BOOK V
ON LAWS[291]
INTRODUCTION
There was a marked difference between the development of law and that of the other subjects so far treated by Isidore in the Etymologies. The latter were of Greek origin, and, with the exception of rhetoric, they appeared as strangers in the Roman environment and never formed an integral part of Roman culture. Instead, they suffered from continuous decay, and by the time of the disintegration of the Roman state they were reduced to such a condition that the “fall of Rome” meant nothing to them. On the other hand, law was an indigenous product of Roman society, upon which the Roman intellect had expended its greatest and most successful efforts, and although it inevitably shared in the general intellectual deterioration of the time, and showed a marked decline after the period of the great jurists, the beginning of its rapid decay is coincident in each section of western Europe with the close of Roman rule. Thus “the fall of Rome” played much the same part in the history of law as the transition from a Greek to a Roman environment had done for the bulk of the intellectual possession of the ancient civilization. After this event law was on terms of equality with the other branches of knowledge, and within two centuries, as judged by its presentation in the Etymologies, it was reduced to as low an estate as they.
Isidore’s De Legibus is divided into two distinct parts. The first is of a general nature, and embraces such topics as law-givers, jus civile, jus gentium, jus naturale, why laws are made, and what character a law ought to have. The second part is more specific; it treats of legal instruments, the law of property, crimes, and punishments. The whole forms a scholastic conglomerate of elements derived from every stage in the development of Roman law and exhibits a point of view that is philological and Christian as much as legal.
Because of its importance in the history of law, this book of the Etymologies has been subjected to more detailed study than any other, but in spite of this its sources have not been clearly determined. In addition to the Scriptures and Isidore’s authorities on word derivation, he is believed to have drawn on the Breviarium Alaricianum, the Theodosian code, the text-books of Gaius and Ulpian, and the Sentences of Paulus. Although the Justinian code was issued a century before the compilation of the Etymologies, it seems improbable that Isidore made any use of it, or had even heard of it.[292]
The purpose of the De Legibus was, no doubt, to serve as a text-book.[293] The amount of space given to it, which is about the average of that allotted to each of the liberal arts, and the fact that it treats of law in a general way, point to this conclusion. Its position in the Etymologies, following, with Medicine, immediately after the liberal arts, is also an indication of its educational character. The best proof of this, however, is found in the number of separate manuscripts in which the De Legibus is reproduced in a catechetical form.[294] At least eight of these are in existence, and the earliest of them is attributed to the ninth century.
EXTRACTS
Chapter 1. On law-givers.
1. Moses first of all set forth the divine laws in the sacred writings for the Hebrew people. King Phoroneus was the first to establish laws and courts for the Greeks.
2. Mercurius Trismegistus first gave laws to the Egyptians. Solon first legislated for the Athenians. Lycurgus first made rules of law for the Lacedaemonians and pretended Apollo’s authority for them.
3. Numa Pompilius, who succeeded Romulus in the kingdom, was the first to give laws to the Romans. Later, when the people could not endure their quarrelsome magistrates they appointed decemvirs to write the laws, and they translated the laws from the books of Solon into the Latin language, and set them up on twelve tables.
4. These men were A. Claudius, T. Genutius, P. Sextius, Spur. Viturius, C. Julius, A. Manlius, Ser. Sulpitius, P. Curiatius, T. Romilius, Sp. Postumius. These were the decemvirs chosen to write the laws.
5. The consul Pompeius was the first who wished to arrange the laws systematically, but he did not persevere, through fear of detractors. Then Caesar began to do it, but he was slain.
6. By degrees the old laws became obsolete through time and neglect; but a mention of them seems necessary although they are not in use now.
7. The new laws began with the emperor Constantine and the rest who followed him, but they were confused and in disorder. Later, in imitation of Gregorianus and Hermogenianus, the younger Theodosius arranged a code of constitutions from the time of Constantine, under the title of each emperor, which he called Theodosian from his own name.
Chapter 2. On laws human and divine.
1. All laws are either divine or human. Divine laws depend on nature, human laws on customs; and so the latter differ, since different laws please different peoples. Divine law is fas; human law is jus. To pass through another’s property is of divine but not of human law.
Chapter 3. On the difference between jus, leges, mores.
1. Jus is the general term and lex is a kind of jus. Jus is so-called because it is just (justum). All jus is made up of laws and customs.
2. Lex is the written ordinance. Mos is custom approved by its antiquity, or unwritten lex. For lex is derived from legere (to read), because it is written.
3. Mos is old custom and is drawn merely from mores. Consuetudo (custom) is a sort of jus established by mores, which is taken instead of lex when lex fails. And it makes no difference whether it depends on writing or reason, since reason commends written law also.
4. Moreover if lex is in accordance with reason, all that is in accordance with reason will be lex, as far as it agrees with religion, is in harmony with knowledge, and is beneficial for salvation. And consuetudo is so-called because it is in common use.
Chapter 4. On jus naturale.
1. Jus is either natural, or civil, or universal (jus gentium). Jus naturale is what is common to all peoples, and what is observed everywhere by the instinct of nature rather than by any ordinance, as the marriage of man and woman, the begetting and rearing of children, the common possession of all,[295] the one freedom of all, the acquisition of those things that are taken in the air or sea or on the land.
2. Likewise the restoring of property entrusted or lent, the repelling of violence by force. For this, or whatever is like this, is nowhere considered unjust, but natural and fair.
Chapter 5. On jus civile.
1. Jus civile is what each people or state has enacted as its own law, for human and divine reasons.
Chapter 6. On jus gentium.
1. Jus gentium is the seizing, building, and fortifying of settlements, wars, captivities, servitudes, postliminies, treaties, peaces, truces, the obligation not to violate an ambassador, the prohibition of intermarriage with aliens. And [it is called] jus gentium because nearly all nations observe it.
Chapter 7. On jus militare.
1. Jus militare is the ceremony of beginning war, the obligation in making a treaty, the going out against the enemy when the signal is given, and the joining of battle; likewise the retreat when the signal is given; likewise the punishment of a soldier’s fault if a post should be deserted. Likewise the amount of pay, the grades of office, and the honor of rewards, as when a crown or a necklace is given.
2. Likewise the determination of the booty, and the just division according to rank of persons and labors undergone, likewise the share of the commander.
Chapter 8. On jus publicum.
1. Jus publicum has to do with sacred things, and priests and magistrates.
Chapter 9. On jus quiritium.
1. Jus quiritium is the law proper to the Romans, by which none is bound but the Quirites, that is, the Romans, as in regard to inheritances, declarations of entry upon inheritances, guardianships, acquiring by prescription; which laws are found among no other people, but they are proper to the Romans and made for them alone.
2. The jus quiritium is made up of laws, plebiscites, decrees of the senate, constitutions and edicts of emperors and opinions of jurists.
Chapter 10. On lex.
1. Lex is the enactment of the people, by which the elders, together with the plebeians, passed some law.
Chapter 11. On plebiscites.
1. Plebiscites (scita) are what the common people alone enact....
Chapter 12. On the senatus consultum.
1. A senatus consultum is that which the senators alone determine in council for the people.
Chapter 13. On the constitution or edict.
1. A constitution or edict is what the king or emperor enacts or proclaims.
Chapter 14. On the responses of the jurists (responsa prudentum).
1. They are the responses which the jurisconsults are said to make to men who consult them. From this the responses of Paulus were so named. For there were certain wise men and judges of equity who composed and published institutions of civil law, by which they settled the suits and contentions of disputants.
Chapter 15. On consular and tribunitian laws.
1. Certain laws are named from those who secured their enactment, as consular, tribunitian, Julian, Cornelian. Papius and Poppaeus, consules suffecti[296] under Caesar Octavianus, carried a law which was called from their names Papia Poppaea, offering rewards to fathers for rearing children.
2. Under the same emperor, Falcidius, a tribune of the people, carried a law that no one should bequeath property in such a way that a fourth, at least, should not remain for the heirs. And it was named the lex Falcidia from him. Aquilius also secured the passage of a law which is called Aquilia to the present time.
Chapter 16. On the lex satyra.
1. A lex satyra is one which speaks at the same time of many things, being so called from the abundance of things, as it were from saturitas (fullness); whence to write satire is to compose poems with varied contents, as those of Horace, Juvenal, and Persius.
Chapter 17. On the Rhodian laws.
1. The Rhodian laws are the laws of commerce on the sea, being so called from the island of Rhodes where was a great trade in ancient times.
Chapter 18. On privileges.
1. Privileges (privilegia) are laws applying to individuals, private laws, as it were. For privilegium is so called because it is applied to a private person (in privato feratur).
Chapter 19. What law can do.
1. Every law either permits something, as that a brave man should compete for a prize, or forbids, as that no one should be allowed to ask the sacred maidens in marriage, or punishes, as that he who has committed murder should suffer capital punishment. For human life is governed by the reward or punishment of the law.[297]
Chapter 20. Why law was made.
1. Laws were made in order that the boldness of men may be checked by fear of them, and innocence be safe among the wicked, and the power of harm bridled among the wicked by the dread of punishment.
Chapter 21. What law ought to be.
1. Law will be honorable, just, possible, according to nature, according to the custom of the country, adapted to the place and time, necessary, useful, clear also, lest it contain anything in its obscurity that tends to fraud, drawn up for no one’s private advantage, but for the common good of all citizens.
Chapter 24. On legal instruments.
1. Voluntas (will) is the general name for all legal instruments, and it has received this name because it issues from free will, not from compulsion.
2. Testamentum (will) is so named because, unless the testator dies, what is written in it cannot be established or known, since it is closed and sealed; and it is called testamentum because it is not in effect until the burial of the testator (testatoris monumentum); whence the Apostle says: Testamentum in mortuis confirmatur.
3. Testamentum has not only this meaning in the Holy Scriptures, that it is in effect only when the testators are dead, but they also called every agreement (pactum et placitum) testamentum; for Laban and Jacob made a testamentum which was certainly to be in effect while they were living. And in the Psalms is read: Adversum te testamentum disposuerunt; and many others of the sort.
4. The tabulae of a will are so called because not only wills but letters were written on hewn tabulae (boards) before paper and parchment were used. Whence letter-carriers are called tabularii.
5. The testament of the civil law is made valid by the signature of five witnesses.
6. The testament of the praetorian law is sealed with the seals of seven witnesses; the former testament is made in the presence of citizens, and from that is called civile; the latter in the presence of the praetors, and thence is of the praetorian law.
7. A testamentum holographum is one wholly written and signed in the hand-writing of the maker. From this it got its name. For the Greeks use the word ὅλον for whole, and γραφή for writing.
8. A testament has no legal force if its maker has forfeited his civil rights, or if it has not been made in due form.
9. A testament is inofficiosum where an attempt has been made to disinherit the children and recourse has been had to persons outside [the family] without regard to the duty of natural affection.[298]
10. The testamentum ruptum is so named because it is made void through the birth of a posthumous child who is neither disinherited nor made an heir by name.
11. A testament is suppressed when it is not publicly made known, to the injury of heirs or legatees or freedmen; and although it is not kept secret, it nevertheless is thought to be suppressed if it is not made known to the aforesaid persons.
12. Nuncupatio (nuncupative will) is when the testator reads the will aloud, saying: “These things I thus give and bequeath as they are written on these tablets and on this wax; and do you Roman citizens be my witness”, and this is called nuncupatio. For nuncupare means to name and confirm openly.
13. The jus liberorum is the right of childless couples to name each other as heir in the place of children.
23. Emptio (purchase) and venditio (sale) is an exchange of goods and a contract arising from agreement.
24. Emptio (purchase) is so called because it is a me tibi (from me to you); venditio is as it were venundinatio, that is, from nundinae (market day).
27. Donatio usufructuaria is so named because the giver retains the usufruct of the thing, the title vesting in him to whom it has been given.
Chapter 25. On property (rebus).
3. Res is derived from possessing rightly (recte); jus from possessing justly (juste).... What is wickedly possessed is not the owner’s. He possesses wickedly who uses his own wickedly or takes possession of another’s.... He who is captured by greed is possessed, not possessing.
4. Bona belong to the honorable or noble, and they are called bona so that they may not have a base use but men may use them for good things.
5. Peculium belongs properly to minors or slaves. For peculium is that which the father or master allows his son or slave to treat as his own....
ON TIMES[299]
INTRODUCTION
To the early and medieval Christian chronology was a subject of absorbing interest. For him the course of the world’s history was authoritatively laid down in the Biblical account, and looking back over it he thought he saw that it was passing by well-marked stages to an end that was to be as sharply defined as its beginning had been. It was inevitable that there should be an attempt to plot its progress and even to form some general notion as to its end. For this purpose the Greek chronology was accepted in its entirety and extended by a set of extravagant assumptions, acceptable to the uncritical minds of the time, back to the beginning of the world. By this means an authoritative chronological exposition of past time was secured, such as under wise interpretation would disclose more clearly the rate and manner in which God’s purpose was working itself out.[300]
The chronology presented by Isidore traces the course of time along the line of the Roman emperors from Heraclius back to Julius Caesar, and then by way of the Ptolemaic dynasty to Alexander the Great. Here a transition is made to the Persian kings, who are followed back to Darius near the beginning of the fifth age. The four ages between the captivity of the Jews and the creation are marked by Biblical personages only.
There are two matters of importance to be noted in connection with the De Temporibus.[301] Isidore is the first to introduce into formal chronology the division of the world’s history into six ages. The idea was not his, however; he was merely putting into practice a suggestion given repeatedly in Augustine’s writings,[302] and used by Orosius in his History Against the Pagans. In the second place, it should be remarked that Isidore shows no signs of being aware of the proposal of Dionysius Exiguus for an era beginning with the birth of Christ. It is true that Isidore’s sixth age is supposed to begin at that time,—although as a matter of fact it begins at the death of Julius Caesar,[303]—but his era is a world era beginning at the creation.
EXTRACTS
Book V, Chapter 28. On the word chronica.
1. Chronica is the Greek word which in Latin is rendered series temporum (succession of times), such as Eusebius, bishop of Caesarea, wrote in Greek and the priest Hieronymus translated into Latin; for χρόνος in Greek is translated by tempus in the Latin.
Chapter 29. On moments and hours.
1. Time is divided into moments, hours, days, months, years, lusters, generations (saecula), ages. A moment is the least and briefest time, so-called from the motion (motu) of the stars.
2. ... Hora is a Greek name and still has a Latin sound. For hora is a limit (finis) of time, just as horae are the limits of the sea and of streams and the borders of garments.[304]
Chapter 30. On days.
5. The days are named from the gods (dii) whose names the Romans bestowed on certain heavenly bodies. They named the first day from Sol, which is the chief of the heavenly bodies just as this same day is the chief of all the days.
6. The second they named from Luna, which is next to Sol in splendor and size and borrows its light from it. The third they named from the star of Mars, which is called Pyrois; the fourth, from the star of Mercurius, which certain ones name Stilbon.
7. The fifth, from the star of Jupiter, which they call Phaeton; the sixth, from the star of Venus, which they call Lucifer, which has more light than all the other stars.
The seventh day, from the star of Saturnus, which being placed in the seventh heaven is said to complete its course in thirty years. And the heathen gave names to the days from the seven stars because they thought that some influence was active upon themselves through the same [stars], saying that they had life (spiritus) from Sol, body from Luna, ability and eloquence from Mercurius, pleasure from Venus, blood from Mars, self-control (temperantia) from Jupiter, and the humors from Saturn. Such indeed was the folly of the heathen who created such ridiculous imaginations. But among the Hebrews the first day is called una Sabbati, which among us is dies Dominicus, which the heathen have dedicated to Sol. The second day of the week is secunda Sabbati, which the heathen call dies Lunae; the third day of the week, tertia Sabbati, which they call dies Martis; the fourth day of the week, quarta Sabbati, which is called Mercurii dies by the pagans; the fifth day of the week, quinta Sabbati, that is, fifth day from dies Dominicus, which among the heathen is called dies Jovis: the sixth day of the week, sexta Sabbati, which is called by them dies Veneris. The seventh from dies Dominicus is Sabbatum, which the gentiles have devoted to Saturnus and have named dies Saturni. Sabbatum is translated from the Hebrew into the Latin as requies, because God rested on that day from all his works.
The ecclesiastical method of speaking the names of the days comes better from the lips of Christians; still, if custom should perchance influence anyone so that what he disapproves of in his heart comes forth from his mouth, let him know that all those from whom these days were named were men, and on account of certain services of a human sort (mortalia), since they were very powerful and were prominent in this world, divine honors were bestowed on them by their admirers, both in respect to the days and the stars, but first the stars were named after men and then the days were named after the stars.
Chapter 31. On night.
1. Nox is derived from nocere (to injure) because it injures the eyes. And it has the light of the moon and stars in order that it may not be without beauty, and that it may comfort all who work by night, and that the light may be sufficiently tempered for certain creatures that cannot endure the light of the sun.
3. Night is caused either because the sun is worn out with his long journey and is weary when he comes to the last stretch of heaven and blows out his weakened fires; or because he is driven under the lands with the same force with which he carried his light over them, and thus the shadow of the earth makes night. Whence Virgilius says:
Ruit Oceano nox
Involvens umbra magna terramque polumque.
Chapter 33. On months.
1. The word mensis is Greek, being derived from the word for moon. For in the Greek language the moon is called μήνη; whence among the Hebrews the regular (legitimi) months are reckoned not from the circle of the sun, but from the course of the moon, which is from new moon to new moon.
2. Because of the swifter course of the moon and the fear that an error of reckoning might arise because of its speed, the Egyptians began to reckon the day of the month from the course of the sun, since the slower course of the sun could be comprehended more easily.
Chapter 34. On the solstices and equinoxes.
2. There are two solstices: first, the summer solstice, eight days before the Kalends of July, from which time the sun begins to return to the lower circles; the second, the winter solstice, eight days before the Kalends of January, when the sun begins to make for the higher circles, whence the day of the winter solstice is the shortest and that of the summer solstice the longest.
3. Likewise there are two equinoxes: one in the spring and the other in the autumn, which the Greeks call ἰσημερίαι. These equinoxes are the eighth day before the Kalends of April and the eighth day before the Kalends of October, because the year formerly was divided into two parts only, that is, into the summer and the winter solstice, and into two hemispheres.
Chapter 35. On the seasons.
1. There are four seasons of the year: spring, summer, autumn, winter. And they are called seasons (tempora) from tempering,[305] since they are tempered in turn by moisture, dryness, heat, and cold.
2. It is known that after the creation of the universe the seasons were divided into three months each, according to the quality of the sun’s course.... And the ancients make the following divisions of these seasons: in the first month spring is called novum, in the second, adultum, in the third, praeceps.[306]
7–8. These seasons are assigned also to separate parts of the heavens. The spring is given to the Orient, because then all things arise (oriuntur) from the earth; summer to the South, because its division is more intense in its heat; winter to the North, because it is torpid with colds and perpetual frost; autumn to the Occident, because it has serious diseases. Whence, too, the leaves of the trees fall. The bordering of cold and heat and the contending of opposite airs causes the autumn to abound in diseases.
Chapter 36. On years.
1. The year is the circle of the sun when it returns to the same place in relation to the stars, after three hundred and sixty-five days....
3. There are three kinds of years. For the year is the lunar, of thirty days, the solstitial, which contains twelve months, or the great year, when all the planets return to the same place, which happens after many solstitial years.
Chapter 38. On generations and ages.
5. Age (aetas) is used properly in two ways: for it is either the age of man, as infancy, prime, old age; or the age of the world, whose first age is from Adam to Noe; the second, from Noe to Abraham; the third, from Abraham to David; the fourth, from David to the migration of Judah to Babylon; the fifth, from then to the coming of the Saviour in the flesh; the sixth, which is now in progress and which will continue until the world is ended.
6. Julius Africanus was the first of our [writers] to set forth in the style of simple history, in the time of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, the passing of these ages by generations and reigns. Then Eusebius, bishop of Caesarea, and the priest Hieronymus of holy memory, published a complex history of chronological tables, using reigns and dates at the same time.[307]
7. Then others, among them especially Victor, bishop of the church of Tununa, reviewed the histories of earlier writers and filled out the deeds of subsequent ages down to the consulate of the second emperor Justinus.
8. We have noted with what brevity we could the total of these times from the beginning of the world to the emperor Augustus Heraclius and Suinthilanus, king of the Goths, adding at the side a column of dates by the evidence of which the total of past time may be known.
Chapter 39. On the ordering of times (chronology).[308]
1. The first age contains at its beginning the creation of the world. On the first day under the name of light God created the angels; on the second, under the name of firmament, the heavens; on the third, under the name of parting, the waters and the land; on the fourth day, the lights of heaven; on the fifth, living things of the waters; on the sixth, living things of the land and man, whom he called Adam.
| [Years] | |
| 2. Adam in his 230th year begat Seth, from whom [sprang] the children of God. | 230 |
| Seth in his 205th year begat Enos, who began to call upon the name of the Lord. | 435 |
| Enos in his 190th year begat Cainan. | 625 |
| Cainan in his 170th year begat Malaleel. | 795 |
| Second Age | |
| 5. Sem in the second year after the flood begat Arphaxad, from whom sprang the Chaldeans. | 2244 |
| Arphaxad in his 135th year begat Sala, from whom sprang the Samaritans and Indians. | 2379 |
| Sala in his 130th year begat Heber, from whom sprang the Hebrews. | 2509 |
| 6. Heber in his 144th year begat Phaleg. The tower was built. | 2643 |
| Phaleg in his 130th year begat Ragan. The gods are first worshiped. | 2773 |
| Ragan in his 132nd year begat Seruch. The kingdom of the Scythians begins. | 2905 |
| 7. Seruch in his 130th year begat Nachor. The king of the Egyptians appears. | 3035 |
| Nachor in his 79th year begat Tharam. The kingdom of the Scythians and the Sycionii appears. | 3114 |
| Tharam in his 70th year begat Abraham. Zoroaster discovered magic. | 3184 |
| Third Age | |
| 12. Abdon ruled eight years. Troy was captured. | 4025 |
| Samson ruled twenty years. Ascanius founded Alba. | 4045 |
| The priest Eli ruled forty years. The ark of the covenant was captured. | 4085 |
| Samuel ruled forty years. Homer is believed to have lived at this time. | 4125 |
| Fourth Age | |
| 13. David ruled forty years. Carthage is founded by Dido. Gad, Nathan and Asaph prophesied. | 4165 |
| Solomon ruled forty years. The temple at Jerusalem was built. | 4205 |
| Fifth Age | |
| 19. The captivity of the Hebrews, seventy years. Judith writes history. | 4680 |
| Darius, thirty-four years. The captivity of the Jews is ended. | 4714 |
| Xerxes, twenty years. The tragedians Sophocles and Euripides are famous. | 4734 |
| 20. Artaxerxes, forty years. Esdras renews the law which was burned. | 4774 |
| Darius, called also Nothus, nineteen years. This time possessed Plato and Gorgias, the first teacher of rhetoric. | 4793 |
| 25. Ptolemaeus, eight years. The art of rhetoric begins at Rome. | 5118 |
| Dionysius, thirty years. Pompey takes Judaea. | 5148 |
| Cleopatra, two years. Egypt is conquered by the Romans. | 5150 |
| Julius Caesar, five years. He was the first to possess sole authority. | 5155 |
| Sixth Age | |
| 26. Octavian, fifty-six years. Christ is born. | 5211 |
| Tiberius, twenty-three years. Christ is crucified. | 5234 |
| Caius Caligula, four years. Matthew wrote his gospel. | 5238 |
| 27. Claudius, fourteen years. Mark published his gospel. | 5252 |
| Nero, fourteen years. Peter and Paul are put to death. | 5266 |
| Vespasian, ten years. Jerusalem was destroyed by Titus. | 5266 |
| 41. Tiberius, six years. The Lombards take Italy. | 5779 |
| Mauritius, twenty-one years. The Goths become Catholic. | 5800 |
| Phocas, eight years. The Romans are defeated by the Persians. | 5808 |
42. Eraclius is now governing the empire in his seventeenth year.
The Jews in Spain are being made Christian. The remainder of the sixth age is known to God alone.
BOOKS VI-VIII
THEOLOGY[309]
INTRODUCTION
After the five books devoted to the seven liberal arts there follow three which are grouped together by unity of subject and are sharply differentiated from the remainder of the Etymologies, which is prevailingly secular in tone. The contents of these three form a summary of the non-secular thought of the time.[310] Their presence in the midst of an encyclopedia of secular learning is to be explained, as we have seen, by the probability that their purpose was educational, and that they are to be regarded as the texts of the final stage in the priestly training. They thus form the conclusion of Isidore’s educational encyclopedia.[311]
ANALYSIS
| I. | The books and services of the Church (Book VI). | ||
| 1. | The Old and New Testaments (ch. 1). | ||
| 2. | The writers and names of the holy books (ch. 2). | ||
| 3. | Books (chs. 3–14). | ||
| a. | Libraries. | ||
| b. | Translators. | ||
| c. | Writers of many books. | ||
| d. | Kinds of books. | ||
| e. | Writing materials. | ||
| 4. | The canons of the Gospels (ch. 15). | ||
| 5. | The canons of the Councils (ch. 16). | ||
| 6. | The Easter cycle and other feasts (ch. 17). | ||
| 7. | The services of the Church (ch. 18). | ||
| II. | God, the angels and the orders of the faithful (Book VII). | ||
| 1. | God (ch. 1). | ||
| 2. | The Son of God (ch. 2). | ||
| 3. | The Holy Spirit (ch. 3). | ||
| 4. | The Trinity (ch. 4). | ||
| 5. | The angels (ch. 5). | ||
| 6. | The meaning of biblical names (chs. 6–10). | ||
| 7. | Martyrs (ch. 11). | ||
| 8. | The clergy (ch. 12). | ||
| 9. | Monks (ch. 13). | ||
| 10. | The remainder of the faithful (ch. 14). | ||
| III. | The Church and the different sects (Book VIII). | ||
| 1. | The Church and the synagogue (ch. 1). | ||
| 2. | Religion and faith (ch. 2). | ||
| 3. | Heresy (chs. 3–5). | ||
| a. | The heresies of the Jews. | ||
| b. | The heresies of the Christians. | ||
| 4. | Heathen philosophers (ch. 6). | ||
| 5. | Poets (ch. 7). | ||
| 6. | Sibyls (ch. 8). | ||
| 7. | Magi (ch. 9). | ||
| 8. | Pagans (ch. 10). | ||
| 9. | Heathen gods (ch. 11). | ||
BOOK VI
On the Books and Services of the Church
EXTRACTS
Chapter 1. On the Old and New Testaments.
