The Earliest Use of John of Salisbury’s Policraticus: Third Family Bestiaries

Viator 44 No. 1 (2013) 107–118. 10.1484/J.VIATOR.1.103144

THE EARLIEST USE OF JOHN OF SALISBURY’S POLICRATICUS: THIRD FAMILY BESTIARIES

Ilya Dines*

Abstract: Medieval Latin bestiaries from the very moment of their formation incorporated excerpts from many different sources. Most of these additions have been discussed in the scholarly literature, but not the excerpts from the Policraticus, the text written by Thomas Becket’s secretary John of Salisbury in 1159. The excerpts, which are anecdotal in nature, appear in Third Family bestiaries written in the diocese of Lincoln at the beginning of the thirteenth century, in the circle of the famous teacher and theologian William de Montibus. It is surprising that the author of the bestiary would choose anecdotes from the Policraticus, whose main subject is what we now would call political science and social relationships. This article is devoted to the functions of the Policraticus in the bestiaries, as well as to the reasons the author of the Third Family bestiary archetype chose to use it as a source. Keywords: medieval bestiaries, bestiaries of the Third Family, John of Salisbury, Policraticus, William de Montibus, Lincoln diocese, medieval education, cathedral schools, medieval manuscripts, Distinctiones. The Policraticus, sive de Nugis Curialium et de Vestigiis Philosophorum (The States-man’s Book: Frivolities of Courtiers and Footprints of Philosophers), written by Archbishop Thomas Becket’s secretary John of Salisbury in 1159, was one of the most popular “digests” at the end of the thirteenth and beginning of the fourteenth century. The book gained its extraordinary fame mostly because it was the first book in the West, in which the relationship between ruler and his subjects and the conditions on which these subjects have a right to revolt were treated in detail. Another factor that added a great deal to the popularity of the book was the great number of exempla and anecdotes that it offered.1

The Policraticus was not totally unknown at the end of the twelfth and beginning of the thirteenth centuries, as there are manuscripts of the work from this period, but for the first three decades after the book was written, the circle in which the book was read and used was mostly restricted to John’s friends and acquaintances (e.g., Peter of Blois and Nigel Wireker). Later (confining our attention to England), with the excep-tion of Gerald of Wales, who made some use of the book, we do not have evidence of acquaintance with the Policraticus until 1258, when Simon de Montfort and Roger Bigod quoted from it in their letter to Pope Alexander IV.2 In 1260 the Franciscan friar John of Wales made very heavy use of the Policraticus in his works.3

In about the year 1265 we have a witness of the treatise discovered by Amnon Linder in Cambridge, Corpus Christi College MS 469. The treatise occupies seventeen

* [email protected]. I thank Amnon Linder, Peter von Moos and Chet Van Duzer for their valuable comments and suggestions. I dedicate this article to my teacher Amnon Linder, with gratitude.

1 Regarding exempla and their functions in the Policraticus see Peter von Moos, “The Use of Exempla in the Policraticus of John of Salisbury,” The World of John of Salisbury, ed. M. Wilks (Oxford 1984) 207–261.

2 Regarding the matters discussed above see Amnon Linder, “The Knowledge of John of Salisbury in the Late Middle Ages,” Studi Medievali 18 (1977) 315–366, at 319–333; see also his “John of Salisbury’s Policraticus in Thirteenth-Century England: The Evidence of Ms Cambridge Corpus Christi College 469,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 40 (1977) 276–282. In the latter article Linder indicates (276) that the second treatise in this manuscript is similar to a bestiary of the Third Family, but in fact it is a fragment of the Etymologiae of Isidore of Seville.

3 Regarding John of Wales see Jenny Swanson, John of Wales. A Study of the Works and Ideas of a Thirteenth-Century Friar (Cambridge 1989).

