As archbishop of Seville and chief prelate of the Spanish church, Isidore had ample opportunity to apply his doctrine concerning the Jews in formulating ecclesiastical policy and legislation. He presided over the Council of Seville in 624, which called for policing the Jews ordered by Sisebut to baptize their children, lest they substitute Christian children for their own.24 More significantly, Isidore presided over the Fourth Council of Toledo in 633, ten canons of which concerned the Jews. Some of these decrees—forbidding Jewish ownership of Christian slaves, Jewish influence over Christians (whether through bribery or by holding public office), and Judaizing on the part of Jewish converts to Christianity25—echoed or reinforced the legislation of previous church councils and Visigothic rulers. Others, however, may well afford insight into Isidore's own attitudes toward the Jews and thus warrant particular attention. Adumbrating later Visigothic discrimination against “Jews, whether baptized or unbaptized,”26 the council forbade Christians of Jewish origin to hold public office,27 and it underscored the gravity of the issue of proselytizing by force in three separate decrees. Reflecting the reality of Jewish survival in Spain despite Sisebut's edict of conversion, Canon 57 banned the baptism of the Jews against their will, but with several important reservations, implied and explicit:
Concerning the Jews, the holy synod has decreed henceforth to compel no one to accept the faith, because God has compassion for whom he wishes and renders obstinate whom he wishes; for not against their will should such people be saved, but with their consent, so that the semblance of justice be kept intact. Just as man, obeying the serpent of his own free will, was ruined, so a man is saved through believing—owing to the call of God's grace and the conversion of his own mind. Therefore, rather than be subdued they should be urged to convert, not under compulsion but through the power of their free will. Those, however, who were previously coerced to become Christian, as happened at the time of the most pious ruler Sisebut, for it is now a fact that they, having been admitted to the divine sacraments, have received the grace of baptism, have been anointed with chrism, and have partaken of the body and blood of the lord—they should appropriately be forced to retain the faith which they adopted, albeit through compulsion or out of necessity, lest the Lord's name be blasphemed, and the faith which they have adopted be deemed vile and contemptible.28
Principled objections to forced conversion notwithstanding, the decree does not follow Gregory the Great in prescribing penalties for those who baptized Jews against their will, and it emphatically upholds the validity of those forced conversions that resulted from King Sisebut's unprecedented edict. In Canon 60 the council ordered that Jewish children be removed from their parents and raised in a Christian environment: “Lest the sons and daughters of the Jews be further entangled in the error of their parents, we decree that they be separated from their company, having been assigned to monasteries or God-fearing Christian men and women, so that under their care they learn the practice of the faith and, thus better instructed, they may make progress in both their behavior and their belief.”29 And, reaffirming an earlier law of Sisebut,30 Canon 63 demanded not only that children born of mixed marriages between Christians and Jews be raised as Christians but that Jewish husbands of Christian women must themselves convert to Christianity.31
Isidore's anti-Jewish pronouncements have evoked scholarly interest and discussion along various lines. Readers of the De fide catholica have questioned the extent of Isidore's interaction with Spanish Jewry, and they have sought to identify the intended applications of his polemical treatise. Did Isidore write this work for disputing directly with the Jews, keeping converted Jews within the church, providing catechetical instruction for the baptized children of Jews, preaching to the Christian laity, or for enlightening the Catholic clergy?32 Additionally, historians have related Isidore's polemic and legislation to their interpretation of the Visigoths' anti-Jewish policy in general.33 What suddenly triggered such extreme hostility toward the Jews during the last 12.5 years of Visigothic rule in Spain? Did it derive primarily from the kings' personal piety and commitment to the ideals of the church or more from considerations of political expediency? Did secular or ecclesiastical leaders take the initiative in formulating these policies? As in fifteenth-century Spain, might measures against the Jews have aimed primarily to eliminate Judaizing among recent converts to Christianity? Did Visigothic monarchs wish to comply with or to emulate the anti-Jewish policies of Byzantine emperors from Justinian to Heraclius, some of whom eventually called for the baptism or expulsion of all Jews in the empire? Acknowledging the correspondence between Isidore's greatest literary productivity and the reign of King Sisebut, investigators have also debated Isidore's stance on the royal decree that Spanish Jews must convert. For in addition to the conciliar canons discussed above, the archbishop addressed the issue of forced conversion in at least four of his own works. In the Sententiae, Isidore wrote that religious belief should not be imposed by force, although it is possible that this passage antedates Sisebut's decree.34 The Etymologiae and Chronicon record the conversion of Spanish Jewry under Sisebut's rule and, albeit subtly, appear to approve of the royal action.35 The Historia Gothorum first notes that Sisebut converted the Jews unwisely, “for he compelled with force those whom one was supposed to bring to the faith with reason.” Yet the text proceeds immediately to mollify its indictment with reference to Philippians 1:18: “in every way, whether in pretense or in truth, Christ is proclaimed.”36 Weighing this evidence, some scholars have judged Isidore a supporter of Sisebut's decree;37 others have stressed his opposition to the edict, at times 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,