Isidore of Seville was born around 560 in Cartagena, which was under the unstable rule of the Visigoths after the collapse of the Roman Empire in the West. His older brother, Leander, the … See more

Middle Ages
Isidore was widely influential throughout the Middle Ages, feeding directly into word lists and … See more

• Barney, Stephen A.; Lewis, W. J.; Beach, J.A.; Berghof, O. (2006). The Etymologies of Isidore of Seville (1st ed.). Cambridge University Press. See more

The Etymologiae presents an abbreviated form of 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 … See more

The Etymologies organizes knowledge, mainly drawn from the classics, into twenty books:
In Book I, Isidore begins with a lengthy section on grammar, the first of three subjects in the mediaeval Trivium considered at the … See more

Almost 1000 manuscript copies of Etymologiae have survived. The earliest is held at the Abbey library of Saint Gall in Switzerland, a 9th-century copy of Books XI to XX forming part of the Codex Sangallensis. The 13th-century Codex Gigas See more

• Summary of contents in English (starts on page 57)
• Codex Guelferbytanus 64 Weissenburgensis (Herzog August Bibliothek)
• Scholia in Isidori Etymologias Vallicelliana See more