CHAPTER IIIsidore’s Relation to Previous Culture
Isidore’s Relation to Previous Culture
It hasbeen 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 knowledgeof 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 theEtymologiesand 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’sEtymologiesis 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 whichthe 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 togeneralizerather 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 hisgreat workDe 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 hisNatural 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’sEtymologies. 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 conspicuoustendency to confusion and feebleness of thought, the habit of heedless copying that we find in an aggravated form in theEtymologies, 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 literaryfactor which influenced Isidore in the composition of theEtymologies, 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 hisDisciplinarum 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, whoseDe Artibus et Disciplinis Liberalium LitterarumIsidore certainly had before him when he wrote the account of the seven liberal arts which occupies the first three books of theEtymologies. 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 theEtymologies. 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-scienceof 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 theEtymologiesand 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 theEtymologies, 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]Itseems 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.