In 'Properties' Bartholomew cites Physiologus and other sources in his two main chapters on the bee, but numerous brief mentions of it in other chapters serve to carry forward and remind us of Bartholomew's main teaching themes: those of authority, discipline and obedience to one’s superiors; of useful, cooperative labour through one’s lifespan; of the sweetness and nourishment of God's word flourishing in fertile soil; and of the Franciscan ideal of worship through sensory awareness of natura. These themes are intertwined with threads of imagery, including that of bees and other creatures in action; of the seasons and waxing and waning growth; of rest and refreshment; of rebelliousness and submission.
In the Praefatio Bartholomew situates himself and his work firmly within the established genre of compilatio as a ‘gathering’ or ‘harvesting’ of useful fruits of others’ labours, by describing himself as a gleaner, the humble and impoverished one who gathers up the harvesters’ leavings.[13] Like Hugh of Kirkstall, Bartholomew stresses the idea of genealogical descent and the passing-on of virtue when he refers, in Book 17’s chapter on the vine, to the growing vine-shoot as the daughter of a fertile mother. Although, unlike Hugh, he repeats the mother-daughter comparison in several other Books and chapters on diverse topics, he was evidently familiar with the conventional metaphor and expected his readers to be.[14] We may reasonably infer an allusion within the text to the task of the compiler in the several chapters where Bartholomew describes bees gathering nutritious matter from flowers near and far.[15] Their wide range of associations mean that bees flit throughout the work, sometimes briefly referred to and at other times inviting meditation upon their significance to the reader. Bartholomew’s own gathered wisdom on bees comes from Pliny, Virgil, Avicenna, Isidore, Ambrose and Aristotle, but his accounts vary in their emphasis and in the kind of analogy they create with human activity, and have a naturalistic quality that suggests they are also drawn from observation.
In the last chapter of Book 1 the allegory of the bee is put in place. Bartholomew introduces the idea of God as honey and sweetness: ‘[God] has many other names … “dew and rain” because he makes the soul fruitful with virtues; “honey” for the sweetness that he puts into the soul of mankind.’[16] Then in Book 3, on the soul (including the anima sensibilis of the senses), Bartholomew cites the medical authority Constantine on diet: ‘for sweetness is very nourishing, and easily assimilated by all the limbs’.[17] In Book 6 the bee serves as a simile that exemplifies the natural preferment of, and submission to, worthy lords among people: ‘Ambrose says that among beasts natura sets the most noble and strong at their head, and makes kings and leaders among them, as happens among animals and birds and also among bees, which are controlled and led by [these leaders].’[18] In Book 9 on the properties of time, ‘Summer feeds and satisfies bees that gather honey from flowers’. Whitsun, seven weeks after Easter, at the start of good, dry weather, is a time of seven-fold grace for Christians from the coming of the Holy Ghost. Military expeditions prepare for action and the bee is part of the general activity:
And then is the time of all kinds of gladness, joy and mirth, for then all animals and birds are in greatest amity; it is a time of greenness, for then plants and woods come into leaf and growth. It is also a time of fragrance and sweetness from flowers in gardens, groves and meadows, when heaven dries up moisture in flowers and turns it into sweetness. Therefore as Aristotle says it is a good time to make honey, because bees frequent plants and trees on account of their flowers; honey collected in springtime is much sweeter than honey collected at harvest time.[19]
In Book 12, on flying creatures, Bartholomew describes the bee community as obedient to its king, each bee having its allotted task and returning to the hive at night. Some bees gather honey, some nurse the young, and some keep watch against predators.[20] In Book 17 bees and their work are a property of the summer vineyard and of the light-filled tree tops: ‘Leaves clothe plants, fields, gardens and woods with beauty and make them delightful with the sweetness that they conceive from the dew of heaven. Therefore bees gather honey when flowers appear; it is a sign of the changing season, and gives hope of fruit.’[21] In Book 18 we are told that the bee deserves to be included among crawling creatures because it uses its legs, as well as its wings, to get along.[22] In this long chapter Bartholomew presents the bee as exemplary in its useful activity, purity and brotherly love. In a complementary chapter he tells how the drones, false bees that do not make honey, steal that of others, kill young bees and are cast out to die.[23] In Book 19, discussed more fully below, we find the products of the bees’ industry listed as ‘things’ with properties we can taste and smell. Liquors, for example, are the natural or man-made products of animals and plants. Honey, he says, is made by the skill of bees from the dew of heaven that falls on flowers.[24] Following chapters are on the properties of honey, honeycomb, mulsus or Greek honeyed wine, mead, claretus or honeyed wine with spices, oxymel or medicated honey, beeswax, and the wax taper or candle.[25]
Much of this may be a matter of observation but, in the context of an allegorical trope where fertility, harvest and honey-gathering express pastoral values, can also be read as religious instruction or exempla for sermons. The manuscript glosses in the chapter De Apibus indicate that readers could and did associate the image of the bee with an ideal of clerical obedience, care and kindness, humility, contemplation and study. By contrast, glosses in the chapter on the drone bee, De fuco, warn against failure in clerical virtue: ‘Be mindful of sloth’; ‘Take note of humility; of contemplation; of him who comes to be a preacher through study’.[26]