Jean Bodin

Jean Bodin

Jean Bodin [ ʒɑ̃ː boˈdɛ̃ː ] (* 1529 or 1530 in Angers ; † 1596 in Laon ), also Latinized as Joannes Bodinus Andegavensis , is considered the first French state theorist of rank. He is considered the founder of the modern concept of sovereignty and, with his state-theoretical work Les six livres de la République (1576, German " Six books on the state "), an early advocate of absolutism .

Live and act

Bodin came from a middle-class background with modest wealth (presumably as the son of a master tailor). He received an adequate education, apparently in the Carmelite monastery of Angers, where he became a novice . He had to break off the training because of non-conforming thoughts, the reasons are not known. It is not yet clear whether he stayed in Calvinist Geneva and was involved in heretic trials in 1547/48 .

He gave up the plan to become a monk in 1549 and went to Paris. Here he studied at the university as well as at the humanistically oriented Collège des trois langues (today Collège de France ). In this way he was introduced not only to traditional orthodox scholasticism , but also to Ramist philosophy . In the further course of the 1550s he studied and taught Roman law at the University of Toulouse . Already at that time he seems to have been particularly interested in comparative law.

From 1561 he was admitted to the parlement of Paris. It is not known with certainty which denomination he sided with when the Wars of Religion broke out in 1562. His personal spirituality changes during this time. He reports on visions and perceives himself to be accompanied by a guardian angel. Inwardly, he said goodbye to all church dogmas and developed personal religious convictions, which biographers interpreted as a turn towards archaic Judaism. This religiosity remains with him until the end of his life.

He pursued his legal and political theoretical interests in Paris. In 1566 he published the writing Methodus ad facilem historiarum cognitionem ("Method for the easy understanding of history"). In it he shows that knowledge of historical legal systems is useful for current legislation. The Réponse de J. Bodin aux paradoxes de M. de Malestroit (1568) followed a little later . In this, he is evidently one of the first to analyze largely correctly the previously unknown phenomenon of inflation , i. H. the creeping devaluation due to an excessive increase in the means of payment. It was mainly about the coins that were minted from the gold and silver of America.

In 1569/70, during the now third religious war, he was imprisoned in Paris, possibly a kind of protective custody to evade him from the persecution of Catholic zealots who viewed him as a secret sympathizer of the Reformation . Afterwards he belonged to the top-class discussion group around Prince François d'Alençon , the intelligent and ambitious youngest son of Henry II. He saw himself in 1574, when his brother Charles IX died. , already as heir to the throne, but then had to go in favor of his older brother Heinrich III. stand back after he had knocked out the royal crown of Poland offered to him.

During these years of general discussion about the best form of government, contact with politics, but also events such as Bartholomew's Night (1572), during which he himself almost died, Bodin conceived his most important work, Les six livres de la république ("Six Books on the State", 1576). He tried to strike a middle path between Machiavellianism , advocated by many Catholics , according to which a ruler has the duty and thus the right to act without moral considerations for the benefit of his state, and the ideal of popular rule or at least an electoral monarchy advocated by Protestant theorists. Based on the thesis that the climate of a country shapes the character of its inhabitants and thus also largely dictates the most suitable form of government for them, Bodin postulates the hereditary monarchy as the ideal regime for climatically moderate France . Such a monarch is said to be "sovereign", i.e. H. not subject to any higher authority, although subject to a certain control by institutions such as the Supreme Courts of Justice ( Parlements ) and the Assemblies of Estates ( États ). In principle, however, the monarch should be “only responsible to God” and thus also stand above the denominational parties. With his postulate of a sovereign, religiously neutral monarchy legitimized by heredity, Bodin took account of the historical situation that the young kings who succeeded Henry II after 1559 had legally come to the throne, but did not have the necessary power. in order to end the disputes between Catholics and Protestants, and that their weakness resulted not least from the fact that the French crown had always been on the side of the Catholics since 1534, and was therefore itself a party and could not act as an arbitrator.

The Six livres were immediately very successful and were reprinted several times. In 1586 an expanded Latin version was also published, revised by the author himself. With his book, Bodin was one of the founders of the non-denominational movement of the pragmatic-minded "politicians" ( politiques ), who gained influence in the following years and finally, under King Henry IV, achieved the end of the wars of religion and the decree of the Edict of Tolerance of Nantes (1598) .

