Home › Religious Uses: Pagan, Hebrew, and Christian › Religious Uses: Pagan, Hebrew, and Christian: Greek

Religious Uses: Pagan, Hebrew, and Christian: Greek

The knowledge of classical mythology was so slight among the ecclesiastics of the Middle Ages that some very queer attributions of the subjects engraved on Greek and Roman gems were made during this period. A reliquary containing a tooth of the Apostle Peter, preserved in the Cathedral of Troyes, was set with antique gems which had been plundered by French and Venetian crusaders from the treasure-house of the Greek Emperor in Constantinople, when that city was sacked in 1204 during the Fourth Crusade. Among these gems was one representing Leda and the Swan--certainly a curious subject for the adornment of a Christian reliquary. Another Greek or Roman gem, long preserved in a church, was furnished by its Christian owners with an inscription indicating that the figure engraved upon it was that of St. Michael, while in reality it was a representation of the god Mercury. Still another gem was provided with an inscription signifying that the subject was the temptation of Mother Eve in the Garden of Eden, but the Greek gem engraver's intent had been to carve the figures of Zeus and Athena, standing before an olive tree, a design which appears on some Athenian coins; at the feet of the divinities appears a serpent. In a similar way the grain-measure crowning the head of Jupiter-Serapis led to the attribution of a gem so engraved to the patriarch Joseph. (Klot, "Ueber den Nutzen und Gebrauch der alten geschnittenen Steine," Altenburg, 1768.) An engraved amethyst bearing the figure of a little Cupid is said to have been worn in a ring by St. Valentine. While this may be somewhat doubtful, it is by no means impossible, for many pagan gems were worn by pious Christians, who reconciled their consciences to the use of these beautiful but scarcely religious ornaments by giving to the pagan symbols a Christian meaning. Certainly, in view of the time-honored customs connected with St. Valentine's Day, there seems something peculiarly appropriate in the design of the ring supposed to have been worn by St. Valentine.

That precious stones had sense and feeling was quite generally believed in medieval times, and a legend told of St. Martial illustrates this idea. The gloves worn by this saint were studded with precious stones, and when on a certain occasion a sacrilegious act was committed in his presence, the gems, horrified at the sight, sprang out of their settings and fell to the ground before the eyes of the onlookers.