Overview
Etymologiae presents in abbreviated form much of that part of the learning of antiquity that Christians thought worth preserving. Etymologies, often very learned and far-fetched, a favorite trope of antiquity, form the subject of just one of the encyclopedia's twenty books, but perceived linguistic similarities permeate the work. Isidore's vast encyclopedia systematizing ancient learning includes subjects from theology to furniture and provided a rich source of classical lore and learning for medieval writers.
In all, Isidore quotes from 154 authors, both Christian and pagan. Many of the Christian authors he read in the originals; of the pagans, many he consulted in contemporary compilations. Bishop Braulio, to whom Isidore dedicated it and sent it for correction, divided it into its twenty books.
- Book I: de grammatica; Trivium: grammar
- Book II: de rhetorica et dialectica; Trivium: rhetoric and dialectic
- Book III: de mathematica; Quadrivium: mathematics, geometry, music, astronomy
- Book IV: de medicina; medicine
- Book V: de legibus et temporibus; law and chronology
- Book VI: de libris et officiis ecclesiasticis; Ecclesiastical books and offices
- Book VII: de deo, angelis et sanctis; God, angels and saints: hierarchies of heaven and earth
- Book VIII: de ecclesia et sectis; The Roman Catholic Church and Jews and heretical sects, philosophers (pagans), prophets and sibyls
- Book IX: de linguis, gentibus, regnis, militia, civibus, affinitatibus; Languages, peoples, kingdoms, cities and titles
- Book X: de vocabulis; Etymologies
- Book XI: de homines et portentis; Mankind, portents and transformations
- Book XII: de animalibus; Beasts and birds
- Book XIII: de mundo et partibus; The physical world, atoms, elements, natural phenomena
- Book XIV: de terra et partibus; Geography: Earth, Asia, Europe, Libya, islands, promontories, mountains, caves
- Book XV: de aedificiis et agris; Public buildings, public works, roads
- Book XVI: de lapidibus et metallis; Metals and stones
- Book XVII: de rebus rusticis; Agriculture
- Book XVIII: de bello et ludis; Terms of war, games, jurisprudence
- Book XIX: de navibus, aedificiis et vestibus; Ships, houses and clothes
- Book XX: de domo et instrumentis domesticis; Food, tools and furnishings
"An editor's enthusiasm is soon chilled by the discovery that Isidore's book is really a mosaic of pieces borrowed from previous writers, sacred and profane, often their 'ipsa verba' without alteration," W. M. Lindsay noted in 1911, having recently edited Isidore for the Clarendon Press, with the further observation, however, that a portion of the texts quoted have otherwise been lost: the Prata of Suetonius can only be reconstructed from Isidore's excerpts. In the second book, dealing with dialectic and rhetoric, Isidore is heavily indebted to translations from the Greek by Boethius, and in treating logic, Cassiodorus, who provided the gist of Isidore's treatment of arithmetic in Book III. Caelius Aurelianus contributes generously to that part of the fourth book which deals with medicine. Isidore's view of Roman law in the fifth book is viewed through the lens of the Visigothic compendiary called the Breviary of Alaric, which was based on the Code of Theodosius, which Isidore never saw. Through Isidore's condensed paraphrase a third-hand memory of Roman law passed to the Early Middle Ages. Lactantius is the author most extensively quoted in the eleventh book, concerning man. The twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth books are largely based on the writings of Pliny and Solinus; whilst the lost Prata of Suetonius, which can be partly pieced together from its quoted passages in Etymolgiae, seems to have inspired the general plan of the "Etymologiae", as well as many of its details.
Isidore's Latin, replete with nonstandard Vulgar Latin, some of which is identified as such, also stands at the cusp of Latin and the local Romance language of Hispania.
Through the Middle Ages Etymologiae was the textbook most in use, regarded so highly as a repository of classical learning that, in a great measure, it superseded the use of the individual works of the classics themselves, full texts of which were no longer copied and thus were lost. The book was not only one of the most popular compendia in medieval libraries but was printed in at least ten editions between 1470 and 1530, showing Isidore's continued popularity in the Renaissance, rivalling Vincent of Beauvais.
A stylized T and O map featuring the world as a wheel appeared in an early printed edition, published at Augsburg, 1472. The editio princeps, the first printed edition, was printed by Johann Sensenschmidt in Nuremberg in 1470. The continent Asia is peopled by descendants of Sem or Shem, Africa by descendants of Ham and Europe by descendants of Japheth, the sons of Noah.
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