BETROTHAL AND WEDDING RINGS 195
the
fifteenth century prove, with but few exceptions, that the nuptial ring
was to be placed on the right hand of the bride, in most of the
dioceses upon the middle finger of this hand, but in the diocese of
Liège on the fourth finger. As Isidore of Seville, writing in the early
part of the seventh century, declares that the betrothal ring was put
on the fourth finger, and repeats the Roman fancy as to the vein
intimately connecting this particular finger with the heart,4
it seems likely that this rule was generally followed in the Roman
Empire up to its end, and even later in some parts of what had once
been Roman provinces, while the early French rules were derived from a
Gallic usage which had never been supplanted by the Roman one.5 That the Gauls and Britons of the first century wore their rings on the middle finger is already noted by Pliny.8 A
gold ring, a unique relic of Anglo-Saxon times in England, was found in
an ancient burial place at Harnham Hill, near Salisbury.7 It
was on a finger bone of the left hand of a skeleton, and resembles
exactly our wedding-ring of to-day. In the same cemetery was unearthed
a. twisted ring of silver, a mere band twice encircling the finger; a
section of the finger-bone remains within the ring. These relics are
believed to
4 Isidori, " De ecclesiasticis officiis," lib. xx, cap. 8, in Migne's " Patrologia Latina," vol. lxxxiii, cols. 811, 812.
B
Deloche, " Le port des anneaux dans l'antiquité romaine, et dans les
premiers siècles du moyen âge," Paris, 1896, pp. 96— 98; Mémoires de
l'Académie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres, vol. xxxv, pt. 2.
6 Naturalis Historia, lib. xxxiii, cap. 24.
7 John
Yonge Akerman, "An Account of Excavations in an Anglo-Saxon Burial
Ground at Harnham Hill Near Salisbury," in Archeologia, vol. xxxv, p.
266, and Plate XII (opp. p. 278).
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