Isidore de Séville en son monde : lieux, peuples, époques

Abstract

“Isidorus of Seville in his world” is different from “Isidore in his world”or “Isidore’s world” by putting the emphasis not on realia or on Weltanschauungen, but on the relations between Isidore’s writings, his classical and biblical culture and his public. Isidore had to describe a new Visigothic world with ancient Latin words. It was sometimes easy because the world was not so very different, such as astronomy or zoology, even if their meaning needed to be understood in relation to the Bible. In some cases though, the world was very different from that of Rome, in the case of, for example administrative geography, political ethnography or history. In the face of the imperial Constantinopolitan inheritance, Isidore praised the Visigothic Catholic kingdom using cultural geography, biblical ethnography and providential history. Finally, Isidore’s interest in integrating the classical culture in the definition of the new Christian knowledge showed he was more a ‘late antique’, than a ‘medieval’ man.