BARTHOLOMEW OF ENGLAND

On the Properties of Things by Bartholomew of England[1317] is, as has been said in a previous chapter, a work of the same sort as those on the natures of things by his earlier fellow-countryman, Alexander of Neckam, and his contemporary of Brabant, Thomas of Cantimpré. Bartholomew himself clearly states the character, purpose, and scope of his work both at its beginning and again in closing. It is primarily a brief compilation of passages on the natures and properties of things, which are scattered through the works both of the saints and the philosophers, with the intent of making plainer the enigmas which the Holy Scriptures conceal under the symbols and figures of the properties of natural and artificial objects. Bartholomew further speaks modestly of his work as an elementary treatise, text-book, or work of reference for the benefit of “young scholars and the general reader (simplices et parvuli) who because of the infinite number of books cannot look up the properties of the objects of which Scripture treats, nor are they able to find quickly even a superficial treatment of what they are after.”[1318] Bartholomew’s book is therefore “a simple and rude” compilation, but he hopes that it may prove useful to persons who, like himself, are not advanced scholars. But after mastering this elementary treatise, they should proceed to more subtle and specialized works. And if they think that anything should be added to what he has given, let them add it. From the tone of these remarks compared to those of Thomas of Cantimpré one would infer that the number of available books and also the amount of available knowledge had considerably increased since Thomas wrote. Yet at the most Bartholomew cannot have written very many years later than Thomas, and it is most likely that their books appeared almost simultaneously.

If Bartholomew’s last sentence is interpreted as an open invitation to his readers to issue revised editions of the book or at least add to their own copies further extracts from the writings of the saints and the philosophers, we shall feel that it is rather risky to attempt to determine the date of the first appearance of the De proprietatibus rerum from the date of the latest works cited in our present copies. But all the manuscripts seem to be essentially alike regardless of date, and the printed edition seems to vary little from the text of the earliest manuscripts. To assist us in determining when Bartholomew lived and wrote we have a request from the General of the Franciscan Order in 1230 asking the French provincial to send to Magdeburg in Saxony Brother Bartholomaeus Anglicus to act as lecturer there.[1319] Salimbene, writing in 1284, cites a passage from Bartholomew concerning elephants and looks back upon him as a great clerk who lectured on the whole Bible in course at Paris.[1320] Bartholomew speaks of the inhabitants of Livonia as having been forced by the Germans from the cult of demons to the Faith of one God, and states that by divine grace and the cooperation of the Germans they are now believed to be freed from their former errors.[1321] But since the conquest of Livonia began as early as 1202, this passage does not serve to date Bartholomew’s work very definitely.

It has already been remarked by the Histoire Littéraire de la France that in the bibliography at the close of his work Bartholomew mentions no writer of later date than the early thirteenth century.[1322] As Bartholomew himself states, however, he uses “many other” authorities than those given in the list, and other names are found sprinkled through his text. In the printed edition of 1488 the Speculum naturale of Vincent of Beauvais, which was not written until 1250, is cited,[1323] but this mention is found in the last sentence of a chapter and may be pretty certainly regarded as a later interpolation.[1324] In citing commentaries upon the works of Aristotle the printed text confuses the abbreviations Albu., Alber., and Alfre. or Alur., standing respectively for Albumasar, Albertus Magnus, and Aluredus or Alfred of England who alone is listed in Bartholomew’s bibliography. There seems to be no certain citation of Albert. If Bartholomew had read Albert’s sharp criticism of Jorath, he perhaps would not have made use of that author. The bibliography includes the names of Michael Scot who was dead by 1235 and of Robert of Lincoln, by whom Grosseteste must be meant, who was born about 1175, became bishop of Lincoln in 1235, and died in 1253. A Gilbertus mentioned in the bibliography may be either the medical writer, Gilbert of England, whose own date is somewhat uncertain, or a corruption for Gerbert. These three writers are seldom, if ever, cited by name in the text of Bartholomew. But he does cite Alexander of Hales[1325] who died in 1245. On the whole it seems possible that Bartholomew wrote his work as early as 1230.

