sion, of wide infl uence over the next three centuries.
Recent redating of Aquinas’s Contra gentiles suggests
that the hundreds of parallels between these two works
show a strong dependence on Martí. With a wealth of
rabbinic materials from and in Hebrew, Pugio is the
most thorough of all the medieval anti-Judaic polemi-
cal works. Martí’s writings are currently being studied
intensively.
See also Aquinas, Thomas; Llull, Ramón;
Vilanova, Arnau de
Further Reading
Cohen, J. The Friars and the Jews. Ithaca, N.Y., 1982. Chap. 6.
Robles, L. Escritores dominicos de la corona de Aragón, siglos
XIII-XV. Salamanca, 1972.
Robert I. Burns, S. J.
MARTIANUS CAPELLA
(fl. fi rst half of the 5th c)
Between 410 and 439, Martianus Capella wrote his De
nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii. This non-Christian al-
legorical treatise, an encyclopedic work on the Seven
Liberal Arts, was to have a widespread infl uence in
the Christian schools of the late Middle Ages, as a
source for teaching the Trivium and Quadrivium. The
De nuptiis is in nine books, the fi rst two describing the
allegorical marriage and each of the next seven dealing
with one of the liberal arts. In time-honored tradition,
Martianus drew his material from a variety of earlier
sources, chiefl y Apulaius, Varro, Pliny, and Euclid. This
(to us) derivative method only heightened its status in
the Middle Ages.
Martianus had three clear “vogues”: the fi rst was
among the scholars of the Carolingian renaissance cen-
tered on Charles the Bald. Johannes Scottus Eriugena
and Remigius of Auxerre wrote commentaries on Mar-
tianus, and it is through Remigius’s commentary that
the De nuptiis became so infl uential. The second group
of admirers were 10th-century Italians, like Notker of
Saint-Gall, Rather of Verona, and Luitprand of Cremona.
Finally, Martianus was one of the cosmographical au-
thors most admired by the 12th-century Chartrians, like
Alexander Neckham (who wrote a commentary), John
of Salisbury, and Thierry of Chartres.
Of Martianus himself, little is known, except that
he was a Roman citizen who spent most of his life at
Carthage. One Victorian scholar, D. Samuel, describing
the De nuptiis as a “mixture of dry traditional school
learning and tasteless and extravagant theological orna-
ment, applied to the most incongruous material, with an
absolutely bizarre effect,” illustrates the extant to which
Martianus’s work, with its interweaving of fact and
fi ction, has become foreign to our sensibility, although
some earlier Christian writers, such as Cassiodorus and
Gregory of Tours, similarly disliked this hybrid style.
See also Eriugena, Johannes ScottusFurther Reading
Martianus Capella. De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii, ed. Adol-
fus Dick, rev. Jean Preaux. Stuttgart: Teubner, 1983.
——. The Marriage of Philology and Mercury, trans. William
Harris Stahl and Richard Johnson with E.L. Burge. New York:
Columbia University Press, 1977.
Shanzer, Danuta. A Philosophical and Literary Commentary on
Martianus Capella’s De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii, Book- Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986.
Lesley J. Smith
MARTINI, SIMONE (c. 1284–1344)
The birthplace of the painter Simone Martini is un-
known, but he must have been a citizen of Siena, for
he is referred to as de Senis. We fi nd no mention of
Martini (as he will be called here, though he is often
called simply Simone) in archival records before 1315.
However, the year of his birth may be deduced from
Vasari, who saw a memorial inscription in the church
of San Francesco in Siena, according to which Martini
died at age sixty. Martini’s training is undocumented.
He may have been a pupil of Duccio and may even have
been one of several collaborators working on Duccio’s
Maestà; or, as Vasari wrote, he may have been a pupil
of Giotto in Rome. Many scholars see in Martini’s work
the infl uence of the French courtly style, to which he
may have been exposed during visits to Naples and
Rome, where French culture throve at the time. Martini
married Giovanna, the sister of the Sienese artist Lippo
Memmi, in 1324; he bought the house they lived in from
Memmi. The couple had no children. After 1333, there is
no mention of Martini in Siena. By 1336, at the latest, he
was in Avignon, where he remained until his death. Only
his brother Donato, also a painter, and his wife trav-
eled with Martini to France. The move may have been
prompted by competition in Siena from the Lorenzetti
brothers, who had been on the rise since c. 1328, or by
an unrealized hope for papal commissions.Siena, Naples, and Assist (c. 1315–1320)
By consensus, the fresco of the Maestà (Palazzo Pub-
blico, Siena) is Martini’s earliest dated work; it was
probably completed for the commune in 1315–1316
and repaired in 1321. It shows the Virgin and Child
enthroned beneath a canopy supported by some of the
saints standing on either side. In the foreground, four
saintly protectors of the commune kneel with two an-
gels, who present bowls of fl owers to the holy pair. A
surrounding border contains images in roundels of GodMARTÍ RAMÓN