Why Can’t We Be Friends? John of Salisbury,Thomas Becket and the Discourse of Amicitia

During the late 1150s, when John of Salisbury turned to compose (or at any rate complete ¹ ) the two writings that have primarily sustained his intellectual reputation through the centuries—the Policraticus and the Metalogicon—he chose to dedicate both of them to Thomas Becket, the then-Chancellor of England, future archbishop of Canterbury and eventual martyr. One might reasonably conclude that these dedications signal a bond of friendship between John and Becket. On the basis of this fact, among other pieces of evidence, scholars who specialise in the study of twelfth-century England have often concluded that John should be accounted an intimate of Becket. Thus, Christopher Brooke maintains that ‘John and Thomas were close personal friends’, ² while Klaus Guth characterises John as Becket’s ‘Freunde und Helfer’, ³ and Yoko Hirata says that ‘they were good friends and close colleagues’. ⁴ Similarly, two of Becket’s most eminent modern biographers describe John as ‘a candid friend’ (Barlow) or as ‘one of his [Thomas’s] most trusted and influential friends’ (Guy). ⁵ Among recent serious scholars of whom I am aware, only Beryl Smalley, Anne Duggan and Karen Bollermann have raised doubts about the actual depth of their connection. For Smalley and Duggan, the bond deserves to be called ‘ambivalent’, while Bollermann might stand accused of ‘questioning its general integrity’, to use Duggan’s phrase. ⁶ As I shall discuss below, there are good reasons, employing John’s own criteria, why integrity is in fact all on the side of John. Not a feint, in other words, but complete honesty.

The mere fact that John began to compose parts of the Policraticus (and perhaps the Metalogicon) during his exile from King Henry’s court during 1156 and 1157—a situation Becket did nothing to correct— suggests that we ought not to take the dedications at face value. ⁷ During the Middle Ages, addressing a book to powerful and well-placed people did not necessarily indicate endorsement of their behaviour—indeed, quite often the opposite. Ironically perhaps, the dedication of a book to a particular person might intimate not affection or gratitude—as it does today—but instead criticism or rebuke. ⁸ Erasing a commonplace justification for the personal intimacy between the John and Becket naturally leads us to revisit the larger question of John’s actual attitude towards his former colleague. In turn, an adequate understanding of the nature of their affinity cannot be separated from some appreciation of the concept of friendship as understood in the twelfth century. Approached in this way, one must draw the conclusion that a friendly bond between John and Becket, as comprehended in their day, was wholly absent.

John enjoyed a vast number (he says ‘an abundance’) of friends. ⁹ In addition to his life-long mutual amity with Peter of Celle, the abbot of San Rémi in Reims, John stood at or near the centre of a large friendship circle that encompassed mainly monks and secular clergy—a network held together by copious correspondence as well as face-to-face interaction. According to a census and comparative analysis undertaken a few years ago by John McLoughlin, the diversity of the recipients (socially as well as geographically) of John of Salisbury’s letters was extraordinary in comparison to other contemporaneous groups. Moreover, through philological and literary analysis of these 213 items of correspondence, McLoughlin was able to isolate two quite clearly defined classes of recipients, which he terms the ‘amicitia-group’ and the ‘non-amicitia group’, distinguished in terms of the language of personal connection. In McLaughlin’s judgment, 67 recipients out of 92 fell into the 1st category, most of whom were either monks (22%) or secular clergy (48%), in other words, men of roughly the same ecclesio-social standing as John himself. John commonly formed ‘friendships’ with persons whose place in the world resembled his own. ¹⁰

Such circles—and many existed in the twelfth century—functioned as an important means of constructing common intellectual and political agendas among literate but otherwise far-flung figures. ¹¹ Epistolary friendship involved a combination of tropes, borrowed heavily from Cicero’s dialogue Laelius (otherwise known as De amicitia), and the exchange of vital information concerning local events that might have wider implications for the condition of the church, especially in relation to temporal affairs. ¹² (The letters also contained their fair share of gossip and back-biting.) Such friendship extended to patronage of literary endeavours. For example, John addressed the Historia Pontificalis, a highly personalised survey and appraisal of events across Europe between 1148 and 1152 to Peter of Celle, whom he styled ‘friend and master’. John says that Peter, his ‘dearest friend’, had bid him by ‘command’ to undertake this project, which masqueraded as a conventional chronicle, in order to set the historical record straight by drawing on direct observation or the reports of reliable witnesses. ¹³ John’s writings illustrate just how intense these expressions of friendship could become.

