[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).