Isidore of Seville

For other uses, see Isidore of Seville (disambiguation).

Not to be confused with [[:Fray Isidoro de Sevilla, Spanish friar]].

Saint Isidore of Seville
Saint Isidore (1655), work by Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, Main Sacristy of Seville Cathedral.
Archbishop of Seville (599–636) Predecessor: Leander Successor: Teodisclo or Honoratus Doctor of the Church proclaimed on April 25, 1722 by Pope Innocent XIII Cleric, writer, musicologist, philosopher and historian
Born	Approximately 560 Seville
Died	April 4, 636 Seville
Venerated in	Catholic Church Eastern Orthodox Church Anglican Communion Old Catholic Churches
Canonized	Immemorial cult
Feast	April 4 in the vetus ordo of the Roman Rite and in the Byzantine Rite. December 16 (in León), translation of Saint Isidore. December 22 in the Mozarabic Rite. April 26 in the novus ordo of the Roman Rite.
Attributes	Latin bishop, with a book and sometimes mounted on a white horse and holding a sword.
Patronage	Internet (unofficial), humanities, surveyors, computer science, students.

Basilica of San Isidoro of León, where his remains are kept.

Saint Isidore of Seville, sculpture by Lorenzo Mercadante de Bretaña, Portal of the Baptism, Seville Cathedral.

Isidore of Seville (Latin: Isidorus Hispalensis; probably Seville, c. 560 – Seville, April 4, 636) was a Catholic ecclesiastic, scholar and polymath, a Hispanic of the Visigothic era. He was Bishop of Seville for more than three decades (602–636). He is venerated as a saint by the Catholic Church and is considered the last Father of the Church.

Biography

Origin

In his treatise De viris illustribus, Isidore states that "he had as father Severianus, of the Carthaginian province of Spain." Severianus is a Roman name. His children were Leander (who was Bishop of Seville), Fulgentius (who was Bishop of Écija), Florentina (who was a nun) and Isidore (who succeeded his brother as Bishop of Seville). Leander wrote a letter to Florentina at the end of the 6th century, known as On the Education of Virgins and the Contempt of the World. In it he mentions a maternal figure called Turtur (turtledove), but it is unknown whether this was the mother's name, whether the name was used as a literary device, or whether he was referring to the Abbess of the convent where Florentina was living.

From the document On the Education of Virgins and the Contempt of the World it can also be gathered that the Hispano-Roman and Catholic family had to leave Cartagena because of the arrival of some foreigners, who might have been the Goths or the Byzantines. Some authors think that King Agila I, faced with the arrival in that area of Hispania of the Byzantines, who had been called in by Athanagild in 552, decided to expel the Hispano-Romans from the region so that they would not help the invader. The same document says that the family moved when Florentina was very small and indicates that Isidore was born much later, because he was small when his sister was already a nun. For all these reasons, it is quite possible that Isidore was born when the family was already in Seville. After the father's death, Leander took charge of his younger siblings.

Antonio Hernández Parrales, archivist-librarian of the Archdiocese of Seville, also states that Isidore must have been born in that city:

in the year 554, Severianus and his wife, whose name is unknown, left Cartagena, which had passed into Byzantine power, and in a forced or voluntary exile came to settle in Seville accompanied by their three children, Leander, Fulgentius and Florentina. This is how Saint Leander himself tells it, when he asserts that the family of Severianus and Turtur had to begin its exile in the year 554 with their three children, by which he indicates to us that Saint Isidore, the fourth and youngest of the children, had not yet been born." And he then writes: "In Seville even the site of the house of his birth is pointed out, which is the place where the parish of San Isidoro stands. Father Antonio de Quintana Dueñas recorded this in his book 'Santos de la ciudad de Sevilla y su Arzobispado', saying: «His illustrious Parish Church, erected on the site that is presumed to have been the Palace of his parents and of his birth, is a foundation of the Holy King Don Fernando». And the scholar Nicolás Antonio, in his Biblioteca hispana vetus, recorded that he had been born in Seville, because it is generally believed that Isidore had not yet been born when his father Severianus came into exile to this city: «Hispali natus vulgo creditur. In eam enim Urbem fama est exulen venisse, nondum eo nato, Severianum». With which it is clear that, despite the constant and historical attempts to deny the Sevillian origin of Saint Isidore, the philosopher was Sevillian.

His birth in Cartagena is recorded in much later sources: the Adbreviatio Brauli caesaraugastani episcopi de vita sancti Isidori Hispaniarum doctoris (13th–14th centuries), the anonymous Vita S. Isidori written in León (11th–12th centuries), the Codex of Saint Martin of León (around 1200), the Life of Saint Isidore by Rodrigo de Cerrato (13th century) and the Breviarium Hispalense (16th century). The siblings Leander, Fulgentius, Florentina and Isidore were collectively called the Four Saints of Cartagena.

The name Isidore is a pagan theophoric name meaning "gift of Isis," but it may have been given to him in reference to the Christian saint Isidore of Chios. The veneration of this saint is documented in the 6th century in North Africa and would have spread to the south of Hispania.

Leander was Bishop of Seville from the time of the Arian King Liuvigild and was exiled for a period. This monarch was succeeded by Reccared, who converted to Catholicism in 587.