But Becket enjoyed no such status in John’s writings. In the handful of letters addressed to Becket in his capacities as Chancellor and archbishop alike, John only twice refers to him by employing the discourse of amicitia, neither of which expresses the typical language of friendship. ¹⁴ The first occurs when he unsuccessfully pleads for the aid of the Chancellor to restore him to King Henry’s good graces. ¹⁵ The other appears in the midst of Becket’s own struggle with the English monarch in the 1160s, in a letter in which John places himself among the Archbishop’s ‘other friends’ who have proffered advice to him. ¹⁶ Would Becket’s obvious exclusion have mattered in the slightest to the Chancellor? An intriguing bit of evidence points to an affirmative answer. Two remarkable letters written by Peter of Celle to Becket at some point in his years of service to Henry indicate a clear approach by the Chancellor to be counted among the ‘friends’ of the Abbot: ‘You have asked about intimacy and friendship’. Becket is quite pointedly rebuffed. There is reason to suppose that Peter had been warned off from opening a relationship with Becket by John himself, judging from a reference to what ‘I have heard from those who have seen and know’, Peter’s response can only be judged mocking. He invokes the trope that there can be no friendship among unequals, a key element of the Ciceronian doctrine of amicitia to be discussed below. Given the lack of parity in their worldly positions, Peter declines to enter into an amicable bond:

Let me say briefly that the more excellent the things I perceive and know about you, the more worthless are the things that I perceive and know about myself. Therefore in no way am I extending my hand to enter into friendship, but if I shall be even among the flock of your casual friends (accidentalis amicorum) I shall reckon that your worthiness has treated me well. ¹⁷

Peter’s careful wording of the letter relies on the rhetorical device of studied ambiguity; the self-abasing references to the Chancellor’s greatness and the abbot’s ignobility indicate a reversal of meaning. Becket apparently did not catch on or he refused to take ‘no’ for an answer, as a subsequent response from Peter to another letter from the Chancellor makes manifest. ¹⁸ The conclusion to be drawn is fairly obvious: Becket lacks the qualifications to lay claim to true friendship as understood by his highly educated contemporaries.

This certainly helps to explain John’s circumspection in the expression of his actual attitude towards the Chancellor, necessitated by the relationship imposed by their respective official positions. But as is evident from even a cursory reading, the dedicatory remarks addressed to Becket in the Policraticus and the Metalogicon convey none of the warmth of feeling that John channelled towards others. Indeed, they seem somewhat bloodless—even contemptuous—in posture towards their dedicatee. The prologue to the Policraticus, for instance, alternates between John’s praise of the restrained life of letters and complaint about the miserable conditions he endures as a servant of the court (even if an ecclesiastical one as a secretary to Archbishop Theobald of Canterbury). ¹⁹ John rues the day he abandoned his studies in favour of the vanities of the courtier. ²⁰ He expresses similar sentiments in the preface to the Metalogicon. ²¹ John’s direct address to Becket, woven into the opening remarks of these works, adopts an odd tone. He explains that, on account of his devotion to the study of the great philosophers of the long-ago past, he disdains to climb the ladder of offices which the Chancellor himself had told him constitutes the sole means of worldly improvement. Yet, John tells Becket that he remains a courtier nevertheless, wedded by a sense of obligation to set wisdom into action. ²²

