TAIONE, bishop of SARAGOSZA. — Immediate successor of St. Braulio (d. in 651). His life unfolded throughout the seventh century. He took part in the Councils of Toledo, VIII (ca. 623) and IX (a. 655).
The name of T. figures in the history of theology as that of the initiator, following St. Isidore, of the literature of Sentences, which preceded the medieval Summae. Indeed, devoted to the patristic writings which, as St. Braulio wrote to him (Ep. 42), “were nested in his breast,” in the years 646–49 he made a journey to Rome, when he was still abbot of a monastery, in order to transcribe certain works of St. Gregory the Great “which are still not found in Spain.” Bearing this acquisition, happy like a satisfied bibliophile (cicut exultant victores capta praeda, he himself says to Eugenius), he returned to Spain to begin the great compilation of the Sentences (a. 652): Libri Sententiarum V., with a prefatory letter to Quiricus, bishop of Barcelona: “Taius indignus Caesaraugustae urbis episcopus, cognomento Samuel, ad Quiricum, Barcinonensem episcopum,” and a dedication to the reader in twelve well-constructed hexameters. Concerning this journey of T. to Rome, medieval legends devised a fantastic account, which modern criticism rejects. It is not known exactly which books of Gregory the Great’s Sentences T. brought to Spain. The work of the great Pontiff had been known in Spain since St. Isidore. Perhaps the Commentaries on Ezekiel constitute a substantial part of that booty. There is another letter from T. to Eugenius of Toledo, serving as the prologue to another work, extracted from the Gregorian writings in six codices. It was a commentary on Scripture, by which the profoundly dogmatic character of the Sentences was completed under another aspect. It has not, however, been identified with certainty, although A. C. Vega probably identifies it as contained in a codex of the cathedral of Lérida.
The work of the Sentences, as T. himself explains in the letter to Quiricus, is an extensive florilegium in five books, the fruit of long vigils during the incursion of the Praga with the Vascones through the lands of Saragosza. Almost in its entirety it epitomizes St. Gregory the Great; only exceptionally does it turn to St. Augustine and St. Isidore. The purpose he set himself—to offer a synthesis to readers who could not devote themselves at length to the great works—was fully achieved in numerous medieval codices. Of the five books, I, V, and part of II deal with dogmatic theology; the others with moral, ascetical, and pastoral applications. It is T.’s merit—here too following St. Isidore in his work of the same title—to have introduced an order and arrangement of subjects that had not existed among his predecessors, such as St. Prosper of Aquitaine. Although lacking other personal qualities and originality, T. must nevertheless be credited with a broad view of the theological-moral sphere, a fair success in the selection of sources, and a warm, persuasive tone. For the rest, his style tends toward a certain artificial conceptualism; his prose reflects the growing defects of the period; it gradually moves away from the general simplicity of Braulio, his teacher, and at times becomes affected and bombastic.
In the correspondence of Braulio of Saragosza (Ep. 42), a Fragmentum remains of a letter from T. to his predecessor concerning various problems relating to the relics of the Passion preserved in Rome.