ABSTRACT
Bodin (1530-96), author of the Methodus ad Facilem Historiarum Cognitionem (1566), has been called the Montesquieu of the six teenth century. Like the author of The Spirit of the Laws, Bodin occupies a transitional position between two different epochs of historical thought. Bodin carries forward many of the pre-critical and unhistorical assumptions of medieval thought, yet points ahead to the new world of historical consciousness. As Kelley has observed, on the one hand Bodin appears to have ‘the scholastic philosopher’s unhistorical and indiscriminate attitude towards his authorities and his faith that an ideal system may be assembled merely by the proper arrangement and criticism of these’, while on the other, he sometimes seems to be striving to capture ‘the spirit of the laws’ by a sophisticated comparative method (‘Bodin’s Method’, p. 147).
