The Theater of Nature: Jean Bodin and Renaissance Science 9781400887507

Table of contents :
Contents
Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Conventions
Introduction
Chapter One. Kinds of Natural Philosophy
Chapter Two. Methods of Bookishness
Chapter Three. Modes of Argument
Chapter Four. Bodin's Philosophy of Nature
Chapter Five. Theatrical Metaphors
Chapter Six. The Reception of the Theatrum
Epilogue. The Legacies of the Theatrum
Notes
Bibliography
Index
About the author

Citation preview

The Theater of Nature

The Theater of Nature JEAN

BODIN

AND R E N A I S S A N C E

• ANN

P R I N C E T O N

BLAIR

SCIENCE

•

U N I V E R S I T Y

P R I N C E T O N ,

N E W

P R E S S

J E R S E Y

Copyright © 1997 by Princeton University Press Published by Princeton University Press, 41 William Street, Pnnceton, NewJersey 08540 In the United Kingdom. Princeton University Press, Chichester, West Sussex All Rights Reserved

Library of Congress Catalogmg-in-Publication Data Blair, Ann, 1961The theater of nature : Jean Bodin and Renaissance science / by Ann Blair ρ

cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index ISBN 0-691-05675-7 (alk. paper) 1 Science, Renaissance.

2. Physics—History

3 Philosophyofnature—History.

4. Bodin, Jean, 1530-1596 Q125.2.B53

1997

I. Title.

113'092—dc21

96-40164

This book has been composed in Sabon Princeton University Press books are printed on acid-free paper and meet the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources Printed in the United States of America 1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

Princeton Legacy Library edition 2017 Paperback ISBN: 978-0-691-60656-9 Hardcover ISBN: 978-0-691-65438-6

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ILLUSTRATIONS

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

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CONVENTIONS

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INTRODUCTION

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CHAPTER ONE Kinds of Natural Philosophy The Dedication of the

Theatrum and the Religious Significance of Nature

The "Propositio" and the Problem of Order Bodin's Notion of Physics The

Theatrum and Contemporary Classifications

CHAPTER TWO Methods of Bookishness The Theatrum as a Dialogue The Method of Commonplaces

"Experience" Bodin's Eclectic Choice of Authorities

CHAPTER FOUR Bodin's Philosophy of Nature

Will and Providence

The Chain of Being

Bodin's Synthesis of Philosophy and Religion CHAPTER FIVE Theatrical Metaphors

82 83 95 107 116 118 126 143 153 153 159 166

The Theater of Nature TheBookasTheater

A Theater of "Theaters" CHAPTER SIX The Reception of the Theatrum

A Survey of Extant Copies

180 187 201

the Theatrum

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The Vernacular Reception of

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Theatrum

The Scholarly Reception of the

The Legacies

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Dialectical Reasoning

EPILOGUE

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CHAPTER THREE Modes of Argument

Divine Free

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NOTES

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

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INDEX

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1. Title page of the second edition of Jean Bodin, Universae naturae theatrum (Frankfurt: Wechel, 1597).

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2. The "portrait" of the mountain that moved in 1560.

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3. Bodin's "web of being."

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4. The "Seventh Table" in Frangois de Fougerolles' French translation of the Theatrum.

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5. Philander Colutius, Theatrum naturae (Speyer, 1611).

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6. Isaac Casaubon's copy of the Theatrum: flyleaf and title page.

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7. Isaac Casaubon's copy of the Theatrum: pp. 230-31.

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8. Title page and p. 660 of Frangois de Fougerolles, Le Theatre de la nature universelle (Lyon: Pillehotte1 1597).

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9. Title page of the first edition of the Problemata Bodini (Magdeburg: Johan Francken, 1602).

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10. Title page and closing paragraph of the Problemata Bodini in ProbIemataAnstotelis (Basel: Emanuel Konig und Sohne, 1666).

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THIS BOOK represents a learning process (inevitably still under way, although now arrested in its public form), which is deeply indebted to the teachers who guided it and to the many friends, colleagues, and experts who contributed advice and information. Above all I thank Anthony Grafton, who first suggested working on Bodin's Theatrum and spotted a copy seemingly providentially for sale in a rare book catalogue. He has tirelessly read and responded to drafts of dissertation, articles, and book, often across great distances, with wonderfully thoughtful and learned advice. In Paris1Jean Ceard devoted extraordinary time and energy to my queries, serving as a mystagogue into the recesses of his library and learning; I am especially grateful for his permission to study the marginal annotations in his copy of the Theatrum, and for his generous help and hospitality throughout the project. Nancy Siraisi, with her keen wit and penetrating comments, has been a constant source of support. Natalie Davis offered crucial advice with her legendary enthusiasm and uncanny prescience. Now that I am in a position to dispense education myself, I appreciate more than ever the exceptional erudition and generosity of my teachers and the excellent conditions for graduate study provided by the History of Science Program and the History Department at Princeton University. In transforming the dissertation into a book I have drawn on the helpful suggestions of many scholars. Brian Copenhaver and Donald Kelley, in reading for the press, made copious and judicious comments. Katy Park inspired the considerable restructuring of the dissertation and changes in the introduction. Lynn Joy, Paula Findlen, Alice Stroup, and Luce Giard commented on the dissertation as a whole; Howard Hotson on the scholarly German reception of Bodin's work. Marie-Dominique Couzinet kindly shared with me her work in press and unpublished papers. Joseph Freedman enthusiastically volunteered many references to works with titles in which the word "theater" appeared. I have tapped the expertise of Roger Ariew and Daniel Garber on philosophical issues, of Isadore Twersky on Jewish sources. So many people over the years have generously lent me their attention and offered insights and advice on a whole range of issues that I fear I will forget some (may they accept my thanks here) in mentioning those whose conversation and correspondence I remember vividly: Roger Chartier, Frangois de Gandt, Robert Descimon, Jean Dupebe, Mordechai Feingold, Francis Goyet, Karl Hufbauer, Christian Jacob, Michael Jeanneret, Christian Jouhaud, Michele LeDoeuff, Michael Mahoney, Peter Miller, Martin Mulsow, William Newman, Alfred Soman, and Timothy Tackett. I have benefited from the reactions of numerous audiences at conferences, talks, and reading groups, and would especially like to thank the participants and organizers of the Folger Library Seminar in summer 1993 on "History and the Disciplines." For research assistance I am grateful to Jocelyn Holland (summer 1993) and Felice Whittum (19961997), and for help in using the Thesaurus Linguae Graecae at Irvine, to Jennifer

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Beach. At Princeton University Press I would like to thank the many people who worked to bring this book to light, from Joanna Hitchcock who started the process to Karen Verde who finished it. I am especially grateful to Gavin Lewis for helpful and exacting copyediting and to Sylvia Coates for preparing the index. My research on the reception of the Theatrum required the assistance of many people. Isabelle Pantin volunteered her expert and ingenious help in conducting the survey of extant copies of the Theatrum, and Marie-Therese Isaac and the late Roland Crahay of the Seminaire de Bibliographie Historique de TUniversite de Mons shared with me the results of their research on Jean Bodin before publication. I am indebted to countless librarians, to those who helped me in person and to those who responded to my questionnaire, often anonymously, sometimes adding welcome details and photocopies. For assistance in person, I am grateful primarily to the staffs of the university libraries at Princeton, Harvard, Oxford, and Basel; the interlibrary loan and document delivery services at Irvine; and the British Library, the Herzog-August-Bibliothek, and the various libraries in Paris, especially the Bibliotheque Nationale. My predoctoral research in Paris was funded by a Chateaubriand Fellowship from the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and postdoctoral research on a different but related project by an NSFNATO fellowship. For two years the History of Science Department at Harvard University provided a congenial environment; in the History Department at Irvine I enjoyed supportive colleagues, good working conditions, and a quarter of research leave. Thanks also to Jonathan and Adam Yedidia for their good humor and loving support throughout the ptocessl

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TEXT REFERENCES by page number only are to Jean Bodin, Universae naturae the-

atrum (Frankfurt: Wechel, 1597); in the notes, the same edition will be designated UNT. The pagination is virtually identical in all three Latin editions. Page numbers correspond to the parts of Bodin's work as follows: dedicatory epistle, sigs. 2r-5v; propositio, pp. 1-7; Book I (principles), pp. 9-130; Book II (elements, minerals and metals), pp. 131—269; Book III (plants and animals), pp. 270—430; Book IV (the soul and angelic beings), pp. 431—548; Book V (celestial bodies), pp. 549-633. Quotations for which the interlocutor is not indicated are from the words of Mystagogus, the master. References in text and notes by page number preceded by "F" refer to the French translation by Frangois de Fougerolles, Le Thiatre de la nature universelle (Lyon: Pillehotte, 1597). References by page number preceded by "D" refer to the German adaptation by Damian Siffert, Problemata Iohannis Bodini (Magdeburg: Johan Francken, 1602). I designate as the "Ceard annotator" the anonymous reader who left abundant annotations in a copy of the Theatrum now owned by Jean Ceard; a complete transcription of these annotations, by myself and Jean Ceard, is included in an appendix to my dissertation, "Restaging Jean Bodin: The Universae naturae theatrum (1596) in its Cultural Context" (Ph.D. diss., Princeton University, 1990). In referring to Bodin's other major works I have used these editions: Methodus ad facilem historiarum cognitionem (Paris: Martinus Iuvenis, 1572), reprinted and translated in Pierre Mesnard, Oeuyres philosophiques de Jean Bodin, Corpus general des philosophes frangais, vol. 5/3 (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1951); Les six livres de la Republique, 6 vols. (Lyon: Gabriel Cartier, 1593; repr. Paris: Fayard, 1986); De la demonomanie des sorciers (Paris: Dupuys, 1587; facsimile ed., Paris: Gutenberg Reprints, 1979). For the Colloquium heptaplomeres, presumed to be by Bodin, I have used the early seventeenth-century manuscript translation published in Colloque entre sept sqavans qui sont de differens sentimens, ed. Frangois Berriot (Geneva: Droz, 1984). These works are referred to in text and notes as Methodus, Republique, Demono­ manie, and Colloque, respectively. Methodus also identifies the location of the following works that appear in the above volume together with Bodin's main work: Bodin, Oratxo de instituenda in Republica Juventute ad senatum populumque Tolosatem (Toulouse: Petrus Puteus, 1559); Pierre Bayle, article "Bodin" in Dictionnaire historique et critique; and Pierre Mesnard's introduction. All translations are my own unless otherwise noted. I have tried to be faithful to original orthography, making tacit modernizations and corrections (in the French

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and German) only when necessary for clarity. For reasons of space, I have included quotations in the original languages only exceptionally, when the source is particularly rare or the original formulation especially revealing. Transliterations from Greek or Hebrew are italicized. The world of Renaissance natural philosophy and scholarship which I study here is a world of men almost exclusively. I use masculine pronouns to refer to anonymous readers and annotators of the Theatrum because it is very unlikely that a woman would have been reading the Latin version around 1600. (This does not hold for the vernacular versions of the text nor for some other kinds of less learned works described in chapter 1.) Secondly, I use "man" when translating from early modern authors to render the generic Latin homo or the dual-purpose French term, homme. These writers share an unquestioned sense that the default setting of the "human hypostasis" is male. The gendered connotation of the English "man" suits their assumptions very neatly. In my own voice, however, I have tried to avoid perpetuating them.

The Theater of Nature

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M.D.X eVIL Fig. 1. Title page of the second edition of Jean Bodin, Universae naturae theatrum (Frankfurt: Wechel, 1597). Author's copy.

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As A YOUNG law student frequenting the markets of Toulouse in the 1550s, Jean Bodin came to the conclusion that salt-water fish tasted better than fresh-water fish. As an older man, looking back on a checkered but prolific career, through some forty years of civil war, he reflected that the saltiness of the ocean was a divine gift that preserved it from impurity, and made the fish there grow bigger and tastier. The received, Aristotelian explanation for the saltiness of the sea from earthly exhalations was absurd; instead, Bodin proposed an explanation informed by critical reflection, but also by "true piety" and a sense of the proper limits of reason. Filled with discussions of this kind, Bodin's last major work, the Universae naturae theatrum or "theater of all of nature" (1596), grew out of a traditional practice of natural philosophy, based on the compilation and explanation of "facts" drawn largely from books, but which increasingly in the Renaissance also incorporated "experience" of various kinds. At the same time, Bodin's natural philosophy was motivated by an irenicist agenda, which he shared with other late humanists, to demonstrate for the agreement of all the greatness and providence of God; as in his more famous Ripublique and Demonomanie, Bodin hoped to restore much-needed order to society and to stem a rising tide of impiety, notably by inspiring everyone to worship the Creator. On both counts the Theatrum opens a new window onto the methods, motivations and difficulties of a kind of natural philosophy not often studied by historians of science. Since its beginnings as a discipline, the history of science has tried to explicate in the early modern period the remarkable changes in the conceptions of nature and of natural philosophy grouped for convenience as the "Scientific Revolution." By now we have a number of detailed and illuminating accounts of the major figures and institutions that contributed to the development of "modern science." What we still lack, however, is a serious understanding of the more widely diffused conceptions of nature and natural philosophy that preceded and often persisted concurrently with these new developments. We need to look beyond the forward-looking few to a broader set of educated but nonspecialist authors and readers of natural philosophy to elucidate the context of the Scientific Revolution. However bold their declarations of a revolutionary break with the past, however exceptional and specialized their individual talents, the innovators were trained in, often continued to draw from, and, in any case, were responding to a range of more "ordinary" practices of natural philosophy. By studying these we can sharpen our sense of what was revolutionary about the Scientific Revolution, and of the process by which new ideas and practices developed and coexisted with, and ultimately supplanted the old. Bodin's Theatrum offers a fine point of departure from which to examine traditional natural philosophy at its height in the late Renaissance (ca. 1550—1630). While historians of science once considered the Renaissance to be indifferent if not hostile to the study of nature, it now increasingly appears as a period of ex-

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plosion in natural knowledge, gathered, from newly recovered ancient texts as well as newly discovered lands. On the one hand Renaissance humanists accumulated and transmitted the greatest legacy of texts to date—ancient, medieval and modern—complete with elaborate commentaries and attempts at synthesis. On the other hand, the sheer mass and diversity of the textual legacy and a new interest in empirical observations served gradually to dislocate received opinion and authorities, by uncovering contradictions and offering alternatives, no single one of which prevailed. The breakdown of Christendom into devastating wars of religion further motivated the search for, and increased the difficulty of finding, grounds for philosophical consensus. Recent studies have taken a number of approaches to chart areas in this rich and varied field: focusing, for example, on the commentaries on a canonical text (notably the Canon of Avicenna), or on a theme in contemporary literature (the prodigious and the marvelous); on the widespread practice of natural historical collecting, or on the life and works of individuals, ranging from a lesser-known alchemist to a well-known philosopher like Gassendi.1 1 have chosen a single book, a kind of encyclopedia of nature, from which to explore avenues in late Renaissance science—through comparison with various other contemporary works,2 through a study of the text itself, its structure and composition, its motivations and metaphors, its arguments and conclusions (both the idiosyncratic and the more typical ones), and, finally, through its reception in the century following its publication. Rather than filming change over time, I offer mostly a detailed still picture of what it meant to "do physics" for Jean Bodin and various near-contemporaries, even as a first, moderate phase of the Scientific Revolution was under way and a second, more radical one was about to begin (starting, say, in the 1620s and 1630s). I have organized my own book around three major themes, which I introduce in chapter 1 in presenting the Theatrum and its context: the bookish methods and practice of "physics" (chapters 2—3), the religious motivations for the study of nature (chapter 4), and the problem of ordering a vast and ever-increasing stock of knowledge (chapter 5). Chapter 6 traces the reception of the Theatrum, from a survey of extant copies, from the citations and marginal annotations of readers of the three Latin editions (1596, 1597, 1605), and from its two vernacularizations—a French translation by the Lyonnais doctor Frangois de Fougerolles (1597), which appealed to a limited, educated readership, and a popular German adaptation of the Theatrum entitled Problemata Bodini, by Damian Siffert, whose careful selection of themes from Bodin's original gave them their longest life, down to a final edition in 1679. I conclude with an epilogue that sketches some of the continuities and discontinuities between the traditional natural philosophy of Bodin and the revolutionary call of Francis Bacon to replace the old system of knowledge with a new method of investigation. With the exception of the mathematical sciences which followed a separate set of ancient models and methods,3 natural philosophy consisted primarily, for over two thousand years, in the transmission and criticism of authoritative texts and their successive commentaries. To make natural knowledge was to transmit, sort,

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explain, and modify the definitions, facts, and arguments accumulated previously, producing texts that following generations of scholars would process in much the same way. This seemingly unending cycle of "literary empiricism" or "humanistic science" culminated in the late Renaissance, as scores of new texts, ancient and modern, poured into the pool of available material.4 Already ancient scholars had devised methods to manage and collate vast quantities of material: erudition at the library of Alexandria (founded by Ptolemy I [323-285 BCE]) produced catalogues of books and their contents, doxographies (that is, lists of the opinions of authorities) and numerous scholarly devices for collecting and comparing material stored in hundreds of thousands of papyrus rolls;5 on natural topics in particular, Pliny the Elder, in the preface to his Natural history (ca. 70 CE), boasted of having gathered twenty thousand pieces of information (no doubt he had the help of amanuenses, but we have no details about the methods they used).6 During the Middle Ages, encyclopedias and florilegia made available summaries of knowledge and quotations from authorities arranged according to various organizational principles. The problem of sorting and storing knowledge for future reference was thus hardly new to the Renaissance, and previous methods of note-taking no doubt inspired the solution advocated by humanist pedagogues which became widespread in Renaissance scholarship in many fields, including natural philosophy. In chapter 2, I argue from an analysis of the printed text (unfortunately no manuscripts of Bodin's survive) that the Theatrum was composed from a commonplace book, a practice of note-taking taught in Renaissance schools and advocated by Bodin himself in his first major work, the Methodus adfacilem historiarum cognitionem (Method, for the Easy Comprehension of History—1566). This was a personal notebook in which each schoolboy (and later, adult reader) was taught to enter and sort under subject headings interesting turns of phrase, opinions, or facts of all kinds encountered in reading, travel, and daily life, for later retrieval and use. As a warehouse of information the commonplace book was indefinitely expandable and flexible, able to accommodate new and disparate material without internal tension, including the results of direct observation and empirical investigations. By divorcing its contents from their original contexts, the commonplace book tended to reduce to equal status "facts" of all categories; by breaking down natural knowledge into hundreds of separate issues requiring causal explanation, it required neither consistency nor a totalizing answer. Bodin's reliance on a book of natural commonplaces in composing the Theatrum can help to account for features peculiar to this work, such as its way of explaining facts that are taken for granted or its juxtaposition of discrete particulars according to loose thematic and topical links, and features which have puzzled modern assessments of Renaissance natural philosophy more generally, like the coexistence of traditional with "modern" elements, of critical judgment with "credulousness" and contradictions. As a method of managing information, the commonplace book was perfectly suited to handle the explosion of knowledge in the late Renaissance without cognitive dissonance. What Edward Grant has argued of medieval Aristotelianism,

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that its longevity was due to its great flexibility and to the atomization of scholastic literature, also holds for this method of traditional natural philosophy, which survived what might otherwise have been fatal internal tensions and succumbed only to external attacks.7 Judging from the scholarly reception of the Theatrum, this cycle of producing natural knowledge from texts continued at least through the first half of the seventeenth century, with no hint of an imminent demise. Given their versatility, these bookish methods cannot in themselves account for the forms of Bodin's arguments. In chapter 3 I examine the uses to which Bodin put the method of commonplaces: notably, his unusually eclectic choice and treatment of sources, and his construction of arguments less often from the "demonstrative reasons" that he announces, than from a mix of looser, dialectical arguments characteristic of sixteenth-century legal reasoning—arguments from authority, experience, and religious principle, even from highly idiosyncratic allegorical interpretations. In chapter 4 I pursue in more depth the peculiarities of Bodin's agenda. The Theatrum is part of a surge of natural theological works in late sixteenth-century France, prompted by widespread fears of a generalized loss of faith during the -virtually continuous civil wars of religion between 1562 and 1598 and designed to show from rational, philosophical arguments the truth of key religious tenets. Developed as an argument against the Epicurean denial of divine governance of this world, and touted during the Middle Ages as a method for converting Jews and Muslims (e.g., by Peter Abelard and Ramon Lull), in the late Renaissance natural theology offered grounds for agreement among the warring religious parties by demonstrating from reason alone a common core of piety. In addition, for Bodin, natural theology put philosophy back on its proper, pious track, and showed the absurd falsity of those philosophies, including Aristotelianism, Epicureanism, and natural magic, which did not sufficiently acknowledge the providence, free will, and omnipotence of God, or the limits of human reason. The Theatrum thus tackles some of the oldest problems in the Judeo-Christian tradition, of reconciling faith and biblical authority with the attractive elements of ancient pagan philosophies. By the mid-sixteenth century, both the philosophy and the religion that Thomas Aquinas had so powerfully reconciled had exploded into multiple alternatives; Bodin's attempt at a new reconciliation is one among many such attempts during this period, which include Gassendi's Christianized Epicureanism or Lipsius's Christianized Stoicism. Although Bodin, too, maintains that religion and philosophy cannot contradict one another, the synthesis he proposes is quite unique. His natural philosophy is a largely anti-Aristotelian concoction of different (e.g., Stoic, Neoplatonic, and Judaized) elements, and the "piety" he defends is so devoid of confessional features that it omits any reference even to the major Christian doctrines (e.g., redemption) that were standard in contemporary natural theologies. Others have expertly explicated Bodin's private, Judaized religion.8 My purpose is rather to follow his supraconfessional strategy in the Theatrum. In Books I and IV Bodin claims to demonstrate from philosophy key religious principles: that the world is not eternal (against Aristotle), and, against the Epicureans, Averroes and most re-

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cently the Italian Aristotelian Pomponazzi, that the personal soul is immortal (and, he shows in the process, corporeal). In the natural-historical Books II and III, Bodin brings back myriad particulars of nature to the providence of God, with careful emphasis on the limits of human reason in understanding phenomena that are in fact supernatural and carried out by the activity of demons. Bodin's project in Theatrum to build basic religious consensus from the study of nature shows that the tradition of natural and physico-theologies, which is well known from the late seventeenth to the early nineteenth centuries, began well before then. My final major theme is the struggle characteristic of the late Renaissance of bringing order and coherence to ever-increasing quantities of knowledge—what Roger Chartier has aptly called the "tension between the exhaustive and the essential."9 On the one hand, Renaissance pedagogy and dialectic emphasized the importance of correct ordering for learning and research; on the other hand, the breakdown of medieval disciplinary boundaries, for both intellectual and institutional reasons, the multiplication of new sources of knowledge, and the accelerated circulation of texts through printing could only overwhelm idealized schemas of knowledge. Solutions to the problem of order ranged from self-consciously disordered miscellanies which justified themselves by reference to ancient models and the pleasure derived from their variety, to rigidly structured textbooks or charts, which touted their utility, but preserved order at the expense of content. Between these extremes, authors attempted all kinds of systematic, topical arrangements, and some resorted to the inferior, because merely arbitrary, alphabetical arrangement, found for example in most dictionaries and a few commonplace books. The universal refrain was the need to balance utility with pleasure, the unity of order with the variety of the material. Like so many contemporaries, Bodin starts off by proclaiming the dignity of order and the unique validity of his arrangement in the Theatrum, but in practice (as I show in chapter 2), the details succeed one another according to a fairly arbitrary (although often elegant) chain of thought. In chapter 5 I explore Bodin's double use of the metaphor of the "theater." First, nature is a theater or a spectacle laid out by God for human contemplation, which is both beautifully varied and perfectly ordered by its Creator. Second, Bodin unself-consciously conflates the theater of nature that is his subject with the "Theater of Nature" that is the book he has written, in which Bodin, too, tries to match variety with unifying order. In the first part of the chapter, I trace the widespread use of the "theater of nature" among contemporary natural philosophical authors. In the second part, I take as a point of departure Bodin's statements in the Theatrum in which he describes his book entitled "theater" as a kind of table (tabula) presenting a vast and complex subject matter in a clear and synthetic order, to consider works entitled "theater" across many disciplines in the period 1550-1700. Although I do not claim to have exhausted the vast number of works entitled "theater," I offer a rough typology of the various forms and functions that authors signaled for their works by the use of this title. With the exception of "laments" which play off the better-known topos of the theatrum mundi

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to explose the tragicomedy of human existence, the title most often connotes, as in Bodin's Theatrum, the ambition of treating a large subject systematically, as if in a tabular fashion. As a result, it applies to works that implement this contradictory task in different ways—from skeletal charts to anthologies in which complex organizational schemes yield to simple accumulation of a mass of material. I present this brief survey of a vast topic—my own attempt at a "theater"—as a prelude to a larger project on encyclopedism in early modern Europe. This book is informed by a number of historiographic perspectives. In the history of science recent scholarship has begun to compensate for the long-standing emphasis of the discipline on the modern aspects of sixteenth- and seventeenthcentury science and to refine our understanding of Renaissance natural philosophy, once dismissed as stagnant. Charles Schmitt has established that Aristotelianism did not impose a narrow dogmatism in the Renaissance (if ever it did), but embraced an eclectic and heterogeneous array of sources, interpretations, and direct criticisms of the Philosopher.10 The old assumption that the humanist movement with its literary emphasis was antithetical to the development of "science" is also being overturned. Recent work on Kepler, Mersenne, and Gassendi reveals the impact of humanist disciplines such as philology, dialectic, or the history of philosophy on well-known contributors to the emergence of modem science.11 My aim in bringing to light Jean Bodin's natural philosophy is not to argue that he should be included among these canonical figures, but to extend the range of authors and texts included in the history of science. Bodin's type of natural philosophy generated more texts and more readers in its time than those authors who have been singled out as forward-looking; to study it is to shed light not only on the context in which the writers of the "avant-garde" wrote and were first received, but also on the assumptions and expectations that they shared with lesser-known but more representative contemporaries. That Jean Bodin is, of course, no "ordinary" author, given his reputation in political philosophy and his various idiosyncratic views, adds a further dimension of interest to the The­ atrum without making it less revealing (to careful analysis) of its cultural context. Historians of literature are also branching out from their own set of canonical figures to consider natural philosophical texts. Scholars of the French Renaissance in particular have produced ground-breaking studies on the monstrous and prodigious, the occult and text-based cosmography.12 Considerations of composition, structure, and metaphor have yielded valuable insights for my study of Bodin's Theatrum. My argument for the use of commonplace books in natural philosophy, for example, is inspired by recent work on Montaigne and Shakespeare.13 In turn 1 hope that the metaphor of the "theater of nature" that I explicate in Bodin and many other natural philosophical authors will become recognized as a widespread and distinct counterpart to the well-known topos of the "theater of the world" traced by literary historians. Furthermore, my survey of the metaphor of the book as theater is designed as a complement to the studies of medieval and Renaissance "mirrors."14 As cultural history, this study is especially influenced by new developments in the history of the book and of reading. A whole range of questions concerning the book as physical object and commercial commodity and the reader as consumer

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and appropriates has added intellectual depth to the traditional pleasures of bibliophilia.15 Combining the focus of the history of the book with the model of "total" studies of specific places pioneered by the Annales school, I propose what one might call an "histoire totale" of one book. I follow the Theatrum from its origins in the printshop (where a dispute concerning the publication of the French translation has left traces in the archives) and in the commonplace books of the author, to its resting point in the notes and citations of its readers. Its reception by erudite and both cultivated and popular vernacular audiences illuminates the different rhythms and forms of appropriation of a text as physical book: the original Latin text with few aids to the reader made its greatest impact in the years after its initial publication; the French translation tried to enhance the consultability of the work and to reach a wider cultivated audience, without much success in its day (but more among today's historians); while the popular adaptation of the Theatrum to cheap editions of problemata, imitated from the classical questionand-answer form, had the longest staying power of all, past the death of traditional natural philosophy in learned circles. Of course this book is also about Jean Bodin, who, despite an abundant literature,16 remains an elusive figure on historical as well as intellectual grounds,17 ranging from the banality of his name18 to the heterodoxy of his thought. He was born in 1529 or 1530 in Angers to a moderately well-off family (his father was a master tailor; his maternal relatives included a procureur). His mother, Catherine Dutertre, was from Anjou, and neither Marrano nor Jewish, as a persistent myth has maintained.19 He was sent for his education to a Carmelite monastery in Angers, then probably on to Paris (ca. 1545-48). He may have matriculated at the University of Paris;20 even if he did not, he probably attended public lectures introducing him to the main intellectual currents of the day, such as those of Petrus Ramus on dialectic and rhetoric, or Adrien Turnebe on Greek philology, from whom he was accused of plagiarizing in his first publication, a Latin verse translation with commentary of Oppian's Cynegetica (1555).21 He may have been the "Jehan Baudin" tried for heresy in Paris in 1548 whose fate is unknown. In any case he was released from his vows as a Carmelite (taken while under age) in 1548.22 He turned to the study of law, first in his home town, then in Toulouse.23 Despite lingering uncertainty concerning his whereabouts in the early 1550s (possibly Geneva in 1552),24 Bodin earned his law degree at Toulouse, where humanistic reforms in legal education had already been introduced, although the law faculty there remained more conservative than others. Bodin strove to find a position for himself at the university,25 or as headmaster in one of the new humanist colleges planned in Toulouse, delivering for the latter purpose an eloquent speech hailing the rebirth of letters under Francis I.26 After the failure of these attempts, Bodin can next be traced taking the oath of Catholicity required for admission as an avocat at the Parlement of Paris in 1562. In 1570 he was appointed commissioner for reform of forest tenures in Normandy, with the task of reviving a royal privilege fallen into disuse.27 Given the difficulty of identifying him, we know Bodin best by his publications.28 Already in 1566, the Methodus, one of the important humanist treatises on how to read, evaluate, and write histories, also included a tripartite plan of study

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of things human, natural, and divine, and announced his polymathic interests. 29 It was followed by reflections on the inflation experienced in sixteenth-century Europe, 30 and an attempt at systematizing law, the Juris universi distributio (1578), probably based on a manuscript finished much earlier. 31 Bodin achieved national and European renown with his Six livres de la Republique (1576). 32 In this long, often rambling work, Bodin replaced Aristotle's notion of governments that "mix" elements of the democratic, aristocratic, and monarchical forms with a notion of sovereignty that is necessarily indivisible and absolute, and ideally vested in a hereditary monarch · He based his arguments on a comparative study of goyernments through history, gathered from his wide-ranging erudition, and on his horror of the civil disturbances that convulsed France from 1562 on: for Bodin, the monarch is bound by his conscience to govern according to the "law of God and of nature," and to act in all things to preserve the state, but, whatever his decisions, the subjects (including the nobility and magistrates) have no right to resist, even on religious grounds.33 For laying the theoretical foundations of absolutism, Bodin was hailed in his own day, and since, as one of the principal modern authorities in political philosophy. Meanwhile Bodin had settled in Laon, where he married Francoise Trouillart, the widow of a controller of the royal domain and the sister of a royal ρ rocureur. In 1576 Bodin participated in the Estates General, as a representative of the Third Estate from Vermandois. Bodin argued for peace and resisted the king's desire to alienate royal lands in order to fund continued war against the Protestants, drawing from his own theory that the fundamental duty of kings was to preserve the state (starting with the royal demesne).3* In so doing, he alienated himself from the king, whose favor he seemed to be courting, and spent the rest of his life in retirement from the center of politics, taking over his brother-in-law's office as procureurdu roi in Laon at the latter's death in 1587 and returning to his writing. In 1580 he published the De la demonomanie des sorciers, which was widely reprinted and translated into Latin, German, and Italian, in which he railed against the growing worship of Satan and called for the persecution of suspected witches by all means necessary.35 Alfred Soman has shown that, although Bodin was a prosecutor, he probably never tried a witchcraft case, and was considered extreme among his colleagues, whom he openly accused of sympathizing with witches for prosecuting them too leniently.36 He also prepared a second French edition of the Republique and a significantly revised Latin translation (published in 1586), from which translations into other vernaculars were made. From roughly 1571 to 1584, Bodin served in the household of the king's youngest brother, Frangois due d'Alengon, who became due d'Anjou in 1576. Alengon was at the center of a group of malcontents who formed the core of the politique party favoring religious toleration to end the civil wars.37 As part of Alengon's retinue, Bodin participated in the delegation that welcomed the Polish ambassadors come to greet their new king Henry of Anjou in Metz in 1573,38 and traveled to England in 1581 in the advance party charged with negotiating a marriage contract between Frangois and Queen Elizabeth (which failed); he accompanied Frangois to Flanders in 1582-83 in a military attempt to drive out the

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Spaniards (also a failure). Bodin's hopes for reward in the duke's household were dashed at the latter's death in 1584. Bodin also performed odd legal services for noblemen, including the marquis de Moy (1580-93) and Henry of Navarre.39 By the 1580s Bodin had two sons, Jean and Elie, who both died before adulthood, and a feeble-minded daughter, Antoinette, who lived under tutelage and died without issue.40 He was constantly in financial straits, which may help to explain (along with intellectually consistent reasons advanced by Paul Rose) why he continued to serve in his office when the city of Laon was governed by the Catholic League after 1588.·" In 1594 Bodin slipped out of the city to meet the royal troops come (successfully) to bring Laon under the control of the new king, Henry IV.42 It is at this point, 1 would suggest, that Bodin met Jacques Mitte de Chevrieres, a lieutenant to the king in the Lyonnais who had accompanied Henry in his Northern campaign, and to whom Bodin dedicated the Universae naturae theatrum.43 Two references in the text (pp. 560, 563) indicate that the Theatrum was composed in 1590; the preface is dated March 1, 1596. By early June of the same year Bodin had died of the plague. Bodin left a will, last seen by Gilles Menage in the late seventeenth century, in which he reportedly asked that a number of his manuscripts be burned, and that he be buried in the Church of the Franciscans.44 Jacques Gillot refers to a final poem that Bodin composed on his death bed, in which he made no reference to Jesus Christ and concludes that "the naughty man . . . died a Jew."45 This and other comments, along with peculiar biases in Bodin's works, have raised questions about Bodin's religious position and relation to Judaism that continue to be discussed.46 Bodin's beliefs have been so elusive precisely because he veiled heterodox views under conventional practice and preferred to rally readers to the cause of a "piety" which he cautiously left mostly unspecified. A manuscript on religion generally attributed to Bodin was circulated clandestinely until its first publication in the mid-nineteenth century;47 the Colloquium heptaplomeres or "conversation of the seven wise men," portrays a debate between seven men, who each argue for a different religion (including some scathing attacks on Christianity), before deciding to abandon the topic and live harmoniously together without further discussion.48 Although the dialogue form here (unlike in the Theatrum) is exploited for ambiguity, and the author's intention has been much debated, the Colloquium is noted for its implicit call for religious toleration and indifference to matters of ritual.49 In addition, Bodin published in 1596 another, short dialogue concerning ethical questions, his Paradoxon or "paradox that there is no virtue in the middle way" which he also translated into French.50 Unlike most late humanists, Bodin comes down to us as a solitary figure, who left practically no manuscript correspondence,51 and was frequently marginalized and harassed. He was arrested in 1568-69, possibly preventively (to guard him against more violent vigilante attacks), on suspicion of heterodoxy (presumably of Protestant leanings);52 under the League in Laon he was denounced twice as heterodox, his house searched, and a number of his books burned.53 He fell out of favor with Henry III, after participating for a few months in his academy,54 never reaped any significant rewards from his service to Alengon (who was sus-

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pected of plotting against his brother Henry III and was therefore allowed little power), and died early in Henry IV's reign. He was remembered as a mediocre lawyer, who was not well liked by his colleagues.55 Nonetheless, Bodin was not only a prolific and onginal author, but unusually widely read and engaged in issues of immediate contemporary significance. Bodin's works are often the richest source of biographical details, in particular of the personal contacts which were crucial to the exchange of ideas as well as natural specimens (and books).56 The Theatrum reveals, for example, that Bodin met William of Orange and the renowned cartographer Abraham Ortelius (presumably during his trip to the Netherlands in 1582-83). Bodin also met with John Dee, according to the latter's diary for 1581, and has an entry in Janus Dousa's liber amicorum .57 Furthermore, Auger Ferrier, engaged in a bitter fight with Bodin over astrological conclusions and scholarly reputation, reveals in passing that Bodin traveled to Italy some time before 1580.58 The Universae naturae theatrum, which has recently begun to be studied,59 does not so much provide grounds for a major reinterpretation of Bodin, as force us to take seriously the wide range and the internal coherence of his thought. Instead of parceling out his contributions to different disciplines and evaluating them separately, we should consider his works as he did, as parts of a single program of study. Although Bodin has often been described as Janus-faced, torn between the modern insights of the Republique and the superstitions of the Demonomanie,60 Paul Rose has rightly emphasized that the apparent paradoxes in Bodin's thought arise more from a modernizing interpretation of his work than from his arguments themselves.61 Bodin consistently envisions God as active in both nature and human affairs, to reward, punish, and govern the world, often acting through the intermediary of demons at his command. To worship these demons (or Satan, their leader) is to deny the greater glory of God; such idolatry and impiety is at the root of the moral degeneration of society, and of the civil wars, famines, and other disturbances permitted by God in vengeful wrath. To restore order Bodin calls for the obedience of subjects (in the Republique), the eradication of witchcraft (in the Demonomanie), and the universal acknowledgment (in the Theatrum) of a few core religious principles—divine omnipotence, providence, and justice. In his political as welt as his natural philosophy Bodin seeks grounds for stability across doctrinal differences as a solution to the wars that, plagued most of his adult life, and to which he refers repeatedly in his later works.62 Bodin is also consistent in his methods of engaging a vast array of sources to support his argument. Bodin was admired by contemporaries, even by the king (despite the latter's displeasure with him), for his abundant wit and "the quantity of wonderful things (pulcherrimarum rerum copia) that he drew from his acute memory on all subjects."63 Whether he actually kept commonplace notebooks as he advocates in the Methodus, at the very least his mind operated like a set of notebooks, storing up information from his encyclopedic reading among ancient and modern writers. He would retrieve the material according to the topic at hand, often accumulating multiple examples to make a point so thoroughly as to drown it out (as in the Republique), or juxtaposing different cases with little connective

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argument (as in the Theatrum). Bodin also reuses the same material, and in his last work cites nearly every one of his earlier Publications.6'1 His articulation of evidence with argument is more effective in the Republique, where he selects facts to support specific conclusions, honed no doubt by his experience in politics and the legal profession. In the Theatrum, his argument that God is provident and omnipotent could be equally served by any natural phenomenon, so that his choice of evidence inevitably seems arbitrary. In both cases the dialectical skills of the lawyer predominate over any systematic or logical structure. Finally, Bodin worked fast, often from tacit intermediate sources, generating errors at the same rhythm as the massive erudite volumes that are the hallmark of late humanist polymathy. My contributions to a better understanding of Bodin's thought are mostly a byproduct of a fine-grained analysis of the Theatrum undertaken in the first instance in order to examine, through its example, the methods and practices of traditional natural philosophy in the late Renaissance. To consider the Theatrum in this cultural context is not only to take a new approach to old questions in the history of science about the persistence of tradition and the emergence of the modern, but also to show how, despite its idiosyncracies, Bodin's work was typical of a number of trends in natural history, natural theology, and encyclopedism in the late Renaissance.

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JEAN BODIN'S Theatrum brings to light a kind of natural philosophy which is not

often taken seriously in the history of science—works designed to instruct and delight nonspecialists, from university students and other "studious persons" to more general readers, for example, those identified as the "curious." This more "ordinary" natural philosophy, not noted for avant-garde contributions to special fields, has frequently been ignored as mere compilation or vulgarization. But in expanding its horizons to include such works the history of science (in any period) stands to gain new insights into the purpose and content of natural philosophy for a broader range of authors and readers than the canonical "forwardlooking" few. The late Renaissance in particular fostered an explosion of works of general natural philosophy. Authors in many different professions and circumstances extolled the virtues of the study of nature, as morally uplifting, useful, and pleasantly varied. The fluidity of the social and cultural position of the field allowed for the publication of many different kinds of works, including some identifiable genres (new and not so new) and a number of individual books which, like Bodin's Theatrum, combined the elements of different kinds without fitting any in particular. In this chapter 1 discuss Bodin's explicit statements of purpose and method and other implicit generic "signals" in the context of contemporary works that share various features with the Theatrum. In trying to address the basic but elusive questions of who wrote works of general natural philosophy, how, why and for whom, I propose drawing from literary studies a rudimentary notion of "genre" or "kind" and from the history of the book an awareness of the material aspects of books.1 The premise is simple: in every book the producers, who comprise not only the author but also the publisher-bookseller2 (and, where applicable, illustrator, translator, or other specialists), send implicit and explicit messages to potential readers and buyers in which they communicate what kind of a work it is. Price, length, and format—factors closely interrelated given the high cost of paper in this period—constrain the accessibility of a work according to the buyer's pocketbook; language (Latin or a vernacular) and style of presentation (more or less erudite, e.g., with or without marginal references, Greek or Hebrew words) according to the reader's educational level. These factors by no means determine readership: wealthy and welleducated readers used books designed for broader audiences, and, as the case of Carlo Ginzurg's famous miller illustrates, "popular" readers could make sense of more learned works;3 furthermore not all readers were buyers, nor all buyers readers. Only a study of the reception of a work, such as I have tried to offer in chapter 6 for Bodin's Theatrum, can determine the nature of the communication be-

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tween author and audience. Nevertheless the most readily accessible source, the book itself, can reveal a lot about the author's motivations and intended audience. In addition to the factors mentioned above, the structure of a book (the nature and number of its divisions, the presence of a table of contents, of one or more indexes, of illustrations of various types, and so on) and, more generally, its tone give clues for what has been called the "task for the reader," that is, the work that the reader is expected to perform in using the book (e.g., scholarly study, pedagogical revision, light reading, intermittent consultation).4 Subject matter may also contribute to distinctions between genres, but most subjects can be adapted to a number of different kinds, as the range within natural philosophy makes clear. A book concentrates many of its generic "signals" in its liminary material— in the title page and frontispiece, dedications, permissions and privileges, laudatory odes, prefatory or introductory statements by the author or others involved in producing the work. The text that follows then elaborates on but can also in various ways diverge from these opening messages. Indeed Renaissance literature is well known for its development of hybrid and uncanonical forms and its delight in mixing heterogeneous materials;5 natural philosophical authors certainly contributed to this wealth of textual experimentation. The heightened desire, characteristic of humanism, to study and rework the ancient models is arguably at the heart of the most canonical developments of the period, Nicolaus Copernicus' De revolutiombus orbium coelestium and Andreas Vesalius' De humani corporis fabrica, which set new standards in form and content for treatises in mathematical astronomy and anatomical description respectively. In natural history the discoveries of new worlds as well as new texts (Dioscorides, Theophrastus) and new philological concerns applied to old classics (like Pliny's Natural History) spawned carefully illustrated works of precise description and increasing specialization; examples range from Leonard Fuchs' history of plants (1543), to Pierre Belon's smaller vernacular histories of birds and fish (1555), to Ulisse Aldrovandi's mammoth publications and still larger plans—his treatment of chickens fills an entire book as Volume II, Book XIV of his OrnithoJogia (1600).6 The^emergence of princely courts as sources of patronage and places for social advancement made possible works that presented practical topics, for example in engineering or instrumentation, as worthy of respect and theoretical discussion; thus Niccolo Tartaglia imitated the axiomatic structure of Euclid's Elements in explaining his theory of ballistics in the Nova scientia (1543), and characteristically gave a Latin title to his vernacular text. Printing played a crucial role in spreading these innovations so that they could be imitated and drawn from in turn, sure signs of their having gained the status of recognizable genres. Similarly for the kinds of general natural philosophy that I will focus on here, humanism and the discoveries of the Renaissance, printing and increased social mobility all helped to shape new genres and broader readerships in both Latin and the vernacular.7 In addition, two other features of late Renaissance culture especially affected works for nonspecialists: the rapid growth of higher education throughout Europe and the continuous religious conflicts. The religious strife

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that was ever present between 1550 and 1650, flaring up with more immediacy in different years and places, focused new attention on the notion, backed by biblical and classical authority, that the study of nature is morally uplifting.8 Every author repeated this argument; some exploited it as an easy justification for their work, but most were deeply influenced by the notion that nature brings us closer to God. It may seem ironic, but many of the contemporaries of and participants in violent and impassioned religious conflicts genuinely feared a rise of irreligion and vice, which they interpreted as either a cause or a consequence of the dissension. A focus on natural phenomena could remedy the situation in one (or both) of two ways: accounts of prodigious and supernatural occurrences reminded readers of the awesome power and wrath of God and would instill dread of wrongdoing and fear of punishment; on the other hand the beauty and admirable harmonies and causal interconnections of the natural world would inspire all who contemplated them to love and worship the divine Creator. Due to the broad appeal of their moral message histoires prodigieuses and natural theologies appeared in both Latin and the vernacular. Although these genres were not directly located within natural philosophy, they used natural philosophical topics for their moral ends and in turn inspired moral arguments in works devoted primarily to understanding nature. The multiplication of universities and academies in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries (generally attributed to the need for trained bureaucracies in the emerging nation states or, in the case of the German-language area, to the competition for students between areas of rival religions) renewed humanist interest in pedagogy and a competition for the easiest and clearest presentations of Aristotelian philosophy.9 Academic publications of all kinds soared: theses to be defended, professorial treatises and commentaries, and a most successful new genre which first appeared in the 1550s—the textbook or primer promising shortcuts to learning and the essentials of a discipline more or less reduced to outline form.10 Soon textbooks also spread beyond the student market, notably in the vernacular." Although the structure of university education often remained little changed from medieval statutes, the demand for greater accessibility affected the nature of classroom teaching: textbooks multiplied, especially in northern universities, gradually allowing for greater distance from assigned Aristotelian texts;12 and commentaries, which were favored in Italy, replaced scholastic levels of argumentative intricacy with simpler variations on the objection-and-response format and included wide-ranging digressions.13 At the other end of the educational spectrum, genres designed for broader audiences (both in Latin and the vernacular) abandoned pedagogical organization in favor of largely miscellaneous (or at best, topical) collections, of "lessons," "problems," or secrets. The problemata, centered on the models of Aristotle, Alexander of Aphrodisias, and Plutarch (all but the last of which are today considered spurious), compiled causal answers to natural and medical questions. Already popular in the Middle Ages, this genre took on new proportions in the Renaissance with the advent of printing and of numerous imitations and versions of the ancient texts, including the Problemata Bodini adapted from Bodin's Theatrum.

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In a parallel but better-known tradition, the pseudo-Aristotelian Secreta secretorum inspired a succession of books of secrets through the Middle Ages and the Renaissance; their popularity fueled by printing, the compilations of practical recipes ranged from Latin works introduced with high-minded declarations to more basic vernacular lists of "secrets," often sorted by type." Finally, genuine miscellanies under an assortment of picturesque titles (e.g., "lessons" and "gardens") self-consciously avoided order in favor of a varied and pleasant rambling which often included natural topics. Between these roughly defined genres, a number of individual works eclectically combined different elements without inspiring imitators or founding a genre of their own. Girolamo Cardano's two encyclopedic works focused on the themes of subtlety and variety (De subtilitate, 1550, and De varietate, 1557) are famous specimens of such idiosyncracy. Focusing on "subtlety" or things difficult either to perceive or to understand, Cardano ranges from natural to artificial and mechanical phenomena, crossing disciplinary boundaries; he reveals practical secrets of medicine and other trades; and he overlays naturalistic explanations with interpretations of portents and moral messages in nature. Cardano1S attacks on Aristotelian philosophy and deviation from traditional genres attracted the ire of Julius Caesar Scaliger who devoted a volume larger than Cardano's original to a refutation of De subtilitate. But this work too, divided into 365 sections of commentary of varying lengths, incorporates a vast and disordered array of philosophical arguments and historical and natural details which are in practice only accessible through the index provided in each edition.15 Nonetheless both works were widely read and cited until well into the seventeenth century. My point is not to analyze these works, which would richly reward close study,16 but to note that Bodin's generic eclecticism in the Theatrum was not unique; experimentation with forms and arguments adapted from existing kinds was a characteristic feature of Renaissance natural philosophical literature. Bodin's 633-page octavo volume with many erudite notes in the margins and only a few woodcut diagrams probably cost more than a simple textbook but less than larger ox more technical works (such as Scaliger's long quarto or works with extensive Greek or illustrations).17 While its erudition and philosophical originality suited it well to professors and scholars, Bodin's Theatmm was also designed to be pedagogical, with its question-and-answer format and its broad coverage of natural philosophy from first principles to metals and minerals, plants and animals, souls, angels, and the heavenly bodies. Its appeal to the growing university audience of the German-language area probably motivated the famous humanist presses of the Wechel family to republish the Theatrum twice: Frankfurt, 1597, and Hanau, 1605.'8 But the Wechels did not bother with the trouble and expense of securing a privilege to guarantee their sole ownership of publication rights for a few years—they only did so for fast-selling pedagogical manuals or lectures." Its rambling organization and special emphasis on natural history, its inclusion of practical recipes and philosophical contentiousness, kept the Theatrum from fitting the standards of academic natural philosophy. But the Theatrum fit very nicely into the Wechels' general emphasis on humanist scholarship of a philo-

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sophical and encyclopedic bent, which sought not to "destroy the notion of traditional authority, [but] rather to subsume it in some larger framework."20 By exalting a nonconfessional God the Theatrum contributed to the Wechel policy of cultivating "areas of accommodation" during the religious wars rather than staking out polemical or dogmatic positions.21 The commonplace conclusion that science and religion were inextricably intertwined in the early modern period has been founded mostly on studies of prominent figures like Kepler, Galileo, or Newton, and on the long debates prompted by Robert Merton's hypothesis of a link between Protestantism and modern science in the seventeenth century.22 But Bodin's Theatrum and the natural theologies and histoires prodigieuses with which I compare it in the next section show how religious themes permeated traditional and encyclopedic natural philosophy in the northern, sixteenth-century Renaissance. On the one hand, natural theologies emphasized the providential arrangement of nature in its normal, law-abiding course; on the other hand, histoires prodigieuses with their accounts of disasters and monsters were reminders of the possibility of direct intervention by an omnipotent God. The Theatrum combined both kinds of demonstrations of divine greatness.

THE DEDICATION OF THE THEATRUM AND THE RELIGIOUS SIGNIFICANCE OF NATURE

At the age of sixty-six Bodin had achieved European renown for his earlier works but stood little chance of social or political advancement from his isolation in the small city of Laon in northern France. The sober opening of the Theatrum suggests that Bodin did not compose it out of ambition for specific external rewards. No poems of praise boast of the author's accomplishments; a simple title page announces the goals and structure of the book: to "contemplate the efficient and final causes of all things and to discuss their continuous series in five books." The work is dedicated to Jacques Mitte de Chevrieres, descendant of an old noble family of Lyon, who probably underwrote the publication of the work and engaged the services of the local printer Jacques Roussin (Bodin had no obvious connections with Lyonnais printers, as his earlier works were published in Paris).25 Like Bodin, Chevrieres at first supported the League but went out to meet the king's troops as they approached his city; he was so successful in helping to bring about Lyon's bloodless capitulation that he gained the trust of the royalists and in 1601 was named lieutenant governor of the Lyonnais.24 Bodin could have met Chevrieres when the latter was among the leaders of the royalist troops approaching Laon as Bodin slipped out to meet them.25 Chevrieres certainly offered a perfect model of political redemption from ligueur allegiance which Bodin perhaps hoped for himself. Chevrieres was also a patron of letters, the dedicatee of at least one other work, a comedy by a local author.26 He and his wife Gabrielle de Gadagne owned a number of learned works, especially in human and natural

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history—including histories of Poland, of northern peoples, of France, and Pierre Belon's history of fish—as well as more pedagogical and practical works on grammar, architecture, and running a country estate.27 Bodin's praise of the learning of his dedicatee (sig. 5r) may be more than a hollow formula, but a genuine expression of shared interests, given how much Bodin appreciated just those kinds of historical and informative works. Unfortunately I have found no further evidence of the relationship between the two men; in particular no relevant letters of Bodin's survive. Bodin's dedication contains the necessary praise of Chevrieres' nobility, which shines forth in turn in his virtue, military prowess, political skill, erudition, and lineage; but Bodin's tone is not one of a client addressing his patron (in contrast, for example, with the front matter by Frangois de Fougerolles in the French translation of the Theatrum—see chapter 6).28 Bodin expresses his gratitude and the hope that others who pride themselves on their nobility will follow Chevrieres' example in embracing learning (sig. 5v), but he reserves his greatest eloquence for the nobility of his subject matter—natural philosophy and above all nature itself: Although there ate many types of praiseworthy arts which are removed from the sordid pursuit of wealth, among all of these, however, none is more illustrious by its antiquity or superior in dignity or more pleasant to know [than natural knowledge]. Indeed while other arts and disciplines can in some way point to their authors, by whose work and industry they were invented and perfected, nonetheless natural knowledge [naturalis sciential has none other than God himself for author and master. (Sig. 2r-v)

As direct divine creation nature is the most venerable, most worthy and most pleasant of all subjects. This kind of superlative praise of one's topic is characteristic of prefatory epistles and may seem merely formulaic. But the famous political philosopher and historian of law goes on to explain that nature is the foundation of all justice and the only source of certainty. Already in the Republique Bodin had declared the supremacy of the "law of God and of nature" (la Ioy de Dieu et de nature) which even the absolute sovereign must obey and which prevails over all other positive laws including international or socalled "natural law" (droit natureI)29 Many of his arguments—against slavery, for example, or in defense of the hierarchies of family and state—rest on an appeal to nature. For Bodin the argument from nature is final and requires no elaboration because it carries the unquestioned authority of divine decree. Bodin reasserts this principle in the Theatrum: "Furthermore unless the science of laws itself, which they call architektonike as governess of all the arts, refers back to nature, it will seem a science of injustice not of law" (sig. 2v).30 But Bodin's tone has changed from his earlier faith in the possibility of finding and applying justice. Near the end of a lifetime of reflection and reading, Bodin has reached the sorry conclusion that human judgment is fickle, differing from place to place, reversing itself over time. He thus rejects his original enthusiasm for a comparative study of law (or so he emphasizes in this work on a new topic).31

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But how can one call a discipline that [field] which above all relies on the principle that "error makes the law"? From this it is well enough understood why from the memory of all ages, times, and cities the ends of this discipline could not be established, since it depends on the judgment and errors of men, so that what some judge worthy of reward others will condemn to punishment. These [thoughts] certainly called me back from the collection I had started on laws, gathered from all the customs and institutions of almost all peoples and compared with one another by lengthy labor so that something certain could be established. I realized that all the edicts, decrees, laws of the peoples are left rashly to the judgment and passion of men unless they rely on the law of God, that is, the law of nature, to guide their blind steps as if in a labyrinth. (Sigs. 2v-3r)

Comparison of Bodin's position with that of a famous contemporary colleague and compatriot, Michel de Montaigne, is useful to highlight the limits of Bodm's apparently skeptical stance.32 This passage at first seems to echo the celebrated dictum of Montaigne that truth on this side of the mountains is error beyond them.33 But while Montaigne exults in the "variety and dissemblance of the world" and suggests that whatever confidence we have in our knowledge is only the result of weakness of mind,34 Bodin keeps his faith in an absolute truth which we must follow blindly, like Ariadne's thread. This "law of God and of nature" may be difficult to find in human history and law, but it shines forth luminously in the natural world. In nature nothing is uncertain. Fire bums in Persia as it does among the Celts and snow is white everywhere, we even see the constant courses of the celestial orbs so that the decrees that were made from the beginning of their origin are always similar to themselves: and for this reason we are warned by oracles and the decrees and voices of all the wise men to follow nature our guide as a sort of deity. (Sig 3r)

In the last book of his Essais Montaigne too advocates following nature,35 but by this advice he means to abandon the intellectual quest for truth and to listen instead to the unquestionable messages of our natural existence and desires. Bodin, on the contrary, believes earnestly in the investigation of nature as a source of certainty and an answer to skeptical doubts; his argument that fire is hot everywhere, for example, is standard among opponents of the academic skeptics from Augustine to Mersenne.36 Nature's laws are not only constant, but also divine in origin, so that natural philosophy offers unique intellectual and moral rewards. These rewards hinge on the purity and simplicity of nature, as direct divine creation, in praise of which Bodin breaks out into an ecstatic hymn. In a slippage characteristic of the dedication and of the project of the Theatrum more generally (see chapter 5), Bodin moves seamlessly from praise of natural philosophy to praise of the subject matter that makes it so noble—nature itself. "Who could hesitate to give natural science the first rank among all the sciences? . . . Indeed what is more pleasant than to open the hidden folds and meanings of nature? What is more noble than the fact that antipathy and contagion, enmities and

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loves, force and faculty are contained, each with insatiable variety, in the innermost entrails of metals, plants, and animals? What is sweeter than to see the rough beginnings of all things, their sowing, birth, growth, changes, destruction and vicissitudes?" (sig. 4r). So far Bodin praises the activities of natural science to "open the secrets" of nature, to "to see the foundations of all things." But the verbs grow less active, as the emphasis of each sentence shifts toward praise of the object of study away from the act of study. "What is more admirable than to watch in OUT breathable sky the generation, of rain, snow, hail, and lightning from insensible exhalation and vapor?" The force of the verb is now totally overwhelmed by the enumeration of the natural phenomena themselves. Natural science gives way to nature as the object of praise, as Bodin moves up through the hierarchy of nature. "But how delightful are so many lights and shapes of fires among the meteors! How admirable the nature of the stars! How varied their courses, . . . sizes, intervals, and the most seemly chorus of the orbs which contain one another as if in mutual embrace of hands! How amazing the constancy of motion in nature constantly moving and changing! How great is the force and power of the immortal souls of which the world is full!" (sigs. 4r—v). By conflating in this way natural philosophy with nature itself, that direct divine creation,37 Bodin gives the most serious motivation to his foray into natural philosophy, although it has more than once been considered misguided (possibly even by some of his contemporaries, as Fougerolles implies in his preface). The Theatrum is not a frivolous end-of-career amusement nor a dazzling display of learning for its own sake, but the final stage of Bodin's lifelong pursuit of knowledge rising up to the divine. In writing the Theatrum Bodin fulfilled a crucial part of his tripartite plan of study, as mapped out in the Methodus of 1566, but also the ideal that he upheld for both state and individuals in the Republique: "We must agree that a people enjoys the sovereign good when it has this goal in its sight, to exercise itself in the contemplation of things natural, human and divine, bringing back all praise to the great Prince of nature. . . . This is [also] the principal goal of the happy life of each individual."38 On this point, then, Bodin and Montaigne were in agreement: contemplation should be the end of an active life.39 But while for Montaigne contemplation revealed human inconstancy and the frailty of all apparent certainties, for Bodin contemplation of the divine creation finally provided the solid bedrock of indisputable certainty that a life of political involvement, especially in a country torn by religious wars, could never reach. As Bodin continues in the dedication it is clear that the Theatrum is more than a personal act of contemplation and worship; he combines the tone of a paean of praise to nature and its Creator with sharp attacks against those who have not grasped its workings, whether particular or general. Many ancient authorities, especially Aristotle, are taken to task in the text for specific shortcomings (e.g., in their causal explanations of natural phenomena). Above all, the dedication vividly casts the entire book as a weapon in the wars of religion—a metaphor in this case, which could be taken quite literally in depictions of those wars.40 Written "when all of Gaul was aflame in a civil war," as Bodin self-consciously states in both the

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dedication and a closing colophon, the Theatrum does not attack any identifiable party in the conflict, but that elusive group, best known from its opponents, of the "impious." How valuable it is that those who cannot be dragged by any precepts of divine laws or oracles of the prophets from their ingrained folly or led to the worship of the true deity, are forced by the most certain demonstrations of this [natural] science, as if under the application of torture and questioning, to reject all impiety and to £\dore one and the same eternal deity! . . . But because often we must dispute with those who have no taste of true piety, they must be constrained by natural science, whose power is so great that it alone can wrest, even from those who are unwilling, clear assent about the state and origin of the world and the infinite power of one eternal God, through the effects and continuous series of causes. (Sigs. 3r—v)

Nature can accomplish, Bodin claims, what divine revelation and injunction cannot. Just as in Roman law countries in this period torture was designed to extract a "voluntary" confession of truth from a suspect against whom there was circumstantial evidence but who refused to admit the truth freely,41 so the study of nature would force the impious to confess what they knew all along but refused to admit openly: the greatness and power of God. Concluding his argument, Bodin explains that the force exerted by the natural philosopher is of a peculiar kind, not physical but intellectual. "It is the duty of the philosopher not to coerce by blatant force, but to urge by reasoning and to teach and draw toward assent with arguments that are not only probable but also necessary. This is above all what we seem to have provided in this disputation" (sig. 4r). Despite this impassioned presentation of the Theatrum as a demonstrative weapon, Bodin does not specify very clearly against whom the persuasive force of natural philosophy must be deployed: his opponents are identified as impious and unwilling to acknowledge God, devoid of the "taste of true piety." In the text Bodin explicitly attacks Epicureans in a few instances, for their claim that the first cause acts necessarily (p. 33) or that the soul is mortal (p. 538), but he also notes that even Epicurus acknowledged that God is most good and most great (p. 38). These otherwise unidentified "Epicureans" serve in part as foils against which Bodin can develop his arguments. But Bodin's impassioned tone in the dedication, which resurfaces periodically in the body of the text,42 indicates that these abstract arguments address what Bodin perceives as a real and immediate danger. Already in the RepubIique Bodin had observed that "the fervent love of the honor of God has been made so lukewarm and even cold from the passage of time that there is danger that it may freeze entirely.1'43 His emotional pitch in the Theatrum is at times reminiscent of the Demonomanie and its alarmed condemnation of witchcraft. As Alfred Soman has shown, Bodin was unusual for his professional class in this virulence against witches;44 but Bodin certainly was not alone in his fear of rising impiety in late sixteenth-century France. Historians have long puzzled over the "atheists" whose existence is loudly deplored in the atheomachiae and defenses of Christianity that multiplied starting in the last third of the sixteenth century.45 Independently of their actual existence,

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on which consensus has yet to be reached, atheists, and the impious more generally, thrived at least in the minds of those who attacked them.46 The wars of religion in particular heightened the horror of unbelief, which was identified not only with members of enemy confessions, but especially with those who supposedly took advantage of the religious strife to reject religion altogether. Thus the Calvinist minister Pierre Viret, whom one might expect to be strictly partisan, voiced a greater fear of the latter than of the former in his Instruction chretienne of 1564, published two years after the outbreak of the first war of religion in France. We have come to a time where there is a danger that we will have more difficulty fighting with these [atheist] monsters than with the superstitious and idolatrous [Catholics], unless God provides for it, as I have good hope that he will. For amid the conflicts which exist today in religion many greatly abuse of the liberty that is given to them to follow either one or the other of the two religions in conflict. Indeed there are many who dispense with both of them and live entirely without any religion 47

Although Viret may have directed these lines in part against specific personal enemies in Geneva,48 his sentiment became the refrain of many French apologists, both Protestant and Catholic, through the early seventeenth century.49 Viret's arguments seemed so compelling, for example, that some years later the Protestant gentleman Pierre de La Primaudaye, who served in the entourage of Henry III and his brother the due d'Alengon, borrowed many of them wholesale in his fourvolume Academie frangoise.50 Returning from the wars of religion, La Primaudaye explains, he found that corruption and depravity had spread in all the estates of the kingdom and that philosophy had become "infected with this execrable atheism" through the teaching of several of those considered the most learned and subtle minds.51 La Primaudaye's "Academie" thus set out to discuss philosophy and to redirect life toward its principal goal of virtuous action. The conversations are reported in the form of a dialogue between Aser1 Amana1 Aram and Achitob1 whose Hebrew names mean respectively Felicity, Truth, Sublimity and Goodness, and presumably lend a specially authentic quality to their words. They take turns concluding each section with an authoritative monologue, to convey unambiguously the author's moral message. To accomplish their moral goals both Viret and La Primaudaye reserve a large place for the study of nature—approximately one third of their works include detailed particulars of nature and a combination of moralizing and providential interpretations. In parallel and overlapping prefaces they explain the purpose of this kind of general natural philosophy: I have not tried to speak of the art and science which belongs to [philosophers and medical doctors] as if it were my profession but to show everyone what is the proper use of this knowledge and how to bring it back to the honor of God. (Viret) . . . For it is required that all those who study in human philosophy . . . be able to convert it to natural theology by which they can learn to know God their Creator in the nature which he created in order to be contemplated through it. (La Primaudaye) . . . 1 have

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tried to show not only how the most simple and ignorant can and must consider the works of creation . . . in order to learn to know God their Creator . . . , but also how the most learned must make use to this same end of all the science and knowledge which they have of all things and of all the liberal arts and human philosophy, and principally the natural philosophers and medical doctors. (Viret)52

Written in French in dialogue form (Viret's Instruction features Nathanael asking questions of Philippe) these works explicitly sought to have a wide impact on both philosophers and non-specialists. La Primaudaye probably expected to attract readership among gentlemen like those he depicts in the work, while Viret's more expensive folio volumes would have been accessible primarily to a learned audience (with access to institutional libraries, for example). Their point was to teach everyone, learned and not so learned, how to appreciate and praise God through consideration of the natural world, how to (in La Primaudaye's words) "convert human philosophy to natural theology." Natural theology, which historians of science rarely mention outside the period of its most visible heyday, roughly 1670-1830, dates back at least, as a term, to the Roman encyclopedist Varro whom Augustine cites in his use of the expression,53 and, as a practice, to Cicero's De natura deorum, from which generations of natural theological writers borrowed examples of the providential arrangement of nature (e.g., the fair and balanced distribution of modes of nourishment and defense to every kind of animal).54 In general, apologetic literature during the Middle Ages was aimed more toward converting the Jews and the Muslims by authoritative arguments, and the intellectual and institutional structures of scholasticism were designed precisely to keep theology inaccessible to the simple reasoning and observation of the nonspecialist.55 Ramon Lull is unusual (and often considered tainted with heterodoxy) for composing a dialogue (in 1270) in which three wise men, each representing one of the three revealed religions, convince by "demonstrative and necessary reasons" a traveler come from a distant land where there is no belief in God.56 Possibly influenced by a reading of Lull, Ramon Sabunde came to stand (posthumously) as the Renaissance founder of the genre. His manuscript of 1436, first published in 1484 as the Liber creaturarum et de homine, was frequently reedited after 1485 under the title Theologia naturalis (ten editions by 1541, another three by 1648); translated into French by Montaigne, it was the inspiration for the longest and most famous of the Essays, the "Apology of Raimond Sebond."37 During the late Renaissance, internal and external threats to the traditional integrity of Christianity—from the new range of rediscovered ancient philosophies and the schism between Protestant and Catholic, as well as the Turkish threat— gave natural theology a new prominence as a versatile and widely accepted argument in defense of Christianity (with or without further partisan positions). The genre often seems dominated by Protestant authors, including Viret, La Primaudaye, or the famous military leader Philippe Duplessis-Mornay.58 Some contained sectarian references, presumably in the hope of drawing readers into Protestantism in the course of a broader defense of Christianity. Others, like La Pri-

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maudaye, presented a defense of positions agreeable to all rather in a spirit of conciliation. But natural theology, by definition largely nonconfessional, also proved useful to Catholic moralists at the end of the sixteenth and in the first half of the seventeenth centuries, in arguing against the perceived threat of libertines and atheists.59 Thus Pierre Charron, notorious for his patchwork composition which leads him to juxtapose rationalist and fideist arguments, devotes one of his Discours chretiens to natural theology, the "Discours de la creation"; there and in his more famous De la sagesse he borrows a number of passages from Bodin's Theatrum.60 The genre culminated in France some fifty years later in the four-volume Theologie naturelle of the Capuchin father Yves de Paris; despite his mystical tendencies, Yves resorts to arguments from nature because they alone can confound those who reject the very authorities on which religion rests in the first instance.61 One must wonder not only whether any such apologetic works ever convinced an impious reader, but also whether their authors sincerely expected to succeed in their appointed task. Duplessis-Momay concedes a less ambitious goal at one point: "indeed, at least, 1 hope to shame [impiety] into silence, to keep its venom within, its own heart."62 Another Protestant apologist, Pacard, is explicitly content with strengthening the faithful, since it is no doubt hopeless to reverse the work of Satan.63 Presumably others too, after proclaiming bold ambitions, also felt the utility of the rather more modest goals of reinforcing and reassuring existing faiths. Bodin's Theatrum both rehearses well-worn natural theological arguments and develops new ones, drawing from and serving as a source in this long tradition. The dedication presents the work as a classic atheomachia. Nonetheless Bodin's Theatrum differs from the genre of the natural theology in two major respects. The first is a matter of emphasis: as he states himself, the Theatrum is a work of physics, not of theology (Bodin never uses the phrase "natural theology"); Bodin often invokes divine providence and omnipotence but as the best explanations of natural phenomena rather than the primary subject of his work. Secondly, Bodin's own religious position remains unusually broadly defined: his atheomachia is not a defense of Christianity like other contemporary works. Bodin's exaltation of a single Creator-God could be acceptable not only to Catholics and Protestants, but also to Jews and Muslims, who were regularly included among the infidels attacked in defenses of Christianity. Bodin almost never cites the New Testament and shuns the moralized interpretations of nature, commonly used (for instance by Viret) to prove specifically Christian doctrines; instead he proposes allegorical interpretations of the Old Testament which struck contemporaries as "rabbinic nonsense." These aspects of the Theatrum support the notion, first spread by a number of near-contemporaries and since developed by modern specialists, that Bodin harbored heterodox and Judaizing tendencies beneath his external Catholic practice." Given the absence of personal papers and the constraints on publication in this period, it may well be impossible to determine satisfactorily what Bodin really believed. Indeed I argue that Bodin's conscious strategy was to dwell not on criteria of distinction and division between religious groups but on fundamental prin-

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ciples which no one could dispute, thus drawing attention away from his specific personal convictions. The dedicatory epistle of the Theatrum serves this purpose very effectively. The portrait of his opponents is both vivid and vague enough that Bodin cannot but command the assent of early modern readers, without making any specific statements about his own beliefs. Although Bodin's peculiar Judaizing tendencies are unique, this general irenic strategy can be recognized among other late humanists, including the Wechels, Justus Lipsius, or members of the Family of Love, who for various reasons shunned explicit discussion of their religious affiliations in order to emphasize scholarship and piety acceptable across confessional lines. The strategy of avoiding potential conflict and mention of specific confessional commitments does not make Bodin or other late humanists less sincere in their piety. On the contrary, they sought deeper incontrovertible foundations for the worship of God than the doctrinal issues under contention in intellectual disputes as well as open warfare. Hence the particular appeal of nature as a book of divine origin whose interpretation was not as laden with doctrinal significance as the Bible. After his attack against the impious Bodin immediately bursts into a paean of praise of the beauties of nature which concludes: These [observations of nature] bring us not only the sweetest pleasure, but also such a great desire for the Creator that, despite ourselves, stupefied and dumbfounded, we become seized of love for him. The completion of this work has been such a pleasure for me that it not only removed all the calamities and unpleasantnesses of the civil wars (in which all of France burnt as we wrote) but it even enabled me to bury in oblivion the memory of the previous pleasures which we used to enjoy before. (Sig. 4v)

Amid the ugliness of contemporary violence (which Bodin narrowly avoided experiencing directly), natural philosophy offers not only a personal refuge of safety and beauty, but also solid grounds on which to rebuild a consensus of "true piety" free from confessional strife. Natural theology and most of Bodin's explanations of particulars are premised on the notion that the student of nature is led toward God by observing and understanding the intricate causal interconnections that account for the harmonious arrangement and variety of the creation. Alongside this rationalist vision of nature as a system in which God's divine planning can be understood, a number of Renaissance writers (including at times Bodin) took instead an antirationalist position according to which the phenomena of nature are morally uplifting precisely because they are humanly incomprehensible. This vision motivated a large number of accounts of prodigious events, such as monstrous births or rains of daggers and blood, not only in formats with clear popular appeal like crude broadsheets or "canards,"63 but also in Latin and vernacular collections (histoires prodigieuses in the French literature) which circulated even in learned circles.66 These accounts showed nature manifesting the wrath and omnipotence of a hidden and transcendent God and enjoined readers to repent and humbly worship the awesome Lawgiver.

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Drawing on ancient sources (notably Pliny and the late antique compiler Julius Obsequens) the genre flourished especially from the mid-sixteenth century with works by Joachim Camerarius, Polydore Vergil (originally published in 1532 and 1531 but reedited with better success in 1552) and Lycosthenes (1552)." The wars of religion heightened the appeal of these warnings of impending crisis and divine wrath, spawning further additions in the genre (by Antoine Tesserant and Frangois de Belleforest among others). Pierre Boaistuau, one of the most successful of these French authors, gives the typical justification for his Histoires prodigieuses of 1560: Of all the things that can be contemplated under the hollow heavens, there is nothing that better wakes the human spirit, seizes the senses, horrifies, or generates more admiration or terror in creatures than the monsters, prodigies, and abominations in which we see the works of Nature not only reversed, overturned, mutilated, and truncated: but (what is more) we discover there most often a secret judgment and scourge of the wrath of God in the things presented to us, which makes us feel the violence of his justice that is so harsh.68

After setting this awed tone Boaistuau boasts of his scholarly approach in providing hitherto unknown accounts and in leaving the "Latin and Greek names in the original. . . to assist those who wish to compare the Latin with the French of some rare authors" (he in fact uses no Greek and very little Latin); he also proclaims his originality in providing reasons for the prodigies, as none have attempted before.69 Boaistuau thus announces a philosophical goal of seeking causal understanding. He does provide general Aristotelian explanations for a number of phenomena, such as monstrous births caused by the emotions or imagination of the mother, or comets appearing from the combustion of earthly exhalations, and uses them to reject astrological explanations. But after these few theoretical statements, his work, true to the genre, focuses on the lurid details of prodigies which must be appreciated for the very fact that they cannot be understood. Boaistuau mocks Cardano, for example, for "plunging into a chasm of philosophy" to explain the effectiveness of the baara plant in warding off devils. Despite his skills in the intellectual hunt, Cardano cannot succeed; indeed, "all the philosophers of the world brought together could not give another reason than that of the prophet when he says: 'The Lord is astonishing in all his works. Who could ever know his secrets or be his counselor?'"™ And even when the causes of some phenomena can be known, prodigies are above all still signs from God, threats, or warnings of divine punishment.71 Although Boaistuau seeks for his book the status of a philosophical inquiry, the knowledge of natural causes is of little significance to it; his motivation is fundamentally antiphilosophical: As for myself I will be content to go as far into knowledge as to confess that everything is done . . by the ordinance of divine providence; to want to peel away and seek too closely the principles and movements of nature and to want to know out of curiosity the causes of things as they happen, although I think it would not be without profit, I would fear that to dwell on them and hold these causes to be very certain would be arrogance and temerity and twice as vulgar as ignorance.72

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Boaistuau's fear of arrogance in delving into the secrets of nature fits into a long tradition of condemnations of curiosity which reaches back to Saint Augustine and other patristic authors and which surfaced in the late Renaissance among a broad range of authors, from skeptics and fideists like Montaigne or Agrippa of Nettesheim to religious reformers like Calvin and Luther. This pietistic emphasis on the limits of human understanding, which Hiram Haydn suggestively identified as a movement of "Counter-Renaissance,"73 runs through the works of many northern humanists and across confessional lines, but without always forming a coherent intellectual position; in a number of cases, including that of Jean Bodin1 it coexists in the same work with rationalist-scholastic assumptions. The notion that the study of nature is religiously and morally uplifting not only motivated entire genres like natural theology and histoires prodigieuses, but also pervaded at least the opening rhetoric of almost all the other kinds of general natural philosophy in the Renaissance. University textbooks and treatises all stressed that physics is not only useful and pleasant but above all a guide to the knowledge and worship of God. In his program of reforming education along Lutheran lines, Melanchthon was especially careful to justify natural philosophy to forestall opposition from reformers who had hoped to do away with philosophy entirely.74 His widely read primer of physics, Doctrinac physicae elementa sive initia (1552), outlines the two ways in which the study of nature is morally edifying—by revealing the divine beauty and providence of the creation and at the same time making us aware of human limitations in fully knowing it: "Although the nature of things cannot be perceived deeply nor the causes of such admirable works understood before we hear directly the deliberation of their architect, the eternal Father, Son, and Holy Ghost: nonetheless now even in this confusion of ours, whatever we can see and consider of the order of the most beautiful bodies in the world is an avenue to the knowledge of God and to virtue."75 Thus the student of nature will learn that God is "an eternal mind, architect of this whole work, wise, good, true, just, beneficent, chaste, and most free; . . . and [that he is] without a doubt vengeful and repays in this life atrocious crimes with atrocious punishments."76 The emphasis on the fearsome aspect of God would perhaps help to keep the Lutheran youth well behaved. Most authors omitted the grim reminders and emphasized the positive lessons of the beauty, harmony, and order of nature.77 In his textbook for arts students, Jacques Aubert, a Reformed medical doctor from Lyon, for example, explained that even before Christianity physics spawned the first moral reflections: "Moral philosophy advanced long ago among the Greeks as if born from physics, when the series, order, and beauty of natural things and the whole world and the arrangement of man himself moved them to apply themselves to what is good and to reflect on leading life correctly, as if obeying the voice of nature."78 Or Frans Titelmans, the young Franciscan who claimed to be the first, in 1542, to compose a compendium of natural philosophy, for his students at the arts faculty at Louvain, incited his readers to piety not only in the preface but throughout his scholastic-style discussion of Aristotle: each of the twelve divisions of his com-

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pendium closes with a lengthy "psalm to the Creator of all things, the one and triune Lord."79 This format did not become usual, however. After prefatory statements justifying their topic as highly uplifting, or hymns to the glory of God, these school presentations concentrated on Aristotelian natural philosophy with little or no further reference to moral or religious teaching. This method of coping with the difficulties of presenting ancient natural philosophy in a Christian context (by showing the morally edifying quality of the field, then proceeding with a philosophical analysis of Aristotelian texts) was standard among academic natural philosophers in northern Europe of all confessions (Aubert and Timpler were Calvinist, Titelmans Catholic, Melanchthon Lutheran) More radical was the attempt by the Calvinist minister and professor of theology Lambert Daneau to set the discipline of physics on a new foundation. Faced with the disagreements among theologians and philosophers Daneau concludes that only the Bible holds certainties and that physics too is contained in the Holy Scripture;80 Moses may have spoken simply, but neither falsely nor in ignorance.81 The result is a "Christian physics" hails biblical authority as the solution, although Aristotelian answers do appear on specific points.82 Following the order of creation, Daneau demonstrates that everything, from night and water to plants and animals, exists for the greater glory and praise of God. Daneau's work was reedited seven times until 1606 and spawned an English translation as well as a continuation in the work of a friend and fellow Calvinist, the Italian refugee Girolamo Zanchi, who treated the same hexameral material more systematically and included human creation—a subject that Daneau had omitted.83 While Bodin invokes direct divine intervention and explicitly attacks Aristotle more than is usual for academic natural philosophers, he does not undermine (as Daneau does) the Anstotelian framework of the discipline; the Theatrum combines pietistic and rationalist strands in a unique mix of contemporary themes. The moral qualities of the study of nature are vaunted in works designed for broader audiences too. Vernacular collections of problemata, like the problems of Alexander of Aphrodisias translated into French and supplemented with original additions by M. Heret,84 draw on the same store of arguments: the contemplation of natural things led the first ancient peoples to a knowledge of the Creator and Governor of the universe so that they adopted some form of religion; more generally Heret concludes that "the science of natural things in itself brings no gain to human life except insofar as it elevates the mind of men higher and induces them to consider the author of nature, which is the sovereign goal of man."85 The drive to justify any kind of investigation of nature in this way can lead to some abrupt juxtapositions, as in Johann Jakob Wecker's De secretis (1582), which begins with two books discussing God and the creation of the world, complete with erudite references to authorities, scholastic-looking objections and responses, and a dichotomous table of all of nature; in the next fifteen books the philosophy gives way to an impressive collection of recipes or "secrets"—such as how to treat fevers or snake bites, how to counterfeit coins or gems, or how to catch fish.86 With these more "popular" works Bodin's Theatrum shares not only the universal

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theme of moral edification through natural philosophy, but more specifically a structure of loose juxtaposition of distinct segments, despite introductory claims of correct ordering.

THE "PROPOSITIO" AND THE PROBLEM OF ORDER

In their aim of displaying for the reader's edification the bounty and beauty of the divine creation, Renaissance natural philosophers faced a perennial issue with more urgency than their predecessors: how to bring order to a large field of particulars. On the one hand the pedagogical needs of growing numbers of students seemed to require clearer and more schematic presentations of each discipline; on the other hand, newly recovered ancient sources and newly discovered worlds flooded natural philosophy especially with vast quantities of previously unknown observations, reports, and authorities. The exuberant diversity of nature was perfect evidence of God's power and goodness, but at the same time it threatened to overwhelm any pedagogical framework. The tension of this dual commitment to order and variety produced a wide range of genres in Renaissance natural philosophy, from skeletal outlines that created order at the expense of copia to works so copious that their order became arbitrary. Bodin's Theatrum fits somewhere near the middle of this spectrum, torn between an introductory call for order and a text that often meanders from one topic to the next following no preexisting logic. Reserving detailed analysis of the structure of the text for the next chapter, in this section I discuss Bodin's stated intentions of correct ordering in light of other contemporary projects and genres. After explaining the purpose of the Theatrum in the dedicatory epistle, Bodin inserts a second introductory statement before the text itself: this unusual "propositio totius operis" οτ "project of the whole work" is devoted especially to the question of order and method. Bodin treats this issue separately from his main subject lest he be guilty, like many others (he warns), of confusing a discipline with the order of teaching it—"which blame even Aristotle himself does not escape, who in his books on Nature tried to explain the question of how to teach, a topic appropriate to the Dialecticians, and which he nonetheless left unresolved" (p. 2). Bodin endows order with the same divine origin and beauty as nature: When God, the supreme parent and moderator of the universe, wisely and brilliantly made all things, nothing that he did was greater or better than to distinguish the parts of matter that were mingled and confused in the beginning and to place them, once garbed with form and figure, each in order in the appropriate location. For nothing can be more beautiful to watch, more delightful to the soul, nor more convenient for use than order . . . but nothing is more loathsome or more unsightly than confusion and disorder. (P. 1)

No contemporary would deny the beauty and necessity of order; but the question of which order nature dictated was open to more controversy. Bodin starts off, as he often does, by taking issue with Aristotle. He reiterates a

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criticism which he attributes to Pico della Mirandola that "the order which [Aristotle] followed in his questions on nature is equally removed from analysis and synthesis" (p. 2). It is unclear exactly what Pico, and Bodin after him, have in mind, especially since Aristotle himself did not arrange his works—they survive only through the notes of his students.87 Presumably Bodin is referring to the order that was standard in published collections: Physica, De caelo, De mundo, De generatione, Meteorologica, De anima, and the series of short works known as the Parva naturalia (including on sensation, memory, sleep and waking, dreams, divination by dreams, the movement of animals, length and shortness of life, youth and old age, life and death, respiration).88 Bodin prefers the order that Pico proposes, which introduces into this standard arrangement, between the Meteorologica and the books on the soul, natural historical topics on "fossils, plants, the generation, parts and movement of animals" (which topics were often either not included or relegated to the Parva naturalia, as above for the movement of animals).89 But while Bodin clearly appreciates Pico's positioning of fossils, plants and animals, he also calls for further modifications: "Although [Pico's order] is more probable than Aristotle's it has nonetheless this disadvantage, that it places the discussion of the heavens and heavenly bodies before De generatione: however, it is clear enough that what is composite comes after what generates it, also meteors which are made in the sky come after fossils which are hidden in the entrails of the earth" (pp. 2—3). Bodin in fact follows the standard Aristotelian order in Book II of his Theatrum, with aerial phenomena coming before earthly ones. But he does take seriously the repositioning of astronomy, which he justifies at length in the "propositio." First, Bodin claims the study of the heavens as a part of physics rather than the specialty of mathematicians as Copernicus and other technical astronomers would have it.90 His use of terms ("the discipline of the heavenly motions" or variants thereon) matches this rejection of "astronomy" as a mathematical field.'1 Then Bodin builds a many-layered argument to justify astronomy's position as the culminating field of physics: But since the disputation of the celestial motions is the purview of the physicist, for nothing is more appropriate to the physicist than motion and nothing more foreign to mathematicians than motion: such a noble discussion should not, I think, come before questions of plants, fossils, and animals, since by the highest agreement of all one must start with the easiest things, and treat the more difficult ones last. But what can be pondered that is more difficult to explain or more obscure to understand or more worthy to know from the nobility of its topic than the discipline of the celestial motions? (P. 3)

Bodin appeals to a supposedly universal notion that one should proceed from what is best known to what is least known, from "easiest" to "most difficult"; he skirts the problematic issue of exactly which kinds of things are easy or hard to know and in particular the interpretation of the famous Aristotelian distinction between what is "clear to us" and what is "clear by nature" which was much discussed in the Renaissance.92 Bodin forestalls this debate by announcing that the

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heavenly bodies should come last both in the order of pedagogical presentation and in the order of investigation (which were often considered opposite) because they are respectively "most difficult to explain" and "most obscure to understand." Witness Aristotle himself, who, although he devoted four books to the subject (i.e., De cado), "left it unresolved," and Plato, who more prudently called the discipline a "deep precipice" given its uncertainty and obscurity. "Therefore," Bodin concludes (p. 3), "we have put it in last place."93 Bodin's deeper motivation for moving the celestial bodies from a position near the beginning to the end of the orderly study of nature lies in his vision of a hierarchy of nobility and moral value that matches this hastily explained hierarchy of difficulty. Bodin defines a series of ten "hypostases"9* of increasing complexity, from ash, which is matter without form, in the first position, through the elements (second hypostasis) and their combinations, of two elements (third) then of three, which form the meteora both aerial (fourth) and earthly (fifth). The sixth, seventh, and eighth hypostases successively add each of Aristotle's three kinds of souls (vegetative, animal, and intelligent) in plants, animals, and humans. Finally in the ninth place the heavenly bodies are the most perfect in the chain of natural beings: "in addition to [having] matter, form, life, sense and intellect they shine with some purer light" (p. 4). Finally, God, incorporeal, eternal and infinite, is a tenth hypostasis "outside the order of nature." Just as nature in general through its divine character lends a special moral force to natural philosophy, so too the heavenly bodies confer their nobility to the field devoted to them: "no [discipline] is more insatiable nor more beautiful nor more outstanding in reason and skill than that which interprets the courses and natures of the stars" (p. 6). Physics should not only include this discipline but give it pride of place as the arrival point of the study of nature. But at the same time as he concludes this argument, Bodin offers an alternative vision of the order of nature and natural philosophy, in which the single linear chain becomes a complex web of interconnections. In summarizing the contents of each of the five books of the Theatrum Bodin effectively acknowledges that Book I does not treat the first three hypostases as his order would suggest, but instead carries over from the Aristotelian project a discussion of first principles as in Aristotle's Physics (including matter, form, cause, motion, infinite divisibility, and the like). Bodin's chain of being thus actually begins with meteora in Book II and proceeds in broad outline as promised through plants and animals in Book III, to the human soul and angels in Book IV and the celestial bodies in Book V, corresponding to the ninth and final natural hypostasis. Bodin concludes that to end with the celestial bodies, most beautiful for the contemplation of the eyes as well as the mind, is to return to the principles of nature discussed in Book I and especially to the First Principle: "and just as we started our disputation about nature from the parent and principle of nature, thus we end our disputation with it too" (p. 6). Thus, Bodin's ideal of linear progression turns out to form a ring. Furthermore, this ring links not only the two extremities but also "everything" with "everything else" in a network of correspondences which create harmony and coherence within variety. In Bodin's final formulation his task is not to follow a strict progression from less to more perfect, but to search for the intercon-

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nections between each and every being; "For there is nothing we have searched for more diligently than the succession of all things and the indissoluble coherence of nature, its interrelations and agreements [contagionem et consensum], and [to see] how the first things correspond to the last, the middle ones to both extremities, and everything to everything else [omnia omnibus]" (p. 6). Indeed in the text of the Theatrum Bodin's ideal of a strictly hierarchized order gives way to an abundance of particulars treated with little apparent structure: the chain of being becomes a web in which intermediate creatures link many different levels of beings. The table of contents spells out sections within the five books as explained in the "propositio" (which can be read as a gloss on the table), but these divisions are not rendered in the text itself which instead runs unbroken for over one hundred pages in each book. Bodin does not address the announced topics with any preestablished system but defines his path through the infinite variety of nature according to a constantly shifting series of thematic, topical, or rhetorical links.95 Bodin confidently criticizes predecessors and announces his correct ordering, but then promptly undermines his own plan with an alternative and more complex vision of nature's intricacy and, in the text, with a vast display of loosely structured particulars. With its grand-sounding "propositio" overwhelmed by a labyrinthine text, the Thcatrum exemplifies the tension between order and variety that pervades so much Renaissance natural philosophy. Alongside their claims of moral edification, prefatory justifications of works of general natural philosophy invoke the Horatian injunction to "instruct and delight" (docere et delectare).96 Order and variety together accomplished this double goal. Order was not only pedagogically necessary but also beautiful to behold;97 variety procured delightful enjoyment, particularly to nonspecialist audiences, yet also taught the wondrous creative power of God. Titles and prefaces widely extolled their alliance, but the ideal proved difficult to realize in the texts that followed. At one end of the spectrum university textbooks surveyed physics in a succession of short chapters often structured around questions or a series of numbered propositions; others supplemented the text with tabular summaries, as Fougerolles would in his French translation of the Theatrum. The French educational reformer Petrus Ramus (Pierre de La Ramee, 1515-72) and his followers in early seventeenth-century England and Germany are particularly notorious for their reduction of topics to simple definitions and divisions distributed in dichotomous diagrams. Ramus insisted that a single method based on the proper disposition of th.e parts of a subject guaranteed certainty in both philosophical investigation and pedagogical presentation. Although Ramism generated heated controversy for its rejection of Aristotelian methods of discovery, its influence permeated late Renaissance pedagogy. But the pedagogical use of divisions and diagrams was also widespread before Ramus, and does not in itself indicate adherence to more specifically Ramist beliefs, such as the single method or the redefinition of the distinction between rhetoric and dialectic.98 Self-avowed Ramists like Wilhelm Scribonius, who taught logic and natural philosophy at the school in Corbach in the late sixteenth century, and Johann Thomas Freigius (1543-83), who taught at the Academy of Altdorf, nonetheless provide quintessential examples of the reductionist textbook.

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Scribonius' Physica et sphaerica doctrina with the commentary of Timothy Bright, a Cambridge M.D. and Anglican divine, is divided into some 330 singlesentence numbered propositions grouped into roughly twenty chapters. Without Bright's paragraph of commentary on each proposition the book would bulk much less even than its 192 pages. The variety of nature is reduced to brief enumerations of metals, minerals, or animals, with a sentence of description of major topics (e.g., "the oviparous quadrupeds are crocodiles, turtles, frogs, lizards, and a few snakes that have four feet").59 The text becomes a prose version of a dichotomous diagram, listing off branching categories and their contents. Bright especially praises Scribonius' method, the Ramist trademark, but also fears succumbing to "such a great variety" of nature.100 Scribonius himself claims to have shown that "all of physics is as pleasant as it is useful."101 Even when sacrificed in this way to the extremes of Ramist reduction, the variety of nature was presumed to overwhelm and delight the reader. This kind of textbook could be fleshed out at will. In his Questiones physicae dedicated to Scribonius, Ioannes Thomas Freigius builds on his initial tabular outline to a total of 1,292 pages, gathering material on each subject from a long list of authorities which he is proud to have presented systematically. On the other hand, in his Paedagogus he covers all the disciplines in a pocket-sized work composed only of diagrams. Depending on the level of the students or the needs of the teacher, Ramist textbooks provided order embellished with differing quantities of "variety" (both in the particulars of nature and in the citation of authorities). Less extreme pedagogues left more room for variety but accordingly faced more problems of order. Michael Neander (1524-81), professor of medicine at Iena, published a "Physics or collection of erudite matters of physics, useful for all life, pleasant and varied"102 which included a sizeable section on natural history. After a brief general introduction for quadrupeds, birds, and fish, for example, Neander resorted to an alphabetical listing of species described from ancient references in a paragraph or more—more "varied" perhaps, but the arbitrary order of names precluded the precise dichotomies (oviparous, viviparous, with solid or cleft hoof, cleft in one or more toes, and so on) that the Ramists advocated. More influentially, Melanehthon set the tone for much Protestant teaching by emphasizing the divine qualities of variety as well as the pedagogical need for order. I think that the first parent of humankind [Adam] . . . then showed the distinctions of the elements and qualities and praised the wisdom of God who included within determined limits an almost infinite variety of effects in the elements and their mixtures. . . . Then he ordered the consideration of human nature, whose variety is admirable.103

In this antechamber to physics Melanchthon advocates an order that leads from the elements, their qualities and mixtures, to humans then animals, plants and other things (metals and minerals) that are formed in the earth.104 In practice Melanchthon dwells especially on the principles of physics and then heavenly bodies (which are treated in Book I), then considers meteora and various mixtures of elements, and avoids altogether the particularly "varied" field of plant and an-

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imal histories. Melanchthon's order, found in most textbooks, is precisely the one that Bodin criticizes, because it places the heavenly bodies at the beginning rather than the end, as their difficulty and nobility demand. Nonetheless, like Bodin, Melanchthon enters into the details of the topics he presents, including, for example, arguments against the eternity of the world or the measurements associated with the various planets similar to those in the Theatrum. Melanchthon invites comparison with Bodin also in that he structures his work around questions to create order amid detail. By contrast with Bodin's dialogue which features two named characters, Melanchthon's tactic, widespread among contemporary textbooks and treatises,105 uses an impersonal, short question to divide the text both typographically (the questions are italicized and centered) and topically into easily identified sections. The questions, most often formulated with "quid est?", often call for factual responses such as definitions and descriptions: "what is physics? . . . is the world eternal?"106 These textbook questions can serve as simplified versions of the scholastic "quaestio" with its multiple layers of objections and responses. Catholic authors like Domingo de Soto or Franciscus Piccolomini use the scholastic terminology of "quaestio, opinio, dubitatio, solutio" and the like throughout their voluminous treatises.107 Protestant textbooks tend to offer a reduced neoscholastic format. Clemens Timpler, for example, professor of philosophy at Steinfurt, follows the brief expository theorems in each chapter with lengthier discussions of problemata, questions which he answers in the affirmative, negative or dubitative, numbering his reasons and presenting them complete with objections and responses.108 The structural elements of these university textbooks are also common to the more broadly marketed genre of problemata formed around a succession of causal questions (with "cur?" [why?]). Indeed one textbook, by Lyonnais doctor Jacques Aubert, frequently frames its chapters around causal questions.109 But a crucial distinction between more learned and more popular texts rests in the relative importance attached to order versus variety. While each professor prepared more or less idiosyncratically a system according to which he selected and arranged his topics, works designed for broader audiences were often unsystematic and disjointed, sometimes self-consciously and proudly so.110 Most university works followed some variant of the order criticized by Bodin for placing the heavenly bodies before the less complex subjects of meteora and natural history. The principles of physics, the heavenly bodies, and the human soul received (in that order) the most consistent and thorough treatment. Most academic natural philosophy also avoided the details and particulars of plant and animal histories or treated them only schematically. Gilbert Jacchaeus, professor of philosophy and medicine at Leiden and author of an Institutiones physicae, gives some indication of the reasons why: "teachers do not lecture on the works on natural history" because these works are neither demonstrative nor difficult enough to require a teacher and there is not enough time to include them in the three (or, elsewhere, two) years of a philosophy course.111 In other words natural history involved too much variety and not enough logic or structure to warrant exposition by philosophy professors.

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Only medical teaching began to incorporate natural historical subjects (often termed "materia medica") during the Renaissance: this interest can be seen as part of a new empiricism introduced in the curriculum (which included "anatomical dissections, botanical demonstrations, and chemical experiments"), 112 and was fueled by the humanist rediscovery of ancient natural histories (e.g., by Theophrastus, Dioscorides and Aristotle) and desire to correct long available texts like Pliny's Natural History,113 as well as by the botanical and zoological illustrations and accounts from the New World. Natural particulars were highlighted also in the works of travel writers, like Andre Thevet, and in the collections, and (probably better-known, then as now) the descriptions of collections of naturalia which elicited wonder through their physical instantiation of the variety of nature.114 Authors of natural-historical description and commentary were certainly more convincing than the Ramists in proclaiming the pleasure and utility of their topics.115 Particulars crept into learned works through the bias of the commentary, which so easily accommodated digressions,116 as in the case of Daneau's hexameron (especially his Christianae physicae pars altera) which dwells on the varieties of species created in each of the six days. As a Catholic counterpart, the Spanish physician and humanist Franciscus Valles used biblical verses as points of departure for increasingly wide-ranging discussions of divination, occult virtues, and demons;117 the alphabetical index that follows is a tacit acknowledgment of the unpredictable structure of the text. Valles' commentary was published with two other works devoted to the natural particulars in the Bible: a "Clear explanation of the similitudes and parables which are taken from herbs and trees in the Bible," by the Dutch physician Levinus Lemnius, who amassed natural and cultural lore on some fifty plants named in the Bible, such as the mandragora and manna; and a companion piece by Franciscus Rueus, a doctor from Lille, on the gems mentioned in the book of Revelation, boasting of its utility to theologians and philosophers, and the pleasure it would procure to fertile minds.118 The balance tips further from utility toward pleasure in a vernacular parallel which purports to save preachers from egregious errors, as if it were a kind of sermon manual. In his Essay des merveilles de nature, Etienne Binet (who signs as Rene Frangois), Jesuit confessor to Louis XIII, deplores the barbarisms and linguistic errors committed by preachers ignorant of the specialized areas to which they refer in their examples.119 Fearful that his colleagues would become the laughing stock of their more worldly audiences and desirous, no doubt in the spirit of the Counter-Reformation, of expanding the appeal of their sermons, Binet promises to unveil the specialized terms and knowledge of many technical and scientific fields, including such vastly different categories as hunting, plants and animals, heraldry, the rainbow, and embroidery. He acknowledges that his jumbled order "is no doubt not what you desire, nor what I do," but points to an "index" (there is only a table of contents) to remedy the situation. Binet revels in the finer points of usage and eloquence rather than in the details of nature for their own sake, and his prose is itself an exercise in witty verve. Despite the author's apology, the jumble of topics is fully intentional and integral to its appeal to the salon- and court-goers whom Binet explicitly contrasts with the experts ("gens du mestier").

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The more "popular" kinds of natural philosophy, in particular books of secrets and problemata, are generally available m both vernacular and Latin versions and do not exploit disorder as a rhetorical device as Binet does. But they are governed by copiousness rather than an ordered argument, and rest, like much of the Theatrum, on a potentially indefinite accumulation of distinct segments. Although the authors may proudly announce, like Bodin, a topical arrangement and a philosophical goal, they most often end up surrendering to miscellaneous compilation, unwilling to sacrifice their store of variety to an ordered argument. Levinus Lemnius' widely reprinted De occultis naturae miraculis opens with a philosophical preface about the need to delve into the causes of hidden or occult phenomena and proceeds through more or less topically arranged chapters to discuss largely medical "secrets" (ranging from the causes of illnesses to the way mirrors work or the interpretation of dreams).120 By the end of the first edition, however, Lemnius abandons the effort of arranging his material and adds an appendix accurately entitled "various teachings of nature and a not irrelevant collection of various things, assembled as in a bundle for reasons of brevity," which would grow in successive editions into two additional books. The accumulation of "not irrelevant" items in a loose succession of topics could continue indefinitely; only an index makes the abundance of details accessible, including topics that are not otherwise announced in section headings or the table of contents. The result was expected to give "no less pleasure than profit" to the "studious reader." The better-known books of secrets like those of Giambattista della Porta or Alexis of Piedmont group separately numbered "secrets" topically in clearly labeled books for more convenient access (thus della Porta provides no index but only a detailed table of contents at back) but the topics follow no special ordering principle. Wecker, who opens his De secretis with a dichotomous table and discusses in Book I the principles of nature in imitation scholastic style (complete with objections, responses, and resolutions) abandons the classificatory scheme and accompanying philosophical baggage when he gets down to specifics. Sections on the liberal arts are pretexts for enumerating curious tricks of varying topical relevance: under "arithmetic" one learns how to guess a number that someone else is thinking, under "grammar," how to make ink and write secret languages.121 Problemata are a similarly cumulative genre in which sets of questions and answers can be rearranged and added on indefinitely. The ancient models condoned such lack of structure. Learned editions of Aristotle's Problems (like their nineteenth-century counterparts) are divided into thirty-eight sections by topic. The succession of topics (at first medical, then on sounds, smells, climates, mathematical and celestial things, animate and inanimate things, and so on) is as arbitrary as the order of problems within a section. The form is so open-ended that no two Latin editions of Aristotle's Problems are exactly alike, as is clear simply from the varying number of problems in each section. Furthermore, vernacular versions of "Aristotle's problems" had nothing in common with the ancient model whose authority they arrogated, and reproduce, inevitably with many variations, a text originally composed in the Middle Ages.'22 After topical sections arranged by body part from head to toe, the collection degenerates into one or two sections

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of "various things" or "problems of several various things, useful and joyous.'"" The unsystematic juxtaposition of curious explanations guarantees variety and the pleasure that derives from it; the utility of the genre lies in the causal explanations and practical tips provided in the answers. Books of secrets and problemata do not emphasize their disorder but, if they address the issue at all, rather point to the rudimentary topical order that they have introduced and purport to follow. By contrast, some of the more self-consciously literary collections of memorable stories or histoires prodigieuses, which often pertain to nature in various ways, explicitly endorse disorder as their structural principle. Works entitled "lessons," in particular, bring together in disjointed chapters all kinds of material, including problems, secrets, and recipes, and stories with memorable moral or historical content; these thick volumes were widely distributed in vernaculars and in Latin. Like most Renaissance genres this one too looked back to ancient models, most directly to the "antiquae lectiones" of Caeselius Vindex, which were never recovered but which were invoked as a model by the Roman author Aulus Gellius.124 In comparing his own Attic Nights with other miscellanies known to him (which also bear titles familiar in the Renaissance, such as "silvae," "pandectae" or "bibliothecae") Gellius explains that he "used a haphazard order [ordo fortuitus]," following what occurred to him during his reading or note taking.125 This is the strategy of Renaissance imitators as well. Probably the most popular author in the genre, the Spaniard Pedro Mexia, almost apologizes in his Diverses legons for a rare topical transition between chapters (from the story of PopeJoan to a discussion of the Amazons, following the theme of "bold women"): "nonetheless I am not bound to keep the order and continuity in this work but write things as they present themselves or as 1 please."126 As in the case of the problemata, the French translation of Mexia's original appends an almost equally large collection of "diverses legons" by his French imitator Antoine du Verdier—any work of this kind can be extended indefinitely.127 The resulting variety is a great pleasure, as one publisher explains to the readers of the Memorabilia of Gaudentius Merula: "all these things are varied by the variety of the stories and also the style . . . I was so delighted by reading it."128 "Variety of style" accompanies topical variety as a key to attracting readers. Lambert Daneau thus boasts of his Physique frangoise, comprising texts by three different authors (Aristotle's De mundo and treatises by Saints Basil and John Damascene): "this volume, as much by the variety of style as by the variety and excellence of the things which it treats, will please and give a taste of this physical science even to . . . those who are the most disgusted by it."129 Variety at the expense of order also had its critics in the Renaissance, not surprisingly from the ranks of the pedagogues: thus the Spanish educational reformer Juan Luis Vives attacked Aulus Gellius for ignoring the importance of the "conjunction and proportion of parts. . . . You will see some gather their discourse from the little sentences picked here and there like flowers as in a bundle. [Gellius'] mixture is worse, since waters are drawn from the most diverse wells and food is mixed with drink as when foreign items are mixed with native ones."130 Taking the defense of Gellius' Attic Nights in response to this and a num-

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ber of other accusations leveled by Vives,13' Henri Estienne (the noted Greek scholar and editor from Paris) countered: "Should [Gellius] be called nothing but a tailor and compiler, who inteijects often his own judgment about places, which he collects and borrows from all over so that he brings the reader utility or pleasure or both?'"32 The popularity of miscellanies and other disordered genres attests to their success in providing utility and pleasure to a wide range of audiences, vernacular as well as erudite.133 At the other end of the spectrum from the pocket-sized skeletal outlines, endless quantities of stuff, garnered from Renaissance discoveries and recoveries, were compiled in vast folio volumes that defied any philosophical scheme. Two widely used works of this scale, both tools to which the most learned resorted although often without acknowledging them, coped with the defeat of order by variety in different ways. Caelius Rhodiginus' Lectionum antiquorum libri XXX (first published 1542), as its title indicates, invokes the precedent of Caeselius Vindex to heap classical references and anecdotes with no concern for order.134 An alphabetized index, despite its many errors, is the only mode of rapid access to over two thousand separate topical chapters. On the other hand, in his Theatrum vitae humanae (first published 1565) Theodor Zwinger musters an equal or greater bulk of material (over ten thousand excerpts from some six hundred authors) under topical or thematic headings.135 For each topic and its subdivisions (e.g., death into death by drowning, by suicide, by serpents, and the like) Zwinger gathers as many different quotations as possible from ancient or Christian sources, with the precise reference. Dichotomous diagrams pepper the beginning of each book, along with explanations for the different branches of the tables. An alphabetical index of topics guarantees easy consultation, even though the typographer apologizes in the first edition for having omitted a planned table of things and of names, pleading the Herculean size of the task.136 By the fourth (posthumous) edition of 1604, the two folio volumes had grown to twenty-nine, the index at back to four different alphabetical listings—of memorable things, of titles (or thematic headings), of "exempla" (that is, famous historical figures) and of authors cited (although in this listing no page references are given). Zwinger's goal is not, like that of the university professors, to develop a simple and singleminded summary of philosophy, but rather to facilitate information retrieval on as many issues as possible. Despite Zwinger's own philosophical commitments (which include an interest in Paracelsianism), the bulk of his Theatrum outweighs its intellectual framework and finally succumbs to the arbitrariness of alphabetical order in the sequel by Laurentius Beyerlinck, the Magnum theatrum vitae humanae, which stands as a monument to late Renaissance copia truly become unwieldy.137 Bodin's Theatrum fits somewhere in the middle of this range of contemporary works, torn in contrary directions: on the one hand Bodin has pedagogical and scholarly ambitions to provide a correct ordering of natural philosophy according to a chain of being; on the other hand, free from the constraints of an academic context, Bodin rambles through the particulars of nature usually neglected in natural philosophical teaching. In the dedication Bodin justifies his work in the

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most high-minded, moral terms, but still bursts into exclamations of pleasure at the beauty and variety of nature. In the text itself Bodin is consistently philosophical rather than effusive,138 and reserves his wonder only for the awesome power of God; nevertheless, his unsystematic juxtaposition of discrete particulars and his openness to practical experience made the Theatrum an excellent choice for adaptation into the problemata genre in the early seventeenth century.

BODIN'S NOTION OF PHYSICS

The genre of the Theatrum is formed not only by Bodin's explanations of his purpose and organization, but also by his definition of his topic and what it means to "do physics." "Physice" is the term that Bodin uses most often, following Aristotle's "phusike," short for "phusike episteme" or natural knowledge (the "naturalis scientia" with which Bodin begins the dedication).139 Historians often use "physics" or "natural philosophy" very generally to cover the study of nature before "science" seems appropriate, either because the type of investigation is distinctly premodern (as is the case for most Renaissance works about nature) or in acknowledgment of the fact that "science" in its current acceptation as "natural science" becomes an actor's category only in the nineteenth century.140 Most Renaissance authors, for their part, defined physics or natural philosophy, as Bodin does, as a science (in its original meaning, from its Latin root, as "certain knowledge") whose subject matter is the "natural body" (p. 11). Although physics may seem at first view to encompass everything "in the vast expanse of this world," as Theorus objects, the natural body is commonly distinguished from the "mathematical body" (which is abstracted by reason alone), the "artificial body" (the subject of mechanics), and the incorporeal (the subject of metaphysics) (pp. 11-12).141 Bodin indicates further differences, largely methodological, that demarcate physics from natural history and medicine. Bodin's rejection of the artificial body, the subject of mechanics, from the area of physics is predictable; it follows from the assumption that only in its pristine state can nature reveal its divine origin. Bodin makes this point in the dedication as a crucial part of his argument for the morally uplifting character of natural knowledge: "We are forbidden by divine decree from mixing creatures of different types and bringing together different offspring, and sowing different grain mixed together in the fields, lest we depart in any way from the purity and simplicity of nature" (sig. 3r). The sacred purity of nature would be marred by any artificial addition or modification. Bodin thus upholds the traditional distinctions between art and nature which some contemporaries (among them Ramus and Francis Bacon, but also Aristotelians like John Case) were beginning to break down.142 "Those [bodies] which are made from art and nature . . . which are similar to monsters among animals and hybrids among plants (such as paper and types of cloth and silk) and which are made of the fusion of stones and metals: although they are made from natural bodies, they are nonetheless outside the discipline of nature" (p. 136). Furthermore the artificial is necessarily inferior to the

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natural, as Bodin indicates in his passing praise of Archimedes who refused to leave his mechanical inventions to posterity because they would "cheapen" mathematics (p. 550). The distinction between physics and mathematics is also fairly clear-cut: "Mathematicians separate numbers for their own sake, as well as points, lines, and surfaces from bodies by the thought process, and they stay as far away as possible from motion: but physici follow motion and the senses, although the senses are very often wrong" (ibid.). Immune from empirical error and refutation, the mathematical disciplines (notably geometry, arithmetic, optics, catoptrics, stereometrics, and music) are more certain than the physical ones. Repeating his striking metaphor for intellectual persuasion, Bodin hails the power of mathematical demonstrations which force even the skeptics to acknowledge their truths "as if by the application of torture," just as physics forces the impious to acknowledge God (p. 474). Indeed the demonstrations of reason and mathematics prevail over the errors of the senses to which physics is inevitably subject (p. 82). But mathematics cannot provide causal understanding of real phenomena, which is the most valuable type of knowledge. Bodin rejects the possibility of a Platonic world of ideas in which mathematical bodies could exist separated from matter (pp. 82—83). As a result, physics implicitly commands greater respect, despite its lesser certainty, following the standard medieval hierarchy of the disciplines."3 In particular Bodin rescues from its "relegation" to the mathematical disciplines the study of the most noble and worthy part of the world, the heavenly bodies, which should be the purview of the physicus. Those who call astronomy a mathematical discipline "not only detract from the honor due to natural science, as if withholding a roof from a house, but also wreak havoc on the mathematical arts entirely" (p. 550). Countless errors (including one that Bodin himself admits having accepted in his Mcthodus of 1566)144 plague astronomy, due to the arduousness of observations and the lack of proper series, to the shortness of time both as elapsed since the Flood when the historical record began and within each human lifespan, and finally due to the defects of instruments (pp. 564-65). Astronomy thus owes everything to the senses and motions, from which mathematicians recoil; but for physici, as we have seen, the heavens are the culmination of the chain of being as it rises toward the divine.145 "Since the celestial bodies are made of matter and form, who could doubt that they pertain to the hunter and contemplator of nature?" (p. 550).146 As with other disciplinary boundaries, Bodin defends a sharp distinction between the two fields, each with its own standards and subject matters: "In sum, those who dispute about mathematical things in the manner of natural philosophy [naturaliter] or about nature in the manner of mathematicians, overturn the foundations of each science" (ibid.). The Theatrum thus offers only descriptive and causal physics and astronomy with no use of mathematics.147 Bodin again supports a traditional definition and ranking of the disciplines which some contemporaries were beginning to challenge,148 notably by trying to raise the status of the mathematical disciplines and in particular by pointing to the relevance of mathematical astronomy to natural philosophy. Bodin distinguishes physics from metaphysics, which as a worthier discipline

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should be treated later (p. 5). However abstract or loosely "metaphysical" some of the issues covered in the Theatrum may seem today, Bodin does not treat metaphysics as he conceives it. Metaphysics deals rather with the first principles which the physicus takes for granted, such as the existence of the natural body, which must be granted ex hypothesi. Th. Why is that? M. Not because it is our senses themselves or the whole nature of things that force us to admit that there is a natural body; but since no science can prove the existence of the subject with which it deals, as Averroes correctly writes. One must grant it either as the topic of a superior science, or by hypothesis, just as the mathematicians postulate many things in this way that are clear and well known in themselves, but whatever is ambiguous or uncertain until now about the mathematical body, and whether it exists, mathematicians do not discuss, rather that pertains to meta ta phusika. Finally it is absurd to want to treat a science at the same time as the way of knowing it. (P. 13),w

Bodin again calls for a clear division of labor between disciplines;130 just as it is wrong to discuss the order of presentation of a discipline, which is the subject of dialectic, alongside the content of the discipline, so too it is "absurd" to discuss a science at the same time as the fundamental assumptions without which it could not function. Bodin criticizes Aristotle in particular for confusing the knowledge of a thing (scientia) with the thing itself that is known (res scita) (p. 470), although, as I have suggested, Bodin himself is prone to a similar conflation. In strictly separating physics from "metalevel" considerations of order or philosophical foundations, which he confines to his "propositio," Bodin precludes selfreflexive comments in the course of the text. As a result of this explicit principle, the tone of the Theatrum is earnest often to the point of seeming naive, especially by contrast with the "modernity" of a Montaigne. Bodin never mentions the ways in which the physicus' representation of the "theater of nature" might not be simply transparent. His focus on the subject of physics at the expense of its methodological presuppositions fits the pattern that Richard McKeon has described of the transformation of the liberal arts in the Renaissance, from abstract methods of approach applicable to all topics to subject matters that accumulate particulars.151 Although in the passage above metaphysics covers the "metalevel" discussion of physics that cannot be part of physics itself, elsewhere Bodin defines the discipline by the hypostasis that it studies, which comes "after" the first nine physical hypostases. "The subject of physics is the mobile body. Since therefore we have demonstrated that angels, souls surviving the dead bodies [to which they were attached] , and demons are mobile bodies, it is the task of the physicus to treat their nature: but the subject of metaphysics can be nothing other than the immobile and incorporeal substance: in which a grave error is committed by those who have written that separated substances pertain to metaphysics as if they were something incorporeal" (p. 520). Bodin argues at length, against the standard Thomist position, that disembodied souls and angelic and demonic beings are corporeal; only the soul is a part of physics, however, because supernatural be-

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ings (including demons and werewolves), even though they are also corporeal, belong to the science of denaonology and deserve separate treatment (pp. 348, 504), which Bodin provides in his Demonomanie.152 All that remains as incorporeal, and the subject of metaphysics, is the tenth, divine hypostasis. The distinction between physics and metaphysics, which at first contrasts subject matter and "metalevel" discussion, becomes an unbridgeable gap between corporeal and incorporeal, natural and divine. "Thus the subject of physics is the physical body; it is not nature, or matter or substance, lest we make incorporeal and corporeal substances the subject of the same science, which cannot be allowed without confusing natural and divine things" (pp. 11—12), By collapsing metaphysics as first philosophy with metaphysics as science of the divine, Bodin assumes a necessary agreement between reason and theology, which makes possible his attempts to give reasoned demonstrations of such fundamental religious truths as the creation of the world and the immortality of the soul. Bodin ignores both fideist trends to dissociate knowledge of the divine from philosophy (as in the thought of Pomponazzi, for example) and other attempts to reconcile theology and philosophy that involved dividing metaphysics into two distinct sciences (such as the solution proposed by Benito Pereira).153 Bodin's demarcations of physics from mechanics, mathematics, and metaphysics follow standard medieval definitions (as opposed to a number of contemporary innovations) and receive no special elaboration. In concluding his "propositio," Bodin calls attention to a more significant set of relations between the Theatrum and three contemporary genres—natural history, Aristotelian physics, and problemata. By explaining his innovations and additions to these preexisting kinds of works Bodin tacitly presents the Theatrum as a combination of and partial contribution to all three of them. Bodin begins by explaining the distinction between physics and natural history: We have concluded very bnefly the history of plants and animals, since they have been treated at more length by Aristotle, Theophrastus, Pliny, Dioscorides, Galen, Mattioli, and many others· we have described what they omitted and which is of use to posterity and known by experience. But we have conjoined succinctly the causes of each thing with its natural history: indeed those who separate natural histories from the discussion of causes err greatly, especially because the same things must be repeated more often: so that when the histories of the motion of the ocean are recounted, the efficient causes must be added to the histories, and not treated in a separate place. The books of Pliny are full of natural histones and are written with the greatest diligence: nonetheless he rarely touches on the questions of causes. But nothing is more suited to the physicus than to inquire into the efficient causes of all things, and more often still, into the ends [or final causes] themselves (Pp. 6-7)154

In the first instance the Theatrum complements longer histories of plants and animals with new material: Bodin acknowledges a topical continuity with that tradition. But he is dissatisfied with existing natural histories because they neglect causal explanation. The task of the physicus is rather to conjoin the causes, efficient and final, with the phenomena described in natural histories

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Similarly, in passing comments Bodin emphasizes that physics yields deeper understanding of the causes and interconnections of nature than the naturalhistorical studies produced by medici. In introducing his Book III on plants and animals Bodin announces his intention of treating these topics as a Tphysicus: "This admirable [coherence] of the world and the contiguity and cementing of its parts has seemingly been either neglected by those who have written about nature, or consciously omitted: nonetheless there is nothing greater nor more in need of studious research in this science; which we sketched in whatever way we could in the preceding book, when we discussed the order of the elements, then of elementary bodies. . . . We must now discuss plants and animals after the method not of medici but of physici, as we said above" (pp. 270—71). The physicus explains the web of interconnections within nature, notably as formed by intermediate beings and causal relations. In discussing the eating habits of fish and how they relate to the shape of the mouth and teeth, Bodin contrasts the descriptive work characteristic of medici and the causal explanations of true physics: "All of which [questions] Rondelet, the nursling of the nymphs, seems to me to have explained very well, who proposed not to describe what others had done, but to explain what was omitted by others, to wit the causes: which is indeed most appropriate to this discipline, while the rest is the concern of the medici" (pp. 331-32).155 Rondelet, a medical doctor best known for his natural histories of fish, receives praise here for explaining the causes of the phenomena he describes as a physicus should.156 At the same time Bodin cuts short the actual details of the nourishment of fish and refers the reader to Rondelet, as if they were merely "medical" after all. Bodin is content with a few examples to make his philosophical point and leaves a more exhaustive enumeration and description to the medici. In these instances, Bodin calls "medici" the authors we would designate as natural historians, who in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were overwhelmingly from the medical profession (including Pierre Belon, an apothecary and medical licentiate; Leonard Fuchs1 botanist and physician; Conrad Gesner, an M.D.; Ulisse Aldrovandi, professor of medicine; and Jan Jonston, a practicing physician). The close association of medicine and natural history throughout the premodern and early modern periods rests on the search for medical virtues in plants and animals, the success of which perforce depends on the proper identification, description, and analysis of the different species.157 Although Bodin actually praises Rondelet here for his attention to causal explanation, he too is a perfect example of the medical doctor-cum-natural historian whose illustrated descriptions of successive species, often compiled from previous natural histories, generally lack (in Bodin's view) the philosophical coherence and explanatory power of "physics." In these passages the maligned medici are only incidentally doctors; above all they specialize in descriptive details of natural history, on which the Theatrum need not dwell in bringing to light the deep philosophical and causal nexus of nature. Bodin has little to say about medicine proper. In his initial set of definitions Bodin distinguishes medicine as the study of the human body from physics as the study of the physical body. The demarcation, on which Bodin does not elaborate,

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seems tenuous since the human body is natural and mobile, hence "physical," and is explicitly included as the eighth of the ten "hypostases." Humans, however, given their free will and moral deserts, are attentively monitored by divine justice even in this world and thus not just another species in the Creation.158 In an imbalance common among contemporary physics manuals,159 the Theatrum devotes only twenty pages at the end of Book III to the human body, focusing instead all of Book IY on the human soul, its organic faculties, and its immortal nature. The soul had an old Aristotelian pedigree; even natural-historical topics, although usually treated by medical doctors, were readily incorporated into physics because of their Aristotelian and Plinian ancestry; the human body, however, was the specialty of a highly demarcated profession and university faculty and one with which Bodin was hardly familiar.160 Although Bodin had read and frequently cites Galen and Hippocrates for specific points, he rarely addresses the principles of cures and diseases. When he does, in one passage, mention the Hippocratic dictum that "contraries cure contraries," he notes that medical principles always suffer exceptions (citing the authority of Galen, Hippocrates, and Avicenna) and concludes with some disdain: "The principles of physics must be much more certain than those of medicine, which they must serve to illuminate" (p. 64). In passages like these Bodin associates himself with the most prestigious line of natural philosophy, the one practiced in Latin at the Faculty of Arts, that of Aristotelian physics. Originally limited to Aristotle's work of that title and the large body of commentary on it, physics as taught in Renaissance universities generally included related texts such as Aristotle's Meteorobgica (on the elements and their mixtures), De caelo (on the heavens) and De anima (on the soul) under one umbrella term. In this way the two-year philosophy course in faculties of arts comprising logic and physics, metaphysics and ethics, could cover Aristotle's major works. Works of physics by professors of philosophy often included natural-historical topics and the human body in theory, but rarely discussed them in any detail. Bodin deviates from this tradition by conjoining "natural histories with their causes" in the long central section of the Theatrum, but he rightly locates both the topics and the mode of reasoning of his Books I and IV in this Aristotelian tradition: "If we dissent from others, we strive in any case to refute falsehoods either with necessary demonstrations or with most certain and clear arguments. We did this especially in questions concerning the principles and causes of nature, the birth and death of the world, the soul: the discussion of which, having always seemed to us very confusing and unclear, we have made clearer and easier by proposing all kinds of questions" (p. 7). These parts of the Theatrum are designed as pedagogical presentations of and original philosophical contributions to topics standard in university physics. Finally, Bodin explicitly connects his work to the tradition of problemata, emphasizing both his original contributions to the genre and its respectable ancient pedigree: "We have proposed none of the problems of Aristotle or Alexander of Aphrodisias, but problems that have not before been posed: or that have been posed but not explained; or explained but not confirmed by certain arguments; or finally where a false history has been set out in place of a true one" (ibid.). Nat-

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ural histories, university physics, and problemata thus serve equally as Bodin's points of reference in defining the Theatrum. While Bodin is proud of his innovations, he introduces them not in order to overthrow the ancient parameters of the genres, but to build on and complete them. For all his anti-Aristotelianism and philosophical idiosyncracies, Bodin was applying traditional tools to traditional questions, and measured himself against well-established contemporary genres.

THE THEATRUM AND CONTEMPORARY CLASSIFICATIONS

The great instability and diversity of contemporary classifications of books and of knowledge in the late Renaissance makes discussion of disciplinary or generic categories delicate—all the more so in natural philosophy which lacked a clear professional base. The growing awareness in the Renaissance that the mass of books available had outstripped any individual's ability to master them led, in the first instance, to the multiplication of summary cribs and vast reference works (from the Ramist textbook to Theodor Zwinger's Theatrum humanae vitae) which promised mastery of all that material. Secondly, catalogues by booksellers, bibliographers, and librarians developed beyond all proportion with their medieval antecedents, to help guide the reader through the literature. Before long the principles of book selection and classification were themselves the object of discussion (notably in books on how to form a library) and booklists and bibliographies were catalogued and discussed in "bibliographies of bibliographies."161 Bodin himself, at the end of the Methodus, provides a bibliography of recommended historians, which he divides into four categories: universal historians and geographistorians, historians of different religions, historians of different peoples, historians of illustrious individuals.162 But these efforts of Renaissance authors to make sense of their complex literary domain leave us with yet another set of fascinating historical problems.163 Sales catalogues consistently make distinctions by the practical criteria of language (Latin, French, German, and the like) and physical presentation (folio, quarto, octavo; bound or unbound)—the latter factors important not only for pricing but also for storage. Their subject categories range more widely: theology (sometimes subdivided into Protestant and Catholic) and law are fairly clear-cut; next comes medicine, which can be combined with philosophy, natural history, or mathematics; after that, each catalogue picks and chooses and combines from among a number of rubrics such as history and geography, philosophy, the liberal arts, mathematics, rhetoric and philology, poetry, music.164 Each arrangement offers a variation on a core hierarchy of disciplines; this variety results not only from arbitrary or practical considerations in specific cases, but also from a general interest in experimenting with the order and definition of categories as they were applied to an ever greater range and number of published works. The fluidity (within certain basic parameters) of the classification of books is evident in printed bibliographies which have less direct practical relevance and

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are more idiosyncratic in their distinctions: Philibert Mareschal for example lumps philosophy, physics, and metaphysics, while separating astrology and physiognomy; his section of "melanges" includes many of the works I considered here, including Cardano, Boaistuau, and various problemata.165 In presenting his Bibliotheque Jrangaise to King Henry III, La Croix du Maine proudly announces a plan to arrange one hundred "buffets" of one hundred books according to a complex set of seven "orders" which are both disparate and overlapping;166 not surprisingly, his project was never implemented. Even more standard divisions following the disciplines (e.g., theology; law; arts and sciences; medicine, natural history, physics; history; grammar; poetry) seemed tenuous to the Swiss natural historian and bibliographer Conrad Gesner, who resorted in his Bibliotheca uni­ versalis (1545) to a single alphabetical list. In one volume he included "all writers in three languages, Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, extant and not, old and more recent until this day, learned and not, publicity available] and hiding in [private] libraries.'"67 The early "library scientists" Naude and Frey also recommended following alphabetical order, but within and between categories taken from university disciplines: grammar under "G" before rhetoric under "R," and within disciplines alphabetically by authoT. The variations are endless and illustrate the uncertain definitions and interrelations of intellectual fields outside the sharply defined university faculties of theology and law; already medicine appears less clearly defined because of its association with natural history and physics.168 Finally, the classifications of knowledge developed by school philosophers are even further removed from categories that might identify genres of books. They use abstract Aristotelian distinctions (e.g., speculative and practical, exoteric and acroamatic, general and particular) to generate countless different branching maps of knowledge, which are never matched against actual works.169 These elegant schemes rest on intermediate categories (subordinating and subordinate) with no practical meaning, before reaching a list of arts and sciences that are enumerated but often not clearly defined. In contemporary classifications of books Bodin1S Theatrum would be considered a book of philosophy or of physics along with the university-produced works that I have mentioned in this chapter. Natural theologies by well-known partisan authors like Viret and Duplessis-Mornay would be considered theological, but, for example, La Primaudaye's more accessible version of Viret's arguments is located in the philosophical section of the "French books" in the auction catalogue of Joseph Scaliger's library. Scaliger's "medical and philosophical books" (in Latin) include not only natural histories (e-.g., Rondelet and Pliny) but also della Porta's book of secrets (Magia naturalis) and ancient problemata like Seneca's Natural Questions. Collections of memorable stories and miscellanies, on the other hand, figure under "orators, philologists, etc." (notably Petrus Victorius' Variae lectiones, Gellius, and other works entitled "miscellanea"); this section also includes dictionaries and reference works similar to Zwinger and Caelius Rhodiginus (e.g., Calepinus, and Perotti's Cornucopiae). These same categories are reproduced tacitly in the order followed for the enumeration of "French books": the philosophical section in that list juxtaposes Wecker's Secrets et merveilles de na-

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tare, Bodin's Republique, La Primaudaye's Acadimie frangaise, and Montaigne's Essais, in that order, before shading into mathematical works, then historical ones—mostly contemporary annals and travel reports.170 These various kinds of contemporary classifications are rudimentary and unstable. They either float in the realm of idealized abstractions (like La Croix du Maine's "buffets" or the schemes of the philosophers) or exploit traditional associations with different disciplines for reasons of convenience, when they do not simply resort to the alphabet. In any case they are not reliable indicators of specialized and distinct fields, but reveal by their diversity the shifting and multiple relations between different subjects. On the one hand, the auction catalogue of Scaliger's library usefully illustrates how contemporaries easily considered together texts that have been treated very differently by historians, viz. a canonical literary text (Montaigne), a canonical text of political philosophy (Bodin) and works of "vulgarization" or "popular" interest (like La Primaudaye and Wecker). On the other hand, it sets apart works which were used for similar purposes, such as natural histories and travel reports, or books of almost universal relevance like miscellanies and encyclopedic dictionaries, which were all used as sources of "historical" facts. Furthermore these classifications do not draw distinctions between kinds of works designed for different contexts and audiences, as I have tried to sketch in this chapter. The Renaissance is rightly known for its polymathic heroes and for its ideal of an encyclopedia which blossomed from ancient roots misinterpreted in the sixteenth century as designating the "circle of disciplines.'"71 Learned and less learned authors composed both single works which spanned many subjects (as in the problemata, books of secrets, and miscellanies) and separate books in different fields, ranging from philosophy to history, medicine, or mathematics. In writing on natural philosophy in his last published work Bodin brought along his personal idiosyncracies as well as the baggage of his previous historical and political interests. His location outside the university and medical profession (the two best-defined bases for the pratice of natural philosophy) made it easier for him to deviate from the norms of either group and to combine features from a number of contemporary genres. As Bodin presents it, the Theatnim provides a clearer and truer exposition of Aristotelian physics, discusses the natural histories of plants and animals in a philosophical way by "conjoining them with their causes," and resolves a loosely ordered succession of causal questions characteristic of problemata. The Theatrum is also a natural theology designed to force the assent of the impious, and to lay incontrovertible foundations for piety in demonstrations of divine providence and omnipotence. To accomplish these goals, the Theatrum accumulates bookish facts, memorable histories, and practical secrets in a dialogue that purports to be pedagogical while teeming with erudite marginal references. While the resulting blend is unique, the Theatrum drew on a stock of sources, themes, and methods common to many other works of its time.

