ality when he deserves it.

Rings sometimes bore the name and title of the Saviour in full, as in
Fig. 135 from the Londesborough collection. Two hands are clasped in
front; it was, therefore, most probably a gift, or betrothal ring. It is
silver, somewhat rudely fashioned. The inscription (here engraved below
it) is in uncial characters, and shorn of its somewhat awkward
abbreviation, reads "Jesus Nazareneus Rex."

[Illustration: Fig. 135.]

[Illustration: Fig. 136.]

[Illustration: Fig. 137.]

The same collection furnishes us with the specimen of a religious ring
(Fig. 136), apparently a work of the fourteenth century. It has a heart
in the centre, from which springs a double flower. On the upper edge of
the ring are five protuberances on each side; they were used to mark a
certain number of prayers said by the wearer, who turned his ring as he
said them, and so completed the series in the darkness of the night.
Such rings are of very common occurrence, and must have been in general
use. They are sometimes furnished with more prominent knobs, as in Fig.
137. They are termed decade rings when furnished with ten bosses, which
were used to count the repetition of ten _aves_, but they are
occasionally seen with one or two additional bosses; when there are
eleven, they notify ten _aves_ and a _paternoster_; the addition of the
twelfth marks the repetition of a creed.

Allusion has already been made to the mystic virtues attributed to
stones during the Middle Ages, and for the fondness for collecting
antique gems. They were coveted not only as works of art, but for their
supposed power over the circumstances of life, or the welfare of
individual wearers. The idea very probably originated with the Gnostics
of the East, who engraved stones with mystic figures believed to impart
good luck or to keep off evil influences. So completely had this belief
gained hold on all classes, that a Gnostic gem set as a ring was found
on the finger of the skeleton of an ecclesiastic, in the Cathedral of
Chichester, "affording indubitable evidence that these relics were
cherished in the Middle Ages by those whose express duty it was to
reprove and check such gross superstition."[115-*]

This belief was ultimately reduced to a system. An old French
_Lapidaire_, compiled in the thirteenth century, assures us that a stone
engraved with the figure of Pegasus or Bellerophon is good for warriors,
"giving them boldness and swiftness in flight