Isidore of Seville in the context of "Spania"

European science in the Middle Ages comprised the study of nature, mathematics and natural philosophy in medieval Europe. Following the fall of the Western Roman Empire and the decline in knowledge of Greek, Christian Western Europe was cut off from an important source of ancient learning. Although a range of Christian clerics and scholars from Isidore and Bede to Jean Buridan and Nicole Oresme maintained the spirit of rational inquiry, Western Europe would see a period of scientific decline during the Early Middle Ages. However, by the time of the High Middle Ages, the region had rallied and was on its way to once more taking the lead in scientific discovery. Scholarship and scientific discoveries of the Late Middle Ages laid the groundwork for the Scientific Revolution of the Early Modern Period.

According to Pierre Duhem, who founded the academic study of medieval science as a critique of the Enlightenment theory of a 17th-century anti-Aristotelian and anticlerical scientific revolution, the various conceptual origins of that alleged revolution lay in the 12th to 14th centuries, in the works of churchmen such as Thomas Aquinas and Buridan.

The "Old World" (Latin: Mundus vetus) is a term for Afro-Eurasia coined by Europeans after 1493, when they became aware of the existence of the Americas. It is used to contrast the continents of Africa, Europe, and Asia in the Eastern Hemisphere, previously thought of by the Europeans as comprising the entire world, with the "New World", a term for the newly encountered lands of the Western Hemisphere, particularly the Americas.

A T and O map or O–T or T–O map (orbis terrarum, orb or circle of the lands; with the letter T inside an O), also known as an Isidoran map, is a type of early world map that represents the Afro-Eurasian landmass as a circle (= O) divided into three parts by a T-shaped combination of the Mediterranean sea, the river Tanais (Don) and the Nile. The origins of this diagram are contested, with some scholars hypothesizing an origin in Roman or late antiquity, while others consider it to have originated in 7th or early-8th century Spain.

The earliest surviving example of a T-O map is found in a late-7th or early-8th century copy of Isidore of Seville's (c. 560–636) De natura rerum, which alongside his Etymologiae (c. 625) are two of the most common texts to be accompanied by such a diagram in the Middle Ages. A later manuscript added the names of Noah's sons (Sem, Iafeth and Cham) for each of the three continents (see Biblical terminology for race). A later variation with more detail is the Beatus map drawn by Beatus of Liébana, an 8th-century Spanish monk, in the prologue to his Commentary on the Apocalypse.

Etymologiae (Latin for 'Etymologies'), also known as the Origines ('Origins'), usually abbreviated Orig., is an etymological encyclopedia compiled by the influential Christian bishop Isidore of Seville (c. 560–636) towards the end of his life. Isidore was encouraged to write the book by his friend Braulio, Bishop of Saragossa. Etymologiae summarized and organized a wealth of knowledge from hundreds of classical sources; three of its books are derived largely from Pliny the Elder's Natural History. Isidore acknowledges Pliny, but not his other principal sources, namely Cassiodorus, Servius, and Gaius Julius Solinus.

Etymologiae covers an encyclopedic range of topics. Etymology, the origins of words, is prominent, but the work also covers, among other things, grammar, rhetoric, mathematics, geometry, music, astronomy, medicine, law, the church and heretical sects, pagan philosophers, languages, cities, humans, animals, the physical world, geography, public buildings, roads, metals, rocks, agriculture, war, ships, clothes, food, and tools.

The Tuscan order (Latin Ordo Tuscanicus or Ordo Tuscanus, with the meaning of Etruscan order) is one of the two classical orders developed by the Romans, the other being the composite order. It is influenced by the Doric order, but with un-fluted columns and a simpler entablature with no triglyphs or guttae. While relatively simple columns with round capitals had been part of the vernacular architecture of Italy and much of Europe since at least Etruscan architecture, the Romans did not consider this style to be a distinct architectural order (for example, the Roman architect Vitruvius did not include it alongside his descriptions of the Greek Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian orders). Its classification as a separate formal order is first mentioned in Isidore of Seville's 6th-century Etymologiae and refined during the Italian Renaissance.

