Gerald of Wales: On the Deeds of Gerald, de Gestis Giraldi 9780192869166, 0192869167

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O X F O R D M E D I E VA L T E X T S

General Editors

J.  W.  B I NNS   D.  D ’ AV RAY M .  S.  K EM P S HA L L   R .  C.  LOVE

G E R A L D O F WA L E S ON TH E DEEDS OF GER ALD (DE GE STIS GIR A L DI )

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Gerald of Wales ON THE DEEDS OF GERALD (DE GESTIS GIRALDI ) edi t ed and t ranslat ed by JAC O B C U R R I E with T H OM A S C H A R L E S -­E DWA R D S and PAU L RUS S E L L

C L A R E N D O N PR E S S   ·   OX F O R D

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Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP, United Kingdom Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries © Jacob Currie, Thomas Charles-Edwards, and Paul Russell 2024 The moral rights of the authors have been asserted All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by licence or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Control Number: 2023933558 ISBN 978–0–19–286916–6 Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, cr0 4yy Links to third party websites are provided by Oxford in good faith and for information only. Oxford disclaims any responsibility for the materials contained in any third party website referenced in this work.

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Ricardo acerrimo auctori magistro amico

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AC K N OW L E D G E M E N T S This volume is the first product of the project ‘The Writings of Gerald of Wales’, funded by the Leverhulme Trust and based in the History Faculty in Oxford. The project was conceived by the late Richard Sharpe several years ago, and started on 1 April 2020. Sadly, Richard did not live to see the project realized. His expertise and en­cyclo­pae­dic knowledge has been much missed and rarely a day goes by without us wondering what Richard would think about our solution to a particular crux. This volume is dedicated to his memory. In these difficult circumstances the History Faculty in Oxford, and in particular Julia Smith and John Watts, provided much-­ needed support to allow us to take the project forward. Needless to say, our gratitude to those who offered us help is far more than conventional. We have been ably supported by our advisers, Robert Bartlett, Marie Therese Flanagan, and Huw Pryce, who have read and commented on everything in this volume with admirable clarity and dispatch, and rescued us from numerous errors and confusions. We have also drawn on the specific expertise of others: Gruffudd Antur, Julia Barrow, Charlene Eska, Shaun McGuinness, Tessa Webber, and Carolinne White have helped us greatly by providing specific points of information or responding to particular queries. We have made much use of Catherine Rooney’s work on the manuscripts of Gerald’s works and have benefitted enormously from her willingness to answer queries. We have also benefitted from the kindness of Fiona Edmonds, whose expertise in map-­making is evident on many pages. We should also gratefully acknowledge the enthusiastic hospitality provided by Wyn Evans, former Bishop of St Davids, on our visit there in the spring of 2022. While much of the earlier stages of this work was carried out under lockdown using digital images, we are grateful to the staff of the manuscripts room in the British Library, where the only complete manuscript of De gestis is housed, for facilitating our labours when we could finally get to the library. The staff at Lambeth Palace Library and the Bodleian Library in Oxford also helped our work in allowing us access to other relevant manuscripts and papers. Warmest thanks go to the editors of Oxford Medieval Texts for agreeing to take this volume on, to the Delegates of Oxford University

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acknowledg emen t s

Press for publishing it, and to Catherine Steele and Emma Slaughter for steering it through the production process. Special thanks go to Rosalind Love, who provided detailed feedback and numerous suggestions for improvement. Above all else, we should record our thanks to Gerald of Wales himself for providing us with endless challenges and entertainment.

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CONTENTS list of maps and g enealo g ical tables xi abbreviat ions xii INTRODUCTION xvii Gerald’s Name xxiv The Title xxv The Manuscript xxvi De gestis Giraldi among Gerald’s Works xxxv Gerald on Gerald xl The Historical Context of De gestis Giraldixlvi The Archdeaconry of Brycheiniog lii Studium and Public Life lvii Episcopal Elections, Metropolitan Status, Proceedings in Rome lxii Gerald as a Writer: His Latin Style, Citations, and Sources lxxvi Previous Editions lxxxviii Editorial Method xciv list of dat es c GERALD O F WA L ES, ON THE DEE D S O F G E R A L D (DE GES TIS GI RAL D I )  1 Table of Contents 2 Preface34 Part One 38 Part Two 84 Part Three 162 appendices 1. The Forms of Welsh Names in De gestis229 2. Gerald and the Districts of Wales 232 3. Early-Modern Notes on De gestis238 The Notes of Brian Twyne 238 The Notes of Richard James 240 The Notes of James Ware 245 BL Additional MS 4787, fos. 245r–246v247 BL Additional MS 4783, fo. 53 250 4. A Note on Laudabiliter (De gestis, ii. 11) 253

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x

con t en t s

bibliography255 list of man u scrip t s cit ed

271

index of citat ions and allu sions 272 general inde x 281

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LIST OF MAPS AND G E N E A L O G I C A L TA B L E S

MA P S 1.  Wales in the twelfth century 2 .  Dyfed: Places 3.  The archdeaconry of Brycheiniog 4.  The seven cantrefi of Dyfed

xvi xviii liii 236

G E N E A LO G I C A L TA B L ES 1 .  The Children of Nest and their Welsh Kin 2.  The feud between the Geraldines and the Flemings of Rhos 3.  The de Breus lords of Brycheiniog 4.  The affinity of the Lord Rhys

xx xlvii li lv

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A B B R E V I AT I O N S AC   AC Brev.   AC Cott. Acta, ed. Barrow Acts, ed. Pryce AFM

AMR

Autobiography BAV BHL BL Bodl. Lib. Brut

Annales Cambriae Annales Cambriae, The B Text, transcribed by H. W. Gough-­Cooper Annales Cambriae, The C Text, transcribed by H. W. Gough-­Cooper St Davids Episcopal Acta, ed. J. Barrow The Acts of Welsh Rulers, 1120–1283, ed. H. Pryce The Annals of the Four Masters: Annála Ríoghachta Éireann: Annals of the Kingdom of Ireland by the Four Masters from the Earliest Times to the Year 1616, ed. J. O’Donovan (Dublin, 1851) Archif Melville Richards (Archive of Welsh Place-­ names), www.e-gymraeg.co.uk/enwaulleoedd/amr/ cronfa_en.aspx The Autobiography of Giraldus Cambrensis, ed. and trans. H. E. Butler Bibliotheca Apostolica Vaticana Bibliotheca Hagiographica Latina British Library Bodleian Library Brut y Tywysogyon, with references to the corrected dates as shown in Brut y Tywysogyon or The Chronicle of the Princes, Peniarth MS. 20 Version, trans. T. Jones (Cardiff, 1952). When the reference is to Brut without specifying the versions, there is no significant difference between the version in Peniarth MS 20 and the others.

