles (cf. Chapter VI, n. 40), and Pico he reckoned among the most ‘subtle’
and ‘learned’ philosophers of his era, albeit unsound on matters of astrology.15 Even
so, the very title of the Colloquium with its explicit reference to ‘hidden mysteries’
plainly alludes to the prisca theologia.
In selectively approving that body of knowledge Bodin was not alone. Protest-
ants, courtiers, and Catholics figured among compatriots of his whose thinking
combined interest in the field with wariness of aspects of it (see Walker 1954).
They included, on the one hand, Mornay as well as no less an intellectual luminary
than Peter Ramus; on the other hand, the poets Guy Fèvre de La Boderie and
Pontus de Tyard, Bishop of Chalon-sur Sâone, both of whom participated in the
movement of literary fellowship that led to the formation of Henri III’s Palace
Academy (see Chapter VII.1 (p. 159)). La Boderie, disciple of Gullaume Postel’s,
and servant of François d’Anjou as one of his secretaries, was also translator of the
Christian Cabbalist Francesco Giorgio’s De harmonia mundi with its ‘incorruptible
doctrine’ culled from Ficino and various Hebrew, Chaldean, and Syriac sources—a
doctrine elucidated by Guy’s brother Nicolas in a preface to the French version
where he explained how ‘all things natural and divine’ issued ‘from Unity’ in four
streams, arithmetic, geometric, ‘harmonic and musical’, and ‘astronomic and
celestial’.16 As for Tyard, who made use of Giorgio’s work, drew more heavily
on Ficino’s and found in ‘the holy Egyptian school’ a source of ‘secret doctrine’

13 Ficino 1559: sig. ¶ ij. For an assessment of Ficino’s perception of prisca theologia in relation to his

view of Cabbala, interpreted as ‘an ancient Jewish mystical theology’, see Idel et al. 2002.
14 The phrase occurs in an edition of Pico’s Conclusiones dated 1532; see Pico 1973, ed. Kieszkowski:

4. For Pico’s astonishing range of sources—Greek, Arab, Egyptian, Chaldean, Hebrew—see Garin 1937:
73–116; summarized by Kieszkowski in Pico 1973: 10–20. Cf. Pico’s defence of his positions and
procedures, the Oration on the Dignity of Man (Oratio de hominis dignitate), where he notes how he had
deployed ‘many principles taken from the ancient theology of Hermes Trismegistus, many more drawn
from the teachings of the Chaldeans and Pythagoras, and many others deriving from the more secret
mysteries of the Hebrews’ (Pico 2012, ed. Borghesi et al., §199).
15 Noack 1857: 217; République 1583: 548; cf. Démonomanie 1580: fos 19vo–20.
16 Giorgio 1588: sig. [ē v]; cf. Secret 1969: 106; Yates 1979: 32.
 Colloquium 243

(Yates 1947/88: 81, 91), he described in the opening passages of his Solitaire
premier (1552) how ‘enjoyment of eternal light’ might be reached through
‘profound contemplation which leads the purified soul’ to ‘the unique source of
beauty and wisdom’ (Tyard 1950: 2). Here were sentiments that chimed with key
elements of Bodin’s religious thought—thought which he undertook to re-examine
in his Colloquium.

X .2 MODE OF EXPOSITION

The re-examination takes the form of a debate between seven participants,

conducted over six sessions reported in six books, and set in Venice. Numbers
and setting are all significant. Seven was a ‘sacred number’ to the Hebrews as Bodin
had long since noted.17 Six is the first ‘perfect’ number, a term originating in the
Greek τέλειος interpretable as ‘completion’ and so especially relevant to this book as
the culmination of Bodin’s lifelong work. The choice of Venice as the setting is
intriguing, given Bodin’s previously equivocal view of the Serenissima’s constitu-
tion.18 However, Venice, he had finally observed, was ‘governed by harmonic
proportion which has rendered that Republic fine and flourishing’, unlike those
unfortunate countries which ‘civil wars or fear of tyrants’ would persistently
‘threaten (civilia bella aut tyrannorum metus . . . impendeant)’ (Noack 1857: 1;
cf. République 1583: 1050). It was an observation that implied a gloomy view of
conditions and prospects in the France of the early 1590s. Here was a scene of
seemingly interminable conflicts and irreconcilable divisions, where peasant
uprisings compounded the disorder perpetuated in local and regional campaigns
by a League sundered between noble, urban notable and radical elements, and by a
Huguenot movement increasingly beset by internal rivalries and distrust of Henri
of Navarre. In the perception of the philosopher of Laon, so many of the problems
underlying these disputes and their solution too might lie in the sacred mysteries of
religion, driver of division and yet potentially the universal salve—if, within the
limits of human understanding, these mysteries could be properly pondered by
men of goodwill and a position acceptable to all discovered.
The work was Bodin’s first and only attempt at a dramatic dialogue consisting of
statements in utramque partem with every participant’s contribution given more or
less equal weight, as distinct from an instructional series of question-and-answer
exchanges between pupil and master (cf. Chapter IX.2 (p. 216), ref. Vulcan 2000).
The seven participants in the Colloquium debate each represents a particular religious
persuasion, or indeed none: a Venetian Catholic (Paulus Coronaeus) at whose house
the gathering takes place: a sceptic (Hieronymus Senamus); a Calvinist and jurist

17 République 1583: IV.ii (p. 566); see Chapter VI.6 (p. 153). In the Colloquium the significance of

the number 7 is further expounded by the Hebrew Salomon and the mathematician Fridericus (Noack
1857: 84–5).
18 Cf. Chapter VI.2 (p. 126). On Venice as the debate’s location see Vasoli 2008: 247–64;

also Kuntz 1999.

244 Jean Bodin

(Antonius Curtius); a natural philosopher (Diegus Toralba); a Lutheran and math-

ematician (Fridericus Podamicus); a Jew (Salomon Barcassius); and a convert from
Catholicism to Islam (Octavius Fagnola).19 There is also a narrator engaged by
Coronaeus to take notes and to give readings, initially from Plato’s Phaedo, later
from a tragedy of Octavius’s composition. In the narrator’s view, it was a gathering
characterized by an impulse towards universalism: in that group ‘no one seemed like
himself so much as all resembled all (nemo tam sui similis quam omnes omnium
videretur)’, and ‘no one was intent upon making his point by debating tricks, but all
were all driven by devotion to learning (nulla contentione verborum aut vincendi
cupiditate, sed omnes studio discendi ferebantur)’ (Noack 1857: 2).20 Thus motivated
they conduct their discussions amicably over dinner and generally begin or end the
proceedings with hymn-singing. Such audial expressions of harmonious interchange
are complemented by a visual manifestation of universal concord. This is Coronaeus’s
‘pantotheca’, a wooden artefact containing a systematic arrangement of samples or
images of ‘whatever could be found by way of planets, comets and similar phenomena,
elements, substances, stones, metals, fossils, plants, living things (planetarum, come-
tarum, similiumque impressionum, elementorum, corporum, lapidum, metallorum, fossi-
lium, stirpium, animantium quaeque nancisci poterat)’ (Noack 1857: 2). These
representative components of universal nature are accommodated in 1296 small
boxes, a structure designed strictly in accordance with the first of the perfect numbers
(62 62). The Colloquium begins with a description of the pantotheca and its
contents, and so furnishes a link between that work and the Theatrum.
The Colloquium, then, is calculatedly introduced and presented within a nu-
merologically informed framework by an author proficient in dialectic and practised
in method. He might therefore be expected to have organized the discussion that
constitutes the treatise’s content along methodically structured lines. In fact the
more obvious technical indicators of such an approach are lacking. In contrast to the
Theatrum, movement from topic to topic is not punctuated by definitions, there is
little trace of syllogism, and binary analysis scarcely features here.21 Nevertheless, a
quite elaborate structure has been discerned in this work. Sets of minor and major
themes have been identified and held to be ‘intimately related’, such that
The thematic structure is interlocked; each book with its various themes finds its
counterpart in the other books. Even different speakers repeat exactly the same words
in contrasting arguments. The structure finds its unity in the repetition of themes and
especially in the use of music and poetry. (Kuntz 1996: 117)
Harmony is certainly an important theme, and indeed furnishes the work’s termini
both ad inceptionem and ad quem; as the narrator indicates at the outset and stresses
afresh in his penultimate sentence, the participants ‘cultivated their piety in wonderful

19 Curiously, throughout the text references to the first four of those named above are by surname,

and to the other three by forename. No significance is discernible in this.

20 Noack 1857: 2. On Bodin’s intention to describe a community informed by its members’

collective purpose see Salas 1999.

21 Cf. Chapter IX.2 (pp. 217, 227, 229, 230).
 Colloquium 245

harmony (mirabili concordia pietatem . . . coluerunt)’ (Noack 1857: 358). However,

other allegedly unifying features may be otherwise interpreted.
The Colloquium is indeed repetitious. Discussion of demons pervades much of
the text. A key issue is whether demons are corporeal. Senamus raises it at an early
stage: ‘si daemones corporales essent’ (Noack 1857: 28). Nine pages later Coronaeus
urges, ‘It must then be settled whether demons are corporeal (explicandum igitur est
an daemones corporei sint)’ (Noack 1857: 37). After seven more pages Toralba
suggests on Porphyry’s authority that they are ‘clothed in an airy body (daemones
aëreo corpore . . . vestiri)’ (Noack 1857: 44), a position that tallies with Bodin’s
conclusion in Theatrum (Chapter IX.2 (p. 225)). But three pages later Senamus
is still wondering ‘whether in fact demons are corporeal (si demus corporeos esse
daemones)’ (Noack 1857: 47). The issue links with the question whether demons
can copulate with human beings, a matter on which Augustine’s authority is
repeatedly invoked (Noack 1857: 80, 216–17). The nature of demons is akin to
that of angels (Noack 1857: 44), and it has some relevance to the question of the
Virgin Birth and therefore to a component of Catholic doctrine over a millennium
old by Bodin’s time. Its relevance to the discussion’s religious orientation is
therefore plain, but—as with others—this particular topic’s treatment is protracted
and fragmented. Other topics, major and minor alike, are again presented repeti-
tiously without much gain and occasionally some loss in clarity. On the one hand,
Toralba offers at length an argument which once more has a major bearing on later
stages of the discussion, and specifically on the critical issue of the nature of Christ.
This is the ‘proof ’ already rehearsed in Theatrum that God is incorporeal and
infinite and all other beings are corporeal and finite, a demonstratio again claimed
to have eluded Duns Scotus (cf. Chapter IX.2 (p. 217)). Within a few pages
Coronaeus asks for that very ‘proof . . . which Toralba promised us previously,
unless I am mistaken (ea demonstratione . . . quod superius Toralba demonstraturum
se, ni fallor, spopondit)’ (Noack 1857: 45). On the topic of icons, inflammatory in
the context of religious wars (cf. Chapter IV.3 (p. 62)), Salomon during the fourth
session pronounces it ‘sufficient to call an image by an abominable and a most
loathsome word, κόπρον, that is dung. For with that word our ancestors used to
execrate idols (uno verbo detestabili ac foedissimo statuam κόπρον i.e. stercus appellare.
Hac enim voce majores nostri solent execrari idola)’ (Noack 1857: 148). Yet in the
course of the following session the same Salomon declares that ‘reverence which is
shown to God in good faith through a clay figure is not unacceptable to eternal God
(aeterno Deo non ingratum esse cultum qui fictili Deo exhibetur bona fide)’ (Noack
1857: 184).
If Bodin had put the Colloquium together in accordance with a ‘thematic
structure’ as coherent and detailed as has been proposed, he would surely have
eliminated such hiatuses. He would also have had to be far more meticulous in
handling his material than the somewhat haphazard mode that in general charac-
terizes his work. In this text, as in his other writings, this prolific and learned scholar
exhibits ‘lack of precision’ in matters of chronology, retrieves his material from his
commonplace books ‘sloppily and in haste’, and succumbs time and again in his use
of sources to ‘corruptions and confusions’ owing, perhaps, to his working from
246 Jean Bodin

memory. Even when he holds a source ‘in high regard’ (in this case, the Hebrew
Pandects), this does not protect him from perpetrating ‘serious errors’.22 And yet, as
if unaware or unabashed, he unhesitatingly records through his Islamist character
Octavius how ‘Arab scholars completely repudiated the New Testament as entirely
corrupted by early Christian sects (Islmaëlitae Novum Instrumentum penitus repudiant
ut a Christianorum veterum sectis plane corruptum)’, or how ‘corruption’ explains the
third-century theologian Origen’s apparent duplication of his fellow Alexandrian
Athanasius’s writings (Noack 1857: 227, 277). Indeed, explicit source criticism
figures prominently in the discussions. It embraces scholarly interpretation of
particular terms; comparison of texts; detection of copyists’ errors, modifications,
and arbitrary interpolations; judgements on factual accuracy; and, ultimately,
pronouncements on the doubtful acceptability of doctrines erected upon seemingly
questionable textual foundations. While such exchanges are initiated and developed
especially by Salomon and Curtius, almost everyone takes part.23 So searching and
sophisticated are the critical observations as to suggest that Bodin was acquainted
with relatively recent literature in biblical criticism and possessed an up-to-date
knowledge of rabbinical literature too (Bezold 1915: 264–8; Guttmann 1905).
Given his attendant proneness to careless use of sources, there is irony here,
however inadvertent.
Nevertheless, disjunctions, repetitions, and seeming inaccuracies in the Collo-
quium’s composition may to at least some degree be explained otherwise than by
unreliable or over-hasty working methods on its author’s part. They may be an
unintended consequence of adopting the dialogue form. For all its advantages as a
means of juxtaposing, comparing, and exploring philosophical options with inter-
changeable conceptual ingredients, such a form was difficult to manage, especially
in a work composed over a considerable period of time. They may also be an effect
of the condition of the source materials, the state and circumstances in which the
Colloquium has survived. Unlike Bodin’s other major works, there is no original
text published under his aegis; nor, any more than for those others, is there a
manuscript identifiable as being in his hand.24 Among the extant manuscript
sources inconsistencies abound, between Latin and above all between Latin and
French versions of the text. These are especially apparent in the verses to which, in a
manner characteristic of humanist dialogues, several of the protagonists resort from
time to time, thereby emulating—as Octavius observes—the common practice of
‘ancient lawgivers (veteres legislatores)’ (Noack 1857: 226). The verses do indeed
serve to highlight some of the fixed points in Bodin’s thinking: on divine law, on
the roles of demons and angels, above all on the power and greatness of God
(Noack 1857: 311–12, 100, 147, 322). But variations are abundant even between

22 Letruit 1995: 519; Blair 1997: 74; Malcolm 2006: 131; Guttmann 1905: 470.
23 For example, Noack 1857: 207–9, 214–15, 225–8, 237–8, 281–2, 318.
24 François Berriot has prefaced his edition of ‘the oldest manuscript copy’ in French with a useful

répertoire of ninety-six Latin and French manuscript copies, currently held in forty-five repositories in
Europe and the USA (Bodin 1984, ed. Berriot: LI–LX). For a critical evaluation of many of the
manuscript versions, see Chauviré 1914b: 4–22. Bezold 1914: 279–91 provides a survey of the
Colloquium’s reception in scholarly circles until its nineteenth-century publication.
 Colloquium 247

the earliest extant versions of the text. Thus, for instance, the forty-five lines on the
question of original sin that figure in the sixteenth-century Latin manuscript
formerly possessed by none other than Henri de Mesmes grow to 287 in the
earliest of the French translations dated to the beginning of the seventeenth
century.25
Even so, the Colloquium does, after all, exhibit a broad thematic structure which
is, clearly, deliberate. The structure is twofold.

X .3 THE QUEST FOR COMMON GROUND

The first three of the six books are largely devoted to establishing common ground
on philosophical questions. This process has two dimensions. From their several
perspectives, the participants elaborate upon positions and arguments relating to
major topics in physics, metaphysics, and ethics already introduced in Bodin’s
previous works. Intermingled with these are exchanges, sometimes brief, on other
issues long debated in scholastic philosophy and theology, many of them specified in
the thirteenth-century condemnations at the University of Paris (see Chapter II.2
(p. 9)). The discussions embrace an impressively wide selection of topics, in addition
to those already noted such as the nature and powers of demons, central concern of
the Démonomanie, or the eternal or limited duration of the world, considered at
length in the Methodus (Chapter IV.4). Toralba pronounces afresh on the idea of
virtue as ‘situated in the midst of vices (versari in medio vitiorum)’, discussed
exhaustively in Paradoxon and now dismissed as one of Aristotle’s least reliable
dicta (Noack 1857: 88). The idea of unicity of intellect, now credited to Aquinas as
well as to Averroës but not, interestingly, to Plotinus, is likewise rejected in short
order, this time by Coronaeus, as a ‘pernicious opinion (perniciosa opinio)’ (Noack
1857: 45; see Chapter IX.2 (p. 220)). Jointly avoiding the Manichean view that
would cast God as creator of evil, Salomon and Octavius both echo Pater in
Paradoxon and beyond him Augustine, on evil defined as privation of good and
therefore in itself nothing.26 In a couple of sentences, Salomon and Fridericus
dispose of the controversial thesis whether a proposition may be at once true in
philosophy and false in theology—the ‘double truth’ theory, condemned by Bishop
Tempier in 1277.27 And Toralba pronounces summarily on yet another set of key
and controversial concepts in scholastic theology: whether ‘willing’ and ‘being’ are
the same in God, a view ascribed to ‘the younger Peripatetics’. On this Scotus had
deliberated at convoluted length, with such arguments as that God is by nature
blessed, that blessedness cannot be without will or an act of will (actu voluntatis), that

25 Compare the version in Noack 1857: 307–8, which approximates to the De Mesmes copy, with

that in Berriot’s edition (Bodin 1984: 481–8, cf. p. 582).