Education

Isidore of Seville presenting his work to his sister Florentina. Manuscript in the Bibliothèque nationale de France, around the year 800.

The Second Council of Toledo of 533 established that children who were going to enter the clergy had to receive compulsory instruction from specialized clerics, supervised by the bishop and in his house.

The episcopal library must have been located in the premises of the basilica of the Holy Jerusalem, situated at an unknown place in Seville.

The historian Jacques Fontaine used two avenues to learn the contents of the library in which Isidore would have been educated: first, the Verses, composed to be placed over the book chests, and second, the sources used in his work.

The Verses present the Holy Scriptures, the works of Origen (except On First Principles, which contained doctrinal errors), the four Fathers of the Latin Church (Hilary, Ambrose, Augustine and Jerome), John Chrysostom, Cyprian of Carthage, classical poets (Virgil, Horace, Ovid, Persius, Lucan and Statius), Christian poets (Prudentius, Avitus, Juvencus and Sedulius), Christian historians (Eusebius, Orosius, Leander of Seville and Gregory the Great) and jurists (Theodosius I, Theodosius II, Paulus and Gaius).

With regard to the sources used, it seems that he may have learned about the classical poems through the commentaries of their scholiasts. He read Virgil, Lactantius and Constantine. In the Etymologies the poets are classified between pagan philosophers and inspired sibyls. With regard to classical prose, he consulted it through rhetoric manuals (especially the Institutio Oratoria of Quintilian) and quotations from the Fathers of the Church (above all Augustine, Jerome and Gregory the Great). He perhaps consulted the work Quadriga of Arusianus Messius, with texts by Terence, Virgil, Sallust and Cicero. He also made use of fragments of encyclopedists such as Varro, Suetonius, Martianus Capella and Cassiodorus. As for religious texts, he read above all the Bible, the Liturgy of the Hours and the readings that were done on the great feasts of the liturgical year. In the first three books of the Etymologies he quotes the philosophers Aristotle and Boethius.

Isidore was a good preacher. Ildefonsus of Toledo would say of him:

Through his oratorical gifts he displayed an overflowing richness, and such charm, that the admirable abundance of his speech left his listeners astounded.

He possibly learned to preach through Leander's advice, Augustine's De Doctrina Christiana, ancient rhetoric manuals and the collections of homilies of Origen, Hilary, Ambrose, Augustine, Jerome, John Chrysostom and Cyprian.

In Etymologies VI Isidore gives a description of what a library should be like. It would be a room with green coffered ceilings, a marble floor and decorated with portraits of the best authors of each discipline (like the Roman library of Asinius Pollio). The books would be arranged as follows: Old and New Testament, Fathers of the Church (Origen, Hilary, Ambrose, Augustine, Jerome, John Chrysostom and Cyprian), Christian poets (Prudentius, Juvencus, Avitus, Sedulius), history (the Gallaecian Orosius and Eusebius), theology (Leander, Gregory the Great and Augustine), law (Theodosius, Theodosius II, Paulus and Gaius) and medicine (Cosmas, Damian, Galen and Hippocrates).

Except in the Etymologies, the most frequently cited authors are ecclesiastical ones, and almost all of his knowledge of the classical authors came from manuals, scholiasts, anthologies, later writers and commentators.

There is no record that Isidore was a monk, but he must have known monastic life because he wrote the work Regula monachorum, dedicated to a Honorianense monastery. According to some authors, this monastery was located near Seville and, according to others, in Fregenal de la Sierra (province of Badajoz).

Saint Isidore's mastery of Greek and Hebrew gave him a reputation as a capable and enthusiastic student. His own Latin was affected by local Visigothic traditions and contains hundreds of words identifiable as Hispanic localisms; the 17th-century editor of his work found 1,640 such localisms, recognizable in the Spanish of the time.

Episcopate

Statue of Isidore of Seville by José Alcoverro located on the entrance staircase of the National Library of Spain.

Upon the death of his brother Leander, in 602, he succeeded him as Bishop of Seville.

Isidore's signature appears on the Decree of Gundemar of 610, by which Toledo was recognized as a metropolitan see. However, the authenticity of this decree is doubtful.

King Sisebut maintained a close relationship of friendship and collaboration with Isidore. It was this monarch who encouraged him to write De natura rerum (which is dedicated to Sisebut), the Chronica, the Historiae Gothorum and a first draft of the Etymologies.

He convoked and presided over three councils in Seville. The first of these was the Second Council of Seville, in 619, attended by 8 bishops: Bisionius of Elvira, Rufinus of Asido, Fulgentius of Astigi, Cambra of Italica, John of Egabro, Fidentius of Tucci, Theodulf of Cabra and Honorius of Córdoba. Jurisdictional matters and the discipline of the clergy were dealt with, although the acts have not survived. At the following council in this city a bishop named Sintario was refuted. The existence of this council is known because Bishop Braulio of Zaragoza asked his friend Isidore to send him the acts. Finally, the third council presided over by Isidore in his city met around 628–629 and, although its acts have not survived either, it is known that Bishop Marcianus of Astigi was deposed at it.

