Isidore of Seville

You know classical literature and the history of ancient Greece and Rome.

You know late antiquity up to Merovingian France and the medieval blockbuster works of Boethius and Isidore of Seville.

And if you haven't listened to the show up to this program, that's no problem at all.

The early medieval period is actually a great jumping in point to our long story and to literary history in general.

Fuck off.

You're not interesting.

Cuthbert and I are off to discuss Isidore with the Abbot at 4.

Bye.

he was interested in the germination of seeds and was aware though somewhat dimly of the essential differences between the seedling of the bean and that of the wheat in the middle ages knowledge of aristotelian botany was brought into western europe at two different periods the ninth and the thirteenth centuries In the 9th century of the Christian era, Rabinus Magnesius Maurus, a German writer, compiled an encyclopedia which contained information about plants indirectly derived from the writings of Theophrastus.

Rabinus actually based his work upon the writings of Isidore of Seville, who lived in the 6th and 7th centuries.

Isidore having obtained his botanical data from Pliny, whose knowledge of plants was in turn borrowed from Theophrastus.

The renewal of Aristotelian learning in the 13th century was derived less directly from classical writings than was the case with the earlier revival.

This textual gap created a peculiar situation where educated Europeans possessed theoretical knowledge about Plato's philosophical importance while remaining largely ignorant of his specific teachings.

Medieval encyclopedists like Isidore of Seville acknowledged Plato's significance in their comprehensive surveys of classical learning, yet their discussions necessarily relied on secondhand summaries rather than direct textual engagement.

The Atlantis narrative requiring access to the complete Timaeus and Critias dialogues remained effectively unknown to medieval scholarship.

The few references to lost civilizations that appeared in medieval literature typically derived from biblical or patristic sources rather than classical Greek philosophy.