Isidore

Saint Isidore of Seville was born about 560 at Cartagena in southeastern Hispania, into a Hispano-Roman family of high standing. His parents, Severianus and Theodora, had four children who would all come to be venerated as saints: Leander, who preceded Isidore as Archbishop of Seville; Fulgentius, later Bishop of Écija; Florentina, who became an abbess; and Isidore himself, the youngest. Political disruption connected with the Byzantine occupation of parts of the Spanish southeast led the family to settle in Seville, where Isidore received a thorough education under his elder brother Leander and in the cathedral school. That formation joined Christian doctrine to the remnants of classical learning still available in Visigothic Spain and prepared him for a life of teaching and ecclesiastical government.

After Leander’s death around 600, Isidore succeeded him as Archbishop of Seville and held the see until his own death more than three decades later. As metropolitan of Baetica he worked to consolidate the Visigothic kingdom in the Catholic faith after King Reccared’s abandonment of Arianism. He presided over important synods, including the Second Council of Seville in 619 and, above all, the Fourth Council of Toledo in 633. The Toledo gathering, attended by bishops from across the realm, issued canons that promoted liturgical uniformity in the Visigothic (later called Mozarabic) rite, required bishops to establish schools and to be grounded in Scripture and the Fathers, and sought to regulate the church’s relations with the Jewish population of Spain. Isidore’s personal authority and writings gave these measures a lasting place in the medieval Spanish church.

Isidore was among the most prolific Latin authors of late antiquity. His encyclopedic Etymologiae, compiled in his later years and associated with King Sisebut and with Braulio of Zaragoza, attempted to summarize ancient learning under the headings of the liberal arts and a wide range of practical and scientific topics; it became a fundamental reference work throughout the Middle Ages. He also wrote a history of the Goths, Vandals, and Suevi, treatises on nature, on differences and synonyms, a rule for monks, and notices of illustrious men. Through these books he transmitted a Christianized digest of classical knowledge to later centuries and came to be regarded as the last of the great Latin Fathers of the Western Church.

Isidore died in Seville on 4 April 636 and was first buried there. In 1063 his relics were translated to León, where they rest in the Basilica of San Isidoro. Veneration of Isidore spread widely in medieval Spain and beyond. He was canonized by Pope Clement VIII in 1598 and declared a Doctor of the Church by Pope Innocent XIII in 1722. His feast is kept on 4 April. In 1997 Pope John Paul II named him patron of the Internet and of computer users, in recognition of his effort to gather and organize the knowledge of his age; he is also invoked as a patron of students and of those who work with computers.