[Transcriber's note]

[Table of Contents]

AN ENCYCLOPEDIST OF THE
DARK AGES
ISIDORE OF SEVILLE

In saeculorum fine doctissimus

(Ex concilio Toletano viii, cap. 2)

BY
ERNEST BREHAUT, A. M.

SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS
FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
IN THE
Faculty of Political Science
in Columbia University

NEW YORK
1912

PREFACE

The writer of the following pages undertook, at the suggestion of Professor James Harvey Robinson, to translate passages from Isidore’s Etymologies which should serve to illustrate the intellectual condition of the dark ages. It soon became evident that a brief introduction to the more important subjects treated by Isidore would be necessary, in order to give the reader an idea of the development of these subjects at the time at which he wrote. Finally it seemed worth while to sum up in a general introduction the results of this examination of the Etymologies and of the collateral study of Isidore’s other writings which it involved.

For many reasons the task of translating from the Etymologies has been a difficult one. There is no modern critical edition of the work to afford a reasonable certainty as to the text; the Latin, while far superior to the degenerate language of Gregory of Tours, is nevertheless corrupt; the treatment is often brief to the point of obscurity; the terminology of ancient science employed by Isidore is often used without a due appreciation of its meaning. However, the greatest difficulty in translating has arisen from the fact that the work is chiefly a long succession of word derivations which usually defy any attempt to render them into English.

In spite of these difficulties the study has been one of great interest. Isidore was, as Montalambert calls him, le dernier savant du monde ancien, as well as the first Christian encyclopaedist. His writings, therefore, while of no importance in themselves, become important as a phenomenon in the history of European thought. His resort to ancient science instead of to philosophy or to poetry is suggestive, as is also the wide variety of his ‘sciences’ and the attenuated condition in which they appear. Of especial interest is Isidore’s state of mind, which in many ways is the reverse of that of the modern thinker.

It is perhaps worth while to remark that the writer has had in mind throughout the general aspects of the intellectual development of Isidore’s time: he has not attempted to comment on the technical details—whether accurately given by Isidore or not—of the many ‘sciences’ that appear in the Etymologies. The student of the history of music, for example, or of medicine as a technical subject, will of course go to the sources.

The writer is under the greatest obligation to Professors James Harvey Robinson and James Thomson Shotwell for assistance and advice, as well as for the illuminating interpretation of the medieval period given in their lectures. He is also indebted to Mr. Henry O. Taylor and Professors William A. Dunning and Munroe Smith for reading portions of the manuscript.

E. B.

Columbia University, New York, February, 1912.

CONTENTS

PART I
INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER I

Isidore’s Life and Writings

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.[1] 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.[2] 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.

At the point where this de-secularizing process was complete, at the opening of the seventh century, lived the Spanish bishop and scholar, Isidore of Seville. His many writings, and especially his great encyclopedia, the Etymologies, are among the most important sources for the history of intellectual culture in the early middle ages, since in them are gathered together and summed up all such dead remnants of secular learning as had not been absolutely rejected by the superstition of his own and earlier ages; they furnish, so to speak, a cross-section of the debris of scientific thought at the point where it is most artificial and unreal.

The résumé that Isidore offers is strikingly complete. In this respect he surpasses all the writers of his own and immediately preceding periods, his scope being much more general than that of his nearest contemporaries, Boethius and Cassiodorus. He goes back here to the tradition of the encyclopedists of the Roman world, Varro, Verrius Flaccus, Pliny, and Suetonius, by the last of whom he is believed to have been especially influenced. Few writers of any period cover the intellectual interests of their time so completely. To understand Isidore’s mental world is nearly to reach the limits of the knowledge of his time.[3]

The influence which he exerted upon the following centuries was very great. His organization of the field of secular science, although it amounted to no more than the laying out of a corpse, was that chiefly accepted throughout the early medieval period. The innumerable references to him by later writers,[4] the many remaining manuscripts,[5] and the successive editions of his works[6] after the invention of printing, indicate the great rôle he played.[7] From the modern point of view the real benefit he conferred upon succeeding centuries was that in his encyclopaedic writings he presented to the intelligent the fact that there had been and might be such a thing as secular science; while the blunders in which he was continually involved, and the shallowness of his thinking, offered a perpetual challenge to the critical power of all who read him. There was contained in his writings also, as we shall see, the embryo of something positive and progressive, namely, the organization of educational subjects that was to appear definitely in the medieval university and dominate education almost to the present day.

For a fuller understanding of Isidore’s historical setting some attention must be given to the country in which he lived. Spanish culture in the early middle ages seems to have been relatively superior. It is well known that the country had been thoroughly Romanized. How complete the process had been may be judged from the list of men of Spanish birth who had won distinction in the wider world of the empire; it includes the two Senecas, Lucan, Quintilian, Martial, Hyginus, Pomponius Mela, Columella, Orosius, and the two emperors, Trajan and Hadrian. In fact Spain had lost its individuality and had become an integral part of the Roman world, little inferior in its culture even to Italy itself; and the close of Roman rule found the people of Spain speaking the Latin language, reading the Latin literature, and habituated to Roman institutions and modes of thought.

Moreover the continuity of this ancient culture had been perhaps less rudely disturbed in Spain than elsewhere by the shock of the barbaric invasions. Here its geographical situation stood the country in good stead; the barbarian frontier was far away and the chances were that barbarians destined by fortune to enter Spain would first spend much time in aimless wandering within the empire, with consequent loss of numbers and some lessening of savagery. Such, at least, was the case with the Visigoths, who alone of the barbarians proved a permanent factor in the country’s development. They were first admitted to the empire in 376, and must have passed largely into the second generation before they began to penetrate into Spain, while the real conquest by them did not begin until much later. “At the time of their appearance as a governing aristocracy in Spain” they “had become by long contact with the Romans to all intents and purposes a civilized people.”[8] They were thus in a position to coalesce with the Romanized natives, and that this was largely brought to pass is shown by the conversion of the Arian Goths to orthodoxy, the removal of the ban of intermarriage between the two races, the use of Latin in all official documents, and finally by the establishment of a common law for both peoples. The “sixty-one correct hexameters” of the Visigothic king Sisebutus (612–620),[9] compared, for instance, with the absolutely hopeless attempts of Charlemagne two centuries later to learn the art of tracing letters,[10] show plainly that Spanish culture had not sunk to the level of that of other parts of the western empire.[11]

In this cultural struggle which had taken place between the native population and their Visigothic rulers the contest between orthodox Christianity and Arianism had been of prime importance, and its settlement of the utmost significance. Since the Spaniards upheld the orthodox faith and the Visigoths were Arians, the victory of orthodoxy was a victory of the native element over the newcomers. By this victory, therefore, a position of predominance unusual for the time was given to the Spanish church organization, and the bishops, the leaders of the church in the struggle, became the most powerful men in the nation. Their power was further strengthened by the weakening of the secular power when the Visigothic royal line became extinct and it proved impossible to secure a successor to it from among the families of the turbulent nobility. From the conversion of the Visigoths in 587 to the invasion of the Saracens, Spain was a country dominated by bishops.[12]

Of Isidore’s life surprisingly little is known, considering the bulk and importance of his writings and his later fame.[13] All that can be ascertained of his family is that it belonged originally to Cartagena, that it was of the orthodox religion, and that the names of its members are Roman.[14] It is extremely probable that it belonged to the Hispano-Roman element of the population. That Isidore and his two brothers were bishops may be taken to show that of whatever origin the family was, it was one of power and influence.

A word may be said of his elder brother, Leander, who was a man of perhaps greater force than Isidore himself. Born at Cartagena, he became a monk, and later, bishop of Seville. He was the chief leader of the orthodox party in its struggle against “the Arian insanity”, and in the heat of the conflict was obliged to absent himself from Spain for a time. He visited Constantinople and there became the friend of Gregory the Great.[15] Returning to Spain, we find him, under king Reccared in 587, presiding over the council of Toledo, at which the Visigothic kingdom turned formally from Arianism. Leander was a man of action rather than a writer, but according to Isidore he engaged in controversy with the heretical party, “overwhelming the Arian impiety with a vehement pen and revealing its wickedness”. He wrote also a little book, which we still have, “On the training of nuns and contempt for the world”,[16] and contributed music and prayers to the church service. There seems to be no doubt that Leander was the foremost churchman of his time in Spain. The prestige of his name must have made it easier for his successor, Isidore, to devote himself to the intellectual rather than to the administrative leadership of the church.[17]

As to Isidore’s early years our only authentic information is that his parents died while he was still young, and left him in the care of Leander. It is very probable, however, that he looked forward from the beginning to the clerical life which his brothers had chosen and that he therefore went through the educational routine as laid down for churchmen, which was practically the only formal education of the time. The best proof of this lies in the fact that Isidore wrote text-books of the liberal arts—a task that would have been well-nigh impossible to one who had not been drilled in them in his youth.[18]

Isidore succeeded his brother Leander in the bishopric of Seville probably in the year 600.[19] His few remaining letters, written in the stilted religious phraseology of the day, give the impression that he was much consulted on ecclesiastical and political matters, and that he held a position of primacy among the Spanish bishops; but on the whole they contain remarkably little that is of personal interest. From the records of the councils we learn that he presided at the second council of Seville in 619, and probably also at the fourth of Toledo in 633.[20] According to a contemporary account written by a cleric named Redemptus, he died in April of 636. No other details of importance are known about his life. His career must have been a placid and uneventful one, and evidently much of his time was spent on his voluminous writings, which were the means by which he won his great ascendancy over the minds of his contemporaries.[21]

Perhaps the most reliable account of the impression which Isidore made on the men of his own time is given in the somewhat ponderous Introduction to his works furnished by his friend and correspondent, Braulio, bishop of Saragossa:[22]

Isidore, a man of great distinction, bishop of the church of Seville, successor and brother of bishop Leander, flourished from the time of Emperor Maurice and King Reccared. In him antiquity reasserted itself—or rather, our time laid in him a picture of the wisdom of antiquity: a man practiced in every form of speech, he adapted himself in the quality of his words to the ignorant and the learned, and was distinguished for unequalled eloquence when there was fit opportunity.[23] Furthermore, the intelligent reader will be able to understand easily from his diversified studies and the works he has completed, how great was his wisdom.... God raised him up in recent times after the many reverses of Spain (I suppose to revive the works of the ancients that we might not always grow duller from boorish rusticity), and set him as a sort of support. And with good right do we apply to him the famous words of the philosopher:[24] “While we were strangers in our own city, and were, so to speak, sojourners who had lost our way, your books brought us home, as it were, so that we could at last recognize who and where we were. You have discussed the antiquity of our fatherland, the orderly arrangement of chronology, the laws of sacrifices and of priests, the discipline of the home and the state, the situation of regions and places, the names, kinds, functions and causes of all things human and divine.”

From this characterization, as well as from the very brief life by another contemporary, Bishop Ildephonsus of Toledo, it is evident that Isidore impressed his own age chiefly as a writer and man of learning. Both Braulio and Ildephonsus give lists of his works. That of the former, who was Isidore’s pupil and correspondent, is the fuller, and may be regarded as the more reliable. With its running comment on the content of each title, it is as follows:

I have noted the following among those works [of Isidore] that have come to my knowledge. He wrote the Differentiae, in two books, in which he subtly distinguished in meaning what was confused in usage; the Proœmia, in one book, in which he stated briefly what each book of the Holy Scriptures contains; the De Ortu et Obitu Patrum, in one book, in which he describes with sententious brevity the deeds of the Fathers, their worth as well, and their death and burial; the Officia, in two books, addressed to his brother Fulgentius, bishop of Astigi, in which he described in his own words, following the authority of the Fathers, why each and every thing is done in the church of God; the Synonyma, in two books, in which Reason appears and comforts the Soul, and arouses in it the hope of obtaining pardon; the De Natura Rerum, in one book, addressed to King Sisebut, in which he cleared up certain obscurities about the elements by studying the works of the church Fathers as well as those of the philosophers; the De Numeris, in one book, in which he touched on the science of arithmetic, on account of the numbers found in the Scriptures; the De Nominibus Legis et Evangeliorum, in one book, in which he revealed what the names of persons [in the Bible] signify mystically; the De Haeresibus, in one book, in which, following the example of the Fathers, he collected scattered items with what brevity he could; the Sententiae, in three books, which he adorned with passages from the Moralia of Pope Gregory; the Chronica, in one book, from the beginning of the world to his own time, put together with great brevity; the Contra Judaeos, in two books, written at the request of his sister Florentina, a nun, in which he proved by evidences from the Law and the Prophets all that the Catholic faith maintains; the De Viris Illustribus, in one book, to which we are appending this list; one book containing a rule for monks, which he tempered in a most seemly way to the usage of his country and the spirits of the weak; the De Origine Gothorum et Regno Suevorum et etiam Vandalorum Historia, in one book; the Quaestiones, in two books, in which the reader recognizes much material from the old treatments; and the Etymologiae, a vast work which he left unfinished, and which I have divided into twenty books, since he wrote it at my request. And whoever meditatively reads this work, which is in every way profitable for wisdom, will not be ignorant of human and divine matters. There is an exceeding elegance in his treatment of the different arts in this work in which he has gathered well-nigh everything that ought to be known. There are also many slight works, and inscriptions in the church of God, done by him with great grace.[25]

For the present purpose, which is to ascertain something of the intellectual outlook of the dark ages, the Etymologiae is, of course, of prime importance, since it contains in condensed form nearly everything that Isidore has written elsewhere. A passing attention, however, should be given to some of his other works, especially those of the more secular sort, in which his characteristic ideas are frequently developed with greater fullness than in the Etymologies itself. These include in particular the Differentiae, the De Natura Rerum, the Liber Numerorum, the Allegoriae, the Sententiae, and the De Ordine Creaturarum.

