De Proprietatibus Rerum Research Articles

Why is a Cow below a Lettuce? The Anomalous Placement of the Animal in Bartholomaeus Anglicus' De proprietatibus rerum

Why is a Cow below a Lettuce? The Anomalous Placement of the Animal in Bartholomaeus Anglicus' De proprietatibus rerum

The Life and Times of John Trevisa, Medieval Scholar

John Trevisa (ca.1342-1402), perhaps the greatest of Middle English prose translators of Latin texts into English, was almost an exact contemporary of Geoffrey Chaucer. Trevisa was born in Cornwall, studies at Oxford, and was instituted vicar of Berkeley, a position he held until his death. Over a period of thirty-five years eminent medievalist David Fowler has pieced together an account of Trevisa's life and times by diligently seeking out documents bearing on his activities and translations. This has resulted in a cultural history of fourtheenth-century England that ranges from the administrative, geographical, and linguistic status of Cornwall to the curriculum of medieval university education, and from religious and secular conflicts to the administration of a substantial provincial household and the role of its aristocratic keepers in the Hundred Years War. Fowler provides an analysis of Trevis's known translations the Gospel of Nicodemus, Dialogus inter Militem et Clericum, FitzRalph's Defensio Curatorum, the Polychronicon, De Regimine Principum and De Proprietatibus Rerum. He also advances the hypothesis that Trevisa was one of the scholars responsible for the first complete translation of the scriptures into English: the Wycliffite Bible. An appendix contains a collection of biographical and historical references designed to illustrate Fowler's contention that Trevisa may have been responsible for the revisions of Piers the Plowman now known as the B and C texts.

A medieval scientific encyclopedia "renewed by goodly printing"; Wynkyn de Worde's English De proprietatibus rerum.

Wynkyn de Worde published c. 1495 the first printed edition of John Trevisa's English translation of an influential work of science composed by Bartholomew the Englishman in Latin in the thirteenth century, De Proprietatibus Rerum (DPR). The design of the Worde's book, the use of Latin in the rubrics, and the visual vocabulary of the illustrations bring readers of English into the circle of learning. First, the plan of organization of Bartholomew's encyclopedic work is analyzed and both that structure and the expository style of the work are related to memorial reading and use as a textbook. Next, the widespread use of DPR in Latin and vernacular languages is reviewed, the suggestion that certain of its books seem to have been used more than others is made, and the reliance of English readers, such as Roger Thorney, who commissioned de Worde's edition, on de Worde for learned books printed in their provincial tongue is pointed out. Finally, through comparison with certain manuscript and other printed editions, the methods de Worde used to make the book readable are explained, the layout is shown to support the idea of system, and the function of the pictures as visual texts carrying scientific ideas is demonstrated.