  Editions of the Welsh texts are:   Brut P Brut y Tywysogyon, Peniarth MS. 20, ed. T.  Jones (Cardiff, 1941)   Brut R Brut y Tywysogyon or The Chronicle of the Princes, Red Book of Hergest Version, ed. and trans. T. Jones (Cardiff, 1955)   BS Brenhinedd y Saeson or The Kings of the Saxons, ed. and trans. T. Jones (Cardiff, 1971) CBT Cyfres Beirdd y Tywysogion

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 CCCM CCSL CSEL Davies, Conquest

DMLBS Episc. Acts, ed. Davies

abbreviat ions

xiii

Corpus Christianorum, continuatio mediaevalis (Turnhout) Corpus Christianorum, series Latina (Turnhout) Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum R.  R.  Davies, Conquest, Coexistence, and Change: Wales, 1063–1415 (Oxford, 1987), reissued as The Age of Conquest: Wales, 1063–1415 (Oxford, 2000) Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources Episcopal Acts and Cognate Documents relating to Welsh Dioceses, 1066–1272, ed. J. Conway Davies

Gerald’s works: Catalogus brevior De iure De gestis De prin. Descr. Kam. Exp. Hib. Gemma eccl. Inuect. Itin. Kam. Libellus Spec. duorum Spec. eccl. Symb. el. Top. Hib. Vita Galf. Vita S. Ethel. Vita S. Hug. Vita S. Rem. Vita S. Dauid Gratian, Decretum Howden, Chronica Howden, Gesta Henrici II

Catalogus brevior librorum suorum De iure et statu Meneuensis ecclesiae De gestis Giraldi (De rebus a se gestis) De principis instructione, ed. R. Bartlett Descriptio Kambriae Expugnatio Hibernica Gemma ecclesiastica Libellus inuectionum (with references) Itinerarium Kambriae Libellus inuectionum (in discussion) Speculum duorum Speculum ecclesiae Symbolum electorum Topographia Hibernica Vita Galfridi Vita S. Ethelberti Vita S. Hugonis Vita S. Remigii Vita S. Dauid Gratian, Decretum, ed. E.  Friedberg, Corpus iuris canonici, i (Leipzig, 1879) Roger of Howden, Chronica, ed. W. Stubbs (4 vols., RS, 1868–71) Gesta regis Henrici secundi Benedicti abbatis, ed. W.  Stubbs (2 vols., RS 1867) (now attributed to Roger of Howden)

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xiv LL Lloyd, HW MGH NGR NLW ODNB OMT OP

PL

PR

PRS RS

SC Taxatio Eccles.

VCH VSBG

WATU

abbreviat ions Liber Landavensis J.  E.  Lloyd, A History of Wales (3rd edn., 2 vols., London, 1939) Monumenta Germaniae Historica National Grid Reference National Library of Wales Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, ed. H. C. G. Matthew and B. Harrison (60 vols, Oxford 2004) Oxford Medieval Texts The Description of Penbrokeshire by George Owen of  Henllys, Lord of Kemes, ed. H.  Owen (4 vols., London, 1892–1936) Patrologiae cursus completus. Series Latina, ed. J.-P. Migne (217 vols, Paris, 1844–55); index (4 vols, Paris 1864) Pipe Roll (with regnal year), thus PR 21 HII is The Pipe Roll of 21 Henry II (following Bartlett, England under the Norman and Angevin Kings, 697) Pipe Roll Society Rerum Britannicarum Medii Aevi Scriptores (‘Rolls Series’); when referring to the works of Gerald of Wales, the volume number 21 is usually omitted (except in the full bibliographical references to each volume); thus RS i. 45 refers to volume one, page 45, of the works of Gerald Sources chrétiennes Taxatio Ecclesiastica Angliae et Walliae auctoritate P. Nicholai IV circa A.D. 1291, Record Commission (London, 1802) The Victoria County History Vitae Sanctorum Britanniae et Genealogiae, ed. A. W. Wade-­Evans, History and Law Series 9 (Cardiff, 1944) M.  Richards, Welsh Administrative and Territorial Units (Cardiff, 1969)

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Map 1.  Wales in the twelfth century

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I N T RO D U C T I O N Gerald of Wales was born at the castle of Manorbier on the southern coast of what is now Pembrokeshire, the most likely date being in June or July 1146.1 Manorbier was in the cantref of Penfro (‘End District’), the south-­western end of the old kingdom of Dyfed. Dyfed was a land, as Gerald and others described it, of seven cantrefi (see Map 4) that, between them, embraced all of modern Pembrokeshire and also the westernmost part of Carmarthenshire.2 His father, William de Barri, was of a knightly family that, according to Gerald’s own explanation of his family’s name ‘de Barri’, held land in and close to Barry Island in Glamorgan.3 His grandfather, Odo de Barri, however, had moved further west after Roger de Montgomery, earl of Shrewsbury, and his younger son, Arnulf, had conquered Ceredigion and most of Dyfed in 1093. He was certainly established in Penfro before the date of the 1130 Pipe Roll.4 Gerald had two elder brothers: Philip, the eldest, inherited Manorbier; Robert, the second, was one of the early party led by Robert fitz

