About Precious Stones and Images of the Cross

The story of the holy House of Loretto is engraved on brass in several languages upon the walls of the church at Loretto. Among others, there are two tablets with the story in English, headed, "The wondrus flittinge of the kirk of our blest Lady of Laureto." It commences by stating that this kirk is the chamber of the House of the Blessed Virgin, in Nazareth, where our Saviour was born; that after the Ascension, the Apostles hallowed and made it a kirk, and St. Luke "framed a pictur to her vary liknes thair zit to be seine;" that it was "haunted with muckle devotione by the folke of the land whar it stud, till the people went after the erreur of Mahomet," etc.

M. de Coulanges mentions that at Loretto he saw a golden heart set with diamonds, presented by Queen Henrietta Maria. "En l'ouvrant on voyoit cette princesse a genoux, qui presentoit le coeur du roi a la Sainte Vierge, avec ces mots, quo charius, eo libentias."

Queen Christina of Sweden completed her renunciation of all the pomps and vanities of the world at Loretto, by laying down at the foot of the golden image her crown and sceptre, with jewels of great value.

In the monastery of the Vatopidi at Mount Athos is the girdle of the Virgin Mary, which appears to be of leather, so far as one can see through the glass case in which it is kept, and is ornamented with diamonds and numerous rows of rudely worked and very ancient pearls. So far is the fame of its miraculous powers throughout the Egean, that frequently when a city is afflicted with pestilence, it is sent for to restore health to the inhabitants.

In the monastery of Xeropotamu, or the "Torrent," on Mount Athos, is a fragment of the true cross, consisting of one long piece of dark wood and two cross pieces, one above the other, the upper one, which is the shorter of the two, being intended for the superscription. Though not exactly a crucifix, it has a small figure of our Lord on the middle of it in ivory or bone; from the great abhorrence in which anything approaching an image is held in the Greek Church, even this would probably not have been spared, had it not been a reputed present from the Empress Pulcheria. Near the foot is a representation in gold plate of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, with an inscription in ancient Greek characters; but what is most remarkable about it is the wonderful size of the uncut diamonds and emeralds with which it is set. This is in all probability the same piece of the true cross which is mentioned in a golden bull of the Emperor Romanus Lecapenus (A.D. 924) as having been taken from the queen's treasury, and presented by him to this monastery after his recovery from a severe illness, on which occasion it was conducted thither with great pomp and ceremonial.

In the monastery of Sphigmenu, at Mount Athos, there is another cross, inferior in other respects, but not less valuable for its ancient diamonds, and the two together form a pair which it would be difficult to match elsewhere.

It has lately been pointed out that the great rarity of large diamonds in ancient works of art, even in Byzantine times, when we should have expected that the gorgeousness of the Court and the communication with Asia would have introduced them, is to be accounted for, not by the scarcity of the gem itself at that period, but by the prohibition which was imposed by the Indian sovereigns against the exportation from that country of any above a certain size. [King on the "Natural History of Precious Stones."]