Saint Eligius

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Saint Eligius bigraphy, stories - Roman Catholic bishop and saint

Saint Eligius : biography

c. 588 – 1 December 660

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Saint Eligius (also Eloy or Loye) () (c. 588 – 1 December 660) is the patron saint of goldsmiths, other metalworkers, and coin collectors. He is also the patron saint of the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers (REME), a corps of the British Army, but he is best known for being the patron saint of horses and those who work with them. Eligius was chief counsellor to Dagobert I, Merovingian king of France. Appointed the bishop of Noyon-Tournai three years after the king’s death in 642, Eligius worked for twenty years to convert the pagan population of Flanders to Christianity.

The legend of the shoeing of the horse

There is also a legend that St Eloi resolved the problem of a horse reluctant to be shod. He thought it was possessed by demons, so he cut off the horse’s foreleg and, while the horse stood on the remaining three legs and watched, he re-shod the hoof on the amputated leg, before miraculously re-attaching the leg to the horse. The legend is depicted at Slapton Church Yorkshire, England,http://www.paintedchurch.org/slapeloi.htm Slapton Church Yorkshire, England, and also in a 14th century painting in the Petit Palais http://petit-palais.org in Avignon, France.

Veneration

St Eligius is particularly honored in Flanders, in the province of Antwerp, and at Tournai, Kortrijk, Ghent, Bruges, and Douai. During the Middle Ages his relics were the object of special veneration, and were repeatedly divided and transferred to other resting-places, in 881, 1066, 1137, 1255, and 1306. A mass of legend has gathered round the life of Saint Eloi, who as the patron saint of goldsmiths is still very popular with goldsmiths, farriers and car mechanics.

He is the patron of goldsmiths, blacksmiths, and all workers in metal. He is generally represented as a bishop, a crosier in his right hand, holding a miniature church of chased gold on the open palm of his left hand. St. Eligius is also the patron saint of cattle and horses.Olmert, Michael (1996). Milton’s Teeth and Ovid’s Umbrella: Curiouser & Curiouser Adventures in History, p.230. Simon & Schuster, New York. ISBN 0-684-80164-7.

An annual mass is celebrated around 9 December at Notre Dame de Paris for members of the Confraternity of St Eloi. This follows the tradition of the May offering, usually a religious painting, made to the Cathedral between 1630 and 1707 by the goldsmiths of Paris.http://www.notredamedeparis.fr/-Les-grands-Mays- Les grands Mays – In French The tradition of the Guild Chapel was revived in 1953 by the Paris goldsmiths who provided the altar, crucifix above it and a statue of the Saint.http://www.notredamedeparis.fr/Messe-de-la-Saint-Eloi Messe de la Saint Eloi – In French

Biography

Eligius was born at the "villa" of Chaptelat, six miles north of Limoges, in Aquitaine (now France), into an educated and influential Gallo-Roman family. His father, recognizing unusual talent in his son, sent him to the goldsmith Abbo, master of the mint at Limoges. Later Eligius went to Neustria, the kingdom of the Franks, where he worked under Babo, the royal treasurer, on whose recommendation Clotaire II, king of the Franks, is said to have commissioned him to make a throne of gold adorned with precious stones.

"And from that which he had taken for a single piece of work, he was able to make two. Incredibly, he could do it all from the same weight for he had accomplished the work commissioned from him without any fraud or mixture of siliquae, or any other fraudulence. Not claiming fragments bitten off by the file or using the devouring flame of the furnace for an excuse, but filling all faithfully with gems, he happily earned his happy reward."

The story, from the contemporary biography written by his friend Audoin, aka Ouen or Saint-Ouen or Dado, bishop of Rouen, gives a sense of the level of corruption that was a normal expectation in Merovingian France.

St. Eligius is the Patron Saint of the Royal Electrical Mechanical Engineers.http://www.army.mod.uk/reme/reme.aspx