Isidore of Seville Quotes on Knowledge
Isidore of Seville (c.560–636) — the Visigothic archbishop whose vast Etymologiae (twenty books, c.620) supplied the standard medieval Latin encyclopedia — gave the early medieval Latin tradition its most influential synthesis of late ancient learning under the framing of grammatical etymology. The central methodological commitment is that the proper structure of any branch of knowledge can be illuminated by the etymological analysis of its technical vocabulary — the names of things, on the implicit theory descending from the Cratylus, preserve the philosophical and theological insights of the original namers — and the corresponding encyclopedic survey covers the seven liberal arts, medicine, law, the chronological organization of universal history, theology, and the natural and humane sciences. The framework, transmitted through the entire medieval Latin tradition (with thousand-fold manuscript copies surviving), supplied the principal early medieval reference work and shaped the broader scholastic encyclopedic tradition through Vincent of Beauvais and the Speculum maius.
Quotes
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Attributed to Isidore of Seville:
“Etymology is the soul of the things named.”
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Attributed to Isidore of Seville:
“Reading is the food of the mind.”
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Attributed to Isidore of Seville:
“All knowledge consists in the knowledge of words and the things they signify.”
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Attributed to Isidore of Seville:
“He who is ignorant of letters is the poorer man.”
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Attributed to Isidore of Seville:
“Wisdom builds her house on seven pillars: the seven liberal arts.”
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“Litterae autem sunt indices rerum, signa verborum, quibus tanta vis est, ut nobis dicta absentium sine voce loquantur. [Verba enim per oculos non per aures introducunt.]”
Letters are signs of things, symbols of words, whose power is so great that without a voice they speak to us the words of the absent; for they introduce words by the eye, not by the ear. | Bk. 1, ch. 3. ( Latin , Brehaut 1912 p.96 ) -
“Bk. 1, ch. 3. ( Latin , Brehaut 1912 p.96 )”
Litterae autem sunt indices rerum, signa verborum, quibus tanta vis est, ut nobis dicta absentium sine voce loquantur. [Verba enim per oculos non per aures introducunt.] -
“Itaque sine Musica nulla disciplina potest esse perfecta, nihil enim sine illa. Nam et ipse mundus quadam harmonia sonorum fertur esse conpositus, et coelum ipsud sub harmoniae modulatione revolvi.”
And without music there can be no perfect knowledge, for there is nothing without it. For even the universe itself is said to have been put together with a certain harmony of sounds, and the very heavens revolve under the guidance of harmony. | Bk. 3, ch. 17. ( Latin , Brehaut 1912 p.137 ) -
“And without music there can be no perfect knowledge, for there is nothing without it. For even the universe itself is said to have been put together with a certain harmony of sounds, and the very heavens revolve under the guidance of harmony.”
Itaque sine Musica nulla disciplina potest esse perfecta, nihil enim sine illa. Nam et ipse mundus quadam harmonia sonorum fertur esse conpositus, et coelum ipsud sub harmoniae modulatione revolvi. -
“Bk. 3, ch. 17. ( Latin , Brehaut 1912 p.137 )”
Itaque sine Musica nulla disciplina potest esse perfecta, nihil enim sine illa. Nam et ipse mundus quadam harmonia sonorum fertur esse conpositus, et coelum ipsud sub harmoniae modulatione revolvi. -
“QVID SIT IVS GENTIVM. Ius gentium est sedium occupatio, aedificatio, munitio, bella, captivitates, servitutes, postliminia, foedera pacis, indutiae, legatorum non violandorum religio, conubia inter alienigenas prohibita. Et inde ius gentium, quia eo iure omnes fere gentes utuntur.”
Bk. 5, ch. 6. ( Latin ) -
“Bk. 5, ch. 6. ( Latin )”
QVID SIT IVS GENTIVM. Ius gentium est sedium occupatio, aedificatio, munitio, bella, captivitates, servitutes, postliminia, foedera pacis, indutiae, legatorum non violandorum religio, conubia inter alienigenas prohibita. Et inde ius gentium, quia eo iure omnes fere gentes utuntur. -
“Bk. 5, ch. 21 ( Brehaut 1912 p.171 )”
Law will be honorable, just, possible, according to nature, according to the custom of the country, adapted to the place and time, necessary, useful, clear also, lest it contain anything in its obscurity that tends to fraud, drawn up for no one’s private advantage, but for the common good of all citizens. -
“A detected vice is quickly cured, but the hidden vice, the more it is concealed, the more deeply it creeps, for truly he who neglects to make it known does not wish to be cured at all.”
Regula Monachorum | Regula Monachorum , 13,5.