Isidore of Seville, pt. 5

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.

Isidore of Seville, pt. 4

Isidore never claimed to be doing original research for his Etymologies. In fact, he wrote, "the reader reads not my work but rereads that of the ancients." And the Etymologies certainly were comprehensive, although it cannot be said that the twenty books of the Etymologies were arranged in any particular order.

The work starts with grammar and rhetoric, continues on to mathematics (of which music is considered to be a subdivision), medicine, law, several books on theology and the Church, languages and nations, the human body, animals, the natural world, geography, cities and buildings, mineralogy, agriculture, war, ships (also including buildings and clothing), and food, drink, and household belongings.

The Etymologies ended up being a cross between a dictionary, a history book, an encyclopedia, and an etymological dictionary. Several examples, from Priscilla Throop’s excellent modern translation of the Etymologies, are as follows:

II.24.1 Definition of philosophy. Philosophy is the knowledge of divine and human matters, joined with an endeavor to live well. It consists of two things: knowledge, scientia, and opinion, opinatio.

III.9. How many infinite numbers exist. It is very certain that numbers are infinite. Whatever number you think may make an end, I say can be increased not only by the addition of one, but also, however large it may be and however great a multitude it may contain, it can be doubled, indeed multiplied by the reasoning and knowledge of numbers.

XVII.10.1 Vegetables. A garden is named hortus because something always springs up, oritur, there. While some land grows something once a year, a garden is never without produce.

The British Library has an excellent page on the Etymologies, including some pages from copies of the Etymologies from the ninth through twelfth centuries.

Isidore of Seville, pt. 3

We’ve been talking about Isidore of Seville, writer of encyclopedias. Where did Isidore, a humble priest, or even a slightly less humble bishop, get all of his information, and why was he so concerned about etymologies (i.e., origins) of words?

Well, Isidore was extremely well read. He liked to read, he had access to the classics (mostly the Roman classics), he had a good memory, and he liked to take notes when he read. His memory and his notes were the basis of the Etymologies. And why etymology? Many classical and medieval scholars, going back to Plato’s Cratylus, believed that words had a specific relationship to their meaning. They believed that words just didn’t evolve by happenstance, but that the sound of the word originated as a result of the word’s meaning. Isidore followed this tradition, and believed that important knowledge comes from studying the original meanings of words. He felt that it more important to study the origins of words than the things that they stood for.

While this seems pretty archaic, modern scholars have not completely dismissed this idea. For example, Padraic Monaghan of Lancaster University in England and a group of researchers argued in an article published in The Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B in 2014 that the sound to meaning relationship in English is more systematic than would be expected by chance. They also argued that “this systematicity is more pronounced for words involved in the early stages of language acquisition and less so in later vocabulary development.”

As a result, they concluded that English vocabulary is “structured to enable systematicity in early language learning to promote language acquisition, while also incorporating arbitrariness for later language in order to facilitate communicative expressivity and efficiency.”

Pretty interesting stuff. Maybe Isidore and Plato were on to something.

Isidore of Seville, pt. 2

We do not know too much about Isidore’s background. His father, Severianus, may have been a relatively important person in Cartagena, Spain, where Isidore's elder brother and sister were born, but Isidore's birthplace is not known. Nor do we know how Isidore was educated. He entered the church as a young man, and, upon his older brother Leander’s (Leander was also a Saint) death in 599, succeeded him as Bishop of Seville.

Isidore was a respected religious leader, an avid reader, and a prolific writer. In addition to his encyclopedia, he wrote many historical and theological works such as The Etymologiae, an encyclopedic dictionary; The Differentiae, a two volume set that addressed differences of words and differences of things (the second volume was more of a theological work), De Natura Rerum, on cosmology and the physical universe, The Chronica, a world history up to the early seventh century, The Historia de regibus Gothorum, Vandalorum et Suevorum, a history of early Spain (i.e., the Goths, Vandals, and Suevi), numerous works of theology and scriptural commentary.

But it is for his famous encyclopedia, The Etymologies (Etymologiae), that he is remembered. One might think that a great work such as encyclopedia would be a young man’s project, but Isidore did not begin writing the Etymologies until his late fifties, in the 610’s. He began the Etymologies at the request of his friend Braulio, the bishop of Zaragoza, Spain, and worked on them for the rest of his life, which was a little too long as far as Braulio was concerned.

Braulio once wrote Isidore a letter complaining that seven years have passed since Braulio first asked Isidore for the book, and he hadn’t seen the finished product yet. But seven years certainly sounds like a reasonable time for handwriting an encyclopedia.

By the time of his death in 636 at age seventy-six, Isidore may have actually finished the book, but, since he did not leave any notes or outlines, we can’t tell how much more he had intended to write. After Isidore’s death, Braulio divided the Etymologies into the twenty books that exist today and may even have edited it somewhat.

Isidore of Seville

Saint Isidore of Seville was the greatest encyclopedist of the Middle Ages, and a polymath.

What is an encyclopedist? It is just what it sounds like – a person who writes an encyclopedia. The Oxford English Dictionary adds an additional definition: "One who attempts to deal with every branch of knowledge, or whose studies have a very extensive range."

That was Isidore in a nutshell.

He wrote his own encyclopedia, The Etymologies, and without anyone’s help. Today, of course, one couldn’t do that; there is just too much to know. But, 1500 years ago, there wasn’t so much to know, so one person could master the majority of his culture’s knowledge. Isidore was a priest and historian and earns a place in the book of polymaths because of a very simple rule (we can call it Isidore’s rule) – anyone who writes an encyclopedia by himself is a polymath.