Historia naturalis
In the early twentieth century, the source of
peridot for the jewelled artefacts of antiquity
was discovered to be the small island of St John,
fifty miles north of the Egyptian port of Berenice.
A triangular and unremarkable mass of land
emerging from the waters of the Red Sea.
Grains of olivine, of which peridot—sometimes
called ‘evening emerald’—is the gem variety, can
be found enclosed in networks of metallic iron on
pallasites, a sub-class of meteorite. These remnants
of luminary debris, partially eroded on entry into
the Earth’s atmosphere, show their distinctive olive
hue when placed in the path of the sun.
During the Greek domination of Egypt
There was, on the island of St John, a commonly
sighted mirage, appearing to those afflicted by an
excess of light: a sea of glass like unto crystal.
A product of the fusion of three simple substances:
sand, soda, and lime—one commonly cited example
is as follows: two enormous blanks weighing twenty
tonnes each, cast and used as lenses in a telescope.
Or: found in a cave at Beth She’arim, a raspberry-
coloured slab, opaque and nearly nine tonnes. The
purpose of which is unknown.
The Red Sea, a tropical body of water notable for
its abundant marine life and extensive coral reef, is
part of a large rift valley between the peninsulas of
Arabia and Africa. In this region in antiquity there
existed plentiful deposits of lapis—not a gem, but
a rock composed of several minerals. When finely
ground, lapis takes the name ultramarine. A costly
pigment commonly used in the destruction of
images.
During the reign of Cleopatra, the emerald mines
of Upper Egypt, near Zabara, produced stones of a
particularly desirable shade: the result of impurities
introduced via minute traces of chromium oxide.
Emerald, the rarest of gems, is marred by internal
fractures, more easily shattered on impact than
other varieties of beryl.
A flawless specimen is almost never seen.
At a later date, the artist Tiepolo replicates
Cleopatra’s wager with Marc Antony, general of
armies and traitor of empire. Dissolving a pearl in
a cup of wine, the queen drinks it down as draught
or proof. In the image the pearl appears suspended
between the thumb and forefinger of the most
beautiful woman in the room, flawless object on
which all eyes are fixed. Tiepolo’s work in this
period is characterised by always a mantled light,
having the characteristic of excessive luminosity. His
frescoes exposing, through the cunning duplicity
of hand and eye, a kind of internal corrosion of the
objects.
Called Topazos, though more correctly Topazios,
by Pliny the Elder—author of Historia Naturalis,
the first encyclopedia of the natural world, held
at the famed and later destroyed Great Library of
Alexandria, and then in monastic libraries across
medieval Europe—the island of St John was
believed, erroneously, to be the source of large
quantities of yellow topaz.
Also in abundance at the time: indigo, orpiment,
folium, verdigris. Gathered as loose rocks on the
surface of the sands. When dissolved in water
and mixed with a binding material, as in works of
tempera—the dominant medium for fixing images
to surfaces until the sixteenth century—their
various colours are accounted for by an internal
structure of minutely thin layers. Bending light
rays first in one direction, then the other.
Vivarium
Of the monastery known as Vivarium—
Or ‘place of life’.
Founded by Cassiodorus, eminently retired
Roman statesman. Who describes the coenobium
as a form of Eden, full of water and rich gardens. By
the Ionian Sea, near the city of Squillace, though
the exact site and circumstances are obscure.
At the apparent site, just south of the Torrente
Alessi, now the location of the remains of a single-
nave church, originally a mausoleum belonging
to a pre-existing villa. The entire complex set
teetering on a ridge that runs down to the placid
and deceptive water. From the alluvial bedrock a
porous, multi-hued substance taking the form of
hexagonal prisms sprouts in prodigious quantities.
At Vivarium, after apocryphal foundation, there
comes to be: a monastery, a library, a scriptorium.
Scribes toiling by daylight and candlelight, tracing
the precious words of God. At this particular apogee
of the art of illumination, simulated precious stones
and porphyry are used increasingly to decorate the
borders.
Among the significant codices reproduced at the
monastery: the twenty-eight figure-poems of
Hrabanus Maurus—after the carmina figurata of
the court poet to Constantine—bound upon the
sacred figure of the cross; various editions of the
four Gospels; and the famous Calendar of the year
354, the original lost but replicated in countless
surviving manuscripts.
Among the thousands of copies there exists a certain
exempla—a master copy of a manuscript outlining
a complex theory of infinity—that made its way
from the original Benedictine monastery of Monte
Cassino (the first destruction and abandonment
of which is dated to 581, and thereafter—), across
calamitous wars, a plague, and two famines.
Rendered in the customary Carolingian minuscule
introduced by Charlemagne (then considered a
wholly novel script), the codex survived virtually
intact, carried hidden in the robes of several
anonymous monks—all but the last perishing
in inexplicable circumstances on the journey to
Vivarium, before the monastery itself vanished.
These were dark times, and in the annals of the
historians and saints there is no mention of this
exempla, but for a marginal note in the enigmatic
Book of Kells, once stolen from the eponymous
abbey and now housed under protective glass at
Trinity College in Dublin.
With its decorated initial dating the manuscript
to the medieval period: the codex testifies to the
renewal of classical principles in art, returning the
winged and fleeing figure to three-dimensional
space. In the Book of Kells, note the canon tables
with their trompe l’oeil details: columns and discs,
arches and arcades. Inscribing a kind of cell.