During the reign of Suintila, he wrote the second version of the Chronica and of the Historiae Gothorum. In the latter, written around 625, he praises the domestic policy pursued until then by Suintila.

Isidore maintained a close relationship with Braulio, Bishop of Zaragoza from 631. The two met when Braulio was only an archdeacon. In 632 Isidore sent Braulio all the material of the Etymologies, asking him to revise the text before its dissemination. For this reason, it is believed that it was Braulio who divided the work into the present twenty books.

King Sisenand came to the throne in 631 and wanted to improve his position with the endorsement of the aristocracy and the clergy. To that end, with Isidore's help, he convoked a general council, something that had not taken place since 589.

Thus Isidore directed the Fourth Council of Toledo, on December 5, 633, which was presided over by Sisenand. It was attended by 62 bishops and seven presbyters representing bishoprics. 75 canons were promulgated. In canons 24 and 25 Isidore proposed to all the bishops the obligation to create schools attached to the cathedral sees for the training of the future clergy. These schools would be boarding schools with two cycles. In the first, for childhood and adolescence, the education would be elementary and would emphasize moral aspects. In the second cycle the aim would be for the pupil to be able to read the elementary sacred texts.

The canons dealt with the creed, the unification of the liturgical practices of the Visigothic Church, ecclesiastical property (concerning the clergy and the founders and patrons of rural churches), slaves and freedmen of the Church (who remained under perpetual ecclesiastical patronage), strengthening the discipline and customs of the clergy, the exclusion of any royal prerogative over the appointment of bishops, and the treatment of the Jews.

The most important canon was the 75th, whose aim was to strengthen the authority of the King and the loyalty of the subjects to the Crown, as well as to regulate the elective procedure of succession to the throne and to establish procedural guarantees for defendants brought to trial before the royal tribunal.

Isidore's opinion on the monarchy is set out in his book Sententiae:

God granted pre-eminence to princes for the government of peoples. Therefore the principate must be beneficial to peoples, not harmful; it must not oppress by commanding but help by condescending. The good king passes more easily from offense to justice than from justice to offense. His purpose must be never to depart from the truth. It is just that the prince abide by his laws, for his rights will be kept by all when he himself respects them. For the voice of his authority is just if what he forbids to the peoples is not considered lawful for himself.

Death and cult

Saint Isidore, Saint Leander and Saint Florentina were buried in the same tomb with a cross and an epitaph. The text of this epitaph is known from four manuscripts (two in the Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris, one in the National Library of Portugal in Lisbon and another in the Municipal Library of Porto) and from a Vita S. Isidori held in the National Library of Spain in Madrid. The epitaph also records the dates of death of the three persons: Leander on March 14, 602, Isidore on April 4, 636 and Florentina on August 28, 633.

According to the 16th-century historians Pedro de Medina and Pedro Barrantes Maldonado, Isidore was buried in an oratory in Santiponce, province of Seville. In 1063 the Leonese King Ferdinand I commissioned the bishops Alvito of León and Ordoño of Astorga and Count Nuño to obtain the remains of Saints Justa and Rufina from the King of the Taifa of Seville, Al-Mu'tadid, his tributary. They did not find the remains of these saints but they did find the remains of Isidore, which were then moved to the Basilica of San Isidoro in León, where they remain.

On the site where the oratory of Santiponce stood, the Monastery of San Isidoro del Campo was founded in 1301.

There are also some of his relics in Murcia Cathedral.

In the high altar of the parish church of the Annunciation in Abla (Almería) there is also a relic of Saint Isidore, donated by the Roman Curia in December 2008 on the occasion of the consecration of that altar.

A confusion with his namesake Isidore the Laborer, made by F. Thaller in the Kirchenlexikon of 1860, spread the double error that Isidore of Seville had been solemnly canonized by Pope Paul V in 1598, as the historian Ursicino Domínguez del Val confirms.

On April 25, 1722, Innocent XIII ordered his feast to be celebrated and proclaimed him a Doctor of the Church.

Works

World map in an 11th-century copy of a work by Isidore of Seville.

Etymologies

Main article: Etymologiae

The Etymologies contain a large amount of organized information on different subjects. The Spanish academic José Soto Chica explains the following about the subjects covered by the work:

[...] we can find disciplines, fields of knowledge and subjects as varied as grammar, rhetoric and dialectic, arithmetic, music, geometry and astronomy, medicine, law, chronology, the Holy Scriptures, the cycles of time, libraries and books, feasts and the principal offices, the nature of God, of the angels, of the holy fathers, the hierarchy and organization of the church, the synagogue and Judaism, the life and work of the most celebrated philosophers, heretics and poets, the study of other religions, information about the peoples of other lands, about their languages, institutions, customs and the relations that were held with them or where the knowledge that was held of them came from, the study of names, the anatomy of the human being, its malformations and the phenomena linked to it, animals, both the familiar and nearby and the exotic and almost fabulous, the elements that made up the universe and matter, the seas, rivers and floods, geography, the types and elements of urban and rural settlements: cities, towns, villages, etc., the forms of communication that could be used, weights and measures, minerals and metals, agriculture, war: weapons, tactics, etc., spectacles and games, the different types of vessels, fishing, buildings and garments, food and drink, household goods, tools...

