SOURCE: Ullmann, W. “The Influence of John of Salisbury on Medieval Italian Jurists.” English Historical Review 59, no. 235 (September 1944): 384-92.

In the following essay, Ullmann discusses the influence of the Policraticus on fourteenth-century Neapolitan jurisprudence.

The fastidious elegance of John of Salisbury's style, the comprehensiveness and logical consistency of the thoughts expressed in the Policraticus, his dispassionate approach to vexatious problems, the straightforward character of the solutions he proposed, the high moral sense which pervades them, and the preponderance of the ‘positive ethical element’¹—all these explain John's appeal to a very wide circle of readers. In recent times John's book has rightly been acclaimed as ‘probably the most perfect and the most complete summation of the political speculations of the past centuries’.² Yet the extraordinary influence which John of Salisbury exercised through his Policraticus on continental scholarship in the later middle ages has so far entirely escaped notice...