The Mineral and the Visual: Precious Stones in Medieval Secular Culture 9780271093697

Table of contents :
Contents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Part I . Jeweled Crowns, Mineralized Kingship
Introduction
1 The Politics of Precious Stones
2 Inventing Mineral Sovereignty
3 Gothic Regal Materiality
Part II . Lapidary Knowledge in Word and Image
Introduction
4 A Royal Pursuit
5 Optical Mineralogy and Lithic Magic
6 Of Stones, Sigils, and Stars
Part III . Geographies of Mineral Marvels, Economies of Mineral Assets
Introduction
7 Edenic Geology and Surplus
8 Mineral Realism in the Global Thirteenth Century
9 Networks of Gem Trade
Epilogue
Notes
Selected Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

The Mineral and the Visual

Brigitte Buettner

The Mineral and the Visual Precious Stones in Medieval Secular Culture

T h e P e n n s y l va n i a S t a t e U n i v e r s i t y P r e s s | U n i v e r s i t y P a r k , P e n n s y l va n i a

Frontispiece: Crown of the Holy Roman Empire, late tenth to twelfth century, Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum, detail (fig. 6); page viii, Holy Cross Chapel, Karlštejn Castle, detail (fig. 25). Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Buettner, Brigitte, author. Title: The mineral and the visual : precious stones in medieval secular culture / Brigitte Buettner. Description: University Park, Pennsylvania The Pennsylvania State University Press, [2022] | Includes bibliographical references and index. Summary: “Examines the social roles, cultural meanings, and active agency of precious stones in jeweled crowns, illustrated lapidaries, and illustrated travel accounts in the European Middle Ages”—Provided by publisher. Identifiers: LCCN 2021061832 | ISBN 9780271092508 (hardback) Subjects: LCSH: Gems—Europe—History—To 1500. | Crowns—Europe—History—To 1500. | Lapidaries (Medieval literature) | Travelers’ writings, European. Classification: LCC NK5642 .B84 2022 | DDC 736/.20940902—dc23/eng/20220210 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021061832 Copyright © 2022 Brigitte Buettner All rights reserved Printed in China Published by The Pennsylvania State University Press, University Park, PA 16802–1003 The Pennsylvania State University Press is a member of the Association of University Presses. It is the policy of The Pennsylvania State University Press to use acid-free paper. Publications on uncoated stock satisfy the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Material, ansi z39.48–1992.

What wonder then if fields and regions here Breathe forth Elixir pure, and Rivers run Potable gold, when with one vertuous touch Th’ Arch-chimic Sun so farr from us remote Produces with Terrestrial Humor mixt Here in the dark so many precious things Of color glorious and effect so rare? —Milton, Paradise Lost

To M. G. & M. G.

List of Illustrations | x Acknowledgments | xiii

Introduction | 1 Part I | Jeweled Crowns, Mineralized Kingship | 19

1 The Politics of Precious Stones | 27 2 Inventing Mineral Sovereignty | 36 3 Gothic Regal Materiality | 47 Contents

Part II | Lapidary Knowledge in Word and Image | 71

4 A Royal Pursuit | 75 5 Optical Mineralogy and Lithic Magic | 93 6 Of Stones, Sigils, and Stars | 126 Part III | Geographies of Mineral Marvels, Economies of Mineral Assets | 149

7 Edenic Geology and Surplus | 155 8 Mineral Realism in the Global Thirteenth Century | 165 9 Networks of Gem Trade | 188 Epilogue | 201 Notes | 205 Selected Bibliography | 237 Index | 247

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

8. 9.

I l lu s t r at i o n s

10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26.

Pietro da Pavia, Initial U(t nichil), in Pliny, Natural History, book 37, 1389 | 3 Precious stones (De gemmis), in Rabanus Maurus, De rerum naturis, book 17.7, 1020s | 7 Third day of Creation, in Vincent of Beauvais, Miroir historial, ca. 1463 | 11 Emperor Lothair enthroned, Lothair Psalter, 842–55 | 12 Jean de Berry inspecting gems, in Bartholomaeus Anglicus, Livre des propriétés des choses, 1410–15 | 17 Crown of the Holy Roman Empire, late tenth to twelfth century | 22 Illustration for Orfèvrerie, in Eugène Viollet-leDuc, Dictionnaire raisonné du mobilier français, 1871 | 24 Epitaph of Rudolf I of Habsburg, detail of crowned head, 1291 | 26 Crown of the Holy Roman Empire, top of front plate | 30 Crown of the Holy Roman Empire, inside view | 30 Albrecht Dürer, The Crown of the Holy Roman Empire, 1510/17 | 32 The crown of the Holy Roman Empire and the orphanus stone, Hortus sanitatis, 1491 | 33 Gold solidus of Constantine the Great, 336–37 | 38 Crowned head of Empress Theodora, Ravenna, church of San Vitale, ca. 544–48 | 41 Emperor Justinian’s procession, Ravenna, church of San Vitale, ca. 544–48 | 42 Bust of Emperor Justinian (?), early sixth century | 44 Crown of Castile, 1256–75 (?) | 48 Staufen (?) cameo from the crown of Castile | 50 Richard II enthroned, in Philippe de Mézières, Epistre au Roi Richart, 1395 | 54 Crown of Bohemia, ca. 1344–47 (reworked in the 1370s) | 57 St. Wenceslas Chapel, Prague, Cathedral of St. Vitus, 1350s–1373 | 59 Blacas Cameo of Augustus, ca. 20–30 CE | 61 Karlštejn Castle, exterior view, 1348–57 | 62 Holy Cross Chapel in the Great Tower of Karlštejn Castle, ca. 1360–65 | 63 Holy Cross Chapel, detail of lower wall, Karlštejn Castle | 64 Crown of Bohemia, detail of top with sapphire cross-shaped reliquary | 66

27. Emperor Charles IV and King Charles V exchanging gem-set rings, in Grandes chroniques de France, before 1379 | 68 28. Two varieties of chelidonius, in Bartholomaeus Anglicus, Livre des propriétés des choses, 1450–75 | 76 29. Gold ring set with an emerald, thirteenth to fourteenth century | 78 30. Nero and Evax exchanging a precious stone, Paneth Codex, Bologna, 1300–1326 | 79 31. Sidrac instructs King Boctus on the nature of precious stones, in Sidrac, Livre de Sidrac, late thirteenth century | 80 32. Opening page for Aries, in Alfonso X, Lapidario, 1250–75 | 84 33. Aristotle lecturing; initial A showing Alfonso supervising the work of translation, in Alfonso X, Lapidario, 1250–75 | 85 34. Nimiuz and caoz, Capricorn 27 and 28, in Alfonso X, Lapidario, 1250–75 | 86 35. Mining for cadmium, in Dioscorides, De materia medica, book 5, second quarter to late tenth century | 88 36. A magnet and other stones, in Dioscorides, De materia medica, book 5, second quarter to late tenth century | 89 37. Miners at work, in Bartholomaeus Anglicus, Livre des propriétés des choses, 1482 | 90 38. Savants disserting about stones, in Bartholomaeus Anglicus, Livre des propriétés des choses, 1450–75 | 91 39. Medley of disk-stones, in Matfre Ermengaud, Breviari d’amor, 1350–75 | 95 40. Fifteen disk-stones, in Matfre Ermengaud, Breviari d’amor, ca. 1400 | 97 41. Heavenly Jerusalem, in Beatus of Liebana, Commentary on the Apocalypse, ca. 945 | 98 42. Tellinimuz, Aries 8, in Alfonso X, Lapidario, 1250–75 | 101 43. Sardonyx to selenites, in Jacob van Maerlant, Der naturen bloeme, ca. 1366 | 101 44. Borax to corallus, in Jacob van Maerlant, Der naturen bloeme, ca. 1366 | 102 45. Pantherus, in Konrad von Megenberg, Das Buch der Natur, mid-fifteenth century | 103 46. Ligurius formed from the urine of a lynx, in an English bestiary, ca. 1240–50 | 104

47. Haematites, in Jacob van Maerlant, Der naturen bloeme, ca. 1285 | 105 48. Amethystus, in Jacob van Maerlant, Der naturen bloeme, ca. 1285 | 106 49. Quatrefoil amethyst cup, 1300–1375 | 106 50. Selenites, in Hortus sanitatis, 1491 | 108 51. Smaragdus, in Konrad von Megenberg, Das Buch der Natur, mid-fifteenth century | 108 52. The battle for emeralds in Scythia, in Livre des merveilles du monde, ca. 1460 | 110 53. Man extracting a draconites from the head of a dragon, in Jacob van Maerlant, Der naturen bloeme, ca. 1285 | 113 54. Mechanical archer aiming at a carbuncle that illuminates a banquet of gilded simulacra, in Abrégé des histoires divines, 1300–1310 | 113 55. Coral tree table ornament with serpent’s tongues (Natterzungenkredenz), before 1562 | 117 56. Coral, in Jacob van Maerlant, Der naturen bloeme, ca. 1285 | 118 57. Chrysolitus and crystallus, in Jacob van Maerlant, Der naturen bloeme, ca. 1285 | 119 58. Devil-chasing diamond, in Cecco d’Ascoli, L’Acerba, 1425–50 | 121 59. Diadochos, magnes, and spherical stones, in Cecco d’Ascoli, L’Acerba, 1425–50 | 122 60. Evil spirits summoned by the diadochos, in Jacob van Maerlant, Der naturen bloeme, ca. 1285 | 122 61. Diebold Lauber workshop, tempest-provoking eliotropia, in Konrad von Megenberg, Buch der Natur, 1442 | 124 62. Calandrino searches for the invisibility stone; he beats his wife, in Boccaccio, Decameron, ca. 1415 | 125 63. Gold signet ring with nicolo intaglio of head of Ceres, late Roman gem, early fourteenth-century mount | 127 64. Page with painted sigils, in Jacob van Maerlant, Der naturen bloeme, ca. 1366 | 129 65. Initial G(eneraliter), in Thomas of Cantimpré, Liber de natura rerum, book 14, 1295 | 130 66. Fifteen stars, stones, and plants, in John Gower, Confessio Amantis, ca. 1470 | 137 67. Naturally impressed head of a king, in Franciscus de Retza, Defensorium inviolatae virginitatis Mariae, ca. 1484 | 139

Illustrations

xi

68. Ptolemy Cameo, ca. 278–269 BCE in a sixteenthcentury mount | 141 69. Nicholas of Verdun and others, shrine of the Three Kings, ca. 1200 | 142 70. Adamas, in Jacob van Maerlant, Der naturen bloeme, ca. 1285 | 144 71. Nectanebus explains the wonders of nature to Alexander the Great, in John Gower, Confessio Amantis, ca. 1470 | 145 72. Aloeswood and precious stones in Haute Babilonie, in Livre des simples médecines, ca. 1460 | 156 73. Pearl fishing and turquoise extraction in Gaindu, in Marco Polo, Le livre des merveilles d’Asie, ca. 1412 | 160 74. Realm of Prester John with a gem-bearing river and marvelous fauna, in The Book of John Mandeville, 1476 | 162 75. Prester John in Ethiopia, Catalan-Estense Map, ca. 1450–60 | 166 76. The court of the Great Khan, in The Book of John Mandeville, ca. 1430 | 169 77. Boucicaut Master, the Khan’s table, in Livre des merveilles, ca. 1410–12 | 170 78. Vine bearing precious stones, in Wonders of the East, 1025–50 | 171 79. Robinet Testard, Trapo, in Livre des merveilles du monde, ca. 1480–85 | 173

xii

Illustrations

80. Boucicaut Master, Sillon (Sri Lanka), in Livre des merveilles, ca. 1410–12 | 175 81. The Mediterranean, Africa, and Asia, CatalanEstense Map, ca. 1450–60 | 177 82. Dog-headed ruler of Nicobar, in Livre des merveilles, ca. 1410–12 | 178 83. The king of Ma’bar, in Livre des merveilles, ca. 1410–12 | 179 84. Procreation of pearls, in a bestiary, 1250–75 | 180 85. Pearl fishing in the Gulf of Mannar, in Marco Polo, Li livres du Graunt Caam, 1400–1410 | 181 86. Boucicaut Master, Valley of Diamonds in the kingdom of Mutfili, in Livre des merveilles, ca. 1410–12 | 184 87. Magnetic mountains pulling nails from ships, in Hortus sanitatis, 1491 | 186 88. Dog-headed merchants on the island of Angamanam, in Livre des merveilles, ca. 1410–12 | 189 89. Major places in Marco Polo’s world | 194 90. Trade in Tabriz, in Le livre des voyages de Marco Polo, 1500–1530 | 195

I have incurred many debts to people and institutions during the years it has taken for this project to come to fruition. I gratefully acknowledge the generous support of the American Philosophical Society, the Mellon Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. My own institution, Smith College, has been unstinting in its institutional and financial support, and I would like to extend special thanks to its Committee on Faculty Compensation and Development and the Office of the Associate Provost. Smith also has provided a collegial environment for work and leisure alike. In particular, thanks are due to Anna Botta, Nancy Bradbury, Scott Bradbury, John Brady, Eglal Doss-Quinby, Richard Lim, John

Acknowledgments

Moore, and Richard Sherr for help on matters small and large. Further afield, the colleagues who have invited me to give talks and those who have shared their expertise include Lilian Armstrong, Hugo Oscar Bizzarri, Nicola Courtright, William Diebold, Sonja Drimmer, Françoise Fery-Hue, John Block Friedman, Eliza Garrison, Galia Halpern, Jeffrey Hamburger, Anne D. Hedeman, Michel Pastoureau, Bruno Reudenbach, William Schipper, Avinoam Shalem, Catherine de Smet, Gia Toussaint, Monika Wagner, Laura Weigert, and Christopher Wood. Elina Gertsman, Cynthia Hahn, Aden Kumler, and Marcia Kupfer supported this book when it needed it most, while Dana Leibsohn and Helen Hills commented on drafts at various stages of imperfection with generosity and incisiveness. Finally, I would like to acknowledge the late Myra Orth, who heard about the project when it was in its infancy and thought it was a good idea.

I am grateful to the museums and libraries

who facilitated access to their collections and gave permission to reproduce images. At Smith College,

Jonathan Cartledge (Imaging Center), Saari Greylock (Provost’s Office), and Christina Ryan (Interlibrary Loan) went well beyond the bounds of duty in providing assistance. At Penn State University Press, I have found an outstanding editorial team in Maddie Caso and Ellie Goodman. Kate Perillo and Courtney Traub helped with the first round of polishing the prose while Annika Fisher, the copyeditor for the press, did a first-rate job in giving the manuscript its final shape. Finally, my infinitely supportive husband, Michael Gorra, and our infinitely insightful daughter, Miriam Gorra, have been with this book for as long as it has existed. Though they may never have wanted to know as much about the Middle Ages and precious stones as they do now, their conversations, reservations, and observations have improved what I say and how I say it in countless ways. This book is dedicated to them—the two gems of my life.

xiv

Acknowledgments

W

hen Giorgio Vasari published the second edition of the Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors,

and Architects in 1568, he went beyond memorial-

izing artists past and present, flattering his patron Cosimo de’ Medici, and declaring Florence the epicenter of creativity. Wittingly or not, he laid, with this text, the groundwork for the theoretical principles that inform the practice of art history to this day. Critical to the argument developed in this

Introduction

book is the enshrinement of a split between the socalled major and minor arts, the former acknowledged in the title while the latter go unmentioned. From Vasari onward, painting, sculpture, and architecture received credit for their cognitive reach on the assumption that a driving idea, istoria, or concetto had imprinted them with a self-reflexive muscle. In contrast, the products of goldsmiths, tapestry makers, ivory carvers, and other materially oriented artistic endeavors were bundled together in the department of the decorative—the unthinking—arts. By the nineteenth century, the theoretical division between fine and applied arts solidified into a rigidly tiered system, amplified by separate institutional frameworks, professional networks, and intellectual priorities.

During the European Middle Ages, the rela-

tive valuation of the arts was nearly the opposite.1 Gem-enriched objects, among the great contributions of that period to the canon of Western art, represented a far greater financial investment than other media. But the products of metalsmiths’ forges and goldsmiths’ chisels were also praised as achievements of unequaled aesthetic appeal, technical expertise, and cultural significance. Were crowns, reliquaries, jewelry, and liturgical vessels not crafted from auratic materials, mined in the depths of the earth, and yet imbued with a starlike radiance? The Mineral and the Visual’s premise is

that assertively material objects are neither mute

Duke of Milan, Giangaleazzo Visconti.2 Fra Pietro

nor dumb even when established methods of inter-

da Pavia, an Augustinian friar and experienced il-

pretation (such as iconography and narratology)

luminator, executed the initials that announce each

fail to detect their meanings. It focuses on precious

of the text’s thirty-seven books, adding a proud

stones, a unique case of an artistic medium that

self-portrait to the initial M for book 35 on the

also constitutes a class of natural objects. In that

art of painting. The U(t nichil) initial for book 37

capacity, gemstones were so highly valued that

on precious stones captures the sense of wonder

they became the building blocks of an intellec-

generated, in Pliny’s estimation, “in the minds of

tual undertaking formalized in a distinct literary

many by the variety, the colors, the texture and the

genre: the lapidary. That may come as a surprise.

elegance of gems.”3 Appreciative in its own way,

We are used to rating gems as no more than liquid

the image shows delicate gem-set rings dangling

assets for the rich or glitzy baubles for the nouveau

from a larger ring silhouetted against a densely

riche. And we rightly hold the extreme esteem

diapered background. Within this main ring is a

they garner as complicit with ruthless monopo-

cluster brooch that crystallizes the initial’s color

listic practices, poverty-level subsistence mining,

scheme—pale red, blue, green, and white—into

conflict minerals, blood diamonds, and extractive

rubies, sapphires, emeralds, and pearls, presenting

industries that violate landscapes across the planet.

them as the fruit of a close collaboration between

Singularly accursed, shiny rocks are deemed cor-

painter, goldsmith, and nature.

rupt, vulgar, and unworthy of academic attention.



It, therefore, requires something of a leap of faith

medieval lapidary discourse did not distinguish

to admit gems and jeweled arts to the arena of

between semiprecious and precious stones. Nor

cultural analysis.

did it discriminate between minerals proper and

Contrary to modern classifications, the

fossils, barnacle shells, coral, fossilized botanicals (such as amber and jet), and calcified biogenic Definitions

materials secreted by animals (including pearls, ambergris, and the “Lynx stone” ligurius). (To

2

But what exactly was a precious stone in medieval

distinguish lapidaries’ verbal creations from exist-

understanding? Pretiosus (derived from pretium,

ing stones, I preserve their Latin names; adamas,

meaning price) could designate any desirable asset,

for example, usually translates to diamond, but it

including Christ’s blood, kings’ authority, wives’

could also designate other “invincible” metallic

chastity, moral qualities, and physical attributes,

and mineral substances.) Above all, premodern

not to mention a vast array of material possessions.

lapidaries blurred the line between factual and

To start with a visual proposition that articulates

fictional items, admitting the “Hail stone” gelacia

the preciousness of precious stones, we can look at

and the “Wild goat stone” gagatromeus side by side

an intriguing miniature found in a late fourteenth-

with rubies and sapphires. As a consequence, the

century copy of Pliny the Elder’s Natural History

medieval lapidary archive features specimens we

(fig. 1). The handsome book, finished in 1389,

recognize at once, others we call by the same name

belonged to Pasquino Capelli, secretary to the

though they no longer mean the same thing, and

the mineral and the visual

Figure 1 Pietro da Pavia, Initial U(t nichil), in Pliny, Natural History, book 37, northern Italy, 1389. Milan, Biblioteca Ambrosiana, MS E.24. Inf., fol. 352r. Photo © Veneranda Biblioteca Ambrosiana / Mondadori Portfolio.

phenomena, trafficking in the supernatural, averting diseases, bringing relief and even permanent cures. Medieval audiences discovered minerals that make one smart, attractive, and sexually fit; others that grant invincibility and invisibility; and still others that protect crops and insure against

many more that have devolved into pure signifiers

travel accidents. Readers of postmodern theory

(assuming they were ever more than that).

will recognize in the concept of virtus a prefigura-



tion of what Jane Bennett incisively describes as

Expansive as this catholic taxonomy may have

been, it nevertheless drew a sharp dividing line

“vibrant matter.” Building on Bruno Latour, she

between stones that counted as precious and com-

has forged that concept to further problematize the

mon rocks. Put simply, the former were capable of

great divide between subjecthood and objecthood,

actions, and it is that cryptoanimation, that ability

the (Eurocentric) foundational myth of modernity.

to capitalize on the “basic dynamism lurking in

Bennett sums up her anti-idealistic philosophical

matter,” that converted ordinary geological entities

project as one intent on rattling “the adamantine

into precious specimens. Stones’ actions went

chain that has bound materiality to inert substance

under the name of virtutes (virtues). Admirably

and that has placed the organic across a chasm

extensive and varied, virtues imbued seemingly

from the inorganic.”5 Instead of a binary—alertness

inert matter with a measure of agency, engineer-

here, inertness there—medieval views about the

ing stones capable of altering the bodies and

cosmos and its varied inhabitants supported the

minds of animate beings, meddling with natural

idea of a continuum. Moving from immanence to

4

Introduction

3

transcendence, creatures populating the mineral,

of a bygone mindset warped by credulity and igno-

vegetable, and animal realms up to the angelic

rance. Modern mineralogy was no longer willing

orders were conceptualized as being strung across

to detect slivers of divine presence and perceive

a golden chain (catena aurea) that leads, step by

the rumblings of life in geological bodies—rocks

step, to the creator of everything, stones included.

had truly turned into inorganic matter. Confidence

That is the gist of an observation volunteered by

in precious stones’ performative talents was, by

Gervase of Tilbury (d. 1220) in his riveting Otia

contrast, a universally recognized feature of pre-

imperialia (Recreation for an emperor), a text I will

modern conceptions of the mineral. The difference

lean on repeatedly. Elaborating on the normative

between a scholastic natural philosopher such as

conception of a vegetative, sensitive, and rational

Albert the Great (Albertus Magnus) (d. 1280), for

soul, the Anglo-Norman court writer envisioned

whom thinking about agency-packed stones was

the human body as a microcosm that “has exis-

an abiding cognitive passion, and a parturient

tence in common with stones, life in common with

woman, who put faith in the obstetrical assistance

trees, sensation in common with animals, and

of the “Eagle stone” aetites, was one of degree, not

intelligence in common with angels.”6 The twelfth-

kind. Neither in the early Christian centuries nor

century scholar Marius (of Salerno?) thought no

in the late medieval period was there a two-tiered

differently when he opined that humans are no

scenario that divided the learned from the untu-

more than a particular conglomerate of air, fire,

tored, pitting cool rationality against superstitious

water, and earth. They share that elemental con-

folk belief. The few critical voices, some of which

stitution with every other animal, plant, and, “in a

we shall be hearing, did little to stem the general

certain way,” stone. The last kinship led Marius to

enthusiasm for stones’ deployment of divinely

the startling conclusion that if “a man is lifted up,

implanted virtutes.

he will fall to earth like a mineral; and after death



he can be counted among the minerals.” Take

foremost, in curative operationes (operations)

away the soul, and rocky essence is all that is left.

effected on human bodies, it also affected stones’



7

4

If lithic motility expressed itself, first and

Only in the seventeenth century would the

own lifecycles. Far from immutable, stones were

axiom of an unbridgeable cleft between beings ani-

believed to experience invigorating growth and

mate and objects inanimate replace the medieval

erosive decay—they “suffer maladies, old age,

concept of a graduated scale. By then, the notion

and death,” in the succinct statement of Girolamo

that stones are equipped with a measure of vitalis-

Cardano, a sixteenth-century Italian humanist.9

tic potency struck naturalists as thoroughly naïve.

Singularly baffling to a twenty-first-century reader

Chemical composition and internal structure now

is the related tenet that geological quasi-subjects

reigned as the only admissible truth in a scientific

can procreate. Reproduction was an identify-

framework predicated exclusively on direct obser-

ing trait of the just-mentioned aetites. While our

vation, experimentation, and factual description.8

disenchanted language identifies this stone as a

In such a corseted epistemic regime, the rest-

hollow geode or a concretion harboring loose mat-

less lithic virtues treasured by medieval lapidary

ter, medieval lapidary parlance characterized it as

knowledge could only appear as animistic fantasies

one that “conteyneth another stone as a womman

the mineral and the visual

with childe.”10 Mineral childbearing traced back

many regards, an idiosyncratic work, but signs of

to the very ancient postulate of Mother Earth’s

mineral vitality can easily be found in canonical

womb, generously fecund, eager to breed mines

lapidaries. Examples include a stone that “weeps”

and nurture ores. Pliny pushed the reasoning to

(water-exuding enhydros), one that “feels” changes

its opposite extreme when remarking that Spanish

in ambient conditions (hyacinthus), and another

lead mines replenish themselves after having been

that “turns anxious” when the moon starts to wane

abandoned “just as a miscarriage seems to make

(selenites).15 The Dominican Thomas of Cantimpré

some women more prolific.”12 Such a gendered

(d. ca. 1271), hardly an unorthodox thinker, went

geological universe even allowed for the open

as far as to countenance a specimen that explicitly

expression of stones’ sexual identity: an intensely

encroaches on human rationality. His onychinus

glowing carbuncle was thought of as the male vari-

roams inside our diseased eyes to extract corrupt-

ant of the invariably female pale balas ruby. What

ed humors “spontaneously, almost as if it were a

should be noted is that the medieval churchmen

sensible thing (quasi res sensata).”16 Most discon-

who authored lapidaries felt no particular urge to

certing is the same author’s decision to admit the

censure or to spiritualize that sort of carnal infor-

unnerving pyrophilos humanus into his popular

mation, derived, as much else, from Greco-Roman

encyclopedia, the Liber de natura rerum (Book

scientific literature.

on the nature of things). Being nothing else than



11

13

The language of things alive permeated

a human heart, killed by cold venom and baked

lapidary knowledge beyond the realm of sexual-

without interruption for as many as nine years,

ity. Attractive and repulsive magnetic forces were

this “most precious” hybrid formation utterly voids

couched in terms designed to recall animate

the distinction between human flesh and rocky

comportments. King Alfonso X of Castile’s mid-

matter.17 Sympathetic analogizing predisposes the

thirteenth-century Lapidario, a text examined in

thermophilic creation to protect from sudden

chapter 4, is home to a panoply of minerals that

death and keep its lucky owners alive—or perhaps

act out deep-seated sympathies and antipathies.

not so lucky, considering that its “great power” is

Experiencing motion and emotions, stones run

powerless against infirmities and suffering, turning

away when placed next to hostile substances lest

the unnatural prolongation of life granted by an

they develop cracks and blemishes out of discon-

uncanny stone into a curse.

tent. So intense are their likes and dislikes that they



can tear into their siblings’ inner fabric. Take poor

that separated precious stones from the common

baciz. A short-term closeness to the dreaded red

geological lot. In gem-grade rubies, sapphires, dia-

jacinth will merely cause it to lose its luster. But

monds, pearls, emeralds, amethysts, topazes, and

should the nefarious proximity last, the baciz will

the like, action and appearance matched up. People

theatrically shatter beyond repair. Emery, mean-

love the carnelian “because of its beauty, and also

while, seems inflamed by a cannibalistic élan vital

because of its virtues,” Alfonso X’s Lapidario as-

that encourages it to eat away at the bodies of other

sures us.18 When that was not the case, physics beat

stones (su propriedat es comer todos los cuerpos de

aesthetics, and a meek-looking rock was still held

las otras piedras). The Alfonsine lapidary is, in

to be pretiosus as long as it could act. Foul-smelling

14

Performative mastery, in short, was the quality

Introduction

5

gagates (jet), for example, transcends its off-

variety of telluric bodies, dust, pebbles, marbles,

putting facade by accomplishing much, whether

earths, salts, sulfurs, metals, and more. Unlike

by facilitating menstruation and helping with

lapidaries, which subscribe to virtutes without

stomach upsets or by chasing away serpents and

any explanation, the encyclopedias compiled by

evil spirits. In the view of lapidaries, the ability to

Bartholomaeus Anglicus, Thomas of Cantimpré,

do things defined a stone’s precious essence, and it

Vincent of Beauvais, and others explicitly broach

did so irrespective of its visual appeal or economic

the question of the origins of stones’ active powers.

worth, the evaluative criteria that mattered most to

They also address, however briefly, the formation

merchants, collectors, and artists.

of geological bodies in accordance with insights gained from up-to-date Arabo-Aristotelian scientific paradigms.21

Sources

Ever since its formal beginnings in Hellenistic

scientific literature, the lapidary genre accomPliny’s aforementioned Natural History served as

plished for the mineral realm what the bestiary

the archetypal model for medieval projects of en-

and the herbal did for the animal and vegetable

cyclopedic ambition. Its first influential offspring

kingdoms: inventory its objects, establish lists and

was Isidore of Seville’s early seventh-century

embryonic taxonomies, hone descriptions. Cross-

Etymologies, though it would not be until the

fertilizations between the three genres occurred

thirteenth century that the medieval encyclopedia

all along their reception history, which explains

(a postmedieval term) reached full maturity.

why the bestiary and the herbal feature a hand-

Responding to the teaching and preaching ideals

ful of stones each. All of this is to remind us that

of the new orders, these all-embracing books were

the premodern natural-scientific discourse was,

copied in Dominican and Franciscan scripto-

for the most part, a bookish affair.22 It would take

ria in Paris, Oxford, Cologne, Padua, and many

another few centuries for field geologists to set out

other cities across Europe. Their titles reflect the

on rock-gathering expeditions, and for painters,

systematizing ethos baked into scholastic philoso-

armed with notebooks and experimental mindsets,

phy, whether as summa (sum), speculum (mirror),

to explore the countryside and record notable rock

de natura rerum (of the nature of things), or de

formations. Collecting raw specimens and paint-

proprietatibus rerum (of the properties of things).

ing en plein air were no more part of the medieval

Like Pliny’s Natural History and Isidore of Seville’s

intellectual landscape than geology, mineralogy,

Etymologies, thirteenth-century encyclopedias

and metallurgy were discrete fields of knowledge.

are omnivorous. They make it a point to survey

Not that direct observation was entirely unknown

everything from cosmology, world geography,

or that sensory evidence was invariably met with

meteorological phenomena, human beings, and

distrust. Albert the Great’s mid-thirteenth-century

all manners of nonhuman animals to trees, plants,

De mineralibus (Book of minerals), a landmark

minerals, and metals. Compared to stand-alone

publication in the history of geology, is a good

lapidaries devoted to “precious” stones only, ency-

case in point. Here and there, it relies on data

clopedias broaden the purview, accepting a greater

gathered through direct observation (experientia),

19

20

6

the mineral and the visual

adding those to a bedrock made of the creative appropriation of existing literature.23 “Creative” is the key word, for medieval literary historians have amply demonstrated that even in modest works, the compilatio of auctoritates (pronouncements in authoritative texts) was never a mindless intellectual venture. Sifting through existing sources necessarily required emending, completing, and updating; at every step, decisions had to be made as to which writings deserved to be reactivated or, on the contrary, consigned to oblivion.24

But what about illustrated copies? What

about the presence of images in the medieval lapidary, broadly understood? The delicate initial of Capelli’s Pliny has already provided an example of visual meaning-making applied to the mineral domain. Its proposition that the preciousness of precious stones stems, in equal measure, from nature and artifice is not exceptional. What is unique is the particular form that statement takes with its gem-set rings, brooch, and pixelated background. For a radically different approach, we can look at a colored drawing that belongs to an earlier encyclopedia (fig. 2). At 335 illustrations, the Romanesque reissue of Rabanus Maurus’s ninth-century De rerum naturis (On the nature of things) invited viewers on an unprecedented pictorial journey during which creator

Figure 2 Precious stones (De gemmis), in Rabanus Maurus, De rerum naturis, book 17.7, Montecassino, 1020s. Montecassino, Library of the Abbey, Cod. 132, fol. 421A. Photo: A.M. Rosati / Art Resource, New York.

and creation, angelic existence and human toil, star and stone, came into sight.25 Produced at the

historians of Warburgian sensibility, from Adolph

prestigious abbey of Montecassino, birthplace of

Goldschmidt and Fritz Saxl to Erwin Panofsky and

Benedictine monasticism, the groundbreaking

Rudolf Wittkower.26 Yet, by combining tradition

visual enterprise was sponsored by the art-loving

with innovation, the monastic limners did more

Abbot Theobald (d. 1035), who perhaps intended it

than reformulate existing contents and forms.27

as a gift for a royal benefactor. As a prime witness

They broke new representational ground, includ-

of the meandering Nachleben of ancient represen-

ing, I think, for several of the nine vignettes that

tational models, Montecassino codex 132 has at-

punctuate book 17 devoted to the products of

tracted the attention of a distinguished roster of art

the earth. Some of those, like the informative

Introduction

7

glass-blowing and marble-splitting scenes, focus

medieval lapidary’s illustrative fortunes were

on human-material transactions, while others

erratic at best. Compositional formulas seem to

meet our gaze as stills of lithic objects. The thir-

emerge from nowhere only to disappear without

teen gemmae scattered across the page in orderly

leaving much of a trace. It may be a distorting

disarray belong to this latter category. Cheerfully

effect produced by now missing connective tis-

nonnaturalistic, they exhibit the same pigmenta-

sue and manuscript copies that still wait to be

tion (yellow, orange, pink, red, green, and blue)

unearthed in some obscure repository. Yet the

that defines everything else in the manuscript:

fact remains that mineral iconography could

all natural and manufactured objects, all initial

rarely rely on tested graphic templates, some-

letters, and all purely decorative embellishments.

thing it shares with other secular topics. It had

But where the palette is generic, the designs are

to invent and reinvent itself, with the result that

specific—and specifically predicated on a formal

it is a varied and plural tradition. Still, the forays

grammar built around circles, triangles, diamonds,

into uncharted visual territory epitomized by the

and squares. At once didactic and elegant (to adopt

Montecassino Rabanus Maurus, the Capelli Pliny,

Bert Hall’s terminology), this formal restraint is

and others we will be discussing paved the way

neither a failure nor a gauche attempt at render-

for early modern mineral pictorial achievements

ing objects that had never been painted before.

of a decidedly realistic temper. In turn, the fan-

Indeed, and until proof to the contrary appears,

tastically particularized portraits of stones in the

the Montecassino codex contains the first known

works of Conrad Gessner, Ulisse Aldrovandi, and

freestanding image of precious stones (as well as

other sixteenth-century natural historians would

of pearls and rock crystal) in Western art. The

set the standard for the hyperrealistic textbooks

self-confident choice of a distinctive, hard-edged

and digital archives of our own age.

28

visual identity to distinguish mineral entities was a novelty, and so too was the notion of a geological representation unencumbered by human actors

Interpretations

and free of narrative activities.

8

The Montecassino image proved precocious.

Rabanus Maurus conceived his De rerum na-

By and large, it was not until around 1300 that

turis as a considered tribute to God’s unrivaled

mineral images became more plentiful. Measured

handiwork, a primer for the intricate art of

against the continuous chain of illustrated herb-

biblical exegesis, and an introduction to the book

als and the plethora of Romanesque and Gothic

of nature, all at once. Its pages ought to lift the

bestiaries enriched with extensive pictorial cycles,

minds of young monks toward spiritual mean-

lapidaries’ pictorial record seems meager indeed.

ings concealed behind the surface of things and

Independent lapidaries rarely carried pictures,

guide other readers of a literalist persuasion to

and it is only in thirteenth-century encyclope-

plumb sensory realities for meaning-laden truths.29

dias and their vernacular translations during

Throughout the Middle Ages, allegorical exegesis

the following century that visual glosses solidi-

was the royal road to decode res as signa in line

fied into something of a tradition. Even so, the

with the Christian doctrine rooted in Romans

the mineral and the visual

1:20, per visibilia ad invisibilia (from the visible

because they functioned as authoritative points of

to the invisible). As you contemplate that heap of

reference for the mineral imagination throughout

precious stones, remember the glorious commu-

the Middle Ages. The first appears in relation to the

nity of saints, Rabanus and like-minded church-

splendid breastplate (rationale in Latin, choshen

men insisted. They suggested doing the same

in Hebrew) that the High Priest Aaron, Moses’s

with individual stones: convert shiny pearls into

brother, wore over a golden and purple tunic called

unblemished virgins, greener-than-green emer-

an ephod (Exodus 28:15–21; 39:10–14). Each of its

alds into verdant faith, and beryl into holy men

twelve gemstones was engraved, like a memorial,

because both give off light, the former when hit by

with the name of one of the tribes of Israel. Early

sunbeams, the latter when illumined by religious

Christian interpreters of the Hebrew Bible took

fervor.

over the idea of foundational stones. However,



Christel Meier has traced the layered tradi-

monumentalizing it, they redirected the twelve

tion of allegorized lapidaries. Her comprehensive

stones from a place of origin to an eschatological

Gemma spiritalis offers ample proof of exegesis’ so-

topography. In Apocalypse 21:18–21, those stones—

phisticated conceptual acrobatics when applied to

boulders, really—support the Heavenly Jerusalem,

dry primary materials, such as the fairly repetitive

the golden, crystalline, and pearly dwelling place

information contained in lapidaries. Among other

of the righteous revealed to St. John during the

things, her survey shows that the genre, especially

harrowing vision that announces the end of times.

prevalent until around 1100, never produced a

All in all, the two series yield sixteen stones, eight

list of fixed meanings. Take the carbuncle, a stone

shared (amethystus, beryllus, chrysolitus, iaspis,

much admired for its incandescent properties

saphirus, sardius, smaragdus, topazius) and four

(as explored in chapter 5). While in the view of

each specific either to the breastplate (achates, car-

some its fiery color was evocative of the Passion

bunculus, ligurius, onychinus) or to the celestial city

of Christ, others saw it as pointing more diffusely

(chalcedonius, chrysoprasus, hyacinthus, sardonyx).

toward martyrial blood. Another line of reasoning

It bears mentioning that the illustrative tradition of

coupled it with fire, though in that case it could be

the Heavenly Jerusalem represents a rich and lively

glossed in terms of the spiritual ardor imparted

chapter in the history of medieval mineral iconog-

by the Holy Ghost, the burning desire for char-

raphy, one that merits its own separate treatment.

ity, the consuming love for God, and, in malo, the



scorching flames of Hell. Nor was this semantic

medieval clerical culture, has had a considerable

adaptability limited to theological hermeneutics.

impact on the practice of art history. The con-

For Chaucer, the same stone stretched its signify-

tinuing confidence in readings filtered through a

ing muscle from martyrdom (Prioress’s Tale) to

theological lens makes acts of interpretation that

lordship (House of Fame) via love (Troilus and

seek to avoid transitive referentiality (ruby means

Criseyde).31

blood) as challenging as tautological mutism

30



Even though The Mineral and the Visual

Allegorical meaning-making, promoted by

(ruby means ruby). By shifting emphasis from

prioritizes secular cultural productions, two bibli-

symbolism to literalism without foregoing mean-

cal twelve-stone sequences need to be mentioned

ing, the approach adopted here wishes to avoid

Introduction

9

predetermined significations in the manner of an

jeweled arts. When Zeus chained the civilizing god

iconology of materials. Instead of making sense

to the Caucasus for having taught humans how to

of the pervasive presence of precious stones in the

tame fire, he found ways to forge an iron ring from

medieval visual regime in a spiritualizing, moraliz-

the fetters. Once he had set it with a rock, it would

ing, or otherwise metaphorical fashion, I fore-

take only a short step to upgrade the materials and

ground their cultural workings. Programmatically

create jewels that, in Marbode’s words, dress the

consonant with the material turn in the humanities

human hand with the triple honor of precious met-

and object-oriented analyses, my methodological

als, expensive gems, and art.35

priorities are indebted not only to postmodern



theory. Nonallegorical, nonspiritual, and non-

Liber lapidum and its goodly progeny, implicitly

theological interpretations are routine for both

legitimized the task of inventorying things-of-

historians of medieval literature and historians of

nature—of paying attention to nature as it is and

science. Thus, in his immensely learned and influ-

as it behaves—with a religious goal in mind. To

ential History of Magic and Experimental Science,

avoid any misunderstanding, the “secular” of my

Lynn Thorndike observed apropos painted bestiar-

title should be understood as sitting in tension

ies that “in the main medieval men represented

with “clerical” (in the social domain) and with

animals in art because they were fond of animals,

“spiritual” (in acts of interpretation), not with

32

33

not because they were fond of allegories.” That is,

“religious” or “sacred.” It goes without saying that

in essence, what The Mineral and the Visual argues

the Christian belief system gave meaning to all

about stones.

facets of medieval life and thought, more or less



It turns out that the dominant strand of the

autonomous explorations of the natural world

medieval lapidary genre was also literal-minded.

not excluded. Nor is this trait particular to the

Take its most successful representative, Marbode

Middle Ages, since physics and metaphysics went

of Rennes’s Liber lapidum (Book of stones). The

hand in hand well into the nineteenth century.

Angevin churchman wrote it in the 1190s, when he

Practicing natural history amounted to confirming

was serving as acting head of Angers’s cathedral

God’s continuing, if vestigial, presence in creatures

school and shortly before his election to the episco-

of the most varied kind. Anselmus Boethius de

pal see of Rennes. Though authored by a promi-

Boodt (d. 1632) alluded to this mystical connection

nent ecclesiastic at a moment when the influence

when stressing that his patron Rudolf II collected

of the Church was at its peak, the poem forgoes

gemstones less to boost his social profile than to

sermonizing to celebrate stones’ lovely appearance

experience the “grandeur and infinite power of

and amazing powers instead. Contemporaries

God.”36 The renowned Renaissance mineralogist

admired Marbode’s classicizing Latin, and the

may have been inspired by Pliny, who enthused

Liber lapidum did not disappoint in this regard. In

in the Natural History that, in a single gemma,

addition to 732 polished hexameters, it offered its

“Nature’s grandeur is gathered together within the

literate readers the pleasure of recurrent ancient

narrowest limits.” And this compacting is so mas-

cultural references. It even ends on a grand Greek

terful that “no domain of hers evokes more wonder

myth involving Prometheus as the inventor of the

in the minds of many who set such store by the

34

10

Even nonallegorized lapidaries, such as the

the mineral and the visual

variety, the colors, the texture and the elegance of gems.” In Pliny’s imperially scaled panorama of all that Nature has on offer, the brilliant clumps—so painfully extracted from earth’s womb, so vehemently desired by men, and so rewarding to scrutinize—constitute a teleological fulfillment. Book 37 devoted to gems may be the Natural History’s last section, but without gemstones, the natural world would be incomplete. It would also lack a specific visual dimension, given that the contemplation of a single gemstone can lead “very many people” to feel immersed in “a supreme and perfect aesthetic experience of the wonders of Nature.”37 Replace Nature with God, and the appreciation for the mineral as a locus of visual ecstasy is the same for de Boodt.

Vincent of Beauvais (d. ca. 1264) provides a

medieval example of analogous feelings. Playing on the double meaning of gemma, at once bud and gem, the Dominican encyclopedist wondered: “And what to say about gems? Theirs is a domain crowned with flowers. What pleasant spectacle it offers. How delightful it is to sight and how it incites our passions. We see red roses, white lilies, purple violets, and see in them not only beauty but the origin of what is admirable since God in his wisdom has produced their forms from the dust of the earth.”38 His massive Speculum maius (Great mirror) will not figure much in the following pages because its first volume, devoted to natural history,

Figure 3 Third day of Creation, in Vincent of Beauvais, Miroir historial, ca. 1463. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS fr. 50, fol. 18r. Photo: BnF.

was rarely illustrated and, if so, only minimally. A miniature taken from the French translation of the third part, the Speculum historiale (Mirror of

that materializes as a patchwork of gleaming fields

history), however, captures the sense of cosmic

of gold, silver, bronze, and a now oxidized metal.

elation at the sight of mineral creations (fig. 3). The

Shimmering gem-flowers flourish in this mineralo-

exceptional image stands out from an otherwise

metallic ecosphere, strewn about the ground and

run-of-the-mill Genesis cycle. It shows, in front

tucked behind orderly ranks of rocks, shrubs, and

of empyrean alpine peaks, an expansive landscape

trees. Given the primordial context, we might

Introduction

11

expect inchoate mineral masses rather than a col-

imperially purple background, the monumental

lection of well-formed amethysts, emeralds, rubies,

miniature portrait of the Carolingian emperor

and sapphires, complemented by a few iridescent

Lothair I (d. 855) exudes jeweled authority (fig. 4).39

pearls and point-cut diamonds (painted in black

The mustachioed grandson of Charlemagne sits

in a then-current artistic convention). The gambit

upright on an honorific faldstool in the classic

of the Speculum image is to have us believe that

pose of majesty, though his legs are parted as if

human-made and god-created perfection coin-

ready for action.40 His hands clutch a long staff

cides. And that, as a result, the world has been

(baculum) and a sword, a set of power objects

mineralized ab aeterno.

complemented by a bulky crossbow clasp that energetically projects from his right shoulder. Even more extravagantly outsized is the crown, its two

Trajectories

lateral sapphires reiterating in a petrified idiom the ruler’s transfixing gaze. What is more, the

In combination with “lapidary knowledge,” I use

illuminator sprinkled the footrest, cushion, and

the anachronistic term “mineral” to push beyond

sword with multicolored stones and also crowded

precious stones’ existence as physical objects and

them on Lothair’s cloak, giving the impression

capture their broader cultural, social, and epis-

of a swarm of scintillating ectoparasites having

temological roles. The mineral so understood

alighted on the body of the rex Francorum. The

converged in a number of artistic genres. I have

private prayer book’s first viewers would have

retained three as main case studies: the jeweled

taken the sapphires, emeralds, garnets, and pearls

crown, the illustrated lapidary, and the illustrated

as indicators of social status, natural treasures, and

travel account. Each category enacted distinctive

objects of culture. They would have known that

permutations of the mineral and the visual, each

the blue-green-white triad derived from the late

reached beyond the sphere of artistic production

antique and Byzantine imperial material lexicon.

to orient social and cognitive practices, and each,

Meanwhile, the red stones anchored the subject’s

finally, was invented in the Middle Ages.

Frankish visual identity, since garnets counted as



mineral capital of the highest order among varied

Part 1 considers the cultural workings of pre-

cious stones in a single category of objects: crowns.

ethnic groups of the migration period.

The loss of secular jeweled art is so severe that the



number of surviving regalia is infinitesimal. I focus

by precious stones is that brilliant materiality

on three gem-encrusted crowns—of the Holy

produced more lasting effects than passing acts

Roman Empire, of the kingdom of Castile, and

of conspicuous consumption. Massing mineral

of the kingdom of Bohemia—that have escaped

and metallic substances on a sovereign’s body was

The implication of a regal body colonized

destruction to query the role of both objects and materials in the performance of kingship, the choreography of sovereign power, and the ideology of luminosity. An image is again helpful to elucidate this initial claim. Silhouetted against an

12

the mineral and the visual

Figure 4 Emperor Lothair enthroned, Lothair Psalter, 842–55. London, British Library, MS Add. 37768, fol. 4r. Photo © The British Library Board.

akin to injecting a dose of symbolic immortality

snow-white “twin virginal gems.”42 Many more

into otherwise corruptible flesh. One might want

examples could be adduced, though they would all

to call this inhabitation a becoming-mineral, in

prove that becoming-mineral was neither a royal

reference to the becoming-animal theorized by

prerogative nor a gender-specific privilege. High

Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari in A Thousand

rank, regardless of sexual identity, coincided with

Plateaus. As they saw it, the hyphenation defines a

a light-emitting appearance. The German language

relational equation, one equidistant from substan-

explicitly recognizes both this gender-neutral and

tive physical metamorphoses and disembodied

class-specific commingling of human and mineral,

poetic analogies. “A becoming is not a correspon-

for it links Edelmann and Edelfrau to Edelstein,

dence between relations,” they wrote, adding that

scoring preciousness into the very definition of

it is not “a resemblance, an imitation, or, at the

noblemen and noblewomen.

limit, an identification” either. The Lothair image



expresses a hybridization between mineral and

ing, and do so with haptic force, mantles, tunics,

41

14

To make visible that distinctive mode of be-

human that is as dynamic and insightful as the

sleeves, hoses, shoes, necklaces, brooches, rings,

French philosophers’ recognition of fluid boundar-

belts, swords, hilts, helmets, and a host of other

ies between human and nonhuman animals. Of

objects owned by the medieval nobility were

course, no one in the Middle Ages believed their

encrusted with pearls and gems. Gaston Bachelard,

monarchs to have turned literally into precious

who has written some beautiful pages about the

stones. Yet they could countenance the idea that

poetics of mineral reveries, nicely calls these con-

gems’ salient properties—hardness, colorful lumi-

spicuous supplements “droplets of concentrated

nosity, rarity—seeped into the fabric of kingship.

ostentation.” He also points out how they support



a near-universal, class-specific “will to shine.”43

Medieval writers need not wait for postmod-

ern discourse to conceive of humans as perme-

Georg Simmel’s discussion of the guiding role of

ated by geological characteristics and, in the

jewels, dress, tattoos, and other Schmuck offers

same breath, believe in stones’ animate leanings.

another excellent model to think about brilliant

They could take inspiration from the Song of

“accessories” in terms of social acts of commu-

Songs’ assured mineral imagination in depicting

nication. Adornment, the German fin de siècle

a Bridegroom with a belly “as of ivory, set with

sociologist thought, “intensifies or enlarges the im-

sapphires,” hands “turned and as of gold, full of

pression of the personality.” That is why its choice

hyacinths,” and legs like “pillars of marble, that are

materials “have always been shining metals and

set upon bases of gold” (5:14–15). To this glisten-

precious stones,” for those are capable of produc-

ing biblical eroticism, the theoretician of poetry

ing something akin to a perceptual “radiation.”44

Geoffrey of Vinsauf (fl. 1200) responded in a

Astute, if counterintuitive, was Simmel’s conclu-

purely secular manner by anatomizing the ideal

sion that gems’ very superfluousness and imper-

female body into mineral clusters: eyes radiant

sonal abstraction is the reason for their functional

like emeralds, a chin “smoother than polished

nimbleness, conceptual malleability, and remark-

marble,” a neck like a “precious column of milk-

able cross-cultural success. Indetermination

white beauty,” and a “crystal throat” placed above

detaches stones from particular historical contexts

the mineral and the visual

and preassigned meanings without canceling

was aimed as much at replenishing the royal cof-

their ideological charge. Acting like a form of soft

fers as imposing visual restraint.45

power, they are meant to dazzle and, therefore, se-



duce rather than compel subjects into a subaltern

of high-grade gems, royal crowns advanced over

position.

the centuries into the august realm of quasi-sacred



Boasting among the highest concentrations

To properly appreciate the optical impact of

thinghood. Several legal documents indicate that

bodies lit up by gems and other lucent materials,

their appropriation was considered an attempt to

it is good to remember that for the overwhelm-

usurp royal authority in its visible manifestation. As

ing majority of people in the Middle Ages, the

a crime of lèse-majesté, it deserved extreme retribu-

spectacle of everyday life came in unaccented

tion: capital punishment. Shockingly unreasonable

tones, muted colors, and washed-out pigments.

as such a response might seem, it touches on the

No peasant garment shone, nor did gold and silver

same taboos that surround the handling of the

embroideries enliven the sartorial appearance

American flag, proving that thing-signs of authority

of urban artisans and tradespeople. Even mod-

maintain essential bonds with what they repre-

est pieces of jewelry, such as rings wrought from

sent.46 Without crowns, there was no enactment of

lead or copper and set with locally sourced stones,

kingship; without gold and precious stones, there

were beyond the reach of most buyers. It is only

were no crowns. The constitutive function of ma-

with the appreciable expansion of the European

terials explains why royal crowns, and coronation

economy during the second half of the twelfth cen-

crowns especially, had recourse to the same two

tury that a consumer culture, properly speaking,

substances—gold and precious stones—irrespective

started to emerge. From that point onward, urban

of changing designs and styles. Compared to the

shops were better stocked with wares that catered

former, which has been dissected from multiple in-

to a more socially diverse clientele, one able—and

terdisciplinary perspectives, the latter have suffered

eager—to afford a measure of glitz. Sumptuary

from scholarly neglect.47 In particular, what has

laws were quickly put in place to counteract the

not received adequate attention is the prominent

rise in sartorial behavior that muddied the seman-

jewel affixed on the front of many medieval crowns.

tic clarity of a divinely ordered body politic. Social

Distilling the essence of royal power, this meta-

climbers who dared to trespass visual hierarchies

phoric lodestone can be viewed as a compelling

by flaunting expensive furs, silks and damasks

exemplification of a nonnarrative object charged

embroidered with metallic threads, vivid colors,

with a political message.

pearly accents, and gem-rich accessories could



expect fines and confiscations. Among the first

to representations and add knowing to owning.

of such regulations, the one passed in 1294 under

Throughout the Middle Ages, lapidary knowl-

King Philip IV the Fair of France barred wealthy

edge was presented as a pursuit worthy of royal

burghers from owning high-end furs, adornments

attention. It promised discursive ownership and,

in gold, gilded and silver crowns, and precious

consequently, cognitive mastery over a splendid

stones. It even mandated that the owners turn in

collection of lithic virtutes. Rather than a general

those treasured possessions, although that clause

survey of stones’ multipronged actions, particular

In part 2, we change perspective from objects

Introduction

15

16

attention will be given to those that intersect

accounts to pursue mineral rarities to their points

with optical realities and visual experiences. The

of origin. Once again Simmel provides excellent

boldly abstract image of gemstones in a Catalonian

conceptual signposting to grasp the mechanisms

manuscript of around 1400, featured on the cover

whereby commercial value is accrued. In the

of this book, provides the springboard for as-

course of dissecting the social workings of money,

sessing lapidaries’ attentiveness to color. From

he reaches the conclusion that the “difficulty of ac-

visually based taxonomies, we move to consider

quisition” attendant to distant imports amounts to

virtues related to the sense of sight, encompass-

the “unique constitutive element of value.” Scarcity,

ing vision-enhancing mineral aids as much as

which we tend to prioritize, is in his shrewd diag-

reality-distorting perceptions. Less immediately

nosis “only the external manifestation, its objec-

accessible is the theme addressed in chapter 6: the

tification in the form of quantity.”48 How pictorial

art of sigils. Corresponding to what we identify as

renditions fleshed out textual accounts and lent

intaglios and cameos as well as to naturally figura-

credibility to the difficulty of acquisition is this

tive stones—veined marbles, moss agates, fossil

section’s main issue, in part because those same

impressions, and the like—sigils encompassed the

representational strategies nurtured the mystique

entire typology of gems bearing representations.

about Orient rubies, sapphires, diamonds, and

While much admired, “stones signed with figures”

pearls.49 Unfortunately, the Letter of Prester John,

(as one author christened them) also confronted

drenched in stony fetishism, failed to capture the

medieval viewers with an intractable enigma. How

imagination of visual artists. The opposite holds

could one tell if the extra dose of virtus carried by

for Polo’s quickly translated Devisement du monde

those mysterious glyphs had been instilled through

(to use the original title of his Travels). Widely

legitimate channels and not incised by some

read, the “Description of the World” enjoyed sev-

artistically talented demonic agent? Such worries,

eral visual transcriptions. Spectacularly ambitious

strange to us, filtered into scholastic debates about

is a cycle of illustrations found in a book aptly

licit and illicit practices, of which those concern-

titled Livre des merveilles (Paris, Bibliothèque na-

ing image magic and astral magic are of particular

tionale de France, MS fr. 2810). Produced in early

relevance. Given the medieval reticence to theorize

fifteenth-century Paris, the hefty volume contains

image making beyond technical considerations,

a selection of travel narratives and related works

the visual focus of those debates should be under-

dealing with the Matter of the East. It unveiled for

scored. We shall see how they led Albert the Great

the book’s original users a world magnificently

to elaborate a sophisticated etiological model in

endowed with natural and human-made marvels,

which images on stones were coupled to images in

in both positive and negative incarnations. Above

the sky via human artistry.

all, it gave them unprecedented access to a visual



Part 3 looks at travel literature, trade, and the

survey of different regions, people, mores, fauna,

medieval geographic imagination to delve deeper

and natural resources. Indeed, at 265 miniatures,

into the economics of mineral preciousness. After

the pictorial program of fr. 2810, which provides

visiting the jeweled realm of Prester John, we will

the iconographic backbone of part 3, was itself a

pick up Marco Polo’s travel memoirs and related

feat worthy of admiration. Conveniently for my

the mineral and the visual

Figure 5 Jean de Berry inspecting gems, in Bartholomaeus Anglicus, Livre des propriétés des choses, trans. Jean Corbechon, 1410–15. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS fr. 9141, fol. 235v. Photo: BnF.

collector of the entire Middle Ages. The duke’s intentional hoarding habits involved, in addition to first-rate manuscripts, paintings, and sculptures, vast quantities of jeweled art and unmounted stones. A miniature from a copy of the French

purpose, several of those images deal with the

translation of Bartholomaeus Anglicus’s encyclo-

sourcing and circulation of precious stones, and

pedia De proprietatibus rerum (On the properties

quite a few activate the trope of the difficulty of

of things) flatters him as a connoisseur of mineral

acquisition to reframe natural objects into desir-

matters (fig. 5).50 Two kneeling merchants are

able commodities.

tempting the seated, warmly dressed princely



The first owner of the Livre des merveilles was

Jean de Berry, easily the best-known individual

client into buying their fine wares. Their studied deference, mandated by courtly etiquette, should

Introduction

17

not hide the fact that the mercantile elite was

London. In turn, increased access fostered both

superbly aware of its worth as the chief purveyor

competitive gem collecting habits among global

of costly commodities, including the things that

elites and an efflorescence of jeweled arts, only

satisfied the aristocratic cravings for trappings

an infinitesimal fraction of which has survived.

than made them shine. Unfortunately, the profile

Subscribing to the spirit of connected histories,

of long-distance traders specializing in mineral

The Mineral and the Visual recognizes Europe’s

assets remains hard to discern, as economic histo-

literal and metaphoric enrichment from contin-

rians have scanted this professional group before

ued imports of goods (gems) and ideas (lapidary

the sixteenth century. Commercial entrepreneurs

knowledge) from Byzantium, the Islamic world,

were especially busy during the Gothic era, when

Persia, India, and China.52 A broad geographic

the pace of luxury imports from the East acceler-

scope is appropriate when examining the circula-

ated thanks to a favorable conjunction of politi-

tion of people, knowledge, and things, and so is a

cal, social, and demographic circumstances. The

temporal framework of the longue durée. Instead

thirteenth-century Commercial Revolution, as

of conventional chronological divisions, we see

historians have dubbed it, more or less coincided

continuities between late antique lapidary knowl-

with the pax Mongolica. Even if somewhat of a

edge and its late medieval iterations or between

misnomer because interethnic conflicts made

the Romanesque and the Gothic conceptions of

the century far from peaceful, this period, last-

jeweled arts. Taken from across the Middle Ages,

ing from the 1240s to the 1360s, unified half of the

the case studies upon which the arguments of this

northern hemisphere under Mongol hegemony.

book rest have been retained less for the way they

It networked the world more intensely than ever,

exemplify specific historical circumstances than

making gems imported from Afghanistan, the

for their creative amalgamation of the mineral and

Persian Gulf, India, and Sri Lanka more abun-

the visual.

51

dantly available to buyers in Venice, Paris, and

18

the mineral and the visual

Pa r t   1

Jeweled Crowns, Mineralized Kingship

O

bjects adorned with precious stones

impressed upon viewers visions of Christ, the

enjoyed a position of undisputed privi-

Virgin, angels, and saints wearing crowns and

lege in the medieval visual economy. In

clothes encrusted with blazing stones. Taken to-

the domain of religious art, splendid reliquaries

gether, these representations drove home a simple,

housed saintly remains, while artfully wrought

albeit lasting, point: more than accessories or sta-

liturgical vessels served to enact sacred rites. In

tus symbols, more even than emblematic strands

the realm of secular art, things jeweled supported

woven into haloes of magnificence, accoutrements

practices integral to social life. Although none was

soaked in radiancy are consubstantial with those

more gem-heavy than royal coronations, mineral

who rule over the celestial and the earthly spheres.

materiality, more broadly, offered medieval elites a



habitual measure of augmented radiance. Crafted

tactility provided the palpable texture of privilege

of shiny metals and festooned with blazing cabo-

is the premise of this first section. It develops

chons, crowns, circlets, coronals, swords, helmets,

that argument by focusing on a particular type

shields, spurs, clasps, shoes, belts, chaplets, coifs,

of object worn by a specific class of people: royal

brooches, and rings complemented shimmering

crowns. As a medium of mineralization—of light

textiles to endow kings and queens, princes and

crystallized—crowns did for kings what reliquar-

barons, knights and ladies with a class-specific

ies did for saints: they incarnated royal and holy

optical vibrancy. Georges Duby, echoing Simmel’s

figures, respectively.2 Take away the dazzling skin,

suggestion of a magnifying effect, summarizes the

and relics and kings revert to what they were in

use of gold and silver in the early Middle Ages in

the first place—ordinary bones and common flesh.

terms of a “halo of magnificence” drawn around

Medieval coronations were object-oriented spec-

“the gods, and the persons of kings, overlords and

tacles through and through. Mantles, tunics, arm-

the rich, as well as of the dead.”1 It mattered to

bands, shoes, scepters, rings, orbs, swords, spurs,

the French historian to take the hoarding habits

and crowns, all emblazoned with rubies, sapphires,

of Germanic chieftains seriously. He recognized

emeralds, pearls, and other highly valued Orient

in them strategies of self-representation designed

stones, would at once magnify and mineralize the

to draw a sharp contrast between those who

royal persona at the very moment of its creation.

controlled things precious and those who had

And just as gold and precious stones were consti-

none. Duby’s diagnostic easily applies to other

tutive of crowns, so were crowns constitutive of

periods, considering that the feudal social habitus

kings and queens ever since Emperor Constantine

continued to be predicated on legible—that is,

the Great (d. 337 CE) had adopted the jeweled

visible—distinctions. Furthermore, the politics

diadem as a badge of sovereign power.3

of preciousness concerned things both religious



and secular, and it dictated, as Duby’s statement

Schatzkammer of the Kunsthistorisches Museum in

underscores, the look of worldly and otherworldly

Vienna (fig. 6). The object is a survivor, one of the

beings alike. Many are the early Christian apses,

few medieval royal crowns to have weathered the

Romanesque tympana, Gothic stained-glass

vagaries of taste and avoided dismemberment to

windows, and late medieval panel paintings that

generate cash. Even a distracted glance suffices to

That brilliant materiality and scintillating

Consider the famous imperial crown in the

conjure up the reverential frisson such a com-

anonymous artisans. If those marks strike us as

manding regalia was meant to elicit. In a perceptual

disturbing intrusions, it is because the featureless

regime built around motion-rich experiences,

surfaces of the industrial age have lowered our

crowns would not meet the gaze in static frozen-

tolerance for rough-looking textures. The cor-

ness from inside a protective glass vitrine or from

rugated feel and emphatic material cadences of

a photographic reproduction with a fixed point of

premodern metalsmithing are, by contrast, laced

view. They were objects on the move, worn by bod-

with the memory of human gestures reiterated

ies in motion. They also had significant weight: in

many times over: bruting, abrading, polishing,

the case of the present example, the weight of seven

stamping, chiseling, hammering, soldering, each

and a half pounds of metal and mineral lowered on

a small step in the exacting process of getting a

a generally teenage head, the weight of divine grace

crown, ring, reliquary, or chalice just right. Eugène

soaked up while the object was on the altar, and the

Viollet-le-Duc (d. 1879), the great lover of me-

no less momentous weight of great expectations

dieval art and visionary pioneer of the historic

placed on every king-in-the-making. Candlelight

preservation movement, contrasted the tactility of

would amplify the crown’s haptic feel as the corona-

outmoded artisanal creations with the regular but

tion pageantry refracted the monarch’s numinous

frigid look of metalwork churned out by machines.

image a hundredfold in the lay and ecclesiastic

Suppose those physical traces are evidence of hon-

grandees that attended such events. Acting simul-

est craftsmanship? This is what he tells readers in

taneously as participants, onlookers, and witnesses,

a seventy-page-long entry on medieval goldsmith-

those “precious” men and women, decked out in

ing in his still-indispensable Dictionnaire raisonné

reflective finery, served as a gleaming foil against

du mobilier français, published in six volumes

which the royal majestas could come into sharper,

between 1858 and 1875.4 And to reinforce the point,

more refulgent relief.

he added colorful chromolithographs and precise



line drawings of close-up views (fig. 7). Nostalgic

We will come back to the Vienna crown and,

in particular, to its legendary main gem. A few

romanticism for a past untainted by alienating la-

words about its facture are useful to keep present

bor conditions and innocent of invasive technolo-

when attending to its political workings later on.

gies certainly streaked Viollet-le-Duc’s vision. But

Much like other medieval metalwork, the crown,

his intuition that technical achievement and what

heaving with mineral and metal, is technically

he incisively named the “intelligence of the object”

intricate and visually complex. Its makers ex-

were in an inverse relationship has lost none of

pertly soldered translucency to opacity, alternat-

its provocative edge. Basically, he entertained the

ing smooth and knobby parts. They felt no need

notion that mechanical manufacturing processes

to conceal the traces of their engagement with thingness and instead took pride in exhibiting how one wrestles with materials’ demands in the long process that formats raw matter into artistic media. Visible nail heads, prongs, and joints read as so many signatures left by highly trained, now mostly

22

the mineral and the visual

Figure 6 Crown of the Holy Roman Empire, late tenth to twelfth century. Gold, enamels, pearls, precious stones, diam. 28.6 cm. Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Schatzkammer, Inv. SK XIII.I. Photo: KHM-Museumsverband.

value and hallowed relics, swift steeds and spices hitherto unknown in England, a sizable collection of gem-set items amounted to “gifts of truly munificent scale.” None appeared more valuable than “a precious crown of solid gold” adorned with gems of inestimable value. What interests me is that the English chronicler makes them the locus of a distinctive visual experience. Seemingly “flashing darts of light,” the stones’ brilliance was such that the “more anyone strove to strain his eyes, the more he was dazzled (reverberatus) and obliged to give up.”5 A second, nearly contemporaneous event takes us into the chamber of bedridden Conrad I (d. 918/19). Realizing that “he soon would pass from the corruptible to the incorruptible,” the childless Frankish monarch summoned subjects and demanded objects to settle his succession. As Figure 7 Illustration for Orfèvrerie, in Eugène Viollet-le-Duc, Dictionnaire raisonné du mobilier français (Paris: Morel et Cie, 1871), 2:176.

manifestations of royal authority, insignia authenticated and even actuated political power. Their carefully calculated transmission, though far from always observed, was a gesture fundamental to the institution of medieval kingship and, as such, one

24

spew out unintelligent things, however formally

often recorded in written sources. More unusual

polished, whereas objects of the “barbarian” past

in the scene reported by Liudprand of Cremona

manage to combine manual dexterity, visual acu-

is the careful distinction Conrad apparently

men, and conceptual sophistication.

drew between coronets of plain gold “with which



almost any kind of prince shines” and the crown

Two anecdotes culled from medieval sources

neatly anticipate the nineteenth-century critic’s

he wanted for his heir: one “burdened” (gravata)

idea of an intelligence of the object, though

with the most precious gems.6 A dazzle so intense

their gist is cultural rather than technical. The

that it blinds and a heaviness so substantial that it

first occurs in William of Malmesbury’s Gesta

burdens are excellent cues for taking the pulse of

regum Anglorum. Redacted in the 1120s or 1130s,

mineral agency in the arena of visual politics.

the “Deeds of the Kings of the English” drew on



existing source material, including a list of rarities

studies, a few general words about the nature of

that the Frankish ruler Hugh the Great (d. 956)

medieval coronations are in order. The accession of

was recorded to have sent across the Channel to

Emperor Lothair (see fig. 4) to the imperial title on

woo Eadhild, half-sister of King Æthelstan (the

Easter Day 823 at St. Peter’s in Rome was the first

“precious rock”). Apart from artifacts of historical

such king-making event that merged anointment

the mineral and the visual

Before proceeding to discuss specific case

and crowning into a coherent, ritualized sequence



of words, gestures, and objects. Crowned by the

tion rituals worth remembering. Since multiple

grace of God (rex Dei gratia), the Carolingian

titles were the norm, kings went through several

ruler, and every monarch after him, emerged

accessions, each requiring a different suite of rega-

from the ceremony changed into “another man” (1

lia. The Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV, whose

Kings 10:6), a man invested with the divine right

gem-alert patronage will be the focus of chapter 3,

to rule. Poised between immortality (his function)

was crowned as many as six times, including as

and mortality (his flesh), he also was a persona

King of Bohemia in 1347, as King of the Romans

mixta, a twinned being. In Ernst Kantorowicz’s

at Bonn in 1341 and again at Aachen in 1349, and,

seminal analysis, this peculiar hybridity consti-

finally, as Holy Roman Emperor at St. Peter’s in

tuted the “king’s two bodies,” one transient and

1355. Nor did formal coronations offer the only

personal, the other everlasting and impersonal,

opportunity for monarchs to display themselves

one wearing a corona visibilis, the other exalted

as their realm’s light-emitting fulcrum.9 Using

with an equally luminous corona invisibilis.7 By

different insignia never was a problem, because

Lothair’s time, the civic and military investitures

it was not a “set of specific objects” that mattered

of late antiquity had been fully clericalized and

but rather a “set of objects of a specific kind.” That

“liturgified.” Churchmen were now in charge of

was Jürgen Petersohn’s important conclusion in

king- and queen-making rites scheduled to coin-

a study published in 1993 in which he also dem-

cide with major religious holidays. Spatially, the

onstrated that, contrary to common opinion, the

action migrated from street and field into precincts

Vienna crown never was the crown of the Holy

under ecclesiastical control. Increasingly elaborate

Roman Empire, at least not until around 1200.

churches in Rome, Aachen, Reims, Westminster,

If anything, it should more accurately be labeled

Prague, and a few other cities developed into loca

“crown of the King of the Romans,” for that was

sancta of medieval kingship. Objects underwent

the title given to a German monarch when he was

a similar conversion. Gem-studded regalia and

crowned on Charlemagne’s throne in Aachen but

crowns, in particular, started to be displayed on

before he acceded to the imperial dignity con-

the altar, where they were blessed and sprinkled

ferred at St. Peter’s in Rome. And not every rex

with holy water by pope or bishop. By the twelfth

Romanorum ended up as imperator Romanorum,

century, if not before, coronation objects were

whether for personal reasons or owing to political

assimilated into the curatorial orbit of religious

circumstances. Moreover, the Vienna crown can be

institutions that represented emergent supraterri-

securely documented for only four out of twenty-

torial identities, foremost the royal abbeys of Saint-

one imperial coronations between 1198 and 1486,

Denis and Westminster (the Tower of London

and in ten cases, it is certain that another crown

would assume that role in the fourteenth century).

was used.10

Regalia, in other words, came to be regarded as



sacramental objects—“things almost sacred” (res

thedral of Speyer, an imperial crown commands

quasi sacrae) in the medieval phrasing—on a par

attention alongside other insignia and heraldic

with reliquaries and liturgical vessels.

signs (fig. 8). Of a Habsburg beauty, with hollow

8

There is one other aspect of medieval corona-

On a funerary effigy in the crypt of the ca-

Jeweled Crowns, Mineralized Kingship

25

Originally stained in vivid colors, the prominent grayish swellings would have appeared as a fair imitation of the gemmed décor. Unmissable is the central stone, its bulging mass underscored by a beaded collet. Not all medieval crowns boasted such a prominent jewel, but many did. To occupy that place, the stone had to be of more-thanaverage size, high quality, distinguished provenance, or be otherwise regally coded. In German regalia studies, it is called a Leitstein, which literally translates to “leading stone” and metaphorically to “lodestone.” Adapting the term mestres peres found in a 1324 inventory of Edward II’s possession, I will use “master stone” as its most evocative paraphrase.11 A secular analog to the one mounted at the meeting of the arms of jeweled crosses in allusion to Christ as “chief corner stone, elect, precious” (1 Peter 2:6), this singular jewel crystallized the very concept of royal authority. As such, it stood as proof of the consubstantiality of sovereign body and mineral materiality—that is, of an essential bond between king, crown, and precious stones. Figure 8 Epitaph of Rudolf I of Habsburg, detail of crowned head, 1291. Speyer, Cathedral. Photo: Erich Lessing / Art Resource, New York.

cheeks, aquiline nose, and an expression of perennial Weltschmerz, Rudolf I (d. 1291) was a king who never made it to the final round of a formal imperial consecration in Rome. For the Aachen coronation in 1273, he may well have worn the realworld equivalent of the stony crown that weighs on his head in perpetuity. Noticeably different from the Ottonian counterpart in Vienna, this sculpted replica has a Gothic form and linear composition.

26

the mineral and the visual

T

he Vienna crown provides an excellent starting point for querying how medieval visual and discursive practices enlisted

prestigious natural substances to create, maintain, and transmit political legitimacy (see fig. 6). Only a few royal crowns survive, and this is the one that has attracted the most substantial body of scholarly literature, at least in Germany, where the “imperial” crown functions as a revered token

Chapter 1

The Politics of Precious Stones

of national identity. Even more exceptional is the robust record of primary sources that shed light on medieval reactions toward the same object. The degrees to which a single gemstone could galvanize the mineral imagination, catalyze narratives, and stimulate political exegesis are some of the themes pursued within the context of those writings.

The Crown

Eight arched plates of unequal height form the armature of the Vienna crown.1 Medieval numerological allegory interpreted that number in terms of the Resurrection (7+1). By tropological extension, it also stood for everlasting beatitude, a meaning appropriate for an object worn by a mortal body grafted onto the immortal office of kingship.2 Like the articulated format, the technique of sunk enamel (Senkschmelz), used on the four side plates that bear figurative representations, was of Byzantine derivation. The formal and material message proves that a German rex Romanorum was in a position to metabolize Byzantine visual strategies, thereby underscoring that he was as much the rightful heir to Roman imperial power as an Eastern basileus. But who was the ruler who made that pointed claim? Given the fascination this object has exerted on German national consciousness,

it is surprising how questions of dating and

King David was especially resonant because medi-

patronage remain unresolved and often a matter

eval royal consecrations were ultimately modeled

of heated debates. Many specialists favor a time

after his. Psalm 20:4, endlessly glossed in medieval

around 962 when Otto I was crowned emperor, an

political theory, affirms that God “set on his head a

event for which an “admirable” new ornatus was

crown of precious stones” (note that it is not “with”

commissioned. Others push the date up to the

but “of ” precious stones). First tested in the cruci-

two later Ottos; others yet, to rulers of the Salian

ble of late antique political theory and perfected in

and Staufen dynasties, even as far as the thirteenth

the Byzantine laboratory of empire, the conception

century. “Conrad, by the Grace of God, Emperor

of sovereignty sanctioned by divine presence was

and Augustus of the Romans” reads the pearly text

fleshed out over the centuries in Western medieval

wedged into the single arch—the signature design

liturgical, devotional, and political literature. In

element of an imperial crown—that connects the

the realm of visual communication, the presump-

brow to the neck plate. Traditionally taken to refer

tion of a transcendent origin of royal power gave

to Conrad II (d. 1039), it could have been added

birth to a group of audacious images in which a

to an existing crown when he, or perhaps another

cloud-borne Hand of God or a standing Christ

Conrad, used it for his coronation in Aachen. The

performs the investiture directly, without priestly

small but triumphant jeweled cross is thought to

mediation.6 The crown in the Schatzkammer offers

3

4

have been added at the same time. A fine example

a three-dimensional translation of the same con-

of how the medium can be the message, the cross’s

stellation of legitimizing ideas.

front, awash with precious stones, speaks of reful-



gent potency. Meanwhile, the nielloed Crucifixion

to the crown’s finely tuned political messaging?

on the crux gemmata’s reverse would remind the

Does it matter that in half of the eight plates, the

crown’s wearers of salvific humility as a vital royal

gems play the lead part rather than the support-

virtue. As Christ’s representatives on earth, kings

ing role of a framing device (around the enamels)?

too must endure suffering if their memory is to

Fitted densely onto the golden background, they

perdure.

alternate between larger specimens and smaller



filler stones, between shimmering cabochons

The four figurative enameled plates show

Christ in Majesty flanked by two angels, Isaiah

and glossy pearls. When added to the horror

speaking to King Hezekiah, and the single figures

vacui composition, the bluntly tactile feel of these

of David and Solomon. Each character holds a

gemmed plates singles them out for attention.

billowing scroll inscribed with a brief but politi-

From a purely technical point of view, the mount-

cally trenchant message. Overall, the scriptural

ings are a tour de force of material experimenta-

excerpts affirm that the monarch is rex et sacerdos,

tion and a tribute to the high standards achieved

constructing a vision of kingship that seamlessly

by the art of medieval metalworking (fig. 9). The

blends secular and sacred functions. In sum, as

team of goldsmiths, taking full advantage of gold’s

heir to exemplary biblical kings and a representa-

ductility, created settings out of double-stacked

tive of Christ on earth, the rex Romanorum must

beaded wires conjoined by miniaturized tubes.

govern with wisdom and justice. The reference to

Three-pronged claws reach out from these delicate

5

28

But what, if anything, is the lithic contribution

Jeweled Crowns, Mineralized Kingship

cradles to secure the large and heavy stones.

chrysolitus are some of the items that are missing.

Polished to a high sheen, medieval cabochons tend

By the same token, the prevalence of sapphires

to condense light instead of dispersing it toward

(and the variant amethyst), emeralds, and pearls

the outside, the way faceting does. Further exem-

emphasizes the imperial theme. Like the sunk

plifying the intelligence of the object (as Viollet-le-

enamel technique and the quincunx pattern (four

Duc would have it), holes gouged into the crown’s

pearls framing a colored stone), the blue-green-

metallic base let light pulsate through the gems

white color scheme looked back to the late antique

(fig. 10). Candlelight would have magnified this

ornamental lexicon and, more immediately, to the

endogenous sense of animation—of rounded min-

trappings of much-emulated Byzantine rulers.8

eral bodies floating in midair—and reinforced the



quasi-mystical perception of a light-filled object

tended to make an overt allusion to the Heavenly

and light-dispensing subject.

Jerusalem, they could have come up with an insig-



nia like the one with which William the Conqueror

Whoever the crown’s original owner was, he

Had the creators of the Vienna crown in-

must have had at his disposal considerable mineral

(d. 1087) was crowned on Christmas Day 1066, a

riches. Until the later Middle Ages, documentation

few months after the successful Norman inva-

is generally lacking to indicate whether a patron

sion of England.9 The object exists today only as a

acquired the gems, inherited them as heirlooms,

verbal artifact. The presumed author of the Song

recycled them by dismantling existing objects,

of the Battle of Hastings, Guy, bishop of Amiens,

or used a combination thereof. Elusive as the

recruited light magic to proclaim the Conqueror’s

acquisition scenario is bound to remain in the case

symbolic command over geopolitical coordinates

of the Vienna crown, the gemstones were clearly

and control over status-affirming substances. His

chosen with care. It is not accidental that twelve

crown’s territorial compass reaches from Greece

(3 × 4) large ones grace the breast- and neckplate,

(meaning Byzantium), whence its creator hails,

because that number carried rich layers of theo-

to Arabia, which supplies gold, and to the Nile,

logical and spiritual associations. More than the

provider of gems. It then expands skyward to co-

twelve tribes of Israel and the twelve Apostles, that

opt the twelve stones of the Heavenly Jerusalem.10

number alluded to the High Priest’s breastplate

But instead of approaching those gems as reposi-

and Heavenly Jerusalem, in any case intertwining

tories of exalted politico-spiritual allegories, the

the crown’s wearers with the biblical past and the

author lingers on their aptitude for fashioning

eschatological future. More convoluted numeri-

the royal persona into a cosmically coruscating

cal speculations based on multiples of twelve that

apparition: “Just as, with clouds dispersed, the sky

some modern interpreters have proposed, on the

is aglow, studded with brilliant stars, so the golden

7

other hand, feel strained. They fall especially short

crown, picked out with sparkling gems, glitters

by bracketing out the fact that there is no typologi-

on every side with dazzling rays.”11 There could

cal overlap between the twenty-four main stones

be no better illustration of Simmel’s contention

and the sixteen specimens mentioned between

that the language of hyperluminosity undergirds

Exodus 28:17–20 and Apocalypse 21:19–20. Black

the ideology of sovereignty. Foreshadowing the

onyx, veined chalcedony, and golden-yellow

insights of the modern sociologist, Guy of Amiens

The Politics of Precious Stones

29

plants his king “at the center of a circle of radia-

up for safekeeping in Nuremberg.14 Very apparent

tion in which every close-by person, every seeing

in his delicate rendering is the mismatch between

eye, is caught.”12 Caught is not the same as duped,

the heart-shaped stone and the ovoid setting, now

and the razzle-dazzle of Norman kingship left one

even more noticeable because an ungainly wire

observer unimpressed. The fact that he was a jester

had to be added to prevent the stone from falling

does not in the least undermine the eloquence of

off (see fig. 9).

his reaction, the way it channeled raw feelings of



hostility toward the foreign invader. After setting

leading gem as the Orphan (orphanus or Waise), a

eyes on the new master, all “resplendent in gold

stone so peerless that it waives any mineralogical

and jewels,” the professional debunker of theatrical

parentage. Combined with its prominent position,

ostentation is recorded to have shouted in mock

that singularity explains why it entered the written

acclamation, “Behold, I see God! Behold, I see

record and why it is the most profiled gemstone

God.” For all its comedic effect, the scene reveals

of the entire medieval period. Walther von der

something profound about status-creating materi-

Vogelweide (d. 1229) is one of the first to men-

ality and the productive confluence of the mineral

tion it and, more importantly, to mythologize it.

and the visual to bolster assertions of legitimacy,

The gifted German lyricist wrote during turbulent

even, and perhaps especially, in a colonial context.

times, when the Holy Roman Empire was thrown

13

Contemporaries hailed the crown’s original

into a bitter succession struggle after Henry VI’s untimely death in 1197. One faction coalesced The Orphan Stone and Inanimate Meaning-Making

around the Welf Otto IV of Brunswick (d. 1218), whereas the other rallied behind the Hohenstaufen

The Leitstein on the opulent front plate of the

Philip of Swabia (d. 1208). The antagonism of the

Vienna crown went missing in the middle of the

two would-be emperors came to a head when both

fourteenth century and was replaced by the sap-

managed to be crowned in front of their support-

phire mounted at the center of the top row. A wa-

ers a few months apart in 1198. Otto’s ceremony

tercolor by Albrecht Dürer confirms that the ersatz

was performed in the right city (Aachen) and by

stone was already in place by the early sixteenth

the coronator sanctioned by tradition (since 1028,

century (fig. 11). The artist had been commissioned

the archbishop of Cologne). As a result, Philip was

to portray the crown, then firmly associated with

crowned by the wrong hands in the wrong place

Charlemagne, when the imperial insignia ended

(Mainz). But he was able to play another trump card: the possession of the imperial treasure, com-

Figure 9 Crown of the Holy Roman Empire, top of front plate, late tenth to twelfth century. Gold, pearls, precious stones. Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Schatzkammer, Inv. SK XIII.I. Photo: KHM-Museumsverband. Figure 10 Crown of the Holy Roman Empire, inside view, late tenth to twelfth century. Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Schatzkammer, Inv. SK XIII.I. Photo: KHM-Museumsverband.

plete with a suite of objects that were then in the process of becoming the imperial regalia.15 Once the Staufen managed to tip the balance of power in his favor, he proceeded to make up for the deficit in legitimacy-creating sites and objects by asking to be anointed and crowned a second time, this time on Charlemagne’s throne at Aachen. In

The Politics of Precious Stones

31

Figure 11 Albrecht Dürer, The Crown of the Holy Roman Empire, 1510/17. Watercolor, 23.7 × 28.7 cm. Nuremberg, Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Inv. Hz. 2574. Photo: bpk Bildagentur / Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nuremberg / Georg Janssen / Art Resource, New York.

in his following not evidence of his might? Was he not in control of vast amounts of gold, silver, and precious stones? And, finally, did he not own the imperial relics and all insignia, including the crown?16 To be king, in sum, meant to exert control over things no less than territories and people.

