Constructing the “Family” of Christ: Isidore of Seville on the Family Ties of Jesus

Although the veneration of the Holy Family and the Holy Kinship flourished in the 15th and 16th centuries, it would be a mistake to believe that Christians in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages were not interested in learning about Christ’s relatives. The religious in Western Europe had several sources from which they could have found out about them. In this paper, we will examine how information about Jesus’s family ties was presented in the works of the last scholar of the ancient world Isidore of Seville. Although it was not his intention to create an exhaustive picture of Christ’s family ties, he nevertheless mentioned them in his works, belonging to various genres. At the same time, as our analysis of his works showed, the Bishop of Seville strived to reduce them to acts of biological procreation, trying not to provide much of the details about the relationship of God the Son with his kindred. Moreover, Isidore of Seville clearly tried to “reduce” as much as possible the number of “earthly” members of Christ’s family that he mentioned. The reason for such a presentation of the material could be that he considered blood kinship to be less important than spiritual. In addition, he attached particular importance to the allegorical interpretation of Christ's family ties. At the same time, he recorded the main deviations in the interpretation of Jesus' family ties in certain heretical teachings, linking them, among other things, with the influence of Judaism, which, after the victory over Arianism, in his eyes turned into the main threat to the Catholic Church in the Visigothic Kingdom of the 7th century.