The Differentiae is in two books, the first of which treats of differences of words, and the second, of differences of things. The plan of the first book is alphabetical; words are ranged in pairs and distinguished from each other. Usually these words are synonyms, and directions are given for their proper use; as, populus and plebs, recens and novus, religio and fides; but frequently words of similar sound are distinguished; as, vis and bis, hora and ora, hos and os, marem and mare. From these latter valuable hints on the Latin pronunciation of the time may be obtained.

The second book, On Differences of Things, treats in a brief way of such distinctions as those between deus and dominus; between the nativity of Christ and of man; between angels, demons, and men; angelic and human wickedness; animus and anima; the grace of God and the will of man; the life of action and that of contemplation.

The introductory remarks of the Differentiae are worth translating, since they reveal one of the most marked characteristics of Isidore’s thinking, the stress that he laid on words. They are as follows:

Many of the ancients sought to define the differences of words, making some subtle distinction between word and word. But the heathen poets disregarded the proper meanings of words under the compulsion of metre. And so, beginning with them, it became the custom for writers to use words without proper discrimination. But although words seem alike, still they are distinguished from one another by having each an origin of its own.[26] Cato was the first of the Latins to write on this subject,[27] after whose example I have in part written myself of a very few, and have in part taken them from the books of the writers.[28]

The De Natura Rerum[29] is a work of great importance for an understanding of Isidore’s view of the physical universe. The preface is of especial interest as giving some hints of his methods of literary work and of his attitude toward pagan writers. It is addressed to Sisebutus, who was king of the Visigoths from 612 to 620.[30] It runs as follows:

Although, as I know, you excel in talent and eloquence and in the varied accomplishments of literature (vario flore literarum), you are still anxious for greater attainment, and you ask me to explain to you something of the nature and causes of things. I, on my part, have run over the works of earlier writers, and am not slow to satisfy your interest and desire, describing in part the system of the days and months; the goals of the year, as well, and the changes of the seasons; the nature also of the elements; the courses of the sun and moon, and the significance of certain stars;[31] the signs of the weather, too, and of the winds; and besides, the situation of the earth, and the alternate tides of the sea. And setting forth all things as they are written by the ancients, and especially in the works of catholic writers, we have described them briefly. For to know the nature of these things is not the wisdom of superstition, if only they are considered with sound and sober learning. Nay, if they were in every way far removed from the search for the truth, that wise king would by no means have said: “Ipse mihi dedit horum quae sunt scientiam veram ut sciam dispositionem coeli et virtutes elementorum, conversionum mutationes, et divisiones temporum, annorum cursus et stellarum dispositiones.”

Wherefore, beginning with the day, whose creation appears first in the order of visible things, let us expound those remaining matters as to which we know that certain men of the heathen and of the church have opinions, setting down in some cases both their thoughts and words, in order that the authority of the very words may carry belief.

The general organization of the matter treated by Isidore in the De Natura Rerum is worth noticing. The preface quoted above indicates that the order of treatment is to follow the order of creation. The first topic, therefore, suggested by the creation of light, we should expect to be the phenomenon of light. Instead of this it is the day, in the calendar sense, that is described, with the natural sequel of the week, month, and year as collections of days. This section really constitutes a brief account of the elements of chronology. Next created are the heavens; so we have next astronomy, presented in a condensed form, to which are appended a few chapters on meteorological matters, such as thunder, clouds, the rainbow, wind, and finally pestilence, which comes in appropriately here as being “a corruption of the air”. The topic next in order, following the first chapter of Genesis, is the sea; and after that, the dry land. It should be noted that this view of the physical universe according to the order of its creation, corresponds roughly to the analysis of matter into the four elements, fire, air, water, earth. As will be shown later, such correspondences are an important factor in the intellectual outlook of the time. This was the kind of mental connection with which people were familiar.[32]

The Liber Numerorum contains nothing arithmetical in the modern sense of the word, in spite of Braulio’s statement that in it Isidore “touched on the science of arithmetic”.[33] Its fuller title is “The book of the numbers which occur in the Holy Scriptures”, and the body of the book is taken up with the mystic significance of each number from one to twenty, omitting seventeen, and also of twenty-four, thirty, forty, forty-six, fifty, and sixty. The method of treatment indicates an advanced mysticism of numbers. The book is not so much an attempt to show the significance of numbers occurring in particular connections, as it is a generalized guide to their mystical interpretation, laying down rules to govern the interpretation of each number, no matter where it occurs. It should be remarked that this was really “the science of number” of the dark ages, and that Braulio’s use of the term “arithmetic” as applying to it was in accordance with the best usage of the time.[34]

The Allegoriae is of a character similar to the Liber Numerorum. It contains in brief form the principal allegories which were read into the books of the Old and the New Testaments, and is evidently meant to constitute a sort of reference book for Scriptural allegory. It possesses little interest.

One of the most important of the writings of Isidore is the Sententiae, in three books. It is a systematic treatise on Christian doctrine and morals,[35] and is culled chiefly from the Moralia of Gregory the Great. As might be guessed from its source, it is not a work of an enlightened character. However, while it is largely taken up with the technicalities of Christian thinking, it is frequently valuable as affording fuller and more specific statements on some matters of interest than are found elsewhere in Isidore’s works. Isidore and Gregory were in substantial agreement in their attitude toward life, but there are indications that in some respects Isidore was not quite as thorough-going as his model.[36]

Among Christian scholars from the beginning there had been a desire to bring the traditional ideas of pagan cosmography into subordination to the Christian scheme. This impulse was strongly, though blindly, felt by Isidore, and it led to his several attempts at a comprehensive account of the universe. Perhaps the most interesting of these is the De Ordine Creaturarum, which differs from the others by including the spiritual as well as the material universe. The difference did not make for rationality, and in this short work Isidore is seen at his scientific worst. As in the De Natura Rerum, the dominating factors in the description of the physical universe are the first chapter of Genesis and the theory of the four elements.

That one of Isidore’s books which is of by far the greatest importance for an understanding of the secular thought of the day, is the Etymologies. This is a sort of dictionary or encyclopedia of all knowledge.[37] As Braulio puts it, it contained “about all that ought to be known”, and it may be taken as representing the widest possible scope of secular knowledge that an orthodox Spaniard of the dark ages could allow himself. Indeed, so hospitable an attitude toward profane learning as Isidore displayed was unparalleled in his own period, and was never surpassed throughout the middle ages.

The encyclopedic character of the Etymologies may best be realized by a general view of its contents. The titles of the twenty books into which it is divided are as follows:

Etymologiarum Libri XX.

• 1. de grammatica.
• 2. de rhetorica et dialectica.
• 3. de quattuor disciplinis mathematicis.
• 4. de medicina.
• 5. de legibus et temporibus.
• 6. de libris et officiis ecclesiasticis.
• 7. de Deo, angelis, et fidelium ordinibus.
• 8. de ecclesia et sectis diversis.
• 9. de linguis, gentibus, regnis, militia, civibus, affinitatibus.
• 10. vocum certarum alphabetum.
• 11. de homine et portentis.
• 12. de animalibus.
• 13. de mundo et partibus.
• 14. de terra et partibus.
• 15. de aedificiis et agris.
• 16. de lapidibus et metallis.
• 17. de rebus rusticis.
• 18. de bello et ludis.
• 19. de navibus, aedificiis et vestibus.
• 20. de penu et instrumentis domesticis et rusticis.

To the modern reader, familiar with the names of only the modern sciences, this series of titles, which includes an almost complete list of the ancient sciences, may not be very illuminating. For this reason it is perhaps allowable to translate them, where it is possible to do so, into their modern equivalents. Thus we have grammar (Bk. 1), rhetoric and logic (Bk. 2), arithmetic, geometry, music, astronomy (Bk. 3), medicine (Bk. 4), law and chronology (Bk. 5), theology (Bks. 6–8), human anatomy and physiology (Bk. 11), zoölogy (Bk. 12), cosmography and physical geography (Bks. 13–14), architecture and surveying (Bk. 15 and part of Bk. 19), mineralogy (Bk. 16), agriculture (Bk. 17), military science (Bk. 18). This partial enumeration of the subjects treated in Isidore’s Etymologies forms an imposing array, and serves to explain something of the importance of the work in the history of thought.

The secret of this inclusiveness lay, however, not in an expanded, but in a contracted interest. Although Isidore is not surpassed in comprehensiveness by any one of the line of Roman encyclopedists who preceded him, in the quality of his thought and the extent of his information he is inferior to them all. Secular knowledge had suffered so much from attrition and decay that it could now be summarized in its entirety by one man.

In spite of this it is very clear that if Isidore had treated these topics with any degree of reference to the actual realities of his own time, he would have left us a work of inestimable value. But he did not do so; he drew, not upon life, but upon books for his ideas; there was no first-hand observation. Moreover, the books which he consulted were, as a rule, centuries old.[38] He tells us practically nothing concerning his own period, in which so many important changes were taking place. For example, there are repeated and detailed references to the founding and early history of Rome, but no direct allusion to the political and social changes brought about by the disintegration of the Roman Empire; trifles attributed to a period thirteen centuries earlier seemed to interest him more than the mighty developments of his own epoch. Again, although he writes upon law, he does not appear to have heard of the Justinian code issued a century before;[39] and in his chronology he fails to mention the proposal for a new era in chronology made also a century before his time by Dionysius the Less.[40]

Throughout the Etymologies there is a leading principle which guides Isidore in his handling of the different subjects, namely, his attitude toward words. His idea was that the road to knowledge was by way of words, and further, that they were to be elucidated by reference to their origin rather than to the things they stood for. This, in itself, gave an antiquarian cast to his work. His confidence in words really amounted to a belief, strong though perhaps somewhat inarticulate, that words were transcendental entities. All he had to do, he believed, was to clear away the misconceptions about their meaning, and set it forth in its true original sense; then, of their own accord, they would attach themselves to the general scheme of truth. The task of first importance, therefore, in treating any subject, was to seize upon the leading terms and trace them back to the meanings which they had in the beginning, before they had been contaminated by the false usage of the poets and other heathen writers; thus the truth would be found. It was inevitable that, with such a preconception, Isidore’s method in the Etymologies should be to treat each subject by the method of defining the terms belonging to it.

It is plain, then, that Isidore used the dictionary method in the Etymologies not as a matter of convenience, but on philosophic grounds. His unthinking confidence in words was, however, ill-rewarded. It merely furnished a plan of treatment which evaded consecutive thought, and made it possible for his work to be a mass of contradictions, as it really is in very many points. Indeed, the task of combining in one work the ill-digested ideas of the school of Christian thought of his day and conflicting ideas borrowed from the pagans would not have been possible except to a writer who did not reason on his material, but was satisfied, as was Isidore, to give the derivation and meaning of his terms in the blind trust that a harmonious whole was thus constituted.

We have some information in regard to the production of the Etymologies.[41] It was a work undertaken at the request of Braulio, bishop of Saragossa, and it occupied the last years of Isidore’s life. Parts of it, however—presumably those that could be used as text-books—were in circulation before his death. Braulio is our authority for the statement that the work as a whole was left unfinished, and that he himself divided it into twenty books, Isidore having made no division except that by subjects. As the brief preface, addressed to Braulio, informs us, the work was the product of long-continued reading, and contained verbatim extracts from previous writers, as well as Isidore’s own comments.

CHAPTER II

Isidore’s Relation to Previous Culture

It has been shown that by a combination of circumstances, geographical, political, and religious, Spain in Isidore’s day was more fortunately situated than the remainder of western Europe. Conditions there were ripe for an expansion of intellectual interest beyond the narrow bounds to which the growth of religious prejudice and the uncertainties of life had reduced it. In this expansion, in which it was Isidore’s part to lead, it was inevitable that the chief element should be an attempt to re-appropriate what had been lost in the preceding centuries, and to adapt it in some measure to the changed conditions of life and thought which had arisen.

