St. Isidore of Seville

Isidore was born about the year 560 at Cartagena, into a family that gave Spain four saints: his brothers Leander and Fulgentius and his sister Florentina. Leander, whom he succeeded as bishop of Seville about 600, had already brought the Visigothic kings from Arianism to the Orthodox faith.

He set himself to gather the learning of the ancient world before it was lost. The Etymologies, in twenty books, ranges over grammar, medicine, law, the earth, the animals, buildings, ships and much beside, quoting the authors he had and defining what things are by where their names come from. For centuries afterwards it was the reference book of the West.

He also wrote the Sentences, three books on doctrine and the moral life drawn largely from St Augustine and St Gregory the Great, and presided at the Fourth Council of Toledo in 633, which ordered the founding of a school at every cathedral.

He reposed at Seville on the fourth of April in the year 636, having spent his last days giving away what he owned. He is often called the last of the ancient Fathers of the West, standing at the point where the classical world ends and the Middle Ages begin.