Table of Contents
The last chapter placed the emergence of ‘Properties’ in England in the context of the church’s concern with preaching, the nobility’s concern to support with authoritative texts their control of their domains, and social networks of wealthy book owners. In the fifteenth century these concerns and networks combine to uphold the position of ‘Properties’ as a prestigious and desirable text. We find it commodified as a manuscript or printed book, adapted as an informative manual, and preserved in ecclesiastical and academic libraries. This chapter looks at some examples of how readers and writers made use of Bartholomew’s authority in the context of increasing literacy, but also increasing instability and conflict. From the time of Richard II’s reign to that of Richard III there is evidence of hostility between England and France, king and subjects, Yorkists and Lancastrians; and between upper and lower ranks as the economic climate changed.
The numbers of prose texts written in English dialects suggest that lay people had better access to the written word, and that the later dissemination and rise in status of ‘Properties’ occur at a time of increased lay literacy and professional involvement with informative and devotional texts. The wide range in types and quality of manuscripts drawing on our work in Latin and English, from the cramped home-made booklet of recipes and extracts to the beautifully laid-out and decorated workshop manuscript, testifies to the social breadth of writers with access to ‘Properties’ in whole or part. The record shows that versions in Latin, French and English vernacular were available to both clerical and non-clerical English users.[1]
This chapter will look at some of the evidence that writers and readers responding to the demands of their particular time found a durable source of material and authority 'in Properties' that they could cite or adapt, or commodify as a prestigious piece of personal property. It could be a source of information; a source of moral examples and images; an authority on the properties of specific items; and a valuable commodity for investment, marketing or exchange.
Knowledge had been the object of systematising efforts since the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, when the church and the Paris schools required scholastic texts to support the drive to educate an effective body of preachers. As we saw in the prologues by Belcalzer and Corbechon, knowledge could also confer a mantle of wisdom like that of Solomon, which was seen as appropriate to landed lords. For Thomas Berkeley, Trevisa provided volumes in English prose embodying knowledge of the world’s history and the world’s content.
As we saw in the last chapter, a work such as ‘Properties’ could be re-created as luxurious copies made from expensive materials, and become solid investments, valuable gifts, and overt declarations of wealth and power. The well-preserved manuscript owned by Chaworth is one example; the badly-damaged fifteenth-century copy of ‘Properties’ in English now in the Bristol City Library is another.[2] During the fifteenth century, copies of the French and English vernacular versions of the work, made to a high standard of workmanship, became desirable commodities for purchase or commissioning from specialist workshops. In 1482, Edward IV acquired a two-volume copy of the French version made a century earlier for Charles V, superimposing his own coat of arms upon the title-page with its original dedication to Charles. Edward is thought to have commissioned or bought his copy of Propriétés from a workshop in Bruges in about 1482, while in exile. The customising of the copy is consistent with a wish, like that of Charles, to assert the legitimacy of his claim to wise kingship. This copy is still part of the English royal library founded by Henry VII.[3] It is not surprising therefore to find ‘Properties’, either in English or in French, included in an un-headed list of works on chivalry, piety, wisdom and romance, now at Balliol College Library, Oxford:
Boccachio de casu virorum illustrium/ The siege of Troy/Sanke Royall/ Boicius de consolacione/ de Regimine principum/ Secreta Secretorum/ The Romaunce of Partenope/Rommat de la Ros/Brut e the croniculis/Seynt Kateryne of Seene/ The pylgrymage o the sowle/The tales of Caunterburye/The booke of cheuallerie/The booke of the salutacioun of owre lady/Egidius de Regimine principum/Legenda Aurea/Maister of the game/Pontus/ Maundevile/The booke of the iij kynges of Coleyne/The Revelicioun of Seynt Brigiede/Sydrake/ Bartholomew in tweye bookis of ij volemys.[4]
Whether the list was a catalogue, a record or a wish-list, it shows a fifteenth-century reader including Bartholomew’s work among both new and old chivalric and devotional works from England, Italy and France, crossing boundaries of language and genre. The list suggests that these books were for both recreation and edification — they include the Canterbury Tales as well as the Pilgrimage of the Soul. That ‘Properties’ was also valued as a religious work that could serve a commemorative purpose and benefit the souls of the deceased is attested to by Sir Thomas Tyrrell of Essex (d.1477), who directed in his will that his copy of ‘Properties’ be given to his parish church ‘theire forth to serve in perpetuite to have my soule and the soule of my wif and of myn Aunte Margarete Rypley’.[5] We find an early Latin manuscript of the work in the careful possession of a west-country vicar in the late fourteenth century. The Reverend John Taylor of Ilminster, Somerset, apparently had the copy re-bound, some old accounts of work in Ilminster church being used in the binding.[6]