INTRODUCTION



I. BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH



JEAN BODIN, like Machiavelli, was one of those writers whose political 

thinking developed under pressure of personal experience. The Six books of 

the Commonwealth was published early in 1576, and more than any of his other 

works, reflects all the facets of his very varied experience. It is the work 

of a humanist who had had a conservative education; of a jurist who was as 

familiar with the work of Du Moulins on the customary law as of the medieval 

civilians; and of a patriot who had turned his attention to politics in the 

conditions produced by the Wars of Religion. The circumstances under which 

the first years of his life were passed explain how he came to be all these 

things.



He was born in Angers in 1529 or 1530 of a prosperous bourgeois family. His 

first patron was its bishop, Gabriel Bouvery, a man of influential 

connections -- he was a nephew of Francis I's Chancellor Poyet -- and a 

scholar versed in Latin, Greek and Hebrew. Under his influence, at the early 

age of 15 or 16 years, Bodin was professed in the Carmelite house of 

Nôtre-Dame at Angers, and then sent with three other young monks to be 

educated at the house of their Order in Paris.



In Paris he came in contact with both the old and the new learning. His 

style of exposition makes it clear that he was trained in the old methods of 

formal argument. It is also clear that he was grounded in the traditional 

aristotelianism of the schools, without however succumbing entirely to its 

influence. He was familiar with Aristotle, but nearly always treats him as 

the antagonist to be refuted rather than the master to be followed. What, 

understandably enough, he seems to have found more attractive was the new 

learning centred in the Collège des Quatre Langues, later to become the 

Collège de France, where linguistic studies replaced theological, and Plato 

superseded Aristotle as the master philosopher. Its courses were open to all 

who cared to attend, and there Bodin probably acquired his extensive 

knowledge of Greek and Hebrew literature, and his platonism. As a legacy of 

his Paris education his style was permanently modelled on the disputation, 

but he was a man of the renaissance in preferring Plato to Aristotle, and in 

being at any rate as much interested in the humane studies of languages and 

history as in philosophy and theology.



His first sojourn in Paris ended when he was 18 or 19 years old with his 

leaving the convent, after being dispensed from his vows, and abandoning the 

study of philosophy and the humanities for that of law. The circumstances 

leading up to this great change of direction are obscure. But in 1547 the 

prior of the Carmelites of Tours and two brothers, one of whom was named 

Jean Bodin, were cited before the Parlement of Paris for having too freely 

debated matters of faith. In the event the prior and one of the brothers, 

but not Jean Bodin, were burned. It is not certain whether this was the 

author of the Six books of the Commonwealth, for the name Jean Bodin was 

fairly common in the sixteenth century, nor why he escaped, whoever he was. 

Did he recant? Or was influence used to save him, perhaps that of Gabriel 

Bouvery? Our Jean Bodin's written works are evidence that he was the sort of 

man who might easily have got into such dangers in his youth. His last book, 

the Heptaplomeres, a dialogue between people of different religious faiths, 

shows him to have been deeply interested in religion, to have been 

profoundly curious about all the various systems of belief professed in his 

day, and to have reached so detached a judgement of them that what his own 

convictions were is a matter of some controversy. He always expressed great 

repugnance for any policy of forcing men's consciences, and declared in the 

Heptaplomeres that under such a threat a man was justified in concealing his 

convictions. He never risked publishing this work. If the Carmelite of 1547 

was our Jean Bodin, the reason for his leaving the dangerous environment of 

the convent becomes clear; and his attitude to religious persecution, and 

his tendency to conform his own religious profession to time and place, is 

explained.



The same sort of ambiguity hangs over what may have been another incident in 

his religious experience. In 1552 a Jean Bodin was in Geneva and left about 

a year later. If this man also was our Jean Bodin it is evidence of his 

desire to acquaint himself thoroughly with what Calvinism stood for, but one 

cannot be certain of anything else than that he must have conformed openly 

to Calvinist practises. The treatment of Calvinism in the Heptaplomeres does 

not suggest that he became, much less remained, a convinced Calvinist. The 

burning of Servetus for heresy in 1553 might well have determined his 

leaving the city. 



Before this happened, about 1550, he had embarked on the study of the civil 

law, and but for the possible break in 1552, was for ten years in Toulouse, 

both as student and teacher. That is to say his life in Toulouse was the 

counterpart of his life in Paris. His environment was academic, and his 

activities those of a scholar, though Roman law had replaced the classics as 

the subject of his studies.



His entry into the world of affairs came in 1561 when he abandoned the 

teaching of the law for its practice, and went to Paris to be called to the 

bar. He had, of course, to take the oath declaring his catholic orthodoxy 

required of every avocat du roi on entering into his office. The removal 

involved more than a change of occupation, important as that was to his 

development as a writer. The climate of legal opinion was very different in 

Paris from what it had been in Toulouse. In south France the new learning 

had invaded the law schools. A new jurisprudence, especially associated with 

Bourges, and the name of Jacques Cujas, developed out of the humanist 

passion for recovering and reconstituting the classical past. The great 

medieval civilians, a Bartolus or a Baldus, consciously adapted Roman law to 

the legal requirements of their own age, just as the medieval grammarian 

consciously developed Latin to be a vehicle for expressing his own processes 

of thought. To Cujas this was a work of barbarization, and he aimed at 

restoring the original text of the corpus iuris civilis. The results of his 

endeavours was one of the monuments of renaissance scholarship, and put him 

in the front rank of sixteenth-century jurists.



Paris lawyers were at once more conservative and more practical, perhaps 

because the customary law of the north, though deeply penetrated by the 

principles of Roman law, was not a derivation from it, as was the case in 

the south, but fundamentally an indigenous growth. The Paris lawyer, 

concerned with the problems of actual legal practice, necessarily therefore 

perpetuated the Bartolist tradition in his treatment of Roman law. What 

interested him more, because of its practical import, were projects for the 

codification and unification of the still very localized law of north 

France. Such a project, first mooted under Charles VII, was taken very 

seriously by Louis XII who ordered an extensive survey of the kingdom to 

collect the necessary material, and while Bodin was in Paris was being 

actively prosecuted by the Chancellor, Michel de L'Hôpital, despite the 

distraction of the political situation. This comprehensive attitude to law 

Bodin found far more sympathetic than the purism and exclusiveness of the 

law universities. In the Six books of the Commonwealth Bartolus and Baldus 

are the authorities on the civil law that he constantly appeals to. Along 

with them he cites Charles Du Moulins on the customary law with equal 

respect. Cujas is only quoted in order to be refuted. 



Projects of codification were inspired in the first instance by 

considerations of administrative convenience. But they appealed also to 

scholars, among them Bodin, who represented another aspect of the French 

renaissance than the classicism of Cujas and his school, and that was its 

universalism. This was quite different from the universalism of the 

schoolmen, which was a matter of abstractions, and centred on the problem of 

form. What French humanists of the first half of the sixteenth century were 

interested in was the integration of concrete facts into comprehensive and 

comprehensible systems. Religion being the urgent topic of the day, it was 

the search for the universal and comprehensive religion which most engaged 

their attention, and encouraged the hope that some sort of agreed formula 

could be reached which would unite Catholic and Huguenot.



Bodin, the humanist and the civilian turned lawyer, embarked on an enquiry 

into universal law. But he did not approach it through the study of texts 

and judgements, despite his experience both as teacher and practitioner, for 

universal law, he thought, was best ascertained through a study of history. 

He was not original in this respect, such ideas were in the air. François 

Hotman made the same association in his Antitribonien published in 1567. But 

the previous year Bodin had already produced his far more thorough and 

systematic study, The Method for the Easy Comprehension of History.[1] He 

announced his plan in the Dedication ' [The civilians] have described the 

laws of no people except the Romans. They should have read Plato, who 

thought that one way to establish law and government in a state was for wise 

men to collect and compare all laws of all states, and from them extract and 

combine the best models.' The Method therefore -- though Bodin reviewed all 

the available material in the form of histories and travel-books, ancient 

and modem -- was not just a scholarly examination of sources. His emphasis 

was on the comprehension of history. What he wanted to establish was what 

experience had shown to be the best and most enduring forms of law. 'In 

history the best part of universal law lies hidden; and what is of great 

importance for the appraisal of laws -- the customs of peoples, and the 

beginnings, growth, conditions, changes and decline of all states -- are 

obtained from it. The chief subject-matter of this Method consists of these 

facts, since nothing is more rewarding in the study of history than what is 

learnt about the government of states.'



Bodin in fact, by the time he came to write the Method was already more 

interested in forms of government than forms of law. In Paris apparently he 

found himself too near to the centre of things to escape being drawn into 

the overmastering preoccupations of the times, religion on his first visit, 

and politics on his second. The development of his career emphasized this 

bias by bringing him new contacts. In 1571 he entered the household of the 

King's brother, François duc d'Alençon, as master of requests and 

councillor. This brought him into the world of high politics just at a time 

when politics were already engaging his attention. The Six books of the 

Commonwealth is evidence of the extent to which he made use of the 

opportunities of his position. He inspected diplomatic correspondence, and 

conversed with foreign ambassadors or Frenchmen returned from abroad. He 

also came with Alençon to England, and saw something of the court of 

Elizabeth and the University of Cambridge. In 1583 he accompanied him on his 

journey to the Netherlands.



