Marcellus Empiricus, also known asMarcellus Burdigalensis (“Marcellus ofBordeaux”), was aLatin medical writer fromGaul at the turn of the 4th and 5th centuries. His only extant work is theDe medicamentis, acompendium ofpharmacological preparations drawing on the work of multiple medical and scientific writers as well as onfolk remedies andmagic. It is a significant if quirky text in the history of European medical writing, an infrequent subject ofmonographs, but regularly mined as a source for magic charms,Celticherbology and lore, and the linguistic study ofGaulish andVulgar Latin.[1]Bonus auctor est (“he’s a good authority”) was the judgment ofJ.J. Scaliger,[2] while the science historianGeorge Sarton called theDe medicamentis an “extraordinary mixture of traditional knowledge, popular (Celtic) medicine, and ranksuperstition.”[3] Marcellus is usually identified with themagister officiorum of that name who held office during the reign ofTheodosius I.
Little is known of the life of Marcellus. The primary sources are:
The Gallic origin of Marcellus is rarely disputed, and he is traditionally identified with thetoponym Burdigalensis; that is, from Bordeaux (Latin Burdigala), within theRoman province ofAquitania. In his prefatoryepistle, he refers to threeBordelaisepraetorian prefects as his countrymen:Siburius,Eutropius, and Julius Ausonius, the father of the poetDecimus Magnus Ausonius.[4] He is sometimes thought to have come fromNarbonne rather than Bordeaux.[5] There has been an attempt to make a Spanishsenator of him on the basis of Symmachus's reference to property he owned inSpain; but this inference ignores that Marcellus is said explicitly to have left Spain to return to livingin avitispenatibus, or among thehousehold spirits of his grandfathers — that is, at home as distinguished from Spain. He probably wrote theDe medicamentis liber during his retirement there.[6]
The author of theDe medicamentis is most likely the Marcellus who was appointedmagister officiorum byTheodosius I. The heading of the prefatory epistle identifies him as avir 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's 16th-century editorJanus Cornarius gives the unhelpful phraseex magno officio (something like “from high office”); coupled with two references in theTheodosian Code to a Marcellus asmagister officiorum,[7] Cornarius's phrase has been taken as a mistaken expansion of the standard abbreviationmag. off. Themagister officiorum was a sort ofMinister of the Interior[8] and the identification is consistent with what is known of the author's life and with the politics of the time.[9] His stated connection to theAusonii makes it likely that he was among the several aristocratic Gauls who benefitted politically when the emperorGratian 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.[10]
Marcellus would have entered his office sometime after April 394 A.D., when his predecessor is last attested,[11] and before the emperor's death on January 17, 395. He was replaced in late November or December of 395, as determined by the last reference to a Marcellus holding office that is dated November 24 and by the dating of a successor.[12] The timing of his departure suggests that he had been a supporter ofRufinus, the calculating politician of Gallic origin who was assassinated November 27 of that year, having failed to resist, or even facilitated, the advance ofAlaric and theVisigoths. Marcellus's support may have been pragmatic or superficial; a source that condemns Rufinus heartily praises Marcellus as “the very soul of excellence.”[13]
Given Rufinus's dealings with the Visigoths, however, it is conceivable that Marcellus should be identified with “a certain former high-ranking official from Narbonne” mentioned by Orosius[14] as present inBethlehem in 415 A.D. While visitingJerome, Orosius says he heard this Gaul relate the declaration made byAthaulf, king of the Visigoths, at Narbonne regarding his intentions toward the Roman empire.[15] John Matthews argued that Marcellus, who would have been about 60 at the time, is “clearly the most eligible candidate.”[16] Since Orosius identifies the Gaul only as having served under Theodosius, and as a “devout, cautious, and serious” person, other figures have been put forth as the likely bearer of the Athaulf declaration.[17]
It is not unreasonable but also not necessary to conclude that Marcellus was a practicing physician. In hisdissertation, theintellectual historian of magic and medicineLynn Thorndike pronounced him the “court physician” of Theodosius I,[18] but the evidence is thin: Libanius, if referring to this Marcellus, praises his ability to cure a headache.[19] The prevailing view is that Marcellus should be categorized as a medical writer and not a physician.[20] A translator of the medical writings ofIsidore of Seville characterizes Marcellus as a “medical amateur” and dismisses theDe medicamentis as “nothing more than the usual ancient home remedies,”[21] and the historian of botanyErnst Meyer seems to have considered him a dilettante.[22]
