Glanvil, Bartholomew

, a writer of the fourteenth century, was an English Minorite, or Franciscan, of the family of the earls of Suffolk. He is said to have studied at Oxford, Paris, and Rome, and to have been very familiar with the writings of Aristotle, Plato, and Pliny; from which, with his own observations, he compiled his celebrated work “De Proprietatibus rernrn,” a kind of general history of nature; divided into nineteen books, treating of God, angels, and devils, the soul, the body, animals, &c. In some copies there is an additional book, not of his writing, on numbers, weights, measures, sounds, &c. Some v “Sermons” of his were printed at Strasburgh in 1495. But his work “De Proprietatibus*' appears to have been the chief favourite, and was one of the first books on which the art of printing was exercised, there being no fewer than twelve editions, or translations, printed from 1479 to 1494. The English translation printed by Wynkyn de Worde is the most magnificent publication that ever issued from the press of that celebrated printer, but the date has not been ascertained. A very copious and exact analysis of this curious work is given by Mr. Dibdin in the second Volume of his” Typographical Antiquities." ²