1  At the birth of Philip Augustus, 21/22 August 1165, he was ‘completing his twentieth year, more or less’, ‘quasi uicesimum etatis sue tunc annum adimplens’, De prin., iii. 25 (OMT 674–5). He was not yet thirty at the death of his uncle David in May 1176, De gestis, i. 9. This is probably the most reliable indication, since it mattered and was not favourable to Gerald’s ambitions. A date in June or July 1146 seems likely, allowing him to be over nineteen in August 1165 but not yet thirty in May 1176. 2  De gestis, ii. 9; Itin. Kam., i. 12 (RS vi. 89–99); Descr. Kam., i. 2 (RS vi. 166–7); Pedeir Keinc y Mabinogi, ed. Williams, pp. 1, 27, 49, 67. For a discussion of Welsh place-­names and personal names, see Appendix 1 (pp. 229–31). 3  The family name is explained by Gerald in Itin. Kam., i. 6 (RS vi. 66): ‘Ab huius etiam insulæ nomine uiri nobiles maritimarum australis Kambriæ partium, qui eidem insulæ cum terris finitimis dominari solent, sunt denominati: a Barri scilicet primo agnomen, postea cognomen de Barri suscipientes’. The evidence for the early knights’ fees of the Lordship of Glamorgan is scanty and a comprehensive picture is not possible before 1262, in an inquisition post mortem, printed in Cartae et Alia Munimenta, ed. Clark, ii. 649–51: Smith, ‘The Kingdom of Morgannwg’, p. 17. Barry then lay between the major knights’ fees of Penmark, about four miles to the west, Dinas Powys, much the same distance to the north-­east, and the lesser fee of Sully, two and a half miles to the east. Odo de Barri may have been a vassal of one of the three, so that Manorbier would have constituted a considerable enhancement of his resources. Nevertheless, the name de Barri persisted among those of his descendants who settled in Ireland as well as those who remained in Wales. For further discussion of the forms of his name, see below, pp. 229–31. 4  PR 31 HI (The Great Roll of the Pipe, ed. Green, 108); Lloyd, HW 423 n. 71.

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Places in Dyfed: Key 1. Abergwaun/Fishgard 2. Aberteifi/Cardigan Castle 3. Angle: one of Gerald’s churches 4. Arberth/Narberth 5. Camros/Camrose 6. Caerfyrddin/Carmarthen 7. Caeriw/Carew (Castle of Odo f. William) 8. Haverford /Hwlffordd 9. Hayscastle (perhaps from Hait) 10. Letterston (from Letard ‘Halfking’) 11. Llanbedr Efelffre/Lampeter Velfrey 12. Llan Ismael/St Ishmael’s 13. Llansteffan 14. Llanwnda: one of Gerald’s churches

15. Llawhaden; episcopal castle 16. Manorbier/Maenor Bŷr/ 17. Mathri/Mathry 18. Pembroke Castle 19. St Clears 20. St Davids/Mynyw 21. St Dogmaels/Llandudoch 22. Talacharn/Laugharne: one of Gerald’s churches 23. Tancredston (probably from Tancred/Tancard) 24. Tenby/Dinbych-y-Pysgod: one of Gerald’s churches 25. Whitland Abbey 26. Wizo’s Castle

Map 2.  Dyfed: Places

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Stephen to go to the aid of Diarmait Mac Murchada in Leinster.5 He also had a half-­brother, Walter, by a different mother.6 The castle that was built immediately after the 1093 invasion towards  the west of Penfro, called Pembroke Castle after the name of the cantref, was entrusted to a leading follower of Arnulf, Gerald of Windsor, the maternal grandfather of Gerald of Wales.7 Gerald of Windsor survived both the onslaught of the Welsh in 1094 and the rebellion and consequent fall of the Montgomery family in 1102. He thereby became a vassal of Henry I, who took the lordship of Pembroke into royal possession. Gerald of Windsor married Nest, daughter of Rhys ap Tewdwr, the last Welsh king of the country, ‘so that he might put down deeper roots for himself and his people in those parts’.8 One of their daughters was Angharad, the wife of William de Barri and mother of Gerald of Wales.9 Nest was also a mistress of Henry I, by whom she had a son, Henry fitz Henry, who acquired lands in Pebidiog and Narberth, and mistress also of Stephen, constable of Cardigan, by whom she had a son, Robert fitz Stephen.10 She appears to have had a son by Hait, attested as sheriff of Pembroke in the Pipe Roll of 1130: William son of Hay, or as a version of Brut y Tywysogion has it, son of Haet, was a  kinsman of Gerald.11 Her descendants came to be known as ‘The Children of Nest’, prominent in Ireland as well as in south-­west Wales (Table 1 overleaf ).12 5  Exp. Hib., i. 3 (ed. Scott and Martin, pp. 32–5). 6  Exp. Hib., i. 42 (ed. Scott and Martin, pp. 116–19), makes it clear that, if William had been married to the mother of Walter, Angharad was William’s second wife, so that Walter was the eldest son, but, as the same chapter shows, Walter was killed in Ireland when his father was still alive. 7  Itin. Kam., i. 12 (RS vi. 89–91). 8 Ibid. 9  She had died by 1160, when Gerald was in his teens, as shown by Acta, ed. Barrow, no. 28. That the ‘Adeliz’ mentioned there was Angharad is clear, since David, bishop of St Davids and a son of Gerald of Windsor by Nest, described her in that document as his sister. 10  De gestis, ii. 9. The B text of the Annales Cambriae, however, named Henry as son of Gerald of Windsor: on this, see Pryce, ‘Gerald and the Geraldines’, pp. 58–9. 11  De gestis, ii. 9; PR 31 HI (The Great Roll of the Pipe, ed. Green, p. 107); Brut R, s.a. 1146, ‘meibon Geralt ystiwart a Gwilim ap Haet’ (‘Gwilyam vab Hay’, Brut P), alongside, s.a. 1136, ‘meibon Gerallt ystiwart a Gwilym ap Oitt’ (‘Gwilym vab Orc’, Pen. 20); Lloyd, HW 502, n. 64. 12  De gestis, ii. 9: ‘septem cantaredos Demecie filii Neste in Wallia optinuerunt’. The term Giraldini is used in the same chapter. Strictly, it would include neither Robert fitz Stephen nor Meilyr fitz Henry, but, as in Exp. Hib., ii. 15 (ed. Scott and Martin, pp. 168–71), the Giraldide plainly included Meilyr fitz Henry and Robert fitz Stephen, so also Giraldini here include the other Children of Nest: Pryce, ‘Gerald and the Geraldines’, pp. 54–5.

