One of the most important sources in Christendom throughout the Middle Ages was St. Isidore of Seville’s Etymologies. A universal encyclopedia, the Etymologies was spread throughout Europe shortly after Isidore’s death and it remained an essential reference for scholars of all kinds thereafter. It has a special significance for the classical legal tradition, since writers like Gratian and St. Thomas Aquinas relied upon the Etymologies for their definitions of important legal concepts. Indeed, with an understanding of the Etymologies in mind, one can readily see how, for example, St. Thomas Aquinas developed the prevailing understanding of the natural law or insurrection. The Etymologies, therefore, is an essential component of the recovery of the classical legal tradition.
Isidore was born around the middle of the sixth century in Cartagena into a prominent family. Unlike other figures of the Church in those days, we do not have a lengthy biography of him. What we do know is this. At the turn of the seventh century he was named archbishop of Seville. While archbishop, in addition to his indefatigable efforts for the faith in Spain, notably the extirpation of Arianism and other heresies, he wrote his Etymologies. The project was nothing more or less than a universal encyclopedia, one of the first undertaken in the Christian age. The task would consume the rest of his life.
The Etymologies became hugely influential for centuries. One estimate puts the number of surviving manuscript copies around a thousand. It seems that Isidore’s work was quickly recognized as an important reference, its influence appearing outside of Spain by the middle of the seventh century, particularly in England, Ireland, and Gaul. Writers like the Venerable Bede relied heavily upon Isidore’s work. By the high Middle Ages, the Etymologies was one of the standard reference works of Christendom. The first printed edition was published in 1472 and it was reprinted regularly thereafter.
As such, the Etymologies has had an important influence on the classical legal tradition. Gratian’s Decretum adopts Isidore’s definitions of various kinds of laws, civil and ecclesiastical alike, throughout his first four distinctions. One may say then that for Gratian’s understanding of jurisprudence, Isidore’s work is foundational. Aquinas likewise relied very heavily on Isidore throughout his works, especially the Summa theologiae. Throughout Aquinas’s treatise on law (ST I-II qq. 90-114), Aquinas frequently refers to the Etymologies as a clearly authoritative source.
As the classical legal tradition is recovered, Isidore will assume once more the great importance he had for figures like the Venerable Bede, Gratian, and Aquinas. None of them wrote in a vacuum, as if the world began only a few moments before they were born. All frankly acknowledged their debt to Isidore’s work. Therefore, we can gain greater insights into authors like Gratian and Aquinas by familiarizing ourselves with Isidore. To put it another way, we put ourselves back into the classical legal tradition when we treat it like a tradition, with a development over time through authors.
The standard Latin text for the Etymologies has long been Lindsay’s Oxford Classical Text, published first in 1911. Since the early 1980s, a new international critical edition has been in progress, including new translations, but progress has been fairly slow. In 2006, an English translation by Stephen Barney, W.J. Lewis, J.A. Beach, and OIiver Berghof was published, based for the most part on Lindsay’s text with some emendations from the new edition-in-progress. For the English-speaking reader, the 2006 translation is an invaluable resource. Especially important is the fact that it is accessible to a general readership.
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A couple of examples, chosen not quite at random, will suffice to demonstrate the value of turning to Isidore to deepen our understanding of subsequent writers in the classical legal tradition.
First, Isidore defines the natural law as the law held in common by all nations through the instinct of nature (5.1.4). He includes in the natural law such things as marriage between a man and a woman, the common destination of goods, and the repulsion of violence by force (ibid.). “Nam hoc, aut si quid huic simile est, numquam iniustum est, sed naturale aequumque habetur”—“Now this, or whatever is similar to this, is never unjust, but is held to be natural and right” (ibid.). It may be fairly said, given Isidore’s influence, that this definition of the natural law is the definition of Christendom (cf. Decretum D.1 c.7). When interpreting, therefore, later works, such as St. Thomas Aquinas on natural law, it simply cannot be done to hold one aspect of Isidore’s definition against another—e.g., to emphasize the common destination of goods while deprecating repelling violence by force.
