Most of the dioceses of France have traditionally kept today as the feast of St Eligius (“Éloi” in French), who was born near Limoges in about 590, and died on this day in 660 after serving as bishop of Noyon for 19 years. In youth, he was trained as a goldsmith, and has long been honored as the heavenly Patron of that art; his biography attributes to him reliquaries of several prominent French Saints, including
Martin of Tours, and
Denys and
Genevieve of Paris. Under the Merovingian King Dagobert I (629-39), and his son Clovis II (639-57), he served as the royal treasurer, and several coins with his name on them are still extant. When he was elected bishop of Noyon in 641, the majority of the inhabitants in the regions to the north of that city, which are now the southern part of Flanders, were still pagan; it was in no small measure his preaching, and the example of his great charity to the poor and sick, that helped to convert them to Christianity. He was also the founder of several monasteries, including an enormous convent at Paris which housed 300 nuns.
 |
| The church itself was commissioned from the painter Raphael in 1509, but only completed in 1575, 55 years after his death, by Baldassare Peruzzi and Aristotele da Sangallo. Because of its proximity to the Tiber, it was frequently damaged by the river’s winter flooding, and frequently restored. It is now almost never open, one of the many Roman churches that fall under the nickname “Santa Maria Sempre Chiusa - St Mary’s Always Closed.” (Image from Wikimedia Commons by JTSH26, CC BY-SA 4.0) |
 |
| A reliquary of the Saint in the cathedral of the Holy Savior in Bruges, one of his many relics venerated in various parts of northern France and Belgium. (Image from Wikimedia Commons by Zairon, CC BY-SA 4.0) |
The National Museum of Catalonia in Barcelona has the doors of a particularly nice altarpiece dedicated to St Eligius, formerly in the chapel of the silversmiths’ guild in the church of Our Lady of Mercy in that city. This was painted by a Portuguese artist named Pere Nunyes, whose work is documented in various parts of Catalonia and Aragon between 1513 and 1557. The outside of the doors are decorated with very colorful images of episodes from the Saint’s life. (Detailed explanations given below.)
Many Renaissance altarpieces with closeable doors had the Annunciation painted in muted colors, or in
grisaille, as we see here, on the outside.
During Passiontide, or indeed all of Lent, the doors were kept closed, to be opened again at the Easter vigil, just as the statues were unveiled. However, the liturgical austerity of Lent would be to some degree mitigated for the feast of the Annunciation, which falls within it in most years.
