Despite his background as a goldsmith, Eligius became increasingly ascetic during his time at the royal court and used his influence to ransom captive slaves and care for the poor.

He is also the patron saint of goldsmiths, metalworkers, coin collectors, veterinarians, and the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers (REME), a corps of the British Army.

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.

[3]Eligius took advantage of this royal favour to obtain alms for the poor and to ransom captive Romans, Gauls, Bretons, Moors and especially Saxons, who were arriving daily at the slave market in Marseilles.

[3] Eligius was a source of edification at the royal court, where he and his friend Audoin of Rouen lived according to the strict Irish monastic rule that had been introduced into Gaul by Columbanus.

"So the unwilling goldsmith was tonsured and constituted guardian of the towns or municipalities of Vermandois which include the metropolis, Tournai, which was once a royal city, and Noyon and Ghent and Kortrijk of Flanders.

After the finding of the body of Quentin of Amiens, Eligius erected in the saint's honour a church to which was joined a monastery under Irish rule.

He also discovered the bodies of Piatus of Tournai and his martyred companions, and in 654 removed the remains of Fursey, the celebrated Irish missionary (died 650).

At one point, Audoin lovingly recalls Eligius' increasingly ascetical appearance during their time serving at the royal court: He was tall with a rosy face.

"[3] Several writings of Eligius have survived: a sermon in which he combats the pagan practices of his time, a homily on the Last Judgment and a letter written in 645 in which he begs for the prayers of Bishop Desiderius of Cahors.

[2] The Petrus Christus panel of 1449 illustrating this article, since the removal of its overpainted halo in 1993, is now recognised in the Lehman Collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art as the Vocational Portrait of a Goldsmith, and not as a depiction of Eligius.

[1] The legend of the shoeing of the horse is depicted in a pre-Reformation carving in the Wincanton Parish Church, Slapton Church Northamptonshire, England,[14] a tapestry in the Hospices de Beaune (Hotel Dieu) in Beaune,[15] France, as a fresco on the wall of Aarhus Cathedral, Denmark, as well as in a 14th-century painting attributed to Niccolo di Pietro Gerini in the Petit Palais in Avignon, France.

[16] The painting was confiscated from an Austrian collector by the Germans during World War II and was restituted to the heirs of the original owners in March 2013 by the French Ministry of Culture.