page_title: Etymologiae
section_title: Overview
hierarchical_section_title: Etymologiae / Overview
caption_attribution_description: T and O style mappa mundi (map of the known world) from the first printed version of Isidorus' Etymologiae (Kraus 13). The book was written in 623 and first printed in 1472 at Augsburg by one Günther Zainer (Guntherus Ziner), Isidor's sketch thus becoming the oldest printed map of the occident. Note: T-O-maps are typically displayed "East-up", show Jerusalem at the center and the paradise at the outmost East, balanced by the pillars of Hercules at the outmost West.
context_page_description: Etymologiae, also known as the Origines and usually abbreviated Orig., is an etymological encyclopedia compiled by Isidore of Seville towards the end of his life. Isidore was encouraged to write the book by his friend Braulio, Bishop of Saragossa. The Etymologies summarized and organized a wealth of knowledge from hundreds of classical sources; three of its books are derived largely from Pliny the Elder's Natural History. Isidore acknowledges Pliny, but not his other principal sources, namely Cassiodorus, Servius and Solinus. The work contains whatever Isidore, an influential Christian bishop, thought worth keeping. Its subject matter is extremely diverse, ranging from grammar and rhetoric to the earth and the cosmos, buildings, metals, war, ships, humans, animals, medicine, law, religions and the hierarchies of angels and saints.
  Etymologiae covers an encyclopedic range of topics.
context_section_description: Etymologiae presents in abbreviated form much of that part of the learning of antiquity that Christians thought worth preserving. Etymologies, often very far-fetched, form the subject of just one of the encyclopedia's twenty books (Book X), but perceived linguistic similarities permeate the work. An idea of the quality of Isidore's etymological knowledge is given by Peter Jones: "Now we know most of his derivations are total nonsense (eg, he derives baculus, 'walking-stick', from Bacchus, god of drink, because you need one to walk straight after sinking a few)".
  Isidore's vast encyclopedia of ancient learning includes subjects from theology to furniture, and provided a rich source of classical lore and learning for medieval writers. In his works including the Etymologiae, Isidore quotes from around 475 works from over 200 authors. Bishop Braulio, to whom Isidore dedicated it and sent it for correction, divided it into its twenty books.
  An analysis by Jacques André of Book XII shows it contains 58 quotations from named authors and 293 borrowed but uncited usages: 79 from Solinus; 61 from Servius; 45 from Pliny the Elder. Isidore takes care to name classical and Christian scholars whose material he uses, especially, in descending order of frequency, Aristotle (15 references), Jerome (10 times), Cato (9 times), Plato (8 times), Pliny, Donatus, Eusebius, Augustine, Suetonius, and Josephus. He mentions as prolific authors the pagan Varro and the Christians Origen and Augustine. But his translator Stephen Barney notes as remarkable that he never actually names the compilers of the encyclopedias that he used "at second or third hand", Aulus Gellius, Nonius Marcellus, Lactantius, Macrobius, and Martianus Capella. Barney further notes as "most striking" that Isidore never mentions three out of his four principal sources (the one he does name being Pliny): Cassiodorus, Servius and Solinus. Conversely, he names Pythagoras eight times, even though Pythagoras wrote no books. The Etymologies are thus "complacently derivative".
  In book II, dealing with dialectic and rhetoric, Isidore is heavily indebted to translations from the Greek by Boethius, and in book III, he is similarly in debt to Cassiodorus, who provided the gist of Isidore's treatment of arithmetic. Caelius Aurelianus contributes generously to the part of book IV dealing with medicine. Isidore's view of Roman law in book V is viewed through the lens of the Visigothic compendiary called the  Breviary of Alaric, which was based on the Code of Theodosius, which Isidore never saw. Through Isidore's condensed paraphrase a third-hand memory of Roman law passed to the Early Middle Ages. Lactantius is the author most extensively quoted in book XI, concerning man. Books XII, XIII and XIV are largely based on Pliny the Elder's Natural History and Solinus, whereas the lost Prata of Suetonius, which can be partly pieced together from what is quoted in Etymologiae, seems to have inspired the general plan of the work, as well as many of its details.
  Isidore's Latin, replete with nonstandard Vulgar Latin, stands at the cusp of Latin and the local Romance language of Hispania. According to the prefatory letters, the work was composed at the urging of his friend Braulio, Bishop of Saragossa, to whom Isidore, at the end of his life, sent his codex inemendatus ("unedited book"), which seems to have begun circulating before Braulio was able to revise and issue it with a dedication to the late Visigothic King Sisebut.
caption: An early printed edition, by Guntherus Zainer, Augsburg, 1472. British Library
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