Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries 71 



The carbuncle was still regarded as luminous in the sixteenth 

 century. In The Dialogues of Creatures Moralised, probably written 

 anonymously around 1550, edited (with an introduction) by Joseph 

 Haslewood in 1816, we find the following statement on page 37. 

 " Carbunculus is a Precyous stone, as sayth Brito, and so namyd, for 

 it is brinnynge lyk a cole of fyre, and the brightnes of hitte shewith 

 in the nyght tyme. Hitte shynyth in derknesse so gieatly that the 

 flamys of hitte smytythe the iye sight. A myrowre of Glasse went to 

 this Carbunculus uppon a tyme and sayde: he was bright like Car- 

 bunculus and so if we two were one we would be of more excel- 

 lence." To which Carbunculus replied " No " because glass was of 

 " frayle stocke." 



John Maplet in his Natural Historic (London, 1567) wrote that 

 the carbuncle, " so called for that (like a fierie cole) it giveth light, 

 but especially in the night season. . . ." E. Fenton was another who 

 referred in his book, Certaiiie Secrete Wonders of Nature (London, 

 1569) , to a story of Luigi Varthema (Ludovicus Vartomanus, born 

 about 1480) . Varthema had seen carbuncles of the King of Pege in 

 India of " so great a shining, that who behelde them in any darke 

 or shaded place, seemed to have his boddy distempered . . . suche 

 was the light and piercing glimmers of these stones. . . ." This type 

 of statement was typical of sixteenth-century authors. 



A change in attitude toward these stories of luminous gems, tales 

 handed down from the Middle Ages, was to come in the seventeenth 

 century. The subject was discussed and a much more cautious 

 opinion expressed by Sir Thomas Browne (1605-1681), famous 

 physician and writer, in his Pseudodoxia Epidemica or Inquiries 

 into Vulgar Errors. In Book 2, Chapter 5, of the second edition 

 (1650) , he wrote: -^ 



Whether a carbuncle (which is esteemed the best and biggest of rubies) 

 doth flame in the dark, or shine like a coal in the night, though generally 

 agreed on by common believers, is very much questioned by many. By 

 Milius, who accounts it a vulgar error: by the learned Boetius,-^ who 

 could not find it verified in that famous one of Rodolphus, which was as 

 big as an egg, and esteemed the best in Europe. Wherefore, although 

 we dispute not the possibility (and the like is said to have been observed 

 in some diamonds) , yet, whether herein there be not too high an appre- 

 hension, and above its natural radiancy, is not without just doubt: how- 

 ever it be granted a very splendid gem, and whose sparks may somewhat 

 resemble the glances of fire, and metaphorically deserve that name. 



"« From T. Browne's Works, edited by Simon Wilkins, 2: 354-355, 1835. 

 ^' Anselmus Boetius or de Boot, who wrote Gemmarium et lapidum historia (Lugd. 

 Bat.. 1636) . 



