Living Letters of the Law. Jeremy Cohen

AND THE ISIDOREAN VISION

      A more truly Isidorean reading of Isidore might proceed from three related observations. First, Isidore composed the De fide catholica precisely at the time of Sisebut's decree that the Jews must convert to Christianity (614—615);⁴⁹ the interdependence between polemical treatise and royal edict might well extend beyond their chronological coincidence to the motivations and presuppositions underlying each. Second, and more generally, the inner logic of Isidore's literary and ecclesiastical career must be understood against the background of Sisebut's designs for the Visigothic monarchy; as in Judith Herrin's aforecited judgment, Isidore's “theories, both political and ecclesiastical, developed in a tight symbiotic relationship with Visigothic practice, both in state and church.” Both men numbered among the most learned of their generation. Both blended their interests in classical science and literature with steadfast commitments to Catholic Christianity and Visigothic Spain. In their respective, even convergent, fashions, both leaders combated the various opponents of these mutual allegiances. Deeming them threats to Visigothic hegemony and to Catholic unity, Sisebut battled against all alien elements in Spain, including Byzantines, Arian heretics, and Jews; he also authored a work of Christian hagiography as well as an anti-Arian treatise.⁵⁰ In Jacques Fontaine's words, Sisebut “understood his mission in such a way that its moral, religious, and political elements were inextricably mingled. He was thus an active collaborator in the Isidorean renaissance, which had as its aim nothing less than the reconstruction of the civil and religious life of Visigothic Spain.”⁵¹ Isidore similarly struggled against heretics and Jews, usually maintaining the policies of Sisebut, even after the latter's death. In his various encyclopedic works, Isidore undertook to endow Visigothic Spain with a viable Christian synthesis of classical culture, one that would confirm Spain's legitimacy as successor to imperial Rome, just as Sisebut sought prestige for his throne by emulating the Eastern emperors of Byzantium, even as he fought their armies in battle. Simply put, both men strove to integrate the society and culture of Spain under Catholic Visigothic rule, and at the same time to accredit that rule as the fulfillment of classical Roman and Christian traditions. Third, Isidore gave clearest expression to these shared aspirations in his two major works of historiography, his universal Chronicon and his Hispano-centric Historia Gothorum. In its original version, each of these historical accounts climaxed and concluded in the reign of Sisebut.⁵² One modern reader⁵³ has suggested that Isidore thus likened Sisebut to the biblical King Solomon, the monarch, conqueror, and sage of ancient Israel who secured its borders, united its twelve tribes, built its temple to God, and enjoyed well-deserved renown for his wisdom and eloquence. Most noteworthy, then, is the place accorded Sisebut's conversion of the Jews in Isidore's histories. The Historia Gothorum lists it first among Sisebut's accomplishments. The full text of the Chronicon mentions it along with but two other achievements of the king; in Isidore's abridgement of the work, it is the only achievement mentioned.⁵⁴ Without doubt the Jews assumed vital importance in Isidore's outlook on history and in his vision of the ideal Visigothic monarchy, and this significance warrants further elaboration.

      If one may link Augustinian and Gregorian constructions of the Jew to considerations of exegesis, the philosophy of history, and anthropology, the key to Isidore's distinctive ideas on the Jews and Judaism lies chiefly in the second of these—that is, in his reading of terrestrial history. Recognizing Isidore's debt to his patristic predecessors, above all Augustine, one must therefore identify the singular features of his historiography with care. Isidore's Chronicon borrowed much from Augustinian accounts of human history, and from the De civitate Dei in particular: the cardinal importance of divine providence in human affairs, the division of history as we know it into six ages, and the parallel spiritual and political dimensions of God's plan for historical development. Nevertheless, nurturing the inclination of the Spanish Orosius two centuries before him, Isidore departed radically from Augustine by elaborating an essentially monistic construction of human experience. Here one finds instructive similarity between Gregory the Great and Isidore, but Isidore's temperament and his overtly historiographic interests yielded a view of human history more positivistic than that suggested in Gregorian biblical commentary.⁵⁵

