An interesting document has been found in Spain showing that craftsmen were supplied with the necessary materials when engaged to make valuable figures for the decoration of altars.  It is dated May 12, 1367, “I, Sancho Martinez Orebsc, silversmith, native of Seville, inform you, the Dean and Chapter of the church of Seville, that it was agreed that I make an image of St. Mary with its tabernacle, that it should be finished at a given time, and that you were to give me the silver and stones required to make it.”

In Spain, the most splendid triumphs of the goldsmith’s skill were the “custodias,” or large tabernacles, in which the Host was carried in procession.  The finest was one made for Toledo by Enrique d’Arphe, in competition with other craftsmen.  His design being chosen, he began his work in 1517, and in 1524 the custodia was finished.  It was in the form of a Gothic temple, six sided, with a jewelled cross on the top, and was eight feet high.  Some of the gold employed was the first ever brought from America.  The whole structure weighed three hundred and eighty-eight pounds.  Arphe made a similar custodia for Cordova and another for Leon.  His grandson, Juan d’Arphe, wrote a verse about the Toledo custodia, in which these lines occur: 

  “Custodia is a temple of rich plate
   Wrought for the glory of Our Saviour true... 
   That holiest ark of old to imitate,
   Fashioned by Bezaleel the cunning Jew,
   Chosen of God to work his sovereign will,
   And greatly gifted with celestial skill.”

Juan d’Arphe himself made a custodia for Seville, the decorations and figures on which were directed by the learned Francesco Pacheco, the father-in-law of Velasquez.  When this custodia was completed, d’Arphe wrote a description of it, alluding boldly to this work as “the largest and finest work in silver known of its kind,” and this could really be said without conceit, for it is a fact.

A Gothic form of goldsmith’s work obtained in Spain in the 13th, 14th and 15th centuries; it was based upon architectural models and was known as “plateresca.”  The shrines for holding relics became in these centuries positive buildings on a small scale in precious material.  In England also were many of these shrines, but few of them now remain.

The first Mayor of London, from 1189 to 1213, was a goldsmith, Henry Fitz Alwyn, the Founder of the Royal Exchange; Sir Thomas Gresham, in 1520, was also a goldsmith and a banker.  There is an entertaining piece of cynical satire on the Goldsmiths in Stubbes’ Anatomy of Abuses, written in the time of Queen Elizabeth, showing that the tricks of the trade had come to full development by that time, and that the public was being aroused on the subject.  Stubbes explains how the goldsmith’s shops are decked with chains and rings, “wonderful richly.”  Then he goes on to say:  “They will make you any monster or article whatsoever of gold, silver, or what