BETROTHAL AND WEDDING RINGS 215
after
the Council of Trent, which ended in 1563. At the betrothal, by proxy,
of Lucrezia Borgia with Giovanni Sforza, February 2, 1493, twin gold
rings set with precious stones were given, one to be put on the fourth
finger of the fiancee's left hand, " whose vein leads to the heart " as
the record specifies, while the other was to be placed on the
bridegroom's little finger.41
In
one of the very risqué tales forming the " Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles,"
the authorship of which has been attributed to King Louis XI of France
(1461-1483), it is related that a lady, while bathing, lost a diamond
ring; the narrator adds: " This was one her liege lord had given her on
the day of her espousal, and she prized it the more highly on this
account." Although diamond rings were not common at this time, the
recently invented art of facetting the diamond was rapidly bringing
these stones into fashion and favor. There is, indeed, a record, or at
least a family tradition, that one of the three large diamonds cut in
facets by Lodowyk van Berken of Bruges, about 1476, at the order of
Duke Charles the Bold of Burgundy, was set in a ring and given by the
duke to Louis XI, with whom he was then seeking to get on a friendly
footing. This diamond is described as having been cut as a " triangle
and a heart." This possibly means that the triangular shape was
slightly modified into a heart shape.*2
A
Scotch legend relates that a married woman by ill-chance let her
wedding ring fall into the river Clyde. On her return home her husband
noted its absence and,
41 See Gregorovius, " Lucrezia Borgia," pp. 375, S76, of Ital.. translation.
42 Robert
de Berquen, " Les Merveilles des Indes Orientales et Occidentales,"
Paris, 1661, pp. 14, 15. Robert de Berquen writes of Louis (Lodowyk) as
" one of his ancestors."
