John of Salisbury publishes Policraticus

1159

The English humanist and Becket ally finished his Latin treatise on statecraft, the Policraticus. It is the first medieval European work to argue systematically that tyrants may be removed, even killed, by their subjects - a seed for much later political theory. John drew on classical Roman sources as well as contemporary observation, producing a work that reads as part philosophical treatise, part satirical portrait of the corrupt courts he had observed.