Human Flight in Early Medieval England: Reality, Reliability, and Mythmaking (or Science and Fiction)

Anglo-Saxon England produced the first Western European who can be plausibly shown to have flown. Eilmer of Malmesbury was a Benedictine monk living in the early eleventh century who had read the classical story of Daedalus and wanted to test the truth of the fable. Eilmer fashioned a pair of artificial wings, leapt from the abbey tower, and flew for a full furlong before falling to the earth and breaking both his legs.

While it is difficult to strip Eilmer’s tale of its mythical associations, the probability of his feat does not buckle under scrutiny. It stands, therefore, at a crossroads. Are we dealing with a technological reality or an imaginative story? This article uncovers and examines some of the most striking incidents of human flight in the literature, art, and science leading up to Eilmer’s lifetime in order to gain a sounder understanding of the monk’s performance. In doing so, I wrest that performance away from conventional histories of science but also challenge earlier dismissals of the flight as mere legend.