MANUSCRIPT AND PRINTED HERBALS 45 



and on the plant-lover there are probably few of the mediaeval 

 writers who exercise so potent a spell. Even in the thirteenth 

 century, that age of great men, Bartholomew the Englishman 

 ranked with thinkers such as Roger Bacon, Thomas Aquinas 

 and Albertus Magnus. He was accounted one of the greatest 

 theologians of his day, and if his lectures on theology were as 

 simple as his writings on herbs, it is easy to understand why 

 they were thronged and why his writings were so eagerly 

 studied, not only in his lifetime but for nearly three centuries 

 afterwards. A child could understand his book on herbs, for, 

 being great, he was simple. But although his work De Pro- 

 prietatibus Rerum (which contains nineteen books) was the 

 source of common information on Natural History throughout 

 the Middle Ages, and was one of the books hired out at a regu- 

 lated price by the scholars of Paris, we know very little of the 

 writer. He spent the greater part of his life in France and 

 Saxony, but he was Enghsh born and was always known as 

 Bartholomseus Anglicus.^ We know that he studied in Paris 

 and entered the French province of the Minorite Order, and 

 later he became one of the most renowned professors of theology 

 in Paris. In 1230 a letter was received from the general of the 

 Friars Minor in the new province of Saxony asking the pro- 

 vincial of France to send Bartholomew and another English- 

 man to help in the work of that province, and the former 

 subsequently went there. We do not know the exact date of 

 De Proprietatihiis Rerum, but it must have been written about 



^ He is sometimes erroneously called Bartholomew de Glanville. Leland, 

 without citing any authority, called him de Glanville. Bale copied Leland in 

 1557 ^nd added a list of writings wrongly attributed to Bartholomew. Quctif 

 and Echard give detailed reasons in pointing out Leland's error. The Parmese 

 chronicler, Salimbene, writing in 1283, refers to him as Bartholomfeus Anghcus, 

 and John de Trittenheim, Abbot of Sparheim (end of fifteenth century), speaks 

 of him as " Bartholomeus natione Anglicus." M. Leopold Dehsle endeavoured 

 to claim him as a Frenchman, but although he spent the greater part of his 

 life abroad, he was always distinguished as " Bartholomaeus AngHcus." That 

 he was a Minorite " de provincia Francia " is no proof that he was a French- 

 man. Batman (1582), on the authority of Bale, describes Bartholomaeus as 

 being " of the noble famihe of the Earles of Suffolk." 



