Isidore of Seville is one of the outstanding figures in the history of the medieval church and culture in the West. His fellow countrymen and bishops paid him a high tribute less than twenty years after his death in 636, when they called him ‘nostri quoque saeculi doctor egregius, ecclesiae catholicae nouissimum decus’ [excellent teacher of our age, the most recent ornament of the Catholic church].¹ His fame was still current when, six centuries later, Dante placed Isidore next to the Venerable Bede and Richard of St Victor in the Heaven of the Sun.²

The sources about Isidore’s life are...

TheSynonymorum de lamentatione animae peccatricis libri duo¹ are attested with various titles,² including the Augustinian one ofSoliloquia.³ The entry in Braulio’sRenotatioreadsSynonymorum libri duo,⁴ while Ildefonsus mentions a ‘liber lamentationis, quem ipse Synonima uocitauit’ [a book of lamentation that he (Isidore) himself calledSynonyma].⁵ Isidore himself, in the epistle with which he sent his work to Braulio,⁶ speaks of it as theSynonymarum[sic]libellus, and in the second of the two prefaces with which theSynonymaare printed in PL, the so-calledPrologus alter, Isidore refers to his alleged direct source, theschedula,asSynonyma.⁷...

The question of the transmission of Isidore’s works from Visigothic Spain to the British Isles has engendered a long and animated scholarly debate, which has become polarized around two theories: first, the theory that the Isidorian texts reached the insular world by way of continental intermediaries, whether Merovingian France¹ or Irish foundations (primarily Bobbio); second, the theory of direct transmission from Spain. In both cases, the role of the Irish as the primary agents of transmission has proved one of the most controversial points at issue, as it involves the more general question of the level of early medieval Irish...

The text known as homily xxii of the Vercelli Book has been described by its most recent editor as a ‘piece of spiritual contemplation modulating into homiletic injunction rather than … a homily’ in the strict sense of a prose text expounding a pericope and intended for a specific date of the Christian calendar.¹ Vercelli xxii does not therefore seem to have been intended for liturgical use, and in this respect it is by no means an exception among the homiletic items of the Vercelli Book. Indeed, the Vercelli collection cannot be considered to be a homiliary in the conventional...

Theubi sunt[where are they (now)] theme is one of the universals of western literature, in particular in late antiquity and the Middle Ages.¹ In pre-Conquest England, in particular, this motif is so widely attested and so typical of the elegiac mood prevalent in Anglo-Saxon literature and culture that the theme has been described as an ‘obsession’ for the Anglo-Saxons.² In a classic study, Gilson pointed out that Isidore’sSynonymarepresent the major source for theubi sunttopos in the western Middle Ages,³ and Cross demonstrated thatSynonymaII, 91 is ‘quite the favourite individual source’ for the...

The two preceding chapters have dealt with the vernacularization of theSynonyma, that is, with the uses and adaptations that were made of the Isidorian text in Old English. There is evidence, however, that theSynonymawere also adopted and adapted within Anglo-Latin texts, and the present chapter will specifically discuss the influence of the Isidorian work on Anglo-Latin literary production. In particular, a number ofubi suntpassages will be analysed as well as private prayers excerpted from theSynonyma. Finally, pedagogical aspects of our text will be investigated by focusing on the role of theSynonymaas a...

The evidence presented in the previous chapters shows that Isidore’sSynonymawere well known and influential among the Anglo-Saxons. Some questions remain concerning the text’s date of arrival in the British Isles, and the routes of its transmission. However, it is clear that Aldhelm († 709 or 710) knew theSynonyma, thus attesting to their presence in England by the end of the seventh century, while at least two surviving witnesses, namely the St Petersburg and the Würzburg manuscripts, date to the first half of the eighth century. No fewer than six other witnesses of theSynonymasurvive from the...