One of the most famous and influential theorists of absolutism was the Frenchman Jean Bodin (1529 or 1530 to 1596). After receiving a good education in classical languages and literature, he studied law, and became a successful lawyer, judge, and (at times) advisor to members of the royal family. Bodin may have flirted with Protestantism, but eventually he came to believe that religious civil war was an extremely bad idea, and that all French people ought to put their country before ambitions to enforce their religion. Peace was more important than religious unity. People like Bodin who put political before religious considerations were called politiques (a word closely connected with the English terms "politic" and "politics," which were just becoming fashionable then). It is possible that Bodin personally came to believe in a religion that contained Islamic and especially Jewish elements, as well as Christian ones, and that he wrote a book called the Colloquium of the Seven in which he develops his eclectic and syncretist ideas. The Colloquium was attributed to Bodin and circulated in manuscript in the seventeenth century, and published as his in the nineteenth, but his authorship has recently been questioned. Though Bodin supported religious toleration, he strongly advocated the persecution of witches, and wrote a lengthy book on witchcraft.