The earliest Jewish wedding-rings are said to have been plain golden circlets, without setting, indeed a silver substitute or even one of a cheaper metal was not forbidden. Pearls, favorite gems with the Jews, were sometimes used for settings at a later period. The purely ceremonial or symbolic significance of the Jewish wedding ring in early times is exemplified in its great size, the major part of these rings being much too large for wear. Sometimes, at the wedding feast, rings of this type were used as holders of myrtle-branches. The circlet surmounted with the temple figure was occasionally formed of two cherubim.[373] A ring supposed to have been the wedding ring of the Roman Tribune, Cola di Rienzi (ca. 1313–1354), is of silver, with an octagonal bezel; the hoop bears the names: “Catarina” and “Nicola,” those of Rienzi and of Catarina di Raselli, his bride. The letters have been placed in sharp relief by cutting away the background and filling it up with niello. Between the names are two stars. As Rienzi chose a star as his emblem on the coins he struck during his brief rule in Rome, this device coupled with the names makes the attribution of the ring not without some good foundation.[374] This ring was bought by Mr. Waterton in Rome for a trifling sum. It had been pledged in a Monte di Pietà, and was disposed of at one of the periodical clearing sales. In the fifteenth century the betrothal ceremony was usually performed in the presence of a notary public, not of a priest, and this continued to be the usage until after the Council of Trent, which ended in 1563. At the betrothal, by proxy, of Lucrezia Borgia with Giovanni Sforza, February 2, 1493, twin gold rings set with precious stones were given, one to be put on the fourth finger of the fiancée’s left hand, “whose vein leads to the heart” as the record specifies, while the other was to be placed on the bridegroom’s little finger.[375] In one of the very risqué tales forming the “Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles,” the authorship of which has been attributed to King Louis XI of France (1461–1483), it is related that a lady, while bathing, lost a diamond ring; the narrator adds: “This was one her liege lord had given her on the day of her espousal, and she prized it the more highly on this account.” Although diamond rings were not common at this time, the recently invented art of facetting the diamond was rapidly bringing these stones into fashion and favor. There is, indeed, a record, or at least a family tradition, that one of the three large diamonds cut in facets by Lodowyk van Berken of Bruges, about 1476, at the order of Duke Charles the Bold of Burgundy, was set in a ring and given by the duke to Louis XI, with whom he was then seeking to get on a friendly footing. This diamond is described as having been cut as a “triangle and a heart.” This possibly means that the triangular shape was slightly modified into a heart shape.[376]