That all trace has been lost of an emerald engraved with the head of Christ and given to Pope Innocent VIII by Sultan Bajazet II about the year 1488, is greatly to be deplored, even though there be no truth in the legend or report that it had been engraved in the time of Christ by the order of Tiberius Cæsar. The evidence of two medals with Latin legends and of certain old paintings with English inscriptions of the sixteenth century seems to prove the existence of the gem in the Vatican treasury about the time specified, and it has been conjectured, with some probability, that the emerald had been engraved by a Byzantine artist at some time before 1453, when Constantinople fell into the hands of the Turks, and that this gem formed part of the booty they then secured. A print, often copied photographically and otherwise, purporting to be a representation of this emerald portrait of Christ, has no evidential value, and has either been freely worked up from the details of the spurious letter of Lentulus to Tiberius, giving a personal description of the Saviour, or still more probably from a Rafaelesque type of Christ’s head.[529] The beads of rosaries, when blessed by the Supreme Pontiff, or by one of the dignitaries of the Church, are considered to be endowed with a certain special virtue in favor of the individual for whom the blessing is imparted. However, should this person loan the beads to another with the intention of making him a partaker of this special blessing, or indulgencing, they lose their virtue. It is prescribed that these beads should be made of stone, glass, or some other durable material not easily broken, in order that the effects of the blessing should not be lost, or perhaps that the object so blessed should be less liable to injury. Various precious stones as well as pearls are used for this purpose, there being generally groups of ten small spheres, each group separated from the other by a larger sphere, the ten smaller beads serving to numerate the paternosters while the large bead is passed through the fingers when a credo has been recited.