Letter 1

From: Braulio of Zaragoza, bishop To: Isidore of Seville, bishop and scholar Date: ~631 AD Context: Braulio had been urging his teacher Isidore to complete and share his encyclopedic Etymologiae for years; this letter begins the surviving correspondence between them. Most Blessed Father and Lord, The long silence between us has not been for lack of affection — you know how fully I hold you in my heart, and how much I owe to the years I spent learning at your feet in Seville. But silence has a way of growing heavy, and I find I can no longer bear it without reaching for my pen. I write now with a specific and pressing purpose. I have heard from several brothers that your great work — the Etymologiae, that encyclopedic gathering of all human knowledge organized through the origins of words — is nearing completion, or at least that substantial portions of it are now in a state fit to be read. I ask you, by the love and respect that binds teacher to student, to send me what you have. The hunger for learning is fierce here, and the materials for satisfying it are few. What you have assembled represents something the Church has not possessed before: a guide to all the arts and sciences, arranged so that even those of us in the distant provinces might find our bearings in the great sea of ancient learning. I understand if the work is not yet finished. I ask only for what you can share — and I trust that whatever comes from your hands will be worth having, finished or not. Your unworthy student, commending you to God's mercy, Braulio