Tuesday, June 19, 2012

De Nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii -- Liberi I-II

 A depiction of the marriage of Philology and Mercury from a manuscript at Oxford

 Martianus Minneus Felix Capella (more commonly known as Martianus Capella) was a pagan writer of the fifth century whose book De Nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii (On the Marriage of Philology and Mercury) was a basis for the creation of a liberal arts education.  This work is encyclopedic, dealing with the seven liberal arts individually in information-packed books within a complex, allegorical frame story.  De Nuptiis is one of the most important texts in the history of education, and, since my goal is to be an educator, I am very interested in it.  The sad thing is, though this work was incredibly popular from the 5th to the 12th centuries, it is little-known now and thus difficult to find.  I am a fan of making knowledge easily and widely available (hence why I volunteer at Project Gutenberg through their Distributed Proofreaders project, helping to digitize out-of-copyright books into free e-books), and, while I would like to make a free English translation of this work, I do not know enough Latin to be able to do so.  What I can do, at the very least, is make the original Latin text easily available.

The Microsoft Word file embedded below is a transcription of the original Latin text (with its occasional Greek words as well) of the first two Books of De Nuptiis.  The edition I used is an 1836 edition with a copious running commentary (which I did not transcribe) edited by Ulricus Fridericus Kopp, found as a scan at The Internet Archive.  I hope someone finds this text of use.  If there is desire for it, I could also work on finding a way to make the text into an e-book as well.  I will post the other books of De Nuptiis in the same fashion once I have transcribed them.  If you find any errors, please let me know so that I can correct the file.  Once again, I hope someone finds this text useful, and thank you for reading.  God Bless.
Martianus Capella -- De Nuptiis -- Liberi I-II

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