At a time of disintegration of classical culture,[3] aristocratic violence, and widespread illiteracy, Isidore was involved in the conversion of theArianVisigothic kings toCatholicism, both assisting his brotherLeander of Seville and continuing after Leander's death. He was influential in the inner circle ofSisebut, Visigothic king ofHispania. Like Leander, he played a prominent role in theCouncils of Toledo and Seville.
His fame after his death was based on hisEtymologiae, anetymological encyclopedia that assembled extracts of many books from classical antiquity that would otherwise have been lost. This work also helped to standardise the use of thefull stop,comma andcolon.[4]
Since theEarly Middle Ages, Isidore has sometimes been calledIsidore the Younger orIsidore Junior (Latin:Isidorus iunior), because of the earlier history purportedly written by Isidore of Córdoba.[5]
Isidore was born inCartago Spartaria (nowCartagena, Spain), a former Carthaginian colony, to a notable family inRoman Hispania, of high social rank,[6] and probably ofGreek descent.[7][8] His father was named Severianus and his mother Theodora.[6] His parents were members of an influential family who were instrumental in the political-religious manoeuvring thatconverted theVisigothic kings from Arianism toCatholicism. The Catholic and Orthodox Churches celebrate him and all his siblings as known saints:
An elder brother,Leander of Seville, immediately preceded Isidore as Archbishop of Seville and, while in office, opposed KingLiuvigild.
His sister,Florentina of Cartagena, was a nun who allegedly ruled over forty convents and one thousand consecrated religious. This claim seems unlikely, however, given the few functioning monastic institutions in Spania during her lifetime.[9]
Isidore received his elementary education in the Cathedral school of Seville. In this institution, the first of its kind in Spania, a body of learned men including Archbishop Leander of Seville taught thetrivium andquadrivium, the classicliberal arts. Isidore applied himself to study diligently enough that he quickly mastered classical Latin,[10] and acquired someGreek andHebrew.
Two centuries of Gothic control of Iberia incrementally suppressed the ancient institutions, classical learning, and manners of theRoman Empire.[11] The associated culture entered a period of long-term decline. The rulingVisigoths nevertheless showed some respect for the outward trappings of Roman culture. Arianism meanwhile took deep root among the Visigoths as the form of Christianity that they received.
Scholars may debate whether Isidore ever personally embraced monastic life or affiliated with any religious order, but he undoubtedly esteemed the monks highly.
After the death ofLeander of Seville on 13 March 600 or 601, Isidore succeeded to theSee of Seville. On his elevation to theepiscopate, he immediately constituted himself as the protector of monks.
Recognising that the spiritual and material welfare of the people of his see depended on the assimilation of remnant Roman and ruling barbarian cultures, Isidore attempted to weld the peoples and subcultures of the Visigothic kingdom into a united nation. He used all available religious resources toward this end and succeeded. Isidore practically eradicated the heresy ofArianism and completely stifled the newheresy ofAcephali at its outset. Archbishop Isidore strengthened religious discipline throughout his see.
Archbishop Isidore also used resources of education to counteract increasingly influential Gothic barbarism throughout his episcopal jurisdiction. His quickening spirit animated the educational movement centered on Seville. Isidore introduced his countrymen toAristotle long before the Arabs studied Greek philosophy extensively.
In 619 Isidore of Seville pronounced anathema against any ecclesiastic who in any way should molest the monasteries.
Isidore presided over the Second Council of Seville, begun on 13 November 619 in the reign of KingSisebut, a provincial council attended by eight other bishops, all from the ecclesiastical province of Baetica in southern Spain. The Acts of the Council fully set forth the nature of Christ, countering the conceptions of Gregory, a Syrian representing the heretical Acephali.
Based on a few surviving canons found in thePseudo-Isidorian Decretals, Isidore is known to have presided over an additional provincial council around 624.
The council dealt with a conflict over theSee of Écija and wrongfully stripped bishop Martianus of his see, a situation that was rectified by the Fourth Council of Toledo. It also addressed a concern over Jews who had been forced to convert to Christianity.
The records of the council, unlike the First and Second Councils of Seville, were not preserved in theHispana, a collection of canons and decretals likely edited by Isidore himself.[12]
All bishops of Hispania attended the Fourth National Council of Toledo, begun on 5 December 633. The aged Archbishop Isidore presided over its deliberations and originated most enactments of the council.
