St. Eleutherius of Tournai (Detail; DG 01) Ceramic Tile

St. Eleutherius was a sixth-century prelate, the first bishop of Tournai. He evangelised the pagan Franks of the region, then Gaul now Belgium. He vigourously argued against Arianism, a rampant anti-trinitarian heresy of the time that denied the divinity of Christ and asserted that Jesus was created by and not of the same substance as God the Father. According to tradition, St. Eleutherius was a martyr: he was set upon by a group of Arians as he left his church, beaten, and left for dead; he died some weeks later of the wounds he sustained in the attack c. 532. + Here, St. Eleutherius--like any other bishop saint--is dressed in episcopal robes and holds a crosier, symbol of his authority. His distinguishing attribute is the five-spired cathedral that he holds in his right hand. The cathedral model is readily identifiable by its spires as the present-day Cathedral of Our Lady (in English; Notre-Dame de Tournai in French; and Onze-Lieve-Vrouw van Doornik in Dutch). Begun in the 12th century long after the Saint’s demise, the building rests on much older foundations and combines features of three distinct styles and construction phases: the Romanesque, the Gothic, and the French Baroque. Today, the Cathedral houses relics of St. Eleutherius in a gabled silver and gilded copper chest adorned with sculptures in very high relief. The reliquary shrine was commissioned by Bishop Walter de Marvis of Tournai, and completed in 1247, on the occasion of the retranslation of the Saint’s relics. It is one of the masterpieces of Gothic metalwork. + Feast: February 20 + Image Credit (DG 01): Detail of an antique image of St. Eleutherius of Tournai from a German devotional print, originally published by the Deutsche Gesellschaft für christliche Kunst [German Society for Christian Art], Munich, Germany, late 19th-century, from the designer’s collection of religious ephemera.