      Precisely what distinguished these ideas of Isidore? Augustine had posited a fundamental distinction between the histories of heavenly and earthly cities, despite their temporary intersection in the saeculum. Gregory had excluded the saeculum from his reading of history, which, owing to his ascetic convictions, he “sketched only from a celestial perspective,”⁵⁶ drastically devaluing the experience of this world. Isidore, however, while upholding Gregory's assertion of a single and sole realm of historical development, portrayed the political events of this world as the critical manifestation of that development!⁵⁷ Providential history in the Chronicon entails the identity of divine and mundane history, inasmuch as God actualizes his design for human salvation within a terrestrial context. Mundane historical developments correspond directly with progress toward the eschaton. More than in Gregorian doctrine, and in contrast with Augustinian teaching, these developments will eventually prove the time ripe for the final redemption, and they will figure directly in the process of Christian salvation.

      Lacking both the neutral political sphere of the Augustinian saeculum and the Gregorian aversion for the worldly,⁵⁸ Isidore's history reverts to a relatively simplistic, tension-free understanding of Christian empire or kingship (imperium or regnum christianum) that characterized Eusebius and other fourth-century writers, including the younger Augustine.⁵⁹ This was the Christian optimism, the do ut des (“I give so that you may give”) mentality that discerned the fulfillment of God's promise of salvation in the Christianization of Rome, against which the older Augustine's De civitate Dei reacted so emphatically.⁶⁰ Yet Isidore did not simply return to the outlook of fourth-century fathers. He borrowed from the older Augustine too, and he composed a universal chronicle of world history that was distinctive, one whose structure and style bespoke his own, early medieval worldview. The Chronicon's narration of its six historical epochs includes earthly and pagan affairs alongside matters divine and spiritual. Commencing with creation and not with Adam (as they do in Augustine's works), they betray no metaphoric correspondence to the proverbial ages in a single human's life and thus do not symbolize the spiritual growth of God's chosen people from its youth to its adulthood. Rather, they serve to depict the totality of human history as Isidore perceived it: Israel and the nations, East and West, natural and supernatural, that recorded in Scripture and that related in classical mythology—all in the same continuum. Isidore's chronology is more precise than Augustine's, his periods more carefully demarcated, and his division of political history more rigorous. Isidore dealt directly with specific kings and kingdoms, not the vast hegemonies of Assyria and Rome that one encounters in the De civitate Dei; all of them had a role to play in the divinely ordained progression of terrestrial history, from creation to the final, seventh age of glory.

      Augustine, we recall, afforded minimal attention to the political highlights of the sixth age—like the pax romana—which extended from the incarnation to the present. Yet Isidore deemed the sixth age as all-important, and it, more than any other, exemplifies the special character of his chronicle. Its annals are as long as those of the five earlier ages combined, its scope entirely extrabiblical, and its history predominantly political—again, in striking contrast with the Augustinian model. As if to underscore that contrast, Isidore's sixth age begins not in the middle of Jesus' ministry but only in the wake of the brief mention of his life,⁶¹ and following the replacement of the Old Testament by the New:

      Octavian Augustus reigned fifty-six years. During his reign, he celebrated three triumphs after his Sicilian [triumph]: a Dalmatian [triumph], an Asian [triumph], and, lastly, an Alexandrian [triumph for his victory] against Antony; thereafter, [he gained control of] Spain. Then, with peace achieved throughout the whole world, on land and at sea, he closed and bolted the gates of Janus. Under his rule, the sixty-nine weeks noted in Daniel [9:2.4–27] were completed; and, with the cessation of the kingship and priesthood of the Jews, the lord Jesus Christ was born of a virgin in the forty-second year of his reign. [Thereafter begins] the sixth age of terrestrial history [sexta aetas saeculi].62

      Juxtaposing the fulfillment of biblical messianic prophecy and the birth of Jesus with the Augustan