Isidore’s biblical world-chronicle is actually structured as Roman imperial history
Evidence
Isidore’s numerous works include chronicles, biblical commentaries, theological tracts, and the Etymologies, which were perhaps the best-seller of the Middle Ages, surviving in close to one thousand medieval manuscripts. They comprise a vast encyclopedic text into which Isidore poured knowledge gleaned from the Bible, Latin poets and geographers, and church fathers. Isidore’s ambitious intellectual program represents an attempt to grasp the rational order of God’s creation: to order human knowledge. The universe, for medieval Christians, was a rational creature. Created by God in six days, its structure was a reflection of divine wisdom. To study the universe was to study God’s reason. History, too, had a rational, divinely ordained structure. — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 92 (
#complicates, via linked claim)
For ideological discourse, especially in modernity, is a key element of any form of domination, particularly the sovereign type. When the theology of progress is universalized, as it is inherently made to be, historians, however unconsciously, begin to see the world as moving on a linear trajectory, one that progresses from an earlier and less developed stage to civilization, always dictated by Western terms. — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 209 (
#complicates, via linked claim)
We are all, so far as we inherit the civilization of Europe, still citizens of the Roman Empire, and time has not yet proved Virgil wrong. — Stephen Kershaw, A Brief History of the Roman Empire, 1983 (
#complicates, via linked claim)
Categorization
- XREF: connects to: Christian thinkers fused biblical and Roman imperial history into one narrative — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 97; Christian historiography fused biblical and Roman imperial history via Eusebius — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 97; Isidore was the first Christian chronicler to date all six ages — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 98 (+4 more)
Broader Connections
- Isidore’s Etymologies shaped medieval Christian understanding as a systematic ordering of creation
#complicates(0.75) — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 92 - Isidore explained human diversity as biblical history made rational.
#complicates(0.75) - The universalized theology of progress makes historians unconsciously reproduce imperial hierarchies
#complicates(0.75) — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 209 - Western civilization continues to be influenced by the Roman Empire.
#complicates(0.75) — Stephen Kershaw, A Brief History of the Roman Empire, 1983