Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 29.djvu/447

John curia before 1150, and then set out for England. On his way through France Abbat Peter supplied him with the necessary means for his journey (see John's epist. lxxxv. p. 117), and St. Bernard with a letter commending him to Archbishop Theobald (, epist. ccclxi. ubi supra), who at once attached him to his clerical staff.

Henceforth, until 1164, John lived at the court of Canterbury, where his talent for affairs as well as his remarkable scholarship caused him to be employed in official business of the most varied kind. The commanding position occupied by Archbishop Theobald made his court a centre of administrative activity; and after the accession of Henry II the king's long absences on the continent threw into the archbishop's hands a large share of the government of the country. John of Salisbury became more and more indispensable to Theobald, and as the primate advanced in years he seems to have acted as his confidential secretary and assistant; 'the charge of all Britain,' he wrote in 1159, 'as touching church matters, was laid upon me' (Metalog. prol. p. 9; cf. lib. iv. 42, p. 206). At the same time his indefatigable habits of study left him time and energy to engage in learned disputation, if not in actual teaching (cf. ib. prol. pp. 8f.), as well as in continual correspondence on literary subjects with a wide circle of scholars.

He was also repeatedly entrusted with delicate negotiations which required his presence abroad. He was in Italy in 1150 (Hist. Pontif. xxxii. 538, cf. xxxix. 542); afterwards he was with Pope Eugenius during his stay at Ferentino (Polier, vi. 24, p. 61), which lasted from November 1150 to June 1151 (cf., Reg. Pontif. Rom. ii. 69-73, ed. Loewenfeld, 1888). He was with the pope again in May 1152 (epist. lix. pp. 64 f.; where 'Romae' seems to be a slip of the pen, the pope being then at Signi). Twice he went as far south as Apulia (Metalog. iii. prol. p. 113); once before 1154 (Policrat. vii. 19, p. 155), and once later—some time between November 1155 and July 1156 (cf., ii. 113-120)—in company with Pope Hadrian IV, with whom he was on terms of affectionate intimacy, and in whose society at Benevento he lived for near three months (Policrat. vi. 24, pp. 59 ff.) It was in 1155 that he was instrumental in obtaining from Hadrian a bull authorising the conquest of Ireland by the English king (Metalog. iv. 42, pp. 205 f.; . De Instruct. Princip. ii. 19, Opp. viii. 195, ed. G. F. Warner, 1891). The genuineness of this bull has, it is true, been recently disputed by Bishop Moran (Irish Ecclesiastical Record, ix. 49-64, November 1872), bv a writer in the 'Analecta Juris Pontificii,' xxi. 257-397 (Paris, 1882), and by Father F. A. Gasquet (Dublin Review, 3rd ser. x. 83-103, 1883); but the arguments rest rather on grounds of political controversy than of historical criticism (cf. ib. 3rd ser. xi. 316-43, 1884).

John's close alliance with the hierarchical interest brought him into disgrace with Henry II. It was on his return from one of his visits to the papal court in 1159 (epist. cxv. p. 164) that Arnulf, bishop of Lisieux, made a report of his doings to the king, who was still absent on the continent, which aroused his wrath and placed John in such danger that 'to stay in England was unsafe, to escape impossible or very difficult.' John writes thus in a letter addressed to Alexander III, whose election fell in September 1159 (epist. cviii. p. 158; cf., epist. lxvii., , ccii. 513). But the incident referred to must have taken place earlier in the year, since it was in this period of enforced leisure that John found time to revise and complete his two most considerable works, the 'Policraticus' and the 'Metalogicus.' Both were finished while the long siege of Toulouse was going on; the one while Pope Hadrian was still alive (Policr. viii. 23, p. 363, where the sense is confounded by false punctuation; cf. lib. i. prol. p. 16; lib. viii. 24, p. 379); the other just after his death on 1 Sept. (Metalog. iv. 42, p. 205). Nor can there be much doubt as to the offence which brought John into disfavour. The exactions levied to meet the charges of the expedition against Toulouse fell, if we are to believe the statement he made some years later (epist. cxlv. p. 223), with peculiar severity upon the church (cf. in the Engl. Hist. Rev. vi. pp. 635 f., 1891); and if, as may be presumed, he denounced them in like vehement, language at the time (cf. epist. cxiii. p. 102),he could not fail to suffer at least temporary disgrace. He was accused, he wrote to Peter of La Celle (epist. cxv. pp. 164 f.; cf. epist. xcvi. p. 142), of urging on the ecclesiastical party to assert more strenuously the privileges of the church; and he thought of going abroad before January to take his friends counsel, and then have recourse to Rome. Meanwhile he wrote to Thomas the chancellor, who was with the king in France, reminding him of their old friendship, and enclosing a letter in his support from the pope (evidently the new pope, Alexander III), in the hope of recovering Henry's favour (epist. cxiii. pp. 161 f.); this letter he sent through a friend, master Ernulf, whose private interest with Thomas he solicited at the same