One of the most enduring medieval legends is that of King Arthur. His tales, his knights, and his queen Guinevere have been told and retold for centuries. But in the twelfth century, monks at Glastonbury Abbey claimed to have uncovered something astonishing: the king’s very bones.
The story is told by Gerald of Wales, the royal clerk and scholar who served King Henry II of England. He began writing De instructione principis around the year 1191, making it a part guide on how to be a ruler, and part history of Henry’s reign. The work has interested historians as Gerald was in a good position to know of the inner workings of Henry’s court as well as receive news coming in from around England.
Gerald of Wales was an energetic churchman and writer whose works blended careful observation with a flair for the dramatic. His accounts of Ireland and Wales, for example, mix detailed description with marvels and exaggerations. While this makes him a vivid storyteller, it also raises questions about how literally his testimony should be taken.
In the midst of a section on giving examples of praiseworthy rulers from the past, Gerald inserts a few paragraphs devoted to King Arthur and here explains that his body had been discovered during his own time. He and his readers would already have a good knowledge of this famous figure. A couple of generations earlier Geoffrey of Monmouth had written Historia regum Britanniae, one of the first detailed accounts of King Arthur. Some believed this legend, while others dismissed it as fiction, but during the twelfth century it was clearly becoming deeply embedded into English lore.
The Discovery at Glastonbury Abbey
The ruins of Glastonbury Abbey – photo by judy dean / Flickr
At the time of the discovery, Glastonbury Abbey was already one of the most important monastic centres in England. It had long been linked with early Christian legends, including the story that Joseph of Arimathea had brought the Holy Grail there. By connecting the abbey to King Arthur, the monks tied their community to yet another layer of sacred and national myth.
Gerald explains that Arthur’s body was discovered at Glastonbury Abbey, in southwestern England, between two stone pyramids. He writes that the body the monks found was:
buried deep in the earth in a hollow oak and indicated by wonderful, almost miraculous, signs, and it was brought into the church with honour and deposited becomingly in a marble tomb. Here too a leaden cross, placed under a stone, not above it as is the custom in our days, but rather fixed below, which I have seen, for I have touched these letters carved there, not raised or projecting but turned inwards towards the stone, contained: ‘Here lies buried the glorious King Arthur and Guinevere, his second wife, in the Isle of Avalon.’
Later on in his account he gives more details, such as noting that two bodies were buried at least sixteen feet deep. One was a man and the other a woman, and space was left for a third body. But “here there was found a blonde tress of woman’s hair, with its shape and colour intact, which, as a monk snatched at it with a greedy hand and lifted it up, immediately crumbled completely into dust.”
Gerald of Wales seems convinced that this was the body of King Arthur. He actually describes seeing it with his own eyes, and finds that the skeletal remains revealed a large man:
For when his shin-bone was placed beside the shin of the tallest man of the locality, whom the abbot pointed out to me, and set on the ground alongside his foot, it came three big fingers’ width above his knee. His skull, too, was large and capacious like a prodigy or wonder, to such a degree that the space between the eyebrows and between the eyes was more than a palm’s width. It showed signs of ten or more wounds, which had all been covered with scar tissue, except for one, greater than the rest, that seemed to have been the only lethal one.
Many historians have dismissed this discovery as an elaborate fraud, committed by the monks of Glastonbury Abbey. In 1184 a fire destroyed many of their buildings, so it has been assumed they needed money for reconstruction and used the legend of King Arthur. However Gerald says that it was really Henry II who was responsible for the excavation, explaining that he had heard about the unusual pyramids at the abbey from old “minstrel-historians” and relayed the information to the monks so they could dig there.
Alleged Tomb of King Arthur, Glastonbury by Brian Deegan
One should also note there are other accounts of the discovery, such as Ralph of Coggeshall, who noted this in his chronicle for the year 1191:
This year were found at Glastonbury the bones of the most renowned Arthur, formerly King of Britain, buried in a very ancient coffin, about which two ancient pyramids had been built: on the sides of these was an inscription, illegible on account of the rudeness of the script and its worn condition. The bones were discovered as follows: as they were digging up this ground to bury a monk who had urgently desired in his lifetime to be interred there, they discovered a certain coffin, on which a leaden cross had been placed, bearing the inscription, ‘Here lies the famous King Arturius, buried in the Isle of Avalon.’
