Isidore of Seville, Saint

ISIDORE OF SEVILLE, Saint. - I. LIFE. - Born ca. 560, died 636. Son of an illustrious Hispano-Roman family (though his mother was perhaps of Gothic stock) that gave the Church and Spain three bishops: Leander, Fulgentius, Isidore, and a nun, Florentina, all saints. St. I. was born in Seville, where his father Severianus had moved a short time before from Cartagena. After the death of his parents, Leander, metropolitan of Seville, was for the darling of his brothers, I., father and teacher at the same time. Later, in 601, I. was to succeed him in the see and in the prestige of his school, and as a shining and incorruptible luminary - as St. Braulio of Saragossa called him.

He was in fact the pool into which the currents of ancient knowledge flowed, to be distributed into a harmonious system. His work is not original; but, as an exact understanding of the past and a systematic adaptation of it to subsequent generations, it makes I., as has rightly been said, one of the most outstanding personalities of all universal literature.

As bishop, I. presided over the II Council of Seville (619), in which he fought and succeeded in converting a Syrian bishop without a see; he also presided over the IV Council of Toledo (633), one of the most important of the national councils, which unified the liturgical discipline in Spain and drafted one of the most precise formulas of Trinitarian and Christological faith. After a most fruitful episcopate, he died in 636: an edifying death described by his disciple Redemptus in moving pages.

II. WORKS

With encyclopedic ambition I. embraced the entire study of human knowledge. Two catalogues of his works serve to reconstruct his literary legacy, which grew over time: the first is the Praenotatio Librorum divi I. (PL 81, 16-17) made by St. Braulio of Saragossa, the second is ch. 9 of the De viris inlustribus of St. Ildephonsus of Toledo.

Among his works, those belonging to dogmatic theology are: the Sententiarum libri III, which form, so to speak, the first Summa theologica, a genre destined to survive so gloriously; the De fide catholica contra Iudaeos, dedicated to his sister Florentina, a work of messianic apologetics, later translated into Old German at the end of the 8th century. To biblical theology belong the Quaestiones in Vetus Testamentum on biblical typology; the Prooemiorum liber unus, introductory notes to the scriptural canon; the De ortu et obitu patrum, a biographical exposition of biblical figures; the De numeris qui in Sacra Scriptura occurrunt, a mystical interpretation of the numbers encountered in Holy Scripture; the Allegoriae quaedam Sacrae Scripturae, on the numbers and figures of the Old and New Testaments. To liturgy and ecclesiastical discipline belong: the De ecclesiasticis Officiis, on worship and its ministers, the Symbol and the Sacraments, the Regula monachorum, notable for the delicacy I. shows toward the weak and for his counsels on reading and study. Of an ascetic character, on the other hand, are the Synonimorum libri duo, which treat of penitential ascetics and which St. Ildephonsus called librum lamentationis. In the domain of profane sciences: the Differentiarum libri duo, a lexicon of synonyms of things and words; the De natura rerum dedicated to King Sisebut, and the De ordine creaturarum, a treatise on cosmography, meteorology and other natural sciences. In the historical genre, the Chronica maior, a universal history which, continuing those of Julius Africanus, Eusebius of Caesarea, Jerome and Victor, reaches the year 615; the Historia Gothorum, with appendices on the Vandals and the Suevi, which opens with the enthusiastic dithyramb De laude Spaniae; the De viris inlustribus, a continuation of the similar works of St. Jerome and Gennadius, but with special attention to Spanish figures; the De haeresibus, a brief history of the heresies. Of an encyclopedic character, on the other hand, are the Etymologiae, which enclose in 20 vols. all that could be known of things sacred and profane in the 7th century — of grammar and medicine, of theology and mineralogy, of precious stones, of agriculture and the making of vessels, of war and domestic work — all of this ordered with a marvelous system. St. I. spent several years in the compilation of this work, which at his death was still unfinished. Its division into books is due to St. Braulio.

Language dominates the entire conception of the work. The procedure is etymological; and, seizing the occasion to explain the etymology of every word, I. often proceeds by ear, according to the custom of the ancient rhetoricians and grammarians. In it he unfolds the whole wealth of his knowledge: an entire volume of Migne's Patrologia that arouses surprise and wonder in the modern reader, for the erudition and the perseverance that must be supposed in the man who realized such a work.

