Talk:Jean Bodin

message: It's like a collection of random thoughts on Bodin. 24.239.183.38 (talk) 13:28, 1 August 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  This article is awful. 

message: Bodin was born (the son of a master tailor?) from modestly prosperous middle-class background. He received a decent education, apparently in the Carmelite monastery of Angers, where he became a novice monk. 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 perhaps refer to another person. 
He obtained release from his monastic vows in 1549 and went to Paris. He studied at the university, but also at the humanist-oriented ’’’Collège des trois langues’’’ (now the Collège de France). His education was thus not only influenced by a traditional orthodox Scholastic approach but was also apparently in contact Ramistic philosophy. Later in the 1550s he studied Roman law at the University of Toulouse and taught there. His special subject at that time seems to have been comparative jurisprudence. 
From 1561 he was licensed as an attorney of the Parlement of Paris. His precise religious convictions upon the outbreak of the wars of Wars of Religion in 1562 are not known. 
He continued to pursue his interests in legal and political theory in Paris. He published a treatise Method for easy comprehension of history (Methodus ad facile historiarum cognition) in 1566, in which he points out that the knowledge of historical legal systems could be useful for contemporary legislation. Shortly afterwards followed the  Réponse de J. Bodin aux paradoxes de M. de Malestroit (1568). In this tract he offered the first or at least one of the earliest scholarly analyses of the phenomenon of inflation, which had been unknown prior to the 16th century, that is the creeping devaluation of the currency due to excessive increase in money supply, in this case the coins which were minted with the gold and especially the silver from the Americas. 
He was imprisoned in Paris in 1569/70 during the Third war of Religion, in what may have been a form of protective custody to escape the persecution of Catholic zealots who considered him a secret supporter of the Reformation. Thereafter, he was a member of the discussion circles around the Prince François d'Alençon (or d'Anjou from 1576), the intelligent and ambitious youngest son of  Henry II, who had already been in line for the throne in 1574, with the death of his brother Charles IX, however, he 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.
 
The lively general discussion regarding the best form of government which took place in those years around the time of events such as the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre (1572) gave inspiration to Bodin’s his most important work, Les six livres de la république (Six Books on the Republic, 1576). With this, he attempted to embark on a middle path between that chosen by many Catholics such as Machiavelli, which would have granted the sovereign the right to act for the benefit of his state without moral consideration, and Protestant theorists' advocacy of a popular government, or at least an elective monarchy. 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 a temperate nation such as France. This power should be "sovereign", i.e., not be subject to any other branch, though to some extent they are limited by institutions like the high courts (Parlement) and representative assemblies (États).  Above all, the monarch is "responsible only to God", that is, must stand above confessional factions. With his advocacy of a sovereign, religiously neutral monarchy, legitimated by hereditary succession, Bodin was to a certain degree responding to the fact that the young kings who reigned after the death of Henry II in 1559 had come to the throne in a most legal manner but were not able to bring the necessary power to bear to end the  clashes between Catholics and Protestants. Additionally their weakness had the result, since the French crown had favored the Catholic side since 1534, that the monarchy could not act as a mediating power.
The Six livres were an immediate success and were frequently reprinted. A revised an 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, which was gaining influence at that time and ultimately succeeded in ending the Wars of Religion under King Henry IV, with the Edict of Nantes (1598). 
After the failure of the hopes Alençon to ascend the throne, Bodin transferred his allegiance to the new King Henry III. However, he lost the king’s favor in 1576 when he attempted to exert a moderating influence on the Catholic party and to restrict the passage of supplemental financial resources for the king in his position as a delegate of the Third Estate at the Estates-General at Blois. Bodin retired from politics and married. In the same year he succeeded his father-in-law in the office of the prosecutor at the court of Laon. 
In political-ideological terms, he remained true to his tendency toward pragmatism and tolerance. The chief evidence on this point is the manuscript Colloquium heptaplomeres de rerum sublimium arcanis abditis, though some modern scholars have contested his authorship of the text. The "Colloquium of the Seven regarding the hidden secrets of the sublime things" offers a peaceful discussion with seven representatives of various religions and worldviews, who in the end agree on the fundamental underlying similarity of their beliefs. 
In the wars that followed the death of Henry III (1589), in which the so-called Catholic League attempted to prevent the succession of the Protestant Henry IV and place an anti-king on the throne, Bodin initially supported the powerful league as he felt it inevitable that they would score a quick victory. 
  
He died in one of the many plague epidemics which beset the French populace in this era, which had already been weakened by decades of continual civil war.
:Discussion: As noted in the heading, this is a translation from the German wikipedia, which offers a substantial biographical overview of his life. The translation is contextual given my background in sixteenth century history and reference to other works about Bodin. To this end, I will add a further reading section to the Bodin article soon. Gamonetus (talk) 13:55, 5 March 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Life and work