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pages, of which the Policraticus is a main source of eleven.4 The treatise has no title, but a fifteenth century table of contents calls it Liber de tyrannis et morte Caesaris et aliorum principum et tyrannorum. The subject of this political tract, which according to Linder might have been composed in the circle of barons rebelling against Henry the Third, is precisely the violent end of tyrants. The author of the text demonstrates a good knowledge of the Policraticus, particularly in his free adaptation of material from the book. The three examples cited are the only evidence of the use of the Po-licraticus during the century following its completion. It is for this reason that the presence of excerpts from John of Salisbury in the Third Family bestiaries, which were composed during that same period, is of such a great importance.

In 1928 Montague Rhodes James, the scholar who established the study of bestiar-ies as a discipline, divided almost all illustrated Latin bestiaries known to him into four families and briefly described every manuscript.5 Having mentioned two manu-scripts of the Third Family, namely, London, Westminster Abbey MS 22 and Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Douce 88 (II), James noted in their non-bestiary parts the pres-ence of the Policraticus. It seems that because of the extreme rarity of James’s edition, this information has not reached scholars working on John of Salisbury; on the other hand, the manuscripts of the Third Family until recently were almost totally neglected by scholars working on bestiaries, and as result the additions from the Policraticus have not been studied.

The genre of bestiaries appeared in England at the beginning of the twelfth century, and soon bestiaries came to be very popular school books among novices and young monks in monasteries and cathedral schools.6 The bestiary tradition had already ex-isted for about a century and was very well developed when the manuscripts of the Third Family were compiled. The Third Family is a small group and consists of the following five manuscripts, which were written in England during the thirteenth cen-tury: Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum MS 254 (1220–1230); Cambridge, University Library MS KK 4.25 (ca. 1230); London, Westminster Abbey MS 22 (ca. 1270–1280); Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Douce 88 (II) (1280–1290); and Oxford, Bodleian Library MS e Musaeo 136 (1290–1300). It is more than possible that the family was once much more numerous and popular, as the Musaeo manuscript is a model book, in which almost all of the images were pricked for copying. The bestiar-ies of the Third Family represent an absolutely different approach from the textual and iconographical points of view to the genre of bestiaries, and they represent the most serious innovation ever made in the field. Contrary to all other bestiaries, the Third Family text begins with the Isidorean text Cum voluntas conditoris7 and pictures of Fabulous Nations, and after that proceeds to Adam naming the animals, and then to the

4 The text contains material (in this order) from the Policraticus VIII.17, 18, 19, 21; II.15; III.10; all

references to the Policraticus are given according to the following edition: Ioannis Saresberiensis Episcopi Carnotensis Policratici, sive de Nugis Curialium el Vestigiis Philosophorum, Libri viii, ed. Clemens C. I. Webb (Oxford 1909).

5 M. R. James, The Bestiary: a reproduction in full of MS Ii. 4.26 in the University Library, Cambridge (Oxford 1928) 7–26.

6 A good introduction to the study of bestiaries is F. McCulloch, Medieval Latin and French Bestiaries (Chapel Hill 1962) 16–40.

7 Isidore, Etymologiae XI.3.

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domestic animals followed by extracts from the Megacosmus of Bernard Silvestris. Then come the chapters on the wild beasts, birds, fish, snakes and insects, and the bestiaries end with chapters on fabulous monsters.