26 ‘malum nihil aliud est quam boni privatio’ (Noack 1857: 87; cf. Paradoxon 1996b: 9; and above,

Chapter IX.3 (p. 233). The position is Augustinian, though Augustine’s account of evil is more subtle
than so summary a definition suggests: for instance, ‘to separate from essence and to adhere to that
which might not exist (deficere ab essentia et ad id tenere ut non sit)’ (Augustine 1992: II.2.2).
27 Noack 1857: 20. See Lerner and Mahdi 1963: 337; cf. Pine 1973.
248 Jean Bodin

God’s will is productive of love, and that ‘love is divine essence (amor est essentia
divina)’.28 Toralba settles for the far more rudimentary position, that ‘God wills
many things, yet is one, not many. Therefore Being and Willing are not the same in
God (Deus multa vult, est tamen unus, non multa. Non igitur idem est in Deo Esse et
Velle)’ (Noack 1857: 25).
Presentation of such positions is mostly assigned to the natural philosopher
Toralba and the Hebrew Salomon. As the work wears on the latter commands an
ever-increasing share of speaking time as well as the company’s deference, avowedly
on grounds of his age and dignity (Noack, 1857: 70), and so gives prominence to
the Hebrew component of the debate. Yet everyone contributes, whether with
additional information, often in anecdotal form, or with queries and challenges
courteously treated and cordially settled or left unresolved. The role of Semanus in
particular is to provide such challenges. Thus, his assertion ‘Nothing seems to me
good that happens contrary to nature, as Aristotle writes (Nihil bonum mihi videtur
quod praeter naturam fiat, ut Aristoteles scribit)’ (Noack 1857: 51) provokes a series
of exchanges punctuated with examples as to whether the causes of seemingly
natural phenomena lie in nature itself or in the interventions of demons. In due
course, the sceptic, having raised objections at every stage, assures his interlocutors,
‘These things have been explained by you elegantly and very carefully (Ista quidem a
vobis eleganter et peraccurate sunt explicata)’ (Noack 1857: 67), and the discussion
ends with a courteous though temporarily unrewarded appeal to Salomon for final
elucidation of such ‘divine mysteries from those sources and sacred springs (arcana
divina ex ipsis fontibus et sacris laticibus)’ of the Hebrews (Noack 1857: 70). In the
next session he is adjudged to have spoken ‘very sagaciously (acutissime)’ (Noack
1857: 77) on the problem of discerning truth when wrapped in allegory or in
obscure words. And, following Toralba’s assertion that ‘heavenly bodies (corpora
coelestia)’ (Noack 1857: 91) are animated beings, the remarks of Salomon once
more on the active intellect’s illuminating the passive intellect in terms of how the
‘human mind is enlightened by cohabiting and consorting with angels as if
contemplating the sun (mens humana angeli contubernio ac societate quasi solis
conspectus illustratur)’ (Noack 1857: 96) are themselves pronounced by Curtius
to have shed ‘a great deal of light on difficult questions (plurimum lucis ad
quaestiones arduas)’ (Noack 1857: 97). But the topic has disruptive implications.
Senamus ‘cannot see whence comes so great a multitude of demons and angels
(non video tamen unde tanta daemonum et angelorum)’ as the colloquium seems
intent upon summoning forth; and consideration of this point leads to serious
disagreement.29
The immediate point of disagreement arises from the proposition that demons
and angels originate from the souls of the deceased. This leads to the question of the
resurrection of the dead, an issue which commands attention towards the end of
the third session and prepares the way for the Colloquium’s second structural part.

28 John Duns Scotus, Ordinatio I. dist. 10, quaestio unica 2.6, 9, in Opera omnia, ed. Carolo Balic

et al., IV (1956): 341–2; cf. Cross 2005: 138.

29 Toralba, according to Noack; but Senamus, as indicated in other sources, seems more likely.
 Colloquium 249

The issue turns on whether resurrection applies both to bodies and to souls, a point
on which Christian teachings, according to Octavius, ‘have kept innumerable
people from the Christian religion (innumerabiles a christiana religione prohibuer-
unt)’ (Noack 1857: 105). An interim position is reached, that souls but not bodies
are resurrected, though the Lutheran Fridericus continues to argue for both and the
Catholic Coronaeus pleads that the company be not seduced ‘from the decisions
and recognized premises of faith (a proposita susceptaque sententia fidei)’ (Noack
1857: 111). These are ominous signs. They are countered at the opening of the
fourth session by a discussion of harmony, characterized by Toralba as ‘agreement
from a mixing of opposites (congruentiam a contrariorum mixtione)’ (Noack 1857:
113). The proposition encourages convergence upon the merits of religious
pluralism in a political community (civitas), a position accompanied by remarks
on the possible advantages of not having any public commitment to some particular
set of beliefs—nor even any discussion of religion, on the basis of precedents such as
the alleged Spartan prohibition against discussing any ‘long-declared law (legem
olim latam)’ (Noack 1857: 130). Where religion is concerned, controversy is both
pointless and harmful, Toralba warns, especially as appeals to logical demonstration
and scientific inquiry (scientia) are likely to undermine the very foundation of faith
(Noack 1857: 129–30). But his colleagues are not deterred. The host, Coronaeus,
takes the view that the outcome of debate ‘about the best kind of religion (de optimo
religionum genere)’ may enable all kinds of deviants and subscribers to other creeds
to discover ‘the right way of salvation (rectam salutis viam)’ (Noack 1857: 131).
Thus motivated, the company sets about the task.
As is apparent throughout the work, they deploy for the purpose an impressive
range of arguments and types of evidence. Material culled from a multiplicity of
disciplines is offered, including mathematics and law as well as physics, astronomy,
medicine, natural science, and various branches of philosophy.30 The Koran is
repeatedly cited, its authenticity tested, and the views of leading Arab authorities—
Al-Ghazali, Avicenna—invoked in relation to the observable mores of Islamic
society and the position of religious dissidents under Islamic law.31 Elements of
the prisca theologia are conspicuous. In a work dedicated to the consideration of
‘hidden mysteries (arcana abditis)’, significance necessarily attaches to ‘the most
ancient principles of the philosophers (philosophorum antiquissima decreta)’ such as
Hermes Trismegistus, ‘the most ancient of all after Moses (omnium post Mosen
antiquissimum)’ (Noack 1857: 281), even though he with others ‘treated of the
principles of their wisdom in the mist of obscurity (sapientiae suae decretis obscur-
itatis caligine contexerunt)’ (Noack 1857: 71). The Chaldeans enjoy a score of
references, most of them in the latter half of the work. By no means all references
to them all are positive: whereas the Chaldeans are on the one hand credited with
originating the doctrine ‘on the celestial nature of souls (ad coelestem animorum
naturam)’ (Noack 1857: 94), on the other they are denounced with the Persians
and others for engaging ‘in a most pernicious custom (perniciosissimo more)’—to wit,

30 Examples in Noack 1857: 14, 41, 54, 93, 85, 248.

31 Noack 1857: 167–71; see Griffel 1999: 129 sqq.
250 Jean Bodin

‘the killing of men (hominum mactatio)’ for sacrificial purposes (Noack 1857: 143).
Likewise the Cabbala, source of ‘the knowledge of natural mysteries (scientia natur-
alium arcanorum)’ among the Hebrews (Noack 1857: 74) according to Salomon,
but also of certain dubious verbal and literal formulations, ‘that kind of Cabbala of
which our elders did not by any means much approve (nunquam enim majores nostri
Kabbalae genus istud valde probarunt)’ (Noack 1857: 282). Yet the same Salomon
endorses wholeheartedly the cabbalistic view of Hebrew, celebrating ‘the inviolable
majesty of the sacred language (majestatem inviolabilem linguae sanctae)’ and its
status both as ‘the only language of nature (sola naturalis est lingua)’ and as ‘granted
to humankind solely by divine gift (sola divino munere hominum generi concessa est)’
(Noack 1857: 202). Philo figures conspicuously among Salomon’s citations,
though again not altogether uncritically.32 But especially noteworthy are the
protagonists’ appeals directly to Platonic and Neoplatonic sources at key junctures.
On the absorbing issue of demons the natural philosopher Toralba cites in a single
intervention no fewer than nine works of Plato’s who had, he subsequently
observes, by comparison with Aristotle ‘much surer grasp of God and the force
and power of mortal souls (multo certiores de Deo deque mortalium animarum vi ac
potestate comprehensiones)’—a level of understanding gained, moreover, ‘by divine
light (divina luce)’ (Noack 1857: 28–9, 186). On the question of human beings’
approach to the Divinity it is to Porphyry and Iamblichus that the Calvinist Curtius
explicitly refers in speaking of ‘the pure mind of man surrendered into an ecstasy of
divine love (pura mens hominis in ecstasin divini amoris sublata)’ (Noack 1857: 43).
And on the Trinity, Fridericus vindicates his resolutely positive view by invoking
the triads specified by Proclus and Plotinus as well as the Pythagorean Numenius of
Apamea and Plotinus’s pupil Amelius Gentilianus, in company with Trismegistus
once more (Noack 1857: 281).
Intermingled with all these are pervasive proofs of Bodin’s familiarity with the
sources of the Christian tradition. His ability to cite Scripture, New Testament as
well as Old, permeates the work. The name of Moses is invoked more often than
even that of Plato, while mentions of St Paul and his epistles are numerically not far
behind.33 References are frequent to the Church Fathers, notably Eusebius of
Caesaria, Justin Martyr, Tertullian, and especially Origen. Many of the issues
debated in the Colloquium recall Origen’s famous debate with the pagan philosopher
Celsus to which several allusions are made (for example, Noack 1857: 118, 223,
259); and Origen’s doctrine of ‘spiritual energies’ has been identified as a ‘weighty
feature’ of Bodin’s thought.34 Augustine of Hippo figures in relation to most major
issues—on demons, on the nature, origins and consequences of sin, on justification
and the Trinity, on saints, on the early church, and more. Every participant invokes

32 See Jones 2013: 347, on the frequency and significance of citations from Philo in the Colloquium.

Cf., for instance, Octavius’s observation that Philo ‘calls demons a band of spirits devoid of body
(daemones appellat chorum corpris expertium animorum)’ (Noack 1857: 44).
33 The following estimates are based on counts of references as listed in the index to the Kuntz

(1975) edition.
34 On the Contra Celsus see, briefly, Trigg 1998: 52–61; on ‘energiae/virtutes spiritales’, Häfner

1996: 82–3.
 Colloquium 251

his name at some point, none more often than—curiously—the convert to Islam
who does so thirteen times, though the Lutheran and the Calvinist are not far
behind (twelve and nine times respectively). Here and there references to the
deliberations and decrees of ecclesiastical councils lubricate the discussion. They
are cited with some discrimination. Whereas Octavius notes a dozen councils of
the early church at which the nature of Christ was considered, Fridericus declares
himself able to accept the status of only four of the great ecumenical councils,
summarily—and inadequately—identified as ‘Nicaea, Constantinople, Ephesus
and Chalcedon’; while Curtius denounces most of the rest as ‘impious conspiracies
(nefariae conjurationes)’ (Noack 1857: 283, 301, 177). The fifteenth-century
councils of the Conciliar Movement receive no mention; but the staunch Catholic
Coronaeus credits the Council of Trent ‘in our age (nostra aetate)’ with ‘supreme
authority (summa autoritate)’ (Noack 1857: 297), even though Curtius and Octavius
each finds examples of its decrees contradicted ‘by all the old Christian theologians
(ab omnibus veteribus christianis theologis)’ (Noack 1857: 350, cf. 285).
All in all, the members of this company, collectively acquainted with authorities of
many kinds and most eras, appear well equipped to accompany Coronaeus in search of
the optimum religious creed. Humanist-style, they pause regularly en route to dwell
on particular terms and to argue about their meanings. Possibilities of discovering
common ground would seem discernible in deployment of a common vocabulary, or
at least in recurrences of certain words. One such word is ‘purity’, a term and its
variants to which every participant resorts. ‘True religion’, says Toralba, ‘lies in the
pure veneration of eternal God (vera religio in puro aeterni Dei cultu versatur)’ (Noack
1857: 172). ‘We are taught (docemur)’, observes Salomon, to confess, to pray, to give
thanks, and ‘finally to sacrifice pure minds to God (postremo Deo mentes puras
sacrificare)’ (Noack 1857: 146), Himself the exemplar of ‘pre-eminence and purity
(divinae illius praestantiae ac puritatis)’ as Coronaeus declares (Noack 1857: 327).
Curtius, Octavius, and Fridericus all speak of ‘pure mind (pura mens)’ (Noack 1857:
43, 121, 182). Most striking of all is the assertion placed in the mouth of the sceptic
Senamus: that ‘by the greatest agreement of almost all theologians religion is nothing
other than a turning away from created things to the pure worship of one God
(theologorum fere omnium summa consensione nihil aliud est religio quam aversio a
creatura ad purum unius Dei cultum)’ (Noack 1857: 179)—a pronouncement closely
akin to the formulation frequently reiterated in others of Bodin’s works (for instance,
Chapters IV n. 114; VI.6 (pp. 155–6).
The participants’ use of the term ‘light’ is scarcely less revealing. In the course of
the second thematic section each of them employs the imagery of illumination,
apart from Senamus who in fact is relatively silent from the beginning of the fourth
session until the culminating passages of the work. Salomon in particular uses it
persistently, in relation to ‘divine wisdom (divinam sapientiam)’, ‘salvation (lux . . .
salutaris)’, and much else besides.35 Octavius speaks, somewhat unexpectedly,

35 Noack 1857: 186–7: ‘by a clear light (perspicuo lumine)’, ‘light of salvation (lux salutaris)’, ‘divine

light (divina lux)’. Cf. his earlier account of the relation between the active and the passive intellect,
informed throughout by the imagery of illumination (Noack 1857: 96–7).
252 Jean Bodin

of ‘Jesus, son of Mary’ as repository of ‘light and revealed truth (lux et veritas aperta)’
(Noack 1857: 218); Curtius of the ‘supremely clear light of the gospel’s truth
(evangelicae veritatis clarissima lux)’ (Noack 1857: 223); Coronaeus of how Christ’s
relationship to God the Father is as ‘light from the sun (lux a sole)’ (Noack 1857:
272); and Fridericus of how even original sin ought not ‘to separate human beings
from the scope of divine light (ab intuitu divinae lucis segregare)’ (Noack 1857:
309). The imagery is especially conspicuous in Toralba’s remarks: in his view, no
one, not even Plato, can attain wisdom ‘without divine aid and light (sine ope ac luce
divina)’ (Noack 1857: 186). And it is Toralba who leads the discussion towards a
possible universal creed.
Early in the fourth session he pronounces ‘the best religion to be the oldest
(optimam tamen religionem esse antiquissimam)’ (Noack 1857: 133), itself a suffi-
ciently ancient opinion. Within a few passages Toralba follows his pronouncement
up by identifying that religion, ‘not only the oldest, but also the best (non modo
antiquissimam, sed etiam optimam)’ (Noack 1857: 141). Received by ‘Adam and his
son Abel (Adamum ejusque filium Abelum)’ from God Himself, it was practised
thereafter ‘to the exclusion of all others (caeteris omnibus exclusis)’ by ‘Seth, Enoch,
Methuselah, down to Noah’ (Noack 1857: 141), conjoining ‘the pure veneration
of God and the laws of nature (purum Dei cultum et naturae leges)’ (Noack 1857:
142). The position is promptly endorsed by Salomon, linking ‘the secret and
concealed treasures of nature (arcanae ac abditos naturae thesauros)’ with ‘the divine
laws (legibus divinis)’ as recorded ‘in the writings and books of our elders (in
majorum nostrorum litteris ac libris)’. It is further strengthened as he adds, citing
Philo: ‘the rules of divine laws . . . contain nothing other than the law of nature and
the life of our ancestors (praescripta legum divinarum . . . nihil aliud quam naturae
legem et majorum nostrorum vitam continent) (Noack 1857: 190, cf. 147). This
alliance of the Hebrew with the natural law tradition is supplemented by Octavius
who affirms that ‘the Mohammedans disagree not at all with Toralba and very little
with Salomon (Nihil a Toralba, parum etiam a Salomone dissident Ismaëlitae)’
(Noack 1857: 174). Briefly it seems that the key to a universal religion may lie
here, in a blend of Judaism, Islam, the Noachite tradition, and natural theology.
Toralba reiterates such a view—indeed, such a hope—in his final contribution
towards the end of the colloquium’s closing session:
Is it not preferable to give one’s heart to that most ancient and truest religion of nature,
planted by immortal God in everyone’s mind, from which there was no disagreement,
that very religion in which Abel, Enoch, Lot, Seth, Noah, Job, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob,
God’s most beloved heroes lived, than to wander in uncertainty among so many and
such different opinions?36

36 ‘nonne praestat simplicissimam illam et antiquissimam eandemque verissimam naturae religionem,

uniuscujusque mentibus ab immortali Deo insitam, a qua dissidendum non erat, amplexari, illam inquam
religionem in qua Abel, Enochus, Lothus, Sethus, Noëmus, Jobus, Abrahamus, Isaacus, Jacobus, Deo
carissimi heroës vixerunt, quam inter tot ac tam varias opiniones incertum quemque vagari, nec habere
certam animi sedem in qua acquiescat?’ (Noack 1857: 351–2). On the Noachite law in relation to the
early modern debate on religious tolerance, see Campos Boralevi 2001; Nelson 2010: 114–15; and, in
respect of the Colloquium, Paganini 2013: especially 77–8; also Gawlick 1996: 17.
 Colloquium 253

But by that point the separate opinions have reasserted themselves. It is uniquely in
the religion of Islam, declares Octavius after all, that one finds the ‘purity of
doctrine which by its excellence has eliminated the subterfuges of unanswerable
questions by which other religions are wretchedly tormented (puritate doctrinae
quae inexplicabilium quaestionum latebras quibus caeterae religiones misere conflic-
tantur suo splendore diluit)’ (Noack 1857: 203). It is the Hebrews, ‘God’s chosen
people (populus hic a Deo selectus)’, protests Salomon, that constitute ‘the truest
church of God, the most faithful witness of God’s deeds, God’s designated keeper
of the sacred law and prophecies (verissima sit Dei ecclesia, fidelissimus rerum
gestarum a Deo testis, sacrosanctae legis et oraculorum custos a Deo designatus)’
(Noack 1857: 202). Yet it is not in either of these that the real obstacle to religious
convergence and mutual understanding resides.

