for the legend was that St. Quentin had been martyred by having nails driven into his head!  Although it was quite evident to others that these were coffin nails, still St. Eloi insisted upon regarding his discovery as genuine, and they began diligently to dismember the remains for distribution among the churches.  As they were pulling one of the teeth, a drop of blood was seen to follow it, which miracle was hailed by St. Eloi as the one proof wanting.  Eloi had the genuine artistic temperament and his religious zeal was much influenced by his aesthetic nature.  He once preached an excellent sermon, still preserved, against superstition.  He inveighed particularly against the use of charms and incantations.  But he had his own little streak of superstition in spite of the fact that he fulminated against it.  When he had committed some fault, after confession, he used to hang bags of relics in his room, and watch them for a sign of forgiveness.  When one of these would turn oily, or begin to affect the surrounding atmosphere peculiarly, he would consider it a sign of the forgiveness of heaven.  It seems to us to-day as if he might have looked to his own relic bags before condemning the ignorant.

St. Eloi died in 659, and was himself distributed to the faithful in quite a wholesale way.  One arm is in Paris.  He was canonized both for his holy life and for his great zeal in art.  He was buried in a silver coffin adorned with gold, and his tomb was said to work miracles like the shrine of Becket.  Indeed, Becket himself was pretty dressy in the matter of jewels; when he travelled to Paris, the simple Frenchmen exclaimed:  “What a wonderful personage the King of England must be, if his chancellor can travel in such state!”

There are various legends about St. Eloi.  It is told that a certain horse once behaved in a very obstreperous way while being shod; St. Eloi calmly cut off the animal’s leg, and fixed the shoe quietly in position, and then replaced the leg, which grew into place again immediately, to the pardonable astonishment of all beholders, not to mention the horse.

St. Eloi was also employed to coin the currency of Dagobert and Clovis II., and examples of these coins may now be seen, as authentic records of the style of his work.  A century after his death the monasteries which he had founded were still in operation, and Charlemagne’s crown and sword are very possibly the result of St. Eloi’s teachings to his followers.

While the monasteries undoubtedly controlled most of the art education of the early middle ages, there were also laymen who devoted themselves to these pursuits.  John de Garlande, a famous teacher in the University of Paris, wrote, in the eleventh century, a “Dictionarius” dealing with various arts.  In this interesting work he describes, the trades of the moneyers (who controlled the mint), the coining of gold and silver into currency (for the making of coin in those days was permitted by individuals), the clasp makers, the