Claude Lecouteux - A Lapidary of Sacred Stones: Their Magical and Medicinal Powers Based on the Earliest Sources

Acknowledgments

With the end of this long labor now at hand, I would like to acknowledge my debt of gratitude toward all my colleagues who generously allowed me to profit from their work: Leo Carruthers (Sorbonne), Chantal Connochie-Bourgne (University of Provence), Elena di Venosa (Milano), Franoise Fry-Hue (IHRT, Paris), Christoph Gerhardt (Trier), Valrie Gontro (Aix), Denis He (Rennes II), and Jens Haustein (Jena), who placed at my disposal his copy of the lapidary Liber defota anima; and to my friends Baukje Finet van der Schaaf (Metz) and Ronald Grambo (Oslo). Without them, this dictionary would have been woefully short of many entries.

I would also like to express posthumous thanks to the late Father Brunet S.J., for permitting me to photograph the incunabula housed in the Les Fontaines Center in Chantilly.

INTRODUCTION

The Bones of the Earth

Stones have an extraordinarily long history and since antiquity they have deeply stirred the human imagination as quintessential representatives of the domain of the marvelous. and the lapidary of Damigeron and Evaxwere translated from the Greek, further feeding the flow of information that culminated in the second half of the twelfth century with the translations of Arabic lapidaries (which were themselves adaptations of Greek, Hebrew, and Latin texts). With the rise of literature as entertainment, poets and novelists had a vast body of workessentially about stones with extraordinary propertiesfrom which to draw material for embellishing their stories. This is why romances in medieval France were among the first literary works to make liberal use of gems.

The study of stones drew scant interest in post-Enlightenment France. In 1871, when Leopold Pammier sought to obtain an edition of the lapidary by Marbode of Rennes (circa 10351123), his friends were surprised to see him engaged in what they considered such an unappealing domain, with such arid soil and such a limited horizon. In short, despite a few books (a list of which can be found in the bibliography), this field of research had become fallow.

The stone is ubiquitous in human history. It has been used as a weapon since prehistoric times. In the Bible, David flattened Goliath with a stone from his sling. During the Middle Ages, it was viewed as the weapon of giants; certain tiny islands were said to be formed from the stones they once cast at their foes. A stone can sometimes resemble an axe, but it is also the weapon of those who have no other means to defend themselves. In Henry VI, Shakespeare puts these words in the mouth of one of his characters: If we be forbidden stones, well fall to it with our teeth!

The Bible has left us a number of sayings that feature stones, such as cast the first stone (John 8:7), stumbling stone (Isaiah 8:14), corner stone (1 Peter 2:6), if his son ask bread, will he give him a stone (Matthew 7:9), there shall not be left here one stone upon another (Matthew 24:2), and proverbs such as a rolling stone gathers no moss and you cannot get blood out of a stone confirm the importance of the mineral. Myths also bring in the stone motif, such as the myth of Sisyphus, for example, or the story of Deucalion and Pyrrha, who on Zeus orders cast stones over their shoulders onto the ground, which then gave birth to men and women.

I. Stones of the Middle Ages

The Genesis of Stones

Following in the footsteps of Aristotle, medieval scholars believed that the dry and moist exhalations occurring inside the earth combined to form minerals. According to another beliefand one that survived in folk traditions until fairly recentlystones grew in the ground and would continue to grow as long as they were not moved. To do so would be tantamount to uprooting them.

Hildegard von Bingen provides the following explanation for the genesis of precious stones: Gems are born in very hot regions of the East from the meeting of water with fiery mountains: the water foams and adheres to the rocks, then solidifies over a length of a time that can run from one to three days (Physica, preface). Several different opinions are recorded in the Old French dialogue Placides et Timo: Others say they are formed from air in the earth as solid works of the planets.

In the Scandinavian cosmogony myths, stones are the bones of the primordial giant Ymir, whose dismembered body formed the earth, sky, and sea. Another medieval dialogue, the Middle High German Lucidarius, tells us: The earth is made like man. The ground is the flesh and its skeleton is the stones.

Some stones are ascribed a different origin. Crystals are considered to be solidified snow. According to John Mandeville, Indian diamonds grow on the crystals formed by frozen water. Other stones are giants or dwarves that have been petrified by the rays of the sun.

Lastly there is a category of stones called bezoars, a term used to designate those that form in the bodies of animals, somewhat similar to gallstones.

Bartholomaeus Anglicus (Bartholomew the Englishman, thirteenth century) maintains in the same way that the quandros can be found in the head of the vulture and, citing Avicenna, says that the rosten or reiben lies in the head of the crab.

The lithic imagination was first stirred by foreign-sounding namesgagatromeus, cegolites, zimur, ranim, or kakabresome of which it then reinterpreted. For example the panchrous, the multicolored stone, became the panther and the opalius (opal) transformed into ophthalmius, because it is good for eyesight. An examination of the manuscripts provides evidence of permanent shifts, when it is not a case of substitutions or confused terms (i.e., a single name being applied to several stones, such as adamas, meaning both loadstone and diamond). When Arabic names invaded lapidaries at the end of the twelfth century, thanks to the translation of the lapidary by a Pseudo-Aristotle, gems answering to the names of elbeneg, dehenc, elendhermon, or haalkec appeared. And in the latter third of the thirteenth century, the Lapidario del Rey Alfonso (Lapidary of King Alfonso) introduced Chaldean stones. Only one of these has been identified: the bezebekaury, a name for ruby.

The Stone Is a Person

In La Rponse du Seigneur (The Lords Answer; II), Alphonse de Chteaubriant declares: People say that stones do not speak, they do not feel. What an error!

The stone has been regarded as a living being, a male or female creature capable of reproducing, believing, and having feelings. Albertus Magnus says that the peanite is of the female sex and that it conceives and engenders a stone that is similar to it. It is also said that the balagius (balas ruby) is the female carbuncle. According to John Mandeville, diamonds can be either sex and can engender children:

Men find them more commonly upon the rocks in the sea and upon hills where the mine of gold is... They grow together, male and female, and are fed with the dew of heaven. And according to their nature they engender and conceive small children, and so they constantly grow and multiply.

Philippe de Thaon mentions turobolein (in other words, pyrite) and Odiles stone (Odilienstein) stand on the Schlossberg near Freiburg-im-Breisgau. The Acta Sanctorum (Acts of the Saints) tells how on October 17, in the legend of Saints Cosmas and Damian, the prefect Lysias ordered them stoned, but the stones refused to strike the targets and instead turned back on the ones who had thrown them.

Stones speak and are used for divinatory purposes, especially the mineral siderite, which can be treated in the following fashion so that its voice may be heard.