Matthaeus Silvaticus

Matthaeus Silvaticus or Mattheus Sylvaticus (c. 1280 – c. 1342) was a medieval Latin medical writer and botanist.

[1] He was a student and teacher in botany and medicine at the School of Salerno in southern Italy.

It has value to historians as a document reflecting the state of pharmacology and medicine in Europe in the late medieval era.

The medical authorities are either (A) the particular ancient Greek medicines writers that were widely read by the medieval Arabs (especially Dioscorides and Galen) or else (B) the Arabic medicines writers available in Latin translations (especially Serapion the Younger and Avicenna).

Part of Matthaeus's encyclopedia was taken from a shorter work by Simon of Genoa (aka Simon Januensis) entitled Synonyma Medicinae, which was written a few decades earlier and which is a dictionary of medicines rather than an encyclopedia of medicines.

Matthaeus Silvaticus teaching his students about medicinal plants in his physic garden in Salerno, from the frontispiece to a 1526 edition of Opus Pandectarum Medicinae