© The Author(s) 2020
O. RanumTyranny from Ancient Greece to Renaissance Francehttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-43185-3_7

7. John of Salisbury on Tyranny in Policraticus

Orest Ranum1  
(1)
Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, USA
 
 
Orest Ranum

Abstract

John of Salisbury on tyranny in the Policraticus. King Henry II’s quarrels with the church led to a recovery of Cicero’s and Orosius’s descriptions of tyranny. The result was a list of Nero’s tyrannical acts.

Keywords
John of Salisbury on tyrannyThomas BeckettCicero, recovery ofOrosius on tyrannyTraits of a tyrant

Born in Old Sarum (near Salisbury), “John the Little,” as he refers to himself (late 1110s–1180), set off for the University of Paris in 1136. He would spend twelve years in that center of learning before returning to England to become a secretary to Archbishop Theobald of Canterbury . Living through the clash between the Crown and the church over legal jurisdictions, John wrote in defense of the church’s positions and defended those positions in person at various courts on the continent, and several times in Rome. Thomas Becket was part of this same circle of clerics until the king made him chancellor and, after Theobald’s death, archbishop of Canterbury. John was banished by the king in 1156–1157, years that turned out to be fruitful for writing several major works, and that very probably saw him beginning his Policraticus, finished in 1159.

Archbishop Becket was murdered in his cathedral in 1170, and John, if not a bystander, knew about it immediately. This brutal act affected John profoundly: he would devote the rest of his life mainly to writing about the martyr, and to fostering a cult of Becket that would flourish all across Europe. From 1176 until his death in 1180, John was bishop at Chartres, one of the church’s most royal French establishments.

The Policraticus is addressed to administrative clergy like him, and to courtiers. Departing from an organic-corporal theory of community, John recommended that minor offenses committed by a king be ignored; but if the welfare of the community-body is threatened, or if religious beliefs and practices are challenged, it is the duty of the entire corps of citizens to get rid of that king.1 Elsewhere, John refers to the tyrant as the servant of God, and that the tyrant-king will be subject to divine punishment, presumably after his death. But John does not turn to the usual vocabulary when he advises tyrannicide. I have not discovered any other philosopher-writer who describes the powers of a corps-community to act in the name of duty, in removing a tyrant, but it is of course logical because of the protection that God gives the corps-community.

Writing prior to the reception of Aristotle’s Politics in Latin, John relies on Cicero and Augustine for his sense of human nature, and he makes moderation and mercy major underlying themes. For his list of tyrannical attributes, he relies on Orosius.2 After describing Caligula’s tyrannical acts, he turns to Nero:

  • He dressed in the motley attire of an actor and played on many stages.

  • His furious lust led him not to refrain, it is said, from his mother and sister.

  • He took a man for his wife.

  • He fished with golden nets and purple twine.

  • He bathed in hot and cold unguents.

  • Rome burned for six days and seven nights.

  • He used engines to break down houses, forcing residents to live in tombs and mansions of the dead.

  • His avarice was so violent that he carried off goods from the burned properties.

  • He commanded the Senate to confer ten million sesterces on him.

  • He put to death the greater part of the Senate, and he almost annihilated the equestrian order.

  • He committed murder: his mother, his sister, his wife.

  • He showed a rash impiety against God.

  • He put the blessed apostle Peter to death.3

Other crimes follow: pestilence in Rome, military disasters, and (he says) other historians describe these cruelties in greater detail.