1. The Old Testament is so-called because when the New came it was at an end, of which the Apostle speaks: Vetera transierunt, et ecce facta sunt omnia nova.
2. The New Testament is so-called because it brings in the new. For men do not learn it, except those renewed from their former state through grace and now belonging to the New Testament, which is the kingdom of heaven.
3. The Hebrews accept on Esdras’ authority twenty-two books of the Old Testament, according to the number of their letters,[312] dividing them into three series, namely, the Law, the Prophets, and the Hagiographi.
4. The first series of the Law is accepted in five books, of which the first is Beresith, which is Genesis; the second, Veele Samoth, which is Exodus; the third, Vaicra, which is Leviticus; the fourth, Vajedabber, which is Numbers; the fifth, Elleaddebarim, which is Deuteronomy.
6. The second series is that of the Prophets, in which eight books are contained, of which the first is Josue Ben-Nun, which in Latin is called Jesu Nave; the second, Sophtin, which is Judges; the third, Samuel, which is the first of Kings; the fourth, Malachim, which is the second of Kings; the fifth, Isaias; the sixth, Jeremias; the seventh, Ezechiel; the eighth, Thereazer, which is called ‘Of the Twelve Prophets,’ which books are taken as one since they are placed together on account of their brevity.
7. The third is the series of the Hagiographi, that is, those who write what is holy, in which are nine books, of which the first is Job; the second, the Psalms; the third, Misse, which is the Proverbs of Solomon; the fourth, Cohaleth, which is Ecclesiastes; the fifth, Sir Hassirim, which is the Song of Songs; the sixth, Daniel; the seventh, Dibrehajamin, which is Verba dierum, i.e., Paralipomenon (Chronicles); the eighth, Esdras; the ninth, Esther. And all of these together, five, eight, and nine, make twenty-two just as they were inclusively given above.
8. Certain add Ruth and Cinoth, which in the Latin is Lamentatio Jeremiae, to the hagiographa and make twenty-four volumes of the Old Testament, like the twenty-four elders who stand in the sight of the Lord.
9. There is with us a fourth series consisting of those books of the Old Testament which are not in the Hebrew canon. Of which the first is the book of Wisdom (Sapientiae); the second, Ecclesiasticus; the third, Thobias; the fourth, Judith; the fifth and sixth, of the Machabees. Although the Jews set these aside as apocryphal, still the church of Christ honors and preaches them among the divine books.
10. In the New Testament are two series: first the Evangelic, in which are Matthew, Mark, Luke and John; second, the apostolic, in which are Paul in fourteen epistles, Peter in two, John in three, James and Jude in one each, the Acts of the Apostles and the Apocalypse of John.
11. Moreover the whole of each Testament is triply divided, that is, into history, morals, and allegory. Again those three have many divisions, for example, what was done and said by God, what by the angels, or by men, what was foretold by the prophets of Christ and his body; what of the devil and his members; what of the old and the new people; what of the present age, and the coming kingdom, and the judgment.
Chapter 2. On the writers and names of the sacred books.
1. These are said to be the authors of the Old Testament according to the Hebrew tradition. First Moses wrote a cosmography of divine history in five volumes, which is named Pentateuch.
8. The book of Josue received its name from Jesus, son of Nave, whose history it contains, and the Hebrews assert that the same Josue was its writer, in the text of which, after the crossing of the Jordan, the kingdoms of the enemy are overthrown and the land divided among the people, and by the separate cities, villages, mountains and boundaries the spiritual realms of the church and the heavenly Jerusalem are prefigured.
18. Solomon, son of David, king of Israel, wrote three volumes according to the number of his names, of which the first is in Hebrew Misle, which the Greeks name Parabolae, the Latins, Proverbia, because in it he sets forth figurative expressions and likenesses of the truth under the form of a parallel.
19. The truth itself he has reserved to its readers to understand. The second book is called Coheleth, which in the Greek is Ecclesiastes, in Latin, Concionator, because its discourse is not especially addressed to one, as in Proverbs, but generally to all, teaching that all things which we see in the universe are perishable and short-lived, and for this reason little to be desired.
20. The third book he called Sir hassirim, which is translated Cantica Canticorum in the Latin, where in a marriage song he sings in mystic fashion the union of Christ and the church....
21. The songs in these three books are said to be written in hexameter and pentameter verse as Josephus and Hieronymus say.
40. These are the four Evangelists whom the holy spirit indicated in Ezechiel in the four animals. And there are four animals, because the faith of the Christian religion is spread by their preaching through the four quarters of the world.
41. And they were called animals (animalia) because the Gospel of Christ is preached by them on account of the soul (anima) of man. And they were full of eyes within and without, since they perceive that what was said by the prophets and what had been promised was being fulfilled.
42. And their legs were straight because there is nothing crooked in the Gospels. And as for the six wings apiece that cover their legs and faces, those things which were hid are revealed at the coming of Christ.
50. These are the writers of the sacred books who, speaking by the holy spirit for our edification, wrote both the precepts of living and the rule for believing.
51. In addition to these there are other volumes called apocrypha, and they are called apocrypha, that is, set aside, because they are doubted. For their origin is hidden and was not clear to the Fathers from whom the authority of the genuine scriptures has come down to us by a most certain and well-known tradition. In these apocrypha, although some truth is found, there is no canonic authority, on account of the many things that are false, and it is rightly judged by the wise that they ought not to be believed [to be the work] of those to whom they are ascribed.
52. For many [works] were brought forward by the heretics under the name of the prophets, and many of later origin under the name of the apostles, and all of those after careful examination were separated from the authority of the canon, under the name of apocrypha.
Chapter 4. On translators.
1. This man [Ptolemy Philadelphus] asked Eleazer the high-priest for the Scriptures of the Old Testament, and had them translated from Hebrew into Greek by seventy translators, and kept them in the library of Alexandria.
2. Being placed separately in separate cells they so translated all, by the influence of the holy spirit, that nothing was found in the text of any one of them, that was different in the rest, even in the order of the words.
5. The priest, Hieronymus, being expert in the three languages, translated the Scriptures also from Hebrew into Latin and expressed them with eloquence, and his translation is rightly preferred to the rest. For it is nearer to the literal, and plainer because of the clearness of its expression, and truer, as being done by a Christian translator.
Chapter 7. Those who wrote much.
1. Marcus Terentius Varro among the Latins wrote innumerable books. Among the Greeks also Chalcenterus is extolled with marvelous praises because he wrote so many books that no one of us could even copy in his own hand-writing as many works of other men.
2. Of our own writers, too, among the Greeks, Origen in his toil upon the Scriptures surpassed both Greeks and Latins in the number of his works. Hieronymus asserts that he had read 6,000 of his books.
3. However Augustine surpassed the zeal of all these by his genius and wisdom. For he wrote so much that no one is able in the days and nights even to read his books, far less to write them.
Chapter 16. On the canons of the councils.
5. Among the rest of the councils we know there are four venerable synods which embrace the whole faith in its chief heads, like the four Gospels or the four rivers of Paradise.
6. Of these the first, the Nicene synod of 318 bishops, was held when Constantine was emperor. In it the blasphemy of the Arian perfidy was condemned, which the same Arius gave utterance to concerning the inequality of the holy Trinity. The same holy synod in the creed defined God the son as consubstantial with God, the father.
7. The second synod of 150 fathers gathered at Constantinople under Theodosius the elder, and condemning Macedonius, who denied that the Holy Spirit was God, proved that the Holy Spirit was consubstantial with the Father and the Son, giving the form of the creed which the whole confession, Greek and Latin, preaches in the churches.
8. The third synod, the first of Ephesus, of 200 bishops, was held under Theodosius II, and it condemned with a just anathema Nestorius, who asserted that there were two persons in Christ, and showed that the one person of the Lord Jesus Christ was immanent in the two natures.
9. The fourth synod of 630 priests was held at Chalcedon under Martianus, and it condemned by the unanimous vote of the fathers Euthyches, abbot of Constantinople, who asserted that the nature of the Word of God and of flesh was one, and his defender, Dioscorus, bishop of Alexandria, and Nestorius himself a second time, along with the remaining heretics, the same synod stating that Christ the Lord was so born of the virgin that we confess in him the substance both of the divine and of the human nature.
These four are the principal synods, stating most fully the doctrine of faith; and whatever councils there are which the holy Fathers, full of the spirit of God, have ratified, after the authority of these four, they continue established in all strength.
Chapter 17. The cycle of Easter.
10. After the completion of this [95-year cycle][313] a return must be made to the beginning. In ancient times the church used to celebrate Easter on the 14th of the moon at the same time as the Jews, whatever day it came on; this way of celebrating the holy Fathers forbade at the council of Nicaea, giving directions to make inquiry not only for the Easter moon and month, but also to observe the day of the resurrection of the Lord, and because of this they extended Easter from the 14th of the moon to the 21st, in order that the dies Dominicus might not be left out.
12. The eve of Easter is spent in watching because of the coming of our King and God, that the time of the resurrection may find us not sleeping but waking. And the reason for this night is a double one, either because he received life at that time when he suffered, or because he is to come for judgment at the same hour at which he arose.
13. And we celebrate Easter in such a way as not merely to call to memory the death and resurrection of Christ but also to consider the rest that is told about him with reference to its mystic meaning (ad sacramentorum significationem).
14. For on account of beginning the new life, and on account of the new man which we are bidden to put on and to put off the old, purging away the old ferment in order that we may be a new sprinkling (conspersio), since Christ is sacrificed as our Pascha (Passover); on account of this newness of life, then, the first month in the months of the year is mystically assigned to the Easter festival.
15. And that Easter is celebrated on a day in the third week, that is, a day that occurs between the fourteenth and twenty-first, this signifies that in the whole time of the world, which is based on the unit of seven days, this mystery has now opened a third time.
16. For the first time is before the law, the second under the law, the third under grace. Wherein the mystery before hidden in the prophetic allegory is now plain, and the resurrection of the Lord is on the third day on account of these three periods of the world.
17. As to the fact that Easter day is sought through seven days from the fourteenth to the twenty-first, this is done on account of the number seven, by which the meaning of completeness is often figured, which is also assigned to the church itself because it is universal. For this reason also John, the apostle, writes to the seven churches.
18. And by the name of the moon in the Scriptures, on account of its mutability it is signified that the church as yet is established [only] in the mortality of the flesh.
19. An observance of different opinions as to the feast of Easter sometimes produces error. For the Latins seek for the moon of the first month from the third day before the Nones of March to the third before the Nones of April, and if the fourteenth day of the moon comes on Sunday, they postpone Easter to another Sunday.
20. The Greeks observe the moon of the first month from the eighth before the Ides of March to the day of the Nones of April, and if the fifteenth day of the moon comes on the Lord’s day, they celebrate Easter. A difference of this sort between them disturbs the regularity of the Easter canon.
BOOK VII
On God, the Angels, and the Orders of the Faithful
EXTRACTS
Chapter 1. On God.
1. The most blessed Hieronymus, a man of the greatest learning and skilled in many languages, first rendered into the Latin language the meaning of the Hebrew names. And leaving out many for brevity, I propose to insert certain of them in this work with their meanings in addition.
2. For the explanation of words sufficiently indicates what they mean. For certain have the reason for their names in peculiar causes. And at the beginning we set down ten names by which God is called among the Hebrews....
Chapter 5. On angels.
2. The word angel is the name of a function, not of a nature; for they are always spirits, but are called angels when they are sent.
3. And the license of painters makes wings for them in order to denote their swift passage in every direction, just as also in the fables of the poets the winds are said to have wings on account of their velocity....
4. The sacred writings testify that there are nine orders of angels, namely, angels, archangels, thrones, dominions, virtues, principalities, powers, cherubim and seraphim. And we shall explain by derivation why the names of these functions were so applied.
5. Angels are so called because they are sent down from heaven to carry messages to men....
6. Archangels in the Greek tongue means summi nuntii in the Latin. For they who carry small or trifling messages are called angels; and they who announce the most important things are called archangels.... Archangels are so called because they hold the leadership among angels.... For they are leaders and chiefs under whose control services are assigned to each and every angel.
17. Certain functions of angels by which signs and wonders are done in the world are called virtues, on account of which the virtues are named.
18. Those are powers to whom hostile virtues are subject, and they are called by the name of powers because evil spirits are constrained by their power not to harm the world as much as they desire.
19. Principalities are those who are in command of the hosts of the angels. And they have received the name of principality because they send the subordinate angels here and there to do the divine service....
20. Dominions are they who are in charge even of the virtues and principalities, and they are called dominions because they rule the rest of the hosts of the angels.
21. Thrones are the hosts of angels who in the Latin are called sedes; and they are called thrones because the creator presides over them, and through them accomplishes his decisions.
22. Cherubim ... are the higher hosts of angels who, being placed nearer, are fuller of the divine wisdom than the rest....
24. The seraphim in like manner are a multitude of angels, and the word is translated from the Hebrew into the Latin as ardentes or incendentes, and they are called ardentes because between them and God no other angels stand, and therefore the nearer they stand in his presence the more they are lighted by the brightness of divine light.
25. And they veil the face and feet of God sitting on his throne, and therefore the rest of the throng of angels are not able to see fully the essence of God, since the seraphim cover him.
28. To each and every one, as has been said before, his proper duties are appointed, and it is agreed that they obtained these according to merit at the beginning of the world. That angels have charge over both places and men, an angel testifies through the prophet, saying: “Princeps regni Persarum mihi restitit” (Dan. x. 13).
29. Whence it is evident that there is no place that angels have not charge of. They have charge also over the beginnings of all works.
30. Such is the order or classification of the angels who after the fall of the wicked stood in celestial strength. For after the apostate angels fell, these were established in the continuance of eternal blessedness.
32. As to the two seraphim that are read of in Isaiah, they show in a figure the meaning of the Old and the New Testament. But as to their covering the face and feet of God, it is because we cannot know the past before the universe, nor the future after the universe, but according to their testimony we contemplate only the intervening time.
Chapter 6. On men who received prophetic names.
1. Most of the men of early times have the origin of their names in appropriate causes. And their names have been given in such a prophetic way that they are in harmony with either their future or their antecedent causes.
2. However we shall now examine merely their literal meaning in history, without touching on the inner meaning of the spirit.
Chapter 11. On martyrs.
4. There are two kinds of martyrs, one in open suffering, the other in the hidden virtue of the spirit. For many, enduring the lyings-in-wait of the enemy and resisting all carnal desires, have become martyrs even in time of peace, because they have sacrificed themselves in their heart to the omnipotent God, and if they had lived in time of persecution, they could have been martyrs in reality.
Chapter 12. On the clergy.
4. The order of bishops is four-fold, namely, patriarchs, archbishops, metropolitans, and bishops.
5. Patriarch in the Greek tongue means highest of the fathers, because he holds the first, that is, the Apostolic place, and he is honored by such a name because he holds the highest office, as for example, the patriarch of Rome, Antioch or Alexandria.
BOOK VIII[314]
The Church and the Different Sects
EXTRACTS
Chapter 1. On the church and the synagogue.
4. The church began at the place where the holy spirit came from heaven and filled those who were sitting together.
5. In view of its present sojourn in strange parts the church is called Sion, because from the distant viewpoint of this sojourn it contemplates the promise of heavenly things, and therefore it has received the name Sion, that is, contemplation.
6. Moreover in view of the peace of the future land it is called Jerusalem, for Jerusalem means vision of peace. For there, all suffering ended, it shall possess with near contemplation the peace which is Christ.
Chapter 3. On heresy.
1. Haeresis is so-called in the Greek from choosing, because, forsooth, each one chooses for himself what seems to him to be better, as the Peripatetic philosophers, the Academic, the Epicureans, and the Stoics, or as others who, following perverse belief, have departed from the church of their own free will.
2. And so heresy is named in the Greek from its meaning of choice, since each at his own will chooses what he pleases to teach or believe. But we are not permitted to believe anything of our own will, nor to choose what someone has believed of his.
3. We have God’s apostles as authorities, who did not themselves of their own will choose anything of what they should believe, but they faithfully transmitted to the nations the teaching received from Christ. And so, even if an angel from heaven shall preach otherwise, he shall be called anathema.
Chapter 5. On the heresies of the Christians.
69. There are also other heresies[315] without founders or names: some of whom believe that God has three forms; and others say that the divinity of Christ is capable of suffering; and others set a date in time to the generation of Christ by the Father. Others believe that by the descent of Christ the liberation of all[316] in the lower regions was accomplished; others deny that the soul is the image of God; others think that souls are changed to demons and to animals of every sort; others hold different views about the constitution of the universe; others think there are innumerable universes; others make water co-eternal with God; others go on their bare feet; others do not eat in company with men.
70. These heresies have arisen against the catholic faith and have been condemned beforehand by the apostles and the holy fathers, or by the councils, and while they are not consistent with one another, being divided among many different errors, they still conspire with one assent against the church of God. But whoever understands the holy Scripture otherwise than as the sense of the Holy Spirit, by whom it was written, demands, though he do not withdraw from the church, he can be still called a heretic.
Chapter 6. On the heathen philosophers.
1. Philosophers are so-called by a Greek name, which in Latin means amatores sapientiae. For he is a philosopher who has a knowledge of divine and human things, and keeps wholly to the way of right living.
2. The name of the philosophers is said to have first originated with Pythagoras. For when the ancient Greeks boastfully named themselves sophists, that is, wise men, or teachers of wisdom, he was asked what he professed to be, and he modestly replied that he was a philosopher, that is, lover of wisdom, since to make a profession of wisdom seemed very arrogant.
3. And so in later times it became the practice to give only the name of philosopher, no matter how great the learning in matters pertaining to wisdom each seemed to himself or to others to possess. And these philosophers are divided into three classes: for they are either natural philosophers (physici), or moral (ethici), or rational (logici).
4. The natural philosophers are so-called because they treat of nature....
5. The moral philosophers are so-called because they discuss morals....
6. The rational philosophers are so named because they add reason to nature and morals.... These are divided into their schools, some having names from their founders, as Platonici, Epicurei, Pythagorici; others from their places of meeting, as Peripatetici, Stoici, Academici.
7. The Platonici are named from the philosopher Plato. They assert that God is the creator of souls, the angels of bodies; they say that after many cycles of years souls return to different bodies.
9. [The Stoics] assert that no one is happy without virtue. They claim that every sin is equally sinful, saying: “He is as guilty who steals chaff as he who steals gold, he who kills a waterfowl as he who kills a horse; for it is not the thing but the spirit (non animal sed animus) that makes the sin.”
10. These also say that the soul perishes with the body. They love the virtue of self-control, and seek eternal glory although they assert that they are not immortal.
11. The Academici are named from Academia, Plato’s villa at Athens, where he taught. These believe that all things are uncertain; but although it must be admitted that many things which God willed to surpass the understanding of man, are uncertain and hidden from us, yet there are very many things which can be received by the senses and apprehended by man.
15. The Epicureans are named from Epicurus, a certain philosopher, a lover of vanity not of wisdom, whom the very philosophers themselves called a swine because he wallowed in carnal filth and asserted that bodily pleasure was the highest good, and even said that the universe was not formed and ruled by a divine Providence.
16. But he assigned the origin of things to atoms, that is, to indivisible material bodies, from the chance combination of which all things arise and have arisen. He said that God did nothing, that all things are corporeal, that the soul is not different from the body. And so he said, “I shall not exist after I die.”
22. These errors of the philosophers have given rise also to heresies in the church....
23. When it is said that the soul perishes, Epicurus is honored; and the denial of the resurrection of the flesh is taken from all the philosophers; and where matter is put on an equality with God, it is the teaching of Zeno; and where anything is read about a God of fire, Heraclitus comes in. The same material is used and the same errors are embraced over and over by heretics and philosophers.
Chapter 7. On poets.
1. Tranquillus thus tells why poets were so named: “When men putting off savagery first began to have a settled mode of life and to obtain a knowledge of themselves and their gods, they contrived a modest way of living and necessary words for themselves, but sought for magnificence in each for the worship of their gods.
2. And so, just as they made temples more beautiful than the homes of that time, and images larger than men’s bodies, so they thought that [the gods] must be honored with an eloquence even more stately, and they extolled their merits in splendid words and pleasure-giving verse.”
10. The function of a poet is in this, that by the aid of a figurative and indirect mode of speech he gracefully changes and transforms to a different aspect what has really taken place. But Lucan is not placed in the number of poets because he seems to have composed a history, not a poem.
Chapter 8. On the sibyls.
3. The most learned authors relate that there were ten Sibyls. Of whom the first was the Persian; the second, the Libyan; the third, the Delphian, born in the temple of the Delphian Apollo, who foretold the Trojan wars and very many of whose verses Homer inserted in his work; the fourth, the Cimmerian in Italy; the fifth, the Erythraean, Herophyla by name, born in Babylon, who foretold to the Greeks on their way to Ilium that they would perish and Homer would write lies; she was called Erythraean because her verses were found in that island; the sixth, the Samian....
5. The seventh, the Sibyl of Cumae, who brought nine books to Tarquinius Priscus in which were written the secrets[317] of Rome....
6. The eighth, the Sibyl of Hellespont, born in Trojan territory, who is said to have lived in the days of Solon and Cyrus.... The ninth, who prophesied at Ancyra. The tenth, the Sibyl of Tibur, Albunea by name.
7. Verses of all these are published, in which it is manifestly proved that they wrote many things about God and Christ and the heathen. The Erythraean Sibyl, however, is said to be the most celebrated and famous of them all.
Chapter 9. On the magi.
1. The first of the magi was Zoroaster, king of the Bactrians, whom Ninus, king of the Assyrians, slew in battle, and of whom Aristotle writes that on the evidence of his works it is clear that he composed 2,000,000 verses.
2. This art was enlarged by Democritus many centuries later when Hippocrates was famous for his knowledge of medicine....
3. And so this vanity of the magic arts flourished during many generations in the whole world by the teaching of the bad angels, through a certain knowledge of the future and the summoning up of infernal spirits. Their inventions are divinations, auguries, the so-called oracles, and necromancy.
4. And there is no miracle in the feats of the magicians, whose arts of wickedness reached such perfection that they actually resisted Moses by wonders very like his, turning twigs to serpents and water to blood.
5. It is said that there was a very famous magician, Circe, who turned Ulysses’ companions into beasts. We also read of a sacrifice which the Arcadians offered to their god Lycaeus when all who ate of it were changed to the shapes of beasts.
6. And it is plain that the famous poet wrote of a certain woman who excelled in the magic arts: “She promises to soothe by her charms the minds of whomsoever she wishes, and to cause others cruel anxieties; to stay the current in the stream, to turn the stars back. She summons the spirits of the dead at night; you shall hear the earth bellow beneath your feet and see the ash trees come down the mountain side.”[318]
7. Why should I tell further of the sorceress—if it is right to believe it—how she summoned the soul of the prophet Samuel from the secret places of hell and presented him to the gaze of the living—if we are to believe that it was the soul of the prophet and not some fantastic deceit created by the trickery of Satan.
8. Prudentius, too, tells of Mercury: “It is said that he recalled the souls of the dead to the light by the power of the wand he held, and others he condemned to death.” And a little later he adds: “The wicked art can summon unsubstantial forms with its magic murmur and utter incantations over sepulchral ashes, and others it can deprive of life.”
9. The magi are they who are usually called malefici because of the greatness of their guilt. They throw the elements into commotion, disorder men’s minds, and without any draught of poison they kill by the mere virulence of a charm.
10. ... They summon demons, and dare to work such juggleries that each one slays his enemies by evil arts. They use blood also, and victims, and often touch dead bodies.
11. Necromancers are they by whose incantations the dead appear to revive and prophesy and answer questions.... To summon them blood is thrown on a corpse; for they say demons love blood, and therefore as often as necromancy is practiced blood is mixed with water, that they may be more easily attracted owing to the color of blood.
12. The hydromantii are so named from water. For it is hydromancy to summon the shades of demons by looking into water and to see their likenesses or mockeries, and to be told some things by them, while the pretence is made that it is actually the dead who are being questioned by the aid of blood.[319]
13. This sort of divination is said to have been introduced by the Persians. Varro says there are four kinds of divination, namely, by earth, air, water, fire; hence geomancy, hydromancy, aeromancy, pyromancy.
14. Divini (sooth-sayers) are so called as if they were Deo pleni (full of God); for they pretend that they are full of divinity and they guess men’s future by a deceitful cleverness.
There are two sorts of [this] divination, skill and frenzy.
16. Arioli (sooth-sayers) are so named because they utter their execrable prayers at the altars (aras) of idols and make funeral offerings, and because of their solemn observances they receive responses from demons.
23. The genethliaci are so named because of their observance of natal days. They lay out men’s nativities according to the twelve constellations of heaven, and by the course of the stars endeavor to foretell the characters, deeds, and fortunes of the new-born, that is, under what sign each has been born, and what result it has for the life of him who is born.
25. At first the interpreters of the stars were called magi, as is read of those who announced the birth of Christ in the Gospel; later they had only the name of mathematici.
26. A knowledge of this art was granted up to the time of the Gospel, that when Christ was born no one after that should read the nativity of anyone from heaven.
30. To these belong also the ligatures, with their accursed remedies, which medical science condemns, whether in charms or in signs or in suspending and binding articles.
31. In all these the demonic art has arisen from a pestilential association of men and bad angels. Whence all must be avoided by Christians and rejected and condemned with thorough-going malediction.
Chapter 10. On the heathen.
2. The Gentiles are they who are without the law and have not yet believed. Moreover they are called Gentiles because they are in their con-genital state, that is, just as in the flesh they have plunged down into sin, to wit, serving idols and not yet regenerate.
Chapter 11. On the gods of the heathen.
1. They whom the pagans assert to be gods are known to have been men at one time, and in accordance with the life and services of each one they began to be worshiped among their own people after their death, as, in Egypt, Isis; in Crete, Jove; among the Moors, Juba; among the Latins, Faunus; among the Romans, Quirinus.
