finally, his supreme intellectual endeavour, the all^orical
trellising of Scripture, to which the Middle Ages were to
devote their thoughts, and were to make warm and living
with the love and yearning of their souls. The converging
current s — deca dence and barbarism — ^meet and join in

^^^8?Ey!^-J^^^^^ P^^^^^y* ^® embodies the intel-
lectual decadence which has lost all independent wish for
knowledge and has dropped the whole round of the mind's
mortal interests; which has seized upon the near, the
tangible, and the ominous in theology' till it has rooted
religion in the fear^of hell. All this may be viewed as a
decadent abandonment of the more intellectual and spiritual
complement to the brute facts of sin, penance, and hell
bardy escaped. But, on the other hand, it was also bar-
barization, and held the strength of barbaric narrowing of
motives and the resistlessness of barbaric fear.

Such were the rdles of BoSthius and Gregory in the
transmission of antique and patristic intellectual interests
into the mediaeval time. Quite different was that of
Gregory's younger contemporary, Isidore, the princely and
vastly influential Bishop of Seville, the primary see in that
land of Spain, which, however it might change dynasties,
was destined never to be free from some kind of sacerdotal
bondage. In Isidore's time, the kingdom of the Visigoth
had recently turned from Arianism to Catholicism, and wore
its new priestly yoke with ardour. Bo^thius had provided
a formal disdplhie and Gregory much substance already
mediaevalized. But the whole ground-plan of Isidore's mind
corresponded with the aptitudes and methods of the Caro-
lingian period, which was to be the schoolday of the Middle
Ages. By reason of his own habits of study, by reason of the
quality of his mind, which led him to select the palpable, the
foolish, and the mechanically correlated, by reason, in fine,
of kis mental faculties and interests, Isidore gathered and
arranged in his treatises a conglomerate of knowledge,
secular and sacred, exactly suited to the coming centuries.

In drawmg from its spiritual heritage, an age takes what
it cares for; and if comparatively decadent or barbarized or



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I04 THE MEDIAEVAL MIND book i

childlike in its intellectual afllnities, it will still manage to
draw what is like itself. In that case, probably it will not
draw directly from the great sources, but from intermediaries
who have partially debased them. From these turbid
compositions the still duller age will continue to select the
obvious and the worse. This indicates the character of
Isidore's work. Hb writings speak for themselves through
their titles, and are so flat, so transparent, so palpably taken
from the nearest authorities, that there is no call to analyze
them. But their tities with some slight indication of their
contents will show the excerpt character of Isidore's mental
processes, and illustrate by anticipation the like qualities
reappearing with the Carolingian doctors.

Isidore's Quaestiones in velus Testamentum^ is his chief
work in the nature of a Scripture commentary. It is con-
fined to those passages of the old Testament which were
deemed most pregnant with allegorical meaning. His
Preface discloses his usual method of procedure: "We have
taken certain of those incidents of the sacred history which
were told or done figuratively, and are filled with mystic
sacraments, and have woven them together in sequence in
this littie work; and, collecting the opinions of the old
churchmen, we have made a choice of flowers as from divers
meadows; and briefly presenting a few matters from so
many, with some changes or additions, we offer them not
only to studious but fastidious readers who detest prolixity."
Every one may feel assured that he will be reading the
interpretations of the Fathers, and not those of Isidore —
"my voice is but their tongue." He states that his sources
are Origen, Victorinus, Ambrose, Jerome, Augustine,
Fxxlgentius, Cassian, and "Gregory so distinguished for his
eloquence in oxu: own time." The spirit of the mediaeval
commentary is in this Preface. The phrase about "culling
the opinions of the Fathers like flowers from divers meadows,"
will be repeated hundreds of times. Such a commentary is
a thing of excerpts ; so it rests upon authority. The writer
thus comforts both his reader and himself ; neither runs the

* Migne 83, col 207-434. No reference need be made, of course, to the
False Decretals t pseudonymously connected with Isidore's name; they are later than
his time.



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CHAP. V LATIN TRANSMITTERS 105

peril of originality, and together they repose on the broad
bosom ^f the Fathers.

