The Languages of Natural Philosophy in the Late Sixteenth Century: Bodin's Universae Naturae Theatrum and Its French Translation

Abstract

A few months before his death in 1596, the celebrated political philosopher Jean Bodin published a little-known encyclopedia of natural philosophy, the Universae naturae theatrum. Composed as a dialogue between an ignorant pupil Theorus and his learned master Mystagogus, the text covers "all of nature" in 633 octavo pages: starting with the principles of physics, then ascending the chain of being from the elements to minerals and metals, plants, animals, souls and the heavenly bodies. The Latin text was reedited twice by Wechel in Frankfurt, 1597 and Hanau, 1605. It also spawned two vernacular works: a French translation by a medical doctor from Lyon named François de Fougerolles (Lyon, 1597) and a German vulgarization by one Damian Siffert of Lindau, first published in Magdeburg in 1602 and reedited with minor modifications four more times until 1679.i The success of this vulgarization, which was explicitly drawn from Bodin's original but involved a complete overhaul and drastic reduction of the Latin text, contrasts with the single printing of the French translation which, in being fairly faithful to the Latin text, failed to acquire a specifically French readership. The different versions of Bodin's Theatrum and their reception raise many questions concerning the position of traditional natural philosophy in the period just preceding and concurrent with the Scientific Revolution, which I try to address in my dissertation.ii Today I will examine Fougerolles' French translation for what it reveals about the emergence of French as a language of science in various fields of natural philosophy in the late sixteenth century.