Isidore’s Life and Writings
The development of European thought as we know it from the dawn of history down to the Dark Ages is marked by the successive secularization and de-secularization of knowledge.[1] From the beginning Greek secular science can be seen painfully disengaging itself from superstition. For some centuries it succeeded in maintaining its separate existence and made wonderful advances; then it was obliged to give way before a new and stronger set of superstitions which may be roughly called Oriental. In the following centuries all those branches of thought which had separated themselves from superstition again returned completely to its cover; knowledge was completely de-secularized, the final influence in this process being the victory of Neoplatonized Christianity.[2] The sciences disappeared as living realities, their names and a few lifeless and scattered fragments being all that remained. They did not reappear as realities until the medieval period ended.
This process of de-secularization was marked by two leading characteristics; on the one hand, by the loss of that contact with physical reality through systematic observation which alone had given life to Greek natural science, and on the other, by a concentration of attention upon what were believed to be the superior realities of the spiritual world. The consideration of these latter became so intense, so detailed and systematic, that there was little energy left among thinking men for anything else.
At the point where this de-secularizing process was complete, at the opening of the seventh century, lived the Spanish bishop and scholar, Isidore of Seville. His many writings, and especially his great encyclopedia, the Etymologies, are among the most important sources for the history of intellectual culture in the early middle ages, since in them are gathered together and summed up all such dead remnants of secular learning as had not been absolutely rejected by the superstition of his own and earlier ages; they furnish, so to speak, a cross-section of the debris of scientific thought at the point where it is most artificial and unreal.
The résumé that Isidore offers is strikingly complete. In this respect he surpasses all the writers of his own and immediately preceding periods, his scope being much more general than that of his nearest contemporaries, Boethius and Cassiodorus. He goes back here to the tradition of the encyclopedists of the Roman world, Varro, Verrius Flaccus, Pliny, and Suetonius, by the last of whom he is believed to have been especially influenced. Few writers of any period cover the intellectual interests of their time so completely. To understand Isidore’s mental world is nearly to reach the limits of the knowledge of his time.[3]
The influence which he exerted upon the following centuries was very great. His organization of the field of secular science, although it amounted to no more than the laying out of a corpse, was that chiefly accepted throughout the early medieval period. The innumerable references to him by later writers,[4] the many remaining manuscripts,[5] and the successive editions of his works[6] after the invention of printing, indicate the great rôle he played.[7] From the modern point of view the real benefit he conferred upon succeeding centuries was that in his encyclopaedic writings he presented to the intelligent the fact that there had been and might be such a thing as secular science; while the blunders in which he was continually involved, and the shallowness of his thinking, offered a perpetual challenge to the critical power of all who read him. There was contained in his writings also, as we shall see, the embryo of something positive and progressive, namely, the organization of educational subjects that was to appear definitely in the medieval university and dominate education almost to the present day.
For a fuller understanding of Isidore’s historical setting some attention must be given to the country in which he lived. Spanish culture in the early middle ages seems to have been relatively superior. It is well known that the country had been thoroughly Romanized. How complete the process had been may be judged from the list of men of Spanish birth who had won distinction in the wider world of the empire; it includes the two Senecas, Lucan, Quintilian, Martial, Hyginus, Pomponius Mela, Columella, Orosius, and the two emperors, Trajan and Hadrian. In fact Spain had lost its individuality and had become an integral part of the Roman world, little inferior in its culture even to Italy itself; and the close of Roman rule found the people of Spain speaking the Latin language, reading the Latin literature, and habituated to Roman institutions and modes of thought.
Moreover the continuity of this ancient culture had been perhaps less rudely disturbed in Spain than elsewhere by the shock of the barbaric invasions. Here its geographical situation stood the country in good stead; the barbarian frontier was far away and the chances were that barbarians destined by fortune to enter Spain would first spend much time in aimless wandering within the empire, with consequent loss of numbers and some lessening of savagery. Such, at least, was the case with the Visigoths, who alone of the barbarians proved a permanent factor in the country’s development. They were first admitted to the empire in 376, and must have passed largely into the second generation before they began to penetrate into Spain, while the real conquest by them did not begin until much later. “At the time of their appearance as a governing aristocracy in Spain” they “had become by long contact with the Romans to all intents and purposes a civilized people.”[8] They were thus in a position to coalesce with the Romanized natives, and that this was largely brought to pass is shown by the conversion of the Arian Goths to orthodoxy, the removal of the ban of intermarriage between the two races, the use of Latin in all official documents, and finally by the establishment of a common law for both peoples. The “sixty-one correct hexameters” of the Visigothic king Sisebutus (612–620),[9] compared, for instance, with the absolutely hopeless attempts of Charlemagne two centuries later to learn the art of tracing letters,[10] show plainly that Spanish culture had not sunk to the level of that of other parts of the western empire.[11]
In this cultural struggle which had taken place between the native population and their Visigothic rulers the contest between orthodox Christianity and Arianism had been of prime importance, and its settlement of the utmost significance. Since the Spaniards upheld the orthodox faith and the Visigoths were Arians, the victory of orthodoxy was a victory of the native element over the newcomers. By this victory, therefore, a position of predominance unusual for the time was given to the Spanish church organization, and the bishops, the leaders of the church in the struggle, became the most powerful men in the nation. Their power was further strengthened by the weakening of the secular power when the Visigothic royal line became extinct and it proved impossible to secure a successor to it from among the families of the turbulent nobility. From the conversion of the Visigoths in 587 to the invasion of the Saracens, Spain was a country dominated by bishops.[12]
Of Isidore’s life surprisingly little is known, considering the bulk and importance of his writings and his later fame.[13] All that can be ascertained of his family is that it belonged originally to Cartagena, that it was of the orthodox religion, and that the names of its members are Roman.[14] It is extremely probable that it belonged to the Hispano-Roman element of the population. That Isidore and his two brothers were bishops may be taken to show that of whatever origin the family was, it was one of power and influence.