Throughout his writings, Isidore commonly proceeds in
this way, whether he says so or not. We may name first
the casual works which represent separate parcels of his
encyclopaedic gleanings, and then glance at his putting
together of them, in his Etymologiae} The muster opens
with two books of Distinctions (Differentiarum), The first
is concerned with the distinctions of like-soimding and like-
meaning words. It is alphabetically arranged. The second
is concerned with the distinctions of things: it begins with
God and the Creation, and passes to the physical parts and
spiritual traits of man. No need to say that it contains
nothing that is Isidore's own. Now come the AUegoriae
quaedam sacrae Scriptidrae, which give in chronological order
the allegorical signification of all the important persons
mentioned in the Old Testament and the New. It was one
of the earliest hand-books of Scriptural allegories, and is a
sheer bit of the Middle Ages in spirit and method. The
substance, of course, is taken from the Fathers. Next, a
little work, De oriu et ohitu Patrum^ states in short para-
graphs the birthplace, span of life, place of sepulture, and
noticeable traits of Scriptural personages.

There follows a collection of brief Isidorean prefaces to
the books of Scripture. Then comes a curious b<x)k, which
may have been suggested to the writer by the words of
Augustine himself. This is the Liber numeroruniy the book
of the numbers occurring in the Scriptures. It tells the
qualities and mystical significance of every niunber from
one to sixteen, and of the chief ones between sixteen and
sixty. These numbers were "most holy and most full of
mysteries'' to Augustine,^ and Augustine is the man whom
Isidore chiefly draws on in this treatise — ^Augustine at his
very worst. One might search far for an apter instance of
an ecclesiastical writer elaborately exploiting the most '
foolish statements that could possibly be found in the writings
of a great predecessor.

1 The Eiymohgiae is to be found in vol. 82 of Migne, col. 73-7 sS; the other works
fill vol 83 of Migne.

' Aug. QuaesU m Gen, i. 152. See ante, p. 67.



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io6 THE MEDIAEVAL MIND book i

Isidore composed a polemic treatise on the Catholic
Faith against the Jews — De fide CcUholica cotUra Judaeos.
The good bishop had nothing to add to the patristic dis-
cussion of this weighty controversy. His book is filled with
quotations from Scripture. It put the matter together
in a way suited to his epoch and the coming centuries, and
at an early time was translated into the German and other
vernacular tongues. Three books of SetUetUiae follow, upon
the contents of Christian doctrine — as to God, the world,
evil, the angels, man, Christ and the Church. They consist
of excerpts from the writings of Gregory the Great and
earlier Church Fathers.^ A more original work is the De
ecdesiasticis qfficiis, upon the services of the Church and the
orders of clergy and laity. It presents the liturgical practices
and ecclesiastical regulations of Isidore's epoch.

Isidore seems to have put most pious feeling into a work
called by him Synonyma, to which name was added the
supplementary designation: De lamenUUione animae. First
the Soul pours out its lament in excruciating iteration,
repeating the same commonplace of Christian piety in
synonymous phrases. When its lengthy plaint is ended.
Reason replies with admonitions synonymously reiterated in
the same fashion.^ This work combined a granmiatical
with a pious purpose, and became very popular through its
doubly edifying nature, and because it strung together so
many easy commonplaces of Christian piety. Isidore also
drew up a Regula for monks, and a book on the Order of
Creation has been ascribed to him. This completes the
sum of his extant works upon religious topics, from which
we pass to those of a secular character.

The first of these is the De rerum naiura^ written to
enlighten his king, Sisebut, "on the scheme {roMo) of the

1 Isidore's Books of Sentences present a topical arrangement of matters more or
less closely pertinent to the Christian Faith, and thus may be regarded as a precursor
of the Sentences of Peter Lombard {post, Chapter XXXV.). But Isidore's work is the
merest compilation, and he does not marshal his extracts to prove or disprove a set
proposition, and show the consensus of authority, like the Lombard. His chief source
is Gregory's Moralia. Prosper of Aquitaine, a younger contemporary and disciple of
Augustine, compiled from Augustine's works a book of Sentences, a still slighter affair
than Isidore's (Migne, Pat. Lot, 51, coL 427-496).

*For example. Reason begins her reply thus: "Quaeso te, anima, obsecro te,
deprecor te, imploro te, ne quid ultra leviter agas, ne quid inconsulte geras, ne temere
aliquid facias," etc (Migne 83, col. 845).