The Histoire Littéraire asserts that “Bartholomew surely was not acquainted with all the authors, true or supposititious, whom he is pleased to enumerate,” but it gives no grounds except the list itself for this sceptical attitude. It is true that in the case of a few authorities in his list, such as Scipio Africanus, Ninus Delphicus, and Epicurus, it would have been as difficult to find any works by them then as now. But I believe that Bartholomew was a wide reader and acquainted with the greater part of the books and authors that he cites. Modern writers concerning medieval learning have too often proceeded upon the gratuitous assumption that medieval writers seldom were directly acquainted with the authorities which they cite. But one suspects that those who have assumed this were none too well acquainted themselves either with the works citing or cited. And why should medieval scholars take their citations at second hand? The original works were fairly accessible; the earliest manuscripts we have of them are almost invariably medieval, and probably they had many, many more copies that are now destroyed, and possibly some originals that are now forever lost. As for Bartholomew, his citations are so numerous, so varied, so specific that they must be largely first-hand.[1326] Obviously he did not spare himself trouble in making a book to save others trouble. Bartholomew also seems to be scrupulously honest in his citations. For instance, Pythagoras is cited but once in the Etymologies of Isidore,[1327] and when Bartholomew makes use of this passage, he gives both Pythagoras and Isidore credit.[1328] It is therefore only fair to Bartholomew to admit that, had his citation of Pythagoras in The Book of the Romans been drawn from any third author, he would have given him credit too. Bartholomew cites Pliny’s Natural History by book and chapter and is evidently directly acquainted with it. On the whole, I am inclined to think that medieval writers had read quite as much of the works listed in their bibliographies as modern writers have of those listed in theirs.

In the Bibliothèque Nationale at Paris alone there are eighteen manuscripts of the De proprietatibus rerum, chiefly of the late thirteenth and early fourteenth century, and the Histoire Littéraire tells us that its title appears in a catalogue of the books which the medieval booksellers of Paris rented to the students at that university.[1329] The work also occurs with frequency in the manuscript collections of England, Germany, and Italy. Hain’s list of fourteen printed editions of it before 1500 is incomplete, and the British Museum catalogue of books printed in Germany alone in the fifteenth century mentions nine editions. It was translated into French under Charles V in the fourteenth century, and also appeared in English, Spanish, and Dutch versions, all three of which were printed at the end of the fifteenth century. These facts indicate that the work was, and continued until the sixteenth century to be, widely used as a text-book, and suggest the further thought that such widely multiplied and disseminated elementary and popular works are more likely to have survived the stagnant and destructive period of the Black Death and Hundred Years War and to have come down to us than are the more advanced, original, and elaborate works of the thirteenth century. Be that as it may, we must not look upon the De proprietatibus rerum as a specimen of the most advanced medieval scholarship, but rather as an illustration of the rough general knowledge which every person with any pretense to culture was then supposed to possess. At the same time, the large number of authorities cited shows how much wider reading a medieval student might do.

On the other hand, we must not be misled by Bartholomew’s humble tone of self-depreciation nor even by his assertion, repeated at the close as well as the opening of his work, that he presents “little or nothing of my own, but simply the words of the saints and the sayings of the philosophers.” As a matter of fact, he not infrequently alludes to contemporary matters or describes daily life without mentioning any authorities, and his amusing accounts of such animals as cats and dogs, or boys and girls, or his instructions how to set a table and give a dinner, are almost entirely his own and show considerable power of observation and dry humor. His chapters on geography, too, deal in large measure and with unusual fulness with the feudal states and peoples of his own day: Scotland, Ireland, Flanders, Brabant, Anjou, Poitou, and so on through a long list alphabetically arranged. In these and in other chapters he forgets all about the fact that he is supposedly explaining only those things mentioned in the Bible, and is manifestly actuated by a scientific interest in present facts and phenomena. The influence of Isidore’s Etymologies upon Bartholomew’s book is evident, and Bartholomew often makes Isidore his starting point in discussing a given topic. But he also often goes far beyond the other’s brief statements; it seems clear that the scanty contents of the Etymologies are no longer deemed sufficient even in an elementary encylopedia and general text-book. Bartholomew seems to use the scissors less than Thomas of Cantimpré, to state things more in his own words, and not to make such long extracts from or paraphrases of other works.

