The earliest written account of the British hero Arthur, credited with defending the islands against the Saxon invasion, dates back to the ninth century. Under the influence of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s work, this figure was transformed into King Arthur, a just ruler and a formidable conqueror. The flourishing of chivalric and courtly culture in Western Europe contributed to the emergence of chivalric romances set at Arthur’s court, with central roles played by the knights gathered around the Round Table. In Poland, knightly culture did not develop to the same extent as in Western Europe, but its characteristic features reached Polish lands mainly through German and Czech influences. No extant evidence exists of Polish versions of the Arthurian legend, but this does not mean that they were unknown to Polish society. This article shows that the Arthurian tradition also left its mark on the culture of medieval Poland. The most striking evidence of its reception is found in works of art, yet Arthurian themes also inspired chroniclers and provided motifs for heraldry and sigillography. Familiarity with the stories of the Knights of the Round Table in Poland is also further suggested by the appearance of personal names inspired by literary characters.

This paper examines an episode recorded by the Venerable Bede in his Ecclesiastical History of the English People, in which the newly converted priest Coifi destroys a pagan temple during the Christianization of Northumbria under King Edwin. The study explores the taboos against riding a stallion and bearing arms – prohibitions which, according to Bede, were observed by pagan priests and which Coifi transgressed in an act of profanation. Critical scholarly interpretations, which treat Bede’s account as a Christianizing fiction and explain these taboos by analogy with norms governing Christian clergy, fail to account for all elements of the story. While acknowledging Bede’s literary creativity, the article argues that the account was based on an authentic oral tradition. When compared with other medieval sources on Scandinavian paganism and the practices of other Indo-European peoples, it is plausible that Northumbria under King Edwin maintained an institution of the sacred horse, whose desecration at the onset of Christianization became the basis of an oral tradition that Bede creatively adapted a century later.