J.P.Sommerville

Absolutism, royalism, and sovereignty

Suggested reading

Baldwin, Summerfield (1937-8), "Jean Bodin and the League", in Catholic Historical Review  23(1937-8), 160-84.
[An important incident in Bodin's later life.]

Bossuet, J-B, Politics drawn from the very words of holy scripture, ed. and trans. by Patrick Riley, Cambridge 1991.
[Classic of French absolutism.]

Burgess, Glenn, Absolute Monarchy and the Stuart Constitution, 1996.
[Discussion of the English case.]

Burns, J.H., Absolutism: the history of an idea, London 1986.
[Succinct discussion.]

Burns, J.H., "Sovereignty and constitutional law in Bodin' "in Political Studies 7(1959), 174-7.
[Examines the question of the relationship between sovereignty and fundamental law.]

Figgis, John Neville, The divine right of kings, Cambridge 1896, rev. ed. 1914.
[Classic account.]

Franklin, Julian, "Sovereignty and the mixed constitution: Bodin and his critics", in J. H. Burns, ed., with the assistance of Mark Goldie, The Cambridge History of Political Thought 1450-1700, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1991, 298-328
[Interesting discussion of later uses, and criticisms, of Bodin's ideas, especially in Germany.]

Franklin, Julian, Jean Bodin and the Sixteenth-Century Revolution in the Methodology of Law and History, New York, 1963
[Important work, setting Bodin in his intellectual context.]

Franklin, Julian, Jean Bodin and the Rise of Absolutist Theory, CUP 1973
[Another key English-language work.]

Henshall, Nicholas, The myth of absolutism, London 1992.
[Argues that absolutism did not exist.]

James VI and I, Political Writings, ed Johann Sommerville, 1994
[classic British absolutist texts, esp. The True law of Free Monarchy.]
An old edition online is McIlwain's    

Kelley, Donald R., Foundations of Modern Historical Scholarship, New York 1970
[Survey of an important part of Bodin's intellectual context.]

Lossky, A., 'The absolutism of Louis XIV', in Canadian Journal of History, 19 (1984), 1-15.

McIlwain, C. H., Constitutionalism and the Changing World, CUP 1939, chs. 1-3 on Sovereignty
[Argues that Bodin was not an absolutist.]

Mosse, George, "The Influence of Jean Bodin's République on English Political Thought," Medievalia et Humanistica 5(1948), 73-83; and Mosse, The Struggle for Sovereignty on England, East Lansing 1950
[Contrast and compare these two with the book by McIlwain above; McIlwain was Mosse's doctoral advisor at Harvard.]

Parker, David, The making of French absolutism, London 1983.
[Historical background.]

Salmon, J. H. M., "The Legacy of Jean Bodin: Absolutist, Populism, or Constitutionalism," in History of Political Thought 17(1996), 500-22
[Fine essay by one of the foremost experts on Bodin and his period.]

Skinner, Quentin, "Conquest and consent: Thomas Hobbes and the  Engagement controversy," in G.E. Aylmer, ed., The Interregnum, London 1972; revised in Skinner's Visions of Politics, vol. 3, 287-307.
[On providentialism and the de facto argument for justifying governments by conquest, at a later period.]

Sommerville, Johann P., 'Absolutism and royalism', in J.H. Burns, ed., The Cambridge History of Political Thought 1450-1700, Cambridge 1991, 347-73.

Sommerville, J.P., Royalists and Patriots. Politics and Ideology in England 1603-1640, 1999,
[especially chapter 1.]