After the failure of the hopes d'Alençons Bodin had the new King Henry III. connected. He lost his favor, however, after he had tried in 1576 as a delegate of the third estate at the Blois Estates Assembly to have a moderating effect on the Catholic party and to prevent special funds for the king. Bodin left politics and got married. In the same year he succeeded his father-in-law in the office of public prosecutor at the Laon court.

At the latest by this he was involved in the prevailing legal practice of the witch trials. In 1580 he published another very influential work on the witchers ' demon mania , La Démonomanie des sorciers, which was translated into several languages ​​(including German) . It was generally understood as a handbook of sorcerers and witchcraft, including advice and argumentation aids for judges who should not shy away from the death penalty.

From 1581 to 1584 Bodin was once again in the service of the Duke of Alençon and in 1581 stayed in England for several months on his behalf.

In political and ideological terms, he remained true to his tendency towards pragmatism and tolerance. This is evidenced by a work that was distributed in manuscript and in copies after his death, the Colloqium heptaplomeres de rerum sublimium arcanis abditis . This “conversation of seven about the hidden secrets of the sublime things” is a sincere discussion among seven representatives of different religions and worldviews, who finally agree on the fundamental equality of their convictions. However, some researchers dispute Bodin's authorship of this manuscript.

In the wars with which after the death of Heinrich III. (1589) tried to prevent the so-called Catholic League from succession to the throne of the Protestant Henry IV and to enforce an opposing king, Bodin initially supported the League, whose rapid victory he apparently considered inevitable.

He died in one of the countless plague epidemics that plagued the French population, weakened by decades of civil war.

The theoretical works of Bodin

As long as Bodin was in political life, he wrote writings on state and political theory . The first was the work Réponse aux paradoxes du seigneur de Malestroit ("Reactions to the Paradoxes of the Lord of Malestroit"), published in 1568 , in which the then puzzling phenomenon of inflation is explained for the first time, and precisely from the sharp increase in the amount of money that with the gold and silver from the Spanish colonies in America were minted and put into circulation.

State scheme according to Bodin

sovereign	Form of government
One	monarchy
Few	aristocracy
All	democracy

Bodin's most important work in 1576 was Les six livres de la République ("The six books on the state "), where république has the general meaning of state (lat. Res publica) and not of republic in the modern sense. Unlike Hobbes , for example , he did not develop his theory from abstract principles, but tried to show that his principles already formed the existing basis of most of Europe's constitutions.

According to the definition of the term going back to Marcus Tullius Cicero , Bodin understood the state to be composed of families and the goods belonging to them. But he adds that the community is guided by supreme power and reason (“summa potestate ac ratione moderata”). He thereby introduces the idea of sovereignty ( sovereignty thesis ) into political philosophy. Sovereignty is a constant and unconditional power over all citizens, with the right to make or repeal laws. The sovereign ruler is not responsible to any other earthly authority, which ultimately advocates an absolutist and centralist monarchy . However, the ruler is bound by divine law or natural law , as it was defined in the scholastic discussions of the Middle Ages. Bodin's thesis that a country's form of government depends on the nature of its inhabitants and that these depend on its climate, was taken up again by Montesquieu in the 18th century .

A monetary theoretical controversy

In the book Les paradoxes du seigneur de Mallestroit sur le faict des monnoyes publiés , published in 1566, Jean de Malestroit dealt with the question of whether a general price increase (in modern terms: a general price inflation ) had taken place and how this should be characterized. It seemed to him to be "paradoxical" that the goods would not have changed in value relative to one another, but with regard to their value, which is expressed in money or in precious metals such as gold and silver.

Bodin's response to Malestroit's writing was La réponse de Jean Bodin à propos de la monnaie et de l'enrichissement de toute chose et le moyen d'y remédier , published in 1568 . To this end, he examined the price development in the past few years and saw the causes of the rise in prices above all in the influx of large quantities of precious metals that Spain had imported from America into Europe.

In his presentations, Bodin anticipated monetary notions of quantity theory , as they were later presented in particular by David Hume .

De Magorum Daemonomania

Jean Bodin: "De la demonomanie des sorciers" (1580)

Bodin came into contact with witch trials early on , because in his book he states that in 1549 he attended a trial in which seven people were accused of sorcery. Undoubtedly, however, his legal practice as a lawyer at the Paris Parlement and the Laon Presidential Court has led him to face charges of sorcery. He himself cites the trial against Johanna Harwilerin from 1579 as decisive for the creation of his work: This

“Gave me cause and cause / to take the pen in my hand / and [nd] the matter of the witches and fiends / which is so surprisingly strange to everyone today / also with many small beliefs wins / now in detail to to explain."