Through Isidore's influence, this Council of Toledo promulgated a decree commanding all bishops to establish seminaries in their cathedral cities along the lines of the cathedral school at Seville, which had educated Isidore decades earlier. The decree prescribed the study of Greek, Hebrew, and the liberal arts and encouraged interest in law and medicine.[13] The authority of the council made this education policy obligatory upon all bishops of the Kingdom of the Visigoths. The council granted remarkable position and deference to the king of the Visigoths. The independent Church bound itself in allegiance to the acknowledged king; it said nothing of allegiance to theBishop of Rome.
Isidore was the first Christian writer to try to compile asumma of universal knowledge, in his most important work, theEtymologiae (taking its title from the method he uncritically used in the transcription of his era's knowledge). It is also known by classicists as theOrigines (the standard abbreviation beingOrig.). Thisencyclopedia—the first such Christianepitome—formed a huge compilation of 448 chapters in 20 volumes.[14]
In it, Isidore entered his own terse digest of Roman handbooks, miscellanies and compendia. He continued the trend towards abridgements and summaries that had characterised Roman learning inLate Antiquity. In the process, many fragments of classical learning are preserved that otherwise would have been hopelessly lost; "in fact, in the majority of his works, including theOrigines, he contributes little more than the mortar which connects excerpts from other authors, as if he was aware of his deficiencies and had more confidence in thestilus maiorum than his own," his translator Katherine Nell MacFarlane remarks.[14]
Some of these fragments were lost in the first place because Isidore's work was so highly regarded—Braulio called itquaecunque fere sciri debentur, "practically everything that it is necessary to know"[15]—that it superseded the use of many individual works of the classics themselves, which were not recopied and have therefore been lost: "all secular knowledge that was of use to the Christian scholar had been winnowed out and contained in one handy volume; the scholar need search no further".[16]
Book VIII of theEtymologiae covers religion, including the Christian Church, Judaism, heretical sects, pagan philosophers, sibyls, and magi.[17] In this section, Isidore documents pre-Christian religious and magical beliefs, preserving knowledge about ancient magical practices, even while condemning them as superstition. His writings serve as one of the few surviving records of magical thought in early medieval Europe, helping to transmit classical esoteric ideas into the Middle Ages.[18]
The fame of this work imparted a new impetus to encyclopedic writing, which bore abundant fruit in the subsequent centuries of theMiddle Ages. It was the most popular compendium inmedieval libraries. It was printed in at least ten editions between 1470 and 1530, showing Isidore's continued popularity in theRenaissance. Until the 12th century brought translations from Arabic sources, Isidore transmitted what western Europeans remembered of the works ofAristotle and other Greeks, although he understood only a limited amount of Greek.[19] TheEtymologiae was much copied, particularly into medievalbestiaries.[20][21][22]
The medievalT-O map represents the inhabited world as described by Isidore in hisEtymologiae
Isidore'sDe fide catholica contra Iudaeos furthersAugustine of Hippo's ideas on the Jewish presence in the Christian society of the ancient world. Like Augustine, Isidore held an acceptance of the Jewish presence as necessary to society because of their expected role in the anticipatedSecond Coming of Christ.
But Isidore had access to Augustine's works, out of which one finds more than forced acceptanceof but rather broader reasons than just an endtime rolefor Jews in society:
[D]iversities in the manners, laws, and institutions whereby earthly peace is secured and maintained [are not scrupled in the heavenly city for which we strive, while its citizens sojourn on earth], but recognizing that, however various they are, they all tend to one and the same end of earthly peace.
