On Saturday, we were talking about Priscilla Throop’s
translation of the Etymologies. One
thing that she did was give the actual etymology for each of Isidore’s words
when it differed from Isidore’s versions, which ranged from correct to
half-right to completely wrong.
For example, Isidore wrote correctly (IX.4.8) that the name
for the Roman senate (and thus modern
Senate) came from the Latin word for old man because the senators were old
men. But he misfired on hortus. He
wrote that a garden (hortus) is called
that because something always springs up (oriri)
there, but Throop noted that the Latin word hortus
actually comes from the Indo-European root *gher,
meaning “to enclose.” Thus, a garden is an enclosure. So we must remember that
Isidore remained a man of his times, and transmitted quite a fair amount of
incorrect information.
The Etymologies
were very influential. A better encyclopedia did not appear for centuries. For
his work on the Etymologies, Isidore
has gone down in history as one of the greatest, if not the greatest, medieval
encyclopedists. By creating this encyclopedia, Isidore could be said to have
been proficient in or at least made significant accomplishments in at least two
widely disparate fields or three less disparate fields. For this feat, Isidore
of Seville deserves recognition as a polymath.
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