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CHAP. V LATIN TRANSMITTERS 107

da3rs and months, the bounds of the year and the change of
seasons, the nature of the elements, the courses of the sun
and moon and stars, and the signs of tempests and winds,
the position of the earth, and the ebb and flow of the sea."
Of all of which, continues Isidore, "we have made brief
note, from the writings of the ancients {veteribus viris), and
especially those who were of the Catholic Faith. For it is
not a vain knowledge (superstUiosa scientia) to know the
nature of these things, if we consider them according to
sound and sober teaching." ^ So Isidore compiles a book
of secular physical knowledge, the substance of which is
taken from the Hexai^meron of Ambrose and the works of
other Fathers, and also from the lost Prata of pagan
Suetonius.*

Of course Isidore busied himself also with history. He
made a dismal universal Ckronicon, and perhaps a History
of the Kings of the Goths, through which stirs a breath of
national pride; and after the model of Jerome he wrote a
De viris illus^bus, concerned with some fifty worthies of
the Church flourishing between Jerome's time and his own.

Here we end the somewhat dry enumeration of the
various works of Isidore outside of his famous "twenty
books of Etymologies." This work has been aptly styled
a Kanversatianslexikon — that excellent German word. It
was named Etymologiaey because the author always gives
the etymology of everything which he describes or defines.
Indeed the tenth book contains only the etymological
definitions of words alphabetically arranged. These
etymologies follow the haphazard similarities of the words,
and often are nonsensical. Sometimes they show a fantastic
caprice indicating a mind steeped in allegorical interpreta-
tions, as, for example, when ^'Amicus is said to be, by
derivation, animi custos; also from hamus, that is, chain of
love, whence we say hami or hooks because they hold." •
This is not ignorance so much as fancy.

The Etymologiae were meant to cover the current know-
ledge of the time, doctrinal as well as secular. But the

> De rerum nahira, Praefatlo (Migne 83, coL 963).

* See Prolegomena to Bedcer's edition.

* Migne 82, ool 367.



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io8 THE MEDIAEVAL MIND book i

latter predominates, as it would in a Konversaiionslexikon.
The general arrangement of the treatise is not alphabetical,
but topical. To indicate the sources of its contents woxxld
be diflScult as well as tedious. Isidore drew on many
previous authors and compilers : to Cassiodorus and Bo6thius
he went for Rhetoric and Dialectic, and made frequent
trips to the Praia of Suetonius for natural knowledge — or
ignorance. In matters of doctrine he draws on the Church
Fathers; and for his epitome of jurisprudence in the fifth
book, upon the Fathers from Tertullian on, and (probably)
upon some elementary book of legal Institutes.^ Glancing
at the handling of topics in the Etymologies one feeb it to

* See Rubier, ''Isidorus-Studien/' Hermes zxv. (1890), 497, 5x8, and literature
there dted.

An analysis of the Etymologies would be out of the question. But the captions
of the twenty books into which it is divided will indicate the range of Isidore's intellectual
interests and those of his time :

I. De irammatica.
n. De rhetorica ei dialecUca,

in. De quatuor discipUtUs mathemalicis. (Thus the first three books contain
the Trivium and Quadrivium.)

IV. De medicina. (A brief hand-book of medical terms.)

V. De legibus ei temponbus. (The hitter part describes the days, nights, weeks,
months, years, solstices and equinoxes. It is hard to guess why this was put in the
same book with Law.)

VI. De Ubris et officiis ecclesiasHcis, (An account of the books of the Bible and
the services of the Church.)

Vn. De Deo, angelis etfidelium ordinibus.

VIII. De ecdesia et sectis diver sis.

IX. De Unguis, geniibus, regnis, etc. (Concerning the various peoples of the earth,
and their languages, and other matters.)

X. Vocum certarum alpkabetum. (An etymological vocabulary of many Latin
words.)

XI. De homine ei portentis. (The names and definitions of the various parts of the
human body, the ages of life, and prodigies and monsters.)

Xn. DeanimaUbus.

Xm. De mundo el pariibus. (The universe and its parts — atoms, elements,
sky, thunder, winds, waters, etc)

XIV. De terra et partibus. (Geographical.)

XV. De aedificOs et agris. (Cities, their public constructions, houses, temples,
and the fields.)

XVI. De lapidibus et metalUs. (Stones, metals, and their qualities curious and
otherwise.)

XVn. De rebus rusticis, (Trees, herbs, etc)

XVm. De bello et ludis. (On war, weapons, armour ; on public games and the
theatre.)

XIX. De navibus, aedificiis et vestibus. (Ships, their parts and equipment; build-
ings and their decoration ; garments and their ornament.)

