John of Salisbury and the world of the Old Testament

Abstract

It is likely that during the years of his exile (1163/4-70) John of Salisbury’s attachment to the bible was strengthened at the expense of his ‘classical humanism’. A glance at the index to Brooke’s volume of the later letters of John of Salisbury does much to confirm this hypothesis. As Smalley pointed out in this context, ‘the holy page reasserted her rule over the artes’. The ancient pagan sources which bulked large in his earlier writings are submerged under a flood of biblical quotations, allusions and exempla. The main topics of these later letters arc the Becket controversy, the papal schism and the empire-papacy conflict. The very nature of these themes must have influenced John’s mental processes. He was no hypocrite, and would not have recommended his exiled archbishop to study the psalms and Gregory’s Moralia had he himself not done likewise.