A stone whose fire wakes in water

Isidore of Seville (c. 560–636) was a scholar and bishop in Visigothic Spain. His Etymologies bring together a great body of words, objects and inherited accounts of their properties. In the section devoted to fiery stones we meet the anthracitis. Its historical name belongs to this particular entry. To identify it with a precisely defined modern mineral would ask the brief description to support more than it can.

A pale vein against red

The stone is called anthracitis because, like the carbuncle, it too is fiery in colour, though encircled by a white vein. Its peculiar property is that, thrown into fire, it goes out as if lifeless, whereas when water is poured over it, it flares up.

– Isidore of Seville, Etymologiae, 1911, XVI, 14, 2.^[1]

At first the entry reads almost like the instructions for a little drawing. Isidore sets a pale vein against a ground the colour of fire. The eye needs both details to picture this particular stone. As soon as actual fire enters the sentence, the picture changes direction. The fiery stone, according to the account, goes out in the flames like something losing its life. Water makes it blaze again. A patch of colour edged with a lighter line has become a small sequence of events.

What makes a description memorable

The verbs repay attention. A specimen in a collection may occupy the same place for years. Isidore’s reader has to imagine the stone in two successive surroundings, revising a first expectation each time it moves. The reversal is one reason the entry is easy to recall. It shows how a medieval reference work could arrange knowledge through the shape of a story. The behaviour ascribed to the stone belongs to the inherited account. What we can observe directly is the care with which the writer brings colour, name and unexpected action together.