John of Salisbury, one of the most influential thinkers of the Middle Ages, studied under both William of Conches and Hugh of St. Victor, but he was more oriented towards humanistic studies and political service. John was born in Salisbury, between 1115 and 1120. In 1136 he went to study arts and theology in Paris. After completing his studies he joined the household of Archbishop Theobald of Canterbury in 1147. In this position he composed letters, provided advise, and acted as an envoy for the Archbishop. He was appointed Bishop of Chartres in 1176 and died there in 1180. John’s love of learning, which he received from his teachers, comes through in his writings:
Although pleasurable in many ways, the pursuit of letters is especially fruitful because it excludes all annoyances stemming from differences of time and place, it draws friends into each other's presence, and it abolishes the situation in which things worth knowing are not experienced. Arts would have perished, laws would have disappeared, faith and all religious duties whatsoever would have shattered, and even the correct use of eloquence would have declined, save that divine compassion granted to mortals the use of letters as a remedy for human infirmity [1].
The interest in studying nature during this period was integrated with an appreciation of the social value of knowledge: “Two fundamental objectives motivated those who participated in the cultural activity of the period. First, they believed that by organizing and systematizing knowledge they could begin to rationalize the universe and order human experience. Second, they intended to apply this knowledge to the varied interests, needs, problems, and questions of human life in a rapidly changing, expanding, and sometimes frightening world [2]." The experience of a world improved by man's efforts fostered an appreciation of the power of human action and a belief in the possibility of progress. This was a century of optimism, based on the faith in the discovery of an ordered natural world, the efficacy of new technologies, and a new humanism: “The final word of this humanism was clearly that man, who was nature, who could understand nature through reason, could also transform it through his actions [3]." But this humanism is clearly a Christian humanism. The belief in an ordered cosmos was based on faith on its Creator, and the confidence in man is based on his dignity as the image of God. Hugh of St. Victor orients education to moral action in the world: “…that there may first come to its knowledge those things which moral earnestness will thereafter turn into action [4]." John of Salisbury saw the practical value of study:
The liberal arts are said to
have become so efficacious among our ancestors, who studied them diligently,
that they enabled them to comprehend eveything they read, elevated their
understanding to all things, and empowered them to cut through the knots of all
problems possible of solution… They are
called "liberal," either because the ancients took care to have their
children [liberos] instructed in them; or because their object is to effect
man's liberation, so that, freed from cares, he may devote himself to wisdom. More often than not, they liberated us from
cares incompatible with wisdom [5].
[1] John of Salisbury, Policraticus (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 3.
[2]
Warren Treadgold, Renaissances before the
Renaissance (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1984), 141.
[3] Jacques Le Goff, Intellectuals in the Middle Ages (Cambrige: Blackwell Publishers, 1993), 57.
[4] Hugh of St. Victor, The Didascalicon (New York: Columbia University Press, 1961), 50.
[5]
John of Salisbury, The Metalogicon
of John of Salisbury (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1982) , 36-37.