32

a letter sent to Pope Innocent III in 1206, Philip



summarized the tumultuous events of the previ-

der Vogelweide endorses the notion of objects’

ous decade, retroactively justifying his right to

evidentiary status. Drawing on the same parallel

the title of rex Romanorum. Had not many lands,

as Conrad I two centuries earlier, he stresses that

strongholds, cities, and towns sworn allegiance

Philip’s crown—burdened with gems—earned

to him? Were untold numbers of ministeriales

him the right to rule over lesser magnates, those

Jeweled Crowns, Mineralized Kingship

In one of his political sayings, Walther von

“crowned with coronets only.”17 That the coronation crown, created for another head, fitted this king perfectly is for Walther proof positive of an intentional (read God-willed) reciprocity. Pushing the exchange between human and mineral to the point of fusion, he fantasizes that “each smiles upon the other, the noble stones, and the young, elect, beloved man.”18 The poet brackets the crown once again at the end of the same poem, now deputizing the Waise to sit directly above the king’s neck so that it can work as “the guiding star of all princes” (aller fürsten laite sterne). Rather than taking that eccentric placement literally, Walther, thinking as a wordsmith, must have taken the “master stone” to stand in, by way of synecdoche, for the crown and represent, by way of metonymy, the imperium itself. Though it has escaped notice, a visual testimony supplies a clear, if retroactive, corroboration of this interpretation (fig. 12). It appears in the Hortus sanitatis, a work printed in 1491 by the Mainz publisher Jacob Meydenbach. At 1073 woodcut illustrations, the “Garden of Health” ranks as the most ambitious early illustrated work in natural history.19 In the mineral section of the compilation, which stitches together an herbal, a bestiary, and a lapidary, the orphanus stands out because it is the only single gem among 144 entries to be honored with both a verbal description and a visual portrait. But the artist reversed Walther

Figure 12 The crown of the Holy Roman Empire and the orphanus stone, Hortus sanitatis (Mainz: Jacob Meydenbach, 1491). Cambridge, Harvard University, Countway Library of Medicine. Photo: Countway Library of Medicine.

von der Vogelweide’s synecdoche, opting to show a gem-set helmet-crown held aloft by a sporty herald rather than an individual lithic object.

the Roman Emperor, and has never been seen any-



where else, and therefore it is called the orphan.

Meydenbach lifted the content for the entry

on the orphanus verbatim from Albert the Great’s

Its color is like wine, of a delicate wine-red, as if

De mineralibus. Here is how the thirteenth-century

bright snow were mingled with clear red wine,

natural philosopher, whose work will be discussed

and were overcome by it. It is a brilliant stone, and

at some length in chapter 6, described the unique

tradition says that at one time it used to shine by

gem: “The Orphanus is the stone in the crown of

night; but nowadays it does not shine in the dark.

The Politics of Precious Stones

33

It is said to preserve the royal honour.”20 Dorothy

physical phenomena, could recognize political

Wyckoff, the De mineralibus’s expert translator

agency in a mineral body. During the drafting of

and a geologist herself, proposed that Albert had

the De mineralibus, the reins of the Holy Roman

an opal in mind, in either its fiery or milky vari-

Empire were once again hotly contested following

ant. But caution is in order, for the description

the death of Frederick II of Hohenstaufen in 1250

does not tally with the way the same text (and all

and, four years later, of his twenty-six-year-old

other lapidaries) portrays the many-hued opal.

son, Conrad IV. The renewed crisis might ac-

In fact, Albert unequivocally pairs the orphanus

count for the hopes pinned retroactively on the

with a shining onychinus in another passage. That

orphanus as a restorer of political authority. Not

would identify it with a type of sardonyx, a stone

everyone shared Albert’s confidence. Consider the

that layers white bands (“bright snow”) over a

anonymous early thirteenth-century German poet

flesh-colored (“delicate wine-red”) base, true to its

known as Der Stricker. He mocked people’s infatu-

etymological derivation from “fingernail.” While

ation with the powers (tugent) ascribed to pre-

the two descriptions are inconsistent, an uncut

cious stones, reminding readers how the imperial

sardonyx would be a much better candidate for

crown’s superlative stones failed to protect Philip

this gem. Opals are rarely present on medieval

of Swabia from being murdered. Philip’s oppo-

objects, in part because they were hard to come

nent, Otto of Brunswick, fared better, being only

by and in part because their pigmentation was

deposed before being exposed to public ridicule.24

considered to be unattractive. Cut cameos and un-



cut sardonyxes, on the other hand, are legion (see

usefully adds provenance to function. The legend

fig. 68). Connoting romanitas and imperial power,

Herzog Ernst dates to the late twelfth century and

that type of gem belonged to the much-admired

is considered one of the earliest epics written in

category of ancient spolia, routinely earmarked for

German. Divided into two loosely connected

prestige objects, such as crowns, signet rings, jew-

parts, the first chronicles a protracted feudal

eled altar crosses, and reliquaries. Furthermore,

conflict between a fictionalized Duke Ernst of

a sardonyx’s translucent color gradient accords

Bavaria and his stepfather, Emperor Otto I. In the

well with Albert’s additional observation that the

second part, the titular hero and his action-hungry

Waise, once a blazing object, had by the time of his

companions embark on a redemptive crusading

writing shed its luster and was no longer able “to

journey that accommodates a circuitous detour

shine in the dark.”

across the fabled East. As history fades into legend

21

22

23



34

The same author’s final assertion that the

One last narrative concerning the Orphan

and measurable distances blur into the sketchy

exceptional stone is invested with the power of

contours of imagined errancy, natural disorienta-

preserving “the royal honor” thrusts us squarely

tions and cultural dislocations accumulate. The

into medieval lapidary knowledge and the preter-

ducal party traverses gemmed cities and meets

natural universe of virtutes. And the distancing “it

crane-headed, flat-footed, one-eyed creatures,

is said” does little to alter the fact that a supremely

among other bewildering monsters, during en-

clear-headed thinker, a fierce Aristotelian who

counters that alternate between the peaceful and

was committed to elucidating a vast range of

the belligerent. After a hair-raising expedition

Jeweled Crowns, Mineralized Kingship

down a swift river, its rocky sides and bottom lined

a matchless Orient stone to the most majestic

with varicolored gems, a solitary superradiant and

object of Christendom. The Arabic name al-

extraprecious stone emerges from the anfractu-

Yatima, reserved for unique pearls and gems,

ous darkness. As the chief reward for months of

precisely translates to “the Orphan.” According to

questing hardship, this stone is none other than

the compilation of historical anecdotes that goes

the Waise, a mineral trophy that—as everyone

under the title Book of Gifts and Rarities, the great

knows—ennobles the imperial crown.25

Abbasid caliph Hārūn al-Rashīd (d. 809) spent



That detail, absent in Herzog Ernst’s earliest

the astronomical sum of 70,000 dinars to acquire

redaction, approximately dated to 1180, surfaced a

one such pearl.27 Another mention is recorded

few decades later when the fight between the Welfs

for the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, where an

and Staufen thrust the crown squarely onto the

outstanding pearl was exhibited, along with other

battlefield of representations. Anticipating both

triumphal spoils, to broadcast the achievements of

Walther von der Vogelweide and Albert the Great,

the new religion.28 By 1000, that monumental jewel

the epic subscribed to the then-novel concept of a

had vanished, and so the crusaders could not have

specific king-making crown (the Vienna crown),

encountered it when they captured the holy city in

complete with its own irreplaceable Leitstein.

1099. But, knee-deep in blood and hands stuffed

Yet the fabrication of an elaborate backstory for a

with treasures, they may well have picked up local

single gemstone remains exceptional in Western

legends and brought home the idea of a charisma-

sources. Considering that references to “soli-

laden, legitimacy-bestowing mineral—a gem fit for

taires” are not infrequent in Byzantine and Islamic

a ruler.29

26

writing, one suspects that a cultural borrowing is at the bottom of Herzog Ernst’s relocation of

The Politics of Precious Stones

35

T

hat Islamic lapidary lore was a source of inspiration for Herzog Ernst’s etiological narrative would not have been

apparent to medieval readers. On the other hand,

the appreciative categorization of high-grade gems as Orient stones attests to an accepted use of the prestige-boosting evocation of the fabled East. Temporal distance was likewise effective at incubating aura and, therefore, at generating value.

Chapter 2

Inventing Mineral Sovereignty

Things associated with the Roman past enjoyed particular authority throughout the Middle Ages, and nothing could trump those connected to Constantine the Great. It is to him as the inventor of the jewel-enriched diadem that we first turn. As the original architect of the materially radiant language of Western kingship, Constantine also traced the contours of mineral visuality in the service of politics. Nowhere was that program more trenchantly enacted than in the famous mosaics of Justinian and Theodora in the church of San Vitale; and nowhere do its chilling implications, the ever-present violent acquisition of mineral assets, emerge with greater clarity.

Constantine’s Perpetual Diadem

Precise birthdates for artistic styles and visual formats are exceedingly rare. A significant exception is Constantine the Great’s invention of not one but two objects encrusted with precious stones, each visually striking, conceptually innovative, and typologically formative: the jeweled cross and jeweled diadem. Famously appearing to the emperor before the decisive battle at the Milvian Bridge in 312, the “cross of light,” having a celestial pedigree, vouched for its auspiciousness. Constantine could trust it as a sign that announced his imminent

defeat of Maxentius, a coruler-turned-foe. We

throughout the medieval period. Displayed on

owe these details to Eusebius of Caesarea (d. 339),

altars and carried in processions, welded to fron-

who wrote them down two decades or so after

tals and affixed to reliquaries, the gleaming crosses

the fact, though based on the emperor’s sworn

pledged to insulate against the Enemy. Brandished

statement (or so he claims). The eminent Church

ahead of marching armies, they deployed the

leader, theologian, historian, polemicist, and

combative virtus injected into the original “salvific

imperial apologist was told that “about the time

sign” specifically against enemies of the Christian

of the midday sun,” Constantine saw “with his

faith, whether identified as infidels or heretics.3

own eyes, up in the sky and resting over the sun,



a cross-shaped trophy formed from light.” During

tion, the equally consequential jeweled crown?

the night, “the Christ of God” visited his imperial

Lacking a definite origin story like the one that

recruit in a dream-vision and urged him to craft

introduced the gem-embellished cross, was it,

“a copy of the sign which had appeared in the sky”

in fact, an invention? The anonymous author of

enhanced with a morale-boosting battle cry: “By

the seventh-century Paschal Chronicle harbored

this conquer.” Acting on the divine injunction,

no doubt, maintaining that Constantine was “the

Constantine called in goldsmiths and jewelers (de-

first to wear a diadem decorated with pearls and

miourgoi) the next day. Like a new Moses oversee-

precious stones.”4 Though no actual late antique

ing the construction of the Ark of the Covenant,

headgear survives, external documentation,

he instructed them on how to translate the fleeting

both visual and written, makes up for the loss.

celestial signum into a durable cross-object, as-

Particularly helpful is the uninterrupted numis-

sembled from gold and precious stones.

matic record. High-end commemorative golden



coins prove that Constantine had adopted the

1

Historians have teased out the many implica-

But what about Constantine’s second inven-

tions of the vision at the Milvian Bridge.2 They

gem-spangled diadem after another critical mili-

have asked, for example, if the Roman emperor

tary victory, this time against his former coruler

truly saw a cross and not some natural light

Licinius. By 324, the determined emperor, who had

phenomenon onto which Eusebius retroactively

either eliminated or enfeebled his rivals, must have

projected a cruciform shape. Art historians may

felt that the time had come to consolidate earlier

want to add another layer of meaning. Quite aside

attempts at a more autocratic control over senate

from the fact that this historically inaugural scene

and plebs alike. The diadem was to spell out in the

was grounded in an act of ocular conversion based

luminescent language of mineral materiality that

on a dream, a vision, and an apparition, it gave

newly confident absolutism. A crisp golden solidus

birth to a radically new type of “artwork.” For

minted in the new capital shows a seated winged

both the intelligence of the object (as outlined

Victory on the reverse. She is inscribing a shield

previously) and the argument of a mineral Middle

held aloft by Genius in keeping with the military

Ages, the fact that this creation was not an image

efforts that kept Constantine busy during the last

but a sign-thing made of gold and precious stones

years of his rule. On the obverse, his wide-eyed

is significant. Modeled after Constantine’s reful-

profile looks straight on with purposeful resolve

gent template, cruces gemmatae were produced

(other impressions opt for a gaze turned upward in

Inventing Mineral Sovereignty

37

Figure 13 Gold solidus of Constantine the Great wearing a jeweled diadem, Constantinople, 336–37. London, British Museum, Inv. 1860,0329.297. Photo: The Trustees of the British Museum.

final phase of ongoing design experiments with the diadem. Its gemmed décor consists of a succession of ovoid pearls laid diagonally in imitation of the laurel (or oak) leaves from which Roman

38

anticipation of a heavenly apotheosis) (fig. 13). As

triumphal wreaths were crafted. Rosettes alternate

a group, Constantine’s coins confirm that the early

with each set of pearls. They introduce a different

diadems consisted of a band of soft cloth knotted

compositional accent that climaxes in a rectangu-

in the back—diadeō translates to “I tie” or “I knot.”5

lar jewel placed above the emperor’s brow, shown

Fluttering, pearl-enriched ties that amplify the

appropriately as the topmost piece. This enlarged

energy of the man’s regimented curls are clearly

ornamentum would evolve into the “master stone”

visible. The diminutive portrait is sufficiently

that signals regal presence on medieval crowns

precise to indicate that this iteration belongs to a

proper.

Jeweled Crowns, Mineralized Kingship



To better appreciate Constantine’s triple

assembly hall, crowded with hundreds of church

invention—of an object, a material practice, and

leaders, to preside over the final deliberations. The

an attribute of absolute power—we might consider

grand show was precisely calibrated to produce

a laudatory oration Eusebius was asked to deliver

an angelic, light-dispensing, peace-seeking ruler.

in 336 for the thirtieth jubilee of Constantine’s rule

Even if Eusebius does not expressly mention a

(tricennalia). The churchman’s commendation of

jeweled diadem, he notes that Constantine’s mantle

his hero’s embodiment of Christian values does not

emitted a “dazzling brilliance of gold and precious

interfere with a celebration of his civic virtues and

stones,” as if shedding beams of bright light.7

moral qualities, both expected features of Roman



encomiastic literature. The result is a ruler steeped

tation, it is reasonable to assume that the same

in ideals of integrity and uprightness, a virtuous

imperial workshop(s) created the crux gemmata

leader who refuses to glory in mundane achieve-

and the jeweled diadems. In contrast to the sudden

ments even at the height of his power. Eusebius’s

epiphany that produced the former, the secular

Augustus is a man flush with inner riches—one so

insignia’s gestation was slow.8 Previous emperors

fortified with high-minded principles that he can

had occasionally flaunted a gem-set diadem and

dismiss external indicators of status. “The raiment,

the message of self-divinization it carried. But

interwoven with gold, finished with intricate blos-

the determined opposition of the Roman senate

Although unprovable for lack of documen-

soms” and the diadem itself are nothing to him.

prevented such showy sartorial gestures, mod-

While the awestruck populace may well marvel,

eled after Hellenistic displays of sovereignty, from

“like children at a hobgoblin,” when confronted

becoming more than a passing vogue. It would

with a body wrapped in transcendental radiance,

take an empire made brittle by periodic civil

Constantine knows better. He is able to recognize

wars and the determination of a Constantine to

the “valuables longed for by the many” and the

impose the corona triumphalis as a permanent

“type of stone that makes men gape” for what they

sign-thing, one tailored to the ideological needs

are: “useless and worthless stuff.”

of a ruler who liked to style himself as “victorious

6



Of course, precious materiality was anything

and triumphant” in eternity. “The royal garb he

but that, and in a second work, Eusebius admits

adorned with gems, and his head, at all times, with

as much. The Vita Constantini was written as a

a diadem [perpetuo diademate],” reads the visibly

retrospective biography/hagiography that bur-

baffled reaction of a commentator.9 More vocal

nished the image of Constantine as a faultless

criticism did not deter subsequent emperors from

Christian ruler. In 325, the two men met during

upholding the flattering proposition that brilliant

the general church council at Nicaea, assembled to

mineral materiality is ontologically consonant with

find a solution to the institutional crisis provoked

the sovereign body. Indeed, only a few decades

by Arian dissenters who supported the soon-to-

after Constantine’s death, Julian (d. 363) celebrated

be heretical view of the Son of God’s subordinate

his five-year commemoration as Augustus with

status. Timed to coincide with the celebration of

a sumptuous (ambitiosus) diadem. As Conrad I

the twentieth anniversary of his accession (vin-

would do centuries later, Julian asked for this

cennalia), the emperor entered the monumental

insignia to be gem-enriched, rejecting the “cheap

Inventing Mineral Sovereignty

39

crown” that had been used for his elevation by the

secular objects carrying an exceptional charis-

army some years earlier.

matic character—to objects “almost sacred.”





10

Constantine’s regalia enjoyed a healthy after-

In their drawn-out efforts to wrest the imperi-

life as imaginative memory tagged any number

al title from the Byzantines, the Latins were equally

of crosses and diadems with the Constantinian

eager to claim Constantine’s political legacy as

label. It makes sense that Byzantine rulers, who

their own. Objects, once again, acted as a crucial

considered themselves the sole heirs to the Roman

conduit for the transmission of unmatched author-

empire, elevated objects associated with the first

ity.13 The Carolingian court poet Ermoldus Nigellus

Christian emperor (or so it was assumed) to the

said as much when he claimed that historically

status of venerated historical relics. Over time,

resonant provenance for the “brilliant crown” with

Constantine’s collection of diadems settled into

which Pope Stephen IV crowned Louis the Pious at

a single crown while morphing from the late

Reims in 816.14 According to Thegan, another con-

antique soft-cloth headband into the medieval

temporary author, it was “amazingly beautiful” and

metallic circlet. Eyewitness accounts of its sighting

“adorned with the most precious gems.”15 Whether

are varied and inconsistent, but according to two

that same relic-crown also accompanied Lothair

sources, dating to the late twelfth century, the

when he acceded to the imperial throne one year

jewel-encrusted crown was exhibited in Hagia

later is impossible to ascertain. No Carolingian

Sophia, where it dangled from a lavish gold and

crown survives, and the miniature portrait from

silver ciborium that Emperor Justinian had gifted

the Lothair Psalter with which we started our min-

for the main altar. A jeweled pendant cross and a

eral journey shows a visually imposing but generic

liturgical dove were attached to this crown while

metallic artifact (see fig. 4).

11

several more, donated by other rulers, completed the display. The highly literate emperor Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus (d. 959) had

Gem Power at Ravenna

adopted a different tactic with the same objective: to exalt the crown and state robes of the emperor

An early confirmation of the late antique diadems’

after whom he was named. In his exhaustive work

evolution into “crowns of precious stones” is

on Byzantine court protocol, he assures us that

found in the celebrated mosaic panels of Emperor

angels had sent these majestic objects down to

Justinian (d. 565) and Empress Theodora (d. 548)

earth, asking that they be deposited on the high

that flank the presbytery of the church of San

altar of the lofty church and only worn by the

Vitale at Ravenna. The literature on the building

legitimate Greek basileus on special occasions. In

and its jewellike mosaic décor is vast and need

art history, things not made by human hands have

not be reviewed here.16 In our context, the most

a name: acheiropoieta. While the term appears

relevant issue pertains to the two panels’ deploy-

usually in reference to works of a religious nature,

ment of mineral assets in the orchestration of regal

such as Christ’s face miraculously impressed on

power.

Veronica’s veil or legendary crucifixes of angelic



manufacture, the category ought to be extended to

ladies-in-waiting, Theodora emerges from the

12

40

Jeweled Crowns, Mineralized Kingship

Surrounded by a retinue of ornately attired

gilded background as a pearly creature (fig. 14). She could be an ancient sister of Elizabeth I, the Tudor queen whose iridescent persona appears in several portraits, comparably stiffened by an excess of pearls. In both cases, lapidary knowledge was at work, endorsing the view that the lustrous globes result from the union of water and dew, a natural immaculate conception that translates into unblemished whiteness (see fig. 84). Unsurprisingly, that surface effect lent itself to be allegorized in terms of virginal purity (a quality appropriate for the Virgin Queen, more dubiously so in the case of the Byzantine basileia). At Ravenna, the artists reinforced the carefully crafted representational discourse by selecting thin disks of mother-of-pearl to embody the pearls that cluster on the woman’s diadem and around her purple-clad torso. The crown, silhouetted against a red-rimmed halo (an honorific attribute), sits on a pearl-sewn bonnet that cushions Theodora’s soulful head. Two gem-set triangular mountings flank an elaborate central jewel that rises from the broad, gemencrusted circlet. A monumental reinterpretation of the Constantinian rosette, this main grouping is formed by an oblong sapphire framed by two

Figure 14 Crowned head of Empress Theodora, Ravenna, church of San Vitale, south wall of the apse, ca. 544–48. Mosaic. Photo: Alfredo Dagli Orti / Art Resource, New York.

drop-shaped pearls that extend from a rectangular, box-mounted emerald. Known as the trifolium,



this arrangement became a standard element of

shares in the deployment of radiance, albeit

Byzantine crowns. Also consistent with Byzantine

less ostentatiously (fig. 15). Unlike the empress’s

design preferences are the double (sometimes

mosaic field, which is subdivided by architectural

triple) sets of pearl strings that span the empress’s

elements into three separate sections, the em-

body. Called pendilia, they were like crystallized

peror’s panel consists of an uninterrupted golden

reincarnations of the loose ties that bound the orig-

background. It projects his cortège into a time-

inal soft-cloth diadems, as seen on Constantine’s

less present: a mode of being unmoored from the

gold solidus. Both pendilia and trifolia were ini-

constraints of spatial coordinates and impervious

tially present on the Vienna crown and would have

to the corrosive action of time.18 Coordinating

gone a long way to sharpen its pointed allusions to

with the offertory action of his wife, Justinian

Romano-centered emblems of sovereignty.

heads a votive procession that progresses toward

17

Facing his queen across the aisle, Justinian

Inventing Mineral Sovereignty

41

Figure 15 Emperor Justinian’s procession, Ravenna, church of San Vitale, north wall of the apse, ca. 544–48. Mosaic, 264 × 365 cm. Photo: Alfredo Dagli Orti / Art Resource, New York.

the cosmic Christ enthroned in the apse. While



Theodora carries a heavy, gem-enriched liturgical

out a central jewel, but in its present restored

chalice, Justinian bears the Eucharistic bread, held

condition, the small, irregular blue and green

in a large, ornately decorated paten. His central

tesserae lack the forceful clarity of the brooch.20

placement, large halo, and red-and-purple jeweled

We do not know what Justinian wore when he was

shoes help single him out from the other men.

crowned in 527 by the patriarch of Constantinople.

The floor-length chlamys provides additional

However, one can presume that his diadem’s

emphasis, enhanced, as it is, with an eye-catching

leading jewel was grander than what appears in

tablion, the rectangular panel of fabric worn, since

San Vitale, perhaps as grand as the one seen on a

Roman times, by men of senatorial rank. Its finely

slightly later mosaic bust portrait (of Justinian?)

rendered embroideries—turquoise birds caged in

at Sant’Apollinare in Ravenna (fig. 16).21 Contrary

red medallions—speak of wealth and taste while

to this crown’s green-red-white arrangement, the

guiding our gaze upward, toward the epaulet,

early Byzantine semantics of colors favored the

which repeats the bird motif, and then to the

blue-green-white triplet in imperially themed con-

prominent brooch that clasps the imperial mantle.

texts. At San Vitale, gemmed friezes in both the

Already present on Constantine’s coin (see fig. 13),

nave and the sanctuary string together rectangular

circular fibulae were power objects in their own

emeralds, oval sapphires, and round pearls on

right. Like gem-set diadems and the color purple,

golden wires.22 As an ennobling device that har-

they were earmarked for members of the impe-

kens back to Roman art, they frame the imperial

rial family and select beneficiaries of imperial

panels with ornamental decorum while recapitu-

largesse. In the mosaic, Justinian’s fibula is the

lating, in the language of the mineral, the mea-

only one of that type; those used by the three

sured cadences of human processions (as do the

secular dignitaries are cross-bowed. There is more

gem-enriched pilasters, which were also of Roman

to the imperial brooch, for it cannot be accidental

filiation [fig. 15]). Exhibiting sapphires (hyacin-

that its central element consists of a single piece of

thi), emeralds, and pearls was not just a matter

On Justinian’s metallic circlet, one can make

colored glass. Materially, it parallels Theodora’s

of aesthetic preference. The Corpus Juris Civilis

mother-of-pearl disks, both types of cut circles

(Body of civil law), a comprehensive collection of

expressing something essential about the sub-

law codes compiled at Justinian’s behest, makes

jects with which they are fused—power in one

that point forcefully: “Ornaments decorated with

case, virtue in the other. Justinian’s bright-orange

gems and gold . . . have been reserved for royal

“stone,” unbroken by mosaic cubes, comes across

uses.”23 The same section, first redacted during the

as a pure surface. Conspicuous pearls, backed

reign of Leo I (d. 474), legislates that only palace

by additional gemstones, accentuate its mesmer-

workshops are authorized to create things made

izing force. In Simmel’s analysis, that radiantly

of gold and gems. Control over status-creating

cyclopean eye would be on a transfixing mission.

materials was so drastic that the interdiction

Intensely visual and vividly monadic, it certainly

extended to jewels that buyers intended to offer

has a riveting effect and, as such, qualifies as a

to the emperor if they required private manufac-

“master stone.”

turing facilities. Regulations were more tolerant

19

Inventing Mineral Sovereignty

43

of sign-things reserved for exclusive imperial use. Consubstantial with the persona of the sovereign, these materials were not merely quasi-sacred but, as Justinian’s code makes clear, sacred. One understands why the risk of dilution into subject bodies produced anxieties and generated taboos.

Justinian’s panel appropriately reserves the

green-blue-white group of gems for objects associated with the King of Kings, including the processional cross and the book carried by the two ecclesiastical dignitaries to the emperor’s left. A monumental inscription reinforces the portraitlike features of the cross bearer to identify him as Maximian, the bishop who consecrated San Vitale in 548 CE. Justinian selected him for the episcopal seat at Ravenna very much against the wishes of the local population. He was to serve as a point man in enforcing the then-shaky Byzantine hold over Italy. Ravenna had only been wrested from Ostrogothic hands in 540, and since the Figure 16 Bust of Emperor Justinian (?), early sixth century. Detached mosaic panel. Ravenna, church of Sant’Apollinare Nuovo. Photo: Alfredo Dagli Orti / Art Resource, New York.

Ostrogoths were Arians, San Vitale joined other architectural projects and urban interventions as a blunt affirmation of religious orthodoxy, Byzantine hegemony, and imperial auctoritas. Belisarius (d. 565), the generalissimo who led the imperial armies from one victory over a Germanic people

44

toward gem-set jewelry for women, and rings were

to the next, may be the owner of the bust squeezed

allowed for both genders, though in those cases,

in between Justinian and Maximian. Absent any

the stones must be unpretentious as opposed to

inscription, we will never know for sure. Among

those used on belts, horses’ bridles, and anything

other candidates, Julianus, the argentarius who

“that belongs to imperial dress and decoration.”

bankrolled this church and other Ravennate

Most unsettling to the modern reader is the code’s

monuments, has been put forward. A more specu-

provision that would-be offenders could expect

lative but intriguing hypothesis is that this figure

not only steep fines but the threat of a death

may have been the high official entrusted with the

penalty. Far from functioning as arbitrary frills or

task of ferrying Justinian’s and Theodora’s gifts

discretionary add-ons, precious stones, together

from Constantinople to Ravenna for the church’s

with porphyry and garments dyed with Tyrian

inauguration.24 Whatever other sediments of

purple or woven from silk, formed a constellation

meaning the two mosaics held, glorifying imperial

Jeweled Crowns, Mineralized Kingship

munificence undoubtedly was part of the program.

that adorn the palace: “Roman power took [the

Justinian and Theodora may never actually have

gems] in earlier times, which green Nereus and

set foot in Ravenna, and, as a woman, the empress

the land of India brought forth and which Caesar

was not allowed to enter the sanctuary anyway.

brought from the court of Memphis, which

Yet working in an intensely physical medium, the

Cleopatra gave in supplication when she came.”28

mosaic craftsmen succeeded in turning the always-

Those that enrich Justin’s coronation fibula reach

absent imperial couple into always-present icons

beyond global diplomacy. Smeared with blood,

of sovereignty—gloriously close and intensely

they are the product of repeated acts of violence:

mineral.

“Jewels which the fortunate victory in the Gothic



war produced and which Ravenna, loyal to our

A text coeval with the mosaics usefully enlarg-

es on the ideological implications of the Ravenna

rulers, brought back, and which Belisarius carried

mosaics, giving their calculated pageantry of light-

from the Vandal court.”29

reflecting substances an unmistakable political



edge. In laudem Iustini Augusti minor (In praise of

months before taking his life on the Franco-

Emperor Justin) is a panegyric composed in 565

Spanish border to avoid capture by the Nazis,

to celebrate the accession of Justin II, Justinian’s

Walter Benjamin exposed with poignant urgency

nephew and heir. Its author, the court writer

how historians tend to align themselves with the

Corippus, reinforces the idea of an uninterrupted

perspective of the victors. Perhaps naively, he

succession sanctioned by divine approval through

exonerated historical materialists because they

the adroit interlacing of coronation ceremonies

write with pens sharpened by the will “to brush

and funeral proceedings. Wailing in one case,

history against the grain.” Short of that, “there is

acclaiming in the other, the processions weave in

no document of culture which is not at the same

and out of the Great Palace in Constantinople.

time a document of barbarism.”30 The forced

Eventually, they take us to the throne “proud with

mineral march imagined by Corippus offers a

gold and jewels” that amplifies the ruler’s body

vivid illustration of Benjamin’s maxim for the

25

In a famous essay written in 1940, a few

flashing with golden rays as if a new sun. In

way it covers the length of Byzantine historical

another moment of ekphrastic bravura, Corippus

consciousness (from India to Rome via Egypt) and

describes the gem-set purple pall commissioned

the breath of its conquests (from Vandal Africa to

by Justin’s consort, Sophia, for Justinian’s lying

Ostrogothic Ravenna). On a much grander scale,

in state. Even in his existence as a corpse, he was

the same scenario played out in the public arena

“crowned with a diadem.” The embroidered cloth’s

during the triumphal procession that rewarded

iconography celebrates imperial conquest by forc-

Belisarius for his resounding victory over the

ing a parade of barbarian nations into the never-

Vandals. As the historian Procopius recorded

26

ending role of tribute bearers. Exquisitely attuned

the festivities, a crowd-pleasing parade of “spoils

to the rhetoric of materials, the poet carries the

and slaves’’ progressed through the streets of the

same note of unqualified triumph into the nonrep-

capital, eventually coming to rest in front of the

resentational arts. This is what he has to say about

magnificent imperial box situated on the palace

the gems affixed to the textile hangings (stramina)

side of the hippodrome.31 In addition to honoring a

27

Inventing Mineral Sovereignty

45

specific military leader, such a spectacle’s broader

churches has been amply documented by histori-

intent was to quell worries about an empire fraying

ans and art historians alike. That is not the case for

at the edges and an emperor whose authority was

secular objects, even though a wealth of primary

anything but uncontested. What better proof of

sources indicate that jewels and precious domes-

unalloyed strength than the Vandal royal treasure

tic artifacts were coveted as intensely as religious

(itself a hoard assembled from warfare and loot-

loot. One participant succinctly recorded that “the

ing) spread out before the victors’ eyes? With silver

spoils were so great that no one could tell you how

coins, golden cups, and “jewelry made of precious

much it amounted to in gold, silver, tableware,

stones” piled high, this was a showy accumulation

precious stones, samite, silk cloth, garments of vair,

of valuable possessions well suited to satisfy the

gray fur and ermine, and all the fine things that

empire’s “will to shine.”

were ever found on Earth.”32 Niketas Choniates, a



florid Byzantine chronicler directly affected by the

The Byzantine empire hardly represents an

exception when it comes to sublimating acts of

harrowing events, provides details about how the

barbarism into works of culture. An entire book

Franks, animated by an “innate love of gold,” broke

could be written about jeweled assets as an intrin-

into the magnificent church of the Holy Apostles.

sic target of medieval military plunder. One such

Even though his account is hardly unbiased, there

occurrence is pertinent to the present discussion.

is no reason to doubt that the invaders vandalized

When Constantinople fell to the crusaders during

the sacred space that doubled as an imperial mau-

the Fourth Crusade, the Latin conquerors did

soleum. Emptying “with utter lawlessness” several

what the Byzantines, Goths, and Vandals had done

tombs, they took “whatever gold ornament, or

centuries earlier. During several infernal days in

round pearls, or radiant, precious, and incorrupt-

April 1204, they killed and plundered, tore through

ible gems” they could find. Even Justinian’s omi-

streets and bodies, ransacked palaces and houses.

nously incorrupt body did not escape violation.33

The disheartening removal of relics dispatched to aggrandize Western monasteries, cathedrals, and

46

Jeweled Crowns, Mineralized Kingship

C

ase studies taken from the thirteenth century onward are especially helpful when it comes to evaluating the scope

of mineral visuality in the performance of kingship. The survival rate of objects produced in the Gothic period is higher and written documenta-

tion more plentiful. However, to excavate more fully the political meanings assigned to “crowns of gold and precious stones” requires a retrospec-

Chapter 3

tive detour to Carolingian times, for that is when

Gothic Regal Materiality

underpin European king- and queen-making ritu-

coronation protocols (ordines), which continue to als to this day, were first devised. In our context, these documents introduce a new line of reasoning, one that meshes the ethical with the physical around the concept of “gems of virtue.” The Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV gave that convergence a monumental and politically incisive interpretation across Prague, the capital city of his kingdom. The chapter ends with his mineral-infused patronage and an episode of intense jewel contemplation during a visit to Paris in 1378, when his nephew Charles V was ruling. The French king was, like his Bohemian uncle and countless other medieval monarchs, a gem-savvy patron. The main crown he commissioned provides a spectacular instance of how jeweled art could lead to a distinctive mode of aesthetic absorption.

Castilian Glyptic Sovereignty

A relative newcomer to regalia studies, the elegant crown of Castile was unearthed in the cathedral of Toledo in 1948 when local authorities, pressured by the dictator Salazar, were searching for the remains of a Sancho who had been king of Portugal (fig. 17). In his stead, they found the well-preserved

Figure 17 Crown of Castile, 1256–75 (?). Gilded brass, sapphires, cameos, diam. 55 cm. Toledo Cathedral. Photo: Album / Art Resource, New York.

mummy of the Castilian Sancho IV (d. 1295).

gems.”2 The Castilian crown’s four cameos articu-

Wrapped in a blanket of Islamic manufacture and

late an equally apposite political message. Two are

dressed in a Franciscan habit, the skeletal royal re-

Roman spolia. Whether the one bare-headed pro-

mains compensated for that sartorial humility with

file represents young Augustus, a veiled Alexander

a suite of status-appropriate objects: a richly ornate

the Great, or the Lydian queen Omphale draped

sword, spurs, and crown. Though forged from

in Hercules’s lion skin is open to interpretation.

ordinary gilded brass, the incisively linear crown

In any case, such precise iconographic meanings

has the visual allure of a sovereign’s regalia. Like

would not have been available to medieval viewers.

the Vienna crown and its Byzantine prototypes,

The gems’ noble materiality and the figures’ clas-

it belongs to the rare, imperially connoted group

sical appearances, however, did matter, for those

of octagonal crowns. For a Castilian ruler, it was

attributes of Romanitas greatly intensified their

a suitable formal choice. After all, Sancho would

auctoritas. In the opinion of some scholars, two of

be hailed as imperator totius Hispaniae, a title af-

the four cameos are medieval (re)creations rather

firming not so much the idea that every monarch

than reuses (fig. 18).3 If a southern Italian prov-

is an emperor in his own realm than proclaim-

enance and a dating to the second quarter of the

ing Castile’s precedence over other peninsular

thirteenth century are confirmed, these cut stones

kingdoms.

could have been produced in a lapidary workshop



associated with Frederick II (d. 1250). The Holy

1

The eight rectangular plates (each measuring 7

× 4.5 cm) serve as platforms for miniaturized cas-

Roman Emperor, whose flamboyantly prismatic

tles that advertise the realm the object represents.

personality has kept historians busy, was a devotee

Fusing the secular and the sacred, they mimic

of classical artistic culture, pathbreaking scien-

three-towered High Gothic facades, each complete

tific inquiries, regal pomp, and his own imperial

with a rose window and tripartite lancets. But it is

persona. He is also one of several medieval rulers

the mineral rather than the representational that

who turned gem collecting into a form of high art,

communicates much of the object’s optical energy.

using glyptics (along with numismatics) as a re-

Four cameos alternate with the same number of

fined outlet for his proto-Renaissance leanings. To

regally sized sapphires polished to a high sheen.

assuage that passion, he jump-started the manu-

A burst of stylized palmettes borders the cameos,

facture of cut stones in the ateliers he founded and

while rectangular and octagonal box mountings,

funded. Hans Wentzel, whose studies on medieval

with the soldering buried underneath a thin and

cut stones remain essential, emphasizes how the

even line of granulation, contain the sapphires.

Staufen cameos often opted for a montage of

Spiritualizing interpretive conventions liked to as-

mythological and biblical motifs. In addition to

sociate that stone’s deep sky-blue tint with the ce-

blending secular and religious content, they also

lestial realm. But it is important to remember that

reconnected with the layered aesthetics of ancient

Marbode of Rennes’s influential Liber lapidum as-

sardonyxes.4

signed the saphirus to enhance the royal body with



a “sacred” embellishment. It is this secular-sacred

of Castile to the Hohenstaufen imperial family, and

function that earns the stone the title of “gem of

those bonds grew even stronger after Frederick II’s

Multiple family ties bound the ruling dynasty

Gothic Regal Materiality

49

staff, and how the beautiful crown boasted crosses delineated by sapphires, rubies, and pearls. Alfonso’s postmortem splendor was a fitting match for the imperial ambitions that shaped his life and, to some extent, the fate of his kingdom.7 Only four years after ascending to the Spanish throne in 1252, he set his eyes on the one in Aachen, publicizing the claim on a seal bearing his enthroned, crowned, globe-and-scepter-holding persona and an inscription referring to the title of the Holy Roman Emperor (Alfonsus Dei gracia Romanorum Rex semper Augustus). In spite of having a legitimate claim through his Staufen mother and persistent diplomatic maneuverings supported by a few electoral princes, his all-consuming chase would remain fruitless. To compound the effects of political missteps with significant financial reFigure 18 Staufen (?) cameo from the crown of Castile. Toledo Cathedral. Photo: Album / Art Resource, New York.

percussions, blunders triggered by poor decisions concerning his succession piled up toward the end of his reign. The result was a full-blown rebellion spearheaded by none other than his second-born son, Sancho (his beloved first child, Ferdinand

first cousin, Beatrice of Swabia (d. 1235), married

de la Cerda, had died accidentally in 1275). The

Ferdinand III of Castile (d. 1252). Even though the

ailing monarch, afflicted by a debilitating chronic

Toledo crown has been ascribed to the patronage

illness, turned into a dyspeptic, physically aching,

of this king, the attribution to his son, the gem-

and more than occasionally violent patriarch. But

loving Alfonso X (d. 1284), seems more persua-

if Alfonso showed himself not so able in politi-

sive. Alfonso’s funerary crown is also attested. He

cal affairs as his sobriquet “el Sabio” would imply,

had elected the cathedral of Murcia as his final

his cultural attainments lived up fully to the high

resting place, but ended his mortal life (minus

expectations placed on a learned, if not wise, ruler.

heart and entrails) in the family mausoleum in the

Cut from the same inquisitive intellectual cloth as

cathedral of Seville that he had founded in honor

Frederick II, the Castilian monarch was animated

of his parents. Like Sancho’s remains, his mummy

by a comparably insatiable curiositas, sponsor-

was surrounded by a set of prestige objects that

ing scientific inquiries supported by translations

prolonged his royal identity past the disintegration

from up-to-date Arabic writings. Islamic ideals of

5

of the flesh. Though those went missing in mod-

enlightened autocratic rule inspired both to invest

ern times, a detailed inventory records how the

in cultural assets as consensus-building political

corpse continued to clutch a globe and ceremonial

enterprises.8 Astrology, the occult arts, lapidary

6

50

Jeweled Crowns, Mineralized Kingship

knowledge, and a passion for ancient carved stones

same precept articulated in the late antique work

were other pursuits that the Spanish king and the

after which it was modeled. Anyone who plagiariz-

German emperor shared.

es the royal dignitas commits a crime, demanding

Finally, the two men shaped their societ-

a penalty, whether confiscation or capital punish-

ies through legislative action. Inspired by the

ment. Appropriating objects belonging de jure to

Justinianic Corpus Juris Civilis, Frederick II

the king was seen in the same light as defaming his

promulgated the Constitutions of Melfi in 1231.

image, seal, and coat of arms, each interpreted as

This legal code includes a provision that instructs

an emanation rather than a mere representation

anyone who “finds money, gold and silver, precious

of sovereignty. In short, we return to the terri-

stones or something else that does not belong to

tory of fetishized mineral materiality first codified

him” to hand those treasures to a representative

in Roman and Byzantine imperial sumptuary

of the king, lest he be accused of theft. It was

regulations.

customary for the late antique and medieval legal



system to reserve chance finds for the royal fisc.

son Sancho were of the same mind when it came

Yet the explicit mention of gems strikes a new

to an exalted conception of the insignias reales. The

note since, as a rule, such legislation covered gold

Siete Partidas conveys that object-based ideology

coins and golden objects only. Also guided by the

in jurisprudence, while the Castigos e documen-

Justinianic legal compilation was Alfonso’s Siete

tos para bien vivir (Lessons and documents to

Partidas (Seven divisions). Thoroughgoing, this

live well) does so in the area of political ethics.

code of law was designed to standardize regula-

Commissioned by Sancho for the education of his

tions and procedures across all the territories

own son and finished in 1293, the Castigos belongs

under his control, several of which were recent

to the literary genre of mirrors for princes, which

Christian conquests and had therefore observed

spelled out codes of conduct for medieval elites

Islamic legal principles for centuries. The text

while giving monarchs the intellectual tools to

dwells at length on the business of kingship, the

exercise their power wisely—or so it was hoped.

education of the prince, the composition of the

Not least among several idiosyncratic features of

royal household, the selection of court officials,

Sancho’s version is a simile that pairs kings with

and the moral and political virtues at the com-

lapidary artisans. Both categories of men must

mand of a good statesman, among other topics.

possess field-specific expertise as they choose,

When it comes to the royal look, the Partidas

discriminate, and distinguish (escojer, departir,

recommends the quotidian use of silken garments

estremar) among precious stones and qualified

and saddles interspersed with gold and precious

individuals, respectively. Only when counseled

stones. On festive occasions and during grand

by these brightest and wisest “gems” will kings be

assemblies, the optical pitch must be inflated: the

able to secure everlasting fame for themselves.12

king should appear with a crown “richly decorated

The Castigos offers a splendid example of a mate-

with magnificent jewels.” Consistent with the

rial exegesis in the service of political values. To

assumption of a mutuality between essence and

some degree that approach was conditioned by

appearance, the Castilian code subscribes to the

the Islamic source material that inspired Sancho’s



9

10

11

At loggerheads about much, Alfonso and his

Gothic Regal Materiality

51

text, though it also compensated for the fact that

Costanza.15 That transmission confirms the rela-

the Castilian regalia never rose to the status of res

tively gender-fluid nature of medieval crowns, at

quasi sacrae. Contrary to what was becoming the

least when treated as movable assets. It especially

norm elsewhere in Europe, all five Spanish king-

indicates that for Castilian rulers of the Gothic era,

doms adhered to a robustly secular interpretation

cameos represented a kind of mineral talisman

of royal symbols and rituals alike. Official eccle-

entrusted with the task of preserving royal honor

siastical coronations were rare and anointments

(to speak like Albert the Great). Antiquity-infused

even rarer. The feudal bestowal of the sword,

and legitimacy-laden, cut stones worked like

the elevation on a shield or an elevated throne,

Byzantine frontal jewels and the Ottonian Waise:

self-coronations, and sheer popular acclamation

as the Castilian “master stones,” or, put differently,

inherited from late antique and Visigothic inaugu-

as the “noble things that pertain to a king.”

ration rites remained choice modes of investiture.

13

Consequently, Castilian regalia continued to be treated like private property transmitted from

Of “Spiritual Precious Stones” and “Gems of Virtues”

father to son.

That much emerges from Alfonso X’s testa-

ment. Dictated in November 1282, it received a

gemology, King Sancho’s Castigos is useful for the

codicil two months later that rehearsed the sixty-

way it dissects the gemmed ornamentation on an

three-year-old monarch’s grievances against his

ideal crown in terms of extended politico-religious

insubordinate son and other rebellious relatives.

analogies. Sancho is one of the few Castilian mon-

The bulk of these text deals with making good

archs who was formally crowned, undoubtedly to

on outstanding debts, funeral arrangements, and

assert a divinely ordained legitimacy against his

charitable donations. As to the transmission of

father’s withdrawal of his blessings. The didactic

objects, Alfonso expressly reserved “the crowns

text instructs his son to make a crown with a ruby

with the precious stones and cameos, and the

mounted high on the headband as a symbol of

rings and other noble things that pertain to a

true understanding sustained by the fear of God.

king” for his legitimate heirs and successors to

The emerald and sapphire to its right signify

the throne of Castile and Léon (in essence, not

steadfast faith and benevolence, whereas the same

Sancho). Whether the Toledo crown corresponds

stones to the left connote blameless mores in word

to the item mentioned in Alfonso’s will cannot be

and deed. Another ruby of outstanding quality

positively affirmed, even though historians have

must grace the king’s neck as a token of his supe-

hypothesized that Sancho may have disregarded

rior intellectual abilities. Finally, a ruby carbuncle

his father’s last wishes and retained this crown

inserted on the crown’s apex serves as a glowing

for his personal use. The will’s explicit mention of

embodiment of his charitable behavior and wise

cameos undeniably accords with their prominent

decisions.16

positioning on the object. A century later, Peter the



Cruel of Castile (d. 1369) would bequeath one of

precious stones was sufficiently flexible to allow

his crowns adorned with cameos to his daughter

for a range of purely political interpretations. Two

14

52

Beyond the unusual image of a king with a flair for

Jeweled Crowns, Mineralized Kingship

The mute and yet murmurous language of

additional examples will suffice to make the point.

of his realm as little more than reflective surfaces

The first comes from the chronicler and Staufen

to enhance his light-imparting, magnified self.19

secretary Godfrey of Viterbo (d. ca. 1196). To the

According to his inventory, he owned as many as

question of who instituted the use of jewel-set

eleven golden crowns, including a magna corona,

crowns, he answered quite accurately by putting

which he had inherited from his grandfather,

forward Julius Caesar (he could not know that his

Edward III, encrusted with jewels worth a for-

bid to institutionalize the jeweled diadem failed,

tune.20 To better understand the uses and meanings

as did those of a few other emperors known to

of regalia, he even commissioned a little tract that

have donned gem-enriched insignia). “What do

traced their history from Anglo-Saxon times to his

precious gems in a crown signify?” the same writer

era.21 Given the adverse state of affairs, the allitera-

goes on to wonder. Pulling physics and politics

tive poem known as Richard the Redeless (Richard

together, he pairs minerals’ chief characteristics—

without counsel), dated to about 1399, appropriately

hardness, virtutes, resplendence, and color—with

puts a negative spin on the imbrication of resplen-

qualities required to govern well, namely stead-

dence and authority. Dilating “on the themes of

fastness, honesty, lawfulness, and of fair renown.17

tyranny, self-indulgence, and evil council,”22 the

The second example relates, more poignantly, to a

anonymous author puzzles: Had Richard’s corona-

king’s demise. Before meeting his violent death at

tion crown not been gorgeous beyond belief, the

the instigation of his rival Henry of Bolingbroke,

best one had ever seen? Was it not “filled” with

Richard II (d. 1400) had been forced to step down

“vertuous stones,” with “perlis of prise” (precious

from the throne (fig. 19). In William Shakespeare’s

pearls) to “punnysshe the wrongis” and with “ru-

memorable words, the deposed monarch lamented

bies rede” to encourage the king’s fair-mindedness

the loss by declaring: “Now, mark me how I will

when meting out punishment? Finally, did the

undo myself. / I give this heavy weight from off

crown’s sapphires not presage his competence

my head / . . . With mine own tears I wash away

in rectifying misconducts, while diamonds (of

my balm, / With mine own hands I give away my

adamantine strength) would instill fear in anyone

crown, / With mine own tongue deny my sacred

contemplating harm?23 It is unlikely that Richard

state, / With mine own breath release all duteous

read this mineralo-ethic road map (surviving in

oaths. / All pomp and majesty I do forswear.”

one manuscript only) on how to guide the affairs

Fussy in the extreme about the conventions of royal

of state with competence. If he did, its message

life and highly aware of strategies of self-fashioning,

was lost on him, and his stones were as useless as

the English monarch was an unswerving promoter

the ones mounted, in Der Stricker’s view, on the

of the sacrality of kingship. When the grounds

Vienna crown. In neither case did the gems prevent

of his rule grew shakier and opposition stronger,

dethronement, usurpation, and murder.

his absolutist tendencies hardened, resulting in a



regime of exile and executions that squashed any

cal messaging originate? Answering this question

acts of resistance. Conscious of the burden of wear-

brings us back to the time of Lothair I, except that

ing a crown and mindful of the dazzle associated

we leave the private realm of pictorial represen-

with the Crown, Richard considered the nobles

tation in illuminated manuscripts for the public

18

But where did stones’ assignation to politi-

Gothic Regal Materiality

53

Figure 19 Richard II enthroned, in Philippe de Mézières, Epistre au Roi Richart, Paris, 1395. London, British Library, MS Royal 20 B VI, fol. 2r. Photo © The British Library Board.

undisputed chief architect of European royal rituals and the sacral conception of kingship those imply.24 In the two ordines for kings, one composed for Charles the Bald and one for his son, Louis the Stammerer, the monarch is presented as chosen by

54

arena of king-making coronation rites. Written

God, representing God on earth, and imbued with

protocols preserve the memory of ephemeral

a priestlike responsibility toward God.25 Of the

events that may never have been enacted exactly

two texts written for queens, the one pertaining to

according to the succession of actions, prayers,

Judith, Charles and Ermentrude’s daughter, most

and oaths those texts envision. Like the sacring

explicitly filters precious stones through the lens of

ritual itself, ordines, as they are known, were a

moral associations. In 856, the Frankish princess

Carolingian creation based on existing, albeit

was asked to marry the king of Wessex, Æthelwulf,

dispersed, elements. As the author of four such

some thirty-five years her elder. Hincmar acted

ordines, Hincmar of Reims (d. 882) remains the

as the officiating priest for a ceremony that

Jeweled Crowns, Mineralized Kingship

merged wedding and coronation. During the

Forms, or the Ordo of Eleven Forms, this joint

nuptial blessings and royal consecration, the

coronation protocol elevated the queen consort to

erudite Carolingian cleric invoked virtuous bibli-

a comparable level of dignity as the one accorded

cal women (Judith, naturally) to underscore the

to her husband. For the latter, a new coronation

queen’s gender-specific duties. He reminded the

prayer, Accipe coronam regni (Receive the crown of

young woman of the obligation to produce male

thy kingdom), replaced the Hincmarian Coronet te

offspring and of the equally binding expectation to

Dominus. Reprising the parallelism first formu-

display mercy and compassion in her day-to-day

lated for Judith, this text likewise presents the

actions. Judith’s anointing with royal chrism was

righteous ruler as one who is “adorned with gems

unprecedented, and so was her formal coronation.

of virtues” (virtutum gemmis ornatus). “Crowned

New, too, were the words the assembly heard when

with the prize of everlasting beatitude,” he joins

Hincmar placed the crown onto her head, saying

the company of Christ the Savior and the “glori-

in reference to Psalm 8:6 (“Thou hast crowned

ous athletes” who willingly laid down their lives in

him with glory and honor”): “May the Lord crown

his name.29 The same ordo maps exterior splendor

thee with glory and honor, and place a crown of

onto inner assets even more energetically in the

spiritual precious stones upon thy head, so that

section for queens. Royal women, too, can expect

whatever is signified by the splendor of gold and

the reward of never-ending life if the “gold of

the varying radiance of gems may ever shine forth

wisdom and gems of virtues” that nourish their

in thy conduct and in thy actions.”27

actions measure up to the resplendent materi-



als.30 Later variants of these two prayers did not

26

Associating the sheen of gemstones with the

luster of moral qualities fits the allegorizing mental

affect the basic suggestion of a becoming-mineral

habit of the early Middle Ages. Yet the political

of virtues, as it were. That, in turn, validates the

orientation of this meaning-making effort deserves

larger point this chapter makes, namely that the

noting, especially when compared to Rabanus

preciousness of precious stones could coincide

Maurus’s nearly contemporaneous interpreta-

with a politically affirmative role. Similar to chrism

tion that skews heavily toward the theological

(the mixture of olive oil and aromatics used for

pole, as discussed earlier. Conceptually formative,

anointments), “crowns of precious stones” and

Hincmar’s four ordines staked out the ground that

“gems of virtues” were essential vehicles for craft-

defines coronation prayers, blessings, oaths, and

ing what Kantorowicz so perceptively named the

actions to this day. In the course of their long his-

royal super-body—the perpetual, transpersonal

tory, their constituent parts were updated, and new

body of the royal function buttressed by seemingly

ones were added, yet the programmatic scaffold-

imperishable materials.

ing of king- and queen-making ceremonies would not be altered in any significant way, let alone questioned.28 Thus a tenth-century ordo extended

Bohemian Mineral Ecstasies

the entwinement of inner riches and outward preciousness from queens to kings. Confusingly

Whereas queens always imbibed the trope of “gems

known as the Stavelot Ordo, the Ordo of Seven

of virtues” at the precise moment of their coming

Gothic Regal Materiality

55

into being, kings may hear it or not, depend-

emptied of its purpose and practical use, though it

ing on the specific set of prayers chosen for their

continues to enjoy a healthy existence as a symbol

ceremony. One monarch who did was Charles IV

of national identity as well as a major attraction on

(d. 1378), king of Bohemia and, from 1355 to his

the Prague tourist circuit. Heedful of the political

death, Holy Roman Emperor. He hailed from the

benefits to be gained from the public performance

illustrious Bohemian dynasty of the Přemyslid on

of kingship, Charles orchestrated his coronation

his mother’s side and was a Luxembourg on his

as a spectacle of unsurpassed magnificence. The

father’s. Born in Prague but raised in Paris and

first step yielded a new Ordo ad coronandum regem

Italy, he was highly literate, fluent in five languages,

Boemorum with a matching Ordo ad benedicen-

well versed in matters of doctrine, a great states-

dum reginam. Both texts systematized and mod-

man and lawgiver, and a lover of literature and

ernized existing protocols, all of which ultimately

art to boot. Crowned king of Bohemia in 1347,

trace back to Hincmar of Reims’s blueprints. The

rex Romanorum at Aachen in 1349, and imperator

newly created archbishop of Prague celebrated

Romanorum at St. Peter’s six years later, Charles

the ceremony in the cathedral, which was then

also was a monarch who assiduously cultivated

in the process of being enlarged and modernized

a high-minded conception of sovereignty sup-

into the splendid Gothic building that continues

ported by references to Augustus, Frederick II of

to overlook the city today from within the castle

Hohenstaufen, and, above all, Constantine the

complex.33 After moving to the high altar and

Great and Charlemagne. He is the only medieval

anointing Charles on the head (like a priest), chest,

king to have written an autobiography, and he also

shoulders, and arms, the archbishop clothed him

ranks as one of the great gemmophile rulers of the

with sacerdotal garments and girded him with

period. While the passion bordering on obses-

the feudal coronation sword. He then proceeded

siveness with which Charles went after relics has

to invest him with ring, scepter, globe, rod, and

often been discussed, his mineral collecting habits,

precious crown, the only object to be sanctified.

conspicuous though they were, have not received

To do so, the bishop sprinkled it with holy water,

much attention. What is certain is that this ruler

being careful to do so “little by little” (minutatim),

turned, like many predecessors and successors, to

as if measuring out divine charisma with a master

precious materiality as a medium to relay ideas

distiller’s trained hand.34 Even more significant

about sacral kingship and insist on a regal concep-

was the crown’s blessing with incense and a formal

tion of divinity.

benedictio, a special treatment that marks the



culmination of the long process during which the

31

56

We can start with his crown (fig. 20).32

Commissioned some years before he ascended to

Constantinian diadem inched from secular thing-

the throne of Bohemia on September 2, 1347, it is

hood into the lofty realm of consecrated objects.35

an object blessed with unusual longevity, since it

Right before the moment when the priest lowered

continued to do its king-making job until 1918,

the celestially powered object onto Charles’s head,

when the Bohemian kingdom was absorbed into

the crowd of privileged participants heard these

the newly created republic of Czechoslovakia.

momentous words: “God, crown of thy faithful,

Absent coronation rituals, the crown has been

you who place the crown of precious stone on their

Jeweled Crowns, Mineralized Kingship

Figure 20 Crown of Bohemia, ca. 1344–47 (reworked in the 1370s). Gold, sapphires, rubies, spinels, pearls, emeralds, aquamarine, rubellite, diam. 19 cm. Prague, Cathedral of St. Vitus. Photo: Erich Lessing / Art Resource, New York.

heads, bless and sanctify this crown so that, just

of an ocean-deep blue color mounted sideways just

as it is adorned with varied precious stones, your

below. Either could claim the status of a “master

servant, its bearer, may be filled with the manifold

stone,” except that coeval appraisals leave no doubt

gift of your precious virtues, by the bounty of your

as to the ruby’s preeminence. In the estimation

grace.” To reinforce the message of external radi-

of one observer, the Burgundian diplomat-spy

ance as a reflection of internal merits, this prayer

Bertrandon de la Broquière, who admired the

segued into the customary Accipe coronam regni,

Bohemian regalia on his return trip from the Holy

and the same idea was repeated a third time during

Land in 1433, it was the largest such gemstone

the coronation of Charles’s French wife, Blanche of

he had ever seen, “bigger than a full-sized date.”

Valois.

Flawless it was not, since “dimples that show a

36



58

The intensely tactile corona regni Bohemiae

few black spots inside” marred its appearance.38

blends the visual and the mineral with detail-ori-

A detailed gemological analysis conducted in

ented precision. Constructed from double sheets

1998 revealed this stone to be a rubellite (red

of hammered and very nearly unalloyed gold, the

tourmaline).39 Charles and his contemporaries

crown’s four hinged plates are fastened together by

would not have made the distinction between that

means of thin golden cotter pins, each capped with

mineral and a ruby or balas ruby. It is the color

a miniature pyramidal balas ruby (spinel). Fleshy

that mattered. Most liked by the Gothic chromatic

fleurons germinate from those rectangular bases,

sensibility, red lent itself readily to associations

their curling tips accentuated by pearls. They add

with Christ’s Passion, just as the celestially colored

milky accents to the overall gold-red-blue color

sapphires would have transported Charles’s con-

scheme. Besides enhancing the crown’s aesthetic,

templative mind toward the empyrean sphere and

the large round and lustrously white pearls added

the snowy pearls toward angelic purity. Allegorical

considerable mineral capital. Rarely found in

symbolism and material thinking need not be mu-

nature, such pearls ranked as high on the scale of

tually exclusive, however, and it is easy to imagine

value as the thirty-nine sapphires and balas rubies

that Charles responded as much to the stones’ fine

that dot the object with chromatic tactility (exclud-

quality, protective virtutes, and evocation of the

ing the smaller stones on the interlocking hoops).37

exotic East (about which more later). Documents

Of particular note are the three-dimensional

concerning the commission of jeweled objects are

mountings. Cast into funnel-shaped platforms,

generally scant in our period, but in this case, it is

they lift the cabochons boldly above the golden

known that the emperor asked for the outstand-

ground. Nearly invisible prongs reach out from

ing “ruby” to be mounted along with other choice

low collets, as if to prevent the crystalline bubbles

gems when he decided to upgrade the crown that

from floating away. Those consist of a mix of near-

had made him king of Bohemia years earlier.

natural forms and regimented geometries, such

That refashioning, which took place a few months

as the then-intriguing novelty of flat-topped table

before his death in 1378, eliminated all emeralds to

cuts. On the frontal axis, a tortuously contoured

make room for sapphires, rubies, and pearls alone.

balas ruby coordinates in size and prominence

The result was an object more opulent, modern,

with a pierced (meaning reused) oblong sapphire

and rigorous in composition—a masterpiece of

Jeweled Crowns, Mineralized Kingship

Figure 21 St. Wenceslas Chapel, Prague, Cathedral of St. Vitus, 1350s–1373. Photo: Petr Bonek / Alamy Stock Photo.

insignificant. As a further indemnification for subtracting something even temporarily from the treasure of heaven, the crown had to be returned to the canons, protectors of the royal dignitas, by

goldsmithing freighted with imperially sized min-

sunset. The reliquary housing Wenceslas’s skullcap

eral votive offerings.

was displayed in the chapel located near the cathe-



Politics and piety bled into Charles’s most

dral’s south entrance facing the palace complex.

diverse artistic enterprises. They explain his formal

It has not survived. A Gothic statue of the saint as

provision to store the crown, when not in use

well as a multistoried tabernacle and a polychrome

during coronations and other festive ceremonies

neo-Gothic shrine now fill the richly decorated

that required the fulsome assertion of royal power,

space, consecrated in 1367 (fig. 21).41

on a golden bust reliquary of St. Wenceslas. While



the transferal of crowns from the secular to the

listed royal saints to nurture national sentiments,

religious sphere is attested since Carolingian times,

Charles made a concerted effort to secure the

Charles’s directive that he and his successors were

status of something like a state cult for Wenceslas,

to lease this one from the cathedral chapter seems

who was his distant Přemyslid ancestor, martyred

without precedent. Neither was the rental fee

in the early tenth century. A rich tomb, financed

40

Well aware of how other kingdoms en-

Gothic Regal Materiality

59

by taxes levied on the silver mines of Kutná Hora

gems and forty-two miniature pearls on Charles’s

(Kuttenberg), was to be its centerpiece. That well-

crown. Although the document is silent on this

intentioned, if calculated political, goal turned

point, these two Caroline gamaus likely were recut

out to be short-lived, and a few years after its

Roman sardonyxes.43 A well-preserved example in

creation, the funerary memoria was dismantled,

the British Museum shows how a Roman diadema-

its riches sold to generate the cash needed for

tus could be reformatted into a medieval coronatus

the campaigns waged against the “schismatic”

without much trouble (fig. 22). Named after the

Hussites. Fortunately, a detailed description, part

nineteenth-century father-and-son collectors,

of an inventory redacted in 1387, preserves in

the handsome Blacas Cameo is a three-layered

words every minutia of the tomb’s overabundant

stone, measuring five inches in length.44 It shows

décor, without a doubt the crowning achieve-

an ageless Augustus in white against a variegated,

ment of the king’s mineral patronage. Along

sepia-colored background. With the head rendered

the roof, carved religious figures alternated with

in sharp profile, the emperor’s naked, godlike torso

historical heroes, while on the two exposed sides,

is turned ever so slightly to reveal the strap of a

the Virgin, the Evangelists, saints, and scenes of

belt-sword and the aegis embossed with the head

martyrdom fleshed out its broader meaning as a

of the Gorgon, wide-eyed and petrifying. In order

Bohemian lieu de mémoire. More than a thousand

to update the ancient portrait, the medieval glyptic

pearls, gemstones, and votive jewels magnified the

artisan exchanged the original cloth band for a

stony container’s visual impact while impregnat-

metallic diadem. Unconcerned by the visible traces

ing it with otherworldly radiance, royal charisma,

of that substitution, he did not bother to remove

and mineral virtus. On top of the front panel,

the fluttering ties. Executed in the flowery style

a gem-rimmed jewel portrayed a human head,

typical of early fourteenth-century metalwork,

which in all likelihood means that it was a reused

the narrow circlet on the carved head accommo-

Roman imperial intaglio, reinterpreted as Christ.

dates nine baby stones. Some were replaced in the

A mélange of jewels and single stones eased the

eighteenth century, but the toy cameo carved with

transition from that cresting element to a Hand of

a bare putto head that is staring at us must date to

God emerging from a jeweled sleeve. The inven-

the late medieval revision. It reads like a playful

tory even notes that its middle finger wore a large

image within an image.

diamond ring. Further down on the central axis,



a large topaz led the gaze to the central imago of

mise-en-scène at the St. Wenceslas Chapel as well.

St. Wenceslas, presumably a gilded, richly jew-

Visually and materially, the gem-encrusted tomb

eled relief. Finally, a row of five cruces gemmatae

responded to the surrounding walls, blending its

inserted along the lower edge served as a salvific

message of sacrifice with a triumphal march of

platform for the tomb’s sponsors, Charles and his

inlaid mineral crosses along the lower perimeter.

third wife, Anna of Schweidnitz (d. 1362). They

As both a security measure and a historicist nod

were present in two signature “images in cameo.”

toward the ancient Romanesque rotunda erected

So skillful was the lapidary artist that he man-

by Wenceslas on the selfsame spot, Charles and

aged to fit no fewer than thirty-one miniature

his architects opted for a muscular wall treatment,

42

60

Jeweled Crowns, Mineralized Kingship

Attention to semantic resonances steered the

relieved by few windows and a gracefully uplifting ribbed vault. As a result, the glowingly material space sits in deliberate aesthetic tension with the diaphanous Gothic choir that Peter Parler, the great German architect who succeeded Matthew of Arras, was building during the same years just around the corner.45 The chapel’s program brought together references to the Bohemian past with invocations of the Heavenly Jerusalem, hence a square plan, an altar dedicated to St. John the Evangelist, and the adoption of a foundation of precious stones, set a few years after the chapel’s completion. The eye-level configuration of 1,345 pieces of softly reflective agate, amethyst, carnelian, chalcedony, chrysoprase, and jasper presents a stately succession of cruces gemmatae that converge above the altar in a painted Crucifixion group flanked by images of the praying imperial couple.46

Analogous ideas underpin Charles IV’s

most breathtaking project, yet another ambitious synthesis of Passion piety and gem enthusiasm: Karlštejn Castle. On an outcropping not far from Prague, the castellated “Charles-stone” pays homage to earlier namesakes as well as to himself (fig. 23). It was restored to Romantic perfection in the nineteenth century, down to the stout tower

Figure 22 Blacas Cameo of Augustus, ca. 20–30 CE, circlet added in the fourteenth century, restored in the eighteenth century. Threelayered sardonyx, 12.8 × 9.3 cm. London, British Museum, Inv. 1867,0507.484. Photo: The Trustees of the British Museum.

that lords over a tiered collage of living quarters, chapels, and defensive apparatus. If this conforms to the archetype of forbidding feudal architecture,

chapel of St. Wenceslas, at Karlštejn they were

its interior tells a different story. The hauntingly

stowed away in a spacious niche carved into the

beautiful Holy Cross Chapel, consecrated in 1365,

wall directly above the altar opposite the entrance.

accommodates a tightly protected and yet expan-

That spatial arrangement facilitated the objects’

sively visionary environment that served as the

continuous absorption of divine virtus so that,

emperor’s private chapel and repository for the

once replenished, they could discharge their duty

imperial relics and regalia (fig. 24). Whereas in

of protecting the royal majestas and participate in

Prague Cathedral the Bohemian crown jewels

legitimating displays. Charles very much needed

were kept in a guarded chamber located over the

the assistance of demonstrative gestures and things

47

Gothic Regal Materiality

61

Figure 23 Karlštejn Castle, Czech Republic, 1348–57. Photo: Erich Lessing / Art Resource, New York.

it provoked. When in 1350 the “imperial signs”— crown, orb, scepter, Holy Lance, and reliquary cross—were finally handed over to him, Charles

62

endowed with an evidential value. His imperial

reneged on his promise to transfer the objects to

election had been anything but smooth. He had

a Reichstadt, either Nuremberg or Frankfurt.48

managed to secure the support of the prince-

Prague—his capital—was to be their new home.

electors and the political factions they represented

A grand parade modeled after a Roman imperial

only by shelling out significant sums of money.

adventus welcomed the sovereign regalia alongside

Not incidentally, this effort led to the abandon-

reliquaries of national significance. Winding its

ment of the Jewish communities that he had at first

way through the streets of Prague, the procession

protected, leaving them vulnerable to expropria-

eventually came to rest in the central square as a

tion and an easy target for mob violence fueled

crowd-pleasing, consensus-building event hence-

by the Black Death and the anti-Semitic hysteria

forth repeated every year.49

Jeweled Crowns, Mineralized Kingship

Figure 24 Holy Cross Chapel in the Great Tower of Karlštejn Castle, ca. 1360–65. Photo © Genevra Kornbluth.

that adorn the rest of the chapel.50 Originally, thin slabs of milky topaz and resinous amber sealed off the windows, letting natural light gradually dissolve into the mellow lambency created by five pyramidal oil lamps that were lowered from the ceiling with the help of pulleys. Whether the row of iron spikes that line the wall below the incrustations served as candle holders or not has been a matter of some debate. In any case, the aureate vault, studded with Venetian glass globes, refracted every glint into an ever-changing kaleidoscope of impermanent perceptions. Even artificial light, timed visits, and crowds have not robbed the modern viewer of a sense of rapture upon entering Charles’s chapel, of feeling awed by the way its luminous rustle harmonizes assertive materiality with mystic dematerialization. Similar to the slightly later ornamental arrangement at the St. Wenceslas Chapel in the cathedral, more than 1,700 irregularly shaped slices of different types of rocks line the Holy Cross Chapel’s lower register. Gilded stucco serves as their unifying background, and it additionally broadcasts in the austere language of emblems and heraldry— Figure 25 Holy Cross Chapel, detail of lower wall, Karlštejn Castle. Photo: Profimedia.CZ a.s. / Alamy Stock Photo.

monograms, crowns, roses, lilies, bees, imperial eagles, Bohemian lions—a message of ownership and lineage (fig. 25).51 The stones, fitted together like pieces of a martyrial jigsaw, form thirty-nine crosses.52 They were cut from violaceous sheets



64

Except for that annual showing, the impe-

of amethyst, rubescent jasper, umber chalcedony,

rial res quasi sacrae were not accessible. The Holy

and dusky red agate, which was mined in and

Cross Chapel was off-limits to anyone but the

around Ciboušov in the Erzgebirge. The Ore

king, a restriction that allowed Charles to pray

Mountains, stretching between Bohemia and

solo under the watchful eyes of Christ, the Virgin,

Saxony, were then under the control of the Crown

and 129 saints and prophets drawn with earthy

of Bohemia, as was adjoining Silesia, the only

realism by the talented artist known as Master

European purveyor of chrysoprase. Describing

Theodoric. His painted “living stones” (1 Peter

these stones as semiprecious, as is often done, is

2:5) have tended to overshadow the “dead” stones

anachronistic. Cut and buffed to perfection by

Jeweled Crowns, Mineralized Kingship

teams of imperial polishers, the slabs that line

when removing the crown from the head of his

Charles’s chapels were, according to medieval

most beloved saint and putting it on his own, and,

mineralogical understanding, fully precious.53

finally, when drinking from one of his many hard-

Visually complex and discursively plurivocal,

stone cups (see fig. 49), the Holy Roman Emperor

the microcrystalline quartzes functioned at once

could anticipate that the stones would shield

as a synchronized evocation of celestial regions,

him from enemy forces both within and without.

regional geology, and national identity.

Unfortunately, no lapidary can be ascribed to the



patronage of Charles IV. A manuscript, written

The mineralization of the Holy Cross Chapel

went beyond the wall treatment. Gemstones

and illuminated in northern Italy, that gathers a

originally sealed the now empty cavities hollowed

beautifully illustrated atlas of the stars and several

out in the frames that cradle Theodoric’s saints.

unillustrated and abridged lapidaries has recently

Each of these receptacles held a relic, making

been reassigned from Charles to his ill-fated

one to wonder if the semitransparent plugs were

son Wenceslas (d. 1419).55 Since no inventory of

meant to prevent a hurried dispersal of miracu-

the emperor’s personal collection survives, its

lous virtus and ensure its slow dissemination

volume and content remain a matter of conjec-

into the surrounding space instead. Charles IV’s

ture. However, it is reasonable to assume that the

profoundly felt mineral piety (as Anton Legner

Roman, Byzantine, and medieval gemstones in

aptly called it) went further still. It was expressed

his possession were of a comparable quality to

in a splendid gem-rimmed cameo affixed to the

those he showered on reliquaries, several of which

central boss in the nearby chapel of St. Catherine,

have escaped destruction.56 One catches a pass-

its prophylactic powers forever protecting the

ing glimpse of his lithic passions when reading

oratory’s praying users. Back in the Holy Cross

that during the 1355 trip to Rome for his imperial

Chapel, plain ovular stones dangled from the

coronation, he seized the opportunity not only to

ogival arcade that rises above the grille separat-

venerate famous relics but to replenish his stock

ing the anteroom from the sanctuary proper. As

of exotic animals, gold, jewels, pearls, and “other

much an aerial mineral exhibit as a screen of vir-

noble things.”57 While it is well known how Charles

tus, it symbolically touched the king with divine

went to great lengths to obtain sacred matter, this

grace every time he crossed from this world into

information, contained in an official letter written

his own stone-lined celestial city.

by the imperial chancellor Jan of Středa, indicates

54

that he was moved by the same determination when it came to satisfying his desire for mineral A Crown “Very Beautiful and Rich”

riches and other tangible rarities.

Twenty-three years after the Roman trip,

Like other medieval rulers, Charles IV would

Charles, accompanied by his eldest son, left Prague

have put trust in “virtuous gems” as a source of

for Paris. Though only sixty-two, he was gout-

royal charisma and talismanic protection. When

ridden and had to endure the exhausting journey

repairing from the noise of the secular world to

on a litter. Still, that effort proved too much, and

the reflective privacy of the Holy Cross Chapel,

he died a few months after his return. The occasion

Gothic Regal Materiality

65

brought to her new home as part of the trousseau. If so, we would have another example of “decorative” elements pressed into service as a meaningful act of communication.

Paris itself had nourished the city-building

ambitions of the Bohemian king. It shaped his vision of a modern capital, an active court life, and an intellectually oriented kingship. Scholars long ago recognized that the jewellike Sainte-Chapelle in the central royal palace on the Île-de-la-Cité was foremost on Charles’s mind when he seeded his own places of worship. The comparison makes his decision to replace the translucent medium of stained glass with an impenetrable mineral Figure 26 Crown of Bohemia, detail of top with sapphire cross-shaped reliquary etched with a Crucifixion, ca. 1344–47 (reworked in the 1370s). Prague, Cathedral of St. Vitus. Photo: Erich Lessing / Art Resource, New York.

envelope even more telling. A French model also inspired Charles’s crafting of a new coronation ordo, and French crowns did the same for his own coronation crown.58 True to the principle of a “set of objects of a specific kind,” there never was a

66

for the French trip was a state visit, and its primary

single French coronation crown.59 Among several

goal was political. Then embroiled in the Hundred

entrusted to the care of the abbey of Saint-Denis,

Years’ War, France was eager to secure impe-

the Sainte Couronne (Holy Crown) was the focus

rial support in its efforts against England and its

of particular veneration. Its name derived from

monarchs’ claims to the French throne. Personal

a spine of the Crown of Thorns that was inserted

meanings and memories flavored the visit, too.

in a compact gem-reliquary affixed on the front.

Charles knew Paris well, since he had been reared

Like Blanche of Valois’s girdle, the gem, identified

at the French court with his coetaneous nephew,

in sources as either a ruby or a red jacinth, had ac-

the future Charles V (d. 1380). Blanche of Valois

companied Princess Anna Iaroslavna in 1051 when

(d. 1348), the woman who would become his first

she left Kiev for Paris to marry King Henry I.60

wife, belonged to the same cohort. When the

After Louis IX acquired the Crown of Thorns for

young French bride moved to Prague in 1334, she

an astronomical sum during the troubled after-

may have integrated the Luxembourg family quite

math of the sack of Constantinople in 1204, it

literally through physical incorporation into the

steadily rose in significance to attain the status of a

Bohemian crown. The two intersecting filigreed

national holy object. Imitating Byzantine imperial

arches that give it a closed form were most likely

practices of doling out bits and pieces of the True

a product of an early fourteenth-century Parisian

Cross to allies and potential allies, the French put

workshop (see fig. 20). It has been surmised that

the Crown of Thorns, kept in the Sainte-Chapelle,

they were recycled from a half-girdle that Blanche

to the same use. Charles IV was one of the

Jeweled Crowns, Mineralized Kingship

beneficiaries of this pious parceling out, receiving

end, his visual absorption was such that it made

two spines from his nephew, the future Charles

him exclaim he had never before seen “so many

V, in 1356. One was deposited in a reliquary,

noble and rich precious stones together.”63 The re-

the other, authenticated by an inscription (“De

markable elision between the gems and the crown

corona domini”), came to rest in the small gold-

is the same as in Walther von der Vogelweide’s

framed sapphirine cross that extends the crown of

poem, each indicating an inverse relationship

Bohemia heavenward at its apex (fig. 26). Ideally

between objects and materials than the one we are

suited to the Bohemian monarch’s deeply felt

generally willing to entertain. New in the present

Christomimetic sensibility, the cerulean reliquary

iteration is the emphasis on the contemplation of

container, etched with a Crucifixion of Byzantine

jeweled art as a moment of intense royal pleasure.

facture, would remind the king that his anoint-

Jewel contemplation might come across as a trivial

ment and coronation had effectively refashioned

occupation. For the medieval ruling class, it was

him into an imago Dei.

nothing of the sort: the display of mineral assets



represented a high point of competitive princely

During his Parisian stay, the Holy Roman

Emperor visited the Sainte-Chapelle and Saint-

sociability.64 Christine de Pizan says as much in

Denis, both rich repositories of jeweled arts,

her official biography of Charles V, finished in

reliquaries, liturgical instruments, and royal

1404. The celebrated first professional woman

insignia. At the abbey, after praying, hearing mass,

writer relied on the Grandes chroniques for the 1378

and visiting the royal tombs, the chair-bound but

visit, including the episode concerning “the very

mentally alert imperial visitor asked to see its ex-

beautiful and rich crown.” Elsewhere, she describes

ceptional collection of relics. Modern descriptions

how after a midday siesta, the French king would

of the state visit never fail to mention this episode

spend time “with his most intimate companions in

but typically omit its secular counterpart: Charles’s

pleasant diversions, perhaps looking at his joyaulx

equally ardent desire to view crowns and joyaulx,

or other treasures.”65

a term denoting both small items of jeweled art



The same event received extended verbal and

and unmounted stones. He enjoyed an even more

visual treatment in a meticulously curated copy

intimate encounter with another crown shortly

of the Grandes chroniques for which Charles V

before embarking on the strenuous return trip.

commissioned additions covering his own reign.66

From the Grandes chroniques de France, the official

While the crown contemplation episode did

annals of the French kingdom, we learn that the

not make it into the program of illustrations,

French king had sent a “very beautiful and rich

one miniature offers a fair substitute in the way

crown” to the pleasure castle of Beauté outside of

it dwells on the meeting of mineral substances,

Paris where the Bohemian party was keeping quar-

visual experiences, and the body of the sovereign

ters. Hennequin (Jean) du Vivier, the king’s official

(fig. 27). It commemorates the gift exchange that

goldsmith and creator of the stunning regalia, was

took place between the two reigning relatives dur-

invited to come along. When the emperor laid

ing the final parting.67 A youthful-looking Valois

eyes on the object he had yearned to see, he “held

Charles, pictured in a blue cloak bestrewn with

it and beheld it for a very long time all over.” By the

fleurs-de-lis, is offering a conspicuous ring to the

61

62

Gothic Regal Materiality

67

mentioned in the text with easy-to-spot red-tinted stones. Whoever decided on that substitution would have been aware of the ruby carbuncle and its reputation as an intensely brilliant stone—a mineral present perfectly suited to the ideology of luminous sovereignty.

