even judging him, whether in a positive or negative sense, a humane advocate of the Jewish cause;38 and still others have sought a middle ground, deeming him inconsistent and his misgivings the result of hindsight, or perhaps a reaction to the rampant Judaizing that ensued in the wake of insincere conversions.39 Investigators likewise disagree concerning the significance of the anti-Jewish measures of the Fourth Council of Toledo: Although some have emphasized the harshness of this presumably Isidorean legislation, linking it to the program of Sisebut,40 others have downplayed its anti-Jewish motivation, suggesting that the council's real antagonism pointed elsewhere.41 Finally, students of Isidore have pondered the place of the archbishop, his De fide catholica, and the Toledan decrees in the evolution of Christian anti-Judaism. In retrospect, they have stressed his reliance on and transmission of earlier traditions, judging him a master of “patristic vulgarization.”42 Looking forward in time, they have considered the subsequent popularity of the De fide catholica—the earliest extant work in medieval German43—the impact of Isidorean legislation on medieval canon law,44 and attitudes toward Isidore in Jewish historiography of the later Middle Ages.45
These scholarly discussions testify to Isidore's prominence in the history of Jewish-Christian polemic; viewed collectively, however, they also point to aspects of the De fide that recent scholarship has not adequately probed. All of these lines of inquiry relate Isidore and his anti-Judaism to strictly external referents—comparing them with earlier patristic writers and traditions, relating them to the contemporary concerns of Visigothic kingdom and church, and assessing their subsequent impact and dissemination. Neither have modern researchers explained the place of the De fide catholica in the entirety of the Isidorean corpus, nor have they subjected its contents to deliberate thematic and structural analysis. A few have reflected impressionistically on the nature of the treatise—perhaps an attempt at systematic theology, or a catechetical work structurally dependent on the Apostle's Creed, or a mystical meditation on Scripture46—while summary characterizations of its tone have ranged from hostility to “meekness.”47 Yet owing to Isidore's debt to his predecessors, most assessments discern no novelty in Isidore's polemic, nor do they allow for the possibility that its substance developed over time.48 As a result of such estimations, much of the significance of the De fide catholica has remained unnoticed.
TERRESTRIAL HISTORY, CONVERSION OF THE JEWS,
AND THE ISIDOREAN VISION
A more truly Isidorean reading of Isidore might proceed from three related observations. First, Isidore composed the De fide catholica precisely at the time of Sisebut's decree that the Jews must convert to Christianity (614—615);49 the interdependence between polemical treatise and royal edict might well extend beyond their chronological coincidence to the motivations and presuppositions underlying each. Second, and more generally, the inner logic of Isidore's literary and ecclesiastical career must be understood against the background of Sisebut's designs for the Visigothic monarchy; as in Judith Herrin's aforecited judgment, Isidore's “theories, both political and ecclesiastical, developed in a tight symbiotic relationship with Visigothic practice, both in state and church.” Both men numbered among the most learned of their generation. Both blended their interests in classical science and literature with steadfast commitments to Catholic Christianity and Visigothic Spain. In their respective, even convergent, fashions, both leaders combated the various opponents of these mutual allegiances. Deeming them threats to Visigothic hegemony and to Catholic unity, Sisebut battled against all alien elements in Spain, including Byzantines, Arian heretics, and Jews; he also authored a work of Christian hagiography as well as an anti-Arian treatise.50 In Jacques Fontaine's words, Sisebut “understood his mission in such a way that its moral, religious, and political elements were inextricably mingled. He was thus an active collaborator in the Isidorean renaissance, which had as its aim nothing less than the reconstruction of the civil and religious life of Visigothic Spain.”51 Isidore similarly struggled against heretics and Jews, usually maintaining the policies of Sisebut, even after the latter's death. In his various encyclopedic works, Isidore undertook to endow Visigothic Spain with a viable Christian synthesis of classical culture, one that would confirm Spain's legitimacy as successor to imperial Rome, just as Sisebut sought prestige for his throne by emulating the Eastern emperors of Byzantium, even as he fought their armies in battle. Simply put, both men strove to integrate the society and culture of Spain under Catholic Visigothic rule, and at the same time to accredit that rule as the fulfillment of classical Roman and Christian traditions. Third, Isidore gave clearest expression to these shared aspirations in his two major works of historiography, his universal Chronicon and his Hispano-centric Historia Gothorum. In its original version, each of these historical accounts climaxed and concluded in the reign of Sisebut.52 One modern reader53 has suggested that Isidore thus likened Sisebut to the biblical King Solomon, the monarch, conqueror, and sage of ancient Israel who secured its borders, united its twelve tribes, built its temple to God, and enjoyed well-deserved renown for his wisdom and eloquence. Most noteworthy, then, is the place accorded Sisebut's conversion of the Jews in Isidore's histories. The Historia Gothorum lists it first among Sisebut's accomplishments. The full text of the Chronicon mentions it along with but two other achievements of the king; in Isidore's abridgement of the work, it is the only achievement mentioned.54 Without doubt the Jews assumed vital importance in Isidore's outlook on history and in his vision of the ideal Visigothic monarchy, and this significance warrants further elaboration.
If one may link Augustinian and Gregorian constructions of the Jew to considerations of exegesis, the philosophy of history, and anthropology, the key to Isidore's distinctive ideas on the Jews and Judaism lies chiefly in the second of these—that is, in his reading of terrestrial history. Recognizing Isidore's debt to his patristic predecessors, above all Augustine, one must therefore identify the singular features of his historiography with care. Isidore's Chronicon borrowed much from Augustinian accounts of human history, and from the De civitate Dei in particular: the cardinal importance of divine providence in human affairs, the division of history as we know it into six ages, and the parallel spiritual and political dimensions of God's plan for historical development. Nevertheless, nurturing the inclination of the Spanish Orosius two centuries before him, Isidore departed radically from Augustine by elaborating an essentially monistic construction of human experience. Here one finds instructive similarity between Gregory the Great and Isidore, but Isidore's temperament and his overtly historiographic interests yielded a view of human history more positivistic than that suggested in Gregorian biblical commentary.55
Precisely what distinguished these ideas of Isidore? Augustine had posited a fundamental distinction between the histories of heavenly and earthly cities, despite their temporary intersection in the saeculum. Gregory had excluded the saeculum from his reading of history, which, owing to his ascetic convictions, he “sketched only from a celestial perspective,”56 drastically devaluing the experience of this world. Isidore, however, while upholding Gregory's assertion of a single and sole realm of historical development, portrayed the political events of this world as the critical manifestation of that development!57 Providential history in the Chronicon entails the identity of divine and mundane history, inasmuch as God actualizes his design for human salvation within a terrestrial context. Mundane historical developments correspond directly with progress toward the eschaton. More than in Gregorian doctrine, and in contrast with Augustinian teaching, these developments will eventually prove the time ripe for the final redemption, and they will figure directly in the process of Christian salvation.
Lacking both the neutral political sphere of the Augustinian saeculum and the Gregorian aversion for the worldly,58 Isidore's history reverts to a relatively simplistic, tension-free understanding of Christian empire or kingship (imperium or regnum christianum) that characterized Eusebius and other fourth-century writers, including the younger Augustine.59 This was the Christian optimism, the do ut des (“I give so that you may give”) mentality that discerned the fulfillment of God's promise of salvation in the Christianization of Rome, against which the older
