THE JOURNEY OF A BOOK Bartholomew the Englishman and the Properties of Things Map of Europe in c.1230, showing locations significant withinThe Journey of a Book. Approx. indications of the frontiers of Christendom (western and eastern) and Islam, and of the Mongol advance, are based on McEvedy, Colin. The New Penguin Atlas of Medieval History. London: Penguin Books, 1992, pp.73, 77. THE JOURNEY OF A BOOK Bartholomew the Englishman and the Properties of Things Elizabeth Keen Published by ANU E Press The Australian National University Canberra ACT 0200, Australia Email: [email protected] This title is also available online at: http://epress.anu.edu.au/journey_citation.html National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry Keen, Elizabeth Joy. Journey of a book : Bartholomew the Englishman and the Properties of things. ISBN 9781921313066 (pbk.). ISBN 9781921313073 (web). 1. Bartholomaeus Anglicus, 13th cent. De proprietatibus rerum. 2. Encyclopedias and dictionaries - Early works to 1600 - History and criticism. 3. Philosophy of nature - Early works to 1800. I. Title. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. Cover design by Teresa Prowse Cover image: Cambridge University Library Gg. 6. 42. f. 5. St. Francis and Companion used by permission of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library. Printed by University Printing Services, ANU This edition © 2007 ANU E Press Table of Contents List of Figures vii Abbreviations ix Acknowledgements xi Chapter 1. Introduction 1 Chapter 2. Literary approaches 15 Chapter 3. `Properties' as a guide to salvation 29 Chapter 4. The world and the journey 57 Chapter 5. `Properties', salvation and social order in late-medieval England 77 Chapter 6. An authoritative source 103 Chapter 7. Navigating tides of change: Bartholomew and the English 127 Chapter 8. Conclusion 161 Appendix A. British Library Manuscript Arundel 123, the contents of the codex. 167 Appendix B. Abridgement of `Properties' in Bodleian Library Manuscript Laud Miscellany 682. 169 References 171 v List of Figures Figure 1: Map of thirteenth-century Christendom showing places significant in the making, transmission and English reception of De proprietatibus rerum. ii Figure 2: The 19 Books of De proprietatibus rerum. 7 Figure 3: The Psalter Map, British Library Additional Ms 28681, f.9 recto. Circa 1260. 67 Figure 4: The Psalter Map, British Library Additional Ms 28681, f.9 verso. Circa 1260. 68 Figure 5: Map of the world on the title page of Book 8, Bartholomeus De Proprietatibus Rerum. Printed by Wynkyn de Worde, 1495. 120 Figure 6: Title-page woodcut for Book 19, Bartholomeus De Proprietatibus Rerum. Printed by Wynkyn de Worde, 1495. 121 Figure 7: Title-page and part of Table of Contents, Bartholomeus De Proprietatibus Rerum. Printed by Thomas Berthelet, 1535. Copy BL 456.a.1 formerly owned by Joseph Banks. 152 Abbreviations AV The Bible, Authorised Version BA Bartholomaeus Anglicus (Bartholomew the Englishman) BL British Library BNF Bibliothèque nationale de France BVM The Blessed Virgin Mary BuB Batman uppon Bartholome, Bateman [sic], Stephen, London: Thomas and Lucretia East, 1582 DrP De rerum Proprietatibus, Angelicus, Bartholomaeus, Frankfurt: 1601 LM Liber de moralitatibus corporum celestium, elementorum, avium, piscium, animalium, arborum sive plantarum et lapidum preciosorum. BNF lat. 3332 and other mss ODCC The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, Cross, F. L., ed., London: Oxford University Press, 1974 ODNB Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 OED Oxford English Dictionary `Properties' De proprietatibus rerum Properties On the Properties of Things. John Trevisa©s Translation of Bartholomeus Anglicus, De Proprietatibus Rerum, Seymour, M. C., ed., 3 vols. Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1975±88 Propriétés Le Livre des Propriétés des Choses, Corbechon, Jean, 1372 STC Short Title Catalogue of the British Library ix Acknowledgements Many people have made this project possible and supported it along the way. I am grateful to those in the History Department of The Australian National University who provided resources and guidance during my doctoral study of Bartholomew: Doug Craig and Anne Curthoys, Bob Barnes, Bill Craven, Stephanie Tarbin, and, above all, John Tillotson, whom I thank for his patient support, encouragement and friendship from the beginning of the project. I thank Alisdair Greig and the staff of the ANU School of Social Studies for my accommodation as a Visiting Fellow from 2003 to 2007. Dr Bruce Moore and the ANU Publication Subsidies Committee have kindly helped to finance production of the book. The scope of my topic has led me to trespass at times into others' fields and I thank Merridee Bailey, Anke Bernau, Tania Colwell, Julie Hotchin, Val Spear and Janet Hadley Williams for their generosity in reading drafts and sharing insights. Thank you to Kathy Hagon and Pam Kelloway for their