260 THE CURIOUS LORE OF PRECIOUS STONES
golden
green gem-stone. Still another, larger than the last named, was set in
the gold monstrance in Magdeburg, and was believed to have been the
handle of Emperor Otho I's knife, since it was perforated. Possibly,
however, the emerald, if genuine, was an Oriental stone, for it was
customary to pierce rubies, sapphires, emeralds, etc., in the East so
as to string them for necklaces or attach them as pendants to a jewel.
In
the convent-church of St. Stephan, in Persian Armenia, erected about
the middle of the seventeenth century, it is related by the French
traveller Tavernier that there was preserved a cross said to be made
out of the basin in which Christ washed the feet of the Apostles. Set
in this cross was a white stone, and the priests asserted that when the
cross was laid upon the body of one seriously ill, this stone would
turn black if he were about to die, but would regain its white hue
after his death.53
No
jewelled sacred image has been the object of greater reverence than has
been accorded to the rude little wooden carving popularly known as the
"Sacro Bambino" or "Sacred Baby," in the old church of Ara Coeli in
Rome. This figure was carved, in 1847, by a monk, out of a piece of
olive-wood from one of the ancient trees growing on the Mount of Olives
near Jerusalem. The carving was executed in the Holy Land and was sent
thence to Italy, and although the ship bearing it was shipwrecked,
this precious freight was miraculously preserved and is supposed to
have been conveyed to its destination in some mysterious way. The
reverence of the thousands of pilgrims who in the course of time have
""Les six voyages de Jean Baptiste Tavernier," La Haye, 1718, vol. i, p. 48 ; Voyages en Perse, liv. i, chap. iv.