Although much shorter, it corroborates and has differences with a few details in Gerald’s account. Ralph did write about thirty years later, in the 1220s, so it might not be surprising that the narrative of this discovery had changed somewhat.
What Happened to the Bones?
Site of what was supposed to be the grave of King Arthur and Queen Guinevere on the grounds of former Glastonbury Abbey, Somerset, UK. Photo by Tom Ordelman / Wikimedia Commons
The discovery of Arthur’s grave at Glastonbury was not just a local matter. Arthur was seen as a figure of national identity, a king who would one day return. By claiming to possess his remains, Glastonbury and its supporters were also reshaping the political imagination of England in the twelfth century. It gave tangible form to a legend that had been circulating for generations.
The whole account by Gerald of Wales leaves us with more questions than answers. We are not even sure when it happened – during or after Henry’s reign? If this was not Arthur and Guinevere, to whom else could these remains have belonged?
It seems that the monks and chroniclers certainly believed that King Arthur had been discovered, but was this more a case of trying to make the evidence fit their preconceived narrative? Glastonbury Abbey was already over 500 years old at this time, and would have come to be seen as an ancient place with many mysteries. As the monks attempted to understand the unusual things they were coming across – the pyramids, the skeletal remains – it would have been tempting for them to link it with the current in-vogue ideas going around England. King Arthur had to be somewhere so it just made sense that he was here.
These skeletal remains would be kept at Glastonbury Abbey for another three and a half centuries, but were then lost as the monastery was suppressed and looted by King Henry VIII in the year 1539. The legends of King Arthur connecting him to Glastonbury remain, and today the small town there is a key destination for those interested in the medieval legend.
Today, historians are sceptical about the claims made at Glastonbury. No physical evidence of Arthur’s grave has survived, and most scholars view the discovery as a product of medieval imagination rather than fact. Yet the story itself shows how powerfully legend could shape the landscape of the Middle Ages — and how myth and history could be woven together in the pursuit of meaning.
You can read Gerald of Wales’ account in De instructione principis, which is edited and translated by Gerald Bartlett as part of the Oxford Medieval Texts series. You can buy the book from Amazon.com.
One of the most enduring medieval legends is that of King Arthur. His tales, his knights, and his queen Guinevere have been told and retold for centuries. But in the twelfth century, monks at Glastonbury Abbey claimed to have uncovered something astonishing: the king’s very bones.
The story is told by Gerald of Wales, the royal clerk and scholar who served King Henry II of England. He began writing De instructione principis around the year 1191, making it a part guide on how to be a ruler, and part history of Henry’s reign. The work has interested historians as Gerald was in a good position to know of the inner workings of Henry’s court as well as receive news coming in from around England.
Gerald of Wales was an energetic churchman and writer whose works blended careful observation with a flair for the dramatic. His accounts of Ireland and Wales, for example, mix detailed description with marvels and exaggerations. While this makes him a vivid storyteller, it also raises questions about how literally his testimony should be taken.
In the midst of a section on giving examples of praiseworthy rulers from the past, Gerald inserts a few paragraphs devoted to King Arthur and here explains that his body had been discovered during his own time. He and his readers would already have a good knowledge of this famous figure. A couple of generations earlier Geoffrey of Monmouth had written Historia regum Britanniae, one of the first detailed accounts of King Arthur. Some believed this legend, while others dismissed it as fiction, but during the twelfth century it was clearly becoming deeply embedded into English lore.
The Discovery at Glastonbury Abbey
At the time of the discovery, Glastonbury Abbey was already one of the most important monastic centres in England. It had long been linked with early Christian legends, including the story that Joseph of Arimathea had brought the Holy Grail there. By connecting the abbey to King Arthur, the monks tied their community to yet another layer of sacred and national myth.
Gerald explains that Arthur’s body was discovered at Glastonbury Abbey, in southwestern England, between two stone pyramids. He writes that the body the monks found was:
buried deep in the earth in a hollow oak and indicated by wonderful, almost miraculous, signs, and it was brought into the church with honour and deposited becomingly in a marble tomb. Here too a leaden cross, placed under a stone, not above it as is the custom in our days, but rather fixed below, which I have seen, for I have touched these letters carved there, not raised or projecting but turned inwards towards the stone, contained: ‘Here lies buried the glorious King Arthur and Guinevere, his second wife, in the Isle of Avalon.’
