Isidore in the Carolingian and Ottonian worlds: encyclopaedism and etymology, ca. 800-1050

Isidore’s Etymologiae, the “Grundbuch des ganzen Mittelalters”, attests to the importance of the encyclopaedic and etymological traditions within medieval intellectual culture. Isidore’s antiquarianism and penchant for collecting made him an authority in the medieval West and ensured his floruit in the Carolingian and Ottonian worlds. In particular, his scholarly methods, already discussed in previous chapters, were widely deployed by early medieval writers and provide insight into the intellectual context of his reception. This paper focuses on the use of Isidore by glossators and commentators from the ninth to the early eleventh centuries. It highlights his significance as demonstrated by glosses on a range of heavily glossed pagan and Christian authors. Isidore was regarded as an authority and functioned as a source of information, including on Greek words. More importantly, through examination of glosses this study considers the influence of Isidore’s intellectual inheritance on early medieval scholarly culture.