X . 4 THE STUMBLING BLOCK

That obstacle stands, rather, on the entrenched doctrines of the Christian religion in
its various versions. At the core of those doctrines, paradoxically in view of Toralba’s
prescription, lies Adam. To Adam is traceable original sin, the fons et origo of so many
components of Christian belief and Christian observance (Noack 1857: 306).
Without original sin there would be no case for infant baptism (Noack 1857:
302). Without their ineluctable sinfulness, human beings would have no need of
an intermediary between themselves and God (Noack 1857: 308). The long-vexed
question of the nature of that intermediary would therefore be rendered otiose. This
would mean treating Christ as no more than a prophet, eliminating the issue of his
divinity and the problem of his dual nature, prime sources of friction in the
consolidation of Christianity itself and principal obstacles in its relations with
Judaism and Islam. Coupled with this are questions arising from Christ’s
incarnation—whether he was begotten or created, whether his was a virgin birth,
even whether it would have been astronomically possible for a star to illuminate just
a stable where he was allegedly born (Noack 1857: 223). But this last was trivial by
comparison with the fundamental issue of Christ’s nature in conjunction with the
nature of God himself.
The issue was at once metaphysical and theological. It involved the problem
of how to demonstrate God’s unique infinity, on which Bodin claimed to have
out-thought Scotus. It involved the nature of God, indefinable apart from his
two essential characteristics: inviolable unity and simplicity (see Chapters IX.2
(p. 226), and IX.3 (p. 234)). Baldly stated, such concepts were difficult to reconcile
with the doctrine of the Trinity.37 Indeed, they flirted with ancient heresy,
from the fourth-century Alexandrian Arius’s view of Christ as wholly separate
from God the Father to the sixteenth-century anti-trinitarianism of Miguel

37 For Aquinas’s attempt to explain the Trinity in terms of hypostasized relations within the

Godhead (‘in divinis relationes sunt subsistentes’) see Summa Theologia Ia, q. 39, a.1, resp. 1; cf.
Chapter IX.2 (p. 214).
254 Jean Bodin

Serveto (Servetus) in Geneva or Fausto Sozzini (Socinus) in Poland. Both of the

latter had hoped by denying Christ’s divinity to effect a reconciliation of Jews
and Christians. They succeeded only in antagonizing mainstream Protestant and
Catholic opinion. And, despite their own doctrinal differences and conciliatory
aspirations, the Colloquium’s several apologists for Christianity—Calvinist, Lutheran,
and Catholic—are equally unbending on this central tenet of their faith. Christ ‘is
not only true God but also true man (Christum non modo Deum verum, sed etiam
hominem verum esse)’, insists Curtius (Noack 1857: 235); ‘in one Christ there is a
dual nature (in uno Christo natura duplex est)’, adds Fridericus (Noack 1857: 259);
while Coronaeus explains, ‘The double nature is so bound together in Christ that it
is not mixed; it is so separated as not to be divided (Natura duplex in Christo sic
copulatur ut non sit confusa, sic distinguitur ut non sit divisa)’ (Noack 1857: 247).
Such assertions and explanations fall far short of satisfying their fellow debaters. To
Salomon, the very idea of Christ’s incarnation is ‘contrary to the nature and essence
of God (contra Dei naturam et essentiam)’ (Noack 1857: 250). Likewise Octavius,
insisting that ‘the essence of the Father is not the same as the essence of the Son
(paternam essentiam non eandem esse cum essentia filii)’ (Noack 1857: 270). And
Toralba loses patience altogether with the Christian protagonists’ best efforts at
elucidation: ‘who can tolerate such things benignly or listen to them patiently (quae
quis aequo animo ferre aut patienter audire queat)?’ (Noack 1857: 287).
Thus, prospects of harmony shudder on the rock of the nature of Christ, once
more the prime impediment to universality as with the miaphysite/monophysite
controversy a millennium before. Prospects of unanimity at the Colloquium are
further disrupted by disagreements, among Christians as well as between Christians
and the rest, and often vigorously expressed, on other important points of doctrine.
The Calvinist Curtius, attempting to make a case for predestination, is opposed on
all sides (Noack 1857: 314–17). On justification, the ‘zenith of salvation (salutis
summa)’ in Curtius’s view, his Lutheran associate Fridericus finds little support for
the position ‘that man is blessed by faith alone, not at all by his merit (hominem
sola fide, nullo suo merito beati)’ as distinct from works (Noack 1857: 321).
On confession and absolution, the Catholic Coronaeus’s conviction ‘that there is
no more efficacious amulet against all sins (confessione auriculari nullum esse adversus
omnia flagitia efficacius amuletum)’ collides immediately with Curtius’s denunci-
ation as impious the notion ‘that the word of the priest alone commonly removes
the most atrocious sins, however foul, without repentance (sine poenitentia, solius
sacerdotis verbo atrocissima quaeque scelera plerumque obliterari putent)’ (Noack
1857: 295–6). Coronaeus’s plea for reverent acceptance of the doctrine of the
real presence in the Eucharist is comprehensively dismissed by Curtius once more:
‘This opinion has been refuted by the most sagacious theologians (Haec opinio ab
acutissimis theologis refutata)’ (Noack 1857: 339). The Catholic’s advocacy of the
efficacy of prayers for the dead fares little better (Noack 1857: 350), while appeals
to saints and the veneration of relics are deemed unacceptable by Fridericus in
particular: ‘only one advocate ought to be proposed, Christ-God (unus tantum
advocatus proponi debeat, Christus Deus)’ (Noack 1857: 331). Warranty is found
in one and the same authority for diametrically opposed views. On the fundamental
 Colloquium 255

topic of grace and its conferral, Curtius takes his stand on a text from St Paul’s
epistle to the Romans: ‘The law was given by Moses, but grace assuredly through
Jesus Christ (Lex a Mose data est, gratia vero per Jesum Christum)’; whereupon
Salomon responds with reference to the same epistle, ‘But Paul himself writes that
those who fulfil the law itself are justified by the action of the law’.38 Not
surprisingly, as the exchanges draw to a close Senamus declares himself unwilling
to take sides on ‘things which are set against each other in dubious debate among
theologians (quae inter theologos dubia disputatione contravertuntur)’ (Noack
1857: 354).
Yet it is Senamus who at the last posits two interventions for what might be
salvaged from the theological wreck. It is a minimalist prize. Senamus describes
how in Jerusalem the many sects hold separate services and ‘yet safeguard the public
tranquillity with supreme harmony (tamen publicam tranquillitatem summa con-
sensione colunt)’ (Noack 1857: 354). Harmony requires simply that everyone be
persuaded, as he and Octavius are persuaded, ‘that all the prayers of all people
which come from a pure heart are acceptable to God or certainly not unacceptable
(omnia omnium vota quae a pura mente proficiscuntur Deo grata vel certe non ingrata
esse)’ (Noack 1857: 355). On this the members of the company with their common
belief in ‘purity’ can surely agree. Even Fidericus, who has argued at an early stage
and in the interests of political order ‘that all citizens be joined in the same sacred
rites and in the same divine worship (ut eisdem sacris et eodem numinis cultu cives
omnes conjungantur)’ (Noack 1857: 117), now at the end cites Theodoric the Great:
‘we cannot command religion, for no unwilling person can be compelled to believe
(religionem imperare non possumus, quia nemo cogi potest ut credat invitus)’ (Noack
1857: 358; cf. Chapter VI.6 (p. 150)). Curtius offers qualified agreement: the
emperor, he declares, spoke ‘excellently (praeclare)’—though even better was the
Emperor Jovian’s plan for means ‘by an edict of union (edicto unionis)’ quietly and
without popular disturbance (plebem seditiosis) to persuade all religions and all sects
‘to piety, purity and mutual love (ad pietatem, integritatem caritatem mutuam)’
(Noack 1857: 358). With an eye characteristically to legal propriety, Salomon
declares that in the sphere of religious observance ‘the law (lex divina) . . . willed that
no one be forced (neminem tamen cogi voluit)’ (Noack 1857: 356). It is a position
which Coronaeus, seemingly, has already adopted: ‘it is lawful for everyone to enjoy
freedom as long as he does not disturb the tranquillity of the state and no one is
forced to attend divine worship nor prevented from attending (tamen uti libertate
cuique licet, dum nihil de tranquillitate civitatis statu detrahatur, nemo sacris adesse
cogitur aut prohibetur’ (Noack 1857: 355). But the host’s agreement is only
momentary. Spokesman for Catholicism, he promptly adds his final substantial
contribution that ‘piety ought to be preferred to public utility (utilitati tamen
publicae pietas anteferri debet)’; and ‘even those who are unwilling ought to be
compelled to go to public religious services in accordance with the provisions of the
most holy decrees of the church of Rome (nolentes etiam ad sacra publica cogi ut

38 ‘Quin etiam Paulus ipse scribit, eos, qui legem ipsam exequuntur, legis actionibus justificari’ (Noack

1857: 311). On legis actio cf. above, Chapter IV.2 (p. 59).
256 Jean Bodin

sanctissimis ecclesiae Romanae decretis cavetur)’ (Noack 1857: 356). In the light of
this, Coronaeus’s concluding claim that the company has reached so nuanced a
degree of unified understanding as to be capable of musical expression ‘in enhar-
monics (enharmonicis rationibus)’ (Noack 1857: 358) rings decidedly false.
Like the younger Bodin’s quest for a universal legal code, the outcome of the
colloquium falls sadly short of discovering a universal religion, let alone a finely
modulated one. The participants might conceivably claim to have achieved
harmony as defined by Toralba, ‘the mixing of opposites’ (see Chapter X.3
(p. 249)). But even this would be to claim too much. There is no ‘mixture (mixtio)’
of religions in any meaningful sense. What there is, as the work’s concluding
sentence declares, is agreement to hold ‘henceforth no debate about religions
(nullam postea de religionibus disputationem)’. Each participant is pledged to ‘uphold
his own religion whatever it might be with the supreme sanctity of his life (suam
quisque religionem summa vitae sanctitate tueretur)’ (Noack 1857: 358). Such a
pledge seems, on the face of it, ominous—indeed, a recipe for religious conflict; and
yet it affords a hopeful prospect. It declines to endorse the policy objective which
royal edicts of pacification had specified time and again during the civil wars: ‘unity
and concord’ with religious differences eventually absorbed in a single church for all
the king’s subjects.39 In place of that objective, the seven participants offer a
commitment to co-existence, with everyone leaving everyone else’s religion alone
whilst upholding and defending his own. Their several systems of belief are to
persist in perpetuity, side by side. Here is harmony of a kind after all: not a new
concordance of faith, not a blending of monodies into a new polyphony, and yet a
consonance of piety, even of charity.40 So, from the moment of concluding their
debate ‘they cultivated purity of life in common endeavours and social intercourse
(vitae integritatem communibus studiis ac convictu coluerunt)’ (Noack 1857: 358). In
the course of the civil wars, precedents of a kind for such a modus vivendi had
emerged, fleetingly on the ground in friendship pacts between local communities,
on paper in occasional statements by intellectuals prompted by concern for citi-
zenship and the common good.41 Bodin’s contribution is nonetheless distinctive.
Its distinctiveness lies, as in some others of his works, less in its conceptual
originality than in the depth of his analysis, the weight of learning which he brings
to bear, and the vigour of his written style. In France as the 1590s wore on the
contribution was in principle timely with the kingdom at last moving painfully
towards accommodating two religions, under the aegis of a turncoat king. But the
time was far from ripe for so outspoken a work as the Colloquium to enjoy more than
covert dissemination.

39 Cf. Chapters IV.3 (p. 62); VI.1 (p. 115).

40 I owe this insight to Colin Davis. Cf. Fabbri 2004, on ‘harmony’ as discordia concors in Bodin’s
Colloquium.
41 Benedict 1996: 78–9; Christin 2003: 99–100. For views expressed by Du Plessis Mornay—who,

like Bodin, had spent time in the Netherlands in the company of William the Silent and in the service
of Anjou—see Lecler 1960: II. 104–6; Fragonard 1991.
 Conclusion

According to Antoine Teissier, avocat in seventeenth-century Provence, historian,

and compiler of scholars’ remarks on other scholars, the learned Joseph Scaliger had
composed an anagram from the letters of Bodin’s name: ‘Ioannes Bodinus, Andinus
sine bono’.1 The phrase, by no friend of its subject, seems ingeniously double-edged.
‘Andinus’, the Latin form of Angers, also alludes to the Italian village of Andes and
so associates Bodin with no less a figure than Virgil who was born there. ‘Sine bono’,
on the other hand, suggests that, unlike the greatest of Latin poets, this gifted
individual was lacking in moral worth. That Scaliger should have taken the latter view
ought to prompt no surprise. Yet the anagram—if he did indeed devise it—implies
that he nonetheless recognized Bodin’s remarkable abilities. Taken altogether, the
assessment would appear to have some merit.
Like Caesar, Bodin was ambitious. Having attended and taught at a more
distinguished law faculty even than that of Angers, he cultivated patronage which
gained him access to the highest judiciary in the land as a practising lawyer, and
then to the royal court, to high-level diplomatic circles, and to the king himself as
an admired man of learning. His range of learning was immense, but his use of it
often careless and, allegedly, unprincipled. Blatantly misogynistic, intellectually
arrogant, incautiously assertive in expressing his opinions, he rarely missed an
opportunity to cut others and especially other thinkers down to size, dissenting
with relish from ones whom he most admired or upon whom he most relied.
Criticism of Aristotle was standard practice in Renaissance Europe, but Bodin
outdid everyone in the virulence of his attacks on the Stagyrite whose ideas
nevertheless informed so much of his own thinking. Yet, if these characteristics
go some way towards validating Scaliger’s stricture, the allegation that Bodin was
deficient in moral fibre seems unsound. Driven by a powerful sense of justice, or at
least of law, he time and again confronted powerful interests in his role whether as
commissioner for forests, or as an outspoken deputy at a tension-riven representa-
tive assembly, or as agent of royal authority and law enforcement in a city under
rebel control. In the name of principle, he seems to have placed his personal safety
repeatedly at risk whilst achieving neither the degree of professional or political
advancement nor the level of material prosperity which his abilities would appear to
have merited.

