The vena amoris: why the ring goes on the left ring finger

Few gestures are as widespread as slipping a ring onto the fourth finger of the left hand. The custom seems obvious, yet behind it lies an ancient anatomical theory, wrong but fascinating: the idea that this finger had a direct connection with the heart. The history of this belief passes through Hellenistic Egypt, Latin scholars, Christian liturgy and early modern legal treatises, until it became the «vein of love» that people still talk about today.

An Egyptian theory told by the Romans

The oldest testimony comes from Aulus Gellius, who in his Attic Nights, written in the second century AD, reports the opinion of the grammarian Apion. According to this Alexandrian author, the Egyptians had discovered, by dissecting bodies, an extremely fine nerve running from the finger next to the little finger of the left hand all the way to the heart. For this reason, Gellius writes, Greeks and Romans had taken to wearing the ring on that finger, thinking it most worthy of such an honour.

More than two centuries later, Macrobius repeats the same explanation in the Saturnalia, once again attributing it to the Egyptians. He adds that the finger was called «medicinal», because physicians used it to stir their preparations, convinced that nothing harmful could touch it without the heart noticing. We are, of course, in the realm of belief: modern anatomy knows of no vein that links a single finger to the heart in any privileged way.

The iron ring of Roman betrothal

In Rome the betrothal ring had a concrete, almost contractual value. Pliny the Elder, in his Natural History, recalls that in his own day an iron ring without a gem was still sent to the bride-to-be as a gift. It was the sign of a commitment made between families rather than a sentimental declaration. In time gold rings appeared, along with designs showing two clasped hands, the motif of the dextrarum iunctio, from which comes the Italian habit of calling the wedding ring «fede», faith.

Christianity inherited the custom and placed it within the liturgy. In medieval rites the ring was blessed and put on the bride's finger, sometimes touching several fingers in turn while the Trinitarian words were spoken, finally coming to rest on the fourth. The English Book of Common Prayer of 1549 fixed the formula «With this ring I thee wed», which still accompanies many ceremonies in the English-speaking world.

The jurists' vena amoris

The Latin expression vena amoris, as we use it, is not ancient. It appears in an English treatise on spousals by the jurist Henry Swinburne, published posthumously in 1686, which takes up the old theory and speaks of a vein able to carry blood from the fourth finger to the heart. From there the phrase passed into books of curiosities and etiquette manuals, becoming the most frequently repeated explanation of the custom.

Not every culture, however, has followed the same rule. In several countries of central and eastern Europe, such as Germany, Poland or Russia, the wedding ring is traditionally worn on the right hand, while the engagement ring may change hands after the wedding. The right hand, after all, was the hand of the oath and of the handshake that sealed agreements.

The fact remains that a mistaken anatomical theory, reported at second hand from an Egyptian grammarian and preserved by two Latin scholars, has guided one of the most intimate gestures of European life for almost two thousand years. The vena amoris does not exist, but its history shows how well love customs can outlive the reasons that first gave birth to them.