Charles V “the Wise” was not a ruler who

can be accused of indulging in frivolous occupations. A pragmatic monarch who preferred pen to sword, he assembled a private library at the Louvre of unequaled size and breadth. His holdings in gem-enriched objects were comparable in quantity and quality. Between crowns, circlets, and chaplets, he owned fifty-odd items, some commissioned, many more acquired and inherited. An inventory redacted one year before his premature death in 1380 at the age of forty-two describes many of these objects with care, confirming the preeminence of “the large, very beautiful, and best crown” so intensely admired by Charles IV. Reaffirming the primacy of the stones, the semilegal document itemizes every one of them in excruciating Figure 27 Emperor Charles IV and King Charles V exchanging gem-set rings, in Grandes chroniques de France, Paris, before 1379. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS fr. 2813, fol. 479r. Photo: BnF.

detail, starting with those mounted on what it tellingly calls the “master fleuron.”68 In a late work, the well-informed Christine de Pizan revisited passages she had written some ten years earlier for Charles’s biography. She renewed sentiments of admiration for the king, mentioning how he wel-

68

Luxembourg Charles. Clad in an ermine-lined

comed merchants of luxury wares and supported

vermilion mantle and wearing the distinctive

goldsmiths, how he commissioned a new set of

hooped imperial crown, he bests the French offer

regalia and donated a hugely expensive ruby to the

with a countergift of two rings. Faithful to the text,

coronation crown kept at Saint-Denis. With regard

the image foregrounds the monarchs’ removal of

to Charles’s main crown, she now observed that

the gem-set rings from their fingers as a way to

it cost the treasury an “extraordinary” amount of

stress that the trading of objects simultaneously

money.69 When Christine wrote those words, “the

funnels royal charisma from one monarch to the

richest crown France had ever seen” was a severely

other. The visual loyalty ends here, however, inso-

wounded object. Mirroring the ruinous state of

far as the illuminator replaced the two diamonds

the French kingdom, the crown had started to be

Jeweled Crowns, Mineralized Kingship

dismembered, and many of its 152 balas rubies,

were to blame, the fate of medieval crowns was

56 sapphires, 309 pearls, and 56 diamonds were

the same as that experienced by the vast major-

in the process of being pawned. Charles V’s son

ity of secular jeweled artifacts: annihilation and

needed cash, and there was no more docile source

obliteration. Still, the few surviving crowns that

to tap than a richly jeweled but vulnerable object.

have been at the center of our attention prove that

Charles VI had not only to pay the soldiers tasked

this artifactual category generated a richly layered

with keeping the English at bay but also to foot the

discursive tradition. Theologians, historians,

bill for the escalating costs of a civil war that was

jurists, and poets responded to the iconic regalia as

tearing his realm asunder. Unexpectedly, the slow

an embodied epiphany of sovereignty—a res quasi

obliteration of the priceless object provoked public

sacra. In the words of William of Malmesbury

outrage. The Parliament of Paris intervened, and

and Liudprand of Cremona, crowns weighed and

the king was publicly reprimanded for the way he

dazzled, literally and metaphorically. By helping

had mishandled this irreplaceable state treasure.

to craft the royal super-body (to use Kantorowicz’s

Equating Crown and crown, the official remon-

catchy formulation once more), crowns, more than

strance requested that the appropriate authori-

any other sign-thing, broadcast the king’s body as

ties do everything in their power to recover the

one that is luminously numinous, at once personal

dispersed pieces. Extra taxes were levied in the

and transpersonal, human and mineral. Nowhere

hopes that the king would be able to buy back the

is that agenda more arrestingly enunciated than

fleurons from the money lenders, several of whom

in the conspicuous “master stone.” Set right above

were the same Italian merchant-bankers who had

a ruler’s brow, this single jewel sums up the deep

sold the gems in the first place. But the success

affinity between royal subjects, regal objects, and

was short-lived, and a few years after repairing the

prestigious materiality. Having reached a good

crown, Charles VI, faced with renewed military

understanding of precious stones as integral to the

expenditures, had to pawn the gems for good.

performance of kingship, we leave the arena of po-

70

litical and ethical virtues in order to venture into Even when conditions were less bellicose, when

the surprising world of physical virtutes.

changes in taste rather than the violence of history

Gothic Regal Materiality

69

Pa r t   I I

Lapidary Knowledge in Word and Image

T

he analogizing thinking that turned a

preserved, and perpetuated in an unbroken chain

crown’s “master stone” into a mineral

of lapidary writing. Whether composed in an early

expression of royal authority was never

medieval monastery or by a late medieval court

spelled out explicitly. By contrast, when medieval

poet, lapidaries celebrate mineral action from the

commentators coined concepts such as “virtuous

pragmatic to the occult and from the corporeal to

stones” and “gems of virtue,” they ostensibly did so

the mental. Lithic virtues were treated like a given,

on the assumption that moral and physical traits

something as self-evident as miracle-producing

share the same language of radiance. In negative

relics and healing plants, all proof of God’s endur-

iterations, that same relationship was couched

ing presence in creation and of creation’s continual

in terms of a blunt opposition. When Eusebius

usefulness to humankind. As such, the powers of

of Caesarea dismissed precious stones as “use-

gems were out-of-the-ordinary behaviors belong-

less and worthless stuff,” he did so as a form of

ing to the preternatural order of things.3

social critique, pitching inner assets against flashy



external ornamentation. But when he asserted that

the almost limitless archive of actions involv-

precious stones are able neither to provide “defense

ing stones. After briefly retracing the history of

against evil” nor “relief from illness or escape from

the lapidary genre, it returns to the question of

death,” he maligned the reliance on stones’ inner

kingship by highlighting how royal figures, both

workings. This sort of principled attack against

real and invented, were enlisted to enhance the

stones’ virtutes resonated throughout the Middle

intellectual profile of the lapidary enterprise.

Ages. It colored Der Stricker’s satire of mineral

Identifying how the mineral and the visual inter-

agency, including the naive assumption (as he saw

acted remains, however, the primary objective,

it) that the Vienna crown’s profusion of gems could

even as we switch from the use of precious stones

shower political blessings onto its owners. Equally

on three-dimensional objects to their depictions in

obvious is the fact that the German poet was, like

illuminated manuscripts. Following a summary of

Eusebius centuries earlier, intimately conversant

lapidaries’ attention to the chromatic identities of

with lapidary lore. He took evident delight in

the objects they lovingly inventory, the discussion

ridiculing those who applaud a stone because

shifts to virtutes that implicate the sense of sight, as

its tugent consists in attracting grass blades and

much in vision-sharpening as in vision-distorting

keeping them suspended in midair, those who

variants with magical implications. Chapter 6 then

quell their thirst with another stone when a slug

deals with the art of sigils and, more specifically,

of wine would do just as well and more cheaply,

with the sustained controversy that such “stones

or those who rub a smaragdus over a defective

signed with figures” provoked among thirteenth-

eye at the risk of injuring it. Only building stones,

century natural philosophers.

1

The aim of the present section is not to survey

millstones, and whetstones merit the label “pre-



cious” on the grounds that they are truly useful.2

published in 1922 under the catchy if mislead-

It should be noted that the book Joan Evans

However sincerely militant, such gemmophobe

ing title Magical Jewels was the last attempt to

sentiments did little to curb the general enthu-

write a general history of the medieval lapidary.4

siasm for stones’ admirable actions, described,

The illustrative tradition, represented foremost

by illuminated manuscripts, is even more virgin

we shall be examining invalidate the basic prem-

territory. If lapidaries’ visual explorations were a

ise that images participated in the production of

stop-and-go affair and never attained the level of

scientific knowledge. In that role, the manuscript

output enjoyed by illustrated herbals and bestiar-

age bequeathed to the print age a fundamental

ies, they are not missing altogether. And while

certitude: that geological bodies deserve the same

the fortunes of many visual propositions ebbed

kind of visual attention than other features of

and flowed, those touching on mining iconog-

creation. Admitting mineral subjects into the rep-

raphies stayed steady throughout the Middle

resentational repertoire would prove to be a lasting

Ages, sustained by roots that reached back to the

innovation, one that shaped the history of Western

Greco-Roman substratum of the lapidary genre.

visuality as much as the adoption of charismatic,

Nor does the streamlined style and sometimes

because gem-loaded, objects.

less-than-polished artistic quality of the miniatures

74

the mineral and the visual

Lapidary lore was an exceptionally long-lived form of knowledge. Its cardinal assumptions, descriptive organization, and core data can be traced back to Vedic India, the ancient Near East, and Pharaonic Egypt. In turn, that millennia-old foundation supported Hellenistic, Roman, and Alexandrian geological narratives from which the medieval lapidary took off. Now often considered a repetitive and uninspired genre, the lapidary carried

Chapter 4

A Royal Pursuit

considerable intellectual weight from the late antique to the early modern periods. The shared Greco-Roman heritage explains why texts originating in the Latin, Byzantine, Hebrew, and Islamic cultural spheres are more alike than they are different. That closeness grew even stronger once the West started to assimilate Arabo-Aristotelian learned writings in the second half of the twelfth century. By the next century, Western metaphysics and physics, including the science of stones, experienced a seismic change of which Albert the Great’s De mineralibus represents a high point.

For all its theoretical novelty, Albert’s summa

on matters mineral includes a more or less standard lapidary. That alone would be a measure of the genre’s success, but the fact that medieval lapidaries survive in hundreds of manuscripts provides the best evidence of their considerable appeal. Of various lengths and literary merit, books on stones were authored in Latin by erudite churchmen and in the vernacular by equally accomplished poets and translators. Some met with great success whereas others turned into textual dead ends, not making it past a single transcription. Unstable as any other textual artifact before the introduction of printed books, handwritten lapidaries have come down to us in versions bare and glossed, interpolated and abridged, authentic and corrupt, prosaic and poetic. Since medieval intellectual habits actively encouraged the recourse to auctoritates,

devolved into the semantically anodyne epistites. Meanwhile, a charitable misreading redirected the liparea to release acrid fumes to protect wild beasts, making it opposite to the stone listed in the Natural History, which flushed the poor animals from their hiding places.1 Such discrepancies notwithstanding, few changes affected lapidaries’ core information. With unperturbed regularity, they outfitted mineral objects with the same assortment of virtutes, inviting each new generation of readers to discover the Figure 28 Two varieties of chelidonius, in Bartholomaeus Anglicus, Livre des propriétés des choses, trans. Jean Corbechon, France, 1450–75. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS fr. 22532, fol. 227v. Photo: BnF.

same repertory of what stones are capable of doing.

Books on stones appealed to textual communi-

ties of the most diverse kinds, and we know of readers who were monks, nuns, friars, clerics, teachers, doctors, lawyers, merchants, and nobles.2 Kings,

we have entries in Bartholomaeus Anglicus’s

however, frequented them with particular assidu-

thirteenth-century De proprietatibus rerum that

ity. The patronage of actual rulers found a perfect

repeat verbatim what Isidore of Seville had written

match in the healthy number of fictional monarchs

in the Etymologies in the early seventh century.

that populate the pages of medieval lapidaries to

It would be a mistake, however, to conclude that

escort a body of knowledge that likes to flirt with

lapidary writing was a sclerotic tradition. There

the occult and is unafraid to court the magical.

always was room for some innovation, be it in the

Lithic virtues returned the favor. They elected kings

form of reorganization, rewording, or more often

to be the recipients of their actions more often than

than not, omissions and additions. When sources

any other social group. Recall the orphanus on the

were contradictory, arbitration was needed, and

Vienna crown that, according to Albert the Great,

when they were incomplete, new data was required.

was able “to preserve the royal honor.” Or take the

Finally, when authoritative pronouncements were

saphirus limned in Marbode’s Liber lapidum as the

deemed too problematic, especially when sugges-

“gem of gems,” fit for a regal hand. From the same

tive of unacceptable magical manipulations, sup-

text, medieval audiences further took away the idea

pression, pure and simple, might be the best course

that the black variety of the “Swallow stone” chelido-

of action. All this does not imply that the lapidary

nius can appease royal anger—a class-specific virtue

enterprise was immune to mechanical repetition

if there ever was one (fig. 28).3

and textual slippages caused by distracted scribes. Quite aside from maddening inconsistencies in the spelling of stones’ names, casual mistakes could

New Beginnings: Marbode’s Liber lapidum

well morph into undisputed facts during the long

76

history of manual transmission. Pliny’s Vulcanic

As a prime example of a fictitious royal endorse-

hephaestitis (“stone of Hephaestus”), for example,

ment and, more important, as the most cited,

Lapidary Knowledge in Word and Image

copied, plagiarized, adapted, glossed, and trans-

“refulgent” adamas, a stone lacking from both

lated lapidary until the birth of modern geology in

the High Priest’s breastplate and the Heavenly

the sixteenth century, the just-mentioned “Book

Jerusalem. Readers looking for mineral features

of Stones” offers a good starting point. Marbode

veneered with didactic lessons would be disap-

(d. 1123) composed the poetic tribute to precious

pointed. Instead, they were thrust into a world in-

stones and their wonder-working powers a few

habited by stones that make smart and handsome,

years before his consecration as bishop of Rennes

protect travelers, assist lawyers, provide healings,

in 1096. A gifted writer, the Angevin churchman

lessen pain, lend a helping hand in childbirth,

also authored one of the first medieval treatises

unmask adulterous wives, spot thieves, provoke

on the art of rhetoric. Erotic arts were not foreign

solar eclipses, multiply crops, and a host of addi-

to him either. Though he would condemn those

tional human-friendly actions. The description of

as immature juvenilia in his later years, his early

the smaragdus can serve as an example of how the

poems play more than once with sexually explicit

Liber lapidum prioritizes the performative over

material, same-sex love not excluded. His lapidary,

the edifying. The intensely green stone, such as

neither too succinct nor too prolix, describes the

the one set in a thirteenth- to fourteenth-century

looks and actions of sixty stones in a seductive lan-

ring in the British Museum, refreshes weary eyes,

guage sure to flatter anyone with literary preten-

uncovers hidden secrets, and discloses future

sions—anyone, that is, who was able to detect an

events (fig. 29). When handled with reverence, it

eagle under “the bird of Jupiter” and understand

increases wealth and grants persuasive oratori-

that Alcides and Hercules are the same person. In

cal skills during pleas; when used as an amulet,

another, short poem, Marbode lets us know that

it cures semitertian fevers and alleviates bouts of

he was partial to the material legacy of the clas-

epileptic seizures. If that were not enough, the

sical past as well. There, he laments the damage

emerald is able to avert tempests, moderate the

incurred by an ancient “sapphire” (meaning lapis

rash tempers of men, and squelch their lustful

lazuli) vase, bought at a Roman market, on its way

passions.6

to where he was staying.5



4



Even so, the churchman’s decision to bracket

Most unexpected is how Marbode was

unafraid to lead his audience into provinces rife

out biblical citations and reject allegorical in-

with wizardry, hydromancy, nigromancy, and,

terpretations was a bold move, especially when

shadiest of all, necromancy.7 As an educated cleric,

considering that he wrote at a time when demand

he would be cognizant of the dangers of ventur-

for religious objects rich with gems had reached a

ing into such a noetic twilight zone. No better

peak. Marbode handled liturgical vessels covered

imprimatur, then, than that of God himself: “To

in stones on a daily basis. Moreover, as an emblem

no one, it should appear doubtful or false that the

of his status, he wore an episcopal ring, presum-

powers of gems are divinely implanted” reads one

ably set with a large stone, as surviving examples

of Marbode’s several assurances.8 That formulation

indicate. His only concession to religious refer-

was not Marbode’s invention; it had Orphic and

ences was to start his list with fourteen out of the

Hermetic origins, as did the corollary that stones

sixteen biblical stones, but not before recording

are more potent than herbs. Late antique lapidary

A Royal Pursuit

77

Contrary to the hodgepodge arrangement of the original Damigeron-Evax, the Latin version adopted a more user-friendly alphabetical organization. It is tentatively attributed to Constantine the African (d. before 1099), the fascinating Carthaginian-born, self-made doctor who ended his days at Montecassino, where he translated Islamic scientific literature into Latin, single-handedly preparing the terrain for the twelfth-century surge in translations.10

Although Marbode drew on this chief source

with the broad-based assurance of an expert compilator, he toned down its most outrageous magical features. This customizing may have been the work of the specific copy of the DamigeronEvax he used, which may also have shifted the sole authorship onto Evax. Doubtless a made-up historical character, this King Evax of Arabia claims Figure 29 Gold ring set with an emerald, thirteenth to fourteenth century. London, British Museum, AF.1811. Photo: The Trustees of the British Museum.

to have written the Liber lapidum in response to a pressing request issued by Tiberius Claudius Nero (d. 42 BCE). Eager to master the categories, names, colors, origins, and powers of precious stones, the Roman emperor wanted a reliable guide to the

writings served as a major source of inspiration,

arcana of lapidary knowledge. Marbode (or the

though Marbode ended up, like so many medieval

copy he used) pretends to be merely reproducing,

writers, creating novelty from tradition. One work

in an abridged and versified form, the epistolary

he specifically resuscitated is known to specialists

exchange between the two lofty personages. The

as the Damigeron-Evax. The modern convention

ruse was simple and effective: introduce unortho-

of hyphenating the two names indicates that this

dox content under the mutual tutelage of ancient

occult-enamored lapidary resulted from the fusion

wisdom and royal consent. Yet Marbode must

of two unrelated texts authored by individuals who

have felt that this precaution was not sufficient to

may have been thus named. Alexandria was their

preempt criticism and consequently restricted the

likely birthplace, because that vibrant cosmo-

circulation of his work to a group of three un-

politan center of the late antique Mediterranean

named cognoscenti. Perhaps this was an homage

witnessed an efflorescence of esoteric literature,

to the Trinity, though the Hermetic reference, for

including several magically inflected lithika.

which three was the numerus sacer, must have

Equally worth noting is the fact that Marbode was

been equally on his mind. Deriving from that same

one of the first to use a newly available translation.

marginally accepted intellectual belief system is

9

78

Lapidary Knowledge in Word and Image

the insistence that lapidary knowledge must be reserved for a coterie of initiates because they know how to handle “occult virtues.” Spreading information about stones’ inner workings to untutored multitudes (turba) amounts to diminishing “the majesty of things” themselves.11 Of course, there is considerable irony in this timeworn sapiential trope, since the “classified” information contained in the Liber lapidum would be divulged well beyond an elite circle of three handpicked readers. Marbode’s tactical deceit of hiding behind Evax proved so effective that his paean to lithic virtues circulated more often than not under the proxy name—or simply as “the lapidary.” That is the case with an abridgment included in a massive medical miscellany compiled in Bologna around 1300, now known as the Paneth Codex (fig. 30).12 Of a diminutive scale, the initial E focuses on the

Figure 30 Nero and Evax exchanging a precious stone, Paneth Codex, Bologna, 1300–1326. New Haven, Yale University, Harvey Cushing / John Hay Whitney Medical Library, MS 28, p. 1197. Photo: Medical Historical Library, Harvey Cushing / John Hay Whitney Medical Library, Yale University.

crowned and enthroned Evax, who is passing an enlarged, intensely green stone to an attendant. Though straightforward, the gesture has broad im-

decades of the thirteenth century that exemplifies

plications, suggesting that the exchange of mineral

the rising interest in making learned subject mat-

riches is closely bound up with the dissemination

ters available in the vernacular. In an even more

of lapidary erudition and that both deserve royal

innovative move, the book enlists visual illustra-

backing.

tions to extend its goal of linguistic adaptation.



Comprising a few miniatures only, the abbreviated

Until new evidence comes to light, this unas-

suming initial is the only known visual transcrip-

pictorial program reserves one to gems framed as

tion of Marbode’s epoch-making lapidary (aside

objects of wealth, taste, and learning. On folio 86

from a few marginal doodles). Neither the Latin

recto of the copy now in Vienna, Sidrac, attired

original nor the many adaptations and transla-

like a Master of the Arts, flips a large plate toward

tions—into Italian, Spanish, Provençal, Danish,

the picture plane, allowing viewers to peruse its

Irish, and Hebrew plus twelve prose and verse

content: a collection of tiny but well-cut stones

renderings in French—found patrons who were

(fig. 31).13 The professor’s spindly finger stretches

interested in complementing the text with picto-

out according to the pictorial convention for a

rial interpretations. The Marbodian model did,

speech act. It also doubles as a conceit to tether the

however, stimulate visual activity in works it more

transfer of knowledge to a concrete exchange of

or less directly inspired. One is the Livre de Sidrac,

things. King Boctus, the beneficiary of Sidrac’s lap-

an encyclopedic compilation composed in the last

idary expertise, seems delighted. Babylonian as he

A Royal Pursuit

79

Figure 31 Sidrac instructs King Boctus on the nature of precious stones, in Sidrac, Livre de Sidrac, northern France, late thirteenth century. Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, MS 2590, fol. 86r. Photo: ÖNB, Vienna.

expansive replies to Boctus’s clipped queries.14 Facts and factoids accumulate, confronting readers with issues grave and trivial: “Has God always existed, and will he do so forever?”; “When the body dies, what becomes of the blood?”; “Why do

80

may have been, he converted to Christianity after

men like to look at women’s legs?”; “Do mur-

imbibing the enlightened information conveyed by

derers take on the sins of their victims?”; “Why

his interlocutor, an omniscient descendant of the

has God chosen to make some rich and others

biblical Noah.

poor?”; and so on for more than 1,200 questions



and answers (in the long version of the text).

Like Marbode’s decision to ventriloquize

the conversation between Evax and Nero, this

Thematic clusters coalesce around topics pertain-

work’s anonymous author pretends that he is

ing to theology, medicine, law, geography, flora,

merely transcribing the words that the philoso-

fauna, and the science of stars, a very fashionable

pher and the king exchanged centuries earlier.

intellectual pursuit in Gothic Europe. Early critics

Cleverly mimicking the improvisational nature

objected to Sidrac’s astrological leanings, but they

of a discussion, the result is an ambling (when

had little effect, judging by the many surviving

not rambling) text that strings together Sidrac’s

manuscripts, translations into other vernaculars,

Lapidary Knowledge in Word and Image

and a spate of early printings. Minerals, too, find

Of Stars and Stones: King Alfonso X’s Lapidario

their place in the work’s encyclopedic coverage. After a generic initial query—“How many kinds

If we are to trust the Livre de Sidrac’s retracing of

of precious stones are there, what are their vir-

its own provenance, the precious text ricocheted

tues, and where are they found?”—the text segues

across the Mediterranean, bouncing off Syria,

into a lapidary comprising twenty-four stones,

Spain, Tunisia, Sicily, and France before landing,

a number ostensibly chosen to match the hours

centuries after its creation, in Toledo. The self-re-

in a day. While Sidrac acknowledges Solomon,

flexive prologue invited historical figures to mingle

Moses, and St. John as legitimizing figures, its

with fictive characters, cementing the reality

author culled much of his information straight

effect. Frederick II of Hohenstaufen, worthy heir

from an Anglo-Norman adaptation of Marbode.

to Boctus’s uncompromising search for enlighten-

And when he did not copy, he created out of

ment, is among the former, actively participating

whole cloth. By mixing and matching standard

in the text’s long transmission history. The mention

lapidary fare, he came up with exotic-sounding

of Toledo is not indifferent either. In the twelfth

mineral novelties, cramif, turquemaf, vermidor,

century, that city spearheaded translation efforts

and four more, surely arousing the interest of

of Arabic philosophical and natural philosophical

his numerous readers. They discovered, among a

literature into Latin. It appears in the same nodal

wealth of intriguing mineral actions, that kings

position in an exceptional lapidary created at the

like to behold a topaz because it reminds them

behest of Frederick’s Spanish cousin, Alfonso X,

of the promise of a never-ending crowned life—a

the likely first owner of the crown of Castile and

promise evoked by the “gems of virtue” dur-

unyielding legislator in matters touching on

ing the coronation rite. In the manner of Der

mineral possessions. The Lapidario presents itself

Stricker and other socially sensitive commenta-

as a work written by a certain Abolays in ancient

tors, Sidrac’s creator also relativized the value of

Chaldea, home to “men more highly learned than

gemstones, recognizing that the logic of supply

anywhere else in the world.”18 Echoing the Livre de

and demand is at work: “There are many very

Sidrac and other works that deal with more or less

precious and worthy stones, but we could well do

forbidden knowledge, this lapidary’s imagined tex-

without them. Except for one manner of stone,

tual peregrination progresses along the translatio

which is necessary to us, and without which we

studii routes from East to West, eventually landing

would suffer much. That is the grinding stone. It

in the house of a Toledan Jew, where it was found

serves everyone, and so it is the most worthy and

by the knowledge-hungry Infante Alfonso. Or to

useful of stones. If it were scarce, it would be as

be more precise, by his erudite physician, Yehuda

valuable as precious stones.” Even so, the Livre

ben Moshe Cohen (d. 1272), the man who would

de Sidrac recommitted itself to the “virtues and

translate the precious text into Castilian with the

miracles” found in precious stones. Implanted

assistance of a Christian cleric and fellow astrono-

by God, their weakening is wholly due to human

mer named Garci Pérez.19 The prologue says that

wickedness, and anyone who questions their ef-

the two translators spent nine years on the project,

ficacy is flatly committing a sin.

from the year when Alfonso’s father, Ferdinand III,

15

16

17

A Royal Pursuit

81

“conquered the kingdom of Murcia” (1243) to two years after he had “conquered the city of Seville”

or relied on an existing Arabic compilation.

(1250). It is clear that one of Alfonso’s earliest acts



of patronage endeavored to insert itself between

guage was another smart move. It made the works

two key episodes in the Christian Reconquista.

he sponsored more widely available than would



have been the case with renderings into Latin,

The unprecedented program of translations

Alfonso X’s choice of Castilian as the target lan-

from Arabic literature that the same monarch

although the political dimension of the language

pursued over the length of his reign has justifi-

that signified Christian supremacy would not be

ably been seen as the cultural arm of the military

lost on his contemporaries. Here and there, patriotic

offensives undertaken under his leadership. As

pride colors the Lapidario. No other lapidary refers

an intellectually inclined ruler, he recognized that

to Spain as a breeding ground for worthy stones—

Islamic scientific writings were the preeminent

except, that is, the Etymologies written by Isidore

purveyor of innovative insight and exciting, even

of Seville, the other Spanish author who hailed

revolutionary, information. Worth mentioning

the land as “very rich in its abundance of precious

in our context is the Picatrix, a translation of an

stones.”22 Other indigenous ethnographic accents in-

erudite Arabic treatise on astral magic that would

clude the comparison of a stone’s shape to a tortilla.

go on to serve as a semiclandestine grimoire well

Such traits were sure to please a ruler who is also

into the Renaissance. Whatever political mo-

remembered for commissioning the first general

tivation undergirded Alfonso’s resolute backing

history of Spain. Yet, as appropriate for a Chaldean

of the transfer of knowledge, in the aggregate,

text, the Lapidario cultivates the oriental roots of

his program of literary sponsorship represents

the stones it catalogs almost to excess. References

a high point in the exploration of the available

to Eastern locales—Arabia, India, Mount Sinai, the

Aristotelian, pseudo-Aristotelian, and Arabic

Nile, Yemen, and the like—complement the stones’

corpus on philosophy, medicine, the physical

evocative Arabic, Chaldean, and, to a lesser extent,

world, and the occult sciences. In the case of the

Greek names, sometimes listed with their equiva-

Lapidario, scholars have detected the layered pres-

lents in Latin or Castilian.23 Açufaratiz, kolloquid,

ence of several works. Aside from drawing on an

gebtratifez, tellinimuz, and 356 more words with an

elusive lapidary erroneously taken for Aristotle’s

esoteric ring yield an incantatory lexicon that offers

creation and astrological writings of Alexandrian

linguistic proof of knowledge formulated in distant

origins, Cohen and Pérez made copious use of

times and faraway lands. At the same time, and

the De materia medica. This hugely influential

much like Marbode’s stratagem of reserving lithic

herbal of encyclopedic scope, written by the Greek

expertise for an erudite audience with the appropri-

physician Pedanius Dioscorides (d. ca. 90 CE) who

ate intellectual disposition to handle stones’ occult

served in the Roman army, became the backbone

properties, the Alfonsine lapidary wants its readers

of Byzantine, Latin, and Islamic pharma-botanical

to be conversant with astronomy and medicine for

writing up to early modern times. It accounts

the proper absorption of its content.

for the Lapidario’s pronounced litho-therapeutic



orientation. What remains unresolved is whether

is only the longest and most heavily illustrated of

20

21

82

the two translators selected the texts from scratch

Lapidary Knowledge in Word and Image

What now goes under the name of Lapidario

four lapidaries gathered in a single codex housed at

stones by color, physical attributes, and origins,

the library of the Escorial. Executed in Alfonso’s

one will be able to separate genuine from fake

royal scriptorium, perhaps several decades after

specimens. Best of all, one will know when stones’

the translation was completed, the manuscript

virtues are at their ripest.27 By depicting the en-

is notable for its elegant script as well as for its

throned king-scholar immersed in conversation

imaginative visual apparatus. There is a delightful

with two students, one of the initials that opens

profusion of decorative elements, ranging from

the Escorial volume celebrates Alfonso X’s direct

historiated initials and expansive line fillers to

involvement in this project (fig. 33).28 As they filled

margins that teem with vegetal ornamentation,

in the architectonic A, the makers of the splendid

minute animals, grotesque heads, and clownish

book would certainly be sensitive to the fact that

composite beings. The Lapidario belongs to the

their king shared the same initial with Abolays

small group of astrological lapidaries organized ac-

and Aristotle. The stature of the latter, nicknamed

cording to the rhythms of the zodiac and under the

Prince of Philosophers, had reached mythic pro-

tutelage of celestial bodies. Twelve full-page illus-

portions by the mid-thirteenth century, when a

trations clarify that internal structure. Reminiscent

sizable portion of his voluminous output was new-

of a majestic Gothic rose window, each focuses

ly available. Especially acclaimed were Aristotle’s

on a naturalistically rendered zodiacal figure

libri naturales, which explained, with exceptional

in the central medallion, like the ram for Aries

theoretical rigor and descriptive care, the mechan-

(fig. 32). The outer band is populated by a serried

ics of the physical universe and the diverse classes

procession of thirty angels, one for every degree.

of its inhabitants. Along with genuine works came

Christian Aristotelians considered them to be the

a nebulous mass of pseudoepigraphic writings on

mediating agents between the Prime Mover and

riskier topics. Dealing with astrology, magic, divi-

the planetary spheres, which in turn influence our

nation, and other forms of controversial knowl-

own world. That view is programmatically spelled

edge, they circulated under Aristotle’s name while,

out in the prologue: “It is said that all things under

in reality, they were products of the reception

the heavens move and act in accordance with the

history of works composed in the Islamic world,

movement of the celestial bodies, because of the

themselves often based on Greek literature.29 The

virtue they receive from them, as was ordained by

Lapidary of Aristotle and the authoritative mir-

God, who is the first virtue whence all other things

ror for princes Secretum secretorum (Kitâb Sirr

24

25

receive theirs.” We will return to the issue of star-

al-’asrār) belong to this group. Perhaps originating

powered stones, but for now it suffices to observe

in the same mid-ninth-century Levantine milieu,

how the Lapidario’s diagrams recapitulate the

they entered into the mix of sources used by the

imbrication of the supraterrestrial and sublunary

redactors/translators of the Lapidario.30

26

spheres while insisting on the generative alliance



between the mineral, the visual, and the astral.

above the initial A can similarly be interpreted



The prologue also articulates what one can

as a fusion of Abolays, Alfonso, and Aristotle—a

expect from the mastery of lapidary knowledge.

personified palimpsest of different temporalities

Besides acquiring the conceptual tools to identify

and geographies. Open book in one hand, finger

The lecturing master in the opening miniature

A Royal Pursuit

83

Figure 32 Opening page for Aries, in Alfonso X, Lapidario, 1250–75. El Escorial, Library of the Royal Monastery of San Lorenzo, MS h-I-15, fol. 11r. Photo: Patrimonio Nacional, Biblioteca del Real Monasterio de San Lorenzo de El Escorial.

Figure 33 Aristotle lecturing; initial A showing Alfonso supervising the work of translation, in Alfonso X, Lapidario, 1250–75. El Escorial, Library of the Royal Monastery of San Lorenzo, MS h-I-15, fol. 1r. Photo: Patrimonio Nacional, Biblioteca del Real Monasterio de San Lorenzo de El Escorial.

iterative representational negotiations. As signifiers

lifted in a speech act, the teacher is addressing an

Mining for Knowledge

of “Chaldea,” they certified for contemporary viewers lapidary knowledge as an intellectual activity of the highest order.

all-male audience. While the lecture hall is unmistakably Gothic, much else is an expression of the

After the opening quires and in between the twelve

convergence between Christian and Islamic visual

grand zodiacal pages, 360 painted initials (one for

cultures. The sages’ pointed hats, long beards, and

each of the thirty degrees that make up the twelve

cross-legged positions, though borrowed from

signs) unfold the Lapidario’s central proposi-

the iconography of majlis (private gatherings), are

tion of classing geological objects as products of

less indicative of unilateral appropriation than of

physical exertion and acts of intellection alike.31 To

A Royal Pursuit

85

Only once a month is this formula interrupted to show fishermen on the Mar Tenebrosa (North Sea) in the act of collecting their precious catch from the waves, although these scenes are placed, like all others, after two medallions that house a star on the ascendant or in midheaven, when the powers of the stone are at their maximum strength.

Each textual entry reiterates the same weav-

ing together of stones and stars. For the nimiuz depicted on the left-hand column, the aspirant lithic expert could read: “Two stars, the first one and the first of the four toward the north, located on the base of Capricorn’s tail, have power over this stone. The stone receives its power and virtue from these stars and works best when both stars are in midheaven.”32 It is, in fact, instructive to take in the entry from the beginning: The stone which belongs to the twenty-seventh degree of the sign of Capricorn is called nimiuz. Its color is green, it is strong and hard to break, and it is rough to the touch. It is found on the island of Çarandin. This stone is used to sharpen iron implements and to polish stone, Figure 34 Nimiuz and caoz, Capricorn 27 and 28, in Alfonso X, Lapidario, 1250–75. El Escorial, Library of the Royal Monastery of San Lorenzo, MS h-I-15, fol. 83r. Photo: Patrimonio Nacional, Biblioteca del Real Monasterio de San Lorenzo de El Escorial.

for it sharpens all manner of iron implements and polishes all stones very easily. In size, this stone is very large, so that in the land where it is found men use it to make pillars and also kettles and pots for cooking food, and bowls and goblets for eating and drinking. Everything

stress that joint action, the compositional template

placed in utensils made of this stone cooks fast

pairs a mature sabio with a young, scantily clad,

and with a small fire, and those who eat the

barefoot, and frequently bent workman (fig. 34). In

foods cooked in these utensils will be cured of

order to avoid monotony, the team of illuminators

hemorrhoids and of arthritic gout. By nature

modulated the details of the figures’ actions, poses,

86

this stone is cold and dry.

costumes, and colors. They varied the settings, too,

The Alfonsine lapidary’s offerings in virtutes is

letting viewers’ eyes glide over generic landscapes,

impressive. If those center primarily on medi-

riverine environments, snake-infested deserts, nar-

cal problems, magical uses and humbly practical

row caves, and the occasional architectural feature.

tasks are not missing, as the description of the

Lapidary Knowledge in Word and Image

nimiuz illustrates. The text’s numerous references

contrast to the beautifully drawn plants, copied

to artistic endeavors are particularly unusual for

and recopied from the late antique to the late

the genre. For example, it mentions a stone that,

medieval periods and even making their way into

when ground, produces the strong glue favored by

printed editions. The Munich volume, dated to the

bookbinders, one that yields the shiny black ink

tenth century, is one of the few witnesses of the

preferred by scribes, one that refines gold, and yet

earliest Old Latin translation and the only known

another that can be used to etch hard surfaces.

example to feature a mineral section outfitted with



Another characteristic of this work is the

a full set of illustrations. Much used, the battered

bland expressions concerning the stones’ origins:

quarto-sized book was produced in a south-

the above example simply says that the nimiuz

ern Italian monastic scriptorium, most likely in

“is found on the island of Çarandin,” and many

Naples, Salerno, or a monastery-rich area nearby.36

other entries are content with the same unspecific

It compensates for its poor material quality by

information. Why, then, an unparalleled picto-

treating viewers to a multitude of Lilliputian sil-

rial cycle that focuses on mineral extraction? So

houettes of plants, animals, and vessels filled with

unique was that choice that neither prior nor

quicksilver, vinegar, honey, wines, and other liquid

subsequent illustrative enterprises, whether in

and granular substances (fig. 35). For the entries on

Latin, Byzantine, or Islamic manuscripts, offer

stones proper, the monastic illuminator settled on

anything approaching the Escorial codex’s unified

generic-looking pebbles, nestling them between

approach that privileges, in one historiated initial

the lines of irregular Beneventan minuscule

after another, the harvesting of lithic objects.

script. Not so generic, however, to exclude a few

33

An explanation may lie in the historical fact that

particularized mineral objects, among which the

metallurgy and mining ranked high in the Spanish

lapis magnetis, which holds an iron tool captive, is

industrial landscape from Roman times onward.

easy to spot (fig. 36). Laconic as these shapes may

For Castile, in particular, this industry represented

be, they inaugurated a novel way to think about

a significant source of revenue. Alfonso X would

mineral objects, uncoupling them from narrative

have appreciated his kingdom’s mineral resources

contexts and presenting them to viewers raw, as it

and had, himself, a good working knowledge of

were. The opening scene to the section on stones

extractive technologies. However, while he may

is of a transitive nature, and the kind of image that

have given the initial impetus for his lapidary’s

the makers of the Lapidario took as their inspira-

unique decorative program, the mining iconog-

tion (see fig. 35, bottom).37 Clearly based on a late

raphy was not his invention. The royal illumina-

antique model, the quarrying of cadmia (which

tors systematized existing, if isolated, examples

designated a variety of mineral and metallic sub-

of images of this theme. Known occurrences

stances “from Cadmos”) mounts an energy-laden

are few, but one fittingly accompanies an early

telluric spectacle. The miner wears an implausibly

copy of Dioscorides’s De materia medica. In that

elegant outfit and wields the tools of his trade with

text, wines and minerals represent a little over 10

dramatic determination, a few stones already flying

percent of the total number of remedies. These

through the air. In an article originally published

substances were seldom given visual existence, in

in 1952, Kurt Weitzmann observed that Byzantine,

34

35

A Royal Pursuit

87

Figure 35 Mining for cadmium, in Dioscorides, De materia medica, book 5, Benevento or Naples, second quarter to late tenth century. Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm. 337, fol. 146v. Photo: BSB, Munich.

Islamic, and Latin manuscripts of the ninth and tenth centuries, often produced in a climate of cultural exchange, redirected ancient scientific illustration, based on a strict separation between the diagrammatic and the narrative, toward “a more humanizing realm.”38 The Munich Dioscorides was one of his examples, although I would amend that statement by including pictures unrelated to humans. Until proof to the contrary, that manuscript should indeed be credited with containing the first geological “portraits.”

Adaptable and resilient, the mining scene’s

Nachleben stretched all the way into the age of printing. As a result, the fundamental insight that lapidary knowledge cannot be divorced from the labor-intensive process that makes its objects visible in the first place continued to inform ever more realistic iterations made after the year 1000. A telling example among many is found in a sumptuous fifteenth-century volume, signed by the scribe Jean du Ries, that the English king Edward IV (d. 1483) bought while in exile in Bruges (fig. 37).39 The landscape has expanded considerably compared to the brief contextual notations of the Munich Dioscorides and Alfonso X’s Lapidario, though the empathy felt for the anonymous workers in

Figure 36 A magnet and other stones, in Dioscorides, De materia medica, book 5, Benevento or Naples, second quarter to late tenth century. Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm. 337, fol. 157v. Photo: BSB, Munich.

their back-breaking encounter with the rocky matrix seems much the same. Such a reading may be overly generous and anachronistic. Just

quickly reached a broader audience than the rank-

as defensible is the view that this image’s fastidi-

and-file Franciscan preachers for whom it served

ous aestheticizing was intended to make a socially

as a handy reference tool. Minimally illustrated

reviled job (which mining was) visually acceptable

at first, it bore copious visual fruits in the French

to aristocratic eyes.

translation commissioned in 1372 by Charles V



of France, owner of the “very beautiful and very

King Edward’s bucolic vision of extractive

labor heads book 16 on stones and metals in the

rich crown” discussed in chapter 3. Titled Livre

French rendering of Bartholomaeus Anglicus’s

des propriétés des choses, this book belongs to the

De proprietatibus rerum. Redacted in the second

literary endeavors that embraced the vernacular-

quarter of the thirteenth century, the Latin original

ization and pictorialization of scientific knowledge

40

A Royal Pursuit

89

Figure 37 Miners at work, in Bartholomaeus Anglicus, Livre des propriétés des choses, book 16, 1482. London, British Library, MS Royal 15 E III, fol. 102r. Photo © The British Library Board. Figure 38 | opposite Savants disserting about stones, in Bartholomaeus Anglicus, Livre des propriétés des choses, book 16, France, 1450–75. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS fr. 22533, fol. 241r. Photo: BnF.

of literacy, painted representations were instrumental in reinforcing encyclopedias’ overarching aim of surveying, classifying, and organizing the bewildering diversity of creation. In many different styles and modes of expression, they conveyed how natural objects, whether animal, vegetable, or mineral, are visually intriguing. Although it is impossible to say whether other copies of the Livre

90

in the later Middle Ages. More than thirty extant

des propriétés mustered the energy to come up

illuminated copies attest to its success, foremost

with a pictorial equivalent for each described item,

among the elite book-buying public.41 Their

there is now only one surviving volume enriched

iconographic programs are sometimes innovative

with a complete cycle of illustrations. Owned by

and always varied, even when limited to a single

the French royal official Tanguy IV du Chastel

opening image for each of the book’s nineteen

(d. 1477), the book features 1,200-odd small frames

sections. Frontispieces were like posters that

that portray, in rapid succession, parts of the

introduced content while easing—alongside tables

human body and a plethora of diseases, climatic

of contents, indexes, rubrications, running titles,

phenomena, animals, regions of the world, plants,

and other paratextual elements—the consultation

and, most exceptionally, stones.42 One hundred

of bulky volumes. Beyond enhancing technologies

two of those, mostly rendered as precious jewels

Lapidary Knowledge in Word and Image

pinned to an imaginary wall, complement the ver-

took on more sharply defined iconographic con-

bal descriptions (see fig. 28). In keeping with this

tours in a few copies of the Livre des propriétés des

emphasis on the preciousness of precious stones,

choses. One formula consists in scattering stones

the frontispiece to book 16, left at the level of an

across a hillock inserted behind a lecturing teacher

under-drawing, lines up dozens of well-cut jewels

and his audience while an alternate setting opts

on an elaborate display shelf. The most frequent

for a fancy gem-set cloth stretched out behind a

choice for the frontispiece—a picture conceived to

group of debating savants (fig. 38).43 Incongruous

simultaneously announce and summarize the en-

but ingenious, either of these conceits foreground

suing content—was neither this volume’s solution

the mineral as nature and art combined, at once

nor the mining scene but the teaching of theoreti-

seductively physical and yet also primed to inspire

cal expertise. Often generic and used for other

thought.

sections of the same book with little variation, it

92

Lapidary Knowledge in Word and Image

A

n unexpected number of interventions credited to stones involve the sense of sight. That priority comes as less

of a surprise when considering that premodern descriptive endeavors had to pay close attention to the ways in which objects register to the eye. Lapidaries were no exception: they resorted to color as a primary tool to identify, sort, and, in some cases, classify the items in their inventory.1

Chapter 5

Optical Mineralogy and Lithic Magic

Only in the seventeenth century would colors’ diagnostic ability become suspect, as chemical probes and crystallographic analyses started to rummage through the hidden faces of matter. Led by the microscope, new instruments and analytical protocols replaced the poetry of surfaces, revealing unsuspected connections. Who could have predicted that the ruby and sapphire are the same mineral, respectively the red and blue variety of corundum (aluminum oxide)? That is not to say that the chromatic architecture of the medieval lapidary did not allow for its own kind of interior journey. And it is one that spilled over, as we shall see, into stones’ performative constitution.

If color was believed to arouse, through

sympathetic resonance, stones into action, then the ability of virtutes to entangle with human vision and imagination seemed just as plausible. Though lithic powers ran the gamut of phenomenological experiences, those that sprinkled a bit of pixie dust into our perceptual apparatus are well represented. Lapidaries promote stones that make us see what should be unseeable (such as demons and the dead) and, in an opposite movement, that conceal what should be seeable (such as bestowing invisibility). What sort of pictorial transcriptions these optically rich processes generated is one question this chapter seeks to answer. It does so by looking at late medieval illuminated manuscripts and their

imaginative solutions—aesthetic and conceptual—

visual cycles in which diagrams of celestial bodies,

to the challenges of visualizing minerals and their

planetary spheres, the seasons, the twelve Labors

formidable actions.

of the Months, and the like are joined by narrative scenes of a religious nature, including a detailed cycle of the life of Christ.3

Chromatic Identities and Taxonomies



Matfre went about the business of coordi-

nating the verbal and the visual conscientiously, One of the pleasures of medieval mineral iconog-

directing readers more than once to the accompa-

raphy is its willingness to accommodate radically

nying picture for complementary information. Of

different styles of representation. In contrast to

note, too, is the connection between the diagram

the aforementioned image in the Livre des pro-

of precious stones and that of planetary spheres.

priétés des choses, which opted for perfectly cut

Depending on the copy, some folios might inter-

gemstones of an aqueous tint, a miniature created

vene in between the two images, but in the Harley

a century or so earlier portrays the same objects

manuscript, they share the same folio, recto and

in a starkly abstract fashion: white, red, green, and

verso. This physical layout telescopes stones and

yellow disks streaked with riotously contrasting

stars in a way that is thematically, if not stylistical-

colors (fig. 39). The extraordinary full-page image

ly, similar to the Alfonsine Lapidario. Matfre starts

belongs to the Breviari d’amor (Breviary of love),

the short lapidary section by underscoring how

a poem in Occitan, almost 35,000 verses long,

gemstones are “useful, precious, of great beauty,

composed between 1288 and 1292. Nothing much

naturally full of great virtues, and bringing remedy

is known about its author, Matfre Ermengaud

to many diseases.”4 At the end, he reemphasizes the

(d. 1322/23), except that he practiced law in the

idea that stones’ powers derive from God and that

town of Béziers in southern France.2 His only

human sin must be blamed for their weakening.

known foray into the sphere of literary creation

The Breviari’s abbreviated lithic collection consists

took the shape of courtly love poetry spliced into

of fifteen specimens, each outfitted with vertuts

the encyclopedic genre. In the Breviari, love acts

culled from the Marbodian canon. Its selection is

as a universal ligament that connects the human

based on the two biblical lists, though it accommo-

to the divine, earth to heaven, women to men, and

dates five items found in neither the High Priest’s

stones to stars. Writing directly in the vernacular,

breastplate nor the Heavenly Jerusalem. The mag-

Matfre belongs to the group of writers who sup-

net may have retained Matfre’s attention because

ported the idea of making scientific knowledge

it was a perennial favorite of lapidary knowledge

available to an audience no longer sufficiently

for the way it packs formidable forces into nar-

literate in Latin to digest challenging content and

row confines. The diamond, ruby, and carnelian

unfamiliar concepts. More unique was his decision to develop the Breviari from the start as a coherent word-and-image unit. Fourteen extant codices, created between the 1320s and the 1420s, attest to that commitment, since they feature extensive

94

Lapidary Knowledge in Word and Image

Figure 39 Medley of disk-stones, in Matfre Ermengaud, Breviari d’amor, Toulouse, 1350–75. London, British Library, MS Harley 4940, fol. 44r. Photo © The British Library Board.

were in the ascendant in his time, and so was the

prototype, one is tempted to say, of the modernist

turquoise, which had started to percolate into

grid famously characterized by Rosalind Krauss

Western texts after first migrating from Arabic and

as “antinatural, antimimetic, antireal.”7 In such a

Persian lapidaries in the early thirteenth century.5

crypto-structuralist logic, it matters little that the



Of a very different visual sensibility than the

carbuncle (in position 1, read from left to right, top

Harley manuscript is the corresponding image in

to bottom) is of a barely more intense hue than the

a volume executed about 1400, also housed in the

ruby (9) and carnelian (14) because what needed

British Library (fig. 40). It maintains the decision

underscoring was their affiliation with the class

to present the stones as flat disks, a convention

of red stones. By the same token, they differ from

that Matfre must have adopted for the inaugu-

the duller amethyst (6) and from the slate-colored

ral, no-longer extant autograph. As far as I am

group represented by husky diamans (2), the fer-

aware, only one other work opted for the same

ruginous magnet (5), and the dun-colored bericlis

choice: Beatus of Liebana’s commentary on the

(10) (which is strange because medieval lapidar-

Apocalypse. Given the structuring presence of the

ies consistently describe the beryl as a pale-blue

two biblical mineral sequences in the Breviari, the

stone). Saffrony estopacis (12), soft grayish-blue

borrowing was appropriate, though Matfre may

chalcedony (15), and lapis-blue safirs (4) are easy to

have intended it specifically as a tribute to that

recognize. Distinctive, too, is nigrescent emerald

masterpiece of Spanish art. The depiction of the

(8), practically as dark as the sardonyx (13) pic-

Heavenly Jerusalem’s twelve foundation stones in

tured immediately below. Vivid turquesa (3) exhib-

the Morgan Beatus offers a close analog (fig. 41).

its a crackly facture, as if the artist wanted to evoke

It so happens that pure chance brought the two

spiderweb turquoise crisscrossed by dark veins of

manuscripts together in the collection of Henry

limonite. That prescient chromatic hyperrealism

Yates Thompson (d. 1928). One likes to imagine

further accommodates a luxuriously golden ach-

that the discerning Victorian devotee of medieval

ates flecked with red dots (11) as well as a willfully

manuscripts recognized affinities between the

striated iaspis (7), red filaments dripping, Pollock-

two volumes, down to the near-identical muddy

like, over the stone’s green skin. Compared to the

red used somewhat incongruously for purple

monochromatic phalanx, these last three speci-

amethyst. In the Beatus miniature, each stone ap-

mens propose an eminently seductive exercise

pears in conjunction with one of the twelve doors

in visual mineralogy, one that oscillates between

that lead into the celestial city and, by metaphoric

arbitrariness and nonarbitrariness, observation

extension, with one of the Apostles. There is no

and imagination.

locative reference whatsoever in the Breviari. In all



fourteen copies, the circles, arranged either verti-

fluent with the mainstream lapidary tradition had

cally or horizontally, are left to pulsate on the page

a say in the making of the Yates Thompson manu-

in splendid isolation. Reminiscent of a watercolor

script, accounting for the accuracy of its chro-

box, the Yates Thompson Breviari picture diagram

matic notations. Matfre nowhere mentions colors,

lends itself particularly well to a sophisticated

perhaps holding words inadequate to the task, and

play of correlations, repetitions, and contrasts—a

instead directs readers to the pictorial portrayals.8

6

96

Lapidary Knowledge in Word and Image

In all likelihood, an artistic advisor who was

Figure 40 Fifteen disk-stones, in Matfre Ermengaud, Breviari d’amor, Catalonia, ca. 1400. London, British Library, MS Yates Thompson 31, fol. 65r. Photo © The British Library Board.

Although Pliny changed the organizational principles for the section on gemstones several times, he relied on color as a constant point of reference. Tellingly, color notations occur twice as often in book 37 on gemstones than in book 35 on the art

His silence represents a deviation from conven-

of painting.10 Inspired by his model’s taxonomy,

tional lapidary literature and its richly nuanced

Isidore of Seville elevated color even more, opting

color vocabulary. Numbering several hundred

to employ it as the most appropriate classificatory

lemmas, Pliny’s Natural History and the Lapidario

tool to organize the minerals listed in book 16 of

of Alfonso X demonstrate what one could call the

his Etymologies. He also introduced changes that

rigorous virtuosity of surface description, a se-

betray evolving chromatic priorities between the

mantic labor that forced both works to stretch and

late antique and the early medieval periods. For

expand the existing Latin and Castilian lexicon.

example, he retained purple stones but eliminated

9

Optical Mineralogy and Lithic Magic

97

Figure 41 Heavenly Jerusalem, in Beatus of Liebana, Commentary on the Apocalypse, Spain, ca. 945. New York, The Morgan Library & Museum, MS M.644, fol. 222v. Purchased J. P. Morgan (1867–1943) in 1919. Photo: The Morgan Library & Museum, New York.

the blue (cerulei) category, pushed white gems

based on the seven hues associated with the

ahead of fiery and golden ones, and gave the lead

rainbow.11

role to green rather than to red. All in all, those revisions converge toward the same goal, namely

• white: albus; candidus (bright and pure)

the foregrounding of the colors that match the

• yellow: citrinus (lemon); croceus (saffron); fla-

prestigious mineral triad of emeralds, “hyacinths,”

vus (blond); fulvus (tawny), as characteristic

and pearls.

of the hand-burning pirites12



98

Here is a brief tabulation of ubiquitous color

• red: ruber/rubeus; numerous nuances, such

terms found in lapidaries. Rather than adopting

as mineus (frank vermillion = vermeil in Old

the Etymologies’s idiosyncratic order, my chart

French), puniceus (orange or crimson), roseus

follows the scheme prevalent in the Middle Ages

(blush), rubicundus (ruddy), rufus (auburn)13

Lapidary Knowledge in Word and Image

• green: viridis, including its inflected forms, such as virens and viridescens14

and Trees, which is not to be found in Stones.”20 A few examples will suffice to illustrate lapidaries’

• blue: c(a)eruleus (sky blue), of which the third

omnivorous thinking by linking. The main variety

type of jacinth called venetus (Venetian blue)

of beryllus is not merely said to be of a blue-green

is the best incarnation; occasionally indicus,

paleness but is made to commune with the color

meaning from India

of seawater, an affinity sealed by the postmedieval

15

• purple: purpureus (reddish purple); violaceus (bluish violet)

• black: niger (shiny black); fuscus (dark brown)

term aquamarine. Greenish chrysolitus likewise blends earth and water yet manages to enliven its

16

pale complexion by adding, as the name implies, golden reflections or fiery sparks (versions dif-

17

fer). The galactides, gelacia, granatus, melichros, Clarus, lividus, and pallidus could be added to

onychinus, and prasius derive their names and

the list because these values (clear, leaden, pale,

thus something of their essence from milk, hail,

respectively) were treated on a par with hues, or al-

pomegranate seeds, honey, fingernails, and leeks,

most so. Similarly attenuated in intensity is grayish

respectively. Lapidaries’ analogizing habit even

glaucus tinged in yellow, green, or blue. Degrees of

affects how stones are apprehended by the sense of

transparency—from perspicuus to glasslike vitreus

taste, opening the door to a diversity of synesthetic

and bright perlucidus—also had an identifying

experiences. When licked and sucked, infused

valence, leading Thomas of Cantimpré to speak of

in cold liquids and steeped in hot concoctions,

a “translucent color” with respect to a particular

minerals provide gustatory sensations ranging

type of draconites.

from milk, myrrh, vinegar, and wine, all the way to



rotten fish.

18

Lapidaries’ descriptions prove equally agile in

recording changes in saturation (crassus, pinguis,



surdus, tenuis, that is, thick, fat, dull, and weak)

inner being and their outer appearance impinged

and registering surfaces that feel oily, airy, or

on other identifying features. Geographic origin

waxy. Stones with metallic glints qualified as aurei,

was one of them. A locus classicus was the Red Sea,

argentei, and rust-colored ferruginei introduce the

its shores littered with red stones. Makers of medi-

vast reservoir of similitudes, or what Jeffrey Cohen

eval world maps conflated water and earth, paint-

suggestively calls “emanative descriptions.” More

ing the entire expanse in red, either a vivid orange

than a matter of poetics, however, knitting ties

minium (red lead) or a scarlet vermilion (see

between the mineral kingdom and other natural

fig. 81, band at the center). Of all such essentializ-

orders answered the needs of a cognitive habit

ing chromatic reasoning, the example in Alfonso’s

trained to detect meaningful connections between

Lapidario of the tellinimuz, a red-dotted black

the most separate phenomena and disparate crea-

stone retrieved in the “Tierra de los Negros,” is as

tures. The Renaissance writer Camillo Leonardi

problematic as it is extreme (fig. 42). That same

(d. ca. 1532) expressed that universal kinship

place also yields the koloquid, a stone armed with

best when observing that “there is no color to be

the unnerving virtus of making those who hold it

found in Heaven, Air, Earth, Sea, Rivers, Herbs

feel as though they were being pelted with rocks.

19

The nonarbitrary relationship between stones’

Optical Mineralogy and Lithic Magic

99

More mutable than the previous specimen, its use

between the Megenberg copy in the municipal

as an ingredient for black hair dye nevertheless

library of Augsburg and the Paris Propriétés des

belongs to the same discourse of racialized geog-

choses, since both conceive of their stones as literal-

raphy. That said, entirely monochromatic mineral

ly precious, depicting them as mounted jewels (see

objects are in the minority. Triple-hued sardonyx,

fig. 28).23 An example is the pantherus on folio 349

a merger of red sard and black-and-white onyx,

recto (fig. 45). The powerful “Panther stone” (a cor-

encapsulates lapidaries’ partiality for colorful mix-

ruption of the Greek word panchrus, meaning all-

es. Anticipating the modern Dutch flag, it appears

colors) is affiliated with the group of opaline gems,

as a banded succession of red, white, and blue

the only mineral bodies to be fully polychromatic.

in a little-known volume of Der naturen bloeme

As is to be expected, the optallius also belongs to

(fig. 43). Today held in the University Library of

that category, described by Isidore as embellished

Leiden, the formally innovative book was cre-

with “the rather pale fire of the carbuncle, the

ated in the 1360s for a member of the IJsselstein

sparkling purple of an amethyst, and the glittering

family, perhaps a canon in the diocese of Utrecht.

green of a smaragdus, all glowing together with

Jacob van Maerlant had finished his “Flower of

a certain variegation.”24 One wonders whether it

Nature,” a free, versified translation of Thomas

is this derivative conceptualization of its coloring

of Cantimpré’s Liber de natura rerum, a little less

or simply a lack of supply that explains why opals

than a century earlier. With an original program of

seldom made it onto medieval objects. Perhaps it

marginal illustrations, the Leiden volume belongs

was the fault of lapidaries and the connection they

to the small group of manuscripts that pairs each

drew between the stone’s uncertain pigmentation

verbal portrait with a visual companion. It lines

and virtutes of questionable value. Sharpening the

up the stony objects as a hard-edged procession of

gaze of thieves while making onlookers hallucinate

circles, semicircles, ovals, squares, rectangles, and

their disappearance is one of them. Objectionable

diamonds, occasionally interrupted by more realis-

as that property may be, it is a fine illustration of

tic silhouettes: a point-cut diamond set on a ring, a

the complementarity of the mineral and the visual.

small heap of pearls, a tentacular and intensely red

Reactions toward the exacontalitus were likewise

coral (fig. 44).

mixed. Whereas Marbode deems it a great marvel



that, true to its name, the stone packs sixty hues

21

The German translation of Thomas of

Cantimpré’s encyclopedia also yielded a com-

into a small body, Albert the Great fears that the

plete cycle of illustration. Konrad von Megenberg

same chromatic compression might rattle our

(d. 1374), a cleric who taught in Paris, Vienna, and

nerves and result in tremulous eyes.25

Regensburg, finished the Buch der Natur in the late



1350s for the enterprising, art-loving Rudolf IV of

it comes to surface markings. They distinguish

Habsburg, Duke of Austria (d. 1365). Like other

between specks, spots, dots, and stars, from which

works already mentioned, the “Book of Nature”

derives the modern appellation “star sapphire.”

played a vital role in fostering the vernaculariza-

Even more evocatively, a stone may be covered

tion and visualization of knowledge in German-

with stigmata.26 Delving deeper into surface con-

speaking areas. One suspects a direct relationship

noisseurship, our texts ask diligent observers to

22

100

Lapidaries’ descriptions are punctilious when

Lapidary Knowledge in Word and Image

Figure 42 Tellinimuz, Aries 8, in Alfonso X, Lapidario, 1250–75. El Escorial, Library of the Royal Monastery of San Lorenzo, MS h-I-15, fol. 4r. Photo: Patrimonio Nacional, Biblioteca del Real Monasterio de San Lorenzo de El Escorial. Figure 43 Sardonyx to selenites, in Jacob van Maerlant, Der naturen bloeme, Utrecht (?), ca. 1366. Leiden, Leiden University Libraries, MS PBL 14A, fol. 137r. Photo: Leiden University Libraries.

note “belts” that edge certain specimens and learn to discriminate between lines straight and wavy, single and multiple, thick and thin. An expressive incarnation of a stone that bears such a graphic signature is the soft, acorn-shaped lapis judaicus. Shared between the herbal, the bestiary, and the lapidary, the whitish “Jews’ stone” looks as if tattooed with parallel lines or lettering. In the disenchanted prose of the modern world, the grooves and glandular shape reveal it to be the clublike fossil spine of an echinoid.27 A much-admired tourist souvenir from the Holy Land, specimens were brought home by Latin pilgrims and crusaders long before they entered Renaissance cabinets of curiosity as “mineral” wonders, nestling in the interstices between animate body and inanimate object. At the very least, they confirmed the artistry of nature, which, as lapidaries document, at times acted like a painter, at others like a sculptor

Figure 44 | opposite Borax to corallus, in Jacob van Maerlant, Der naturen bloeme, Utrecht (?), ca. 1366. Leiden, Leiden University Libraries, MS PBL 14A, fol. 131v. Photo: Leiden University Libraries. Figure 45 Pantherus, in Konrad von Megenberg, Das Buch der Natur, southern Germany, mid-fifteenth century. Augsburg, Staatsund Stadtbibliothek Augsburg, 2 Cod 497, fol. 349r. Photo: SuStb Augsburg.

or an engraver, but was always dedicated to crafting visually intriguing objects. four humors (body fluids) assumed to regulate human organs and minds.29 The ligurius offers Chromatic Lithotherapy

a poetic illustration of such chromatic agency. Number seven on the High Priest’s breastplate

Color reached beyond the surface of things.

and a frequent presence in the medieval min-

Folding physics into aesthetics, it touched the very

eral imagination, the “Lynx stone” belongs to

warp and weft of matter, prompting one author

the group of minerals incubated in the bodies of

to rate the opal as a stone for which “it is ytrowed

beasts, birds, fish, and reptiles. In contrast to the

that he [sic] hath as many vertues as hewes and

fully formed stones most animals shed, it is the

colours.” Crucially, this play between appearance

product of a liquid discharge, namely urine. The

and action could condition stones’ therapeutic

medieval lapidary and bestiary agreed, perpetu-

conduct. Because of the universal validity of the

ating a tale already mentioned by Theophrastus

principle of sympathy and antipathy, as well as its

(d. 285 BCE), Aristotle’s student who is considered

medical correlate that “all treatment is applied by

to be the founder of the science of geology in the

use either of opposites or of similarities,” yellow

West.30 From their descriptions, it emerges that

stones were tailor-made for tackling disorders

the proverbially keen-sighted animal, portrayed

caused by an excess of yellow bile, one of the

most often as a cross between a wolf and a spotted

28

Optical Mineralogy and Lithic Magic

103

Figure 46 Ligurius formed from the urine of a lynx, in a bestiary, England, ca. 1240–50. Oxford, University of Oxford, Bodleian Libraries, MS Bodl. 764, fol. 11r. Photo: Bodleian Libraries.

identification, since amber is a mineral susceptible to electrostatic charges when rubbed. Pliny worked with that information and dismissed the stone’s bladder-born feline provenance as nonsense. He correctly maintained that electrum and its variant

104

pard, buries its waste intentionally to withhold it

ligurius were of vegetable origin—a “liquid seeping

from prying human hands. Eventually, the mixture

from the interior of a species of pine”—and that

of earth and urine hardens into a beautiful gem

this tree is particularly abundant on the islands of

that cures jaundice and other diseases originating

the Northern Ocean (Baltic Sea).31 The Roman au-

in the lower body, from stomach upsets, vomiting,

thor’s sensible explanation gained no traction, how-

and diarrhea to constipation and painful urina-

ever, and both the lynx and its stony product went

tion. Its nature as a cold and transparent stone,

on to enthrall writers and readers throughout the

one, moreover, of a duskily flaming color—a fulvus

Middle Ages. Illuminated Romanesque and Gothic

somewhere between a brownish yellow and a car-

bestiaries regularly honor the beast, though few

buncular red—indicates that the “Lynx stone” cor-

went the extra step to validate the stone’s existence

responds to amber. Its ability to attract straw, bits of

as well.32 A richly illustrated mid-thirteenth-century

wood, and iron and copper shavings confirms that

manuscript created in a Salisbury workshop is an

Lapidary Knowledge in Word and Image

exception (fig. 46).33 Its regal lynx, framed by two swaying trees, is silhouetted against a blanketlike red rectangle embedded in a shimmering, highly burnished golden background. An egg-shaped ligurius conceals the animal’s left hind paw; for clarity’s sake, the stone is labeled while “linx” is written across the miniature’s upper frame. The illuminator even took pains to connect genitals and effluvia via three lines resembling flames, evidently wanting to affirm that an essential umbilical cord rather than a transitory act of micturition binds the mineral to its animal progenitor.

Wondrous in origin and endowed with useful

qualities, the ligurius was one of several stones that migrated from the discourse of natural history into the realm of creative fiction. As early as the mideleventh century, it appears in a scene of courtly gift-giving in the Latin prose poem Ruodlieb. The lynx, here a hybrid offspring of a wolf and a vixen, completes the gallery of luxurious commodities—

Figure 47 Haematites, in Jacob van Maerlant, Der naturen bloeme, southern Netherlands / Flanders, ca. 1285. Detmold, Lippische Landesbibliothek, Mscr. 70, fol. 134r. Photo: LLB, Detmold.

gold and silver, rich garments and weapons, hardy horses and exotic animals—destined for royal consumption. Proud of his expertise in lapidary knowl-



The principle of chromatic sympathy pow-

edge, the anonymous southern German poet took

ers numerous stones beside the ligurius. It seemed

a detour of some thirty verses to review a method

natural that red-colored, red-spotted, and red-

that forces the sublimation of urine into a precious

streaked specimens had been engineered to

stone. Animal cruelty is of no concern, since the

interface with blood, whether that translated into

poor lynx, taken captive and chained inside a barrel,

healing festering wounds, lessening over-abundant

is forced to piss after being given a good slug of

menses, or stanching blood.35 Predictably, the stone

sweet-tasting but strong wine. Should the wayward

that performs best in this regard is the “Blood

beast refuse to cooperate, the nasty treatment will

stone” haematites, an iron oxide still used in mod-

still prove effective, yielding a full bladder inside its

ern treatments for its superior styptic properties.

dead body. Either way, the fluid is to be collected in

One artist took on the challenge of representing

small vessels and buried for fifteen days. By a secret

this curative virtus by showing a man who is rais-

alchemy, the vile mixture of urine and dirt can then

ing an enlarged green stone toward his profusely

34

be expected to have crystallized into an intensely

bleeding nose (fig. 47). The image belongs to a

glowing gem, one so sublime that it may adorn

little-known book housed in the municipal library

queenly rings and, when large, kingly crowns.

of Detmold in North Rhine-Westphalia.36 Its visual

Optical Mineralogy and Lithic Magic

105

Figure 48 Amethystus, in Jacob van Maerlant, Der naturen bloeme, southern Netherlands / Flanders, ca. 1285. Detmold, Lippische Landesbibliothek, Mscr. 70, fol. 130r. Photo: LLB, Detmold. Figure 49 Quatrefoil amethyst cup, Prague (?), 1300–1375. Diam. 9.5 cm. Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Kunstkammer, KK. 1990. Photo: KHM-Museumsverband.

cycle, brimming with surprises, ends abruptly with

to near-transparency. The Holy Roman Emperor’s

this stone, and there is no indication that additional

intense piety would have made him relate such

images were planned. Though no Raphael, the

material transmutations to the regenerative bless-

illuminator deserves credit for doing something ap-

ings of spiritual intoxication. As a lapidary reader,

parently no one else did: transpose stones’ actions

he would have known that the amethystus inhib-

into visual realities. Whether this was the artist’s

its drunkenness, sharpens mental faculties, and

decision or not is impossible to determine. Guiding

represses negative thoughts. But as a gem lover,

directions are faintly visible in the margins of two

Charles must have appreciated the captivating

folios, implying the presence of an iconographic

optical show mounted by seemingly dead and yet

advisor who oversaw the program. Such notes

so obviously vibrant matter.

would normally be erased, but accident or inattentiveness preserved a few in this instance. The fact that the notes only concern color—ward (black),

Perceptual Artistry

wit (white), silver, and iser (iron)—confirms the essential role attributed to that quality in the creation

Medieval lapidary knowledge recognized that

of mineral identities. Never mind that the artist did

color is not a static, independent reality but exists

not always obey the prompt.

only in interaction with viewers and surroundings.



Stones’ phenomenological responsiveness explains

For efficiency’s sake, the Detmold illumina-

tor repeated the same compositional template for

why the nerizech in Alfonso X’s Lapidario, which

the amethystus, adding a young helper to pass the

at first looks like a banal pale-red object, produces

stone to the bald man seated on the ground, his

a near-pictorial sensory experience once hit by

face distorted by pain or illness (fig. 48; a mix-up

sunlight. Then, uncertain lines—as if “painted

in the layout places the image next to the entry

by a painter who doesn’t know how to paint”—

for the achates). Unsurprisingly, lapidaries tell us

come into focus.38 In mainstream lapidaries, the

that purple stones enjoy a particular affinity with

blue variety of hyacinthus similarly responds to

wine. In addition to easing hangovers (as must

ambient stimulation. Hard body though it is, it

be the case here), they prevent drunkenness and

reacts to the environment because it “feels” the

improve the quality of wine, always in danger of

air, changing from a serene to a cloudy appear-

turning into vinegar. Putting theory into practice,

ance. That category-crossing behavior, that ability

cups and chalices carved from amethyst translated

to conform itself to atmospheric conditions,

those properties into a concrete physical reality.

prompted Bartholomaeus Anglicus to declare it

Perennial favorites in princely and ecclesiastical

marvelous (mirabilis est) and his English transla-

collections, such vessels survive from Charles IV’s

tor, John Trevisa, to anthropomorphize it as a

substantial holdings in beautifully carved and

stone that experiences “gladnesse” while not free

expertly polished hard-stone objects (fig. 49).37

from a “malicolik qualite.”39 The same author also

When held up and turned around, light permeates

perpetuated the view of a selenites that “foloweth

amethyst’s uneven mass, shaping and reshaping the

the moone and waxeth and wayneth as the moone

bowl along the spectrum that leads from opacity

doth.”40 He did so contra Bartholomaeus, who,

Optical Mineralogy and Lithic Magic

107

Figure 50 Selenites, in Hortus sanitatis (Mainz: Jacob Meydenbach, 1491). Cambridge, Harvard University, Countway Library of Medicine. Photo: Countway Library of Medicine.

Figure 51 Smaragdus, in Konrad von Megenberg, Das Buch der Natur, southern Germany, mid-fifteenth century. Augsburg, Staatsund Stadtbibliothek, 2 Cod 497, fol. 351r. Photo: SuStb Augsburg.

like other authors, had opted for the rational,



albeit less poetic, explanation of a shape-shifting

natural milieu, then others impress for doing the

macula contained within the rock’s interior.

opposite. Smooth, translucent, greener-than-green

That a small clump of earth can be in tune with

smaragdus, as pictured in Megenberg’s Buch der

cosmic phenomena (the waxing and waning of the

Natur, best illustrates this determined immuta-

moon) and empathize with humans’ innermost

bility (fig. 51). Like rubies, sapphires, and pearls,

feelings (happiness and sadness) was a possibil-

emeralds were prized throughout the Middle Ages,

ity medieval lapidaries entertain more than once.

though more in the early centuries when, with

This unequivocal quasi-subjecthood could even be

sapphires and pearls, they formed the imperial

conveyed visually. In the woodcut illustration of

triad of precious stones. Hugh the Great added a

the Hortus sanitatis, we look upon a table crowded

few to the cargo of costly rarities that he sent to

with expressive moon-faced pebbles (fig. 50).

his prospective Anglo-Saxon bride. William of

What better assurance that not all lithic entities are

Malmesbury, who, as we saw, reports the story,

condemned to an existence of physical immobility

specifies that the “green depths” of these gems, hit

or emotional impassivity?

by sunlight, “animated the eyes of the bystanders

41

108

If some stones are able to interact with the

Lapidary Knowledge in Word and Image

with their enchanting radiance.”42 Pliny’s Scythian

(fig. 52).47 In this lavish copy, created for King René

variety likewise conserves an unalloyed green

of Anjou (d. 1480) or someone in his entourage,

coloration down to its innermost being, one so

aristocratic eyes were served an intoxicating mix of

intense that it casts a verdurous glow around it.

forbidden fantasies: werewolves, human sacrifice,

All the more marvelous is the fact that the eye

people who “flay their enemies alive to use for

can penetrate that bottomless viriditas, thereby

their saddles and pavements,” warrior women

altering human perception and the environment

whose enfeebled men stay at home and spin, and a

in one and the same illuminating gesture. The

tribe called Actropophages that sustains itself with

stone’s birthplace, Scythia, was firmly engraved

human flesh while its neighbors savor blood com-

in the medieval mental map of the world, despite

pacts. A deep cleft in the mountain range reveals

stretching imprecisely between the northern

the tense antagonism between a one-eyed man

Baltic shores and the Eurasian steppes. Cold and

and a griffin caught in a swirl of red gemstones, on

barren, the inhospitable region seemed predes-

the right side toward the background. But why red

tined to provide a breeding ground for creatures

gems? Rather than a thoughtless mistake, this act

of the “monstrous” or “Plinian” races dear to the

of creative freedom speaks to the emerald’s relative

premodern ethnographic discourse. Among

loss of status in the later Middle Ages. Considered

these variously formed people, the one-eyed

from the point of view of the pictorial economy,

Arimaspians ranked as conspicuously fierce. They

it makes the stones rhyme with other sanguine

were notably locked in deadly combat against

accents as a way of calling attention to the violent

giant griffins for control over Scythia’s precious

nature of this peculiar mode of mineral sourcing.

but scarce natural resources. Pliny and other



43

44

Contrary to the Scythian myth cultivated by

ancient authors thought that deposits of gold fu-

lapidary lore, the bulk of medieval emeralds were

eled the never-ending conflict, whereas the late

sourced along with their companion stones, beryl

antique author Solinus put the blame on the green

and aquamarine, in mines scattered across the

mineral (deposits of both minerals were discov-

desert plateau between the Nile and the Red Sea.

ered a few centuries ago in the Ural Mountains).

Informally known as “Cleopatra’s mines,” they

It is through his influential Collectanea rerum

were abandoned by the middle of the fourteenth

memorabilium (Collection of memorable things)

century, at which point a few seams of low-grade

that the tale filtered into the medieval lapidary

emeralds started to be exploited in Austria.48

vulgate.45 Succinct, middle-brow, and flagrantly

Small, of attenuated saturation, and ranging from

sensationalist, the late antique work summarized,

opaque to translucent, Egyptian emeralds differ in

rephrased, and grouped together information

all aspects from the highly transparent Colombian

scattered across Pliny’s unwieldy Natural History.

emeralds familiar to us today. Furthermore, the

The Collectanea’s considerable afterlife stretched

premodern term smaragdus federated, besides the

across the Middle Ages, shaping the worldview of

emerald, a number of green stones, such as the

many readers along the way. It was the primary

malachite, peridot, olivine, and plasma. Adding

source for a late medieval gazetteer that drama-

to the confusion, green-tinted glass could come

tized Scythia’s attractions in both word and image

under the same term, and more than one princely

46

Optical Mineralogy and Lithic Magic

109

Figure 52 The battle for emeralds in Scythia, in Livre des merveilles du monde, France (Angers?), ca. 1460. New York, The Morgan Library & Museum, MS M.461, fol. 70r. Purchased J. P. Morgan (1837–1913) in 1911. Photo: The Morgan Library & Museum, New York.

taxed by the precision work their art requires. From the Natural History came the oft-repeated anecdote that Nero was in the habit of watching gladiatorial games in smaragdo. The Roman emperor is known to have been shortsighted, but

collection and church treasury is known to have

Pliny probably meant to say that he used a piece of

housed this type of “emerald” artifact. Genuine

the green stone (or glass) to relieve his eyes from

or not, the smaragdus and its calming optical ef-

the blinding glare in the arena rather than as a vi-

fects were a staple of premodern mineralogy and

sion aid proper.51 Polished slices of rock crystal and

had been ever since Theophrastus mentioned them

beryl used as magnifying lenses are, on the other

in his treatise. Gem carvers, in particular, were

hand, well attested for the Middle Ages. Sometimes

advised to use a chunk to relax their weary eyes,

called “beryl eyes,” these lapides ad legendum

49

50

110

Lapidary Knowledge in Word and Image

assisted farsighted readers, eventually yielding the

properties—the abilities to trigger sadness, induce

German word for eyeglasses (Brille) and the early

fear, provoke nightmares, intensify aggressive

modern English word for mirrors (berral glasses).

urges, and produce abnormal levels of saliva-

Vincent Ilardi, author of an excellent history on

tion in children—ascribed to a mineral of starkly

eyeglasses and related optical devices, reminds us

contrasting pigmentation: white veins streaking a

that spectacle makers, working in either glass or

black surface. Reasoning by sympathetic corre-

crystal, were closely associated with the guild of

spondences, Albert the Great conjectured that the

goldsmiths, purveyors of expensive frames in gold

stone must activate black bile, which, concentrated

and silver.

in the head, is at the origin of mental patholo-

52



The crystalline “Rainbow stone” iris carried

gies.56 It is interesting to note that Arabic lapidaries

the synergetic partnership between minerals and

indexed the onyx just as negatively—its name, el

optics straight into the human eye. In Greco-

jaza, translates to “sadness.” Chromatic determin-

Roman, Arabic, and Latin medieval physiologi-

ism similarly rules the actions of the medus in

cal teachings, the active agent that enables the

ways all the more apparent since it comes in two

apprehension of the external world was thought

opposite kinds: the black variety causes unstop-

to be an internal iris, not the retina. Working

pable vomiting, desquamation, and the blinding

like a lens, it was described as focusing the rays

of one’s enemies while the white version provides

of sight in the same way that the stone captures

assistance to the visually impaired, including to

and refracts rays of sunlight.53 That this stone,

individuals afflicted by long-standing cases of

essentially a pure, well-formed hexagonal quartz

blindness. Assuming, of course, one could find the

crystal, can split white light into the colors of the

stone, pulverize it on a green grindstone, and dis-

spectrum and generate a kaleidoscopic display

solve the resulting powder in the milk of a mother

from an achromatic body, elicited much admira-

who has given birth to a single male child.57 The

tion.54 Iridescence, a term coined in the stone’s

extravagance of this remedy is by no means an

honor, would later be used beyond diffraction to

isolated instance. Lapidary therapeutics strain

class colors found in nature—wings of butterflies,

credibility, yet the sheer power of words, the mere

scales of scarab beetles, soap bubbles, pearlescent

act of reading about repairing and restoring and

nacre—that enticingly change with every adjust-

preventing may well have had a soothing placebo

ment of the angle of vision.

effect on readers living in a time when medical



help was rare and rudimentary. Blurred vision

Equally at home in the theater of mineral

wonders was the onyx, except that its “virtues”

and night blindness (nyctalopia, which prevents

are unconditionally negative, a marked departure

the distinguishing of shapes in low light) have

from the prevalent optimism about stones’ posi-

their own stony cures, as do eye diseases of the

tive actions. The onychinus’s distorting impact on

most diverse kinds, matching data compiled for

the sense of sight was such that Bartholomaeus

herbal pharmacotherapy and healings recorded

Anglicus charged highly polished specimens of

at saints’ shrines.58 Lapidaries mention dry and

producing blurry “images and figures.”55 He added

liquid collyria impregnated with mineral particles

that optical feature to the usual roster of dismal

to check sticky discharges, soothe inflamed eyes,

Optical Mineralogy and Lithic Magic

111

calm itchy corneas, stiffen drooping eyelids, and

of ladies and the cups of lords. From the Saracen-

correct blinking or bulging eyes. Simply pushing

detecting masts on Roland’s vessels to Alexander

bits of minerals under the eyelids makes it easier to

the Great’s rich tent crowned with a carbuncle for

remove cysts and encrusted sleep. Albert the Great

illumination and a topaz to cool intense heat, the

reassures readers who might be fretting at the idea

coallike stone gleams from the pages of narra-

of such an invasive procedure that “a smoothly

tives eager to create an air of mystery, luxury, and

polished thing does not damage the eye, unless it

exoticism.61 For some authors, the carbuncle was

should touch the center, or pupil, the sensitive part

identical to the “Dragon stone” draconites, boost-

opposite the opening of the eyeball.”

ing its qualities even more (fig. 53).62 Western lapi-

59

dary lore had it that the monstrous snakes, whose foreheads give birth to these marvelous gems, live Carbuncular Illuminations

in India (where the legend most likely originated). Much repeated was Solinus’s recommendation that

Another vivid illustration of the close interaction

hunters administer sedative drugs and soporific

between minerals and vision comes from the be-

enchantments to lull the fearsome animals into

guiling carbuncle. In contrast to stones that flicker

sleep, then sneak into their caves and lop off their

intermittently, like lamps or candles, the carbuncu-

heads. But care is in order, since the dragons must

lus appears to conserve light without interruption

be in full vigor; if already dead, they will punish

or weakening. Eerily intense, its name translates

human acquisitive cruelty by delivering a worth-

to “live coals” (anthrax in Greek), and it served as

less soft stone.

a catch-all term for any red stone that glows in the



dark, whether by means of luminescence or phos-

defeating virtus to its full diegetic potential in-

phorescence (see fig. 44, top). In a world plunged

volves Gerbert of Aurillac (d. 1003), the shepherd

into darkness after sunset, an object that appeared

boy who managed to work his way up from the

dull during daytime but was reborn into igneous

French backwoods to the Holy See and become

splendor at night was a cause for unqualified won-

Pope Sylvester II in 999. He was prodigiously well-

der. Legions of carbuncles impart an air of preter-

read, an enlightened innovator, and among the

natural glamour to medieval narratives of the most

first to assimilate Arabic mathematics, the use of

diverse kinds. Church inventories, for example,

the abacus, and the armillary sphere. Intellectual

report that shrines and reliquaries set with the

(pre)occupations ahead of their time were easily

blazing gemstone illuminate even the darkest

suspect, and poor Gerbert ended up being cast as

corners of a building, as though they were capable

an inventor of uncanny devices and a protagonist

of transposing the spiritual illumination dispensed

in shifty adventures. One of these tales recount-

by saintly remains into physical reality. Medieval

ed in William of Malmesbury’s Gesta Regum

secular literature was equally partial to carbuncles.