The additional texts bound together with Third Family bestiaries are usually differ-ent from the additional texts found in manuscripts of other families. The text of the bestiaries themselves have much material whose source until recently had not been identified, but in fact it represents a compilation made up from many sources, for in-stance: Hildebert of Lavardin, Honorius of Autun, Hugh of St. Victor, Peter the Chanter, Peter Comestor, Peter Damiani, St. Augustine, St. Jerome, St. Gregory the Great, and many other astronomical, medical, grammatical, and encyclopedic texts. The prominent place, though, belongs to the following works: the Policraticus of John of Salisbury, and the unpublished Distinctiones Theologicae, Numerale, and Versarius of William de Montibus.8 William de Montibus, a once very important and popular and now mostly forgotten teacher and theologian, was born ca. 1140, perhaps in Lin-coln, was taught by St. Gilbert of Sempringham, and in the 1170–1180s continued his education in Paris, where he also taught as a master. While in Paris, William was in contact with Peter Comestor, Peter of Poitiers, and Peter the Chanter. Returning to England about 1186, by the invitation of the bishop of Lincoln, St. Hugh, he soon got the position of chancellor of Lincoln Cathedral, where he established a famous theo-logical school. There he seems to have written his alphabetically arranged Distinctio-nes Theologicae and Numerale, which were intended to introduce novices to various aspects of theology, and to prepare cathedral clergy and parish priests for their duties. Among William’s students were Gerald of Wales, Richard Wetheringsett, who later became chancellor of the University of Cambridge and archbishop of Canterbury, and Samuel Presbyter, who left us excerpts from William’s lectures. It is also possible that the young Robert Grosseteste, who in the 1190s was a cleric in Hugh’s household, attended William’s lectures. William died in 1213 in Scotland.9 I have previously demonstrated that either William de Montibus or someone from his immediate circle was responsible for compiling the archetype of the Third Family bestiaries around 1200–1210 for explicitly didactical purposes.10

A careful analysis of the text shows that contrary to what has been noted by James, the interpolations from John Salisbury occur not only in the non-bestiary parts of these manuscripts, but also in the bestiaries themselves. The first addition from the Po-licraticus appears in chapter 22,11 an introductory chapter to the section on wild ani-mals (beginning with Bestiarum Vocabulum proprie convenit leonibus, pardis et tigris...). In Second Family bestiaries (which are the main source for the Third Family

8 I am currently working on an edition of this text. 9 The best discussion of William’s life and works is Joseph Goering, William de Montibus (c. 1140–

1213): The Schools and the Literature of Pastoral Care (Toronto 1992); see also Hugh MacKinnon, “The Life and Works of William de Montibus,” (D.Phil, Oxford University 1959); and idem, “William de Monti-bus: A Medieval Teacher,” Essays in Medieval History Presented to Bertie Wilkinson, ed. T. A. Sandquist and Michael R. Powicke (Toronto 1969) 32–45.

10 Ilya Dines, “A Critical Edition of the Bestiaries of the Third Family” (Ph.D. diss., University of Jerusalem 2008) 340–380.

11 I use the chapter numeration of my edition of the Third Family text.

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text12) the chapter has no moralisation, while the Third Family does. Most of the lines are taken from William de Montibus’s long distinction on bestiae, interpreting the various aspects of beasts in bono and in malo. The last lines of this distinction discuss the characteristics of leo, lupus, vulpes, equus, etc., and end with the word Malitia. The author of the Third Family archetype replaced William’s material and “glossed” the word with text from John of Salisbury that describes the characteristics of a large number of sometimes identical creatures in a similar way:

Malitia siquidem, ut iam diximus, homo animalis sive bestialis dicitur, in quem confluxisse constat rapacitatem leonis, varietatem pardi, asperitatem tigridis, gulam lupi, crudelitatem ursi, fraudes vulpis, tenacitatem harpyiae, immunditiam suis, petulantiam hirci, superbiam equi, stoliditatem asini, obstinationem muli, toxicum hydrae, nigredinem corvi,13 et si quid deterius est. Malice, therefore, as we already mentioned, is said to be an animal-man or bestial man, in whom coincide the rapacity of the lion, the (color) diversity of the leopard, the sharpness of the tiger, the voracity of the wolf, the cruelty of the bear, the fraud of a fox, the tenacity of the harpy, the dirtiness of the pig, the licentiousness of the goat, the haughtiness of the horse, the foolishness of the donkey, the obstinacy of the mule, the poison of the hydra, the black-ness of the raven—and anything else that is worse. The next chapter, chapter 23, is that on the lion, which is one of the longest in bes-

tiaries. The chapter has a moralisation which is typical of the bestiary tradition, com-paring the lion’s various activities to the deeds of Christ. The chapter in Third Family manuscripts has also a Policraticus addition at the very end, which probably was meant to function as a sort of exemplum, for it is not hard to guess the moralisation that was intended to be understood from it, and it was certainly meant to be a “fun” story appended to amuse the possibly bored reader. The text is a paraphrase of the famous story told by Aulus Gellius in his Noctes Atticae14 about a slave named Andro-cles (Andronicus), who runs away from his lord and finds shelter in the cave without knowing that the cave actualy is a lion’s den.15 The Third Family bestiaries illustrate the story of Andronicus, showing him and his friend a lion in the circus. Fitzwilliam

