CHAPTER III
Isidore’s World View
Is it possible to ascertain from the writings of Isidore what was the general view of the universe and the attitude toward life held in the sixth and seventh centuries?
On first thought it seems doubtful. As has been indicated, his works, and especially the Etymologies, form a mosaic of borrowings, whose ultimate origin is to be traced to unnumbered writings in both Greek and Latin, and in both Christian and pagan literatures. We find side by side in Isidore the ideas of Aristotle, Nicomachus, Porphyry, Varro, Cicero, Suetonius, Moses, St. Paul, Origen, and Augustine, to mention only a few; and these ideas, although as a rule they have undergone degeneration, are sometimes in the original words or a close rendering of them. If viewed closely they are a mass of confusion and incoherence. This is natural; such eclectism as had existed for centuries in the Roman, pagan and Christian, systems of thought is not compatible with consistency. Incoherence in the intellectual possession was inevitable; equally inevitable was an increasing indifference to incoherence and even inability to perceive it. The words of a writer of such a period must therefore not be pressed too hard. Too close an investigation would land the inquirer in hopeless confusion.
Furthermore, even in writers far more consecutive in their thinking than Isidore, there are often fundamental preconceptions which are naively taken for granted, and which, although unstated, serve as points around which to mass ideas. If the reader does not happen to approach the subject with the same preconceptions, a misapprehension is likely to result. It is the business of the critic to grasp these preconceptions and place the reader on the same plane of understanding, as it were, so that he can follow the meaning as it lay in the mind of the writer. Sometimes this undertaking is possible, but in the case of a writer like Isidore, whose ideas are often hazy and whose work is a conglomerate of ten centuries, it may easily be impossible.[55]
However, it must be remembered that such an absence of an acute self-consciousness as is indicated in the condition just described, is exactly the thing that enables men to perform feats of an astonishing character in constructing a world-philosophy, if perchance they have a taste in that direction. Their minds, not being irritated or roused by any perception of inconsistency, rest happy in the conviction that all is explained, and remain oblivious of that sense of mystery which forms the background of modern scientific thought. As tested from this point of view the medieval period afforded the conditions for a complacent and authoritative world-philosophy, such as in fact it did possess.
The difficulties in ascertaining the world view held by Isidore are, then, considerable; but, since he was the leading representative of the intellect of the dark ages, and the only important writer on secular subjects in two centuries of western European history, the attempt to ascertain it seems worth while. In making this attempt, however, it is necessary to keep these difficulties of interpretation in mind; the danger is that we shall lay too much stress on the minor inconsistencies which he probably was not aware of, and so fail to see that large general consistency which, because of his lack of critical sensitiveness, he was able to believe that he found.
Isidore’s physical universe[56] in its form is geocentric, and is bounded by a revolving sphere which he believed to be made of fire, and in which the stars are fixed. The question of the number of spheres he treats in an inconsistent way, sometimes speaking of seven concentric inner spheres, and sometimes of only one.[57] The relative size of sun, earth, and moon is accurately given—though, it appears, not without misgiving[58]—and also the cause of eclipses of both the sun and the moon.
The subject of greatest interest in this connection is, of course, the question whether or not Isidore believed in the sphericity of the earth. It is maintained by some authorities that this notion was not lost at any time during the middle ages. Isidore certainly believed that the heavens constituted a sphere or spheres, and that the sun and moon revolved in circles around the earth. He states the theory of the zones correctly in two passages,[59] applying it, however, not to the spherical earth but to the sphere of the heavens. On the other hand, he frequently gives expression to notions belonging to a primitive cosmology.[60] The suspicion is aroused, therefore, that when he was stating astronomical ideas, he was usually simply copying what perhaps he did not understand. A passage that seems to settle the matter is found in De Natura Rerum. It shows that the fact that he could state such a theory as that of the zones correctly, is no proof that he understood its application to the earth. A translation of the passage follows:
In describing the universe the philosophers mention five circles, which the Greeks call παράλληλοι that is, zones, into which the circle of lands is divided.... Now let us imagine them after the manner of our right hand, so that the thumb may be called the Arctic circle, uninhabitable because of cold; the second, the summer circle, temperate, inhabitable; the middle (finger), the equinoctial (Isemerinus) circle, torrid, uninhabitable; the fourth, the winter circle, temperate, inhabitable; the fifth, the Antarctic circle, frigid, uninhabitable. The first of these is the northern, the second, the solstitial, the third, the equinoctial, the fourth, the winter circle, the fifth, the southern.... The following figure shows the divisions of these circles. ([Fig. 1].) Now, the equinoctial circle is uninhabitable because the sun, speeding through the midst of the heaven, creates an excessive heat in these places, so that, on account of the parched earth, crops do not grow there, nor are men permitted to dwell there, because of the great heat. But, on the other hand, the northern and southern circles, being adjacent to each other, are not inhabited, for the reason that they are situated far from the sun’s course, and are rendered waste by the great rigor of the climate and the icy blasts of the winds. But the circle of the summer solstice which is situated in the east, between the northern circle and the circle of heat, and the circle which is placed in the west, between the circle of the heat and the southern circle, are temperate for the reason that they derive cold from one circle, heat from the other. Of which Virgil [says]: