The cross is naturally the most favourite of pendants; yet this symbol does not appear to have been commonly worn on the person till about the fifth century. Among the most interesting pectoral crosses in the British Museum is one inscribed with a text from Galatians VI. 14; upon its arms and lower part are rings for pendent gems, and in the centre the setting for a stone. Another cross, ornamented with nielloed[6] figures of our Lord, the Virgin, and two angels or military saints, has the name of its owner inscribed at the back. Both date from about the tenth or eleventh century. One of the finest and the best known of such ornaments is the gold and enamelled pectoral cross in the Victoria and Albert Museum, known as the Beresford-Hope Cross. This remarkable specimen of Byzantine jewellery, dating from about the eighth century, is formed of two cruciform plates of gold, hinged so as to form a reliquary, and set in a silver-gilt frame of later workmanship than the cross itself. The figures upon it, executed in translucent cloisonné enamel, represent on one part the Saviour on the cross, with busts of the Virgin and St. John on either side, and on the other a full-length figure of the Virgin and the heads of four saints (Pl. IX, 8). Jewellery ornamented in this manner is of great rarity; being executed nearly always upon pure gold, it has seldom escaped the crucible. [6] Niello: a composition of lead, silver, sulphur, and borax. Judging from the mosaics, as, for example, the portraits of Justinian in the churches of San Vitale and Sant' Apollinare Nuovo at Ravenna, brooches of the circular type appear to have been generally worn. Their chief characteristic was the presence of three chains set with jewels attached to them by loops. Coins, as in Roman times, were frequently mounted as brooches in a beaded or open-work edging. Bow-shaped brooches were worn, but not after the sixth century. Three inscribed examples of the fourth century, one of them of gold, are in the British Museum. [Illustration: _PLATE IX_ BYZANTINE JEWELLERY, AND ENAMELLED JEWELLERY IN THE BYZANTINE STYLE] Similar in workmanship to the crescent-shaped earrings described above, and of about the same date, is a remarkable gold bracelet in the Franks Bequest. It is formed of an open-work hoop decorated with swans and peacocks enclosed in scrolls issuing from a vase. A circular medallion with a repoussé bust of the Virgin forms the clasp.