Gemme

GEMME. - The use of gems, especially in rings, was very widespread in the Roman world, and fashion ensured that it continued among Christians as well; Tertullian in fact ridiculed women who "wore sacks of gold on each of their fingers" (De cultu feminarum, 9: PL 1, 1314).

Gems could bear mythological scenes, engraved or in relief. Clement of Alexandria admonishes: "among Christians we may have a ring for sealing and closing more securely objects of value; all other rings are not permitted to us. The images engraved on them for use as seals should preferably be a dove, a fish, a swift ship with sails spread; one may also represent on them a lyre, like Polycrates, or an anchor, like Seleucus, and finally a fisherman on the shore of the sea, the sight of which will remind us of Peter and Moses. But let one be on guard not to put on one's finger the images of idols, the mere thought of which is a crime. Nor a sword, nor a bow, nor an arrow, for those who desire peace, nor yet vessels that recall orgies to the followers of temperance." And he adds: "if the faithful adopted the sign of the cross or scenes of other mysteries of the Christian faith, they risked betraying themselves before the pagans; if instead they placed profane and voluptuous subjects on their rings, they ran the danger of offending God" (Paedagog.: PG 8, 629 and 633).

In the Christian cemeteries, especially during the plunderings carried out there during the 17th and 18th centuries, very many gems were removed, found inserted in the lime sealing the tombs. Boldetti speaks of "jasper, topaz, plasma and particularly engravings in sapphirine agate and cameos of various kinds" found in his time (Osservazioni sopra i cimiteri dei SS. Martiri, Rome 1720, pp. 495-96); many of them went into the collection of Cardinal Carpegna.

In 1861, from the cemetery of Callistus, at the third mile of the Via Aurelia, later called of Calepodius, a cameo was extracted, on which was represented the triumph of Bacchus; Boldetti gives as coming from the cemetery of Priscilla a cameo with the head of Augustus; a cameo with Ganymede is said to have been found in the cemetery "in catacumbas." Boldetti reproduced ten rings found in the subterranean cemeteries of Rome with symbols of the anchor and the ship, with the monogram alone or with the A and the Ω between two palms (op. cit., pp. 502 and 506); others were reproduced by Carrucci, with the symbols of the Good Shepherd, of the IXΘYΣ, of the fisherman, of the dolphin clinging to the anchor, with Jonah, Daniel, etc. (Storia dell'arte cristiana, VI, Prato 1880, pls. 477-78).

G. B. De Rossi in 1851 found in the major cemetery on the Via Nomentana a fragment of oriental sardonyx with the head of Augustus, today in the Christian Museum of the Vatican Library, and in the same cemetery he saw set in the lime of a loculus a chalcedony phalera, of the type of those already seen by Buonarroti and which Borghesi demonstrated to have been worn sewn on the breast and on belts, especially military ones.

Enrico Josi