2. ... And in their praises the poets, too, have helped, and by writing poems have raised them up to the heavens.
3. It is said that the invention of certain arts has given rise to worship, as medicine for Aesculapius, craftsmanship for Vulcan. And they get their names from their activities, as Mercurius because he is in charge of merchandise; Liber from liberty.
4. There were also certain brave men and founders of cities, upon whose death men, because they loved them, made images of them, so as to have some comfort from the contemplation of their likenesses, but this error, it is now plain, so insinuated itself among later men by the influence of demons, that the persons whom earlier men honored for the sake of memory and nothing else, were believed by their successors to be gods, and were worshiped.
5. The use of images arose when, because of longing for the dead, likenesses or representations were made of them as if they had been received into heaven. And demons substituted themselves to be worshiped on earth in their place, and persuaded deceived and wretched men that sacrifices should be made to them.
12. While wicked pride, whether of men or of demons, commands and desires this worship, on the other hand pious humility, whether of men or of holy angels, refuses it when offered to them and shows to whom it is due.
15. Demons, they say, were named by the Greeks as if δαήμονας, that is, clever and knowing about things. For they foreknow many things that are to come, and because of this they are wont to give some responses.
16. For there is in them a knowledge of things greater than is in human weakness, partly by the keenness of their subtler sense, partly by the experience of very long life, partly by God’s command as revealed by the angels. They are strong in the nature of their aerial bodies.
17. Before their transgression, indeed, they had celestial bodies. But they fell and changed to an aerial quality, and they are not allowed to occupy the purer stretches of yonder airy space, but those misty parts, and this serves as a sort of prison for them until the time of judgment. These are the apostate angels, and their chief is the devil.
18. The devil (diabolus) in Hebrew means flowing downward (deorsum fluens), because he despised a calm station at heaven’s height and fell in downward ruin by the weight of his pride; but in Greek devil means accuser, whether because he reports the guilty deeds to which he is himself the tempter, or because he accuses the innocence of the elect with false crimes. Whence the angel’s voice says in the Apocalypse: “The accuser of our brethren has been cast down, who accused them in the sight of God day and night.”
19. Satanas signifies in Latin the adversary, or deserter. He is the adversary, for he is the foe of truth, and struggles to resist the virtues of the holy; and the deserter, because he became an apostate and did not stand by the truth in which he was created; and the tempter, because he demands that the uprightness of the just be tried, as is written in Job.
20. Antichrist is so named because he is going to oppose Christ. It is not as certain simple-minded persons understand, that he is called Antichrist because he is going to come before Christ, that is, that Christ will come after him; not so, but Antichrist in the Greek means in the Latin contrarius Christo, for ἀντὶ in Greek means contra in Latin.
21. For when he comes he will say falsely that he is Christ, and he will fight against him, and will oppose the sacraments of Christ, in order to destroy the Gospel of truth.
22. For he will try to repair the temple at Jerusalem and to restore all the ceremonies of the old law; moreover he is Antichrist who denies that Christ is God, for he is opposed to Christ; all who go out of the church and are cut off from the unity of faith are themselves Antichrist.
37. They say that Janus is the gate (janua), as it were, of the universe, or the heavens or the months; they make Janus with two faces because of the East and the West; when they make him with four faces and call him the double Janus they refer this to the four quarters of the universe or to the four elements or seasons. But when they make this pretence they make a monster, not a god.
56. They say that Diana [Apollo’s] sister is at the same time Luna and the divinity of roads. And they represent her as a maiden because nothing grows on a road. And both [Apollo and Diana] are falsely represented as having arrows because the sun and moon send their rays from heaven down to the earth.
81. Pan is a Greek name; the Latin is Silvanus; the god of the country people whom they invented to represent nature, whence he is called Pan, that is, all. For they pretend that he is made out of every kind of element.
82. For he has horns to represent the rays of the sun and moon; he has a skin, marked by spots, because of the stars of heaven; his face is red to represent the ether; he carries a Pan’s-pipe of seven reeds because of the harmony of the heavens in which are seven sounds, and the seven notes of the voice.
89. These[320] and others are the fabulous imaginations of the heathen, and, being rightly understood, they are such that their worship, though in ignorance, brings damnation.
100. They say manes are the gods of the dead, whose power, they assert, is between the moon and the earth....
101. Larvae they say are demons made from men who have been wicked. It is said to be their nature to terrify little ones and to gibber in dark corners.
BOOK IX
ON LANGUAGES, RACES, EMPIRES, WARFARE, CITIZENS, RELATIONSHIPS
INTRODUCTION
In spite of the apparent lack of unity indicated by the title, the subject of Book IX may be fairly described as mankind. It is true that language is the first topic, but it is brought in merely because Isidore believed that differences of race were based on differences of language. It is followed by a survey of the races of mankind, ending with an account of the races that had won military prominence. Isidore then turns to man within the state and treats of him first as a soldier and then as a citizen. Finally man is taken up as a member of the family, and an account of family relationship and of marriage is given.[321]
ANALYSIS
| I. | Languages (ch. 1). | |
| II. | Mankind (ch. 2). | |
| 1. | Mankind the descendants of the sons of Noah (Secs. 2–37). | |
| 2. | General view of the peoples of the earth with their Hebrew origin where known (Secs. 37–135). | |
| III. | Empires, rulers, and warfare (ch. 3). | |
| IV. | Terms relating to civil life (ch. 4). | |
| V. | The family (chs. 5–7). | |
| 1. | The direct line (ch. 5). | |
| 2. | Relatives and degrees of relationship, with the “prohibited degrees” (ch. 6). | |
| 3. | Marriage (ch. 7). | |
EXTRACTS
Chapter 1. On the languages of the nations.
1. The diversity of languages arose after the flood, at the building of the tower; for before that proud undertaking divided human society among different languages (in diversos signorum sonos) there was one tongue for all peoples, which is called Hebrew. This the patriarchs and prophets used, not only in their conversation, but in the sacred writings as well. At first there were as many languages as peoples, then more peoples than languages, because many peoples sprang from one language.
3. There are three sacred languages, Hebrew, Greek, and Latin, and they are supreme through all the world. For it was in these three languages that the charge against the Lord was written above the cross by Pilate. Wherefore, because of the obscurity of the holy Scriptures, a knowledge of these three languages is necessary, in order that there may be recourse to a second if the expression in one of them leads to doubt of a word or its meaning.
4. But the Greek tongue is considered most famous among the tongues of the nations. For it is more resonant than the Latin and all other tongues, and its variety is discerned in its five divisions: of which the first is called κοινή, that is, debased or common, which all use.
5. The second is Attic, that is, the Athenian speech which all the writers of Greece used. The third is Doric, which the Egyptians have and the Sicilians. The fourth is Ionic. The fifth, Aeolic, which the Aeoles spoke. In observing the Greek tongue there are definite distinctions of this sort; for their language is divided in this way.
6. Certain have asserted that there are four Latin languages, namely, the early, the Latin, the Roman, the corrupted. The early is that which the oldest Italians used in the time of Janus and Saturn, a rude speech, as is shown in the songs of the Salii; the Latin, which they spoke in Latium under Latinus and the kings of Tuscia, in which the twelve tables were written.
7. The Roman, which began to be spoken by the Roman people after the kings were driven out, which was used by the poets Naevius, Plautus, Ennius, Virgilius, the orators Gracchus, Cato, Cicero, and the rest. The corrupted Latin, which, after the empire was extended more widely, burst into the Roman state along with customs and men, corrupting the soundness of speech by solecisms and barbarisms.
10. Every language, Greek, Latin, or of other nations, any man can grasp by hearing it, or can get from a teacher by reading. Though a knowledge of all languages is difficult for anyone, still no one is so sluggish that, situated as he is in his own nation, he should not know his own nation’s language. For what else is he to be thought except lower than the brute animals? For they make the sound that is proper to them, but he is worse who lacks a knowledge of his own language.
11. What sort of language God spoke at the beginning of the world when he said “Let there be light”, it is difficult to discover. For there were no languages yet. Likewise [it is hard to learn] in what tongue he spoke later to man’s external ear, especially when he spoke to the first man or to the prophets, or when God’s voice sounded corporally[322] as when he said, “Thou art my beloved son”, where it is believed by certain authorities that he used that one and single language that existed before there was a diversity of language. However among the different nations it is believed that God speaks to them in that same tongue which they themselves use, so as to be understood by them.
12. God speaks to men, not through the agency of invisible substance, but by an embodied being, in which form he has willed to appear to men when he has spoken. The Apostle says also: “If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels”, where the question arises in what tongue angels speak. Not that angels have languages, but this is said figuratively.
13. Likewise it is asked what tongue men will speak in future. The answer is nowhere found....
14. And we have written first about tongues and later about nations for the reason that nations have arisen from tongues, not tongues from nations.
Chapter 2. On names of Nations.
2. The nations among whom the earth is divided are seventy-three. Fifteen from Japhet, thirty-one from Cham, twenty-seven from Sem, which make seventy-three, or rather, as calculation shows, seventy-two, and as many languages began to exist throughout the lands, and increasing they filled the provinces and islands.
9. ... These[323] are the nations of the stock of Sem, possessing the southern land from the sun-rise all the way to the Phoenicians.
25. ... These[323] are the nations of the stock of Cham, who hold all the southern part from Sidon all the way to the Strait of Cadiz.
37. These are the nations of the stock of Japhet, which possessed the half of Asia and all Europe as far as the British Ocean, leaving names to both places and peoples from Mt. Taurus to Aquilo, of which at a later time a great many were changed, but the rest remain as they were.
38. For the names of many peoples have remained in part, so that it is evident to-day whence they were derived, as the Assyrians from Assur, the Hebrews from Heber, but they have changed in part, through length of time, so that the most learned men scanning the oldest histories have with difficulty been able to find the origins, not of all, but of some of them.
39. ... And if all things should be considered, it is evident that a greater number of peoples have changed their names than have kept them, and different reasons have imposed different names on them. For the Indi were so-called from the river Indus which bounds them on the west.
40. The Seres[324] obtained a name from their own town, a people lying toward the East, among whom wool taken from trees is woven.
89. The Goths are believed to have been named from Magog, son of Japhet, from the likeness of the last syllable. These the ancients called Getae, rather than Goths, a race brave and very powerful, of lofty massive stature, fear-inspiring in the matter of arms....
96. The Vindilicus is a river bursting forth in the extremity of Gaul, near which stream the Vandals are said to have dwelt, and to have derived their name from it.
97. The nations of Germany are so-called because their bodies are of monstrous size, and their tribes are terrible, being inured to the fiercest cold, and they have derived their characteristics from the rigor of the climate, of fierce spirit and always unconquerable, living on plunder and hunting. Of these there are very many tribes, varying in their armor and in the color of their dress and with different languages, and the derivation of their names is doubtful.... The frightfulness of their barbarism contributes a certain fearfulness of sound to their very names.
100. The tribe of Saxons, dwelling on the shores of the Ocean and among pathless marshes, brave and active. And from this they get their name, because they are a hardy and very strong race of men, and one that surpasses other tribes in piracy.
101. It is believed that the Francs were so-called from a certain leader. Others think that their name comes from the savagery of their character. For their customs are uncouth, and they have a natural fierceness of spirit.
102. Certain suspect that the Britons were so-called according to the Latin because they are stupid (bruti), a people situated in the midst of the Ocean, separated by the sea, as it were, beyond the circle of lands.
105. In accordance with diversity of climate, the appearance of men and their color and bodily size vary and diversities of mind appear. Thence we see that the Romans are dignified, the Greeks unstable, the Africans crafty, the Gauls fierce by nature and somewhat headlong in their disposition, which the character of the climates brings about.
132. The Anthropophagi, a very fierce people, situated in the direction of the Seres. And they are named Anthropophagi because they eat human flesh. And just as in the case of these, so in the case of other peoples throughout the ages, names have been changed either because of kings, or countries, or customs, or some other causes, so that the first origin of their name is not evident, owing to distance of time.
133. Moreover those who are called Antipodes, because they are believed to be opposite to our feet, so that, being as it were placed beneath the earth, they tread in footsteps that are opposed to our feet. It is by no means to be believed, because neither the solid texture nor the center of the earth admits it. Besides, this is not established by any historical evidence, but the poets arrive at this conclusion by a sort of reasoning.
Chapter 3. On kingdoms and terms used in warfare.
2. Whole nations have enjoyed sovereignty each in its own turn, as the Assyrians, Medes, Persians, Egyptians, Greeks, whose turns the lot of time so rolled around that one was destroyed by another. Amid all the kingdoms of the earth, however, two are said to be more glorious than the rest; that of the Assyrians first, then that of the Romans, being separated and distinguished from one another both in time and place.
3. For as the former was earlier and the latter later, so the former arose in the East and the latter in the West; finally at the destruction of the former the beginning of the latter immediately appeared. All other kingdoms and all other kings are regarded as appendages of these.
BOOK X
ALPHABETICAL LIST OF WORDS[325]
EXTRACTS
1. Though the derivation of words by the philosophers involves this belief, that homo comes from humanitas, sapiens from sapientia, because sapientia exists before sapiens, still another special cause is evident in the derivation of certain names, as homo from humus, whence in a true sense homo is so called. And we have set down certain of these derivations in this work for the sake of example.
44. Compilator, one who mixes the words of other men with his own as painters are wont to mix and pound different things in a mortar. Of this crime the famous poet of Mantua was once accused when he had translated certain verses of Homer and mingled them with his own, and when he was called by his rivals a plunderer of the ancients he replied: “Magnarum esse virium clavam Herculi extorquere de manu”.
194. Nepos,[326] so called from a certain kind of scorpion that eats its own young, excepting one which has a seat upon its back; this one, being saved, eats its father. Whence men who eat up in luxury the goods of their parents are called Nepotes.
235. Rationator, so-called, a great man because he can give a reason for all the things which are allowed to be wonderful.
BOOK XI[327]
ON MAN AND MONSTERS
ANALYSIS
| I. | Man and his parts (ch. 1). | |
| A description of the human body. | ||
| II. | The six ages of man (ch. 2). | |
| III. | Monsters. | |
| 1. | Monstrous births (ch. 3, 1–11). | |
| 2. | Monstrous races (ch. 3, 12–27). | |
| 3. | The imaginary monsters of pagan mythology (ch. 3, 28–39). | |
| 4. | Transformations (ch. 4). | |
EXTRACTS
Chapter 1. On man and his parts.
4. Homo is so named because he is made of humus (earth), as it is told in Genesis: “Et creavit Deus hominem de humo terrae.” And the whole man made up of both substances, that is, of the union of soul and body, is termed homo by an abuse of the word.
6. Man is two-fold, the inner and the outer. The inner man is the soul (anima); the outer man, the body.
7. Anima received its name from the heathen, for the reason that it is wind (ventus). Wind is called in the Greek ἄνεμος; and we seem to live by drawing air into the mouth. But this is most clearly false, because anima comes into being long before air can be received into the mouth, because it is already alive in the womb of the mother.
8. Anima therefore is not air, as certain have thought who have not been able to form a conception of an incorporeal nature.
9. The evangelist asserts that spiritus is the same thing as anima, saying: “Potestatem habeo ponendi animam meam et rursus potestatem habeo sumendi eam.” And in regard to the anima of the Lord at the time of the passion, the same evangelist thus spoke, saying: “et inclinato capite emisit spiritum.”
10. For what is it to send forth the spiritus, if not to lay down the anima. But the anima is so called because it lives, and the spiritus because of its spiritual nature, or because it breathes (inspiret) in the body.
11. Likewise animus is the same as anima. But anima is of life, animus of wisdom. Whence the philosophers say that even without animus the life remains, and without the mind, anima endures....
12. ... It is not anima, but what excels in anima that is called mens, its head or eye, as it were. Whence man himself is called the image of God in respect to mens. However all those things are united to anima so that it is one thing. The anima has received different names according to the working of different causes.
13. ... When it gives life to the body, it is anima; when it wills,[328] it is animus; when it knows, it is mens; when it recollects, it is memoria; when it judges what is right, it is ratio; when it breathes, it is spiritus; when it is conscious of anything, it is sensus....
14. Corpus is so called because being corrupted, it perishes. For it is perishable and mortal and must sometime be dissolved.
16. The body is made up of the four elements. For earth is in the flesh; air in the breath; moisture in the blood; fire in the vital heat. For the elements have each their own part in us, and something is due them when the structure is broken up....
18. The bodily senses are five: sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch. Two of these open and close; two are always open.
56. The arteries are so named because the air, that is, the breath, is carried by them from the lungs; or because they retain the breath of life in their narrow and close passages, whence they emit the sounds of the voice, which would all sound alike if the movement of the tongue did not create differences of the voice.
77. Lac (milk) derives its name from its color, because it is a white liquor, for the Greeks call white λεῦκος and its nature is changed from blood; for after the birth whatever blood has not yet been spent in the nourishing of the womb flows by a natural passage to the breasts, and whitening by their virtue, receives the quality of milk.
86. Ossa (bones) are the solid parts of the body. For on these all form and strength depend. Ossa are named from ustus (burned), because they were burned by the ancients, or as others think, from os (the mouth), because there they are visible, for everywhere else they are covered and concealed by the skin and flesh.
92. Terga, because it is on the back that we lie flat on the earth (terra); men alone can do this, for dumb animals lie either on the belly or on the side; whence the word tergum is applied to them mistakenly.
108. The knees are the meeting-points of the thighs and lower legs; and they are called knees (genua) because in the womb they are opposite to the cheeks (genae). For they adhere to them there and they are akin to the eyes, the revealers of tears and of pity. For the knees (genua) are so called from the cheeks (genae).
109. In short they assert that man in his beginning and first formation is so folded up that the knees are above, and by these the eyes are shaped so that there are deep hollows. Ennius says: “Atque genua comprimit artagena.” Thence it is that when men fall on their knees they at once begin to weep. For nature has willed that they remember their mother’s womb where they sat in darkness, as it were, until they should come to the light.
118. Cor is derived from a Greek term—what they call καρδία (heart)—or, it may be, from cura (cure). For in it dwell all anxious thought and wisdom. And it is near the lungs for this reason, that when it is fired by anger it may be cooled by the liquid of the lungs. It has two arteries, of which the left has more blood, the right, more air. From it also is the pulse we find in the right arm.
120. The pulsus (pulse) is so called because it beats (palpitet), and by its evidence we perceive that there is sickness or health. Its motion is two-fold; a simple motion which is made up of a single beat, and a composite, made up of several movements—irregular and unequal. And these movements have definite limits....
121. The veins are so called because they are the passages of the flowing blood, and its streamlets spread through all the body, by which all the parts are moistened.
124. The Greeks call the lungs πλεύμων, because they are the bellows of the heart and in them is πνεῦμα, that is, spiritus, by which they are stirred and moved, whence they are called pulmones....
125. Jecur (liver) has its name because in it fire (ignis) has its seat, and from there it flies up into the head. Thence it spreads to the eyes and the other organs of sense and the limbs, and by its heat it changes into blood the liquid that it has appropriated from food, and this blood it furnishes to the several parts to feed and nourish them. In the liver pleasure resides and desire, according to those who dispute about natural philosophy.
127. The spleen is so called from corresponding to (supplementum) the liver on the opposite side in order that there may be no vacuum, and this certain men believe was formed with a view to laughter. For it is by the spleen we laugh, by the bile we are angry, by the heart we are wise, by the liver we love. And while these four elements remain, the animal is whole.
Chapter 3. On human monstrosities.
1. Portents, Varro says, are those births which seem to have taken place contrary to nature. But they are not contrary to nature, because they come by the divine will, since the will of the creator is the nature of each thing that is created. Whence, too, the heathen themselves call God now nature, now God.
2. A portent, therefore, happens not contrary to nature, but contrary to known nature....
4. Certain creations of portents seem to have been made with future meanings. For God sometimes wishes to indicate what is to come by disgusting features at birth, as also by dreams and oracles, that he may give forewarning by these, and indicate to certain nations or certain men coming destruction. This has been proved by many trials.
5. ... But these portents which are sent in warning, do not live long, but die as soon as they are born.
12. And just as there are monstrous individuals in separate races of men, so in the whole human kind there are certain monstrous races, as the Gigantes, Cynocephali, Cyclopes, and the rest.
15. The Cynocephali are so called because they have dogs’ heads and their very barking betrays them as beasts rather than men. These are born in India.
16. The Cyclopes, too, the same India gives birth to, and they are named Cyclopes because they are said to have a single eye in the midst of the forehead. These have the additional name ἀγριοφαγίται because they eat nothing but the flesh of wild beasts.
17. The Blemmyes, born in Libya, are believed to be headless trunks, having mouth and eyes in the breast; others are born without necks, with eyes in their shoulders.
18. In the remote east, races with faces of a monstrous sort are described. Some without noses, with formless countenances; others with lower lip so protruding that by it they shelter the whole face from the heat of the sun while they sleep; others have small mouths, and take sustenance through a narrow opening by means of oat-straws; a good many are said to be tongueless, using nod or gesture in place of words.
19. They say the Panotii in Scythia have ears of so large a size that they cover the whole body with them. For πᾶν in Greek means all, and ὦτα, ears.
21. The Satyrs are manikins with upturned noses; they have horns on their foreheads, and are goat-footed, such as the one St. Anthony saw in the desert. And he, being questioned, is said to have answered the servant of God, saying, “I am mortal, one of the inhabitants of the waste, whom the heathen, misled by error, worship as the Fauns and Satyrs.”
23. The race of the Sciopodes is said to live in Ethiopia. They have one leg apiece, and are of a marvelous swiftness, and the Greeks call them Sciopodes from this, that in summertime they lie on the ground on their backs and are shaded by the greatness of their feet.
24. The Antipodes in Libya have feet turned backward and eight toes on each foot.
28. Other fabulous monstrosities of the human race are said to exist, but they do not; they are imaginary. And their meaning is found in the causes of things, as Geryon, King of Spain, who is said to have had a triple form. For there were three brothers of such harmonious spirit that it was, as it were, one soul in three bodies.
Chapter 4. On transformations to beasts.
2. Moreover they affirm with no fabulous lying but with historic proof, that Diomedes’ companions were changed to birds. And certain say that witches are created from human beings. For the shapes of the wicked change for their many villanies, and they turn bodily into beasts, whether by magic charms or by the use of herbs.
3. Many creatures go through a natural change and by decay pass into different forms, as bees [are formed] by the decaying flesh of calves, as beetles from horses, locusts from mules, scorpions from crabs.
BOOK XII
ON ANIMALS
INTRODUCTION
The history of zoölogical knowledge during the ten centuries from Aristotle to Isidore may be indicated with sufficient clearness by enumerating three of the works that survive. They are Aristotle’s “History of Animals”, the zoölogical part (Books VIII-XI) of Pliny’s “Natural History”, and Isidore’s “On Animals”. On the first, belonging to the fourth century B.C., Cuvier has pronounced judgment as “one of the greatest monuments that the genius of man has raised to the natural sciences”.[329] Pliny, four centuries later, is commended by Cuvier for his industry and learning, but reproached for his predilection for the fabulous, and his absolute lack of scientific order and of the scientific spirit.[330] Six centuries later a résumé of zoölogical knowledge is given in the Etymologies, which is of no value except for the information it gives of the benighted character of the medieval intellect.
Isidore’s zoölogy is shown in a better light, however, when it is compared with that of the Physiologus,[331] his great rival in this field throughout the Middle Ages. This is a collection of fabulous accounts of animals, with the moral and spiritual lessons that were drawn from them. In it the ancient science is seen in its most de-secularized form; nature knowledge is made absolutely subservient to religious teaching, and in the process actual knowledge is driven out and fable takes its place. It must be reckoned to Isidore’s credit that he resisted the temptation to give “the higher meaning”.
ANALYSIS
| I. | Flocks and herds and beasts of burden (ch. 1). |
| II. | Wild beasts (ch. 2). |
| III. | Small creatures (ch. 3). |
| IV. | Serpents (ch. 4). |
| V. | Worms (ch. 5). |
| VI. | Fishes (ch. 6). |
| VII. | Birds (ch. 7). |
| VIII. | Small flying creatures (ch. 8). |
EXTRACTS
Chapter 1. On flocks and work animals.
1. Adam first named all living creatures, assigning a name to each in accordance with its purpose at that time, in view of the nature it was to be subject to.
2. But the nations have named all animals in their own languages. But Adam did not give those names in the language of the Greeks or Romans or any barbaric people, but in that one of all languages which existed before the flood, and is called Hebrew.
9. A sheep is a domesticated animal with soft wool, harmless and calm in disposition.
10. The wether (vervex) is so called from its strength (vires) ... or because it has a worm (vermen) in its head, and, excited by the itch of these worms, they butt one another and fight and smite one another with great fury.
17. And so these animals (Ibices), as we have said, remain among the loftiest rocks, and if ever they perceive the hostile presence of wild beast or of man they throw themselves down from the highest summits, and land unharmed on their horns.
18. [Deer] are foes of snakes, and when they feel that they are weighed down with weakness they draw snakes out from their holes by the breath of their nostrils and overcoming the deadly poison[332] they refresh themselves by eating them. They made known the plant dittany. For they eat it, and shake out the arrows that have stuck in them.
19. They give a wondering attention to the whistling sound of the Pan’s pipes. They listen sharply with up-pricked ears, not with hanging ears. If ever they swim across great rivers or seas, they lay the head on the haunch of the one in front, and following one another in turn they feel no weariness from the weight.
43. Horses have a high spirit; for they prance in the fields, they scent war, they are roused by the trumpet-sound to battle, they are roused by the voice and urged to the race, they grieve when they are beaten, they are proud when they win a victory. Certain know the enemy in battle, so that they bite the foe. Some recall their own masters, and forget obedience if their masters are changed; some allow none but their masters to mount them; when their masters are slain or are dying, many shed tears. The horse is the only creature that weeps for man and feels the emotion of grief....
Chapter 2. On beasts of prey.
5. When lions sleep, their eyes are on the watch; when they walk about they obliterate their tracks with their tails that the hunter may not find them. When a cub is born it is said to sleep for three nights and three days. Then the shaking, as it were, of the ground where it lies, because of its father’s roaring, is said to awaken the sleeping cub.