In the household of Alençon he was in a world intellectually congenial to 

him. The Duke was the official leader of the party of the politiques, whose 

distinction it was, in an age of rising fanaticism, to hold that the state 

is primarily concerned with the maintenance of order and not with the 

establishment of true religion. The party therefore stood for the absolute 

authority of the monarchy to determine the measures necessary to that end, 

and its unqualified right to demand obedience, as against the doctrine of 

the right of resistance in the name of religion. A public and official 

statement of these principles had been made by the Chancellor, Michel de 

l'Hôpital, in his speech to the Estates of Orleans in 1560, just about the 

time Bodin came to Paris. It fell on ears mostly deaf. In 1562 the long 

series of the Wars of Religion started, and for the space of thirty years 

France enjoyed neither settled peace nor order. At this stage of his career, 

in these circumstances, and in this environment, Bodin composed the Six 

books of the Commonwealth, published in 1576.



Civil war inspired him with a horror of rebellion and the anarchy that comes 

in its train, and convinced him that the politiques were right, and that the 

only remedy was the recognition of the absolute authority of the state 'to 

which, after immortal God, we owe all things'. Roman law suggested to him 

the essential concept of such a power. But the comparative historical 

studies already undertaken in the Method enabled him to free the concept of 

sovereignty from its particular Roman associations, and to consider it in 

general as the mark of all types of states at all times. His conviction that 

it is the condition of human well-being that this power must in all 

circumstances be preserved led him into the attempt to construct a universal 

science of politics.



Almost immediately after the publication of the book his career took a 

downward turn. This had nothing to do with the work itself, but was a 

consequence of his disinterested conduct as deputy for Vermandois in the 

Estates of Blois. The occasion proved to be one of the first importance. 

Since the Estates of Tours in 1484, assembled by the Regency on the death of 

Louis XI, there had been none in France till Francis I summoned them to meet 

at Orleans in December 1560. His death a few days before they assembled 

robbed the meeting of any direction, and they were dissolved in January. The 

Estates-General met again that year at Pontoise, but was again overshadowed, 

this time by the Colloquy of Passy, which was looked to more hopefully for a 

solution of the growing religious troubles of the kingdom. It failed however 

and civil war started. Therefore the expedient of a meeting of the Estates 

was again tried. This time they were summoned to meet at Blois in December 

1576. 



The opportunity was the Paix de Monsieur which had brought a lull in 

hostilities. The politiques hoped to convert it into a lasting peace by 

negotiating a settlement. But the Catholic League had just been founded by 

the intransigent conservatives, and it dominated the two privileged orders 

of the nobles and the clergy. In these circumstances religious peace was 

unattainable. Much important business was nevertheless transacted. The 

Estates discussed a considerable programme of administrative reform, and 

financial expedients to relieve the chronic inadequacy of the revenues. The 

results of these deliberations were embodied in the bills of recommendation 

presented by the three estates, and on these the great Ordinance of Blois of 

1579 was based, for the Estates could only petition for legislation. The 

framing and publication of edicts belonged to the Crown.



Judging by what he says in the Six books of the Commonwealth these Estates, 

the most important of any that met in the sixteenth century, were a model of 

what Estates should be to Bodin's mind. Yet his personal share in them was 

disastrous to himself. It was his first and only appearance in public life, 

and also the only occasion on which he made an open stand for principles in 

circumstances damaging to himself. He perhaps found the courage, or the 

conviction, necessary to do this because it was the future of France, and 

not simply his own safety, which was at stake. His sense of the importance 

of the occasion led him to publish an account of what had happened in a 

pamphlet entitled Recueil de tout ce qu'il s'est négocié en la compagnie du 

Tiers Etat de France ... en la VIIIe de Blois. In an assembly dominated by 

the Catholic League, of which the King himself, Henry III, was aspiring to 

become head, he opposed the reopening of the war against the Huguenots, and 

urged that a solution of the religious problem could only be achieved by 

negotiation. He upheld the right of the third estate to dissent from the 

recommendations of the two privileged orders, despite their opposition. He 

opposed as damaging to the monarchy the alienation of royal domain as a 

means of raising money for the prosecution of the war.



His success in the last two instances cost him the favour of the King. When 

therefore the Duc d'Alençon died in 1583, he retired from Paris and took up 

the office of procurateur au présidial de Lâon which he inherited from his 

brother-in-law in 1578. Provincial seclusion did not, however, mean peace 

and security. In 1588, on the assassination of its leader, the Duc de Guise, 

the League started a reign of terror in Lâon as in so many other places in 

France, and Bodin thought it prudent to join an association which stood for 

everything in both politics and religion which he utterly condemned. The 

advent of Henry IV in 1594, and the long-deferred triumph of the policy of 

the politiques, could not have been anything but profoundly welcome to him. 

But if he had entertained any hopes of restored favour, his joining the 

League cost him any advancement. He was still in Lâon when he died towards 

the end of 1596.



Judging by his writings at this time, however, his withdrawal from politics 

went deeper than a mere change of scene and occupation. There was also an 

intellectual withdrawal. He abandoned his preoccupation with men and affairs 

in favour of the contemplation of the order of nature, and an enquiry into 

the truths of religion. He was still the same Bodin however in search of a 

universal system. In the Novum Theatrum Naturae of 1594 he set out to 

describe the universal system of nature, and the unpublished 

Heptaplomeres[2] was a search for the principles of universal religion. It 

is also significant of this shift of interest that of his minor works, the 

essay on currency belongs to the second Paris period, while in Lâon he 

composed the Demonomania, a study of the influence of good and evil spirits 

in the world. It could hardly have been the result of any deliberate plan, 

but in fact the order of Bodin's intellectual development, as reflected in 

his writings, follows the order of man's ascent from the contemplation of 

his fellows to the contemplation of nature and of God, described in the Six 

books of the Commonwealth as the fulfilment of the end and purpose of life.



Despite this withdrawal he was already a famous man at the time of his 

death. Ten editions of the Six books of the Commonwealth appeared in the 

French version during his lifetime. In 1586 he published a slightly expanded 

Latin version, and two more editions of this appeared before he died. Other 

translators rendered the book into Italian, Spanish, German and English. But 

his fame, though great, was comparatively short-lived. New editions of his 

book continued to appear at intervals till the middle of the seventeenth 

century after which the stream dried up. This was because, though the book 

did much to bring about a revolution in political thinking, once that was 

accomplished it had not the literary qualities to recommend it to the 

general reader. It remains all the same an important book, both in its own 

right, and as a landmark in the history of political thought.



II. THE ARGUMENT OF THE SIX BOOKS OF THE COMMONWEALTH 



THE true turning points in the history of political thinking are marked not 

so much by new things that are said, as by new questions that are asked. 

With the possible exception of the authors of the Defensor Pacis, no one in 

the middle ages asked 'What is a state and how is it constructed?', but only 

'Who are the rulers and what are their powers?' Even Machiavelli, individual 

as he was in treating the state as existing in its own right without 

reference to any higher purpose or order, never asked this question. But 

Bodin did, and so got away from the endless debate on the relations of 

temporal and spiritual powers, and found the new approach required of the 

new situation which had arisen in the sixteenth century.



The break-up of the medieval Church destroyed the framework of the older 

forms of political thinking. So long as there was a universally recognized 

Church, having authority, it was possible to conceive of a realizable order 

in Christendom in terms of obligation to the Church. To require princes to 

act as the sword of the Church, or subjects to renounce their allegiance to 

an excommunicate ruler, might be unpalatable, but were not impracticable 

commands. But when princes and subjects alike had first to make a decision 

as to what was the Church they recognized, such commandments could only, and 

did, lead to confusion. Some other focus of political obligation had to be 

found before order could ensue.



His French environment, and his sympathy with the party of the politiques 

probably helped Bodin to recognize where the new centre of gravity lay. He 

no longer talks about the temporal and spiritual powers, the Church and the 

secular ruler, but about the commonwealth, la république. Moreover he 

described it with what was recognized to be such insight into its essential 

character, that all but the simplest political thinkers that came after him, 

whether they agreed with him or not, thought and wrote not about the powers 

that be, but the political community as such, and in terms used by him.



For a modem reader the newness of his outlook is somewhat disguised by its 

formal academic presentation. By comparison with Machiavelli, for instance, 

he seems to belong to an earlier tradition of political writing. It is true 

that he did so. His university education along traditional lines turned him 

out a formal and systematic thinker not only by habit but also by training. 

Without always keeping to the strict form of the disputation, he 

nevertheless followed the method in principle in establishing his 

conclusions. Whether he was discussing slavery [I, v], the exercise of the 

royal prerogative of justice [IV, vi], or the best form of the commonwealth 

[VI, iv], he first put the subject to be debated in the form of a question, 

then assembled all the arguments that could be urged on one side and the 

other, proceeded point by point to rebut the view which he rejected, and so 

established a reasoned conclusion. The Six books of the Commonwealth has in 

consequence about as much pretension to literary grace and charm as a 

scholastic treatise, and the full text makes very laborious reading. But it 

also has the merits of its defects. The exposition is complete and coherent. 

