Page:English Historical Review Volume 35.djvu/344

 336 THE MASTERS OF THE SCHOOLS AT July in France after Lucius became pope.^ Lucius died on 15 February 1145, and Robert acted as chancellor under his successor, Eugenius III, until September 1146, after which nothing is heard of him. On Robert's departure then in 1144 John passed under the instruction of Simon of Poissy, of whom little is known, and continued his theological studies. Schaarschmidt thought he could not have spent all the remainder of his twelve years under Simon, for we cannot suppose that he studied ' five or six years from 1 142 or 1 143 to 1 148 ' under one master.^ The establishment of the fact that Robert did not leave Paris until 1144 removes part of the objection, and it is evident that twelve years reckoned from a year beginning at Christmas 1135 do not necessarily extend beyond 1147. But it seems on the whole most probable that John's last years of study were not spent wholly at Paris but in part at Provins with his friend Peter of La Celle and perhaps also at Rheims. It is not, however, my purpose here to carry the narrative of John's biography further. VII. The Metamorphosis Goliae Episcopi John of Salisbury's account of his studies in France has often been brought into relation with a poem entitled the Metamorphosis Goliae Episcopi. This is found in a single manuscript transcribed about 1240 by a monk, as is supposed, of Reading Abbey.' It was printed in 1841 by Thomas Wright among the Latin Poems commonly attributed to Walter Mapes,^ but it is certainly a produc- tion of at least a generation earlier than Walter Map's time. In this the poet recounts a dream in which the sleeper beholds the divinities of the classical pantheon. Then appear the philosophers, poets, and others, who still pursue their old arts, Totum dicunt lepide, nihil rusticantes. Their company is immediately followed by a band of divines and philosophers of the writer's own day : Theodoric. Ibi doctor cernitur ille Carnotensis, cuius lingua vehemens truncat velud ensis ; Gilbert of et hie praesul praesulum stat Pictaviensis, La PoiT^e. prius et nubentium miles et castrensis.* » J. Thorpe, Segistrum Roffense, pp. 39 ff., 1769. Mr. Round called attention to this evidence in the Athenaeum journal, 3601, 31 October 1896. » Harl. MS. 978, fo. 121 6 (now numbered 100 b) ff. I have inserted one or two corrections from the manuscript. See the Palaeographical Society Facsimiles, i. Plate 125. In H L. D. Ward's Catalogue oj Romances, i. (1883), 407 ff., the manuscript is dated a little later. » ' II itait ne chevalier, dit le rimeur, et seigneur chatelain,' is Haureau's exposi- tion (Mim. de VAcad. des Inscr. xxvm. iL (1876) 227).
 * p. 25.
 * pp. 21-30.