Was Jean Bodin Jewish?

Jean Bodin – the prominent sixteenth century French philosopher and jurist – is well-known for both his contributions to political and economic thought, but also for being one of the best proponents of a rational belief in witchcraft in his 1580 ‘De la demonomanie des sorciers’.

What many people don’t know unless they’ve read potted biographies of Bodin or works on so-called ‘jewish achievement’ is that it is commonly claimed that Bodin was jewish.

For example, ‘Catholic Answers’ claims in their entry on Bodin that:

‘Bodin, JEAN, b. at Angers, 1520, probably of Jewish origin; d. at Laon, 1596.’ (1)

While ‘The Institute for New Economic Thinking’ declares that:

‘Born in Angers to a prosperous artisan family of Jewish origins, Jean Bodin studied and taught Roman law at the university in Toulouse (around the time when Navarrus was there), before becoming a lawyer in Paris around 1561.’ (2)

These absolute/strongly implied claims that Bodin was ‘of jewish origin’ are severely dated in academic terms. Since they are mentioned in article on Bodin by Frances Yates for the ‘New York Review of Books’ in October 1976, but Yates is far more circumspect (and accurate) concerning the claim as she notes that Bodin was ‘possibly of Jewish descent on his mother’s side’. (3)

What Yates is alluding to her is what both ‘Catholic Answers’ and ‘The Institute for New Economic Thinking’ – deliberately? – conceal in that it is a ‘possible’ not a ‘probable’ in that a historical theory was suggested whereby Bodin could have had jewish ancestry on his mother’s side, but that it was just that: a theory (aka a speculation).

That said jews have been quick to present the claim that Bodin was of partial jewish origin as ‘fact’ in their literature concerning ‘jewish achievement’ with Leon Roth writing in 1928 that:

‘It is noteworthy that, like Montaigne and L’Hopital, Bodin had one Jewish parent.’ (4)

Now Bodin - as with Montaigne and L’Hopital (referring to the seventeenth century French mathematician Guillaume de l’Hopital) – is presented as jewish, but - as I’ve debunked in detail with Montaigne (5) and will do separately with L’Hopital – this is complete nonsense and is a speculative theory from the turn of the twentieth century where there was a wave of claims that major figures in European history ‘were of jewish ancestry’. (6)

The truth is that the ‘Bodin was of jewish ancestry’ has long been considered disproven by biographers and researchers on Bodin himself as Harvard University’s ‘Bodin Project’ notes when it points out that:

‘Bodin was sixty-six years of age at the time of his death in 1596. He was therefore born in 1529 or 1530. His father was a successful businessman in the textile trade at Angers in western France. His mother came from a neighbouring village; the view once canvassed that she was a Jewess is now discredited. Jean Bodin had four sisters and two brothers, both older than he. One of them was also called Jean, an early instance of the nomenclatural duplication that would dog the philosopher throughout his life.’ (7)

The crux of the point here is that the thesis that Bodin had jewish ancestry seems to be nearly identical to that same thesis that was also applied to Christopher Columbus (8) and Miguel de Cervantes (9) at around the same time, which basically amounts to a somewhat unclear lineage of a historical figure combined with an occupation linked to textiles – this is a common trope in these accusations in so far as the claim is made that it was a ‘jewish trade’ (it was not) – allows some biographer/researcher somewhere to make a spurious and speculative claim of jewishness, which is then picked up by other – often directly partisan and not infrequently jewish – authors who then present it as ‘fact’ and this is spread around others. So, you in essence get a false ‘manufactured consensus’ that X person was jewish when the biographers say quite the opposite or at the very least merely state it as a possibility not a certainty.

So, no Jean Bodin was not jewish and exactly what he presented himself to be: a Catholic Frenchman.

References

(1) https://www.catholic.com/encyclopedia/jean-bodin

(2) https://www.hetwebsite.net/het/profiles/bodin.htm

(3) https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1976/10/14/the-mystery-of-jean-bodin/

(4) Leon Roth, 1928, ‘Jewish Thought in the Modern World’, p. 444 in Edwyn Bevan, Charles Singer (Eds.),1928, ‘The Legacy of Israel’, 1^st Edition, Clarendon Press: Oxford

(5) On the nonsensical claim that de Montaigne was of jewish ancestry please see my article: https://karlradl14.substack.com/p/did-michel-de-montaigne-have-jewish

(6) For some of these and why they are stupid/wrong please see my articles: https://karlradl14.substack.com/p/was-miguel-de-cervantes-jewish; https://karlradl14.substack.com/p/was-john-calvin-jewish; https://karlradl14.substack.com/p/was-martin-behaim-jewish; https://karlradl14.substack.com/p/was-saint-junipero-serra-jewish;

(7) https://bodinproject.hsites.harvard.edu/biography-bodin

(8) On this please see my article: https://karlradl14.substack.com/p/was-christopher-columbus-jewish

(9) On this please see my article: https://karlradl14.substack.com/p/was-miguel-de-cervantes-jewish