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Isidore of Seville > 
Saint Isidore of Seville was Archbishop of Seville for more than three decades and has the reputation of being one of the great scholars of the early middle ages. All the later medieval history-writing of Spain was based on Isidore's histories.
Isidore's most important work was the first encyclopedia known to be compiled in western civilization, the Etymologiae. The work takes its title from the method he used in the transcription of his era's knowledge. The encyclopedia was a huge compilation of 448 chapters in 20 volumes, devoted to transmitting the epitome of the learning of antiquity. The depository of classical culture in Isidore's compendium was so highly regarded that it superseded the use of many individual works of the classics themselves, which were not recopied and have been lost. The book was the most popular compendium in medieval libraries. It was printed in at least 10 editions between 1470 and 1530, showing Isidore's continued popularity in the Renaissance. Until the 12th century brought translations from Arabic sources, Isidore transmitted what western Europeans remembered of the works of Aristotle and other Greeks, although he understood only a limited amount of Greek. The Etymologiae was much copied, particularly into medieval bestiaries.
His other works include his Chronica Majora (a universal history), De differentiis verborum, which amounts to brief theological treatise on the doctrine of the Trinity, the nature of Christ, of Paradise, angels, and men. Isidore also produced a History of the Goths; On the Nature of Things (not the poem of Lucretius), a book of astronomy and natural history dedicated to the Visigothic king Sisebut; and Questions on the Old Testament. There is a mystical treatise on the allegorical meanings of numbers, and a number of brief letters.
He was canonized as a saint by the Roman Catholic Church in 1598 and declared a Doctor of the Church in 1722.
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