Isidore was born in Cartagena, where his father was the Roman Governor, but he was sent to school at Seville, where his elder brother (St Leander of Seville) became one of his teachers. The school at Seville was the first of its kind in Spain. All the ordinary school subjects were taught, and the boys were made to work very hard. Isidore, like many boys, disliked hard work, and one day he played truant from school. In fact, he intended to run away altogether; but, as the sun was very hot and he soon became very tired, he sat down to rest beside a little spring that gushed over a rock. As he was resting in the shade he noticed that the stone on which the drops of water fell had been worn away, and he thought: If drops of water can actually make a hole in a hard stone by never ceasing to fall, surely if I persevere with my lessons I shall gradually get to like them and not find them dull and difficult. So that evening he went back to school and before long became the best scholar there.
When he grew older he became a teacher in the school, and when his brother, St Leander, died he was made Bishop of Seville in his place. The king at the time was St. Hermengild’s brother, Reccared, who had persuaded Hermengild to come out from the safety of the Church and had helped his father deceive him. But when Reccared had become king he had also become a Catholic, for he never forgot the example of Hermengild’s bravery and he could not help feeling that he was partly to blame for his death. So, with the king a Catholic and the two great Bishops, St Leander and St Isidore, to teach the people, it was not long before Arianism was destroyed in Spain.
But Isidore saw that he had other work to do. The long rule of the barbarian Goths in Spain had meant that the country had become uncivilized. Men had forgotten all the learning which the Roman Empire had given them. They had even forgotten to have any manners. Isidore thought that if Spain was to become a great land again, “worthy of the Catholic faith“, the young people must be educated once more. First of all he made the school at Seville even better than it had been in his brother’s time. Greek and Hebrew and law and medicine could all be studied there. And he himself set to work to compile the first encyclopedia that had been made in Christian times, so that those who wanted would have a great reference book of all branches of knowledge.
Then, in the year 633 A.D., when he presided over a Church Council at Toledo, where all the bishops in Spain met together, he persuaded them that schools like his at Seville should be attached to every cathedral in the country. When Isidore died three years later, one of these bishops, Braulio of Saragossa, wrote of him: “I think that God must have raised him up in these times to restore Spain from the decay into which it has fallen, to set up again the ancient landmarks, and to save us from becoming altogether barbarian.”
For hundreds of years men all over Europe owed a great debt to St Isidore, who understood that sound learning is part of Christian life, and who was nicknamed ‘the schoolmaster of the Middle Ages’ because men continued to use for many years the books he wrote. It would be impossible to describe the virtues of Isidore as Bishop: how firm, humble, patient, and merciful: how zealously he labored for the restoration of christian morals and ecclesiastical discipline, and how untiring he was in his efforts, both by word and writing, to establish them among his people; and, finally, how he excelled in every virtue. In 1997, Pope John Paul II decided that the internet could use a patron saint to guide Catholics in its proper use. He chose Saint Isidore of Seville (560-636), Doctor of the Church, and last of the Latin Fathers.
Almighty and eternal God, who created us in Thy image and bade us to seek after all that is good, true and beautiful, especially in the divine person of Thy only-begotten Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, grant we beseech Thee, that, through the intercession of Saint Isidore, bishop and doctor, during our journeys through the internet we will direct our hands and eyes only to that which is pleasing to Thee and treat with charity and patience all those souls whom we encounter. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.