San Isidoro de Sevilla
Honours Isidore of Seville, the seventh-century Visigothic archbishop and author of the Etymologies, a vast compilation of the knowledge of his age.
Behind the sign lives a man who wanted to fit the whole world inside a book. Isidore was born around the year 556 into a learned Visigothic family, took over from his brother Leander at the head of the see of Seville, which he governed for more than three decades, and presided over the councils that ordered the Hispanic Church of his time.
His fame springs from the Etymologiae, twenty books gathering everything then known of grammar, medicine, law, the stars and the trades. Isidore explained each thing by tracing its name back to its origin, convinced that the nature of a thing lay hidden in the word for it. The result dazzled half of Europe: there was scarcely a monastic library that did not keep a copy.
Hence his late and almost mischievous title: he has been proposed as patron of those who browse the internet, that other encyclopedia where everything links to everything, though no official proclamation is on record. The Calle de San Isidoro de Sevilla, in the Imperial district, bears his name with no documented local reason.