ABSTRACT
The key to Jean Bodin's religious thought is found in the Colloquium heptaploineres, the intriguing work which Bodin completed in 158869 but did not publish. In addition to the religious views discussed, the Colloquium heptaplomeres represents many of the ideas of the Brethren of the Common Life, the Christian humanists, such as Erasmus, who emphasized inner religion and true piety, and the Reformers. Bodin's emphasis upon harmony and toleration, coming as it did in the midst of an age of religious conflicts, makes him an innovator in the religious thinking of the Cinquecento, because the complete tolerationists' view that Bodin was offering was not held by anybody before Uriel da Costa and Spinoza. There is an essence shared by all historical faiths but never exhausted by any one. Hence in the great tradition of universalism, a sixteenth-century voice was found. It was not left to the later centuries to have this message expressed by Shaftesbury, Locke, Spinoza, Hume, or Lessing.
