Swallows have gems called celidonii in their gizzards, one white and one red. The red variety is called masculine because it is of greater virtue than the white kind. These stones are especially valuable if they have been extracted from the chick before it touches the ground, “as is said in Lapidarius where their virtues are described as Constantinus says.”[1373] Lapidarius can scarcely mean Marbod’s poem on gems, since he wrote later than Constantinus Africanus, and while he discusses the chelidonius, he says nothing of extracting it so soon and describes the colors of its two varieties as black and red,[1374] and so does Bartholomew later on.[1375] Marcellus Empiricus had called them black and white.[1376] Chelidonius seems to be derived from the Greek word for swallow, χελιδών, and to mean the swallow-stone. Pliny mentions two varieties but simply states that they are like the swallow in color, not that they come from its gizzard. Furthermore he describes the color of one as purple on one side, of the other as “purple besprinkled with black spots.”[1377] Solinus mentions swallows but says nothing of any stone connected with them. Bartholomew, however, also mentions the herb celidonia or swallow-wort. He cites Macrobius for the story that, if anyone blinds the young of swallows, the parent birds restore their offspring’s sight by anointing their eyes with the juice of this herb, a statement which is also found in Pliny.[1378] Not only does the swallow contain gems of great virtue and know of healing herbs; it has medical properties itself. For instance, blood extracted from its right wing is a remedy for the eyes.

Of the birds described by Bartholomew the upupa or hoopoe is especially associated with the practice of magic. Pliny cites the poet Aeschylus as saying that the bird changes its form;[1379] and from Aristotle to modern French peasants it has been believed to build its nest of human ordure.[1380] After quoting Isidore, who in part uses Pliny,[1381] for the bird’s supposed filthy habits, its frequenting sepulchers, and the statement that anyone anointed with its blood will see demons suffocating him in his dreams, Bartholomew adds that its heart is used in sorceries. Students of nature (Phisici) say that when it grows old and cannot see or fly, its offspring tear off its outworn pinions and bathe its eyes with the juices of herbs—thus just reversing the relation between the swallow and its young—and warm it under their wings until its feathers grow again and, perfectly renovated, it is able to see and fly as well as they. In Basil’s Hexaemeron a similar story is told of the filial devotion of young storks toward their aged parent. The hoopoe’s renovation by its young also is included in the Latin bestiaries,[1382] but Bartholomew appears to cite Phisici rather than Physiologus.[1383] Thomas of Cantimpré’s chapter on the hoopoe is similar to Bartholomew’s except that all he says to connect it with magic is that anointing one’s temples with its blood protects one from sorcerers and enchanters; but “how this is, Experimenter does not state.” Vincent of Beauvais gives a somewhat fuller account of the hoopoe in his Speculum naturale and the bird’s properties are also treated by Albertus Magnus in his De animalibus,[1384] and in the De mirabilibus mundi ascribed to him, also by Petrus Hispanus in the Thesaurus pauperum,[1385] and by Arnald of Villanova in Remedia contra maleficia. For the use of the bird’s heart in magic Vincent cites a Liber de natura rerum, which perhaps is the Liber rerum cited by Thomas of Cantimpré, who, however, in that case failed to copy the statement in question. Vincent attributes to “Pythagoras in The Book of the Romans,” the statement that sprinkling a sleeping person with the blood of the hoopoe will cause him to see phantasms of demons, which is essentially the same statement that Bartholomew draws from Isidore and Pliny. But Bartholomew sometimes cites Pythagoras in The Book of the Romans. These instances show the difficulty of dealing with medieval citations, but on the whole indicate that Vincent used independently the same sources as Thomas and Bartholomew and made a different selection from them.

