chalcedonyn.

Etymology: The current form c(h)alcedony is directly adapted < Latin c(h)alcedonius , used in the Vulgate to render Greek χαλκηδών , in Revelation xxi. 19, the name of the precious stone forming the third foundation of the New Jerusalem, but found nowhere else. Adapted forms of the same word in Old French were calce- , calcidoine , whence the Middle English calcidoine , calcedun ; also cassidoine , whence Middle English cassidoine n.¹ and its varieties, which are separately treated. The 16th cent. chalcedon was perhaps directly from New Testament Greek. The word is of very complicated history. The Latin is commonly assumed to be the same as the adjective chalcēdonius of Chalcedon in Asia Minor, as if it were ‘Chalcedonian stone’, but this is very doubtful. In interpreting the name in the Vulgate, which has the variant form carcedonius, the early writers identified it with a stone mentioned by Pliny xxvii. §§103, 104, where manuscripts have the variants carchedonia, charcedonia, calcedonia, calchedonia, carchedonius, said to be found in North Africa, and to be brought by way of Carthage (Καρχηδών), which, from the description, could have nothing to do with the chalcedony of the moderns. Isidore has carchedonia; Epiphanius de Gemmis iv, says it is produced ἐν Καρχηδόνι τῆς Λιβύης. The carchedonius or chalcedonius is mentioned and moralized upon by a whole catena of writers, including especially Bæda; but to none of them was it more than a traditional name, about which there clustered notions originally derived from Pliny with an accretion of later fables. The first to try to identify it with any known stone was apparently Albertus Magnus (1205–1282), who may have had in view some form of the stone to which the name is now given. (See the exhaustive article of Schade Altdeutsches Wbuch. 1363.)