Etymologiae: Manuscript

Guiding questions:

Imagine each individual object by itself. Does having all of these objects together change your thinking or enhance your knowledge of the overall object? Do you develop a new understanding of the object when they are placed in one room? 

About Etymologiae

Isidore of Seville wrote Etymologiae ca. 800. He was the first Christian writer to write a compilation of universal knowledge towards the end of his life in the form of an encyclopedia. This became a widely used textbook, comprised of 20 books, throughout the Middle Ages. Etymologiae summarizes and organizes topics from many classical sources covering grammar, mathematics, medicine, agriculture, the Roman Catholic Church, and many other areas, and so people often read this piece in place of many of the original classical texts (Barney 2006, 10).

Isidore was born around 560 CE and was educated in Seville in a monastery school. Leander, his brother, was an influential churchman after becoming the Bishop of Seville before 580, and he converted many friends from Arianism to Catholicism. After his brother passed away, Isidore became the Bishop of Seville around 600. He was a very influential churchman and followed in his brother’s footsteps to eradicate the widespread Arian heresy, and thus presided over many important Church councils in Seville and Toledo (Barney 2006, 7).

There were at least ten printed editions of this encyclopedia between 1472 and 1530 until its influence started to fade away during the Renaissance. The first was in 1472 at Augsburg. About 1000 copies of the manuscript have survived. The objects in this room are all manuscript leaves from Isidore of Seville’s Etymologiae, but some of these leaves have been separated, and are thus displayed in museums around the world. In fact, 8 leaves are in Munich, 4 in New York, 32 in Regensberg, and 8 at Harvard University (. This room shows one leaf from each museum with the front cover from Columbia University, and the link under each object provides the destination for all the leaves found in the respective museums.

When looking through these objects, would it be different if these objects are not all placed together in one room like this? Does having all the leaves in one location make it easier to appreciate the full Etymologiae?