Anglorum has Gerbert discover the secret where-

Epics and romances use them to adorn crowns and

abouts of Emperor Augustus’s treasure.63 On the

belts, decorate helmets and noseguards, project

Campus Martius in Rome stood a statue, the story

from swords and shields, and embellish the rings

goes, its right index finger outstretched and its

60

112

Lapidary Knowledge in Word and Image

A tale that deploys the carbuncle’s darkness-

forehead bearing an inscription that read “Strike here.” Less literally minded than those who dealt blows to the metallic figure itself, Gerbert correctly surmised that the “here” designated the place where the finger’s projected shadow fell. Come nighttime, he and his assistant investigated this spot, not by digging but by enchantments, William hastens to add. The pair quickly discovered an entrance to a vast and entirely gilded underground palace. Inside, a carbuncle—“gem rich and rare”— cast a spectral glow over the frozen simulacra of a king and his queen, attendants, and guards, dispelling the shades of night. The scene is illustrated in an early fourteenth-century French historical compendium, the Abrégé des histoires divines (fig. 54). To differentiate the carbuncle from the red-tinted arch in which it is lodged, the illuminator painted it as an ovoid white stone.64 On the right, he added a nimble gilded archer to foreshadow the story’s dramatic ending. For when Gerbert’s assistant, unable to control his covetousness, snatched a knife from the table, the automaton guard loosened an arrow from his bow. As planned, the projectile hit the carbuncle, plunging everything into darkness. If in William of Malmesbury’s version the intruders barely manage to escape, later retellings were less forgiving and punished the boundary-crossing archeological expedition hatched from unchecked curiositas with the protagonists’ live entombment.65

By the thirteenth century, the carbuncle had

started to drop its mythopoetic luster. It faced increased competition from actual red gems, such as the coveted Orient rubies. Not that the substitution reversed the carbuncle’s cachet straight away. Thomas of Cantimpré, for example, although deferring to the opinion of “experts in lapidary art” who know how to separate the carbuncle from the inferior rubinus and balagius, voices his

Figure 53 Man extracting a draconites from the head of a dragon, in Jacob van Maerlant, Der naturen bloeme, southern Netherlands / Flanders, ca. 1285. Detmold, Lippische Landesbibliothek, Mscr. 70, fol. 133v. Photo: LLB, Detmold. Figure 54 Mechanical archer aiming at a carbuncle that illuminates a banquet of gilded simulacra, in Abrégé des histoires divines, France (Amiens?), 1300–1310. New York, The Morgan Library & Museum, MS M.751, fol. 100v. Photo: The Morgan Library & Museum, New York.

Optical Mineralogy and Lithic Magic

113

undiminished appreciation for a stone loaded

in forecasting, divination, and assorted magi-

with every mineral virtus, as precious as it is

cal operations. Given the involvement of highly

hard to find.66 The happy coexistence of mineral

regarded churchmen in the lapidary enterprise,

fact and lapidary fiction continues with Matfre

the tolerance for less than orthodox cultural

Ermengaud’s Breviari d’amor and its listing of the

technologies might seem perplexing. It reminds

carbuncle side-by-side with the cornelina and the

us that medieval attitudes toward what counted as

robis. Past the Middle Ages, we find the flam-

acceptable and what was to be proscribed were far

ing stone, presented as a rare variety of the ruby,

from uniform and that the boundaries between

in one of Benvenuto Cellini’s artistic treatises. A

licit and illicit practices were neither fixed nor

paragon of a self-consciously Renaissance artist,

unchangeable.70

Cellini revisited the age-old carbuncular trope in



an otherwise plausible tale. He tells of a Roman

and meaning from the sense of sight. Lapidaries

peasant who discovered a light-emitting stone

reflect the Middle Ages’ fascination with oneiric

under a vine. Unaware of its value, he sold it for

activity and the conviction that immaterial and yet

a risible sum to a Venetian gem buyer, who was

substantive imagines effectively mediate between

well informed about the matter and resold it to

present and future, human nature and divine in-

the Ottoman sultan for an exorbitant price. If the

tentions. They offer minerals that keep awake and

anecdote amounts to vintage mineral marvelizing,

induce sleepiness, as well as those that stimulate

that ending rings with a newly Eurocentric tone,

dreaming and keep disturbing nightmares at bay.

specifically in the way it overcharges the East as a

Albert the Great inched closer into Freudian ter-

symbolic redress for the control it exerts over the

ritory by stating that the multicolored amandinus

most treasured mineral rarities.

“makes one understand prophecy and the interpre-

67

Dreams, like prognostication, drew energy

tation of dreams and even of riddles.”71 A textual invention of thirteenth-century encyclopedias, Unleashing Stones’ Preternatural Agency

this stone probably owed its existence to a creative misreading of adamas or amianthus. Those same

Stones’ multidimensional interactions with the

texts list aggressive quirita, a gem retrieved from

sense of sight extended from physical to mental

the nests of hoopoes capable of extracting a sleep-

seeing, broadly understood. Thus several French

ing person’s innermost secrets. It can also produce

vernacular lapidaries reconditioned Nero’s “emer-

hallucinations, poetically styled by John Trevisa

ald” from a purely optical device into a prophetic

as “wonderliche fantasies.”72 Medieval bestiaries

tool wherein the emperor could discover anything

discredit the hoopoe as a bird courted by diviners

he fancied. Despite continuous official con-

and witches, so the negative virtus is not surpris-

demnation and the threat of harsh punishments,

ing. Equally reviled was the hyena, whose eyes

scryers used crystal balls to divine future events

were said to harden into precious gems. These

throughout the Middle Ages. While lapidar-

“Hiena stones” allow their owners to peer into the

ies suppress references to crystal gazing, they do

future, a power derived from the assumption that

not outlaw from their pages virtutes that assist

the hyena weaponizes its thousand-colored eyes to

68

69

114

Lapidary Knowledge in Word and Image

fascinate—in the literal sense of bewitching—other

Once it got (con)fused with the “Moon stone” sel-

beasts. Malefic characteristics accumulate on a

enites, the same mineral became firmly tied to the

creature said to scavenge in tombs, feed on carrion,

lunar cycle (a folk motif if there ever was), flour-

and vocalize like men to lure its prey. Worst of all,

ishing with the onset of the waning phase of the

aberrant sexual characteristics turned it into a cy-

moon on the twenty-ninth day of each month.76

clical hermaphrodite because, until recently, it was



not understood that an evolutionary accident had

in more intimate contacts between human and

endowed female spotted hyenas with a penislike

mineral flesh than a fleeting glance or a passing

clitoris. The medieval bestiary’s allegorical agenda

touch. Numerous stones seem to perform best

took a particularly unsavory turn in correlating the

when hung from the neck and worn on a finger.

animal’s alleged annual gender-shifting habit with

Such visually demonstrative binding techniques,

accusations of changeability and duplicitousness

codified in antiquity, were known as suspensions

hurled against Jews and sodomites. Generally

and ligatures; given the right context, pendants

indifferent to didactic meaning-making, lapidaries

and rings can be classed as their socially sanc-

prefer to focus on operative efficacy instead: place

tioned equivalents.77 Examples of operational gem-

the quirita on the sleeper’s chest to unlock their

set rings are not hard to find in medieval fictional

hidden thoughts just as you should keep the hiena

literature, hagiographic accounts, and princely

under the tongue to activate its divinatory powers.

inventories. St. Augustine relays an intriguing



early example in the City of God. Completed in

73

74

Sublingual use was one of many applications

The quest for optimal curative results resulted

aimed at maximizing stones’ potency. For internal

the first decades of the fifth century, this foun-

use, properly speaking, shaved and pulverized

dational guide to a good Christian life sustained

minerals were to be strained into liquids and

by the right set of beliefs and practices gave the

added to pills, suppositories, pastes, poultices,

ring miracle wide recognition.78 Its protagonist

and liniments. In some cases, merely staring at a

is Petronia, a Carthaginian lady suffering from

stone was deemed sufficient to rouse it into action.

an incurable illness. To alleviate her affliction, a

When lapidaries prescribe a specific time of the

Jewish healer recommended that she attach a ring

day for contact with the stone, there is a latent oc-

set with a “gem” extracted from an ox’s kidney to

cult dimension insofar as complying with temporal

a knotted circlet of hair. Wearing that contrap-

instructions was a standard rule of ritual magic.

tion under her clothes, against her bare flesh, the

The abovementioned pantherus, for instance,

woman set off on a pilgrimage to the shrine of

brings a successful day, provided one beholds it

the protomartyr St. Stephen, spending the night

before sunrise (see fig. 45). This may seem a bland

a short distance from her destination. Upon wak-

observation, yet it made Konrad von Megenberg

ing the next morning, the ring had fallen off the

feel sufficiently queasy that he replaced it in the

circlet, but since both objects were intact, the dis-

Buch der Natur with a morning prayer to the

assembly must have occurred through the invisible

Virgin. Sweet-tempered swallows gestate in their

touch of a miracle. Drawing the appropriate moral

stomachs the chelidonius, a stone held to operate

lesson from this little roadside miracle, Augustine

best between dawn and the sixth hour (see fig. 28).

comments that the inviolate circlet and ring signify

75

Optical Mineralogy and Lithic Magic

115

Christ’s ability to cross solid matter—his mother’s

miniature trees bearing “serpent’s tongues” as their

womb, closed doors—without causing a break. His

fruit. Now identified as fossilized shark teeth, they

implicit point is that virtues discharged by natural

added, so it was thought, poison-detecting func-

objects cannot compete with the virtus emanating

tions to coral’s apotropaic powers. Of the hun-

from saintly remains. Ring, hair circlet, knots, and

dreds of these objects mentioned in inventories,

animal amulet indicate that Petronia’s Jewish advi-

only three have survived, a stark reminder of the

sor was an expert in traditional healing methods.

tremendous loss of medieval secular art (fig. 55).

Well established in folk tradition, such ligaments

An elaborate example is today held in the treasury

and suspensions received textual validation in late

of the Viennese chapter of the Teutonic Order, one

antique lithika, a type of literature that would have

of the several military monastic orders founded

been familiar to a great reader like Augustine. They

in the wake of the Crusades. It consists of an

figure prominently in the Damigeron-Evax and

elegant hexagonal foot surmounted by a knop that

hence in Marbode’s Liber lapidum. The bishop of

doubles as a salt-cellar to hold the chief seasoning

Rennes rounded up his knowledge of marginally

used in medieval cuisine. Guests (or, more likely,

acceptable procedures with a more recent work

their pages) could pick a “serpent’s tongue” from

aptly titled On Physical Ligatures, Incantations,

the tangle of branches and use it to test food and

and Suspensions around the Neck. Its author, the

drinks for toxic contamination, always a distinct

prolific, multilingual Syrian Melkite scientific

possibility in the treacherous halls of the court.

writer Qustā ibn Lūqā (d. ca. 912), cast the text as a

Once abundant in the shallow coastal waters of

dialogue between a father and a son eager to learn

the Mediterranean, coral, raw and manufactured,

about ancient Greek attitudes toward the magical

was one of the few significant European mineral

potential of natural substances. From what is, for

exports. In lapidary lore, it is the only “stone” (in

the most part, a medical treatise, Marbode and

reality, the exoskeleton of polyp colonies) resulting

authors of lapidaries after him gained the idea that

from metamorphosis, since it was assumed that

a hyacinthus worn as a pendant protects travelers,

coral was originally a plant that had turned into

that an amethystus must be “placed or suspended

a rock, shedding its white or green pigmentation

over the navel” to prevent drunkenness, and that

for a pleasing vermilion red along the way.81 Both

“suspending an emerald on the neck or carrying it

color and shape give it unusual visual recognition,

on the finger” can lessen epileptic seizures.

as can readily be seen on the page of the Leiden



Van Maerlant volume (see fig. 44). Thomas of

79

Coral branches provide the most obvious ex-

ample of a ubiquitous and accepted use of suspen-

Cantimpré explained the plant’s multistemmed

sions. In Renaissance paintings, babies appear as protected from the evil eye by necklaces, pendants, teething devices, and rattles wrought from that material.80 In the domestic sphere, knives equipped with protective coral handles were an everyday sight on the late medieval princely table, as were mounted centerpieces wrought into showy

116

Lapidary Knowledge in Word and Image

Figure 55 Coral tree table ornament with serpent’s tongues (Natterzungenkredenz), Germany, before 1562. Gold, silver-gilt, coral, fossilized shark teeth. Vienna, Treasury and Museum of the Teutonic Order, inv. no. K-037. Photo: Schatzkammer und Museum des Deutschen Ordens, Vienna.

encompass agricultural fertility rites. Confirming the ancient Mediterranean origins of medieval lapidary knowledge, these organic rituals serve to improve the yield of vineyards and olive trees.

Stones’ Virtues and the Drama of Magic

Coral’s manifold virtues crossed openly into magical territory, and their visual transcription in the Detmold Van Maerlant is unique. The same manuscript harbors even bolder scenes. On the left-hand column of folio 133 recto, the acFigure 56 Coral, in Jacob van Maerlant, Der naturen bloeme, southern Netherlands / Flanders, ca. 1285. Detmold, Lippische Landesbibliothe, Mscr. 70, fol. 132v. Photo: LLB, Detmold. Figure 57 | opposite Chrysolitus and crystallus, in Jacob van Maerlant, Der naturen bloeme, southern Netherlands / Flanders, ca. 1285. Detmold, Lippische Landesbibliothek, Mscr. 70, fol. 133r. Photo: LLB, Detmold.

tions of the chrysolitus take center stage (fig. 57). Unassisted, the scintillating pale-green stone is eager to “expel stupidity and confer wisdom,” but it gathers strength when mounted in gold and suspended from the neck. This suspension averts nocturnal fears and keeps tormenting phantasms at bay. Increasing its potency even further, the same stone ought to be perforated and tied with an ass’s bristle to the left arm, ligament-like: it now

118

growth in terms of a specific will-to-form.82 Coral

uses its invisible though formidable forces to battle

spreads out its limbs not so much like the horns

nasty demons. The requirement of being tied to

of a stag or the roots of a plant, he writes, but in

the “sinister” side of the body—the side favored

the manner of a crucifix (ad modum crucis). One

by practitioners of forbidden arts—surfaces more

suspects that this Christian conversion was the

than once in our texts. Another example is the

Dominican friar’s answer to the charmlike work-

chelidonius that precedes it. Lapidaries recommend

ings of coral. All the more unorthodox, then, was

that it should be wrapped in a piece of cloth to has-

the choice made by the creators of the Detmold

ten its activation on the assumption that a pebble

copy of the Liber de natura rerum’s Dutch trans-

born from a soaring swallow needed double tying

lation. The miniature unabashedly highlights

to remain in place.83 Unwilling to self-censor, the

coral’s deployment in weather magic (fig. 56).

artist of the Detmold volume decided to squarely

Two vibrant branches of it are tied to a tree while

acknowledge the chrisolitus’s unsettling abilities—

a young fellow holds a third, presumably com-

so unsettling, it would seem, that he stretched the

menting on coral’s pledge to protect fields from

image out over the entire right column, the only

storms, lightning, hail, and assorted environmental

such miniature in the entire book. In this ex-

catastrophes. Coral’s portfolio extended further to

panded frame, two men are seen manipulating odd

Lapidary Knowledge in Word and Image

props: a dragon-headed wand, a magnified green

himself as a specialist of learned magic, eventually

stone that grazes the severed head of a billy goat,

teaching astrology—the queen of science in his

and a flowery scepter surmounted by a red bird.

view—at the university of Bologna. Blunders of a

Does this gallery of unorthodox figures allude to

political nature magnified by heterodox religious

the nightmarish specters the stone vows to chase

ideas eventually precipitated his downfall. He was

away, much as the diminutive lion who is taking

dismissed from his academic post in 1324 and

flight on the left? If so, the image reveals what the

sent to the stake three years later. Cecco’s works

text proscribes, confirming Richard Kieckhefer’s

went up in flames as well, though some apprecia-

observation that “a book of magic is also a magical

tive readers managed to save his lyrical contribu-

book,” one that “shares in the numinous quali-

tion to the encyclopedic genre. Just as it inspired

ties and powers of the rites it contains.”84 For the

loyalty, the Acerba stimulated artistic creativity,

fearless way in which it mobilizes the authority of

and as many as ten copies of the forty-odd known

the image to explore modes of operative cogni-

manuscripts received a cycle of illustrations. In

tion harshly persecuted by the official Church, the

a few cases, the twenty-seven stones that make

eccentric Detmold manuscript deserves to figure

up the astrologically oriented lapidary appear as

prominently in the annals of medieval magic.

gem-set rings, a choice designed to highlight the



In contrast to the chrysolitus and its shady

transactions, the crystallus, pictured on the

examples.88 Several generic spheres dot the margins

right-hand side on the same page, could pass for

of the Vienna volume, but vignettes that engage

a canonical demon-chaser. It shares that power

in sulfurous negotiations disrupt their humdrum

with the equally limpid adamas, which Isidore of

progression. For the diamante, the illuminator de-

Seville already declared fit for combating “mali-

cided to excise the mediation of a human agent as

cious witchery.”85 Later lapidaries agree, com-

seen in the Detmold codex (fig. 58). The ring, set

mending the “unconquerable” stone for foiling

with an impaling point-cut diamond, does the job

a whole range of demonic assaults. That is its

of chasing the devil solo. Relying to a large degree

role in another one-of-a-kind manuscript, one

on Bartholomaeus Anglicus (who, in turn, re-

that thrusts us deeper into the arena in which the

cycled Isidore of Seville), Cecco’s text reaffirms the

magical, the mineral, and the visual freely col-

diamond’s antidemonic powers when tied to the

lide. Created in the second quarter of the fifteenth

left arm. Aware that he was touching on forbidden

century in northern Italy, the damaged volume has

knowledge, the author decided that it was best to

attracted no more attention than the Van Maerlant

insert the Hermetic trope of a restricted audience

manuscript. The neglect is undeserved, consider-

primed to digest rarefied content. Interestingly, he

ing that more than one hundred vivacious sketches

made it gender-specific, professing to have left out

86

87

120

preciousness of precious stones, as noted for other

of plants, animals, planets, and minerals enliven

the stone’s less-than-acceptable dealings lest the

its margins as illustrations of the encyclopedic

ears of female readers be offended.89

poem Acerba by Francesco Stabili (d. 1327). The



author is better known by his pen name, Cecco

owner was a man or a woman is information we

d’Ascoli. Trained in medicine, he reinvented

no longer have. Whoever it was, one wonders if

Lapidary Knowledge in Word and Image

Whether the Vienna manuscript’s original

Figure 58 Devil-chasing diamond, in Cecco d’Ascoli, L’Acerba, northern Italy, 1425–50. Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Cod. 2608, fol. 37r. Photo: ÖNB, Vienna.

they quivered when laying their eyes on actions

medieval cultural productions were uniformly

so patently demonic or fretted when discovering

pious. Shuttling between the living and the dead,

the cadaveric scene that follows two folios later

this stone is of an undisguised necromantic nature.

(fig. 59). Placed above a magnetic rock with a

Though it “abhors death,” it promptly loses its force

trapped iron horseshoe, the stretched-out skeleton,

when in contact with a corpse, an erosion Cecco

its head lost to cropping, is under the sway of the

has observed personally many times over, or so he

diadochos. The “Substitute stone,” mounted in a

claims.90 Yet drawing strength from that antipa-

huge ring and stuck upside-down into the lifeless

thetic weakness, the diadochos manages to remodel

body, was held to be so magically charged that its

itself into a medium for summoning the shadows

inclusion in mainstream lapidaries should give

of the dead and revealing the physiognomy of

pause to anyone who is under the impression that

demons. That is precisely the visualization chosen

Optical Mineralogy and Lithic Magic

121

Figure 59 Diadochos, magnes, and spherical stones, in Cecco d’Ascoli, L’Acerba, northern Italy, 1425–50. Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Cod. 2608, fol. 39v. Photo: ÖNB Vienna. Figure 60 Evil spirits summoned by the diadochos, in Jacob van Maerlant, Der naturen bloeme, southern Netherlands / Flanders, ca. 1285. Detmold, Lippische Landesbibliothek, Mscr. 70, fol. 133v. Photo: LLB, Detmold.

by the Van Maerlant illuminator (fig. 60). Proving

narrative moments, they are typically worn (in

once again how a clumsy artist can craft pioneer-

the manner of a ligature) on a ring with the bezel

ing imagery, the small vignette shows animal and

facing the palm. Boccaccio (d. 1375) seized on the

demonic heads as free agents, severed from their

belief that a rock is able to suppress human pres-

bodies, bobbing on the waves. An enlarged dark

ence, taking it as an opportunity to debunk both

stone in the foreground cues viewers into realizing

delusional thoughts and fraudulent assertions.

that mineral action is responsible for the advent of

Painter Calandrino is the slow-witted protagonist

the ghastly figures.

of a bracing comedy of errors narrated in the third

All-powerful eliotropia is another stone that

tale on Day Eight of the Decameron.93 A band of

cajoles the licit into partnering with the illicit.

scheming colleagues, whom Calandrino trusts

Rubbing the “Heliotrope stone” with its herbal

as his best friends, manage to convince him that

namesake will activate it. The stone can bring

the magical stone does indeed exist. How could it

water to a boiling point, but additionally, spilling

not? Had not Maso di Saggio, the crafty ringleader

over into the macrocosm, it can trigger storms.

and an artist himself, visited the “happy valley

Powerful and sinister, these tempests end up

Bengodi” in the country of the Basques and seen a

altering the sun, making it appear as a blood-red

gold-laying goose, a hill made of grated parmesan,

disk, which is why the stone’s vernacular name

and a river of wine? And a mountain covered in

is “sun-turner.” True to the rationalizing spirit of

emeralds of good enough quality to satisfy a sul-

the scholastic era, thirteenth-century encyclo-

tan? Topping all other marvels, famed heliotrope

pedias unmasked that garbled understanding of

has its home there, too. Maso, sly manufacturer

solar eclipses as a mere deception of the senses

of fictions that he is, assures the titular antihero

provoked by red-colored mists that arise when

that the stone is blessed with the vertù of making

certain minerals touch boiling water. Unwilling

people invisible when they are out of sight. Parody

to disenchant, the illustrator of a mid-fifteenth-

is hard to produce in images, but the illuminator

century copy of Konrad von Megenberg’s Buch der

of an early fifteenth-century manuscript of the

Natur has tucked the sun behind a ruffled cloud,

French translation of the Decameron manages to

letting the rain stream onto the Edelstein held by

articulate the misalignment between reality and

the fashionable Edelmann (fig. 61). It is worth

make-believe that is at the bottom of this story

underscoring that neither this author nor his eccle-

(fig. 62). On the left, Calandrino, surrounded by

siastical colleagues felt the need to censor actions

his double-crossing companions, searches for the

tangled up in weather magic or edit out the same

precious stone in a river outside Florence, con-

stone’s predictive abilities. As to heliotrope’s most

vinced that its discovery will make him rich over-

formidable gift—that of conferring invisibility—it

night. On the right side, the story’s pathetic ending

is, at most, prefaced by a distancing “it is said.”

shows him savagely beating his wife for having



dared to rebuke him when he came home late and

91

Whether explicitly identified with the

eliotropia or not, invisibility stones were much-

burdened with river stones. Incapable of dealing

beloved props in medieval romances. Spiriting

with the truth, the man is convinced that he was

away heroes, lovers, and thieves at opportune

invisible when he entered his home and therefore

92

Optical Mineralogy and Lithic Magic

123

Figure 61 | opposite Diebold Lauber workshop, tempest-provoking eliotropia, in Konrad von Megenberg, Buch der Natur, Hagenau, 1442. Heidelberg, University Library, Cod. Pal. germ. 300, p. 332v. Photo: Heidelberg University Library.

accuses his wife of having broken the spell—is it

Figure 62 Calandrino searches for the invisibility stone; he beats his wife, in Boccaccio, Decameron, trans. Laurent de Premierfait, Paris, ca. 1415. Paris, Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal, MS 5070, fol. 281r. Photo: BnF.

to two additional conclusions. On the one hand, it

not that “all things lose their virtue in the presence of a woman”? If seeing can lead to a form of blindness, in our context, the edifying tale leads confirms that bits and pieces of lapidary knowledge seeped into the general consciousness, and on the other, it twists the collocation of the mineral and the visual into a comedic direction, harbinger of a new sensibility that would end up consigning the whole idea of lithic agency to the quaint realm of prescientific superstition.

Optical Mineralogy and Lithic Magic

125

T

he preceding discussion has been concerned with stones’ interference with human perception, showing how they

shaped it to the point of inversion and distortion. A more literal though no less knotty symbiosis between the visual and the mineral is the subject of this chapter devoted to the art of sigils. Sigilla designated images fashioned from any number of materials, though only cut gems will be of

Chapter 6

Of Stones, Sigils, and Stars

interest here. When worn as pendants or rings, cameos and intaglios functioned as doubly potent amulets. In the opinion of one commentator, etched representations multiply the natural potency inherent in precious stones as much as a hundredfold.1 Or, as the fourteenth-century German poet Volmar more dramatically put it: plain stones without images are no more useful than wind.2 But for some, images’ contribution to mineral agency was an inherently troublesome business. Quite a few thirteenth-century scholastic intellectuals picked up the topic of sigils as they grappled with distinctions between natural, preternatural, and miraculous workings, trying to separate licit from illicit doings. Those debates led Albert the Great to reflect on the alliance between stars and stones in a manner that was as sophisticated as it was innovative. His De mineralibus, already groundbreaking on purely geological aspects, also elaborated a model to think through nature’s close cooperation with artifice in the production of cut gems. Coming to full fruition during the Renaissance, Albert’s farsighted postulation prefigured a Warburgian-like Denkraum in which the inspired gem-carving artisan figures as an enabler of cosmic energies—one who knows how to operate at the instrumental intersection of the world above and the world below.3

The Troubling Allure of “Stones Signed with Figures”

The most immediate problem with sigils was of an iconographic nature. The bulk of gems bearing figurative signs available during the Middle Ages were of Hellenistic, Roman, and late antique provenance, and thus they bore mythological, astral, and magical representations. In spite of enigmatic content, carved carnelians, amethysts, crystals, bloodstones, and other “semiprecious” stones were treasured cultural spolia. When used as seal matrices for the authentication of private correspondence and legal documents, they were known as secreta, as the inscription sigillum secreti engraved on the oval bezel enclosing an intaglio of the goddess Ceres emphasizes (fig. 63).4 On religious objects, inscriptions would be added to re-

Figure 63 Gold signet ring with nicolo intaglio of head of Ceres, late Roman gem, early fourteenth-century mount. London, British Museum, Inv. AF.556. Photo: The Trustees of the British Museum.

format worrisome signs into acceptable Christian characters: Venus reborn into the Virgin, Hercules

the Leiden copy of Van Maerlant’s Der naturen

reenvisioned as Samson, an enthroned Roman

bloeme, to which we can return. Single oval shapes

emperor interpreted as Christ in Majesty, and so

in attenuated black, green, and red colors, some

on. Yet such semantic tinkering in the service of

laid horizontally, others vertically, populate the

an interpretatio Christiana was not as common as

margins of three folios (fig. 64). That layout is con-

one might think. The Castilian crown discussed in

sistent with the preceding alphabetical lapidary,

chapter 3 (see fig. 17) that parades four ancient and

except that white figures, drawn with a sure hand,

all’antica cameos offers but one example among

have been added to each stone. On folio 138 verso,

hundreds of the potency granted to finely crafted

one discerns a turtledove, a fighting serpent and

historical relics as carriers of Romanitas and impe-

centaur, and a lion supporting a man who clutches

rial aura. Of course, those strands of meaning

a winged devil in one hand and a snake in the oth-

need not be mutually exclusive, though it would

er (third from the top in the right-hand column).

be misguided to consider Alfonso X incapable

It seems odd that there should be a glaring gap in

of appreciating a secular, even a magico-pagan,

this exercise of micromimesis: the blank surface

interpretation of carved stones. After all, several of

on the bottom left. Neither an oversight nor a

the eleven lapidaries he intended to commission

miscalculation about how to represent a white

focused on the art of sigils.6

figure on a white stone, that figureless gem was the



artist’s clever solution to make invisibility visible.

5

Had those projects seen the light, their il-

lustrations may have resembled those found in

Indeed, as the written caption confirms, the power

Of Stones, Sigils, and Stars

127

of rendering its owners undetectable falls within

occult operationes spurred the Dominican writer to

the ambit of this stone inscribed with a mirror-

pledge time and again that images etched on stones

gazing mermaid.7 To the best of my knowledge, the

perform “many great miracles” only because they

Leiden volume is the only extant book that honors

were brought into being by the will of God, much

sigil-bearing stones with a graphic existence.

like active mineral matter itself. Those defensive

Carolingian book painting, to be sure, excelled

measures were not enough, and a cautionary note,

at trimming borders and other framing devices

inserted before the two pamphlets on (the un-

with carved gemstones to heighten the classiciz-

named) sigils, warns readers: “Certain opinions

ing thrust of its renovatio-conscious pages. The

of the ancients we think should neither be fully

difference with the present manuscript is that the

refuted nor fully approved.”12 Not yet reassured,

incised stones have evolved from a framing device

Thomas (or the copy he used) proceeded to excise

into autonomous mineral objects, even if the close

from his source material any aspect he deemed

correlation between verbal description and visual

incompatible with his religious convictions. Using

rendition works against the assumption that they

a sharp knife, he lopped off references to ritual

were copied after actual gems.8

magic, astral causation, and sexuality.13 In the case



of the stone imprinted with the devil- and snake-

Jacob van Maerlant retained Thomas of

Cantimpré’s decision to append two brief tracts ​

grabbing man, he acknowledges that it may be used

on the “ancient and noble art” of sigils to book 14

to extract answers from evil spirits yet amputated

of the Liber de natura rerum.9 Compared to regular

the fellow’s erect member. As to the white gem with

lapidary entries, the tone of these pamphlets is

the mermaid, he kept the requirement that it be

markedly operative. “If you come upon a green

mounted in lead and worn on a ring (essentially,

iaspis with a cross on it, it will prevent those who

as a ligature) but eliminated the next steps, more

carry it from drowning,” reads a typical entry.10

frankly redolent of magical maneuvers. The many

Both the green complexion and spindly cross are

readers of the Liber de natura rerum never learned

faithfully rendered in the top right-hand gem. Two

what the few who had access to the unexpurgated

items down is the red jewel with the figure holding

version did: that this sigil, coated in wax, would

a snake and devil; the text informs us that demons

make them invisible on the battlefield.14

will fall under its sway when it is enclosed in a



lead setting. Opening the door onto a world full

Thomas of Cantimpré assures us, authored the

of spirits, promising results for troubles extending

second tract on sigils. Modern studies prefer to see

from business transactions to matters of the heart,

it as a product of the same late antique milieu in

the second libellus was in high demand, consider-

which the Damigeron-Evax originated, albeit one

ing that thirty or so copies of the Liber sigillorum

with an unusually complex transmission history.15

A “certain Jewish philosopher named Thetel,”

have been identified. In Thomas’s encyclopedia, the term sigilla does not appear, having been either converted into “carved stones” or hidden under the circumlocution “stones signed with figures.”

11

The same anxiety about content that touched upon

128

Lapidary Knowledge in Word and Image

Figure 64 Page with painted sigils, in Jacob van Maerlant, Der naturen bloeme, Utrecht (?), ca. 1366. Leiden, Leiden University Libraries, MS BPL 14A, fol. 138v. Photo: Leiden University Libraries.

about: And thou shalt put them in both sides of the ephod, a memorial for the children of Israel. And Aaron shall bear their names before the Lord upon both shoulders, for a remembrance. In the longer version of the “Book on Sigils,” the putative author endorses that philological filiation, having witnessed how the ancient Israelites practiced the art of gem carving after crossing the Red Sea.16 The prologue to book 14 of the Liber de natura rerum enlarges on this ur-carving scene (fig. 65).17 It mentions Aristotle as the ultimate auctoritas on matters mineral, then quotes Evax Figure 65 Initial G(eneraliter), in Thomas of Cantimpré, Liber de natura rerum, book 14, France/Flanders, 1295. Berlin, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, MS Hamilton 114, fol. 154v. Photo: Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz.

for his knowledge of the “names, colors, virtues, and kinds of stones”—Marbode, as usual, goes unacknowledged. But, in a syncretic moment typical of medieval learned culture, Thomas then turns to the Bible, rehearsing how God appointed the talented multimedia artist Bezalel and his assistant,

130

One of Thetel’s numerous variant spellings is

Aholiab, to create the Tabernacle, its precious fur-

C(h)etel. That name’s overlap with c[a]elatura—the

nishings, and the High Priest’s accoutrements. And

name for engraving, chiseling, chasing, and related

it is during the migration from Egypt to Canaan

techniques that produce raised or sunk images—

and the journey from bondage to freedom that

proved suggestive. In the Bible, that word appears

these artists tutored the children of Israel in the

in connection with the two “remembrance stones”

art of gem-carving. Contrary to the unabridged

affixed to the golden shoulder clasp that fastens the

version of Thetel’s tract, which put the creative

High Priest’s breastplate to the ephod. According

endeavor under the invigorating inspiration of

to Exodus 28:9–12, God gave Moses detailed in-

celestial bodies, the Dominican author delegates

structions on how to carve them:

that task to the Holy Spirit. It is that lofty patron-

And thou shalt take two onyx stones (lapides

age that, in his eyes, explains why ancient carved

onychinos), and shalt grave on them the names

gems attained inimitable perfection.

of the children of Israel: Six names on one



To sketch the foundational scenario for the

stone, and the other six on the other, accord-

glyptic arts, Thomas of Cantimpré drew on rab-

ing to the order of their birth. With the work

binical commentaries, at least indirectly. Gervase

of an engraver and the graving of a jeweler

of Tilbury had already nourished his thinking on

(opere sculptoris et caelatura gemmarii), thou

the art of sigils in the Otia imperialia by visiting

shalt engrave them with the names of the

the same body of literature some decades ear-

children of Israel, set in gold and compassed

lier. Among the “recreations fit for an emperor,”

Lapidary Knowledge in Word and Image

he names as many as eleven mirabilia of a stony

Licit and Illicit Signs

nature. “Many people claim,” the English author 18

somewhat cautiously reports, that gems etched

To fully comprehend why Thomas of Cantimpré

with a fly will scare away the insects they mimic

agonized about “stones signed with figures,”

and that those adorned with a winged horse will

it is necessary to take a larger view. In mid-

spur equines to run faster. Relying on what he has

thirteenth-century Paris, the city where the

seen written by “Hebrew doctors,” Gervase also

Dominican was finishing his theological educa-

traces the wondrous art of gem carving back to its

tion, perfecting his preaching skills, and com-

origin. In his imaginative version, God himself

pleting the Liber de natura rerum, the art of

acts as the direct instigator. Having proscribed

sigils was something of a hot-button topic. The

manual labor on Sabbath, he nonetheless gave

conjunction of active figures and active mineral

the children of Israel license to find something to

objects confronted commentators on natural

keep their bodies busy and their minds occupied.

phenomena with a quandary at once ethical and

Why not collect the extra precious stones that

physical. Were images endowed with their own

have tumbled from the rivers of Paradise and use

set of powerful virtutes, tolerable or not? And

them to stimulate daydreaming? Eventually, this

could rules be established and criteria instituted

purely contemplative activity was bound to solidify

to make the call one way or another? Finally,

into material images. And, as through some

how could one imagine the correlation of form

magical mental rubbing, the imagery reproduced

and matter, figure and stone? Nicolas Weill-Parot

everybody’s inner thoughts: religious scenes for

has teased out the philosophical implications of

individuals engrossed in meditations of a devout

a discussion that divided scholastic intellectu-

kind and secular subject matter for those indulging

als, none of whom had qualms about the medi-

in musings of a mundane nature. “Cut by divine

cal and magical properties carried by the stones

power,” these capmahu—Gervase’s portmanteau

themselves. For art historians, disputes revolving

neologism that fuses caput (head, as in origin)

around the art of sigils are of particular interest

with manhu (an expression of wonder)—can be

because they confirm that figurative products

added to the list of images not made by human

could be the subject of intense debate well before

hands. Such nonartifactual artifacts enjoyed a

the Renaissance. At a more immediate level,

privileged status throughout the medieval period

“stones signed with figures” responded to the

because they were assumed to facilitate contact

Gothic fascination with visual motility. Paintings

between humans and the divine (and in the pro-

that weep; statues that talk, embrace, and bleed;

cess, they often legitimized innovative formats and

automata that walk, bend, and shoot arrows (as in

potentially disruptive imagery). Unlike the familiar

Gerbert of Aurillac’s subterranean expedition) are

Christomimetic icons, Veronicas, and crucifixes,

some of the better-known manifestations of this

cut stones were acheiropoieta that took the mineral

new kinetic sensibility. The art of sigils belongs to

as their medium and the Old Testament God, the

the same universe of (inter)active imagines graced

Holy Ghost, or the physical superlunary world as

with enough agency to be responsive to humans’

their inspiration.

innermost desires, fantasies, and aspirations.

19

Of Stones, Sigils, and Stars

131



The productive reception of Islamic scientific

writings and what we would call pseudoscientific

substances), sacrifices, incantations, conjurations,

literature played a major role in kindling theoreti-

spells, and charms. To separate the wheat from the

cal interest in sigils, seals, and operative talismans,

chaff and firm up the distinction between demonic

both in two dimensions and in the round. From

manipulations and elusive natural phenomena,

the second half of the twelfth century onward,

William stressed that the causes of baffling physi-

enterprising intellectuals in Toledo, Paris, Oxford,

cal behaviors might be inscrutable but need not

Padua, and elsewhere across Europe were increas-

qualify as magical. Operative images, on the other

ingly exposed to texts that dealt with alchemy;

hand, are an entirely different story. As imitations

astrology; astral, talismanic, and judicial magic;

of natural objects, figurative representations and

secreta literature; Hermetic philosophy; and kin-

statuettes are derivative and perforce sterile. An

dred tracts and treatises that stretched the bounds

extraneous agent is needed to jump-start their

of permissible knowledge. Added to the newly

actions, and that can mean anything from angelic

expanded body of Aristotelian works, those writ-

assistance, ritualistic activation, and incantatory

ings revitalized thinking in areas as diverse as op-

words to demonic machinations.23 Unadorned

tics and medicine, forecasting and image-making.

stones are, by contrast, beyond suspicion because

The Latin translation of a “Book on Images” was

they run on God-given virtutes naturales. The

among them. Written by the Sabian polymath

trailblazing concept of natural magic proposed by

and mathematical genius Thābit ibn Qurrah

William of Auvergne to filter out the acceptable

al-H.arrānī (d. 901), it describes the operations— whether chasing scorpions or destroying cities—of

from the inacceptable would continue to play a

seven talismans fashioned from gold, silver, lead,

physical phenomena—spontaneous generation, the

tin, bronze, wax, and clay.21 Yet for every author

transfixing look of a hyena, the curative proper-

willing to expand and experiment, there was a

ties of a saphirus, the tempest-provoking fury of

dogmatic colleague who incriminated materials

the eliotropia, down to magnetic forces, a peren-

that did not dovetail neatly with the Christian

nial favorite of actions at a distance. For all their

belief system. In the case of sigils, Thomas of

surprises, these behaviors are part and parcel of

Cantimpré tried to have it both ways: the writings

the material fabric of the universe. Natural magic

that discuss carved stones are to be “neither fully

was William’s inspired way to define them, and

refuted nor fully approved.” Uppermost in the

with that supple label came the assurance that they

Dominican’s mind would have been the weighty

owed nothing to devilish shenanigans, artificially

opinions of Paris’s influential bishop, William of

induced illusions, cleverly contrived sleights of

Auvergne (d. 1249). He denounced a wide range of

hand, and other procedures affiliated with the

practices embraced by votaries of the opera magica

opera magica.

in several of his many writings.22 Having observed



up close such less-than-orthodox proceedings in

already drawn a rudimentary distinction between

the underground clerical culture of his youth, he

intrinsic and extrinsic mineral virtutes. While the

rejected them wholesale: suffumigations (the ritual

first yield curative properties, the second strive for

20

132

burning of incense, special herbs, and psychoactive

Lapidary Knowledge in Word and Image

key role in early modern decipherments of cryptic

Decades earlier, Gervase of Tilbury had

more ambitious attainments such as grace, power,

benedictio ad sanctificandum lapides, a prayer so

and material riches, not to mention the lithic holy

perplexing that it deserves quoting in full:

grail of making their owners invisible. Extravagant

God, almighty Father, who showed Thy virtue

and unreasonable, those actions need an external

to all through certain insensible creatures,

catalyst, but instead of invoking a separate and

who bade Thy servant Moses adorn himself

likely vexatious spiritual entity, the author of the

among other holy vestments with twelve

Otia imperialia turned toward ritual action. This

precious stones as a token of judgment, and

is what he had in mind: a celebrant who coaxes

also showed the Evangelist John the heavenly

stones into action by anointing them with an

city of Jerusalem eternally constructed of

herb or, more aggressively, by coating them with

the virtues which these same stones signify,

the blood of a sacrificial animal. The priest who

we humbly beseech Thy Majesty to deign to

presides over this magico-religious cookery must

consecrate and sanctify these stones by the

be of a pure disposition. Equally important is his

sanctification and invocation of Thy Name,

ability to recite the seventy-two names for God,

that they may be sanctified and consecrated,

each of which should be engraved on a separate

and may recover the efficacious virtues with

stone. When those conditions are satisfied, the

which the experience of wise men proves Thee

mineral objects are ready to receive appropriate

to have endowed them, so that whatever per-

adjurations, spells, and benedictions. Like the

sons may wear them, may feel Thy virtue pres-

foundational story that linked the invention of

ent through them and may deserve to receive

gem carving to the ancient Israelites, the conse-

the gifts of Thy grace and the protection of

cration rite derived from Kabbalistic sources, to

Thy virtue, through Jesus, Thy Son, in whom

which Gervase refers motivated readers who want

all sanctification consists, who lives with Thee,

to pursue the topic further.24 Thomas of Cantimpré

and reigns as God forever and ever. Amen.

knew The Consecration of Stones as well. Contrary

Indications that the consecration rite was actually

to his misgivings about the art of sigils, he did not

performed on the day of the Epiphany, January 6,

hesitate in this case. Compared to his translators,

are scant.28 Thomas probably never attended such

Konrad von Megenberg (who reproduced it in

a stone-sanctifying service, yet he chose to support

Latin) and Jacob van Maerlant (who only mentions

the idea of a revitalizing treatment that restores

it briefly), the Brabantine encyclopedist gave the

precious stones to their full potency. If Original

peculiar ritual maximum visibility by append-

Sin is to be blamed for sapping mineral bodies’ pri-

ing it at the end of book 14. The self-explanatory

meval energies, human misuse has weakened them

rubric reads: “How stones lose and recover the

further, leaving behind apathetic stones that are

natural virtues instilled by God.” More fully

no longer capable of performing “many and great

Christianized than the proceedings summarized in

miracles.” Yet that bleak predicament contains its

the Otia imperialia, the ritual action here involves

own possibility of redemption, since Thomas puts

a priest, clad in vestments, wrapping a given stone

forward the rite of consecration and sanctification

in a linen cloth. Once he has placed the bundle

to repair lifeless stones, very much in the same

on the altar, he is ready to pronounce the Oratio et

way that baptism reconditions human bodies and

25

26

27

Of Stones, Sigils, and Stars

133

penance decontaminates human minds. Rather

settling in Cologne, where he oversaw the theo-

than a rite of exorcism, the consecration rite is

logical curriculum at the newly created Dominican

better viewed as a legacy of late antique techniques

studium generale (a school for advanced studies).

designed to exert pressure on natural objects. The

It is there that, in the 1250s, he drafted the bulk of

Damigeron-Evax, a text admittedly enamored with

the De mineralibus, also known as Liber minera-

the occult, often insists on this aspect, including

lium.32 While the “Book of Minerals” stands as a

in the entry for the “divine and saintly” diadochos:

self-contained work, it also represents one chapter

the stone must be awoken through unceasing

in Albert’s step-by-step exploration of, and com-

consecration (sanctificatus perpetua consecra-

mentary on, Aristotle’s libri naturales. He typically

tione). Marbode fully endorsed his model, adding

approached this rigorous interpretive task through

a fervent defense of the “marvelous effects” stones

the filter of available revisions. In this case, the

produce, provided that they are genuine and “have

Kitāb al-Shifā’ (The book on cures/remedies) by

been consecrated with the appropriate rites.” It

Abū ‘Alī Ibn Sīnā (d. 1037) was a major source of

makes one wonder if the charming “stones signed

inspiration.33 The prolific Persian author, whose

with figures” that punctuate the tracts on sigils in

name was Latinized into Avicenna, profoundly

the Leiden Van Maerlant can be seen in the same

shaped the history of science, East and West. His

light. Painting as a form of “perpetual consecra-

contribution to mineralogy circulated in a Latin

29

30

31

tion”—that would be the magic of an illustrated

rendering by Alfred of Sareshel both indepen-

book on magic.

dently and as an addendum to book 4 of Aristotle’s Meteorology.34 Albert retained its title to announce his programmatic intent of covering the entire geo-

Albert the Great: Theorizing Lithic Agency

logical realm. Whereas lapidaries deal exclusively with precious stones (that is, stones endowed with

134

No one gave a more cogent answer to the vexing

virtues), the De mineralibus only reserves books 1

problem concerning the origins of the powers

and 2 to their treatment, leaving books 3 and 4

residing in both sigils and stones than Albert the

to discuss metals and book 5 in-between (media)

Great. To appreciate how the scholastic natu-

substances, such as alum, arsenic, nitrates, salts,

ral philosopher reconceptualized the interface

and sulfates. Although each class exhibits specific

between the visual and the mineral, it is worth

characteristics, commonalities are many, starting

slowing down and examining relevant passages of

with their existence as simple compounds (corpora

his De mineralibus in some detail. Throughout his

commixta), more complex than the four elements

long life, the German Dominican was an eloquent

but more elemental than plants and animals.

spokesperson for the ideals of the new preach-



ing orders and served, with equal energy, as an

of scientific inquiry, checking auctoritates against

administrator, political mediator, doctrinal expert,

data garnered from personal observation and reli-

and charismatic teacher. Hailed by his contem-

able eyewitness accounts was a given, or so it would

poraries as doctor universalis for his immense

seem. In reality, it turns out that many of Albert’s

learning, Albert studied and taught in Paris before

assertions of direct experience were pirated from

Lapidary Knowledge in Word and Image

For a staunch advocate of the nascent culture

other authors. Instead of outright plagiarism (a

capacious mineral science spelled the end of

notion that did not exist in the Middle Ages), such

traditional lapidary knowledge. However, the

covert textual borrowings are best viewed in the

renewal of forms of knowledge not being linear, it

context of a monastic culture that fostered collab-

should come as no surprise that his sophisticated

orative working habits. Either way, Albert claims

speculations about the origin and performance

to have sucked on stones when feeling thirsty,

of geological bodies sit comfortably next to an

found pearls in his mouth after eating oysters, and

ordinary lapidary. It lists about a hundred items,

watched a saphirus cure two abscesses within the

from incombustible abeston to glasslike zigrites. In

space of four years. He also had a chance to observe

contrast to the largely descriptive lapidary ars, the

how cranes put a stone in their nest in a garden

scientia of minerals has to address causation—the

in Cologne, confirming what eagles are said to do

genesis of mineral objects, the origins of virtutes,

with the aetites. Relying on his scientific instinct,

the identity of sigils. In agreement with existing

he interpreted that odd avian behavior in terms of

theories of Aristotelian derivation, Albert posits

a cooling device rather than a method of protect-

that two vaporous exhalations, one hot and one

ing the eggs or hastening the hatching process.

cold, compact and harden mineral objects, no mat-

Particularly interesting are the De mineralibus’s

ter how smooth or brittle, transparent or opaque.

references to Frederick of Hohenstaufen, for they

A “mineralizing virtue” activates these geothermal

confirm that the inquisitive Holy Roman Emperor

forces, as we would call them. It extracts humidity

was an experimentator of some repute. One episode

from the earth and dries water following multistep

has him send a glove to Gothia to test a petrify-

processes that Avicenna had usefully elucidated

ing well; another shows him as the proud owner

under the rubrics of “conglutination” and “con-

of a counter-magnet—that is, of a stone that rebels

gelation.”38 Albert then extends the same causal

against its nature, letting itself be attracted rather

reasoning to the genealogy of virtutes.39 Answering

than repulsed by iron.36 In Albert’s observational

the question of how powers come to reside in lithic

regime, dewondering statements based on experi-

bodies and enliven seemingly dead matter is a chal-

ence (genuine or borrowed) are not uncommon.

lenge, he recognizes. Older explanatory models are

One example pertains to the pumice stone syrus.

of no great help, in part because hylomorphic con-

If it floats on water, so the De mineralibus stresses,

victions forced an Aristotelian like him to envisage

it is because the stone is a highly porous mineral

a more interactive relationship between form and

and not because it receives assistance from occult

matter than Platonically oriented natural philoso-

powers. Most sobering is its take on the gift of

phers were willing to admit. A “substantial form”

invisibility, so beloved by lapidaries. Deception of

(species or forma substantialis) is Albert’s solution.40

the senses rather than magic is at work, for when

It seamlessly conjoins form—assumed to be active

certain minerals, such as the eliotropia, are lowered

and male—and matter—assumed to be passive and

into water, they create effervescent fumes that fog

female. More to the point, this substantial form

the brains of human observers.

codes stones with a set of particularizing charac-



teristics, explaining why amethysts always get rid

35

37

In more ways than Albert the Great could have

anticipated, the De mineralibus and its reasoned,

of hangovers, carbuncles flicker in the dark, and

Of Stones, Sigils, and Stars

135

magnetic stones attract iron. Local constraints af-

nonetheless full-fledged citizens of this prose of

fect accidental properties, such as color and texture.

the world.

They can tweak virtutes, making them strong and



weak, continuous and fitful. But they cannot alter a

ally expansive images belong to a lavish copy in

stone’s hardwired substantial form.

the Morgan Library of the Confessio Amantis, a



Like the credo expressed in the prologue to

The visually compact and yet conceptu-

33,000-line poem of encyclopedic scope writ-

the Alfonsine lapidary, Albert the Great de-

ten in the 1390s by John Gower (d. 1408). In the

fended the view that the “powers of all things

intellectual lineage of the Secretum secretorum,

below originate in the stars and constellations

it combines a mirror for princes with a selective

of the heavens.” Harkening back to various

curriculum aimed at equipping rulers with the

Aristotelian and Hermetic tenets (generally via

rudiments of advanced education. In the section

Islamic rewritings), this conjecture had solidified

devoted to the physical sciences, Gower called on

into an article of faith for progressive thinkers

mighty “astronomien” and “magicien” Nectanebus

in Gothic Europe. Not least of its attractions

to instruct his alleged stepson, Alexander the

was the central presupposition of an enlivening

Great, on topics touching on “magique naturel.”

virtus universalis. Activated by the Prime Mover,

After revisiting Aristotelian-Hermetic ideas

this vivifying force permeates the entire cosmos,

about the energizing impact of celestial bodies

encouraging clouds to move and wounds to heal,

on inferior entities, the text presents the virtues

plants to germinate from seed and animals to

one can expect to find in fifteen “gras” and “stons,”

grow into full-fledged creatures, trees to give

each governed by a specific star.43 On folio 158

off sap and eyes to shed tears, and, finally, every

verso, we have Aldebaran presiding over car-

single precious stone, formatted by its substantial

buncle and anabulla (spurge), the Pleiades over

form, to spring into action.42 A thoughtful artist

crystal and fennel, Algol over diamond and black

even found a way to visually express the idea of

hellebore, Alhaiot over sapphire and horehound,

an intimate cooperation between the world above

and Canus major over beryl and savin. The Arabic

and the world below (fig. 66). Oblivious to the

names for the stars as well as the number fifteen

constraints imposed by the narrow frames, his

betray the English author’s familiarity with the

expansive landscapes fade toward an atmospheric

Hermetic Liber de XV stellis, XV lapidibus, XV

mountainous horizon moored, on the left side,

herbis et XV figuris (Book on fifteen stars, fifteen

to a walled city. Each of his fifteen panoramas is

stones, fifteen plants, and fifteen figures), itself

populated by an outsized six-pointed star, a stone,

derived from late antique sources devoted to

and a plant. Compared to the plants, rendered in

the fabrication of sigils and talismanic figures.44

41

the crisply mimetic manner of fifteenth-century herbal illustrations, the mineral objects appear as generic oval pebbles (only the grayish pointcut diamond, the top right image on page here reproduced, enjoys a degree of particularization). Underwhelming as they may look, the stones are

136

Lapidary Knowledge in Word and Image

Figure 66 Fifteen stars, stones, and plants, in John Gower, Confessio Amantis, London (?), ca. 1470. New York, The Morgan Library & Museum, MS M.126, fol. 158v. Purchased J. P. Morgan (1837– 1913), 1903. Photo: The Morgan Library & Museum, New York.

Gower, readers will note, deleted the “figures,”

Egypt as the birthplace of cut stones, it quickly

demonstrating that the controversies surround-

passes over the “popular tradition” (meaning, the

ing the troublesome sigils were far from over a

biblical and rabbinical references) to instead make

century or so after they had first flared up. The

a connection with mathematics, since this science,

self-censuring measure must have been the poet’s

upon which the carving of figures is founded, also

decision, since the Confessio’s original dedicatee,

originated there.47 Yet the ultimate impetus comes

King Richard II, is known to have owned several

from the stars. Mirroring the process that channels

books dealing with secreta. The volume in the

celestial energies into mineral bodies via substan-

Morgan Library is tolerant in its own way. Created

tial forms, the “primary figures” of the firmament

a little less than a century later for Edward IV (the

score themselves into some of them. The result-

same patron who owned the Propriétés des choses

ing sigils have a markedly astral character built

with the tony mining scene [see fig. 37]), it is the

on a repertoire of forms that encompass the signs

only known version of the Liber de XV stellis to

of the zodiac, constellations, planets, images of

have yielded a pictorial cycle.

Hermetic derivation, and more in that vein.48 The

45

relationship between celestial prototype and lithic reproduction is formal and, at the same time, fully The Mineral, the Visual, and the Astral

embodied. Bound together like mother and child, they are programmed to drift apart, a process of

138

As the “Book on Fifteen Stars” makes clear, the

severance that, in time, will empty cut gems of

transmission model that governs the relay of

their powers. At that point, they have become use-

virtutes from celestial to mineral bodies presides

less, cold, and dead—in short, mere ghosts of their

over the impression of sigils as well. Gower chose

formerly active selves.49 For Albert, that deteriorat-

to suppress that information, as Bartholomaeus

ing trajectory—what Aristotelians called the cor-

Anglicus had done in the De proprietatibus rerum,

ruption of matter—is nonreversible; nowhere does

which pointedly omits any mention of “stones

the De mineralibus propose a consecration rite that

signed with figures.” Albert the Great boldly went

would revive listless mineral bodies and restore

where others were reluctant or unwilling to go.

them to the status of vibrant matter.

Still, alert to the fact that it was an intellectual



minefield, he prefaced the section on sigils with

are the product of natural creative processes alone.

a disclaimer: he only included it at the urging of

However, his answer is more complicated, in ways

younger brethren who were eager to be enlight-

that are directly relevant to the field of art his-

ened about the topic. Recalling Marbode’s expert

tory. In keeping with its methodical approach, the

who discloses the secrets of lapidary knowledge

De mineralibus starts by identifying three types

to a select group of initiates, Albert envisages a

of “images and sigils in stones”: the first recalls

master explicator, one who is theoretically adept at

painting, the second appears to be “raised as if

fingering ideas culled from astrology, magic, and

embossed,” and the third has been hollowed out

even nigromancia—in a word, someone like him-

or incised.50 Translated into modern language, the

self.46 Though the De mineralibus invokes ancient

first correspond to veined marbles, dendrites, and

Lapidary Knowledge in Word and Image

It would seem that for Albert the Great, sigils

moss agates, while the second and the third can be mapped onto cameos and intaglios as well as onto naturally sculpted geological objects, such as fossils, fossil impressions, casts of shells, and concretions. With his customary experiential signaling, Albert puts forward a specific example collected during a personal encounter (or so he claims) for each category. For the raised image, he takes us to Paris, specifically to the kitchen of “the son of the King of Castile” where a cook retrieved an astonishing oyster shell from the guts of a fish— astonishing because it exhibits “perfectly represented” images of snakes on both its exterior and its interior. The man obligingly sent the specimen to the Dominican natural philosopher, knowing that he was the kind of person whose scientific interest would be piqued by what appeared to be a self-sculpting object. Tempting as it is to identify the Castilian prince with the future Alfonso X, the individual in question was one of his younger brothers (the episode nonetheless raises the intriguing possibility of indirect contact between two of the era’s most uncompromisingly curious

Figure 67 Naturally impressed head of a king, in Franciscus de Retza, Defensorium inviolatae virginitatis Mariae, Speyer, ca. 1484. Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, 4 Inc.s.a. 644, fol. 18b. Photo: Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Munich.

minds). The encounter with the pictorial image occurs in Venice, a city Albert the Great knew from his student years in northern Italy. He recalls

world to validate the truth of the Immaculate

how one day he chanced upon craftsmen who were

Conception. If “nature can paint a head of a king

sheeting the walls of a church. When they joined

in a stone,” he argues, then nothing prevents Christ

two cut halves of a single slab of marble, a “most

from having emerged from Mary’s body, leaving it

beautiful picture of a king’s head with a crown and

unbroken.52 The parallelism is far from clear, and

a long beard” emerged, as if by magic. But this was

Retza’s decision to transcribe several sigils from

the work of natural magic, only ever so slightly

Thetel’s tract is not particularly helpful (fig. 67).

assisted by human hands (the cutting and join-

The printed booklet’s illustration turns out to be

ing, not the carving). Albert’s marble king would

just as confusing. While the draftsman made an

go on to enjoy a healthy afterlife. The Austrian

honest attempt to translate the piece of figurative

Dominican preacher Franciscus de Retza (Franz

geology into a visual idiom, something went amiss,

von Retz) (d. 1427), for example, enlists it as one

and he ended up with two separate blocks, each

among several exempla culled from the natural

stamped with a complete head.

51

Of Stones, Sigils, and Stars

139



Although Albert the Great’s Venetian pic-

ture stone rarely figures in the scholarly record,

this innate lithic impulse best with the expression

it can be associated with what art historians have

“inborn pictures” (ingenitas figuras), one for which

come to identify as “images made by chance.”

Konrad von Megenberg found the perfect German

Renaissance art theory embraced that trope for

equivalent: “angeporns gemaeld.”59

53

the way it confirmed the collaboration between



fantasia and mimesis even in natural figurative

agate” only briefly.60 Conversely, another gem

activities. Leon Battista Alberti is one of several

retained his attention and inspired an unhurried,

authors who refers to it in his seminal De pictura

observant description:

Albert the Great refers to Pyrrhus’s “sculpted

(On Painting), published in 1450. When reviewing

For there is at Cologne, in the shrine of the

how pictorial arts were held in high esteem by the

Three Kings, an onyx (onychinus) of large

ancients, he pauses and elaborates: “Nay, nature

size, having the breadth of a man’s hand or

herself seems to take delight in painting, as when

more; and on it, upon the material of the onyx

she depicts centaurs and the faces of bearded kings

stone, which is like a fingernail [in color], are

in crackled blocks of marble.”54 Alberti does not

pictured in pure white the heads of two young

name Albert the Great. He may well have culled

men; one [profile] is behind the other, but the

the “faces of bearded kings” directly from Pliny,

nose and mouth project enough to be seen.

as Albert may have done as well for his Venetian

And on the foreheads is pictured a very black

“memory.” The Natural History tells the story of

serpent which connects the heads. And on the

an admirable block of marble found on the Greek

jaw of one of them, just on the angle of the

island of Paros, which, once split, revealed the im-

curve of the jawbone, between the part that

age of Silenus, the beefy satyr who liked to carouse

comes down from the head and that which

with Dionysus’s drunken band.55 Almost certainly

is bent towards the mouth, is the head of an

cribbed from the Roman encyclopedia is the gem

Ethiopian, very black, with a long beard. And

Alberti mentions next in the same paragraph:

below on the neck there is again stone having

“Pyrrhus is said to have owned a gem on which

the color of a fingernail. And there seems to

nature had painted the nine muses with their at-

be a cloth decorated with flowers around the

tributes.” The moss agate owned by King Pyrrhus

heads.61

56

of Epirus (third century BCE) is not missing

By extraordinary luck, the object Albert deci-

from our lapidaries either, though it is sometimes

phers with care still exists. It is a magnificent

rendered with modernized iconography. Along

sardonyx cameo that presently lives in its own

with the suitably medieval “trees and crowned

glass case, surrounded by other choice examples

kings, and well-adorned ladies, and shapes of wild

of Hellenistic and Roman glyptic art, in the

beasts,” one reads about a composition in which

Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna (fig. 68).62

the ancient goddesses have morphed into “Saracen

Trimmed and repurposed into a pendant in the

gods.” Specific content notwithstanding, the

late sixteenth century, it is otherwise in mint

point about naturally impressed images remains

condition. No fewer than eleven expertly carved

the same: it is not art but nature that fashioned

layers transfer our gaze from the man wearing

57

140

them (non arte, sed naturae).58 Marbode sums up

Lapidary Knowledge in Word and Image

Figure 68 Ptolemy Cameo, ca. 278–269 BCE in a sixteenth-century mount. Sardonyx, 11.5 × 11.3 cm. Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum, inv. IXa 81. Photo: KHM-Museumsverband.

a dark-brown helmet in the foreground to the



luminously bluish-white flesh of the female head,

close viewing. Though the Ptolemy Cameo would

generally identified as the art-loving Egyptian

be stolen in 1574 and replaced with the large citrine

king Ptolemy II Philadelphus (d. 246 BCE) and his

now visible on the shrine of the Three Magi,

sister-wife, Arsinoë II. Such antiquarian subject

it had spent the previous centuries in Albert’s

matter was not accessible to a thirteenth-century

neighborhood, within walking distance from the

iconographer, and Albert the Great can be excused

Dominican convent of the Holy Cross, where he

for a few interpretive “mistakes,” as he identifies

was teaching, writing, praying, and puzzling out

two young men in lieu of the Ptolemaic couple

the wonders of creation, mineral and otherwise. As

or “an Ethiopian”—that is, a Black personage—

a matter of fact, the alluring gem enjoyed maxi-

instead of the head of the Egyptian god Ammon

mum visibility since it graced the front side of the

on the helmet’s neck guard.

celebrated shrine, which stood, then as now, in

Albert’s considered ekphrasis presupposes

Of Stones, Sigils, and Stars

141

Figure 69 Nicholas of Verdun and others, shrine of the Three Kings, ca. 1200. Gold, gilt, enamel, precious stones, 220 × 110 × 53 cm. Cologne Cathedral. Photo: interfoto / Alamy Stock Photo.

142

the cathedral of Cologne (fig. 69).63 Started in the

bodies, those of the three kings plus three early

workshop of the renowned goldsmith Nicholas of

Christian martyrs. It was smothered with 1450-odd

Verdun around 1190 and finished some decades

gemstones, including 300 ancient carved spolia,

later by another team, the “astoundingly beauti-

that protruded from its glistening skin and added

ful shrine made of gold and of the most precious

their natural virtutes to the miraculous emanations

stones” (as one local chronicle raves) is the largest

flowing from the holy remains.65 Sources attest that

surviving medieval reliquary.64 The double-decker,

the Holy Roman Emperor Otto IV contributed

house-shaped object needed to be of monumental

a significant amount of pretiosa (jewels), which

proportions because it had to accommodate six

is why he is commemorated as a noncanonical

Lapidary Knowledge in Word and Image

fourth king in the lower frontal panel depicting

The De mineralibus’s account of the genesis

the Adoration of the Magi. Whether it is he who

of sigils gets more complicated once we leave

offered the Ptolemy Cameo cannot be determined.

the category of stones stamped with figurative

If that were the case, the conspicuous gift could

representations through entirely natural actions.

have been intended as an indirect response to the

Experience tells Albert that artificial gem cutting

Vienna crown adorned with the mythical Orphan

“sometimes” has a part, even though he does not

stone, a hypothesis that gains added strength if one

specify if that concerns carved gems of less than

thinks of the latter as an uncarved sardonyx. We

perfect quality or those of other materials than

would then have two gem-studded power objects

onychinus (and possibly a combination of both).

complete with eye-catching “master stones,” each

Proceeding again systematically, he details two

lending itself to be deployed in the battlefield of

different methods that rely on the human hand

representations that pitched the Welfs against the

and a hardening agent.69 The third type—figures

Staufen in the continuing conflict over the impe-

created solely through the art of engraving (ex

66

arte rasura)—proves more intractable to ratio-

rial title.

Neither political ramifications nor interpreta-

nal elucidation. Cologne, with Venice, was at the

tio Christiana retained Albert the Great. While it

forefront of rock-crystal carving in Europe at that

makes sense to assume that the “two young men”

time, giving Albert ample opportunity for first-

joined by the “head of an Ethiopian” struck him

hand observation. Yet tools outfitted with a tip

as a crypto-portrait of the three wise kings and,

coated in diamond dust, though commonly used

by extension, of the Trinity, he chose not to make

in metalworkers’ workshops of his day, strike him

those meanings available. What mattered to him

as impractical and too costly. In large part, his

in the context of the De mineralibus was to unravel

hesitance was due to his unwillingness to let go of

the underlying causes and hidden processes in the

traditional lapidary lore, which made him cling to

creation of this spectacular sigil. Taking the mod-

the idea that an adamas stone can be “vanquished”

ern reader aback, Albert maintains that this gem

only when smeared with the blood of a male

“was made naturally and not artificially,” adding

goat (fig. 70).70 (The fanciful legend has a basis in

that “many others like this are found.” Mindful

reality, since heated minerals are more receptive

of the principle that the “powers of all things

to artificial alterations.) Finding himself unchar-

below originate in the stars and constellations

acteristically on the reenchanting side of things,

of the heavens,” he then goes on to surmise that,

he even added a bit of personal mineral folklore,

given the right circumstances, heavenly configura-

writing that the blood can be improved by forcing

tions will fold themselves into rocky matrices and

the goat to drink wine infused with wild parsley or

“sign” them with figures during the very process

eat mountain fenugreek.71 Contrast this with the

of their formation. By virtue of their material

contemporaneous Alfonsine Lapidario. Benefiting

constitution—“wateriness approaching airiness”—

from the more advanced views set forth in Arabic

gem-grade stones are ideally responsive to such a

lapidaries on the subject, the Castilian text recom-

celestial rubbing, and none more so than the softer

mends that “those who wish to pierce or cut other

species, onychinus included.

stones should take small, very thin, and sharp

67

68

Of Stones, Sigils, and Stars

143

of nature in the creation of sigils. He reasoned that even if sigils and their powers “originate in the stars and constellations of the heavens” and excluding those that are solely due to natural processes (like the Ptolemy Cameo), lapidary artisans are needed to transfer the agency-laden figures from the skies onto the stones. To fulfill that relay mission competently, those human agents have to be in tune, so to speak, with cosmic forces. A natural inclination reinforced by assiduous work will prepare them for the mastery of appropriate astronomical expertise. Thus equipped, they will be able to fabricate sigils under propitious conditions, Figure 70 Adamas, in Jacob van Maerlant, Der naturen bloeme, southern Netherlands / Flanders, ca. 1285. Detmold, Lippische Landesbibliothek, Mscr. 70, fol. 131r. Photo: LLB, Detmold.

“when the heavenly force is thought to influence the image most strongly.”74 From the emphasis on artists’ astrologically informed talent, it ensues that sigils do not depend on suffumigations, animal sacrifices, spells, and other dubious procedures. That was Albert the Great’s powerfully legitimating

pieces of diamond and fasten them to the tips of

conclusion. One finds similar ideas in one other

fragments of either silver or copper, in order to

work, the Speculum astronomiae, a sort of biblio-

pierce or cut stones they want to carve, or to make

graphic guide to astrology and various occult dis-

cameos.”72

ciplines ascribed to someone of Albert’s entourage



when not to himself. In the two sections that deal

Even so, there is more at stake in Albert the

Great’s insistence on the naturalness of “stones

with “the science of images,” image magic is un-

signed with figures” than technical considerations.

ambiguously condemned because it has recourse,

Sigils conceived as products of celestial figurative

directly or indirectly, to evil spirits as activating

activities go a long way to neutralize unease about

forces. In contrast to such “abominable” or “detest-

the potential presence of unacceptable activating

able” visual practices, “astrological images” whose

entities. The channels through which virtutes

powers “derive solely from the celestial figure” are

pour from stars into stones may be arcane and the

admissible.75 The decision to authenticate sigils

resulting glyphs abstruse, but demonic they are

through astral influences is therefore the same as

not. While enlisting formative celestial forces to

in the De mineralibus. However, in the Speculum,

account for the life of inferior bodies was not, per

there is no mention of an artisan, no room for a

se, original, using that same conceptual armature

human creator who acts as a catalyzer of similitudi-

to legitimize a class of images was unprecedented.

nes that bind together immensely dissimilar orders

Albert’s tack was especially unusual because it led

of being. Albert’s ingeniously human-centered so-

him to theorize the part of artifice and the part

lution to the problem of sigils prefigured the early

73

144

Lapidary Knowledge in Word and Image

modern concept of the inspired creator—one who has learned how to bend matter into form under the empowering guidance of divinely activated celestial motions. In this cosmically scaled space, nature and art, form and matter, stars and artisans, reason and magic collaborate to create plain stones and stones signed with figures, each powerful, beautiful, and irreproachably canonical. One final image. It, too, comes from Gower’s Confessio Amantis in the Morgan Library and brings us back to the collaboration between king and sage in handling the secrets of “magique naturel” (fig. 71). Nectanebus, dressed in an erminetrimmed crimson robe, a brimless hat on his head, is seen strolling next to his illustrious student, the (anachronistically) crowned Alexander. The two men thread a ground made of a luscious carpet of verdant plants and colorful stones, a mingling of the vegetable and the mineral that gestures, as noted before, toward the double meaning of

Figure 71 Nectanebus explains the wonders of nature to Alexander the Great, in John Gower, Confessio Amantis, London (?), ca. 1470. New York, The Morgan Library & Museum, MS M.126, fol. 158r. Purchased J. P. Morgan (1837–1913), 1903. Photo: The Morgan Library & Museum, New York.

gemma, gem and bud. In this densely patterned, scintillating ecosystem, the chromatic echoes between yellow stones and yellow stars, dark gray

middle-class patrons commissioned the exciting

diamonds and dusky clouds, cannot be accidental.

Van Maerlant volumes, and there are other likely

Rather, such formal resonances succinctly commu-

candidates for nonaristocratic ownership. Lack

nicate the idea that the existence of minerals is tied

of documentation forever withdraws from our

up with the actions of celestial bodies.

view the specific reasons that went behind the



production of encyclopedias and related works of

The regally alert Macedonian ruler eagerly

seizes the opportunity of being initiated into the

encyclopedic scope enhanced with pictorial cycles.

mysteries of the mineral realm. As such, he stands

One likes to imagine patrons with a particu-

as a fair model of medieval elite consumers who

lar fondness for mineral matters and a taste for

could likewise leaven the accumulation of mineral

picture books. The fact remains that the ability to

riches with the possession of lapidary knowledge.

apprehend geological objects in a visual form was a

Less inaccessible than gem-enriched prestige ob-

privilege enjoyed by few. Isolated earlier examples

jects, illustrated lapidaries, though rarities in their

aside, illustrated lapidaries did not take off until

own right, reached a socially more diverse group

the late thirteenth century, and even then, they

of viewers. It is virtually certain that two well-off

never coalesced into something more robust than

Of Stones, Sigils, and Stars

145

146

an intermittent and disseminated proposition (the

as abstract, approximate, and singularly unfit for

exception would be Livre des propriétés des choses).

scientific purposes. Yet neither different standards

As a consequence, compositions disappeared from

of figurative accuracy nor the absence of particu-

the repertoire of mineral iconography no sooner

larizing representational protocols—the absence

than they had appeared. The daring visual cycles of

of realism, in short—invalidate the groundbreak-

the Detmold Der naturen bloeme and the Vienna

ing contribution of the manuscript age. With

Acerba suffered that fate, surviving as ephemeral,

no equivalent in Byzantine and Islamic contexts

though formidable, corroborations of stones’

despite their shared textual histories, Western me-

nigromantic—and even necromantic—powers.

dieval visual culture deserves credit for having un-

Conversely, identical representational formulas

locked the doors to representation for the mineral

migrated along now buried paths of transmission,

realm. That visual interest nicely resonates with

emerging and reemerging in a range of (seeming-

lapidaries’ cultivation of visuality. We have noted

ly) disconnected texts and unconnected contexts.

those texts’ chromatic punctiliousness and percep-

Bravely minimalist “portraits” of stones, such as

tual responsiveness. We have also seen how they

those featured in Matfre Ermengaud’s Breviari

let imaginative experiences—dreams, hallucina-

d’amor and the Leiden copy of Der naturen bloeme,

tions, illusions, delusions—echo throughout their

belong to that group. Compared to these repre-

pages to affirm the mutually sustaining partnership

sentations, which construed stones as a distinct

between the mineral and the visual. Stones that

class of natural objects obeying their own formal

can make us see and think more clearly, protect

laws, the equally standard mining scene insisted

animals, detect poisons, fertilize vineyards, turn

on integrating conceptual exploration with physi-

the sun a blood-red color, summon spirits from

cal labor. It must remain an open question if the

the underworld, and predict our future. Assuredly,

determined extractive gestures seen in the Munich

this is no dead matter.

Dioscorides, Edward IV’s Livre des propriétés des



choses, and kindred images not included here be-

mineral agency one step further by applying it to

tray an embryonic environmental consciousness, a

sigils. Albert the Great, when pushing his thinking

sense that mining represents an assault on nature

about the genesis of images etched into intaglios,

that impoverishes while enriching.

cameos, and stones that are naturally predisposed



to figurative imprints, decided to synchronize

Whichever stylistic contours it took, medieval

Thirteenth-century natural philosophers took

mineral imagery never was a passive transcription

the mineral with the astral. Even bolder was his

of verbal descriptions. By adding, subtracting, and

move to make the lapidary artisan-scientist part of

simply transposing into a different mode of expres-

that conversation across immeasurability. Albert

sion, visual representations perforce reformulated

was a progressive intellectual, and not everyone

their subjects, thereby turning into active partici-

approved of stones signed with potency-laden

pants in technologies of knowledge that strove to

figures—far from it. Nor were conflicted reactions

comprehend the order of nature and the infinite

(à la Thomas of Cantimpré) and outright rejec-

variety of things-of-nature therein. Medieval por-

tions limited to commentators of the scholastic

traits of lithic objects may strike the modern eye

era. Gower’s excision of sigils from the pages of

Lapidary Knowledge in Word and Image

the Confessio Amantis has given us an example to

and make them.”77 Petrarch’s astringent invective

which one can add Petrarch’s Remedies for Fortune

against costly baubles and extravagant trifles tar-

Fair and Foul. The Italian humanist poet (d. 1374)

gets gemstones more generally. Like Der Stricker’s,

wrote these fictional dialogues about human pas-

his critique revolves around the artificial creation

sions, positive and negative, toward the end of his

of value. Are gems’ inflated prices not merely a

life. As a collector of ancient cameos, he is less

function of “the madness of humans” rather than

bothered by the possibility of demonic interference

being embedded in “the nature of things”? And

than by the irresistible magic of the image itself.

is it not self-serving dealers who fabricate stones’

Lady Reason (rationality personified) chastises

powers, then sell them to gullible lapidary authors

Lady Joy (pleasure incarnate) for staring “in awe at

who enshrine them in writing? Keeping Lady

the faces engraved on gemstones by human hands.”

Reason’s argument present, we are ready to journey

She would do better to lift her gaze in order to

to the fabled East—source of all prized Orient

admire “the genius of the supreme artist.” After all,

stones—and approach mineral visuality as a form

it is he “who made the gems, and the mind, the

of social capital with global implications.

76

hands, the eyes that perceive them, know them,

Of Stones, Sigils, and Stars

147

Pa r t   I I I

Geographies of Mineral Marvels, Economies of Mineral Assets

S

haped and reshaped by ancient forms

and representational protocols that made the

of knowledge, medieval lapidaries took

stones attractively legible to Western audiences?

pride in displaying connections to intel-

Preciousness, we must remember, does not exist

lectual enterprises that bore the mark of distance

in nature; it must be manufactured. The medieval

and foreignness, whether one measured those

lapidary did so by tying value to the presence of

in terms of space or time. Marbode of Rennes’s

virtutes. For the discourse at the center of this

liberal use of the late antique Damigeron-Evax

part, it hinged on spatial distance, which, by the

is a signal example of that ongoing process of

same token, familiarized readers, viewers, and

revisionist and legitimating assimilation. As a

buyers with the locales where gems and other rari-

direct consequence, the most successful medieval

ties were harvested—regions so far away and so

lapidary was ascribed to the voice of Evax, alleg-

poorly known to most people in the Middle Ages

edly a king of Arabia. Albert the Great’s inspired

that they would be hard-pressed to flesh them out

reading of works by Aristotle, Avicenna, and

beyond exotic-sounding signifiers. Sheer distance,

other innovative natural philosophers is another

however, would not suffice to create and sustain

example of a reception history that transcended

mineral desire. It is the difficulty of acquisition

linguistic barriers and religious boundaries. The

(to reason with Simmel) that played a crucial role

same cross-cultural fusions begot Boctus (the

in the layered processes that crafted attractive

fictional Babylonian recipient of Sidrac’s infinite

things and fashioned tempting signs. Enduring

wisdom), and it provided the contours of the

mineral legends—the epic struggle between the

translatio studii from ancient Chaldea to modern

Arimaspians and griffins over the control of

Spain that the prologue of Alfonso X’s Lapidario

Scythian emeralds, the snake-infested Valley of

rehearses. To this cauldron of inherited lore, the

Diamonds, underwater magnetic mountains,

medieval lapidary tradition added a few origi-

among others—spun layers of mythopoetic thrill

nal ingredients, most notably poetic voices (as

around brute nature and naked economic realities.

with Marbode and his vernacular translators)

To put it somewhat bluntly, gems’ allure increased

and visual glosses. At an even more basic level, it

in proportion to the dangers associated with their

ensured the survival of mineral matters as a live—

procurement, ultimately justifying, in the eyes of

and exciting—scientific discourse.

elite consumers, their inflated prices.





