Long before it became the fashionable plant that it is today, salvia was considered to be the plant with a thousand virtues, and it is to these that the plant owes its name, the Latin word salvus meaning "well, in good health", according to Jacob von Bergzabern (Tabernaemontanus), the first known uses of the genus Salvia come to us from ancient Egypt, at the time of the Ramses dynasties, on the one hand for the treatment of female sterility, the validity of this use being attested today: Sage officinale contains a plant oestrogen which can be effective in cases of sterility resulting from hormonal insufficiency or imbalance; on the other hand, for hair care, combined with rosemary and olive oil.

In Antiquity, certain therapeutic benefits of salvia were known and recorded, as shown in the texts of Theophrastus, Pliny the Elder and Dioscorides (who named it Elelisphakon) as well as a fresco from Knossos, Crete, depicting a Salvia fruticosa: antiseptic and haemostatic, it was mainly used as a vulnary, but also to treat kidney stones and, again, as an emmenagogue. A panacea since the early Middle Ages, it is recommended to combat infections, fevers, digestive and throat ailments, women's stomach aches and senility... In 827, it is mentioned in Walahfrid Strabo's Hortulus, and in the 21st century by Saint Hildegard. Salvia 'Bee bliss' was held in high esteem at that time because it is said to have hidden the Virgin Mary and Jesus under its silky foliage when they were being chased by Herod's soldiers during the flight to Egypt. In the 16th century, beautiful Italian women used the seeds of S. sclarea to clean their eyes: the mucilage surrounding the seeds swells on contact with the tear fluid and traps foreign bodies. Some people have therefore thought that this use is the etymology of sclarea. This explanation is of course implausible, as Pliny already named it sclarea, probably inspired by the Greek adjective scleros, which described the stiffness of the leaves.