Isidore of Seville
Saint Isidore of Seville is proposed as the patron of the internet and of computer users and programmers because of the nature of his life’s great work: his Etymologiae was an immense encyclopedia that gathered, cross-referenced, and organized the whole of human knowledge as it then stood — a vast network of linked entries reaching from grammar and medicine to ships, stones, and the cosmos. Centuries before the database, he built a system for storing and retrieving information by association, which is why those who proposed a patron for the web in the late twentieth century turned naturally to him. The last of the great Latin Fathers, he is fittingly also a patron of students. The patronage of the internet has never been formally confirmed by Rome, but it has become widely accepted by tradition.
Saint Isidore of Seville was Archbishop of Seville for over three decades and the last of the Latin Fathers of the Church. Born around 560, he compiled the Etymologiae, a vast encyclopedia that preserved much of classical learning through the early Middle Ages. He has been proposed as the patron saint of the internet due to his work in organizing human knowledge.
