Jean Bodin was a French jurist and political philosopher, member of the Parlement of Paris and professor of law in Toulouse.
67 Facts About Jean Bodin
2.
Jean Bodin favoured the strong central control of a national monarchy as an antidote to factional strife.
3.
Jean Bodin was successively a friar, academic, professional lawyer, and political adviser.
4.
Jean Bodin was born near Angers, possibly the son of a master tailor, into a modestly prosperous middle-class background.
5.
Jean Bodin received a decent education, apparently in the Carmelite monastery of Angers, where he became a novice friar.
6.
Jean Bodin obtained release from his vows in 1549 and went to Paris.
7.
Jean Bodin studied at the university, but at the humanist-oriented College des Quatre Langues ; he was for two years a student under Guillaume Prevost, a little-known magister in philosophy.
8.
Jean Bodin's education was not only influenced by an orthodox Scholastic approach but was apparently in contact with Ramist philosophy.
9.
Jean Bodin had a plan for a school on humanist principles in Toulouse, but failed to raise local support.
10.
Jean Bodin continued to pursue his interests in legal and political theory in Paris, publishing significant works on historiography and economics.
11.
Jean Bodin became a member of the discussion circles around the Prince Francois d'Alencon.
12.
Jean Bodin 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.
13.
Jean Bodin withdrew his claim in favor of his older brother Henry III, who had recently returned from his abortive effort to reign as the King of Poland.
14.
Jean Bodin attempted to exert a moderating influence on the Catholic party, and tried restrict the passage of supplemental taxation for the king.
15.
Jean Bodin was in touch with William Wade in Paris, Lord Burghley's contact, at the time of publication of the Six livres.
16.
Jean Bodin later accompanied Prince Francois, by then Duke of Anjou, to England in 1581, in his second attempt to woo Elizabeth I of England.
17.
Jean Bodin became a correspondent of Francis Walsingham; and Michel de Castelnau passed on to Mary, Queen of Scots a prophecy supposed to be Jean Bodin's, on the death of Elizabeth, at the time of the Babington Plot.
18.
Jean Bodin initially gave support to the powerful League; he felt it inevitable that they would score a quick victory.
19.
Jean Bodin died, in Laon, during one of the many plague epidemics of the time.
20.
Jean Bodin wrote in turn books on history, economics, politics, demonology, and natural philosophy; and left a work in manuscript on religion.
21.
In France, Jean Bodin was noted as a historian for his Methodus ad facilem historiarum cognitionem.
22.
Jean Bodin wrote, "Of history, that is, the true narration of things, there are three kinds: human, natural and divine".
23.
Jean Bodin pointed out that the knowledge of historical legal systems could be useful for contemporary legislation.
24.
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 naivete.
25.
Jean Bodin dropped much of the rhetorical apparatus of the humanists.
26.
Jean Bodin was after Martin 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.
27.
Jean Bodin mentioned other factors: population increase, trade, the possibility of economic migration, and consumption that he saw as profligate.
28.
Problems of Jean Bodin became attached to some Renaissance editions of Aristotelian problemata in natural philosophy.
29.
The discussion regarding the best form of government which took place in those years around the St Bartholomew's Day massacre gave the inspiration; Jean Bodin attempted to embark on a middle path.
30.
Jean 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 Niccolo Machiavelli's citta as political unit is thoughtful; Jean Bodin introduced republic as a term for matters of public law.
31.
Jean Bodin denounced the works of Cornelius Agrippa, and the perceived traffic in "sorceries" carried out along the Spanish Road, running along eastern France for much of its length.
32.
Jean Bodin wrote in extreme terms about procedures in sorcery trials, opposing the normal safeguards of justice.
33.
Jean Bodin asserted that not even one witch could be erroneously condemned if the correct procedures were followed, because rumours concerning sorcerers were almost always true.
34.
Jean Bodin's attitude has been called a populationist strategy typical of mercantilism.
35.
Jean Bodin became well known for his analysis of sovereignty, which he took to be indivisible, and to involve full legislative powers.
36.
Jean Bodin hedged the absolutist nature of his theory of sovereignty, which was an analytical concept; if later his ideas were used in a different, normative fashion, that was not overtly the reason in Bodin.
