Ithaca College

Michael Twomey, Dana Professor of Humanities and Arts, Department of English, has published a bibliographical essay about the medieval encyclopedist Bartholomaeus Anglicus (Bartholomew the Englishman) in Oxford Bibliographies, a peer-reviewed, selectively curated, online guide to scholarship in a variety of academic disciplines.  In the words of the “About” page of the publisher, Oxford University Press, “Oxford Bibliographies provides faculty and students alike with a seamless pathway to the most accurate and reliable resources for a variety of academic topics. Every article in our database is an authoritative guide to the current scholarship, written and reviewed by academic experts, with original commentary and annotations.”

Twomey’s article covers the biography of Bartholomaeus, the date and contents of his encyclopedia, issues regarding the manuscripts and early printed editions, and the dissemination and reception of the Latin and vernacular versions.

Bartholomaeus Anglicus (b. ca. 1190, d. ca. 1270) is known for the encyclopedia De proprietatibus rerum (“On the properties of things”), which he compiled while teaching at the Sorbonne in Paris and in the Franciscan cathedral school in Magdeburg, Germany.  His encyclopedia was one of the most popular books in the Middle Ages and early modern period, surviving in hundreds of manuscripts.  It was continuously in print, both in Latin and in nearly every Western European vernacular language, from the beginning of printing until 1609.  It has been considered by many to be “Shakespeare’s encyclopedia,” although this belief is due partly to the presence of a forged signature by William Ireland (1775-1835; see image) on the first page of a sixteenth-century English translation.

In 2007, the Belgian publisher Brepols began issuing the first modern edition.  Twomey is a member of the editorial team that produced Volume One, which contains Books I through IV.  He has also edited Book XIV, to appear at a later date.

Citation: “Bartholomaeus Anglicus.” Oxford Bibliographies Online, in “Medieval Studies.” Ed. Paul E. Szarmach.  New York: Oxford University Press, 2017-03-30. URL:  http://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780195396584/obo-9780195396584-0225.xml?rskey=Jp1S2l&result=1.

Image:  Forged Shakespearean ex libris in a British Library copy of the 1535 edition of De proprietatibus rerum, published by Thomas Berthelet (STC 1537).