Today April 4

Today is the feast of St. Isidore of Seville, the last of the Latin Church Fathers. In medieval (and earlier) times, anyone ignorant of Isidore could not be said to be educated. He was a renaissance man, and this long before the actual Renaissance! He lived ca. 560-636 A.D. He had an encyclopedic knowledge and wrote about: grammar, rhetoric, mathematics, music, medicine, law, books, theology, languages, physiology, zoology, astronomy, architecture, metallurgy, agriculture, warfare, wardrobe and cooking, all while he was serving as bishop of Seville, to which he succeeded his brother Leander, who had been his teacher. An orphan, he was raised by his much older brother Leander and his sister Florentina. He hated homeschooling and ran away because he hated being corrected and he was rather a poor student. But while on the run, he observed stones worn away by the continual dripping of water and renewed in determination, he returned home. He ended up being one of the most educated educators in the Western world. Even so, Leander kept him under lock and key for awhile.

After serving as adjunct to his brother, bishop of Seville, he served there himself as bishop for 37 years through the reigns of 6 kings. To his brother and himself is due the credit of converting the Visigoth kings from Arianism to Christianity. In between writing and doing his episcopal duties, Isidore found time to preside over numerous church councils and synods, including the 4th Council of Toledo. That early council reinforced clerical celibacy and established a seminary or cathedral school in every diocese. It declared reprehensible the forced conversions of the Jews, but it did allow confiscation of the goods of the converted Jews who returned to their original faith. Sigh. Isidore did declare slaves and freemen were equal in the sight of God, however, and for that he should be deemed progressive.

He died after a short illness, during which he so divested himself of his worldly goods you couldn't walk through his house without bumping into a poor or homeless person staying there. Picture "Entertaining Angels." And when the end was near, he directed 2 bishops to support him into the church, where he put on sackcloth, rubbed ashes in his hair, loudly begged pardon for his sins, received viaticum (last Communion), went home and died. The year was 636.