Jean Bodin
Jean Bodin was a French jurist and political philosopher, member of the Parlement of Paris and professor of law in Toulouse. Bodin lived during the aftermath of the Protestant Reformation and wrote against the background of religious conflict in France. He seemed to be a nominal Catholic throughout his life but was critical of papal authority over governments. Known for his theory of sovereignty, he favoured the strong central control of a national monarchy as an antidote to factional strife.
Towards the end of his life he wrote a dialogue among different religions, including representatives of Judaism, Islam and natural theology in which all agreed to coexist in concord, but was not published. He was also an influential writer on demonology, as his later years were spent during the peak of the early modern witch trials.
Life
Jean Bodin was successively a friar, academic, professional lawyer, and political adviser. An excursion as a politician having proved a failure, he lived out his life as a provincial magistrate.Early life
Bodin was born near Angers, possibly the son of a master tailor, into a modestly prosperous middle-class background. He received a decent education, apparently in the Carmelite monastery of Angers, where he became a novice friar. Some claims made about his early life remain obscure. There is some evidence of a visit to Geneva in 1547–48 in which he became involved in a heresy trial. The records of this episode, however, are murky and may refer to another person.Paris and Toulouse
Bodin obtained release from his vows in 1549 and went to Paris. He studied at the university, but also at the humanist-oriented Collège des Quatre Langues ; he was for two years a student under Guillaume Prévost, a little-known magister in philosophy. His education was not only influenced by an orthodox Scholastic approach but was also apparently in contact with Ramist philosophy.Later, in the 1550s, he studied Roman law at the University of Toulouse, under Arnaud du Ferrier, and taught there. His special subject at that time seems to have been comparative jurisprudence. Subsequently, he worked on a Latin translation of Oppian of Apamea, under the continuing patronage of Gabriel Bouvery, Bishop of Angers. Bodin had a plan for a school on humanist principles in Toulouse, but failed to raise local support. He left in 1560.
The Wars of Religion and the ''politiques''
From 1561, Bodin was licensed as an attorney of the Parlement of Paris. His religious convictions on the outbreak of the Wars of Religion in 1562 cannot be determined, but he affirmed formally his Catholic faith, taking an oath that year along with other members of the Parlement. He continued to pursue his interests in legal and political theory in Paris, publishing significant works on historiography and economics.Bodin became a member of the discussion circles around the Prince François d'Alençon. He was the intelligent and ambitious youngest son of Henry II, and was in line for the throne in 1574, with the death of his brother Charles IX. He withdrew his claim, however, in favor of his older brother Henry III, who had recently returned from his abortive effort to reign as the King of Poland. Alençon was a leader of the politiques faction of political pragmatists.
Under Henry III
After the failure of Prince François' hopes to ascend the throne, Bodin transferred his allegiance to the new king Henry III. In practical politics, however, he lost the king's favor in 1576–7, as delegate of the Third Estate at the Estates-General at Blois, and leader in his Estate of the February 1577 moves to prevent a new war against the Huguenots. He attempted to exert a moderating influence on the Catholic party, and also tried to restrict the passage of supplemental taxation for the king. Bodin then retired from political life; he had married in February 1576. His wife, Françoise Trouillart, was the widow of Claude Bayard, and sister of Nicolas Trouillart who died in 1587; both were royal attorneys in the Provost of Laon and attorneys in the Bailiwick of Vermandois, and Bodin took over the charges.Jean Bodin was in touch with William Wade in Paris, Lord Burghley's contact, at the time of publication of the Six livres. He later accompanied Prince François, by then Duke of Anjou, to England in 1581, in his second attempt to woo Elizabeth I of England. On this visit, Bodin saw the English Parliament. He brushed off a request to secure better treatment for English Catholics, to the dismay of Robert Persons, given that Edmund Campion was in prison at the time. Bodin saw some of Campion's trial, he is said also to have witnessed Campion's execution in December 1581, making the hanging the occasion for a public letter against the use of force in matters of religion. Bodin became a correspondent of Francis Walsingham; and Michel de Castelnau passed on to Mary, Queen of Scots a prophecy supposed to be Bodin's, on the death of Elizabeth, at the time of the Babington Plot.
Prince François became Duke of Brabant in 1582, however, and embarked on an adventurous campaign to expand his territory. The disapproving Bodin accompanied him, and was trapped in the Prince's disastrous raid on Antwerp that ended the attempt, followed shortly by the Prince's death in 1584.
Last years
In the wars that followed the death of Henry III, the Catholic League attempted to prevent the succession of the Protestant Henry of Navarre by placing another king on the throne. Bodin initially gave support to the powerful League; he felt it inevitable that they would score a quick victory.Jean Bodin died in Laon, during one of the many plague epidemics of the time.
Books
Bodin generally wrote in French, with later Latin translations. Several of the works have been seen as influenced by Ramism, at least in terms of structure.Bodin wrote in turn books on history, economics, politics, demonology, and natural philosophy; and also left a work in manuscript on religion. A modern edition of Bodin's works was begun in 1951 as Oeuvres philosophiques de Jean Bodin by Pierre Mesnard, but only one volume appeared.
