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?
A geography by Herodotus.
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.
Two passages about magic.
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.
Bartholomew and Arnold of Saxony on stones.
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]
Citations by Arnold of Saxony and by Bartholomew.
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.
Virtues of animals.