1 Teissier 1715: IV. 268. According to Loisel 1652: 639, the anagrammatist was Cujas, equally no

friend of Bodin.
258 Jean Bodin

But Bodin did achieve what he set out to do, if not in the vita activa, then
certainly in the vita contemplativa—the classic options which he reviewed, with a
typical thrust at Aristotle, at the beginning of his best-known work (République
1583: 5–9). Early in his first large-scale book he specified a programme of writing
conceived with a moral purpose in view: the three kinds (genera) of history, human,
natural, and divine, each associated with a particular virtue as well as with a
particular sphere of law (see Chapter IV.4 (p. 69)). He pursued that programme
with remarkable consistency, dealing in three of his major works—the Methodus,
the Theatrum, the Colloquium—with each genus in turn, and regularly according
leading roles to themes declared at the outset of his writing career. Examples of such
themes abound: ‘harmony’, stressed in his Oratio (see Chapter III.3 (pp. 45–6));
‘illumination’ and the ‘intellect’, ‘agent’ and ‘passive’, features of his Oppian
commentary (see Chapter III.2 (p. 35)); the ‘finite’–‘infinite’ relationship which,
like the question of human and divine free will, figured in his Methodus and
continued to drive his arguments thirty years later in his Theatrum (see Chapters
IV.4 (p. 76); IX.2 (p. 230)). Of course, to note such constants is by no means to
suggest that Bodin’s thinking failed to evolve. On the contrary, and again for
example: between the Methodus and the République his view of the components of
‘sovereignty’, his key concept in the related spheres of law and politics, altered
substantially (see Chapters IV.4 (p. 83); VI.4 (p. 138)); likewise, by his later works,
his ideas on the relation between reason and will, or on such large topics as the
soul’s materiality or immateriality, or on verbal but vital differentiations between
‘creation’ and ‘generation’ in respect of the origin of the world (see Chapter IX.2
(pp. 226, 229)). Thus, at the outset of his writing career Bodin laid down his
agenda both broadly and in considerable detail, and yet brought to its pursuit a
notable fertility of mind.
Bodin, indeed, insisted repeatedly on his own originality.2 Apart from the
particular points which he chose to stress, the claim is warranted in relation to
some major issues. Among them are his idea of the ‘state’ as an entity differentiable
from both ruler and ruled, his sense of its apparatus—laws, constitutions—as social
phenomena, his eventual position on the composition of the soul.3 These are by no
means negligible hypotheses. However, the overall distinctiveness of his thought
and its presentation springs in large measure from his ability to extract and
reprocess multiple elements from the ‘mosaic of contexts’4 which he persistently
and copiously quarried. At the core of those contexts was the scholastic coupled
with the spiritual tradition in which he was steeped from his days as a Carmelite
novice. For all his advocacy of humanist education and parade of humanist
learning, the issues around which his ideas revolved time and again were those
that had preoccupied the thirteenth-century masters: Albert the Great, Thomas
Aquinas, John Duns Scotus, and others—and in their wake the Carmelite luminary

2 For instance, see Chapters IV.2 (pp. 54–5); IV.4 (p. 83); V.3 (p. 101).
3 See `Chapters VI.4 (p. 136); VI.6 (p. 157); IX.2 (p. 227). See Lloyd 1983: 156 sqq.; Schnur
1973: 441; Blair 1997: 140.
4 The phrase is Jones’s 2013: 341, applied to Grotius and his contemporaries.
 Conclusion 259

John Baconthorpe. No less conspicuous in this jurist’s mental furniture were

principles rooted in medieval legal precedent, feudal or customary,5 such as the
rule of the inalienability of the domain, his stand on which and on other issues cost
him his place in Henri III’s affections (see Chapter VII.2 (pp. 166–7)). Features
even of his much-vaunted method which clearly owed much to Ramist dialectic
have been identified with ‘the typical structure of the medieval treatise’ (Isnardi
Parente 1964: I. 26). But the tesserae of this mosaic were also formed from a far
wider range of materials. In addition to the classic civilian and canonist compil-
ations of Tribonian and Gratian, the vade-mecum of every fully trained lawyer,
Bodin quarried his materials, or purported to quarry them, from a vast array of
Greek and Roman, Hebrew and Arab, ancient and modern philosophers, histor-
ians, theologians, mystics, cabbalists, poets, military experts, writers of virtually
every description, and amalgamated them with information culled from personal
acquaintances or accumulated through his own observations. Few scholars, even
other exponents of the encyclopaedic approach that characterized the Angevin’s
work, could match the range and variety of supporting evidence he adduced, nor
the temerity with which he tackled so many categories of controversial issues. Those
very qualities, coupled with the frequent acerbity of his observations, exposed him
to the attacks of rivals. Weighed against the massive scholarship of Cujas in the field
of law or Scaliger’s in classics and chronology, Bodin’s pronouncements must often
have seemed those of a dilettante.
And yet, it is precisely in the scope and comprehensiveness of his undertaking
and his vision that Bodin’s real originality and significance lie. All those materials
were deployed ultimately in the cause of universality. Certainly, concerns with the
universal were characteristic of much humanist scholarship. But no one could match
Bodin’s relentless mission. Intent upon that mission, he adopted a method specif-
ically devised to divulge ‘universals’, applied it to ‘universal history’ together with
‘universal time’, and pursued as his overall objectives the disclosure of ‘universal
law’—and, above all else, the discovery of a ‘universal religion’ (for instance,
Chapter IV.2 (p. 54–5); IV.4 (pp. 66, 69, 74)). No student of Bodin’s works can
fail to discern how religious considerations permeated his thought from his Oratio
onwards: witness his insistence to the senators of Toulouse that the educational
programme he proposed would equip students to gain knowledge of the most
universal mysteries of all, not only of nature, but even of the divine (see
Chapter III.3 (p. 45)). Even so, in the perception of some who commented on
him posthumously he was a man of no known religion, ‘neither Jew nor Christian
nor Turk’ (see Chapter X.1 (p. 239)). The religion of this most religious of
philosophers remains itself a mystery. What, then, can be concluded of his creed
and the religious practice he favoured?
The focus of Bodin’s religious belief was an incorporeal and infinite God,
the ultimate unity, simple, eternal, and unchanging. This God could and did
intervene at will in his created world and was unconstrained by the laws of nature.

5 Examples in Isnardi Parente 1964: 34, 42–3, etc.

260 Jean Bodin

It followed from his nature that the agents of his interventions could in no sense be
parts of his person. Notions of the Trinity were inadmissible. Divine intervention
was implemented through angels and demons which populated the universe
and interacted with human beings. Their interactions might be benevolent or
malevolent. The evils associated with the latter were not God’s doing, for every-
thing that he had created was good. Rather, they were effects of the free will that
humans enjoyed, punishments for the culpable exercise of which were imposed by
demons as God’s penal instruments. God himself was ultimately unknowable,
though his intentions might be construed partly from his revealed law and
partly from the natural world that he had created. Some closer approximation to
knowledge of him might nevertheless be attainable, under the guidance of some
exceptional persons. Who, then, might such persons be, and what form might the
guidance take?
The clue to Bodin’s view of religious practice lies in a set of key terms to which
attention has been drawn throughout this book. They occur time and again in his
major works, and nowhere more insistently than in the République (see especially
Chapter VI.6 (pp. 155, 156). The terms are ‘purification’, ‘contemplation’, and
‘illumination’. The position is stated most plainly of all by Mystagogus towards the
end of the Theatrum:
If someone panting from the body as if from the waves should emerge pure and be
nourished by contemplation of divine things, who would doubt that he should not
only be equipped by God with the agent intellect, but also become expert and
understand commands and learning illuminated by Him.6
What Mystagogus describes is an ecstatic experience resulting in prophetic capabil-
ities. But the sequence of the terms at issue captures the stages of a process recognized
by metaphysicians and theologians at least from Plato onwards. It features strongly in
Neoplatonist writings—in Plotinus, in Porphyry, in Pseudo-Dionysius’s Ecclesiastical
Hierarchy, ultimately in Ficino’s Theologia platonica.7 It occurs in the Corpus Herme-
ticum and serves to inform the thought of the Greek fathers of the church, Clement of
Alexandria, Origen, Gregory of Nyssa.8 It features in the vital cross-fertilization that
took place between the thought of the great Arab philosophers, notably Averroës, and
the leading thirteenth-century scholastics (see Gilson 1955: 225). As for Jewish
theology, elements of it occur in Scripture, in apocryphal and rabbinical literature,
as well as in Maimonides’s great exegesis on divine law, the Guide of the Perplexed, and
in Philo too.9 While Bodin time and again drew upon the Torah, the biblical prophets

6 ‘si quis e corporis salebra velut ex undis purus emergat ac sublimium rerum contemplatione pascatur,

quis dubitet quin intellectum agentem divino munere non modo adepturus sit, verumetiam adepto fruatur,
eiusque nutus & eruditionem intelligat’ (1596a: 540). Cf. Chapter VI. 6 (p. 156).
7 See Plato, Phaedo 67 a–b; Porphyry, Sententiae §.32; Dionysius, Ecclesiastical Hierarchy, 400c,

401b, 392a, 393a, 425a, 536d; Kristeller 1953: 230 sqq.

8 Dictionnaire de Spiritualité XII/2 (1986): col. 2638.
9 The Jewish Encyclopedia VIII: 83–4. For Maimonides see, for instance, Guide 1963: II. 56

(p. 371): ‘that individual would obtain knowledge and wisdom [when] he passes from potentiality
to actuality and acquires a perfect and accomplished human intellect and pure and well-tempered
human moral habits’. On Philo see Chapter VI.6 (n. 159).
 Conclusion 261

and rabbinical literature, his interest is scarcely less plain in the Cabbala, the ‘secret
language’ of the Hebrews.10 Aptitude in this, by the Hebraist and Graecist Johann
Reuchlin’s account, might yield ‘the best state of a contemplative man’: a man who
‘can expel affairs of the flesh’ and ‘see God with a pure heart’ in a heaven ‘lit by its own
spirit and illuminated by the first cause as by a mind’, ultimate source of ‘the prophetic
light which is called “Illuminating Vision”’ (Reuchlin 1983: 291, 293, 345).
Bodin evidently thought of himself as a prophet, the product of some such
process. This self-perception came to him, it has been argued, through a specific
experience of conversion, undergone in three phases over a period of twenty-one
years and culminating in the ‘sacrifice’ of his soul described in the Démonomanie.11
Whether or not he did in fact experience so specific a spiritual crisis, the cumulative
effect of immersion over decades in the multifarious philosophical and theological
writings that so richly informed his work can scarcely be doubted. Reluctant to
identify his thought exclusively with any one of the traditions represented by such
writings, deliberately taking issue as occasion arose with Neoplatonists, with the
Hebrews, even with Maimonides,12 he refrained at the last from aligning himself
with any orthodox doctrinal code. Rather, his overriding aim was to reduce all
religious beliefs and practices to their common core essentials, stripping away
dogma that provoked dissent. Two prime considerations governed the pursuit.
The first was the historical, on the assumption that the oldest credo must have
underpinned so many of the rest, and for this status the religion of the Jews had
a strong, though by no means incontestable, claim (see Chapter VI.6 (p. 155);
cf. Chapter X.3 (p. 252)). The second was the universal, lodestar of his thought.
With Christendom collapsing around him in discord and conflict, surely harmony
might be restored, if it were restorable at all, through defining the irreducible
essentials of belief, present in all religions: and, within these elemental boundaries,
allowing in political communities pluralities of religious practices, conducted
according to the lights of the believers themselves.
If this was Bodin’s aspiration, he was disappointed. True, two years after his
death an approximation to religious pluralism was indeed established in France,
under the aegis of a monarch who at one time had engaged the Angevin’s
professional services. But there is no evidence that Henri IV was influenced in
his policies by the positions at which Bodin had arrived. Indeed, his fellow citizens
gave an indifferent, even a cool reception to the works in which those positions
were expounded most fully. The Colloquium remained unpublished and so reached
scarcely any of them. While the Theatrum achieved four editions in all including a
French translation and seems to have been read ‘across many religious divides’,
the few French readers who actually cited it did so in negative terms (Blair 1997:
181, 183). Farther afield its impact was greater, especially upon readers who
approached it in a Bodinian manner, as a repository of information and ideas for
their own purposes. Such purposes related less to Bodin’s religious concerns than to

10 For instance, Chapters IV.4 (n. 98); VI.6 (n. 153); IX.2.
11 Rose 1980b: 164–74; and cf. Chapter VII.3.
12 For instance, Chapter IV.4 (p. 77); cf. Chapter IX.2 (p. 219).
262 Jean Bodin

the field of natural philosophy explored, as he had explored it, mainly by reference
to books critically assessed and the apparatus of logical demonstration (for instance,
Chapter IX.2 (pp. 217–18)).
Even so, others of Bodin’s books achieved greater impact in France and elsewhere,
if numbers of editions and reissues are any indicator. The Methodus ran to a dozen
editions, the French République to fourteen, the Latin Respublica to eight more with
translations into Italian, Spanish, and German within the author’s lifetime, and
another into English a decade after his death.13 Almost as successful a publishing
venture was the Démonomanie with its twenty-two editions between 1580 and
1616, a score of them in vernacular languages. That alarming work may have had
precisely the impact in France that Bodin intended, given the increase in witchcraft
prosecutions there in the two decades following its publication (see Soman 1978).
Again, if Bodin intended his Methodus to reach a wide range of readers, copies of it
can be found in the first half of the seventeenth century ‘in the hands of people as
diverse as German Protestant princes, English schoolboys, erudite Italian monks . . .
as well as lawyers, doctors, printers’ (Miglietti 2013: 196). But none of his works was
received as widely as the République; and none exemplifies more plainly how wide of
an author’s intended mark its reception may fall. In Catholic Europe, the character
of that reception was secular, conditioned to at least some degree by the work’s
inclusion, in the years of its author’s death, in the Clementine Index of prohibited
books. Italian readers fought shy of the ultimately religious inspiration of Bodin’s
thought and the culminating thrust of his exposition. They focused their attention
instead on his account of sovereignty, on his dismissal of ‘mixed’ respublicae, his
remarks on the papacy, and his assessments of Italian regimes (Comparato 2013;
Valente 2013). In Spain, in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, the
République was ‘instrumental’ to all parties involved in a key political and constitu-
tional controversy, ‘over the secularisation and juridification of Castilian government’
(Braun 2013: 291). Elsewhere, including France, Bodin’s voluntarist and essentially
moralist position on the exercise of ‘sovereign’ power within the limits of divine and
natural law was corrupted into advocacy of raison d’état, doctrines oriented above all
else towards ‘the elaboration of techniques of domination’ and regardless of religious
considerations (Zarka 1994: 3; cf. Foisneau 2013). In vain had Bodin in his Répub-
lique, and pace the anagrammatizing Scaliger, quoted Virgil on how ‘a wise and
virtuous man’—a prophet indeed—might prove the ‘light of virtue’ to have ‘more
power and majesty than had arms or laws or all the magistrates together’ (1583: 651).
Such a message was to have all too little impact upon political consciousness and the
conduct of European affairs in the century that followed his death.

13 Crahay et al. 1992; convenient summary in Blair 2013: 138.

 APPENDIX

Identifying Bodin

A remarkable number of Jean Bodin’s contemporaries shared his name as well as other
features of his identity.1 His namesakes included his own elder brother, Guillaume Bodin’s
second son. They also included Jean Bodin de la Bodinière or de Montguichet, like the jurist
an Angevin who, again like him, served in François d’Alençon’s household and was engaged
in reforming the administration of the Normandy forests. Other Jean Bodins were, respect-
ively, a student at Angers, a doctor in theology, a priest at Bourgueil in the Loire valley, a
Protestant minister, a merchant of Saint-Maurice,2 a conspirator against the Guise with
others of Alençon’s protégés, and several others again. As comparatively few documents
relating directly to the life of the author of the République are extant, the factor of
homonymy has stimulated a good deal of conjecture about events and circumstances in
which he could arguably have been involved, given the obscurity that prevails about his
actual whereabouts at the times in question. For the most part, judgements on these are
offered, either explicitly or implicitly, in the course of this book. One important problem
requires further comment.
This is the much-canvassed suggestion that in 1552 or thereabouts, between his return to
Angers from Paris and his arrival in Toulouse, Jean Bodin spent a year in Geneva.3 The
evidence for this includes the considerable knowledge of Geneva and its constitution that he
displays in his best-known book. It also includes a record in the Geneva marriage registers of
a marriage between Typhène Renaud, widow of a converted priest, and a ‘Jehan Bodin, natif
de Sainct-Amand, diocese de Bourges’ who signed the register. The case for identifying the
bridegroom with the jurist is strengthened by the fact that in later life the latter did describe
himself as ‘Jean Bodin de Saint Amand’. An explanation of his connection with that place
has been explained by the suggestion that his father, though an Angevin, may have been a
travelling tradesman whose business took him to the Bourbonnais, and that his wife
travelled with him and gave birth there to the younger of the sons whom they called Jean.
However, none of these arguments convinces. It has been shown that the detailed
information about Geneva contained in the République need not have derived from first-
hand knowledge of the place on the author’s part. Such information occurs only in editions
of the République published after 1577 and initially in a pirated edition of the work revised
by the Genevan pastor Simon Goulart.4 The signature of Typhène Renaud’s bridegroom in
the Geneva register is dissimilar from two authentic signatures by the subject of the present
book, one of them on an inventory of assets inherited by a niece of his for whom he acted as
guardian. The link with Saint-Amand in the case of ‘Jean Bodin Angevin’ dates from 1576
and, far from indicating his birthplace, seems to signify an attempt on his part to dignify his

1 Letizia Fontana (2009) covers the main issues and provides a fully referenced and persuasive

discussion.
2 A place name that is itself a source of confusion: there are in present-day France some sixty

locations called St Maurice.

