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The Religious Use of Various Stones: Brantome

The story of the emeralds brought from the New World by Hernan Cortes must have been quite familiar to sixteenth century writers, for we find Brantome applying some details of this story to "a beautiful and incomparable pearl" said to have been brought from Mexico by Cortes on his return to Spain. This he later allowed to slip from his fingers into the sea while showing it to a friend on board the ship that was bearing him toward Algiers; it was lost in the sea, and in the words of Brantome "vanished from the sight of mankind, unworthy to possess such a miracle of nature." The loss of this pearl is looked upon by the French writer as a punishment for the "inscription" Cortes had caused to be placed upon it: Inter natos mulierum non surrexit major; this refers to John the Baptist and was, as we have seen, engraved upon one of the famous emeralds of Cortes. Brantome believes that its application to a simple product of nature was sacrilegious and the cause of the object's loss; he also sees in this loss an omen of the death of the Emperor Charles which occurred shortly afterward, and he draws attention to the fact that the "Africans" called their kings "precious stones."