Isidore’s relation to previous culture must, therefore, be examined. It appears certain, although perhaps it cannot be proved, that he was completely cut off from that world of thought, both Christian and pagan, which was expressed in the Greek language. The tradition of wide linguistic learning which was attached to him after his death and has not been questioned until recent times, has really nothing to rest upon.[42] Isidore himself does not claim a knowledge of Greek, and he seems to have relied on translations for whatever his works contain that is of Greek origin.[43] He nowhere quotes a Greek sentence, and since the Etymologies and others of his works are practically made up of quotations, it seems strange that he did not do so if he had resorted at all to Greek authors. The detached Greek words, and the Greek phrases that occur rarely in his works, are practically all given as derivations of Latin words; and when it is remembered that such detached words and phrases had been extremely common in Latin literature for centuries, it becomes plain that their use by Isidore does not necessarily indicate that he had a reading knowledge of Greek. His case is similar to that of many intelligent persons of the present day who are able to trace words to Latin and Greek roots without being able to read these languages.[44]

What aspects, then, of the Latin literary tradition, which alone has to be taken into account, are of importance as giving an understanding of Isidore and his works?

To him, no doubt, the literary past seemed to be filled chiefly with the succession of Christian writers from Tertullian to Gregory the Great. These, starting out with a religion to which a primitive cosmology was tenaciously attached, were really engaged in amalgamating with it the less hostile items of the Graeco-Roman intellectual inheritance. Men like Augustine were occupied in de-secularizing the knowledge of their times; that is, in reshaping it so that it should fill a subordinate place in the religious scheme and so support that scheme, or at least not be in opposition to it. Orosius’ feat of reshaping history so that it was subservient to religion, is a good example of what was going on in every field. Such secular knowledge as was allowed to exist was brought into more or less close relation to the religious ideas that dominated thinkers, and whatever could not be thus reshaped tended to be rejected and forgotten. The nearest approach to an exception to this is found in the subjects that had formed the educational curriculum of the Greeks and Romans. These offered robust opposition to de-secularization; and though they were attenuated to almost nothing, they succeeded in maintaining their separate existence. This process of de-secularization was about complete by the time of Cassiodorus; in him we have an intellectual outlook that recognizes, outside of the religious scheme, only the seven liberal arts.[45]

On the other hand, there was the pagan literary tradition, which owed all the value that it possessed to contact with Greek culture. Except in the field of legal social relations, the Romans made no original contribution to civilization. They had no proper curiosity concerning the universe, and so could do no thinking of vital importance concerning it. Anything approaching scientific thought in the modern sense was absolutely unknown to them. Therefore, while most of their writers were prosaic and secular in their habit of mind and free from mystical leanings, the intellectual possession of the Romans was not of the close-knit rational character which would have enabled them to resist successfully the avalanche of Oriental superstition which descended on the Western world in the centuries after the conquest of the East.[46] Secular thought in the Roman civilization was thus doomed to undergo a process of decay.

The branch of pagan Latin literature which throws most light on the character of Isidore’s Etymologies is the succession of encyclopedias which constituted so conspicuous a feature of literary history under the Empire. The chief writers in this field, in order of time, were Varro, Verrius Flaccus, the elder Pliny, Suetonius, Pompeius Festus, and Nonius Marcellus. While the motives and causes that impelled them to their task were doubtless many and intricate, consideration of a few paramount influences by which they were affected will explain much of the character of their work, and will indicate the origin of the main peculiarities of Isidore’s encyclopaedia.

In the first place, it is in these encyclopaedias, which profess to cover the fields of literary scholarship and natural science, that the intellectual decline most clearly reveals itself. They may be regarded on the one hand as representing the successive stages in the decay of the intellectual inheritance, and in them we may trace the way in which the array of ordered knowledge was steadily losing in both content and quality. Viewed, on the other hand, as a totality, and considered with reference to the impulses that led to their production, they are again symptomatic of degeneration; they stand as the most thorough-going example of the epitomizing tendency which permeated Roman thought and which evidenced its decline. Written as they were by the intellectual leaders of their day, they represent a curious reversal of the modern situation, since where the leaders in the modern expansion of thought have devoted themselves to specialized inquiry, those of the Roman empire gave their attention to compiling and arranging the whole body of knowledge rather than to extending it at any point. The conditions of their time drove them to generalize rather than to specialize.

These encyclopedias are pervaded by a tone of literary scholarship. It was a peculiarity of Latin literature that philology was almost as old as poetry. The Roman poetry was a mere reflection of the Greek, the poets invariably knowing Greek and either translating from it or following Greek models. Poetry so produced was inevitably artificial and in need of elucidation. These conditions favored the rapid growth of criticism; grammar, word derivation, philology, antiquarian history were favorite studies from early times, engaging the attention even of leading Romans. There was even a sort of literary science; for example, Varro’s geography, which was meant to include the geographical allusions of the poets. A mass of scholarly lore was thus accumulated and this soon became unwieldy. It was the function of Varro and Verrius Flaccus especially to reduce this mass to order and to bring it into such shape that it could be referred to readily. To effect the latter object Verrius Flaccus introduced the method of alphabetical arrangement, using this for the first time in his great work De Verborum Significatu. These two writers gave, then, in their encyclopedic works a survey of the apparatus for literary criticism, including a sort of literary science, and the whole succession of encyclopedic writers was greatly influenced by the example which they set.

In the works of Pliny and Suetonius, who followed Varro and Verrius Flaccus, natural science is brought into the foreground. The change, however, was but slight. The natural science of the Romans was anything but scientific; neither experiment, systematic observation, nor research had ever been practiced among them. Their science was an affair of books and was of an authoritative character. Even the poets were looked upon as possessing scientific knowledge and were seriously quoted to maintain scientific theses. There was no real distinction between the natural and philological sciences of the time, and therefore the encyclopedia of literary criticism was closely allied with that of natural science.

As illustrating the character of the encyclopedias it is worth while to notice more fully the method by which they were produced. As has been suggested, Roman scholars and scientists under the Empire were little more than note-takers. Pliny the Elder is the typical example of this tendency; a student of extraordinary diligence, his study consisted in reading, making extracts, and compiling them. Such was the origin of his Natural History. He left to his nephew, in addition, the legacy of “one hundred and sixty common-place books, written on both sides of the scroll and in very small hand-writing”.[47] The full effect of the tendency thus illustrated cannot be perceived, however, if we think merely of the process as it was carried on by Pliny, for he consulted chiefly original works; when, later, extracts began to be made from works that were themselves compiled from extracts, when epitomes began to be epitomized, a state of confusion and feebleness of thought inevitably ensued. This is the condition which is exemplified in the two latest of the Roman encyclopedists, Pompeius Festus and Nonius Marcellus, and the tradition is continued in Isidore.

The body of knowledge gathered together under all these influences possessed little of a positive nature. It was informed by no general ideas of a striking character and it entirely lacked the element of reasoned proof. Since its science was a science of authority, it was easy for the Christian writers to modify it by substituting the authority of the Scriptures for that of pagan writers. In fact, the encyclopedias furnished to the church fathers secular knowledge in a particularly convenient and unobjectionable form. Augustine, especially, made great use of Varro. It can be seen that this literary form was better adapted than any other to pass with unbroken continuity from ancient into medieval literature.

It is then to the succession of Roman encyclopedists that we must go to explain the method, spirit, and content of Isidore’s Etymologies. A comparison of the organization of the material and of the sub-titles of Isidore’s work with those of the Roman writers,[48] so far as they are known, shows the extent of his indebtedness. The literary and philological flavor, the stress on word history and derivation, the pseudo-science based on authority, the conspicuous tendency to confusion and feebleness of thought, the habit of heedless copying that we find in an aggravated form in the Etymologies, all these are inherited characteristics that betray the origin of the work.

But though the example which was furnished by the Roman encyclopedists was by far the strongest literary factor which influenced Isidore in the composition of the Etymologies, it was not the only one of importance. A minor type of encyclopedia, that of education, occurs in Latin literature. The first example of it is furnished by Varro in his Disciplinarum Libri IX;[49] this work had, however, disappeared before Isidore’s time. Varro found no successor until the fourth century, when Martianus Capella wrote his account of the seven liberal arts,[50] giving thus a comprehensive treatment of the subject-matter of education. He was followed in the sixth century by Cassiodorus, whose De Artibus et Disciplinis Liberalium Litterarum Isidore certainly had before him when he wrote the account of the seven liberal arts which occupies the first three books of the Etymologies. Isidore’s work therefore appears to be a fusion of the minor encyclopedia of education and the major encyclopedia of all knowledge.

We are now in a position to form a clearer judgment of the personal element which Isidore contributed to the composition of the Etymologies. It is worth while in the first place to point out that the essentials of the work are derived from the pagan, not the Christian, side of the Latin tradition. This in itself showed a commendable initiative, considering that it was the age of Gregory the Great. It was Isidore’s function to adjust the secular learning thus obtained to a new and lower level of thought and to the Christian philosophy of the time. The way in which this was accomplished constitutes the only original element in the treatment of the subject-matter. The adjustment was secured partly by an amalgamation of the pseudo-science of the church fathers with that found in the encyclopedic writings, and by the inclusion of the three books which deal with religious matters, but chiefly by the new spirit in which secular knowledge was conceived. The works of Pliny and Suetonius were surveys of what was known; that of Isidore was a survey of “what ought to be known”. For his age secular knowledge was valuable, not for itself, but for edification. In theory, at least, it was Isidore’s notion that such knowledge might “avail for life if applied to the better uses”.

The question of the actual sources used by Isidore in the Etymologies and in his other works of a secular nature is a difficult one. The literary tradition of the period preceding his, which was mainly a time of compiling and epitomizing, is so complicated and confused that the student cannot be certain, when he finds the exact wording of a writer in the work of another who preceded him, that the former has borrowed from the latter. Both may have borrowed from another source or even from two different sources identical as respects the passage in question.[51] In the task of ascertaining Isidore’s sources the difficulties already enumerated are increased by the loss of important works upon which it is pretty certain that he drew,[52] and also by his habit of quoting the sources quoted by his authorities as if they were his own.[53]

However, although there has been no thorough-going investigation of this question, much has been accomplished by students interested in sections of the Etymologies, such, for example, as those on music and law. Classical scholars also have investigated his sources in a more general way, but their efforts have been not so much directed to the elucidation of Isidore himself as inspired by the hope of recovering some fragments of the classical authors. The varying conclusions reached show that no great certainty has been attained, but it is possible to give a tentative list of sources which will indicate roughly the nature of the influences which contributed to form Isidore’s ideas.[54] It seems probable that his working library contained works of the following authors: Lactantius, Tertullian, Jerome, Ambrose, Augustine, Orosius, Cassiodorus, Suetonius, Pliny, Solinus, Hyginus, Sallust, Hegesippus, the abridger of Vitruvius, Servius, the scholia on Lucan, and Justinus.

CHAPTER III

Isidore’s World View

Is it possible to ascertain from the writings of Isidore what was the general view of the universe and the attitude toward life held in the sixth and seventh centuries?

On first thought it seems doubtful. As has been indicated, his works, and especially the Etymologies, form a mosaic of borrowings, whose ultimate origin is to be traced to unnumbered writings in both Greek and Latin, and in both Christian and pagan literatures. We find side by side in Isidore the ideas of Aristotle, Nicomachus, Porphyry, Varro, Cicero, Suetonius, Moses, St. Paul, Origen, and Augustine, to mention only a few; and these ideas, although as a rule they have undergone degeneration, are sometimes in the original words or a close rendering of them. If viewed closely they are a mass of confusion and incoherence. This is natural; such eclectism as had existed for centuries in the Roman, pagan and Christian, systems of thought is not compatible with consistency. Incoherence in the intellectual possession was inevitable; equally inevitable was an increasing indifference to incoherence and even inability to perceive it. The words of a writer of such a period must therefore not be pressed too hard. Too close an investigation would land the inquirer in hopeless confusion.

Furthermore, even in writers far more consecutive in their thinking than Isidore, there are often fundamental preconceptions which are naively taken for granted, and which, although unstated, serve as points around which to mass ideas. If the reader does not happen to approach the subject with the same preconceptions, a misapprehension is likely to result. It is the business of the critic to grasp these preconceptions and place the reader on the same plane of understanding, as it were, so that he can follow the meaning as it lay in the mind of the writer. Sometimes this undertaking is possible, but in the case of a writer like Isidore, whose ideas are often hazy and whose work is a conglomerate of ten centuries, it may easily be impossible.[55]

However, it must be remembered that such an absence of an acute self-consciousness as is indicated in the condition just described, is exactly the thing that enables men to perform feats of an astonishing character in constructing a world-philosophy, if perchance they have a taste in that direction. Their minds, not being irritated or roused by any perception of inconsistency, rest happy in the conviction that all is explained, and remain oblivious of that sense of mystery which forms the background of modern scientific thought. As tested from this point of view the medieval period afforded the conditions for a complacent and authoritative world-philosophy, such as in fact it did possess.

The difficulties in ascertaining the world view held by Isidore are, then, considerable; but, since he was the leading representative of the intellect of the dark ages, and the only important writer on secular subjects in two centuries of western European history, the attempt to ascertain it seems worth while. In making this attempt, however, it is necessary to keep these difficulties of interpretation in mind; the danger is that we shall lay too much stress on the minor inconsistencies which he probably was not aware of, and so fail to see that large general consistency which, because of his lack of critical sensitiveness, he was able to believe that he found.

