Why Can’t We Be Friends? John of Salisbury, Thomas Becket and the Discourse of Amicitia

Abstract

There has been an almost universal tendency to treat Thomas Becket as a personal—even close and intimate—friend of John of Salisbury, based on their decades-long association. Evidence for this position has rested, for example, on the fact that the two writings that have primarily sustained John’s intellectual reputation through the centuries—the Policraticus and the Metalogicon—he chose to dedicate to Becket. During the Middle Ages, however, addressing a book to powerful and well-placed people did not necessarily suggest endorsement of their behaviour. Indeed, a dedication might indicate criticism or rebuke rather than affection or gratitude, as it does today. John’s actual attitude towards Becket cannot be separated from appreciation of the relationship between friends as understood in the twelfth century. John stood at or near the centre of a large friendship circle that encompassed mainly monks and secular clergy—a network held together by copious correspondence as well as face-to-face interaction. Such circles functioned as important means of constructing common intellectual and political agendas among literate but otherwise far-flung figures. Becket received no such expressions of friendship status from John of Salisbury.