980 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters . 
CONCLUSION. 
Was John of Salisbury a humanist? Can he be considered 
a precursor of the later Renaissance? Schaarschmidt holds 
that he can be so considered. Voigt, on the other hand, claims 
that John did not have that “feeling for the Greek,” “that de¬ 
sire to live over again the ancient days”—and therefore was 
not truly imbued with the humanistic spirit. Before passing 
a final judgment, however, the circumstances under which he 
wrote ought to he noted. 
His three great works, the Polycraticus, Entheticus and 
Metalogicus were all finished about the same time—1159. He 
was not master of a school, nor a librarian. His school days 
had ended eleven years before and, ever since, he had been en¬ 
gaged in looking after the confidential affairs of his superiors. 
The composition of these works, therefore, was entirely the 
occupation of his leisure moments. His temporary estrange¬ 
ment with Henry gave him an unusual amount of time so that 
he was able not only to finish his Polycraticus and Entheticus, 
upon which he had been working for some time, but also to 
write the Metalogicus in answer to the opponents of the classics. 
It is, perhaps, unfortunate that John did not sing his own 
praises, that he did not proclaim himself as the only and or¬ 
iginal exponent of the true appreciation of the classics. In his 
early training at Chartres there had been impressed upon him 
the maxim that indulgence in vices could not exist where the 
love for letters held sway. He states, himself, that this love 
for letters meant more especially love for the classical works. 
Therefore when he took up his pen against the Cornificians, it 
solve this vexatious problem on the basis that he knew no Greek. But 
while these quotations cannot be traced to Latin sources, they can 
almost all of them be traced to later Greek writers. However the ques¬ 
tion need not be discussed here. Wolfflin, Reifferscheid, Schaarschmidt 
and Manitius have worried over the “lost Latin authors” quite suffi¬ 
ciently. See Pliilologie, 1861', pp. 12-26. Schaarschmidt, pp. 103-108, 
and PTiilologus, vol. 47, pp. 566-7. Whether or not John knew any 
Greek is discussed by Schaarschmidt, pp. 108-124; Poole, pp. 124-130; 
Clerval, p. 232. 
