Letter 3

From: Braulio of Zaragoza, bishop To: Isidore of Seville, bishop and scholar Date: ~632 AD Context: Braulio presses Isidore more urgently to finish and send the Etymologiae, deploying rhetorical flattery alongside genuine scholarly need. To the most holy and learned Lord Isidore, bishop, worthy of all reverence, I know what it means to receive a letter urging you to finish something. I have written enough unfinished things myself to understand the particular discomfort of having someone waiting on your work. I ask your forgiveness for what I am about to do: I am going to urge you again. The Etymologiae must be finished. I do not say this lightly or out of impatience alone. I say it because there is no one else who can do what you have done — no one in Spain, and I would wager no one in the Latin world — who has the learning, the patience, and the organizational intelligence to produce such a work. If you set it aside unfinished, it will never be finished. No one else will take it up. The knowledge you have gathered will remain scattered in a thousand books that most of us will never see. You told me in your last letter that parts of it embarrass you. I believe you, and I also believe that your embarrassment is that of a man who sets his standards far higher than the rest of us manage. What embarrasses you will instruct us. Please send what you have. Revise the rest at your leisure and send corrections later. But let us have the work. I beg you in the name of the Lord and of the learning that binds us together. Braulio, your unworthy son