Amulet, medicine, treasure? The value placed on Mediterranean red coral in the British Isles in the long seventeenth century

This thesis explores the significance of Mediterranean red coral within the British Isles during the long seventeenth century, considering both how coral was interpreted within the epistemological frameworks familiar to early modern people and whether attitudes to coral over the period indicate cultural continuity or cultural change. Building on previous scholarship on red coral and more expansive cultural histories of materials, this thesis takes an innovative approach, exploring how the value of coral was constructed from the perspective of specific sections of society, lay people (men, women and children) employing coral in their everyday lives and those with a professional or amateur interest in coral (physicians, collectors, natural philosophers). Drawing on a wide variety of sources, the thesis incorporates evidence from across the social hierarchy from monarchs to foundlings, physicians to sailors.

Popular in Classical writings and medieval devotion and medicine, by the early modern period, Mediterranean red coral as a material and an idea permeated British culture. The origins of red coral were explained in Greek mythology and its origins, properties and uses were described by the Roman natural historian, Pliny the Elder. Coral could be incorporated into the humoral theory propounded by Hippocrates and Galen, was praised by Paracelsus and deemed to be effective by the experiments of seventeenth-century British physicians and chemists. As a necklace or teething toy given to a small child, it had simultaneous properties to soothe pain, cure fevers and deflect the Evil Eye. As a string of beads, it is possible that coral could both recall the Catholic rosary and religious iconography of the Christ child with coral beads, while used as prayer beads or worry beads for those identifying as Protestant. As a semi-precious stone, coral's perceived properties to heal and bring luck and prosperity allied with the tenets of lapidary medicine and astrology; God's power linked the planets with complementary materials on earth. As a curiosity of nature, coral presented a beautiful and tactile item suitable for polishing and carving into wondrous forms for display while posing a conundrum regarding its origins and whether formed by God or Nature.

This thesis thus makes the argument that the expansive study of red coral as a multivalent material reveals the multiplicity of beliefs and concerns during the period but also comments on the pace of cultural change. While religious leaders, physicians and scientists may have loudly demanded total allegiance to one doctrine or another, at ground level, change was slow and beliefs were deeply held and long lasting. A study of coral from the perspective of different groups of people within British society thus helps us move away from the dialectic oppositions of Catholic survivalism versus Protestantism, old medicine and new, and magic versus science in post-Reformation Britain. In a religiously and medically pluralist society, ordinary people were able to exert choice about where to seek succour. Rather than experiencing a linear progression towards rationality, secularisation and modernity, my research demonstrates how coral offered British people a way to hold various world views concurrently, switch between them or even pretend allegiance to one identity, while maintaining loyalty to another.