CHAPTER III

CHAPTER IIIIsidore’s World View

Isidore’s World View

Is itpossible 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 theEtymologies, 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, andwhich, 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 ofthe 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 inDe 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 thesummer solstice which is situatedin the east, between the northern circle and the circle of heat, and the circle which is placedin 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]

“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.Illustration: The five circles

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 thatzonaandcirculuswere 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 theorbis terraeor circle of the land.[64]The adjustment of thetwo 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 thesecommon 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 ofDe Natura Rerumhe 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, thequinta essentia, or ether, superior to the others and permeating them, Isidore shows merely a trace. He says in one passagethat “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 intorelation 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 everybranch 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 thetime 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: “Thearteriae[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.Illustration: Meteorology

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 conceptionseemed to Isidore so important that he introduced a figure to illustrate it. (Fig. II.)

Fig. 3.Illustration: Elements

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 thespiritual—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 hisCertain Allegories of the Holy Scripturesa 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. InDe Natura RerumIsidore makes a regular practice of first giving theexplanation 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 theEtymologiesthis “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 bespoken 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 theDifferentiae:

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 theEtymologies. The only reflection of value suggested by the treatment of philosophy in Isidore’s works is that in being de-secularized it hascompletely 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 thoughtthat 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 didnot 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. TheDe 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 encyclopediaDe Universo, which follows Isidore’sEtymologiesclosely, 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 theSententiae: “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 hedid 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, weretheoriginal 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]

Back to Index Next