However, in Bartholomew’s first book, whose subject is God, the first two chapters are taken entirely and perhaps discreetly, since the difficult problem of the Trinity is under discussion, from an Extra of Innocent III, while the third chapter is drawn from more varied authorities, such as Augustine, the treatise on the Trinity ascribed to Boethius,[1330] and the more recent Hugh and Richard, both of St. Victor. Presently the theme of divine names is discussed[1331] and Bartholomew lists and explains the ten Hebrew names of God, which are found also in Isidore, namely: El, Eloe, Sabbaoth, Zelioz or Ramathel, Eyel, Adonay, Ya, Tetragrammaton, Saday, and Eloym.

In the second book on the properties of angels is also discussed the nature of demons.[1332] They are naturally perspicacious in matters of science and powerful by their “sense of nature”—a phrase which we have already met in William of Auvergne, whom, however, I think Bartholomew does not cite; perhaps it was a technical expression that spread rapidly from mouth to mouth of medieval psychologists as such expressions do today,—experience of time, and knowledge of Scripture. They can predict many future events, partly because their knowledge of nature gained through their subtler senses is superior to man’s, partly because of their longer lives which permit them to learn more, partly by angelic revelation. Their bodies were celestial before they transgressed but now are aerial. Apuleius’s characterization of them is repeated via Augustine, whose explanation is also given, that they know occult virtues in nature which are hidden from us and by which they are able to accelerate natural processes and work feats of magic such as those performed by Pharaoh’s magicians.

Bartholomew’s third book may be described as psychological and discusses the human mind or soul (anima), of which definitions by various Greek philosophers are repeated, and the senses. The fourth and fifth books are physiological. These three books seem to be based mainly upon the writings of Constantinus Africanus; less frequently Aristotle and other authorities are cited. One treatise is ascribed to Avicenna and Constantinus which is not in Peter the Deacon’s list of the latter’s works, namely, a treatise on poisonous animals and poisons and presumably a translation of Avicenna by Constantinus.[1333] In this connection we are told that while some animals have poisonous tongues like snakes, others have medicinal and healing tongues like the dog, as Cassiodorus says, and either from the goodness of nature or from some occult property.[1334] We have already noted elsewhere Bartholomew’s acceptance of the usual medieval theory of three brain cells devoted to three mental faculties, in which connection he cites Johannitius or Hunain ibn Ishak.[1335] In discussing the disease of melancholia Bartholomew tells of a noble whom he knew who imagined that he was a cat and insisted upon sleeping under the bed in order to watch the mouse holes.[1336] In a later passage in his seventh book Bartholomew repeats Constantinus’ distinction between mania as an infection of the anterior cell of the brain with injury to the imagination and melancholia as an infection of the central cell with loss of one’s reason.[1337]

In discussing vision Bartholomew gives the views of “an author of the science of perspective” precedence over those of Constantinus.[1338] This author believes that in vision three coterminous pyramids or cones are formed with the apex of each in the pupil of the eye and the base formed by the object seen. One pyramid is made up of species from the object coming along straight lines to the center of the eye. The second pyramid is made by the vision going out from the eye to the object seen. The third pyramid consists of light, which, as Bartholomew explains elsewhere[1339] on the authority of Basel and Dionysius and Augustine, is a distinct substance by which other bodies are illuminated. Light was created three days before sun and moon which are simply vehicles for it. But while this light is always shining, whether visibly or invisibly, it produces illumination only when other bodies are in a condition to receive it. The human eye can see itself only by the reflection of rays, “and possibly the vision delights in the sight of a mirror because through reflection of rays it is, by returning to itself, fortified as it were and in a way strengthened.”[1340]

Bartholomew’s sixth book is entitled, “Of ages,” but really deals more with matters of daily family and domestic life, discussing in addition to age, death, infancy, childhood, manhood, such family relationships as father, mother, and daughter, and such domestic concerns as servants, food and drink, dinners and banquets, sleep and waking, dreams and exercise. This last topic of exercise is discussed largely in the words of a sermon by Fulgentius, but in other chapters Bartholomew writes so vividly from his own observation that he deserves quotation, although the themes are somewhat of a digression from our main subject.[1341]