Sebastiano Serlio described five orders including a "Tuscan order", "the solidest and least ornate", in his fourth book of Regole generali di architettura sopra le cinque maniere de gli edifici (1537). Though Fra Giocondo had attempted a first illustration of a Tuscan capital in his printed edition of Vitruvius (1511), he showed the capital with an egg and dart enrichment that belonged to the Ionic. The "most rustic" Tuscan order of Serlio was later carefully delineated by Andrea Palladio.

The Generations of Noah, also called the Table of Nations or Origines Gentium, is a genealogy of the sons of Noah, according to the Hebrew Bible (Genesis 10:9), and their dispersion into many lands after the Flood, focusing on the major known societies. The term 'nations' to describe the descendants is a standard English translation of the Hebrew word "goyim", following the c. 400 CE Latin Vulgate's "nationes", and does not have the same political connotations that the word entails today.

The list of 70 names introduces for the first time several well-known ethnonyms and toponyms important to biblical geography, such as Noah's three sons Shem, Ham, and Japheth, from which 18th-century German scholars at the Göttingen school of history derived the race terminology Semites, Hamites, and Japhetites. Certain of Noah's grandsons were also used for names of peoples: from Elam, Ashur, Aram, Cush, and Canaan were derived respectively the Elamites, Assyrians, Arameans, Cushites, and Canaanites. Likewise, from the sons of Canaan: Heth, Jebus, and Amorus were derived Hittites, Jebusites, and Amorites. Further descendants of Noah include Eber (from Shem), the hunter-king Nimrod (from Cush).

The Codex Gigas ("Giant Book"; Czech: Obří kniha) is the largest extant medieval illuminated manuscript in the world, at a length of 92 cm (36 in). It is a Romanesque Latin Bible, with other texts, some secular, added in the second half of the book. Very large illuminated bibles were typical of Romanesque monastic book production, but even among these, the page-size of the Codex Gigas is exceptional. The manuscript is also known as the Devil's Bible due to its highly unusual full-page portrait of Satan, the Devil, and the legend surrounding the book's creation. Apart from the famous page with an image of the Devil, the book is not very heavily illustrated with figurative miniatures, compared to other grand contemporary Bibles.

The manuscript was created in the early 13th century in the Benedictine monastery of Podlažice in Chrast, Bohemia, now a region in the modern-day Czech Republic. The manuscript contains the complete Latin Bible in the Vulgate version, as well as other popular works, all written in Latin. Between the Old and New Testaments is a selection of other popular medieval reference works: Flavius Josephus's Antiquities of the Jews and The Jewish War, Isidore of Seville's encyclopedia Etymologiae, the chronicle of Cosmas of Prague (Chronica Boemorum), and medical works: an early version of the Ars medicinae compilation of treatises, and two books by Constantine the African.

The term Japhetites (sometimes spelled Japhethites; in adjective form Japhetic or Japhethitic) refers to the descendants of Japheth, one of the three sons of Noah in the Book of Genesis. The term was used in ethnological and linguistic writings from the 18th to the 20th centuries as a Biblically derived racial classification for the European peoples, but is now considered obsolete. Medieval ethnographers believed that the world had been divided into three large-scale groupings, corresponding to the three classical continents: the Semitic peoples of Asia, the Hamitic peoples of Africa, and the Japhetic peoples of Europe.

The term has been used in modern times as a designation in physical anthropology, ethnography, and comparative linguistics. In anthropology, it was used in a racial sense for White people (the Caucasian race). In linguistics, it referred to the Indo-European languages. Both of these uses are considered obsolete nowadays. Only the Semitic peoples form a well-defined language family. The Indo-European group is no longer known as "Japhetite", and the Hamitic group is now recognized as paraphyletic within the Afro-Asiatic family.

Leander of Seville (Spanish: Leandro de Sevilla; Latin: Leandrus; c. 534 AD – 13 March 600 or 601) was a Hispano-Roman Catholic prelate who served as Bishop of Seville. He was instrumental in effecting the conversion of the Visigothic kings Hermenegild and Reccared to Catholicism. His brother (and successor as bishop) was the encyclopedist Isidore of Seville.