Innumerable are the sources of this great mosaic which modern philology attempts to analyze. Many are second-hand, not from the encyclopedic arsenal of Suetonius, which never existed, but from various compendia and glossaries that are being identified day by day; the number of authors used is extraordinary. From the study of the Etymologiae, philology and grammar, literary history, archaeology, etc., derive great advantages.

His epistolary, very limited, consists of 11 letters. Seven of these form the epistolary correspondence between I. and St. Braulio: a document full of interest for the study of the relations between these two great men, and which allows one to witness the slow elaboration of the Etymologiae. The 27 Epigrammata in distichs, which adorned his library, sometimes beneath the busts of the authors then celebrated, his pharmacy and his Scriptorium, are an interesting contribution to the history of culture. Their authenticity, denied or called into doubt by some, is today, after the studies of H. Beeson, beyond dispute.

This collection of his works, today recognized, does not without any doubt exhaust all the abundance of his literary legacy, and modern research strives to identify some of the "many other opuscules" to which St. Braulio alludes in his Praenotatio. Nevertheless, some of the works recently attributed to him do not belong to him: the Commonitiuncula ad sororem, attributed to him by Anspach (Script. eccles. Hisp. lat., III, El Escorial 1935), which is instead later than St. I., as Father A. Vaccari has demonstrated. Also later than the doctor of Spain is the Liber de variis quaestionibus, published as an Isidorian work in the same collection by Anspach and Father Vega: examination of the work induces one rather to seek its author in the Adoptionist Felix of Urgel.

The literary production of St. I., as has been said, is devoid of originality. Its doctrinal value lies in its sources. It has been said that for every one of his statements he has a determinate source; this judgment appears ever more true as the philological studies of his works proceed. The redaction is a mosaic or a work of inlay, in which phrases, sentences and clauses of very many authors are inserted and interwoven, ingeniously combined and adapted to the turns of the argument in each particular case. Although he has personal and direct knowledge of what he asserts, if to express his thought he has at hand the already completed redaction of an ancient author, he uses it (cf., for example, in the De viris inlustribus), instead of giving his own judgment in different words.

He rarely names the authors he uses. They are usually the Holy Fathers, especially in writings of an ecclesiastical character. Pagan authors are more heavily used in the Etymologiae and in works of profane sciences. Although he does not limit himself to extracting from a single author, but instead has various authors at his disposal for each subject, it is nevertheless certain that he draws especially from classical authors.

Thus in book I of the Differentiae his principal source is the De orthographia of Agroecius, a grammarian of the 5th century; in the De natura rerum, the Hexaemeron of St. Ambrose, the Recognitiones of pseudo-Clement in Rufinus's translation, and the pagans Hyginus, Solinus and Servius; in the De numeris, the seven books De arithmetica of Martianus Capella (end of the 4th century) and various writings of St. Augustine on biblical symbolism; the Sententiae are an extract of the Moralia of St. Gregory; the Regula monachorum derives substantially from Cassian and from St. Benedict; the Tituli of the library, finally, are sprinkled with numerous and interesting reminiscences of Martial.

The diffusion of his work was extraordinary, both for its rapidity and for its extent. His codices were bearers of culture from Spain to France and thence, by means of the Irish monks, to all of Christendom. French writers have Isidorian citations already in the 7th century. Aldhelm, in his Epistola ad Acircium (685-705), used the De natura rerum in the very century in which it was composed. The De fide catholica was translated into German at Murbach in the 8th century. The Sententiae too were already being copied in the 7th century; and manuscripts of Bobbio from that century and from the 8th are still preserved in Milan. The diffusion of the Etymologiae is marvelous: scarcely a century after the death of their author, 54 copies of the work had already crossed the Pyrenees. Today about a thousand manuscript codices of it are preserved. This suggests that 10,000 of them existed in the Middle Ages: one of the famous "literary successes" in history.