3 The case for this is argued most strongly in Droz 1948.
4 Müller 1980; Crahay 1981; cf. Chapter VI.2 (p. 118).
264 Appendix: Identifying Bodin
name with seigneurial status.5 He has also been clearly differentiated on convincing grounds
from his namesake of Montguichet, perhaps the most remarkable coincidence of name and
career of all those that have been mooted.6 As for his father’s itinerant occupation, this is no
more than supposition, on a par with hypotheses such as that the young Jean’s godmother
was Spanish (une marrane espagnole) and a Jewess, and so the underlying cause of Bodin’s
Judaizing proclivities.7

5 The name of some seventeen different places in present-day France.

6 See Devèze 1961: II. 192, 212–16.
7 A hypothesis noted, curiously misinterpreted and dismissed by Chauviré 1914a: 16–17.
 Bibliography
1. BODIN’ S WO R K S
(a) Contemporary editions (ordered in title sequence)
(1555) Oppiani de venatione libri IIII J. Bodino Andegavensi interprete . . . His accessit com-
mentarius varius et multiplex ejusdem interpretis (Paris: M. Vascosan).
(1559) Oratio de instituenda in republica juventute ad senatum populumque Tolosatem
(Toulouse: Petrus Puteus).
(1566) Methodus ad facilem historiarum cognitionem (Paris: Martin le Ieune).
(1572) Methodus ad facilem historiarum cognitionem (Paris: Martin le Ieune).
(1568) La Response de Maistre Iean Bodin advocat de la cour au Paradoxe de Monsieur de
Malestroit touchant l’encherissement de toutes choses & le moyen d’y remedier (Paris: Martin le
Ieune).
(1578a) Discours de Iean Bodin svr le rehaussement et diminvtion des monnoyes tant d’or que
d’argent, & le moyen d’y remedier (Paris: Iacques du Puys).
(1573) La Harangve de Messire Charles des Cars, Evesque et Duc de Langres, Pair de
France . . . aux magnifiques Ambassadeurs de Poulogne . . . tournee de Latin en François par
Ian Bodin (Paris: Pierre l’Huillier).
(1576) Les Six livres de la République (Paris: Jacques du Puys).
(1577) Les Six livres de la République de I. Bodin Angevin (Geneva: Claude Juge).
(1583) Les Six livres de la République de I. Bodin Angevin (Paris: Iacques du Puys).
(1586) Io. Bodini Andegavensis. De Republica libri sex, Latine ab autore redditi (Paris: Iacques
du Puys).
(1577) Recveil de tout ce qui s’est negotié en la compagnie du tiers Estat de France en l’assemblee
generale des trois Estats assignez par le Roy en la ville de Blois au xv novembre 1576 (s.l.).
(1578b) Ivris vniversi distribvtio (Paris: Iacques du Puys).
(1580a) Ivris vniversi distribvtio (Coloniae Agrippinae [Cologne]: Ioannes Gymnicus).
(1580b) De la démonomanie des sorciers (Paris: Jacques du Puys).
(1587) De la démonomanie des sorciers, suivie de la refutation des opinions de Jean Wier (Paris:
Jacques du Puys).
(1596b) Io Bodini Paradoxon, quod nec virtus vlla in mediocritate nec summum hominis
bonum in virtutis actione consistere possit (Paris: Denys du Val).
(1598) Le Paradoxe de Iean Bodin Angevin qv’il n’y a pas vne sevle vertu en mediocrité, ny au
milieu de deux vices (Paris: Denys du Val).
(1596a) Vniversae Natvrae Theatrvm in qvo rervm omnium effectrices causae & fines quinque
libris discutiuntur (Lyon: Iacobvm Rovssin).
(1597) Le Theatre de la Nature universelle de Iean Bodin Iurisc. . . . traduict du Latin par
M. François de Fovgerolles Bourbonnois Docteur aux Arts & en Medicine (Lyon: Iean
Pillehotte).

(b) Modern editions (ordered in title sequence)

(1951) Oeuvres philosophiques [Latin texts with French translations of Oratio, Juris universi
distributio, and Methodus (1572)], ed. Pierre Mesnard (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France).
(1969) Method for the easy Comprehension of History, trans with introduction and notes by
Beatrice Reynolds (New York: Norton).
(2013) Methodus ad facilem historiarun cognitionem, edizione, traduzione e commento a cura
di Sara Miglietti (Pisa: Scuola Normale Superiore).
266 Bibliography
(1985a) Ivris Vniversi Distribvtio: les trois premières éditions, con una nota di lettura di Witold
Wolodkiewicz (Naples: Jovene).
(1985b) Exposé du droit universel: Juris universi distributio, texte traduit par Lucien Jerphagnon,
commentaire par Simone Goyard-Fabre, notes par René-Marie Rampelberg (Paris: Presses
Universitaires de France).
(1962) The Six Bookes of a Commonweale, a Facsimile Reprint of the English Translation of
1606, corrected and supplemented in the light of a new Comparison with the French and
Latin Texts, edited with an introduction by Kenneth Douglas McRae (Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press).
(1964–1997) I sei libri dello stato di Jean Bodin, a cura di Margherita Isnardi Parente e Diego
Quaglioni, 3 vols (Turin: Unione Tipografico-Editrice Torinese).
(2013) Les Six livres de la République/De republica libri sex, première edition, livre premier; critique
bilingue par Mario Turchetti, texte établi par Nicolas de Aranjo (Paris: Classiques Garnier).
(1932) La Vie chère au XVIe siècle: La Response de Jean Bodin à M. de Malestroit, 1568,
nouvelle edition, publiée avec une introduction, des notes et 3 facsimilé de l’édition
originale, par Henri Hauser (Paris: Armand Colin).
(1997) Response to the Paradoxes of Malestroit, by Jean Bodin, translated and edited by Henry
Tudor and R. W. Dyson, introduction by D. P. O’Brien, notes by J. C. M. Starkey
(Bristol: Thoemmes).
(2016) De la Démonomanie des sorciers, edited with an introduction and notes by Virginia
Krause, Christian Martin, and Eric McPhail (Geneva: Droz).
(1980) Jean Bodin: Selected Writings on Philosophy, Religion and Politics, edited with an
introduction and notes by Paul Lawrence Rose (Geneva: Droz).
Contains:
‘Épitre à son neveu’ (novembre 1586)
‘Consilium de institutione principis aut alius nobilioris ingenii’ (Erfurt, 1603)
‘Sapientiae moralis epitome’ (Paris, 1588)
‘Paradoxon quod nec virtus ulla in mediocritate nec summum hominis bonum in
virtutis actione consistere possit’ (Paris, 1596), dedicatory preface only
‘Le Paradoxe de Jean Bodin Angevin qu’il n’y a pas une seule vertu en mediocrité ny
au milieu de deux vices. Traduit de Latin en François, et augmenté en plusieurs lieux’
(Paris, 1598)
‘Lettre de Jean Bautru de Matras’ (1568–69?)
‘Lettre de M. Bodin’ (Paris, 1590)
(1857) Ioannis Bodini Colloquium Heptaplomeres de rerum sublimium arcanis abditis,
e codibus manuscriptis . . . curavit Ludovicus Noack (Suerini Megaloburgiensum).
(1975) Colloquium of the Seven about Secrets of the Sublime: Colloquium Heptaplomeres de
rerum sublimium arcanis abditis, translation with introduction, annotations and critical
readings by Marion Leathers Kuntz (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press).
(1984) Colloque entre sept scavans qui sont de differens sentimens des secrets cachez des choses
relevees, traduction anonyme du Colloquium heptaplomeres de Jean Bodin (Manuscrit
française 1923 de la Bibliothèque Nationale de Paris), texte présenté et établi par François
Berriot (Geneva: Droz).

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Yates, F. A. (1979), The Occult Philosophy in the Elizabethan Age (London: Routledge &
Kegan Paul.
Zarka, Y.-C., ed. (1994), Raison et déraison d’état: théoriciens et théories de la raison d’état aux
XVIe et XVIIe siècles (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France).
Zimmerman, B., aka Sainte-Croix (1912), see Wessels (1912).
Zimmerman, B., aka Sainte-Croix (1935), ‘Les Carmes humanistes’, Études Carmélitaines
20: 19–93.
 Index