6. Toward man the nature of the lion is kind, so that they cannot become angry unless attacked. Their pity is shown by continual examples. For they spare the fallen, they allow captives they meet to return home; they do not kill man unless very hungry.
17. The Gryphes are so called because they are winged quadrupeds. This kind of wild beast is found in the Hyperborean Mts. In every part of their body they are lions, and in wings and head are like eagles, and they are fierce enemies of horses. Moreover they tear men to pieces.
20. They say the urine [of the lynx] is changed to the hardness of a precious stone, which is called lincurius, and by the following proof it is shown that the lynxes are conscious of this; for when they have urinated, they cover the urine with sand as well as they can, from a sort of meanness of nature, lest such a product be turned to the advantage of man.
21. Castores (beavers) are so named from castrating. For their testicles are useful for medicine and therefore when they perceive a hunter, they castrate themselves and cut away their potency by a bite. Of these Cicero speaks in Scauriana: “They ransom themselves by that part of the body for which they are most sought.”
24. [The wolf] is a ravenous beast and greedy for blood, and of it the country people say that a man loses his voice if a wolf sees him first. And therefore if a person is suddenly silent, they say, “It is the wolf in the fable”. But if the wolf perceives that he has been noticed first, he lays aside his boldness....
25. ... No creature is more sagacious than dogs, for they have more understanding than other animals.
26. For they alone recognize their names, love their masters, guard their masters’ houses, risk their lives for their masters, of their own free will rush upon the prey with their master, do not abandon even their master’s dead body. And finally their nature is such that they cannot exist without men. In dogs two things are to be regarded, courage and speed.
38. Musio is so called because it is a foe to mice (muribus). Common people call it cat (catus) because it catches [mice]. Others say, because it sees (catat). For it has such sharp sight that it overcomes the darkness of the night by the brightness of its eyes.
Chapter 3. On small animals.
1. Mus (mouse) is a tiny animal; it has a Greek name;[333] but any word that is derived from it becomes Latin. Others say mures are so named because they are born from the humor (moisture) of the earth. For mus is equivalent to terra, and from the word comes humus too. The liver of these creatures grows at the full moon, just as certain things that belong to the sea grow, which grow smaller again when the moon lessens.
3. Mustella (weasel) is so called, being, as it were, mus longus (long mouse); for telum (missile) is so called from its length. This creature, somewhat wily in its disposition, moves and changes its nest in the house when it is nursing its young. It chases snakes and mice. And there are two sorts of weasels. For one is a creature of the woods, and is of a different size, which the Greeks call ἴκτιδες. The other wanders about in houses. Now they have an erroneous idea who say that the weasel conceives in its mouth, and gives birth through its ear.[334]
4. In Sardinia is a very tiny creature, spider-shaped, which is called solifuga, because it shuns the daylight. It is very common in silver mines, secretly creeping along, and it poisons those who unknowingly sit down on it.
8. Grillus (cricket or grasshopper) has its name from the sound of its voice. This creature walks backward, tunnels the earth, makes a loud sound at night. The ant goes hunting it, having itself lowered by a hair into its hole, first blowing the dust out, that it may not hide itself, and thus it is dragged out in the embrace of the ant.
9. Formica (ant) is so called because it carries morsels (ferat micas) of grain. Its wisdom is great. For it looks forward to the future and in summer makes ready food to be eaten in winter. At the harvest, too, it picks out wheat and refuses to touch barley. After it rains it always puts out the grain [to dry]. It is said there are ants in Ethiopia of a dog’s shape, and these dig up golden sands with their feet, and they watch them in order that no one may carry them off, and those that do seize them, they pursue till they kill.
10. Formicoleon (ant-lion) has its name for this, that it is a lion of the ants, or at least ant and lion at the same time. For it is a small creature that is very hostile to ants. It hides itself in the sand and kills the ants as they are carrying grains. And it is called lion and ant because it is, as it were, an ant to other animals, but a lion to ants.[335]
Chapter 4. On serpents.
3. The serpent has received its name because it crawls (serpit) with unnoticed steps; for it does not go with strides that are observable, but creeps on by the trifling impulses of its scales. But those that go on four feet, like lizards and newts, are called not serpents but reptiles. Now serpents are reptiles because they creep (reptant) on their belly and breast; and there are as many poisons as there are genera; as many deaths as there are species; as many dolors, as colors.
4. The dragon (draco) is the largest of all serpents and of all living things upon earth. This the Greeks call δράκοντα. And it was taken into the Latin so that it was called Draco. And frequently being dragged from caves it rushes into the air, and the air is thrown into commotion on account of it. And it is crested, has a small face and narrow blow-holes through which it draws its breath and thrusts out its tongue. And it has its strength not in its teeth but in its tail, and it is dangerous for its stroke, rather than for its jaws.
5. It is harmless in the way of poison, but poison is not necessary for it to cause death, because it kills whatever it has entangled in its folds. And from it the elephant is not safe because of its size. For it lies in wait near the paths by which elephants usually go, and entangles the elephant’s legs in its folds, and kills it by strangling. It grows in Ethiopia and in India, in the very burning of perennial heat.
12. It is said that when the asp begins to feel the influence of the wizard who summons her forth with certain forms of words suited thereto, in order that he may bring her out from her hole—when the asp is unwilling to come forth, she presses one ear against the earth, and the other she closes and covers up with her tail, and so refuses to hear those magical sounds, and does not come out at the incantation.
36. The Salamander is so called because it is strong against fire; and amid all poisons its power is the greatest. For other [poisonous animals] strike individuals; this slays very many at the same time; for if it crawls up a tree, it infects all the fruit with poison and slays those who eat it; nay, even if it falls in a well, the power of the poison slays those who drink it. It fights against fires, and alone among living things, extinguishes them. For it lives in the midst of flames without pain and without being consumed, and not only is it not burned, but it puts the fire out.
Chapter 5. On worms.
1. A worm is a creature that as a rule comes into being without any begetting from flesh or wood or any earthy substance, although sometimes they are born from eggs, as the scorpion. Worms belong either to earth or water or air[336] or flesh or leaves or wood or clothes.
3. Sanguissuga, a water worm, is so named because it sucks blood. For it lies in wait for drinkers, and when it is carried into their throats or fastens itself anywhere, it draws the blood, and when it has taken its fill of gore, it vomits it out, to suck in again fresh blood.
Chapter 6. On fishes.
3. Certain kinds of fishes are amphibious, being so called because they have the practice of walking on land and of swimming in the water.
4. Men gave names to the beasts of the field and wild animals and birds, before the fishes, because they were seen and known first. And later, when the kinds of fishes had been learned by degrees, names were applied either from their likeness to land animals, or to suit the species, whether in regard to habits, color, shape, or sex.
6. [Fish receive their names] from sex, as the musculus (mussel) because it is the masculine of whale, for by union with the mussel it is said this monster conceives.
8. There are huge sorts of whales with bodies the size of mountains, like the whale that received Jonah, whose belly was of such magnitude that it held something like a hell, the prophet saying: “He heard me from the belly of hell”.
14. Thynni (tunnies) have a Greek name. They appear in spring-time. They come in on the right side and go out on the left. They are supposed to do this because they see more keenly with the right eye than with the left.
25. Mullus, so called because it is mollis (soft) and most tender, by eating which they relate that lust is held in check and that the keenness of the sight is dimmed; moreover men who have often eaten it have a fishy smell. The killing of a mullet in wine brings a distaste for wine to those who have drunk thereof.
34. Echeneis, a small fish, half-a-foot long, took its name because it holds a ship[337] back by clinging to it. Though the winds rush and the gusts rage it is seen nevertheless that the ship stands still as if rooted in the sea, and does not move, not because the fish holds it back but merely because it clings to it.
35. The uranoscope is so called from an eye which it has in its head, by which it always looks upward.
41. The likeness of the eel (anguilla) to the snake (anguis) has given it its name. Its origin is in mud. Whence whensoever it is taken, it is so slippery that the more determinedly one squeezes it the quicker it slips away. They say, too, that a river of the east, the Ganges, produces them three hundred feet long. If an eel is killed in wine they who drink of it have a loathing for wine.
43. Lamprey (muraena) the Greeks term μύραινα, because it coils itself in circles. They say that this fish is of the female sex only, and that it conceives from the serpent. On this account it is enticed by the fishermen by hissing like a serpent, and it is taken. It is killed with difficulty by the stroke of a club but at once by that of a ferule. It is certain that it has its life in its tail, for if the head is struck it is hard to kill it, but when its tail is struck it dies at once.
53. Mussels (musculi) as we have said before are shell-fish, and oysters conceive from their milk, and they are called musculi as if it were masculi.
56. Certain relate what is incredible, that ships go more slowly if they carry a tortoise’s right foot.
Chapter 7. On birds.
3. Birds (aves) are so called because they have no definite roads (viae) but speed hither and thither through pathless (avia) ways.
9. Many names of birds were evidently made up from the sound of their cry, as grus, corvus, cygnus, pavo, ulula, cuculus, graculus, and so on. For the variety of their cry told men what they were to be called.
10. The eagle (aquila) is so called from its sharpness (acumine) of sight. For it is said to possess such power of vision that when it is borne over the sea with motionless wing and is not visible to human sight, even from such a lofty place it sees the fishes swim, and descending like a missile from an engine it seizes its booty and flies with it to the shore.
11. It is also said not to lower its gaze from the rays of the sun, and for this reason it lifts its young ones in its talons and exposes them to the rays of the sun, and keeps as worthy of its kind those which it sees keep a motionless gaze, and drops down as degenerate whatever ones it sees turning their gaze downward.
18. The swan (cygnus) is so called from singing, because it pours forth sweet song in modulated tones. And it sings sweetly for the reason that it has a long curving neck, and it must needs be that the voice, struggling out by a long and winding way, should utter various notes.
19. They say that in the Hyperborean regions when cithara players lead, many swans fly up and sing very harmoniously.
44. The crow (cornix), a bird full of years, has a Greek name[338] among the Latins, and augurs say it increases a man’s anxieties by the tokens it gives, that it reveals ambushes, and foretells the future. It is great wickedness to believe this, that God entrusts his counsels to crows.
66. To the hoopoe (upupa) the Greeks give its name because it attends to (consideret) human excrements and feeds on stinking filth, a most foul bird, helmeted with upstanding crests, always lingering at graves and human excrements. And whoever anoints himself with its blood, on going to sleep will see demons choking him.
67. Tuci, which is the name the Spaniards give to cuckoos (cuculi), were evidently named from their peculiar cry. These have a time for coming, perched on the shoulders of kites because of their short and weak flights, in order that they may not grow weary and fail in the long spaces of the air. Their saliva produces grasshoppers. [The cuckoo] eats the eggs it finds in the sparrow’s nest, and substitutes its own, which the sparrow receives and sets on and cares for.
79. All kinds of flying things are born twice. For first the eggs are born, then by the heat of the mother’s body they are formed and given life.
Chapter 8. On small winged creatures.
1. Bees (apes) are so called because they hold to one another by the feet, or it may be because they are born without feet (pes). For it is only later on that they get feet and wings. These are skilful in the business of producing honey, they dwell in homes allotted to them, they arrange their dwellings with a skill that makes no mistake, they store the hive from various flowers, and forming their wax-cells, they fill the camp with unnumbered young, and they have an army and kings, they make wars, flee from smoke, and are enraged by noise.
2. A good many have proved by experiment that these spring from the carcasses of cattle. For in order to create them the flesh of slain calves is beaten, in order that worms may be created from the rotten gore, and these afterward turn to bees. In a correct sense bees (apes) are so called because they spring from boves as hornets from horses, drones from mules, wasps from asses.
BOOKS XIII AND XIV
[On Universe and Earth]
INTRODUCTION
In books XIII and XIV Isidore gives a complete and systematic account of the material universe, taking up and treating in order the heavens, the atmosphere, water, and earth. His treatment of the last two is especially full and constitutes a geographical description of the earth’s surface as known at his time.[339]
ANALYSIS
| I. | The universe (Bk. XIII, ch. 1). | |
| II. | Atoms (ch. 2). | |
| III. | Elements (ch. 3). | |
| IV. | The heavens (chs. 4–6). | |
| 1. | The parts of the heavens.[340] | |
| 2. | The circles of the heavens.[340] | |
| V. | The air and the clouds (chs. 7–11). | |
| 1. | Thunder. | |
| 2. | Lightning. | |
| 3. | The rainbow and cloud forms. | |
| 4. | The winds. | |
| VI. | Waters (chs. 12–22). | |
| 1. | Springs. | |
| 2. | The sea. | |
| 3. | The ocean. | |
| 4. | The Mediterranean. | |
| 5. | Bays, etc. | |
| 6. | Lakes. | |
| 7. | The abyss. | |
| 8. | Rivers. | |
| VII. | The dry land (Bk. XIV, ch. 1). | |
| 1. | The circle of lands (chs. 2–5). | |
| (1) Asia. | ||
| (2) Europe. | ||
| (3) Africa. | ||
| 2. | Islands (ch. 6). | |
| 3. | Promontories (ch. 7). | |
| 4. | Mountains, etc. (ch. 8). | |
| 5. | The lower parts of the earth (ch. 9). | |
BOOK XIII
On the Universe and its Parts
EXTRACTS
Preface.—In this book, as it were in a brief outline we have commented on certain causes in the heavens, and the sites of the lands, and the spaces of the sea, so that the reader may run them over in a little time, and learn their etymologies and causes with compendious brevity.
Chapter 1. On the universe.
1. The universe is the heavens, the earth, the sea, and what in them is the work of God, of whom it is said: “And the universe was made by him”. The universe (mundus) is so named in Latin by the philosophers because it is in continued motion (motu), as for example, the heavens, the sun, moon, air, seas. For no rest is permitted to its elements, and therefore it is always in motion.
2. Whence also the elements seem to Varro living creatures, since, he says, they move of themselves. The Greeks have borrowed a name for the universe from ornament, on account of the variety of the elements and the beauty of the stars. For it is called among them κόσμος, which means ornament. For with the eyes of the flesh we see nothing fairer than the universe.
3. It is agreed that there are four climata, that is, tracts of the universe: East, West, North, South.
Chapter 2. On the atoms.
1. The philosophers call by the name of atoms certain parts of bodies in the universe so very minute that they do not appear to the sight, nor admit of τομή, that is, division, whence they are called atoms. These are said to flit through the void of the whole universe with restless motions, and to move hither and thither like the finest dust that is seen when the rays of the sun pour through the windows. From these certain philosophers of the heathen have thought that trees are produced, and herbs and all fruits, and fire and water, and all things are made out of them.
2. Atoms exist either in a body, or in time, or in number, or in the letters. In a body as a stone. You divide it into parts, and the parts themselves you divide into grains like the sands, and again you divide the very grains of sand into the finest dust, until if you could, you would come to some little particle which is now [such] that it cannot be divided or cut. This is an atom in a body.
3. In time, the atom is thus understood: you divide a year, for example, into months, the months into days, the days into hours, the parts of the hours still admit of division, until you come to such an instant of time and fragment of a moment as it were, that it cannot be lengthened by any little bit and therefore it cannot be divided. This is the atom of time.
4. In numbers, as for example, eight is divided into fours, again four into twos, then two into ones. One is an atom because it is indivisible. So also in case of the letters. For you divide a speech into words, words into syllables, the syllable into letters. The letter, the smallest part, is the atom and cannot be divided. The atom is therefore what cannot be divided, like the point in geometry....
Chapter 3. On the elements.
1. Hyle[341] is the name the Greeks apply to the first material of things, which is in no way formed, but has a capacity for all bodily forms, and out of it these visible elements are shaped. Wherefore they have derived their name from this source.[342] This hyle the Latins called materia, for the reason that everything in the rough from which something is made, is always called materia....
2. The Greeks moreover call the elements στοιχεῖα,[343] because they are akin to one another in the harmony of like quality and a sort of common character, for they are said to be allied with one another in a natural way, now tracing their origin from fire all the way to earth, now from earth all the way to fire, so that fire fades into air, air is thickened to water, water coarsened to earth, and again earth is dissolved into water, water refined into air, air rarefied into fire.
3. Wherefore all elements are present in all, but each of them has received its name from that which it has in greater degree. And they have been assigned by divine providence to the living creatures that are suited to them, for the Creator himself filled the heaven with angels, the air with birds, the sea with fish, the earth with men and other living creatures.
Chapter 5. On the parts of the heavens.
1. Ether is the place in which the stars are, and it signifies that fire which is separated on high from the whole universe. Ether is the element itself; and aethra is the glow of the ether and is a Greek word.
Chapter 7. On the air and the clouds.
1. Air is emptiness, having more rarity mixed with it than the other elements. Of it Virgil says:
Longum per inane secutus.
Air (aer) is so called from αἴρειν (to raise), because it supports the earth or, it may be, is supported by it. This belongs partly to the substance of heaven, partly to that of the earth. For yonder thin air where windy and gusty blasts cannot come into existence, belongs to the heavenly part; but this more disordered air which takes a corporeal character because of dank exhalations, is assigned to earth, and it has many subdivisions: for being set in motion it makes winds; and being vigorously agitated, lightnings and thunderings; being contracted, clouds; being thickened, rain; when the clouds freeze, snow; when thick clouds freeze in a more disordered way, hail; being spread abroad, it causes fine weather; for it is known that thick air is a cloud and that a cloud that thins and melts away, is air.
2. ... Now the thickening of the air makes clouds. For the winds gather the air together and make a cloud. Whence is the expression: “Atque in nubem cogitur aer.”
Chapter 8. On thunder.
1. Thunder (tonitruum) is so called because its sound terrifies (terreat), for tonus is sound. And it sometimes shakes everything so severely that it seems to have split the heavens, since when a great gust of the most furious wind suddenly bursts into the clouds, its circular motion becoming stronger and seeking an outlet, it tears asunder with great force the cloud it has hollowed out, and thus comes to our ears with a horrifying noise.
2. One ought not to wonder at this since a vesicle, however small, emits a great sound when it is exploded. Lightning is caused at the same time with the thunder, but the former is seen more quickly because it is bright and the latter comes to our ears more slowly....
Chapter 9. On thunder-bolts.
1. ... Clouds striking together make thunder-bolts: for in all things collision creates fire, as we see in the case of stones, or when wheels rub together, or in the woods. In the same way fire is created in the clouds; whence they are clouds before, lightnings later.
2. It is certain that it is from wind and fire that thunder-bolts are formed in the clouds, and that they are launched by the impulse of the winds; and the fire of a thunder-bolt has greater force in penetrating because it is made of subtler elements than our fire, that is, the fire we make use of....
Chapter 10. On the rainbow and the causes of clouds.
1. The rainbow is so called from its resemblance to a bent bow. Its proper name is Iris and it is called Iris, as it were aeris (of the air), because it comes down through the air to earth. It comes from the radiance of the sun when hollow clouds receive the sun’s ray full in front, and they create the appearance of a bow, and rarified water, bright air, and a misty cloud under the beams of the sun create those varied hues.
2. Rains (pluviae) are so called because they flow, as if fluviae. They arise by exhalation from earth and sea, and being carried aloft they fall in drops on the lands, being acted upon by the heat of the sun or condensed by strong winds.
13. Shadow (umbra) is air that lacks sun, and is so called because it is made when we interpose ourselves in the rays of the sun. It moves and is ill-defined, because of the motion of the sun and the force of the wind. As often as we move in the sun, it seems to move with us, because wherever we encounter the rays of the sun, we take the light from that place, and so the shadow seems to walk with us and to imitate our motions.
Chapter 11. On the winds.
2. There are four chief winds. The first of these is from the east, Subsolanus, and Auster from the south, Favonius from the west, and from Septentrio (north) a wind of the same name blows. These winds have kindred winds one on each side.
3. Subsolanus has on its right Vulturnus, on its left Eurus; Auster has on its right Euroauster, on its left Austroafricus; Favonius on its right Africus, on its left Corus. Further, Septentrio has on its right Circius, on its left Aquilo. These twelve winds surround the globe of the universe with their blasts.
20. ... In the spring and autumn the greatest possible storms appear when it is neither full summer nor full winter, whence, as [the time] is an intervening one, bordering on both seasons, storms are caused from the conjunction of contrary airs.
Chapter 12. On the waters.
2. The two most powerful elements of human life are fire and water, whence they who are forbidden fire and water are seriously punished.
3. The element of water is master of all the rest. For the waters temper the heavens, fertilize the earth, incorporate air in their exhalations, climb aloft and claim the heavens; for what is more marvelous than the waters keeping their place in the heavens!
4. It is too small a thing to come to such a height; they carry with them thither swarms of fishes; pouring forth, they are the cause of all growth on the earth. They produce fruits, they make fruit trees and herbs grow, they scour away filth, wash away sin, and give drink to all living things.
Chapter 13. On the different qualities of waters.
5. Linus, a fountain of Arcadia, does not allow miscarriages to take place. In Sicily are two springs, of which one makes the sterile woman fertile, the other makes the fertile, sterile. In Thessaly are two rivers; they say that sheep drinking from one become black; from the other, white; from both, parti-colored.
10. Hot springs in Sardinia cure the eyes; they betray thieves, for their guilt is revealed by blindness. They say there is a spring in Epirus in which lighted torches are extinguished, and torches that are extinguished are lighted. Among the Garamantes they say there is a spring so cold in the daytime that it cannot be drunk, so hot at night that it cannot be touched.
Chapter 14. On the sea.
2. ... The depth of the sea varies; still the level of its surface is invariable.
3. Moreover that the sea does not increase, though it receives all streams and all springs, is accounted for in this way; partly that its very greatness does not feel the waters flowing in; secondly, because the bitter water consumes the fresh that is added, or that the clouds draw up much water to themselves, or that the winds carry it off, and the sun partly dries it up; lastly, because the water leaks through certain secret holes in the earth, and turns and runs back to the sources of rivers and to the springs.
Chapter 15. On the ocean.
1. Oceanus is so named by both Greeks and Latins because it flows like a circle around the circle of the land; it may be from its speed because it runs swiftly (ocius); or because like the heavens it glows with a dark purple color. Oceanus is, as it were, κυάνεος (dark purple). It is this that embraces the shores of the lands, approaching and receding with alternate tides. For when the winds breathe in the depths, it either pushes the waters away or sucks them back.
2. And it has taken different names from the neighboring lands; as Gallicus, Germanicus, Scythicus, Caspius, Hyrcanus, Atlanticus, Gaditanus. The Gaditanian strait was named from Gades where the entrance to the Mare Magnum first opens from the Ocean. Whence when Hercules had come to Gades he placed the columns there, believing that there was the limit of the circle of the lands.
Chapter 16. On the Mediterranean Sea.
1. The Mare Magnum is that which flows from the west out of the Ocean and extends toward the South, and then stretches to the North. And it is called Magnum because the rest of the seas are smaller in comparison with it. It is also called Mediterranean because it flows through the midst of the land (per mediam terram) as far as the Orient, separating Europe and Africa and Asia.
Chapter 20. On the abyss.
1. The abyss is the deep water which cannot be penetrated; whether caverns of unknown waters from which springs and rivers flow; or the waters that pass secretly beneath, whence it is called abyss. For all waters or torrents return by secret channels to the abyss which is their source.
Chapter 21. On rivers.
6. Certain of the rivers have received their names from causes peculiar to them, and of these some which are told of as famous in history should be mentioned.
7. Geon is a river issuing from Paradise and surrounding the whole of Ethiopia, being called by this name because it waters the land of Egypt by its flood, for γῆ in the Greek means terra in the Latin. This river is called Nile by the Egyptians, on account of the mud which it brings, which gives fertility.
8. The river Ganges, which the holy Scriptures call Phison, issuing from Paradise, takes its course toward the regions of India.... It is said to rise in the manner of the Nile and overflow the lands of the East.
9. The Tigris, a river of Mesopotamia, rises in Paradise, and flows opposite the Assyrians (contra Assyrios), and after many windings flows into the Dead Sea. And it is called by this name because of its velocity, like a wild beast that runs with great speed.
10. The Euphrates, a river of Mesopotamia, greatly abounding in gems, rises in Paradise and flows through the midst of Babylonia.... It irrigates Mesopotamia in certain places just as the Nile does Alexandria. Sallust, however, a most reliable author, asserts that the Tigris and the Euphrates arise from one source in Armenia, and going by different ways are far separated, an intervening space of many miles being left, and the land which is enclosed by them is called Mesopotamia. Therefore as Hieronymus noted, there must be a different explanation of the rivers of Paradise.
24. Tanus was the first king of the Scythians, from whom the river Tanais is said to have been named. It rises in the Riphaean forest, and separates Europe from Asia, flowing in the midst between two divisions of the world, and emptying into the Pontus.
35. Certain rivers were overwhelmed in the flood, and shut off by the mass of the lands, but certain ones which were not, burst forth by passages that were at that time violently formed from the abyss.
Chapter 22. On floods.
2. The first flood occurred under Noah, when the Omnipotent, offended at man’s guilty deeds, covered the whole circle of the lands[344] and destroyed all, and there was one stretch of sky and sea; and we observe the proof of this to the present time in the stones which we are wont to go to see in the distant mountains, which have mingled in them the shells of mussels and oysters, and besides are often hollowed by the waters.
3. The second flood was in Achaea in the time of the patriarch Jacob and of Ogygius, who was the founder and king of Eleusina, and gave his name to the place and time.
4. The third flood was in Thessaly in the time of Moses and Amphictyon, who reigned third after Cecrops. At which time a flood of waters destroyed the greater part of the peoples of Thessaly, a few escaping by taking refuge in the mountains, especially on mount Parnassus, on whose circuit Deucalion then possessed dominion. And he received those who fled to him on rafts, and warmed and fed them on the twin peaks of Parnassus, and so the fables of the Greeks say that the human race was re-created from stones—because of the inborn hardness of the heart of man.
BOOK XIV
On the Earth and its Parts
EXTRACTS
Chapter 1. On the earth.
1. The earth is placed in the middle region of the universe, being situated like a center at an equal interval from all parts of heaven; in the singular number it means the whole circle;[345] in the plural[346] the separate parts; and reason gives different names for it; for it is called terra from the upper part where it suffers attrition (teritur); humus from the lower and humid part, as for example, under the sea; again, tellus, because we take (tollimus) its fruits; it is also called ops because it brings opulence.[347] It is likewise called arva, from ploughing (arando) and cultivating.