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for most of two generations after him, in the evaluation and elaboration of knowledge accumulated largely from texts. Observation and calculation might occasionally be included alongside textual analysis, but without any special status or authority accorded to them. Even today's science, with its specialized methods, is governed by a system of literary conventions that are well worth studying.1 A fortiori, for traditional natural philosophy, which consists largely in textual criticism, the methods of bookish scholarship and rhetorical presentation are fundamental to the scientific enterprise itself. In this chapter I offer a close analysis of the construction of Bodin's Theatrum, notably its use of the dialogue form and its origins in a book of commonplaces. Bodin's methods of extracting and reusing material from other texts illuminate the practices of contemporaries and of a majority of natural philosophers before the Scientific Revolution, as they constituted and slowly modified their stocks of natural "facts." In the two chapters which follow I will turn to progressively more peculiar features of Bodin's natural philosophy, and to the functions of "judgment" that Bodin applied to the process of "inventio" or fact-gathering that I treat here. Reserving for later the novelty of Bodin's speculative philosophy in the Theatrum, I show here how Bodin's use of particulars in the natural historical books (II, III, and parts of IV and V) provides a key to understanding a widespread method of Renaissance scholarship that relies on the collection of natural commonplaces. Bodin's use of the dialogue form in the Theatrum is comparable in various respects to otherliterary and philosophical dialogues of the Renaissance, and to the question-and-answer form of the problemata. One of its striking features is Bodin's habit of framing theory-laden questions about the natural phenomena to be explained. I argue that this feature and Bodin's practice of physics more generally can be explained from his use of a book of natural commonplaces, in keeping with his own advice in the Methodus. Although there is no physical proof of the existence of Bodin's notebook, I propose the "method of commonplaces" both as a specific hypothesis to explain the composition of Bodin's Theatrum and more broadly as a metaphorical description of one of the dominant patterns of thought in the cycle of traditional natural philosophy. Finally, I show how the apparently meandering structure of the Theatrum results from Bodin's adaptation of the dialogue to suit the topical and thematic material accumulated in a commonplace book.

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'CHAPTER TWO' THE THEATRUM AS A DIALOGUE

The success of the dialogue in Renaissance literature is well-known,2 primarily because of such canonical works as Boccaccio's Decameron, Marguerite de Navarre's Heptameron, or Thomas More's Utopia·, but the dialogue permeated Renaissance writing in all fields, from grammar to demonology and medicine, and at all levels, from Latin primers and vernacular introductions to technical treatises.3 Inevitably the diversity of forms and uses of dialogue is enormous—so too is the number of possible classificatory schemes.4 Without attempting to treat this vast topic systematically, I outline some of the salient features of dialogues on natural philosophy to set the context for Bodin's Theatrum, Humanist authors of dialogues could look back to three major ancient models— Socrates/Plato, Cicero, and Lucian.5 The Socratic dialogue is notorious for the leading questions by which the master persuades his pupil to accept the correct answer, supposedly drawing out the pupil's innate understanding of the issue; but Plato's Symposium offered an alternative model, widely imitated for its lively exchange of ideas on love and beauty among eight well-bred dinner guests. In the Ciceronian form (e.g., De natura deorum) three interlocutors each present and argue for rival philosophical positions, but no single view clearly prevails in the end. Finally, Lucian's newly recovered satiric dialogues invited applications of the form to witty polemic and social satire, which, however, are of little relevance to natural philosophy.6 Inspired by these classical precedents, Renaissance authors also strayed from them, taking the genre in new directions, notably by highlighting the locus amoenus or elegant setting of a gracious conversation, or by exploiting the persuasive or didactic power of the form. Courtly dialogues (often the most famous, including Boccaccio, Castiglione, and Marguerite de Navarre) feature entertaining conversation and storytelling in a pleasant setting (often a retreat) among members of the social elite. Especially widespread in the sixteenth century, philosophical dialogues confronted conflicting positions, sometimes in order to reveal the complexity of an issue that is finally left undecided (following the model of Cicero), in other cases in order to advance controversial views without being responsible for asserting them as true (most famously in the case of Galileo), or in order to convince the discussants and the reader of a conclusion (in various modifications of the Socratic form).7 Finally, humanist educators used the dialogue in a number of formats (master quizzing pupil, pupil asking questions, conversations imitated from daily life, and so forth) to make more palatable for schoolchildren and other beginners unambiguous lessons ranging from the Latin language to the catechism or natural philosophy. Every author assembled a unique mix of these formal and intellectual components to reach his intended audience. Dialogues on natural philosophy for readers of good breeding, for example, were often both pedagogical and philosophical in their aims, but also used the device of a "courtly" setting. Bodin was familiar with one such text since he composed a liminary poem for its translation into French: a "Dialogue on the Earth-

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quake" by the Bolognese gentleman Lucio Maggio1 written in 1571 after an earthquake at Ferrara, and translated into French in 1575 (after a second Italian earthquake) by Nicolas de Livre, a prominent and wealthy member of the Paris nobility. This engaging little book features four Italian gentlemen (identified with genuine names) on a carriage journey after the earthquake; they discuss the characteristics and causes of earthquakes in general, and the most knowledgeable of them presents the basics of Aristotle's theory, responding to objections as they are raised. This work of natural philosophy by a gentleman for gentlemen conveys information and a minimum of philosophical debate by exploiting the topicality of its subject and a classic locus amoenus.8 The genre flourished in all sizes, from short vernacular texts like Maggio's, to a weighty folio, available in Latin and French, by the Volaterran bishop Simon Maiole.5 His Dies caniculares are set in a country retreat where a gentleman and his two guests, a theologian and a philosopher, sit out the hot season (hence the title), discussing the marvelous occurrences of nature (from comets and lightning to rains of daggers and blood). The philosopher teaches bits of Aristotelian theory while the theologian exhorts his companions to admire the miraculous power of God. In this case the dialogue is not only pedagogical, but also exploits the "dialogicity" of the form, juxtaposing potentially conflicting interpretations of nature without preferring one over the other.10 The Theatrum, by contrast, has none of the trappings of the courtly dialogue: no locus amoenus or narrative to set an elegant scene for the conversation, no introductions for the characters who are given symbolic rather than realsounding names. The Theatrum clearly has elements of the philosophical dialogue, as it challenges Aristotelian and other received views in a number of areas, (such as angelology, meteorology, and various specifics of natural history). But, unlike the most famous philosophical dialogues of the Renaissance, it is not particularly "dialogic": it neither leaves issues unresolved through the presentation of multiple conclusions nor leads the interlocutors to modify their original positions under the force of new arguments. A classic example of dialogicity is provided instead by the Colloquium heptaplomeres attributed to Bodin1 in which seven men representing different religions end their debate without agreeing on any solution other than to live in harmony without broaching the issue again; although the work has been interpreted as favoring one position or the other, no single point of view prevails explicitly and the diversity of interpretations proposed is evidence of the discretion with which the author presented his personal preference (if he did so at all).11 In another example of a dialogical form, Galileo uses one of the characters in his Dialogue concerning the Two World Systems to convince the other two to reject their initial position in the face of powerful arguments. The sleight of hand in the concluding pages by which Galileo makes the leading exponent of Copemicanism suddenly deny that his conclusions are certain and return to conventional authority as a fideist solution fooled none of his contemporaries, least of all Pope Urban VlII who felt that his own argument for treating Copernicanism as a hypothesis had been ridiculed. The force of the Church's reaction against Galileo bears witness to his success in using the dialogue to per-

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suade readers of his view.12 In the Socratic form as well, the dialogue serves as dialectical tool, as the questioner is persuaded by the master to accept an apparently startling conclusion. This is the method chosen by Lefevre d'Etaples in his pedagogical presentation of natural philosophy of 1536: his dialogues on natural philosophy supposedly involve up to eight different figures with symbolic names (glosses are provided, such as "Hermeneus—Interpres," Oneropolus—Coniector," "Epiponus—Laboriosus," "Neanias—Adolescens" and the like) but soon are reduced to exchanges in which the "theorist" (Oneropolus) leads the "hard worker" (Epiponus) to assent to his reasoning.13 In all these cases the dialogue form is integral to the argument by allowing the author to raise and respond to objections, to challenge received opinions, or to marshal the persuasive powers of rhetoric and dialectic alongside strictly logical reasoning.14 The Theatrum certainly uses the dialogue for rhetorical purposes, as I will show below in analyzing its structure, but not as a classic device for philosophical persuasion. The master, Mystagogus, labors neither to convince his pupil of his conclusions nor to guide him to find them himself. The pupil, Theorus, asks for and gratefully accepts as indisputable the answers of his learned master. Only Books I and IV contain some arguments sustained over objections raised by Theorus. Even in these cases the pupil's objections do not form a coherent position opposed to that of the master; furthermore they are raised emphatically not for Theorus' sake, but to ensure that Mystagogus can present his solution fully, for the benefit of those "who assent only to the most certain demonstrations" (i.e., those "Epicureans" and impious against whom the Theatrum was written).15 Except in one passage, in which Theorus suggests an interpretation of comets as the souls of great men, which Mystagogus neither endorses nor rejects (p. 222), the Theatrum does not leave any ambiguity as to the conclusions that the author advances and expects the reader to accept. Even when Bodin proposes other unorthodox views, notably on the corporeality of souls and angels, the dialogue does not veil his commitment to them or present them as hypothetical (as Galileo's Dialogue purports to). This kind of dialogue that does not engage in any genuine diversity of opinion or leave questions pending has been called "monological" and is generally seen as characteristic of the later Renaissance, when didactic dialogues with an unequivocal message prevailed over more open-ended uses of the form.16 Although I use "dialogue" as a shorthand to describe the construction of the Theatrum as a succession of questions and answers ascribed to two characters named Theorus and Mystagogus, Bodin himself does not call his work a dialogue or colloquy. In the only explicit reference to the form of the Theatrum, Bodin explains in concluding the "propositio" that "we have followed the method of questions and answers, with the character of Theorus set forth as disciple and that of Mystagogus as master, because none seemed to be easier or more effective for the memory" (p. 7). For Bodin the dialogue is less a literary form than a "method," that is a way of investigating and/or teaching, which promises easy retention. Similarly, Bernard Palissy composes his treatise on underground springs and resources "in the form of a dialogue so that it will be more easily understood.'"7 Here Palissy does call "dialogue" an approach very similar to Bodin's: two figures

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with symbolic names (at best) carry on a discussion through questions and answers. In the Recepte veritable (1563) the figures are named after their roles as "demande" and "responce"; in the Discours admirable (1580) Palissy names them "theorique" and "practique" and gives the interaction a combative tone, as "practique" in the answering position mocks the inadequacies of "theorique." This conviction that the dialogue form is a useful pedagogical aid, which Bodin and Palissy share with many contemporary authors, results from the central role of the dialogue in Renaissance education. In sixteenth-century England, for example, a child's education consisted of memorizing increasingly difficult dialogues.18 The first was the vernacular catechism, best known in, but not unique to Reformed countries, which took the form of a conversation between master and child, in which the master asked questions in order to drill or verify the knowledge of the pupil.19 Next, the Latin language was taught through dialogues that pupils would act out with each other in the classroom. Elementary "colloquies" like those of Vives (1539), Mosellanus (1517) or Mathurin Cordier (1564) generally drew their material from realistic interactions in the school, generating further examples of master-pupil conversations; children would move on to the Colloquies of Erasmus (1522) which offered more sophisticated language and topics, typically in conversations staged between friends or family members.20 For those who continued to secondary education, for example in the Jesuit colleges (which were also widely imitated outside the order), lessons were drilled by question and answer by peers or the master himself in exercises called redditio at the beginning or quaestiones at the end of class, and reparationes during meals.21 At the university, finally, the oral disputation centered around questions, too, although they were posed less in search of a simple, unequivocal answer than for the sake of the multiple layers of analysis, objections, and responses that preceded it.22 Bodin explicitly relates the Theatrum to this high-level question-and-answer form when he refers to his work as a disputatio in opening and closing statements, including at the end of Book I, reiterating his desire to rely only on the most certain reasons in all disputations about nature.23 But Bodin's unsystematic way both of choosing questions and of providing answers yields a quite different form from the tightly argued logic of the scholastic disputation. Like other Renaissance pedagogical authors, Bodin has reduced the scholastic format to a shadow of its medieval complexity. Instead, what the term conveys most of all in the late sixteenth century is the intention to provide demonstrations from reason and first principles. As Charles Lohr describes, Spanish neoscholastics in particular developed in this period a new literary form with their systematic treatises or disputationes, mostly in metaphysics, in which they abandoned the order of Aristotle's discussion in favor of building the arguments from first principles, according to the logic of the subject.2+ Although Bodin's attempt to give reasoned demonstrations of religious truths rarely meets rigorous logical standards, he certainly advertised "demonstration" as the principal aim of the Theatrum—a disputatio was precisely the kind of work that would force assent by reason "as if under the application of torture." But Bodin was probably also inspired by the great numbers of didactic works

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for use in the classroom and beyond it, ranging from technical topics like chronology and astronomy (in Latin) to lighter ones like dancing and the basics of astronomy or anatomy (in the vernacular).25 The dialogue form of the Theatrum may well have grown out of his plan for the education of his children, as laid out in a "Letter to His Nephew concerning the Instruction of His Children" of 1586 (which circulated in manuscript until its recent publication). As soon as I returned from England [in 1582] I found one of [my sons] aged three years and the other four. From then I taught them with nuts and cherries to name in Latin everything that they saw; and seeing that they were well endowed in memory and mind I started to have them say in Latin, angels, darkness, light, the world and how old it was, to wit 5,534 years, the sky and how many orbs it has, how many visible fixed stars, how many planets and their movements and their names, how many elements, the wind, clouds, rains, snows, hail, storm, lightnmg, thunder, fog, and dew, . . . rivers, seas, fish, birds and beasts, quadrupeds, naming most of them and some of the most common birds and fish; then the towns, . . . the parts of the house . . and finally man and all his parts from the hair to the skin, internal and external; the five senses, the six first qualities . . . the six flavors, . . odors, . . colors, the six [musical] accents, . . . the six perfect bodies . . the six metals [and so forth]. This they learned little by little and every day they repeated what they had learned before the meal, which they did willingly given their appetite for it, and there was not a day that they did not Ieam something new. Shortly thereafter I accustomed them to interrogate one another, so that they spoke to each other without my teaching them anything. . . . Having thus habituated them to recite every day what they had learned, I established for them 300 moral sentences in French and in Latin; and give them for example the sentences which they Ieam every day one at a time, and now they know 220 of them and I will continue until 300. . . [They also learned Latin conjugations and declensions] . . and to teach them the main agreements and concordances I taught them these words; "Ego cupio vehementer laudare opificem mundi optimum et potentissimum omnium pro dignitate" [I greatly desire to praise the Creator of the world, the best and most powerful of all in keeping with his worthiness]. And then I taught them "ego cupio": noun and verb agree, "cupio vehementer": the adverb is correctly joined with the verb [and so on]. After dinner they learn arithmetic; soon I will teach them geometry;. . I will have them read Cicero and translate Latin into French; but I am preparing for them six hundred questions in Latin without French on all the beauty of nature. . . . The most beautiful secret to giving them sure memory and judgment is to teach them all beautiful things and in order.26

Schooling his children at home, Bodin taught them to interrogate one another (as in a classroom), first on the Latin names of things, then on questions (and answers) "on all the beauty of nature." The questions Bodin planned to write about nature "in Latin without French" would combine linguistic and moral training by extolling, in Latin, the divine creation. Presumably this project, which Bodin had only sketched in 1586, played some

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role in prompting the composition of the Theatrum, using, as I discuss in the next section, the material on natural topics that he had probably been collecting since the beginning of his scholarly career.27 While Bodin's use of question and answer in the instruction of his children is in keeping with contemporary pedagogy, one can wonder whether he really proceeded as he describes with the encyclopedic coverage of the world, from its age at 5,534 years to the list of six perfect solids and the six metals. If this list is more than an idealized educational program, its apprehension by young children must have involved a kind of memorization devoid of much understanding that has often been associated with Renaissance schooling.28 Even if these heavy demands on rote memorization were placed on the young Bodins, it is hardly conceivable that the Theatrum as it was published was used for their instruction. Theorus and Mystagogus

For whose instruction, then, was the Theatrum composed? The best indications of an answer lie in the relationship that Bodin creates between Theorus and Mystagogus. As I argue below, in the first place the reader is expected to identify with Theorus and learn with him from Mystagogus' answers; but the dialogue is also instructive at a second level, by showing the reader how to acquire knowledge in physics. Although Bodin does not introduce these characters except as pupil and master respectively, he has given them unusual names that refer to their roles in the dialogue. "Theorus" is not even attested in Latin dictionaries; as a result the Wechels, in printing the second and third editions, no doubt thought they were correcting an error when they rendered it "Theodoras" instead in the opening page of the text (later references in all editions are abbreviated "Th."). The term is recognizable nonetheless as a simple transliteration of the Greek thedros. In its first meaning, which Renaissance etymologists traced to the root theos, "god," thedros is one who accedes to the divinity or one who tends to the matters pertaining to it, such as sacrifices and ceremonies or the consultation of oracles. In a second meaning, drawn from theaomai, "to see, to contemplate," thedros is a spectator, of solemn games or official contests for example, or finally, by extension, one who travels to inspect the customs of each city.29 Fougerolles translates "Theorus" as "le Theoricien," emphasizing his contemplative activity as spectator of the theater of nature. This fits neatly with the title and general purpose of the The­ atrum, to observe God's work throughout nature. Whenjuxtaposed with "Mystagogus," however, the other two meanings of thedros also become significant, as both names combine religious with touristic connotations.30 "Mystagogus" and "mystagogue" are attested in dictionaries of Latin and Renaissance French, with the meaning of the Greek mustagdgos, one who initiates into the sacred mysteries, and by extension one who is entrusted with guarding the sacred objects and showing them to visitors.31 Bodin himself had already used the term in the Dtmonomanie, quoting from Menander, to designate the guardian angel or "daimon" assigned to each person (what he calls in the Theatrum the "agent intellect").32 In many cases the term was losing its strong meaning of "ini-

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tiator" in the sixteenth century: Calepinus suggests translating "mystagogus" as "sacristan"; "mystagogue" is mostly used comically, as in the fifth book of Pantagruel, or to mock the hierarchy of the Catholic Church in Marnix de Sainte-Aldegonde.33 In addition, however, all these dictionaries cite a unique usage of the term in one of Cicero's speeches against Verres. There he refers to a Sicilian official called a "mystagogue." After deploring the theft of works of art from the holy buildings of Syracuse, Cicero concludes: "The result of all this, gentlemen, is that the persons known as 'mystagogues,' who act as guides to visitors and show them the various things worth seeing, have had to reverse the form of their explanations. Formerly, they showed you everywhere what things were; now they explain everywhere what has been taken away."34 Bodin no doubt also refers to this passage, extending it to a wider ancient context, when he explains the meaning of "mystagogus" in the first few paragraphs of the Theatrum. In the first exchange of the book Theorus expresses his gratitude for the opportunity of learning from the master and proposes that they follow the custom of the most sophisticated cities. Theorus. Since you seem to me so replete with knowledge and gifted by nature that no one could teach more willingly nor more easily than you what he has learned through infinite labor and long study, and since you have given me liberty to inquire into the intimate recesses of your soul about all things, does it please you that we follow the laudable custom of the most polite cities?

In a unique inversion of the usual pattern of dialogue, Mystagogus asks Theorus what he means. Mystagogus. I would consider it ungrateful and mean-spirited not to distribute

generously what one has in abundance and knows will benefit another, especially if one knows that one will not be the poorer for it. But such is the power and nature of the sciences that the more you teach them and pass them from yourself to another, the richer and more learned you become. . . . But what do you mean by the custom of the more sophisticated cities? Theorus. To create a magistrate, whom they call mystagogue, whose duty it is to receive graciously travelers desirous [of seeing) antiquities and worthy things, and to show them around the city and lay out [for them] all the antiquity of the place and to explain affably the temples, theaters, colonnades and whatever most beautiful and rare things he knows; thus 1 too, a traveler in this city of the world, desire to be instructed by you about all things, so that I can understand things above and below, first and last and in the middle, and all the causes of all things and their consequences. (Pp. 9-10)

"Mystagogus" is explicitly associated with the role of a guide, not only of sacred objects, but of local attractions. The last mentioned meaning of theoros as one who visits cities therefore becomes particularly appropriate as a match for the "touristic" acceptation of "mystagogus": Theorus indeed describes himself as a visitor, "a traveler in this city of the world" in need of a guide.

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But it is hard to ignore the hieratic connotations of these names, which persisted for example down to a late alchemical text composed under the pseudonym of "Mystagogus."35 Without necessarily using the exact term, Philo and Plato describe a similar sacred guide or "hierophans" who initiates the disciple to the divine mysteries.36 Theorus' reference to himself as a traveler, as if foreign to the world, reinforces the Philonic origin of the metaphor For Philo humans do not belong to the world before being born and reside in this world as foreigners until they die: "God alone is properly speaking a citizen of the world, all created beings are only metics and strangers and they are called citizens by a misuse of language which does not correspond to the truth."37 This more generally Neoplatonic vision of humankind as intermediate between the material world and the transcendent divine allows for both optimistic and pessimistic interpretations of human capacities, both of which appeal by turns to Bodin. As 1 will show in analyzing Bodins argumentation, he believes that we can overcome the divide between the material and the transcendent, notably by rising toward God through the study of nature, as in the Theatrum, but at the same time he places limits on human investigation and understanding which result from the ultimately unbridgeable gap separating all creatures from the divine. As I discuss at the end of chapter 3, Mystagogus thus teaches a reasoned study of nature, but also serves as a special conduit to divine wisdom, notably when he dispenses allegorical interpretations of the Bible. Bodin mostly leaves the Neoplatonic themes dormant and avoids the language of hermetic initiation in the Theatrum. Bodin shuns the obvious theme of mysteries to be uncovered by the master, and rejects the implication that this knowledge of God through nature is limited to the few or should be kept secret. When Theorus marvels at the master's generosity in agreeing to pass on to a student everything that he has learned at such great cost, Mystagogus explains a very first lesson, of which Francis Bacon would have approved: not only is it "ungrateful and mean-spirited" to refuse to share what one has in abundance, but knowledge is a unique kind of wealth which only grows as one shares it.38 Furthermore, Mystagogus may be "gifted by nature," as Theorus describes, but has nonetheless acquired his knowledge not through a sacred revelation that no one else could have had, but rather through hard work and long hours of study (infinito labore ac vigiliis), as anyone can. On the one hand, Bodin's choice of names sets a tone of hallowed respect for nature as a kind of sacred temple to be guarded and revered; on the other hand, we are explicitly offered not an initiate's glimpse of mysteries as revealed by an anointed priest of nature, but a tour of the vast and open theater of God's creation led by a talented and knowledgeable teacher. These introductory metaphors are not maintained long and the names of the characters soon disappear from attention as they are abbreviated throughout (as "Th." and "Myst."). The real evidence for the nature of the pedagogy at work lies in the exchanges themselves. Although Theorus tries to start out like a novice ("What is the subject of this science?" then: "What is nature?"), by the third question already he reveals his familiarity with what turns out to be a vast store of clas-

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sical texts and arguments. Theorus responds to Mystagogus' definition of nature with a tacit reference to the Aristotelian one, which Mystagogus had neither mentioned nor adopted: "Why do you not define nature as the principle of movement and rest?" This question prompts one of Bodin's many critiques of Aristotle, in this case for proposing different definitions for nature in different places and grounding them on notions like form and matter which have no natural existence of their own (p. 11). In the philosophical passages of the Theatrum (notably Book I) Theorus tacitly builds his questions around the arguments of others, which Mystagogus identifies in some cases as those of Aristotle (pp. 68, 71), Alexander of Aphrodisias (pp. 30, 121) or Proclus (pp. 35, 50). In the natural-historical books this practice of embedding prior knowledge in the question itself becomes even more striking: why do wild plants seed faster than cultivated ones? (p. 275). Why do males have more teeth than females? (p. 412). Why do those who enjoy listening to music made of short notes and intervals very often go crazy? (p. 458). Mystagogus only occasionally informs the reader of the source of Theorus' prior knowledge. He attributes, for example, the claim that males have more teeth than females to Aristotle's History of Animals (2.3); Mystagogus does so when he intends to deny the premise of Theorus' question and to attack the authority from which it is drawn. In the vast majority of cases, on the contrary, both Theorus and Mystagogus are convinced of the fact that is taken for granted in Theorus' question and turn their attention exclusively to a causal explanation of it. Theorus is clearly no beginner. He commands with ease a large pool of facts and arguments that comprise the received knowledge shared by all those who studied the standard classical texts (primarily Aristotle and commentators, Theophrastus, Pliny, and Galen), many of which would be covered in a university humanist arts curriculum. Theorus reasons well (his master only finds occasional flaws in his arguments),39 and refers to what he has learned "in the schools," for instance concerning the perception of singulars by the intellect (p. 470), or what he "has been told" about the principles of the world (pp. 40, 69). In one instance he cites Euclid's Geometry with precision (Book III, Proposition 16; p. 77), thus invoking an authority for his point and at the same time supplying for the reader the reference to an argument that he might not recall. Occasionally Theorus' tacit knowledge spans more than the usual range of sources: in these cases a marginal note provides the location of the fact that he takes for granted, like the cases of spontaneous combustion of the countryside in the summer heat of Muscovy and Poland (p. 212). Bodin uses the citation both to display his erudition and to establish the authenticity of this little known fact. Various instances of this type aside, most marginal references appear alongside Mystagogus' answers, to adduce respected and canonical authorities to shore up the master's arguments. One can wonder, however, whether the contemporary reader was not expected to gain new information (as the modern reader often does!) from Theorus' questions as well as from the master's answers. In a few cases, indeed, Bodin gives Theorus a question for which Mystagogus has no answer, as if with the sole intention of establishing a fact within the constraints of the dialogue form. Thus when Theorus asks: "Why do quails follow a leader of another species . . . called

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an ortygometra?" Mystagogus does not give a causal explanation at all, but merely confirms the statement embedded in Theorus' question and goes on to give other details about the behavior of quails. Th. Why do quails follow a leader of another species which is also very small and for that reason is called ortygometra? M. This too is proved by daily experience that quails, under the leadership of the ortygometra, sometimes also a Cynchrama or Lingulaca, take off in a group and attempt to fly across rivers and seas, but fall from fatigue in the flight. For this reason it happens that "fishing" for quails is more useful than fishing for fish in the month of October, especially on the shores of the Sicilian or Tyrrhenian sea, as if they sought refuge in the embrace of the water, the parent of birds. (Pp. 375-76)

Bodin wanted to describe the interesting fact that quails fall into the sea, but did not manage to formulate it within a coherent question and answer that also preserved the right emphasis. Evidently Theorus could not have asked, "Why do quails fall into the sea?" and received the simple answer "Because they are tired after they have flown," since the element of surprise, the new and exciting piece of information that Bodin had to convey, was the very fact that quails fall into the sea. This must be reserved for Mystagogus to assert, because he is the knowledgeable one. Theorus' question instead is not meant to be surprising: the ortygometra was well known to contemporaries with an interest in natural philosophy from Aristotle's History of Animals 7.12 and was even more accessible from Pliny's Natural History 10.33. Pierre Belon, for example, devotes a page to the problem of identifying the birds mentioned in these passages (among them "Lingulaca" and "Cynchrama" which Bodin mentions), although he concludes that their names are too difficult to be interpreted properly. ^ In this case what Bodin has to add to the traditional sources is not a causal explanation but a new descriptive fact: notably that quails fall into the sea so that one can "fish" for them more easily than for ordinary fish in the month of October. Bodin invokes here the "daily experience" of fishermen on the shores of the Sicilian and Tyrrhenian seas to bring to light a noteworthy new piece of information (which indeed attracted the attention of at least one early reader).41 Hence Bodin's difficulties in fitting his material into the question-and-answer mode: Theorus could not very well frame the question in terms of something he has yet to learn. It is rare that the modern reader, who no longer shares the same pool of received knowledge, can still appreciate with Bodin and his contemporaries the "self-evidence" of the questions in the Theatrum. We can get a sense of that selfevidence, however, from a few of the questions—posed in exactly the same tone and form as all the others which are so puzzling—which one can still conceive of asking today. "Why do birds put their heads under their wings when they are about to sleep?" (p. 379). "Why does a magnet attract iron?" (p. 243). Curiously, these are often the questions, based on a more direct kind of "common experience" than many of the "experiences" adduced in the Theatrum, that Mystagogus has the most difficulty answering. Whereas Mystagogus has no doubts about the

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causal explanations he proposes for countless "facts" of bookish origin, his answers here are tentative. For example, on the birds' sleeping position he answers with questions of his own: "Maybe [they put their head under their wingl to keep the cold away from their head? Maybe they seek the same position they had at the very beginning of their existence, when they rested most sweetly? Indeed, before they are hatched and when they are born birds have their head under their right wing and resting over their right leg" (p. 379). On the attractive powers of the magnet Mystagogus declines even to speculate, preferring simply to confess his ignorance of the cause (a recurrent maneuver which is part of Bodin's strategy for a pious natural philosophy). To Bodin's contemporaries, I would argue, most of the other questions in the Theatrum—e.g., why snakes bite women more than men (p. 316) or why water corrupted and purified seven times cannot be corrupted again (p. 202)—would have seemed equally straightforward. Theorus is thus a character with which the reader is expected to identify. Educated in the common classical sources and capable of arguing coherently, he asks reasonable questions, based on knowledge that a sixteenth-century reader would share for the most part, at least passively. But like all those who know only natural histories and existing explanations, Theorus has much to Ieam from Mystagogus: corrections and new insights about the causes of things, particularly their final causes. Theorus is also eager to learn and, being neither stubborn nor stupid, he willingly accepts Mystagogus' answers, raising objections when they are reasonable or, when they are not, for the sake of others less reasonable than he. As for Mystagogus, he stands (with an occasional exception) unambiguously for Bodin himself. Bodin's Method of Physics Bodin may well have chosen the dialogue form (as he would later in the Paradoxon) as a pedagogical device, inspired perhaps by the drills that he had developed for the use of his children or by the notion that dialogues are easily memorized. In the realization of the work, however, the interaction between Theorus and Mystagogus plays a more fundamental role, as it becomes constitutive of Bodin's natural philosophy. In particular, the questions and answers themselves define his practice of physics, and, as I show in the final section, they create the work's "orderly" organization. How the physicus acquires the certain knowledge which Bodin extols in his dedication is an issue to which he only alludes in passing (p. 141), briefly engaging the methodological issues that a number of contemporaries, most notably the "Paduan Aristotelians" discussed in depth.12 In the bulk of the Theatrum Bodin's "method" of physics is not a method of discovery in the modern sense, but a way of making connections, through causal explanations and the links in the chain of being, within a body of knowledge that is largely taken for granted. It is significant that Theorus is not an ignorant neophyte, but knows both facts and what earlier thinkers have said about most phenomena of nature. By its very

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structure the Theatrum is the discussion of a body of existing knowledge that needs to be systematized—corrected when necessary, defined, described, divided, and ordered, and above all causally explained. As we have seen, Bodin's "method" (a term he uses only once in the Theatrum) is that of "questions and answers." Mystagogus elaborates on this introductory statement early on in the dialogue: Th. What must we ask [to acquire] complete knowledge of the natural body?

M. Three things: first what it is [quid sit], then what its characteristics are [quale sit], finally why it is [cur sit]. The first contains the intimate essence of the thing from the causes themselves by a definition; the second comprises the faculties and powers specific to it by a description; the third explains why these properties are in it and to what end. When these three types of questions are accurately laid out and explained, the universal doctrine of the physical body is known and understood; there is no fourth [question] (P 12)

The questions and answers not only facilitate retention, but actually constitute the proper method of physics. As a consequence, the Theatrum teaches both the content of physics, through Mystagogus' answers, and the method of physics, through the interaction between the two figures. Bodin's conception of philosophical investigation here is largely scholastic. Medieval disputation also made no distinction between the method of determining the truth and the method of teaching it. Both discovery and pedagogy are enacted in the critical discussion of a quaes Hon Typically, in the scholastic interpretation of Aristotle's Posterior analytics (2.1. 89b23ff.), four questions are considered necessary to acquire scientia: an sit? (does it exist?) quid sit? (what is it?) qualis sit? (of what kind is it?) and propter quid sit? (for what/ because of what is it?).44 The proper responses cover assertion, definition, description, and causal explanation of each phenomenon considered. Bodin is not as consistent in the application of the questions: whereas Aquinas ritually approaches each subject with the four questions,45 Theorus generally asks only one, at most two, types of questions about each issue. Mystagogus thus defines some things, describes others, and reserves causal explanations for others still, although there are cases of overlap. Most importantly, Bodin makes a point of reducing the number of questions to three ("there is no fourth question"), eliminating an sit? from his list. Although Theorus does at times ask a question simply to establish a fact, most of his questions take for granted without prior discussion the existence of the phenomenon for which he now seeks a causal explanation. The striking theory- (or "fact"-) ladenness of the questions that Bodin addresses is one of the most alien features of the text for the modern reader. This theory-ladenness may seem jarring in part because the questions that we take for granted and seek to answer today are different. Nonetheless Bodin's rejection of the first of the four scholastic questions is a methodological flaw which one direct contemporary explicitly criticized. Montaigne's critique is remarkably specific to this point, in his famous essay "On Cripples" in which he attacks, among other cases of hasty judgment, the unquestion-

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ing certainty with which many of his countrymen persecuted those suspected of witchcraft. (Before long, Francis Bacon, too, would propose a complete reversal of the priorities of Bodin's physics, replacing the search for causal explanation with an empirical investigation of the an sit?) Montaigne no doubt had in mind Bodin's arguments, published some five years earlier, in the Demonomanie, when calling for greater skepticism in the investigation of accusations of witchcraft.46 But Montaigne's comments apply equally well to the Theatrum: How free and vague an instrument human reason is. I see ordinarily that men, when facts are put before them, are more ready to amuse themselves by inquiring into their reason than by inquinng into their truth. They leave aside the cases and amuse themelves treating the causes Comical prattlers! The knowledge of causes belongs only to Him who has the guidance of things. . . . They pass over the facts, but they assiduously examine their consequences. They ordinarily begin thus: 'How does this happen?' What they should say is: 'But does it happen?' Our reason is capable of filling out a hundred other worlds. . . . And few people fail, especially in things of which it is hard to persuade others, to affirm that they have seen the thing or to cite witnesses whose authority stops us from contradicting. Following this custom, we know the foundations and causes of a thousand things that never were.17

Unwilling to forsake the possibility of causal understanding, as Montaigne does, by consigning it to the purview of God alone, Bodin eagerly seeks explanations for many a questionable "fact." Although Bodin acknowledges that facts long held to be true need not be so, he does not in practice devote as much attention to establishing the positive existence of facts as he does to explaining them. Bodin's attitude can be attributed to a number of factors, in particular his reluctance to doubt the reports of "authorities" and his staunch defense of the principles of divine omnipotence and intervention, which allow anything to be possible. Bodin is well aware of the limitations of human understanding, but is more mindful of rejecting something that might be true than of accepting something that might be false. As a result, his method of physics, taught by both precept and example in the Theatrum, suspends the first question of existence, which is equally fundamental not only to "modern" empiricism but also to the scholastic approach. Presupposing the existence of a phenomenon, the discussion should begin with a definition (e.g., p. 182). Definition is not specific to physics, nor does Mystagogus formally explain it to his pupil; but he notes in passing some of its characteristics: a definition is unique, encompasses the "sole essence" of the thing, and yet can never "equal the thing defined in every part" (pp. 433-34). Definitions cannot be demonstrated, since they are "the principles of demonstrations," but they can be explained (p. 14). Mystagogus recommends basing the definition on a description, especially when tackling an elusive subject. In the case of fire, for example, since "its forms are hidden," the best we can do is to describe its accidents—"fire is the most simple, pure, subtle, hot, clear, light, voracious, and efficacious of all the elements" (p. 145). Although Bodin distinguishes two types of questions for description and definition, the two are often confused in this way·.

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Theorus actually asks few quale questions; he often already knows the characteristics of the subject to the extent that he can ask more specific questions (e.g., quantus? [how big?] or quotuplex? [in how many types?]) or for confirmation of what he has heard (an? numP [is it true that. . . ?]). The most characteristic question of the Theatrum is in cur? or variants like quid? (how?) or quonam modo? (in what way?). In response to these Mystagogus gives his much-advertised causal explanations. Mystagogus adheres to the four Aristotelian causes against proposals for more (pp. 23-24)48 The formal and material causes are intrinsic, contained in the hypostasis to which each being is assigned according to the type of matter and soul (or form) that it comprises (pp. 53-54). As announced in the title and other programmatic statements, Bodin thus focuses on the efficient and final causes. While the former can satisfy Theorus' curiosity about the mechanisms of the nature, the final cause receives pride of place: Th. Why is it necessary to think of a final cause, since for the perfection of the physical body it suffices to have the matter from which, the form through which, and the efficient cause by which the thing can be made? M. Because nature does nothing in vain: furthermore the final cause is the most noble of all, to which all the others are properly referred: and in addition Avicenna judged that the discussion of ends was the most outstanding of all. What indeed is more useful and more excellent than to understand clearly to what end each thing is made? (P. 24)

The final cause alone can fully reveal the providence and wisdom of God and is therefore the key to the morally uplifting character of physics. If the stated purpose of the physicus is to give both the efficient and the final causes of each phenomenon, in practice Bodin usually treats both types of explanation on the same footing; he offers one cause or the other, sometimes both, m whatever kind of answer seems convincing. When asked for example why lions alone among animals of prey are born wi.th their eyes open, Mystagogus answers from the efficient cause only: "it is not because they see more clearly, as the Greeks write that they are called leonta for that reason (indeed birds have the best eyesight and birds of prey the sharpest of all), but because they have very short eyelids for the size of their eyes" (p. 349).49 On the other hand, Theorus learns why animals lose their first set of teeth from the final cause: because the first teeth would be of no use in consuming more solid food (p. 411). The fullest explanations include both types of causes: "Th. Why do men have a weaker sense of smell than the other animals? M. Theophrastus writes this, but gives no cause. It seems to me that the cause must be that men have proportionally the smallest nostrils and the smallest nerve of smell of all. . . . And in this the -wisdom of the Creator is apparent, for if he had given man a very acute sense of smell, men would not be able to bear the odor of others, and not even their own" (pp. 461-62). Bodin's explanations rarely conform to this ideal: in some cases they overflow with different causes that are not classified or logically ordered but are heaped one upon the other for greater persuasive force. Bodin's new information about the fate of swallows during the winter months, for example, reveals his concurrent consideration of many different factors.

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Th. Why do swallows leave in the fall or through what regions do they fly since they appear nowhere on the earth during the winter? M. Since they are altogether useless for the nourishment of men, and cannot find food in the winter, and do not serve as food for the birds of prey (indeed they all fly past the latter with incredible speed) after the end of the summer and of the flies, having performed the office to which they are assigned by the Creator [of eating the flies], they go in a flock to the seashore, lest they be killed by the northwest winds blowing after the autumn equinox, and they spend six months under the very high rocks and cliffs that overlook the sea, clinging to the rocks and to one another in mutual embrace, until the winds favorable to birds begin to blow gently at the spring equinox, so that they return to their homeland and each to its ancestral home (P. 364)

While all of the reasons adduced here are from the final cause, some are anthropocentric (the swallows serve to consume flies in the summer), while others emphasize the ends of swallows considered for their own sake (they must avoid the dangerous winds); some are negative (they serve no purpose for other animals), others positive (they must look for food). Bodin's overdetermined explanation is testimony less to his rigorous pursuit of causal understanding than to his exuberant appreciation for the "coherence and harmony" of the world, in which every phenomenon has its place and multiple causes. The interconnected web of beings (see below, p. 133) is matched by a providential web of causes which the physicus must uncover in as many different directions as possible. Like both the ideal problema and the ideal scholastic quaestio disputata, Bodin's questions are worth answering—they are neither too easy nor too difficult, as the (ancient) preface to the pseudo-Alexandrian problemata explains: "One must thus ask questions about things that are of a middling variety: that is, not those that are totally obvious of themselves, nor those that are so hidden and obscure that man cannot understand them: but those that, albeit difficult and obscure, can nevertheless be explained by the erudition and understanding of man."50 That birds have wings in order to fly, that fire is hot can be understood "without any doubt or difficulty" and therefore warrants no problema; one who asks, furthermore, "if nature is provident . . . ordered and beautiful . . . certainly deserves great punishment."51 Skeptics must be ruled out from the beginning. On the other hand, those who ask questions which are inexplicable, such as why people laugh when tickled in the armpits, or why the magnet attracts only iron, or why certain herbs have effects on the body, "show themselves to be impertinent when they try to resolve such questions and there is nothing more improper and less probable than the reasons that they give."52 In the same way Bodin tries to steer a middle course, balancing a constant tension in the Theatrum between his emphasis on the powers of human understanding (against the skeptics) and his awareness of its limits (against the arrogant). Theorus' questions are not unreasonable challenges to commonly accepted facts and arguments (and in the few cases in which they might seem so, they are posed on behalf of others); nor are they excessively difficult (or when they are, Mystagogus simply explains that confession of ignorance is the best answer and does not delve further). Theorus poses questions based on his prior knowledge

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and understanding of the world that cause him to puzzle over some apparent contradiction. Why are the summers hotter outside the tropics than within them? Why do the hottest plants grow in cold regions and the driest in humid ones? The master resolves the difficulty by showing that the apparent counterexample to a common assumption actually fits established principles, sometimes even the very assumptions which raised the difficulty in the first place "Th. Why do birds of prey which do not drink liquids have softer stomachs than birds that do drink? M. The stomach is soft in all birds since their genus first originated from the water and they lack a bladder to receive and remove the serous humors: it is softer however for the birds of prey because they drink and eat not grain but flesh and blood only" (p. 378). Theorus' initial notion that the liquidity of the food consumed affects the softness of the stomach is not denied but confirmed as Mystagogus explains that it is the diet of flesh and blood rather than grain that accounts for the softer stomachs of the birds of prey. The dialogue form enables Bodin to draw on multiple models, literary and pedagogical, scholastic and "problematic," to show readers both the results and the process of proper physical investigation. In his questions, which are characteristically embedded in layers of tacit knowledge, and his answers, replete with erudite references, Bodin leaves visible traces of his own method of composition, which also offer insight into the nature of bookish natural philosophy more generally.

THE METHOD OF COMMONPLACES

Following clues not only in Bodin's methodological statements but also in some of the striking features of the Theatrum, notably its use of sources and tacit knowledge and its rambling interweaving of topics and themes, I argue that the Theatrum was composed from a book of natural commonplaces, in keeping with a method advocated in Renaissance schools, traces of which (both physical and literary) can be found in the works of many contemporaries. Although in Bodin's case no physical evidence remains and many specific questions as to the exact nature of the notebooks he might have kept cannot be answered, I propose the method of commonplaces both as a plausible hypothesis for the actual composition of the Theatrum, and more broadly (lest the lack of physical evidence seem devastating) as a metaphor for the method of reading and note-taking that made a work like the Theatrum possible.53 The practice of keeping books of commonplaces is well known, from the advice of humanist pedagogues (drawing on ancient and medieval antecedents) to its continued vitality in quite recent times.54 In the Renaissance schoolchildren throughout Europe were taught to keep notebooks in which they were to record passages from their reading worth saving for memorization and later use.55 Moral sentences and rhetorical turns of phrase were especially collected in this way (hence the notion of a commonplace as a cliched expression, most often a moralizing proverb or a rhetorical device), but commonplace books were also used to gather arguments or factual information of interest to the individual or relevant

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to the discipline under study. The educated reader was encouraged to keep up these notebooks even after leaving school and the surveillance of the master. The commonplace book ideally would collect the experiences of a lifetime, through reading and other instructive occasions. Travelers in particular were advised to take notes on all the things that they encountered, and to enter them in an orderly fashion in their commonplace book on their return home.56 Although in later centuries the commonplace book often designates a kind of diary of experiences, reflections, and readings, kept in chronological order,57 the humanist conception of the notebook calls for a systematic ordering of the material according to subject headings, to ensure easy retrieval. The proper selection of these headings constituted a central issue for the many authors who proffered advice on commonplace books in the Renaissance, and the assignment of each new passage to the appropriate heading was a critical process for each reader, which could require multiple readings of the text and careful reflection.58 Some authors recommended copying the same passage or providing cross-references under multiple entries to resolve difficult cases. As for the ordering of the headings, maintaining any system under the constant accumulation of new material, which might require new headings, would inevitably prove difficult; many authors kept track of the headings in a table of contents (listing the headings by order of appearance), or in an alphabetized or semi-alphabetized index. Printed commonplace books, which were free from new additions, variously chose alphabetical or systematic topical arrangements; some supplied only the headings, leaving blank pages to be filled by the reader. The entries under each heading could vary in length, depending on the type of material, from short proverbs or metaphors to long passages copied verbatim out of an interesting source; other entries might only paraphrase the original. The entry might include the precise reference of the quotation, or not. Some headings would accumulate many entries, while others could remain at the top of blank sheets, planted there in a spell of enthusiasm for the topic or the undertaking as a whole, which (as with the two closest analogues to the commonplace book, classroom notes and diaries) could easily peter out before yielding much.59 Although surviving commonplace manuscripts are often neat copies completed in one sitting,60 the original notebooks must have been difficult to keep after a while, as space might run out under one heading, with the entries reduced to smaller and smaller scrawls, while blank space accumulated under another. To resolve this aggravating problem, John Locke proudly offered the readers of the Bibliotheque universelle et historique of 1686 a "new method of a commonplace-book": he proposed continuing a heading, when space on the first page had run out, on a fresh page, necessarily separated from the first, while keeping track of these continuations in a semi-alphabetized index at the head of the notebook (alphabetized by first letter, then within each letter by first vowel). The article in which he explains this innovation is itself arranged under topical headings continued and recorded as he suggests; although he voices the usual authorial protestations of modesty and the fear that his idea might seem paltry in a century so fertile in inventions, Locke lauds the great utility of his method which he and his

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friends had experienced through long years of use.61 The finer points of arranging a commonplace book thus continued to be of pressing importance to scholars in the late seventeenth century; their utility for natural philosophy specifically, however, had no doubt diminished by this date, as scientific investigation became less bookish in its methods. Although the commonplace book strictly defined is a humanist innovation, like most Renaissance practices it developed from both glorious ancient sources and unacknowledged medieval precedents to suit contemporary needs. Ancient rhetoric, from Aristotle's Topics to Quintilian's Institutio oratoria, coined a notion of the "places" (topoi or loci) of use to the orator, to stimulate inventio and the gathering of arguments for a composition, or to add rhetorical embellishment. These "places" variously comprised Aristotle's ten categories (quality, quantity, place, and so on) which enumerated the aspects from which to consider an issue; or the "seats of arguments," listing the grounds on which an argument can rest (e.g., from effects, from circumstances, from greater or lesser); or the rhetorical embellishments standard in any composition (amplification, captatio benevolentiae, and the like). This already complex notion of "place" continued to expand in the Middle Ages, as florilegia and sermon manuals supplemented these theoretical guides to good arguing with substantive material that could be copied directly: sententiae selected and collected from various authorities (such as the popular genre of Flores Aristotelis), or on various topics—best known are the collections of moral sentences, but medical handbooks could also compile for easy access "commonplace" medical recipes and descriptions.62 In the Renaissance loci communes were used to approach virtually every field, including law and theology (gathering patristic and classical statements under such "places" as sin, angels, or divine providence).63 Theodor Zwinger's massive Theatrum humanae vitae extended the commonplace method to an encyclopedic range of topics, providing a quick supply of examples and quotations for every conceivable occasion. More widely used were Erasmus' Adages, which offered a hefty dose of humanist learning in the form of the famous classical proverbs and moral sayings that defined the shared cultural baggage of educated men and women. When their personal commonplace books lacked the needed range and quality, authors of all kinds resorted to these printed cribs—schoolboys composing Latin orations to impress an audience at graduation, learned scholars discussing a point of erudition, or vernacular authors displaying their mastery of the internationally respected culture of humanism. The use of commonplace books, both printed and personal, has thus been clearly identified in the works of minor and major figures, from Shakespeare and Montaigne to Thomas Browne and the seventeenth-century divine Isaac Barrow, to name only a few.64 Commonplace books served as storehouses and clearinghouses for all the quotations, tropes, examples, and general information that supplied copiousness of both words and things, as required by the widely influential Erasmian ideal of eloquence.65 The commonplace book was a crucial, although often unacknowledged, tool of scholarship in all fields that relied on the compilation and criticism of bookish knowledge, including those now considered "scientific." In advice to medical students

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in the late sixteenth century, for example, Girolamo Mercuriale recommended keeping notebooks arranged according to such topics as causes, signs, diseases, cures, drugs, diets, and the like, garnered from a reading of the standard authorities.66 Similarly, as we shall see, Jean Bodin advocated maintaining commonplace books on three kinds of history, human, natural, and divine, with no methodological distinction between them. Some aspects of the commonplace method are common to any note-taking activity which combines material on various topics from different sources, and can be recognized in the scholarship of many periods and places 67 Within the tradition directly available to the Renaissance, Pliny's Natural History offered a prime example of a work constructed from the compilation of a myriad anecdotes and tidbits of natural knowledge, which in turn served generations of medieval and Renaissance authors, who eagerly recycled its tasty morsels. Although little is known about his method of working, Pliny boasted of having amassed some twenty thousand bits of information, culled from two thousand volumes by one hundred authors (whom he lists at the beginning of his work).68 In a pattern that resembles a topically driven method of commonplaces, Pliny characteristically lifted substantial passages from a main source like Theophrastus and interwove them with scattered details on the same topic garnered from other authors.69 Pliny also subordinated his method to an encyclopedic project that dictated the vast range of subjects to be covered.™ Medieval encyclopedias tended toward pedagogical reduction (following the seven liberal arts, for example), and only rivaled Pliny's bulk with the three mirrors of Vincent of Beauvais: on history, nature, and doctrine (a fourth, Speculum morale, was added after his death).71 The Renaissance experienced such a great explosion of knowledge that tools for managing it rapidly became essential. In addition to published works, like the "dictionaries, miscellanies, 'diverses legons,' florilegia, and other kinds of finding books [repertoires],"72 that Gabriel Naude recommends owning in every library, there were new physical and social devices to help in the task as well. The book wheel, a freestanding (and expensive) device first described by Agosto Ramelli, allowed a scholar to keep up to seventy books open at one time, turning easily from one to the other without losing the specific references; and, for those with money but no time, a professional "reader" could be hired to take notes and report on the contents of learned books—a service used mostly by rulers in need of advice informed by ancient and modem histories.73 For the greater number of readers, relying on their own abilities, the function of the book wheel in bringing together for comparison and collation the opinions and facts reported by many authors on one point could be accomplished more portably and cheaply (albeit less elegantly) in the commonplace book. The commonplace book formalized the process of bookish research at a time when the bulk of knowledge to be managed had rapidly become unwieldy. Originally intended to be memorized (as in the case of a schoolboy's collection of rhetorical flourishes), the commonplace book served as an aid to the memory by recording in a retrievable fashion items that seemed worth reusing, but which could not likely be retained until the appropriate moment, possibly many years away. This fundamental method of scholar-

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ship has often left few traces, however, and might escape attention, if so many authors had not discussed its use explicitly, among them Jean Bodin. Bodin opens his Methodus ad Jacilem histonarum cognitionem of 1566 with an often-quoted description of his threefold project: There are three types of history [historia] , that is of true narration: the human, the natural, and the divine. The first pertains to man, the second to nature, the third to the parent of nature. One explains the actions of man living in society, the second traces the causes placed in nature and their progression back to the first principle, the last examines the power and gathered strength of the all-powerful God and immortal souls From them a threefold assent is bom, either probable, necessary, or religious, and just as many virtues, namely prudence, science, and religion. . . From these three virtues combined grows true wisdom, the highest and final good of man "

The passage has generally been taken as a blueprint for Bodin's later works: the Republique covers human history, the Theatrum natural history, while the unpublished Colloquium is seen as the culmination in "divine history."73 The correspondence between the plan and the published works, however, especially in the first and last cases, applies only loosely. Rather than finished works, what Bodin outlines in the Methodus is (as the title suggests) a method of research. The aim is to acquire "historia" in a broader sense than merely human history (although elsewhere Bodin also uses the term in this narrower sense).76 Bodin's conception of "history, that is true narration" closely follows that of both classical models and humanist contemporaries, for whom "historia" designated especially the knowledge and description of particulars as opposed to universals.77 The "historia" accumulated by the commonplace book thus provides the material for, but differs from the end product of "natural philosophy": in the Theatrum Bodin produces "naturalis scientia" by conjoining the material accumulated with appropriate causal explanations. Concerned in the Methodus primarily about acquiring "historia," Bodin explains that it is necessary to proceed by the use of commonplaces in chapter 3, "How to Properly Establish the Places [loci] of Histories." The abundance and variety of histories is so great that they cannot be clearly understood nor retained in the memory for long unless they are distributed into certain established categories. Therefore what learned men habitually do m the other arts to assist the memoiy, I believe should also be done in history: that is, to compose commonplaces of memorable things in a certain order, so that from them, as from treasure chests, we can draw a variety of examples to direct our actions. . . . So for that reason I think we must follow this order in providing an account of all places [loci] in three books: in the first book [we will treat] of human matters; in the second of the natural events that happen fairly often in history; in the third of divine things.78

The books of history, human, natural, and divine, that Bodin advocates are commonplace books that would accumulate facts of interest in each of the three fields and classify them into appropriate categories, following the well-established prac-

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tice that Bodin, along with virtually all of his Latin-educated contemporaries, was no doubt taught in school. For human history Bodin advocates a study not only of words (i.e. the famous speeches that were the focus of a rhetorical, often Italian approach to history), but also of plans and deeds. These should be judged according to their honesty and utility, and arranged topically under widely used headings of largely moral import, which often conjoin opposites: like "obscurity and nobility of birth," "life and death," "wealth and poverty," "pleasure and pain," "strength and weakness," "ignorance and knowledge . . . and, in general, all the vices and virtues." Bodin then moves to issues that are addressed directly in the Republique, from "domestic discipline" to "royal prerogatives," "magistrates," and "war and peace." But he also closes with a consideration of arts, techniques, and sciences (among them, agriculture, trade, medicine, and music). The book of divine history should trace the "origins, progress,. . . and fall of each religion . . . and what in each conforms to virtue and what does not"; the "places" to be considered include "the human soul,. . . the threefold order of intelligences, then God and his deeds and oracles, finally religion and impiety."79 Although the Republique differs considerably from the notebooks Bodin describes, in all likelihood Bodin did rely on commonplace books of some kind to compose it. Certainly the wealth of detail and examples accumulated there suggests that some serious system of note-taking was required. Pierre Mesnard speculates that Bodin ran an "information service" for Henry III and used the note cards compiled in that setting to write the Republique.80 It is simpler to assume that Bodin followed his own precepts as laid out in the Metho­ dius. Contemporaries also praised Bodin for his keen memory, but their comments only make his use of a commonplace book more likely rather than less so—these notebooks were precisely designed to aid and train the memory by offering easy reference to items worth retaining, arranged with clarity and order. The form of Bodin's notes may not seem readily apparent in his most famous work. Bodin's professional expertise and personal reflection on questions of applied law and politics accounts no doubt in part for the greater argumentative coherence of the Republique, which made such an impression on contemporary and modern readers. Nonetheless, even the Republique suffers from an overabundance of commonplaces, heaped together with insufficient discipline, in the analysis of the first modern Bodin scholar, Roger Chauvire.81 Closer scrutiny of the Methodus, long admired for some modern-sounding precepts of historical research, has led Anthony Grafton to conclude that even seemingly "organic" texts, presumed to have grown out of the author's original insight, stem from "the cobbling together of bits of material from the most disparate sources, unacknowledged at the time and difficult to discover now."82 For example, Bodin's rules of source criticism turn out to have been lifted from a fifteenth-century forgery claiming to be the work of one "pseudo-Metasthenes," and his critique of received chronology is based on a reading, not of Copernicus, as Bodin implies, but of the sixteenthcentury German historian Johann Funck. Similarly, as Marian Tooley has shown, Bodin's famous theory of climates elaborates on widely held medieval theories with a wealth of new and diverse examples83—just the kind of reworking that a

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commonplace book would make easy. Finally, A. London Fell brings together evidence for numerous "partial plagiarisms," of which Bodin was accused as early as his first work, the translation of Oppian's Cynegetica in 1555, and which extended to the Republique itself. As Fell points out, we do not yet fully understand the shifting and complex norms in the Renaissance that warranted the frequency both of virulent accusations of plagiarism and of unacknowledged borrowing among contemporaries.84 The commonplace book does not explain these phenomena, but is the tool that amplifies them by keeping ready for use a topically arranged compilation of reading notes; whether the commonplace entries include precise references to the sources from which they were taken and whether an author then chooses to mention those sources in his work, are issues left to each writer's discretion.85 Even if (as I think likely) the most coherent of Bodin's (and his contemporaries') works rest on a patchwork of tacit and explicit borrowings, including rhetorical turns of phrase, philosophical ideas, and direct quotations and references to authorities, the method of commonplaces can easily pass unnoticed because of the greater impact of the author's arguments, or the historian's desire to highlight them. In the Theatrum, on the contrary, precisely because of Bodin's relative lack of expertise in natural philosophy, the commonplaces are more readily apparent in the final product. As a nonspecialist, Bodin has chosen an argument, that God is provident, which is so general that it does not govern effectively the deployment of particulars. Any selection of natural facts could be used to demonstrate it, and Bodin's choice inevitably seems arbitrary—it is driven by his collection of commonplaces rather than by the logic of his argument. As a result, the Theatrum offers a clearer view than more famous "avant-garde" works of the methods and conclusions characteristic of most natural philosophy of its time. Bodin's description in the Methodus of the second book, of natural commonplaces, is remarkably similar to the final outline of the Theatrum published thirty years later: The second book will embrace with the appropriate division the histones of natural things which occur fairly often in reading historians: first, on the principles of nature: on time and place, on coining to be and passing away, and on motion and change in general [Theatrum, Book I]; on elements and their nature, on imperfect bodies, on metals and stones [Book II], on the genus of plants, on animals divided into three orders [Book III], on celestial bodies, on the magnitude and shape of the world [Book V].86

The description lacks only the treatment of souls and angelic beings in Book IV. Like a commonplace book, the Theatrum is designed as an aid to the memory, as Bodin suggests in explaining his choice of the dialogue form; its title also evokes contemporary memory theaters and the Theatrum can be interpreted as a bookish contribution to that tradition. Furthermore, like the commonplace book that Bodin describes in the Methodusy the Theatrum treats the natural things "that happen fairly often in history" or "that occur fairly often in reading historians"— Bodin uses the two expressions interchangeably, as if conflating history with the

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writings of historians. The myriad natural facts and opinions on which Theorus bases his questions and with which Mystagogus supports his causal explanations are culled from Bodin's wide reading of histories (or historians), human and natural, ancient and modern. Bodin's loosely structured chain of thought is also, I argue below, an attempt to combine the two conflicting principles of organization of the commonplace book, by topic and by theme. Finally, the method of commonplaces can help to explain some of the puzzling contradictions of Bodin's work and Renaissance natural philosophy more generally, notably its juxtaposition of critical insights with credulity, of reasoned observation with hearsay. Theorus' characteristic mode of questioning rests on innumerable bits of tacit knowledge garnered mostly from standard classical sources, which Bodin is proud to explain. "Why are seeds more potent as they are smaller? . . . Why is the goat dumbfounded in front of an eryngius plant?" (pp. 276, 294). Although no references are given to the sources of these questions, Bodin probably garnered the facts on which they rest from his reading of historians, such as Theophrastus and Pliny, Plutarch and Aristotle.87 In the first case Mystagogus answers with a refutation of an earlier explanation; in displaying his superior reasoning, Bodin gives the reference to the authority whom he refutes, at the same time revealing the likely source for the fact initially taken for granted. Theophrastus had argued that smaller things are more fertile because they are perfected faster than larger ones; Bodin responds: "if this reason were probable, then men would be born faster than horses [since they are more perfect]; it is more likely that all the power concentrated in a smaller place erupts more efficaciously and violently" (p. 276). In the case of the goat and why it is stunned by the eryngius plant (a kind of thistle), Bodin provides an explanation where none had been given before; without any motivation to cite his authorities, Bodin leaves the reader (as in most passages in the Theatrum) with no clues as to his sources. Pliny's Natural History is always a favorite source; Pliny does report part of Bodin's "fact"—a herd of goats is dumbfounded when one of them has its beard plucked, or eats "a certain herb." But Pliny does not name the plant "eryngius" nor does he describe (as Bodm does) how the goatherd must come remove the plant. Pliny's early modern editor Jacques Dalechamps points to Plutarch, whose account he criticizes for having distorted Aristotle's original to fabricate the term "egyngius."88 Plutarch introduces the eryngius but describes only how the herd (rather than the individual goat) stands by until the goatherd comes and removes the plant; while Aristotle only mentions the beard component of the story. Modern scholarship includes other references on the topic, none of which is a likely possible source for Bodin.89 In posing the question as he does—making the eryngius the focus of the question, and discussing both the individual goat's behavior and the herd's—Bodin is most likely combining and slightly distorting details from different sources, in the same way that one of them (Pliny) has been shown to have treated his sources.90 Bodin could have accumulated his material on the subject in his book of natural places under an appropriate heading, either topical ("eryngius" or "goat") or thematic (in this case, "antipathy"). Indeed Bodin's answer is that the goat is stunned

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by the eryngius because of a natural antipathy, and thus opens up the theme of plant antipathies, which he develops with further material in the following questions, devoted to the antipathies between cabbage and vine, fern and reed, and between the squill (squilla) or rue (ruta) and demons and sorcerers (p. 294).91 Although the evidence for the actual "places" involved is only circumstantial, Bodin has gathered details from different sources about related phenomena, as the commonplace book does, and makes his own natural philosophy from a sophisticated blend of material. The commonplace book is useful both for merging material from different sources in this way and for lifting entire passages from one source m particular.52 Furthermore, Theorus' explananda are typically treated like "commonplaces" in the colloquial sense too: in being selected from their original source and entered into the commonplace book they become self-evident truths, which do not need to be asserted or attributed to a source before they are explained. Bodin's task is to create natural philosophical knowledge by providing causal understanding of these undisputed facts. When Bodin does cite a source, notably to establish a little-known "fact" that he has gathered from an unusual source, the method of commonplaces is easiest to trace: Bodin culls from the innards of a huge volume the one event or detail, often only minor and incidental to the original author's point, that he can use for his own, very different purposes. From the 850 folio pages of Martin Cromer's history of Poland, for example, Bodin picks, peppers with minor errors, and misattributes one ten-line passage about the spontaneous combustion of the Polish countryside during the summer of 1473 (p. 212).53 He adds to it another example of a similar occurrence taken from the 200 folio pages of Baron Sigismund of Herberstein's history of Muscovy. For Cromer the fires were simply part of the chronicle of the year 1473, immediately juxtaposed with other noteworthy events like the death of the local archbishop; Herberstein, on the other hand, had used the spontaneous fire of summer 1525 in Muscovy as evidence in his demonstration of the extreme weather conditions in Russia—he juxtaposes the story with a description of the great cold in winter 1526 when men, trees, and animals were killed and spittle would freeze before it hit the ground.94 Disentangling the two "facts" from their original contexts, Bodin brings the accounts together to establish his own point—that the heat of the summer is greater in areas on either side of the tropics than in the tropics, despite the fact that the rays of the sun are more oblique, hence presumably less hot. After establishing this fact (unusually for the Theatrum) by citing his authorities, Bodin poses a characteristic type of "why?" question by setting up what appears to be a contradiction, only to resolve it without overturning the assumptions that had seemed to be violated. The summers are hotter outside the tropics, Bodin explains, "because the air is heavier from the vapors, rains, and rivers that abound beyond the tropical regions, once heated it easily retains the heat: just as fire burns hotter in wood than in straw and in metal than in wood. Within the tropics, however, where the regions are drier and hotter, the air, because of its thinness, can with difficulty retain the heat, although stones made warm by the heat of the sun burn ardently because of their solidity" (p. 212). He goes on, in

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the next question, to corroborate this conclusion by describing the practice of the sauna: "Those who want to heat baths rapidly at moderate expense pour water on the stones at the bottom of the bath which have been heated by fire: in a moment the closed room fills with the densest vapor, from which a violent heat is spread in the thick air: from which it is clear that the thickness of the air, excited by the vapor of the water, keeps the heat, while earlier it could not because of its fineness" (p. 212). Here Bodin uses the commonplace book to bring together bookish facts with practical knowledge, presumably garnered from his own (or someone else's) travels, in a new openness to "experience" of various kinds that is noticeable during the sixteenth century. Bodin thus amasses an original array of material on the theme that denser things hold heat better than finer ones, but he never explicitly states that general principle. This is how Bodin goes about doing physics, that is, creating a piece of certain, causal knowledge: from his reading of histories and from a broader pool of "experiences" he gathers various facts on a topic, drawn tacitly or explicitly from one or more sources; he poses a puzzle that he resolves with an original explanation, refuting previous theories or covering new ground. In this case he even lays the foundation for a general "law" of nature, which he, characteristically, does not make explicit.95 Even though Bodin does not fully exploit its capabilities, the commonplace method does allow for disparate material to be interrelated in new and suggestive ways. At the same time, however, it involves no systematic confrontation of material, and, given the indefinite number of separate headings under which related material can be scattered, the commonplace method can also easily harbor contradictions, which can be carried undetected into a printed work. As a result, contradictory explanations to different questions coexist in different parts of the Theatrum, as a few attentive contemporary readers pointed out. On page 284, for example, Bodin explains that grafted trees yield more and sweeter fruit because of the more abundant sap called up to repair the wound; but on page 279 he had explained that older trees yielded sweeter fruit precisely because they were less full of sap. Is it the abundance or the absence of sap that causes sweetness in fruit? Bodin never addresses the general principle, but provides contradictory evidence in the answers to different questions. Here the commonplace book, with its idiosyncratic set of entries, has served to hide rather than uncover a thematic link.96 As a tool for composition that opened many possibilities but required none in particular, the commonplace book was supremely tolerant of cognitive dissonance. This tolerance was probably the key to the long survival of traditional natural philosophy and its methods,97 but at the same time it fostered that coexistence of credulity with critical judgment that is so characteristic of Renaissance natural philosophy, and one of its most puzzling features. Bodin's use of commonplaces also characteristically introduces all kinds of errors of detail, in proper names and references especially. Perhaps he worked mostly from memory, keeping only mental notes in the style of the commonplace book; more likely, Bodin kept a physical notebook, but entered and retrieved his material sloppily and in haste, with varying degrees of precision and accuracy in

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the source references. Those who have tried to retrace Bodin's scholarship in all his works have uncovered similar errors. Just as Bodin distorted many of the names of places destroyed in the hot summers of Muscovy and Poland, his citations from Leo Africanus' Description of Africa in the Methodus, for example, involve numerous distortions in exotic names, among them "tenesme" for "Temesne," "Homar Essuein" for "Homar Esuef," or "Ungiazen" for uImegiagen."98 His Reponse a Malestroit misattributes material (e.g., to Plutarch, when the only possible source is Suetonius) and makes many numerical errors." Similarly, Guttmann notices a "lack of control" in Bodin's citations of Jewish sources, which contain many errors and false citations.100 The marginal references in the Theatrum are often wrong, as in the above example in which he cites Thomas Cromer's Book XVII for Martin Cromer's Book XXVIII; or (to choose one example among many) in attacking Theophrastus' views on hoarfrost he refers to De causis plantarum 1.19 for 5.13 (p. 205). In some instances no doubt typographers contributed these single-digit glitches. Bodin himself is clearly responsible for many of these errors, however, which appear in different uses of the same material. In the Republique, when comparing the climates of northern and southern regions, Bodin adduces the same examples as in the Theatrum to argue that summers are hotter in colder climates than in warmer ones. In this less detailed reference to the same material Bodin also calls Martin Cromer Thomas but dates the event to 1552 rather than 1473.101 As this case illustrates, the same notes can easily be used and reused in different works, with or without explicit self-citation. In this, his last book, especially, Bodin proudly mentions in marginal references almost every one of his previous publications.102 Frequently, Bodin simply drops the source altogether somewhere in the process of storing and retrieving material. The commonplace method makes a "matter of fact" out of someone else's evidence, neutralizing its original argumentative value, so that it can be reused to a different, even exactly opposite, purpose. While Lucio Maggio's work on earthquakes supported the Aristotelian theory of earthquakes—that they are caused by the explosion of accumulated earthly exhalations, Bodin silently borrows some of Maggio's examples precisely to disprove the Aristotelian explanation. Thus the earthquake of 1571 in Ferrara, "in a plain surrounded by rivers," resulted, according to Maggio, from the accumulation of exhalations in underground conduits that could not escape due to the dryness of the earth, making an earthquake inevitable.103 For Bodin, on the contrary, the fact that Ferrara is situated in a plain "is the most certain argument that the terrible earthquake in the city and country of Ferrara could not have occurred from exhalations and mere air" (p. 176). In the same way, in the Demonomanie Bodin takes cases to prove the reality of witchcraft even from his greatest opponent, Johann Wier, who had argued that they involved only mental delusion, not genuine deeds.104 Especially when they are made explicit (which is the case in the Demonomanie), such instances of turning an opponent's evidence into evidence against his position can be used to powerful rhetorical effect, notably in legal arguments. Perhaps his professional training made Bodin particularly attentive to the possibilities of reusing evidence against its original purpose.

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The "facts" created in the commonplace book from the reading of historians also include doxographical information and authoritative citations, the intermediate source for which is often hidden, so that Bodin's erudition appears greater than it actually is and remains particularly difficult to track. In the course of arguing for both his general philosophical positions and his specific explanations of natural events, Bodin refers to over 250 authors, from Adelandus (p. 476) to Xenagoras (p. 170), for example, whose views are reported (considerably more accessibly) in Pico and Plutarch respectively. Bodin acknowledges ancient doxographers, like Plutarch, who mentions Xenagoras in his "Life of Aemilius Paullus,"105 but he borrows heavily and often silently from the great Renaissance doxographer, Pico della Mirandola, whose nine hundred theses or Conclusiones surpassed previous models in the genre in the quantity and diversity of opinions gathered and in their more systematic arrangement. The Conclusiones can account for a number of Bodin's Arabic and preclassical references, allowing for some distortion of and elaboration on his source. One Adelandus, author of a De anima, for example, is enlisted along with other authorities ("Empedocles, Plato, Philo, and the Academics") in support of Bodin's position that the seeds of all virtues and knowledge are divinely sown in our souls (pp. 475-76). Bodin's French translator, apparently unfamiliar with this thinkeT, rendered the name " Andelandus" (F687). But Pico's conclusions contain eight opinions attributed to "Adelandus the Arab," among them the notion that "the soul has in itself the species of things and is only excited by external things.'"06 Pico makes no mention of the title of the work, which Bodin presumably added as a safe guess, in his desire to strengthen a weak authority. The method of commonplaces applied to works like Pico's Conclusiones can account well for Bodin's wealth of one-line thoughts attributed to long-lost authors that resurface from the commonplace book as unattached doxographical "facts," having shed, in being entered there, any mention of their origins. For example, Bodin follows Pico closely in reporting that Isaac Narbonensis "thought that the celestial bodies bestow nothing on inferior bodies except heat," but embroiders a bit on his source in attributing to "Albumaron [sic] Babylonius" the idea that the sun warms things with its innate heat (in Pico, Abumaron stated that the sun warms the inferior world by shedding its light on it).107 Bodin even preserves in this case the near juxtaposition of the two opinions in his source, although he inverts the order. That Bodin selected these opinions from Pico does not diminish their importance for his philosophical system, but does reduce the evidence for Bodin's direct familiarity with certain Jewish and other unusual sources.108 Pico also serves as a font of more recent and independently accessible erudition. In a spectacular case of wholesale borrowing and of using a passage against its original purpose, Bodin lifts from Pico's Apologia a bevy of medieval authorities, complete with titles and precise references to quodlibetal disputations on the question of the spatial location of angels: "Durandus et Bernardus de Guagnaco in impugnationibus Henr. quolib. 2. Thomas Anglicus in quolib. Henr. Brito in 2. sentent. loan. Pariens. in Correctorio" (p. 514).109 Pico cites these doctors to support his conclusion, against the Scotists1 that during the Harrowing of Hell

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Christ was only in Hell "by effect." Bodin in fact goes on to reject the solution that they present—that of calling the location of angels "effective," concluding that angels must have genuine bodies (p. 514); one can wonder, indeed, why he bothered citing these authorities in the first place.110 Bodin does not attribute the citations to their source, but mentions Pico's Apologia in the following note, along with other authorities, to support the separate contention that angels and disembodied souls are present everywhere. Whether this juxtaposition is due to accident, to an unconscious association of ideas, or to a conscious desire to mention his source somewhere nearby, is impossible to say. Bodin had behaved similarly in mentioning Livre's translation within two pages of the material that he borrowed from it (pp. 174, 176). The practice is also reminiscent of Pliny, who boasted of "his professionalism" in acknowledging "those who have contributed to [his] success" and proceeded to list at the front of his work the names of the hundred authors from whom he gathered his material, without making further reference to them in the body of his text. Our standards for attributing specific pieces of information to specific sources developed only gradually during the early modern period.111 These cases of recycling of doxographical material suggest that while Bodin's reading of contemporary historians was indeed remarkable, much of his apparently broad mastery of Arab, Hebrew, ancient, and medieval sources can be traced (probably in more cases than those I have found) to hidden intermediate sources that are considerably more ordinary. This is not to undermine Bodin's status as one of the most accomplished humanists of his time, but to reveal the methods common to Renaissance scholarship of even the highest caliber. The commonplace book was the ideal tool for stocking up on erudite morsels of all kinds with which, variously, to impress, convince, or distract readers for generations to come. The Structure oj the Theatrum

In its structure, too, the Theatrum reveals its origins in a book of "places," both topical and thematic, which the dialogue forms into a smooth progression of ideas. In Book I and the second half of Book IV Bodin's arguments against the eternity of the world and for the immortality and corporeality of souls and angels are carried over successive questions and dictate to a large extent the order of topics. In Book V on astronomy, many of the questions follow a certain "standard" logic, discussing for each planet the magnitude, distance from the earth, or influences on the earth. What is more peculiar is the organization of the remaining, largely natural-historical books (II, III, parts of IV and V), in which the succession of questions follows no apparent logic, although, as I show in this section, it is carefully planned. The questions are generally grouped together by topic in sections which are announced in the table of contents, but not in the text itself, the headings of which correspond closely to the loci advocated in the Methodus for the book of natural places. The fact that these headings "recall those of Renaissance memory theaters," as Frances Yates has pointed out,112 is not surprising

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given the common mnemonic goal of both the commonplace book and the Theatrum. The sections proceed roughly according to the principles announced in the "propositio," following the chain of hypostases which starts with the elements and moves through progressively more complex and worthy creatures, culminating with the ninth hypostasis, comprised of angels and heavenly bodies (the final divine hypostasis being the subject of metaphysics rather than physics). Within each natural-historical section the choice of subtopics, the order in which to discuss them, the questions to pose on each of them, all seem arbitrary. The section on quadrupeds, for example, moves from dogs and wolves to lions, monkeys, the porcupine, and pigs, then on to elephants (pp. 346-55). Why those animals in that order? Why no mention of, say, foxes or tigers? Theorus raises questions about the mating habits of wolves, the diverse species of dogs, the moral and humoral qualities of lions (their courage but fear of roosters, their abundance of yellow bile, and so forth), the shape and geographical location of pigs (such as their short neck and large stomach, and their absence in most of Arabia and Africa), without any apparent logic. Bodin approaches different topics with wildly different interests; he raises no systematic set of questions. Some subjects warrant many questions, others only a few, and untold numbers none at all. There is no criterion for completeness, so that the discussion of a topic is never closed before the text leaves it to move on in another direction. The Theatrum is thus a prime example of that "mobile, open-ended treatment of topics" that Terence Cave finds characteristic of much Renaissance writing, from Erasmus to Rabelais and Montaigne.113 Like the headings in a commonplace book, each section gathers discrete units of knowledge (formed by each set of question and answer), the nature, position and number of which is not determined a priori but by the copia that happens to be available. Through this loose juxtaposition of discrete issues Bodin can remedy one of the great dilemmas facing the keeper of a commonplace book: whether to use topical or thematic headings to organize one's material. For example, should the salamander, an animal known for consuming and living in fire, be classified topically with other lizards and snakes, or rather thematically with other animals that live in fires? The dialogue form gives Bodin the flexibility to combine both. After a discussion of the chameleon, Theorus asks, through a topical transition, about the salamander (we are in the section on reptiles), and whether it really lives off fire. Mystagogus' answer that no animal can live in the fire prompts Theorus to ask, in a thematic transition this time, whether the cricket (an insect) does not live in the fireplace and find nourishment there. Bodin neglects for a moment the supposed division between reptiles and insects to pursue the question of animals that live in extreme temperatures—Bodin's answer includes a discussion of Aristotle's claims that some flies are born in furnaces for smelting copper and some red worms in the snow; he denies all these accounts, concluding that "nothing is more foreign to generation and corruption than extremes of hot and cold" (p. 310). Through this thematic juxtaposition of questions the reader can gather at least four cases for inclusion under a commonplace heading of "life in extreme temperatures." What may seem at first a "digression"—Bodin strays from salamanders to crickets and from crickets on to other insects, all within the section

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assigned by the table of contents to snakes—is a thematic elaboration that follows smoothly from the topic at hand.1" When Bodin is ready to return to the original topic of reptiles, he does so as seamlessly as possible, again following a theme. One insect having led to another (over some three pages), Theorus learns that grasshoppers are edible, but too small in northern climates to satisfy the appetites of the more voracious peoples who live there. The differential distribution of animals serves as the theme leading to the next question and back to the snakes: why are garter snakes found everywhere while other kinds of snakes live far from men? Mystagogus explains that this is nature's way of keeping dangerous animals away from humans and, conversely, of making animals that live near them harmless, like the lions in Mauritania who flee at the sight of women threatening them with sticks (pp. 313-14). From there we are back to the assigned topic, and move on to vipers, their different types, biting habits, and so on. The dialogue is the ideal vehicle for Bodin's constantly shifting chain of thought, allowing him to dwell on some points while avoiding others and to move apparently naturally from one loosely related topic to another. On a typographical level, the dialogue is useful in marking off each pair of question and answer with a paragraph indentation, so that the reader can search rapidly through the otherwise continuous prose in each of the five books. Most pages are divided into two or three paragraphs in this way, each of which begins with a question by Theorus that defines the issue under discussion. Except for some unpredictable comparisons and examples that are embedded in Bodin's answers and remain hard to find, Bodin's main contribution to every question can be fairly easily retrieved within the relevant section by skimming through the beginnings of the questions. In this way the question-and-answer format helps to provide a rudimentary index through the work (although early annotators made a better index of their own in their marginal notes). On a topical level the dialogue easily accommodates the continuously changing succession of topics and themes. In the second half of the section on quadrupeds Bodin weaves his way through different types of animals following primarily an investigation of horns (pp. 355-58): How does the rhinoceros differ from the monoceros? Is there really an occult power in the antlers of deer? Why do deer alone shed their antlers every year? On the subject of deer Bodin stops a little longer, discussing the reason why deer stand upwind rather than downwind (is it to prevent dogs from tracking their scent?), but then moves on again to "the other horn-bearing animals"—notably cows. Again the topic commands a few questions: Why does one say that cows are the most useful of animals? Why do bees like co"w dung so much? What is the animal closest to the nature of cows?—-sheep. This answer calls back the theme: Why do sheep facing north have no horns? Why do goats that do not have horns give more milk? Why do females lack horns more often than males, except among cows?—is it not because horns would be useless to females since they are timid? But God gave horns to cows, despite their gentleness, so that they can be more easily seized (pp. 355-58). At this point Bodin has exhausted the theme of horns and prepares a transition to the next theme, that of sexual differentiation. He has already announced the new theme in the last question, why females lack horns more than males, but still

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requires a topical pivot. Following his causal answer to Theorus' last question Mystagogus adds a pleasant anecdote: after killing a doe with antlers Louis XII is reported to have quipped to his newly wedded wife Anne de Bretagne, whom many considered too headstrong, that female deer all had horns originally but that God took them away because the does used them excessively (p. 358). The anecdote is a fine rhetorical embellishment, although it does not address Theorus' question; above all it serves Bodin's dialogue as an elegant transition. Theorus can ask next without any abruptness whether deer should not be considered both male and female. The new theme leads to hares. Do they not participate in both sexes? Why do hares breed so many hermaphrodites? (pp. 358-59). Then, topically: Do hares have flat teeth? The question that follows seems out of place·— how many kinds of work animals are there?—until the answer reveals that horses and donkeys have no horns but also have flat teeth (p. 360). Then Bodin addresses a number of questions on animals in the horse family. The dialogue moves in a continuous serpentine path from one question to the next, sometimes following a topic, sometimes a theme, sometimes adding a detail to provide an elegant transition. The natural historical books form one long "chain of thought," to match the chain of being it describes. The sections are not delineated in the text precisely because they do not have to be. The topical sections follow the stages of the chain of being, so that to link sections Bodin needs only to return to his constant underlying theme and ask about the intermediate beings: How many types of coral are there? (between minerals and plants) (p. 268); or: what is a zoophyte? (between plants and animals) (p. 297). Within sections, too, Bodin frequently uses the chain of being as the theme to link two questions. Without any obvious justification, for example, he establishes a hierarchy among birds: what is closest to swallows?—sparrows; what comes after sparrows?— woodpeckers; what follows the genus of woodpeckers?—four species of robins (pp. 366-69). Bodin is generally quite diligent about pursuing the topic set out for each section without straying too far afield—genuine digressions like the one from the salamander to crickets are rare. Bodin usually confines his themes within his answer to one question rather than pursuing them across successive questions. In the section on "moles, weasels, ferrets, and cats," for example, Bodin discusses the sweet-smelling excrement of the sibeta (a kind of panther) and mentions as thematic parallels the moschos, a goat from the depths of Africa and India which secretes a sweet-smelling substance from its umbilical chord (musk), and a gland near the eyes of pigs which produces a substance of the same odor (pp. 344-45). To devote a series of questions to the theme would have diverted him from the section topic, while goats and pigs are treated more generally under different themes a few pages later. After the end of his last topical section on animals (dealing with birds), the themes can emerge more freely. A question about why birds suffer more from the cold than animals with fur leads to questions about how deer, cattle, bear, and fish all fare through the winter months (pp. 381-82). Finally, Bodin moves into four sections explicitly devoted to themes: on gelded animals and castrated men;

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on the lovemaking, conception, and birth of animals; on the lifespans of humans and animals, and on the enmities of animals. In all of these discussions Bodin ranges widely across the species, taking examples from insects, snakes, fish, birds, quadrupeds, and humans (to which an extra topical section is devoted at the very end of Book III). The seamless textual progression is perhaps easier to maintain in the thematic sections, although transitions can still require devices that are more elegant than meaningful. In order to introduce the section on castrated beings Bodin sows a detail as seed for transition. In response to Theorus' question about the effects of a bite by a rabid dog, Mystagogus tells of a special key of Saint Hubert which when applied to cauterize the wound will cure it, adding that "castrated people are cured more easily than those who are not" (p. 383). The next section then seems to follow smoothly, although without any real conceptual link, as Theorus asks why castrated animals lack courage. In a similarly rhetorical transition, after Mystagogus has explained that "porcupine" (hystrix) comes from the Greek for "hairy pig" despite the fact that it actually looks like a hedgehog rather than a pig, Theorus takes the opportunity to change the subject even while claiming not to: "Since we have fallen to discussing pigs, I would like to know whether wild pigs are of the same species as domestic ones" (p. 353). The art of the elegant transition was carefully studied in the Renaissance classroom, where Ovid's Metamorphoses were universally admired as a model."5 To ensure the smooth flow of his dialogue Bodin sometimes plays on anecdotes or points of detail, but in most cases, his transitions are genuinely conceptual, linking topics together that share a thematic link. Many topics have more than one theme in common, but at every juncture Theorus selects a single theme to pursue, although he might have selected another. The dialogue thus creates an order from the tension between topic and theme, which has no predetermined necessity since any number of other paths could have been taken through the same material. Bodin is careful to make the questions and answers follow smoothly not only for rhetorical reasons, but also so that the form of the text can match one of its major themes. Just as the stages of the chain of being (e.g., minerals, plants, and animals) are linked to their nearest neighbors by intermediate beings that share features with both of the "extremes" that they bring together, so each set of question and answer in the Theatrum touches its closest neighbors by sharing with each of them a theme or at least an elegantly placed detail.

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As A VERSATILE TOOL for storing and managing an ever-increasing stock of information, the commonplace book promised copia that could be put to many different uses, in books with all kinds of subjects, structures, and arguments, from Bodin's Theatrum to his Republique, from Montaigne's Essays to Locke's treatises. Following the categories of Renaissance rhetoric, after the process of inventio, an author exercised judgment (judicium), notably in the arguments that the collected facts were made to serve and in the choice and treatment of the different sources available. In this chapter I analyze the kinds of arguments that Bodin deploys in the Theatrum, in particular his use of reason, experience, and authority. While embracing the principles of Aristotelian Scientiay that rigorous logic should prevail over authority and temper sense experience, in practice Bodin draws on a rich mix of persuasive tactics, no doubt indebted to his legal background. Some of his arguments are traditional (for example, from the consensus of authorities); others are typical of Renaissance argumentation more generally (including a new attention to various kinds of "experience," references to an increased pool of philosophical sources, and a certain penchant for criticism); or they are specific to a later, northern Renaissance, such as the appeal to religious principles. On the other hand, Bodin's personal idiosyncracies are also recognizable: in his unusually harsh criticisms of Aristotle, the remarkable eclecticism of the sources he favors, and the prominence of the Old Testament, as interpreted at times by his own allegorical readings, as the highest authority. In his attempt to resolve the religious controversies and to restore piety, Bodin wants to show the agreement of philosophy and religion, by having philosophy "demonstrate" some essential religious tenets. What Bodin presents as demonstrative is largely a pragmatic array of arguments used to support preestablished conclusions drawn from the Bible and moral principle. But how Bodin marshals his sources and arguments to suit his purpose is revealing of what seemed persuasive to him and—to the best of his judgment, at least—to potential readers (the reception of the Theatrum reveals that his allegorical interpretations, for example, were not very convincing in fact). That conceptions of proof, fact, and evidence themselves have a history, which underlies the more commonly studied history of scientific ideas, has increasingly been recognized in recent years.1 During the Renaissance, the relative weight accorded to authority, experience, and rigorous logic was shifting. The multiple, contradictory voices rediscovered in ancient sources complicated the principle of authority with the problem of deciding which authorities to favor. The New World and new inventions—Bodin mentions progress in metallurgy, textiles, and astronomy in addition to the classic three, the canon, the compass, and the printing press2—highlighted the limits of

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ancient knowledge and the value of direct observation and practical mastery. Furthermore, the religious and political controversies of the sixteenth century, publicized and fueled by the printing press, highlighted the power of arguments that strayed from the narrow confines of scholastic rules. Bodin's modes of argument offer a rich example of these shifts underway and of the negotiation required between the merits of different kinds of arguments.

DIALECTICAL REASONING

Although Bodin vaunts the demonstrative and certain nature of his naturalis scientia , he does not follow the standards of demonstration set by Aristotle's Poste­ rior Analytics, nor (since indeed few ever did) those set by the various scholastic interpretations and implementations of its precepts. 3 In much of the Theatrum Bodin is concerned with the particulars of nature, following precedents not in scholastic disputation but rather in medieval encyclopedic and hexameral literature, such as Vincent of Beauvais or Henry of Langenstein who, as part of the Augustinian revival of the fourteenth century, looked to nature as a source of religious inspiration.4 On these points Bodin often applies cogent reasoned criticisms to reject received (Aristotelian) explanations, and, less often, builds arguments with which to replace them, based either on his collection of textual or more directly empirical facts (as in the case of the hot continental summers) or on biblical authority.5 In Books I and IV, when Bodin does address issues standard in scholastic disputations, he adopts the language and ideals of Aristotelian scientia: Theorus is reprimanded for logical errors like petitions of principle and sophistry (pp. 64, 88, 108, 478, 515); Mystagogus concludes his arguments with syllogisms, and both repeatedly refer to the principle that "it is appropriate to argue from reason when investigating nature" (p. 191, also pp. 89, 190, 445-46, 512, 554). But these references to logical rigor are more persuasive trappings than genuine demonstrations, and generally elaborate on conclusions already reached on philosophical and especially biblical authority. Writing outside the university, where the form and rules of scholastic logic survived the longest, Bodin can neglect them, and draws instead on a humanist practice of dialectic. In Aristotle's system, dialectic is the art of arguing from plausible premises (rather from certain premises—the purview of logic) and is treated especially in the Topics. By the late Renaissance, however, "dialectic" and "logic" were often used interchangeably,6 as the latter became assimilated to the former through the humanist reforms in education and modes of argumentation. From the fifteenth century on, humanists dismissed as technical niceties the fine distinctions and linguistic emphasis of medieval dialectic.7 Instead they favored a practical orientation, moving dialectic away from logic and closer to rhetoric, and a focus on things rather than words, which matched the new Renaissance interest in particulars. For many sixteenth-century reformers of logic, from Rudolph Agricola to Melanchthon to Peter Ramus, dialectic applied universally to all fields, and rested primarily on natural forms of reasoning, with little discussion of the

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nature of demonstration or of the self-evident principles from which they started. Bodin's mix of arguments—from reason (largely common sense), from authority, "experience" of various kinds, and religious principles—violates some of the basic rules of scholastic disputation, to argue from reason alone and to use only the principles proper to each discipline. Instead, Bodin's practice is characteristic of humanist dialectic, widespread in Renaissance schools and especially developed in the legal profession. A fair amount of ink has been spilled already concerning Bodin's relations to Ramus and the latter's proposed reforms of dialectic.8 Bodin may well have attended the lectures of Ramus in Paris in the early 1550s. In particular, a Sammelband of texts designed for school use (possibly at the College de Reims, since two of the three printers involved advertised that they worked in the college's vicinity) is preserved at the Bodleian Library, which contains, among other annotations: "these [texts] were read by Jean Bodin.'" The texts are classics by Cicero, published with commentaries by Ramus and his close associate Omer Talon.10 Inevitably, we cannot be certain of the identity of this "Jean Bodin," but the attribution to ours is plausible. In any case, what conclusions to draw from this, or any other contact that Bodin might have had with Ramism, remains a matter of interpretation. Certainly Bodin shares Ramus' stridency in his attacks on Aristotle and his goal of rising up through study to an acknowledgment of the Creator, but for Ramus dialectic is the key discipline on both counts." Bodin can plausibly have drawn from Ramus (as others have argued) other reformist emphases: the importance of a method that extends across more than one discipline (notably through the three kinds of commonplace books); the descent from general principles to particulars; the emphasis on things rather than words and the consultation of artisans for their practical expertise; or the image of Homer's golden chain, dear to the Platonic tradition more generally. Bodin also attempted a largely dichotomous classification of law in his Iuris universi distributio (1580) and a similar classification of the natural being at the beginning of Book II of the Theatrum (pp. 133-36), outlining categories and an order that are subsequently completely ignored.12 These features are perhaps not as peculiar to Ramus as they are often taken to be. Although notoriously associated with Ramus, dichotomous classifications existed already in medieval manuscripts and were widespread in Renaissance pedagogy starting even before Ramus." Dichotomous diagrams were also used by enemies of Ramus, like the Calvinist minister Lambert Daneau.14 The praise of correct order and method is a commonplace among humanists of all kinds; although Bodin advocates a single method of scholarship in the Methodus, in the Theatrum he clearly distinguishes between analysis and synthesis: analysis is the proper order of teaching, and both are essential in the process of discovery.15 The descent from principles to particulars, recommended by Aristotle too, was increasingly part of general natural philosophies and even some university textbooks in the Renaissance. The references to practical results and investigations are also a broader phenomenon, found in the works of Vives and G. Agricola and a philologist like Guillaume Bude.16 The most convincing evidence for a specifically

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Ramist interest in Bodin is the high recommendation of Ramus' Dialectica in a posthumous collection of advice on the education of a prince; the editor of the book says that he has translated (into German) a French manuscript by Bodin that his uncle had obtained from its original recipient, a member of the Saxon court.17 Since Walter Ong rightly brought Ramism to the fore as a major movement in this period,18 it has become difficult to disentangle from the more general spread of humanist pedagogy to northern Europe (e.g., through Rudolph Agricola and Melanchthon) a specifically Ramist program, which was designed to criticize not only scholasticism but also certain aspects of contemporary humanism. Ramus caused such a scandal at the University of Paris (and was banned from teaching there) because he explicitly challenged specific university statutes and curricular definitions. In particular he proposed a single method, for both teaching and discovery, applicable to all fields, which was based on the proper distribution of a subject, and he redefined the relations between dialectic and rhetoric, reducing the latter to elocutio alone. Bodin, who had no professional association with the university, never wrote about logic, rhetoric, or dialectic, nor took a side in the Ramist debates of the day. When, in passing, he did address the issue of the proper relations between the disciplines, it was to uphold the Aristotelian principle of the separation of methods and subjects for each discipline, in order to accuse Aristotle himself of having violated it when he treated a discipline at the same time as the order of teaching it. Bodin no doubt heartily approved of Ramus' vehement attacks on Aristotle, starting with his thesis of 1543 which set out to show that everything in Aristotle was fabricated,19 but Bodin preferred to use Aristotle's principles against him, rather than to follow Ramus in rejecting those principles altogether. Bodin took humanist ideals so much to heart that he devoted little attention to the methodological issues (including Ramism) that dialecticians debated among themselves, and preferred a pragmatic, direct approach to contemporary problems. As McRae himself pointed out when he first argued for Bodin's Ramist tendencies, "Bodin was too much of an eclectic to be classified as a faithful disciple of any one thinker, and in any case he was far less interested in logical niceties than in raw facts."20 Ramus may have been one of Bodin's main sources for a number of northern humanist concerns, but I find little evidence that Bodin was a Ramist in any more specific sense. 1 associate Bodin's dialectic less with any direct or indirect contact with Ramus at Paris than with his legal tiaining at Toulouse and subsequent practice as an avocat and writer of legal briefs. It is generally recognized that lawyers exercised more than their fair share of influence on the broader intellectual culture during the early modem period, especially in France, where the noblesse de robe formed an increasingly distinct social group, perpetuated by heredity of office, and identified by its high educational standards and considerable political independence. Even so, the importance of the legal profession in shaping the composition and reception of works outside the legal specialty has been little studied. During the sixteenth century, when avenues of social advancement were not yet closed off, the law offered a route for upward mobility through education—a route that

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served Bodin well intellectually if not financially, although he did not rise up to a rank that carried ennoblement (he could perhaps have hoped that one of his sons or grandsons would eventually rise that high, though as it happened, his two sons died before reaching adulthood). Lawyers ranked, after clerics and doctors, among the social groups with the highest rates of book ownership, and seem to have owned books in an especially wide range of fields outside their specialty;21 they represent a good proportion (roughly 20 percent) of the owners of copies of the Theatrum whom I have been able to identify. Conversely, although in lesser numbers of course, lawyers constituted a healthy proportion of sixteenth-century authors.22 Among authors of natural philosophy, certainly medical doctors were by far the dominant professional group. But lawyers contributed a few wellknown figures with various kinds of "scientific" interests, most famously Montaigne and Francis Bacon, but also the mathematician Pierre de Fermat (160165), a parlementaire at Toulouse, the polymathic correspondant and collector Claude Fabri de Peiresc who was trained as a lawyer,23 or, among the lesserknown figures, Jean de Champaignac, author of the first book of physics in French, who was a parlementaire at Bordeaux. Lawyers in sixteenth-century France are noted above all for their role in the development of historicism, and relativism.24 The new approach to Roman law called mos gallicus, founded at the University of Bourges by Alciato, a disciple of Guillaume Bude's, in the late 1520s, emphasized that Roman law was suited to the specific historical and political context that created it and should not be taken as universally true, as the traditional mos italicus taught.25 As a result French lawyers turned increasingly to customary law and local archival records in search of laws appropriate to their context. But the awareness of the endless multiplicity of specific contexts, each with its appropriate institutions, led legal scholars, on the one hand, to the sheer accumulation of historical data, and, on the other, to the search for universal laws underlying them all. Both these tendencies are evident in Bodin's work, as he struggled to establish comparative truths from a mass of historical commonplaces. Bodin shared his fascination with accumulating diversity and detail with fellow lawyer-historians like Etienne Pasquier and La Popeliniere, without succumbing to the relativism of those, like Montaigne or Charron, who abandoned the hope of uncovering general truths.26 Although he expressed disappointment at his own attempt to gather "all the customs and institutions of almost all peoples . . . so that something certain could be established," Bodin turned with confidence to nature, "where nothing is uncertain," to be "our guide as a sort of deity" (sig. 3r). The impact of legal training was thus not uniform within the same historical context.27 While Montaigne's skepticism has been attributed to the exercise of arguing on both sides of a question, in utramque partem,28 for Bodin the exploration of alternative solutions to a question was never attractive. Bodin adopted neither the burgeoning relativism of a few contemporaries nor the cynicism that William Bouwsma identifies as a widespread characteristic of lawyers in this period.29 Instead Bodin focused all the more vehemently on what he saw as the one correct position, generally dictated by his religious convictions and fears (against athe-

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ism, for instance, or witchcraft), as if to compensate with his zeal for the risks that he saw, in his own and others' professional training, of arguing well for the wrong side of an issue. Conscious of the power of dialectical argumentation, Bodin was clearly concerned that it be applied to good ends. Bodin thus insists throughout the Theatrum that "there cannot be more than one truth" (p. 82; also pp. 521, 433, 484), following Cicero as the latter reminds his brother Quintus in De oratore that although orators argue both sides of a question, only one of the two positions can ever be true.30 The lesson is one that Bodin took to heart. Having once determined the "single truth" of an issue, Bodin ably exploited the persuasive tactics of his profession in advancing it: on the one hand, by attacking with destructive logic and rhetorical verve the positions of his opponent (usually Aristotle), and on the other hand, by building his own case from the eclectic accumulation of authorities and multiple kinds of evidence, with a veneer of syllogistic reasoning. Bodin's tendency to pay more critical attention to his opponents' arguments than to his own is typical of lawyers, at least in sixteenth-century France, for whom, according to Donald Kelley, "persuasion was more important than consistency in pleading a cause"; the legal curriculum especially developed argumentativeness against others.31 Bodin's tactic of heaping disparate authorities and evidence to support an argument, as found not only in the Theatrum but also in the Republique and the Demonomanie,32 is also characteristic of legal writing, notably in the consilia, or briefs composed for a fee by outside lawyers in support of a case. One example in this genre is the consilium by Bodin extant in a collection of arguments in favor of Paul Scalich's claim to descend from the noble della Scala family, in which the argument rests on a vast store of legal references." In the Theatrum, Bodin's pragmatic array of arguments is dialectically effective, even if it does not provide the rigorous demonstrations from first principles that his disputation advertises. Bodin does not follow the Aristotelian and scholastic injunctions to argue from reason alone and from principles taken from within the discipline.34 Mystagogus' syllogisms, for example, while well constructed, rest on a patchwork of appeals to common sense and authority. As part of his argument against the eternity of the world, Mystagogus argues as follows that what comes from nothing returns to nothing: Th. Please give me the demonstration? M. Aristotle asserts constantly that all natural forms die at the death of the subject, except for the human one: but what dies and goes to nothing, must have come from nothing: indeed corruption is nothing other than the extinction of form which goes into nothing, just as generation is the creation of forms that come from nothing, that is from the efficient cause. . . . Th. This consequence, that if forms go into nothing, they came from nothing, does not seem necessary to me. M. Nothing is more certain, nor more common [usiiatius] in the discipline of physics. Indeed it is necessary that the death of that thing that was produced from nothing be a return to nothing [annihilatio): and the proportion of generation to corruption is the same as that of creation to annihilation, that is, to simple death. (P. 65)

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Theorus is evidently convinced; it is not through the effect of logic, however, but only by the repetition of a principle which is then applied to an example— rhubarb, and justified only as "certain and common in the discipline of physics." The syllogistic form serves primarily to rephrase more persuasively a position taken for granted because it accords with religious principles. Similarly, Bodin clinches his crucial demonstration of the corporeal nature of souls and angels by invoking religious and moral principle—they must have bodies in order to experience rewards and punishments after death as they deserve—in violation of the disciplinary boundaries that Bodin is elsewhere keen on maintaining. To muster arguments for the truth, all disciplines are fair game, since there is, after all, only one truth, common to all fields, and which perforce concords with religious principles (see below, pp. 141-44). Bodin's statements that reason must prevail over authority announce the primacy of reason that one expects from a disputation, but they generally occur at points when a conclusion has already been established by authority. The reasons are justified as useful to "illustrate and confirm" such truths, or to convince the skeptics of them, or simply because reasons are appropriate to physics; they are not necessary to the pious, however, including Bodin and the two characters in his dialogue, who have the proper respect for authority. In concluding his argument that the world was created, Mystagogus justifies his reasoned discussion of the issue: "Although this fact is most certain from the authority of the most weighty and holy writers, nonetheless it is more convenient [commodius] to make the things more certain by clear and necessary demonstrations: since it is not worthy of the physicus to preserve by authority those things which he can teach by necessary argument, especially in these times in which everyone wants everything demonstrated to them" (p. 89). Physics thus serves to support religion in troubled times when the impious refuse to believe anything that is not demonstrated to them. On the origins of underground springs and on the number of celestial orbs, too, Bodin finds in the "sacred fonts of the Hebrews" the correct solutions—that springs and rivers are formed from the seawater which flows through the pores in the earth, and that there are ten celestial orbs. The argument from authority rests in the first case on the Bible with confirmations by Thales, Plato, Philo, Seneca, and GeorgAgricola, and in the second on the Bible, Philo, and Aben Ezra. Theorus first acknowledges the "authority of antiquity" (p. 191) and "of these writers, [which] is so great with me that I place it far above all other arguments" (p. 554). Then he requests "nonetheless that it be illustrated and confirmed insofar as possible by demonstrations, because of those who assent to nothing except what is clear from most certain arguments" (p. 554). Theorus proclaims himself convinced, for his part, but requests reasons on behalf of others who would still doubt. Mystagogus complies with the requests, but on a key religious issue like the immortality of the soul, he first protests at some length that it is impious to doubt something that is already so clearly established (pp. 537-39). Occasionally Bodin follows a statement of the principle of reason over author-

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ity with a rejection of the authority adduced. When Theorus remains attached to the notion that the soul is the same as its faculties, which he attributes to Augustine, Mystagogus reminds him: "it is necessary to discuss with reasons, not authority: if the faculty of the soul were the same as the soul itself, sense and intellect, substance and accident would be one and the same . . . ; the consequent is absurd, therefore the antecedent is" (p. 446). An individual authority without support from religious principles, even a Church father, is thus open to rational refutation. But reason can only confirm the authority of the Bible and its true interpreters. As a result, the principle that one should argue from reason rather than authority serves mostly to justify supplying "necessary arguments" for religious truths that it would be foolish to doubt in the first place. Bodin still attributes the greatest demonstrative power to reason, which forces assent even from those who would resist, and which "would be sufficient [to prove the case], if we were deprived of authority" (p. 191; cf. p. 185). Bodin preserves the quality of Aristotelian sdentia for his natural philosophy, in order to place it in the service of conclusions founded on the Old Testament and religious principles. The argument from the consensus of authorities (with or without explicit mention of the Bible) is often used as a demonstration in itself, for example, to establish the existence of great floods (p. 213)—Bodin cites Plato, Aristotle, and Proclus, but the agreement of the Bible is obvious—or to reject the notion that God has a merely vegetative soul, as "all the philosophers, in unison, admit" (p. 433). The "common" agreement of philosophical experts carries the same weight as the universal agreement of all people, which Bodin also invokes as a demonstration, for example, of the fact that there are not two suns or two moons despite appearances of such (p. 217), or that the soul is immortal (pp. 537-38). The manipulation of philosophical authorities serves as an especially powerful tool. On the seeds of virtue that are sown in the soul, Bodin makes his point by citing eight philosophers, from Empedocles to the mysterious Adelandus (p. 476); on the corporeal nature of angels, Bodin lines up a record thirteen authorities. In these doxographies one can recognize the work of the commonplace book which brings together disparate sources on one topic, applied to a special Renaissance interest in gathering the opinions of past thinkers.35 Unlike some who collected the opinions of philosophers for the historical record, or even mocked the notion that philosophers agreed on the truth,36 Bodin only uses doxographies of authorities who support his own arguments.37 By contrast, for example, Scipion Dupleix, in the first major textbook of physics in French (first published in 1603), provides lists of philosophers who agree on various solutions to a question, before siding with one group or another according to his own position.38 For Bodin, the "common consensus" of philosophers is a powerful argument for the truth, which would be tarnished by the implication that philosophers might also agree on false conclusions. Once again, Bodin is not tempted by exploring authorities or arguments on both sides of an issue, but only in defending his conclusion. Conversely, when philosophers disagree, Bodin points this out to show that all previous solutions must be rejected. In these cases Bodin is willing to be harshly

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critical. On the number of predicaments (the Stoics proposed four, Plotinus five, Architas ten—p. 137), or the divisions of the soul (Plato had two, Zeno three, Panaetius five, Soranus seven, Chrysippus eight, Apollophanes nine, and Posidonius twelve—p. 469), Bodin mocks such a diversity of opinions that all miss the truth: there are only two kinds of accidents (quantity and quality), and "there is nothing divided in the essence of the soul." On the nature of the soul, Bodin proceeds more delicately. After noting the conflicting opinions of the Greek, Latin, Egyptian, and Arab philosophers, Bodin first protests his modesty: "Either none of these things is true, or not more than one of them is true, because it cannot be that more than one thing is true: but it would seem to be stupid to pass judgment on so many and such great men, arrogant to decide. . . . I want to follow the opinion of these learned and good men and I want this whole disputation to be judged by these considerations, so that I do not stray from the better received opinion [a recepta saniore sententia discedere nolim]" (pp. 484-85). Once coaxed into this difficult topic, Mystagogus proceeds, as elsewhere, to show that all previous opinions are wrong and that the soul is not only indivisible and immortal but also corporeal after death. The "better received opinion" thus turns out to carry little weight. Bodin does fear arrogance as a crime against God, but not in refuting previous philosophical opinion. Bodin exercises his reasoning most effectively in tearing down received opinion, especially Aristotle. Although he uses philosophical authority (especially the "consensus" of authorities) as an argument with demonstrative force when it suits his purposes, and is always respectful of the Bible, Bodin devotes much of the Theatrum to a demolition of the most cherished authority in philosophy. He is motivated, I argue in chapter 4, by his search for a new, more pious philosophy that can be better reconciled with religion. Many contemporaries, however, especially among the French, perceived such anti-Aristotelianism instead as a threat to the synthesis of faith and reason and responded with hostility. Even the French translator Frangois de Fougerolles defended himself in his translator's preface against endorsing some of Bodin's positions, "which do not seem to me appropriate and by which he attacks Aristotle quite frequently" (F++4v). Scipion Dupleix mocked Bodin, citing the Theatrum in the margin of his Physique, for rejecting Aristotle when he had nothing better to offer: "the imprudence, even the impudence is so great in some that they glory in criticizing Aristotle on matters they do not understand."35 Twenty years later, Marin Mersenne classified Bodin as a "novator" hostile to Aristotle by grouping him with others who identified themselves and were widely identified as such—Francesco Patrizi, Sebastien Basson, David Gorlaeus, Jacques Charpentier, Nicolas Hill. Among university philosophers (even down to Leibniz in 1669), Bodin's anti-Aristotelianism seemed bold, innovative, and excessive.40 From a modern perspective the Theatrum seems, instead, steeped in traditional Aristotelian natural philosophy, since it adheres to most of the received categories, including matter and form, the four causes, the hierarchy of being, the three kinds of soul, the active and passive intellects, the conception of physics as

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a contemplative scientia, and so on. In the late Renaissance, however, these ideas, although originally Aristotelian, had come to seem universal rather than specific to a particular philosophical school. Despite challenges during the Renaissance to the four elements (to which Bodin contributed, along with Cardano, or the more radical Paracelsus), these other fundaments were taken for granted. What was striking to contemporaries, then, was not the extent to which Bodin accepted these traditional notions, but on the contrary the vehemence and frequency of his attacks on Aristotle, on other grounds—on matters large and small, of fact, definition, and causal explanation. Criticisms of Aristotle were becoming more common during the late Renaissance, as even self-proclaimed Aristotelians pointed out errors and weaknesses in the Philosopher's theories. One of the frequently disputed areas, for example, was Aristotle's meteorology, with its overarching explanatory system of watery and fiery exhalations, which by their condensation, eruption, or combustion above or below ground purportedly accounted for everything from the origin of metals and underground springs, to earthquakes, comets, and hailstorms.41 In astronomy, too, the observations of new stars and comets led to the rejection, even among "Aristotelians," of solid spheres, perfect celestial bodies, and the rigid super- and sublunary distinction that had been essential to medieval cosmology.42 But Bodin goes beyond the norm of such criticisms from within the Aristotelian camp, as the reactions of Mersenne and others attest. Readers of the Theatrum were especially interested in Bodin's criticisms of Aristotle. One diligent annotator flagged in the margin (along with criticisms of some forty other authors) 160 attacks on Aristotle, "Aristotle chastised"—on average more than once every four pages. This relentless critique, motivated (I argue) by Bodin's search for piety, is not articulated as an explicit program to innovate, but is carried out on one particular point after another, on exclusively rational grounds—time and time again Aristotle is found to be self-contradictory, obscure, and wrong, as can be seen from the absurd consequences of his theories. In Book I, devoted specifically to the questions typical of Aristotle's Physics, Bodin attacks Aristotle's definitions at every turn. Aristotle is inconsistent, for example, when he defines nature as the principle of rest and motion, but later defines it in terms of matter and form, or generation, or the physical body. "But since for one thing there is only one definition, one of two things is the case: either none of these definitions is true, or no more than one of them is true" (p. 11). Bodin then proposes his own definition, which does not develop new philosophical principles, but rather cuts philosophy short by referring directly to God: "nature is the essence and force given to each thing from its origin by the gift and grace (concessu) of the Creator" (ibid.). Aristotle is wrongheaded: he makes motion the measure of time, rather than time the measure of motion as it should be; he defines place in terms of its borders, not its nature—but place would exist even if there were nothing in the world; and so on. What Bodin offers instead of these Aristotelian errors, he admits, are not always genuine definitions because the subjects are too difficult: "It

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is best that I confess that I do not know [the definition of time], as Galen modestly confessed, than to define it ineptly: . . . time is a definite part of the infinite eternity. Which definition, although new, lacks those disadvantages that we noted" (p. 88). In signaling his innovation here, Bodin is at the same time boastful and apologetic. Unlike many of the other "novatores" with whom he was grouped by Mersenne, Bodin does not much advertise the critical nature of his work in his title or prefatory statements; like a reformer rather than a revolutionary, he leaves these nuggets of originality to be picked up by attentive readers, like Isaac Casaubon who noted down the passage in the flyleaf of his copy.43 On this point Bodin seems close to Duns Scotus, himself influenced by St. Augustine, in rejecting the Aristotelian notion that the motions of the heavens are the sole measure of time: even if all movement stopped, time would continue.44 On the other hand, in defining place, Bodin shuns Duns Scotus' relational emphasis and takes rather a Platonic line: place is "the measure of the location [situs] of the natural body" (p. 106).45 Bodin does not follow a consistent philosophical pattern in choosing his own conclusions. Finally, Aristotle is obscure. His definition of motion, Bodin quips, for example, is more obscure than motion itself. Furthermore, Aristotle was obscure on purpose: "As the squid [loligo] troubles the clearest water with its innate ink lest it be caught, [Aristotle was obscure] so that he would not reveal that the physicus lacked a reason or was giving a false one in difficult matters; for in clear things Aristotle was usually clear" (p. 100). The comparison of Aristotle with a squid or cuttlefish, first introduced already in antiquity, was commonplace among humanist critics of Aristotle, including Patrizi, Campanella, Charpentier and Gassendi—many of them among the "novatores" who so irritated Mersenne.46 Bodin makes a further point of rejecting the traditional, and more charitable, interpretation of the existence of obscure passages in Aristotle: whereas many thought the Philosopher intentionally veiled the secrets of nature lest they be too widely understood, as he supposedly explained in a letter to his pupil Alexander the Great (p. IOO),47 Bodin comments that Aristotle is clear enough on "clear things." Aristotle's obscurity is thus designed to hide his ignorance or error, since he is unwilling openly to admit the shortcomings of his theories. This arrogance in advancing unsound explanations is one fault of Aristotle's that Bodin conscientiously strives to avoid in his work. In the natural-historical books, too, Aristotle comes under constant fire. Although historians of science today hold Aristotle's zoological observations in high esteem, Bodin finds him guilty of errors of fact. He is wrong to report, for example, that red fish (rubelliones) do not have males: "daily experience teaches that this is false: for those animals that lack males must also lack females, like eels and all ostracoderma" (p. 330). But most importantly, given his project, it is Aristotle's causal explanations that Bodin finds full of absurd consequences and contradictions. Aristotle claims that the voice of castrati is higher-pitched because the vocal cords are relaxed by the loss of the weight of the testes: but if this were so, then men should be able to raise their voices by lifting their testes themselves, thus relieving the weight on the cords—"Such stupidities are shameful,"

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Bodin concludes (p. 387). Or Bodin complains that, in explaining the origin of the saltiness of the sea, Aristotle contradicts himself, "as he does most frequently" (p. 468): M. . . . Aristotle thinks (in the Meteorologica 2.1) that [the saltiness of the sea] is made from some very subtle mixture of the earth drawn forth by the heat of the sun, by some fiction worthy of an old woman. . . . [If it were so] the urine of animals and rock salt would also have to draw their salty taste from the heat of the sun, which is absurd, since rock salt [is formed] m the most intimate entrails of the earth where the rays of the sun cannot penetrate. Th. But urine and sweat are said to be salty from their rawness. M. In this he contradicts himself (Problemata, sec. 23), since urine is the most salty because it is the most cooked of all, just as the most cooked ashes are the most salty. (Pp. 197-98)48

Bodin holds Aristotle to high standards, requiring one cause for all manifestations of saltiness, even though he himself adduces different and sometimes contradictory explanations of similar phenomena. When pressed in turn for his own explanation of the saltiness of the sea,49 Mystagogus answers that alkali, salsula, chickpeas, and saliva are all salty for the same reason that sugar is sweet and bile bitter: "in this the great wisdom of the Creator shines forth, which endowed all animals and plants with salt in order to protect them from putrefaction" (p. 199). Bodins answer is unimpeachable, but hardly philosophically satisfying, as he directly invokes divine wisdom and providence and violates the disciplinary boundaries that called for physical explanations for physical phenomena. This kind of invocation of God as explanans—the philosophical version of a deus ex machina resolution—was considered inappropriate by philosophers in the Aristotelian vein both before and after Bodin. Nicole Oresme, for example, begins his treatise On the Causes of Marvels (ca. 1370), which is not even bound by the stricter rules of scholastic treatises, by dismissing the "recourse to the heavens . . . or demons, or to our glorious God as if He would produce these effects directly" as "the last refuge of the weak."50 At the other end of our time frame, the Spanish neoscholastic Benito Pereira also warned against "falling back on the miraculous or the absolute power of God."51 Scipion Dupleix, too, complained specifically on the saltiness of the sea that Bodin found Aristotle's explanation "too bland, for he had a depraved taste in consuming the doctrines of Aristotle: and after having rejected them he could give no better ones and had recourse to the first cause, which is God. Poor ignoramus who meddles in criticizing the master of masters without giving a reason for his criticism!"52 Bodin is indeed more adept at using reason to attack others than to construct theories of his own or to guard himself from similar criticism. Humanist argumentation seems similar in this respect to that of the ancient medical doctors, who used their finely honed rhetorical skills to attract clients by ridiculing their opponents, but who did not turn those same critical faculties to examining their own work.53 Others have noted a similar asymmetry in the critical thinking of Henry of Langenstein, in his hexameral commentary on Genesis which is also comparable to the Theatrum in its encyclopedic scope and its religious motives for natural philosophy.54

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Bodin is at his best on the attack, as in this (portion of a) tirade against Aristotle's theory of comets, in which one senses the flourish of the avocat pleading a case (and which I paraphrase here for brevity): Even if we concede that smokey exhalations were borne to the sphere of the moon, although that cannot happen, in what way can all these exhalations of the air come together to form a globe so that they provide fuel for such great fires? Or if the exhalations are diffused throughout the air, why are not comets, too, distributed through the air? . . . in addition, since the material and hypostasis of all the exhalations is the same, why is one comet of the purest clarity, while the other is black with pale blue; one is horned, another fiery and terrible? . . . Why also would they have different shapes, like a beard or a sword? . . . Why do the winds not dissipate them? . . . For what reason do they follow such a constant course from East to West? Why also would we see comets in winter more than in summer although exhalations are weak and thin in the winter, held back by the frozen earth solid with cold? Why almost always toward the North? . . . and even all the forests and woods of the whole earth could not have sufficed as fuel for the two-month long comet [that appeared in AugustandSeptember 1556]. (Pp. 218-20)

Others before Bodin had raised a few of these objections, too. Cardano, one of Aristotle's staunchest critics on this issue, had pointed out that exhalations could not rise so high in the air nor provide enough fuel for comets, but then left off·. "I abstain from many things that show the absurdity of Aristotle's opinion."55 Instead, Bodin revels in raising every argument against Aristotle, including some that rely on Aristotelian premises (e.g., that exhalations can rise to the level of the moon, or that the winds are born from exhalations), which Bodin rejects elsewhere (pp. 217, 162) but accepts here for the sake of argument. The more arguments accumulated against the adversary, the stronger the case, even if the arguments do not form a single coherent theory of their own. Bodin's most effective weapon is the modus tollens and its extension, the reduc­ tio ad absurdum, by which he rejects his opponents' positions on the ground of their false or absurd consequences.56 Mystagogus lays to rest by such a reductio ad absurdum, for example, the Epicurean argument that the first cause acts by necessity (p. 33). Aristotle's assumption that all live things have a vegetal soul entails that God would have one too—"the consequent is absurd, by the highest agreement of all philosophers, therefore the antecedent" (p. 433). The same logic applies, as above, in Bodin's discussion of the high-pitched voices of castrati or in the objections raised against Aristotle's theory of comets, even where the refrain "consequens absurdum, ergo antecedens" is not explicit. The reductio is by nature destructive. Bodin explicitly discusses the contrast between the force of his negative arguments and the weakness of his positive ones, after he has rejected Aristotle's theory of winds as exhalations: "Th. Why is it easier to overturn wrong opinions than to establish true ones? M. The reason is twofold, first because it is easier to destroy than to construct; secondly it is possible to speak falsely about each thing in an infinite number of ways, but there is only one way to say the truth: just as there is one straight line that is the shortest of all between two

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points, around which innumerable curved lines can be drawn" (pp. 162—63). Bodin saves himself from proposing an alternative to the Aristotelian explanation by invoking his cherished principle of the "single truth" which is held up as a quasi-sacred absolute. Human reason is often too weak to uncover the truth, in which case it is enough to reject the false explanations without attempting to find the single true one. This sense of the limits of reason, which Hiram Haydn found typical of a late "Counter-Renaissance,"57 may contribute to Bodin's heavy reliance on other kinds of arguments, notably from authority, "experience," and religious principle.