Abel 252 Aquinas, St Thomas 8, 35, 58, 75, 77, 95, 125,
Abelard, Peter 240 155 n.154, 172, 175 n.48, 176 n.52,
Abraham 252 184, 209 n.64, 213, 214 nn.12, 13, 217,
absolute power 111, 125, 135, 136, 141 219, 225 n.50, 228, 230, 236 n.81, 242,
see also sovereignty 247, 253 n.37, 258
Academics, see Neoplatonists see also Thomism
Académie du Palais (Palace Academy) 159–60, Arabic (language) 10, 183
197, 242 Aramaic 8, 185–6
Académie de Poésie et Musique 159 aristocracy 84, 85, 86, 112, 137, 154, 199
see also Platonic Academy see also nobility, nobles
accident 130, 206, 215, 217, 219 n.31, Aristotelianism 20, 58, 74 n.99, 96–7, 105,
223, 228 160, 174, 217 n.25, 228–9
Accursius, Franciscus 85, 140 Aristotle
Aconcio, Giacomo 69 on causes 59, 215
action of the law (legis actio) 59, 61, 154, 255 on common sense 186
Adam 64, 66, 252, 253 cosmology of 75
Aegidius, see Giles on demonstrative logic 11, 14, 20, 39, 221
Aelian 32 on epistemology 71, 175, 216
Africa 79, 104 n.24 on justice 153–4
Agricola, Rudolph 13, 14 n.14, 31, 32, 39, 47, on slavery 132
68, 70 n.85 on state and government 144
agriculture 99 Works:
Albert the Great (Albertus Magnus) 178, 184, Categories 77
186, 225 n.50, 258 Generation of Animals 141
Alciato, Andrea 173 History of Animals 29, 30, 33
Aldrovandi, Ulisse 213 n.9 Metaphysics 67, 176, 215
Alençon, Duke of, see Valois Meteorology 33, 224
Alexander of Aphrodisias 35, 218 Nicomachean Ethics 55 n.23, 58, 67, 95,
Alexander the Great 123 n.33 130, 131, 154, 235, 237
Al-Ghazali (Abū Ḥāmid Muḥammad ibn On the Heavens 75
Muḥammad) 249 On the Soul 78 n.114, 237
Almohad dynasty 76 Parts of Animals 33
Àlvares, Francisco 100, 218 Physics 59, 71, 214, 215, 222–3, 241
Amelius Gentilianus 250 Politics 79, 82–3, 86, 134, 137, 148, 149
analysis 31, 69, 71, 79, 130, 138, 221, 244 Posterior Analytics 11, 15, 58, 71, 214, 215, 225
Añastro Ysunza, Gaspar de 118 Rhetoric 31, 67
Angelo (Angelus) de Ubaldis, see Ubaldi Topics 31, 32 n.49, 130 n.56
angels 172 n.34, 175, 176, 185, 205, 214, 217 arithmetic 62, 152, 206, 242
n.23, 220 n.37, 225, 227, 228, 234, 245, arithmetical justice, see justice
246, 248, 260 Arius 253
see also demons; intermediate beings armies 101, 110, 131, 145, 170, 190
Angennes, Nicolas de, seigneur de Armagnac, Georges d’, Bishop of Rodez 19
Rambouillet 160 Arrianus, Lucius Flavius 123 n.33
Angers 1–5, 15–16, 39, 41, 42, 63, 90, 100, ars, artes 22, 37–8, 45, 54, 67–9, 73, 91, 100,
108, 173, 188, 189, 200 n.38, 257, 263 209, 233, 235
Anjou, Duke of, René (‘le Roi René’) 4 articuli Henriciani 111
see also Henri III; Valois Asia, Asiatic 65, 79, 80, 101
Annius (Giovanni Nanni of Viterbo) 72 Assembly of Notables 195, 197
Anthoine of Toulouse, a Jesuit 200 astrologers, astrology 11, 119, 125, 152, 177,
Antony, Mark (Marcus Antonius) 101 182, 231, 242
Apel, Johann 55 astronomers, astronomy 20, 29, 125, 182, 206,
apocalypse 172, 173 218, 220, 242, 249, 253
Appian of Alexandria 101 Athanasius of Alexandria, St 246
300 Index
atheism atheists 47, 149, 150 n.134, 211, 232
Auch 39
Audet, Nicholas 5
Augustine of Hippo, St 8, 35, 65 n.61, 132,
176, 184, 219, 220, 226, 230, 234 n.79,
237, 245, 247, 250
Augustus, Emperor of Rome 110 n.42, 146, 233
Auriol, Blaise d’ 21
Austria 109
authority, see imperium
Autun 110
Bishop of 165
Averroës (Ibn Rushd) 8, 20, 35, 74 n.99, 176,
186, 216, 219, 220, 225 n.50, 227, 228,
234, 247, 260
Avicenna (Ibn Sina) 20, 219, 249
avocats 18, 19, 21, 49–54, 64, 90, 92–4, 98,
116, 121, 127, 128, 163, 192, 193 n.19,
194, 195, 197, 198 n.36, 239, 257
Ayrault, Pierre 3, 211
Azo 84
Babington Plot 194
Baconthorpe, John 8–10, 35, 75, 259
Badet, Arnaud de 21
Baïf, Jean Antoine de 159
Balbus, Lucilius 213
Baldus de Ubaldis 54, 83, 122, 136 n.83, 181
Barclay, William 3–4, 113 n.55
Baron, Éguiner 3, 15–16
Bartolus of Sassoferrato 22, 54, 59 n.41,
82 n.122, 83, 84 n.127, 122, 128,
134, 135 n.81, 181
Basel 55
Baudouin, François 23 n.8, 67–8, 72 n.91
Bautru de Matras, Maurice 63–4
Bautru de Matras, Jean 63–6, 78
Bayard, Nicolas 194
Bayle, Pierre 239
Beaulieu, edict of, see edicts
Béda, Noël 10
Bellay, Jean du, Bishop of Paris 15
Bellay, Joachim du 36 n.63
Benoist, René 173
Bergerac, Peace of, see edicts (Poitiers)
Bernardino, St, of Siena 11–12
Berosus the Chaldean 72, 229
Bertin, Dominique 100
Bertrand, Nicolas 19
Bertrandi, Jean 40, 51
Bèze, Théodore de 4, 112–13, 116, 233
Bibliander, Theodore 241
Biel, Gabriel 96
bimetallic ratio 97, 99, 102, 105, 145
Blois 159, 161, 204
Estates-general of (1576) 106, 141 n.103,
146 n.124, 160–9, 189, 200, 211 n.3
(1588) 195, 196
ordinances of, see edicts
Bodin, Antoinette, daughter of JB 239
Bodin, Catherine, née Dutertre, mother of JB
1, 2
Bodin, Guillaume, father of JB 1–2, 4, 90, 263
Bodin, Guillaume, uncle of JB 1
Bodin, Hélie, son of JB 4 n.7, 207, 239
Bodin, Jean, grandfather of JB 1
Bodin, Jean, brother of JB 2
Bodin, Jean (JB) passim
as avocat 52–3
as commissioner 94, 116, 257
as deputy 94, 106, 116, 160–8, 257
children of 207, 239
death of 239
early life 1–5
education of 4–5, 8–14, 16, 23
offices of 116, 190, 194, 197–203
finances of 2, 44, 90–1, 190, 194
in England 190–1
in the Netherlands 191–3
patrons of 5, 15, 23, 24, 51, 52, 54, 92,
100, 109, 116, 160, 169, 170, 212
wife of, see Trouillart
Principal works:
Colloquium 216 n.21, 240–56, 258, 261
Démonomanie 95 n.9, 156, 171–89, 211,
225, 227, 247, 261, 262
Distributio 53–62, 83, 117 n.8, 125, 138,
154, 215
Methodus 26, 47 n.93, 50, 54, 56, 66–89,
91–2, 99, 102, 117, 123–6, 129, 132,
135–8, 142, 143, 148, 150, 151, 155
n.153, 156, 158, 186, 211–12, 219,
226, 227 n.54, 229–30, 247, 258, 262
Oppian 24–37, 47 n.93, 59, 68, 91, 92, 258
Oratio 37–48, 51, 91, 149, 206, 258
Paradoxon 231–8, 247
Recueil 106, 160 n.2, 162–8
République 47 n.93, 54, 57, 61, 84 n.126,
93, 106, 107 n.35, 108 n.37, 116–58,
162, 166, 167, 169, 181–3, 185–8,
190–3, 195, 201, 202, 204, 208, 211,
218, 227, 258, 260, 262, 263
Response 100–7, 117, 145, 148
Theatrum 212–31, 237, 240, 244, 245,
258, 260, 261
minor writings: 62–6, 196–8, 201–9
Bodin, Jean, son of JB 207, 239
Bodin, Roland, uncle of JB 1
Bongars, Jacques 26
Bonvoisin, Jehan 63
books 7, 11, 26, 33, 34, 36, 60, 91, 173, 190,
201, 211–12, 222, 239, 252, 262
book production 6, 91–2
book marketing 6, 91
see also commonplace, publishing
Bordeaux 39–40
Collège de Guyenne 40
Boulanger, Pierre 163, 166, 168
 Index
Bourbon, Antoine de, King of Navarre 202
Bourbon, Charles de, Constable 20 n.7
Bourbon, Charles de, Cardinal (‘Charles X)’
200, 202–4
Bourbon, Henri of, see Henri IV
Bourbon, Henri de, Prince of Condé 160,
165, 167
Bourbon, Louis de, Duke of Montpensier
63, 165
Bouvery, Gabriel, Bishop of Angers 1, 4, 5, 7,
15, 24, 92
Boyssoné, Jean de 20–1, 23
Briçonnet, Guillaume, Bishop of Meaux 4
Brisson, Barnabé 197, 201
Brodeau, Jean 25, 29, 35
Bruges 192
Bruno, Giordano 234 n.79
Buchanan, George 7
Budé, Guillaume 22, 23 n.8, 38, 42, 47 n.91,
83, 97, 100–1, 105
Bunel, Pierre 20
Burghley, see Cecil
cabbala 184, 185, 242, 250, 261
Caesar, Julius 100, 110, 124 n.36, 257
Calais 194
Calvin, Jean 4, 8, 10, 16, 112, 113, 207 n.52
Calvinist 21, 53, 243, 250, 251, 254
see also Huguenot, Protestant
Campion, Edmund 191
‘Capitolinus’ 30
Caracalla (Marcus Aurelius Severus Antoninus
Augustus), Emperor of Rome 31 n.45
Carcassonne 41
Cardano, Girolamo 20, 152
caritas 236
see also charity, love
Carmel, Carmelites 4–5, 7–10, 14, 15, 16, 34,
35, 65, 207, 258
Casaubon, Isaac 26
Cassius Dion, Lucius 124 n.36
Castellio, Sebastian 63
Castelnau, Michel de, sieur de Mauvissière
194, 195
Castro, Paolo di (Paulus Castrensis) 122
Caturce, Jean de 21
causation, causes 19–20, 30, 45, 58–62, 70–1,
77, 81, 101–3, 107, 124, 127, 129,
149–52, 172, 174, 177, 215–16, 220–4,
226, 229, 230, 233, 234, 241, 248
first cause 220, 228, 261
Cecil, William, Lord Burghley 190–1
Celsus, Aulus Cornelius 31
Celsus, pagan philosopher 250
censors, censorship 140, 149, 200, 201
census 148
Cerizay family 2
Cesalpino, Andrea 213 n.9
chain of being 214, 219–20
301
Chalcedon, Council of 251
Chaldean 72, 229, 242, 249
Chambre ardente 14
Chambre des Comptes 6, 56, 95, 98, 100, 146
Champhuan, Jean de, sieur du Ruisseau 193
changes, political 66, 74, 85–7, 127, 130, 137,
143, 146, 149, 151
charity 7, 208, 256
see also caritas, love
Charles IX, King of France 98, 108, 112,
178, 196
Charron, Pierre 27
Chasseneuz, Barthélemy de 81 n.119
Châtelet 100
Châtillon-Coligny, Odet de, Archbishop of
Toulouse 40
Cherruyer, Jehan, seigneur de Malestroit 95,
98–107
Chevrières, Jacques Mitte de 212
Christ, Christian 5, 20, 34, 38, 45, 63–6, 78,
111, 123, 125, 140, 172, 188, 209, 212,
220 n.37, 226, 227 n.55, 237, 239, 240,
241, 245, 249, 250–6, 259
chronology 72, 74–7, 80, 152, 156, 229–30,
245, 259
Cicero, Marcus Tullius 4, 10, 22, 31, 36, 38–9,
54 n.18, 55, 68, 73, 100, 117, 125,
144 n.118, 182, 198, 206, 207, 208,
213, 216
Cinqarbres, Jean 92, 155 n.153
citizen, citizenship 38, 45–7, 82, 118 n.11,
119, 122 n.30, 128, 130, 131, 133–5,
145, 148, 149–51, 155, 236,
255, 256
Claudian (Claudius Claudianus) 209
Claudius Aelianus, see Aelian
Clausse, Pierre, seigneur de Marchaumont 190
Clement of Alexandria (Titus Flavius
Clemens) 157, 260
clergy, clerics 2, 14–15, 40, 41, 112, 140,
157 n.161, 161, 196, 211
Clèves, Henriette de, Duchess of Nevers 159
Clèves, William, Duke of 180
client, clientage, see patron
climate, theory of 80–1, 120, 151, 226
coins, coinage 2, 84, 96–100, 103–7, 138, 145,
200, 204
see also money
Colas, Jean 99, 107
Collart, Jehan 201
Colomiers 174
commissions, commissioners 94, 116, 142, 147,
166, 179, 195, 257
commonplace 34, 218
commonplace books 12, 39, 245
commonwealth 38, 42, 43, 45–7, 66, 70, 74,
81, 102, 112, 116, 126 n.42, 127,
143, 144 n.117, 157, 179
see also république
302 Index
Commynes, Philippe de 100, 124
Compiègne 174
Conciergerie 7, 14, 94
concord 17, 19, 47–8, 62, 115, 131,
133 n.65, 168
see also harmony, music
Condé, see Bourbon
Condemnations (1270, 1277) 9, 74 n.99, 247
confession, as evidence 179, 182
of sins 251, 254
Connan, François 16, 23, 54, 55, 61
conseils, councils 18, 51, 62, 99, 106, 112, 115,
164, 168, 190, 192, 196, 197, 198, 199,
200–1, 204
consent 60, 85, 87, 96, 113, 132, 139, 146, 150
consilia 92–3, 122
Constantinople, Council of 251
constitution 81–9, 111–14, VI passim, 166–70,
192, 243, 258, 262
municipal 17–22, 196
consultation 53, 62, 92–3, 98, 141–2, 160,
168, 170
Contarini, Gasparo 126
Contarini, Per Maria 126 n.43
contemplation 5, 130, 156–8, 208, 212, 216,
227, 231, 234–5, 243, 260–1
Conti, Lorenzo 118
contracts 60, 95, 97, 106–7, 113, 122, 131,
133, 135
see also covenants, promises
Copernicus, Nikolaus 79 n.115, 80 n.117, 97,
104, 216 n.20, 218, 220
Coras, Jean de 21, 22, 23 n.8, 56, 68, 70
Corrozet, Gilles 6–7
cosmography, cosmos 73, 79–80, 86, 152,
176, 220
councils, see conseils
Councils of the Church, see Chalcedon,
Constantinople, Ephesus, Nicaea, Trent
Cour de Monnaies 99, 100, 105
courtiers 104, 112, 127, 148, 159, 198, 242
covenants 140, 175, 187
Cox, Richard, Bishop of Ely 91
Cracow 111
creation 64, 65–6, 74–83, 86–7, 103, 134 n.69,
152, 173, 175 n.47, 176–7, 184, 187,
205–6, 208, 212, 215, 220, 229, 231,
247, 253, 258, 260
Ctesias 30
Cujas, Jacques 3, 19, 21, 22–4, 27, 51, 52, 54,
118, 257 n.1, 259
Cusa, see Nicolas
custom, coûtumes 15, 100, 108, 121, 132, 136,
139 n.97, 141–2, 174, 211 n.2, 259
Dampmartin, Pierre de 117
Daneau, Lambert 173
Danett, Audley 193
Danzig 55
Dares the Phrygian 30
Dauger, M. an avocat 195
Debuat, Paris 164 n.16
De Fer, Adrien 197, 199
definition 13, 58, 60–2, 65, 69–70, 82–4, 113,
129–30, 131, 133, 134, 135–9, 154,
175–7, 183, 202, 208, 216–17, 219,
223, 224, 225–6, 229, 230, 233, 235,
237, 244, 247, 256
democracy 84–5, 87, 112, 128, 137, 154, 199
Democritus 32
demons 64, 65, 78, 171–88, 217 n.23, 224–5,
227, 228, 245–8, 250, 260
see also angels; intermediate beings
demonstratio 11, 14, 39
demonstrative regress 20, 221
Demosthenes 10
Derrer, Sebastian 55
Descordes, Jean 36
Desportes, Philippe 159
devil, diabolism 156 n.157, 172–180
dialectic 12–13, 22, 30–3, 39, 43, 59, 67,
69–71, 73, 131, 180, 187, 206, 217,
234, 259
dialogue 11–12, 117, 216, 233–4, 240–1,
243, 246
Dictys the Cretan 30
Diecmann, Johann 239
diet, Polish Sejm 111
Diodorus Siculus 79
Diogenes Laertius 11
Dionysius Afer, see Dionysius Periegetes
Dionysius the Areopagite 237 n.85, 260
Dionysius of Halicarnassus 83, 123, 135–6
Dionysius Periegetes 30, 33
Dioscorides, Pedanius 218, 221, 222
dispositio, disposition 13, 31, 59, 70
distributio, distribution 13, 30, 53–62, 154
division 13 n.10, 31, 59–61, 70, 119, 143, 217
Dolet, Étienne 7, 11, 19, 20, 21, 36
domain, royal 87, 94, 116, 122, 140,
141 n.103, 145, 166–7, 169, 189, 259
Dominicans 8, 20, 21, 72, 125
dominium 60 n.46, 125–6, 203
see also property
Doneau, Hugues 23 n.8, 214 n.10
Dorat, Jean 114
Doron, Claude 159
‘double truth’ theory 217, 247
Duaren, François 23 n.8
Dudley, Robert, Earl of Leicester 191
Durand, Guillaume 184
Dutertre, René 5
eclipses 212
economic conditions 2, 6–7, 17–18, 47
see also agriculture, harvests, industries,
population, prices, trade
ecstasy ecstatic 5, 178, 227, 234, 250, 260
 Index 303
edicts, ordinances 41, 50, 73 n.93, 82, 84, 88, Faur, Jacques du 19, 40, 41, 51–2
94, 98, 106–7, 112, 120, 121, 133 n.65, Faur, Louis du 52
139 n.97, 144, 151, 180, 255, 256 Faur, Michel du 42
of Beaulieu (1576) (Paix de Faur, Pierre du 19 n.4
Monsieur) 115–16, 160–1, 162–4 Faur de Pibrac, Guy du 19, 20, 23, 42, 51–2,
of Blois (1579) 169, 188 54, 93, 100, 109, 111, 116, 117, 118,
of Moulins (1566) 141 n.103 120 n.21, 126, 127, 159, 160, 169,
of Orléans (1560) 196 170, 206
of Poitiers (1577) (Peace of Bergerac) 170 fealty 138, 141, 145
of St Germain (1562) (January Edict) 53, female, see women
62–3 Ferrier, Arnaud du 19, 22
of St Germain (1570) 88, 107 Ferrier, Augier 20, 119, 123 n.32
of Villers-Cotterêts (1539) 194 n.24 Ficino, Marsiglio 11, 45 n.85, 125 n.40, 159,
education 2, 4–5, 6–14, 18, 37–48, 50, 68, 86, 225 n.49, 231, 242, 260
87, 149, 159, 205–9, 212–13 finance 17, 40, 47, 49, 90–107, 136, 144–8,
Edward the Elder, King of the Anglo- 166, 168, 169, 189, 190, 199–200, 210
Saxons 143 n.114 Flanders 222
Edward IV, King of England 145 Floral Games 19, 21, 47
Egypt, Egyptian 29, 30, 33 n.53, 56, 72, 225, Florence 127
229, 242 Foix de Candale, François, Bishop of Aire-sur-
Elhari ibim Esed, of Baghdad 155, 156 n.155 l’Adour 222