In his dedications, John deploys two rhetorical strategies. The first derives from the classical genre of the panegyric, which typically contained exaggerated, overstated, overwrought and even grovelling expressions of praise. He lauds Becket’s strength of character, resistance to vanity and refusal to be led astray by pleasure. ²³ The Chancellor stands above all other courtly denizens for his ability to resist the blandishments set before him. Thus, consistent with the panegyric’s rhetorical character, Becket’s righteousness cannot be adequately honoured by such a trifling book as John offers to him. Second, John deflects any suggestion that the criticisms he proffers in the Policraticus might be aimed at the dedicatee. Lest anyone suppose that his extensive denunciations of the courtly way of life and those who indulge in it might apply to Becket, John says that he addresses his remarks to one who stands entirely above reproach. The Policraticus simply affords to Becket—whom John proclaims to be ‘the most discriminating mind of our generation’ ²⁴ —guidelines for discerning the defects of men (among whom its author rhetorically includes himself) lacking the moral fortitude and piety of the Chancellor. In an ambiguous turn of phrase, John quotes an adage found in the Saturnalia by the Roman satirical poet Horace to the effect that ‘with a change of a name, the story may be told about you’. ²⁵ In modern parlance, one might loosely translate this quip as ‘it takes one to know one’. But, of course, John immediately says, this could not possibly apply to Becket himself. ²⁶ Near the close of the concluding chapter of the final book of the Policraticus, John offers a comment that on the surface absolves Becket himself from the need to learn the teachings permeating the massive tome.

Behold that you [Becket] possess the truest and most faithful path.… This path alone can suffice for good and happy living, to such a great degree that the external world adds either little or nothing to perfection. And I do not prohibit you from wrapping yourself in a variety of glittering garments overlaid with gold, nor from feasting splendidly every day, nor again from occupying the foremost public offices, and—so that I may express much in a few words—from yielding to the times and even perverse morals (even though you are yourself righteous in all moral matters), and from laughing with a world which is amused by its own enticements. For you are so great that you ought not and cannot be captured by these traps (although many have already been taken prisoner by them). ²⁷

Yet anyone familiar with the conduct and beliefs rebuked in the Policraticus will realise that it does indeed fit precisely the Chancellor’s well-established proclivities. ²⁸ According to John, his lesson should resonate with Becket all the more in light of his high position and involvement in weighty affairs of state. Ultimately, engagement in courtly follies yields only self-debasement.

Of course, at roughly 250,000 words in length, the Policraticus may hardly be reduced to a diatribe against the failings of Thomas Becket as a man and a royal official. Still, the selection of the themes John discusses in the Policraticus fully supports the impression of his wary stance towards Becket. In many ways, the Chancellor epitomised the corruption John observed in ecclesiastical as well as secular institutions. Although often treated as an early expression of medieval political thought, the Policraticus has a far greater scope. Organised into eight books, it surveys the moral challenges posed by life at court, the responsibilities appropriate to the ruler, his officials and subjects and the practical lessons to be gleaned from the teachings of the ancient schools of philosophy. In examining all these themes, John stays ever mindful of Becket. The intended audience of the Policraticus may have been wide, but the Chancellor constituted its archetype, the person in the metaphorical room to whom the preacher spoke directly.

John should not be mistaken for a man of puritanical sensibilities. He had wide open eyes. While he aimed without waver at the promotion of government guided towards moral and religious ends, he explicitly recognised that those who populated the offices of state possessed human foibles. In Book I of the Policraticus, John enumerates the many amusements that he knew—presumably on the basis of direct observation—enjoyed popularity among courtiers such as Becket. The first and clearly the foremost of these he identifies as the sport of hunting for pleasure, which he expressly distinguishes from a legitimate and useful occupation. Hunting for recreation commanded a reputation as a preeminent symbol of royal and aristocratic privilege. In his youth, Becket had become a close companion of a member of a minor noble family, Richer de l’Aigle, who taught him the skills of the hunter as well as the hawker, which ultimately served him well. ²⁹ While serving as Henry’s Chancellor, he famously joined his master in the pursuit of quarry, which surely further endeared him to the king. In addition, Henry and Becket had acquired a reputation for gambling on games of chance, a talent which the latter may have acquired during his years in Paris, a city notable for the opportunities afforded to students to indulge in licentious conduct of all manner. ³⁰ Probably not coincidentally, gambling is the second of the frivolities that John discusses at length in the first book of the Policraticus.

