JOHN, a native of Angiers, where he was born about the year 1530, was one of the ablest men in France in the sixteenth century, and famous for his Methodus ad facilem Historiarum cognitionem, his Republic, and other works. He was in great favour with Henry III. who imprisoned Michel de la Serre for writing an injurious piece against Bodin; but this favour was not of long continuance. The duke of Alençon, however, gave him several employments, and carried him to England as one of his counsellors, where he had the pleasure and glory of seeing his books on the Commonwealth read publicly in the university of Cambridge, having been translated from the French into Latin. In the Ragguaglia of Boccalini he is condemned to the fire as an atheist, for having said in his books that liberty of conscience ought to be granted to sectaries. He declared himself with much freedom against those who asserted that the authority of monarchs is unlimited; and yet he displeased the republicans. Upon the death of the duke of Alençon, Bodin retired to Laon, where he married; and in the time of Charles IX. he was the king's solicitor, with a commission for the forests of Normandy. He died of the plague, at Laon, in 1596. Besides his Methodus, and Six Livres de la République which La-harpe justly describes as containing the germ of the Spirit of Laws, Bodin wrote Commentaire sur les Livres de la Chasse d'Oppien, Paris, 1555, in 4to; Démonomanie, Paris, 1581, in 4to; Fléau des Démons et Sorciers, 1616, in 8vo; Universa Naturae Theatrum, Lyons, 1596, in 8vo; Paradoxes, doctes et excellents Discours de la Vertu touchant la Fin et Souverain Bien de l'Homme, Paris, 1604; and Colloquium Heptapleronem ab editis Rerum sublimium Arcanis, which has never been printed.