Elijah, prophet 4 n.7, 5, 207 Forcadel, Étienne 23
Elizabeth [I], Queen of England 120, 189–93, form 9, 73, 76, 77 n.111, 87, 134, 137, 144,
194, 197 153–4, 173, 205, 215, 216, 222–3, 226,
eloquence 38 n.68, 44, 52, 64, 90, 170 229, 240
see also oratory, style du parlement fortifications, fortresses 131, 145 n.120,
Elvidius, Stanislaus 109 146, 192
encyclopaedism 67, 212, 213, 259 fortitude 235
England 108, 118, 120, 145, 189–93, 197 fortune 74 n.96, 177
Enoch 252 Foudon 1
Ephectics 223 Fougerolles, François 217
Ephesus, Council of 251 Foulques-Nerra, see Fulk
Epicureans 11, 47, 73, 74, 87, 176, 186, 209, Franckenberger, Andreas 119
211, 219, 229, 234 Franciscans 8, 11, 20, 58, 125, 197, 230, 239
equality, inequality 62, 95, 108, 115, 132–3, freedom of conscience 63, 107, 150
140, 149, 154, 160 free will 66, 74, 78, 81, 120, 151, 153, 176,
equity 62, 83, 84, 113, 133, 142, 154, 155 219, 234, 236, 237, 258, 260
see also iudicis officium Freiburg 55
Erasmus, Desiderius 7 n.2, 29 n.34, 47, 55, 91, Freigius, Johann Thomas 55
173, 205, 237 friends, friendship 20, 25, 51, 54, 57, 64, 92,
Erastothenes of Cyrene 30 93, 100, 117, 119, 128, 134, 170, 197,
estates 141, 155, 157 208, 236, 242
of Languedoc 41, 148 n.127 friendship pacts 256
estates-general 53, 87, 113–14, 116 Frisius, Gemma 218
of Orléans (1560) 63 n.55, 146 Fulk III, Count of Anjou 1, 5
of Blois (1576) 106, 162–70, 211 n.3 Francis I, King of France 1, 6, 7, 10, 20 n.7, 42,
of Blois (1588) 195–6, 197 50, 87, 112 n.51, 180
Eusebius of Caesaria 250 Francis II, King of France 49, 53
Eustathius of Thessalonica 32 Funck, Johann 74
exhalation 224–5
experientia 153, 183, 221–2 Gaius, Roman jurist 59, 132 n.63
Ezekiel, prophet 236 Galen (Galenus), Claudius 33, 59, 125, 151,
218, 221
factions 53, 108, 115, 137, 150, 160, 210 Gallican, Gallicanism 120, 161, 162
family 86, 116, 130, 132, 134, 211, 231 Gambiglioni, Angelo (Angelus de
fate 73, 74, 87, 231 Aretio) 122 n.29
father, see paterfamilias garrisons 192, 200, 210
Fauchet, Claude 100 Gembloux 170
Faur, family 19, 20, 23, 42, 92, 93 Geneva 4, 16 n.21, 63, 112, 118, 254, 263
304 Index
Gentillet, Innocent 127
genus 13, 32, 59, 73, 146 n.124, 217
geography 7, 73, 79, 80, 151, 206
geometry 62, 79, 154, 206, 207, 242
geometrical justice, see justice
Germany 55, 89, 115, 144, 188, 206
Gerson, Jean 125
Giles of Rome (Aegidius Romanus) 184
Gillot, Jacques 239
Giorgio, Francesco 242
Godfrey of Fontaines 75
gold 96–107, 145, 200, 219
Gonzague (Gonzaga), Louis de, Duke of
Nevers 159, 162, 164
Gossin, Raymond de 21
Goulart, Simon 118, 263
government 50, 73, 74, 82, 84 n.128, 103,
113, 116, 120, 126 n.43, 129, 130,
142–9, 154–5, 157 n.161, 162,
168–71, 189
municipal (Angers, Laon, Paris,
Toulouse) 2–3, 6, 18, 196
grace 65 n.61, 102, 165 n.19, 172, 176, 186,
191, 209, 212, 237, 255
grammar, grammarians 10, 12, 26, 28, 29,
38–40, 92, 207
Grands Jours 4, 94
Grassaille, Charles de 81 n.119
Gratian of Bologna 259
Greek language 7, 10, 12, 24–37, 41, 81,
91, 92, 99 n.18, 105 n.27, 157, 181,
214, 216, 219 n.32, 222 n.41, 233,
238 n.88, 243
Gregory XIII, Pope 157 n.163
Gregory of Nyssa, Bishop 260
Grimaudet, François 3, 63, 105–6, 211 n.2
Grotius, Hugo 36, 258 n.4
Guicciardini, Francesco 124, 218
Guise, family 51, 57, 95, 109, 263
Guise, Charles de, Cardinal of Lorraine 51,
52, 94
Guise, Henri, Duke of 160, 163, 195, 196
Guise, Louis, Cardinal 196
Guise-Lorraine, Charles, Duke of Mayenne 195,
199, 200, 210
Hadrian, Emperor of Rome 101
Haillan, Bernard du, seigneur de Girard 112
Hainault 189
harmonic justice, see justice
harmony 11, 34 n.59, 45, 59, 69, 72, 86–7,
130, 153–7, 177 n.57, 178, 185–7, 213,
219 n.33, 224, 231, 235–7, 241, 244,
245, 249, 254, 255–6, 258, 261
see also concord, music
harvests 108
Harvey, Gabriel 14, 118 n.10
Harvillier, Jeanne 174, 183
Haton, Claude 170
Hebrew, Hebrews 56, 74 n.98, 76, 77 n.110,
87, 92, 125, 134, 151, 153, 155, 156–7,
184, 185, 208 n.55, 219–21, 233,
235 n.80, 242, 243, 246, 248, 250,
252, 253, 259
see also Jews
Hebrew language 2, 7, 8, 10, 41, 92, 155, 156,
157, 181–4, 233, 238, 261
Hennequin, family 56–7, 198 n.36
Anne 57 n.31
Oudart 51
Henri II, King of France 14, 17, 24, 49, 52,
108, 170
Henri III, King of France 31 n.47, 115,
135 n.78, 159–71, 190 n.5, 195,
196–204, 204, 242, 259
as Duke of Anjou 63 n.55, 108–12
Henri IV, King of France 108, 115, 161, 165,
194, 198, 201, 202, 210, 211 n.4, 243,
261
Henry of Ghent 35, 75, 78, 219
heresy, heretics 4, 7, 14–15, 21, 52, 172, 176,
190, 200, 237, 242, 253
Hermes (aka Mercurius) Trismegistus 11,
222 n.41, 242, 249, 250
Herodotus of Halicarnassus 33, 67, 79, 124
n.36, 126
‘Herpin, René’ 119, 177 n.54
Hesiod 37
Hippocrates 79, 125, 218
history 22, 24 n.10, 29, 38, 46, 54–5, 66–89,
100, 102, 112–13, 121, 123–7, 135–6,
142, 150, 153, 162, 177 n.55, 182,
202–3, 206, 212, 218, 226, 229, 231,
240, 258, 259, 261
Holster, Gaspar 72
homage, see fealty
Homer 29, 219
honestas 43–4
Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus) 208–9, 233
Horus Apollo 32–3
Hotman, François 53 n.14, 112–13,
191 n.11, 202
Hotman de Villiers, Jean 191
Hubert de Vendôme, Bishop of Angers 3
Huet, Pierre Daniel 239 n.3
Huguenots 53, 108, 114, 115, 139, 160–1,
170, 211, 243
see also Calvinist, Protestant
humanism, humanists 3, 4, 7, 10–13, 15,
17–48, 51–2, 55, 67, 69 nn.77, 80, 71,
74, 100, 113, 124, 129, 144, 173, 205,
206, 208, 213, 233 n.75, 246, 251, 258,
259
hypostase 181, 214, 253 n.37
Iamblichus 11, 153 n.143, 182, 186, 250
icons 62, 245
see also images
 Index 305
Illiers, Christophe d’ 21 Judaism, see Jews
Illiers, Jean d’ 21 Judas Maccabaeus 65
illumination 5, 9, 35, 45, 46, 134, 156–8, 205, judges, see magistrates
208, 209, 228, 233, 234–5, 237, 243, judicis officium, see office of the judge
248, 250–2, 258, 260–1, 262 jus 57–9
images 35, 65, 68, 73 n.95, 139, 173, 177, 244, justice 13, 18, 55, 57–9, 62, 82–7, 89, 95, 97,
245, 251–2 105, 106, 110, 120, 125, 130, 132, 133,
Imola, Alexander da (Alessandro) Tartagni 122, 139, 140, 143, 148, 153–5, 157, 158,
181 176, 185, 199, 208, 234, 235–6, 257
Imola, Giovanni da 122 arithmetical 62, 154, 242
imperium 84, 86–8, 113, 135–6, 142–4, 236 commutative 154
merum imperium 82–3 distributive 154
see also sovereignty geometrical 62, 154, 242
Index of prohibited books 188, 262 harmonic 62, 97, 154, 180, 193 n.18, 242
industries 17, 37, 98 justification 66, 155, 237, 250, 254–5
inequality, see equality Justin Martyr 250
infinity 75, 76, 86, 130, 175, 209, 217, 229, just war 84 n.126, 127, 154
245, 253, 258, 259
inflation, see prices Kepler, Johann 154 n.149
inheritance, see succession kings, kingship 9, 10, 49, 83 n.124, 84, 85–7,
Innocent IX, Pope 188, 211 89, 93, 94, 95, 100–1, 105, 110–12,
Institor, see Kramer 113, 130, 135, 137–9, 141–2, 144, 146,
intellect 9, 20 n.5, 34–5, 74 n.99, 77, 157–8, 154, 157, 160, 162 n.7, 166, 167, 178,
176, 177, 186, 206, 216, 220, 228, 230–1, 193, 195, 198–9, 202, 204
234–7, 247, 248, 251 n.35, 258, 260 Kramer (aka Institor), Heinrich 183 n.60
intermediate beings 78, 120, 139, 175, 214, 226
inventio 12, 32, 59, 70 La Boderie, Guy Fèvre de 242
Isaac 252 La Boderie, Nicolas de 242
Isaiah, prophet 74 n.98, 182, 233 Lactantius, Lucius Caecilius Firmianus 47 n.93
Islam 76, 155 n.154, 211, 240, 241, 244, 246, Lagus, Konrad 55
249, 251, 252, 253 La Jaille, family 1
Israel, Israelite 134, 242 Lambin, Denis 20–1, 24
Isaure, Clémence 19, 47 ‘Lampridius’ 30
Italy 17, 19, 20, 56 n.28, 102, 122–4, 127, 181, landholding, see property
206, 212 n.5, 257, 262 Languedoc 17, 48, 49, 115, 161, 166
Iuba (aka Juba) 33 Estates of 41, 148
iudicis officium 59, 154 Parlement of, see Toulouse
see also equity, office of the judge La Noue, François de 211
ius, see jus Laon 116, 163, 165, 173, 174, 192, 194,
Ivan IV, Tsar of Russia 109 195, 196–204, 207, 210, 212 n.6,
232, 239
Jacob 252 La Perrière, Guillaume de 18, 40
Jamyn, Amadys 159 La Ramée, see Ramus
January Edict, see edicts La Rochelle 110
Jeremiah, prophet 182 La Ruë, Abel de 174
Jesuits 48, 188, 191, 200, 211 La Serre, Michel de 119
Jews, Judaism 5 n.8, 10, 11, 65, 66, 75, 76, La Tour, Jean de 4
77, 81, 125, 156–7, 182, 185, 188, La Tourette, Alexandre de 105
209 n.63, 210, 211, 219, 239, 241, Lauraguais 109
242 n.13, 244, 252, 253, 254, 259, law, laws 13, 22–3, 43, 46, 50, 54, 56, 57,
260, 261, 264 61–2, 67, 81, 82, 84–5, 87, 90, 93,
see also Hebrew 95–6, 102, 105, 108, 122, 129, 132,
Job, prophet 178, 182, 231, 252 138–9, 142, 149, 154–5, 157, 175,
John III, King of Sweden 109 179–80, 198, 202, 205 n.51, 236,
John of Paris 125 255, 258
Josephus, Flavius 87, 124 n.36, 125, 210 canon 3, 9, 19, 22, 50, 89, 121, 135, 140, 180
Jourdain, François 2 civil 3, 19, 22, 46, 50, 54, 55, 59, 61, 68,
Jovian (Flavius Iovianus Augustus), Emperor of 134, 140
Rome 255 constitutional 111–12
306 Index
law, laws (cont.)
divine 5, 9, 55, 58, 89, 120 n.22, 122, 129,
132, 139–40, 142, 148, 152, 178, 179,
181, 182, 185, 204, 205, 208–9, 218, 220,
246, 249, 252, 253, 255, 259, 260, 262
feudal 121, 126, 133, 137–8, 141
fundamental 140
human 61, 120 n.22, 129, 142, 179, 181
international 138
of nations 82
of nature 10 n.7, 35, 46, 55, 58, 74, 113,
126, 129, 132, 133, 136, 139–40, 141,
142, 154, 175, 178, 212–13, 214 n.10,
218, 229, 231, 236 n.81, 252, 259, 262
public 55, 61, 112, 122, 143 n.111, 144
private 55, 59, 61, 122, 136, 202
Roman 22, 24 n.10, 46, 54, 55, 56, 59–62,
73 n.93, 84, 85, 110, 112, 113, 121,
122, 126 n.41, 132 n.60, 133,
142 n.107, 203, 211, 238
Salic 141
universal 23 n.8, 24 n.10, 47 n.91, 54, 57,
66, 81, 89, 120, 213, 238, 259
see also custom, succession
law-making 9, 61, 82–5, 125, 134, 138, 141,
142, 161, 167
Latin language 10, 12, 24, 25, 26, 36, 38, 41,
43, 75, 109–11, 114, 118–19, 120–1,
128–9, 135, 139 n.97, 144, 151, 153,
183, 187, 191, 195, 205–7, 212, 219 n.32,
232, 233–6, 238, 246, 257, 262
League, leagues 116, 161, 195–210, 239, 243
Le Conte, Antoine 23 n.8
Lefèvre d’Étaples, Jacques 4, 11
legis actio, see action of the law
Leicester, see Dudley
Le Jeune, Martin 92, 211 n.2
Lennox, Duke of, see Stewart
Leo Africanus 79, 124, 218
Leo Hebraeus 185, 186 n.67
Leon Abravanel, Judah, see Leo Hebraeus
León, Moses de 185
Le Roy, Louis de 113–14
L’Estoile, Pierre de 16, 112
Le Sueur, Nicollas 198–9, 200
L’Hospital, Michel de 20, 51, 53, 93–4, 128
liberty 86, 112, 132, 154, 176, 208
licences 24, 92, 159
lieu commun, see commonplace
light, see illumination
Lippi, Lorenzo 25, 28
Lipsius, Justus 27
Lisle, Claude de 232
Livre, Nicolas de 100, 117 n.7
Livy (Titus Livius) 123–4
Loisel, Antoine 52, 257 n.1
Lombard, Peter 8, 172
Lorraine, Cardinal of, see Guise
L’Ostal, Pierre de 119
Lot 252
Louis IX, King of France 202
Louis XI, King of France 2, 17
Louis XII, King of France 145
love 205, 208–9, 234, 236, 238, 248, 250, 255
see also caritas, charity
Loyola, St Ignatius 7
Loyseau, Charles 93
Lucretius (Titus Lucretius Carus) 25 n.13,
209 n.62
Luillier family 56–7
Luillier, Jeanne 57 n.31
Luillier, Nicolas 163, 164, 168, 169
Lull, Ramon 240, 241 n.7
Luther, Martin 237
Lutheran 21, 74, 237, 239, 244, 249, 251, 254
lycanthropy 33, 178, 188
Lycurgus of Sparta 33 n.58
Machiavelli, Niccolò 74 n.96, 87, 126–7, 131,
138, 144, 188, 211
Magdeburg 118
magic 20, 172, 177, 184, 201, 242
magistrates 4, 12, 45, 53, 61, 62, 70, 82–4, 90,
113, 119, 120, 129, 130, 136 n.85, 138,
139, 142–9, 154–5, 157 n.161, 174,
179–80, 185, 187, 189, 198, 199, 232,
236, 262
maiestas, maiesté 61 n.51, 88, 135, 142,
144, 220
see also sovereignty, summa potestas
Maimonides, Moses 75–7, 92, 125,
155 nn.152, 154, 156, 172 n.35,
175 nn.47, 49, 182, 185, 219,
220 n.36, 233, 260, 261
Malestroit, see Cherruyer
Mandelot, François de 160, 169
Manetho the Egyptian 30, 32, 72, 229
Manichean heresy, the 176, 247
Manners, Edward, Earl of Rutland 88
Mantes 164,
Manutius, Aldus 30
Marchaumont, see Clausse
Marguerite de Navarre 207 n.52
Marle, lordship of 165, 194, 210
Marnix de St Aldegonde, Philipp 192
Marot, Clément 20, 233 n.74
Marsilius of Padua 125
Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots 191, 193, 194
Massacre, see St Bartholomew
mathematics 7, 26, 73, 86, 152, 181, 217,
242, 249
matter 73, 76, 77–8, 174, 175, 177, 205,
214–16, 223, 226, 229
mean, concept of 130–1, 176, 177, 186, 193,
215, 216, 224, 225, 234, 237
Medici, Catherine de’ 108, 127, 159
medicine 3, 20, 31 n.46, 38, 125, 178, 222,
234, 249
 Index 307
Megasthenes the Persian 72 Moulin, Charles du 54, 83, 97, 98, 100, 106,
Mela, Pomponius 29 112, 135, 141
Melanchthon, Philip 13 n.13, 69, 173 Moy, Charles de, Marquis 170, 190, 194
memory, 34, 39, 68, 121, 205, 207, 213 Müller, Johann, of Königsberg 218
Ménage, Gilles 239 Münster, Sebastian 79
Mendoza, Bernardino de 190 music 205–6, 236, 244, 256
Mercator, Gerard 152 see also concord, harmony
merchants 1–3, 17–18, 39, 41, 46, 47, 53, 105, Muslim, see Islam
146, 263 mysticism 5, 10, 11, 156, 185, 237, 242 n.13, 259
Mercier, Jean 8
merum imperium, see imperium Nabonassar, King of Babylon 229
Mesmes, de, family 198 n.36 Nancelius, Nicolas 12
Mesmes, Henri de 50, 51, 57, 108, 247 Navarre, Henri of, see Henri IV
Mesnil, Baptiste du 100 Navarro, Martín de Azpilcueta 97, 98, 104
metabolai politeion, see changes, political necessity 9, 75, 76, 77, 78, 81 n.119, 96, 151,
metaphysics 9, 20, 34, 35, 47, 62, 79, 137, 153, 198 n.35, 231
144 n.118, 158, 172, 174, 175, 181, 186, Neoplatonism, Neoplatonist 11, 65, 76, 77, 78,
213, 215, 223, 227 n.54, 247, 253, 260 125, 158, 186, 188, 219, 224, 227, 228,
metempsychosis 34 231, 237, 250, 260, 261
method 13, 22, 31, 34 n.59, 39, 55, 56, 66–73, see also Ficino, Iamblichus, Plotinus, Porphyry,
79, 82, 129, 175, 181, 183, 217, Proclus
218 n.27, 244, 259 Netherlands 108, 141, 150 n.135, 161, 170,
Methuselah 252 189–93, 211 n.4, 256 n.41
Metz 109 Nevers, see Clèves, Gonzague
Milan 179 Nicaea, Council of 251
Milieu, Christophe 69 nicodemism 171
military 72, 110, 111, 115, 119, 131, 144–6, Nicolai, family 56–7
147, 165, 170, 171, 189, 191, 199, 259 Nicolai, Antoine de 57 n.31
mints 2, 99, 100, 106, 107, 147 Nicolai, Jean 56–7
Minut, Jacques de 19 Nicolas of Cusa 125, 241
Mirabelli, Nanni of Savona 91 Nieupoort 192
Miron, Marc 159 Nifo, Agostino 19–20, 174–5
mixed state 143, 192 Nîmes 39
mnemonics, see memory Noack, Ludwig 241 n.9
Mohammedan, see Islam Noah 252
Monarchies, the Four 89, 144 nobility, nobles 4, 6, 18, 24, 114, 117, 128,
