The stuff of salvation

Forever wed to onion for a tasty stuffing, the versatile sage leaf was also once used to wash 'the secret parts of man or woman' 

- Ian Morton

THE Holy Roman Emperor Charlemagne, whose domains spanned Frankish, Lombard and Papal lands across central and southern Europe from the Baltic to the Mediterranean, decreed that everyone should grow sage. But the mighty medieval potentate was not thinking of enhanced food. He was acknowledging the huge reputation of the herb as a singular treatment for almost any ailment, accepting and projecting the wisdom of ancient Greek writers and the veneration placed upon it in classical Rome.

Believed to have emanated from the Balkan peninsula, sage was welcomed in ancient Egypt as an aid to fertility. Classical culture valued it as a digestive agent and meat preservative with the ability to mask the flavour when the eat-by date had obviously passed, but it was more appreciated for medicinal purposes, the Greek philosopher Hippocrates commending it with the declaration ‘let your food be your medicine and your medicine be your food’. The Greeks used its leaves to stem external bleeding, drank sage tea to treat ulcers, enhance the memory and ease sore throats, as well as crushing sage for toothpaste.

The Romans shared these values, used sage as a diuretic and local anaesthetic, regarded it as a ‘holy herb’ and employed it in ceremonial rituals to improve harvests. They carried it with them when colonising western Europe and so brought it with them to Britain, where its virtues became widely esteemed. As Charlemagne was expounding its merits across the Continent with papal approval, so every monastery founded in this country established gardens wherein sage was planted, the most important of 16 herbs deemed to be essential to the health and wellbeing of monks and populace alike in the treatment of fevers, liver complaints, epilepsy, throat infections and the curing of warts. The Latin name