Background
Jean Bodin was born in Angers, France, the son of a tailor.
(Jean Bodin's On the Demon-Mania of Witches (De la démonom...)
Jean Bodin's On the Demon-Mania of Witches (De la démonomanie des sorciers) was published in 1580 and quickly became one of the most widely read and translated works on witchcraft in Europe. Bodin (1529/30-1596), a lawyer and scholar, was greatly admired by his contemporaries. His works on politics, history and religion, especially his encyclopaedic Les six livres de la république (1576), contributed ideas and theories that have continued to attract the attention of researchers in a wide range of disciplines. The Demon-Mania is a passionately argued treatise on the reality and dangers of magic and witchcraft, which Bodin saw as a growing threat to the state. His treatise also makes detailed recommendations to judges for the effective prosecution of witchcraft cases. Professor Pearl's introduction to the text situates it in the full context of Bodin's thought and the historical experience of his age. The notes by the editors give the reader access to Bodin's vast network of theological, classical, historical and legal sources. The Demon-Mania, appearing here in its first English translation, provides sharp insights into the mentality of a complex and bitterly divided age.
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(Bodin's Six livres de la république is a vast synthesis o...)
Bodin's Six livres de la république is a vast synthesis of comparative public law and politics, the theoretical core of which is formed by the four chapters translated in this volume. These contain his celebrated theory of sovereignty, which informed his thinking on the state and made his République a landmark in the development of European political thought. This theory, however, also included a seductive but erroneous thesis that was of great importance for the development of royalist ideology: the idea that sovereignty is indivisible, that the entire power of the state has to be vested in a single individual or group. This thesis, together with the crisis of authority in the French religious wars, led Bodin to a systematically absolutist interpretation of the French and other contemporary monarchies. His primary aim was to exclude any legal ground of forcible resistance. A king of France, he hoped, would continue to adhere to moral and prudential limitations, but a proper king, he insisted, could not be lawfully constrained. This is the first complete translation of these chapters into English since 1606. It is accompanied by a lucid introduction, a chronology, and a bibliography.
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Jean Bodin was born in Angers, France, the son of a tailor.
He received his early education in Angers and Paris as a member of the religious order of Carmelites. After leaving the monastic life, he studied under Arnaud du Ferrierat the University of Toulouse.
In 1561 he began to practice law in Paris and at about the same time published two significant books. In Methodus ad facilem historiarum cognitionem (A Method for the Easy Learning of History), Bodin attempted to determine the principles of universal law through a study of history; in Response aux paradoxes de M. Malestroit (1568; Response to the Paradoxes of Monsieur Malestroit), he contended that the revolutionary rise in prices in the 16th century was caused by the great influx of gold and silver-an analysis which has earned him a distinguished position among early modern European economists.
Bodin won the favor of King Henry III of France and of his brother, the Duke of Alençon. In 1571 he became counselor to the duke and was appointed king's attorney at Laon in 1576. In the same year he served as a delegate of the Third Estate (commoners) at the Estates General of Blois. Because of his stand, Bodin lost favor with the King, but he continued to serve the duke.
Bodin's most famous work, Six livres de la république (1576; Six Books of the Republic), reflects his distress over the chaos in France during the Wars of Religion. In 1583 Bodin returned to Laon as procurator to the presidial court and spent the rest of his life there. Bodin's interest turned from politics to religion, and his writings reflect this change. In 1596 Bodin died of plague in Laon.
(Jean Bodin's On the Demon-Mania of Witches (De la démonom...)
(Bodin's Six livres de la république is a vast synthesis o...)
His religious belisfs were reflected in his works. In La Demonomanie des sorciers (1580; The Demonomania of Witches), he advocated the burning of witches. In the Heptaplomeres (1588) - a colloquy between a Jew, a Moslem, a Calvinist, a Lutheran, a Catholic, a theist, and an epicurean - his characters eventually decide that since one religion is as good as another, they should live together in charity.
He remained a nominal Catholic throughout his life but was critical of papal authority over governments.
Bodin antagonized the clergy and nobility by favoring negotiation instead of war with the French Protestants. He also opposed the King's demand to gain additional revenue by selling public lands and royal demesnes.
He believed the state needed one supreme authority to make and enforce law, an authority whose power was limited only by natural and divine law and by the "fundamental laws" of the land. Although he conceded that there could be different types of government, he thought monarchy the most stable because its sovereignty was not divided.
He married in February 1576. His wife, Françoise Trouillart, was the widow of Claude Bayard.