monarch, monarchy, see king, kingship 154, 169, 191, 193, 200, 204, 232, 243
money, see coinage Nodé, Pierre 173
quantity theory of 104 nominalism 215, 237
debasement of 96, 103 Nostradamus 33 n.53
Monluc, Jean de 109, 111 numbers, numerology 11, 74, 86, 87, 120,
monsters, see prodigies 152–3, 198, 204, 206, 208, 217 n.25,
Montaigne, Michel de 27, 74 n.96, 173, 219, 243, 244
209 n.64 Numenius of Apamea 250
Montauban 39 Nuremberg 55
Montmorency, Anne, seigneur de 40
Montmorency-Damville, Henri, Duke of oaths 9, 50, 63, 64 n.56, 90, 94, 111–12, 135,
115, 165 137, 140, 164, 197, 198
Montpellier 41 n.73 Obertus de Orto 16
Montpensier, see Bourbon Obry, Nicole 173
More, St Thomas 38, 45 n.85, 126, 133, 148 office 3, 18, 19, 22, 43, 53, 57, 83, 84, 93–5,
Morel, Guillaume 25 106, 112, 116, 136 n.85, 143, 145–7,
Mornay, Philippe du Plessis 211, 213–14, 241, 149, 155, 161, 170, 174, 190 n.7, 194,
242, 256 n.41 196–7, 199, 210, 211
mortgages 166 sale of (venality) 49, 93, 146, 161, 162, 169
see also rentes office of the judge 59, 62, 83, 93
Moses, prophet 11, 65, 242, 249, 250, 255 see also iudicis officium, equity
Mothay, Michel du, ? grandfather of JB 1 Olivier, Jean, Bishop of Angers 4
motion, motive 78, 80, 87, 222–3, 227, 229–31 Oppian of Apamea 24–37, 59, 68
308 Index
Oppian of Cilicia 24
optimates 87, 144 n.116
oratory 31, 36, 38–9, 52–3, 159
see also eloquence
ordinances, see edicts
Oresme, Nicolas 96, 97
Origen 157, 172 n.35, 246, 250, 260
Orléans, Estates-general of (1560) 63, 146
Orléans, Ordinance of, see edicts
Orpheus, musician and mystic 242
Orus Apollo, see Horus
Oswaldt, Johann 118
Ottoman Empire 88, 124, 179
Ovid (Publius Ovidus Naso) 25 n.13,
65 n.62, 208
Paix de Monsieur, see edicts
Palace Academy, see Académie
pantotheca 244
Panvinio, Onofrio 74
Paris 6–8, 13, 18, 24, 42, 44, 49, 50, 56–7, 94,
98, 108, 111, 115, 117, 159, 160, 161,
163, 168, 169, 190, 191, 194, 195, 198,
200, 201
Petit Châtelet 201 n.40
Place de Grève 201 n.40
Place Maubert 7, 15
Sainte Chapelle 6
see also Chambre des Comptes, Châtelet,
Conciergerie, Cour des Monnaies
Parlement, University
papacy, popes 9, 135, 140, 162 n.7, 211, 212,
242, 262
see also Gregory, Innocent
Parlement of Languedoc/ Toulouse 18–19, 21,
23, 37, 40, 47, 51
Parlement of Paris 2, 4, 7, 10, 14, 15, 19, 50,
53, 56, 63, 84, 90, 92–4, 98, 100, 108,
116, 121, 123, 161, 163, 174, 189, 195,
197–200, 210, 232
parlements 19, 41, 53, 120, 194 n.24, 198, 200
Pasquier, Étienne 52, 93, 170 n.29
paterfamilias 130–3, 149, 211
Paul, St 183–4, 250, 255
Paulus, Roman jurist 60–1, 255 n.38
Pausanias 33
Pelagius 237
Peletier du Mans, Jacques 36 n.63
peoples, nature of, see climate, theory of
Péronne 116, 161
Persian, Persians 56, 72, 177, 229, 249
Peurbach, Georg von 218
Pharamond, King of the Franks 204
Philip VI, King of France 50, 52
Philip II, King of Spain 108, 161, 170, 189, 190
Philo of Alexandria (Philo Judaeus) 11, 64 n.58,
65 n.61, 76, 77, 78, 87 n.135, 125,
138 n.93, 153 n.143, 156–7, 172 n.34,
182, 185, 219, 233, 235, 250, 252, 260
Philoponus, John 77
philosophy 5, 8, 11, 13 n.12, 37, 38, 57, 67, 76,
81, 152, 177, 242, 247, 249
‘innermost’ 73
moral 117, 159
natural 20, 212–32, 240, 262
see also ethics, metaphysics
Philostratus, Lucius Flavius 33
Phiseau, Jean 164 n.13
Phocion 137
Pibrac, see Faur de Pibrac
Picardy 116
Pico della Mirandola, Giovanni 10, 11, 184,
234 n.79, 237, 242
Piges, Eustache 164 n.13
Pistoia, Cynus da 84 n.127, 122
Place Maubert, see Paris
plagiarism 27, 128
planets, stars 80–1, 185, 220, 231, 244, 253
Plato 11, 13, 34, 35, 54, 58, 62, 64, 78, 86,
100, 125, 129, 130, 136, 148, 153,
157–8, 159, 180, 182, 186, 215, 219,
225, 234 n.79, 235, 250, 252
Works:
Apology of Socrates 176 n.53
Minos 209 n.60
Phaedo 34, 78 n.114, 158, 237 n.85, 244
Phaedrus 13, 58, 70 n.83
Philebus 13, 130 n.56
Republic 73 n.92, 86, 149 n.129, 153, 157,
237 n.85
Timaeus 11, 75, 77, 153
Platonism, Platonists 10–11, 35, 59, 76, 77,
130, 152, 157, 186, 227, 237, 250
Platonic Academy 87, 125 n.40, 159
Plessis-lès-Tours, treaty of 189, 190
Pliny the Elder (Gaius Plinius Secundus) 29, 33,
100, 213, 231
Plotinus 11, 78 n.114, 158, 176 n.52, 186, 214
n.12, 220, 228 n.60, 237 n.85, 247,
250, 260
Plutarch 32, 100, 101, 123, 124, 182, 219
poetry 19, 24–37, 67, 91, 159, 173, 208–9,
239, 244, 257, 259
Poitiers 94
Poland 109–12, 114, 115, 117, 254
Poliziano, Angelo 184
Polybius 83, 117, 124 n.36, 135, 137, 151
Pomponazzi, Pietro 20, 225, 227
poor, the 7, 18, 44, 48, 103, 106, 145, 154, 208
popes, see papacy
popular, see democracy
population 7, 17, 49, 148, 196, 231
Porphyry 11, 78 n.114, 158, 182, 186, 231,
245, 250, 260
Possevino, Antonio 188, 211–12, 213
Postel , Guillaume 7, 173, 241, 242
Potier, Bernard 232
Potier, Nicolas 232
 Index
Poyet, Pierre 1
Poyet, Guillaume 1, 102
praescriptio longi temporis 203
prayer 5, 178, 205, 236, 251, 254, 255
Prevost, Guillaume 5, 8–9
Prévot, Bernard 100
prices 49, 63 n.55, 91–2, 93, 95–108, 145, 171
priests, see clergy
primogeniture 128, 202–3
prisca theologia 242, 249
see also Hermes Trismegistus
privation 77 n.111, 176, 229, 233, 235–7, 247
processions 2, 200, 210
Proclus 11, 77, 186, 216, 219, 220, 250
prodigies 172
Prometheus 65
promises 122, 133, 137, 140, 178, 191
property 10 n.7, 60 n.46, 61, 85, 119, 122,
125–6, 130, 132–3, 140–1, 143, 145,
148, 154, 155, 167, 200, 203
prophecies, prophecy, prophets 5, 47 n.92,
64, 65, 74 n.98, 89, 144, 156, n.155,
176, 177, 182, 185, 195, 204, 205,
207, 232, 234, 236, 238, 241 n.11,
253, 260–2
of Daniel 89, 144, 241 n.11
Sybilline 177
Protestantism, Protestants 4, 15, 53, 62, 63, 88,
107–9, 112, 115–16, 127, 135 n.80,
161, 171, 173, 202, 209, 211, 237,
241 n.10, 242, 254, 262, 263
see also Calvinist, Huguenot, Lutheran
prudence, prudentia 12, 22, 58, 69, 71, 73–4,
81, 87, 103, 142, 155, 157, 206, 208,
233, 235–6
Pruneaux, see Sorbiers
Psellus, Michael 34
Ptolemy 79–80, 218
publishing 10, 23, 24–7, 37, 56, 57, 66, 90–2,
117–18, 126, 161, 162–3, 171, 187,
197, 201–2, 207, 211, 212, 232, 240,
246, 262
see also books
purity 5, 64, 65 n.61, 73, 78, 144, 150, 155–8,
176, 186, 187, 229, 234, 237, 243,
250–2, 255–6, 260–1
Puys, Jacques du 118, 187, 211 n.2
Pyrrho 223
Pythagoras, Pythagorean 34, 74, 152–3, 237,
242, 250
quality 97, 206, 223, 235
quantity 206, 223
quantity theory 104
Quintilian, Fabius 33, 36, 38–9
Rabelais, François 6, 20, 21
Ragusa 144 n.116
Rainer, Jean 38
309
Ramus, Peter 8, 12–14, 24, 25, 27, 30 n.43,
31, 32, 33 n.58, 38, 39, 46 n.88, 47,
55, 58 n.39, 59, 69 n.82, 70, 71,
73 n.94, 86, 108–9, 129, 130, 152,
159, 185, 206, 242
reason 9, 11, 20, 29 n.33, 33–5, 39, 55–6, 58,
67, 71–2, 76, 77, 82, 85, 113, 125, 131,
134, 137, 144 n.118, 151, 158, 175,
180, 204, 212–14, 217, 218, 221, 225,
237, 258
recta ratio 22, 46, 55, 57, 69, 70
rebellion, rebels 20, 142, 161, 170, 189, 192,
198, 204, 210, 257
Regiomontanus, see Müller
regressus demonstrativus (demonstrative
regress) 20, 221
relics 254
remonstrances 117, 142, 198
rentes constituées 166
repentance 156 n.159, 180, 254
république 18, 82–7, 120, 129–55, 179, 199
see also commonwealth
representation 73, 113, 155, 157, 202–3, 244
resistance 113, 139, 210
resurrection 248–9
Reuchlin, Johann 261
rhetoric 10, 12, 27, 30–2, 36, 39, 44, 53,
67–70, 99, 127, 182–3, 187, 210, 216
Richart, Antoine 196–201, 210
right, see jus
Rittershausen, Conrad 26–7, 35, 36
Rochette, Louis de 21
Rodez 19, 39
Rome 100, 102, 123, 126
Rondelet, Guillaume 100
Ronsard, Pierre de 19, 114, 159, 173
Rouen 94
Roussin, Jacques 212
Russia 109
Rutland, see Manners
Sabellicus, Marcus Antonius 79
St Bartholomew, Massacre of (Saint
Barthélemy) 87, 108–11, 114, 117,
126, 127
Sainte Union, see League
Saint Germain-en-Laye 195
St Germain, Edicts of, see edicts
Saint-Mesmin, Sr. de 163, 168
Sallust (Gaius Sallustius Crispus) 124
Salmanassar, King of Assyria 229
salvation 35 n.60, 237, 249, 251, 254
Samuel, prophet 182
Scalich, Paul, of Zagreb 93
Scaliger, Joseph Justus 26, 27, 29, 36, 74,
75 n.102, 229–30, 239, 257, 259, 262
Scaliger, Julius Caesar 26, 119
Scève, Guillaume 21
Scève, Maurice 21
310
Schneider, Johann Gottlob 27, 28
scholasticism, scholastics 8–12, 22, 39, 54, 57,
67, 74 n.99, 75, 77, 89, 93, 95, 96, 104,
112, 122, 125–6, 131, 172, 174, 186,
213–15, 219, 222–3, 230, 247,
258, 260
Schröder, Johannes 118
science, scientia 22, 23, 25, 42, 46, 52, 54,
58, 59, 69, 73, 78–9, 81, 89, 93, 121,
123, 130, 135, 150, 169, 175, 177, 212,
213, 215, 219–21, 226, 229, 233, 235,
249, 250
Scotland 179, 194
Scotus, John Duns 8, 20, 35, 95–6, 125,
215 n.16, 217, 219, 230, 236 n.81,
237, 245, 247–8, 253, 258
Sébillet, Thomas 36 n.63
Senckenberg, Heinrich Christian von 241 n.9
Seneca, Lucius Annaeus 85, 132, 213, 231
Serveto (Servetus), Miguel 253–4
Seth 252
silver 19, 96–107, 145
sin 66, 96, 132, 172–3, 205 n.51, 209, 230,
235, 237, 247, 250, 252–4
slavery, slaves 44, 86, 93, 120, 132, 141, 234
Socrates, Socratic 70 n.83, 158, 176, 216
Solinus, Gaius Julius 29, 30, 33
Solon 33 n.58, 46, 53
Sorbiers, Roch de, seigneur des Pruneaux 192
sorcery, see witchcraft
Soreth, Blessed John 5
soul 9, 11, 20, 34, 47, 57–8, 64, 69 n.78, 73,
75, 78 n.114, 80–1, 144 n.118, 156–8,
172, 176–8, 186, 205, 206, 214,
216–20, 225–31, 234–7, 243, 248–50,
258, 261
sources 22, 29–35, 56 n.26, 58 n.39, 68, 72, 76,
77 n.110, 79, 89, 100–1, 117–29, 135,
138, 151, 155–8, 181–6, 188, 208, 211,
218–22, 233, 238, 240, 242, 245–6, 250
sovereignty 61, 70, 83–5, 111, 113, 120,
133–42, 144, 145, 148, 154, 160 n.3,
162, 193, 202, 258, 262
see also summa potestas, maiestas
Sozzini (Socinus), Fausto 254
‘Spartianus’ 30
species 13, 35, 76, 205, 213, 223, 235
Sprenger, Jakob 183
stars, see planets
state, concept of the 136–40, 143–7
see also commonwealth, république
States-General (Netherlands) 193
Stewart, Esmé, Duke of Lennox 193
Stoics 47, 55, 58, 62, 73, 74, 76, 85, 87, 132,
151, 153, 213, 218, 227, 237
Strabo 30, 79
style du parlement 52
see also eloquence
Sturm, Johann 13
Index
substance 13, 97, 214, 215, 217, 219 n.31, 221,
226, 227
substituts 94
succession 132, 141, 202
Suetonius Tranquillus 123–4
summa potestas 57 n.33, 110, 111 n.47, 113,
129 n.52, 135, 139
Sweden 109
syllogism 11, 30, 33, 39, 71, 217, 227, 229, 244
Syriac 10, 242
Tabouet, Julien 21
Tacitus, Publius Cornelius 123–4, 136 n.83,
233
Talon, Omer 11, 14 n.18, 27
taxation, taxes 2, 3, 17, 22, 41, 49, 84, 111,
113, 130, 138, 146, 148, 162, 166,
193 n.16
teaching, see education
Teissier, Antoine 257
temperance 157, 206, 208, 235
Tempier, Étienne, Bishop of Paris 9, 247
Tessier, Jean 54, 56, 58, 66, 92
Tertullian, Quintus Septimus Florens 250
theatre 25, 68, 212, 213
Theodoric the Great, King of the
Ostrogoths 150, 255
theology 3, 5, 8–10, 11, 20, 38, 57–8, 65 n.61,
66, 73, 75, 81, 116, 125, 131, 156, 158,
172, 173, 177, 182, 184–8, 208,
212–15, 217, 219, 226, 231–2, 236,
241, 242, 247, 249, 251–5, 260–1
Theophrastus 186
Thomasius, Christian 27
Thomasius, Jakob 27
Thomism, Thomist 20, 35 n.60, 58, 128, 209,
214, 230, 237
Thou, Christiofle de 108, 128, 141, 170, 174
Thucydides 126
thunderbolts 224, 231
Tiraqueau, André 128
toleration, religious 109, 115–16, 150, 165,
252 n.36
torture 15, 21, 65, 71 n.88, 149, 179
Toulouse 7, 16–24, 37–49, 51, 52, 54, 87, 98,
100, 109, 148, 174, 196, 200, 259, 263
Collège d’Esquile 21, 40
Collège de Saint-Mathurin 18
councils in 18
see also Floral Games, Parlement, University
Tours 25
trade 2, 17, 38, 47, 89, 99, 101–4, 128, 148,
196, 199
translating, translation 4, 8, 11, 24–5, 36–7,
109–11, 118, 126, 156 n.159, 162, 185,
191, 207, 209, 212, 232–3, 246–7
Trent, Council of 161, 162, 182, 251
trepidation 80, 220
Trinity, the 214 n.12, 237, 250, 253, 260
 Index 311
Tribonian 46, 61 n.49, 259 Vico, Giambattista 136 n.83
triplicities 80 Vigneulles, Pilippe de 6
Trouillart, Françoise, wife of JB 116, 239 Villers-Cotterêts, ordinance of, see edicts
Trouillart, Nicolas 116, 192 Vion, Jacques 164 n.13
Turk, Turkey 109, 179, 239, 259 Virgil 25, 32, 37, 257, 262
see also Ottoman virtues 42–3, 69, 81, 133, 148, 154, 191, 206,
Turnèbe, Adrien 11, 13 n.12, 25–8, 41, 51, 207, 219, 233, 235, 237
71, 91 cardinal 208
Tyard, Pontus de 242–3 intellectual 186, 206, 235, 236
tyrannicide, tyranny, tyrants 86, 96, 113, 118 n.11, moral 206, 235, 236
125, 127–8, 132, 137, 154, 243 natural 233, 235, 236
theological 208, 236
Ubaldi, Angelo degli (Angelus de Ubaldis) 122 Vitruvius 23, 100
see also Baldus Vives, Juan Luis 12, 13, 32
Ulpian, Roman jurist 61, 83, 133 n.65 Viviers 39
University of Angers 2, 3, 15 voluntas, see will
of Cahors 24
of Cambridge 191 Waad, William 190–1
of Orléans 16, 112 wages 7, 98, 146
of Oxford 191 Walsingham, Sir Francis 192 n.12, 193, 194,
of Paris 4, 5, 10–14, 27 n.24, 50, 75, 92, 125, 195 n.26
173, 247 war 41, 49, 53, 61, 63, 64–6, 83, 84, 87, 98,
Collège Cardinal-Lemoine 8, 12 104 n.26, 107, 111, 138, 145,
Collège de France 7 147 n.125, 150, 151 n.137, 154,
Collège de Navarre 7 164–6, 168, 171, 193 n.16, 200, 204,
Collège de Presles 8, 14 208, 213, 232, 236, 243, 256
Collège de Sainte-Barbe 7 see also just war
of Padua 19–21, 51, 225 weights and measures 97, 99, 103, 138, 222
of Toulouse 18–24, 40, 41, 46, 48, 50, 56, Weyer, Johann 180–1, 184, 188
68, 122 will 9, 20, 41, 55, 58, 66, 69, 70, 74–8, 81, 82,
usury 169 85, 87, 112, 120, 122, 125, 131, 132,
utilitas 43–4 139, 152, 175, 177, 229–32, 234–7,
247–8, 255, 258, 259
Val, Denys du 232 see also free will
Valla, Lorenzo 39, 233 n.75, 234 n.77 William of Ockham 125
Valois, house of 108, 202 William of Orange-Nassau (‘the Silent’)
Valois, François de, Duke of Alençon / 150 n.135, 256 n.41
Anjou 57, 108, 115–17, 127, 150 n.135, wisdom 13, 37, 69, 73, 74, 153, 158, 205, 208,
161, 164, 170–1, 189–94, 197, 202, 212, 215 n.15, 231, 232, 233–6, 242,
203, 211 n.4, 242, 256 n.41, 263 243, 249, 251, 252, 260 n.9
Varro, Marcus Terentius 29, 119, 213 witchcraft, witches 15, 78, 171–88, 201,
Vascosan, Michel de 24 n.11, 27 n.24, 28, 92 211, 262
Vatable, François 7–8, 10, 12 Wittenberg 55
Vatican 20 n.6, 123 Wolf, Johann 91
Vegio, Matteo 11 women 44, 130, 141, 172, 174, 176, 180,
Venice 29, 38, 85, 118 n.11, 126, 243 187, 257
ambassador of 194
Venot, Florent 15 Xavier, St Francis 7
Verbery 174 Xenophon 124 n.36, 180
Vergerio, Pier Paolo 37–8
Vermandois 106, 116, 160, 163–5, 168, 174, Zabarella, Jacopo 19
194, 195, 197 Zoroaster 242
Versoris, Pierre de 163, 164, 165, 200 Zygmunt II August, King of Poland 109