Letter 6

From: Braulio of Zaragoza, bishop To: Isidore of Seville, bishop and scholar Date: ~634 AD Context: Braulio writes with enormous gratitude on receiving the Etymologiae, praising Isidore's achievement and pledging to care for the work carefully. To my most holy Lord Isidore, teacher and father, The Etymologiae has arrived. I have spent the past three days doing almost nothing else — eating too little, sleeping less — and I find myself unable to express adequately what I feel on reading it. This is a work unlike anything produced in the Latin West in living memory. I do not say this to flatter you, though God knows you have earned all the praise I could offer; I say it because it is true and because I think you may not fully understand what you have done. You have given the Church a key to all learning. A young priest in any province of Spain, or Gaul, or anywhere Latin is read, can now open these twenty books and find — organized, explained, and cross-referenced — the whole inheritance of pagan and Christian learning that would otherwise require a lifetime of searching through texts he will never have access to. The Etymologiae does not replace those texts, but it makes them navigable. For those of us at the edges of the world, that is no small gift. I will copy it carefully. I will send copies to those I trust. And I will guard the original as the treasure it is. You asked me to handle the dedication. I have done so, inserting a brief preface that I hope you will approve. Your grateful and unworthy son, Braulio