Intersecting with and yet distinct from

To track how distance at once reinforced and

lapidary knowledge, tales of an ethnogeographic

dislocated the nexus of the mineral and the visual,

stamp assessed precious stones’ cultural impact

we first stop in the realm of Prester John. The

according to different priorities while maintain-

made-up personage, in whose existence every-

ing, and indeed boosting, the aura associated

one believed, came onto the stage of European

with their (mostly) foreign provenance. How

historical consciousness in the form of a Letter,

fictional episodes and factual accounts set in the

one that bristles with hyperbolic mineral motifs.1

East promoted the preciousness of precious stones

Hyperbole, albeit pruned and reconceptualized,

is a leading question throughout this section.

also informs Marco Polo’s Devisement du monde,

What, in particular, were the textual and visual

written just over a century later. The two narra-

strategies that turned clumps of shiny earth into

tives, which provide the main case studies consid-

consumable signs? And what were the tropes

ered here, frame the radical reorganization of the

world that took place during the pax Mongolica.

savior of Latin Christendom, then torn apart by

For reasons of internal politics, the Mongol leader-

internal conflicts and barely holding on to the

ship put an end in 1242 to decades of brutally

hard-won Crusader states. Actual, if severely

successful invasions during which they subju-

distorted, historical facts galvanized the idea of

gated one group after another in Central Asia, the

a Muslim-battling Eastern Christian ruler into

Middle East, and China, coming within a hair’s

existence. Key among those was the victory of

breadth of crushing feudally fractured Europe as

the largely Buddhist Kara Khitan led by Yeh-lü

well. Once they turned their energies to empire

Ta-shih (d. 1143) over the Muslim Seljuk Turks at

building, the successors of Genghis Khan (d. 1227)

the Battle of Qatwan, north of Samarkand in 1141.4

consolidated their scattered conquests into an

Of this alleged Greek Letter there is, however,

enormous territorial entity. Unhampered by frac-

no material trace. By contrast, the Latin Epistola

tious clans of relatives, the Mongol hegemony over

presbiteri Johannis generated something of a copy-

the better part of the Asian continent facilitated

ing frenzy. More than two hundred transcriptions

the emergence of a spectacularly interconnected

of the various Latin recensions have been identi-

world in which high-end commodities moved with

fied, making it virtually certain that the Letter was

relative ease and regularity from the Indonesian

a Western forgery.5 Whoever its canny redactor

Spice Islands to the British Isles. People, too,

was, he must have been dismayed by the political

embarked on long-distance travel as never before.

dissensions that were tearing Church and State

Thus a not insignificant number of Westerners

apart during the Investiture Controversy, not to

made it to East Asia, enough for small commu-

mention by the seemingly unstoppable spread of

nities of Christians to flourish in a handful of

Islam. At a minimum, he was an ardent gemmo-

Chinese coastal cities, for Italian children to carry

phile, considering that his political fiction, so full

Mongol names, and for Asian motifs to percolate

of fantasies, so ready to make promises, ranks as

into European works of art.

the headiest mineral myth-making exercise of the

2



Some introductory remarks about the Letter

of Prester John (hereafter Letter) and Marco Polo’s

few traces in the pictorial record, his immense

Devisement du monde (hereafter Devisement) will

legendary domain, home to gem-bearing rivers

be helpful before proceeding to discuss in greater

and crystalline palaces, is superbly visual, justify-

detail how each work orchestrates mineral pres-

ing its inclusion in our discussion.

ences. When it comes to jeweled ardor, Prester



John is hard to match. The thrilling character

copies but presents a far richer iconographic dos-

started to emerge from the mists of nonbeing in

sier.6 Literary scholars recognized long ago that the

the middle of the twelfth century in stories that

Venetian committed his memoirs to paper with the

glorified an Eastern savior-king. By the 1160s,

help of Rustichello da Pisa, a professional writer of

the larger-than-life rex et sacerdos had developed

chivalric romances.7 For reasons that are no longer

enough existential muscle to send a missive to

fully apparent, the two men shared a prison cell in

the Byzantine emperor, Manuel I Comnenus

Genoa during the winter of 1298/99. (Polo’s captiv-

(d. 1180). In it, he volunteered his services as a

ity was likely linked to an episode in the ongoing

3

152

entire medieval period. Even if Prester John left

the mineral and the visual

Marco Polo’s Devisement survives in fewer

conflict between that city and Venice.) Whatever

an “I/he saw” heralds the former while an “I/he

the two authors’ respective contributions (a matter

heard” signals the latter.12 Polo and his amanuensis

of disagreement), their collaborative effort resulted

are more cagey when it comes to a third category

in an absorbing tale that manages to balance truth

of alleged truth, since nowhere do they acknowl-

and invention without detracting from either.

edge the recycling of motifs picked up from

Speaking alternatively as “I,” “We,” “They,” and

Western sources and indigenous traditions alike.

“Messer Marco,” the narrators advertise their book,

To put the difference between the Letter and the

written in a Franco-Italian tongue, as an all-in-

Devisement in a nutshell, one could say that where

clusive voyage of discovery, one that samples “the

one text excels at conjuring up grand but inher-

customs of the people and the various objects of

ently static gem-filled scenarios, the other breeds

commerce, the beasts and birds, the gold and silver

a viscerally dynamic universe in which mineral

and precious stones.” No matter how much that

riches are, as everything else, restlessly nomadic. In

content may be beyond belief, Polo and Rustichello

Polo and Rustichello’s handling, precious resources

vouch for the factuality of their report. Early

are fully situated; their value, no longer abstractly

readers agreed. Christopher Columbus (d. 1506)

absolute, responds to the law of supply and de-

famously modeled his mental map of the world in

mand. It makes sense, then, that the Devisement

part after the Devisement’s coordinates. His copy

turns its back on timeless lapidary discourse to

of the Latin (and quite heavily doctored) transla-

embrace, instead, embodied forms of knowing:

tion based on a version in Venetian dialect by the

the traveler who witnesses mining, the merchant

Dominican friar Francesco Pipino of Bologna

whose expertise makes him discriminate between

survives. It shows that the Genoese navigator, who

high-grade stones and those of lesser quality, the

persuaded his Spanish royal backers that he would

discerning ruler who accumulates brilliant capital.

find a direct passage to the Indies and their riches,



annotated the lines that mention profitable natural

contextualize the Devisement’s mineral episodes.

commodities—spices and gold as well as precious

Odoric of Pordenone’s Itinerarium (circulating

stones. Nor did the esteem given to Polo and

under a number of alternative titles) is one. Friar

Rustichello’s work subside once the European colo-

Odoric (d. 1331) hailed from the Friuli region and

nial project was in full swing. Several globally ori-

left Italy around 1318, eventually reaching China

ented Enlightenment savants continued to applaud

via India. Franciscan friars outnumbered any other

the accuracy of its descriptions and the acuity of its

social group in Asia-bound expeditions, in part

observations.10 Modern scholarship has been more

because their order’s penitential ideals fostered

skeptical toward the Devisement’s insistent claim

long-distance movement as a form of self-imposed

that it will treat readers to “the full truth about the

trial, in part because the Mongols’ well-publicized

different regions of the world.” To their credit, the

religious eclecticism was attractive to proselytizing

coauthors are candid about the dialogic nature of

visitors. It is upon his return in 1329/30 that Odoric

their information, committing themselves to mak-

dictated his recollections to a fellow Franciscan.

ing the distinction between firsthand experience

Translated into several vernacular languages,

and secondhand reporting linguistically explicit:

the religiously inflected Itinerarium was much

8

9

11

A few related narratives will be helpful to

Geographies of Mineral Marvels, Economies of Mineral Assets

153

in demand.13 Unquestionably, its most assiduous

as the Boucicaut Master executed the bulk of its

reader was the author who introduces himself as

decorative program, numbering as many as 265

a knight from St. Albans. He crossed the Channel

miniatures.16 Marvelous in content and in form,

in 1322, or so he says, to undertake a pilgrimage to

the ambitious, large-format book amounts to the

the Holy Land. Then he decided to push further,

most sustained pictorial effort before the sixteenth

much further East, only to return thirty-five years

century to engage with the representation (and

later, gout-ridden and with many thousands of

misrepresentation) of regions lying beyond the

imaginary miles and dreamed-up encounters

familiar world, which basically meant beyond

behind him. Positive identification of the author

the Holy Land. But how do images featured in

of The Book of John Mandeville continues to elude

the Livre des merveilles and cognate late medieval

specialists, though it is doubtful that he was a

illuminated manuscripts go about the business

military man or even English (hence the designa-

of romancing gemstones? How do they close the

tion “Mandeville-author”). He is now thought to

gap between here and there, sameness and alterity,

have journeyed no further than a good working

to style them as coveted commodities? That is

library, a place conducive to a leisurely remixing of

the central question chapter 8 addresses. Oddly,

passages pilfered from existing literature. Odoric

a few months after the Livre des merveilles was

of Pordenone served as his go-to reference for

completed, the original patron, John the Fearless,

content beyond the Holy Land. Whoever he may

Duke of Burgundy (d. 1419), parted with the

have been, the Mandeville-author was a first-rate

spellbinding book. For reasons of personal politics,

raconteur and, for the most part, an observer who

he offered it as a New Year’s Day gift in 1413 to his

handled the diversity of the world and its inhabit-

uncle, the famously voracious bibliophile Jean de

ants tolerably well (except with regard to Jews).

Berry (d. 1416).17 His similarly prodigious appetite

And his book did sell well, surviving in some three

for gems would have made him doubly appreci-

hundred copies, compared to about one hundred

ate the gift. There is no denying that illustrated

and fifty extant manuscripts of Marco Polo’s actual

travel literature catered to the affluent segment

travels.

of the book-buying public. Yet the restricted

14

15



Conveniently, the Devisement, the Itinerarium,

and the Book of John Mandeville were gathered

representations we are about to examine in no way

with five additional texts into an omnibus edi-

blunt their ability to reflect—and reflect upon—

tion of narratives dealing with the Mongols, the

commonly shared cultural assumptions. As such,

Crusades, and other aspects touching on what

they offer useful glimpses into the sourcing and

literary historians define as the Matter of the East.

trade of Orient stones, which is the topic of the

The most lavish realization of this compilation is

concluding chapter, with an emphasis on gems as

a deluxe Parisian manuscript dating to the first

a transnational currency that satisfied an endless

decade of the fifteenth century, fittingly titled

appetite for dazzling, status-creating adornment.

Livre des merveilles (Book of marvels). A leading atelier headed by the talented artist known

154

circulation and limited social reach of the visual

the mineral and the visual

A

ccording to a common understanding, the ultimate provider of precious stones was the Terrestrial Paradise. This

assumption resonated throughout the Middle Ages because it was rooted in Scripture. Genesis 2:11–12 asserts that the Edenic river Phison (also Pishon) circles the land of Havilah, “where gold groweth” and where one finds “bdellium and the onyx stone,” shorthand for all manner of precious

Chapter 7

Edenic Geology and Surplus

substances.1 What such a mineral paradise might look like becomes clear in a fifteenth-century copy of the Livre des simples médecines (Book of simple medicines) (fig. 72). The rubric of this French translation and adaptation of the standard medieval herbal announces the scene as pertaining to aloe bois. Aloeswood is a fragrant, resinous bark derived from trees of the Aquilaria species native to Southeast Asia. Up to the modern period, it was an expensive natural rarity, much prized as a perfume and for its medicinal properties reputed to cure indigestion, counteract heart failure, and correct an insufficient or obstructed menstrual flow. Other illustrated copies of the same text logically opt for twigs floating down the river. Yet in this case, the foaming waters are empty, leaving the dapper fisherman to chase after other riches: the conspicuously incongruous rubies and sapphires that litter the riverbank. In addition to decking out the shores, the sunlit globular objects nestle in rocky crags and carpet the path leading, past a sealed city, to the tranquil, tree-lined horizon. The miniature, painted with chromatic alacrity, seems designed to startle the eye; content-wise, it usefully sets the stage for several themes explored in this chapter. First, the decision to present the stones as well-formed cabochons calls attention to their joint existence as polished objects of commerce and as flawless natural entities. Second, by condensing the entire class of precious stones into rubies and sapphires, the image certified to the

original viewers that those colored stones ought

bulk of scientific insights and esoteric wisdom, in-

to be regarded as preeminent mineral possessions.

cluding lapidary knowledge, was assumed to have

This view tracks with the predilection in Gothic

originated; it confusingly also designated Cairo,

jeweled arts for the same stones (in addition to

causing the Phison to merge its propagative waters

pearls) (see fig. 20) and their commanding pres-

with those of the Nile. Unless it was identified with

ence in princely collections. Third, the image’s

the Ganges (as in patristic exegesis), the source of

“unrealistic” choice comes as an invitation to

the Phison/Nile could truly be visited in “Upper

contemplate a superabundant minerogenetic set-

Babylonia.” Perpetuating Greco-Roman geographic

ting where stones can be easily collected, free from

writings, the larger region went by the name of

toil or expense. Paradise and near-Edenic regions

Ethiopia, a generic label more or less correspond-

are unaffected, it would seem, by the difficulty of

ing to southern Egypt, northern Sudan (Nubia),

acquisition.

and the Horn of Africa.2 Medieval cartographic imagination configured Ethiopia (so defined) negatively, as a heart of darkness, home to people

From the Really Marvelous to the Marvelously Real

Black, heathen, and occasionally cannibalistic. Colonized by projection and deformed discourse,

The Livre des simples médecines’ studied cultivation

Ethiopia, at the same time, emerged in certain

of mineral desire comes into sharper focus once we

accounts as the antechamber to the Terrestrial

realize that the entry for aloeswood nowhere men-

Paradise. Counterintuitive as that proximity might

tions precious stones. Whether the ostentatious

seem, several medieval world maps offer visual

inclusion of rubies and sapphires at the start of the

proof: look at the Catalan-Estense map to discover

bulky book resulted from the wish of the patron

in that region a self-contained, nicely polylobed

(an Augustinian canon who is seen praying to the

Edenic garden connected to the rest of the world

Virgin and Child in the frontispiece) or from the

through its four rivers (see fig. 81). That spatial

whim of the artist is impossible to say. An arbitrary

closeness explains why Ethiopia was assumed to be

decision, it was not. Just like precious aloeswood,

extra rich in marvelous natural resources.3 Gervase

precious stones were assumed to be children of

of Tilbury is one of the many authors who thought

fertile Phison, the river that makes Paradise’s

of it as a mineral heaven, a place where one could

glorious materials generously available for fishing

stumble, like a carefree fisherman, upon “rivers

and painting. On the strength of this text, the

containing precious stones which anyone can pick

Terrestrial Paradise is located in Upper Babylonia.

up.”4 The author of the Book of John Mandeville

During the Middle Ages, “Babylonia” not only cor-

peddled the same idea. Forgetting that elsewhere

responded to the ancient Chaldean city where the

he equated the Phison with the Ganges, he assures readers that “in this river [the Nile] many precious stones are found and much lignum aloes:

Figure 72 Aloeswood and precious stones in Haute Babilonie, in Livre des simples médecines, Burgundy, ca. 1460. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS fr. 9137, fol. 36r. Photo: BnF.

it is a kind of wood that comes from the Earthly Paradise.”5 Uncertainty about the Phison’s trajectory in our postlapsarian world, whether it flowed

Edenic Geology and Surplus

157

158

into the Nile or the Ganges after a more or less

substantial. Anticipating Orientalist visions of pro-

lengthy journey underground, is understandable.

lific natural breeding, Marbode of Rennes hailed

Ever since Ptolemy’s Geography, it was an accepted

India as the house or homeland (domus) of gems

fact that Africa and Asia were connected in the

and the “greatest nurturer of stones.”8 Much earlier,

extreme south by a vast, unreachable, and barely

Eusebius of Caesarea presented a similar picture

fathomable landmass (as again depicted in fig. 81).

when describing the lavish festivities organized for

The medieval meta-geographic concept of the

the wedding of Constantine the Great’s second son.

Three Indies further consolidated the fusion of

He speaks of “embassies from the Indians, who live

Ethiopia/Africa and Asia. This even more elastic

near the rising sun” and pictures them as bring-

label went back to early Christian biblical com-

ing rich gifts, unknown animals, and “all sorts of

mentators who had adopted it to match the three

sparkling jewels.”9 Albert the Great came up with

apostolic missions led, according to apocryphal

a revisionist version of the same idea. Though he

legends, by Saints Thomas, Bartholomew, and

could not foresee the deleterious consequences of

Matthew into regions located to the east and the

this kind of essentializing train of thought in later

south of the Holy Land.6 In the end, for medieval

times, he gave the routine geographic observation

audiences India Major, India Minor, and Middle

a novel scientific underpinning: if India and Egypt

India belonged, together with Ethiopia, Upper

are packed with both gems and stones bearing

Babylonia, and the always unreachable Terrestrial

sigils, it is because “the power of the planets is

Paradise, to what Mary Baine Campbell has

most effective” in those regions.10

summed up as an “essentially ‘Elsewhere.’”7





overabundance, the European offerings in the area

Deficient spatial coordinates and patchy con-

When measured against Eastern natural

tours did not prevent the Indies from having a firm

of high-end resources could only register as defi-

place in the medieval ethnogeographic imagina-

cient. Sure, the coast of northern Spain and those

tion. Both the Indies and India proper were places

of southern and eastern England are rich in jet,

that offered endless supplies of natural marvels

Scotland’s freshwater mussels yield excellent scotch

and desirable goods, so Western verbal and visual

pearls, the Mediterranean teems with coral, and the

representations repeated again and again. One

Baltic is lined with amber. But these Western fruits

could assume that divine providence had wanted

of Nature’s geological womb pale by comparison

to offset every natural miscalculation, every queer

to their siblings sourced in the East, the sparkling

and fearsome animal, every poisonous plant and

Orient stones of unsurpassed quantity and quality.

overheated desert found in those lands, with an at-

That was a given, yet between the twelfth-century

tractive redress. Being in the neighborhood of the

Letter of Prester John and Marco Polo’s thirteenth-

sun’s abode provided an explanation then deemed

century Devisement du monde, a significant shift

reasonable for people’s darker complexions as well

took place in the experience of world geography and

as for the copiousness of tasty fruit, healing plants,

its material make-up. The impact of that reconfigu-

and, most coveted of all, exotic spices (pepper,

ration cannot be overstated, since it paved the way

nutmeg, mace, ginger, cinnamon, and the like).

for future voyages of exploration and, as Columbus’s

The East’s yield in mineral treasures was just as

invasive expeditions so sharply demonstrate, for

Geographies of Mineral Marvels, Economies of Mineral Assets

Europe’s early modern colonial ambitions, all fu-

delivering valuable reports taken during recon-

eled by the aggressive drive to find a passage to

naissance missions across China and neighboring

the Indies and its untold botanical and mineral

territories. Having been raised in Venice’s exciting

treasures. One might say that readers of these new

mercantile culture, Polo had many opportunities

reports about Asia all of a sudden discovered a

to grow a sharp eye for the valuable and a fine

world that is navigable not only metaphorically but

ear for the memorable. Though he never stepped

also literally. Hormuz, Tabriz, Cambaluc, Quinsai,

into the family business, that same background

and Calicut moved into the places traditionally

taught him how to filter experience through the

occupied by Babylon, Ethiopia, the Phison, and the

lens of the inventory.14 Approaching the places he

Terrestrial Paradise. And instead of a worldwide

visited and the people he encountered with the

choreography of monsters and marvels, beehives of

observational sensibility of a homo economicus,

human industriousness with advanced urban life

he lines up a global cast of characters that makes

and high levels of material culture came into sight.

ample room for deft merchants and astute rulers

Is the bustling Chinese port city Zayton/Quanzhou,

invested in the pursuit of profits accruing from the

in which Indian ships disgorge loads of spices, pre-

incessant movement of goods. In the Devisement,

cious stones, and pearls, not a marvelous thing to

jewels, spices, and fine textiles no longer exist as

behold, asks the Devisement?

self-enclosed abstractions in the way readers in



earlier centuries experienced them in the Letter

11

Marco Polo’s understanding of what consti-

tutes a marvel merits further comment because

of Prester John and countless narratives set in a

it, on the one hand, reflects broader trends in the

largely made-up East. They here garner attention

ethnogeographic discourse and, on the other, gov-

only to the extent that they can be acquired and

erns his and his contemporaries’ (re)presentation

sold—in essence, fancied by others.15 To define

of mineral assets. Before the Venetian humanist

that new material sensibility, I use the notion of

Ramusio published Polo’s journey under the title of

“marvelously real” put forward by Michael Murrin

Dei viaggi di Messer Marco Polo in 1559, the work

to capture Polo’s conceptual handling of a world

circulated, in addition to Devisement du monde, as

infinitely vaster and more complex than he, as any

Livre des merveilles and, in the Latin translation,

other European, could have imagined.16

as De mirabilibus mundi. These titles’ emphasis



on marvel is justified, for Polo stresses that he had

of an earlier era is, if not entirely absent, of an at-

witnessed one grandesime merveille after another

tenuated presence in the pages of the Devisement.

during the decades-long journey that took him

A comparison between the aloeswood scene in

from Venice to China and back via Indonesia and

the Livre des simples médecines with which we

India. His gift for delivering gripping précis of

started and a colored sketch depicting mineral

12

For the same reason, the preternatural wonder

spectacular natural features, attractive commodi-

sourcing in a Marco Polo volume clarifies this

ties, and praiseworthy human achievements—“all

contrast (fig. 73).17 Instead of a short distance from

the novelties and strange things”13—surely was

Paradise, we find ourselves outside Gaindu (mod-

the skill that prompted Kublai Khan (d. 1294) to

ern Xichang, southern Sichuan province), where

retain the Venetian as a minor official capable of

pearls are harvested from a salty lake and beautiful

Edenic Geology and Surplus

159

They could coexist in the same way that Albert the Great embedded a lapidary in a cutting-edge discussion of the formation of geological bodies and the origin of their powers. At about the same time that Albert finished the De mineralibus and Marco Polo left Venice, an English chronicler enthused: “O England, to thee the Pisans, the Genoese and the Venetians have transported the sapphire, the carbuncle and the emerald, drawn from the rivers of Paradise.”19 Someone writing in 1265 would have known that precious stones were no longer ferried from Paradise to the West via the Indies but were shipped across the waters that connect the South China Sea to the Mediterranean via the Indian Ocean. But myths are hard to let go of, and especially so when the really marvelous and the marvelously real reinforce, rather than negate, each other.

Figure 73 Pearl fishing and turquoise extraction in Gaindu, in Marco Polo, Le livre des merveilles d’Asie, Paris (?), ca. 1412. New York, The Morgan Library & Museum, MS M.723, fol. 175v. Photo: The Morgan Library & Museum, New York.

Prester John’s Mineral Extravaganza

It is on the way to Paradise that one could expect to find the reality-defying realm of Prester John. Nothing if not hyperbolic, the priest-king’s invented dominion stretches over the Three Indies, or in

160

turquoise is mined from a mountain nearby.18

the Letter’s words, “from Babylon to where the sun

Though half-hidden, Kublai Khan exerts direct

rises.” It encompasses seventy-two kingdoms and

surveillance. The spatial shortcut effectively makes

is home to the biblical Gog and Magog and the

the point that bodies of water crammed with al-

Ten Lost Hebrew Tribes. Cemented by harmony,

luvial gems and mines lined with mineral seams

powered by piety, and sustained by unlimited

are not open-access enclaves but tightly controlled

human and natural resources, these surroundings

resources. Accordingly, the toiling men are dressed

are as tolerant of diversity as they are expansive.

in plain outfits and wield task-specific tools, very

Creatures horned, dog-headed, man-eating, giant,

much unlike the easy-going, fashion-forward

and simply human live within their confines. The

dandy who is fishing for precious substances in

only noticeable female presence is the Amazons,

the previous image (see fig. 72). Of course, the two

although there is a fleeting mention of ladies who

approaches were not necessarily incompatible.

visit the sovereign for procreative purposes and

Geographies of Mineral Marvels, Economies of Mineral Assets

those who spin his outfits from the fireproof skin



Grandest of all the rivers in the inflation-

of salamanders. In addition to these “strange

prone realm of Prester John is the Phison-fed

worms,” Prester John’s sprawling empire is hospi-

Ydonus (fig. 74).25 Roau of Arundel, an obscure

table to elephants, hippopotami, camels, panthers,

Anglo-Norman poet who translated the Letter

white and red lions, crocodiles that mingle peace-

for his crusading patron William de Vere in the

fully with white blackbirds, silent cicadas, sagit-

1190s, made a fair attempt to upgrade the standard

tariuses, fish whose blood yields purple dye, and

enumeration into poetry:

20

the one self-sacrificing phoenix. Methagallinarii, cametheternis, and thinsiretae might be found

In this pagan land

there as well. If this sounds like a menagerie

Flows a water of great sweetness they call Ydomus.

hatched by Jorge Luis Borges, then Hieronymus

It comes straight from Paradise,

Bosch acted as the territory’s landscape designer.

And spreads out into several branches.

Its amenities include a shell-shaped Fountain of

A river such as this has never yet been seen.

Youth carved from a “stone of admirable virtue”

One verily finds in it

in which Christians and would-be Christians are

Great quantities of rich gems:

cured of leprosy and any other debilitating dis-

Emeralds of great virtue,

ease. The convoluted hydrography accommodates

Sapphires of sure and tried value,

meandering paradisiacal rivers of milk and honey

Carbuncles of great clarity,

along a waterless stream that carries rocks and logs

Topazes of which we have in abundance,

into a sandy sea. Another buried river is rich in

And chrysolithes likewise.

mineral deposits. At the risk of live entombment,

Onyxes, beryls in profusion,

daring souls can reach it when the earth briefly

Amethysts and sardonyxes,

gapes open and dig through the ground, for pre-

And a thousand other fine gems.

cious stones make up the gravel. As if to compen-

One also finds therein jaspers and crystals,

21

22

sate for that poisoned gift, a larger river, flush with

nicogerles, and corals.26

gems, is within such easy reach that children are trained to stay in it for three or four days on end (a

Among other lithic attractions Prester John’s land

thinly veiled reference to child labor in traditional

has on offer are stones that eagles lift into their nests.

small-scale mining). Being a generous suzerain,

Fashioning them after the “Eagle stone” aetites, the

Prester John allows locals to help themselves. But

lapidary-savvy redactor of the Letter gave them

he is not overly generous: he gets first pick and

the exotic-sounding name of midriosi and outfit-

the right to set aside the finest specimens for his

ted them with an impressive array of powers—they

own “treasure and exercise of power.” Worse, he

sharpen human vision, rejuvenate, and, best of all,

is willing to pay only half of the gems’ estimated

render invisible. More unexpected is these mineral

market value, a miserliness that so upset some later

creations’ social consciousness, since they enforce

scribes that they amended what they were copying

peace by banishing hatred, discord, and envy, though

and restored the ideal Christian ruler to the status

only after proper consecration with an apposite

of a fair trader.

formula (legitimo carmine).27 Not yet satisfied, a later

23

24

Edenic Geology and Surplus

161

Figure 74 Realm of Prester John with a gembearing river and marvelous fauna, in The Book of John Mandeville, trans. Otto of Diemeringen, Germany, Lake Constance region, 1476. Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Cod. 2838, fol. 136r. Photo: ÖNB Vienna.

162

gemmophile interpolator thought it necessary to add

and its twin, which has the opposite effect of creating

ten more “incredibly virtuous stones.” Gigantism

darkness at midday. The second group of five stones

inflates these to the size of hazelnuts while lapidary

reach deeper into the physical fabric of things. One

knowledge powers them with a selection of more

specimen performs the Christological miracle of

or less canonical virtutes. The first group of five

changing water into wine while another produces a

comprises a stone that creates “bitter cold,” one

most pleasant kind of milk. The interpolator’s three

that generates an equivalent sensation of “most

final examples require consecration once again to

fervent heat,” and a third that maintains a temper-

operate correctly, at which point they yield results

ate atmosphere. Then there is a carbuncle-like item,

both trivial and excessive: baiting fish, trapping

which predictably turns night into broad daylight,

wild beasts (when leashed to dragons’ sinews), and

Geographies of Mineral Marvels, Economies of Mineral Assets

releasing an explosive charge that tears through

frozen, Prester John’s habitation welcomes visitors

everything (after being smeared with the blood of a

daily. They join thirty thousand resident courtiers,

slain lion).28

all congregating at mealtimes around a single table.



It is just as well that precious stones multiply,

Balanced on only two columns of amethyst, the

for Prester John’s mineral needs are immense.

top of this gargantuan table consists of a precious

At once pious and bombastic, he cannot enter the

emerald as a preventative against intoxication and

battlefield unless protected by thirteen large jew-

physical urges. If “our sublimeness” so wishes, he

eled crosses (of Constantinian memory) mounted

can retire from the noise of court life and repair to

on chariots. On pleasure outings in peacetime,

his jewel-encrusted, balsam-lit private chamber.

the priestly monarch favors a plain wooden cross

Onyxes are part of its decoration, but the Letter’s

and reinforces the subdued tenor by asking a ser-

redactor knew his lapidaries and neutralized the

vant to bring along a golden dish containing earth.

stones’ nefarious “virtues” by setting carnelians

Whoever composed the Letter had a fine sense of

around them, as those texts recommend. Still,

how to mesh the politics of materiality and the

the reiterated presence of the harmful onychinus

representation of sovereignty, for he promptly

remains puzzling. It raises the question about the

canceled that self-imposed gesture of humility by

author’s intent, making one wonder if he meant

appointing another retainer to exhibit a silver dish

to insert a material signifier for the antagonistic

29

30

crammed with gold or precious stones (or both, in

forces that bedevil even perfect, or at least per-

some versions). The most extreme concentration

fectly conceived, utopias.

of mineral wealth occurs in the built environment.



Prester John declares that his main palace is a

other tools at his disposal. His bed, for example,

duplicate of the dwelling that the Apostle Thomas

is made of (or covered by) sapphire to ensure

had designed, according to a well-established

an unpolluted sleep. The precautionary measure

legend, for the Indo-Parthian king Gundophorus.

seems unnecessary, however, considering that as

Its latter-day incarnation reads like a lapidary writ

a priestly king, he is in no need of a libido sup-

large. Every door, wall, column, step, window, and

pressant. And even less once we learn that fair

piece of furniture—every single building block—is

ladies visit him only four times a year for the strict

made of or contains precious stones. Slabs of the

purpose of having their wombs “sanctified.” The

dark and intensely negative onychinus pave the

most chilling perfection-enforcing contraption is a

plaza and plaster its walled perimeter to inflate

gigantic mirror affixed on top of a second minero-

the natural aggressiveness of jousting knights.

morphic construct that soars above the palace’s

Meanwhile, the palace’s main gates layer sardonyx

courtyard.32 Precious, hard, and reflective, its lower

with the rare cornu cerastis (the horn of a mythical

level consists of 125 steps carved from porphyry,

serpent) to act as poison-detecting barriers. On

serpentine, alabaster, crystal, sardonyx, amethyst,

top of its fireproof ebony roof, two golden pom-

amber, jasper, and multicolored pantherus, a list

mels send back shafts of light, replicating during

calculated to evoke the Apocalyptical catalog with-

daytime what the carbuncles at their summit

out exactly repeating it.33 After that steep climb,

do throughout the night. Far from inhospitably

visitors witness a spectacle of delirious grandeur

31

To implement flawlessness, Prester John has

Edenic Geology and Surplus

163

in the form of a double pyramid that stretches as

Ernst, the poem that marvelized the orphanus on

far as the eye can see. The podium’s pillars increase

the Vienna crown as a luminous gem retrieved in

according to a geometric progression—1, 2, 4, 8,

faraway lands, offers one example. Designed to dis-

16, 32, 64—followed by the same succession in

orient and awe, the splendid city of Grippia greats

reverse order, as if the whole thing were intended

Duke Ernst and his fellow travelers with walls,

to mimic a colossal octahedral diamond. The last

battlements, streets, vaults, palace furnishings,

column doubles as a pedestal for the outsized

and “all sorts of wondrous things” made of gold

mirror. Guarded by no fewer than twelve thou-

and precious stones.36 The language of materiality

sand armed men, that marvel of technology is less

successfully substitutes for animate speech, since

marvelous when it comes to its function. Besides

the city’s crane-headed inhabitants cannot com-

detecting all physical motion in subject provinces,

municate through verbal language with the exotic

it exposes any scheming and plotting. As a high-art

(because entirely human) visitors.

panopticon, this all-seeing mirror unmasks Prester



John’s shimmering domain as a politico-religious

would impress audiences stuck in damp, dark,

dystopia that brooks no behavior it deems deviant:

and drafty castles just as much. The grandest of

lying, thieving, whoring.

these mineral interpolations arrives in the form



of another majestic residence, this time commis-

34

Of a hard-edged visuality, Prester John’s palace

complex exemplifies what might be called an ar-

sioned by the nonexistent king’s godlike father,

chitectural becoming-mineral. Medieval readers of

Quasideus.37 His son uses the paternal palace,

the Letter—and royal readers in particular—must

drawn after a master plan of angelic inspiration,

have been wonderstruck by the vision it proposes

to celebrate birthdays. He also visits it on crown-

of a vertiginous accumulation of priceless materi-

wearing occasions, seizing the opportunity to

als. To be sure, they owned gem-set regalia and

drink from the ultrafragrant, supernourishing,

jewel-rich accessories. But furniture? Buildings?

extrahealing Water of Life that courses through the

Prester John’s hallucinatory dwellings had an even

disorienting interior. Tightly sealed, this dwell-

greater impact because they fostered a veritable

ing grants access only to its owner through a door

building boom in imagined architecture, one that

that opens automatically, as if by magic. Both

reinforced the dangerous dialectics between gem-

door and floor, hewn from crystal, reverberate the

hungry readers and jeweled fantasies, between

astral vault emblazoned with celestial sapphires

the beggarly West and the prosperous East. From

and flashing topazes. Meanwhile, the fifty needle-

the later twelfth century onward, increasingly

shaped gilded columns that line the windowless

more intricate mineralized structures rose from

circular wall support amphora-sized carbuncles.

the pages of heroic epics and courtly romances to

They illuminate the interior with such unforgiving

signal spatial distance, temporal remoteness, and

clarity that even the most unremarkable thing can-

enviable difference. Gem-encrusted chambers,

not hide or be hidden. Never did the mineral and

tombs, castles, and even entire cities became ex-

the visual converge with more perturbing implica-

pected tropes of stories linked to the Matter of the

tions. And never again would their conjunction

East and the Matter of Troy (or Rome). Herzog

create such a mirage of cold perfection.

35

164

Early additions to the Letter of Prester John

Geographies of Mineral Marvels, Economies of Mineral Assets

A

s early as the 1200s, Prester John started to shed some luster. Not that his existence was in doubt. Well into the

early modern period, explorers and missionaries continued to investigate the mythical priest-king’s possible whereabouts. Some European kings even launched full-blown expeditions to locate his fabled realm.1 By the fourteenth century, Ethiopia started to look more promising than other regions

Chapter 8

Mineral Realism in the Global Thirteenth Century

of the Indies, an identification that gained traction after an embassy to Rome solidified contacts between the African Christian kingdom and the Latin world.2 Logically, if unexpectedly, the ideal rex et sacerdos morphed into a black-skinned personage, which is how he appears on a midfifteenth-century map produced in Catalonia, then the premier mapmaking center (fig. 75).3 When eastern Africa ceased to be a viable candidate, Prester John migrated to the continent’s west end and, in due time, to the Americas, then considered as another part of the Indies, according to the stubborn opinion of Columbus and many of his contemporaries. By definition always essentially elsewhere, Prester John could not, of course, be found there either.

“Not one hundredth part is true of what is

told of him,” Odoric of Pordenone adamantly exclaims in the Itinerarium, reaching the terse conclusion that his capital does not even measure up to Vicenza, not to speak of larger cities.4 In his view, Prester John is neither an Ethiopian monarch nor an Indian potentate (let alone an inhabitant of the Americas) but a minor Tartar princeling. It is likely that Odoric was motivated to cut the once all-powerful ruler down to size after reading the Devisement. In a lengthy narrative aside, Polo and Rustichello chart the formation of the Mongol empire and identify Prester John with one of Genghis

Figure 75 Prester John in Ethiopia, Catalan-Estense Map, Catalonia, ca. 1450–60. Modena, Gallerie Estensi, Biblioteca Estense Universitaria, C.G.A.1. Photo: Su concessione del Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali e per il Turismo—Gallerie Estensi, Biblioteca Estense Universitaria.

province called Tenduc.5 How the Devisement and other thirteenth-century travel narratives took Prester John’s deconstructed mineral riches and scattered them across the globe; how they intertwined newly reachable lands with the difficulty of acquisition trope; and finally, how images translated that conceptual remapping are questions to

Khan’s Central Asian vassals who was roundly

be pursued next.

defeated when he dared to defy his overlord. The tables, in short, have turned, so that the descendants of a sovereign who a century earlier was

The Wonders of Artifice: The Palace of Cambaluc and

said to rule over seventy-two kingdoms have now

the Golden Vine

become the Mongols’ lieges. Even if its leaders are

166

practicing Christians (but of the Nestorian sort)

Prester John’s downwardly mobile trajectory did

and marry into the Great Khan’s family, their once

not spell the end of imagined Eastern mineral

mesmerizing dominion has shrunk to a remote

treasures. Kublai Khan’s sprawling winter palace

Geographies of Mineral Marvels, Economies of Mineral Assets

complex in Cambaluc (Khanbaliq, modern

Devisement is, by its own admission, all about.

Beijing) offers a fine example of how the new lord

The khan’s private quarters offer another example

of lords annexed some of Prester John’s mineral

of a new style of marvel, albeit one with a brash

capital. Working both with and against traditional

ideological valence. Prefiguring nineteenth-

assumptions, balancing received truth and experi-

century Orientalist fantasies—Samuel Taylor

ential knowledge, Polo and Rustichello present the

Coleridge’s Xanadu is the obvious reference—

far-off seat of power neither as a climax of savage

Polo and Rusthichello’s Kublai Khan lives in a

Tartar living nor as a grandiose castle in the air.

pleasure dome stocked with mineral and human

It is an architectural merveille, but one that can

treasures—gold, silver, precious stones, pearls,

be used in actuality for a highly polished lifestyle.

heaps of jeweled objects, wives, and concubines.9

The palace proper, which Polo is the first known

Based on presents, tributes, and tithes, a robust gift

European to have visited, sits amid an artificially

economy feeds the Mongol ruler’s cache of brilliant

contrived park dominated by a bulky mound.

materiality. As is well known, nothing amazes

Planted with the finest species of evergreens, which

the Venetian merchant’s son quite as much as the

the khan removed from conquered territories as

quasi-alchemical transmutation of precious mate-

botanical spoils, its ground consists of a mixture of

rials into paper money.10 Through his oft-copied

rose and azure soil, making it look greener-than-

description of the Mongol use of the revolutionary

green, as if an emerald earthwork. The single-

currency (invented in China some centuries ear-

storied imperial lodgings are large and lavish. Even

lier), European readers learned that the notes are

though the castle cannot accommodate the volume

obtained from the bark of the mulberry, the same

of courtiers one would have encountered in

tree whose leaves feed silkworms. Additionally,

Prester John’s palace had it existed, the great hall at

the Devisement told them that a red imperial seal

Cambaluc can still house as many as six thousand

authenticates each piece, and it clarified how much

people. And it, too, shimmers with choice mate-

each denomination is worth in Venetian coins.

rials matched by pleasing pictures. Of precious

That these pieces of paper work as signs with uni-

stones, there seems to be no trace, however. Or

versal validity is a commercial achievement Polo

should one detect in the brightly glazed roof tiles

finds impressive, implicitly contrasting it with the

the flashing carbuncles of yore? The Devisement

bewildering proliferation of currencies circulating

notes that they “shine like crystal” and bathe the

in fragmented Europe. Foreign traders certainly

palace in a “luster . . . seen for a great way around,”

appreciate the way their gold, silver, gems, and

which, as shown earlier, was the established way to

pearls become liquid assets that lend themselves

paraphrase the legendary stone’s illuminating pow-

to easy reconversion into other goods. And they

ers. Indeed, the Mandeville-author was happy to

like the promptness and generosity with which the

trade on existing traditions and restore a foot-long

khan honors business transactions even more.

ruby carbuncle, perched on a golden column, to



the bedroom of the Great Khan.

nopolistic hold over the empire’s prestige economy.



Whereas Kublai Khan retains the treasured goods

6

7

8

The brilliantly glazed tiles fall under the

rubric of “novelties and strange things” that the

Just as stunning is the Mongol ruler’s mo-

that long-distance merchants bring along, the ruling

Mineral Realism in the Global Thirteenth Century

167

families must content themselves with a few jewels

by craft or magic, the author knows not—a clas-

procured from local workshops. Polo’s observation

sic mineral marvel is housed in the great hall at

that a team of twelve experts assess the value of all

Khanbaliq. The English tinted pen drawing in

incoming riches matches the historical record. It

a Mandeville copy in the British Library gives a

reveals that a centralized bureaucratic agency, called

pale and thoroughly Westernized idea of a space

the “Goldsmith and Lapidary Office,” was tasked

drenched, according to the rhapsodic verbal

with enforcing quality standards through direct

portrait, in conspicuous preciousness (fig. 76).14

supervision of hundreds of goldsmiths, lapidaries,

This is where the Mongol leader, his family, and

and other purveyors of luxury goods. It also bears

his courtiers consume their meals in tiered ar-

remembering that earlier in the century, dur-

rangement. The image rightly depicts Kublai Khan

ing the period of Mongol conquests, well-trained

sitting alone at the largest table, even adding the

artisans were prized war captives. Unique in the

crouching clerks who record his every word. Yet it

annals of Gothic art history is Guillaume Boucher,

fails to give a sense of its refined workmanship and

a Parisian goldsmith who was seized in Hungary,

the opulence of its décor. Echoing Prester John’s

where he was working on the cathedral and taken to

lithic furnishings, the main table, “made of gold

Karakorum. The Flemish friar William of Rubruck

and precious stones and white or yellow crystal,”

(d. ca. 1293), who traveled to the Mongol court in

is “bordered with gold and stones, whether with

1253, saw some of Boucher’s creations. He mentions

amethyst, or with lignum aloes, which comes from

religious trinkets for Catholic slaves and jewelry for

Paradise, or with ivory set in and bordered with

Mongol ladies as well as an astonishing arborescent

gold.”15 But the real marvel is found against the

mechanical silver fountain. Placed at the entrance

walls. Replacing Marco Polo’s finely pragmatic

to Möngke Khan’s palace, it dispenses mare’s milk,

buffet and Odoric of Pordenone’s splendid jade

wine, and other intoxicating beverages.12 Not so

(merdacas) vase with beverages issuing through

incidentally, the same William informed King

conduits hidden beneath gilded dragons, the

Louis IX of France, who had asked him to under-

Mandeville-author opts for nature and artifice en-

take the arduous mission, that the Parisian artist

twined.16. He claims that a vigorous vine decks out

was sending him a leather strap “ornamented with

the entire hall during major festivities. Fooling the

a precious stone which they [the Mongols] carry as

eyes, its serpentine tendrils support jeweled grapes:

a protection against thunder and lightning.” While

crystals, beryls, irises, topazes, rubies, garnets, al-

it is not known if the gift reached its destination, the

mandines, emeralds, peridots, and chrysolites that

anecdote confirms how confidence in minerals’ pre-

conjure fruits white, yellow, red, and green while

ternatural power transcended cultural boundaries

onyxes and gerachites add glowing black accents

and settled into things with a transnational reach.

to the rigorously mimetic vegetable anatomy. Did



the astutely intertextual Mandeville-author add

11

13

168

Echoing Boucher’s automaton, artificial

contrivances that appear to be endowed with life

the last-mentioned “Kite stone” because lapidaries

function as an alterity-creating device in the Book

told him that this stone’s devious powers consist

of John Mandeville. In addition to jeweled peacocks

in revealing people’s private thoughts? And, more

that come to life during major banquets—whether

egregiously, in forcing women to yield to their

Geographies of Mineral Marvels, Economies of Mineral Assets

Figure 76 The court of the Great Khan, in The Book of John Mandeville, East Anglia, ca. 1430. London, British Library, MS Harley 3954, fol. 46r. Photo © The British Library Board.

Figure 77 Boucicaut Master, the Khan’s table backed by a gem-bearing golden vine, in Livre des merveilles, Paris, ca. 1410–12. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS fr. 2810, fol. 198r. Photo: BnF.

court. For purely practical considerations, such as lowering production time and costs, book entrepreneurs liked their artists to recycle existing templates. Using the Virgin and Child and the giftbearing wise men to portray an exotic ruler being

170

husbands’ every desire? Such an attentive material

served by three courtiers points, however, to larger

choice may well have reinforced Western notions

patterns of representations based on an assimilat-

of (Eastern) tyrannical forms of power. In the ren-

ing logic. The red rubric, sandwiched between the

dering of Jean de Berry’s Livre des merveilles, the

miniature and the text, takes the uneasy cultural

golden vine has been recast as a stately bower to

montage into a different direction: “Description

signal the space of sovereignty (fig. 77). Stretched

of the noble table of Prester John and of the noble

tautly over a trellis, it carries bunches of sapphire

servants” (fol. 198r). Rather than a small blunder

and ruby only—a deliberate reduction meant to

committed by a distracted scribe, the caption

highlight the quintessence of mineral preciousness,

exposes with piercing clarity that for someone sit-

as noted before. More perplexing is the composi-

ting at a desk in Paris in the early fifteenth century,

tional conversion of an Adoration of the Magi into

the Mongol emperor and the priest-king were

a secular event, one moreover set at the “Tartarian”

indistinguishable.

Geographies of Mineral Marvels, Economies of Mineral Assets



The genealogical roots of the “vine of gold

and precious stones” were as long as its shoots. The Mandeville-author could not have known that they reached back to the dawn of writing, since the first mention of jeweled trees occurs in the ancient Mesopotamian Epic of Gilgamesh. Specifically, they appear in the lush garden of the gods located at the end of the world, near the rising sun, where the eponymous hero is searching for the secret of eternal life while processing the untimely death of his friend Enkidu.17 Several strata of GrecoRoman writing passed Gilgamesh’s leafy simulacra onto medieval authors, who pictured them in either arboreal or vine form. In some strands of this complex literary transmission, the branches, laden with mineralized fruit, provide shelter for mechanical birds.18 Poised between the ordinary and the extraordinary, the marvelous vine could not be missing from the Otia imperialia. Gervase of Tilbury assigns it to the sacred island of Heliopolis—literally, the sun’s abode. Ivoryclad walls and floors, glowing bronze, iron, and gold, all inset with gemstones, come together as a backdrop for the glistening vine, heavy with pearls. Its decorative remit is to provide a frame, radiant

Figure 78 Vine bearing precious stones, in Wonders of the East, Winchester (?), 1025–50. London, British Library, MS Cotton Tiberius B V/1, fol. 84v. Photo © The British Library Board.

with ordered perfection, for the couch upon which the celestial body recharges itself every night.19 The English writer did not invent that scenario but

One group of texts imagined Alexander as writing

picked it up from a body of literature known as the

to his mother, Olympias, to keep her abreast of his

Alexander Romance. Scores of translations and

Indian campaigns. Three closely related Anglo-

adaptations from India to Iceland embroidered on

Saxon manuscripts gave that pseudo-epistolary

the original redaction, written down shortly after

tradition an energetic visual expression.20 In the

the death of Alexander the Great (d. 323 BCE). In

Cotton Tiberius copy of the Wonders of the East,

the process, the Macedonian conqueror’s hubris

the jewel-bearing “golden vineyard” materializes

ballooned into far-fetched adventures while his

as fruit trimmed with pearly ribbons (fig. 78).21

military intrepidness won him epic victories,

Sensibly, the artist clipped the hyperbolic plant

including against Porus, the formidable Indian

said to spread for as many as 150 feet, then

king at whose court the artificial tree had landed.

threaded its curling branches in and out of a rustic

Mineral Realism in the Global Thirteenth Century

171

T-frame. Far from crude simplifications, these

The island’s exact location in the great ocean past

alterations allow for a dynamic copresence of the

India Major was a muddled affair (“banished by

domestic and the foreign, the sprouting and the

Nature beyond the confines of the world,” reads

petrified. It is a smart bricolage, though not one

Pliny’s uncharitable direction); that its size grew

that has received much attention owing to the

and shrank from one text to another mattered less

anthropocentric and zoocentric orientation of

than the conviction of its inexhaustible offerings.

modern monster studies. Yet just as headless, dog-

Above all, as if to build toward its later nickname

headed, hoofed, and hermaphroditic beings tested

of Gem Island, Taprobane was pictured as being

definitions of the human in these unconventional

awash with mineral wealth, gold, silver, pearls, and

visual cycles, so did the golden vine push viewers’

a great variety of precious stones.23

imagination toward a nondualistic hybridization of



the animate and the inanimate—things essentially

well (fig. 79). It comes from the same compila-

elsewhere and yet firmly within sight.

tion as the riveting image of Scythia (see fig. 52).

A miniature captures that geological lushness

Responding to the increased demand for ethnogeographic literature in the later Middle Ages, the Livre des merveilles du monde, put together around

Gem Paradise: Taprobane

1400, catalogs fifty-six world regions in alphabetiThe change in perspective that refashioned car-

cal order, from Africa to northern Ululande, the

buncles into glazed tiles and relocated the golden

mysterious, wind-swept homeland of magicians.

vine from a place near the rising sun to the palace

Its anonymous author took liberally from Solinus’s

of the Great Khan also altered thirteenth-century

Collectanea. But whereas few of the 150-odd

topographical representations of natural resources.

known manuscripts of the late antique work carry

New gem-rich arcadias came into focus, proposing

pictures, all four copies of the Livre des merveilles

gentler visions of earthly bliss than the onerous

du monde attracted visual glosses. Robinet Testard,

beauty of the realm of Prester John. To be sure,

a fashionable late fifteenth-century French artist,

Sri Lanka, Java, Sumatra, and other Spice Islands

executed the pictures for this iteration, com-

would go on to register as magnificently favored,

missioned by the book-loving couple Charles,

but as paradises go, these were places one could

Count of Angoulême (d. 1496), and Louise of

visit (and, eventually, colonize). Taprobane/

Savoy (d. 1531).24 A minerogenetic Shangri-La,

Ceylon (modern Sri Lanka) best illustrates this

his “Trapo” invites people to pluck shiny stones

watershed in Western representational sensibility.

off the beach as if they were shells destined for a

Well before thirteenth-century European visitors

beachcomber’s basket. To heighten the impression

set foot on the island opposite the southern tip of

of effortless reward, the painter, who was perfectly

22

the Indian subcontinent, ancient descriptions had singled out what they called Taprobane as a place shaded by fruit-bearing evergreen trees, rich in cities, and blessed with two summers and hence a seemingly miraculous doubling of harvests.

172

Figure 79 Robinet Testard, Trapo, in Livre des merveilles du monde, ca. 1480– 85. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS fr. 22971, fol. 57r. Photo: BnF.

Geographies of Mineral Marvels, Economies of Mineral Assets

capable of working in a realistic idiom, did some-



thing else that recalls the visual performance of the

cultural milieu pushed a less brazenly “grab-and-

Livre des simples médecines examined at the outset

go” agenda. We can remain in Sri Lanka with a

of chapter 7. Besides forcing the ostentatious bivalve

depiction that complicates ideas about how to

to reveal a brood of silvery pearls, Testard unnatu-

reach mineral resources (fig. 80). Like Marco Polo,

rally enlarged the mollusk and inflated the scale of

Odoric of Pordenone chose the modern name of

the smoothly polished rubies, sapphires, topazes,

Seilan/Sillon (Ceylon) over Taprobane. Illustrating

and diamonds accordingly. Manipulating scale was

his section in the Livre des merveilles, the min-

his way to prioritize the things that are gathered

iature shows how the native men and women go

over the people who do the gathering. One is

about their ruby-collecting business, uninhibited

reminded of the Mandeville-author, who also opted

by nakedness and unfazed by ferocious animals.

for gigantism: gems in India grow “so big and so

Their bent bodies nevertheless betray a sense of

broad that one makes dishes, plates, bowls, and

effort, suggesting that even in pre-Edenic sur-

goblets, and many other wonders.” It is even easier

roundings, the acquisition of precious stones is a

to find written equivalents to the fantasy of unre-

physically taxing undertaking. While the scene is

stricted access. One example comes from the aptly

hardly innocent of exoticizing voyeurism, its prop-

named Mirabilia descripta (Description of marvels)

osition that locals can dispense with clothes (and,

25

by Jordanus Catalani (also Catala de Severac, d. ca.

one is left to imagine, with corresponding constric-

1330). Its author, a Dominican friar, apparently was

tive social norms) is not a straightforward exercise

the first to conflate Prester John with an Ethiopian

in condescending primitivism either. When seen

king. He embarked on missionary activity to India

from a Paris racked by war, ravaged by widespread

in the 1320s after receiving appropriate linguis-

social unrest, and afflicted by recurring episodes

tic training and spiritual preparation in Tabriz.

of the Black Death, this idyllic dreamscape must

Appointed in 1329 to serve as the first bishop of

truly have registered as a paradise on earth—and

Quilon (Kollam), Jordanus was put in charge of a

quite literally so, considering that Odoric and

diocese with jurisdiction over most of the Indies.

his contemporaries thought of Seilan as a kind

Not indifferent to mundane attractions, he proves

of antechamber to the Terrestrial Paradise. Was

observant in his encounters with new things,

Adam’s Peak not proof of their imbricated topog-

inanimate no less than animate. He thus applauds

raphies? The conical Sri Pada is Sri Lanka’s tallest

a region that supplies a wealth of precious stones

mountain and functions as a multidenominational pilgrimage site to this day. For medieval Christians

“endowed with excellent virtues,” and with such liberality that they “may be gathered by anybody.”

and Muslims, it was the revered site of Adam’s

All in all, these verbal and visual constructs of un-

tomb. Thanks to a parallel line of reasoning, a lake

hindered accessibility functioned like the obverse

(rendered in the image as a fluvial body of water)

of Simmel’s difficulty of acquisition but with the

came to be nestled in the shadows of Adam’s Peak.

same effect: obscure for the gem-collecting public,

Thanks to a small additional mental step, the two

the far from idyllic, manually intensive conditions

holy spots were interlinked so that the lake was

of artisanal mining.

believed to have been formed by the tears Adam

26

174

To be fair, other images produced for the same

Geographies of Mineral Marvels, Economies of Mineral Assets

Figure 80 Boucicaut Master, Sillon (Sri Lanka) with the lake formed by the tears shed by Adam and Eve, in Livre des merveilles, Paris, ca. 1410–12. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS fr. 2810, fol. 106v. Photo: BnF.

connection.27 A neat example of this last strategy comes from the reminiscences recorded in 1357 by John of Marignolli about his travels to China and India. The Florentine friar set out on the challenging journey at the bidding of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV, whose chaplain he had

and Eve shed after their expulsion from Paradise.

become. Though the Italian made it to Sri Lanka,

Most wondrously, it was a jeweled lake.

a local tyrant kept him captive for four months.



Adding insult to injury, he robbed the traveler

Although treatments of the thinly veiled real-

ity of gem-bearing gravel deposits and precious

of the “gold, silver, silk, cloth of gold, precious

water-worn pebbles differed, this lake was securely

stones, pearls, camphor, musk, myrrh, and aro-

ensconced in the canon of global mineral mar-

matic spices” that he had received as parting gifts

vels from the thirteenth century onward. Some

from the Great Khan and other rulers he met en

writers identified Adam and Eve’s congealed tears

route. Unable to scale the holy mountain himself,

with the stones themselves; others rejected the

Marignolli picked up descriptions from local in-

link between postlapsarian crying and water-born

formants and previous textual accounts. While he

gems without entirely letting go of the paradisiacal

dismisses the idea of tear-generated gems outright,

Mineral Realism in the Global Thirteenth Century

175

he harbors no doubt that the water-catching basin

travelers witnessed (or imagined they witnessed).

(replacing the lake) and the Fountain of Paradise

However, his account gained greater visibility

are connected. How else to explain the presence

because a range of subsequent narratives, down to

of leaves shed by unknown species of trees, fruits

captions on late medieval world maps, cited it. On

with healing properties, pieces of aloeswood, and

the aforementioned Catalonian map in the Estense

coveted Orient stones, “such as the carbuncle and

Library in Modena, a significantly enlarged Sri

the sapphire”?28

Lanka (and its twin “Java”) works as the gateway



The thrill-seeking Mandeville-author also took

to a colorful kaleidoscope of gemlike islands with

liberties with the basic plot. Practiced at creative

three different types of mermaids standing sentinel

plagiarism, he culled the passage from Odoric’s

(fig. 81). An oddly empty, rectangular Taprobane

Itinerarium, replicating the idea of a lake envi-

looms large at the easternmost edge, a location

ably replete with precious stones. Less enviably,

occupied by the Terrestrial Paradise in older maps

the same body of water seethes with nasty water

(here, as noted, Paradise is found in Ethiopia).

leeches. In the corresponding image, the pests,

That the same island appears twice—first as

hard to portray, are elevated to the status of exotic

Seilan and then, toward the edges of the world, as

fauna, pouncing eagle, drooling pard, hawk-eyed

Taprobane—is a good indication of unresolved

dragon, and a mild-looking, retiring elephant

negotiations between accredited traditions and

(fig. 80). The Mandeville-author added snakes and

fresh, fact-based geographic information. In more

crocodiles to the leeches, undoubtedly because he

than one respect, Marco Polo’s report deviated

felt that nature’s openhandedness in those parts

from standard accounts of Sri Lanka. He took leave

of the world required a more resolute rebalancing

from the mineralized lake and gave preference to

than bloodsucking worms. If for this writer can-

the Buddhist version of Sri Pada’s pilgrimage site.

celing the advantages of the Indies amounted to

The tomb, therefore, belongs not to Adam but to

piling up natural disasters, he ended with a picture

the historical Buddha (whose life the Devisement

of calibrated equipoise, the region’s population

recaps at some length), as do the hair, grinder

having found a way to circumvent the perils by us-

teeth, and a Grail-like bowl of green porphyry

ing lemon juice as a repellent. The real constraint,

found therein.30 Kublai Khan, never far away even

the Book of John Mandeville implies, comes in the

when at a great remove, covets those precious

form of economic regulation: the local lord grants

relics, though not as much as a secular object of

his people license to search for the stones only

desire: a top-grade, flawless ruby, long as the palm

once a year.29 In other words, myth-making and

of a hand and thick as an arm. King-sized, red as

social realism need not cancel each other.

fire, and more resplendent than any other gem, it is, in this text’s hyperbolic assessment, “the most precious thing in the world.”31 Try as he might, the

Mineral Monopolies and the Manufacture of Value

Mongol ruler failed to extort it from the Ceylonese king. The latter cherished it as an ancestral heir-

176

In many ways, Marco Polo’s view of Seilan as

loom, one so symbolically charged that it could

a mineral nirvana tracked what other Western

not be relinquished even for the cost of an entire

Geographies of Mineral Marvels, Economies of Mineral Assets

Figure 81 The Mediterranean, Africa, and Asia, Catalan-Estense Map, Catalonia, ca. 1450–60. Modena, Gallerie Estensi, Biblioteca Estense Universitaria, C.G.A.1. Photo: Su concessione del Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali e per il Turismo— Gallerie Estensi, Biblioteca Estense Universitaria.

and the Book of John Mandeville bring up the marvelous jewel as well, though they relocate it to nearby Nicoveran / Nacumera (Nicobar).32 Dogheaded and ox-worshipping as they may be, the island’s inhabitants are entirely rational and valorous. The corresponding miniature in the Livre des

city according to the Devisement’s approving

merveilles interprets those qualities in terms of a

computation.

courtly gathering presided over by a majestic cyno-

Of all the merveilles that Polo reminisced

cephalus king, scepter in hand and crown adorned

about with Rustichello in the Genoese prison,

with a gilded figurine of an ox (fig. 82). The regally

none weaves together the mineral, the visual, and

sized ruby pendant on his chest is painted a bright

the sovereign body more powerfully than this

vermilion; like Justinian’s cyclopean brooch at San

single gem. It was not their invention. Like the

Vitale, this punctum of sovereignty grabs our eyes

golden vine and the gem-filled lake, this ruby had

as the most incandescent patch of color in an oth-

settled in the cross-cultural archive of mineral lore,

erwise pastel-colored environment. So captivating,

leaving a blazing trail in sources Byzantine, Arabic,

it makes one (almost) forget hybridity and idolatry.

Persian, Indian, and Chinese. Odoric’s Itinerarium

“A good foot long and five fingers wide,” exclaims



Mineral Realism in the Global Thirteenth Century

177

Figure 82 Dog-headed ruler of Nicobar wearing a legendary ruby, in Livre des merveilles, Paris, ca. 1410–12. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS fr. 2810, fol. 106r. Photo: BnF.

This author is Ibn Battuta (d. 1368/69), the scholarly Moroccan writer who traveled as widely as Marco Polo had done in the previous century. By his reckoning, a Sufi saint named Sheik Ibn Kafif (d. 982) participated in a round of pearling that

the Mandeville-author, highlighting its function as

yielded the “three stones of ruby” inserted on the

a material emblem of absolute authority, dynastic

royal crown. Implausible as that catch sounds, it

continuity, and political authority. Thus the ruler

implicitly recognizes the role of Arab traders in the

of Nacumera wears it during inauguration rites

island’s economy since ancient times.34

and then continuously thereafter, “for if he did not



have this ruby, no one would consider him king.”

a necklace endowed with a comparably legitimat-

That the powerful gem is functionally equivalent

ing force. While Odoric’s Itinerarium assigns this

to a Western crown is a parallel the redactor of

jewel to the ruby-owning kings of Nicoveran, the

a later, augmented version of the Book of John

Devisement keeps the two objects separate, reserv-

Mandeville drew explicitly. Another author went

ing the power necklace for the kings of “Maabar.”

a step further by physically assimilating the ruby

Ma’bar was the Persian name Polo adopted for

into the hereditary crown of the kings of Sri Lanka.

the southern part of India’s Coromandel Coast

33

178

The Ceylonese ruby sometimes has a twin in

Geographies of Mineral Marvels, Economies of Mineral Assets

Figure 83 The king of Ma’bar with a jeweled necklace, in Livre des merveilles, Paris, ca. 1410–12. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS fr. 2810, fol. 78r. Photo: BnF.

difference, and that is the true merveille.35 Less preoccupied with the king’s polygamy or his union with his late brother’s wife (an act of incest in medieval Christian view), Polo is fascinated by his considerable commercial acumen.36 Any gemstone

across from Sri Lanka, a vital region for the global

weighing more than half a saggio (ca. 12 carats)

trade in rarities insofar as its ports served as nodal

gets channeled into the royal treasure. To swell

transshipping points for cargoes originating in

his coffers further, the same ruler is willing to pay

China and the Spice Islands. Ruled by the powerful

double the going rate for high-grade stones—a

Pandyan dynasty, the Devisement hails the “noble

clever strategy that coaxes merchants into comply-

province” as the “best of all the Indies.” Visitors

ing freely with what are, in effect, monopolistic

can expect to come across tarantulas, yogis,

trade restrictions.37 The Livre des merveilles ignores

astrologers, devoted wives who commit sati, and

Polo’s thick ethnographic description of the

subjects who observe strict rulers of cleanliness,

kingdom of Ma’bar, settling on two themes only:

abstain from wine, sleep in hammocks, and import

nudity and minerality (fig. 83).38 While hewing to

horses from Persia. In short, it is a spectacle of

the textual information that the temperate climate

Mineral Realism in the Global Thirteenth Century

179

assimilation transformed this latter necklace into a rosary that the Indian king uses to recite prayers “to his idols.”39 For all its shortcuts and approximations, the image succeeds in articulating the idea of an essential bond between charisma-absorbing objects and charisma-exuding subjects. Owing to that ontological commixture of mineral and flesh, this ruler appears as a figure of plenty and civility—and definitely not as the “noble savage” forged by a patronizing modern ethnography. Figure 84 Procreation of pearls, in a bestiary, France, 1250–75. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS lat. 14429, fol. 117v. Photo: BnF.

To a significant degree, as the reference from

Ibn Battuta already indicated, the wealth of the Ma’bar and Malabar Coasts in South India rested on the pearl industry. Copious beds of Pinctada oysters have since time immemorial lived in the shallow waters of the Gulf of Mannar. Nowadays,

180

obviates the need for clothes, the iconographic

we consider pearls to be the product of an act of

advisor for the manuscript must have felt that the

violence. We know that they emerge, phoenix-like,

addition of homey sheep would better clarify the

from the petrified bandages of nacre with which

contrast between here, where cloth spun from

the oyster patiently covers bruises inflicted by par-

wool is a necessity, and there, where it has no use

asites or grains of sand. In ancient and medieval

whatsoever. The king, master of his own space,

lapidary knowledge this prosaic reality gave way

is entirely naked save for a prodigiously large

to the language of wonder.40 In a tale that unites

necklace of sapphires and rubies, a Western-style

the sea to the sky, the mollusks live in watery

crown, and modesty-preserving briefs. These re-

depths only to surface during the morning hours.

place the jewel-trimmed loincloth Polo mentions.

At that point, they are ready to unlock their valves

Gone, too, are the jeweled bracelets, anklets, and

and absorb a few drops of dew. The offspring of

finger and toe rings that atomize the Pandyan regal

that gossamer insemination come either as single

body, half-covering it with gold, gems, and pearls

specimens or as a brood of smaller stones, their

“worth more than a city’s ransom.” Jean de Berry

shininess and brightness corresponding to the

must have greeted this scene with approbation,

purity of the droplets of dew (fig. 84). The portrait

recognizing in the visually distant but ideologi-

of Theodora at Ravenna stands as a compelling

cally proximate prince a peer, one to be emulated

example of a self-reflexive use of mother-of-pearl

in terms of mineral possessions, if nothing else. It

disks, deployed to enfold the empress in mineral

turns out that the Devisement alludes to two dis-

materiality (see fig. 14). Whoever commissioned

tinct pieces of jewelry. One is a choker laden with

the mosaic may well have been familiar with the

a variety of priceless stones, the other, a thin silk

mechanics of pearls’ gestation. Perhaps that person

cord strung with 104 pearls and rubies. Cultural

had read the popular Collectanea and noted how

Geographies of Mineral Marvels, Economies of Mineral Assets

Figure 85 Pearl fishing in the Gulf of Mannar, in Marco Polo, Li livres du Graunt Caam, London (?), 1400–1410. Oxford, University of Oxford, Bodleian Libraries, MS Bodl. 264, fol. 265r. Photo: Bodleian Libraries.

Pliny calls “wind-pearls,” more or less equivalent to the “baroque pearls” of modern jewelry.42

Not surprisingly, Polo and Rustichello jet-

tisoned this anthropomorphized account, presumably considering it an old wives’ tale. As a

Solinus’s detailed description was sensitive to the

replacement, they propose a modern type of

oysters’ feelings—the lusting after the dew “as after

wonder: the complex organization of pearl fish-

a husband,” the sipping of the longed-for semen,

ing and the professional training of local fisher-

the concern about an overly intense sun that might

men. Their circumstantial description is rightly

stain the pearly children with ungainly spots, and,

famous.43 Less known is a visual transcription

not least, the anxiety caused by prying human

featured in an English copy of Li livres du Graunt

hands. Should a thunderstorm break out, the

Caam (Book of the estate of the Great Khan), one

frightened mollusks will react by shutting their ar-

of the alternate titles of the Devisement (fig. 85).44

mored casing in a violent gesture that causes them

Painted a decade or so before the Parisian Livre

to miscarry or to produce useless offspring—what

des merveilles, the feathery composition struggles

41

Mineral Realism in the Global Thirteenth Century

181

to separate sameness and difference.45 Two ma-

between prestige materiality and sovereign

ture men occupy the boat. Lacking exposure to

authority. Badakhshan is another region where

members of the Tamil community or knowledge

strict rules are in place to regulate the flow of

of their ethnic identity, the English illuminator

mineral wealth. The forbidding mountain region

relied on entrenched visual codes. Hard to miss

in the Hindu Kush that straddles present-day

are the Chinese-style mustaches and curled, forked

Afghanistan and Tajikistan has seen extractive

beards that supplied ready-made definitions of

activity since early antiquity, whether the goal

Asian otherness. The illumination also includes an

was to obtain metals, sapphires, turquoises, balas

older reading man on the right meant to represent

rubies (“rubies from Badascian”), or shimmering

one of the Brahmans who scare away the sharks

deep-blue lapis lazuli. Mining technologies, which

through the sheer power of charmed words,

laboriously pry the valuable minerals from their

reinterpreted as a European-style (charm) book.

rocky matrices around the site of Sar-e-Sang in

Unresolved tensions between the familiar and

the upper Kokcha River Valley, have not changed

the unfamiliar continue underwater. Leaving out

much since the thirteenth century. Crippled by

treacherous razor-edged reefs and waters infested

illness, Marco Polo spent a year in the cold envi-

with “sea-dogs,” the picture prefers to foreground

ronment where the kings, uniting East and West,

well-differentiated shells and pearl-bearing oysters.

descend from Alexander the Great and Darius the

Nor should the artist’s decision to sprinkle rubies

Great. He also observed how unshod horses walk

and sapphires across the waters look confusing,

along rugged mountainous paths and how women

since it correlates to other instances which priori-

wear padded trousers to live up to ideals of large-

tize symbolic value over textual faithfulness and

hipped female beauty.46 The Devisement comments

cultural legibility over physical plausibility.

on the local lord’s draconian management of the



region’s excellent natural treasures, stressing how

Exclusive control over mineral assets is an

economic merveille Polo records not only for the

he saves the best balas rubies for his use (“the king

kingdom of Ma’bar but for several other regions

amasses them all”) or else releases them as tribute

he crossed during his travels to and from China.

money and as tokens to feed the supraregional gift

Gaindu, mentioned above, is one such place (see

economy. Creating artificial scarcity to increase

fig. 73). The Devisement trenchantly observes how

value is one of Polo’s several observations that

Kublai Khan’s monopoly on freshwater pearl fish-

seems to come straight from the playbook of mod-

ing and turquoise extraction prevents depreciation,

ern capitalism.

an economic provision so vital that infractions occur on pain of death. Extreme as this response might seem, it is not the work of Oriental tyranny

Between Dread and Desire: The Valley of Diamonds

(as later views would have it), since European

and Magnetic Mountains

sumptuary laws from the Justinianic code to

182

Alfonso X’s Siete Partidas adopted comparable

In Polo and Rustichello’s world, the most vital

regulations. If anything, such drastic measures

link between production and consumption oc-

confirm the international currency of the equation

curs in the Valley of Diamonds, a locative trope

Geographies of Mineral Marvels, Economies of Mineral Assets

as firmly part of the premodern global mineral



imagination as Sri Lanka’s outsized ruby. Before

ing from the Livre des merveilles’s picture gallery

the discovery of significant deposits in Brazil and,

(fig. 86). All the same, the Boucicaut Master came

after the mid-nineteenth century, in South Africa,

up with a composition that was sure to give pause

diamonds mined in the Deccan plateau in central

to Jean de Berry and his select companion viewers

India faced no competition. Though he did not

for the way it positions gender as the real wonder:

go there himself, Polo identifies the region with

the owner of the mine is a queen. Though Polo

the kingdom of Mursily/Mutfili (Motupalli).

does not name her, his Queen of Mursily/Mutfili

Attuned to European readers’ expectations,

was almost certainly Rudramadevi Kakatiya

Rustichello may have suggested including the

(d. 1289).50 Against all odds, the formidable prin-

Valley of Diamonds as a set piece of the mirabilia

cess succeeded her father in 1262 and then went

Indiae. According to the usual understanding, the

on to govern the kingdom for some twenty-five

locals throw juicy chunks of meat to eagles that

years, despite continued internal opposition and

are nesting high above snake-infested ravines.

external pressure.51 Far from blithely othering this

Once the birds have carried the bait upland, they

woman who rules over a province in distant India

discard the stones stuck to the meat or preserve

Major, the image more subtly actuates the dialec-

them in their guts, either way offering safe access

tics between what is familiar and what is not. As is

to the prized spoils. Diamonds’ lipophilic proper-

commonly the case in medieval art, it opts for the

ties (oil and grease collect on its surface) must

language of clothes, not skin color or physiogno-

have been at the root of a fable attested in Indian,

my, as the primary medium of alterity.52 The pres-

Chinese, Persian, Arabic, and Western sources.

ent queen might well be a Parisian—except, that

47

The Valley of Diamonds could not be miss-

Inevitably, variants are numerous, though never

is, for her garments’ obtrusive tailoring (cut-out

to the point of obscuring the core elements of

bodice and large gold trimmings) and dissonant

the unorthodox harvesting method. Sinbad is the

color contrasts (cinnabar red gown clashing with

best-known visitor to the Valley of Diamonds.

a yellow lining). Those design elements, far from

During the second of his seven voyages, the

innocent, created an optical jazziness that would

error-prone and staunchly undeterred sailor of

have struck a contemporary viewer as exotically

the Arabian Nights finds himself airlifted by a

outré. More of a visual cliché is the turban worn

huge bird of prey to the valley floor and then

by the queen’s lady-in-waiting, whose seductive

back again, his pockets bursting with shiny loot.

lemony shift disturbingly foreshadows the modern

In the West, the snake-and-eagle story can be

sexualized Orientalist discourse. If not to race,

traced back to Herodotus’s Histories (mid-fifth

the image pays attention to class, in addition to

century BCE), albeit in relation to Arabian cin-

gender. The stark opposition between the women’s

namon. Its earliest medieval mention, found

and the overseers’ upright stances and the labor-

in an allegorical lapidary composed in the late

ers’ bent bodies, one bottom turned toward us,

fourth century by Bishop Epiphanius of Cyprus,

is as emphatic as it is self-explanatory. Forced to

connected it to the retrieval of the blue variety of

toil across yawning clefts, the workmen are busy

hyacinthus (sapphire).

collecting the brilliantly colored cubes—rubies and

48

49

Mineral Realism in the Global Thirteenth Century

183

sapphires, not diamonds—dropped by the eagles

them to a seasoned writer, the papal secretary and

before the serpents can get to them. For all its ab-

noted humanist Poggio Bracciolini, who appended

breviated rendering of “mining,” the scene openly

them to his De varietate fortunae (On the vicis-

recognizes that corporeal coercion is the means to

situdes of fortune), finished in 1448. De’ Conti’s

replenish the box held by the supervisor’s vigi-

portrait of the Valley of Diamonds in the Deccan

lant assistant. This insight is, I think, as far as an

plateau (or, more precisely, in what had become

early fifteenth-century image pitched to a princely

the Vijayanagara empire) is unrushed even as it

audience could go in not entirely masking the ugly

verges on the absurd. Catapults project the “warm

truth about the labor regimes prevalent in extrac-

and bleeding” chunks of meat onto mountain tops,

tive industries.

where the eagles, joined by vultures, are at leisure

The Devisement’s authors also felt that some-

to help themselves protected from the invasive ser-

thing was not quite right with the mythopoeic

pents.53 The Mandeville-author, in contrast, models

scenario of the Valley of Diamonds. While repro-

restraint. Often an effusive marvelizer, he replaces

ducing established mineral lore, they amended it

the entire Valley of Diamonds episode with unvar-

with a dose of new-age verisimilitude. Not unlike

nished lapidary knowledge, giving a synopsis of

the miniature, their compromise solution pairs

various types of diamantz, their origins, physi-

fable and reality by complementing the soaring,

cal properties, and powers.54 Some copyists were

gem-ferrying eagles with down-to-earth alluvial

put off by this textual grafting and recommended

deposits. The rivers, replenished during the wet

that readers reach for their lapidaries instead. It

monsoon season, produce beautiful gemstones,

so happens that the Book of Mandeville’s digres-

and that constitutes a natural merveille in its

sion closely resembles the entry on the diamond

own right. Polo and Rustichello’s handling of

in a work known as Mandeville’s Lapidary. For

the Valley of Diamonds inspired a later Italian

specialists who have examined the two texts, it

traveler to concoct another distinctive blend of the

remains unclear if the author of the travelogue and

witnessed and the imagined. Contrary to Marco

the author of lapidary were the one and the same

Polo, Niccolò de’ Conti (d. 1469) was a practicing

person.55 To complicate matters further, the Liège

merchant. Hailing from Chioggia, a coastal city

notary, translator, and writer Jean d’Outremeuse

south of Venice, he set off from Damascus to exert

(d. 1400) claims in his Trésorier de philosophie

his profession disguised as a Persian trader dur-

naturelle des pierres précieuses (Treasure book

ing the entirety of his twenty-five-year-long trip

of the natural philosophy of precious stones) to

across India and Southeast Asia. He, too, did not

have spent thirty-two years studying the science

put his recollections on paper himself, dictating

of precious stones in a Latin lapidary authored by Mandeville. This text has never come to light because it probably never existed, making it plausible

Figure 86 Boucicaut Master, Valley of Diamonds in the kingdom of Mutfili, in Livre des merveilles, Paris, ca. 1410–12. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS fr. 2810, fol. 81r/82r. Photo: BnF.

that d’Outremeuse wrote under the pseudonym Mandeville, knight of St. Albans. To reinforce the reality effect, the Flemish writer resorted to an original authenticating strategy—one that frames

Mineral Realism in the Global Thirteenth Century

185

volunteer the rare comment that diamonds’ efficacy is severely compromised if one trades them with profit in mind.

According to the Book of Mandeville’s car-

tographic imagination, dread and desire gather pace as one moves further east and draws closer to Paradise. Candidly, the author admits that he could not enter it, being held back by impenetrable walls and, more sadly, by his moral shortcomings.57 Between Cathay (China) and the unreachable Edenic garden extends a vast realm that belongs to none other than Prester John.58 The description of the royal palace (in the city of Nise on the island of Pentoxoire) has already given us a chance to observe how this writer restored the “emperor of India” to his erstwhile glory, making him as worthy as the Great Khan—poorer perhaps, but more perfect because of his pious Christianity.59 No longer a princeling of a landlocked country in Central Asia as by Polo’s reckoning, Prester John has here regained a lot of hegemonic clout. At the same time, the Mandeville-author imagines him Figure 87 Magnetic mountains pulling nails from ships, in Hortus sanitatis (Mainz: Jacob Meydenbach, 1491). Cambridge, Harvard University, Countway Library of Medicine. Photo: Countway Library of Medicine.

as a strangely aquatic ruler, lord of an archipelagic hinterland created by the rivers of Paradise. Dramatizing the point of contact between the marvelous and the monstrous, between Eastern natural abundance and means to frustrate access, its many islands are home to an impressive catalog

the exchange of gems and the transmission of

of hybrids. There is even a female race equipped

lapidary knowledge as a mutually reinforcing

with gemmed eyes that kill, like the lethal gaze of

interaction. On top of imparting mineral con-

a basilisk, when in anger.60 While relishing such

noisseurship, he asserts that his alleged friend

bits of conventional mineral lore, the Book of John

entrusted fine jewels, which he had received from

Mandeville is nonetheless a product of its time

an Arab acquaintance, to his care. Well aware of

when it observes that merchants are reluctant to

their beneficial virtutes, d’Outremeuse decided

journey to the realm of Prester John, thus passing

not to sell the precious items. Whatever the exact

up an attractive business opportunity. Not only

relation between the two texts and their presumed

“are they afraid of the long way,” but they worry

authors, it cannot be sheer coincidence that they

about “the great dangers that are in the sea in

56

186

Geographies of Mineral Marvels, Economies of Mineral Assets

these regions.” Underwater magnetic rocks, first

that transformed carbuncles into roof tiles

encountered in the Persian Gulf—so many “that

and paired the stone-retrieving eagles of the

it is a wonder”—and then again in the Indian

Valley of Diamonds with alluvial deposits. In

Ocean are the most serious peril awaiting travelers

the Devisement’s account no treacherous mag-

eager to venture into the unknown. The made-up

netic rocks are responsible for the absence of

globe-trotting knight wants us to believe that he

nails. Aware of indigenous building traditions,

had caught sight of one himself. Except that this

it explains how wooden dowels and ropes hold

phantom island turns out to be a shrub-covered

together the planks of the single-mast vessels

assemblage of ships caught by overpowering and

(dhows) that ferry people, animals, and goods

entirely invisible forces. Comparable in longevity

between Hormuz and the port cities in southern

and adaptability to the golden vine and the Valley

India. Polo is wrong to dismiss these ships as

of Diamonds, the naturally magnetized earth

poorly built, but his assumption of their frailty

formations appear in Pliny’s Natural History as two

and inability to weather strong storms provides

hills “near the river Indus,” one outfitted with forces

him with a better—more marvelously real than re-

of attraction, the other with the opposite.61 They

ally marvelous—explanation than the improbable

are present in the Alexander Romance, the Arabian

magnetic mountains.64 Small as it might seem,

Nights, Herzog Ernst, and countless scientific tracts,

this cognitive adjustment indicates that some

lapidaries, travelogues, epics, and romances.

