Bodin, Jean

« and doctrine contradicted Bodin's long-standing principles of legitimacy, non-resistance and religious tolerance. Yet Bodin, like many other royalist magistrates of the time, openly collaborated with the League.

He sought to justify his course by mystical reflections on the preordained doom of the ruling dynasty.

But he seems to have been driven by fears not only for his office and his property, but perhaps for his life as well; now, as in the past, he was under suspicion of heresy.

He stood publicly for Navarre only in 1594 when the forces of the latter were victorious. These troubles notwithstanding, Bodin never ceased to pursue his vast programme of scholarly and philosophic research.

Between 1588 and his death he produced two short works on ethics, a major treatise on religion and a system of natural philosophy.

His writings make it clear that Bodin's religion was a Judaizing Neoplatonism.

But outwardly at least he remained within the church, and on his death he was buried as a Catholic in accordance with his will. 2 Public law - the theory of sovereignty Bodin's most celebrated work is his Les six livres de la république (The Six Books of a Commonwealth) (1576 ), an encyclopedic treatise of public law and policy that appeared in 1576.

The theory of sovereignty, which provides its framework, was a major event in the development of European political thought.

Bodin's precise definition of supreme authority, his determination of its scope and his analysis of the functions it logically entailed helped to turn public law into a scientific discipline.

With Bodin and his followers (especially in Germany), the various jurisdictions of a state could be systematically ordered with respect to an ultimate centre of authority.

And his elaboration of the implications of sovereignty through a vast synthesis of comparative public law helped to launch a whole new literary genre. Bodin's doctrine of sovereignty, however, was seriously flawed by his erroneous views on the indivisibility of sovereignty.

He believed that all the powers of the state had ultimately to be concentrated in a single individual or group.

This was presented not only as a recommendation of political prudence but as the analytic condition of a coherent and coordinated legal system.

Bodin could thus conclude that a mixed constitution, in which the prerogatives of sovereignty were shared or separated, was logically impossible.

He therefore failed to see that shared or separated powers produced a compound sovereign, the components of which were coordinated by an underlying basic norm, or rule of recognition, accepted by the general community.

Sovereignty, for Bodin, was always that of a ruler.

What he needed, but could not imagine, was some notion of constituent authority distinct from the ordinary power of a government.

(see Constitutionalism §1 ; Sovereignty §§1, 3 ) 3 Public law - the French monarchy and absolutism Bodin's rejection of the mixed constitution would ultimately lead him to an absolutist interpretation of the French and other monarchies of Western Europe.

(see Absolutism §§2-3 ).

This was not his original intention, and in his. »