The author sent part of this work to Sisebut, probably the first ten books, calling it Origins. The work is also referred to as Origins by Braulio of Zaragoza in his correspondence, but this bishop uses the term Etymologies more often and describes it thus when he lists the works of the Hispalense in his Renotatio Isidori. Nevertheless, it was published under the name Origins in the 16th century.

The modern edition of the Etymologies, produced by the Scottish academic Wallace Martin Lindsay in 1911, consists of two volumes grouped into twenty books with an index. This index did not originally exist, but each book had a heading that may have been written by Braulio or by Isidore. It is known that it was Isidore who gave the work 448 chapters on different subjects with divisions and subdivisions.

In the Etymologies sources are used regardless of whether they are pagan or Christian authors, ancient or recent, with the sole aim of compiling the information needed on the matter.

His most common procedure in this work is to reproduce, literally or not, and without citing the person responsible, texts by other authors. Sometimes he resorted to a single source for a subject, for example Pliny the Elder (one of the authors who served the work most), but at other times he mixes what several informants say, for example adding passages from Vitruvius to Pliny the Elder.

At other times he decides to mention the authors. The most mentioned author is Virgil (more than 250 times), followed at a great distance by the Baetican Lucan (45 times) and Cicero (with a number of times close to Lucan's). He mentions a large number of poets such as Plautus, Terence, Lucretius, Ovid or the Hispanic Martial, and a small number of prose writers, such as the aforementioned Cicero or Sallust. What he most usually does when he mentions an author is not to reproduce his words literally, although there are also cases in which he quotes his exact words. He also resorts to glossing the authors he mentions and quoting them literally. He also resorts to literal quotations to exemplify an entry and even quotes authors who really contribute nothing to what has already been said, as "ornament".

In some cases, Isidore turns to speaking about subjects he knows first-hand.

In the Etymologies, Isidore of Seville explains that Philosophy is divided into three parts: Physics, Logic and Ethics. Physics is divided into Geometry, Arithmetic and Music. Logic, for its part, is divided into Dialectic and Rhetoric.

For Isidore, the word "history" means "to see" and "to know". For Herodotus, however, "history" means "to investigate".

The Etymologies deal with the usefulness of history in the following words:

The histories of peoples do not fail to provide readers with useful things that were said in them. Many wise men, taking them from the histories, narrated human events of past ages for the instruction of the present moment, since through history, going back in time, the total reckoning of times and years is summed up, and through the succession of consuls and kings one becomes aware of many necessary things.

In this work he says that Moses was the first of the non-pagans to write a history of the origin of the world, referring to Genesis, and as the first pagan historians he mentions Dares Phrygius, a hero of the Iliad who would have written about the Trojan War, Pherecydes of Syros and Herodotus.

As Isidore points out, in the ancient world Grammar was the science for interpreting poets and historians. Isidore, in turn, defines Grammar as the science that teaches how to speak correctly and relates it to Rhetoric and Dialectic.

Sententiae

There are three books. Book I deals with matters of faith and Books II and III with the theological virtues, grace and the virtues in general. The work seems to have been created initially for the training of the clergy. It was composed between 612 and 615, at the height of his intellectual and pastoral capacity.

On the exercise of the power of princes:

God granted princes sovereignty for the government of peoples; He willed that they should be at the head of those who share their same lot of being born and dying. Therefore the principate must favor the peoples and not harm them; not oppress them with tyranny, but watch over them, being condescending, so that their mark of power may be truly useful and they may employ the gift of God to protect the members of Christ.

— St. Isidore, Sententiae, 1.3C., 48-49

Temporal power, subject to its own laws and to spiritual power:

CHRISTENDOM 1) It is just that the prince be subject to his own laws. For only when he too respects the laws will they be able to believe that these will be kept by all. 2) Princes must submit to their own laws and may not fail to comply with the laws promulgated for their subjects. And the complaint of those who do not tolerate being permitted something that is forbidden to the people is just. 3) Secular power is subject to ecclesiastical laws, and princes, although they hold the government of the kingdom, are nevertheless subject to the bond of faith, in such a way that they are obliged to proclaim the faith of Christ in their laws and to preserve this proclamation with their good conduct.

— St. Isidore: Sententiae III, 51.4.

Book of Numbers

In this work he studies the symbolism of some numbers that appear in the Bible. It is dated between 612 and 615. It was written at the request of another person, who is unknown. In the edition of the Spanish Jesuit Faustino Arévalo, included in the Patrologia Latina of the French priest Jacques Paul Migne, it is titled Liber Numerorum qui in Sanctis Scripturis ocurrunt (Book of the Numbers that appear in the Holy Scriptures).

Isidore begins the work with the definition of number and studies the following: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 18, 19, 20, 24, 30, 40, 46, 50, 60 and 153.

In appendix 21 of the Patrologia Latina, volume 83, col. 1293–1302, there is another Book of Numbers that has nothing to do with Isidore's work.

