Note 1317 — Chapter LIV
Reading edition
Bartholomew has already been presented in part to English-speaking readers in Steele’s Medieval Lore, London, 1907, and more recently in excerpts in Coulton’s Social Life in Britain from the Norman Conquest to the Reformation, Cambridge, 1918, but their quotations and most other modern references to him are based upon the later medieval English versions of his work and not upon his own original Latin text. My summary is based directly upon the Latin text as printed by Lindelbach at Heidelberg in 1488:
“Explicit liber de proprietatibus rerum editus a fratre Bartholomeo anglico ordinis fratrum minorum. Anno domini Mcccclxxxviii kalendas vero Junii xii.”
I am indebted to the liberality of the John Crerar Library in Chicago in allowing this rare volume to be transported to Cleveland for my use.
I have also checked up the printed text to some extent by examination of the following MSS at Paris. On the whole the discrepancies between the MSS and printed version seem slight, although a modern critical edition of Bartholomew’s work is certainly desirable, especially in view of the rarity of the editio princeps.
BN 16098, 13th century.
BN 16099, 13th century.
BN 347, 14th century.
Since I finished this chapter a paper has appeared by G. E. Se Boyar, “Bartholomaeus Anglicus and his Encyclopaedia,” in The Journal of English and Germanic Philology, XIX (1920) 168-89.