XX. De penu et instrumetUis domesUds et rusticis* (On wines and provisions,
and their stores and receptacles.)



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CHAP. V LATIN TRANSMITTERS 109

have been a huge collection of terms and definitions. The
actual information conveyed is very slight. Isidore is under
the spell of words. Were they fetishes to him? did they
carry moral potency? At all events the working of his
mind reflects the long-age dominance of grammar^ and
rhetoric in Roman education, which treated other topics,
ahnost as illustrations of these chief branches.^_

1 The exaggerated growth of grammatical and rhetorical studies is curiously shown
by the mast of words invented to indicate the various kinds of tropes and figures. See
the list in Bede, De sekemaHs (Migne 90, col. 175 sgq.).



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CHAPTER VI

THE BARBARIC DISRUPTION OF THE EMPIRE ^

The Latinizing of northern Italy, Spain, and Gaul was
part of the expansion of Roman dominion. Throughout
these lands, alien peoples submitted to the Roman order
and acquired new traits from the training of its discipline.
Voluntarily or under compulsion they exchanged their
institutions and customs for those of Roman Italy, and their
native tongues for Latin. The education and culture of the
upper classes became identical with that gained in the
sdiools about the Forum, and Roman literature was the
literature which they studied and produced. In a greater
or less degree their characters were Latinized, while their
traditions were abandoned for those of Rome. Yet, although
Romanized and Latinized, these peoples were not Roman.
Their culture was acquired, their characters were changed,
yet with old traits surviving. In character and faculties, as
in geographical position, they were intermediate, and in r61e
they were mediatorial. Much of what they had received,
and what they had themselves become, they perforce trans-
mitted to the ruder hiunanity which, as the Empire weakened,
pressed in, serving, plundering, murdering, and finally amal-
gamating with these provincials. The surviving Latin
culture passed to the mingled populations which were
turning to inchoate Romance nations in Italy, Spain,
and Gaul. Likewise Christianity, Romanized, paganized,
barbarized, had been accepted through these countries.
And now these mingled peoples, these inchoate Romance
nations, were to accomplish a broader mediation in extending

> CI. Hodgkin, lialy and her Invaders, 8 vob.; Villari, The Barbarian Invan^
of Italy, 2 vols.



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CHAP. VI THE BARBARIC DISRXJPTION iii

the rudiments of Latin oiltxire, along with the great new
Religion, to the barbarous peoples beyond the Romance
pale.

The mediating r6Ies of the Roman provincials began,
mth their first subjection to Roman order. For barbarians
were continually brought into the provinces as slaves or
prisoners of war. Next, they entered to serve as auxiliary
troops, coming especially from the wavering Teutonic out-
skirts of the Empire. And during that time of misrule and
military anarchy which came between the death of
Commodus (a.d. 192) and the accession of Diocletian (a.d.
284), Teutonic inroads threatened the imperial fabric. But,
g^t Jrom palpable invasions^ there was a constant increase
in the Teutonic inflow from the close of the second centiuy.
More and more the Teutons tilled the fields ; more and more
they filled the armies. They became ofBicers of the army and
officials of the Government. So long as the vigour of life
and growth continued in the Latinized population of the
Empire, and so long as the Roman law and order held, the
assimilative power of Latin culture and Roman institutions
was enormous; the barbarians became Romanized. But
when self-conserving strength and coercive energy waned
with Romans and provincials, when the law's protection was
no longer sure, and a dry rot infected dvic institutions, then
Roman civilization lost some of its transforming virtue. The
barbarism of the Teutonic influx became more obstinate as
the transmuting forces of civilization weakened. Evidently
the decadent civilization of the Empire could no longer
raise these barbarians to the level of its greater periods ; it
could at most impress them with such cultiure and such ord^
as it still possessed. Moreover, reacting upon these dis-
turbed and infinn conditions, barbarism put forth a positive
transforming energy, tending to barbarize the Empire, its
government, its army, its inhabitants. The decay of Roman
institutions and the grafting of Teutonic institutions upon
Roman survivals were as universal as the mingUng of races,
tempers, and traditions. The course of events may briefly
be reviewed.

In the third centiuy the Goths began, by land and sea,
to md the eastern provinces of the imdivided Roman



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112 THE MEDIAEVAL MIND book i

Empire; down the Danube they sailed, and out upon the
Eiudne; then their plundering fleets spread through the
eastern Mediterranean. They were attacked, rq>ulsed, over-
thrown, and slaughtered in hordes in the year 270. Some
of the survivors remained in bondage, some retired north
beyond the Danube. Aurelian gave up to them the province
of Dada, the latest conquest of the Empire, the first to be
abandoned. These Dadan settlers thenceforth appear as
Visigoths. For a century the Empire had no great trouble
from them. Dada was the scene of the career of Ulfilas
(b. 311, d. 380), the Arian q>ostle of the Goths. They
became Christian in part, and in part remained fiercdy
heathen. About 372, harassed by the Huns, they pressed
south to escape over the Danube. Valens permitted them
to cross; then Roman treachery followed, answered by
desperate Gothic raids in Thrace, till at last Valens was
defeated and slain at Hadrianople in 378.