12 The bestiary most similar to that of the Second Family used as a source for the Third Family is a besti-

ary in London, BL MS Add. 1128; for the printed text see W. B. Clark, A Medieval Book of Beasts: The Second-Family Bestiary. Commentary, Art, Text and Translation (Woodbridge 2006).

13 “confluxisse ... corvi.” John of Salisbury, Policraticus, VIII.24. 14 Aulus Gellius, Noctes Atticae, V. 14; regarding the Androcles story see A. C. Brown, “The Knight of

the Lion,” Publications of the Modern Language Association of America 20.4 (1905) 673–706; and A. G. Brodeur, “The Grateful Lion,” Publications of the Modern Language Association of America 39.3 (1924) 485–524. The transmission of Aulus Gellius in the Middle Ages is discussed in P. K. Marshall, Janet Martin, and Richard H. Rouse, “Clare College MS. 26 and the Circulation of Aulus Gellius 1–7 in Medieval England and France,” Mediaeval Studies 42 (1980) 353–394.

15 McCulloch (n. 6 above) 140, mentioned the subject in connection with Fitzwilliam manuscript and refered to Aulus Gellius as the source. In fact, close examination of the Third Family text points neither to Gellius nor to any medieval paraphrase of Gellius (e.g., those of William of Malmesbury, Ralph de Diceto, and Alexander Neckam), but rather to the Policraticus of John of Salisbury, V.17 (where as in the bestiary text the slave is called Andronicus). The texts of the above-mentioned paraphrases are printed in H. T. Ouellette, ed., William of Malmesbury. Polyhistor: A Critical Edition (Binghampton, New York 1982) 70; W. Stubbs, ed., Radulphi de Diceto decani Lundoniensis opera historica (London 1876) vol. 68.1, 40; T. Wright, ed., Alexandri Neckam De Naturis Rerum Libri Duo, with the poem of the same author, De Laudibus Divinae Sapientia (London 1863) 2.148.

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manuscript represents a nude man bound to a stick in the center with a lion licking his leg; on the right is a small turreted building (Rome or the Capitolium) with three spectators, whose gesture indicates their amazement. On the left there is a group of five people (one of them with tonsured head—a monk or friar?) pointing to Androni-cus and the lion, as if to say: “This is the lion, a man’s friend; this is the man, a lion’s doctor.”16 The illustration in Westminster 22 (fig. 1) is precedeed by the rubric: Leonis miraculum. The scene is very similar to that in Fitzwilliam, but the group on the left consists now of only three people; to the right of Andronicus appears an unidentified person with his forefinger pointing up; and the group in the building contains only two people. 17

Chapter 37 deals with the simia or monkey. The monkey, as we learn from bestiary, produces two offspring, one of which is beloved, while the other is despised. When pursued by hunters, the monkey keeps the beloved one in front of her, while she puts the despised young on her neck, and she runs on her hind legs. After some time, though, she becomes tired from running only on two legs, and has no choice but to drop the beloved kid; this way, the despised one unexpectedly escapes the danger. The short moralisation in the Second Family involves the theme of hypocrisy. The Third Family follows this tradition in its own way: it replaces the old moralisation and cre-ates a new one on the same theme, treating it differently and more broadly. The new moralisation is a paraphrase of the William de Montibus’s chapter on hypocrisy with (as we observed in chapter on the lion) a “gloss” on the subject from John of Salis-bury:

Hypocrita vero, quia ad omnia quae agit gloriam humani favoris querit. Foris, quasi per hu-militatem se deiecit, faciei pallorem ostendat. Profunda ab usu trahit suspiria, artificiosis et obsequentibus lacrimis subito inundatur, obstipo capite, luminibus interclausis, coma brevi, capite fere raso, voce demissa, labiis ab oratione mobilibus, incessu tranquillo, publicis as-pectibus, religionis speciem ingerit. Cui si non differas, vehementissime indignatur. Si quando obloquaris, religionis inimicus et veritatis diceris impugnator.18 Hypocrisy, indeed, because in everything it does, it seeks the glory of human favor. Outside, it seems abject in humility, with a pale face. Out of habit, it draws deep sighs, and is quickly flooded by artificial and obsequious tears; it has its head bent, eyes half-closed, short hair, indeed its head almost shaved, a muffled voice, lips moving in prayer, and a quiet gait, and when it is in the public view, it puts on religious airs. If you do not agree with it, it is vehe-mently indignant. If you reproach it, you will be called an enemy of religion and opponent of the truth.

Chapter 52 on the talpa or mole is the last chapter in the section on wild animals in which there is an addition from the Policraticus:

16 The picture is reproduced in F. W. Wormald and P. M. Giles, eds., A Descriptive Catalogue of the

Additional Illuminated Manuscripts in the Fitzwilliam Museum Acquired Between 1895 and 1979 (Cambridge and New York 1982) vol. 1, fig. 2.

17 The Douce artist revises the scene: in addition to Andronicus and the lion he portrays a person with a staff on the left and three people on the right. The composition in Musaeo is the simplest: only the lion, Andronicus, and the unidentified person are depicted.

18 “Faciei pallorem ... impugnator.” John of Salisbury, Policraticus VII.21 (De hypocritis).

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Cui similes sunt quorum mentes cupiditas rerum terrenarum obnubit. Quorum oculos ita per-strinxit malitia, ut quae per se lucent, nequeant intueri.19 Contra veritatis verba aures obtu-rant,20 ut obdurant cor. Qui talparum more semper in humo versantur, quorum tota conversa-tio in terra deprimitur, ut nihil altum sapiant, nil divinum.21 They are similar to people blinded by greediness for terrestrial things. Malice has so strongly covered their eyes, that they cannot see even things that shine by themselves. They close their ears to the words of truth, so that their heart becomes hardened. Those who dwell in the ground like moles, and whose whole life passes in the soil, they do understand anything that is high or divine.

According to the bestiary, the mole dwells underground, has no eyes, and is con-demned to permanent blindness. The Second Family text has no moralisation. The short moralisation in the Third Family refers to the subjects of Cupiditas and again to Malitia, using material from the same chapter of John Salisbury as in the case of Bes-tiarum Vocabulum.

Towards the end of the bestiary, the Third Family author places the chapter on apes (bees), chapter 158. The long text on bees in the Second Family is composed of ex-cerpts from Isidore of Seville and Ambrose, and discusses the various aspects of bees’ activities, admiring the cleverness of their social organisation. The Third Family chapter adopts the Second Family text and adds to it about fifty verses about bees taken from the Policraticus of John of Salisbury.22 The lines are devoted to the subject of the bees’ social organisation, and I suggest that they serve as another exemplum.23

In the next chapter on De minutis volatilibus (Tiny Flying Animals), chapter 159, the subject of the moralisation is the abuse of authority by officials. The moralisation consists of a short fragment from Hildebert of Lavardin (quoted below) and a long exemplum from Peter Comestor;24 a line from the Policraticus has been inserted in the fragment from Hildebert. The moralisation is intended to condemn church officials.

Mel muscae sequuntur, cadavera lupi, frumenta formicae. Sic turba populi divitem praedam quidem sequuntur, non hominem.25 Item, quasi muscae quaedam circumvolant officiales praelatorum, qui dum sub praetextu officii spoliare possunt aut vexare privatos,26 suavitatem perdunt orationis et pacis ecclesiasticae. Flies seek honey, the wolf seeks corpses, and ants seek wheat. Thus a crowd of people seeks rich prey, but not a man. Also, some church officials circle around like flies, and under pre-text of their office they can despoil and oppress simple people, and they destroy the pleasure of speech and of ecclesiastical peace.

