An album of views of the Angers St Eligius window

Angers, Cathédrale Saint-Maurice, Bay 107, lancet to right, Life of St Eligius, c.1225-35:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/22274117@N08/albums/72157660151747127

Gordon Plumb

-----Original Message-----
From: John Dillon <[log in to unmask]>
To: MEDIEVAL-RELIGION <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Thu, Dec 1, 2016 7:38 am
Subject: [M-R] FEAST - A Saint for the Day (December 1): St. Eligius

medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture

Eligius (d. 659/660; Éloi, Aloy, Aloisio, Loise, etc., etc.) was a pious goldsmith of Gallo-Roman origin who served as master of the mint at Marseille under the Frankish kings Chlotar II and Dagobert I. One of the latter's _familiares_, he distinguished himself by ransoming prisoners of war and by founding monasteries at Solignac in his native Limousin and at Paris. Shortly after Dagobert's death in 639 Eligius took holy orders. In 641 he was elected bishop of Noyon-Tournai. He founded monasteries in his diocese and undertook missionary work in Flanders. A Carolingian-period collection of sermons circulated under his name (it's now known as the Pseudo-Eligius).

Eligius' Vita by his friend Audoenus (Ouen, Dado) of Rouen survives in a later reworking (BHL 2474). Jo Ann McNamara's English-language translation may be read here:
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/basis/eligius.html
That Vita's morality tale (cap. 47) of the greedy bishop and the late Eligius' horse combined with Eligius' having been a smith may have given rise to the story, popular in the later Middle Ages, of the saint's removing a lower leg (or just a hoof) of a horse that needed to be shod, shoeing the hoof, and then re-attaching to the unharmed beast the member in question. Eligius, who is also a patron of goldsmiths and of jewelers, thus became a patron of blacksmiths and farriers and is often represented with a hammer or with the horse's lower leg.

Today (1. December) is Eligius' feast day in many places and his day of commemoration in the Roman Martyrology. In the diocese of Beauvais, Noyon, and Senlis his feast is kept on the first Sunday of December. In some locales in northern France and in Belgium it is kept on other days in late November or early December.

Some period-pertinent images of St. Eligius:

a) as depicted (at left) in a mid-twelfth-century copy, of Limousin origin, of Usuard's Martyrology (Paris: BNF, Nouvelle acquisition latine 214, fol. 100v):
http://tinyurl.com/y8vyuvm

b) as depicted (nine scenes) in the earlier thirteenth-century St. Eligius and St. Nicholas window (bay 18; ca. 1235) in the cathédrale Saint-Étienne in Auxerre:
http://therosewindow.com/pilot/Auxerre/w18.htm

c) as depicted (scenes) in the earlier thirteenth-century Life of St. Eligius lancet in a choir window devoted to the lives of St. Peter and St. Eligius (bay 107; ca. 1240) in the cathédrale Saint-Maurice in Angers:
http://therosewindow.com/pilot/Angers/w107R-1.htm
http://therosewindow.com/pilot/Angers/w107R-3.htm
http://therosewindow.com/pilot/Angers/w107R-4.htm
http://therosewindow.com/pilot/Angers/w107R-5.htm
http://therosewindow.com/pilot/Angers/w107R-6.htm
http://therosewindow.com/pilot/Angers/w107R-7.htm

d) as twice depicted (protecting the chapel of Saint-Martial from a fire engulfing Paris; healing a paralytic in the abbey church of Saint-Denis) in the _Rouleau de saint Éloi_ in the Musée Carnavalet in Paris, the only known surviving portion of a seemingly earlier thirteenth-century (ca. 1240) Life of the saint created in the abbey of Noyon:
http://www.carnavalet.paris.fr/fr/collections/rouleau-de-saint-eloi
http://tinyurl.com/gqhaa9f

e) as depicted (at left) in the late thirteenth-century Livre d'images de Madame Marie (ca. 1285-1290; Paris, BnF, ms. Nouvelle acquisition française 16251, fol. 88r):
http://tinyurl.com/ykepc4g

f) as depicted in a fourteenth-century glass window (bay 19, Scenes of St. Eligius and of St. Thomas of Canterbury ) in Rouen's église abbatiale de Saint-Ouen:
http://therosewindow.com/pilot/Rouen-St-Ouen/w19-A.htm
http://therosewindow.com/pilot/Rouen-St-Ouen/w19-B.htm
http://therosewindow.com/pilot/Rouen-St-Ouen/w19-C.htm

g) as depicted in a fourteenth-century fresco in the church of the Holy Cross in Slapton (Northants):
http://www.paintedchurch.org/slapeloi.htm