2. Earth in distinction from water is called dry; since the Scripture says that “God called the dry land, earth”. For dryness is the natural property of earth. Its dampness it gets by its relation to water. As to its motion (earthquakes) some say it is wind in its hollow parts, the force of which causes it to move.
3. Others say that a generative water moves in the lands, and causes them to strike together, sicut vas, as Lucretius says. Others have it that the earth is sponge-shaped, and its fallen parts lying in ruins cause all the upper parts to shake. The yawning of the earth also is caused either by the motion of the lower water, or by frequent thunderings, or by winds bursting out of the hollow parts of the earth.
Chapter 2. On the circle of lands.[348]
1. The circle of lands (orbis) is so called from its roundness, which is like that of a wheel, whence a small wheel is called orbiculus. For the Ocean flowing about on all sides encircles its boundaries. It is divided into three parts; of which the first is called Asia; the second, Europe; the third, Africa.
2. These three parts the ancients did not divide equally; for Asia stretches from the South through the East to the North, and Europe from the North to the West, and thence Africa from the West to the South. Whence plainly the two, Europe and Africa, occupy one-half, and Asia alone the other. But the former were made into two parts because the Great Sea enters from the Ocean between them and cuts them apart. Wherefore if you divide the circle of lands into two parts, East and West, Asia will be in one, and in the other, Europe and Africa.
Chapter 3. On Asia.
1. Asia was so called from the name of a certain woman who held dominion over the East in the time of the ancients. Lying in the third part of the circle of lands it is bounded on the east by the sun-rise, on the south by the ocean, on the west by our sea, on the north by lake Maeotis and the river Tanais. It has many provinces and regions, of which I shall briefly explain the names and sites, beginning with Paradise.
2. Paradise is a place lying in the parts of the Orient, whose name is translated out of the Greek into the Latin as hortus. In the Hebrew it is called Eden, which in our tongue means delight. And the two being joined mean garden of delight; for it is planted with every kind of wood and fruit-bearing tree, having also the tree of life; there is neither cold nor heat there, but a continual spring temperature.
3. And a spring, bursting forth from its center, waters the whole grove, and divides into four rivers that take their rise there. Approach to this place was closed after man’s sin. For it is hedged in on every side by sword-like flame,[349] that is, girt by a wall of fire whose burning almost reaches the heaven.
4. A guard of cherubim, too, that is, of angels, is set over the burning of the fiery rampart to ward off evil spirits, in order that the flames may keep men off, and good angels, bad ones, that the approach to Paradise may not be open to any flesh or to the spirit of wickedness.
5. India is so called from the river Indus, by which it is bounded on the west. It stretches from the southern sea all the way to the sun-rise, and from the north all the way to Mount Caucasus, having many peoples and cities and the island of Taprobana, full of elephants, and Chryse and Argyra, rich in gold and silver, and Tyle, which never lacks leaves on its trees.
Chapter 4. On Europe.
2. Europe, which was parted off to form a third part of the circle, begins at the river Tanais, passing to the west along the Northern ocean as far as the limits of Spain. Its Eastern and Southern parts begin at the Pontus, extend along the whole Mare Magnum, and end at the island of Gades.
Chapter 5. On Libya (Africa).
3. It begins at the boundaries of Egypt,[350] extending along the South through Ethiopia as far as Mt. Atlas. On the north it is bounded by the Mediterranean Sea, and it ends at the strait of Gades, having the provinces Libya Cyrenensis, Pentapolis, Tripolis, Byzacium, Carthago, Numidia, Mauritania Stifensis, Mauritania Tingitana, and in the neighborhood of the sun’s heat, Ethiopia.
14. Ethiopia is so called from the color of its people, who are scorched by the nearness of the sun. The color of the people betrays the sun’s intensity, for there is never-ending heat here. Whatever there is of Ethiopia is under the south pole. Towards the west it is mountainous, sandy in the middle, and toward the eastern region, a desert. Its situation extends from the Atlas Mts. on the west to the bounds of Egypt on the east. It is bounded on the south by the ocean, on the north by the river Nile. It has many peoples, of diverse appearance and fear-inspiring because of their monstrous aspect.
17. Besides the three parts of the circle there is a fourth part across the Ocean on the South,[351] which is unknown to us on account of the heat of the sun, in whose boundaries, according to story, the Antipodes are said to dwell.
Chapter 6. On Islands.
2. Britannia, an island of the Ocean, completely separated from the circle of lands by the sea that flows between, is called by the name of its people. It lies in the rear of the Gauls and looks toward Spain. Its circuit is 4,875 miles; there are many large rivers in it and hot springs, and an abundant and varied supply of metals. Jet is very common there, and pearls.
3. Thanatos, an island of the Ocean in the Gallic sea, separated from Britain by a narrow strait, with fields rich in grain and a fertile soil. It is called Thanatos from the death of snakes, for it is destitute of them itself, and earth taken thence to any part of the world kills snakes at once.
4. Thyle is the furthest island in the Ocean, between the region of North and that of West,[352] beyond Britain, having its name from the sun, because there the sun makes its summer halt, and there is no day beyond it; whence the sea there is sluggish and frozen.
6. Scotia, the same as Hibernia, an island very near Britain, narrower in the extent of its lands but more fertile; this reaches from Africa towards Boreas, and Iberia and the Cantabrian ocean are opposite to the first part of it. Whence, too, it is called Hibernia. It is called Scotia because it is inhabited by the tribes of Scots. There are no snakes there, few birds, no bees; and so if any one scatters among beehives stones or pebbles brought thence, the swarms desert them.
8. The Happy Isles (Fortunatae insulae) ... lie in the Ocean opposite the left of Mauretania, very near the West, and separated from one another by the sea.
12. Taprobana is an island lying close to India on the Southeast, where the Indian Ocean begins, extending in length eight hundred and seventy-five miles, in width, six hundred and twenty-five. It is separated [from India] by a river that flows between. It is all full of pearls and gems. Part of it is full of wild beasts and elephants, but men occupy part. In this island they say that there are two summers and two winters in one year, and that the place blooms twice with flowers.
21. Delos is said to be so named because after the flood which is said to have come in the time of Ogygius, when continuous night had overshadowed the circle of lands for many months, it was lightened by the rays of the sun before all lands, and got its name from that, because it was first made visible to the eye. For the Greeks call visible δῆλος.
Chapter 9. On the under parts of the Earth.
9. Gehenna is a place of fire and sulphur, which they think is so named from the valley sacred to idols which is near the wall of Jerusalem, which was filled in former time with bodies of the dead. For there the Hebrews used to sacrifice their own sons to demons, and the place itself was called Gehennon. Therefore the place of future punishment where sinners are to be tortured is denoted by the name of this place. (We read in Job) that there is a double Gehenna, both of fire and of frost.
11. Just as the heart of an animal is in its midst, so also infernus is said to be in the midst of the earth.
BOOK XV
ON BUILDINGS AND FIELDS
ANALYSIS
| I. | Cities (ch. 1). | ||
| Of India (6), Persia (7–10), Mesopotamia (12–13), Syria (14–15), Palestine (16–26), Phoenicia (27–28), Egypt (31–36), Asia Minor (37–41), Greece (43–48), Italy (49–62), Gaul (63–65), Spain (66–72), Northern Africa (74–77). | |||
| II. | Architecture.[353] | ||
| 1. | City architecture (ch. 2). | ||
| a. Kinds of cities (3–14). | |||
| b. Walls (17–21). | |||
| c. Gates, squares, sewers, etc. (22–46). | |||
| 2. | Dwellings (ch. 3). | ||
| 3. | Buildings for religious purposes (ch. 4). | ||
| 4. | Storehouses (ch. 5). | ||
| 5. | Workshops (ch. 6). | ||
| 6. | Entrances (ch. 7). | ||
| 7. | Parts of buildings (ch. 8). | ||
| 8. | Defences (ch. 9). | ||
| 9. | Tents (ch. 10). | ||
| 10. | Tombs (ch. 11). | ||
| 11. | Buildings in the country (ch. 12). | ||
| III. | Fields, landmarks, land-measures[354] (chs. 13–15). | ||
| IV. | Roads (ch. 16). | ||
EXTRACTS
Chapter 1. On cities.
5. The Jews assert that Shem, son of Noah, whom they call Melchisedeck, was the first after the flood to found the city of Salem in Syria, in which was the kingdom of the same Melchisedeck. This city the Jebusaei held later, from whom it got the name Jebus, and so the two names being united, Jebus and Salem became Hierusalem, and this was later called Hierosolyma by Solomon, as if Hierosolomonia.
42. Constantinople, a city of Thrace, Constantine called after his own name, the only city equal to Rome in deeds and power. This was first founded by Pausanias, king of the Spartans, and called Byzantium, because it extends between the Adriatic and the Propontis, or because it is a store-house for the wealth of land and sea.[355] Whence Constantine judged it very fit to become his store-house for land and sea. And it is now the seat of Roman power, and the capital of the whole Orient, as Rome is of the Occident.
66. Caesaraugusta Tarraconensis,[356] a town of Spain, was both founded and named by Caesar Augustus, excelling all the cities of Spain in the beauty of its site and in its attractions (deliciis), and more famous than all, and distinguished (florens) for the graves of the sainted martyrs.
67. The Africans under Hannibal occupied the coast of Spain and built Carthago Spartaria, which presently was captured and made a colony by the Romans, and gave its name also to the province. But now it has been destroyed and reduced to desolation by the Goths.
69. Caesar Augustus built Emerita after he had taken Lusitania and certain islands of the Ocean, giving it a name from the fact that he placed his veteran soldiers there. For veterans, freed from service, are called emeriti.
70. Olyssipona (Lisbon) was founded and named by Ulysses, and at this place, as historians say, the heavens are separated from the earth and the seas from the lands.
71. Hispalis (Seville) Julius Caesar founded, and called it Julia Romula from his own name and the name of the city of Rome. It is called Hispalis from its situation, because it is placed on marshy ground, the stakes (palis) being driven deep, that it might not slip because of its slippery and unsteady foundations.
72. Gades is a town founded by the Carthaginians who also founded Carthago Spartaria.
Chapter 4. On sacred buildings.
8. Fanes (Fana) are so called from Fauns to whom the heathen blindness erected temples wherein those who sought for guidance might hear the responses of demons.
9. Delubra, the name the ancients gave to temples having springs in which they washed themselves (diluebantur) before entering.... These are at the present time sanctuaries with sacred springs in which the regenerate faithful purify themselves, and they were well called delubra with a sort of prophetic meaning; for they are for the washing away of sins.
Chapter 15. On land measurements.
1. Measure is whatever limit is set in respect to weight, capacity, length, height and mind (animus). And so the ancients divided the circle of lands into parts, the parts into provinces, the provinces into regions, the regions into districts, the districts into territories, the territories into fields, the fields into centuries, the centuries into acres (jugera), the acres into climata [about sixty feet square], then the climata into actus [120 x 4 ft.], perches, paces, grades (gradus), cubits, feet, palms, inches, (uncia), and fingers. For so clever were they.
BOOK XVI
ON STONES AND METALS[357]
ANALYSIS
| I. | Kinds of earth (ch. 1). | |
| II. | Earthy substances made out of water (de glebis ex aqua[358]) (ch. 2). | |
| III. | Common stones (ch. 3). | |
| IV. | The less common stones (ch. 4). | |
| V. | Marbles (ch. 5). | |
| VI. | Gems (chs. 6–15). | |
| 1. | Green gems (ch. 7). | |
| 2. | Red gems (ch. 8). | |
| 3. | Purple gems (ch. 9). | |
| 4. | White gems (ch. 10). | |
| 5. | Black gems (ch. 11). | |
| 6. | Parti-colored gems (ch. 12). | |
| 7. | Crystalline gems (ch. 13). | |
| 8. | Glowing gems (ch. 14). | |
| 9. | Gold-colored gems (ch. 15). | |
| VII. | Glass (ch. 16). | |
| VIII. | Metals (chs. 17–24). | |
| 1. | Gold (ch. 18). | |
| 2. | Silver (ch. 19). | |
| 3. | Bronze (ch. 20). | |
| 4. | Iron (ch. 21). | |
| 5. | Lead (ch. 22). | |
| 6. | Tin (ch. 23). | |
| 7. | Amber (ch. 24). | |
| IX. | Weights (ch. 25). | |
| X. | Measurements (chs. 26, 27). | |
| Abbreviations for units of measurement (ch. 27). | ||
EXTRACTS
Chapter 4. On the less common stones.
3. Gagates (jet) was first found in Cilicia, thrown up by the water of the river Gagates. Whence it was named, although it is very abundant in Britain. It is black, flat, smooth, and burns when brought near to fire. Dishes cut out of it are not destructible. If burned it puts serpents to flight, betrays those who are possessed by demons, and reveals virginity. It is wonderful that it is set on fire by water and extinguished with oil.
19. Amiantos (amianth) ... resists all poisons, especially those of the magi.
Chapter 7. On green gems.
8. Certain believe that the jasper gives both attractiveness and safety to its wearers, but to believe this is a sign not of faith but of superstition.
9. The topaz is of the green sort and it glitters with every color. It was found first in an island of Arabia in which Troglodyte pirates, worn out with hunger and storm, discovered it when they pulled the roots of herbs. This island was sought for afterward, and was at length found by seamen, being all covered with clouds. And on this account the place and the gem received the name from cause. For τοπάζειν in the Troglodyte language denotes seeking.
12. Heliotropium[359] ... receives the sun-light after the manner of a looking-glass, and reveals the eclipses of the sun, showing the moon passing under. In the case of this gem there is also a most manifest proof of the shamelessness of the magi, because they say its wearer is not visible if he takes an infusion of the plant heliotrope and in addition utters certain charms.
Chapter 8. On red gems.
1. ... The magi assert that [coral] resists thunder-bolts,—if it is to be believed.
Chapter 10. On white gems.
4. Galactites (milk-stone) is milk-white, and being rubbed it gives a white fluid that tastes like milk, and being tied on nursing mothers it increases the flow of milk. If it is hung on the necks of children it is said to create saliva, and it is said to melt in the mouth and take away the memory.
Chapter 13. On crystals.
1. It is said that crystal glitters and is of a watery color because it is snow that has hardened into ice in the course of the years.... It is produced in Asia and Cyprus, and especially in the Alps of the north, where there is no hot sun even in summer. Therefore the ice itself is bared, and hardening through the years gives this appearance which is called crystal. This, being set opposite to the rays of the sun, so seizes upon its flame that it sets fire to dry fungi or leaves. Its use is to make cups, but it can endure nothing but what is cold.
2. Adamas ... Though this is an unconquerable despiser of the steel and of fire, yet it is softened by the fresh, warm blood of stags, and then is shattered by many blows of an iron instrument.
3. It is said to reveal poisons as does amber (electron), to drive away useless fears, to resist evil arts.
Chapter 14. On glowing gems.
7. Dracontites is forcibly taken from the brain of a dragon, and unless it is torn from the living creature it has not the quality of a gem; whence magi cut it out of dragons while they are sleeping. For bold men explore the cave of the dragons, and scatter there medicated grains to hasten their sleep, and thus cut off their heads while they are sunk in sleep, and take out the gems.
Chapter 15. On yellow gems.
17. Glossoptera is like the human tongue whence it took its name. It is said to fall from heaven when the moon is in eclipse, and the magi attribute great power to it, for they think that to it the motions of the moon are due.
21. There are also certain gems which the heathen use in certain superstitions.
22. By the fragrance of the liparia,[360] they relate that all wild beasts are summoned. By the ananchitis[360] in divination by water they say the likenesses of demons are summoned. By the synochitis[360] they assert that the shades of those below that have been summoned forth, are held.
23. Chenelites is the eye of the Indian tortoise, of a varied purple. By means of this magi pretend that the future is foretold, if it is put on the tongue.
25. Hyaenia is a stone found in the eye of the hyena and they say that if it is placed under the tongue of a man he foretells the future.
Chapter 20. On bronze.
4. Corinthian bronze is a mixture of all metals, and it was first made by accident at Corinth, when the city was taken and burned. For when Hannibal had taken the city, he piled all the statues of bronze and gold and silver into one heap and burned them.
Chapter 21. On iron.
2. There is no body with elements so dense, so closely interlacing and interwoven, as iron; whence in it there is hardness and cold.
Chapter 25. On weights.
1. It is a delight to learn the manner of weights and measures. For all corporeal substances, as it is written, from the highest even to the lowest, are ordered and shaped within the limits of measure, number, and weight. To all corporeal things nature has assigned weight. Its own weight regulates everything.
2. Moses, who preceded all the philosophers of the nations in time, first told us of measures and numbers and weight in different passages in the Scripture. Phidon of Argos was the first to establish a system of weights in Greece.
19. Uncia ... And it is reckoned a lawful weight for this reason, that the number of its scruples measures the hours of the day and night, or because reckoned twelve times it makes a pound.
20. Libra (pound) is made up of twelve ounces, and thence is counted a kind of perfect weight, because it is made up of as many ounces as a year is months. And it is called libra because it is libera (free) and embraces all the aforementioned weights within itself.
23. Centenarium is a weight of one hundred pounds. And this weight the Romans established because of the perfection of the number one hundred.
Chapter 26. On measures.
1. Measure is the limiting of something in amount or time. It has to do with either corporeal substance or time. It has to do with corporeal substance as, for example, the length or shortness of men, pieces of timber, and columns; even the sun has a measure proper to its circle, which geometricians dare to inquire into. It has to do with time as, for example, hours, days, years; whence we say that we measure the feet of the hours.
2. But speaking in a limited sense, measure (mensura) is so named because by it fruits and grain are meted, that is, wet and dry measure, as modius (peck), artabo (three and half modi), urna (pitcher), amphora (jar).
10. Modius (peck) is so named because after its own mode it is perfect. It is a measure of forty-four pounds, that is, of twenty-two sextarii. The cause of this number is derived from this, that in the beginning God made twenty-two works. For on the first day he made seven, that is, matter in the rough, angels, light, the upper heavens, earth, water, and air. On the second day, the firmament alone. On the third day, four things: the seas, seeds, sowing, and plantings. On the fourth day, three things: the sun and moon and stars. On the fifth day, three: fishes, and creeping things of the water, and flying creatures. On the sixth day, four: wild beasts, flocks, creeping things of the earth, and man. And in all twenty-two kinds were made in the six days. And there are twenty-two generations from Adam to Jacob, from whose seed sprang all the people of Israel, and twenty-two books of the Old Testament as far as Esther, and twenty-two letters of the alphabet out of which the doctrine of the divine law is composed. According to these precedents a modius of twenty-two sextarii was established by Moses according to the measure of the holy law, and although different nations in their ignorance add weight to this measure or detract from it, still among the Hebrews it is kept unchanged by divine ordinance.
Chapter 27. Abbreviations for weights.
1. The marks for weight are unknown to most and thence they cause readers to err. So let us add their shapes and characters as they were set down by the ancients.[361]
BOOK XVII
ON AGRICULTURE
ANALYSIS
| I. | Writers on rural affairs (ch. 1). |
| II. | The cultivation of the fields (ch. 2). |
| III. | Grains (ch. 3). |
| IV. | Leguminous plants (ch. 4). |
| V. | Vines (ch. 5). |
| VI. | Trees (chs. 6–7). |
| 1. Species of trees (ch. 7). | |
| VII. | Aromatic shrubs (ch. 8). |
| VIII. | Aromatic and common herbs (ch. 9). |
| IX. | Vegetables (chs. 10, 11). |
BOOK XVIII
ON WAR AND AMUSEMENTS
ANALYSIS
| I. | War[362] (chs. 1–14). | |
| 1. | Kinds of war (ch. 1). | |
| 2. | Triumphs (ch. 2). | |
| 3. | Standards (ch. 3). | |
| 4. | Trumpets (ch 4). | |
| 5. | Armor (chs. 5–14). | |
| a. Swords (ch. 6). | ||
| b. Spears (ch. 7). | ||
| c. Arrows (ch. 8). | ||
| d. Quivers (ch. 9). | ||
| e. Slings (ch. 10). | ||
| f. The battering ram (ch. 11). | ||
| g. Shields (ch. 12). | ||
| h. Coats of mail (ch. 13). | ||
| i. Helmets (ch. 14). | ||
| II. | The law-court (de foro) (ch. 15). | |
| III. | Spectacles[363] (chs. 16–59). | |
| 1. | Gymnastic contests (chs. 17–26). | |
| 2. | The circus (chs. 27–41). | |
| 3. | The theatre (chs. 42–51). | |
| 4. | The amphitheatre (chs. 52–58). | |
| 5. | Condemnation of spectacles (ch. 59). | |
| IV. | Gambling (chs. 60–68). | |
| V. | Ball-playing (ch. 69). | |
EXTRACTS
Chapter 16. On spectacles.
1. Spectacles, as I think, is the general name given to pleasures which defile not of themselves, but through those things that take place there.
3. The origin of the word (ludus) is of no consequence when the origin of the thing is idolatry.... On this account the stain of its origin must be regarded, lest one should regard as good what took its origin in evil.
Chapter 27. On the sports of the circus.
1. The sports of the circus (ludi circenses) were established on account of worship, and because of the honoring of the heathen gods. Whence those who view them seem to be furthering the worship of evil spirits. For horse-racing was in former times practiced by itself, and its ordinary practice at least was no guilt, but when this natural practice was included in the games, it was transferred to the worship of demons.
Chapter 41. On the colors at the races.[364]
1. The same heathen have associated the colors worn by the horses with the elements: likening the red to the sun, that is, to fire; the white to air; the green to earth; the blue to the sea. Likewise they wished the red to run in summer because they are of a fiery color and all things are of a golden hue at that time; the white in winter because it is icy and everything is white; the green during the verdure of spring, because then the vine leaves are thickening.
2. They also consecrated the red to Mars from whom the Romans are sprung, because the Roman standards are adorned with scarlet or because Mars delights in blood. The white [they consecrated] to western breezes and fine weather, the green to flowers and earth, the blue to the sea or air because they are of a caerulean color, the golden or saffron to fire and the sun, and the purple to Iris, which we call the bow, because Iris has many colors.
3. And so while under this pretence they pollute themselves with the gods and the elements of this world, they are known to be certainly worshiping the same gods and elements. Whence you ought to notice, Christian, how many unclean gods they have around. Therefore the place which many spirits of Satan have seized shall be alien to you. For all that place the devil and his angels have filled.
Chapter 45. On tragedians.
1. Tragedians are they who sang in mournful verse the ancient deeds and crimes of guilty kings, while the people looked on.
Chapter 46. On comedians.
1. Comedians are they who represented by song and gesture the doings of men in private life, and in their plays set forth the defilement of maidens and the love affairs of harlots.
Chapter 59. On the execration of these.
1. These spectacles of cruelty and this gazing upon vanities were established not only by the fault of men but by the command of demons. Wherefore a Christian ought to have nothing to do with the madness of the circus, with the shamelessness of the theatre, with the cruelty of the amphitheatre, with the atrocity of the arena, with the luxury of the ludus. For he denies God who ventures on such things, becoming a violator of the Christian faith—he who seeks afresh that which he long before renounced in baptism, that is, the devil, his parades and his works.
BOOK XIX
ON SHIPS, BUILDINGS, AND GARMENTS[365]
ANALYSIS
| I. | Ships[366] (chs. 1–6). |
| 1. Seamen (ch. 1, 3–7). | |
| 2. Kinds of ships (ch. 1, 8–27). | |
| 3. Parts of ships (ch. 2). | |
| 4. Sails (ch. 3). | |
| 5. Ropes (ch. 4). | |
| 6. Nets (ch. 5). | |
| II. | Furnaces of smiths (ch. 6). |
| 1. Tools of smiths (ch. 7). | |
| III. | Buildings (chs. 8–18). |
| 1. Construction (ch. 10). | |
| 2. Adornment (chs. 11–17). | |
| 3. Tools for building (ch. 18). | |
| IV. | Workers in wood (ch. 19). |
| V. | Garments (chs. 20–29). |
| 1. Weaving (ch. 20). | |
| 2. The dress of a priest under the law (ch. 21). | |
| 3. The names of other articles of clothing (ch. 22). | |
| 4. Peculiar costumes of certain peoples (ch. 23). | |
| 5. Men’s garments (ch. 24). | |
| 6. Women’s garments (ch. 25). | |
| 7. Bedding, tablecloths, and so forth (ch. 26). | |
| 8. Wools (ch. 27). | |
| 9. Colors of garments (ch. 28). | |
| 10. Instruments for making cloth (ch. 29). | |
| VI. | Ornaments (chs. 30–32). |
| 1. Head ornaments for women (ch. 31). | |
| 2. Rings (ch. 32). | |
| VII. | Girdles (ch. 33). |
| VIII. | Footwear (ch. 34). |
BOOK XX
ON PROVISIONS AND UTENSILS OF THE HOUSEHOLD AND THE FIELDS
ANALYSIS
| I. | Tables (ch. 1). |
| II. | Food (ch. 2). |
| III. | Drink (ch. 3). |
| IV. | Dishes. |
| 1. For food (ch. 4). | |
| 2. For drink (ch. 5). | |
| 3. For wine and water (ch. 6). | |
| 4. For oil (ch. 7). | |
| V. | Cooking utensils (ch. 8). |
| VI. | Receptacles (ch. 9). |
| VII. | Lamps (ch. 10). |
| VIII. | Beds and seats (ch. 11). |
| IX. | Vehicles (ch. 12). |
| X. | Other utensils (ch. 13). |
| XI. | Tools for the country (ch. 14). |
| XII. | Tools for the garden (ch. 15). |
| XIII. | Horse trappings (ch. 16). |
APPENDIX I
[Isidore’s Use of the Word Terra]
Further light on Isidore’s conception of the earth can be gained by noticing his use of the word terra in the following passage, and comparing the passage with that from Hyginus on which it is based.
| Isidore. | Hyginus. | |
|---|---|---|
| Nunc terrae positionem definiemus et mare quibus locis interfusum videatur, ordine exponemus. | ||
| Terra, ut testatur Hyginus, mundi media regione collocata, omnibus partibus coeli aequali dissidens intervallo centrum obtinet. | Terra mundi media regione collocata, omnibus partibus aequali dissidens intervallo, centrum obtinet sphaerae. Hanc mediam dividit axis in dimensione totius terrae. | |
| Oceanus autem regione circumductionis spherae profusus prope totius orbis alluit fines. Itaque et siderum signa occidentia in eum cadere existimantur. | Oceanus autem regione circumductionis spherae profusus, prope totius orbis alluit fines. Itaque et signa occidentia in eum decidere existimantur. Sic igitur et terras contineri poterimus explanare. | |
| Regio autem terrae dividitur trifariam e quibus una pars Europa, altera Asia, tertia Africa vocatur. Europam igitur ab Africa dividit mare ab extremis oceani finibus, et Herculi columnis. Asiam autem et Libyam cum Aegypto disterminat ostium Nili fluvii, quod Canopicon appellatur. Asiam ab Europa Tanais dividit bifariam se conjiciens in paludem, quae Maeotis appellatur. Asia autem, ut ait beatissimus Augustinus, a meridie per orientem usque ad septentrionem pervenit. Europa vero a septentrione usque ad occidentem, atque inde Africa ab occidente usque ad meridiem. | Nam quaecumque regio est quae inter Arcticum et Aestivum finem collocata est, ea dividitur trifariam e quibus una pars, Europa; altera, Asia; tertia, Africa vocatur. Europam igitur ab Africa dividit mare ab extremis Oceani finibus, et Herculi columnis. Asiam vero et Libyam cum Aegypto disterminat os Nili fluminis quod Canopicon appellatur. Asiam ab Europa conjiciens in paludem quae Maeotis appellatur. (Hygini Poeticon Astron., Mythographi Latini, Thomas Muncherus, Amsterdam, 1681, vol. i, p. 353.) | |
| Unde videntur orbem dimidium duae tenere, Europa et Africa. Alium vero dimidium sola Asia. Sed ideo illae duae partes factae sunt, quia inter utramque ab Oceano ingreditur, quidquid aquarum terras influit, et hoc mare Magnum nobis facit. Totius autem terrae mensuram geometrae centum octoginta millium stadiorum aestimaverunt. (De Natura Rerum, ch. 48.) |
In the passage from Hyginus, terra in the singular is the spherical earth occupying the centre of the sphere formed by the universe. The ocean is on the surface of this spherical earth, and it washes “the limits of the circle of lands”. For this reason the heavenly bodies “are [popularly] supposed to set in it.” Hyginus then turns to the dry land (terras), and describes the land surface “between the boundaries of the Arctic and torrid zones” as divided into three parts, Europe, Asia, and Africa.