It was sixteen years after this that Theodosius the Great
marched from the East to Italy to suppress Arbogast, the
overweening Frank, who had cast out his weak master
Yalentinian. The leader of the Visigothic auxiliaries was
Alaric. When the great emperor died, Alaric was pro-
claimed King of the Visigoths, and soon proceeded to ravage
and conquer Greece. Stilicho, son of a Vandal chief — one
sees how all the high oflScers are Teuton — ^was the uncertain
stay of Theodosius's weakling sons, Honorius and Arcadius.
In 400 Alaric attempted to invade Italy, but was foiled by
Stilicho, who five years later circumvented and destroyed
another horde of Goths, both men and women, who had
penetrated Italy to the Apennines. In 408 Alaric made a
second attempt to enter, and this time was successful, for
Stilicho was dead. Thrice he besieged Rome, capturing it
in 410. Then he died, his quick death to be a warning to
Attila. The new Gothic king, Ataulf, concdved the plan
of imiting Romans and Goths in a renewed and strengthened
kingdom. But this task was not for him, and in two years
he left Italy with his Visigoths to establish a kingdom in
the south of Gaul.

Attila comes next upon the scene. The eastern Empire
had endured the oppression of this terrible Turanian, and



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CHAP. VI THE BARBARIC DISRUPTION 113

had paid him tribute for some years, before he decided to
march westward by a route north of the Alps, and attack
Gaul. He penetrated to Orleans, which he b^^ed in vain.
Many nations were in the two armies that were now to
meet in battle on the ^'Catalaunian Plains." On Attila's
side, besides his Huns, were subject Franks, Bructeri,
Thuringians, Burgundians, and the hosts of Gqndae and
Ostrogoths. Opposed were the Roman forces, Bretons,
Burgundians, Alans, Saxons, Salian Franks, and the army of
the Visigoths. Defeated, but not overthrown, the lion Hun
withdrew across the Rhine ; but the next ^ring, in 452, he
descended from the eastern Alps upon Aquileia and destroyed
it, and next sacked the cities of Venetia and the Po Valley
as far as Milan. Then he passed eastward to the river
Mindo, where he was met by a Roman embassy, in which
Pope Leo was the most imposing figure. Before this
embassy the Scourge of God withdrew, awed or persuaded,
or in superstitious fear. The following year, upon Attila's
death, his reafan broke up; Gepidae and Goths beat the
Huns in battle, and again Teutons held sway in Central
Europe .

The fear of the Hun had hardly ceased when the Vandals
came from Africa, and leisurely plundered Rome. They
were Teutons, perhaps kin to the Goths. But theirs had
been a far migration. At the opening of the fifth century
they had entered Gaul and fought the Franks, then passed
on to Spain, wherb they were broken by the Visigoths. So
they crossed to Africa and foimded a kingdom there, whence
they invaded Italy. By this time, the middle of the fifth
centiuy, the fighting and ruling energy in the western
Empire was barbarian. The stocks had become mixed
through intermarriage and the confusion of wars and
frequent change of sides. An illustrative figure is Count
Ridmer, whose father was a noble Suevian, while his mother
was a Visigothic princess. He directed the Roman State
from 456 to 472, placing one after another of his Roman
puppets on the imperial throne.

In the famous year 476 the Roman army was made up
of barbarians, mainly drawn from lands now induded in
Bohemia, Austria, and Hungary. There were large con-

VOL. I I



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;i4 THE MEDIAEVAL MIND book i

tingents of Rugii and Hemli, who had flocked in bands
to Italy as adventurers. Such troops had the status of
foederati, that is, barbarian auxiliaries or allies. Suddenly
they demanded one-third of the lands of Italy .^ Upon
refusal of their demand, they made a king from among
themselves, the Herulian Odoacer, and Romulus Augustulus
flitted from the shadowy imperial throne. By reason of his
dramatic name, rather than by any marked circumstance of
his deposition, he has come to typify with historians the
close of the line of western emperors.

The Herulian soldier-king or "Patridan," Odoacer, a
nondescript transition personage, ruled twelve years. Then
the nation of the Ostrogoths, which had learned much from
the vicissitudes of fortune in the East, obtained the eastern