ABSTRACT
A lengthy lapidary tradition lies behind the descriptions of precious stones in Spenser’s poetry. Belief in magical and medical properties of jewels is present in the earliest human documents, including Assyrian tablets from the Royal Library at Nineveh, Egyptian papyri, and Greek treatises. Pliny’s systematic treatment of precious stones in the first century, Natural History, was the basis and point of departure for Western lapidary writings of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. De materia medica by Dioscorides, another first-century work listing the medical virtues of precious stones, was considered authoritative in the sixteenth century, as were treatments of gems by Hippocrates and Galen. Foremost among other important lapidaries accessible in sixteenth-century England are Isidore of Seville’s Etymologies, Marbode’s Latin poem Liber lapidum, seu De gemmis, Bartholomaeus Anglicus’ De proprietatibus rerum (especially popular in English versions by John Trevisa [1397] and Stephen Bateman [1582]), Vincent of Beauvais’s Speculum naturale, and the lapidary in Albertus Magnus’ De mineralibus. The relationship among these and other lapidary works is complex, and exactly how information passed from earlier authors to later ones is impossible to determine. Despite many errors and discrepancies in transmission, however, lapidary literature was remarkably consistent and provided a fund of lore about the ‘secret powers’ (Milton Prolusions 3) of precious stones.
