gems, early lapidaries, early gemology, early mineralogy, France

Because of the heterogeneity and extravagance of their content, lapidaries have often been neglected and remain, even today, largely overlooked in studies of medieval literature. Yet the large number of recorded manuscripts attests to their wide popularity and the significant place that precious stones held in medieval society and literature. The anonymous lapidary transcribed in the manuscript Paris, BnF, Fonds français, 2007—a prose lapidary dated to the 15ᵗʰ century—has, to date, been the subject of only one study, that of Barbara Geromel, who focused mainly on another witness (Turin, Biblioteca Reale, Varia 110), whose content—though incomplete—corresponds in every respect to that of the Paris manuscript. This prose lapidary fits into a long and rich history of precious stones since antiquity, but also distinguishes itself by its complex organization of material, as it adopts, in a partial and imperfect way, the alphabetical paradigm—until then rarely employed in encyclopedias due to the tensions it embodied with respect to theological order. As a material witness of a broader sphere—namely that of medieval encyclopedism—this lapidary contributes to the compilation of past knowledge and calls for deeper study, both of the material it contains, of its sources drawn from a large number of manuscript traditions, and of its alphabetical classification.