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Jewelry of the Ancients

Jewelry of the Ancients Page of 453 Chemical Analysis of Precious Stones Text size:minus plus Restore normal size   Mail page  Print this page
JEWELRY OP THE ANCIENTS.                     409
so worthy a princess—she had been strangled by the command of the miserable Honorius—cannot refrain from instancing the poetical justice of the mode of execution, " which encircled with the cord a throat previously decorated with a necklace obtained by sacrilege from the most venerable of the Roman shrines."
The same custom of dedicating remarkable specimens of pre­cious stones to the honour of the Deity, or his saints, was carried down far into the Middle Ages. In the paliotto or chased gold frontal of the high-altar of S. Ambrogio, Milan, is inserted a long oval topaz inscribed which can only be
interpreted as the votive offering of Eiada, some Lombard con­tributor to its construction in the 9th century. Under Lychnis I have noticed the far-famed karfunhel, so long believed by report to have lighted up the shrine of S. Elizabeth of Marburg. Leofric, the tenth abbot of St. Alban's, Matthew Paris tells us in his life, in order to relieve the poor in a great famine, sold all the plate belonging to his church, except " certain noble engraved gems now vulgarly called camel, for which he could find no purchasers." And the Patent Rolls give a detailed list of the camei collected by Henry III. for the embellishment of the shrine he was constructing "for Edward the Confessor. They were over eighty in number ; amongst which fifty-five are parti­cularized as " large," and one especially " in a gold setting with a chain to it," is valued at 200?., an incredible sum if brought to the present standard which requires it to be multiplied at least twenty-fold.
Besides these, several precious stones, of large size, especially sapphires, figure in this list, as set in the breasts or held in the hands of the numerous statuettes in gold, which embellished this extraordinary production of the artist-goldsmiths of the 13th century. But the richest assemblage of gems, both intrinsically valuable, and priceless as works of art, was that formerly en­riching the abbey of St.'Denys. Many of them had come down from the Carlovingian kings, some were presents from the early Byzantine emperors, others trophies of the Frankish conquest of Constantinople. The greater part appear to have been intro­duced in the ornamentation of the statuettes in gold and silver, and on the reliquaries in other shapes, in devising which the in­genious devotion of the Middle Ages loved to exert its skill and fancy. A most interesting description to the lover of medi­aeval art, and full of curious details of these riches, drawn up at the time of their greatest splendour, will be found in Marion Dumersan's 'Trésor de S. Denys,' published in 1645.
Jewelry of the Ancients Page of 453 Chemical Analysis of Precious Stones
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