SOURCE: Dickinson, John. “The Mediaeval Conception of Kingship and Some of Its Limitations, as Developed in the Policraticus of John of Salisbury.” Speculum 1, no. 3 (July 1926): 308-37.

In the following essay, Dickinson explores the sometimes contradictory ideas which constitute John's concept of the monarch.

The Policraticus of John of Salisbury¹ is the earliest elaborate mediaeval treatise on politics.² Completed in 1159, the date of its composition makes it a landmark in the history of political speculation for two reasons. It is the only important political treatise written before western thought had once more become familiar with the Politics of Aristotle. It thus represents the purely mediaeval tradition unaffected by ideas newly borrowed from classical antiquity. It is the culmination, in their maturest form, of a body of doctrines which had developed in unbroken sequence from patristic literature in contact with the institutions of the earlier Middle Ages. In the second...