Isidore of Seville

(b ?Cartagena, c559; d Seville,4 April 636). Spanish archbishop, encyclopedist, theologian saint and doctor of the church. The youngest of Severianus’s four children, Isidore was probably born in Cartagena, Spain, shortly before his family fled to Seville. His early education was overseen by his elder brother Leander, whom he succeeded to the episcopal see at Seville in about 599. As archbishop, Isidore presided over the fourth Council of Toledo, which sought to achieve doctrinal and liturgical uniformity throughout Spain and parts of southern France.

The largest of Isidore’s works is his encyclopedic Etymologiarum sive Originum libri xx, an investigation of the principal terms employed in all branches of knowledge. Chapters 15 to 23 of book 3 deal exclusively with music, which is defined there as ‘the skill [peritia] of modulation consisting of tone and song’. In his discussion of the Quadrivium (bk iii, chap.24), however, Isidore closely followed Cassiodorus in defining music as ‘the discipline which treats of numbers in relation to those numbers which are found in sounds’. He again followed Cassiodorus in discussing ‘the three parts’ of music: harmonics, rhythmics and metrics (iii, 18). He went on, however, to describe ‘the threefold division’ of music (iii, 19), this time following Augustine of Hippo:

Moreover for every sound which forms the material of songs, there is a threefold nature. The first is the harmonic, which consists of singing; the second, the organic, which is produced by blowing; the third, the rhythmic, in which the music is produced by the impulse of the fingers.

Isidore appeared to follow St Augustine again, at least in part, when he wrote (iii, 15) that ‘unless sounds are remembered by man, they perish, for they cannot be written down’. This statement has sometimes been interpreted to mean that musical notation was unknown in the early 7th century, or at least in Isidore’s circle.

The statement most widely quoted by later writers on music is perhaps: ‘Music moves the feelings and changes the emotions’ (iii, 17).

Isidore manifested a different and somewhat more practical concern with music in vi, 9. There, and in closely related passages in his De ecclesiasticis officiis (i, 3–7, 9, 13–15; ii, 12), he dealt with the role of music in the Divine Office. Comparison of these passages with surviving manuscripts for the Mozarabic rite makes it clear that he referred specifically to that rite. His definitions of antiphons and responsories are, however, relevant to other Christian rites as well:

Antiphon, from the Greek, is defined as a reciprocal utterance: namely, two choirs singing alternately or from one to the other. This type of singing, it is said, was invented by the Greeks. Responsories were invented long ago by the Italians and are called by that name because to the singing of one person the choir responds in consonance. Formerly, each one alone sang the responsory. Now sometimes one, sometimes two or three sing together, a choir of many responding.

Jacques Fontaine’s great work on Isidore and his sources shows, however, that this contrast between theoretical and practical concerns is not as pronounced as Gurlitt and others have claimed. Although Isidore paid his respects to the Hellenistic tradition of music theory, as transmitted in an already impoverished form primarily by Cassiodorus and other late writers, he did not hesitate to omit from his writings a complex and detailed mass of inherited theoretical paraphernalia which no longer bore any relevance to his practical experience with music as a churchman. When his sources and his experience clashed, he allowed his experience and his own imagination to prevail, as shown not only in his omissions from the sources but also in his sometimes subtle modifications of them as well. Thus, Isidore may be seen to have borne witness to a further step in the decline of an ancient tradition of music theory and to the very first glimmerings of a new tradition.

Isidore’s writings on numerous subjects influenced a broad range of writers and thinkers throughout the Middle Ages. In addition to the Etymologiae and the De ecclesiasticis officiis, his works include the Differentiarum libri, De natura rerum, Allegoriae, De ortu et obitu patrum, Liber numerorum, Mysticorum expositiones sacramentorum seu quaestiones in vetus Testamentum, De fide catholica, Sententiarum libri tres, Synonyma, Historia Gothorum, Historiae Vandalorum et Sueborum, Laus Spaniae, De viris illustribus, and the Regula monachorum.

EDITIONS

BIBLIOGRAPHY

G. Bareille: ‘Isidore de Séville (Saint)’, Dictionnaire de théologie catholique, viii (1924), 98–111

P. Séjourné: Le dernier père de l’église, Saint Isidore de Séville: son rôle dans l’histoire du droit canonique (Paris, 1929)

B. Altaner: ‘Der Stand der Isidorforschung: ein kritischer Bericht über die seit 1910 erschienene Literatur’, Miscellanea isidoriana(Rome,1936), 1–32

J. Pérez de Urbel: San Isidoro de Sevilla: su vida, su obra y su tiempo(Barcelona, 1945)

W. Gurlitt: ‘Zur Bedeutungsgeschichte von “musicus” und “cantor” bei Isidor von Sevilla’, Abhandlungen der Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur in Mainz, Geistes- und sozialwissenschaftlichen Klasse (1950), no.7, 539–58

H. Hüschen: ‘Der Einfluss Isidors von Sevilla auf die Musikanschauung des Mittelalters’, Miscelánea en homenaje a Monseñor Higinio Anglés (Barcelona, 1958–61), 397–406

J. Fontaine: Isidore de Séville et la culture classique dans l’Espagne wisigothique (Paris, 1959, enlarged 2/1983)

J. Madoz: San Isidoro de Sevilla: semblanza de su personalidad literaria(Madrid, 1960)

J.N. Hillgarth: ‘The Position of Isidorian Studies: a Critical Review of the Literature since 1935’, Isidoriana, ed. M.C. Díaz y Díaz (León, 1961), 11–74

A. Humbert: ‘St Isidore of Seville’, New Catholic Encyclopedia (New York, 1967)

D.M. Randel: ‘Responsorial Psalmody in the Mozarabic Rite’, Etudes grégoriennes, x (1969), 87–116

J.N. Hillgarth: ‘The Position of Isidorian Studies: a Critical Review of the Literature, 1936–1975’, Studi medievali, xxiv (1983), 817–905

J.N. Hillgarth: ‘Isidore of Seville, St’, Dictionary of the Middle Ages, ed. J.R., Strayer, vi (New York, 1985), 563–6

J. Fontaine: Tradition et actualité chez Isidore de Séville(London, 1988)

M. Huglo: ‘Les diagrammes d’harmonique interpolés dans les manuscrits hispaniques de la musica Isidori’, Scriptorium, xlviii (1994), 171–86

DON M. RANDEL (with NILS NADEAU)