Isidore’s physical universe[56] in its form is geocentric, and is bounded by a revolving sphere which he believed to be made of fire, and in which the stars are fixed. The question of the number of spheres he treats in an inconsistent way, sometimes speaking of seven concentric inner spheres, and sometimes of only one.[57] The relative size of sun, earth, and moon is accurately given—though, it appears, not without misgiving[58]—and also the cause of eclipses of both the sun and the moon.

The subject of greatest interest in this connection is, of course, the question whether or not Isidore believed in the sphericity of the earth. It is maintained by some authorities that this notion was not lost at any time during the middle ages. Isidore certainly believed that the heavens constituted a sphere or spheres, and that the sun and moon revolved in circles around the earth. He states the theory of the zones correctly in two passages,[59] applying it, however, not to the spherical earth but to the sphere of the heavens. On the other hand, he frequently gives expression to notions belonging to a primitive cosmology.[60] The suspicion is aroused, therefore, that when he was stating astronomical ideas, he was usually simply copying what perhaps he did not understand. A passage that seems to settle the matter is found in De Natura Rerum. It shows that the fact that he could state such a theory as that of the zones correctly, is no proof that he understood its application to the earth. A translation of the passage follows:

In describing the universe the philosophers mention five circles, which the Greeks call παράλληλοι that is, zones, into which the circle of lands is divided.... Now let us imagine them after the manner of our right hand, so that the thumb may be called the Arctic circle, uninhabitable because of cold; the second, the summer circle, temperate, inhabitable; the middle (finger), the equinoctial (Isemerinus) circle, torrid, uninhabitable; the fourth, the winter circle, temperate, inhabitable; the fifth, the Antarctic circle, frigid, uninhabitable. The first of these is the northern, the second, the solstitial, the third, the equinoctial, the fourth, the winter circle, the fifth, the southern.... The following figure shows the divisions of these circles. ([Fig. 1].) Now, the equinoctial circle is uninhabitable because the sun, speeding through the midst of the heaven, creates an excessive heat in these places, so that, on account of the parched earth, crops do not grow there, nor are men permitted to dwell there, because of the great heat. But, on the other hand, the northern and southern circles, being adjacent to each other, are not inhabited, for the reason that they are situated far from the sun’s course, and are rendered waste by the great rigor of the climate and the icy blasts of the winds. But the circle of the summer solstice which is situated in the east, between the northern circle and the circle of heat, and the circle which is placed in the west, between the circle of the heat and the southern circle, are temperate for the reason that they derive cold from one circle, heat from the other. Of which Virgil [says]:

“Between these and the middle [zone] two are granted to wretched mortals by the gift of the gods.”

Now, they who are next to the torrid circle are the Ethiopians, who are burnt by excessive heat.[61]

Fig. 1.

The explanation of the passage and of the figure which illustrates it seems to be that Isidore accepted the terminology of the spherical earth from Hyginus[62] without taking the time to understand it—if indeed he had the ability to do so—and applied it without compunction to the flat earth. He evidently thought that zona and circulus were interchangeable terms,[63] and his “circles” did not run around the circumference of a spherical earth, but lay flat on a flat earth, where they filled with sufficient completeness the orbis terrae or circle of the land.[64] The adjustment of the two conflicting theories was extremely crude, since it involved placing the arctic and antarctic circles side by side, and the two temperate circles one in the east and one in the west.

By such a blunder as this may be measured the stagnation of the secular thought of the time. Of Greek science only remnants were in existence, and these were regarded with indifference. Writers like Isidore might use them, but they did not hesitate to mangle and distort them. Moreover they were given only second place even in the science of the day; the first place was held by the notions of the natural world expressed in the Scriptures. Each one of these, no matter how primitive or how figurative, had to be taken seriously into account and given its proper weight in building up the general scheme. In this intellectual activity Isidore is more at home than when he is handling the ideas of the pagans, as may be perceived from his discussion of the shape of the firmament: “As to its shape, whether it covers the earth from above like a plate, or like an egg-shell shuts the whole creation in on every side, thinkers take opposite views. For the mention the Psalmist makes of this when he says: Extendas coelum sicut pellem,[65] does not conflict with either opinion, since when his own skin covers any animal, it envelopes equally every part all around, and when it is removed from the flesh and stretched out, there is no doubt that it can form a chamber either rectangular or curved.”[66]

The vastness of the physical universe is an idea not presented in Isidore’s writings. It was for his mind really a small universe, and one limited sharply by definite boundaries both in time and space. It had begun at the creation, its matter being constituted at that time out of nothing, and it was to have an end as sharply marked. It extended from the earth to the sphere of the heavens which revolved about the earth, and what was beyond scarcely appears even as a question. It was a universe in which high winds might, and sometimes did, dislodge particles from the fiery heavens;[67] and in which the sun approached so close to some of the inhabitants of the earth as to scorch them.[68] In truth, Isidore’s universe was reduced to rather stifling proportions.

A fundamental part of Isidore’s world-philosophy was his view of the constitution of matter. This is closely bound up with his conception of the form of the universe, and it is also the most important of his ideas in the field of natural science.

He believed in the existence of the four elements, earth, air, fire, and water,[69] and that they were the visible manifestations of one underlying matter.[70] They were not mutually exclusive but “all elements existed in all”, and it was possible for one element to be transmuted into another. Their properties were not invariable, but as a rule fire is spoken of as hot and dry; air, hot and wet; water, wet and cold; earth, cold and dry. It will be observed that each successive pair of elements had a common quality: thus fire and air shared the quality of ‘hot’; air and water, that of ‘wet’; water and earth, that of ‘cold’; earth and fire, that of ‘dry’. It was by the aid of these common qualities, which served as means, that the elements could be more easily thought of as passing into each other.[71]

It should be remarked that the general idea is the same as that of modern chemistry in so far as it assumes that there are elements and attributes properties to them. The difference is that the modern chemist insists that the properties shall be fixed for each element, while Isidore has no consciousness of such a necessity. For instance, in a chapter of De Natura Rerum he attributes two separate sets of properties to the four elements, without realizing at all the confusion of such a procedure. Again, from the point of view of the best ancient conception of the four elements, Isidore is equally at fault. For Aristotle the names given to them had been merely labels. He perceived in the natural world two significant sets of opposing qualities, namely, hot and cold, wet and dry. These sets of opposing qualities interpenetrated one another: the result was four possible combinations, namely, hot and dry, hot and wet, cold and wet, cold and dry. His elements designated merely these combinations and were nothing more than conventional names for them. Isidore, however, took the names of the elements in a literal sense.[72] The label itself had become important, while what stood behind it and gave it its value was regarded as almost meaningless. What has happened here is typical of the whole development of ancient thought down to Isidore’s time.

Of Aristotle’s conception of a fifth element, the quinta essentia, or ether, superior to the others and permeating them, Isidore shows merely a trace. He says in one passage that “ether is the place where the stars are, and it signifies that fire which is separated on high from all the universe”.[73] He offers also another definition in which he confuses three of the elements of Aristotle: “Ether is the upper, fiery air”.[74]

The theory of the four elements, as has been already indicated, has a cosmological bearing. In the universe at large the elements were thought of as tending to arrange themselves in strata according to weight. Isidore says it is proved “that earth is the heaviest of all things created; and therefore, they say, it holds the lowest place in the creation, because by nature nothing but itself can support it. And we perceive that water is heavier than air in proportion as it is lighter than earth.... Fire, too, is apprehended to be in its nature above air, which is easily proved even in the case of fire that burns in earthy substance, since as soon as it is kindled, it directs its flame toward the upper spaces which are above the air, where there is an abundance of it, and where it has its place.”[75]

Thus the physical universe consists of the four kinds of matter, stratified according to the principle of weight. The notion was one in frequent use,[76] and it was brought into relation with animate existence by assigning to each of the four strata a peculiar population. Thus the fiery heavens were occupied by angels; the air, by birds and demons; the water, by fishes; the earth, by man and other animals.[77]

The theory of the four elements was fertile in every branch of the natural science of medieval times. Isidore uses it, for example, to explain the physical constitution of man:

Man’s body is divided among the four elements. For he has in him something of fire, of air, of water, and of earth. There is the quality of earth in the flesh, of moisture in the blood, of air in the breath, of fire in the vital heat. Moreover, the four-fold division of the human body indicates the four elements. For the head is related to the heavens, and in it are two eyes, as it were the luminaries of the sun and moon. The breast is akin to the air, because the breathings are emitted from it as the breath of the winds from the air. The belly is likened to the sea, because of the collection of all the humors, the gathering of the waters as it were. The feet, finally, are compared to the earth, because they are dry like the earth. Further, the mind is placed in the citadel of the head like God in the heavens, to look upon and govern all from a high place.[78]

In another passage Isidore tells us that fire has its seat in the liver, and that “it flies thence up to the head as if to the heavens of our body. From this fire the rays of the eyes flash, and from the middle of it, as from a center, narrow passages lead not only to the eyes but to the other senses”.[79]

Naturally the four elements play a great part in medicine. They are related to the four humors, blood, yellow bile, black bile, and phlegm. “Each humor imitates its element; blood, air;[80] yellow bile, fire; black bile, earth; phlegm, water. Health depends on the proper blending of these humors.”[81] It appears to have been the belief of the time that the humors possessed each the same qualities as the corresponding element. Medical reasoning might confine itself to the four humors or it might go back of them to the four elements, as in the explanation of vertigo, where the diagnosis indicates, apparently, the transmutation of one element into another. Isidore says: “The arteriae [air passages] and veins produce a windiness in man’s head from a resolving of moisture, and make a whirling in his eyes whence it is called vertigo”.[82]

That notions of such a loose, semi-philosophical nature should survive while the solid empirical content of medical science faded away, is characteristic of the decline of thought which culminated in the dark ages. The science of medicine had cut itself loose from concrete things, and attached itself almost exclusively to the vague philosophical conceptions from which even the best Greek thinkers had not been able to free it.

The phenomena of meteorology, also, were explained largely by the four elements. The upper air was believed to be akin to the fire above it, and was therefore calm and cloudless; while the lower air was supposed to be cloudy and disturbed by storms because of its proximity to water, the next element below it in the series.[83] Further, the belief in the possibility of the transmutation of elements was of use here. Air, for example, might be transmuted into water, or water into air.[84] As Isidore puts it: “[air] being contracted, makes clouds; being thickened, rain; when the clouds freeze, snow; when thick clouds freeze in a more disordered way, hail; being spread abroad, it causes fine weather, for it is well-known that thick air is a cloud, and a rarified and spread-out cloud is air.”[85]

Fig. 2.

The most remote fields are invaded by the four elements. It is by reference to them that the seasons are explained. Here use is made rather of their properties than of the elements themselves. “The spring is composed of moisture and heat; the summer, of fire and dryness; the autumn, of dryness and cold; the winter, of cold and moisture.”[86] From this the transition is easy to another far-fetched application of the theory. The four quarters of the universe, East, West, North, and South, are connected with the four seasons, and thus with the four elements. This conception seemed to Isidore so important that he introduced a figure to illustrate it. ([Fig. II.])

Fig. 3.

The old notion that man is a microcosm or parallel of the universe on a small scale, was familiar to Isidore. As has been shown, he believed that man was composed of the same four elements as the universe, and that they were distributed in him in much the same way as in it. It was going only a step further for him to declare that “all things are contained in man, and in him exists the nature of all things”;[87] after which it was easy “to place man in communion with the fabric of the universe”[88] by means of a figure. ([Fig. III.])

The idea of the parallelism of man and the universe, when thus literally conceived, was a fruitful one. Man could be explained by the universe. And the process could be reversed and the universe also explained by man, since man may be observed in his entirety and his life history may be easily followed, while that of the universe may not. Isidore doubtless took this view, for he says: “The plan of the universe is to be inquired into according to man alone. For just as man passes to his end through definite ages, so too the universe is passing away during this prolonged time, since both man and the universe decay after they reach their growth.”[89] The division of the life of the universe, for example, into six definite ages, which he incorporated into his chronology, was given greater certainty and meaning from the similar division of man’s life into six ages.

