INTRODUCTION John of Salisbury, an English-Born Clerk to The

INTRODUCTION

In what I am going to relate I shall, by the help of God, write nothing but what I myself have seen and heard and know to be true, or have on good authority from the testimony or writings of reliable men.1

John of Salisbury, an English-born clerk to the archbishops of Canterbury, was one of the brightest luminaries of the twelfth century renaissance. Born at Old Sarum sometime between 1115 and 1120, he was educated at Exeter and then Paris, where he studied with such famed scholars as Peter Abelard and Gilbert of Poitiers. By 1148, he had joined the curia of Archbishop Theobald of Canterbury and remained in Kent as a clerk after 1162, when Theobald died and was replaced with Thomas Becket. Following Becket’s famous martyrdom in December 1170 (at which John was nearly present, having fled Becket’s assassins just before the event) he briefly worked as treasurer of Exeter Cathedral. In the summer of 1176, he was consecrated Bishop of Chartres and thereafter died in France in 1180.2 A prodigious writer, John of Salisbury produced three major books: Policraticus, a treatise on political theory and court affairs; Metalogicon, a formal defense of the legitimacy of the liberal arts; and Historia Pontificalis, a history of papal affairs in the mid-twelfth century.3 There are four shorter

1 Historia, P. 4. 2 Some of his other teachers included Alberic of Rheims, William of Conches, Peter Helias, Robert of Melun, Richard l’Evêque, and Simon of Poissy; on his education, see R.L. Poole, “The Masters of the Schools at Paris and Chartres in John of Salisbury’s Time,” English Historical Review 35 (1920): 321–42; and O. Weijers, “The Chronology of John of Salisbury’s Studies in France (Metalogicon, II.10),” in The World of John of Salisbury, ed. M. Wilks (London, 1994), 109–16. For a recent journey through John’s life, see C.J. Nederman, John of Salisbury (Tempe, 2005), 1–39. 3 The Historia Pontificalis of John of Salisbury, ed. and trans. M. Chibnall (London, 1956); the revised edition is from Oxford Medieval Texts (1986). Metalogicon, eds. J.B. Hall and K.S.B. Keats-Rohan, in Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Medievalis 98 (Turnhout, 1991); the translated edition is The Metalogicon of John of Salisbury: a Twelfth-Century Defense of the Verbal and Logical Arts of the Trivium, trans. D.D. McGarry (Reprint, Westport, 1982). There are two Latin editions of Policraticus: the older Ioannis Saresberiensis Episcopi Carnotensis Policratici, ed. C.C.J. Webb, 2 vols. (Reprint, New York, 1979), and the partial Policraticus I-IV, eds. J.B. Hall and K.S.B. Keats-Rohan, in Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Medievalis 117 (Turnhout, 1993). The English translations are: Frivolities of Courtiers and Footprints of Philosophers, being a Translation of the First, Second, and Third Books, and

2 introduction texts as well: two hagiographical Lives of Sts Anselm and Thomas Becket; and two poems, Entheticus Major, a satirical poem on philosophy, human reason, and divine Truth, and Entheticus Minor, a warning on the dangers of frivolity.4 A collection of 325 personal letters and a few scattered acts from his last years at Exeter and Chartres round out his writings.5 Of these works undoubtedly his most famous is the treatise Policraticus, which was heavily read in the later Middle Ages and remains on many university political science reading lists today.6 And yet, as one scholar has lamented, “it is remarkable [that John of Salisbury] is not better known to the Western world.”7 Given his thorough education at the hands of the best-recognized masters of his time and the large corpus of extant writings, it is odd that nowadays he is so relatively unknown. As recently as 2009 his life and writings was the subject of a

Selections from the Seventh and Eighth Books of the Policraticus, trans. J.B. Pike (Reprint, New York, 1972); The Statesman’s Book, being the Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Books, and Selections from the Seventh and Eighth Books of the Policraticus, trans. J. Dickinson (Reprint, New York, 1963); Policraticus: of the Frivolities of Courtiers and the Footprints of Philosophers, trans. C.J. Nederman, Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought (Cambridge, UK, 1996); and Policraticus: The Statesman’s Book, trans. M.F. Markland (New York, 1979). For citations to translations of Policraticus into French, Italian, and Spanish, see Nederman, John of Salisbury, 87–8. 4 Vita Sancti Anselmi and Vita Sancti Thomae, ed. I. Biffi, in Anselmo e Becket, due vite (Milan, 1990); see also Materials for the History of Thomas Becket, eds. J.C. Robertson and J.B. Sheppard, vol. 2 (London, 1875–1885). The English translation is Anselm & Becket: Two Canterbury Saints’ Lives by John of Salisbury, trans. R.E. Pepin (Toronto, 2009). Salisbury’s poems are “John of Salisbury’s Entheticus,” ed. and trans. R.E. Pepin, Allegorica 9 (1987): 7–133, and Entheticus Maior et Minor, ed. and trans. Jan van Laarhoven, 3 vols. (Leiden, 1987); Entheticus Minor is also in Webb, Policratici, 1.1–11; Hall & Keats-Rohan, Policraticus, 9–19; and an English translation is in Pike’s Policraticus, 415–25. 5 The Letters of John of Salisbury, Volume One (the Early Letters), eds. and trans. W.J. Millor, H.E. Butler, and C.N.L. Brooke (Revised, Oxford, 1986), and The Letters of John of Salisbury, Volume Two (the Later Letters), eds. W.J. Millor and C.N.L. Brooke (Oxford, 1979). For his acta, see Joannis Saresberiensis postea episcopi Carnotensis opera omnia nunc pri- mum in unum collegit, ed. J.A. Giles, 2 vols, in Patres Ecclesiae Anglicanae (London, 1848), 2.325–327; and Millor, nos. 330, 331, 333. John’s Necrologium, or list of bequests to Chartres Cathedral on the occasion of his death, is in Cartulaire de Notre-Dame de Chartres, eds. E. De Lépinois and L. Merlet, 3 vols. (Chartres, 1862–1864), 3.202–03. There is also John’s judgment in favor of Lire Abbey (co-adjudicated with Bartholomew, bishop of Exeter), which was not written by him but contains his ruling and is dated to 1171 X 1173; English Episcopal Acta XI: Exeter, 1046–1184, ed. F. Barlow (Oxford, 1996), no. 114. 6 Q. Taylor, “John of Salisbury, the Policraticus, and Political Thought,” Humanitas 19:1–2 (2006): 135. The particularities of each of Salisbury’s works have been amply summarized in Nederman, John of Salisbury. Interestingly, Metalogicon has also recently reappeared in a discussion of current educational issues in the United States; see W.C. Turgeon, “John of Salisbury: an Argument for Philosophy within Education,” Analytic Teaching 18 (1999): 44–52. 7 Taylor, “Political Thought,” 133.