"EXPERIENCE"

Bodin's sense of the weakness of reason relative to the omnipotence and omniscience of God has the consequence, at first view paradoxically "modem," of placing greater weight on "experience" (both direct and indirect) to establish the nature of the world. As Lucien Febvre and others have noted, in a world where so many things, both natural and supernatural, are not understood, and in which anything is within God's power, almost no report or experience can be rejected as unbelievable a priori.58 From the existence of witches to the movement of the sphere of the fixed stars at great speeds, from the fact that ostriches digest iron to the attractive powers of the magnet, the world is full of phenomena that we would today variously reject, reinterpret, or accept, but which are plausible once established by authoritative reports and direct experience and which it would be arrogant to reject in the face of good evidence.59 This is one of the reasons why Bodin spends very little time discussing the existence of the "facts" that he sets out to explain: except in unusual circumstances, something reported in an authoritative source needs no further confirmation; the commonplace book can detach it from its original source and context and store it as "fact," preapproved and ready to use. In about twenty instances in the Theatrum, nonetheless, rather than explaining the "fact" in question, Bodin debunks it. Most commonly he provides reasons: notably, the contradiction of religious principles, and "experience" or the lack thereof.60 In the case of the basilisk, the serpent that reportedly could kill by its gaze alone, Bodin first introduces a logical objection, which dates back to Galen:61 "How could that be? With all due respect to Aetius (book 8, chap. 33), who could have seen one, if it kills with its gaze alone? What Nicander writes is truer . . that the basilisk kills with its fetid breath" (pp. 306-7). The objection seems specious, however: could one not see the basilisk without being seen by it? But Bodin clinches the discussion with an incontrovertible religious argument: "I do not believe that the greatest Creator of all things would make such a maleficent animal, which would kill other animals by its gaze alone: indeed, how many deaths of men and animals would he have wreaked in the countryside and the cities?" (p. 307). Similarly, the hyacinth stone does not ward off lightning, because natural things do not have powers against supernatural forces. Neither does God

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himself feed the young ravens, following a literal reading of Psalm 147,62 after their parents abandon them in the nest: the natural historians do not report this and "for other reasons it would be stupid [for God] to worry about the nourishment of ravens and dragons, but to neglect man and animals more worthy than they: indeed it is said (in Psalm 145)63 that he gives nourishment to all his creatures" (pp. 372-73). Instead, Bodin offers an allegorical interpretation of Psalm 147, in which the ravens stand for the demons who ask God to feed to them the wicked. Not surprisingly, this explanation was censored and irritated contemporary readers, one of whom labeled it a "rabbinic interpretation."64 The more uncontestable argument for and against the veracity of reported phenomena is "experience, the mistress of things, which has proved that reported things are false instead of true, and on the contrary that some things thought to be fabulous are true" (p. 249). In calling experience a mistress (in the sense of teacher), Bodin revives Pliny's praise of usus which teaches all things.65 For example, Bodin explains, neither diamond nor garlic affect the attractive force of a magnet; and it is not true that in musical instruments strings made from sheep gut cannot be accorded with those made from wolf gut—a point that Bodin had already made in his 1555 commentary on Oppian (p. 249).66 On this latter point Bodin was evidently quite innovative, to judge from the fact that Rene Descartes still accepted the antipathy between sheep gut and wolf gut four decades later (Gilson considers this the "only remnant of superstition" in his thought), and that Pierre Trichet, a musical expert writing in the 1630s, was reluctant to reject it as well.67 On the other hand, Bodin continues, "usage has taught us" that food cooked or mixed with the aetites stone reveals a thief because he alone is unable to swallow it (ibid.). As we found in the case of philosophical authorities, Bodin places special stock in the testimony of experts, notably medici: concerning the case of the ravens above, Bodin notes that such behavior had never been reported by the "authors of natural things" (p. 372); similarly, that the oriole cures jaundice is hardly credible, "since the experience of the thing is very easy, and yet we do not read of any such thing reported over so many centuries by the most learned doctors, who have investigated most assiduously all the remedies of this disease, in order to cure it" (p. 369). What is harder to understand is how Bodin reaches the positive conclusions about "experience" that he does: that the aetites stone is effective, or that sows and bitches abort when the pigs and dogs from which they conceived are killed or castrated, which "was unknown to antiquity and would seem incredible if frequent experience, the mistress of all things, did not force us to confess it" (p. 386). "Experientia" as an abstract term generally refers, as in these cases, to an undifferentiated, medieval mix of hearsay, bookish learning, and actual experience.68 Even when "experientia" accords with the experience that we know, one need not assume it results from a direct or systematic observation of nature: Bodin's debunking of the occult effect of garlic juice on the magnet, for example, could be taken from della Porta, who describes having tested the claim directly.69 The decisions that Bodin makes about what this kind of "experientia" proves and dis-

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proves inevitably seem rather arbitrary to us and it is hard to evaluate Bodin's judgments by the standards of his time. It is clear, however, that Bodin did not seem particularly credulous to contemporaries. Even one so skeptically inclined as Montaigne criticized Bodin rather of being excessively incredulous when he rejected reports by reputable ancient historians in his Methodus. In a passage no doubt composed before Bodin's Demonomanie and his famous critique of its arguments in favor of witchcraft,70 Montaigne has this appraisal of Bodin's judgment: Jean Bodin is a good author of our day, equipped with much more judgment than the mob of scribblers of his time, and he deserves to be judged and considered. I find him a little bold in that passage of his Method of History in which he accuses Plutarch not only of ignorance (on which I would have let him have his say, for that is not my quarry), but also of often wnting incredible and entirely fabulous things (those are his words). . . "As," he says, "when [Plutarch] relates that a Lacedaemonian boy let his whole stomach be torn up by a young fox he had stolen, and kept it hidden under his robe until he died, rather than disclose his theft." . . I am so steeped in the greatness of those people that not only does Plutarch's story not seem incredible to me, as it does to Bodin, but I do not find it even rare and strange. . . We must not judge what is possible and what is not, according to what is credible and incredible to our sense, as I have said elsewhere; and it is a great error, and yet one into which most men fall (which I am not saying for Bodin) to balk at believing about others what they themselves could not do—or would not. . . . What brutish stupidity!71

Although Montaigne concedes that Bodin is not usually guilty of this kind of error, he finds it arrogant and "brutish" to dismiss a fact reported by an authority like Plutarch on the grounds that it seems incredible. Yet, when Bodin makes a similar argument about the arrogance of denying the existence of witches, to which many have attested, Montaigne parts company with him. Clearly, both authors face the same difficulty, in acknowledging the weakness of human abilities and the omnipotence of God, of how to sort through the mass of "experience" (bookish and direct) accumulated in the Renaissance, to separate the credible from the incredible. Both are willing to be critical at some points, and to suspend judgment at others; but they exercise their judgment differently on crucial issues like witchcraft, with Montaigne opting for skepticism more often than Bodin. In particular, while Montaigne questions our ability to draw knowledge from experience which is always so diverse and dissimilar,72 Bodin confidently invokes it as a guarantor of truth. Although his notion and use of "experientia" is far from modern, Bodin's Theatrum is part of a broad trend in Renaissance natural philosophy toward a greater interest in particulars and in empiricism. Bodin does not distinguish between the quality of evidence provided by an authoritative bookish report and that of a direct observation, but the kinds of natural phenomena he addresses are susceptible to arguments from experience, whether direct or indirect—unlike many of the questions discussed in scholastic natural philosophy, which John Murdoch

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concludes often had little to do with nature.73 Bodin not only grants experience, as corrected by reason, a theoretical role in the formation of knowledge, following Aristotle, but also introduces as evidence experiences that he has personally garnered through everyday life, motivated observation, a unique case of measurement (to be discussed shortly) and the consultation of friends, experts, and artisans. Bodin does not devote much fanfare to the presentation of this evidence, but treats it as interchangeable with the bookish reports alongside which it was presumably collected in the commonplace book. To the classic skeptical objections about the weaknesses of the senses, Bodin responds with a balanced position, which acknowledges the need for reason both to correct sense experience and to take it into account: The senses do not always err, as the Academics thought, nor do they always report the truth, as Aristotle writes: For when the eye looks at the sun, it reports to the understanding that the sun is one foot wide, or a bit bigger, and when a straight stick is partly under water, the eye reports to the intellect that the stick is bent and crooked. . . . But the understanding detects and judges the error of the senses, that the sun is not two feet [sic] wide and that the stick under water is not bent, therefore reason is like some rule of Polycletes which is provided to correct the errors of the senses, if they err. nor can it always do without the senses (P. 474)

Bodin thus recommends a middle path, between the Platonists and the Peripatetics, between reason and sense experience, between the rule of Polycletes which he mentions here and the rule of Lesbos with which he contrasts it elsewhere. As Bodin explains in discussing in the Republique his vision of ideal justice, which is a combination of the two rules, the rule of Polycletes is the straight line against which architects set their rulers, or unbending reason; that of Lesbos is a more flexible ruler, made of lead, "so that by accommodating itself in every direction, one could save the stone." What Bodin recommends is a third rule, "which is neither as stiff as the first nor as flexible as the second."74 In the sphere of justice, Bodin calls it "harmonic justice," which he defines as the balanced combination of "arithmetic" and "geometric justice." In epistemology, he suggests, this third rule calls for a use of the senses tempered by reason. Bodin follows Aristotle in maintaining that "all scientia is of universals, there can be no certain knowledge [sciential of particulars." Still, he allots the latter a crucial role in the formation of knowledge: "the consideration of particulars brings to the unskilled [imperitis] sensible knowledge which we call intuitive, and to those who are skilled the teaching of perceived things brings more certain confirmation" (pp. 140-41). Bodin thus displays a complex conception of scientific method, which distinguishes between an ordeT of investigation and an order of pedagogy: From which we understand that all the arts and sciences started from sensible knowledge, which they call synthesis; but it is necessary to teach arts that are perceived and known with reason and method, that is by analysis, which means from the more simple and universal things to the particular and composite ones. But for those who are

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seeking knowledge of natural things it is necessary to follow a certain circular path, so that [after going] from the starting marker to the turning post we return from there to the starting point, nor should we always consider the descent, but also the ascent. (P. 141)

Although Bodin's brief description of the "circular path" of scientific inquiry does not match the detailed discussions by specialists of the method of "regress," he is familiar with the outline at least of the methodology developed in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Padua from a combination of Averroist and recently revived Galenic texts.75 In continuing his description of the method of discovery, Bodin dwells especially on sense experience: ". . . and we should examine the treasures of the singular things of nature in the air, the water, the earth, and under the earth, nor should we follow our ears as much as our eyes. Indeed we see that some have not written as accurately as they should have about nature, because they had no experience of singular things" (p. 141). Bodin reveals associations with the senses that are characteristic of a culture in which tradition is transmitted orally rather than in writing.76 He thus associates the ears with unreliable reports—hearsay, but also with what one hears in lectures or receives from authority (even from books, he implies, which have not been written accurately); the eyes, on the other hand, are more trustworthy, associated with direct experience rather than with the bookish transmission of authority. Bodin calls attention to the novelty of his precept that sight should prevail over hearing, by having Theorus ask whether the traditional superiority of hearing and authority should not hold: Th. Is not the sense of the ears more certain than that of the eyes? M. It is so when true things are said, nonetheless in order that the truest things be reported, it is necessary to place them under the eyes insofar as possible, because use and experience cannot be taught when it is a matter of sensible things; that is why those who hope to reach the knowledge of natural things must observe the powers, the tastes, odors, colors, shape of plants, and the nature of metals and stones and the dissections of animals. (P. 141)

Just like the collectors in late sixteenth-century Italy studied by Paula Findlen, Bodin emphasizes the need to use all the senses in investigating nature, although the role of sight has priority.77 While Bodin's invocation of "experientia" is hard to reconcile with modernstyle empiricism, Bodin does refer in a number of places to direct observations of his own. In most of these cases he does not announce' the case as an "experience," but simply uses the first person, variously in the plural or the singular, to describe something that corroborates his point. When Theorus asks why fish live less long than other animals, as Aristotle and Theophrastus maintained, Bodin asserts the contrary: "from the experience of many centuries it is known that no animal lives longer than the fish." This can be seen from the size of aquatic animals: "for example, the terrestrial crocodile barely reaches three cubits, while the aquatic one exceeds thirty. We ourselves have seen a crocodile of twenty cubits. For

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growth happens from what is warm and humid: and the sea is warm and humid" (pp. 393-94). Bodin gives no circumstantial details about when and where he saw the animal: the direct eyewitness report (in the authorial "we") is treated equivalently with his assertion, presumably bookish in origin, that terrestrial crocodiles do not exceed three cubits. In a discussion of the eating habits of birds Bodin reveals that he tried to determine directly the truth of the traditional belief that the ostrich, can digest iron: "On the ostrich, however, and whether it digests iron, I would not dare say: even though I have seen some brought to France and [watched them] be fed by the tamer, nonetheless I could not understand anything from him" (p. 378). In both these cases one can presume that Bodin went out of his way to observe an unusual phenomenon directly in order to gather and report the "truest things," as he advocated. Successful in the first case, the attempt failed in the second, due, perhaps, as he implies, to a language barrier with the ostrich tamer. Bodin also taps information acquired in a particular place, whether from everyday experience, local oral traditions, or archival investigation. From Toulouse, where he lived as a student, he recalls his experience in the fish market to support his argument that salt water is purer than fresh water: "the fish of the ocean are better, bigger, and more tasty than the others, which we experienced in Toulouse, since fish are brought there from both kinds of water" (p. 333). When discussing the virtues of certain stones that change color m forewarning of danger, Bodin reports a local tradition which he seems to endorse: "I myself saw a topaz set in gold and broken in many places, which the unskilled mistake for emerald, to which the Toulousains attribute the same power [of changing color to signal danger], and believe that it is [also] a sign of chastity or unchastity according to whether it is whole or broken" (p. 235). Similarly, Bodin learned during those years of the case of a dog coupling with a hare, and implies that he saw what he describes in the archives: "It is reported in the public acts of Verphillus, not far from Toulouse, and by the attestation of many [witnesses], that a young bitch was united and joined with a male hare in the vineyards and the adultery of both was revealed because, joined at the same time, they could not be torn apart" (pp. 345-46).78 From Bodin's frequent allusions to archival records in the Republique, it is clear that, following the mos gallicus, he spent time investigating documents in various locales; although such research most often yielded evidence for legal arguments, the notebook of natural places could store up an unusual tidbit like this one, for later use in the Theatrum. This form of motivated observation of written sources is used interchangeably with observations of crocodiles and ostriches, as well as more ordinary experience and oral traditions, as part of Bodin's stock of "facts." Bodin's facts, whether derived from books or from various forms of experience, stem, in a characteristically premodern way, not from a systematic research plan but rather from a generalized and encyclopedic kind of curiosity, and are qualitative and descriptive rather than quantitative. In only one instance does Bodin engage in a more systematic kind of investigation and in one that involves measurement: he gives a list of the proportions between the weights of different met-

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als and then of a number of other substances, from earth to oil and wine and water, "from which, he concludes, can easily be judged the intermediate weights of all natural things" (p. 260). In explaining how the proportions between the weights of substances easily yield (through their inverse) the proportions between the volumes of these substances, he reveals his source: "This was first demonstrated by Frangois de Foix de Candale, the Archimedes of France, who, taking equal lengths of the six metals drawn into a wire . . . weighed them in a very fine balance, and since mercury could not be made into a wire, he impressed a coin of gold or silver in the bone of a squid, then removing the coin, poured an equal amount of mercury in it, which he then poured into one side of the balance to find its weight" (p. 261). After describing Candala's elaborate setup secondhand, Bodin claims credit for his own contribution: "we ourselves collected the weight of salt, earth, salt water, fresh water, wine, ash, and oil, which have not been included in the books of any writers until now" (p. 261). Ordering them in a descending "chain" of weights, Bodin notes, for example, that "fresh water is to ash as 74 to 72; red wine weighs almost the same as water . . . , while white wine is a little lighter, and is to oil as 72 is to 70" (p. 260). Although Bodin is conscious of the novelty of his results, he does not announce them prominently or as if they were different in kind from those reported by Candala or what he might have read. Bodin does not give any indication of his own technique for measuring and weighing these different substances. Although this passage circulated with favorable reviews through Mersenne to various of his correspondents, Kepler mentions it only to criticize Bodin's inadequate technique: "Bodin himself has measured and weighed in a vessel earth, salt, ash, oil, wine, salt and fresh water. It is a very different thing, however, to weigh earth, salt and ash dry, like grain in a raised vessel, and to weigh its pure substance and eliminate the air mixed in between, which cannot be done without water."75 This unique example of systematic measurement on Bodin's part is not motivated by a broader project, but most likely was inspired by Bodin's contact with Candala, about which we unfortunately know nothing more than what he explains in the Theatrum.60

The mention of personal contacts who made an experience possible is one of the primary distinguishing features of this form of evidence. "Alacris of Gergovia showed me a piece of wood, half of which had turned to stone on the side that floated in the spring of the Mont Dore in Auvergne, and we even saw the droppings of trees and little pieces of wood turn to stone in two or three hours in the rivulet of the spring of Alliac near Riom and we have the petrified roots of the dead trees with their marrow and bark, which anyone can see in many places" (p. 228). Bodin gives only minimal circumstantial details for this account of fastpetrifying wood, and emphasizes neither the status nor the reliability of the otherwise unknown "Alacris," but notes instead how common the phenomenon is. In this case, personal experience is convincing because it is easily shared and widely accessible. In other cases, however, Bodin draws on experiences that were more exceptional and which played a powerful role in determining his opinion on the matter. For example, on the existence of trees that bear duck eggs in Scot-

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land, as reported by (among others) the contemporary historian Hector Boethius:81 "As I doubted on the matter what I had heard from the French ambassador returning from Scotland, Abraham Ortelius confirmed it and showed me the very shells fertile with ducks that had been brought to Antwerp" (p. 298). Here the personal contact needs no introduction to modern historians and tantalizingly reveals one point of interaction of Bodin with the irenicist sect of the Family of Love.82 The royal court, where Bodin seems to have circulated at least occasionally as early as the 1550s and down to 1576, was one of the places where he garnered novel information. It was presumably there that Bodin met the French ambassador returning from Scotland with the report of duck-bearing trees. Bodin describes being "in the presence of Henry II king of France" (who was killed in a jousting accident in 1559) when he "saw sixty singers singing together with different parts, with such short notes that they could not be perceived to diverge in any way" (p. 370—Bodin's choice of verb ["I saw"] to describe this aural experience also recalls his views on the primacy of vision, see p. 141). We can reconstruct in some more detail the kinds of court contacts that led to Bodin's mentioning in his discussion of earthquakes the case of a mountain that moved in 1560, and to the publication in 1575 of a map of the affected area, in a work by the nobleman Nicolas de Livre. Bodin comments that he saw the map "not without wonderment" when it was brought to court (on June 6, 1560, we learn from Livre's account) by Mathieu Coignet, French ambassador to the Swiss, who had gotten it (Livre explains) from a doctor Amerbach in Saleurre (probably Soleure or Solothurn, Switzerland). Anonymous annotations in one copy of Livre's work explain that Coignet had sent the map to secretary Bourdin at the court. Foreign doctor, ambassador, royal secretary, avocat, and noble courtier all participated in the creation of this piece of knowledge; along with the king and his court, they marveled at the phenomenon and its graphic representation. As Livre describes the incident, "there was a mountain covered with trees and two ponds which, detaching itself from another, started to move from Easter until the following June 1560 and at first advanced by one league per day, but shortly thereafter moved more slowly, so that near the end it only moved 35 fathoms [per day]. . . . The mountain came so close to a village named Kling that the inhabitants fled for fear of being crushed." The lovely map ended up in the hands of the noble author, while Bodin provides a verbal reference in the Theatrum, adding the usual error of detail—he dates the event to 1561 instead of 1560 (see figure 2).85 Bodin's service to the king's younger brother Frangois, notably during the letter's campaign in Flanders, yielded further unique information, which is flagged in two of the three annotated copies of the Theatrum that I have studied. I myself saw, not without amazement ladmiratio], that William, Prince of Orange lost his sense of taste from a wound to the neck,84 and that a French soldier became mute by a similar wound. . . . But the Prince of Orange lived without taste until he was killed: and although he ordered dishes with acrid, sour, or salty condiments, nonetheless he perceived nothing by taste, as we learned from him. But it is no less

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Fig. 2. The "portrait" of the mountain that moved in 1560, which Bodin reports having marveled at when he saw it at the royal court where it had been sent by the French ambassador to the Swiss, Mathieu Coignet. This map was published in Nicolas de Livre, Discours du tremblement de terre (Paris: DuVal, 1575); anonymous annotations in this copy (R. 4 2 5 1 1 ) give the further information that it was sent to the royal secretary Bourdin, and quote a verse from Psalm 113/114. Photograph reprinted with permission of Bibliotheque Nationale de France—Paris. remarkable [mirum] for someone to have lost [the sense of] taste than for someone who hears and has an intact tongue to lose the ability to speak; this seemed incredible to me before, [and still would] if I had not learned it from experience, (p. 4 6 0 ) Bodin's rare use here of the language of wonder and admiration conveys the force of the direct experience in overturning established beliefs, notably Aristotle's claim that n o animal can live without a sense of taste, and his o w n conviction that muteness was caused by a loss of hearing or of the tongue. T h i s passage is also exceptional in combining the abstract term "experientia" with an actual account of an experience. Bodm's presentation of empirical evidence is rarely announced as "experientia" and generally involves simply a verb in the first person. Bodin uses equally frequently the plural and the singular, whereas Fougerolles shifts them all to the singular in the F r e n c h translation. By the authorial "we" Bodin may encourage the reader to feel involved in the more readily accessible experiences (of measuring c o m m o n substances, of seeing a crocodile or petrified wood),

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whereas he uses "1" to describe his failure with the ostrich and his more particular interactions, with Alacris, Ortelius, or William of Orange.85 In addition to introducing personal empirical experience of a kind rarely seen in medieval natural philosophy, Bodin follows another path opened during the Renaissance, of consulting artisans and other practical experts.86 Peter Ramus, for example, boasted of having investigated the shop of every ingenious artisan in Paris.87 Bodin presumably acquired by a similar kind of direct contact some of his details about the "common practices" of different manual professions, although he also uses information of bookish origin, as he acknowledges in discussing the Parisian jewelers and their contradictory opinions about whether gold is diminished by fire (p. 263).88 The testimony of various kinds of practitioners, endowed with the authority of their expertise, is yet another kind of "experientia." When Theorus asks how we know that the sea is saltier in its depths than on the surface, Mystagogus answers that this was learned "not only by reason, but also by experience": Th. By which experience was it known? . . . M. Prom those who from salty springs boil out the salt by fire; indeed first they draw from the surface the fresh and less salty water and to know clearly how much to draw they send down into the water a raw egg, which sinks and yet does not reach the bottom, but stays hanging where the water begins to be saltier: from which it is understood clearly enough that the water of the sea is found saltier at the bottom than on the surface, but that the surface which is exposed to the rays of the sun and the stars is fresher. (P. 200)89

The practice of salt collectors is the only explicit argument in support of Bodin's claim about the different levels of saltiness of the sea. Similarly we know that swallows do not fly away during the winter but hide under rocks by the sea, where fishermen have often found them (p. 365). In other cases, Bodin corroborates arguments already underway by referring to the common practices of fishermen who avoid carrying their catch near blossoming hawthorn plants because fish are corrupted by the flowers' odor (p. 401), or of sauna attendants who create a hotter air by making it dense with moisture (p. 212). It is probably from the practical expertise of those who make and deal in remedies that Bodin derives his most modern-sounding tests. For example, to evaluate the effectiveness of the aetites stone in preventing miscarriage, Bodin declares: "I would not be able in any way to say that it is true, nor would I want to say that it is false: therefore it is necessary to make a test lpericulum] in a woman who aborts frequently" (p. 249). He proposes a more controlled experiment to determine, before buying a sample of it, whether the antidote sold as "bezoar" (or "behal zehar," which comes from the Hebrew for "tamer of poisons" according to Bodin) is genuine. Since dealers in unguents [seplasiarii] often substitute false and counterfeit drugs for the true ones, one does not buy it [behal zehar] except after making an experiment Ipericulum] from the death of animals: a deadly poison or the most devastating venom of all is given to two puppies or cats, then a little bit of the powder of this

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stone is given to one of the puppies: so that if the puppy to which no antidote was given dies, [while] the other escapes unscathed, the integrity of the stone will be revealed (P. 241)90

In using the classical term "periculum" to describe these experiments, Bodin may purposefully be shunning the occult and alchemical connotations of the medieval term "experimentum."91 In any case, Bodin avoids the confusion of the two terms often common in medieval usage, and keeps his Renaissance notion of "experientia" devoid of any tests or modern-style "experiments." What we would consider Bodin's most sophisticated form of specifically scientific reasoning occurs not in an argument of physics to establish the truth of a theory or fact, but as practical advice in a pharmaceutical tradition. In other parts of his treatment of stones and metals Bodin draws on the related chemical tradition to offer a few recipes. In speaking of the biting pungency of ammoniac salt, Bodin adds, for example, that it can change silver into glass and back again, although it cannot change into silver glass that was not first changed from silver because "art cannot give a worthier form to natural things, only a worse one" (p. 239). Theorus expresses disbelief and asks for the recipe, which Mystagogus duly supplies: "Dip the silver in aqua chrysulca; it will all liquefy into water so that no trace of silver remains; then dilute fresh water with the ammoniac salt and put it in the aqua chrysulca in which the silver was melted: pure silver will settle at the bottom of the container" (pp. 239-40).92 In the way characteristic of the "professors of secrets"93 Bodin also indicates that he knows other recipes which he will not divulge: "Having melted stones, or rather in the process of melting them fto make glass], chemists imitate all kinds of gems by adding colors artificially, so that the most skilled [observers] are often deceived: though I have learned these things from experience, it is better to stay silent than to report them" (p. 238). Bound by a moral duty to put his knowledge to good use, Bodin offers instead methods of detecting fraud: quicksilver can be distinguished from the tin with which merchants fraudulently dilute it by filtering through a sieve— the quicksilver will pass through while the tin will not (p. 255); artificial emeralds made from copper can be detected by their lighter weight and their tendency to attract grease and dirt (p. 267). Bodin explains that "it is necessary that these frauds be detected, lest those who are inexperienced in the appearance of gems be deceived. We write of these things having experienced them" (p. 267). How he "experienced" them—in books, from consulting artisans or (what I consider least likely) from direct investigation—is left unspecified. This information about detecting fraud in remedies and metals is typical of contemporary books of secrets rather than of Aristotelian scientia, but fits into Bodin's expansive practice of natural philosophy. Bodin's "experientia" is on the premodern side of the divide that Peter Dear draws between the conception of experience as something well known to all and the single, staged "crucial experiments" favored by the mechanical philosophers to decide a controversial issue.94 With one exception, Bodin's "experientia" is qualitative and collected without a preconceived experimental agenda, but plan-

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lessly, as opportunities for interesting observations present themselves. From the results of his information gathering, using bookish and more directly experienced facts as equivalent, Bodin occasionally moves toward some more general principles of nature: suggesting that dense things hold heat better than thin ones (p. 212) and stating more explicitly that nature places contrary things in contrary locations (p. 274) or that white things are weaker than black ones (p. 235). Bodin even uses the expression "the laws of nature," although he is not the first to do so, in a few instances which would have delighted Edgar Zilsel, in his attempt to show a connection between Bodin's theory of sovereignty and the modern conception of a lawgiving God.95 But the "laws of nature" remain an abstraction for Bodin that yields in practice to his preference for resolving particular problems one by one and to his prudent fear of arrogance in claiming to understand too much about nature. For example, when discussing in which seasons various animals fatten the most, Bodin explains how each species behaves by invoking different kinds of reasons: cattle fatten in the fall when their internal heat is renewed by the cooler weather; deer grow fattest in spring when they eat the tender green leaves; birds and other animals grow fattest in winter when their pores contract, retaining their humors, and so forth (p. 381). Overwhelmed by the diversity of factors in nature, Bodin does not look for general patterns, even though his climate theory of temperaments might have been applied to good effect in this instance.96 Like most contemporaries, Bodin is little interested in enunciating principles of nature, content to repeat only the most standard Aristotelian notions that nature does nothing in vain (p. 24) or that nature fears a void and the penetration of bodies (pp. 147, 175).97 Bodin's more general conclusions are thus not consciously developed through systematic research nor tested against counterarguments; they are rather by-products of the topical collection of information in the commonplace book. As a result they often harbor contradictions, hidden under the disparate rubrics of the commonplace book, as we have seen, and caused by Bodin's tendency to use "experience" to corroborate quick conclusions instead of building them up with care. Thus, concerning Bodin's claim from the case of marble that white things are weaker than black ones, one reader commented: "any universal enunciation is dangerous," and pointed out that the principle is violated by Bodin's own statements that diamonds, which can be white too, are the strongest of stones,98 Within the parameters of premodern natural philosophy, which do not apply experience to resolve theoretical questions, Bodin's "experientia" nonetheless includes more than the usual medieval mix of hearsay and "common knowledge." Bodin introduces personal experiences, sometimes with the claim that they are easily accessible to all (as with the petrified wood), in other cases with a clear awareness of the uniqueness of his contact (as with William of Orange). Furthermore, he draws on the "common practices" of various artisanal professions which would never have been thought worthy of attention by natural philosophers, even encyclopedic ones, before the Renaissance. This newly expanded purview of "experientia" carries not only theoretical weight in Bodin's natural philosophy, but

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serves alongside authoritative bookish statements to establish facts, overturn received opinions, and corroborate and support explanations. Remarkable, however, for its relative paucity in the Theatrum is the great supply of "experience" concerning non-European worlds that was circulating in the sixteenth century. In a single passage, Bodin discusses plants that grow "in Africa and India" and lists only their names, without any description, expressing the hope "that our people will be taken by the desire to bring and cultivate them insofar as possible: for in them we can see the generosity of God toward us and his admirable wisdom" (p. 286). This list (like Bodin's other enumerations of species) is constructed from a patchwork of names, sometimes distorted, taken from a variety of sources, with no effort to make them identifiable." Bodin barely refers to the New World discoveries; it is not always clear when he does, since he only has one term to designate two different kinds of "Indians"—in some instances this conflation does not even matter, because Bodin invokes them only as indistinct "others" who fill out the world—as in "fire seems hot to the Indians, Celts, Ethiopians, and Scythians" (pp. 537-38).100 Bodin has read at least one Spanish travel report, as he acknowledges in describing the "iogne" plant, which shrivels up when touched but then is revitalized again once left alone, and has garnered at least two other tidbits from the same or similar sources.101 He also mentions the American firefly (pp. 304, 452) and the bird of paradise of the Portuguese Molucca islands (p. 366); but his source on the amianthos, a stone that grows in America, is another humanist of his ilk, J. C. Scaliger, against whom he marshals the support of Mattioli to declare that this stone is a "plumaceous alum" (plumaceum . . . alumen, p. 237). These few observations from the New World or other continents are simply blended into the general stock of data that he collects and are not accorded any special status. Others have noted how Bodin shunned the exotic in accounts of non-European peoples in his Methodus.'02 In his natural philosophy, too, Bodin's two main purposes both led him to minimize the marvelous. As a natural theologian, Bodin emphasized the works of God in the ordinary and familiar phenomena, which, as many such authors stated explicitly, were just as worthy of admiration as the exotic and unusual ones. As a philosopher, Bodin offered either causal explanations that made wonder unnecessary, or called for the "silent admiration" and worship of God, whose secrets were beyond human comprehension. In this way Bodin strove to reconcile a philosophical use of the human faculties of reason and experience with a properly pious awareness of their limitations, without falling into frivolous sensationalism.

BODIN'S ECLECTIC CHOICE OF AUTHORITIES

Bodin's pragmatic kind of dialectic leaves a significant role not only for arguments from "experience," but also for arguments from authority. On the one hand, as I have mentioned, Bodin applies standards of logical consistency to point out the absurd consequences and contradictions of various authoritative positions, most

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notably of Aristotle, but also of others. On the other hand, he enlists as authoritative the support of those who agree with him on a specific point (including Aristotle), even if he criticizes them on other issues. The result is what I call an eclectic use of authorities in which no single philosophical school predominates; Bodin is driven by his own originality and by a special interest in finding biblical answers to his questions. Before illustrating my use of the term, some discussion of other acceptations of "eclectic" and how well they apply to Bodin can help to place him in the context of broader histories of philosophy. Charles Schmitt recently coined the term "eclectic Aristotelians" to designate the diverse Renaissance thinkers who still defined themselves as Aristotelians (ranging from Pomponazzi or Zabarella to Scaliger or Keckermann), but who felt they were improving on previous interpretations of the Philosopher by contributing elements of newly available philosophies (including Platonic and Neoplatonic, Stoic, pre-Socratic and Hermetic philosophies, among others).103 To apply this appellation to Bodin may seem sensible from our point of view, given Bodin's (ungrateful) indebtedness to Aristotelian categories and his wide-ranging use of other sources; but it is misleading in that it obscures Bodin's own vehement rejection of Aristotle. Schmitt never included Bodin among his "eclectic Aristotelians," nor would I. In a second, more historical usage, the term "eclectic" was used increasingly through the seventeenth century to designate a new school of philosophy, which claimed to be inspired by the ancient model of Potamon of Alexandria.104 From Vossius and Lipsius to the influential historian of philosophy Johann Jakob Brucker whose Historia critica philosophiae began to appar in 1733, the "eclectic" philosopher was praised as free from dogma, willing to study and adopt the truths devised by any sect, forming a philosophy in accordance with the "light of nature" and reconcilable with Christianity. Far from having the negative connotation that is fairly widespread today, for Brucker and the histories of philosophy that he inspired (including those of Denis Diderot), "eclectics" were precisely those whose innovations could still be appreciated as modern or at least partially true.105 In Brucker's judgment, the first eclectics appeared in the late sixteenth century, with Cardano, Bruno, and Campanella, followed by Bacon, Hobbes, Descartes, and Leibniz. After a brief discussion, however, Brucker decides against including Bodin as an "eclectic": the Republique is full of "useless and unpleasant digressions"; in the Theatrum, "although indeed [Bodin] often divorces himself from Aristotelian [propositions], he does not offer better or more certain things than the Stagirite, with his obscure and uncertain assertions and reasons, but he scales clouds and sells [empty] winds by using scholastic and metaphysical terms."106 Bodin may have seemed an innovator in the first part of the seventeenth century (to Mersenne, for example), but by the eighteenth, the standards for innovativeness having shifted considerably in the meantime, Bodin appeared instead too traditional to be included among Brucker's "eclectics." Bodin's pointed exclusion from Brucker's influential canon of "forward-looking" thinkers no doubt worked to seal the oblivion of the Theatrum, which he already reported difficulty in finding, from the eighteenth century on.

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Bodin is neither an eclectic Aristotelian as defined by Schmitt1 nor an eclectic according to Brucker's definition. Nevertheless, a looser usage of the term to describe someone who picks and chooses among the philosophies rather than following a single preexisting school applies well to Bodin's attitude toward philosophical authorities. Although he readily invokes the "common consent of philosophers" in favor of his positions, this tactic is not so much that of a syncretist who himself is persuaded by the patterns of agreement among philosophers, as that of the dialectician who uses the argument from consent to persuade others. Indeed, one senses a certain arbitrariness in Bodin's claims about the opinions of others: in the service of his arguments, he can attribute agreement with his own positions to others with little or no solid grounds. For example, 1 have not been able to substantiate his claim that Gaudentius Merula supports the corporeal nature of demons (p. 511);107 or, to bolster his argument against Aristotle's notion that humans only have memory, Bodin asserts that on this issue "no one follows [Aristotle's] opinion" (p. 409). Scipion Dupleix disagrees, however, finding that the consensus is indeed with Aristotle: "On the contrary, it would be hard to find even one noted philosopher who did not follow Aristotle on this point, even among the moderns, including such learned and celebrated figures as Scaliger and Femel."108 Of course, Dupleix himself has an argument to support, in his case to defend Aristotle, just as Bodin likes to criticize him. In these polemics, the actual positions of Aristotle and of the (often unnamed) philosophers who "generally agree" one way or the other are less relevant than the services they render to positions for or against Aristotle that rest on other grounds. Bodin's eclecticism makes him hard to identify with any particular philosophical group. Bodin differs from most contemporary critics of Aristotle in that, in rejecting the Philosopher, he does not champion another one, as Patrizi and Charpentier championed Plato, Gassendi Epicurus, or Lipsius the Stoics. Instead, Bodin distributes praise and blame across all the philosophical schools. Bodin's citations range widely over all the sources available in the Renaissance.109 Of the thirty-three authors whom Bodin refers to most often (more than 8 times), ancients account for two-thirds. Aristotle tops the list (ahead of the 80 references to the Bible), due to the numerous critical, but also some positive references—over 170 all told; among the ancient commentators on Aristotle, Bodin cites Themistius and Philoponus (10-15 references each), but especially Alexander of Aphrodisias (40 references) whom he calls "the most acute Peripatetic" (p. 65). Plato is next (after the Bible), with roughly 50 references, and Bodin is often favorable to the Neoplatonists Plotinus, Proclus, Porphyry, and the easily Neoplatonized Pythagoras (ca. 15 references each). Natural-historical and medical writers bulk large, with much attention to Pliny and Galen (40 references each), Theophrastus (25 references), Dioscorides and Hippocrates (10 each), but also numerous occasional references (1-3 each) to lesser authors, like Athenaeus, Aetius, Artemidorus, Celsus, Columella, Nicander, and others. The moralists especially in vogue in the Renaissance also figure prominently in the Theatrum: Plutarch (25 references), Cicero and Seneca (10-15 each) and the Stoics more generally (8 references). Democritus (20 references) and Epicurus (10 references)

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are presumably cited secondhand, the former mostly favorably and the latter always critically. Euclid and Ptolemy are invoked as scientific, and Homer as poetic authorities (10—15 each). The Church Fathers weigh in mostly favorably with Augustine (25 references), John of Damascus (10) and Gregory of Nyssa (7). Despite his humanist interest in antiquity and early Christianity, Bodin interacts significantly with medieval authors too: with Averroes, with whose commentary he probably studied Aristotle, and Duns Scotus, "the most acute of all" (p. 471) (30 references each), but also with Avicenna, Aquinas, Albertus Magnus, and Henry of Mechelen (10-15 each). Maimonides, "the most acute of all the Hebrew philosophers" (p. 542) (10 references), heads a small but rich list of Jewish authors, including Leo Ebreo (7 references), Aben Ezra (6 references), and rabbis Akiva1 Coucy, David Kimhi, and Levi ben Iarchi (1—3 references each).110 Among the moderns, Bodin cites only Pico with frequency (25 references), followed by the Jewish Neoplatonist Leo Ebreo (7 references), Copernicus (in order to refute him—5 references), then, from a smattering of different areas, Cardano, Ficino, Georg Agricola, Francisco Alvarez, Regiomontanus, Peurbach, and Mattioli (3-4 each). Bodin mentions once about three dozen other Renaissance authors of all kinds—historians (Guicciardini, Leo Africanus), philologists (Gaza, Valla, Scaliger), physicians (Fernel, Paracelsus), astronomers (Bassantin, Gemma Frisius), reformers (Melanchthon, Erasmus), even Cabbalists (Paul Fagius, p. 283; Paul Ricius, p. 544).111 Bodin's broad erudition thus deserves its legendary standing, even if (as I showed in a few cases above, see pp. 76—77) one learned citation can hide another. Only the Hermetic texts are missing from his repertoire. In defining his positions Bodin frequently blames and praises the same thinkers in turn. Aristotle bears the brunt of Bodin's attacks, but a diligent contemporary annotator also flags criticisms of some forty-odd other thinkers in the Theatrum. Although we know very little about this anonymous reader, probably active in the early seventeenth century, his judgment is useful because he provides us with a near-contemporary's sense of what counts as criticism or praise worthy of note: Theophrastus (criticized 15 times), Plato (11 times), Galen (9), Pliny (8), Alexander of Aphrodisias (8), Averroes (7), Plotinus (6), Pico (4), Pythagoras, Albertus Magnus, and Duns Scotus (3 criticisms each), Augustine, Aquinas, Empedocles, Simplicius, Anaxagoras, and Witelo (2 each), and a plethora of others whose criticism he flags once, ranging from the "populace" to Ptolemy and Porphyry. These figures singled out for criticism include almost all those on the much smaller list that the same annotator has made of those whom Bodin praises: only three contemporaries (Fernel, Rondelet, and Candala, whom Bodin probably knew personally), and those most representative for Bodin of true piety—Maimonides and the Hebrews—make the positive while avoiding the negative list.112 As in the case of Aristotle, Bodin's discussions of philosophers are predominantly critical. Even his praise is often double-edged, as he bestows an honorific epithet precisely at the moment at which he dismisses that thinker's idea; Bodin's intent is presumably to mitigate the impact of his critique, and advertise respect of authority, and yet the move at the same time enhances his own superiority

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over such eminent thinkers. Thus Pliny, "the most erudite contemplator of nature," was fooled by the round shapes of certain coral parts into thinking that these were fruits produced by the coral (p. 269). Or "the most learned Pico" proposed that motion be considered the principle of the physical body, but if it were, then rest, which is more worthy, would have to be considered a principle too (p. 102)—the Ceard annotator in this case even signals the double-edged nature of the reference: "Pico praised, nonetheless at time same criticized."113 Even Scotus, "the most acute of all" failed to find a demonstration of the infinite power of God (p. 512)—then Bodin proceeds to provide one where Scotus could not. Despite the constant critiques and damning praise, Bodin tacitly approves of and relies on these and other authorities, in his arguments from common consent and in his recycling of countless bookish facts. Thus even Aristotle, who receives so much blame and no explicit praise, is used as an authority many times, whether to establish the fact that salt water is made fresh by percolating through wax (p. 200) or to support the position that demons are corporeal (p. 511).114 But none of the major philosophical schools is completely satisfying to Bodin: he relies in part on the Neoplatonists in his arguments for the corporeal nature of angels and demons, the circular shape of the soul (p. 535), or the personal demons, both good and bad, assigned to each person (p. 524);115 he also uses Plato's notion of the exemplar to explain the creation of the world (p. 19). But then Bodin criticizes the Platonists for their ideas about metempsychosis (p. 537) or the emanation of intelligences one from another: all intelligences depend directly on God, who cannot be reached by rising through successive stages of being (pp. 547-48). With the Stoics Bodin agrees that the seeds of virtues are sown in the soul (p 476), that the world is corruptible (p. 47), and that planets are intelligent and animate creatures (p. 571).116 He may also borrow from them his ideas about a new distribution of qualities among the elements: air, rather than being warm and humid, is dry and the coldest element—"this was the opinion of Galen, easily the prince of the doctors after Hippocrates, who followed the opinion of Hippocrates and the Stoics" (p. 157). In this way Lasswitz sees Bodin playing a role in the transmission of Stoic element theory and the formation of a distinction between wetness and fluidity (both called "humiditas"), which Kepler fully articulated.117 But the Stoics, too, are criticized, notably for the notion that there are four predicaments (p. 137), or, less explicitly, that animals have reason (p. 437). As for Alexander of Aphrodisias, who gets the most frequent explicit praise ("clarissimus," "argutissimus," "acutissimus," pp. 65, 87, 113, 521), his intelligence only better points up the weakness of the Peripatetic system: "he wrote that one could demonstrate that God, founder of all things, was prior to all time: nonetheless his demonstration cannot be found, perhaps because he feared that it would destroy from their foundations both his own and Aristotle's decrees about nature" (p. 87). In any case, Alexander errs in attributing a corporeal substance to God (p. 521). Scotus, who is a crucial source for Bodin's emphasis on divine free will and intervention,118 nonetheless followed Aristotle in the error of believing in the necessity of future contingents (p. 27).

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Philosophers are thus always found wanting in one respect or another (although Platonists, Stoics, and Duns Scotus fare the best). Instead, the pure font of all truth is the Bible, especially the Old Testament, to which Bodin refers over eighty times (as opposed to two references to the New Testament).119 It teaches not only overarching principles—the creation of the world, the activity of divine providence and of demons, the immortality of the soul—but also solutions to many more specific points: that springs and rivers originate from sea water (p. 191; cf. Eccles. 1:7), that there are supercelestial waters above the sphere of the heavens (p. 214; cf. Gen. 1:8), that there is a natural antipathy between snakes and women (p. 317), and so forth. Bodin does not quote directly from the Bible as often as he simply refers in the margins to book and chapter (in one case I have found him likely lifting the references from a commentary).120 Bodin also often refers to the Bible through various (nonliteral) interpretations. On the number of celestial orbs, for example, Bodin first shows the great disagreement of astronomers, using a doxography in order to dismiss all previous solutions: Eudoxus claimed there are 23 orbs, Callippus 30, Aristotle 47, Ptolemy 31, and Regiomontanus 33. "Th. What should we decide in the face of such great variety? M. It seems to me we should bring back the secrets of hidden things to the sacred fonts of the Hebrews; from these indeed we will draw the most certain decrees. But the tabernacle which the Lawmaker ordered made is the archetype of the whole world, to which ten curtains surrounding it were ordered, decorated with angelic figures, which means that there are ten heavens shining with visible stars" (p. 554). In the margin Bodin refers to "Exod c. 23 and following" (the more precise reference, I surmise, would be Exod. 26:1: "The tabernacle itself you are to make with ten sheets of fine twined linen") and to the allegories of Philo Hebraeus. While many aspects of Bodin's argumentation in the Theatrum are typical of late humanism, his use of allegories, frequently from the Jewish tradition, bucks the contemporary trend toward Biblical literalism which, after Luther, spread among both Catholics and Protestants.121 Many contemporary authors used the Bible as a proof-text, perpetuating the medieval practice well into the seventeenth century, not only in political, but also in natural philosophy (Descartes himself used biblical references on one or two occasions to convince private correspondents).122 A few, like Lambert Daneau, even thought the Bible the only good source of natural philosophy. But Daneau advocated a strictly literal reading of the Old Testament: "Although it is conceded that Moses spoke simply, nonetheless Moses must not be charged with have spoken or written anything on these issues mendaciously or falsely or ignorantly."123 In striving to be complete, Renaissance discussions of the Bible readily included mention of the Jewish commentaries (such as those of Rashi or Aben Ezra), and references to Hebrew words and to the Aramaic of the Targums, but they accepted very little of this material as authoritative.'24 Censors and readers accordingly responded to Bodin's allegories with expurgations and hostile comments, calling them "rabbinical dabblings" and "anagogical interpretation, which is not proper."125 Or, when Bodin argues that the heavens are animate from Ezekiel 1 (v. 21) and 10 (v. 17), in

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which the prophet asserts that "the spirit of the animal was in the wheels," the Ceard annotator exclaims: "but that was a prophetic vision!"126 For Bodin1 on the contrary, any biblical statement is potentially useful as a source of hidden wisdom. He argues against the prevailing literalism quite explicitly in the Demonomanie'. "It has happened that these good literal interpreters, who, taking literally the serpent who talks in Genesis, go around saying that animals used to talk back then, have made a million atheists. . . . Philo Hebrew is admirable for his interpretations on morals and Leo [Ebreo] and Maimonides for theirs on nature, and the Zohar, which is not yet translated from Chaldean, for both kinds of them.'"27 Bodin hastens to add that any superstitious use of the Bible or its words as charms is a satanic infection, as for example in certain cabbalistic practices that play on the name of God. But after distancing himself from such deviant forms of nonliteral readings, he hails a IargelyJewish tradition of allegorical interpretation, which nonetheless also includes Origen and "other Hebrew and Christian theologians": "We see in the prophets and in the law of God that there are great and beautiful secrets of the works of God hidden under the allegories of the Bible."128 Bodin's use of allegory does not stem from the need to make sense of an apparently nonsensical text, which was the standard motivation for allegoresis acknowledged as legitimate down to the late sixteenth century,129 but rather from his desire to find in the Bible answers to philosophical questions.130 Allegory also serves for Bodin its traditional protreptic function, described for example by Augustine, of valorizing the truth and its divine source by making it difficult of access and reminding us of the weakness of human reason.131 Bodin's allegories are especially concentrated in the second half of the Theatrum, where they provide biblical arguments for his cosmology: for the ten celestial orbs and the seven planets (indicated by the seven-branched candelabra—p. 576); for the action of demons on earth carrying out divine commands (the ravens—p. 372; or the destructors described in Isaiah 54—p. 632); or for the agent intellects assigned to each soul. Bodin not only borrows his readings from others, but also devises his own, for example using the description in Leviticus 14 of the ritual of purification of the leper to show how the pure soul can climb toward God: The Priest is ordered to take two birds, and to kill one in running water, and, having bound the other with hyssop, vermilion, and cedar, to dip it into the blood of the other bird and having purified it to let it fly away, surviving the dead body. For if someone emerges from the roughness of the body, pure as if cleansed m water, who could doubt that he would not be granted by divine gift an agent intellect, to enjoy it and understand its desires and knowledge, and be enlightened by it just as the moon is by the sun (P. 540)

Bodin goes on to explicate the moon and the sun as the two intellects—patient and agent respectively. Micah 3 (v. 6), announcing the setting of the sun for the prophets, thus warns of the punishment of the wicked by the "setting" or withdrawal of the agent intellect assigned to them. When Theorus objects that he had learned that these words referred to the Last Judgment, Mystagogus replies: "That is the interpretation of the ignorant, although it is clear that [these words] apply

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to the agent and patient [or passive] intellects . . . and are directed to the impious [improbus]" (p. 541). Through his allegorical understanding Mystagogus initiates Theorus into the deeper secrets contained in the Bible, in this instance playing a more noticeable "mystagogical" function. Bodin also gives an allegorical interpretation of the pagan fable of Cupid and Psyche, which he considers a "new fable" invented by the younger Academics: again, the moral is that the soul (Psyche) must be faithful to its assigned agent intellect (Cupid) (p. 493). This time, however, the low status of the fable (invented, and of recent origin) gives the allegory a lighter, recreational role in the argument, as Theorus responds: "this interpretation of the fable seems to me most pleasant and most elegant: but we have shown enough that there cannot be two souls in animals, nor three in men" (p. 494). Bodin also draws limits to his allegorical practice, dismissing certain allegories as excessively contrived. In astronomy, Bodin counts three movements imparted each by one of the three outermost orbs: the eighth sphere (after the seven planets) moves in a "wobbling" motion from north to east to south to west every seven thousand years, the ninth in a revolution from west to east completed every forty-nine thousand years, and the tenth sphere carries all the others in a daily rotation (pp. 555-56).'32 Bodin assigns to each of them, in descending order, the three proportions that recur throughout his work—arithmetic, geometric, and harmonic motions, the latter a combination of the two others. But he does not approve of the attempt to link them to the strophe and antistrophe of the lyric poets: "the interpretor contrived this for the praise of the poets" (p. 558). Similarly, Bodin rejects the attempt by Aben Ezra to link the ten orbs to the Ten Commandments, as "more subtle than true" (p. 577). Despite the possibility of excess, allegory in the hands of a good mystagogue is still the only way to uncover the secrets of nature contained in the Bible. The Hebrews derive a special status in Bodin's thought from being recipients of God's revelations in the Old Testament: they "have expressed [expresserunt] the truest origins of the world from the sources themselves" (p. 48). More generally, with their God-given language, doctrines, and laws, the Hebrews are often praised as "more certain interpreters of natural things" (p. 390). For example, they alone know the time between litters for various animals, because this "could not have been discovered by human investigation and study, if God had not instilled it through divine doctrine" (p. 391). With his interest in comparative law, it is not so surprising, perhaps, that Bodin should report on Hebrew law, but he also finds it revealing of natural truths: that infant boys should only be circumcised on the eighth day shows that the critical day to survive is the seventh (p. 419), that Hebrews are allowed to eat only fish with fins and scales shows that those are the purer kinds of fish (p. 333). Bodin is less unusual in his use of Hebrew words to uncover natural truths,133 and in his view that "the natural language is that of the Hebrews, which was given by God to the human race; but others are artificial and imitations of this natural one; thus it is fitting that names were given to things according to the nature of each thing" (p. 146, see also p. 422). Bodin thus concludes from the construction of schamaim for the heavens, that they are made of fire (ash) and water (maim)—this etymology is easily found in Renais-

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sance commentaries,13+ but not the conclusion that it reveals the true nature of the heavens. Similarly, arnebeth for "hare" reveals, by the noun's feminine gender, that the species is predominantly female (p. 359), or labaneth for moon indicates that it is speckled and, being thus closest to the mottled nature of the elements, has the greatest influence on the elementary world (p. 610).135 Nonetheless, Bodin criticizes certain opinions that he ascribes to the Hebrews when they are not of divine origin. Bodin rejects for example the belief that the stone that "the Hebrews and the Arabs call Halcmol because it provokes dreams" actually has that effect: "true dreams cannot be caused by any stones or any power of plants . . . ; they must be granted by the single gift of God" (p. 234). Or Bodin argues against those among the Hebrew philosophers who distinguish between the soul (nephesch) and the understanding (nesamah), which is conjoined to the latter by spirit (p. 497). When the Hebrews act as merely human philosophers, they are prone to error too and are subjected to Bodin's eclectic judgments. On the whole, however, Hebrew wisdom derived from divine law and revelation carries especial authority not only from its great antiquity,136 but also from its proximity to the divine source of all truth. With proper interpretations of the Old Testament, Bodin claims to uncover some of the divine secrets hidden there, and uses his argumentative skills to give "demonstrative reasons" or at least persuasive arguments to integrate these authoritative truths into natural philosophy.

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As THE DEDICATION makes clear, Bodin's Theatrum is a deeply religious work, designed as a weapon to convince the impious and as a personal act of worship—an exaltation of the existence, omnipotence, and providence of a good and just God. To some commentators the Theatrum has seemed a step backward toward medieval thought from the "modernity" of the Republique, but Bodin scholars and historians of political philosophy have increasingly recognized the internal coherence of Bodin's thought and its fundamentally religious character.1 As the last major and indisputably authentic work of Bodin's, the Theatrum brings together many of the themes of his previous works in an ambitious attempt to provide a new synthesis between faith and reason, one that would be both more philosophically correct and more pious than the alternatives circulating during the Renaissance. While the Theatrum is part of a growing irenicist apologetic movement in the late sixteenth century (as I showed in chapter 1), it is also the capstone of Bodin's distinctive system of thought, and this chapter will treat more than the others of aspects of the Theatrum that are unique to its author. As in the Demonomanie, Bodin stresses the direct intervention of God in the world through the activity of demons and angels who carry out his orders and abhors any attempt to manipulate such demonic forces, for instance through natural magic or witchcraft. As in the Republique, Bodin emphasizes the role of connective intermediate beings in creating a harmonious world where opposites cooperate rather than destroying one another, and he builds grounds for consensus safe from confessional differences. In turning in his last work to the study of nature, as he had announced in the Methodus, Bodin finds confirmation of the conclusions he had reached in earlier works, tacitly sealing them with the higher certainty accorded natural philosophy. In addition, in the Theatrum Bodin wrestles with some of the most fundamental questions in reconciling philosophy and religion: the power and the limits of reason in understanding a world that is both providentially arranged according to laws and subject to the free will of humans and of God. The acclaimed "synthesis of reason and faith" achieved by Thomas Aquinas in the thirteenth century may appear in retrospect, notably after its elevation to Catholic orthodoxy following the Council of Trent, to have resolved once and for all the tensions inherent in reconciling ancient pagan learning with Christian doctrine. But, in addition to the many scholastic challenges to Thomism (among them, Averroism and late medieval nominalism), the Renaissance and the Reformation had by the mid-sixteenth century exploded both of the hitherto fairly stable sets

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of texts and ideas to be reconciled. The newly recovered ancient texts included Hermetica and Neoplatonic sources, which offered exciting new possibilities for philosophical confirmation of Christian doctrines, but also the first overtly nontheistic ancient philosophies to come to the attention of the Latin West (notably Epicureanism, Stoicism, and skepticism). Meanwhile, many Reformers, emphasizing the fallen state of human nature, questioned the propriety of using human reason to justify or explain faith, which could only develop from the divine gift of grace. Renaissance solutions to the newly reopened question of the relation between reason and faith ranged from Pietro Pomponazzi's naturalistic explanation of miracles to Lambert Daneau's "Christian physics" in which the literal word of Moses was the main admissible authority. Inspired by both a wide erudition and a heightened sense of the omnipotence and transcendence of God, Bodin tried to define a new way of using philosophy to combat impiety and Epicureanism. Bodin combines natural theological arguments that demonstrate through reason the existence and nature of God, with an expansion of the realm of "divine secrets" beyond the purview of human understanding, which exalt God for his very inaccessibility. Although Bodin does not present his work as revolutionary, he is keen, however, to point out how the Theatrum adds to and improves on received knowledge: by conjoining natural histories with their causes—providing hitherto unknown explanations and correcting false ones; by showing the harmonious coherence of the universe, which had been previously neglected by others; and by offering a new demonstration of the immortality of the soul, a central religious doctrine most recently mandated by the Fifth Lateran Council of 1513.2 The Theatrum is largely devoted to arguing against three impious propositions found in ancient philosophy: the eternity of the world, the necessity of the laws of nature, and the mortality of the soul. Already in 1277, the bishop of Paris had condemned some 219 propositions, most of them because of determinist or eternalist implications (mortalism was not yet a major issue).3 Although this condemnation, which was largely aimed against the recent work of Thomas Aquinas, was lifted in 1325 out of admiration for the latter's work, it highlighted two of the major points that required reconciliation between philosophy and religion. By the early sixteenth century the Fifth Lateran Council narrowed the range of acceptable interpretations of Aristotle on the immortality of the soul, in particular condemning the Averroist notion of a universal immortal soul, and required philosophers to demonstrate personal immortality instead. The need to reconcile philosophy and theology became even more urgent after Pietro Pomponazzi argued, in a treatise of 1516, that philosophy proved instead that the soul was mortal, although he acknowledged that theology reached a different, and true conclusion.4 In responding to this crisis in the relations between philosophy and theology, the Theatrum offered new demonstrations to resolve these long-standing problems, by relying especially on two favorite themes: the wisdom and free will of God, and the role of intermediate beings.

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DIVINE FREE WILL AND PROVIDENCE

Against the Eternity of the World While the Theatrum is one long demonstration of the goodness and greatness of God, Bodin never systematically addresses the nature of the God he exalts: the topic is not germane to physics, as he reminds Theorus at one point (p. 544), and furthermore would involve Bodin in controversial discussions that he no doubt strategically preferred to avoid. Nonetheless certain divine attributes play a central role in Bodin's discussion of the principles and phenomena of nature—in particular the omnipotence, free will, and providence of God. Bodin's demonstration against the eternity of the world, which spans a good portion of Book I, hinges on his arguments for an all-powerful God, who knows no necessity and has complete free will. This "voluntary first cause" carries the weight of his concluding syllogism: "Nothing can be eternal by nature whose first cause is voluntary; but the first cause of the world is voluntary; therefore the world cannot be eternal by nature, since its state and condition depend on the decision and free will of another" (p. 37), With this demonstration Bodin tackles a traditional point of conflict between Aristotelian philosophy and the JudeoChristian account of creation, and takes the position mandated by the condemnations of 1277 against excessively naturalistic Aristotelian conclusions.5 In his attempt at reconciling philosophy with theological beliefs, Thomas Aquinas had argued that reason could not establish whether the world was eternal or not, and that the issue could be resolved only by appeal to faith and biblical authority; indeed Aristotle, he maintained, had only held the eternity of the world to be philosophically probable rather than certain.6 After the 1370s, no one maintained any more that Aristotle did not consider the eternity of the world to be certain,7 but Aquinas' fideist-style conclusion that the limitations of reason made it impossible to disprove the eternity of the world on philosophical grounds remained a popular solution to the problem. Bodin, rejecting this trend, offers a rational demonstration against the eternity of the world, to force the assent of the wicked and those left cold by religious authority. He may be targeting especially Girolamo Cardano who declared the sea eternal, or Pietro Pomponazzi, who maintained that natural events follow a necessary chain of causes.8 Bodin's argument relies on an emphasis on divine free will that is characteristic of Christian nominalists like Duns Scotus and of Jewish philosophers like Maimonides, both of whom Bodin cites at various points.® God can suspend and modify all things of this world, from the will of men to the course of nature: "He can not only bend the wills of men where he wishes and bend them back from whatever direction he wishes, but can also restrain the attacks of wild animals and govern inanimate natures, he can even keep fire from burning and can remove and hold back all the power of nature." Indeed, Bodin reasons, what could be more absurd than to attribute free will to humans, while constraining the First Cause and Creator of all things to a "servile" natural necessity? (pp. 27—29). Furthermore, sense experience reminds us frequently that nature is subject to divine

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intervention: "monstrous births, new and hitherto unknown diseases, unusual violence in storms, enormous floods and unexpected fires, horrifying portents like rains of stones, blood, milk or wheat—all these events, of which antiquity, and books, and histories are full, can only happen from divine causes outside nature" (p. 31). Mystagogus explains that divine intervention does not destroy but adds to (non destruit sed astruit) the scientia of nature and the causal understanding that guarantees certain knowledge: "indeed if I prevent a stone from falling, I do not Temove the natural demonstration by which we are taught that heavy things fall of their own motion" (p. 34). Bodin does not deny natural law, but allows for it to be supplemented by reversals and suspensions of it willed by God.10 Unlike most nominalists, Bodin does not develop the notion of an "ordered power" (potentia ordinata) of God who abides by his own decrees once laid down; nor does he dwell on the possibilities that were initially open to God's po­ tentia absoluta for alternative arrangements of the world.11 Bodin rejects the ordinary/absolute distinction as excessively constraining: instead, God's omnipotence is constantly operative in the world, even when God in fact abides by his own decisions. Th. I ask you whether God could save the world . . . from destruction against the laws of nature which he himself established? M. If he decreed that the world will end, nothing can stand in the way of his decrees: but the Creator decreed that the world would finally end some day of old age and decay, therefore the world will perish. But even the angels are not eternal by nature, unless they are sustained by the power of the Creator: which [power], as Damascene very rightly wrote, Gregory the Great called the hand of the All-powerful, certainly much more judiciously than those who report that God does it with his absolute rather than his ordinary power: for the great Prince of the World will always be freed, not by the senate nor by the people, but by himself, from the laws of nature which he has fixed and ordered. (P. 40)

Having shown earlier that the world had a beginning, Bodin declares here that it also will have an end, according to the prophecies in the Bible. Although Bodin delicately avoids the issue of whether God might reverse his decision (which he certainly should be free to do), his main point is that divine omnipotence is completely removed from the human notion of "absolute power." That merely human concept suggests that like a worldly sovereign God would have to be released from the laws by some other power. Bodin makes the same point in the Methodus, denying that the numerological historical scheme he develops at great length is binding on divine will, and in the Republiquen Rather than applying human categories to divine power, we should recognize it as something altogether different: the hand of the All-powerful. Bodin first makes, then notes the reductionism of a comparison between the omnipotent God of nature and the absolute sovereign of the Ripublique—Bodin applies to God the well-known maxim from Roman law that the "prince is freed from the laws" (princeps legibus solutus), then he emphasizes that God is so free that he is never "freed from" anything by anyone.13 While other contemporaries worried that the comparison between the "absolute power" of God and that of the sover-

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eign would give too much to the sovereign,14 Bodin on the contrary was concerned that the comparison would take away from the unique character of divine power. Later in the Theatrum Bodin willingly compares the angels and demons who execute divine orders to the ministers who carry out the sovereign's laws. But these structural similarities between the political and the natural orders do not extend to the rulers in these respective realms: God stands in a transcendent and separate category above any human sovereign, however "absolute" his power. Divine Providence

God's unlimited freedom of will demonstrates not only that the world cannot be eternal, according to Bodin, but also that the world is always arranged exactly according to the divine plan. On the one hand, God has chosen laws that govern nature under normal circumstances as a well-arranged system; on the other hand, God suspends those laws at will to intervene directly, or through his agents, in nature. These two kinds of providential divine governance are the main theme of the natural-historical books, with their separate discussion of countless particulars of nature. Although Bodin more frequently refers concretely to the wisdom, the prudence, the goodness, the gifts or the decrees of God, "providentia" is the underlying principle, which Bodin first introduces to refute the Aristotelian notion of natural necessity. M. There would be no providence if the world were governed by necessity: God would be released from the care of all things, as Epicurus and Strato of Lampsacus thought. Th. Why no providence? M. Because providence is seen only in two thmgs, first that each thing is, then that it is good: but necessity excludes both of them. Indeed, a necessary series of causes makes a stable and immutable order that could not be otherwise, nor the order of things changed, say, to save someone from the flames or other present or future dangers. If providence is removed, God is removed, because the one who should himself be the moderator and arbiter of nature would be coerced by a servile necessity and would not have any power to decide about the things of which he is the first and principal cause, for not even a worm is in vain. (P. 29)15

Bodin does allow for the possibility of random and meaningless events that happen simply as the result of a conjunction of causes. But he warns against violating divine providence by overextending the category of the fortuitous. Th What is a fortuitous cause? M. One that, destined neither by human will nor by nature, has an unexpected effect, whether it happens often or rarely . . . just as if a sponge filled with various colors and wildly thrown against a canvas yielded a portrait of Socrates: this case and similar ones are called fortuitous. From which it is understood that many are in error and deceived who believe that nothing at all happens by chance. But it must not be called a fortuitous cause if the sleeping Conscus falling from above crushes Socrates passing below; although this effect has various causes, first Coriscus: then his imprudence and rashness to have lain down and fallen asleep in a place where he risked falling, his sleep, his fall, his weight, the walk of Socrates

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and perhaps the revenge for some crime of Socrates and pity for the sleeping man: this cannot be attributed to fortuitous cases without impiety, otherwise divine providence would be heedlessly violated. (Pp 25-26)

What keeps Coriscus' accident from being fortuitous is the fact that humans and their free will are involved—everything that happens to Coriscus, or to any human, must be part of a divine plan of retribution and signification. Bodin's God is constantly attentive to the deserts of human beings and bestows rewards and punishments as appropriate even in their earthly life through direct or indirect intervention in nature. As a result, in nature nothing is necessary, and conversely nothing is fortuitous, because everything (except, Bodin specifies at one point, the celestial bodies) is designed around, and for, humans. In his demonstration against the Epicureans and their notion of a random and godless universe, Bodin relies on evidence of both ordinary and extraordinary providence. To show the ordinary action of providence Bodin can follow a number of ancient natural-philosophical precepts: notably, the Aristotelian principle that nature does nothing in vain (which Bodin repeats periodically),16 or its extension in teleological demonstrations, characteristic of the Aristotelian and the Galenic methods, or Stoic arguments about the moral order of the universe such as those presented in Cicero's De natura deorum." Implicitly or explicitly, most of Bodin's countless "why?" questions in this way lead to a single, divine final cause which acts through efficient, secondary causes. But, in a pattern reminiscent of Calvin's, Bodin defends divine providence while carefully distinguishing himself from what he perceives as the excessive necessaritarianism of Aristotle and the Stoics.16 Bodin thus also shows the extraordinary action of providence (often in discussions that he proudly considers "new"), when divine free will and direct intervention constitute both efficient and final cause. The Theatrum's delicate balance between the two types of providence in arguing for the greatness of God matches Bodin's dual strategy of rational explanation on the one hand and admiration of the inexplicable supernatural on the other. Although in his discussion of first principles in Book I Bodin evokes divine providence as an extraordinary suspension of the laws of nature, resulting in "monstrous births, . . . unusual violence, . . . and horrible portents," the bulk of Books II and III concerns the providential aspects of the ordinary workings of nature: the occult properties of gemstones, the characteristics of animals adapted to their needs, or the numerous messages, rewards,· and punishments that God sends through natural phenomena. Many of Bodin's arguments are traditional, drawn from Cicero's De natura deorum, for example, and comparable to those of contemporaries like Pierre Viret or Duplessis-Mornay. But, while most contemporary works of physics or natural theology emphasized abstract principles of nature or religious and moral lessons, Bodin focuses on the specifics of nature, exulting in the beauty and harmony of the world, demonstrated even in its smallest parts.19 Each and every detail demonstrates his larger argument, in a strategy that William Paley, at the other end of the long-lived natural theological tradition, explained clearly in 1802: "So it is with evidence of a divine agency. The proof is not a conclusion which lies at the end of a chain of reasoning . . . of which, if one

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link fail, the whole fails; but it is an argument separately supplied by every sepa­ rate example. . . . The eye proves it without the ear; the ear without the eye. The proof in each example is complete; . . . no future consideration can detract anything from the force of the example."20 Similarly, Bodin proves divine providence many times over in each of his separate explanations of natural phenomena. Like all natural theologians, Bodin must explain the existence of apparently useless or evil features of nature. The underlying assumption, religious in origin, is that "everything that exists is good insofar as it exists" (omne ens, quatenus ens, bonum esse) (p. 311).21 Bodin rejects as futile and impious "the complaints of the Manicheans and Pliny," who finds the human condition aptly depicted by the wail of the newborn (p. 310);22 and he considers absurd the belief of Plato and Aristotle, which the Neoplatonists shared, that all ills originate from the vice of matter (p. 631). Instead, invoking the divine judgment that everything in the creation is good, Bodin concludes that "evil is nothing other than the lack or absence of good" (pp. 631-32). From poisonous plants to dangerous animals and evil demons, Bodin tries to show through a variety of arguments how everything apparently evil in nature serves a useful purpose in God's good and wise plan. Starting with poisonous plants, Bodin argues that some are useful in medicine and in pharmaceutical mixtures. Others, when placed with meat in a trap or on the tip of an arrow, are useful for killing wild animals. Finally, "hemlock, which is also very pleasant for cattle, seems to have been created so that those condemned to a just death are killed gently" (pp. 287-88). In addition, God has taken precautions for the safe use of poisons: the napellus plant, for example, bears the sign of its lethal power, since its flowers form the shape of a human skull (p. 287). This natural "warning label" is a rare instance in Bodin of a "signature," a concept most developed by Paracelsus and also used by Cardano.23 Furthermore, God has wisely distributed these plants: "[aconites] do not grow without careful cultivation, and where they grow spontaneously, the most wise Creator of nature has hidden them so that they cannot be found except in the deepest valleys or on the highest mountains far from the sight of men in order to kill rapacious animals" (p. 287). (What this implies about rapacious animals is somewhat contradictory with Bodin's larger argument!) A few pages later, Bodin adds new reasons in defense of poisonous plants: many are not poisonous by their quality, but only when taken in excessive quantity; furthermore "the most wise Creator always placed antidotes and preservatives to counteract them" (pp. 292-93, also pp. 312, 315). It is human dishonesty, after all, that is responsible for mixing and multiplying poisons to kill others (p. 288). Finally, Bodin concludes that only the vicious are threatened by these dangers (p. 315). The same kinds of arguments are repeated in different variations about dangerous animals, from vipers and poisonous fish to lions and birds of prey (pp. 314, 334, 380). In addition, many have physical characteristics that reduce the danger to humans: snakes, for example, can go hungry for longer than other animals because they lack innate heat, which is why they are always born in very hot places and in the midday sun—but "this was done by the great goodness of God lest

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hunger arm and push these dangerous animals more and more to harm humans" (p. 316). Identifying a secondary, efficient cause to explain the phenomenon does not make it any less the work of divine providence. Nature forms a system, ultimately designed for human good, which must nonetheless provide for each element within it. Thus creatures that are a nuisance or a danger to us are often useful and necessary for other animals, on which we indirectly depend. Hemlock, for example, may be dangerous to us, but it is a most pleasant food for cattle and starlings; fennel, while pernicious to cows, is a delight for donkeys; or storks use the leaves of plane trees to ward off bats, their enemies (p. 293). Bodin concludes that "nothing in nature can be said to be evil in itself, but only with respect to something else" (p. 294). In order to judge the utility of something, one must consider more than its utility for humans. These particular arguments are not new with Bodin: Viret makes some use of them, many can be found in contemporary commentaries on Genesis, and Bodin lifts his list of plants that are harmful to humans but good for animals from a contemporary natural history.24 Traditional also are Bodin's arguments that show how nature endows each creature with the means for self-defense. While Pliny lists the protective devices of animals too, he does so in order to contrast them with the sorry fate of man, left naked and defenseless, and has no sense of nature as a system with its own intrinsic purpose.23 Instead, Cicero is Bodin's model here: "The wise Artisan of nature gave the deer antlers for beauty, for fighting, for medicine, and in addition gave them prudence to beware [of danger]; to bulls and goats he gave horns to fight with; to boar he gave protruding teeth; to lions, claws, teeth, strength, and courage; to others fleet-footedness to flee; to others black ink to diffuse, like squids; to others the ability to stupefy, like the electric ray; to some even a corrupt odor to repel enemies" (p. 356).26 Bodin pursues this theme in more original detail in later passages: insects have many feet so that they can flee to safety since they have no strength to fight, swallows can fly very fast to avoid the birds of prey (pp. 304, 363); catfish have large mouths because, when threatened by enemies, they swallow their young and regurgitate them later (p. 334). Bodin's answers grow first out of a natural phenomenon to be explained, but Bodin implicitly refers to the broader principle that God provides for the protection of each creature. Although these kinds of arguments are fairly typical of contemporary natural theologians, Bodin differs from them in generally shunning moralized interpretations of nature. Following on a long tradition of medieval moralizations, Pierre Viret explains, for example, that "just as the sun will never be without the moon, nor the moon without the sun, thus Jesus Christ will not be without his Church, nor the Church without Jesus Christ, although we see it now grow, now decline and sometimes as if collapse altogether, like the eclipsed moon."27 For Viret nature serves as a pretext for religious instruction. By contrast, the Theatrum contains only a few such moralizations, and they grow less out of the desire to impart a religious lesson than out of the need to explain a peculiar natural phenomenon. For example, to explain the counterintuitive fact that parrots have the thickest and

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hardest tongues of all the birds and yet are the only ones to talk, Bodin reasons that it is "so that we understand that speech comes not from the mobility and softness of the tongue, but that it was given to man by God and was kept from the animals" (p. 371). Or God imparts a lesson of morality to us by giving birds either claws or spurs, but not both; he does so, "so that we understand that nature has distributed weapons for self-protection rather than to attack others" (pp. 378-79). It is the natural phenomenon rather than the moral lesson itself that motivates these conclusions. In a related pattern, Bodin spends relatively less time discussing the human body and faculties than other natural theologians did, who, from Ramon Sabunde to Charron, frequently made the unique moral and cognitive abilities of humans the most important argument for divine providence.28 Bodin defines his field as physics, in which humans are only one object of study among many, whereas more religiously motivated authors seeking the most powerful demonstrations of God in any field preferred to emphasize the centrality of human nature. Bodin's physics steers a new course between many competing contemporary alternatives. On the one hand, Bodin genuinely takes as his point of departure the study of nature; he shuns Viret's tendency to read natural phenomena primarily as lessons of contemporary political and theological significance.29 On the other hand, Bodin also rejects the solution of those who offer largely naturalistic explanations, omitting divine will and intervention: for Leone Ebreo1 a fifteenthcentury Neoplatonist whom Bodin cites in the Theatrum, for example, birds of prey live alone in order to have their prey for themselves.30 Or, for Girolamo Cardano, predators are brought forth by nature to maintain a sophisticated kind of "ecological" balance: "when an animal is in too great abundance, often nature produces another that is nourished from the first for two reasons: lest the excess of the first animals be harmful to the place, and so that ease of pasture and life are given to the offspring of the first ones."31 Although Cardano admires the providential arrangement of nature, he sees it as a self-regulating system that provides for itself. At the extreme of this strand of Renaissance naturalism Pietro Pomponazzi proposed naturalistic explanations even for long-recognized miracles.32 Against these tendencies Bodin reintroduces God as a direct cause of natural phenomena, to counter what he considers the impiety of seeing nature only as a necessary chain of physical causes. Bodin's God-directed nature is chiefly concerned with the proper treatment of humans. Although he acknowledges that nature also provides for the needs of its different plants and animals, Bodin often points to a directly anthropocentric finality, of the kind that Cardano, for example, had mocked.33 Songbirds "sweeten the spirits of those who listen to them with their most soft and varied songs" (p. 370); the tides provide opportunities to embark and disembark, to remove filth and prevent rotting and to collect salt (p. 196). In marveling over the wonderful variety of dogs that suit human needs so well, Bodin seems even to forget the role of breeding which he had discussed in his translation of Oppian's Cynegeiica;34 it is as if God especially created each species of dogs to human specifications:

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The wise Creator made some for the hunt, others to guard the sheep, others for the protection of man; furthermore, among the hunting dogs some were given very short legs and long bodies so that they can penetrate the inner hiding places of the wild animals; but to the running dogs [were given] very long and dry legs . . . and a very pointed muzzle to slice the air, with a tail longer than the others to turn and move in accordance with the running: indeed [the dog] uses it as a ship uses its rudder. (P 347)

Here Bodin reasserts a traditional anthropocentrism as part of his reasoned demonstration of the attributes of God. The questions that Bodin highlights as most original, "new and not offered by the ancient authors," especially reveal the moral plan and intervention of God in nature for humans' sake. For example, Bodin is proud to explain for the first time that every region is endowed annually (or in some cases seasonally) "by divine gift" with a sudden abundance of birds or fish, for whom one can find no natural origins, neither eggs nor nests nor consumed food in their stomachs, to account for their existence. "The ignorant seize these offerings most avidly, without inquiring into their causes or asking who provided them, any more than pigs do of the acoms on which they have gorged themselves" (p. 327). But Bodin enlightens his readers about the supernatural and directly divine origins of the bounty of nature which is generally enjoyed so ungratefully. Conversely, Bodin explains, God can use abundance as a punishment, as when suddenly great quantities of rats do great damage to the fields and then disappear completely: "assuredly they are a deadly plague sent down from the heavens, marveling at which Pliny and Aristotle . . . admitted [clearly] enough that many things happen beyond the ordinary effects of nature, for which we do not know the causes, and that God the parent of nature is not obligated by any necessity" (p. 339). Amid the details of an apparently anodine section on rats, Bodin powerfully restates his emphasis on the omnipotence and free will of God. Another of Bodin's new questions concerns the reason why plants useful for animals grow easily, while those useful for human consumption require careful cultivation: At first the great Creator ordered that the earth produce plants and animals on it, but when . . . he noticed that men were taken away from the contemplation of intelligible things toward base desires, he wanted them to be involved in agriculture and husbandry; he removed the spontaneous fertility from the earth so that its cultivation would diminish the unhealthy drives of men and would push them to seek their nourishment with a certain religiosity since they would feel that their labors were vain without the gift and grace of God. (P. 272)

Bodin also notes that cultivation is useful in preventing the excessive spread of wild animals and plants, but this naturalistic explanation pales against the moral significance of God's requirement of agriculture. Although he does not signal its novelty this time, Bodin extends the same reasoning to animals: Why do pests like

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rats and frogs multiply so easily, while useful animals require careful husbandry? "Just as the Provider of the world feeds a multitude of men by bringing forth suddenly legions of birds and fish, thus also he punishes the arrogance and pride of men when he places a limit on his liberality and withdraws fecundity from the water, earth, air or animals because of the outrages of men" (pp. 339-^fO). God regulates nature to suit human deserts. Similarly, Bodin boasts of the originality of a "most difficult question, all the greater that it has never been discovered or asked by the ancients": why do epidemic diseases, plagues, and wars wax and wane with the moon, as is well known from experience?—because God effects these punishments through the action of the heavenly bodies; indeed the latter "are called the armies of God, since they are armed by the order of their Ruler to take revenge on the unjust and to save the good, and are held back by him according to his decrees and laws" (p. 614). Consistently, Bodin's contribution is to emphasize the moral purposes effected by God through nature, both indirectly through natural phenomena (like the waxing and waning of the moon or the growing requirements of plants) and directly through supernatural ones (like the sudden, naturally inexplicable, appearance of scores of birds, fish, or rats). Bodin's claims for the originality of these positions are confirmed by the reaction of contemporary readers, who flag these and similar passages with interest and the highest praise (as I discuss in chapter 6, p. 200). Bodin occasionally offers natural causes for phenomena considered strictly supernatural by other authors, such as the origin of the lightning stone, or of rains of frogs from the condensation of vapors (pp. 240, 242, 305). On balance, however, Bodin dwells especially on the enactment of God's purposes in nature, not only through the workings of the natural system but also through supernatural intervention. No wonder, then, that the study of nature will incite even the impious to worship the omnipotent God who governs every aspect of human life on earth.

THE CHAIN OF BEING

Bodin is proud not only to redirect natural philosophy toward pious conclusions by repeated demonstrations of divine omnipotence and providence, but also to develop a more strictly philosophical theme that has been, according to him, "either neglected by those who have written about nature or consciously omitted": "the admirable coherence of the world and the contiguity and connection of its parts . . . than which there is almost nothing greater nor more worthy of study in this science" (p. 270). Given the long pedigree and widespread use of the "principle of plenitude" and more generally of the idea of a "chain of being" from antiquity through the eighteenth century, Bodin's claim to originality on this score may seem overstated, as it did to Isaac Casaubon who commented: "p. 270 Bodin wants to seem to be the first to have observed this—what great stupidity."35 As recent correctives to Lovejoy's rather monolithic account have stressed, however,

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agreement on a basic hierarchy of beings covered a wide variety of positions on the relations between the different levels of the hierarchy. In particular, Christians struggled with the Neoplatonic notion of the progressive emanation of forms one from the other, and with the problem of God's relation to the chain, as both infinitely superior to it and yet the standard of its rising degrees of perfection.36 Bodin creates his own vision of the chain of being (a term that he never actually uses) by adapting it to his particular concerns about divme transcendence, and by putting the argument from the interconnection of all things to original uses in political philosophy, demonology, and natural philosophy. As Bodin explains in his introduction, the Theatrum is ordered by the succession of increasingly more complex and more perfect levels of being, or hypostases, from the elements, minerals and metals (Book II), to plants and animals (Book III), souls and angels (Book IV), and the celestial bodies (Book V). The sections within each book follow the chain in greater detail, moving, for example, in Book III from insects to snakes, to fish, then quadrupeds, culminating in birds and finally humans. Even within sections, Bodin moves from one species to the next "closest" one: aquatic creatures are on a chain that rises from "aquatic insects," like worms and starfish, to barnacles and snails, crustaceans, and finally fish. In principle the single, hierarchical strand of the chain of being thus provides a basic order within the variety of nature, following a conception so commonplace as to be shared by virtually all medieval and Renaissance thinkers. On close analysis, however, Bodin's "chain" appears as an idiosyncratic and entangled web. Bodin's hierarchy is clearly defined as a chain only at the highest levels—God, the celestial bodies, and angelic beings; on the lower levels, it becomes a web of complex interconnections and intermediate beings linking its elements in many different directions. Thus Bodin's only explicit reference to a chain applies to causes rather than beings in general: "Causes have their own causes, except the first one in which it is necessary to stop and to draw from it a series of all the causes like a golden chain, that is, seiran khrusen, which Plato following Homer imagines that Jupiter holds and sends down to the earth from the top of the sky" (p. 23).37 An anonymous commentator added in the margins of this passage: "the golden chain is the ladder of Jacob,"38 adding a biblical metaphor to those of ancient mythology and philosophy. The originally Homeric image of the golden chain, compounded by Plato's image of a golden rope, became a "philosophical catchword" for the Middle Platonists, and was transmitted through the work of Neoplatonists (especially Macrobius) to early Christian thought; it was also readily available in contemporary works.39 This chain descends from above, transmitting causation to each level below in a strictly hierarchical fashion. Bodin uses the notion as further evidence of the free will and omnipotence of God, who, at the top of the chain, cannot possibly be constrained by any link beneath him. "It is fair and in accordance with universal nature that inferior [causes] be submitted to the powers of superior ones: but who would want to be so stupid as to believe that superior things are constrained by the force and power of inferior ones?" (p. 28). Bodin thus ridicules the claims of magicians to reverse the direction of

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causation and even invokes the authority of Aristotle, who "decreed . . . that no intelligences can suffer from material things: otherwise celestial things would be acted on and perfected by terrestrial ones, superior by inferior, inanimate by animate" (p. 455). On the absurdity of lower causes dictating to higher ones, Bodin's piety and Aristotle can both agree. But Bodin's sense of piety conflicts with a number of aspects of the Neoplatonic conception of the chain of being. Defending divine providence, Bodin carefully refutes the idea that superior beings, while acting on inferior ones, would contemplate only higher ones and take no heed of lesser beings: "This was Proclus' most fallacious opinion: for then neither God nor the angels would turn their attention toward men or the care of the world; . . . but nothing prevents the understanding from contemplating and grasping things corporeal and incorporeal, superior and inferior, middling and extreme, sensible and insensible" (p. 472). Instead, God and angelic beings40 regularly attend to human needs, out of the goodness and wisdom of divine providence, which is proffered freely and without constraint. The angelic beings, "with which the world is full as Cicero most correctly wrote," act only as "they are pushed or prevented by the powers and commands of their superiors" (p. 96).41 Thus "only divine and human actions are voluntary, as we demonstrated above, but those of genies and demons are constrained by divine power, so they do nothing without orders" (p. 178). Bodin tries to combine a pious acknowledgment of the sole control of God over all creation, with the action of intermediate beings to carry out his will.42 In defense of divine transcendence, Bodin rejects the Neoplatonist notion of a progressive emanation of infeiior intelligences one from the other and, conversely, of the possibility of rising through successive stages to the godhead. Just as the moon and other planets derive their light not from one another but each one directly from the sun, so too each being derives its intelligence directly from God, who alone has that creative power (p. 547). To posit intermediaries in the downward transmission of divine creative power would be to allow for a progressive rise through these intermediaries to God: "but this [error] is at the root of all ancient impiety, brought on by those who thought that it was possible to reach from dead men to demons, from demons to heroes, from heroes to the lesser gods, and from them to the great gods of the nations, and that only in this way could one reach the Sovereign" (pp. 547-48). In place of this philosophical "escalator" proposed by the Neoplatonists, Bodin affirms the utter transcendence of God. As evidence he adduces the divine law of the Old Testament, for example, which forbids any stairs to rise to the altar of God in the Temple (Exodus 20). Bodin thus charges with impiety Iamblichus, Porphyry, Proclus, and Plotinus, to whom he is otherwise indebted, for claiming that humans can rise through the intelligences directly to God (p. 548). Consistent with his obsession with the unbridgeable gap between the Creator and mere creatures is Bodin's almost complete neglect of the complex hierarchy of angelic beings generally expounded by Neoplatonic-minded philosophers. In his frequent allusions to angels and demons, Bodin never refers to the different ranks of angels described in Jewish lore or medieval Catholic theology, such as

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powers, dominations, cherubim, and the like.43 Although Bodin's use of ten hypostases suggests a link to the ten sefirot of the Jewish cabbala,44 which describe the ten aspects of God, this correspondence is not borne out in the Theatrum. Furthermore, in the Demonomanie, Bodin condemns such cabbalistic endeavors for being related to the blasphemous activities of sorcerers like Agrippa of Nettesheim. While praising those who found the great and beautiful secrets of the works of God hidden in the allegories of the Bible, like Philo, Leone Ebreo, Origen, and Solomon, Bodin criticizes "the latest Jews, who spin marvelous subtleties on the great name of God, from which they compose seventy-two names of God and as many of the angels, and then subtilize on the numbers that they call sefirot and think that one can make marvels with these names and numbers. But this is very suspect to me, when I see sorcerers like Agrippa and his accomplices sullying the great and sacred name of God by mixing it with their characters."45 Instead, Bodin sticks close to the Old Testament and acknowledges only the two cherubim described there who are God's closest assistants and distribute divine power to the heavenly bodies (p. 631).46 Bodin's position on the place of angels in the hierarchy of being is consistent with a general decline in interest in the celestial hierarchies in the Renaissance, as both Reformation and Counter-Reformation doctrines minimized the role of angels as intermediaries.47 Bodin's position is, for example, particularly reminiscent of that of Calvin, who emphasized the total subservience of angels to God and discouraged inquiring into obscure questions concerning the nature of their origin and their hierarchies; Calvin, too, discussed only the angels described in the Bible and clearly distinguished between the idolatrous and the proper worship of angels.48 Similarly, Bodin ends his Book IV with the reminder that "even though it were true that no benefits are bestowed on us except through the work and ministry of angels, we must not render thanks to any other but God himself" (p. 548). In other passages, Bodin defines the ninth hypostasis as comprised of the celestial bodies, rather than angelic beings.49 While Bodin never elucidates the relationship between these two competitors for the highest rank of creation, he sees the heavenly bodies as playing much the same role as angels, transmitting divine decrees to the terrestrial world. For Bodin the heavens are animate, endowed with a vivifying and intelligent soul, without which they would be inferior to humans in dignity and worth (pp. 551-52). While many philosophers, from Aristotle to some early scholastics, had maintained this view, the gradual tendency of medieval Latin thought was to de-animate the heavens.50 Thomas Aquinas expressed doubts about the animation of the heavens and declared the issue unresolved, albeit not essential to the faith.51 In 1277 the notion that the heavens were endowed with intelligent souls was explicitly condemned;52 instead, it was acceptable to consider that the heavens were moved by outside intelligences, like angels. But in passages that are crossed out in censored copies of the Theatrum, Bodin rejects this position, to follow the Hebrews "who philosophize more acutely and truly"; his solution seems an awkward compromise, combining innate souls with angelic direction: "Each celestial orb, like an animal, has an infused soul, by which it is moved, as men are moved by their soul, nonetheless in accordance with the mo-

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tion of a superior angel, as we learn clearly from the secrets of Ezekiel in Mercana [sic for Mercava] [in margin: that is, his chariot], where he writes that the celestial wheels are moved by the spirit that is in them, but nonetheless from the judgment and will of the animals neighboring them" (pp. 583-84). The infused soul can account for the complex and noncircular motions of the planets, as approximated by epicycles and other mathematical devices: since the heavens are "living and move of themselves, . . . it need not seem surprising if no planet moves in a circular orbit, but they all follow an oval path, which can be seen especially in the revolution of Mercury" (p. 571). Along with the Hebrews, whom he credits here again, Bodin also rejoins Calvin, who concluded from Psalms that the heavens were a homogeneous space in which animated planets circulated of their own movement, and the Stoics, who envisioned the planets as intelligent creatures moving through a homogeneous pneuma." Even more than with angels, Bodin seems ambivalent about the role of the heavens in the hierarchy of command, juxtaposing his nominalism with a more Neoplatonic conception of their importance. On the one hand, the heavens are mere executors of divine orders: "The Creator regulates their force and power, so that he does not allow us to be constrained by any necessity of fate" (p. 609). Thus, when wars become more violent at the conjunctions and oppositions of sun and moon, or when eclipses coincide with the overthrowing of tyrannies or other significant events (as indeed they often do, according to the histories that Bodin has accumulated), it is only because these events "depend on superior causes," "on the divine judgment," and not through any necessity (p. 616) 54 Bodin carefully guards against charges of astral determinism, such as those leveled against his earlier works for their excessive attention to numerological and astrological patterns in history.55 On the other hand, even if the sun is rightly called "servant" by the Hebrews "because it extends to mortals from its power only what it has received from the permission of the Creator" (p. 617). Bodin objects passionately to the notion that the purpose of the heavenly bodies is to serve humans. Th. Are the celestial bodies therefore made for man? M. That is like asking if men were made for cattle: indeed the end is more noble than those things which tend toward it. But who except one who is insane would think that terrestrial things were superior to heavenly ones, the elementary world to the stars, darkness to light, and effects to causes? The arrogant ineptitude of men, however, is involved in this error, that they think that the stars and heavenly bodies from which they derive incredible usefulness were made for them. (P. 609)

In this passage, which was repeatedly censored, Bodin indicates that the exalted station of the heavenly bodies does indeed put them beyond caring for their human inferiors. By their beauty and regularity, the heavens serve higher purposes than simply providing for human needs as directed by God: they constitute the closest point of access to the godhead, the last step in a Neoplatonic ladder, which Bodin seems to reintroduce here on the sly. Although Theorus is, appropriately, completely dumbfounded by "[God's] ad-

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mirable power, wisdom, majesty, and constancy in the delineation, size, beauty, multitude, intervals, course, harmony, and shape of the orbs and celestial bodies" (p. 609),56 most of the Theatrum is devoted to the lower reaches of the hierarchy of being, to the much less abstract myriad of particulars. At this level Bodin develops his vision of a complex web of interconnections, rising from the bottom upward, formed by intermediate beings that conjoin the two "extremes" in which they participate, and without which the world would fall into destructive discord. Present already in the Ripublique and the Dimonomanie , and also in the Collo­ quium heptaplomeres, this vision is elaborated in fullest detail in the Theatrum: Th. What are the bonds of the universe? M. First the fact that nothing is empty, but that all bodies are either continuous or contiguous with one another so that there is no gap between the parts: for this reason indeed heavy things are borne upward against their natural location in order to avoid a vacuum or the penetration of parts. Secondly, that the waters embrace the earth in their expanse so that they keep together with their humidity the parts of the earth that dissolve too much from dryness; between earth and water we see mud which is fertile in its productivity; between water and air intermediate vapors; exhalations lighter than air and denser than fire link these two elements; between the fiery and the celestial essences some have placed ether, but it is either fire or the sky itself. Between mud [iimum] and stones we see clay participate in the nature of both, just as crystal between water and diamond; between water and metals [we see] mercury; between metals and stones pyrites or the genus of marcasites; between stones and plants coral which clings to the rocks with its roots and grows branches; between plants and animals what are called zoophytes [in marginal note: plant-animals] which have feeling and movement but cling nonetheless with their roots to the rocks and earth from which they draw nourishment; between aquatic and terrestrial animals amphibious or double animals that live in both places; between males and females hermaphrodites; between aquatic and flying animals flying fish, some without feathers, others with feathers instead of scales but that do not fly; between birds and reptiles bats, which fly but have no feathers, but have teeth, wings, hair, and breasts; finally between man and wild animals the varieties of monkeys; between the animal and angelic natures men who share similarities and mutual society with both and somehow participate in the nature of both. For every middle thing is of such a kind that either it is changed to the nature of both, or it participates in both. (Pp. 226—27)"

Both the Aristotelian principle that nature fears a void and the Neoplatonic principle of plenitude dictate that the universe is a seamless web of beings. For every gap between categories there is an intermediate being that touches the extremes it conjoins and ensures that neither emptiness nor overlap occur. Throughout the natural-historical books Bodin repeatedly refers to these intermediates, including those described above and others. At first view it may seem as though the middle terms link each of the successive hypostases in a single linear progression: from earth (an element) to stones through mud; from stones to plants through coral, and through zoophytes to animals; through amphibians to fish and through flying fish to birds. It soon be-

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comes clear, however, that the connecting links operate at different levels of generality and bring together categories that are not always neighbors according to the linear succession of hypostases. While zoophytes link plants to animals, within the category of animals bats are intermediate between birds and reptiles and amphibians between yet another subgroup, terrestrial animals, and fish. Further examples of middle terms divide the natural world in still other ways: spiders and scorpions are intermediate between snakes and "the rest of the insects" (p. 304), and elephants are intermediate between animals with tusks and those with horns (p. 354). The "chain" becomes completely entangled once all the interconnections are established (see figure 3). Earth, for example, is connected at the same time to metals (through marcasites), stones (through clay), and plants (through truffles and tubers) (pp. 296-97). Meanwhile all the categories that are linked with earth are interconnected with each other: stones and metals through pyrites, plants and stones through coral, and plants and metals through argurodendron, also called plantargentum, an example of which is the vein of silver reported by Georg Agricola that was sixty feet high, twenty feet long, and nine inches wide (p. 267).58 In some cases two beings can establish the same link: if bats are intermediate between quadrupeds and birds, ostriches must be too as their name ( struthiocamelus) indicates, since they combine the height of the camel and the wings of the sparrow (strouthos) (p. 363). Finally, even the categories between which the intermediates operate are not stable: zoophytes, while intermediate between plants and animals, are in turn linked with the "more perfect animals" through the "genus of reptiles without blood" (p. 299). The identification of intermediate beings can continue indefinitely, by varying the categories and subcategories to be linked. The criteria governing the intermediate beings are as disparate as Bo din's criteria of classification. By definition, the intermediate being shares in the "nature" of both of the categories it links together. But what precise aspect it shares can vary widely: in some cases it is a way of drawing nourishment (for instance, through the roots), or a way of reproducing (by assimilation of food rather than by accretion, in the case of truffles); in others a morphological feature (having wings, branches, and so forth), a common environment (for example, living in water) or a form of "social interaction" (such as that of humans and angels). These disparate kinds of intermediates stem from Bodin's disparate criteria for classification. He distinguishes between birds, for example, on the basis of their habits (birds that sing, that talk, that roll in the dust—like turkeys and chickens) and diet (birds of prey that live off flesh) as well as environmental criteria (aquatic birds) and morphological ones (birds with flat feet, with bent claws).55 To explain that the cuckoo, for example, is not a bird of prey, Bodin invokes a number of different ethological and morphological arguments: "it does not have bent claws, but straight ones; it does not eat flesh as the birds of prey do, but grain: the other birds of prey cannot swallow or even taste grains placed in their mouth; finally, little birds often harass the cuckoo which is cowardly and timid: it also hides during the winter in hollow trees and molts" (p. 377).60 Bodin does not strive for con-

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EARTH

clay

marcasites truffles

METALS

STONES

corai

PLANTS Fig. 3. Bodin's intricate web of being in which every category is linked to every other by intermediates rather than forming a single-stranded hierarchical chain.

sistency in the description of species, in the way that a contemporary like Pierre Belon consciously strove to follow the Aristotelian injunction to consider morphology above all.61 Given Bodin's disinterest in systematic classification, intermediate bemgs do not serve (as they did for most natural historians, following Aristotle) as a convenient way to classify perplexing species like bats and ostriches; nor are they simply manifestations of the playfulness of nature which delights in producing all possible variations on a theme, as Cardano emphasized.62 Instead, for Bodin, intermediate beings are the bonds that hold together the disparate and opposite elements of the world in admirable coherence and harmony. It is these bonds linking the different parts together rather than the individual parts themselves that Bodin prides himself on studying in the Theatrum (supposedly for the first time)—this indeed is the task of the physicus as opposed to that of medicus (see chapter 1, pp. 44—45). Bodin shows how both contraries and the mediation between them are equally crucial to the world. The elements, for example, although so opposite in their qualities, have maintained the harmony of the world for many centuries. This is because of the proper bonds between them: fire, which is very hot, and air, which is very cold, share a great fineness and dryness;

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air, though dry, and water, though wet, are both cold; and so on. "Thus, far from causing the ruin of the world, the contrariety of the elements would by its absence destroy the world, just as harmony is altogether lost if the intermediates between the high and low voices are removed" (p. 143). The way in which discord is turned to harmony in the world is a further tribute to the wisdom and providence of God. These harmonious bonds are present throughout the universe, not only in nature, but also in mathematics, music, and justice, as Bodin also discusses in the Republique. The four elements correspond to the first four numbers of a harmonic progression: 2-3-4-6. This progression is harmonic in that it combines the arithmetic principle of progression by addition (2-3-4; 4-6-8; 4-6-12) with the geometric principle of progression by multiplication (2-4-8-16), by introducing arithmetic means between the terms of the geometric progression, yielding: 2-34-6-8-12-16. The ratios of successive terms in this series also correspond to the string lengths involved in musical chords that are euphonic fifths and fourths (pp. 143-44).63 Alternatively, Bodin explains that the elements are four in number because it takes precisely four numbers to establish a harmonic link between two "solids": "since the elementary body is by nature solid, it consists in solid numbers; but it is necessary to link two solid numbers with two intermediaries." Thus the solids 8 (the cube of 2) and 27 (the cube of 3) require the intermediate terms 12 and 18 to be conjoined. Bodin consciously borrows from Plato's Timaeus here, but cautions that Plato only considers geometric, not the superior, harmonic proportions that Bodin introduces (pp. 144-45). In the Republique, one of Bodin's proudest innovations is his description of harmonic justice, which follows a similar explanation of the mathematical and musical nature of the harmonic progression. Bodin proposes a standard of justice both strict and adaptable, combining the unbending rule of Polycletes with the more flexible rule of Lesbos, to adapt equity to the variety of places, persons, and circumstances involved, in order to achieve true fairness. Harmonicjustice is an intermediate between arithmetic government by law alone, characteristic of popular rule, and geometric government, based on arbitration. While both of these extremes are ruinous to the state, Bodin maintains, the harmonic intermediate keeps the state secure in an ideal, monarchical form of government.64 Whether in nature or in politics, Bodin's conception of the intermediate being is Platonic rather than Aristotelian. Bodin rejects the Aristotelian notion of a middle term that is superior to both extremes by the fact that it is distinct from them both,65 and instead sees the middle term as participating in the nature of both the extremes that it brings together (medium per participationem). Bodin draws on Plato's numerical and musical analogies to explain the harmonious effect of the middle term or terms, but the notion of a harmonic rather than an arithmetic or geometric progression is original with Bodin—characteristically, it is a middle way that participates in both of the progressions that it conjoins.66 In his eclecticism, Bodin also points to other kinds of connections in the world. He adopts the Aristotelian argument, for example, that the human soul is linked to the vegetative and sensitive souls of plants and animals by subsuming them,

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and in this way the "binary is contained in the ternary" (p. 551, also p. 437). The analogy between microcosm and macrocosm, a commonplace of Renaissance thought, promoted by Ficino among others, is graced in the Theatrum with a new term: just as man is a microcosm or "small universe," Theorus proposes that the world is a meganthrdpos or "big man" (pp. 409-10). Bodin shows how the triple division of the world into elementary, ethereal, and celestial regions corresponds to the three regions in man: the viscera where corruption occurs, the heart where vital heat is stored, and the brain which consists of the intelligible (or celestial) nature (p. 410). The various planets correspond to the parts of the body on which they have the greatest impact: Venus to the powers of generation, Mars to the bilious gland, Jupiter to the brain, and so on (pp. 618-19).67 But Bodin's cursory treatment of the human body and of the impact of the planets is mostly conventional (he does add explications of the Hebrew terms of the planets as further evidence for their nature). What is more original is his application of the argument of the interconnectedness of the world through intermediate beings. The Argumentjrom Intermediates

Bodin's set piece, quoted above, detailing some of the innumerable links between different substances and species in nature, surfaces in all of Bodin's major works after the Methodus, where it often serves to clinch Bodin's main points. In the Demonomanie, Bodin uses it to establish one of the most fundamental assumptions behind the belief in witchcraft—the idea that "spirits" (that is, angels and demons) can "associate" with humans, notably by directing them and communicating with them. There can be no association that holds between angels and demons [for God has placed an irreconcilable antipathy between them]; but there are men who are neither good nor bad and can adapt to either type, so that one can say that the intellective soul of man is intermediate between angels and demons. For we can see that this great God of nature has bound all things through intermediates, which are in accord with the extremes and compose the harmony of the intelligible, celestial, and elementaiy worlds through intermediate and indissoluble links.68

Then follows the list of other examples of intermediate beings. Here Bodin presents humans as intermediates—not between mortal and immortal or earthly and angelic, following the commonplace made most famous by Pico—but rather between good and evil spirits. The human soul can tend toward both good and evil, and is thus a crucial link between these polar opposites. After a few examples of angelic communications to prophets, priests, and other virtuous men, the Demonomanie is devoted to the association of diabolical spirits with men and especially women, in witchcraft. In the Colloquium heptaplomeres attributed to Bodin the succession of intermediate beings is introduced as part of the opening description of the learned home of Paul Coroni, the host of the conversations to follow. The text dwells on a special mathematical cupboard or pantotheca in Coroni's home, "in which plants and

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animals were displayed in such a way that the last were connected to the first and the middling ones to both extremes, and everything to everything else by an admirable invention, viz., between earth and stone he put clay. . . ."69 Here the description serves to establish the depth of Coroni's understanding of nature, but also to illustrate the harmony that reigned in his house between his six boarders, each of a different religion, "who lived in such integrity, innocence, and union that no one so much resembled himself as all resembled all."™ The point is to show how harmony can subsume discord and religious differences: after the debates that he records in the Colloquium, the seven continued to "live together in an admirable union, with exemplary piety and way of life, taking their meals and studying in common. But they never again spoke of religion, as each one stayed firm and constant in his and persevered until the end in manifest sanctity."71 Here the opening vision of the harmony of nature overcoming opposites through intermediate terms serves as a tacit model for the relations between different religions.72 Bodin is optimistic also in the Republique, asserting that God mixed good and evil in order to create a greater good, that good is always more powerful than evil and that harmony overcomes discord in the end.73 He saves his favorite piece until the end of the six books, then concludes: "Just as the harmony of this world and its parts is composed from vices and virtues, from the different qualities of the elements, from contrary movements, from the sympathies and antipathies, all linked by inviolable intermediaries, thus also the Republic is composed of good and bad people, of rich and poor, wise and foolish, strong and weak, linked by those who are middling between one sort of people and another."74 Throughout the Republique Bodin invokes the "law of God and of nature" as the norm for proper government. Sometimes the "law of God" refers to the positive law of the Old Testament (e.g., concerning the treatment of a runaway slave); occasionally, nature presents practical constraints that the prince cannot afford to ignore, "for everything that is against nature cannot last long" (e.g., the temperament of a people as a function of its environment).75 Most of the time, however, "the law of God and of nature" designates the inviolable authority of the divine will, which is most clearly manifested in nature, because nature, unlike human affairs, is unsullied by the unfortunate use that men make of their freedom of will. Nature thus serves as a special guide to proper behavior and government. Although Bodin warns against comparing a merely human monarch to the great prince of nature himself, he also draws parallels between the government of the state and the government of the world, notably in their reliance on intermediate beings.76 Bodin remains rather unclear about the exact nature of these "intermediates" in the state. Intermediates in social status, wealth, or moral qualities, they are in any case crucial to the harmony and stability of a government. For example, larger states are less prone to revolutions, Bodin explains, because they are less easily divided into two leagues: "for between the great lords and the little people, between the rich and the poor, between the evil and the virtuous there are a great number of middling people [mediocres] who link people to one another, by intermediates that draw from different extremes and are in harmony with them."77 Although he does not explicitly call them intermediates in the Republique, in the

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Theatrum Bodin establishes a parallel between their role in the state and that of angels in the natural world. "Just as in a well-governed Republic there is no less need for executioners, lictors, and public undertakers, than for magistrates and judges and curators: thus in this Republic of the world God himself has assigned angels as princes and governors for the generation, providence [procuratio], and protection of things in all places, celestial and elementary, among animals, plants, fossils, cities, provinces, families, and individuals" (p. 632). These intermediaries, too, play a crucial role in keeping both the state and nature in harmony, by diffusing and executing fairly and effectively the orders from above. Just as Bodin distinguishes three essential ranks of magistrates—superior, middling, and inferior magistrates78—so in nature, too, he establishes a chain of command from God to superior angels, to inferior ones, to humans, to animals (pp. 527-28). In both nature and the state, intermediate beings uphold hierarchy and create harmony: magistrates and angels, as the essential links in the hierarchy of command; and intermediates of all ranks and types (between rich and poor, wise and foolish, between rocks and metals, or snakes and insects) as the bonds between opposites that create stability and harmony. This is one of Bodin's most often and proudly repeated insights. In the Theatrum the argument from intermediates is not only central to the natural-historical books, but also to what is possibly Bodin's most noteworthy innovation—his theory of the soul. Unlike most philosophers who treated the issue in separate treatises, Bodin places the soul squarely within the discipline of physics, because the soul is both the natural form of the animate body, and endowed with a separate and corporeal essence once detached from the dead body (p. 432). After a discussion of the senses and faculties of the organic soul,79 Bodin turns to the more contentious topic of the intellective soul and proposes a new demonstration of its immortality, based on its intermediate nature as both corporeal and immortal. Scholastic theories of the soul revolved primarily around the interpretation of Aristotle's difficult De anima, but needed to take into account the central Christian doctrine of the personal immortality of the soul. Averroes' rejection of individual immortality in favor of the immortality of a single, universally shared intellective soul was especially controversial. By the late Middle Ages some theologians, like Scotus, denied the rational demonstrability of the immortality of the soul and considered it a matter of faith alone.80 But in 1513 the Lateran Council, fueled by Neoplatonizing philosophical tendencies, had proclaimed "that individual immortality could be demonstrated philosophically and consequently had to be defended by all philosophers."81 This decree prompted a strong reaction from strict Aristotelians. Most notably, Pietro Pomponazzi argued that Aristotle and philosophical reasoning taught the mortality of the soul, although he tried to soften the blow by declaring that the question could not be solved philosophically either way and of course protested his firm belief in the immortality of the soul.82 Still, this work of 1516 caused a furor, and, after a papal condemnation, Pomponazzi published with his next work an appendix providing the orthodox proofs of the immortality of the soul.83

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In proving from rational grounds the immortality of the soul, as earlier he had disproved the eternity of the world and demonstrated the providence and omnipotence of God, Bodin is reacting against all forms of impious philosophizing: against Averroes for denying the personal immortality of the soul; against Pomponazzi for claiming that philosophy shows the soul to be mortal; and against all those, like Pomponazzi or even Duns Scotus, who deny the rational demonstrability of this central doctrine. But Bodin calls his opponents only "Epicureans," using the term to designate at first, generally, those who doubt the immortality of the soul, then more specifically those who, barely above the level of brutes, take pleasure and pain as the measure of good and evil and believe in the random distribution of atoms. Bodin does seem to fear especially these Lucretian ideas, which were more readily available after the edition of 1563 by Denys Lambin;84 but his sense of urgency stems no doubt mostly from what he perceives as circumstances favorable to impiety: both in the philosophy of Pomponazzi and other rationalist Aristotelians, and in the fideism and religious disillusionment current during the wars of religion.85 Typically, Mystagogus first protests the impiety of doubting a truth so obvious and universally shared, arguing from the universal consent of all peoples: "M. There can be no more certain demonstration than the highest consent and faith of all peoples in the same thing, which is like a law of nature, so that it is a crime to discuss it further and forbidden to doubt it. Indeed who could demonstrate in another way that fire is hot than to show that it seems so to Indians, Celts, Ethiopians, and Scythians? . . ." Theorus asks for reasons, not for himself, but for those impious others, but Mystagogus lets him plead some more before complying: Th. I admit that some things are so clear that one who would ask for a demonstration of them would be trying to shed light on the sun with lit torches: nonetheless a number of people have called into doubt the immortality of the soul. . . . I think that we must coerce this kind of Epicurean as if by torture. M. If those [people] are in no way, or hardly, different from the judgment of wild beasts, who measure the ends of good and bad things by pain and pleasure and who think that souls and the whole world were created and die from the random conjunction of atoms, if then, for lack of honest instruction, they have arrived at this point, they cannot be brought back from it to the truth, any more than a prostitute can call back her lost sense of shame: therefore a demonstration would do them no good, nor is it necessary for others, and therefore seems to be asked of us in vain. Th. Nonetheless I think it always useful to have necessary demonstrations of such things.

Finally, then, Mystagogus accedes to his pupil's request. M. A demonstration follows necessarily, if we grant the hypothesis of the ancients, viz. that the soul [anima] is separated from the body if it can do something without corporeal organs: but we said above, that the soul lanima] is able to understand, to reason, to contemplate without corporeal organs, from which it follows that it is separable from the dead body; and that is the demonstration. Given or having proven the hypothesis, it seemed necessary to Aristotle. But if someone is so stubborn that

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he thinks we should grant nothing to the soul [animus] without the action of the senses, we will conclude nonetheless with two other demonstrations that souls [animi] survive their dead bodies, leaving aside innumerable arguments of others (Pp. 537-39)

In opening with Aristotle's argument, Bodin alludes to the empirical evidence he has presented earlier concerning the ability of the soul to function independently of the body. Already during life, Bodin explains, the soul is often transported out of the body, during ecstatic experiences brought on by good angels, as well as during demonic ones brought on by evil forces, as in cases of witchcraft. The many examples of ecstasy reported by theologians, philosophers, doctors, historians, and poets all reveal that while temporarily transported outside the living body the soul is able to hear, feel, and understand. All the more reason, then, for the soul to continue to function in these ways after the death of the body (pp. 500-507). But for the recalcitrant, Bodin advances his more powerful and original demonstrations. Th. What are they? M. Since extremes are always joined by intermediates and one cannot reach from one extreme to another without passing through a middling being; and there are two extremes, viz. form completely separated from matter and form entirely concrete, inseparable from matter except by destruction, such as constitutes the natural body; therefore there must be some intermediate, which joins these two extremes, viz. form separable from matter. But, as we demonstrated above, it is always true in all of nature that all extremes are linked by intermediates: if therefore the human soul [mens] is separable from the dead body, it follows necessanly that it survives it and carnes out its actions without the operation of the senses. Th. This new demonstration appears to me to be of great weight and moment: if you please, what is the other? M. Given the extremes, of which one is totally corruptible and one is totally incorruptible, there must be an intermediate, which is corrupted in one part of itself, but free from corruption in the other; but this is nothing other than man, who participates in both natures: brute elements, plants, stones are far inferior to man in worth and dignity, and since man alone associates with angels and demons, he alone can link the celestial to the terrestrial, superior to inferior, immortal to mortal. (Pp. 539-40)86

Both demonstrations rest on Bodin's argument from the interconnection by intermediates: human nature conjoins—by participating in both extremes and yet forming an entity distinct from them—form free from matter and form inseparable from matter (in the first demonstration), and (more conventionally, perhaps, in the second) the corruptible and the incorruptible. Through the long buildup to the final demonstration, Bodin presents it as a crowning achievement. A few pages earlier, Bodin had already sketched this argument from intermediates, alluding explicitly to the demonstration "above, in Book II" (i.e., the passage on the "bonds of the universe"), and signaling its novelty with a typical combination of boast and apology: "although new, it seems most effective" (pp. 499-500). Isaac

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Casaubon, who already was hardly impressed by Bodin's claims of originality for the passage on the "bonds of the universe," again mocks these new claims with the sarcastic marginal comment: "That the soul of man is an intermediate nature between corporeal and noncorporeal things. New philosophy!"87 Stated so bluntly, Bodin's argument is indeed hardly original, but apparently only a restatement of the commonplace, circulated by Ficino and Pico among others, that human nature links earthly and angelic, corporeal and incorporeal.88 But Casaubon oversimplifies Bodin's position and misses its genuine originality, which Bodin (perhaps purposefully) does not emphasize as much. Bodin does not consider the human intermediate between corporeal and incorporeal, because for him the soul is immortal yet corporeal. Rather than linking corporeal body with incorporeal soul, according to the standard view, for Bodin the human hypostasis mediates between form separated from matter (disembodied souls and angels) and form fully embedded in matter (as in all natural bodies), by virtue of its soul which is corporeal, yet separable from the material body. The body of the soul is not material, but spiritual—yet corporeal nonetheless: "from which it follows that human souls [mentes], angels, and demons consist of some corporeal nature, but not of bone, or flesh: rather from an invisible essence, like air, or fire, or both, or of a celestial essence, surpassing with its fineness the most subtle bodies: thus even if we grant it is a spiritual body, it is a body nonetheless" (pp. 515-16). Later, following a Neoplatonic position,89 Bodin proposes that their bodies are shaped like the stars, moon, and sun—that is, like spheres (p. 535). To establish the corporeal nature of the disembodied soul, Bodin first argues by analogy with angels and demons, then from the finite and locatable natuie of souls as well as angels and demons. If angels and demons are corporeal, Bodin argues, then disembodied souls must be too, for given their past association with material bodies, they are inferior to angels in dignity. "But Porphyry, Aristotle, Iamblichus, Psellus, Plotinus, Philoponus, Ammonius, Olympiodorus, Alexander of Aphrodisias, Gaudentius Merula, Apuleius, Basil, Tertullian, Augustine, report with the highest agreement that demons are of a corporeal nature" (p. 511). The argument from authority convinces Theorus, especially "on these difficult matters so remote from human sense," nevertheless once again he asks for reasons and demonstrations, since "certain knowledge [sciential . . . cannot consist of opinion or credulity" (p. 512). No mention of the Epicureans, this time, as particularly recalcitrant, for, as Bodin acknowledges, most philosophers part ways with him on the corporeal nature of souls. M. Peripatetics and Academics, who affirm that demons are corporeal, think that separated souls [mentes] are free from all body, but they do not demonstrate this: you nonetheless demand from me a demonstration of this thing which has never been given by anyone before. Nonetheless I will try to provide this, not so much in order to overturn the opinions of the Academics and Peripatetics about the souls being separated from all body, but rather so that it is plainly understood that there is no substance at all outside God which is incorporeal. By this demonstration it will also be proved that God has an infinite essence and power, which Giovanni Pico, prince of

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Mirandola, confessed was never clear to him, and for which even Scotus, the most acute of all, admitted that he lacked a demonstration. . . From this demonstration we will also show that the opinion of the Themistians and Averroists about the single universal soul of all men is completely overturned. (Pp. 512-13)

Bodin's agenda here rings familiar: to maintain the transcendence of God as the only being which is incorporeal, infinite in essence and m power, by showing how angels and souls, previously considered incorporeal, actually have bodies. The demonstration that Bodin has thus celebrated revolves around this syllogism: "Every substance that is contained in the embrace of the greatest orb is finite: human souls [mentes], angels, and demons are contained in the great orb, therefore they are finite, because nothing infinite can be contained in a finite space. . . . But nothing incorporeal is enclosed in any limits or place; therefore human souls, angels, and demons are not incorporeal . . . ; therefore they must have a corporeal nature" (p. 513). Bodin rejects various scholastic notions designed to define for incorporeal angels and souls a place or location that is not circumscribed (as is the case with corporeal beings), but definite, or effective. Bodin finds these distinctions absurd, for they "permit neither the good to rise to heaven, nor the evil to descend to hell: since it is appropriate that angels and separated souls are everywhere, if they are incorporeal substances" (p. 514). Mystagogus rebukes Theonrs for sophisticating, when he tries to object that God or mathematical entities have locations without bodies: "I abhor fallacies and empty subtleties, especially in discussing such arduous things" (p. 515). Bodin finally closes the issue by explaining its importance, not from physics but from dialectic and theology. If souls and angels were incorporeal, the wicked could not be made to experience suffering, which constitutes the punishment that they deserve, nor the good to receive their just rewards: "but nothing can be conceded that would better support the opinions of the Epicureans" (p. 521). Incorporeal angels and demons could not keep heaven and hell as separate places—this is the most powerful kind of demonstration, from moral repugnance. Furthermore Bodin shows how his position rules out a number of other impieties. The corporeal soul undermines the "very pernicious error of . . . [those] who posit a single, universal soul," for, "their foundations having thus been destroyed, all their arguments, about thirty in number, collapse at the same time" (pp. 521—22). In addition, corporeal angels demonstrate that God alone, being incorporeal, is infinite, and being infinite, is simple and indivisible, eternal and endowed with infinite life, power, goodness, wisdom, knowledge [sciential, and virtues—a demonstration of "great weight and moment against the Epicureans" (pp. 522-23). Even more startling is Bodin's application of his theory of the soul to the Aristotelian distinction between passive and active intellects (or patient and agent intellects)—the former traditionally identified with the reception of sensory experience, the latter with thought formation. Rejecting the "widespread opinion of the schools, which is nonetheless not demonstrated" (pp. 524—25), Bodin maintains that the active intellect comes instead from outside [thurathen]: it is a good angel or, if the person refuses that good counsel, a bad demon assigned to each

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person to guide and to punish and reward him or her as appropriate (p. 524). As evidence Bodin adduces the "venerable and therefore noble opinion" of Aristotle, Plato, Averroes, and Alexander of Aphrodisias, among others, that nations, cities, and individuals are protected by angels until, if ignored, the angels leave them prey to evil influences instead (pp. 528-29). Furthermore, the Old Testament abounds in stories of angels sent down to direct humans, often by delivering prophecies through the agent intellect. Although God alone knows the soul's inner secrets, the agent intellect can also inflict twinges of conscience to chastise evil thoughts (p. 532). Bodin's theory of the soul is thus a significant departure from the standard or orthodox accounts. Amid all the philosophers he has criticized, Platonists as well as Aristotelians, Averroists and Epicureans among other impious schools, Bodin hails only Alexander of Aphrodisias for his perspicacity in declaring that no substance is free from body, but he too is found wanting: "he would have been right, if he had omitted God [from this proposition]" (p. 521). Another possible source for his notion of the corporeal soul is Bodin's upbringing in a Carmelite monastery, which probably featured the works of Bacon of Baconthorpe, the favorite Carmelite scholastic, noted for his materialistic tendencies.90 Bodin does not acknowledge any such sources, however, and, in his view, stands alone in having resolved some of the greatest difficulties of philosophy, notably in proving the infinite power of God and the immortality of the soul. Although his theory of corporeal souls and angels was probably devised in all sincerity, as Bodin explains, to maintain the uniqueness of God and the practicality of punishment and rewards after death, by the time his work was in circulation, the increasing rigidity of the Counter-Reformation Church warranted a vigorous expurgation by the Catholic authorities of Bodin's entire theory of the intellective soul. Threatened by the Protestant schism as well as by rebellious philosophers like Pomponazzi or the nebulous "Epicureans," the Counter-Reformation Church made Thomas Aquinas the benchmark of orthodoxy. Like most scholastics, Thomas conceived of the soul after death and of angelic beings as incorporeal.91 Nevertheless, some seventeenth-century Protestants, especially in England, expressed interest in corporeity, although few went as far as John Milton in elaborating a scheme in which corporeal angels ensure the unity of the world.92 In a more tolerant philosophical climate, such as that which prevailed in the Middle Ages or early Renaissance, Bodin's unusual theory of the soul might have been taken seriously as a doctrinal option. But in the rigid climate of the early seventeenth century, Bodin's innovations were rejected out of hand for their unorthodoxy, presumably especially out of the fear that a corporeal soul could only be interpreted as mortal, despite his best efforts to prove precisely the contrary. Although Bodin's Protestant readers did not engage in a systematic condemnation of the Theatrum, they also criticized and rejected his theory of the corporeal soul, and of the separate agent intellect. Given the great fear of heterodoxy in both Catholic and established Protestant circles, Bodin's readers were rarely able to appreciate favorably the originality and audaciousness of his attempt to give philosophical demonstrations to the central tenets of religious piety.

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BODIN'S SYNTHESIS OF PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION

Bo din's strategies for making physics serve religious ends rest on the fundamental principle that the truth is one. Bodin adduces this principle in a variety of different contexts, to reject the multiplicity of definitions of the soul (p. 484), or to deny that physici and mathematici can reach different conclusions on the infinite divisibility of matter: "What is true cannot be more than one, just as there can be no more than one straight line that is the shortest between two points, while around it there can be innumerable curved ones" (p. 82). But its most important implication is that natural philosophy as a reasoned investigation can never contradict true religion. By maintaining the necessary agreement of philosophy and religion, Bodin preserves reason as a powerful apologetic tool, notably to combat what he sees as a dangerous tide of Italian Renaissance rationalism. But at the same time Bodin narrows the purview of reason on traditionally philosophical questions, in an original effort to save a place for simple piety and worship of God. The Augustinian precept of the unity of truth,93 by guaranteeing the agreement of philosophy and religion, was also the cornerstone of Aquinas' synthesis of reason and faith. But the supposedly inevitable unity promised by Aquinas was threatened already in the Middle Ages, on the one hand by the institutional separation of philosophy and theology between separate and potentially independent faculties, and on the other hand by a few radical philosophers who, while supposedly acquiring merely probable knowledge, affirmed that their conclusions were irreconcilable with the teachings of the Church. As scholars have pointed out against the early histories of rationalism that looked back to them for antecedents,94 the radical Averroists never actually formulated a theory of a "double truth" (in which philosophy and theology would reach separate and incompatible but equally true conclusions), but they did seem to presuppose one.55 During the Renaissance Italian philosophical and medical faculties maintained a strong institutional independence from theology and often favored rationalist tendencies. Thus unremarkable Renaissance Aristotelians, like Benedetto Varchi, simply ignored the problem of reconciling philosophy and theology, considering that such attempts were precisely what led to dangerous heresies.96 And the most remarkable of the Italian Renaissance philosophers, Pietro Pomponazzi, followed on medieval radicalism by shunning any explicit notion of a "double truth," and at the same time expounding a rationalist philosophy more radical then ever, devoid of any personal God, miracles, or immortal souls. Bodin has sometimes been associated with this rationalist tradition, notably because he too, omits mention of a redemptive God and calls for reasons to support his conclusions.91 Nonetheless his consistent reliance on the Bible and religious principle to determine those conclusions and his vehement objection to impious philosophies place him rather among the northern humanist opponents of Italian rationalism. The separation of reason and faith, which was the more or less explicit point of departure of rationalist philosophies, was precisely one of the great

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perils that late sixteenth-century French apologetic authors sought to combat.98 Natural-theological authors, from Viret to Duplessis-Mornay and Lambert Daneau, insisted on the agreement of reason and faith." Within the university, too, Pierre de La Ramee proposed curricular reforms at Paris precisely in order to reaffirm that union.100 This dream of a new synthesis of philosophy and religion motivated attempts in many different directions, including the idiosyncratic syncretism of Guillaume Postel, the Christianized Stoicism of Justus Lipsius, or the Christianized Epicureanism of Pierre Gassendi.101 Bodin's motivation was thus hardly unusual, but, like the others, he proposed his own set of solutions. In the first place, Bodin reaffirms the unity of reason and faith by extending the power of reason to demonstrate religious truths even beyond what Aquinas and Maimonides had considered possible. The latter had concluded that the eternity of the world and the immortality of the soul were questions that could not be resolved on logical grounds alone, but only by faith and revelation. But Bodin confidently provides "necessary reasons" for these conclusions. He does so with his characteristically scattershot use of dialectic. In particular, to prove the corporeal nature of angelic beings, Bodin conveniently invokes the principle of the unity of truth: M. . . . What is true must be the same for physicists, theologians, dialecticians, medical doctors, and there cannot be more than one truth. Even if we had no demonstrations on the corporeal nature of angels and demons and on human souls from causes, effects, subjects, adjuncts, which we nonetheless showed were most certain, we would still have very many demonstrations by contrariety: but demonstrations from contrariety are the most certain of all. Th. Which are they? M. If there is no action of bodies on incorporeal things, there is no suffering of the souls from corporeal things, and the punishments for criminals and the rewards for the good will be removed. . . . Likewise there would be no distinction between heaven and hell. (P. 521)

To deny corporeal existence to angels and souls after death would be to undermine the very existence of heaven and hell, good and evil, and the foundation of all morality and religion—a conclusion that forces contemporary readers to accept his premise not on physical, but on moral grounds. Thanks to the unity of truth, Bodin violates the scholastic criteria of logical reasoning within a discipline, and enlists this direct appeal to the moral sense as part of his "necessary demonstration" of a truth that is both philosophical and religious. In the second place, after expanding the purview of reason to prove religious truths, Bodin cuts it back by denying the possibility of rational answers to longdebated physical questions. Again, Bodin's strategy is reminiscent of that of Calvin, who advocated using reason to defend truths rather than to search for new answers.102 The Theatrum is not an ode to the powers of human reason, but rather to the greatness of God: "Indeed those who set up disputations about nature in such a way that they forget the parent of nature, are guilty of the highest impiety toward him: for all disputations about nature must refer principally to that end" (p. 140) Thus Bodin mocks all kinds of authorities for their philo-

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sophical errors, and concludes with a modest confession of ignorance and a worshipful silence in front of the unfathomable works of God. Where philosophers have failed to provide adequate explanations of even quite ordinary natural phenomena, Bodin refutes their arguments, often with considerable sarcasm, then simply acknowledges the weakness of human reason. After heaping objection upon objection to refute Aristotle's theory of comets (which explained them as the combustion of earthly vapors), Bodin concludes: "But since such silliness pains me, it seems to me better simply to admit ignorance, than to assert something rashly or agree with very ill-founded opinions: and just as, since wine is rarely useful but very often harmful to the sick, it is better not to give them any at all than to run a clear risk in the hope of an unlikely gain, thus it is better to feed the minds of the ignorant with no opinion than with a false one" (p. 217). Bodin repeats here a skeptical argument advanced by Cotta in Cicero's De natura deorum, which Montaigne also borrowed to wonder whether humans should not be deprived of the faculty of reasoning altogether since it is so rarely useful and so often dangerous.103 Without going as far as Montaigne's attack on reason in general, Bodin nonetheless dips into skepticism here, offering a strange companion argument to his rational demonstrations: when faced with puzzling natural phenomena Bodin advocates conceding their unknowability, without particularly calling for further investigation. In the case of the action of magnets on iron, Mystagogus indicates that confessions of ignorance can also serve in part to goad philosophers on to a search for better answers; even so, he displays no interest in pursuing the investigation himself and does not point to the need for others to do so: "I willingly confess that I am entirely ignorant of the cause, but I think one must refute the false reasons of others with necessary arguments, so that either they carry out more diligently their research of nature, or they are not ashamed to admit ignorance" (p. 244). In many instances, the possibility and very legitimacy of further inquiry are questionable at best. Thus the saltiness of the sea, the origin of metals, or the origin of hoarfrost are attributed variously to "the great wisdom of the Creator," to "some more divine power," or to the "hidden treasuries of divine secrets" (pp. 199, 205, 259). Further inquiry into these directly divine activities would be pointless. Bodin invokes demons to explain the inexplicable, precisely in order to place further inquiry off limits to the physicus. Bodin argues that demons, rather than Aristotelian exhalations, are the cause of violent winds and storms, and of earthquakes. Indeed "since an exhalation is natural, it is moved without violence, for nothing natural can be violent" (p. 160); therefore, the storms and earthquakes that knock down buildings, uproot trees, and suck ships into maelstroms can only be due to demons, acting under divine command. But, Theorus asks, does the discussion of demons pertain to natural philosophy? It does, Mystagogus responds, insofar as [the physicus] must refute the opinions of those who prefer to pile up silly causes of things rather than to refer them to demons or confess ignorance. Indeed, first Heraclitus, then Theophrastus and Plutarch wrote that all of the most beautiful secrets are hidden to men, because they thought that nothing should be believed from the senses or even clear effects. But how much more modestly Hippocrates,

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when he did not know thoroughly the causes and cures for epidemic diseases (who is said nonetheless to have written more certainly than others about nature), did not hesitate to call on God himself, as in tragedies as if to explain the errors of men. (p. 178)104

The natural philosopher uses reason to refute false explanations, but then must admit the limits of his understanding, either by confessing ignorance directly or by attributing the phenomena to demonic activity which is necessarily beyond the purview of philosophical investigation.105 Bodin clarifies his attitude toward skepticism here: the confession of ignorance is not designed to impugn the powers of reason or the senses, but rather to lead toward a pious humility and worship of God. There is a positive virtue, then, in recognizing the limits of human understanding. As Bodin concludes on the magnet: "It is better to admire in silence the majesty of the greatest Workman than to want rashly to go insane with reasoning" (p. 249). Bodin does not stress the limits of human understanding for their own sake—he is a firm believer in the coercive power of reasoning and the validity of sense experience—but he sees inexplicable phenomena like earthquakes, magnets, and comets as opportunities for reinforcing piety and humility: like the "admirable" condition of the fetus in the womb, they "should call back the proud from their arrogance" (p. 428). Bodin's natural philosophy, designed as a demonstration, through both reason and the limits of reason, of the principles of "true religion," elucidates some of Bodins deepest convictions and at the same time his strategy of evasiveness, which has spawned centuries of debate about his "real" beliefs. In the Theatrum Bodin complements earlier attacks (in the Demonomanie, for example) on the attitudes that make true religion impossible, notably the the sins of arrogance, blasphemy, idolatry, and superstition. By framing the Theatrum as an attack on the impious and the Epicureans, Bodin commands the general agreement of any contemporary reader, without volunteering contentious specifics about the "true religion" that he himself advocates. I would suggest that this strategy is not only a judicious act of self-protection, but also a result of his indifference to the hotly debated theological issues of the day which, instead of solving matters, threatened to jeopardize the foundations of religion altogether. Unlike most contemporary natural theologians, Bodin does not try to prove central Christian dogmas, like the Trinity, the Incarnation, or the Redemption, let alone to take a stand (as a number of atheomachs did in the course of their arguments) on specifically Protestant or Catholic doctrines.106 As a result Bodin has been hailed as an early proponent of religious toleration, or of "natural religion,"107 but these terms should not be interpreted in their modern meanings. Bodin always asserted that there was only one true religion, in defense of which he railed against witches, natural magicians, arrogant natural philosophers, and the "impious" in general. Bodin's "toleration" was a far cry from a modern sense of indifference to and respect for the beliefs of others, whatever forms they might take. Like his contemporaries, Bodin was convinced that the moral standing of

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the community as a whole was crucial to the fate of each of its members.108 Scourges such as civil wars, plagues, and earthquakes were divine warnings and expressions of wrath provoked by a generally weak state of piety. Certainly Bodin's France, aflame in civil war, as he reminds us in both the preface and the colophon, was suffering divine retribution. In the Republique Bodin warns that "the fervent love of the honor of God has become so lukewarm and cold from the succession of time that there is danger that in the end it will freeze over.""*1 By practicing and spreading Satanic worship, witches were the most easily identified culprits of this dire state of affairs; Bodin's willingness to suspend the few safeguards in the criminal justice system concerning the use of torture and of circumstantial evidence indicates the great urgency he felt in eradicating this most hidden and heinous of crimes.110 Bodin has sometimes been considered a proponent of a natural, deistic religion. But Bodin never denied a personal God or divine revelation. On the contrary, the Theatrum proposes a natural philosophy that conforms to the authority of the Bible, especially the Old Testament, as direct divine revelation. Furthermore, God is constantly attentive to human deserts, intervening and regulating nature as appropriate to reward or punish. Bodin's God is not bound by reason, nor equated with natural law, and it is precisely because he transcends our understanding that he commands fervent worship, respect, and admiration. Bodin's strategy of avoiding partisan issues and of dwelling, in an active defense of piety, on "areas of accommodation" was common to other late humanists. The Wechel publishers, who reedited the Theatrum in 1597 and 1605, although they remained staunch Calvinists, and fled from Paris to Frankfurt and on to Hanau in the face of religious persecution, upheld irenicist publishing policies: they avoided dogmatic questions and instead printed works by authors of various confessions which, like Bodin's Theatrum, took an erudite and critical approach to questions rather than a partisan one.1" Some Lutheran humanists also shared their outlook, although the Thirty Years' War put an end to this irenic spirit.112 Similarly, Dutch humanists in Leiden and Antwerp, notably those around Christophe Plantin, practiced trade and scholarship (often with a particular interest in nature) in a conscious effort to avoid divisive issues and to foster tolerance and moderation.113 In Leiden, Janus Dousa (in whose liber amicorum Bodin inscribed his signature, apparently during his trip north in 1582) motivated his philological studies as a search for peace and harmony.114 A number of powerful Dutch humanists were also members of the spiritualist sect, the Family of Love, which preached a tolerant, nondogmatic religion: including Plantin, Ortelius, the cartographer (who showed Bodin eggs from a duck-bearing tree, as discussed in chapter 3) and Lipsius, whose De constantia (1585), like Bodin's Theatrum, features God on every page, but a God with no contentious features, a God on whom all could agree. Notorious for his multiple conversions, from Catholicism to various Protestantisms and back again, Lipsius called himself a "Christian philosopher," skirting the obviously delicate question of his more specific affiliation.115 The scattered evidence of Bodin's personal ties to this northern and often Dutch type of humanist scholarship (which is meagre but all the more precious

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since Bodin left so little indication of his friendships) underscores the observation that he shared its intellectual agenda. What Frances Yates identified, in a powerful reinterpretation of the Renaissance, as an irenicism inspired by Hermetic texts, appears increasingly as only one among the many attempts by northern humanists to find nonconfessional and philosophical solutions to the religious conflicts. Despite their various forms of religious unorthodoxy, most of these thinkers were not inspired by Hermeticism, but by a whole range of ancient philosophies recently become accessible. In response to the dire contemporary circumstances, they cultivated an irenicism that could draw from roots as orthodox as Erasmus' own pacifism.116 Bodin's irenicism went hand in hand not with Hermetic interests, but with a peculiar personal religion. Although he was born and buried a Catholic and took the oath of Catholicity required of all avocats at the Parlement of Paris in 1562, he never seemed orthodox to contemporaries—as evidenced by the various arrests and searches to which he was subjected. A contemporary Englishman reported that Bodin was "of the [Protestant] religion"; Casaubon too wondered about that possibility."7 TheJesuit Antonius Possevinus was incensed that Bodin spoke in "honest terms" of Calvin, Luther, and Melanchthon."8 After his death, Bodin was accused of Judaizing."9 The comment was certainly a slur, but also contained some insight into Bodin's intellectual position, as Paul Rose and others have argued expertly.120 Most obvious among the traces of Bodin's Judaizing are his silence on central Christian notions of original sin, grace, justification, and redemption, and the special authority he conferred on the Hebrews as the "keepers of divine secrets," which are found in the Old Testament rather than the New. Although these Judaizing tendencies should not be interpreted as evidence that Bodin actually practiced Judaism—I find his interest in kosher law to be comparative and his knowledge of Hebrew not clearly exceptional—it took much less than Jewish practice to be suspect in sixteenth-century France.121 The key to Bodin's survival, and to the persistence of debates among historians concerning his religious beliefs, was Nicodemism, or the dissimulation of heterodox views behind religious conformity.122 Although Nicodemism is usually associated with members of a persecuted religious minority that existed more openly elsewhere, it was also advocated and practiced by heterodox individuals (starting probably with Otto Brunfels in the 1530s) and clandestine sects.123 Lipsius, for example, while converting back and forth as his academic appointments at Louvain, Jena, Leiden, and again Louvain dictated, kept an internal allegiance to the Family of Love.124 Bodin explicitly justified such practice, in comments that treat religion as a social phenomenon, the guarantee of political stability, and as an outward ritual that divine judgment can penetrate to find the genuine intention behind it. Alongside his passionate invocations of the "one religion, one truth, one divine law published by the mouth of God,"125 in the Republique Bodin also takes a pragmatic approach to religion. Assuming, like many political theorists, that religion guarantees the moral fiber and stability of a state, he warns that religion "once re-

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ceived by common consent" must never be placed m dispute, "because all things that are in dispute are also put in doubt But it is great impiety to put in doubt that on which everyone must be resolved and assured; there is no thing so clear and so true that is not obscured and shaken by disputing it, even among those who rely not on demonstration or reason but on faith alone.'"26 As a result, religions should be maintained wherever they are; like any change in the Republic, a change in religion would be extremely dangerous, and sedition is most likely when two religions in particular are in rivalry. In any case, Bodin concludes "just as the greatest tyranny is not as miserable as anarchy, just so the strongest superstition in the world is not as detestable as atheism [or no religion at all]. One must flee the greater evil when one cannot establish the true religion.'"" Better, then, to settle for the religion in place, whatever its faults, than to try inappropriately to change it. The exact nature of an established religion becomes even less important to Bodin in the Demonomanie, where he develops a theory of intention to distinguish between the intolerable practices of witchcraft and similar religious habits among the pagans. Those who mean to ally themselves with the devil, Bodin explains, even if they fail, are no less guilty than those who actually do, "for there is no less impiety in offending what one thinks is God than in offending God himself; . . . God looks at the heart and intention, which is the basis of all good and bad actions.'"28 Conversely, the pagan practices of divination, although doubly impious because they sought answers about the future and involved sacrificing to idols, do not constitute sorcery, "because [the pagans] did it in the best conscience that they had and they thought that they were pleasing God."129 God can read the hearts of men and judges their intentions more than their actual practice.130 Given his careful destruction of personal papers, the lack of extant correspondence, and the constraints on publication in late sixteenth-century France, what Bodin really believed is inevitably a matter of conjecture. It is not my purpose to elaborate on Bodin's private religion, but to show from his sincere and often passionate attacks on specific sins what constituted for him the core of piety required of everyone, regardless of religious affiliation. The Theatrum can be read for this purpose as an extension of the arguments of the Demonomanie. Bodin insists on nothing that was not already a matter of agreement among the religious groups represented in Europe and around the Mediterranean in his day: worship of a single, omnipotent, and provident God and humility in the face of his inscrutable will. But on these few points Bodin is uncompromising. He fears impiety, in the form especially of arrogance, blasphemy, idolatry, and superstition. Arrogance is characteristic of natural philosophers who claim to explain everything, and advance silly reasons for phenomena instead of admitting that they cannot understand: "the greatest praise one can give to God is to confess one's own ignorance; and it is an insult to God not to recognize the weakness of one's brain."131 It is arrogant also to deny a fact simply because one does not understand it, as Bodin complains many do of witchcraft, for against God "one cannot argue from impossibility given the weakness of our mind "'32 After all, if the sphere of the fixed

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stars travels naturally at 1,706,155 leagues per day, who are we to assert that God with his supernatural agency cannot give Satan the power to transport witches to the sabbath?133 Arrogance keeps us from properly recognizing and paying homage to the greatness of God. Blasphemy is the sin of directing toward a mere creature praise that should be addressed to God. To attribute supernatural or even natural but hidden powers to merely material things is blasphemy: "he who takes the power of natural things as proceeding from them is insulting God, to whom the praise is due.'"31 Bodin admits all kinds of natural, occult powers associated with stones, animals and plants: the aetites or eagle-stone when ground up into bread reveals a thief, who will choke on it (pp. 234, 249); the behalzehar is a versatile antidote to poisons of all kinds (p. 241); cabbage juice counteracts drunkenness, and squill (sea onion) makes the plants around it grow better "by some occult power hidden in the treasures of nature" (p. 294). These powers are natural but hidden, and on both counts reveal the wisdom of divine providence. Not only do they render great services to humans, but by being occult and hidden from our understanding they further incite us to piety: "if the [occult power of each gemstone] were open to all, it would not generate an admiration for the creator nor that usefulness that is gathered from the knowledge of hidden things" (p. 233).135 Every occult power should thus remind us to acknowledge its ultimate source. Bodin does not challenge the vast tradition of occult natural powers passed down in medicine and natural history,136 but he does reject as impious (most) claims that material substances have powers over supernatural phenomena. "I do not agree with those who think that demons flee diamonds: which opinion is conjoined with impiety since it turns men away from the worship of the single God toward a trust in empty things. It is a similar error to think that hyacinth protects one from lightning" (p. 231). Here Bodin has redrawn the boundary between natural and supernatural. Lightning, like storms and earthquakes, is caused by demonic agency (p. 208); therefore it would be blasphemous to attribute to these stones power against the forces unleashed by God. Nonetheless, Bodin does seem to violate his own principle, when he admits that squill and rue are inimical to demons and witches, due to their high salt content (pp. 29495)—perhaps he has drawn some holy associations with salt from the Bible.137 Idolatry is the sin most prominent in the Demonomanie, of worshiping another power than God. Bodin pursues witches not for the crimes they commit against humans (although he acknowledges their reality), but for the most heinous crime of all—"divine lese-majeste."138 Witches are deluded into thinking that Satan is independent from God, whereas, despite Manichean tendencies of his own, Bodin insists that demons and Satan are only carrying out divine commands as part of a broader providential plan.139 Indeed, because demons act only with the consent of God, Bodin explains that they cannot be used against states or magistrates; he thus offers, in passing, an explanation for the radical differences between the worlds he discusses in the Republique and the Demonomanie, which have often puzzled historians.140

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The greater risk for natural philosophers is the sin of superstition, or the attempt to control and conjure demonic powers as if they were natural forces. Superstition is a great evil, even when it is applied in the service of good causes. "Th. It remains to ask whether the actions of demons are natural? M. That is what Theophrastus Paracelsus left behind in his writings, who is said to have lived always familiarly with demons, as his writings indicate in some way. Whence this plague of natural magic has invaded the minds of the ignorant, but since we have written abundantly on this elsewhere. We should say nothing about it here" (pp. 177-78). In the Demonomanie Bodin names Agrippa, Pomponazzi, and Paracelsus as the worst sorcerers of his age (following on Avicenna, Algazel, and Alfarabi). By claiming that they are only manipulating the natural forces of plants, animals, stones, and celestial bodies, they are "covering under the veil of nature the sorceries, vanities, and pagan superstitions of the idolaters and sorcerers.'"41 They are, in fact, trying to manipulate supernatural forces: like the Cabbala, theirs is "a real, pernicious magic that destroys entirely the foundations of the law of God."142 If Bodin simply thought all such superstitions ineffective, he would not so vehemently oppose them. But Bodin believes on the one hand that God intervenes in the world and has left supernatural messages and gifts in nature for human use, and on the other hand that demons let humans manipulate supernatural forces in order to enlist them in the cause of evil, by giving them the illusion of magical control. The distinction between the legitimate interpretation of nature as divine activity and the illegitimate use of nature by those who deny divine agency in nature is thus of paramount importance. In order to keep his own methods of astrological numerology (e.g., in the life cycles of states) or his own list of occult remedies safe from impiety, Bodin must rehearse his acknowledgments of divine free will, omnipotence and providence, and lash out against those who deny the activity of God in nature. Natural magic—that is, the claim to effect naturally, automatically, without supernatural intervention, results that are in fact supernatural in origin—is only a less explicit form of witchcraft, which invokes the powers of material things rather than Satan directly, but in any case fails to render to God what is his due: praise, prayer, and recognition that all powers flow only from him. The four sins of arrogance, blasphemy, idolatry, and superstition are manifestations of the same human pride and unwillingness to acknowledge the transcendence of God. They constitute the impiety that Bodin so feared was running rampant in his day, as evidenced by the flowering of witchcraft and the civil wars that were likely divine retribution. Although the Theatrum is also motivated by the utility of pedagogy and the pleasure of accumulated research, it is another attempt by Bodin (after the Demonomanie and the Republique) to address the crisis of his time: to rid the country of atheists by means of a properly pious natural philosophy. Bodin's strategies include demonstrating religious truths through "necessaiy reasons," proving divine providence by bringing a myriad particulars of nature to their first cause, and showing the limits of human reason in the face

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of divine free will. In his own peculiar way Bodin proposed a new solution to the ongoing problem of reconciling religion and philosophy: the Theatrum is an eclectic and largely anti-Aristotelian natural philosophy harnessed to an attack on the cardinal sin of human pride. Just as in the Republique Bodin proposed foundations for a state that would be supraconfessional, so too in the Theatrum he meant to gather consensus for a core of pious principles shared by all confessions, and grounded in the study of nature, whose lessons about God could be made demonstratively clear. Bodin's nonpartisan religious sentiment should not be understood as mere pragmatism, but as an active form of piety—active enough indeed to motivate the substantial project of the Theatrum.