In the thirteenth book Bartholomew deals with the element water, with wells, streams, seas, ponds, pools, and drops of water, with some particular bodies of water such as the Tigris, Euphrates, Jordan, Lake of Tiberias, and Mediterranean Sea. In the last chapter fish are considered. As in the account of birds, use is made of Isidore and Pliny, notably concerning the cleverness with which fish escape the snares laid for them by fishermen. Some fish are said to help their fellows withdraw from the basket-like traps set for them by fishermen by seizing their tails in their mouths and pulling them out backwards. Aristotle, too, is cited and Avicenna is referred to several times on the question whether a particular fish is edible or not. But an authority especially employed in this chapter is Jorath or Iorat, who in the bibliography at the end of the work is called a Chaldean. From his book on animals Bartholomew takes such details as that there are fish who live only three hours, who conceive from dew alone or in accord with the phases of the moon and the rising and setting of the stars. Dolphins, when a man is drowning, can tell from the odor whether he has ever eaten the flesh of a dolphin. If he has not, they rescue him and bring him safe to land; if he has, they devour him on the spot.

Bartholomew also depends upon Jorath for his account of whales, which were not treated of by Pliny. The whale possesses a superabundance of sperm which floats on the water and, when collected and dried, turns to amber. When hungry, the whale has only to open its mouth and emit a fragrant odor like amber, and the other fish, attracted and delighted thereby, swim into its jaws and down its throat. On some occasions, however, this pleasant breath, if it may be so termed, of the whale saves the other fish instead of luring them on to destruction. When a certain serpentine and venomous fish approaches, they take refuge behind the whale, who then repels the fetid odor of the newcomer by the sweetness of his own effusion. While Bartholomew lists the whale along with fish, he notes that Jorath says that terrestrial matter dominates in it over water, and that consequently it becomes very corpulent and fat, and in its old age dust collects on its back to such an extent that vegetation grows there and the creature is often mistaken for an island and lures sailors to their destruction,—a reminiscence, we may suppose, of one of Lucian’s stories. So fat is the whale that he must be wounded deeply to feel it at all, but once his inner flesh is reached by the weapon, he cannot endure the bitterness of the salt water, seeks the shore, and is easily captured. The whale cherishes its young with wondrous love, and when they are stranded on shoals it frees them by spouting water over them. When a severe storm is raging, it swallows them and they abide safely in its belly until the storm is past, when it vomits them forth again.

In the fourteenth book Bartholomew treats of earth, and besides defining mountains, hills, valleys, plains, fields, meadows, deserts, caves, and ditches in general, describes over thirty particular peaks or mountain ranges, most of which are named in the Bible, like Ararat, Bethel, Hermon, Hebron, and Horeb. But in the fifteenth book, on Provinces, his geography is that of classical antiquity and of the feudal world of his own time rather than that of Scripture. Where the medieval region was known under the same name in antiquity, he is apt to continue to use the old description of it, even though it may be really out-of-date and no longer closely applicable. Sometimes, however, as in the chapter on Burgundy, he uses only a little of Isidore’s description and apparently writes the rest of the paragraph from personal knowledge. And in the case of new localities and names, for which he can find no ancient and early medieval authorities, he describes the province intelligently and accurately as it is in his own time. On the whole his account, although its 175 chapters are brief, is of considerable value[1386] for the political geography of Europe in the thirteenth century, both as a general survey showing what regions he deemed important enough to mention[1387] and what he thought might be omitted, and also often for particular details concerning particular places, while it is sometimes enlivened by the spice of local or racial prejudice.

Citing Isidore, Bartholomew divides the world as in a T map into Asia, occupying one-half the circle, and Europe and Africa each occupying a quarter. Indeed he says later that Africa is smaller than Europe;[1388] Africa of course had not yet been circumnavigated. In speaking of Alemannia he alludes to other provinces “in either Germany” which are not included in his list of chapter headings: Austria and Bavaria near the Danube, Alsace along the Rhine, “and many others which it would be tedious to enumerate one by one.”[1389] He describes Apulia as the maritime region in Italy separated from the island of Sicily by an arm of the sea, and as a very populous land, full of gold and silver, rich in grain, wine, and oil, famous for its renowned cities, well fortified in castles and towns, fertile and fecund in varied crops. Brindisi (Brundusium) is its metropolis, and across the sea from Apulia to the south is Barbary.[1390] Bartholomew thus uses the term “Apulia” as “Le Puglie” is used today, to include both ancient Apulia and Calabria, which he does not mention by that name. His description testifies to the greater prosperity of that region under the Normans and Frederick II than in later times, and also shows that Bartholomew is not blind to economic conditions in his survey of various regions. He is very apt, indeed, to tell whether the soil is well-watered and fertile or rocky and arid, and to describe the other resources of the district and the characteristics of the peoples inhabiting it. He speaks in high praise of the extensive dominions and sea-power of Venice and of the justice and concord of its citizens.[1391] He also recognizes the importance of the wool trade between England and Flanders.[1392]