Later on in his account he gives more details, such as noting that two bodies were buried at least sixteen feet deep. One was a man and the other a woman, and space was left for a third body. But “here there was found a blonde tress of woman’s hair, with its shape and colour intact, which, as a monk snatched at it with a greedy hand and lifted it up, immediately crumbled completely into dust.”
Gerald of Wales seems convinced that this was the body of King Arthur. He actually describes seeing it with his own eyes, and finds that the skeletal remains revealed a large man:
For when his shin-bone was placed beside the shin of the tallest man of the locality, whom the abbot pointed out to me, and set on the ground alongside his foot, it came three big fingers’ width above his knee. His skull, too, was large and capacious like a prodigy or wonder, to such a degree that the space between the eyebrows and between the eyes was more than a palm’s width. It showed signs of ten or more wounds, which had all been covered with scar tissue, except for one, greater than the rest, that seemed to have been the only lethal one.
Many historians have dismissed this discovery as an elaborate fraud, committed by the monks of Glastonbury Abbey. In 1184 a fire destroyed many of their buildings, so it has been assumed they needed money for reconstruction and used the legend of King Arthur. However Gerald says that it was really Henry II who was responsible for the excavation, explaining that he had heard about the unusual pyramids at the abbey from old “minstrel-historians” and relayed the information to the monks so they could dig there.
One should also note there are other accounts of the discovery, such as Ralph of Coggeshall, who noted this in his chronicle for the year 1191:
This year were found at Glastonbury the bones of the most renowned Arthur, formerly King of Britain, buried in a very ancient coffin, about which two ancient pyramids had been built: on the sides of these was an inscription, illegible on account of the rudeness of the script and its worn condition. The bones were discovered as follows: as they were digging up this ground to bury a monk who had urgently desired in his lifetime to be interred there, they discovered a certain coffin, on which a leaden cross had been placed, bearing the inscription, ‘Here lies the famous King Arturius, buried in the Isle of Avalon.’
Although much shorter, it corroborates and has differences with a few details in Gerald’s account. Ralph did write about thirty years later, in the 1220s, so it might not be surprising that the narrative of this discovery had changed somewhat.
What Happened to the Bones?
The discovery of Arthur’s grave at Glastonbury was not just a local matter. Arthur was seen as a figure of national identity, a king who would one day return. By claiming to possess his remains, Glastonbury and its supporters were also reshaping the political imagination of England in the twelfth century. It gave tangible form to a legend that had been circulating for generations.
The whole account by Gerald of Wales leaves us with more questions than answers. We are not even sure when it happened – during or after Henry’s reign? If this was not Arthur and Guinevere, to whom else could these remains have belonged?
It seems that the monks and chroniclers certainly believed that King Arthur had been discovered, but was this more a case of trying to make the evidence fit their preconceived narrative? Glastonbury Abbey was already over 500 years old at this time, and would have come to be seen as an ancient place with many mysteries. As the monks attempted to understand the unusual things they were coming across – the pyramids, the skeletal remains – it would have been tempting for them to link it with the current in-vogue ideas going around England. King Arthur had to be somewhere so it just made sense that he was here.
These skeletal remains would be kept at Glastonbury Abbey for another three and a half centuries, but were then lost as the monastery was suppressed and looted by King Henry VIII in the year 1539. The legends of King Arthur connecting him to Glastonbury remain, and today the small town there is a key destination for those interested in the medieval legend.
Today, historians are sceptical about the claims made at Glastonbury. No physical evidence of Arthur’s grave has survived, and most scholars view the discovery as a product of medieval imagination rather than fact. Yet the story itself shows how powerfully legend could shape the landscape of the Middle Ages — and how myth and history could be woven together in the pursuit of meaning.
You can read Gerald of Wales’ account in De instructione principis, which is edited and translated by Gerald Bartlett as part of the Oxford Medieval Texts series. You can buy the book from Amazon.com.
Subscribe to Medievalverse
Related Posts