John realised how unrealistic and even undesirable would be any effort to convert men such as the Chancellor into ascetics. Rather, the Policraticus includes advice for negotiating the allurements of the court without succumbing wholly to the dangers posed by its frivolities. Indeed, he tackles this issue head-on, insisting that entertainments such as hunting and gambling should not be regarded as evil in themselves—he uses the Latin term indifferentia—but rather should be approached circumspectly because of their potential for inducement to unbridled pleasure. ³¹ John also notes the impact that the hunter, in particular, imposes upon the ordinary farmer, whose fields cannot be tended on account of the chase after wild animals. Yet, John declines to move from these criticisms to overt and unconditional condemnation. Drawing a distinction between entertainments that offer respite from the hard work demanded of public service and those pursued for their own sake without limit, he allows the one but censures the other. Since John realises perfectly well the impracticality and unreasonableness of demanding that courtly amusements be halted entirely, he appeals to one of his favourite themes, moderation, to set boundaries on their conduct. ³²

Did John realistically believe that his flexible willingness to countenance some courtly frivolities would actually exercise any impact on the behaviour of Becket, Henry and their ilk? That seems unlikely. Then why bother devoting so great an effort to so little probable effect? Arguably, John hoped to establish his bona fides as a credible and judicious commentator on the comportment of courtiers, whose true duties lie in governance of the realm. Whether or not they received the message, the Chancellor and his royal chum had been admonished that surrendering themselves wholly to such unconstrained enthusiasms disgraces their offices and them personally.

In the Policraticus, as already noted, John describes himself as a creature of the court with daily activities shaped by the myriad demands imposed by diplomacy, correspondence and legal dispute. Obviously, he looked upon the world of the court with a jaundiced eye, considering it fraught with intrigue and flattery, vice and corruption. In other words, John wrote as an insider. Nowhere do we find the insights he gleaned from his experiences better expressed than in the third book of the Policraticus, which primarily aims to disparage the efforts of flatterers to manipulate the actions of anyone who might be positioned to improve their lot. What might this teach us about Becket? In 1159, a pressing question must have preoccupied John: could Becket be trusted? Was he friend or foe to the cause of the church and Canterbury? In the parlance of the day, the friend constituted the very antithesis of the flatterer. We have seen that, up to the present point, John did not regard himself to be on especially friendly terms (as he understood them) with Becket, even after perhaps more than two decades of familiarity. Knowing how to differentiate between a friend and a flatterer constituted the single most useful skill that any denizen of court might possess. John sometimes intimates that Becket’s apparent turn away from ecclesiastical values and towards worldly pursuits represented a feint, a character test of his fellows in order to establish their true mettle. Superficial disloyalty might instead reflect the Chancellor’s clever scheme to discover who around him might be judged faithful to the cause of God and church. ³³ Thus, the third book of the Policraticus may be read to have a dual purpose: instructing Becket in the standards he should apply in differentiating friend from flatterer, while affording the rest of his readers an analogous test of the Chancellor’s own fidelity.

At this juncture, we must turn to those passages of Book III of the Policraticus in which John lays out a normative theory of friendship heavily indebted to De amicitia, Cicero’s treatise on the topic. Throughout the course of his lifetime, Cicero ruminated about the criteria necessary for distinguishing between true and false friends, especially the various motivations that may be ascribed to their relationships. In De amicitia, a relatively late work, his conception of friendship crystallised. Cicero regarded friendship as a unique and powerful connection between people. Such relationships are indeed rare. John agrees with Cicero that true friendship, defined as existing for its own sake rather than for some ulterior purpose, occurs amongst only ‘three or four pairs of friends’ amidst ‘the multitude and variety of persons’—a direct reference to De amicitia 15. Real friendship, however, may only flourish ‘if one cherishes friendship on account of its own virtues’. ³⁴ In this very important sense, friendship depends upon the kind of reciprocity that is found solely among people who share in the common qualities of virtue. Why is the possession of virtue among friends the chief characteristic of friendship? Since the goal of virtue is the realisation of the good of others, only virtue assures that friends will be truly oriented towards each other’s good first and foremost, rather than their own advantage.

