Matthaeus Silvaticus

Matthaeus Silvaticus or Mattheus Sylvaticus was an Italian medieval medical writer and botanist.

His Life and Encyclopedia

Matthaeus Silvaticus was born in northern Italy, probably Mantua. He was a student and teacher in botany and medicine at the School of Salerno in southern Italy.
His only notability is for writing a 650-page encyclopedia about medicating agents which he completed about the year 1317 under the Latin title Pandectarum Medicinae or Pandectae Medicinae. Most of the medicating agents were botanicals. The presentation is in alphabetical order. The bulk of his encyclopedia is compiled from earlier medicine books, including books by Dioscorides, Avicenna, Serapion the Younger, and Simon of Genoa (Simon Januensis).
As an indication of its popularity in late medieval Europe, the Pandectarum Medicinae was printed in at least eleven editions in various countries between the invention of the printing press and 1500.

Arabic influence

The medical school in Salerno was influenced by Arabic-to-Latin translations of Arabic medical literature. One indication of the Arabic influence is that 233 out of 487 plant names in Matthaeus's medicines encyclopedia were Latinizations of Arabic plant names. Many of those Latinized Arabic names had little circulation in Latin. Native Latin names existed for some of them, in which case Matthaeus also used the native Latin name as well. In some cases he prefers to give primary status to the Arabic name in preference to the classical Latin name. In other cases he gives primary status to the Latin name and just mentions what the Arabic name is.

Simon of Genoa

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