A 900-Year-Old Fundraising Scam

A four-year study by archaeologists has comprehensively demolished cherished myths about one of the most romantic religious sites in England, Glastonbury Abbey.

Those feet, immortalized in William Blake’s poem "Jerusalem," never walked on the green and pleasant land of Glastonbury; the oldest church in England was not built there by Christ’s disciples; Joseph of Arimathea’s walking stick does not miraculously flower every Christmas after 2,000 years. And it turns out that the supposed link with King Arthur and his beautiful queen, Guinevere, is false too–invented by 12th-century monks faced with a financial crisis in the wake of a disastrous fire.