Because of the way Bartholomew presented certain creatures as analogous to people interacting with each other, his compilation could later be used in wider contexts as a source for writers of stories where animals might reflect or parody human behaviour. Indeed, Michel Zink argues that medieval literature concerning animals is really to do with people.^[23] Writers of devotional texts could invoke readers’ knowledge of the symbolism of certain animals and birds, preserved in the bestiary, to teach through allegorical and moralising associations. Bartholomew had defined the properties of things as their ‘dispositions, doings and effects’; that is, their characters, behaviours, and relations with each other, and this implied analogies with the relationships and behaviours of people.^[24] Although in ‘Properties’ the things of creation reflect the cosmos in their hierarchical arrangement (as Bartholomew had explained in Books 3 and 4), they also have complementary and opposing properties. In the later Books, the compiler had organised the plethora of things of the world into complementary relationships of alliance or enmity, fertility and infertility, poison and antidote, all under the providence of natura. The diversity of living things and their mutual oppositions, purposely ordained by natura, forms the theme of Bartholomew’s long introduction to Book 18. Even fruit could be described as wild/tame; fair/foul; good/evil.^[25] This allowed writers to find, in his chapters and cross-references, analogues for the dynamics of human relationships observable around them.

The writer of the mid-fifteenth-century collection of sermons Jacob’s Well shows us how ‘Properties’ could be a vehicle for carrying forward the concept of such mutual tensions through analogy with well-known beasts:

Since the sheep and the wolf have contrary properties, a harp strung with gut from both of these animals will be discordant. As we saw in Chapter 5, the author of Dives and Pauper draws on the same image in the context of his dialogue-sermon on ‘Thou shalt not kill’.^[27]

In the image of the 10-stringed harp, these two writers rely on their readers’ awareness of the predator/prey relationship between wolf and sheep, and the antithetical nature of their properties, to strengthen the point that one failure of Christian observance could vitiate all the rest. They also assume familiarity with the Old Testament story of David, the epistle of James on keeping the whole law, and the parable of the lost sheep.^[28]

Bartholomew’s account of the wolf combines stories from a number of sources including Physiologus, Isidore, ‘Cherles’, Pliny, Homer, Avicenna, Solinus and Aristotle, that convey the density of fearful myth surrounding the animal, especially its savagery towards sheep; and descriptions of actual wolf behaviour such as fishermen’s observations of the way it scavenges for fish offal. He concludes the chapter:

Bartholomew stresses the contrariness of nature between wolf and sheep, like that between eagle and dove, whereas the later users of this source make explicit the exegetical link to the Ten Commandments and the theme of salvation. We can see how Bartholomew’s multiplicity of sources and viewpoints enabled these later writers to use the harp-string anecdote as a basis for sermons with the addition of their own emphasis or interpretation.

The multiple viewpoints and opinions cited by Bartholomew on some matters allowed later writers to recast the properties of things to create ambiguity and double entendre as a basis for social comment. Ambiguity and double entendre offered a useful mode of discourse for those who wished to represent objects of criticism at a safe remove, such as writers of political satire; or who needed to privilege some properties over others in their interpretations of Bartholomew, such as the heralds.

The heralds were allied with lawyers in that their knowledge and records of genealogies could be applied to legal claims of ownership or inheritance in threatening times. Anthony Wagner describes the development of the functions and status of heralds from the earliest mention (c.1170) of their role in tournaments. Their responsibilities and expertise increased during the Hundred Years’ War and, by the 1370s, they were compiling rolls of arms and were called to give expert evidence when the right to a coat of arms was disputed. They could also set their hands and seals to certificates or grants of arms, a process tightened under Henry V to control the use of arms by unqualified persons. By the end of the fifteenth century, heraldry was a well-developed system for bestowing and interpreting arms, with its own technical language, rules and body of knowledge. Through the system, they had developed an agreed code of meanings attached to certain animals, birds, plants and colours in use as personal or family emblems. The animal or bird displayed upon the shield, so easily depicted in carved stone and wood, or in the margins of a manuscript, could make an encoded claim interpretable by those who knew about the charges’ properties.^[30]

The author of the earliest-known heraldic treatise, the Anglo-Norman De heraudie, variously dated to between 1280 and 1345, had listed the limited number of natural and fabulous creatures that could be used as charges on the shield — the lion, the leopard, and the griffin; the eagle, the martlet, the popinjay, the crow, the swan and the heron.^[31] Although the list of heraldic birds and animals was still quite short, the herald and the armiger were free to draw on puns, or on literary or other sources. Aspiring armigers would have needed the expertise and resources of the heralds to select something suitable.^[32]