In addition, he emphasizes that he is writing his book of witches,

"So that one has to guard against [witchcraft] / and then the things / when one needs / should judge / judge of these / such stucco / should have a thorough knowledge [.]"

This is particularly important for judges who have to lead witch trials so that they do not “judge by the blue glasses”.

The book is mainly designed as a refutation of the "culpable errors" of the doctor Johann Weyer , who, like Bodin, believed in the existence of demons, but attributed most cases of witchcraft to either banal criminal maneuvers or pathological melancholy .

In historical research into the witch hunt, Bodin's work plays an important role in answering the question of the extent to which these processes can be traced back to outbreaks of popular anger among the uneducated or to attacks by leading circles of the population, to which the latter is usually attributed to rational intentions.

As a state theorist, Bodin can appear as a forerunner of modern ideas. The demonologist Bodin seems to contradict this. Bodin's doctrine of demons can be justified "rationally" from his Old Testament and Neo-Platonism- oriented image of God: While nature is subject to strict laws in its processes, God, who created nature with its laws, is absolutely free, she is temporarily and to change individual occurrences or to violate the laws of nature. However, he does not intervene directly, but makes use of the good and bad demons. This image of God, who as absolute ruler is not subject to the natural necessities created by himself, can be seen in parallel to Bodin's constitutional law, which also places the absolutist ruler above the laws he has created. Bodin, who is looking for a coherent solution - not only between the demon teachings handed down from ancient and Christian sources, but also a level of mediation between the absolute freedom of God and the scientifically required determinism - finds this in the good and bad demons that God can use to intervene in the laws of nature and cause unnatural events.

Colloquium heptaplomeres de rerum sublimium arcanis

In the book called Heptaplomeres , the author - recent research is uncertain about the attribution to Bodin - presents in dialogue form how seven world wise men exchange amicable conversations about the different world views and come to the conclusion that all are in the sense of varieties of the Equivalent to natural religion . So here he reveals a tolerant attitude. The fact that he always clearly brought the arguments of the opposing positions into the discussion was later accused by the theological critics of the author as indifferentism or disbelief. Among the positions of deist religious philosophy and advocates of a natural theology or natural religion, the author with this work is considered to be a representative of an extreme position: natural religion is generally accessible and sufficient for itself, any revelation religion is therefore simply unnecessary.

As mentioned, Bodin's authorship of the Heptaplomeres is controversial. Karl F.altenbacher has long and David Wootton since 1999 the conviction that Bodin could in no way be the author of this text. Jean Céard and Isabelle Pantin in Paris also spoke out against this assumption.

reception

Despite his initial fame, Bodin quickly became suspicious of many theologians; his works were eventually placed on the index of banned books by the Pope. Bodin's will stipulated that all of his books should be burned. However, the manuscript Heptaplomeres was in great demand among connoisseurs. It is known that Hugo Grotius , Leibniz or the Swedish Queen had it researched or had copies made. The French psychiatrist Louis-Florentin Calmeil (1798–1895) judged Bodin that his works did more harm to mankind than those of the inquisitors.

Works

• Colloquium heptaplomeres de rerum sublimium arcanis . Olms, Hildesheim 1970 (repr. Of the edition by L. Noack, Schwerin 1857)
  • French: Colloque entre sept scavans qui sont de differens sentimens des secrets cachez des choses relevées , Droz, Genève 1984.
  • English: Colloquium of the Seven about Secrets of the Sublime , trans. M. Kuntz, Princeton University Press, Princeton 1975, new edition Kluwer Academic Publisher, 2008, ISBN 0-271-03435-1
• De Magorum Daemonomania. Libri IV. Olms, Hildesheim 2003, ISBN 3-487-11794-0 (Repr. D. Basel 1581)
  • French: De la démonomanie des sorciers , Jacques Du Puys, Paris 1581. ( digital copies at archive.org )
  • English: RA Scott: On the Demon-Mania of Witches , Victoria University Press, Toronto 1995.
  • German: From the Ausgelaßnen Wütigen Teuffelsheer . Translated by Johann Fischer, B. Jobin, Strasbourg 1581/1591, reprint ADEVA, Graz 1973, ISBN 3-201-00821-4 . ( Digitized in the Google book search)
• Methodus ad facilem historiarum cognitionem . (“The method for easily grasping history”), Martin Juven, Paris 1566.
  • English: B. Reynolds: Method for the easy comprehension of History , Columbia University Press, New York 1945.
  • French: together with the Latin text contained in: Pierre Mesnard (ed.): Œuvres philosophiques de Jean Bodin , Presses Universitaires de France, Paris 1951.
• Six books on the state . Beck, Munich
  • Part 1–3. - 1983, ISBN 3-406-30703-5
  • Part 4-6. - 1986, ISBN 3-406-08060-X
  • About the state . Selection, translation and afterword by Gottfried Niedhart . Reclam, Stuttgart. ISBN 3-15-009812-2

