Abstract

AGUIAR, Thiago Borges de  and  PETERLEVITZ, Augusto. The etymologies of Isidore of Seville and the Greco-Roman culture transmission in Visigothic Spain. Acta Educ. [online]. 2019, vol.41, e48139.  Epub Oct 01, 2019. ISSN 2178-5201.  https://doi.org/10.4025/actascieduc.v41i1.48139.

This article presents a reading of the Etymologies of Isidore of Seville, a seventeenth-century Spanish bishop, as a manual of instruction for clerics and laity, which main guidelines were the transmission (and emulation) of Greco-Roman culture in Visigothic Spain. Considering Isidore as an educator, we place his work in the Visigothic context to understand how his manual presents contents of Greco-Roman culture as an ideal worthy of emulation, with special emphasis on government, history, the liberal arts, nature, human beings, and society. The establishment and legitimacy of the Visigothic Kingdom were related to the method of reproducing Roman manuscripts, an activity that was highly intensified under the guidance of Bishop Isidore of Seville: Royal counselor, administrator of monasteries and ‘bishop schools’, where men were trained to be agents both for the royal and ecclesiastic powers. As a major Church authority in the peninsula, he helped to consolidate the legitimacy of the Visigothic Kingdom in the territory. The analysis of the best-known work by the bishop of Seville reveals both the appraisal and the use of the classical roman culture in the rising ‘barbarian’ kingdom, as well as exposes the mindset and conceptions about the world and the society within that context.

Keywords : medieval education; Isidore of Seville; Christian paideia; 7^th century.

        · abstract in Portuguese | Spanish     · text in English | Portuguese     · English ( pdf ) | Portuguese ( pdf )