St. I. was, as has already been said, the educator of the Middle Ages, and his books were compulsory texts in the schools. Archives still preserve today a great number of extracts, adaptations, and fragments taken from his works for school purposes. His definitions and his juridical aphorisms, coined in a precise and definitive manner, were introduced into the canonical collections and were learned by heart, as John of Salisbury prescribed. If the use of ancient sources, wherever it was copied and plagiarized without regard. Bede summarized in his Chronica from I., and in his De Temporibus the De natura rerum. An unknown Scottus of the 8th century modeled his Versus de alphabeto on the Tituli of the Spaniard. Latchen (ca. 660), although Irish, summarized the De ortu et obitu patrum in his Dicta Isidori in libro de vita et exitu prophetarum. The De institutione clericorum of Rabanus Maurus, in the 9th century, includes, without confessing it, chapter after chapter copied verbatim from I. The Middle Ages studied and thought under the sign of I., animated by his spirit.

The traditional ancient foundation is combined with gifts of clarity and method that reduce everything to a luminous system and bring order to everything he treats. A terse, sober style, elegant in its simplicity, in what it preserves as personal; precision of concepts and concision of terms, which chisels the expression, consa-

making it perpetual; and, whenever he draws on ancient sources, skillful sagacity in the selection of classical authors.

Finally, from the whole of I.'s work the man shines through: a fine and lofty character, transfigured by holiness; vibrant with enthusiasm for every sentiment of piety, humanity and patriotism, he even reaches outpourings of tenderness in his familiar letters. These, few as they are, give a portrait that one would seek in vain in his impersonal expositions of the Etymologiae and in the De ecclesiasticis officiis.

Studies: the best updated bibliography is in B. Altaner, Patrologie, Freiburg im Br. 1930. General studies: M. Manitius, Gesch. der lat. Liter. des Mittelalters, I, Munich 1911, pp. 52-70; Z. García Villada, Historia eclesiástica de España, II, II, Madrid 1933, pp. 197-229; F. Pérez de Urbel, Las letras en la época visigoda, in the Historia de España edited by P. Menéndez y Pidal, ibid. 1940, pp. 379-431; G. Madoz, Escritores de la época visigótica, in the Historia general de las literaturas hispánicas, edited by G. Díaz Playa, Barcelona 1940, pp. 114-40.

On questions of authenticity: A. Vaccani, Un trattato ascetico attribuito a s. Girolamo, in Milanque Cavallera, Toulouse 1948, pp. 147-62 (on the Commonitiuncula ad sororem); G. Madoz, Una obra de Félix de Urgel falsamente adjudicada a s. I. de Sevilla, in Estudios eclesiásticos, 23 (1949), pp. 147-68. On the state of research concerning St. Isidore, v. B. Altaner, Der Stand der Isidorforschung. Ein britischer Bericht über die seit 1910 erschienene Literatur, in Misc. Isid., Rome 1936, pp. 1-32; for the chronology, J. A. de Aldama, Indicaciones sobre la cronología de las obras de s. I., ibid., pp. 57-89; on the survival of Isidorian influence, E. Anspach, Das Fortleben Isidors vom VII. bis IX. Jahrhundert, ibid., pp. 323-56.

Monographs: In Miscellanea Isidoriana, Rome 1936, a collection of Isidorian studies by various specialists, concerning the chronology and the evaluation of the works of the Spaniard. On the canonical aspect, P. Séjourné, Le dernier Père de l'Église, 1st Isidore de Séville, Paris 1929. On his activity in the councils, G. Madoz, El floriligio patristico del II Concilio de Sevilla, in Misc. Isid., pp. 177-220; id., Le symbole du IV Concile de Tolide, in Rev. d'hist. ecclés., 39 (1938), pp. 5-20. On his Regula monachorum, R. Klee, Die Regula monachorum Isidori von Sevilla und ihr Verhältnis zu den übrigen abendländischen Mönchsregeln jener Zeit, Marburg 1909. On the letters, R. Geiselmann, Die Abendmahllehre an der Wende der christ. Spätantike zum Frühmittelalter, Munich 1933. On the spirituality, J. Mullins, The spiritual Life according to s. I. of Seville, Washington 1940.

Giuseppe Madoz