Saint Isidore 7thC Savior
Saint Isidore was born in Seville about 560 and he died on April 4, 636. He was a Spanish-Roman scholar, theologian and archbishop of Seville. He is widely regarded as the last scholar of the ancient world. At a time of great tumult. Saint Isidore was involved in the conversion of the Arian Visigoth kings to Christianity. Saint Isidore’s fame after his death was based on his etymological encyclopedia that assembled extracts of many books from classical antiquity that would otherwise have been lost. This work also helped to standardize the use of the full stop, comma and colon. Do you think we owe a lot to Saint Isidore?
Saint Isidore Biography
Saint Isidore was born in Cartagena, Spain to a notable family in Roman of high social rank, and probably of Greek descent. His siblings were very accomplished. An elder brother, Leander of Seville, immediately preceded Saint Isidore as Archbishop of Seville and, while in office, opposed the King.
A younger brother, Fulgentius of Cartagena, served as the Bishop of Astigi. His sister, Florentina of Cartagena, was a nun who allegedly ruled over forty convents and one thousand consecrated religious.
After the death of his brother Leander of Seville in March 600 or 601, Saint Isidore succeeded him as the Bishop of Seville. He recognized that the spiritual and material welfare of the people of his see depended on the assimilation of Roman and barbarian (Visigoth) cultures. Saint Isidore tried to weld the peoples and subcultures of the Visigoth kingdom into a united nation. He used all available religious resources toward this end and succeeded. Isidore practically eradicated the heresy of Arianism and completely stifled the new heresy of Acephali at its outset.
Saint Isidore was the first Christian writer to try to compile a summa of universal knowledge, in his most important work, known by classicists as the Origines (the standard abbreviation being Orig.). This encyclopedia—the first such Christian epitome—formed a huge compilation of 448 chapters in 20 volumes. In it, Isidore entered his own terse digest of Roman handbooks, miscellanies and compendia. He continued the trend towards abridgements and summaries that characterized Roman learning in Late Antiquity. In the process, many fragments of classical learning are preserved that otherwise would have been hopelessly lost.
The fame of this work gave a new impetus to encyclopedic writing, which bore fruit in the subsequent centuries of the Middle Ages. It was the most popular compendium in medieval libraries. It was printed in at least ten editions between 1470 and 1530, showing Saint Isidore’s continued popularity in the Renaissance.
Saint Isidore’s wrote 12 other major works on various topics including mathematics, holy scripture, and monastic life. Here is a list. All of the books were written in Latin.
- Historia de regibus Gothorum, Vandalorum et Suevorum
- Chronica Majora, a universal history
- De differentiis verborum
- De natura rerum (On the Nature of Things)
- Questions on the Old Testament
- Liber numerorum qui in sanctis Scripturis occurrunt,
a number of brief letters - Sententiae libri tres Codex Sang. 228; 9th century
- De viris illustribus
- De ecclesiasticis officiis
- De summo bono
- De ortu et obitu patrum
- Regula Monachorum
Saint Isidore of Seville died on April 4, 636 after serving more than 32 years as archbishop of Seville. Isidore was one of the last of the ancient Christian philosophers. He has been called the most learned man of his age by some scholars, and he exercised a far-reaching and immeasurable influence on the educational life of the Middle Ages. His contemporary and friend Braulio of Zaragoza said: “After so much destruction and so many disasters, God has raised him in recent times to restore the monuments of the ancients, so that we would not fall completely into barbarism.”
Conclusion
Saint Isidore is one of those anonymous people to whom we owe a lot. He writings were extensive, and in the he not only captured important knowledge that would have otherwise been lost, but he standardized the use of now common literary tools like the colon, and comma. What he was able to accomplish against the herasies of the time, while Bishop of Seville, is eye-watering.
