SOURCE: McGurk, J. J. N. “John of Salisbury.” History Today 25, no. 1 (January 1975): 40-47.

[In the following essay, McGurk offers a portrait of John's life and works, focusing on his humanism.]

In the 1140s an Englishman from Salisbury arrived at the Papal Court of Pope Eugenius III to seek employment and advancement. John of Salisbury, or Johannes Parvus, as he was known to the Middle Ages, did not merely become an ordinary Papal chancery clerk but the outstanding scholar of his age, memorable in his elegant writings for the light he threw on so many of the more important figures in church and state of the second half of the twelfth century. Popes, prelates and kings stand out the more distinctly from the praises and criticism of this articulate yet unmalicious observer of their characters and actions. But he was not simply a good journalist of his times; for, in the range and readiness of his classical learning he became the most representative English figure of the twelfth-century renaissance. Throughout his work there is a noteworthy commonsense, a subtle humour, a deep regard for human values, a tenacious loyalty to his friends and a clear conviction of the supremacy of the spiritual over the temporal ends of mankind. Besides a huge official correspondence, happily preserved, John of Salisbury wrote treatises on studies, on the art of government, a brief history of the papacy from 1148 to 1152 and lives of Saints Anselm and Becket, Archbishops of Canterbury. He himself, however, is mainly known to us through his many books, among which are scattered biographical fragments.

Scholars have not yet settled the details of the dating of his career; but it appears that John was born at Old Sarum or Old Salisbury c. 1115; nothing much is known about his early life except for what he cares to tell us himself. Characteristically, he began his education by learning the Psalter from an old priest; but the old man tried to involve his pupils in his secret delvings into magic, and, with the practical commonsense that never deserted him, John appears to have got himself thrown out of class, whenever his teacher indulged in crystal-gazing. He then tells us that he passed about twelve years in studies, and that these began seriously in 1136 in Paris, whither he was drawn, like so many of his contemporaries, studiorum causa. To John, the French were ‘the most gentle and civil of all nations’, yet he never lost any pride in his own English nationality, and was ever careful to point out his English friends to the ever-widening circle of others he made among the influential abroad, who included St Bernard of Clairvaux, Pope Adrian IV, King Louis VII of France, Peter the Abbot of Celle, and scholars such as Gilbert de la Porrée, and Cardinal Robert Pullen.

John was fortunate in his times as a student at Paris and Chartres; for it was then that he probably heard Abelard lecture at Paris, as well as Gilbert de la Porrée and Robert Pullen and many others, who were of the first importance in their subject, and who gave the north of France the reputation for founding the twelfth-century movement of Christian humanism. It is as a product of these schools that John of Salisbury became one of the best exponents of the learning of his age and England's most representative figure of the twelfth-century renaissance. The humanity of the man and the humanism of his writings bridge the centuries, thanks to their ‘modernity’ of outlooks and attitudes to life and learning. What lineaments of his character emerge from his writings?

Certainly the most outstanding are sound commonsense, moderation, tolerance and a quiet strength in his own convictions. Although he was ever ready to seek an honourable compromise, he never wavered on a matter of principle. An ability to make and keep life-long friends, even among those of disparate intellectual camps such as those of St Bernard and Gilbert de la Porrée, speak of a man easy to get along with amid the cut and thrust of ambitious administrators, in whose company he lived both at the Papal Curia and in the households of Archbishop Theobald and Becket. The learned men of business in those households have been much written about; many of them were exiles from the university milieu, and were apparently regarded with some suspicion by rising civil servants. Yet his many friends often paid him the high compliment of taking criticism from him. We have a vivid picture from John's own writing in his celebrated Metalogicon:

I could ward off in silence the cavilling of my fellow-scholars and those who call themselves philosophers, but I cannot altogether escape the teeth of my fellow civil servants. To accommodate onself to everyone and to hurt no one used to be a sufficient path to favour but now it is rarely possible to avoid the envy of one's colleagues in this way. If I am silent I am thought ignorant; if I talk I am accused of being a bore. If I am serious I am said to be an intriguer; if merry, a fool. If I had consumed my time with my colleagues in gambling, hunting and other employs of courtiers, they would have attacked my writings as little as I do theirs. However, it is nothing to me if I am judged by those who fear not most the judgement of clowns and fools.

