gems, early lapidaries, early gemology, early mineralogy, Marbode of Rennes

This thesis begins by an introduction which contains, the life of Marbode of Rennes, something about the history of lapidaries, above all of Latin lapidaries, and explains the contents of the liber lapidum. In the second chapter, the author enumerates the medieval translations of the book into eleven languages and describes the editions of the Latin text. The chapter ends with a list of the manuscripts of the liber lapidum kept outside of France and with a description of the history and of the contents of the manuscripts kept in France. In the third chapter, we have the classification into six families of the manuscripts kept in France. The thesis ends with a supplement containing two chapters of the critical edition that the author will publish in the future: the prologue and chapter vi on the emerald with a French translation. At the end we find a bibliography and an index of the manuscripts cited in the thesis.