In turn, virtue stands in close and irrevocable connection to truth. Virtue requires knowledge of the good, which is grounded in truth. Hence, the bond of friendship must rest on the commitment of each friend to seek and respect the truth. In consequence of reciprocal virtue based on the quest for the good, John concludes that open and free debate and criticism logically follow from the very nature of friendship. Individuals who are truly friends with one another are expected to engage in conscientious, constructive reproval of the morals of their fellows and to challenge ideas that do not stand up to rational evaluation. Likewise, people should be prepared to listen to and consider seriously such honest criticism when it is rendered. This quality seems essential to friendship, since it is guided by truthfulness. ‘If a friend makes a mistake he is to be instructed’, John insists, ‘If he should instruct, he is to be listened to’. ³⁵ ‘Truth is stern’, but the virtuous man wishes to know when he has gone astray, and the true friend provides this knowledge unflinchingly: ‘Better the chastisement of a friend than the fraudulent kissing-up (oscula) of a flatterer’. ³⁶ It is in this sense that friendship is a bond of faith (fides), because friends can be trusted to shun pretense and speak the truth in all matters for the sake of one another. ³⁷ They are to be treated with honesty and valued for their own sake, which may mean that they will be subjected to open critical scrutiny when their words and deeds are unseemly. This is an irony of friendship for John: one of the hallmarks of a true bond among friends is the readiness on the part of both parties to employ unsparing criticism when such is appropriate and necessary. One friend so loves the other that he will not shrink from the moral duty of correction, ‘for no critic need be feared by the lover of truth’. ³⁸ In sum, friendship demands ‘untrammeled honor, observant duty, the path of virtue, the acceptance of service, and the sincerity of words. And it is aided by fidelity, namely, constancy of speech and deed, and by truth, which is the foundation of all duties and good’. ³⁹ Only honourable and virtuous men are capable of genuine friendship.

There can thus be only a single answer to the question of whether ‘there can be friendship or love among bad men’. John sides with Cicero (De amicitia 65): ‘It cannot exist except among good men’. Whatever similarities seem to create a harmonious bond among evil men, he insists, are only faint imitations of the true affinity that arises between persons fully inculcated in virtue. ⁴⁰ Cicero himself had carefully distinguished in De amicitia 79 between genuine friendship and the attitude of people who ‘regard their friends as they do their cattle, valuing most highly those who give the hope of the largest gain’. John wholeheartedly agrees. Expediency is antithetical to friendship. The false friend is one who seeks his own advantage under the guise of affection. Counterfeit friendship is based on ‘profit’ and ‘lucrative results’: John explains that ‘since men … love not their friends but themselves in each instance, it is necessary to have the garb of pretense in order to be pleasing’. ⁴¹ In other words, a person may feign friendship, which poses the dilemma of judging when deceit is employed for self-interest ends.

Cicero had expressly contrasted true friendship with the illusory amity of the flatterer. ⁴² Again, John wholeheartedly endorses the Ciceronian view: ‘The flatterer seeks his own good without reference to the good of others. Under the guise of friendship’, the flatterer does unremitting harm, specifically, ‘he blocks the ears of listeners lest they hear the truth’. In support of this, John again quotes from De amicitia 90 to the effect that the man who refuses to listen to the truth endangers his own well-being. ⁴³ The flatterer covers over the faults of those whom he flatters, which is ultimately detrimental to the good of the flattered; the friend speaks the truth openly and desires to correct his fellow with patience and good will. ⁴⁴ Flattery betokens a slavish cast of mind, whereas friendship is grounded in true intellectual liberty and the honest give-and-take entailed thereby. ⁴⁵ Consequently, ‘Those who are vulgar and base flatterers are not admitted … among friends’, ⁴⁶ since such flattery is sure to undermine the trust friends possess in one another’s virtue and truthfulness. In sum, friendship and flattery are wholly incommensurable ways of living with one’s fellow human beings. No person should ever imagine that he serves the interests of his friend by lying, deceiving or duplicitous conduct, which are supreme examples of failing to live up to the moral code imbedded in friendship, on John’s Ciceronian understanding of it.

