Identifier: Fragmenta Manuscripta 006

Date: 1100-1125

Contents: De fide catholica

Language: Latin

Location: England

Isidore of Seville (c. 560-636) became bishop of Seville around 600. His most famous work was his Etymologies, an encyclopedia of all secular and religious knowledge available at the time. Isidore drew from classical texts, like Pliny’s Natural History, and Christian texts, like Augustine’s City of God. This was one of the most influential works in the Middle Ages with 1,000 extant medieval manuscripts. He also wrote a theological manual for the clergy, called Sententiae.[1]

 The Fragmenta Manuscripta collections contains a fragment of Isidore of Seville’s De fide catholica contra Iudaeos (On the Catholic Faith Against the Jews).[2] Anti-Jewish sentiment was common in the Middle Ages as Jews were blamed for the death of Jesus Christ. De fide catholica contra Iudaeos contains an account of the Passion of Christ where Isidore repeats the accusation four times. This work draws from the anti-Jewish literature of Jerome, St. Augustine, and Pope Gregory the Great. Isidore attacks the Jewish belief and its adherents. The work consists of 170 allegories, nineteen of which are particularly nasty, linking the Jews to the Antichrist.[3]

Other works specifically against Judaism include Isidore of Seville’s Allegoriae quaedam sacrae Scripturae and Mysticorum expositions Sacramentorum seu Quaestiones in Vetus Testamentum.[4] Isidore also contributed two decisions regarding anti-Jewish legislation of the Fourth Council of Toledo in 633 that were adopted in the collections of canon law in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. The first, Canon 60, ordered that Jewish children be removed from their families so that they could be educated by Christians. And the second, Canon 65, forbade Jews from holding any public office.[5]

NOTES
[1] “Isidore of Seville, St.,” in The Encyclopedia of the Middle Ages (New York: Viking, published by Penguin Group, 1999), 245.

[2] Migne, J.P. (ed.), Patrologia Latina, vol 83, Sancti Isidori Hispalensis Episcopi (Paris: 1850), col. 449-538.

[3] Bat-Shava Albert, “Isidore of Seville: His Attitude Towards Judaism and his Impact on Early Medieval Canonical Law,” The Jewish Quarterly Review XXX 3,4 (1990), 208-209.

[4] Migne, J.P. (ed.), Patrologia Latina, vol 83, Sancti Isidori Hispalensis Episcopi (Paris: 1850), col. 97-130, 207-424.

[5] See Bat-Shava Albert, “Isidore of Seville: His Attitude Towards Judaism and his Impact on Early Medieval Canonical Law,” The Jewish Quarterly Review XXX 3,4 (1990): 207-220.