Rings for the finger

by George Frederick Kunz

A serpent ne’er becomes a flying dragon till he has eat a serpent.

Hence this ring combined the curative or talismanic powers attributed to the toad, the serpent and the dragon.[515]

The ring of St. Mark, said to have been long preserved in the treasury of St. Mark’s cathedral at Venice, was believed to have been acquired in a miraculous way. In the time of Henry III (1216–1272) the body of the saint, which had been taken to the cathedral, was suddenly missed and no trace of it could be found. Resort was then had to prayers and supplications, and these appear to have been answered, for one day the sacristan, while traversing the nave, saw an arm emerge from one of the pillars. He hastened to report this wonderful thing to the Doge and the cathedral clergy, who on reaching the building became witnesses of the miracle. As they were kneeling reverently before the column the hand of the apparition opened and let fall a ring, which was picked up by the Bishop of Olivolo. At the same instant, hand and arm disappeared, and the column opened, revealing in its interior an iron casket in which were the lost remains of St. Mark.

Not many years later this ring served to give proof of an appearance of the saint. One February day a fearful storm arose, piling up the waters of the lagoons and threatening the destruction of Venice. In the midst of the tempest, a man approached one of the gondoliers on the Riva dei Schiavoni, near the cathedral, and asked to be rowed across the canal to San Giorgio Maggiore. It was in vain that the gondolier protested he could not make head against the storm; he was at last forced to yield to the importunities of his would-be passenger. But what was his surprise to find that his boat proceeded as easily as though no storm were raging. On their arrival at San Giorgio Maggiore they were joined by another man, and the gondolier was now directed to proceed to the Lido. This time his reluctance was less difficult to overcome, although the storm was growing worse, for he felt encouraged by the ease with which he had already made part of the journey. And sure enough his long row to the Lido was equally uneventful. Here a third man joined the party, and the gondolier was told to row out between the castles on either side of the entrance into the open Adriatic. Feeling that he could now refuse nothing, the gondolier undertook to accomplish this apparently impossible task, and succeeded in reaching the sea. Here there arose before them a ship manned by the demons of the storm, who were steering their way in toward Venice, bringing utter destruction with them. And now the three men in the little boat stood up and pronounced an exorcism of such power that the ship foundered, and the demons, howling fearfully, were swallowed up in the deep. Immediately the tempest was stilled and the waves died down. The gondolier was now ordered to take his passengers back to the places where they embarked, and when the last of them, the first one he had picked up, stepped on to the Riva dei Schiavoni, he announced himself to be Mark, the Evangelist, and dropped a ring worth five ducats into the gondolier’s hand, telling him to show it to the authorities and say that it was St. Mark’s ring, in proof of which they would find that its carefully locked receptacle in the cathedral was empty.[516] This proved to be true, and the gondolier received a liberal pension as a reward for having aided, however humbly, in the preservation of Venice by St. Mark.[517]

The marvellous ring of Gyges may have suggested to Abbot Tritheim, or Trithemius, of Spandau (1462–1516) the idea of fabricating a ring which would give the wearer the power of becoming invisible at will. The Abbot asserts that he had made such a ring out of the material called electrum, a natural alloy of gold and silver, having the color of amber. To possess the requisite power, the ring must be cast at the hour at which the person designing to use it was born, and it should be inscribed with the word “Tetragrammaton” signifying the four letters composing the Ineffable Name. When this ring was placed upon the thumb of the left hand, the wearer immediately became invisible. Besides this virtue, when worn on any finger, the ring preserved the wearer from poison and betrayed the presence of enemies by changing color.[518]

Rings bearing the Latin inscription “Jesus autem transiens per medium illorum” (Jesus, however, passing through their midst),[519] were thought to confer invisibility upon the wearer. This inscription occurs on the hoop of a gold ring set with an uncut diamond, shown at the Special Exhibition at the South Kensington Museum, June, 1862.

This motto, “Jesus autem transiens,” etc., was in mediæval times regarded as a great charm against the dangers that menaced a traveller on his journeys. In his quaint old English, Sir John Mandeville says of this that these words were sometimes pronounced by “some men when thei dreden them of thefes on any way, or of enemyes, in token and mynde that our Lord passed through out of the Jews’ crueltie and scaped safely fro hem.” On the gold noble which Edward III had struck in commemoration of his victory in the naval battle of Helvoet Sluys in 1340, and of his escape from the perils he underwent therein, this motto appears as the legend.[520]

Lambeccius narrates that he once told Emperor Leopold I (1657–1675) of a magic gold ring, said to have been long preserved in the Austrian treasury, and whose special virtue was that it could be used as an oracle to foretell the results of an approaching battle. If victory was to crown the Austrian army, this ring would shine with an unwonted splendor. It was said to be made from the gold offered by the Magi to the Infant Jesus. While, however, sacred ceremonies were being performed before the Emperor Frederick, grandson of Rudolph I., just before his departure for a disastrous battle with Louis of Bavaria, the ring vanished from the eyes of man. Later, it was said to have been recovered and Lambeccius suggested that a ring he had recently observed in the treasury, bearing certain characters difficult of interpretation, might be the ring made from the offering of the Magi.[521] The omen of victory observable in this ring must have been suggested by what Josephus writes of the high-priest’s breastplate. According to his story “God announced victory in battle” by means of the twelve stones set in this breastplate, and he proceeds “such a splendour shone from them when the army was not yet in motion, that all the people knew God himself was present to aid them.”

A magic ring was made in the seventeenth century by a Florentine monk, named Nicolaus; this was designed to drive away gnats. It bore a charmed figure executed during the ascendency of the planet Saturn. The charm is said to have worked successfully. Since Saturn was usually regarded as a bearer of ill-luck, the operation of the magic figure must have depended upon sympathetic magic, the enlisting of the help of an evil power to combat a nature-plague.[522]

It is related that long ago in the Principality of Anhalt, a princess had the habit of going to the window after dinner and shaking out the crumbs from her napkin. Intention or chance induced a great toad to station itself under this window so as to eat up the precious crumbs. In due time the princess was wedded, and one night, shortly before the birth of a child, she saw a maid enter the room with a lighted candle in her hand. Approaching the bedside she handed a gold ring to the princess, telling her at the same time that it was sent by the toad, out of gratitude for the food she had given it, with the earnest warning to guard the ring carefully, as the fortunes of Anhalt were bound up with it. Moreover, every precaution was to be taken on Christmas Eve to guard against fire.[523] It is stated that this ring was still to be seen in Dessau in 1722, and that it was customary to put out all the fires in the palace on Christmas Eve, and to have watchmen patrol the building all through the night.[524]