16 Facts About Marcellus Empiricus

Marcellus Empiricus, known as Marcellus Burdigalensis, was a Latin medical writer from Gaul at the turn of the 4th and 5th centuries.

Marcellus Empiricus's only extant work is the De medicamentis, a compendium of pharmacological preparations drawing on the work of multiple medical and scientific writers as well as on folk remedies and magic.

Gallic origin of Marcellus Empiricus is rarely disputed, and he is traditionally identified with the toponym Burdigalensis; that is, from Bordeaux, within the Roman province of Aquitania.

Marcellus Empiricus is sometimes thought to have come from Narbonne rather than Bordeaux.

Marcellus Empiricus probably wrote the De medicamentis liber during his retirement there.

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Author of the De medicamentis is most likely the Marcellus who was appointed magister officiorum by Theodosius I The heading of the prefatory epistle identifies him as a vir inlustris, translatable as “a distinguished man”; at the time, this phrase was a formal designation of rank, indicating that he had held imperial office.

Marcellus Empiricus's stated connection to the Ausonii makes it likely that he was among the several aristocratic Gauls who benefitted politically when the emperor Gratian appointed his Bordelaise tutor Ausonius to high office and from Theodosius's extended residence in the western empire during the latter years of his reign.

The prevailing view is that Marcellus Empiricus should be categorized as a medical writer and not a physician.

Prescriptions for veterinary treatments dispersed throughout the De medicamentis suggest the interests and concerns of the author — the letter from Symmachus serves mainly to inquire whether Marcellus Empiricus can provide thoroughbred horses for games to be sponsored by his son, who has been elected praetor — and of his intended audience, either the owners of estates or the literate workers who managed them.

Marcellus Empiricus is usually regarded as a Christian, but he embraces magico-medical practices that draw on the traditional religions of antiquity.

Marcellus Empiricus alludes to a Roman version of the myth in which Asclepius restores the dismembered Virbius to wholeness; as a writer, Marcellus Empiricus says, he follows a similar course of gathering the disiecta … membra of his sources into one corpus.

John Matthews has argued that this Marcellus Empiricus is likely to have been a son or near descendant of the medical writer, since the family of an inlustris is most likely to have possessed the wealth for such a generous contribution.

Marcellus Empiricus begins the De medicamentis liber by acknowledging his models.

Marcellus Empiricus was a transitional figure between ancient and medieval materia medica.

Marcellus Empiricus is seldom cited directly, but his influence, though perhaps not wide or pervasive, can be traced in several medieval medical texts.

Marcellus Empiricus is one of the likely sources for Anglo-Saxon leechcraft, or at least drew on the shared European magico-medical tradition that produced runic healing: a 13th-century wooden amulet from Bergen is inscribed with a charm in runes that resembles Marcellus Empiricus's Aisus charm.