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Murrhina, China-Agate

Murrhina, China-Agate Page of 453 Naxium, Emery Text size:minus plus Restore normal size   Mail page  Print this page
MURRHINA.
245
of the full size upon the same enormous folding plate. But what then gave it supremo importance, and probably had conduced chiefly to its preservation through the wreck of ages, was the inscription, " not made by hands," but traced by the finger of Nature (as L. states, and evidently in good faith),3 in the colours of the stone, B. XEISTO. ES. XXX., interpreted as " Christus Beator Orbis." To produce the effect of natural shades in the substance these letters must have been traced with nitric acid which leaves a slight opacity where applied, of which there is an example (Marlborough), the name and titles of a former owner, Andreas Carraia, traced round the edge of a singularly fine Cameo (Constantine with helmed head). The mixture of Greek and Roman capitals betrays a Byzantine date, and refers to the consecration of this unparalleled relic of imperial splendour to the service of the Altar. No tradition is recorded of its origin : but as it had been " for many centuries " in the same possession, everything leads to the belief that it found its way to Vienna after the Prankish conquest of Constantinople, when so many grand Camei became dispersed throughout Europe. The exist­ence of such a natural prodigy as a slab of Agate of the dimen­sions this patera demanded renders the vast prices given for similar rarities under the Caesars no longer a thing to be won­dered at. The shape of this is precisely that of the trulla, and of the class of vessels more peculiarly formed out of the Mur-rhina, as its natural capabilities dictated. The Emperor Leopold II. exhibited this Agate to Lambeccius as the most important of all his treasures ; but to him also the miraculous inscription constituted its principal value.
The front of the altar in the Chiesa del Jesu, Borne, is formed of one slab of Murrhinuin found in the ruins of an ancient house in the Forum. " It answers the description in Pliny very well. It is purple in colour, with strata of a dull white running through it : on the edges of the white there is a slight irides­cence. It bears a resemblance to fluor-spar, but it is not fluor, for, as Sibilio at Rome showed me, fluor-spar is easily scratched, whereas the so-called Murra cannot be scratched, more particu­larly in the white."—(H. M. Westropp.)
3 Adding, " Though man be silent, the very slones proclaim God's glory ! "
Murrhina, China-Agate Page of 453 Naxium, Emery
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