Collectio Canonum Hispana

The compilation of the Collectio Canonum Hispana is attributed to Isidore, who must have made it between 633 and 636, with the help of the conciliar acts collected by his brother Leander. It consists of canonical documents from 73 councils (15 Greek, 9 African, 17 French and 36 Spanish) and 103 papal decretal letters.

More documents were added to it in the Julian Recension (made by Julian of Toledo between 681 and 683) and the Isidorian Vulgate Recension (from between 694 and 702).

It served as an almost official code of canon law throughout Spain and much of France and influenced most European nations between the 7th century and the 12th century. From then on other canonical collections began to appear, such as the Decree of Gratian (1140), the Decretals of Gregory IX (1234), those of Boniface VIII (1298) and others, which diminished the importance of the Hispana.

Historiographical output

Illuminated folio 26v of the Toledan Codex (9th century) of the Etymologies (now in the National Library of Spain, shelfmark: Vitr. 14-3). Written in Visigothic minuscule of the Toledo-Seville school, it comes from Toledo Cathedral.

The French academic Jacques Fontaine has pointed out three reasons why History is important in Isidore's work: its good place in the classical theory of literary genres, the legacy of the Christian historians, and the fact that he himself had witnessed historical events of the Visigothic kingdom.

The Spanish academic Luis Vázquez de Parga recognized Isidore's great influence and his role as the initiator of the field of national history, but he held a negative judgment of his historiographical work. He was of the opinion that he did not have the temperament of a historian that Saint Gregory of Tours did have, and that he was a historian inferior to the Hispanics Hydatius, John of Biclaro and Maximus of Zaragoza.

Chronicle

It has been called the Universal Chronicle, Chronica mundi and Chronica Maiora.

Isidore made a first short version of this work in 615–616. He then made a long one in 624. Finally, in 627 he made a summary or epitome known as the Chronicon, included in chapters 38 and 39 of Book V of the Etymologies.

Under the influence of Saint Augustine, he divides history into six ages. The number is the same as the six days of Creation according to Genesis and the six ages of man according to ancient tradition (early childhood, childhood, adolescence, youth, maturity and old age). For Isidore the ages are as follows: from the Creation to the Universal Flood, from the sons of Noah to the birth of Abraham, from Abraham to King David, from the reign of David to the exile in Babylon, from the exile to the birth of Jesus Christ, and from the latter to the reign of Sisebut.

From the second age he combines biblical history with that of the kingdoms and empires of the Middle East. From the third age, he narrates the history of Egypt and Greece, even resorting to pagan sources. In the third and even more in the fourth he also turns his attention to the Italian peninsula and Rome. In the fifth age he gives greater prominence to Persia, Alexander the Great and the Hellenistic states, focuses more on Rome and mentions Hispania for the first time. The sixth age speaks of the Roman emperors and of the Goths, Vandals, Alans and Suebi.

Liber de viris illustribus

This work of biographical notes on illustrious men was written by Isidore between 615 and 618 as a complement to the similar works of Saint Jerome of 384 and of Gennadius of Massilia from around 470.

Isidore wrote two versions: a short one of 33 chapters, ranging from Hosius of Córdoba (4th century) to Maximus of Zaragoza (7th century), and another of 46 chapters that coincides with the short one in 32 chapters and splits Hosius into two.

Of the 33 chapters of the short version, 12 are devoted to Hispanics, 7 to Italians, 6 to Africans, 4 to Gauls and 4 to people from the Greek East.

Between 657 and 667 Saint Ildefonsus of Toledo wrote another book of biographical notes with the same title.

History of the Goths, Vandals and Suebi

Main article: Historia de regibus Gothorum, Vandalorum et Suevorum

Isidore first made a short version, between 619 and 620, and a long one in 624. The long one places more emphasis on the triumph of Catholicism over Arianism and is the more widely disseminated. It extols Catholic kings such as Reccared, Sisebut and Suintila. He does not fall into fanaticism, criticizing Sisebut for ordering the forced conversion of the Jews and not defending the rebellion of the Catholic saint Hermenegild against his father, the Arian King Liuvigild.

The long version begins with the Laus Hispaniae/Spaniae or De laude Hispaniae/Spaniae, a piece of patriotic exaltation.

According to Vázquez de Praga, with this work Isidore becomes the first author to renounce Roman continuity in Hispania, and the presence of the Goths is legitimized.

According to the Spanish Jesuit academic José Madoz Moleres, this is a work about the Goths with brief appendices about the Vandals and the Suebi.

When he deals with the Goths he speaks from their origin, saying that they descend from Magog, and continues up to the sack of Rome by Alaric I in 410. Then from that event to the political unity of the Kingdom of Toledo and the reign of Liuvigild. The next fundamental point for Isidore is the conversion of Reccared and the Catholic unity of Hispania. After narrating their history there is a text known as the Recapitulatio or Laus Gothorum, which is a eulogy of this people.

About the Vandals, he speaks of when they crossed the Rhine in 406 and passed through the Gauls. He also relates how they crossed the Pyrenees in 409 to burst into Spain causing death and devastation. He then speaks of how the barbarians turned toward peace and divided Hispania among themselves: the Hasding Vandals and the Suebi in Gallaecia, the Alans in Lusitania and the Siling Vandals in Baetica. He says that King Genseric apostatized from Catholicism to become an Arian, took his whole people to North Africa and assaulted Rome. He speaks of the persecutions of Catholics by some Vandal kings and of the end of the Vandal kingdom brought about by the Byzantine general Belisarius in 526.

