Jean Bodin

Bodin was a member of the Parlement of Paris and taught law in Toulouse during the decades after the Protestant Reformation, when France convulsed with sectarian violence. He remained nominally Catholic but pushed back against papal claims over secular governments, arguing instead for strong central monarchy as the cure for factional chaos. His theory of sovereignty became a pillar of political philosophy. Near the end of his life he wrote a dialogue in which representatives of Judaism, Islam, Catholicism, and natural theology agreed to peaceful coexistence — a manuscript he never published. H…