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Crystal Balls and Crystal Gazing: Paris

In Paris the various ornaments were preserved in the Bibliotheque Royale until the night of November 5-6, 1831, when many of them, with other valuables, were stolen by an ex-convict. Closely pursued by the police, the thief threw his booty into the Seine; much of the plunder was subsequently recovered, but the signet of Childeric was lost for ever. The crystal ball had not seemed of sufficient value to tempt the thief and was left undisturbed; it was later, in 1852, deposited in the Louvre Museum. (Cochet, "Le tombeau de Childeric Ier roi des Francs," Paris, 1859, pp. 16 sqq.) In a personal communication to Abbe Cochet made in 1858 by Mr. Thomas Wright, the latter stated that he had seen at Downing in Flintshire with Lord Fielding five crystal balls, bearing labels declaring that they came from the sepulchres of the kings of France violated at the time of the French Revolution. They had been purchased about 1810 at the sale of the Duchess of Portland's effects. (Cochet, op. cit., p. 305.) Among the crystal balls found in French sepulchres may be noted one discovered by Rigollot in 1853 at Arras, and preserved in the Museum of that city; this still has the original gold mounting serving to attach it to the necklace from which it had been worn suspended. Another found at or near Levas was in the possession of M. Dancoise, a notary of Henin-Lietard, dept. Pas de Calais. (Cochet, op. cit., p. 302; figure.) In the Bibliotheque at Dieppe there is a crystal ball, 32 mm. in diameter, found at Douvrend, dept. Seine-Inferieure, in 1838, in a Merovingian tomb; this is pierced through. (Cochet, op. cit., p. 303, No. 1.) The department of Moselle supplied three discoveries of this kind, crystal balls having been found in a tomb at St. Preux-la-Montagne, Sablon and Moineville near Briey, the latter measuring 36 mm. in diameter. (Simon, "Observations sur les sepulchres antiques decouverts dans plusieures contres des Gaules," p. 5; pl. ii, fig. 14.) The Saxon tombs of England have also furnished a contingent of crystal balls, for example at Chatham, at Chassel Down on the Isle of Wight, where four were discovered, at Breach Down, Barham, near Canterbury, at Fairford, Gloucestershire, and also in Kent. (See Wylie's Fairford Graves," pl. iv, fig. 1, pl. v, fig 2; Akerman's "Remains of Pagan Saxondom," Roach Smith's "Collectanea antiqua"; Douglas' "Nenia Brittanica," and Hillier's "Antiquities of the Isle of Wight.") We should also note a crystal ball found in a funerary urn at Hinsbury Hill, Northamptonshire; (Akerman, op. cit., p. 10.) this as well as the one found at Fairford was facetted. (Journal of the Archaeological Institute, vol. ix, p. 179.) From St. Nicholas, Worcestershire, is reported a crystal ball 1 1/2 inches in diameter. (Akerman, op. cit., pp. 39, 40.) In his "Hydrotaphia, or Urn Burial," published in 1658, Sir Thomas Browne (1605-1682), author of the "Religio Medici," relates that there was at that time in the possession of Cardinal Farnese, an urn in which, besides a number of antique engraved gems, an ape of agate, and an elephant of amber, there had been found a crystal ball and six "nuts" of crystal. (Miscellanies upon various subjects, by John Aubrey, to which is added "Hydrotaphia, or Urn Burial," by Sir Thomas Browne, London, 1890, p. 244; chap. ii.) One of the largest and most perfect crystal balls is in the Dresden "Grune Gewolbe" (Green Vaults). This weighs 15 German pounds and measures 6 2/3 inches in diameter; it was undoubtedly used for purposes of augury. Ten thousand dollars was the price paid for it in 1780.