About the Suebi, he narrates how Hermeric entered Hispania in 408. They settled with the Hasding Vandals in Gallaecia and, when the Vandals passed over to Africa, they kept this territory for themselves alone. He also narrates military expeditions of the Suebi to other parts under Rechila and Rechiar. The entry of the Goths into the Iberian Peninsula would put an end to the Suebian advances and confined them to Gallaecia from 457. Isidore relates the conversion of Rechiar from paganism to Catholicism in 448. However, he says that a Gallic preacher, Ajax or Alax, ended up converting the Suebi to Arianism. After this, he says that Theodemir returned to Catholicism with the support of Saint Martin of Braga. Finally, Liuvigild annexed the territory of the Suebi, weakened by internal power struggles, when they were ruled by the usurper Andeca.

On the Catholic Faith against the Jews

Amid a process of internal struggles and ideological reformulations, the Hispanic Jewish community of the 6th and 7th centuries became the scapegoat of a desire to consolidate the monarchy around Catholicism. In his work De fide catholica contra Iudaeos he expands the ideas of Saint Augustine on the Jewish presence in Christian society. It is a short treatise written against Judaism, although Isidore was opposed to King Sisebut in his idea that it was necessary to promote conversion to Christianity by force. Isidore preferred to convince rather than compel, but neither was he forceful in rejecting the violence that was exercised against the Jews in this period.

To understand Isidorian thought one must take into account that of Saint Gregory the Great, who had coincided for years with his brother Leander in Constantinople and who had later been Pope between 590 and 604. Gregory was of the opinion that the Jews should be considered full citizens and, although he believed that the Jewish faith was erroneous, he was opposed to forced conversion, favoring achieving change through reason and kind persuasion.

Isidore of Seville gathered the most relevant ancient polemical tradition, making his text one of the most important in matters of anti-Jewish apologetics until well into the Middle Ages. The influence of the Hispalense thinker's postulate was essential in the ideological framework that surrounded the revival of European anti-Judaism from the end of the 11th century to the 13th century.

Music in his work

In the Sententiae he says that matter precedes the things formed from it just as sound precedes song.

In his Book of Numbers he says that for musicians there are three kinds of sound: voice for mouths, breath in flutes and plucking for citharas. In this same work he says that for the ancients there are seven kinds of philosophy: one arithmetic, two geometry, three music, four astronomy, five astrology, six mechanics and seven medicine.

In his Rule for Monks he says that at Matins the custom of psalmody and singing must be kept.

In his Ecclesiastical Offices

In this work he says that it was Moses in Exodus 15 who instituted choirs and canticles after his crossing of the Red Sea, and taught the singing to God of the triumphal canticle with choirs of both sexes, in separate classes, he and his sister presiding over them. He also says that the choir was formed in the shape of a crown, in a circle, and that this is why it is called that. He points out that for the Jews a choir must have a minimum of ten people but that for Christians there is no set number. He also specifies that the ministry of the canticle was exercised by Deborah in Judges 5. However, he specifies that the psalms are sung by men. He says that it was King David who first sang the psalter and that the Church sings the Davidic psalms with gentle melodies to incline souls to conversion. He explains that the singers of old abstained from eating the day before singing, but when they were going to sing psalms they ate legumes "for the sake of the voice," which is why they were called "fabarii." He also speaks of the singer Asaph. He mentions that in the Confessions Saint Augustine approves of singing in the Church to delight the ears and so that the weaker soul may rise up with the affection of piety.

He also speaks of hymns. He says that David was the first to sing them, followed by other prophets, and that a hymn to the Creator was sung by the three young men who were shut in a furnace in Daniel 3. He distinguishes between divine hymns and hymns composed by human ingenuity. For Isidore the first to compose hymns was Hilary of Poitiers, followed by Ambrose of Milan.

He says that the Greek Christians were the first to compose antiphons and that Ambrose of Milan spread these to the West. About responsories he says that they were invented by the Italians and that they are so called because the choir responded to what a soloist sang, although at the time Isidore was writing it was common to respond to the singing of three. He also says that, in the liturgy, when the time comes to sing, everyone must sing. He also explains that the lauds consist of singing the alleluia in praise of God and that, while in Spain it was always sung after the psalms or the readings, in the rest of the Church it was sung only on Sundays and during the 50 days after the feast of the Resurrection. He points out that, according to Ecclesiasticus 50:16, the Jews sang offertories accompanied by trumpets when they sacrificed an animal, and that the Church replaces the trumpets with preaching and sings for the sacrifice of Christ. He also explains how in the Mass "Hosanna in the highest" is sung. He criticizes people dancing at the calends of January seeking applause, both sexes mixing in the choirs, and people getting drunk on wine.

In his Etymologies

With the Etymologies Isidore does not aim to develop a theory of music that allows the technique to be learned, but rather to explain the principal names, both theoretical ones and those of instruments.

