|
MEDIEVAL AND MODERN HISTORY
|
19
|
||
|
|
|||
|
Inventories
of some of the oriental collections of later times seem to be
extravagant fiction rather than veritable history. In that interesting
book dictated in a Genoese prison to Rusticiano da Pisa, accounts are
given by Marco Polo of great treasures seen by the first Europeans to
penetrate into China. He describes the king of Malabar as wearing
suspended about his neck a string of 104 large pearls and rubies of
great value, which he used as a rosary. Likewise on his legs were
anklets and on his toes were rings, all thickly set with costly pearls,
the whole "worth more than a city's ransom. And 't is no wonder he hath
great store of such gear ; for they are found in his kingdom. No one is
permitted to remove therefrom a pearl weighing more than half a saggio. The king desires to reserve all such to himself, and so the quantity he has is almost incredible."1
Later
travelers give wonderful descriptions of this excessive passion for
pearls. Literature is full of this appreciation, and of the part which
these gems played in the affairs of the Orientals. Who has not dwelt
with delight upon those imperishable legends such as are embodied in
the Arabian Nights, of the pearl voyages by Sindbad the Sailor, of the
wonderful treasure chests, and of the superb necklaces adorning the
beautiful black-eyed women !
The
returning Crusaders in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and the
development of the knightly orders, had much to do with spreading
through Europe a fondness for pearls in personal decoration. Those who,
like Chaucer's knight, had been with Peter, King of Cyprus, at the
capture and plunder when "Alexandria was won," returned to their homes
with riches of pearls and gold and precious stones. And learning much
relative to decorative art from Moorish craftsmen, the jewelers of
western Europe set these in designs not always crude and ineffective.
Although
they were well known and valued, pearls do not seem to have been much
used in England before the twelfth century, as the Anglo-Saxons were
not an especially art-loving people. The word itself is of foreign
derivation and occurs in a similar form in all modern languages, both
Romance and Teutonic; perle, French and German; perla, Italian, Portuguese, Provençal, Spanish, and Swedish; paarl, Danish and Dutch. Its origin is doubtful. Some philologists consider it Teutonic and the diminutive of beere, a berry ; Claude de Saumaise derives it from pirula, the diminutive of pirum, a sphere ; while Diez and many others refer it to pira or to the medieval Latin pirula, in allusion to the pear shape frequently assumed by the pearl.2
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
|
|||