Milestones of Science Books

BODIN, Jean.

De republica libri sex, Latine ab autore redditi, multo quam antea locupletiores.

Lyon and Paris: Jaques du Puys, 1582.

1st Edition. Hardcover. Near Fine. Item #002917

Folio (329 x 212 mm). [8], 779 [1], 60 pp. Title with large engraved device, ornamental and historiated headpieces and initials, index bound at end. 17th-century French mottled calf, spine with 5 raised bands, gilt lettering and gilt decoration; red-sprinkled edges (binding rubbed, upper hinge partially split but cords holding firm, spine ends and corners worn). A crisp and clean copy internally with only very little even browning, occasional faint ink annotations and text markings in contemporary hand, a few pages with light dampstain at top gutter. Provenance: Jacq. Segers (Dutch address sticker to first flyleaf), shaved old signature to top title with a second line motto "audio, fero, spero" preserved, a loosely inserted contemporary manuscript leaf mentions Zeelst Merefelthoven, which is a Dutch province of North Brabant, assuming that our copy has been in a private Dutch collection for long time. An exceptionally fresh copy in untouched binding. ----

Adams B2228; PMM 94 (first French edition). FIRST LATIN EDITION of Bodin's most significant work The Six Books of the Commonwealth (Les Six livres de la République) first published in French in 1576, which represents the summation of legal and political thought of the French Renaissance. It is "the first modern attempt to create a complete system of political science. Its basis was the Politics of Aristotle .., and it was through Bodin that Aristotle's work came to exercise the influence on modern political thinking which has made him the father of modern democracy. Bodin was not content merely to reproduce his master, however; he added considerably from his own experience. Although like most sixteenth-century writers he approved of absolute government, he demanded its control by constitutional laws, in which respect he foreshadowed the development during the seventeenth century of the idea of the 'social contract' .. Thus Bodin was the first to set out clearly the argument round which most political discussion centred in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, that law is merely an expression of the sovereign will, but that where this reposes in an absolute monarch, it must be mitigated by a customary or natural law. When the lawgiver's law becomes unjust, it ceases to be valid and must be resisted." (PMM 94). - Visit our website for additional images and information.

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