[The heavenly city] is therefore so far from rescinding and abolishing these diversities, that it even preserves and adopts them, so long only as no hindrance to the worship of the one supreme and true God is thus introduced...and makes this earthly peace bear upon the peace of heaven; for this alone can be truly called and esteemed the peace of the reasonable creatures, consisting as it does in the perfectly ordered and harmonious enjoyment of God and of one another in God. (City of God, Book 19, Chapter 17)[23]
According to Jeremy Cohen, Isidore exceeds the anti-rabbinic polemics of earlier theologians by criticising Jewish practice as deliberately disingenuous inDe fide catholica contra Iudaeos.[24]
But once again Isidore's same predecessor, Augustine, seems to have written of at least the possibility of Jewish rabbinical practice along that subject's content's purportedly deceptive lines in the same work cited above:
They say that it is not credible that the seventy translators [of theSeptuagint] who simultaneously and unanimously produced one rendering, could have erred, or, in a case in which no interest of theirs was involved, could have falsified their translation, but that the Jews, envying us our translation of their Law and Prophets, have made alterations in their texts to undermine the authority of ours. (City of God, Book 15, Chapter 11)[23]
He contributed two decisions to theFourth Council of Toledo: Canon 60 calling for the forced removal of children from parents practisingCrypto-Judaism and their education by Christians on the basis that while their parents were concealing themselves under the guise of Christians, they had presumably allowed their children to be baptised with intent to deceive. This removal was an exception to the general rule of the treatment of Jewish children according to the 13th centurySumma Theologica, "[I]t was never the custom of the Church to baptize the children of Jews against the will of their parents...."[25]
He also contributed Canon 65 thought to forbid Jews and Christians of Jewish origin from holding public office.[26]
Isidore was one of the last of the ancient Christian philosophers and was contemporary withMaximus the Confessor. He has been called the most learned man of his age by some scholars,[31][32] and he exercised a far-reaching and immeasurable influence on the educational life of the Middle Ages. His contemporary and friendBraulio of Zaragoza said of him: "After so much destruction and so many disasters, God has raised him in recent times to restore the monuments of the ancients, so that we would not fall completely into barbarism".[33]
TheEighth Council of Toledo (653) recorded its admiration of his character in these glowing terms: "The extraordinary doctor, the latest ornament of the Catholic Church, the most learned man of the latter ages, always to be named with reverence, Isidore". This tribute was endorsed by theFifteenth Council of Toledo, held in 688. Isidore was proclaimed aDoctor of the Church in 1722 byPope Innocent XIII.[34]
Isidore was interred inSeville. His tomb represented an important place of veneration for theMozarabs during the centuries after the Arab conquest of Visigothic Hispania. In the middle of the 11th century, with the division ofAl Andalus intotaifas and the strengthening of the Christian holdings in the Iberian peninsula,Ferdinand I of León and Castile found himself in a position to extract tribute from the fractured Arab states. In addition to money,Abbad II al-Mu'tadid, the Abbadid ruler ofSeville (1042–1069), agreed to turn over St. Isidore's remains to Ferdinand I.[35] A Catholic poet described al-Mutatid placing a brocaded cover over Isidore's sarcophagus, and remarked, "Now you are leaving here, revered Isidore. You know well how much your fame was mine!" Ferdinand had Isidore's remains reinterred in the then-recently constructedBasilica of San Isidoro inLeón.[36] Today, many of his bones are buried in thecathedral of Murcia, Spain.
Contemporary researchers have criticised Isidore—specifically, his work in theEtymologies. The historian Sandro D'Onofrio has argued that "job consisted here and there of restating, recapitulating, and sometimes simply transliterating both data and theories that lacked research and originality."[37]
In this view, Isidore—considering the large popularity his works enjoyed during the Middle Ages and the founding role he had inScholasticism—would be less a brilliant thinker than a Christian gatekeeper making etymologies fit into the Christian worldview. "[H]e prescribed what they should mean," asserts D'Onofrio.
The researcher Victor Bruno has countered this argument. According to him, it was not the meaning of theEtymologies, or of Isidore's work as a whole, to give a scientific or philological account of the words, as a modern researcher would do. "It is obvious that, from a material point of view," argues Bruno, "Isidore's practical knowledge on etymology, geography, and history are considered outdated; his methods, from the current academic and scientific standpoint, are questionable, and some of his conclusions are indeed incorrect. But Isidore is less concerned about being etymologically or philologically right than beingontologically right."[38] In Bruno's view, Isidore, despite[clarification needed] living in theEarly Middle Ages, is anarchaic or "traditional" thinker. Being religiously inclined, Isidore would be concerned with the redeeming meaning of words and history, the ultimate quest of religions. The same researcher also found parallels between Isidore's interpretation of the word "year" (annus) and the meaning of the same words[clarification needed] in theJāiminīya-Upaniṣad-Brāmaṇa.[39]
^Montalembert, Charles F.Les Moines d'Occident depuis Saint Benoît jusqu'à Saint Bernard[The Monks of the West from Saint Benedict to Saint Bernard]. Paris: J. Lecoffre, 1860.
^Jacques Fontaine,Isidore de Séville et la culture classique dans l'Espagne wisigothique (Paris) 1959
^Wright, Roger (2013)."Isidore of Seville, Saint". In Emmerson, Richard K. (ed.).Key Figures in Medieval Europe: An Encyclopedia. Routledge. p. 350.ISBN978-1-136-77518-5.Isidore's family, from Cartagena, may have been of Greek descent.
^Roger Collins,Early Medieval Spain. New York: St Martin's Press, 1995, pp. 79–86.
^"His literary style, though lucid, is pedestrian": Katherine Nell MacFarlane's observation, in "Isidore of Seville on the Pagan Gods (Origines VIII. 11)",Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, New Series,70.3 (1980):1–40, p. 4, reflects mainstream secular opinion.
