After the decadence of Roman power in the East, the rulers of India and Persia, through their control of the fisheries, again accumulated enormous quantities of pearls. All of the early travelers to those countries were astonished at the lavish display of these gems in decorative costume.
The manuscript of Renaudot’s two Mohammedans, who visited India and China in the ninth century, notes that the kings of the Indies were rich in ornaments, “yet pearls are what they most esteem, and their value surpasses that of all other jewels; they hoard them up in their treasures with their most precious things. The grandees of the court, the great officers and captains, wear the like jewels in their collars.”[[24]]
FRANCIS I, KING OF FRANCE, 1494–1547
Louvre, Paris
ISABELLE DE VALOIS
By Pantoia de la Cruz, Prado Museum, Madrid
Inventories of some of the oriental collections of later times seem to be extravagant fiction rather than veritable history. In that interesting book dictated in a Genoese prison to Rusticiano da Pisa, accounts are given by Marco Polo of great treasures seen by the first Europeans to penetrate into China. He describes the king of Malabar as wearing suspended about his neck a string of 104 large pearls and rubies of great value, which he used as a rosary. Likewise on his legs were anklets and on his toes were rings, all thickly set with costly pearls, the whole “worth more than a city’s ransom. And ’tis no wonder he hath great store of such gear; for they are found in his kingdom. No one is permitted to remove therefrom a pearl weighing more than half a saggio. The king desires to reserve all such to himself, and so the quantity he has is almost incredible.”[[25]]
Later travelers give wonderful descriptions of this excessive passion for pearls. Literature is full of this appreciation, and of the part which these gems played in the affairs of the Orientals. Who has not dwelt with delight upon those imperishable legends such as are embodied in the Arabian Nights, of the pearl voyages by Sindbad the Sailor, of the wonderful treasure chests, and of the superb necklaces adorning the beautiful black-eyed women!
The returning Crusaders in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and the development of the knightly orders, had much to do with spreading through Europe a fondness for pearls in personal decoration. Those who, like Chaucer’s knight, had been with Peter, King of Cyprus, at the capture and plunder when “Alexandria was won,” returned to their homes with riches of pearls and gold and precious stones. And learning much relative to decorative art from Moorish craftsmen, the jewelers of western Europe set these in designs not always crude and ineffective.
Although they were well known and valued, pearls do not seem to have been much used in England before the twelfth century, as the Anglo-Saxons were not an especially art-loving people. The word itself is of foreign derivation and occurs in a similar form in all modern languages, both Romance and Teutonic; perle, French and German; perla, Italian, Portuguese, Provençal, Spanish, and Swedish; paarl, Danish and Dutch. Its origin is doubtful. Some philologists consider it Teutonic and the diminutive of beere, a berry; Claude de Saumaise derives it from pirula, the diminutive of pirum, a sphere; while Diez and many others refer it to pira or to the medieval Latin pirula, in allusion to the pear shape frequently assumed by the pearl.[[26]]