08.08.07
From Nero to newts: Antiquity reclaimed, truth, joy, and the strange case of the self-castrating beaver — all in the work of Isidore, patron saint of the internet
Above is the title of Emily Wilson’s review in the current, August 3, Times Literary Supplement of two books about Isidore of Seville, “who became patron saint of the internet in 1999.” Unfortunately the books from Cambridge University are expensive, really expensive: Barney et al.’s The Etymologies of Isidore is $150 for 475 pages, and John Henderson’s The Medieval World of Isidore of Seville: Truth from Words is $99 for 244 pages. But these would be fun books to peruse if they were affordable or if the library purchased them.
Isidore’s effort in sixth-century Spain, when it was ruled by the Visigoths, to reestablish the importance of Roman culture through its language, specifically the etymology of Latin, had an impact that was comparable to the Bible’s. Indeed, Isidore’s family “played an important role in the conversion of the Visigothic kings to Roman Catholicism, away from Arianism (a form of Christianity which denied that the Son is co-eternal with the Father).”
While Isidore’s cultural impact was profound, much of what Isidore wrote, much like the internet today, was made up. “Most of Isidore’s supposed etymologies are — by the standards of modern academic philology — complete twaddle.” Take, for example, his entry on beavers:
It may often seem as if Isadore, like a bad search engine, offers little or no control over all this material. Certainly, much of the “information” he provides is (from a modern perspective) blatantly false, albeit entertaining. For instance, we are assured that “Beavers (castor) are so-called from castrating (castrare). Their testicles are useful for medicines, on account of which, when they anticipate a hunter, they castrate themselves and amputate their own genitals with their teeth.”