John delighted in his ability to write an incisive Ciceronian Latin, but, because of his Christian humanism, his style has been compared rather with St Jerome's than Cicero's. He loved to report witty sayings, plundered the classics and the Fathers of the Church for supporting examples, which he placed in allusive juxtaposition so that his work can be read with the evident joy he had in composing them. His sense of humour is subtle and witty, but often overt; in the Metalogicon he recalled how his great teacher Gilbert de la Porrée used to pour scorn on those who abandoned the study of the liberal arts for more lucrative, utilitarian and perhaps less exacting pursuits by advising them to take up the science of bakery, which required little skill but at least ensured their daily bread.

About John of Salisbury's character little independent evidence survives. The chronicler Benedict of Peterborough thought John ‘a man of much learning, great eloquence and profound wisdom’. There is, too, the oft-cited testimonial, written for John by no less a figure than St Bernard of Clairvaux, to aid John's appointment to the household of Archbishop Theobald. Here is an extract:

I am sending to your Lordship, John, the bearer of this letter; he is a friend of mine and of my friends … he has a good reputation among good men, not less for his life than for his learning. This I have not learned from those who use words lightly and exaggerate but from my own sons (Cistercian monks of Clairvaux) whom I love and believe as my own eyes.

Modern authorities on John of Salisbury's writings corroborate St Bernard's words. C. C. J. Webb, perhaps his best biographer, wrote of him, ‘a man of deep yet sober piety and quiet humour … convinced that the highest function of knowledge is to be an instrument of the good life.’ To Dom David Knowles, John of Salisbury is the ‘Erasmus, the Johnson of the twelfth century’; to Christopher Brooke, ‘the most learned classical scholar of his day’. The editor of his Historia Pontificalis, Marjorie Chibnall, writes of him as belonging ‘to that group of scholars and statesmen, like St Anselm and Hugh of St Victor, whose character and motives have never given rise to controversy.’ To Henry Osborn Taylor, John of Salisbury was ‘the finished scholar, who knew not one thing but whatever might be known, and was enlightened by the training of the world … and he knew more than any man of the ancient philosophies.’ And though he admires his work and accords John his due place in the twelfth-century renaissance, Professor Southern describes him as ‘a failed academic driven into administration by lack of scholarly opportunities.’

After twelve years of study, John of Salisbury's future career lay not as a teacher in the schools but in the field of ecclesiastical administration. More than likely he was introduced to the Papal Curia of Pope Eugenius III by his old master, Cardinal Robert Pullen. It is not certain when in the 1140s he was at the Papal Curia, but he does appear at the Council of Rheims in 1148, where St Bernard and Theobald, Archbishop of Canterbury, met; and, in the light of the recent research on the chronology of John's career, it is reasonable to suppose that thereafter he was in the employ of the Archbishop as his secretary until the Archbishop's death in 1161. Some fifteen years after his experience in the Papal Curia, John wrote what was his sole excursus into the field of historical writing, his Memoirs of the Papal Court, or the Historia Pontificalis, written when in exile because of the Becket conflict with Henry II, and dedicated to his host and friend Peter of Celle, who in 1162 became Abbot of St Remigius of Rheims. This work was but little known in the Middle Ages; and it has survived in a thirteenth-century manuscript copy belonging to the monastery of Fleury, but is now in the municipal library of Berne. The Historia Pontificalis is but a fragment of Papal history dealing with events from 1148 to 1152; John intended it to be a continuation of Sigebert of Gembloux's chronicle of the Popes which ended in 1148. These memoirs of a scholar-diplomat, at a time when the Curia was becoming the centre of government for all western Christendom, are an important historical source, particularly as the writer purports to put down ‘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.’ His overall aim presents a well-known philosophy of history:

My aim, like that of other chroniclers before me, shall be to profit my contemporaries and future generations … to relate noteworthy matters, so that the invisible things of God may be clearly seen by the things that are done … For as the pagan says, the lives of others are our teachers; and whoever knows nothing of the past hastens blindly into the future … and nothing, after knowledge of the grace and law of God, teaches the living more surely and soundly than knowledge of the deeds of the departed.

(Prologue to the Historia Pontificalis.)

A glance through the pages of the Historia will show how he tried to fulfil the moral purpose of history; but it will also show that there is confusion in its structure, for John could never quite make up his mind whether to treat his materials by theme or by a simple chronological outline. The work is valuable, however, for the speeches he reports, and for his description of Western Europe during and after the second Crusade from the point of view of an Englishman working in the Papal Curia, observing with acuity and recalling with accuracy. Yet in his Historia John is not always unprejudiced; he is pro-French and anti-German, and unafraid to criticize Pope and Cardinals. The event of two Papal legates visiting Germany gave him the chance to judge both severely. At first, he finds it difficult to understand why so many of Pope Eugenius's decisions were later revoked, unless, he wrote, ‘that he had merited it by so readily revoking the judgements of his predecessors, not to mention his fellow bishops, and secondly that he was too ready to rely on his personal opinion in imposing sentences.’ While his judgement on Eugenius may sound harsh enough, all his best qualities of fair-play, tact and balance are brought out in his description of the trial of Gilbert de la Porrée for heresy at the hands of St Bernard of Clairvaux. John revered both men, the one for his notable scholarship and the other for his sanctity. He acquits them both on the grounds of good intentions; Bernard for being over-zealous and Gilbert as a misunderstood liberal intellectual. The Papal court had ever been an excellent training school for diplomats. As John's one essay into history his book is then chiefly of interest for the light it throws on to some of the chief characters of his brief chosen period; but he was more at home in dealing with classical sources of history and literature than those of his own time. It was his knowledge of these that gave John of Salisbury his subsequent reputation of being the best representative of the Christian humanism of the twelfth century.

The steadily growing plant of twelfth-century humanism was not merely one of a literary appreciation of classical authors; for, in the writings of John of Salisbury alone, it can be seen to blossom in the realms of politics, theology, law and philosophy. Classical allusions and a polished Latinity, even though they show his encyclopaedic knowledge of the ancient world of learning, did not alone earn him that great reputation; nor do they alone make him a humanist. Learning of itself was not its own justification, John of Salisbury was man enough of his own age to write: ‘He who by philosophizing has reached caritas (the love of God) has attained philosophy's true end.’ Plato and Aristotle had said as much. But John in his many works can hardly be called a professional philosopher in the sense that Abelard was one, but rather an exponent of the art of living, in which virtue was inseparable from wisdom. This practical psychology, gained not merely from books, but from a wide knowledge of the workings of human nature, showed him its weaknesses, which perhaps were nowhere more on show than in the diplomatic circles in which he spent so much of his working life. And the precepts for others from his own practical wisdom come across very strongly in his two most important writings, the Policraticus, or Book of the Statesman, and the Metalogicon, a vindication of the liberal arts, both completed about 1159 and dedicated to Thomas Becket. From one of its subsidiary titles—de nugis curialium—the Statesman's Book or Guide would appear to be a criticism of the trifles of courtiers, but it is, in fact, the first treatise on political thought of its kind to be written in England. It does begin with those polite trivialities which hinder the proper conduct of State affairs, but continues with the structuring of a theory of the State. Not unlike Plato's Republic, the Policraticus outlines the ideal State, of which the soul is the clergy, the head is the prince, who is the servant of the clergy; the heart is the senate; the eyes, ears and tongue are the governors of the provinces; the hands, the armed forces and administrative class; while the feet are the husbandmen. The analogy is but a minor part of its eight books or chapters; its essential political philosophy is the high Gregorian theory of the sovereignty of the spiritual, in which all political arrangements should be regarded as part and parcel of the ecclesiastical organization. Characteristically, of the canon law position of his time he wrote:

all law that does not bear the imprint of divine law is to be censured as inane and a princely constitution that does not conform to ecclesiastical discipline must be considered harmful.