“The handmaid is a female slave deputed to make herself useful to the housewife. She is assigned to the more laborious and demeaning tasks, she is fed with coarser food, she is clad in meaner clothing, she is oppressed by the yoke of servitude.” Her son becomes a serf and, if she is of servile condition, so does a freeman who marries her, nor is she permitted to marry as she chooses. “Like the serf, she is because of the vice of ingratitude recalled after being manumitted, is afflicted with scoldings, is bruised by rods and beatings, is oppressed by varied and conflicting vexations and anxieties, is scarcely permitted to breathe amid her miseries.” Such painting of her woes does not imply much sympathy on Bartholomew’s part, however, since he concludes by saying that it is written that whoso nourishes his servant delicately will find him insolent in the end.[1342]

Boys have a great capacity for mischief but are susceptible to discipline, if put under tutors and compelled to submit to it. Their constitutions are hot and moist, their flesh is soft, their bodies are flexible, agile, and light; their minds are docile. They lead a safe life without care and worry, appreciating only play, fearing no danger more than the rod, loving apples better than gold. They go naked unashamed; they are heedless of praise or scolding, easily angered and easily placated, easily hurt in the body and unable to endure much work. The hot humor that dominates them makes them restless and fickle. They tend to eat too much and are susceptible to various diseases in consequence. They think only of the present and care nothing for the future; they love games and vanities but refuse to attend to gain and utility. “The least things they think the greatest, and vice versa.” “They want what is hurtful and contrary to them.” They do not remember favors received. All that they see they desire and imitate. They prefer to talk with and take advice from other boys, and shun the company of their elders. They can’t keep secrets. They laugh or cry easily, and they are continually shouting, talking, or chattering, and can scarcely keep still even while they are asleep.[1343]

Girls “are in constitution hot, moist, and of delicate health; in physique graceful and flexible and beautiful; in mental attitude modest and timid and playful; in their social relations well trained in manners, cautious and reticent in speech, luxurious in dress.” After quoting Aristotle to the effect that women generally have longer and softer hair than men and a longer neck, and remarking the peculiarities of their complexions and figures, Bartholomew says further that they have slenderer and more flexible hands and feet, a weaker voice, voluble and ready speech, that they take short steps, and that in mind they tend to be haughty, are prone to wrath, tenacious in hate, merciful, jealous, impatient of labor, docile, tricky, bitter, and “headlong in lust.”[1344] Whether Bartholomew is inconsistent in this passage or believes that the female nature is, the reader must judge.

These are Bartholomew’s instructions for giving a dinner party: “First the food is prepared; at the same time the guests are assembled; chairs and also stools are required; in the dining room tables are set and the table furnishings are arranged and adorned. The guests with the host are placed at the head table, but they do not sit down at table before the hands of the guests are washed; next the host’s children and then the servants are grouped together at table. Spoons, knives, and salt cellars are first placed upon the table. Loaves of bread and cups of wine are presently added. There follow many and varied courses; the butlers and waiters serve each person diligently. The guests joyfully engage in vying with one another in pledging toasts; they are cheered with viols and citharas; now the wines and now the courses are renewed; they divide and share with one another the dishes which happen to be opposite them; finally the fruit and dessert are brought in. When dinner is finished, the table furnishings and remains of food are carried away and the tables are set aside. Hands are again washed and wiped; thanks are returned to God and to the host; for the sake of good cheer the cups go round again and again. When these features of the dinner are over, the guests either are offered couches for some rest, or are allowed to return home.”[1345]

In a chapter on dreams Bartholomew declares that they are sometimes true and sometimes false. One should neither put indiscriminate faith in them nor spurn them entirely, since sometimes certain conjectures concerning the future may be had through dreams. Moreover, the meaning of some dreams is evident at once; others require interpretation. Dreams arise from varied sources, being produced by divine inspiration, by angelic administration, by diabolic illusion, or by natural and bodily causes.[1346]