The other, and even more important lesson that Bodin learned in the schools 

was to achieve clarity and unambiguity by careful definition of all the 

important terms used. It was these definitions that on occasions he quite 

rightly claimed were new, and that a generation that was fast casting behind 

it the rigid formalism of the schools found most arresting and most 

illuminating. 



The opening sentences of the Six books of the Commonwealth betray the 

original plan of the whole work. Bodin starts by defining the commonwealth 

as 'the rightly ordered government of a number of families and of those 

things which are their common concern, by a sovereign power'. He then goes 

on 'we start in this way with a definition because the final end of any 

subject must be understood before the means of attaining it can profitably 

be considered, and the definition indicates what that end is'. In other 

words he is concerned to establish first what a state is and the ends for 

which it exists, and then to discuss the practical policies necessary for 

their accomplishment. His book is therefore a work of the same mixed 

character as Aristotle's Politics. That is to say it is concerned at once 

with a philosophy of the state, and with the science of politics. In fact, 

although he seldom mentions Aristotle except to disagree with him, the 

Politics obviously provided the general model for the Six books of the 

Commonwealth. The structure is the same. The first two books of the latter 

work reproduce the order of the argument in books I and III of the former, 

being concerned with establishing the nature of the state as such, its end, 

its foundation in the family, citizenship, and the possible forms the state 

can assume, and in the same order. Again, Bodin shared Aristotle's lively 

interest in the causes of the preservation and destruction of states, and 

therefore the theme of books IV and V in the Six books of the Commonwealth 

bear a general resemblance to the central books of the Politics. But in this 

part of the work, where he is concerned with the practice, and not with the 

theory of politics, Bodin moves away from Aristotle. For one thing the great 

difference in political conditions in ancient Greece and in his own times 

meant that there could be little correspondence in the particulars of this 

discussion. The problems were not the same. Moreover there is an urgency in 

Bodin's writing that one does not sense in the Politics. He wanted to 

remedy, not just to analyse, the evils of the times. As he says in the 

Dedication, when the ship of state is in danger of foundering, it behoves 

the very passengers to give what assistance they can, and it is in the hope 

of restoring the ancient splendour of the French monarchy that he has 

undertaken to write on the commonwealth. The theme of what is to be done and 

what avoided becomes more and more insistent as the argument proceeds, and 

altogether dominates the later books.



But as has been said, though France might be his immediate concern, he 

wanted to enlarge his enquiry so as to arrive at a universal science of 

politics. His procedure was the same as that already used in the Method, 

induction from the known relevant facts. He surveyed all the evidence about 

the way the state works, much as Aristotle conducted a preliminary enquiry 

into the constitutions of Greek city states, only he did what Aristotle did 

not do, included all this material in the main work. For Bodin the relevant 

facts were in the first instance all the information he could collect about 

the contemporary world from the dominions of the Grand Turk to the New 

World, and from Sweden to Ethiopia. His sources were those already used for 

the enquiry into universal law, the accounts of travellers and contemporary 

historians such as Leo the African and Francesco Alvarez, Paolo Giovio and 

Las Casas, Machiavelli, Guicciardini and the Venetian constitutional 

historians, Sleidan, Sigismond d'Herberstein and many others. As has been 

shown, this information he checked, supplemented and brought up to date by 

inspecting diplomatic correspondence, and talking with diplomats whenever he 

could.



In the second place the relevant evidence included, he considered, the facts 

of past history. This meant for him, as for all men of the renaissance, 

primarily the ancient world as portrayed by the Greek and Roman historians, 

and he shared the characteristic humanist admiration for its achievements. 

But he also had a good deal to say about medieval France, and had troubled 

to consult the archives at Rheims, Beauvais and elsewhere. He knew something 

about England, and how the Empire and the Papacy had developed during the 

middle ages. As he had already explained in the Method, the study of history 

is not only the means of discovering the principles of universal law, but 

also of political wisdom. 'For acquiring prudence nothing is more important 

or more essential than history, because episodes in human life recur as in a 

circle, repeating themselves.' It is clear that he regarded history as the 

record of a series of recurrences rather than of a process of change. As 

will appear later, his cosmological system implied that the order of events 

is cyclic and not evolutionary. History therefore is a storehouse of 

immediately relevant examples, mostly of the character of cautionary tales. 

He could in consequence assume that the proper collection and collation of 

these examples would enable one not only to interpret contemporary politics, 

but also to formulate rules for the guidance of statesmen which should have 

a timeless validity, 'reliable maxims for what we should seek and what 

avoid'.



Such use of such material for the building up of the science of politics was 

not original. The resemblance to Machiavelli is too close to be fortuitous. 

Machiavelli's collected works were published in 1550, and Bodin refers to 

the Prince, the Discourses on Livy, and the History of Florence, besides 

basing a chapter [V, v] on the Art of War. In the introduction to the 

Discourses he could find the statement that history is the proper study of 

the statesman because, human nature being constant, men always behave in the 

same way, and therefore the same sequence of cause and effect is always 

repeating itself. One learns by the experience of others. In the Prince and 

the Discourses he could see Machiavelli applying this principle by regularly 

juxtaposing examples of what he was discussing taken first from ancient and 

then from contemporary history, deducing general conclusions, and so 

proceeding to frame general maxims. Bodin took over the method but vastly 

extended the scope. He thought Machiavelli's survey too restricted to allow 

of conclusions universally valid, and complained that he was very ignorant 

of many things because he had not read a sufficiency of good books, nor 

acquainted himself with any peoples but the Italians. Hence what appears to 

be Bodin's prolixity. It was a consequence of the extent of the field he 

surveyed, and, it must be admitted, his inability to condense or select.



The science of politics, like any other science, is shaped by the questions 

asked, and for which an answer is sought. Here again Machiavelli suggested 

some, though not always all the most important, questions asked. Ought 

princes to keep the terms of the treaties they made? Should they aim at 

being rather loved or feared by their subjects' Is it expedient to arm one's 

subjects and train them for war? But here the resemblance ends. It is an 

indication of the fundamental difference in values between the two men that 

the answers are always different where morals are concerned. If Machiavelli 

holds that a prince is only bound to keep a treaty when it furthers his 

interests, Bodin says he must do so if the interests of the other party to 

the treaty are at stake [I, viii]. If Machiavelli argues that a prince 

should rely on fear to keep his subjects obedient and in awe, Bodin thinks 

that he should win their affection because friendship and not interest is 

the bond of society [IV, vi].



It is clear from these instances that for Bodin the science of politics was 

not just a study of the technique of successful government as it was for 

Machiavelli. He borrowed the method of investigation, but he strongly 

reprehended the lack of regard for moral principles, and in the Dedication 

classed Machiavelli with the apologists of the right of rebellion, as the 

writers whose doctrines had caused the ruin of commonwealths in his own day. 

He had as clear a vision as the Italian of what states are like, and of how 

men conduct themselves politically. But unlike the Italian he always 

measured them by an absolute standard of right to which they ought to 

conform. Therefore for him the examination of things as they are did not 

cover the whole enquiry necessary. An historical survey can be made to yield 

conclusions about what are politically expedient ways and means, but he did 

not think it was capable of determining the ends to which those ways and 

means should be directed. He rejected the notion that one can arrive at a 

true conception of the proper order in human affairs by considering things 

merely as they are. This comes out in his discussion of slavery [I, v]. He 

will not allow that it can be defended as a natural institution simply 

because it has always existed among men. It is the work of sin, not of 

nature, and condemned as such by Jew, Christian, and Mohammedan alike.



This is indicative of his whole approach to politics. His values are as 

traditional as was his cosmology. He thought of the natural order as 

contained within an eternal order comprehending the universe and all 

particulars within it, in a single system of relationships. To that order 

all actions and all institutions must be referred as their end. It is 

spontaneously realized in all created things save man. The proper motions of 

the heavenly bodies can be determined by observation because in them there 

is no imperfection. But when one comes to consider men, the divine and 

natural intention has been disturbed by the Fall. The proper order of human 

society cannot therefore be determined by observation simply, because men 

are imperfect. To know that order we must consult natural reason, and with 

even more certainty, the law of God revealed in the scriptures. For Bodin 

therefore, as he himself observed at the beginning, the science of politics 

must be founded in a philosophy of the state indicating ends.



Moreover a moral imperative is implied since men, knowing by revelation and 

the light of natural reason what the divine intention is, are bound in 

conscience to endeavour to realize it.



In fact Bodin's political thought was rooted in a body of dogma, the law of 

God. It should perhaps be observed in passing that he appears to mean the 

Old Testament Scriptures alone. There is no single citation from the New 

Testament throughout the work, and a reference to the trial of Christ is 

only there to illustrate the powers of Roman provincial governors. Bodin had 

read Calvin, and forcibly approved his condemnation of rebellion, yet he 

never mentions Romans xiii on which it was based [II, v].



From these premises it is not surprising to find that Bodin was at one with 

Calvin and the earlier reformers in seeing the state as originating in the 

Fall. The disorder and violence of the times he lived in converted what had 

been a traditional doctrine into a living belief. The state is necessary 

because men are wicked. But whereas Calvin adhered to the old view that the 

sin was the sin of rebellion against "the commands of God, for Bodin it was 

the sin of injustice against one's fellow men. He reverts several times to 

the theme that the state originated in violence [I, vi and IV, i]. Sometimes 

he represents it as the consequence of a passion for dominion, of which 

Nimrod was the first exemplar. At others he ascribes it to an instinct of 

mutual association as a means of protection against such acts of violence 

[III, vii]. But in either case, it is the same evils which threaten men, the 

destruction of their liberty and the seizure of their possessions.



