[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.