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active 13th century Anglicus Bartholomaeus
A 13th-century Franciscan scholar best known for De proprietatibus rerum, an ambitious survey of the natural world, theology, and everyday knowledge. His work became one of the Middle Ages’ most widely read reference books and helped carry learning to readers far beyond the university.
1 Audiobook
Mediaeval Lore from Bartholomew Anglicus
by active 13th century Anglicus Bartholomaeus
About the author
Little is known for certain about his early life, but Bartholomaeus Anglicus—also called Bartholomew the Englishman—was an English Franciscan active in the early to mid-13th century. Reliable reference sources describe him as a scholar connected with Paris and as a lecturer in divinity who entered the Franciscan order around the 1220s.
He is remembered above all for De proprietatibus rerum (On the Properties of Things), written around the 1240s. The book gathered material on theology, the human body, animals, plants, astronomy, geography, and many other subjects into one large, accessible compendium—something like an early encyclopedia.
That wide scope helped give the work an unusually long life. It circulated broadly in manuscript, was later translated into several vernacular languages, and remained influential for centuries, making him one of the best-known compilers of knowledge in the medieval world.