This is the first English edition of a treatise that influenced French thinkers from its publication in 1610 until the end of the ancien regime. In his Treatise of Orders and Plain Dignities, Charles Loyseau set out to harmonize with law his fellow citizens' values and behavior in the crucial sphere of possession and exercise of public power. The introduction to this edition sets this important text in the context of Loyseau's own political thesis and the intellectual milieu of those who administered early-modern France.

This is the first English edition of a treatise that influenced French thinkers from its publication in 1610 until the end of the ancien regime. In his Treatise of Orders and Plain Dignities, Charles Loyseau set out to harmonize with law his fellow citizens' values and behavior in the crucial sphere of possession and exercise of public power. The introduction to this edition sets this important text in the context of Loyseau's own political thesis and the intellectual milieu of those who administered early-modern France.

Jean Bodin was a figure of great importance in European intellectual history, known as a jurist, associate of kings and courtiers in sixteenth-century France, and author of influential works in the fields of constitutional and social thought, historical writing, witchcraft, and a great deal else besides. Best known for his contribution to formulating the modern doctrine of sovereignty, Bodin was a scholar of exceptional range, whose works provoked controversy in his own time and have continued to do so down the centuries. Hugh Trevor-Roper described him as "the Aristotle, the Montesquieu of...