AVOIDING THE MIRACULOUS IN ISIDORE OF SEVILLE

This article seeks to place the work of Isidore of Seville within wider late antique discussions concerning miracles performed by saints and their relics. Surveying Isidore’s many works, it seeks to uncover his thinking around miracles and their place in determining sanctity. What emerges is an apparent discrepancy on the question of miracles between the work of Isidore and that of his two main sources, Gregory the Great and Augustine of Hippo. Isidore expresses far less enthusiasm for, and confi dence in, miracles than either Gregory or Augustine. Isidore’s reticence on the subject of miracles seems to jar with his wider pastoral concerns, but here I suggest that he was motivated by a suspicion of untrustworthy religious fi gures, a fear of schism in the Visigothic church, and an accompanying desire to promote interior Christian reform.