Career of Marbod.
Of medieval Latin Lapidaries the earliest and what also seems to have been the classic on the subject of the marvelous properties of stones is the Liber lapidum seu de gemmis by Marbod, bishop of Rennes,[3063] who lived from 1035 to 1123 and so had very likely completed this work before the close of the eleventh century. Indeed one manuscript of it seems to date from that century[3064] and there are numerous twelfth century manuscripts. These early manuscripts bear his name and the style is the same as in his other writings. Born in the county of Anjou, Marbod attended the church school there, became the schoolmaster himself from 1067 to 1081, during which time he probably composed the Liber lapidum, then served as archdeacon under three successive bishops, and finally himself became a bishop in 1096. He attended church councils in 1103 and 1104 and died in September, 1123, in an Angevin monastery, whose monks issued a eulogistic encyclical letter on that occasion, while two archdeacons celebrated his integrity, learning, and eloquence in admiring verse. Marbod’s own productions are also in poetical form. It is interesting to note that despite his early date he was eulogized not as a lone man of letters in an uncultured age but as “the king of orators, although at that time all Gaul resounded with varied studies.”
Relation of the Liber lapidum to the prose Evax.
The Liber lapidum is a Latin poem of 734 hexameters describing sixty stones. In the opening lines Marbod writes:
“Evax, king of the Arabs, is said to have written to Nero,
Who after Augustus ruled next in the city.[3065]
How many the species of stones, what names, and what colors,
From what regions they came, and how great the power of each one.”
Making use of this worthy book, Marbod has decided to compose a briefer account for himself and a few friends only, believing that he who popularizes mysteries lessens their majesty. As a result of this opening line and the fact that in some manuscripts Marbod’s own name is not given, his poem is sometimes listed in the catalogues as the work of Evax.[3066] There is also, however, extant a work in Latin prose which opens, “Evax, king of Arabia, to the emperor Tiberius greeting.”[3067] But as this prose work is not much longer than Marbod’s poem, and seems to be known only from a single manuscript of the fourteenth century, it is doubtful if it is the work which he professed to abbreviate. This prose work is also ascribed to Amigeron or Damigeron,[3068] to whom we have already seen that the author of Lithica was supposed to be indebted and whose name was regarded as that of a famous magician. After alluding to the magnificent gifts which the emperor had sent to Evax by the centurion Lucinius Fronto and offering this book in return, the author of the prose version lists seven stones appropriate, not, strangely enough, to the seven planets, but to seven of the signs of the zodiac.[3069] Fifty chapters are then devoted to as many stones, beginning with Aetites, which is twenty-fifth in Marbod’s list, and ending with Sardo, while Sardius comes tenth in Marbod’s poem. Marbod’s own order, however, sometimes varies in the manuscripts.[3070]
Problem of Marbod’s sources.