h) as depicted in a panel of the early fourteenth-century Smiths' Window (bay 37, Schmiedefenster; 1320) in the Münster in Freiburg im Breisgau:
http://www.michaelseeger.de/muenster/eligius.jpg
A better view of the panel as a whole (but the caption is a tad uninformed):
http://therosewindow.com/pilot/Freiburg/n37-b2.htm

i) as depicted in an earlier fourteenth-century copy of the _Legenda aurea_ in its French-language version by Jean de Vignay (ca. 1326-1350; Paris, BnF, ms. Français 185, 182r):
http://tinyurl.com/ybnz6ej

j) as depicted in an earlier fourteenth-century French-language legendary of Parisian origin with illuminations attributed to the Fauvel Master (ca. 1327; Paris, BnF, ms. Français 183, fol. 248v):
http://tinyurl.com/y8vy8cv

k) as portrayed in relief in the mid-fourteenth-century structural member above the left jambs on the north portal of Öja kyrka, Öja (Gotlands län):
http://tinyurl.com/jzwo7zf
Detail view:
http://tinyurl.com/hq53asc

l) as depicted (grayscale view) in a now lost panel from the later fourteenth-century rood screen of St Andrew in Hempstead (Norfolk):
http://www.norfolkchurches.co.uk/hempstead/Eligius.jpg

m) as depicted in a fifteenth(?)-century pen-and-ink drawing in the margin of a page of a later tenth- or early eleventh-century copy of Audoenus' Vita of the saint (Tours, Bibliothèque municipale, ms. 1028, fol. 32r):
http://www.enluminures.culture.fr/Wave/savimage/enlumine/irht2/IRHT_051007-p.jpg

n) as depicted in a fifteenth-century fresco in Holy Trinity Church in Wensley (N. Yorks):
http://www.paintedchurch.org/wenseloi.htm

o) as depicted (at right) in a heavily restored fifteenth-century fresco in the Church of St Lawrence in Broughton (Bucks):
http://www.paintedchurch.org/broubhel.htm

p) as portrayed in a pair of fifteenth-century spandrel sculptures in the collégiale Sainte-Croix in Liège:
http://www.fabrice-muller.be/sc/iconographie/saint-eloi.html

q) as depicted in a probably early fifteenth-century vault fresco, last restored in 2007, in Højby Kirke, Højby (Odsherred Kommune) in Sjælland:
http://tinyurl.com/zwooofs

r) as depicted (left-hand column; right-hand column, St. Nicholas of Myra) in the early fifteenth-century Hours of René of Anjou (ca. 1405-1410; London, BL, Egerton MS 1070, fol. 81r; image zoomable):
http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/Viewer.aspx?ref=egerton_ms_1070_f081r

s) as twice portrayed in a pair of early fifteenth-century sculptures (statue and historiated base) by Nanni di Banco for an exterior niche of Florence's chiesa di Orsanmichele (betw. 1411 and 1415; original and recent copy; the originals are inside in the Museo):
1) Statue (original):
http://tinyurl.com/pdzr3uh
Detail view:
http://tinyurl.com/hzj8tmk
2) Statue (recent copy placed in the niche):
http://tinyurl.com/ylmktbk
3) Base (recent copy placed at the niche):
http://tinyurl.com/2e8a9og

t) as depicted in the early fifteenth-century Châteauroux Breviary (ca. 1414; Châteauroux, Bibliothèque municipale, ms. 2, fol. 204v):
http://www.enluminures.culture.fr/Wave/savimage/enlumine/irht2/IRHT_054049-p.jpg

u) as depicted by János Váci in the earlier fifteenth-century missal (1423) of the goldsmiths' guild of Vác, now in the National Széchenyi Library in Budapest:
http://mek.oszk.hu/01900/01949/html/index261.html

v) as depicted (at center; at right, St. Anthony of Egypt) in an earlier fifteenth-century fresco (1439) in the chapter room (interpreted by some as a refectory) of the eremo di Santa Caterina in Leggiuno (VA) in Lombardy:
http://tinyurl.com/zmymhj2

w) as depicted by Guillaume Vrelant in a mid- or slightly later fifteenth-century book of hours of Flemish origin (Bruges; ca. 1455-1465; Pierpont Morgan Library and Museum, Morgan ms. M.387, fol. 96v):
http://corsair.morganlibrary.org/icaimages/3/m387.096va.jpg

x) as portrayed in relief by Giovanni Gaggini on the mid-fifteenth-century tombstone (1459) for the goldsmiths' company in the basilica di Santa Maria delle Vigne in Genoa:
http://tinyurl.com/nwc4k73