literature

• Henri Baudrillart : Jean Bodin et son temps. Tableau des théories politiques et des idées économiques au 16ème siècle . Scientia-Verlag, Aalen 1964 (repr. Of the Paris edition 1853).
• Roger Chauviré: Jean Bodin. Auteur de la "Republique". Champion, Paris 1914.
• Marie-Dominique Couzinet, Histoire et Méthode à la Renaissance. Une Lecture de la Methodus ad facilem historiarum cognitionem de Jean Bodin. Vrin, Paris 1996, ISBN 2-7116-1246-5 .
• Horst Denzer (Ed.): Jean Bodin. Negotiations of the international Bodin conference in Munich / Proceedings of the International Conference on Bodin in Munich / Actes du colloque international Jean Bodin à Munich. CH Beck, Munich 1973, ISBN 3-406-02798-9 .
• Karl F.altenbacher (ed.): Magic, religion and sciences in the Colloquium heptaplomeres. Results of the conferences in Paris 1994 and in the Villa Vigoni (= contributions to Romance studies, 6). Scientific Book Society, Darmstadt 2002, ISBN 3-534-16024-X .
• Karl F.altenbacher (ed.): The critical dialogue of the Colloquium Heptaplomeres: Science, philosophy and religion at the beginning of the 17th century. Results of the conference at the France Center of the Free University of Berlin (= contributions to Romance studies, 12). Darmstadt 2009.
• Elisabeth Feist: Worldview and State Idea with Jean Bodin . Niemeyer, Halle / Saale 1930.
• Thomas Gergen: Art. Bodin, Jean (1529 / 30-1596) . In: Albrecht Cordes , Heiner Lück , Dieter Werkmüller , Ruth Schmidt-Wiegand (eds.): Concise Dictionary of German Legal History , 2nd, completely revised and expanded edition, Volume I. Erich Schmidt Verlag, Berlin 2008, Sp. 692–694. ISBN 978-3-503-07912-4
• Gottschalk E. Guhrauer : The Heptaplomeres of Jean Bodin. On the history of culture and literature in the century of the Reformation . Slatkine, Geneva 1971 (repr. Of the 1841 edition). ( Digitized at archive.org )
• Michael Hausin: Jean Bodin , in: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon , Volume 25, Bad Hersfeld 2005, Sp. 81–85 ISBN 3-88309-332-7
• Christopher Lattmann: The Devil, the Witch and the Legal Scholar. Crimen magiae and the witch trial in Jean Bodin's De la Démonomanie des Sorciers . Klostermann-Verlag 2019, ISBN 978-3-465-04389-8 .
• Peter C. Mayer-Tasch: Jean Bodin. An introduction to his life, his work and its impact . Parerga publishing house, Düsseldorf 2000, ISBN 3-930450-51-8 .
• Claudia Opitz-Belakhal : The Universe of Jean Bodin. State formation, power and gender in the 16th century . Campus Verlag, Frankfurt / M. 2006, ISBN 3-593-38207-5 .
• Adalbert Klempt: The secularization of the universal historical view - On the change in historical thinking in the 16th and 17th centuries. Goettingen 1960.
• JH Franklin: Jean Bodin and the sixteenth-century revolution in the methodology of Law and History. New York / London 1963.
• Girolamo Cotroneo: Jean Bodin teorico della storia. Naples 1966.
• Marie-Dominique Couzinet: Histoire et méthode à la Renaissance - Une lecture de la “Methodus ad facilem historiarum cognitionem” by Jean Bodin. Paris 1996.
• Marie-Dominique Couzinet: Jean Bodin. Paris 2001.
• Igor Melani: Il tribunale della storia - Leggere la "Methodus" by Jean Bodin , Florence 2006.
• Andreas Kamp: From the Paleolithic to Postmodernism - The Genesis of our Epoch System , Vol. I: From the Beginnings to the End of the 17th Century. Amsterdam / Philadelphia 2010, pp. 188-214.