This shift of emphasis to be observed when one passes from Calvin to Bodin 

is significant of a newly developing doctrine of rights inherent in the 

individual, and prior to the state. In the second half of the sixteenth 

century the old conception of the primitive state of innocence was 

undergoing important modification. The liberty that men enjoyed in that 

primitive natural society was assumed not to have been lost -- as Calvin 

thought it had been lost -- but to be inalienable, and its preservation the 

foundation of all legitimate political authority. Such views were being 

expressed by François Hotman in his Franco-Gallia of 1573, and a short while 

after the publication of the Six books of the Commonwealth in the Vindiciae 

contra tyrannos of 1579. Bodin never used such phrases as 'natural rights', 

or 'inherent rights'. But he assumed all through two rights in the 

individual sanctioned by divine and natural law, liberty and property. 



For once his treatment of the subject of liberty was fragmentary, perhaps 

because his preoccupation with order led him to approach the state 

throughout from the point of view of the authority of the ruler, rather than 

that of the rights of the subject. But his main conception is clear. He 

defined natural liberty as perfect freedom to live as one pleases, subject 

only to the rule of reason [I, iii]. This is qualified when a man becomes a 

citizen by the obligation to obey the ruler. But he did not, as did Hotman 

and the author of the Vindiciae contra tyrannos, hold that such an 

obligation is compatible with freedom only when the citizen consents to law 

and government. He would not allow that consent plays any part whatsoever in 

the obligation to obey. Since, as will appear later, the prince and the law 

through which he speaks are subject to divine and natural law, for Bodin the 

ultimate sanction of the individual's liberty, and the guarantee that the 

necessary restrictions on it in a political society shall be reasonable, is 

not consent, but the imprescriptibility of divine and natural law.



His treatment of the subject of property is incidental to his defence of the 

family, and his desire to preserve its integrity. This he saw could only be 

done by preserving the integrity of its property, threatened by rights of 

alienation and the depredations of the tax-collector. He therefore, long 

before either Grotius or Locke, defended private property as sanctioned by 

divine and natural law, and deduced that the ruler has no right to tax at 

will [I, viii]. He never asked however, as Grotius and Locke asked, how 

these rights were distinguished and delimited in the first instance. He 

simply assumed that the existing state of affairs was sanctioned by the 

tenth commandment. As a civilian, writing of a society in which property 

usually meant inherited real estate, he may have assumed as obvious that the 

rights of individual families went back to an original occupation of res 

nullius. But however they arose, these rights he regarded as so sacred that 

the property of the subject cannot be taken from him without his consent, 

save by legal escheat or confiscation. Presumably he meant that the consent 

of the Estates was necessary to the imposition of any new tax.



The establishment of the principle that there are certain imprescriptible 

rights in the individual provided him with the means of distinguishing the 

rightly ordered state from that which is not so. Tyrannical government is 

one under which the liberty and property of the subject are arbitrarily 

invaded, a legitimate government one where the ruler or rulers respect and 

guarantee them [II, ii]. If then he agreed with Calvin that the state 

originated in sin, he did not agree with him that in consequence it is 

merely a machinery for the punishment of sin. He followed up his account of 

the wickedness of the first rulers by observing that in the face of the 

threat of enslavement, men were drawn together to form a society whose 

purpose was the preservation of rights [III, vii]. A true state is therefore 

a droit gouvernement.



It is clear from his discussion of the term droit that he meant nothing less 

by it than the whole good of man. He repeats the accepted formula that the 

body should be disciplined to virtuous activity, and virtuous activity 

directed to the apprehension of eternal truth. Aquinas would have agreed. 

But Bodin added that contemplation, or the development of those qualities of 

mind whereby men distinguish good and evil, true and false, pious and 

impious, is not only the sovereign good of the individual, but also the true 

end of the state, for he explicitly identified the two. The importance of 

this modification can hardly be exaggerated, for it brings not only natural 

virtue, but religion within the sphere of politics [I, i]. He does not 

however enlarge upon the implications, nor ever discuss the Church as such. 

But it is clear that he did not mean that the state has an obligation to 

establish 'true religion', or that it is for the prince to set up an 

organized Church and compel conformity to it. This is clear from his 

treatment of the subject of heresy [IV, vii]. He objected to persecution as 

only too likely to produce a general scepticism about religion. This he 

thought a disaster of the first importance, for in his opinion any system of 

beliefs is to be preferred to none. Religion, because it induces reverence 

and obedience, is the foundation of the commonwealth, and it largely rests 

with the prince whether it flourishes or not. What the prince must do is to 

establish conditions under which religion in the general sense is 

encouraged. Only by toleration of all forms can genuine piety be promoted, 

and only the prince can implement a policy of toleration. When therefore 

Bodin makes droit the end of the state, he does not mean, as Aristotle did, 

that the state is the means to the good life because political activity is 

the highest exercise of virtue. He meant that the state alone can maintain 

those conditions under which subjects can individually live virtuous, 

thoughtful, and pious lives. The best state, he says, is the one in which 

the greatest number of citizens live such lives.



Bodin was at the same time fully aware of the fact that in this imperfect 

world all states fall short of this ideal in varying degrees, and pursue 

not the highest good, but some particular good only, Sparta courage and 

devotion, Rome justice. As he says, the state must first secure the lives of 

its citizens before it can consider how they should live virtuously, and the 

energies of most states are absorbed in the initial effort of survival. In 

fact, in the ensuing books of the Six books of the Commonwealth the 

discussion is largely confined to this immediate problem of 

self-preservation. But as he said in his opening chapter, he did not intend 

to take Plato as his model and describe an ideal impossible of realization. 

Like Aristotle, he was looking for the best in the possible, and he was 

fully aware that as things were, states fell far below the level of what in 

favourable circumstances they might become. Having defined the ideal, or 

ultimate goal, his practical intention involved concentrating on what can in 

fact be achieved.



When he comes to consider the essential structure of the state, he follows 

Aristotle in holding that the family group, and not the individual, is the 

unit out of which the commonwealth is made up [I, ii]. He agreed that the 

family is a natural society held together by the authority of the husband 

over the wife, the father over his children and the master over his 

servants, all sharing a common means of subsistence. But what he emphasized 

was its moral and political rather than its economic significance, 

complaining that Aristotle neglected this aspect of it. He discussed it from 

the point of view of the father, and the father in his role of ruler rather 

than in his role of organizer of the common life. This was because, as is 

clear from all that he has to say about both the origin of the state, and 

the causes of its destruction, he was convinced that what men chiefly need 

is discipline to correct their factious and rebellious spirits. Therefore, 

he wanted to see the authority of the father not only preserved, but 

strengthened even to the extent of the power of life and death over his 

dependants, for he saw in that power the only means of training the young in 

the habit of obedience necessary to be acquired if they were later to 

exhibit that submission to the ruler proper in a subject [I, iv]. Good 

citizens are made in the nursery. It is thus its political importance that 

impels him to defend the authority of parents.



Starting from these ideas of sin and its correction, it is not surprising 

that he should have seen the state in terms of power [I, viii]. Its 

distinguishing mark is puissance souveraine, a sovereign power. It is 

necessarily perpetual and absolute, for any person or persons, within the 

community or outside it, who can impose any time limits, or restrictions on 

its competence, must be the true sovereign, and the apparent sovereign only 

an agent. His admission of lois royales, or fundamental laws of the French 

monarchy, does not really compromise these statements. The salic law is a 

rule restricting, not the exercise of sovereignty, but the choice of the 

person who may exercise it. The denial of the right to alienate royal domain 

was an application of the principle of Roman law that the one thing a 

sovereign cannot do is to destroy his own sovereignty, and this, Bodin 

thought, the impoverishment of the Crown would bring about.



On the other hand the use of the term 'absolute' did not necessarily imply 

that sovereign power was underived, since jurists were familiar with the 

Roman theory that the imperium is inherent in the community, and conferred 

by it on the ruler. But Bodin, though trained in the civil law, rejected 

this part of it. He did so almost certainly because the doctrine of the 

popular origin of political authority was already being associated by 

Huguenot writers such as Hotman, with doctrines of the right of resistance. 

It was very likely this association which led Bodin to deny that consent to 

government was any part of natural liberty, or that the obligation to obey 

depended on such consent being given. Bodin's ideas on the origin of 

political authority derive not from the civil law but from the Hebrew 

Scriptures. All power is of God [I, viii]. All right to command is therefore 

essentially independent of the consent of the commanded. The artificial 

society of the commonwealth should be modelled on the natural society of the 

family, and no father is appointed by his children to rule over them.



The unqualified right to command is therefore the distinguishing mark of the 

ruler. This characterization of the sovereign in terms of power is one of 

Bodin's most original conceptions, and marks the break with the traditional 

view of the king, enshrined in coronation oaths in use everywhere, that he 

was in virtue of his office essentially the embodiment of justice, and his 

primary function was to judge his subjects. Such a conception of monarchy 

was still that commonly held. Louis XII, busy with projects for the 

codification of law, spoke of himself as 'débiteur de justice à nos sujets'. 

