Isidore, according to the Holy Father, "would not have wanted to miss out an anything that had been acquired by man in the ancient times, whether that was pagan, Jewish or Christian". "Therefore, one should not be surprised that, in pursuing this goal went on the Pope , sometimes he happened not to be able to properly filter, as he would have liked to, the knowledge he had through the cleansing waters of the Christian faith". "The wealth of the culture Isidore had pointed out the Pontiff enabled him to compare all the time the Christian novelty with the Greek-Roman classic heritage". "Praiseworthy" is "his nagging worry not to neglect anything of what the human experience had produced in the history of his native country and in the whole world". In the first part of the catechesis, the Pope mentioned Isidore’s library, "full of pagan and Christian classical works": "attracted" by both, Isidore "was taught to develop a very strong discipline in devoting himself to study them with discretion and judgement". Because of the "serene and open-minded climate" in which he lived, Isidore had "an encyclopaedic knowledge of the pagan classic culture and a deep knowledge of the Christian culture": hence his "eclecticism", that ranged "very easily from Martial to Augustine, from Cicero to Gregory the Great".