Bartholomew’s seventh book is medical, treating of infirmities in seventy chapters. His desire to be brief is probably what restrains him from including any long medical concoctions. He continues to make much use of Constantinus Africanus, who is cited in almost every chapter, and whose “many other experiments”[1347] Bartholomew often has not time to include. One of the cures cited from Constantinus is to scarify the shin bones in order to cure a headache, the theory being that this will remove the injurious humor from the head to the lower extremities.[1348] A part of the treatment prescribed for cases of frenzy is to shave the scalp and wash it with tepid vinegar or cover it with plasters made of the lung of a pig or cow. Keeping the patient firmly bound in a dark place, bleeding him, and abstaining from answering his foolish questions are other features of the regimen suggested.[1349] To rouse a patient from a state of stupor and lethargy it is recommended to pull hard at his hair or beard, dash cold water frequently in his face, or make a stench under him.[1350] An “experiment” against epilepsy from Platearius consists in scarifying three drops of blood from the patient’s scalp and at the end of the fit giving them to him to eat with a crow’s egg.[1351] Indeed crow’s eggs alone are regarded as quite beneficial. To Platearius is also credited the following method “of curing or at least palliating leprosy.”[1352] Take a red snake with a white belly, remove the venom, cut off the head and tail, cook it with leeks, and administer it frequently with food,—a preparation roughly similar to theriac. Wine in which a snake has lain putrefying a long time is “a medicine useful for many diseases,” and Bartholomew repeats the tale we have heard before of the woman who caused her blind husband to recover his sight instead of killing him when she cooked a snake instead of an eel with garlic for him to eat. After such liberties had been taken with his blindness, one would expect a husband to recover his sight, if he could!

The poisons of venomous animals differ. The venom of the viper is hot and dry; that of the scorpion, cold and dry; that of the spider, cold and moist. Avicenna says that the poison of the male is really more deadly than that of the female, but female serpents have more teeth and so are perhaps worse on the whole. The venom of the old is more injurious than that of the young; that of a fasting animal is more harmful than that of a full animal; and poisons are worse in summer than winter, and at noon than at night.[1353] “Diascorides” says[1354] that river crabs possess an occult virtue against the bite of mad dogs, and their ashes taken with gentian are a singular remedy. A scorpion sting may be cured by placing oil in which the scorpion has been drowned or boiled upon the puncture, or by pulverizing the scorpion’s body and placing it upon the wound. The idea of course is that the poison will return to the body from which it came.

In book eight Bartholomew discusses the universe and celestial bodies. According to the tradition of the saints there is a visible and an invisible heaven. The visible heaven is multiplex and subdivides into seven heavens, the aerial, ethereal, fiery, Olympian, the firmament, the aqueous or crystalline, and the empyrean. The authority of Scripture concerning the waters above the firmament causes Bartholomew to accept the existence of an aqueous or crystalline heaven. But he rejects Bede’s view that these waters are cold and congealed in order to temper the excessive heat generated by the swift revolution of the other heavens, for Job tells us that there is concord and harmony in the heavens, and cold and humid waters would be contrary to the celestial substance of the heavens. Therefore “the moderns” have in Bartholomew’s opinion “investigated the inmost secrets of philosophy more profoundly,” when, as Alexander of Hales states, they suggest that those waters are neither frigid, fluid, and humid, nor congealed, solid, and ponderous, but on the contrary very mobile and remarkable for their clearness and transparency. It is not because they are congealed but because they are transparent that this heaven is called crystalline.[1355] In other words, the “waters above the firmament” are not really waters. And the original modern investigator who ventured to dispute Bede’s authority on the subject of the waters above the firmament was not Alexander of Hales but, as we have seen, William of Conches, whom Bartholomew lists in his bibliography and quotes in other passages, although he does not mention him by name here.

Of the other heavens Bartholomew gives most space to the empyrean. It is by nature immobile and unmoved and consequently is not essential like the other heavens for the continued generation of things in our inferior world, but rather, as Alexander of Hales says, to round out the universe and the types of bodies in it. Bartholomew continues: “The empyrean heaven is the first body, simplest in nature, the least corporeal, the subtlest, the first firmament of the world, largest in quantity, lucid in quality, spherical in shape, loftiest in location since farthest from the center, embracing in its amplitude spirits and bodies visible and invisible, and the abode of the supreme God; for God may be everywhere, yet he is said especially to be in the heaven, since there shines most powerfully the working of his virtue.”[1356] After this description of the last of the visible heavens as the abode of invisible spirits and of God Himself there does not seem to be much call for an invisible heaven, which Bartholomew himself seems by this time to have forgotten. For the passage just quoted he cites Rabanus as his source “who employs the words of Basil in the Hexaemeron,” but I have been unable to find the passage either in the Hexaemeron of Basil or the works of Rabanus Maurus.[1357] Nor have I been able to find several other citations which Bartholomew makes from Rabanus in matters astronomical and astrological.