The same view was taken by so eminent a contemporary of Bodin's as the 

Chancellor, Michel de L'Hôpital, whose politique views on the French 

monarchy, expounded in his great speech to the Estates in 1560, were in 

other ways very much the same as Bodin's. Kings were first instituted, he 

told them, for the sake of justice, and this remains the essential attribute 

of the kingly office, as is shown by the representation of the king on the 

great seal, seated on his throne in the act of judgement.[3] Bodin, while 

agreeing that all jurisdiction derived from the king, did not even include 

the exercise of jurisdiction among the attributes of sovereignty, much less 

make it the distinctive mark, since the king exercises this right 

indirectly, by delegation [IV, vi]. For him the peculiar and essential mark 

of sovereignty is the right to make law; it is its unique attribute, for it 

is the normal means by which the sovereign indicates his commands. Law then 

is simply the command of the sovereign. This voluntarist conception is 

underlined by the distinction he makes between law -- that which is 

commanded -- and right -- that which is equitable. Only the first proceeds 

from the sovereign.



If law is command simply it includes, as Bodin saw, all activities of the 

sovereign. There are however certain matters which the sovereign must attend 

to himself in virtue of his office and not delegate to the subject, as he 

delegates rights of jurisdiction, and these powers Bodin calls the 

attributes of sovereignty. First there is included what Locke called the 

federative power, or sole right of making war and peace, and concluding 

alliances. Second there is the right to authorize all appointments to public 

office, whatever the actual procedure in use. Again, as the source of all 

rights of jurisdiction, the sovereign is the final resort of appeal for all 

his subjects and in all causes. Finally he has the exclusive right to demand 

unqualified oaths of submission, for the relations of the subject to his 

sovereign are unique in that all his other obligations, as vassal of his 

lord, for instance, are subject to the prior obligation to his sovereign. 

These rights are inseparable from sovereignty, for the alienation or 

delegation of any one of them destroys the sovereign.



From these premises Bodin was able to reach that conclusion that he was 

convinced must be established if any order was to be maintained anywhere. 

There is no right whatsoever in the subject of rebellion against the 

sovereign he had no part in instituting or of disobedience to the law he had 

no part in making [II, v]. So long as the king had been regarded as the 

embodiment of justice, the obligation to obey was conditional on the justice 

of the command. But once the king was conceived of as an absolute and 

independent power, the usual grounds of resistance were denied. At the same 

time Bodin wanted to establish a positive obligation to unconditional 

obedience. He did so by postulating that political authority was of divine 

institution. Natural and divine law oblige a man to obey the ruler set over 

him by God. Much as he might condemn tyranny, he would not allow that the 

cruellest of tyrants and the most unjust of laws may be resisted. The virtue 

of the citizen is the virtue of obedience.



So much does Bodin insist on power as the distinguishing mark of the state 

that he comes very near to saying that it is the existence of a sovereign 

that constitutes a state. He defines the state in terms of its government, 

'a rightly ordered government', and citizenship in terms of subjection, for 

it is not any rights which he may enjoy that make a man a citizen, but his 

subjection to a sovereign power [I, vi]. The identity of a state therefore 

depends on the identity of its sovereign [IV, i]. Every revolution, whether 

sudden or gradual, which results in the seat of sovereignty being changed 

involves the foundation of a new state, though laws and institutions remain 

without alteration. This happened when the slow growth of the power of the 

Princes converted Germany from a monarchy to an aristocracy. But no 

revolution in laws and institutions, such as the setting up of Lutheran 

churches in the Scandinavian states, creates a new commonwealth, if 

sovereignty remains in the same place. Bodin could not go quite so far as 

Hobbes and define the commonwealth as a number of individuals united solely 

by their individual subjection to a common power, for he thought of men as 

naturally sociable, and any association of men as based on mutual amity even 

more than on justice [III, vii]. But sharing Hobbes's acute fear of anarchy, 

he was possessed by the same conviction that the recognition of an absolute 

sovereign power was the only bulwark against it. Where there is no such 

power, there can be no political society. 



This insistence that effective power was the mark of the state does not mean 

however that Bodin was the exponent of power politics in the same sense that 

Machiavelli was. Nor could he have said with Hobbes that there is no 

distinction of right and wrong, just and unjust, until a sovereign makes 

laws creating such distinctions. As has already been shown, he included the 

idea of right, as well as of power, in his definition of the state. Though 

he distinguished law and equity, it was because of the difference in 

provenance. The one proceeds from the sovereign and the other from God. But 

in a rightly ordered society there should be no opposition between them; law 

should conform to equity. Starting as he did from the conception of an 

absolute moral order, he was necessarily emphatic that if the sovereign is 

absolute in relation to the subject, he is not so in relation to God. To 

God, as the author of his authority, he is in all things answerable. The 

sovereign is not therefore a law unto himself, but the instrument of divine 

law, bound to make his laws conform to its principles [I, viii]. From the 

point of view of the oppressed subject, this qualification of the absolute 

authority of the ruler would seem to be of no practical importance, since no 

human agent might appoint himself the executor of divine justice. But it was 

a qualification very generally accepted as of the first importance in the 

sixteenth century. In the next century it was writers such as Bossuet, or 

James I and Filmer, rather than Hobbes, who were Bodin's spiritual heirs in 

this respect.



Bodin however did not intend that the moral sanctions governing the exercise 

of sovereign power should be unreal. His insistence that the prince must act 

as the instrument of divine and natural law led him to make considerable 

qualifications of practical import in the absolutism of a monarch who 

governs as he should. It is sometimes said that Bodin's ideal was 

constitutional monarchy, because he advocated the summoning of Estates. It 

is not so much Estates however which he thought of as tempering the improper 

exercise of absolute power, for he thought their function purely 

consultative, but rather the unvarying rule of law based on equity.



This comes out very clearly when in book III he proceeds to analyse the 

essential structure of government, as a counterpart to his analysis of the 

essential structure of the state. The inclusion of the term 'rightly ordered 

government' in his definition of the commonwealth required such an 

investigation. For government to be efficiently, still more for it to be 

justly, conducted, three things are necessary, counsel, execution, and 

assent. The commonwealth should therefore be provided with a 'senate' or 

council with a constitutional right to advise the sovereign, a magistracy 

with legal rights of jurisdiction, and Estates which provide a means of 

communication between subjects and sovereign. A council and Estates are not 

however a necessary part of the government of the commonwealth. It is highly 

expedient, but not necessary, for the sovereign to act upon advice. He can 

act on his own unassisted judgement, and may choose to do so [III, i]. 

Again, the sovereign need not invite representations from his subjects, nor 

consult with them in matters of public interest. But again, it is highly 

expedient for him to do so. Emphatically as he rejected the doctrine that 

law and government derives from the community, he was fully aware of the 

practical value of consent in securing obedience. Estates provide the 

sovereign with the opportunity both of informing himself of grievances, and 

securing approval for proposed remedies. Such consultation is, however, a 

matter of policy and not obligation [I, viii and III, vii].



But the case of the magistrates is different. They are indispensable to the 

government of the commonwealth, for though the sovereign is the fountain of 

justice, he necessarily delegates the exercise of powers of jurisdiction. 

The law is his command, but it is not physically possible for him to enforce 

it personally throughout his dominions, or hear all the suits of all his 

subjects, without the magistrate as intermediary. It is on the magistrate 

rather than on the sovereign that the regular functioning of the 

commonwealth depends. Neither the will of the sovereign, nor the law, can 

come into operation until the magistrate gives it effect, or as Bodin says, 

brings it to life [III, v]. He implies that the magistrate has therefore a 

share in sovereign power, though a strictly subordinate one, for he is bound 

in obedience to his sovereign, and holds office during pleasure. But because 

of its indispensability to the functioning of a state, the office pertains 

to the commonwealth and not to the sovereign, who only has the right of the 

provision of persons; and when the magistrate is given discretionary powers, 

and is not bound to apply the letter of the law automatically, he does so in 

right of his office, and not simply as the agent of the sovereign. He 

therefore shares the sovereign's responsibility to divine and natural law, 

and is bound by the principles of equity in all his independent actions.



So Bodin sums up his account of the government of the commonwealth, 'a state 

cannot fail to prosper where the sovereign retains those rights proper to 

his majesty, the senate preserves its authority, the magistrates exercise 

their legitimate powers, and justice runs its ordinary course'. For a prince 

to govern in any other manner is for him to risk becoming a tyrant.



Perhaps an even more serious check on the arbitrary exercise of absolute 

power was the obligation of the sovereign to keep his 'covenants' with his 

subjects. Bodin deduces this obligation from the subjection of the prince to 

divine and natural law. By a 'covenant' he means any law which is the 

outcome of an agreement between the sovereign and his subjects. He gives as 

illustration the promises of redress of grievances, given to the Cortes by 

the Spanish kings on various occasions, in return for a grant of taxation. 

All such agreements he thought binding, and he distinguished them from the 

laws which proceed from the sole will of the prince and so can be abrogated 

by him at pleasure [I, viii]. Moreover his insistence that the prince may 

not tax without consent provides occasions tor the making of such covenants, 

as his example of the Spanish kings shows.



