Harmony and the Heptaplomeres of Jean Bodin

Harmony and the Heptaplomeres of Jean Bodin" MARION DANIELS KUNTZ THE CENT~,L THEME of Jean Bodin's Colloquium Heptaplomeres De Rerum Sublimium Arcanis Abditis is harmony.1 The paradoxes of Bodin's life may not seem ~ propos to such a theme, yet they perhaps help to explain this last work of Bodin, circulated in manuscript for almost three hundred years before its publication in 1857. Disharmony dominated the outward circumstances of Bodln's life. He entered the Carmelite house at Angers at an early age and later was sent to Paris to study at the Carmelite house there. 2 The reasons for Bodin's departure from Paris and the Carmelite order after three or four years are uncertain. He may have been released because he had been professed at an early age, or his lack or orthodoxy may have become apparent. In 1548 the prior of the Carmelites of Tours, Rend Gamier, and two religious brothers of Paris, one of whom was named Jean Bodin, were summoned as heretics before the Parlement of Paris. a Venot, one of the brothers, suffered martyrdom along with Leonard GaUimard, a Protestant convert who arranged the escape of other Protestants to Geneva.4 It is uncertain whether our Jean Bodin was one of the brothers summoned with Venot, or what the reasons * The author wishes to express appreciation to the American Council of Learned Societies for a Grant-In-Aid which fostered the research for this paper; to Monsignor Jos6 Ruysehaert, Vice-Prefect, Biblioteca Vaticana, Rome, Italy; to Dott~ Giorgio Ferrari, Director, Biblioteca Marciana, Venice, Italy; to Dr. O. B. Hardison, Dr. Richard Schoeck, Miss Dorothy Mason of the Folger Renaissance Library, Washington, D.C. Also sincere thanks to Dr. Gregor Sebba and Dr. Girard Mangone for constructive criticism. An introduction and translation of Jean Bodin's Colloquium Heptaplomeres by the author will be published by Princeton University Press in 1974. x Jean Bodin, Colloquium Heptaplomeres De Rerum Sublimium Arcanis Abditis, Ludovicus Noack, ed. (Schwerin, 1857). 2 K. D. MeRae's unpublished dissertation, "The Political Thought of Jean Bodin" (Harvard , 1953), p. 9. McRae has proof of Bodin's Carmelite relationship from the discovery at Ham, in the Somme Department, of a volume of sixteenth and seventeenth century documents ; among these is the sworn statement made by four priests of the Carmelites at Paris that they had known Jean Bodin, who attended lectures in philosophy and left the order after two or three years. 8 Pierre Mesnard, Oeuvres Philosophlques de lean Bodin (Paris, 1951), 1, XIII. 4 The Archives of Geneva (see La France Protestante, II [Paris, 1879], 671) reveal a marriage contract on August 25, 1552 between Jean Bodin of Saint-Amand and Typhaine Reynaude, resident of Geneva and widow of Leonard Gallimard. See also Mesnard, op. cit., XI, and McRae, diss. cit., pp. 18-26. [31] 32 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY were for his escape.5 Bodin's late works, however, make clear that he might easily have gotten into difficulty in his youth because of his religious views, because control of men's consciences was always repugnant to him. Although Bodin was accused of being a Protestant, in 1562 his name appeared on the list of those faithful to the Church. 6 As the Wars of Religion increased in vehemence, a royal edict was passed in 1568 which decreed severe punishment for those of the reformed faith, dismissed all Protestants from offices of the Crown, and renewed the oath of Catholicity upon the Parlements and the Universities. Bodin's religious views made him suspect . On March 5, 1569, his career as deputy for the procureur-general at Poitiers was interrupted by his arrest and imprisonment for a year and a half as an adherent of the new religion. He was released as a result of the Edict of Pacification of August 11, 1570. In 1571 he was appointed maitre des requdtes et conseiller for Francis, Duke of Alen$on. The Duke was the official leader of the Politiques, who maintained, in an age of rising fanaticism, that the state's primary concern was the maintenance of order, not the establishment of true religion. In spite of Bodin's service to Alen...