A word may be introduced concerning Alexander of Hales, whom Bartholomew has twice cited in the foregoing passages, but whom we probably shall not have occasion to mention again. Like Bartholomew, he was an Englishman and a Franciscan, and Bartholomew may have been either an attendant upon his lectures or his colleague at Paris. He died in 1245 and is known as one of the first to attempt to fit together previous Christian opinion and theology with the newly introduced works of Aristotle and writings of the Arabs. Of this we see evidence in the citations made from him by Bartholomew. But Alexander’s field was primarily theology and not natural science.

While the saints may regard the heavens as manifold and list as many as seven of them,[1358] the philosophers will admit only one heaven, says Bartholomew, who this time correctly quotes Basil as affirming in the Hexaemeron that “the philosophers would rather gnaw out their tongues than admit that there are many heavens.” Bartholomew also presents Aristotle’s view in the Liber de celo et mundo that the heaven is characterized by the greatest possible simplicity and purity and has no division or contrariety of parts. According to the new translation of De celo et mundo it is “a perfect complete unit to which there is no like, neither fabricated nor generated,” and with an equal, single, and circular motion. In the De causis elementorum Aristotle holds further that the heaven is a fifth element, differing in natural properties and distinct from the four elements and not like them subject to generation and corruption.[1359] Indeed, they would destroy one another by their mutual contrariety and repugnance were it not for the conciliating influence of celestial virtue.[1360] But while the heaven is one, it has many orbs and circles of varying figure and magnitude, and there is a greater aggregation of light in the stars than in other parts of the sky. Such variations account for the varying or even contrary effects produced by the heaven in our lower world at different times and places, and explain why the pure sky causes corruption as well as generation here below.

The Aristotelian foundation thus laid for the superstructure of astrological science and art is apparently accepted by Bartholomew, who states that “the Creator established the heaven as the cause and origin of generation and corruption, and therefore it was necessary that it should not be subject to generation and corruption.” In short, the universe divides into two parts. The heaven, beginning with the circle of the moon, is the nobler, simpler, superior, and active portion of the universe. The other part, extending from the sphere of the moon downward to earth’s center, is inferior, passive, acted upon and governed by the heaven. In all his later scientific and astrological discussion Bartholomew implies this hypothesis, and, after the two chapters which we have already summarized on the waters above the firmament and the empyrean heaven, pays no more attention to the seven heavens of the saints. The firmament, “called by the philosophers the first heaven and the last, in whose convexity are situated the bodies of stars and planets,” absorbs his attention during the remaining forty-eight chapters of his eighth book. “By means of its motion, it is the effective principle of generation and corruption in the inferior world.” Rabanus explains how its rays converge as toward a center upon the earth’s surface and exert a concentrated impression there; and the science of perspective also illustrates this. The three less stable elements, air, fire, and water, obey the firmament even to the extent of local motion, as is illustrated by the tides. The element earth is not influenced in this way, but produces diverse species from itself in obedience to the celestial impressions which it receives.

Bartholomew discusses the signs of the zodiac in much the usual astrological fashion. They are given animal names because in their effects they represent the properties of those animals.[1361] In their effects, too, they may be distinguished as hot or cold, masculine or feminine, diurnal or nocturnal; and they are grouped in trios with the four elements and cardinal points and in varied relations with the planets. Each governs its portion of the human body; thus the Ram “dominates the head and face, and produces a hairy body, a crooked frame, an oblique face, heavy eyes, short ears, a long neck.”[1362] Each sign also has its bearings on human life; thus Virgo is “the house of sickness, of serfs and handmaids and the domestic animals. It signifies inconstancy and changing from place to place.”[1363] Bartholomew indeed devotes a separate chapter to “the properties and occult virtues” of each sign “according to the astrologers.”[1364] The seven planets by their progress through the signs and conjunctions in them influence every creature on earth.[1365] Bartholomew outlines their successive control of the formation of the child in the womb. He also devotes a chapter to the influence of each planet. Mars, for example, “disposes men to mobility and levity of mind, to wrath and animosity and other choleric passions; it also fits men for arts employing fire such as those of smiths and bakers, just as Saturn produces agriculturists and porters of heavy weights, and Jupiter on the contrary turns out men adapted to lighter pursuits such as orators and money-changers.”[1366] Bartholomew also discusses the head and tail of the dragon as “two stars which are not planets but yet seem to have the nature and influence of the planets.”[1367] The fixed stars, too, have their influence, causing storms or clear weather and, according to the mathematici, presignifying sad or glad events. Bartholomew further sets forth the theory of the magnus annus or return of all the stars to the same positions after an interval of 15,000 or 36,000 years. “But whatever the philosophers have said concerning it, this much is sure that it is not for us to determine the last day.”[1368] God alone knows. Bartholomew’s most frequently cited authorities on the subject of astrology seem to be Albumasar, Messahala[1369] (Ma Sha’ Allah), and Alphraganus.