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by 1600, as attested by the less than serious tone in which Shakespeare and Cervantes, to cite the most famous examples, placed the topos in the mouths of their characters.1 Because of its use by a number of canonical literary figures m the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the theatrum mundi has been the object of much interest.3 In its classic formulation, as expressed by Ronsard for example, "the world is a theater, men are the actors, fortune is the stage director, . . . the heavens and fates are its spectators."3 Bodin's Theatrum, however, points to two other, equally widespread but virtually unstudied uses of the metaphor of the "theater" in the early modern period, which I will trace in this chapter: the notion of nature as a theater, in which the human is the spectator rather than the actor, looking out at the world as to a stage where God displays his skill and providence as author and producer;4 and the "theater" as a book title, which announces encyclopedic ambitions to treat a vast topic in a concise and systematic way, and graces all kinds of works that try to accomplish this elusive goal. By playing off both these metaphors, Bodin's title encapsulates his most significant themes—his demonstration of divine providence, and his encyclopedic survey of all of nature. Both of these uses of the metaphor which I study were widespread in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries: I trace the first among natural philosophical authors mostly from 1550 to 1630; the second I follow in titles across many different fields, in a survey spanning roughly 1550 to 1700. Unlike the classic formulation of the theatrum mundi, which has antecedents in ancient and medieval literature, these two metaphors appeared in the sixteenth century: before them one finds related metaphors, such as the "book of nature" and books entitled "mirror." In the early modern penod all three theatrical metaphors interacted to form a veritable fad, in a period when not only stage plays, but also royal rituals, anatomical dissections, and natural collections marshaled an increasingly theatrical apparatus. But the two that I trace were especially fueled, I argue, by the Renaissance awareness of the vast scope of nature and of knowledge to be embraced. Bodin's use of them offers both an especially rich case, since he combines two of these metaphors in his title and work, and a representative one, as each of them can be found (generally singly) among other near-contemporaries, before and, in greater numbers, after him. THE THEATER OF NATURE

Rather than the vanity and bitterness of a tragicomic human existence, Bodin's metaphor of the theatrum mundi or theatrum naturae stresses the beauty and order of the world as divine creation. In the opening exchange, when Theorus asks

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Mystagogus to serve as his guide and to teach him the causes and consequences of all things, the latter replies: Indeed you ask for the most beautiful and difficult thing of all which I would consider myself supremely happy to have acquired if I could acquire it from some mortal or god: because we have come into this theater of the world for no other reason than to understand insofar as we can, by contemplating the appearance of the universe and all the actions and individual works of the greatest Creator of all things, his admirable power, goodness, and wisdom, and to be swept away more ardently in praise of him. (p. 10, emphasis added) The theatrum mundi here is the display of divine providence for human edification. This providential theme is not new, but better known in another formulation: that of nature as a book written by God, alongside the Bible, in which the creatures are the letters or pages that spell out divine wisdom and bounty for the human reader. This versatile metaphor was not always natural-theological, but first appeared in prophetic and apocalyptic writings (the heavens as book), and in the early atomists, who compared the combination of atoms to form things with the way letters are combined to form words.5 The "book of nature" took its more familiar form in medieval pulpit eloquence and was used by both theologians and philosophers.6 From the Renaissance on, it had unusually wide appeal, among natural theologians (most famously perhaps, Ramon Sabunde),7 but also natural philosophers of many persuasions, both traditional and "modern" (from Athanasius Kircher to Descartes) and across many disciplines, including natural history, the occult sciences, and astronomy (as in Aldrovandi, Agrippa of Nettesheim, Galileo, and Kepler).8 The image of the theater in comparison with that of the book of nature would seem to emphasize a visual, nonverbal form of contemplation: the "theater"— from its root in theaomai, "to look at,"—is first of all something that one watches, a spectacle, as sixteenth-century dictionaries indicate.9 Yet the natural-philosophical books that exploit the metaphor of the theater of nature, occasionally in titles (like Bodin's Theatrum) and, most commonly, in prefaces and justifications, are generally texts without illustrations, which represent the culmination of a largely bookish cycle of producing knowledge. Instead of greater visual or empirical immediacy, I argue, the "theater of nature" in Renaissance natural philosophy emphasized especially the vastness and grandeur of nature, its varied and complex harmonies laid out all at once for human contemplation—stressing the same kind of encyclopedic themes as the "theater" as title. More specifically than the book, the theater was also associated with moral edification and the twin goals of pleasing and instructing. Finally, the "theater of nature" was more than a spectacle: it is, according to Mystagogus, a place "into" which "we have come." As a result, even if the role for humans in this natural philosophical "theater of the world" is not to act out a role, but to watch and contemplate, the spectator is still part of the scene, ambiguously both observer and participant in nature. The only precedent for this new metaphor of the theater of the world that I have found is one that Bodin may well have known—from Philo's On the Creation

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of the World·, a later author of a Theatrum naturae (1672) explicitly acknowledges it in his school discussion of Aristotle's Physics,10 but earlier authors who used the metaphor, like Melanchthon in 1552, may not have been aware of it. Philo compares the creation to the preparation of a banquet or of theatrical or competitive games: In the same way, the guide of the universe, like an organizer of games and feasts, intending to call man to a feast and a spectacle, arranged m advance what could serve these two ends, so that in coming into this world, he would find straight away the banquet and the most holy theater, the first filled with all that the earth, rivers, sea, and air produce for one's enjoyment; the other full of spectacles of all kinds, presenting surprising realities, striking qualities, admirable movements and choruses, m harmonious arrangements."

While the banquet feeds prelapsarian humans to their full, the theater set up by God amazes and instructs, with its coordination of different spectacles: it is "the font where the men who came later drew the images that they engraved in their minds.'"2 Setting the parameters for later uses of the metaphor, Philo emphasizes the variety, broad scope, and harmonious beauty of the theater of the world; but unlike most Renaissance authors, Philo has in mind the experience of watching a play, which unfolds through time with carefully orchestrated choral and dancing interludes. The emphasis of Renaissance natural philosophical authors is rather on the static qualities of the theater of nature—its vast expanse, intricate order, and elaborate construction; this theater offers a complete and coherent view of the world in one gaze. The authors of textbooks and school treatises of physics usually repeat about their topic some variant on a simple refrain: "this most spatious theater (or amphitheater) of the world," "this most vast theater of nature."13 The theater of the world is also most beautiful, as Melanchthon stresses for example in his enumeration of the spread of nature: "this whole most beautiful theater, the sky, lights, stars, air, water, earth, plants, animals, and other bodies of the world, is created with such great art, . . . [so] arranged according to sympathy and order, that it is a manifest witness to God the Creator."14 Its beauty lies especially in the bonds of "sympathy" that connect the parts of the world to form an orderly and cohesive whole, and which are for Melanchthon, as for Bodin, a crucial sign of divine planning. The metaphor bridged confessional differences, as the Jesuit Louis Cressolles, too, stressed the combination of beauty, order, and expanse that makes nature into a theater: "The beauty of the world, the wondrous order of the things created by God . . . and all the admirable features that shine forth even in the smallest things extend like a theater in which the singular power and goodness of the divinity are triumphant, which is constantly the most pleasant spectacle for the soul."15 The theatrum mundi is less a dramatic sequence requiring a stage director than a vast ordered construction revealing a divine builder. To one steeped in the recovery of ancient culture, a "theater" often first meant a large public structure, noted for its orderly and beautiful design. Theaters rank alongside the temples, colonnades, and other "most beautiful and rare things"

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which, according to Theorus in Bodin's Theatrum, the "mystagogues" or tour guides of the most distinguished cities showed their foreign visitors.16 The theater metaphor becomes one of the many forms of the argument from design, comparable to and often combined with metaphors of nature as a lovely home, or an intricate machine,17 which reveals through its beauty the wisdom and power of its architect and Creator. It thus serves the same purpose as the watch would, more famously, for natural theologians of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. In an unusual combination, in 1594 La Primaudaye concludes that the world is shop display, temple, and more than that—a theater that manifests wealth and divinity all at once. "[The world] is a great, beautiful, and rich shop in which the sovereign and excellent artisan shows all of his works so that he may be known by them. It is a temple, in which there is no creature so small that is not an image of its Creator, to show him and make him clear to us. In short, it is a theater, where the divine essence, justice, providence, love, and wisdom act with their admirable virtue on all nature from the top of the sky down to the center of the earth.'"8 He refers back to one of the medieval meanings of "theatrum" as "shop display," then moves to the temple metaphor commonplace among ancient writers in the diffuse tradition of the "religion of the world" (Plutarch for example called the world a "very holy temple full of divine majesty").19 But he surpasses both the medieval shop display and the ancient temple with a Christian understanding of the world as the theater of divine providence. The metaphor of the theater as a place that one enters and passes through is often pursued quite literally: "The extent [of natural philosophy] is so great that the life of no single man could suffice to go through in passing this theater of nature. . . . so that I offered myself to accompany some young men desirous of entering the theater of nature."20 Frances Yates has shown that the notion of "entering" a theater of knowledge need not be merely metaphorical. In the 1530s Giulio Camillo Delminio designed a physical structure called a "theater" in which one or two "spectators" could stand as if on a stage in the center of the room, looking up toward the stands to gaze at the images laid out there. The purpose was didactic, in Camillo's case to teach the elements of the Hermetic worldview, and an outgrowth, Yates argues, of the long tradition of memory palaces.21 There is no evidence that Camillo's theater spawned any imitations, but it certainly gave its designer a fame which grew at his death, and the publication of its description by Girolamo Muzio may well mark the beginning of the trend toward theatrical metaphors about nature and books.22 Physical "theaters of knowledge" were probably more widely experienced at the time in other contexts. In 1593 Leiden University built a permanent amphitheater of anatomy which was an imitation of the one at the University of Padua: a circular structure filled with steeply rising benches around the dissection table in the center. But the early professors of anatomy responsible for its upkeep soon added a new dimension to the practical teaching tool. Their collection of skeletons was expanded to include general natural curiosities and antiquities (including a mummy and a Roman urn, for example). They also acquired a large number of engravings that conveyed basic anatomical and medical information

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(allegories of the four temperaments, depictions of nudes with some anatomical detail) while illustrating variations on the theme of memento mori.23 The anatomical theater and dissections performed there were not only a requirement of medical education, but also a show open to the public every winter for a fee, which offered entertainment and instruction, both moral and medical; it proved a great success as part of the "social season."24 While nature could be contemplated "as if" in a theater, natural knowledge could actually be displayed in a theater. Similarly, collections of natural history were also called "theaters of nature" or "of all natural things" by contemporaries.25 Such collections displayed both nature itself, in the form of curious specimens, and knowledge about nature as possessed by the collector. Access to these privately owned collections was more or less restricted, but the visitor to Aldrovandi's extraordinary collection, for example, was treated to a spectacular tour, reports of which gave it an international reputation. Although only a few were privy to the experience directly, books and images about these collections made them known to a broader educated audience both in their day and later.26 These uniquely Renaissance "theaters of nature," from Camillo's Hermetic scheme to natural collections, shared with the natural philosophers who used the metaphor in their writings an acute awareness of the vast scope and endless variety of nature, fostered no doubt in large part by the continuous flow of discoveries of both new texts and new things. Although it coexisted with metaphors of the book of nature, the metaphor of the theater of nature especially conveyed the encyclopedic ideal of bringing a vast topic under a single, all-encompassing gaze. Appropriately, it seems to originate in the Renaissance, with Camillo's theater perhaps, in the 1530s; Melanchthon used it without much ado in 1552, presumably because he found it commonplace. It lasted well into "modern" natural history, as exemplified by this translation from Linnaeus: If therefore the Maker of all things, who has done nothing without design, has furnished this earthly globe, like a museum, with the most admirable proofs of his wisdom and power; if, moreover, this splendid theatre would be adorned m vain without a spectator; and if he has placed in it Man, the chief and most perfect of all his works, who alone is capable of duly considering the wonderful oeconomy of the whole; it follows that Man is made for the purpose of studying the creator's works."

Globe, museum, theater—Linnaeus' terms are more up-to-date (including the "museum" developed in the seventeenth century)28 but evoke the same vast expanse and variety of nature as the evidence of choice for the traditional natural theological project. Linnaeus also poses, as many Renaissance authors did, the problem of the human role in the theater of nature. Nature as theater, marvelous spectacle, and intricate physical structure, requires a spectator.25 Daniel Sennert adds the weight of that most ancient authority, Hermes Trismegistus: "even long ago Hermes Trismegistus left some writing in this sense: 'Man stands above the brute animals and the world by his reason and his mind. Indeed Man was made to be the spectator of the works of God, and he admired them and knew the Creator.'"30 Sennert's

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Hermes joins Cicero of the Dream oj Scipio or De natura deorum, or Philo, as an ancient and authoritative source for this theme of human contemplation of divinity in the world. At the same time, though, humans are generally to some extent included as part of the theater of nature on display. La Primaudaye, for example, also uses the metaphor which he had earlier applied to the natural world as a whole to describe his treatment of humans in particular: "we presented [man] before everyone as if on a theater, with his main parts and faculties of body and soul."31 The human body and mental faculties are similarly included in the works of Sennert, Keckermann, Casmann, and Bodin, among those who make most use of the theatrum mundi metaphor. The human spectator thus examines himself alongside the rest of nature with the same detached analysis of physiological and psychological functions. In the theater of nature the human spectator does not become an actor with a moral dimension, or the object of the spectator's compassion. But it is perhaps a sign of the tensions inherent in this observation of self that these general treatments of natural philosophy eschew detailed considerations of human nature in favor of lengthier sections on the principles of physics, the elements, and meteorological phenomena. Some wrestle explicitly with the multiple roles for humans in the theater of the world, as Frangois Baudouin did in 1561, in the opening pages of one of the first French "methods" of history, which called for the conjoining of legal and historical scholarship to ground jurisprudence in the mos gallicus tradition: We have been placed by God in this world as in a most vast amphitheater, first as spectators, then as actors, and even in some way as judges. . . . We cannot help, if we have eyes, seeing the natural things, which the diligent revolution of the celestial orbs and this immobile globe of earth every day offer to our eyes willy-nilly, differing in their admirable variety, yet recurring with constant and eternal regularity. . . . This theona, which is also called natural histoiy (as Plato calls the science of physical things history), of which I speak now, shows the admirable structure, size, beauty and (in a word) univeise or Jtosmos of the amphitheater. But those things which are carried out and happen among men, I call human and divine conjoined with human, which are like the actions begun on this stage from the founding of the world and brought down to the present age. This history, of which 1 prepare to speak, proposes them to our intelligence, memory and souls to be contemplated as if painted in a painting [in tabula pictas]. . . . If we consider the nature and histoiy of animals, birds, quadrupeds, fish, we meet, I admit, great miracles. But the history of the nobler animals, that is of men, is far different and more wonderful. . . .32

The theater of nature has all the usual characteristics—vast, beautiful, and harmoniously arranged—that reveal a divine Creator. But Baudouin finds the theater of human actions more interesting: on the one hand it is full of the frauds and confusions of human affairs, but on the other hand divine agency is at work alongside the human, and divine providence can be discerned in history as well as in nature. Similarly, Philippe Duplessis Mornay sees in human affairs as much as in nature the manifestation of divine will and providence; thus, to carry out his difficult project of reviving Christian piety, he will turn to "the world, to man,

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and to the theater of all the centuries, in a word to God himself, and . . . to everything in which he has manifested himself in the creation and in the conduct of the universe."33 For Baudouin, and even more explicitly for Mornay, human history or the "theater of the centuries" resembles less the theater of human existence, miserable and vain and the laughingstock of the gods, than the extension of the cosmic theater of divine providence from its usual spatial definition in nature to the temporal dimension; but in this temporal extension of the metaphor humans are not just spectators but also actors under divine direction. The classic literary use of the theatrum mundi as a variant on the theme of the vanity of human life also appears occasionally in treatments of nature, primarily by religious writers. As we saw above (p. 51) the prelate Simon Maiole does not use a natural-theological justification: instead he treats the marvels of nature before dismissing human experience as a bubble that dances on the water and bursts. Both Maiole and his French translator refer to the theater of human life, and the work ends on the theatrical version of the vanitas theme: "Thus we see that all the actions of men are nothing but a stage where a beautiful tragedy is played."34 For the Calvinist theologian Lambert Daneau, too, purely religious concerns outweigh natural theological ones as he repeats, in refuting the Marcionite heresy, the "old adage": "The life of man is a fable, the world a theater."35 More typical, however, of the attitude toward the theater of human life among natural philosophers is the position of Otho Casmann who contrasts the sorry picture of the human theater with the glorious theater of nature. In the preface to his textbook of physics of 1605 he asks his dedicatee, a member of the local government: "What more honorable pleasure for a man of government than to withdraw occasionally from the court, a theater glittering with cares and often wretched, into the theater of universal nature [universae naturae . . . theatrum] marvelously built by God the Creator, so that, relaxing his mind in the contemplation of the admirable works of God he rises toward God the Architect himself and glorifies him?"36 Similarly, in the Theatrum Bodin bemoans the corruption of human affairs in which, like Baudouin and Mornay, he too had labored to find the patterns of divine agency; and he leaves aside the "great theater" of the law courts which reveals the sordid agency of men, "the secret actions, traffics, and doings of all kinds of men."37 Instead, in the Theatrum he praises the contemplation of the constancy, beauty, and harmony of unadulterated nature as the most direct route to the divine Creator. The theater of "universal nature" is the theater of God himself.38

THE BOOK AS THEATER

Not only does Bodin use the metaphor of the theatrum naturae in his text, calling the natural world a vast and beautiful theater of divine providence, but he bases his title on apparently the same metaphor. Bodin easily conflates, as we have seen, the study of nature, that is, the discipline of natural philosophy, with nature itself, the subject of that discipline.3' He is in general not particularly attentive to

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the potential distance between a subject and the knowledge or treatment of that subject. The most likely interpretation of Bodin's choice of title, then, is that here too he conflates the material he will discuss, nature, with the book itself which discusses it. Just as contemporary collections displayed elements of both the "theater of nature" and of the "theater of natural knowledge," Bodin also moves, perhaps without even reflecting on it, from a commonplace metaphor, the theater of nature, to a different metaphor—that of the book as theater. Bodin's title may have resulted from the extension of a metaphorical description of his subject matter, but, once chosen, the metaphoric title of the book as theater becomes the object of further discussion by both author and translator. In introducing his French translation, Frangois de Fougerolles exploits the metaphor of the theater in a direction that we have already encountered—the theater as a display of wonders; but he also adds a more explicitly political dimension. "[I set out] to let Frenchmen enjoy what [Bodin] offers in his learned Theater, to represent for them the marvels of nature, just as in the old days the great captains would do for the people of a city, when they gave a Theater to show them something rare or by representing live the story of some noteworthy thing."40 The theater offers edifying entertainment, and at the same time commands the respect and awe of the people for the "great captains" who put on the show for them. To the historian the "theater" in this context evokes, too, the elaborate structures built for royal entries and ceremonies which symbolized the grandeur and majesty of the ruler for all the inhabitants of a city to see.41 Fougerolles' emphasis on the marvelous and singular displayed to please and instruct, but also to impress and possibly appease the people, is peculiar to his translation and perhaps intentionally suited to its vernacular audience. Nonetheless, the same themes underly Bodin's (and others') praise of natural philosophy: the "theater" or display of nature in a book is both useful (to confound atheists, for example) and pleasant, as the justificatory refrain goes;42 but in addition, although the point is rarely made explicitly, in displaying the admirable and awesome power of God, it commands worship of the divine majesty—a majesty that is too great to be compared with any human power, and requires, even more than a temporal ruler, a stance of humble submission and admiration.43 In Bodin's discussion of his book as Theatrum, the title refers to the nature of the book itself. As Bodin explains in the dedicatory epistle, his "theater" is a special kind of work: "And the Theater of Nature is nothing other than a sort of table [tabula] of the things created by the immortal God placed before the eyes of everyone, so that we may contemplate and love the majesty, power, goodness, wisdom of the author himself and his admirable providence in the highest, the middling and the smallest things" (sig. 3v). Bodin conceives his Universae naturae theatrum as a display of all of nature open to everyone, just as Camillo's theater tried to embrace all of Hermetic philosophy and to make it accessible to many viewers. What Bodin means by "tabula" is somewhat clearer at the end of Book I in a passage which, significantly, also contains the third and final reference to the "theater" in Bodin's Theatrum. Announcing the opening section of Book II, Theorus asks Mystagogus:

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Th. . . . But before we advance to elements and elementary bodies [from the principles of nature] and to the individual appearances of things, display if you please the table [tabula] of the whole world, as in a theater, so that with everything set out as it were before the eyes, the essence and faculty of each thing may be more easily understood. M. I will try to do this, but since nothing seemed more difficult to Plato than to divide well, it will be necessary for us to rely in dividing and defining not so much on authority as on the most certain reasons, as I have thought it appropriate in all disputations about nature. (Pp. 129-30, emphasis added)

Adding in this one instance a new task to the triple method of the natural philosopher, that of "division," Mystagogus offers in the first few pages of Book II a general classification of the main topics covered in the Theatrum, according to the subdivisions of the natural being—defined by its two components, body and accident (pp. 133-39). The natural body is either perfect or imperfect, animate or inanimate, the combinations of which define the categories of nature used m Bodin's Theatrum: elements, meteorological phenomena, minerals and metals, plants, and animals, which are further classified as intelligent or brutish, earthly or celestial. Alongside the heavenly bodies and angels, the celestial animals, are the terrestrial animals, which include insects, birds, fish, and land creatures— reptile or mammal, ruminant or not. Many of these categories are further subdivided; ruminants, for example, according to whether they have horns or not, are covered with wool or hair, are domestic or wild. For plants, Bodin only distinguishes tree and grass, both of which may be fruit-bearing or not. A parallel but shorter examination of "accident" contains similar divisions and definitions of some of the Aristotelian categories: quantity is either continuous or discrete; quality is intellectual or sensible, the latter intrinsic or extrinsic; place comes in six types and time in two; Bodin also includes here, somewhat incongruously, the six perfect bodies. No other passage in the Theatrum is so clearly "tabular" in the sense of setting up successive divisions of the subject matter Bodin consciously maintains a roughly dichotomous organization "because the best way to divide is by dichotomia" (p. 134). Bodin's use of the Greek term for "dichotomy" evokes Aristotle's critique of the method, where he is generally taken to be attacking Plato for a practice that he considers artificial and destructive of natural groupings; Bodin ignores the critique, however, and follows a dichotomizing trend made famous by, but not exclusive to Ramist teaching aids.44 Once Bodin enters the details of each subject, the divisions and even the categories presented in this unique "tabular" passage are of course forgotten. In the French translation Fougerolles appends a series of twelve tables which resemble the roughly dichotomous tables so often associated with Ramism. They do not use the same divisions and categories as those outlined verbally by Bodin, which is an indication perhaps that the two sets of dichotomies do not derive from a single philosophical program like Ramism; nonetheless, Fougerolles shares the same goal of presenting "a table, as in a theater" (see figure 4). In introducing the tables in his appendix, Fougerolles explains, in a passage of his own composition:

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Fig. 4. Fougerolles' "Seventh Table," for Book III of Bodin's Theatrum, in which he largely ignores Bodin's categories, both those outlined in Bodin's "tabular passage" (p. 134) and those used in the section on plants (pp. 2 7 0 - 9 6 ) , in favor of his own classification of the ways of knowing plants. Photograph reprinted with permission of Bibliotheque Nationale de France—Paris. Having finished this translation I thought of adding a table [tableau] to find more easily the subject matter of the things treated in this whole work. Nonetheless I was in doubt as to whether I should order it alphabetically, like the common ones, which are better suited to words than to subjects, or if I should arrange it by the division of the things contained therein, which seemed more convenient, and all the more so as one cannot imagine how much benefit can be drawn from it, since this doctrine is entirely philosophical and can only be well understood from the definitions and divisions which are hidden to one who reads out of order. He can thus use these tables like a door or a board [planche] to enter the Theater and to take his place according to his ability or according to the nature of the subject which he wants to contemplate and with great contentment, if only he makes the effort of perusing them, although they are not as large as the subject requires." (F917, emphasis added) Fougerolles first presents his appended tables as a form of index, which h e calls a tableau, useful for finding the material treated in the book. He prefers to arrange this "index" methodically rather than alphabetically, revealing a concern c o m m o n to other contemporaries to preserve the natural connections of a subject rather

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than sacrificing them to the artificial order of words.45 Then Fougerolles refers to a planche—a word that, like Bodin's tabula, is associated with the theater. Fougerolles' planche may be a signboard assigning seats or a program of sorts; it helps the viewer find what he has come for. Bodin's "tabula of the whole world, as in a theater" could possibly refer to a tabula picta or painting such as might be used as the backdrop on a stage;46 Baudouin, in the quotation above, uses a similar phrase in developing his metaphor of history as theater. Or the tabula could denote the stage itself, with its orderly and often elaborate arrangement of receding buildings, trees, and columns to create the impression of depth.47 Although it is hard to fully appreciate the connection of the "table" with the theater, in the usage of both Fougerolles and Bodin, the "tabula" has clear connotations which help explain how Bodin conceives his work, that "Theater of Nature which is nothing other than a table of the things created by the immortal God. . . ." The "tabula," whether presented in discursive or in graphic form, is first of all clear and easy to follow, unencumbered by detail, a schema of the subject at hand. Secondly, both Bodin's "tabular section" and Fougerolles' tables taken together cover the entirety of the material: the "tabula," and still more Bodin's "theater," reinforced by the "universae" of the title, is global in scope. As Duplessis Mornay asserts in his argument against atheism, the "tableau" is convincing precisely because it gathers the relevant arguments together in one place so that they can be seen all at once: "whoever is willing to represent everything in a tableau to see them all at once, the promise and the prophecies of Christ, the coming of Jesus and the progress of his Gospels, will not be able to deny, even by the rules of true philosophy, that he is sent by God himself."48 Finally the "tabula" establishes the links connecting each part of the subject matter to the others. Bodin's verbal table is especially hierarchical, as each level of branching generates subordinate divisions, while Fougerolles places all the subsections of the natural body on the same level (this may be due in part to the typographical difficulties of fitting deeply branching tables onto a single page). Nonetheless in both cases every element is clearly located within the whole. Since Bodin's aim in the Tkeatrum is to offer "nothing other than a table," he ostensibly perceives his "theater" as a work with tabular qualities: brief, but clear and systematic, covering the entire subject and explaining the place of every element within it. Even in a subtitle that minimizes the specificity of the metaphor, Clemens Timpler, in teaching natural philosophy in Calvinist Germany, associates clarity, brevity, and generality with the "theater," in his textbook entitled: "Methodical system of physics or natural philosophy, in which all of nature, as if in a mirror or theater, is briefly and clearly explained and discussed through theorems and problems and proposed for contemplation."49 The fact that Bodin's Theatrum strikes the modern reader as less systematic than rambling, less global than full of specific and apparently unrelated details, is a function not of Bodin's aims, but of the difficulty of fulfilling the goal of the "theater" when the mass of material to be included overwhelms existing systematic frameworks and when the principle of representation is one-to-one reproduction. Bodin's conflation of his subject matter with his knowledge of it is a source of

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difficulty in making the Theatrum a table or schema of nature. Bodin has no method for reducing the vast subject matter into a more schematic representation, and does not much discuss the ways of knowing God through nature, but assumes that he can recognize and then show divine agency in nature simply by reporting its every detail. In the final pages of the Theatrum Bodin gives the best indication yet of how God is visible in the world: Th. Why did the Creator of the world and the Founder of all things, in answer to the Legislator's questions that he show him his face, respond that his face could be seen by no mortal, but only his back? Qob 34:29) M. This elegant allegory signifies that God cannot be known by superior or preceding causes because there are none, but only from behind, that is, from his effects. Shortly after he added: "I will cover your eyes with my hand": his hand signifies his works which he put in front of the eyes of each of us, and he placed man not in a hidden angle, but in the middle of the world, so that he could contemplate much more easily and better than in the sky the universe of all things [universitatem], and all his works, through which he would see the sun, that is God, as if through looking glasses [sperillis]. And for this reason we undertook this disputation about nature and natural things, so that, even if it is tenuously explained , we could reach from it some knowledge of the Creator and burst into praise of him with all our strength, so that finally borne up to the sublime by these steps we can enjoy divine beatitude: which is the final and highest good of man. (P 633)50

Bodin concedes that all human knowledge of God is inevitably weak and filtered through the "glass" of his works,51 but he is also confident that this contemplation is the most direct route to God. Bodin intertwines the pessimistic and optimistic strands present in Philo's "religion of the world" as well as in Augustinian piety, but on balance is more optimistic than many of his immediate contemporaries, and closer to a sanguine conception of natural theology such as that of Ramon Sabunde. Many contemporaries in the late sixteenth century were more skeptical than Bodin about the possibility of an easy representation of the theater of nature. Calvin, for example, maintained that before the Fall, humans could appreciate the glory of God as displayed in the mirror, theater, or book of the world (he uses all these metaphors at various points);52 after the Fall, while nature lost nothing of its purity as theater of divine glory, humans lost their ability to perceive God in nature. Thus Calvinists like Pierre Viret and La Primaudaye1 copying him, warn that reading the book of nature is not easy: The Spirit of God often sets out in the Holy Scnptures this whole visible world as a great book of nature and of true natural theology, and all the creatures, as preachers and universal witnesses to God their creator and to his works and glory. There are nevertheless very few [men] who have the eyes that are required to read in this book and who have ears suited to hearing the voices and sermons of these natural preachers, even amid the most learned and those who have best pursued research into nature and who have most progressed in the knowledge of natural things and of the liberal arts and all human philosophy.53

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Similarly, the Calvinist vernacular poet du Bartas, who also uses images of the world as theater, mirror, and school, reasserts that faith alone makes possible a correct reading of the book of nature.54 Among Catholics, Montaigne, not surprisingly, also finds nature and God's traces in nature hard to read.55 On a lighter note, but with similar implications, the Italian physician Garimberto, author of some problemata, responds in this way to the question of why pretty faces can seem ugly to some and vice versa: "If men were true spectators of things, and if on the contrary the things that one sees were really beautiful, it is certain that one would know very well to discern between the beautiful and the ugly: but because there is no true spectator of an object nor any truly beautiful object, inasmuch as only the idea of good is beautiful and the fancy that considers it is the only true spectator, all other things are only images of beauty."56 In this case there is no true beauty to begin with, but even if there were (as in the contemplation of divine works), the human spectator cannot be a "true spectator." Books, theaters, mirrors were such long-lived metaphors for describing nature because they functioned through both thick and thin of the natural-theological project: to the pessimists these metaphors illustrated the need for proper interpretation, and the difficulty of finding "true spectators" or undistorted reflections; for the optimists, they expressed the ease of deriving clear instruction, direct representations, and true images of divine activity in the world.57 Often mixed, these metaphors coexisted and reinforced one another to suit each author's purposes throughout the early modern period.58 Those who elevated the metaphor of the theater to the title of their work manifested especially their confidence in being able to give a faithful representation of their topic. The return of greater optimism about the natural-theological project can perhaps be gauged by the number of works about nature that were entitled "theater." Whereas Bodin's Theatrum is to my knowledge the first, by the midseventeenth century there were others, most of them justified as natural theologies. Antonius Deusing's Naturae theatrum universale (1644) couches a school treatment of speculative physics in now familiar terms: "we must admire this Theater of nature in which the architect and governor of nature represents his immense glory as in a mirror"; "those who enter this spacious theater of nature" must contemplate it, so that "from the visible creation of God we will also see with the eyes of nature the invisible and eternal God, Creator and Motor of all things, whom we know more exactly through Scripture."59 Deusing retains a Calvinist's sense that the Bible, that "treasury of all things," provides a more exact knowledge of God, but nonetheless calls for the study of singular things through the senses to complement it.60 Others abandon all reticence about the theological virtues of studying nature. In his Theatre of politicall Flying-Insects (1657), for example, Samuel Purchas exults in the ease of knowing God through his study of bees: "For as God is a glass in heaven, wherein all his creatures are seen, so are the creatures a glass upon earth, wherein we may behold and know our God." In Jan Jonston's Theatrum universale omnium animalium, which used the title for the first time in 1718 in a posthumous collection of natural histories originally published separately in the 1650s (on insects, fish, birds, quadrupeds, etc.), and in

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Franciscus van Sterbeeck's theater of mushrooms (Theatrum fungorum oft Tooneel des Campernoelien [1675], in Dutch) the "theater" was well established as an encyclopedic treatment of a morally edifying topic.61 As is generally known, although poorly understood, among Catholic authors the natural-theological theme was not as prominent. One Theatrum naturae, "generally explained from the eight books of physics [of Aristotle]," records a disputation between two Augustinian canons, presided over by the Benedictine CaroIus Grueber and published in Salzburg in 1662. It boasts rather of the theater as a place of truth, devoid of any "new monsters of opinions," presented simply, for many spectators, and which invites, "by the pleasant variety of things, the intellect to burn with love of knowledge."62 The "theater" as title, while especially favored by Protestant authors, was by no means associated with a specific philosophical or religious agenda, and owed its success and longevity to its versatility. As I argue in the next section, the explosion of works entitled "theater" after 1550, but especially after 1600, signals a growing enthusiasm for and confidence in the possibility of broad pedagogical or encyclopedic treatments in a variety of disciplines, including but ranging far beyond natural theological treatments of nature like Bodin's.

A THEATER OF "THEATERS" Although none of the other books entitled "theater" in the spate of such works published between 1550 and 1700 closely resembles Bodin's Theatrum in subject matter and form, the connotations of the metaphor as it is used in Bodin's The­ atrum can help to elucidate the meaning of the "theaters" published in other, widely differing fields.63 There are of course works entitled "theater" at this time that are not primarily based on metaphor, but discuss the physical structure of the ancient theater, or controversies concerning the moral worth of dramatic composition, which are not relevant to my discussion.64 Sometimes the metaphor was taken so literally as to inspire the construction of temporary theaters, like Camillo's memory theater or the scenic archways built for royal entries and celebrations. One such structure, a "theater of all the sciences," bearing statues of the Muses, was dedicated at the gymnasium of Naples to its benefactor Prince Inigo de Guevara and described in a lavish commemorative volume.65 In most cases, however, the theater announced in titles in the early modern period is not real but metaphorical. The "theater" as a title became such a commonplace that many works so entitled make no explicit reference to the metaphor, and the works that share the title, from a one-page lament over a lost fortune to a multivolume folio compilation of commonplaces, may seem to have nothing in common.66 Nonetheless, the choice of title is worth studying, as one of the most prominent indications that an author gives prospective readers about a book, although the phenomenon has rarely been discussed.67 The metaphor of the theater underlying these titles is multifaceted but rests primarily, I argue, on one or both of two major themes: a moral theme, which

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draws either on the canonical metaphor of the theater of human life or on the association with the theater of the ancients which combined edification with entertainment; and a formal theme, in which the book as "theater" aims, regardless of its actual success, to provide global treatment of a large subject in the form of a "tabula," a concise, clear, and structured if not graphically tabular presentation.68 In practice "theaters" in this latter category often result in ungainly compilations or collections which suffer from the same difficulties as Bodin's Theatrum in representing a vast topic with no explicit awareness of the process of selection involved. In proposing this rough typology of "theaters," I am well aware that my inventory of such works (currently at about 170 titles) is far from exhaustive.69 Nonetheless the patterns that I have found are regularly confirmed as new works come to my attention. The Oxford English Dictionary considers the metaphorical use of the theater in titles, but mixes what I consider different types of "theaters." Its definition corresponds fairly well to my notion of "tabular" book: "a book giving a 'view' or 'conspectus' of some subject; a text-book, manual, treatise (chiefly in titles of such works). Obsolete." But as examples of this definition it includes what I distinguish as laments (Boaistuau's Theatrum mundi in an English translation of 1566), alongside "subject theaters" (Purchas' Theatre of political!. FlyingInsects and Parkinson's Theatrum botanicum) and collections of maps (Speed, The Theatre of the Empire of Great Britain), which I will consider separately below. Laments and Moral "Theaters" In accordance with their interest in the theatrum mundi as the metaphor of the theater of human life, most critics have focused thus far on a specific subgroup of works entitled "theater" which I will call the "lament." Most famous among these are Pierre Boaistuau's Theatre du monde (1558) and jean-Jacques Boissard's The­ atrum vitae humanae (1596). Inhis early "theater," much reprinted and translated, Boaistuau sets the standard for the lament, which describes in successive segments the miseries of human life, from birth to marriage and on to death, through the calamities of war, natural disaster, famine, and plague. In a formulation of the classic theatrum mundi Boaistuau sees this world as "a theater in which some play the role of mechanics of low condition, and others represent the kings, dukes, counts. . . . And yet as soon as they have all laid down their masks and when death comes and puts an end to this bloody tragedy, they all recognize one another as men. And then God who is in heaven laughs at their follies, projects, and vanities (as David attests) but with such a terrible and frightening laugh that it seizes us with fear and makes the whole earth tremble."70 To justify its bitterness Boaistuau maintains that his work is drawn from the best words of the Church Fathers and is designed only to help the public. Boissard's Theatrum vitae humanae similarly traces the "miserable course of human life" from the creation and the Fall to the wars of ancient Israel, Greece, and Rome. Each scene is depicted in a careful engraving by Theodore de Bry who finishes with a series on the timeless human vices. According to Boissard all these evils and vices are due to the effects of "Satan, sin, the flesh, and the world,"

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which have conspired, since Adam's first arrogant rebellion, against God and the salvation of the elect.71 Reinforcing the theme of the theatrum mundi, a dance of death is depicted on the title page: the dance of death is not only a traditional representation of the vanity of earthly life, but also, originally at least, a performance which was literally theatrical, drawing on the themes and form of medieval morality plays. Instead of stressing the classic theatrum mundi, laments could also elaborate on the edifying nature of theatrical representation. Jean-Pierre Camus, bishop of Belley, known for his friendship with Frangois de Sales and his prolific writings, published as the Amphitheatre sanglant (1630) a collection of "histoires tragiques"—violent displays of the punishment of the wicked and of the horrible but righteous behavior of the just.72 In holding up to scrutiny human behavior, he wants to emulate the natural philosophers in their close examination of nature, and to bring out with vividness to a broad audience the moral lessons to be drawn. The world is the bloody amphitheater of similar actions which happen every day before our eyes and are all the less noticed as they are more familiar to us There are some who consider the actions of men with attention just as others contemplate the works of nature with particular speculation; for just as the latter discover a thousand secrets that the vulgar do not know although everyone sees them as well as they do; just so the former notice in what happens in this world many noteworthy things and things that could occupy the mind, but which are not at all seen by those who only consider them superficially. The ancients who amused the people by the spectacles of the theaters represented for us actions sometimes tragic sometimes comic, and made of them a political mystery not only to entertain the populace but also to impress in the mind of the spectators the horror of evil and the desire for good by the different outcomes of virtue and vice. . . . This is the goal of the sad stories presented in this amphitheater which you are about to see.73

Camus explicitly endows his work with a political dimension, as he compares it to the theaters used by rulers to entertain but also to impress on their subjects appropriate behavior—explicitly, to choose virtue over vice, but also implicitly, to choose submission over rebellion. The themes of the reader as spectator and of the theater as a vehicle for pleasant but useful moral instruction eclipse the vanitas emphasis of the lament in a number of other works that one might call "moral theaters," which form from the beginning of the "theater" fad an abundant subgroup. These "theaters" are generally illustrated, to attract readers to their exhortatory message. Aegidius Sadeler's Theatrum morum (1609) consists of some one hundred detailed engravings of scenes from animal fables to illustrate morals about human behavior. Beneath a versified explanation of each illustration, a paragraph of prose provides a "true example" of the lesson, drawn from ancient histories, as acknowledged by brief references to classical authors. Sadeler explains that he has left further space on each page in which the reader can add examples of his choice—all in the hope that the reader will find the work pleasing and useful for the praise of God and

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his own use.74 A similar Theatre des animaux (1644) is designed especially "to induce young people, with pleasure and without thinking, . . to recognize how they should behave toward everyone"; each page provides a clear moral precept, illustrated by an engraving, which is also meant to demonstrate the utility of painting, and a poetic explanation (twenty years before La Fontaine), to facilitate memorization.75 Although this "theater . . . in which are represented most actions of human life" refers to the roles that men and women play in the theater of the world, it is devoid of the bitterness of the classic theatrum mundi which is better suited to the lament than to pedagogic exhortations.76 Jost Amman's Gynaeceum sive theatrum mulierum (1586) likewise depicts women throughout Europe "of every dignity, order, station, condition, profession, and age": from the "patrician Venetian woman" to the "servant bearing water," each is the object of an engraving and a nine-line poem in praise of her virtues. Even if the metaphor is not made explicit, it is easy to see each woman as playing out the role, whether lowly or lofty, assigned to her on the stage of the world. Although often described as melancholy and serious, the women are not the object of lament or ridicule, but are offered as models for the imitation of the readership or "audience," probably largely female, if the dedication to a queen is any indication.77 Collections of emblems, with their obvious moral intent, are among works frequently entitled "theater," and include one of the earliest such titles, Guillaume de La Perriere's Theatre des Bons Engins (1539).78 Unfortunately none of the authors of these works explains his use of the metaphor. Wilfried Barner has argued that the title stems from the fact that the emblems are seen as miniature stages on which the drama of human life unfolds, but this interpretation is possible only in the cases of emblems that involve human figures.79 More generally, I would argue that the title grows out of the common perception of the "theater" as the ideal combination of entertainment and moral edification; it is particularly suited, therefore, to collections of emblems, which were designed both to please and to instruct.80 Richard Verstegen's Theatrum crudelitatum haereticorum nostri temporis (1587) portrays the treatment of Catholics by Protestants in France, the Low Countries, and England in graphic and horrifying detail with a full-page copper engraving in each spread and an explanation on the facing page of the instruments of torture applied. The modern reader may find it hard to imagine a "theater" more bitter or more revealing of the vanity of human passions and cruelty, but for Verstegen the spectacle could not be more inspirational or morally uplifting. Whoever you are who desire to enter and see this theater, first steel your soul and strengthen your gaze lest the sight of our troop [of coreligionists] strike you dumb and the horror torment you. . . If a young man resists the attack of a wild beast with constancy . . . we rejoice and the theater trembles with the applause of the crowd; these spectacles are all the more delightful that he is more worthy of praise . . . But this type of combat is different and the constancy, the deceits, the dangers, and the moment thereof greater, as heresy far surpasses all the wild beasts 81

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Although Verstegen does not couch his "theater" in the lighter tones of entertaining edification for the young, his "theater" is still designed both to delight Coblectare) and to edify the well-prepared soul. His vivid engravings easily fascinate the reader with a taste for the morbid, and the martyrdom they portray had long been considered the most pious and edifying of sights. "Theaters" with a moral message may refer to the roles assigned to men and women on the stage of life or to the reader as spectator, but do not adopt the bitter tone and hostility to earthly concerns characteristic of the classic theatrum mundi. The difference between this moral type of "theater" and the lament is one of tone and emphasis: while both claim to teach morality, the lament does so negatively by portraying the vices and evils of human existence; the "moral theater," on the contrary, offers models for emulation, and even the atrocities detailed by Verstegen become only so many obstacles which the worthy overcome. Illustrated and Tabular "Subject Theaters"

In an amazing variety of subjects a "theater" designated a work informative primarily through its illustrations, apprehended by the reader's gaze. After stating nine rules of good penmanship, Jodocus Hondius for example, in 1594, provides in forty plates samples of different writing styles, suited to different languages and situations, all drawn to scale both elegantly and rapidly: "in my judgment," he concludes, "this is what should be considered lspectandum est] above all in this art."82 Michael Praetorius appends to the second volume of his encyclopedia of music, especially devoted to musical instruments, a "Theatrum instrumentorum" (1620), a series of detailed plates of instruments from different countries, drawn to scale.83 Similarly, Jacques Besson's Theatre des instrumens Mathematiques et Mechaniques (1578) is praised by its editor, Frangois Beroald, for offering machines both "pleasant to look at and most useful to put in practice"; corresponding to each figure a "declaration" explains the machine's operation and a "proposition" describes its different parts.84 In these books the illustration is offered as a model, detailed, accurate and drawn to scale, possibly to be executed by the reader; the "theater" is a collection of such models which the reader will look at closely. Botany is a more predictable subject for such illustrated "theaters." Daniel Rabel's Theatrumflorae (1622), devoid of text, teaches exclusively through its illustrations of flowers, with inset details of the corresponding bulbs and blossoms.85 John Parkinson, who explains that his work has grown from "a Physicall Garden of Simples to a Theater of Plants," follows the model of Dioscorides in mingling smaller illustrations of plants or their pans with a detailed text that discusses the virtues and characteristics of each plant and corrects the errors of colleagues and predecessors.86 The "theater" refers here not only to the importance of the illustrations, but also to the "large extent" of the material covered. An earlier version of the work dealt only with medical simples and was called a "garden." The "theater of plants" is instead a folio volume of over seventeen hundred pages which boasts "a more ample History . . . than hath been hitherto published by any before." Furthermore the plants are "distributed into sundry classes or

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tribes."aT Although Parkinson does not actually provide any tables of distribution, for him the "theater" is clearly associated, as it was for Bodin, with a work of universal scope and potentially tabular presentation. Furthermore the Latin "theatrum" suggested a level of erudition that Parkinson, "apothecary of London and the Kings Herbarist," hoped to emphasize in his otherwise vernacular work. History is another discipline that favored the title in the seventeenth century; the metaphor refers not only to history as the theater of divine providence, but more often to the encyclopedic ideal of a global, "tabular" presentation of the vast subject. In his universal history from the beginning of the world to 1683, Petrus Megerlinus alludes to the former theme, but dwells on the latter, and on the virtues of his fold-out wheel of dates corresponding to events and astrological conjunctions which promises a "tabular" overview.88 Johann Abelinus' Theatrum Europaeum (1635) is an impressive thirteen-hundred-page folio tracing the history of Europe, and primarily of the Holy Roman Empire, from 1617 to 1629. The German text is supplemented with costly engravings, mostly of military subjects. Although ostensibly designed as a commissioned work dedicated to the memory of Emperor Mathias and to his successor Ferdinand, the printer expresses the hope that his book "would not only be a pleasant record of the events of their own time and enjoyable for the living but also of value for dear posterity."89 A "theater" already for its arresting illustrations and universal scope, it is further justified with the familiar refrain of combining instruction with enjoyment.90 Singling out one theme in history, Arnold Mermann introduces his Theatrum conversionis gentium totius orbis, a history of conversions to Christianity, as either some sort of stage in which many different characters each have their role and act their part; or a table [tabula] from which (just as from a geographical map one can discern the provinces, cities, citadels, rivers, and the like) each can find out for certain in which period, by which apostles or apostolic men, finally under which popes and under which emperors or kings or princes each province and people came to the Christian religion and the true cult of God, abandoning superstition.91 Although his text is actually only a simple narrative with marginal flags corresponding to the important names mentioned, Mermann would evidently like his "theater" to be a chart or a table. His comparison of the text with a map is more detailed and sustained than the rather hollow attempt to explain his title as a truly theatrical scene. Christopher Helvicus realized what Mermann seemed to envision, in his Theatrum historicum et chronologicum (first published in 1609, followed by numerous expanded reeditions).92 Helvicus proceeds by regular intervals of years, at first by century, then by decade, from the beginning of the world to his day, listing events and their dates, much as timetables of history do today. The table grows larger and larger as it approaches the author's time and includes more subdivisions by type of event. While the conception of the work is not original, Helvicus' use of the metaphor of the theater is: he presents material of universal scope in a well-ordered table that illustrates the interconnections in its subject matter, whether between dates in different calendars or between different types of contemporaneous events. Closely related to the history "theaters" are the numerous "theaters" of famous

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men. Paul Freher alludes to the stage of the world on which the men he catalogues have appeared, but his broad scope (1,560 folio pages covering the theologians, lawyers, doctors, and philosophers from all regions of Europe from the Middle Ages to his day), ordered presentation (within each field by date of death), and pages of portraits give the work the form of a tabular "theater."93 A genealogical "theater" (1668) mixes metaphors by providing a table in the form of a tree to illustrate the family relations among the European nobility.94 By the early eighteenth century, such "theaters" included scholarly reference works, like Vincent Placcius' Theatrum anonymorum et pseudonymorum . . . virorum (1708) which identifies the learned and famous authors of anonymous and pseudonymous works, or Petrus Arpe's Theatrumfati (1712) which provides bio-bibliographical information on authors of works on fate, fortune, and providence.95 More isolated instances of theaters can be found on a wide range of other topics, from ethics to dueling.96 Pedagogical"Theaters"

Although the metaphor does not seem to designate a specific kind of exercise, a handful of school works across different disciplines borrow the metaphor, notably to designate disputations (especially in the mid-seventeenth century), or to describe tabular study guides. The disputation entitled Theatrum naturae presided over by Carolus Grueber has counterparts in ethics and metaphysics: a Theatrum aristotelicum pandens doctrinam librorum IX Nichomachiorum (1665) held at Nuremberg, or a Theatrum metaphysicum (1658) at the University of Jena.97 Perhaps in these cases the metaphor refers to the public staging of a disputation; or perhaps it is meant to glamorize a routine scholastic exercise by associating it with a contemporary trend with broader appeal. Easier to understand are the pedagogical tables published as "theaters." Jacob Lorhard's encyclopedic summary of philosophy, Theatrum philosophicum (1613), consists of lengthy tables (up to thirty pages) called "diagraphe," which enumerate the definitions and precepts of the seven liberal arts and the three other philosophical disciplines (physics, ethics, and metaphysics).98 In a section of his Ency­ clopedia (1630), entitled "theater of nature adorned with perpetual tables," Alsted hails the model of Bodin's Theatrum and, following it, he claims, offers tables "not only as an aid to memory but also so that the pious heart may rejoice at the variety of the works of God and be excited to worship the Creator."99 His fifteen pages of roughly dichotomous classifications of nature are inspired indeed by Bodin's ideals and motivations, but not by his unsystematic practice. In his Theatrum scholasticum Alsted gives pedagogical summaries of mnemonics, logic, and rhetoric, for the use of gymnasium students.100 Or a later compendium of "aristotelico-Cartesian physics" for beginners opens with a "succinct theater of theoretical philosophy," demonstrating the detachment of the form and the term from any given intellectual program.101 The table, and the collection of tables, embody one ideal of the "theater." The most elaborate tabular "theater" is a Physica seu naturae theatrum (1611) by Philander Colutius, professor at the Gymnasio Romano (see figure 5).102 A single-

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Fig 5. Philander Colutius, Theatrum naturae (Speyer: Matthaeus Buschweiler, 1611). This "theater" displays summaries of the thought of various ancient philosophers (whose busts are in the foreground) and (in the arches of the theater) quotations from Aristotle's major works on topics progressing from prime matter to plants, animals, and the human soul Original size: 71.7cm x 4 6 7cm. Reprinted with permission of the Herzog-August-Bibliothek, Wolfenbuttel.

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sheet large copper engraving features a semicircular theater with a central stage and surrounding balconies, in a textual and Aristotelian version of Camillo's memory theater. On successive levels of the stage the busts of sixteen ancient philosophers bear brief statements of their main doctrines. Aristotle stands near the center of the stage, alone on his level with the symbols of his three principles: prime matter (a rock), form (a young head), and privation (a skull). Under the arches of the three tiers of balconies above are selected quotations from Colutius' translation of Aristotle's works. The subject matter rises progressively from prime matter through plants and animals to the human soul, matched at each tier by the succession of orders in the columns (Doric, Ionic, Corinthian). In this "theater of nature or physics" nature and knowledge of nature are explicitly confused. Its physics consists of a selection of quotations from Aristotle (comparable to the/lo­ res) which are "digested," then displayed in a tabular form. Spanning "all of natural philosophy," in a concise memory theater, which links philosophers with one another according to the number of natural principles they propounded, and each part of nature according to its position in a hierarchized chain of being, this "theater" is so tabular that it can hardly serve its philosophical purpose—even in its original size it is barely legible. Dedicated to Scipio Borghese, a relative of the cardinal, it is no doubt a symbolic gesture, a bid for patronage on the part of this professor of medicine who exults in his mastery of classical culture, from Vitruvian architecture to Aristotelian natural philosophy. Nonetheless this Physica seu naturae theatrum provides an excellent example of the ambitions of many less successfully tabular but more useful "subject theaters." Geographical "Theaters"

Geography is the field with the most clearly identifiable tradition of "theaters." The standards were set by Abraham Ortelius' Theatrum orbis terrarum (first published 1570), which launched not only a profitable publishing run (some seventy-three reeditions between 1576 and 1697), but a genre, a title and an expression that, from only two occurrences in Roman literature, soon grew to become a cliche.103 Frangois de Dainville has noted that after Ortelius the "theater" designated a collection of modem maps, as opposed to a "geography" which offered maps in the ancient tradition inspired by Ptolemy.104 In Ortelius-style "theaters," maps indicating geographical contours, towns, and rivers alternate with textual descriptions of the physical and human geography. While the visual aspect of the collection of maps is obvious, the geographical "theater" further offers a unique opportunity to realize the "tabular" reduction of a global topic. On the one hand, the title, rendered in English as The Theater of the Whole World, and the numerous imitations it spawned ("theaters" of "all Gaul," of the "empire of Britain," of "all principal cities"), emphasize the exhaustive treatment afforded by these collections of maps. Ortelius adds that in making his maps manageable in size "nothing has been omitted." On the other hand, the map is necessarily a reduction, and furthermore is often explicitly designed to be

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portable: one of the many abridgments of Ortelius boasts that "it will serve you better when you are on the roads,'"05 although none of the maps included would seem to offer the detail required for actual travel. The map is the very model of the tabular reduction of a vast expanse, as Mermann suggests when he cites the map as the ideal to be imitated in his historical tables. The map comes so close to being the land it represents that ownership of a map could have political overtones. The political symbolism involved in giving a collection of maps to a ruler is most explicit in Maurice Bouguereau's Thedtrefrangoys (1594). Hailed as the first atlas of France, his collection of maps of the French provinces dedicated to Henry of Navarre was a gesture in support of the future Henry IV, finished hurriedly as Tours was about to fall to the League. The royalist printer tells of assembling this collection of maps not only "for the pleasure of seeing the particularities and remarkable things" in each province of the kingdom, and not only "for its usefulness for men of war . . . or for your treasurers and tax collectors" but to offer and dedicate to Henry "the image of your kingdom, which is the theater, not only of your French provinces, but a Theater eminent in itself over all the other kingdoms of the earth."106 Combining like so many others the goals of pleasure and utility, Bouguereau's Theatre is also an effigy of the kingdom for Henry of Navarre. To further reinforce the point, the frontispiece features an unusual, and no doubt costly, design: a portrait of Henry that can be lifted to display underneath a map of his rightful kingdom—France.107 "Theaters" defined by place were probably the most common form of "theater"; not exclusively collections of maps, they included: expansions on Ortelius, reductions of Ortelius, "theaters" of cities taken together or singly, of European countries or provinces (from France to Denmark), of exotic places and peoples (from Mexico to the Orient), of battlegrounds and fortifications.106 In an unillustrated Theatre de I'univers Frangois de Grenaille articulated the problem characteristic not only of the geographical "theater," but of the "theater" project more generally—how to choose the scale to which to reduce a vast subject in order to make it manageable: How is it possible to understand the whole universe? All the books that are made treat only some of the imaginable topics; what could we read that would treat absolutely everything? In addition, these big volumes that our century has published to instruct us frighten most minds, not only because it is impossible to carry them, but because their length makes us dread reading them. Some authors who have wanted to avoid this pitfall have fallen into another which is not lesser: to keep themselves from saying too much., they do not say enough.105

Grenaille promises to strike the perfect balance between saying too much and saying too little in his description of the whole world: "I do not forget universal visions, but am also attached to particular ones."110 Torn between the study of the local, with chorography, and the study of the universal, with cosmography,11' geography experienced early on both great enthusiasm for "theaters" and the difficulties of meeting their contradictory goals.

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The Theater as Collection The encyclopedic ambition to cover all knowledge systematically was articulated more clearly and repeatedly than ever in the Renaissance: the term "encyclopedia" itself was coined in the sixteenth century, supposedly from ancient precedents describing the "circle of learning," in an etymology that scholars now consider spurious.112 Throughout the early modern period, encyclopedic works struggled with their double ambition of embracing all knowledge and presenting its interconnections in a systematic way.113 The works that actually went to press rather than remaining at the project stage reached compromises ranging from, at one extreme, bare tables elaborating a system of knowledge with a minimum of definitions and substance, to, at the other extreme, massive compilations of quotations and "facts" heaped with little order and accessible through alphabetized subject indices. The "theater" is a title found at every stage of the encyclopedic drive: as unfinished project (e.g., Federico Cesi's Amphitheatrum phytosophiae, his pet project in the 1620s),114 as skeletal tables (e.g., Jacob Lorhard's Theatrum philosophicum) and as massive compilations, most famously Theodor Zwinger's Theatrum vitae humanae, and as works in between, like Ioannis Colle's De idea et theatro imitatricium et imitabilium (1618) which consciously discusses the dangers of both excess prolixity and of excess brevity.115 Thusjohann Heinrich Alsted, one of the first authors of a work both entitled and recognizable as an encyclopedia, lists Lorhard, Zwinger, and Colle, and their very different types of "theaters" among the fifteen or so predecessors he acknowledges as inspiring his own encyclopedic endeavor.116 Despite this range of acceptations inherent in the broad scope of most "theaters," the title is especially associated with the loose collection of material on a topic, the anthology that chooses bulk over systematic order. Many of the "theaters" we have already examined are also collections: of flowers, of famous men, of maps, arranged according to a more or less carefully conceived plan. One The­ atre of the earth (1599) abandons systematic pretensions in favor of the clearly arbitrary, but ever so useful, order of the alphabet, in a pocket dictionary of place names.117 Other anthologies that try to retain a topical order are effectively usable only through an alphabetical index: such is the case, for example, with Theodor Zwinger's Theatrum vitae humanae, which grew from an original two volumes in 1565 to 29 in 1604, with multiple indices, by topic, theme, and proper name, to access the tens of thousands of excerpts from over six hundred authors arranged by topical commonplace headings.118 Its sequel, Laurentius Beyerlinck's Magnum theatrum vitae humanae, finally alphabetizes the headings, tacitly recognizing the failure of Zwinger's attempt at a system.119 Zwinger and Beyerlinck allude, to explain their title, to the classic theatrum mundi metaphor. Zwinger explains that "the material comprised by our theater embraces in its purview all the things that can happen to man, whether good or bad," and thus offers an abundance of precepts for good living.120 Beyerlinck dwells on the metaphor a bit more: "From all eternity great actors have played the

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story of human life. Their great number and diversity no doubt required a very vast theater. These theaters [i.e. his eight volumes] are excellent, in which all men of all orders can most conveniently consider and watch very well the great theater of human life that is given here." But before long Beyerlinck's deeper interests in amassing material for its own sake transpire: "This is the Amphitheater of the Universe, in which everything under the sky can most conveniently be seen and all those who live under it can watch, and know all things human and divine.'"21 Then follows an enumeration of the categories of men, from theologians and lawyers to mathematicians and grammarians, who are sure to gain something from consulting this work. The allusions to the theater of human life briefly add a tone of moral elevation to "theaters" that are primarily collections of quotables for use in a wide variety of circumstances. Otto Aichefs Theatrumfunebre (1675) and Caspar Dornavius' Amphitheatrum sapientiae socraticae joco-seriae (1619) are more specialized examples of the same genre. The first is a collection of epitaphs classified according to the social standing of the person concerned. Although in brief references to the classic metaphor the reader is admonished to behold death, and the work is divided into "scenes" devoted to each of the categories of epitaphs (e.g., for abbots, cardinals, emperors, and so on), this Theatrum is a light compilation of witty quips that delights above all in the wide variety of specimens gathered.122 The second makes no attempt at ponderous self-justification but offers 850 folio pages of ancient and modern encomia of all things humble and usually reviled, from the ant and the spider to abstractions like mendacity and fever. The title proclaims the utility of the work in teaching the mysteries of nature and in providing all at once pleasure, wisdom, and virtue in public and in private, but Dornavius' basic purpose was to bring together the "work of these men and the product of their talent, which are not commonly sought after, gathered as if in one amphitheater to be seen and heard publicly."123 Thus the "theater," with or without explicit systematic ambitions, is in the end often nothing more than a collection of material drawn from a broad array of sources. In another extension of the "tabular" ambition to provide complete and ordered coverage of a given subject, the "theater" could designate an anthology of independent treatises in a particular field. The Theatrum geographiae veteris (1618) of Petrus Bertius, cosmographer to Louis XIII, for example, is a collection not of maps, but of texts of ancient geography, which gathers in one discontinuously paginated volume the eight books of Ptolemy's Geography in Greek and facing Latin translation, Gerard Mercator's notes on that work, and a set of tables with distances between the cities of the Roman Empire.m Similarly, in 1569, Sigmund Feyrabend collected twenty German texts by various contemporary authors concerning different types of demons under the title Theatrum diabolorum. After affirming the purity of his motives, Feyrabend boasts that "this book is like a book of commonplaces, or a common index (Gemein Register) so that one can easily find all sorts of useful information.'"25 The Theatrum diabolorum was the first of many "theaters" to appear from Feyrabend's presses, which suggests that

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the title was a success in his experience: it was, in fact, a frequent practice for these various kinds of anthologies, including collections of maps, to be frequently authored by the printer himself.126 The motivations for such anthologies are made most explicit in the Theatrum chemicum (first published in 1602), which had a long career as a multivolume anthology of texts on alchemy and the philosopher's stone. This thing seems to have been undertaken principally toward this goal: so that, considering that the writings in each discipline lie scattered and widely dispersed and that they cannot be read without both difficulty and expense, having been sought out everywhere, these [texts] brought into one volume in this way offer the complete, or at least the greatest extent of the whole art, as in some most beautiful theater, for the pleasurable viewing and observation of the studious: from which they can pick, as from a well-kept and artfully arranged garden, wholesome herbs of every kind, various blossoms and fruits not only for the utility, but also for the delectation of each. . . . I took care that the works of these men, as many as could be obtained, gathered from everywhere at great expense and effort, were collected [digeri] and arranged in one body in a kind of theater.127

Here the "theater" is valued as a collection of scattered works to save readers both time and expense and to offer them in one place a view of the entire art. The title describes the work as "congestum et in tres partes seu volumina digestum," referring to the double process of collecting ("congerere"), then sorting ("digerere") as if in a commonplace book.128 But Zetzner's "digestio" involved a simple distribution of the texts into three volumes; only an alphabetical index establishes links between the different texts. To explicate the "theater" Zetzner introduces a second metaphor to highlight the combination of "pleasure" and "utility" in his work: that of the garden where both wholesome fruits and beautiful flowers can be picked. AlthoughJIores orflonlegium already denoted in the Middle Ages a collection of the best sayings of an author, in contemporary court culture the garden could also serve as an encyclopedic collection in its own right, and occasionally appears as a title for less conceptually ambitious works like miscellanies.129 By the mid-seventeenth century the Theatrum could designate an anthology without further justification. A Teatro evangelico (1649) collects the sermons by different authors delivered for special occasions throughout the year; a Theatrum pads of 1663 gathers European treaties of various types, concerning commerce, royal marriages, and peace agreements; a Theatrum et examen omnium decisionum regni Napolitani (1699), the legal decrees of the kingdom of Naples; a "Theater of the paintings of David Teniers" (1660) first published at the painter's expense, reproductions of his works.130 The metaphors of the theater of nature and of the book entitled "theater" are new with the sixteenth century. They draw on the medieval metaphor of the mirror (speculum), which we have more than once encountered in glosses on the metaphor of theater, and which carries many of the same connotations: notably, of visual contemplation and moral edification.131 As a title the mirror often desig-

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nated summae of encyclopedic scope, most notably Vincent of Beauvais' four Specula, doctrinal, natural, historical, and moral, but the mirror also carries the possibility of a negative interpretation, as a distorted and indirect reflection of reality. The "theater," on the contrary, conveys more optimistically and more forcefully the project of representing a vast and edifying subject, such as nature, in a way that underscores its harmonious interconnections "as in a table." The explosion of "theaters" between 1550 and 1700 is attributable not only to the continuing taste for picturesque titles (from "forests" to "pearls" and "gardens"),132 but, most significantly, to the encyclopedic ambitions of so many authors to cover a subject, or all knowledge, so as to please and instruct readers, and attract buyers, not with narrow specialisms but with broad claims to importance. Bodin's Theatrum was preceded by "theaters" in many different fields: works of geography and history, emblem and other illustrated books, or anthologies about devils. The metaphor of nature as a theater for the display of divine glory and providence was also widespread, especially among Protestant authors, before him. Nonetheless Bodin was the first to cast the metaphor of the theater of nature into a title; his Theatrum clearly inspired Alsted and probably (more or less directly) the others who followed not only his metaphors but also his natural-theological agenda, both of which one can still recognize in the Spectacle de la Nature by Antoine Pluche, one of the most widely read books of the eighteenth century.133

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The Reception of the Theatrum

THE PATTERNS OF RECEPTION of the Theatrum, to which I have already occasionally

alluded, provide useful evidence for its position within the contemporary spectrum of natural philosophy. Those aspects which were least well received are also the most idiosyncratic of Bodin's views (notably the extremes of his antiAristotelianism, and his Judaizing), while those which resonated favorably with, or were (consciously or not) reproduced by contemporaries highlight more broadly shared interests and methods—notably his encyclopedic and naturaltheological agendas and his bookish methods of composition. The responses of contemporaries offer especially precious clues to evaluate what was "ordinary" and what was unusual in a premodern practice of natural philosophy so remote from our own notions of science. The reactions of learned readers can be garnered from the traces of ownership and marginal annotations left in surviving copies of the work, and from references to the Theatrum in correspondence and published works, which I present in a first section. In a second section I follow the vernacular career of the Theatrum, made possible by its broad scope and apologetic purpose designed to reach a nonspecialist audience. The French translation of 1597, too faithful to the erudition and idiosyncracies of the original, appeared in only one edition, but marked the beginning of a growing wave of interest for works of natural philosophy in French. On the other hand, the German Problemata Bodini, which adapted selected passages to the concerns and expectations of a more popular audience, was reedited at least as often as, and until much later than the Latin original from which it was drawn. The divergent careers of the three versions of the Theatrum illustrate the different rhythms of natural philosophy among different categories of reader which are too crudely described by the standard categories of "popular" and "elite."

A SURVEY OF EXTANT COPIES

The Theatrum is remarkable for the range, but not particularly for the quantity of its reeditions and later versions. The Theatrum was considerably less successful than the most famous Latin works in its encyclopedic mode, like Cardano's De varietate or Scaliger's response to it in the Exercitationum exotericarum. . . liber XV, and than other kinds of works available both in Latin and in French, like Levinus Lemnius' De occultis naturae miraculis, or various books of secrets and problemata. The Theatrum also lagged far behind Bodin's other major works, even though it no doubt benefited from the fact that Bodin's fame was already well established by the end of his life.1 Some of its appeal, then as now, rested on the renown of

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its author, as the markings of readers avid for details about Bodm himself attest.2 With its three Latin editions, the Theatrum was only moderately successful, comparable, for example, to Lambert Daneau's Physica Christiana, Antoine Mizauld's De arcanis naturae, or Simon Maiole's Dies caniculares (which was also translated into French)—works that also addressed widely shared contemporary concerns, but whose idiosyncracies, timing, and complexity variously kept them from sweeping a broad market. The reception of the Theatrum varied considerably by context: with justification in each case, a local historian of Lyon reports that it had little success, while R.J.W. Evans, in studying late humanist culture in central Europe, describes the Theatrum as "a popular work." In France, the Theatrum was little cited, and mostly in negative terms, while in central Europe it became one of the standard references among academic natural philosophers—unlike many works, it warranted two editions from the famous Wechel presses.3 My point is not that the Theatrum changed the content or practice of natural philosophy by spreading novel views to a wide readership, but rather to enhance our understanding of the position of traditional physics in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries by examining who actually read this work, in what form, how, and why. At the same time, a case study of the reception of one work can address from a new angle questions commonly raised in the history of the book, which cannot be answered solely from the evidence of book ownership and library inventories. With these goals in mind, I conducted a mail survey of extant copies of the Latin and French editions, which, thanks to the generous responses of over 80 percent of the librarians solicited, yielded sometimes detailed information concerning over 250 copies of the work scattered in some twenty countries.4 I garnered the locations of another 60 copies of the Theatrum (mostly in places that had not responded to my questionnaire) from the results of a survey concerning all of Bodin's works conducted by the Seminaire de Bibliographie Historique de TUniversite de Mons.3 The geographical distribution of the 314 copies of which I am aware is shown in table I.6 I have no new evidence with which to elucidate the question of how many copies might have been printed in each edition. A higher rate of conservation for the first edition is not surprising given the practice of modem book collecting— its effects are noticeable, for example, in American libraries, where the collections were built exclusively from relatively recent purchases. The first edition appeared in two emissions, the first with no dedication or rubrication in the title page, the second, probably larger or at least better preserved, including the dedication and a more elaborate title page. The low survival rate of the French translation may be typical or, I would argue, in part due to its poor showing on the market when it appeared.7 We have few precise figures for print runs in the sixteenth century, which could vary from 800 to 2000 copies, with an optimal economic efficiency estimated to be around 1,250 copies.8 The run size clearly varied considerably with the kind of book involved. Only one generation later, Gabriel Naude explicitly discussed this variability: a "good book of philosophy, demonstration of mathematics, or solid speech approved by the learned" would be produced in 500 or at most 750 copies, while novels, "hollow meditations," or books of rid-

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TABLE 1

Geographical Distribution of Extant Copies of the Theatrum Three Latin Editions 1596

1597

French Edition

1605

1597

Totals

Austria

2

3

2

0

7

Belgium

5

2

2

2

11

Czech Republic

0

Denmark

1

England

9

6

Finland

0

1

France

30

8

13

Germany

12

25

Hungary

0

3

10 1

Italy Luxembourg

2

0

5

0

3

2

26

0

1

21

72

20

1

58

1

0

4

6

3

2

21

0

0

0

1

1

3 1 9 0

Netherlands

0

3

2

3

8

Poland

4

10

9

0

23

Romania

0

0

2

0

2

Russia

0

5

2

0

7

Scotland

2

1

2

8

1

3

Spain

1

0

3

Sweden

0

0

1 1

1

2

2

0

0

0

2

2

1

4

0

7

4

1

4

19 100

10 88

Switzerland (French) Switzerland (German) Switzerland (Total) USA Total

8 86

0

9

6 40

43 314

dies or tales would run to 1 , 5 0 0 or even 3 , 0 0 0 copies and often still have to be reedited. 9 Certainly Bodin's Theatrum lies in the first rather than the second category, while the Problemata Bodini bear out Naude's observation in selling at least as well as, and probably considerably better than, its erudite source—three or four editions, each probably with a larger print run than the Theatrum; although produced in greater numbers, as is typical for popular works, the Problemata Bodini is only sparsely preserved—in twelve confirmed copies. 10 The impact of the Theatrum is especially impressive in its geographical range, as attested by the distribution of copies in European libraries, from England to

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Russia, from Sweden to Spain. These collections, mostly formed by local acquisitions of various kinds, provide a good overall picture of places where the Theatrum was used by at least one, generally relatively early, owner.11 Of course, this distribution masks travel prior to the book's entry into a library: thus the ex libris in one copy of the 1597 Latin edition, now preserved in Luneburg, show that it was purchased in Marburg in 1607 by one Johannes Brandes of Hameln; the book presumably traveled with him from Hesse back to his home in Lower Saxony, where it passed in 1670 to Heinrich Rixner (1634-92), professor of metaphysics at the University of Helmstedt, before entering the library of the Micheliskloster in Luneburg, which was later absorbed into the municipal library.12 Books followed the movements of people within a broadly defined German area, although the specific trajectories are often mysterious: from a doctor's purchase in Prague in 1600 to the faculty of medicine at Ingolstadt in 1720, or from a purchase in Leipzig in 1606 by one Johannes Geitmann of Wroclaw, for sixteen silver grosschen, through ownership by Augustus, Duke of Saxony, to Katowice, Poland, where this particular volume is now." Movements across linguistic borders, such as by Huguenot refugees, could account for the copies of the French translation now in England, Scotland, or the Netherlands, for example.14 But the majority of the 59 copies for which ex libris provide information about early ownership (pre-1700) show a local owner: either a notable from a predictable range of occupations (professors and polymaths, doctors, lawyers, and clerics) or an institution (religious orders, colleges, or princely libraries).15 The current locations of extant copies of the Theatrum, despite weaknesses inherent in this form of evidence, follow patterns that are confirmed by the other types of evidence about the work's reception. After an initial impact in France and its near neighbors (Belgium, Italy, and French Switzerland), where the copies of the first edition outnumber the copies of the other two combined, the Theatrum was reprinted, owned, and cited predominantly outside these areas—in England, and in central and eastern Europe, where the two Wechel editions spread through Germany and Poland, and carried Bodin's text to progressively more remote locations, in Romania, Scotland, or Sweden, for example (where the 1605 edition predominates). A confessional bias toward Protestant or tolerant and mixed areas (like Poland in this period) is noticeable. Certainly the relatively poor reception in bastions of Catholic orthodoxy like Spain and, to a lesser extent, Italy can in part be explained by the censorship and expurgations leveled against the Theatrum, but the frequent ownership of uncorrected copies by Catholic orders and individuals is also a reminder of the inefficacy of such regulations against books already published, especially from Protestant Germany. The Theatrum was owned and no doubt read (although the two phenomena are not coextensive) across many religious divides. Jacob Rosius (1598—1676), a Reformed minister near Bern, author of a perpetual calendar among other astronomical and mathematical writings, and his colleague Johann Hartman (1636-1717) after him, owned a copy of the Theatrum; so did canons regular "F.F." from Creuzlingen and Jan Malachiasz. in Poland, and Archbishop of Canterbury William Sancroft.16 The library inventory (1613) of the Arminian Walter

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Browne of Corpus Christi College included a copy of the Theatrum, and the Lutheran church in Wroclaw owned a copy.17 Among the Catholics, Louis Herron, a presbyter in Poitiers, best known for his poem in five books to Notre-Dame de Liesse, owned a copy of the first edition until 1607 when it entered the collection of the Jesuits in Poitiers.18 The bibliophile canon from Limoges Jean de Cordes owned a copy which was sold at his death, with the rest of his collection, to Cardinal Mazarin.19 Institutions, which account for more than half of the copies with useful ex libris markings (a bias created by their concern for preventing theft, no doubt), add to the evidence of Catholic ownership: extant are copies from at least ten Jesuit, six Oratorian, and three Capuchin, as well as from Benedictine, Minorite, and Minim houses, and one church.20 Some Catholics, like the Jesuits Antonio Possevino or Martin del Rio, already eager critics of Bodin's Republique and Dimonomanie, read the Theatrum only to excoriate it.21 Thanks largely to the efforts of Possevmo, who, for example, charged Bodin with Machiavellianism for giving only human and secular rules of government and neglecting the role of the Church, the Methodus, Republique, and Demonomanie were forbidden, pending official expurgation, in the Index prepared for Sixtus V in 1590, which was not promulgated.22 By 1596 the Index of Clement VIII allowed only an expurgated Methodus and prohibited the Republique and Demonomanie entirely.23 Although the ecclesiastical judge (official) Chalom must have been aware of these developments, he gave his approval for the publication of the Theatrum in 1596.24 It seems to have aroused little reaction; in the following year Chalom approved the French translation, as did his colleague the Augustinian Le Conte, who even praised "the great profit [this book] brings to studious persons for the beautiful doctrine contained therein" (F+++3r).25 By 1613, however, the Spanish Index had corrected the work, according to the flyleaf of a copy at the Escorial Palace.26 The Roman Congregation of the Index condemned the work on August 14, 1628; other copies refer to expurgations of 1632, and of March 19, 1633—but the latter is the one recorded in printings of the Index of Prohibited Books.27 The diversity of dates and judgments rendered, from correction to prohibition, and the fact that most extant copies bear no sign of either, reveal the complexity of the phenomenon of expostjacto censorship. One copy, at the Biblioteca Nacional in Madrid, provides detailed evidence of the offending passages according to the expurgation of 1632.28 Passages that refer to the corporeality of demons (e.g., their inclusion in physics or their sulfurous odor, pp. 163-64, 210), to the hierarchy of intermediate powers (pp. 170, 409), to the animate nature of the celestial bodies (pp. 552-53, 583) are struck out beyond legibility; so too is Bodin's conclusion that it would be stupid (ineptum) to think that God feeds the crows while neglecting superior animals (pp. 372-73)— although the censor did not delete Bodin's allegorical reading of the crows as demons, he objected to Bodin's rational reconstruction of divine will. At the end of Book IV, pp. 510-48 are beyond correction and simply torn out of the book (in another copy, a note on the flyleaf calls for the same bulk deletion, which was not carried out, however).29 This section includes Bodin's discussion of the corporeal nature of angels and souls, of the agent intellect, and some extended allegorical interpretations (for example, on the purification of the leper. The Council

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of Trent (1545-63) focused on the sacraments and the reform of the clergy and did not address the question of the corporeality of angels specifically.30 Nonetheless, in the decades after the council, Counter-Reformation theologians progressively narrowed Catholic orthodoxy to a renewal of Thomism, with its doctrine of incorporeal angels, and reduced the role of demons, so that soon after the publication of the Theatrum, Bodin's positions seemed especially condemnable.31 Even if official expurgations were not often carried out, individual readers could also reach the same negative conclusions, as one can follow in one of the only annotated copies of the French translation (which is, revealingly, annotated in both French and Latin), which belonged to the convent of Minims at Besangon. Although it does not refer to any official guidelines for correction, many of the same passages are "x"ed out or criticized: "tu te trompe [sic]," "temeraria opinio," or "temeraria opinio et erronea"; and the crucial quire at the end of Book IV (F771-86) is missing, presumably from having been torn out.32 Unlike the Spanish expurgator, this annotator also attacks Bodin's examples of the influence of the heavens on earth, from the effect of the moon on lunatics (F886) to the attribution of each day of the week to the influence of a planet (F897).33 Nevertheless, even he found something of interest that did not warrant criticism: Bodin's explanations of the Hebrew names for Jupiter and Saturn (F895-96).34 To Catholics who were willing to stray beyond the increasingly narrow confines of orthodoxy, the Theatrum presumably had more to offer.33 Such a Catholic was Jiri Pontanus, for example, a CzechJesuit and Counter-Reformation patriot, who was also a member of the circle of Rudolph II, and who owned Bodin's Theatrum alongside other unorthodox books, of very different, alchemical and iatrochemical persuasions.36 Among the French, Mersenne and Scipion Dupleix were mostly critical of the Theatrum, although not for its religious unorthodoxy, but rather for its anti-Aristotelianism; nonetheless Gabriel Naude praised, among other accomplishments, Bodin's having "built the theater of nature on new principles"—he owned a copy himself, but underlined only one passage in which Theorus denies that the soul separated from the body can be a vivifying form. Pierre Charron, too, appreciated the Theatrum, to the extent of borrowing numerous passages for his famous De la Sagesse and his more natural-theological Discours Chretiens.37 Bodin's innovativeness in matters both philosophical and religious suited the work for those whose positions were not determined by Catholic orthodoxy, and prevented it from becoming a standard reference in natural-philosophical treatises or textbooks in Catholic circles. Among Protestants, however, who not only lacked a central definition of orthodoxy, but also faced for the first time the problem of reconciling religion and philosophy on new foundations, and tended, perhaps as a result, to entertain a broader range of alternatives, Bodin was cited more frequently and more favorably, despite continued criticisms. In particular, a circle of Calvinist philosophers based in Germany, who were attempting in the same way as Bodin to find philosophical foundations for religious principles, integrated the Theatrum into their set of references and into their teaching; it was their interest, no doubt, that fueled the two Wechel editions and their spread in central and eastern European universities. The evidence that first pointed to their use of the Theatrum is the physical con-

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joining of Bodin's book with a number of works that cite it, in the early modern practice of multiple binding. In this period books were usually purchased bound only in plain paper; owners would have them bound more lastingly according to their pocketbook and personal taste, from simple vellum to expensive leather that could be stamped with insignia or decorations. The majority of the copies in my survey were bound alone, usually in vellum, in the seventeenth century; some have been rebound more recently. In thirty-five cases, however, the Theatrum was bound with another text before 1700.38 A wide range of factors governed the choice of text to bind with another. The binding process itself was expensive, therefore the more texts one had bound together, the less it cost to preserve each work in this way. Thin books especially were often bound with other works because of the ease of doing so and the relatively greater expense that individual bindings would involve. Purchase order clearly also influenced binding practices: the books in a library that were still unbound and available for combined binding were likely to be more recent acquisitions; the books to be bound together also had to have the same format. In addition to these practical considerations, however, library owners had an interest in binding together books that they thought "belonged together" since they would inevitably always be stored together, as Gabriel Naude cautions: "[In order to keep together books on the same subject] one must see to it that books that are too small to be bound alone be conjoined only with those that treat the same subject; otherwise it is better to have them bound singly than to bring confusion to a library by combining them with books on a topic so extravagant and distant that one would never have the idea of finding them in that company."35 Understandably, for example, Bodin's Theatrum was in one case bound with his Methodus (edition of 1595) (Prague), in another with his very thin Paradoxon (1596) (Paris, Mazarine). Presumably the owner who bound Bodin's Theatrum with Boethius' De consolatione philosophiae (1607) was trying to organize his books by alphabetical order (Wolfenbuttel). In most cases, however, a common theme linked the Theatrum to the books with which it was bound. Sometimes different owners even selected the same work to combine with the Theatrum: these particularly "obvious" choices were the bestselling Magia naturalis by della Porta (despite the fact that the final volume reached over 1,500 pages—Basel and Ulm); Nicolas Hill's Philosophia Epicureat itself a philosophically bold atomist work by an English Catholic, which also cited the Theatrum (Bern and Budapest);40 the Nucleus Mysteriorum enucleata by Otho Casmann, which, although it did not cite the Theatrum, shared its natural theological theme and theater metaphor, and circulated among the Calvinist circles that most cited Bodin's work (Olomouc [Moravia] and Erlangen); and Caspar Peucer's Commentarius de praecipuis divinationum generibus (Vatican and Prague), a combination that suggests (as in the case of Pontanus) that readers of the The­ atrum were often interested in other unorthodox topics, like divination, however incompatible these might be with Bodin's own forms of unorthodoxy. The Theatrum was regularly bound with various works by those who referred to it most—a circle of Calvinist professors concerned to integrate philosophy into the curricula of the academies and universities burgeoning in the new confessional states of Germany, and linked by ties of collegiality and discipleship.

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Clemens Timpler (1563/4-1624) taught philosophy for thirty years at a new Calvinist gymnasium in Steinfurt;41 Otho Casmann (ca. 1562-1607) preceded Timpler at Steinfurt before becoming rector of a new school in Stade; Rodolph Goclenius (1547-1628) taught Casmann among his numerous students at the University of Marburg and was instrumental in the letter's conversion from Catholicism to Calvinism; and, most famously, Bartholomaus Keckermann (1573—1609) studied briefly under Timpler at Heidelberg, and became professor of physics, logic, and theology at Heidelberg, and then at Gdansk.42 Other books bound with the Theatrum included a variety of pedagogical works: on arithmetic (by Christian Wurstisen of Basel) or astronomy (by the Norwegian and Lutheran, Conrad Axelson, who both cited from and was cited by the Calvinist professors)43 and especially on physics—notably, the Physica of Wilhelm Scribonius, a Calvinist and a Ramist; a late edition of the Compendium naturalis philosophiae by the Franciscan Frans Titelmans, one of the first textbooks of physics. Alongside Bodin's Theatrum one finds its Catholic counterpart, Francisco Valles' attempt to derive physics from the Bible in his De sacra philosophia; the ever-useful Physics of Aristotle, or the more esoteric Hellenistic compilation of natural knowledge by Ocellus Lucanus.44 The Theatrum was also bound with works about divination and the supernatural, and, less compellingly, with books of travel literature and histories full of exempla, or a Hebrew primer.45 Finally, two combinations seem to defeat any logic.46 This survey of extant copies, like other studies of book ownership, offers a general pattern of reception and crucial leads for further investigation, but does not in itself answer questions about how and by whom the Theatrum was actually read—what caught a reader's attention, and why, and what entered a reader's set of active references. Guided in many instances by information garnered through the survey (about works bound with the Theatrum and copies containing annotations), I will show how the Theatrum fit into the cycle of bookish natural philosophy that produced it, yielding original positions for philosophers to include in their doxographies, interesting facts for natural historians to recycle, and a host of new tidbits for alert readers to note and respond to. It also offered an example of a natural-theological argument, the details of which no one adopted wholesale, but which was common to those who most used the Theatrum, from the Calvinist professors to the Catholic Charron, and which outlasted, through its reformulation in the Problemata Bodini, even the late references to the Theatrum in the 1670s.

THE SCHOLARLY RECEPTION OF THE THEATRUM

From ca. 1550 until the ravaging effects of the Thirty Years' War, the Germanlanguage area experienced a massive academic boom, as Jesuits, Calvinists and Lutherans established new schools and universities to compete for the religious allegiance of increasing numbers of students.47 Vyingwith one another for attention, and often using printing presses installed with the schools, the new professors published vast numbers of treatises, textbooks, disputations, and theses—as

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a result, the yearly production of works of philosophy more than doubled between 1600 and 1619; then it declined progressively, reaching its pre-boom level by the late 1630s.48 The rapid expansion of the academic system created a complex network of former students and mentors, relatives and friends. These professors developed a proud sense of their position in society as a privileged caste of "Gelehrte." Its members recognized one another by their passion for books, and maintained their literary friendships by travel and abundant correspondence.19 In their academic work, the "Gelehrte" identified themselves by their culture of citation, showing their belonging to confessional subgroups by frequent references to the same set of near-contemporary sources and to one another. It is in this context that Bodin's Theatrum became a standard reference for a generation of Reformed philosophers.50 Bodin's appeal to this particular subset of contemporaries is not made explicit. Certainly he was already well known for his other works. Clemens Timpler cites Bodin forty times, far more than any other modern authority, in his treatise of political philosophy, and more often favorably than not.51 Despite Keckermann's insistence that history did not constitute a discipline and hence could not be the object of a method, Bodin's Methodus was also widely reprinted in the German area, singly and in a series of works on the "art of history."52 Keckermann, for one, explicitly distanced himself from the excessive criticisms of Possevino.53 Similarly, the Demonomanie was printed, in Latin and in German, in German cities more than in other foreign locations.54 Bodin had status as a modern authority. For example, in puzzling over a passage in the Demonomanie in which Bodin maintained that Nebuchadnezzar actually lost his human form for that of a beast, Goclenius concluded that it must have been so, by a miracle of God, because "we think very highly of Bodin, a man of great judgment."55 Although the citations of the Theatrum are no doubt in part due to Bodin's fame and to the high levels of academic activity in general in Germany in this period, Bodin's natural philosophy also corresponded particularly well to the concerns of a certain set of philosophers, who shared his natural-theological agenda (notably in their frequent use of the metaphor of the "theater of nature")56 and his desire to provide philosophical and certain demonstrations of religious truths. The initial reaction of Protestant reformers had been to reject Aristotle, secular philosophy more generally, and scholastic attempts to reconcile philosophy and theology. Melanchthon was the first to introduce natural philosophy into Protestant university textbooks and to justify the study of nature as morally edifying.57 But by the late sixteenth century the Reformed philosophers went further than Melanchthon, and wanted to use philosophy and natural theology to prove the scientific and certain nature of their theological conclusions.58 Like Bodin, Keckermann insisted repeatedly on the principle that the "truth is one and simple"; unlike Bodin, he also elaborated a systematic account of the relations between theology and philosophy.59 In particular Keckermann and his cohort, ironically, often turned to Catholic neoscholastics like Pereira and Suarez for philosophical arguments to establish the certainty of religious truths. Despite confessional differences, both groups were fighting both against the secular Aristotelianism of

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Pomponazzi and those who maintained that a proposition true in philosophy could conflict with a theological truth, and also against the theologians who would deny the value of philosophy altogether.60 To ensure the singleness of truth, like Bodin, the Calvinist philosophers often turned to the Bible to resolve philosophical questions; for example, Timpler invoked "Sacred Scripture" as one of the "most authoritative kinds of testimony" in frequent citations from both Old and New Testaments (with somewhat more of the former than of the latter).61 But, unlike Bodin, they also favored Aristotle as the principal philosophical authority. As a result they often criticized Bodin for his anti-Aristotelianism in natural philosophy; nonetheless they took the Thcatrum seriously as a source of original philosophical argument in line with their own objectives. In Timpler's physics textbooks, Bodin is the modern author most often cited (nine times) after Zabarella (seventeen times), outstripping Avicenna (eight times), but all of them of course lagging far behind the Bible and Aristotle Three of the nine citations Freedman rates as negative.62 Keckermann, characteristically a defender of Aristotle, is often critical of Bodin; nonetheless, he approves of Bodin's piety and hostility toward superstition, notably his uncovering "the wile of the devil under the veil of occult qualities" in the Demonomanie , 63 and is particularly attentive to the meteorology in the Theatrum. He argues at some length against Bodin's redefinition of air as the most cold and dry element: this "strange opinion . . . does not distinguish between what is per se and what is by accident. Air does not make things cold in itself but only by accident. . . . Furthermore, Bodin confuses wind with air; indeed winds, especially from the North, make things violently cold, but it does not follow that air makes things cold, for wind is not air, nor is air wind, 1 mean pure air which is the object of discussion here."64 Finally, Bodin does not distinguish between two different types of humidity: the humidity of air (as found in oil) and that of water (as found in aqueous fruit), which distinction accounts, for example, for the different complexions of people.65 Keckermann also finds "peculiar" Bodin's notion that the cause of hoarfrost is hidden in the treasury of divine secrets. He explains instead how hoarfrost results from natural causes, notably from the condensation of vapor at night; nonetheless he notes that "often a special disease for plants results from hoarfrost, which Pliny calls 'carbunculatio' in [Natural history], XVII, 24, [which] is neither ordinary nor natural and does not occur at the time proper to hoarfrost, . . . but at extraordinary times."66 Keckermann thus acknowledges a supernatural form of hoarfrost alongside the natural one; similarly, he concludes that "one should not simply refute what Bodin warns in the theater of nature page 177 that hurricanes, lightning, earthquakes have certain not-ordinary causes which can be attributed to genies or demons restrained by divine power."67 Bodin's unusual positions are to be taken seriously, which is why his errors should also be refuted at length. On comets, a topic hotly debated throughout this period for both its cosmological and astrological implications, Keckermann finds only an ancient reference to correct: Bodin cites Pliny instead of Aristotle, "perhaps due a memory lapse," for the observation that comets do not set like the other stars but gradually dis-

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appear from view.68 Keckermann concedes Bodin's point that the tails of comets do not always point away from the sun, but sometimes away from the direction of their motion: this received rule "is not a universal theorem, but it suffers an exception in some comets."69 Keckermann expresses annoyance, however, with Bodin and Cardano for condemning Aristotle's theory because it cannot account for the variety of colors seen in comets, without themselves adducing any reason for the phenomena.70 On the whole, Keckermann concludes nonetheless that Bodin "was clearly a remarkable author in his doctrine of meteors, one who disagrees with the others with great zeal."71 Other authors shared this appraisal, as they included Bodin's original conclusions in doxographies, with or without critical commentary. Daniel Sennert of Wroctaw (1572-1637), a professor of medicine at Wittenberg best known for his attempt to reconcile Paracelsian with Galenic and Aristotelian theory, reported without open criticism Bodin's suggestion (introduced in the Theatrum in a rare ambiguous use of the dialogue form) that comets are the souls of illustrious men.71 Kaspar Bartholin (1585—1629), a Lutheran from Malmo, who after studying medicine ended up as professor of theology at Copenhagen, was less tolerant of Bodin's errance from Christian orthodoxy: "Without reason or justice Bodin calls it an error and the arrogant weakness of men to believe that stars were made for them, . . . since the end to which things are directed is more excellent than the things directed at it."73 Predictably, also, Timpler vehemently rejected Bodin's notion that the celestial bodies are animate, and Keckermann, Bodin's definition of the active intellect, although he did not take the high moral tone of an accusation of impiety.74 Outside Germany, too, Bodin's theory of the soul especially attracted attention, featuring (without judgment) in doxographies by Robert Burton (1577-1640) and John Selden (1584-1654), and garnering among scholars through the seventeenth century a favorable reference here and a less favorable one there.75 On less contentious, natural-historical topics, on the other hand, Bodin was received quite favorably. Goclenius in particular generally admired the truth of Bodin's positions in the earliest published references to the Theatrum that I have found—his commentary on a textbook of natural philosophy by the Dutch professor Cornelius Valerius published in 1598.76 Goclenius frequently recommends Bodin as extra reading, on the existence of supracelestial waters, on the recipe for making arsenic, on the distinction between first and second objects of vision (light then color).77 Bodin is the authority that Goclenius uses to support Valerius' compromise position between Plato and Aristotle that mental powers are infused at the same time as the soul is sent into the body by God; he cites the passage in the Theatrum in which the seeds of virtues and sciences are said to be divinely sown in human souls.78 Goclenius praises as "splendid" Bodin's refutation of Aristotle's theory on the origins of springs (which come from the sea rather than from the compression of underground exhalations).79 He even argues against detractors in favor of Bodin's belief that swallows take refuge during the winter under the high cliffs on the edge of the sea.80 Nonetheless he also criticizes Bodin on one point: "Bodin most obtusely decided that those animals had the most perfect

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sense of touch that have the thinnest skin, that is, spiders and worms."81 These numerous, overwhelmingly positive references to the Theatrum in a textbook of natural philosophy designed for "the philosophical school at Marburg" as early as 1598 no doubt helped to put the Theatrum on the list of works regularly consulted and cited by Goclenius' German Calvinist colleagues, including his former pupil Alsted.82 The Theatrum served as a source of natural historical information, unadulterated by philosophy, for Jan Jonston (1603-75), a Polish doctor settled in England, who composed many separate natural histories (of birds, fish, etc.), which were all posthumously published as a single "theater of all the animals" (1718). Jonston's much reprinted Thaumatographia naturalis (first published in 1632) is similar to the Theatrum in that it does not grow out of school exercises or lectures but lays out in one volume the wonders of the natural world, starting with the heavens, then moving up from elements, minerals, and plants to animals and humans. ForJonston the Theatrum is more than a source from which to determine Bodin's philosophical position, as it was for the German professors; not only do Bodin's views appear in Jonston's discussion of the number of orbs,83 or the movement of the fixed stars, but Bodin's doxographies are the likely source from which Jonston has culled the other opinions that he cites. On the growing distance of the reference star Prima Arietis from the equinox Jonston gives the authorities (with one exception—Menelaus) that Bodin lists in the Theatrum, with the same figures attributed to them, many of the same Latin phrases to introduce them, but no acknowledgment of his source. "Meton, who lived in the 130th year after Thales found the star of Aries at the equinox. Timochares [found that it] followed [the equinox] by 2 degrees. Hipparchus, by 4°9'; Ptolemy by 6°40'; Albategnius by 18°12'. Alfonso [of the Alfonsine tables] by 23°48'. Werner by 26°54': Bodin by 28°20'."84 On the other hand, Jonston cites Bodin as his source for the custom of beating the insane on the full moon, for the description of the comet of 1556 which was so big that all the forests of the earth would not have sufficed to maintain its fire, and for the argument against a shift in the apogee of the sun from the constancy of the "discipline of eclipses."85 Although he disagrees with Bodin on the cause of water springing up from the earth (it is not caused by the weight of the earth pushing the water as Bodin says),86 Jonston is generally less concerned with arguing for or against Bodin's position as ingathering information and interesting details from the Theatrum. On "fossils" especially Jonston culls regularly from Bodin: on the magnet Jonston quotes a full page from the Theatrum in which Bodin describes how an iron needle rubbed with a magnet will face toward one of the four cardinal directions depending on the orientation of the rock from which the magnet was taken, and how one can see this in the motion of a magnetized needle attached to a piece of floating wood.87 Jonston learns from Bodin that crystal can be melted in extremely hot furnaces, that diamond will be tarnished by an hour in the fire, but can rapidly be polished back to a shine, and that vinegar penetrates the inner recesses of iron and thus weakens it.88 Finally, Jonston cites Bodin for the fact that emeralds can be very large, and gives examples of large emeralds in a cloister in the region of Lyon, and

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in the chapel of Saint Wenceslas in Prague.89 Bodin in fact refers only to foot-long emeralds in Genoa and Magdeburg. On this point Jonston seems to have found his examples elsewhere and attributed them by error to a source he frequently exploited. Less interested in arguments and explanations, Jonston used Bodin's Theatrum to different purposes than the German professors of philosophy—as a storehouse of doxographical and natural knowledge with which he could fill his Thaumatographia, which was reprinted down to 1665, thus ferrying Bodin's tidbits into the late seventeenth century. For Pierre Charron (1541-1603), Bodin's Theatrum served as a hidden source for the descriptions of nature and especially the human soul, in works that waver (exacerbating a tendency that we found in Bodin) between rationalism and fideism.90 As an avocat at the Parlement of Paris, Charron may have personally known Bodin. He went on to study theology, then, like Bodin, he followed the League for a brief period in Angers, before declaring for the king as soon as the city was retaken, and apologizing for his error.91 Like other neo-Stoic moralists, (such as Du Vair and Lipsius), and influenced by Montaigne, Charron founds his search for wisdom in self-knowledge.92 He is thus particularly interested in Bodin's discussion of the soul, from which he borrows liberally, both m De la sagesse (1601) and in the later Discours Chretiens. The difficulty of defining the soul; the term "hypostasis" to describe the human conjoining of soul and body; the arguments that the soul must be corporeal in order to be located, and immortal once detached from the body, given its intermediate nature between purely incorporeal and completely material beings, and as confirmed by the ecstatic experiences of prophets, Cardano and Duns Scotus—on all these points Charron follows Bodin closely.93 On the corporeal nature of the soul, Charron cites many of the same authorities: "all the philosophers," and, among the theologians, Tertullian, Basil, Gregory, Augustine, and John Damascene (he adds Origen to Bodin's list and does not name the philosophers as Bodin does).94 He even quotes the same Biblical verse "erunt sicut angeli" (Matt. 22:30), although he prudently mentions Bodin's view that the souls of illustrious men become angels after death only as "the opinion of some," and, refraining from a conclusion himself, he refers the reader to "Religion and the Theologians who discuss this all clearly."95 But Charron did not follow Bodin in his attempt to give rational philosophical demonstrations of religious truths and instead leaned mostly toward fideism in his first work: De la sagesse was censured by the Sorbonne precisely for failing to use reason to demonstrate the immortality of the soul.96 Charron took heed of the censure, and in his Discours Chretiens of 1604 pursued a more usual natural-theological project. Although he still insists on our inability to know God through reason and on the superiority of a silent adoration of divine majesty, Charron devotes the second of his three Discours Chretiens to a study of creation, that "visible, great and clear mirror of [divine] majesty, theater of his power, goodness, wisdom, workshop, and store (atelier et boutique) of his providence and marvels."97 The metaphors here, as well as Charron's renewed focus on knowing the human self, are especially reminiscent of La Primaudaye.98 But in treating numer-

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ous specifics, Charron's borrowings from the Theatrum are also clear: in his section on astronomy, which (as in Jonston and most other authors) comes first, the heavens are animate, following Ezekiel 1:20 and 10:17: "spiritus vitae in rotis"; there are ten orbs, as signified by the ten curtains of the tabernacle; the motions of the three outermost orbs follow a progression from arithmetic and geometnc to harmonic proportions.™ In meteorology, Charron defines the elements, in particular air, according to the received opinion, but then ends up following "a number of people" according to whom air is mostly defined by cold, and he distinguishes between natural and supernaturally violent winds.100 Citing many of the same authorities as Bodin, Charron rejects Aristotle's explanation of the formation of underground springs as "impertinent" and contrary to the opinion of "the ancient wise men, Salomon, Esdras, Thales, Plato, and Philo.'"01 Furthermore, in his enumeration of the enmities between animals, Charron reveals in his choice of names that he has used Bodin's Latin original rather than Fougerolles' translation.102 In a work constructed primarily from unacknowledged borrowings,103 Charron ferries, alongside arguments from La Primaudaye and Montaigne, not only tidbits of natural history that were widely accepted, but also some of Bodin's unusual conclusions and characteristic authorities. Primarily a moralist rather than a natural philosopher, Charron probably appreciated these passages for their greater attention to the Bible in reconciling philosophy and religion. But Charron set them in an indubitably Christian apologetics, which also proved, among other topics, the redemption of the world and the person, conception, and birth of the Redeemer.104 He shunned Bodin's allegorizations and distanced himself from some of his unacceptable discussions (e.g., concerning the souls of great men becoming angels) and more readily deferred to theological authority. Charron was willing to attack Aristotle, but did so discreetly, without the explicit venom of Bodin.105 Finally, Bodin's material was generally ancillary to Charron's principal discussion of neo-Stoic ethics, of the passions, vices, and virtues.106 Nonetheless, the wide success of Charron's work (especially among circles of the "erudite libertines" and the Port-Royalists) circulated Bodin's ideas (without attribution) outside the universities, and past those, like Mersenne and Scipion Dupleix, who otherwise feared Bodin's explicit anti-Aristotelianism as a threat to the received synthesis of religion and philosophy.107 Aside from its reception among those with a bookish interest in natural philosophy—the traditional academics, natural historical compilers or moralists like Charron—the Theatrum had some impact on those circles associated with science today considered "modern," either for its empiricism or for its mathematization. Gilbert Watts, a fellow of Lincoln College, Oxford, known as one of the "earlier ardent Baconians" (he translated Bacon's De augmentis scientiarum in 1633), owned a first edition of the Theatrum along with works by Campanella, Cardano, Casaubon, Gilbert, and Harvey, among others.108 This is perhaps not very surprising, given the continuities (as well as the significant breaks) in the methods of compiling "experience" between Bodin and Francis Bacon, as I sketch in the epilogue. Among those oriented toward mathematization rather than empiricism, on the other hand, the Theatrum was known for a single passage—the one m

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which Bodin praises Candala as a "French Archimedes" and both cites and adds to his investigation of the specific weights of various substances (pp. 260-61). Excerpted from the rest of the work, this passage became one of the sources used in the tables of specific weights compiled and circulated in the early seventeenth century, notably through Mersenne.109 The authors of these tables, like the fortifications engineer Pierre Petit and the royal physician Louis Savot, cited Bodin alongside Tartaglia, Candala, and others as their predecessors in this research.110 It is perhaps through this circulation rather than from a direct reading of the Theatrum that Kepler became aware of the passage, the results of which he criticized cogently.111 Conversely, none of the works of traditional or academic natural philosophy mention this passage, which alone among the countless bookish tidbits in the Theatrum caught the attention of practitioners (like Kepler) and compilers (like Savot) with modern mathematical interests. This disjunction between the natural-historical and the mathematical citations of the Theatrum suggests how different scientific circles coexisted without much intersection in the first half of the seventeenth century.112 Citations and active use of the Theatrum lasted through the third quarter of the seventeenth century. The Calvinist universities lost ground rapidly during the first few years of the Thirty Years' War. Heidelberg became Catholic, Marburg Lutheran; Steinfurt and Herborn did not maintain their position.113 The collapse of Calvinist philosophy in the 1620s ended the academic citations of the Theatrum. Nonetheless, the book was still read in German circles: by Rixner1 at Helmstedt1 who annotated his copy purchased in 1670; or by one Samuel Eglingerus (presumably in Basel) who exclaimed with enthusiasm in his ex libris of 1663: "Happy who can know the causes of things!"114 Evidence for use of the French edition, particularly scarce, includes a copy annotated at Bodin's discussion of elephant horns: "On August 19, 1648, two or three of these horns or teeth of elephants were brought to Aurillac, weighing forty pounds."115 In 1673 Jean Chapelain (1595-1674), the leading Aristotelian literary critic and a member of the Academie frangaise, wrote to Herman Conring (1606—81), professor of medicine at Helmstedt: "I also have by Bodin a summary of physics which is not to be disdained."116 Conring, who had become a more and more liberal Aristotelian over time, responded: "I read what Bodin wrote in the Theatrum some time ago and found it of some merit."117 But the two were both old men whose training and interests in exclusively bookish natural philosophy dated back to the first half of the century. One younger man, however, the unusually learned curator of the Wolfenbuttel library, W. G. Leibniz (1646-1716), in 1669 still ranked Bodin among the "novatores," in a list expanded since Mersenne's time to include our "moderns" (Galileo, Bacon, and Descartes) as well as the Renaissance "moderns" (Patrizi, Telesio, Basson, etc.), and he expressed the traditional ambivalence about innovators, warning that one should neither completely accept nor completely reject them.118 Only in the eighteenth century would Brucker strike the Theatrum from the list of "novatores," whom he hailed unambiguously as admirable. The Theatrum had become hard to find, a collector's item (purchased for example by an

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American businessman), and Bodin the object of respectful, but historical rather than philosophical discussion.119 Pierre Bayle was one of the last to engage with the content of the Theatrum, in his Dictionnaire of 1675: acknowledging that Bodin's notion that comets are the souls of illustrious men is "very strange," Bayle goes on at some length to show that there must be a mistake.120 In 1702 Bodin's criticism of Aristotle's definition of air still seemed worth citing as part of a general attack on the ancients.121 The anti-Aristotelianism that hampered the success of the Theatrum in the early seventeenth century improved its staying power through the end of the century. It was not time yet to dismiss the Theatrum as beyond correction or the ability to make sense. But soon the Theatrum disappeared from learned discussion, and when it was mentioned during the nineteenth century, it was only to be labeled "a work of detestable physics."122 The Evidence from Annotated Copies In the seventy-five-odd years of its active use, many more near-contemporaries read the Theatrum than those who referred to it or borrowed from it in their own publications. From three well-annotated copies that I have been able to consult, we can watch a few individuals at work, and get a better sense of the methods of reading that generated the citations of the Theatrum, both of philosophical conclusions and of natural-historical tidbits, even though none of these particular annotators went on to cite the Theatrum.123 Nicolaus Granius (d. 1631), profesSOT of physics at Rostock, then at the University of Helmstedt,124 focused mostly on astronomy and optics, covering other sections more cursorily. Isaac Casaubon (1559-1614), born in Geneva, active in England, and one of the great late humanists, along with Lipsius and Scaliger,125 "may have been the most thorough and complex adversarial reader in the period": he left marginalia in many books, using a method of note-taking that relied on marginal and loose-leaf memoranda rather than on copying passages out in a notebook (see figures 6 and 7).126 Finally, the most abundant annotations are those of an anonymous reader, here referred to as the "Ceard annotator," in a copy of the 1597 Latin edition, now in the library of Jean Ceard. The notes provide occasional clues about their author, suggesting that he was not French, but possibly Italian, and possibly Protestant; his references to other Latin works from all over Europe place his reading after 1603, while notes in a second hand, possibly by the same person at a later date, give page references that correspond to a 1609 edition of Bodin's Republica.127 Despite individual differences, these readers all kept the same kind of notes, which are characteristic of scholarly readings in the period.128 First of all, the notes elucidate the meaning of the text. They repeat or summarize the questions posed, or list a general topic heading (such as one might use in a commonplace book, like "winds," "glass," or "the metamorphosis of the silkworm"), in the margin (Ceard annotator) or across the top of the page opening (Granius), or, in a select list of references to pages of special interest, on the flyleaves (Granius and Casaubon). These notes serve as a running index to a work which is divided only

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Fig. 6. Isaac Casaubon's copy of Bodin's Theatrum (first edition, second emission, with rubricated title page). This flyleaf (one of three containing notes) lists many points of interest also flagged in the text, e.g., "202 water seven times corrupted," "397 Johannes de Temporibus lived to 369 years." There are also two pointed criticisms. "226 on the connections or gradations of the world, p. 270 Bodin wants to seem the first to have observed them: many stupidities"; and, sarcastically, "499 that the human soul is intermediate between the corporeal and the incorporeal: new philosophy! also pp. 518 and 510." Notes on the title page mention Bodin's having traveled on the Ocean seven times (p. 197), his praise of Joseph Scaliger (p. 566) and his use of "mama" to denote "marga" or "argille" (pp. 224, 262, 264). Photograph reprinted with permission of the British Library, London; Shelfmark no. 536.b.4 into b o o k s of over a hundred pages each; they are a precious supplement to the brief table of contents, guiding the reader back to digressions and other hidden nuggets of information. They also add corrections and clarifications. The Ceard annotator meticulously corrects typographical errors and references, adds n u m bers to match Bodin's enumerations in the words of the text, and clarifies Bodin's elliptical arguments by completing them in the margin. 129 Granius adds more systematic, numbered outlines to clarify the text, and dichotomous diagrams, for instance on the motions of the earth proposed by Copernicus, the laws of optics, the modes of generation in plants, or kinds of agent intellect. 130 All three occasionally offer vernacular translations for technical terms. 131 Secondly, the readers

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Fig. 7. On pp. 2 3 0 - 3 1 Isaac Casaubon notes topics under discussion in the margin ("chrysocolla," "adamas," "color caeruleus," "lapilli diaphaneis") or summaries of Bodin's conclusions ("Adamas cedit igm"—the diamond yields to fire); he gives the French equivalent for a Latin term: "diamans d'Alengon" and notes "pietas B[odini]" across from Bodin's denial that the hyacinth stone is effective agamst lightning. Photograph reprinted with permission of the British Library, London; shelfmark no. 536.b.4. single out Bodin's philosophical positions, monitoring especially his criticism and praise of authorities, and are avid for unique bits of information, whether derived from b o o k s or personal experience—this is the kind of note-taking that underlies the citations of the Theatrum b y both philosophers and natural historians. Finally, they add personal c o m m e n t s and criticisms, providing cross-references within the Theatrum or to other w o r k s — t h e s e notes begin the process of entering the n e w material into one's mental storehouse of knowledge, and confronting it with what was already there. T h e Ceard annotator keeps the most detailed doxographical tally, flagging everything from Bodin's praise of Candala to his criticism of the "vulgar," 132 and of course his notorious 1 6 0 criticisms of Aristotle; the result can serve as a rudimentary list of Bodin's sources, similar to printed lists sometimes found at the beginning of compilatory works, in a pattern proudly set b y Pliny in his Natural history. 131 Casaubon pursues the theme less exhaustively, listing a select catalogue of Bodin's criticisms of Aristotle on one of the three flyleaves he uses for notes and flagging others in the text, including an instance in w h i c h Bodin tries to defend

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Aristotle (p. 60—on the single principle of nature).134 These reports are neutral rather than judgmental, except in Granius who lists on the flyleaf two instances in which Bodin "unjustly carps against Aristotle.'"35 Casaubon also keeps a selective record of other authorities mentioned by Bodin, with special attention to his friends in the Scaliger family: he notices Bodin's praise of Joseph Scaliger (p. 566—also noted on the title page, see figure 6), adds Julius Scaliger as the source for the term "noluntas" (p. 469), and supplies a cross-reference to Julius Scaliger's commentary on Theophrastus for Bodin's discussion of how better plants can grow from worse ones (p. 276).136 In the practice of traditional natural philosophy, each author defines his position and his original contribution to the field in the way he discusses authorities, and apportions praise and criticism to that same set of sources which every other writer in the field has used before. By flagging the passages where Bodin takes on known authorities, the readers keep an index of arguments and philosophical positions in addition to an index by subject matter. The readers also glean avidly numerous bits of information. Some are bookish in origin, like the case of Faustina who bore a child that looked like the gladiator she loved (Casaubon, p. 120), or the temple of Utica whose wooden beams remained uncorrupted after twelve hundred years (Ceard annotator and Casaubon, p. 278). Others stem from the more unique store of "experientia" collected by Bodin: both Casaubon and the Ceard annotator flag the case of William of Orange who lost his sense of taste from a head wound (p. 460). Casaubon especially highlights Bodin's reports of the common practices in different manual professions. Interspersing French for practical expressions, Casaubon notes Bodin's description of those who know how to explode a mine to destroy the walls of a city,137 and the practices of the fishermen who catch quails in their nets (p. 328), come across swallows hiding under the cliffs (p. 365), or avoid certain flowers that make fish rot by their smell (p. 401). With a regional bias toward things French, Casaubon flags Bodin's stories about Montpellier, Toulouse, or the Loiret near Orleans (pp. 192, 252, 333), and the precious key of St. Hubert which cures humans from rabies and is preserved in a shrine in Savoy (p. 383). Like Casaubon, the Ceard annotator singles out interesting customs, like the English law against killing birds of prey (p. 380). The readers also adduce their own experience into their otherwise bookish notes, perpetuating this integration of literary and nonliterary elements in the transmission and formation of knowledge. Bodin's description of the birth of worms from excrement and from plants elicits from Granius: "worms that are born from rotten cheese similarly degenerate into flies. I myself have seen this in cheese placed in hot weather in a hot and dry place."138 The Ceard annotator objects to Bodin's claim that hares are the fastest animals: "but dogs catch up to them when they are tired" (p. 405), and adds other details, presumably rather more bookish in nature—such as that Germans have higher-pitched voices than Ethiopians (on the question of the voice of castrated men), and "that Calvin and Scaliger were black."139 Bookish cross-references continue this work of integrating the Theatrum into a set of mental connections. They display the reader's knowledge and acumen, al-

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though presumably mainly for his private pleasure,140 and leave precious traces of a thought process that could be useful in annotating other books, or in composing an original work. Even the least diligent annotators can add references to common ancient texts like Pliny or Cicero.141 The Ceard annotator displays familiarity with a much broader range of books, citing Bodin's other works, contemporary authors like Fernel, Cardano, or Scaliger, or collections of mirabilia by Hieronymus Magius (on the burning power of hoarfrost), Caesarius Heisterbachensis (on the spherical shape of the soul), and Caelius Rhodiginus (on Taraxippus).142 In most cases the external references give a parallel to Bodin's argument or a supportive example. Occasionally, the Ceard annotator uses an external reference to reject Bodin's position; when Bodin denies that fish die in an enclosed pool for lack of air, he comments: "Fish also breathe, drawing not air separated from water but air joined with water. Scaliger Exer. 273 nu.2 p. 347b at the bottom; Rondelet also agrees, but Aristotle denies it, and Cardano de Variet. 1.7 c.37, p. 289 [agrees]" (p. 329). These precise references suggest that the annotator was reading in a well-supplied study in which he could consult many books at once. Whether or not he also kept a separate notebook, the annotator clearly used the margins of Bodin's Theatrum to relate different passages on one topic, as in a commonplace book. In one cross-reference Granius suggests the source for a passage in Bodin—his argument against Copernicus that it is false to argue against Ptolemy that the moon should look twice as large because it is twice as close in perigee as in apogee (p. 596): "Either Jean Pena transcribed from here these same words in his Letter to the Cardinal of Lorraine on the use of optics, or Bodin [took them] from him."143 Given the date of Pena's preface (1557), it must be Bodin who borrowed from Pena, unless there is another common source. Internal cross-references also perform the same function, and, by confronting Bodin with himself, they sometimes reveal contradictions in the text (on whether motion and rest are contraries, for example, or on the relation between abundance of sap and the sweetness of a fruit).144 Casaubon often lists up to three and four other locations for a topic (the ten hypostases; the links in the chain of being, or the nature of ash), but leaves some cross-references unfinished. When on p. 404 Bodin explains that the right pincers of crabs are not always larger than the left ones, but are larger if they get more use, Casaubon remarks: "the pincers of crabs. But you have another reason, see p. ." He was probably thinking of the passage on p. 320 in which Bodin explains that pincers can grow back once torn off, which could account for their different sizes.145 Finally, in addition to helping to organize and interrelate the knowledge acquired by reading the Theatrum with an existing network of texts and experience, the notes can express a direct appraisal of Bodin's thought and work. All three readers are attentive to Bodin's style, revealing the persistence of humanist concerns for proper Latinity. The Ceard annotator exclaims "pulchre" in admiration at Bodin's eloquent variations on the -rogari verbs in the preface, and notices the same trick with variations on the -ger- root on p. 490.146 He also comments that Bodin's "ubiubi" is equivalent to "ubicumque" and appears in the language of Plautus and Terence (p. 321).147 Similarly Granius notes concerning the title that "Plautus and

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Ennius [use] 'contemplo' in the active voice.'"48 Casaubon flags the anakephaleosis (summary) and transition at the end of Book I (p. 129). Finally, the Ceard annotator complains that "suum ibi et ubi" would be a more Latin turn of phrase than Bodin's "suam ubietam et ibietam" although it emulates the Greek (p. 516). The readers generally agree in praising Bodin, notably for his piety. Granius is fascinated by Bodin's confessions of ignorance.149 In addition, Casaubon flags as the "piety of Bodin" the passage in which Bodin warns against attributing to material things powers that belong to God alone (see figure 7).150 He reserves special praise for Bodin's examples of divine providence—that God does things against nature in hoarfrost in order to excite our admiration ("docte," p. 206); that the mixture of wheat and barley in a field prevents disease to the whole crop because divine providence ensures in this way that the rich as well as the poor will be fed ("acute," p. 292); that insects are useful for goading men to work, and rousing them from their sleep and drunken stupor, especially in the summer when the south wind blows ("acutissime," p. 318). On this passage the Ceard annotator adds his own explanation of the utility of insects: "They also incite us to cleanliness: because these creatures are generally born from filth.'"51 It is in their criticisms that the readers differ the most. Casaubon is only once critical of Bodin because he is wrong: correcting Bodin on a philological and chronological point, Casaubon exclaims "how stupid" when Bodin states that Themistius lived fifty years after Aristotle.152 He also comments that to compare the chameleon to the octopus because they both can change color is silly ("ineptum hoc," p. 310).153 Otherwise, the cold nature of the air, the magnetic needle that points in the four cardinal directions, the monstrous mating of dog and hare, or the account of spontaneous combustion in the heat of the summer in Muscovy are all noted without critical comment. Casaubon is sharply critical, however, of some of Bodin's philosophical points because he finds them useless and boring— because they are too obviously true rather than because they are false. Of Bodin's argument that death does not happen only by the opposition of contraries Casaubon writes "but this is easy" ("sed hoc facile," p. 45); it is "frivolous" to argue at length as Bodin does that although perfection is reached only at a specific moment, the act of generation (of a temple for example) takes place over time ("haec frivola," p. 111). Casaubon has no patience with the chain of being, or with Bodin's argument about the soul as intermediate, although he does take note of the pages on which these themes occur.154 The Ceard annotator is not as judgmental about Bodin's philosophical themes. He objects rather to specific points, whether fish breathe or hares run the fastest, or to Bodin's hasty generalization that all white things are weaker than things of other colors.155 But his main complaints concern Bodin's allegorical interpretations: "no certain doctrine can be drawn from allegories" (p. 134). While he does not react to the theories Bodin advances, he opposes the justifications that Bodin draws for them from the Bible: to argue that Ecclesiastes 10:20—"a bird of the sky will carry your voice"—refers to the active intellect or angel to each person, is "an anagogical interpretation, which is not proper" (p. 532).156 Or, concerning Bodin's conclusion that the souls of great men become angels, "Christ says not

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that they will be angels, but that they will be like angels" (p. 537). The Ceard annotator does not object to Bodin's use of demons as explanations, although he prefers a naturalistic explanation when Bodin offers the option.137 Nor does he criticize the animate nature of the celestial bodies. But (like Bartholin) he is adamant on the single point that man remains superior to them: "Man is the final cause of the world; it is for him that the world was created: but God is the final cause of man. Man is not only [terrestrial] by reason of his terrestrial body, but he is even more than celestial by reason of his immortal soul. Why [were] not [the stars created for man], since they are useful to him?" (p. 609). The second hand reinforces the point: "certainly [the celestial bodies are inferior] since the skies were made for man" (p. 552). These criticisms do not prevent Casaubon and the Ceard annotator from reading the Theatrum closely, in order to collect philosophical judgments, pious arguments, and juicy bits of information, of the kind that the various authors who cited the Theatrum retrieved from their own readings of the text. Whatever their appraisal of Bodin, these readers perpetuated his method of collecting doxographical and natural-historical information from bookish and "experiential" sources in a cycle that showed no sign of internal strain or imminent demise.

