Mediaeval Lore from Bartholomew Anglicus | Page 2

commonly to
be found in the ranks of those who are pledged to the forward
movement of modern life; while those who are vainly striving to stem
the progress of the world are as careless of the past as they are fearful
of the future. In short, history, the new sense of modern times, the great
compensation for the losses of the centuries, is now teaching us
worthily, and making us feel that the past is not dead, but is living in us,
and will be alive in the future which we are now helping to make.

To my mind, therefore, no excuse is needful for the attempt made in the
following pages to familiarise the reading public with what was once a
famous knowledge-book of the Middle Ages. But the reader, before he
can enjoy it, must cast away the exploded theory of the invincible and
wilful ignorance of the days when it was written; the people of that
time were eagerly desirous for knowledge, and their teachers were
mostly single-hearted and intelligent men, of a diligence and
laboriousness almost past belief. The "Properties of Things" of
Bartholomew the Englishman is but one of the huge encyclopaedias
written in the early Middle Age for the instruction of those who wished
to learn, and the reputation of it and its fellows shows how much the
science of the day was appreciated by the public at large, how many
there were who wished to learn. Even apart from its interest as showing
the tendency of men's minds in days when Science did actually tell
them "fairy tales," the book is a delightful one in its English garb; for
the language is as simple as if the author were speaking by word of
mouth, and at the same time is pleasant, and not lacking a certain
quaint floweriness, which makes it all the easier to retain the
subject-matter of the book.
Altogether, this introduction to the study of the Mediaeval
Encyclopaedia, and the insight which such works give us into the
thought of the past and its desire for knowledge, make a book at once
agreeable and useful; and I repeat that it is a hopeful sign of the times
when students of science find themselves drawn towards the historical
aspect of the world of men, and show that their minds have been
enlarged, and not narrowed, by their special studies--a defect which
was too apt to mar the qualities of the seekers into natural facts in what
must now, I would hope, be called the just-passed epoch of intelligence
dominated by Whig politics, and the self-sufficiency of empirical
science.
WILLIAM MORRIS.

INTRODUCTION
THE PROLOGUE OF THE TRANSLATOR
MEDIAEVAL SCIENCE
MEDIAEVAL MANNERS
MEDIAEVAL MEDICINE

MEDIAEVAL GEOGRAPHY
MEDIAEVAL NATURAL HISTORY--TREES
MEDIAEVAL NATURAL HISTORY--BIRDS AND FISHES
MEDIAEVAL NATURAL HISTORY--ANIMALS
THE SOURCES OF THE BOOK
BIBLIOGRAPHY
GLOSSARY

INTRODUCTION
THE BOOK AND ITS OBJECT.--The book which we offer to the
public of to- day is drawn from one of the most widely read books of
mediaeval times. Written by an English Franciscan, Bartholomew, in
the middle of the thirteenth century, probably before 1260, it speedily
travelled over Europe. It was translated into French by order of Charles
V. (1364-81) in 1372, into Spanish, into Dutch, and into English in
1397. Its popularity, almost unexampled, is explained by the scope of
the work, as stated in the translator's prologue (p. 9). It was written to
explain the allusions to natural objects met with in the Scriptures or in
the Gloss. It was, in fact, an account of the properties of things in
general; an encyclopaedia of similes for the benefit of the village
preaching friar, written for men without deep--sometimes without any--
learning. Assuming no previous information, and giving a fairly clear
statement of the state of the knowledge of the time, the book was
readily welcomed by the class for which it was designed, and by the
small nucleus of an educated class which was slowly forming. Its
popularity remained in full vigour after the invention of printing, no
less than ten editions being published in the fifteenth century of the
Latin copy alone, with four French translations, a Dutch, a Spanish, and
an English one.
The first years of the modern commercial system gave its death-blow to
the popularity of this characteristically mediaeval work, and though an
effort was made in 1582 to revive it, the attempt was
unsuccessful--quite naturally so, since the book was written for men
desirous to hear of the wonders of strange lands, and did not give an
accurate account of anything. The man who bought cinnamon at
Stourbridge Fair in 1380 would have felt poorer if any one had told him
that it was not shot from the phoenix' nest with leaden arrows, while the

merchant of 1580 wished to know