Letter 27

Braulio of Zaragoza [bishop, c.590-651, Isidore's devoted student and correspondent] writes to Isidore of Seville [c.560-636] requesting delivery of the completed Etymologiae, the twenty-book encyclopedia of all human knowledge that Isidore had been composing for years. Braulio had been involved in organizing and editing the work and was eager to see it in final form. The letter reveals the intense intellectual collaboration between the two greatest scholars of Visigothic Spain and the importance they placed on transmitting classical learning to future generations — an urgency born from the sense that ancient civilization was slipping away.