The setting of the parable of the workers in the vineyard was especially meaningful since the narrative had some real-life parallels in thirteenth-century rural life.[71] In Book 6 of ‘Properties’, Bartholomew takes us indoors, into the manorial household, where we find lord and lady, children, guests and servants. These include not only male workers such as the manservant and steward but also the nurse, the maidservant and the midwife. Here, he presents a sequence of chapters dealing with the most universal and commonplace experiences — those of childhood, of work, domestic relations, mealtimes and bedtimes, sports and pastimes, sleep and dreams — beginning with the first chapter on death, De morte, and ending with rest, De quiete. [72] The midwife swaddles the newborn infant, the child wilfully struggles under his mother’s hand as she tries to wash him, the daughter is cherished by the father, the negligent servant is punished and the good steward rewarded. The image of the maidservant beaten for misbehaviour contrasts with that of the servant or guest in the house of a good lord; rewarded, feasted and secure.[73] The domestic household depicted is strongly hierarchical, with lord and lady presiding over ranks of servants. The range of dramatis personae in Book 6 could have allowed readers of all social backgrounds to identify with Bartholomew’s normative portrayals of servanthood in the lord’s familia.
Book 6’s chapters on meal-times make palpable the physical and spiritual rewards of belonging to, and serving in, the well-run abode of lord and lady. In De prandio, ‘On the mid-day meal’, Bartholomew tells us that food is prepared; fellow diners (conviviae) are called; forms and stools are set in the hall; trestles, cloths, towels are organised. Guests sit down with the lord at the top of the table, and no-one sits down until the guests have washed their hands. Mothers and daughters take their place, and retainers take theirs. Spoons, knives and salt-cellars are set on the table, then bread, drink and various dishes. Menials and servants cheerfully bring dishes and drinks and joke amongst themselves. There is music. Fruit and épiceries conclude the meal, then tables are cleared and moved from the centre of the room; hands are washed and dried. The lord and the guests say grace, and drinks go round again. Finally, everyone goes to rest or back to their own homes. Bartholomew does not need to cite any external authorities, but could be drawing on experience of secular occasions to describe lunchtime in a prosperous household.[74]
Throughout ‘Properties’, Bartholomew implies the goal of arrival, rest and reward. Whether they be workers in the household or travellers emerging from the thickets and arriving at the walls before the gates close, all can have a share in the lord's feast at the end of the day. Bartholomew puts this reassuring idea clearly in place in Book 6, where he describes the evening meal at the lord's house.[75] Here, all is decorous conviviality, sensory enjoyment, relaxation and rest. There are people, colours, music, candles, lights, delicious food and wine, and darkness and moths are shut out. All ranks are present, and again it is, in a sense, a scene which the reader can concretise from actual experience, whether sitting at the head or the foot of the table (above or below the salt, as the saying goes) or serving up in the kitchen, and be fully involved in mind, body and spirit. At the same time, early in the chapter Bartholomew makes explicit reference to the Old Testament story of the feast of Ahasuerus, foreshadowing the New Testament promise of the ‘many mansions’ prepared for the faithful.[76] Such descriptions allow the reader to reflect on actual life and service within the manorial household, but also on an ideal of life spent in the service of God.
Bartholomew keeps familiar images of service and lordship before the reader from first to last. In Book 1, on the properties and names of God, he puts in place an ideal of lordship drawn from the most authoritative sources: for Damascene, God is perfect unity, light itself, a mystical circle; St Bernard describes God in terms of fruitfulness, benevolence and loving rule; the blessed Dionysius (St Denis) describes God as the father of fathers, shepherd of his flock, only describable by figures of speech.[77] Book 2 then presents the orders of good angels as ideal servants of God, and Lucifer as the archetype of the disobedient servant.[78] The idea of good and bad governance recurs in Book 5, where the soul is described as ruler of the body, and the limbs and organs have separate tasks; if the head is well disposed or distempered, all the limbs follow suit.[79] In Book 6, chapters on good lordship and good service spell out the ideal relationship, while chapters on bad lordship and bad servants present the reverse.[80]
In Book 6 the notion of lordship and service is extended to the mutual relations of man and wife in a colourful and courtly passage. The man woos a bride, gives gifts in exchange for her, takes her into his house and bed, looks after and corrects her, and makes her mistress over his money and familia; he takes care of her interests just as much as his own.[81] The economic concerns of the dominus and domina are referred to in the chapter on the good servant, who, among other virtues, is meek but eager to procure the profit of his lord; he takes more heed to multiply and grow his lord’s goods and cattle than his own, for in multiplying his lord’s cattle he procures his own profit. A good servant is careful to give an account of what he has taken and delivered of his lord’s goods and cattle, for he hopes to have payment and reward for good stewardship.[82] This normative but lively picture of the familia, complete with marriage, money and orderly housekeeping, not only recalls scriptural parables of good service but also seems appropriately evocative for the Franciscan committed to a life without fixed abode or domestic comfort. Bartholomew’s description of the man wooing, wedding and bedding the bride might have suggested a compensatory vision for the celibate Christian cleric, one that we know was promoted by Bernard of Clairvaux in his imagery of the mystical espousal to the church celebrated in the Song of Songs.[83]