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Ch. 7: Sacred Use of Gems

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SACRED USES OF PRECIOUS STONES. I25
valuable jewels, largely the offerings of princes and nobles.
In the Convent of Troitza are seen Bibles and other religious
volumes bound in covers of silver-gilt overspread with gems
and fastened with clasps of antique carnei ; golden chalices,
decorated with rows of diamonds ; crosses bearing their rich
burdens of emeralds and rubies ; dalmatics embroidered with
gems ; and saints and Madonnas resplendent with brilliant jewels. Two gold crosses, one weighing seventy-five and the other
one hundred pounds, both enriched with costly gems, were displayed above the altar in the Cathedral of Constantinople, now
the Mosque of St. Sophia, a church under the Christian emperors exceedingly opulent in every kind of decoration, including
gold, silver, pearls, and nearly every variety of precious
stones.
Memorials for the Dead. — It has been a custom from an
early period in the history of the race, to honor the dead with
costly tombs or other monuments often embellished with the
most valuable objects wealth or devoted love could bestow.
For this purpose precious stones, the most coveted of all
earth's treasures, have been generously employed not only
upon these testimonials of the pious zeal, ardent attachment,
or ostentatious vanity of surviving friends, but also upon the
mortuary habiliments of the deceased, as Egyptian mummies
and the tombs of the saints of the Middle Ages bear witness.
Not unfrequently offerings of gems and other precious things
were made at the graves of the lost ones, as tokens of affectionate remembrance ; especially was this true of the ancient
Romans. It is related that Fabia Fabiana, a private Roman
lady, dedicated to her deceased granddaughter a large number
of valuable gems comprising diamonds, emeralds, rubies, pearls,
and other varieties, all mounted in necklaces, ear-drops, bracelets, rings, anklets, and shoe ornaments, as was learned from
  
 
 
  
     
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