Europeans started to recognize the Indian Ocean

Whether condensed into a single unit or scattered

for what it had always been: a largely intercon-

into clusters of smaller rocks, whether detectable

nected commercial maritime space, bustling with

above the waters or stealthily concealed from sight,

ports, emporia, and bazaars.65 The entrenched per-

their sole raison d’être is to ambush vessels unaware

ception of the Indian Ocean as an oneiric horizon

of their existence. Just how powerful the magnetic

colonized by fantasies and fears did not, however,

pull is, how it yanks iron fittings from the ships that

suddenly become obsolete.66 As portrayed in

pass nearby with catastrophic consequences for

Albert the Great’s De mineralibus and, more than

62

the passengers, is something the Hortus sanitatis

two centuries later, in Meydenbach’s Hortus sani-

illustration conveys with graphic realism (fig. 87).

tatis, the magnetic mountains pertain to the same

The text, quoting Albert the Great, explains that the

form of knowledge that motivated the Mandeville-

magnes is “a stone of an iron color, which is mostly

author to augment the terrors of the jeweled lake

found in the Indian Ocean, where it is said to be so

in Sri Lanka by adding serpents and crocodiles

abundant that it is dangerous to sail there in ships

to the leeches. Taken together, such imagined

that have the nails outside.”

hindrances reinforced the notion that distance



and difficulty of acquisition go hand in hand. And

63

But what about Polo and Rustichello? How

did they handle such vintage mineral lore? To

that laid the groundwork for marketing mineral

reconfigure the lodestone rocks into something

objects as desirable things wrapped in engrossing

empirically observable that remains attrac-

tales—things worth owning and displaying.

tive to readers steeped in the marvels of the East, they found an answer similar to the one

Mineral Realism in the Global Thirteenth Century

187

O

ne last passage from the Devisement and matching miniature from the Livre des merveilles usefully bridge the represen-

tation of mineral attractions and the actual trade of gemstones, the topic of this last chapter (fig. 88). At

first glance the image’s take on trade and its perils, on sameness and difference, is, once again, unsubtle. Whereas Odoric of Pordenone’s Itinerarium locates the ruby-owning Cynocephali on the island

Chapter 9

Networks of Gem Trade

of Nicobar (see fig. 82), the Devisement identifies their home as nearby Angamanam (Andaman).1 To this day, uncontacted people live on some of the smaller, more remote islands in the Bay of Bengal, north of Sumatra, and observe inimical behavior toward would-be visitors as a way of preserving traditional ways of living. Polo and Rustichello’s careful wording is of a piece with their habitual undogmatic approach to the world’s diverse population. They insist that the strange people’s heads, eyes, and teeth only resemble those of mastiffs. It is far from the only dewondering gesture sure to have startled their readers. They swear that griffins are nothing but overly large eagles, and pygmies are stuffed monkeys in disguise. Reports about fire-dwelling salamanders supposed to produce an incombustible cloth (asbeston) are pure “fables and lies,” and neither do unicorns look like the beasts depicted in Western art (they are rhinoceroses).

In a much-quoted study, Rudolf Wittkower

examines how the Livre des merveilles’s pictorial cycle betrays Polo and Rustichello’s commitment to “the full truth about the different regions of the world.” In his diagnostic, the miniatures simply reinstated the monstrous races, fantastic animals, and other paraphernalia recycled from the archive of Marvels of the East. The conclusion seems self-evident: the artists’ capacity to stretch their cultural imagination beyond the

Figure 88 Dog-headed merchants on the island of Angamanam, in Livre des merveilles, Paris, ca. 1410–12. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS fr. 2810, fol. 76v. Photo: BnF.

repertoire of stock motifs was rather more limited

and which fill the two sacks to the right, gems are

than that of the two writers. I want to complicate

nowhere mentioned in the text.5 It is possible that

such a straightforward contrast between nuanced

the image’s placement right before the chapter on

words and reductive images by venturing a more

Seilan and its magnificent ruby suggested to the

generous reading. Quite aside from the fact that

iconographic advisor the idea of linking the two

the monstrous races are a rare occurrence in this

islands through the language of precious stones.

manuscript, its illuminators were perfectly capable

Whatever the reason for the revision, and although

of recalibrating visual and verbal stereotypes. To

Jean de Berry was not the person who commis-

wit, the Cynocephali folk are portrayed as peace-

sioned the Livre des merveilles, it must have met

ful handlers of precious goods, a far cry from the

his approval. He loved red stones best, owning

fierce exocannibals ominously referred to in the

no fewer than twenty individually named Orient

text. Dressed in the manner of European mer-

rubies, including the Ruby of the Quail, the Barley

chants, the well-groomed fellows have nonhirsute

Grain Ruby, the Heart of France Ruby, the Balas of

and blatantly pale-skinned hands. Their graceful

the Pope, and, predictably, the Berry Ruby.6 That

limbs attract attention not only for how they sit in

said, the image’s rewriting is a decision that rever-

tension with their muzzles but for what they do,

berates beyond satisfying the gemmophile cravings

namely execute precise gestures with a universal

of a small Parisian courtly elite at the turn of the

valence: evaluating, selling, buying, handling, and

fifteenth century. It incisively acknowledges that

haggling.3 If anything, the city tucked in behind the

precious stones are integral to the global prestige

rolling hills reinforces the air of genteel urbanity,

economy and that their circulation inextricably

the sense that cultural capital accrues from the ex-

connects here to there—and even to the essentially

change of things even when faces become animal-

elsewhere.

2

istic and words fade into incomprehensible barks. It is a vision of “a diverse but common humanity, united economically through trade.”4 Instead of ag-

Import/Export

gressive othering, it juggles dissonant epistemolog-

190

ical registers, walking a fine line between attraction

Snouts aside, Polo would likewise have had no dif-

and aversion, closeness and distance. Neither nar-

ficulty in recognizing himself in the Cynocephali’s

ratively tidy nor ideologically innocent, the splen-

digest of computational gestures. In ways both

did miniature asks viewers to ponder questions

explicit and implicit, the miniature thematizes

touching on the distinction between humanity and

the realities of long-distance commerce, when

animality and to ask whether it is looks or actions

the experience of people, customs, and languages

that constitute enlightened (economic) behavior.

become increasingly hard to figure out, and com-

There is an additional element that has gone un-

munication starts to trade words for the language

noticed. Scarcely inconspicuous, the interpolation

of limbs and things. Neither would the Venetian

concerns the two merchants who busy themselves

traveler have objected to the Livre des merveilles’s

with rubies and sapphires. Contrary to spices

insertion of precious stones, given that jewels had

with which Angamanam is abundantly endowed

played a determining role in his own biography.

Geographies of Mineral Marvels, Economies of Mineral Assets

The Polo family house was located at a stone’s

the perennially resource-hungry Mongolian

throw from the Ruga dei Oresi (Goldsmiths’

leadership had learned decades earlier how to

Street) that led, as it still does, from the Rialto

lure foreign merchants with trade incentives into

Bridge to the central markets. With the parallel

the ever-growing territory under their control.

Ruga dei Zogielieri (Jewelers’ Street), that area was

The decision of Berke Khan (d. 1266) to meet the

the hub of European jeweled commerce from the

two Venetians in the summer quarters that the

twelfth century onward. Gem aficionados flocked

Mongols of the Golden Horde kept at Sarai on the

to those streets, attracted by stalls laden with

lower Volga is an indication of that proactive eco-

tempting wares that could meet anyone’s demand

nomic policy.8 So, too, is the fact that he paid twice

for high-quality Orient stones.

the going rate for the joyaulx, as the Devisement



Mineral matters affected Polo’s life more

approvingly notes. “Twice” need not be taken liter-

deeply than spatial proximity given that jew-

ally; Marco Polo uses it repeatedly as an intensifier,

els were the medium through which his father,

basically meaning “a lot.”9 Still, the episode com-

Niccolò, and uncle Maffeo first came into contact

municates Berke Khan’s interest-driven largesse,

with the Mongols. Much as other Italians did in

which additionally dictated that he heap “very

exploring new business opportunities, the two

great and rich gifts” on the foreign and—as Marco

elder Polos had moved the family partnership to

is quick to point out—exotic-looking travelers.

Constantinople in the 1250s. When the political



climate in the Byzantine capital deteriorated, it

practices and pearl-hoarding strategies, Thomas

spelled disaster for the Venetian community, and

Allsen has proposed a different interpretation

the Polos moved again. Luckier than compatriots

of the encounter between the Mongol ruler and

who were mutilated, killed, or perished at sea

the Venetian merchants. As he sees it, the khan’s

when attempting to flee from the punitive forces

liberality amounted to appointing the Polos to the

unleashed by Emperor Michael VIII Palaeologus

role of commercial agents.10 That would help ac-

(d. 1282) and his Genoese allies, Niccolò and

count for their prolonged stay in Bukhara without

Maffeo opted for the port city of Soldaia (Sudak).

excluding the traditional explanation of escalat-

To facilitate their relocation to what was then

ing frictions between the generally pro-Mamluk

a major Venetian emporium on the Crimean

Mongols of the Golden Horde and their generally

Peninsula, the brothers liquidated their posses-

anti-Mamluk cousins of the Persian Ilkhanate.

sions, converting them into portable and highly

Entirely hypothetical is the inference that the

profitable joyaulx.7 Not long after their arrival in

Polos’ presence, for a good three years, in Central

Crimea, circumstances again took a turn for the

Asia originated a Mongol urban legend that identi-

worse, putting renewed pressure on the resident

fied the West as rich in mineral resources. That,

In his wide-ranging study of Mongolian trade

Venetian merchant colony. But rather than return-

at least, is the intriguing implication of a dispatch

ing home, the resourceful Italian traders decided

sent by the Ilkhan Arghun (d. 1291) to the French

to push further east. They acted on a calculated

king Philip the Fair. The letter’s primary aim was

risk, knowing that the people they called Tartars

to rekindle the project of a Franco-Mongolian

were avid consumers of jeweled wares. Moreover,

alliance (reminiscent of Prester John) against

Networks of Gem Trade

191

the Mamluk caliphate with the goal of “freeing”

reliable means to amass precious possessions.15

Jerusalem. In exchange for his efforts, the khan

Harder to assess in any detail is recycling, yet it

demanded “rare gifts from the land of the Franks,

definitely was another means to acquire otherwise

falcons and precious stones in various colors.”

elusive materials. Gem-drenched objects, such as



the Vienna crown, could not have existed without

11

In reality, precious stones were in short supply

in “the land of the Franks.” Fiery red garnets of

the dismemberment of existing artifacts (pierced

the pyrope type amassed by early Scandinavian,

sapphires, easy to spot on medieval religious and

Anglo-Saxon, and Frankish elites were mined in

secular artwork, are unmistakable traces of such

Eastern Europe, complementing long-distance im-

repurposing). International commerce in luxu-

ports of the equally prized almandine garnets of a

ries did take place, but the volume was small. The

purplish hue.12 Significant seams of amethysts and

Anglo-Saxon scholar Ælfric (d. ca. 1010) already

different varieties of sardonyxes were discovered

expresses admiration for the adventuresome

in Germany, Austria, and Eastern Europe but not

long-distance mercator who brings back sought-

until the fourteenth century. We have seen how

after commodities from far-flung lands. Practicing

they were put to good use in the chapels sponsored

portfolio diversification, his cargo includes “purple

by Emperor Charles IV (see fig. 25). The volume of

cloth and silks, precious jewels and gold, unusual

amber, coral, rock crystal, jet (gagates, in lapidar-

clothes and spices, wine and oil, ivory and bronze,

ies), and freshwater seed pearls was more substan-

copper and tin, sulfur and glass and many similar

tial, enough to generate raw and manufactured

things.”16 By Marco Polo’s time, the improvisa-

surplus for the export market. Baltic amber, for

tional nature of early commerce had given way to

example, became in the later Middle Ages a lucra-

a well-oiled distribution system with global reach.

tive monopoly controlled by the Teutonic Order.

During the halcyon days of the pax Mongolica,

Mediterranean coral, meanwhile, found eager

sapphires, rubies, and topazes collected in Sri

customers in Central Asia. Marco Polo attests to

Lanka, diamonds extracted in India, balas rubies

its popularity in Tibet and the Kashmir region,

and lapis lazuli pried from rocky matrices in re-

concluding that “the coral which is carried from

mote Badakhshan, and pearls fished in the Gulf of

our parts of the world has a better sale there than

Mannar reached, with reasonable reliability, well-

in any other country.”

to-do East Asian, African, and European buyers,

13



192

14

The fact remains that the bulk of natural

everyone animated by the same quest for the same

rarities traveled from East to West, as it had done

scarce mineral treasures. Self-contained but over-

since ancient times. During the early Middle Ages,

lapping commercial circuits tied together Chinese,

mounted and unmounted stones circulated more

Malay, Tamil, Gujarati, Persian, Armenian, Jewish,

locally and not necessarily through the channel

Byzantine, Italian, and, above all, Muslim trad-

of commercial transactions. Confiscation from

ing communities, those which specialized at the

disgraced subjects, tributes, ransoms, bribes,

regional level in merchandise with a transnational

bequests, dowries, gifts, archeological site finds

reach.17 In this newly networked world, Quanzhou

(foremost in ancient Roman settlements and

in China, various locales along the coasts of

cemeteries), and war looting provided more

the Indian subcontinent, Famagusta in Cyprus,

Geographies of Mineral Marvels, Economies of Mineral Assets

Aleppo, Constantinople, and Alexandria were

compounds in bulk—antimony, borax, vitriol,

some of the port cities that consolidated their lead

alkali ashes, essential for the manufacture of glass

as transshipping nodes. After landing in Venice

and soap, and alum, the chief mordant used in the

and other Mediterranean ports, gemstones and

rapidly developing cloth industry. On the out-

sundry precious wares would be sent on muleback

bound trip, their ships carried iron, copper, timber,

over the Alps to the fairs in Champagne, the gold-

salt, grain, furs, weapons, and textiles in wool,

smiths’ workshops in Paris, the fashionable bodies

cotton, and linen. Great, too, was the demand for

in London, the crowns of kings, and the coffers of

silver, as Muslim and Mongol rulers had increas-

hoarding collectors across Europe.

ingly recourse to that metal, abundant in Europe,



The southerly route for transporting goods

for coinage. In addition to cloth, produced in

between the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean

northern cities, glass and rock crystal wares, at the

connected the Red Sea to Alexandria. Handled by

center of Venice’s industrial sector, were export

caravans as long as the eye could see and off-limits

goods that contributed to the reduction of Europe’s

to Christian merchants, this route represented

trade deficit with the Islamic and Asian worlds.

a lucrative source of tax revenue for successive

Containers of all shapes and sizes, vision aids, but-

Egyptian ruling dynasties. The fifteenth-century

tons, imitation gems, and assorted trinkets left the

Andalusian traveler Pero Tafur, looking down

workshops of Venetian fiolarii (glassmakers) and

on the Sinai from the heights of the monastery

the cristellarii (or cristellai), one of the first guilds

of St. Catherine, gives a vivid impression of the

to formalize its statutes in 1284.21 Take a will dic-

camel-driven processions overflowing with “all the

tated by a Venetian merchant in 1263/64. Besides

spices, pearls, precious stones and gold, perfumes

Italian linen cloth and fine Flemish woolen textiles,

and linen, and parrots, and cats from India, with

it lists a ceremonial saddle, two game boards, two

many other things, which they distribute through-

candlesticks, and several vessels made of rock crys-

out the world.” One wants to note in passing that

tal, entirely or in part. Also included is a cut stone

the trans-Saharan trade, which also picked up

(chamaore).22 Nothing unusual in this compilation

speed in the thirteenth century and supplied the

of movable assets, except for the place where the

Western, Byzantine, and Islamic worlds with gold,

document was redacted: the Persian city of Tabriz.

ivory, and enslaved people, played no role in the

A few years before the three Polos passed through

area of minerals proper. Egyptian and Levantine

what is now northern Iran, the testator, Pietro

funduks provided the setting where European

Viglioni (Vioni), had resettled in the “noble city

merchants, led by the Italians, conducted their

Tauris” (fig. 89). While the Devisement abounds

affairs. In those tightly controlled spaces, they

in prejudice toward the place’s ethnically varied

negotiated favorable terms in view of filling the

population and the “worshippers of Mahomet,”

hold of their galleys with grain, flax, raw cotton,

in particular, it lavishes praise on Tabriz’s role as

silk (both raw and finished), salt, leather, ceramics,

a vibrant commercial hub, as if one could divorce

metalware, spices, aromatics, perfumes, dyes, and

urban vitality from its human actors. Silk and

the odd exotic animal, as mentioned by Tafur.

aureate fabrics, all manner of fruit, and wondrous

They also bought mineral substances and chemical

quantities of precious stones crowd the tables of

18

19

20

Networks of Gem Trade

193

Figure 89 Major places in Marco Polo’s world. Photo: Chronicle / Alamy Stock Photo.

from further east and precious wares in amber, coral, and rock crystal, which had traveled from the West, would meet before finding buyers that took them in the opposite direction whence they had come. Francesco Balducci Pegolotti’s celebrat-

194

sellers who tempt buyers streaming in from near

ed Pratica della mercatura (Merchant’s handbook),

and far.23 In the last illustrated copy of Marco Polo’s

compiled in the 1330s, observes that in “Torisi” one

narrative, created in the early sixteenth century for

can buy spices, fine textiles, furs, indigo, cinnabar,

an unknown patron, that febrile activity transpires

quicksilver, gold and silver coins as well as coral,

well (fig. 90). The composition adroitly links port

pearls (tax free), and amber “in the manner of

to marketplace through an unbroken chain of

paternosters.”24 The Florentine merchant-banker

transactional gestures, buying, selling, transport-

compiled his manual to assist those engaged in

ing, seizing, and releasing. On the gem dealer’s

domestic and long-distance commerce, listing

bench to the left, one has to imagine a greater va-

routes, measures, weights, currencies, and customs

riety than the triad of rubies, sapphires, and pearls

dues. His fact-driven portrait of Tabriz is, natu-

that entice viewers of this miniature. After all, it is

rally, less vivid than the imaginative recollections

in those same spaces that precious stones coming

of actual travelers. One thinks of Ibn Battuta’s vivid

Geographies of Mineral Marvels, Economies of Mineral Assets

Figure 90 Trade in Tabriz, in Le livre des voyages de Marco Polo, trans. Robert Frescher, France, 1500–1530. Paris, Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal, MS 5219, fol. 25r. Photo: BnF.

female shoppers did the looking is hard to say—it may well have been both.

Precious Profits

rendering of the city’s beguiling mineral spectacle: “I passed through the jewelers’ bazaar, and my eyes

Located on one of the main crossroads be-

were dazzled by the varieties of precious stones

tween the trans-Eurasian and the north-south

that I saw.” The same passage features a detail that

axis, Tabriz enjoyed an advantageous position

goes unmentioned in Western sources. The jewels,

that made it an interregional node connected

it appears, were shown “in the hands of beautiful

to both the Black Sea (via Trebizond) and the

slave-boys.” Whether the writer was shocked by

Mediterranean (via Lajazzo/Ayas on the Gulf of

this nontraditional mode of live display or because

Alexandretta). In 1258/59, the already prospering

25

Networks of Gem Trade

195

city benefitted from the unexpected fall of mighty

prominent Contarini and Loredan families who set

Baghdad, conquered by the seemingly unstop-

off from Constantinople in 1338. Egypt then being

pable Mongolian forces. During the following

off-limits to Christians, they took the most north-

decades, Tabriz turned into the de facto capital of

erly route to reach Delhi via Crimea, Tana, and

the Ilkhanate, a rise that coincided with deteriorat-

Afghanistan.27 Muhammad ibn Tughluq (d. 1351),

ing relations between Latindom and the Mamluks.

the cultured if erratic sultan of Mongol descent,

When those came to a head in 1291 after the loss

enjoyed a reputation for openhanded largesse.

of Crusader Acre, the pope issued a general trade

Eager to burnish his international credentials, he

embargo. Though variably observed, it caused

liked to employ foreigners, not least Ibn Battuta,

the main east-west artery to shift northward,

recruited as a magistrate. The Venetians calculated

away from Egypt and other Mamluk-controlled

that Western exotica were likely to attract his at-

territories. In general, international trade during

tention as well, which is why they brought along a

the entire period was dictated by the balance of

clock, a mechanical fountain, fabrics, silver coins,

power between the two Muslim superpowers, their

and a little Baltic amber. Their wager paid off,

ongoing conflicts amplified by alliances with the

and their reward of 200,000 bezants was gener-

Italian maritime republics. The Mongol Ilkhanate

ous. In contrast to the Polos, who came to Berke

seized the opportunity to turn the situation to its

Khan with jewels and departed with money, the

advantage. It encouraged international commerce

Loredans and their associates added one extra step:

by improving the infrastructure, ensuring safer

about half that sum, essentially the money that was

traveling conditions, and lowering taxes—a wel-

not set aside to cover transport costs, taxes, and

come measure given that land transit was always

bribes, was converted into pearls. For the three

more expensive than sea transport. The ability to

men who survived the rigors of the journey and

bypass Arab middlemen combined with the pros-

made it back to Venice, the pearls generated hand-

pect of new and potentially lucrative markets acted

some profits—exactly how much is not known

as an added incentive for Western risk-taking

but probably quite a bit more than the standard

merchants to push as far as Tabriz, where they

12 to 20 percent expected from overseas imports.

established small but thriving mercantile com-

Intending to achieve an even greater gain, one

munities, Genoese and Venetian above all. It was

trading partner forwarded his pearly capital to the

only with the messy dissolution of the Ilkhanate,

fairs of northern France. If we trust the contempo-

compounded by the slow but inexorable spread

raneous testimony of a French Carmelite, target-

of the plague (eventually known as the Black

ing the transalpine market and its gem-deprived

Death) along the same roads frequented by friars,

customers was a smart move, well worth the added

merchants, and goods that international exchanges

risk. A gaping imbalance between supply and

came by the 1330s to a sputtering end.

demand explains, in his view, why pearls are “sold



for high prices and could hardly be found at all in

26

196

Unlike missionaries, Italian merchants rarely

went beyond Persia to reach the sources of spices

Paris.” He then grumbles about the sartorial in-

and gems directly. One well-documented excep-

temperance of the nobility, going as far as to blame

tion concerns six Venetian business partners of the

the crushing defeat of the French at the battle of

Geographies of Mineral Marvels, Economies of Mineral Assets

Poitiers in 1356 during the Hundred Years’ War on

In fifteenth-century Flanders, where diamond

knights covered “head to foot with gems and pre-

faceting took off, one such newly fashionable

cious stones”—knights mineralized, one might be

stone was equivalent to about five rubies and five

tempted to say.

emeralds, 800 grams of gold, a roll of the finest



Brussels woolen cloth, or thirty kilos of pepper.32

28

Pearls, loose and in strands, would be

transported from Delhi to Paris in soft pouches.

A rare early document relating to Frederick II

Gemstones proper were more safely locked away

is even more revealing. Drawn up in 1253, it is a

in small caskets, the kind held open by the man

contract that registers a transaction between the

wearing the Asian-style hat to the right of the

Holy Roman Emperor’s son, the short-lived and

Tabriz marketplace illumination (see fig. 90).

financially hard-pressed Conrad IV (d. 1254), and

Different, too, was their mode of appraisal. To sort

Genoese merchants.33 The volume of valuable

pearls according to size, gem traders would use

possessions transferred from prince to merchant is

sieves fitted with holes of increasing diameter. Seed

astounding. Totaling 987 items, the list includes 99

pearls, bought by mercers to baste clothes and by

rings set with stones (plus one without), 94 gems

apothecaries to pulverize into fancy drugs, were

mounted on brooches and pendants, 10 smaller

priced by the ounce. Medium-sized pearls were

but precious devotional and household objects,

sold also by the ounce or else in strands, leaving

and some 800 mounted (inclusi) and unmounted

only the large, white, and round Orient pearls to

(exclusi) stones. Two-thirds of those were intaglios

be transacted individually. Gems, on the other

(de entalia), leaving 80 cameos and regal Orient

hand, were evaluated, then as now, by the carat.

rubies, sapphires, pearls, diamonds, and topazes to

Pegolotti’s treatise contains conversion tables, con-

complete the list. The portable treasure confirms

firming that their price grew exponentially rather

the Staufen’s taste for cut stones. It also attests to

than incrementally with each added carat.29 But

the large volume of a medieval ruler’s mineral

what were those prices? How was the preciousness

possessions (admittedly one of imperial rank and

of precious stones quantified? Unfortunately, and

gemmophile inclinations). Even if the pressing

30

in contrast to Islamic counterparts, Western lapi-

need for cash must have forced the seller to settle

daries contain next to no information about gems’

for a sum quite a bit below the market rate, the

relative prices. An exception is a Hebrew manu-

lot’s assessment at 2,522 Genoese pounds was huge.

script redacted in Venice in 1403 and updated in

According to the calculations made by Eugene

Genoa fifty years later. It appends a short lapidary

Byrne, who first brought the document to light,

to a merchant’s manual, giving advice on how to

that sum corresponded more or less to the follow-

price gemstones and detect imitations. “Sparkling”

ing: 10 noble houses, a large ship fully manned and

Orient rubies—the carbuncles of yore—fetch the

with provisions for up to four months, 150 sacks

highest price. At 80 ducats for a single carat, they

of wool of 500 pounds each and 1500 pounds of

are four times as expensive as balas rubies and

raw silk, between 13,000 and 18,000 bushels of

eight times more than sapphires. Only well-cut

wheat, between 8,000 and 9,000 sheep and 85 of

diamonds come close at 60 ducats. Comparative

the finest horses. More loathsome is the fact that

data is valuable to put raw figures into perspective.

the same money would have bought some 350

31

Networks of Gem Trade

197

enslaved Saracen people (the trade in humans was one of Genoa’s specialties and a significant source

artistic manuals, technical literature, and the oc-

of revenue).

casional lapidary.37 For the production of artificial

Within the restricted ambit of the luxury

gems, Venice was again a leader. The city’s many

trade, precious stones could not compete with the

skilled gioiellieri da falso worked with crystal and



intense traffic in spices, perfumes, dyes, and other

glass, perfecting new carving methods and color-

long-distance commodities. But as the preced-

ing procedures to fool the eye of even the most

ing figures show, they outstripped everything

alert shopper. Recalling the role of synthetic stones

else, whether raw or manufactured, animate or

nowadays, such faux gemstones effectively met the

inanimate, when it came to the value-to-weight

demands of an urban clientele wanting to invest in

ratio. To keep this lucrative commerce thriving by

status-enhancing accessories without having the

preventing prices from spiraling out of control,

financial wherewithal to afford Orient stones.

some local governments classified precious stones



as duty-free merchandise. Alternatively, they kept

demanded careful protection. Caskets and small

markups in check by applying lower taxes. In addi-

coffers offered secure storage, but they had the

tion to collecting sales dues, resident officials who

disadvantage of being easy to spot. Swallowing

mustered the requisite expertise could perform

the stones was a more radical option, though

Genuine gems, expensive and easy to purloin,

the job of a gem inspector. In that capacity, they

Marco Polo mentions Gujarati pirates’ “atrocious”

combined anti-fraud services with assistance to

countermeasure that forced emetic drinks down

foreign merchants, helping them navigate unfamil-

their captives’ throats.38 Without going to such

iar languages, currencies, measures, and products.

extremes (well attested in the gem trade through-

Unease about confusing the genuine and the fake

out the ages), merchants could hide their precious

always looms large in the area of precious stones,

haul behind other merchandise and inside hems

and it is a constant theme in lapidaries as well.

to avoid detection by thieves and custom officers

Granted, Marbode’s observation that counterfeited

alike. Polo’s admittedly unreliable sixteenth-century

gems betray themselves because they are devoid of

editor, Ramusio, relates that this was the precau-

virtutes is a recommendation of limited practi-

tion Marco, Niccolò, and Maffeo took on their

cal use. So is the Livre de Sidrac’s advice to test

return journey. Presumed dead after so many years

the genuineness of a red-spotted green agate by

of absence, no one recognized the scruffy, Tartar-

enveloping it in an herb (it will sweat) or in one’s

looking visitors when they first showed up in 1295

fist (it becomes invisible).36 The Natural History, on

at their Venetian palazzo. It is only during a lavish

the other hand, offers a range of methods that deal

feast, when the three men changed into one luxuri-

with both the production and the consumption

ous outfit after another, that the revelatory moment

end. Pliny instructs readers on ways to enhance

came: Messer Marco slit open the seams and linings

defective stones, fabricate imitations from glass

of his coarse traveling clothes to release a cascade

and cheaper stones, and detect such counterfeits by

of invaluable gemstones. That mineral epiphany

examining their color, streaking, weight, hardness,

confirmed, beyond a shadow of a doubt, the true

and temperature (stones are cooler than glass).

identity of the foreigners while offering a glimpse

34

35

198

Much of this information filtered into medieval

Geographies of Mineral Marvels, Economies of Mineral Assets

into their fabulous wealth.39 Reality was grittier

demand simply reversed the long-standing appre-

than this magical scenario worthy of the Arabian

ciation for lithic performativity. If anything, lapi-

Nights would have it. A sizable part of the Polos’

daries and ethnogeographic literature reinforced

belongings had been confiscated in Trebizond, then

one another in commending Orient stones as the

a Byzantine successor state under Genoese control.

most attractive and potent mineral objects to be

Marco’s will, drawn up shortly before his death,

had. To that end, late medieval visual and textual

shows a man of means who left a sizable legacy to

narratives contextualized stones imported from

religious houses, his wife and three daughters, and

distant shores, whether they went by the name

even to Peter, an enslaved Tartar whom he emanci-

of Taprobane or Seilan, Ethiopia or Badakhshan,

pated on that occasion—but not a single precious

Terrestrial Paradise or Cambaluc. Particularly use-

Orient stone is mentioned. A millionaire, as his

ful representational strategies to sell a mystique,

nickname Messer Milione came to suggest, he most

if not an actual product, included two well-honed

definitely was not.

rhetorical devices: hyperbole and the difficulty of

40

acquisition. The transformation of Scythian emerThroughout this final part of the book, imagina-

alds and Indian diamonds into rubies and sap-

tion has taken us from west to east even as reality

phires in the Livre des merveilles is governed by the

has brought us from east to west. We have seen

same logic, as is the eye-catching use of the same

how the medieval mental map of the world was

gems to announce Paradise in the Livre des simples

well provided with mineral marvels and, increas-

médecines. The portfolio of images that engineered

ingly from the thirteenth century onward, with

such semantic (re)positionings could easily be

mineral commodities. In either case, they figured

expanded, all reinforcing the preeminence of gems

prominently in European conceptions of the

one would find in the collections of those who also

mirabilia Indiae. Thematically, our discussion has

owned the manuscripts that skillfully romanced

progressed from the really marvelous to the mar-

their sourcing.

velously real, the first epitomized by the Letter of



Prester John, the second by Polo and Rustichello’s

thologized by the legend of Prester John, traced to

Devisement du monde. Pictorial transcriptions

the sources by Marco Polo, and transported half-

of jeweled encounters in the Livre des merveilles

way across the globe by adventurous merchants

and related late medieval illustrated manuscripts

ended up in princely collections. But rather than a

have given that pilgrimage a visual dimension.

simple overlap between representation and reality,

Small in numbers and restricted in circulation, the

the ongoing echoes between the collecting of dis-

miniatures considered here nonetheless deserve

courses and the collecting of objects point to the

attention for the way they articulated an economic

mutually reinforcing convergence of knowing and

understanding of the preciousness of precious

owning. For medieval elites, interest in the first

stones—images of commercial transactions,

justified investment in the second, and vice versa.

control over natural assets, and display of jew-

It is no small irony that along with the consider-

eled treasures. Not that this new understanding of

able influx of gems (and other high-end goods)

gems as goods regulated by the laws of supply and

came a heightened awareness of the international

Indeed, the bulk of the precious stones my-

Networks of Gem Trade

199

character of mineral lust. The realization that

was the way in which they prepared the terrain

jeweled riches were distressingly absent from

for what Renaissance print culture would do on a

Western soils found itself magnified accordingly.

much grander scale: market the world as a reposi-

That the kings of Ma’bar wore no clothes to speak

tory of natural rarities ready to be converted into

of and that the rulers of Nicoveran were dog-

profitable commodities. It is this vision, seeded in

headed must have seemed irrelevant—or almost

the dynamic intellectual, commercial, and visual

so—when confronted with the undeniable fact

cultures of the thirteenth century, that would grow

that those rulers were admirable masters of lithic

into full-blown gem envy, eventually unleashing

treasures. On the threshold of a new world, such

the somber forces of extractive colonialism.

adjustments in perception and representation were to have lasting repercussions. Not least of them

200

Geographies of Mineral Marvels, Economies of Mineral Assets

R

eaders of The Mineral and the Visual may have developed gem fatigue by now. They may feel like Umberto Eco’s

Baudolino and his friends who, in the process of inventing the land of Prester John during boozy nights in twelfth-century Paris, have visited in their minds so many “blest islands and paradises” as to leave them “all fed up with precious stones.”1

Sly, boisterous, a self-confessed liar, and as likable as he is irritating, Baudolino ends up taking his

Epilogue

made-up character at face value. Moving along the same paths of wishful thinking as his numerous medieval predecessors, he and his adventurehungry companions decide to embark on a quest to unearth the rex et sacerdos. In what is above all a playful intertextual journey and a twelfth-century who’s who, encounters with war and love, the monstrous races, and paradisiacal riches ensue. Only a writer of a polished postmodern sensibility rooted in an exceptional knowledge of the Middle Ages could return the Letter of Prester John to its origin of fictional facticity. Eco deftly captures the outsized space allocated to precious stones in the medieval cultural imagination while also reconnecting with its satirical tradition. Critical voices ridiculing the appetite for jewels echoed throughout the Middle Ages, and we heard from a few of them, Der Stricker and Petrarch included. On the whole, however, neither the morally righteous rhetoric of antipreciousness nor the unascertainable existence of many items listed in lapidaries curbed the period’s enthusiasm for mineral materiality. Gemstones gave distinct aesthetic pleasures—Vincent of Beauvais thought, as we read in the introduction, that they represented “the origin of what is admirable.” Inner workings were as important as looks, and it was those that made precious stones stand out for their wondrous

202

powers. Natural virtutes, most everyone agreed,

Great’s recruitment of celestial forces to account

had been breathed into rocky matrices by divine

for lithic agency and the actions of sigils provides

will with the charitable intent of assisting humans

a fascinating illustration, not least for the way it

to cope with hardships, challenges, and limitations.

incorporates gem artisans into the process that

Repairing body parts and preventing illness, fixing

translates astral prototypes into mineral copies.

mental disorders and marital problems, helping to

“The powers of all things below originate in the

cook fish and talk to the dead, and hundreds more

stars and constellations of the heavens” was the

mineral actions justify the label pretiosus in the

Aristotelian-Hermetic credo that oriented the

view of lapidaries. Many of these virtues unexpect-

thinking of the scholastic natural philosopher.

edly connect to optical phenomena. Interweaving

It brings to mind—anachronically and yet quite

the mineral and the visual, stones heal damaged

precisely—what Walter Benjamin had to say about

eyes, serve as magnifying tools and protective

the affinity between stones and stars. He broaches

eyewear, alter human perception of reality, and

the topic in an incisive interpretation of the art of

stretch visibility to its limits by vaporizing people

storytelling stimulated by Nikolaĭ Leskov’s novella

into nothingness.

The Alexandrite, titled after a rare type of chryso-



The purely secular, nonallegorical lapidary

beryl mined in the Urals and named in honor of

discourse of Romano-Greek derivation merged

Tsar Alexander II. Infusing avant-garde thinking

seamlessly with scriptural and parascriptural

with historical awareness, Benjamin sees in the

validations of gems and their powers. The High

expert, if eccentric, Bohemian gem cutter Wenzel,

Priest’s breastplate, the Heavenly Jerusalem, and

who is at the center of Leskov’s story, a man who is

the inexhaustibly minerogenetic Phison provided

unafraid to reach mystical heights as he descends

authoritative biblical references that reinforced the

“into the depths of inanimate nature.” But there it

intuition about a divinely endowed, naturally po-

is: Wenzel belongs to the “old time,” an era before

tent, and preternaturally beautiful mineral realm.

the advent of “indifferent” relations between

Meanwhile, actual and invented kings supported

humankind and nature, a time “when the stones in

the lapidary project by volunteering the prestige

the womb of the earth and the planets at celestial

associated with the royal brand. Constantine

heights were still concerned with the fate of men.”2

the Great, Frederick II, Alfonso X, Evax, Sidrac,



Prester John, Thetel, and countless others certi-

quainted with premodern lapidary knowledge and

fied the genre’s legitimacy, countering objections

its premise of a fundamentally anthropocentric

to its willingness to traffic in magical operations

orientation of stony actions. As a thinker sensitive

and other equally suspect dealings. With such

to the power of things, he repeatedly questioned

illustrious backing, who could doubt the existence

the modern, rigorously disenchanted separation of

of virtutes? Support for stones’ workings could be

active subjects and passive objects, aliveness and

detected in the physics of the universe itself, a line

inertness, meaning and nonmeaning. The reverse

of reasoning that became especially prominent

insight, based on the assumption of continuous

during the radical reorganization of scientific

exchanges between humans and things, guided the

thinking in the thirteenth century. Albert the

creation of jeweled artifacts throughout the Middle

the mineral and the visual

One wonders if Benjamin was, like Leskov, ac-

Ages. Crowns “burdened” with haptic encrusta-

take in stones’ curative, protective, nigromantic,

tions of rubies, sapphires, diamonds, topazes,

and, most daringly, necromantic pursuits. That is

emeralds, pearls, and other prized Orient stones

foremost the case with the Detmold copy of Van

exemplify that principle in its purest form as signi-

Maerlant’s Der naturen bloeme and the Vienna

fiers of kingship, visually, materially, and symboli-

exemplar of Cecco’s Acerba, though as of yet

cally. Even a single gem—a Leitstein, lodestone,

undiscovered manuscripts may well yield similarly

“master stone”—could serve as a precipitate of the

unorthodox pictorial journeys. The combination

royal majestas, a role compellingly illustrated by

of pictures and words gathered pace in fourteenth-

the geographically distant but functionally proxi-

and fifteenth-century encyclopedias written in ver-

mate Sri Lankan ruby. One remembers that Polo

nacular languages. Such creations were profoundly

and Rustichello did not hesitate to hail it as “the

innovative for the way they broadened access to

most precious thing in the world.”

up-to-date information about the natural world



while capitalizing on complementary forms of

If mineral visuality permeated the lives of me-

dieval elites, the reverse commitment—visualizing

knowledge. The genre of illustrated travel narrative

mineral objects—animated the lapidary. A sig-

first made its presence felt during the same time,

nificant contribution of the manuscript age to the

ostensibly propelled into existence by the perva-

history of Western science, the depiction of stones

sive appetite for visual experiences in the Gothic

in medieval miniatures constitutes a watershed

era. Where miniatures about “the properties of

between the near-absence of mineral iconography

things” showed viewers how stones look and, very

in antiquity and its profuse presence in early mod-

occasionally, what they do, the Livre des merveilles

ern scientific publications (of which Meydenbach’s

and related volumes brought the excitement of

Hortus sanitatis is an early harbinger). The fact

distant, exotic, and near-Paradisiacal places into

that it was a dispersed tradition, moreover yielding

their privileged owners’ laps. Interlacing knowing

nonparticularized shapes, does not diminish its

and owning, they also endorsed the notion that

epistemic achievement. Medieval representations

gemstones are so abundant in the Indies that they

of mineral objects came, as we have seen, in two

can be plucked from beaches, riverbanks, lakes,

main formats: still lifes of stones conceived as self-

and eagle’s nests without effort—there is the dif-

sufficient entities, on the one hand, and narrative

ficulty of acquisition associated with distance, but

scenes revolving around human-mineral interac-

nothing equaling the grimly injurious realities of

tions, on the other. When of the latter sort, actions

extractive industries.

tend to materialize in a physically principled man-



ner—harvesting, mining, exchanging, fingering,

late the mineral from precious stones in order to

buying, and even displaying (as with the intrigu-

distill the conceptual dimension embedded in

ingly mineralized king of Ma’bar in the Livre des

physical objects. Original ideas concerning king-

merveilles). At the other end of the conceptual

ship, the natural world, and global geographies

spectrum, stones claim intellectual attention in

were expressed in verbal, visual, and artifactual

scenes of teaching, learning, and conversation.

creations that centered on the mineral. At once

Finally, in a few instances, viewers are invited to

objects, materials, and signs, precious stones were

It has been this book’s concern to extrapo-

Epilogue

203

204

not only useful in terms of what they did and what

light, and the elegance of their beauty. I call them

they meant: they were good to think with. That is

the miracles of nature, grateful gifts, a delight, a

what Claude Lévi-Strauss famously said about to-

study and a treasure.”3 His expansive definition

temic animals, and the same can be said about the

bridges nature and culture, knowing and own-

mineral as here understood. With that in mind, I

ing, the aesthetic and the performative. As such,

want to give the last word to a medieval voice. The

Neckam’s characterization nicely recapitulates the

eminent English churchman Alexander Neckam

way this book has advocated a cultural approach to

(d. 1217) writes that “gems are commended by the

the art of precious stones, lapidary knowledge, and

wondrous power of their virtue, their sparkling

the workings of the mineral.

the mineral and the visual

Unless otherwise indicated, all translations are my own; scriptural references are to the Douay-Rheims Bible.

Introduction

notes

1. Marina Belozerskaya, Rethinking the Renaissance: Burgundian Arts Across Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012); Brigitte Buettner, “Toward a Historiography of the Sumptuous Arts,” in A Companion to Medieval Art: Romanesque and Gothic in Northern Europe, ed. Conrad Rudolph (Hoboken: Wiley-Blackwell, 2019), 657–80. 2. Lilian Armstrong, “The Illustration of Pliny’s Historia Naturalis: Manuscripts Before 1430,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 46 (1983): 26–29; Marco Rossi, “Pietro da Pavia e il Plinio dell’Ambrosiana: Miniatura tardogotica e cultural scientifica del mondo classico,” Rivista di storia della miniatura 1–2 (1996–97): 231–38. 3. Pliny, Natural History 37.1, trans. D. E. Eichholz, Books 36–37 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1962), 165. 4. Caroline Walker Bynum, Christian Materiality: An Essay on Religion in Late Medieval Europe (New York: Zone, 2011), 239. 5. Jane Bennett, Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things (Durham: Duke University Press, 2010), 57, and Bruno Latour, We Have Never Been Modern, trans. Catherine Porter (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993), 97–100. For medieval views, see Bynum, Christian Materiality, 250–56; Kellie Robertson, “Exemplary Rocks,” in Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, ed., Animal, Vegetable, Mineral: Ethics and Objects (Washington, DC: Oliphaunt, 2012), 91–121. 6. Gervase of Tilbury, Otia Imperialia: Recreation for an Emperor 1.1, ed. and trans. S. E. Banks and J. W. Binns (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 26–27. 7. Richard C. Dales, “Marius On the Elements and the Twelfth-Century Science of Matter,” Viator 3 (1972): 191–218, at 216. 8. Michel Foucault, The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences (1971; repr., New York: Vintage, 1994), 128–32. 9. Girolamo Cardano, quoted in Lorraine Daston, “Nature by Design,” in Picturing Science, Producing

Art, ed. Caroline A. Jones and Peter Galison (New York: Routledge, 1998), 241. 10. Bartholomaeus Anglicus, De Proprietatibus rerum 16.38, trans. John Trevisa, On the Properties of Things: John Trevisa’s Translation of Bartholomaeus Anglicus “De Proprietatibus rerum”; A Critical Text, ed. Michael C. Seymour (Oxford: Clarendon, 1975), 2:846. On the aetites, see Alphons A. Barb, “Birds and Medical Magic,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 13, nos. 3–4 (1950): 316–22; Nichola E. Harris, “Loadstones are Girl’s Best Friend: Lapidary Cures, Midwives, and Manuals of Popular Healing in Medieval and Early Modern England,” in The Sacred and the Secular in Medieval Healing: Sites, Objects, and Texts, ed. Barbara S. Bowers and Linda Migl Keyser (Abingdon: Routledge, 2016), 182–218. 11. Frank Dawson Adams, The Birth and Development of the Geological Sciences (Baltimore: Williams & Wilkins, 1938), 95–102; Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, Stone: An Ecology of the Inhuman (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2015), 237–45; Robert Halleux, “Fécondité des mines et sexualité des pierres dans l’Antiquité gréco-romaine,” Revue Belge de Philologie et d’Histoire 48, no. 1 (1970): 16–25. 12. Pliny, Natural History 34.49, trans. H. Rackham (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1952), 246–47. 13. This notion was already expressed by Theophrastus, On Stones 31, trans. Earle R. Caley and John F. C. Richards (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1956), 52 and 124–25 (commentary). 14. Alfonso X, Lapidario, Cancer 20, Taurus 9, trans. Ingrid Bahler and Katherine Gyékényesi Gatto, The Lapidary of King Alfonso X the Learned (New Orleans: University Press of the South, 1997), 100–101, 51, respectively. 15. For a dissection of stones’ emotive life in ancient literature, see Sonia Macrì, Pietre viventi: I minerali nel mondo immaginario del mondo antico (Turin: UTET, 2009), 41–62. 16. Thomas of Cantimpré, Liber de natura rerum: Editio princeps secundum codices manuscriptos 14.49, ed. Helmut Boese (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1973), 366. Of a more pious disposition, Konrad von Megenberg suppressed that claim from his

206

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translation and replaced it with a biblical reference; see Konrad von Megenberg, Buch der Natur 6.56, ed. Robert Luff and Georg Steer (Tübingen: M. Niemeyer, 2003), 491. 17. Thomas of Cantimpré, Liber de natura rerum 14.56, ed. Boese, 367. In all likelihood, he took the idea of the pyrophilos humanus over from the Alexander Legend; see Valentin Rose, “Aristoteles De lapidibus und Arnoldus Saxo,” Zeitschrift für deutschen Alterthum 18 (1875): 346–47. However, pyrophyllite, a soft “fire leaf ” mineral, which crystallizes into flesh-colored foliated laminae, might have been at the root of its invention. 18. Alfonso X, Lapidario, Capricorn 6, trans. Bahler and Gyékényesi Gatto, 188. 19. Among the many studies on the Natural History, particularly useful are Mary Beagon, Roman Nature: The Thought of Pliny the Elder (Oxford: Clarendon, 1992), and Trevor Murphy, Pliny the Elder’s Natural History: The Empire in the Encyclopedia (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004). On the medieval reception, see Arno Borst, Das Buch der Naturgeschichte: Plinius und seine Leser im Zeitalter des Pergaments (Heidelberg: Winter, 1994), and Marjorie Chibnall, “Pliny’s Natural History and the Middle Ages,” in Thomas A. Dorey, Empire and Aftermath: Silver Latin II (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1975), 57–78. 20. Jacques Le Goff, “Pourquoi le XIIIème siècle a-t-il été plus particulièrement un siècle d’encyclopédisme?,” in L’enciclopedismo medievale, ed. Michelangelo Picone (Ravenna: Longo, 1994), 23–40. 21. Isabelle Draelants, “La science encyclopédique des pierres au XIIIe siècle: L’apogée d’une veine minéralogique,” in Claude Thomasset, Joëlle Ducos, and Jean-Pierre Chambon, Aux origines de la géologie de l’Antiquité au Moyen Âge (Paris: Honoré Champion, 2010), 91–139. 22. For a good overview, see Karen Meier Reeds and Tomomi Kinukawa, “Medieval Natural History,” in The Cambridge History of Science, vol. 2, Medieval Science, ed. David C. Lindberg and Michael H. Shank (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 569–89. 23. On the difference between experentia and experimentum, see Katharine Park, “Observation in











the Margins, 500–1500,” in Histories of Scientific Observation, ed. Lorraine Daston and Elizabeth Lunbeck (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011), 15–44. 24. Mary Franklin-Brown, Reading the World: Encyclopedic Writing in the Scholastic Age (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2012), 63–72; Neil Hathaway, “Compilatio: From Plagiarism to Compiling,” Viator 20 (1989): 19–44; Elizabeth Keen, “Shifting Horizons: The Medieval Compilation of Knowledge as Mirror of a Changing World,” in Encyclopaedism from Antiquity to the Renaissance, ed. Jason König and Greg Woolf (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 277–300. 25. See the facsimile edition: Rabanus Maurus, De rerum naturis: Cod. Cassin. 132 / Archivio dell’Abbazia di Montecassino, commentary by Guglielmo Cavallo (Pavone Canavese, Turin: Priuli & Verlucca, 1994). See also Giulia Orofino, with Lidia Buono and Roberta Casavecchia, I codici decorati dell’archivio di Montecassino, vol. 2.2, I codici preteobaldiani e teobaldiani (Rome: Istituto poligrafico, 2000), 50–86. 26. For a summary of the interpretive tradition, see Marianne Reuter, Text und Bild im Codex 132 der Bibliothek von Montecassino “Liber Rabani de originibus rerum”: Untersuchungen zur mittelalterlichen Illustrationspraxis (Munich: Arbeo-Gesellschaft, 1984), 22–32. William Schipper traces all illuminated versions back to a common tenth-century ancestor that is no longer extant (“Montecassino 132 and the Early Transmission of Rabanus’ De rerum naturis,” Archa Verbi 4 [2007]: 103–26). 27. Diane O. Le Berrurier, The Pictorial Sources of Mythological and Scientific Illustrations in Hrabanus Maurus’ “De rerum naturis” (New York: Garland, 1978). 28. Bert S. Hall, “The Didactic and the Elegant: Some Thoughts on Scientific and Technological Illustrations in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance,” in Picturing Knowledge: Historical and Philosophical Problems Concerning the Use of Art in Science, edited by Brian S. Baigrie (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996), 3–39. Adolph Goldschmidt, “Frühmittelalterliche illustrierte Enzyklopädien,” Vorträge der Bibliothek Warburg

3 (1923): 219. For the crystallus in Cod. 132, see Buettner, “Icy Geometry: Rock Crystal in Lapidary Knowledge,” in Seeking Transparency: Rock Crystals Across the Medieval Mediterranean, ed. Cynthia Hahn and Avinoam Shalem (Berlin: Gebr. Mann, 2020), 117–28, at 126–27. 29. Elisabeth Heyse, Hrabanus Maurus’ Enzyklopädie ‘De rerum naturis’: Untersuchungen zu den Quellen und zur Methode der Kompilation (Munich: Arbeo-Gesellschaft, 1969), and Maria Rissel, Rezeption antiker und patristischer Wissenschaft bei Hrabanus Maurus: Studien zur karolingischen Geistesgeschichte (Bern: Herbert Lang, 1976). 30. Christel Meier, Gemma spiritalis: Methode und Gebrauch der Edelsteinallegorese vom frühen Christentum bis ins 18. Jahrhundert (Munich: W. Fink, 1977), 147–50. See also Michel Pastoureau, Red: The History of a Color, trans. Jody Gladding (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016), 22–29, 58–63. 31. See Howard R. Patch, “Precious Stones in the House of Fame,” Modern Language Notes 50, no. 5 (1935): 312–17. 32. Günter Bandmann, “Bemerkungen zu einer Ikonologie des Materials,” Städel-Jahrbuch, n.s., 2 (1969): 75–100; Günter Bandmann, “Der Wandel der Materialbewertung in the Kunsttheorie des 19. Jahrhunderts,” in Beiträge zur Theorie der Künste im 19. Jahrhundert, ed. Helmut Koopmann and J. Adolf Schmoll gen. Eisenwerth (Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 1971), 1:129–57. For a critical engagement with Bandmann’s influential interpretive framework, see Thomas Raff, Die Sprache der Materialien: Anleitung zu einer Ikonologie der Werkstoffe (Münster: Waxmann, 2008), 14–17. 33. For an overview, see Aden Kumler, “Materials, Materia, ‘Materiality,’” in A Companion to Medieval Art: Romanesque and Gothic in Northern Europe, ed. Conrad Rudolph (Hoboken: Wiley-Blackwell, 2019), 95–117. 34. Lynn Thorndike, A History of Magic and Experimental Science (New York: Columbia University Press, 1923–58), 1:502 (hereafter cited as HMES). 35. Marbode, Liber lapidum, lines 712–18, ed. and Spanish trans. María Esthera Herrera (Paris: Belles Lettres, 2005), 181. He copied Pliny, Natural History

Notes to Pages 7–10

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37.2, trans. Eichholz, 165, and Isidore of Seville, The Etymologies 16.6.1, ed. and trans. Stephen A. Barney, W. J. Lewis, J. A. Beach, and Oliver Berghof (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 322. See discussion in Bennett, Vibrant Matter, 54–60; Olga Raggio, “The Myth of Prometheus: Its Survival and Metamorphoses up to the Eighteenth Century,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 21, no. 1/2 (1958): 44–62. 36. Anselmus Boethius de Boodt, quoted in Martin Kemp, “‘Wrought by No Artist’s Hand’: The Natural, Artificial, the Exotic, and the Scientific in Some Artifacts from the Renaissance,” in Reframing the Renaissance: Visual Culture in Europe and Latin America, 1450–1650, ed. Claire Farago (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), 193. 37. Pliny, Natural History 37.1, trans. Eichholz, 165. 38. Vincent of Beauvais, Speculum Naturale 29.10, Bibliotheca Mundi: Speculum Quadruplex (Douai: B. Belleri, 1624), 2069. 39. Wilhelm Koehler and Florentine Mütherich, Die karolingischen Miniaturen, vol. 4, Die Hofschule Kaiser Lothars (Berlin: Deutscher Verein für Kunstwissenschaft, 1971), 28–30, 35–46; John Lowden, “The Royal/Imperial Book and the Image or Self-Image of the Medieval Ruler,” in Kings and Kingship in Medieval Europe, ed. Anne J. Duggan (London: King’s College London, Center for Late Antique and Medieval Studies, 1993), 213–40. 40. On the majestas pose, see the classic essay by Meyer Schapiro, Words and Pictures: On the Literal and the Symbolic in the Illustration of a Text (The Hague: Mouton, 1973). For the way the image revisits late antique prototypes, see Ildar H. Garipzanov, The Symbolic Language of Authority in the Carolingian World (c. 751–877) (Leiden: Brill, 2008), 228–43. 41. Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, trans. Brian Massumi (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987), 237. 42. Geoffrey of Vinsauf, Poetria Nova, lines 565–612, trans. Margaret F. Nims (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1967), 36–37. 43. Gaston Bachelard, Earth and Reveries of Will: An Essay on the Imagination of Matter, trans. Kenneth Haltman (Dallas: Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture, 2002), 242.

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44. Simmel, The Sociology of Georg Simmel, trans. and ed. Kurt H. Wolff (Glencoe: Free Press, 1950), 339. 45. François-André Isambert, ed., Recueil général des anciennes lois françaises, depuis l’an 420 jusqu’à la Révolution de 1789 (Paris: Belin-Leprieur, 1821), 2:697–98. For an apposite summary of medieval sumptuary laws, see Ronald W. Lightbown, Mediaeval European Jewellery: With a Catalogue of the Collection in the Victoria & Albert Museum (London: Victoria & Albert Museum, 1992), 79–89. 46. The notion of regalia as “signs of authority” goes back to Percy Ernst Schramm’s Herrschaftszeichen und Staatssymbolik: Beiträge zu ihrer Geschichte vom dritten bis zum sechzehnten Jahrhundert, 3 vols. (Stuttgart: Hiersemann, 1954–56). See also his introductory remarks in Kaiser, Könige und Päpste: Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Geschichte des Mittelalters (Stuttgart: Hiersemann, 1968–70), 30–58. 47. For excellent discussions of the cultural roles of gold in the Middle Ages, see C. R. Dodwell, AngloSaxon Art: A New Perspective (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1982), 24–43; Matthias Hardt, Gold und Herrschaft: Die Schätze europäischer Könige und Fürsten im ersten Jahrtausend (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2004), 60–121; Dominic Janes, God and Gold in Late Antiquity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998). 48. Georg Simmel, The Philosophy of Money, 3rd ed., ed. David Frisby, trans. Tom Bottomore and Kaethe Mengelberg (New York: Routledge, 2004), 98. And in the same spirit, Paul Freedman, “Spices and Late-Medieval European Ideas of Scarcity and Value,” Speculum 80, no. 4 (2005): 1209–27. 49. I capitalize Orient stones because the noncapitalized term now designates highly lustrous gems, regardless of their origins. Late medieval French inventories use pierres d’Orient almost like a brand name to define high-grade stones. 50. Millard Meiss, French Painting in the Time of Jean de Berry: The Boucicaut Master (London: Phaidon, 1968), 58–59; Millard Meiss, French Painting in the Time of Jean de Berry: The Late Fourteenth Century and the Patronage of the Duke (London: Phaidon, 1967), 73, 94; Heinz Meyer, Die Enzyklopädie des Bartholomäus Anglicus: Untersuchungen zur Überlieferungs- und Rezeptionsgeschichte von “De

proprietatibus rerum” (Munich: W. Fink, 2000), 350–51. 51. Exceptions are Thomas T. Allsen, The Steppe and the Sea: Pearls in the Mongol Empire (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019), and the older but still valuable Otto Mugler, Edelsteinhandel im Mittelalter und im 16. Jahrhundert, mit Excursen über den Levante- und Asiatischen Handel überhaupt (Munich: Höffling, 1928). For the postmedieval period, see Michael Bycroft and Sven Dupré, ed., Gems in the Early Modern World: Materials, Knowledge and Global Trade, 1450–1800 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018). 52. The classic reference is Sanjay Subrahmanyam, “Connected Histories: Notes Towards a Reconfiguration of Early Modern Eurasia,” Modern Asian Studies 31, no. 3 (1997): 735–62.







Part 1

1. Georges Duby, The Early Growth of the European Economy: Warriors and Peasants from the Seventh to the Twelfth Century, trans. Howard B. Clarke (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1974), 61. 2. Cynthia Hahn, Strange Beauty: Issues in the Making and Meaning of Reliquaries, 400–circa 1204 (University Park: Penn State University Press, 2012), 9; Cynthia Hahn, “What Do Reliquaries Do for Relics?,” Numen 57 (2010): 284–316. 3. For overviews on the history of crowns, see Lightbown, Mediaeval European Jewellery, 121–31; Schramm, Herrschaftszeichen und Staatssymbolik, 2:377–479; Edward Francis Twining, A History of the Crown Jewels of Europe (London: B. T. Batsford, 1960). 4. Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc, Dictionnaire raisonné du mobilier français de l’époque carlovingienne à la Renaissance (Paris: A. Morel, 1873–74), 2:169–239, at 172. 5. William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regum Anglorum: The History of the English Kings 2.135, ed. and trans. R. A. B. Mynors (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998–99), 1:218–19. On this chronicle, see Laura Hibbard Loomis, “The Athelstan Gift Story: Its Influence on English Chronicles and Carolingian Romances,” in Adventures in the Middle Ages: A







Memorial Collection of Essays and Studies (New York: B. Franklin, 1962), 254–73. 6. Liudprand of Cremona, Retribution 2.20, trans. Paolo Squatriti, The Complete Works of Liudprand of Cremona (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2007), 84–85. For the original Antapodosis, see the edition by Joseph Becker in Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptores rerum Germanicarum 41 (Hannover: Hahn, 1915), 46. The work is discussed, with additional examples, by Jürgen Petersohn, “Über monarchische Insignien und ihre Funktion im mittelalterlichen Reich,” Historische Zeitschrift 266, no. 1 (1998): 59–63. 7. Ernst H. Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies: A Study in Mediaeval Political Theology (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1957), 336–42. 8. Joachim Ott, “Die Frühgeschichte von Krone und Krönung,” in Krönungen: Könige in Aachen; Geschichte und Mythos, ed. Mario Kramp (Mainz: Von Zabern, 2000), 1:122–30; Janet Nelson, “Symbols in Context: Rulers’ Inauguration Rituals in Byzantium and the West in the Early Middle Ages,” in Politics and Ritual in Early Medieval Europe (London: Hambledon, 1986), 259–81. 9. Carlrichard Brühl, “Fränkischer Krönungsbrauch und das Problem der ‘Festkrönungen,’” and Carlrichard Brühl, “Kronen- und Krönungsbrauch im frühen und hohen Mittelalter,” in Aus Mittelalter und Diplomatik: Gesammelte Aufsätze (Hildesheim: Weidmann, 1989), 1:351–412, 1:413–43. 10. Jürgen Petersohn, “Echte” und “falsche” Insignien im deutschen Krönungsbrauch des Mittelalters? Kritik eines Forschungsstereotyp (Stuttgart: Steiner, 1993), 33, 55. 11. Joan Evans, A History of Jewellery, 1100–1870 (London: Faber & Faber, 1953), 55.

Chapter 1

1. General discussions on the crown include Hans Martin Schaller, “Die Wiener Reichskrone— Entstanden unter König Konrad III.,” in Die Reichskleinodien: Herrschaftszeichen des Heiligen Römischen Reiches, ed. Hans-Jürgen Becker et al. (Göppingen: Gesellschaft für Staufische Geschichte, 1997), 58–105; Reinhart Staats, Die Reichskrone:

Notes to Pages 18–27

209















210

Geschichte und Bedeutung eines Europäischen Symbol (Kiel: Ludwig, 2008). 2. Heinz Meyer and Rudolf Suntrup, Lexikon der Mittelalterlichen Zahlenbedeutungen (Munich: W. Fink, 1987), col. 565–80. 3. Liudprand of Cremona, quoted in Schramm, Herrschaftszeichen und Staatssymbolik 1:69. 4. For a late dating, see Mechthild Schulze-Dörrlamm, Die Kaiserkrone Konrad II. (1024–1039): Eine archäologische Untersuchung zu Alter und Herkunft der Reichskrone (Sigmaringen: Jan Thorbecke, 1991). 5. Jacques Le Goff, “Le roi dans l’Occident médiéval: Caractères originaux,” in Kings and Kingship in Medieval Europe, ed. Anne J. Duggan (London: King’s College London, 1993), 1–40. 6. André Grabar, L’empereur dans l’art byzantin: Recherches sur l’art officiel de l’empire d’Orient (Paris: Belles Lettres, 1936), 112–22; Mariëlle Hageman, “Between the Imperial and the Sacred: The Gesture of Coronation in Carolingian and Ottonian Images,” in New Approaches to Medieval Communication, ed. Marco Mostert (Turnhout: Brepols, 1999), 127–63; Kantorowicz, King’s Two Bodies, 61–78; Joachim Ott, Krone und Krönung: Die Verheißung und Verleihung von Kronen in der Kunst von der Spätantike bis um 1200 und die geistige Auslegung der Krone (Mainz: Von Zabern, 1998), 29–73, 179–89. 7. Hansmartin Decker–Hauff, “Die ‘Reichskrone’ angefertigt für Kaiser Otto I.,” in Schramm et al., Herrschaftszeichen und Staatssymbolik, 2:586–609; Reinhart Staats, Theologie der Reichskrone: Ottonische “Renovatio Imperii” im Spiegel einer Insignie (Stuttgart: Anton Hiersemann, 1976), 57–93. 8. Hermann Fillitz, “Die Edelsteinordnung auf der Reichskrone und ihre Beziehung zur Spätantike,”’ Österreichische Zeitschrift für Kunst und Denkmalpflege 10 (1956): 38–45; Gerda Friess, Edelsteine im Mittelalter: Wandel und Kontinuität in Ihrer Bedeutung durch zwölf Jahrhunderte in Aberglauben, Medizin, Theologie und Goldschmiedekunst (Hildesheim: Gerstenberg, 1980), 55–68. 9. Poem and crown are discussed by Ronald Lightbown, “The English Coronation Regalia Before the Commonwealth,” in The Crown Jewels:

Notes to Pages 27–33

The History of the Coronation Regalia in the Jewel House of the Tower of London, ed. Claude Blair (London: Stationary Office, 1998), 1:257–352, at 286–89, and Ott, Krone und Krönung, 193–200. 10. Christine Ratkowitsch, “Die Edelsteinsymbolik in der lateinischen Dichtung des 11. und 12. Jahrhunderts,” Wiener Studien 105 (1992): 195–232, at 225. 11. “Carmen de Hastingae proelio” of Guy, Bishop of Amiens, lines 779–82, ed. and trans. Frank Barlow (Oxford: Clarendon, 1999), 44–47. 12. Simmel, Sociology of Georg Simmel, 342. 13. Quoted in Janet Nelson, “The Rites of the Conqueror,” in Politics and Ritual in Early Medieval Europe (London: Hambledon, 1986), 401. 14. Earl E. Rosenthal, “Die ‘Reichskrone,’ die ‘Wiener Krone’ und die ‘Krone des Karls des Grossen’ um 1520,” Jahrbuch der Kunsthistorischen Sammlungen in Wien 66 (1970): 7–48. 15. See the cautionary, though overly legalistic, remarks by Petersohn, “Echte” und “falsche” Insignien, 10–18. 16. Regestum Innocentii III papae super negotio Romani imperii, ed. Friedrich Kempf (Rome: Pontificia Università Gregoriana, 1947), 319; see also Peter Csendes, Philipp von Schwaben: Ein Staufer im Kampf um die Macht (Darmstadt: Primus, 2003), 69–83. 17. Walther von der Vogelweide, The Single-Stanza Lyrics 28, ed. and trans. Frederick Goldin (New York: Routledge, 2003), 142–43. 18. Ibid., 30, ed. and trans. Goldin, 146–47. I restore the plural of “das edel gestaine” in the translation I give. There is ample literature on the Waise as presented in Walther’s poem. The most comprehensive is Matthias Nix, Untersuchungen zur Funktion der politischen Spruchdichtung Walthers von der Vogelweide (Göppingen: Kümmerle, 1993). See also Joachim Heinzle, “Philippe—des rîches krône—der weise: Krönung und Krone in Walthers Sprüchen für Philipp von Schwaben,” in Walther von der Vogelweide: Textkritik und Edition, ed. Thomas Bein (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1999), 225–37; Eberhard Nellmann, “Philippe setze en weisen ûf: Zur Parteiname Walthers für Philipp von Schwaben,” in Stauferzeit: Geschichte, Literatur, Kunst, ed.

Rüdiger Krohn, Bernd Thum, and Peter Wapnewski (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1978), 87–104. 19. Christel Meier-Staubach, “Der Hortus Sanitatis als enzyklopädisches Buch: Zur Pragmatisierung traditionellen Wissens und ihrer Realisierung in der Illustration,” in Alles was Recht war: Rechtsliteratur und literarisches Recht. Festschrift für Ruth SchmidtWiegand zum 70. Geburtstag, ed. Hans Höfinghoff et al. (Essen: Item-Verlag, 1996), 191–200. 20. Albert the Great, De mineralibus 2.2.13, trans. Dorothy Wyckoff, Book of Minerals (Oxford: Clarendon, 1967), 111; translation slightly modified. For the original, see Albert the Great, Mineralia, in Opera omnia, edited by Auguste Borgnet (Paris: Ludovic Vivès, 1890), 5:43. 21. See also Schramm, Herrschaftszeichen und Staatssymbolik, 3:803–16; Gunther Wolf, “Der Waise: Bemerkungen zum Leitstein der Wiener Reichskrone,” Deutsches Archiv für Erforschung des Mittelalters 41 (1985): 39–65. 22. Albert the Great, De mineralibus 1.2.2, trans. Wyckoff, 42. 23. Dale Kinney, “Ancient Gems in the Middle Ages: Riches and Ready-Mades,” in Richard Brilliant and Dale Kinney, ed., Reuse Value: “Spolia” and Appropriation in Art and Architecture from Constantine to Sherrie Levine (Farnham: Ashgate, 2011), 97–120. 24. Der Stricker, “Von Edelsteinen,” lines 77–89, in Die Kleindichtung des Strickers, ed. Wolfgang Wilfried Moelleken, Gayle Agler-Beck, and Robert E. Lewis (Göppingen: Kümmerle Verlag, 1977), 4:209. 25. The Legend of Duke Ernst, trans. J. W. Thomas and Carolyn Dussère (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1979), 109. For additional examples of gemlined subterranean rivers, see David Malcolm Blamires, Herzog Ernst and the Otherworld Voyage: A Comparative Study (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1979), 47–52. 26. Petersohn, “Echte” und “falsche” Insignien, 31. 27. Book of Gifts and Rarities (Kitāb al-Hadāyā wa alTuhaf): Selections Compiled in the Fifteenth Century from an Eleventh-Century Manuscript on Gifts and Treasures, trans. Ghāda al-Hijjāwī al-Qaddūmī (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996), 181–82 (no. 224).

28. Nasser Rabbat, “The Dome of the Rock Revisited: Some Remarks on al-Wasiti’s Accounts,” Muqarnas 10 (1993): 66–75, at 71–72. 29. Hubert Herkommer, “Der Weise, ‘aller fürsten leitesterne,’” Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte 50 (1976): 44–59; Avinoam Shalem, “Jewels and Journeys: The Case of the Medieval Gemstone Called al-Yatima,” Muqarnas 14 (1997): 42–56 at 48–51.

Chapter 2

1. Eusebius, Life of Constantine 28–30, trans. Averil Cameron and Stuart G. Hall (Oxford: Clarendon, 1999), 80–81. 2. H. A. Drake, “Eusebius on the True Cross,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 36, no. 1 (1985): 1–22, and Raymond van Dam, Remembering Constantine at the Milvian Bridge (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 56–81. 3. Klaus Schreiner, “Signia Victricia: Heilige Zeichen in kriegerischen Konflikten des Mittelalters,” in Zeichen, Rituale, Werte, ed. Gerd Althoff (Münster: Rhema, 2004), 259–300. For a summary of jeweled crosses, see Hahn, Strange Beauty, 73–102. 4. Paschal Chronicle, quoted in Cyril Mango, The Art of the Byzantine Empire, 312–1453: Sources and Documents (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1986), 10. 5. Maria R. Alföldi, Die Constantinische Goldprägung: Untersuchungen zu ihrer Bedeutung für Kaiserpolitik und Hofkunst (Mainz: Römisch-Germanisches Zentralmuseum, 1963), 93–99, 113–21; Patrick M. Bruun, “Constantine andicinius, A.D. 313–37,” in The Roman Imperial Coinage, ed. C. H. V. Sutherland and R. A. G. Carson, 10 vol. (London: Spink and Son Ltd., 1984), 7:43–6; Frank Kolb, Herrscherideologie in der Spätantike (Berlin: Akademie, 2001), 76–80, 201–4; Sabine G. MacCormack, Art and Ceremony in Late Antiquity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981), 188–92. 6. Eusebius, In Praise of Constantine 5.6–7, ed. Harold A. Drake, In Praise of Constantine: A Historical Study and New Translation of Eusebius’ Tricennial

Notes to Pages 33–39

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Orations (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976), 90. 7. Eusebius, Life of Constantine 3.10, trans. Cameron and Hall, 125. 8. Isabella Baldini Lippolis, L’oreficeria nell’impero di Costantinopoli tra IV e VII secolo (Bari: Edipuglia, 1999), 52–66; Jonathan Bardill, Constantine, Divine Emperor of the Christian Golden Age (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 11–27; Josef Deér, “Der Ursprung der Kaiserkrone,” Schweizer Beiträge zur allgemeinen Geschichte 8 (1950): 51–87; Richard Delbrueck, Spätantike Kaiserporträts von Constantinus Magnus bis zum Ende des Westreichs (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1933), 53–70. 9. Epitome de Caesaribus 41.14, trans. Thomas M. Banchich (Buffalo: Canisius College, 2009), 167. For additional examples, see Ott, Krone und Krönung, 163–67. 10. Ann M. Stout, “Jewelry as a Symbol of Status in the Roman Empire,” in The World of the Roman Costume, ed. Judith Lynn Sebesta and Larissa Bonfante (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1994), 89. 11. For the concept of “imaginative memory,” see Amy G. Remensnyder, Remembrance of Kings Past: Monastic Foundation Legends in Medieval Southern France (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1995). 12. All primary sources are discussed in HansDietrich Kahl, “Die ‘Konstantinskrone’ in der Hagia Sophia zu Konstantinopel: Ein Beitrag zur byzantinischen Konstantinslegende,” in Antike und Universalgeschichte: Festschrift Hans Erich Stier zum 70. Geburtstag, ed. Ruth Stiehl and Gustav Adolf Lehmann (Münster: Aschendorff, 1972), 302–22, at 305–6, 308, and 313, respectively. The same author suggests that the crown, assumed to be that of Constantine, may have been given by Emperor Maurice (d. 602). 13. Amnon Linder, “The Myth of Constantine the Great in the West: Sources and Hagiographic Commemoration,” Studi medievali 16 (1975): 43–95. 14. Ermoldus Nigellus, In Honor of Louis, book 2, trans. Thomas F. X. Noble, Charlemagne and Louis the Pious: The Lives by Einhard, Notker, Ermoldus, Thegan, and The Astronomer (University Park: Penn State University Press, 2009), 152.

212

Notes to Pages 39–43

15. Thegan, The Deeds of Emperor Louis 17, trans. Noble, Charlemagne and Louis the Pious, 202. See also Matthias Becher, “Costantino il Grande, l’incoronazione imperiale nell’816 e le relazioni tra papato e Franchi dopo la prima metà del secolo VIII,” in Costantino il Grande tra medioevo e età moderna, ed. Giorgio Bonamente, Giorgio Cracco, and Klaus Rosen (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2008), 15–50. 16. Especially relevant are Irina Andreescu-Treadgold and Warren Treadgold, “Procopius and the Imperial Panels of S. Vitale,” Art Bulletin 79, no. 4 (1997): 708–23; Charles Barber, “The Imperial Panels at San Vitale: A Reconsideration,” Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies 14 (1990): 19–43; Sarah E. Bassett, “Style and Meaning in the Imperial Panels at San Vitale,” Artibus et Historiae 29 (2008): 49–57; Gerhart Rodenwaldt, “Bemerkungen zu den Kaisermosaiken in San Vitale,” Jahrbuch des deutschen archäologischen Instituts 59/60 (1944/45), 88–110. 17. Baldini Lippolis, Oreficeria, 67–151; Katharine R. Brown, “The Mosaics of San Vitale: Evidence for the Attribution of Some Early Byzantine Jewelry to Court Workshops,” Gesta 18, no. 1 (1979): 57–62; Stout, “Jewelry as a Symbol.” 18. Janes, God and Gold, 105–52. 19. This anomaly is noted by Richard Delbrueck, “Der spätantike Kaiserornat,” Die Antike 8 (1932): 1–21, at 5. 20. Irina Andreescu-Treadgold, “The Emperor’s New Crown and St. Vitalis’ New Clothes,” Corso di cultura sull’arte Ravennate e Bizantina 41 (1995): 149–86, at 158–59. 21. Isabella Baldini Lippolis, “ll ritratto musivo nella facciata interna di S. Apollinare Nuovo a Ravenna,” in Atti del VI Colloquio dell’Associazione italiana per lo studio e la conservazione del mosaico, ed. Federico Guidobaldi and Andrea Paribeni (Ravenna: Girasole, 2000), 463–78. 22. Lieselotte Kötzsche, “Der Gemmenfries—ein frühchristliches Ornament?,” Aachener Kunstblätter 60 (1994): 37–44. 23. The Codex of Justinian: A New Annotated Translation, With Parallel Latin and Greek Text Based on a Translation by Justice Fred. H. Blume 11.12.1, ed. Bruce W. Frier et al. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), 3:2681.

24. Friedrich Wilhelm Deichmann, Ravenna: Hauptstadt des spätantiken Abendlandes (Wiesbaden: F. Steiner, 1969), 1:241–42. 25. Jonathan Shepard, “Courts in East and West,” in The Medieval World, ed. Peter Linehan, Janet L. Nelson, and Marios Costambeys (London: Routledge, 2018), 11–32. 26. Flavius Cresconius Corippus, In laudem Iustini Augusti minoris, Libri IV 4.114–29, trans. Averil Cameron (London: Athlone, 1976), 76–77, 112. 27. Ibid., lines 240–93, trans. Cameron, 43–45, 92–93. The description of the lying in state deliberately echoes with that of Constantine by Eusebius (Life of Constantine 4.65–67, trans. Cameron and Hall, 179–80). 28. Corippus, In laudem 3.13–18, trans. Cameron, 61, 102–3. “Green Nereus” means the sea, and its products are therefore pearls. 29. Ibid., 2.121–24, trans. Cameron, 51, 96. 30. Walter Benjamin, “On the Concept of History,” in Selected Writings, trans. Edmund Jephcott et al., ed. Michael W. Jennings (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2003), 4:389–400, at 391–92. 31. Procopius, History of the Wars 4.9, ed. and trans. H. B. Dewing (London: W. Heinemann, 1914), 2:278–83. 32. Geoffrey of Villehardouin, The Conquest of Constantinople, §250, trans. Caroline Smith, Joinville and Villehardouin: Chronicles of the Crusades (London: Penguin Classics, 2008), 67. 33. Niketas Choniates, History of Byzantium 10, trans. Harry J. Magoulias, O City of Byzantium: Annals of Niketas Choniatēs Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1984), 357.

Chapter 3

1. Hermann J. Hüffer, “Die Funde im Dom von Toledo und die kastilische Königskrone,” Saeculum 2 (1951): 433–42, and Tom Nickson, Toledo Cathedral: Building Histories in Medieval Castile (University Park: Penn State University Press, 2015), 165–68. 2. Marbode, Liber lapidum, lines 103 and 112, respectively, ed. and Spanish trans. Herrera, 27, 29. Into the thirteenth century, saphirus could designate



















either the lapis lazuli (as had been the case since antiquity) or our sapphire, which is the case here. 3. Wilhelm Grünhagen, “Bemerkungen zu den Kameen in der Krone des Königs Sancho IV. von Kastilien,” Madrider Mitteilungen 29 (1988): 245–53. 4. Hans Wentzel, “‘Staatskameen’ im Mittelalter,” Jahrbuch der Berliner Museen 4 (1962): 42–77, at 63– 72, and Rainer Kahsnitz, “Staufische Kameen,” in Die Zeit der Staufer: Geschichte, Kunst, Kultur, ed. Reiner Haussherr (Stuttgart: Württembergisches Landesmuseum, 1977–79), 5:477–520. 5. For an attribution to Alfonso X, see, for example, Fernando Gutiérrez Baños, Las empresas artísticas de Sancho IV el Bravo (Burgos: Junta de Castilla y León, 1997), 74–81, and Álvaro Soler del Campo, “La corona y la espada del rey,” in Alfonso X el Sabio: Sala San Esteban, Murcia, ed. Alberto Canto García et al. (Murcia: A. G. Novograf, 2009), 54–61. 6. Teresa Laguna Paúl, “El imperio y la corona de Castilla: La visita a la capilla de los Reyes de Sevilla en 1500,” in El intercambio artístico entre los reinos hispanos y las cortes europeas en la Baja Edad Media, ed. María Concepción Cosmen Alonso, Victoria Herráez Ortega, and María Pellón GómezCalcerrada (León: University of León, 2009), 217–37. 7. Accessible biographies include Simon R. Doubleday, The Wise King: A Christian Prince, Muslim Spain, and the Birth of the Renaissance (New York: Perseus, 2015), and Joseph F. O’Callaghan, The Learned King: The Reign of Alfonso X of Castile (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993). 8. Maribel Fierro, “Alfonso X ‘The Wise:’ The Last Almohad Caliph?,” Medieval Encounters 15 (2009): 175–98. 9. James M. Powell, The “Liber Augustalis” or Constitutions of Melfi Promulgated by the Emperor Frederick II for the Kingdom of Sicily in 1231 (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1971), 124. 10. Joseph F. O’Callaghan, Alfonso X, the Justinian of His Age: Law and Justice in Thirteenth-Century Castile (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2019). 11. Alfonso X, Siete Partidas 2.5.5, trans. Samuel Parsons Scott, ed. Robert I. Burns, Las Siete Partidas, vol. 2, Medieval Government: The World of Kings and Warriors (Philadelphia: University

Notes to Pages 44–51

213

of Pennsylvania Press, 2001), 2:288. See also I. G. Bango Torviso, “De las insignias reales en la España medieval,” in Imágenes y promotores en el arte medieval: Miscelánea en homenaje a Joaquín Yarza Luaces, ed. Luisa Melero Moneo et al. (Barcelona: Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, 2001), 59–66. 12. Castigos del Rey Don Sancho IV 16, ed. Hugo Oscar Bizzarri (Madrid: Iberoamericana, 2001), 168–70. See also Isidro G. Bango Torviso, “Regalia insignia: Les señas de identidad del monarca y de su linaje,” in Alfonso X el Sabio: Sala San Esteban, Murcia, ed. Alberto Canto García et al. (Murcia: A. G. Novograf, 2009), 42–53. 13. Teofilo F. Ruiz, “Unsacred Monarchy: The Kings of Castile in the Late Middle Ages,” in Rites of Power, Symbolism, Ritual, and Politics Since the Middle Ages, ed. Sean Wilentz (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1985), 109–44. 14. Codicilo del testament de Alfonso X, no. 521, in Diplomatario andaluz de Alfonso X, ed. Manuel González Jiménez (Seville: Monte, 1991), 559. 15. Crónicas de los reyes de Castilla, desde Don Alfonso el Sabio hasta los católicos Don Fernando y Doña Isabel, ed. Cayetano Rosell (Madrid: M. Rivadeneyra, 1875–78) 1:595. 16. Castigos del Rey Don Sancho IV 11, ed. Bizzarri, 142–43. 17. Godfrey of Viterbo, Pantheon 26.7, ed. Georg Waitz, Gotifredi Viterbiensis Opera, Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptores 22 (Hannover, 1872), 275. 18. Shakespeare, Richard II, act 4, scene 1, lines 212–20. Kantorowicz read the play as “the tragedy of the King’s Two Bodies” (King’s Two Bodies, 24–41). 19. This idea is expressed in several charters, for which, see Elliot Kendall, Lordship and Literature: John Gower and the Politics of the Great Household (Oxford: Clarendon, 2008), 51. 20. Jenny Stratford, Richard II and the English Royal Treasure, inventory R 9 (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2012), 147, and for the author’s discussion, 9–14, 263–64. 21. Patricia J. Eberle, “Richard II and the Literary Arts,” in Richard II: The Art of Kingship, ed. Anthony Goodman and James Gillespie (Oxford: Clarendon, 1999), 231–53, at 239–40.