The wide scope assigned by Isidore to the action of the four elements—which scope includes the immaterial as well as the material—is completely alien to the modern way of thinking; as is, also, the bringing of the universe, the year, and man, into so intimate and specific a connection. Still more difficult is it for us to grasp such an idea as that the ounce “is reckoned a lawful weight because the number of its scruples measures the hours of the day and night”;[90] or that “the Hebrews use twenty-two letters of the alphabet, following the [number of] books in the Old Testament”.[91] And the climax is reached when he expresses the notion that a man bursts into tears as soon as he casts himself down on his knees, because the knees and the eyes are close together in the womb.[92]

Although these examples of Isidore’s thinking afford excellent proof of his incoherence and lack of logical consecutiveness, their explanation goes deeper. Like all primitive thinkers, those of medieval times were firmly convinced of the solidarity of the universe; they felt its unity much more strongly than they did its multiplicity; what we regard as separate kinds of phenomena and separate ways of viewing the universe they regarded as of necessity closely inter-related. There were no categories of thought that were for them mutually exclusive; they carried their ideas without hesitation from the material into the immaterial, and from the natural into the supernatural. No conception established in one sphere seemed impertinent in any other. It was this state of mind that enabled the medieval thinker to take such erratic leaps from one sphere of thought to another, without any feeling of uncertainty or any fear of getting lost.[93]

Perhaps nothing illustrates more clearly the erratic thinking to which this idea of the solidarity of the universe led, than the way in which Isidore reasons about number. To his mind the fact, for instance, that “God in the beginning made twenty-two works” explains why there are twenty-two sextarii in the bushel; and that “there were twenty-two generations from Adam to Jacob, and twenty-two books of the Old Testament as far as Esther, and twenty-two letters of the alphabet out of which the divine law is composed”,[94] were additional explanations for the same thing. A like connection is found in his statement that “the pound is counted a kind of perfect weight because it is made up of as many ounces as the year has months”.[95]

Isidore’s conceptions in regard to number, indeed, deserve to be ranked closely after the theory of the four elements as affording to him “paths of intelligence” through the universe, material and immaterial. Both in the world at large and in the microcosm of man the harmony of “musical numbers” is an essential;[96] and number is also an essential factor in every part and aspect of the universe. “Take number from all things,” he says, “and all things perish.”[97] However, his idea of the importance of number in the world is equaled only by the vagueness with which he conceived its operations as a working principle. Here he takes absolute leave of the logic which, in his account of the four elements, he had already so often left behind. The best he could do, in describing the actual operation of this principle, was to make lists of instances in which the same number occurred, and no matter how unrelated the spheres of thought thus connected, to assume their close interrelation and explanation of one another.

It is now clear that according to Isidore’s way of thinking, a fact belonging to one set of phenomena might be caused or explained by something totally different in another sphere. This being so, it was inevitable that there should be an effort to pass from the known to the unknown along the path thus suggested. When we reflect that, for the medieval thinker, there were three kinds of knowledge—namely, knowledge of the material, the moral, and the spiritual—and that they were in an ascending scale of value, it will appear equally inevitable that this effort to pass from the known to the unknown should be mainly an effort to pass from the material and obvious to the intangible and unseen, though more real, spiritual world. In this consideration we have the chief explanation of medieval allegory.[98]

In Isidore we find that allegorical interpretation is a thing of little spontaneity. The allegorizing of the Scriptures had long before his time settled down into a system. In his Certain Allegories of the Holy Scriptures a list is given of the most noted mystical interpretations of Scripture, a dry enumeration, with now and then an interesting side-light upon the opinion of the time. The extent to which the Scripture was subject to allegorizing may be guessed from the fact that Isidore specifies that “the ten commandments must be taken literally”.[99] Allegory is applied also to the phenomena of nature. In De Natura Rerum Isidore makes a regular practice of first giving the explanation of natural phenomena and following this with the “higher meaning”. Thus the sun has Christ for its allegorical meaning; the stars, the saints; thunder is “the rebuke from on high of the divine voice”, or it may be “the loud preaching of the saints, which dins with loud clamor in the ears of the faithful over all the circle of the lands”.[100] In the Etymologies this “higher meaning” of natural objects is rarely given.

The view held in the dark ages of the natural and the supernatural and of their relative proportions in the outlook on life, was precisely the reverse of that held by intelligent men in modern times. For us the material universe has taken on the aspect of order; within its limits phenomena seem to follow definite modes of behavior, upon the evidence of which a body of scientific knowledge has been built up. Indeed at times in certain branches of science there has been danger of a dogmatism akin to, if the reverse of, that which prevailed in medieval times with reference to the supernatural. On the other hand, the certainty that once existed in regard to the supernatural world has faded away; no means of investigating it that commands confidence has been devised, and any idea held in regard to it is believed to be void of truth if inconsistent with the conclusions reached by science. In all these respects the attitude of Isidore and his time is exactly opposite to ours. To him the supernatural world was the demonstrable and ordered one. Its phenomena, or what were supposed to be such, were accepted as valid, while no importance was attached to evidence offered by the senses as to the material. It may even be said that the supernatural universe bulked far larger in the mind of the medieval thinker than does the natural in that of the modern, and it was fortified by an immeasurably stronger and more uncritical dogmatism.

It is evident, therefore, that if we compare the dogmatic world-view of the medieval thinker with the more tentative one of the modern scientist, allowance must be made for the fact that they take hold of the universe at opposite ends. Their plans are so fundamentally different that it is hard to express the meaning of one in terms of the other.

Isidore’s method of apprehending the supernatural world can hardly be called mysticism. With mysticism we associate intuition and exalted feeling, and the examples that have been given of Isidore’s thinking in terms of allegory and number, show that he thought of the supernatural in the same prosaic and literal way as he did of the natural; there was no break for him between them, nor was there any change of intellectual atmosphere when he crossed the line. So the higher sense at least of the term ‘mystic’ must be denied him. His share in the mysticism of his age, which he accepted unquestioningly, was not a positive one; he exhibits rather the negative side of mysticism, the intellectual haziness, slothfulness and self-delusion by which it was so often accompanied in medieval times.

Isidore believed that in point of time the supernatural preceded the natural. He says that God “created all things out of nothing”,[101] and, again, that “the matter from which the universe was formed preceded the things created out of it not in time, but in origin, in the same sense as sound precedes music”.[102] It is evident that he regarded the material as an emanation from the spiritual. With such an origin the material world was naturally subservient to spiritual control, and miracles caused little wonder. They “are not contrary to nature, because they are caused by the divine will, and the will of the Creator is the nature of each created thing.... A miracle, therefore, does not happen contrary to nature, but contrary to nature as known.”[103] The supernatural thus not only preceded, but dominated, the natural. Finally, the universe was to disappear at the end of six ages, and all was to be reabsorbed in the supernatural. The world of nature, then, was merely a passing incident in a greater reality that contained it.

As in the universe at large, so in man the supernatural completely overshadows the natural. The soul is all-important and theory in regard to it is precise and dogmatic. “As to the soul,” Isidore says, “the philosophers of this world have described with great uncertainty what it is, what it is like, where it is, what form it has, and what its power is. Some have said it is fire; others, blood; others that it is incorporeal and has no shape. A number have believed with rash impiety that it is a part of the divine nature. But we say that it is not fire nor blood, but that it is incorporeal, capable of feeling and of change; without weight, shape, or color. And we say that the soul is not a part, but a creature of God, and that it is not of the substance of God, or of any underlying matter of the elements, but was created out of nothing.”[104] He says further, that the soul “has a beginning but cannot have an end”.[105] All the activities by which life is manifested are considered as parts or functions of the soul. Dum contemplatur, spiritus est; dum sentit, sensus est; dum sapit, animus est; dum intelligit, mens est; dum discernit, ratio est; dum consentit, voluntas est; dum recordatur, memoria est; et dum membra vegetat, anima est.[106]

In contrast with the soul the body scarcely deserves to be spoken of except with disparagement. Its goods are to be unhesitatingly sacrificed to those of the supernatural element in man, or rather, they are not regarded as goods at all. “It is advantageous,” Isidore says, “for those who are well and strong to become infirm, lest through the vigor of their health they be defiled by illicit passions and the desire for luxury”.[107] The present life of the body has no value; it is brief and wretched. “Holy men desire to spurn the world and devote the activity of their minds to things above, in order to convey themselves back to the place from which they have come, and withdraw from the place into which they have been cast.”[108] Thus philosophy of the supernatural culminated in asceticism.

Isidore’s supernatural world has its inhabitants, and in dealing with these he has a theology, an angelology, and a demonology; in all of which fields his ideas are more precise and clear-cut than where he speaks of the material world.

His theology is of little interest; it consists in the orthodox view of the time, accepted without a shadow of criticism. He says, “We are not permitted to form any belief of our own will, or to choose a belief that someone else has accepted of his own. We have God’s apostles as authorities, who did not themselves choose anything of what they should believe, but they faithfully transmitted to the nations the teaching received from Christ. And so even if an angel from heaven shall preach otherwise, let him be anathema”.[109]

The minor inhabitants of Isidore’s supernatural world, the angels and demons, offer a more practical interest. They represent the stage of development at which the old polytheism of the Jews had adjusted itself to monotheism, but had by no means faded out of existence. Indeed, it is plain that at this time the immediate concern of the ordinary man was with these spirits, good and bad; while between man and God there were, for the most part, only mediate relations.

The number of these spirits was very great; each place had its angel, as had each man,—and, presumably, a demon as well. The seraphim, the highest order in the hierarchy of angels, were a multitude in themselves. We may surmise that for Isidore, as for Jerome, the entire human population of the world was as nothing compared with the entire population of spirits.[110]

The good angels are marshalled in a hierarchy of nine orders, to which they were assigned in order of merit at the beginning of the world, and to each of these a specified task is given. For example, the order named virtues (virtutes) has charge of miracles; and the business of the seraphim is “to veil the face and feet of God”.[111] The nature of the angels is described succinctly in a paragraph of the Differentiae:

Angels are of spiritual substance; they were created before all creatures and made subject to change by nature, but were rendered changeless by the contemplation of God. They are not subject to passion, they possess reason, are immortal, perpetual in blessedness, with no anxiety for their felicity, and with foreknowledge of the future. They govern the world according to command; they take bodies from the upper air;[112] they dwell in the heavens.[113]

The special virtue of the good angels is subjection to God. “There is no greater iniquity for them than to wish to glory not in God but in themselves”.[114] The gaps in their ranks caused by the fall of the bad angels were to be filled from the number of the elect.[115]

The demons, or bad angels, were created along with the good; indeed the devil, their leader, was first created of all the angels. It was “before the time of the visible universe” that their fall took place; at that time they lost “all the good of their natures” and all possibility of pardon.[116] They are the “enemies of mankind” and are “sent on the service of vengeance”. The only restraint on their malignity is that they are obliged to obey God. Isidore sums up their activities in a fear-inspiring way:

They unsettle the senses, stir low passions, disorder life, cause alarms in sleep, bring diseases, fill the mind with terror, distort the limbs, control the way in which lots are cast, make a pretence at oracles by their tricks, arouse the passion of love, create the heat of cupidity, lurk in consecrated images; when invoked they appear; they tell lies that resemble the truth; they take on different forms, and sometimes appear in the likeness of angels.[117]

Their capacity for evil tasks is increased by their superior intelligence, which retains “the keen perception of the angelic creation”.[118] Their power of foreknowledge, and, in addition, the duration of their experience, make the struggle against them a hopeless one for man. They are also incredibly persistent: “The devil never rests from his attack on the just man”, who is “sometimes reduced to straits of despair”.[119]

It is evident that these demons were an all-pervading factor in the life of the time. They were conceived of as entering the mind, both waking and sleeping, and furnishing it with the very material for thought and action. The Christian, by the aid of the good angels, was alone able to defeat them, and, moreover, he alone realized the necessity of combating them. The pagans of the pre-Christian era, on the other hand, were believed to have been willing victims. The trail of demonic influence could be found in every department of their life and thought, especially in their religion, which was very close to demon worship, and in their philosophy and poetry.[120]

It is of interest to notice in detail Isidore’s scale of values for secular learning, as shown in opinions expressed throughout his works. How did the fields of thought that had filled the horizon of the thinker of classical times, appear in the perspective of the dark ages?

Philosophy,[121] in the first place, no longer stands for any active principle; all its old aspect of metaphysical and ethical inquiry has been lost. It is merely a container in which minor subjects are arranged in a comprehensive plan, and the only interest which it presents, as philosophy, is to be found in the question of what minor subjects are included and how they are grouped. Here Isidore is more inconsistent than usual. He gives three plans of the field of knowledge, all substantially differing from one another in details and all strikingly different from his own marshaling of all knowledge in the Etymologies. The only reflection of value suggested by the treatment of philosophy in Isidore’s works is that in being de-secularized it has completely lost its essential content. It can, therefore, no longer be a source of offence to any Christian.