Rhys ap Tewdwr King of Deheubarth

Idnerth

Gerald of Windsor = Nest

= Stephen

= Henry I kg of England

Gruffudd

Gwenllian = Madog

Robert † c. 1182

Henry f. Henry † 1157

RHYS † 1197

Efa = Cadwallon

Odo de Barri

William Odo of Carew Raymond = Basilia sister of le Gros Richard de Clare

Maurice

William baron of Naas † c. 1199

David Angharad = William bp of St Davids de Barri Miles

Philip GERALD Ralph Maredudd Meilyr of Wales fitz Henry Justiciar of Ireland William

Gerald archdeacon of Brecon

Nest is also likely to have been the mother of William son of Hait/Hay, sheriff of Pembroke in 1130 (Lloyd, HW 502 n. 64). Efa, who married Cadwallon ap Madog of Maelienydd, was the daughter of Madog ap Maredudd † 1160, king of Powys.

Maelgwn † 1197

Hywel † 1212

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Table 1.   The Children of Nest and their Welsh Kin

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Dyfed became a land of several peoples.13 For Rhygyfarch, a scholar of the churches of Llanbadarn and of St Davids, writing shortly after 1093, it had been overrun by ‘the French’.14 In the next reign the cantref of Rhos, to the north of Penfro across Milford Haven, was deliberately settled by Henry I with Flemings, who soon dominated that cantref and occupied also the parish of Angle in the west of Penfro, parts of the cantref of Daugleddau to the east of Rhos, and part also of the commote of Talacharn to the east of Penfro.15 They are described by Gerald as great sheep-­farmers and especially hostile to the Welsh.16 The cantref of Penfro in the south and the cantrefi of Rhos and Daugleddau in the middle included the best land of Dyfed. The mountainous and less fertile north remained largely Welsh. The Flemings of Rhos and Daugleddau thus acted as a buffer between Penfro in the south, including Manorbier, and the Welsh to the north. The Flemings were a nation distinct from ‘the French’ in Penfro, a deliberate settlement authorized by Henry I c. 1110.17 Sometimes the difference in nationality could issue in hostility, as we shall see below. More often they were allies, as in 1166, when Gerald was a young man and ‘the French from Penfro and the Flemings came to the castle of Cilgerran and laid siege to it’.18 The French and the Flemings intermarried: David, bishop of St Davids and Gerald’s uncle, married his daughter to Walter son of Wizo, one of the Flemish leaders.19 Both Gerald’s eldest brother, Philip, and his cousin, Odo of Carew, married daughters of Richard fitz Tancred, castellan of Haverfordwest.20 Philip, moreover, spoke Flemish, as is revealed by a story told by Gerald about a conversation between Philip and a Flemish knight called Ernaldus Rheting at Haverfordwest, the main town of Rhos.21 The language they were both speaking was Flemish, not French or English, although the language of the family at Manorbier was very likely to have been French. Ernaldus was a knight, as were several Flemings who took part 13  See Maps 2 and 4 (pp. xviii and 236). 14  Lapidge, ‘The Welsh-­Latin poetry of Sulien’s family’, p. 90, Francigenae, translated ‘Normans’ by Lapidge, but cf. Brut (from about 1090 until the 1160s probably the work of members of the same family), s.a. 1093, ‘the French overran Dyfed’. 15  Brut, s.a. 1108; De gestis, i. 2, 4; Itin. Kam., i. 11 (RS vi. 83–4). For further discussion of the districts of Wales and Dyfed in De gestis, see Appendix 2 (pp. 232–7). 16  Itin. Kam., i. 11 (83–4). 17  Brut, s.a. 1108; John of Worcester, iii, ed. McGurk, s.a. 1111; Cartulary of Worcester Cathedral Priory, ed. Darlington, pp. xxxi–iii, 134–5 (nos. 152–8); Lloyd, HW 424–5. 18  Brut, s.a. 1166. 19  Vita Dauidis Secundi, Episcopi Meneuensis, ed. Richter, ‘A new edition’, p. 248. 20  De gestis, i. 3. 21  Spec. duorum, ed. Richter, Lefèvre, et al., pp. 36–9, ll. 609–34.

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in the Irish expedition. Someone who was of pure Welsh descent would be most unlikely to be regarded as a knight: Gerald never uses the term of a Welshman. Flemings and French were accepted as members of knightly society; the Welsh were not. Gerald, however, seems not to have been fluent in Flemish, just as he was not fluent in Welsh. When he was helping Archbishop Baldwin to preach the crusade in 1188, Gerald preached in Latin and French, not Flemish or Welsh.22 He reveals a significant knowledge of the Welsh language, though he makes mistakes, and may have had enough know­ ledge of the language for ordinary conversation, though not enough for preaching. It is possible that he had a similar knowledge of Flemish. Gerald’s earliest upbringing was in the southernmost cantref of Dyfed, Penfro. Yet he was also linked with St Davids, at the western end of Pebidiog, north of the Flemish-dominated cantref of Rhos and much more Welsh in population and language. There, his uncle David was bishop. In Dyfed the two poles of his early life were Manorbier and St Davids, the castle to the south and the cathedral to the north. The history and traditions of St Davids were thoroughly Welsh; its earlier links outside Wales were mainly with Ireland, even though Asser of St Davids had spent many years in the household of King Alfred. From St Davids Gerald could sail to south-­eastern Ireland in a day, whereas it would take him ten days to travel to London and two months, at least, to reach Rome.23 The Children of Nest had found it easier to form an attachment to St David than to the Welsh. Gerald wrote one account of the conquest of Ireland; the other was an anonymous poem in Anglo-­Norman French.24 The poem tells how ‘the Irish of Osraige had pursued the English’ until the latter came to some open and firm ground where the English chose to fight. ‘Then Maurice shouted and called on St David’ and Robert fitz Stephen, Meilyr fitz Henry, and Miles fitz David (all of them Gerald’s relations) and others ‘turned on the Irish and called on St David’. This French poem about the deeds of ‘la gent engleis’, the English people in Ireland, whose battle-­cry was ‘St David’, exhibits the overlapping identities of the Children of Nest.25 22  De gestis, ii. 18, 19. 23  De gestis, iii. 13. In De iure, prol. (RS iii. 113), Gerald has, apparently, been thinking of St Davids to Canterbury as per xv. fere dietas. 24  The Song of Dermot and the Earl, ed. and trans. Orpen; The Deeds of the Normans in Ireland, ed. and trans. E. Mullally. 25 e.g. The Song of Dermot and the Earl, ed. and trans. Orpen, pp. 250–1; The Deeds of the Normans in Ireland, ed. and trans. E. Mullally, p. 141.

