The Church Fathers · c. 620–636; unfinished at his death
The Etymologies
Etymologiae
Isidore of Seville · c. 560–636
What it is
Twenty books explaining the whole of knowledge by way of the origins of words — grammar, medicine, law, God, animals, ships, farming, furniture.
Why it lasted
The most consulted book of the Middle Ages after the Bible, and for centuries the West's entire encyclopaedia of the ancient world.
Where to read it
This work is in the public domain and can be read in full, free, at the archives below. The Library catalogues it; it does not host the text.
These open a search on each archive rather than a direct link, which is the honest way to point at an edition nobody here has checked line by line.
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