The goldsmiths of France absorbed several other auxiliary arts, and were powerful and influential.  In state processions the goldsmiths had the first place of importance, and bore the royal canopy when the King himself took part in the ceremony, carrying the shrine of St. Genevieve also, when it was taken forth in great pageants.

In the quaint wording of the period, goldsmiths were forbidden to gild or silver-plate any article made of copper or latten, unless they left some part of the original exposed, “at the foot or some other part,... to the intent that a man may see whereof the thing is made for to eschew the deceipt aforesaid.”  This law was enacted in 1404.

Many of the great art schools of the Middle Ages were established in connection with the numerous monasteries scattered through all the European countries and in England.  The Rule of St. Benedict rings true concerning the proper consecration of an artist:  “If there be artists in the monastery, let them exercise their crafts with all humility and reverence, provided the abbot shall have ordered them.  But if any of them be proud of the skill he hath in his craft, because he thereby seemeth to gain something for the monastery, let him be removed from it and not exercise it again, unless, after humbling himself, the abbot shall permit him.”  Craft without graft was the keynote of mediaeval art.

King Alfred had a monastic art school at Athelney, in which he had collected “monks of all kinds from every quarter.”  This accounts for the Greek type of work turned out at this time, and very likely for Italian influences in early British art.  The king was active in craft work himself, for Asser tells us that he “continued, during his frequent wars, to teach his workers in gold and artificers of all kinds.”

The quaint old encyclopaedia of Bartholomew Anglicus, called, “The Properties of Things,” defines gold and silver in an original way, according to the beliefs of this writer’s day.  He says of gold, that “in the composition there is more sadness of brimstone than of air and moisture of quicksilver, and therefore gold is more sad and heavy than silver.”  Of silver he remarks, “Though silver be white yet it maketh black lines and strakes in the body that is scored therewith.”

Marco Polo says that in the province of Carazan “the rivers yield great quantities of washed gold, and also that which is solid, and on the mountains they find gold in the vein, and they give one pound of gold for six of silver.”

Workers in gold or silver usually employ one of two methods—­casting or beating, combined with delicacy of finish, chasing, and polishing.  The technical processes are interestingly described by the writers of the old treatises on divers arts.  In the earliest of these, by the monk Theophilus, in the eleventh century, we have most graphic accounts of processes very similar to those now in use.  The naive monastic instructor, in his preface, exhorts