Page "Saint David" Paragraph 5

Rhygyfarch counted Glastonbury Abbey among the churches David founded.

Around forty years later William of Malmesbury believing the Abbey older, said that David visited Glastonbury only to rededicate the Abbey and donate a travelling altar including a great sapphire.

He had had a vision of Jesus who said that " the church had been dedicated long ago by Himself in honour of His Mother, and it was not seemly that it should be re-dedicated by human hands ".

So David instead commissioned an extension to be built to the abbey, east of the Old Church.

( The dimensions of this extension given by William were verified archaeologically in 1921 ).

One manuscript indicates that a sapphire altar was among the items King Henry VIII confiscated from the abbey at its dissolution a thousand years later.