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The Journey of a Book: Bartholomew the Englishman and the Properties of Things (review)

In this insightful work, Elizabeth Keen traces the text of a medieval compendium, De proprietatibus rerum, on its journey from thirteenth-century Europe to the library of Sir Joseph Banks. Carefully following each separating or converging strand of meaning or way of reading, like so many lines on a complicated map, she illustrates how and why this particular text remained a living work among English readers over so many centuries, and casts light on the mental universes of its diverse readerships. Such themes as enclosure and mendicancy, orthodoxy and heterodoxy, preaching and contemplation, agricultural practice, land ownership, book ownership, memory, allegory, social order and disruption, nationalism, and Protestantism are all part of this rich topography. There is a pleasing symmetry in the fact that this study of a book about everything, itself becomes a book about everything, as the author’s focus widens to accommodate each new context. Despite the complexity of her task, Keen accomplishes it with clarity and a steady momentum of argument. The Journey of a Book is thus a satisfying, as well as informative and thought-provoking, read. Irrespective of the contested identity of Bartholomew himself, Keen’s point of departure is that his work, ‘Properties’, is a compilatio of the late twelfth/early thirteenth century, and is located within a firmly Franciscan milieu. She emphasises, beginning with an interesting historiographical discussion, how such works were both authoritative collections of important facts and opinions, and exegetical texts intended to illustrate the workings of God’s creation and the path to salvation. Although medieval compilatio exist in a continuum with scientific observation writings of later periods, the medieval works were not merely early, or flawed, examples of the scientific endeavour, but a distinct genre with their own intrinsic worth. However, Keen also highlights that the meaning of ‘Properties’ was not static, but in constant flux over the long duration of its reception by English audiences. This is perhaps a truism, but one which has never been as convincingly or empathetically teased apart as in this book.