Bartholomew often undertakes to state the boundaries of a region under discussion. Sometimes he is clear and convincing in this, as when he states that Gascony used to be a part of Aquitaine, that it is bounded by the Pyrenees, the Ocean, and the county of Toulouse, and approaches the territory of the Poitevins to the north; that it is drained by the Garonne river and that Bordeaux is its metropolis.[1393] Sometimes his statements are confusing, but we must remember that feudal states were very difficult to bound exactly and varied greatly in extent from time to time. Some mistakes in the points of the compass are perhaps slips of copyists rather than of Bartholomew. He speaks of Brabant and Lorraine as the westernmost or frontier provinces of Germany. Brabant is bounded on the north by Frisia, the Britannic Ocean (North Sea), and the Gulf of Flanders; on the west by lower Gaul and on the south by upper France. It is watered by the Meuse and Scheldt.[1394] Lorraine is bounded by Brabant, the Rhine, Alsace, the region of Sens, and Belgic Gaul. Metz is located in it.[1395] Flanders is a province of Belgic Gaul next the seacoast, with Germany to the east, the Gallic sea to the west, and the region of Sens and Burgundy to the south.[1396]

Bartholomew is uncertain whether France is named from the Franks or from a free hangman (a franco carnifice) who became king at Paris and from whom the executioners received privileges. Isidore does not mention Francia, so that Bartholomew does not derive this etymology from him. He seems uncertain also whether to identify France with all ancient Gaul or simply with Belgic Gaul. He would carry it south only to the province of Narbonensis and the Pennine Alps, but east to the Rhine and Germany. This perhaps is an attestation of the growing territorial power of the French monarch, but perhaps is also a hold-over from the ancient boundaries of Gaul. At any rate many of his other regions would overlap and conflict with a France of this size. He extols the stone and cement about Paris, which give it an advantage over other localities in building construction, and he further eulogizes the city itself as the Athens of his age which elevates the science and culture not of France only but all Europe.[1397]

Léopold Delisle, writing in the Histoire Littéraire de la France, endeavored to claim Bartholomew as a Frenchman, despite the Anglicus that regularly accompanies his name. Yet for all Bartholomew’s praise of Paris and Venice, his chapters on England, Ireland, Scotland, and Brittany[1398] are alone almost enough to determine his nationality. He asserts that Brittany should be called Britannia Minor, and the island Britannia Maior or Great Britain, since Brittany was settled by fugitive Britons from the island and the daughter should not be raised to an equality with the mother country, especially since it cannot equal Great Britain either in population or merit.[1399] Also Bartholomew represents the Irish as savages[1400] and describes the Scots in very unfavorable terms. His view is that if they have any good customs, they borrowed them from the English. He admits, however, that the Scots would be good-looking in face and figure, but then adds the insulting condition, if they would not insist on deforming themselves by wearing their national costume.[1401] But as for England, or Albion as it was once called, after describing it as the largest island in the (Atlantic) ocean and recounting some of its legends and history, Bartholomew quotes a metrical description of it as a fertile corner of the world, a rich island which has little need of the rest of the world but whose products all the rest of the world requires, and whose people are happy, jocose, and free of mind, tongue, and hand.[1402] Censure of and prejudice against all others who claim to be British, ill-concealed insular pride! Who can doubt that the writer is an Englishman?

Some writer named Herodotus is cited a good deal by Bartholomew for such regions as Poitou, Picardy, Saxony, Sclavia, Scotland, and Thuringia, of which the Greek historian Herodotus of course knew nothing and said nothing.