19 “Quorum ... intueri.” John of Salisbury, Policraticus VIII.24. 20 Cf. Ps. 57.5: “Sicut aspidis surdae, et obturantis aures suas.” 21 “Qui talparum ... divinum.” John of Salisbury, Policraticus VIII.24. 22 John of Salisbury, Policraticus VI.21. 23 The verses in the Policraticus formed part of the so-called Institutio Trajani; the verses themselves

came from Virgil’s Georgics IV.3; regarding the authorship and other questions about the Institutio Trajani see H. Liebeschutz, “John of Salisbury and Pseudo-Plutarch,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Insti-tutes 6 (1943) 33–39; see also D. Luscombe, “John of Salisbury in Recent Scholarship,” The World of John of Salisbury, ed. M. Wilks (Oxford 1984) 32–33.

24 John of Salisbury, Policraticus VI.1. 25 “Mel ... hominem.” The passage is based on the treatise Moralium dogma philosophorum, possibly by

William of Conches, attributed to Hildebert in PL 171.1030. 26 “Dum sub ... privatos.” John of Salisbury, Policraticus VI.1.

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Those are so far all of the additions from the Policraticus that I have been able to identify in the bestiaries themselves, though there may be other less clear cases of adoption from this book. Thus, for instance, there is one short passage in the story of the castor (beaver), which most possibly came from the Polcraticus, but as it also ap-pears in one work of St. Jerome, we cannot be certain what was the immediate source of this passage.27 There is another long excerpt from the Policraticus which occupies several folios in three manuscripts of the Third Family (KK 4.25; Douce 88 and Westminster 22), but not in their bestiary parts.28 The presence of the text has never been noticed, probably because researchers overlooked the rubric (fig. 2). The text itself is a pastiche, an extremely elaborate composition which consists of paragraphs, paraphrases, and single lines (mostly from the Policraticus) very skillfully rearranged so as to form a new treatise whose main subject is prognostication of the future;29 many animals, birds and other creatures involved in this process are intertwined in the narra-tive. The text consists essentially of the following excerpts (in this order): Lib. II.19, 24, 25; Lib. I.13; Lib. II.1, 2, 12, 14, 2; Lib. III.8; Lib. II.1, 27; Lib. I.13; Lib. II.27–28, 26, 28; last two paragraphs: Lib. V.4 (Naturam diffinire difficile esse asserit Tullius …); Isidore, Etymologiae VIII.xi.94 (or Hraban Maur, De Universo XV.6, PL 111, 433D—which is the same) Fortunam a fortuitis nomen habere dicun …; again Policraticus, Lib. V.4, the line from unknown source; then finally Policraticus, Lib. II.21–22.

One manuscript, Westminster 22, lacks what are the final two paragraphs of KK 4. 25 and Douce 88, as that material appears as a separate unit in the Rota Fortunae sec-tion, which occurs in this manuscript immediately after the bestiary and before the text of Pseudo-Seneca. The section has a standard illustartion of the Wheel of Fortune (fig. 3) with its typical text “Regno, Regnavi, Sum sine regno, Regnabo” (I reign, I reigned, My reign is finished, I shall reign). In medieval manuscripts the image is generally unaccompanied by any text, but the scribe of Westminster used an excerpt from the Policraticus as explanatory material to clarify this subjet.

Naturam diffinire difficile esse asserit Tullius. Ego difficili credo diffinire fortunam, eo quod huius nulla, illius aliqua substantia est. Natura siquidem rebus originem praebet. Quod nequaquam esset, si in veritate ipsa non esset. Quod enim omnino non est alicui praestare non potest, ut sit. At fortuna cum non sit, non potest diffiniri. In eo siquidem quod non est, non potest cuiquam constare, quid sit.30 Caeterum, ut cum fortuna minus agamus, sit inopinatorum eventuum forma.31 Quae tamen in his consistit, quae improvisa emergunt.32 Fortunam a fortuitis nomen habere dicunt, quasi deam quandam res humanas varis casibus ac fortunis illudentem. Unde et caecam appellant, eo quod passim in quoslibet homines currens sine examine meritorum, ad bonos et malos venit.33 Nos autem, quibus de caelo veritas il-

27 The chapter on castor (chap. 38) reads: “Vnde Crates ille Thebanus, proiecto in mari non parvo auri

pondere: ‘Abite, inquit, pessum, malae cupiditates. Ego vos mergam, ne ipse mergar a vobis.’” Cf. St. Jerome, Adversus Jovinianum, II.2; and John of Salisbury, Policraticus VII.13.

