broadening of knowledge, and in particular an ever-increasing familiarity with the Latin classics. The classical reading of a noted Englishman of the period has recently been summed up by Dr. Reginald Lane Poole as follows: "John of Salisbury seems to have been ignorant of Plautus, Lucretius, and perhaps Catullus; but he was familiar with Terence, Virgil, Horace (not, however, his Odes), Ovid, Lucan, Statius, Juvenal, Martial, Persius, and a number of later poets. If he had read little of Cicero's Orations, he knew his philosophical works intimately; and he was well acquainted with Seneca, Quintilian, and the two Plinies. With historians he was more poorly supplied. Cæsar and Tacitus were names to him, and Livy he cites but once; but Sallust, Suetonius, Justinus, and, more than all, Valerius Maximus were constantly at his hand. No doubt his resources made him dependent to a great extent upon the later classical writers— Gellius, Macrobius, Apuleius, etc.--but the range of his reading was certainly superior to that of most professed Latinists of the present day. Such learning was without question unique in the twelfth century; but the fact that it was possible is proof that the mass of Latin literature in attainable manuscripts was far greater than is commonly supposed."

Their classical learning such men as John of Salisbury put to daily use, and they strove to write with elegance and precision. Accomplished Latinists were thought necessary in the employ of any man of power; through their hands all official correspondence passed; and, among men of affairs as well as the clergy, scholarship gave a superior glamour to force of personality.

John of Salisbury († 1180) was preeminent as a scholar, an apostle of classical culture, a humanist. But he was also an active diplomat, and a versatile participant in contemporary disputes. His career has unusual interest. The course of his studies during twelve years abroad he has himself recorded, and we are able to follow him in his journeys here and there after 1136, when he first heard the lectures of Abelard on Mont St. Geneviève, as he proceeded to different places to learn of the

celebrated teachers of his day; Robert of Melun, for example, and Gilbert de la Porrée at Paris, William de Conches and Richard l'Evêque at Chartres, and Peter de la Celle at Provins in Champagne. About 1150 he returned to England to become a member of the clerical staff of Archbishop Theobald of Canterbury, to whom he had been recommended by Bernard of Clairvaux. He soon proved himself the most accomplished of Theobald's helpers, and was engaged in many kinds of official business, some of which required great tact. Before 1169 he had crossed the Alps ten times on missions to Rome, and on one occasion had spent three months with Adrian IV., the only Englishman ever Pope, with whom he was on terms of affectionate intimacy, and from whom he is said to have secured a bull authorising the Conquest of Ireland by the English king. He was one of the executors of Theobald's will, and one of the five commissioners who went to Montpellier to fetch the pallium for the consecration of Becket. Afterwards he became the "eye and arm" of the new Archbishop. Though he did not hesitate to point out to Becket his mistakes, he nevertheless faithfully supported him in difficulty and exile, and was with him when he was murdered. He was one of the chief to urge Becket's claim to canonisation, as he had before urged Anselm's, this time successfully. He remained in England until 1176, when he was made Bishop of Chartres. "Vir magnae religionis totiusque scientiae radiis illustratus so runs his obituary in the church there, where he lies.

Some three hundred of John's letters are extant, clear witnesses to his keenness of intellect and purity of diction. His two great prose works are the Polycraticus and the Metalogicus. The former, "The Statesman's Book," which has a descriptive sub-title, De Nugis Curialium et Vestigiis Philosophorum, contrasts the vain pursuits of men of his day with the best precepts of the philosophers, pointing out the frivolous or vicious pleasures that are opposed to reason and right. It is a work of vast learning, somewhat miscellaneous, indeed, but greatly praised throughout

the Middle Ages and rich in interest even to-day. In the Metalogicus, John defended thoroughly the study of logic, and conveyed to his readers a large part of Aristotle's Organon.

Peter Abelard and Bernard of Clairvaux, to whom reference has just been made, were the most famous French theologians of the first half of the century. Abelard's name is now inseparable from that of the beautiful Héloïse, whose love for him, as revealed in their passionate letters to each other, had such tragic results for both. But he deserves worthier renown by virtue of his extraordinary intellectual power and bold honesty of scientific attitude. In these respects he rises superior to Bernard, who, on the other hand, was more zealous and uplifted in spirit. Further to contrast the two, Abelard might be called a man of "knowledge "—which, according to a Welsh triad, has three embellishing names, "paths of truth, hand of reason, and strength of genius" -and Bernard a man of "conscience," the embellishing names of which, following the same authority, are "light of heaven, eye of truth, and voice of God." The one a speculative schoolman, the other a faithful mystic, they were naturally opposed in their views of dogma. Bernard, more powerful politically in his day, succeeded in having Abelard's works condemned as heretical by the Council of Sens in 1140. Yet these never ceased to circulate, to the advantage of free thought. One can trace little direct influence of Abelard's opinions on Middle English writers; while few of those who treated religious themes were unaffected by the mysticism of his opponent. In modern times, however, Abelard's fame has grown the greater, and he is now universally recognised as a thinker of high importance.

