gems, early lapidaries, early gemology, early mineralogy, diamond, Marbode, Albertus Magnus, corundum, history.1, carbuncle

No reader of The Faerie Queene can forget the shield of Prince Arthur; Spenser has endowed it with a personality of its own. In numerous martial engagements it accepts the brunt of the attack; and at times, when Arthur is faced with an antagonist of preternatural force or with superhuman conditions of combat, it becomes his most effective weapon. Living in an age that was unstained by scientific rationalism and writing in a great tradition, Spenser was well aware of the legends of arms and armour; and scholars, attempting to discover the sources of the figments of his imagination, have succeeded in suggesting not only the genesis of Arthur’s shield but its place in Spenser’s moral allegory.