In Isidore terra means in the first instance, dry land, in the second—if he realized the meaning of Hyginus—the sphere; in the third, the dry land; in the fourth, the sphere. There is no evidence that Isidore was conscious of having made these transitions. He entirely omits the sentence in which Hyginus passes from the subject of the spherical earth to that of the lands. It is clear that Isidore has fallen into the same confusion here as in the passage quoted on p. 51; he uses the terminology of the spherical earth, while having no conception of anything but the flat earth.[367]
The difficulty offered by the word sphera in the passage quoted above from Isidore, is not insuperable, since it is clear from the following passage that he was not very definite in his notion of what a sphere was. A sphere and a circle apparently meant about the same thing to him.
Cujus perfectionem spherae vel circuli multis argumentationibus tractans, rationabile Plato Fabricatoris mundi insinuat opus. Primo, quod ex una linea constat. Secundo, quod sine initio est et sine fine. Tertio, quod a puncto efficitur. Denuo, quod motum ex se habeat. Deinde quod careat indicio angulorum, et quod in se ceteras figuras omnes includat, et quod motum inerrabilem habeat, siquidem sex alii motus errabiles sunt, ante, a tergo, dextra, laevaque, sursum, deorsum. Postremo, et quod necessitate efficiatur, ut haec linea ultra circulum duci non possit. D. N. R., 12, 5.
APPENDIX II
Subdivisions of Philosophy
Philosophy was regarded by Isidore as a comprehensive term embracing all knowledge. He gives its subdivisions as follows:
| I. | ||
| Philosophia | Naturalis or Physica | Arithmetica |
| Geometria | ||
| Musica | ||
| Astronomia | ||
| Moralis or Ethica | Prudentia | |
| Justitia | ||
| Fortitudo | ||
| Temperantia | ||
| Rationalis or Logica | Dialectica | |
| Logica | ||
That Isidore felt the need of an adjustment of this plan to the Christian scheme of things is to be perceived in the statement with which he accompanies it, that the Scriptures are made up of the three kinds of philosophy, natural, moral, and rational; and in the further statement that Christian scholars asserted the claims of Christian doctrine (theorica) to take the place of rational or logical philosophy.[368]
| II. | |||
| Philosophia[369] | Inspectiva | Naturalis | Arithmetica |
| Geometria | |||
| Musica | |||
| Astronomia | |||
| Doctrinalis | |||
| Divinalis | |||
| Actualis | Moralis | ||
| Dispensativa | |||
| Civilis | |||
| III. | ||
| Philosophia[370] | Physica or Naturalis | Arithmetica |
| Geometria | ||
| Musica | ||
| Astronomia | ||
| Astrologia | ||
| Mechanica | ||
| Medicina | ||
| Logica or Rationalis | Dialectica | |
| Rhetorica | ||
| Ethica or Moralis | Prudentia | |
| Justitia | ||
| Fortitudo | ||
| Temperantia | ||
In connection with this outline also an attempt at adjustment is made. Christian doctrine is placed, somewhat inappropriately, under the head of ethical philosophy: “Wisdom (prudentia) is the recognition of the true faith and the knowledge of the Scriptures, in which one must have regard for the triple method of interpretation. The first is that by which certain things are taken literally without any figure, as the Ten Commandments; the second is that by which certain things in the Scriptures are taken in a double sense, both in the definite historic meaning and in accordance with the understanding of figures, as in regard to Sara and Hagar; first, because they existed in reality, second, because the two Testaments are figuratively denoted by them. The third kind is that which is taken in a spiritual sense only, as the Song of Songs. For if it is understood according to the sound of the words and their literal force, the result is bodily wantonness rather than the excellence of the inner meaning. After the definition of wisdom let us now give the parts of justice (justitia), of which the first is to fear God, to venerate religion, to honor parents, to love the fatherland, to help all, to harm none, to embrace the bonds of brotherly love, to face the dangers of others, to bring aid to the wretched, to repay a good turn, to observe equity in judgments.” (Diff., 2, 39.)
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VITA
The writer of this thesis was born in Prince Edward Island, Canada. He attended Dalhousie College, from which he graduated in 1894 with high honors in the Classics. He entered Harvard University in 1895, and received the degree of A. B. in 1896, and A. M. in 1897. From 1898 to 1908 he was Instructor, Assistant Professor and Professor of Latin at Colorado College, and from 1908 to 1911 Professor of History at the same institution. He spent the years 1908–9 and 1911–12 in the school of Political Science of Columbia University. He has taken courses with Professors Burgess, Dunning, Osgood, Robinson, Shotwell, and Sloane of Columbia. He is thirty-eight years old.
FOOTNOTES
[1] Cf. S. Reinach, Orpheus, p. 36.
[2] Neoplatonism, the last phase in the decline of ancient philosophy, profoundly influenced the Christian philosophy of patristic and medieval times, for which it prepared the way. The “first principle” of this philosophy was “the supra-rational, that which lies beyond reason and beyond reality.” It was from this source that Christian mysticism and contempt for empirical knowledge were largely drawn. It has been said that Catholic Christianity “conquered Neoplatonism after it had assimilated nearly everything that it possessed.” Its influence was far greater in the eastern than in the western empire. See Harnack, History of Dogma, vol. i, App. 3, for a brief account of Neoplatonism. See also Encycl. Brit., 11th edition, Art. “Neoplatonism.”
[3] Nihil enim Isidorus intentatum reliquit: facultates omnes attigit, scientias humanas divinasque pertractavit, scriptores veteres profanos et sacros evolvit, atque in suum usum descripsit; nec contentus etymologico suo opere scientiarum encyclopaediam comprehendere, multa singillatim in sacrarum litterarum interpretatione disseruit, multa in omni alio theologiae genere, multa in philosophicis atque astronomicis argumentis, multa in re litteraria, chronologica et historica. Arevalo, Prolegomena in Editionem S. Isidori Hispalensis, cap. 1, 3.
[4] Arevalo in his Prolegomena, cap. 33, collects passages containing “laudes Isidori” from medieval writers, including Fredegarius, Alcuin, William of Malmesbury, Vincent of Beauvais, and others. Isidore is cited by Petrarch in a way which shows that he was much read in his time. Petrarch is giving authorities for his theory of poetry, and after mentioning Varro and Suetonius, he says: “Then I can add a third name, which will probably be better known to you, Isidore.” Cf. Robinson and Rolfe, Petrarch, p. 263.
[5] Ac portenti quidem simile est, quot mihi antiquissimi Isidori Codices in Urbis (Rome) bibliothecis sed maxime in Vaticana occurrerint. Arevalo, Prolegomena, cap. 1, 7. Manuscripts of Isidore’s works are numerous also in Spain and France.
[6] The editions of Isidore’s complete works are as follows: (1) that of de la Bigne published at Paris in 1580; (2) that of Grial, Madrid, 1599; (3) that of du Breul, Paris, 1601; that of Arevalus, Rome, 1796. Arevalus, in the Prolegomena to his edition, enumerates ten editions of the Etymologies between 1477 and 1577. Others of Isidore’s works appeared also in frequent separate editions.
[7] See Cañal, San Isidoro, ch. 7.
[8] Martin A. S. Hume, The Spanish People, p. 45.
[9] See Teuffel and Schwabe, History of Roman Literature, vol. ii, sec. 495, 1, and Poetae Latini Minores, 5, 357.
[10] See Einhard, Vita Caroli Magni in Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptores (Pertz ed.), vol. ii, p. 456.
[11] Another factor in the history of Spain at this time that may have had a slight influence on the culture of the country was the reoccupation of the southeastern part of the country by the Eastern Empire, which lasted from Justinian’s time down to 628. The region so held included even Seville for some years.
[12] For the history of Spain under the Visigoths, see Lavisse et Rambaud, Histoire Générale, vol. i, chap. 3 (by M. A. Berthelot), and Altamira, Historia de España, vol. i, c. 1.
[13] In the Acta Sanctorum, Aprilis 1 (April 4) is the life of Isidore supposed to have been written by Lucas Tudensis (13th century). Arevalo also gives a life by Rodericus Cerratensis (also 13th century). These ‘lives’ are full of fables and cannot be trusted as sole authorities for any detail of Isidore’s career.
[14] Severianus, Leander, Fulgentius, Florentina.
[15] Gregory’s Moralia is dedicated to Leander.
[16] Sancti Leandri Hispalensis Episcopi Regula sive de institutione virginum et contemptu mundi, in Migne, Patr. Lat., vol. 72, col. 866–898.
[17] Isidori De Viris Illustribus Liber, cap. 41.
[18] In one of Isidore’s letters, addressed to Duke Claudius (Claudio duci), he says: “Memento communis nostri doctoris Leandri.” This seems to point to formal instruction given by Leander, and possibly to the existence of a school at Seville. Migne, P. L. 83, col. 905.
[19] Isidore, in his life of Leander (De Viris Illustribus, cap. 41), says: “(Leander) fluorit sub Reccaredo (d. 601) ... cujus etiam tempore vitae terminum clausit.” Ildephonsus, in his life of Isidore (d. 636), says of him, “Annis fere quadraginta tenens pontificatus honorem” (Migne, P. L. 82, col. 68). Gregory the Great has a letter to Leander and one to Reccared belonging to the year 598–599 (Migne, P. L. 77, col. 1050–1056).
[20] Gams, Kirchengeschichte von Spanien ii, 2, pp. 89, 101.
[21] Contemporary sources for Isidore’s life are: the passage in the regula of his brother Leander (Migne, P. L. 72, col. 892); the correspondence of Isidore (Migne, P. L., 83, col. 893); Braulio’s Introduction to Isidore’s works (Migne, P. L. 82, col. 65); the life of Isidore given by Ildephonsus, bishop of Toledo (d. 667) in his continuation of Isidore’s De Viris Illustribus; and the letter of the clerk Redemptus, describing Isidore’s death (Migne, P. L. 82, col. 68).
[22] Sancti Braulionis, Caesaraugust. episcopi Praenotatio librorum Isidori, Migne, P. L. 82, col. 65.
[23] The reference in this passage is undoubtedly to the difference between the colloquial Latin and that of the scholar. The same consideration may perhaps explain the decidedly peculiar comment of Ildephonsus on Isidore as a public speaker: “Nam tantae jucunditatis affluentem copiam in eloquendo promeruit, ut ubertas admiranda dicendi ex eo in stuporem verteret audientes, ex quo audita bis, qui audisset non nisi repetita saepius commendaret.” Migne, P. L. 82, col. 68.
[24] This passage is found in Cicero, Academica Posteriora 1, 3, and is addressed to Varro.
[25] Braulio’s list mentions a Liber de Haeresibus which does not appear in Arevalo’s edition, and fails to mention the Liber de Ordine Creaturarum and the Epistolae, which are included. Ildephonsus’s list is still less complete, leaving out the Proœmia, Allegoriae, Numeri, Officia, Regula, De Ordine Creaturarum, Chronicon, De Viris Illustribus, and the Epistolae.
[26] Quadam propria origine.
[27] Cato did not himself write on synonyms. But Isidore probably got this idea from the fact that synonyms were excerpted from his writings by later grammarians. See Teuffel, History of Roman Literature, 121, 6.
[28] Migne, P. L. 83, col. 9.
[29] There is a critical edition of De Natura Rerum by G. Becker, Berlin, 1857.
[30] Isidore describes this ruler in his History of the Goths as scientia literarum magna ex parte imbutus. See Migne, P. L. 83, col. 1073.
[31] “The higher meaning.” Compare De Natura Rerum, chapter 26, 4: “Per hunc Arcturum, id est, Septentrionem, Ecclesiam septenaria virtute fulgentem intelligimus.”
[35] “La Suma Teológica del Siglo VII.” Menéndez y Pelayo, Estudios de Crítica Literaria, vol. 1, p. 149.
[36] If Isidore had been as thorough-going as Gregory in depreciating the secular he certainly would not have written the Etymologies. His strongest anti-secular spirit is shown in the chapter (13) de libris gentilium of the Sententiae where, following Gregory, he denounces “all secular learning.” It is pretty plain, however, that he is here following his model rather than working out his own position, and in the last section of the chapter he modifies what he has said by admitting that grammar may “avail for life if only it is applied to better uses.”
[37] It is not of great length—three hundred and twenty-eight quarto pages in the reprint of Arevalo’s edition in Migne, Patrologiae Latinae, with about one-fifth of each page occupied by footnotes.
[41] The circumstances under which the Etymologies was written are referred to in Braulio’s Introduction and in the life of Isidore by Ildephonsus (both in Migne, P. L. 82, col. 65–68); in the correspondence between Braulio and Isidore (Migne, P. L. 83, col. 910–914); and in the preface of the Etymologies.
[42] The oft-repeated expression, Latinis, Graecis et Hebraicis litteris instructus, found in the Vita Sancti Isidori, deserves no attention. There is no historical basis for the assertion that Isidore knew Greek or Hebrew. In view of the time, it would be more reasonable to demand proof that he did know them rather than that he did not. As to his knowledge of Greek, see Dressel, De Isidori Originum Fontibus in Rivista di Filologia, vol. iii (1874–75), p. 216. The legend of Isidore’s wide linguistic learning persists, however, even in the 11th edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica. See Art. “Encyclopedia.”
[43] Cf. Etym., 2, 2, 1; 2, 25, 1 and 9; 3, 2. See pp. [111], [120], [125].
[44] The point has been made that Isidore shows his ignorance of the Greek language by the mistakes he made in the use of Greek words in his derivations. A few examples selected almost at random may be useful in this connection, although it must be remembered that the possibility of corruption in the text is always great.
(a) 3, 22, 6. “Chordas autem dictas a corde.” (b) 3, 22, 8. “Lyra dicta ἀπὸ τὸ λυρεῖν a varietate vocum.” (c) 12, 1, 35. “Camur enim Graecum verbum curvum significat.”
Why Isidore in (a) does not give the natural derivation from χορδή is not clear unless his knowledge of Greek was very slight. λυρεῖν, in (b), is a form that is not found in Greek. In (c) camur is not a Greek word written in Roman letters, as Isidore apparently thought. See Harper’s Latin Dictionary. Compare also the form in which Aristotle’s περὶ ἑρμηνείας is cited: de perihermeniis, praefatio perihermeniarum, in libro perihermeniarum (2, 27). Isidore’s Greek has given his editors much trouble. See Migne, Patr. Lat. 81, 328, for comment upon it by Vulcanius, who edited the Etymologies in 1577.
[46] For a brief account of Oriental influences in Roman religion, see Dill, Roman Society in the Last Century of the Western Empire (London, 1898), ch. 4.
[47] Younger Pliny, Epistles, 3, 5.
[48] An outline of the contents of leading encyclopædic works, so far as known, is here given for purposes of comparison with the contents of the Etymologies.
| Marcus Terentius Varro, 116–28 B.C. | ||||
| Antiquitatum Rerum Humanarum et Divinarum Libri XLI. | ||||
| Rerum Humanarum Libri XXV. | ||||
| Bk. 1. | Introduction. | |||
| 2–7. | de hominibus. | |||
| 8–13. | de locis (8, Rome; 11, Italy; 12, remaining Europe; 13, Asia and Africa). | |||
| 14–19. | de temporibus (14, introduction; 15, de saeculis; 16, de lustris; 17, de annis; 18, de mensibus; 19, de diebus). | |||
| 20–25. | de rebus. | |||
| Rerum Divinarum Libri XVI. | ||||
| Bk. 26. | Introduction. | |||
| 27–29. | de hominibus. | |||
| 30–32. | de locis. | |||
| 33–35. | de temporibus. | |||
| 36–38. | de rebus. | |||
| 38–41. | de diis. | |||
This encyclopedia stands for the interests of the scholarly antiquarian rather than for those of the man interested in natural science. The work itself is lost, but the nature of its contents is fairly well known, thanks to St. Augustine. For further information regarding Varro’s encyclopedic works, see Boissier, Étude sur la vie et les ouvrages de M. Varron, Paris, 1861; and Geschichte der Römischen Literatur, Martin Schanz, München, 1909, Erster Teil, Zweite Hälfte, 187, 188.
| Verrius Flaccus (flourished under Augustus). | |
| De Verborum Significatu. | |
The work itself has been lost, as also the greater part of the abbreviation of it to twenty books made by Pompeius Festus before 200 A.D. Festus’s abridgement was further abridged by Paulus Diaconus in Charlemagne’s time. It is regarded as certain that material in Isidore’s Etymologies came directly or indirectly from the De Verborum Significatu. Nettleship, Lectures and Essays, Oxford, 1885.
| Pliny the Elder (23–79 A.D.). | |||
| Naturalis Historiae Libri XXXVII. | |||
| Bk. 1. | Contents and lists of sources. | ||
| 2. | Description of the universe. | ||
| 3–6. | Geography. | ||
| 7. | Man. | ||
| 8. | Animals. | ||
| 9. | Fishes. | ||
| 10. | Birds. | ||
| 11. | Insects. | ||
| 12–27. | Trees, shrubs, plants, including medicinal botany. | ||
| 27–32. | Medicinal zoölogy. | ||
| 32–37. | Metals, colors, stones, and gems, especially from the artist’s point of view. | ||
Dressel, De Isidori Originum Fontibus, pp. 243–247, in Rivista di filologia, 1874–75, gives an incomplete list of Isidore’s borrowings from Pliny. He points out Isidore’s carelessness in borrowing in one case where he shows that what Pliny tells us of the echineis, Isidore hastily assigns to the mullus. Cf. Isidore 12, 6, 25, with Pliny, 32; 8, 9, 70, 138–39.
| Suetonius Tranquillus (last of first century and first half of second). | |
| Prata. | |
This work is lost. It was an encyclopedia in at least ten books, of which the titles of some books and fragments have been recovered, a large portion of them from the Etymologies and De Natura Rerum. Among the subjects were leges, mores, tempora, mundus, animantium naturae. Isidore quotes Suetonius twice. See A. Reifferscheid, C. Suetoni Tranquilli Reliquiae, Leipzig, 1860, pp. 155 et seq., and Schanz, Geschichte der Römischen Literatur, Dritter Teil, pp. 47–66.
| Nonius Marcellus (early fourth century). | |||
| Compendiosa Doctrina ad Filium. | |||
| Bks. 1–12. | Grammatical in character, including one book, (5) De Differentia Similium Significationum. | ||
| 13. | de genere navigiorum. | ||
| 14. | de genere vestimentorum. | ||
| 15. | de genere vasorum vel poculorum. | ||
| 16. | de genere calciamentorum. | ||
| 17. | de coloribus vestimentorum. | ||
| 18. | de genere ciborum vel potorum. | ||
| 19. | de genere armorum. | ||
| 20. | de propinquitatum vocabulis. | ||
This work is, in part, in dictionary form (Bks. 1–6). There is much resemblance between passages in Nonius Marcellus and in the Etymologies, which Nettleship believes to be due to the use of a common source. Nettleship, “Nonius Marcellus,” in Lectures and Essays. Lindsay, Nonius Marcellus, Oxford, 1901.
[49] Disciplinarum Libri IX. Bk. 1. Grammar. Bk. 2. Dialectic. Bk. 3. Rhetoric. Bk. 4. Geometry. Bk. 5. Arithmetic. Bk. 6. Astrology. Bk. 7. Music. Bk. 8. Medicine. Bk. 9. Architecture. (Conjectural list of disciplines given by Ritschl, Opusc. 3, p. 312.)
[50] Martianus Capella, De Nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii.
[52] E.g. Suetonius, Prata.
[54] Dressel, De Isidori Originum Fontibus, in Rivista di filologia, 1874–75, discusses Isidore’s method of using his sources, and gives a list of writers and works to which he traces passages in Isidore, giving usually a list of the latter. The writers include Sallust, Justinus, Hegesippus, Orosius, Pliny, Solinus, the abridger of Vitruvius, Lucretius, Hyginus, Cassiodorus, Servius, the scholia on Lucan.
Nettleship, Lectures and Essays, Oxford, 1885, devotes attention chiefly to the encyclopedic tradition, treating of Verrius Flaccus, the Glosses of Placidus, the Noctes Atticae of Gellius, Nonius Marcellus, and Servius. He treats of Isidore only by the way, and lays stress on his debt to Suetonius, Prata, and Verrius Flaccus, De Verborum Significatu. See pp. 330–336, and for opinion of Latin encyclopedic tradition, pp. 283–285.
Reifferscheid, Suetoni Reliquiae, recovers several passages of Suetonius from Isidore.
C. Schmidt, Quaestiones de musicis scriptoribus Romanis imprimis de Cassiodoro et Isidoro, traces Isidore’s De Musica to an unknown Christian writer.
G. Becker, editor of De Natura Rerum, Berlin, 1857, discusses the sources of that work especially, tracing it to Suetonius, Solinus, and Hyginus on the one hand, and Ambrose, Clement, Augustine, on the other.
H. Hertzberg, Die Chroniken des Isidors, Forsch. zur deutschen Geschichte, 15, 280 et seq., discusses the sources of Isidore’s Chronica, which he traces to Jerome’s translation of Eusebius with later continuations. The same writer also treats of the sources of The History of the Goths (Gött. 1874).
H. Usener, Anecdoton Holderi (Bonn, 1877), p. 65, asserts that Isidore did not use Cassiodorus’ encyclopedia of the liberal arts.
M. Conrat, Geschichte der Quellen und Literatur des Römischen Rechts im früheren Mittelalter (Leipzig, 1891) treats of the sources of Isidore’s Leges, pp. 151 et seq.; as also Voigt, Jus Naturale, 1, 576 et seq., and Dirksen, Hinterlassene Schriften, 1, 185 et seq.
Arno Schenk, De Isidori Hispalensis de natura rerum libelli fontibus, Jena, 1909, finds that Isidore wrote the De Natura Rerum and the Etymologiae from his collection of excerpts which is drawn from Ambrose, Clement, Augustine, Jerome, the scholiast on Germanicus, Hyginus, Servius, the scholia on Lucan, Solinus, Suetonius, and a number of the Roman poets. This dissertation is largely meant to show that Reifferscheid in his work, Suetoni Reliquiae, had gone too far in attributing passages found in Isidore to Suetonius.
M. Klussman, Excerpta Tertullianea in Isidori Hispalensis Etymologiis, Hamburg, 1892, gives a list of nearly seventy passages borrowed by Isidore from Tertullian, at the same time pointing out that credit for the passages is nowhere assigned to the latter.
[55] For example, Isidore evidently had a theory as to the origin and value of language, but he does not state it anywhere, although innumerable times he approaches the subject in an oblique sort of way. See [p. 99]. Again, he never tells us whether he believed the earth to be flat or spherical; he uses at one time language that belongs to the spherical earth, and at another, language that can have sense only if he believed the earth to be flat. Here we have not only no definite statement of the conception—although it must have existed in his mind, considering the frequency of his writings on the physical universe—but we have in addition the puzzle of deciding which set of expressions used in this connection was meaningless to him. See pp. [50]–[54] and [Appendix].
[56] For Isidore’s physical universe in general, see Etym. 3, 24–71; 13, 4–6; De Natura Rerum, 9–27. See pp. [142]–[154], [234], [243].
[57] Isidore seems to have kept an open mind on the question of the number of the spheres. He says: de numero eorum [coelorum] nihil sibi praesumat humana temeritas. D. N. R., 13, 1.
[59] 3, 44; 13, 6. See [p. 146].
[60] See [Appendix I].
[61] De Quinque Circulis.
“In definitione autem mundi circulos aiunt philosophi quinque, quos Graeci παραλλήλους—id est, zonas—vocant, in quibus dividitur orbis terrae.... Sed fingamus eas in modum dextrae nostrae, ut pollex sit circulus ἀρτικός, frigore inhabitabilis; secundus circulus θερινὸς, temperatus habitabilis; medius circulus ἰσημερινὸς, torridus inhabitabilis; quartus circulus χειμερινὸς, temperatus habitabilis; quintus circulus ἀνταρτικὸς, frigidus inhabitabilis. Horum primus septentrionalis est, secundas solstitialis, tertius aequinoctialis, quartus hiemalis, quintus australis....