The Court of Sapience ed. by E. Ruth Harvey

STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER E. RUTH HARVEY, ed. The Court ofSapience. Toronto Medieval Texts and Translations, vol. 2. Toronto: University ofToronto Press, 1984. Pp. xlv, 226. $35.00. The Court of Sapience is an attractive fragment, a poem of learning perhaps written toward the middle of the fifteenth century. The author, after narrating the debate between the Four Daughters of God, a debate resolved with the aid of the title figure, describes the entire world of knowledge. His goal is to show how human virtue (and thus salvation) depends upon wisdom and learning. The only previous edition of the poem, by Robert Spindler (1927), is valuable primarily for destroying Stephen Hawes's attribution of the poem to Lydgate; moreover, a fourth manuscript version of the text-Columbia University Library, Plimpton 256-has appeared since Spindler's edition. The time is ripe for a modern look at the text, and this Ruth Harvey's edition offers. On the whole, Harvey does a solid job on the poem. She provides a fairly conservative transcription of the text as printed by Caxton and exhaustive textual annotation. The notes to the text are properly billed as a "Textual Commentary," since they give extensive information about a variety of learned topics which emerge in the course of the poet's description of the Seven Liberal Arts and of two of the theological virtues. Particularly impressive is Harvey's tracing down every possible use of Bartholomaeus Anglicus's De proprietatibus rerum, a source for an extensive block of natural description in the middle of the poem. But in spite ofsolid achievement, this edition leaves one only whetted, not satiated. Harvey clearly knows enough to provide an edition of The Court which will satisfy (as Spindler's has done) the next half century's worth of scholars of fifteenth-century poetry. For reasons which are not clear to me, since performing these tasks would seem to follow logically from a decision to edit the poem, Harvey fails to provide a good deal of information I should have thought to be central to her task. Harvey nearly ignores what should haveformed the most pressing reason for a new edition-the opportunity to improve upon Spindler's text. Iffor no other reason than his ignorance of the Plimpton copy, Spindler is inadequate. Moreover, the addition of a new textual source should imply the presentation of a full collation and some attempt at an authoritative text with explanation of variant readings. On this score Harvey simply demurs. She does make an effort at explaining manuscript relations (pp. 200 REVIEWS xvi-xviii) but finds that "no decisive conclusions" are possible. As a result she opts for a conservative presentation and offers the text of Caxton's print, corrected as necessary. Such a presentation would leave no room for argument, were Harvey careful in her further procedures. As she notes (p. xx), Caxton's text provides the best copy text since it is the fullest version of the poem-fuller than the Trinity manuscript that Spindler printed. But if part of the justification for an edition rests on the discovery of Plimpton, then its readings need to share top billing with Caxton: the manuscript deserves a full and useful collation. In fact, the textual variants are selective, less extensive for the same manuscripts than Spindler's. They are selective on no very discernible principle ("all significant variant readings") and are buried in the back of the book (pp.163-87), where they are extremely hard to use in conjunction with the printed text of Caxton. Moreover, cor­ rections of this copy text are not marked by brackets in the text (pp. 3-80). And at least some of Harvey's retentions of Caxton readings might be thought to require some explanations in the Textual Notes: excepting the question of metrics, the volume probably shies further away from matters explicitly textual than it should. In the notes that do appear, including those offering translations of the text, Harvey leans a little too much on "perhaps" for my taste. One's confidence in an editor depends a good deal on how assured she appears to be in handling that text about which...

An Optical Theme in The Merchant’s Tale

An Optical Theme in The Merchant’s Tale

Rex imago dei: Charles V of France and the Livre des propriétés des choses

The subject of this paper is the Livre des propriétés des choses, the fourteenth-century French translation of the thirteenth-century encyclopedia De proprietatibus rerum. The translation was made for Charles V of France, and the original copy is lost. Here a reconstruction is offered of the appearance of the frontispiece of the royal exemplar. The textual additions of the translator and the iconography of this frontispiece reveal a new conception of the meaning and usage of the encyclopedia, as well as a concerted attempt to draw this authoritative work into the orbit of royal aims and aspirations. The reconstructed frontispiece also allows us to correct an error, which originates with Montfaucon, concerning the illustration of the original copy of the Livre des propriétés des choses.

Science and Structure in Milton's Doctrine of Divorce

The scientific and pseudo-scientific lore in Milton's prose, like that in his poetry, is impressive for its bulk and its conventionality. What may at first seem recondite information is anticipated repeatedly in such vernacular encyclopedias and common handbooks as Bartholomew's De Proprietatibus Rerum (c. 1230), Stephen Batman's Batman vppon Bartholome (1582), Peter de la Primaudaye's The French Academie (1618), and John Swan's Speculum Mundi (1643). The range is tremendous: astronomy, astrology, herbal, animal, and lapidary lore, physiology, medical lore—all are drawn upon in their customary associations for illustration, argument, invective, and the other devices of controversial prose. Medical and anatomical allusions recur with great frequency. Anyone writing about the ills of the body politic, as Milton did, will make the expected comparisons with human disease; but the emphasis in Of Reformation and Eikonoklastes on fevers, flesh and skin diseases, insanity, and other ailments goes beyond the casual to the insistent and the directive. In Eikonoklastes and the Defences, for example, the stress falls upon disease and distortion rather than remedy : distemper, palsy, abortion, false pregnancy, and miscarriage. In these Milton is arguing more against an opponent than for an idea, and the morbid associations are part of his strategy.