The inhabitants of Finland, we are told, are a barbarous race “occupied with magic arts.” They practice divination by means of the number of knots in a ball of thread and sell favorable winds to the sailors who navigate along their shores. In reality, Bartholomew explains, the demons send the winds or not, in order to secure the souls of the Finns in the end.[1403] While we are on the subject of magic, a passage from Bartholomew’s next book may be noted.[1404] Discussing the gem Heliotrope, he cites Isidore for the statement that “it manifests the stupidity of enchanters and magicians who glory in their prodigies, for they deceive men’s eyes in their operations just as this gem does, of which he says by way of illustration that together with the herb of the same name and certain incantations it deceives the gaze of the spectators and causes them not to see the man who carries it.” But when we turn to the Etymologies,[1405] we find that Isidore simply quotes the sentence of Pliny, “This too is a manifest instance of the impudence of the magicians that they say that the bearer of this stone cannot be seen if he joins to it the herb Heliotrope and adds certain prayers.” Bartholomew has evidently put his own interpretation upon the passage.

The last passage has introduced us to Bartholomew’s sixteenth book on gems, minerals, and metals. Valentin Rose,[1406] in what Langlois praised as “sa belle dissertation sur le De lapidibus aristotélique et sur le Lapidaire d’Arnoldus Saxo,”[1407] exploited a hitherto obscure German writer, Arnold of Saxony, who appears to be cited only by Vincent of Beauvais and of whose works but a single manuscript is known. Yet Rose would have us believe that Albertus Magnus made much use of him without acknowledgment in his work on minerals[1408] and that Bartholomew did the same in his sixteenth book. I shall endeavor to show that it is much more likely that Arnold copied Bartholomew. First, it is less likely that Bartholomew, who was called to Magdeburg to instruct the Saxons, possibly after his De proprietatibus rerum had been completed, would have borrowed from one of them than that the opposite should be the case. Second, Bartholomew’s work is much fuller than Arnold’s which Rose admits is “meager and mechanical.” Third, Bartholomew’s work is professedly a compilation; his object is to cite his authorities and he usually does so scrupulously; hence if he made much use of Arnold, he would certainly mention him somewhere. Fourth, in descriptions of particular stones Arnold of Saxony cites no authorities but merely makes the lump statement at the start that he uses Aristotle, Aaron and Evax, by whom he means Marbod’s poem, and “Diascorides”; Bartholomew on the other hand in the case of each gem makes distinct citations from Isidore, Lapidarius,[1409] and “Diascorides,” all of whom he is evidently using directly but with discrimination and in different combinations in each particular case. Fifth, the same stones are treated more fully by Bartholomew than by Arnold, whose terse descriptions suggest the style of an abbreviator. Thus Bartholomew devotes two columns to the sapphire; Arnold gives it but eleven lines. Sixth, although Rose denied that Arnold used Aristotle and “Diascorides” except in his other work De virtute universali, and contended that in his De virtutibus lapidum he used only Marbod and one other unknown source, in point of fact almost every passage in Arnold which Rose refers to this unknown source is given by Bartholomew as from “Diascorides.” If, therefore, Arnold’s unknown source is not “Diascorides,” it must be Bartholomew. The natural inference is that while Bartholomew has made direct use of some treatise passing under the name of Dioscorides, Arnold has not seen this treatise itself but has probably condensed or extracted it at second-hand from Bartholomew without acknowledging his indebtedness to Bartholomew at all and only vaguely acknowledging his debt to “Diascorides” in his preface. This inference is supported by the use made of Isidore on stones by our two authors; Bartholomew uses Isidore directly and cites book and chapter; Arnold repeats indirectly through Marbod a bare skeleton of brief phrases which originally were in Isidore.[1410]

Rose further asserted, without printing the passages in question to support his contention, that Albertus Magnus had simply copied a number of citations from Arnold, such as Jorach on animals, Pictagoras in The Book of the Romans, Esculapius in De membris, Zeno in De naturalibus, Velbetus in De sensibus, and Alchyldis De venenis. But we have already noted that Bartholomew cites Jorath and Pythagoras; Zeno, too, is in his bibliography, and in the introduction to his eighteenth book he cites the Liber Escolapii de occultis membrorum virtutibus. Vincent of Beauvais also cites these works more than once. I do not believe that Bartholomew took his citations from Arnold, and I doubt if either Albert or Vincent did. The probability is that such books were common property then, however little may be known about them today, and that it would be as easy then for anyone to lay his hand on these books as on the works of Arnold of Saxony, whom Vincent alone mentions. In discussing other mineral substances than gems, such as metals, sulphur, salt, soda, glass, Bartholomew cites Aristotle, Avicenna, and Platearius as well as Lapidarius, Isidore, and “Diascorides,” but in the seventeenth book on trees and herbs he continues to cite “Dyascorides” and Isidore, although also making extensive use of Pliny. In the eighteenth book on animals his list of authorities widens again and he cites Solinus, Papias, Marcianus, Aristotle, Theophrastus, Avicenna, and Isaac, but Pliny continues to be his chief reliance.

