Figs. 107 and 108.—Faces of an Hexagonal Enamelled Salt-cellar, representing the Labours of Hercules. Executed at Limoges, for Francis I., by Pierre Raymond.
With the remark that, at the end of the sixteenth century, Venice, doubtless imitating Limoges, also manufactured pieces of plate in enamelled copper, we return to our national goldsmiths.
This celebrated corporation could, without much trouble, be traced back in Gaul to the epoch of the Roman occupation; but it is unnecessary to search for its origin beyond St. Eloi, who is still its patron, after having been its founder and protector. Eloi, become prime-minister to Dagobert I.—thanks in some measure to his merits as a goldsmith, which distinguished him above all, and gained him the honour of royal friendship—continued to work no less at his forge as a simple artisan. “He made for the king,” says the chronicle, “a great number of gold vases enriched with precious stones, and he worked incessantly, seated with his servant Thillon, a Saxon by birth, at his side, who followed the lessons of his master.”
Fig. 109.—Interior base of a Salt-cellar, executed at Limoges; with a Portrait of Francis I.
This extract seems to indicate that already the goldsmith’s art was organised as a corporation, and that it comprised three ranks of artisans—the masters, the journeymen, and the apprentices. Besides, it is clear that St. Eloi founded two distinct corporations of goldsmiths—one for secular, the other for religious works, in order that the objects sacred to worship should not be manufactured by the same hands that executed those designed for profane uses or worldly state. The seat of the former in Paris was first the Cité, near the very abode of St. Eloi long known as the maison au fèvre, and surrounding the monastery of St. Martial. Within the jurisdiction of that monastery was the space comprised between the streets of La Barillerie, of La Calandre, Aux Fèves, and of La Vieille Draperie, under the denomination of “St. Eloi’s Enclosure.” A raging fire destroyed the entire quarter inhabited by the goldsmiths, excepting the monastery; and the lay goldsmiths went forth and established themselves as a colony, still under the auspices of their patron saint, in the shadow of the Church of St. Paul des Champs, which he had caused to be constructed on the right bank of the Seine. The assemblage of forges and shops of these artisans soon formed a sort of suburb, which was called Clôture, or Culture St. Eloi. Subsequently some of the goldsmiths returned to the Cité; but they remained on the Grand-Pont, and returned no more to the streets, where the cobblers had established themselves. Moreover, the monastery of St. Martial had become, under the administration of its first abbess, St. Anne, a branch of the goldsmith’s school which the “Seigneur Eloi” had established in 631 in the Abbey of Solignac, in the environs of Limoges. That abbey, whose first abbot, Thillon or Théau—a pupil, or, as the chronicle expresses it, a servant of St. Eloi—was also a skilful goldsmith, preserved during several centuries the traditions of its founder, and furnished not only models, but also skilful workmen, to all the monastic ateliers of Christendom which exclusively manufactured for the churches jewelled and enamelled plate.
Fig. 110.—Ewer in Enamel, of Limoges, by Pierre Raymond.
However, the goldsmiths of Paris engaged in secular works continued to maintain themselves as a corporation; and their privileges, which they ascribed to the special regard of Dagobert for St. Eloi, were recognised, it is said, in 768 by a royal charter, and confirmed in 846 in a capitulary of Charles the Bald. These goldsmiths worked in gold and silver only for kings and nobles, whom the strictness of the sumptuary laws did not reach. The Dictionary of Jean de Garlande informs us that, in the eleventh century, there were in Paris four classes of workmen in the goldsmith’s trade—those who coined money (nummularii), the clasp-makers (firmacularii), the manufacturers of drinking-goblets (cipharii), and the goldsmiths, properly so called (aurifabri). The ateliers and the shop-windows of these last were on the Pont-au-Change ([Fig. 111]), in competition with the money-changers, who for the most part were Lombards or Italians. From that epoch a rivalry commenced between these two trade guilds, which only ceased on the complete downfall of the money-changers.
