Bodin wrote in turn books on history, economics, politics, demonology, and natural philosophy;[21] and also left a (later notorious) work in manuscript on religion (see under "Religious tolerance").

This book was one of the most significant contributions to the ars historica of the period, and distinctively put an emphasis on the role of political knowledge in interpreting historical writings.

[24] Jean Bodin rejected the biblical Four Monarchies model, taking an unpopular position at the time,[25] as well as the classical theory of a Golden Age for its naiveté.

Bodin was after Martín de Azpilicueta, who had alluded to the issue in 1556 (something noticed also by Gómara in his unpublished Annals),[28][29] an early observer that the rise in prices was due in large part to the influx of precious metals.

With this work, Bodin became one of the founders of the pragmatic inter-confessional group known as the politiques, who ultimately succeeded in ending the Wars of Religion under King Henry IV, with the Edict of Nantes (1598).

Against the monarchomachs who were assailing kingship in his time, such as Theodore Beza and François Hotman, Bodin succeeded in writing a fundamental and influential treatise of social and political theory.

[42] The Republic of Venice is not accepted in the terms of Gasparo Contarini: it is called an aristocratic constitution, not a mixed one, with a concentric structure, and its apparent stability was not attributable to the form of government.

Based on the assumption that a country's climate shapes the character of its population, and hence to a large extent the most suitable form of government, Bodin postulated that a hereditary monarchy would be the ideal regime for a temperate nation such as France.

[45][46][47] Bodin's major work on sorcery and the witchcraft persecutions was "Of the Demon-mania of the Sorcerers" (De la démonomanie des sorciers), first issued in 1580, with ten editions published by 1604.

[48] In it he elaborates the influential concept of "pact witchcraft" based on a deal with the Devil[49] and the belief that the evil spirit would use a strategy to impose doubt on judges to look upon magicians as madmen and hypochondriacs deserving of compassion rather than chastisement.

[52] It gave a report of a 1552 public exorcism in Paris,[53] and of the case of Magdalena de la Cruz of Cordova, an abbess who had confessed to sexual relations with the Devil over three decades.

[57] This advocacy of relaxation was aimed directly at the existing standards laid down by the Parlement of Paris (physical or written evidence, confessions not obtained by torture, unimpeachable witnesses).

[59][60][vague] The book was influential in the debate over witchcraft; it was translated into German by Johann Fischart (1581),[61][62] and in the same year into Latin by François Du Jon as De magorum dæmonomania libri IV.

The "Colloquium of the Seven regarding the hidden secrets of the sublime things" offers a peaceful discussion with seven representatives of various religions and worldviews, who in the end agree on the fundamental underlying similarity of their beliefs.

[97] He has been seen as a scriptural relativist, and deist, with Montaigne and Pierre Charron;[98] also in the group of learned Christian Hebraists with John Selden, Carlo Giuseppe Imbonati, and Gerhard Vossius.

[99] By reputation, at least, Bodin was cited as an unbeliever, deist or atheist by Christian writers who associated him with perceived free-thinking and sceptical tradition of Machiavelli and Pietro Pomponazzi, Lucilio Vanini, Thomas Hobbes and Baruch Spinoza: Pierre-Daniel Huet,[100] Nathaniel Falck,[101] Claude-François Houtteville.

[102] Pierre Bayle attributed to Bodin a maxim about the intellectual consequences of the non-existence of God (a precursor of Voltaire's, but based on a traditional commonplace of French thinkers).

Leon Poliakov discussed this in The Aryan Myth:[116] Etymological speculation and childish word games of this kind have been rife in western history ever since the Fathers of the Church, but it was the humanists of the Renaissance who first utilized them in the service of a new born chauvinism.

It may be remarked, furthermore, that Bodin's theory attributes to the Frankish Gauls certain virtues which were unknown to the enslaved Gauls.Historical disciples included Jacques Auguste de Thou and William Camden.

[125] In clearer terms, on the other hand, he believed that mankind was unifying, the drivers being trade, and the indications of the respublica mundana (world commonwealth) and international law as developing.

Bodin had numerous followers as political theorist, including Pierre Grégoire, in whom with François Grimaudet legislative authority starts to become closer to the divine right of kings, and William Barclay.

[138] Jean Bodin's rejection of the Four Monarchies model was unpopular, given the German investment in the Holy Roman Emperor as fourth monarch,[139] the attitude of Johannes Sleidanus.

The need to accommodate the existing structure of the Empire with Bodin as theorist of sovereignty led to a controversy running over nearly half a century; starting with Henning Arnisaeus, it continued unresolved to 1626 and the time of Christopher Besoldus.

[144] Somerville makes the point that not all those who discussed sovereignty in England at this period necessarily took their views from Bodin: the ideas were in the air at the time, and some such as Hadrian à Saravia and Christopher Lever had their own reasoning to similar conclusions.

[149] Richard Beacon in Solon His Follie (1594), directed towards English colonisation in Ireland, used text derived from the Six livres, as well as much theory from Machiavelli; he also argued, against Bodin, that France was a mixed monarchy.

John Locke in arguing decades later against Filmer in Two Treatises of Government didn't go behind his work to attack Bodin; but his ally James Tyrrell did, as did Algernon Sidney.

The Methodus went on the Index in 1590;[168] Robert Bellarmine as censor found it of some merit in its learning, but the author to be a heretic or atheist, critical of the papacy and much too sympathetic to Charles Du Moulin in particular.

[172] Bellarmine's Tractatus de potestate summi pontificis in temporalibus reiterated, against Bodin's sovereignty theory, an indirect form of the traditional papal deposing power to release subjects from the duty of obedience to tyrants.

[173] Jakob Keller, in an apologetical work on behalf of limited justifications for tyrannicide, treated Bodin as a serious opponent on the argument that subjects can only resist a tyrant passively, with views on the Empire that were offensive.

[176] It was recognized, in an unpublished dialogue imagined between Bodin and a jurist of Castile, that the government of Spain was harder than that of France, the other major European power, because of the more complex structure of the kingdom.