In the introduction to this book Bartholomew takes the view, supported by the authority both of Pliny and of John of Damascus,[1411] that all kinds of animals were created for man’s benefit. Even fleas and vermin, like wild beasts and reptiles, are useful in leading him to recognize his own infirmity and to invoke the name of God. But furthermore “there is nothing in the body of an animal which is without manifest or occult medicinal virtue.” Escolapius in The Occult Virtues of Members states that hemorrhoids may be cured by sitting on a lion’s skin, and Bartholomew lists other examples of amulets, ligatures, and suspensions from Pliny and the Viaticum of Constantinus Africanus as well as “Dyascorides” and “Pitagoras in The Book of the Romans.” The knowledge of medicinal herbs and the semi-human emotions or moral virtues supposed to be possessed by animals also receive the usual treatment. Bartholomew informs us that the deadly basilisk loses its venomous character when burned to an ash, and that its ashes are considered useful in operations of alchemy and especially in the transmutation of metals.[1412] Jerome and Solinus are cited concerning dragons who overturn ships by flying against their sails, and of the use made by the Ethiopians of the blood of dragons against the summer’s heat and of their flesh for divers diseases. For as David says, “Thou gavest him for food to the peoples of Ethiopia.”[1413] Marvelous monsters of India are not forgotten, and Aristotle is cited concerning a terrible man-eating wolf in India with three sets of teeth, a lion’s foot, a scorpion’s tail, human face and voice. Its voice is furthermore terrible like the sound of a trumpet, and it is swift as a deer.[1414] Bartholomew’s credulity and scepticism vary with the attitude of his authorities. When he finds them in disagreement over the question whether the beaver castrates itself in order to escape its hunters—Cicero, Juvenal, Isidore, and Physiologus asserting this, while Pliny, Dyascorides, and Platearius deny it—he prefers the arguments of the latter, especially since the experience of his own time supports their view.[1415]

Physiologus is cited a number of times[1416] by Bartholomew concerning the snake, crocodile, elephant, wolf, wild ass or onager, the onocentaur who is half human and half ass, panther, siren, and taxo or melus. Rather strangely he does not cite Physiologus in describing the lion. Bartholomew’s citations of Physiologus bear out the points we have made in an earlier chapter that Physiologus is one thing, and the allegorical interpretation of passages cited from Physiologus another thing, that Physiologus means what it says, “Natural Scientist,” and not allegorist or moralizer. For although a primary purpose of Bartholomew’s own work is supposed to be the elucidation of the truth concealed in Scripture under the symbolism of natural phenomena, he cites Physiologus simply for zoological data and omits entirely the moral application and spiritual allegory which it has become customary to associate with the term Physiologus. Moreover, much which Bartholomew ascribes to Physiologus cannot be found in any of the bestiaries which are commonly associated with that name.[1417] This again shows how the middle ages added to its ancient authorities.

In his nineteenth and last book Bartholomew states that he will treat “first of color, then of odor, then of savor, last of liquor.” The discussion of color occupies the first thirty-six chapters in which Aristotle is more frequently cited than any other authority. The citations become less numerous from chapter eleven to thirty-six[1418] while particular colors are being described, and where Bartholomew perhaps gives us some original information. Isaac seems to be Bartholomew’s chief authority in the chapters upon smell and taste. Concerning the latter matter Bartholomew states that the theories of philosophers and medical men disagree.[1419] Under the caption of Liquor he describes honey, mead, claretum (which was a mixture of wine, honey, and spices), milk, butter, and cheese. These last suggest eggs, and chapters 77 to 113 are devoted to those of various animals. The work then proceeds to consider weights and measures, and concludes with chapters describing various musical instruments.[1420]