Isidore’s Etymologies shaped medieval Christian understanding as a systematic ordering of creation

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

Categorization

• SHARE: The Etymologies surviving in ~1,000 manuscripts as the Middle Ages’ best-seller is exactly the sort of nerdy fact a friend into medieval intellectual history would enjoy.