THE VERNACULAR RECEPTION

The French Translation

Evidence for the vernacular reception of the Theatrum is much harder to come by than for its reception by scholars. Progressively fewer copies survive as the text reached more popular audiences, through the French translation and then the German vulgarization; fewer copies still (if any, in the case of the Problemata Bodini) bear traces of ownership or readership. Publications and citations, reading notes and references in letters, even ex libris markings and carefully planned multiple bindings were all practices of an international elite of scholars who read and wrote almost exclusively in Latin. Certainly, these scholars also functioned in the vernacular in their daily life, and occasionally integrated elements from this experience in their notes and writings, introducing translations of technical terms or references to the artisans they consulted. But they had neither the need nor the inclination to treat topics like natural philosophy in the vernacular: trained since childhood in the mastery of humanist Latinity and at universities that exercised a Latin monopoly on higher education, they considered the classical languages (including, when possible, Greek)158 to be the only proper vehicle for philosophical reflection and for the precise expression necessary in the search for certainty. To publish in the vernacular would have been, for great classicists like Casaubon, or academic philosophers like Keckermann, to step down from this noble goal and heritage, and from an exclusive club of correspondents, friends, and rivals. Nonetheless, as is well known, the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries witnessed the rapid development, standardization, and rise in respectability of many

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European vernaculars. This complex and long drawn-out process, subject to a multitude of local and chronological variations, grew out of many factors, including the rise of the vernacular through the late Middle Ages, the spread of Protestant catechisms and translations of the Bible, increased literacy and circulation of texts, and the centralization and growing sense of identity of national states. Of special relevance to the development of the vernacular in scientific fields were the new social and intellectual ambitions of artisans, who could diffuse their vernacular writings through print and were rewarded by the patronage of courts. In France, the surgeon Ambroise Pare and the potter Bernard Palissy, both royal proteges, consciously framed their vernacular treatises as challenges to the claims to superiority made by the learned doctors and philosophers.159 At the same time, certain humanist circles, excited by a nationalist competition with Italy in the "rebirth of letters," called for the development of French in order to surpass Italian and even equal the classical languages. The Dejfence et illustration de la languefrangoyse of 1549 was the most famous expression of this program, written by a poet to emphasize the prominent role that poetry would play in this process. But it inspired authors across many fields, including not only Jacques Peletier du Mans (whose French arithmetic was also indebted to practical vernacular manuals), but also (more indirectly) Jean Bodin and his French translator, Frangois de Fougerolles. In an early speech, delivered in Latin to the people and senate of Toulouse concerning plans to start a new school (of which he probably hoped to be named rector), Bodin acknowledged that it would be "a great and illustrious accomplishment to be able to teach the arts and sciences in the vernacular," instead of spending so much time learning another language first. "Following the example of both the Greeks and the Latins who preferred to express in their own language rather than a foreign one the things they had learned from the Egyptians and the Greeks respectively . . . , we too will endeavor to express what we have received from them in the French language, which will be rich enough, 1 predict, to clothe and even adorn the sciences.'"60 Nonetheless, Bodin concluded, a mastery of Latin (such as the proposed school would provide) was still essential, particularly for relations with other countries. Bodin showed his enthusiasm for French in this speech perhaps in part to please the city notables, whose own school training in Latin would typically have been eroded by business and legal activities conducted in the vernacular, and who were precisely in the 1550s enthusiastic to support French (as opposed to the local Occitan), notably in the famous poetry contest held annually in Toulouse.161 But Bodin himself appreciated the value of French for certain kinds of works. His commentary on Oppian and his Methodus were composed in Latin, as this was the language appropriate to these humanist genres; despite numerous reprintings down to 1650, the Methodus was not translated from the Latin until this century, and the Oppian probably never will be. But Bodin wrote in French when addressing issues of immediate political relevance,162 to help solve national crises, such as those caused by civil war, witchcraft, or inflation. Bodin explains in the Republique that he chose to "write in the popular tongue, as much because the wellsprings of the Latin language are almost dried

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up, and will dry up completely if the barbarity caused by the civil wars continues, as in order to be better understood by all native Frenchmen."163 As a bilingual author, who translated his own work both from French into Latin (in the case of the Republique) and vice versa (in the case of the Paradoxon on moral virtue),164 Bodin clearly chose knowledgeably the language in which to compose the Theatrum. Latin was indeed the language in which this long work, full of bookish erudition and idiosyncratic philosophy, was best received—the only language that could carry it across so many linguistic barriers, to be cited by German academics and read by individuals scattered across Europe. Nevertheless, the documents generated by a legal dispute over the publication of the French translation reveal that Bodin himself wanted the Theatrum to be translated into French. When brought to court by Fougerolles, who demanded control of the front matter to the translation and more money (he won on the first point but lost on the second), the printer Jacques Roussin of Lyon, who had produced the Latin original, explained (through his lawyer): "Having received a book by the late monsieur Jehan Baudin entitled Teatrum naturae he [Roussin] had it printed in Latin, and it was dedicated to the sieur de Chevrieres and to acquit himself of the promise he had made to the author and to the said Chevrieres he had it translated by the plaintiff in French for the sum of twenty ecus to be paid in books and five ecus of silver."165 This assurance made by the printer to Bodin and Chevrieres that he would publish a translation supports Fougerolles' claim in the preface that "the author thought that this book would be so well received that someone would spare him the labor of translating it" (F[+8]r). The translation was thus born from Bodin's desire to have his work made more widely accessible, and from the willingness of a doctor with literary ambitions to undertake this massive project—working for six months, Fougerolles produced four cahiers of four folio sheets each, which evidently yielded the 916 printed pages of the French translation.166 The French Thidtre was not the initiative of a printer who projected brisk sales. Roussin clearly rued the day he signed on FougeroiIes for the job;167 a few weeks later, at the notary's again, the translator refused to hand over his text, and Roussin evidently ended up dropping out of the deal—the translation was published by Jean Pillehotte (who was originally involved in collaboration with Roussin). But Pillehotte was probably not particularly happy, either, with the modest success of the work on the market. As this case illustrates, bookish natural philosophy (unlike practical manuals in various scientific fields, or the more drastically vulgarized Problemata Bodini) was in the late sixteenth century still best suited to Latin and hardly available in French. Only the PhysiqueJrangaise (1595) by Jean de Champaignac, a lawyer at the Parlement of Bordeaux, preceded the French TTiedtre;168 dedicating it to a woman, Champaignac announces a project (which he never completed) to compose "in our language a summaiy of the four parts of philosophy."169 Even Champaignac's work, which follows closely the form and content of the university curriculum— ostensibly to diffuse it to a wider audience (including women) and perhaps to serve as a vernacular crutch for students—was reissued only once, in 1597. Much less likely was a second issue of the Theatre, a more original and demanding work

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that assumed familiarity with the content, if not the language, of ancient and medieval philosophy. Not long afterward, however, Aristotelian philosophy did become widely available in French. Scipion Dupleix, royal historiographer and preceptor to sons of the nobility—a more prestigious person than Champaignac—succeeded where the latter had failed: his Physique (1603), Logique (1604), Metaphysique (1610), and Ethique (1617) were each reissued between six and eight times down to 1645. His one-volume compendia were also imitated by others, notably Theophraste Bouju (1614) and Rene de Ceriziers (1643).170 Although these authors modulated somewhat differently their positions on controversial topics like comets or the nature of the elements,171 they all hailed Aristotle as their guide, and, as a result, would have been hostile (as Dupleix explicitly was) to Bodin's anti-Aristotelianism. A spate of works attacking Aristotle during the 1620s provoked a strong conservative reaction from the University of Paris, which had the backing of the Parlement de Paris, for example, to cancel a disputation announced in 1624 in defense of anti-Aristotelian theses.172 Aristotle seemed more and more essential to the defense of the faith in early seventeenth-century Paris, so that once there was an audience for natural philosophy in French, the idiosyncracies of the Theatre made it too risque. Bodin's natural philosophy was not mentioned even in the more liberal circles of the Bureau d'Adresse of Theophraste Renaudot, which from 1633 to 1642 invited the general public to debate in French on all kinds of issues.173 The Theatre, already out for almost forty years, was not well timed to meet up with a philosophically adventurous vernacular audience. As a result, it is cited (as far as 1 know) only by modern commentators, who are grateful for the motivations that produced it despite its mediocre commercial prospects—in particular the ambitions of Frangois de Fougerolles. Fougerolles was a medical doctor, originally from the Bourbonnais, trained in Montpellier, and engaged as physician, librarian, and preceptor in a noble family of Grenoble.174 His patron, Artus Prunier de Saint-Andre, was counselor and then president of the Parlement of Grenoble; a staunch royalist, he fought in the surrender of Grenoble to the king in 1590 and, in 1594, helped orchestrate the peaceful surrender of Lyon, notably with Jacques Mitte de Chevrieres, the dedicatee of the Latin Theatrum."5 Although amid his general protestations of gratitude Fougerolles does not mention Prunier's role in facilitating his translation, it seems likely that the favorable relationship between the two dedicatees played some role: Chevrieres could have given a copy of the book to Prunier, for example, which then attracted the notice of Fougerolles (Prunier's librarian); or, since he was involved in the commitment to publish a French translation, Chevrieres could have asked Prunier for suggestions. In any case, at age thirty-seven and full of literary ambition, Fougerolles accepted. To his dedicatee Fougerolles promises that the translation of the Theatrum is only a first installment in the repayment of his affection; to the reader he advertises forthcoming works—a textbook of physics, "which will follow this translation, in which I hope to treat methodically and briefly of everything which pertains to natural science" (implying that Bodin was neither methodical nor brief), and "something of my own vintage which I hope soon to publish on Mathematics" (F[+6]r, +5r; ++4v, ++5r). Nothing in

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print ever came of these projects; instead Fougerolles published two more translations, from Greek (one into French and one into Latin), and two medical works, on gerontology and Hippocratic medicine.176 In 1608 Henry IV commissioned Prunier to develop with Fougerolles (who was now also "physician in ordinary to the king") regulations for the practice of medicine and pharmacy in Grenoble; the apothecaries protested and probably took no heed of these rules, imposed by an outsider to their profession.177 Whether thanks to Prunier, or with the additional help of more recent dedicatees, Louis Galles of Lyon and Frangois due de Lesdiguieres (both military noblemen), Fougerolles achieved ennoblement in 1611.176 He died in 1626. Fougerolles exercised his hard-won control of the front matter of the Theatre to make it a rich display of his social and intellectual standing, accumulating, in twenty-five pages, a dedicatory epistle, a translator's preface, and numerous odes of praise.179 His preface, full of classical allusions to prove that he was learned despite writing in French, develops the themes typical of translations of learned texts since the Middle Ages.180 In a well-worn topos, he invokes the encouragement of a friend (F[+8]r), then of "several of my friends," who, being amateurs of letters could not, however, satisfy without my presence their minds with those things which they desired to know in Philosophy because they were not familiar with the languages, but were otherwise very studious in French books and especially in those which treated elevated questions worthy of their minds Such were Monsieur Portal, guard of the mint in Montpellier, and Monsieur Gay in Die and in this city of Lyon Monsieur Guillemin my compatriot [i.e., also from the Bourbonnais], all of whom have often begged me in letters as well as in person to give them some book in French to attain knowledge of the secrets of nature. (F++3r)181 By this display of mutual admiration, Fougerolles enhances both his own and his friends' honorable status. Then, in a move more peculiar to his period, Fougerolles enters the fray of rivalries within the medical profession, notably those that pitted, throughout the early modern period but especially in the sixteenth century, the French-trained surgeons (and apothecaries) against the more respectable, better-paid, Latintrained medical doctors.182 I have falso) given great pleasure to some surgeons and apothecaries who would only need to wear the doctor's robe to put some ignorant [doctors] to shame who, because they cannot understand Bodin when they read him nor why I translated him, do not stop speaking evil both of him and of my translation, although I think for my part that it is better not to answer anything than to provoke their malice with reasons, but I put this off to a better topic where I will show them that my strength extends beyond a translation (F++3r—v) Although Fougerolles expresses pleasure in undermining the medical hierarchy by publishing a theoretical work in French, he is probably less interested in helping his social and professional inferiors than in nettling those enemies among his colleagues whom he attacks in passing comments throughout the preface. He is

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eager to show off his medical training, at the same time as he praises his teachers.183 The Theatrum in any case is not particularly useful for the quasi-mythical "apothecaries and surgeons" often invoked in the prefaces of vernacular scientific works.184 Nor does Fougerolles demonstrate in his later writings a commitment to the publication of medical works in the vernacular. In justifying his use of French, Fougerolles briefly follows the arguments of those, like Pare or Palissy, who hoped to challenge the hierarchy of learning, but he develops especially the patriotic humanist arguments typical of the Deffence et illustration.185 Bodin's Theatrum should be translated so that "those who already have the rest of his works in the same language not be deprived of this one . . . which is no less common to the other nations than to the French who have raised the author, like a plant adorned with such beautiful flowers" (F[+8]r). In short, "it seems to me entirely reasonable that the works of a Frenchman be read in French" (F++4r). Bodin was unquestionably by the end of his life one of the bestknown Frenchmen of his time, largely because of his international stature.186 Fougerolles thus warns that anyone who would criticize Bodin, notably for venturing into physics, would be "no less insulting to the author than invidious to the French nation" (F[+8]v). On Fougerolles' account, Bodin's very motivation for writing was to "to bring fame, as a Frenchman, to his country with the writings of his divine knowledge." The translator only gives Frenchmen back their due in "letting them enjoy what Bodin offers them in his learned Theater" (F[+8]v). In his constant defensiveness, Fougerolles is (to my knowledge) alone among contemporaries in raising the issue of whether "it would have been more appropriate if Bodin the jurist had devoted himself entirely to that part of philosophy which he treated so well in his Republique rather than leaving it to treat of natural things, of which none should have knowledge except the Physicist" (F[+8]v). He promptly dismisses the cavil, however, praising the Theatrum as the best of all Bodin's works, in which he "has sailed not only the archipelago of one science, but . . . into the Ocean of universal philosophy, . . . and brought back what he found that is most precious, . . . everything that is beautiful and rare in this world" (F+3v-+4r). In a series of typical protestations, Fougerolles explains that the translatio studii has come to rest in France, where we must now "enrich, embellish, and adorn our language after the example of the ancients" (F++lv). He justifies the vernacular by invoking ancient precedent, at the same time as he claims that the French already outshine the "ancient wise men and doctors, just as the sun hides the stars by rising among them" (F++lr). In the same way, he explains the need for French to borrow from Greek and Latin, as each of them had borrowed from their predecessors, since "our language is so short" (F++2v).187 He pleads for leniency ("remember that I am not Amyot or Vigenere," F++2r) and emphasizes the novelty and difficulty of writing on philosophical topics in French.188 In closing, he promises to express faithfully, like an ambassador, the "spirit (ame) of the author, without changing anything, without diminishing or adding to the meaning"— taking a common literalist approach to his task (F++4v-5r).iM Although Fougerolles praises the different books of the Theatrum each for their special con-

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tributions, in the preface (F++3v) and in the odes he writes at the beginning of each book, he does not share Bodin's deeper intellectual or spiritual motivation for the study of nature. Fougerolles neither translates nor develops Bodin's discussion in the dedication of the role of natural science in leading to a true understanding and adoration of God.190 Instead, in a praise of science that was de rigueur, Fougerolles revels in a long-winded and all too mixed metaphor comparing the beauty of science with the beauty of Helen of Troy (F+2r-v), and its difficulty with the long quests of the Argonauts, Hercules, and Aeneas to please a demanding goddess (F+3r-v). The topic is the occasion for a grand display of classical allusions and florid prose rather than for serious reflection. Fougerolles is not simply motivated by the desire for monetary gain, however, although he surely expected rewards from his patron in addition to asking for more from the printer.191 Rather it is the search for honor that runs as the clearest theme through the liminary material that he was so intent on preparing himself—honor for the nation, but above all for himself, in a bid for recognition of his literary merits from his patron and colleagues, and from posterity. Unfortunately, we have virtually no contemporary assessments of Fougerolles' work;192 nonetheless, the modifications he introduced in his translation are evidence of what at least one individual thought suitable for a vernacular audience. After presenting his translation as the faithful record of the work of one of France's greatest sons, a lasting piece of the national heritage, Fougerolles does not in fact treat Bodin's original as a text to be memorialized in its pristine condition.193 Like other careful readers, Fougerolles makes corrections (for better and for worse) in Bodin's references and text,194 and adds clarifications. But he also alters the layout of the work and introduces a range of more or less intentional modifications, mostly in an effort to make it more eloquent, more wonderful, and more pedagogical—the latter a task that left him especially frustrated (as he hints in the preface) with Bodin's rambling complexity. In the tables appended at the end of the volume, in which he enumerates and subdivides the major parts of each topic (many of which parts Bodin had completely neglected), Fougerolles shows what he thought a "theater of nature" should be (see figure 4). His ideal was probably much better suited to the audience he was likely to reach, with its systematized outline of definitions, pruned of complicated philosophical arguments, erudite references, and demonstrations of religious truths. But in adhering to his standards of translation, Fougerolles followed a text that, for all its glorious erudition, and despite his best efforts to make it more palatable, could not easily meet the interests of a vernacular audience. FougeroIles' most noticeable changes are to break up the text of each book into numbered sections, using titles drawn from the topics listed in Bodin's table of contents (which were neither numbered nor introduced into the Latin text), and to add some new diagrams. The division of the text into more clearly marked sections lets Fougerolles neglect at times the seamlessness of Bodin's web. When changing topics from fire to air, Bodin characteristically passes from a discussion of cautery to a transitional question, aTh. What is closest to fire? M. Air by its

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lightness and thinness . . . ," before launching into "What is air?" He shows especially clearly the chain of closest neighbors throughout nature. Fougerolles, on the other hand, ends Book II, Section 4 with the discussion of cautery, then simply marks off Section 5 entitled "On air . . ." which begins immediately, "What is air?" and omits Bodin's transitional question entirely (p. 155, F208).195 Bodin had made a few crude and schematic diagrams to illustrate abstract discussions for example of the harmonic ratios (p. 144) or the way in which the world was made according to an archetype in God's mind (just as a rectangle of a certain area can be made into a triangle of the same area following an archetypal triangle, p. 19). Fougerolles adds two wind-wheels (F225, F228), a more unusual wheel of earthquakes (F240), and an outline of the Ptolemaic system (F827). A schematic picture of a person who views the top of a tower through a mirror (to show that this is possible only in a precise configuration, F660) is as close as he comes to depicting real-life situations (see figure 8, right); like Bodin, he offers no illustrations of plants or animals. The Theatre is hardly a visually enticing book, but it does present a more readable, spacious layout.196 Among the textual additions are a number of straightforward glosses designed for less learned readers. Arsinoe, for example, whose architect built a temple with a magnetic lintel so that a metal statue could be held up in the air by its action, was the "wife of Lysimachus, king of Macedonia" (p. 248, F348). Or when Bodin curtly describes the different shapes of the earth's shadow that would be produced by the changing sizes of the earth relative to the sun as conoid (when the sun is larger than the earth) and calatoid (when the earth is larger), Fougerolles elaborates: "conoid, that is in the shape of a pyramid or the top of a bell tower" and "calatoid, or in the shape of a basket" (pp. 601-2, F870-71), introducing analogies with objects from daily life. But at the same time Fougerolles does not stint on Bodin's erudition, omitting only a few of the many hundreds of marginal notes (e.g., p. 146, F196; p. 233, F326). Although he uses (correct) Latin transliterations for Bodin's Hebrew terms (due to limitations of his own, or possibly those of the printer), he actually introduces more Greek (a language that he was proud of having mastered) in places where Bodin had stuck to Latin.197 In a search for eloquence, Fougerolles elaborates, usually innocuously, on Bodin's terse Latin.198 For example, in translating Bodin's comment that those who listen to music made of rapid and short notes often become insane, Fougerolles dwells on "those who enjoy the tunes of a short music which (in a manner of speaking) flies with a thousand little notes into the ears of those who listen" (p. 458, F662). Occasionally these elaborations introduce natural-philosophical details not present in the original: when Bodin merely asserts that plants stay green in the tropics because they are not hindered by the cold, Fougerolles adds that "the cold does not prevent them from drawing nourishment continuously from the earth to replace the fallen leaves."193 When Fougerolles strays from the original to the extent of distorting it, however, it is most often by adding an expression that gives a new emphasis to Bodin's argument. In particular Fougerolles expatiates on the incontrovertibility of Holy Scripture, or the divine nature of reason and knowledge. In arguing that the globe is made of water on

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which the surface of the earth rests, Bodin emphasizes that he has reasons to prove it, "even if we did not rely on the authority of the holy scriptures"; but Fougerolles changes Bodin's emphasis with a simple apposition: "even if we did not rely on the authority of the holy scriptures, which we prefer to all the other reasons that one could raise against it, although we also are not without arguments and demonstrations sufficient to make this understood" (p. 190, F261).200 These effusions stem less from a conscious policy of distortion than from a desire to wax eloquent (and imprecise) about the divine: natural science is a goddess, Bodin's wisdom is "divine," as are the "operations of reason" (p. 474, F685). Despite this rhetorical enthusiasm for the divine, Fougerolles provides only a most formulaic expression of Bodin's natural-theological project and that in a colophon.201 Unlike Bodin who admires above all the providence of God in all its (often unspectacular) details, Fougerolles emphasizes instead the wondrous. For him, Bodin "offers in his learned Theater to represent the marvels of nature" (F+8v). Similarly, Fougerolles emphasizes the petrified root that Bodin "brought back to show and still has" (p. 228, F319), as if inviting the reader to come see it. Or the "reversus," a fish used to catch other fish according to Bodin, is flagged in the margin as "a remarkable fish of the Indies" (p. 324, F463). Whether out of his own interests or to cater to those of putative readers, Fougerolles appeals to the contemporary fascination with curiosities—such a "double" or "fishermen's" fish is reported for example in the inventory of an Italian collection of naturalia.202 Here Fougerolles makes the most of a fairly rare reference in Bodin to a curious specimen from the New World. In other cases, Fougerolles is reduced to Gallicizing slavishly (coining all kinds of short-lived neologisms)203 Bodin's names of fish and birds, and, for lack of any way to match them with more standard descriptions, he refers the reader in a footnote (which he signals as his own with an asterisk) to other works on these subjects: "See Pierre Belon who will tell you the diversity of their names with their description, or the Histoire of Rondelet on the same subject. See also Gesner; otherwise the names will be confused in our language if one changes them from the correct Greek and Latin" (F460).204 Indeed many of Bodin's species have no relation with those catalogued in contemporary natural histories, and stem from a combination of bookish sources rather than from the more direct experience informing Belon, Rondelet, or Gesner.205 On the human body Fougerolles intervenes more decisively with the confidence of the specialist. Although Bodin's section on the human body is entitled "De corporis humani fabrica" and is thus suggestive of Vesalius' famous work, Fougerolles alone (and not Bodin) uses the term "anatomie" to describe on what grounds "it is clearly learned" that nerves proceed from the brain, veins from the liver, and arteries from the heart (p. 424, F609).206 Fougerolles corrects Bodin most explicitly when he addresses a question that any doctor has learned well— "what are the parts of the human body?" Bodin answers with a simple list: "bones, marrow, ligaments, . . . muscles, veins, arteries, kidneys," and so on, including fat, the four humors, the triple spirit (natural, vital, and animal), and ending with skin and the epidermis (p. 411). This jumble does not follow even the most basic classifications used in medical textbooks. In the margin Fougerolles sets things

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straight: "The organic parts are confused here with the similar ones, which we will arrange in this way. Firstly, the ten similar parts are the bones, cartilage, links, tendons, muscles, nerves, veins, arteries, membranes, and skin. The organic parts are like the heart, liver, spleen, brain, hand, eye, foot, etc. The excrements are like the nails, hair. Fat and the humors are not parts of the body" (F589).207 In astronomy too Fougerolles makes the Theatre more precise, spelling out a distinction to which Bodin merely alludes, between the periodic, synodic, and lunar months (p. 567, F817). Fougerolles reveals in these notes that he wants a more systematic presentation, which would classify and describe more completely the topics that Bodin covers only idiosyncratically. Hence, no doubt, his plan to write a work of physics of his own "which would be methodical and brief," and of which the tables appended to the translation are a first installment. In introducing them in a note to the reader, Fougerolles admits that he has extended the treatment of certain topics more than the author and has shortened others (F917), but does not reveal how drastically the tables actually differ from Bodin's text. Fougerolles orders, in roughly dichotomous divisions that may be inspired by Ramus (whose French Dialectique he praises in the translator's preface), subject matter that Bodin could have treated but often did not, according to hierarchies that Bodin never mentioned. In the first table, devoted to the principles of physics, Fougerolles covers topics that are found in Bodin, but with none of the subdivisions and few of the examples he provides. The second table strays further afield, contrasting destiny (physical and astrological) with the necessity of nature, and these two with fortune and will. Bodin had touched on these issues only as part of his demonstration against the eternity of the world, which conversely does not appear anywhere in Fougerolles' tables. The outline of the different kinds of natural bodies in the fourth table is more faithful to Bodin's own tabular passage (pp. 133-39), but once he attempts to present Bodin's more specific sections in the tables, Fougerolles faces major difficulties. Bodin's disparate criteria for distinguishing plants, for example, (useful to man and not; dry and wet; male and female; exotic and domestic) offer no subordinated hierarchies of use to Fougerolles who, instead, systematizes the ways of knowing plants, in a table which reaches specific examples—rarely those in Bodin—only at the end of its dichotomous branches (see above, figure 4). Fougerolles abandons his project shortly after table 11 on the "reasonable animal," which classifies lower and higher animals according to their faculties. The twelfth and last table, on "the accidents of the natural being," ranges from geometric shapes to vices and virtues and bears little relation even to the general fields covered in the Theatrum. Fougerolles does not attempt to fit the bulk of Bodin's Books IV and V into the scheme. Fougerolles worked hard during those six months to make the most of Bodin's work for an audience less interested in philosophical arguments or in the criticism of authorities than in a basic pedagogical presentation of standard topics in natural philosophy. But Bodin's more complicated and high-minded goals left him with little opportunity for success.

Fig. 9. Title page of the first edition of the Problemata Bodini, "brought into understandable German by Damian Siffert von Lindau" (Magdeburg: Johan Francken, 1602). The woodcut of the scholar using globe and astronomical instruments is a close copy (inverted by the printing process) of the depiction of "Der Astronomus" in Jost Amman, Standebuch (1568; facsimile, Nuremberg: Karl R. Pawlas, 1962); it was also reused in Problemata Aristotelis (Hamburg: M. Frobenij, 1604), which makes no mention of the Problemata Bodini. Courtesy of Manenbibliothek Halle. The German

Problemata Bodini

M u c h more successful in its day, although now hardly to be found, and even m o r e rarely mentioned in print, was the German-language adaptation of the Theatrum which appeared in four (possibly five) editions through the seventeenth century: the "Problems of J e a n Bodin on the Things That Happen in the Sky, in the Air, on the Earth and inside the Earth and of the Natural Causes and Properties of the Same, All Sorts of Questions and Answers. F u n and Useful to Read. Brought into Understandable German by Damian Siffert of Lindau" first appeared

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in Magdeburg in 1602 (see figure 9).208 It was reprinted (with a few omissions) in Basel in 1622, 1666, and 1679 as an addition to the "Problemata Aristotelis That Is, Discussions and Solutions to Many Doubtful Questions by the Most Famous Aristotle and Many Other Famous Natural Philosophers. To Which Are Also Added in This Edition the Useful Problems of Jean Bodin. . . ." (see figure 10, left).209 These "Problems of Aristotle . . . and Many Other Philosophers" were very widely translated and reprinted in the early modern period (under slightly varying titles): in Latin, in twenty incunabula and at least thirty-six editions down to 1686, in German in six incunabula and at least twenty-five editions, in French in some eight editions starting in 1554, and in English from 1595 down to at least the mid-nineteenth century—these figures, which are likely to increase with further research, already total over one hundred editions.210 The Problemata Bodini were thus designed to piggyback on, and add novelty to, a well-formed and highly successful genre, which came close to matching for bulk even the books of secrets.211 Despite their title (which in German also masks the vernacular nature of the text),212 these versions of the Problemata Aristotelis have nothing but the title and the characteristic problemata form in common with what are known today as the pseudo-Aristotelian problems—that is, the collection of problems divided into thirty-eight topical sections, formed from a core of authentic Aristotelian problems with accretions by the Peripatetic school, which was transmitted through the Middle Ages and the Renaissance down to the various editions and translations we have today.213 As Brian Lawn explains, the text that circulated most widely in the Renaissance under the title "Problems of Aristotle" stems not from any classical original, but from a manuscript first composed around the fourteenth century. Lawn designates this text, of which twenty-one manuscripts from the fifteenth century also survive, by the medieval incipit "Omnes homines," with which most, hut not all Renaissance versions begin: a one-page introduction justifies the collection of questions and answers by invoking Aristotle's famous line that "all men naturally seek knowledge." Whether or not the introduction is included, the problemata of the "Omnes homines" texts all begin with the same first question: why does man alone among the animals walk upright?214 While the "genuine" problems of Aristotle were available only in Greek or Latin during the early modern period,215 this text constituted a "lowbrow" tradition circulating both in the vernacular and in Latin and which is indistinguishable from the other when cited by short title only. After its (late) demise, it left no modern legacy. The popular "Problems of Aristotle" are similar in form and topics, but different in content and style of answer from the pseudo-Aristotelian problems. Like the classical problems, they follow the standards of the genre made explicit by Alexander of Aphrodisias (to whom the other large collection of ancient problems is attributed): they ask questions of a "middling sort," that are neither too obvious nor impossible to explain, but that can be resolved from well-known principles.216 But the popular problems follow a shift (already somewhat visible in the problems attributed to Alexander of Aphrodisias) away from Aristotle's original use of problems as puzzles posed by the master to test and exercise the students'

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mastery of the principles in question. The pseudo-Aristotelian problems typically pose a conundrum that highlights an apparent contradiction between established philosophical principles and daily experience, then offer a number of alternative resolutions, based on often sophisticated manipulation of those principles.217 By contrast, the medieval text poses more straightforward questions, such as might originate from a pupil's ignorance rather than a master's probing, and provides simpler causal answers, with few or no alternatives, in an authoritative tone, which makes implicit or explicit reference to the likes of Aristotle, Hippocrates, or (despite the anachronism with the claims of the title) Albertus Magnus.218 "Why do some people have frizzy hair and others not? Frizzy hair is caused by superabundant heat. . . . which can commonly be seen in those whose naturally flat hair curls when they enter the heat of bath- and steamhouses."219 These explanations of everyday phenomena serve to diffuse a basic understanding of the Hippocratic-Aristotelian principles, rather than to investigate the finer points of their application to specific circumstances. The explanations favor a naturalistic approach, but, unlike the classical problems, the Omnes homines" text also occasionally refers to divine purposes.220 Like the classical problems, the popular "Problems of Aristotle" are arranged loosely by topic, covering a wide range of issues with a particular focus on medicine and meteorology. But while the topical sections of Aristotle's problems are juxtaposed in a traditional, but arbitrary order (on medicine, on sweat, on wine, etc.), the "Omnes homines" text (as one title page boasts)221 proceeds systematically by body part, from head to toe, as if to promise a more successful pedagogy through order, although the editions invariably end with at least one section of miscellaneous questions. All problemata texts, composed of the virtually arbitrary juxtaposition of discrete units, are highly prone to corruption and very difficult to emend: problems can be omitted and added, shortened and modified without leaving any internal inconsistencies. Even the most stable text in the genre, the pseudo-Aristotelian problems, varied from edition to edition, as is most easily noticeable in the number of questions in each of the thirty-eight sections.222 Among the learned, who sought an authentic reproduction of the ancient original, the corruption and interpolations were a common object of complaint.223 But in the popular editions, the mobility of the genre was not discussed and was rather exploited as a virtue, both consciously and not, as it allowed for editorial tinkering and sloppiness (I have found no trends in the variations between editions),221 and for indefinite add-ons to bring novelty to successive editions. Most Problemata Aristotelis, in both the "high" and the "low" versions, appeared with the problems of Alexander of Aphrodisias (which also followed suit with a "high" version in two sections and a "low" version containing only the first of those), and occasionally with other ancient problems, notably by Plutarch or Cassius (a doctor of the Pneumatic school, second or third century CE).225 The "low" editions accumulated modern accretions as well, attributed to the learned doctor Marc-Antonio Zimara (well after his death in 1532; 103 to 106 problems depending on the edition), and the otherwise unknown doctors Leonardo Iacchino

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(9 problems), and Sylvius (60 problems)."6 In addition, the genre spawned a number of original stand-alone collections, many learned, others less so.227 The Problemata Bodini, both in the stand-alone first edition, and especially as appended to the Omnes homines" text and the problems of Zimara in the Basel editions of the Problemata Aristotelis, were thus fairly typical additions to the genre—although perhaps the longest, with their 419 questions.228 They get prominent billing on the title pages as the novel feature of these editions of the otherwise widely available German Aristotelis Problemata; Zimara's problems, by contrast, which are also present at least in 1666 and 1679, are only mentioned on the title page in the last edition.229 Like Zimara's, Bodin's Problemata are associated with an authoritative name, but required considerable reworking of a learned source to fit the requirements of an already established popular genre. In the case of Zimara we are left only with the end product of this transformation— we are told neither the source for the wide-ranging problems (from medicine to politics and ethics) that are attributed to Zimara, nor the nature of the cultural mediation that made it possible. In the case of the Problemata Bodini, which may be the last in the series of problemata to be appended to the "Omnes homines" text, we are fortunate to have the name of their author, Damian Siffert of Lindau, and a rare statement of purpose in a closing paragraph: "This much seemed good to bring into German from the Theater of Philosophy of Bodin for the common man. Learned people can read the above-named book themselves, there they will then find arguments and demonstrations of all the things recounted. With this the German reader would want something to be left of service to him, for his enjoyment and use, especially so that God the Creator and his wonderful works be recognized, lauded and praised" (D173).230 Siffert acknowledges that he has omitted many of the "arguments and demonstrations" of the original, to which he refers learned readers. His goal instead is to bring to the "common man" what can be useful and pleasant to him from the Theatrum: in particular, faithful to Bodin's own motivation, he highlights the evidence of the providence and goodness of God, but he also draws out various practical observations and advice. The "common man" whom Siffert addresses is not "everyman," but rather the respectable, property-owning and literate member of a community, in a village or a town,231 who is interested in bettering himself by self-education and moral edification. Unfortunately, the circumstances of this popularization are otherwise completely unknown. Although he mastered Latin and the meaning of Bodin's often complex original very well, Siffert has been rendered obscure by the narrow interest of early modern bio-bibliographers for learned authors. I have found no mention of him, nor other works of his, but he may have been the anonymous middleman in any number of other popularizations. By analogy with Walther Ryff in Strasbourg, who has been studied, one could think of him as an in-house popularizer for Francken and other Magdeburg publishers; indeed Ryff is responsible for one set of German translations of the Problemata Aristotelis published in Strasbourg in 1540, 1543, and 1545.232 Johan Francken, whom Benzing classifies as a publisher rather than a printer, had already published a partial Latin edition of Bodin's Republica (Book II only),

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prepared by one Johann Schroder in 1581, and a compendium of philosophy by Justus Lipsius—both works designed for the low end of the Latin-reading market.233 He is known above all for the trial held against him (along with other booksellers) in Leipzig, where he was attending the book fair, during the Calvinist agitation there in 1591. Coming from Magdeburg, a bastion of Lutheranism,234 he was accused of "bringing dangerous things to the common man" during a period of religious unrest and Calvinist dominance—an indication that he was dealing in fairly popular works. 5,000 copies of eleven different books, by Lutheran theologians arguing against Calvinists, were seized, and he was jailed for five months.233 Otherwise, Francken's commercial activities have been presented as typical of those of an active and astute bookseller of his time.236 Given the popularity of the problemata genre, especially in Germany, Siffert's work probably seemed a promising venture, although it did not lead to a second edition (Francken died in 1625).237 The Basel editions are likewise unremarkable. Johann Schroter (edition of 1622) is noted today for his woodcuts.238 Emanuel Konig (editions of 1666 and 1679), carrying on a century-long family tradition in the business,239 used a somewhat shortened, but otherwise unchanged, version of the first edition (possibly following the text printed by Schroter): approximately twenty questions are rather unpredictably omitted, especially near the beginning and the end. The questions omitted often concern reproduction, but also include a discussion of light and heavy things, rivers and seas, and the human body and faculties.240 Perhaps the cuts were designed to highlight the complementary nature of Bodin's problems with those treated in the medically oriented Omnes homines" text. In addition, some references are corrected and words modernized.241 Although the problemata are not discussed in any works on popular German literature, which have traditionally focused on romances,242 they fit into many of the trends that have been recently identified as typical of popular works. With their focus on natural-philosophical and medical questions, the problemata are part of a general rise of interest in scientific books, mostly in the vernacular, which is noticeable in Strasbourg, for example, after 1530.243 The emphasis in the Problemata Bodini on concrete, everyday experience and on practical advice brings it as close as possible to the many how-to manuals in circulation. Chrisman argues that these noncontroversial works were especially welcome in situations of religious instability. The practice of multiple bindings can illustrate (for lack of any other traces of ownership or readership) the incorporation of the problemata among popular works on scientific and technical topics. These bindings span works separated by much longer periods than the scholarly bindings 1 have found, and may well be due to librarians in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries storing popular works that had until then been kept only in their original paper wrapping. Nonetheless, the problemata are bound with a fairly predictable gamut of popular books: on women's remedies and on their superstitions, tracts on plague and medical diagnosis, manuals of ballistics or weather prediction, and, somewhat more surprisingly, a German translation of Thomas More's Utopia.244 Siffert's work is in many ways comparable to, albeit less learned than that of

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the vernacular encyclopedic author Martin Zeiller (1589—1661), as analyzed by Wilhelm Kuhlmann.245 Like Zeiller, Siffert is not concerned with ordering his material. He does not smooth over the non sequiturs that result from his selection from Bodin; his text, in eighty-seven unnumbered folios with hundreds of unnumbered questions, is not divided into any sections, nor made accessible through an index or even a table of contents; occasional summaries printed in the margin provide a rough guide. The book is designed to be aimlessly read rather than used in a scholarly consultation. The question-and-answer format, and the related "table-talk" form, which generally favored a miscellaneous order, were also common among popular works.246 In keeping with the genre of problemata, Siffert focuses on particulars rather than abstractions and general principles. At the same time, like Zeiller, he demonstrates by using a few Latin terms and quotations his direct contact with the world of learning and attempts to link these quotations with daily concerns.2" Although it might be tempting, given how amusing the content of the problemata often seems to us, to include them among the books of riddles, jokes, and other facetiae or nugae for popular consumption,248 this would be to ignore the generally serious intent of the genre, which always claimed to be useful as well as pleasant: problemata explained daily phenomena and the efficacy of practical tips, and those of Bodin, uniquely, added even higher, moral stakes by teaching the works of the Creator. Highlighting the generally edifying purpose of the genre are the spoofs of the pedagogical questionand-answer form that one finds in works clearly marked as humorous, like the Problemata ludicra, published without revealing place, date, or publisher (presumably to avoid the possibility of prosecution), which revel in the tautologies and lewdness of schoolboy jokes.249 A number of features made Bodin's Theatrum a good choice of source for a collection of problemata: notably, its numerous "why?" questions, its emphasis on natural-historical particulars rather than on abstract principles, and its introduction of bits of experience—from daily life, curious observations, and the practice of artisans; its moral theme was also well suited for popularization. Nonetheless the transformation required was massive: at first view, it seems that the claim of the Problemata Bodini to have any connection with the Theatrum is false.250 The size has been cut to about 10 percent of the original. All of Bodin's references to authorities have been omitted, except for the occasional mention of well-known passages of the Old Testament (Psalms, Genesis, and Job) and a few contemporaries (Georg Agricola, Leo Africanus—e.g., D83); Aristotle, Bodin's constant foil and point of departure, does not appear once. Vast sections of Bodin's abstract arguments are condensed into single paragraphs and most of the philosophical issues in Books I and IV are omitted. Instead of complex questions originating from textual sources, Siffert poses concrete questions that make sense from common experience; he often forms them from details picked out of Mystagogus' answers to more abstract questions, omitting the questions themselves. From Bodin's discussion of the nature of change and whether it happens only in an instant, Siffert selects one issue of interest: "Is someone who has only one eye still a man?" (D10; cf. UNT, pp. Ill—12).251 This work of "vulgarization" involved a sophisticated

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and intelligent negotiation between two worlds which Siffert bridged—he clearly read attentively and understood Bodin's original, and does not distort its conclusions, but even in the natural-historical books he is highly selective, as one can see from a comparison of the two works, for example in their treatment of plants. Bodin begins, characteristically, by establishing the link with the preceding section, through the entities intermediate between stones or metals and plants (p. 271). He then defines the plant and its divisions (trees and grass), lists its parts (trunk, roots, branches, and so forth) and its modes of generation (by seed, graft, or "tears") (p. 272). The first major issue is a "new question" about why plants useful to animals grow more easily than those useful for humans (p. 273)—by this arrangement God saves us from sloth and luxury and turns us toward religion. Theorus next asks whether the earth does not yield fruit for human need without cultivation—yes, to one who is frugal, indeed "before the floods they lived of acorns and apples and an abundance of milk without eating meat" (p. 273). While Bodin goes on in this answer to explain how nature follows an "art," Siffert, who has not reproduced any of the discussion thus far, latches onto an issue of interest to anyone with a basic knowledge of the Bible: "What did men who lived before the Flood eat? They ate acorns and apples and milk. They ate no meat" (D65).252 Siffert also likes Bodin's emphasis on divine providence, which he summarizes perfectly in a succinct version of Bodin's long explanation of why different plants grow in different places (e.g., aromatic plants in the south where human nature is colder): "Why is it that not everything grows in all places? God the wise creator ordered things so that plants would grow that are appropriate to each country according to the nature of the men and what is useful or not useful to them" (D65; cf. UNT, p. 274).233 Siffert avoids abstract terms like "providence" in favor of the actions of "God the wise Creator." He explains in this way the difficulty commonly experienced in trying to get a particular plant to grow in a particular place. When Bodin lists and explains the features of various categories of plants— wild and domestic, male and female, those that grow fast or slowly, and so on, Siffert finds nothing of interest. As we have seen, Bodin had culled these categories and "facts" from his reading of ancient sources, a bookish type of experience that Siffert's audience would not share. Bodin's argument, for example, as to why small seeds are more potent than larger ones only makes sense against the appropriate passage in Theophrastus' History of Plants; the potency of a seed is not a concept that is easily measured in common experience. Siffertjoins Bodin again in questions about concrete phenomena: "Why is it that leaves fall so soon? . . . Why is it that when one makes a gash in a tree it does not damage it? . . . Why is it that some trees freeze from great cold [and others do not]? . . . Why [is it] that the fruit from old trees taste better than those from young ones?" (D65-66).254 Siffert applies Bodin's discussion of caprification (the phenomenon whereby a fruit ripens faster when bitten by an insect—also known to Theophrastus) to a concrete example: "Which apples will ripen soonest? Those which have been eaten by a worm because the worm is dead and cannot eat more of them, and they will ripen earliest because they do not have so much humidity any more" (D67; cf.

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UNT , p. 279).255 Siffert is more practically oriented still, when Bodin wonders

why some plants are more vigorous when trimmed, and cites the examples of angelica and the vine (p. 280); for Siffert what counts are practical instructions for the vine-grower: "Does it harm the vine if one does not trim it once? Yes indeed. For the vine will die or wilt in two or three years. What should one do so that angelica does not wilt but grows longer? One must trim it, otherwise it lives and grows only three years, the third year it bears seed" (D67-68).256 Siffert exploits the recipes that are tucked away in Bodin's generally more theoretical concerns. When Bodin discusses the antipathies between plants, and mentions the example of the cabbage and the vine, Siffert focuses on the useful tip: "How can one dispel drunkenness? Take cabbage juice at the pharmacy and you will become sober again" (D73; cf. UNT, p. 294).257 In one instance Siffert uses the German language as the ground for reformulating one of Bodin's questions. Where Theorus asks: "Are there really trees that grow wool and cotton?" (p. 286), Siffert asks: "Where does the name "Baum-wolle" [literally, "tree-wool," for "cotton"] come from? From the fact that wool grows on trees, however not in these but in foreign lands and especially in Arabia there are many such trees on which wool grows" (D69).258 By explaining the evocative formation of "Baumwolle" Siffert has sacrificed the distinction that Bodin maintained between trees that grow wool (arbores laniferae), found in Arabia, and trees that grow cotton (gosypium), common rather in Africa and India; but he has gained a "hook" by which to interest his reader in a phenomenon otherwise inaccessible to common experience—his own language. A close reading reveals that Siffert not only draws all of his material from the Theatrum, but also follows the order of Bodin's text, at the cost of frequent non sequiturs in the Problemata. Siffert follows the meandering course of Bodin's work from snakes to insects and back to snakes, for example, but he adds further twists by drawing questions from Bodin's answers that differ widely from the neighboring questions. In the midst of questions on snakes, Siffert asks about the length of the human intestine, which is seven times as long as a man is high (D79)259 because Bodin had mentioned this fact to show that it was not hard to believe that a snake should grow to the size of a whale: indeed a worm had once been found in a man's intestine that was thirty-five feet long (p. 309). Divorced from its original context, the isolated fact about the length of the human intestine has lost all connection with the surrounding questions. Similarly, when Bodin moves back from insects to the original topic of the section on snakes, Siffert follows, asking about the origin of grasshoppers, then about the administration of theriac. This time, however, he inserts a question concerning lions and whether they are indomitable (D83),260 which stems from Bodin's discussion of the distribution of snakes—he had found that by divine providence poisonous snakes lived far from humans, and that the animals that lived near them were harmless, like the gentle lions of Mauritania (p. 314). Siffert abandons the broader theme of the distribution of animals which had linked these issues in Bodin's text. Furthermore, although he has now made the lion, rather than the original theme, the center of discussion, he does not move the question to a later passage where, following

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Bodin again, he discusses lions for their own sake. Siffert not only sacrifices the themes that Bodin had skillfully woven through the questions and their answers, but also abandons any concern for topical order to the convenience of following his source very closely. Conversely, Siffert sometimes consolidates in one question material on the same issue. In answering the question of whether humans have a specific life span, Siffert first follows Bodin's question and answer—that there are limits beyond which humans cannot live (p. 395)—but also includes material from a later question in Bodin about the longest-lived people (p. 397). Siffert selects one of Bodin's numerous examples, of Johannes de Temporibus who lived to the age of 369 years, to append to his discussion: "Does man have a certain time to live and to die? Yes indeed, as either his nature brings with it, or God especially wills that one man should have a longer or shorter time to live. But such a determined limit no man can go beyond, but he must die, when he reaches it, just as the other animals also have their goal and determined time to live. Johannes Temporibus in our time lived to 369 years" (D134-35).261 Despite composing in this way a completely new work, by selecting and combining different elements from Bodin's original, Siffert is remarkably faithful to Bodin's particular explanations and overall message. This makes his few modifications to Bodin's points all the more striking. Siffert appears to be quoting Bodin when he concludes that "the number seven is perfect." Indeed Bodin in a number of places praises the powers of seven, but he reserves that particular phrase for the number six instead, which Siffert completely ignores.262 In another curious instance, Siffert distorts Bodin's original by changing not its underlying message but the details of the argument. Mystagogus explains, to Theorus' surprise, that women have smaller brains than men: they may be more wily, but wile does not depend on brain size, whereas prudence, which does, is weak in women. Siffert reaches the same conclusion about the capacities of women, but starts from the proposition that women have larger brains than men: "but they are not wise and prudent for that reason, for they are wily like the old snake." The "facts" about brain size and whether it affects prudence (yes for Bodin, no for Siffert) have become arbitrary: opposite ones are used equally easily to support the same conclusion. Siffert's modification of Bodin's original "facts" may stem from a genuine disagreement or from the rhetorical need to make a problema seem counterintuitive. After Bodin had explained that women were shrewder than men, it seemed counterintuitive that they should have smaller brains. But for his previous question Siffert had explained why the world would face disaster if women were allowed to learn the arts and practice matters of importance; why, then, he poses the puzzle, "do women claim to be intelligent and prudent because they have more brains in the head than men?" (D139; cf. UNT, pp. 403-4).263 With the conclusion determined in advance by traditional misogyny, the issue is how to formulate a vivid question that elicits it, rather than to discuss what might actually be the case. Siffert follows Bodin closely in his pious motivations. Quoting from the Theatrum, he praises nature as good (D71; cf. UNT, pp. 294, 311).264 He debunks

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popular beliefs when Bodin does, denying that the basilisk can kill with its gaze alone (D78; cf. UNT, pp. 306-7),265 or that the woodpecker seeks a magical herb to open the hole to its nest when it is blocked (D114; cf. UNT, pp. 367-68).266 Like Bodin, Siffert explains that God is too good to make such a cruel animal as the basilisk and too kind not to intervene to help the woodpecker in need. Siffert also rejects, albeit less harshly than Bodin, beliefs that attribute occult powers against demons to mere material beings: "that a diamond chases away the devil and a hyacinth stone prevents thunder . . . that has no natural cause, but is a magical belief that one holds for a natural one" (D52; cf. UNT, p. 231).267 Siffert agrees with Bodin that certain questions are beyond human understanding: the causes of the winds, for example, are the hardest to give with certainty, he asserts, quoting a passage from the New Testament instead of Bodin's selection from the Old (D25; cf. UNT, p. 164);268 similarly, on comets "the naturalists themselves write uncertain things, for the works of God are not all to be regulated by natural causes" (D49; cf. UNT, pp. 217, 219),269 and likewise for the causes of hoarfrost, and matters about which Bodin confesses his ignorance. Siffert follows Bodin in his criticisms of Aristotle (without mentioning Aristotle), when he asserts for example, that springs originate from the seawater on which the earth floats (D31; cf. UNT, p. 190).270 On earthquakes, however, Siffert uses the Aristotelian exhalation theory to describe them before concluding with Bodin that they are "beyond human understanding" (D26-27; cf. UNT, pp. 174ff).271 Rather than the ancient authorities and the Old Testament on which Bodin relies so heavily, Siffert uses as his primary texts of reference the New Testament and the basic Lutheran catechism, which were better known to his literate but popular audience. He substitutes New for Old Testament references (although he saves a number of the latter still), and supplies quotations of his own: for instance, in reporting from Bodin that evil demons and animals cannot bear the presence of salt (p. 294), Siffert adds that "Christ says of himself: I am the salt etc." (D74).272 Bodin arouses Siffert's enthusiasm with one of his rare references to the New Testament—on the fact that John ate grasshoppers in the desert (p. 313); Siffert gives prominence to "Saint John the Baptist" in the text and repeats the story a second time in the margin (D82). Conversely, however, on the corporeality of angels where Bodin holds views not suitable for exposition in a catechism, Siffert dodges the issue altogether: "Do angels then have no body? That is a subtle issue about this question. They can appear in bodily form" (D4).273 He also avoids the animate nature of the heavenly bodies in the few questions which he devotes to astronomy (mostly to the effects of the moon on the earth, D166ff.). In the beginning especially, Siffert slips in lessons of catechism, emphasizing, for example, during his brief summary of Bodin's argument against the eternity of the world, the need to prepare for the Last Days (Dl, 2-3),274 or, concerning the possibility of mixtures, the nature of the Eucharist (D12; cf. UNT, p. 122).275 Siffert appeals to popular religious sentiment, as condoned by secular if not the highest ecclesiastical authorities,276 and strays from Bodin when he emphasizes the presence of Satan in the world. Although Bodin's position on the power of evil

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is not always perfectly consistent,2" Bodin does not in the Theatrum refer to Satan, but only to demons who supposedly act only on the orders of God. Siffert follows him in a statement to that effect (D8; cf. UNT, p. 94),278 but he also refers to a more autonomous evil. The "evil devil" is the way Siffert bluntly renders Bodin's "hindering superior cause" in the list of the causes of monsters (Dll; cf. UNT, p. 115).279 In explaining why lightning does not often strike in cold regions, Siffert replaces Bodin's demons with Satan, who requires hot exhalations in order to make thunder (D45; cf. UNT, p. 211).280 Siffert also introduces Satan as an agent in phenomena that Bodin had explained naturalistically, notably for "thunderstones" which Siffert says are caused "either by nature or by the power of Satan" (D56; cf. UNT, pp. 242—43).281 Unlike Bodin's servants of God carrying out divine punishment, Siffert's Satan disposes of a will and a power all his own. His second question presupposes a Manichean kind of combat: "Why is it that the highnesses are not in agreement and do not get along well together? Because it is against nature that there be more than one beginning and highest thing; for that reason in the old days it was arranged that a burgomaster would rule over the others. 'Because there cannot be two principles of infinite wisdom and power'" (D2).282 Although Siffert quotes here from Bodin, he does not convey the hypothetical nature of Bodin's discussion of a conflict between two first principles— for Bodin there can be no more than one principle precisely because two would wreak havoc on the world with their rivalry; Siffert, on the other hand, presumes the contest to be already taking place. Unlike Fougerolles, Siffert did not have to create an audience for his new work, but could appeal to the already established readership of problemata. To do so, Siffert carefully selected from Bodin questions that would seem relevant to his readers: questions that explain concrete phenomena known by common experience or hearsay, that offer practical recipes, or that reinforce common piety and the lessons of the Bible and Protestant catechisms. Siffert avoids Bodin's philosophical schemes (the chain of being, the demonstrations about the soul, or even his definitions, enumerations, and divisions); instead he develops Bodin's theme of divine providence and omnipotence, following Bodin's causal explanations, confessions of ignorance, and attacks on magical beliefs. Readers of problemata had until then mainly been exposed to problems with a medical emphasis: Why does hair grow white? Why is the head round? Why do children cry at birth? Why does man have no tail? and the like. Siffert's Problemata worked as part of the well-defined genre in the first place because they occasionally overlapped with existing collections of questions: Zimara asks why women are lustful in summer and men in winter, Siffert why men and women are not lustful all the time (D129-30); or Zimara asks why people put one hand over their eyes to see further, and Siffert why some people close one eye when they want to see something (D153).283 On the other hand, Siffert's Problemata offered a new range to the problems already in circulation; as the title page boasts, the Problemata Bodini treats of "the things that happen in the sky, in the air, on the earth, and inside the earth" and considers in more detail than other problemata the specifics about minerals,

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meteorological phenomena, plants, and animals. Siffert may have consciously emphasized this complementarity by focusing mostly on the natural-historical sections of Bodin's Theatrum.28'' Siffert's successful adaptation of the Theatrum into a set of problemata is evidence that despite his learned background, Bodin dealt with issues that could appeal to a much more popular audience than that targeted by the Latin or the French versions. But the Theatrum had first to be transformed by the efforts of a cultural intermediary like Siffert—someone both learned enough to understand Bodin's original and conversant with the interests and points of reference of readers of popular problemata. Through his efforts the Theatrum had its longest legacy. Popular readers, already oblivious at the beginning of the century to the anti-Anstotelianism in Bodin that seemed tendentious to more knowledgeable readers, were equally oblivious, by the end of the century, to the new experimental and mathematical methods that made Bodin's Theatrum, and indeed the whole genre of problemata, seem passe in more educated circles. Long after the last learned translation and commentary on the problemata was reprinted in 1632,285 the novel additions offered by the Problemata Bodini helped to perpetuate the genre for popular German readers through the end of the seventeenth century. Despite idiosyncracies that irritated cultivated readers and probably hindered a wide French diffusion in the early seventeenth century, Bodin's ingenious explanations of divine providence and wide collection of interesting facts appealed to a broad spectrum of readers, from Isaac Casaubon to the audience that Damian Siffert anticipated. The Theatrum kept its staying power through the end of the seventeenth century: on the one hand, its innovative criticisms of Aristotle and original theory of the soul warranted inclusion in philosophical doxographies; on the other hand, its natural-theological arguments, although less "modern" in content, resembled in motivation and form those of the more famous physicotheologies of the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries,286 and its questionand-answer format has remained a pedagogical favorite down to this day.

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metaphors and tensions in the Theatrum are elements common to many works of natural philosophy in the late Renaissance. Although Bodin's natural philosophy, with its unique combination of these elements to advance some original conclusions, seemed mostly plausible and coherent in 1596, from a modem standpoint it readily seems an example of traditional natural philosophy in crisis or decadence, given its puzzling mix of credulity and criticism, its unreflecting claims to carry out ambitious projects, its mass of unstructured particulars, and its demolition of received opinion with little philosophical construction to substitute for it. Yet similar systems of tradition- and text-based natural philosophy outside Western Europe survived these kinds of tensions much longer, absorbing even selected elements of modern science (notably in astronomy) without losing their traditional character. Indeed the question to pose is not why there was no Scientific Revolution in China or Japan, but why there was one in Europe.1 With no claim to offer any direct answer to that large question, I chart briefly here in concluding some of the legacies of Bodin's kind of natural philosophy during and beyond the Scientific Revolution. Text-based natural philosophy, little changed in its methods for over two thousand years, showed every sign in 1596 of accommodating successfully the influx of new information. Bodin claimed to replace, with his own peculiar philosophical commitments, the weaknesses of Aristotelian explanations, but he did not challenge the practices and presuppositions fundamental to traditional natural philosophy. Rather than in decline, these seemed the solid foundations from which to resolve the crisis in religion and politics. This was the crisis which Bodin, like most of his contemporaries, sought to resolve, and which he blamed for the decline of letters since Francis I.2 Perpetuating the cycle of textual compilation, commentary, and criticism, Bodin confidently marshaled a vast array of bookish sources, as well as a limited number of "experiences," to produce definitive causal explanations. These in turn fueled the predominantly bookish notes and compositions of traditional natural philosophers and compilers for another fifty or sixty years—arguably the bulk, although not the best-known, of writings about nature in the first half of the seventeenth century. More popular compilations like Siffert's Problemata Bodini extended still further, into the late seventeenth century and even the eighteenth century (with new printings of Aristotle's problems, for example) "facts" taken on ancient authority and tradition, although such popular beliefs were increasingly criticized as superstitious in learned circles.3

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Longer-lived, beyond the Scientific Revolution, were Bodin's motivations and metaphors for the study of nature. Natural-philosophical demonstrations of divine providence and omnipotence (albeit often pursued through phenomena different from those selected by Bodin) reached their height between the late seventeenth and the early nineteenth centuries (from Derham's Physico-theology to Paley's Nat­ ural Theology), but arguments from design survived even the Darwinian revolution.4 The metaphor of the theater associated both with this natural-theological project (in the "theater of nature") and with more general encyclopedic ambitions (in the "theater" as title) was current down to the eighteenth century—to Linnaeus and the Abbe Pluche in the first case, and to "theaters" of history and geography, or Jonston's natural histories, in the second. The methods that Bodin advocated for keeping and using notes on readings, in commonplace books, were still current, too, from the late seventeenth century down to the nineteenth century but increasingly for humanistic rather than scientific pursuits. Although readers no doubt continued to include notes from scientific readings in such notebooks, this method of collecting information no longer constituted a method of discovery in natural philosophy, as it had for Renaissance scholars like Bodin. The self-consciously revolutionary calls for starting natural philosophy from new, mathematical, or experimental foundations, starting in the 1620s and 1630s, ushered in what became over the course of the following half-century a complete replacement of the system of traditional natural philosophy. Inevitably, then, one wonders, what, if anything, Bodin's kind of natural philosophy contributed to the development of this "modern science." Although isolated aspects of Bodin's natural philosophy have been compared to Cartesian rationalism (notably his call for reasoned demonstrations) or Baconian experimentalism (given his interest in empirical particulars),5 there are considerable differences between Bodin's claims about and practice of natural philosophy on the one hand, and the rhetoric and practice of "modern" figures like Descartes and Francis Bacon on the other. Bodin's knowledge of and interest in mathematics was minimal. Kepler praised Bodin's project of applying harmonic proportions to issues of state, but criticized the proportions Bodin considered harmonic as insufficiently informed by mathematics;6 in Bodin's natural philosophy, the only passage that warranted mention in circles interested in mathematics was the exceptional listing of specific weights inspired by Frangois de Foix de Candale. Bodin's claims to ground natural philosophy on reason alone were much less bold than Descartes': Bodin's "reasons" typically supported conclusions first established on philosophical or biblical authority, and introduced a pragmatic mix of dialectical and rhetorical arguments, using rigorous logic only to overturn received opinion rather than to construct new explanations. Even Bodin's rhetoric was weaker than that characteristic of the "moderns": while scathing in his attacks on Aristotle, Bodin did not mock bookish learning more generally, as Descartes and Bacon both did, however much they, too (as recent scholarship has emphasized) may in fact have drawn on various precedents.7 Bodin's ambivalent attitude toward novelty, for example, is characteristic of the

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reformer rather than the revolutionary: he was proud of his innovations at the same time as he implicitly acknowledged novelty as a negative indicator of truth.8 A closer comparison of Bodin's methods and assumptions with those of Francis Bacon (whose program of natural-historical collection offers more promise of parallels than Descartes' rationalist constructions) can serve to highlight the differences (and a few similarities) between one of the influential natural-philosophical "revolutionaries" and more traditional Renaissance natural philosophy. My comparison of the Theatrum with Bacon's New Organon of 1620 also contrasts the natural philosophies of two lawyers, separated by different legal systems and a chronological gap of about one generation. In 1596 Francis Bacon was thirty-five years old, already interested in natural philosophy from his years at Cambridge, and dissatisfied with the traditional university teaching, but involved in the upward movement of his legal and political career, so that his published works date only from after his retirement from politics in 1620. Bacon visited France in 1576 while he was in the tutelage of Amias PauIet1 the English ambassador to France, and probably frequented the Palace Academy of Henry III,9 but he was much Bodin's junior and only a young man even five years later when Bodin visited England. Although they might have met, there is no evidence that the two men interacted. Nonetheless they shared a similar goal of consolidating the national state in the midst of religious strife, and saw in natural philosophy a source of certainty and agreement, serving to reinforce the state (as Bacon emphasized especially) and true piety (as Bodin reiterated more than Bacon). Both also devoted much of their natural philosophy to the collection of information from a variety of sources. Despite these broad similarities, the differences between Bodin and Bacon are striking—notably in their uses of authority, nature, and a systematic and selfconscious methodology. As its margins full of bookish references attest, the Theatrum is redolent with the opinions of previous thinkers, which are variously mined (more or less explicitly) for "facts," criticized, or used in doxographies of authorities in agreement to establish many of Bodin's conclusions. The abundant tradition of previous thought forms an integral part of Bodin's practice of natural philosophy. Bacon, on the other hand, in a more revolutionary stance, turns the distaste for Aristotelian theory which he shares with Bodin into a generalized indifference to received opinion. He seems to refer quite precisely to the cycle of text-based natural philosophy when he warns: "It is idle to expect any great advancement in science from the superinducing and engrafting of new things upon old. We must begin anew from the very foundations, unless we would revolve forever in a circle with mean and contemptible progress."10 In his call to sweep away previous opinion and start afresh, Bacon leaves no room for one of Bodin's favorite arguments—from the common agreement of philosophers. Bacon first objects specifically, against the Aristotelians, that there is no general consent in favor of Aristotle; Bodin would no doubt have agreed. Bacon then dismisses what consent there is for Aristotle as merely traditional rather than true consent, which must be based on independent judgment; in the

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interests of his own anti-Aristotelian agenda, Bodin might well have agreed again. But, finally, Bacon attacks not only the conclusions to which the argument was frequently put, but the quality of the argument itself: "even if it had been a real and widespread consent, still so little ought consent to be deemed a sure and solid confirmation that it is in fact a strong presumption the other way."11 Here, in order to preserve his own use of the argument to support his (often unusual) positions, Bodin would have to part ways with Bacon and others who shared this "modern" position—including Descartes, but also less radical thinkers like Gabriel Naude, who attacked the argument from agreement made (by Bodin among others) to justify accusations of witchcraft.12 Bacon carefully excepts matters of religion and politics, where dissension is potentially subversive of the state, to conclude that "the worst of all auguries is from consent in matters intellectual (divinity excepted, and politics where there is right of vote). For nothing pleases the many unless it strikes the imagination, or binds the understanding with the bands of common notions."13 While in matters intellectual Bodin turns willingly to tradition to shore up his points, Bacon rejects the opinions of others as "Idols of the Theater" and turns his back on past consensus as a criterion for truth.14 Using a method of compilation that he shares with Bodin, Bacon does in fact gather the opinions of ancient and Renaissance thinkers, notably in the De sapientia veterum and in his collections of natural histories. His treatment of the "wisdom of the ancients" is the occasion for Bacon not only to search for truth in what he sees as a deeper and more primitive past than that considered by traditional philosophy, but also, as Lisa Jardine shows, to teach his precepts to contemporaries through the skillful interpretation of parables in a work that indeed became extraordinarily popular.15 Bacon thus uses authority, but not in the same way as Bodin: not to establish, but to illustrate and explain his conclusions. In the Sylva sylvarum, the vast collection of natural-historical material on which he was working at his death, to serve "for the Erecting and Building of a true Philosophy," Bacon gathers in one thousand "experiments" what Graham Rees has called "grains of empirical material" harvested both from ancient and modern sources and from direct observation.16 Bacon distinguishes borrowed material from his own, but uses stock formulas (such as "it is reported") to avoid the parade of authorities that he disliked in traditional natural philosophies. While culling "facts" from other writers, as Bodin does, Bacon does not use authority as an argument; nor does he cite other thinkers in order to refute them.17 True to his program Bacon avoids explicit mention of traditional philosophy; his natural history is presented as if constructed on new foundations. In their compiling of "facts" from a variety of sources, Bodin and Bacon occasionally overlap: for example, in noting, presumably from a Spanish travel report, the kind of climate on top of the mountains of South America.18 But Bodin's use of experientia is different from Bacon's outline for a program of "experimental" investigation. Bodin gathers experience in discrete bits which are logged in the commonplace book before he can predict their utility, and are adduced when appropriate as corroborative evidence in an explanation. Bacon, on the other hand, sets out to examine a general class of phenomena in order purposefully to dis-

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cover first new "facts," then general principles. Bodin's collection of experience is determined by the circumstances; Bacon's is directed by the matter under investigation. Both value the accumulation of evidence (possibly a function of their legal training), and the evidence collected is not always different in nature—some of Bacon's facts, like the majority of Bodin's, must stem (to use Bodin's expression) from a "reading of ancient and modern historians."19 But Bodin uses his evidence to support an explanation of a specific question, while Bacon collects evidence in an open-ended investigation of a broader problem, such as the question of heat which Bacon pursues in Book II of his New Organon, in the most detailed example of his method in action. Similarly, and independently, William Gilbert investigated the magnet as a general phenomenon in the 1590s, rather than asking specific questions as Bodin does. Bacon also offers a more detailed system for elaborating the laws of nature from the accumulated evidence, complete with twenty-seven types of "prerogative instances" to be evaluated in tables and experiments to test the resulting generalizations. By collecting all the evidence from different quarters so systematically, Bacon guards against the risk that Bodin runs of offering contradictory principles to explain similar phenomena that are separated into different questions; furthermore, Bacon can gather more instances of the phenomena that he investigates since they are more broadly defined than Bodin's innumerable unrelated questions. The articulation of evidence and conclusion, based on self-consciously progressive stages of inference, is less arbitrary than the way in which Bodin, and his German popularizer Siffert, align authorities and "facts" to suit preestablished conclusions—for example when Bodin argues that no one follows Aristotle's opinion that humans alone have memory (p. 409), or when Siffert changes the "facts" of Bodin's explanation of why women are less capable than men (pp. 403404; D139).20 Unlike Bodin, who unself-consciously proclaims his largely rhetorical chain of particulars as a true representation of nature, Bacon does not assume the "transparency" of facts or explanations, but devises elaborate checks against the numerous "Idols" that commonly mislead human reasoning, and conceives experiments that use "instruments and machinery" to probe the secrets of nature.21 Although at times Bacon's definition of "physics" seems Aristotelian (as "the investigation of the efficient cause"),22 in general the purpose of natural philosophy for Bacon is "discovery," or the collection of facts in order to develop new knowledge, while for Bodin physics is the search for causal understanding of wellknown phenomena. Indeed Bacon complains of his contemporaries: "And if by chance there be one who seeks after truth in earnest, yet even he will propose to himself such a kind of truth as shall yield satisfaction to the mind and understanding in rendering causes for things long since discovered, and not the truth which shall lead to new assurance of works and new light of axioms."23 For Bacon, natural philosophy is an open-ended quest, while Bodin treats it as a nearly completed body of knowledge that needs only to be perfected. These different conceptions are evident in the two authors' use of a similar metaphor, that of torture: for Bacon torture is the experimental process by which nature is forced to reveal its secrets; for Bodin, torture is the way in which the cer-

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tainty of natural philosophy forces the acquiescence of the unwilling to wellknown truths.24 To explain these different conceptions one can extend Julian Martin's argument about Bacon's methods and adduce the different uses of torture in the two legal systems: in England statements made under torture were not considered truthful in themselves, but part of an ongoing investigation, revealing new facts to be weighed alongside many other pieces of evidence; on the Continent, torture was expected to elicit a full, truthful confession and (once repeated "freely") the most reliable evidence of all.25 Similarly, Bacon envisions physics as a painstaking process of research by many different means that yields facts which must be systematically confronted with one another, while for Bodin natural philosophy demonstrates truths that are attained as if immediately and transparently through the contemplation of nature by a properly pious and diligent mystagogue. For Bacon the purpose of physics is useful knowledge; for Bodin physics is scientia, the utility of which rests in its intellectual certainty and consequent ability to convince the recalcitrant. Bacon does not share Bodin's sense of the sacredness of nature: he advocates artificial means of uncovering nature's secrets and hails the time when useful knowledge of nature will restore human dominion over it: "Only let the human race recover that right over nature which belongs to it by divine bequest, and let power be given it; the exercise thereof will be governed by sound reason and true religion."26 For Bodin, on the contrary, human invention is necessarily inferior to, and divine law forbids it from sullying, "the purity and simplicity of nature" (sig. 3r). While Bacon stresses that nature is a gift from God that we must study in order to harness it ("nature to be commanded must be obeyed"),27 for Bodin the gift is one to be admired and apprehended intellectually as part of the human rise to the divine. Bacon thus scoffs at those who limit their discipline to what has already been discovered,28 and harbors great hopes for the future. He not only lays out a program for future research but also announces in the New Atlantis, with a millenarian enthusiasm that Bodin gives no sign of sharing, the imminence of a new era of human mastery of nature.29 Bacon looks ahead (if only to the near future), while Bodin, despite a sense of progressive development in the past (not only in arts like metallurgy and printing but also in such theoretical endeavors as astronomy),30 considers questions that remain unresolved, such as the causes of magnets, earthquakes, or storms, to be better left unasked—since they are unknown, they are beyond the ability of human reason to understand. Bodin and Bacon are not opposed on all counts: in addition to sharing a method of accumulation of examples, they attribute the same moral purpose to the practice of natural philosophy. Bacon is not particularly motivated by a fear of atheism, but does respond to those who would invoke religious arguments against the investigation of nature: "Natural philosophy is, after the word of God, at once the surest medicine against superstition and the most approved nourishment for faith, and therefore she is rightly given to religion as her most faithful handmaid, since the one displays the will of God, the other his power."31 Although confident that the power and providence of God shine forth in nature, Bacon is unwilling to explain any phenomena by the direct or indirect interven-

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tion of God. Unlike Bodin who is reluctant to draw out laws of nature and adduces monstrous events in his theoretical statements to prove the power of God, Bacon insists that everything in nature can and must be reduced to a law: For we are not to give up the investigation until the properties and qualities found m such things as may be taken for miracles of nature be reduced and comprehended under some form or fixed law, so that all the irregularity or singularity shall be found to depend on some common form, and the miracle shall turn out to be only in the exact specific differences, and the degree and the rare concurrence, not in the species itself.52

Bacon implicitly denies the possibility of divine intervention that Bodin scrupulously preserves. Working from the same late Renaissance problem of an abundance of detail accumulated from readings and experience, from the same conviction that the study of nature can provide moral regeneration, and from similar ambitions to encompass all of nature and knowledge in general, Bodin and Bacon nonetheless followed divergent methods. Bacon's stronger rejection of authority and previous opinion; his reformulation of physics as a process of discovery rather than the explanation of known phenomena; his formulation of a method of drawing progressively higher-order inferences from the data and of devising experiments to test them; his call for the use of instruments in an active investigation of nature; and his belief in the human ability and duty to gain practical control over nature through a forward-looking program of collaborative research—all marked significant departures from the traditional practice of physics as exemplified by Bodin. Given Bacon's own limited implementation of his program, however, both often reached a similar kind of inconclusive accumulation of examples combined with occasional and tenuous generalizations. The Baconian program at first involved more a change in the self-conception and rhetoric of the natural philosopher and the introduction of a few spectacular experimental tools than a sudden and complete overhaul of existing natural philosophy, as Steven Shapin has argued in his recent discussions of Robert Boyle.33 The use of authority, philosophical and biblical, to shore up or determine conclusions, and the continued acceptance of "facts" so long traditional that even Descartes did not doubt them (such as the discord between strings made of sheep-gut and wolf-gut) were largely unappreciated legacies of Renaissance natural philosophy that persisted much later than "moderns" (then or now) have generally recognized. Although the Scientific Revolution prevailed, and rapidly by comparison with earlier rates of scientific change, it was neither as complete nor as abrupt a transformation as the political connotations of the term suggest.34 Late Renaissance natural philosophy, as the immediate context in which and against which many of the new ideas were developed and spread in the seventeenth century, coexisted with and contributed to them, and should feature in any full understanding of the widely discussed "origins of modern science." Traditional natural philosophy also formed a self-consistent and versatile system of thought, the mechanisms of which can help to explain its longevity, not only in Europe but in other compa-

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rable traditions. As an example taken from the Latin tradition at its height, Bodin's Theatrum could offer rich grounds for comparison, notably (to one with the requisite language skills) with encyclopedic bookish natural philosophy in China. My own motivations for studying Bodin's Theatrum have been more broadly historical—to elucidate through this example the practice and purposes of learned natural philosophy in the late northern Renaissance, outside a small elite of "avant-garde" figures. While the latter have received much attention for their innovations, the great majority of the many authors (and even more readers) of natural philosophy during this period worked with traditional bookish methods and philosophical parameters to accommodate new sources and information, and to propose new criticisms and insights, gradually adding to a secular cycle of textbased science. Natural philosophy before the Scientific Revolution was neither moribund nor decadent, but offered special attractions in a time of religious and political conflict and encyclopedic ambitions. To many contemporaries, Bodin prominent among them, natural philosophy promised grounds for agreement across political and religious divides, a greater knowledge and appreciation of God through his creation, and a vast collection of pleasant and useful information to be ordered and transmitted. The particular circumstances of the late Renaissance prompted a renewed interest in age-old themes, giving them specific forms and functions—including the metaphors of the theater and the naturaltheological and encyclopedic agendas to which they applied—which lasted well after the demise of the text-based practices that first prompted them.

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INTRODUCTION 1. Nancy G. Siraisi 1 Avicenna in Renaissance Italy: The Canon and Medical Teachingin Ital­ ian Universities after 1500 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1987); Jean Ceard, La nature et Ies prodiges: L'insolite au XVI' si'ede en France (Geneva: Droz, 1977); Katharine Park and Lorraine Daston, "Unnatural Conceptions The Study of Monsters in Sixteenthand Seventeenth-Century France and England," Past and Present, no. 92 (1981): 20-54 and Wonders and the Order of Nature 1150-1750 (Zone Books, forthcoming); Paula Findlen, Possessing Nature: Museums, Collecting, and Scientific Culture in Early Modern Italy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994); Pamela Smith, The Business of Alchemy: Science and Culture in the Holy Roman Empire (Princeton, NJ.: Princeton University Press, 1994), Lynn Sumida Joy, Gassendi the Atomist: Advocate of History in an Age of Science (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987); Margaret Osier, ed , Atoms, Pneuma and Tran­ quillity: Epicurean and Stoic Themes in European Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991). 2. In selecting the contemporary works with which to compare Bodin's Theatrum, 1 was guided, according to the theme I was pursuing, by the similarities I perceived, for example, in the form, topic, motivation or title of near-contemporary works. My base of operations was the Bibliotheque Nationale. In my search for relevant works 1 used library catalogues, secondary reference works, the advice of numerous scholars, and—my most precious resource—the references provided by the primary sources, whether in the text, in manuscript annotations, or in material bibliography (e.g., the works with which Bodin's Theatrum was bound). I do not claim to provide an exhaustive discussion, but a relevant one. 3. See Thomas Kuhn1 "Mathematical versus Experimental Traditions in the Development of Physical Science," The Essential Tension (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977), pp. 31-65. 4 These terms are introduced respectively by R. Hooykaas1 Humanisme, science et reforme: Pierre de la Ramee (1515-72) (Leiden: Brill, 1958), p. 36, and Ian Maclean, "The Interpretation of Natural Signs: Cardano's De subtilitate versus Scaliger's Exercitationes," m Occult and Scientific Mentalities in the Renaissance, ed. Brian Vickers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), pp. 231-52, 231: the "humanistic tradition of science." 5. ChristianJacob1 "Lire pour ecrire' navigations alexandrines," in Le pouvoir des bibliotheques: La memoire des livres en Occident, ed. Marc Baratm and ChristianJacob (Paris: Albin Michel, 1996), pp. 47-83. 6. Pliny the Elder, Natural History, trans. John Bostock and Η. T. Riley, 6 vols. (Lon don: Henry G. Bohn, 1855), 1:6. 7 Edward Grant, "Aristotelianism and the Longevity of the Medieval World View," His­ tory of Science 16 (1978): 93-106, 103. 8. Paul Rose, Bodin and the Great God of Nature: The Moral and Religious Universe of a Judaiser (Geneva: Droz1 1980). 9. Roger Chartier1 L'ordre des livres: Lecteurs, auteurs, bibliotheques en Europe entreXIV' et XVllI' siecle (Aix-en-Provence: Alinea, 1992), p. 76. 10 See, among his many writings, Aristotle and the Renaissance (Cambridge, Mass.: Har-

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vard University Press, 1983) and John Case and Aristotelianism in Renaissance England (Kingston and Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1983) 11. See Anthony Grafton, Defenders of the Text: The Traditions of Scholarship in an Age of Science 1450-1800 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1991), especially the introduction and chap. 7; Nicholas Jardine, The Birth of History and Philosophy of Science: Ke­ pler's "A Defence of Tycho against Ursus" with Essays on Its Provenance and Significance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984); Peter Dear, Mersenne and the Learning of the Schools (Ithaca, N. Y.: Cornell University Press, 1988); and, more generally, the series of articles by Ann Blair, Anthony Grafton, Owen Harinaway, and Lynn Joy on "Reassessing Humanism and Science," Journal of the History of Ideas 53 (1992): 535-83, and the literature cited there. 12. Ctard, La. nature et Ies prodiges; Bnan Copenhaver, Symphorien Champier and the Re­ ception of the Occultist Tradition in Renaissance France (The Hague: Mouton, 1978); Frank Lestringant, L'atelierdu cosmographe (Paris: Albin Michel, 1991). 13. Francis Goyet, "A propos de 'ces pastissages de lieux communs' (le role des notes de lecture dans la genese des Essais)," Bulletin de la Societe des Amis de Montaigne 5-6 (1986): 11-26 and 7-8 (1987): 9-30; Walter J. Ong, "Commonplace Rhapsody: Ravisius Textor, Zwinger and Shakespeare," in Classical Influences on European Culture 1500-1700, ed. R. R Bolgar (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976), pp. 91-126. 14. Herbert Grabes, The Mutable Glass: Mirror-Imagery in Titles and Texts of the Middle Ages and English Renaissance, trans. Gordon Collier (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982); Edward Peter Nolan, Now Through a Glass Darkly: Specular Images of Being and Knowingfrom Virgil to Chaucer (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1990). 15. On both counts I am pleased to own a copy of Bodin's Theatrum (Frankfurt: Wechel, 1597) which 1 owe to the sharp eyes of Anthony Grafton in perusing the sales list of the London bookseller William Poole; title page reproduced in figure 1. 16. For the most recent survey of the literature (since 1985), see Marie-Dominique Couzinet, "Jean Bodin: Etat des lieux et perspectives de recherches," Bulletin de I'Association d'etude sur I'humanisme, la Reforme et la Renaissance 21 (1995): 11-36; and Yves Charles Zarka, td.,]ean Bodin: Nature, histoire, droit et politique (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1996). International conference proceedings on Bodin include: Verhandlungen der intemationalen Bodin-Tagungin Munchen (1970), ed. HorstDenzer (Munich: C. H. Beck, 1973), including a long bibliography; "La Rdpublique" di Jean Bodin, Atti del convegno di Perugia (1980) (Florence: Olschki, 1981); Actes du colloque interdisciplinaire d'Angers: Jean Bodin (1984) (Angers: Presses de l'Universite d'Angers, 1985). 17. The best brief biography is by Kenneth McRae in Jean Bodin, The Six Bookes of a Commonweale, ed. Kenneth McRae (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1962), pp. A3-A13; for full documentation, see McRae's 1954 Harvard Ph.D. dissertation, "The Political Thought of Jean Bodin," pp. 5-152. See also Roger ChauvirejJean Bodin, auteur de la Republique (La Fteche: Eug. Besnier, 1914). Paul L. Rose is working on a complete intellectual biography. 18. There were some sixteen families named Bodin in Anjou and Jean was probably the most common first name of the period; Jean Bodin even had an older brother of the same name. See Emile Pasquier, "La famille de Jean Bodin," Revue d'histoire de I'eglise de France 19 (1933): 459. In addition, another avocat at the Parlement of Paris was named Jean Bodin: see R. Delachenal, Histoire des avocats au parlement de Paris (1300-1600) (Paris: Plon, 1885), pp. 405-6. This other Jean Bodin may be Jean Bodin, sieur de Montguichet, who was "conseiller aux eaux et forets a la Table de marbre de Paris," or yet another one. SeeJacqueline Boucher, "L'incarcdration dejean Bodin pendant la troisieme guerre de re-

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hgion," Nouvelle revue du seizieme siecle 1 (1983): 34-35; see also P. Comu1 "Jean Bodin de Montguichet," Revue de VAnjou, n.s., 54 (1907), as cited by McRae in Bodm, Six Bookes, p. A7 19 See documents concerning Bodin's family in Pasquier, "La Famille de Jean Bodin"; for more evidence on Bodin's parents see Jacques Levron, "Jean Bodin et sa famille," (Angers: H. Siraudeau, 1950), reprinted in Fundamental Studies on Jean Bodin, ed. J. P. Mayer (New York: Amo Press, 1979), article 2, pp. 1-57. For the latest repetition of the Jewish claim see Janine Chanteur, "L'idee de Ioi naturelle dans la Republique de Jean Bodin," in Denzer, Verhandlungen der Bodin-Tagung, p. 196. 20. Jean Dupebe has found record of a "Johannes Bodin Andegavensis" paying his dues in spring 1549 as a beginning student. Bibliotheque Nationale, Ms Lat. 9954, f. 109r; I am most grateful for this personal communication. The document matches Bodin's chronology and origins very well, but this cannot dispel the possibility of its concerning another Jean Bodin. 21. Oppiani de venatione libri IIlI (Paris: Michel Vascosan, 1555). Tumebe accused Bodin of plagiarism m the translation of the same work that he published in the same year. On Petrus Ramus' lectures, see below, chapter 3, pp. 84-85. 22. See McRae, "The Political Thought of Jean Bodin," pp. IOff. 23. See Henri Gilles, "La Facultd de Droit de Toulouse au temps de Jean Bodin," Annales d'histoire des Jacultes de droit et de science juridique (Paris), 1986, pp. 23—36; Jean Bodin et Toulouse (Toulouse: Maurice Espic, 1961). More generally, see Julian H. Franklin, Jean Bodin and the Sixteenth-Century Revolution in the Methodology of Law and History (New York: Columbia University Press, 1963). 24. This hypothesis, which on the whole seems to me rather doubtful, rests on the mention of a "Jehan Baudin" as an immigrant in the city registers of Geneva. On this debate see Henri Naef, "La jeunesse de Jean Bodin ou Ies conversions oubliees," Bibliotheque d'humanisme et Renaissance 8 (1946): 137-55; Emilie Droz, "Le carme Jean Bodin, heretique," ibid., 10 (1948): 77-94; Jacques Levron, "Jean Bodin sieur de Saint-Amand," ibid., pp. 69-76. The Jean Bodin of Geneva married Typhaine Renault, widow of Lyenard Gallimard, one of the men arrested with "Jean Bodin" in Paris in 1548, who was executed. If (as seems plausible) these two Bodins were the same person, the question remains whether he was also "our" Jean Bodin. See Boucher, "L'incarceration de Jean Bodin," p. 33. Bodin would have had to be widowed by the time of his later marriage in Laon. 25. Possibly Bodin tried to advance himself by mounting a cabal to support the Bartolist Forcadel over Cujas; Cujas prevailed, becoming Toulouse's most famous law professor in the period, and came away from the experience perceiving Bodin as an enemy. See A. London Fell, Origins of Legislative Sovereignty and the Legislative State, vol. 3: Bodin's Humanis­ tic Legal System and Rejection of "Medieval Political Theology" (Boston, Mass.: Oelgeschlager, Gunn and Hain, 1987), pp. 248-53; Pierre Mesnard denies the charge, in "Jean Bodin a Toulouse," Bibliotheque d'humanisme et Renaissance 12 (1950): 49-51. 26. Oratio de instituenda in Republica iuventute ad senatum populumque Tolosatem (Toulouse: Petrus Puteus, 1559), reprinted and translated in Methodus, pp. 7-65. On this text see Paolo Renzi, "I giovani, la citta, Io stato. Jean Bodin e la seeIta dell'educazione nella Francia del Cinquecento," Nuova rivista storica 75 (1991): 1-50. Founded in the sixteenth century in many towns across France, colleges dispensed a humanist secondary education. 27. McRae, "The Political Thought of Jean Bodin," pp. 54-55. 28. For an excellent bibliography, see Roland Crahay, Marie-Therese Isaac, and ManeThfirfese Lenger, with Rene Plisnier, Bibliographie critique des editions anciennes de Jean Bodin (Brussels: Academie Royale de Belgique, 1992).

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29. For full citation see "Conventions" above. Also available in English translation by Beatrice Reynolds, Methodjor the Easy Comprehension of History (Hew York: Octagon Books, 1966). Neither of these translations is entirely reliable. For the most recent study, see Marie-Dominique Couzinet, Methode et Wstoire ά la Renaissance: Une lecture de la Methodus dejean Bodin (Paris: Vrin1 1996); also John L. Brown, The Methodus ad Facilem Historiarum Cognitionem of Jean Bodin: A Critical Study (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University Press, 1939). 30. La responce . .. aux paradoxes de Monsieur de Malestroit (Paris: Martin Ie Jeune, 1568;2d, rev. ed, Paris: Jacques DuPuys, 1578). See Eckhard Buddruss, "Erudition classique et theorie quantitative de la monnaie dans la Reponse ά MaIestroit de Jean Bodin," Journal des savants, 1987, pp. 89-125. 31. Juris universi distnbutio (Paris: Jacques Dupuys, 1578). Reprinted and translated into French, with commentary in Expose du droit universel, trans. Lucien Jerphagnon, commt. Simone Goyard-Fabre, annot. Rene-Marie Rampelberg (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1985) 32. For full citation, see above, p. xiii; see also Bodin, Six Bookes of a Commonweale. For the vast secondary literature, see the bibliography by Marie-Dominique Couzinet m "Jean Bodin: Etat des lieux," and, most recently, discussions in Zarka, Jean Bodin and Fell, Ori­ gins of Legislative Sovereignty, vol. 5 (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1993—96), Part 1, Annex Π1 and Part 2, Appendix 3. 33. Julian Franklin shows how Bodin's ideal of government shifted from a constitu tionalist position in 1566 to an absolutist one in the Republique. See Julian H. Franklin, JeanBodin and the Rise of Absolutist Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973). 34. Bodm published an account (anonymously, speaking of himself in the third person) of the politics of the Third Estate at the Estates General of Blois, Recueil de tout ce qui s'est negocie en la compagnie du Tiers Etat. . . en la ville de Bloys (n. pi., n. pub., 1577; repr Paris: Martin Gobert, 1614). See Roland Crahay, "Jean Bodin aux Etats Generaux de 1576," Assemblee di stati e istituzioni rappresentative nella storia del pensiero politico modemo (secoli XV-XX), Atti del convegno mternazionale tenuto a Perugia, 1982 (Perugia: Annah della Facolta di Scienze Politiche, 1983), pp. 85-120; and, most recently, Mark Greengrass, "A Day in the Life of the Third Estate: Blois, 26th Dec. 1576," in Politics, Ideology and the Law in Early Modern Europe· Essays in Honor of J. Η. M. Salmon, ed. Adrianna E. Bakos (Rochester, N Y.. University of Rochester Press, 1994), pp. 73—90. 35. For full citations, see p. xiii; see Christopher Baxter, "Jean Bodin's De la Demonomanie des sorciers: The Logic of Persecution," in The Damned Art: Essays in the Literature of Witchcraft, ed. Sidney Anglo (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1977), pp. 76-105. 36. Alfred Soman, "Decriminalizing Witchcraft: Does the French Experience Furnish a European Model?" Criminal Justice History 10 (1989): 11-12; also "The Parlement of Paris and the Great Witch Hunt (1565-1640)," Sixteenth-Century Journal 9 (1978): 30-44. For Bodin's accusation, see Demonomanie, fol. 232r. 37. On Frangois' complex role in the politics of the time, see Mack P. Holt, The Duhe of Anjou and the Politique Struggle during the Wars of Religion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986). There are no documents concerning Bodin's service to Francois; Boucher suggests that Bodin received no pay, "L'incarceration de Jean Bodin," pp. 42-43. Letters of 1580 and 1583 do refer to Bodin's position as "maltre des requetes de Monseigneur," see A. Ponthieux, "Quelques documents inedits de Jean Bodin," Revue du seizieme siecle 15 (1928): 61, 63. 38 See his French translation of the speech delivered on that occasion: Harangue de

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Messire Charles des Cars . . . prononcee aux magnificques Ambassadeurs de Pologne, tournee du Iatm enfranQOis par J. Bodin (Paris: Pierre L'Huillier, 1573).

39. Bodin was legal counselor to the marquis de Moy and "advocate and counselor for the affairs of the county of Marie" for Henry of Navarre. See the documents reprinted by Ponthieux, "Quelques documents inedits," pp. 56-99. Much earlier, he had written a brief in support of Paul Scalich's (dubious) claim to descend from the noble della Scala family; see the "Responsum Ioanms Bodini. . . pro Paulo Scaligero," in Responsa lurisconsultorum . . . de origine, gente ac nomine Pauli Scaligeri (Cologne: Nicolaus Graphaeus, 1567), pp. 45-51. 40. Under the name of one of his sons, Bodin published a pedagogical compilation of moral sentences m verse: Elias Bodin, Sapientiae moralis epitome (Paris: Jacques Dupuys, 1588). 41. See the pleas for payment for services rendered in the documents published by Ponthieux, "Quelques documents inedits"; Menage reports that in his will Bodin stated that he was one of the poorest procureurs in the country. Gilles Menage, Vitae Petri Aerodii et Guillelmi Menagii (Paris: Joumel, 1675), p. 146. On Bodin's attitudes toward the League, see Paul L. Rose, "Bodin and the Bourbon Succession to the French Throne, 1583—94," Six­ teenth-Century Journal 9 (1978): 75-98; "The 'Politique' and the Prophet: Bodin and the Catholic League, 1589-1594," Historical Journal 21 (1978): 783-808; "Two Problems of Bodin's Religious Biography: The Letter to Jean Bautru des Matras and the Imprisonment of 1569," Bibliotheque d'humamsme et Renaissance 38 (1976): 459-66. 42. For a contemporary account see Antoine Richart, Memoires sur la Ligue dans Ie Laonnois (Laon: Societe academique de Laon, 1869), pp. 436-37. 43. OnJuly 13, 1594, the king sent Chevrieres back to Lyon in advance of the fall of Laon which he expected would be "good and short." Antoine Pericaud, Notes et documents pour servir a I'histoire de Lyon sous Ie regne d'Henri IV (1594-1610) (Lyon: Mougm-Rusand, 1845), p. 15 (entry of July 13, 1594). According to Richart's Memoires, Bodin left the city to join the royal troops on April 5. There was thus plenty of time for the two to meet. 44 McRae, in Bodin, Six Bookes, pp. A12-A13; Menage, Vitae Petri Aerodii et Guillelmi Menagii, pp. 146-48. 45. Pierre Bayle, "Bodin" in Dictionnaire historique et critique, note (O), in Methodus, p. xxxiii; see also Pierre de l'Estoile, Memoires-Journaux, ed. G. Brunet et al., vol. 9 (Paris: Jules Tallandier, 1982), p. 104, and P. Colomies, Gallia Orientalis (The Hague: Adrian Vlacq, 1665), p. 86, as discussed in McRae, "The Political Thought of Jean Bodin," p. 134. 46. The proponents of the Geneva hypothesis consider Bodin Protestant (see note 24 above); Pierre Mesnard presents him as a Catholic, in "La pensee religieuse de Jean Bodin," Revue du seizieme siecle 16 (1929): 77-121. On Bodin's relation to Judaism, see especially Rose, Bodin and the Great God of Nature, also: Maryanne Horowitz, "Bodin's Religion Reconsidered: The Marrano as Role Model," Proceedings oj the Annual Meeting of the Western Society for French History 11 (1984): 36-46, and "Judaism in Jean Bodin," Sixteenth-Century Journal 13 (1982): 109-14; Christopher Baxter, "Jean Bodin's Daemon and his Conversion to Judaism," Verhandlungen der Bodin-Tagung, pp. 1—21; Georg Roellertbleck, Offenbarung, Natur und judische Oberlieferung bei Jean Bodin (Gutersloh: Gern Mohn, 1964). 47. See, most recently, Gunter Gawlick and Friedrich Niewohner, eds., Jean Bodins Col­ loquium Heptaplomeres, Wolfenbutteler Forschungen, vol. 67 (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1996). The attribution of the Colloquium to Bodin has been called into question by Karl Friedrich Faltenbacher, Das Colloquium Heptaplomeres, ein Religionsgesprach zwisehen Scholastik und AuJklarung: Untersuchungen zur Thematik und zur Frage der Autorschaft

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(Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1988). I am fairly convinced of Bodin's authorship, given the num ber of passages that rehearse themes developed in other works by Bodin, in a practice of self-citation for which the Theatrum provides ample evidence. But, pending resolution of the current controversy, 1 do not rest my arguments for Bodin's positions on this work, although I will occasionally point to parallels with other passages I use as evidence. 48. For full citation of the French translation, see "Conventions" above; see also Collo­ quium of the Seven, trans, and ed. Marion Leathers Kuntz (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1975). 49. See Marion L. Kuntz, "Harmony and the Heptaplomeres of Jean Bodin," Journal of the History of Philosophy 12 (1974): 31--41; Raffaella Tessaro, "Cristianesimo e religione: Una tesi di Jean Bodin," Humanitas 39 (1984): 91-100. 50. Paradoxon quod nec virtus ulla in mediocritate (Paris: Denys Duval, 1596); the French translation appeared only after his death: Paradoxe . . . qu'il n'y pas une seule vertu en medi­ ae rite, ny au milieu de deux vices (Paris: Denys Du Val, 1598) 51. We have one letter (probably from 1568-69), first published in P. Colomies, Gal­ lia Orientalis, to Jean Bautru des Matras, a Protestant friend, with whom Bodin shares criticisms of Catholic practice And one letter was published in his lifetime, probably without his permission, as the "Lettre de Monsieur Bodin," detailing the reasons the politique Bodin had for adhering to the League. Both are available, with commentary, in Paul L. Rose, Jean Bodin: Selected Writings on Philosophy, Religion and Politics (Geneva: Droz, 1980), pp. 77-93. See also Chauvire, Jean Bodin, auteur de la Republique, pp 521-35, who includes a few more items, including a description of the failed attack on Antwerp; Ponthieux, "Quelques documents inedits," reproduces a few business letters. 52. See Boucher, "L'incarceration de Jean Bodin." 53. See Richart, Memoires, pp. 228—29. 54. Robert J. Sealy, S. J., The Palace Academy of Henry III (Geneva: Droz, 1981), p. 66. 55. See Antoine Loisel, "Dialogue des avocats," in Divers opuscules (Paris: Guillemot, 1652), p. 548. 56. On the culture of exchange in early modem Europe see Findlen, Possessing Nature; Natalie Z. Davis, "Beyond the Market: Books as Gifts in Sixteenth-Century France," Trans­ actions of the Royal Histoncal Society, 5th ser., 33 (1983): 69-88. 57. Private Diary of Dr. John Dee, ed. James Orchard Halliwell (London: Camden Society, 1842), p. 10. For more English reports on Bodin, see the Calendar of State Papers, For­ eign Series, for 1577 and 1586-88, the latter cited by McRae, "The Political Thought of Jean Bodin," pp. 116-17. The Dousa entry was kindly mentioned to me by Roland Crahay; I Tegret not having obtained the details of this reference before his untimely death in 1992. 58. Auger Ferrier, Advertissemens a M. Jean Bodin sur Ie 4' livre de sa Republique (Paris: Cavellat, 1580), p. 28. 59. The major studies are Cesare Vasoli, "Note sul Theatrum naturae di Jean Bodin," Rivista di storia della filosofia 45 (1990): 475—537—I am grateful to Marie-Dominique Couzinet for sharing with me her unpublished French translation of this article; Ralph Hafner, "Circularis ratio: Zur Methode in Jean Bodins Universae naturae theatrum," Il cannochiale: Rivista di studi filosofici 1 (1993): 41-68; Francois Berriot, "Le Thddtre de la nature universelle ou Ie tableau du monde," in Zarka1Jean Bodin, pp. 3-22; Pierre Mesnard, "A fisica de Jean Bodin segundo ο 'Anfiteatro da natureza,'" Revista portuguesa de filosofia 17 (1961): 164-200; Roger Chauvird, "La physique de Bodin," Revue de 1'Anjou 65 (1912): 145-77. On some points I will refer to my dissertation, "Restaging Jean Bodin: the Universae naturae the­ atrum (1596) in its Cultural Context" (Ph.D. diss., Princeton University, 1990).

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60. Pierre Mesnard1 "The Psychology and Pneumatology of Jean Bodin," International Philosophical Quarterly 2 (1962): 244

61. Paul L. Rose, "Bodin's Universe and its Paradoxes: Some Problems in the Intellectual Biography of jean Bodin," in Politics and Society in Reformation Europe: EssaysjorSir Ge­ offrey Elton on his Sixty-Fifth Birthday, ed. E. I. Kouri and Tom Scott (New York: MacmilIan Press, 1987), pp. 266-88; for a similar perspective see Marie-Dominique Couzinet, "La logique divine dans Ies Six livres de la Ripublique deJean Bodin: Hypothese de lecture," Eu­ ropean University Institute Working Papers 91/8. 62. See, for example, UNT, colophon: "Finis Theatri Naturae, quod loan. Bodinus Gallia tota bello civili flagrante conscripsit" (p. 633); see also UNT, dedication, sig. 4v; Paradoxon, preface, in Rose, Jean Bodin: Selected Writings, p. 37. 63. Pierre Bayle, "Bodin," in Dictionnaire historique et critique; note (E) in Mesnard, Oeuvres philosophiques, p. xxvii. 64. These self-citations (see below, chap. 2, n. 102) make it impossible to question the authenticity of the Theatrum; one librarian, however, in notes on the flyleaf of a copy at Grenoble, attributed the Theatrum to the "other" Jean Bodin. Bibliotheque Municipale de Grenoble, F5129. CHAPTER ONE KINDS OF NATURAL PHILOSOPHY

1. On genre theory in literature see Alastair Fowler, Kinds of Literature (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1982); Rosalie L. Colie, The Resources of Kind: GenreTheory in the Renaissance, ed. Barbara K. Lewalski (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973); and Gerard Genette, Seuils (Paris: Seuil, 1987). 2. See Roger Chartier, L'ordre des livres: Lecteurs, auteurs, bibliotheques en Europe entre XIV' et XVIIT silcle (Aix-en-Provence: Alinea, 1992), chap. 1. 3. Carlo Ginzburg, The Cheese and the Worms, trans. John and Anne Tedeschi (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1982), p. 29. 4. Fowler, Kinds of Literature, p. 72, drawing on Frank Kermode, "Novel and Narrative," in The Theory of the Novel: New Essays, ed. John Halperin (New York: Oxford University Press, 1974), pp. 159ff. 5. See, among other discussions, Michel Jeanneret, "Savoir, signe, sens ,"Journal of Me­ dieval and Renaissance Studies 22 (1992): 19-32. 6. This work is readily available as Ulisse Aldrovandi, Aldrovandi on Chickens: the Or­ nithology of Ulisse Aldrovandi (1600), vol. II, booh 14, trans. L. R. Lind (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1963). 7. The spread of vernacular literacy has begun to be studied, see Literacy and Social De­ velopment in the West: A Reader, ed. Harvey J. Graff (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981); but the evolution of Latin literacy, which is equally important to our understanding of readership in the early modern period, has received no attention so far. I owe this realization to Nancy Siraisi. 8. See, among other influential sources, St. Paul in Romans 1:20; or Balbus' argument from design in Cicero, De natura deorum, book 2. 9. On the German-language area see Joseph S. Freedman, EuropeanAcademic Philosophy in the Late Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries: The Life, Significance and Philosophy of Qemens Timpler, 2 vols. (Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1988). On the growth of European higher education more generally see Les universites europeennes du XVT au XVIiI' sitcles: Histoire so-

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dale des populations etudiantes, ed. Dominique Julia, Jacques Revel, and Roger Chattier, 2

vols. (Pans: Editions de 1'Hcole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales1 1986-89). 10. See Charles B. Schmitt, "The Rise of the Philosophical Textbook," Cambridge History of Renaissance Philosophy, ed Charles B. Schmitt et al. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), pp. 792-804. 11. E.g., Jean de Champaignac, Physiquefrancoise (Bordeaux: S. Millange, 1595) and especially Scipion Dupleix, Physique (Paris: Vve D. Salis, 1603), Logique (Paris: Vve D Salis, 1604), Metaphysique (Paris: Vve D. Salis, 1610) and Ethique (Paris: L. Sonnius, 1610), which I discuss in more detail in chapter 6, pp 203-4. 12 For example, Frangois de Dainville seesJesuit teaching in the early seventeenth century from original treatises dictated by the master as the "pedagogical expression of a serious revolution." See Frangois de Dainville, Lageographie des humanistes (Paris: Beauchesne, 1940), pp. 222-23. 13 See Der Kommentar in der Renaissance, ed. August Buck and Otto Herding (Boppard. Boldt, 1975); Nancy Sitaisi, Avicenna in the Renaissance; and jean Ceard, "Les formes discursives," in Precis de litterature franqaise du XVI' siecle, ed Robert Aulotte (Pans: Presses Universitaires de France, 1991), pp. 155-92, esp. 177—91 on the commentary 14. See William Eamon, Science and the Secrets of Nature: Books of Secrets in Medieval and Early Modern Culture (Princeton, N.J : Princeton University Press, 1994). 15. Julius Caesar Scaliger, Exotericarum exercitationum liber XV (Frankfurt: Wechel, 1582); see Ian Maclean, "The Interpretation of Natural Signs: Cardano's De subtilitate versus Scaliger's Exercitationes," m Occult and Scientific Mentalities in the Renaissance, ed. Brian Vickers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), pp. 231-52. 16. See Anthony Grafton, Cardano's Cosmos: The Three Worlds of a Renaissance Magician (Harvard University Press, forthcoming) 17. The only sure indication of price 1 have found is an ex libris indicating that one Johannes Geitmann from Wrociaw purchased a copy of the 1605 edition at Leipzig m 1606 for sixteen silver pennies. "Lipsiae sibi para. Johannes Geitmann Vratiss. Sl an 1606 16 arg gross." Copy at the University Library, Katowice, Poland; I am grateful to Prof. Dr. Paulina Buchwald-Pelcowa for this information. 18. On this general context, see Ian Maclean, "Philosophical Books in European Markets, 1570—1630: The Case of Ramus," in New Perspectives on Renaissance Thought: Essays in the History of Science, Education and Philosophy, ed John Henry and Sarah Hutton (London: Duckworth, 1990), pp. 253-63. 19 Ian Maclean, "L'economie du livre erudit: Ie cas Wechel (1572-1627)," in Le Ixvre dans I'Europe de la Renaissance, Actes du XXVllP colloque international d'etudes humanistes de Tours, ed. Pierre Aquilon and Henri-Jean Martm (Paris: Promodis, 1988), pp. 230-39; also Albert Labarre, "Editions et privileges des heritiers d'Andre Wechel a Francfort et a Hanau, (1582-1627)," Gutenberg-Jahrbuch (1970): 238—50. 20. RJ.W. Evans, The Wechel Presses: Humanism and Calvinism in Central Europe 1572-1627, Past and Present Supplement 2 (Oxford, 1975), pp. 11-12. 21. Ibid., p. 48. 22. For an introduction to this vast area see God and Nature, ed. David Lindberg and Ronald Numbers (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986), e.g., chaps. 3-8; John Hedley Brooke, Science and Religion: Some Historical Perspectives (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), chaps. 2—3. For the most recent work on the Merton thesis, see Science in Context 3 (1989), special issue entitled "After Merton- Protestant and Catholic Science in Seventeenth-Century Europe."

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23. In the court records concerning a dispute over the publication of the French translation of the Theatrum the printer of the Latin version mentions his commitment to both Bodm and Chevrieres See below, chapter 6, ρ 203. 24 See Antoine Pericaud, Notes et documents pour servir ά I'histoire de Lyon sous la Ligue (1589-94) (Lyon: Mougm-Rusand, 1844), pp. 71, 78-79, 186; Nicolas Chorier 1 La vie d'Artus Prunier de Saint-Andre (Paris: Picard, 1880), pp. 133, 323-24, 354-59; also Henri Hours, "Le retour de Lyon sous Tautorite royale a la fin des guerres de religion (1593-97)," These de l'Ecole Nationale des Chartes (Paris, 1951), which I have not seen—unfortunately no copies are on deposit in Paris or Lyon. 25 Antoine Pericaud, Notes et documents pour servir a I'histoire de Lyon sous Ie regne d'Henn IV (1594-1610) (Lyon: Mougin-Rusand, 1845), p. 15 OuIy 13, 1594). 26 BenoIt Voron, L'Enfer poetique (Lyon, 1586; reed. Vienna: E.-J. Savigne, 1878); see Claude Longeon, Une province frangaise ά la Renaissance: La vie intellectuelle en Forez au XVI' siecle (Saint-Etienne: Centre d'Etudes Foreziennes, 1975), pp. 67, 201. 27. On Gabrielle de Gadagne, see Jacques Pemetti, Recherches pour servir ά I'histoire de Lyon ou Ies Lyonnais dignes de memoire, 2 vols. (Lyon: Freres Duplain, 1757), 2:18-20. They owned, for example, Olaus Magnus, Historia de gentibus septentrionalibus (1554), Robert Gaguin, Rerum gallicarum annates (1577), a collection of grammar books by Augustinus Saturnus, Joannes Rivius, and Joannes Susenbrotus, a Praedium rusticum, and a French translation of L. B Alberti, L'architecture et art de bien batir (1553) I consulted the Archives Municipales de Lyon, Fonds Tricou, s.v. "Mitte" and the "Fichier des possesseurs" at the Bibliotheque Nationale and the Bibliotheque Municipale de Lyon, as discussed in my "Restagmg Jean Bodin: The Universae naturae theatrum m Its Cultural Context" (Ph.D. diss , Princeton University, 1990), pp. 11-12. 28 On the useful distinction between patron and Maecenas and the relationships they created with writers, notably by rewarding, respectively, regular service versus punctual performance, see Alain Viala, La naissance de I'ecrivain: Sociologie de la litterature ά Vdge classique (Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1985) 29. See Republique I, chap. 8, p. 188; III, chap. 4, p. 98. For more on Bodin and natural law see Janme Chanteur, "L'idee de Ioi naturelle dans la Republique de Jean Bodin," in Verhandlungen der intemationalen Bodin-Tagung in Munchen, ed. Horst Denzer (Munich: C. H. Beck, 1973), pp. 195-212. 30. Aristotle calls political philosophy "architektonike" in Nicomachean Ethics7 1.2. 31. Cf. M ethodus, chap. 6. See also Pierre Mesnard, "Jean Bodin fait de I'histoire comparee la base des sciences humaines," in Images de I'homme et de I'oeuvre (Paris: Vrin, 1970), pp. 192-95. 32. For comparisons of Montaigne and Bodin on witchcraft, see Maryanne Cline Horo witz, "Montaigne versus Bodin on Ancient Tales of Demonology," Proceedings of the West­ ern Society for French History 16 (1989): 103-10, and Raymond Esclapez, "Deux magistrats humanistes du XVIe siecle face a l'irrationnel: Montaigne et Bodm," Bulletin de la Societe des Amis de Montaigne, 7th ser., 7-8 (1987): 47-74 I consolidate my own comparisons, which surface throughout this book, in "Bodin, Montaigne and the Role of Disciplinary Boundaries," in History and the Disciplines: From Renaissance to Enlightenment, ed. Donald R KelIey (University of Rochester Press, forthcoming). 33. "Quelle verite que ces montaignes boment, qui est mensonge au monde qui se tient au dela?" Montaigne, Essais, ed. Pierre Villey, 3 vols. (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1988), II, chap. 12, p. 579. 34. Ibid., II, chap. 2, ρ 339, or III, chap 13, p. 1068

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35. Ibid., Ill, chap. 12, p. 1059. 36. Peter Dear, Mersenne and the Learning of the Schools (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1988), p. 36, and the references given there. 37. Elsewhere (p. 470) Bodin criticizes this kind of confusion, see below on his definition of physics. Nonetheless others have also noted how Bodin fails to distinguish between "his material and its interpretation"; see Oumelbanine Zhiri, "L'Afrique dans Ie miroir de l'Europe: Fortunes de Jean Leon TAfricain k la Renaissance" (These de doctorat, Universite de Paris X-Nanterre, 1989), p. 512 (not included in the published version, L'Afrique au miroir de !'Europe: Fortunes dejean Leon I'Afncain a la Renaissance {Geneva: Droz, 1991]). 38. Republique, 1, chap. 1, p. 31. 39. On the significance of such a retirement, see Nannerl Keohane, Philosophy and the State in France: The Renaissance to the Enlightenment (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1980), pp. 79ff., 99ff. 40. See Dror Wahrman, "From Imaginary Drama to Dramatized Imagery: The Mappemonde nouvelle papistique, 1566—67," Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 54 (1991): 186-205, plates 57b (book as offensive weapon), and 56b (book as shield). 41. See John H. Langbein, Torture and the Law of Proof: Europe and England in the Ancien Regime (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976). 42. See the repetition of the torture metaphor, UNT1 pp. 474, 512, 538. 43. Republique, III, chap. 4, p. 115. 44. Alfred Soman, "Decriminalizing Witchcraft," reprinted in Sorcellerie et Justice Criminelle: Le Parlement de Paris (16'-18' siecles) (Aldershot, Hampshire, Great Britain: Variorum, 1992), pp. 11-12. 45. Among the many recent works on this question see Michael Hunter and David Wootton, eds., Atheismfrom the Reformation to the Enlightenment (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992); Francois Berriot, Atheismes et atheistes au KVI' siecle en France, 2 vols. (Lille: Editions du Cerf, 1976); David Wootton, "Lucien Febvre and the Problem of Unbelief in the Early Modern Period," Journal of Modem History 60 (1988): 695-730, "Unbelief in Early Modern Europe," History Workshop 20 (1985): 82-100, and Paolo Sarpi: Between Renaissance and Enlightenment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983); James E. Force, "The Origins of Modern Atheism," Journal of the History of Ideas 50 (1989): 153-66; C. J. Betts, Early Deism in France: From the So-Called 'Deistes' of Lyon (1564) to Voltaire's 'Lettres philosophiques' (1734) (The Hague and Boston: Martinus Nijhoff, 1984); Aspects du libertinisme auXVl' siecle. Actes du Colloque international de Sommieres (Paris: Vrin1 1974); Don Cameron Allen, Doubt's Boundless Sea: Skepticism and Faith in the Renaissance (Baltimore: TheJohns Hopkins University Press, 1964). 46. The classic opposite positions are those of Henri Busson, Le rationalisme dans la Iitterature frangaise de la Renaissance (1533-1601) (Paris: Vrin, 1957), and Lucien Febvre, Le probleme de I'incroyance au sememe siecle: La religion de Rabelais (Paris: Albin Michel, 1942 and 1968). David Wootton explains that the term "atheism," first coined in the mid-sixteenth century, described "either someone who did not believe in the existence of God, or someone who held beliefs which made God's existence irrelevant." In this broader sense (as I will use it), it encompassed terms coined earlier in the century, like "libertine" and "Epicurean," and positions which the Middle Ages simply labeled "impious." Hunter and Wootton, Atheismfrom the Reformation to the Enlightenment, pp. 25-26. 47. Pierre Viret, Instruction chrestienne, 2 vols. (Geneva: Jean Rivery, 1564), vol. 2, sig. Cvi recto. 48. On Viret see Jean Barnaud, Pierre Viret, sa vie et son oeuvre (1511-71) (Samt-Amans: G. Carayol, 1911).

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49 See Rene Pintard, Le lihertinage erudit dans la premiere moitie du XVll' siecle (Paris: Boivin, 1943), p. 5: he cites La Noue, Charron, Cruce, Amyraut among those attributing the rise of unbelief to the wars of religion 50. Pierre de La Primaudaye, L'Academie frangoise: book 1, De ία cognoissance de I'homme et de son institution en bonnes moeurs (Paris: G. Chaudiere, 1577); book 2, Suite de VAcademie fra^oise: Sur la creation, matiere, composition, forme, division, utilite et usage des parties corporelles et animales de I'homme et. .. des puissances et oeuvres de I'dme, first published (Paris: G. Chaudiere, 1580); book 3, Tome troisitme, first published (Paris: G. Chaudiere, 1590), on natural philosophy especially; book 4, De laphilosophie divine et Chrestienne, first published (Paris: J. Chouet, 1599). See Karl-Heinz Diochner, Darstellung einiger Grundzuge des literarischen Werks von Pierre de La Primaudaye unter besonderer Berucksichtigung biographischer und quellenkundlicher Studien (Berlin: Freie Universitat, I960), including a list of pages borrowed from Viret on pp. 54, 61. 51. Pierre de La Primaudaye, L'academie franfoise (Saumur: Thomas Portau, 1613), Book IT, sigs. 02v and Ov. Cf. Viret, Instruction chrestienne, vol. 2, sigs. Cv verso—Cvi recto. 52. Viret, Instruction chrestienne, vol. 2, sig. Cvi recto; La Primaudaye, L'academie franQOise, vol. 2, sig. 04 verso; Viret, Instruction chrestienne, vol. 2, sig. Cvi verso. 53. Varro distinguished among treatments of the Greco-Roman gods three kinds of theology: the mythical (poetic descriptions), the political (official state rituals), and the natural—the philosophical study of the divine as revealed in nature. Referring back to Varro, Augustine coined the term "theologia naturalis" (Varro had used the Greek adjective "physicon" for "natural") which he praised as the only truthful one of these three Gentile theologies. See Werner Jaeger, The Theology of the Early Greek Philosophers (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1960), pp. 2-4. 54. At the same time the De natura deorum also served as a source of skeptical arguments. Composed as a dialogue between a skeptic, a Stoic and an Epicurean, it is a prime example of an ambiguous, "Ciceronian"-style dialogue. Cf. Cicero, De natura deorum, trans. H. Rackham (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1956), 2.118-30, pp. 237—49. 55 Amos Funkenstein describes the solid "protective belt" around theology in the Middle Ages, which gradually erodes in the early modern period. See Amos Funkenstein, "Scholasticism, Scepticism and Secular Theology," in Scepticismfrom the Renaissance to the Enlightenment, ed. Richard Popkin and Charles Schmitt (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1987), pp. 45-54; also his Theology and the Scientific Imaginationfrom the Middle Ages to the Seven­ teenth Century (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1986). 56. The traveler reveals great piety in his worship of God, but not which of the three religions specifically he found persuasive. See "The Book of the Gentile and the Three Wise Men," in Selected Works of Ramon Llull, ed and trans. Anthony Bonner, 2 vols. (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1985), 1:91-304. 57. On Sabunde/Sebon, see Claude Blum, ed., Montaigne: Apologie de Raimond Sebond. De la Theologia CL la Theologie (Paris: Honore Champion, 1990). 58. Philippe Duplessis Mornay, De la verite de la religion chretienne (Antwerp: Plantin, 1581); the Atheomachie (n. pi., 1582) traditionally attributed to him is not his. Georges Pacard, Theologie naturelle ou recueil contenant plusieurs argumens prins de la nature contre Ies epicuriens et aiheistes de nostre temps (Niort, 1611; first published 1579); Charles de Bourgueville, Athiomachie (Paris: Martin Ie Jeune, 1564). On this topic, see Frangois Laplanche, L'evidence du Dieu chretien: Religion, culture et socitti dans I'apologetique protestante de la France classique (1576-1670) (Strasbourg: Association des publications de la Faculte de Theologie Protestante de Strasbourg, 1983). 59. For survey of Catholic apologetics see Henri Bremond, Histoire litteraire du sentiment

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religieux en France, 11 vols. (1923; repr. Paris: Armand Colin, 1967), vol. 1: Vhumanisme devot; also Henri Busson, La pensee religieuse francaise de Charran a Pascal (Paris: Vrin, 1933). 60 I discuss Charron's borrowings from Bodin in chapter 6, pp. 192-93. 61. Yves de Paris, La iheologie naturelle (1633, 1635, 1640, 1641), vol. 1 (Paris: Veuve N. Buon, 1640), sig. ++ij recto; see Bremond, Histoire litteraire du sentiment religieux en France, 1:421-524 62. Duplessis Momay, De la verite de la religion chretienne (Paris: Jean Richer, 1582), dedication, as quoted and discussed in Laplanche, L'ividence du Dieu Chretien, pp. 18, 266. 63. Georges Pacard, Theologie naturelle, as discussed in Laplanche, L'evidence du Dieu Chretien, pp. 23-24. I have not managed to locate a copy of this rare work. 64 See especially Paul Lawrence Rose, Bodin and the Great God of Nature, which, as Maryanne Cline Horowitz perceptively comments, is more rewarding in proportion to one's knowledge of Jewish sources; see her review, "Judaism in Jean Bodm," SixteenthCentury Journal 13 (1982): 111. For a more thorough discussion of Bodin's religious strategies, see below, chapter 4, esp. pp. 146-152, and, on his Jewish references, chapter 3, pp. 112—15 and chapter 4, n. 121, p. 281. 65. On the canard literature see Jean-Pierre Seguin, L'injormation en France avant leperiodique (1529-1631) (Paris: Maisonneuve et Larose, 1964). 66. Notably in woTld histories; see Ottavia Niccoli, Prophecy and People in Renaissance Italy, trans. Lydia G. Cochrane (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1990) 67 On this complex literature which I present only schematically, see the richly detailed work by Jean Ceard, La nature et Ies prodiges: L'insolite au XVI' siecle en France (Geneva: Droz, 1977). 68. Pierre Boaistuau, Histoires prodigieuses (Paris: Charles Mace, 1575), dedication, sigs. a ii recto-verso. 69. Ibid., "Advertissement au lecteur," sig. a[vilr. 70 Ibid., ch. 23, fol. 99r—v. The Biblical quotation is from Romans 11:34—35. 71. Ibid., ch. 44, fol. 147r-v 72. Ibid., ch. 44, fol. 145v (note that the pagination in this edition is faulty). 73. Hiram Haydn, The Counter-Renaissance (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1950). 74. As 1 discuss in more detail in chapter 6; see Charles Lohr, "Metaphysics," in Cam­ bridge History of Renaissance Philosophy, pp. 537-638, esp. pp. 621-23. 75. Philip Melanchthon, Doctrinae physicae elementa sive initia (Lyon: Jean de Tournes and Gul Gazeius, 1552), pp. 2-3. See Sachiko Kusukawa, The Transformation of Natural Philosophy: The Case of Philip Melanchthon (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995). 76. Melanchthon, ibid., p. 2. 77. See, among others, Bruno Seidel, Physica (Frankfurt: Palthenius, 1596); Daniel Sennert, Epitome naturalis scientiae (Wittenberg: Caspar Heiden, 1618); Clemens Timpler, Physicae seu philosophiae naturalis systema (Hanau: Guilielmus Antonius, 1605); Cornelius Valerius, Physicae seu de naturae philosophia institutio (Lyon: Theobald Paganus, 1568). 78. Jacques Aubert, Institutiones physicae in quattuor partes distributae (Lyon: Antonius de Harsy, 1584), sigs. 2v-3r. This account follows a tradition that dates back to Cicero at least; I am grateful to Anthony Grafton for this information 79. Frans Titelmans, Compendium philosophiae naturalis (Paris: Michel de Roigny, 1582; first published 1542). Charles Schmitt lends credence to his claim of being the first author of such a work, "The Rise of the Philosophical Textbook," p. 795 80. Lambert Daneau, Physica ChHstiana (Geneva: Petrus Santandreanus, 1576), p. 21, also sig. *ijv; followed by a Physicae Christianae pars altera (Geneva: Petrus Santandreanus,

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1580). On Daneau's thought in general see Olivier Fatio, Methode et theologie: Lambert Daneau et Ies debuts de la scolastique reformee (Geneva: Droz1 1976). 81 Daneau, Physica Christiana, ρ 23. 82. I am grateful to Max Engammarre for showing me his "Controverses autour de la foudre et du tonnerre au soir de la Renaissance," to appear in a volume ed Yves-Marie Berce. 83. The Wonderful Workmanship of the World wherin is conteined an excellent discourse of Christian naturall Philosophic, concernyng thefourme, knowledge, and use of all thinges created: specially gathered out of the Fountaines of holy Scripture (London: for Andrew Maunsell, 1578); Hieronymus Zanchi, De operibus dei intra spacium sex dierum creatis opus (Neustadt: Matthaeus Harnisius, 1591). 84 Les problemes d'Alexandre Aphrodise excellent et ancien philosophe, pleins de matieres de medecine et philosophie traduit de Grec en Francois, avec annotations des lieux plus notables et difficiles: Soixante autres problemes de mesme matiere, medecine et philosophie par M. Heret (Paris: Guillaume Guillard, 1555). Heret (1518-85), trained as a medical doctor, also translated Plato's Symposium and a history of the war of Troy from Greek into French. 85. Heret, ibid., sig. lv]recto. 86. JohannJakob Wecker, De secretis libri XVII (Basel: Perna, 1587), reedited as late as 1750; first published in German in 1569; also translated into French in 1586. 87. For early orderings, see Paul Moraux, Les listes anciennes des ouvrages d'Aristote (Louvam: Editions Universitaires de Louvain, 1951). Renaissance scholars were not necessarily aware of the late nature of these orderings; see Angelo Poliziano, Miscellaneorum centuria prima (Basel: apud Valent. Curionem, 1522), chap. 1. 88. For this arrangement see for example Jean de Merlieres, Aristotelis Physiea (Paris: du Puys, 1580); for an introduction to Aristotle's motivations and context see G.E.R. Lloyd, Aristotle: the Growth and Structure of his Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968). 89 Without giving a reference Bodin cites almost verbatim from Pico's Conclusiones sive theses DCCCC, ed. Bohdan Kieszkowski (Geneva- Droz, 1973), p. 57 ("Conclusiones philosophicae secundum propriam opinionem numero LXXX," no. 38). But Bodin omits Pico's mention of De mundo: he may have been aware of the doubts concerning the attri bution to Aristotle which were current in the Renaissance; later (p. 155) Bodin refers to "Aristotle's De mundo" in a marginal note, perhaps for convenience. On the issue see Jill Kraye1 "Daniel Heinsius and the Author of De mundo," in The Uses of Greek and Latin: Historical Essays, ed. A. C. Dionisotti et al. (London The Warburg Institute, 1988), pp. 171— 97. 90. Cf. Copernicus' famous statement that "mathematics is for mathematicians" in the preface to his De revolutionibus orbium coelestium, facsimile reprint (Brussels: Culture et Civilisation, 1966), fol. iiii verso. 91 Bodin uses the term "astrologia" only to criticize those who consider it a mathematical discipline, UNT, p. 550. He means our "astronomy," in a conflation common throughout this period; on this point, see Betsey Barker Price, "The Physical Astronomy and Astrology of Albertus Magnus," in Albertus Magnus and the Sciences: Commemorative Es­ says, ed. James A. Weisheipl (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1980), p. 155. 92. Aristotle, Physics 1.184al6-21 with commentary in Aristotle's Physics Books 1 and II, trans. W. Charlton, vol. 1 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970), p. 51; for Renaissance interpretations of this passage see Neal Gilbert, Renaissance Concepts of Method (New York: Columbia University Press, 1960), esp chaps. 7-8; and Nicholas Jardine, "Epistemology of the Sciences," Cambridge History of Renaissance Philosophy, pp. 685-93.

