Bartholomeus Anglicus
fl. c. 1220-c.
1250
Also called Bartholomew the Englishman, he was a professor of theology at the University of Paris who joined the Franciscan order (about 1225) and began composing the first comprehensive encyclopedia of sciences of the time. Medieval scholars defined science as knowledge, so topics included theology and philosophy along with medicine, zoology, botany, geography, mineralogy, and other earth sciences. Bartholomew's presentation of these latter reflect the influence of Aristotle's Meteorologica, and he followed a few earlier thinkers in defining wind as air in motion, not as Aristotle's earthly exhalation. The work was a great success, and was copied over and over and printed at least fourteen times before 1500.
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