John argues that, when a ruler puts himself above the law or ceases to rule the people, he could then be deposed; and, indeed, he went on to state that it is licit, and even glorious to kill a tyrant. Often cited down the centuries, this teaching has been not without its modern adherents, but it must be recalled that the twelfth century had been quite critical of its kings who acted beyond their powers. In later writings John became tamer when he wrote of the right of active resistance; the thirteenth-century political writers would be tamer still.

In John of Salisbury's loyalty to the Roman church and canon law there is a strong likeness to St Bernard of Clairvaux; but he is not blind to the greed and sharp practices of the Roman Curia. He records for us in the Policraticus a conversation with Hadrian IV, the only Englishman ever to have been Pope, where John told him it was common report that the Roman Curia was not the mother, but the avaricious step-mother of the Church. Hadrian IV replied by talking about the rebellion of the limbs of a body against its stomach, which the limbs complained did nothing but eat up what their labours had gained; he went on to liken the stomach to the prince, and simply reminded John that any body will surely die without nourishment. The Policraticus is not all pure political theory, but a veritable compendium of the institutional and intellectual imperatives of the times with all the miscellanea of a well-read author. Chaucer apparently read it; for he took from it two tales of gambling in high places, and incorporated them into his Pardoner's Tale.

In the Metalogicon there is to be found a fusion of the Aristotelian philosophy then known with the thought of the great Augustine of Hippo. Superficially, this work represents a defence of the seven liberal arts as practised at his old school, Chartres, where logic and dialectic had their place as a means to the search for truth, but were not studied as ends in themselves. Yet, philosophically, the Metalogicon is of the greatest importance as an analysis of the entire series of Aristotle's work on logic; it is, in fact, the earliest work in the middle ages that uses the whole of the Organon, the Topics and Analytics, which had been little more than titles to Peter Abelard. But again, it is more than a philosophic treatise; it is also a cri de coeur for worthy objectives in studies, as John directed his attack against those scholars who cannot see beyond dialectics.

Not being a practitioner himself, he can perhaps the more objectively give sound advice on education: for instance, ‘One should lecture on a book in such a way as to make an understanding of its contents as easy as possible.’ He saw little sense in discussions between masters and pupils that were not based on wide reading: at worst, such classes became noisy battles; and, at best, when masters were hard pressed, they dealt in verbal tricks, becoming as slippery in their answers as the proverbial eel. Logic by itself remains bloodless and barren; and dialectics of itself may teach pupils how to argue, but without principles and substance. John was, of course, making these protests at a time when specialization was coming into the schools, and when it was no longer possible for a single scholar to grasp the ever-growing weight of universal scholarship. He was obviously out of sympathy with certain modes of thought and certain protagonists of specialist studies in depth. But the classical studies of Chartres were losing ground to the new studies at the University of Paris.

Apart from analytical philosophy and educational advice, the Metalogicon gives us fragments of biographical interest such as this:

I have been distracted by other tasks, not different merely but inimical to study, so that I could scarcely snatch an hour here and there, and then furtively to play philosopher. Ten times have I crossed the chain of the Alps since I left England first; twice have I travelled through Apulia; I have done business often in the Roman Court on behalf of my superiors and friends, and on a variety of counts I have traversed England, and France too many times.