28 It seems that the Fitzwilliam and Musaeo manuscripts also once had this text. 29 That is why the 15th-c. catalogue refers to this text in Douce 88 as to Prognosticationes; the catalogue

entry has been published in N. R. Ker, Medieval Libraries of Great Britain: A List of Surviving Books (Lon-don 1964) 46.

30 “Naturam diffinire ... quid sit.” John of Salisbury, Policraticus V.4. 31 “Caeterum ... forma.” John of Salisbury, Policraticus V.4. 32 “Consistit ... emergunt.” John of Salisbury, Policraticus V.4. 33 “Fortunam ... venit.” Isidore, Etymologiae VIII.xi. 94.

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luxit non caecae deae, quae nulla est, sed pro arbitrio et voluntate viri34 et veri Dei,35 scimus cuncta iuste disponi. Cuius aeternae providentiae immutabilis status, omnium mutabilium continet cursum.36 De quo quidam ait: omnia maiestas sua continet atque potestas. Item: stabilisque manens dat cuncta moveri.37 Tullius asserts that it is difficult to define “nature.” I think that it is difficult to define “for-tune,” for the latter has no substance, while the former has some. Nature gives things their origin, which would not be possible, if it truly did not exist, for what does not exist at all cannot give anything to anyone, for it to exist. But fortune, as it does not [materially] exist, cannot be defined. For with regard to a thing which does not exist, no one can be sure what it is. Nevertheless, not to deal with Fortune: let it be [i.e. let us define it as] the form of unex-pected events, which nonetheless consists in those things which happen unexpectedly. Some say that Fortune got its name from the word “events”, like a goddess jeering at the deeds of people in various situations and accidents. Because of that it is called blind, as it runs here and there to various people without taking into consideration their merits: it comes to good ones and bad ones. We, to whom the truth shined from Heaven not via a blind goddess, who does not exist, but via the judgment and will of the living and true God, know that every-thing is arranged according to justice. The unshakable position of this eternal providence determines the movement of everything changeable. About this someone said: Majesty and power contain all things that belong to them. Also: remaining stable it causes everything to move.

To sum up: additions from the Policraticus appear at least in seven chapters in manu-scripts of the Third Family, making it one of the most important sources of adoptions. The use of the Policraticus demonstrates that the author of the Third Family archetype had an excellent knowledge of John of Salisbury’s text, which allowed to make high-quality compilation freely combining various paragraphs, passages, and lines. There are only a few other texts that the author knew so well: aside from the Bible and the writings of the most important Church Fathers, these are Isidore of Seville, Pseudo-Seneca, and Honorius Autun—that is, the most important school texts. It is surprising that the author of the Third Family archetype would so carefully study a text that was barely known to the public.

The number of subjects on which he took material from the Policraticus is re-stricted: there is only Malitia and Hypocritas, Cupiditas-Hypocritas, one short mor-alization condemning church officials, two exempla, and the text on Rota Fortunae; but they do enrich the relevant chapters in the Third Family bestiary. The author of the Third Family archetype never uses material about the main subject of the Policraticus, that is, about the relationship between king and his subject. In this aspect we see a striking difference between the use of the Policraticus in the Third Family manu-scripts and in the above-mentioned anonymous tract based on the Policraticus in Cor-pus Christi College MS 469. This is not surprising, as it would be difficult to imagine a reason why the author of the Third Family archetype would want to introduce nov-ices or young monks—his intended audience—to such a problematic subject. This explains why the author of the bestiary confined himself to the Frivolities of Courtiers part of the Policraticus: the subject of that part of the book is more closely akin to that

34 Kk 4. 25 reads “vivi.” 35 “Nos autem ... dei.” Cf. John of Salisbury, Policraticus V.4. 36 “aeternae ... cursum.” John of Salisbury, Policraticus II.21. 37 “Stabilis ... moveri.” John of Salisbury, Policraticus II.22.