y) as twice depicted (consecration as bishop; miracle of the horse's leg) by a follower of Rogier van der Weyden in a mid- or slightly later fifteenth-century drawing (1460s?; sketch for an altarpiece) in the Musée du Louvre in Paris (click on the images to expand):
http://arts-graphiques.louvre.fr/detail/oeuvres/7/110876-Triptyque-de-saint-Eloi
http://en.muzeo.com/art-print/triptyque-de-saint-eloi/van-der-weyden-rogier

z) as portrayed in a later fifteenth-century vault boss in the katholische Pfarrkirche St. Laurentius in Bremm (Lkr. Cochem-Zell) in Rheinland-Pfalz:
http://www.bremm.info/img/kirche/figur3.jpg

aa) as depicted (several panels accessible via hotlinks) by Niccolò da Varallo in his late fifteenth-century St. Eligius window (betw. 1480 and 1486) in Milan's cattedrale metropolitana di Santa Maria Nascente:
http://tinyurl.com/2uhur9x

bb) as depicted (scenes) by the Master of the Apocalypse of Aymar de Poitiers in a detached leaf, from a late fifteenth-century book of hours, in the Musée du Louvre in Paris:
http://arts-graphiques.louvre.fr/detail/oeuvres/0/111483-Saint-Eloi
http://arts-graphiques.louvre.fr/detail/oeuvres/0/111483-Saint-Eloi-max

cc) as depicted by Sandro Botticelli on the predella of his late fifteenth-century altarpiece of the Coronation of the BVM (betw. 1490 and 1492) in the Galleria degli Uffizi in Florence:
http://tinyurl.com/gsmj2xg

dd) as depicted (left margin at bottom) in a hand-colored woodcut in the Beloit College copy of Hartmann Schedel's late fifteenth-century _Weltchronik_ (_Nuremberg Chronicle_; 1493) at fol. CLIIr:
http://www.beloit.edu/nuremberg/book/6th_age/right_page/55%20%28Folio%20CLIIr%29.pdf

ee) as depicted (center panel at right; on the outer panels: St. Anthony of Egypt, St. Sebastian) by Hans Leu the Elder in a late fifteenth-century panel painting (ca. 1495) in the Schweizerisches Nationalmuseum in Zürich:
http://tinyurl.com/p37m4au

ff) as depicted (at center) in a late fifteenth- or early sixteenth-century panel painting attributed to the Master of the Madonna della Misericordia in the Museo del Prado in Madrid:
http://tinyurl.com/yacukul

gg) as portrayed in a late fifteenth- or early sixteenth-century polychromed wooden bust (ca. 1495-1505) in the Museo civico in Bolzano:
http://tarvos.imareal.oeaw.ac.at/server/images/7005723.JPG

hh) as portrayed in relief on an early sixteenth-century vault boss (ca. 1501-1510) in the nave of late fifteenth- / early sixteenth-century St. Eligius Kapelle in Krewinkel (Gemeinde Büllingen) in Belgium:
http://balat.kikirpa.be/object/10094445

ii) as depicted (at right) in an early sixteenth-century fresco in the chiesa di San Giovanni Battista in Salbertrand (TO) in Piedmont:
http://tinyurl.com/jy2ze5a

jj) as depicted (scenes) in the early sixteenth-century St. Eligius window (bay 0; 1506) in the église de la Madeleine in Troyes:
http://therosewindow.com/pilot/Troyes-St-Madelein/w0-Frame.htm

kk) as portrayed (at center) in the early sixteenth-century polychromed wooden statues of the Messkirch altarpiece (1519; manufactured in Ulm) in the Museum Schnütgen in Köln:
http://tinyurl.com/px96mta
Detail view (Eligius):
http://tinyurl.com/gm3jsa3

ll) as portrayed by Niklaus Manuel in an early sixteenth-century panel painting (1515) in the Kunstmuseum Bern:
http://www.wga.hu/art/m/manuel/eligius.jpg

mm) as portrayed in relief (at left) in an earlier sixteenth-century polychromed wooden compartment (for an altarpiece?; from Laupheim; ca. 1520) in the Liebighaus in Frankfurt am Main:
http://tinyurl.com/qcpnn5j

nn) as depicted by Adam Schlanz on a wing of an earlier sixteenth-century altarpiece (1523) in the Stephanskapelle in Genhofen, a locality of Stiefenhofen (Lkr. Lindau) in Bayern:
http://tarvos.imareal.oeaw.ac.at/server/images/7017155.JPG
The altar as a whole:
http://tinyurl.com/jcthr9k

Best,
John Dillon
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