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Yet even the Welsh had some place in Gerald’s identity. It was partly that the place of his birth was Manorbier, ‘the loveliest part of Penfro’, Penfro being ‘the loveliest part of Dyfed’, and Dyfed ‘the loveliest of all the lands of the whole of Wales’—and Gerald was a firm believer in the influence of geography upon character.26 In his account of the English in Ireland he has a chapter entitled ‘Praise of the Kindred’, namely the Children of Nest, in which he inserts a characteristic ex­clam­ation: ‘What a kindred, what a race, by its dual nature deriving its courage from the Trojans and its skill in the use of arms from the Gauls’.27 Here the Trojans are the Welsh, while the Gauls are the French. When Gerald described his own descent in the first chapter of De gestis, he was careful to establish his legitimate birth from the marriage between William de Barri and Angharad, but he pursued his further lineage only through his mother, and then through her mother, Nest, ‘the noble daughter of Rhys ap Tewdwr, the prince of South Wales’.28 Only one of his four grandparents might have been Welsh, and yet it was that one grandparent who gave Gerald the status of a descendant of kings. Gerald was not distinguished for modesty. In the competitive world of the Paris schools and, later, of the court of Henry II, there were plenty of rivals seeking to belittle the qualities of a young and able man.29 Gerald’s praise of himself was part of that competition for reputation and favour. He had inherited advantages: according to himself, at least, he was exceptionally handsome as a young man and still, when in his fifties, could be picked out as ‘tall and with shaggy eyebrows’.30 He was also good with words, certainly in writing and very probably also when speaking. To be tall, good-­looking, and eloquent, and to have the self-­confidence natural to someone who was conscious of such advantages, was, no doubt, an advantage to him as a preacher, as a lecturer in Paris, and in arguing his case in the papal curia.

26  Itin. Kam., i. 12 (RS vi. 92–3); Bartlett, Gerald of Wales, pp. 201–10 (164–71). See also Map 2 (p. xviii). 27  Exp. Hib., ii. 10 (ed. Scott and Martin, pp. 156–7). 28  His paternal grandfather was Odo de Barri, as shown by the PR 31 HI (The Great Roll of the Pipe, ed. Green, 137), which records that ‘Willelmus filius Odonis de Barri’ had paid £4 out of the £10 due ‘pro terra patris sui’. Odo had probably died not long before. 29  As, for example, William Wibert, Symb. el., ep. 1 (RS i. 204–5); cf. Knowles, ‘Some monastic enemies of Gerald of Wales’, pp. 138–9. 30  Spec. eccl., ii. 33 (RS iv. 104), trans. Autobiography, ed. Butler, pp. 77–8 (Gerald in his youth); De iure, v (RS iii. 292–3) (Gerald in older age).

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While he was archdeacon of Brecon, others referred to Gerald as Magister Giraldus, archidiaconus Meneuensis, and he himself used the same form but without the initial Magister.31 After he had resigned his archdeaconry in 1203 in favour of his nephew Gerald, he and others reverted to the family name with or without the initial magister, (Magister) Giraldus de Barri. From that point, any reference to Giraldus archidiaconus would have been to the nephew. An example of its use by others is in the episcopal Acta of St Davids, where the editor is likely to be right in identifying G.  de Barry (G.  de Barri in the further Inspeximus) as Gerald of Wales rather than his nephew, since his name occurs first among the witnesses and before an archdeacon; one would expect the nephew to be identified as archdeacon.32 Modern scholars initially tended to follow their early-­modern predecessors, who were generally writing in Latin, such as Sir John Prise in the sixteenth century and Henry Wharton in the seventeenth, in  calling him Giraldus Cambrensis: for example, the Rolls Series, J. E. Lloyd, and H. E. Butler.33 This was presumably ultimately based on the beginning of De gestis, i. 1, Giraldus itaque de Kambria oriundus. As an English form of the name, F.  M.  Powicke in 1928 preferred Gerald of Wales and was followed in 1982 by both Robert Bartlett in his Gerald of Wales and Brynley  F.  Roberts in his book of the same title.34 This has been predominant since then, but John Gillingham 31  For example, by others in Inuect., iii. 9, 10, 17, 22, 23, iv. 7 (Davies, pp. 152–3, 157–8, 161–2, 173), and by Gerald himself, Symb. el., ep. 1 (RS i. 203). There were also other ­archidiaconi Meneuenses, four in total (De gestis, i. 8). Gerald’s specific title was archidiaconus de Brecheniauc (iii. 4), just as Poncius was archidiaconus de Penbroc (ii. 7). In the singular, archidiaconus Meneuensis would be acceptable if the context allowed it to be taken as ‘an archdeacon of St Davids’, that is, as a description and not a title. In Symbolum Electorum, ep. xxxi (RS i. 319), Gerald criticizes Osbert for using archidiaconus de sancto Dauid (using our orthography) as a title: ‘Ad maioris etiam arrogantie et iactantie signum archidiaconus de Kairmerdhin uocari dedignans, potius archidiaconum de Sto. Dauid se facit in Anglia ubique uocari . . .  Caueat sibi nunc Pontius quoniam ad eius archidiaconatum, cuius sibi indebite nomen usurpat, aspirare uidetur’. If the title was archidiaconus de Sancto Dauid (as an alternative to archidiaconus de Penbroc), that might be enough to make archidiaconus Meneuensis unobjectionable, since it was more likely to be taken as a description rather than the ­formal title. 32  Acta, ed. Barrow, nos. 78 and 148 respectively. Compare Spec. duorum, ed. Richter, Lefèvre, et al., p. 250 (Ep. vii, ll. 142–3), ‘litteras et sigillum magistri Giraldi ibi videre, non autem archidiaconi Giraldi’. An example of Gerald using this form for himself is Spec. duorum, ed. Richter, Lefèvre, et al., p. 2 (BAV MS Reg. 470, fo. 50rb). 33  John Prise, Historiae Brittanicae Defensio, ed. Davies, e.g. p. 37; Anglia Sacra, ed. Wharton, ii. 373–647; RS 21/i–viii; Lloyd, HW i. 554–64; Autobiography, ed. Butler. 34  Powicke, ‘Gerald of Wales’; Bartlett, Gerald of Wales; Roberts, Gerald of Wales.

