For the compiler and his contemporaries, the familia could be a religious as well as a secular institution, manifest in the religious orders and houses. It was also a visionary one, where Father, Son and Holy Spirit were joined by the Virgin as Christ’s mother and the church as his bride. In the womb of the Church lay souls waiting to be nurtured by priests and preachers. The emphasis on feminine forms of service in Book 6 and elsewhere in ‘Properties’ can be seen as appropriate for male religious in the light of this medieval trope, and of recent studies of female and male fertility as a complex metaphor for the pastoral role of the clergy.^[84] Taking this further, the glosses confirm that readers could draw from certain chapters the idea that physical procreation could be joyfully embraced as a metaphor for clerical office. Some indicate, for example, that clerical readers could see their own relationship with Christ, their own spiritual nurture and their own office reflected in the figure of the nurse: ‘Take note concerning Christ; of the teaching of the masters; of the office of prelate and of subordinates.’^[85] In the following chapter on the midwife, the glossator infers the ideal compassion of preachers as they help to bring forth Christian souls from the womb of the church: ‘Take note of preachers and their office; of compassion; of the prelate and the preacher.’^[86] The inclusion in Book 18 of chapters on the feminine or female, on gestation and on the foetus are thus by no means anomalous in the context of this metaphorical understanding, as the glossator makes clear in relation to the foetus: ‘Take note concerning sons in the womb of the church.’^[87]

In such positive representations of clerical and pastoral office we can discern what, in effect, appears as an idealised third gender — the celibate creature who performs both masculine and feminine roles. In the chapters cited above and elsewhere, Bartholomew subtly reinforces the idea that preaching can be both nurturing and fertilising. In Book 13’s long last chapter on the properties of fishes, he cites Aristotle on the ways fishes reproduce: ‘For certain [fishes] are engendered through coitus and emission of sperm, as Aristotle says.’^[88] The gloss alongside makes clear the implied analogy with spreading the word: ‘Take note concerning the preacher.’^[89] In Book 12, on flying creatures, Bartholomew emphasises the cock's masculine properties of vigour, aggressive display and male ardour but also feminine compassion; and in the case of the hen, feminine properties of submissiveness to the male, modesty and maternal love. The glosses indicate that these properties could pertain to preachers. Those against the chapter on the cock include: ‘Take note concerning the labour of the good and of works of piety; of the compassion of women.’^[90] Glosses against the chapter on the hen include: ‘Be on your guard against vain glory; take note of compassion; of pastoral care.’^[91] In the chapter on the castrated capon, Bartholomew portrays a creature in which both masculine and feminine properties are absent or subverted; the capon is fleshy but sexless, and neither defends nor nurtures. In the end it is good only for taking to the oven and eating.^[92] The glosses confirm that mere inactive neutrality could be associated (as in the case of the drone bee) with ineffective, carnal and useless clerics and hypocrites, and warn of their ending. On the other hand, the properties of familiar creatures such as the ox or bee could imply an active role for the celibate, and the clerical life could be envisaged as a productive, rewarding, procreative state embracing the best of men’s and women’s sexual roles. To be merely neuter was to be useless, but the preacher, like the un-mated nurse, could be a privileged surrogate mother.^[93]