Fig. 16.—Polycandelon or Disc, for Seventeen Lamps, in the British Museum.
At the end of the twelfth century, Robert de Clari, the knight of Amiens, wrote—“Throughout the church hang one hundred candelabra, and there is not one which does not hang from a silver chain as thick as a man’s arm, and each candelabrum has quite twenty-five lamps or more, and there is not a single candelabrum which is not worth two hundred silver marks.” Benjamin of Tudela mentions “candelabra, lamps, and lanterns, of gold and silver more than any man can name;” and Stephen of Novgorod (1350) speaks of “a multitude immense, innumerable, of lamps.”
Of the great brilliance of illumination obtained in the early churches there can be no doubt. Paulinus writes that at his church at Nola the lights were suspended in such profusion that they seemed to float in a sea. An interesting account of the method of lighting followed at the Lateran, illustrated by a plan of the circles, is given by Rohault de Fleury.[192]
A Byzantine lamp-holder lately sent to the Louvre from Constantinople is probably almost identical in general form with the “discs” of Paulus. This polycandelon is a broad flat ring of bronze pierced with eight holes for as many lights, and suspended by four chains. It bears a votive inscription which reads, “Lord, remember thee of Thy servant Abraham, son of Constantine.”[193]
In the British Museum is a much more ornate example of the same kind of disc. This is also of bronze, about sixteen inches diameter, pierced with seventeen holes for the lights, the interspaces being cut away to form a radiating pattern. We give a drawing of this interesting lamp, with which we have associated a small pierced plate for a lamp chain in the same collection ([Fig. 16]). In the Archæological Museum at Granada there is an ornamental disc closely resembling the example in the British Museum. It came from the mosque of Elvira, and probably belongs to the ninth century. We mention this because the bottom plate of the modern mosque lamp with the small holes which take glass tubular vessels eight or ten inches long and only about two inches in diameter, continues the tradition of the Byzantine polycandela, and the oil vessels well represent those like spear shafts mentioned by the Poet.
Fig. 17.—Silver Polycandelon from Lampsacus, in the British Museum.
In another example in the British Museum the disc is not quite flat but of the form of a dinner plate, the holes for the lamps being around the rim. This lamp-holder is of silver, and was brought from Lampsacus near Gallipoli with several altar vessels inscribed with a monogram which reads ΜΗΝΑ or ΑΜΗΝ. In [Fig. 17] we have restored the oil vases. Another bronze polycandelon has recently been brought from Egypt by Professor Flinders Petrie: this is about eight inches across ([Fig. 18][194]).
Fig. 18.—Coptic Polycandelon for Four Lamps.