Hidden beneath this enclosure, by illusion or fact
climbing out of the page, the note, so minuscule
as to be missed (certainly by the first centuries’ of
scholars) is a cipher. If correctly decoded, it gives
the coordinates of a sanctuary, dismantled and
reassembled: walls and windows carried piece by
piece over an unnamed mountain range. On the
new site a replica in exactitude, body and soul. Of
the old, no trace remains.
Following a wave of fire, sweeping the settlements in
merciless raids. From Vivarium the fleeing monks
who abandoned their cloisters. Thus surviving,
intact, from this. Into the next.
Ricorso
Supposing: an infinite series of dissolutions and
restorations at fixed periods in the course of
ages. That is, an infinite number of worlds.
The defining feature of all crystals: their repeating
lattice structure. Artful composition of the visible
world by invisible means—one wonders what
one sees at the edge of the range. As if on waking,
walking blind into a hall of mirrors.
And sometimes the scribe would have a poor
grasp of Latin, and his errors would multiply with
the work of those who followed. Faithful copyists,
quietly inscribing error into eternity.
In a time of persecution, during the reign of Urban
Of the flaws observed on the surface of the sun
I, Galileo Galilei, do testify:
At age thirteen sent to the monastery of
Vallombrosa, in the high woods, above the sombre
trees. At age twenty-four corresponded with the
greatest mathematical minds. Wrote the great
works not in Latin, but Italian, all the better to be
better read by all.
This seventh month of the calendar year, in the
terrible days of my persecution: saw the slow
revolution of the brightest star, and marked,
heretic, its imperfections. Here there are prodigious
monsters, here something monstrous defaces the
face of the sun. And worlds beyond worlds—
Sounds the alarm in Rome: field of empire bleeding
light. In the Index Liborum Prohibitorum, by the
Holy Office of the Inquisition inscribed as terrible
error for two hundred years.
This mind of God, held for his natural term in a
cell of no grand size. At Arceti, in a villa known
as Il Gioiello—‘the jewel’. By macular degeneration
heard, but could not see, the prophet Milton, in his
sad decline. In paradise, he wrote—
I saw an angel standing in the sun.
Returned as a body travelling light years, reaches,
with exactitude, the Medicean stars. Too late,
exactly as foretold.
But in the visible skies only eagles and doves,
rendered in rich and costly blue.
A high wind shook the trees of the buried inland
sea.
Occasional phenomena of occlusion, by which
the island is hidden. By which is meant: the island
cannot be found.
Lux aeterna
Composed in a time of persecution, during the
reign of Domitian
Composed as a score for sixteen voices, concluding
with seven bars of silence: in the days of the voice of
the seventh angel
Of the composition of spaces of worship, their
common use of decorative glass sheets—stained
by the addition of metallic salts, cut into pictures
while molten. Through them light diverges, on its
path from heaven.
The holy city of the final book of the Bible, composed
by the historical figure of St John, is figured as a
marvel of divine invention, with streets of pure
gold and gates of luminous pearl. Its foundations
are specified as, in this order: jasper, sapphire,
chalcedony, emerald, sardonyx, sardius, chrysolite,
beryl, topaz, chrysoprasus, jacinth, and amethyst.
In the holy book, often copied but overlooked: the
significance of numbers.
In handbooks for the valuation and sale of gems,
we learn that chalcedony was once abundantly
used for the carving of miniature scenes, and to
ward against bad dreams. Of jacinth—dedicated to
eclipses, wounds, and plagues. And asterism: the
six-rayed star of the sapphire.
To trace another path: ‘jasper’, a spotted or speckled
stone, derived from the Latin iaspadem. From the
Greek iaspis. From the first Word, which is: light.
What is this light? asks Augustine.
Out of the rift, starved of the bliss and mercy of
God—came the angels aswarm upon the air,
resplendent, effulgent, with swords of fire.
And the prophet told of the holy city, with its
eagles and lions, oxen and men; hemmed round
by angelic orders: illuminated by that light by which
they were created, themselves became light.
These angels that come, and pass from the future
into the past. Returned through the ages—the
divine, the heroic, the dissolute—always grasping
itself in its jagged jewelled claws.
Though the text, as discovered later, is full of errors.
I lived for a time in Rome, that great city without
beginning or end
and her light was like unto a stone most precious /
clear as crystal
I lived for a time on the island, in the middle of the
Red Sea. The waves were without end, blue-green
and mineral beneath a perfect sun.
I lived with no true sense of time. Only the sweet
rise and fall of glittering tides. Subtle emanations
measured in microns, at subterranean leagues.
And I John saw the holy city
Babylon, that is Rome, destroyed. Ruins upon
ruins, and the empire greatly diminished—until
the time of its kingdom come.
Glory of glories. And light, everlasting
Finis
NOTES
Excepting book titles and foreign words, italicised phrases
are quotes from the following sources:
The Bible: Authorized King James Version, with an
introduction and notes by Robert Carroll and Stephen
Prickett (Oxford University Press, 1997).
The Cambridge History of Medieval Monasticism in
the Latin West, edited by Alison I. Beach and Isabelle
Cochelin (Cambridge University Press, 2020).
Saint Augustine, City of God, translated by Henry
Bettenson (London: Penguin, 2003).
Roberto Calasso, Tiepolo Pink, translated by Alistair
McEwen (London: Penguin, 2009).
Florentine Mütherich, Carolingan Painting (London:
Chatto & Windus, 1977).
Ruth V. Wright and Robert L. Chadbourne, Gems and
Minerals of the Bible (New York: Harper & Row, 1970).