The Curious Lore of Precious Stones / Being a description of their sentiments and folk lore, superstitions, symbolism, mysticism, use in medicine, protection, prevention, religion, and divination. Crystal gazing, birth-stones, lucky stones and talismans, astral, zodiacal, and planetary

by George Frederick Kunz

Sapphire

One of the earliest specimens of English literature, William Langley’s “Vision of William concerning Piers the Plowman” (written about 1377), contains a mention of the sapphire as a cure for disease:[495]

I looked on my left half as þe lady me taughte

And was war of a woman wortheli yeclothed,

Purfiled with pelure[496] þe finest vpon erthe,

Y-crowned with a corone þe kyng hath none better.

Fetislich[497] hir fyngres were fretted[498] with gold wyre,

And þere-on red rubyes as red as any glede,[499]

And diamants of derrest pris, and double manere safferes,

Orientales and ewages[500] enuenymes[501] to destroye.

Among the rich gifts offered at the shrine of St. Erkinwald, in Old Saint Paul’s, was a sapphire given in 1391 by Richard Preston, “a citizen and grocer of London.” He stipulated that the stone should be kept at the shrine for the cure of diseases of the eyes, and that proclamation should be made of its remedial virtues. St. Erkinwald was the son of Offa, King of the East Saxons, and was converted to Christianity by Melittus, the first bishop of London. In 675 A.D. he himself became bishop of London, being the third to attain that rank after the death of Melittus. His body was interred in the cathedral, and his shrine, which was richly embellished during the reign of Edward III (1327-1377), received many valuable donations.[502]

The usefulness of the sapphire as an eyestone for the removal of all impurities or foreign bodies from the eye is noted by Albertus Magnus, who writes that he had seen it employed for this purpose. He adds that when a sapphire was used in this way it should be dipped in cold water both before and after the operation.[503] This was probably not so much to make the stone colder to the touch as to cleanse it, certainly a very necessary proceeding when the same stone was used by many persons suffering from contagious diseases of the eyes.

Richard Preston’s sapphire appears to have been only one of a class regarded as having special virtue to cure diseased eyes, as is shown by the existence of various other similar sapphires in different parts of Europe. It is not very easy to determine the precise reason—if there be one—which rendered any single sapphire more useful than another in this respect. An entry in the inventory of Charles V notes “an oval Oriental sapphire for touching the eyes, set in a band of gold.”[504] Possibly the fact that a particular gem of this kind was used remedially, and was not set for wear as an ornament, may have been the only cause for a belief in its special virtue.

That the sapphire should have been regarded as especially valuable for the cure of eye diseases serves to illustrate the wide-reaching and persistent influence of Egyptian thought, and the curious transformations through which an originally reasonable idea may pass in the course of time. We have already noted that the sapphire of the ancients was our lapis-lazuli, and in the Ebers Papyrus lapis-lazuli is given as one of the ingredients of an eye-wash. This ingredient is believed to have originally been the oxide of copper sometimes called lapis Armenus, a material possessing marked astringent properties, and which might be used to advantage in certain morbid conditions of the eye. Lapis-lazuli, another blue stone, was later substituted because of its greater intrinsic value, its similarity of color rendering it equally efficacious according to primitive ideas on this subject. When, however, in medieval times, the name sapphire came to signify the blue corundum gem known to us by this designation, the special curative virtues of the lapis-lazuli were transferred to this still more valuable stone.

The proper method of applying a sapphire to cure plague boils is given at some length by Van Helmont. A gem of a fine, deep color was to be selected and rubbed gently and slowly around the pestilential tumor. During and immediately after this operation, the patient would feel but little alleviation; but a good while after the removal of the stone, favorable symptoms would appear, provided the malady were not too far advanced. This Van Helmont attributes to a magnetic force in the sapphire by means of which the absent gem continued to extract “the pestilential virulency and contagious poyson from the infected part.”[505]