Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 3.djvu/866

848 resolution beiug carried, lie contrived to get inserted in the petition drawn up by the states the clause &quot; without war,&quot; which practically rendered all its other clauses nugatory. While he thus resisted the clergy and nobility and their dependents, he opposed the demand of the king to be allowed to alienate the public lands and royal demesnes, and had influence sufficient to get it refused, although the chief deputies had been won over to assent to it. This lost him the favour of the king, who wanted money on any terms. His magnum opus Les six livres de la Rdpublique (Paris, 1576) passed through various editions in its author s lifetime, that of 1583 having as an appendix L apologie de Rene Herpin (Bodin himself). In 158G he issued a Latin version, for the use chiefly of English students of law and politics. It is the first elaborate attempt in modern times to construct a system of political science. &quot; From the time,&quot; says Sir William Hamilton, &quot; when Aristotle wrote his eight books of Politics, until the time when Montesquieu wrote his thirty-one books on The Spirit of Laws, the six books of the Republic of Bodinus is the ablest and most remarkable treatise extant on the philosophy of government and legislation ; and even until the present day these three authors stand out as the great political triumvirate.&quot; Bodin was, of course, greatly indebted to Aristotle for his knowledge of the working of political causes, but he made use of what his illustrious predecessor taught him in no servile way, and added much from his own reflections, his large acquaintance with history, and his vivid personal experience. The Republic is a work of which it is quite impossible to give a brief account, and as there have been many lengthened sum maries of it, it may suffice to say that those to be found in Hallam s Lit. of Europe, (vol. ii. 1st ed.), Heron s History of Jurisprudence, Lerminier s Introduction a VHistoire du Droit, and Bluntschli s Geschichte des Staatsrechts, give a good general view of its character, while that in Professor Baudrillart s J. Bodin et son Temps is so exceedingly care ful and excellent that scarcely a thought of any value in the original has escaped being indicated. With all his breadth and liberality of mind Bodin was an exceedingly credulous believer in witchcraft, the virtues of numbers, and the power of the stars, and in 1580 he published^ the Demonomanie des Sorciers, a work which is a most humbling evidence that even the greatest men may not be exempt from the most irrational prejudices of their age. Although he was himself regarded by most of his contemporaries as a sceptic, and by some as an atheist, he denounced all who dared to doubt of sorcery, and zealously urged the burning of witches and wizards. It might, perhaps, have gone hard with himself if his counsel had been strictly followed, as he confessed to have had from his thirty-seventh year a friendly demon who, if properly invoked, touched his right ear when he purposed doing what was wrong, and his left when he meditated doing good. To the duke of Alengon Bodin owed several important preferments. In 1581 he accompanied his patron as secretary when that prince came over to England to seek the hand of Queen Elizabeth. Here he had the pleasure of finding that the Republic was studied at London and Cambridge, although in a barbarous Latin translation. This was what determined him to translate his work into Latin himself. The latter part of Bodin s life was spent at Laon, the inhabitants of which he is said to have persuaded to declare for the League in 1589, and for Henry IV. five years afterwards. He died of the plague in that city in 1596, and was buried in the church of the Carmelites. In the year during which he died there appeared his Universale Naturae Theatrum, which was translated into French by Fongerolles in the following year. He left behind him a very famous MS., the Colloquium Heptaplomeres de abditis rerum sublimium arcanis, which was published for the first time in a complete form by Noack in 1857, although it had been previously studied by others, e.g., Grotius, Huet, Manage, Diecmann, &c. It is composed in the form of a conversation between seven learned men a Jew, a Mah ometan, a Lutheran, a Zwinglian, a Roman Catholic, an Epicurean, and a Theist. The con clusion to which they are represented as coming is that they will live together in charity and toleration, and cease from further disputation as to religion.

1em  BODLEY,, founder of the Bodleian library at Oxford, was born at Exeter in 1544. When he was about twelve years of age, his father, John Bodley, being obliged to leave the kingdom on account of his Protestant principles, settled with his family at Geneva, and continued there till the death of Queen Mary. In that university, then in its infancy, young Bodley studied under several eminent professors. On the accession of Queen Elizabeth he returned with his father to England, and was soon after entered of Magdalen College, Oxford. In 1563 he took the degree of bachelor of arts, and the year following w r as admitted a fellow of Merton College. In 1565 he read a Greek lecture in the hall of that college, took the degree of master of arts the year after, and read natural philosophy in the public schools. In 1569 he was one of the proctors of the university, and for some time after officiated as public orator. Quitting Oxford in 1576, he made the tour of Europe; and on returning to his college after four years absence he applied himself to historical and political studies. He became gentleman-usher to Queen Elizabeth; and in 1585 he married Anne Ball, a widow lady of con siderable fortune, whose father, named Carew,was of Bristol. He was soon after sent as ambassador to the king of Denmark, and to several German princes. He was next, despatched on a secret mission to France ; and in 1588 he went as ambassador to the United Provinces. On his return to England in 1597, finding his preferment obstructed by the jarring interests of Burleigh and Essex, he retired from court, and could never afterwards be prevailed on to accept of any public employment. He now began the foundation of the Bodleian library ; and soon after the accession of King James I. he received the honour of knighthood. He died at his house in London, January 28, 1612, and was buried in the choir of Merton College  BODMIN, a parliamentary and municipal borough and market-town of England, in the county of Cornwall, 235 miles from London, and 30 from Plymouth by rail. It is situated between two hills, and consists of one narrow but well-paved street, about a mile in length. The church of St Petrock, which formerly belonged to the monastery of that name, is a spacious building dating from 1472 ; and the town-hall consists partly of remains of the convent of the Grey Friars. A lunatic asylum, erected in 1SG6, the 