not many years after, he attained wealth from the mines of Fürst, which
is a city in Lorraine, and took his name from " Luck."30 Nor would
King Vladislaus have restored to the Assembly of Barons, Tursius, a
citizen of Cracow, who became rich through the mines in that part of the
kingdom of Hungary which was formerly called Dacia.31 Nay, not even the
common worker in the mines is vile and abject. For, trained to vigilance
and work by night and day, he has great powers of endurance when occasion
demands, and easily sustains the fatigues and duties of a soldier, for he is
accustomed to keep long vigils at night, to wield iron tools, to dig trenches,
to drive tunnels, to make machines, and to carry burdens. Therefore, experts
in military affairs prefer the miner, not only to a commoner from the town,
but even to the rustic.
But to bring this discussion to an end, inasmuch as the chief callings
are those of the moneylender, the soldier, the merchant, the farmer, and the
miner, I say, inasmuch as usury is odious, while the spoil cruelly captured
from the possessions of the people innocent of wrong is wicked in the sight
of God and man, and inasmuch as the calling of the miner excels in honour
and dignity that of the merchant trading for lucre, while it is not less noble
though far more profitable than agriculture, who can fail to realize that
mining is a calling of peculiar dignity ? Certainly, though it is but one of
ten important and excellent methods of acquiring wealth in an honourable
way, a careful and diligent man can attain this result in no easier way
than by mining.
" These Phoenician workings are in Thasos itself, between Coenyra and a place called
" Aenyra over against Samothrace ; a high mountain has been turned upside down in
" the search for ores." (Rawlinson's Trans.). The occasion of this statement of Herodotus
was the relations of the Thasians with Darius (521-486 B.c.). The date of the Phoenician
colonization of Thasos is highly nebular—anywhere from 1200 to 900 b.c.
30Agricola, De Veteribus et Novis Metallis, Book I., p. 392, says :—" Conrad, whose
"nickname in former years was 'pauper,' suddenly became rich from the silver mines of
" Mount Jura, known as the Firstum." He was ennobled with the title of Graf Cuntz
von Glück by the Emperor Maximilian (who was Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire,
1493-1519). Conrad was originally a working miner at Schneeberg where he was known
as Armer Cuntz (poor Cuntz or Conrad) and grew wealthy from the mines of Fürst in
Leberthal. This district is located in the Vosges Mountains on the borders of Lorraine
and Upper Alsace. The story of Cuntz or Conrad von Glück is mentioned by Albinus
(Meissnische Land und Berg Chronica, Dresden, 1589, p. 116), Mathesius (Sarepta, Nuremberg, 1578, fol. xvi.), and by others.
31Vladislaus III. was King of Poland, 1434-44, and also became King of Hungary in
1440. Tursius seems to be a Latinized name and cannot be identified.
