With the Deterioration of Libraries, Securus Melior Felix Cannot Find an Adequate Exemplar of Martianus Capella's Nuptiae Mercuri et Philologiae in Rome

In 534 Securus Melior Felix, a school master on Trajan's Forum, attempted to amend Martianus Capella's De nuptiis philologiae et mercurii for a new edition. According to subscriptions or comments by Felix found in later copies of his edition, the dense and convoluted text of De nuptiis, written by Capella c. 410-420 CE, had already become hopelessly corrupted by scribal errors. That Felix worked near the famous Bibliotheca Ulpia did not help him find an uncorrupted text. As early as the late 4th century or early 5th century, when the Historia Augusta was composed, many books from the Bibliotheca Ulpia had been transferred to the baths of Diocletian, and the contents of the Ulpian library were more a matter of legend than reality. 

In the fourth century, the catalogue of the regions, the Libellus de regionibus urbis Romae, stated that there were 28 libraries in Rome. Many of these libraries existed in some form or another in the sixth century before the Gothic wars. Because almost all public libraries of Rome were attached to a temple, they must have suffered from the measures taken by Theodosius against pagan worship after the defeat of Eugenius. Those measures included the closing of pagan temples. Without constant care papyrus rolls in a library would have deteriorated, so the closing of the temples would have resulted in the loss of many classical texts.

"It has been suggested that the collections of books in the villas of Campania were transferred to the newly founded monasteries. There is no evidence for this supposition, nor it seems was there any intention to keep an eye on things reputedly pagan and at least distracting. Maintaining a library is expensive and there were not the conditions for imposing an extra expenditure on a monastery. It is certain that the long campaign of Justinian against the Goths inflicted a terrible blow to all the cultural structures of the ancient capital and of many municipal towns. We have a very authoritative witness for this disaster in Cassiodorus.

"In his introduction to the Institutiones, Cassiodorus tells us how in the same year 534 when Securus Melior Felix was editing Martianus Capella, he had tried with the help of Pope Agapitus to build a library and a school for Christian studies in Rome, on the model of that of Nisibis [Nusaybin]. This would be a new institution which would rival the public teaching of secular lterature. However, due to the wars and troubles which 'had devastated the kingdom of Italy', the project fell through" (Bertelli, "The Production and Distribution of Books in Late Antiquity," IN: Hodges & Bowden (eds) The Sixth Century: Production, Distribution and Demand [1998] 52-54).

Writing in Late Antiquity, Martianus Minneus Felix Capella was one of the earliest developers of the system of the seven liberal arts that provided the framework for early medieval education. His single encyclopedic work, translated from Latin as On the Marriage of Philology and Mercury, also called De septem disciplinis (On the seven disciplines), is an elaborate didactic allegory written in a mixture of prose and allusive verse.  "The style is wordy and involved, loaded with metaphor and bizarre expressions. The book was of great importance in defining the standard formula of academic learning from the Christianized Roman Empire of the fifth century until the Renaissance of the 12th century. This formula included a medieval love for allegory (in particular personifications) as a means of presenting knowledge, and a structuring of that learning around the seven liberal arts." (Wikipedia article on Martianus Capella, accessed 8-2019).

Even though by the 6th century the text of Martianus Capella was probably extensively corrupted by scribal errors, the 6th century writer Gregory of Tours stated that it has become virtually a school manual. "In his 1959 study, C. Leonardi catalogued 241 existing manuscripts of De nuptiis, attesting to its popularity during the Middle Ages.^[10] It was commented upon copiously: by John Scotus Erigena, Hadoard, Alexander Neckham, and Remigius of Auxerre.^[12][13] In the eleventh century the German monk Notker Labeo translated the first two books into Old High German. Martianus continued to play a major role as transmitter of ancient learning until the rise of a new system of learning founded on scholastic Aristotelianism. As late as the thirteenth century, Martianus was still credited as having been the efficient cause of the study of astronomy.^[14]" (Wikipedia)

As popular as De nuptiis was during the Middle Ages, by the second half of the 15th century its popularity declined. No printed edition of the text appeared until the edition of Franciscus Vitalis Bodianus issued in Vicenza in 1499. Nevertheless, that edition must have been a large one since the ISTC No. ic00117000 cites copies in no less than 151 institutions (a huge number for a 15th century imprint).