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93. uPhoran es bathos," also UNT, p. 551; see Plato, Republic 7.528d8—el. 94. This late Greek term was spread through Neoplatonic and early Christian usage to designate "substance" (OED). See, more generally, A.C. Lloyd, "Introduction to Later Neoplatonism," in Cambridge History of Later Greek and Early Medieval Philosophy, ed. A. H. Armstrong (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967), pp. 272-81. 95. I discuss the "web of being" in chapter 4, pp. 131ff., and the structure of the Theatrum as a meandering "chain of thought" in chapter 2, pp. 77ff. 96. For the persistence of this theme, which has roots not only in Horace's call for poetry to be "utile et dulce," but also in the Aristotelian tradition, see Jose Antonio Maravall, Culture of the Baroque: Analysis of a Historical Structure, trans. Terry Cochran (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986), p. 77. 97. Cf. Olivier Fatio1 Nihil pulchrius ordine: Contnbution a I'etude de Vetablissement de la discipline ecclesiastique aux Pays-Bas ou Lambert Daneau aux Pays-Bas (1581-83) (Leiden: Brill, 1971). 98. I discuss this issue and Bodin's relation to Ramus in more detail in chapter 3. 99. Gulielmus Adolphus Scribonius, Physica et sphaerica doctrina: ilia Timothei Brighthi Cantabrigiensis Med. D. animadversionibus, 4th ed. (Frankfurt: Palthenius, 1600), p. 189. 100. Dedication by Timothy Bright to Philip Sidney, ibid., sig. A3r-v. 101. Ibid., dedication. 102. Michael Neander, Physice, sive potius syllogae physicae rerum eruditarum, ad omnem vitam utilium, iucundarum et variarum ... varietate fere conditae et illustratae (Leipzig: GeoTgius Defner, 1585). 103. Vtelanchthon, Doctrinae physicae elementa, p. 4. 104. Ibid., pp. 6, 33. Melanchthon recommends starting with God, the heavens, and stars. 105. E.g., Johannes Thomas Freigius, Quaestionesphysicae (Basel: Johannes Henricpetri, 1585); Timpler, Physicae systema; Seidel, Physica. 106. Melanchthon, Doctrinae physicae elementa, pp. 9, 63. 107. Franciscus Piccolomini, Librorum ad scientiam de natura attinentium partes quinque (Frankfurt: Andreae Wecheli haeredes, Claudium Marnium et loan. Aubrium, 1597); Domingo de Soto, Super octo libros physicorum Aristotelis praeclarissima commentaria (Venice: Franciscus Zilettus, 1582). 108. Timpler, Phystcat systema. 109. Aubert, Institutiones physicae. 110. See on this point, and the textbook tradition more generally, Sister Mary Richard Reif, "Natural Philosophy in Some Early Seventeenth-Century Scholastic Textbooks," (Ph.D. diss., Saint Louis University, 1962), and "The Textbook Tradition in Natural Philosophy 1600-1650," Journal of the History of Ideas 30 (1969): 17-32. Cf. the disjointedness of the texts in the "popular" bibliotheque bleue; see Chartier, Uordre des livres, p. 24. 111. Gilbert Iacchaeus, Institutiones physicae, 4th ed. (Schleusingen: Petrus Schmid, 1635), 1.4, p. 13, as discussed in Reif, "Natural philosophy," p. 66. 112. Paula Findlen, Possessing Nature: Museums, Collecting, and Scientific Culture in Early Modern Italy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), pp. 248—50. 113. See, for example, Karen M. Reeds, "Renaissance Humanism and Botany," Annals of Science 33 (1976): 519—42; Charles Nauert1 "Humanists, Scientists, and Pliny: Changing Approaches to a Classical Author," American Historical Review 84 (1979): 72-85. 114. See Findlen, Possessing Nature; and Benjamin Schmidt, "Innocence Abroad: the Dutch Imagination and the Representation of the New World c. 1570-1670" (Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 1994)—for the insight that books about collections played a crucial

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role in spreading awareness and admiration of them. On the works of travel writers, see Frank Lestringant, L'atelier du cosmographe (Paris: Albin Michel, 1991). 115. See, for example, one of the only commentaries on Aristotle's Parts of Animals, by a medical doctor from Crete: Daniel Furlanus, In libros Aristotelis de partibus animalium (Venice: loan. Baptista Somachus, 1574), sig. a2v. 116. In addition to the citations given above (note 13), see Jean Ceard, "Les transformations du genre du commentaire," in L'automne de la Renaissance (1580-1630), ed. Jean Lafond and Andre Stegmann (Paris: Vrin, 1981), pp. 101-15; and "Les mots et les choses: Le commentaire a la Renaissance," in L'Europe de la Renaissance, ed. Marie-TheresejonesDavies (Paris, 1988), pp. 25-36. 117. Franciscus Valles, De iis quae scripta sunt physice in libris sacris, sive de sacra philosophia (Lyon: Frangois Le Fevre, 1588). See Giancarlo Zanier, Medicina efilosofia tra '500 e '600 (Milan: Franco Angeli, 1983), chap. 2. 118. Levinus Lemnius, Similitudinum ac parabolarum quae in Bibliis ex Herbis atque Arboribus desumuntur dilucida explicatio: In qua narratione singula 1oca explanantur, quilnts Prophetae, observata stirpium natura, condones suas illustrant, divinaque oracula fultiunt, and Franciscus Rueus, Insulanus, De gemrnis aliquot, iis praesertim quarum divus Johannes Apos­ tolus in sua Apocalypsi meminit: De aliis quoque, quarum usus hoc aevi apud omnes percrebruit, Libri duo: Theologis non minus utiles quam Philosophis, et omninofelicioribus ingeniis periucundi, e non vulgaribus utriusque philosophiae adytis deprompti, both published with Valles, De iis quae scripta sunt. 119. Etienne Binet, Essay des merveilles de nature et des plus nobles artifices, piece tres-necessaire a tous ceux qui font profession d'eloquence (Rouen: Remain de Beauvais, 1621); see Henri Bremond, Histoire litteraire du sentiment religieux en France, 1:258—65, and Pierre Laurens, "Au tournant du siecle, une synthese fragile: l'Essai des merveilles d'Etienne Binet," Auiomne de Ia Renaissance, ed. Jean Lafond and Andre Stegmann (Paris: Vrin, 1981), pp. 65-80. Binet explains that his name means "twice-born" ("bis-ne"), hence his choice of a synonymous pseudonym: Re-ηέ. 120. Levinus Lemnius, Occulta naturae miracula, ac varia rerum documenta, probabili ratione atque artifici coniectura duobus libris explicata, quae studioso avidoque Lectori non tam usui sunt futura quam oblectamento (Antwerp: Gulielmus Simon, 1559), then, in an expanded version, De occultis naturae miraculis (Cologne: Joannes Birckman, 1573); Les occultes merveilles et secretz de nature avec plusieurs enseignemens des choses diverses, tant par raison probable, que par coniecture artificielle: exposees en deux livres, de non moindre plaisir que profit au lecteur studieux (Paris: Galiot du Pre, 1574). Books I-II first published 1559; books II-IV 1573; 10 Latin editions through 1640; published in French (1566, 1567, 1574, 1575), Italian (1563, 1567), and English (1568). 121. Johann Jakob Wecker, De secretis libri XVII (Basel: Pema1 1587); Les secrets et mer­ veilles de nature (Lyon: Barthelemy Honorat, 1586); first published in German in 1569. 122. See Brian Lawn, The Salernitan Questions: An Introduction to the Histoty of Medieval and Renaissance Problem Literature (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963), pp. 99ff. 1 discuss this curious situation in more detail in chapter 6. 123. See, for example, Problimes d'Aristote et autres Philosophes et Medecins selon la com­ position du corps humain (Lyon: Jean de Toumes, 1587), pp. 143, 147. 124. See Ceard, "Les formes discursives," p. 183; Aulus Gellius, Noctes Atticae (Frankfurt: ex officina Zachario-Paltheniana, 1603), 20.10, p. 491. 125. Aulus Gellius, Nodes Atticae, 20.10, p. 491. For a fine string of metaphors for such miscellanies, and interesting contemporary references, see the preface to Jean-Cecile Frey's unpublished "Hortus," Bibliotheque de !'Arsenal MS 1146, fol. lr-v, which I translate and

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reprint in "Bibliotheques portables: Les recueils de lieux communs dans la Renaissance tardive," in Lepouvoir des bibliotheques: La Memoire des livres en Occident, ed. Marc Baratin and ChristianJacob (Paris: Albin Michel, 1996), pp. 101-2, 106. 126. Les diverses legons de Pierre Messie, trans. Antoine du Verdier (Lyon· Barthelemy Honorat, 1577), chap. 10 , fol. 26r. First published as Los dialogos ο colioquios del magnifico cavallero Pero Mexia (Seville, 1548). 127. Antoine du Verdier, Diverses legons (Lyon: Barthelemy Honorat, 1577). 128. "Haec porro omni historiarum varietate, et stylo ita vanantur. . Libelli adeo sum lectione oblectatus." Memorabilium Gaudentii Merulae auctum opus (Lyon: Matthias Bonhomme, 1556). 129 Lambert Daneau, Physique franfoise (Geneva: Eustace Vignon, 1581), sig. ιν verso. 130. Ludovicus Vives, De ratione dicendi, book 2, in Opera, vol. 1 (Basel: Episcop., 1555), pp. 108-9. 131. Estienne responds to six complaints by Vives about Gellius, including charges of arrogance, loquaciousness, affected language, and nationalism. I have unfortunately not succeeded m locating these other criticisms in Vives. 132. "Agam, an ille aliud nihil quam consarcinator aut consutor esse dicendus est . . . qui plerunque suum iudicium ita interponit de locis, quos undique collectos depromit, ut magnam leeton utilitatem, vel voluptatem, aut etiam utrumque afferat?" Henri Estienne, "Noctes aliquot Parisinae" appended to Gellius, Nodes Atticae, ρ 5. I owe this fascinating reference to Jean Ceard. Henri Estienne also published a miscellany by Aulus Janus Parrhasius, Liber de rebus per epistolam quaesitis (Geneva, 1567). 133. On different miscellanies, see Neil Kenny, The Palace of Secret s: Bero aide de Verville and Renaissance Conceptions of Knowledge (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991); Michel Jeanneret, Des mets et des mots: Banquets et propos de table a la Renaissance (Mayenne: Librairie Jose Corti, 1987); also Ruth A. Fox, The Tangled Chain: The Structure of Disorder in the Anatomy of Melancholy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976); Amhony Grafton, Joseph Scaliger: A Study in the History of Classical Scholarship, vol. 1: Textual Criticism and Ex­ egesis (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983), chap. 1, on Poliziano's miscellany, and the literature cited there. 134. "Atque, ut paucis Tem complectar, quicquid lectione collectum est, stilus in unum rediget corpus et inde Antiquarum lectionum titulus hisce libellis est adoptatus: nam et Pomponium libros variarum lectionum concinnasse Iegimus: sed et Commentaria Lectionum Antiquarum, a Caeselio Vindice composite, Gellius advocat. Siquidem apum, mire diversa confudimus libamenta, uti ex succis odoraminum variis, reliquum tamen fiat spiTamentum unum: adservato, quantum evaluimus, brevitatis modulo, ne prorsum nimio plus excrescens fieret hekatontabiblios pragmata." Ludovicus Caelius Rhodiginus, Lectionum antiquarum libri triginta (Geneva: Philippus Albertus, 1620), fol. 5v (Greek transliteration added) 135. See Walter J. Ong, "Commonplace Rhapsody: Ravisius Textor, Zwmger and Shakespeare," m Classical Influences on European Culture 1500-1700, ed. R. R. Bolgar (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976), pp. 91-126. 136. Theodor Zwinger, Theatrum humanae vitae (Basel: Oporinus, 1565), typographus ad lectorem. 137. Laurentius Beyerlinck, Magnum Theatrum vitae humanae, 8 vols. (Lyon: Jean-Antoine Huguetan et Marc-Antoine Ravaud, 1661-65; first published 1631). On Zwinger's philosophical positions, see the detailed analysis by Carlos Gilly, "Zwischen Erfahrung und Spekulation: Theodor Zwinger und die religiose und kulturelle Krise seiner Zeit,"

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Busier Zeitschrift fur Geschichte und Altertumskunde 77 (1977): 57-137, 78 (1978): 125-223. 138. Bodin reports, for example, the wonder of Georg Agricola upon seeing a petrified tree, but finds, for his part, the phenomenon to be quite banal: "everyone can see examples of this in many places" (UNT, pp. 227-28). As Katy Park has pointed out to me, the good philosopher need not wonder because he can explain the phenomenon. 139. Anstotle, Metaphysics, 6.1.1025b4-1026a. 140. Thus Newton's "physics," although famous for its modernity, is entitled The Math­ ematical Principles of Natural Philosophy. The Oxford English Dictionary dates the first use of "scientist" to 1833. I use "physics" and "natural philosophy" almost interchangeably, and occasionally "science" to emphasize the fact that these activities, however foreign to modem sensibilities, constituted a self-consistent rational analysis of the natural world. Instead of "physicist" which connotes too narrowly a modem practitioner of physics, I use the Latin "physicus." 141 Reif finds these same definitions in Alsted, among other contemporaries; see her "Natural philosophy," p. 40. 142 Reif, "Natural philosophy," pp. 233-34. See also Charles Schmitt, John Case and Aristotehanism in Renaissance England (Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1983), chap. 5. 143 This was the position of Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas after him; see, for example, James A. Weisheipl, Nature and Motion in the MiddleAges (Washington, D C : The Catholic University of America, 1985), pp 234-36. Medieval classifications following Isidore of Seville also tended to subordinate the quadrrvium, including mathematics, to physics; see Marshall Clagett, "Some General Aspects of Physics in the Middle Ages," Isis 39 (1948): 31. 144. In the Theatrum Bodm rejects the claim of Copernicus and Melanchthon that the sun had moved closer to the earth since the time of Ptolemy, reversing the position he took in the Methodus. Compare UNT, pp. 603-4, and Methodus, chap. 8, pp. 234-35 (Latin), p. 439 (French translation). 145. Cf. Isidore of Seville, for whom the seven liberal arts culminated in astronomy that it might "free souls entangled by secular wisdom from earthly matters and set them at meditation upon the things on high." Isidore of Seville, Etymologies, 3.71.41, as translated in Ernest Brehaut, An Encyclopedist of the Dark Ages: Isidore of Seville, Studies in History, Economics and Public Law, vol. 48 (New York: Columbia University, Longman, Green and Co., 1912), pp. 81-82. 146. On the interchangeability of astronomy and astrology, see above, note 91; on the wide use of the metaphor of science as a hunt in this period, see Eamon, Science and the Secrets of Nature, chap. 8. 147. Bodin broaches mathematics at one point by way of illustrating his notion that the world was created according to an exemplar, as in the case of a circle formed with the area of a square. Bodin mentions Oronce Fine's attempt at squaring the circle (De quadratura circuli [Paris: S. Colinaeus, 1544]) and its refutations by Johannes Buteo (De quadratura circuli [Lyon: G. Rovillius, 1559]) and Pedro Nunez (De erratis Orontii Finaei [Coimbra: ex officina J. Barrerii et J. Alvari, 1546]) respectively. UNT, p. 19. 148 E.g., Christopher Clavius and his Jesuit followers. See Peter Dear, "Jesuit Mathematical Science and the Reconstitution of Experience in the Early Seventeenth Century," Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 18 (1987): 133-75, esp pp. 137-38. See also Nicholas Jardine, The Birth of History and Philosophy of Science: Kepler's "A Defence of Tycho

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against Ursus," with Essays on its Provenance and Signifiance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), ρ 246, and Bruce Stephenson, The Music of the Heavens: Kepler's Har­ monic Astronomy (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1994). 149. Given Bodin's marginal references to Aristotle's Metaphysics, he may have in mind Averroes' commentary on Metaphysics 12.2: "nulla scientia habet probare sua principia." (Averroes also refers to Physics, 2.26.21, and 1, last chap., and De anima 2.27). 150. At one point, however, Bodin is proud to have bridged a gap between disciplines: his theory of harmonic justice required a dual expertise in mathematics and the law, drawing on the principles of the former and the decisions of the latter field. Republique, VI, chap. 6, p. 254. 151. Richard McKeon, "The Transformation of the Liberal Arts in the Renaissance," in Developments in the Early Renaissance, ed Bernard S. Levy (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1972), pp. 158-223, e.g., p. 168. 152. Bodin thus maintains the standard distinction between natural on the one hand and preternatural or supernatural on the other—the former consists of the actions of demons exploiting the laws of nature to their purposes, the latter is limited to divine interventions that suspend the laws of nature. See Lorraine Daston, "Marvelous Facts and Miraculous Evidence in Early Modern Europe," in Questions of Evidence: Proof Practice and Persuasion across the Disciplines, ed. James Chandler et al. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), pp. 243-74. 153. Lohr, "Metaphysics," esp. pp. 606-7 on Pereira. 154. The works that Bodin has in mind probably include Aristotle's Historia animalium; On the causes of plants by his pupil Theophrastus; Dioscorides' history of plants, translated from Greek into Latin in 1554 by Pietro-Andrea Mattioli, who added an introduction from which I have found Bodin borrowing; Pliny's encyclopedic Natural History which also spans geography, astronomy, "anthropology," and medicine; and Galen's On the Usefulness of the Parts of the Body which covers different animal species as well as the human body in its demonstration of the design of nature, 155. In calling Rondelet the "nursling of the nymphs" Bodin reuses a phrase that he had already borrowed from Plutarch (De defectu oraculorum, 421a) to refer to Cleombrotus ("that nursling of the nymphs and demons," UNT, pp. 21, 107) and his discussion of the plurality of worlds. Perhaps the nymphs as divinities of the sea especially evoke Rondelet's study of fish; 1 owe this suggestion to Jean Ceard. 156. See for example Guillaume Rondelet, Histoire des poissons (Lyon· M. Bonhomxne, 1558). 157. On this connection, see Findlen, Possessing Nature, chap. 6. 158 I show in chapter. 4 how, for Bodin, events that happen to humans cannot often be considered fortuitous. 159. Reif, "The Textbook Tradition in Natural Philosophy," p. 27. 160. Thus Francois de Fougerolles, the medical doctor who translated the Theatrum into French, was dismayed by Bodin's hasty enumeration of the parts of the body and his defective categories and terminology; see F589,1 discuss this in more detail in chapter 6, pp. 210-11. 161. Gabriel Naude, AcJvis pour dresser une bibliotheque (Paris: Francois Targa, 1627). Naude claims his was the first work of its kind, but others were pursuing the question at the same time, notably Jean-Cecile Frey, Via ad divas scientias, artesque (Paris: Denys Langlois, 1628), pt. 4. See Archer Taylor, A History of Bibliographies of Bibliographies (New Brunswick, N.J.: Scarecrow Press, 1955). Taylor places the beginning of the genre with Gesner's Pandectae (1548), a massive subject index containing sections on bibliography

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and miscellanies; the genre was fully established by the mid-seventeenth century, with the Biblioteca bibliotecarum (1653) of Philippe Labe. 162. Methodus, chap. 10, pp. 254ff. (Latin), 465ff. (French). 163. The work of bibliographers, librarians, and booksellers is beginning to be studied as part of the history of the book. See for example Chartier, L'ordre des livres, chap. 3, for a useful discussion. 164. For some examples see Catalogus librorum bibliothecae IHustrissimi viri Iosephi Scaligeri (Leiden, 1609) reprinted as The Auction Catalogue of the Library of J. J. Scaliger, ed. H. J. de Jonge (Utrecht: HES Publishers, 1977); The Auction Catalogue of the Library of J. Arminius, ed. C. O. Bangs (Utrecht: HES Publishers, 1985; first published 1610); The Auction Catalogue of the Library of Dirk Canter, ed. j. A. Grays (Utrecht: HES Publishers, 1985; first published 1617); The Auction Catalogue of the Library of Hugh Goodyear, English Reformed Minister at Leiden, ed. J. D. Bangs (Utrecht: HES Publishers, 1985; first published 1662). For sample catalogues from the Frankfurt fairs, see Die Messkataloge des sechzehnten Jahrhunderts (1564-92), ed. Bernhard Fabian, 4 vols. (Hildesheim: Olms, 1972-78). 165. Philibert Mareschal, La guide des arts et sciences et promptuaire de tous livres tant composez que traduicts en Francois (Paris: F. Jaquin, 1598). 166. (1) sacred things; (2) concerning the arts and sciences; (3) description of the universe; (4) concerning the human genus; (5) men illustrious in war; (6) the works of God (including the natural historical topics); (7) "meslanges de divers memoires." La Croix du Maine, "Desseins ou projects . . . presentez au trfes chretien roy . . . Henri III," appended to his Bibliotheques franQaises (Paris: Saillant et Nyon, 1772-73), first published 1584. For more on La Croix du Maine, see Chartier, L'ordre des livres, pp. 83-89. 167. Conrad Gesner, Bibliotheca universalis, sive Catalogus omnium scriptorum locupletissimus, in tribus Unguis, Latina, Graeca et Hebraica, extantium et non extantium, veterum et recentiorum in hunc usque diem, doctorum et indoctorum, publicatorum et in Bibliothecis latentium: Opus novum et non bibliothecis tantum publicis privatisve instituendis necessarium, sed studiosis omnibus cuiuscunque artis aut scientiae ad studia melius formanda utilissimum (Zurich: Christophorus Froschoverus, 1545). See also Alfredo Serrai, Conrad Gesner (Rome: Bulzoni,

1990). 168. For more examples and discussion see Ian Maclean, "The Market for Scholarly Books and Conceptions of Genre in Northern Europe, 1570-1630," in Die Renaissance im Blich der Nationen Europas, ed. Georg Kauffmann (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1991), pp. 17-31; and Henri-Jean Martin, "Classements et conjonctures," in Histoire de Vedition frangaise, vol. 1: Le Iivre conquerant, ed. Henri-Jean Martin and Roger Chartier (Paris: Promodis, 1983), pp. 429-57. 169. For some examples see Joseph S. Freedman, "The Diffusion of the Writings of Petrus Ramus in Central Europe, c. 1570-1630," Renaissance Quarterly 46 (1993): 98-152, esp. pp. 100-105. 170. The Auction Catalogue of the Library of J. J. Scaliger, pp. 10-13, 23-31, 39-42, esp. p. 40. 171. On the ancient roots of the term see Henri-Irenee Marrou, Saint Augustin et lafin de la culture antique (Paris: Boccard, 1958), pt. 2, chap. 3; L. M. de Rijk,"Enkuklios paideia: A Study of Its Original Meaning," Vivarium 3 (1965): 24-93 (Greek transliteration added); for its Renaissance legacy see Jean Cfeard, "Encyclopedie et encyclopedisme a la Renaissance," in L'encyclopedisme, Actes du colloque de Caen 1987, ed. Annie Becq (Paris, 1991), pp. 57-67, and Franco Simone, "La notion d'encyclopedie: Elfement caracteristique de la Renaissance frangaise," in French Renaissance Studies 1540-70, ed. Peter Sharratt (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1976), pp. 234-62.

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CHAPTER TWO METHODS OF BOOKISHNESS

1. The recent literature includes Alan Gross, The Rhetoric of Science (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1990), Marcello Pera and William R. Shea, eds., Persuading Science: The Art oj Scientific Rhetoric (Canton, Mass.: Science History Publications, 1991), Lawrence J. Prelli, A Rhetoric of Science: Inventing Scientific Discourse (Columbia: University of South Caroliria Press, 1989). 2. The secondary literature is correspondingly vast. For the French context I have used Jean Ceard, "Les formes discursives," in Precis de litterature frangaise du XVI' siecle (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1991), pp. 164-76; Michel Le Guern, "Sur Ie genre du dialogue," and Eva Kushner, "Le dialogue de 1580 a 1630: Articulations et fonctions," m L'automne de la Renaissance 1580-1630, ed. Jean Lafond and Andre Stegmann, pp. 141-48, 149-62; M. K. Benouis, Le dialogue philosopkique dans la litterature Jrangaise du seizieme siecle (The Hague: Mouton, 1976); Le dialogue au temps de la Renaissance, ed. Marie-Therese Jones-Davies (Paris: Jean Touzot, 1984). Other recent work includes D Marsh, The Quat­ trocento Dialogue: Classical Tradition and Humanist Innovation (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1980); K. J. Wilson, Incomplete Fictions: the Formation of English Renais­ sance Dialogue (Washington, D.C.: The CatholicUmversityofAmerica Press, 1985);JonR. Snyder, Writing the Scene of Speaking: Theories of Dialogue in the Late Italian Renaissance (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1989); Virginia Cox, The Renaissance Dialogue: Liter­ ary Dialogue in its Social and Political Contexts, Castiglione to Galileo (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992); and Colette H. Winn, The Dialogue in Early Modem France, 1547-1630 (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1993). 3. Treatises in dialogue form include: Pierre Viret, Instruction chrestienne (1564), Jean Femel, De abditis rerum causis (1548); Henri Estienne, Deux dialogues du nouveau langage Jrangois Italianize (1578); Jacques Peletier du Mans, Dialogue de I'ortografe (1555); Lambert Daneau, Des sorciers (1574), as discussed in Ceard, "Les formes discursives," pp. 165, 170; I discuss pedagogical dialogues in more detail below. 4. Le Guern, for example, distinguishes the didactic, the polemical, and the dialectical; he cites Paul Pelhsson, Discours sur les oeuvres de M. Sarasin (1658) for a distinction between didactic and humorous dialogues and those of an intermediate, "more perfect" type. Benouis proposes a more detailed typology, comprising dialogues of vulganzation, polemical, satiric, lucianic, and encyclopedic dialogues. See Le Guem, "Sur Ie genre du dialogue," and Benouis, Le dialogue philosophique 5. See Dictionnaire de VAcademiefrangaise (1694), s.v "Dialogue," as discussed in Le Guem, "Sur Ie genre du dialogue," p. 142. 6 The most famous French Lucianic dialogue is Bonaventure des Periers' Cymbalum mundi (1537). On Lucian in Renaissance France see Christiane Lauvergnat-Gagniere, Lucien de Samosate et Ie lucianisme en France au XVl' siecle: Atheisme et poUmique (Geneva· Droz, 1988). 7. The main philosophical dialogues of the French Renaissance are the Dialogues of Guy de Brues (1557), Louis Le Caron (1556), Jacques Tahureau (1565), and the Solitaires of Pontus de Tyard (1552 and 1555), for brief presentations, see Ceard, "Les formes discursives." 8. Lucio Maggio, Del terremoto dialogo (Bologna: Alessandro Benacci, 1571; reed. Bologna: Nicolo Tebaldini, 1624); trans. Nicolas de Livre, Discours du tremblement de terre en forme de dialogue (Pans: Denys du Val, 1575; Paris: L'Huillier, 1575; reed. Paris: du Val, 1579). For an edition and translation of Bodin's poem, see Ann Blair, "Un poeme inconnu

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de Jean Bodin," Bibliotheque d'humanisme et Renaissance 54 (1992): 175—81; I am also planning an article on Bodin's relation to Nicolas de Livre. 9. Simon Maiole, Dies caniculares hoc est colloquia tria et viginti physicae, nova et penitus admiranda ac summa iucunditate concinnata per Simonem Maiolum episcopum Vulturanensem (Mainz: Ioannes Albinus, 1607), followed by Pars secunda (Cologne: Ioannis Schonwetter, 1608), trans. Lesjours caniculaires, 3 vols. (Paris: Robert Fouet, 1609-12). Maiole/Maioli is

identified in the Latin version as "Vulturariensis," and in the French translation as being from Ast (Asti). His title may be imitated from Alessander ab Alessandro, Dies geniales (1532). 10. See also Antonio Brucioli, Dialogues sur certains points de la philosophie naturele et choses meteorologiques (Lyon: Guillaume Rouille, 1556), set in a country house in Arcetri. Less explicitly "courtly" is Pedro Mexia, Trois dialogues touchant la nature du Soleil, de la Terre et de toutes Ies choses qui sefont et apparoissent en Vair (Pans: Federic Morel, 1579). 11. See notes 47-49 of the introduction for some bibliography on the Colloquium heptaplomeres.

12. For recent discussions of Galileo's rhetoric, see Richard Westfall, "Galileo and Newton: Different Rhetorical Strategies," in Persuading Science, pp. 107—24; or Jean Dietz Moss, Novelties in the Heavens: Rhetoric and Science in the Copernican Controversy (Chicago: Universityof Chicago Press, 1993). 13. Jacques Lefevre d'Etaples, Totius philosophiae naturalis paraphrases (Lyon: lacobus Giuncti1 1536). 14. C.J.R. Armstrong, "The Dialectical Road to Truth: the Dialogue," in French Renais­ sance Studies, ed. Peter Sharratt (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1976), pp. 3651. 15 See my discussion in chapter 3 pp. 88-89 of how arguments from authority often prepare Bodin's "reasoned demonstrations," and chapter 4 pp. 138-39 for an example of Mystagogus' reluctance to provide such demonstrations. 16. See Ceard, "Les formes discursives," p. 169; Kushner, "Le dialogue de 1580 a 1630," p. 151, and Le Guern, "Sur Ie genre du dialogue," p. 144. The terms refer to the categories of dialogical and monological thought developed by Mikhail Bakhtm in The Dialogic Imag­ ination: Four Essays, ed. Michael Holquist, trans. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981). 17. Bernard Palissy1 Recepte veritable, ed. Keith Cameron (Geneva: Droz, 1988), p. 57; as discussed m Ceard, "Les formes discursives," p. 170. 18. Medieval precedents include only a few pedagogical handbooks and catechisms, e.g., Alcuin's De arte rhetorica dialogus or the Latm catechism in question-and-answer form by Bruno of Wiirzburg (ca. 1005-45), "Commentarius in orationem dominicam . . . " in Migne, Patrologia latina, 142:557-62. On the educational use of the dialogue in the Renaissance, see Peter Mack, "The Dialogue in English Education in the Sixteenth Century," in Le Dialogue au temps de la Renaissance, pp. 189-212. 19. See for example Paul Grendler, Schooling in Renaissance Italy: Literacy and Learning 1300-1600 (Baltimore, Md.: TheJohns Hopkins University Press, 1989), on the use of catechisms in sixteenth-century Italy; for Germany see, among other works, Gerald Strauss, Luther's House of Learning: Indoctrination of the Young in the German Reformation (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978). 20. See Louis Massebieau, Les colloques scolaires du 1& siecle et leurs auteurs (1480—1570) (Paris, 1878; repr. Geneva: Slatkine1 1978), pp. 59-61; on the use of colloquies to teach Greek, see p. 51. 21. Gabriel Codina Mir, Aux sources de la pedagogie des Jesuites (Rome: Institutum His-

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toricum S. j., 1968), pp. 111-18, and Gustave Dupont-Ferner, Du ColUge de Clermont au Lycee Louis-Ie-Crand, 3 vols. (Paris: E. de Boccard, 1921-25), 1:208-12. 22. On this characteristic mode of scholastic arguing see Brian Lawn, Tfie Rise and De­ cline of the Scholastic 'Quaestio disputata,' with Special Emphasis on Its Use in the Teaching of Medicine and Science (Leiden: Brill, 1993). 23. UNT1 sig. 4r (as quoted above, p. 22), pp. 6, 130 (end of Book 1), 547 (at the end of Book IV), 549 (at the beginning of Book V), and 633 (at the end of Book V): "But it is for that purpose [the contemplation of God] that we undertook this disputation on natural things." 1 am grateful to Karl Hufbauer for raising the question of the significance of this term. 24. Lohr, "Metaphysics," pp. 609-10. 25. See for example Pierre Haguelon, Calendarium trilingue, seu de Mensibus Hebraeorum, Graecorum et Romanorum dialogus (Paris: M. Juvenis, 1557); Christianus Urstisius, Quaestiones novae in theoricas novas Planetarum doctissimi mathematici Ceorgii Purbachii Germani (Basel: Henricpetri, 1573). Simon Girault, Globe du monde contenant un bref traite du del et de la terre (Langres: Jean de Preys, 1592); Jean Tabourot, Orchesographie et traicte en forme de dialogue par lequel toutes personnes peuventfacilement apprendre et practiquer I'honneste exercice des dances (Langres: J. de Preys, 1588) are discussed in Kushner, "Le dialogue de 1580 a 1630," pp. 155—57. These pedagogical authors often published a number of dialogues on different topics; Simon Girault also wrote on anatomy in a rare Discours du coeur du petit monde et de la composition du corps humain (Langres: Jean Chauvetet, 1613)-1 am grateful to the New York book dealer Seth Fagen for a photocopy of this work. 26. Bodin, "Epltre touchant !'institution de ses enfans a son neveu," in Jean Bodin: Se­ lected Writings on Philosophy, Religion and Politics, ed. Paul L. Rose (Geneva: Droz, 1980), pp. 3-4 (emphasis added). Rose also discusses the text in Bodin and the Great God of Na­ ture\ pp. 52-54. 27. On the role of "Epltre," see Mesnard, "Jean Bodin devant Ie probleme de !'education," Revue des travaux de I'Academie des Sciences morales et politiques 112 (1959): 217—28. 28. Mack, "The Dialogue in English Education," p. 204. See also Grendler, Schooling in Renaissance Italy, p. 197. 29. Henri Estienne, Thesaurus graecae linguae (Paris: Firmin Didot, 1841), 4:354. Estienne credits the third meaning ("one who travels to cities . . . " to Bude, but I could not find it in the editions of Bude's Lexicon graeco-latinum that I was able to check (Geneva: Crispin, 1554), (Geneva: Crispin, 1562), and (Basel: Henricpetri, 1584)—I owe information about the edition of 1584 to Geoffrey Clark. 30. See also the discussion of these names in Marie-Dominique Couzinet, "Construction de l'id6e de theatre," an unpublished paper which the author kindly circulated to me in 1993. 31. For modem discussion of the Latm term, see Thesaurus linguae latinae, Aegidius Forcellini, Totius latinitatis lexicon, 11 vols. (Prato: typis Aldinianis, 1858-87). Cf. other uses in: Louis Cressolles (a Jesuit), Mystagogus de sacrorum hominum disciplina (Paris: Cramoisy, 1629), a guide to ecclesiastical ranks and functions; and Paul Fagius, Christian Hebraist and Cabbalist, who describes the Levites among the ancient Hebrews as "servants of public law and of the magistrates, and at the same time mystagogues" (i.e., guardians of sacred objects), in Thargum hoc est, paraphrasis Onkeli Chaldaica in Sacra Biblia, ex Chaldaeo in Latinum fidelissime versa, additis . .. sucrinctis Annotationibus (Strasbourg: per Georgium Machaeropoeum, 1546), on Deut. 19. 32. Demonomanie, fol. 14v. Bodin quotes two lines from an unidentified fragment by Menander; see Menandri reliquiae selectae, ed. F. H. Sandbach, rev. ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), #714: "To each man is given a daimon at birth, which is his mystagogue for all of life." I am grateful to Jennifer Beach for help in using the Thesaurus linguae graecae.

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33. "Sacrorum custos, qui custodiae sacroram est praefectus. . . . Gal. sacristain. . . . Sacristan." Ambrosius Calepinus, Dictionamm octolinguarum (Lyon: Symphorien Berauld et al., 1570). Edmond Huguet, Dictionnaire de la langue franfaise du seizxeme siecle, vol. 5 (Paris: Didier, 1961), p. 386. He cites Rabelais, V, 43 and 47; and "Marnix. Differ. Relig. I, v, 4": see Mamix de Sainte-Aldegonde, Premier tome du tableau des differens de la religion (La Rochelle: Haultin, 1601), fol. 360r: "Comme Mssrs Ies Canonistes et Docteurs de Cristallin sont Ies mystagogues, gardiens et eunuches de cette belle nymphe Jthe Catholic Church], il semblerait qu'il deussent pareillement etre Ies Roys de la febve." 34 Cicero, Actionis Secundae in C. Verrem 4.59.132 as quoted from The Verrine Orations, vol. 2: Agamst Verres, part II, trans. L.H.G. Greenwood (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1953), pp. 440-41. 35. Cleidophorus Mystagogus, Mercury's Caducean Rod (London, 1702), as mentioned in BettyJo Dobbs, The Janus Faces of Genius: The Role of Alchemy in Newton's Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), p. 37, n. 55, p. 78, n. 65. 36. See Philo, On the Cherubim, trans. F. H. Colson and G. H. Whitaker (London and New York: G. Heinemann, 1929), sec. 42ff., pp. 34-35, and Plato, Symposium 211 cl-4, as cited m P. Festugiere, La revelation d'Hermis Trismegiste, vol. 2: Le Dieu cosmique (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1949), pp. 548-49. Mystagogos does occur three times in Philo, according to the Thesaurus linguae graecae: De somniis 1.164, 2.78, and De virtutibus 178. 37. "To God they are aliens and sojourners. For each of us has come into this world as into a foreign city, in which before our birth we had no part, and in this city he does but sojourn, until he has exhausted his appointed span of life." Philo, On the Cherubim, sees. 120-21, p. 79; quotation in the text translated from Festugiere, Le Dieu cosmique, 2:538. 38. Near the end, again, Theorus calls attention to the ease and generosity with which Mystagogus responds to his insatiable desire for knowledge (UNT, p. 544). Bodin may perhaps be drawing on the Stoic notion that knowledge grows as in a garden, from seeds, see ibid., p. 475, and Maryanne Cline Horowitz, Seeds of Virtue and Knowledge (Princeton University Press, forthcoming). For a similar sentiment that sharing knowledge is essential to the scholar see Montaigne, Essais, ed. Pierre Villey (Paris: Presses Universtaires de France, 1988), III, chap. 9, pp. 986-87; Montaigne cites Seneca, Epistles 6 and Cicero, De officiis 1.43 (following Villey ed.). 39. E g., by petitio principii (UNT, p. 64), or sophistry (ibid., pp. 88, 108). 40. "Ce passage d'Aristote nous semble si difficile, que comme Pline ne l'a bonnement comprins, aussi advouons n'entendre bonnement quels oyseaux Aristote prenoit pour Cynchramus et Glottis et Ortygometra." Pierre Belon, L'histoire de la nature des oyseaux avec leurs descriptions et naifs portraicts retirez du naturel (Paris: Gilles Corrozet, 1555), p. 263. Fougerolles himself fails to translate "cynchrama" and "lingulaca" specifically, and offers only "proyer" or "bird of prey" in their place in the French translation (F538). 41. The anonymous Ceard annotator (see above, p. xiii) comments m the margin of UNT, p. 375, that "aucupium," the term for hunting birds, should be substituted for Bodin's "piscatio" to describe this activity. 42. See below, chap. 3, pp. 98-99. 43. Bernardo Bazan et al., Les questions disputees et Ies questions quodlibetiques dans lesfacultes de theologie, de droit et de medecine, Typologie des sources du moyen-age occidental, fasc. 44-45 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1985), pp. 23-24. 44. As discussed, for example, in James Weisheipl, "The Evolution of the Scientific Method," in Nature and Motion in the Middle Ages (Washington, D. C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1985), pp. 248-49. 45. Ibid., pp. 253-54. 46. For more comparison of their positions on witchcraft, see Maryanne Horowitz,

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"Montaigne versus Bodin on Ancient Tales of Demonology," Proceedings of the Annual Meeting oj the Western Society for French History 16 (1989): 103-14; and Raymond Esclapez, "Deux magistrats du XVIe siecle face a l'irrationel: Montaigne et Bodin," Bulletin de la Societe des amis de Montaigne, 7th ser., 7-8 (1987): 47-74. 47. Montaigne, Essais, III, chap. 11, pp. 1026-27; The Complete Essays of Montaigne, trans. Donald Frame (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1965), p. 78S. 48. A. London Fell discusses the similanty of this passage on the four causes with the work of the Toulousan lawyer Corasius See A. London Fell, Origins of Legislative Sover­ eignty and the Legislative State, vol. 3: Bodin's Humanistic Legal System and Rejection of "Me­ dieval Political Theology," (Boston, Mass.: Oelgeschlager, Gunn, and Hain1 1987), pp. 9599. For an example of the multiplication of the number of causes from a reading of Galen (of the efficient into cohesive, antecedent, and initial causes), see Vivian Nutton, "Seeds of Disease: An Explanation of Contagion and Infection from the Greeks to the Renaissance," Medical History 27 (1983): 4. 49. Greek transliteration added. 50 This preface is found in what I call the "highbrow" editions of Alexander's problemata (see chapter 6, pp. 213-15), as in Lesproblemes d'Alexandre Aphrodise, trans. M. Heret (Paris: Guillaume Guillard, 1555), fol. 3v: "Celles choses adonc se doivent demander et mettre en doute, qui sont moiennes: c'est a dire non celles, quit sont d'ellesmesmes totallement evidentes, ne aussi celles qui sont tant cachees et obscures que Fhomme ne Ies puisse comprendre: mais celles La, lesquelles combien que soient obscures et difficiles, peuvent toutefois estre expliquees par 1'erudition et entendement de l'homme." For the similar parameters of the scholastic quaestio, see Lawn, The Rise and Decline of the Scholastic 'Quaestio disputata', p. 11. 51. Les problemes d'Alexandre Aphrodise, fol. Ir. 52. Ibid., fol 3r. This preface is an important statement in the theory of occult qualities. 53. This argument is published in summary form in my "Humanist Methods in Natural Philosophy: the Commonplace Book," Journal of the History of Ideas 53 (1992): 541-51. 54. The literature is accordingly vast: see especially Francis Goyet, Le sublime du "lieu commun": L'invention rhetorique dans I'Antiquite et a la Renaissance (Paris: Honore Champion, 1996); Ann Moss, Printed Commonplace-Books and the Structuring of Renaissance Thought (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996); SisterJoan Marie Lechner, Renaissance Concepts of the Commonplaces (New York: Pageant Press, 1962); Zachary Schiffman, "Montaigne and the Rise of Skepticism m Early Modem Europe: A Reappraisal," Journal of the History of Ideas 45 (1984): 499-516, and the works they cite. Peter Jehn, ed., Toposforschung: Eine Dokumentation (Frankfurt: Athenaeum, 1972). 55. See Schiffman, "Montaigne and the Rise of Skepticism," and Moss, Printed Commonplace-Books. Virtually every Renaissance pedagogue addressed the issue: from Guarino da Verona to Vives and Erasmus, to obscure later figures like Jean-Cecile Frey. See, among many examples, Erasmus, De ratione studii (Louvain: Theod. Martinus Alost, 1512), or Jean-Cecile Frey, Via ad divas scientias artesque (Paris: Denys Langlois, 1628; repr. Pans, 1645, and Jena, 1674). 56. E g., J. H. Alsted, Orator (Herborn: G. Corvinus, 1616), pp. 302-3. 57. See, for example, Berkeley's Commonplace Book, ed. G. A. Johnston (London: Faber and Faber, 1930). 58. E.g., Bodin stresses the importance of selecting the "principal" issue involved, and gives as an example of how to determine it his choice of heading for a story about Antiochus reported in Plutarch. "Et quoniam plerunque eadem historiae pars in diversis capitibus censeri potest, causam praecipuam intueri oportet." Methodus, chap. 3, ρ 122 (Latin), ρ 291 (French). For a fine analysis of the process of assigning passages to head-

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mgs, see Francis Goyet, "A propos de 'ces pastissages de lieux communs' (le role des notes de lecture dans la genese des Essais)," Bulletin de la Societe des Amis de Montaigne 5-6 (1986): 11-26, 7-8 (1987): 9-30. 59. As in a "loci communes rhetorici" (seventeenth-century) which collects epistolary formulas: there are many entries for "formulae explicandi" and rhetorical tropes, but then headings for expressions of regret, and of love remain vacant. Bibliotheque Nationale, MS Fr 1015 and 1016. 60 E.g., a commonplace book of moral sayings in a continuous flow of headings and entries BN MS Fr 4821, fols. 65r-78v. 61. John Locke, "Nouvelle methode de dresser des recueils communiquee par l'Auteur." Bibliotheque universelle et historique de I'annee 1686, 2d ed., vol 2 (Amsterdam· Wolfgang, Waesberge, Boom and van Someren, 1687), pp. 315-39 62. Lechner, Renaissance Concepts of the Commonplaces, p. 62 on medical compilations. 63. Eg., Nicolaas Everaerts, Loci argumentorum legales (Frankfurt: N. Bassaeus, 1581), or "digestions" of laws according to commonplaces, as in D. Burchari Wormaciensis Ecclesias Episcopi Decretorum libri XX . . loci communis congesti (Paris: Ioannes Foucherius, 1550). On "digestion" in the case of Justinian's Digest, see Francis Goyet, "Encyclopedie et 'lieux communs,"' in L'Encyclopedisme, Actes du colloque de Caen, 1987, ed. Annie Becq (Pans: Khnksieck, 1991), pp. 493-504. Loci communes theologici run from Melanchthon (Basel: J. Oponnus, 1558) to Alsted (Frankfurt: J. Pressius, 1653), for example. AlsoJohn G Rechtien, "John Foxe's Comprehensive Collection of Commonplaces: A Renaissance Memory System for Students and Theologians," Sixteenth-Century Journal 9 (1978): 83-89. 64. See, for example, T. W. Baldwin, William Shakspere's Small Latine and Lesse Greeke, 2 vols. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1956). On Montaigne, see Goyet, "A propos de 'ces pastissages de lieux communs."' On Barrow, see Anthony Grafton, "Barrow as a Scholar," in Before Newton: The Life and Times of Isaac Barrow, ed Mordechai FeingoId (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 296-97. On Browne, see J.-J. Denonain, "Les problemes de l'honnete homme vers 1635: Religio medici et Ies conferences du Bureau d'Adresse," Etudes anglaises 18 (1965): 238. On Zwmger see Walter J. Ong, "Commonplace Rhapsody: Ravisius Textor, Zwmger and Shakespeare," m Classical Influ­ ences on European Culture 1500-1700. ed. R. R. Bolgar (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976), pp. 91-126. On Erasmus see Margaret Mann Phillips, The 'Adages' of Eras­ mus: A Study with Translations (New York: Garland Press, 1972). 65. See Terence Cave, The Cornucopian Text: Problems of Writing in the French Renaissance (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979), sec. 1, chap. 1. 66. Richard J. Durling, "Girolamo Mercuriale's De modo studendi," Osiris, 2d ser., vol. 6 (1990), ed. Michael McVaugh and Nancy Siraisi, p. 195. 67 A comparison with Chinese reference works, compendia, and concordances would be especially rewarding: see Ssu-Yu Teng and K. Biggerstaff, An Annotated Bibliography of Selected Chinese Reference Works (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1971), pp. 83-128. At its height the library of Alexandria generated similar activities of classifying and compiling books and producing reference works and guides to scholarship. See Christian Jacob, "Lire pour ecrire: Navigations alexandrines," Le pouvoir des bibliotheques: La memoire des livres en Occident, ed. Marc Baratin and Christian Jacob (Paris: Albin Michel, 1996), pp. 47-83. Most of this work, available today in fragments, was only known to the Renaissance in the form of a mythical aura surrounding the library of Alexandria. 68. Pliny the Elder, Natural History, trans. John Bostock and H T. Riley, 6 vols. (London: Henry G. Bohn, 1855), 1:6. 69. See G.E R. Lloyd, Science, Folklore and Ideology: Studies in the Life Sciences in Ancient

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Greece (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), pp. 135-49; more generally, Roger French and Frank Greenaway, eds., Science in the Early Roman Empire: Pliny the Elder, His Sources and Influence (London: Croora Helm, 1986). 70. Gian Biagio Conte, "The Inventory of the World: Form of Nature and Encyclopedic Project in Pliny the Elder," in Genres and Readers, trans. Glenn Most (Baltimore, Md.: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994). 71. See Maurice de Gandillac et al., La pensee encyclopedique au Moyen Age (Neuchatel: Editions de la Baconniere, 1966), also available as a special issue of Cahiers d'histoire mondiale (1966); for a bibliography on Vincent of Beauvais, see Spicae: Cahiers de !'Atelier Vincent de Beauvais 1 (1978): 6-29. 72. Naude, Advis pour dresser une bibliotheque (Paris: Frantois Targa, 1627), p. 64.1 discuss this passage in my "Bibliotheques portables: Les recueils de lieux communs dans la Renaissance tardive," in Baratin and Jacob, Lepouvoirdes bibliotheques, pp. 84-87. 73. See Anthony Grafton and Lisa Jardine, " 'Studied for Action': How Gabriel Harvey Read his Livy," Past and Present, no. 129 (1990): 45-49; and, more generally, William Sherman, John Dee: The Politics of Reading and Writing in the English Renaissance (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1995). For another kind of "professional" reading and annotation designed to be circulated to others, see Owen Gingerich and Robert Westman, The Wittich Connection: Conflict and Priority in Late Sixteenth-Century Cosmology, Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, vol. 78, part 7 (Philadelphia: APS, 1988). 74. Methodus, chap. 1, p. 114 (Latin), p. 281 (French). 75. E.g., Pierre Mesnard, "Jean Bodin a la recherche des secrets de la nature," in Umanesimo e esoterismo, ed. Enrico Castelli (Padua: CEDAM, 1960), 223. 76. E.g., when he says that one should begin on the subject of history with a chronological table of all peoples. Methodus, chap. 2, p. 116 (Latin), p. 284 (French). 77. On this original meaning of "historia," see Pierre Louis, "Le mot historic chez Aristote," Revue de philologie 29 (1955): 39-44; Arno Seifert, Cognitio historica: Die Geschichte als Namengeberin derfruhneuzeitlichen Empirie (Berlin: Dunckerund Humblot, 1976), e.g., p. 14; Nancy G. Siraisi, "Girolamo Cardano and the Art of Medical Narrative," Journal of the History of Ideas 52 (1991): 581-602. 78. "De locis historiarum recte instituendis." Methodus, chap. 3, p. 119 (Latin), p. 287 (French). 79. Ibid., chap. 2, p. 118 (Latin), p. 285 (French), and chap. 3, p. 122 (Latin), p. 291 (French). 80. Mesnard, introduction ("Vers un portrait de Jean Bodin"), in Methodus, p. xvii. 81. Roger Chauvire, Jean Bodin, auteur de la Ripublique (La Fleche: Eug. Besnier, 1914), p. 491. 82. Anthony Grafton, "Editing Technical Neo-Latm Texts: Two Cases and their Implications," in Editing Greek and Latin Texts, ed. John Grant (New York: AMS Press, 1989), p. 183. 83. MarianJ. Tooley, "Bodin and the Medieval Theory of Climate," Speculum 28 (1953): 83; Grafton, "Editing Technical Neo-Latin Texts," pp. 180-83. 84. Fell, Origins of Legislative Sovereignty and the Legislative State, vol. 3, p. 265; more generally, see Antoine Compagnon, La seconde main: Ou Ie travail de la citation (Paris: Seuil, 1979). 85. Although many practical aspects of the commonplace book are discussed (e.g., in Locke's article), 1 have found no discussion of the question of source citation (Locke, for one, keeps in his sample entries scrupulously detailed records of the sources). See his "Nouvelle mithode pour dresser des recueils."

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86. Methodus, chap. 3, p. 122 (Latin), p. 290 (French). 87. See Theophrastus, De causis plantarum, 2.17. Pliny, Natural History, 8.50; Plutarch, Moralia, "De sera numinis vindicta," 558E; Aristotle, History of Animals, 9.3, 610 b29. 88. C. Plinii Secundi Historiae mundi, ed. Jacques Dalechamps (Frankfurt: Claudius Marnius et heredes Joan. Aubrij, 1608), 8.50, p. 393: "Hoc si quis apprehensam ex grege unam trahat caeterae stupentes spectant. Id etiam evenire cum quandam herbam aliqua ex eis momordent." Dalechamps provides in his notes the reference to Plutarch's "De iis qui sero a numina puniuntur," where he thinks Plutarch poorly copied this passage in Aristotle, introducing the "eryngius" plant. For a modern translation, see Pliny, Natural History, vol. 2, pp. 341-42 (chapter is numbered 8.76 in that edition). 89. Cross-references in the Loeb ed. of Plutarch's Moralia 7.243 include Theophrastus, Frag. 174 (ed. Wimmer); Antigonus, Historiarum Mirabilium chap, cvii (para. 115) and a scholium on Nieander, Theriaca, verse 645. 90. "Th.. Cur capra decerpto Eryngij capite stat immobilis quasi perculsa, ac caeterae quoque caprae attonitae quiescunt? M. Propter earn quam superius diximus, rerum antipathiam; quod Capranus cum videt, eripit demorsum Eryngij caput ab ore caprae: quae etiam subsistit si quis arancum seu barbam mulceat, est enim stohdum genus omne pecoris" (UNT, p. 294). On Pliny's treatment of his sources, see Lloyd, Science, Ideology and Folklore, pp. 142-43. 91 Such lists of antipathies and sympathies grow out of a tradition reaching back to late Greek philosophy: see Max Wellmann, Die Physika des Bolos Demokritos und der Magier Anaxilaos aus Larissa, Abhandlungen der Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften (1928), no. 7; and Julius Rohr, Der okkulte Kraftbegrifj im Altertum (Leipzig: Dieterichsche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1923); I owe these references to Brian Copenhaver. 92 As in the case of his list of plants poisonous to humans, but which are food to certain animals, which Bodin has taken almost verbatim from Mattioli: compare UNT, p. 293, and Pierre Andre Matthiole, Commentaires . . . sur Ies six livres de Dioscoride, trans, du Pinet (Lyon: Guillaume Rouille, 1572), preface, p. 15. 93. Bodin: "Ut anno 1473 Stradonia tota, Velisca, Coninium, Balsum, Chelma, Lubonilia, Basilica Luciciensis, Mogilnense monastenum, non alio, quam solis incendio deflagrarunt. [Note: Thomas (sic) Cromer in histona Polonica lib. 17.]"; he refers to this event again on p. 580. Source: "Neque hoc solum incommodum eo anno [1473] Polonia pertulit: sed aestu quoque et ardore vexata est usque adeo ut alvei fluminum plerorumque arescerent. . . . Stradomia quidem ad vicesimamsextam diem Iulij penitus conflagravit: . . Conflagrarunt etiam Velisca, Coninum, Belsum, Chelma, Lubomlia: praeterea basilica Lenciciensis cum vicmis domibus archiepiscopi et sacerdotum, itemque Mogilense monasterium." Martin Cromer, Polonia sive de origine et rebus gestis Polonorum libri XXX (Cologne: Birckmann, 1589), book 28, p. 412. 94. See Sigismund of Herberstein, Rerum moscoviticarum commentarij (Basel: loannes Oporinus, 1556), p. 61. 95. See chapter 3, pp. 105-6, for a discussion of Bodin's attitude toward "laws of nature." 96. A diligent reader, the "Ceard annotator" (see above, p. xiii), points out the contradiction in a marginal annotation to the passage on p. 284: "At p. 279 f[ine] ex ubertate succi minus suavem prodire fructum pronunciat." 97. In an extension of the argument of Edward Grant, "Aristotelianism and the Longevity of the Medieval World View," History of Science 16 (1978): 93-106. 98. Oumelbanine Zhiri, "L'Afrique dans Ie miroir de l'Europe: Fortunes de Jean Leon l'Africain a la Renaissance," (These de doctorat, Universite de Paris X-Nanterre, 1989),

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pp. 421-23. These examples are omitted from the published version of her thesis (Geneva: Droz1 1991). 99. Eckhard Buddruss1 "Erudition classique et theorie quantitative de la monnaie dans la Reponse & Malestroit de Jean Bodin," Journal des savants (1987): 89-125, e.g., p. 96. 100. Jalcob Guttmann1 'TJber Jean Bodin in seinen Beziehungen zum Judentum1" Monatsschnft fur Geschichte und Wissenschaft des Judentums 49 (1905): 327. 101. Republique, V1 chap. I1 p. 15. 102. Bodin's translation of Oppiani de venatione, cited in UNT, p. 306; Methodus (chap. 5). cited p. 624; De Republica (4.2), cited pp. 418, 614; Demonomania, cited pp. 348, 502; "libellus quod nulla virtus sit" (Paradoxon quod nee virtus ulla in mediocritate . . , 1596), cited p. 139; and Bodin's liminary poem on earthquakes, cited p. 174. 103. Lucio Maggio1 Diseours du tremblement de terre, trans. Nicolas de Livre (Paris: L'Huillier, 1575), p. 112. 104 See Stefan Janson, Jean Bodin, Johann Fisehart: "De la demonomanie des soreiers" (1580), "Vom ausgelassenen wutigen Teuffelsheer" (1581) und ihre Fallberiehte (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1980), e.g., pp. 191, 197, 205. 105 See Plutarch, Les vies des hommes illustres, trans. Jacques Amyot (Paris: Michel de Vascosan, 1565), fol. 168v. 106. "Amma habet apud se rerum species et excitatur tantum ab extrinsecis rebus." Pico della Mirandola, "Conclusiones secundum Adelandum Arabem," Conclusiones sive theses DCCCC, ed. Bohdan Kieszkowski (Geneva: Droz, 1973), p. 42. The concept of "species" was the subject of numerous interpretations in the Middle Ages, but roughly corresponds to an "idea": Augustine for example uses the terms interchangeably, see Norman Kretzmann et al., eds., The Cambridge History of Later Medieval Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), p. 442. 107. "Isaac vero Narbonensis nihil corpora coelestia inferioribus praeter calorem largiri putavit." UNT, p. 578. Cf. "Corpora coelestia non largiuntur formaliter inferioribus nisi caliditatem." "Conclusiones secundum Isaac Narbonensem," Pico, Conclusiones, p. 37. "Quinetiam Albumaron Babylonius scribit Solem insito sibi calore calefacere." UNT, p. 578. Cf. "Coelum calefacit inferiora per lumen suum super ea cadens." "Conclusiones secundum Abumaron Babylonium1" Pico1 Conclusiones, p. 38. 108. As part of his demonstration of Bodin's wide Hebrew erudition, Guttmann tries to account for a more direct source for Bodin's mention of "Isaac Narbonensis": he speculates that Bodin might have meant Isaac Abravanel and be referring to him, and mentions one Isaac Narboni who composed an unpublished Talmudic work about which nothing more is known. Guttmann also noticed the passage in Pico1 but does not recognize that a tacit borrowing from Pico outweighs all other hypotheses. Jakob Guttmann1 "Lflber Jean Bodin in seinen Beziehungen zum Judentum," Monatsschriftfur Geschiehte und Wissenschaft des Judentums 49 (1905): 336. 109. These authorities are: Durand d'Aurillac, Thomist; Bernard of Gannat (Auvergne)1 author of impugnationes against Henry of Ghent in response to the latter's attacks on Aquinas; Thomas of Wylton1 author of disputations attacking Durand de Saint-Pourgain; John of Paris, author of a Correctorium in defense of Aquinas. "Henr. Brito" is an error (also present in the first edition) for "Herv. Brito" or Herve Nedellec of Brittany, Thomist. Bodin's source must be: "In conclusione mea, dico Christum fuisse in infemo solum per effectum. . . . Hanc enim opinionem quam ego sequor, licet assertive tenet, non solum Durandus, sed et Bemardus de Gannaco in impugnationibus Henrici quolibeto secundo. tenes [sic] Thomas Anglicus in quolibetis suis. tenet Herveus Britonis in suo secundo sen-

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tentiarum. tenuit et beatus Thomas in primo sententiarum, licet alibi demde videri potest sequi aliam opinionem." Pico, Apologia, in Opera omnia, 2 vols. (Basel: Henricpetri, 1567; facsimile, Tunn, 1971), 1:128-29. The crucial clue was provided by Martin Grabmann, Uittelalterlicb.es Geistesleben: Abhandlungen zur Geschichte der Scholastik und Mystik, vol. 2 (Munich: Max Hueber, 1936), p. 553, noting that Bernard of Gannat is cited by Pico. I am grateful to Jean Ceard for ingenious help in solving this puzzle. 110. I discuss Bodin's notion of corporeal angels and souls m chapter 4, pp. 140-42 Bodin may be trying to attract attention to orthodox thinkers to sweeten his own un orthodox argument. 111. On the history of the footnote, see Anthony Grafton, "The Footnote from de Thou to Ranke," in Proof and Persuasion in History, History and Theory: Studies in the Philosophy of History, Theme Issue 33, ed. Anthony Grafton and Suzanne L. Marchand (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University, 1994), pp. 53-76, and The Tragic Origins of the German Footnote (Cambridge Mass.: Harvard University Press, forthcoming). 112. Frances Yates, "The Mystery of Jean Bodin," New York Review of Books, (October 14, 1976), p. 47. 113. Terence Cave, The Comucopian Text, p. 22. 114. Many other Renaissance texts share this feature of "digressing" to elaborate on a theme See, for example, Jean-Claude Margolin, "De la digression au commentaire: Pour une lecture humaniste du De asse de Guillaume Bude," in Neo-Latin and the Vernacular in Renaissance France, ed. Grahame Castor and Terence Cave (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984), p. 10; and Jean Ceard, "Les transformations du genre du commentaire." For a metaphor similar to my discussion of Bodin's "chain of thought," see Ruth A. Fox, The Tan­ gled Chain: The Structure of Disorder in the Anatomy of Melancholy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976). 115. On the use of Ovid in the classroom, see Ann Blair, "Ovidius Methodizatus: The Metamorphoses of Ovid m a Sixteenth-Century Paris College," History of Universities 9 (1990): 94-95. CHAPTER THREE MODES OF ARGUMENT

1. SeeJames Chandler, Arnold I. Davidson and Harry Harootunian, eds., Questions of Evidence: Proof, Practice, and Persuasion across the Disciplines (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), especially Lorraine Daston, "Historical Epistemology," pp. 282-89, and the literature cited there. 2. Methodus, chap. 7, p. 228 (Latin), p. 430 (French). 3. Eileen Serene, "Demonstrative Science," in Cambridge History of Later Medieval Phi­ losophy, ed. Norman Kretzmann et al. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), pp. 496-517. 4. See Nicholas Steneck, Science and Creation in the Middle Ages: Henry of Langenstein (d. 1397) on Genesis (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1976), e.g., p. 141. 5. Roellenbleck highlights similar elements—reason, "induction" from examples and the authority of the Old Testament—as the mainstays of Bodin's arguments in the Republique too. See Georg Roellenbleck, "La structure du raisonnement dans la Republique de Jean Bodin: Autorite-Argument-Preuve," in Intersignes Nantais: Melanges de litterature offerts CL Madame de la Garanderie, Textes et langages, vol. 14 (Nantes: Universite de Nantes, 1987), pp. 189-205.

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6. "L'usage a obtemi . . . qu'on use indifferemment du mot de logique ou dialectique pour toute cette discipline." Scipion Dupleix, Logique (1607; repr. Pans: Fayard, 1984), p. 29. 7. This summary of dialectic in the Renaissance is based on Lisa Jardine, Francis Bacon: Discovery and the Art of Discourse (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974), chap. 1. For a study of medieval usage, see Pierre Michaud-Quantin, "L'emploi des termes 'Iogica' et 'dialectica' au Moyen-Age," Arts liberaux et philosophie au Moyen Age, Actes du 4e Congres international de philosophie medievale, 1967 (Paris: Vrin, 1969), pp. 855-63. 8. The question of Bodin's connection with Ramism was first and most effectively presented by Kenneth D. McRae1 "Ramist Tendencies in the Thought of Jean Bodin," Journal of the History of Ideas 16 (1955): 306-23. 9. Bodleian Library Bywater T.4.25, contains: (1) Omer Talon, Academia (Paris: Matthaeus David, e regione collegii Rhemensis, 1550); (2) Talon, In Lucullum Ciceronis Commentarii (Paris: Matthaeus David, 1550); (3) Talon, Rhetorica (Paris: Ludovicus Grandmus, e regione collegii Rhemensis, 1551); (4) Talon, In Marci Tul Ciceronis Partitiones Oratorias Annotationes (Pans: Matthaeus David, 1551); (5) Petrus Ramus, Ciceronis de fato liber (Paris: Vascosan, 1550); (6) Georgius Valla, In lib. Ciceronis de fato (no title page or publication information). The notes (which cover texts 1,3, and 5) are in two distinct hands which are closely intermingled and may be by the same person; to draw conclusions from a comparison of these notes with the few examples of Bodin's later hand would require an expert paleographer. The notes concern the texts by Cicero rather than the commentaries by Talon or Ramus; nonetheless the teacher who probably dictated them was presumably sympathetic to the Ramist commentary, and may well have been Talon or Ramus in person. On this discovery, which remains to be studied in detail, see Giles G. Barber, "Haec a Joanne Bodmo lecta," Bibliotheque d'humanisme et Renaissance 25 (1963): 362-65; and Kenneth D. McRae, "A Postscript on Bodin's Connections with Ramism," Journal of the History of Ideas 24 (1963): 569-71. 10. On the relationship between the two fnends, which probably included Talon's publishing under his name works by Ramus after the latter was banned from teaching at the university, see Kees Meerhoff, Rhetorique et poetique au XVl' siecle en France: Du Bellay, Ramus et Ies autres (Leiden: Brill, 1986), pp. 189-90; on Talon's early works which are in the Sammelband, see pp. 263-64. 11. See, for example, Ramus' description of how dialectic, by enabling a view of all the arts and sciences, rises up to the supreme end and author of all things. P. Ramus, Dialecticae institutiones (Paris: Iacobus Bogardus, 1543), fol. 35r. For a good introduction see Peter Sharratt, "Peter Ramus and the Reform of the University: The Divorce of Philosophy and Eloquence?" in French Renaissance Studies 1540-70 (Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh Press, 1976), pp. 4-20. 12. See McRae, "Ramist Tendencies"; Cesare Vasoli, "Note sul Theatrum naturae di Bodin," Rivista di storia dellafilosofia 45 (1990): 478ff; on the golden chain imagery, see Ralph Hafner, "Circularis ratio: Zur Methode in Jean Bodin's Universae naturae theatrum," 11 cannochiale: Rivista di studifilosofici 1 (1993): 50, comparing UNT, p. 23 and Ramus' Di­ alectique, ed. Michel Dassonville (Geneva: Droz, 1964), p. 146. I discuss the purpose of UNT, pp. 133-36 in chap. 5, pp. 161-62. The tables appended to the French translation by Frangois de Fougerolles also differ greatly from the text itself that it purports to systematize, as I discuss m chapter 6, p. 211; see also below, figure 4, pp.162-63. 13. See Michael Evans, "The Geometry of the Mind," Architectural Association Quarterly 12 (1980): 32-55, and K. J. Holtgen, "Synoptische Tabellen in der medizinischen Literatur und die Logik Agricolas und Ramus'," SudhoffsArchiv 49 (1965): 371-90; as discussed

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in Charles Schmitt, Aristotle and the Renaissance (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1983), pp. 56-57. Marion Kuntz also mentions Donald Kelley's suggestion that "Ramus' 'influence' on Bodin has been overdone " Marion Kuntz, trans and ed., Collo­ quium of the Seven about Secrets of the Sublime (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1975), p. xviii. 14. See Olivier Fatio, Methode et theologique: Lambert Daneau et Ies debuts de la scolastique reformee (Geneva: Droz, 1976), pp. 38 and 112*—117*. Daneau was intellectually and personally close to Beza and Turnebe, both vehement opponents of Ramus. 15. See Neal Gilbert, Renaissance Concepts of Method (New York: Columbia University Press, I960), also Olivier Fatio, Nihil pulchrius ordxne: Contribution a I'etude de I'etablissement de las discipline ecclesiastique aux Pays-Bas ou Lambert Daneau aux Pays-Bas (15811583) (Leiden: Brill, 1971). For Bodin's discussion, which 1 quote below, pp. 98-9, see UNT, p. 141. 16 See Paolo Rossi, Philosophy, Technology and the Arts in the Early Modern Era, trans. Salvator Attanasio, ed. Benjamin Nelson (New York: Harper and Row, 1970), e.g., pp. 5-6 (Vives), pp. 49ff (Agricola). Bodin mentions that Guillaume Bude consulted the jewellers of Paris to find out if gold is diminished by fire (UNT, p. 263). 17. " . . tradenda est Rami Dialectica omnium optima, propterea quod haec ars animum variarum dissertationum capacem reddat." Consilia Johannis Bodim Galli, et Fausti Longiani ltali, de principe recte instituendo (Erfurt: Johannes Pistorius, 1603; first published 1602), fols. B2r-v, as quoted in McRae, "Ramist Tendencies," p. 320. See Roland Crahay, Marie Therese Isaac, and Marie-Therese Lenger, Bibliographie critique des editions anciennes de Jean Bodin (Brussels: Academie Royale de Belgique, 1992), pp. 328-31. 18. Walter J. Ong, Ramus: Method and the Decay of Dialogue (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1958). 19 Ramus' thesis of 1543 was originally entitled: "Quaecumque ab Aristotele dicta essent commentitia esse," where " 'commentitia' is to be understood in the sense of 'artificial,' 'fabricated,' or 'contrived '" Ong, Ramus, p. 46. As early as 1612 the title was reported to be "falsa et commentitia." See Philip W Cummmgs, "A Note on the Transmission of the Title of Ramus' Master's Thesis," Journal of the History of Ideas 39 (1978): 481. On Bodin's criticism of Aristotle for failing to separate dialectic, see above, chapter 1, p. 30. 20. McRae, "Ramist Tendencies," p. 323. 21. Albert Labarre, Le livre dans la vie amienoise au seizieme siecle: L'enseignement des inventaires apres dices, 1503-1576 (Paris: Nauwelaerts, 1971), pp. 112ff, 243ff. 22. Robert Damton points out the pitfalls of some attempts at a sociological analysis of authors in ancien regime France in The Literary Underground of the Old Regime (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1982), pp. 169-73. 23. See Michael S. Mahoney, The Mathematical Career of Pierre de Fermat (1601-1665), 2d ed. (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1994), pp 15ff; and the forthcoming work on Peiresc by Peter N. Miller, a selection of which was presented at the Renaissance Society of America in April 1995; I discuss Champaignac in chapter 6, pp. 203-4. 24. Donald R. Kelley, Foundations of Modern Historical Scholarship: Language, Law, and History in the French Renaissance (New York: Columbia University Press, 1970); Zachary Sayre Schiffman, On the Threshold of Modernity: Relativism in the French Renaissance (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991). 25. Kelley, Foundations of Modern Historical Scholarship, chap 4; and The Beginning of Ide­ ology: Consciousness and Society in the French Reformation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), pp. 158ff. 26. See Schiffman, On the Threshold of Modernity, chap. 2.

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27. On the legal culture more generally, see Ian Maclean, Interpretation and Meaning in the Renaissance: The Case of Law (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992); and Richard Kagan, Lawsuits and Litigants in Castile 1500-1700 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1981). For a discussion of the impact of Bacon's legal training on his natural philosophy, see Julian Martin, Francis Bacon, the State and the Reform of Natural Phi­ losophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), chap. 4. 28. See Zachary S. Schiffman, "Montaigne and the Rise of Skepticism in Early Modern Europe: A Reappraisal," Journal of the History of Ideas 45 (1984): 499-516. 29. William Bouwsma, "Lawyers and Early Modem Culture," American HisCoriai Review 78 (1973): 314. 30. "Itaque et illi alias aliud eisdem de rebus et sentiunt et iudicant et nos contrarias saepe causas dicimus, non modo ut Crassus contra me dicat aliquando, aut ego contra Crassum, cum alterutri necesse sit falsum dicere, sed etiam ut uterque nostrum eadem de re alias aliud defendat, cum plus uno verum esse non possit" Cicero, De oratore ad Quinium fratrem libri tres 2.7.30 (my emphasis). I owe this reference to Jean Ceard's keen memory. 31. Kelley, The Beginning of Ideology, pp. 206-7. 32. On the Republique, see Georg Roellenbleck, "La structure du raisonnement dans la Republique de Jean Bodin," pp. 191, 195. On the Demonomanie, see Roland Crahay and Marie-Therese Isaac, "La 'bibliotheque' deJean Bodin demonologue: Les bases theoriques," Bulletin de la classe des lettres et des sciences morales et politiques, Academie royale de Belgique (Bruxelles), 5th ser., 73 (1987): 151; also Janson, Jean Bodin, Johann Fischart: "De la demonomanie des sorciers" (1580), "Vom ausgelassenen wutigen Teufelsheer" (1581) und ihre Fallberichte (Frankfurt: PeterLang1 1980), e.g., p. 127. 33. "Responsum Ioannis Bodini. . . pro Paulo Scaligero," in Responsa Iurisconsultorum . . . de origine, gente ac nomine Pauli Scaligeri (Cologne: Nicolaus Graphaeus, 1567),

pp. 45-51. For guidance m deciphering legal citations in the Renaissance, see Michel Reulos, Comment transcrire et interpreter Ies references juridiques .. . contenues dans Ies ouvrages du XVI' siecle (Geneva: Droz, 1985). 34. Aristotle, Posterior Analytics 1.7, as discussed also in Peter Dear, Mersenne and the Learning of the Schools (Ithaca, N.Y., Cornell University Press, 1988), p. 63; and James A. Weisheipl, Nature and Motion in the Middle Ages (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America, 1985), pp. 249-50. 35. On the theme of seeds of virtue sown in the soul, see Maryanne Horowitz, Seeds of Virtue and Knowledge (Princeton University Press, forthcoming), chap. 8. On the Renaissance use of the doxography, or collection of opinions of philosophers, see Brian Copenhaver, "Natural Magic, Hermetism and Occultism in Early Modern Science," in Reap­ praisals of the Scientific Revolution, ed. David Lindberg and Robert Westman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 269-70. 36. See the positions of Montaigne, Naude, and Francis Bacon on common consent, which I discuss in the epilogue, p. 228 and notes 12-13. 37. This is true even in the case of the scholastic authors who call the location of an angel "effective": Bodin cites them on the point on which he agrees with them, that the distinction between "circumscriptive" and "definitive" is absurd, and only then mentions (without associating it with them), and rejects, the "effective" solution. UNT, p. 514, and above, chapter 2, pp. 76-77. 38. Scipion Dupleix, Physique (Rouen: Louys de Mesnil, 1640; repr. Paris: Fayard, 1990), on whether angels have bodies (1.8, pp. 103ff.), on the existence of the void (4.7, pp. 263ff.), or whether the heavens are animate (5.6, pp. 327ff.). 39. "Mais !'imprudence, voire !'impudence est telle en quelques-uns qu'ils font gloire de

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reprendre Aristote en ce qu'ils n'entendent pas, comme Zoile a reprendre Homere." Dupleix, Physique, p. 650. Zoilos1 a Greek sophist, was known for his petty and passionate critique of Homer in his "Homeromastrix." 40. Mann Mersenne, La verite des sciences (1625; repr. Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatf Friedrich Frommann Verlag, 1969), pp. 109-10. Mersenne also includes one "Olive" whom 1 have not been able to identify. Mersenne no doubt has in mind these attacks on Aristotle which escalated especially in the 1620s: Francisco Patrizi, Nova de universis philosophia (1591); Nicholas Hill, Philosophia Epicurea, Democritiana, Theophrastica (1601) which was bound with the Theatrum (see chapter 6, p. 186); David van Goorl, Exercitationes philosophicae (1620); Nicolas Charpentier, Philosophia libera (1621); Sebastien Basson, Philosophia naturalis (1621); On Patrizi see Cesare Vasoli, Francesco Patrizι da Cherso (Rome: Bulzoni, 1989), and Luc Deitz, "Space, Light and Soul in Francesco Patrizi's Noya de universis philosophia (1591)," paper delivered at the Dibner Conference on Natural Phi losophy and the Disciplines, May 1995, to appear in the proceedings, ed. Anthony Grafton and Nancy Siraisi; for the others, see Pintard, Le libertinage erudit (Paris: Boivin, 1943), ρ 42 and ad indicem. I discuss Bodin's reception among university philosophers in detail in chapter 6, especially pp. 188-91, 194-95 41. On Aristotle's meteorological theory, see Friedrich Solmsen, Aristotle's System of the Physical World (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1960), pp. 404ff. For some criticisms by "Aristotelians," see the works of Jean Crassot, as discussed in Frangois de Dainville, La geographie des humanistes (Paris: Beauchesne, 1940), pp. 224-26, or Jean-Cecile Frey, as discussed m my "The Teaching of Natural Philosophy in Early SeventeenthCentury Paris: The Case of Jean-Cecile Frey," History of Universities 12 (1993): 95-158, esp. pp. 122-23. 42. See, for example, Lawrence Brockliss, French Higher Education in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries: A Cultural History (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987), pp. 340-45; Roger Ariew, "Theory of Comets at Paris during the Seventeenth Century," Journal of the History of Ideas 53 (1992): 355-72. 43. See British Library shelfmark 536.b.4, flyleaf. 44. See Pierre Duhem, Medieval Cosmology: Theories of Infinity, Place, Time, Void and the Plurality of Worlds, ed. and trans. Roger Ariew (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985), pp. 295-99. Cesare Vasoli sees Bodin's position as a simplification of that of GianFrancesco Pico, "Note sul Theatrum naturae di Jean Bodin," Rivista di storia dellafilosofia 45 (1990): 498. 45. I owe these assessments to the expertise of Roger Ariew. 46. Charles B. Schmitt, "Aristotle as a Cuttlefish: The Origin and Development of a Renaissance Image," Studies in the Renaissance 12 (1965): 60-72. Schmitt explains that the cuttlefish and the squid (Ioligo) were used interchangeably in this metaphor, as both animals (despite certain anatomical differences) were known as ink-squirters; ibid., note 23. 47. Aulus Gellius reports the contents of this letter, which is now believed to be spurious, Noctes atticae (Frankfurt: ex officina Zachario-Paltheniana, 1603), 20.5, pp. 483-85. 48. Problems, 23 is devoted to the sea and contains questions concerning its saltiness, but includes no reference to urine or sweat. Problems 2.3 argues that sweat and urine are salty because they are what remains after bodily concoction. 49. Theorus has to pose the question twice before getting an answer (pp. 197, 198). 50. Bert Hansen, trans, and ed., Nicole Oresme and the Marvels of Nature: A Study of His De Causis mirabilium with Critical Edition, Translation and Commentary (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1985), p. 137; for other authors using the expression "refuge of the weak" see ibid., p. 50.

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51. Pererius, Commentariorum et disputationum in Genesin (Rome: G. Ferrarius, 1589), p. 8, as quoted in Arnold Williams, The Common Expositor: An Account of the Commentaries on Genesis 1527-1633 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1948), p. 23. 52. Dupleix, Physique, p. 486 On p. 462, Dupleix also criticizes Aristotle's explanation of earthquakes as "impertinent." I am grateful to Roger Ariew for pointing out these references to me. 53. G.E.R. Lloyd, Magic, Reason and Experience (Cambridge. Cambridge University Press, 1979), p. 97. 54. Steneck, Science and Creation, p. 119; and Lynn Thorndike, A History of Magic and Experimental Science, vol. 3 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1934), p. 502ff. 55. Girolamo Cardano, De subtilitate, IV, in Opera omnia, vol. 3 (Lyon, 1663; facsimile, Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Friedrich Frommann, 1966), 420. 56. G.E.R. Lloyd notes that modus tollens was one of the earliest forms of rigorous argument developed in ancient Greece, notably by Zeno in his dilemmas. Lloyd, Magic, Rea­ son and Experience, pp. 74-79. 57. Hiram Haydn, The Counter-Renaissance (New York: Charles Scnbner's Sons, 1950), esp. chaps. 2, 4. 58. Lucien Febvre, Leprobleme de I'incroyance au XVI'siecle: La religion de Rabelais (Pans: Albin Michel, 1942), pp. 404-7; or Robert Lenoble, Esquisse d'une histoire de I'idee de na­ ture (Pans: Albin Michel, 1969), pp. 291-92. 59. See E. William Monter, "Inflation and Witchcraft: The Case of Jean Bodin," in Ac­ tion and Conviction in Early Modern Europe: Essays in Memory of Ε. H. Harbison, ed. Theodore Rabb and Jerrold Siegel (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1969), pp. 371-89. 60. Some "facts" that he rejects without explanation include- the belief that agate (the stone) makes fighters invincible (p. 234), or that the beaver bites off his testicles when pur sued (instead, Bodin explains, the pursuing dogs do) (p. 336). 61. Antoine Schnapper reports that this argument is that old, in Le Geant, la licorne et la tulipe: Collections et collectionneurs dans la France du XVII' siecle (Paris: Flammarion, 1988), p. 86 (he does not give a reference). 62. "Sing to Yahweh in gratitude . . . who gives their food to the cattle and to the young ravens when they cry" (Ps. 147:9, Jerusalem Bible). 63. "Patiently, all creatures look to you to feed them throughout the year, quick to satisfy every need, you feed them all with a generous hand" (Ps. 145:15, Jerusalem Bible) 64. Anonymous annotations in the copy of the Theatrum in the personal library of Jean Ceard; denoted "Ceard annotator," for UNT, p. 372. The evidence of expurgation is from a copy of the 1605 edition at the Biblioteca Nacional in Madrid, expurgated according to the decree of 1632. I owe this detailed information to M. Gerald Morisse of Pessac who very kindly responded to my search notice placed in the Nouvelles du livre ancien. 65. Pliny, Natural History 26.10, as quoted in Lloyd, Science, Folklore and Ideology, p. 137. 66. Bodin, Oppiani de venatione (Paris: Robert Fouet, 1597), book 2, fol. 29r, with Bodin's commentary on fol. 94v. 67. "Id tantum videtur vocem humanam nobis gratissimam reddere, quia omnium maxime conformis est nostris spiritibus. Ita forte etiam amicissimi gratior est, quam inimici, ex sympathia et dispathia affectuum: eadem ratione qua aiunt ovis pellem tensam in tympano obmutescere, si feriatur, lupina in alio tympano resonante." "Compendium musicae," section 1 in Oeuvres de Descartes, ed. Charles Adam and Paul Tannery, vol. 10 (Paris: Vrin, 1986), p. 90; the editors note similar remarks in the works of Ambroise Pare and Mersenne. For comment, see Etienne Gilson, ed with commentary, Descartes. Discours

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de la methode (Paris: Vrin, 1925), p. 121. Pierre Trichet discusses Bodin's point and seems in doubt whether to agree with Bodin, for "nonetheless one would have to reject as fabulous all the accounts made since of this phenomenon." Trichet, "Traite de musique," Bibliotheque Sainte-Genevieve, Pans, Mss. 1070, fols. 70v-71r; he cites Bodin's Oppian commentary rather than the Theatrum. 68 See David Lindberg, "Science as Handmaiden: Roger Bacon and the Patristic Tradition," Is is 78 (1987): 533. 69. "But when I tried all these things, I found them to he false. . . . When I enquired of Manners, whether it were so . . , they said, They were old wives fables." Giambattista della Porta, Natural Magick (1658; repr. New York: Basic Books, 1959), 7.48, p. 212. 70. Essais, III, 11, "Des boyteux," pp. 1025-35, as discussed in chapter 2, p. 62. 71. The Complete Essays of Montaigne, trans. Donald Frame (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1965), II, chap 32, "Seneca and Plutarch," pp 546-48. The passage Montaigne discusses is in Bodin's Methodus, chap. 4, p. 132 (Latin), p. 304 (French). 72. E.g., Montaigne, Essais, III, 13, "De l'experience," pp. 1064-116. 73. For a sampling of typical questions debated in medieval science, e.g., whether there are other worlds, or how a quality can begin, then cease, to be present in a thing, see Edward Grant, Planets, Stars and Orbs: The Medieval Cosmos, 1200-1687 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994). John Murdoch concludes that "in a very important way natural philosophy was not about nature," in his "The Analytic Character of Late Medieval Learning: Natural Philosophy without Nature," in Approaches to Nature in the Middle Ages, ed. Lawrence D. Roberts (Binghamton, N.Y.: Center for Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1982), p. 174. 74. Republique, VI, chap. 6, pp. 259-60. For a similar description of the two rules see Caelius Rhodiginus, Lecdonesantiquae (Geneva: Philippus Albertus, 1620), 7.22, pp. 36465: he cites Aristotle as his source on the rule of Lesbos and Galen as his source on the rule of Polycletes. 75. See Nicholas Jardine, "Epistemology of the Sciences," Cambridge History of Renais­ sance Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), pp. 685-711, esp. pp. 686-93; John H RandallJr., "The Development of Scientific Method in the School of Padua," Journal of the History of Ideas 1 (1940): 177-206; Gilbert, Renaissance Concepts of Method, chap. 7; also Daniela Mugnai Carrara, "Una polemica umanistico-scolastica circa l'interpretazione delle tre dottrine ordinate di Galeno," Annali dell'Istituto e Museo di Storia della Scienza di Firenze 8 (1983): 31-57. 76. Walter Ong's notion that print culture had eradicated oral culture (among the educated elites) by the mid-sixteenth century seems overstated See Ong, The Presence of the Word (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1967). 77. Paula Findlen, Possessing Nature: Museums, Collecting, and Scientific Culture in Early Modern Italy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), pp. 205-6, cf. UNT, p. 141. 78. "Verphillus" is probably the town of Verfeil, in the Laurageais (currently department of Aude). I am grateful to Jim Given for this information. 79. "Er selber Bodinus hat Erden, Salz, Asche1 Oel1 Wein, Meer und suess Wasser mit einem gefesse gemessen und gewegen. Es ist aber vil ein anders Erden Salz unnd Aschen trucken zuwegen wie ein Traid in eim gehuben Gefesse unnd dasselbe seiner gedignen substanz nach unnd mit ausschliessung dess zwischen eingemischten Luffts abwegen, welches night ohne wasser geschehen kan." Johannes Kepler, "Anhang des Visierbuchleins," in Messekunst Archimedis (Linz: Hansen Blancken, 1616), in Cesammelte Werke, ed. Max Caspar (Munich: C.H. Beck, 1937- ), 9:264. On Mersenne's role in spreading knowledge of this passage, see below, chapter 6, notes 109-10.

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80. Bodin describes what seems at first another experimental setup to illustrate the interaction of the poles of magnets which "cannot be understood except by experience," notably from placing magnets on floating pieces of wood to watch them interact (UNT, pp. 245-46). In proposing this experiment as a pedagogic tool rather than an opportunity for systematic investigation, Bodin does not innovate on his medieval predecessors, however, such as the thirteenth-century writer Pierre de Maricourt See Duane H. D. Roller, The Demagnete of William Gilbert (Amsterdam: Menno Hertzberger, 1959), p. 41. On Candala, see Jeanne Ellen Harrie, "Francois Foix de Candale and the Hermetic Tradition in Sixteenth-Century France" (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Riverside, 1975). Harrie speculates that Candala might have come into contact with Bodin through the Scaligers, p. 52. Their contact dates back at least to 1566, when Candala published an edition of Euclid's Elements (Paris: Iohannes Royer, 1566), containing a liminary poem by Bodin: Si gentile decus, si regum splendor avorum, Priscaque nobilitant venerandae stemmata gentis, Nobilitate tua vix ulla est clarior usquam. At minima est laudum de multis ista tuarum: Nam tua te virtus, et verae laudis avara Mens, atque eximius, doctissime Candala, candor, Et quos afflavit sapiens tibi Pallas honores, Illustrant multo melius quam vestra propago. Quam proavi claro creti de sanguine Reges, Aurea quam tectis laquearia iuncta superbis. Bodin also refers more briefly to Candala's work on specific weights in the Republique, VI, chap. 3, p. 142. 81. Hector Boethius, Scotorum historiae a prima gentis origine (Paris: Jacques du Puys, 1574), fols. 8v-9r. Although other authors, like Olaus Magnus, also mention these clakis ducks, Hector Boethius locates them, as Bodin does, in Kilkenny (which both identify as being "in Scotia"). 82. Ortelius shared Bodin's motivation for the study of nature as a haven from contemporary religious conflicts. See Alastair Hamilton, The Family of Love (Cambridge: James Clarke, 1981), esp. pp. 70-74. His widely read and imitated Theatrum orbis terrarum (.Antwerp: Coppenius Diesth, 1570) may have inspired Bodin's title, as it did many other "theaters," especially in geography, as I discuss in chapter. 5, pp. 174-175. 83. Compare UNT, p. 176, and Nicolas de Livre, Discours du tremblement de terre en forme de dialogue (Paris: Du Val, 1575), pp. 62-63; the map is present in Bibliotheque Nationale copy, R.42511; one can observe where it has been torn out of the other copy of the same edition, R.13009. Matthieu Coignet receives an entry in Louis Μοτέή, Lε grand dicAonnaire historique, vol. 3 (Paris: chez Ies Libraires Associes, 1759), p. 796; a lawyer at the Parlement de Paris, he served as ambassador to Switzerland and the Grisons for five years—the story of this map confirms that he served under Charles IX rather than Francis I (as some accounts claim, according to Moreri). The doctor Amerbach may be Boniface Amerbach (1495-1562) or his son Basil Amerbach (1534-91), both noted legal humanists based in Basel. See Moreri, Le grand dictionnaire historique, vol. 1 (Paris: chez Ies Libraries Associes, 1759), p. 459. I have not succeeded in locating the places described in Livre's account: "au pays de Rou, ou bien Roetleu," in Germany, near a village named Rofendorff; the map also mentions a castle at Burgtischbach; the village of Kling, which was most threatened, may be the current Klingnau, in canton Aarau, Switzerland. A league (Iieue) measures about two miles; a fathom (toise) about six feet.

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84. William of Orange received this wound to the neck m an attempt on his life in 1581/82. C. V Wedgwood, William the Silent: William of Nassau, Prince of Orange 1533-1584 (New York: W. W. Norton, 1968), pp. 229-35. 85. These are only hypotheses on a complex question of usage and authorial self-definition that would reward further study. See the recent work by Rivka Feldhay on "Authorship and Authority in Giordano Bruno," presented at the History of Science Society Meeting in 1993. 86 In general on the interaction between craftsmen and the university-educated m the Renaissance see Rossi, Philosophy, Technology and the Arts in the Early Modern Era. 87 "Dico atque confirmo, nullum esse in Academia Paris, mathematicis artibus eruditum, quem non familiarem charumque habeam: imo opificem in urbe nullum paulo ingeniosiorem, cujus offkinam mechanicamque totam non saepe perscruter atque excutiam." Peter Ramus, "Actio pro regia mathematicae professionis cathedra, habita in Senatu 3 Id. Martis anno 1566," as quoted in R. Hooykaas, Humanisme, science et reforme: Pierre de La Ramee (1515-72) (Leiden: Brill, 1958), p. 94. 88. Bodin gives Bude as his source, but I have not been able to locate the passage in Bude's digressive De asse. 89 Bodin also tells of the salt workers who pollute a certain lake near Carcassonne that turns to salt in the sun, lest the local population get its salt there rather than from them (UNT, pp. 238-39). 90. On the bezoar stone see A. Simili, "La pietra bezoar," m Atti del XVl Congresso Nazionale della Societa ltaliana di Storia della Medicina (Bologna, 1959) as quoted in FindIen, "Museums, Collecting and Scientific Culture in Early Modern Italy" (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Berkeley, 1989), p. 235. 91 Charles B. Schmitt, "Experience and Experiment: A Comparison of Zabarella's View with Galileo's De Motu," Studies in the Renaissance 16 (1969): 135. Galileo also uses "periculum" instead of "experimentum." 92. Aqua chrysulca, which Fougerolles translates as eau forte, may be equivalent to aqua fortis, which "was used to denote not only concentrated nitric acid but also spirit of wine and caustic soda solution." See Maurice P. Crosland, Historical Studies in the Language of Chemistry (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1962), p. 103. 93. The phrase was introduced by contemporary Tommaso Garzoni; see William Eamon, Science and the Secrets of Nature: Books of Secrets in Medieval and Early Modern Cul­ ture (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1994), p. 135. 94. Peter Dear, "Jesuit Mathematical Science and the Reconstitution of Experience in the Early Seventeenth Century," Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 18 (1987): 134; and, more generally, Discipline and Experience: The Mathematical Way in the Scientific Revo­ lution (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995). 95. Edgar Zilsel, "The Genesis of the Concept of Physical Law," Philosophical Review 51 (1942): 278, for the conclusion that I paraphrase. Bodin speaks of "laws of nature," e.g. in a passage emphasizing that God is not bound by them: UNT, p. 40 (as discussed below, chapter 4, pp. 118-20; the passage is repeated from the Methodus, chap. 6, p. 201 [Latin], pp. 394—95 [French]), or in the expression "the laws of God and of nature" to which philosophy must conform (UNT, p. 191, for example, and as a ubiquitous refrain in the Republique). After noticing Rose's suggestion that Bodin might have been the first to use the expression (see Paul Lawrence Rose, "Bodin's Universe and its Paradoxes: Some Problems in the Intellectual Biography of Jean Bodin," Politics and Society in Reformation Europe: Essays Presented to Sir Geoffrey Elton on His Sixty-fifth Birthday, ed. E. I. Kouri and Tom Scott [New York: Macmillan, 1987], p. 273), I have found it (at least) in Melanchthon, Doctrinae physicae elementa (Lyon: Jean de Tourne and Gul. Gazeius, 1552), p. 32 Alistair

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Crombie traces the term back to Augustine, De genesi ad litteram 9.17, in his "European Scientific Thinking," History of Science 33 (1995): 229. 96. See also my "La nature theatre de Dieu, selon Jean Bodin," Nouvelle revue du seizieme siecle 7 (1989): 77. Bodin's climate theory is most elaborated m the Methodus, chap. 5; but appears in UNT, e.g., p. 274. 97. Lenoble finds this absence of laws of nature characteristic of Renaissance natural philosophy. Robert Lenoble, Esquisse d'une histoire de Videe de nature, p. 291 98. See Ceard annotations (in my "Restaging Jean Bodin: The Universae naturae theatrum (1596) in Its Cultural Context" [Ph.D. diss., Princeton University, 1990]) to UNTi p. 235; for Bodin's earlier statement on diamonds, see UNT, p. 230. 99. Some of Bodin's names are in Garcia da Orta, Aromatum et simplicium aliquot medicamentorum apud lndos nascentium (Antwerp: Plantin, 1574); others are in Jacques Dalechamps, Historia generalis plantarum, vol. 2 (Lyon: G. Rouille, 1587), book 18 on foreign plants. These natural historians never enumerate names, but provide extensive discussion and description. Typical of Bodin's distortions are his "Hignero" for "Higuero," or his "ganebanus" for Dalechamps' "Guanabanus." I was unable to find mention elsewhere of Bodin's "yerna" or "taromaca," for example, which Fougerolles does not translate (along with most of the other terms; see below, chapter 6 and note 203 ). 100 At one point Bodin compares the Chinese with the "Oriental Indians," finding the former more learned and cultivated (UNT, p. 560). 101. "Hispanorum historia," ibid., p. 297. He also refers to a Historia Indica (possibly the same work) on the fact that one can die of cold on the highest American mountains (ibid., p. 204); he must have taken from a similar, or the same, source his account of how Columbus tricked the Indians with his prediction of an eclipse (ibid., p. 568). 102 OumeIbanine Zhiri, L'Afrique au Miroir de ΓEurope: Fortunes dejean Lion L'Africain a la Renaissance (Geneva: Droz, 1991), p. 141ff; and Guy Turbet-Delof, "Jean Bodin, lecteur de Leon d'Afrique," Neohelion (Budapest), nos. 1-2 (1974): 212. 103. See especially Charles B. Schmitt, Aristotle and the Renaissance (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1983), chap. 4. 104. For a brief survey, see Ulrich Schneider, "L'eclecticisme avant Cousin. La tradition allemande," Corpus 18/19 (1991): 15-27; Schneider is preparing a book on the topic. 105. For a general survey of early histories of philosophy see Giovanni Santinello et al., Models of the History of Philosophy: From Its Origins in the Renaissance to the 'Historia Philosophica,' ed. C. W. T. Blackwell (Dordrecht: KluwerAcademic Publishers, 1993). See also Denis Diderot, Histoire generale des dogmes et des opinions philosophises: Depuis Ies plus anciens temps jusqu'a nos jours, Tiree du Dictionnaire encyclopedique des arts et sciences (London, 1764), and the article "Eclectisme" in the Encyclopedic, as cited in Schneider,

"L'eclectisme avant Cousin," p. 25. The negative view of eclecticism is described and con tested in The Question of "Eclecticism": Studies in Later Greek Philosophy, ed. John M. Dillon and A. A. Long (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), introduction. 106. "Quanquam enim saepiuscule ab Aristotelicis facit divortium, obscuris tamen et incertis assertionibus et rationibus meliora, quam Stagirita habet et certiora haud affert, sed adhibitis terminis scholasticis et metaphysicis nubes scandit et ventos vendit." Johann Jakob Brucker, Historia critica philosophiae, vol 5 (Leipzig: Bernh. Christoph. Breitkopf, 1744), p. 942. 107. Merula, Memorabilium . . . auctum opus (Lyon: Matthias Bonhomme, 1556). On Bodin's use of the consensus of authorities to shore up a conclusion reached on other grounds, see above, 88-90. 108. Scipion Dupleix, Physique (1640; repr. Paris: Fayard, 1990), chap. 26, p. 650. 109. The following statistics are based on my count of references (both positive and

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negative) to each author, including marginal notes, but excluding repeated references to an author within a single discussion. 1 have usually rounded the figures to the nearest 5; they are approximate, but useful to indicate general trends. 110. See Guttmann, "LJberJean Bodin inseinen Beziehungen zum Judentum," Monatsschrift fur Geschichte und Wissenschaftdes Judentums 49 (1905): 315-48, 459-89. 111. On Fagius and Ricius, and for some mention of Bodin as well, see Frangois Secret, Les kabbalistes chretiens de la Renaissance (Paris: Dunod, 1964). Bodin appreciates their biblical interpretations, but elsewhere also expresses hostility to what he perceives as the magical and superstitious aspects of Cabbala; I discuss Bodin's allegories below pp. 266-69 and quote from his attitude toward Cabbala in chap. 4, section 3, p. 357. 112. In addition, the list of authorities praised comprises: Alexander of Aphrodisias (praised 4 times), and Pico, Galen, Pliny, and Witelo (once each). 113. See Ceard annotations to UNT, p. 102. 114. Bodin refers to History of Animals 8.2 and Metaphysics 9 and 12 respectively. 115. On the shape of the soul, see Proclus, The Elements of Theology, ed. E. R. Dodds, rev. ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963), proposition 210, commentary on p. 308; on personal demons, see Iamblichus, On the Mysteries, ed. Stephen Ronan, trans. Thomas Taylor and Alexander Wilder (Hastings, England: Chthonios Books, 1989), sections 272—85 and ad indicem. 116. On this theme see Joseph Moreau1 L'dme du monde de Platon aux Stoiciens (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1939) chap. 4. 117. Kurd Lasswitz, Geschichte der Atomistik vom Mittelalter bis Newton, vol. 1 (Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1963), pp. 326-27. 118. For a closer analysis see Margherita Isnardi-Parente, "Le volontarisme de Jean Bodin," in Verhandlungen der Bodin-Tagung, ed. Horst Denzer (Munich: C. H. Beck, 1973), pp. 39-51. 119. Matthew 22 [v. 30]: "Non nubent sed Erunt sicut angeli" (UNT, p. 537) and Mark 1 Iv. 7] which describes how John the Baptist ate locusts (UNT, p. 313). Bodin chides Erasmus for considering this latter passage corrupt. 120. See Bodin's quotation and reference concerning the winds: "Qui promit ventos de thesauris suis," in the margins: "Psalm 135. Exod. 12"; UNT, p. 164. But there is no reference to winds in Exod. 12, and Fougerolles omits this latter reference. Annotations by Vatable in Biblia (Paris: Robert Estienne, 1545), however, include the "Exod. 12" reference at Psalm 135. Bodin may have been using this set of annotations, or other annotations which were either a source for or a copy of Vatable's on this point. In fact the authorship of these annotations is questionable: Robert Estienne is suspected of having introduced remarks by various Protestant commentators under cover of Vatable's respectable name, which ultimately warranted the condemnation of the edition. I have not found sources for the exact phrasing of Bodin's biblical quotations; in this case, for example, the Vulgate translation in the Vatable commentary reads: "qui producit ventos de thesauris suis." Bodin's quotations (e.g., UNT, p. 24: Isaiah 54: "Vastatorem ego creavi ad perdendum") differ from the Vulgate and a number of more Hebrew-oriented translations, including Testamenti veteris Biblia sacra, translated from Hebrew by Tremellius and Junius (Geneva: de Tournes, 1590), Biblia sacra, trans. Sebastian Munster (Zurich: Christophorus Froschoverus, 1539), Biblia breves, ed. Robert Estienne (Paris: Estienne, 1532) and the revised Vulgate of Isidore Clarius Brixianus (Venice: Petrus Schoeffer, 1542). More research is required to identify the translation Bodin was using. 121. Arnold Williams, The Common Expositor: An Account of the Commentaries on Gene­ sis, 1527—1633 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1948), p. 20. 122. On the question of the animal soul, for example, in The Philosophical Writings of

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Descartes, trans. John Cottingham et al , vol. 3 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), p. 62 (letter of 1637) and p. 230 (letter of 1643). I owe these references to Lex Newman. 123. Lambert Daneau, Physica Christiana, sive de rerum creatarum cognitione et usus, disputato e sacrae scripturae fontibus hausta et decerpta, vol. 1 (Geneva: Petrus Santandreanus, 1576), pp. 23-24. 124. Williams, The Common Expositor, pp. 12-13. 125. "Rabbinicae nugae," in the notes by Casaubon, British Library shelfmark 536.b.4, for p. 16 concerning Bodin's mention of "metatron"; Ceard annotations to p. 532, concerning the agent intellect and its ability to know human thoughts. 126. Ceard annotations to p. 551. 127. Dtmonomanie, fols. 71r-72r. For an analysis of explicit discussion of allegory in the Colloquium, see Marianne T. Freed, "L'alMgorie dans Erasme et Le Colloque de sept scavans de Jean Bodin et quelques vues divergentes," Moreana 28 (1991): 165-78. 128. Demonomanie, fols. 67r-v. 129. See Jean Pepin, La tradition de I'allegorie de Philon d'Alexandrie & Dante (Paris: Etudes Augustimennes, 1987), p. 35. 130. One exception would be Bodin's explanation of Psalm 147 m which God is said to feed the ravens. These should be interpreted as "demons" in order for the passage to make sense, according to Bodin (UNT, p. 372). 131. Pepin, La tradition de I'allegorie, chap. 5. 132. The tenth sphere accounts for the daily rotation, the ninth for the precession of the equinoxes, the eighth for the variation in the length of the sidereal year (its effect being roughly equivalent to the mechanism for trepidation developed by Thabit ibn Qurra). For a medieval presentation of this system, see Derek J. Price, ed., The Equatorie of the Planets (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1955). 133. Arno Borst, Turmbau von Babel: Geschichte der Meinungen xiber Ursprung und Vieljalt der Sprachen und Vdlker, vol. 3 (Stuttgart: Anton Hiersemann, 1960), part 1, passim, e.g., pp. 1137ff. (Vives), 1316ff. (Casaubon) for the notion of Hebrew as a natural language. 134. E.g., Hieronymus Zanchi, De operibus dei intra sex dierum ereatis opus (Neustadt: typis Matthaei Harnisii, 1591), 11, chap. 2, pp. 246. 135 On pre-Galilean notions of the moon's rough and speckled surface, see Roger Ariew, "Galileo's Lunar Observations in the Context of Medieval Lunar Theory," Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 15 (1984): 213-26, e.g., pp. 220-21. 136. Antiquity was an argument that carried special weight for Bodin and many contemporaries; see, among many possible examples, Anthony Grafton, Forgers and Critics: Creativity and Duplicity in Western Scholarship (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1990) on the appeal of the claims of Annius of Viterbo, pp. 54-55. CHAPTER FOUR BODIN'S PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE

1. See, for example, Paul L. Rose, "Bodin's Universe and its Paradoxes: Some Problems in the Intellectual Biography of Jean Bodin," in Politics and Society in Reformation Europe: Essays for Sir Geoffrey Elton on His Sixy-Fifth Birthday, ed. E. I. Kouri and Tom Scott (New York: Macmillan, 1987), pp 266-88; Marie-Dominique Couzinet, "La logique divine dans Les Six livres de la Republique de Jean Bodin: Hypothese de lecture," European University In­ stitute Working Papers 91/8; and Simone Goyard-Fabre, Jean Bodin et Ie Droit de la Republique (Paris: Presses Umversitaires de France, 1989).

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2. See Sacrorum conciliorum nova et amplissima collectio, ed. J D. Mansi et al., vol. 32 (1438-1549) (Pans: Hubert Welter, 1902), pp. 842-43; discussed in Christia Mercer, "The Vitality and Importance of Early Modern Aristotehanism," in The Rise of Modern Phi­ losophy: The Tension between the New and Traditional Philosophies from Machiavelli to Leibniz,

ed. Tom Sorell (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), p. 47, and Charles Lohr, "Metaphysics," m The Cambridge History of Renaissance Philosophy, ed. Charles Schmitt et al. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), pp. 602ff. 3. See A Source Book in Medieval Science, ed Edward Grant (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1974), pp 45-50. 4. SeeJean Ceard, "Materialisme et theorie de 1'ame dans la pensee padouane: Le 'Traite de 1'immortalite de Fame' de Pomponazzi," Revue philosophique 1 (1981): 25-48; Martin L. Pine, Pietro Pomponazzi: Radical Philosopher of the Renaissance (Padua: Editrice Antenore, 1986), chap. 1, on the soul. On the crisis that Pomponazzi provoked in philosophical circles throughout Europe, see Lohr, "Metaphysics," pp. 602-7. 5. See Grant, A Source Book in Medieval Science, p. 48. 6. See Thomas Aquinas, Siger of Brabant, and Bonaventure, On the Eternity of the World, trans. Cyril Vollert et al. (Milwaukee, Wis.: Marquette University Press, 1984). 7. Richard C. Dales, Medieval Discussions of the Eternity of the World (Leiden: Brill, 1990), p. 260. 8. Cf. Methodus, chap. 8, pp. 228ff. (Latin), pp. 43Iff. (French), where Bodin makes a similar argument. Pierre Mesnard has suggested that the passage in the Methodus was designed as a refutation of Girolamo Cardano. Pierre Mesnard, "Jean Bodin et Ie probleme de I'eternite du monde," Bulletin de I'Association Guillaume Bude (1951): 125. Cardano discreetly takes the Aristotelian position in his discussion of the saltiness of the sea, e.g., when he asserts that the sea must be eternal, in De suhtilitate, II, Opera omnia, vol. 3 (Lyon: Huguetan and Ravaud, 1663; facsimile ed., Stuttgart: Friedrich FTOmmann Verlag, 1966), p. 407. His conclusion is better known from Scaliger's counterattack in Exotericarum exercitationum liber XV (Frankfurt: Wechel, 1582), exercitatio LXI. For Pomponazzi's bolder declarations, see Pine, Pietro Pomponazzi, ch. 3. 9. See Margherita Isnardi-Parente1 "Le volontarisme de Jean Bodin: Maimonide ou Duns Scot?" in Verhandlungen der internationalen Bodin-Tagung in Munchen, ed. Horst Denzer (Munich: Beck, 1973), pp. 39-51. Paul Lawrence Rose considers Bodin's references to Scotus primarily as a stratagem to veil his non-Christian sources, Bodin and the Great God of Nature: The Moral and Religious Universe of a Judaiser (Geneva: Droz, 1980), pp. 71-72. 10. For Bodin's use of the term "law of nature," see chapter 3, pp. 106. 11. See William Courtenay, "Nominalism and Late Medieval Religion," in The Pursuit of Holiness in Late Medieval and Renaissance Religion, ed. Charles Trinkaus (Leiden: Brill, 1974), p. 39. 12. The same phrase is found in Methodus, chap. 6, p. 201 (Latin), pp. 394-95 (French); and in Colloque, II, p. 37, as mentioned in Couzinet, "La logique divine," p. 13. For a similar idea, see Republique, IV, chap. 2, p. 58, as discussed in Michel Villey, "La justice harmonique selon Jean Bodin," in Denzer, Verhandlungen der Bodin-Tagung, p. 70. 13. On the maxim see Ernst Kantorowicz, Selected Studies (Locust Valley, Ν.Ύ.: J. J. Augustin, 1965), pp. 159, 161. 14. As discussed in Francis Oakley, Omnipotence, Covenant and Order: An Excursion in the History of ldeasfrom Abelard to Leibniz (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1984), chap. 4, esp. pp. 109ff. 15. Bodin argues explicitly against Epicurus, predictably, and Strato of Lampsacus, an Aristotelian, pupil of Theophrastus, known for his materialism (third century BCE).

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16. See quotation above, from UNT, p. 29; also pp. 24, 129, 417, 480 (among others). 17. See Leontine Zanta, La Renaissance du stoicisme au XVI' siecle (Geneva: Slatkine, 1975), esp. chap. 1. 18. See Susan E. Schreiner, The Theater of His Glory: Nature and the Natural Order in the Thought of John Calvin (Durham, N.C.: Labyrinth Press, 1991), e.g., p. 17. 19 Cf a similar tendency in Henry of Langenstein, in Nicholas Steneck, Science and Creation in the Middle Ages: Henry oj Langenstein (d. 1397) on Genesis (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1976), ρ 141. 20. William Paley, Natural Theology, from a late London edition (New York: American Tract Society, n.d.), p. 58 (first published 1802). 21. See also p. 632: "Quicquid est, quatenus est, dicitur bonum, ac divinae bonitatis particeps ex essentia ipsa." cf. Pierre Viret, Instruction chrestienne, 2 vols. (Geneva: Jean Rivery, 1564), 2:178: "Car Dieu n'a cree aucune creature qui ne soit bonne, entant qu'il l'a creee, veu que c'est un ouvrier qui ne peut faire aucune oeuvre mauvaise." 22. See the famous beginning of book 7 of in Pliny's Natural History, trans. John Bostock and Η. T. Riley, 6 vols. (London: Henry G. Bohn, 1855-57), 2:117-22. 23. See Ceard, La nature et Ies prodiges: L'insolite au XVI' siecle en France (Geneva: Droz, 1977), p. 231. More generally see Massimo Bianchi, Signatura rerum: Segni, magia e conoscenza da Paracelso a Leibniz (Rome: Edizioni dell'Ateneo, 1987). 24. E.g., Viret, Instruction chrestienne, 2:181; Arnold Williams, The Common Expositor: An Account of the Commentaries on Genesis 1527-1633 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1948), p. 181; The list of plants comes from Pietro Andrea Mattioli, Commentaires sur Ies six livres de Pedacius Dioscoride, trans, du Pinet (Lyon: Guillaume Rouille, 1572), p. 15 25. Pliny, Natural History, 2:117—22. On Pliny's strict anthropocentrism see Robert Lenoble, Esquisse d'une histoire de I'idee de nature (Paris: Albin Michel, 1969), p. 179. 26 Cf. Cicero, De natura deorum 2. 50.127: "lam ilia cernimus ut contra vim et metum suis se armis quaeque defendant, cornibus tauri, apri dentibus, cursu leones; aliae fuga se, aliae occultatione tutantur, atramenti effusione saepiae, torpore torpedines, multae etiam insectantis odoris intolerabili foeditate depellunt." 27 Viret, Instruction chrestienne, 2:108. 28 See Ceard, "Apologetique et pensee morale, de Sebon a Duplessis-Mornay," Actes du colloque international la morale et Ies moralistes au XVII' siecle, forthcoming. 29 See quotation above, note 27, and Viret, Instruction chrestienne, 2:184. 30. Philosophie d'amour de M. Leon Hebreu, trans. Seigneur du Pare (Lyon: Benoist Rigaud, 1595), pp. 137-38. 31. Cardano, De la subtilite, trans. Richard Le Blanc (Paris: Guillaume de La Noue1 1578), fol. 280v (book 10). 32. See Pme, Pietro Pomponazzi, chap. 3. 33. See Ceard, La nature et Ies prodiges, p. 234. 34. Bodin, Oppiani de venatione (Paris: Vascosan, 1555), e.g. l:fols. 7v-8r. 35. "p. 270 Bod. vult videri primum id observasse: multa ineptia," Casaubon annotations, flyleaf, as reproduced in figure 6. For a general history of the idea of the chain of being, see Arthur O. Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1964). For controversy on Lovejoy's notion of plenitude see Jaako Hintikka, "Gaps in the Great Chain of Being: An Exercise in the Methodology of the History of Ideas," in Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association 49 (1976): 22—38; and Moltke S. Gram and Richard M. Martin, "The Perils of Plenitude: Hintikka contra Lovejoy," Journal of the History of Ideas 41 (1980): 497-511.

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36. See Edward P. Mahoney, "Lovejoy and the Hierarchy of Being," Journal of the His­ tory of Ideas 48 (1987): 211-30; and Francis Oakley, "Lovejoy's Unexplored Option," ibid , pp 231-47; Mahoney, "Metaphysical Foundations of the Hierarchy of Being According to Some Late-Medieval and Renaissance Philosophers," in Philosophies of Existence, Ancient and Medieval, ed. Parviz Morewedge (New York: Fordham University Press, 1982), pp. 165257; William F. Bynum, "The Great Chain of Being after Forty Years: An Appraisal," His­ tory of Science 13 (1975): 1-28. 37. Bodin repeats the image in his Latin poem on earthquakes, see Ann Blair, "Un poeme inconnu de Jean Bodin," Bibliotheque d'humanisme et Renaissance 54 (1992): 175-81. 38. Ceard annotations for p. 23. On this formulation of the chain of being, see Jacob's Ladder and the Tree of Life: Concepts of Hierarchy and the Great Chain of Being, ed. Marion Leathers Kuntz and Paul Gnmley Kuntz (New York: Peter Lang, 1987). 39. E.g., Ramus' Dialectique, as cited in Ralph Hafner, "Circularis ratio: Zur Methode in Jean Bodin's Universae naturae theatrum," Il cannochiale: Rivista di studi filosofici 1 (1993): 50. On the golden chain and golden rope, see Iliad 8.19 and Plato, Theaetetus 153 c-d. On the Neoplatonic transmission see Ludwig Edelstein, "The Golden Chain of Homer," in Studies in Intellectual History (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1953), pp. 48-66; more generally, Bernard McGinn, The Golden Chain: A Study in the Theologcal An­ thropology of Isaac of Stella (Washington, D.C.: Cistercian Publications, Consortium Press, 1972), pp. 66-69. For the passage m Macrobius, see Commentarii in Somnium Scipionis 1.1.4.15, ed. J. Willis (Leipzig, 1970), p. 58, as cited in Edward P. Mahoney, "Metaphysical Foundations of the Hierarchy of Being," p. 214. 40. Bodin refers variously to genies, demons, and angels. "Genies" can be good or evil and "demons" also have a generic meaning in some passages. But his frequent references to "angels and demons" separate the good from the evil, and imply a commitment to the Neoplatonic belief in both good and bad angelic beings, although in the Demonomanie Bodin declares himself willing to defer to the judgment of Catholic theologians on this point, who admitted only the existence of bad demons. Demonomanie, I, chap. 1, fol. 7v. I will follow Bodin's usage insofar as possible and also use "angelic beings" as a generic term. 41. Bodm maybe referring to Cicero, De divinatione 1. 30.64, in which Posidonius' view that "the air is full of immortal souls" is favorably reported. 42. A likely source for this emphasis on angels as executors of divine command is Maimonides, Guide for the Perplexed, trans. Shlomo Pines (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963), II, chap. 6. For other contemporary solutions to the problem of accommodating demonic beliefs with religious orthodoxy, see D. P. Walker, Spiritual and Demonic Magic from Ficino to Campanella (London: Warburg Institute, 1958). For the risks that Bodin runs of attributing too much power directly to demons, see Jean Ceard, "Medecine et demonologie: Les enjeux d'un debat," in Diable, diables, diableries au temps de la Renais­ sance, ed. Marie-ThereseJones-Davies (Paris: Touzot, 1988), pp. 97-112. One of the key differences, in principle, was that demons could only exploit, not override the laws of nature; see Peter Dear, "Miracles, Experiments and the Ordinary Course of Nature," Isis 81 (1990): 672. See also Stuart Clark, "The Scientific Status of Demonology," in Occult and Scientific Mentalities in the Renaissance, ed. Brian Vickers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), pp. 351-74. 43. For the Catholic theory of angels and the hierarchies derived from Dionysius the Areopagite, see Jean-Marie Vernier, Les anges chez Saint Thomas d'Aquin (Paris: Nouvelles Editions Latines, 1986); also S. K. Heninger, Touches of Sweet Harmony: Pythagorean Cos­ mology and Renaissance Poetics (San Marino, Calif.: Huntington Library, 1974).

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44. The number of stages in the chain of being is variable, but I am not aware of any precedents for Bodin's choice of ten levels of being. Lull, for example, has eight stages: stone, fire, plant, animal, man, heavens, angel, and God. On the ten sefirot, see Gershom Scholem, ed., Zohar: The Book of Splendor (New York: Schocken Books, 1949), pp. 77ff. 45. Oemonomanie, II, chap. 2, fol. 67v. On Bodin's attitude toward Cabbala, see Frangois Secret, Les kabbalistes Chretiens de la Renaissance (Paris: Dunod, 1964), pp. 210-11; Walker, Spiritual and Demonic Magic, p. 174. 46. In the margins he cites these biblical passages: Isaiah 6, Ezekiel 1 and 10, Zachariah 4; Exodus 24-25. 47. See C. A. Patrides, "Renaissance Thought on the Celestial Hierarchy: The Decline of a Tradition," Journal of the History of Ideas 29 (1959): 155-66. 48. Schreiner, The Theater of His Glory, pp. 39-53. 49. Compare the definitions of the ninth hypostases, UNT, p. 4 (heavenly bodies) and p. 73 (angelic beings). 50. See Richard C. Dales, "The De-Animation of the Heavens in the Middle Ages," Jour­ nal of the History of Ideas 41 (1980): 531-50. 51. Thomas Litt, Les corps celestes dans I'univers de Saint Thomas d'Aquin (Louvain: Publications Universitaires, 1963), pp. 103ff. 52. Dales, "The De-Animation of the Heavens," p. 545 53. On Calvin, see Albert-Marie Schmidt, La poesie scientifique en France au seizieme siecle (Paris: Albin Michel, 1938), p. 314; see also his "La doctrine de la science et la theologie calvinienne," Foi et vie 36 (1935): 270-85. On the Stoic view of the planets, see Cicero, De natura deorum 2.21.54-55 and 2.42, as discussed and cited in Peter Barker, "Stoic Contributions to Early Modern Science," in Atoms, Pneuma and Tranquillity: Epicurean and Stoic Themes in European Thought, ed. Margaret Osier (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), pp. 135-54, esp. pp. 138-39. 54. Choosing a few cases from the many discussed in the Methodus, Bodin gives m example the eclipses that accompanied the fall of the tyrants Darius of Persia (ca. 520 BCE), Perseus of Macedonia (181-68 BCE), Denys of Syracuse (b. 432 BCE), and Alexander of Pherae in Thessaly (fourth century BCE). Poor punctuation obscures Bodin's Latin. 55. Notably by the Genevese pastor Simon Goulart, whose critique of the Ripublique contributed to that work's being banned in Geneva. See Roland Crahay, "Controverses religieuses a propos de la Republique de Jean Bodin," in La controverse religiev.se XVI'-XIX' siecles, Actes du I" ColloqueJean Boisset, ed. Michel Peronnet, vol. 1 (Montpellier: Universite Paul Valery, 1980), pp. 57-58. On Bodin's desire to steer a middle course between the outright condemnation of astrology in G.-Fr. Pico and Melanchthon's excessive concessions to astrology, see Walker, Spiritual and Demonic Magic, pp. 174ff. 56. This passage is reminiscent of the preface, UNT, sig. 4v. 57. For virtually identical passages, see Republique, VI, chap. 6, p. 311; Demonomanie, I, chap. 2, fols. 8r-v; Colloque, I, p. 3 (description of the pantotheca). 58. See Georg Agricola, De ortu et causis subterraneorum (Wittenberg: Zacharias Schurer, 1612), book V, chap. 3, p. 128. 59. In botany Bodin classifies some plants by odor (UNT, ρ 288), others by taste (pp. 288-89), by effect on man and animal (poisonous, p. 287; useless, pp. 284, 293), by location (exotic, p. 286), by whether they require cultivation (p. 285) as well as by mor phology (conifers, p. 277). On birds, see UNT, esp. pp. 370-71, 374, 376-78. 60. Similarly, to show that dogs are different from wolves, although they are close in appearance, Bodin emphasizes their mutual enmity, their different habits and medicinal properties, UNT, p. 346.

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61. SeeJeari Ceard, "Pierre Belon, zoologiste," Actes du colloque Renaissance-Qassicisme du Maine (Paris: Nizet1 1975), pp. 131-32. 62. Ceard, La nature et Ies prodiges, chap. 9, on Cardano. See also Paula Findlen, "Jokes of Nature and Jokes of Knowledge: The Playfulness of Scientific Discourse m Early Modern Europe," Renaissance Quarterly 43 (1990)' 292-331. 63. See Villey, "La justice harmonique selon Bodm," pp. 69-86, esp. p. 71; Philippe Desan, "Jean Bodin et I'idee de methode au XVIt siecle," and "La justice mathematique de Jean Bodin," Corpus 4 (1987): 3-18, 19-29. 64. Republique, VI, chap. 6. For more on the rules of Lesbos and Polycletes, see above, chap. 3, p. 98. 65. See Bodin's criticism of Aristotle's definition of virtue as the mean between extremes from even the title of his Paradoxon quod nec virtus ulla in mediocritate nec summum hominis bonum in virtutis actione consistere possit (Paris: D. Duval, 1596), reprinted m Jean Bodin: Se­ lected Writings on Philosophy, Religion and Politics (Geneva: Droz, 1980), ed. Paul L. Rose, pp. 37-75. 66. Villey warns that Bodin underrepresents his indebtedness to Plato m order to emphasize his originality; see his "La justice harmonique," pp. 82-83. Desan, on the other hand, emphasizes Bodin's originality and suggests that Bodin's professional background helped inspire him to find a reconciliation between opposed methods; see "La justice mathematique," pp. 25-26. 67. Ficino develops similar themes m his De vita coelitus comparanda (1489); see, among other commentaries, Walker, Spiritual and Demonic Magic, chap. 2, and Brian Copenhaver, "Scholastic Philosophy and Renaissance Magic in the De vita of Marsilio Ficino," Renais­ sance Quarterly 37 (1984): 523-54. 68. Demonomanie I, chap. 2, fol. 8r. 69. Colloque, I, p. 3. 70. Ibid., p. 2 71. Ibid., IV, p. 569. 72. See Marion Leathers Kuntz, "Harmony and the Heptaplomeres of Jean Bodin,"Jour­ nal of the History of Philosophy 12 (1974): 31-41. 73. "Et tout ainsi que Ie discord donne grace a l'armonie, aussi Dieu a voulu que Ie mal fust entremesle avec Ie bien, et Ies vertus posees au milieu des vices . . . a fin qu'il en reussit un plus grand bien, et que la puissance et beaute des oeuvres de Dieu par ce moyen fust cognue, qui autrement demeuroit cachee et ensevelie . . . estant tousjours Ie bien plus puissant que Ie mal, et Ies accords plus que Ies discords." Republique, VI, chap. 6, pp. 31112.

74. Republique, VI, chap. 6, p. 312. 75. Ibid., I, chap. 5, p. 88; I, chap. 5, p. 95 (a runaway slave could not be returned to his master when the latter was in anger) 76. The comparison is made in the Colloquium, referring specifically to the government of Venice, where the discussion is set: "Curce: Je n'accorde pas encor qu'il faille que cela soit conduict de Dieu comme une Republique, a l'exemple de la republique universelle du monde, ou plustost que nostre ville doibve estre l'exemple de ce patron et modele de la Cite du monde." Colloque, p. 82. The Latin version is unreservedly positive about the analogy: "Ego mundum hunc a Deo perinde ut Rempublicam ad illius reipublicae mundanae imaginem temperari oportere statuo," as quoted ibid. But see above, pp. 119-20, for the limits Bodin places on a comparison of the monarch with God himself. 77. Ripublique, IV, chap. 1, p. 49. 78. Ibid., Ill, chap. 3, p. 90.

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79. For a valuable survey of this topic, see Katharine Park, "The Organic Soul," in Cam­ bridge History of Renaissance Philosophy, ed. Charles Schmitt et al. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), pp. 464-84. 80. Pine, Pietro Pomponazzi, p. 56. 81. Eckhard Kessler, "The Intellective Soul," Cambndge History of Renaissance Philoso­ phy , p. 495. He cites S. Offelli, "II pensiero del Concilio Lateranense V sulla dimostrabilita dell'immortalita dell'anima," Studia patavina 2 (1955): 3-17; and G. Di Napoli, L'immortalita dell'anima nel Rinascimento (Turin, 1963) See also Christia Mercer, "The Vitality and Importance of Early Modern Aristotelianism," pp 46-49. 82. Pine, Pietro Pomponazzi, pp. 62, 111. 83. Ibid., p. 47. 84. Lucretius, De rerum nature Iibri sex, ed. Denys Lambm (Paris and Lyon: G. Rouille, 1563). 85. Simone Fraisse, !.'influence de Lucrtce en France au XVl' siecle (Pans: Nizet, 1962), concurs that Lucretius did not start philosophical debate, but became an added element in debates already underway. He was widely excoriated for his ideas, but admired (and possibly taught) for his poetic style. 86. Bodin seems to use indiscriminately "anima," "animus," and "mens" to mean "soul"; Fougerolles translates all these terms as "ame." 87. Casaubon, notes to p. 499, in British Library, shelfmark 536.b.4; see below chapter 6, note 125. 88. See Paul 0. Kristeller, The Philosophy of Marsilio Ficino (Gloucester, Mass.: Peter Smith, 1964), chap. 6; also Ficino, "Five Questions Concerning the Mind," and Pico della Mirandola, "Oration on the Dignity of Man," in The Renaissance Philosophy of Man, ed. Ernst Cassirer et al. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1948), pp. 193ff, 223ff. 89. See Proclus, Elements of Theology, ed. C. R. Dodds, rev. ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963), proposition 210, commentary on ρ 308. 90. See John Baconthorpe, Quodlibeta Joannis Bachonis (Venice: heredes Octaviani Scoti, 1526), e.g. II, disp. 3, qu. 1, art. 2-5 on the location of angels. 1 am grateful to RogerAriew for suggesting this source. 91. Vernier, Les anges chez Saint Thomas d'Aquin. "Necesse est ponere aliquas creaturas incorporeas. Id enim quod praecipue in rebus creatis Deus intendit, est bonum quod consistit in assimilatione ad Deum. . . . Deus autem creaturam producit per intellectum et voluntatem, ut supra ostensum est. Unde ad perfectionem universi requiritur quod sint aliquae creaturae intellectuales. Unde necesse est ponere, ad hoc quod universum sit perfectum, quod sit aliqua incorporea creatura." Aquinas, Summa theologica, qu. 50, art. 1. I am grateful to Nancy Siraisi for this reference. 92. For a survey of seventeenth-centUTy English positions on angels, see Robert H. West, Mi Iton and the Angels (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1955), esp. pp. 52, 83ff. Also Harinder Singh Maijara, Contemplation of Created Things: Science in Paradise Lost (Toronto. University of Toronto Press, 1992), pp. 226-29, 270-71. On Milton and Bodin, see Louis Ignatius Bredvold, "Milton and Bodin's Heptaplomeres," Studies in Philology 21 (1924): 399-402. On Donne and Bodin, see Edwin B. Benjamin, "Donne and Bodin's Theatrum" in Notes and Queries (London) 213 (1968): 92-95. 93. See Augustine, De doctrina Christiana 4.29, Migne, Patrologia Latina, 34:119-20, as quoted in Nicolas Steneck, Science and Creation in the MiddleAges, pp. 145, 191. 94. E.g., Henri Busson, Le rationalisme dans la littiraturefranfaise de la Renaissance (1533—1601) (Paris: Vrin, 1957), following Ernest Renan, Averroes et I'Averroisme (Paris,

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1866) For a critique see Paul O. Kristeller, "The Myth of Renaissance Atheism and the French Tradition of Free Thought," Journal of the History of Philosophy 6 (1968): 233-44. 95. Umberto Pirotti, "Aristotelian Philosophy and the Popularization of Learning: Benedetto Varchi and Renaissance Aristoteliamsm," in The Late Italian Renaissance 1525-1630, ed. Eric Cochrane (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1970), p. 203. See also Pine, Pietro Pomponazzi, pp. 17—21. 96. Pirotti, "Aristotelian Philosophy," p. 204. 97. Busson, Le rationalisme, pp. 540ff. 98. Frangois Laplanche, L'evidence du Dieu chretien: Religion, culture et societe dans I'apologetique protestante de la France classique (1576—1670) (Strasbourg: Association des Publications de la Faculte de Theologie Protestante de Strasbourg, 1983), p. 65. 99. See Ernst Bizer, "Fruhorthodoxie und Rationalismus," Theologische Studien (Zurich) 71 (1963), esp. pp. 60-61. 100. See Ramus, Prophilosophica Parisiensis Academiae disciplina (Paris: M. David, 1551), p. 40, among other passages quoted in Busson, Le rationalisme, pp. 268-69. 101. On Postel, see Manon Leathers Kuntz, Guillaume Postel, Prophet of the Restitution of All Things: His Life and Thought (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1981), e.g., pp. 161ff. For Lipsius' Stoicism, see, for example, his Physiologiae Stoicorum libri tres (Paris: Hadrianus Perier, 1604). On Lipsius' thought in general, see Jason Lewis Saunders, Justus Lipsius: The Philosophy of Renaissance Stoicism (New York: Liberal Arts Press, 1955); on his social and political context, see Mark Morford, Stoics and Neostoics: Rubens and the Circle of Lipsius (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1991), and G. Guldner, Das Toleranz-Problem in den Niederlanden im Ausgang des 16. Jahrhunderts (Lubeck: Matthiesen, 1968). On Gassendi, see Margaret Osier, "Fortune, Fate and Divination: Gassendi's Voluntarist Theology and the Baptism of Epicureanism," in Atoms, Pneuma and Tranquillity, pp. 155-76, and the literature cited there 102 Charles Partee, Calvin and Classical Philosophy (Leiden: Brill, 1977), pp. 7-8. 103. See Cicero, De natura deorum 3.27.69, e.g., trans. Horace C. P. McGregor (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1972), p. 222, and Montaigne, Essais, ed. Pierre Villey, 3 vols. (Paris: PressesUniversitaires de France, 1988), II, chap. 12, p. 486. 104. Bodin is presumably referring to Hippocrates' use of prayer along with human remedies in the cure of some diseases, in On Regimen 4; for a discussion see G.E.R. Lloyd, Magic, Reason and Experience (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), pp. 42, 45. 105. On the category of the preternatural, which comprises these demonic activities, see Daston, "Marvelous Facts and Miraculous Evidence in Early Modern Europe," in Questions of Evidence: Proof, Practice, and Persuasion across the Disciplines, ed. James Chandler et al. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), pp. 243-74. 106. As I have pointed out here and there, Bodin repeats some Protestant themes, e.g , in his complaint in the Republique that "the year is spent mostly in festivities and games" (IV, chap. 4, p. 121). But this sentiment and a number of other Protestant tendencies were also shared by reformist Catholics, as Jean Delumeau has emphasized; Catholicism between Luther and Voltaire: A New View of the Counter-Reformation, trans. Jeremy Moiser (London: Bums and Oates; Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1977). For similarities with Calvin's positions, notably on the role of reason, see above, notes 18, 48, 102. 107. For a useful discussion of this term see Jacqueline Lagree, La religion naturelle (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1991). 108. For example, Bodin explains that the reason why witches must be executed is not to punish them, but to spare the whole population the wrath of God. Demonomanie, IV,

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chap. 1, fol. 185r. For an extreme case of this kind of thinking, which was characteristic during the wars of religion, consider the case of Munster, as described by R. Po-Chia Hsia, "Munster and the Anabaptists," in The German People and the Reformation (Ithaca, N.Y : Cornell University Press, 1988), pp. 51-69. 109. Republique, III, chap. 4, p. 115. 110. "The judgment of this crime, which is so detestable, must be treated extraordinarily and differently from that of other crimes. Whoever wants to keep the order of law and ordinary procedures would be perverting all divine and human law." Demonomanie, IV, chap. 4, fol. 212v. Some attempts have been made to portray Bodin's witch-hunting as moderate for its time; see, e.g., Pierre Mesnard, "La Demonomanie deJean Bodin," in L'opera e il pensiero di G. Pico della Mirandola nella storia dell'umanesimo, vol. 2 (Florence: Istituto Nazionale di Studi sul Rinascimento, 1965), pp. 333-56 111. R.J.W. Evans, TTie Wechel Presses: Humanism and Calvinism in Central Europe 1572-1627, Past and Present, Supplement 2 (Oxford: Past and Present Society, 1975), pp. 43-^49. I borrow from Evans the expression "areas of accommodation." 112. See R.J.W. Evans, "Rantzau and Welser: Aspects of Later German Humanism," History of European Ideas 5 (1984): 257-72. 113. See J. A. van Dorsten, "Temporis Filia Veritas: Learning and Religious Peace," The Anglo-Dutch Renaissance, ed. J. van den Bergand Alastair Hamilton (Leiden: Brill, 1988), pp. 38-45 on Leiden, and Alastair Hamilton, The Family of Love (Cambridge: James Clarke, 1981), chap. 4, on the Antwerp humanists. 114. Van Dorsten, "Temporis Filia Veritas," pp. 41-42. Bodin's entry in the liber amicorum reads: "En tais duskhereiais eklampei to kalon. In adversis elucet honestum J. Bodinus aetat. 52." (Greek transliteration added.) "In evil times the good shines through." Jean Bodin, age 52. 1 am grateful to the late Roland Crahay for this information. 115. Justus Lipsius, De constantia (Antwerp: Plantin, 1585), ad lectorem praescriptio, sigs. 2v-3v. See Roland Crahay, "Le probleme du pluralisme confessionnel dans Ies PaysBas k la fin du XVlt siecle: Les embaTras de Juste Lipse (1589-1596)," in Naissance et Af­ firmation de I'Idee de Tolerance, Actes du Vt Colloque Jean Boisset (Montpellier: Universite Paul Valery, 1988), pp. 157-87. 116. See, among her many works, Frances Yates, The Occult Philosophy in the Elizabethan Age (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1979). For a reevaluation of Yates' theses along these lines, see William Sherman, John Dee: The Politics of Reading and Writing in the English Renaissance (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1995). For the intellectual and political context of Erasmus' Querelapaas composed in 1516, see Robert P. Adams, The Better Part of Valor: More, Erasmus, Colet, and Vives, on Humanism,War and Peace 1496-1535

(Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1962), chaps. 9-10, and James D. Tracy, Erasmus: The Growth of a Mind (Geneva: Droz, 1972), pp. 138ff. For another irenicist strand in the seventeenth century, see Richard H. Popkin, "The Third Force in Seventeenth-Century Thought: Scepticism, Science and Millenarianism," in The Third Force in Seventeenth-Cen­ tury Thought (Leiden: Brill, 1992), pp. 90-119. 117. WilliamWade to Burghley, February 6,1577, Calendar of State Papers, Foreign Se­ ries; Casaubon's view is reported in Ludovicus Diecmann, De naturalismo (Leipzig: J. F. Gleditsch, 1684), p. 5. 118. Bayle, note (0), referring to Possevinus, De quatuor scriptoribus (Rome, 1592; Lyon, 1593), in Methodus, p. xxxii 119. Bayle, note (O), ibid., p. xxxiii. See also more such accusations made in the later seventeenth century, quoted by G. E. Guhrauer in his edition of Das Heptaplomeres des Jean Bodin (1841; repr. Geneva: Slatkine, 1971), p. lxxx.