Early Music Books in the Rare Books Division of the Library of Congress

The Music Division of the Library of Congress contains some of the Library's richest materials, and the Library generally regards with pride the comprehensive and valuable research collection in the field of music that has been built up under the able direction of the chiefs who have administered that Division from its earliest beginnings. By the very nature of the complex organization of the institution, however, it has not been possible to concentrate all of the Library's music materials in the one Division. Occasionally the references to music in a particular volume may not be its major element and accordingly the work has not been classified as a volume of music. Frequently the Library has accepted gifts of collections of a general content with the understanding that their integrity would not be violated; similarly the Library has made purchases of other general collections which again it has deemed wiser to maintain as integral units rather than to disperse them. A few people have long been aware of many of the musical titles and other volumes of musical interest in the custody of the Library's Rare Books Division, but since many of these books are not included in either Julia Gregory's Catalogue of Early Books on Music (before 1800) (Washington, 1913) or the supplement by Hazel Bartlett, published in 1944, their existence is often overlooked by music scholars. It is at the insistence of these scholars that we promised to prepare a short paper on the early music books published prior to 1521, which for one reason or another are shelved in the Library's Rare Books Division. The oldest volume of musical interest is a manuscript on vellum of Bartholomaeus Anglicus' De proprietatibus rerum, described as number 129 of the Library's manuscripts recorded in the Seymour de Ricci and William J. Wilson Census of Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in the United States (New York, 1935). Dated about 1400, the manuscript was written in France; it came into the Library's possession in 1933. The final leaves of this encyclopedic work contain several chapters on modulation and various types of early musical instruments, (i.e., tuba, buccina, tibia, sambuca, symphonia, cithara, lira, cimbala, sistrum, and tintinnabulum). This work because of its varied and informative content enjoyed an enormous popularity as is demonstrated by the many early printed editions

More Sources of Rastell's Interlude of the Four Elements

Recent publications have suggested a considerable number of sources of the cosmological and cosmographical material in John Rastell's Interlude of the Four Elements. M. E. Borish maintains that the source of Rastell's “cosmology, natural history, and geography is Gergor Reisch's Margarita Philosophica.” Elizabeth M. Nugent affirms that Rastell garnered his material not only from Reisch but also from Bartholomaeus Anglicus' De proprietatibus rerum, Caxton's Mirrour of the World, Sacrobosco's Textus de Sphaera, and Martin Waldseemüller's Cosmographiae Introductio (to which was appended Amerigo Vespucci's Quattuor navigationes and Waldseemüller's huge world map of 1507). I wish to add to this list of sources a number of pertinent texts which have been overlooked.

Rare Medical Books

ON the occasion of the seventieth birthday earlier this year of the late Prof. Harvey Cushing, Schuman's of New York brought out, under the title of “Seventy Noteworthy Medical Rarities”, an illustrated and annotated catalogue to which are prefixed a portrait of Dr. Cushing, taken about forty years ago, and an appreciation of the eminent surgeon and bibliophile by Dr. Lawrence Reynolds. Among the notable works listed in the catalogue may be mentioned a thirteenth century medical manuscript on vellum containing some of the works of Constantinus Africanus, Giles of Corbeil and others, the work of Bartholomaeus Anglicus entitled “De Proprietatibus Rerum” (1535), Ambroise Paré's “Dix Livres de la Chirurgie” (1564), Gasparo Aselli's book on the lacteals (1627), Robert Boyle's “Sceptical Chymist” (1661) and modern works by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sir William Osler and S. Weir Mitchell.