Isidore of Seville and His Reception in the Early Middle Ages
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LATE ANTIQUE AND EARLY MEDIEVAL IBERIA 2 LATE ANTIQUE AND EARLY MEDIEVAL IBERIA Fear & Wood (eds) Wood & Fear Isidore of Seville (d. 636 AD) is a crucial figure in the preservation and propagation of Classical and Patristic learning. He put this learning to varied use in his own day, ensuring in the process that it could be made useful for future generations. Because of the depth of what he preserved and the breadth of its diffusion, Pope John Paul II proclaimed Isidore the patron saint of the Internet in 1997. His influence was felt throughout the middle ages, most acutely in early medieval Western Europe. Isidore’s compilations of the works of earlier authorities provided theological, pastoral, scientific and historical resources that formed an essential part of monastic curricula for centuries. Representing a cross-section of the different approaches that have been taken to Isidore’s writings, the collected essays in Isidore of Seville and his Reception in the Early Middle Ages: Transmitting and Transforming Knowledge explore the sources on which Isidore drew, how he selected and arranged them, and the different ways in which his legacy was appropriated by future in the Early Middle Ages of Seville and his Reception Isidore generations across the early medieval West. Andrew Fear is Lecturer in Classics and Ancient History at the University of Manchester and author of Rome and Baetica (Oxford, 1996), The Lives of the Visigothic Fathers (Liverpool, 1997) and Orosius: Seven Books of History against the Pagans (Liverpool, 2010). Jamie Wood is Senior Lecturer in History at the University of Lincoln, au- thor of The Politics of Identity in Visigothic Spain: Religion and Power in the Edited by Andrew Fear and Jamie Wood Histories of Isidore of Seville (Leiden, 2012), and a number of other articles on late antique and Visigothic Spain, especially the works of Isidore of Seville. Isidore of Seville and his Reception Amsterdamin the Early Middle Ages TransmittingUniversity and TransformingPress Knowledge ISBN:978-90-8964-828-0 AUP.nl 9 7 8 9 0 8 9 6 4 8 2 8 0 Isidore of Seville and his Reception in the Early Middle Ages Amsterdam UniversityPress Late Antique and Early Medieval Iberia Scholarship on the Iberian Peninsula in late antiquity and the early Middle Ages is burgeoning across a variety of disciplines and time periods, yet the publication profile of the field remains disjointed. ‘Late Antique and Early Medieval Iberia’ (LAEMI) provides a publication hub for high-quality research on Iberian Studies from the fields of history, archaeology, theology and religious studies, numismatics, palaeography, music, and cognate disciplines. Another key aim of the series is to break down barriers between the excellent scholarship that takes place in Iberia and Latin America and the Anglophone worlds. Series Editor Jamie Wood, University of Lincoln, UK Editorial Board Members Andrew Fear, University of Manchester, UK Nicola Clarke, Newcastle University, UK Iñaki Martín Viso, University of Salamanca, Spain Glaire Anderson, University of North Carolina, USA Eleonora Dell’Elicine, University of Buenos Aires, Argentina Amsterdam UniversityPress Isidore of Seville and his Reception in the Early Middle Ages Transmitting and Transforming Knowledge Edited by Andrew Fear and Jamie Wood Amsterdam UniversityPress Amsterdam University Press Cover illustration: Statue of Isidore of Seville on the front steps of the Biblioteca Nacional de España in Madrid (Wikimedia Commons, Luis García) Cover design: Coördesign, Leiden Lay-out: Crius Group, Hulshout Amsterdam University Press English-language titles are distributed in the US and Canada by Amsterdamthe University of Chicago Press. isbn 978 90 8964 828 0 e-isbn 978 90 4852 676 5 (pdf) doi 10.5117/9789089648280University nur 684 Press © Andrew Fear & Jamie Wood / Amsterdam University Press B.V., Amsterdam 2016 All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the written permission of both the copyright owner and the author of the book. Every effort has been made to obtain permission to use all copyrighted illustrations reproduced in this book. Nonetheless, whosoever believes to have rights to this material is advised to contact the publisher. Table of Contents Preface 7 Paul Fouracre 1 Introduction 11 Andrew Fear and Jamie Wood 2 A Family Affair 31 Leander, Isidore and the Legacy of Gregory the Great in Spain Jamie Wood 3 Variations on a Theme 57 Isidore and Pliny on Human and Human-Instigated Anomaly Mary Beagon 4 Putting the Pieces Back Together 75 Isidore and De Natura Rerum Andrew Fear 5 The Politics of History-Writing 93 Problematizing the Historiographical Origins of Isidore of Seville in Early Medieval Hispania Michael J. Kelly Amsterdam6 Isidorian Texts in Seventh-Century Ireland 111 Marina Smyth 7 Isidore of Seville in Anglo-Saxon England 131 