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Superstitions: French

The metropolitan cathedral of Saint Lawrence at Genoa claims a very dubious possession of the reputed valuable emerald dish, known to the Catholic world as Il Sacro Catino. Its history, making due allowance for questionable tradition, is that at the siege of Palestine in IIOI, the Genoese selected this as the choicest prize. Until 1809, they kept it almost sacredly; the French then took it away, but were compelled to restore it in 1815, but it was returned in a broken state. From its size, as an emerald, it was invaluable when perfect, and the legend stated that our Saviour had eaten the Paschal lamb off it with His disciples, and that it was one of the presents of the Queen of Sheba to Solomon, who had preserved it in the Temple. Unfortunately for all these invaluable influences, the emerald dish, once in the power of the French, was subjected to chemical analysis, and was found to be a spurious composition of green glass.

In the Bibliotheque Universelle de Geneve for September, 1839, the San Graal is said to have been "une pierre precieuse qui se detacha de la couronne de Satan lorsqu'il fut precipite du ciel."

In the latter part of the thirteenth century, Marco Polo relates that the inhabitants of Zipangu, in the Indian Seas, had certain stones of a charmed virtue inserted between the skin and the flesh of their right arms, which through the power of diabolical enchantments rendered them invulnerable. The miraculous virtues of precious stones are alluded to by Chaucer, in his "Romaunt de la Rose," and he refers, in "The House of Fame," to the treatise on gems called "The Lapidary," renowned at that time:- "And thei were sett as thicke of onchis Five of the finest stories faire That men redin in the Lapidaire."

The book here mentioned is, probably, that mentioned by Montfaucon as in the Library at Paris, "Le Lapidaire de la Vertu des Pierres." Gower, whose birth is supposed to have been about 1320, in his "Confessio Amantis" (first printed in 1483), gives a description of the chariot and crown of the sun, in which the Arabian ideas respecting precious stones are interwoven with Ovid's fictions and the classical mythology:- "Of golde glistrende spoke and whele The Sonne his carte hath, faire and wele; In which he sit, and is croned With bright stones environed; Of which if that I speke shall There be tofore in speciall, Set in the front of his corone, Thre stones, which no persone Hath upon erth; and the first is By name cleped Leucachatis; The other two cleped thus, Astroites and Ceraunus, In his corone; and also byhynde, By olde bokes, as I fynd, There ben of worthy stones three, Set eche of hem in his degree; Whereof a Cristelle is that one, Which that corone is sett upon; The second is an Adamant; The third is noble and avenant, Which cleped is Idriades- And over this yet natheless, Upon the sidis of the werke, After the writynge of the clerke, There sitten five stones mo; The Smaragdine is one of tho, Jaspis, and Helitropius, And Vandides and Jacinctus. Lo ! thus the corone is beset Whereof it shineth wel the bet."