“Quorum circulorum divisiones talis distinguit figura ([Fig. I]).
3. “Sed ideo aequinoctialis circulus inhabitabilis est, quia sol per medium coelum currens nimium his locis facit fervorem, ita ut nec fruges ibi nascantur propter exustam terram, nec homines propter nimium ardorem habitare permittantur. At contra septentrionalis et australis circuli sibi conjuncti idcirco non habitantur, quia a cursu solis longe positi sunt, nimioque caeli rigore ventorumque gelidis flatibus contabescunt.
4. “Solstitialis vero circulus, qui in Oriente inter septentrionalem et aestivum est collocatus, vel iste qui in Occidente inter aestivum et australem est positus, ideo temperati sunt eo quod ex uno circulo rigorem, ex altero calorem habeant. De quibus Virgilius:
“Has inter mediamque duae mortalibus aegris
Munere concessae divum.
“Sed qui proximi sunt aestivo circulo, ipsi sunt Aethiopes nimio calore perusti.” De Natura Rerum, ch. x.
[62] The two passages in which Isidore states the theory of the zones correctly are from Hyginus, Poeticon Astronomicon (Mythographi Latini, ed. Muncker, Amsterdam, 1691). Cf. p. 146.
[63] For a similar confusion of sphaera and circulus see [Appendix I].
[64] That this was Isidore’s conception of the land surface is evident from many passages (e.g., see [p. 244]) and is made certain from his map ([p. 5]). This map is found in an old edition of the Etymologies (Libri Etymologiarum ... et de Summo Bono Libri III, Venetiis, 1483) in the library of Union Theological Seminary.
[65] Cf. Psalms, 104, 2.
[66] De Ordine Creaturarum Liber, 4, 1–2.
[67] 3, 71, 3.
[68] De Natura Rerum, ch. 10.
[69] For a clear account of the theory of the four elements in medieval thought see Les Quatre Elements, J. Leminne in Mémoires couronées par l’Académie Royale de Belgique, v. 65, Bruxelles, 1903.
[70] Etym., 13, 3. Cf. D. N. R., 11.
[71] The theory of atoms is also stated by Isidore. See [p. 235]. It is not used, however, and is not fully stated. The part played in the theory by atoms of different sizes is not mentioned, and although “the void” is mentioned, its importance is not brought out.
[72] See Art. “Chemistry,” Encyclopedia Britannica, 11th edition.
[73] Etym., 13, 5, 1.
[74] Diff., 1, 82.
[75] De Ordine Creat. Liber, 4, 5–6. Cf. D. N. R., 11. The problem of “the waters above the firmament,” which occupied the minds of the church fathers so much, and which is at variance with the cosmological side of the theory of the four elements, Isidore seems inclined to settle by regarding it as a miracle. Cf. D. N. R., 14.
[76] In the De Natura Rerum and the De Ordine Creaturarum, as well as in Books XIII-XIV of the Etymologies, Isidore follows the order of the four elements in describing the universe. His fidelity to this order, as well as the variations of emphasis and of minor treatment which he introduced into it, are of interest. These may be exhibited in parallel form as follows:
| Etymologies Books xiii and xiv | De Natura Rerum | De Ordine Creaturarum | |
|---|---|---|---|
| xiii, chaps. 4–6 | chaps. 9–27 | 4–6 | |
| Fire (the heavens) | Astronomy | Astronomy, fuller | Astronomy, briefer, with an account of the angels, the inhabitants of the element of fire |
| xiii, 7–12 | 28–39 | 7–8 | |
| Air | The atmosphere and meteorological phenomena | The same, fuller | The same, briefer, with an account of demons, the inhabitants of the air |
| xiii, 12–22 | 40–44 | 9 | |
| Water | A description of water with a geography of the water surface of the earth | The same in very much abbreviated form | The same, briefer, without the geography |
| xiv, 1–9 | 45–48 | 10–15 | |
| Earth | A description of the dry land with a geography of the land surface of the earth | The same in very much abbreviated form | The same, briefer than in De Natura Rerum, with an account of men as the inhabitants of this element, their nature and future life |
This table indicates the great stress Isidore laid upon the cosmological side of the theory of the four elements, as well as his tendency to use his large general ideas in relating the individual branches of knowledge. Here astronomy, meteorology, and geography are thus grouped together, and angelology is put into relation with astronomy and demonology with meteorology.
[77] Etym., 13, 3, 3, and 8, 11, 17.
[78] Diff., 2, 17, 48.
[79] Diff., 2, 17, 67.
[80] Here blood and the element, air, are related; the passage quoted in the preceding paragraph shows a similar relation between blood and the element water. Such inconsistencies are extremely common.
[81] Etym., 4. 5.
[82] Etym., 4, 7, 4.
[83] Etym., 13, 7, 1.
[84] Etym., 13, 3.
[85] Etym., 13, 7. Almost side by side with this explanation of rain is another which says that rains “arise from an exhalation from land and sea, which being carried aloft falls in drops on the lands, being acted upon by the sun’s heat, or condensed by strong winds,” 13, 10, 2. Lightning is explained as caused by the collision of clouds (13, 9, 1); thunder, by their bursting (13, 8); the rainbow, by the sun shining into a hollow cloud (13, 10, 1).
[86] D. N. R., 7, 4. Cf. Etym., 5, 35, 1.
[87] Sent., 1, 11, 1.
[88] “Mundus est universitas omnis, quae constat ex coelo et terra.... Secundum mysticum sensum, mundus competenter homo significatur, quia sicut ille ex quatuor concretus est elementis, ita et iste constat quatuor humoribus uno temperamento commistis. Unde et veteres hominem in communionem fabricae mundi constituerunt. Siquidem Graece mundus κόσμος, homo autem μικρόκοσμος, id est minor mundus, est appellatus.” D. N. R., 9, 2, and 3. Cf. 11, 3.
[89] Sentent., 1, 8, 1–2.
[90] Etym., 16, 25, 19.
[91] Etym., 1, 3, 4. Cf. 6, 1, 3.
[92] Etym., 11, 1, 109. Cf. Diff., 2, 17, 56 and 71.
[93] While this mode of viewing the universe had its origin in pagan antiquity, and even earlier, its scope was greatly enlarged by Christian thinkers. Living in a world whose general constitution and purpose they thought they thoroughly understood, they were confident that even in its smallest details there could be perceived a conscious adaptation to the whole. This idea they often carried so far as seemingly to leave no place for chance or convention. Each trifling matter was given a meaning that was greater than itself.
[94] Etym., 16, 26, 10.
[95] Etym., 16, 25, 20.
[96] Etym., 3, 23, 2.
[97] Etym., 3, 4, 3.
[98] The explanation suggested accounts for the prevalence of allegory in medieval times. Among the less comprehensive and not characteristically medieval causes for it must be reckoned the influence of the parables that are explained in the New Testament, the occasional grossness of Biblical characters and language which called for an interpretation that would remove offence and offer edification, the congenial activity which allegorizing offered to the pious mind, and, finally, the fact that by a clever use of allegorical interpretation some desired end might be obtained.
[99] Migne, P. L., 83, col. 303. “Inter haec igitur omnia decem praecepta solum ibi quod de Sabbato positum est figurate observandum praecipitur. Quam figuram nos intelligendam, non etiam per otium corporale celebrandam, suscipimus. Reliqua tamen ibi praecepta proprie praecepta sunt, quae sine ulla figurata significatione observantur. Nihil enim mystice significant, sed sic intelliguntur ut sonant. Et notandum quia sicut decem plagis percutiuntur Aegyptii, sic decem praeceptis conscribuntur tabulae, quibus regantur populi Dei.” The Scriptures were for Isidore un vasto simbolismo (Cañal, San Isidoro, p. 51).
[100] D. N. R., 29, 2.
[101] De Natura Rerum, 14, 2.
[102] Sent., 1, 8, 6.
[103] Etym., 11, 3, 1 and 2.
[104] Diff., 2, 100.
[105] Diff., 2, 92.
[106] Diff., 2, 97.
[107] Sentent., 3, 3, 5.
[108] Sentent., 3, 16, 5.
[109] Etym., 8, 3, 2–3.
[110] Jerome, In Isaiam, Lib. xi, ch. 40. “Ita universa gentium multitudo supernis ministeriis et angelorum multitudini comparata pro nihilo ducitur.” Cf. Etym., 7, 5, 19.
[111] Etym., 7, 5, 24.
[112] For appearance to man. Cf. Angeli corpora in quibus hominibus apparent, de superno aere sumunt. Sentent., 1, 10, 19.
[113] Diff., 2, 41.
[114] Sentent., 1, 10, 16.
[115] Sentent., 1, 10, 13.
[116] De Ord. Creat., 8, 7–10.
[117] Diff., 2, 41.
[118] Sentent., 1, 10, 17.
[119] Sentent., 3, 5, 35–36.
[121] Four definitions are given, 2, 24, 3 and 9. Cf. 8, 6, 1; Diff., 2, 149. See pp. [116]–[119]. For the marshaling of the minor subjects under philosophy see [Appendix II].
[122] Sentent., 1, 17, 1–4.
[123] Etym., 8, 6, 23. In books VII and VIII of the Etymologies, where the subjects taken up appear to be treated in the order of merit, the place of the pagan philosophers in the list is an instructive one. The list is as follows: God, the persons of the Trinity, angels, patriarchs, prophets and martyrs, the clergy, the faithful, heretics, pagan philosophers, poets, sibyls, magi, the heathen, and heathen gods, who are the equivalent of demons. See [p. 196], [note].
[124] 8, 7, 10.
[126] 8, 7, 1.
[127] Sentent., 3, 13, 1. It seems extremely probable that Isidore did not quote from the poets directly but merely appropriated along with other material the quotations contained in the sources which he consulted.
[128] “Illud trimodum intelligentiae genus,” Diff., 2, 154. Cf. “Tripliciter autem scribitur, dum non solum historialiter vel mystice sed etiam moraliter quid in unum quodque gerere debeat edocetur.” Contra Judaeos, 2, 20. See also De Ord. Creat., 10, 4–7 and Etym., 6, 1, 11 ([p. 186]).
[129] De Universo is published in Migne, Patr. Lat., 3. In the preface Rabanus says: “Much is set forth in this work concerning the natures of things and the meanings of words and also as to the mystical signification of things. Accordingly I have arranged my matter so that the reader may find the historical and mystical explanations of each thing set together (continuatim positam); and so may be able to satisfy his desire to know both significations.” Isidore’s Etymologies is said to have been left unfinished (quamvis imperfectum ipse reliquerit. Braulio’s Introduction. See [p. 25]). The conjecture may be offered that the finishing of the work might have meant chiefly the insertion of “the higher meaning”.
[130] Sentent., 2, 1, 14.
[131] Sentent., 1, 17, 2.
[132] Cuvier, Histoire des Sciences Naturelles, vol. i, pp. 260–280.
[133] Cf. Isidore’s attitude: “The histories of the gentiles do no harm where they tell of what is profitable,” 1, 41, 1. See [p. 103].
[135] 5, 38, 5; 5, 39.
[136] 9, 1, 1.
[137] 9, 2, 132.
[138] The basis on which the canon of the seven liberal arts was formed is indicated by a passage in Martianus Capella, who makes Apollo say in regard to the exclusion of medicine and architecture from it that “their attention and skill is given to mortal and earthly things, and they have nothing in common with the ether and the gods; it is not unseemly to reject them with loathing.” (Ed. Eyssenhardt, IV, 13). The Christian Isidore held much the same notion as the pagan Capella. He believed that the order of the seven liberal arts terminating in astronomy was one whose object was “to free souls entangled by secular wisdom from earthly matters and set them at meditation upon the things on high” (3, 71, 41). See also pp. [65], [77]. It is plain enough that education in both the pagan and Christian spheres was strongly affected by the mystical tendency of the time, and it is not too much to say that the seven liberal arts stand not so much for the impracticality of a “gentleman’s” education as for that desirable in the education of a mystic.
[139] Cf. Cañal, San Isidoro (Sevilla, 1897), p. 23.
[140] Cf. Roger, L’Enseignement des lettres classiques d’Ausone à Alcuin (Paris, 1905), pp. 126–129.
[141] Of Augustine’s treatises on grammar, dialectic, rhetoric, geometry, arithmetic, and music, all but that on music were lost within a very short time. They could have had but little influence. Cf. Retract., 1, c. 6, and Teuffel and Schwabe, History of Roman Literature, Sect. 440, 7.
[142] M. Aurelii Cassiodori, De Institutione Divinarum Litterarum and De Artibus ac Disciplinis Liberalium Litterarum. In Migne, P. L., vol. 70.
[143] Cassiodorus, De Institutione Divinarum Litterarum, Migne, P. L., 70, 1108 and 1141. In the former of these passages Cassiodorus discusses also the question whether there should be absolute reliance on divine aid in the interpretation of the Scriptures—in which connection he cites miraculous interpretations by illiterate persons—or “whether it is better to continue in the use of the ordinary learning.” He decides on the whole for the latter course. The fact that Cassiodorus wrote an account of the seven liberal arts shows perhaps that he was more benighted in his theory than in his practice. Gregory the Great, however, was more consistent and thorough-going. He stands as the typical example of extreme illiberality in the history of European education. His position is shown in the notorious letter addressed to the Bishop of Vienne: “A report has reached us which we cannot mention without a blush, that thou expoundest grammar to certain friends; whereat we are so offended and filled with scorn that our former opinion of thee is turned to mourning and sorrow.... If hereafter it be clearly established that the rumor which we have heard is false and that thou art not applying thyself to the idle vanities of secular learning (nugis et secularibus litteris), we shall render thanks to our God.” Gregory the Great, Ep. ix. 54. The translation is that given in R. Lane-Poole, Medieval Thought.
[144] The second council of Toledo (531) devoted especial attention to the subject of preparation for the priesthood. See Mansi, Sacrorum Conciliorum Collectio (Florence, 1764), vol. 8 (Concilium Toletanum II).
[145] Mansi, vol. 8, p. 785.
[146] Cap. 2.
[147] Mansi, vol. 10, p. 626 (Concilium Toletanum, IV, Cap. 24).
[148] Isidore’s Regula Monachorum, 20, 5.
[150] Etym., 3, 71, 41.
[151] To this conception of the time, that the secular side of education was a necessary evil, of which a minimum use must be made, the school disciplines had in reality been adapting themselves for centuries by their growing formalism and loss of content. Among the seven liberal arts rhetoric is the best example of the former characteristic. It was so purely conventional a discipline in Isidore’s time that, even though he wrote of it, he confesses that it made no impression on him, either good or bad. “When it is laid aside,” he says, “all recollection vanishes.” The loss of content, on the other hand, is best seen in Isidore’s account of the four mathematical sciences, especially in that of geometry, which consists of nothing more than a few definitions.
[152] See [p. 31] for outline of contents.
[153] However, Cassiodorus had in the De Institutione Divinarum Litterarum a chapter entitled “On monks having the care of the infirm”. In this he urged upon them the reading of a number of medical works (those of Dioscorides, Hippocrates, Galen, Caelius Aurelianus, and “various others”. Migne, P. L., 70, 1146).
[154] 4, 13. See also [p. 163].
[155] See Sandys, History of Classical Scholarship, pp. 6–10.
[156] It is still in existence. The best text is that of Uhlig, 1883 (Leipzig).
[157] “Grammar is a practical knowledge of the usages of language as generally current among poets and prose writers. It is divided into six parts: (1) trained reading with due regard to prosody; (2) explanation according to poetical figures; (3) ready statement of dialectical peculiarities and allusions; (4) discovery of etymology; (5) an accurate account of analogies; (6) criticism of poetical productions, which is the noblest part of grammatic art.” The Grammar of Dionysius Thrax, translated by T. Davidson (St. Louis, 1874), p. 3. In contrast to this definition the body of the work is devoted to reading, punctuation, the alphabet, syllables, and the parts of speech.
[158] The older definition or its substance was still retained, however. See [p. 97]. Its retention is rather an evidence of conservatism than a proof of the continued study of the poets.
[159] The following list of passages gives some idea of the way in which grammatical works were produced in this age.
Vox sive sonus est aer ictus, id est percussus, sensibilis auditu quantum in ipso est. Probi, Instituta Artium in Keil, Grammatici Latini, vol. vi, p. 4, 13.
Vox est aer ictus sensibilis auditu, quantum in ipso est. Donati, Ars Grammatica. Ibid., vol. iv, p. 367, 5.
Vox est aer ictus sensibilis auditu, verbis emissa, et exacta sensus prolatio. Sergii, Explanationum in artem Donati, Liber I., Ibid., vol. iv, p. 487, 4.
Vox est aer auditu percipibilis quantum in ipso est. Marius Victorinus, Ars Grammatica. Ibid., vol. vi, p. 4, 13.
Vox quid est? Aer ictus sensibilisque auditu quantum in ipso est. Maximus Victorinus, Ars Grammatica. Ibid., vol. vi, p. 189, 8.
Vox articulata est aer percussus sensibilis auditu quantum in ipso est. Cassiodorus, Institutio de Arte Grammatica. Ibid., vol. vii, p. 215, 4.
Vox est aer ictus sensibilis auditu, quantum in ipso est. Isidore, Etymologiae, 1, 15.
These grammars are almost altogether made up of definitions which had become stereotyped.
[160] The greater length of his treatment is due to the fact that he includes more subjects than do the preceding writers of text-books. A comparison of his table of contents with those of Cassiodorus, Martianus Capella, Donatus, and Servius shows that he professes to cover much more than they; he has ten topics that do not appear in Donatus’ Ars Grammatica, and a greater number that do not appear in Servius, Capella, or Cassiodorus.
[161] See especially his definition of verbum, 1, 9, 1.
[162] The analysis is meant to indicate briefly the formal organization of the subject. It is followed by selected passages in translation, which, while illustrating the technical treatment, are meant rather to give what is of more general interest. It must be remembered that this treatment by selected passages fails to give a just idea of the meagerness, attenuation, and confusion of the material considered as a whole.
[164] A set of terms unfamiliar to the modern student of grammar is given under this head. Nouns having six distinct case-forms are called hexaptota; those having five, pentaptota, and so on. See 1, 7, 33.
[165] Pronouns are classified according to use into finita, infinita, minus quam finita, possessiva, relativa, demonstrativa; and according to origin into primigenia and deductiva.
[166] Three conjugations are given.
[167] Note part of the definition: “Adverbium autem sine verbo non habet plenam significationem, ut hodie: adjicis illi verbum, hodie scribo, et juncto verbo implesti sensum.” 1, 10, 1.
[168] Isidore asserts that there are one hundred and twenty-four sorts of metrical feet, “four of two syllables, eight of three, sixteen of four, thirty-two of five, sixty-four of six.” 1, 17, 1.
[169] The ten so-called accents of the grammarians are described: the acute, the grave, the circumflex, the marks to indicate long and short vowels, the hyphen, the comma, the apostrophe, the rough and smooth breathing.
[170] This section is to be explained by reference to the chief controversy in the history of the science of grammar in classical times, that between analogy and anomaly, or whether grammatical regularity or irregularity was the more basic phenomenon. In Capella’s grammar analogia is the heading under which declensions of nouns and conjugations of verbs are given, while exceptions are grouped under the heading anomala. See Martianus Capella, Eyssenhardt, pp. 75–97. Also Sandys, History of Classical Scholarship, Index.
[171] Solecism is “the failure to put words together according to the correct method”, while barbarism includes blunders in the use of single words. 1, 33, 1.
[172] Chiefly a parade of long words, like perissologia, macrologia, tapinosis, cacosyntheton, etc. 1, 34.
[173] A large number of poetical figures are described. This section is probably nothing but an evidence of conservatism, since Isidore certainly did not include a study of the poets in his scheme of education.
[174] A number of metres are described and some attention is given to different kinds of poetry, such as the elegiac, bucolic, hymn, cento, etc.
[175] Du Breul has disciplinis, not artibus.
[176] Librarii et calculatores.
[177] From Jerome, ad Soph., in Migne, Patr. Lat., 6, 7, 30.
[178] This sentence, as many others, is in the accusative and infinitive without any governing verb.
[179] Liberalium litterarum.
[180] In complexum istarum cadunt.
[181] See Etym., 1, 21, 2–28.
[182] The grammarian.
[183] Notas sed tantum praepositionum. Probably abbreviations for prepositions and other connectives that were in frequent use.
[184] Praefixis characteribus.
[185] Among the seven liberal arts grammar is the art par excellence.
[186] Cf. Quintilian, 1, 6, 28.
[187] Quia nomina et verba rerum nota facit.
[188] Cf. 17, 6, 5, where silva (xilva) is derived from ξύλον (wood).
[189] De Fabrica mundi et Evangeliis.
[190] Isidore, Etym., 2, 19, 14, “Praeterea secundum Victorinum enthymematis est altera definitio. Ex sola propositione, sicut jam dictum est, ita constat. ‘Si tempestas vitanda est, non est navigatio requirenda.’”
Cassiodorus, De Rhet. Halm, Rhetores Latini, p. 500. “Praeterea secundum Victorinum enthymematis est altera definitio. Ex sola propositione, sicut jam dictum est, ita constat enthymema, ut est illud: ‘si tempestas vitanda est, non est navigatio requirenda.’”
Isidore, Etym., 2, 9, 18. “Hunc Cicero ita facit in arte rhetorica.”
Cass. in Halm, p. 500, 18. “Hunc Cicero facit in arte rhetorica.”
[191] The analytical treatment of this subject is obviously carried to an absurd degree. The whole activity of the orator is analyzed into five parts: inventio, dispositio, elocutio (wording), memoria, pronuntiatio. The whole subject-matter is analyzed into three parts: deliberative, epideictic, forensic. All court cases are analyzed from the point of view of the defence, according to status, that is, according to the nature of the leading point in the case. The speech itself (oratio) is analyzed into four parts: introduction, narrative, argument and conclusion. All cases are analyzed again according to the psychological impression they make on the audience. All arguments are analyzed into regular and irregular syllogisms. Even negation, giving the lie, is analyzed into several sorts. Rhetorical figures are analyzed elaborately.
[192] “In which there is discussion of what ought or ought not to be done in regard to any of the practical affairs of life.” 2, 4, 1. The genus deliberativum is divided into suasio and dissuasio, and each of these again, under the three headings, honestum, utile, possibile.
[193] Epideictic; divided into laus and vituperatio, 2, 4.
[194] Forensic rhetoric.
[195] Under this heading we have the chief effort of ancient rhetoric to be helpful to the defense in cases brought before the courts. The term status meant the crucial point in a case, and its subdivisions are intended to include the chief kinds of crucial points upon which the advocate must base his speech. The inference in both Isidore and Cassiodorus is that there is only one status in a case, but Quintilian (3, 6, 21) expressly says that there are more than one, and that the chief status in a case “is the strongest point in it on which the whole matter chiefly turns.”
In this section Isidore borrows from Cassiodorus almost without change in the wording. In one case he has made a serious blunder in copying: the subdivisions that Cassiodorus places under qualitas, Isidore has placed under finis. (Cass., De Rhet., Halm, p. 496.)
[196] “When an act that is imputed to a person is denied by another” (2, 5, 3), and the balancing of evidence is the method of deciding.
[197] “When it is maintained that the act that is the matter of accusation is not that [specified], and its nature is shown by the use of definitions.” 2, 5, 3.
[198] “In which the nature of justice and right and the abstract grounds of reward and punishment are gone into.” 2, 5, 5.
[199] Term left undefined.
[200] “Which of itself offers no satisfactory ground for defence but seeks for defence beyond its own limits.” 2, 5, 5.
[201] “When the accused does not deny the act but demands that it be pardoned.” 2, 5, 6.
[202] “When the deed is confessed but guilt is denied” on the ground of ignorance, accident, or necessity. 2, 5, 8.
[203] “When the accused confesses that he has committed the wrong and has done so purposely, and still demands that he be pardoned, which kind can be of very rare occurrence.” 2, 5, 8.
[204] “When the accused endeavors energetically to divert the charge made against him from himself and his guilt to another.” 2, 5, 6.
[205] “When it is urged that there is justification because another had committed a wrong before.” 2, 5, 7.
[206] “When some other honorable or expedient act of another is alleged, for the accomplishing of which the act specified in the accusation is asserted to have been done.” 2, 5, 7.
[207] “In which there is discussion of what is just in view of civil custom and equity.” 2, 5, 5.
[208] “When the nature of the case is inquired into; and since the dispute is concerned with the real meaning and classification of the matter at stake, this is called the constitutio generalis.” 2, 5, 3. This is the general heading under which all the sub-heads classified under finis should have been placed. Isidore made a mistake in copying from Cassiodorus, in whom the classification is correct.
[209] “When the case depends on this, that it is not the proper person who brings the action, or that it is not before the proper court, at the proper time, according to the proper law, charging the proper crime, demanding the proper punishment.” 2, 5, 4.
[210] “When the words seem to be at variance with the intention of the writer.” 2, 5, 9.
[211] “When two or more laws are perceived to be in conflict with one another.” 2, 5, 9.
[212] “When what is written seems to have two or more meanings.” 2, 5, 10.
[213] “When from what is written another thing also which is not written is inferred.” 2, 5, 10.
[214] “When inquiry is made as to what is the force of a word.” 2, 5, 10.
[215] A division applying only to the genus deliberativum.
[216] Six are usually given. Cassiodorus has exordium, narratio, partitio, confirmatio, reprehensio, conclusio. Halm, Rhetores Latini Minores, p. 497.
[217] An analysis of cases according to the emotional effect they are likely to have on the audience.
[218] “Ut admirentur (judices) quenquam ad defensionem eius accedere.” Halm, 316, 34, from Sulpitius Victor.
[219] The irregular syllogism. Each sub-head is exhaustively analyzed.
[220] Giving the lie as conclusion of an irregular syllogism.
[221] A short account of the nature of law. This sub-head is not found in the text-books on rhetoric before Isidore’s time.