constant encouragement. I thank the staff of the Bibliothèque nationale in Paris; the University of London Library, the British Library, the Wellcome History of Medicine Library and the Warburg Institute Library; the Bodleian Library, Balliol College Library and Corpus Christi College, Oxford; Cambridge University Library, and Bristol City Library for all their help. I am grateful to the British Library and to Cambridge University Library for permission to reproduce images from their manuscript collections. ANU E Press have been a pleasure to work with, as has John Owen, whom I thank for his judicious editing. Thanks to Yasmine Musharbash for her assistance with material in German and to Geoff Hinchcliffe for technical help. Particular thanks go to my family, especially Ian. xi Chapter 1. Introduction As I gather, Bartholomaeus Glanville took his name from the most noble family of the earls of Suffolk. As a youth he faithfully observed the Franciscan way of life. When older he frequented the Vale of Isis, Paris, and even, if the surmise is correct, Rome herself. A wise man, he spent the first parts of his studies acquiring skill in philosophy and, equally, theology: in the former, so that he might investigate more precisely the causes of material things; in the latter, so that he might, so to speak, illumine his mind with a divine radiance. Aristotle, Plato and Pliny were his companions in that situation; distinguished by his mastery of them, he elegantly composed and put forth the book of Properties of Things: which the hand of time constantly tended, so that its fame has justly grown to greatness.1 Historians have been interested in the De proprietatibus rerum of Bartholomew the Englishman since the sixteenth century, when John Leland (d.1552) included the compiler in his catalogue of esteemed English writers and planted the notion of Bartholomew's Glanville origins. Successive ages and literary cultures have found their own uses for the work and its compiler and their own reasons to investigate him and the image of creation that he helped to perpetuate. The present age is no exception Ð Bartholomew's identity, career, philosophy and achievement have all been examined and re-assessed since Leland's time. It is not the intention here to enter into the debate about Bartholomew's identity but, rather, to draw conclusions about the ways in which later cultures perceived and represented him. We do have sufficient evidence to be able to introduce him as a not-too-shadowy figure, and to follow traces of some of the personae he acquired over time. These traces, in the form of written responses and attitudes to him and his work, invite the historian's scrutiny as testimony to changes in medieval people's ideas about things and their properties. The work becomes a point of reference by which we can judge adherences to, or departures from, orthodox medieval representations of the world and society. Who was Bartholomew the Englishman? Bartholomew is known today from his single large compilation of knowledge referred to throughout the Middle Ages as De proprietatibus rerum, `On the properties of things'. There have been debates about his nationality and background: when he lived; whether he was an Englishman, Frenchman or Burgundian, or in the English `nation' at Paris; whether he was educated at Oxford or Chartres. In the nineteenth century Léopold Delisle questioned the accepted notion, illustrated above, that Bartholomew was a fourteenth-century member of the Glanville family of Suffolk and identified him as a French compiler 1 The Journey of a Book of the thirteenth century. Michael Seymour has suggested that Johannes Anglicus and Bartholomaeus Anglicus, both of whom were sent to Magdeburg, may have been members of the natio anglicana in Paris after studying at Oxford. Seymour tentatively identifies him with Bartholomew of Prague, minister provincial of newly-converted Bohemia in 1255±56.2 Gerald Se Boyar argues that he was educated at Chartres. It is generally agreed, however, that Bartholomew completed `Properties' in Saxony in about 1240, that he was extremely well read, but that he might not have had with him in Magdeburg all the books he draws on Ð in other words, he cites from memory.3 For a contemporary account of him we must rely on a few mentions by early Franciscan writers. Giordano of Giano (professed c.1217 and a member of the second mission to Germany in 1221) supplies the few contemporary glimpses we have of Bartholomew's career. According to Giordano, brother Bartholomaeus Anglicus was one of two friars then in France sent to organise the new Franciscan province of Saxonia; he himself arranged to conduct them thither in 1231. According to the Franciscan chronicler Thomas of Eccleston, writing in the following century, the Englishman Haymo of Faversham and `three other professors' were admitted to the Order at St Denys in Paris in about 1223.4 One of these others may have been Bartholomew.