The pagan philosophy, however, was a different thing. It was known to have been concerned with the same problems as was Christian theology. It had thus a certain right to exist and a certain value, but this terminated with the appearance of Christianity. As Isidore puts it, “the philosophers of this world certainly knew God, but the humility of Christ displeased them and they went astray”; “they fell in with wicked angels and the devil became their mediator for death as Christ became ours for life”.[122] After Christian theology had settled beyond the shadow of a doubt the problems that had occupied the pagan philosophers, these latter could cause only trouble. Pagan philosophy now stood only for a perversion of the wisdom which was found in its true form in the books of the Scriptural canon and the works of the church Fathers. Its “errors” were believed to be the source of the heresies in the church. “The same material is used and the same errors are embraced over and over again by philosophers and heretics”.[123]

Isidore’s idea of the function of poetry is a peculiar one. “It is the business of the poet,” he says, “to take veritable occurrences and gracefully change and transform them to other appearances by a figurative and indirect mode of speech”.[124] From this it might be inferred that he thought that the use of poetry was to furnish material for allegorical interpretation. He ranks the poets of pagan antiquity below the philosophers, and brings serious charges against them. He asserts that they have “disregarded the proper meanings of words under the compulsion of metre” and have thus been guilty of introducing a great amount of confusion into thought and language.[125] His most vigorous indictment of pagan poetry, however, is that it had its origin in the pagan religions, which he identifies with demon worship. He quotes Suetonius to establish this point: “When men ... first began to know themselves and their gods, they used for themselves a modest way of living and only necessary words, while for the worship of their gods they devised magnificence in each”. This “magnificence” of speech is alleged to have been poetry.[126] With such opinions, he naturally desired the ostracism of poetry. “The Christian is forbidden to read their lies.”[127]

Toward pagan philosophy and poetry, then, Isidore’s attitude is hostile, and it is very improbable that he ever wasted any time on them. But in the field of secular knowledge apart from these subjects he has, within limits, a use for the inheritance left by pagan Rome. It is his chief claim to recognition that he was not absolutely content with the de-secularized science that he found in Ambrose, Jerome and Augustine, but had the independence to go behind it and draw upon its original sources in Roman literature. The spirit in which he did this, however, was not the spirit of revolt, but apparently only a natural desire for more extended information. His critical faculty did not warn him that in seeking this information from pagan sources he was passing from one intellectual atmosphere to another; his mind was too literal and plodding and dwelt too much on details to notice when it was on dangerous ground. His resort to pagan science was not always happy in its result; but the many blunders which he made cannot affect the merit of his enterprise in going beyond the circle of Christian writers; and it must be said for his version of secular knowledge, as contained in his secular writings, that, poor as it was, it was one without which the middle ages would have been a great deal poorer.

As a matter of fact, Isidore did not leave the science of the Roman Empire in a state much worse than that in which he found it. It had been undergoing a process of decay for centuries. At their best the Roman men of science had been unable even to appropriate the more abstract parts of Greek science. They were governed throughout by a short-sighted practicality, as when, for instance, in the case of the mathematical sciences they tried to take over results without taking the method of reaching or verifying them. In the natural sciences their inferiority was only less marked. Here the absence of critical method permitted the incorporation of many superstitious notions. As has been pointed out, the Roman science was wholly a science of authority, and the greatest scientist was the greatest accumulator of previous authorities. Thus throughout its course in the Roman world science had been beating a retreat. By Isidore’s time these forces of short-sighted utilitarianism, the spirit of subservience to authority, and superstition, had brought it to a state of inoffensive feebleness such that it was more welcome to the Christian than was either poetry or philosophy.

This Roman pseudo-science could not, however, hold an important place in the thinking of the time: the fundamental conceptions that prevailed forbade it. The material world held a low place, as we have seen; on every side evidence can be found of an ascending scale of values from the material through the moral to the spiritual. Upon this idea is founded “the triple method of interpretation”[128] used in the Scriptures and elsewhere, and with it is connected the triple division of knowledge into natural science, ethics, and theology. There was not only an ascending scale of value for the different sorts of knowledge, but an ascending scale of validity. Spiritual truth and moral truth transcended the truth of material facts, whose stubbornness had been forgotten and had not yet been re-discovered. Yet, with all this depreciation of the material, it in some measure reasserted itself: as the literal meaning had to be grasped in the Scriptures before the higher meaning could be educed, so the material world had to be recognized before its higher meaning could be ascertained. This was the basis for science in the philosophy of the dark ages.

In this way Isidore’s pseudo-science was brought into harmony with religion. Natural science was, indeed, concerned with the lowest and faintest form of reality, namely, the material world; but even material things had their spiritual implications, and because of this were worthy of an orderly survey. The De Natura Rerum, in which each term is explained first as it relates to the natural world and then as to its higher meaning, shows how science played the subordinate part just indicated. It is of great interest at this point to notice that Isidore’s successor, Rabanus Maurus, in his comprehensive encyclopedia De Universo, which follows Isidore’s Etymologies closely, adds, however, the higher meanings which Isidore had left out in his work.[129] It is the importance of natural science from this point of view that Isidore has in mind in a passage in the Sententiae: “It does no harm to anyone if, because of simplicity, he has an inadequate idea of the elements, provided only he speaks the truth of God. For even though one may not be able to discuss the incorporeal and the corporeal natures, an upright life with faith makes him blessed.”[130]

He is far, however, from expressing complete approval of pagan science; the perversity of the pagan scientists forbids this. “The philosophers of the world are highly praised for the measuring of time, and the tracing of the course of the stars, and the analysis of the elements. Still, they had this only from God. Flying proudly through the air like birds, and plunging into the deep sea like fishes, and walking like dumb animals, they gained knowledge of the earth, but they would not seek with all their minds to know their Maker”.[131]

In judging the quality of Isidore’s science as science, we must remember that he is separated from Pliny, his great predecessor in the encyclopedic field, by nearly six centuries, and that those six centuries form a period of continuous intellectual decline; and, further, we must bear in mind the fact that Pliny himself sometimes copied what he did not understand, and was so little of a scientist as even to welcome the marvelous.[132] After this, what can be expected from Isidore? That he wrote what he did write, at the time he did, is in itself the astonishing fact. His work is the only symptom of intellectual life in two centuries of Western European history.

Isidore’s view of the past was as simple and dogmatic as his view of the universe at large; in fact it was conditioned by his world-view. The acceptance of Christianity and the new scale of values thus introduced had of necessity involved the projection of the new interests into the past. The legendary background of the new religion had accelerated the process. The past, as seen by writers of the pagan civilization and as reflecting the interests of that civilization, now became of no service, and, as a whole, was dropped. The pagan histories were regarded as written by men whose point of view was wholly false and mischievous, even though sometimes their facts might be correct. They were approached by the Christian re-adjusters of history in much the same spirit as that in which the modern historian goes to the medieval chronicle, though with an opposite aim: the modern historian is after what is social and human, while Augustine and Orosius were after illustrations of the ways of God to man.[133]

By Isidore’s time, then, the Christian view of the past had become completely de-secularized. Biblical tradition dominated all historical thinking. On the six days of creation was centered special attention. This point, at which the natural emanated from the supernatural, fascinated the medieval thinker as the doctrine of evolution does the modern. It formed the touch-stone by the aid of which was interpreted not only the material world,[134] but also the course of history. In parallelism with the six days and the six periods in man’s life, the history of the world was divided with absolute definiteness into six ages. Isidore himself was living in the sixth and last of these, “the residue of which was known to God alone”.[135] His view of the past had no perspective; or rather, it had an inverted perspective, because the increasing confusion of every department of the sublunar world led him to dwell in preference upon the earlier time when the course of history was confined to the pure stream of Hebrew tradition, when the supernatural manifested itself more frequently, and when even the names of personages were charged with prophetic meaning.

In this inverted perspective the history of the Hebrews naturally formed a prominent part. The Hebrew people of antiquity and their language, which is traced back to Adam, were the original race and language. It was only “at the building of the tower after the flood that the diversity of languages arose”. On this occasion not only did the different languages of later history appear, but at the same time and as a result, the different races of mankind were constituted.[136] All languages, then, and all races, are variants of the Hebrew type. Isidore believed that even in his time some of the nations could be traced back and identified with the original Hebrew stock by etymologizing on their names. Others, however, had cast aside their old names and taken others, “either from kings or countries or customs or other causes”, and the genealogy of these he believed to be irretrievably lost.[137]

CHAPTER IV

Isidore’s Relation to Education

The question of perpetuating the pagan range of educational subjects presented a great difficulty to the leaders of patristic and early medieval thought, so great a difficulty that some of them were almost more ready to discard education than to try to separate it from its heathen entanglements. In both the Greek and Roman worlds formal education had been late in developing; as a consequence its tone was wholly secular. Its object was to put the youth of the ruling classes in touch with the culture and life of the time. The subjects found most serviceable for study were literature, rhetoric, and philosophy. The sciences known to the ancients gradually gained a foot-hold also, and instruction began to be given in a number of them, including geometry, music, arithmetic, astronomy, medicine, and architecture. Finally, the subject-matter of education settled down to the stereotyped list of seven subjects, known as “the seven liberal arts”, from which there was apparently little deviation in later Roman and medieval times.[138] This formal education of the Romans was so well established and enjoyed such prestige that in spite of Christian hostility it continued to flourish until the increasing disorganization of society in the fifth and sixth centuries made the continuance of secular schools impossible.

Upon their disappearance the whole burden of maintaining education fell upon the church. In the church organization the effective bodies for such an activity were the groups of clergy attached to cathedrals and to monasteries. There was no system established by a central authority and enforced by public opinion to guide the efforts made by these bodies, and it is plain that in each case educational facilities for the training of priests would be provided in accordance with the intelligence and character of the different bishops and abbots. Where the ecclesiastical authorities were ignorant or careless, the training of the priest or monk must have degenerated to a sort of apprenticeship. The evidence which we possess of the illiteracy[139] of the clergy would lead us to infer that in the dark ages education, in any sense worthy of the name, was sporadic, the product of the happy coincidence of opportunity and an ecclesiastic intelligent enough to realize it.[140]

The first comprehensive effort[141] to deal with the educational situation from the Christian standpoint was made by Cassiodorus and was designed expressly to meet the needs of the inmates of a monastery in Southern Italy. Naturally he put forth his main endeavor on the side of what may be called theology, but, in addition, he felt impelled to give very brief and vague accounts of the seven liberal arts, which he was reluctantly forced to consider as an indispensable preparation for the former study.[142]

Cassiodorus’ attitude toward these preliminary studies is a curious one. He believed that their subject-matter was to be found scattered through the Scriptures and that “the teachers of secular learning” had gathered together the disjointed bits of information and organized them into the seven liberal arts. As a consequence he thought that a knowledge of these arts was of assistance when any passage relating to them was met in the reading of the Scriptures. In spite of this, however, it seems to have been his opinion that the less use made of them the better, and that, if ignorance of the liberal arts was a fault, it was certainly one of a minor character and had the advantage of not endangering the Christian’s faith.[143] With Cassiodorus the problem of education was little more than that of securing a training sufficient to enable one to read and study the Scriptures. The speculation cannot be avoided as to whether, if Christianity had depended, like Druidism, on an oral tradition, Cassiodorus might not have been willing to dispense with education altogether.

Isidore is the second writer to deal comprehensively with the subject-matter of Christian education. Before giving an account, however, of the way in which he met the problems that were presented to him, it is necessary to glance at the educational situation as it then existed in Spain. It appears from the enactments of the councils of Toledo in the sixth and seventh centuries that the clergy as a body were beginning to be concerned for the education of their order.[144] An article of the council of 531 directs that as soon as children destined for the secular clergy are placed under the control of the bishop, “they ought to be educated in the house of the church under the direction of the bishop by a master appointed for the purpose”.[145] Another article[146] says that “those who receive such an education” should not presume to leave their own church and go to another “since it is not fair that a bishop should receive or claim a pupil whom another bishop has freed from boorish stupidity and the untrained state of infancy”. It is further directed that those who were “ignorant of letters” should not become priests. An article of the fourth council of Toledo in 633, at which Isidore probably presided, orders that “whoever among the clergy are youths should remain in one room of the atrium, in order that they may spend the years of the lustful period of their lives not in indulgence but in the discipline of the church, being put in charge of an older man of the highest character as master of their instruction and witness of their life”.[147] These passages all refer to cathedral schools, but there is evidence equally good of the existence of similar schools in the monasteries.[148] Such, then, were the practical conditions, as far as known, which determined the educational activity of Isidore’s time.

The spirit in which Isidore approached the task of furnishing a comprehensive treatment of the secular subject-matter of education was the one proper to his age. He held that its place was a subordinate one. He seems to be expressing his own and not a borrowed view when he says that “grammarians are better than heretics, for heretics persuade men to drink a deadly draught, while the learning of grammarians can avail for life, if only it is turned to better uses”.[149] The same depreciation of the independent value of secular studies is reflected in his statement that the order of the seven liberal arts in the curriculum was one intended to secure a progressive liberation of the mind from earthly matters and “to set it at the task of contemplating things on high”.[150] He evidently believed that it was the function of the seven liberal arts to raise the mind from a lower or material to a higher or spiritual plane of thought.[151]

In the Etymologies, as has been noticed, Isidore has combined the encyclopedia of education, as exemplified in the works of Martianus Capella and Cassiodorus, and the encyclopedia of the whole range of knowledge, of which the works of Varro, Pliny, and Suetonius are leading examples. The first three of the twenty books which are comprised in the Etymologies are evidently educational texts; the last twelve as evidently belong to the encyclopedia of all knowledge.[152] The question is in which of these divisions the intervening books should be classed. If we look to Isidore’s predecessors for guidance on this point, we find that Capella gives only the seven liberal arts, while Cassiodorus gives not only a comprehensive account of preparatory studies in the form of the seven liberal arts, but adds in his De Institutione Divinarum Litterarum a treatment of the higher, or religious, education of the monk. The supposition that Isidore followed the example of Cassiodorus is the more natural one. Their educational purpose was much the same: Cassiodorus had in mind the training of the monk, while Isidore was concerned with the education of the priest. It is, all things considered, more natural to suppose that Isidore is giving in Books I-VIII of his Etymologies a comprehensive survey of the education of the secular clergy, than to suppose that his educational texts stopped short at the end of the seven liberal arts.

