AMULETS: ANCIENT, MEDIEVAL, ORIENTAL 331
private collection in Paris.2*
Empress Eugénie is stated to have worn it at the time of the birth of
the Prince Imperial, and to have further shown her belief in the
mystic, or magic, virtues of the talisman by sending it several years
later to Biarritz, that it might be kept for a time in the sick-room of
M. Bacciochi, when he was prostrated by illness in that city.«
An
Anglo-Saxon treatise on the medical art, from the beginning of the
tenth century, the original manuscript of which was owned by an
Anglo-Saxon leech named Bald, as testified to by an entry on the
title-leaf, gives the agate a prominent place as a talismanic and
curative agent. More especially is its power over the demon-world
emphasized. Indeed it is asserted to serve as a sort of diagnostic of
demoniacal possession, the words being: "The man who hath in him
secretly the loathly fiend, if he taketh in liquid any portion of the
shavings of this stone, then soon is exhibited manifestly in him that
which before secretly lay hid. ' ' Less unfamiliar to those acquainted
with the early literature on the subject are the statements that the
wearers of agates were guarded against danger from lightning, and from
venom. The liquid "extract of agate," taken internally, also produced
smooth skin and rendered the partaker immune from the bites of snakes.24
An
extremely strange type of amulets found occasionally in Gallic
sepulchres are disks made from human skulls. It appears to be a
well-ascertained fact that the operation of
"Dictionnaire
d'Archéologie Chrétienne, ed. by Dom Fernand Cabrol and Dom H.
Leclercq, Fase, xxv, Paris, 1911, cols. 696-698, with cuts of the
talisman taken from those given by E. Aus'm Weertht to illustrate a
paper is the Jahrb. des Vereins der Alterthumsfreunde im Rheinlande,
vols, xxxix-xl, p. 265-272, Plates IV, V, VI, Bonn, 1866. The original
photographs were taken by express permission of Napoleon III.
" Emile Ollivier, " L'Empire Libérale," Paris, 1897, vol. ii, p. 55.
*
Rev. Oswald Cockayne, " Leechdoms, Wortcunning and Starerait of Early
England," London, 1865, voL ii, p. 299 (Bk. II, cap. 66 of the " Laece
Boe").