Therefore, when we consider, for example, Aquinas on private property (ST II-II q.66 a.2 ad 1) or self-defense (ST II-II q.64 a.7), Isidore provides important insight into the ground upon which Aquinas worked. In both cases, Aquinas clarifies and deepens Isidore’s definitions without contradicting them. It is simply true for Aquinas that the natural law provides for both the universal destination of goods and the resistance of violence by force. Those things and those like them are simply natural and just—“Nam hoc, aut si quid huic simile est, numquam iniustum est, sed naturale aequumque habetur”. But that does not mean that concepts are entirely clear from the outset, and it is precisely that clarity that Aquinas offers. However, it is essential to note that Aquinas does not contradict Isidore’s definition—on the contrary, he takes it as a given.
For our next example, we see that Isidore provides insight into the understanding in the Christian legal tradition of sedition and tumult, which are important to understand Aquinas’s treatment of other topics. Isidore includes sedition among the crimes set forth in the law. “Seditio dicitur dissensio civium, quod seorsum alii ad alios eunt. Nam hi maxime turbatione rerum et tumultu gaudent“—“A dissension of citizens is called sedition, because they divide into different factions. For they rejoice greatly in disturbances of things and tumult” (5.26.11). Isidore repeats his definition of sedition in Book 18, when he includes tumults among the kinds of war. “Sicut autem bellum vocatur quod contra hostes agitur, ita tumultus quod civili seditione concitatur”—“As what is waged against enemies is called war, so is a tumult what is spurred on by civil sedition” (18.1.6).
Isidore goes on to quote Cicero’s Eighth Philippic, drawing the etymology of tumultus from “timor multus” (18.1.7); after all, “Quid est enim aliud tumultus nisi perturbatio tanta ut maior timor oriatur?”—“What is a tumult other than a disturbance so great that a greater fear arises?” (Phil. 8.3). Indeed, Isidore uses Cicero to hammer home his point about tumults: “‘Potest enim,’ inquit, ‘esse bellum ut tumultus non sit. Tumultus autem esse sine bello non potest’”—“‘There can be,’ he says, ‘a war such that an insurrection will not happen, but there cannot be an insurrection without war’” (18.1.7, quoting Phil. 8.3). Isidore even adopts Cicero’s maxim that, unlike a war, there are no exemptions from service in a tumult (ibid.). For Isidore, following Cicero, insurrection is an awful thing, a criminal act.
One cannot help but note that, here, Isidore anticipates certain modern scholars—notably the author of a little tract based upon some lectures given in Spain by an odd coincidence in 1962—who recognize that partisan warfare has more in common with the universal war of an insurrection, which is to say a criminal act to punished by the state precisely as a criminal act, than the carefully governed war between states in a classical sense. And partisan warfare, precisely because it is like a tumult, is aimed at nothing less than the destruction of an existing social order (however it may be defined). Isidore presents to the classical legal tradition Cicero’s assessment of the real terror of an insurrection or a partisan war: there are no exemptions from service. The war against a social order—or, indeed, order itself—is total war (now with the already appalling consequences of such a war are exacerbated by modern weapons).
However, in the dimension we are most concerned about for the moment, which is to say Isidore’s reception in the classical legal tradition, it is important to note that Aquinas is clearly influenced by Isidore’s definition, even the distinction between war properly speaking and sedition (ST II-II q.42 a.1). Aquinas has, ultimately, the same concept as Isidore of sedition as fundamentally a criminal act opposed to the common good of the state (cf. ST II-II q.42 a.1 co; II-II q.42 a.2 ad 1). Once more Aquinas deepens Isidore’s insight by stating clearly the way in which sedition is directly opposed to the common good (ST II-II q.42 a.2 co.). Moreover, Aquinas explains that those who resist sedition are not themselves seditious because they are ultimately defending the common good (ibid.).
These two examples show clearly that, by understanding Isidore’s Etymologies, we understand better how, in these cases, Aquinas worked with concepts. We can see how Aquinas clarified and deepened—without contradicting—the prevailing understanding contained in Isidore’s great work. We can also see that Isidore fits into a tradition, too, relying on older sources, like Cicero, for his definitions. Recovering the classical legal tradition requires both recovering the sources themselves and recovering the understanding of the developments across these sources. It would be wrong, for example, to assume that Aquinas and Gratian came up with these concepts on their own. They frankly acknowledged their debt to Isidore, encouraging us to do the same.
Pat Smith