It is clear then that in a rightly ordered commonwealth, governed according 

to the principles of divine and natural law, there is necessarily an 

absolute power, but it should not function as an arbitrary one. Much as he 

learned from Machiavelli, he did not share his faith in the unfettered rule 

of men of ability. His ideal was a state in which, as Harrington would have 

said, there is the regiment of laws and not the regiment of men.



At the same time, though in the rightly ordered commonwealth there is the 

rule of law, divine, natural, and positive, a political society does not 

cease to be a true commonwealth if these conditions are violated. It is 

still a true commonwealth if it is characterized by a sovereign power. This 

becomes clear when Bodin turns from the consideration of the state to 

states, or the various forms in which the state can be embodied. Until the 

Italians started comparing the workings of despotisms and popular 

governments as they knew them in Italy, no one since ancient times had 

thought of analysing the forms that the state can take. It is true that in 

the later middle ages knowledge of the Politics familiarized scholars with 

Aristotle's six pure types. But since the speculations thus provoked had no 

roots in the practical politics of those times, nothing of importance was 

added to what Aristotle had to say. The Italians on the other hand confined 

themselves to the two types they knew, and did not attempt an exhaustive 

analysis of all possible forms. What is remarkable about Bodin's handling of 

the theme is that it is both exhaustive and freshly observed. He took the 

greatest care to find as exact a description as possible of the actual 

situation and therefore, based as it was on individual observation, there 

was nothing merely derivative in his account.



He started by reducing Aristotle's six types to three, monarchy, aristocracy 

and democracy. because, as he saw, if the existence of a sovereign power is 

the mark of a state, this is a matter of fact, and provides no criterion for 

distinguishing good and bad states. All that can be distinguished in fact is 

the location of sovereign power. With his eye on the actualities of the 

situation, he defined aristocracy not as the rule of the few, but the rule 

of a minority group, and democracy not as the rule of the many, but the rule 

of a majority of the whole body. The mixed constitution, so much admired by 

most of Aristotle's readers, especially in the sixteenth century, he 

rejected as impossible of existence. That which is absolute cannot be 

divided. An absolute power must be unique or it is no power at all [II, i].



Right as he might be in this respect, he would seem to have been sacrificing 

one great advantage. Constitutions, especially European constitutions, were 

very various. The supposition of mixed constitutions provided a formula for 

differentiating a great number of permutations and combinations. Bodin 

however solved the problem in another way. In the first place he made a 

distinction in the way sovereign power is exercised. Each type can operate 

tyrannically as a mere exercise of arbitrary power, regardless of the claims 

of justice or the rights of the subject. Or it can operate despotically as 

the rightful exercise of an arbitrary power over subjects conquered in a 

just war. Or it can operate legitimately in accordance with the principles 

of divine and natural law, safeguarding the inherent rights of subjects.



Bodin appears here to be doing what he had just said could not be done, 

distinguishing states by a standard of value and not simply by a matter of 

fact. It is not only that the terms 'tyrannical' and 'legitimate' imply 

condemnation in the one case and approval in the other. In the one the 

principles of divine and natural law, which are the mark of the rightly 

ordered government, are observed, and in the other they are not. Bodin would 

probably have answered that he is not here classing states according to the 

particular ends they pursue, but only according to the mode of their 

operation. Nevertheless one cannot get over the fact that another element 

than purely constitutional factors is brought in. It is a particular example 

of his tendency to mingle judgements of fact with judgements of value 

without distinguishing them.



Much more original was the distinction he made in the second place between 

the sovereign and the government, or machine through which the sovereign 

operates. Each of the three fundamental types of commonwealth can be 

provided with a form of government normally characteristic of one of the 

other two [II, ii]. By this test ancient Rome was a democracy governed 

aristocratically, and contemporary France, England, and Spain monarchies 

governed democratically. This analysis was, he claimed with justice, new. 

Moreover it was surely much more true to the facts than the old doctrine of 

mixed constitutions.



Bodin gave so much time and space to the meticulous examination of the 

structure of actual states because the ultimate purpose of his analysis was 

a practical one. He wanted to find out the secret of stability in a 

politically unstable world. Being a sixteenth-century Frenchman, and a 

patriot, his decision was inevitably in favour of monarchy [VI, iv]. The 

essential mark of sovereignty is the power to command, and commands, as he 

says, must proceed from a single will. Collective sovereignty belongs to the 

realm of ideas rather than of actualities, so that in times of crisis, when 

immediate and decisive action is necessary, all types of commonwealth tend 

to revert temporarily to monarchy by the institution of a dictatorship, or 

some such expedient. Moreover, since he rejected the necessity of consent to 

government, the important thing about government in his view is not that it 

should be approved, but that it should be well-advised. A king alone can 

consult whom he wills, and be governed by the advice of the wiser, and not 

just the more numerous part. Democracies where the opposite is true, and it 

is the opinion of the majority that prevails, he thought the least stable 

form of commonwealth because the majority of men include the ignorant, 

passionate, and gullible. Aristocracies he also thought insecure because 

perpetually threatened by dissensions, dissension between the governed and 

the governing class, and struggles for power within the governing class 

itself. Only in a monarchy are conditions to be found favourable to that 

alliance of unity with wisdom which makes the proper exercise of power 

possible.



Defects however can be mitigated, if not eliminated, if the form of the 

government is different from that of the commonwealth. The democratic Roman 

Republic lasted so long because governed aristocratically, in that office 

was largely confined to the patrician class. It was much vexed by civil 

strife, but it exhibited a measure of wisdom and discipline in the conduct 

of affairs which could not have been expected from the plebs, and which 

secured its long survival. But with the example of the three great western 

monarchies before his eyes, he was convinced that the most stable form is a 

monarchy governed democratically, that is to say where the king consults the 

estates, and all subjects are eligible to office, and it is not exclusive to 

any one class. Such a state has both the strength that comes from unity, and 

the strength that comes from common consent.



Not that Bodin thought that it was possible to establish at will those forms 

perceived to be the most stable. On the contrary he did not consider that 

the particular forms of states are a matter of human choice and contrivance 

at all, but rather the inevitable product of environment, or 'climate' as he 

calls it [V, i]. His doctrines were a deduction from still current medieval 

physiological theories about the close inter-relation of mind and body. 

Temperature and humidity determine physique, and physique determines mental 

and moral aptitudes. This being so it is obvious that the forms of law and 

government must also be shaped by these unalterable conditions. Rather 

surprisingly for so systematic a thinker he makes no attempt to bring his 

argument full circle, and work out a connection between the three climates 

he distinguished, frigid, temperate, and torrid, and the three fundamental 

types of commonwealth. It would have meant much forcing of the facts about 

the distribution of political forms in Europe to make them fit into a neat 

pattern of this sort. He preferred to leave these ends loose, and confined 

himself to such scattered observations as that the vigour and independence 

of mountain peoples, which comes from the severity of the climatic 

conditions, explain why the Swiss and the Florentines have developed 

democratic forms of government, whereas the more relaxing effect of damp and 

marshy country predispose Venetians to submit to the rule of an aristocracy.



Forms of government and of law must be judged therefore by relative and not 

by absolute standards. The savage penal code, and warlike policies 

appropriate to the physically vigorous, brave but stupid northern races are 

altogether unsuited to the delicate, timid, imaginative, and subtle 

southerner. Diplomacy is the effective weapon of their advancement. Bodin 

had said at the beginning of the Six books of the Commonwealth that no state 

pursues the good life absolutely, but always some particular and partial 

good. His doctrine of the influence of environment meant that it is in the 

nature of things that this should be so.



Here a modem reader would be satisfied that Bodin had made his point and 

need carry the argument no further. But Bodin meant by 'climate' something 

much more all-pervasive than temperature, humidity, and the he of the land, 

though he included all these things. When he subordinated the commonwealth 

to divine and natural law he did not only mean that its laws and its 

government ought to conform to a moral order. He also meant that it had its 

necessary place in a physical universe subject to invariable natural laws 

proceeding from God as first cause. It is only when his cosmological ideas 

are taken into consideration that the full significance of his relativist 

views on politics is to be appreciated.[4] His system was medieval, for he 

deliberately rejected Copernicus in the Novum Theatrum Naturae, and adhered 

to the traditional view based on Aristotle's physics. That system was 

necessarily astrological. If Aristotle's premises were accepted, first that 

the universe consists of a material core, the earth and its atmosphere, 

enclosed within an immaterial envelope, the heavens; and second, that matter 

is in itself inert and formless; it followed that its myriad forms, and the 

unceasing transmutation to which it is subject, must proceed from immaterial 

agents external to it. These agents can only be the stars. Their perpetual 

and complex revolutions in their circular orbits round the earth are the 

cause of all phenomena and all change of any kind. All things, from a grain 

of corn to a commonwealth, are moulded by the place and time of their 

occurrence, and their life-histories governed by the movement of the 

heavens. Hence his view of history as the record of recurrences. The 

historical process must be cyclic rather than evolutionary since it proceeds 

from the circular motion of the heavens.



