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DIAMONDS IN LITERATURE 403
and
nobles, then the glories of the great were glorified by telling of the
diamonds they wore, and the glory of the diamond was glorified by the
fables and superstitions of Pliny and those who followed him. Fable,
magic and superstitions, enlarged by reiteration, crept into print, and
were established for generations and centuries. The searching light of
the first decade of the twentieth century has not yet quite dissipated
them, though goat's blood and the hammer and anvil test have been
abolished.
Fables
about the origin of the diamond are not many. In India it was said that
lightning penetrating the earth generated them; it is also believed
there that they continue to grow and may be later found in ground
which has been already worked over. This idea of slow growth by
accretion has appeared in print quite lately and comes from high
authority. Pliny wrote that it was engendered in fine gold.
From
the first to the fifteenth century little was written of the diamond
but fable, and that a development of Pliny with nonsensical
outcroppings of belief in its magic influences. The principal writers
were Isidorus, Bishop of Seville in the seventh century; Marbodus,
Bishop of Rennes, in the eleventh century, and Moham-mond Ben Mansur in
the twelfth.
During
this period, the imaginations of ignorance and folly, fostered by those
who profited by them, crystallized into various forms of superstition.
Following the idea of stones in the Jewish High Priest's breastplate
representing the twelve tribes of Israel, the Romish Church was awarded
twelve Apostle Stones. The diamond not being amenable to the uses of
Apostle Stones,
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