Gold, 1.41 grams; 20.34 mm. Internal 17.86 mm, US size 7.5; UK size O. Circa 15th century AD. A beautiful religious ring with the letters IHS inscribed in to a heart shaped bezel, initials for IESUS HRISTOS SALVATOR, Jesus savior of man. Above the h on the bezel there is small cross that symbolizes the crucifixion of Christ, either side of the bezel the shoulders have arrow shaped panels detailed with cross hatching. In the Latin-speaking Christianity of medieval Western Europe, the most common Christogram is "IHS" or "IHC", derived from the first three letters of the Greek name of Jesus, iota-eta-sigma. Here, the Greek letter eta was transliterated as the letter H in the Latin-speaking west (Greek eta and Latin-alphabet H had the same visual appearance and shared a common historical origin), while the Greek letter sigma was either transliterated as the Latin letter C (due to the visually similar form of the lunate sigma), or as Latin S (since these letters of the two alphabets wrote the same sound). Because the Latin-alphabet letters I and J were not systematically distinguished until the 17th century, "JHS" and "JHC" are equivalent to "IHS" and "IHC". Ref: British Rings 800-1914 by Charles Oman; page118, plate 71 ring b. An extremely rare religious ring in extremely fine condition. Found early 1990's, ex Crawford collection.