Another mediæval story is founded on the same myth, but purified and Christianised. A knight is playing at ball and incommoded by his ring. He therefore removes it, and places it for safety on the finger of a statue of the Blessed Virgin. On seeking it again he finds the hand of the finger clasped, and is unable to recover his ring; whereupon the knight renounces the world, and, as the betrothed of the Virgin, enters a monastery.
Gifts of rings to the Virgin were common in the Middle Ages. Monstrelet relates that at the execution of the Constable of France, Louis de Luxembourg, in the reign of Louis XI., he took a gold ring set with a diamond from his finger, and, giving it to the Penitentiary, desired he would offer it to the image of the Virgin Mary, and place it on her finger, which he promised to perform.
Mr. J. Baring Gould, in his ‘Curious Myths of the Middle Ages,’ relates a legend by Cæsarius of Heisterboch of a similar character to that of Venus and the ring. A certain clerk, Philip, a great necromancer, took some Swabian and Bavarian youths to a lonely spot in a field, where, at their desire, he proceeded to perform incantations. First, he drew a circle round them with his sword, and warned them on no consideration to leave the ring.
Then, retiring from them a little space, he began his incantations, and suddenly there appeared around the youths a multitude of armed men brandishing weapons, and daring them to fight. The demons, failing to draw them by this means from their enchanted circle, vanished, and there was seen a company of beautiful damsels, dancing about the ring, and by their attitudes alluring the youths towards them. One of them, exceeding in beauty and grace the others, singled out a youth, and, dancing before him, extended to him a ring of gold, casting languishing glances towards him, and, by all the means in her power, endeavouring to attract his attention and kindle his passion. The young man, unable to resist any longer, put forth his finger beyond the circle to take the ring, and the apparition at once drew him towards her, and vanished with him. However, after much trouble, the necromancer was able to recover him from the evil spirit.
‘The incident of the ring,’ remarks Mr. Gould, ‘in connexion with the ancient goddess, is certainly taken from the old religion of the Teutonic and Scandinavian peoples. Freyja was represented in her temples holding a ring in her hand; so was Thorgerda Hördabrúda. The Faereyinga Saga relates an event in the life of the Faroese hero Sigmund Brestesson, which is to the point. “They (Earl Hakon and Sigmund) went to the temple, and the earl fell on the ground before her statue, and there he lay long. The statue was richly dressed, and had a heavy gold ring on the arm. And the earl stood up and touched the ring, and tried to remove it, but could not; and it seemed to Sigmund as though she frowned. Then the earl said: ‘She is not pleased with thee, Sigmund, and I do not know whether I shall be able to reconcile you; but that shall be the token of her favour, if she gives us the ring which she has in her hand.’ Then the earl took much silver, and laid it on her footstool before her, and again he flung himself before her, and Sigmund noticed that he wept profusely. And when he stood up he took the ring, and she let go of it. Then the earl gave it to Sigmund and said: ‘I give thee this ring to thy weal; never part with it;’ and Sigmund promised he would not.”
‘This ring occasions the death of the Faroese chief. In after years King Olaf, who converts him to Christianity, knowing that this gold ring is a relic of paganism, asks Sigmund to give it to him: the chief refuses, and the king angrily pronounces a warning that it will be the cause of his death. And his word falls true, for Sigmund is murdered in his sleep for the sake of the ring.’
There was no limit to the credulity of believers in the mystic in the middle and even in later ages. Sir Walter Scott, in his ‘Demonology and Witchcraft,’ remarks that the early dabblers in astrology and chemistry, although denying the use of all necromancy—that is, unlawful or black magic—pretended always to a correspondence with the various spirits of the elements, on the principle of the Rosicrucian philosophy. They affirmed that they could bind to their service, and imprison in a ring, a mirror, or a stone, some fairy sylph or salamander, and compel it to appear when called, and render answers to such questions as the viewer should propose.’[34]
In the reign of Henry VIII. (1533) Jones, the famous, or rather infamous, ‘Oxford Conjurer,’ told his dupe, Sir William Neville, that amongst other marvels he could make rings of gold which would ensure the favour of great men to those who wore them. He said ‘that my lord cardinal (Wolsey) had such,’ and he promised one to Sir William and his brother.[35]
It is not a little curious that Henry VIII. himself, the despoiler of monasteries, and, to a certain extent, the uprooter of many superstitious practices, placed such faith in the traditional virtues of a jewel that had for ages decked the shrine of Thomas à Becket at Canterbury that he caused it to be placed in a ring, which he constantly wore afterwards, in the manner of those times, on his enormous thumb. The last time that this jewel appears in history is among the ‘diamonds’ of the golden collar of his daughter Queen Mary, who, although a bigoted Roman Catholic, did not scruple to wear the spoils of a shrine. This jewel was called the ‘royal of France’ having been presented to the shrine of the murdered Archbishop by King Louis VII. in 1179.[36]
