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IS IDORUS. De responsione mundi et de a Strorum ordinatione. 7 December, l472.
This stiori treati se, better known under the tille De natura rerum,'' is an epitome of the seventh-century Spanish encyclopedisi's vi e S Oi the universe. About hali os iis 46 shori chapters are devoted to astronomy and meteorology, while the rest contains geographical descriptions. ΙSidbre's chi et work the 'Etymologiae, as Well as his 'De ordine creaturarum, treais also os astronomy, hutless fully. The Work was addressed to Sisebutus, Mng of the Visigotiis belween 6 Ia and 62o. You asked me to explain to you something of the nature and causes of things V Isidore wrote in the Prologue. I, on my pari, have run GVer the WorkSol earlier writers, and am not flow to satis ly your interest and destre, describingin part the system of the clays and monilis, the measure of the year, and the changes of the seasons, the nature of the elementa, me courses of the sun and the moon, the significance of certain stars, the signs of the weather and wincls, and also the position of the earth, with the alternate ticles of the sea. And setting iorili allthese as they are Writim by the ancients, and Especialty in the works of the Catholicwriters, I have added shori notes. Fon to know the nature of these things is notthe sdom of vain superstition, ii they are considered with sound and sober learning . . . Whereiore, heginning with the Jay, whose creation appears first in theomer of visi hie mings, let me expound those remaitiing matters as to which wel now that certain men of the heathen worid and of the Church pronounced opinions repro lucing in sonae cases both their thoughis and texis so that the authori ty oithe VeiF Words may carry bellet. TheSe introductoo remarks give a good description Oi me book - and of allthe other works of Isidore. The bishop of S ille was not an originat writer orthinker. He copi ed on the one hand the works of Pliny, Suetonius, Varro, Pompeius Festus and other Latin encyclopedi sis, and on the other, the writings of Tertullian, Ambrose, Augustine and other Chureli Fathers. In a desperate efforthe tried to harmonise the tea hings of the pagan and the Christian philosophers, ending in contradictions and confusion. His own position on some of the most important questions rema ins obscure. Scholars, for example, stili dehate whether heaccepted the Ptolemaic theory ahout the spherical shape of the earth or whether hebetioed in the flatness of the eat th as taurat in the Bible. For even here he trieclio compromise. He spealis of the Spheres of heaven, and of the sun and the moon revolving in circles around the earth; but these circles he conceived as horizontal, their planes lying on the earthi He belloed in the four elements euth, air, fire and water. The fire was hol and dry: the air, hin and wet: the water, mei and cold; and the earth cold and dry. Eaeli successive pair os elements having qualities in common, their transmutabili ty into each other Was possibi e This doctrine of course, Isidore took irom Aristolle, as did the Chureli Famers beiore him and the scholastics alterwards. It would he uniust, thereiore, to reproach him onthis p int. With ali his limitations, Isidore had a great virtve: he linew the value os science. His knowledge of the classical writers was imperieci, but at least he didnot condemn them blindly. Ηe tried rather to transmit the remnants of Graeco Latin thought to the Christian worid. Someone has called him the last of the scholars of antiqui ty.V Thmum Cassiodorus particularly, he was reatly lini ed tothe late Roman writers His encyclopedia Was modested on their encyclopedias: in a new age, he continued their tradition. But he was also a genuine representative of the neis spirit. Thus one can understand that the Middie Ages revered him asa great thini er, and that his encyclopedia, in iis turn, hecame the modet for those of Vincent de Beauvais, Alberius Magnus, and others. And in any appini sal of his accomplistiment one must remember that ior centuries he stood alone. His light clim as it was. Was one of the few lictis of the Dain Ages Isidore was boni at Carthagena, in Spatii, in 56o. His brother, Leander, waSarchbishop oi Toledo; in 599 Isidore succeeded him in this see. As archbashophe presided at severat Gunciis at Toledo. at the last oi which in 633, no less than siXUQWo bishopS were present: Spain was actualty governed by bishops. He di edin 636. In I 598 he was canoniged as a Siant. In vim of the contusion in some biographi es, it may be not unnecessary toremark here that 1 ope de riga's poem 'Isidro and his three plays on the child-hood, youm, and later lite of that Sales have nothing to do with Isidore of Seville. They were written in honor of Isidro, labrador de Mad id an eleventii centun humble pinsani, whose bones were supposed to lime cured Mng Philip III of Spatia. and who at me request of tho Κing was made a Saint in I 622. Bought in March, 18 .