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prefers Gerald de Barri and Julia Barrow in Acta has Gerald de Barri the elder/Gerald of Wales.35 Earlier in the twentieth century he was also called ‘Gerald the Welshman’ or, in Welsh, ‘Gerallt Gymro’, as by Henry Owen and Thomas Jones.36 Bartlett, however, has rightly adduced the evidence of the first preface to De principis instructione, where Gerald makes the distinction, ‘our education and daily contacts were, as we have said, amongst the English, but our birthplace and our family are to be found in Wales’.37 As this shows, for Gerald, the part of the country with which a person was most closely connected formed his identity, and the land both of Gerald’s birthplace and where his immediate family and his relations were brought up was Dyfed. If Gerald’s attachment to Wales may have fluctuated, his love of Dyfed and pride in the Children of Nest seems never to have wavered. Yet, to introduce another name, ‘Gerald the Dimetian’, would not help. To judge by the same preface, for many of his contemporaries, especially if they wanted to disparage him, he was Gerald of Wales. T HE T I T L E Gerald’s account of his own life has been known as De rebus a se gestis libri tres for more than three centuries. Henry Wharton first printed it under that title in 1691 and the name has stuck, usually in the shortened form De rebus a se gestis. The Rolls Series adopted the same title in 1861.38 H. E. Butler translated it as ‘The Autobiography of Giraldus Cambrensis’. The label has been universally adopted in historical 35  Gillingham, ‘The English invasion of Ireland’, p. 155, criticizes both ‘Gerald of Wales’ and ‘Gerald the Welshman’ on the ground that ‘it tends to identify him too emphatically with just one stage of a career which, roughly speaking, began as pro-­English, went first pro-­ Welsh, then pro-­French’, but by ‘French’ here, Gillingham is thinking of the French of France and Gerald’s support for the invasion of Prince Louis, not of the French of Dyfed; Acta, ed. Barrow, pp. 28–9. 36 Owen, Gerald the Welshman; Thomas Jones in his translation of Itin. Kam. and Descr. Kam., and his short bilingual book in commemoration of the eight-­hundredth anniversary of Gerald’s birth: Jones, Gerallt Gymro: Hanes y Daith trwy Gymru, Disgrifiad o Gymru; Jones, Gerallt Gymro: Gerald the Welshman. For a list of many versions of Gerald’s name in different languages, see https://data.cerl.org/thesaurus/cnp00949397 (accessed on 4 August 2022). 37  De prin., first pref. (OMT 4–5); Bartlett, Gerald of Wales, p. 17 (22–3). 38  The Rolls Series editor, J. S. Brewer, refers to the work in his preface as De Gestis (e.g. RS i. xciv), but seems by this to mean only an abbreviation of De Rebus a se gestis (cf. RS i. lxxxviii). He cites a passage in which Gerald refers to it by its true title (RS i. xc). Within the text itself, Brewer adds invented headings to each book or part: to parts two and three he gives the titles ‘Liber secundus de gestis Giraldi’ and ‘Liber tertius de gestis Giraldi’; to part one, ‘Giraldi Cambrensis liber primus de rebus a se gestis’ (RS i. 45, 89, and 21, respectively). Brewer may have been aware, that is, of Gerald’s own title, but preferred to keep Wharton’s.

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­ riting on Gerald.39 Gerald himself, however, knew the work by quite w another name: in his frequent references to it in other works, he in­vari­ ably referred to it as the ‘liber de gestis Giraldi’ (or, occasionally, in place of ‘liber’, ‘libellus’).40 He saw it not as libri tres but as a single liber, divided into three partes or distinctiones.41 A late-­medieval cataloguer would have entered our text into his book-­list as ‘de gestis Giraldi liber’; or perhaps, if he knew the text’s author, ‘Giraldus de gestis suis’.42 Its English equivalent is not ‘autobiography’ but ‘On Gerald’s Deeds’ or, in a more modern manner, simply ‘What Gerald Did’. The sole manuscript of De gestis Giraldi, BL Cotton MS Tiberius B. xiii, was left unrubricated and in consequence untitled.43 Seventeenth-­ century readers, unaware of the label left by Gerald in his other works, applied their own. Sir James Ware called it Gerald’s ‘liber de vita sua’.44 In 1617, Brian Twyne added running titles throughout the text in Tiberius B. xiii: ‘Vita Gyraldi’.45 Wharton was likewise free to name the apparently unnamed. We restore Gerald’s title. T HE M A NU SC R IPT The text of De gestis Giraldi is uniquely preserved in BL Cotton MS Tiberius B. xiii, fos. 154r–185v. It does not seem to have been widely circulated in the Middle Ages: in contrast to many of Gerald’s other works, it is not listed in British medieval library catalogues. Indeed, there is no external evidence that any other manuscript of De gestis ever 39  See, e.g., Bartlett, Gerald of Wales, pp. 15 (21), 33 (35), and 219 (178); Williams, ‘A bibliography of Giraldus Cambrensis’, pp. 111 and 132; Henley and McMullen, Gerald of Wales, passim. 40 e.g. Inuect., iv. 1 (Davies, p. 164), iv. 2 (Davies, p. 167), vi. 1 (Davies, p. 204; twice, once as liber and once libellus), vi. 13 (Davies, p. 215), vi. 24 (Davies, p. 226; ‘in libro de gestis eiusdem’), vi. 25 (Davies, p. 228; ‘ex libro qui de gestis Giraldi inscribitur’); De iure, iii (RS iii. 188), iii (RS iii. 196), iv (RS iii. 212), iv (RS iii. 218), iv (RS iii. 225), iv (RS iii. 241), iv (RS iii. 246), iv (RS iii. 247; ‘de gestis Giraldi’ without liber), vii (RS iii. 334; ‘librum de gestis propriis’), iv (RS iii. 273), vii (RS iii. 373); Epistola ad capitulum Herefordense (RS i. 415); Spec. eccl., iv. 33 (RS iv. 340); Catalogus brevior (RS i. 423); Retractationes (RS i. 426). 41  Gerald refers to its sections as partes in the prologue to De gestis itself; as distinctiones in Spec. eccl., iv. 33 (RS iv. 340). 42 Sharpe, Titulus, pp. 82–98. 43  The BL catalogue describes the Tiberius manuscript as containing ‘one of two extant copies of Gerald’s autobiography’. But in fact the other copy is Sir James Ware’s notes from the Tiberius manuscript in BL Add. MS 4787; they are printed in Appendix 3 (pp. 247–52). 44  See Appendix 3 (p. 248 (cf. p. 250)). 45  ‘Vita Gyraldi’ together on fo. 154r; ‘Gyraldi’ and ‘Vita’ on subsequent versos and rectos respectively (and thus perhaps then ‘Gyraldi Vita’ in intent). The hand is identified in Hunt, ‘Preface to the “Speculum ecclesiae” ’, p. 190.