If this supposition is correct, the outline of this survey is as follows: Grammar (Bk. I), Rhetoric and Dialectic (Bk. II), Arithmetic, Geometry, Music, Astronomy (Bk. III), Medicine (Bk. IV), Laws and Times (Bk. V), the books and services of the church (Bk. VI), God, the angels, and the orders of the faithful (Bk. VII), the church and the different sects (Bk. VIII). The inclusion of medicine, law, and chronology, which were not in the corresponding plan of Cassiodorus,[153] meant merely an enlargement of his scheme to fit it for the slightly different purpose which Isidore had in mind. The reason for the inclusion of these subjects is the practical one: in the absence of any other educated class priests were obliged to have some slight knowledge of medicine and law, while the intricacy of the church calendar of the time made chronology a professional necessity.

At first sight this plan of educational subjects would seem to be at variance with our accepted idea that the seven liberal arts covered the whole field of preparatory training. A closer examination shows, however, that in form at least Isidore kept them in a class by themselves; and when he passes from them to medicine he is careful to specify that it is not one of the liberal arts, but forms a “second philosophy”.[154] By this he means that medicine—and the same may be assumed for laws and times—is placed in the higher and not the preparatory stage of education, and that in this sphere it plays a minor part.

If, then, this view of the subject-matter of the first eight books of the Etymologies is correct, it will be admitted that in Isidore’s organization of education a significant step has been taken. In the education of the Greek and Roman world there was nothing to parallel the medieval and modern university development, which has been characterized until recently by the three professional schools of law, medicine, and theology. In Isidore’s plan we have, for the first time, as professional studies, first, what corresponds to the later theology, and, in subordination to this, the subjects of law, medicine and chronology. It is evident, therefore, that we have here in embryo, as it were, the organization of the medieval university; law and medicine have only to be secularized and freed from their subordination to theology, and the medieval university in its complete form appears.

PART II
THE ETYMOLOGIES

BOOK I

ON GRAMMAR

INTRODUCTION

Grammar did not appear as a separate body of knowledge until a late period in the Greek civilization. The merest ground-work of the science had sufficed to meet all the demands of education, of philosophy, and of a literature in course of production; for its development it was necessary to await a period of literary criticism. When the Alexandrian scholars began to compare the idiom of Homer with that of their own day, the requisite stimulus for the scientific study of language was given, and grammar may be regarded as dating from the Alexandrian age.

What was at that time termed grammar, γραμματική, included far more than the modern science; it was the study of literature at large. The grammarian might have nothing to do with what we call grammar, but be a student of textual criticism or mythology. Any sort of study undertaken for the purpose of elucidating the poets was grammatical. Like the modern professor of literature, the only invariable characteristic of the grammarian was his literary point of view.[155]

The grammatical studies of the Romans were patterned closely after those of the Greeks; the Greek terminology and organization of the science were adopted without change. The Roman interest in the subject was no doubt heightened by the fact that the Roman culture was a bilingual one; thus a broad basis for the study was furnished, and naturally much attention was given to the derivation of words. A large number of scholarly works was produced, and the inferiority of the borrowed Roman culture is perhaps less noticeable in this department than in any other.

It was inevitable that this ‘grammar’, in a condensed form, should come to be used in common education. Its outlines, however, were rather vague, and many of its departments did not lend themselves to the concise statement necessary in a text-book. The first Greek school grammar, the τεχνὴ γραμματικὴ[156] of Dionysius Thrax, which was destined to be the basis of all the school grammars of antiquity, appeared about 80 B.C. It is noticeable that although the definition of grammar that is given[157] is the definition of the grammar of the scholars, the subjects actually treated are little more than the parts of speech. It was natural that there should be this gap between promise and performance. For a long time no doubt this mere outline was filled in by the oral interpretation of the masterpieces in the manner of the scholars; but when these ceased to be studied, in the early medieval period, the study of grammar was confined to the material offered in the text-books.[158]

The first of the Romans to produce a school grammar was Remmius Palaemon, who flourished in the first half of the first century. He had many successors in the later centuries of the Roman Empire, and the literary tradition of the school grammar continued unbroken into the Middle Ages. The most influential exponent of the subject was Aelius Donatus, whose Ars, written in the fourth century, was used throughout the Middle Ages. The chief writers of grammatical texts in the centuries preceding Isidore were Victorinus, Donatus, Diomedes, Charisius, and Martianus Capella in the fourth; Consentius and Phocas in the fifth; and Cassiodorus in the sixth. No new contributions were being made to the science, and these writers had no other resource than to copy their predecessors, which they did in a slavish manner.[159] The verbal similarity in all of them is so strong that it is impossible to trace with certainty the immediate source of any one of the later writers.

Isidore’s account of grammar is of somewhat more than the average length[160] found in these text-books, but its lack of solid substance, in which it differs from the books of the fourth century, measures the decline in intellectual grasp and thoroughness of the two intervening centuries. Donatus, Servius, and even Capella, stick closely to the technique of the subject and are thorough-going; their books are calculated to afford a severe discipline to the student. But in Isidore a feebleness in handling the subject is evident; he is apparently unaware of the superior importance of such subjects as conjugation and declension, and he is very easily led into confusion by the trains of thought suggested by his frequent derivations.[161]

ANALYSIS[162]

EXTRACTS

Chapter 2. On the seven liberal arts.[175]

1. The disciplines belonging to the liberal arts are seven. First, grammar, that is, practical knowledge of speech. Second, rhetoric, which is considered especially necessary in civil causes because of the brilliancy and copiousness of its eloquence. Third, dialectic, called also logic, which separates truth from falsehood by the subtlest distinctions.

2. Fourth, arithmetic, which includes the significance and the divisions of numbers. Fifth, music, which consists of poems and songs.

3. Sixth, geometry, which embraces measurements and dimensions. Seventh, astronomy, which contains the law of the stars.

Chapter 3. On the ordinary letters.

1. The foundations of the grammatic art are the ordinary letters, which elementary teachers[176] are occupied with, instruction in which is, as it were, the infancy of the grammatic art. Whence Varro calls it litteratio. Letters are signs of things, symbols of words, whose power is so great that without a voice they speak to us the words of the absent; for they introduce words by the eye, not by the ear.

2. The use of the letters was invented in order to remember things. For things are fettered by letters in order that they may not escape through forgetfulness. For in such a variety of things all could not be learned by hearing and held in the memory.

4. Latin and Greek letters have evidently come from the Hebrew. For among the latter aleph was first so named; then [judging] by the similarity of sound it was transmitted to the Greeks as alpha; likewise to the Latins as a. For the borrower fashioned the letter of the second language according to similarity of sound, so that we can know that the Hebrew language is the mother of all languages and alphabets.[177]

7. The letter Υ Pythagoras of Samos first made, after the model of human life, whose lower stem denotes the first of life, which is unsettled and has not yet devoted itself to the vices or the virtues. The double part which is above, begins in youth; of which the right side is steep, but leads to the blessed life; the left is easier, but leads down to ruin and destruction....

8. Among the Greeks there are five mystic letters.[178] The first is Υ, which denotes human life, of which we have just spoken. The second is Θ, which denotes death. For judges used to place this letter, theta, at the names of those whom they condemned to death; and it is called theta ἀπὸ τοῦ θανάτου, i.e., from death. Whence also it has a weapon through its middle, i.e., the sign of death. Of which a certain one speaks thus:

O multum ante alias infelix littera theta!

9. The third is Τ, indicating the shape of the cross of the Lord.... The remaining two, the first and the last, Christ claims for himself. For he is himself the beginning, himself the end, saying: “I am α and ω,” for they pass into one another in turn, and alpha passes in regular succession to ω and again ω returns to alpha; in order that the Lord might show in himself that he was the way from the beginning to the end and from the end to the beginning.

Chapter 4. On the Latin alphabet.

17. The nations gave the names of the letters in accordance with the sound in their own language, noting and distinguishing the sounds of the voice. After they had noted them, they gave them names and forms; and they made the forms in part at pleasure, in part according to the sound of the letters; as, for example, i and o, of which one has a slender stem, just as it has a thin sound; the sound of the other is gross (pinguis), just as its form is full.

Chapter 5. On grammar.

1. Grammar is the science of speaking correctly, and is the source and foundation of literature.[179] This one of the disciplines was discovered next after the ordinary letters, so that those who have already learned the letters may learn by it the method of speaking correctly. Grammar took its name from letters, for the Greeks call letters γράμματα.

4. The divisions of the grammatic art are enumerated by certain authorities as thirty; namely, eight parts of speech, the articulate voice, the letter, the syllable, metrical feet, accent, marks of punctuation, signs and abbreviations, orthography, analogy, etymology, glosses, synonyms, barbarisms, solecisms, [other] faults, metaplasms, schemata, tropes, prose, metres, fables, histories.

Chapter 6. On the parts of speech.

1. Aristotle first taught two parts of speech, the noun and the verb. Then Donatus defined eight. But all revert to these two chief ones, that is, to the noun and the verb, which indicate the person and the act. The remainder are appendages, and trace their origin to these.

2. For the pronoun arises from the noun and performs its function, as orator, ille. The adverb arises from the noun, as doctus, docte. The participle from the noun and verb, as lego, legens. But the conjunction and preposition and interjection are included in those mentioned.[180] Many therefore have defined five parts because these are superfluous.

Chapter 21. On critical marks (notae sententiarum).

1. In addition there were certain marks in the writings of celebrated authors, which the ancients set in poems and histories to discriminate among the passages. A mark is a separate form placed like a letter, to indicate some judgment about a word, thought or verse. There are twenty-six marks used in annotating verses, which are enumerated below with their names.[181]

Chapter 22. On shorthand.

1. Ennius[182] first invented 1,100 shorthand signs. The use of the signs was that scribes wrote whatever was said in public meeting or in court, several standing by at one time and deciding among themselves how many words and in what order each should write. At Rome Tullius Tiro, Cicero’s freedman, was the first to invent shorthand, but only for prepositions.[183]

2. After him Vipsanius Philargius and Aquila, Maecenas’s freedman, each added a number of signs. Then Seneca, collecting them all and arranging them and increasing their number, raised the total to 5,000. The signs (notae) are so-called because they denote words or syllables by marks,[184] and bring them again to the notice of readers, and they who have learned them are now properly called notarii.

Chapter 27. On orthography.

1. Orthography is Greek, and it means in the Latin correct writing; for ὀρθή in the Greek means correct, and γραφή means writing. This branch of knowledge teaches us how we ought to write. For as the art[185] treats of the inflection of the parts of speech, so orthography deals with the knowledge of writing, as, for example,

ad, when it is a preposition, takes the letter d; when it is a conjunction, the letter t.

2. Haud, when it is an adverb of negation, is terminated by the letter d and is aspirated at the beginning; but when it is a conjunction, it is written with the letter t and is without aspiration.

7. Forsitan ought to be written with n at the end, because its uncorrupted form is forte si tandem.

Chapter 29. On etymology.

1. Etymology is the derivation of words,[186] when the force of a verb or a noun is ascertained through interpretation. This Aristotle called σύμβολον, and Cicero, notatio, because it explains the names of things;[187] as, for example, flumen is so called from fluere, because it arose from flowing.

2. A knowledge of etymology is often necessary in interpretation, for, when you see whence a name has come, you grasp its force more quickly. For every consideration of a thing is clearer when its etymology is known. Not all names, however, were given by the ancients in accordance with nature, but certain also according to whim, just as we sometimes give slaves and estates names according to our fancy.

3. Hence it is that the etymologies of some names are not found, since certain things have received their name not according to the quality in which they originated, but according to man’s arbitrary choice. Etymologies are given in accordance with cause, as reges from regere, that is, recte agere; or origin, as homo because he is from the earth (humus); or from contraries, as lutum (mud) from lavare—since mud is not clean—and lucus (sacred grove), because being shady it has little light (parum luceat).

4. Certain words also were formed by derivation from other words; as prudens from prudentia. Certain also from cries, as graculus (jackdaw) from garrulitas. Certain also have sprung from a Greek origin, and have changed over into the Latin, as silva,[188] domus.

5. Other things have derived their names from the names of places, cities, or rivers. Many also are drawn from the languages of foreign peoples; whence their derivation is perceived with difficulty; for there are many barbarous words unknown to the Greeks and Latins.

Chapter 32. On barbarism.

1. Barbarism is the uttering of a word with an error in a letter or in a quantity: a letter, as floriet, when florebit is correct; a quantity, if the first syllable is prolonged instead of the middle one, as latebrae, tenebrae. And it is called barbarism from the barbarian peoples, since they were ignorant of the purity of Latin speech; for each nation becoming subject to the Romans, transmitted to Rome along with their wealth their faults, both of speech and of morals.

Chapter 37. On tropes.

1. Tropes are so named by the grammarians from a Greek word which in Latin means modi locutionum. They are turned from their own meaning to a kindred meaning that is not their own. And it is very difficult to comment on the names of them all, but Donatus gave for practice a list of thirteen selected from the whole number.

