ABSTRACT
Jean Bodin is a many-sided figure who has been in recent years the subject of proliferating and increasingly specialized studies. The one persistent habit of Bodin scholars has been to restrict themselves to one of two of these sides, which moreover are defined in terms of rather formal categories of political thought, historical method, law, geography, and the like. Bodin seems to present a historical paradox. On the one hand he was almost too typical of his age. Humanist, jurist, astrologist, Etienne Fournol remarked, here indeed is a man of the 16th century. On the other hand, and in a longer perspective, he was a man for many ages. A man with a passion for the past and designs upon the future, Bodin does not seem to have been much at home in his own time; he might well have preferred to be a contemporary of St Thomas or of Descartes.