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existed, nor is the text cited by other medieval authors. But Tiberius B. xiii is plainly not an authorial copy: it has little evidence of Giraldian revision and many of its mistakes are readily explained as visual copying errors. There must thus once have been another, but it has perished and left no other children. A manuscript of 237 parchment leaves, preceded by one and succeeded by two paper flyleaves (i.e. i + 237 + ii), Tiberius B. xiii consists of two parts and three texts: I. i. fos. 1r–153v. Gerald of Wales, Speculum ecclesie, s. xiii1 ii. fos. 154r–185v. Gerald of Wales, De gestis Giraldi, s. xiii1 II. fos. 186r–237v. Roger of Ford, Speculum ecclesie, s. xiii2 Each of the three texts presents the sole surviving copy of the work it contains. It is not clear when the two parts were first bound together, but Ford’s text may well have been joined to Gerald’s due simply to its title. The origin of the text of De gestis in Tiberius B. xiii is unknown, but the Augustinian priory of Llanthony Secunda, by Gloucester, is a likely candidate.46 In 1617, the antiquary Brian Twyne (1581–1644) copied extracts from Tiberius B. xiii, labelling them ‘Excerpta ex quibusdam Manuscriptis Lantoniensis coenobii prope Glocestr: que uidi apud Magistrum Henricum Parry. 1617’.47 This Parry, a fellow of Corpus 46  The history of Llanthony Priory preserved in BL Cotton MS Julius D. x, fos. 31r–53v, contains passages drawn from Gerald’s Speculum ecclesiae. Hunt, ‘Preface to the “Speculum ecclesiae” ’, p. 193, considered this to be evidence of the presence of Tiberius B. xiii or another manuscript of the Speculum ecclesiae at Llanthony. Bartlett has recently argued, however, that the author of the history of Llanthony was in fact Gerald himself (Bartlett, ‘Gerald of Wales and the History of Llanthony Priory’; History of Llanthony Priory, ed. Bartlett, pp. xxvi–xxxvi). If this is correct, no such presence is necessary to account for the reuse. 47  Bodl. Lib. MS Twyne 22, fo. 99r. Noted by Hunt, ‘Preface to the “Speculum ecclesiae” ’, p. 190. For the relevant passages, see Appendix 3, pp. 238–40. For Twyne, see ODNB, s.n., ‘Twyne, Brian, 1581–1644’. He was elected as a discipulus in Corpus Christi College, Oxford, on 13 December 1594, Probationary Fellow 1605; he was the son of Thomas Twyne, himself a discipulus of Corpus (elected 6 July 1560), Probationary Fellow 1564. Brian was the first Keeper of the University Archives, 1534–44; and died 4 July 1644. Discipulus is the term used in the Founder’s Statutes of Corpus for a person elected onto the foundation and in receipt of maintenance, namely someone who would later be called a scholar. Probationary Fellows, scholares, held that status for only two years, after which they were normally elected full Fellows, socii. The details here and in the following notes are mainly derived from ‘Hegge’s Catalogue’, a catalogue of Fellows and Scholars (discipuli) of the college, originally compiled by Robert Hegge, discipulus 1614, Probationary Fellow 1624, d. 1629; subsequently continued after his death, the catalogue was edited by Thomas Fowler, History of Corpus Christi College, pp. 378–450. The importance of the Corpus Christi College connection in the transmission of this manuscript is striking.

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Christi College, Oxford, was the eldest son of Henry Parry (1560–1616), bishop first of Gloucester, then of Worcester, who left his manuscripts to his son on his death.48 Parry fils gave his college many manuscripts, at least nine of which came from Llanthony, but it is unclear why Twyne thought Tiberius B. xiii did as well.49 Perhaps Parry told him so. Where might Bishop Parry have obtained the manuscript? Other Llanthony books were given to Trinity College, Oxford, by Francis Baber (d. 1669), chancellor of Gloucester cathedral, leading Bennett to write that ‘[t]he Gloucester associations of these men suggest that the books they presented to their colleges had remained in the locality of Llanthony’.50 Other pathways are possible: Llanthony Priory was dissolved in 1538 and in his 1545 will its last prior, Richard Hart, left ‘all my bookes of Latyn’ to one Thomas Morgan. Among Hart’s executors was Thomas Theare, and it has been argued that it was through Theare or his grandson, the book collector John Theyer (d. 1673), that many Llanthony manuscripts passed to their present homes.51 In this case, however, such a vector may be unnecessary: there were simpler ways for books to move the half mile from Llanthony Secunda to Gloucester Cathedral. By 1621, Tiberius B. xiii had entered the collection of Sir Robert Bruce Cotton (1571–1631), for in that year Cotton lent the book to Henry Bourchier (c. 1587–1654), later the fifth earl of Bath.52 The manuscript had already been stamped with Cotton’s arms, and it was perhaps at that point that Gerald’s texts were rebound and joined to Roger of Ford’s Speculum.53 It may also have been lent to John Selden in 1638, though in this case it is unclear to which Giraldian manuscript Cotton’s loan list refers.54 Cotton’s collection, bequeathed by his grandson to trustees to be preserved for public use, formed part of the 48  Henry Parry junior matriculated on 28 March 1607; discipulus at Corpus (elected 4 Jan. 1609; Probationary Fellow 1614). For his father, see ODNB, s.n. ‘Parry, Henry (1561–1616), bishop of Worcester’: born c. 20 December 1561; discipulus of Corpus (elected 13 November 1576); Probationary Fellow 1586; bishop of Gloucester, 1607; of Worcester, 1610, died 12 December 1616. 49 Ker, Medieval Libraries of Great Britain, p. 62, and Ker and Watson, Medieval Libraries of Great Britain: supplement, p. 43. On Parry’s gifts, see also Thomson, Descriptive Catalogue of the Medieval Manuscripts of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, xxiv and xxvi. 50  Bennett, ‘The book collections of Llanthony Priory’, i. 217. 51  Bennett, ‘The book collections of Llanthony Priory’, i. 216–17. 52 Tite, Early Records, p. 108, citing BL Add. MS 6018. 53  Cotton’s loan list records ‘Giraldi Cambrensis distinctiones et vita Armes’, the last part indicating, as often in this list, that the MS was marked with Cotton’s arms. See Tite, Early Records, p. 35. 54 Tite, Early Records, p. 80.