Web links

Wikisource: Jean Bodin  - Sources and full texts (French)

Wikisource: Jean Bodin  - Sources and full texts

Commons : Jean Bodin  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Publications by and about Jean Bodin in the Helveticat catalog of the Swiss National Library
• Literature by and about Jean Bodin in the catalog of the German National Library
• Works by and about Jean Bodin  in the German Digital Library
• Works by Jean Bodin at Zeno.org .
• Mario Turchetti:  Jean Bodin. In: Edward N. Zalta (Ed.): Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy . 2008 (English).
• Bodin, Jean. In: Lexicon on the history of the witch hunt. Edited by Gudrun Gersmann, Katrin Moeller, Jürgen-Michael Schmidt. On: historicum.net , January 17, 2008, archived from the original on March 22, 2016 . 
• Gert Pinkernell : Names, titles and dates of French literature: a chronological repertory of important authors and works from 842 to approx. 1960. 3rd edition as electronic publication of the University Library of Wuppertal, 2014 (main source for the section “Life and Creation”). 
• Entry on Jean Bodin in the virtual personal lexicon of international relations (PIBv), edited by Ulrich Menzel , Institute for Social Sciences at the Technical University of Braunschweig .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} Lattmann 2019, pp. 9–11
2. ^ Or, monnaie, échange dans la culture de la Renaissance: actes du 9e Colloque ... Par Association d'étude sur l'humanisme, la Réforme et la Renaissance. Colloque international, André Tournon, Gabriel-A. Pérouse. Publication de L'Université de Saint Etienne. 1995
3. ↑ De Magorum Daemonomania. Strasbourg, 1591, The advance / or leaving to the following tractierung und action . Translated from French into German by Johann Fischart .
4. ↑ De Magorum Daemonomania. Strasbourg, 1591, p. 70. Translated from French into German by Johann Fischart.
5. ↑ OPINIONVM IOANNIS VVIERI CONFVTATIO. Libro quarto. CAP V. In: Jean Bodin: De Magorum Daemonomania. Libri IV. Olms, Hildesheim 2003, ISBN 3-487-11794-0 (Repr. D. Basel 1581). P. 417
6. ^ Jacques Roger: Avant-propos . In: Jean Bodin: Colloque entre sept scavans qui sont de differens sentimens des secrets chachez des choses relevees . Traduction anonyme du Colloquium heptaplomeres de Jean Bodin. Manuscript français 1923 de la Bibliothèque Nationale de Paris. Texts présenté et établi by François Berriot. Avec la collaboration de Katharine Davies, Jean Larmat, et Jacques Roger. Librairie Droz SA Genève, 1984. pp. IXff.
7. ↑ See Mario Turchetti:  Jean Bodin: 6.2 Open Questions. In: Edward N. Zalta (Ed.): Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy . 2008, accessed February 29, 2020.
8. ↑ See J. Bodin (attr.): Colloquium heptaplomeres , ed. L. Noack 1857, 141ff, esp. 143 ( available from Google Books ), etc.
9. ↑ More details in the conference volume Magie, Religion und Wissenschaften in the Coll. heptaplomeres , Darmstadt 2002.
10. ↑ Érudits libertins et théologiens à la recherche du Colloquium . In: Jean Bodin: Colloque entre sept scavans qui sont de differens sentimens des secrets chachez des choses relevees . Traduction anonyme du Colloquium heptaplomeres de Jean Bodin. Manuscript français 1923 de la Bibliothèque Nationale de Paris. Texts présenté et établi by François Berriot. Avec la collaboration de Katharine Davies, Jean Larmat, et Jacques Roger. Librairie Droz SA Genève, 1984. pp. XXIVff.
11. ↑ L.-F. Calmeil: De la folie , Paris 1845, vol. 2, p. 489 : "Ses ouvrages ont fait à l'humanité plus de mal que ceux des inquisiteurs."