John’s account of friendship and flattery in Book III does not, however, merely reproduce its Ciceronian source. As he sometimes did with other classical moral philosophies (such as Epicureanism), ⁴⁷ he explicitly politicises doctrines originally meant to apply to the private sphere. In John’s view, flattery predominates among courtly modes of speech, consequently detracting from good government by leading the ruler and his counsellors and servants down the path to vice. John says flattery is always ‘accompanied by deception and fraud and betrayal and the infamy of lying’. ⁴⁸ This contrasts directly with John’s standard of speech as free and open debate, sincere in seeking after the honourable and the virtuous course of conduct. Flattery is inimical to the kind of rational discourse oriented towards truth that he believes must accompany any government whose goal is truly to seek the common good and justice for the governed. Such a view directly parallels John’s conception of language, articulated in his other major philosophical work, the Metalogicon, as the indispensable medium through which the welfare and happiness of humanity as a whole are realised by gaining access to truth. ⁴⁹

John clearly supposes that the ethical stringency of friendship would constitute the guiding principle applied in a well-ordered court. ⁵⁰ Such a court would be free of flattery and its members would concern themselves with their various duties in ways consistent with the positions that they occupy. It would be a court characterised by unfettered criticism of ideas and conduct, without rancour and with the greatest degree of mutual trust. All of its members would serve one another mutually and would have each other’s best interests at heart, as well as the good of the community as a whole. In this sense, John intends for the model of friendship described in Book III of the Policraticus to have direct and immediate relevance to the pursuit of public business. His ultimate concern lays not so much in understanding an intimate or private relationship; he sketches a standard of conduct against which may be judged the activities of actual courtiers, to the obvious detriment of the latter.

At the same time, John fully realises that the chances for creating such a court are minimal at best. The image of the ‘court of friends’, while attractive, should perhaps be conceived instead as aspirational for him—like the king whom he describes in later books of the Policraticus—rather than a blueprint which he desires to apply precisely and rigorously. In particular, the honourable courtier needs to know how to distinguish between people like himself—true friends—and those who take on the pretense of friendship for the sake of self-interest, and how to treat each appropriately. This is the central message of Book III. John cites the dictum, derived from De amicitia 59, that ‘one is to live among enemies as though among friends, and to live among friends as if in the midst of enemies’. ⁵¹ In other words, John believes that it is necessary to act towards those of whom one is distrustful at court with a veneer of affection until one can establish their true intentions. Treatment of those whose friendship is uncertain, or who are likely to be foes, requires an entirely different attitude. In this instance, one should decorously maintain one’s distance from the person until his true status becomes evident; one may be polite and cordial, but by no means should a stranger be admitted immediately into one’s circle of friends. If someone proves to measure up to the standard of friendship, he can thereafter be counted among those who are trustworthy.

In particular, John cautions suspicion of those possessing great wealth and authority. It is ‘in doubt whether the rich and powerful are capable of loving. It is now agreed that they are never or rarely capable of loving and especially in cases where it is apparent that they love themselves rather than others’. ⁵² Here, too, John echoes Cicero, in De amicitia 65. The love of accumulation—whether of material goods or of power—is simply incompatible with the sort of unselfish affection necessary for friendship. Moreover, the wealthy man will devote all of his time and energy to keep or expand his possessions, leaving no opportunity for the pursuits shared among friends. In sum, ‘The rich man is known to be an acquaintance, rarely or never a friend’. ⁵³ Consequently, the courtier’s quest for friends should lead him to shun such seekers after property and position.