LikeAusonius and laterSidonius Apollinaris, Marcellus is among those aristocratic Gauls of the 4th and 5th centuries who were nominally or even devoutlyChristian but who fashioned themselves after theRepublican ideal of theRoman noble: a career in politics balanced with countryvillas and informational or literary writing on a range of subjects, including philosophy, astronomy, agriculture, and the natural sciences.[23] Although medical writing might have been regarded as a lesser achievement, it was a resource for thepater familias who traditionally took personal responsibility for the health care of his household, both family members and slaves.[24]
Prescriptions forveterinary treatments dispersed throughout theDe medicamentis also suggest the interests and concerns of the author — the letter from Symmachus serves mainly to inquire whether Marcellus can provide thoroughbred horses for games to be sponsored by his son, who has been electedpraetor — and of his intended audience, either the owners of estates or the literate workers who managed them.[25] “Do-it-yourself” manuals were popular among the landowning elite because they offered, as Marcellus promises, a form of self-sufficiency and mastery.[26]
Alf Önnerfors has argued that a personal element distinguishes theDe medicamentis from similar medical manuals, which are in effect if not fact anonymous. In the letter to his sons, whom he addresses asdulcissimi (“my sweetest”), Marcellus expresses the hope that they and their families will, in case of sickness, find support and remedies in their father's manual, without intervention by doctors (sine medicis intercessione). This emphasis on self-reliance, however, is not meant to exclude others, but to empower oneself to help others; appealing todivina misericordia (“godlike compassion”), Marcellus urges his sons to extendcaritas (“caring” or perhaps Christian “charity”) to strangers and the poor as well as to their loved ones.[27] The tone, Önnerfors concludes, is “humane and full of gentle humor.”[28]
Marcellus is usually regarded as aChristian,[29] but he also embracesmagico-medical practices that draw on the traditional religions ofantiquity. Historian of botanical pharmacology Jerry Stannard believed that evidence in theDe medicamentis could neither prove nor disprove Marcellus's religious identity, noting that the few references to Christianity are “commonplace” and that, conversely, charms with references toHellenistic magic occur widely in medieval Christian texts.[30] In his classic studyThe Cult of the Saints,Peter Brown describes and sets out to explain what he sees as “the exclusively pagan tone of a book whose author was possibly a Christian writing for a largelyChristianized upper class.”[31] Historians of ancient medicine Carmélia Opsomer and Robert Halleux note that in his preface, Marcellus infuses Christian concerns into the ancient tradition of “doctoring without doctors.”[32] That Marcellus was at least a nominal Christian is suggested by his appointment to high office by Theodosius I, who exerted his will to Christianize the empire by ordering theRoman senate to convert en masse.[33]
The internal evidence of religion in the text is meager. The phrasedivina misericordia in the preface appears also inSt. Augustine’sDe civitate Dei, where the reference to divine mercy follows immediately after a passage on barbarian incursions.[34] Marcellus and Augustine are contemporaries, and the use of the phrase is less a question of influence than of the currency of a shared Christian concept.[35] Elsewhere, passages sometimes cited as evidence of Christianity[36] on closer inspection only display thesyncretism of the Hellenisticmagico-religious tradition, as Stannard noted.Christ, for instance, is invoked in an herb-gathering incantation,[37] but the ritual makes use of magico-medical practices of pre-Christian antiquity. AJudaeo-Christian reference —nomine domini Iacob, in nomine domini Sabaoth[38] — appears as part of a magic charm that the practitioner is instructed to inscribe on alamella, or metal leaf. Such“magic words” often include nonsense syllables and more-or-less corrupt phrases from “exotic” languages such asCeltic,Aramaic,Coptic, andHebrew, and are not indications of formal adherence to a religion.[39]
The first reference to any religious figure in the text isAsclepius, the premier god of healing among the Greeks. Marcellus alludes to a Roman version of the myth in which Asclepius restores the dismemberedVirbius to wholeness; as a writer, Marcellus says, he follows a similar course of gathering thedisiecta … membra ("scattered body parts") of his sources into onecorpus (whole body).[40] In addition to gods from theGreco-Roman pantheon, one charm deciphered as aGaulish passage has been translated to invoke the Celtic god Aisus, orEsus as it is more commonly spelled, for his aid in dispelling throat trouble.[41]
An inscription[42] dated 445 recognizes a Marcellus as the most important financial supporter in the rebuilding of the cathedral at Narbonne, carried out during thebishopric ofSt. Rusticus. John Matthews has argued that this Marcellus is likely to have been a son or near descendant of the medical writer, since the family of aninlustris is most likely to have possessed the wealth for such a generous contribution.[43] The donor had served for two years aspraetorian prefect of Gaul. Assuming that the man would have been a native, Matthews weighs this piece of evidence with the Athaulf anecdote from Orosius to situate the author of theDe medicamentis in the Narbonensis,[44] but this is a minority view.
