The bee, then, is one of the joyful and salutary aspects of the physical world. Bartholomew does not deny the pleasures of the summer landscape; nevertheless, seasons and weather can cloud the real and the metaphorical landscape. He also has to address the world’s wintery and fleeting aspects and to emphasise that the Christian’s goal lies beyond this world and in eternity. In the lengthy first chapter of Book 8, Bartholomew sets out definitions of the physical world according to classical writers, in particular Aristotle and Plato, but concludes with Christian teaching derived from St Augustine:
Although the universe is clothed with so many noble and diverse things by the might and virtue of God, yet as far as this lower world goes, it is totally subject to many faults and much wretchedness. Although this world seems to be father and begetter of bodies, yet it is the prison of spirits, and a most cruel exile for souls, and a place of very great suffering. For the world is a place of sin and guilt, of exile and pilgrimage, of sorrow and woe … of moving and of changing, of flow and ebb, of decay and corruption, of disease and turmoil, of violence and destruction, of deceit and guile.[27]
According to Aristotle, however, heaven is simple; its movement is even, it is sober, steadfast and abiding, incorruptible and unchanging.[28] In Book 9, on time, Bartholomew tells us that changeableness on earth is caused by, but is different from, the movement of the spheres and takes six forms — generation, corruption, alteration, growth, diminution, and movement from place to place.[29] Nevertheless, in a spirit of Franciscan acceptance of natura, Bartholomew presents the change and decay we witness in the changing seasons as a cause for reassurance and joy. Natura, he tells us in Book 18, has reasons and remedies for all our discomforts.[30]
In ‘Properties’, representations of decay and destructiveness accompany and counterbalance those of growth and sweetness, and vice versa. We have seen that the ideas of movement, growth and activity inform the religious metaphors of the vine, the bee, and the mother and daughter, used in the Cistercian chronicle of Hugh of Kirkstall. The same sense of movement pervades ‘Properties’ in passages describing the actions and effects of people, animals, birds and fishes, plants and trees. These things become sources for positive-spirited meditation on life and death, fertility and salvation.[31] In Book 17 the well-filled panorama of rural labour in vineyard, woods, fields and ploughland can be joyously productive but its guardians have to be vigilant against foxes, caterpillars, nettles and briars. There are also weeds, bad soil, snakes and toads that hide in the foliage, and invading pigs and dogs.[32] The glosses show that destructive animals and weeds could denote moral hazards such as worldly, proud and secular people, as in the chapter on the bramble that snatches at the legs of the unwary walker: ‘Take note of the worldly and proud; of the secular; of the sons and disciples of wicked men and heretics; of the works of the wicked; of greedy prelates.’[33] Nature, then, is a salutary reminder of our own vices as well as of God’s providence. Brambles and pests are reminders of the way nature balances opposite properties, humours and elements in human life as in the cosmos. In Book 9, on the chapter on the Hebrew festival of the tabernacles, Bartholomew shows how the rewards of autumn balance those of spring: at this harvest festival, fruits are brought and houses decorated, but it is also a time of expiation and repentance. The harvest is gathered and the trees are dry and cold.[34] In Book 17, in the chapter ‘On the tree-tops’, Bartholomew delivers a sermon, with reference only to the authority of Isidore, on the consolations and hopes we can draw from the seasonal cycle of growth and decay. The leaves that shelter the bees ‘are green and growing in spring and summer, fade in autumn, fall one by one as winter comes, and in the end rot into the ground. Leaves are, however, useful as medicine and fodder.’ The growth of leaves, flowers and fruit provides protection, remedies, food and enjoyment. Isidore says they are like light: while they last they activate all our senses.[35]
Bartholomew stresses in the last chapters of Book 6 that, as the times of year balance each other, we must balance our diet and complement exercise with rest. As the year turns, so peace and quietness come at the end to crown the turbulence and laboriousness of life. Bartholomew describes the properties of complementary conditions, both general and specific: life and death; childhood and adulthood; male and female; lordship and servitude; waking and sleeping; exercise and rest; food and drink; and, in particular, things that accord with nature and things that are contrary to nature.[36]