gems, glyptic, engraved gems, agate, cameo, intaglio, amulet, Greek, Roman, gems for healing, medicinal use of gems, amulets, magical gems

The notebooks of Lionel Bonnemère take the form of fourteen school exercise books, with lined paper and cardboard covers. Only the last is not paginated. Notebooks thirteen and fourteen are devoted to the author’s research on Roman gladiators. Notebooks four and nine are not present in the collections of the Musée national des Arts et Traditions populaires. On the flyleaf of notebook ten, Lionel Bonnemère notes: “My collection was begun in 1882; before that period, I had only a few jewels bought at random, and of little importance.” Notebook six is dated February 1890, notebook seven November 1891, and notebook eight 1900. In each notebook, the objects are grouped by series (jewelry, amulets, smokers’ objects, ribbons, political objects, passementerie…) and numbered. The notes provide explanations about an object, indicate comparisons with analogous objects, and add supplementary information gathered after the catalog. They are placed at the end of the notebook, except in notebook three where they appear at the beginning and end of the manuscript. The series devoted to amulets and talismans represent more than one-third of the notebooks, that is 347 pages out of 972. Notebook five contains 223 pages on the subject, which is also treated in notebooks one, two, three, and twelve. For publication, the text of Lionel Bonnemère is transcribed in full, with his spelling and numbering retained (for example, in notebook five where number 213 is followed by 312). The notes have been kept in their original place, but the system of cross-reference has been clarified: in the publication, the page index replaces the reference to another notebook. The objects appearing in the collections of the Musée national des Arts et Traditions populaires are identified by their inventory number, followed by the reference number of the photographic plate, and the reference to the illustration in the work. Finally, in order to preserve the document’s “raw” character, it did not seem useful to add a contemporary bibliography. Readers may refer to the work of Jean Marquès-Rivière, Amulettes, talismans et pantacles dans la tradition orientale et occidentale, published by Payot in 1972.