A Companion to Isidore of Seville presents nineteen chapters from leading international scholars on Isidore of Seville (d. 636), the most prominent bishop of the Visigothic kingdom in Hispania in the seventh century and one of the most prolific authors of early medieval western Europe. Introductory studies establish the political, religious and familial contexts in which Isidore operated, his key works are then analysed in detail, as are some of the main themes that run throughout his corpus. Isidore's influence extended across the entire Middle Ages and into the early modern period in fields such as church governance and pastoral care, theology, grammar, science, history-writing, and linguistics – all topics that are explored in the volume. Contributors: Graham Barrett, Winston Black, José Carracedo Fraga, Santiago Castellanos, Pedro Castillo Maldonado, Jacques Elfassi, Andrew Fear, Amy Fuller, Raúl González Salinero, Jeremy Lawrance, Céline Martin, Thomas O'Loughlin, Martin J. Ryan, Sinéad O'Sullivan, Mark Lewis Tizzoni, Purificación Ubric Rabaneda, Faith Wallis, Immo Warntjes, and Jamie Wood. See inside the book.

This work is a complete English translation of the Latin Etymologies of Isidore, Bishop of Seville (c.560–636). Isidore compiled the work between c.615 and the early 630s and it takes the form of an encyclopedia, arranged by subject matter. It contains much lore of the late classical world beginning with the Seven Liberal Arts, including Rhetoric, and touches on thousands of topics ranging from the names of God, the terminology of the Law, the technologies of fabrics, ships and agriculture to the names of cities and rivers, the theatrical arts, and cooking utensils. Isidore provides etymologies for most of the terms he explains, finding in the causes of words the underlying key to their meaning. This book offers a highly readable translation of the twenty books of the Etymologies, one of the most widely known texts for a thousand years from Isidore's time.

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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. 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. 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.

Isidore of Seville's On the Nature of Things, the first attempt by a Christian author to present an account of the physical universe - the heavens, planets and stars, earth and its physical features, weather and time - played an exceptionally influential role in the assimilation of classical science into the emerging Christian culture of medieval Europe.

6. Isidorian Texts in Seventh-Century Ireland / Marina Smyth -- 7. Isidore of Seville in Anglo-Saxon England: The Synonyma as a Source of Felix's Vita S. Guthlaci / Claudia Di Sciacca -- 8. Hispania et Italia: Paul the Deacon, Isidore, and the Lombards / Christopher Heath -- 9. Rylands MS Latin 12: A Carolingian Example of Isidore's Reception into the Patristic Canon / Melissa Markauskas -- 10. Adoption, Adaptation, & Authority: The Use of Isidore in the Opus Caroli / Laura Carlson -- Abbreviations -- Index

Isidore of Seville is one of the dominant contributors to the development of medieval Catholic theology. Sententiae, his major theological work, is arranged in three divisions or books. The first is a dogmatic part, presenting the doctrinal assertions of the Catholic faith. This is followed by two additional books, developing the moral principles and correct behavior necessary to attain eternal union with God,the highest good -- summum bonum -- who is the subject oft the first assertion of faith in Book 1. The work presents a marvelously holistic view of faith and action, developing the relationship between the intellectual and moral, the individual and social life of the Christian believer, all in the context of eternal life.

This analysis of the theological positions of Isidore of Seville provides new insights into the political instrumentalization of religion in Visigothic Spain. Catholicism served as the main component of the "proto-national" agenda of the Gothic monarchy.

In Isidore of Seville and the “Liber Iudiciorum,” the author re-interprets the meaning and “function” of the seventh-century Visigothic law-code, the Liber Iudiciorum within the context of the cooperative competition of history-writing between nodes of power in Seville and Toledo.