214

Notes to Pages 51–55

22. Richard H. Jones, The Royal Policy of Richard II: Absolutism in the Later Middle Ages (Oxford: Blackwell, 1968), 147. 23. Richard the Redeless, passus primus, lines 33–48, ed. James M. Dean, “Richard the Redeless” and “Mum and the Soothsegger,” TEAMS: Middle English Texts Series (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 2000), 26–27. I thank Nancy Bradbury for helping with the translation. For additional jeweled crowns mentioned in Middle English poetry, see P. J. Heather, “Precious Stones in the Middle-English Verse of the Fourteenth Century, II,” Folklore 42, no. 4 (1931): 345–404, at 375–79. 24. Franz-Reiner Erkens, Herrschersakralität im Mittelalter: Von den Anfängen bis zum Investiturstreit (Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer, 2006); Jacques Le Goff, “Aspects religieux et sacrés de la monarchie française du Xe au XIIIe siècle,” in La royauté sacrée dans le monde chrétien, ed. Alain Boureau and Claudio Sergio Ingerflom (Paris: Éditions de l’EHESS, 1992), 19–28. 25. Robert-Henri Bautier, “Sacres et couronnements sous les Carolingiens et les premiers Capétiens: Recherches sur la genèse du sacre royal français,” in Recherches sur l’histoire de la France médiévale: Des Mérovingiens aux premiers Capétiens (Aldershot: Variorum, 1991), 33–43; Richard A. Jackson, “Who Wrote Hincmar’s Ordines?,” Viator 25 (1994): 31–52; Janet Nelson, “Kingship, Law and Liturgy in the Political Thought of Hincmar of Rheims,” in Politics and Ritual in Early Medieval Europe (London: Hambledon, 1986), 133–71. 26. Janet Nelson, “The Earliest Royal Ordo: Some Liturgical and Historical Aspects,” in Politics and Ritual, 341–60; Janet Nelson, “Early Medieval Rites of Queen-Making,” in Queens and Queenship in Medieval Europe, ed. Anne J. Duggan (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1997), 301–15; Julie Ann Smith, “The Earliest Queen-Making Rites,” Church History 66, no. 1 (1997): 18–35. 27. “Gloria et honore coronet te Dominus, et ponat super caput tuum coronam de spiritali lapide pretioso, ut quicquid in fulgore auri et in vario nitore gemmarum significatur, hoc in tuis moribus, hoc in actibus semper refulgeat.” Hincmar, Ordo 5.10, ed. Richard A. Jackson, Ordines Coronationis Franciae: Texts and Ordines for the Coronation of Frankish

and French Kings and Queens in the Middle Ages (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995), 1:79. 28. Cornelius A. Bouman, Sacring and Crowning: The Development of the Latin Ritual for the Anointing of Kings and the Coronation of an Emperor before the Eleventh Century (Groningen: J. B. Wolters, 1957), 127–40. 29. Stavelot Ordo / Ordo of Eleven Forms 14.4, ed. Jackson, Ordines Coronationis Franciae, 1:161. 30. Ibid. 16.13, ed. Jackson, Ordines Coronationis Franciae, 1:166. For its use at Aachen, see Coronatio Aquisgranensis, ed. Georg Heinrich Pertz, Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Leges 2 (Hanover: Hahn, 1837), 389–90. 31. Heike Johanna Mierau, “Karl IV. im Zeichen des ‘wahren’ Kreuzes: Konstantin als Vorbild für einen spätmittelalterlichen Kaiser,” in Konstantin der Große: Das Bild des Kaisers im Wandel der Zeiten, ed. Andreas Goltz and Heinrich SchlangeSchöningen (Cologne: Böhlau, 2008), 109–38. 32. For the most comprehensive study, see Karel Otavský, Die Sankt Wenzelskrone im Prager Domschatz und die Frage der Kunstauffassung am Hofe Kaiser Karls IV (Bern: P. Lang, 1992). Also Karel Otavský, in Karl IV, Kaiser von Gottes Gnaden: Kunst und Repräsentation des Hauses Luxemburg, 1310–1437, ed. Jiří Fajt et al. (Berlin: Deutscher Kunstverlag, 2006), 90–95 (cat. no. 13); Twining, History of the Crown Jewels, 64–67. 33. Paul Crossley, “The Politics of Presentation: The Architecture of Charles IV of Bohemia,” in Courts and Regions in Medieval Europe, ed. Sarah Rees Jones, Richard Marks, and A. J. Minnis (York: York Medieval Press, 2000), 166–72, and Peter Hilsch, “Die Krönungen Karls IV.,” in Kaiser Karl IV: Staatsmann und Mäzen, ed. Ferdinand Seibt (Munich: Prestel, 1978), 108–11. 34. Ordo ad coronandum regem Boemorum, in Korunovační řád eských králů: Ordo ad coronandum Regem Boemorum, ed. Jiří Kuthan and Miroslav Šmied (Prague: Filozofická fakulta Univerzity Karlovy, 2009), 250. 35. That blessing, present in a few previous ordines, can be traced back to an English rite of the middle of the twelfth century. On this rite, see Leopold G. Wickham Legg, English Coronation Records

(Westminster: Archibald Constable, 1901), 36, and P. L. Ward, “The Coronation Ceremony in Mediaeval England,” Speculum 14, no. 2 (1939): 160–78. 36. “Deus tuorum corona fidelium, qui in capitibus eorum ponis coronam de lapide precioso, benedic et sanctifica coronam istam, quatenus, sicut ipsa diversis preciosisque lapidibus adornatur, sic famulus tuus gestator ipsius multiplici preciosarum virtutum munere, tua largiente gracia, repleatur.” Ordo ad coronandum regem Boemorum, ed. Kuthan and Šmied, 248–50. See also Benita Berning, “Nach alltem löblichen Gebrauch”: Die böhmische Königskrönungen der Frühen Neuzeit (1526–1743) (Cologne: Böhlau, 2008), 35–43. 37. One of the blue stones is an aquamarine. 38. Bertrandon de la Broquière, Voyage d’Oultre Mer, §344, in Silvia Cappellini, “The Voyage d’Oultre Mer by Bertrandon de la Broquière (1432–1433): An Enlightened Journey in the World of the Levant (Followed by a New Critical Edition of His Text)” (PhD diss., Johns Hopkins University, 1999), 637. 39. Jaroslav Hyršl, Petra Neumanová, Jiří Kouřimský, and Petra Burdová, “Rubelit ve svatováclavské korunĕ,” Vesmír 79, no.1 (2000): 18–23. Older literature is likely to identify the rubellite as a ruby from Burma (Myanmar). 40. For additional examples of crowns donated to churches and reliquaries to secure the legitimacy of a lineage, see Percy Ernst Schramm, “Herrschaftszeichen, Gestiftet, Verschenkt, Verkauft, Verpfändet: Belege aus dem Mittelalter,” in Nachrichten von der Akademie der Wissenschaften in Göttingen 5 (1957): nos. 85, 88, 89. 41. Ivo Hlobil and Klára Benešovská, Peter Parler & St. Vitus Cathedral, 1356–1399 (Prague: Prague Castle Administration, 1999), 44–55. 42. Antonín Podlaha and Eduard Šittler, Chrámový Poklad u Sv. Víta v Praze (Prague, 1903), liii–lvi (Document 6). 43. Emanuel Poche, “Einige Erwägungen über die Kameen Karls IV.,” in Sborník k sedmdesátinám Jana Květa, Acta Universitatis Carolinae, Philosophica et Historica 1 (Prague: Universita Karlova, 1965), 85. 44. The provenance traces back to the Strozzi of Florence. See A. H. Smith and Henry Beauchamp

Notes to Pages 55–60

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Walters, Catalogue of the Engraved Gems and Cameos: Greek, Etruscan and Roman in the British Museum (London: Printed by the Order of the Trustees, 1926), no. 3577. 45. Crossley, “Politics of Presentation,” 100–106; Iva Rosario, Art and Propaganda: Charles IV of Bohemia, 1346–1378 (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2000), 54–63. 46. Anton Legner, “Wände aus Edelstein und Gefässe aus Kristall,” in Die Parler und der schöne Stil, 1350–1400: Europäische Kunst unter den Luxemburger, ed. Anton Legner (Cologne: Museen der Stadt Köln, 1978–80), 3:169–83; Christel Meier, “Edelsteinallegorese,” in Legner, Die Parler, 3:184–88; Hana Šedinová, “The Symbolism of the Precious Stones in St. Wenceslas Chapel,” Artibus et Historiae 20, no. 39 (1999): 75–94. 47. Rosario, Art and Propaganda, 19–26. 48. Dankwart Leistikow, “Die Aufbewahrungsorte der Reichskleinodien—Vom Trifels bis Nürnberg,” in Die Reichskleinodien: Herrschaftszeichen des Heiligen Römischen Reiches, ed. Hans-Jürgen Becker et al. (Göppingen: Gesellschaft für Staufische Geschichte, 1997), 184–213, at 201–3. 49. Hartmut Kühne, Ostensio Reliquiarum: Untersuchungen über Entstehung, Ausbreitung, Gestalt und Funktion der Heiltumsweisungen im römisch-deutschen Regnum (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2000), 106–32, and Mitchell B. Merback, Pilgrimage and Pogrom: Violence, Memory, and Visual Culture at the Host-Miracle Shrines of Germany and Austria (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2012), 197–202. 50. Karl Möseneder, “Lapides vivi: Über die Kreuzkapelle der Burg Karlstein,” Wiener Jahrbuch für Kunstgeschichte 34 (1981): 39–69. 51. František Skřivánek, “The Incrustations of the Karlštejn Chapels,” Technologia Artis 2 (1992): 38–43, https://​technologiaartis​.avu​.cz​/a​_2mozaika​ -vtraz​-inkrust​.html. 52. There is no separate entry for the symbolism of the number 39 in Meyer and Suntrup’s Lexikon der Mittelalterlichen Zahlenbedeutungen (though it can be factorized as 3 × (10 + 3)). The parallelism with the number of sapphires and rubies on the crown is, however, striking. 53. Barbara Drake Boehm, “Called to Create: Luxury Artists at Work in Prague,” in Prague: The Crown

216

Notes to Pages 61–66

of Bohemia, 1347–1437, ed. Barbara Drake Boehm and Jiří Fajt (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2005), 80, and Anton Legner,“Karolinische Edelsteinwände,” in Kaiser Karl IV: Staatsmann und Mäzen, ed. Ferdinand Seibt (Munich: Prestel, 1978), 360–61. 54. Only the central stone is authentic; the others were replaced during the late nineteenth-century restoration; see Magister Theodoricus, Court Painter to Emperor Charles IV: The Pictorial Decoration of the Shrines at Karlštejn Castle, ed. Jiří Fajt, in association with Jan Royt (Prague: National Gallery, 1998), 172. 55. Dieter Blume, Mechthild Haffner, and Wolfgang Metzger, Sternbilder des Mittelalters und der Renaissance: Der gemalte Himmel zwischen Wissenschaft und Phantasie (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2016), 2:347–56. 56. Karel Otavský, “Reliquien im Besitz Kaisers Karls IV.: Ihre Verehrung und Ihre Fassungen,” in Court Chapels of the High and Late Middle Ages and Their Artistic Decoration, ed. Jiří Fajt (Prague: National Gallery, 2003), 129–41. 57. Quoted in Jiří Fajt, “Charles IV: Toward a New Imperial Style,” in Boehm and Fajt, Prague, 8n65. 58. Joseph Cibulka, “La couronne royale de Bohême et les couronnes des rois de France,” in Relations artistiques entre la France et les autres pays depuis le haut Moyen Âge jusqu’à la fin du XIXe siècle (Paris: Congrès international d’histoire de l’art, 1959), 167–75; Claire Richter Sherman, “The Queen in Charles V’s Coronation Book: Jeanne de Bourbon and the Ordo ad reginam benedicendam,” Viator 8 (1977): 255–98, at 280–85. 59. Danielle Gaborit-Chopin, Regalia: Les instruments du sacre des rois de France, les “Honneurs de Charlemagne” (Paris: Réunion des Musées Nationaux, 1987); Danielle Gaborit-Chopin, “Les couronnes du sacre des rois et des reines au trésor de Saint-Denis,” Bulletin Monumental 133, no. 2 (1975): 165–74. 60. Le trésor de Saint-Denis (Paris: Réunion des Musées Nationaux, 1991), no. 48; Talia Zajac, “Remembrance and Erasure of Objects Belonging to Rus’ Princesses in Medieval Western Sources: The Cases of Anastasia Iaroslavna’s ‘Saber of Charlemagne’ and Anna Iaroslavna’s Red Gem,”

in Moving Women, Moving Objects (400–1500), ed. Tracy Chapman Hamilton and Mariah ProctorTiffany (Leiden: Brill, 2019), 33–58. 61. Chronique des règnes de Jean II et de Charles V, ed. Roland Delachenal, 4 vols. (Paris: Renouard, 1910–20), 2:204–8. 62. Philippe Henwood, “Les orfèvres parisiens pendant le règne de Charles VI (1380–1422),” Bulletin archéologique du comité des travaux historiques et scientifiques, n.s., 15 (1979): 85–180, at 96–103. 63. Chronique des règnes de Jean II et de Charles V, ed. Delachenal, 2:267. 64. Michele Tomasi, “Entre ‘estat tenir’ et ‘esbatement’: L’orfèvrerie selon les chroniqueurs français sous les règnes de Charles V et Charles VI,” in Orfèvrerie gothique en Europe: Production et réception, ed. Élisabeth Antoine-König and Michele Tomasi (Rome: Viella, 2016), 125–41. 65. Christine de Pizan, Le livre des fais et bonnes meurs du sage roy Charles V, ed. Suzanne Solente, 2 vols. (Geneva: Droz, 1977), 2:125–26, 1:46–47. The latter passage is translated by Eric Hicks in The Writings of Christine de Pizan, ed. Charity Cannon Willard (New York, 1994), 237–38. 66. Anne D. Hedeman, The Royal Image: Illustrations of the “Grandes Chroniques de France,” 1274–1422 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), 128–33. 67. Chronique des règnes de Jean II et de Charles V, ed. Delachenal, 2:271–72; Brigitte Buettner, “Past Presents: New Year’s Gifts at the Valois Courts, ca. 1400,” Art Bulletin 83, no. 4 (2001): 598–625, at 613. 68. Jules Labarte, Inventaire du mobilier de Charles V, roi de France (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1879), 12–14 (no. 1); Éva Kovács, L’âge d’or de l’orfèvrerie parisienne au temps des princes de Valois (Paris: Éditions Faton, 2004), 316–20. The École de Bijouterie in Lyons created a replica in 1975, illustrated in Bernard Morel, The French Crown Jewels: The Objects of the Coronations of the Kings and Queens of France (Antwerp: Fonds Mercator, 1988), 89–90. 69. Christine de Pizan, The Book of Peace 27, ed. Karen Green et al. (University Park: Penn State University Press, 2008), 169–70, 297–98. 70. Alfred Coville, “La très belle couronne royale au temps des Armagnacs et des Bourguignons,” in

Mélanges offerts à M. Nicolas Iorga par ses amis de France et des pays de langue française (Paris: J. Gamber, 1933), 183–98.

Part 2

1. Eusebius, In Praise of Constantine 5.7, ed. Drake, 90. 2. Der Stricker, “Von Edelsteinen.” See John Margetts, “Steine des Anstosses: Zu des Strickers ‘Von den edelen steinen,’” in Vom Mittelalter zur Neuzeit: Festschrift für Horst Brunner, ed. Dorothea Klein et al. (Wiesbaden: Reichert, 2000), 227–48; Manfred Günter Scholz, “Wer den Stricker totschlägt oder Die Lüge von den Edelsteinen,” in Impulse und Resonanzen: Tübinger mediävistische Beiträge zum 80. Geburtstag von Walter Haug, ed. Gisela Vollmann-Profe et al. (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 2007), 229–43. 3. Robert Bartlett, The Natural and the Supernatural in the Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008); Bynum, Christian Materiality, 145–65; Lorrain Daston and Katharine Park, Wonders and the Order of Nature, 1150–1750 (New York: Zone, 1998), 120–33. 4. Joan Evans, Magical Jewels of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, Particularly in England (1922; repr., New York: Dover, 1976); Moritz Steinschneider, ”Lapidarien: Ein culturgeschichtlicher Versuch,” in Semitic Studies in Memory of Rev. Dr. Alexander Kohut, ed. George Alexander Kohut (Berlin: S. Calvary, 1897), 42–72, with an extensive listing of Latin, Arabic, and Hebrew sources. For the best overview of the Islamic lapidary tradition, see Manfred Ullmann, Die Natur- und Geheimwissenschaften im Islam (Leiden: Brill, 1972), 114–44.

Chapter 4

1. Pliny, Natural History 37.172, trans. Eichholz, 304–5; Albert the Great, De mineralibus 2.2.10, trans. Wyckoff, 102. 2. The famous German nun, Hildegard of Bingen, authored an idiosyncratic lapidary, published in Hildegard von Bingen’s “Physica”: The Complete

Notes to Pages 67–76

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English Translation of Her Classic Work on Health and Healing, trans. Priscilla Throop (Rochester: Healing Arts, 1998), 137–58. 3. Marbode, Liber lapidum, no. 17, line 263, ed. and Spanish trans. Herrera, 65. 4. Evans, Magical Jewels, 53–61; HMES, 1:775–82; Léopold Pannier, ed., Les lapidaires français du Moyen Age des XIIe, XIIIe, et XIVe siècles (Paris: F. Vieweg, 1882), 15–22. 5. Marbode of Rennes, Vas fractum, PL 171:1586B, trans. Gerald A. Bond, The Loving Subject: Desire, Eloquence, and Power in Romanesque France (Philadelphia: University of Philadelphia Press, 1995), 94. See also Ittai Weinryb, “Beyond Representation: Things—Human and Nonhuman,” in Cultural Histories of the Material World, ed. Peter N. Miller (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2013), 172–86. 6. Marbode, Liber lapidum, no. 7, ed. and Spanish trans. Herrera, 35–41. 7. For the difference between nigromancy and necromancy (invocation of the dead), see Jean-Patrice Boudet, Entre science et “nigromance”: Astrologie, divination et magie dans l’Occident médiéval (XIIe– XVe èsiècle) (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 2006), 92–94, and Frank Klaassen, “Necromancy,” in The Routledge History of Medieval Magic, ed. Sophie Page and Catherine Rider (London: Routledge, 2019), 201–11. 8. Marbode, Liber lapidum, lines 21–23, ed. and Spanish trans. Herrera, 8n6. 9. Robert Halleux, “Damigéron, Evax et Marbode: L’héritage alexandrin dans les lapidaires médiévaux,” Studi medievali, ser. 3, 15 (1974): 327–47; David Pingree, “The Diffusion of Arabic Magical Texts in Western Europe,” in La diffusione delle scienze islamiche nel medio evo europeo, ed. Biancamaria Scarcia Amoretti (Rome: Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, 1987), 57–102, at 59–64; Valentin Rose, “Damigeron, De lapidibus,” Hermes 9 (1875): 471–91. 10. Charles Burnett and Danielle Jacquart, ed., Constantine the African and ‘Alī Ibn Al-‘Abbās alMağūsī: The “Pantegni” and Related Texts (Leiden: Brill, 1994). 11. For this and the preceding quotes, see Marbode, Liber lapidum, prologue, lines 1–23, ed. and Spanish

218

Notes to Pages 76–82

trans. Herrera, 7–9, and comments by Nicolas WeillParot, Points aveugles de la nature: La rationalité scientifique médiévale face à l’occulte, l’attraction magnétique et l’horreur du vide (XIIIe–milieu du XVe siècle) (Paris: Belles Lettres, 2013), 38–41. 12. Karl Sudhoff, “Codex Fritz Paneth,” Archiv für Geschichte der Mathematik, der Naturwissenschaften und der Technik 12 (1929): 2–31. 13. H. J. Hermann, Die westeuropäischen Handschriften und Inkunabeln der Gotik und der Renaissance, vol. 2, Englische und französische Handschriften des XIV. Jahrhunderts, Beschreibendes Verzeichnis der illuminierten Handschriften in Österreich 8 (Leipzig: Hiersemann, 1936), 51–53. For a more comprehensive discussion of the Livre de Sidrac’s manuscript tradition, see Françoise Fery-Hue, “Sidrac et les pierres précieuses,” Revue d’histoire des textes 28 (1998): 93–181. 14. Ernstpeter Ruhe, “Wissensvermittlung in Frage und Antwort: Der enzyklopädische Lehrdialog Le Livre de Sidrac,” in Wissensliteratur im Mittelalter und in der Frühen Neuzeit: Bedingungen, Typen, Publikum, Sprache, ed. Horst Brunner and Norbert Richard Wolf (Wiesbaden: L. Reichert, 1993), 26–35, and Beate Wins, “Le Livre de Sidrac: Stand der Forschung und neue Ergebnisse,” in Brunner and Wolf, Wissensliteratur, 36–52. 15. Sidrac, Livre de Sidrac, nos. 1065–91, ed. Ernstpeter Ruhe, Sydrac le philosophe: Le Livre de la fontaine de toutes sciences; Edition des enzyklopädischen Lehrdialogs aus dem XIII. Jahrhundert (Wiesbaden: L. Reichert, 2000), 384–94. 16. Sidrac, Livre de Sidrac, no. 365, ed. Ruhe, 156. 17. Ibid., no. 1065, ed. Ruhe, 384. 18. Alfonso X, Lapidario, prologue, trans. Bahler and Gyékényesi Gatto, 19. See also Ghislaine Fournès, “Le prologue comme pré-texte chez Alfonso X (Lapidaire, Calila e Dimna),” Cahiers de linguistique et de civilisation hispaniques médiévales 24 (2001): 399–415. 19. Norman Roth, “Jewish Collaborators in Alfonso’s Scientific Work,” in Emperor of Culture: Alfonso X the Learned of Castile and His Thirteenth-Century Renaissance, ed. Robert I. Burns (Philadelphia: University of Philadelphia Press, 1990), 59–71. 20. Picatrix: A Medieval Treatise on Astral Magic, trans. Dan Attrell and David Porreca (University

Park: Penn State University Press 2019). Useful assessments include Boudet, Entre science et “nigromance,” 187–98, and Liana Saif, The Arabic Influences on Early Modern Occult Philosophy (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), 36–45. 21. Marcelino V. Amasuno, “En torno a las fuentes de la literatura científica del siglo XIII: Presencia del Lapidario de Aristóteles en el alfonsí,” Revista Canadiense de Estudios Hispánicos 9, no. 3 (1985): 299–328; Marcelino V. Amasuno, La materia médica de Dioscórides en el Lapidario de Alfonso X el Sabio: Literatura y ciencia en la Castilla del siglo XIII (Madrid: C.S.I.C., Centro de Estudios Históricos, 1987). 22. Isidore of Seville, Etymologies 14.4.28, ed. and trans. Barney et al., 292. 23. J. Horace Nunemaker, “The Chaldean Stones in the Lapidary of Alfonso X,” PMLA 45, no. 2 (1930): 444–53; Nunemaker, “In Pursuit of the Sources of the Alfonsine Lapidaries,” Speculum 14, no. 4 (1939): 483–89. 24. El Escorial, Real Bibl., MS h-I-15, fols. 1–93v, 41 × 30 cm. The most comprehensive study of the pictorial program is by Ana Domínguez Rodríguez, Astrología y arte en el “Lapidario” de Alfonso X el Sabio, rev. ed. (Murcia: Real Academia Alfonso X el Sabio, 2007). 25. Evans, Magical Jewels, 41–50. 26. Alfonso X, Lapidario, prologue, trans. Bahler and Gyékényesi Gatto, 19; see also Alejandro García Avilés, “La magie astrale comme art visuel au XIIIe siècle,” in Images et magie: “Picatrix” entre Orient et Occident, ed. Jean-Patrice Boudet, Anna Caiozzo, and Nicolas Weill-Parot (Paris: Champion, 2011), 95–113. 27. Alfonso X, Lapidario, prologue, trans. Bahler and Gyékényesi Gatto, 21. 28. Kirstin Kennedy, Alfonso X of Castile-León: Royal Patronage, Self-Promotion, and Manuscripts in Thirteenth-Century Spain (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2019). 29. Bernard G. Dod, “Aristoteles latinus,” in The Cambridge History of Later Medieval Philosophy: From the Rediscovery of Aristotle to the Disintegration of Scholasticism, 1100–1600, ed. Norman Kretzmann et al. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 43–79.

30. For the first, in addition to the editions by Valentin Rose and Julius Ruska, see Isabelle Draelants, “Un encyclopédiste méconnu du XIIIème siècle, Arnold de Saxe: Œuvres, sources et réception” (PhD diss., Université de Louvain-la-Neuve, 2000), 476–84; Felix Klein-Franke, “The Knowledge of Aristotle’s Lapidary During the Latin Middle Ages,” Ambix 17 (1970): 137–42; Ullmann, Natur- und Geheimwissenschaften, 105–10. For the second, see Secretum secretorum, in Three Prose Versions of the “Secreta secretorum,” ed. Robert Steele (London: Published for the Early English Text Society by K. Paul, Trench, Trübner, 1898), 87–89. 31. Only 301 chapters survive because three signs have lost some pages (one for Leo, twenty-eight for Aquarius, and two for Pisces). 32. Alfonso X, Lapidario, Capricorn 27, trans. Bahler and Gyékényesi Gatto, 200. 33. Alberto Bonchino, “La miniera e l’arte nel Rinascimento: Sull’iconografia mineraria tedesca dal tardo gotico al Bergaltar di Hans Hesse,” Rinascimento 50 (2010): 237–61. 34. Manuel C. Díaz y Díaz, “Metales y minería en la época visigótica a través de Isidoro de Sevilla,” in La minería Hispana e Iberoamericana: Contribución a su investigación histórica, 7 vols. (León: Cátedra de San Isidoro, 1970), 1:261–74. 35. Christopher J. Duffin, “Some Early EighteenthCentury Geological Materia Medica,” in A History of Geology and Medicine, ed. Christopher J. Duffin, R. T. J Moody, and Christopher Gardner-Thorpe (London: Geological Society of London, 2013), 209–33; Dietlinde Goltz, Studien zur Geschichte der Mineralnamen in Pharmazie, Chemie und Medizin von den Anfängen bis Paracelsus, Sudhoffs Archiv, Beiheft 14 (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner, 1972), 111–15, 129–75; John M. Riddle, Dioscorides on Pharmacy and Medicine (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1985), 146–64. 36. Minta Collins, Medieval Herbals: The Illustrative Traditions (London: British Library, 2000), 149–54. 37. On possible sources, see Riddle, Dioscorides, 198–203. 38. Kurt Weitzmann, “The Greek Sources of Islamic Scientific Illustrations,” in Studies in Classical and Byzantine Manuscript Illumination, ed. Herbert

Notes to Pages 82–89

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L. Kessler (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971), 20–44, at 43–44. 39. Scot McKendrick, John Lowden, and Kathleen Doyle, eds., Royal Manuscripts: The Genius of Illumination (London: British Library, 2011), no. 93; Meyer, Die Enzyklopädie des Bartholomäus Anglicus, 340–41. 40. This work is comprehensively examined by Elizabeth Keen, The Journey of a Book: Bartholomew the Englishman and the Properties of Things (Canberra: Australian National University Press, 2007). 41. Heinz Meyer, “Die illustrierten lateinischen Handschriften im Rahmen der Gesamtüberlieferung der Enzyklopädie des Bartholomäus Anglicus,” Frühmittelalterliche Studien 30 (1996): 368–95. 42. Christel Meier, “Illustration und Textcorpus: Zu kommunikations- und ordnungsfunktionalen Aspekten der Bilder in den mittelalterlichen Enzyklopädiehandschriften,” Frühmittelalterliche Studien 31 (1997): 1–31, at 13–16, and Meyer, Die Enzyklopädie des Bartholomäus Anglicus, 354 (F 37). 43. Meyer, Die Enzyklopädie des Bartholomäus Anglicus, 354–55 (F 38).

Chapter 5

1. Valérie Gontero-Lauze, Sagesses minérales: Médecine et magie des pierres précieuses au Moyen Âge (Paris: Garnier, 2010), 49–61, and Karin Leonhard, “Bunte Steine: Zur Rolle der Farbe in mittelalterlichen und frühneuzeitlichen Lapidarien,” in Steinformen: Materialität, Qualität, Imitation, ed. Isabella Augart, Maurice Saß, and Iris Wenderholm (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2018), 155–78. 2. Peter T. Ricketts, Connaissance de la littérature occitane: Matfre Ermengaud (1246–1332) et le Breviari d’amor (Perpignan: Presses Universitaires de Perpignan, 2012). 3. Carlos Miranda García-Tejedor, “Los manuscritos con pinturas del Breviari d’Amor de Matfre Ermengaud de Béziers: Un estado de la cuestión,” in La miniatura medieval en la península Ibérica, ed. Joaquín Yarza Luaces (Murcia: Nausícaä, 2007), 313–74.

220

Notes to Pages 89–98

4. Matfre Ermengaud, Breviari d’amor, lines 5893–96, ed. Peter T. Ricketts, Le Breviari d’Amor de Matfre Ermengaud, vol. 2, 1–8880 (London: Westfield College, 1989), 284). 5. Matfre’s direct source for the entry on the turquoise was an adaptation of Marbode’s work known as the Second Prose Lapidary, published in Joan Evans and Paul Studer, eds., Anglo-Norman Lapidaries (Paris: Edouard Champion, 1924), 136 (no. 36). 6. George F. Warner et al., A Descriptive Catalogue of Fourteen Illuminated Manuscripts in the Library of Henry Yates Thompson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1912), 1–22, and Katja Laske-Fix, Der Bildzyklus des Breviari d’amor (Munich: Schnell & Steiner, 1973), 40, 132. 7. Rosalind Krauss, “Grids,” October 9 (1979): 50–64. 8. Matfre Ermengaud, Breviari d’amor, lines 5985–88, ed. Ricketts, 288. 9. Michèle Fruyt, “La lexicalisation et la conceptualisation de la couleur dans les textes techniques et scientifiques latins,” in L’écriture du texte scientifique au Moyen Âge: Des origines de la langue française au XVIIIe siècle, ed. Claude Thomasset (Paris: Presses de l’Université Paris-Sorbonne, 2006), 13–47; Emma Martinell, “Expresión lingüística del color en el Lapidario de Alfonso X,” Cahiers de linguistique hispanique médiévale 11 (1986): 133–49; E. de Saint-Denis, “Nuances et jeux de lumière dans l’Histoire naturelle de Pline l’Ancien,” Revue de philologie, de littérature et d’histoire anciennes 45 (1971): 218–39. 10. Mark Bradley, Colour and Meaning in Ancient Rome (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 101. A useful resource for the vocabulary of colors remains Jacques André, Étude sur les termes de couleur dans la langue latine (Paris: Klincksieck, 1949). 11. Rolf G. Kuehni and Andreas Schwarz, Color Ordered: A Survey of Color Order Systems from Antiquity to the Present (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 28–53, and Christel Meier, “Text und Kontext: Steine und Farben bei Bartholomäus Anglicus in ihren Werk- und Diskurszusammenhängen,” in Bartholomaeus Anglicus, “De Proprietatibus rerum”: Texte latin et réception vernaculaire, ed. Baudouin van den Abeele and Heinz Meyer (Turnhout: Brepols, 2005), 151–84.

12. Michael Pastoureau, Yellow: The History of a Color, trans. Jody Gladding (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2019), 64–67. 13. Confusingly, puniceus could also be rendered as yellow (see Pastoureau, Red, 50–52). 14. Green stones comprise translucent iaspis, melochites (probably malachite), and leek-green prasius. 15. Derived from the Persian yâkut and corresponding to modern corundum, hyacinthus could also be listed as red granatus and pale yellow citrinus. Visual renditions are, accordingly, inconsistent. 16. When purpureus, the amethystus resembles pure vine and when violaceus, a fresh rose, writes Marbode (Liber lapidum, lines 240–41, ed. and Spanish trans. Herrera, 63). 17. The calcophanus, glistening gagates, and gerachites are the only purely black stones. For the opposition of niger and the rarely mentioned matte ater, corresponding to blaek and swart in Old and Middle English, see Michel Pastoureau, Black: The History of a Color (Princeton: Princeton University Press 2009), 27–35. 18. Thomas of Cantimpré, Liber de natura rerum 14.24, ed. Boese, 361. 19. Cohen, Stone, 137. 20. Camillo Leonardi, Speculum lapidum 1.6 (Venice, 1502), 11. 21. Alfonso X, Lapidario, Aries 8, Gemini 2, trans. Bahler and Gyékényesi Gatto, 28, 81, respectively. For the fluctuating attitudes toward “Moors” in Alfonsine visual documents, see Jean Devisse, “The Black and His Color: From Symbols to Reality,” in The Image of the Black in Western Art, vol. 2, From the Early Christian Era to the “Age of Discovery,” part 1, From the Demonic Threat to the Incarnation of Sainthood, ed. David Bindman and Henry Louis Gates Jr. (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2010), 86–89. 22. Dagmar Gottschall, Konrad von Megenbergs “Buch von den natürlichen Dingen”: Ein Dokument deutschsprachiger Albertus Magnus–Rezeption im 14. Jahrhundert (Leiden: Brill, 2004), 125–31. 23. On the Augsburg manuscript, see Ulrike Spyra, Das “Buch der Natur” Konrads von Megenberg: Die illustrierten Handschriften und Inkunabeln (Cologne: Böhlau, 2005), 99–108, 248–53.

24. Isidore of Seville, Etymologies 16.12.3, ed. and trans. Barney et al., 325. 25. Marbode, Liber lapidum, lines 529–30, ed. and Spanish trans. Herrera, 129; Albert the Great, De mineralibus 2.2.5, trans. Wyckoff, 91. 26. For example, the argirites in Bartholomaeus Anglicus, De proprietatibus rerum 16.15 (1601 ed., 725), a cubic silvery stone streaked with gold (habens stigmata aurea), identifiable as a pyrite. For allegorical interpretations of markings, see Meier, Gemma spiritalis, 214–24. 27. Christopher J. Duffin, “Lapis Judaicus or the Jews’ Stone: The Folklore of Fossil Echinoid Spines,” Proceedings of the Geologists’ Association 117 (2006): 265–75; Stephen J. Gould, “The Jew and the Jew Stone,” Natural History 6 (2000): 26–39; Eladio Liñán, María Liñán, and Joaquín Carrasco, “Cryptopalaeontology,” in A History of Geology and Medicine, ed. Christopher J. Duffin, R. T. J. Moody, and Christopher Gardner-Thorpe (London: Geological Society of London, 2013), 45–64. 28. Bartholomaeus Anglicus, De Proprietatibus rerum 16.72, trans. Trevisa, ed. Seymour, 2:862. 29. Isidore of Seville, Etymologies 4.9.5, ed. and trans. Barney et al., 113. Sympathy and antipathy in the context of lapidary knowledge are discussed in HMES, 1:84–88; Meier, Gemma spiritalis, 373–460; Hans Waldeck, “Mineralien, Edelsteine, Medizin—Kulturgeschichtliche Zusammenhänge,” in Faszination Edelstein aus den Schatzkammern der Welt: Mythos, Kunst, Wissenschaft, ed. Sybille Ebert-Schifferer and Martina Harms (Bern: Benteli, 1992), 93–103. For an overview of humoral theory, see Noga Arikha, Passions and Tempers: A History of the Humours (New York: Ecco, 2007). 30. Theophrastus, On Stones 28, trans. Earle R. Caley and John F. C. Richards (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1956), 51, 109–16; D. E. Eichholz, “Some Mineralogical Problems in Theophrastus’ De Lapidibus,” Classical Quarterly 17, no. 1 (1967): 103–9; Steven A. Walton, “Theophrastus on Lyngurium: Medieval and Early Modern Lore from the Classical Lapidary Tradition,” Annals of Science 58, no. 4 (2001): 357–79. 31. Pliny, Natural History 32.42, 37.52–53, trans. Eichholz, 195, 203–5.

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32. Willene B. Clark, A Medieval Book of Beasts: The Second-Family Bestiary; Commentary, Art, Text and Translation (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2006), 53–54, 126–27. 33. Richard Barber, Bestiary: Being an English Version of the Bodleian Library, Oxford M.S. Bodley 764 (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2006); Clark, Medieval Book, 75–76, 241–42; Nigel Morgan, Early Gothic Manuscripts, vol. 4 of A Survey of Manuscripts Illuminated in the British Isles (London: H. Miller, 1988), 2: no. 98. 34. The Ruodlieb, lines 99–129, ed. Christopher W. Grocock (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1985), 70–71. 35. Françoise Fery-Hue, “Des pierres et du sang,” in Le sang au Moyen Âge: Actes du quatrième colloque international de Montpellier, Université Paul-Valéry (27–29 novembre 1997), edited by Marcel Faure (Montpellier: Association C.R.I.S.I.M.A., Université Paul-Valéry, 1999): 39–68. 36. Amand Berteloot, Jacob van Maerlant, Der Naturen Bloeme: Farbmikrofiche-Edition der Handschrift Detmold, Lippische Landesbibliothek, Mscr. 70 (Munich: Lengenfelder, 1999); Berteloot, “Kalender, Leerseiten und Miniaturen: Ein Streifzug durch die Detmolder Maerlant-Handschrift,” in Jacob van Maerlants “Der naturen bloeme” und das Umfeld: Vorläufer–Redaktionen–Rezeption, ed. Amand Berteloot and Detlev Hellfaier (Münster: Waxmann, 2001), 105–18. 37. Boehm and Fajt, Prague: The Crown of Bohemia, 166 (no. 36b). 38. Alfonso X, Lapidario, Taurus 13, trans. Bahler and Gyékényesi Gatto, 54. 39. Bartholomaeus Anglicus, De rerum proprietatibus 16.54, 1601 ed., 743; in the Trevisa translation, the citation occurs in 16.53 (ed. Seymour, 2:854). 40. Bartholomaeus Anglicus, On the properties of things 16.91, trans. Trevisa, ed. Seymour, 2:873. 41. Bartholomaeus Anglicus, De Proprietatibus rerum 16.92, 1601 ed., 763. In modern mineralogy, selenite is a crystalline variety of gypsum, while moonstone designates iridescent feldspar. 42. William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regum Anglorum 2.135, ed. and trans. Mynors, 1:218–19, translation slightly modified. 43. Pliny, Natural History 37.62–64, trans. Eichholz, 213.

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Notes to Pages 104–110

44. There is extensive literature on this topic, including John Block Friedman, The Monstrous Races in Medieval Art and Thought (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1981); Asa Simon Mittman, with Peter J. Dendle, The Ashgate Research Companion to Monsters and the Monstrous (Farnham: Ashgate, 2012); David Williams, Deformed Discourse: The Function of the Monster in Mediaeval Thought and Literature (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1996); Rudolf Wittkower, “Marvels of the East: A Study in the History of Monsters,” in Allegory and the Migration of Symbols (London: Thames and Hudson, 1977), 45–74. 45. Pliny, Natural History 7.10, trans. Rackham, 512–13; Solinus, Collectanea rerum memorabilium 15.22–23, ed. and trans. Kai Brodersen, Wunder der Welt, Lateinisch und Deutsch (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2014), 146–48. See also Gérard Cames, “Or, émeraudes et griffons,” Gazette des Beaux-Arts 90 (1977): 105–8, and Adrienne Mayor and Michael Heaney, “Griffins and Arimaspeans,” Folklore 104 (1993): 40–66. 46. In addition to Brodersen, Wunder der Welt, see Kai Brodersen, ed., Solinus: New Studies (Heidelberg: Antike, 2014), and Kai Brodersen, “Mapping Pliny’s World: The Achievement of Solinus,” Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies 54, no. 1 (2011): 63–88. 47. John Plummer, The Last Flowering: French Painting in Manuscripts, 1420–1530 (New York: Pierpont Morgan Library, 1982), cat. 44. 48. Subhi Y. Labib, Handelsgeschichte Ägyptens im Spätmittelalter, 1171–517 (Wiesbaden: F. Steiner, 1965), 312–14, and Mugler, Edelsteinhandel im Mittelalter, 32–33. 49. Thea Elisabeth Haevernick, “Zu einigen antiken Gläsern in Kirchenschätzen,” Trierer Zeitschrift für Geschichte und Kunst 36 (1973): 103–17, and Ingeborg Krueger, “An Emerald of Glass: The Emerald of Charlemagne at Mittelzell, Reichenau,” in Facts and Artefacts: Art in the Islamic World; Festschrift for Jens Kröger on His 65th Birthday, ed. Annette Hagedorn and Avinoam Shalem (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 21–38. 50. Theophrastus, On Stones 23, trans. Caley and Richards, 50. 51. Pliny, Natural History 37.63–64, trans. Eichholz, 212–15. See discussion by Dimitris Plantzos,

“Crystals and Lenses in the Graeco-Roman World,” American Journal of Archaeology 101, no. 3 (1997): 451–64. 52. Vincent Ilardi, Renaissance Vision from Spectacles to Telescopes (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 2007), 8–11. 53. John Gage, Color and Culture: Practice and Meaning from Antiquity to Abstraction (Boston: Little, Brown, 1993), 121–33, and David C. Lindberg, Theories of Vision from al-Kindi to Kepler (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1967). 54. Buettner, “Icy Geometry,” 124–27. 55. Bartholomaeus Anglicus, De proprietatibus rerum 16.72 (1601 ed., 751). Perhaps this interpretation contains a memory of Pliny’s blackish vitreous obsidian, which, when used as a mirror, reflects shadows rather than images (Natural History 36.196, trans. Eichholz, 154–55). 56. Albert the Great, De mineralibus 2.2.13, trans. Wyckoff, 109. 57. Marbode, Liber lapidum, lines 505–10, ed. and Spanish trans. Herrera, 123. 58. Luke E. Demaitre, Medieval Medicine: The Art of Healing, from Head to Toe (Santa Barbara: Praeger, 2013), 159–78, and Pierre-André Sigal, L’homme et le miracle dans la France médiévale, XIe–XIIe siècle (Paris: Cerf, 1985), 228–33. 59. Albert the Great, De mineralibus 2.2.13, trans. Wyckoff, 110. Lightbown links this passage to curative stones listed in late medieval collections (Mediaeval European Jewellery, 97–98); see also Richard Kieckhefer, Magic in the Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 100–105. 60. Sydney H. Ball, “Luminous Gems, Mythical and Real,” Scientific Monthly 47, no. 6 (1938): 496–505; Valérie Gontero, Parures d’or et de gemmes: L’orfèvrerie dans les romans antiques du XIIe siècle (Aix-en-Provence: Publications de l’Université de Provence, 2002), 138–43; George Frederick Kunz, The Curious Lore of Precious Stones (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1913), 161–75; Stith Thompson, Motif-Index of Folk Literature: A Classification of Narrative Elements in Folktales, Ballads, Myths, Fables, Mediaeval Romances, Exempla, Fabliaux, Jest-Books, and Local Legends (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1955–58), D1645;

Theodore Ziolkowski, “Der Karfunkelstein,” Euphorion: Zeitschrift für Literaturgeschichte 55 (1961): 297–326. 61. The Song of Roland, lines 2630–39, trans. Glyn Burgess (London: Penguin, 1990), 189, and Roman d’Alexandre, lines 1953–57, ed. Alfred Foulet, The Medieval French “Roman d’Alexandre” (Princeton: Princeton University Press), 3:201. 62. Solinus describes the carbuncle as a white stone “much valued by the kings of Orient” (Collectanea rerum memorabilium 20.16–18, ed. and trans. Brodersen, 220). For more examples, see Thompson, Motif-Index, B100–109. 63. William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regum Anglorum 2.169, ed. and trans. Mynors, 1:284–89. 64. Michael Camille, The Gothic Idol: Ideology and Image-Making in Medieval Art (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 253–55, and Elly R. Truitt, Medieval Robots: Mechanism, Magic, Nature, and Art (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015), 79–82. 65. An example is the Gesta Romanorum, a popular collection of exempla compiled around 1300. See Gesta Romanorum: A New Translation, trans. Christopher Stace (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2016), 265–67 (no. 107). 66. Thomas of Cantimpré, Liber de natura rerum 14.13, ed. Boese, 359. 67. Benvenuto Cellini, The Treatises of Benvenuto Cellini on Goldsmithing and Sculpture, trans. C. R. Ashbee (New York: Dover, 1967), 42–44. 68. For an example, see the Lapidary of King Philip, ed. Pannier, Lapidaires français du Moyen, 294. 69. Kunz, Curious Lore, 176–224. 70. Useful overviews on medieval magic include Kieckhefer, Magic; Graziella Federici-Vescovini, Le Moyen Âge magique: La magie entre religion et science du XIIIe au XIVe siècle (Paris: Vrin, 2011); Sophie Page, “Medieval Magic,” in The Oxford Illustrated History of Witchcraft and Magic, ed. Owen Davies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), 29–64; Page and Rider, Routledge History of Medieval Magic. 71. Albert the Great, De mineralibus 2.2.1, trans. Wyckoff, 74. 72. Bartholomaeus Anglicus, De Proprietatibus rerum 16.82, trans. Trevisa, ed. Seymour, 2:868.

Notes to Pages 111–114

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73. Mikita Brottman, Hyena (London: Reaktion, 2012), 18–20. 74. John Boswell, Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality: Gay People in Western Europe from the Beginning of the Christian Era to the Fourteenth Century (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1981), 137–43, 316–18, and Debra Higgs Strickland, Medieval Bestiaries: Text, Image, Ideology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 145–55. 75. Konrad von Megenberg, Buch der Natur 6.14, ed. Luff and Steer, 473–74. Of all the texts considered here, this is the only one with recurrent biblical references and religious glosses. 76. Christopher J. Duffin, “Chelidonius: The Swallow Stone,” Folklore 124, no. 1 (2013): 81–103. 77. Albert the Great devotes an entire section to the topic; see De mineralibus 2.3.6, trans. Wyckoff, 146– 51. For broader discussions, see Liselotte Hansmann and Lenz Kriss-Rettenbeck, Amulett und Talisman: Erscheinungsform und Geschichte (Munich: G. D. W. Callwey, 1966), 17–54; Kieckhefer, Magic, 75–80; Lightbown, Mediaeval European Jewellery, 98–100, 206–9. 78. Augustine, The City of God Against the Pagans 22.8, ed. R. W. Dyson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 1130–31. 79. Judith Wilcox and John M. Riddle, “Qustā ibn Lūqā’s Physical Ligatures and the Recognition of the Placebo Effect: With an Edition and Translation,” Medieval Encounters 1, no. 1 (1995): 1–50, at 34–35, 43. 80. S. A. Callisen, “The Evil Eye in Italian Art,” Art Bulletin 19, no. 3 (1937): 450–62, and Marcia Pointon, Brilliant Effects: A Cultural History of Gem Stones and Jewellery (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009), 127–44. 81. So self-contained were the two states of coral that Albert the Great (following Arnold of Saxony) considered them two different species (De mineralibus 2.2.3, trans. Wyckoff, 81). On coral’s assimilation to the petrified blood of Medusa, see Macrì, Pietre viventi, 63–77. 82. Thomas of Cantimpré, Liber de natura rerum 14.15, ed. Boese, 359. 83. Marbode, Liber lapidum, lines 259–60, ed. and Spanish trans. Herrera, 65.

224

Notes to Pages 115–123

84. Richard Kieckhefer, Forbidden Rites: A Necromancer’s Manual of the Fifteenth Century (University Park: Penn State University Press, 1998), 4. 85. Isidore of Seville, Etymologies 16.12.3, ed. and trans. Barney et al., 326. 86. See María Ester Herrera, “La historia del ‘diamante’ desde Plinio a Bartolomé el Inglés,” in Comprendre et maîtriser la nature au Moyen Âge: Mélanges d’histoire des sciences offerts à Guy Beaujouan (Geneva: Droz,1994), 139–53. 87. H. J. Hermann, Die Handschriften und Inkunabeln der italienischen Renaissance, part 1, Oberitalien: Genua, Lombardei, Emilia, Romagna, Beschreibendes Verzeichnis der illuminierten Handschriften in Österreich 8 (Leipzig: Karl W. Hiersemann. 1930), 6: no. 26. 88. Cecco d’Ascoli [Francesco Stabili], Acerba 3.48–56, ed. Marco Albertazzi (Trento: La Finestra, 2002), 252–77. See further Marco Berisso, “Il lapidario dell’Acerba,” in Cecco d’Ascoli: Cultura, scienza e politica nell’Italia del Trecento (Rome: Istituto Storico Italiano per il Medioevo, 2007), 53–68; Marialuisa Camuffo and Aldo Maria Costantini, “Il lapidario dell’Acerba,” Lettere italiane 40, no. 4 (1988): 526–35; HMES, 2:948–68. 89. Cecco d’Ascoli, Acerba 3.48, ed. Albertazzi, 253. 90. Ibid. 3.52, ed. Albertazzi, 267. 91. Konrad von Megenberg, Buch der Natur 6.34, ed. Luff and Steer, 482. 92. Françoise Fery-Hue, “La description de la ‘pierre précieuse’ au Moyen Âge: Encyclopédies, lapidaires et textes littéraires,” in La description au Moyen Âge: Actes du colloque du Centre d’Études Médiévales et Dialectales de Lille 3; Université Charles-deGaulle—Lille III, 25 et 26 septembre 1992, edited by Aimé Petit, Bien dire et bien aprandre 11 (Lille: Univ. de Charles-de-Gaulle, 1993), 158–63; Heather, “Precious Stones, II,” 379–85; Corinne Saunders, Magic and the Supernatural in Medieval English Romance (Woodbridge: D. S. Brewer, 2010), 124–30. 93. Boccaccio, The Decameron 8.3, trans. G. H. McWilliam (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1995), 561– 69); see also Ronald L. Martinez, “Calandrino and the Powers of the Stone: Rhetoric, Belief, and the Progress of Ingegno in Decameron 8.3,” Heliotropia 1, no. 1 (2003): 1–32.

Chapter 6

1. Konrad Goehl and Johannes Gottfried Mayer, “Antike Gemmen: Steinmagie und Liebeszauber bis ins christliche Mittelalter; Der Jude ‘Techel’ oder ‘Cheel’ und die coelatio lapidum mit Edition und Übersetzung zweier Steinbücher,” in Editionen und Studien zur lateinischen und deutschen Fachprosa des Mittelalters: Festgabe für Gundolf Keil, ed. Konrad Goehl and Johannes Gottfried Mayer (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2000), 286. 2. Volmar, quoted in Claude Lecouteux, “Zu den geschnittenen Gemmen von Volmars Steinbuch,” Vestigia Bibliae: Jahrbuch des deutschen BibelArchivs Hamburg 24/25 (2002/3): 527–36. 3. Aby Warburg, The Renewal of Pagan Antiquity: Contributions to the Cultural History of the European Renaissance, trans. David Britt (Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute for the History of Art and the Humanities, 1999). For the best summary of Albert’s conception, see Nicolas Weill-Parot, “Astrology, Astral Influences, and Occult Properties in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries,” Traditio 65 (2010): 201–30, at 215–18. 4. Martin Henig, “The Re-Use and Copying of Ancient Intaglios set in Medieval Personal Seals, Mainly Found in England: An Aspect of the Renaissance of the 12th Century,” in Good Impressions: Image and Authority in Medieval Seals, ed. Noël Adams, John Cherry, and James Robinson (London: British Museum, 2008), 25–34. 5. Erika Zwierlein-Diehl, Antike Gemmen und ihr Nachleben (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2007), 210–31, and Erika Zwierlein-Diehl, “Magical Gems in the Medieval and Early-Modern Periods: Tradition, Transformation, Innovation,” in Les savoirs magiques et leur transmission de l’Antiquité à la Renaissance, ed. Véronique Dasen and Jean-Michel Spieser (Florence: SISMEL, Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2014), 87–130. 6. We know about those texts from a table of contents included in an Alfonsine manuscript tellingly titled Book of the Forms and Figures Which Are in the Heavens (El Escorial, Library of the Royal Monastery of San Lorenzo, MS h-I-16). On “lapidaries of engraved gems,” see Evans, Magical Jewels, 95–139; Ferdinand de Mély, “Du rôle des pierres

gravées gravées au Moyen Âge,” Revue de l’art chrétien 4 (1893): 14–24, 98–105, 191–203; Evans and Studer, Anglo-Norman Lapidaries, 277–96. 7. Thomas of Cantimpré, Liber de natura rerum 14.70, no. 6, ed. Boese, 372; Jacob van Maerlant, Naturen bloeme, lines 1295–302, ed. Eelco Verwijs (1878; repr., Arnhem: Gijsbers & Van Loon, 1980), 239. 8. M. J. M. de Haan, “Illustrations of Gems in the Leiden Manuscript of Der Naturen Bloeme,” in Essays Presented to G. I. Lieftinck, ed. J. P. Gumbert and M. J. M. de Haan (Amsterdam: Van Gendt, 1976), 3:71–79. 9. Thomas of Cantimpré, Liber de natura rerum 14.69–70, ed. Boese, 370–73. On the two tracts and related texts, see Draelants, “Encyclopédiste méconnu,” 486–95; HMES, 2:388–92; Weill–Parot, Les “images astrologiques” au Moyen Âge et à la Renaissance: Spéculations intellectuelles et pratiques magiques (XIIe–XVe siècle) (Paris: Champion, 2002), 113–23. 10. Thomas of Cantimpré, Liber de natura rerum 14.70, no. 7, ed. Boese, 372; Jacob van Maerlant, Naturen bloeme, lines 1303–6, ed. Verwijs, 239. 11. Thomas de Cantimpré, Liber de natura rerum 14.69, title and prologue, ed. Boese, 370. 12. Ibid. 14.69.68–70, ed. Boese, 371. 13. “Castrated” is the word used by Goehl and Mayer (“Antike Gemmen,” 266). 14. Goehl and Mayer, “Antike Gemmen,” 278–79, 292–93 (nos. 14, 20). 15. Katelyn Mesler, “The Medieval Lapidary of Techel/ Azareus on Engraved Stones and Its Jewish Appropriations,” Aleph 14, no. 2 (2014): 75–143. 16. HMES, 2:388–89. 17. Thomas of Cantimpré, Liber de natura rerum 14.1.41–59, ed. Boese, 356; in shorter form at 14.70.2–7, ed. Boese, 371. Zwierlein-Diehl identifies a Carolingian source (Antike Gemmen, 250–51). 18. Michael Rothmann, “Totius orbis descriptio: Die ‘Otia Imperialia’ des Gervasius von Tilbury, eine höfische Enzyklopädie und die scientia naturalis,” in Die Enzyklopädie im Wandel vom Hochmittelalter bis zur frühen Neuzeit, ed. Christel Meier (Munich: W. Fink, 2002), 189–224. 19. Gervase of Tilbury, Otia imperialia 3.28, ed. and trans. Banks and Binns, 612–15.

Notes to Pages 126–131

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20. For a concise summary, see Charles Burnett, “The Establishment of Medieval Hermeticism,” in The Medieval World, ed. Peter Linehan, Janet L. Nelson, and Marios Costambeys (London: Routledge, 2018), 126–45. 21. Francis J. Carmody, The Astronomical Work of Thabit b. Qurra (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1960), 167–97. 22. Boudet, Entre science et “nigromance,” 214–20; HMES, 2:338–71; Thomas B. de Mayo, The Demonology of William of Auvergne: By Fire and Sword (Lewiston: Edwin Mellen, 2007), 28–32, 120– 23, 150–53; Sophie Page, Magic in the Cloister: Pious Motives, Illicit Interests, and Occult Approaches to the Medieval Universe (University Park: Penn State University Press, 2013), 31–48; Weill–Parot, “Images astrologiques,” 175–213. 23. On various methods for activating talismans, see Claude Lecouteux, The High Magic of Talismans and Amulets: Tradition and Craft (Rochester: Inner Traditions, 2005), 157–85. 24. Gervase of Tilbury, Otia imperialia 3.28, ed. and trans. Banks and Binns, 614–19. 25. He most likely knew the text through Arnold of Saxony’s De floribus rerum naturalium (Draelants, “Encyclopédiste méconnu,” 460–64). As with the renewal of lapidary discourse more generally, this work was instrumental in calling attention to sigils. 26. Thomas de Cantimpré, Liber de natura rerum 14.71, ed. Boese, 373–74. 27. A fifteenth-century copy of the Lapidary of King Philip embroidered these instructions: wrap the stone along with a crystal in a white sheet, store it in a box that you then place in a chest for forty days (Pannier, Lapidaires français du Moyen, 290). 28. Adolph Franz found its indications in two liturgical manuscripts only (Die kirchlichen Benediktionen im Mittelalter [Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 1909], 1:435–42). 29. William S. Heckscher, “Relics of Pagan Antiquity in Mediaeval Settings,” Journal of the Warburg Institute 1 (1938): 215n3. 30. Damigeron–Evax 5, ed. Robert Halleux and Jacques Schamp, Les lapidaires grecs (Paris: Belles Lettres, 1985), 241; see also Evans, Magical Jewels, 200. 31. Marbode, Liber lapidum, lines 726–27, ed. and Spanish trans. Herrera, 182–83.

226

Notes to Pages 132–135

32. HMES, 2:517–92; John M. Riddle and James A. Mulholland, “Albert on Stones and Minerals,” in Albertus Magnus and the Sciences: Commemorative Essays, ed. James A. Weisheipl (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1980), 203–34. 33. On Albert the Great’s wide range of sources, see Wyckoff ’s edition of the Book of Minerals, 253–85. 34. Avicennae de Congelatione et Conglutinatione Lapidum, Being Sections of the Kitâb al-Shifâ’: The Latin and Arabic Texts, ed. and trans. Eric John Holmyard and Desmond Christopher Mandeville (Paris: P. Geuthner, 1927); Jean-Marc Mandosio and Carla Di Martino, “La ‘Météorologie’ d’Avicenne (Kitâb al–Šifâ’ V) et sa diffusion dans le monde latin,” in Wissen über Grenzen: Arabisches Wissen und lateinisches Mittelalter, ed. Andreas Speer and Lydia Wegener (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2006), 406–24. 35. Draelants identifies sixteen instances of an experiential notation taken straight from Arnold of Saxony’s De floribus rerum naturalium (“Encyclopédiste méconnu,” 548–50). On the topic of Albert’s “plagiarism,” see HMES, 2:535–48, and James R. Shaw, “Albertus Magnus and the Rise of an Empirical Approach in Medieval Philosophy and Science,” in By Things Seen: Reference and Recognition in Medieval Thought, ed. David L. Jeffrey (Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 1979), 175–85. 36. Albert the Great, De mineralibus 1.1.7, 2.2.11, trans. Wyckoff, 28, 104. 37. Ibid., 2.2.5, trans. Wyckoff, 89. 38. Ibid., 1.1.8–9, trans. Wyckoff, 29–35. 39. Ibid., 2.1.4, trans. Wyckoff, 64–67; see also Udo Reinhold Jeck, “Virtus Lapidum: Zur philosophischen Begründung der magischen Wirksamkeit und der physikalischen Beschaffenheit kostbarer Mineralien in der Naturphilosophie Alberts des Grossen,” Early Science and Medicine 5, no. 1 (2000): 33–46; WeillParot, Points aveugles, 53–56, 81–90. 40. Valerie Allen, “Mineral Virtue,” in Animal, Vegetable, Mineral: Ethics and Objects, ed. Jeffrey Jerome Cohen (Washington, DC: Oliphaunt, 2012), 123–52; Heribert M. Nobis, “Der Ursprung der Steine: Zur Beziehung zwischen Alchemie und Mineralogie im Mittelalter,” in Toward a History of Mineralogy, Petrology, and Geochemistry, ed. Bernhard Fritscher and Fergus Henderson (Munich: Institut für Geschichte

der Naturwissenschaften, 1998 ), 29–52; Adam Takahashi, “Formative Power and Intellect in the Natural Philosophy of Albert the Great,” Early Science and Medicine 13, no. 5 (2008): 451–81. 41. Albert the Great, De mineralibus 2.1.2, trans. Wyckoff, 60. See also Adams, Birth and Development, 78–84; Edward Grant, “Medieval and Renaissance Scholastic Conceptions of the Influence of the Celestial Region on the Terrestrial,” Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 17 (1987): 1–23; Saif, Arabic Influences, 70–82. 42. Isabelle Draelants, “La virtus universalis: Un concept d’origine hermétique? Les sources d’une notion de philosophie naturelle médiévale,” in Hermetism from Late Antiquity to Humanism, ed. Paolo Lucentini, Ilaria Parri, and Vittoria Perrone Compagni (Turnhout: Brepols, 2004), 157–88. 43. John Gower, Confessio Amantis, book 7, lines 1271– 438, ed. Russell A. Peck, trans. Andrew Galloway (Kalamazoo: Published for TEAMS in association with the University of Rochester by the Medieval Institute Publications, 2004), 3:293–96. 44. Tamara F. O’Callaghan, “The Fifteen Stars, Stones and Herbs: Book VII of the Confessio Amantis and Its Afterlife,” in John Gower, Trilingual Poet: Language, Translation and Tradition, ed. Elisabeth Dutton with John Hines and R. F. Yeager (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2010), 139–56, and Lynn Thorndike, “Traditional Medieval Tracts Concerning Engraved Astrological Images,” in Mélanges Auguste Pelzer: Études d’histoire littéraire et doctrinale de la Scolastique médiévale offertes à Monseigneur Auguste Pelzer (Louvain: Éditions de l’Institut Supérieur de Philosophie, 1947), 217–74. 45. Sonja Drimmer, “The Visual Language of Vernacular Manuscript Illumination: John Gower’s Confessio Amantis (Pierpont Morgan MS M.126)” (PhD diss., Columbia University, 2011), 320–26. I thank the author for sharing her dissertation with me. 46. I correct the misleading necromantia in Borgnet’s and Wyckoff ’s editions after Weill-Parot, Points aveugles, 459n132. 47. Albert the Great, De mineralibus 2.3.4, trans. Wyckoff, 139–40. 48. Ibid., 2.3.5, trans. Wyckoff, 140–45; copied from Arnold of Saxony’s De floribus rerum naturalium (Draelants, “Encyclopédiste méconnu,” 455–59).

49. Albert the Great, De mineralibus 2.3.3, trans. Wyckoff, 137. 50. Albert the Great uses the terms imago depicta, imago elevata quasi opere excussorio, and figura incisionis, respectively (2.3.3, ed. Borgnet, 48; trans. Wyckoff, 127–28). 51. Albert the Great, De mineralibus 2.3.1, trans. Wyckoff, 128. He even explains the disproportionately large forehead in terms of natural processes. Philippe Cordez usefully relates the passage to actual slabs of marble found in Venetian churches (“Albertus Magnus und die Steine von Venedig: Ein Beitrag zur ‘Bildwissenschaft’ des 13. Jahrhunderts,” in Augart, Saß, and Wenderholm, Steinformen, 191–206). 52. Franciscus de Retza, Defensorium inviolatae virginitatis Mariae, ed. Wilhelm Ludwig Schreiber (Weimar: Gesellschaft der Bibliophilen, 1910), no. 59. 53. On the lusus naturae, see the seminal study by Paula Findlen, “Jokes of Nature and Jokes of Knowledge: The Playfulness of Scientific Discourse in Early Modern Europe,” Renaissance Quarterly 43, no. 2 (1990): 292–331. More specific discussions of painted stones include Jurgis Baltrušaitis, “Pictorial Stones,” Aberrations: An Essay on the Legend of Forms (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1989), 59–105, and Giacomo Berra, “Immagini casuali, figure nascoste e natura antropomorfa nell’immaginario artistico rinascimentale,” Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz 43 (1999): 358–419. 54. Leon Battista Alberti, De pictura, quoted after H. W. Janson, “The ‘Image Made by Chance’ in Renaissance Thought,” in De Artibus opuscula XL: Essays in Honor of Erwin Panofsky, ed. Millard Meiss (New York: New York University Press for the Institute of Advanced Study, 1961), 1:255. 55. Pliny, Natural History 36.14, trans. Eichholz, 13. 56. Ibid., 37.5, trans. Eichholz, 167. 57. Lapidary of Bern, lines 132–39, and Lapidary of Cambridge, lines 61–78, respectively, ed. Pannier, Lapidaires français du Moyen, 112, 147. 58. Pliny, Natural History 37.3.5, trans. Eichholz, 166–67. 59. Marbode, Liber lapidum, line 54, ed. and Spanish trans. Herrera, 17; Konrad von Megenberg, Buch der Natur 6.2, ed. Luff and Steer, 467; translating Thomas of Cantimpré, Liber de natura rerum 14.3,

Notes to Pages 136–140

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ed. Boese, 356. Thomas, for good measure, added “hocque esse opus nature, non artis.” 60. Albert the Great, De mineralibus 2.3.4, trans. Wyckoff, 139. 61. Ibid., 2.3.2, trans. Wyckoff, 130–31; ed. Borgnet, 50. 62. Erika Zwierlein-Diehl, Magie der Steine: Die antiken Prunkkameen im Kunsthistorischen Museum (Vienna: Kunsthistorisches Museum, 2008), 56–73. 63. Joseph Hoster, “Der Wiener Ptolemäerkameo— Einst am Kölner Dreikönigenschrein,” in Studien zur Buchmalerei und Goldschmiedekunst des Mittelalters: Festschrift für Karl Hermann Usener zum 60. Geburtstag, ed. Frieda Dettweiler, Herbert Köllner, and Peter Anselm Riedl (Marburg: Kunstgeschichtliches Seminar, 1967), 55–64. 64. Chronica regia Coloniensis, quoted in Hans Hofmann, Die Heiligen Drei Könige: Zur Heiligenverehrung im kirchlichen, gesellschaftlichen und politischen Leben des Mittelalters (Bonn: Röhrscheid, 1975), 305n13. 65. See the comprehensive examination by Erika Zwierlein-Diehl, Die Gemmen und Kameen des Dreikönigenschreines (Cologne: Verlag Kölner Dom, 1998). 66. Axel and Martina Werbke, “Theologie, Politik und Diplomatie am Dreikönigenschrein: Die Ikonographie der Frontseite,” Wallraf-RichartzJahrbuch 46/47 (1985/86): 7–73. 67. Philippe Cordez, “La châsse des rois mages à Cologne et la christianisation des pierres magiques au XIIe et XIIIe siècles,” in Le trésor au Moyen Âge: Discours, pratiques et objets, ed. Lucas Burkart, Philippe Cordez, Pierre Alain Mariaux, and Yann Potin (Florence: SISMEL, Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2010), 315–32, and Zwierlein-Diehl, Gemmen und Kameen, 70–87. 68. Albert the Great, De mineralibus 2.3.2: “Probavi autem quod non est vitrum, sed lapis, propter quod praesumpsi picturam illam esse a natura et non ab arte” (ed. Borgnet, 50; trans. Wyckoff, 131). See comments by Zwierlein–Diehl, Gemmen und Kameen, 62–70. 69. Albert the Great, De mineralibus 2.3.2, trans. Wyckoff, 131–34. 70. Friedrich Ohly, Diamant und Bocksblut: Zur Traditions- und Auslegungsgeschichte eines Naturvorgangs von der Antike bis in die Moderne

228

Notes to Pages 140–152

(Berlin: E. Schmidt, 1976), and Horst Schneider, “Diamanten im Mittelalter,” Das Mittelalter 21, no. 2 (2016): 332–49. The story goes back to Pliny, Natural History 37.15.59–60, trans. Eichholz, 210–11. 71. Albert the Great, De mineralibus 2.2.1, trans. Wickhoff, 70. 72. Alfonso X, Lapidario, Taurus 1, trans. Bahler and Gyékényesi Gatto, 46. Evidence for diamond tools is abundant. See, for example, a thirteenth-century collection of technical recipes published in Geoffroy Grassin, “Le travail des gemmes au XIIIe siècle dans la Doctrina poliendi pretiosos lapides,” Cahiers de civilisation médiévale 42, no. 166 (1999): 111–37. 73. Boudet, Entre science et “nigromance,” 220–27; Daston, “Nature by Design,” 232–35; Frank Klaassen, The Transformations of Magic: Illicit Learned Magic in the Later Middle Ages and Renaissance (University Park: Penn State University Press, 2013), 23–36; Weill-Parot, “Images astrologiques,” 27–90, 260–80. 74. Albert the Great, De mineralibus 2.3.3, trans. Wickhoff, 136. 75. Speculum astronomiae, quoted in Paola Zambelli, The “Speculum Astronomiae” and Its Enigma: Astrology, Theology and Science in Albertus Magnus and His Contemporaries (Dordrecht: Springer, 1992), 240–51, 270–71. 76. On Petrarch as a collector of ancient cameos and coins, see Zwierlein-Diehl, Antike Gemmen, 265. 77. Petrarch, Remedies for Fortune Fair and Foul 1.39, ed. Conrad H. Rawski, Petrarch’s Remedies for Fortune Fair and Foul: A Modern English Translation of De remediis utriusque Fortune (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991), 1:124.

Part 3

1. On hyperbolism in literature on the Matter of the East, see Mary Baine Campbell, The Witness and the Other World: Exotic European Travel Writing, 400–1600 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988), 70–71. 2. Lauren Arnold, Princely Gifts and Papal Treasures: The Franciscan Mission to China and Its Influence on the Art of the West, 1250–1350 (San Francisco: Desiderata, 1999); Peter Jackson, The Mongols and











the West, 1221–1410 (Abington: Routledge, 2018); Robert Sabatino Lopez, “L’extrême frontière du commerce de l’Europe médiévale,” Le Moyen Âge 69 (1963): 479–90, at 482, on the vogue for Mongol (and Armenian) names. 3. The literature on Prester John is substantial. For overviews, see István Bejczy, La lettre du Prêtre Jean: Une utopie médiévale (Paris: Imago, 2001); Robert Silverberg, The Realm of Prester John, with a New Afterword (London: Phoenix, 2001); Vsevolod Slessarev, Prester John: The Letter and the Legend (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1959). 4. Charles E. Nowell, “The Historical Prester John,” Speculum 28, no. 3 (1953): 435–45. 5. The history and translation of relevant texts are available in Keagan Brewer, ed. and trans., Prester John: The Legend and Its Sources (Farnham: Ashgate, 2015), 46–91. Though not error-free, this work supersedes Frederick Zarncke’s edition of 1879, reprinted in Beckingham and Hamilton, Prester John, 40–102. References to five early interpolations (A, B, C, D, E) remain the same. 6. The best edition is edited by Philippe Ménard: Le devisement du monde, 6 vols. (Geneva: Droz, 2001–9). It is based on the first French translation close to the lost original, preserved in eighteen manuscripts. I refer to it while also citing the English translation based on the early manuscripts but integrating later redactions: The Book of Ser Marco Polo, trans. Henry Yule, rev. Henri Cordier, 3rd ed., 2 vols (London: John Murray, 1903). The manuscript tradition is summarized by Jacques Monfrin, “La tradition du texte,” in Marco Polo, Le livre des merveilles: Manuscrit français 2810 de la Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris, with commentary by François Avril et al. (Luzern: Faksimile Verlag, 1996), 337–51. 7. Debates about the respective contributions of the two authors and the tangle of narrative voices are ongoing. See Simon Gaunt, Marco Polo’s “Le Devisement du Monde”: Narrative Voice, Language and Diversity (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2013), 41– 77, and John Larner, Marco Polo and the Discovery of the World (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999), 46–67. 8. Marco Polo, Devisement 156, ed. Ménard, 5:131; trans. Yule and Cordier, 2:236. The manuscript













group used by Ménard omits the mention of precious stones. 9. Columbus does not seem not to have owned Polo’s book before his first voyage, but he obtained it sometimes afterward. For a comprehensive analysis, see Valery Flint, The Imaginative Landscape of Christopher Columbus (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992). 10. Jürgen Osterhammel, Unfabling the East: The Enlightenment’s Encounter with Asia, trans. Robert Savage (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2018), 328–29. 11. Marco Polo, Devisement, prologue, ed. Ménard 1:117; trans. Yule and Cordier, 1:1–2. 12. Ibid., prologue, ed. Ménard 1:117; trans. Yule and Cordier, 1:2. 13. For a concise overview of his life and work, see Larner, Marco Polo and the Discovery, 116–32. 14. Candidates for his true identity have been many, as summarized in John Mandeville [pseud.], The Book of John Mandeville, with Related Texts, ed. and trans. Iain Macleod Higgins (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2011), xiii–xix. I adopt the “Mandeville-author” convention from this edition to signal that we are dealing with a pen name. 15. John Mandeville [pseud.], Le livre des merveilles du monde, ed. Christiane Deluz (Paris: Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, 2000), 370–82. The earliest version in Anglo-French dates to 1356. 16. François Avril, “Le Livre des Merveilles, manuscrit Français 2810 de la Bibliothèque nationale de France,” in Polo, Livre des merveilles, 291–324; Meiss, French Painting, 38–46, 116–22; Vicki Gwen Porter, “The West Looks at the East in the Late Middle Ages: The Livre des merveilles du monde” (PhD. diss., Johns Hopkins University, 1977). 17. Buettner, “Past Presents,” 602–3.

Chapter 7

1. Bdellium designated both a resin produced by a myrrh-scented tree and a precious stone. This is the Vulgate’s rendition; in the older Septuagint, the materials are gold, carbuncle, and the leek-green lapis prasinus.

Notes to Pages 152–155

229

2. Mary Baine Campbell, “Asia, Africa, Abyssinia: Writing the Land of Prester John,” in Travel Writing, Form, and Empire: The Poetics and Politics of Mobility, ed. Julia Kuehn and Paul Smethurst (New York: Routledge, 2009), 21–37. 3. For conflicting ideas about the location of Paradise, see Alessandro Scafi, Maps of Paradise (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013). 4. Gervase of Tilbury, Otia imperialia 3.78, ed. and trans. Banks and Binns, 702–3. 5. Book of John Mandeville 8, ed. and trans. Higgins, 35. 6. Larner, Marco Polo and the Discovery, 1–30, and Marianne O’Doherty, The Indies and the Medieval West: Thought, Report, Imagination (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013), 33–38. 7. Campbell, Witness and the Other World, 48. 8. Marbode, Liber lapidum, lines 214, 244, ed. and Spanish trans. Herrera, 55, 63. 9. Eusebius, Life of Constantine 4.50, echoing 4.7, trans. Cameron and Hall, 172, 155–56. 10. Albert the Great, De mineralibus 2.3.4, trans. Wyckoff, 138–39. 11. Marco Polo, Devisement 156, ed. Ménard 5:129–30; trans. Yule and Cordier, 2:234–35 (where merveilleuse chose is omitted). 12. In addition to the seminal essay by Caroline Walker Bynum, “Wonder,” American Historical Review 102, no. 1 (1997): 1–26, see Pierre-Yves Badel, “Lire la merveille selon Marco Polo,” Revue des Sciences Humaines, 183, no. 3 (1981): 7–16; Keagan Brewer, Wonder and Skepticism in the Middle Ages (London: Routledge, 2016), 89–104; Larner, Marco Polo and the Discovery, 77–87. 13. Marco Polo, Devisement 16, ed. Ménard 1:130–31; trans. Yule and Cordier, 1:30. 14. Katharine Park, “The Meanings of Natural Diversity: Marco Polo on the ‘Division’ of the World,” in Texts and Contexts in Ancient and Medieval Science: Studies on the Occasion of John E. Murdoch’s Seventieth Birthday, ed. Edith Sylla and Michael McVaugh (Leiden: Brill, 1997), 134–47. 15. Franco Brunello, Marco Polo e le merci dell’Oriente (Vicenza: Pozza, 1986), 99–105; Geraldine Heng, Empire of Magic: Medieval Romance and the Politics of Cultural Fantasy (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003), 247–57; Leonardo

230

Notes to Pages 157–163

Olschki, Marco Polo’s Asia: An Introduction to his “Description of the World” called “Il Milione,” trans. John A. Scott (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1960), 147–77. 16. Michael Murrin, Trade and Romance (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2014), 19–25, building on Campbell, Witness and the Other World, 87–112. 17. Jean-François Kosta-Théfaine, “Du récit de voyage et de sa mise en image: L’exemple du manuscrit de New York (Pierpont Morgan Library, M.723) du Devisement du Monde de Marco Polo,” in Art et littérature: Le voyage entre texte et image, ed. JeanLoup Korzilius (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2006), 31–59. 18. Marco Polo, Devisement 116, ed. Ménard, 4:73; trans. Yule and Cordier, 2:53. 19. Quoted in Lightbown, Medieval European Jewellery, 27. 20. Letter of Prester John, uninterpolated 42–43, ed. and trans. Brewer, 52, 76. The fire-dwelling salamander comes from the bestiary; lapidaries mention it in relation to amiantus (asbestos), which they sometimes paraphrase as “Salamander’s down.” 21. Ibid., uninterpolated 14, ed. and trans. Brewer, 47, 68–69, slightly modified. As with other enumerations, this list expands and contracts from one version to another. 22. Ibid., interpolation C 34–37, ed. and trans. Brewer, 52, 75. 23. Ibid., uninterpolated 38–40, ed. and trans. Brewer 52, 75–76. 24. Ibid., uninterpolated 39, ed. and trans. Brewer, 52, 75 (who translates “medietate” as fair price). 25. Ibid., uninterpolated 22, ed. and trans. Brewer, 48–49, 71. 26. Letter of Prester John, trans. Roau of Arundel, in Martin Gosman, La lettre du Prêtre Jean: Les versions en ancien français et en ancien occitan (Groningen: Bouma’s Boekhuis, 1982), 125–26. 27. Letter of Prester John, uninterpolated 29–30, ed. and trans. Brewer, 50, 73. On the midriosi, also spelled indiosi, nudiosi, radiosi, and other more or less fanciful variants, see Slessarev, Prester John, 43. 28. Letter of Prester John, interpolation E 8–20, ed. and trans. Brewer, 53–54, 76–78. 29. HMES, 2:236–45; Michael Uebel, Ecstatic Transformation: On the Uses of Alterity in the Middle Ages (New York: Palgrave Macmillan,

2005), 142–45; Uebel, “Imperial Fetishism: Prester John Among the Natives,” in The Postcolonial Middle Ages, ed. Jeffrey Jerome Cohen (New York: Palgrave, 2000), 261–82. 30. Letter of Prester John, uninterpolated 47–50, ed. and trans. Brewer, 54, 78. Depending on the textual version, the number of crosses decreases or increases up to thirty. 31. Ibid., uninterpolated 56–75, ed. and trans. Brewer, 56–60, 80–84. 32. Ibid., uninterpolated 46, 51–52, ed. and trans. Brewer, 52, 54, 76, 78. See also Marcia Kupfer, Art and Optics in the Hereford Map: An English Mappa Mundi, c. 1300 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2016), 83–86; Uebel, Ecstatic Transformation, 93–99. 33. Letter of Prester John, uninterpolated 67–72, ed. and trans. Brewer, 59, 83–84 (who mistakenly renders serpentinus and pantherus as serpent- and leopard-skin). 34. Christopher Taylor, “Global Circulation as Christian Enclosure: Legend, Empire, and the Nomadic Prester John,” Literature Compass 11, no. 7 (2014): 445–59. 35. Paul Frankl, The Gothic: Literary Sources and Interpretations Through Eight Centuries (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1960), 159–205; Gontero, Parures d’or et de gemmes, 39–72; P. J. Heather, “Precious Stones in the Middle-English Verse of the Fourteenth Century, I,” Folklore 42, no. 3 (1931): 257–60; Heather, “Precious Stones, II,” 345–60. 36. Legend of Duke Ernst, 89–90. See also Debra Higgs Strickland, “The Sartorial Monsters of Herzog Ernst,” in Different Visions: A Journal of New Perspectives on Medieval Art 2 (June 2010): 1–35. 37. Letter of Prester John, various interpolations 76–96, ed. and trans. Brewer, 60–61, 84–90.

