Moûtiers la Celle in the diocese of Troyes, with his friend Peter of Celle. He was present at the council of Reims, presided over by Pope Eugenius III., and was probably presented by Bernard of Clairvaux to Theobald, archbishop of Canterbury, at whose court he settled, probably about 1150. Appointed secretary to Theobald, he was frequently sent on missions to the papal see. During this time he composed his greatest works, published almost certainly in 1159, the Policraticus, sive de nugis curialium et de vestigiis philosophorum and the Metalogicus, writings invaluable as storehouses of information regarding the matter and form of scholastic education, and remarkable for their cultivated style and humanist tendency. After the death of Theobald in 1161, John continued as secretary to Thomas Becket, and took an active part in the long disputes between that primate and his sovereign, Henry II. His letters throw light on the constitutional struggle then agitating the English world. With Becket he withdrew to France during the king’s displeasure; he returned with him in 1170, and was present at his assassination. In the following years, during which he continued in an influential situation in Canterbury, but at what precise date is unknown, he drew up the Life of Thomas Becket. In 1176 he was made bishop of Chartres, where he passed the remainder of his life. In 1179 he took an active part in the council of the Lateran. He died at or near Chartres on the 25th of October 1180.
John’s writings enable us to understand with much completeness the literary and scientific position of the 12th century. His views imply a cultivated intelligence well versed in practical affairs, opposing to the extremes of both nominalism and realism a practical common sense. His doctrine is a kind of utilitarianism, with a strong leaning on the speculative side to the modified literary scepticism of Cicero, for whom he had unbounded admiration. He was a humanist before the Renaissance, surpassing all other representatives of the school of Chartres in his knowledge of the Latin classics, as in the purity of his style, which was evidently moulded on that of Cicero. Of Greek writers he appears to have known nothing at first hand, and very little in translations. The Timaeus of Plato in the Latin version of Chalcidius was known to him as to his contemporaries and predecessors, and probably he had access to translations of the Phaedo and Meno. Of Aristotle he possessed the whole of the Organon in Latin; he is, indeed, the first of the medieval writers of note to whom the whole was known. Of other Aristotelian writings he appears to have known nothing.
The collected editions of the works are by J. A. Giles (5 vols., Oxford, 1848), and by Migne, in the Patrologiae cursus, vol. 199: neither accurate. The Policraticus was edited with notes and introductions by C. C. I. Webb, Ioannis Saresberiensis episcopi Carnotensis Policratici (Oxford, 1909), 2 vols. The most complete study of John of Salisbury is the monograph by C. Schaarschmidt, Johannes Sarisberiensis nach Leben und Studien, Schriften und Philosophie, 1862, which is a model of accurate and complete workmanship. See also the article in the Dict. Nat. Biog.
JOHN (1290–c. 1320), surnamed the Parricide, and called also
John of Swabia, was a son of Rudolph II. count of Habsburg
and Agnes daughter of Ottakar II. king of Bohemia, and
consequently a grandson of the German king Rudolph I. Having
passed his early days at the Bohemian court, when he came of
age he demanded a portion of the family estates from his uncle,
the German king Albert I. His wishes were not gratified, and
with three companions he formed a plan to murder the king.
On the 1st of May 1308 Albert in crossing the river Reuss at
Windisch became separated from his attendants, and was at
once attacked and killed by the four conspirators. John
escaped the vengeance of Albert’s sons, and was afterwards
found in a monastery at Pisa, where in 1313 he is said to have
been visited by the emperor Henry VII., who had placed him
under the ban. From this time he vanishes from history.
The character of John is used by Schiller in his play Wilhelm
Tell.
