This brief notice is a portion of work in progress on the iconographical cycle of the last of the above-mentioned texts: the Livre des propriétés des choses, a French rendering of Bartholomaeus Anglicus' De proprietatibus rerum. The latter is a thirteenth-century ranging ontologically from God and the Angels, through Man, and down to the accidents of matter. For the most part it is, or was used as, a handy compendium of "physical" lore, a Herbal, Lapidary and Bestiary, to take but three examples. ... The proper bases for this study would be the original manuscript and a modern, critical edition of the text. The first has yet to be found, and the second has not yet been prepared. Thus, the of the cycle must begin part of the way into the story — by identifying, dating and grouping as many as possible of the early and using this basis to what came before and study what came after. As part of that work, the present notice has the limited aim of reviewing the earliest documentary to the Livre des propriétés des choses and some identifications of early copies which have been made, of two previously untraced copies and of taking a bird's-eye view of the ensuing picture. - [Author]

Language: English

DOI: 10.3406/scrip.1977.2818