Isidore of Seville, Etymologies

Contents

ff. 1r-91v Isidore of Seville, Etymologies, incomplete.

Contains: end of Book 2 (Rhetoric and Dialectic). Beginning of Book 3 (Arithmetic, etc.). End of Book 5 (Chronology). Books 6-9 complete (Ecclesiastical matters. Theology. The Church and religions. Language and peoples.) Beginning of Book 10 (Etymology). Fragments of Books 11-13 (Man and his parts. Zoology. The World). Book 14 complete except for 1 leaf (Physical geography). Book 15 complete (Public building and roads). Book 16 incomplete (Stones and metals). Book 17 beginning only (Agriculture).

f. 1r [opens imperfectly] ... pars cause est propositum ... f. 91v [ends imperfectly] inspiratione bona et cum caripter manus inficiens ...

Late 12th Century

1 volume 91 ll. atlas folio. 45 x 31 cm. On vellum. 19th century boards. The lower part of f. 54 has been cut away. The lower margins of many leaves are frayed. Finely written in double column of 42 lines in a clear gothic hand with headings and paragraph marks in red, and some good large ornamental initials also in red. The Ptolemaic World-map on f. 65v is in red, green and black, and the small diagrams (f. 8v) and the Tables of Consanguinity (ff. 53r, 54r) are in red and black. The last 5 ll. are un-numbered, but the others have the original foliation, and the volume contains ff. 19-22, 25 (misplaced before f. 19)-31, 41-88, 90, 95, 106, 111, 113, 115-118, 120-137.

Purchased 1910.

This famous encyclopaedia - the first of its kind - was written about 630 and first printed at Augsburg in 1472.

Catalogue description modified in 2014. For original description, see S.A.J. Moorat, Catalogue of Western Manuscripts on Medicine and Science in the Wellcome Historical Medical Library (London: Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine, 1962-1973).