David (i. 7); that the fourth beast in Daniel meant the Roman empire (i. 218); that the 70 weeks extended from the 20th year of Artaxerxes to the 8th of Claudius (iii. 89); that Hebrews was by St. Paul (i. 7). He interprets Mark xiii. 32 evasively (i. 117). He corrects the confusion between the two Philips (i. 447). His shrewdness and humour, occasionally tinged with causticity, appear in various letters. "I hear that you have bought a great many books, and yet . . . know nothing of their contents;" take care lest you be called "a book's-grave," or "moth-feeder"; then comes a serious allusion to the buried talent (i. 127). He tells a bishop that he trains the younger ministers well, but spoils them by over-praising them (i. 202). He hears that Zosimus can say by heart some passages of St. Basil and suggests that he should read a certain homily against drunkards (i. 61). He asks an ascetic why he "abstains from meat and feeds greedily on revilings" (i. 446). His friend Harpocras, a good "sophist" (whom he recommends for a vacant mastership, v. 458, and urges to keep his boys from the theatre and hippodrome, v. 185), had written a sarcastic "monody," or elegy, on Zosimus and his fellows, as already "dead in sin"; Isidore, whom he had requested to forward it to them, defers doing so, lest he should infuriate them against the author; however, he says in effect, if you really mean it to go, send it yourself, and then, if a feud arises, you will have no one else to blame (v. 52). He remarks that "some people are allowed to be tempted to cure them of the notion that they are great and invincible persons" (v. 39). He points out to a palace chamberlain the inconsistence of being glib at Scripture quotations and "mad after other people's property" (i. 27). But for all this keenness and didactic severity, and in spite of his expressed approval of the use of torture (i. 116), he impresses us as a man of kindly disposition, warm in his friendships (see Epp. i. 161, ii. 31, v. 125). He observes that "God values nothing more than love, for the sake of which He became man and obedient unto death; for on this account also the first-called of His disciples were two brothers . . . our Saviour thus intimating that He wills all His disciples to be united fraternally" (i. 10). In this spirit he says of slaves, "Prejudice or fortune . . . has made them our property, but we are all one by nature, by the faith, by the judgment to come" (i. 471); and he tells how a young man came to his cell, asked to see him, was introduced by the porter, fell at his feet in tears in silence, then, on being reassured, said that he was the servant of Iron the barrister, and had offended his master in ignorance, but too deeply for pardon. "I cannot think," writes Isidore, "that the true Christian Iron, who knows the grace that has set all men free, can hold a slave" (οἰκετην ἔχειν, i. 142). This tenderness is in harmony with the candour ("si sainte et si belle," says Tillemont, xv. 104) with which he owns that when he has tried to pray for them who have deliberately injured him, he has found himself doing so "with his lips only." "Not that I doubt that some have attained that height of excellence: rather, I rejoice at and rejoice with them, and would desire to reach the same point" (v. 398).
Isidore's letters naturally contain allusions to the religious customs or opinions of his age: such as pilgrimage to the shrines of the saints, as of St. Peter (ii. 5; cf. i. 160 on that of Thecla, and i. 226 on the martyrs who "guard the city" of Pelusium); the benediction given by the bishop "from his high chair," and the response "And with thy spirit" (i. 122); the deacon's linen garment, and the bishop's woollen "omophorion" which he took off when the gospel was read (i. 136); the right of sanctuary (i. 174); the wrongfulness of exacting an oath (i. 155).
His death cannot be placed later than 449 or 450 (see Tillem. xv. 116).
Two thousand letters of his, we are told, were collected by the zealously anti-Monophysite community of Acoemetae, or "sleepless" monks, at Constantinople, and arranged in 4 vols. of 500 letters each. This collection appears to be identical with the extant 2,012 letters, distributed, without regard to chronology, into 5 books (see Tillem. xv. 117, 847), of which the first three were edited by Billius, the fourth by Rittershusius, and the fifth by Andrew Schott, a Jesuit; the whole being included in the ed. pub. at Paris in 1638. Many of the letters are, in effect, repetitions. See Bouuy, De S. Isid. Pel. lib. iii. (Nîmes, 1885); also C. H. Turner and E. K. Lake in Journ. of Theol Stud. vol. vi. pp. 70, 270.
[W.B.]
Ivo, St. (Yvo), June 19, a supposed Persian bp. in Britain, after whom the town of St. Ives in Hunts was named. His Life was written by the monk Goscelin when resident at Ramsey, towards the end of 11th cent., based on a more diffused account by a previous abbat Andrew, who collected his information while in the East on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem in 1020. Goscelin's Life is printed in Boll. Acta SS. 10 June ii. 288. It describes Ivo as a missionary bishop, a star of the East, a messenger of the true Sun, divinely marked out for work in Britain. Quitting Persia, he passed through Asia and Illyricum to Rome, enlightening every place he visited. From Rome he proceeded to Gaul, where the admiring king and nobles would have detained him, but he pushed forward to Britain with his three companions. There he rescued the people from idolatry. The first-fruit of his labours was "a youth of patrician dignity named Patricius, the son of a Senator." Passing into Mercia, Ivo settled at the vill of Slepe, 3 English leucae (Gosc. c. 2, § 8) from Huntedun. There he laboured many years, died, and was buried. About 100 lustra (c. 1, § 4) had passed since the bishop's death, when a peasant of Slepe struck with his plough a stone sarcophagus, within which were found, besides human remains, a silver chalice and insignia of the episcopal rank. Slepe being one of the estates of the abbey of Ramsey, 8 leucae (c. 2, § 8) distant, abbat Eadnoth was informed of this. The same night a man of Slepe saw in a vision one robed as a bishop, with ornaments like those in the sarcophagus, who said he was St. Ivo and wished to be removed to the abbey, with two of his companions, whose burial-places he described. The translation was accordingly effected, and