The most extreme enemy of the friendly (that is, virtuous and truth-seeking) courtier is the tyrant, the nemesis of religion and morality whose spectre is raised throughout the Policraticus. Interestingly, John closes Book III with advice about how to cope with a manifest tyrant within the confines of court. Friendly acts of criticism and correction will, of course, be ineffectual with a tyrant, since tyranny reflects the extreme of self-interest and self-aggrandisement. Therefore, the courtier must adopt an entirely different strategy, namely, to engage in precisely that form of flattery that would otherwise be forbidden to him. The state of the tyrant’s moral character is so corrupt that the only way to survive at court is cloak oneself in deceit. John’s prohibition on mendacity is not absolute. Indeed, the Policraticus from beginning to end countenances what John terms at one point ‘pious deception’. ⁵⁴ In the case of the tyrant, the Policraticus explicitly legitimises the use of the weapons of deceit—flattery among them—in order to combat the grave endangerment of social and political order. After his relentless attack on flattery throughout Book III, he introduces an exception:

In the secular literature [Cicero, De amicitia 24], there is caution that one is to live one way with a friend and another with a tyrant. It is not permitted to flatter a friend, but it is permitted to flatter the ears of a tyrant. For in fact, the man whom it is permitted to flatter, it is permitted to slay. Furthermore, it is not only permitted, but equitable and just, to slay tyrants. ⁵⁵

Setting aside the much-debated issue of John of Salisbury’s theory of tyrannicide, ⁵⁶ the immediately relevant point of this passage is that the rules of civilised society do not apply in the case of the tyrant, whom John likens to a traitor and a public criminal. Since the tyrant’s behaviour inclines to the commission of violence and fraud, purely according to his own will, he is utterly incapable of experiencing friendship. The tyrant is, John says, a ‘public enemy, and whoever does not prosecute him transgresses against himself and against the whole body of the earthly republic’. ⁵⁷ Thus, deceitful flattery is legitimated for John in the case of the tyrannical head of state precisely because of the grievous harm that he commits. Deception ceases to be a sin or an evil when directed to the defense of humanity against tyranny. If flattery stands opposed to friendship because it uses the semblance of friendly conduct in order achieve private advantage, then the tyrant is the quintessential embodiment of the moral character of the flatterer: he lives only for himself and has the power to make everyone else do likewise. In this instance, the ethical courtier has no choice but to fight the enemy with the tools of the enemy. John seems to suggest, indeed, that just as one may have a duty (both to God and to one’s fellows) to kill a tyrant, one has a duty to deceive him with flattery, if by that sleight further harm is deflected. ⁵⁸

So where does Becket figure in this scheme? John draws no explicit conclusions—hardly a surprise, since seldom in his writings will one find him wielding a cudgel when a lighter touch will do. He instead leaves it to the reader to draw his own inferences, which should not be an exceedingly onerous task, however. If one connects the dots, John’s overwrought words addressed to Becket in the prefaces and conclusions to both the Policraticus and the Metalogicon may strike one as very much resembling his advice for coping with a courtly flatterer—or even a tyrant. Throughout John’s corpus, we are given plenty of reasons to explain why John could never bring himself to address Becket in terms of amicitia discourse. I would propose that the core of this hesitance may be found in the essence of their relationship, which I consider to be transactional. Given his Ciceronian insistence that no true friendship may be founded on purely utilitarian considerations, it would be hypocritical for John to count Becket among the members of his friendship circle.

On what basis do I posit that pragmatism characterises their bond, at least from John’s perspective? My response points to a single overarching principle at work, manifested in two different contexts. That principle stems from the motivation that ultimately drove the entirety of John’s career from the time of his admission into the household of Archbishop Theobald: the protection and promotion of the liberty of the church and, especially, of the untrammeled authority of Canterbury. ⁵⁹ In the early phase of his writings about Becket, prior to his ascension to archbishop, John expressed profound concern that in the role of Chancellor, Thomas abetted the diminished standing of the church rather than defending its rights. A man who acted in that manner lacked the qualities requisite for friendship as John conceived them, given that respect for ecclesiastical liberty could not be distinguished from (Christian) virtue for him. Becket was at best worthless, and quite possibly a threat, to the proper principal purpose of government, as John conceived of it: the defense of the church. In the second stage, Becket now became useful, but for just the same reason: he now stood up for Canterbury against the onslaught of the king.

