His picture of the learned world.
In 1159 John of Salisbury completed his two chief works, the Metalogicus and the Polycraticus.[461] In the former he tells the interesting story of his education in the schools of northern France, and describes the teachers and methods of the humanistic school of Chartres and the schools of logic at Paris. This valuable picture of educational conditions in the middle of the twelfth century has already supplied us with a number of bits of information concerning authors of whom we have treated. Its importance in the history of the study of the classics and of scholasticism has long been recognized, and its content has often been reproduced in secondary works, so that we need not dwell upon it specifically here.[462] Moreover, although John spent some twelve years in his studies in France, he appears from his own statements to have passed from the study of logic and “grammar” to that of theology without devoting much attention to natural science,[463] although he received some instruction in the Quadrivium from Richard Bishop and Hardewin the Teuton. He was, it is true, according to his own statement, a pupil of William of Conches for three years, but he always alludes to William as a grammarian, not as a writer on natural philosophy and astronomy. This one-sided description of William’s teaching warns us not to place too implicit faith in John’s account of the learned world of his times. Even if reliable as it stands, it is not in itself a complete or adequate picture. In the Polycraticus, however, he engages in a rather long discussion of magic, astrology and other forms of divination which it behooves us to note.
Chief events of his life.
John tells us that he was a mere lad when in 1136 he first came from England to Gaul to hear the famous Abelard lecture. Like many medieval students, he was or soon came to be in a needy condition and eked out a living at one time by tutoring the sons of nobles. During the time that had elapsed between his long training in the liberal arts and theology and his writing of the Metalogicus in 1159, he had led a busy life in the employ of Theobald, archbishop of Canterbury, crossing the Alps ten times, journeying twice all the way from England to Apulia, and frequently traveling about England and what is now France (John says, “the Gauls”—Gallias). In 1159 he addressed the Polycraticus to Thomas Becket, then absent with Henry II as his chancellor at the siege of Toulouse. Thomas was just about John’s age and, before he became chancellor in 1154 at the age of thirty-six, had been like John first a student and then in the employ of Archbishop Theobald. John sided with Thomas Becket in the struggle with Henry II, retired to France, and returned to England with him in 1170. In 1176 he crowned his career by becoming bishop of Chartres where perhaps some years of his early studies had been spent. His death was in 1180.
General character of the Polycraticus.
In the Metalogicus John tells us that he has scarcely touched a book of logic since he left the palaestra of the dialecticians so many years ago, but he returns to the subject again in that work. In the Polycraticus his literary tastes and interests are more manifest. He writes a good Latin style and shows a wide acquaintance with classical authors and ancient history as well as with patristic literature. The character and content of the Polycraticus is more clearly suggested by its sub-title, “Courtiers’ Trifles and Philosophers’ Footprints” (De nugis curialium et vestigiis philosophorum). In part it is satirical, although there is considerable serious discussion of the state and philosophy and much moralizing for the benefit of contemporary courts and statesmen. John confesses that the entire work is little more than a patch-work of other men’s opinions, sometimes without specific acknowledgment of the authorities. He professes to believe that Thomas will recognize the sources of these passages without being told, while other readers who are more ignorant will be thereby spurred on to wider reading. These quotations, moreover, are either from ancient classical or comparatively early Christian writers. John does not epitomize recent literature and thought, although he makes application of the thought of the past to contemporary society and politics, and although he shows some acquaintance with the works of contemporary writers such as Bernard Silvester. In the main his attitude is essentially conservative; he repeats traditional views in an attractive but somewhat dilettante literary form, with such rational criticism as a study of the classics might be expected to produce when qualified by scrupulous adherence to medieval Christian dogma. This is especially true of his discussion of the magic arts and astrology.
Magic, maleficia, and mathematica.
John begins to discuss magic in the first of the eight books of the Polycraticus after a few chapters have been taken up with such other triflings of courtiers as hunting, dicing, music, and theatrical shows and spectacles. More harmful than the illusions of the stage, he declares, are those of the magic arts and various kinds of disreputable mathematica, long since forbidden by the holy fathers who knew that all these artificia, or rather maleficia arose from a fatal familiarity of men and demons.[464] John thus takes as practically synonymous the three terms, magica, mathematica and maleficium. He presently explains that the word mathesis in one sense denotes learning in general, but that when it has a long penultima, it signifies the figments of divination,[465] which belong under magic, whose varieties are many and diverse. Thus magic is John’s most general and inclusive term for all occult arts.
Use of Isidore on magic.
The account of magic in John’s ninth, tenth, eleventh, and twelfth chapters is largely derived without acknowledgment from that of Isidore of Seville.[466] We have already seen how this became a stock description of the subject copied with little change by successive writers and embodied in the decretals of the church. It is rather surprising that a writer as well versed in the classics as John is generally supposed to be should not have borrowed his account more directly from some such ancient Latin writers as Pliny and Apuleius. John, however, alters the wording and arrangement and consequently the emphasis considerably. He makes it seem, for example, that several magic arts, which really have nothing to do with predicting the future, are sub-varieties of divination. He also adds some new varieties to Isidore’s list of practitioners of the magic arts. The vultivoli try to affect men by making images of them from wax or clay. Imaginarii, on the other hand, make images with the intent that demons should enter these images and instruct them in regard to doubtful matters. Besides interpreters of dreams (conjectores) and chiromancers John further mentions specularii who practise divination by gazing into polished surfaces such as the edges of swords, basins, and mirrors. It was this art that Joseph is described as exercising or pretending to exercise, when he charged his brothers with having made off with the cup in which he was wont to practice divination. The thirteenth and closing chapter of John’s first book is a long list of omens from Roman history and Latin literature, especially Vergil.