His travels are noteworthy when one recalls that the apparently normal time allowed to get from Rome to Canterbury was seven weeks; but we are told that the journey could be completed in four weeks by a courier riding—and presumably sailing—at express speed.

From the last part of the book we are given a bird's eye view of the contemporary scene; the illness of Archbishop Theobald, the death of his friend Pope Hadrian IV (September 1159), and the war brewing in France. There, too, we read of his embassy to Rome, whereby Hadrian IV issued the controversial Bull, Laudabiliter—some historians have queried its authenticity—commissioning the English King Henry II to invade Ireland and set about its religious reformation. John did bring back an emerald ring, which was apparently a token of the Pope's grant in virtue of the Donation of Constantine to give the King the right to the island of Ireland. In view of the forged nature of the Donation, it is difficult to see how this ‘grant’ could have been used as the legal basis of Laudabiliter. John then goes on to tell his readers of the terrible burdens placed on his shoulders with the death of the Pope, and of the last illness of his Archbishop, and ends with a prayer that those who hear or read him should intercede for him with the Virgin's Son:

that he may take away from me all vanity and the love of it and he may make me an assiduous seeker of truth and no less a lover and worshipper of it when found.

It makes an excellent summary of its author's views of life and learning.

After Theobald's death, in 1161, John continued as secretary to his close friend, Thomas Becket. In the long dispute between the King and the Archbishop John, at times, acted as mediator and conciliator; but, because of loyalty to Becket's stand on principle, he left England in company with Becket for France to continue support for Thomas among his influential friends. As a true friend, he reproved Thomas for his methods in searching canon laws to justify his stand on clerical immunities:

Of much profit indeed are laws and canons,’ he wrote, ‘but believe me that now is not the time for them … whoever rose from a study of the civil or even of the canon law with a humble and contrite heart.

John returned with the Archbishop to England in 1170, and was present in Canterbury Cathedral during the tragic circumstances of Becket's murder. Apparently, before the armed knights' entry into the Cathedral, Thomas told his clerks that he was ready to die for the sake of God and justice, to which John of Salisbury is reported to have replied:

We are sinners and not yet prepared to die: I see no one here save you who is anxious to die for dying's sake.

He could well rebuke the Archbishop for his methods; none had been a stronger supporter of his cause. There is no doubt from the many letters he wrote to the bishops in England during Becket's exile of his conviction that Becket's cause was none other than the liberty of the church. After the murder in the Cathedral, John became treasurer to Bartholomew, the Bishop of Exeter, one of his life-long friends; and in 1176, on the recommendation of none other than King Louis VII of France and that of the Archbishop of Sens, John was elected to the See of his beloved Chartres, where he passed the remainder of his life. He died the year following the Lateran Council in which he played an active part, at the age of sixty-five.

In the vast volumes of letters he wrote we get further glimpses of this attractive personality, at work as secretary, ambassador and friend to a wide cosmopolitan circle of learned men. From them we can also see that, through his work and friends, John of Salisbury was in touch with, and at times deeply involved in, the most active movements of his time; the schools of Paris, the quarrels between Cistercian and Cluniac monks, the noteworthy developments then taking place in Roman and canon law, the vitality of the royal courts of England and France and the Curia.

These letters are too diffuse in the wide variety of the business subjects with which they deal to be considered in any detail here, while those of them that may be termed private correspondence are of a literary genre common to the period, clothed in classical allusion, reflecting more the urbanity of his intimates than John's own feelings and thoughts. Their general tenor is, however, the liberal humanity of his outlook on life—the views of a scholar who regards the classics as living companions, full of practical advice for the art of life itself.

Perhaps more of a European than an Englishman, John of Salisbury embodied the new humanism that came to permeate twelfth-century thought. It was at Chartres that he gained his immense classical learning and elegant Latin style; and it was there he ended his days and labours in the splendid Cathedral which, among the richness of its carved art, fittingly displays a representation of the Seven Liberal Arts, of which John of Salisbury was the outstanding product and protagonist.