Abstract

Isidore (ca. 560–636 CE) was bishop of Seville, metropolitan bishop of the ecclesiastical province of Baetica, and advisor to the Visigothic kings of Spain in the first third of the seventh century. However, most importantly, he was the outstanding intellectual of early medieval Spain and played a central role in the transmission of much classical and early Christian learning into the medieval period. His magnum opus, the Etymologiae, over one thousand medieval manuscripts of which survive,
is the most famous example of this influence, but numerous other works attempted to categorize, organize, and make useful the knowledge of the pagan past for the Christian
present and future.