Yet Isidore did not simply return to the outlook of fourth-century fathers. He borrowed from the older Augustine too, and he composed a universal chronicle of world history that was distinctive, one whose structure and style bespoke his own, early medieval worldview. The Chronicon's narration of its six historical epochs includes earthly and pagan affairs alongside matters divine and spiritual. Commencing with creation and not with Adam (as they do in Augustine's works), they betray no metaphoric correspondence to the proverbial ages in a single human's life and thus do not symbolize the spiritual growth of God's chosen people from its youth to its adulthood. Rather, they serve to depict the totality of human history as Isidore perceived it: Israel and the nations, East and West, natural and supernatural, that recorded in Scripture and that related in classical mythology—all in the same continuum. Isidore's chronology is more precise than Augustine's, his periods more carefully demarcated, and his division of political history more rigorous. Isidore dealt directly with specific kings and kingdoms, not the vast hegemonies of Assyria and Rome that one encounters in the De civitate Dei; all of them had a role to play in the divinely ordained progression of terrestrial history, from creation to the final, seventh age of glory.
Augustine, we recall, afforded minimal attention to the political highlights of the sixth age—like the pax romana—which extended from the incarnation to the present. Yet Isidore deemed the sixth age as all-important, and it, more than any other, exemplifies the special character of his chronicle. Its annals are as long as those of the five earlier ages combined, its scope entirely extrabiblical, and its history predominantly political—again, in striking contrast with the Augustinian model. As if to underscore that contrast, Isidore's sixth age begins not in the middle of Jesus' ministry but only in the wake of the brief mention of his life,61 and following the replacement of the Old Testament by the New:
Octavian Augustus reigned fifty-six years. During his reign, he celebrated three triumphs after his Sicilian [triumph]: a Dalmatian [triumph], an Asian [triumph], and, lastly, an Alexandrian [triumph for his victory] against Antony; thereafter, [he gained control of] Spain. Then, with peace achieved throughout the whole world, on land and at sea, he closed and bolted the gates of Janus. Under his rule, the sixty-nine weeks noted in Daniel [9:2.4–27] were completed; and, with the cessation of the kingship and priesthood of the Jews, the lord Jesus Christ was born of a virgin in the forty-second year of his reign. [Thereafter begins] the sixth age of terrestrial history [sexta aetas saeculi].62
Juxtaposing the fulfillment of biblical messianic prophecy and the birth of Jesus with the Augustan apogee of Roman political achievement, Isidore's record of the incarnation epitomizes his blend of spiritual and worldly history: What better a demonstration than the physical embodiment of God on earth, coincident with the pax romanal Moreover, with the triumph of Rome and the establishment of Christianity already established fact, Isidore's sixth age epitomizes the identification of Romanitas and Christianitas, yielding an uninterrupted review of pagan emperors, their Christian successors, and the Germanic rulers of Spain. Neither the conversion of Constantine (who, eventually, at the end of his life, received Arian baptism)63 nor the end of the Western empire marks the end of an era in this historical narrative. Rome lacks unique soteriological import. Duly constituted kingship (regnum) survived the empire in the West, so that its fall hardly undercut the basis for historical optimism; Spanish monarchs assumed no less significance than did Roman or Byzantine emperors. Structurally, the sixth age links the incarnation and the final judgment, the first and second comings of Christ. It is Christian history, in which God's plan for the salvation of his people draws progressively closer to its full and final realization.
As the Chronicon records the reigns of Eastern and Western monarchs in succession, it highlights their victories over Jews, heretics, and Byzantine invaders of the West, those who evidently impede the realization of a properly ordered Christendom. Presumably, when these problems have been overcome, the sixth age will give way to the seventh. History will culminate in a final age of glory.
When will this final redemption occur? During Sisebut's reign, when Isidore first wrote the Chronicon, he reported the king's conversion of the Jews and at once reflected that “the time remaining in the sixth age is known to God alone.”64 Isidore's chronicle thus concludes, it would seem, on a note of uncertainty. Yet the movement of the sixth age of history from the pax romana to Catholic Visigothic kingship, and from the incarnation—entailing “the cessation of the kingship and priesthood of the Jews [cessante regno ac sacerdotio Iudaeo- rwra]”—to the conversion of Iberian Jewry, is suggestive.65 Marc Reydellet has elaborated: “Isidore lives in a world where all disparities seem to be conclusively reconciled: The Jews become Christians; all of Spain is reorganized around [the Visigothic capital of] Toledo. One does not mean to state that Isidore displayed a blind optimism—but simply that the great conflict of good and evil is played out within each individual. Yet in the order of collective history, the plan of God can seem to be on a course of total and definitive realization.”66 The conversion of the Jews at the end of the sixth age heralded that realization; and, Reydellet thus has concluded, Isidore's universal chronicle “was, in the history of its genre, the only one which had a conclusion.”67
The concerns and structure of Isidore's other major historiographical treatise, the Historia Gothorum, echo this sense of the Chronicon. In its first version, it too dates from the reign of Sisebut, and it too served as “a declaration of independence on the part of Visigothic Spain and an affirmation of its worth against the ancient [Roman] mistress of the Mediterranean world.”68 But if the Chrorticon legitimizes Visigothic kingship in a blending of Romanitas and Christianitas that followed upon the incarnation, the history of the Goths roots its patriotic vision in the glories of Spain and the Christian character of the Visigothic kingdom it spawned: “Of all lands from the West to India, you, Spain, holy and ever-fruitful mother of princes and of nations [principum gentiumque mater] are the most beautiful. You now are justly queen of all provinces, from whom not only the West but also the East receives its light. You are the splendor and jewel of the world, a very distinguished part of the earth, in which the glorious fertility of the Getic people takes much pleasure and flourishes greatly.”69 The panegyric of Isidore's well-known Laus Spaniae continues, but its ramifications for Isidore are already clear: Spain, mother of kings, is uniquely suited to the fulfillment of Christian historical-political aspirations. A geographical, spatial entity, Spain has nurtured the foremost Christian monarchy, much as the temporal progression of universal Chronicon's sixth age culminates in the Visigothic kingdom. For the Chronicori's emphasis on the incarnation, effecting the Christianization of human history through God's participation in it, the Historia Gothorum substitutes the conversion of Visigothic Spain and her rulers—to justify her claims to Rome's erstwhile primacy and her opposition to Byzantine imperialism. Not so much the historical Jesus of the Chronicon but Christ the king accords divine sanction to the Catholic rulers of the Historia Gothorum; his values pervade the totality of the Visigothic church—monarch and prelates, clergy and laity together—and render it the genuine kingdom of Christ (regnum Christi), the defense of the members of Christ (tuitio membrorum Christi).70
The earliest version of the Historia Gothorum reaches a natural conclusion in the career of King Sisebut:
At the beginning of his reign, leading the Jews to the Christian faith, he was zealous indeed, but not wisely so; for he compelled with force those whom one was supposed to bring to the faith with reason. But, as it is written, whether in pretense or in truth, Christ is proclaimed. He was, moreover, refined in his eloquence, learned in his thought, and educated, to an extent, in the sciences.
He was also renowned for his military accomplishments and victories…. Twice, in person, did he successfully defeat the Byzantines, and he conquered some of their cities for himself. He was so merciful following his victory, that he freed for ransom many from the opposing army who had been taken captive and led into slavery, and the price of the redemption of the captives became his treasure.71
