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Glastonbury Shrines Part 8: Local Somerset Saints
St. Edgar the Peacemaker was King of Wessex and a great patron of Glastonbury from where his great advisor, St. Dunstan, hailed. He chose to be buried there, in the Chapter House by the door to the church, upon his death on 8th July AD 975. It is claimed his body was found to be incorrupt and blood flowed when it was cut during his tomb's opening in 1052. His relics were interred with those of Saints Apollinaris and Vincent which he himself had presented to the Abbey in a large gold and silver shrine decorated with ivory images. They were placed on display in the Edgar Chapel at the far eastern end of the Abbey Church. The Abbey also claimed to be the burial place of St. Gildas the Wise, the famous pseudo-historian who wrote De Excidio Britanniae. Gildas hailed from the Clyde Valley in modern Scotland. He is known to have lived in Wales, but he is also claimed as a resident of Glastonbury and Rhuys in Brittany. Both displayed his shrine and the latter can still be seen in the local parish church. However, the Breton saint appears to have really been one St. Gueltus who was misidentified as the more famous Gildas. There therefore seems little reason to doubt the Glastonbury story that St. Gildas retired to a small hermitage on the site where the church of Leigh-in-Street now stands. Here he died and was later brought to the nearby Abbey for burial. Click to Start Again
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