About: Geoffrey of Wells

Geoffrey of Wells (Galfridius Fontibus) was a mid-12th-century English hagiographer and a canon of Wells Cathedral, whose De Infantia Sancti Edmundi ("The infancy of Saint Edmund"), part of the burgeoning library of 12th-century legendaries concerning Saint Edmund, accounted the royal saint's childhood to have been full of adventure. He dedicated his "largely spurious account" to Ording, eighth abbot of Bury St. Edmunds, and spoke of the encouragement of another well-placed Anglo-Saxon, Prior Sihtric. The manuscript of Geoffrey's pious embroidery was among the manuscripts collected by the early 17th-century antiquary Robert Bruce Cotton, now conserved in the British Library in London.