Page:Seventeen lectures on the study of medieval and modern history and kindred subjects.djvu/151

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VII.]
John of Salisbury.
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when Vacarius was teaching law, and Theobald was maintaining the school of literature in his own palace from which so many conspicuous men afterwards sprang. For thirty years John continued to live, the central figure of English learning; suffering indeed many troubles with Becket, whose companion he was in his exile, but restored to his home in 1170; in 1 176 he was made Bishop of Chartres, and he died in 1180. His career is conspicuous, and he had both ability and opportunity that were given to few.

I can only mention now the names of the other students at Paris who to some extent trod in his footsteps: Ralph de Diceto the historian, Archdeacon of Middlesex and Dean of S. Paul's, studied at S. Genevieve shortly after John of Salisbury; he lived to the end of the century: Robert of Melun and Robert Pullus had not only been pupils but teachers at Paris, and Adam of Petitpont the same; these have been already mentioned. Walter Map, the poet and satirist, afterwards Archdeacon of Oxford, was another Parisian student; so was Giraldus Cambrensis; so probably were Roger of Hoveden and most of those ecclesiastics of the time to whom the title magister is given in formal documents, of whom it would be useless labour to give a catalogue. The scholars of Tours were of the same class. Bologna was the special university for young archdeacons; and, as most archdeacons were appointed when very young and by family interest, there was a tolerably rapid succession of them, and I fear it must be added that they fell into a great many temptations. We all know of the question discussed at this period, 'An possit archidiaconus salvus esse;' whatever were the peculiar temptations of his official career, he was lucky if he passed without debt or difficulty through his university course. In 1200 Henry de Jacea, Archdeacon of Liege, and not only archdeacon but bishop-elect, was killed in a scuffle with the townsmen of Paris. At Bologna debt seems to have been the greater snare. Gilbert Foliot, when Bishop of London, had sometimes two archdeacons at once studying there; and at the same time there was resident there a Canon of S. Paul's, Master David, whose letters have been recently published in the