John of Salisbury (1120-1180), who described himself as Johannes Parvus, was an English author, educationalist, diplomat and bishop of Chartres, and was born at Salisbury.

1. John
of
Salisbury
Maria Angela P. Mabasa
BA Political Science 2
POL SC 4
Misamis University, H. T. Feliciano st.
Ozamiz City, Misamis Occidental
March 2016

2. John of Salisbury
John of Salisbury (1120-1180), who
described himself as Johannes Parvus, was an
English author, educationalist, diplomat and
bishop of Chartres, and was born at
Salisbury.
He is considered to be the most
typical medieval political writer before the
discovery and spread of Aristotelianism in
the thirteenth century, which gave rise to
such divergent and overtowering figures as
St. Thomas Aquinas and Marsilio of Padua.

3. John of Salisbury
John spent 12 years of his
schooling in France, mostly in Paris, then
the world center of philosophy and
theology, and in Chartres, an important
center of humanistic studies.
Like other great English political
writers later on, John of Salisbury had wide
practical experience in public affairs.
At an early age, as the secretary of
Archbishop Theobald of Canterbury, he
acquired intimate knowledge of
government on politics in England.

4. John is best known for his championing of supremacy of the
ecclesiastical over the temporal power.
The human body is another symbolic analogy that John of Salisbury
employs for proving the superiority of the ecclesiastical over the secular
power. He compares,
 Commonwealth -------------- Body
 Farmers and workers ------- Feet
 Public finance officer ------ Stomach and intestines
 Officials and soldiers ------ Hand
 Senate -------------------------- Heart
 Prince --------------------------- Head
 Church and clergy ----------- Soul

5. John of Salisbury’s

6. THE STATESMAN'S BOOK
THE NATURE AND SOURCE OF ROYAL AUTHORITY
“… a prince… obeys the law and rules the people by
its dictates, accounting himself as their servant. It is by
virtue of the law that he makes good his claim to the
foremost and chief place in the management of the affairs
of the commonwealth and in the bearing of its burdens.“

7. THE STATESMAN'S BOOK
THE RELATION OF THE PRINCE TO AUTHORITY
“Princes should not deem that it detracts from their princely
dignity to believe that the enactments of their own justice are not to
be preferred to the justice of God, whose justice is everlasting
justice, and His law is equity.
Now equity, as the learned jurists defined it, is a certain
fitness of things which compares all things rationally, and seeks to
apply like rules of right and wrong to like cases being impartially
disposed toward all person, and allotting to each other that which
belongs to him. Of this equity the interpreter is the law, to which
the will and intention of the equity and justice are known.“

8. THE STATESMAN'S BOOK
THE PRINCE SUBORDINATE TO THE PRIESTS
“This sword, then, the prince recieves from the hand of
the Church, although she herself has no sword of blood at all.
Nevertheless she has this sword , but she uses it by the hand of
the prince, upon whom she confers the power of bodily coercion,
retaining to herself authority over spiritual thngs in the person of
the pontiffs.“

9. THE STATESMAN'S BOOK
JUSTICE AND MERCY
“It should hold true of the prince, as it should hold true
of all men, that no one should seek his own interest but that of
others. Yet the measure of affection with which he should
embrace his subjects like brethren in the arms of charity must
be kept within the bounds of moderation.“

10. THE STATESMAN'S BOOK
THE STATE AS AN ORGANISM
“A commonwealth, according to Plutarch, is a certain body
which is endowed with life by the benefit of divine favor, which acts
as the prompting of the highest equity, and is ruled by what may be
called the moderating power of reason. Those things which establish
and implant in us the practice of religion, and transmit to us the
worship of God (here I do not follow Plutarch, who says “of the
Gods“) fill the place of the soul in the body of the commonwealth.
And therefore those who preside over the practice of religion should
be looked up to and venerated as the soul of the body.“

11. THE STATESMAN'S BOOK
THE “FEET“ OF THE COMMONWEALTH
“… All these occupations are so numerous that the
commonwealth in the number of its feet exceeds not only the
eight-footed crab but even the centipede, and because of their
verymultitude they cannot be enumerated…“

12. THE STATESMAN'S BOOK
THE LOVE OF LIBERTY AND FREE SPEECH
“Liberty means judging everything freely in accordance
with one’s individual judgment, and does not hesitate to reprove
what it sees is opposed to good morals.“

13. THE STATESMAN'S BOOK
THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A TYRANT
AND A PRINCE
“A tyrant, then, as the philosophers have described him, is
one who oppresses the people by rulership based upon force, while
he who rules with accordance to with the laws is a prince.“

14. THE STATESMAN'S BOOK
TYRANNICIDE
“… but the lest the authority of Roman history be held in
small account because it has for the most part been written by
infidels concerning infidels, let its lessons be confirmed by
examples drawn from sacred and Christian history. For it is
everywhere obvious that, in the words of Valerius, only that power
is secure in the long run which places bounds to its own exercise.
And surely nought is so splendid or so magnificent that it does
not need to be tempered by moderation.“

15. THE STATESMAN'S BOOK
ECCLESIASTICAL TYRANTS
“But grant that it is permissible for men of the flesh to
contend for the primacy, still I think that on no account is this ever
permissible for churchmen.“
“…The philosophers say, and I think truly, that there is
nothing in human affairs better nor more useful than man, and
among men themselves nothing better nor more useful than a prince,
whether ecclesiastical or temporal; on the contrary there is nothing
more hurtful to man than man, and among them the temporal or
ecclesiastical tyrant is more hurtful than any other. But certainly of
the two kinds, the ecclesiastical is worse than the temporal.“

16. REFERENCES
PRINTS:
Ebenstein, W., & Ebenstein, A. O. (1991). Great political
thinkers: Plato to the present.
NON-PRINTS:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_of_Salisbury
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/john-salisbury/
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/08478b.htm