By the last decades of Elizabeth’s reign the printing press was a key instrument for the sharing of knowledge.[54] In his new presentation of Properties Batman does not obliterate Bartholomew’s authorities, but he adds so many others from the many available to him in print that their opinions tend to predominate in certain areas of the work. He tends to direct his readers’ attention to present-day rather than antique authors, although he does show a keen knowledge of classical mythology, especially in Books 8, 9 and 15. Batman cites and borrows from many more authors than the ones he names in his preliminary pages, but that list gives us an indication of those he considers most important:
… whereunto is added so much as hath bene brought to light by the trauaile of others, as Conradus Gesner of Tygure, Phisition, writing of the nature of beasts, birds, fishes, & Serpents.[55] Fuchsius, Mathiolus, Theophrastus, Paracelsus, and Dodoneus, these wrote of the natures, operations and effects of Hearbs, Plants, Trees, Fruit, Seeds, Metalls and Mineralls.[56] Sebastian Munster, Henry Cornelius Agrippa, and others of Astronomie and Cosmographie.[57] Abraham Ortelius of Antwarpe for maps & discriptions: all which woorkes hath done great good in diuerse and sundrie Common wealths.[58]
Batman’s adaptation must be seen, then, in the context of other printed works available at the time from both continental and English contemporary writers. These included the accounts of voyages and new discoveries, catalogues, chronicles, new humanist writings, translations and re-issuings of canonical works, treatises on many subjects, and polemical works from both sides of the religious divide in England. An important authority for Batman is himself; Batman upon Bartholome was the last of nine published works which include The Travayled Pilgrim (1569), ‘an allegorical poem on the subject of man’s journey through life’; A christall glasse of christian reformation wherein the godly maye beholde the coloured abuses used in this our present tyme (1569); The Golden Booke (1577); The New Arival of the three Gracis into Anglia, Lamenting the abusis of the present Age (1580); and The Doome warning all men to the Judgement (1581).[59] These titles indicate his concern as a churchman to warn and to reform, and suggest that he may have seen ‘Properties’ as a useful instrument in those causes.
His concerns are also practical and of the moment. He praises modern English writers and notes English translations; for example, ‘Hernan Lopes, a Portingall of Castaneda, his discovery of the East Indias, translated into English by Nicholas Lichfield, gentleman, 1582’.[60] He makes approving mention of English scholars, travel writers and translators such as Andrew Boorde (d.1549) and George Turner (d.1610): ‘Andrew Bord of Phisicke Doctour, an English man, The Breviary of health, printed Anno. 1547; Dedor Turner Phisition, Anno 1551, one that for his travailes in forren countries, for the onelye benefit of this our realme of England, deserveth perpetuall praise’.[61]
Works by classical writers provided another source of newly printed books, and Batman demonstrates in his comments that he was familiar with many, including modern translations of Ovid and Homer. Batman’s evident knowledge of, and interest in, classical mythology is particularly apparent in his marginal comments on Book 8. He stresses the authority of classical writers on India and Asia generally, and he also cites medieval travellers later than Bartholomew’s time such as Marco Polo and John Mandeville (with the aside ‘but manye Fables are set downe of him’).
Many of Batman’s comments and additions confirm the view that the experience of things from beyond former horizons, reported and rumoured, generated new stories but amalgamated them with existing fables and moralisations, as well as producing more careful categorisations of natural phenomena.[62] For example, he adds a long extract from Ortelius to Bartholomew’s four chapters on elephants (which were compiled from bestiary sources) ‘For the better vnderstanding of Elephantes, in what coast they most abound’.[63] His comments demonstrate both a new empiricism and an old adherence to traditional beliefs; thus, into his marginal comment on the monster ‘lamia’, Batman subsumes the traditional bestiary warning against sirena, the monster that seduces and kills sailors. On the other hand, against the chapter on the siren later in the work, he notes pragmatically: ‘Sirene, is the swift course of water, that whatsoeuer commeth within the violence of it, is carryed away … Those [sirens with wings and claws] are Harpie, & both feyned’.