Bold ideas abound with John of Salisbury; he praises Brutus; he is of opinion that the murder of tyrants is not only justifiable, but an honest and commendable deed: "Non modo licitum est, sed æquum et justum." Whatever may be the apparent prosperity of the great, the State will go to ruin if the common people suffer: "When the people suffer, it is as though the sovereign had the gout"[283]; he must not imagine he is in health; let him try to walk, and down he falls.
Characteristics of the same sort are found, with much more sparkling wit, in the Latin works of Walter Map.[284] This Welshman has the vivacity of the Celts his compatriots; he was celebrated at the court of Henry II., and throughout England for his repartees and witticisms, so celebrated indeed that he himself came to agree to others' opinion, and thought them worth collecting. He thus formed a very bizarre book, without beginning or end, in which he noted, day by day,[285] all the curious things he had heard—"ego verbum audivi"—and with greater abundance those he had said, including a great many puns. Thus it happens that certain chapters of his "De Nugis Curialium," a title that the work owes to the success of John of Salisbury's, are real novels, and have the smartness of such; others are real fabliaux, with all their coarseness; others are scenes of comedy, with dialogues, and indications of characters as in a play[286]; others again are anecdotes of the East, "quoddam mirabile," told on their return by pilgrims or crusaders.
Like John of Salisbury, Map had studied in Paris, fulfilled missions to Rome, and known Becket; but he shared neither his sympathy for France, nor his affection for St. Bernard. In the quarrel which sprung up between the saint and Abélard, he took the part of the latter. Though he belonged to the Church, he is never weary of sneering at the monks, and especially at the Cistercians; he imputes to St. Bernard abortive miracles. "Placed," says Map, "in the presence of a corpse, Bernard exclaimed: 'Walter, come forth!'—But Walter, as he did not hear the voice of Jesus, so did he not listen with the ears of Lazarus, and came not."[287] Women also are for Map the subject of constant satires; he was the author of that famous "Dissuasio Valerii ad Rufinum de ducenda uxore,"[288] well known to the Wife of Bath and which the Middle Ages persistently attributed to St. Jerome. Map had asserted his authorship and stated that he had written the dissertation "changing only our names," assuming for himself the name of Valerius "me qui Walterus sum," and calling his uxorious friend Rufinus because he was red-haired. But it was of no avail, and St. Jerome continued to be the author, in the same way as Cornelius Nepos was credited with having written Joseph of Exeter's "Trojan War," dedicated though it was to the archbishop of Canterbury. Map is very strong in his advice to his red-haired friend, who "was bent upon being married, not loved, and aspired to the fate of Vulcan, not of Mars."
As a compensation many poems in Latin and French were attributed to Map, of doubtful authenticity. That he wrote verses and was famous as a poet there is no question, but what poems were his we do not know for certain. To him was ascribed most of the "Goliardic" poetry current in the Middle Ages, so called on account of the principal personage who figures in it, Golias, the type of the gluttonous and debauched prelate. Some of those poems were merry songs full of humour and entrain, perfectly consistent with what we know of Map's fantasy: "My supreme wish is to die in the tavern! May my dying lips be wet with wine! So that on their coming the choirs of angels will exclaim: 'God be merciful to this drinker!'"[289] Doubts exist also as to what his French poems were; most of his jokes and repartees were delivered in French, as we know from the testimony of Gerald de Barry,[290] but what he wrote in that language is uncertain. The "Lancelot" is assigned to him in many manuscripts and is perhaps his work.[291]
V.
The subjects of the Angevin kings also took part in the scientific movement. In the ranks of their literary men using the Latin language are jurists, physicians, savants, historians, theologians, and, among the latter, some of the most famous doctors of the Middle Ages: Alexander of Hales, the "irrefragable doctor"[292]; Duns Scot, the "subtle doctor"; Adam de Marisco, friend and adviser of Simon de Montfort, the "illustrious doctor"; Ockham, the "invincible doctor"; Roger Bacon, the "admirable doctor"; Bradwardine, the "profound doctor," and yet others.
Scot discusses the greatest problems of soul and matter, and amid many contradictions, and much obscurity, arrives at this conclusion, that matter is one: "Socrates and the brazen sphere are identical in nature." He almost reaches this further conclusion, that "being is one."[293] His reputation is immense during the Middle Ages; it diminishes at the Renaissance, and Rabelais, drawing up a list of some remarkable books in St. Victor's library, inscribes on it, between the "Maschefaim des Advocats" and the "Ratepenade des Cardinaux," the works of the subtle doctor under the irreverent title of "Barbouillamenta Scoti."[294]
Ockham, in the pay of Philippe-le-Bel—for England, that formerly had to send for Lanfranc and Anselm, can now furnish the Continent with doctors—makes war on Boniface VIII., and, drawing his arguments from both St. Paul and Aristotle, attacks the temporal power of the popes.[295] Roger Bacon endeavours to clear up the chaos of the sciences; he forestalls his illustrious namesake, and classifies the causes of human errors.[296] Archbishop Bradwardine,[297] who died in the great plague of 1349, restricts himself to theology, and in a book famous during the Middle Ages, defends the "Cause of God" against all sceptics, heretics, infidels, and miscreants, confuting them all, and even Aristotle himself.[298]
No longer is Salerno alone to produce illustrious physicians, or Bologne illustrious jurists. A "Rosa Anglica," the work of John of Gaddesden, court physician under Edward II., has the greatest success in learned Europe, and teaches how the stone can be cured by rubbing the invalid with a paste composed of crickets and beetles pounded together, "but taking care to first remove the heads and wings."[299] A multitude of prescriptions, of the same stamp most of them, are set down in this book, which was still printed and considered as an authority at the Renaissance.