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120. On the use of Judaizing as a catch-all insult in this period, see Ilona N. Rashkow, "Hebrew Bible Translation and the Fear of Judaization," Sixteenth-Century Journal 21 (1990): 217-18. On Bodm and Judaism, see the bibliography cited in the introduction, note 46. 121. For example, on the key issue of pure and impure meats, Bodin compares the reasons why the Romans and the Jews forbade the consumption of dormouse (glis) and pork, and concludes that some people are very fond of these foods, and others not (UNT, p. 342). The Ceard annotator, for example, was able to correct him (or the printer) on various Hebrew terms. See Ceard annotations, to pp. 52, 58, 164, 497, 538, 619, 628. In the Methodus Bodin announces his plan to consult the Talmud with the help of the two professors of Hebrew at the College Royal, I. Cinqarbres and Mercier. Methodus, dedication, p. 108 (Latin), p. 274 (French). Bodin's main Jewish sources, like Maimonides, Philo, and the commentaries on the laws were available in Latin translation: see Jacob I. Dienstag, "Christian Translators of Maimonides' Mishneh Torah into Latin: A Bio-Bibliographical Survey," in Salo WittmayerBaron Jubilee Volume, vol. 1 (Jerusalem: American Academy for Jewish Research, 1974), pp. 287-309; or Sebastian Munster, trans. Catalogus omnium praeceptorum legis mosaicae (Basel: Henricus Petrus, 1533), which includes mention of some of Bodin's more unusual references, like rabbi "Cotsis" (for Moses of Coucy) (mentioned in UNT, ρ 390). On the interest in Hebraica among Christians in this period, see Jerome Friedman, The Most Ancient Testimony: Sixteenth-Century Christian Hebraica in the Age of Re­ naissance Nostalgia (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1983), and Jewish Christians and Chris­ tian Jews from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment, ed. Richard Popkin and Gordon M Weiner (Dordrecht: Kluwer1 1994), and the literatures cited there. For a general history of New Christians in France in this period, see Salo Wittmayer Baron, A Social and Religious History of the Jews, 2d ed., vol. 15 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1973), chap. 64, pp. 74ff. 122. Perez Zagorin, Ways of Lying: Dissimulation, Persecution, and Conformity in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1990), pp. 281-88, on Bodin; also Carlo Ginzburg, Jl Nicodemismo: Simulazione e dissimulazione religiosa nell'Europa del '500 (Turin: G. Einaudi1 1970). 123. See Ginzburg, Il Nicodemismo, and the Teview by D. P. Walker in Music, Spirit and Language in the Renaissance, ed. Penelope Gouk (London: Variorum Reprints, 1985), sec XVI, pp. 8-13. 124. Hamilton, The Family of Love, pp. 96-102; Zagorin, Ways of Lying, pp. 119-24. 125. Republique, IV, chap. 7, p. 206. 126. Ibid., IV, chap. 7, pp. 204-5. See also Apologie de Rene Herpin, in Republique, VI, p. 318. 127. Republique, IV, chap. 7, pp. 207-8. The Colloquium adds that it is forbidden by divine law to attempt to change someone's religion. Colloque, IV, p. 206, also p. 186. 128. Demonomanie, II, chap. 8, fol. 130v. See also "Refutation des opinions de Jean Wier," ibid., fol. 270v. 129. Demonomanie, I, chap. 7, fol. 55r. 130. In the Colloquium the debate is unresolved as to whether a sincere intention compensates entirely for the worship of a false god, but the seven reach a consensus that it is better to settle on a wrong religion than on none at all. Colloque, IV, p. 197. On the problem of the false god, see ibid., pp. 192-93. 131. Demonomanie, sig. e ij verso. 132. Demonomanie, II, chap. 6, fols. 105r—v. 133. "RSfutation des opinions de Jean Wier," fol. 269v.

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134. Demonomanie, I, chap. 5, fol. 39r. 135. This paragraph is omitted, presumably inadvertently, from the French translation. 136. The number seven also has various occult powers: water purified seven times can no longer be corrupted, and things cannot be reflected in a mirror more than seven times, due to the "occult power of the number seven, which is indeed very great in all of nature" (UNT, pp. 202, 216). 137. The biblical statements in praise of salt include Matthew 5:13, Mark 9:49-50 and, in the Old Testament, references to the "salt of the Covenant," e.g., Lev. 2:13, Num. 18:19. See below, p. 222 and note 272 on the holiness of salt in the Problemata Bodini. 138. Demonomanie, IV, chap. 2, fol. 199v. 139. In addition to the passages quoted above from the Theatrum, see ibid., II, chap. 8, fol. 123v, or III, chap. 2, fol. 146v. On Bodin and the risk of Manicheism, see Jean Ceard, "Medecine et demonologie: Les enjeux d'un debat," in Diable, diables, diableries au temps de la Renaissance, pp. 99-101. 140. Demonomanie, III, chap. 4, fols. 156r-v. 141. Ibid., I, chap. 5, fol. 41v. 142. Ibid., I, chap. 5, fol. 41r. On Bodm's attack on magic, see Yates, The Occult Philos­ ophy, pp. 67-71, and Walker, Spiritual and Demonic Magic, pp. 172-76 CHAPTER FIVE THEATRICAL METAPHORS

1. SeeJaques' soliloquy in As You Like It Il.vii. Sancho Panza makes fun of the cliched saying in Don Quixote, chap. 64, "Of the strange adventure which befell the valorous Don Quixote, with the Brave Knight of the Looking-Glass," calling it "a brave comparison, . . . but not so new." Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, The Life and Exploits oj That Ingenious Gen­ tleman Don Quixote de la Mancha, trans. Charles Jarvis (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1925), p. 341; as discussed in Jean-Pierre Cavaille, "Theatrum mundi: Notes sur la theatralite du monde baroque," European University Institute Working Papers, no. 87/318 (1987): 9. 2. See most recently Lynda G. Christian, Theatrum mundi: The History of an Idea (New York: Garland Publishing, 1987); Cavaille, "Theatrum mundi." 3. See Ronsard's 1564 epilogue to the Fontainebleau carnival, as quoted in Emst Robert Curtius, "Topics: Theatrum mundi," Romanische Forschungen: Zeitschrift fur romanische Sprachen und Literaturen 55 (1941): 175. See also Ernst Curtius, European Literature and the Latin MiddleAges (New York: Pantheon Books, 1953), pp. 138-44. 4. This use of the metaphor is briefly mentioned in Christian, Theatrum mundi, p. 97, and in Herbert Weisinger, "Theatrum mundi: Illusion as Reality," in The Agony and the Tri­ umph: Papers on the Use and Abuse of Myth (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1964), p. 64. 5. Hans Blumenberg, Die Lesbarkeit der Welt (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1981), chaps. 3, 4. See also the special issue of the Revue fran^aise d'histoire du Hvre 64 no. 86-87 n.s. (1995) entitled "La Symbolique du livre dans l'art occidental du haut Moyen Age a Rembrandt " 6. Ernst Curtius, "The Book of Nature," in European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages (New York: Pantheon Books, 1953), pp. 319-26. 7. Ramon Sabunde, Theologia naturalis sive liber creaturarum (Lyon: Petrus Compagnon, 1643), titulus CCXII, p. 336. 8. Paula Findlen, "Empty Signs? Reading the Book of Nature in Renaissance Science," Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 21 (1990): 514; she cites on this point Paolo Rossi, "La nuova scienza e il simbolo del libro,'" in his La culturafilosofica del Rinascimento

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italiano (Florence: Sansoni, 1961), pp 452-65. Frank Manuel observes that the metaphor is especially used by those who want to keep science and religion separate (e g., Galileo or Francis Bacon), in The Religion of Isaac New ton (Oxford' Clarendon Press, 1974), p. 28. 9. See Huguet, Dictionnaire de la languefrancaise du seizieme siede; also Forcellini, Totius latinitads lexicon.

10 Carolus Grueber, praeses, Theatrum naturae ex octo libris physicis generaliter explicatum (Salzburg: Joannis Baptista Mayr, 1672), p. 1. See also below, pp 166, 172. 11. Emphasis added. Philo, De opificio mundi, trans R. Arnaldez (Paris: Cerf, 1961), para. 78, p. 193 (my translation from French). 12. Ibid. 13. See, for example, Bartholomaus Keckermann, Systema physicum septem libris adornatum (Danzig: Andreas Hunefeld, 1610), fol. 1; Clemens Timpler, Pars altera physicae complectens apsychologiam (Hanau: Guilielmus Antonius, 1605), sig. 2r; Franciscus Tidicaeus, Microcosmos (Leipzig: Nicolas et Chnstophorus Nerlich, 1615), sig. [c4]r; Antoine Mizauld, De arcanis naturae (Paris: Jacob Kerver, 1558), fol. 4r; Johann Heinrich Alsted, Theologia naturalis (Hanau: Conrad Eyfridii, 1623), p. 4. 14. Melanchthon, Doctrinae physicae elementa (Lyon: Jean de Tournes and Gul. Gazeius, 1552), p. 2 See also Daniel Sennert1 Epitome naturalis scienttae (WittenbeTg: Caspar Heiden, 1618), p. 129 15. Louis Cressolles, Mystagogus de sacrorum hominum disciplina (Paris: Sebastian Cramoisy, 1629), p. 494 (emphasis added). See also the poetry of the archbisop of Sens, Jacques Davy du Perron: "La Terre serf, Seigneur, de theatre a ta gloire," in Oeuvres, 3d ed. (Paris: Pierre Chaudiere, 1633; repr. Geneva: Slatkine, 1969), p. 8 (on Psalm 103). 16. For a discussion of this passage see above, chapter 2. Plotmus, who also uses the term "mystagogus," only uses the classic theatrum mundi metaphor: Enneads 3. 80-105, in which man acts out the role assigned to him by the logos. 17 See Melanchthon, Doctrinae physical elementa, p. 2; Sennert, Epitome naturalis scien­ ttae, fol. 2. 18. "C'est une belle, grande et riche boutique en laquelle ce souverain et tres excellent ouvrier desploye toutes ses oeuvres, a fin qu'il soit cogneu par icelles. C'est un temple, auquel il n'y a si petite creature, qui ne soit comme une image de son Createur, pour Ie nous monstrer et manifested Bref, c'est un theatre, ou la divine essence, sa iustice, sa providence, son amour, sa sapience, besognent d'une admirable vertu sur toute nature, depuis Ie plus haut ciel iusqu'au centre de la terre." Pierre de la Primaudaye, L'Academie frangoise (Saumur: Thomas Portau, 1613), II, sig. 03v (emphasis added). 19. Festugiere, La revelation d'Hermes Trismegiste, vol. 2: Le Dieu cosmique (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1949), p. xiii; Plutarch, De tranquillitate animi, chap. 20, as quoted in ibid., p. 234. For the meaning of theatrum as "shop display," see Du Cange, Glossarium mediae et infimae latinitatis, as discussed in Richard Bemheimer, "Theatrum Mundi," Art Bulletin (NewYork) 38 (1956): 230. 20. Sennert, Epitome naturalis scientiae, sig. 6r-v. 21. Frances Yates, The Art of Memory (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1966), chap. 6. 22. On Camillo's reputation, see ibid., p. 135; the description of the "theater," mentioned ibid., p. 136, is L'ldea del Theatro deU'eccellen. M. GiwIio Camillo (1550). On the fashion for theatrical metaphors, see Bernheimer, "Theatrum Mundi," p. 230: "It is striking that the vast majority of the books having the word theatrum in their title came out after Camillo's death, beginning in the second half of the sixteenth century." For another memory theater (in book form), see Wilhelm Schmidt-Biggemann, "Robert Fludds Theatrum

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memoriae," in Ars memorativa: Zur kulturgeschichtlichen Bedeutung der Gedachtniskunst 1400-1750, ed. JorgJochen Bems and Wolfgang Neuber (Tubingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1993), pp 154-69. 23. Th. H. Lunsingh Scheurleer, "Un amphitheatre d'anatomie moralisee," in Leiden University in the Seventeenth Century: An Exchange of Learning, ed. Th. H. Lunsingh Scheurleer and G.H.M. Posthumus Meyjes (Leiden: Brill, 1975), pp. 217-77; and JeanPierre Cavaille, "Un theatre de la science et de la mort a l'epoque baroque: Famphitheatre d'anatomie de Leiden," European University Institute Working Papers, no. 90/2 (1990): 1-81. For the antecedents to this setting for anatomical dissection, see Katharine Park, "The Criminal and the Saintly Body: Autopsy and Dissection m Renaissance Italy," Renais­ sance Quarterly 47 (1994): 1-33. 24. See William S. Heckscher, Rembrandt's Anatomy of Dr. Nicolaas Tulp (New York: New York University Press, 1958). 25. Paula Findlen, Possessing Nature: Museums, Collecting, and Scientific Culture in Early Modern Italy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), pp. 22-23. See also her dissertation, "Museums, Collecting, and Scientific Culture in Early Modern Europe" (Ph.D diss., University of California at Berkeley, 1990), pp. 45-49, where she mentions Francesco Calzolari's collection, and refers to Benedetto Cerud and Andrea Chiocco, Mu­ seum Francisci Calceolani (Venice, 1622), p. 97, and G. Gabrieli, "II Carteggio Linceo della Vecchia Accademia di Federigo Cesi (1603-30)," Memorie della R. Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei: Gasse di scienze morali, storiche e filologiche 6th ser., vol. 7, fasc. 1-3 (Rome, 1938-41), I, p. 168 and II, p. 778. 26. A point made by Benjamin Schmidt, "Innocence Abroad: The Dutch Imagination and the Representation of the NewWorld c. 1570-1670" (Ph.D, diss., Harvard University, 1994). 27. Linnaeus, Reflections on the Study of Nature, anon, trans. (London: George Nicol, 1785), p. 13. Emphasis added. 28. See Findlen, Possessing Nature, and on the origin of the term more specifically, "The Museum: its Classical Etymology and Renaissance Genealogy," Journal of the History of Col­ lections 1 (1989): 59-78. 29. For example: "L'homme a este mis et presente en ce theatre du monde, a cause de Dieu seul, a celle fin qu'il s'eiouisse en Iuy, qu'il recognoisse sa magnificence et liberalite, et que du tout il se Ee et appuye en luy." Levinus Lemnius1 Les occultes merveilles et secretz de nature (Paris: Galiot du Pre, 1574), fol. IOv. Similarly, "Ab opifi.ce illo mundihominem in hoc orbis terrarum theatro, audio, operum suorum esse spectatorem collocatum: ut in sui suaeque sapientiae ac potentiae cognitionem ad admirationem ex assidua illorum contemplatione traducatur." Casmann, Marinarum quaestionum tractatxo philosophica (Frankfurt: Zacharias Palthenius, 1596), sig. A2r-v. 30. Sennert, Epitome naturalis scientiae, sig. 2v. See also Domingo de Soto, Super octo Iibros physicorum Aristotelis (Venice: Franciscus Zilettus, 1582), sig. a2r. 31. La Primaudaye, L'Academie frangoise, IV, sig. a2r. 32. Frangois Baudouin, De institutione historiae universae et eius cum iurisprudentia coniunctione prolegomenon liber I, in Artis historicae penus, 2 vols. (Basel: Petrus Perna, 1579), I: 599-600, 602. On Baudouin and his intellectual context, see Donald R. Kelley, Founda­ tions of Modern Historical Scholarship: Language, Law, and History in the French Renaissance

(New York: Columbia University Press, 1970), chap. 5. 33 Philippe DupIessis Momay, De la verite de la religion chretienne (Antwerp: Plantin, 1581), sig. 2r-v.

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34. Simon Maiole, Dies caniculares: hoc est colloquia tria et viginti physicae, nova et penitus admiranda ac summa iucunditate concinnata . .. (Mainz: Ioannes Albmus, curante Ioanni Theobaldi Schonwetter et Conrado Meulio, 1607); Les jours caniculaires (Paris: Robert Fouet, 1609), p. 1028, see also translator's preface. 35. "Et quo pacto melius furor ille Marcionitarum ab mferis revocari potest? Erit denique contra quam tamen vetus proverbium habet, vita ipsa hominum fabula, Mundus theatrum." Lambert Daneau, Physica Christiana (Geneva: Petrus Santandreanus, 1576), p. 67. 36. "Ad nobili prudentia amplissimum Virum Dominum Bernhardum a Geismar Reipub Warburgensis Consulem dignissimum. . . . Quodnam vero honestius viro politico oblectamentum, quam interdum e Curia, curarum splendido, et saepe misero Theatro, secedere in universae Naturae a Conditore Deo mirabiliter exstructum Theatrum, ut admirandorum Dei operum contemplatione animum suum recreans ad ipsum assurgat Architecture! Deum, eumque glorificet?" Casmann, Nucleus Mysteriorum naturae, enucleatus (Hamburg: Frobenius, 1605), sig. 4r 37. Bodin1 Demonomanie, dedicatory epistle to Christofle de Thou, president au Parlement de Paris, as discussed by Marie-Dominique Couzmet, "Construction de l'idee de theatre," unpublished paper. 38. Reif notes, in her study of the "manualists," or authors of natural philosophy textbooks, especially in early seventeenth-century Germany, that "universal nature" often was used to signify God as First Cause which held together the chain of secondary causes. See Sister Mary Richard Reif, "Natural Philosophy in Some Early Seventeenth-Century Scholastic Textbooks," (Ph.D. diss., Saint Louis University, 1962), p. 152. 39. UNT, sigs. 4r—v, as discussed above, in chapter 1, pp. 20-21. 40. F+8v-++lr. The "great captains" to whom Fougerolles is referring are presumably ancient generals. 41. See, for a survey of this subject, Roy Strong, Art and Power: Renaissance Festivals 1450-1650 (Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell Press, 1984). 42. See above, chapter 1, p. 33ff., for this dual justification which appears in a majority of the authors considered there: including Jacques Aubert, Leonardo Fioravanti, Ioannes Gallucius, Levinus Lemnius, Simon Maiole, Gaudentius Merula, Michael Neander, and Wilhelm Scribonius, as well as the sixteenth-century translators of Pliny's Natural His­ tory (du Pinet), of Alexander of Aphrodisias's Problemata (M. Heret), and of Cardano's De subtilitate (Richard Le Blanc) among others. 43. Cf. Couzinet, "Construction de l'idee de theatre"; Francis Goyet, Le sublime du "lieu commun": L'invention rhitorique dans YAntiquite et a la Renaissance (Paris: Champion, 1996), part 2, chap. 3, pp. 308-12. I am grateful to Francis Goyet for pointing out the importance of majesty as a theme. 44. SeeAristotle1 Parts of Animals 1.2-4 642b5ff, as annotated in the Loeb edition, trans A. L. Peck (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1937), pp. 78-79ff. On the "tabula" as teaching aid see Stephen Ferguson, "System and Schema: Tabulae of the Fifteenth to the Eighteenth Centuries," Princeton University Library Chronicle 49 (1987): 9—30. For a discussion of Bodin's relation to Ramism, see above, chapter 3, pp. 84-85. 45. Aldrovandi, for example, objected to using alphabetical order for his work on birds of 1599 because it separated related objects while bringing together dissimilar ones. See Lynn Thorndike, A History of Magic and Experimental Science vol. 6: The Sixteenth Century (New York: Columbia University Press, 1941), p. 271, citing Aldrovandi's preface. 46. See Georges Vedier, Origine et evolution de la dramaturge neo-classique (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1955), pp. 89, 183, discussing the seventeenth century.

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47. See, for example, Sebastiano Serlio's stage displays, e.g., his Il secundo Lxbro di Perspettiva (1545), in Baroque and Romantic Stage Design, ed. Janos Scholz (New York' Dutton, 1962), no. 3. 48. Mornay, De la verite de la religion chretienne, sig. 3v. 49. Clemens Timpler, Physicae seu philosophiae naturalis systerna methodicus in tres partes digestum: m quo tanquam in speculo seu theatro universa Natura, per Theoremata et Problemata breviter et perspicue explicata et disceptata, contemplanda propomtur, pars prima; complectens Physicam generalem (Hanau: Guilielmus Antonius, 1605) (Greek transliteration added). 50. "Specillum" designates an instrument used to examine something, as in a medical examination. 51. For more on this theme see Edward Peter Nolan, Now Through α Glass Darkly: Spec­ ular Images of Being and Knowingfrom Virgil to Chaucer (Ann Arbor. University of Michigan Press, 1990). 52. Susan E. Schreiner, The Theater of His Glory: Nature and Natural Order in the Thought of John Calvin (Durham, N.C.: Labyrinth Press, 1991), pp. 65, 95; and Roy Battenhouse, "The Doctrine of Man in Calvin and m Renaissance Platonism," Journal of the History of Ideas 9 (1948): 463. Some occurrences of the theater metaphor in Calvin: Institutes I.v.5, I.vi.2, l.xiv.20, Il.vi.l; On Genesis 1.6 and prefatory "argument," as cited by Battenhouse 53. Pierre Viret, Instruction chrestienne, 2 vols. (Geneva: Jean Rivery, 1564), vol. 2, sig Cvir. As copied in La Primaudaye, L'Academie franQoise, II, sig 02v. 54. Jan Miernowski, Dialectique et connaissance dans la Sepmaine de Du Bartas (Geneva: Droz, 1992), pp. 281ff., and Guillaume Salluste du Bartas, La Sepmaine ou creation du monde (Paris: J. Fevrier, 1578), pp. 4-6,11. 99-132. 55. Montaigne, Essais, ed. Pierre Villey, 3 vols. (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1988), II, chap 12, pp. 446-47. 56 Girolamo Garimberto1 Problemes, trans. Jean Louveau d'Orleans (Lyon: Guillaume Rouille, 1559), p. 218. 57. On the double interpretation of the mirror, as true and as distorting reflection, see Christian Jacob, "Voir la terre dans un miroir," unpublished paper, part of a work in progress entitled "La cartographie au telescope," for a copy of which I am grateful to the author. 58. See Herbert Grabes, The Mutable Glass: Mirror-Imagery in Titles and Texts of the Mid­ dle Ages and English Renaissance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982). Natural philosophers often mixed mirror and theater metaphors. Grabes considers only literary sources when he writes that there are few "literary passages in which the world or the realm of nature is termed a mirror," p. 76. 59. "Admirandum illud Naturae Theatrum, in quo Naturae Architectus ac gubernator immensam gloriam suam velut in speculo moralibus repraesentat. . . . Naturae Theatrum ingredientibus . . . Ex visibili hac Dei creatura, invisibilem sempitemum Deum, creatorem ac motorem rerum omnium, quem ex Scriptura novimus exactius, Naturae quoque oculis contueremur." Antonius Deusing, Naturae theatrum universale (Harderwijk: apud NicoIaum a Wienngen, gymnasii typographum, 1644), sigs. *2r, *[4]r. 60. Ibid., pp. 9-11. 61. Samuel Purchas, A theatre of politicall Flying-Insects (London: Thomas Parkhurst, 1657), sig. A2v. On some of Purchas' other works, see John Parker, "Samuel Purchas, Spokesman for Empire," in Theatrum orb is librorum, ed. Ton Croiset van Uchelen et al. (Utrecht: HES Publishers, 1989), pp. 47-56. Jan Jonston, Theatrum universale omnium an-

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imalium (Amsterdam: R. and G. Wetstenios, 1718) Franciseus van Steerbeek, Theatrum Jungorum oft Tooneel des Campernoelien (Antwerp: I. Iacobs, 1675). 62. Grueber, Theatrum naturae, from "approbatio facultatis philosophicae," sig 4r. I am grateful to Joseph Freedman for giving me this reference and copies of the first few pages. Grueber is also the one who cites Philo as a source for the metaphor of the theater; see notes 10-12 above. 63. I will use the term "theater" as a shorthand to designate any work that carries that word in its title. 64. See, e.g , Justus Lipsius, De amphitheatro liber (Antwerp: Plantin, 1584); Richard Baker, Theatrum redivivum or the theatre vindicated (London: Francis Eglesfield, 1662), or Theatrum triumphans (London: Eglesfield, 1670) which propose to "vindicate the stage from all those groundless calumnies." 65. Anon., Theatrum omnium scientiarum (Naples: Robertus Mollus, 1650). 66. Anon , Le theatre de la fortune. Sur lequel sont estalez ses trompeurs changemens (n.pl., n.pub., 1619). Theodor Zwinger, Theatrum Mitae humanae (Basel: loan. Oporinus, Ambrosius and Aurelius Frobenius, 1565). 67. See Harry Levin, "The Title as a Literary Genre," Modern Language Review 72 (1977): xxiii-xxxvi; also Gerard Genette, SeuiIs (Paris: Seuil, 1987), pp. 54ff. 68. I will use "tabular" in quotation marks as a shorthand for those features I found characteristic of Bodin's aim in the Theatrum: a clear, concise presentation of a topic of global scope, which would, ideally, point out the interconnections within the material even if it was not actually composed as a table. Without quotation marks 1 will use the term to refer to the actual layout of a table. 69 Working before the European library catalogues were on-line, I compiled this list from early U S. databases and old-fashioned methods; I am especially grateful to Joseph Freedman for passing on to me titles of "theaters" encountered during his research. The works were mostly consulted at the Bibliotheque Nationale, at Princeton, Harvard, and the Library of Congress. 70. Pierre Boaistuau, Le theatre du monde (1558), ed. Michel Simonin (Geneva: Droz, 1981), epitre liminaire, p. 42. On Boaistuau and the theater metaphor more generally, see Tom Conley, "Pierre Boaistuau's Cosmographic Stage: Theater, Text and Map," Renaissance Drama ns. 23 (1992): 59-86. 71. Jean-Jacques Boissard, Theatrum vitae humanae (Frankfurt: Abraham Faber, 1596), sig. [a4]r-v. 72 For example, a story entitled "la sanglante chastete" tells of a man who, in order to preserve his chastity, killed himself in punishment for having almost been seduced. Camus explains how his behavior was admirable, because it also moved the young man's father back to piety. Jean-Pierre Camus, L'amphitheatre sanglant oil sont representees plusieurs ac­ tions tragiques de nostre temps (Paris: Joseph Cottereau, 1630), chap. 3, pp. 25-38. On Camus see Henri Bremond, Histoire litteraire du sentiment religieux en France, 11 vols. (Paris: Armand Colin, 1967), 1:149-86; and Jean Descrains, Jean-Pierre Camus (1584-1652) et ses Diversites (1609-18), ou la culture d'un eveque humaniste, 2 vols. (Lille: Atelier national de reproduction des theses; Paris: diffusion A. G. Nizet, 1985) and Bibliographie des oeuvres de Jean-Pierre Camus (Paris: Societe d'etude du XVIIt siecle, 1971). 73. Camus, Vamphiteatre sanglant, sigs. aij verso-aiij verso. 74. "Darumben auch em zimliches Spatium am Papir Iehr gelassen/ dass solches ein jeder nach seinem Lust und Gefallen etwas zu annotiren, als in emem Stambuch brauchen moge. Der gantzlichen Hoffnung/ es werde ihm ein jeder Verstendiger diesen Fleiss und Arbeit/

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welcher auff diss Werck gewendet/ gefallen lassen und solches zu Gottes Lob und eignem Nutz gebrauchen und mein darbey zum besten gedencken." Aegidius Sadeler, Theatrum morum. Artliche Gesprache der Thier mit wahren Historien den Menschen zur Lehr (Prague, 1609; facsimile, Prague: Gesellschaft deutscher Bucherfreunde in Bohmen1 1933-34). 75. "Ce n'est done point sans profit que ce Livre t'est presente, duquel tu ne peux recevoir que contentement et principalement la ieunesse a laquelle la lecture sera prompte, chaque histoire ou fable n'estant plus longue qu'un sonnet, et pource tres-aisee a retenir, ce qui Ies conduira (en ce faisant) sans y penser, et avec plaisir, a recevoir une prompte resolution en toutes leurs affaires: mais aussi recognoistre en quelle fagon ils se doivent gouverner avec un chacun." Le theatre des animaux auquel sous diverses fables et histoires, est represente la pluspart des actions de la vie humaine (Paris: Guillaume Ie Be, 1644), "au lecteur." 76. In the same vein, see Willibald Pirckheimer, Theatrum virtutis et honoris oder Tugendbuchlein (Nuremberg: Paul Kauffmann, 1606). 77. Jost Amman, Gynaeceum sive theatrum mulierum in quo praecipuarum omnium per Europam in primis, nationum, gentium, populorumque, cuiuscunque dignitatis, ordinis, status, conditionis, professionis, aetatis, foemineos habitus videre est, artificiosissimis nunc primum figuris, neque usquam antehac pari elegantia editis expressos (Frankfurt: Sigmund Feyrabend, 1586).

The dedication names "Isabellam Austriacam, Galliae reginam"—probably Elizabeth of Austria, who became queen of France through her marriage to Charles IX (1560-74). She returned to Vienna at the death of her husband in 1574 and died in 1592. 78. Guillaume de La Perriere, Le Theatre des Bons Engins auquel sont contenuz cent Emblemes moraulx (1539; repr. Gainesville, Florida: Scholars' Facsimiles and Reprints, 1964). The first edition of the work contained no illustrations, which were added only for the numerous subsequent editions For another collection of emblems (sub-)titled "theater" see Daniel Meichsner, Thesaurus sapientiae civilis, sive vitae humanae ac virtutum et vitiorum the­ atrum. Symbolis aeri incisis, et emblematum novis plane ac reconditae Sapientiae tesseris adornatum, Gnomologicis illustnum Poetarum versibus, et praeceptis expositum. Opusculum philologicum et politicum. Loco Albi amicorum in gratiam omnium ordinum, cumprimis civilis Sapi­ entiae Candidatorum lectufuturum utile et iucundum (Frankfurt: E. Kieser, 1626). 79. Wilfried Barner, " 'Theatrum Mundi'—der Mensch als Schauspieler," in Barockrhetorik. Untersuchungen zu ihrengeschichtlichen Grundlagen (Tubingen: M. Niemeyer, 1970),

p. 101. Emblems with human figures include those depicting Icarus or Prometheus, for example, as described in Carlo Ginzburg, "High and Low: The Theme of Forbidden Knowledge in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries," Past and Present, no. 73 (1976), pp. 28-41. 80. The bibliography on emblem literature is vast and tends to focus on classification of known emblems and their history. Recent works on the subject include Daniel S. Russell, The Emblem and Device in France (Lexington, Ky.: French Forum, 1985); Peter M. Daly, Emblem Theory (Nendeln: KTO Press, 1979); L'embleme a la Renaissance. Actes de lajoumee d'etudes du 10 mai 1980, ed. Yves Giraud (Paris: Societe d'Editions de l'Enseignement Superieur, 1982); Embltmes et devises au temps de la Renaissance, ed. Μ. T. Jones-Davies (Paris: J. Touzot, 1981); Alain Boureau, "Le livre d'emblemes sur la scene publique: Cote cour et cote jardin," in Les usages de I'imprimerie, XV'-XIX' siecles, ed. Roger Chartier (Paris: Fayard, 1987), pp. 343-79. 81. Richard Verstegen, Theatrum crudelitatum haereticorum nostri temporis (Antwerp: Adrian Hubert, 1587), pp. 16-17; for a modern edition of the sixteenth-century French translation, see Le Thedtre des cruautes de Richard Verstegan (1587), ed. Frank Lestringant (Paris: Chandeigne, 1995).

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82. Jodocus Hondius, Theatrum artis scribendi vana summorum nostn seculi, artificiam exemplaria complectens novem diversis Unguis exarata (Amsterdam: J. Hondius, 1594; facsimile, Nieuwkoop: Miland Publishers, 1969). 83. Michael Praetorius, Theatrum instrumentorum seu sciagraphia. Darinnen Eigentliche Abriss und Abconterfeyung fast aller derer Musicalischen Instrumenten, so ietziger zeit in Welschland, England, Teutschland und andern Ortern ublich und vorhand seyn: Wie dann auch ettlicher der Alten und Indianischen Instrumenten recht und iust nach dem Massstabe abgerissen und abgetheilt (Wolfenbuttel: [Holwein], 1620), reproduced m Praetorius, Syntagma musicum, trans. Harold Blumenfeld (New York: Da Capo Press, 1980), appendix. 84. "Void un theatre de labeur immense, rempli de machines et d'instrumens plaisans a considerer et tres-utiles a practiquer." Jacques Besson, Theatre des instrumens Mathematiques et Mechaniques avec !'interpretation des Figures d'iceluy par Frangois Beroald (Lyon: Barthelemy Vincent, 1578). On Besson, see Denise Hillard, "Jacques Besson et son 'Theatre des instruments mathematiques,"' Revue Jrangaise d'histoire du Iivre, n.s. 9, no. 22 (1979): 5-38. For later works in this genre, see Jacob Leupold, Theatrum machinarum molarium, oder Schauplatz der Muhlen-Bau-Kunst (Leipzig: W. Deer, 1735; repr. Hanover: Th. Schafer, 1982), Theatrum machinarium, oder Schau-Platz der Hebzeuge (Leipzig: Christoph Zunkel, 1725); Theatrum pontifieiale, oder Schau-Platz der BrUeken und Brilcken-Baues (Leipzig: Christoph Zunkel, 1726); Theatrum arithmetico-geometncum, das ist Schau-Platz der Rechenund Mess-Kunst (Leipzig: Christoph Zunkel, 1727). 85. Daniel Rabel, Theatrumflorae (Paris: P. Firens, 1633; first published 1622). 86 John Parkinson, Theatrum botanieum: the theater of plants or an herball of a large ex­ tent (London: Thomas Cotes, 1640), "to the reader." 87. Parkinson's subtitle reads: "Containing therein a more ample and exact History and declaration of the Physicall Herbs and Plants that aie in other Authours, encreased by the accesse of many hundreds of new, rare and strange Plants from all the parts of the world, with sundry Gummes, and other Physicall materials, than hath been hitherto published by any before; and a most large demonstration of their Natures and Vertues. Shewing withall the many errors, differences and oversights of sundry authors that have formerly written of them; and a certaine confidence or most probable conjecture of the true and genuine Herbes and Plants. Distributed into sundry classes or Tribes, for the more easie knowledge of the many Herbes of one nature and property. . . ." 88. Petrus Megerlinus, Theatrum divini regiminis a mundo eondito usque ad nostrum secuIum (Basel: Joh. Ludovicus Konig et Iohannes Branmyller, 1683). 89. Johann Abelinus, Theatrum Europaeum oder Warhaffte Beschreibung aller Denckwurdigen Ceschichten so hin und wieder, furnemblieh in Europa: hemach auch an andern Orthen der Welt, so wol im Religion als Polieey wesen vom Jahr Christi 1617 bis auff das Jahr 1629 sichzugetragen (Frankfurt: Matthaeus Merian, 1635). 90. Other historical "theaters" include Andreas Hondorff, Theatrum historicum, sive promptuarium illustrium exemplorum (Frankfurt: Feyrabend, 1590), which explicitly offers history as a series of moral exempla; Matthias Tympius, Theatrum historicum (Cologne: Johannes Gymnicus, 1614), which boasts that it is organized by commonplaces arranged alphabetically; Christian Matthias, Theatrum historicum theoretxco-practicum (Amsterdam: D. Elzevir, 1668), spanning from Babylon to its year of publication; I am grateful to Joseph Freedman for these last two references and for copies of their title pages. 91. "Amice lector, en tibi damus theatrum omnium mortalium conversionis ad fidem Christi, velut aut scenam quandam, in qua aliae, aliaeque personae, suos quaeque actus habent partesque agunt; aut tabulam, unde (sicut ex charta cosmographica provincias, civ-

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itates, arces, fluvios, et eiusmodi discemere licet) cuivis probatum compertumque esse queat, qua aetate cum primis, quibus apostolis, apostolicisve viris, quibus Pontificibus Max. demum quibus Imperatonbus, seu Regibus, seu principibus, provinciae quaeque ac popuh ad Christianam religionem, verumque Dei cultum, abdicata superstitione, venerint." Arnold Mermann, Theatrum conversionis gentium totius orbis, sive chronologia de vocatione omnium populorum et propagatae per universum orbem fidei, Christianaeque religionis descriptio (Antwerp: Ch. Plantin, 1572), "ad lectorem." 92. Christophorus Helvicus, Theatrum historicum et chronologicum aequalibus denorariorum quinquagenariorum et Centenariorum intervallis; cum assignatione Imperiorum, regnorum, dynastiarum, regum, aliorumque virorum celebrium, prophetarum, theologorum, Iureconsultorum, Medicorum, Philosophorum, Oratorum, Historicorum, Poetarum, Haereticorum, Rabbinorum, Conciliorum, Synodorum, Academiarum etc itemque usitatarum Epocharum, ita digestum ut universa temporum et historiarum series a primo mundi exordio ad annum 1662 quasi in speculo videri possit. Nunc continuatum et revisum lohan. Balthasar Schuppio, eloquentiae et historiarum professore in Academia Marpurgensi, 6th ed. (Oxford: H.Hall, 1662; first published 1609). 93. Paul Freher, Theatrum virorum eruditione clarorum in quo vitae et scripta theologorum, jureconsultorum, medicorum et philosophorum tam in Germania superiore et injeriore quam in aliis Europae regionibus, Graecia nempe, Hispatiia, ItaHa, Gallia, Angha, Polonia, Hungaria, Bohemia, Dania et Suecia a seculis aliquot, ad haec usque tempora, florentium, secundum annorum emortalium seriem, tanquam variis in scenis repraesantur. Opus omnibus Eruditis lectu jucundissimum in quatuor partes divisum (Nuremberg: Johann Hofmann, 1688). Similar works include: a two-volume lexicon of Italian scholars, Hieronymus Ghilinus, Teatro d'huomini letterati (Venice: per Ii Guerigli, 1647); Johann Gottfried Zeidler, Theatri eruditorum pictura (Wittenberg: Matthaeus Henckel, 1690). 1 owe these references to Joseph Freedman. 94. Philip Jacob Spener, Theatrum nobilitatis Europeae (Frankfurt: Aegidius Vogelius, 1668); I am grateful to Joseph Freedman for this reference. See also Hieronymus Henninges, Theatrumgenealogicumostentans omnes omnium aetatumfamilias; monarchum, regum, ducum, marchionum, principum, comitum, atque illustrtum heroum et heroinarum (Magdeburg: Ambrosius Kirchner, 1593). 95. Vincent Placcius, Theatrum anonymorum et pseudonymorum ex symbolis et collatione virorum per Europam doctissimorum ac celeberrimorum (Hamburg: vidua G. Liebernickelii, 1708); Petrus Frid. Arpe, Theatrumjati sive notitia scriptorum de providentia, Jortuna etjato (Rotterdam: Frisch et Bohm, 1712). 96. E.g., Hieronymus Praetorius, Theatrum ethicum et politicum (Iena: Johann Reiffenberger, 1634)—from Joseph Freedman; Karl Philip Dieussart, Theatrum architecturae civiiis, in drey Bucher getheilet (Bamberg: J. J. Immel, 1697). Or Marc de Vulson de la Colombiere, Le vray theatre de I'honneur et de chevalerie ou Ie miroir hiroique (Paris: A. Courbe, 1648). 97. Christophorus Preibisius, praeses, and Jo. Elias Rew, Resp., Theatrum aristotelicum pandens doctrinam librorum IX Nicomachiorum publiceque disceptatum in incluto Nirocorum Athenaeo (Altdorf: e chalcographeo Joh. Henrici Schonnerstedt, 1665); Wilhelmus Stratemannus, Theatrum metaphysicum . . . in inclyta Salana concinnatum (Amstad: Christian a Saher, 1658)—both from Joseph Freedman. For the earlier references to Grueber, see above, pp. 155, 166, and notes 10 and 62. 98. Jacob Lorhard, Theatrum philosophicum in quo artium ac disciplinarum philosophicarum plerarumque omnium .. . praecepta in perpetuis schematismis ac typis, tanquam in speculo cognoscenda obijciuntur (Basel: Conrad Waldkirch, 1613).

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99. " 'Theatrum naturae perpetuis tabulis adornatum.' Bodinus, homo polyhistor, Physicam scripsit, eamque naturae theatrum inscripsit: quod in syntagmate Physicae nobis spectanda exhibeatur universitas naturae. Hoc exemplum in praesentia secutus, universam rerum naturalium rempublicam his tabulis et indicibus repraesento, ut non solum memoria habeat subsidium, sed etiam pium cor jucunda varietate operum Dei sese oblectet, indeque ad amorem et cultum opificis excitetur." Alsted, Encyclopedia septem tomis distincta, vol. 1 (Herbom: G. Corvinus, 1630), pp. 787-802, p. 787. 100. Johannes Henricus Alsted, Theatrum scholasticum (Herborn: Corvinus, 1610). 101. Jo. Henricus Suicerus, Compendium physicae Aristotelico-Cartesianae, in usum tironum methodo erotematica adornatum, cui praefigitur breve et succinctum philosophiae theoretxcae theatrum (London: J. Leake pro Edward Hall, 1687)—from Joseph Freedman. 102. Philander Colutius, Physica seu naturae theatrum in typum totius philosophiae naturalis (Speyer: Matthaeus Buschweiler, 1611) reproduced with commentary in Deutsche Blustrierte Flugblatter des 16. und 17. Jahrhunderts, ed. Wolfgang Harms, vol. 1 (Tubingen: Max Niemeyer, 1985), no. 5, pp. 16-19. Colutius' position is indicated by the words "Scholae Romanae Professore," as indicated at top right; his name is at top left. 103. See "ut me quaesturamque meam quasi in aliquo terraram orbis theatro versari existimarem. . . ." Cicero, Actionis secundae in Verrem 5. 35; and "Ego vero non deero et, ubicumque pugnabo, in theatro terraram orbis esse me credam." Quintus Curtius Rufus, Historia Alexandri Magni 9.6.26. I am grateful to Jennifer Beach for help in using classical databases for this search. For a bibliography of Ortelius, see R. V. Tooley, Maps and Mapmakers (London: Batsford, 1949): 42 folio editions; 31 pocket editions. 104. Frangois de Dainville, introduction to Maurice Bouguereau, Le Theatre /ranfoys (Tours, 1594; facsimile, Amsterdam: Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, 1966), p. ix. 105. "Afin que pius aisement il vous serve par Ies chemins." Abraham Ortelius, Epitome du theatre du monde, abridged by Philippe Galle (Antwerp: Plantin, 1588). A long format seems to be preferred for the small-sized collections of maps. On Renaissance geography and maps, see Christian Jacob, L'empire des cartes: Approche theorique de la cartographie a travers Vhistoire (Paris: Albin Michel, 1992); John Gillies, Shakespeare and the Geography of Difference (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), chap. 3. 106. Bouguereau, Le Thedtre fran(oys, sigs. [aiij]r-v. 107. See Tom Conley, The Self-Made Map: Cartographic Writing in Early Modern France (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996), chap. 6. 108. Ortelius: e.g., Johann Blaeu, Theatre du monde 5 vols. (Amsterdam: J. Blaeu, 1635-54); Philippus Gallaeus, Theatriorbis terrarum enchiridion (Antwerp: Christoph Plantin, 1585). Cities: Georg Braun, Le theatre des cites du monde, premier volume (Cologne: Godefroy van Kempen, 1579), from the original latin, De praecipuis totius universi urbibus (Cologne: Braun, 1575); Abraham Saur, Theatrum urbium (Frankfurt: N. Bassaeus, 1595); Petrus Bertellius, Theatrum urbium italicarum (Venice: Bertellius, 1599); Johann Blaeu, Theatrum civitatum et admirandorum ltaliae (Amsterdam: Blaeu, 1663); Novum ac magnum theatrum urbium Belgicae liberae ac Joederatae. Tooneel der steden van de Vereenighde Nederlanden (Blaeu: n. pi., 1649). More prosaic descriptions of particular cities include: Achille Mucius1 Theatrum . .. quo ornatissima quadam quasi Scaena plurima non modo antiqua, sed recentiora etaim Domorum, Rerum, Virorumque Hllustrium Bergomatum Monimenta Poetice referuntur (Bergomia: Ventura, 1596); Jacques du Breul, Le theatre des antiquitez de Paris (Paris: Societe des Imprimeurs, 1639). European countries or provinces: Jan Jansson, Theatrum universae Galliae (Amsterdam: Ioannes Jansonius, 1631); John Speed, The Theatre of the Empire of Great Britaine (London:

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J. Sudbury and G. Humble, 1616; first published 1611); JonJensen Colding, Daniae descriptio nova, insularum ac partium praecipuarum huius plagae arcticae theatrum repraesentans (Frankfurt: Feyrabend, 1594). Non-European: Teatro Mexicano (Mexico: Augustin de Vetancurt, 1698). OrJohannes Henricus Hottinger, ArchaioIogia orientalis, exhibens compendium theatri orientalis . . . (Hei delberg: Samuel Broun, 1662); I owe this reference to Joseph Freedman. Military: I. D. Rhode, Theatrum belli in America septentrionali (n. pi., 1755); Frederik de Wit, Theatrum iconographicum omnium urbium et praecipuorum oppidorum Belgicarum XVII Provinciarum per accurate delineatarum (Amsterdam: F. de Wit, 1680). 109 "Comment nous est-il possible de comprendre tout l'Univers? Tous Ies livres qui sont faits ne traittent qu'une partie des sujets imaginables; quelle lecture done pouvonsnous faire qui nous traitte absolument de toutes choses? Ajoutez a cela que ces gros Volumes que nostre siecle a publiez pour nous instruire, espouvantent la pluspart des Esprits, non seulement parce qu'il est comme impossible de Ies porter, mais encor pour ce que la longueur nous en fait apprehender la lecture. Quelques Autheurs qui ont voulu esviter cet inconvenient sont tombez dans un autre qui n'est pas moindre: car pour s'empescher de dire trop, ils ne disent pas assez." Frangois de Grenaille1 Le theatre de I'univers ou abrege du monde (Paris: Antoine Robinot, 1643), p. 6. 110. Ibid., p. 8. 111. Frank Lestringant, Latelier du cosmographe (Paris: Albin Michel, 1991). 112. See Jean Ceard, "Encyclopedie et encyclopedisme a la Renaissance," in L'Encyclopedisme, Actes du colloque de Caen 1987, ed. Annie Becq (Paris: Klinsieck, 1991), the term taken as ancient precedent is actually a corruption of enkuklios paideia which was used by Pliny and Quintilian to designate "general culture" or "common education." See also Franco Simone, "La notion d'encyclopedie: Element caracteristique de la Renaissance frangaise," in French Renaissance Studies 1540-1570, ed. Peter Sharratt (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1976), pp. 234-62; L. M. de Rijk, "Egkuklios paideia: A Study of Its Original Meaning," Vivarium 3 (1965): 24-93. 113. Leroy Loemker, The Struggle for Synthesis: The Seventeenth-Century Background of Leibniz's Synthesis of Order and Freedom (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1972); Wilhelm Schmidt-Biggemann, Topica universalis: Eine Modellgeschichte humanistischer und barocker Wissenschaft (Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 1983). 114. Findlen, Possessing Nature, pp. 72, 76. 115 After listing a number of predecessors in the encyclopedic genre, Colle concludes: "Horum enim alij nimia prolixitate, alij nimia brevitate, aut exiguam, aut nullam utilitatem afferre videntur; imo ingenia ad maiores difficultates traducunt, tanquam amethodici, inordinati, aut vanis ambagibus et longis quaestionibus circumvoluti." Ioannis Colle, De idea et theatro imitatricium et imitabilium ad omnes intellectus, facilitates, scientias et artes (Pesaro: Ioannis Boatius, 1618), sig. 3v. 116. J. H. Alsted, Encyclopedia, sig. iiiv. 117. [John Thorie?], The theatre of the earth (London: Adam Islip, 1599). 118. See Walter J. Ong, S. J., "Commonplace Rhapsody: Ravisius Textor, Zwinger and Shakespeare," in Classical Influences on European Culture 1500-1700, ed. R. R. Bolgar (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976), p. 112. 119 See also the work compiled from Ravisius Textor's earlier Theatrum and Conrad Lycosthenes, by the printer Conrad Waldkirch, Theatrum poeticum atque historicum sive officina Io. Ravisii Textoris, post Conr. Lycosthenis vigilias ad meliorem ordinem redacta, disposita et innumeris in locis correcta, cum cornucopiae libello, aucta ex Natalis Comitis Mythologiae Iibris aliquot et Geofredilino Cerii Vivariens. Mythologiae Musarum libello (Basel: Conrad Waldkirch, 1609), arranged topically.

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120 "Materia igitur Theatro nostro subiecta, omnia ea quae in hominem cadere possunt, sive bona sint, sive mala, sui ambitu complectitur . . De quibus cum Ethica philosophia, quatenus ad felicitatem et beatitudinem humanam quomodolibet facere possunt, disputet: manifestum est, theatrum quoque nostrum ad Morum philosophiam referri debere: hocque solo differre, quod illic praecepta bene vivendi in universum traduntur." Zwinger, Theatrum vitae humanae (Basel: Oporinus, 1565), p. 4. 121. "Humanae vitae fabulam . . . ab omni aevo luserunt magni Actores. Horum multitudo ac diversitas Theatrum sane exigebat amplissimum. . . . Theatra ilia optima ubi omnes omnium Ordinum homines commodissime considere et spectare optime possunt Magnum quod hie datur Theatrum vitae humanae. Amphitheatrum est Universi, in quo commodissime quidquid sub caelo est spectari et quicumque sub eo degunt homines spectare, res divinas, humanasque omnes cognoscere possunt." Beyerlinck, Magnum The­ atrum vitae humanae, vol. 1 (Lyon: Jean-Antoine Huguetan and Marc-Antome Ravaud, 1661), dedication and "to the reader." 122. Otto Aicher, Theatrumfiinebre exhibens per varias scenas epitaphia nova, antiqua, seria, jocosa, aevo, ordine, dignitate, genere, sexu, fortuna, ingenio, adeo et stylo perquam varia, cum summorum pontificum, et imperatorum succincta chronologia, eorumque symbolis ac epitaphiis; in quatuor partes distinctum, exstructum a Dodone Richea (seu Ottone Aicher) (Salzburg: Joan. Bapt. Mayr, 1675). 123 Caspar Dornavius, Amphitheatrum sapientiae socraticae joco-seriae, hoc est, Encomia et commentaria auctorum, qua veterum, qua recentiorum prope omnium: quibus res, aut pro vilibus vulgo aut damnosis habitae, styli patrocinio vindicantur, exornantur: opus ad mysteria naturae discenda, ad omnem amoenitatem, sapientiam, virtutem, publice privatimve utilissimum (Hanau: Wechel impensis Danielis ac Davidis Aubriorum et Clementis Schleichii, 1619), dedication. 124. Petrus Bertius, Theatrumgeographiae veteris in quo Claudii PtolemaeiAlexandrini Geographiae libri viii graece et latine Graeca ad codices Palatinos collata aucta et emendata sunt Latina infinitis locis correcta opera P. Bertii Christianissimi Galliarum Regis cosmographi (Amsterdam: Jodocus Hondius, 1618). The collection also includes Mercator, In tabulas Ptolemaicas a se delineatas annotationes and Antoninus Pius, Itxneraria duo praeterea Provinciarum Romanarum libellus. 125. Sigmund Feyrabend, Theatrum diabolorum, das ist ein sehr nutzliches verstenndiges buch darauss einjeder Christ sonderlich unndfieissig zu lernen wie das wir in dieser Welt nicht mit Keysern Konigen Fursten und Herm oder andern Potentaten sondern mit dem aller mechtigsten Fursten dieser Welt dem Teuffel zukempjfen und zustreiten Welcher (wie S. Petrus schreibt) umbhergeht wie ein brullender Low uns zuverschlingen . . . (Frankfurt: Feyrabend, 1569), sig. iijv. 126. Sigmund Feyrabend printed Jost Amman, Gynaeceum sive theatrum mulierum (Frankfurt, 1586) and underwrote the publication of Andreas Hondorff, Theatrum historicum (Frankfurt: impensis S. Feyrabend, apud Ioannem Feyrabend, 1590), and his relative Ioannes Feyrabend printed Jon Jensen Colding's Daniae . . . theatrum (Frankfurt, 1594). Similarly, Jodocus Hondius was author and printer-publisher of a Theatrum artis scribendi (Amsterdam, 1594) and printer-publisher of Bertius, Theatrum geographiae veteris (Amsterdam, 1618). On Feyrabend, see Heinrich Pallmann, "Sigmund Feyrabend, sein Leben und seine geschichtlichen Verbindungen," Archiv ftir Frankfiirts Geschichte und Kunst, n.s., 7 (1881): 1-272. 127. "Quae sane res in eum potissimum suscepta finem esse videtur: ut quae scripta in singulis scientiis dissipata lateque dispersa iacerent: nec sine molestia et sumptu passim conquisita legerentur: ea in unum volumen ad hunc modum redacta, omnem totius artis, vel sane praecipuum apparatum, veluti pulcherrimo quodam in theatro cum voluptate

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intuendum spectandumque studiosis proponerent: unde hi, tanquam ex horto bene culto et artificiose disposito, omnis generis herbas salutares, floseulos item fructusque varios ad suam singuli non solum utilitatem, sed etiam oblectationem possent decerpere. . . . Ego illorum opera, quotquot indagari quidem potuerunt, magno sumptu et labore undique conquisita, unum in corpus et qualis Theatrum quoddam digeri, disponique curavi." Theatrum chemicum, praecipuos selectorum auctorum tractatus de chemiae et lapidis philosophici antiqui­ tate, veritate, iure, praestantia et operationibus, continens: in gratiam verae chemiae et medicinae chemicae studiosorum (ut qui uberrimam inde optimorum remediorum messem facere poterunt) congestum et in tres partes seu volumina digestum; singulis voluminibus, suo auctorum et librorum catalogo primis pagellis: rerum vero et verborum indice postremis annexe, 3 vols.

(Ursellis [Oberursel]: Cornelius Sutorius, sumtibus Lazarus Zetzner, Strasbourg, 1602), sigs. 2r-v. Later editions grew to six volumes, and are generally attributed to Ashmole. The contents of volume 1: Robertus Vallensis: de veritate et antiquitate artis Chemicae et pulveris sive Medicinae philosophorum vel auri potabilis, testimoma et theoremata ex variis auctoribus. Io. Chrysippus Fanianus: de artis alchemia veterum auctorum et praesertim iurisconsultorum indicia et responsa ad quaestionem an Alchimia sit ars legitima. Thomas Mufetti Londinatis Angli.: Dialogus apologeticus de iure et praestantia Chemicorum medicamentorum. Theob de Hoghelande Mittelburgensis: De Alchemiae difficultatibus: in quo docetur, quid facere quidque vitare debeat verae Chemiae studiosus ad perfectionem aspirans. Gerardi Dornei: CIavis totius philosophiae chemisticae, Physica Genesis, Physica Hermetis Trismegisti. . . Bernard G. Penoti: de vera praeparatione et usu Medicamentorum chemicorum, tractatus varij. Bemardus Trevisanus: de chemica miraculo, quod lapidem philosophiae appellant. Dionysii Zacharij: Opusculum philosophiae naturalis metallorum cum annotationibus Nicolai Flameli. 128. On "digerere" and "congerere" see Goyet, "A propos de 'ces pastissages de lieux communs' (le role des notes de lecture dans la genese des Essais)," part 2, Bulletin de la Societe des Amis de Montaigne 7-8 (1987): 17. 129. Richard Patterson, "The 'Hortus Palatinus' at Heidelberg and the Reformation of the World," part 1: "The Iconography of the Garden," and part 2: "Culture as Science," Journal of Garden History 1 (1981): 67-104, 179-202. Janus Caecilius Frey's unpublished "Hortus," for example (Bibliotheque de TArsenal Ms 1146) is a miscellany, as discussed in my "Bibliotheques portables: Les recueils de lieux communs dans la Renaissance tardive," in Le pouvoir des bibliotheques, ed. Marc Baratin and Christian Jacob (Paris: Albin Michel, 1996), pp. 84-106, and "The Teaching of Natural Philosophy in Early Seventeenth-Century Paris: The Case of Jean Cecile Frey," History of Universities 12 (1993): 95-158; see Deutsche Illustnerte Flugblatter des 16. und 17. Jahrhunderts for some examples of broadsheets constructed around the garden metaphor. 130. D. Iulio Rospigliosi, Arcobispo de Tarso y Apostolico nuncio en Ios Reynos de Espana, Teatro evangelico de sermones, escntos pro diferentes autores y a singulares Asuntos (Alcala: por Maria Fernandez, aeosta de IuanAntonio Bonet, 1649). Theatrumpacis (Nuremberg: Joh. Andr. Endter and Wolfgang des Jungern, 1663). Matteo Sorrentino, Theatrum et examen omnium decisionum regni Neapolitani (Naples. Michaelis Aloysius Mutius, 1699). El teatro depinturas de David Teniers (Brussels: a Costas del Auctor, 1660); Theatrum pictorium Davidis Teniers (Antwerp: apud Henricum et Comelium Verdussen, 1684). 131. Marie-Madeleine Martinet, Le Miroir de I'esprit dans Ie the&tre Elisabethain: Varia­ tions dramatiques sur une idee philosophique, littiraire et artistique (Paris: Didier Erudition, 1981), especially pp. 25-27. 132. Aulus Gellius already complained of the festive titles used by his predecessors,

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many of which were revived m the Renaissance: including "silvae," "lectiones," "pandectae," and "bibliothecae." Aulus Gellius, Noctes Atticae, (Frankfurt: ex officina ZacharioPaltheniana, 1603), XX, chap. 10, pp. 491-92. Gellius' own "nights" was matched rather by "days" in the Renaissance, from Alexandri ab Alexandro's Dies geniales (Paris: Thomas Brumen, 1586) to Maiole's Dies caniculares. See also Gregor Reisch, Margarita philosophica or "philosophical pearl" (1503). For a string of such metaphors see the preface to Frey's "Hortus" quoted in my "Bibliotheques portables," or the "salad composed of many kinds of herbs," proposed by Louis Garon, Le chasse-ennuy (Paris: Claude Grisot1 1633), preface. 133. Daniel Mornet, "Les enseignements des bibliotheques privees," Revue d'histoire Iitteraire de France 17 (1910): 460. CHAPTER SIX THE RECEPTION OF THE THEATRUM

1. Studies on the reception of Bodin's other works include Richard H. Popkin1 "The Dispersion of Bodin's Dialogues in England, Holland and Germany," Journal of the History of Ideas 49 (1988): 157-60; and Leonard F. Dean1 "Bodin's Methodus in England Before 1625," Studies in Philology 39 (1942): 160-66. For contemporary appraisals of Bodin in general, mostly posthumous, see Colloque, pp. xvi-xvii. 2. For example, heavily as well as sparsely annotated copies flag the little-known publications that Bodin mentions in the Theatrum, e.g., his Paradoxon or the poem on earthquakes. See the Ceard annotations, the copies at the Sorbonne Library (1596; SPg5 in-12) and the Basel University Library (1596; Jh X 10 n.2; ex libris by one R. Fescat, 1635, unidentified), at pp. 139, 174. Other annotations call attention to biographical details contained in the Theatrum, including Bodin's mention of the year 1590 (Ceard annotations for ρ 633), or the fact that he was on the ocean seven times (Casaubon annotations: the note and page reference, to p. 197, appear on the title page, see figure 6); the latter detail is also repeated by Pierre Bayle, because "it seemed worthy of being reported. It is a part of his history." Bayle, "Bodin," in Dictionnaire historique et critique, note (S) in M ethodus, p. xxxvii. 3. "Cet ouvrage dans lequel Bodin avance plusieurs choses qui pourraient faire croire qu'il etait un vrai naturaliste, c'est a dire qu'il n'admettait d'autre religion que la naturelle, eut peu de succes." Antoine Pericaud, Notes et documents pour servir A I'histoire de Lyon sous Ie regne d'Henri IV (1594-1610) (Lyon: Mougin-Rusand, 1845), p. 124. R.J.W. Evans, The Wechel Presses: Humanism and Calvinism in Central Europe 1572-1627, Past and Present, Supplement 2 (Oxford: Past and Present Society, 1975), p. 15. 4. Although I have not been able to thank them individually, I am grateful to all the respondents, and would particularly like to thank those who included photocopies of interesting passages and title pages, and identified owners who were local notables. This survey would not have been possible without the expert advice and material support generously volunteered by Isabelle Pantin, then librarian at the Ecole Normale Superieure de Jeunes Filles-Jourdan. I am grateful also to Marie-Therfese Isaac, director of the Seminaire de Bibliographie Historique de l'Universite de Mons1 for sharing with me the list compiled there (also from a mail survey) of locations for the Theatrum, among other works by Jean Bodin. My survey concerned only the Universae naturae theatrum and its French translation. 5. Roland Crahay1 Marie-Therese Isaac, and Marie-Therese Lenger, Bibliographie critique des editions anciennes de Jean Bodin (Brussels: Academie Royale de Belgique, 1992). 6. This list includes only two copies in private hands, both of the second Latin edition—

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my own and that of Jean Ceard. Surely there are a number of others, but I received no response on this matter to my query in the Nouvelles du livre ancien. 7. See Jean-FranQois Gilmont, "La diffusion et la conservation des oeuvres de C. Scribani," Revue d'histoire de la spiritualite 53 (1977): 271, where he notes that first editions and Latin editions are preserved in greater numbers. For an example of the title page of the second emission, see figure 6; to compare with that of the first emission see Crahay et al., Bib­ liographic critique, pp. 292, 294. As Crahay et al. point out, responses from mail surveys are often insufficient to distinguish clearly between the two emissions; in my survey, I was able to identify 26 first emissions (without dedications) and 41 second emissions (with dedications) from 78 responses; the remaining 22 editions referred to in my table I garnered from Crahay et al, who do not record the distinction for most of the entries in their list (see Crahay et al., pp. 295-96). As a result I do not attempt to do so either. 8. As discussed in Miriam Usher Chrisman, Lay Culture, Learned Culture: Books and So­ cial Change in Strasbourg, 1480—1599 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1982), pp. 318-19, n. 8; she cites on this point Leon Voet, The Golden Compasses, vol. 2 (Amsterdam: Van Gendt, 1972), pp. 169, 172. 9. Gabriel Naudέ, Jugement sur ce qui a ett imprime contre Mazarin, (n.pl.), p. 476, as cited in Henri-Jean Martin, "Comment mesurer Ie succes litteraire: Le probleme des tirages," Le IivrefranQais sous I'Ancien Regime (Paris: Promodis, 1987), p. 212. 10. My survey did not include this work, which 1 did not know existed at the time I conducted it. I rely on Crahay et al., Bibliographie critique, pp. 307-11, who report copies in Vienna and Graz; Halle (2), Berlin (2) and Wolfenbtittel; Gdansk and Poznafi; Bucha rest; Basel; and at the National Library of Medicine (Bethesda, Md.). The catalogue of the Bibliotheque Nationale et Universitaire of Strasbourg also reports a copy, which I was not able to see, however. I have consulted copies in Basel, Vienna, and Wolfenbuttel. 11. For other discussions of this kind of evidence see Albert Labarre, "Sur la transmission des livres anciens," Beitrage zur Geschichte des Buches und seiner Funktion in der Gesellschaft: Festschrijtfur Hans Widmann (Stuttgart: A. Hiersemann, 1974), pp. 111-25; and "Survie et disparition des livres," Revue de la Bibliotheque Nationale 30 (1988): 61-66. 12. Luneburg, Ratsbucherei, Ph 238, ex libris: 1. "Sum ex libris Johannes Brandes Hamelens[is], Emptius] Marpurgi Cattorlum] anno 1607. 17 Jan." 2. Ή. Rixneri 5 Sept. 1670." I am grateful to the librarian at Luneburg for identifying Heinrich Rixner. RixneT was the author of Collegium metaphysicum viginti quatuor disputationibus propositum (Helmstedt: Johannes Heitmuller, 1671), as cited in Joseph Freedman, European Academic Phi­ losophy in the Late Sixteenth and Early Seventeenth Centuries: The Life, Significance, and Phi­ losophy of Clemens Timpler (1563-1624), 2 vols. (Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1988), 2:551. 13. Munich, Universitatsbibliothek, 1597 edition, 8o. Med.774.2: 1. "J.J. B. R. philosoph. et Medic. D. comparavit Pragae AD 1600"; 2. "Fac. Med. Ingolstadtiensis." Katowice, Bibliotheka Slgska, 229304 I: 1. "Lipsiae sibi para[vit] Johannes Geitmann Vratiss. SI an. 1606 16 arg- gross." 2. "Von Gottes Gnaden Augustus Herzog v. Sax. Chur." After 1570 the groschen was counted as one twenty-fourth of a taler, according to Helmut Kahnt and Bernd Knorr, Aite Masse, Miinzen und Gewichte: Ein Lexikon (Mannheim: Bibliographisches Institut, 1986), p. 111. In his study of the distribution of works by Scribani, Jean-Frangois Gilmontnotes the "aberrant movements of a non-negligeable fringe," see "La diffusion et la conservation des editions de C. Scribani," Revue d'histoire de la spiritualite 53 (1977): 261-74. 14. In addition, a Latin edition that belonged to Rene Moreau of the Faculty of Medicine at Paris later belonged to John Cosin, bishop of Durham (1594-1672). Durham University Library, Cosin S.v.5. 15. The professors include: Ioannes Broscius (1585—1652), professor of eloquence at Krakow who acquired his copy in 1612 (Bibliotheca Jagellona, Krakow); H. Rixner, men-

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uoned above; Nicolaus Granius, professor of physics at the University of Helmstedt (Wolfenbuttel). One can assimilate to this category vanous polymathic figures: Gabriel Naude, librarian to Henri de Mesmes (Bibliotheque Sainte-Genevieve 1 Pans); Isaac Vossius, historiographer and librarian of Holland (Rijksuniversiteit Leiden); Isaac Casaubon (British Library); also Justus Lipsius whose purchase of May 17, 1596, is recorded in La correspondance de Juste Lipse conservee au Musee Plantin-Moretus, ed. Alois Gerlo and Hendrik D. L Vervliet (Antwerp: De Nederlandsche Boekhandel, 1967), p. 281. Among the lawyers: Claude Expilly, royal councilor and avocat at the Parlement of Grenoble, who owned two copies—a first edition and the French translation, the latter probably a gift of the translator, as discussed below in note 192 (Bibliotheque Municipale, Grenoble); Barbot, president au parlement de Bordeaux (Bibliotheque Municipale, Bordeaux); Gaillard Guiran (1600-80), conseiller au presidial de Nimes (Bibliotheque Municipale, Ntmes); Johann Camman (1584-1649), a jurist from Braunschweig (Stadtbibliothek Braunschweig). In addition to "J. J. B. R." and Rene Moreau, mentioned above, the doctors include: Robert Burton, author of the Anatomy of Melancholy (Christ Church, Oxford, as confirmed in Nicolas Kiessling, The Library of Robert Burton [Oxford: the Oxford Bibliographical Society, 1988], ρ 34); Joannes Scheifler, "doctor of philosophy and medicine and monastery physician [physicus monacensis]," who acquired the book in 1643, before or after his Bavarian colleague Thomas Mermanus. The copy is annotated sporadically, presumably by one of the two doctors, on passages concerning the eternity of the world, fire, light, odors, and the passive and active intellects (Umversitatsbibliothek Eichstatt). I discuss ownership by clerics and religious institutions below, notes 16-20. The colleges mentioned are Academia regia in La Rochelle (Bibliotheque Municipale, La Rochelle), Collegium Lugdunense (Lyon), Collegium Laudunense in Paris (Sorbonne), Bibliotheca Romano-catholicae Ecclesiasticae Academiae Petropolitae (Leningrad), and the Gymnasium Bregensis founded by George II of Silesia (1523-86) (Biblioteka Uniwersytecka, Wroclaw). The princely libraries are: the Bibliotheca Rodolphina de Legnica founded by Georg Rudolph of Silesia (1595-1653) (Biblioteka Uniwersytecka, Wroclaw, distinct from the preceding copy); and the Bibliotheca Palatino-Dusseldorpiensis (Universitatsbibliothek Diisseldorf). One copy belonged to the library of the "Senate" of Gdansk (Gdansk); another copy shows signs of having once been a chained book, as if in use in a public library (Stadtbibliothek Augsburg). At least twenty-five eighteenth-century owners can be identified as well, but I will not include them in my discussion, since their motivations for owning the Theatrum -were probably different from those of closer contemporaries. See below, pp. 194-95. 16. Jacob Rosius, Ephemeris perpetua, hoc est generate calendarium astronomicum et astrologicum, elaboratum et conscnptum (Basel: Petrinos, n.d.), epistle dated 1628 (Rosius was at one point suspected of atheism, according to the biographical information provided by the Zentralbibliothek Solothurn); Thurgauische Kantonsbibliothek Frauenfeld; Biblioteka Universytecka, WrocJaw (I owe this information to Paulina Buchwald-Pelcowa of the Biblioteka Narodowa, Warsaw, to whom I am especially grateful for her detailed information concerning the Theatrum in Polish collections); Emmanuel College Library, Cambridge. 17. Oxford University Archive, Hyp. B. 20 fol. 15v. I owe this information to Mordechai Feingold. Browne also owned a number of scientific works, notably vernacular treatises of navigation and De re anatomica by Realdo Colombo. See Nicholas Tyacke, Anti-Calvinists: The Rise of English Arminianism c. 1590-1640 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987), pp. 65-66. The Wroclaw Lutheran church copy is in the Biblioteka Uniwersytecka, Wroclaw. 18. Bibliothfeque Municipale, Poitiers. See La liesse de Louys Herron (Poitiers: Veuve de A. Mesnier, 1636). 19. Gabriel Naude, Bibliothecae Cordesianae catalogus (Paris: A. Vitray, 1643), p. 424.

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Gabriel Naude made a catalogue of De Cordes' collection in anticipation of its purchase by Mazarin, for whom he served as librarian. See Rene Pintard, Le libertinage erud.it dans la pre­ miere moitie du XVIle si tele (Paris: Boivin, 1943), pp 94, 309. 20. ForJesuit ex libris, see copies in Aschaffenburg, Cremona (from a Jesuit college in Milan), Graz, Mainz, Poitiers, the Smithsonian, Solothum, Szeged, Vienna (Universitats bibliothek), and Warsaw. For Oratonan ex libris: Angers, Coutances (French translation), Dijon, Grenoble, Paris (Bibliotheque Nationale), Poznan. For Capuchin ex libris: Paris (Bibliothfeque Nationale), Pau, the Vatican (from a Capuchin house in Naples). For Benedictine ex libris: Biblioteka Uniwersytecka, Warsaw, Minims: Besanton (French translation); Minorite: Mainz; unidentified monastery: Vesoul; Church: Notre-Dame de Reims (Reims). 21. But del Rio never carried out his promise to show its errors in print; his criticism comes down through Bayle, "Bodin" in Dictionnaire historique et critique, note (O) in Methodus, pp. xxxii-xxxiii. 22. Much of this sketch is drawn from Roland Crahay, "Controverses religieuses a propos de la Republique de Jean Bodin," in La controverse religieuse XV1'-X1XC siecles, Actes du Premier Colloque Jean Boisset, VIt Colloque du Centre d'Histoire de la Reforme et du Protestantisme, ed. Michel Peronnet, vol. 1 (Montpellier: Universite Paul Valery, 1980) pp. 57-73. See Antonio Possevino, Judicium de Nuae militis Galli, scriptis, quae ilie Discursus politicos et militares inscripsit. De Joannis Bodini Methodo historiae, Libris de Republica et Daemonomania. De Philipp Momaei libro De perfectione Christiana. De Nicotao Machiavello (Rome: Vatican, 1592), pp. 87-121. See also A. Lynn Martin, The Jesuit Mind: The Mentality of an Elite in Early Modern France (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1988), passim.

23. For an example of the complex discussions behind these indices, see John A. Tedeschi, "Florentine Documents for a History of the 'Index of Prohibited Books,'" in Renaissance: Studies in Honor of Hans Baron, ed. Anthony Molho and John A. Tedeschi (DeKalb, Il.: Northern Illinois University Press, 1971), pp 577-605, pp. 591-92 on Bodin's works. 24. Indeed the second edition of Possevino's Judicium (Lyon: Buysson, 1593) was dedicated to Chalom. See also Crahay, "Controverses religieuses," pp. 64-65. Chalom published two speeches of his own, and was the object of a number of dedications, see Chanoine O.-C. Reure, Bibliotheque des eenvains foreziens, Recueil de memoires et documents sur Ie Forez publie par la Societe de la Diana, vols. 13-14 (Montbrison: Brassart, 1914), 13:99-100; for further notices on him, see Archives Departementales du Rhone, Fonds Beyssac; L. Morel de Voleme et H. de Charpin, Recueil de documents pour servir a ITiistoire de I'ancien gouvernement de Lyon (Lyon: Louis Perrin, 1854), p. 158; and Antoine Pericaud, Notes et documents pour servir a I'histoire de Lyon sous la Ligue (1589-1594) (Lyon: Mougin-Rusand, 1845), p. 146 (entry of September 20, 1593). 25. F+++3r. 1 have not found any information on I. Comes/Le Conte (possibly also Compagnon). 26 On verso of p. 633: "Correctus est liber hie ad formam indicis expurgatorij S. Inquisitionis apud S. Laurentium regium. pridie Kal Aug. 1613. F. Lucas Alacaius. Iterum expurgatus iusta chatalogum S. Inquisitionis apud S. Laurentium Regium 13 Augusti 1708 [?]. Fr. Bartolome de Medinarum." From a photocopy received with the questionnaire. Unfortunately I have no details about what was actually corrected in the book. 27. For the 1628 condemnation, see Joseph Hilgers, Der Index der verbotenen Bucher in seiner neuen Fassung dargelegt und rechtlich-historisch gewiirdigt (Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 1904), p. 422 as quoted in Crahay, "Controverses religieuses," p. 70. The other dates are mentioned in copies at the Biblioteca Nacional in Madrid (in which the text has

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also been expurgated) and the Universitatsbibliothek Heidelberg, respectively. Copies at Biblioteka Uniwersytecka1 Warsaw, and at Nimes are marked "liber prohibitus" without further indications. See Index Librorum Prohibitorum Alexandri Vll. Pontifici Maximi iussu editus (Rome: Camera apostolica, 1664), section XXXVII, p. 336. 28. "Corregi este libro conforme a el expurgatorio deste anno de 1632." 1 owe the detailed information about this copy to Gerald Morisse of Pessac who very kindly responded to my search notice placed in the Nouvelles du livre ancien. 29. A librarian's annotation in a copy of the first edition at the Staatsbibliothek in Munich also notes that this passage was to be deleted: "p. 509 'cur animam corpus esse vis' dele usque ad finem libri [book IV] qui terminatur pag. 548." In a copy at the Houghton Library, Harvard, pp. 509, 512-31 and 534-48 are crossed out in broad diagonals and still legible. 30. See Theodore Alois, trans. The Decrees and Canons of the Council of Trent 1545-63 (London: G. Routledge, 1851). 31. The Fourth Lateran Council of 1215 had already asserted the spiritual nature of angels; see Jean-Marie Vernier, Les anges chez Saint Thomas d'Aquin (Paris: Nouvelles Editions Latines, 1986), p. 138. But this was not enforced as a matter of dogma. 32. This annotator attacks the animate nature of the celestial bodies (F792), the corporeal substance of the soul (F734—38) and of angels (F178), and Bodin's explanation of the agent intellect (F755), and reclaims as miracles the trances that Bodin had attributed to the action of demons (F725-26). He also adds to the text and the corresponding appended table that substance cannot exist without accident "naturally," emphasizing that God is substance without accident (cf. F41 and table 4 at the end of the volume). 33. He also specifies that the nefarious effect of conjunctions on republics happens only "sometimes with divine permission," ("Quelquefois par la permission divine," F891, F899), and that a planet like Mercury "acts on the body, not on the soul" ("Influendo in corpus non in animam," F895). 34. Saturn, '^abbath," means tranquil, and Jupiter, "Tsaddik," means just. UN T, p. 619. 35. Unfortunately I have no confirmed examples of Catholic annotators other than the Besa^on critic. The anonymous Ceard annotator might be Catholic, as his occasional use of Italian would tend to indicate, or Protestant, as his spelling of "Solomo" rather the more conventional "Salomo" would suggest. The "Solomo" spelling was condemned by the Sorbonne, see Rabelais, Le Tiers Livre, ed. Michael Screech (Geneva: Droz1 1964), p. 13, n. 145. I owe this observation to Jean Ciard. 36. Including, among others, Croll's Basilica Chymicat the Theatrum chemicum, various Paracelsian works, and Cardano's book on the interpretation of dreams. R.J.W. Evans, Rudolph Il and His World: A Study in Intellectual History 1576-1612 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973), pp. 158-61. 37. "Nec immerito [Bodinus] sane: Cum animum inquietum ac vastissimum quem acceperat a natura tam pertinaci studio, tam inexhausta doctrina, torn admirabili judicio excultum, ad rerum omnium comprehensionem attulerit ut superatis linguarum pene omnium ac scientiarum difficultatibus, non modo Naturae theatrum novis rationibus exstruxerit, sed regnorum . . . species . . . in ordinem sapientissimum reduxerit." Gabriel Naude1 Bibliographia politica, (Frankfurt: Cura Hermanni Conringii, 1673), pp. 33-34. Naude's copy of the Theatrum is at the Bibliotheque Samte-Genevieve, Paris; annotation on p. 433. For the anti-Aristotelianism of the Theatrum, see chapter 3, pp. 90-95; and Charron's use of Bodin, see below, pp. 192-93. 38. In one case the Theatrum was bound in the eighteenth century with another text, a medical treatise on female reproduction, Severinus Pinaeus' Opusculum physiologicum

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(1599). The choice of work with which to bind the Theatrum may well date from the eighteenth century. 1have assumed, however, that copies rebound after 1900 with other early works were merely replacing an earlier binding rather than bringing the works together for the first time. This occurs in the copies at Luneburg Ratsbibliothek (Theatrum bound with Goclenius & Urstisius; in another volume, with Jean de Lery). 39. Gabriel Naude, Advis pour dresser une biblioth&que (Paris: Frangois Targa, 1627), p. 137. 40. Hill complains about Bodin's definition of metal as a malleable, meltable elementary body that grows in the bowels of the earth—in that case "wax, resm, gums, and every substance that can be liquefied, extended, and molded would be a metal." Nicholas Hill, Philosophia Epicurea, Democritiana, Theophrastica proposita simpliciter, non edocta (Paris: Rolinus Thierry, 1601), pp. 23-24. Cf. UNT, p. 254. On Nicholas Hill, see Hugh TrevorRoper in Catholics, Anglicans and Puritans: Seventeenth-Century Essays (London: Seeker and Warburg, 1987), pp. 1-39. I owe this reference to Howard Hotson. 41. Clemens Timpler, Physicae seu philosophiae naturalis systema, parts 1 and 2 (1605) (Regensburg). On Clemens Timpler, see the detailed study by Joseph Freedman, European Academic Philosophy. Freedman also provides useful information about a range of contemporary German academics; as does Reif, for selected academics across Europe, in "Natural Philosophy in Some Early Seventeenth-Century Scholastic Textbooks" (Ph.D. diss., St. Louis University, 1962), chap. 1. 42 Otho Casmann, Marinarum quaestionum tractatio philosophica (The Hague) and Nu­ cleus Mysteriorum naturae enucleatus (Hamburg: Frobenius1 1605); on Casmann, see Freedman, European Academic Philosophy, 1:54. Rodolph Goclenius, Isagoge in Peripateticorum (1598) (Liineburg). Bartholomaus Keckermann, Contemplatio gemina (1607) (Lodz, Poland), Disputationes philosophicae (1606) (WrocZaw). On Keckermann, see Freedman, European Academic Philosophy, 1:30, and, specifically on Keckermann's career and writings, an unpublished paper by Freedman delivered at the History of Science Society meeting of December 1992. For valuable comments and conversations on this material I am grateful to Howard Hotson, who kindly lent me a copy of his "Johann Heinrich Alsted: Encyclopedists Millenarianism and the Second Reformation in Germany" (D. Phil, thesis, Oxford University, 1991). In an appendix to this work, Hotson also provides biographical sketches of many of the authors I mention here. 43. On Timpler's citations of Axelson, see Freedman, European Academic Philosophy, 1:128, 139. Axelson cites Casmann especially, also in his Physica et ethica mosaica (Hanau: Wechel, 1613). 44. Christian Urstisius, Elementa arithmetica (1595) (with Goclenius above, Laneburg); Conrad Aslachus, De natura caeli triplici (1597) (Amberg); Wilhelm Scribonius, Physica et sphaerica doctrina (Frankfurt: Wechel, 1593) (Wolfenbuttel) and Isagoge sphaerica (1580) (Paris, personal library of Jean Ceard); Georg Liebler, Epitome naturalis philosophiae (1600) (Wroclaw); Frans Titelmans, Compendium philosophiae naturalis (Paris: Michel de Roigny, 1582; first published 1542) (Oxford); Aristotle, I tomus physicus (1593) (Vatican, with Peucer above); Ocellus Lucanus, De universa natura libellus (1596) (Leningrad); Franciscus Valles, De its quae scripta sunt physice in libris sacris, sive de sacra philosophia (1608; first published 1587) (Gdansk). 45. Books on the supernatural: in addition to Peucer above, Heinrich Ranzovius, Tractatus astrologicus (1593) (Augsburg); B. Pereira, De magia (1593) (Cologne); Ludwig Lavater, De spectris (1580) and Lambert Daneau, De veneficiis (1581) (bound together at Vienna); John Dee, Monas hieroglyphicus (1591) (Cologne). Travel, exempla, Hebrew: Jean de Lery, Historia navigations (1594) (Luneburg); Busbeq, Legationes turcicae (1605) (Lyon).

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In one volume (Dusseldorf): Ramus, De moribus veterum Gallorum (1574) and De militia Julii Caesaris (1574), Louis I de Bourbon, prince de Conde, Literae ad Carolum IX (n. d , ca, 1569), and Johannes Cygneus, Annalium Bambergensium prodromus (1603). Bellarmin, Institutiones linguae hebraicae (1596) (Aschaffenburg) 46 Antonius Agustinus, Emendationum et opmiorum libri quatuor (1599) (Vienna); Hippolytus a Collibus, Princeps Consiliarius, Palatinus (1599) and Lipsius, Epistolica institutio (1591) (Budapest). 47. Freedman, European Academic Philosophy, 1:87-90. Freedman refers especially to KaTlheinz Goldmann, Verzeichnis der Hochschulen (Neustadt an der Aisch: Degener, 1967). 48. Freedman, European Academic Philosophy, 1:90. He draws his figures from Friedrich Kapp1 Ceschichte des deutschen Buchhandels Ms in das siebzehnte Jahrhundert (Leipzig: Verlag des Borsenvereins der deutschen Buchhandler, 1886). Regarding disputations and theses, in pro gradu disputations the students composed and defended their own theses, while in sub praeside disputations the professors were held responsible for the theses, although the student contribution in composing them may have varied. See Theo Verbeek, Descartes and the Dutch: Early Reactions to Cartesian Philosophy 1637-50 (Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 1992), pp. ix-x. 49. Erich Tranz, "Der deutsche Spathumanismus um 1600 als Standeskultur," in. Deutsche Baroekforschung: Dohumentation einer Epoche, ed. Richard Alewyn (Cologne: Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 1965), pp. 147-81, especially pp. 161-69. 50. On the more general features of German intellectual life in this period, notably its territorialization and the resulting dominance of the universities, see William Clark, "The Scientific Revolution in the German Nations," in The Scientific Revolution in National Con­ text, ed. Roy Porter and Mikulas Teich (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), pp. 90-114. 51. Freedman, European Academic Philosophy, 1:142, 145-46; Freedman provides a breakdown of Timpler's assessment of Bodin's position on vanous questions in his Philosophiae practicae pars tertia . . . complectens politicam integram (Hanau: G. Antonius, 1611): 9 negative, 15 positive, 5 neutral. The Latin Republica was widely available: it was printed in Lyon (1 edition), Paris (2), and Geneva (1), but especially in the German-Ianguage area: in Frankfurt (6 editions), Oberursel (Ursellis) (1), and Magdeburg (1, abridged edition); and in German translation in Mumpelgart (1) and Frankfurt (1); see Crahay et al, Bibliographie critique, pp. 91-197. 52. Artis historicae penus, ed. Johann Wolf (Basel: Petrus Perna, 1576 and 1579). The Methodus was reprinted not only in Paris (once) and Geneva (twice), but especially in German-language cities like Heidelberg (twice), Strasbourg (four times), and Basel (twice). See Crahay et al., Bibliographie critique, pp. 19-49. On Keckermann's view of history, see Arno Seifert, Cognitio Historical Die Geschichte als Namengeberin der/ruhzeitlichen Empirie (Berlin: Duncker und Humblot, 1976), pp. 97-100. 53. See Bartholomaus Keckermann, "De locis communibus," appended to Gymnasium logician in Opera omnia quae extant (Geneva: Petrus Aubertus, 1614), vol. 1, pp. 494-500. And in "De natura et propnetatibus historiae," Opera, vol.2, chap. 2, section 7, he lists three complaints against Bodin's Methodus: (1) it follows no method; (2) it compiles many things that are relevant to politics [instead of history]; (3) it contains errors concerning the succession of the monarchies and the place of the Holy Roman Empire. But "Possevinus, misguided by his zeal, bitterly criticizes the Methodus of Bodin in many places where he should not." 54. Seven reeditions—in Latin in Basel (1) and Frankfurt (2); in German in Strasbourg (3) and Hamburg (1). See Crahay et al., Bibliographie critique, pp. 258-84. 55. Rodolph Goclenius, Scholae seu disputationes physicae, more Academicofere propositae

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et habitae plaeraeque omnes in Schola illustri Cattorum 3d ed. (Marburg: Paul Egenolphus, 1602), pp. 89-90. Although Bodin alludes to the question in the UNT1 p. 537, Goclenius is probably referring to the more detailed passage in the Demonomanie, II, chap. 6, fol. 114r. 56. I have found this metaphor in Casmann, Timpler, Alsted, and Sennert. See chapter 5, p. 155. 57. Sachiko Kusukawa, The Transformation of Natural Philosophy: The Case of Philip Melanchthon (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995). 58. This account is largely drawn from Charles Lohr's very useful "Metaphysics," in The Cambridge History of Renaissance Philosophy, ed. Charles Schmitt et al. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988); on this point see p. 633. 59. As discussed in Richard A. Muller, "Vera Philosophia cum sacra Theologia nusquam pugnat: Keckermann on Philosophy, Theology, and the Problem of Double Truth," Six­ teenth-Century Journal 15 (1984): 341-65, esp. pp. 352-53; he quotes from Keckermann, Operaomnia quae extant, 2 vols. (Geneva: Petrus Aubertus, 1614), vol 1, col. [70] B-C. 60. See Lohr, "Metaphysics," pp. 600-14. 61. Freedman, European Academic Philosophy, 1:132-34. 62. Zabarella and Avicenna: ibid., 1:276 andn. 180, 2:642. The citations ofBodin, and FTeedman's summary of Timpler's assessments of Bodm are as follows. In Physicae seu philosophiae naturalis systema methodicum, part 1. "How many species of simple taste [sapor simplex] are there? In what manner should simple taste be divided into subcategories?" (positive) "Do physical generation and physical corruption affect the entire natural body [compositum] or just its matter or its form?" (positive) "Do physical generation and physical corruption each take place instantaneously?" (positive) Part 2: "Is natural sky an animate body?" (emphatically negative) "How should metal be defined?" (positive) Part 3: "Is animal correctly divided into the subcategories of man and beast?" (polemically negative) "Do serpents mate, conceive, and give birth to young?" (positive) "What in particular should be observed concerning four-legged terrestrial beasts?" (positive) "Can the seed of one species of plant give birth naturally to a different species of plant?" (positive). Ibid., 1:144. 63. "Quam nefandi hommis astutiam occultarum qualitatum velo tectam graviter detexit Bodinus lib. 1 Daemonomagiae ch. 1." Keckermann, Systema physicum septem libris adornatum (Danzig: Andreas Hunefeld, 1610), p. 74. On Aristotelianism at the German universities more generally, see Joseph S. Freedman, "Aristotle and the Content of Philosophy Instruction at Central European Schools and Universities during the Reformation Era (1500-1650)," Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 137 (1993), pp. 213-53. 64. Keckermann, Systema physicum, pp. 210-11. Cf. UNT, p. 155. 65. A point-by-point refutation follows. Keckermann, Systema physicum, p. 212. 66. Ibid., pp 1014-15. 67. Ibid., pp. 871-72. See UNT, p. 177. In discussing Paracelsus here Keckermann also follows Bodin's own text which mentions Paracelsus at this point. 68. Keckermann, Systema physicum, pp. 884-85. The long (and mostly accurate) quotation is from UNT, p. 221. In general on this topic see C. Doris Hellman, The Comet of 1577: Its Place in the History of Astronomy (New York: Columbia University Press, 1944). 69. Keckermann, Systema physicum, pp. 888-89. 70. "Vide etiam Theatrum Bodini pag. 219 et comment. Cardani supra Quadrip. Ptolom. pag. 152 et notetur quod illi, qui Arist. sententiam damnant, non possunt ullam rationem adducere istius adversitatis colorum in Cometis." Ibid., pp. 917-18. Cardano's criticism is found in his commentary on Ptolemy's book 2, textus 53, in In Oaudii Ptole-

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maei IIII de astrorum iudicijs aut, ut vulgo vocant, Quadripartitae Constructionis libros commentaria (Lyon: Theobald Paganus, 1555), p. 343. 71. Keckermann, Systema physicum, pp. 1014-15. 72. Daniel Sennert, Epitome naturalis scientiae (Wittenberg: Caspar Heiden, 1618), pp. 265-66. See UNT, p. 222. 73. Caspar Bartholin, Astrologia seu de Stellarum naturae affectionibus et effectionibus (Wittenberg: Caspar Heiden, 1624), pp. 23-24. See UNT, p. 609. 74. Timpler: Freedman, EuropeanAcademic Philosophy, 1:144. Keckermann, Systema physicum, pp. 661-62. 75. See Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy, ed. Floyd Dell and Paul JordanSmith (New York: Tudor, 1941), pp. 159-60; and John Selden, De Jure Naturali et Gen­ tium Juxta Disciplinam Ebraeorum, book 1, in Opera omnia, ed. David Wilkins (London: Guil. Bowyer, 1726), vol. 1, part 1, p. 156. Henry Stubbe cites favorably Bodin's rejection of the scholastic distinction between circumscriptive and definitive locations of souls and angels. See Onofrio Nicastro, Lettere di Henry Stubbe a Thomas Hobbes 8 iuglio 1656-6 maggiο 1657 (Siena: Universita degli Studi, Facolta di Lettere e Filosofia 1 1973), p. 24—1 am grateful to Mordechai Feingold for this reference. On Stubbe, see James R. Jacob, Henry Stubbe, Radical Protestantism and the Early Enlightenment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983). Henry More, the Cambridge Platonist, is unfavorable: Bodin "was a man who was addicted to ascribing things to spirits when he need not." Henry More, An Anti­ dote Against Atheism, in Collected Philosophical Writings (London, 1712), III, xi, 124, as discussed in Robert H. West, Milton and the Angels (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1955), p. 97 76. Physicae seu naturalis Philosophiae Institutiones Cornelii Valerii Ultrajectinl In usum Scholae Philosophicae Marpurgensis, cum generali Physices synopsi, capitumque in paragraphos distinctione, eorundemque argumentis, jam denuo editae. Opera et studio Hermanni Wolfii.. . Quibus accesserunt excellentissimi viri Rodolphi Goclenii notae in singula capita doctissimae (Marburg: Egenolphus, 1598). Cornelius Valerius (d. 1578) taught at the University of Louvain, where Lipsius was one of his students. On Valerius see the articles mentioned in Nieuw Nederlandsch Biografisch Woordenboek, ed. Molhuysen et al., vol. 5 (Leiden: A. W. Sijthoffs uitgevers-maatschappij, 1921), cols. 992-93. His textbook was first published (Lyon: Theobald Paganus, 1568). 77. Supracelestial waters: Goclenius, in Valerius Physieae . . . Institutiones, p. 34; see UNT, p. 214 Arsenic: "Auripigmentum enim naturale est: Arsenicum vero est artificiosum. Quomodo autem fiat docet Bodinus in theat.nat. p. 253." Goclenius in Valerius, Physicae . . . Institutiones, p. 94; see UNT, p. 253. Objects of vision: Goclenius in Valerius Physicae. .. Institutiones, p. 136. See UNT, p. 448. 78. Valerius' statement: "Hae notitiae non fuerunt ante corporum animationem corporibus insitae, ut Plato scripsit; nec tantum institutione aut doctrina paulatim comparantur, ut Aristoteles docuit; sed una cum animis in corpora demissis a Deo simul ingeneratae." Goclenius' note: "Sed Bodimis respondet [Aristoteli] per instantiam: Reticulis oculorum omnium fere colorum varietas et ignea vis indita est. Et cutis interior manus ex aequabili contemperatione calidi, frigidi, humidi, sicci constat ad meliorem objectorum perceptionem. Sic etiam in animis nostris semina virtutum et scientiarum divinitus sparsa sunt ad veriorem et rectiorem noetdn comprehensionem." Physicae... Institutiones, pp 161, 164 (Greek transliteration added): see UNT, pp. 475-76. 79. "Sed Aristoteleam opinionem refutat Bodinus lib. 2 Theatri pag. 191 luculente." Goclenius in Valerius, Physicae .. . Institutiones, p. 85. 80 Ibid., pp. 110-11; see UNT, pp. 365-66.

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81. "Hebetissimus Bodinus animantia ea hunc integerrimum habere statuit, quae tenuissima sunt cute, de quo genere sunt aranei et vermiculi." Goclenius in Valerius, Physicae . .. Institutiones, p. 130; see UNT, p. 463. 82. For Alsted's praise of Bodin see above, chapter 5, p. 172. 83. JanJonston, Thaumatographia naturalis in decern classes distincta, in quibus admiranda 1. coeli, 2. elementorum, 3. meteororum, 4. fossilium, 5. plantarum, 6. avium, 7. quadrupedum, 8. exanguium, 9. piscium, 10. hominis, 2d ed. (Amsterdam: JohannesJanssonius a Waesberge and Elizeus Wejerstraet, 1633), 1, chap. 3, p. 12; see UNT, p. 554. On Jonston, see S. WoIlgast, "Johann Johnston und seine Verbindungen zu Comenius und seine Stellung in der Wissenschaft," in Johannes Amos Comenius (1592-1680): Exponent of European Culture? ed. P. van Vliet and A. J. Vandeijagt (Amsterdam: North Holland, 1994), pp. 93-115 84. "Meto qui centesimo trigesimo post Thaletemfloruit anno, Arietis stellam in aequinoctio deprehend.it. Timochares duobus gradibus consequi. Hipparchus quatuor, minutis novem; Ptolemaeus sex, minutis quadraginta; Albategnius octodecim, minutis duodecim. Alphonsus viginti tribus, minutis quadraginta octo. Wernerus viginti sex et quinquagmta quatuor: Bodinus viginti octo, viginti minutis." Jonston, Thaumatographia, I, chap. 3, pp. 14-15 (emphasis added). Cf. UNT, pp. 562-63, which I have shortened to match Jonston's text: "Nam Meto qui annis 132. post Thalem floruit, Arietis stellam in ipso Aequinoctio deprehendit: Timocharis . . . consequi . . . duobus gradibus. Hipparchus gradibus 4. minutiis 9 . . . [Menelaus] . . . Ptolemaeus gradibus 6 minutiis 40; Albategnius gradibus 18 et minutiis 2; Alphonsus gradibus 23 et 48 minutiis. Vernerus gradibus 26 et 54 minutiis. Hae aetate, id est anno 1590, posteriores sunt gradibus 28 et 20 minutiis (emphasis added)." Elsewhere Jonston acknowledges Bodin for the opinions of Hipparchus, Thebit [ibn Qurra] and Henry of Mechelen on the movement of the sun. Thaumatographia, I, chap. 5, p. 21, see UNT, p. 564. 85. Thaumatographia, book 1, chap. 6, p. 32; UNT, pp. 612-13. "Tantum annus 1556 vidit, ut non tantum exspirationes levissimae et aridae, sed nec omnes quidem sylvae ac nemora, quotquot erant, ubique terrarum, pabulo bimestri, quo luxit, sufficere potuissent. Verba sunt Bodini lib. 2 Theatri." Jonston, Thaumatographia, III, chap. 2, p. Ill; UNT, pp. 219-20. "Nec videtur verisimile Bodino 1.5 Theatri in tanta distantiae varietate, tam immobilem Ecclipsium manere posse disciplinam." Jonston, Thaumatographia, I, chap. 5, p. 22; UNT, pp. 602-3. 86. "Terrae ponderi aquam propellenti [adscripsit] Bodinus 1.2 theatri. . . . Terrae pondus aquam propellent non est causa. Nec enim terra in aquam incumbit, sed vice versa. Canales ubi non sunt pleni, non inferiorem partem vacuam habent, sed superiorem."Jonston, Thaumatographia, II, chap. 4, p. 72-73; UNT, p. 192. 87. Jonston, Thaumatographia, IV, chap. 15, p. 161; UNT, pp. 245-46. 88. "A solis liquari nequit calore, summa enim frigoris intensio, tantam ei [crystallo] soliditatem attulit, ut vinci modico nequeat. Impatiens tamen fervoris Bodin 1.2 Theat. Naturae." Jonston, Thaumatographia, IV, chap. 20, p. 172; UNT, p. 229. "Attamen, quamvis igni appositus horae spacio suum amittat splendorem, eundem recuperat politus, minuto splendore. Expertum, in mutuo attritu sic glutinari, ut facile separari non possit. Bodin Theatri Naturae 1.2." Jonston, Thaumatographia, IV, chap. 20, p. 173; UNT, p. 231. "Si causa quaeritur, acetum intimos ferri subire meatus dicendum est. Bodinus 1.2. theatri." Jonston, Thaumatographia, IV, chap. 31, p. 196; UNT, p. 256. 89. "Haud exiguus [smaragdus] tamen in Coenobio agri Lugdunensis; et qui Pragae in SacelIo Divi Venceslai visebatur, dodrante hoc major est. Bodin 1.2. Theatri." Jonston, Thaumatographia, IV, chap 21, p. 174; UNT, p. 233.

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90. Anthony Levi, S.J., French Moralists: The Theory of the Passions 1585 to 1649 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1964), pp. 97ff. 91. Ibid., p. 97. 92. Jean Ceard, "Apologetique et pensee morale, de Sebon a Duplessis-Mornay," Actes du colloque international la morale et Ies moralistes au XVIl' siecle (forthcoming). 93. Pierre Charron, De la sagesse (Paris: David Douceur, 1604; repr. Paris: Fayard, 1986), I, chap. 7 and Discours Chretiens, in Toutes Ies oeuvres de Pierre Charron (Pans: Jacques Villery, 1635), pp. 176ff; cf. UNT1 pp. 482-548. 94. Charron, Discours Chretiens, p. 178; cf. UNT, p. 511. 95. Charron, De la Sagesse, p. 101; cf. UNT, pp. 537, 221. 96. Pintard, Le Ubertinage erudit, pp. 60-61, 66-67. 97. Discours Chretiens, p. 120; for the inability to know God through reason, see ibid., pp. 5, 11. 98. See quotation above in chapter 5, note 18. 99. Charron, Discours Chretiens, pp. 132, 134-35; cf UNT, pp. 551, 554, 557. 100. Charron, Discours Chretiens, pp. 142-44; cf. UNT, pp. 156, 159-60. 101. Charron, Discours Chretiens, p. 145; Bodin cites on this point Thales, Plato, Philo, Seneca, Agricola, and, in a note, Pliny and biblical passages in Esdras and Psalms (attributed to Solomon), UNT, p. 191. 102. "Inimitiez, comme Ie Chien et Ie Loup, Ie Cheval et la Chameau, !'Elephant et Ie Rhinocerot, Ie Lyon et l'Oryx, Ie Crocodile et Ie Rat d'lnde, l'Asne et l'Egypte Oiseau." Diseours Chretiens, p. 156. Charron selects six of the twelve enmities between animals listed by Bodin; see UNT, p. 406. While Fougerolles copies Bodin's "igneumon," Charron gives a translation ("rat d'lnde"); and while Fougerolles identifies Bodin's "Aegythus" ("cerein"), Charron translates it crudely ("Egypte oiseau"). Cf. F582-83. The same conclusion is reached in Philippe Ducoux, "Genese et evolution de La Sagesse de Pierre Charron" (These de doctorat, Universite FranQois Rabelais, Tours, 1992), p. 508 who notes Charron's use of Bodin's term "alacritas" which Fougerolles avoids in a paraphrase. Compare Charron, De la Sagesse, 1, chap. 3, p. 59 (lower half of the page); UNT, p. 416; F597. 103. See J.-B. Sabrie, De Yhumamsme au rationalisme: Pierre Charron (1541-1603): L'homme, I'oeuvre, I'influence (Paris: Felix Alcan, 1913), pp. 255-84. 104. See, e.g., Charron, Discours Chretiens, part 3, pp. 205-308. 105. I show how self-presentation (as an explicit opponent of Aristotle or as a faithful follower) played an important role in making criticisms of Aristotle seem acceptable, in "Tradition and Innovation in Early Modern Natural Philosophy: Jean Bodin and JeanCecile Frey," Perspectives on Science 2 (1994): 428-54. 106. Charron also draws from the Republique, concerning the ways of maintaining the state, for example. See Philippe Ducoux, "Genese et evolution de La Sagesse de Pierre Charron" (These de doctorat, Universite Frangois Rabelais, Tours, 1992), p. 1139, n. 175. 107. Levi, French Moralists, p. 97. On Mersenne and Dupleix, see above, pp 90, 93. 108. Mordechai Feingold, The Mathematicians' Apprenticeship: Science, Universities and Society in England 1560-1640 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), p. 74; Vivian Green, The Commonwealth of Lincoln College 1427-1977 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979), pp. 678-79 (I owe this reference to Mordechai Feingold). 109. See the letter by Robert Cornier to Mersenne on September 21, 1625, requesting to see the "paper on weights" as soon as he could find it again, Correspondance du P. Marin Mersenne, ed. Comelis de Waard and Rene Pintard, vol. 1. (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1945), pp. 294-95.

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110. Pierre Petit, L'usage ou Ie moyen de pratiquer par une regie toutes Ies operations du compos de proportion (Paris: Melchior Mondiere, 1634) as described in Correspondance du P. Marin Mersenne, 1:300. On p. 10 Petit refers to the hollowing out of a bone in order to weigh mercury, as described by Bodin, but he does not mention Bodin's name. Louis Savot, L'architecture franQoise des bastimens particuliers (Paris: Cramoisy, 1624), p. 317, cites Bodin explicitly: "Tout ce que dessus pour Ie regard des metaux a este tire de Monsieur I'Evesque de Candale, et pour Ies autres de Tartaglia, Pisgafetta, Ghetaldus et Bodin, Textrait m'en ayant este donn6 par Ie Sieur Aleaume, ingenieur du Roy." Also quoted in Correspondance du P. Marin Mersenne, 1:247-48. Savot's source, the royal engineer Aleaume, also mentions Bodin in a similar passage on specific weights, Bibliotheque Sainte-Genevieve, MS 2289, final section. Cf. UNT, pp. 260-61. 111. As discussed in chapter 3, p. 101; see Joannes Kepler, "Anhang des Visierbuchleins," in Messekunst Archimedis (Linz: Hansen Blancken, 1616) reprinted in Gesammelte Werke, ed. Max Caspar (Munich: C. H. Beck, 1937-), 9:264. Kepler is also critical of Bodin's arithmetical arguments about harmonic proportions and justice in the Republique, see below, epilogue, note 6. 112. See the classic formulation of this point in Thomas Kuhn, "Mathematical versus Experimental Traditions in the Development of Physical Science," in The Essential Tension (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977), pp 31-65. 113. Lohr1 "Metaphysics," p. 638. 114. Rixner ex libris in copy at Luneburg Ratsbucherei, as discussed in note 12 above. Eglingerus ex libris in copy at Universitatsbibliothek, Basel. "Sam. Eglinger: D. anno 1663 foelix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas!" This is a quotation from Vergil's Georgics 2. 490. The notes in his copy suggest that he was particularly interested in Bodin's refutation of Copernicus and in the animate nature of the celestial bodies. 115. Yale University Library, F508. 1 owe this information to Jean Ceard. 116. Lettres de Jean Chapelain, ed. Philippe Tamizey de Larroque, vol. 2 (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1883), p. 826. Avariant is mentioned according to which Chapelain would have only seen a copy of the work ("J'ay vu encore de Iuy . . ."). On Chapelain, see Christian Jouhaud, "Sur Ie statut d'homme de lettres au XVIIt siecle: La correspondence de Jean Chapelain (1595-1674)," Annales: Histoire, Sciences Sociales 2 (1994): 311-47 117. "Conringius, epistola ad Jo. Cappellanum: quod (Bodinus) naturae theatrum inscripsit, pauloque ante obitum edidit, pridem mihi lectum fuit et quantivis pretii aestimatum." The quotation is provided in librarians' notes (probably from the eighteenth century) in a copy of the Theatrum at the Staatsbibliothek in Munich; I am grateful to the respondent to my questionnaire there for this information and to Martin Mulsow for help in trying to elucidate a source. Unfortunately, I have not been able to identify one. On Conring, see Michael Stolleis, ed., Hermann Conring (1606-81): Beitrage zu Leben und Werk (Berlin: Duncker und Humblot, 1983). 118. "Utinam vero ad recentiorem hanc aetatem stilum filumque producas et admoneas inconsultam iuventutem nostram neque omnia neque nihil novatoribus tribuenda esse. Bagheminus non solus est cui censor debeare; sunt Patricii, Telesii, Campanellae, Bodini, Nizolii, Fracastorii, Cardani, Galilaei, Verulamii, Gassendi, Hobbii, Cartesii, Bassonis, Digbaei, Sennerti, Sperlingii, Derodones, Deusingii et multa alia nomina in quae philosophiae pallium distrahitur." Leibniz to Jac. Thomasius, April 20/30, 1669, in Die philosophischen Schriften von G. W. Leibniz, ed. Carl Immanuel Gerhardt, vol. 1 (Berlin: Weidmannsche Buchhandlung, 1875), p. 15; as discussed in Giovanni Santinello et al., Models of the His-

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tory of Philosophy: From Its Origins in the Renaissance to the 'Historia Philosophia', ed. C.W.T. Blackwell (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1993), p. 425. 119. James Logan of Philadelphia, a businessman with broad interests, purchased a copy of the 1605 edition in 1749 (now in the collection of the Library Company, Philadelphia) . See Edwin Wolf II, The Library of James Logan of Philadelphia (1674-1751) (Philadelphia: Library Company of Philadelphia, 1974), p. 61. A work treating Bodin from a historical perspective is Lyser Polycarpus, Selecta de vita et scriptis Joannis Bodini (Wittenberg: Samuel Kreusig, 1715). 120. "II est visible qu'il y a une faute a 'illustrium virorum,' ou que Bodin donne a ces mots-ta un sens tout particulier; car Ie sens ordinaire d'Hommes illustres ne convient pas a ce qui suit, c'est a dire a ces siecles innombrables de vie passez sur la terre que Bodin accorde aux Esprits dont il fait mention. Disons done qu'il veut parler des Genies, ou des Anges, et qu'il suppose qu'ils sont sujets a la mort." Bayle, "Bodin" in Dictxonnaire historique et critique, note (O) in Methodus, p. xxxiv. Bayle is responding to Vossius' criticism of this passage as impious in Gerard Vossius, De Theologie gentile et physiologia Christiana sive de origine et progressu idololatriae (Amsterdam: Johannes Blaeu11668), book 3, chap. 9, p, 386. See UNT, p. 221. 121 Observationum selectarum ad rem litterarium spectantium, ed. Christian Thomasius, vol. 5 (Halle: Libraria Rengeriana, 1702), p. 99. 122. "C'est un livre d'une detestable physique, duquel la critique la plus indulgente ne trouverait rien de bon a extraire." Henri Baudrillart, Jean Bodin et son temps (Paris: Guillaumin, 1853), p. 189. 123 A number of other copies are partially annotated, e.g., at the University of Geneva, through p. 33. Most readers annotated only a fraction of the books they owned. Robert Burton, for example, annotated some 20 percent of the seventeen hundred books in his library; see Nicholas H. Kiessling, The Library of Robert Burton, as discussed, with further examples, in William H. Sherman, John Dee: The Politics of Reading and Writing in the English Renaissance (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1995), p. 80. For a study linking underlined and annotated passages with those quoted in a disputation see David McKitterick, ed., Andrew Perne: Quatercentenary Studies (Cambridge: Cambridge Bibliographical Society, 1991) as cited in Sherman, John Dee, p. 67. 124. Copy at Wolfenbuttel, shelfmark M237.8 Helmst. Further references to this work will cite Granius and the relevant page number in his copy of the Theatrum. Granius presided over disputations on meteors at Rostock in 1596: De meteoris disputationes 4, breviter explicantes libros 3 Aris. Meteorologicos, quas in celebri Academia Rostochiensi sub praesidio Nicolai Andreae Cranii Stregensis, privatim defendebat Ulfo nobilis viri Christophori Andreae a Ste/ia in Smolandia filius (Liibeck: haeredes Assuveri Crogen, 1596). Theses defended

under Granius can be found published at Helmstedt from 1604 until 1608. 125. Copy in British Library, shelfmark 536.b.4. Further references to this work will cite Casaubon and the relevant page number in the Theatrum. On Casaubon, see Jean Jehasse, La Renaissance de la critique: Lessor de I'humanisme erudit de 1560 a 1614 (SaintEtienne: Publications de I'Universite de Saint-Etienne, 1976); Anthony Grafton, "Protestant versus Prophet: Isaac Casaubon on Hermes Trismegistus," and "The Strange Deaths of Hermes and the Sibyls," in Defenders of the Text: The Traditions of Scholarship in an Age of Science, 1450-1800 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1991), pp. 145-77. 126. Sherman, John Dee, pp. 71, 80. "Adversaria" is the term given by Casaubon himself, and by librarians since, to the signs of active reading left in the blank spaces of books. Following Sherman, see Mark Pattison, Isaac Casaubon (1559-1614) (London: Longmans,

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Green, 1875), pp. 481-82: " 'Casaubon's way,' Grotius tells Camerarius, 'was not to write out what he designed to publish, but to trust to his memory, with at least a few jottings, partly on the margins of his books, partly on loose sheets—true sibylline leaves.'" Pattison cites Grotius Epp. app. ep. 184. 127. A complete transcription of these annotations, by myself and Jean Ceard, is included in an appendix to my dissertation, "Restaging Jean Bodin: The Universae naturae theatrum (1596) in its Cultural Context" (Ph.D. diss., Princeton University, 1990), pp. 554-609. Further references to his annotations will cite the "Ceard annotator" and the relevant page number in the Theatrum (which can in turn be used to find the quotation in the above-mentioned appendix). 1 will refer to this anonymous annotator as the "Ceard annotator" and will use the masculine pronoun to refer to him, since the odds on the reader's being a woman are extremely slim. The later notes will be designed "hand 2"; that they are posterior to the others is clear from p. 346 in which hand 2 finished a note begun by hand 1 over an erasure. The two do not disagree with one another but present a coherent set of annotations and I will treat them as such. For a discussion of books likely annotated by the same person in successive sittings, see Sherman, John Dee, p. 77. All but two of the four ex libris on the title page are illegible: Daniel Gralicius? Then, more recent: "domus prob. S.J. Viennae ad S. Annam Catalogo inscriptus 1699." The latter inscription presumably designates a probatory house of the Jesuits of Vienna (Austria). From the fact that the reader replaces Bodin's "vulgo" with "gallice" (p. 289) one can deduce that he was not French. He offers an Italian translation at one point: "gatto zibetto" for Bodin's sibetus (p. 344). His spelling of "Solomo" (p. 403), instead of the more usual "Salomo" may indicate that he was Protestant (as discussed above in note 35 above). The notes are in a small, neat italic hand. It is possible to identify from the page numbers some editions that he might have used (other editions may have identical pagination however): Bodin, Methodus (Basel: Jacob Stoer, 1595) (p. 186); Demonomania (Frankfurt: Wolfgang Richter, 1603) (p. 230); Scaliger, Exotericarum exercitationum liber XV (Paris: Frederic Morel, 1557) (p. 329); Cardano1 De varietate (Avignon: Matthaeus Vincentius, 1558) (p. 329). Hand 2 also gives a page reference that corresponds to Bodin's Republica (Frankfurt: haeredes Petri Fischeri, 1609) (p. 357). 128. For comparison, see Sherman ,John Dee, pp. 66-78. 129. Among the Ceard annotator's excellent corrections: "parcere" for "parere" (p. 348), or "Igneus" for "Ingens" (p. 391); he also corrects punctuation (the excessive italics on p. 440) or the spelling of Greek and Hebrew words (e.g., p. 58). At times he overcorrects, as when he changes "noluntas" into "voluntas" (p. 469). Emending a puzzling passage in Bodm's original, he changes "digitos" to "dictos" (p. 420, 1. 2) to make sense of Bodin's claim that six is the only perfect number among the "numeros digitos"—Fougerolles inventively interprets these as the numbers that one can reach with one's fingers (" [nombres] digitaux"), but the expression would be highly unusual (F602) Both the Ceard annotator and Fougerolles speculate also to make sense of Bodin's passage on p. 509,11. 10-12. The Ceard annotator suggests substituting "pedes" for the second occurrence of "manus" (1.12), while Fougerolles changes the first "manus" (1.10) to "coeur" (F734). Casaubon suggests a few emendations as well: "respondit" for "reposuit" on p. 261; "sugeret" for "sugere" on p. 429. Among corrections of references are "ca. 21, v. 9" for "ca. 2." in a reference to Numbers (p. 266); or, on Theophrastus, "II, 17" for "II, 16" (p. 276). The annotator matches Bodm's enumerations, e.g., by marking "1," "2," "3," for each point made; Ceard annotations, pp. 127, 208. On p. 135 the Ceard annotator counts five where Bodin had announced four types of animals with wings.

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When Theorus asks whether drinking gold would make one live longer and better, Mystagogus replies: "how could that be, when an eternal flame could hardly take anything away from the essence of gold?" The annotator adds: "much less then could the human intestine [take something away from the gold]" (p. 265). Or he addresses the second half of a question that Bodin forgets in asking why women are more lascivious in the summer and in the evening and men in the winter and in the morning: "he forgot to answer about evening and morning. But the same reason appears to hold. Indeed the male is excessively heated from his daily movements, but the cold quality of the female is tempered" (p. 388). 130. Granius enumerates Bodin's arguments against Aristotle's exhalation theory: "comets do not come from exhalations because 1. [exhalations] do not rise high enough; 2. [exhalations] do not stick together; 3. because comets of the same material differ in color." Granius, p. 218; also p. 410. For dichotomous diagrams, see pp. 581, 452, 593, 272. An example (p. 530): a substantial part of man The active intellect is either

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Evidently Bodin was less of a Ramist than some of his readers. 131. Granius translates some bird names into his native Swedish: "Sprinck rountzall; fringilla- bosfinck; fang sprinck, biorkrast" (pp. 367-69). Casaubon uses French: "Stibi, antimoine," "cuivre," and "imagination" for "phantasia" (pp. 251, 266, 466); the Ceard annotator, Italian: "gatto zibetto" (p. 344). 132. For their belief that small eels are males—Bodin maintains that eels do not have males and females; Ceard annotator, p. 330. 133. Pliny is proud to list the authors used as sources in his work. These lists of names appear (without page references) in various places depending on the edition: e.g., at the end of each book (see Pliny, Natural History, trans. John Bostock and Η. T. Riley [London: Henry G. Bohn, 1855-571) or in the table of contents, at the end of the list of chapters for each book (see Pliny, Histonae mundi libri XXXVII [Frankfurt: Claudius Marnius et haeredes Joan. Aubrij, 1608], pp. 12-56, passim). See also Zwinger's "Index autorum," in Theatrum humanae vitae (Basel: Henricpetri, 1604). 134. "p. 190. de scaturigine fontium; p. 197 de salsugine maris; p. 210 de tomtru ex collisione nubium hoc irridet B.; p. 217 de generatione cometarum satis acerbe [sharp criticism] ; 387 ineptias vocat [on the voice of castrated men]; 434 definitionem animae; 459 de numero sensuum et quod amarum ac salsum confuderit; 470 illud scientia et quod scitur idem est." Casaubon, second flyleaf. "Apologia huperAr. tentatur." Casaubon, p. 60 (Greek transliteration added). 135. "Aristotelem inique vellicat 454, 627." Granius, flyleaf. Bodin criticizes Aristotle on p. 454 for calling sense both active and passive in turn and on p. 627 for his absurd opinion that God must be an eternally moving sphere. 136. He notes references to Plato (Casaubon, pp. 149, 144, 444), Rondelet (p. 331), Gesner (p. 394), Vitellio (p. 464), Aquinas (p. 471), Scotus (p. 503), and Pico's Adelandus (p. 476). For "noluntas," see Scaliger, Exercitationum exotericarum liber XV (Frankfurt: Wechel, 1582), exercitatio CCCXV. The Ceard annotator takes it as a misprint for "voluntas."

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137. "Et qui sciunt quid sit sauter la mine " Casaubon, p. 174,1. 30. 138. Έ putrefacto caseo vermiculi nati similiter in muscas degenerant. Ipse vidi in canicularibus collocato caseo in calido et sicco loco." Granius, p. 301. A similar comment from lived experience was elicited from a French reader about elephant tusks, see note 115 above (Yale Library). 139. "Cur castratis vox acutior, Gallis et Bobus gravior? ut et Germanis quam Aethiopibus"; "Tali [nigro] colore scribunt historici fuisse Calvinum, Scaligerum." Ceard annotator, pp. 387, 408. 140. There are instances of marginal annotations that were designed to circulate to other contemporaries, however: such as the four copies of Copernicus' De revolutionibus annotated by Wittich, see Owen Gingerich and Robert S. Westman, The Wittich Connec­ tion: Conflict and Priority in Late Sixteenth-Century Cosmology, Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, vol. 78, part 7 (Philadelphia, 1988); or the annotations of professional "readers" like Gabriel Harvey, see Anthony Grafton and Lisa Jardine, " 'Studied for Action': How Gabriel Harvey Read his Livy," Past and Present, no. 129 (1990): 30-78. 141. The much less careful annotator of the copy in the Universitatsbibliothek Basel: on p. 153 he refers to Pliny 9.42 and 32.1 on the torpedo; on p. 186 to Pliny 37.18 and 25.13 on molybdena. 142. Hieronymus Magius, Variarum lectionum seu miscellaneorum libri IlIl (Venice: Iordanus Zilettus, 1564). Ceard annotator, p. 205. Caesarius Heisterbachensis, Illustrium miraculorum et historiarum memorabilium libri XII (Cologne: A. Mylius, 1591), p. 264, among other places. Ceard annotator, p. 535. Caelius Rhodiginus, Lectionum antiquarum libri XXX (Geneva: Philippus Albertus, 1620), XIII, 17, p. 887a. Ceard annotator, p. 407 143. "Ioh. Pena aut hinc transcnpsit eadem verba in Epist. ad Cardinal. Lotting, de usu optices, aut Bodinus ex illo inde." Indeed Pena does reject Copernicus' argument m the same way Bodin does, although with no overlap of specific phrases: "At Copernicus, vir certe mire sagax, sed in hoc minus oculatus, cum has Ptolemaei distantias examinaret, eas inde reprehendit, quia cum maximae ad minimam ratio dupla fere sit, diametrum quoque Lunae perigeae, duplo maiorem videri oportuerit diametro Lunae apogeae. Quae Copernici argumentatio fallax est: neque enim si duae sint aequales magnitudines, quarum altera centum, altera ducentis passibus a te distet necesse est duplo maiorem cerni propiorem magnitudinem, quam remotiorem: neque id ulla Optices Geometriaeve demonstratio docet: imo vero dictat Optica ars, Aequales magnitudines ab oculo inaequaliter distantes, habere minorem rationem angulorum, sub quibus cemuntur, quam distantiarum. Unde etiam colligitur, fieri posse, ut Ptolemaei distantiae verae sint, et tamen diametri Lunae haud magnopere discrepent." Johan Pena, preface "De usu optices" in Euclidis optica et catoptrica, trans, into Latin by J. Pena (Paris: A. Wechel, 1557), sig. bb recto. 144. On motion and rest: "Motus et quies non contraria. Ipse turn vocat contraria. v. p. 138." Casaubon, p. 101. On sap and the sweetness of fruits, see Ceard annotator, pp. 279, 284, as discussed in chapter 2, p. 74. 145. "Chelae cancrorum. s[ed] aliam causam habes." Casaubon, p. 404. On Castor and Pollux, p. 211, Casaubon leaves blank the notation "vide p." The missing page number should be 336. 146. UNT: "Ut quidem videmus leges innumerabiles de testamentis ac iure successorio nulla ratione rogari, abrogari, aut iis subrogari, obrogari, derogari, quae tamen uno capite divinae legis summa aequitate velut a stirpe convelluntur" (fol. 3r). And "sed congerendi, ingerendi, digerendi, egerendi, augendi actus sunt animae vegetatricis" (p. 490). 147. See Terence, Eunuchus 1.295, Andria 1.984; Plautus, Casina 1.686, Epidicus 1.491. 148. "In quo rerum omnium effectrices causae, et fines contemplantur, et continuae se-

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ries qumque libris discutiuntur." On "contemplantur": "Plaut. et Ennius contemplo active." Granius, title page 149. Granius, pp. 178, 217, flyleaf. 150. Casaubon, p. 231; he flags a confession of ignorance on p. 88. 151. Ceard annotator, p. 318; cf. also his praise of divine providence on p. 27 152. "Quam inepte de Themistio." Casaubon, p. 482, 1. 30. Indeed Themistius was a Peripatetic of the fourth century CE. 153. This comparison can also be found in Montaigne, Essais, 3 vols., ed. Pierre Villey (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France), II, 12, p. 469; Montaigne's source has been identified as Plutarch, trans. Amyot, "Quels animaux sont Ies plus advisez" in Les oeuvres morales et meslees de Plutarque (Paris: Vascosan, 1575), chap. 58, fol. 519r. See also Rabelais, Le quart livre, ii, as cited by Villey in Montaigne, Essais, p. 1280. 154. On the flyleaf facing the title page Casaubon takes notes on the passages but complains: "p. 226 de mundi nexibus et veluti gradibus p. 270 Bod. vult videri primum id observasse: multa ineptia"—and later: "499 hoti anima hominis media natura est inter res corporeas et non corporeas. Nova philosophia [ironic] et 518 et 510." (Greek transliteration added—reproduced in figure 6.) 155. He notes: "[all white things] of this type [are bad]. Indeed every universal statement is dangerous, since it was explained that diamond is white, as above [p.230]" Cfeard annotator, p. 235, He also notes that Vesalius denies what Bodin says about the position of a fetus in the uterus (p. 428). 156. See also annotations to pp. 372 (on the interpretation of crows as demons: "rabbinic interpretation"), 540 (on the sacrifice to the leper: "allegorical and anagogical interpretations"), 551 (on using Ezekiel to show that the heavens are animate: "but that was a prophetic vision!"). Casaubon complains once of "nugae rabbinicae" (p. 16 on "Metatron"), and flags references to Judaism (the Hebrew positions on the soul, p. 497, and the laws on fish, p. 333), but has no reaction to these passages. 157. E.g., why is the wet nurse ready with milk just as the baby cries? Either the milk was replenished in the same time that the infant digested his earlier meal, or the genie protecting the child warned the nurse of the child's hunger. "I prefer the first reason," he remarks (Cfeard annotator, p. 430). 158. Casaubon occasionally writes notes in Greek on Bodm's Latin text, ostensibly to be more concise. E g., for p. 202: "Aqua septies corrupta aphthartos tou loipou." for Bodin's "[aqua septies corrupta] totiesque puritati restituta, corrumpi postea non potest." (Greek transliteration added; see figure 6.) For other examples of annotations in Greek, see JeanClaude Margolin, "Sur quelques ouvrages de la bibliotheque de Postel annotes de sa main," in Guillaume Postel 1581-1981, Actes du Colloque d'Avranches (Paris: Tredaniel, 1985), pp. 109-30. 159. See, for example, Bernard Palissy, Discours admirable des eaux etfontaines (Paris: M. Ie Jeune, 1580); Ambroise Pare, Apologie et traite in Oeuvres (1585; facsimile, Paris: Trinckvel, 1977). With less fanfare, natural historians like Pierre Belon and GuilIaume Rondelet wrote in both French and Latin, and even Latin authors in the field introduced vernacular translations of species names, in their effort to describe the species they saw and match them with the ancient names (a process with obvious practical importance when it came to identifying the ingredients for ancient recipes). For a more detailed discussion of language choices in scientific fields, see my article "La persistance du latin comme langue de science a la fin de la Renaissance," Sciences et langues en Europe, ed. Roger Chartier and Pietro Corsi (Paris: Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, 1996), pp. 21-42.

