Isaías y Jeremías: los profetas de Isidoro de Sevilla en Sentencías
The biblical text represents a fundamental part of Isidore of Seville´s Sentencias. This work, written towards the year 633, contains a large number of biblical quotations. Although Isidore managed to use a variety of references from both testaments, some books, passages and biblical episodes are mentioned more systematically than others. This is the case of the prophetic literature, especially the Books of Isaiah and Jeremiah. This article will focus mainly in the analysis of these two prophets and how their voices were used and introduced in the work of Isidore. The main purpose is to analyze the relation between the prophetic message and the reasons that motivated Isidore to give Isaiah and Jeremiah a predominant position inside his work. During the VIIth century, the political and religious context raised the question of the Kingdom´s unity. In this scenario, the prophetic message allowed Isidore to communicate his preoccupations regarding fundamental topics such as disobedience, the Final Judgment and the organization of the Church.
The Prophecies of Isaiah and the Fall of Jerusalem in 587 B.C
On first reflection it might appear strange to consider the question of the prophecies of Isaiah and the fall of Jerusalem to the Babylonians in 587 B.C., with the subsequent destruction of the temple there. Yet there are a number of factors which suggest that there is an important connection, even though the latest prophecies delivered by Isaiah cannot be dated much after 701 B.C., and the interval of time between these and the fall of Jerusalem would therefore have been more than a century. We know that prophecy was regarded as a living word from God, and it is evident from the way in which the Deuteronomic Historian interprets prophecy that he regarded it as nothing strange that a prophetic threat should have been fulfilled with quite remarkable exactness almost three centuries after it had been delivered (cf. 1 Kings xiii 2 with 2 Kings xxiii 16) 1). Furthermore, it is clear from the complex way in which the prophetic books have been compiled over a very long period of time that they were the subject of further reflection and adaptation long after the original prophet had died. Nowhere is this more evident than in the case of the book of the prophet Isaiah. We may adduce a number of important considerations which point to the acceptance of the view that the present shape and structure of the book of Isaiah owes a considerable debt to the belief that a con-
Críth Gablach and the law of status
This paper presents a detailed study of the determinants of social status as set out in Crith Gablach (c. AD 700), an Irish law tract on social classification which attempts a systematic analysis of the status of the free and noble classes (excluding the church and the professions) in early medieval Irish society. The nature and determinants of status are considered and the ranks of society set out in detail. To be a noble was to be hereditarily a lord of freemen in clientship – lordship rather than actual income ennobled, though other factors were relevant. For the non-noble freeman, a house, land and material assets are the basis of status. Lordship, however, appears to be economically central to the condition of the non-noble grades. Crith Gablach is one of the few outstanding pieces of social analysis from early medieval Europe.