The Legend Of Lady Godiva Finally Explained

May 2024 ยท 2 minute read

There are a few tantalizing pieces of information in the historical record about the real Lady Godiva. According to the BBC, Godiva and Leofric founded a Benedictine monastery for 24 monks and an abbot. The monastery was on the site of a nunnery that had been destroyed by Danes in 1016. 

Godiva must have been a pretty pious person because it's said that she had all of her gold and silver melted down and remade into images of saints, crosses, and other objects, which she donated to the monastery. On her deathbed, she gave the monks a gem-encrusted gold chain and told them to put it around the neck of an image of the Virgin Mary. Anyone who came to the abbey church was supposed to say a prayer for each stone in the chain. So she was basically just increasing the workload for all the pilgrims who came to her church, but whatever. Everyone knows the Virgin Mary was all about fancy jewelry. Wasn't she? 

Anyway, Godiva outlived her husband by a decade and was supposedly buried in the abbey church alongside him, though no one knows for sure if that's true. You can check out her potential final resting place for yourself, though, if you're interested. The remains of the monastery and cathedral can be seen in Priory Row, Coventry.

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