It was therefore natural and inevitable that his treatment of history should 

seem from our point of view to lack perspective. He agreed with Machiavelli 

that history repeats itself: democracy in ancient Rome, or in the Forest 

Cantons of contemporary Switzerland was a manifestation of a fixed and 

constant type. But whereas Machiavelli derived his cyclic view of the 

historical process from his doctrine of the constancy of human nature, Bodin 

derived it from the recurrent pattern of events inherent in the cosmic 

process. It will be observed that Bodin's ideas about the relativity of laws 

and institutions have a spatial rather than a temporal reference. As one 

moves through space they differ, according to the different figure of the 

heavens enclosed within their horizon. But as one moves through time one 

keeps on coming upon the same phenomena, according as the stars repeat their 

revolutions.



This is not to say that he believed in an order of necessity in human 

affairs. The search for the principles of practical wisdom in politics which 

dominates so much of the Six books of the Commonwealth presupposes the 

opposite. Bodin held the orthodox view that the will, being immaterial, is 

free of those celestial forces that mould matter. If a man cannot change his 

environment and the influences to which he is subject, he can make the best 

or the worst of his situation. The increasing disorder of the world in which 

he lived convinced Bodin that statesmen were making the worst of it, largely 

through ignorance, and states, as do natural bodies, were perishing untimely 

from violent disorders.



Books IV and V therefore are devoted to the problem of the preservation of 

the commonwealth, or rather, of the sovereign power which is its 

constitutive principle. It takes the form of a discussion of revolutions, 

what induces them, and what precautions are necessary to avoid them, for it 

must be remembered that for Bodin a revolution which removes the seat of 

sovereignty involves the destruction of one state and the foundation of a 

new one. Bodin was always drawing conclusions about what ought to be done, 

but these two books are entirely devoted to the applied science of politics. 

He considers such questions as the laws governing the distribution of 

property [V, ii], the rules relating to eligibility for office and the terms 

of appointment [IV, iv], the attitude to be taken to political parties, or 

to professional and other associations of citizens [IV, vii and III, vii], 

or the best way of securing the state against attack [V, v]. He lays down a 

few rules of general application. Patrimonial estates should not be 

confiscated, whatever the needs of the exchequer [V, iii]. Divisions among 

citizens such as are embodied in political parties should never be 

encouraged, but peaceful associations such as trade-guilds should [III, 

vii]. Office should never be sold [V, iv].



But nearly all his conclusions are, as is to be expected, relative to the 

type of commonwealth to be preserved, for as he says, states of opposite 

tendencies require opposite policies. For instance, in a democracy office 

must be open to all and of short duration to preserve an even distribution 

of power by equal and rapid rotation. If this is not secured democracy 

perishes. By parity of argument in an aristocracy eligibility must be 

confined to the ruling class. In the case of monarchy, however, since it is 

not based on the rule of a class, the king can choose his officers where he 

will, and be guided solely by convenience in fixing the terms of 

appointment, long in subordinate positions where experience is useful, short 

in the high offices of state where long enjoyment of power makes a mere 

subject too mighty.



He owed much in these two books to a similar discussion in the Politics. But 

he was an independent observer of contemporary politics, and not only did he 

apply what Aristotle had to say to conditions in the sixteenth century, but 

recognized problems which did not exist for Aristotle. Aristotle suggested 

his treatment of the subject of tyranny. But such discussions as those on 

treatment of political factions, or the arming of the subject, derived from 

his own observation or reading. This preoccupation with contemporary 

problems is a result of his didactic intentions. As has been said already, 

he wished to remedy, not just analyse, the causes of disruption. He was 

addressing himself to statesmen, and there were two lessons he wished to 

impress on them. First, that just because a commonwealth is the outcome of 

circumstances, preconceived notions about how it should be governed are 

useless and even mischievous. The ruler must start with a thorough 

understanding of the particular situation with which he has to deal, since 

fundamentally he cannot change it. And second, having such knowledge of the 

situation, he must then know what experience has shown to be the appropriate 

way of dealing with it. 



The discussion of the means of preservation of the different kinds of 

commonwealth, when taken in conjunction with the initial account of the 

commonwealth as such, raises considerable difficulties. What ends did Bodin 

really think the state served? In book I it is said that it exists to 

promote the good and virtuous life for its citizens. A commonwealth is 

contrasted with a band of robbers, for one is based on justice and the other 

on violence. He also said that having determined the end, the means to its 

realization would then be considered. But the argument does not develop in 

this way. It is not means to the end of virtue in the citizen which are 

subsequently discussed, but means to the end of the preservation of the 

state, regardless of its character. 



He had of course pointed out in book I that a state must live before it can 

live well, and this concentration on the immediate problem of survival 

rather than on the ultimate purpose of the good life does not in itself 

create any difficulty. But he not only includes tyranny among the true types 

of commonwealth, but considers how it may best be preserved. Since tyranny 

is by definition that form of the commonwealth in which divine and natural 

law is set at defiance, it is difficult to see why he should have recognized 

it as a commonwealth while rejecting a robber-band, or how it is to be 

reconciled with the definition of the state as a rightly ordered government.



His inconclusiveness on this crucial point was a consequence of what was 

characteristic of much of his argument, a tendency to pass from a discussion 

of what is right to a discussion of what is necessary or expedient, without 

apparently being aware of the shift of ground. An example has already been 

noticed in his analysis of the fundamental types of commonwealth. Another is 

the criteria appealed to in determining the best form of commonwealth [VI, 

iv]. Or again, it is never quite clear whether he insisted on discipline 

because it was conducive to virtue, or because it was a condition of 

political stability. His hesitation arose from the fact that he saw the 

state in the first place as the possible, and only possible, instrument of 

the good life on earth. He also saw that to be this it must be an effective 

power. Thinking of what the state might be he gave it by definition a moral 

purpose. Thinking of how necessary it is, he accepted any effective 

organized power as a true state. The contradiction was never resolved. In 

the last analysis he thought any form of polity, however tyrannical, better 

than anarchy, just as he thought any system of beliefs, however crude and 

cruel, better than atheism. Therefore the preservation of some sort of state 

must in all circumstances be secured.



The whole work concludes with a chapter on justice. This would seem at first 

glance to be a return at the last to the theme of the rightly ordered 

commonwealth described at the beginning, as distinct from the efficiently 

governed one, which subsequently occupied his attention. In book I, when 

illustrating the partial aims of all particular states, he put Rome highest 

because her achievement was justice. The whole book therefore closes on the 

suggestion that the best realizable right order which actual states can hope 

to achieve is not the whole good of man, but that modest degree of it which 

is called justice. What he meant by the term is therefore of some 

importance.



In the earlier part of the Six books of the Commonwealth when he is 

discussing the commonwealth as such, he not infrequently uses the term 

'natural justice', without however explaining what he meant by it. The 

context generally suggests however that he meant respect for the rights of 

the subject to his liberty and property. In this last chapter on the other 

hand it is political justice and not natural that he is talking about. He 

had noticed the difference when he observed that Plato thought of justice as 

a philosopher and not as a jurist. In this last chapter Bodin is speaking as 

a jurist. He defines it in legal terms, as the principle upon which rewards 

and punishments are distributed in the commonwealth, that is to say the 

working of the criminal law, and the administration. But whereas natural 

justice is presumably in his view constant and universal, here the proper 

order of justice is relative to the type of commonwealth. Commutative 

justice, or the strictly equal distribution of honours and penalties 

preserves a democracy but would destroy an aristocracy. Conversely 

distributive justice, or award in accordance with the quality of persons, 

safeguards an aristocracy but would corrupt a democracy. In a monarchy where 

a more elastic social system is possible than in either of the other two 

types, since in it classes are at once distinguished and yet not mutually 

exclusive, harmonic justice is the appropriate form since by it honours are 

given not in accordance with the status of persons, but with their 

particular suitability [VI, vi].



This treatment of the theme of justice, therefore, does not really bring the 

argument back to the state considered as the instrument of the good life. It 

is true that justice here means right order in the commonwealth, but it is 

the right order that preserves it as a type, rather than any embodiment of 

universal moral principles. As he said, states must live before they can 

live well, and the discussion in book IV of the causes of revolution made it 

clear that they do not find it so easy to live. The whole work ends on this 

note, how may their survival be assured.



However, the theme of book I, that the state exists to promote virtue in its 

citizens, is not completely lost sight of, and at one point in the final 

book he returns to the problem of the pursuit of higher ends. Every state, 

he says, ought to undertake the moral discipline of its citizens, such as 

was exercised in pagan Rome by the censors. In the modem state he regarded 

it as the function of priests and ministers of religion, [VI, i]. The Church 

has a duty and a place within the state. It is clear that when he included 

true religion in that total good which it is the state's purpose to promote, 

he did not only mean that the prince should free the practice of one's 

beliefs from legal restrictions. He also meant that the clergy have a 

necessary function in the disciplining of the citizen. They are not however 

solely responsible for this discipline. It is a duty incumbent on the 

sovereign to use such opportunities as he has to the same end. Surprisingly 

enough he thought the proper management of taxation a suitable means. In 

spite of the chronic inadequacy of the revenues in France in his day, he 

clung to the conviction that the king ought to be able to 'live of his own', 

and that taxes were an extraordinary expedient which ought never to be 

allowed to establish themselves as an ordinary source of revenue. 

