Isidore composed a polemic treatise on the Catholic Faith against the Jews—De fide Catholica contra Judaeos. The good bishop had nothing to add to the patristic discussion of this weighty controversy. His book is filled with quotations from Scripture. It put the matter together in a way suited to his epoch and the coming centuries, and at an early time was translated into the German and other vernacular tongues. Three books of Sententiae follow, upon the contents of Christian doctrine—as to God, the world, evil, the angels, man, Christ and the Church. They consist of excerpts from the writings of Gregory the Great and earlier Church Fathers.[1] A more original work is the De ecclesiastics officiis, upon the services of the Church and the orders of clergy and laity. It presents the liturgical practices and ecclesiastical regulations of Isidore's epoch.
Isidore seems to have put most pious feeling into a work called by him Synonyma, to which name was added the supplementary designation: De lamentatione animae. First the Soul pours out its lament in excruciating iteration, repeating the same commonplace of Christian piety in synonymous phrases. When its lengthy plaint is ended, Reason replies with admonitions synonymously reiterated in the same fashion.[2] This work combined a grammatical with a pious purpose, and became very popular through its doubly edifying nature, and because it strung together so many easy commonplaces of Christian piety. Isidore also drew up a Regula for monks, and a book on the Order of Creation has been ascribed to him. This completes the sum of his extant works upon religious topics, from which we pass to those of a secular character.
The first of these is the De rerum natura, written to
- ↑ Isidore's Books of Sentences present a topical arrangement of matters more or less closely pertinent to the Christian Faith, and thus may be regarded as a precursor of the Sentences of Peter Lombard (post, Chapter 34.). But Isidore's work is the merest compilation, and he does not marshal his extracts to prove or disprove a set proposition, and show the consensus of authority, like the Lombard. His chief source is Gregory's Moralia. Prosper of Aquitaine, a younger contemporary and disciple of Augustine, compiled from Augustine's works a book of Sentences, a still slighter affair than Isidore's (Migne, Pat. Lat. 51, col. 427-496).
- ↑ For example, Reason begins her reply thus: "Quaeso te, anima, obsecro te, deprecor te, imploro te, ne quid ultra leviter agas, ne quid inconsulte geras, ne temere aliquid facias," etc. (Migne 83, col. 845).
