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  • Sorcery and Sovereignty: Bo...
    Bohrer, Ashley J.

    Political theology : the journal of Christian Socialism, 08/2020, Letnik: 21, Številka: 6
    Journal Article

    While much has been written on Six Books on the Commonwealth and his Demonmania, scholarship on Jean Bodin generally treats these as two separate areas of inquiry. Moreover, discussions of Bodin's economic writing, especially his Reply to Malestroit are nearly universally lacking in these discussions. In this paper, I analyze all three of these works together, arguing that Bodin's political economic perspectives on money, population, and the state form the ground for his interest in witches, sorcery, and the occult. By highlighting the historical context of rising mercantilism and the widespread peasant rebellions that contested it, I argue that Bodin's maintains a unified and coherent philosophy across his political, economic, theological, and demonological works. This materialist reinterpretation of Bodin argues that his philosophy chiefly concerns a defense of mercantile state wealth accumulation, in which witch hunting plays a crucial role of population discipline and reproductive pronatalism.