His doctrine of music is based on Pythagoras, through Boethius and Cassiodorus.

Book III of the Etymologies is devoted to the quadrivium: chapters I to IX Arithmetic, chapters X to XIII Geometry, chapters XIV to XXIII Music and XXIV to LXX Astronomy.

Music is described as the art of modulation and can be instrumental and vocal. The word "music" would come from "Muses". He says that Moses states that the first musician was Tubal, that the Greeks believe it was Pythagoras, and others the Theban Linus.

He speaks of how religious hymns, nuptial hymns, funeral threnodies, songs to the sound of the flute and banquet songs accompanied by the lyre and the cithara developed. He relies on Pythagoras to assert that the universe is composed of music and moves with the harmony of sounds, and says that music has the power to move the affections.

He divides music into three parts: harmonic (pitch), rhythmic (fusion of sound with the word) and metric (the different forms of verse).

Music can be harmonic (it comes from the voice), organic (it comes from a wind instrument) and rhythmic (it comes from plucking or percussion).

He subscribes to the Greek theory of the fifteen tones, the lowest being the Hypodorian and the highest the Hyperlydian. He divides voices according to their intensity and timbre into soft, brilliant, subtle, rich, high, hard, rough, veiled, "vinuola" and perfect (which are high, clear and soft).

He also devotes himself to describing different wind, string and percussion instruments.

He sets out a theory of numbers in music and their proportions (among 1, 2, 3, 6, 8, 12, 18 and 36) in relation to man and the universe.

His most important definition is that of harmony, which he divides into symphony, diaphony and euphony.

List of Isidorian works

Opera omnia. 1797 edition

The Faculty of Theology of Seville bears the name of Saint Isidore.

In 1978 the Argentine academic José J. A. Alfaro del Valle drew up the following list of works by Isidore of Seville:

• Liber de ordine creaturarum. Patrologiae Cursus Completus. Sancti Isidori Hispalensis Episcopi Opera Omnia.
• Libri sententiarum
• Synonima, de lamentatione animae peccatricis
• Allegoriae Sacrae Scripturae ad Orosium
• De ortu et obitu Patrum
• In libros veteris se novi Testamenti prooemia
• Liber numerorum, qui in sanctis Scripturis occurrunt
• Quaestiones in Vetus Testamentum
• Quaestiones de veteri et novo Testamento
• De fide catholica, sive contra iudaeos
• De origine officiorum. De Ecclesiasticis officiis
• De origine ministrorum
• Regula monachorum
• Liber de natura rerum
• Originum sive Etymologiarum libri XX
• Differentiarum sive De Proprietate Sermonum
• Chronicon
• Historia de regibus Gothorum, Wandalorum et Suevorum
• Liber de viris illustribus
• Epistolae
• De fabrica mundi

The following works are attributed to Isidore:

• Excerpta Canonum
• Concilia
• Epistolae decretales
• Dissertatio in veram et genuinam co­llectionem canonum Ecclesiae Hispaniae

Legends

According to legend, in 1063 Ferdinand I waged war in the lands of Badajoz and Seville, and made the taifa King of Seville his tributary. From him he obtained the handing over of the relics of Saint Justa, but when his embassy arrived in Seville to collect them, it did not find them. However, once in Seville, the Bishop of León, a member of the embassy, had a vision while he slept, thanks to which they miraculously found the relics of Saint Isidore. The return was made along the Vía de la Plata. Already near León, the embassy entered marshy lands, and the horses were unable to advance. When the horses' eyes were covered, they went forward, heading toward the newly built church of Saints John and Pelagius, which from then on would be called San Isidoro.

Influence

Coat of arms of the City of Seville, with the King Saint Ferdinand in the center flanked by the bishops Saint Isidore and Saint Leander.

Bishop Braulio of Zaragoza was Isidore's great friend and the great promoter of his works. The historians Vitalino Valcárcel and Juan Gil consider that Braulio was educated by Isidore in the episcopal school of Seville, but the historian Manuel Díaz y Díaz rejects this theory.

The Eighth Council of Toledo (653) expressed its admiration for the figure of Isidore with the following words of praise:

Nostri quoque sæculi doctor egregius ecclesiæ catholicæ, novissimum decus, præaecedentibus ætate postremus, doctrinæ comparatione non infimus, et qoud maius est, in sæculorum fine doctissimus, atque cum reverentia nominandus Isidorus [...]

The great doctor of our century, the most recent glory of the Catholic Church, the last in time compared with them, but not the last compared in wisdom and, what is more, the most learned of the last centuries, who must be named with all reverence, Isidore...

This tribute was ratified by the Fifteenth Council of Toledo, held in 688, which also used the epithet doctor egregius to refer to him.

He was also praised in the anonymous work Vita Fructuosi, from the end of the 7th century.

Isidore's texts greatly influenced 7th-century authors. Bishop Taio of Zaragoza was especially influenced by his Sententiae, Bishop Eugenius of Toledo by his verses, Ildefonsus of Toledo by his synonyms, Valerius of Bierzo by the allegorical visions he relates, and Julian of Toledo by his work in general.