[222] In the use of letters, words, and sentences.
[223] Figurae verborum et sententiarum. Samples of the former are anadiplosis, paradiastole, antimetabole, exoche; of the latter (forty-seven in all), coenonesis, parrhesia, aposiopesis, aetiologia, epitrochasmus. Cf. p. 107, note.
[224] H. W. Blunt, Art. “Logic,” in Encycl. Brit., 11th ed. See also Rashdall, Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages (Oxford, 1895), vol. i, p. 36.
[225] It was thought that the Latin vocabulary was not well suited to the expression of the ideas of logic. Cf. Martianus Capella, De Nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii (ed. Eyssenhardt) where Dialectica is about to speak: “Ac mox Dialectica, quanquam parum digne latine loqui posse crederetur, tamen promptiore fiducia restrictisque quadam obtutus vibratione luminibus etiam ante verba formidabilis, sic exorsa.”
[226] It is true that the works of Boethius, which were not school texts, served to revivify the subject, but his influence was very slight in this respect until long after Isidore’s time. M. Manitius, Geschichte der lateinischen Literatur des Mittelalters (München, 1911), pp. 29–32.
[227] 2, 26, 15. Cf. Cass. Migne, P. L., vol. lxx, col. 1170.
[228] 2, 27, 1. Cf. Cass. Migne, P. L., vol. lxx, col. 1170.
[229] 2, 28, 22. Cf. Cass. Migne, P. L., vol. lxx, col. 1173.
[230] The substance of Isidore’s De Dialectica is taken chiefly from Cassiodorus. A number of passages seem to be based on Martianus Capella: for example, Etym., 2, 31, 1, on Martianus Capella (Eyssenhardt), 118, 8 ff.; Etym., 2, 31, 4–5, on M. C., 118, 15–25; Etym., 2, 31, 7, on M. C., 120, 9 ff.
[231] Isidore’s ignorance of Greek has been inferred from his use of the forms, isagogae and perihermeniae. See [p. 36].
[232] Du Breul has theologia; Arevalus, theorica.
[233] This passage is copied from Cassiodorus and is not an indication that Isidore had read the work of Aristotle that is mentioned.
[234] A recommendation copied word for word from Cassiodorus.
[235] “The cumulative evidence is surely very strong that the alphabetic numerals were first employed in Alexandria early in the third century B.C.” J. Gow, A Short History of Greek Mathematics (Cambridge, 1884), p. 48.
[236] We have in Isidore, for example, the terms numerus trigonus, numerus quadratus, numerus quinquangulus, and linealis, superficialis, and circularis numerus.
[237] Cajori, Hist. of Math., p. 72.
[238] Gow, speaking of the Greek ἀριθμητική, says: “Its aim was entirely different from that of the ordinary calculator, and it was natural that the philosopher who sought in numbers to find the plan on which the creator worked, should begin to regard with contempt the merchant who wanted only to know how many sardines at ten for an obol he could buy for a talent.” Gow, op. cit., p. 72.
[239] Cantor believes that the use of the abacus had been forgotten before Isidore’s time, cf. “calculator a calculis, id est a lapillis minutis quos antiqui in manu tenentes numeros componebant.” Etym., 10, 43. See Cantor, Vorlesungen über Geschichte der Mathematik (Leipzig, 1894–1900), vol. i, p. 774.
[240] Isidore adds to the account as found in Cassiodorus a few remarks about numbers in the Scriptures, some derivations of numbers, and the sections on the means and on infinity.
[241] Du Breul has magnitudinis et formarum; Arevalo, magnitudinis formarum.
[242] This derivation points to a soft c in decem.
[243] Six was regarded as a perfect number, because it is equal to the sum of all its factors.
[244] Pariter par, et pariter impar, et impariter par et impariter impar. Since these all profess to be divisions of even number, the word odd is not used in the translation.
[245] To remind the reader of Isidore’s notation Roman numerals are kept wherever he used them.
[246] The division into even, odd, and numbers sharing the characteristics of even and odd numbers goes back to Nicomachus. It is not a logical division, as the second class contains the third. See Gow, p. 90.
[247] Superflui, diminuti, perfecti.
[248] The examples are found in Du Breul. They do not appear in Arevalo.
[249] Cantor, Vorlesungen über Geschichte der Mathematik, vol. i, p. 521.
[250] The authenticity of the work on geometry that has been handed down under Boethius’ name is questioned. (See Cantor, ibid., pp. 536 et seq.) It contains the complete proof of only three of Euclid’s propositions. It also contains calculations of areas of geometrical figures. See edition of Friedlein (Leipzig, 1867).
[251] Cf. Martianus Capella’s definition: “Geometria vocor quod permeatam crebro admensamque tellurem eiusque figuram, magnitudinem, locum, partes et stadia possim cum suis rationibus explicare neque ulla sit in totius terrae diversitate partitio quam non memoris cursu descriptionis absolvam.” Eyssenhardt, 198, 30.
[252] The whole of Isidore’s De Geometria is here given, with the exception of a few passages that are untranslatable. It is given as a whole to enforce attention to the loss of the traditional content, partial or complete, which was so striking a feature of all the members of the quadrivium in early medieval times.
[253] Hujus ars disciplinae. Ars may be equal to ‘hand-book’ here.
[254] Schmidt, Questiones de musicis scriptoribus Romanis, imprimis de Cassiodoro et Isidoro (Darmstadt, 1899). This dissertation is in part an examination of the question whether the Roman writers associated music with grammar or the mathematical sciences in their enumerations of educational subjects. It contains a useful list of passages bearing on the seven liberal arts.
[255] Five definitions of music are given by Isidore, two making no allusion to its mathematical character. They are as follows:
“Musica est peritia modulationis sono cantuque consistens.” Etym., 3, 15, 1.
“Musica est disciplina quae de numeris loquitur qui inveniuntur in sonis.” Etym., 3, Preface.
“Musica est disciplina quae de numeris loquitur qui ad aliquid sunt his qui inveniuntur in sonis.” Etym., 2, 24, 15.
“Musica quae in carminibus cantibusque consistit.” Etym., 1, 2, 2.
“Musica est ars spectabilis voce vel gestu, habens in se numerorum ac soni certam dimensionem cum scientia perfectae modulationis. Haec constat ex tribus modis, id est, sono, verbis, numeris.” Diff., ii, cap. 39.
[256] Etym., 3, 17, 1.
[257] Etym., 3, 15, 1.
[258] C. Schmidt, op. cit., after a detailed comparison of passages, concludes that Isidore did not obtain his material for De Musica from Cassiodorus or Augustine, but that all three go back independently to an original work produced by an unknown Christian writer. However, the numerous identical passages in Cassiodorus and Isidore would indicate that the latter had used the former at least as a guide in plagiarism. See Schmidt, pp. 26–52, and compare Dressel, De Isidori Originum Fontibus (Turin, 1874), pp. 5 and 6.
[259] Woodridge in the Oxford History of Music (Oxford, 1901), vol. i, p. 33, note, says of Isidore’s De Musica, that it “clearly reveals the complete ignorance of his time. His dicta upon music are chiefly crude and misleading paraphrases from Cassiodorus and others, from which it is evident that the signification of the terms employed had completely escaped him. Modes are not mentioned by him [but cf. 3, 20, 7] and keys and genera are confounded together.”
[260] Qui voce propria canunt.
[261] The pandura was a stringed instrument! In the succeeding sections these instruments are briefly described, and the sambuca, another stringed instrument, is also included.
[262] Other instruments mentioned are psalterum, lyra, barbitos, phoenix, pectis, indica, aliae quadrata forma vel trigonali, margaritum, ballematica, tintinnabulum, symphonia.
[263] The general sense of the passage: “ut sine ipsius perfectione etiam homo symphoniis carens non consistat.” 3, 23, 2. See [p. 65].
[264] J. L. E. Dreyer, History of the Planetary Systems from Thales to Kepler (Cambridge, 1906), p. 141.
[265] See Introduction, [p. 51].
[266] Tannery in his Recherches sur l’histoire de l’astronomie ancienne (Paris, 1893), has an interesting discussion of the successive names of the science of the heavenly bodies. He attributes the revival of the older term astronomy about the end of the third century A.D., to the association of the term astrology with divination. In Varro the name used was astrology.
[267] 3, 71, 21–40. See pp. [152]–[4].
[268] Du Breul has Ptolemaeus, rex Alexandriae.
[269] The canons by which Ptolemy calculated the position of the planets. Isidore makes no further reference to them.
[270] For map showing the climata see Konrad Miller, Die ältesten Weltkarten (Stuttgart, 1895), vol. iii, p. 127.
[271] This order is repeated in 13, 6.
[272] This passage indicates Isidore’s belief in a flat earth. See pp. [51]–[54].
[273] Isidore does not observe the distinctions he lays down here. He does not seem to have known that Orion and Bootes were constellations.
[274] Du Breul has in addition: latitudo intelligitur per signiferum, longitudo per proprium excursum.
[275] The celestial equator.
[276] Subjects of medical interest are treated also in book xi (parts of the body, monstrous births, etc.), in book xii (healing springs), and in book xxii (diet). There is also a chapter (39) on pestilence in De Natura Rerum.
[277] Galen was one of these.
[278] Max Neuberger, Geschichte der Medizin (Stuttgart, 1906–1911), vol. i, pp. 310–321.
[279] Ibid., vol. ii, p. 61 et seq.
[280] Neuberger, op. cit., vol. ii, pp. 240–278 for an account of medicine in the early middle ages.
[281] This school was really founded in the first century B.C. According to it disease consists in a contraction or relaxation of the pores (strictus status or laxus status). Nothing but the supposed general condition of the body was of importance. Neuberger, Geschichte der Medizin, vol. 1, pp. 303–309.
[282] A school that appeared in the third century B.C., and corresponded in medicine to the skeptical movement in philosophy. All a priori reasoning was rejected. Ibid., vol. 1, pp. 276–284.
[283] The classical school of medicine founded by Hippocrates. Isidore fails to mention the Pneumatici and the Eclectici (ibid., vol. 1, pp. 327–336), other prominent schools of medicine.
[284] The derivation which Isidore had in mind was probably ζῆν (to live).
[285] The sentence is a confused one. Isidore probably had in mind the derivation of cholera from χολή and ῥέω.
[286] Arteriae. Compare “Sanguis per venas in omne corpus diffunditur et spiritus per arterias.” Cicero, N. D., 2, 55, 138.
[287] Referring to the idea that the elements could pass into one another. See [p. 60].
[288] Du Breul has insania daemonum.
[289] A kind of leprosy.
[290] De initio medicinae.
[291] The De Legibus constitutes Isidore’s formal account of law. In bk. ii a chapter is devoted to the subject of law as a sub-division of rhetoric; it consists of definitions of general terms. In bk. ix there are chapters on citizens, and on degrees of kinship, which have a legal bearing. Cf. also bk. xviii, 15.
[292] Considering the intellectual stagnation of the time, it seems quite possible that the Justinian code was unheard of wherever it was not actually the law of the land. Vinogradoff gives the conclusion of modern scholarship as to this when he says (Roman Law in Medieval Europe, London, 1909, p. 8): “The Corpus Juris of Justinian, which contains the main body of law for later ages, including our own, was accepted and even known only in the East and in those parts of Italy which had been reconquered by Justinian’s generals. The rest of the western provinces still clung to the tradition of the preceding period, culminating in the official code of Theodosius II (A.D. 437).” Compare also Conrat, Die Epitome Exactis Regibus, Introd., pp. 248–257; Flach, Droit Romain au Moyen Age (Paris, 1890), especially pp. 52–57. Conrat, in his Geschichte der Quellen und Literatur des Römischen Rechts in Früheren Mittelalter, pp. 150–153, maintains, first, that there is no trace of evidence elsewhere in Isidore’s works, of a knowledge of the existence of the Justinian code; and, second, that the internal evidence in the De Legibus points to the use of other sources. See also Ureña, Historia Crítica de la Literatura Jurídica Española (Madrid, 1897), vol 1, p. 294.
[293] The De Legibus should not be regarded as a text-book for a law school, but for the subject of law as forming a minor part of the preparation of a priest. See Introd., [p. 87], and Flach, op. cit., the fourth section of which (pp. 104–128) deals with the teaching of law from the sixth to the eleventh century.
[294] For an account of separate MSS. of Isidore’s De Legibus (often containing also legal matter from bks. ii, ix and xviii), see Joseph Tardif, Un Abrégé Juridique des Etymologies d’Isidore de Seville in Mélanges Julien Havet (Paris, 1895).
[295] Communis omnium possessio.
[296] Holding the consulate for part of the year only.
[297] Reading legis for eius. See 2, 10.
[298] See Muirhead, The Law of Rome, p. 249.
[299] In his “On Times,” Isidore is apparently condensing what he has written elsewhere. The first part of it, which gives an account of the divisions of time—the moment, hour, day, week, month, year, and so forth—is drawn from De Natura Rerum, which in turn was based on Suetonius, Solinus, Hyginus, of the heathen writers, and Ambrosius, Clement, and Augustine, of the Christian. (See [p. 46].) In the second part, which consists of a brief chronology, Isidore condensed his Chronicon, which was drawn from Eusebius as translated and modified by Jerome, and supplemented by the later work of Prosper, Victor Tunnensis, and Joannis Biclarensis. The sources of the Chronicon have been thoroughly discussed by H. Hertzberg, Ueber die Chronicon des Isidors von Sevilla in Forschungen zur Deutschen Geschichte (Göttingen, 1875), vol. xv.
[300] At the same time chronology was incidentally made to show in a statistical way what a great priority Hebrew civilization had over its pagan rivals. Cf. pp. [79], [80].
[301] In some respects Isidore’s chronology is peculiar, and differs from any known chronology of world-history of the time. For example, where Hieronymus gives the time from the flood to Abraham as 1072 years, Isidore gives it as 942 years; and where Africanus put the birth of Christ in the year 5500 of the world, Isidore put it in 5197. See Hertzberg, p. 376. Again, only the full years are noticed, the fractions of the older chronologies being either counted as integers or ignored, though this is not done according to any system. For table showing irregularities here, see ibid., p. 325, notes 3 and 4.
[302] E.g. De Civitate Dei, xxii, 30.
[303] 5, 38, 5.
[304] Hora (hour) and ora (coast or border) are confused.
[305] A communionis temperamento.
[306] So in the case of summer, autumn, and winter.
[307] The reference in “complex history” (complicem historiam) is to the parallel sets of chronological tables of the histories of different peoples given by Eusebius.
[308] Sufficient of Isidore’s chronology is translated to give an idea of its method and of the events mentioned in it. His dates for the six ages of the world are as follows:
| First age | 0–2242. |
| Second age | 2242–3184. |
| Third age | 3184–4125. |
| Fourth age | 4125–4610. |
| Fifth age | 4610–5155. |
| Sixth age | 5155–? |
The world according to Isidore’s chronology was in its 5825th year. Although Isidore professes to start the sixth age with the birth of Christ, he really starts it with the beginning of the reign of Augustus. See Chronicon; Migne, P. L., vol. 83, col. 1038.
[309] These three books are not grouped by Isidore under one name. There apparently was no name in existence by which to designate them, as theologia was not applied, commonly at least, to Christian doctrine before Abelard’s time.
[310] The sources of bks. vi-viii differ from those of the remaining books of the Etymologies in being almost exclusively Christian. Isidore himself, in his non-secular writings, covers more fully the subjects which he here treats in a summary fashion. Compare bk. vi, chaps. 1 and 2, with Proemia in Libros Veteris ac Novi Testamenti; bk. vii, chaps. 6 and 7, with Expositiones Mysticorum Sacramentorum and De Ortu et Obitu Patrum; bk. viii, chaps. 1–5, with Sententiarum Libri Tres; bk. vi, chap. 19, and bk. vii, chaps. 12, 13, with De Ecclesiasticis Officiis.
[312] Of the alphabet.
[313] This passage is preceded by a table indicating the date of Easter for 95 years (627–721). It is clear that although Isidore was not acquainted with the plan of Dionysius Exiguus to institute the Christian era, he was acquainted with the essentials of his Easter table. Dionysius had given the dates for Easter in five 19-year cycles, dating from 525; in Isidore this is continued for the years 627 to 721. Isidore’s table consists merely of parallel columns of the days of the month and corresponding days of the moon on which Easter fell. Each date is marked C or E, abbreviations for communis annus and embolismus which describe respectively the year of twelve and that of thirteen lunar months in use in the Hebrew chronology. A further abbreviation, B, stands opposite each fourth year, to mark the leap-years. The years are not numbered according to any era, and the assignment of dates, 627–721, is inferred from the dates given for Easter. See Ideler, Chronologie, vol. ii, p. 290 (Berlin, 1826). Isidore does not make it plain that he understood the mathematics of the computation of Easter. It is of interest that in 643 the fourth synod of Toledo passed an enactment to secure a common observance of Easter throughout the Spanish churches, no doubt according to this Easter-table. See Gams, Die Kirchengeschichte von Spanien (Regensburg, 1874), vol. ii, part 2, p. 94.
[314] It is worth noticing that in bks. vii and viii Isidore gives a list of the whole hierarchy of supernatural and human existences beginning with God and ending with the devil. An inspection of the order of subjects will suggest to the reader that he was arranging them in order of merit. If this supposition is correct, the table of contents of these two books is a very significant one, as throwing light upon Isidore’s scale of values for the divine, the human and the demonic.
[315] A list of heresies precedes.
[316] Du Breul, hominum instead of omnium.
[317] Reading secreta for decreta.
[318] Verg. Aen. 4, 487–491, not quoted directly but taken from Augustine, De Civitate Dei, 21, 6.
[319] From Augustine, De Civitate Dei, bk. vii. cap. 35.
[320] The reference is to heathen gods.
[321] Isidore gives a table of “the prohibited degrees” within which marriage was forbidden by the rule of the church. Since the introduction of Christianity these had been steadily extended until in Isidore’s lifetime intermarriage within the seventh degree was prohibited by Pope Gregory. The analogy between the wide extension of “the prohibited degrees” in the dark ages and that found among primitive peoples generally is remarkable. Westermarck, History of Human Marriage, p. 297, says: “As a rule among primitive peoples unaffected by modern civilization, the prohibited degrees are more numerous than in advanced communities, the prohibitions in many cases referring even to all the members of a tribe or clan.” For an account of this development of marriage, see Westermarck, op. cit., p. 308, and Smith and Cheetham’s Christian Antiquities, art. “Prohibited Degrees.” This social phenomenon of the dark ages is a development parallel to the recrudescence of the primitive in the intellectual sphere which is illustrated in so marked a manner in the Etymologies (cf. pp. 50–54).
[322] Corporaliter.
[323] The names of the nations are enumerated in the preceding sections.
[324] The name China appeared for the first time in the Christian Topography of Cosmas Indicopleustes. It does not appear in the Etymologies.
[325] This is the only part of the Etymologies in which Isidore gives up every principle of organization of his subject-matter except the alphabetical one. Elsewhere the terms are grouped according to their meaning, with sometimes traces of alphabetical order in the groups, but here the dictionary method alone is used.
[326] Grandson, sometimes has meaning of prodigal, spendthrift.
[327] In the first part of book xi are contained the remnants of the sciences of human anatomy and physiology as the ancients had known them. The second part is devoted to unnatural births, which were regarded as having a prophetic meaning, and to monstrous races. It is not known what were Isidore’s immediate sources for bk. xi. Most of the natural science of the later Roman empire, however, was drawn ultimately from Pliny. To correspond to Isidore’s topics in this book of the Etymologies, comparative anatomy and physiology are found in Pliny’s Natural History, bk. xi, ch. 44 et seq., and chapters on monstrous races (Gentium mirabiles figurae) and on unusual and unnatural births (prodigiosi, monstruosi partus) are found in bk. vii.
[328] Vult.
[329] Cuvier, Histoire des Sciences Naturelles, vol. i, p. 166.
[330] Cuvier, vol. i, p. 264.
[331] The Physiologus probably originated at Alexandria in the first century A.D., and was translated into the Latin about the end of the fourth century. It was very popular with the church fathers. Isidore’s De Animalibus exhibits its influence in many passages. See Lauchert, Physiologus (Strassburg, 1891), p. 103. A Greek version of the Physiologus is given by Lauchert and a Latin by Cahier in Mélanges d’Archéologie, Paris, vols. ii, iii, iv (1851–53).
[332] Superacta pernicie veneni.
[333] The Greek is μῦς.
[334] A notion found in the Physiologus.
[335] This animal is of literary origin and illustrates the danger of a literary science. For some reason the Septuagint translators translated the Hebrew word for lion in Job 4:11 by the word μυρμηκολέων. The commentators later on, in their efforts to explain the term, evolved a new animal, a compound of ant and lion. See Lauchert, Geschichte des Physiologus, p. 21, and art. “Physiologus” in the Encyclopedia Britannica, 11th ed.
[336] Aranea, vermis aeris, 12, 5, 2.
[337] ἔχω, ναῦς.
[338] Cornix is not a Greek word, as Isidore seems to imply. Its nearest Greek equivalent is κορώνη.
[339] Cf. Beazley, The Dawn of Modern Geography, pp. 366–67. See also [p. 53], [note].
[340] Repeated with little change from De Astronomia. See pp. [145], [146].
[341] ὕλη.
[342] I.e., elementa = hylementa.
[343] The word στοιχεῖον means “one in a series.”
[344] Orbis.
[345] Orbem.
[346] Terrae.
[347] Opem fert frugibus.
[349] Romphaea flamma. Cf. Etym., 18, 6, 3.
[350] Egypt is regarded as part of Asia. 14, 3, 27–28.
[351] Extra tres autem partes orbis, quarta pars trans Oceanum interior est in Meridie.
[353] Architecture appears in a disintegrated form in the Etymologies (bks. xv, chs. 2–12; xix, chs. 8–19). A comparison with Vitruvius’s work on architecture (translated by J. Gwilt, London, 1880) shows that the main differences between the subjects treated by Isidore and those in Vitruvius’s work lie in the omission by the former of the account of building materials (bk. ii), temple architecture, water supply (bk. viii), dialling, and mechanics.
[354] See Introd., [p. 32]. The two chapters, “De Mensuris Agrorum” and “De Itineribus,” together with three chapters of bk. xvi, “De Ponderibus,” “De Mensuris,” “De Signis,” are given in Hultsch, Metrologicorum Scriptorum Reliquiae, Leipzig, 1886 (Scriptores Romani in vol. ii). Hultsch finds (vol. ii, 34) that Isidore made use of Columella and a number of minor writers on these subjects.
[355] Isidore probably had in mind some derivation of Byzantium, which would explain his meaning here, but he gives no hint of what it was.
[356] Saragossa.
[357] Pliny’s five books (xxxiii-xxxvii) on mineralogy in his Natural History are the chief source upon which later writers drew. An epitome of them, or rather, an epitome of an epitome, was made by Solinus in the third century. This underwent a further revision in the sixth century. Isidore is supposed to have used both the epitome and the original, as well as an unknown source, from which he drew the medical virtues of the precious stones. Cf. King, The Natural History, Ancient and Modern, of Precious Stones (London, 1865), p. 6.
[358] Asphalt, alum, salt, soda, etc.
[359] Striped jasper.
[360] Unknown.
[361] Twenty-one of these are named.
[362] The information on military matters contained here and in bk. ix was drawn ultimately from the succession of Roman writers on military science. The chief of these were Frontinus, Hyginus, Vegetius.
[363] The title, De Spectaculis, and much of the material are drawn from Tertullian’s De Spectaculis. See M. Klussman, Excerpta Tertullianea in Isidori Hispalensis Etymologiis (Hamburg, 1892).
[364] Compare Tertullian, De Spectaculis, chs. 6–9.
[365] At this point in his work Isidore turns from the ‘sciences’ to the useful arts.
[366] For a similar subject and treatment, compare De Genere Navigiorum, in Nonius Marcellus’s encyclopedia. See [p. 43].
[367] For passages illustrating Isidore’s cosmology, see Etym., 2, 24, 2; 3, 52, 1; 3, 47; 9, 2, 133; 11, 3, 24; 13, 1, 1. See also pp. [50]–[58] and notes.
[368] 2, 24, 3–8. See pp. [73]–[74], [116]–[119].
[369] 2, 24, 10–16.
[370] Diff., 2, 39.
[371] The list given here is not a complete list of works consulted. The wide range of topics included in Isidore’s encyclopedia has made it necessary to consult a great many books, and the great modern encyclopedias have been used continuously, especially the 11th edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica.
Transcriber’s note
- The book cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.
- Obvious printer errors have been silently corrected.
- Original spelling was kept, but variant spellings were made consistent when a predominant usage was found, except the variants “encyclopedia”, “encyclopaedia”, “encyclopædia”, and their derivatives, which are preserved as printed.
- Blank pages have been skipped.
- Footnotes have been renumbered and moved to the end of the book.
- Illustrations have been slightly moved so that they do not break up paragraphs while remaining close to the text they illustrate.
- Other emendations made:
- [p. 14]:
- “Yerra” → “[Terra]”
- [p. 141]:
- placement of anchor for note [267] conjectured. None found.
- [p. 210]:
- “25.” → “[9.]” and “of the stock of Cham, who stock of Sem” → “[of the stock of Sem]”, both after checking the Latin original.
- [p. 233]:
- Added “[On Universe and Earth]” as a general title to “Books XIII and XIV” chapter, both in this page and in the Table of Contents.
- [p. 243]:
- placement of anchor for note [347] conjectured. None found.
- [p. 264]:
- Added “[Isidore’s Use of the Word Terra]” as a title to Appendix I, taken from the Table of Contents.
| [p. 14]: | “Yerra” → “[Terra]” |
| [p. 141]: | placement of anchor for note [267] conjectured. None found. |
| [p. 210]: | “25.” → “[9.]” and “of the stock of Cham, who stock of Sem” → “[of the stock of Sem]”, both after checking the Latin original. |
| [p. 233]: | Added “[On Universe and Earth]” as a general title to “Books XIII and XIV” chapter, both in this page and in the Table of Contents. |
| [p. 243]: | placement of anchor for note [347] conjectured. None found. |
| [p. 264]: | Added “[Isidore’s Use of the Word Terra]” as a title to Appendix I, taken from the Table of Contents. |