Marcellus begins theDe medicamentis liber by acknowledging his models. The texts he draws on include the so-calledMedicina Plinii or “Medical Pliny,” theherbal (Herbarius) ofPseudo-Apuleius, and the pharmacological treatise ofScribonius Largus, as well as the most famous Latin encyclopedia from antiquity, theHistoria naturalis ofPliny the Elder.[45]
The work is structured as follows:
Marcellus was a transitional figure between ancient and medievalmateria medica. Although the contents of the recipes — their names, uses, and methods of treatment — derive from the medical texts ofancient Greece andRome, the book also points forward to doctrines and approaches characteristic ofmedieval medicine. Marcellus is seldom cited directly, but his influence, though perhaps not wide or pervasive, can be traced in several medieval medical texts.[54]
A major change in the approach to writing about botanical pharmacology is signalled in theDe Medicamentis. As texts associated with Mediterranean medicine traveled west and north with the expanding borders of theRoman empire, the plants required by drug recipes were no longer familiar, and the descriptions or illustrations provided by earlier herbals failed to correspond to indigenousflora. Marcellus's practice of offering synonyms is one attempt to bridge this gap. He often provides a string of correspondences: the Greek plant namepolygonos is first glossed assanguinaria in Latin (1.2),[55] then as "what we [in Gaul?] call rubia" (1.44); in the same chapterpolygonos is given as another name formillefolium (1.28), and identified elsewhere as equivalent toverbena (10.5). Of the dozen or so Celtic plant names, ten are provided with or as synonyms for Greek or Latin names. A preoccupation with naming rather than description is a characteristic also of medieval herbals.[56] The problems of identifying plants may have been an intellectual attraction for Marcellus'sRenaissance editorCornarius, whose botanical work emphasized the value of words over illustration.[57]
Another medieval emphasis foreshadowed in Marcellus is a concern for locating ingredients in their native environment, replacing the exoticflora andfauna prescribed in texts from antiquity withindigenous species. Recipes in both Marcellus and the medieval writers tend toward “polypharmacy,” or the use of a great number of ingredients in a single preparation. Many recipes inDe medicamentis contain at least ten ingredients, and one, theantidotus Cosmiana (29.11), is compounded of 73.[58]
Marcellus is one of the likely sources forAnglo-Saxonleechcraft,[59] or at least drew on the shared European magico-medical tradition that also producedrunic healing: a 13th-century woodenamulet fromBergen is inscribed with a charm inrunes that resembles Marcellus'sAisus charm.[60]
InThe Cult of the Saints, Peter Brown contrasts the “horizontal” or environmental healing prescribed by Marcellus to the “vertical,” authoritarian healing of his countryman and contemporary St.Martin of Tours, known formiracle cures and especiallyexorcism. Since magic for medical purposes can be considered a form offaith healing, that is also not a distinction between the two; “rich layers of folklore and superstition,” writes Brown, “lie beneath the thin veneer of Hippocratic empiricism” in Marcellus.[61] Nor does the difference lie in the social class of the intended beneficiaries, for both therapeutic systems encompassed “country folk and the common people”[62] as well as senatorial landowners. At the Christian shrines, however, healing required submission to “socially chartered” authority;[63] in Marcellus, the patient or practitioner, often addressed directly as “you,” becomes the agent of his own cure.[64]
While the power of a saint to offer a cure resided within a particular shrine which the patient must visit, health for Marcellus lay in the interconnectivity of the patient with his environment, the use he actively made of herbs, animals, minerals, dung, language, and transformative processes such asemulsification,calcination andfermentation. In the prefatory epistle, Marcellus insists on the efficacy ofremedia fortuita atque simplicia (remedies that are readily available and act directly), despite the many recipes involving more than a dozen ingredients; in the concludingCarmen, he celebrates ingredients from the far reaches of the empire and the known world (lines 41–67), emphasizing that the Roman practitioner has access to a “global” marketplace.[65]
