Isidore of Seville

560 - 636 AD

Translation from the Ante-Nicene Fathers. For a complete electronic copy, visit the Christian Classics Ethereal Library, the New Advent Library. Italics in the text by John Wijngaards.

“Only a woman is an animal that menstruates. Through touching her blood fruits will fail to get ripe. Mustard degenerates, grass dries up and trees lose their fruit before time. Iron gets rusted and the air becomes dark. When dogs eat it, they acquire rabies”.

Etymologiarum libri XI, 1; in Patres Latini 82, c. 414.

Isidore took the idea from J. Solinus’ third century Collectanea rerum memorabilium (recogn. Mommsen, Berlin, 1864), p. 17, which is in large measure dependent on Plinius’ Natural History.