Carbuncle is another name for a deep red almandine gemstone that has been cut with a smooth, convex face in a method called cabochon. Traditionally, the term referred to any red gemstone, most often a red garnet. Carbuncles and their chimeras have spanned three millennia. Intermingling red gems until the time of their crystal-chemical definitions at the end of the 18th century, they united, for commercial purposes, the various sardonyx and carnelian, garnets, ruby and spinel as an intrinsic common quality of their luminous dispersion magnified by artifacts. Although they share the same linguistic origin, this gemstone should not be confused with the medical term carbuncle, a type of abscess.

Cultural references

Legendary creature

In South American folklore, the carbuncle is a small elusive animal containing a mirror, shining gemstone or riches like gold. The description of the carbuncle vary, some saying it looks like a firefly in the night, or like having a bivalve-like shell and maize ear shape. According to the Book of Imaginary Beings "nobody ever saw it well enough to know whether it was a bird or a mammal, whether it had feathers or fur." A Chilean man known as Gaspar Huerta is said to have encountered a carbuncle while digging an irrigation canal, but reportedly he could not see what its shape was because he killed it on the spot to recover its riches. In Chilote mythology it is variously described as green-red shining animal such as a dog, cat, bivalve or simply a flame that is the "guardian of the metals".

Medieval texts

In fiction, a carbuncle can also be a stone with magical properties, usually capable of providing its own illumination to an otherwise dark interior. This is encountered in a number of medieval texts. In the French romance of c. 1150, Le Pèlerinage de Charlemagne à Jérusalem et à Constantinople, a fictionalized Charlemagne finds that his bedchamber in Emperor Hugo's palace at Constantinople has such lighting. An English translation from the Welsh version of c. 1200 says, "Within it was a golden column, and for light a carbuncle stone in its end, making it always day, when the day was gone." In the initial letter ostensibly written by the mythical Prester John and sent to European heads of state in 1165, the priest-king claims that carbuncles regularly serve as indoor lighting: "Indeed at either end of the palace, above the roof-ridge, are two golden apples, and in each of these are two carbuncles, so that the gold shines in the day and the carbuncles sparkle at night." In another of Prester John's architectural wonders there is "a carbuncle of such size as a large amphora, by which the palace is illuminated as the world is illuminated by the sun". The divinely illuminated stones in the Book of Mormon, Ether 6:2–3, match this description.

The Bible

Several passages in the Bible refer to gemstones, which are variously translated into English; some translations (such as the Jewish Publication Society of America Version given here) use "carbuncle" in the following passages:

Additional references