MARTIANUS CAPELLA
(fl. first half of the 5th c.). Between 410 and 439, Martianus Capella wrote his De nuptiis
Philologiae et Mercurii. This non-Christian allegorical treatise, an encyclopedic work on
the Seven Liberal Arts, was to have a widespread influence 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 first two describing the allegorical marriage and each of the next seven
dealing with one of the liberal arts. In timehonored tradition, Martianus drew his material
from a variety of earlier sources, chiefly Apulaius, Varro, Pliny, and Euclid. This (to us)
derivative method only heightened its status in the Middle Ages.
Martianus had three clear “vogues”: the first was among the scholars of the
Carolingian renaissance centered on Charles the Bald. Johannes Scottus Eriugena and
Remigius of Auxerre wrote commentaries on Martianus, and it is through Remigius’s
commentary that the De nuptiis became so influential. 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 authors 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
ornament, 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 fiction,
has become foreign to our sensibility, although some earlier Christian writers, such as
Cassiodorus and Gregory of Tours, similarly disliked this hybrid style.
Lesley J.Smith
[See also: ALEXANDER NECKHAM; CHARTRES; ERIUGENA, JOHANNES
SCOTTUS; LIBERAL ARTS; REMIGIUS OF AUXERRE; THIERRY OF
CHARTRES]
Martianus Capella. De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii, ed. Adolfus 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 1. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986.
MARTIN OF TOURS
(ca. 316–ca. 397/400). Martin of Tours was born at Sabaria in Pannonia (today
Szombathely, Hungary). Much of his youth was spent in Italy, at Pavia, where his father,
a Roman army officer, was posted. At about age fifteen, he joined the army but became
increasingly attracted to Christianity. While assigned to Amiens, Martin gave half his
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