Commonwealth

TRANSLATOR'S NOTE
An abridgment of an important work, to be justified, must preserve not only 
the whole of the essential argument, but also its characteristic 
proportions. Closely argued and economically written books are therefore not 
susceptible of such treatment without suffering loss or distortion. The Six 
books of the Commonwealth, however, is marked by great elaboration because 
of the method of demonstration. Bodin's aim to construct a universal science 
of politics by surveying all the relevant facts and opinions required that 
this survey should be exhaustive. He tried to make it so. The definition of 
a citizen is only established after all the descriptions he knew have been 
discussed, and tested by reference to the facts. An observation on the 
instability of Florentine politics leads to a recital of the whole course of 
the city's history from the middle of the thirteenth century -- and so on 
and so forth. If one is treating the Six books of the Commonwealth as a 
document of sixteenth-century scholarship, none of this material can be 
jettisoned. But if it is taken as a book on political science much of it 
can, for it is not all necessary to the development of the argument. On the 
contrary, the very wealth of this illustration gives an impression of 
confusion that Bodin does not deserve. His book is in fact carefully planned 
as a whole, and however long his parentheses, he always returns to the 
argument at the point where he broke off. If much of this illustrative 
material is discarded the main shape of the argument emerges clearly and 
coherently. This has been the principle of selection in this abridged 
version, though sufficient reference to past and present political 
actualities has been preserved to show how he established his conclusions.
Bodin's prose is not easy to translate. The problem is partly one of style 
and partly one of vocabulary. His sentences are long, elaborate, loosely 
constructed and elliptical. It would take a Sir Thomas Hoby to convey their 
quality. No attempt has been made to do this, but only to convey the sense. 
Though the result may make easier reading, much of the weightiness and force 
of the original is inevitably lost. But no translation, however inadequate, 
could fail to preserve one characteristic of the original, and that is the 
sound of a voice arguing, for this is not just a matter of style, of the way 
Bodin writes, but of the way he thinks. Difficulties over his vocabulary 
arise because it was designed to express the actualities of 
sixteenth-century politics, especially in France, and where there are no 

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English counterparts, it is hard to find English equivalents. The 
distinction he makes between cité and république for instance describes the 
situation in France but bears no relation to conditions of English political 
organization. In case of such special difficulties a note has been added. 
République has been translated commonwealth to avoid the suggestion of a 
specific form of constitution that republic conveys in English.
Footnotes have been kept to a minimum. Bodin's method of demonstration 
involves constant reference to the literature of law, philosophy, and 
history. It has been assumed that his classical and biblical references need 
no elucidation. Only his references to the more obscure incidents of 
contemporary politics have been explained, for here his encyclopaedic 
reading had made him familiar with the bye-ways that are not common 
knowledge. Discussion of his accuracy in using his sources must however lie 
outside the scope of a book in which only fragments of them are 
incorporated.