The Synonyma as a UniversitySource of Felix’s Vita S. Guthlaci Claudia Di Sciacca Press 8 Hispania et Italia 159 Paul the Deacon, Isidore, and the Lombards Christopher Heath 9 Rylands MS Latin 12 177 A Carolingian Example of Isidore’s Reception into the Patristic Canon Melissa Markauskas 10 Adoption, Adaptation, & Authority 209 The Use of Isidore in the Opus Caroli Laura Carlson Abbreviations 231 Index 233 Amsterdam UniversityPress Preface Paul Fouracre, University of Manchester ‘God’s anger was shown so clearly that a star appeared in the heavens – the star astrologers call a comet: when it rises, they say, the earth is convulsed with hunger, with the swift succession of kings, with the movement of peoples, and the clashing of swords threatens it’. These are the words of a Frankish hagiographer writing probably in the early 680s. He (we can be almost certain that it was a ‘he’) was describing the interregnum of 675/6 which led to the death of his hero, Leudegar, bishop of Autun. The passage just quoted came from Isidore’s Etymologies (3.71.16). For an author who rarely moves beyond the scriptural in his borrowings, it is remarkable to see him turning to Isidore in this way. The borrowing is testimony both to the rapid dissemination of Isidore’s works across Western Europe and to their importance as tools for explaining human vicissitudes in a turbulent world. Several of the chapters in this volume derive from a day workshop that was held at the Instituto Cervantes in Manchester in April 2013. The aim in putting together the volume was to combine these pieces with some specially-commissioned studies in order to create the first English-language collected volume on Isidore. Drawing on the strong scholarly tradition in the study of Isidore in France and Spain, as well as the increasing number of new editions of key Isidorian texts, the volume incorporates original contributions from established and early career scholars that provide a chronologically and geographically coherent overview of Isidore’s impact Amsterdamacross Western Europe in the early medieval period, from Spain, Ireland, England, Italy and Francia. The debt Western European learning of the Early Middle Ages owed to Isidore as a transmitter and translator of the classical tradition is more or less a given in narrativesUniversity of intellectual history. A collection of essays that clarifies, highlights nuances and further explainsPress his contribution is therefore most welcome. It is particularly useful to juxtapose the Iberian context of Isidore’s work with its reception in other cultures: the collection demonstrates, as the editors put it, ‘that there was not one Isidorian legacy but many’. And as Christopher Heath’s chapter suggests, we can identify that legacy in works which do not actually quote him. Heath’s thinking was in fact prompted by a question at a seminar in London where he presented a structural analysis of the works of Paul the Deacon. There, a distinguished classicist asked, ‘Where is Isidore in all this?’ Well, in linguistic terms, 8 PAUL FOURACRE strictly nowhere, but was it conceivable that Paul, writing in the later eighth century, was influenced by Isidore? Careful research reveals that indeed he was: Paul’s praise of Italy turns out to owe a great deal to Isidore’s Laus Spaniae. One reason for thinking that Paul must have been familiar with Isidore’s work is that he was a fixture of the Carolingian cultural project into which Paul was himself co-opted. Laura Carlson explains how the Carolingian intelligentsia were reliant on Isidore to formulate their views on spirituality, especially in relation to image and language. Interestingly it was another Spaniard, Theodulf of Orléans, who led the thinking here, and Theodulf was very proud of his Iberian heritage. Melissa Markauskas further shows how Carolingians reached for their Isidore to help them navigate Patristic material. In short, for the Carolingians Isidore was also the ‘go to’ for political ideas, for explanations of natural phenomena, for the definitions of orthodoxy and heresy, and for the conception of Iberia itself. It is surely no coincidence that when the Carolingians tried to put that religious definition into practice by presenting themselves as the standard bearers of orthodoxy, they turned their fire upon Adoptionism, a peculiarly Spanish (and frankly rather obscure) heresy. More surprising at first sight is to find the influence of Isidore’s Synonyma upon Felix’s Life of Guthlac, for this is set in the early eighth century in the badlands around Crowland, still today a remote spot in the Lincolnshire fens. But as Claudia di Siacca makes clear, it is not that surprising given the fact that Isidore was, in the words of our editors, ‘a staple figure of early Anglo-Saxon libraries’. Isidore’s influence spread like the Atlantic tide, up from Spain, round the British Isles and down into Francia, as well as by land across into Francia from the south.