Thus Bartholomew, a Franciscan in good standing, who lectured on the Bible at Paris and was called by the General of his Order to lecture in Saxony, in a work intended for elementary students and the general reader, far from engaging in any tilt with the astrologers or attacking their art as involving fatalism and contrary to morality and free will, affirms the general law of the control of earth by sky and repeats with little or no question a mass of astrological detail from Arabian writers. After such an exhibition as this of what a commonplace and matter-of-course affair astrological theory was in the thirteenth century, how impossible it is to have the least sympathy with those specialists in medieval learning who would have the work of Daniel of Morley shunned like the pest because of its astrological doctrine, or account for Bacon’s imprisonment in 1278 by his astrological doctrine, or deny that Albertus Magnus could have written the Speculum astronomiae with its astrological doctrine. But of Bacon and Albertus more later.

Bartholomew’s ninth book deals with time and its parts. He defines a day as the time occupied by a complete revolution of the sun around the earth, and states that a day consists of twenty-four hours, or of four “quarters” of six hours each. But he seems unacquainted with our division of the hour into sixty minutes and the minute into sixty seconds. Instead he subdivides the hour into four “points” or forty “moments.” Each moment is thus equivalent to a minute and a half of our time, and it may be divided further into twelve unciae (ounces), while each uncia includes forty-seven atoms, making 22,560 atoms in an hour as against 3,600 of our seconds. Honorius of Autun in his De imagine mundi, a work written presumably in the first part of the twelfth century, speaks of the hour as a twelfth part of the day, but makes it consist of four “points,” forty “moments,” and 22,560 atoms just as Bartholomew does. But Honorius also divides the hour into ten “minutes,” fifteen “parts,” and sixty ostenta, which last would correspond to our minutes, if his hour was of the same length as ours. Honorius does not mention the unciae of Bartholomew. [1370] Bartholomew further tells us that Sunday is called the Lord’s Day and is privileged in many particulars, since on it the world was created, the Lord was born, rose from the dead, and also sent the Holy Spirit. We have already presented Bartholomew’s discussion of the Egyptian days in an earlier chapter.

The tenth book, in nine brief chapters, is entitled, “Form and Matter,” but after one chapter on form, discusses the elements. An element, according to Constantinus, is a simple substance and the least particle of a compound body. The rest of the chapters are devoted to the particular element fire and to things closely associated with it, such as flame, smoke, sparks, and ashes. Carbo, “Rabanus says, is fire actually incorporated and united with earthly matter.” Bartholomew’s further description suggests our coal, but perhaps he has only charcoal in mind.

The eleventh book treats in sixteen chapters of the element air and its “passions,” such as winds, clouds, rainbows, dew, rain, hail, snow, thunder and lightning, and leads up to the following book on birds, or rather, creatures of the air, since bees, flies, crickets, locusts, bats, and griffins are included in the alphabetical list of thirty-eight chapters. The birds described are for the most part familiar ones: the eagle, hawk, owl, dove, turtle-dove, quail, stork, crow, crane, hen, swallow, kite, partridge, peacock, pelican, screech-owl, sparrow, vulture, hoopoe, phoenix. Some of these creatures place precious stones in their nests to keep off snakes, the eagle employing the gem achates[1371] and the griffin an emerald.[1372]