e Catholics, it is pertinent here to
remark that tyranny produced much the same effect on its victims,
whatever their religion. The Sorbonne, [Sidenote: The Sorbonne]
consulted by the League, unanimously decided that the people of France
were freed from their oath of allegiance to Henry III and could with a
good conscience take arms against him. One of the doctors, Boucher,
wrote to prove that the church and the people had the right to depose
an assassin, a perjurer, an impious or heretical prince, or one guilty
of sacrilege or witchcraft. A tyrant, he concluded, was a wild beast,
whom it was lawful for the state as a whole or even for private
individuals, to kill.

So firmly established did the doctrine of the contract between prince
and people become that towards the end of the century one finds it
taken for granted. The _Memoires_ of the Huguenot soldier, poet and
historian Agrippa d'Aubigne are full of republican sentiments, as, for
example, "There is a binding obligation {601} between the king and his
subjects," and "The power of the prince proceeds from the people."

But it must not be imagined that such doctrines passed without
challenge. The most important writer on political science after
Machiavelli, John Bodin, [Sidenote: Bodin, 1530-96] was on the whole a
conservative. In his writings acute and sometimes profound remarks
jostle quaint and abject superstitions. He hounded the government and
the mob on witches with the vile zeal of the authors of the _Witches'
Hammer_; and he examined all existing religions with the coolness of a
philosopher. He urged on the attention of the world that history was
determined in general by natural causes, such as climate, but that
revolutions were caused partly by the inscrutable will of God and
partly by the more ascertainable influence of planets.

His most famous work, _The Republic_, [Sidenote: 1576] is a criticism
of Machiavelli and an attempt to bring politics back into the domain of
morality. He defines a state as a company of men united for the
purpose of living well and happily; he thinks it arose from natural
right and social contract. For the first time Bodin differentiates the
state from the government, defining sovereignty (_majestas_) as the
attribute of the former. He classifies governments in the usual three
categories, and refuses to believe in mixed governments. Though
England puzzles him, he regards her as an absolute monarchy. This is
the for