2. Metaphor is the assumption of a transfer of meaning in some word, as when we say segetes fluctuare (the grain-fields billow), vites gemmare, when we do not find any waves or gems in these things, but the words are transferred from the old application to a new one. These and other tropical forms of speech are veiled with figurative cloaks with reference to the things to be understood, with the view that they may exercise the intelligence of the reader, and may not be cheap because they are unadorned and easily apprehended.

22. Allegory is the saying of things that do not belong to the matter in hand (alienoloquium), for one thing is said, another is understood; as, tres in littore cervos conspicit errantes, where the three leaders of the Punic war, or the three Punic wars are indicated; and in the Bucolics, aurea mala decem misi, i.e., ten pastoral eclogues to Augustus. There are many species of this figure, of which seven are conspicuous: irony, antiphrasis, enigma, charientismus, paroemia, sarcasmus, astysmus.

23. It is irony where the thought is given a contrary meaning by the manner of speech. By this figure something is said cleverly, either in the way of accusation or insult, as the following:

Vestras, Eure, domos, illa se jactet in aula

Aeolus, et clauso ventorum carcere regnet.

And why aula (palace) if it is carcer (prison)! It is made clear by the manner of speech, for the manner of speech says carcer. Jactet in aula is irony, and the whole is expressed in a contradictory manner of speech by the figure of irony which mocks by praising.

24. Antiphrasis is language to be understood to the contrary, as, lucus (sacred grove), since it is without light (lux) because of the excessive gloom of the woods....

25. Between irony and antiphrasis there is this difference, that irony indicates by the manner of speaking alone what is meant, as when we say to a man doing ill, “Bonum est quod facis”. But antiphrasis indicates the contrary not by the voice of the speaker, but only in the words, whose derivation is the opposite [of their meaning].

Chapter 39. On metres.

4. Whatever is measured by verse feet is a poem (carmen). It is thought that the name was given because it was pronounced rhythmically (carptim), or ... because they who sang such things were supposed to be out of their minds (mente carere).

9. ... [The hexameter] excels the rest of the metres in authority, being alone of them all fitted as well to the greatest tasks as to the small, and with an equal capacity for sweetness and delight.... It is also older than the other metres. It is proved that Moses was the first to use it in the song of Deuteronomy, long before Pherecydes and Homer. Whence also it is evident that the making of poems was older among the Hebrews than among the nations. Since Job, too, who goes back as far as Moses, sang in hexameter verse, [using] the dactyl and the spondee.

12. Hecataeus of Miletus is said to have been the first among the Greeks to compose this metre; or, as others think, Pherecydes of Syros, and this metre before Homer was called Pythian, after Homer, heroic.

17. It is manifest that David the prophet was the first to compose and sing hymns in praise of God. Later among the nations Timothoe who (quae) lived in the time of Ennius, long after David, wrote the first hymns in honor of Apollo and the Muses. Hymni is translated from the Greek to the Latin as laudes.

25. Among grammarians they are wont to be called centones who [take] from the poems of Homer and Virgil with a view to their own works, and put together in patchwork fashion many bits found here and there to suit each subject.

26. Proba, wife of Adelphos, composed at great length a cento from Virgil about the structure of the universe and the gospels,[189] the subject-matter being made up verse by verse, and the verses being arranged appropriately to suit the subject-matter. And a certain Pomponius, among other poems (otia) of his own pen, wrote Tityrus from the same poet in honor of Christ.

Chapter 41. On history.

1. History is the story of what has been done, and by its means what has taken place in the past is perceived. It is called in the Greek historia, ἀπὸ τοῦ ἱστορεῖν, that is from seeing (videre) and learning (cognoscere). For among the ancients no one wrote history unless he had been present and witnessed what was to be described. For we understand what we see better than we do what we gather by hearsay.

2. For what is seen is told without lying. This discipline belongs to grammar because whatever is worth remembering is entrusted to letters....

Chapter 42. On the first writers of history.

1. Moses was the first among us to write a history of the beginning of the world. Among the nations Dares Phrygius was the first to publish a history of the Greeks and Trojans, which they say was written by him on palm-leaves.

2. And after Dares, Herodotus is considered the first historian in Greece. After whom Pherecydes was famous, at the time when Esdras wrote the law.

Chapter 43. On the usefulness of history.

1. Histories of the heathen do no harm to their readers where they tell what is useful. For many wise men have put past deeds into their histories for the instruction of the present.

2. Besides, in history the total reckoning of past times and years is embraced and many necessary matters are examined in the light of the succession of consuls and kings.

Chapter 44. On the sorts of history.

1. There are three sorts of history. The doings of one day are called ephemeris. Among us this name is diarium....

2. What is arranged according to separate months is called kalendaria.

3. Annales are the deeds of the years, one by one. For whatever was related in the commentaries from year to year as worthy of memory, in peace and war, by sea and land, they named annals from the deeds of a year.

4. But history is a thing of many years or times, and through diligence in it the yearly commentaries are put into books. Between history and annals there is this difference, that history belongs to the times which we see, and annals belong to years which our age does not know. Whence Sallust is made up of history; Livy, Eusebius and Hieronymus of annals and history.

BOOK II

ON RHETORIC

INTRODUCTION

Rhetoric held a position in the ancient world that the modern reader has difficulty in understanding. Democratic government, including the popular administration of justice, at a time when all discussion was necessarily oral, created an ideal condition in Athens and the other Greek states for the development of oratory. In the life of the Roman republic, too, there was enough of the popular element to make public speaking of the greatest importance. The art of rhetoric was therefore in close touch with the real interests of life. It was not merely a school discipline, but a preparation for a definite activity that held a high place in the esteem of the people, and it embodied a set of sensible ideas on public speaking in which the tendency to over-elaboration and artificiality characteristic of scholastic disciplines was kept in check by the wholesome influences that came from practical application.

With the establishment of the Roman Empire public discussion of political matters quickly disappeared, and forensic oratory for the same reason tended to decline. Thus the chief element which had given vitality to ancient rhetoric was eliminated. Roman oratory, however, died hard. It nursed itself on various pretences and shows. Much of the old interest in oratory turned back on rhetoric, which was thus exposed to a double danger, as an educational discipline that had lost connection with practical life and as a subject that had become too fashionable. When once the new influence had gained headway a strong tendency to artificiality was revealed. Rhetoric became scholastic and ridiculously overburdened with classification and terminology; it grew more lifeless as it grew more systematic. Interest then gradually subsided. Treatises grew shorter and drier, and consisted largely of long lists of terms defined without critical understanding of their meaning. The subject now held its place by the mere force of authority.

This was the state of rhetoric in Isidore’s time, and his treatment reflects the condition to which it had been reduced. He says that “it is easy for the reader to admire but impossible to understand” the books on rhetoric, and, further, that when they are laid aside “all recollection vanishes.” From a writer with this attitude little need be expected. His few miserable pages, compared with Quintilian’s interesting treatise, measure fully the decline of rhetoric during the first six centuries A.D. What Isidore gives is merely a summary, so cursory and disjointed that it frequently cannot be understood without liberal reference to the fuller treatises of his predecessors.

In Isidore’s De Rhetorica practically the whole of Cassiodorus’ text-book on this subject is incorporated without acknowledgment. Two authorities, Victorinus and Cicero, are quoted,[190] but on referring to Cassiodorus it becomes plain that even here Isidore is merely copying his authority’s citation of authority. However his brief chapter on law cannot be paralleled in any extant treatise before his time and its insertion must be credited to his initiative.

ANALYSIS[191]

EXTRACTS

Chapter 1. On rhetoric and its name.

1. Rhetoric is the science of speaking well in civil questions for the purpose of persuading to what is just and good. It is called rhetoric in the Greek ἀπὸ τοῦ ῥητορίζειν, that is, from eloquence of speech. For speech among the Greeks is called ῥῆσις, and the orator ῥήτωρ.

2. Rhetoric is allied to the grammatic art. For in grammar we learn the science of speaking correctly, and in rhetoric we discover in what way to express what we have learned.

Chapter 2. On the discoverers of the art of rhetoric.

1. This discipline was invented by Gorgias, Aristotle and Hermagoras among the Greeks, and translated into Latin by Tullius and Quintilian, but with such eloquence and variety that it is easy for the reader to admire, impossible to understand.

2. For while he holds the parchment the connected discourse as it were cleaves to his memory, but presently when it is laid aside all recollection vanishes. Perfect knowledge of this discipline makes the orator.

Chapter 3. On the name of the orator and the parts of rhetoric.

1. The orator is the good man skilled in speaking. ‘The good man’ means nature, character, accomplishments (artibus). ‘Skilled in speaking’ means studied eloquence, which consists of five parts: invention, ordering, diction and style, memory, delivery, and the purpose, which is to persuade of something.

2. Skill in speaking consists in three things: nature, learning, practise; nature, that is, talent; learning, knowledge; practice, continuous labor. These are the things that are looked to not only in the orator but in every artist with a view to accomplishment.

Chapter 4. The three kinds of causes.

1. There are three kinds of causes: deliberative, epideictic, judicial. The deliberative kind is that in which there is a discussion as to what ought or ought not to be done in regard to any of the practical affairs of life. The epideictic, in which a character is shown to be praiseworthy or reprehensible.

2. The judicial, in which opinion as to reward or punishment with reference to an act of an individual is given.

Chapter 16. Style and diction.

2. One must use good Latin and speak to the point. He speaks good Latin who constantly uses the true and natural names of things, and is not at variance with the style and literary refinement of the present time. Let it not be enough for him to be careful of what he says, without saying it in a clear, attractive manner; nor that only, without saying what he says wittily also.

Chapter 21. On figures.

1. Speech is amplified and adorned by the use of figures. Since direct, unvaried speech creates a weariness and disgust both of speaking and hearing, it must be varied and turned into other forms, so that it may give renewed power to the speaker, and become more ornate and turn the judge from an aloof countenance and attention.

ON DIALECTIC

INTRODUCTION

In tracing the fortunes of logic through the period of decadence and the dark ages the effect upon it of a transition from a pagan to a Christian environment need scarcely be taken into consideration. Such marks of degeneration as it shows must be attributed simply to the general decay of thought, which was marked in both pagan and Christian spheres. By its character logic was well adapted to pass from the service of Greek philosophy and science to that of Christian theology: it had been worked out mainly as a method of Greek science, which was especially backward in the fields where induction plays a large part; consequently the Greek logic is not inductive. It is the logic of universals ready-made, and it has nothing to do with their making; it receives universals as authoritative. It was therefore most welcome to Christian thinkers, since it was precisely adapted to “the task of drawing out the implications of dogmatic premises.”[224]

It was not until a very late period that logic appeared in the Latin language in the form of a school text. In fact, with the exception of Varro’s Dialectic in his “Nine Books of the Disciplines,” which has been lost, there were no writings on logic in the Latin down to the fourth century. Instruction in the subject was apparently given in Greek and to but few pupils. In the fourth century, however, Greek was going out of use, and it became necessary, if logic was to be saved in the schools, to have Latin text-books.[225] The need was met by a line of text-writers, of whom Marius Victorinus (c. 350) was the first. The oldest Latin school-book on logic that has survived, however, is that of Martianus Capella. Neither he nor his two successors, Cassiodorus and Isidore, were versed in the subject; they were merely compilers of educational encyclopedias. Such was the perfunctory origin of the Latin text-books on logic.[226]

The reader of Isidore’s account of logic is struck by the enthusiasm displayed. Speaking of Aristotle’s Categories he says: “This work of Aristotle’s should be read attentively, since, just as is stated therein, all that a man says is included in the ten categories.”[227] Further on he quotes the saying that “Aristotle dipped his pen in intellect when he wrote the Perihermeniae.”[228] Again, a study of Apuleius “will introduce the reader advantageously with God’s help to great paths of understanding.”[229] All of these passages, however, come word for word from Cassiodorus. Isidore’s enthusiasm as well as his bibliography seems to lack genuineness.[230]

ANALYSIS

EXTRACTS

Book II, Chapter 22. On dialectic.

1. Dialectic is the discipline elaborated with a view of ascertaining the causes of things. In itself it is the sub-division of philosophy that is called logical, i.e., rational, capable of defining, enquiring and expressing precisely. For it teaches in the several kinds of questions how the true and false are separated by discussion.

2. The first philosophers used dialectic in their discourses, but they did not reduce it to the practical form of an art. After them Aristotle systematized the subject-matter of this branch of learning, and called it dialectic, because there is discussion of words (dictis) in it; for λεκτὸν means dictio. And dialectic follows after the discipline of rhetoric because they have many things in common.

Chapter 23. On the difference between the dialectical and the rhetorical art.

1. Varro, in the nine books of the Disciplinae, distinguished dialectic and rhetoric by the following simile: “Dialectic and rhetoric are as in man’s hand the closed fist and the open palm, the former drawing words together, the latter scattering them.”

2. If dialectic is keener in expressing things precisely, rhetoric is more eloquent in persuading to the belief it desires. The former seldom appears in the schools, the latter goes without a break [from the schools] to the law-court. The former gets few students, the latter often whole peoples.