Mediaeval Lore from Bartholomew Anglicus | Page 4

it is good to remove all obstacles which prevent the ordinary reader from feeling the continuity of his mother tongue.
THE AUTHOR.--The facts known of our author's life have been summarised by Miss Toulmin Smith in her article in the Dictionary of National Biography. In the sixteenth century he was generally believed to date from about 1360, and to have belonged to the Glanvilles--an honourable Suffolk family in the Middle Ages; but there seems to be no authority whatever for the statement. We first hear of him in a letter from the provincial of the Franciscans of Saxony to the provincial of France, asking that Bartholomew Anglicus and another friar should be sent to assist him in his newly-created province. Next year (1231) a MS. chronicle reports that two were sent, and that Bartholomew Anglicus was appointed teacher of holy theology to the brethren in the province. We learn from Salimbene, who wrote the Chronicles of Parma (1283), that he had been a professor of theology in the University of Paris, where he had lectured on the whole Bible. The subject in treating of which he is referred to was an elephant belonging to the Emperor; and Salimbene quotes a passage on the elephant from his De Proprietatibus Rerum. What may be a quotation from the De Proprietatibus can be found in Roger Bacon's Opus Tertium (1267).
THE DATE OF THE WORK.--The date of the work seems fairly easy to fix. It cannot, as we have above seen, be later than 1267, and Amable Jourdain fixes it before 1260 by the fact that the particular translations of Aristotle from which Bartholomew quotes (Latin through the Arabic), went almost universally out of use by 1260. On the other hand, quotations are made from Albertus Magnus, who was in Paris in 1248. And that it was written near this year is evident from the fact that no quotations are made from Vincent of Beauvais, Thomas Aquinas, Roger Bacon, or Egidius Colonna, all of whom were in Paris during the second half of the thirteenth century. The earliest known MS. is in the Ashmole Collection, and was written in 1296. Two French MSS. are dated 1297 and 1329 respectively.
As we said in the beginning of this chapter, the work had an immediate and lasting success. Bartholomew Anglicus became known as "Magister de Proprietatibus Rerum," and his book was on the list of those which students could borrow from the University chest. It is probable that much of this popularity was due to the fact that he was a teacher for many years of the Grey Friars, and that these, the most popular and the most human preachers of the day, carried his book and his stories with them wherever they went.
SOURCES.--The chief sources of our author's inspiration are notable. He relies on St. Dionysius the Areopagite for heaven and the angels, Aristotle for Physics and Natural History, Pliny's Natural History, Isidore of Seville's Etymology, Albumazar, Al Faragus, and other Arab writers for Astronomy, Constantinus Afer's Pantegna for Medical Science, and Physiologus, the Bestiarium, and the Lapidarium for the properties of gems, animals, etc. Besides these he quotes many other writers (a list of whom is given in an appendix) little known to modern readers.
THE TRANSLATION AND PRINCIPLES OF SELECTION.--The translation from which we quote was made for Sir Thomas lord of Berkeley in 1397 by John Trevisa, his chaplain. We owe this good Englishman something for the works in English prose he called into existence--some not yet printed; may we not see in him another proof of what we owe to Chaucer--a language stamped with the seal of a great poet, henceforth sufficient for the people who speak it, ample for the expression of their thoughts or needs?
In selecting from such a book, the principles which have guided the editor are these: To the general reader he desires to offer a fair representation of the work of Bartholomew Anglicus, preserving the language and style. To be fair, the work must be sometimes dull--in the whole book there are many very dull passages. He has desired to select passages of interest for their quaint language, and their views of things, often for their very misrepresentations of matters of common knowledge to-day, and for their bearing upon the literature of the country. The student of literature and science will find in it the materials in which the history of their growth is read. In conclusion, the editor ventures to hope that the work will not be unwelcome to the numerous and growing class who love English for its own sake as the noblest tongue on earth, and who desire not to forget the rock from which it was hewn, and the pit from which it was digged.
Our first selection will naturally be the translator's prologue in the