as also in Bede (H. E. i. 4 and Epit.), who probably got it from the Liber Pontificalis. He was on firm ground therefore when he spoke of ' annals of good authority '. But in none of these sources are the names of the missionaries given. Geoffrey of Monmouth, however, says (IV, § 19) that their names were Fagan and Duvian; and he adds the story of the twenty-eight flamens and three arch-flamens, who as the result of their mission were superseded by twenty-eight bishops and three archbishops. After him Giraldus Cambrensis (Descr. Cambr. i ad fin.) gives their names as Fagan and Damian. But neither of these writers brings the missionaries to Glastonbury.[1]
In the Gesta Pontificum (p. 196) William of Malmesbury had expressed his view that the first founder of the monastery of Glastonbury was K. Ina, acting under the advice of St Aldhelm. A like statement is found in the first edition of his Gesta Regum (p. 35, note). But this does not prevent him from recognising that Glastonbury had long been a sacred spot and that St Patrick at the close of his Irish mission had died and was buried there.[2] In the insertion into his third edition of the Gesta Regum he goes much further back, and brings the nameless missionaries of Pope Eleutherus to Glastonbury and makes them the builders of the Old Church of St Mary. He has indeed seen some evidence of a yet earlier origin—the building of the church by actual disciples of Christ. He will not deny the possibility of this; for, if St Philip came to Gaul as Freculfus says, he may well have sent some of his disciples across the sea to Britain. The reader, however, shall not be troubled further with matters of mere opinion.
This is a statement guarded enough, and not unworthy of a cautious historian who at the time of writing was enjoying the hospitality of the Glastonbury monks. But a few strokes of the pen turn it into something very different. The missionaries are identified as Phagan and Deruvian, of whom much may be learned from the Charter of St Patrick and the Gesta Britannorum. The addition of the single word 'restaurata' makes Phagan and Deruvian the restorers, not the builders, of the Old Church. The suggestion that its building by the actual disciples of Christ can be treated as mere matter of opinion is struck out.
We are at a loss to know what written evidence William of Malmesbury found for the statement that 'the church of Glastonbury did
- ↑ The little Glastonbury Chronicle of 1259, referred to above in the note on p. 3, makes Fagan and Deruvian found a bishopric for Somerset with its seat at Congresbury: it goes on, as in the Wells 'Historiola' (Camd. Soc, Ecclesiastical Documents, p. 10), to bring the bishopric to Wells under Bishop Daniel in K. Ina's time.
- ↑ Gesta Pontif., p. 197.