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160. Bodin, "Oratio de instituenda in Repub. juventute ad senatum populumque Tolosatem," Methodus, p. 21 (Latin), p. 52 (French). 161. The royal decree of Villers-Cotterets of 1539 declared French the official language of the realm, and required it for all legal documents and proceedings. The measure was designed to oust not Latm as much as the local dialects that pervaded most of the regions of France beyond the lle-de-France. In Toulouse this decree hastened a linguistic transformation of the urban culture. After the Floral Games of Toulouse were condemned in du Bellay's Dejfence et Illustration for rewarding "corrupt language," they crowned Ronsard m 1554 and thereafter only French poets. This policy of Frenchification among the notables did not prevent a concurrent revival of literary Occitan. See Robert A. Schneider, Public Life in Toulouse 1463-1789: From Municipal Republic to Cosmopolitan City (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1989), pp. 45-47. For a broader study of the relations between French and the other dialects and languages in France during the early modern period see David A. Bell, "Lingua populi, lingua dev. Language, Religion, and the Origins of French Revolutionary Nationalism," American Historical Review 100 (1995): 1403-37. 162. A point made by Christopher Baxter, "Jean Bodin's De la Demonomanie des sorciers: The Logic of Persecution," in The Damned Art: Essays in the Literature of Witchcraft, ed. Sydney Anglo (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1977), pp. 79-80 163. Republique, I, preface, p. 10. Monter notes how, in his polemical works on witchcraft and inflation (the Reponse aux Paradoxes de Malestroit), Bodin presents himself "as a layman"; that pose might be compromised by composing in Latin. William Monter, "Inflation and Witchcraft: The Case of Jean Bodin," Action and Conviction in Early Modem Eu­ rope: Essays in Memory ofE. H. Harbison, ed. Theodore Rabb and Jerrold Seigel (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1969), p. 383. 164. In the process of translating the Republique Bodin introduced many interesting changes, notably reducing the national context of his discussion. See Kenneth McRae, introduction to Bodin, Six Bookes of a Commonweale, trans. Richard Knolles (1606; facsimile, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1962), section A. For more on the widespread but little-studied practice of translation from vernacular to Latin, see W. Leonard Grant, "European Vernacular Works in Latin Translation," Studies in the Renaissance 1 (1954): 120-56; J. W. Binns, "Latin Translations from English in Renaissance England, 1550-1640," Res Publica Litterarum: Studies in the Classical Tradition 5 (1982): 25-40. In the Paradoxe . .. qu'il n'y a pas une seule vertu en mediocrite (Paris: Denys du Val, 1598), Bodin remarks that "one always prefers one's own language to a foreign one." ("on aime tousiours mieux Ie citoyen que l'estranger.") See Jean Bodin: Selected Writings on Religion, Philosophy and Politics, ed. Paul L. Rose (Geneva: Droz, 1980), p. 43. 165. Archives Departementales du Rhone, BP 400, sentence du 31 mai 1597. I am grateful to Jean Ceard, Natalie Davis, and Jean Dupebe for help in transcribing this document, and to Tom Luckett for procuring it for me. For a fuller presentation of this and the two other legal documents generated by the case (Archives Departementales du Rhone 3E3705, June 4 and July 23, 1597), see my "Restaging Jean Bodin," pp. 16—22. I am also planning an article on the topic for the Bulletin du bibliophile. This kind of double remuneration in money and in kind was typical, but five silver Scus in cash was probably a low amount for a translation, which would usually have been well paid (e.g., on the order of ten ecus for a work of this scale). See Annie Parent, Les metiers du Iivre a Paris au XVI' siecle (1535-60) (Geneva: Droz, 1974), pp. 99-110. 166. Archives DSpartementales du Rhone, 3E3705, Notaire Combet, June 4.1 am grateful to Jean Ceard and Kristin Gager for help in transcribing this document. On the habit of submitting manuscripts in cahiers of three or four folio sheets folded in two, see Jeanne

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Veyrin-Forrer, "Fabriquer un livre," La lettre et Ie texte: Trente annees de recherches sur I'histoire du livre (Paris: Ecole Normale Superieure de Jeunes Filles, 1987), p. 279. 167. Fougerolles was probably a difficult character. Without any reference to this particular incident, the biographer of his patron noted: "II n'estoit pas toujours traittable." Nicolas Chorier, La vie d'Artus Prurder de Saint-Andre (Paris: Picard, 1880; text originally composed m 1682), p. 237. 168. The Physique franQoise of Lambert Daneau (Geneva: Eustace Vignon, 1581) is a collection of translations of treatments of "physics" from the early Christian period, including the pseudo-Aristotelian De mundo and works by John Damascene and Basil. 169. Champaignac, Physique frangoise (Bordeaux: S. Millanges, 1595), preface. Itis dedicated to Iacquete de Mombrom, dame des Vicomtes de Boudeille et dAunay et des Baronnies d'Archiac et Mathas, et Castellenies de la Tour Blanche et Sertonville Champaignac's only other publication is a Traite de Vimmortalite de I'ame (Bordeaux: S. Millanges, 1597). 170. Dupleix, Corps de philosophie (Geneva: B. Labbe, 1623), then three editions to 1645; Cours de philosophie (Paris: C. Somnius, 1626 and 1632); Theophraste Bouju, Corps de toutes Ies philosophies (Paris: C. Chastellain, 1614); Rene de Ceriziers, Le philosophe frangais (Paris: A. de Sommaville, 1643), then two editions to 1658. 171. Bouju, for example, rejected fire as an element and argued against the heterogeneity of the sub- and superlunary spheres. See Roger Anew, "Aristotelianism in the Seventeenth Century," Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy (forthcoming). 172. Pintard, Le libertinage erud.it, pp. 42-43. On the condemnation of 1624, see Daniel Garber, "Making a Place for Dissent: Aristotelianism and Anti-Aristotelianism in Early Seventeenth-Century Pans," and "On the Front-Lines of the Scientific Counter-Revolution: Defending Aristotle, Paris-Style," unpublished papers to appear in a book in progress. 173. See Howard Solomon, Public Welfare, Science, and Propaganda in Seventeenth-Cen­ tury France (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1972). 174. Although the dates of his service are unclear, Fougerolles speaks in the dedicatory epistle of having already been obliged to Prumer for "so many years." (F+4v) He also compliments the father on the progress of his son (F+5r). Concerning his service with Prunier see Chorier, La vie dArtus Prunier, pp 293, 155. He had previously practiced medicine in Lyon, according to Breghot du Lut and Pericaud aine, Biographie lyonnaise: Catalogue des Lyonnais digues de memoire (Paris: Techener, and Lyon: Giberton & Brun, 1839), s.v. Fougerolles. See also Adolphe Masimbert, "Artus Prunier de Saint-Andre, sa bibliotheque et son bibliothecaire," Petite revue des bibliophiles dauphinois, 2d ser., 2 (1925-26): 189-96; he notes that the library is mentioned in Louis Jacob, Traicte des plus belles bibliothtques (Paris: R. Le Due, 1644), p. 647, and describes some of the manuscripts in the collection. An eighteenth-century catalogue of the collection does not include any works by Bodin or Fougerolles, however; see Saint-Andre de Virieu, "Catalogue des livres de ma bibliotheque" (1749), Bibliotheque Municipale, Grenoble, Ms R8885. On Fougerolles' medical training, see V. L. Saulnier, "Medecins de Montpellier au temps de Rabelais," Bibliotheque d'humanisme et Renaissance 19 (1957): 458. Edmond Maignien, "Reliure aux armes des freres Louis et Frangois de Galles," Petite revue des bibliophiles dauphinois, 1st ser., 2 (1908-9): 25 reports an engraving of Fougerolles by La Roussiere, which I was unable to find in Grenoble or among the prints by La Roussiere at the Bibliotheque Nationale. 175. Prunier is praised for his erudition in Latin, Greek, and even Hebrew, by Guy Allard, Dictionnaire du Dauphine, 2 vols. (Grenoble: Edouard Allier, 1864), 2:437. My biographical sketch is drawn from the detailed account of Chorier, originally composed in 1682. For some more information on his family, which settled in the Dauphine in the midsixteenth centuiy, see Jacques Mourier et Sophie Malavieille, "De l'Anjou au Dauphine:

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Iriiteraire gen£alogique d'un noble au XVIIIe siecle," Evocations (Grenoble) (1991): 157—67, esp. 158-59. On February 15, 1594, Prunier wrote to Henry IV that "Monsieur de Chevriferes Sainct Chaumont has upheld your affairs here with all his power and has long since given proof of his fidelity," as quoted m Chorier La vie d'Artus Prunier, pp. 323-24. Rewards, in money and offices, were planned for Chevrieres in the king's instructions to Prunier; ibid., pp. 354-59. On Chevrieres, see chapter 1, pp. 18-19. 176. Le DiogZne franQais tire du grec (Lyon: Huguetan, 1601, reedited 1602); De senum afjecttbus praecavendis nonnullisque curandis enarratio (Lyon: I. de Gabiano et Laur. Durand, 1610); Methodus in septem aphorismorum libros ab Hippocrate observata (Paris: Adrien Perier, 1612); De non necandis ad epulandum animantibus libri IIII (Lyon: Claude Morillon, 1620). 177. Fougerolles, Reglements sur I'exercice de la medecine en la province de Dauphine1 par nos seigneurs de la souveraine cour de Parlement au diet pays (Lyon: Claude Morillon, 1608). For the apothecaries' protest, see Archives Municipales de Grenoble, BB76, fol. 92v (August 21, 1609); also Rene Riviere, "Les maitres apothicaires en Dauphine des origines a la revolution frangaise" (These soutenue devant la Faculte de medecine et de pharmacie, Lyon, 1947), p. 94. In the same year royal letters authorized the formation of a college of medicine which was to be the origin of the medical school in Grenoble See Dr. A. Bordier, La medecine a Grenoble: Notes pour servir a lhistoire de I'Ecole de Medecine et de Phar­ macie (Grenoble: Veuve Rigaudin, 1896), pp. 42-44, 49. 178. According to Edmond Maignien, "Reiiure aux armes des freres Louis et Frangois de Galles," p. 25, Fougerolles visited the de Galles brothers frequently, and Frangois arranged Fougerolles' marriage to Catherine Porret, widow of another noted doctor, the sieur de Laye; at her death Fougerolles married Claudine Jacqueline, the lady of the manor of Vergeron. For the trial to establish his nobility in 1612, see Archives Departementales de l'Isere, 2E1052. 179. The ode writers are identified as: I. A. Amyot Melleraieos Maihematikdn; D. Ioyse Advocat au grand Conseil; I. Hemichenus Arvernus Iuriseonsultus; L. Gillon Bourbonnois Professeur en droict; Petrus Vimarus, Lugdunensis Doctor M.; Philippe d'Avesnes, de Berry. (Greek transliteration added.) Two of them wrote odes in later works published by Pillehotte, which suggests that the printer tapped them when working on the front matter for other authors. L. Gillon (professor of law from Bourbonnais) authored a quatrain in Frangois Humblot (Minim), La dispute solennelle agitee en la maison de ville de Mascon entre FF Humblot Minime et Th. Cassegrain Ministre (Lyon: Pillehotte, 1598). Pierre Vimar, medical doctor in Lyon, and a Protestant (information from Natalie Davis), wrote hendecasyllables in Jacques Pons, De Nimis licentiosa ac liberaliore intempestivaque sanguinis missione (Lyon: Pillehotte, 1600). I owe this information to the very detailed catalogue of the Bibliotheque Municipale de Lyon. 180. For some recent work on translation of philosophical texts from Latin to vernacular in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, see (along with the articles with which they are published): Serge Lusignan, "La topique de la translatio studii et les traductions frangaises de textes savants au XIVc siecle," Traduction et Traducteurs au Moyen Age Actes du colloque international du CNRS (Paris: CNRS, 1986), pp. 303-15; Paul Chavy, "Les traductions humanistes au debut de la Renaissance frangaise: Traductions medievales, traductions modemes," Revue canadxenne de litterature comparee 8 (1981), special issue, ed. Eva Kushner and Paul Chavy, pp. 284-98; Frangois Berriot, "Langue, nation et pouvoir: Les traducteurs du XVIt siecle precurseurs des humanistes de la Renaissance," Langues et na­ tions au temps de la Renaissance, ed. Marie-ThereseJones-Davies (Paris: Klinksieck, 1991), pp. 113-35; Lys Ann Shore, "A Case Study in Medieval Nonliterary Translation: Scientific

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Texts from Latin to French," Medieval Translators and their Craft, ed Jeanette Beer (Kalamazoo, Mich.: Medieval Institute Publications, 1989), pp. 297-328; more generally, NeoLatin and the Vernacular in Renaissance France, ed. Grahame Castor and Terence Cave (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984). 181. 1 have not been able to trace Portal or Guillemin. Gaspard Gay of Die (1560-1606), or possibly his younger brother Antoine (1571- after 1600), came from a Protestant family involved in the silk trade. In 1597 Gaspard became member of the general council of Die. Dictionnaire de Biographie FranQaise, vol. 5 (Pans: Letouzez et Ane, 1982), pp. 887, 892, 901 (nos. 1, 10, 26). 182. The surgeon Ambroise Pare, for example, was attacked by the medical faculty of Paris for publishing in French, see The Apologie and Treatise of Ambroise Pari, ed. Geoffrey Keynes (New York: Dover, 1968), p. xix. In publishing in French doctors could both disseminate knowledge and help to reinforce the authority of physicians over surgeons and lay people; see Natalie Z. Davis, "Printing and the People," pp. 222-25 and "Proverbial Wisdom and Popular Errors," pp. 258-67, in Society and Culture in Early Modern France (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1975). Also Vivian Nutton, "Humanist Surgery," in The Medical Renaissance of the Sixteenth Century, ed. Andrew Wear et al. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), pp. 85-87, on Jacques Dalechamps' French translations of Greek surgical texts. On the politics of vernacular translations outside science, see Glyn Norton, "The Politics of Translation in Early Renaissance France: Confrontations of Policy and Theory during the Reign of Francis 1," Die literansche Obersetzung: Fallstudien zu ihrer Kulturgeschichte, ed. Brigitte Schultze (Berlin: Erich Schmidt Verlag, 1987), pp. 1-13. 183. Masimbert mentions among Fougerolles' enemies an associate whom Fougerolles despised, and a rival for the position of "maitre general jure en chirurgie" which he obtained from the king and which entitled him to examine all surgeons in the province. Adolphe Masimbert, "Artus Prunier de Saint-Andre," p. 194. "Monsieur Saporte, Conseiller et Medecin du Roy" helped him to advance to the doctorate at the "illustrious university of Montpellier, in which he is not only like a star, but also like a Sun lighting up with the rays of his divine wisdom the whole hemisphere of France" (F+4v-[+5]r). Chorier recounts how Saporta was exempted from the obligation of giving public lectures, a privilege "fortified by the insistence of Saint-Andre," Fougerolles' patron. Chorier, La vie d'Artus Prunier, p. 154. Saporta published a number of medical treatises, m addition to enjoying a royal title. Fougerolles also praises "Monsieur Hucher professeur et conseiller du Roy" at the University of Montpellier as one of the numerous learned minds that flourish in France. Born in Picardy (Beauvais?), Jean Hucher was the author of a treatise on sterility; he died in 1598. 184. See, for example, the claim of a 1668 Problemes d'Aristote (Rouen: Behourt, 1668), title page: "Oeuvre fort agreable et utile aux chirargiens et a tous ceux qui veulent apprendre Ies admirables secrets de la nature." 185. Fougerolles repeats his desire to "illustrate" the French language in the preface to his DiogZne franfais. This notion was made famous by Joachim du Bellay, Deffence et illus­ tration de la langiie franqoyse (1549). 186. For example, Bodin's Republique was taught at Cambridge University in Bodin's lifetime already, according to Bayle, Dictionnaire historique et critique, note (F), in Methodus, p. xxvii. Bayle notes the difference between tutorials and lectures, however, and suggests that this teaching was of the first, less public variety. 187. Borrowings into French from other languages (especially Latin but also Italian and

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Greek) were both common and hotly debated in the sixteenth century. See Ferdinand Brunot1 Histoire de la langue frangaise, vol. 2: Le seizieme siecle (Paris: Armand Colin, 1906), pp. 163ff. 188. He notes that Ramus' Dialectique (1555) and the paraphrase of Aristotle's logic by Philippe Canaye sieur de Fresne, L'organe c'est a dire, I'instrument du discours (Lyon: de Tournes, 1589; reed. 1627, 1628) offer the only preparation (F++4r-v). On Canaye, see Marie-Luce Demonet-Launay, "La nouvelle logique frangaise: LOrgane (1574-89) de Philippe Canaye," in Logtque et litterature a la Renaissance, Actes du colloque a la Baumeles-Aix, 1991, ed. Marie-Luce Demonet-Launay and Andre Tournon (Paris: Champion, 1994), pp. 89-99. Jacques Amyot translated Plutarch's Lives into French and Blaise de Vigenere Livy's Decades. 189. On contemporary notions of translation see Glyn Norton, The Ideology and Lan­ guage of Translation in Renaissance France and Their Humanist Antecedents (Geneva: Droz, 1984), pp. 154-58, on Fougerolles. 190. After Fougerolles' dedication and translator's preface, the translation includes Bodin's "summary of the work" but omits Bodin's dedication to Chevrieres, before beginning the text itself. 191. Luce Guillerm argues that translations were as well rewarded as original works by patrons in this period. Luce Guillerm, "L'auteur, Ies modeles, et Ie pouvoir ou la topique de la traduction au XVIt siecle en France," Revue des sciences humaines 180 (1980): p. 14 The double search for money and glory is characteristic of this system of literary rewards, as Roger Chartier has pointed out to me. 192. Claude Expilly (1561-1636), avocat at the Parlement of Grenoble, who was in the rare circumstance of owning copies both of the first Latin edition and of the French translation, finds fault with Fougerolles' translation when the latter writes that God created some dogs "pour Ie soulas des hommes." Expilly notes in the margin: "pour Ie plaisir ou bien pour l'esbas, mais en latin il y a '[ad hominum] praesidia' qui veut dire defense et soutien des hommes." Note on F497, Bibliotheque Municipale, Grenoble, F5129 (cf. UNT, p. 347). His copy of the translation was a gift from Fougerolles dated March 22, 1598, who also gave him a copy of his De senum ajfectibus praecavendis nonnullisque curandis enarratio (Lyon: I. de Gabiano et Laur. Durand, 1610) (Bibliotheque Municipale, Grenoble, D751); he was a colleague and friend of Artus Prunier's. On Expilly, among many articles by local historians, see Robert Lefrangois, "Le president Claude Expilly, avocat, historien, grammairien et poete dauphinois," Bulletin mensuel de I'Academie delphinale, 8th ser., 4, no. 6 (1965): 169-78. 193. While early medieval vernacularizations were adaptations rather than translations (see Peter F. Dembowski, "Learned Latin Treatises in French: Inspiration, Plagiarism, and Translation," Viator 17 [1986]: 255-69), humanist translations of ancient texts generally strove for high fidelity. 194. Fougerolles does well to correct Bodin's reference to De causis plantarum, I, 19 to V, 19 (UNT, p. 205; F284), and less well to add a comma in the name of "Gaudentius Merula" (UNT, p. 511; F737) or to spell "Adelandus" as "Andelandus" (UNT, p. 476; F687). The change from Bodin's (correct) "Psalm 93" to "Psalm 39" may be intentional or a misprint (UNT, p. 506; F729). When Bodin gives a forward reference to his discussion of animate bodies and separate intelligences "in book 5 below" (UNT, p. 98), Fougerolles writes "book 4," which was clearly Bodin's intention (F122). The slip, which Bodin repeats when referring to a "book 6" (UNT, p. 145) suggests that Bodin had originally planned six books instead of five, perhaps breaking up plants and animals, which together now comprise the longest book; Fougerolles corrects the reference to "book 5" (F195).

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195. Similarly, within a single section, Fougerolles omits Bodin's transitional question between his physical description of stones, in particular the emerald, and a discussion of their virtues and properties (UNT, p. 233; F327). 196. Fougerolles also respects the verse form of poetic quotations, while Bodin had wrapped poems into prose form (UNT, pp. 494, 623; F714, F901); he occasionally expands on Bodin's poetic excerpts (UNT, p. 241; F339) or provides the verses to which Bodm had only alluded (UNT, p. 455; F657). 197. E.g., Schamaim (UNT, p. 46; F51); Sadai (UNT, p. 29; F29); Homeomereis (UNT, p. 106; F133); struthios and kamflos (UNT, p. 362; F520); chlorio (UNT, ρ 369; F528); ortugometra (UNT, p. 375; F538). Or he gives the title of the Hippocratic On the sacred dis­ ease in Greek, while Bodm gives only the Latin translation (UNT, ρ 500; F722). 198. Etienne Dolet, for example, recommends "giving French phrases their proper number," notably by following common usage and seeking richness and abundance of expression. As a result translators often doubled or tripled the words of a Latin passage. Chavy, "Les traductions humanistes au debut de la Renaissance fran?aise," p. 293 199. "Th. Cur intra limites utriusque Tropici stirpes fere omnes, ac Vitis ipsa, et Ficus semper virent? M. Quia nullis frigoribus prohibentur" (UNT, p. 277). "M. Parce que la froideur ne les empesche pas de tirer continuellement l'aliment de la terre pour reparer la cheutte des feuilles caduques" (F393). 200. As Paul Lawrence Rose points out (Bodin and the Great God of Nature [Geneva: Droz, 1980], pp. 132-33, note 34), Fougerolles adds a similar distortion, supported furthermore with a footnote that he indicates as his own by an asterisk, when he specifies that the seeds of virtue emerge "through the light that God has communicated in them by his spirit" (UNT, p. 476; F688). In the note Fougerolles refers (in Latin) to a psalm: "signasti super nos lumen vultus sui" (Ps 4:6). 201. "Nous avons adiouste a ceste traduction plusieurs annotations et figures, outre les precedentes Tables, pour Tenrichissement de cest oeuvre, la Fin duquel soit a Thonneur et gloire de Dieu eternellement." F, colophon. 202. The inventory of the collection of Antonio Giganti in Bologna contains an "illustration of two New World fish, the so-called upside-down fish [pesce roversico]. One may call them fishermen's fish [pesci pescatori] because one pierces other fish with the spines with which it is armed while the other catches them with a sack that it has on its tail, extending and then contracting it. Men make use of these fish in the sea as they would arms and sparrow hawks on land." Bibliotheca Ambrosiana, ms. S.85 sup, c. 250r, as quoted in Paula Findlen, Possessing Nature: Museums, Collecting, and Scientific Culture in Early Modern Italy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), p. 172. 203. Fougerolles' unimaginative Gallicizations lead to a glaring oversight when he fails to recognize in Bodin's "Ambrosius Gallus" the famous Ambroise Pare and instead calls him "Ambroise Gal" (UNT, p. 316; F451). In another, less obvious case, Bodin's "Igneus" should be translated ("Feu") rather than Gallicized as "lgne" (UNT, p. 391; F561). Bodin is referring to Jean Feu, president of the Parlement of Rouen from 1525 to 1549, see Henri de Frondeville1 Les presidents du Parlement de Normandie (1499-1790) (Rouen: A. Lestringant and Paris: Auguste Picard, 1953), pp. 161-62. But the reference was lost in the later Latin editions as well, which render it "ingens" instead. Fougerolles' neologisms include Orphus-Orphin; Aurata-Doree; Dentex-Dental; Lepras-Leparas [sicl; RubellioRouget; Capriscus-Caprisque; Novacula (razor)-Rasouer; Mormyrus-Mormyre; ScarusScare; Abramis-Abrame; Melanderinus-Melandrin; Sargus-Sargon; Melanurus-Melanure, and so on. He gives genuine translations for some names: Sparus-Dard; Salpa-Merluche; Cantarus-Escharbot (UNT, p. 322; F460).

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204. For similar notes see F536 (on birds) and F494 (on quadrupeds). 205. The identification of Bodin's sources for names is most difficult. For an example of partial success, concerning Bodin's names of exotic plants, see chapter 3, p.107, and note 99. 206. On some of the models which inspired Vesalius in composing his De Fabrica, see Jackie Pigeaud, "Formes et normes dans Ie De Fabrica de Vesale," in Le Corps ά la Renais­ sance, ed. Jean Ceard et al. (Paris: Aux Amateurs de Livres, 1990), pp. 399-421. 207. This distinction is Aristotelian in origin (Parts of animals 1.1, 2.1, 2.2); it was used by Galen, Methodus medendi 5.2, and traditional in medical textbooks throughout the Middle Ages. 1 am grateful to Nancy Siraisi for this information. In another instance Fougerolles complains of Bodin's calling psyllium (fleabane) a warm plant: "Toutesfois l'emulsion de sa graine est fort froide" (F389). Pierre Richelet defines "emulsion" as "portion faite avec diverses choses rafraichissantes" in his Dictionnaire portatif de la langue frangaise (Lyon: Bruyset, 1775). If the seed can serve for "emulsions" its virtue is evidently cold. 208. Problemata Iohannis Bodini von denen dingen die sich am Himmel in der Lujft, auff Erden und in der Erden zutragen und von derselben Naturlichen ursachen und eigenschafften allerley Eragen und Antwort. Lustig und nutzlich zu lesen. In verstendig Teutsch gebracht durch Damianum Siffertem Lindaviensem (Magdeburg: Johan Francken, 1602). I am grateful to

Roland Crahay and Marie-Therese Isaac for first bringing this work to my attention. It is listed (in a spurious edition of 1607) in the bibliography of Horst Denzer, ed., Verhandlungen der internationalen Bodin-Tagung in Munchen (Munich: C. H. Beck, 1973), p. 499. To my knowledge it had not otherwise been mentioned before being carefully tracked in Crahay et al., Bibliographie critique, pp. 304-11. My discussion of this text would not have been possible without the pnor research of the Seminaire de Bibliographie Historique de l'Universite de Mons and the kindness of its director, Marie-Therese Isaac. I am especially grateful for her permission and help in obtaining a flow-copy of the microfilm held by the Seminaire at Mons of a copy of the first edition of the Problemata Bodini in the collection of the Marienbibliothek in Halle, Germany (call number X.3.24). All citations in parentheses preceded by "D" will refer to this edition, following a pagination I have added for convenience that matches the signatures in this way: p. 1 =sig. Aij; p. 15 = sig. B; p. 31 = sig. C; p. 47 = sig D; p. 63 = sig. E; p. 79 = sig. F; p. 95 = sig. G; p. Ill = sig. H; p. 127 = sig. I; p. 143 = sig. K; p. 159 = sig. L (the copy I used inserted an extra copy of sig. Kv recto-verso which I have disregarded in my pagination, presuming it is an artefact of the microfilm); the last page of text is p. 173. 209. Problemata Aristotelis .. . Problemata Bodini (Basel: Johann Schroter, 1622; Basel: Emanuel Konig und Sohne1 1666 and 1679). An edition from 1613 is signaled in the Staatsbibliothek Berlin, but its existence has not been confirmed. See CTahay et al., Bibliographie critique, p. 309. 210. I take these figures for the Latin and German editions from Brian Lawn, The Salernitan Questions: An Introduction to the History of Medieval and Renaissance Problem Literature (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963), p. 99, who lists the editions he has found. As he recognizes, they are not exhaustive; for example, Lawn does not know of the Basel, 1679, imprint, which might be the latest German one. See also F. Edward Cranz, with revisions by Charles B. Schmitt, A Bibliography of Aristotle Editions 1501-1600 (Baden-Baden: Valentin Koerner1 1984), p. 219. This listing is less complete, but on some points complements Lawn's; it does not distinguish between the two different texts circulating under the title of "Problems of Aristotle." The bibliographical problems posed by these kinds of popular works that were haphazardly preserved rather than carefully collected during the early modern period are enormous. I am in the process of studying this abundant tradition more

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systematically, in "The Genre of the Problemata in the Renaissance," paper delivered at the Dibner Conference on "Natural Philosophy and the Disciplines," to appear in the proceedings, ed. Anthony Grafton and Nancy Siraisi, and "Authorship in a Popular Natural Philosophical Genre: the Problemata7" paper delivered at the British society for the History of Science, July 1996, to appear in the British Journalfor the History of Science (1998). French editions: Problemes d'Aristote et autres filosofes (Lyon: de Tournes, 1554, then 1570, 1587), (Lyon: Rigaud, 1613), (Paris: Bonfons, n.d.), (Rouen: Anglot, 1618), (Rouen: de la Mare, 1633), (Rouen: L. Behourt, 1668). English editions: Problemes of Aristotle and other phylosophers (Edinburgh, 1595; London, 1597, 1607, 1666, 1680, 1684, 1710), then Aristotle's book of problems (London, 1725, 1741, 1760, 1776, etc. down to New York, 1849). In Italy and in Spain the "Problems of Aristotle" were not published directly but comprise much of the works by Ortensio Lando, Quattro libri de dubbi (Venice, 1552), Bartolomeo Paschetti, Dubbi morali e naturah (Genoa, 1581), and Hieronymo Campos, SyIva de varias questiones (Antwerp, 1575), as described in Lawn, The Salernitan Questions, p. 101. 211 Eamon reports 70 editions (in French, Italian, German, English, Latin, Dutch, Spanish, Polish, and Danish) of Alexis of Piedmont's Secrets from 1555 to 1599, and another 34 down to 1699; della Porta's Magia naturalis was also extremely popular, despite its massive size: by 1700 he counts 24 editions in Latin, 13 in French, 2 in English and 1 each in German and Dutch. William Eamon1 Science and the Secrets of Nature: Books of Se­ crets in Medieval and Early Modern Culture (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1994), pp. 251-52. 212. This phenomenon is fairly widespread, in the titles of books of secrets, but also Bacon's Sylva sylvarum for example. 213 Modem translations include the Loeb edition in 2 vols., trans. W. S Hett (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1936); Helmut Flashar, trans. Aristoieles: Problemataphysica (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1962), which includes a detailed commentary on the text and a valuable introduction to the genre more broadly (the latter treated in pp 295-384); and Pierre Louis, Problemes d'Aristote, 3 vols. (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1991), who makes the mistake in his introduction of assuming that the French Problemes d'Aristote are a translation of the pseudo-Aristotelian problemata. 214. In particular, the Basel editions that contain Bodin's problemata omit the Omnes homines" introduction and begin immediately with the first question. 215. The most widely used translation was that of Theodor Gaza, on the peculiarities of which see John Monfasani, "Aristotle's Problemata and De animalibus in the Renaissance," paper delivered at the Dibner Conference on "Natural Philosophy and the Disciplines," to appear in the proceedings, ed. Anthony Grafton and Nancy Siraisi. The various separate editions starting with (Rome, 1475) often added other texts as well: in early editions, the medieval translation and commentary by Pietro dAbano and Valla's translation of the problems attributed to Alexander of Aphrodisias (Venice, 1501; Paris, 1520); in later ones only Gaza's translation of the pseudo-Alexandrian problems (Paris, 1524, 1534, 1539; Lyon, 1551; Valence, 1554). The Problemata were also included in the numerous Opera omnia of Aristotle, in Latin and Greek, e.g., ed. Aldus (Venice, 1498), (Venice: Iunta, 1552), ed. Erasmus (Basel, 1531, 1550); ed. and trans. Sylburg (Frankfurt, 1585); ed. Casaubon, who for this text used Gaza's translation (Lyon, 1590); trans, and commt. Ludovico Settala (Frankfurt, 1602-7, 1632). 216. For example: "Why is it that children, who are warm, are not fond of wine, while Scythians and courageous men, who are also warm, are fond of wine? Is it due to the fact that the latter are hot and dry . . , but children are moist as well as hot? Now wine-

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drinking is a desire for something liquid. Their moisture, then, prevents children from being thirsty; for desire is in a sense the want of something." Aristotle, Problems 3.7, Loeb edition, 1:81. I quote this principle of Alexander's in chapter 2, p. 64 and note 50, in discussing Bodin's method of physics. 217. Flashar suggests that these alternatives ("is it? . . . or is it?) might stem from a master's posing the question of all of his pupils who answer in turn, which is what might be meant by Aspasius' calling them "problemata enkuklia." Aristoteles: Problemata physica, pp. 341-46. For one example from Aristotle's problems consider: "Why is it colder at dawn, although the sun is nearer then? Is it because at that moment the sun has been absent for a long time, so that the earth has been more chilled? Or is it because dew, like hoarfrost, falls more toward daybreak, and these are both cold? Or do both these fall because the rising heat is mastered, and is mastered because of the absence of sun? . . . Or are we to think that the greater cold is due to the fact that the food is digested? We are then more liable to cold because we are more empty. Evidence for this is the fact that we are coldest after vomiting." Aristotle, Problems 8.17, Loeb edition, 1:189. 218. Albertus is cited as an authority in the second question already, on why the heads of animals are hairy—according to Albertus their hair is very dry. See Problemes d'Aristote et autres Philosophes et Medecins, selon la composition du corps humain (Lyon: Jean de Toumes1 1587), p. 8 (problem 2). 219. Ibid., p. 11 (problem 6). 220. For example, on the question of why men walk upright, the unusually long answer adduces six different reasons, starting with the will of the Creator, "but this answer does not seem valid and sufficient enough, although it is true, because it can apply to the solution of all the other problems"; and culminating with a "physical answer": "because each thing needs to have a form and shape to suit its movement." Ibid., pp. 5-6 (problem 1).

221. Cf. the full title of the Problemes dAristote cited above, note 218. 222. Comparing the number of problems in the opening sections, in the editions by Erasmus (Basel: Isengrin, 1550) and by Casaubon (Lyon: Laemarius, 1590): book 1 (57 and 59 problems respectively), book 2 (42/42), book 3 (35/34), book 4 (32/33), book 5 (42/39), book 6 (7/7), book 7 (19/5), etc. 223. Jean of Jandun, at the Arts Faculty of Paris, already noted in 1300 that "the problems are commonly found corrupt and incorrect." As quoted in Lawn, Salemitan Questions, p. 94 (my translation). Jandun's more general complaint about the neglect of the Prob­ lemata may have stimulated Pietro d'Abano to undertake the only medieval commentary on the work; see Nancy G. Siraisi, "The Expositio problematum Aristotelis of Peter of Abano," Isis 61 (1970): 321-39. For the two other commentaries, see Ludovico Settala, Problemata Aristotelis, 3 vols. (Frankfurt: haeredes Wecheli, Claudium Mamium et Ioannem Aubrium, 1602—7); and G. Guastavini (Lyon: Cardon, 1608). For the complaint of a contemporary encyclopedist on the corrupt tradition, see Ioannis Wower, De Polymathia tractatio (Hamburg: Froben, 1603), pp. 107-8. 224. Comparing for example a few sections of Problemes d'Aristote (Lyon: de Toumes, 1587) with that of (Rouen: L. Behourt, 1668), immediate discrepancies are clear in the numbers of questions in each section: on hair (19 and 10 respectively), on children (8/10), on the embryo (3/3), on abortion (14 vs. 7 then 10 in a separate section "on various things"), and a final section entitled "other problems" or "many different things, joyous and useful" (15/18). Although the total number of problems is not so different (for these sections: 59/60), their order, and their division into sections vary considerably. 225. Compare, for example, the problems of Alexander included in Problemata Aris-

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totelis (Paris: Colinaeus, 1524), in a translation by Gaza (sections of 147 and 130 problems), with those in Problemata Anstotelis ac philosophorum (Frankfurt: Brubach, 1548), in a translation by Poliziano (one section of 150 problems). Interestingly, unlike in the case of Aristotle's problems, both the "high" and the "low" versions were translated into French: the "high" by M Heret, Les problemes d'Alexandre Aphrodise (Paris: Guillaume Guillard, 1555) (sections of 151 and 135 problems), the "low" in an anonymous translation with Problemes d'Aristote (Lyon: de Toumes, 1554) (section of 150 problems). The problems of Alexander were never included in German editions, however. The "highbrow" ProblemataAristotelis (Valence: Barbonius, 1554) includes 31 "causae naturales" attributed to Plutarch (which I have not yet identified). In the "lowbrow" Problemata Aristotelis (Frankfurt: Brubach, 1548), 4 problems attributed to Plutarch correspond to his Roman Questions, questions 68-71, as available in H. J. Rose, trans., The Roman Questions of Plutarch (New York: Arno Press, 1975). Plutarch composed no text called "problems" by modern classicists, but he did compose a number of works in question-and-answer form (which often stray from the classic "why?" questions, e.g., his Roman and Greek questions). Cassius1 who is known only for his Problemata of 84 or 85 questions, circulated only in the most scholarly circles: in stand-alone editions in Greek or Latin, and in the bilingual edition by Sylburgius of the problems of Aristotle and Alexander of Aphrodisias (Frankfurt: Wechel, 1585) 226. A professor of natural philosophy at Padua and other Italian universities, Zimara wrote learned commentanes on Aristotle and Averroes including his much reprinted index to their works, the Tabula dilucidationum in dictis Aristotelis et Averrois (1537); see the biobibliography (by Michael J. Wilmott and Charles B. Schmitt) in the appendix of Cambridge History of Renaissance Philosophy, p. 841. Zimara's problems are consistently included in Latin and vernacular versions of the Problemata Aristotelis. Iacchino's problems appear in Problemes d'Aristote et autres philosophes (Lyon: de Toumes, 1587), for example. Sylvius's problems are appended to M. Heret, trans., Les problemes d'Alexandre Aphrodise (1555). 227. Scholarly examples include Antonio Luiz, Problematum libri quinque (Lisbon: n. pub., 1539); Martin Weinrich, Problematum partim physicorum, partim medicorum (Wittenberg: officina Cratoniana, 1590). Girolamo Manfredi, 11 perche, sive liber de homine (first printed Bologna, 1474) (as discussed in Lawn. Salernitan Questions, p. 112), or Girolamo Garimberto, Problemes, trans. Jean Louveau (Lyon: Rouille1 1559), are examples of more popular collections. 228. I am relying on the count of Crahay et al., Bibliographic critique, p. 306. 229. The edition of 1622 does not announce those of Zimara, but I do not know if it contains them. See reproductions of these title pages in Crahay et al., Bibliographie critique, pp. 307-8, 310. 230. "So viel ist fur guth angesehen worden / auss dem Theatro Philosophiae Bodini, dem gemeinen Manne ins Teutsch zu bringen. Gelerte konnen genanntes Buch selbst lesen / da sie denn Argumenta und Demonstrationes aller erzehlten dinge finden werden. Mit diesem wolle ihme der Teudsche Leser etwas lassen gedienet seyn / zu Lust und Nutze / fumemlich / dass Gott der Schopffer / und seine wunderliche Wercke erkannt / und er gelobet und gepreiset werde." (See figure 10, at right, which reproduces a page from a later edition containing this passage.) 231. See William Eamon's helpful discussion, Books of Secrets, pp. 99-102. 232. Despite coming originally from Lindau in the south of Germany Siffert could have traveled for his studies, which he must have pursued to some extent, but then perhaps abandoned. The Lindau archives do not have any record of him. I am grateful also to Martin Mulsow for looking out for Siffert in his research in Bavarian locations, without sue-

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cess, On Ryff, who produced many popular medical handbooks, see Miriam Usher Chrisman, Lay Culture, Learned Culture: Books and Social Change in Strasbourg, 1480-1599 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1982), pp 179-81; she cites Josef Benzing, Walther H. Ryff und sein literarisches Werk, eine Bibliographie (Hamburg·. Dr. Ernst Hauswedell, 1959). 233. Josef Benzing, Die Buchdrucker des 16. und 17. Jahrhunderts im deutsehen Sprachgebiet, 2d ed. (Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1982), p. 311. The works previously published by Francken were De specebus rerum publicarum (Magdeburg: apud Johannem Francum, 1581) (see Crahay et al., Bibliographie critique, p. 165); and Justus Lipsius, Flores totius philosophiae (Magdeburg: Francken, 1599). For Ryffs modification of an existing German translation of the Problemata Aristotelis, see Problemata Aristotelis, gebessert . . . durch Apollinarem [a pseudonym for Walther Ryff] (Strasbourg: J. Cammerlander, 1540), likely reedited in 1543 and 1545. Compare with an earlier German translation in Eiη hupseh biechlein .. Proplemata Aristotelis [Strasbourg, 1515], as I discuss in my "Authorship in a Popular Natural Philosophical Genre: the Problemata." 234. Magdeburg's most famous son in this period was Mathias Flacius Illyricus, one of the principal Lutheran historiographers, whose work is known as the "Magdeburg Cen turies." On Illyricus, see Donald R. Kelley, "The Theory of History," in Cambridge History of Renaissance Philosophy, pp. 755-56, and the literature cited there. 235. H. Schletter, "Ein Pressprocess gegen den Magdeburger Buchhandler J. Frank in der Leipziger Ostermesse 1591," Mittheilungen der deutsehen Gesellschaft zur Erforschung vaterlandischer Sprache und Alterthumer in Leipzig 1 (1856): 16-30, esp. pp 18-19. 236. Albrecht Kirchhoff, "Ein speculativer Buchhandler alter Zeit: Johann Francke in Magdeburg," Archivfur Geschiehte des deutsehen Buchhandels 13 (1890): 115-76. 237. Ibid., p. 164. 238. Hans Koegler, "Die Schrotersche Druckerei in Basel, 1594 bis 1635," AnzeigerJilr Schweizerische Altertumskunde. lndicateur d'antiquites suisses, n. s. 22 (1920): 54-65. 239. Emanuel Konig (active 1660-1707) was the son of a Basel publisher of the same name. Earlier a Samuel Konig had been active from 1569. Benzing, Die Buchdrucker des 16. und 17. Jahrhunderts, pp. 45-46, 42. 240. Questions omitted. On reproduction: Why can some women have no children? (D8). How is an egg shaped when a boy must come of it? (D10). What is a monstrous birth? (Dll). Why is it that men and women do not always desire intercourse? (D129). Why are more girls born than boys? (D131). Which people are least lascivious? (D146). Why is it that of twins the girl usually dies and the boy lives? (D155). Light and heavy things: Why is a sick or dead body lighter? (D28). Why is baked bread lighter than the dough used to make it? (D29). Is ash or water lighter? (D30). Seas and rivers: Does the water not go up over the mountains? (D31). Why do some who travel on the sea often get sick? (D33). Human body and faculties: Is it because the tongue is mobile that men can speak? (D149), Why is it that men cannot move their ears like other animals? (D150). Why do some people close one eye when they want to see and recognize something? (D151). Why can cats see at night? (D152). Why is it that one cannot see anything in a mirror in the dark? (D157). Why is it that a song that sounds well soon sounds bad when one makes errors in singing? (D159). Why does a man not have as strong a sense of smell as a dog? (D160). This list gives a representative sample and most of the omitted questions, but is not exhaustive. 241. E.g., "trocken" for "treuge" or "Athem" for "Odem," or a reference to Job 28 is (wrongly) changed to Job 18. Compare D21, D23, D17 with the (Basel, 1666) edition.

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242 E.g , Hildegard Beyer, "Die deutschen Volksbucher und ihr Lesepublikum" (Ph.D. diss., University of Frankfurt, 1962). J. von Gorres, Die teutschen Voiksbucher (Heidelberg: Mohr und Zimmer, 1807) casts the net more widely, to include books of remedies and Bauernpractica, but no problemata. The same is true for the French equivalent: Charles Nisard, Histoire des livres populaires ou de la litterature du colportage, 2 vols. (Paris: Amyot, 1854). 243. Chrisman, Lay Culture, Learned Culture, pp. 171ff. Chrisman's bibliography of works published in sixteenth-century Strasbourg includes Problemata Anstotelis (Strasbourg: O. Cammerlander, 1543), which she classifies under "medical treatises based on Greek sources." It is the second in a series of three editions due to Ryff (Strasbourg: Cammerlander, 1540, 1543 and 1545; see above, note 233. 244. Aristotelis problemata . . . Problemata Bodini (Basel, 1666), Wolfenbuttel QuN519.1, is bound with Die gestriegelte Rocken-Philosophia (Chemnitz: Conrad Stosseln, 1705), debunking popular ("women's") superstitions, and Frauendienst darinne eigentlich beschrieben sind vie! herrlicher und bewahrter Hiilffs-Mittel (Leipzig: Zacharias Beckem, 1675). ProblemataAnstotelis (Hamburg: M. Froben, 1604), Wolfenbuttel QuH156, bound with Consilium antipodagncum (in German) (Leipzig: Thom. Schurers Erben, n. d.), which promises methods for determining whether a disease is curable or not, and Georg Phaedro Rodochaeus, Halopyrgice sive Iatrochemica pestis epidemicae curatio (in German) (Halle: Christophoras Bismarck, n. d.), offering chemical plague remedies. Aristotelis Problemata .. . Problemata Bodini (Basel, 1666), Universitatsbibliothek Basel, bound with Buschenmeister (Frankfurt: Christian Egenolff, 1597) a manual of ballistics and the art of war; Thomas More, De optimo reipublica statu (in German) (Leipzig: Henning Grossen des Jungern, 1612); and Bawren Practica (Frankfurt: Heyne von Bry, 1570) On this latter genre see Gorres, Die teutschen VolksbiXcher, pp. 34-39 245. I have consulted Martin Zeiller, Neue Beschreybung der Kdnigreiehe Denemarck und Norwegen (Ulm: B. Kuhnen, 1648) and Miscellanea oder Allerley zusammen getragene Politische historische und andere denckwiirdige Sachen (Nuremberg: Georg Wildeisen, 1661). Both have a physical aspect similar to Siffert's Problemata, but they mimic more closely the learned book: they include prefaces and dedications, cite more Latin quotations and ancient authorities, and provide a table of contents and in the case of the second, an index. See Wilhelm Kuhlmann, "Lekture fur den Burger: Eigenart und Vermittlungsfunktion der polyhistorischen Reihenwerke Martin Zeillers (1589—1661)," in Literatur und Volk im 17. Jahrhundert: Probleme popularer Kultur in Deutschland, ed. Wolfgang Bruckner, Peter Blickle, and Dieter Breuer, 2 vols. (Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1985), 2:917-34, 919-21, 924-25. 246. On the choppiness characteristic of the French bibliotheque Meue, see Roger Chartier, L'ordre des livres: Lecteurs, auteurs, bibliotheques en Europe entre XIV' et XVIIY siecle (Aix-en-Provence: Alinea, 1992), p. 24, and, more generally, on popular genres in France, his The Cultural Uses of Pnnt in Early Modern France, trans. Lydia G. Cochrane (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1987), chaps. 5-8. 247. The Gothic script yields to Roman type for a few technical terms in Latin (generatio, corruptio, prima causa) and some terms in transition between Latin and German, like exhalation (D15) and region (D21). Materia, whether by mistake or because it was in current German usage, is printed in Gothic (D5). Siffert introduces a few Latin sentences from Bodin's original—direct quotations (e.g., D2, cf. UNT, p. 60) or paraphrases (e.g., D37, cf. UNT, pp. 202 and 216), which I discuss below. 248. See Chrisman, Lay Culture, Learned Culture, p. 305, and her Bibliography of Stras­ bourg Imprints, 1480—1599 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1982), pp. 185-87. On the genre (in France) see Devinettesfranfaises du MoyenAge, ed. Bruno Roy (Montreal: Bellarmin, 1977).

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249. E.g., "Quid est scholasticus? R. Est filius patris sui, frater sororis, nepos avunculi, doctor omnium, praesertim in naturalibus, utpote qui se libenter adjungit puellis, quae ex simplicitate caseum fell custodiendum commiserunt. Summa summarum studiosus melius loquitur furno, etiamsi os ejus non ita large pateat; profert aurea verba, etiam si rostrum ipsius non sit flavum." Problemata ludicra . . . animi relaxandi causa excogitata, published with Nugae venales (Prostant apud Neminem, sed tamen ubique, [1642]). 250. This is, for example, the conclusion of the bibliographers at Mons. See Crahay et al., Bibliographie critique, p. 306. 251. "1st einer / der nur ein Auge hat / kem Mensch? Er ist nichts desto weniger ein Mensch wenn ihme gleich ohn volkomlicher form und Menschen gestalt etwas fehlet / an Henden / Fussen oder Augen." 252. "Was haben die Menschen / so fur der Sundfluth gelebet / gessen? Sie haben Eicheln und Epffel gessen / und Milch. Haben kein Flesich gessen." 253. "Wie kompts das nicht alles an alien orten wechset? Das hat Gott der weise Sehopfer also geordnet / das wachsen solle / was einem jeden Lande zutreglich were nach der Natur der Menschen / was denselben nutzlich oder nicht dienstlich ist." 254. "Wie kompts / das die Bletter so balde abfallen? . . . Wie kompts / wenn man eine Wunde in Bawm hawet / das es inne nicht schadet? . . . Wie kompts / das etliche Bewme von grosser kelte erfrieren? . . . Wie das von Alten Bewmen die Fruchte besser schmecken / als von Jungen Bewmen?" 255. "Welche Epffel werden am ersten reiff? Die / welche wurmstich icht worden seind / denn der Wurm in ihnen ist Tod / unnd kan ihnen nichts mehr abfressen / drumb werden sie am ehesten reiff / weil sie nicht mehr so viel feuchtigkeit haben." 256. "Schadets auch den Weinstoeken / wenn man sie ein mal nicht beschneidet? Ja traun. Denn in zwey oder drey Jahren stirbt oder verdirbt der Weinstock. Wie sol mans machen / das Angelica nicht verdirbet / Sondem lenger wechset? Man mus sie beschneiden / Sonsten lebet sie und wechst nur drey Jahr / das dritte Jahr tregt sie Samen." 257. "Wie sol einer die Trunckenheit vertreiben? Nim succum Brassicarum in der Apoteca, so wirstu wider ntichtem." 258. "Woher nennet mans Bawmwollen? Darumb das die Wolle an den Bewmen wechset / doch nicht in diesen / Sondern in frembden Landen / und sonderlich in Arabia hat es solcher Bauwme viel / an welchen Wolle wechset." Another case in which Siffert selects exotica from Bodin is that of the "fisherman's fish," also singled out by Fougerolles: "Kan man auch einen Fisch mit dem andern fangen? Ja. In India ist ein Fisch / heist Reversus / nut dem selben Fische fahen die Indianer Fische / gleich wie wir das Wilpret mit Jagthunden fahen / denn der Fisch Reversus ist wie ein Jagthund im Wasser / fehet Fische" (D87); cf. F463 and UNT, p. 324. 259. "Wie Iang seind die Dermer ins Menschen Leibe? Sie seind siebenmal lenger / als der Mensch ist / daher konnen grosse Wurmer drinnen wachsen. Man hat einen DarmWurm in einen Mensehen gefunden / welcher Funff unnd dreyssig Schue Iang gewesen ist." 260. "Ists war das ein Lewe so ein unbendig Thier ist? Wo Lewen sein / da viel Menschen wonen / werden die Lewen bendig / und seind nicht so kune und reissen. AIs in Mauritania werden sie so schuchter und schewe gemacht / das sie sich von Weibern mit Steckeln veijagen lassen / wie Leo Afer schreibet." 261. "Hat der Mensch ein gewiss ziel zu leben und zu sterben? Ja traun / wie es entweder seine Natur mit bringet / oder es Gott sonderlich wil / das einer lengere oder kurzere zeit zu leben haben sol. Aber solch geordnet ziel kan kein Mensche komen / Sondern er mus sterben / wenn es da ist / wie auch die andem Thier / ihr ziel unnd gewisse zeit zu leben haben. Johannes Temporibus hat zu unser zeit drey hundert und Neun und Sechzig

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Jar gelebet " This passage attracted the attention of scholarly readers too: Granius adds usefully that "Joannes de Temporibus" was the arms-bearer of Charlemagne. Granius, p. 397; Casaubon includes the fact on a flyleaf (see figure 6). 262 Compare Siffert: "Septenarius numerus est perfectus" (D37) with Bodin: "Ipseque numerus senarius solus inter digitos [or dictos? as emended by the Ceard annotator, see above, note 129] numeros perfectus est" (UNT, p. 420). For Bodin's praise of seven, which he never calls "perfect," see ibid., pp. 202, 216, 418. Bodin explains, accusing one of his critics, Auger Ferrier, of making the confusion that a perfect number is equal to the sum of its divisors (1+2+3=6); seven is sacred, however, as Calvin, Galen, and Macrobius have written. Bodin, Apologie de Rene Herpin, m Republique, VI, p. 394. 263 Siffert's problem is (presumably by omission of a "why?") formulated as an assertion ending in a question mark: "Die Weiber wollen traun klug und verstendig sein I weil sie mehr Gehimes im Kopffe haben als ein Mann?" 264. "Nihil est in natura noxium per se, sed tantum pros ti. Omne ens quatenus ens, bonum est." (Greek transliteration added.) 265. "Woraus wechset ein Basiliscus? Mann wil / er wachst aus einem Hunes Eye / welches aber nit wol gleublich / wie auch mcht gleublich / das ein Basiliscus und Catoblepa / Menschen und Thier Todten sollen / allein wenn man sie ansehe. Solle Gott solche schedliche Thier geschaffen haben / die andere also Todteten." 266. "lsts war / das ein Specht ein Kraut holet / wenn ihme der Vogelsteller sein Nest im Bawme zugemacht hat / das er nicht kan zu semen Jungen komen / als den mit dem Kraute das Nest auffmache? Man hat zwar befunden / das das Nest zugemacht gewesen ist / Aber das Kraut noch kein Mensche gefunden / Doch ists zuverwundem / das der Vogel wenn er siehet / das er nicht zu seinen Jungen kommen kan / immerdar fleuget und schreiet / unnd das endlich das Nest / ohne alle Menschen hiilffe / auffgehet / unnd er also wider hinein zu seinen Jungen kompt. Gott is wunderlich in seinen wercken / Sorget freilich selbst auch fur die Vogel / das sie nicht schaden leiden." Bodin adds in the next paragraph a sentence that corresponds to Siffert's last sentence: "neque opifex picorum tantum prospexit, sed etiam minimoram animantium saluti . . ." (UNT, ρ 368). 267. "Das ein Adamant Stein die Teuffel vertreiben / unnd ein Hyacinth gut furm Donner sein solle / das eim der Donner unnd das Wetter nicht treffe / das hat keine Naturliche ursache / Sondern ist ein Zauberglaube / wie man es dafur helt." Bodin further accuses these beliefs of turning humans away from God. 268. "Woher nemen die Winde ihren ursprung / und wie verhelt sichs mit den Winden? Davon gewissen bericht zu thuen / ist das schwehreste unter alien Naturliche dingen. Es bleibt wol dabey / das Christus saget: Du weist nicht woher der Wind kompt / ob du wol sein Sausen und brausen horest. Etliche wollen / die Winde nemen ihren ursprung von der Sonnen / denn dieselbe moderire die Lufft." Bodin had cited Psalm 103 ("Qui facit angelos suos ventos vel flatus") and 135 ("qui promit ventos de thesauns suis"). In the next question Bodin goes on to explain how the sun moderates the air (UNT, p. 164). 269. "An welchem orthe des Himmels entstehen die Cometen? Nahe beim Mond / und es schreiben die Naturkundiger selbst ungewis von den Cometen / denn Gottes Werck seind nicht alle nach den Naturlichen ursachen zu Reguliren. Es entstehen aber die Come ten mehr im Winter / als im Sommer. Im Winter stehet ein Comet nicht lange / denn wegen der kelte verlischt und vergehet er." 270. "Woher entstehen die Brunnen? Von dem Meerwasser / das die Erde uberschwemmet und befeuchtet / das zeuhet sich in die Erde / davon werden Brunnen / Psal.24.Eccl.l." Bodin gives the same Biblical references. Ps. 24:2: "he himself founded [the world] on the ocean"; Eccles. 1:7: "into the sea all rivers go." 271. "Woher entstehet ein Erdbeben? Von der exhalation / wenn sich die Erde auffthut

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/ und von einander reisset / und die lufft heraus gehet / die sich drinne verschlossen verhelt / da erbebet nicht allein das Meer / Sondem auch die Heuser und Turme fallen und versincken / oder es gibt grawsam Brollen in der lufft / welches uber Menschlichen verstand / und allein zuvorwundern ist das ein klein ding solch gros ding thut. Es geschehen aber die Erdbeben mancherley weise, welche allhie nicht zuerzehlen." 272. "Man saget fur gewis / wenn man dem bosen Geiste Salz vorhalte / so sol er nicht bleiben. Christus spricht von sich: Ich bin das Salz / etc." Although three gospels (Matthew 5:13, Mark 9:49-50, Luke 14:34-35) contain passages affirming that salt is good, nowhere does Jesus say: "I am the salt." 273. "Haben denn die Engel keinen Leib? Es ist ein subtil ding umb diese frage. Sie konnen leiblich erscheinen." 274. "1st die Welt auch Ewig? und wird sie ewig stehen bleiben. Moses schreibt die Welt das ist / Himmel und Erde sampt allem was drinne ist / sey geschaffen / drumb mus die Welt nicht von ewigkeit sein. Unnd weil sie ein geschaffen ding ist / so mus sie auch zu seiner zeit wider vergehen / aber die Welt bleibe gleich so lange I als Gott wil / stehen / oder vergehe. / So konnen doch wir Menschen nicht ewig in der Welt bleiben / Sondern mussen ein mal draus und davon / darumb wir uns furnemlich bekummern sollen / und zusehen / das wir Selig in jene Welt kommen mochten / wenn wir aus dieser Welt davon mussen." "1st der Mensch aus nichts geschaffen? Der Mensch ist anfenglich von Gott / darnach aus Erde und Assche formirt und gemacht Was ist die Erde und Asche. Es ist ein Element / welches Gott aus nichts geschaffen hat. Wenn der Mensch zu Erde und Asche wird / was wird er? Er wird wider I das er zuvor gewesen ist / nemlich / er kompt wider in seine Element / daraus er geschaffen ist / welche Gott am Jungsten Tage wider herfur suchen / und new formiren / und vorige Menschliche gestalt geben wil / wie die H. Schrifft leret." 275. "Kan man auch Wasser zu Weine machen? Der Herr Christus hat Wasser zu Weine gemacht / Aber da hat nicht die Natur / Sondem Gott selbst gewircket. Naturlicher weise kan man wol Wasser unnd Wem vermischen / das Wasser zu Wein werde / denn welches am schwechsten ist / das nimpt des andern sterckern form und gestalt an sich. Ita quoque ex aere et stanno fit aes resonans; ex auro et argento aequis partibus inter se confusis fit electrum ei plane consimile, quod natura miscuit m fodinis." 276. David Warren Sabean, Power in the Blood: Popular Culture and Village Discourse in Early Modern Germany (Cambridge- Cambridge University Press, 1984), gives examples of the beliefs of the local magistrates of Wurttemberg in the effectiveness and presence of the devil (e.g., chap. 1, pp. 40-41). 277. See Jean Ceard, "Medecine et demonologie: Les enjeux d'un debat," in Diable, diables, diableries au temps de la Renaissance, ed. Marie-Therese Jones-Davies (Paris: Jean Touzot, 1988), p. 100, on the powers attributed to demons especially in the Demonomanie. 278. "Was ετ [Gott] zuvorn geschaffen hat / daselbst heraus kan Gott herfur bnngen was er will / uff sein gebieten und befehl / auff welche auch die guten und bosen Engel da stehen / und zu seinem befehl in bereitschafft sein." 279. "Woher entstehet gros Sterben / und so viel schedliche Thier mit hauffen? Zum theil von der Natur / wenn dieselbe von ihrem Scopo unnd ziel abweichet / oder wenn das subiectum zu schwach ist / oder der Teuffel so bose / oder wenn est etwa vom Himel herab verursachet wird / So tregt sich solches zu / wider die Ordnung der Natur." 280. "Kan denn der Bose Geist uberal Donner zuwege bringen? In kalten orten horet man fast keinen Donner. Denn wenn es der Satan wil Donnern machen / So mus er warme und Fette rauchende exhalationes dazu haben / die findet er in kalten orten und Landen nicht." 281. "Woher entstehet der Donnerfeil? Donnerfeil ist ein Stein / der im ungestumen

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Wetter / unnd regenischen Wolcken / entweder von der Natur / oder durch des Satans macht und gewalt / flugs zusammen gebackt wird / und im Donner herunter schlegt. Er sol von Erd und feuchtigkeit zusammen wachsen etc. unnd eins mals ein solcher Stein hundert und zehen Pfunde gewogen haben." 282. "Wie kompts / das die Oberkeiten nicht einig sein / und sich nicht wol vertragen? Darumb das es wider die Natur ist / das mehr denn ein Anfang und Oberste sey / darumb vorzeiten geordnet worden / das ein Burgermeister umb den andem hat regieren mussen. Quia non possunt esse duo principia infmitae sapientiae ac potestatis." In margin: "Zwo Sonnen / saget Alexander der Magnus zum Konige Dario / kan die Welt nit leiden. Unus Sol Unus Dominus esto." "Quia non possunt . . ." is from UNT, p. 60. I have found no source in Bodin for Siffert's quotation from Alexander the Great to King Darius. 283. Cf. Zimara, in Problemata Anstotelis (Basel, 1666), problem 20, p. 150; problem 60, p. 170 The problem numbers also correspond to those in Problemes d'Aristote (Lyon: de Tournes, 1587). 284. From Bodin's section on the human body and mental faculties, Siffert selects some questions on the senses and reproduction, the latter mostly omitted in the Basel editions. 285. Ludovico Settala, In Aristotelis Problemata Commentaria, 2d ed. (Paris: Claude Landry, 1632). 286. A term that gained wide currency from William Derham's much reprinted Boyle lectures, Physico-Theology, or a Demonstration of the Being and Attributes of God, from His Works of Creation (London: W Innys, 1713). SeeJohn Hedley Brooke, Science and Religion: Some Historical Perspectives (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), pp. 199-200 and, more generally, Clarence J. Glacken, Traces on the Rhodian Shore: Nature and Culture in Western Thoughtfrom Ancient Times to the End of the Eighteenth Century (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967), chaps 8, 11. EPILOGUE THE LEGACIES OF THE THEATRUM

1. Nathan Sivin, "Why the Scientific Revolution Did Not Take Place in China—or Didn't It?" in Transformation and Tradition in the Sciences: Essays in Honor of I. Bernard Cohen, ed. Everett Mendelsohn (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), pp. 531-54. James R. Bartholomew, "Why Was There No Scientific Revolution, in Tokugawa Japan?" Japanese Studies in the History of Science 15 (1976): 111-25. For a critique of this kind of question see A. C. Graham, "China, Europe, and the Origins of Modern Science Needham's The Grand Titration," in Chinese Science: Explorations of an Ancient Tradition, ed. Shigeru Nakayama and Nathan Sivin (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1973), pp. 45-69. On traditional compilation in China, see R. Kent Guy, The Emperor's Four Treasuries: Scholars and State in the Late Ch'ien-Lung Era (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1987); David McMullen1 State and Scholars in Tang China (618-907) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988); Yung Sik Kim, "Natural Knowledge in a Traditional Culture: Problems in the Study of the History of Chinese Science," Minerva 20 (1982): 83-104. On the impact of seventeenth-century European astronomy in China, see Willard Peterson, "Fang I-Chih: Western Learning and the 'Investigation of Things,'" in The Unfolding of Neo-Confucianism, Conference on Seventeenth-Century Chinese Thought, Bellagio1 Italy, 1970, ed. William Theodore de Bary (New York: Columbia University Press, 1975), pp. 369-411. 2. On this theme, see Wemer Gundersheimer, "The Crisis of the Late French Renaissance," in Renaissance: Studies in Honor of Hans Baron, ed. Anthony Molho and John Tedeschi (Dekalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1971), pp. 791-808, and Peter

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Burke, "Tradition and Experience: The Idea of Decline from Brani to Gibbon," Daedalus (Summer 1976): 137-52. For Bodin's sense of crisis see, for example, Republique, I, preface, p. 10, where he fears that the wars of religion will dry up the study of letters completely. 3. For an early example of an attack by a member of the medical elite on "popular" natural explanations, see the case of Laurent Joubert, as discussed in Natalie Davis, "Printing and Popular Errors," in Society and Culture in Sixteenth-Century France (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1975). For discussions of the increasing disjunction between elite and popular cultures, see Katharine Park and Lorraine Daston, "Unnatural Conceptions: The Study of Monsters in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-century France and England," Past and Present, no. 92 (1981): 20-54; and Peter Burke, Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe (London: T. Smith, 1978). The attack on popular superstitions was also one of the agendas of the Enlightenment philosophes. 4. E.g., in providential explanations that include evolution, see John Hedley Brooke, Science and Religion: Some Historical Perspectives (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), pp. 313-17. 5. Roger Chauvire, Jean Bodin, auteur de la Republique (La Fleche: Eug. Besnier, 1914), p. 123. 6. Kepler, Harmonice mundi, book III, "digressio politica," in Gesammelte Werke, ed. Max Caspar, vol. 6 (Munich: Beck, 1970), pp. 186-205, esp. pp. 186, 188; also Kepler, L'harmonie du monde, trans. Jean Peyroux (Bordeaux: Editions Bergeret, 1979), pp 183-204. 7. For a recent discussion of Descartes' indebtedness to tradition, see Roger Ariew, "Descartes and Scholasticism: the Intellectual Background to Descartes' Thought," in The Cambridge Companion to Descartes, ed. John Cottingham (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), pp. 58-90; and, more generally, Tom Sorell, ed., The Rise of Modern Phi­ losophy: The Tension between the New and Traditional Philosophiesfrom Machiavelli to Leibniz (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993). On Bacon, see especially Lisa Jardine, Francis Bacon: Discovery and the Art of Discourse (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974); Paolo Rossi, Francis Bacon: from Magic to Science, trans. Sacha Rabinovitch (London: Routledge

and Kegan Paul, 1968). 8. See, for example, on time (UNT, p. 88) or the demonstration of immortality (ibid., pp. 539^10). 9. SeeJulian Martin, Francis Bacon, the State and the Reform of Natural Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), pp. 27-29, who cites Amias Paulet, Copy-Book of Letters, ed. 0. Ogle (1866). 10. Francis Bacon, New Organon, ed. Fulton H. Anderson (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Press, 1960), I, 31, p. 46. 11. Ibid., I, 77, p. 74. 12. "La premiere [des raisons des accusations de magie] est que tout Ie monde croit et se persuade asseurement que la plus forte preuve et la plus grande asseurance que l'on puisse avoir de la verite depend d'un consentement general et approbation universelle laquelle, comme Ie dit Aristote dans Ie T des Ethiques, ne peut estre du tout fausse et controversee. . . ." Gabriel Naude, Apologie pour tous Ies grands personnages qui ont estefaussement soupgonnez de magie (Paris: Frantois Targa, 1625), p. 636. Naude may be referring to Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics 7.13 1153b25, in which the argument from common consent is used (among other places) although not discussed explicitly. On Naude and his open-minded Aristotelianism, see Rene Pintard, Le libertinage erudit dans la premiere moitie du XVII' siecle (Paris: Boivin, 1943), passim. Montaigne, too, denies the possibility of common consent: "il ne se void aucune proposition qui ne soit debatue et controverse entre

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nous, ou qui ne Ie puisse estre" (Essais, ed. Pierre Villey [Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1988], II, 12, p. 562), although he also occasionally uses an argument from the common agreement of philosophers, for instance to support the notion that the highest good is the tranquillity of the soul (ibid., p. 488). 13. Bacon, New Organon, I, 77, pp. 74-75. 14. In direct contrast with Bacon, the Colloquium heptaplomeres expresses distrust of the argument from agreement specifically in religious matters: citing Seneca in support, Coroni notes that if the opinion of the greatest number were followed m religion, the worship of Satan would prevail. Colloque, p. 319. The opposition between Bodin and Bacon highlights the two authors' feelings of embattlement toward what they perceived as a hostile "general consensus": diplomatically flexible in questions of government, Bacon attacked the consensus on how to do philosophy, while Bodin (presuming he is the author of the Colloquium) was not as dissatisfied with the prevailing philosophical methods as with what he perceived as a decline in religious and moral standards. For Bacon's famous discussion of the "Idols," see New Organon, I, 39-62, pp. 47ff. 15. Jardine, Francis Bacon, chap. 10, p. 193, for example. Rossi, Francis Bacon: from Magic to Science, chap. 3, p. 127; also Charles Lemmi, The Classic Deities in Bacon: A Study in Mythological Symbolism (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1933). 16. Francis Bacon, Sylva Sylvarum or a naturall historie in ten centuries published after the authors death by William Rawley, 2d ed. (London: J.H. for William Lee, 1628), sig. Alv. Graham Rees, "An Unpublished Manuscript by Francis Bacon: Sylva Sylvarum Drafts and other Working Notes," Annals of Science 38 (1981): 388. 17. Bacon names only seven authors, all modern (Scaliger, Comines, Ficino, Paracelsus, Telesio, Croll, and Galileo), most only once, throughout the Sylva. See Rees, "An Unpublished Manuscript," p. 389 18. Compare Bacon, New Organon, II, 12, p. 133, and UNT, p. 204. 19 For example, Bacon must draw from an ancient source the notion that the air on top of mount Olympus is rare, and from a modern one the report of the habits of travelers on the Peak of Tenerife. Bacon, New Organon, II, 12, p. 133. 20. On the issue of human memory, Bodin attributes support of his position to authorities whom Dupleix interprets as being on the contrary, in agreement with Aristotle; as discussed above, in chapter 3, p. 109. 21. Bacon, New Organon, author's preface, p. 35. 22. Ibid., II, 9, p. 129. 23. Ibid., I, 81, p. 78. 24. On Bacon's metaphors, see Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology and the Scientific Revolution (New York: Harper and Row, 1980), esp. chapter 7. For Bodin's use of the torture metaphor, see UNT, sig. 3r, pp. 474, 512, 538 as discussed in chapter 1, p. 25. 25. Martin, Francis Bacon, pp. 82-83. For a description of the continental theory of judicial torture, seeJohn H. Langbein, Torture and the Law of Proof : Europe and England in the Ancien Regime (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976). 26. Bacon, New Organon, I, 129, p. 119. 27. Bacon, New Organon, I, 3, p. 39. Bernard PaIissy already held a similar instrumental attitude toward nature. 28. "There is found in all arts one general device, which has now become familiar—that the author lays the weakness of his art to the charge of nature: whatever his art cannot attain he sets down on the authority of the same art to be in nature impossible. . . . And all for the sake of having their art thought perfect, and for the miserable vainglory of making

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it believed that whatever has not yet been discovered and comprehended can never be discovered or comprehended hereafter." Bacon, New Organon, I, 88, pp. 85-86. This complaint is not new, but can be found in astrological arguments m antiquity. 29. On this program and its enormous impact, see, among other works, Charles Webster, The Great Instauration: Science, Medicine and Reform 1626-1660 (London: Duckworth, 1975). 30. See Methodus, chap. 7, p. 228 (Latin), p. 430 (French). 31 Bacon, New Organon, 1, 89, p. 88. 32. Ibid., II, 28, p. 177. 33. Steven Shapin, "The Early Essays and Ethics of Robert Boyle," Bntish Journalfor the History of Science 26 (1993): 335-45, and, more generally, A Social History of Truth: Civil­ ity and Science in Seventeenth-Century England (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994). 34. I. B. Cohen, Revolution in Science (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1985), chap. 4.

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Colloquium heptaplomeres. (Presumed author of this anonymous work.) Latin manuscript ed. G. E. Guhrauer, Das Heptaplomeres des Jean Bodin (1841; repr. Geneva: Slatkine, 1971). Early seventeenth-century French manuscript translation: Colloque entre sept εςαvans qui sont de difjerens sentimens, ed. Frangois Berriot (Geneva: Droz, 1984). English translation by Marion Leathers Kuntz: Colloquium of the Seven about Secrets of the Sublime

(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1975). De la Demonomanie des sorciers. Paris: Dupuys, 1587; facsimile ed., Paris: Gutenberg

Reprints, 1979. Harangue de Messire Charles des Cars ..

prononcee aioc magnijicques Ambassadeurs de Pologne, tournee du latin enfrangois par]. Bodin. Paris: L'Huillier, 1573. Iuris universi distributio: Les trois premieres editions, con una nota di lettura di Witold Wolodkiewicz (Naples: Jovene editore, 1985). French translation by Lucien Jerphagnon: Ex­ pose du droit universel, annot. Simone Goyard-Fabre and Rene-Marie Rampelberg (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1985).

Jean Bodin: Selected Writings on Philosophy, Religion and Politics, ed. Paul L Rose. Geneva:

Droz, 1980. Methodus adfacilem historiarum cognitionem (Paris: Martinus Juvenis, 1572). Reprinted in Pierre Mesnard. Oeuvres philosophiques de Jean Bodin: Corpus geniral des philosophes

frangais, vol. 5/3 (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1951), pp. 105-473. English translation by Beatrice Reynolds: Methodfor the Easy Comprehension of History (New York: Octagon Books, 1966) Oppiani de venatione libri IIIl. Paris: Michel Vascosan, 1555. Oratio de instituenda in Republica Juventute ad senatum populumque Tolosatem (Toulouse:

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I

N

Abelinus, Johann, 171 Aben Ezra, 88, 110, 112, 114 Abumaron, 76 Academie frartfoise (La Pnmaudaye), 23, 48 active intellect, 113-14, 141-42 Adages (Erasmus), 67 Adelandus the Arab, 76, 89 aetites stone experiment, 104-5 Aetius, 95, 109 agate stone, 266n 60 Agncola, Geoig, 84, 88, 110,132, 218 Agncola, Rudolph, 83, 85 Agnppa of Nettesheim, 28, 129, 151, 154 Aicher, Otto, 177 Akiva, Rabbi, 110 Alacris of Gergovia, 101, 104 Albertus Magnus, 110, 215 Aldrovandi, Uhsse, 15, 44, 154, 285n.45; collection of, 157 Aleaume, sieur, 306n.110 Alengon (Frangois due d'Alengon) See Frangois due d'Alengon Alexander of Aphrodisias: as authority, 58, 109-10, 140, 142; praised, 111, 271n.ll2; problems of, 16, 29, 45, 213, 215 Alexandria library, 5 Alexis of Piedmont, 37 Alfarabi, 151 Algazel, 151 allegorical interpretation, 25, 95-96, 112-14, 123, 129, 200-201 Alsted, Johann Heinrich, 172, 176, 179, 191, 257n.63 Alvarez, Francisco, 110 Amerbach, 102 Amman1Jost, 169 Ammomus, 140 Anaxagoras, 110 angels: annotated copies on, 200-201; belief in association with, 135; Bodin's notion of, 275n.40, Catholic Church position on, 299n,31; chain of being position of, 127, 128; compared to magistrates, 120, 137; corporeal nature of, 88, 89, 140-42; hierarchies of, 128-29, 275n.43; intervention of God through, 116, 275n 42; order of Book IV of Theatrum, 32, 127 See also demons; intermediate beings

D

E

X

De amma (Aristotle), 31, 45, 137 animals' annotated copies on, 198, 199, chain of being position of, 132; displayed in Corom's home, 136; distinctions between, 276n 60; experience related to, 99-100, laws of nature applied to, 106, Meianchthon's order for, 34-35, natural philosophy ordering of, 31; Neander's order for, 34; ordered in Book 111 of Theatrum, 32, 78-81, 127; poisonous, 122-23; Theatrum problema on, 65; Theatrum questions on, 59-60, 63-65, 78-81, 266n 60; treated by physicus, 44; used in Mystagogus/Theorus dialogue, 72-73; useful to humankind, 125-26. See also birds; fish Anjou, due d'Anjou. See Frangois due d'Alengon Annales school, 9 annotated copies (Theatrum), 195-201, 295n.2, 299n32, 299n.35, 308n 127, 308n.l29. See also Casaubon, Ceard annotator anthropocentrism, 124-25, 130, 190 antlers anecdote, 80 Apollophanes, 90 apologetic literature, 24-26 Apuleius, 140 Aquinas, Thomas, 6, 61, 110, 116, 117, 129, 142-43 Archimedes, 41 Architas, 90 archUefetonifee, 19 arguments' Bodin's tactics in, 87-88, 121-22, 139; from consensus of authorities, 89; on intermediate beings, 135-42; legal origin of, 85-87; on poisonous plants and animals, 122-23; m VroHemala Bodini, 218; which seem arbitrary, 13, 74, 109, 199, 221. See also authority; experience; reason argurodendron, 132 Aristotelianism· available in French language, 204, Bodin's rejection of, 83, 90, 195, 227-28; Cardano's attacks on, 17; discussed in dialogues, 51; during the Renaissance, 8, 16, 36, 45, 188; eclectic, 108-9; longevity of, 5-6; Protestant responses to, 188-89. See also "novatores" (on antiAristotelianism) Anstotelis Problemata, 16, 214

370

•INDEX·

Anstotle: passim, notably 45, 137; Bodin's criticisms of, 30-31, 42, 82-83, 85, 90-94, 108-11, 195, 197-98; compared to squid or cuttlefish, 92, 265n.46; criticism of natural history of, 92-93; criticism of order used by, 31; on the eternity of the world, 118; on intermediate beings, 131, 133-34, on knowledge, 98; on method, 61; on the soul, 141-42; as source, 58-59, 72, 267n.74; style of problems used by, 213, 215, theory of comets by, 94; theory of mixed government, 10 amebeth (hare), 115 Arpe, Petrus, 172 arrogance, 149-50, 151 Artemidorus, 109 astronomy: and astrology, 245n.81, disagreement of authorities within, 112; Bodin on position of, 31-32; errors within, 41; studied as part of physics, 31 atheism: described, 242n.46; natural theology argument against, 25; perceived as threat, 22-23 See also religion Athenaeus, 109 Aubert, Jacques, 28, 29, 35, 285n.42 Augustine, St., 20, 24, 28, 92, 110, 113, 140, 143, 192 Augustus, Duke of Saxony, 183 authorities· argument from consensus of, 89, 228; Bodin's criticism of, 110; Bodin's eclectic use of, 107-15; cited by Bodin, 109-10 authority: from antiquity, 88, 272n 136; Bible as, 88-89, 112-15, 189, 206; changing patterns of, 82; of experts as "experientia," 104; reason and, 88-89 Averroes (lbn Rushd), 110, 137, 142 Avicenna (lbn Sina), 45, 63, 110, 151, 189 Axelson, Conrad, 187 baara plant, 27

Bacon, Francis, 40, 57, 62, 86, 108, 193, 226, 227-31, 329n.l4 Baconthorpe, Bacon of, 142 Bamer, Wilfried, 169 Barrow, Isaac, 67 Bartas (Guillaume de Salluste, seigneur du), 165 Bartholin, Kaspar, 190, 201 Basel, 217 Basil, St, 38, 140, 192 basilisk, 95 Basson, Sebastien, 90 Baudouin, Frangois, 158, 159, 163 Bayle, Pierre, 195, 295n.2 Belleforest, Frangois de, 27

Belon, Pierre, 15, 19, 44, 59, 133, 210, 311n.l59 Beroald, Frangois, 170 Bertius, Petrus, 177 Besson, Jacques, 170 Beyerlinck, Laurentius, 39, 176 bezoar stone, 104-5, 269n.90 Bible, allegorical interpretations of, 95-96, 113-14; authority of, 89, 90, 147, 188, 189, 206; Bodin's use of, 25, 109, 112-13, 271n.l20; Charron's use of, 192-93; Christian physics and, 29; in Fougerolles' Thidtre, 210; in Siffert, 218, 222. Set also New Testament; Old Testament Bibliotheque universelle et histonque (Locke), 66-67 bibliographies, during the Renaissance, 46-48 Bibliotheca universalis (Gesner), 47 Bibliotheque frati(aise (La Croix du Maine), 47 Bmet, Htienne, 36 birds. Bodin's classification of, 132-33; experience related to, 60, 64-65, 100; as gift to mankind, 125, hierarchy of, 80; names of, 210; of prey, 65, 124, quails, 59; Theatrum problema on, 65. See also animals blasphemy, 150 Boaistuau, Pierre, 27-28, 47, 167 Boccaccio, Giovanni, 50 Bodin, Antoinette, 11 Bodin, Elie, 11 Bodin, Jean: accomplishments of, 11-12; accused of partial plagiarisms, 71, 235n.21; on astronomy, 31-32; background/early life of, 9, 234n.l8; chain of being by, 126-35, 276n.44; citation of own works, 13, 75, 239n.64, 260n,102; commonplace books used by, 5-6, 49, 68, 70-77; comparison of Bacon with, 227-31, 329n. 14, comparison of Melanchthon with, 35; criticisms of Aristotle by, 82, 85, 90-94, 108-11, 195, 197-98; criticized for anti-Anstotelianism, 90, 108, 189-90, 193-95; examining beliefs of, 25-26; ideal of order in, 32-33; intellectual abilities of, 12-13; as Jehan Baudin, 9, 203, 235n.24; knowledge of Judaism by, 110, 148, 281n.l21; legal training of, 86-87; marriage/career/death of, 10-11, 235n.25, 237n,39; natural philosophy of, 3, 8, 20-21, 40-46, 60-65, 226-31; personal religion of, 148-49, 237n.46; political theory of, 10, 21, 120, 137, 152, 236n.33; relations between Ramus and, 84-85; on supremacy of God's law, 19-20; theory of the soul by, 90, 137-42, 190; on vernacular Ian-

•

guage, 2 0 2 - 3 , on witchcraft, 10, 22, 1 4 6 - 4 7 . Sec also titles of individual works by Bodin Bodm, Jean (son), 11 Boissard, Jean-Jacques, 167 book- binding, 186; history, 8 - 9 , 1 4 - 1 5 , 181, 1 8 5 - 8 6 ; book of nature metaphor, 154; book as theater metaphor, 1 5 9 - 6 1 ; classification of books in Renaissance, 46—48 Borghese, Scipio, 174 Bouguereau, Maurice, 175 Bouju, Theophraste, 2 0 4 Bourdin, secretary, 102 Bouwsma, William, 8 6 Boyle, Robert, 2 3 1 brains of women, 2 2 1 Brandes, Johannes, 183 Bretagne, Anne de, 8 0 Bnght, Timothy, 3 4 Browne, Thomas, 67 Browne, Walter, 1 8 3 - 8 4 Brucker, Johann Jakob, 1 0 8 - 9 , 194 Bruno, Giordano, 1 0 8 Budg, Guillaume, 8 4 , 86, 2 6 9 n . 8 8 Bureau d'Adresse of Theophraste Renaudot, 2 0 4 Burton, Robert, 190, 2 9 7 n . l 5 , 3 0 7 n . l 2 3 Buteo, Johannes, 2 4 9 n . l 4 7 Cabbala, 110, 129, 151 De caelo (Aristotle), 31, 4 5 Caesarms Heisterbachensis, 199 Calepmus, Ambrosius, 4 7 , 56 Calvimst philosophers: declining influence of, 194; reception of Theatrumby, 185, 1 8 6 - 9 0 ; use of biblical authority by, 189 Calvin, John: condemning curiosity, 28; contemporary comments on, 148, 198; similarities with Bodin, 121, 1 2 9 - 3 0 , 144, 2 7 9 n . l 0 6 ; theater metaphor in, 1 6 4 Cameranus, Joachim, 27 Camillo Delminio, Giulio, 156, 157 Campanella, Tommaso, 108 Camus, Jean-Pierre, 168 Canaye, Philippe, sieur du Fresne, 3 1 6 n . l 8 8 Candale, Francois de Foix de (Candala), 101, 110, 194, 197, 2 2 6 Dies caniculares (Maiole), 51, 181 Cardano, Girolamo: criticisms of Aristotle by, 91, 94, 108, 190; as encyclopedist, 17, 47, 180, 285n.42; on nature, 122, 124, 133, 192; rationalism of, 27, 118; as source, 110, 199 Casaubon, Isaac, 148, 224; annotations of Theatrum by, 9 2 , 112, 126, 1 3 9 - 4 0 , 1 9 5 - 2 0 1 , 295n.2

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371

Case, John, 4 0 Casmann, Otho, 158, 159, 186, 187 Cassius, 2 1 5 castrated men, 8 0 - 8 1 Cave, Terence, 78 Ceard annotator. annotations by, 113, 127, 1 9 5 - 2 0 1 , 255n.41, 2 5 9 n . 9 6 , 2 8 1 n . l 2 1 , 2 9 5 n 2; descnbed, xiii, 2 9 9 n 35, 3 0 8 n . l 2 7 , tally of authorities by, 91, 1 1 0 - 1 1 Ceard, Jean, 195 celestial bodies: against deterministic view of, 130; as agents of divine will, 126; chain of being position of, 3 2 , 127, 1 2 9 - 3 0 ; disagreements among authorities on, 112; influences of, 135, 2 9 9 n 33; made for humans, 130, 190, 2 0 1 ; reception of Bodm on, 185, 1 9 0 - 9 1 , 201; studied under physics, 31 Celsus, 109 Ceriziers, Rene de, 2 0 4 Cervantes, Miguel de, 153 Cesi, Federico, 1 7 6 chain of being, 3 2 - 3 3 , 1 2 6 - 3 5 , 2 7 6 n , 4 4 Chalom, 184 Champaignac, Jean de, 86, 2 0 3 Chapelain, Jean, 1 9 4 Charpentier, Jacques, 90, 109 Charron, Pierre, 25, 8 6 , 185, 1 9 2 - 9 3 Chattier, Roger, 7 Chauvirg, Roger, 70 Chevriferes, Jacques Mitte de, 11, 1 8 - 1 9 , 203, 204 China, 2 2 5 , 2 5 7 n . 6 7 , 2 7 0 n 100 Chrisman, Miriam Usher, 2 1 7 Chnstian physics, 29, 117, 147. See also religion Chrysippus, 9 0 Cicero. De natura deorutn, 24, 121, 123, 145, 158, 2 4 3 n . 5 4 ; dialogue in, 50; references to, 109; in Renaissance education, 54, 84, 87 Clavius, Christopher, 2 4 9 n . l 4 8 Clement VIII, Pope, 1 8 4 Coignet, Mathieu, 102, 1 0 3 Colle, loannis, 1 7 6 Colloquies (Erasmus), 53 Colloquium heptaplomeres (Bodin), 11, 51, 69, 135-36 Colutius, Philander, 1 7 2 - 7 4 comets, 94, 1 8 9 - 9 0 , 191 Commentarius de praecipuis divinationum generibus (Peucer), 186 "common consensus," 89, 109, 2 2 7 - 2 8 commonplace books' Bodin's physics and use of, 49; contradictions due to, 74, 199; described, 5; method of, 6 5 - 7 7 ; natural

372

' I N D E X '

commonplace books (eont.) knowledge ordered in, 5, 68-69, 82; ongins/functions of, 65-68, thematic vs. topical headings m, 78-81; Theatrum composed from, 5-6, 71-81; used in the Republique, 70-71; use into nineteenth century, 226 Conclusiones (Pico della Mirandola), 76 condemnations of 1277, 117, 129 confessions of ignorance, 60, 92-93, 144-46, 149, 200, 222 conflation1 of nature and natural knowledge, 20-21, 42, 159-60, 242n.37; of history and historical knowledge, 71-72 Conring, Herman, 194 De consolatione philosophiae (Boethius), 186 De constantia (Lipsius), 147 contemplation, 21 Copernicus, Nicolaus, 15, 31, 70, 110, 196, 199, 249n.l44, 306n.ll4, 310n.l40 Cordes, Jean de, 184 Cordier, Mathurin, 53 Cornier, Robert, 305n. 109 Coriscus' accident, 120-21 Cosin, John, 296n 14 cosmology, 113-14 Coucy, Rabbi, 110 Council of Trent (1545-63)/ Counter-Reformation, 36, 142, 185 "Counter-Renaissance," 28 courtly dialogues, 50 creation, 118 Cressolles, Louis, 155 Cromer, Martin, 73, 75 Cupid and Psyche fable, 114 cuttlefish metaphor, 92, 265n.46 Cynegetica (Oppian), 9, 71, 124 Damville, Frangois de, 174 Dalechamps, Jacques, 72, 270n 99 dance of death, 168 Daneau, Lambert, 29, 36, 38, 84, 112, 117, 144, 159, 181 Davy du Perron, Jacques, 283n.l5 Dear, Peter, 105 Decameron (Boccaccio), 50 Dee, John, 12 Dejfence et illustration de la languefrarnoyse (du Bellay), 202, 206 della Porta, Giambattista, 37, 47, 96, 186 Democritus, 52, 109 De la Dimonomanie des sorciers (Bodin), 10; argument as lawyer-like, 87; on Biblical literalism, 113; cabbala condemned in, 129; Cath-

olic Church reception of, 184; direct intervention of God according to, 116; printing/ distribution of, 188, religious nature of, 149; science of demonology in, 43; sin of idolatry in, 150; use of sources in, 75, on witchcraft, 22, 62, 75, 97, 116, 150; list of worst sorcerers of age, 151 demons: baara plant to ward off, 27; belief in association with, 111, 135; Bodin's notion of, 128, 275n.40; collection of German texts on, 177; compared to magistrates, 120; corporeal nature of, 140-41; intervention of God through, 116; storms and earthquakes due to, 145-46; to explain natural phenomena, 189 See also intermediate beings Descartes, Rene, 96, 108, 112, 154, 172, 226, 228 Description of Africa (Leo Africanus), 75 Deusing, Antonius, 165, 306n 118 Dialeetica (Ramus), 85 dialectical reasoning, 83-84, 262n.ll dialogue· Bodin's use of, 49, 50-55, 58-60, 138-39; and the method of physics, 60-63; models for, 50-51; and use of sources, 72-73; used in Renaissance education, 53. See also Mystagogus (Theatrum character), Theorus (Theatrum character) Dialogue concerning the Two World Chief Systems (Galileo), 51 Dictionnaire historique et critique (Bayle), 195 Diderot, Denis, 108 digression, 78-79 Dioscondes, 15, 36, 43, 109 Discours chretiens (Charron), 25, 185, 192-93 disputatio, 53, 301n.48 Diverses IeQons (Mexia), 38 divine free will, 118—20, 136 divine omnipotence, 118-20 divine providence, 120-26 "docere et delectare," 33, 160, 178, 246n.96, 285n 42 Doctrinae physicae elementa sive initia (Melanchthon), 28 Doraavius, Caspar, 177 "double truth" theory, 143 Dousa1Janus, 12, 147 doxography, 76, 89-90, 112, 190-91, 197, 227 Duns Scotus, John, 92, 110, 111, 118, 137, 138, 192 Dupleix, Scipion, 89, 90, 93, 109, 185, 193, 204 Duplessis Momay, Philippe. See Momay Dutertre, Catherine, 9

• I N D E X · earthquakes, 51, 75, 91, 145, 222 eclecticism, 107-9 education: Bodin's plan for his children's, 54-55; dialogues used in, 53; growth of, 15, 187-88, use of commonplace books in Renaissance, 65—66 Eglingerus, Samuel, 194 elements: as bonds of the universe, 133-34; reception of Bodin's theory of, 91, 111, 189 Elements (Euclid), 15 emblems, 169 Empedocles, 76, 89, 110 encyclopedia, 48, 176, 179. Seealso order Ennius, 199 Epicureans: attacked, 22, 52, 138, 140-41; Christianized, 6, 144; necessary universe of, 94, random and godless universe of, 121 Epicurus, 22, 109, 273n 15 Erasmus, Desiderius, 53, 67, 110, 148, 271n 119 eryngius plant, 72-73 Essais (Montaigne). See Montaigne Essay des merveilles de nature (Binet), 36 Estienne, Henri, 39 Etaples, Leffevre d', 52 eternity of the world, 118-20 Ethique (Dupleix), 204 Euclid, 15, 58, 110 Evans, R J. W., 181 evil: of arrogance, 149-50, 151; of blasphemy and idolatry, 150; Boissard on cause of, 167-68; companson of Bodin and Siffert on, 222-23; definition of, 123, 325n.264; Repubhque on purpose of, 136; of superstition, 151 Exercitationum exotericarum .. . liber XV (Scaliger), 180 experience: Bacon's use of, 228-29; Bodin's sources of, 102-4; Bodin's use of, 95—107, 225, 228-29; continuities in methods of compiling, 193; "experientia" and, 103, 105-7; experts and, 104; on magnets, 268n.80; periculum and, 104-5; reason and, 98, role m scientific method of, 98-99; senses and, 63, 99, 102-3 Expilly, Claude, 297n.l5, 316n.l92 Fabri de Peiresc, Claude, 86 Fagius, Paul, 110, 254n.31 faith: Aristotle and defense of, 204; natural theological authors on, 144; synthesis between reason and, 116-17, 143-44. See also reason; religion

373

Family of Love, 26, 102, 147, 148 Febvre, Lucien, 95 Fell, A London, 71 Fermat, Pierre de, 86 Fernel, jean, 109, 110 Ferrier, Auger, 12 Feyrabend, Sigmund, 177, 293n.l26 Ficino, Marsilio, 110, 135 Findlen, Paula, 99 Fine, Oronce, 249n 147 fish: annotated copies on, 199; experience related to, 99, 100; fisherman's fish, 210, 324n.258; as gift to mankind, 125; Hebrew dietary laws on, 114; natural histories of, 44, 210 See also animals FOix de Candale, Frangois de. See Candale, Frangois de Foix de fortuitous cause, 120-21 fossils, 31 Fougerolles, Frangois de· book as theateT metaphor used by, 160, career of, 204-5, 313n.174; comparison of Bodin's front matter with, 19; implicit criticisms of Bodin in, 21, 204, 210-11; "rebirth of letters" movement and, 202; preface by, 90, 205-6; tables by, 33, 161-63, 211; translation arrangements made by, 103, 203, 210, 270n.99, 282n.l35, on use of vernacular language, 206-7. See also Theatrum (French translation) Francken, Johan, 216-17 Frangois, due d'Alengon, 10-11, 102, 236n.37 Frangois, Rene (Etienne Binet), 36 free will, 118-20 Freher, Paul, 172 Freigius, Johann Thomas, 33, 34 French language: Mystagogus/Theorus and, 55-56, and natural philosophy, 204; "rebirth of letters" movement and, 202, 312n.l61 See also languages Fuchs, Leonard, 15, 44 Funck1Johann, 70 Gadagne, Gabrielle de, 18 Galen, 43, 45, 109-11, 121, 267n,74, 271n.ll0, 325n.262 Galileo, 18, 51-52, 154 Galles, Louis, 205 Garimberto, Girolamo, 165 Gassendi, Pierre, 4, 6, 109, 144 Gay (of Die), 205 Gaza, Theodor, 110

374

• Γ N D E X·

Geitmann, Johannes, 183, 240η 17 Gellius, Aulus, 38-39, 294-95η.132 GemmaFrisius, 110 De generatione (Aristotle), 31 geographical theaters, 174-78 Geometry (Euclid), 58 Gesner, Conrad, 44, 47, 210, 250n.l61 Gilbert, William, 229 Gillot, Jacques, 11 Gilson, Etienne, 96 Ginzburg, Carlo, 14 goat and eryngius plant, 72-73 Goclenius, Rodolph, 187, 190, 191 God: appreciated through nature, 16, 24; blasphemy against, 150; Bodin's vision of, 12; and chain of being, 127, 128; Demonomanie on intervention of, 116; experience and the omnipotence of, 95-96, 97; as incorporeal, 141; intervention in nature by, 124-25; laws of, 19-20, 120, 136, free will/omnipotence of, 118-20; nonconfessional, 18, 146-47; providence of, 120-26; reached through study of nature, 56, 57; as the tenth hypostasis, 32; Theatrum argument about, 13; Theatrum as ode to, 144-45, 164 golden chain metaphor, 84, 127 Gorlaeus, David, 90 Goulart, Simon, 276n.55 government See state Granius, Nicolaus, 195-201 Grant, Edward, 5 Greek language. See languages Gregory the Great, 119 Gregory ofNyssa, 110, 192 Grenaille, Francois de, 175 Grueber, Carolus (Theatrum naturae), 155, 166, 172 Guicciardini, 110 Guillemin (of Lyon), 205 Guttmann1Jakob, 75 Gynaeceum sive theatrum mulierum (Amman), 169 harmonic justice, 98, 134, 250n.l50 harmony: discord/religious differences and, 136; of the world through elements, 133-34 Haydn, Hiram, 28, 95 heavens. See celestial bodies Hebrews- as authorities, 114; language of, 114-15, 135, 185, 281n,121 Helvicus, Christopher, 171 hemlock, 122, 123 Henry Il (France), 10, 102 Henry III (France), 11-12, 47, 70, 227

HenrylV (France), 11, 175, 205 Henry of Langenstein, 83, 93 Henry of Mechelen, 110, 304n.84 Heptameron (Marguerite de Navarre), 50 Heraclitus, 145 Herberstein, Baron Sigismund von, 73 Heret, Mathurin, 29, 321n,225 hermetiea, 110, 117, 148, 156-57 Herron, Louis, 184 Hill, Nicholas, 90, 186 Hippocrates, 45, 109, 111, 145, 215 Histoires prodigieuses (Boaistuau), 27 Histona critiea philosophiae (Brucker), 108 histoires prodigieuses genre, 26-28, 38 "histoires tragiques," 168 history: conflated with historical knowledge, 71-72; Methodus on study of, 9, 69-70; theater of the world and, 158-59; theatrical metaphors used in, 171; used by Bodin as sources, 73-77. See also humankind History of Animals (Aristotle), 58, 59 History of Plants (Theophrastus), 219 hoarfrost, 189 Hobbes, Thomas, 108 Homer, 84, 110 Hondius, Jodocus, 170, 293n.l26 Hondorff, Andreas, 289n.90 homs, 70 Hucher (of Montpellier), 315n.l83 human body, 45, 210-11 humankind: chain of being and, 126-35; heavenly bodies to serve, 130, 190, 201; intervention of God for, 124-25; plants and animals useful for, 125-26; role in theater of the world, 158-59. See also history De humani corporis fabrica (Vesalius), 15, 210 hyacinth stone, 95 hypostases, 32. See also chain of being Iacchino, Leonardo, 215 Iamblichus, 128, 140 De idea et theatro imitatricium et imitabilium (Colle), 176 idolatry, 150 illustrated subject theaters, 170-71 Index, Roman Congregation of, 184 Inigo de Guevara, Prince, 166 insects, 78-79 Institutiones physicae (Jacchaeus), 35 Institutio oratoria (Quintilian), 67 Instruction chretienne (Viret), 23 intermediate beings: examples of, 132-36; in the state, 120, 136-37; theory of the soul and, 137-42

• INDEX iogne plant, 107 irenicism, 26, 1 4 7 - 4 8 Isaac Narbonensis, 7 6 luns universi distnbutio (Bodm), 8 4 Jacchaeus, Gilbert, 35 Jardine, Lisa, 2 2 8 Jena, 148 Joannes de Temponbus, 221 John of Damascus (Damascene), 38, 110, 119, 192 J o n s t o n J a n , 44, 165, 1 9 1 - 9 2 Joubert, Laurent, 3 2 8 n 3 Judaism. Bodin as Judaizer, 148; Bodin's knowledge of, 2 8 1 n 121; Jewish sources in Tkeatrum, 75, 110, 1 1 4 - 1 5 ; Judeo-Christian tradition, 118. See also allegorical interpretation, Cabbala, religion Juris universi distnbutio (Bodm), 10 Keckermann, Bartholomaus, 108, 158, 187, 188, 1 8 9 - 9 0 Kelley, Donald, 87 Kepler, Johannes, 18, 101, 154, 194, 2 2 6 Kimhi, Rabbi David, 110 Kircher, Athanasius, 154 Komg, Emanuel, 217 Kuhlmann, Wilhelm, 2 1 8 labaneth (moon), 115 Labe, Philippe, 2 5 1 n 161 La Croix du Maine, Frangois Grude, sieur de, 47 La Fontaine, Jean de, 169 Lambm, Denys, 138 lament "theaters," 1 6 7 - 6 8 languages: French, 5 5 - 5 6 , 2 0 2 - 4 , 3 1 2 n . l 6 1 ; German, 220; Greek, 14, 27, 5 5 - 5 6 , 63, 81, 208, 3 1 0 n 158; Hebrew, 14, 1 1 4 - 1 5 , 2 8 1 n . l 2 1 , 308n 129; justification of vernacular, 2 0 6 - 7 , Latin, 14, 15, 27, 45, 5 3 - 5 6 , 203; Renaissance literature classified by, 4 6 , 47; in title vs text, 2 1 3 La Pernere, Guillaume de, 169 La Popelinifere, Lancelot Voisin, sieur de, 86 La Primaudaye, Pierre de, 2 3 - 2 5 , 4 7 - 4 8 , 156, 158, 164, 192 Lasswitz, Kurd, 111 Lateran Council: (1215), 299n.31; (1513), 117, 137 Latin language: Bodin's plan for teaching, 54; Mystagogus/Theorus and, 5 5 - 5 6 , taught through dialogues, 53; Theatrum written in, 203 Lawn, Brian, 2 1 3

•

375

laws of nature, 1 9 - 2 0 , 74, 106, 1 1 9 - 2 0 , 136, 229, 269n.95 Le Conte, Augustmian, 184 Lectionum antiquorum libri XXX (Rhodiginus), 39 legal profession, 8 5 - 8 7 , 183 Leibniz, W. G„ 90, 108, 194 Leiden University, 148, 156 Lemnius, Levinus, 36, 180, 285n.42 Leo Africanus, 7 5 , 110, 2 1 8 Leo (Leone) Ebreo, 110, 113, 124, 129 leper purification ritual (Leviticus), 113 Lesbos (rule of), 98, 134 Lesdiguiferes, Francois due de, 2 0 5 "Letter to His Nephew concerning the Instruction of His Children" (Bodin), 5 4 Levi ben larchi, Rabbi, 1 1 0 Liber creaturarum et de homine (Sabunde), 2 4 Linnaeus (Carl von Linne), 1 5 7 - 5 8 Lipsius, Justus, 6, 26, 1 0 8 - 9 , 144, 147, 148, 195,217, 297n.l5 literature: anthologies, 1 7 7 - 7 8 ; apologetic, 24; histoires prodigieuses, 2 6 - 2 8 , 38; history "theaters," 171; miscellany as genre, 3 7 - 3 9 , 218, 247n. 125; moral "theaters," 1 6 8 - 6 9 , natural theology, 2 4 - 2 8 , problemata genre of, 16, 3 7 - 3 8 , 2 1 3 - 1 6 , 3 1 8 n . 2 1 0 , Renaissance dialogues, 5 0 - 5 1 ; Renaissance textbooks, 3 4 - 3 9 . See also natural philosophy literature Livre, Nicolas de, 51, 102, 103 Locke, John, 66, 8 2 locus amoenus (dialogue), 50, 51 Logan, James, 3 0 7 n . l l 9 logic, 8 3 - 8 4 Logique (Dupleix), 2 0 4 Lohr, Charles, 53 Lorhard, Jacob, 172, 176 Louis XII (France), 80 Louvain, 1 4 8 Lucian, 50 Lucretius, 278n 8 5 Lull, Ramon, 24, 2 7 6 n 4 4 Luther, Martin, 28, 112, 148 Lycosthenes, 27 McKeon, Richard, 4 2 McRae, Kenneth, 8 5 Maggio, Lucio, 51, 75 Magia naturalis (della Porta), 4 7 , 9 6 , 186 Magius, Hieronymus, 199 magnet: experiment, 2 6 8 n 80; ignorance on, 145; large, 1 9 1 - 9 2 Magnum theatrum vitae humanae (Beyerlinck), 39,176

376

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I N D E X

Maimonides1 110, 113, 118, 275n.42, 281n.l21 Maiole, Bishop Simon, 51, 159, 181, 285n.42 Manicheanism, 122, 150, 223 maps ("theaters"), 174-75 Mareschal, Philibert, 47 Marnix de Sainte-Aldegonde, 56 Martin, Julian, 230 mathematics, 41, 226, 249n 147 Mattioli, Pietro Andrea, 43, 107, 110, 259n.92, 274n.24 Mazann, Cardinal, 184 medicine, 36, 44-45; as profession, 205-6. See also natural knowledge medicus, 44, 133 Megerlinus, Petrus, 171 Melanchthon, Philip: on astrology, 276n.55; Bodin's use of, 110, 148, 249n.l44; on commonplaces, 257n.63; on dialectic, 83, 85; on natural philosophy, 28-29, 34-35, 188, 269n 95; on theater of nature, 155, 157 Memorabilia (Merula), 38 Menage, Gilles, 11 Menander, 55 Mercator, Gerard, 177 Mercuriale, Girolamo, 68 Mermann, Arnold, 171, 175 Mersenne, Marin, 20, 80, 90, 185, 193, 194 Merton, Robert, 18 Merula, Gaudentius, 38, 109, 140, 285n.42 Mesnard, Pierre, 70 metals, 127, 300n.40; weighed, 100-101 Metamorphoses (Ovid), 81 metaphors on beauty of science, 207; book of nature, 154; book as theater, 159-66; on chain of being, 127, cuttlefish, 92, 265n.46; mirror metaphor, 165, 178; for miscellanies, 247n.l25; science as a hunt, 41, Theorus as a traveler, 57; torture, 22, 138, 229-30, 242n42; used in Discours Chretiens (Charron), 192; used for nature, 153-59, 165, 226; used in titles, 166-67, 178-79. See also theater metaphors metaphysics: disputationes m, 53; physics distinguished from, 41-43 Metaphysique (Dupleix), 204 Meteorologica (Aristotle), 31, 45 method: "circular path," 99; of commonplaces, 65-77; dialogue as, 52, 61, of physics, 60-65; Ramism and, 84-85 Methodus adfacilem historiarum cognitionem (Bodin)' Catholic Church reception of, 184; on commonplace notebooks, 49, 71; com-

posed m Latin, 202, contents of, 9-10; diffusion of, 188; lack of exotic accounts in, 107; Plutarch cnticized in, 97; on study of history, 9, 69-70 Mexia, Pedro, 38 Milton, John, 142 Mizauld, Antome, 181 Montaigne, Michel de. on causes, 61-62; and Charron, 192; and commonplacing, 82, 86; in contemporary classifications, 48; on natural theology, 24, 165; on Plutarch, 97; skeptical arguments of, 20-21, 28, 97, 145, 328n. 12; self-consciousness of, 42; on witchcraft, 97 moral "theaters," 168-70 More, Henry, 303n.75 More, Thomas, 50, 217 Moreau, Rene, 297n.l5 Momay, Philippe Duplessis, 24-25, 47, 121, 144, 158-59, 163 Mosellanus, Petrus, 53 mos gallicus, 86, 100 moving mountain anecdote, 102, 103 Moy, marquis de, 11 De mundo (Aristotle), 31 Murdoch, John, 97-98 Muzio, Girolamo, 156 Mystagogus (Theatrum character): on animals, 81; Aristotelian reasoning by, 83; comments on allegories by, 113-14; on creation of the world, 88; on demons, 145-46; dialogue used by, 52, 61, 62-63; on divine intervention, 119; on fortuitous cause, 120-21; on natural necessity, 120; reductio ad absurdum argument by, 94-95; relationship with Theorus, 55-60; on saltiness of the sea, 93; on the soul, 138-39; sources for dialogue of, 72-73; syllogistic arguments of, 87-89; Theorus requests guidance from, 15354; on unity of truth, 144. See also Theorus CTheatrum character) names: analysis of Mystagogus and Theorus, 55-57; of God and angels, 129; in natural history, 107, 210, 270n 99, 317n.203. See also languages De natura deorum (Cicero), 24, 121, 123, 145, 158, 243n.54 Naturae theatrum universale (Deusing), 165 natural causes, 27, 64-65. See also natural phenomena natural history: criticism, of Aristotle's, 92-93; Jonston's, 165-66; medicine and, 44-45; physics and, 43-44; Problemata Bodini on,

• I N D E X · 218-21; sources for, 72-73, 123; Theatrum as source of, 43, 45, 69, 191-93; at university, 35 Natural history (Pliny the Elder), 5, 15, 36, 59, 68 natural knowledge: annotated copies on, 198-99, Bodin's use of archives for, 100; conflated with nature, 20—21, 42, 159-60, 242n.37; detecting fraudulent, 105; role of experience in forming, 98; importance of sharing, 57, 255n.38, ordered in commonplace books, 5, 68—69, 82; physics as evaluation of, 49; Renaissance ordering of, 7, 30-40, 46-48, 176; theaters of, 156-57; used by Bodin in works, 43, 45, 69-70, 73-77 natural laws, 19—20, 106, 119-20, 136, 269n.95 natural magic, 151 See also occult powers, witchcraft natural necessity, 120 natural phenomena: causal explanations of, 21-22, 27, 64-65; demons as cause of, 145-46, expenence used to explain, 95-96; fortuitous cause of, 120-21; HippocraticAristotelian understanding of, 215; Keckermann on, 189-90; Problemata Bodini on, 219—20; supernatural vs., 126, 250n.l52, Theatrum theory-laden questions on, 49, 62-65 natural philosophy1 comparison of Bodin and Bacon's, 227-31, 329n 14; in context of Scientific Revolution, 3, 232; eliminating atheism by, 151-52, explosion of general, 14; features of Bodin's, 3, 8, 40-46, 90-91, 226-27; Renaissance dialogues on, 50-51; similarities of Tkeatrum and biblical, 147; Theatrum dialogue on, 50—55; ties between religion and, 18, 143-52, traditional contents of, 4-5; of Viret and La Primaudaye, 23-24 See also physics; science natural philosophy literature: books of secrets, 17, 37, 38, 213; classifications of Renaissance, 46-48; exploiting metaphor of theater of nature, 154-58; nature of, 14-15; order vs. variety in 37-39, 175, 218; problemata genre of, 16, 37-38, 213-16, Renaissance developments in, 15-18; use of dialogues m, 52. See also literature Natural Questions (Seneca), 47 natural theology: Bodin on, 6; genre of, 24-28; origins/development of, 24—26, 224, 226, 243n.53; difficulties of, 164-65; premise of, 26; Theatrum as, 48, 120—26. See also

377

religion nature- Bodin's praise of, 20-21, 26; conflation with natural knowledge, 20-21, 42, 159-60 242n.37; diverse philosophies on, 124; divine will manifested in, 136; as gift from God, 125; God reached through study of, 57; as God's manifestations, 26; illegitimate use of, 151; laws of, 19-20, 106, 120, 136, 269n.95, metaphors used for, 153-59, 165, 226; religion and, 15-16, 19-30; as sacred, 20, 40, 57, universal nature, 285n 38; useless or evil features of, 122-23 Naude, Gabriel, 47, 68, 181, 185, 186, 228, 297n.l5 Navarre, Marguerite de, 50 Neander, Michael, 34, 285n,42 Neoplatonists. on cham of being 127-28; on evil and other ills, 122; hierarchy of angelic beings by, 128; progressive emanation of forms notion of, 127; view of universe by, 131 new: Bacon's attitude toward, 230, Bodin's attitude toward, 12, 82, 126; readers' attention to the, 200. See also "novatores" New Atlantis (Bacon), 230 New Organon (Bacon), 227, 229 New Testament, 25, 222. See also Bible New World, 36, 82, 107, 210, 228, 324n.258 Newton, Isaac, 18 Nicander, 95, 109 Nicodemism, 25, 148 noblesse de robe, 85-86 Nova scientia (Tartaglia), 15 "novatores," 92, 108-9, 194, 305n 105, 306n.ll8 Nucleus Mysteriorum enucleata (Casmann), 186 Nunez, Pedro, 249n.l47 Obsequens, Julius, 27 occult powers, 150, 222 Ocellus Lucanus, 187 Old Testament: Bodin's use of, 25, 82, 88-89, 128-29, 142, 148; on the heavens, 130; interpretations of, 112-15; ProblemataBodini use of, 218, 222 See also allegorical interpretation; Bible Olympiodorus, 140 Omnes homines" text, 213, 215, 216, 217 On the Causes of Marvels (Oresme), 93 On the Creation of the World (Philo), 154-55 Ong, Walter, 85 Oppian, 96, 202. See also Cynegetica Orange, William, Prince of, 102-3, 104, 106, 198

378

I N D E X

order: alphabetical, 47, 66, 162-63, 285n.45; Bodin's ideal of linear progression of, 32-33; divine origin/beauty of, 30-31; of Problemata Bodini, 220-21; of Renaissance knowledge, 7, 30-40; in Scribonius' Physica, 34; used by Aristotle, 31; used by Melanchthon, 34-35; used by Neander, 34; versus variety, 38-39, 175, 218; within commonplace books, 66, 68-69, 78-81 Oresme, Nicole, 93 Origen, 113, 129, 192 Ornithologia (Aldrovandi), 15 Orta, Garcia da, 270n.99 Ortelius, Abraham, 12, 102, 104, 147, 174 ortygometra, 59 Ovid, 81 Pacard, Georges, 25 Padua, 99, 156-57 Paedagogus (Freigius), 34 Paley, William, 121 Pahssy, Bernard, 52-53, 202 Panaetius, 90 Paracelsus, Theophrastus, 110, 122, 151 Paradoxon (Bodin), 11, 186 Pare, Ambroise, 202 Parkinson1John, 167, 170, 171 Parlement de Paris, 9, 148, 192, 204 parrots, 123-24 Parva naturalia (Aristotle), 31 Pasquier, Etienne, 86 passive intellect, 113-14, 141-42 Patrizi, Francesco, 90, 109 Paulet, Amias, 227 pedagogical "theaters," 172-74 Peletier du Mans, Jacques, 202 Pena1Jean, 199 Pereira, Benito, 43, 93, 188 periculum as experiment, 104-5 Petit, Pierre, 194 Peucer, Caspar, 186 Peurbach, Georg, 110 Philo, 56, 76, 88, 112-13, 129, 154-55, 158, 164,193 Philoponus Qohn Philoponus), 109, 140 Philosophia Epicurea (Hill), 186 philosophical dialogues, 50 philosophy: agreement between religion and, 6-7, 82-83, 116-17, conflict between religion and, 189; consensus/diversity in, 89-90; converted to natural theology, 24; eclectic, 108; infected with atheism, 23, presented in Christian context, 29; rationalist, 143-44; synthesis of religion and, 143-52

Physica (Aristotle), 31, 32 Physica Christiana (Daneau), 181 Physica et sphaerica doctrina (Scnbonius), 34 Physica seu naturae theatrum (Colutius), 172-74 physics. Aristotelian, 45; Bacon's definition of, 229-30; Bodin's notion of, 40-46, 230; bookish methods of, 49ff.; Christian, 117; mathematics compared to, 41; medicine distinguished from, 44, 133; metaphysics distinguished from, 41-43; method of in The­ atrum, 60-65; natural history and, 43-44, study of heavens withm, 31; study of soul within, 137; use of term, 249n 140. See also natural philosophy; science Physique (Dupleix), 204 Physique fran(oise (Champaignac), 203 Physiquejranfoise (Daneau), 38, 313n.l68 Piccolomini, Franciscus, 35 Pico della Mirandola, Gianfrancesco, 265n.44, 276n.55 Pico della Mirandola, Giovanni, 31, 76, 110, 135, 140, 271n,112 piety: founded on natural philosophy, 26, loss of, 22-23, 147; pessimistic and optimistic strands of, 164; praise of Bodin's, 200; principles of true, 146, 149-52; in Siffert, 221-22 Pillehotte, Jean, 203 Placcius, Vincent, 172 "places" (topoi or loci), 67-70. See also commonplace books plagues, 126 planche, 163 plantargentum, 132 Plantin, Christophe, 147 plants: for animals vs. humans, 125; baara, 27; classified, 276n.59; displayed m Coroni's home, 135-36; eryngius, 72-73; exotic, 107; illustrated theater on, 170-71; iogne, 107; Melanchthon's order for, 34-35; Neander's order for, 34; order of Book III of Theatrum, 31-32, 127; poisonous, 122, 259n.92; Problemata Bodini questions on, 219-20; The­ atrum problema on, 65, 74; treated by physicus, 44 Plato, 32, 50, 76, 88-90, 109-12, 142, 161, 193 Plautus, 199 Pliny the Elder: acknowledgments by, 77, 197, Bodin's criticism of, 43, 110, 111; French translation of, 285n.42; Natural history, 5, 15, 36, 59, 68; praised, 271n.ll2; on protective devices of animals, 123; used as source, 27, 59, 72, 109, 189; on "usus" as teacher, 96 Plotmus, 90, 109, 110, 128, 140, 283n.l6 Pluche, Antoine, 179

• INDEX. Plutarch: cnticized by Bodin, 97; problems of, 16, 215, as source, 72, 75-76, 109, 145, 250n.l55, 256n.58, and theater metaphor, 156 poisonous animals, 122-23 poisonous plants, 122, 259n.92 Polycletes (rule of), 98, 134 Pomponazzi, Pietro, 43, 108, 117, 137-38, 143, 151, 189 Pontanus, Jiri, 185, 186 Porphyry, 109, 110, 128, 140 Portal (of Montpelher), 205 Posidomus, 90 Possevinus, Antonius, 148, 184, 188 Postel, Guillaume, 144 Posterior analytics (Anstotle), 61, 83 Potamon of Alexandria, 108 Praetorrus, Michael, 170 "prince is freed from the laws," 119 printers, 203, 293n.l26. See also Wechel publishers Problemata Anstotelis ("Problems of Aristotle"), 213, 215-16, 318n.210 Problemata Bodini (Siffert): editions of, 182, 212-17, as German adaptation of Theatrum, 4, 217-24; order of, 220-21; reception of, 187, 213, 224-25; theory-laden questions of, 218-24; title page of, 212, 214; See also Theatrum (Bodin) problemata genre: arguments used in, 29-30, Bodin's work connected to, 45-46, 218; described, 16; order within, 37-38; structural elements of, 35; type of question in, 64, 213, 221; used in the Theatrum, 49, 64. See also Problemata Aristotelis; Problemata Bodini Problems (Aristotle), 37 Proclus, 58, 89, 109, 128 propositio (Theatrum), 30-31, 33 Protestant reformers, 28, 112, 117, 188-89 See also Calvin; Calvinist philosophers; Luther; Melanchthon Prunier, Artus, sieur de Saint-Andre, 204-5 Psellus, 140 Psyche and Cupid fable, 114 Ptolemy, 110, 174, 177, 199 Purchas, Samuel, 165, 167 Pythagoras, 109, 110 quaestiones, 6 1 quails, 59 Questiones physicae (Freigius), 34 Quintilian, 67 Rabel, Daniel, 170 Rabelais, Francois, 78

379

Ramelli, Agosto, 68 Ramus, Petrus (also Peter Ramus, Pierre de La Ramee): on art and nature, 40, and Bodm, 9, 83-85, 161, consulting artisans, 104, followers of, 34; Fougerolles and, 211, 316n 188, Granius and, 309n 130, principles of, 33, 83-85, religion and philosophy synthesized by, 144; thesis title of, 263n.l9 rationalist philosophy, 143-44; mocked, 27 reason, authority and, 88-89, experience and, 98; limits of, 95, 144; synthesis between faith and, 116-17, 143-44. See also confessions of ignorance, faith reductio ad absurdum argument, 94-95 Rees, Graham, 228 Regiomontanus Qohann Muller), 110, 112 religion: agreement between philosophy and, 6-7, 82-83, 116-17; Bodin's personal, 148—49; conflict between philosophy and, 189, harmony despite differences in, 136, nature and, 15-16, 19-30; principles of true, 146-52; Republique on, 148-49, synthesis of philosophy and, 143-52; three kinds of theology, 243n.53; ties between science and, 18; universal acknowledgment of, 12. See also atheism religious toleration, 146-47 Renaissance. Anstotelianism during the, 8, 16; changing patterns of authority during, 82; eclectic Aristotelians of the, 108; encyclopedic ambition during, 176; humanists avoiding partisan religious positions during, 147-48; legal profession during, 85-86, natural knowledge gathered during, 3-4; natural philosophy literature developed during, 15-18; ordering of knowledge during, 7, 30-40; structure of textbooks during, 34—39; reference works during, 46—48; use of commonplace books dunng, 65-66 Renaudot, Theophraste, 204 reptiles, 79 Republique (Bodm): archival records referred to in, 100; Catholic Church reception of, 184; classification of, 48; commonplace book use in the, 70-71; effectiveness of arguments in, 13, 87; harmonic justice of, 98, 134, 250n.l50; human history covered by, 69-70; ideals in, 21, 152; intermediate beings in, 116, 120, J 36-37; Latin translation of, 10, 203, pragmatic view of religion in, 148-49; Protestant reception of, 276n.55, on purpose of good and evil, 136, on witchcraft, 147, written in French, 202-3 De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (Copernicus), 15

380

•

I N D E X'

rhetoric: comparison of Bodin and Bacon's, 226; changes in rhetoric of natural philosophy, 231; of self-presentation, 305n.l05 Rhodiginus, Caelius, 39, 47, 199 Ricius, Paul, 110 Rio, Martin del, 184 Rixner, Hemrich, 183, 194 Roman law, 22, 86, 119 Ronsard, Pierre de, 153 Rondelet, Guillaume, 44, 110, 199, 210, 311n.l59 Rose, Paul, 12, 148 Rosius, Jacob, 183 Roussin, Jacques, 18, 203 Rueus, Franciscus, 36 Ryff, Walther, 216 Sabunde, Ramon, 24, 124, 154, 164 Sadeler, Aegidius1 168-69 De la Sagesse (Charron), 25, 185, 192 salt, 93, 111, 150, 222, 282n.37; in sea, 104, 145, 326n 272; -workers, 269n.89 Sancroft, Archbishop William, 183 De sapientia veterum (Bacon), 228 Saporta (of Montpellier), 205 Savot, Louis, 194 Scalich, Paul, 87 Scaliger, Joseph, 47, 198 Scaliger, Julius Caesar, 17, 107-8, 109-10, 180, 195, 198, 199 schamaim (heavens), 114 Schmitt1 Charles, 8, 108, 109 scholastic: authorities, 76; method and deviation from, 61,83, 87-88, 141 Schroder1Johann, 217 science: contributors to emergence of, 8, 231-32; of demonology, 43; metaphor on beauty of, 207; reception of Theatrum m circles of, 193-94; ties between religion and, 18 See also natural philosophy; physics Scientific Revolution: gradual process of, 231-32; natural philosophy in context of, 3, 232; Theatrum legacy for, 225 Scribonius, Wilhelm, 33, 34, 187, 285n.42 De secretis, Secrets et merveilles de nature (Wecker), 29, 37, 47-48 secrets, books of, 17, 37, 38 Selden, John, 190 Seneca, 47, 88, 109 Sennert, Daniel, 157-58, 190 senses. See experience, senses and seven, 60, 221, 282n.l36 sexual differentiation, 79-80 Shakespeare, William, 67, 153

Shapin, Steven, 231 Siffert, Damian1 4, 212, 216-24, 229 Simplicius, 110 Sixtus V, Pope, 184 Socrates: and Coriscus, 120-21; dialogues of, 50, 52 Solomon, 129, 193, 299n.35, 308n 127 Soman, Alfred, 10, 22 Soto, Domingo de, 35 Soranus1 90 soul. Bodm's theory of the, 89, 111, 137-42, 190; Book IV on the, 32, 127; corporeal nature of the, 140-41; diversity of opinions on the, 90; understanding distinguished from the, 115 sources' cited in Bodin, 109-10; disparate uses of, 75-76, 109, 221; rules for confronting, 229. See also commonplace books sovereignty comparison of human and divine, 119-20; of hereditary monarchy, 10 Spectacle de la Nature (Pluche), 179 Speed, John, 167, 29 In.108 state: compared to nature, 119-20, 136-37; hereditary monarchy in, 10; intermediates within, 136-37; Republique ideal of, 21, 152, 236n 33 Stoics: Bodin on, 111-12; Chnstianized, 6, 144, on moral order of universe, 121; on number of predicaments, 90; on seeds of virtue, 255n 138 stones: agate, 266n.60; bezoar, 104-5; experiment on aetites, 104-5; hyacinth, 95 Stubbe, Henry, 303n.75 Suarez, Francisco, 188 Suetonius, 75 De subtilitate (Cardano), 17 superstition, 151 Syiva sylvarum (Bacon), 228 Sylvius, 216 Symposium (Plato), 50 table of contents (Theatrum), 33, 161-64 tabula/table, 33, 59-63, 84, 161-63, 211; terms defined, 287n 68 Talon, Omer, 84 Tartaglia, Niccolo, 15, 194 Teniers, David, 178 Terence, 199 Tertullian, 140, 192 Tesserant1 Antoine, 27 Thales, 88, 193 Thaumatographia naturalis (Jonston), 191, 192 theater metaphors: Bodin's double use of, 7-8, 153; divine providence theme of, 154; ex-

•INDEX· ploited m natural philosophy literature, 154-58; geographical "theaters," 174-78, illustrated subject "theaters," 170-71; laments, 167-68; memory theaters, 77-78; moral "theaters," 168-70; overview of, 178-79; pedagogical "theaters," 172-74; role of humans in, 158—59; tabular subject "theaters," 171-72, 172-74, 177; "theater," 287n.63, theaters of knowledge, 156-57; theaters of nature, 153-59, used in religious literature, 159; used in titles, 166-79, Zwmger's and Beyerlinck's use of, 176—77. See also metaphors Theatrum (Bodin). agenda of, 6—7; annotated copies of, 195-201; arguments against impious philosophical propositions in, 117; authorities cited in, 109-11; biographical details in, 11, 12, 295n.2; Bodm's personal convictions in, 26; Calvinist reception of, 185, 186-87; Catholic Church reception of, 184-85; physics in, 41; on chain of being, 3, 127, 131-35; compared to New Organon, 227; comparing nature and the state, 119-20, 136-37; composed from commonplace book, 5-6, 71-77; contemporary classification of, 47, cost of, 240n.l7; criticism of authorities in, 110-11; criticism/reception of, 184-87; dedication of, 11, 18-22; dialogue form in, 49-55; extant copies of, 180-84'—bound with other works, 186—87; French translation (Fougerolles) of, 33, 180-81, 201-12; geographical distribution of extant copies, 182; German Problemata Bodini adaptation of, 4, 182, 187, 212-24, 225, human histories in, 73-77; legacies of the, 225-32; linear progression within, 32-33; marginal references in error, 75; moralizations within, 123-24; MystagogusATheorus dialogue in, 55-60; natural histories in, 43, 45, 69; natural philosophy examined through, 3, 14, 90-91; as natural theology, 48, 120-26; as ode to greatness of God, 13, 144-45, 164; order within, 31, 32, 39—40; outlined in Methodus, 71; owners of, 183-84, 296-98nn. 12-20, 316n.l92; propositio statement of, 30-31, 33; scholarly reception of, 82, 187-95; selfevidence of questions m, 59-60, structure of, 17-18, 77-81; tables in French translation of, 33, 161-64, 211; title page of, 2, 18; use of allegories m, 113—14; use of analysis and synthesis in, 84; use of physics throughout, 60-65; using experience to establish truth in, 95-107. See also theater metaphors

381

Theatrum (Book 1): arguments against eternity of the world, 118-20; Aristotelian language in, 83; attacks on Aristotle in, 91-92; on divine providence, 121, structure of, 77, structure of philosophical passages in, 58; use of Aristotelian order in, 31, 32; on using reason m disputes, 53 Theatrum (Book II). chain of being m, 32, 127; topics covered in Theatrum, 84, 161; on providential aspects of nature, 121; structure of, 77 Theatrum (Book III): chain of being in, 32; Fougerolles' "Seventh Table" in, 162, 211; on human body, 45, on providential aspects of nature, 121; structure of, 77 Theatrum (Book IV): Aristotelian language in, 83; cham of being in, 32, 127; demonstrations on the soul in, 139, structure of, 77 Theatrum (Book V): chain of being in, 32, 127; structure of, 77 Theatrum chemicum, 178 Theatrum (French translation by Fougerolles)' geographical distribution of, 182; preface of, 205-6; reception of, 180, 181, 201-12; tables of, 33, 161-63, 211, textual additions to, 207-11; title page of, 209. See also Fougerolles, Frangois de Theatrum (German adaptation). See Problemata Bodini (Siffert) theatrum mundi (theater of the world). See theater metaphors Themistius, 109, 200 T7j£o!ogie naturelle (Yves de Paris), 25 theology. See natural theology; religion Theophrastus, 15, 36, 43, 63, 68, 72, 99, 109, 110, 145, 219 Theorus (Theatrum character): asks Mystagogus to be teacher, 153-54; comments on allegories, 113-14; on demons, 145; dialogue on animals by, 81; dialogue used for ambiguity by, 52; on eternity of the world, 87; on fortuitous cause, 120-21; logical errors of, 83, 141; on necessity, 120; on power of God, 130-31; relationship with Mystagogus, 55-60, 62-63; on salty sea, 104; on the soul, 138-39; sources used for dialogue of, 72-73; on unity of truth, 144; on world as meganthrdpos, 135 theory-laden questions (Problemata Bodini), 218-23 theory-laden questions (Theatrum): on natural phenomena, 49; triad structure of, 61-62; within dialogue, 62-65 Thevet, Andre, 36

382

•INDEX»

Timpler, Clemens, 29, 35, 163, 187, 188, 189, 190 Titelmans, Frans, 28-29, 187 Tooley, Marian, 70 Topics (Aristotle), 67 torture metaphor, 22, 138, 229-30, 242n.42 Toulouse, 85, 86, 100, 198, 202 Translation, 203-4, 206, 305n.l02, 312n.l64, 316n 193. See also Theatrum (French translation) Tnchet, Pierre, 96 Trismegistus, Hermes, 157 See also hermetica Trouillart, Francoise, 10 true religion, 146-47. See also piety; religion truth, conflict of philosophy and theological, 189; on diversity of opinions and, 90; found in the Bible, 112; notion of double, 143, through use of torture, 22; uncovered in Hebrew words, 114-15; unity of, 87, 95, 143, 144, 188; using experience to establish, 95-107 Tumebe, Adnen, 9 universe: differences in Repubhque and Demonomanie, 150; harmonious bonds of, 133-35, Neoplatonist notion of, 131; theater of God in, 159; universal nature, 285n38 Utopia (More), 50, 217 Valerius, Cornelius, 190 Valla, 110 Vallis, Franciscus, 36, 187 van Sterbeeck, Franciscus, 166 Varchi, Benedetto, 143 De varietate (Cardano), 180 Varro, 24, 243n.53 Verdier, Antoine du, 38 Vergil, Polydore, 27

Verstegen, Richard, 169-70 Vesalius, Andreas, 15, 210, 311n.l55 Villers-Cotterets (1539), 312n 161 Vincent of Beauvais, 68, 83, 178 Vindex, Caesehus, 38 Viret, Pierre, 23-24, 47, 121, 123, 124, 144, 164 Vives1Juan Luis, 38-39, 53, 84, 256n.55 Vossius, Gerard, 108, 307n,120 wars of religion, 10, 21-23, 187-88 Watts, Gilbert, 193 Wechel publishers, 17-18, 26, 147, 181 Wecker1JohannJakob, 29, 37, 47 Wier, Johann, 75 William of Orange. See Orange, William of witchcraft: Bodin's call for eradication of, 12, 22, 147, 279n.l08; fundamental assumption about, 135; Montaigne and Bodm on, 97 Witelo, 110, 271n.ll2 women, xiv, 221 wonder, 36, 40, 103, 107, 207, 210 Wurstisen, Christian, 187 Xenagoras, 76 Yates, Frances, 77, 148, 156 Yves de Paris, 25 Zabarella, Jacopo, 108, 189 Zanchi, Girolamo, 29, 272n.l34 Zeiller1 Martm, 218 Zetzner, Lazarus, 178 Zilsel, Edgar, 106 Zimara, Marc-Antonio, 215, 216, 223 Zohar, 113, 276n,44 zoophytes, 132 Zwinger, Theodor, 39, 46, 47, 67, 176

About the author ANN BLAIR is Assistant Professor of History and of History and

Literature at Harvard University.