Amongst the many Englishmen in the twelfth century who first studied and afterwards taught in France, others besides John of Salisbury were Abelard's disciples. Of these one of the most conspicuous was John of Salisbury's own master, Robert of Melun, who had a famous school at Paris, and afterwards at Melun, from about 1130 to 1160. At Mont St. Geneviève the "Robertines" long continued to discuss their

leader's great work "on the nature of God, the angels, and man, on the soul, man's state, his disposition before and after the Fall, and his redemption," the Summa Theologiae, which above all gave warrant for his repute as a metaphysician. Robert's most illustrious pupil was perhaps Thomas à Becket, with whom he was closely connected all his life, and through whose favour he was appointed to the see of Hereford, a position which he held at his death in 1167. Another English teacher of note at Paris was Adam du Petit Pont, who died in 1180, Bishop of St. Asaph's. He was a pupil of Peter Lombard († 1160), whose Sententiae had enormous vogue. In his Eulogium Adam defends the theological doctrines of his master concerning the humanity of Christ against the vigorous attacks made upon them by another prominent Englishman of the time, John of Cornwall (fl. 1170). Adam was a friend of John of Salisbury's, but the latter reproaches him with over-subtlety and quibbling.

It is remarkable, indeed, how many Englishmen at this period. gained distinction abroad, not merely as teachers, but also as administrators: for example, John of Poictiers, a native of Kent, and a member of the household of Theobald of Canterbury, who from 1181 to 1193 was Archbishop of Lyons; Ralph of Sarr in Thanet, another Canterbury clerk, who was Dean of Rheims from 1176 to 1194; Robert Pullus, Chancellor of the Holy Roman Church (1145-46), who taught at Oxford and Paris; and Master Thomas Brown, a sort of Chancellor of the Exchequer in Sicily.

By exchange, various prominent Frenchmen received preferment in England. Thus Gerard la Pucelle, noted as a teacher at Paris and Cologne, was chosen by Becket to be Bishop of Coventry († 1184). Still more interesting was Peter of Blois (fl. 1190). First a student at Tours, Paris, and Bologna, he later gained experience of men as a teacher, legislator (he was for a time keeper of the royal seal in Sicily), and royal ambassador. An aristocrat himself, no one was more familiar with princes and prelates. In England, thanks to his own merits as well as to the favour of Henry II., he occupied such positions as Chancellor to

the Archbishop of Canterbury, Archdeacon of Bath, Secretary of the Queen, and Archdeacon of London-nothing very high. Though superbly vain, he had in reality very distinguished qualities as a scholar. Still extant from his hand are a score of Opuscula on theology, some sixty-five sermons, and a large body of letters, which he collected at the request of the King. In his youth, he tells us, he was given to composing poems of a secular character, but later he deliberately abandoned that style of verse for a graver sort. Once, writing to a grammar-teacher of Beauvais, he complains:

You have remained with the ass in the mire of a very dull intelligence. Priscian and Tully, Lucan and Persius, these are your gods. I fear lest when you die it may be said of you in reproach: Where are your gods in whom you have put your trust?

And again, trying to dissuade a friend from purely secular studies, he pleads:

What have you to do with these false vanities and follies? What concern have you, who ought to be an organ of truth, with the fabulous loves of the gods of the Gentiles? . . . You have spent your days until old age in the fables of the Gentiles, in the studies of the philosophers, and finally in civil law, and, contrary to the wishes of all who loved you, you have endangered your soul by avoiding the sacred page of theology.

Yet he himself never conquered his taste for the writers of antiquity, and he elaborately defends his practice of quoting from the Latin poets.

Peter, moreover, gives us information of the courts at Canterbury and London. In one letter to a correspondent abroad, he thus exalts the former :

There are, he says, in the house of my lord the Archbishop of Canterbury, men deeply versed in literature, among whom is found all rectitude of justice, all prudence of foresight, every form of learning. These, after prayers and before eating, exercise themselves assiduously in the reading, arguing, and deciding of causes. All the knotty questions of the kingdom are referred to us, which, being propounded among our fellows in the common auditory, each