So, if what I claim has validity, would not it mean Becket had acquired the characteristics necessary to meet the stringent standards for friendship? Assuredly not. John’s view seems to be that Becket personally had attained no more virtue than before. Rather, the Archbishop simply transmuted into a very expedient symbol in the fight to establish the independence of the church from secular interference. Becket may have become a proponent of John’s overarching agenda, but he earned no more credit towards entrance into the status of friend than previously. This becomes particularly obvious when one considers John’s activities in the decade following Becket’s murder. ⁶⁰ Manipulative? Perhaps. But then John apparently never regarded himself to be on friendly terms with Thomas in the first place. Like Cicero, John did not reject the idea that many human interactions were legitimately based on benefit. He simply rejected the conclusion that such relationships merit the appellation ‘friendships’.

Returning to the observation with which this study opened, namely, the dedication of the Metalogicon and especially the Policraticus to Becket, we ought not infer that John anxiously sought for his texts, once completed, to enter into the Chancellor’s hands with due haste. In the case of the Policraticus, the original manuscript initially fell into the possession of Ralph Brito, the subprior of Christ Church, Canterbury and Peter of Celle (and perhaps a few others). In a letter to Peter that accompanies the conveyance of a copy of the text, John tells his friend to offer suggestions and criticisms and, should it be deemed unsuitable, to insist that it be withheld from presentation to Becket at all. (Here is a perfect example of John’s theory of friendship applied.) John acknowledges that the book will make him no friends at court, but he desires not to create enemies. ⁶¹ We have no precise information about when (or even whether) a version of the Policraticus reached Becket. ⁶² In light of the numerous letters to Becket and to Henry II composed by John, either in the name of Archbishop Theobald or of their author himself, during 1160 and 1161 begging the Chancellor to return to Canterbury, it seems unlikely that the Policraticus would have reached its dedicatee until after the death of the Archbishop in April 1161. Perhaps John transmitted it to Becket via an intermediary sometime after it had been improved and approved by his friends, as he requested in his letter to Peter. Regardless of the exact timing, Becket certainly did not secure the work immediately after its completion. The circulation of the Policraticus suggests that John’s most pressing concern lay elsewhere than advising and admonishing the Chancellor, who may simply have been inoculated against the principles expressed therein. (It goes without saying that John could hardly have foreseen Thomas’s extreme transformation following his consecration as archbishop of Canterbury.) Given these circumstances, John instead wanted at least in part to provide a warning to those working with the Chancellor—and, as it turned out, the next archbishop—about Becket’s unreliability.

Let us assume that the Policraticus and the Metalogicon did reach Becket’s eyes between their completion towards the end of 1159 and his elevation to the See of Canterbury in mid-1162. What might he have made of them? It seems doubtful that he would have regarded them as friendly writings, the dedications notwithstanding. Becket was sufficiently well-educated—both in book-learning and in political wiles—that the full implications of John’s direct addresses to him would surely not have gone unnoticed. But all we may do is surmise, since the two collections of John’s letters are separated by the period in which his epistolary pen goes silent from Theobald’s demise until the beginning of his continental exile in early 1164. Possessing correspondence from these intervening years would reveal a great deal, I think. In any case, just as John harboured grave scepticism about Becket’s personal traits, reflected in the Chancellor’s exclusion from his friendship circle, so the misgivings may have been mutual. Becket’s indifference to John’s plight in 1156/1157 speaks to a lack of regard for someone who had been his colleague at the Canterbury court for many years and who may have been a fellow student in Paris in the 1130s and 1140s. The very fact that, once Becket was consecrated, John was cut out of the Archbishop’s immediate inner circle hints (however faintly) that the words of the Policraticus and the Metalogicon had been interpreted by Becket as quite damning criticism. In this supposition, Becket would surely have been correct. Scholars have on occasion speculated that John’s extensive discussion of tyranny in the Policraticus must have incurred the wrath of King Henry. Why should the same reaction to John’s words not be true for Becket as well? Beyond such musings, it is evident that the ascription of a close personal friendship between John and Becket cannot be sustained. In turn, this reframes more generally the way in which the reading of John’s treatises, letters and other prose and poetry ought to be approached.