Chapter 8

1. Charles F. Beckingham, “The Quest for Prester John,” in Prester John, the Mongols and the Ten Lost Tribes, ed. Charles F. Beckingham and Bernard Hamilton (Aldershot: Variorum, 1996), 271–90; Bernard Hamilton, “Continental Drift: Prester John’s Progress through the Indies,” in

Beckingham and Hamilton, Prester John, 237–69; Ulrich Knefelkamp, Die Suche nach dem Reich des Priesterkönigs Johannes: Dargestellt anhand von Reiseberichten und anderen ethnographischen Quellen des 12. bis 17. Jahrhunderts (Gelsenkirchen: Müller, 1986). 2. Charles F. Beckingham, “An Ethiopian Embassy to Europe, c. 1310,” in Beckingham and Hamilton, Prester John, 197–206, and Matteo Salvadore, The African Prester John and the Birth of EthiopianEuropean Relations, 1402–1555 (London: Routledge, 2017). 3. Jean Devisse and Michel Mollat, “The Appeal to the Ethiopian,” in Bindman and Gates, Image of the Black, vol. 2, From the Early Christian Era to the “Age of Discovery,” part 2, Africans in the Christian Ordinance of the World, 144–52. 4. Odoric of Pordenone, Itinerarium 44, ed. and trans. Henry Yule, rev. Henri Cordier, The Travels of Friar Odoric of Pordenone (1316–1330), in Cathay and the Way Thither, Being a Collection of Medieval Notices of China (London: Hakluyt Society, 1913), 2:244–45. For similar sentiments, see Brewer, Prester John, 141–211. 5. Marco Polo, Devisement 64–67, ed. Ménard, 2:25–29; trans. Yule and Cordier, 1:226–37. For a detailed discussion including Prester John and the correlations made in the thirteenth century with actual Central Asian rulers, see Yule and Cordier, 1:284–89. Tenduc has been variously identified. 6. Marco Polo, Devisement 83, ed. Ménard, 3:70–73; trans. Yule and Cordier, 1:362–72; Odoric of Pordenone, Itinerarium 37, ed. and trans. Yule and Cordier, 2:215–22; Book of John Mandeville 23, ed. and trans. Higgins, 129–34. 7. Marco Polo, Devisement 83, ed. Ménard, 3:73; trans. Yule and Cordier, 1:364. The “rose et azur” that covers the mounts corrects “rose d’azur” in older editions, which Yule translated as “ore of azure.” 8. Book of John Mandeville 25, ed. and trans. Higgins, 143. 9. On the limitations of reading the Devisement through a Saidian paradigm, see Sharon Kinoshita, “Traveling Texts: De-orientalizing Marco Polo’s Le Devisement du monde,” in Travel, Agency, and the Circulation of Knowledge, ed. Gesa Mackenthun, Andrea Nicolas, and Stephanie Wodianka

Notes to Pages 163–167

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(Münster: Waxmann, 2017), 223–46, and Kim M. Phillips, Before Orientalism: Asian Peoples and Cultures in European Travel Writing, 1245–1510 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014). 10. Marco Polo, Devisement 95, ed. Ménard, 3:96–98; trans. Yule and Cordier, 1:423–30. 11. Allsen, Steppe and the Sea, 41. 12. William of Rubruck, The Journey of William of Rubruck 30, ed. Christopher Dawson, The Mission to Asia: Narratives and Letters of the Franciscan Missionaries in Mongolia and China in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries (London: Sheed and Ward, 1955), 175–76. See also Leonardo Olschki, Guillaume Boucher: A French Artist at the Court of the Khans (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1946). 13. William of Rubruck, Journey 36, ed. Dawson, 206. 14. Kathleen L. Scott, Later Gothic Manuscripts, 1390– 1490, 2 vols., A Survey of Manuscripts Illuminated in the British Isles 6 (London: Harvey Miller, 1996), 2:207–11. 15. Book of John Mandeville 23, ed. and trans. Higgins, 130–33. 16. Yule and Cordier suggest that merdacas (and its variants) was derived from khas, the Mongolian term for jade (Cathay and the Way Thither, 2:221n1). 17. Keith Dickson, “The Jeweled Trees: Alterity in Gilgamesh,” Comparative Literature 59, no. 3 (2007): 193–208. 18. Gerard Brett, “The Automata in the Byzantine ‘Throne of Solomon,’” Speculum 29 (1954): 477–87, and Truitt, Medieval Robots, 22–39. 19. Gervase of Tilbury, Otia imperialia 3.78, ed. and trans. Banks and Binns, 702–7. 20. Campbell, Witness and the Other World, 57–75; A. J. Ford, Marvel and Artefact: The “Wonders of the East” in Its Manuscript Contexts (Leiden: Brill, 2016); Asa Simon Mittman, Maps and Monsters in Medieval England (New York: Routledge, 2006). 21. Andy Orchard, Pride and Prodigies: Studies in the Monsters of the “Beowulf ”-Manuscript (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003), 179, 198–99, 206, 228–29. See also the facsimile edited by P. McGurk, An Eleventh-Century Anglo-Saxon Illustrated Miscellany: British Library Cotton Nero D.II (Copenhagen: Rosenkilde and Bagger, 1983).

232

Notes to Pages 167–179

22. Paul Freedman, “Locating the Exotic,” in Locating the Middle Ages: The Spaces and Places of Medieval Culture, ed. Julian Weiss and Sarah Salih (London: King’s College London Centre for Late Antique & Medieval Studies, 2012), 23–37; Tilo Renz, “Utopische Elemente der mittelalterlichen Reiseliteratur,” Das Mittelalter 18 (2013): 129–52. 23. Pliny, Natural History 6.24, trans. Rackham, 398– 409; D. P. M. Weerakkody, Taprobanê: Ancient Sri Lanka as Known to Greeks and Romans (Turnhout: Brepols, 1997), 51–77. 24. Anne-Caroline Beaugendre, Les merveilles du monde ou Les secrets de l’histoire naturelle (Arcueil: Anthèse, 1996), 70. 25. Book of John Mandeville 30, ed. and trans. Higgins, 161. 26. Jordanus Catalani, Mirabilia Descripta 4.20–21, trans. Henry Yule, The Wonders of the East (London: Hakluyt Society, 1863), 20. 27. O’Doherty, Indies, 89–95. 28. John de’ Marignolli, Recollections of Travel in the East, ed. and trans. Yule and Cordier, Cathay and the Way Thither, 3:234–35. See also Ananda Abeydeera, “In Search of the Garden of Eden: Florentine Friar Giovanni dei Marignolli’s Travels in Ceylon,” Terrae Incognitae 25, no. 1 (1993): 1–23. 29. Book of John Mandeville 21, ed. and trans. Higgins, 122; Odoric of Pordenone, Itinerarium 25, ed. and trans. Yule and Cordier, 2:171–72. 30. Marco Polo, Devisement 168, ed. Ménard, 6:23–28; trans. Yule and Cordier, 2:316–30 (with a detailed note on the relics). 31. Ibid., ed. Ménard 6:24; trans. Yule and Cordier, 2:313–314n5. See also Jordanus Catalani, Mirabilia Descripta 5.5, 5.11, trans. Yule, 28, 30. 32. Odoric of Pordenone, Itinerarium 24, ed. and trans. Yule and Cordier, 2:167–70; Book of John Mandeville 21, ed. and trans. Higgins, 121. 33. Book of John Mandeville 21, ed. and trans. Higgins, 195. 34. Ibn Battuta, The Travels of Ibn Battuta, A.D. 1325– 1354, ed. H. A. R. Gibb, 2 vols. (Farnham: Ashgate, 2010), 2:315. 35. Marco Polo, Devisement 169, ed. Ménard, 6:28–36; trans. Yule and Cordier, 2:331–52. See contextualization in Joan-Pau Rubiés, Travel and Ethnology in the Renaissance: South India Through European

Eyes, 1250–1625 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 57–73. 36. Scott D. Westrem, “Medieval Western European Views of Sexuality Reflected in the Narratives of Travelers to the Orient,” in Homo Carnalis: The Carnal Aspect of Medieval Human Life, ed. Helen Rodite Lemay (Binghamton: State University of New York Press, 1990), 141–56. 37. Marco Polo, Devisement 169, ed. Ménard, 6:30–31; trans. Yule and Cordier, 2:339. Similar dispositions obtain in the neighboring kingdom of Lar: see Marco Polo, Devisement 172, ed. Ménard, 6:40; trans. Yule and Cordier, 2:364. For the broader context of those regions in relation to the medieval gem trade, see Mugler, Edelsteinhandel im Mittelalter, 13–28. 38. Philippe Ménard, “L’illustration du Devisement du monde de Marco Polo: Étude d’iconographie comparée,” in Les métamorphoses du récit de voyage, ed. François Moureau (Paris: Champion, 1986), 17–31. 39. Marco Polo, Devisement 169, ed. Ménard, 6:30; trans. Yule and Cordier, 2:338–39. The amount of 104 beads is close to the 108 that make up the Buddhist and Hindu japamala, but scribes varied the number as much as up to 400. 40. Valérie Gontero, “Les gemmes marines: Au carrefour du lapidaire et du bestiaire,” in Mondes marins du Moyen Âge, ed. Chantal Connochie– Bourgne (Aix-en-Provence: Presses universitaires de Provence, 2006), 187–97; R. A. Donkin, Beyond Price: Pearls and Pearl-Fishing; Origins to the Age of Discoveries (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1998), 1–41, 258–63; Friedrich Ohly, Die Perle des Wortes: Zur Geschichte eines Bildes für Dichtung (Frankfurt am Main: Insel, 2002), 134–88. 41. Solinus, Collectanea rerum memorabilium 53.23–27, ed. and trans. Brodersen, 312–14. 42. Pliny, Natural History 9.107–11, trans. Rackham, 234–39. 43. Marco Polo, Devisement 169, ed. Ménard, 6:28–30; trans. Yule and Cordier, 2:331–37n2. See also Allsen, Steppe and the Sea, 11–33, and Donkin, Beyond Price, 127–31, 157–62. 44. Mark Cruse, “Romancing the Orient: The Roman d’Alexandre and Marco Polo’s Livre du grand Khan in Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Bodl. 264,” in Medieval Romance and Material Culture,

ed. Nicholas Perkins (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2015), 233–51, and Scott, Later Gothic Manuscripts, 2:68–73. 45. Debra Higgs Strickland, “Text, Image, and Contradiction in the Devisement dou monde,” in Marco Polo and the Encounter of East and West, ed. Suzanne Conklin Akbari and Amilcare Iannucci (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008), 23–59. 46. Marco Polo, Devisement 46, ed. Ménard, 2:4–6; trans. Yule and Cordier, 1:157–62. See also Peter Spufford, “Lapis, Indigo, Woad: Artists’ Materials in the Context of International Trade Before 1700,” in Trade in Artists’ Materials: Markets and Commerce in Europe to 1700, ed. Jo Kirby, Susie Nash, and Joanna Cannon (London: Archetype, 2010), 10–25. 47. Allsen, Steppe and the Sea, 100–112. 48. Herodotus, The Histories 3.111, trans. Robin Waterfield (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 215. See also Paul Freedman, Out of the East: Spices and the Medieval Imagination (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008), 133–37. 49. Epiphanius of Cyprus, De gemmis: The Old Georgian Version and the Fragments of the Armenian Version, ed. and trans. Robert P. Blake and Henri de Vis (London: Christophers, 1934), 117–19. 50. Marco Polo, Devisement 171, ed. Ménard, 6:38–39; trans. Yule and Cordier, 2:360–63. 51. The Devisement mistakenly says she ruled forty years after the demise of her husband. See Cynthia Talbot, “Rudrama-devi, the Female King: Gender and Political Authority in Medieval India,” in Syllables of Sky: Studies in South Indian Civilization in Honour of Velcheru Narayana Rao, ed. David Shulman (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 391–430. 52. Joyce Kubiski, “Orientalizing Costume in Early Fifteenth-Century French Manuscript Painting (Cité des Dames Master, Limbourg Brothers, Boucicaut Master, and Bedford Master),” Gesta 40, no. 2 (2001): 161–80. 53. Niccolò de’ Conti, Travels, lines 622–43, ed. and trans. Michèle Guéret-Laferté, in Poggio Bracciolini, “De l’Inde”: Les voyages en Asie de Niccolò de’ Conti (Turnhout: Brepols, 2004), 154–57. 54. Book of John Mandeville 17, ed. and trans. Higgins, 98–100. This passage elicited many marginal

Notes to Pages 179–185

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notations from the early owners of the text, as shown by Rosemary Tzanaki, Mandeville’s Medieval Audiences: A Study on the Reception of the “Book” of Sir John Mandeville (1371–1550) (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003), 124. 55. Guy De Poerck, “Le corpus mandevillien du ms Chantilly 699,” in Fin du Moyen Âge et Renaissance: Mélanges de philologie française offerts à Robert Guiette, ed. Guy De Poerck (Antwerp: De Nederlandsche Boekhandel, 1961), 31–48. 56. Gontero-Lauze, Sagesses minérales, 36–40, 247–48; André Goosse, “Les lapidaires attribués à Mandeville,” Les Dialectes belgo-romans 17, no. 2 (1960): 63–112; Louis Mourin, “Les lapidaires attribués à Jean de Mandeville et à Jean à la Barbe,” Romanica Gandensia 4 (1955): 159–91. 57. Book of John Mandeville 33, ed. and trans. Higgins, 179–81. 58. Ibid., 30, ed. and trans. Higgins, 160–64. 59. Geraldine Heng, The Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 363–73. 60. Book of John Mandeville 31, ed. and trans. Higgins, 170. 61. Pliny, Natural History 2.98, trans. Rackham, 340–41. 62. Gédéon Huet, “La légende de la montagne d’aimant dans le roman de Berinus,” Romania 44, no. 175/76 (1916): 427–53; Gédéon Huet, “La légende de la montagne d’aimant dans le roman de Berinus: Nouvelles Recherches,” Romania 45, no. 178 (1919): 194–204; Claude Lecouteux, “Die Sage vom Magnetberg,” Fabula: Zeitschrift für Erzählforschung 25, nos. 1–2 (1984): 35–65; Murrin, Trade and Romance, 83–107; Christa A. Tuczay, “Motifs in The Arabian Nights and in Ancient and Medieval European Literature: A Comparison,” Folklore 116, no. 3 (2005): 272–91. 63. Albert the Great, De mineralibus 2.2.11, trans. Wyckoff, 103. 64. Marco Polo, Devisement 36, ed. Ménard, 1:161; trans. Yule and Cordier, 1:108. Other European travelers commented on this aspect of the vessels, including Odoric of Pordenone, Itinerarium 5, ed. and trans. Yule and Cordier, 2:113–14. 65. K. N. Chaudhuri, Trade and Civilisation in the Indian Ocean: An Economic History from the Rise of Islam to 1750 (Cambridge: Cambridge University

234

Notes to Pages 185–191

Press, 1985); Marianne O’Doherty, “A Peripheral Matter? Oceans in the East in Late Medieval Thought,” Bulletin of International Medieval Research 16 (2010): 1–40. 66. As per Jacques Le Goff, “The Medieval West and the Indian Ocean: An Oneiric Horizon” in Time, Work, and Culture in the Middle Ages, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980), 189–200.

Chapter 9

1. Odoric of Pordenone, Itinerarium 24, ed. and trans. Yule and Cordier, 2:167–7; Marco Polo, Devisement 167, ed. Ménard, 6:22; trans. Yule and Cordier, 2:309–12. 2. Rudolf Wittkower, “Marco Polo and the Pictorial Tradition of the Marvels of the East,” in Allegory and the Migration of Symbols (London: Thames and Hudson, 1977), 75–92. For a more nuanced assessment, see Debra Higgs Strickland, “Artists, Audience, and Ambivalence in Marco Polo’s Divisament dou Monde,” Viator 36 (2005): 493–529. 3. On the manuscript’s engagement with the global life of things, including precious stones, see Mark Cruse, “‘Pleasure in Foreign Things’: Global Entanglement in the Livre des merveilles du monde (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, fr. 2810),” Mediaevalia 41 (2020): 217–36. 4. O’Doherty, Indies, 132. 5. The brief description of Angamanam is in Bibliothèque Nationale de France, MS fr. 2810, fol. 76r. 6. Françoise Autrand, Jean de Berry: L’art et le pouvoir (Paris: Fayard, 2000), 474–75. 7. Marco Polo, Devisement 1, ed. Ménard, 1:118; trans. Yule and Cordier, 1:2; Larner, Marco Polo and the Discovery, 31–45; Leonardo Olschki, Marco Polo’s Precursors (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1943), 71–81. 8. David Jacoby, “Marco Polo, His Close Relatives, and His Travel Account: Some New Insights,” Mediterranean Historical Review 21, no. 2 (2006): 193–218, at 193–98. 9. Suzanne Conklin Akbari, “Currents and Currency in Marco Polo’s Devisement dou monde and The

Book of John Mandeville,” in Marco Polo and the Encounter of East and West, ed. Suzanne Conklin Akbari and Amilcare Iannucci (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008), 110–30; Jean-Claude Faucon, “Examen des donnés numériques dans le Devisement du Monde,” in I Viaggi del “Milione”: Itinerari testuali, vettori di trasmissione e metamorfosi del “Devisement du monde” di Marco Polo e Rustichello da Pisa nella pluralità delle attestazioni, ed. Silvia Conte (Rome: Tiellemedia, 2008), 89–111. 10. Thomas T. Allsen, “Mongolian Princes and Their Merchant Partners, 1200–1260,” Asia Major, 3rd ser., 2, no. 2 (1989): 83–126, at 120–21; on the accumulation of precious treasures by Mongolian rulers, see Allsen, Steppe and the Sea, 34–49. 11. Anthony Cutler, “Gifts and Gift Exchange as Aspects of the Byzantine, Arab, and Related Economies,” in Image Making in Byzantium, Sasanian Persia and the Early Muslim World: Images and Cultures (Farnham: Ashgate, 2009), 257. 12. Birgit Arrhenius, Merovingian Garnet Jewellery: Emergence and Social Implications (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell International, 1985). See also Gemstones in the First Millenium AD: Mines, Trade, Workshops and Symbolism, ed. Alexandra Hilgner, Susanne Greiff, and Dieter Quast (Mainz: RömischGermanisches Zentralmuseum, 2017). 13. Florin Curta, “The Amber Trail in Early Medieval Eastern Europe,” in Paradigms and Methods in Early Medieval Studies, ed. Celia Chazelle and Felice Lifshitz (New York: Palgrave, 2007), 61–79. 14. Marco Polo, Devisement 48, 115, ed. Ménard, 2:7, 4:71; trans. Yule and Cordier, 1:167–68, 2:49. 15. Hardt, Gold und Herrschaft, 161–215, and Timothy Reuter, “Plunder and Tribute in the Carolingian Empire,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 35 (1985): 75–94. 16. Aelfric, Colloquy, in Anglo-Saxon Prose, ed. and trans. Michael Swanton (London: Dent, 1975), 112; see also Valerie Hansen, The Year 1000: When Explorers Connected the World—And Globalization Began (New York: Scribner, 2020). 17. The foundational work is Janet L. Abu-Lughod, Before European Hegemony: The World System, A.D. 1250–1350 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989).

18. Pero Tafur, Travels and Adventures, 1435–1439, trans. Malcolm Letts (London: Routledge, 1926), 83–84. 19. Sarah M. Guérin, “Gold, Ivory, and Copper: Materials and Arts of Trans-Saharan Trade,” in Caravans of Gold, Fragments in Time: Art, Culture, and Exchange across Medieval Saharan Africa, ed. Kathleen Bickford Berzok (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2019), 174–201. 20. Robert Sabatino Lopez and Irving W. Raymond, Medieval Trade in the Mediterranean World: Illustrative Documents (New York: Columbia University Press, 1968), 108–14. 21. Angeliki E. Laiou, “Venice as a Center of Trade and Artistic Production in the Thirteenth Century,” in Il Medio Oriente e l’Occidente nell’arte del XIII secolo, ed. Hans Belting, Atti del XXIV Congresso internazionale di storia dell’arte, Bologna, 1979, no. 2 (Bologna: Editrice CLUEB, 1982), 11–26, at 17–23. 22. Susanne Brugger-Koch, “Venedig und Paris—die wichtigsten Zentren des hochmittelalterlichen Hartsteinschliffs im Spiegel der Quellen,” Zeitschrift des Deutschen Vereins für Kunstwissenschaft 40, nos. 1–4 (1986): 3–39; Stefania Gerevini, “The Bern Diptych: Venetian Rock Crystal Between Craft, Trade, and Aesthetics,” in Seeking Transparency: Rock Crystals Across the Medieval Mediterranean, ed. Cynthia Hahn and Avinoam Shalem (Berlin: Gebr. Mann, April 2020), 183–95, at 193. 23. Marco Polo, Devisement 29, ed. Ménard, 1:149–50; trans. Yule and Cordier, 1:74–76. The city’s role is assessed in Politics, Patronage and the Transmission of Knowledge in 13th–15th Century Tabriz, ed. Judith Pfeiffer (Leiden: Brill, 2013). 24. Francesco Balducci Pegolotti, La pratica della mercatura, ed. Allan Evans (Cambridge: Mediaeval Academy of America, 1936), 26–31. 25. Ibn Battuta, Travels, 2:344–45. 26. Eliyahu Ashtor, Levant Trade in the Later Middle Ages (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983), 3–63; Virgil Ciocîltan, The Mongols and the Black Sea Trade in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries, trans. Samuel P. Willcocks (Leiden: Brill, 2012); A. P. Martinez, “The Eurasian Overland and Pontic Trades in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries,” Archivum Eurasiae Medii Aevi 16

Notes to Pages 191–196

235

(2008): 127–221; Mugler, Edelsteinhandel im Mittelalter, 36–48. 27. Robert Sabatino Lopez, “European Merchants in the Medieval Indies: The Evidence of Commercial Documents,” Journal of Economic History 3, no. 2 (1943): 164–84, and Rosamond E. Mack, Bazaar to Piazza: Islamic Trade and Italian Art, 1300–1600 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), 15–25, at 18–19. 28. The Chronicle of Jean de Venette, trans. Jean Birdsall, ed. Richard A. Newhall (New York: Columbia University Press, 1953), 63. 29. Pegolotti, Pratica della mercatura, ed. Evans, 302–5. 30. Allsen, Steppe and the Sea, 89–99; Lightbown, Mediaeval European Jewellery, 26–32. 31. Colette Sirat, “Les pierres précieuses et leurs prix au XVe siècle en Italie, d’après un manuscrit hebreu,” Annales E.S.C. 23 (1968): 1067–85. 32. Peter Spufford, Power and Profit: The Merchant in Medieval Europe (London: Thames and Hudson, 2002), 123. For the price of spices, see Freedman, Out of the East, 126–29. 33. Eugene H. Byrne considers the transaction to be a pledge to raise funds or to settle a debt rather than a sale proper (“Some Mediaeval Gems and Relative Values,” Speculum 10, no. 2 [1935]: 177–87). Lightbown offers a different interpretation (Mediaeval European Jewellery, 57–65). 34. Mugler, Edelsteinhandel im Mittelalter, 29, 45. 35. Marbode, Liber lapidum, lines 724–27, ed. and Spanish trans. Herrera, 183. 36. Sidrac, Livre de Sidrac, no. 1075, ed. Ruhe, 389. 37. Pliny, Natural History 37.197–200, trans. Eichholz, 324–27. On fake gems, see Marjolijn Bol, “Coloring

236

Notes to Pages 196–204

Topaz, Crystal and Moonstone: Gems and the Imitation of Art and Nature, 300–1500,” in Fakes!? Hoaxes, Counterfeits, and Deception in Early Modern Science, ed. Marco Beretta and Maria Conforti (Sagamore Beach: Science History Publications, 2014), 108–29, and Anne-Françoise Cannella, Gemmes, verre coloré, fausses pierres précieuses au Moyen Âge: Le quatrième livre du “Trésorier de Philosophie naturelle des pierres précieuses” de Jean d’Outremeuse (Geneva: Droz, 2006), 222–28. 38. Marco Polo, Devisement 178, ed. Ménard, 6:49; trans. Yule and Cordier, 2:392. 39. Henry Yule, introduction to Yule and Cordier, Book of Ser Marco Polo, 1:4–6. 40. Ibid., 1:66–74.

Epilogue

1. Umberto Eco, Baudolino, trans. William Weaver (New York: Harcourt, 2002), 140–41. 2. Walter Benjamin, “The Storyteller: Reflections on the Works of Nikolai Leskov,” trans. Harry Zohn, in Selected Writings, 3:147–66, at 153, 160–61. The Alexandrite is included in Nikolaĭ S. Leskow, The Musk-Ox and Other Tales, trans. R. Norman (London: Routledge, 1945), 195–208, at 204. 3. Alexander Neckam, quoted in Lightbown, Mediaeval European Jewellery, 11.

Publications of a general interest are listed here. Works on specific authors, texts, and works of art appear in the notes. Primary sources are mainly arranged by first name; secondary sources are arranged by surname.

Primary Sources

Selected Bibliography

Albert the Great [Albertus Magnus]. Book of Minerals. Translated by Dorothy Wyckoff. Oxford: Clarendon, 1967. ———. The Book of Secrets of Albertus Magnus of the Virtues of Herbs, Stones and Certain Beasts, also A Book of the Marvels of the World. Edited by Michael R. Best and Frank H. Brightman. Oxford: Clarendon, 1973. ———. Mineralia. In Opera omnia, edited by Auguste Borgnet, 5:1–116. Paris: Ludovic Vivès, 1890. Alfonso X [El Sabio]. “Lapidario” and “Libro de la Formas & Imagenes.” Edited by Roderic C. Diman and Lynn W. Winget. Madison: Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies, 1980. ———. The Lapidary of King Alfonso X the Learned. Translated by Ingrid Bahler and Katherine Gyékényesi Gatto. New Orleans: University Press of the South, 1997. Avicenna [Ali Ibn Sīnā]. De congelatione et conglutinatione lapidum, Being Sections of the Kitâb al-Shifâ’: The Latin and the Arabic Texts. Edited and translated by E. J. Holmyard and D. C. Mandeville. Paris: P. Geuthner, 1927. Bartholomaeus Anglicus. De rerum proprietatibus. 1601. Reprint, Frankfurt am Main: Minerva, 1964. ———. On the Properties of Things: John Trevisa’s Translation of Bartholomaeus Anglicus “De Proprietatibus rerum”; A Critical Text. Edited by Michael C. Seymour. 3 vols. Oxford: Clarendon, 1975. Boccaccio, The Decameron. Translated by G. H. McWilliam. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1995. “Carmen de Hastingae proelio” of Guy, Bishop of Amiens. Edited and translated by Frank Barlow. Oxford: Clarendon, 1999. Castigos del Rey Don Sancho IV. Edited by Hugo Oscar Bizzarri. Madrid: Iberoamericana, 2001. Cathay and the Way Thither, Being a Collection of Medieval Notices of China. Edited by Henry Yule,

with revisions by Henri Cordier. 4 vols. London: Hakluyt Society, 1913–16. Cecco d’Ascoli [Francesco Stabili]. L’Acerba. Edited by Marco Albertazzi. Trento: La Finestra, 2002. Cellini, Benvenuto. The Treatises of Benvenuto Cellini on Goldsmithing and Sculpture. Translated by C. R. Ashbee. New York: Dover, 1967. Christine de Pizan. Le livre des fais et bonnes meurs du sage roy Charles V. Edited by Suzanne Solente. 2 vols. Geneva: Droz, 1977. Chronique des règnes de Jean II et de Charles V. Edited by Roland Delachenal. 4 vols. Paris: Renouard, 1910–20. The Codex of Justinian: A New Annotated Translation, With Parallel Latin and Greek Text Based on a Translation by Justice Fred. H. Blume. Edited by Bruce W. Frier et al. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016. Corippus, Flavius Cresconius. In laudem Iustini Augusti minoris, Libri IV. Translated by Averil Cameron. London: Athlone, 1976. Damigeron–Evax (Old Latin version). In Robert Halleux and Jacques Schamp, Les lapidaires grecs, 193–297. Paris: Belles Lettres, 1985. Dioscorides [Pedanius of Anazarbus]. De materia medica. Translated by Lily Y. Beck. 3rd rev. ed. Hildesheim: Olms-Weidmann, 2017. Eusebius. In Praise of Constantine. In In Praise of Constantine: A Historical Study and New Translation of Eusebius’ Tricennial Orations, edited by Harold A. Drake. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976. ———. Life of Constantine. Translated by Averil Cameron and Stuart G. Hall. Oxford: Clarendon, 1999. Gervase of Tilbury. Otia Imperialia: Recreation for an Emperor. Edited and translated by S. E. Banks and J. W. Binns. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. Gower, John. Confessio Amantis. Edited by Russell A. Peck. Translated by Andrew Galloway. 3 vols. Kalamazoo: Published for TEAMS in association with the University of Rochester by the Medieval Institute Publications, 2000–2004. Ibn Battuta. The Travels of Ibn Battuta, A.D. 1325–1354. Edited by H. A. R. Gibb. 2 vols. Farnham: Ashgate, 2010.

238

Selected Bibliography

Isidore of Seville. The Etymologies. Edited and translated by Stephen A. Barney, W. J. Lewis, J. A. Beach, and Oliver Berghof. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Jacob van Maerlant. Naturen Bloeme. Edited by Eelco Verwijs. 1878. Reprint, Arnhem: Gijsbers & Van Loon, 1980. John Mandeville [pseud.]. “The Book of John Mandeville” with Related Texts. Edited and translated by Iain Macleod Higgins. Indianapolis: Hackett, 2011. ———. Le livre des merveilles du monde. Edited by Christiane Deluz. Paris: Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, 2000. Jordanus Catalani [Jordan Catala de Severac]. Mirabilia Descripta: The Wonders of the East. Translated by Henry Yule. London: Hakluyt Society, 1863. Konrad von Megenberg. Buch der Natur. Edited by Robert Luff and Georg Steer. Tübingen: M. Niemeyer, 2003. Korunovační řád eských králů: Ordo ad coronandum Regem Boemorum, ed. Jiří Kuthan and Miroslav Šmied. Prague: Filozofická fakulta Univerzity Karlovy, 2009. The Legend of Duke Ernst. Translated by J. W. Thomas and Carolyn Dussère. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1979. The Letter of Prester John. Edited by Friedrich Zarncke. In Beckingham and Hamilton, Prester John, the Mongols and the Ten Lost Tribes, 77–102. The Letter of Prester John. In Prester John: The Legend and Its Sources, 46–91, edited and translated by Keagan Brewer, 46–91. Farnham: Ashgate, 2015. Liudprand of Cremona. The Complete Works of Liudprand of Cremona. Translated by Paolo Squatriti. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2007. Marbode of Rennes. De lapidibus, Considered as a Medical Treatise with Text, Commentary and C. W. King’s Translation, Together with Text and Translation of Marbode’s Minor Works on Stones. Edited by John M. Riddle. Wiesbaden: Steiner, 1977. ———. Liber lapidum. Edited and translated by María Esthera Herrera. Paris: Belles Lettres, 2005. Marco Polo. The Book of Ser Marco Polo. Translated by Henry Yule. Revised by Henri Cordier. 3rd ed. 2 vols. London: John Murray, 1903.

———. Le devisement du monde. Edited by Philippe Ménard. 6 vols. Geneva: Droz, 2001–9. ———. Le livre des merveilles: Manuscrit français 2810 de la Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris. With commentary by François Avril et al. Luzern: Faksimile Verlag, 1996. Matfre Ermengaud. Le Breviari d’Amor de Matfre Ermengaud, vol. 2, 1–8880. Edited by Peter T. Ricketts. London: Westfield College, 1989. Odoric of Pordenone. The Travels of Friar Odoric of Pordenone (1316–1330). In Cathay and the Way Thither, Being a Collection of Medieval Notices of China, edited and translated by Henry Yule, with revisions by Henri Cordier, vol. 2. London: Hakluyt Society, 1913. Ordines Coronationis Franciae: Texts and Ordines for the Coronation of Frankish and French Kings and Queens in the Middle Ages. Edited by Richard A. Jackson. 2 vols. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995, 2000. Pegolotti, Francesco Balducci. La pratica della mercatura. Edited by Allan Evans. Cambridge: Mediaeval Academy of America, 1936. Petrarch. Petrarch’s Remedies for Fortune Fair and Foul: A Modern English Translation of “De remediis utriusque Fortune,” with a Commentary. Edited by Conrad H. Rawski. 5 vols. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991. Pliny the Elder. Natural History. Translated by H. Rackham. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1942. ———. Natural History, Books 36–37. Translated by D. E. Eichholz. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1962. Poggio Bracciolini. “De l’Inde”: Les voyages en Asie de Niccolò de’ Conti. Edited and translated by Michèle Guéret-Laferté. Turnhout: Brepols, 2004. Rabanus Maurus. De Universo: The Peculiar Properties of Words and Their Mystical Significance. Translated by Priscilla Throop. 2 vols. Charlotte: MedievalMS, 2009. The Ruodlieb. Edited by Christopher W. Grocock. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1985. Ruska, Julius. Das Steinbuch des Aristoteles mit literargeschichtlichen Untersuchungen nach der arabischen Handschrift in der Bibliothèque Nationale. Heidelberg: C. Winter, 1912.

Sidrac. Sydrac le philosophe: Le Livre de la fontaine de toutes sciences; Edition des enzyklopädischen Lehrdialogs aus dem XIII. Jahrhundert. Edited by Ernstpeter Ruhe. Wiesbaden: L. Reichert, 2000. Solinus [C. Julius]. Collectanea rerum memorabilium. Edited by Theodor Mommsen. Berlin: Weidmann, 1895. ———. Wunder der Welt, Lateinisch und Deutsch. Edited and translated by Kai Brodersen. Darmstadt: WBG (Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft), 2014. Der Stricker. “Von Edelsteinen.” In Die Kleindichtung des Strickers, edited by Wolfgang Wilfried Moelleken, Gayle Agler-Beck, and Robert E. Lewis, 4:206–14 (no. 127). Göppingen: Kümmerle Verlag, 1977. Theophrastus. On Stones. Translated by Earle R. Caley and John F. C. Richards. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1956. Thomas of Cantimpré [Thomas Cantimpratensis]. Liber de natura rerum: Editio princeps secundum codices manuscriptos. Edited by Helmut Boese. Berlin: de Gruyter, 1973. Three Prose Versions of the “Secreta secretorum.” Edited by Robert Steele. London: Early English Text Society, published by K. Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co., 1898. Vincent of Beauvais. Bibliotheca Mundi: Speculum Quadruplex. Douai: B. Belleri, 1624. The Virtues of Stones. Translated by Patricia Tahil. Seattle: Ars Obscura, 1989. Volmar. Das Steinbuch: Ein altdeutsches Gedicht. Edited by Hans Lambel. Heilbronn: Henninger, 1877. Walther von der Vogelweide. The Single-Stanza Lyrics. Edited and translated by Frederick Goldin. New York: Routledge, 2003. William of Malmesbury. Gesta regum Anglorum: The History of the English Kings. Edited and translated by R. A. B. Mynors. Completed by R. M. Thomson, and M. Winterbottom. 2 vols. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998–99. William of Rubruck. The Journey of William of Rubruck. In The Mission to Asia: Narratives and Letters of the Franciscan Missionaries in Mongolia and China in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries, edited by Christopher Dawson, 87–220. London: Sheed and Ward, 1955.

Selected Bibliography

239

Secondary Literature

Adams, Frank Dawson. The Birth and Development of the Geological Sciences. Baltimore: Williams & Wilkins, 1938. Allsen, Thomas T. The Steppe and the Sea: Pearls in the Mongol Empire. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019. Armstrong, Lilian. “The Illustration of Pliny’s Historia Naturalis: Manuscripts Before 1430.” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 46 (1983): 19–39. Ashtor, Eliyahu. Levant Trade in the Later Middle Ages. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983. Augart, Isabella, Maurice Saß, and Iris Wenderholm, eds. Steinformen: Materialität, Qualität, Imitation. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2018. Bachelard, Gaston. Earth and Reveries of Will: An Essay on the Imagination of Matter. Translated by Kenneth Haltman. Dallas: Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture, 2002. Baldini Lippolis, Isabella. L’oreficeria nell’impero di Costantinopoli tra IV e VII secolo. Bari: Edipuglia, 1999. Baltrušaitis, Jurgis. “Pictorial Stones.” In Aberrations: An Essay on the Legend of Forms, 59–105. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1989. Becker, Hans-Jürgen, et al., eds. Die Reichskleinodien: Herrschaftszeichen des Heiligen Römischen Reiches. Göppingen: Gesellschaft für Staufische Geschichte, 1997. Beckingham, Charles F., and Bernard Hamilton, eds. Prester John, the Mongols and the Ten Lost Tribes. Aldershot: Variorum, 1996. Benjamin, Walter. Selected Writings. Translated by Edmund Jephcott et al. Edited by Michael W. Jennings. 4 vols. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996–2003. Bennett, Jane. Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things. Durham: Duke University Press, 2010. Bindman, David, and Henry Louis Gates Jr., eds. The Image of the Black in Western Art, vol. 2, From the Early Christian Era to the “Age of Discovery.” Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2010.

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Blair, Claude, ed. The Crown Jewels: The History of the Coronation Regalia in the Jewel House of the Tower of London. 2 vols. London: Stationary Office, 1998. Boehm, Barbara Drake, and Jiří Fajt, eds. Prague: The Crown of Bohemia, 1347–1437. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2005. Boudet, Jean-Patrice. Entre science et “nigromance”: Astrologie, divination et magie dans l’Occident médiéval (XIIe–XVe siècle). Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 2006. Bouman, Cornelius A. Sacring and Crowning: The Development of the Latin Ritual for the Anointing of Kings and the Coronation of an Emperor Before the Eleventh Century. Groningen: J. B. Wolters, 1957. Buettner, Brigitte. “Past Presents: New Year’s Gifts at the Valois Courts, ca. 1400.” Art Bulletin 83, no. 4 (2001): 598–625. ———. “Precious Stones, Mineral Beings: Performative Materiality in Fifteenth-Century Northern Art.” In The Matter of Art: Materials, Technologies, Meanings, c. 1250–1650, edited by Christy Anderson, Anne Dunlop, and Pamela H. Smith, 205–22. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2015. ———. “Toward a Historiography of the Sumptuous Arts.” In A Companion to Medieval Art: Romanesque and Gothic in Northern Europe, edited by Conrad Rudolph, 657–80. Hoboken: Wiley-Blackwell, 2019. Bycroft, Michael, and Sven Dupré, eds. Gems in the Early Modern World: Materials, Knowledge and Global Trade, 1450–1800. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018. Bynum, Caroline Walker. Christian Materiality: An Essay on Religion in Late Medieval Europe. New York: Zone, 2011. ———. “Wonder.” American Historical Review 102, no. 1 (1997): 1–26. Byrne, Eugene H. “Some Mediaeval Gems and Relative Values.” Speculum 10, no. 2 (1935): 177–87. Campbell, Mary Baine. The Witness and the Other World: Exotic European Travel Writing, 400–1600. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988. Cannella, Anne-Françoise. Gemmes, verre coloré, fausses pierres précieuses au Moyen Âge: Le quatrième livre du “Trésorier de Philosophie naturelle des

pierres précieuses” de Jean d’Outremeuse. Geneva: Droz, 2006. Chayes, Evelien. L’éloquence des pierres précieuses: De Marbode de Rennes à Alard d’Amsterdam et Remy Belleau; Sur quelques lapidaires du XVIe siècle. Paris: Champion, 2010. Clark, Grahame. Symbols of Excellence: Precious Materials as Expressions of Status. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986. Clark, Willene B. A Medieval Book of Beasts: The SecondFamily Bestiary; Commentary, Art, Text and Translation. Woodbridge: Boydell, 2006. Cohen, Jeffrey Jerome, ed. Animal, Vegetable, Mineral: Ethics and Objects. Washington, DC: Oliphaunt, 2012. ———. Stone: An Ecology of the Inhuman. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2015. Crossley, Paul. “The Politics of Presentation: The Architecture of Charles IV of Bohemia.” In Courts and Regions in Medieval Europe, edited by Sarah Rees Jones, Richard Marks, and A. J. Minnis, 99–172. York: York Medieval Press, 2000. Daston, Lorraine. “Nature by Design.” In Picturing Science, Producing Art, edited by Caroline A. Jones and Peter Galison, 232–53. New York: Routledge, 1998. Daston, Lorraine, and Katharine Park. Wonders and the Order of Nature, 1150–1750. New York: Zone, 1998. Deleuze, Gilles, and Félix Guattari. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Translated by Brian Massumi. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987. Donkin, R. A. Beyond Price: Pearls and Pearl-Fishing; Origins to the Age of Discoveries. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1998. Draelants, Isabelle. “Encyclopédies et lapidaires médiévaux: La durable autorité d’Isidore de Séville et des Étymologies.” Cahiers de recherches médiévales et humanistes 16 (2008): 39–91. ———. “Un encyclopédiste méconnu du XIIIème siècle, Arnold de Saxe: Œuvres, sources et réception.” PhD diss., Université de Louvain-la-Neuve, 2000. ———. “La science encyclopédique des pierres au XIIIe siècle: L’apogée d’une veine minéralogique.” In Aux origines de la géologie de l’Antiquité au Moyen Âge, edited by Claude Thomasset, Joëlle Ducos,

and Jean-Pierre Chambon, 91–139. Paris: Honoré Champion, 2010. ———. “La virtus universalis: Un concept d’origine hermétique? Les sources d’une notion de philosophie naturelle médiévale.” In Hermetism from Late Antiquity to Humanism, edited by Paolo Lucentini, Ilaria Parri, and Vittoria Perrone Compagni, 157–88. Turnhout: Brepols, 2004. Duby, Georges. The Early Growth of the European Economy: Warriors and Peasants from the Seventh to the Twelfth Century. Translated by Howard B. Clarke. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1974. Duffin, Christopher J. “Chelidonius: The Swallow Stone.” Folklore 124, no. 1 (2013): 81–103. ———. “Lapis Judaicus or the Jews’ Stone: The Folklore of Fossil Echinoid Spines.” Proceedings of the Geologists’ Association 117 (2006): 265–75. Duffin, Christopher J., R. T. J. Moody, and Christopher Gardner-Thorpe, eds. A History of Geology and Medicine. London: Geological Society of London, 2013. Eamon, William. Science and the Secrets of Nature: Books of Secrets in Medieval and Early Modern Culture. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994. Ebert-Schifferer, Sybille, and Martina Harms, eds. Faszination Edelstein aus den Schatzkammern der Welt: Mythos, Kunst, Wissenschaft. Bern: Benteli, 1992. Elkins, James. “Art History as the History of Crystallography.” In The Domain of Images, 13–30. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1999. Evans, Joan. A History of Jewellery, 1100–1870. London: Faber & Faber, 1953. ———. Magical Jewels of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, Particularly in England. 1922. Reprint, New York: Dover, 1976. Evans, Joan, and Mary S. Serjeantson. English Mediaeval Lapidaries. London: Oxford University Press, 1933. Evans, Joan, and Paul Studer, eds. Anglo-Norman Lapidaries. Paris: Edouard Champion, 1924. Fajt, Jiří, Markus Hörsch, Barbara Drake Boehm, and Andrea Langer, eds. Karl IV, Kaiser von Gottes Gnaden: Kunst und Repräsentation des Hauses Luxemburg, 1310–1437. Berlin: Deutscher Kunstverlag, 2006.

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Note: page numbers in italics refer to figures. Those followed by n refer to notes, with note number.

index

Aachen, 25–26, 28, 31, 50, 56 Abolays, 81, 83 Abrégé des histoires divines, 113, 113 acheiropoieta and “images made by chance,” 40, 131, 140 Adam, 174–76, 175 adamas, 2, 77, 114, 120, 143, 144 Adoration of the Magi, 143, 170, 170 Ælfric, 192 Æthelstan (English king), 24 Æthelwulf (king of Wessex), 55–56 aetites (Eagle stone), 4, 135, 161 Africa, 157–58, 172, 177, 183, 193 See also Egypt; Ethiopia agate, 9, 16, 61, 64, 96, 97, 139–40, 198 alabaster, 163 Alberti, Leon Battista, De pictura, 140 Albert the Great (Albertus Magnus), 4, 134, 151, 158, 187 De mineralibus, 6–7, 33–34, 75, 100, 111, 112, 114, 126, 134–36, 202 on sigils, 138–45, 146, 158 substantial form, 135–36, 138, 202 Aldrovandi, Ulisse, 8 Alexander Romance, 171, 187 Alexander the Great, 136, 145, 145 Alfonso X the Learned (king of Castile, León, and Galicia), 50–52, 82, 87, 127 Lapidario, 5, 81–87, 84, 85, 86, 89, 94, 97, 99–100, 101, 107, 143–44, 151 Siete Partidas, 51 Alfred of Sareshel, 134 Allsen, Thomas, 191 almandine, 168, 192 alum, 134, 193 amandinus, 114 amber, 2, 64, 104, 158, 163, 192, 194 See also ligurius (Lynx stone) ambergris, 2 amethysts, 5, 9, 29, 48, 61, 64, 96, 100, 107, 116, 127, 135, 161, 163, 168, 192, 221n16 depicted in manuscripts, 11, 12, 96, 97, 106, 107 amulets and talismans, 52, 65, 77, 116, 126, 132, 136 Andaman and Nicobar Islands, 177–78, 178, 188–90, 189 animals, 2, 4, 6, 10, 65, 71, 76, 103, 105, 116, 122, 123, 133, 134, 136, 140, 144, 146, 158, 160, 161, 162, 187, 188, 204 in manuscript decoration, 83, 87, 90, 120, 174

animals (continued) specific crocodile, 161, 176, 187 dragon, 112–13, 113, 132, 162, 168, 175, 176, 184 eagle, 64, 77, 135, 161, 176, 183–85, 184, 187, 188, 203 fish, 103, 113, 161, 162, 202 goat, 2, 120, 143 griffin, 109, 151, 188 hoopoe, 114 horse, 44, 105, 121, 131, 179, 182, 197 hyena, 114–15, 132 lynx, 103–5, 104 oyster, 159–60, 160, 180–82, 181 panther, 100, 161 salamander, 161, 188, 230n20 scorpion, 132 shark, 116, 117, 182 snake and serpent, 86, 112, 127–28, 129, 139, 176, 183, 185 swallow, 118 Anna of Schweidnitz, 60 antimony, 193 aquamarine, 99, 109, 215n37 Arabian Nights, 183, 187 Arghun (Mongol ruler), 191–92 Aristotle, 82–85, 84, 130, 132, 134–38, 151 Arnold of Saxony (Arnoldus Saxo), De floribus rerum naturalium, 224n81, 226n25, 226n35, 227n48 Augustine of Hippo, City of God, 115–16 Augustus (Roman emperor), 112–13, 113 automata, 113, 113, 131, 168, 171 Avicenna (Abū ‘Alī Ibn Sīnā), 134, 151 Bachelard, Gaston, 14 Badakhshan, 182 Baghdad, 196 balas ruby. See ruby: balas Baltic, 104, 109, 158, 192, 196 barnacle shells, 2 Bartholomaeus Anglicus, De proprietatibus rerum, 6, 17, 89, 90, 107–8, 111, 120, 138, 221n26 Livre des propriétés des choses, trans. Jean Corbechon, 17, 17–18, 76 , 89–92, 90, 91, 94, 100, 138, 146 On the Properties of Things, trans. John Trevisa, 4, 103, 107, 114 Bartholomew (saint), 158 Baudolino, 201 bdellium, 155, 229n1

248

Index

Beatrice of Swabia (queen of Castile), 49–50 Beatus of Liebana, Commentary on the Apocalypse, 96, 98 becoming-mineral, 14, 55, 164 Belisarius, 44, 45–46 Benjamin, Walter, 45, 202 Bennett, Jane, 3 Berke Khan (Mongol ruler), 191, 196 Bertrandon de la Broquière, 58 beryl, 9, 96, 97, 99, 109, 136, 137, 161, 168 use in magnifying glasses, 110–11 bestiaries, 8, 10, 74, 104, 114 Bezalel, 130 Bible Apocalypse, Heavenly Jerusalem, 9, 29, 61, 77, 94, 96, 98, 202 Exodus, breastplate of High Priest, 9, 29, 77, 94, 103, 202 on “remembrance stones” on High Priest’s shoulder clasp, 130 Psalms, coronation of King David, 28 Song of Songs, 14 Blacas Cameo, 60, 61 Black Sea, 195 Blanche of Valois (queen of Bohemia), 56–58, 66 Boccaccio, Giovanni, Decameron, 123–25, 125 Boctus (king), 79–80, 80, 151 Book of Gifts and Rarities, 34–35 The Book of John Mandeville, 154, 157, 161, 162, 168–70, 169, 174, 176–78, 185–87 borax, 102, 193 Boucher, Guillaume, 168 Bracciolini, Poggio, De varietate fortunae, 185 Buddha, 176–77 Byrne, Eugene, 197, 236n33 cabochons vs. faceting, 58, 155, 197 cadmium, 88 Caesar, Julius, 45, 53 calcophanus (Brazen-voiced stone), 221n17 cameos and intaglios, 16, 34, 48, 49, 50, 52, 60, 65, 126–27, 127, 138, 139, 143–44, 146–47, 197 origin among ancient Israelites, 130–31 See also Blacas Cameo; Ptolemy Cameo; sigils Campbell, Mary Baine, 158 Capelli, Pasquino, 2, 7, 8 carbuncles, 5, 9, 52, 68, 100, 112–14, 135, 160, 161, 162, 163, 164, 167, 172, 176, 197, 223n62, 229n1 depicted in manuscripts, 96, 97, 113, 136, 137

Cardano, Girolamo, 4 carnelian, 5, 61, 94, 96, 97, 127, 163 Castile, 49–52, 87 Cecco d’Ascoli (Francesco Stabili), L’Acerba, 120–21, 121, 122, 146, 203 celestial bodies, 83, 84, 86–87, 94, 130, 136–38, 137, 144–45 moon, 5, 108, 108, 115 stars, 7, 16, 29, 33, 65, 80, 82, 86–87, 86, 94, 100, 136, 137, 138, 143, 144, 145, 202 sun, 45, 123, 146, 158, 160, 171, 172, 181 See also magic: astral Cellini, Benvenuto, 114 Ceylon. See Sri Lanka chalcedony, 29, 61, 64, 96, 97 Chaldea, 81, 82, 85, 151, 157 Charlemagne (Carolingian emperor), 12, 25, 31, 56 Charles, count of Angoulême, 172 Charles IV of Luxembourg (king of Bohemia and Holy Roman Emperor), 25, 55–68, 68, 106, 107, 175, 192 Charles the Bald (Carolingian emperor), 54–55 Charles V (king of France), 66–69, 68, 89 Charles VI (king of France), 65, 68–69 Chaucer, Geoffrey, 9 chelidonius (Swallow stone), 76, 76, 115, 118 China, 18, 152, 153, 167, 175, 179, 186, 192 Cambaluc (Beijing), 159, 166–67, 199 Gaindu (Xichang), 159–60, 160, 182 Quanzhou (Zayton), 159, 192 See also Kublai Khan (Mongol ruler) Choniates, Niketas, 46 Christine de Pizan, 67, 68 chrysolitus, 9, 29, 99, 118–20, 119, 161, 168 chrysoprase, 9, 61, 64 cinnabar, 194 citrine, 98, 141, 221n16 Cleopatra, 45, 109 Cohen, Jeffrey, 99 Cohen, Yehuda ben Moshe, 81–82 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 167 Cologne, 6, 134, 135, 140, 143 Columbus, Christopher, 153, 158–59, 165, 229n9 Conrad I (Frankish king), 24 Conrad II (Holy Roman Emperor), 28 Conrad IV (Holy Roman Emperor), 34, 197 Constantine I the Great (Roman emperor), 21, 38, 36–40, 158 Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus (Byzantine emperor), 40

Constantine the African, 78 Constantinople (Istanbul), 40, 43, 45, 46, 66, 191, 193, 196 Contarini family, 196 coral, 2, 100, 102, 116–18, 117, 118, 158, 161, 192, 194, 224n81 Corippus, In laudem Justini Augusti minor, 45 cornu cerastis, 163 coronations, 21–22, 24–25, 28, 31–32, 45, 52, 53–58, 65, 66 coronation protocols (ordines), 47, 54–55, 56, 66, 215n35 corundum, 93, 221n15 Costanza (queen of Castile), 52 cross, jeweled (crux gemmata), 28, 30, 31–33, 39, 66, 67 crowns and diadems, jeweled, 12, 15, 21–69, 133, 178, 178 crown of Bohemia, 56–59, 57, 66, 66, 67 crown of Castile, 47–50, 48, 50 Crown of Holy Roman Empire (Vienna crown), 21–22, 23, 25, 27–35, 30, 32, 33, 41, 53, 143 al-Yatima, 35 Orphan stone (Waise), 31, 33, 33–35, 52, 76, 143, 164 crown of William the Conqueror, 29–31 Crusades, 35, 46, 66, 103, 116, 152, 154, 196 crystal. See rock crystal Damigeron-Evax, 78–79, 79, 116, 128, 130, 134, 151 David (biblical king), 28 De Boodt, Anselmus Boethius, 10 Deleuze, Gilles, 14 demons, 5, 93, 118, 120–23, 121, 122, 127, 128, 129, 132, 134–38, 143–47 diadochos (Substitute stone), 121–22, 122, 134 diamonds, 2, 5, 16, 53, 60, 68, 68, 69, 100, 143–44, 163, 164, 173, 174, 185–86, 192, 197, 199, 203, 228n72 depicted in manuscripts, 11, 12, 96, 97, 120, 121, 136, 137, 145 Valley of Diamonds, 151, 182–85, 184, 187 See also adamas Dionysus, 140 Dioscorides, De materia medica, 82, 87–89, 88, 89, 146 draconites (Dragon stone), 112–13, 113 dreams, 114, 146 Duby, Georges, 21 Dürer, Albrecht, 31, 32 Eadhild, 24 ebony, 163 Eco, Umberto, 201 Edward II (king of England), 26

Index

249

Edward III (king of England), 53 Edward IV (king of England), 89, 138 Egypt, 45, 75, 109, 130, 138, 157, 158, 193, 196 Alexandria, 75, 78, 82, 193 Cairo (Babylonia), 79, 151, 157–58 eliotropia (Heliotrope stone), 123, 125, 132, 135 Elizabeth I (queen of England), 41 emeralds, 5, 9, 21, 29, 41, 43, 52, 57, 58, 77, 78, 98, 114, 116, 123, 151, 160, 161, 163, 167, 168, 197, 199, 203 depicted in manuscripts, 2, 3, 11, 12, 13, 14, 96, 97 smaragdus, 9, 73, 77, 100, 108–10, 108 emery, 5 enhydros (Stone with moisture), 5 ephod, 9, 130 Epic of Gilgamesh, 171 Epiphanius of Cyprus, 183 epistites, 76 Ermoldus Nigellus, 40 Ethiopia, 157–58, 159, 165, 166, 176, 177 Eusebius of Caesarea, 33, 38–39, 73, 158 Evans, Joan, 73–74 Eve, 174–76, 175 exacontalitus, 100

garnets, 12, 13, 168, 192 gelacia (Hail stone), 2, 99 Genghis Khan (Mongol ruler), 152 Genoa, 152–53, 160, 191, 196, 197, 199 Geoffrey of Vinsauf, 14 gerachites (Kite stone), 168–70, 221n17 Gerbert of Aurillac (Pope Sylvester II), 112–13, 113 Gervase of Tilbury, Otia imperialia, 4, 130–33, 157, 171 Gessner, Conrad, 8 Gilgamesh, 171 glass, 8, 43, 64, 109–10, 111, 192, 193, 198 stained glass, 21, 66 Godfrey of Viterbo, 53 Goldschmidt, Adolph, 7 goldsmiths, 1–2, 22–24, 24, 28, 37, 59, 67, 68, 111, 114, 142, 168, 191, 193 Gower, John, Confessio Amantis, 136–38, 137, 145, 145, 146–47 granatus, 113, 221n15 Grandes Chroniques de France, 67–68, 68 Guattari, Félix, 14 Gundophorus, 163 Guy, bishop of Amiens, Song of the Battle of Hastings, 29–31

Famagusta, 192 Ferdinand de la Cerda, 50 Ferdinand III (king of Castile), 49–50, 81–82 flowers, 11, 120, 140, 145 fluids, 111–12, 115 bile, 103, 111 blood, 2, 6, 9, 80, 105, 106, 109, 133, 143, 155, 161, 163, 224n81 milk, 99, 111, 161, 162, 168 oil, 55, 18, 99, 192 urine, 103–5, 104 vinegar, 87, 99, 107 water, 5, 41, 99, 123, 135, 143, 162 wine, 33, 73, 87, 99, 105, 107, 123, 143, 162, 168, 179, 192 fossils and geodes, 2, 4, 16, 103, 116, 139 Fountain of Youth, 160–61 Francesco Pipino of Bologna, 153 Frederick II of Hohenstaufen (Holy Roman Emperor), 34, 49–51, 81, 135, 197, 202 See also Staufen dynasty

haematites (Blood stone), 105, 105–7 Hall, Bert, 8 Hārūn al-Rashīd (Abbasid caliph), 35 Heavenly Jerusalem. See Bible: Apocalypse, Heavenly Jerusalem Heliopolis, 171 Hennequin (Jean) du Vivier, 67 Henry I (king of France), 66 Henry VI (Holy Roman Emperor), 31 herbals, 6, 33, 74, 82, 103, 111, 136, 155 herbs, plants, and trees, 4, 73, 77, 99, 118, 132, 133, 136, 137, 158, 167, 175–76, 198 aloeswood (lignum aloes), 155, 157, 159, 168, 176 jeweled trees, 171 precious stones derived from, 104, 116–18, 229n1 Hercules, 49, 77, 127 Hermeticism, 77, 78, 120, 132, 136, 138, 202 Herodotus, Histories, 183 Herzog Ernst, 34–35, 164, 187 hiena (Hyena stone), 114–15 Hincmar of Reims, 54–55, 56 Hortus sanitatis (Jakob Meydenbach, pub.), 33, 33, 108, 108, 186, 187, 203

gagatromeus (Wild goat stone), 2 galactides (Milk stone), 99

250

Index

Hugh the Great (Frankish king), 24, 108 hyacinthus, 5, 9, 14, 43, 66, 98, 107, 116, 221n15 hyperbole, 151, 160, 162, 163, 171, 174, 176, 199 Iaroslavna, Anna, 66 iaspis, 9, 96, 97, 128, 221n14 Ibn Battuta, 178, 194–95, 196 Ibn Kafif, 178 IJsselstein family, 100 Ilardi, Vincent, 110 India, 18, 45, 75, 82, 99, 112, 158, 159, 165, 171, 172, 174, 175, 177, 185, 186, 192, 199 Delhi, 196, 197 Gulf of Mannar, 180, 181, 192 Ma’bar region (Coromandel Coast), 178–80, 179, 182, 200, 203 Malabar Coast, 180 Three Indies, 153, 158, 160, 165, 174, 176, 179, 203 Valley of Diamonds (see diamonds) Indian Ocean, 160, 186, 187, 193 indigo, 194 Innocent III (pope), 32 intelligence of the object, 22–24, 29 iris (Rainbow stone), 111, 168 Isidore of Seville, Etymologies, 6, 76, 82, 97–98, 120 Islamic writings lapidaries and lapidary knowledge, 35, 36, 75, 83, 96, 111, 183, 197 mirror for princes, 50, 51 scientific literature, , 78, 81, 82, 83, 112, 132, 136, 143–44 Israelites, 9, 130–31, 133 ivory, 14, 168, 171, 192, 193 jacinth, 5, 66, 90, 99 jade, 168, 232n16 jasper, 61, 64, 161, 163 Jean, duke of Berry, 17, 17–18, 154, 180, 183, 190 Jean d’Outremeuse, Trésorier de philosophie naturelle des pierres précieuses, 185–86 jet (gagates), 2, 5–6, 158, 192, 221n17 jewelry, 1, 15, 44, 46, 168, 180 brooches and fibulae, 2, 3, 7, 14, 21, 43, 45, 177, 197 necklaces, 14, 116, 178, 179, 180 pendants, 54, 115–16, 126, 141, 177, 178, 197 rings, 2, 3, 7, 10, 14, 15, 21, 22, 34, 44, 52, 56, 60, 67–68, 68, 77, 78, 100, 105, 112, 115–16, 120, 121, 122, 123, 126, 127, 127, 128, 180

John (saint), 9, 61, 81 John of Marignolli, 175–76 John the Fearless, duke of Burgundy, 154 Jordanus Catalani (Jordanus Catala de Severac), Mirabilia descripta, 174 Judith (Carolingian queen), 54–55 Julian (Roman emperor), 39–40 Justin II (Byzantine emperor), 45 Justinian (Byzantine emperor), 46, 51, 177, 182 See also Ravenna: church of San Vitale Kabbalah, 133 Kantorowicz, Ernst, 25, 55, 69 Karlštejn Castle, Holy Cross Chapel, 61–65, 62, 63, 64 Kieckhefer, Richard, 120 kings radiant body, 12, 14–15, 21, 24–25, 28, 30–31, 36, 55, 56, 68, 69, 130, 203 as patrons of lapidaries, 15–16, 73, 75–92 Krauss, Rosalind, 96 Kublai Khan (Mongol ruler), 159–60, 160, 166–69, 168, 169, 170, 176–77, 182 lapidaries, illustrated, 8, 12, 73–74, 87, 93–94, 116, 145–46, 151, 203 Lapidary of Aristotle, 83 Lapidary of King Philip, 226n27 lapis judaicus (Jews’ stone), 103 lapis lazuli, 77, 182, 192, 213n2 Latour, Bruno, 3 Legner, Anton, 65 Leonardi, Camillo, 99 Leskov, Nikolaĭ, The Alexandrite, 202 Letter of Prester John. See Prester John Lévi-Strauss, Claude, 204 Liber de XV stellis, XV lapidibus, XV herbis et XV figuris, 136, 138 Liber sigillorum, 128–30 ligurius (Lynx stone), 2, 9, 103–5, 104 liparea, 76 Liudprand of Cremona, 24, 69 Livre de Sidrac, 79–81, 80, 151, 198, 202 Livre des merveilles (Bibliothèque nationale de France MS fr. 2810), 16–17, 154, 170, 170, 174, 175, 177–78, 178, 179, 179–80, 183–85, 184, 188–90, 189, 199, 203 Livre des merveilles du monde, 110, 172–74, 173 Livre des simples médecines, 155–57, 156, 159–60, 174, 19

Index

251

Loredan family, 196 Lothair I (Carolingian emperor), 12–14, 13, 24–25, 40, 53 Louise of Savoy, duchess of Angoulême, 172 Louis IX (king of France), 66, 168 Louis the Pious (Carolingian emperor), 40 Louis the Stammerer (Carolingian emperor), 54–55 Maerlant, Jacob van, Der naturen bloeme, 100, 101, 102, 105, 105–7, 106, 112, 113, 116, 118–20, 119, 121–23, 122, 127–28, 129, 133, 134, 143, 144, 145, 146, 203 magic, 114, 115, 118–25, 125, 132, 120, 203 astral, 16, 82, 138, 144–45 (see also sigils) divination and forecasting, 77, 83, 114–15, 132, 146 hydromancy, 77, 123 ligatures and suspensions, 115–16, 118, 123 natural, 132–33, 139 necromancy and nigromancy, 77, 121, 122, 146, 203, 218n7 weather, 118, 118, 123, 124 witchcraft, 114, 119, 120, 121 magnes (magnetite, lodestone), 5, 87, 89, 94, 96, 97, 121, 122, 132, 135–36, 151, 186, 187 malachite, 109, 221n14 Mamluks, 191–92, 196 Mandeville’s Lapidary, 185–86 Manuel I Comnenus (Byzantine emperor), 152 maps, 99, 157, 165, 166, 176, 177, 194 marble, 6, 8, 14, 16, 138, 139–40, 139, 227n51 Marbode of Rennes, Liber lapidum, 10, 49, 76–79, 81, 100, 116, 140, 151, 158 Marius (of Salerno?), 4 Matfre Ermengaud, Breviari d’amor, 94–97, 95, 97, 114, 146 Matthew (saint), 158 Maximian (bishop), 44 Medici, Cosimo de’, 1 medus, 111 Megenberg, Konrad von, Buch der Natur, 100, 103, 108, 108–9, 115, 123, 124, 133, 140 Meier, Christel, 9 melichros (Honey stone), 99 merchants, 6, 17, 17–18, 68, 69, 76, 153, 159, 167, 179, 185, 186, 188–99, 189, 195 mermaids, 128, 176 metals, 1, 14–15, 21 gold, 9, 11, 14, 15, 21, 24, 29, 31, 32, 37, 39, 43–44, 45, 46, 47, 51, 55, 58, 65, 87, 96, 97, 98, 99, 105, 109, 111, 118,

252

Index

123, 132, 153, 155, 163, 164, 167, 168, 171, 172, 175, 180, 183, 192, 193, 194, 221n26 golden chain, 3–4 golden vine, 168–72, 170, 171 brass, 48, 49 bronze, 11, 132, 171, 192 copper, 15, 104, 144, 192, 193 iron, 10, 86, 104, 105, 107, 135–36, 171, 187, 193 lead, 5, 15, 128, 132 quicksilver, 87, 194 tin, 132, 192 silver, 11, 15, 21, 32, 46, 51, 60, 105, 107, 111, 132, 144, 153, 163, 167, 168, 172, 193, 194, 196, 221n26 Michael VIII Palaeologus (Byzantine emperor), 191 minerals, assimilated substances, 2 See also alum; amber; ambergris; antimony; barnacle shells; borax; coral; ivory; jet (gagate); pearls; salt; sulfur mining, 5, 60, 74, 87–89, 88, 90, 92, 109, 146, 153, 159–61, 160, 174, 182–85, 184, 203 minium (red lead), 99 mirrors, 111, 163–64, 128, 223n55 Möngke Khan (Mongol ruler), 168 Mongols, 18, 152, 168, 191, 192, 196 18, 192 monstrous races, 151, 190, 201 Arimaspians, 109, 151 Cynocephali, 177–78, 178, 188–90, 189 Montecassino, 7, 78 Moses, 9, 81, 130, 133 Muhammad bin Tughluq, Sultan of Delhi, 196 Murrin, Michael, 159 Neckam, Alexander, 204 Nectanebus, 136, 145, 145 Nero (Roman emperor), 78, 79, 79, 110, 114 Niccolò de’ Conti, 185 Nicholas of Verdun, 141–44, 14 Odoric of Pordenone, Itinerarium, 153–54, 165, 168, 174, 175, 176, 177, 178, 188, 234n64 onychinus (Fingernail stone), 5, 9, 34, 99, 130, 140, 143 onyx, 29, 111, 140, 161, 163, 168 opals, 34, 100, 103 optics. See vision Orphan stone (Waise). See Crown of Holy Roman Empire Otto I (Holy Roman Emperor), 28, 34–35

Otto IV (Holy Roman Emperor), 31–32, 34, 35, 142–43 Panofsky, Erwin, 7 pantherus Paradise, Terrestrial, 155–57, 156, 158, 159, 160, 161, 168, 174–76, 177, 186, 199 Paris, 16, 56, 65–67, 69, 100, 131, 132, 134, 139, 154, 168, 170, 174, 183, 190, 193, 196, 197, 201 Saint-Denis, Abbey, 25, 66, 67 Sainte-Chapelle, 66, 67 Paschal Chronicle, 37 pearls, 2, 5, 9, 14, 16, 21, 28, 29, 35, 37, 38, 38, 41, 41, 43, 46, 50, 53, 57, 58, 60, 65, 69, 98, 108, 135, 157, 172, 203 depicted in manuscripts, 2, 3, 8, 11, 12, 13, 14, 100, 171, 173, 174, 180 generation of, 180–81 pearl fishing, 158, 159–60, 160, 180–82, 181 trade in, 159, 167, 175, 192, 193, 194, 196, 197 Pegolotti, Francesco Balducci, Pratica della mercatura, 194–95, 197 Pérez, Garci, 81–82 peridot, 109, 168 Persia, 18, 96, 134, 177, 179, 183, 185, 187, 122, 196, 221n15 Hormuz, 159, 187 Tabriz, 174, 193–96, 195 Petersohn, Jürgen, 25 Peter the Cruel (King of Castile), 52 Petrarch, Remedies for Fortune Fair and Foul, 147, 201 Philip IV the Fair (King of France), 15, 191–92 Philip of Swabia (Holy Roman Emperor), 31–33, 34, 35 Philippe de Mézières, Epistre au Roi Richart, 53, 54 Picatrix, 82 Pietro da Pavia, 2, 3, 7, 8 Pliny the Elder, Natural History 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 10–11, 76, 97, 104, 109, 110, 140, 172, 181, 187, 198 Polo, Maffeo and Niccolò, 191, 193, 198–99 Polo, Marco, 152–53, 159, 160, 167, 176–85, 187, 190–91, 192, 194, 198–99, 203 Devisement du monde, 16, 151, 152–54, 159–60, 160, 165–68, 181, 176–90, 191, 193–94, 195, 198, 199 See also Livre des merveilles; Rustichello da Pisa porphyry, 44, 163, 176 Porus (king of India), 171 Prague, 25, 47, 56, 62, 66 Cathedral St. Vitus, 56, 61 St. Wenceslas Chapel, 59, 59–61 prasius (Leek-green stone), 99, 221n14

precious stones. See stones, precious Prester John, 160–64, 166, 167, 170, 172, 174, 186, 191, 201, 202 Letter of Prester John, 16, 151–52, 158, 159, 160 location, 160, 165, 166 precious stones in the realm of, 151, 159, 161–64, 162, 168, 199 Procopius, 45 Prometheus, 10 Ptolemy, Geography, 158 Ptolemy Cameo, 141–44, 141, 142 pumice, 135 pyrite, 211n26 pyrophilos humanus, 5 Pyrrhus (king of Macedonia), 140 Qustā ibn Lūqā, On Physical Ligatures, Incantations, and Suspensions around the Neck, 116 quirita, 114, 115 Rabanus Maurus, De rerum naturis, 7, 7–9, 55 Ramusio, Giovanni Battista, 159, 198 Ravenna, 44, 45 church of San Vitale, 40–45, 41, 42, 180 church of Sant’Apollinare Nuovo, 43, 44 Red Sea, 99, 130, 193 Reims, 25, 40 relics and reliquaries, 1, 21, 22, 24, 25, 32, 34, 37, 40, 46, 56, 61, 62, 65, 66, 73, 112, 127 of the Buddha, 176 Crown of Thorns, 66–67 reliquary of St. Wenceslas, 59 shrine of the Three Kings (Cologne Cathedral), 141–44, 142 René of Anjou, King of Naples, 109 Retza, Franciscus de (Franz von Retz), Defensorium inviolatae virginitatis, 139, 139 Richard II (king of England), 53, 54, 138 Richard the Redeless, 53 rivers, 34–35, 99, 123, 131, 152, 157, 160, 161, 162, 185, 186, 187 Ganges, 157–58 Nile, 29, 157–58 Phison (Pishon), 130, 155–57, 156, 159, 161, 202 Roau of Arundel, 161 rock crystal, 8, 14, 110–11, 114, 118–20, 119, 127, 136, 137, 143–44, 161, 163, 164, 167, 168, 192, 193, 198, 226n27

Index

253

Rome, 24–25, 26, 65, 74, 75, 112, 165 rubies, 2, 5, 9, 16, 21, 50, 53, 58, 66, 68, 93, 94–96, 108, 113, 114, 167, 168, 170, 192, 194, 197, 216n52 allegorization of, 9, 52 balas, 5, 58, 69, 182, 190, 192, 197 depicted in manuscripts, 3, 11, 12, 13, 14, 68, 96, 97, 109, 110, 113, 155–57, 156, 170, 172–73, 173, 174, 175, 178, 179, 180, 181, 182, 183–85, 184, 189, 190 royal ruby of Sri Lanka, 176–78, 178, 183, 203 rubellite, 58 See also carbuncles Rudolf I (king of Germany), 25–26, 26 Rudolf II (Holy Roman Emperor), 10 Rudolf IV of Habsburg, Duke of Austria, 100 Rudramadevi Kakatiya (Indian queen), 183, 184, 233n51 Ruodlieb, 105 Rustichello da Pisa, 152–53, 165, 167, 177, 181, 182, 183, 185, 187, 203 See also Polo, Marco: Devisement du monde salt, 6, 116, 117, 134, 193 Sancho IV (king of Castile), 47–48, 50 Castigos e documentos para bien vivir, 51–52 sapphires, 5, 16, 21, 29, 31, 41, 41, 43, 48, 49, 50, 52, 53, 58, 66, 69, 76, 93, 100, 108, 135, 160, 161, 163, 164, 176, 183, 192, 194, 197, 199, 216n52, 213n2 depicted in manuscripts, 2, 3, 11, 12, 13, 14, 96, 97, 136, 137, 155–57, 156, 170, 173, 174, 179, 180, 181, 182, 184, 185, 189, 190 sardius, 9 sardonyx, 34, 49, 60, 96, 97, 100, 101, 140–41, 143, 161, 163, 192 Saxl, Fritz, 7 Scythia, 109, 110, 151, 172, 199 Secretum secretorum (Kitâb Sirr al-’asrār), 83, 136 selenites (Moon stone), 5, 101, 107–8, 108, 115, 222n41 sexuality and procreation, 3, 4–5, 11, 77, 115, 128, 158, 160, 163, 180, 180–81 Shakespeare, William, 53 sigils, 16, 129, 126–47, 158, 202 silk, 15, 44, 51, 175, 180, 192, 193 Simmel, Georg, 14, 16, 21, 29, 43 Sinbad the Sailor, 183 slaves, 45, 168, 193, 195, 198, 199 Solinus, C. Julius, Collectanea rerum memorabilium, 109, 112, 172, 180–81 Solomon (biblical king), 81

254

Index

Song of Roland, 112 Speculum astronomiae, 144 spices, 24, 153, 158, 159, 175, 190, 192, 193, 194, 196, 198 Spice Islands, 152, 172, 179 spolia, 34, 49, 127, 142 Sri Lanka (Ceylon/ Taprobane), 18, 172–78, 173, 175, 177, 187, 192, 199, 203 See also rubies: royal of Sri Lanka Staufen dynasty, 28, 31, 35, 49, 50, 143 See also Frederick II of Hohenstaufen (Holy Roman Emperor) Stephen (saint), 115 Stephen IV (pope), 40 stones, common, 3, 6, 73, 111 stones, cut. See cameos and intaglios stones, precious allegorization of, 8–10, 29, 41, 49, 51–55, 72, 73, 107, 115 as quasi-animate matter, 3–5, 14, 103, 107, 108, 135, 138, 146, 172 artificial imitations, 193, 197, 198 colors, 93–114 consecration of, 133–34, 138, 161–63, 226n27 critique of, 4, 34, 53, 73, 81, 147, 201 and “difficulty of acquisition,” 16–17, 151, 157, 166, 174, 187, 199, 103 “gems of virtue,” 47, 55, 73, 81 gendering of, 4–5 as gifts, 24, 67–68, 68, 105, 158, 175, 191, 192, 204 individual, in lapidaries achates (see agate) adamas, 2, 77, 114, 120, 143, 144 (see also diamonds) amandinus, 114 amethystus (see amethysts) balagius (see rubies: balas) beryllus (see beryl) calcophanus, 221n17 carbunculus (see carbuncles; rubies) cornalina (see carnelian) chalcedonius (see chalcedony) chelidonius, 76, 76, 115, 118 chrysolitus, 9, 29, 99, 118–20, 119, 161, 168 chrysoprasus (see chrysoprase) corallus (see coral) crystallus (see rock crystal) diadochos, 121–22, 122, 134 draconites), 112–13, 113 eliotropia, 123, 125, 132, 135

epistites, 76 exacontalitus, 100 gagates (see jet) gagatromeus, 2 galactides, 99 gelacia, 2, 99 gerachites, 168–70, 221n17 granatus, 113, 221n15 haematites, 105, 105–7 hiena, 114–15 hyacinthus, 5, 9, 14, 43, 66, 98, 107, 116, 221n15 (see also jacinth) iaspis, 9, 96, 97, 128, 221n14 (see also jasper) iris, 111, 168 lapis judaicus, 103 ligurius, 2, 9, 103–5, 104 (see also amber) liparea, 76 magnes, 5, 87, 89, 94, 96, 97, 121, 122, 132, 135–36, 151, 186, 187 medus, 111 melichros, 99 onychinus, 5, 9, 34, 99, 130, 140, 143 optallius (see opals) pantherus, 100, 103, 115, 163 prasius), 99, 221n14 quirita, 114, 115 saphirus (see lapis lazuli; sapphires) sardius, 9 sardonyx, 34, 49, 60, 96, 97, 100, 101, 140–41, 143, 161, 163, 192 selenites, 5, 101, 107–8, 108, 115, 222n41 smaragdus (see emeralds) topaz, 5, 9, 60, 64, 81, 96, 97, 112, 161, 164, 168, 173, 174, 192, 203 Latin names, 2 luminosity, 5, 12–15, 13, 21, 25, 29–31, 34, 37, 39, 45, 55, 64, 112–14, 167 “master stone” (Leitstein), 15, 26, 26, 31, 38, 38, 43, 52, 58, 68, 69, 133, 143 medieval definition of, 2–5, 64–65 Orient stones, 16, 21, 34–35, 36, 151, 154, 158, 176, 187, 190, 191, 198, 199, 203, 208n49 trade in, 17–18, 188–200, 189, 195 value of, 2, 16, 21, 36, 58, 81, 114, 147, 151, 161, 167–68, 179, 182, 187, 192, 198 virtutes (powers), 3–6, 10, 15–16, 34, 53, 58, 65, 73, 76, 77, 81, 86–87, 93, 94, 99, 100, 112, 114–25, 118, 119, 121,

122, 131–38, 142, 144, 146, 147, 151, 160, 161–63, 168, 185–86, 198, 202 curing diseases, 3, 4, 5, 35, 73, 90, 94, 103–07, 105, 106, 111–12, 115–16, 132, 161, 203, 223n59 intrinsic vs. extrinsic, 16, 132–3 making invisible, 3, 93, 123–25, 125, 127–28, 133, 135 power to affect sight (see vision) Stricker, Der, 34, 53, 73, 147, 201 sulfur, 6, 192 sumptuary laws, 15, 182 Constitutions of Melfi, 51 Corpus Juris Civilis, 43–44, 51 Sylvester II (pope). See Gerbert of Aurillac (Pope Sylvester II) Tafur, Pero, 193 Tanguy IV du Chastel, 90 Taprobane. See Sri Lanka Testard, Robinet, 172–74, 173 Thābit ibn Qurrah al-Ḥarrānī, Book on Images, 132 Thegan, 40 Theobald (abbot of Montecassino), 7 Theodora (Byzantine empress). See Ravenna: church of San Vitale Theodoric, Master, 64 Theophrastus, 103, 110 Thetel, 128–30, 139, 202 Thomas (saint), 158, 163 Thomas of Cantimpré, Liber de natura rerum, 5, 6, 99, 100, 113–14, 116–18, 130, 128–33, 146, 227n59 Thompson, Henry Yates, 96 Thorndike, Lynn, 10 Toledo, 47, 81, 132 topaz, 5, 9, 60, 64, 81, 96, 97, 112, 161, 164, 168, 173, 174, 192, 203 Trebizond, 195, 199 Trevisa, John. See Bartholomaeus Anglicus, De proprietatibus rerum turquoise, 94–96, 97, 159–60, 160, 182, 220n5 Vandals, 45–46 Vasari, Giorgio, 1 Venice, 139, 143, 152–53, 193, 196, 198 Viglioni (Vioni), Pietro, 193 Vincent of Beauvais, Speculum maius, 6, 11, 11–12, 201 Viollet-le-Duc, Eugène, 24, 22–24 Virgin, 21, 41, 60, 64, 115, 126, 157, 170

Index

255

Visconti, Giangaleazzo, 2 vision, 5, 12, 15, 21, 24, 31, 37, 51, 67, 73, 77, 93–94, 100, 107–09, 100 110–12, 114–15, 121, 123, 125, 135, 136, 147, 163–64, 186, 195, 202 Volmar, 126 Walther von der Vogelweide, 31–33, 67 Warburg, Aby, 7, 126, 225n3 Weill-Parot, Nicolas, 131 Weitzmann, Kurt, 87–89 Wenceslas (king of Bohemia), 65 Wenceslas (saint), 59–60 Wentzel, Hans, 49 Westminster Abbey, 25

256

Index

William de Vere, 161 William of Auvergne, 132 William of Malmesbury, Gesta regum Anglorum, 24, 69, 108–9, 112–13 William of Rubruck, 168 William the Conqueror (king of England), 29–31 Wittkower, Rudolf, 7, 188 Wonders of the East, 171, 171–72 Wyckoff, Dorothy, 34 Yeh-lü Ta-shih, 152