Isidore's work greatly influenced Alcuin of York, who achieved great importance at the court of Charlemagne. Rabanus Maurus also drew influences from Isidore. Later, the Isidorian work was also disseminated by Irish clerics.

The monk Oliba compiled several of his works. In the 12th century Dominicus Gundissalinus paid special attention to astronomy, astrology and medicine in Saint Isidore's work.

Saint Isidore's Sententiae is possibly his most-read work during the Middle Ages, since numerous copies were made before the invention of the printing press.

The Etymologies were the most important reference work during the Middle Ages. Between the 15th and 16th centuries it was printed more than ten times. The Spanish writer Luis Francisco Martínez Montes explained its relevance in the following words:

Let us imagine an edition of the Espasa or of the Encyclopædia Britannica written in our day and still in use in the year 2900

In 1868 the Cardinal Archbishop of Seville Luis de la Lastra y Cuesta asked the Holy See that Saint Isidore be made patron of the archdiocese, which was granted by Pius IX that same year.

In 2022 the Vatican issued a commemorative stamp with the image of Saint Isidore painted by Murillo for the 300th anniversary of his proclamation as Doctor of the Catholic Church.

Eponymy

Parishes in Seville and Oviedo bear his name, as do former monasteries in León and Santiponce.

This saint also gives his name to three educational institutions in Seville:

• Centro Universitario San Isidoro, affiliated with Pablo de Olavide University and based on the CEADE campus on the Isla de la Cartuja.
• San Isidoro Secondary School.
• Facultad de Teología San Isidoro de Sevilla, founded in 2019.

See also

• Banner of San Isidoro
• Instituto San Isidoro of Seville
• Patronage of Seville

Bibliography

• De Sevilla, Isidoro. Etimologías (Latin–Spanish bilingual edition). Madrid: Biblioteca de Autores Cristianos, 2004, ISBN 9788479147266.
• De Sevilla, Isidoro. Sobre la fe católica contra los judíos (Castro Caridad, Eva and Peña Fernández, Francisco eds.). Seville: Universidad de Sevilla, 2014, ISBN 9788447214327.
• Bodelón, Serafín. Literatura latina de la Edad Media en España. Madrid: Akal, 1989. ISBN 978-84-7600-394-7 (Google Books).
• Cicalese, Vicente; Álvarez, Sara. Isidoro de Sevilla, historias y testamento político. Montevideo: Libros del Astillero, 1982.
• Drews, W. The unknown neighbour. The jews in the thought of Isidore of Seville. Leiden-Boston, 2006.
• Domínguez del Val, Ursicino. «Isidoro de Sevilla» in Diccionario de Historia Eclesiástica de España. Madrid: Inst. Enrique Flórez–CSIC, 1973.
• Escudero, José Antonio. Curso de historia del Derecho: fuentes e instituciones político-administrativas, pp. 216–217. Madrid: Solana e Hijos, 2003. ISBN 84-398-4903-6.
• Fontaine, Jacques. Isidoro de Sevilla: génesis y originalidad de la cultura hispánica en tiempos de los visigodos. Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2000; Spanish translation by Miguel Montes, Ed. Encuentro, 2002. ISBN 978-84-7490-653-0 (Google Books).
• Fubini, Enrico. La estética musical desde la Antigüedad hasta el siglo XX. Madrid: Alianza, 1992.
• Hoppin, Richard. Medieval Music. W. W. Norton, 1978. La música medieval. Madrid: Akal, 2000. (Google Books).
• Reese, Gustave. Music in the Middle Ages. W. W. Norton, 1940. La música en la Edad Media. Madrid: Alianza, 1989.
• Madoz, José. San Isidoro de Sevilla, semblanza de su personalidad literaria. León: Estudios Isidorianos, 1960.
• Pérez de Urbel, Fray Justo. San Isidoro de Sevilla: su vida, su obra y su tiempo. León: University of León, 1995.
• Rowell, Lewis. Introducción a la filosofía de la música. Antecedentes históricos y problemas estéticos. Barcelona: Gedisa, 1999.
• Bernadete, Seth (1969). Herodotean Inquiries. Martinus Nijhoff y The Hague.
• Paniagua Aguilar, David (2011). Estudio crítico. Concilios hispánicos de época visigótica y mozárabe (in español). Madrid: Fundación Ignacio Larramendi.
• Martínez Montes, Luis Francisco (2018). España, una historia global (in español). Global Square. ISBN 9788494938108.
• Domínguez del Val, Ursicino (1981). Leandro de Sevilla y la lucha contra el arrianismo (in español). Editora Nacional. ISBN 84-276-0519-6.

External links

• «Isidoro de Sevilla» in the Biblioteca Virtual de Polígrafos of the Fundación Ignacio Larramendi (record POLI20090012875).
• Biography of Saint Isidore of Seville in the Diccionario biográfico español of the Real Academia de la Historia
• «San Isidoro», biography in the Catholic Encyclopedia.
• «San Leandro y San Isidoro» at Historialago.com
• «Benedicto XVI presenta a san Isidoro de Sevilla» at Zenit.org
• Material relating to Isidore of Seville.
• Etymologiae in the Biblioteca Digital Hispánica (digitized manuscript)
• Etimologias at Scribd