^Rachel Stocking, "Martianus, Aventius and Isidore: provincial councils in seventh-century Spain"Early Medieval Europe 6 (1997) 169–188.
^Isidore's own work regarding medicine is examined bySharpe, William D. (1964). "Isidore of Seville: The Medical Writings".Transactions of the American Philosophical Society.54 (2).
^abMacFarlane 1980:4; MacFarlane translatesEtymologiae viii.
^Barney, Stephen A.; Lewis, W. J.; Beach, J. A.; Berghof, O. (2006).The Etymologies of Isidore of Seville (1st ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 173–190.ISBN978-0-511-21969-6.
^Otto, B.; Stausberg, M. (2014).Defining Magic: A Reader. Taylor & Francis.ISBN978-1317545033.
^Verner, Lisa (2005).The Epistemology of the Monstrous in the Middle Ages. Routledge. pp. 94–95.ISBN978-0415972437.
^Green, Roland, ed. (2012).The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics (4th ed.). Princeton University Press.ISBN978-0691154916.
^Barber, Richard W. (1992).Bestiary : Being an English Version of the Bodleian Library, Oxford M.S. Bodley 764: With All the Original Miniatures Reproduced in Facsimile. Woodbridge, Suffolk, England: Boydell & Brewer. pp. 8, 13.
^Aquinas, St. Thomas (1274).Summa Theologica, p. II of p. IInd, "Treatise on Faith, Hope and Charity", Question 10, Article 12, Answer. Quote continues: "..., although in times past there have been many very powerful catholic princes likeConstantine andTheodosius, who would certainly not have failed to obtain this favour from them if it had been at all reasonable."
^Bar-Shava Albert (1990). "Isidore of Seville: His attitude towards Judaism and his impact on early Medieval Canonical law".The Jewish Quarterly Review. XXX 3, 4 (3/4):207–220.JSTOR1454969.
^Isidore of Seville (2008)."Introduction".Isidore of Seville: De Ecclesiasticis Officiis. Translated by Knoebel, Thomas L. Paulist Press. p. 11.ISBN978-0-8091-0581-6.
^Jorge Mario Cabrera Valverde (2004).Estampas de la Antigüedad Clásica. Editorial Universidad de Costa Rica. p. 124.ISBN978-9977-67-803-0.Un discípulo suyo, San Braulio de Zaragoza, escribe sobre él: ""Después de tantas ruinas y desastres, Dios le ha suscitado en estos últimos tiempos para restaurar los monumentos de los antiguos, a fin de que no cayésemos por completo en la barbarie."
^Dumont, Darl J."St. Isidore of Seville".New Advent Catholic Encyclopedia. New Advent LLC. Retrieved26 October 2022.
^Father Alban Butler. "Saint Isidore, Bishop of Seville". Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints, 1866. Saints.SQPN.com. 2 April 2013. Web. 9 August 2014.Saints SQPN
Ziolkowski, Vernon P.,The De Fide Catholica contra Iudaeos of Saint Isidorus, Bishop, Book 1, Saint Louis University, PhD diss. (1982).
Castro Caridad, Eva and Peña Fernández, Francisco (translators). "Isidoro de Sevilla. Sobre la fe católica contra los judíos". Sevilla:Universidad de Sevilla, 2012.ISBN978-84-472-1432-7.
Throop, Priscilla, (translator).Isidore's Synonyms and Differences. (a translation ofSynonyms orLamentations of a Sinful Soul,Book of Differences I, andBook of Differences II) Charlotte, VT: MedievalMS, 2012 (EPubISBN978-1-105-82667-2)
Barrett, Graham. "God's Librarian: Isadore of Seville and His Literary Agenda," pp. 42–100 in Fear, A. T., and Jamie Wood eds.Isidore of Seville and His Reception in the Early Middle Ages: Transmitting and Transforming Knowledge. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2016.
Henderson, John.The Medieval World of Isidore of Seville: Truth from Words. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007.ISBN0-521-86740-1.
Jones, Peter."Patron saint of the internet", telegraph.co.uk, 27 August 2006 (Review ofThe Etymologies of Isidore of Seville, Cambridge University Press, 2006)
Lloyd Dusenbury, David (2017). "Ait enim Lucretius. An affirmation of the Epicurean concept of time in Isidore of Seville'sEtymologiae".Antiquité Tardive.25:341–351.doi:10.1484/J.AT.5.114866.ISSN1250-7334.
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