JOHN, THE EPISTLES OF. The so-called epistles of John,
in the Bible, are not epistles in the strict sense of the term, for
the first is a homily, and encyclical or pastoral (as has been recognized since the days of Bretschneider and Michaelis), while
the other two are brief notes or letters. Nor are they John’s,
if John means the son of Zebedee. The latter conclusion depends
upon the particular hypothesis adopted with regard to the
general Johannine problem, yet even when it is held that John the apostle
(q.v.) survived to old age in Ephesus, the second
and third epistles may be fairly ascribed (with Erasmus, Grotius,
Credner, Bretschneider, Reuss, &c.) to John the presbyter[1], as several circles in the early church held (“Opinio a plerisque
tradita,” Jerome: De vir. ill. 18). An apostle indeed might
call himself a presbyter (cf. 1 Pet. v. 1). But these notes imply
no apostolic claim on the part of the author, and, although their
author is anonymous, the likelihood is that their composition
by the great Asiatic presbyter John led afterwards to their
incorporation in the “instrumentum” of John the apostle’s
writings, when the prestige of the latter had obscured the
former. All hypotheses as to their pseudonymity or composition
by different hands may be dismissed. They would never have
floated down the stream of tradition except on the support of
some primitive authority. If this was not connected with John
the apostle the only feasible alternative is to think of John the
presbyter, for Papias refers to the latter in precisely this fashion (Euseb. H. E. iii. 39, 15; καὶ τοῦτο ὁ π. ἔλεγε).
The period of all three lies somewhere within the last decade of the 1st century and the first decade of the 2nd. No evidence is available to determine in what precise order they were written, but it will be convenient to take the two smaller notes before the larger. The so-called Second Epistle of John is one of the excommunicating notes occasionally despatched by early Christian leaders to a community (cf. 2 Cor. v. 9). The presbyter or elder warns a Christian community, figuratively addressed as “the elect lady” (cf. 13 with 1 Pet. i. 1; v, 13; also the plural of 6, 8, 10 and 13), against some itinerant (cf. Didache xi. 1–2) teachers who were promulgating advanced Docetic views (7) upon the person of Christ. The note is merely designed to serve (12) until the writer arrives in person. He sends greetings to his correspondents from some community in which he is residing at present (13), and with which they had evidently some connexion.
The note was familiar to Irenaeus[2] who twice (i. 16, 3, iii. 16, 8) cites 10–11, once quoting it from the first epistle by mistake, but no tradition has preserved the name of the community in question, and all opinions on the matter are guess-work. The reference to “all who know the truth” (ver. 1) is, of course, to be taken relatively (cf. Rev. ii. 23); it does not necessarily imply a centre like Antioch or Rome (Chapman). Whiston thought of Philadelphia, and probably it must have been one of the Asiatic churches.
The so-called Third Epistle of John belongs to the ἐπίστολαι συστάτικαι (2 Cor. iii. 1) of the early church, like Rom. xvi. It is a private note addressed by the presbyter to a certain Gaius, a member of the same community or house-church (9) as that to which 2 John is written. A local errorist, Diotrephes (9–10) had repudiated the authority of the writer and his party, threatening even to excommunicate Gaius and others from the church (cf. Abbott’s Diatessarica, § 2258). With this opponent the writer promises (10) to deal sharply in person before very long. Meantime (14) he despatches the present note, in hearty appreciation of his correspondent’s attitude and character.
The allusion in 9 (ἔγραψα) refers in all likelihood to the “second” epistle (so Ewald, Wolf, Salmon, &c.). In order to avoid the suggestion that it implied a lost epistle, ἂν was inserted at an early stage in the textual history of the note. If ἐκκλήσιας could be read in 12, Demetrius would be a presbyter; in any case, he is not to be identified with Demas (Chapman), nor is
- ↑ So Selwyn, Christian Prophets (pp. 133–145), Harnack, Heinrici (Das Urchristenthum, 1902, pp. 129 seq.), and von Soden (History of Early Christian Literature, pp. 445–446), after Renan (L’Église chrétienne, pp. 78 seq.). Von Dobschütz (Christian Life in the Primitive Church, pp. 218 seq.) and R. Knopf (Das nachapost. Zeitalter, 1905, pp. 32 seq., &c.) are among the most recent critics who ascribe all three epistles to the presbyter.
- ↑ On the early allusions to these brief notes, cf. Gregory: The Canon and Text of the New Testament (1907), pp. 131, 190 seq., Westcott’s Canon of the New Testament, pp. 218 seq., 355, 357, 366, &c., and Leipoldt’s Geschichte d. neut. Kanons (1907), i. pp. 66 seq., 78 seq., 99 seq., 151 seq., 192 seq., 232 seq.
