of enforced idleness that we owe the production of his two most important works, the Policraticus and the Metalogicus. Both were written during the time when the king was absent at the tedious siege of Toulouse in 1159: the one was completed before, the other just after, the death of Hadrian the Fourth on the first day of September in that year. The storm which had impended over John of Salisbury seems soon to have passed by: but in 1161 his patron, archbishop Theobald, died, and the favour which was continued to him by Thomas Becket came to be a source of anxiety rather than of advantage. After an absence of more than four years king Henry was again in England in January 1163. The fact possibly determined John's withdrawal.[1] He left the country only to return with Becket seven years later, and to witness his murder. During this time of exile he was the truest, because the wisest, champion of the archbishop. The intemperate and wanton means by which the latter sought to promote his cause, John was the first to reprove. He did not spare his warnings, and, when necessary, would denounce Becket's actions not as impolitic but simply as unchristian.[2] Still his hearty adhesion to the hier-
- ↑ He again found hospitality at the hands of Peter of La Celle, who became abbat of Saint Rémy at Rheims some time after April 1162, Gallia Christiana 9. (1751) 234; and it was at this time that he composed the Historia pontificalis which has been assigned on internal notices to 1162 or 1163 (see Giesebrecht, Sitzungsberichte der philosophisch-philologischen und historischen Classe der königlichen Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften 3. 124) and which is dedicated to the abbat. [But the work was not written until 1164 at earliest. See the Dictionary of national Biography, 29. 442.] Whether it was at this time or during his former stay with Peter of La Celle that John acted as the latter's clerk, 'quondam clericus noster,' as Peter wrote in 1176, Epist. vii. 6, Maxima Bibliotheca Patrum 23. 886 c, it is perhaps impossible to decide: Dr. Schaarschmidt, p. 26, seems to think it was on the earlier occasion.
- ↑ See a pointed example in a letter addressed to Becket, to which Dr. Schaarschmidt, p. 47 n. 3, draws attention. Among other things John says, 'Si enim litterarum vestrarum et ipsius [Becket's reply and his opponent's letter] articuli singuli conferantur, ex amaritudine potius et rancore animi quam ex caritatis sinceritate videbitur processisse responsio.' He would not treat the pope's courier with the contumely which Becket had thought fit to use towards a cardinal legate of the apostolic see: Epist. ccxx. Opp. 2. 72 sq.