''Methodus ad facilem historiarum cognitionem''
In France, Bodin was noted as a historian for his Methodus ad facilem historiarum cognitionem . He wrote, "Of history, that is, the true narration of things, there are three kinds: human, natural and divine". This book was one of the most significant contributions to the ars historica of the period, and distinctively put an emphasis on the role of political knowledge in interpreting historical writings. He pointed out that the knowledge of historical legal systems could be useful for contemporary legislation.The Methodus was a successful and influential manual on the writing of technical history. It answered by means of detailed historiographical advice the skeptical line on the possibility of historical knowledge advanced by Francesco Patrizzi. It also expanded the view of historical "data" found in earlier humanists, with the immediacy of its concerns for the social side of human life.
Jean Bodin rejected the biblical Four Monarchies model, taking an unpopular position at the time, as well as the classical theory of a Golden Age for its naiveté. He also dropped much of the rhetorical apparatus of the humanists.
Economic thought: the ''Reply to Malestroit''
The Réponse de J. Bodin aux paradoxes de M. de Malestroit was a tract, provoked by theories of Jean Cherruies “Seigneur de Malestroit”, in which Bodin offered one of the earliest scholarly analyses of the phenomenon of inflation, unknown prior to the 16th century. The background to discussion in the 1560s was that by 1550 an increase in the money supply in Western Europe had brought general benefits. But there had also been appreciable inflation. Silver arriving via Spain from the South American mine of Potosí, together with other sources of silver and gold, from other new sources, was causing monetary change.Bodin was after Martín de Azpilicueta, who had alluded to the issue in 1556, an early observer that the rise in prices was due in large part to the influx of precious metals. Analysing the phenomenon, amongst other factors he pointed to the relationship between the amount of goods and the amount of money in circulation. The debates of the time laid the foundation for the "quantity theory of money". Bodin mentioned other factors: population increase, trade, the possibility of economic migration, and consumption that he saw as profligate.
The ''Theatrum''
The Theatrum Universae Naturae is Bodin's statement of natural philosophy. It contains many particular and even idiosyncratic personal views, for instance that eclipses are related to political events. It argued against the certainty of the astronomical theory of stellar parallax, and the terrestrial origin of the "comet of 1573". This work shows major Ramist influences. Consideration of the orderly majesty of God leads to encyclopedism about the universe and an analogue of a memory system.Problems of Bodin became attached to some Renaissance editions of Aristotelian problemata in natural philosophy. Further, Damian Siffert compiled a Problemata Bodini, which was based on the Theatrum.
''Les Six livres de la République''
Jean Bodin's best-known work was "The Six Books of the Republic", written in 1576. The discussion regarding the best form of government which took place in those years around the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre gave the inspiration. Bodin's, classical, definition of sovereignty is: "la puissance absolue et perpetuelle d'une République". His main ideas about sovereignty are found in chapter VIII and X of Book I, including his statement "The sovereign Prince is accountable only to God".The Six livres were an immediate success and were frequently reprinted. A revised and expanded Latin translation by the author appeared in 1586. With this work, Bodin became one of the founders of the pragmatic inter-confessional group known as the politiques, who ultimately succeeded in ending the Wars of Religion under King Henry IV, with the Edict of Nantes. Against the monarchomachs who were assailing kingship in his time, such as Theodore Beza and François Hotman, Bodin succeeded in writing a fundamental and influential treatise of social and political theory. In its reasoning against all types of mixed constitution and resistance theory, it was an effective counter-attack against the monarchomach position invoking "popular sovereignty".
The structure of the earlier books has been described as Ramist in structure. Book VI contains astrological and numerological reasoning. Bodin invoked Pythagoras in discussing justice and in Book IV used ideas related to the Utopia of Thomas More. The use of language derived from or replacing Niccolò Machiavelli's città as political unit is thoughtful; Bodin introduced republic as a term for matters of public law. Bodin, although he referred to Tacitus, was not writing here in the tradition of classical republicanism. The Ottoman Empire is analysed as a "seigneurial monarchy". The Republic of Venice is not accepted in the terms of Gasparo Contarini: it is called an aristocratic constitution, not a mixed one, with a concentric structure, and its apparent stability was not attributable to the form of government.
The ideas in the Six livres on the importance of climate in the shaping of a people's character were also influential, finding a prominent place in the work of Giovanni Botero and later in Baron de Montesquieu's climatic determinism. Based on the assumption that a country's climate shapes the character of its population, and hence to a large extent the most suitable form of government, Bodin postulated that a hereditary monarchy would be the ideal regime for a temperate nation such as France. This power should be "sovereign", i.e., not be subject to any other branch, though to some extent limited by institutions like the high courts and representative assemblies. Above all, the monarch is "responsible only to God", that is, must stand above confessional factions.
The work soon became widely known. Gaspar de Anastro made a Spanish translation in 1590. Richard Knolles put together an English translation ; this was based on the 1586 Latin version, but in places follows other versions. It appeared under the title The Six Bookes of a Common-weale.