Isidore of Seville

Isidore of Seville

Saint, Latin name Isidorus Hispalensis. ?560--636 ad, Spanish archbishop and scholar, noted for his Etymologies, an encyclopedia. Feast day: April 4

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Isidore of Seville 

Born circa 560; died Apr. 4, 636, in Seville. Spanish theologian and author.

Isidore became archbishop of Seville in 600. He is the author of the Etymologiae, a distinctive encyclopedia of the early Middle Ages, and the History of the Kings of the Goths, Vandals, and Suevi, a work dealing primarily with the political and ecclesiastical history of Visigothic Spain. Isidore was an ideologist of the Hispano-Roman aristocracy that supported the authority of the Visigoths. The works of Isidore, who was well educated for his day, are compilatory in character. Their value is primarily in the great amount of factual material they contain.

WORKS

Patrologiae cursus completus: Seria latina, vols. 81–84. Paris, 1862–78.
Excerpts from Etymologiae. In Agrikul’tura v pamiatnikakh Zapadnogo srednevekov’ia. Moscow-Leningrad, 1936. Pages 1–40.

REFERENCE

Fontaine, J. Isidore de Séville …. vols. 1–2. Paris, 1959.