Nevertheless, he had to recognize that there are crises for which the 

ordinary revenues do not suffice. On such occasions, when taxes must be 

imposed, they should be on luxury articles, not because that involves taxing 

the rich and the rich should pay, or because it is economically sound, but 

because the most effective way of checking self-indulgence and vicious 

habits is to make them expensive [VI, ii].



As has been shown, the Six books of the Commonwealth was an immediate 

success, and a much read book for about fifty years after its appearance. 

Nevertheless from Bodin's point of view it was perhaps only a partial 

success. Although his doctrine of the relativity of political institutions 

has attracted much attention in present times, Bodin wholly failed to 

impress his contemporaries as a student of politics. Rulers did not carry 

round a copy of his book as they were reported to do with the Prince. Apart 

from its immense length, it was not very digestible. The form is repellent 

to all except the determined reader. Bodin buried his conclusions under a 

mass of evidence and long scholarly discussions of its interpretation. The 

presentation was formal and elaborate in an old-fashioned way. The chapters 

were very long, unparagraphed, and with few marginal headings to indicate 

the succession of subjects of discussion. Emphatically, not the sort of 

reading that men of affairs take up. He was read by people whose interest in 

politics was speculative rather than practical. What attracted them was his 

doctrine of sovereignty, his analysis of forms, and his defence of monarchy. 

Everyone writing after Bodin, by direct or indirect influence, repeats what 

he has to say in whole or in part on these subjects. Hobbes, the royalist 

writers, and Locke all assume that the essence of sovereignty is the 

authority to make law, and attribute to the sovereign the powers which he 

does. Hobbes takes over his analysis of essential forms, the royalists his 

defence of monarchy on grounds of expediency, and Filmer repeats the whole 

comparative discussion of the characteristics of each form. Even Harrington, 

who belonged to the school of thought that Bodin rejected, and ascribed 

final authority to the people, analysed government into the senate 

proposing, the magistrate executing, and the people resolving. This part of 

his book was indeed almost too convincing. Once his doctrine of sovereignty 

was accepted as common form, his book was no longer kept alive by being a 

subject of controversy. On the other hand the later part suffered from the 

opposite disadvantage, neglect. His scholarly readers were not so interested 

in the discussion of means as of ends. Moreover the fact that he based his 

doctrine of environment on a cosmological system which was on the point of 

being abandoned at the very time he was writing probably contributed to the 

oblivion which was the fate of this part of his work. Montesquieu could 

claim that the Esprit des Lois was a work which had no parentage.



It was a long time before anyone else attempted to survey so immense a field 

of political experience, and to carry any further his enquiry into the 

meaning of the variety of political forms and institutions in all places and 

at all times. No one, not even Montesquieu, emulated the grandeur of his 

design. One had to be as near the middle ages in time, and in spirit, as 

Bodin was, to think and write of the state in relation to the cosmic 

process, at once rooted in it and reflecting it. He concluded his defence of 

monarchy with the same argument as Dante and his kind had used. The 

microcosm should reflect the macrocosm, and thus. since the universe is 

subject to the sole and sovereign majesty of God, so the commonwealth should 

be subject to the sole and sovereign majesty of the prince [VI, iv].



The Six books of the Commonwealth marks the transition from specifically 

medieval to specifically modem ways of political thinking. It at once 

recorded that process and assisted its accomplishment. His scholarship 

combined the methods of the old learning with the interests of the new. He 

asked new questions because he perceived new problems. He recognized the 

emergence of the state as the all-important and all-powerful instrument of 

men's fate. But he could not, as could Machiavelli, rid himself of the 

belief in a universal order of absolute values, in which the state still had 

a place. His book is all the more interesting because the transition is not 

perfectly accomplished. This comes out in his inability to make a clear 

separate of right and fact. He could neither say consistently with the 

schoolmen, let us consider things as they ought to be if the purposes of God 

are to be accomplished, or with Machiavelli, let us consider things as they 

must be if men are to have what they desire. Because he was an acute and 

original observer he was able to analyse the state, its marks, its types, 

its functions, with clarity. But it is not finally clear whether he still 

thought its purpose was to make men good by acting as the instrument of a 

higher law, or had begun to think it existed in its own right to afford them 

security.



TRANSLATOR'S NOTE



AN abridgment of an important work, to be justified, must preserve not only 

the whole of the essential argument, but also its characteristic 

proportions. Closely argued and economically written books are therefore not 

susceptible of such treatment without suffering loss or distortion. The Six 

books of the Commonwealth, however, is marked by great elaboration because 

of the method of demonstration. Bodin's aim to construct a universal science 

of politics by surveying all the relevant facts and opinions required that 

this survey should be exhaustive. He tried to make it so. The definition of 

a citizen is only established after all the descriptions he knew have been 

discussed, and tested by reference to the facts. An observation on the 

instability of Florentine politics leads to a recital of the whole course of 

the city's history from the middle of the thirteenth century -- and so on 

and so forth. If one is treating the Six books of the Commonwealth as a 

document of sixteenth-century scholarship, none of this material can be 

jettisoned. But if it is taken as a book on political science much of it 

can, for it is not all necessary to the development of the argument. On the 

contrary, the very wealth of this illustration gives an impression of 

confusion that Bodin does not deserve. His book is in fact carefully planned 

as a whole, and however long his parentheses, he always returns to the 

argument at the point where he broke off. If much of this illustrative 

material is discarded the main shape of the argument emerges clearly and 

coherently. This has been the principle of selection in this abridged 

version, though sufficient reference to past and present political 

actualities has been preserved to show how he established his conclusions.



Bodin's prose is not easy to translate. The problem is partly one of style 

and partly one of vocabulary. His sentences are long, elaborate, loosely 

constructed and elliptical. It would take a Sir Thomas Hoby to convey their 

quality. No attempt has been made to do this, but only to convey the sense. 

Though the result may make easier reading, much of the weightiness and force 

of the original is inevitably lost. But no translation, however inadequate, 

could fail to preserve one characteristic of the original, and that is the 

sound of a voice arguing, for this is not just a matter of style, of the way 

Bodin writes, but of the way he thinks. Difficulties over his vocabulary 

arise because it was designed to express the actualities of 

sixteenth-century politics, especially in France, and where there are no 

English counterparts, it is hard to find English equivalents. The 

distinction he makes between cité and république for instance describes the 

situation in France but bears no relation to conditions of English political 

organization. In case of such special difficulties a note has been added. 

République has been translated commonwealth to avoid the suggestion of a 

specific form of constitution that republic conveys in English.



Footnotes have been kept to a minimum. Bodin's method of demonstration 

involves constant reference to the literature of law, philosophy, and 

history. It has been assumed that his classical and biblical references need 

no elucidation. Only his references to the more obscure incidents of 

contemporary politics have been explained, for here his encyclopaedic 

reading had made him familiar with the bye-ways that are not common 

knowledge. Discussion of his accuracy in using his sources must however lie 

outside the scope of a book in which only fragments of them are 

incorporated.



BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE



Texts.



A collected edition of Bodin's works is in preparation. Jean Bodin. OEuvres 

philosophiques, texte établi, traduit, et publié par P. Mesnard (Corpus 

général des philosophes français). Of this series the first volume has 

appeared, Methodus ad facilem historiarum cognitionem (Paris, 1951). (This 

is prefaced by the most recent biography.)



For the Six books of the Commonwealth only sixteenth- and 

seventeenth-century editions are at present available. An abridged version 

by J. C. de Laire was published in 1755. Authorities.



H. J. L. Baudrillart, Jean Bodin et son temps (Paris, 1853). R. Chauviré, 

Jean Bodin, auteur de la République (Paris, 1914). E. Hancke, Bodin. Studien 

über die Begrijf der Souveränitat (Breslau, 1894). A. Garosci, Jean Bodin, 

Politica e diritto nel rinascimento francese (Milano, 1934).



E. Fournol, Bodin, prédécesseur de Montesquieu (Paris, 1896). J. 

Moreau-Reibel, Jean Bodin et le droit public comparé dans ses rapports avec 

la philosophie d'histoire (Paris, 1933). B. Reynolds, Proponents of limited 

monarchy in sixteenth century France.



François Hotman and Jean Bodin (Columbia University Studies in History, No, 

334). (New York, 1931). See also:



J. W. Allen, Political Thought in the Sixteenth Century (London, 1928). P. 

Mesnard, L'Essor de la philosophic politique au 16è siècle (Paris, 1936). G. 

H. Sabine, A History of Political Theory (London, 1937). G. Weill, Les 

théories sur le pouvoir royal en France pendant les guerres de religion 

(Paris, 1891).







1. This is most easily consulted in the translation by B. Reynolds (Columbia 

University Records of Civilization), New York, 1945.



2. This was first published, in an incomplete form, by Guhrauer in 1841. L. 

Noack published a complete version, Colloquium Heptaplomeres lie abditis 

rerum sublimium arcanis (Schwerin, 1857). An incomplete French version was 

published by R. Chauviré in 1914.



3. P. Duféy. Michel de L'Hôpital: OEuvres complètes (Paris, 1824-26), Vol. 

I, No. 4.



4. For a fuller account of this relationship, see my article, 'Jean Bodin 

and the medieval theory of climate', in Speculum, Vol. XXVIII, No 1, Jan. 

1953.