37.
Jean Bodin was a politique in theory, which was the moderate position of the period in French politics; but drew the conclusion that only passive resistance to authority was justified.
38.
Jean Bodin had no doctrine of separation of powers and argued in a traditional way about royal prerogative and its proper, limited sphere.
39.
Jean Bodin's doctrine was one of balance as harmony, with numerous qualifications; as such it could be used in different manners, and was.
40.
Where Aristotle argued for six types of state, Jean Bodin allowed only monarchy, aristocracy and democracy.
41.
Jean Bodin advocated distinguishing the form of state from the form of government.
42.
Respect for individual liberty and possessions were the hallmark of the orderly state, a view Jean Bodin shared with Hotman and George Buchanan.
43.
In matters of law and politics, Jean Bodin saw religion as a social prop, encouraging respect for law and governance.
44.
Jean Bodin praised printing as outshining any achievement of the ancients.
45.
Jean Bodin is identified as the first person to realize the rapid rate of change of early modern Europe.
46.
In politics, he adhered to the ideas of his time in considering a political revolution in the nature of an astronomical cycle: a changement or simply a change in English; from Polybius Jean Bodin took the idea of anacyclosis, or cyclic change of constitution.
47.
Jean Bodin's theory was that governments had begun as monarchical, had then been democratic, before becoming aristocratic.
48.
In 1576, Jean Bodin was engaged in French politics, and then argued against the use of compulsion in matters of religion, if unsuccessfully.
49.
Jean Bodin argued that a state might contain several religions; this was a very unusual position for his time, if shared by Michel de l'Hopital and William the Silent.
50.
Jean Bodin argued in the Six livres that the Trial of the Knights Templar was an example of unjustified persecution, similar to that of the Jews and medieval fraternities.
51.
In 1588, Jean Bodin completed in manuscript a Latin work Colloquium heptaplomeres de rerum sublimium arcanis abditis.
52.
Truth, in Jean Bodin's view, commanded universal agreement; and the Abrahamic religions agreed on the Old Testament.
53.
Jean Bodin has been seen as a scriptural relativist, and deist, with Montaigne and Pierre Charron; in the group of learned Christian Hebraists with John Selden, Carlo Giuseppe Imbonati, and Gerhard Vossius.
54.
Jean Bodin was influenced by philosophic Judaism to believe in the annihilation of the wicked 'post exacta supplicia'.
55.
Jean Bodin was a polymath, concerned with universal history which he approached as a jurist.
56.
Jean Bodin belonged to an identifiable French school of antiquarian and cultural history, with Lancelot Voisin de La Popeliniere, Louis Le Caron, Louis Le Roy, Etienne Pasquier and Nicolas Vignier.
57.
Jean Bodin drew largely on Johann Boemus, and classical authors, as well as accounts from Leo Africanus and Francisco Alvares.
58.
Jean Bodin showed little interest in the New World.
59.
Jean Bodin made an identification of peoples and geographical sectors with planetary influences, in Book V of the Six Livres.
60.
Influentially, Jean Bodin defended an orderly Gallican monarchy against Huguenots, and any external interference.
61.
Jean Bodin had numerous followers as political theorist, including Pierre Gregoire, in whom with Francois Grimaudet legislative authority starts to become closer to the divine right of kings, and William Barclay.
62.
Jean Bodin drew a line under it, by adopting the concept of composite polyarchy, which held sway subsequently.
63.
Shortly Jean Bodin's works were known in England: to Philip Sidney, Walter Ralegh, and to Gabriel Harvey who reported they were fashionable in Oxford.
64.
Richard Beacon in Solon His Follie, directed towards English colonisation in Ireland, used text derived from the Six livres, as well as much theory from Machiavelli; he argued, against Jean Bodin, that France was a mixed monarchy.
65.
Jean Bodin influenced the controversial definitions of John Cowell, in his 1607 book The Interpreter, that caused a furore in Parliament during 1610.
66.
Works of Jean Bodin were soon placed on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum for various reasons, including discussion of Fortune, and reason of state.
67.
Against tyrannicide, Jean Bodin's thought was out of step of conventional thinking in Spain at the time.