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of the bestiary. It is clear, though, that an insertion of the Policraticus excerpts into the bestiary would inevitably stimulate interest in the whole Policraticus (as it is similarly clear that insertion of excerpts of St. Augustine, say, would stimulate an interest in his books, as indeed had actually been done with just such intention). I think the author of the bestiary would not have been perturbed if, in later life, his pupils became ac-quainted with the political ideas of John Salisbury. Like anyone aware of the mind-set of students, if he had been worried about such an outcome, he never would have in-cluded such an alluring text accompanied by such vivid illustrations in the vain belief that the curiosity of his pupils would remain unstipulated precisely by those texts and that they would not be inquisitive about their source.

The discovery of additions from the Policraticus in Third Family bestiaries pushes back the date of the earliest heavy use of John of Salisbury from about 1260 to about 1210, that is, to the time when the archetype of the Third Family bestiaries was com-piled. As noted above, the archetype of the Third Family bestiaries was written circa 1210 either by William de Montibus or by one from his students. Gerald of Wales is so far the only one of his students who certainly knew the Policraticus, but there is no reason to suggest that he could have been the author of the Third Family archetype. The situation is much more complicated with regard to William himself. The corpus of his writings has not been studied in detail yet, and as a result, we do not know whether William was familiar with the text of the Policraticus when he completed his most important works, that is his Distinctiones Theologicae and Numerale, that is in about 1200, and we have no evidence whether he might have become familiar with the Po-licraticus between 1200 and the date when the Third Family archetype was composed, that is, in about 1210.

Whoever the author was, analysis of his sources does not reveal usage of any text that was really obscure or hardly accessible at that time. Thus, we can suggest that the text of the John of Salisbury could hardly be an exception—that is, it cannot have been an obscure or difficult-to-access text. Of course, it is also possible that the text was generally difficult to access, but somehow the author of the Third Family archetype happened to have it. But in this case he had to have considerable time to attain the deep knowledge of the Policraticus that he demonstrates in the bestiary. Therefore, in my opinion, the two just mentioned possibilities mean there is something we do not know so far about the use of the Policraticus in late twelth-century England, and the corpus of about 100 extant manuscripts of Lincoln provenance, part of them largely unstudied florilegia, offers a good opportunity for the further research.

The Third Family bestiaries, written somewhere in the diocese of Lincoln at the beginning of the thirteenth century, in the circle of the once very famous but now al-most forgotten teacher and theologian William de Montibus, as mentioned above, rep-resent the most significant innovation in the history of the bestiary genre. More that all others they were designed to be used in teaching novices and clergy in cathedral schools and monasteries, and more than all others they were informative and thought provoking. The author of the Third Family archetype gave the work this character making various changes to the Second Family bestiary from which he was working: he structured some entries using the model of distinctiones, which allows a few different

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interpretations of the given subject; he created curious illustrations; and he added new material from a variety of sources that had never been incorporated into bestiaries, including pieces from encyclopedias and medical texts—and from the Policraticus of John Salisbury.38 Thus, the anonymous author’s use of the Policraticus is a significant part of his effort to create a new type of bestiary.

38 For detailed discussion of the changes and additions made in the course of creating the Third Family

bestiary, see Ilya Dines, A Critical Edition of the Bestiaries of the Third Family (Toronto forthcoming.)

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FIG. 1. London, Westminster Abbey MS 22, fol. 16r. © The Dean and Chapter of Westminster.

FIG. 2. Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Douce 88, fol. 116v (printed by permission of the Bodleian Library).

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FIG. 3. London, Westminster Abbey MS 22, fols. 54v–55r. © The Dean and Chapter of Westminster.