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collection of the British Museum at its foundation in 1753. Though the earlier elements of the story are uncertain, then, this manuscript of De gestis perhaps passed from Llanthony to Gloucester, to the Parrys, to Cotton, and thence to its present home by St Pancras. The former size of the manuscript’s leaves is impossible to determine due to trimming, fire, and framing. The total area of the leaves surviving after framing varies from 245mm × 168mm to 255mm × 175mm.55 The written area averages 180mm × 105mm, in two columns. The columns are, on average, 60mm wide and are separated by an intercolumnar space of 8mm. More parchment appears to have been damaged and lost in the manuscript’s upper margin than in its lower. De gestis is written in two carefully ruled columns, with text beginning above the top line.56 Each column is of forty-­two written lines: forty-­one within the frame of the ruling, that is, and one above it. The ruling is done with a grey or black crayon. Three pairs of horizontal lines extend the full width of each leaf: the first and second (above and below the leaf ’s second line of text); the twenty-­first and twenty-­ second (halfway down the column); and the forty-­first and forty-­ second (above and below the leaf ’s final line of text). The remaining horizontal ruling lines cover only the width of the two columns, though they sometimes slightly overrun the frame. Seven vertical ruling lines extend the full height of each leaf. Two define a left margin about as wide as the distance between horizontal ruling lines. Three vertical lines define an intercolumnar space about twice as wide as the distance between the horizontal ruling lines. The final two define a right margin identical to that on the left. There was formerly an eighth vertical ruling line in the far outer margin (see, e.g., fos. 161r and 162r), but these lines have mostly been lost to trimming or to fire damage. Pricking holes are regu­lar­ly visible at the foot of the vertical ruling lines, below the text area. Those to mark the top of the vertical lines have been burnt or trimmed away, as have those which likely defined the position of the three pairs of horizontal lines extending the full width of each leaf. The text’s final quire (AA, see below) follows the same ruling pattern, though its lines are far fainter. The text of De gestis was written by two scribes, the first covering the three quires X, Y, and Z (fos. 154r–177v; see below) and the second the single quire AA (fos. 178r–185v), whom we call respectively scribe 55  The outer edge of the leaves is longer than the inner edge, presumably due to the effects of the fire. 56  Ker, ‘From “above top line” to “below top line” ’, pp. 13–16.

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A and scribe B. Though their hands are markedly different in aspect, both write a proto-­gothic minuscule and date to the first half of the thirteenth century.57 If De gestis and the Speculum ecclesie were completed in a single campaign (see below), the whole would have been written after the Speculum’s terminus post quem of 1219.58 Neither scribe appears within the other’s stint, and what few medieval additions or corrections appear in the text of De gestis are done by the text hand at that point.59 In her 2005 dissertation, C.  M.  Rooney argued that the whole of De gestis had been written by a single scribe, that this scribe was also responsible for much of the Speculum ecclesie, covering fos. 63vb–153v, and that his hand appeared as well in Lambeth Palace MS 236, containing Gerald’s Gemma ecclesiastica.60 Though we disagree with the first of her contentions, the second and third are possible, but difficult to judge. Our scribe A may well have written parts of the Speculum, but the hand (or hands) of the latter part of the Speculum is extremely inconsistent and we hesitate therefore to assert an identity. The hand of Lambeth 236 is very similar to that of our scribe A but we again hesitate to claim that they are the same. Our scribe B does not appear elsewhere in Tiberius B. xiii. The copy of De gestis follows standard late twelfth-­century practices in punctuation.61 There are three weights of pause. The single low punctus, the punctus elevatus, and the single low punctus followed by a littera notabilior represent respectively minor, medial, and major pauses. Questions are marked by punctus interrogativi. The scribes’ practice in dividing up clauses and phrases is erratic. Cum clauses, for example, are often, but not always, followed by punctus elevati; sentence division is often erroneous.62 There is no reason to think that the text’s inconsistent punctuation represents Gerald’s own usage, and we have therefore re-­punctuated on modern principles.63 The decoration of De gestis was never finished. Both scribes left spaces for coloured initials and for rubrics to mark chapter beginnings. Only a single coloured initial, a ‘C’ on fo. 172v, was ever filled in. It is 57  We are grateful to Professor M. T. J. Webber for her advice on these points. 58 Bartlett, Gerald of Wales, p. 220 (179) and Hunt, ‘Preface to the “Speculum ecclesiae” ’, pp. 196–7. 59  Notably the substantial addition in the lower margin of fo. 158v, written by scribe A. 60  Rooney, ‘The manuscripts of the works of Gerald of Wales’, pp. 149–50. 61 Parkes, Pause and Effect, pp. 41–3. 62  See below, pp. xcvi–xcvii. 63  See below, pp. xcv–xcvi.

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unclear why: two other blanks for coloured initials on the same page were left unfilled. The scribes noted the letter to be added as an initial in the margin, as an indication to the decorator. In most cases these letters have been trimmed or lost (as perhaps they were intended to be) but they can occasionally be seen, for example on the far left of fo. 155r. Rubricated capitula, by contrast, have been filled in, apparently by both scribes in their respective stints: by scribe A in the first three quires and by scribe B in the last. There are occasional slips: no space was left for a rubric on fo. 170r and the words ‘Visio Giraldi’ have had to be squeezed into the edge of the text block; the space lefts for rubrics is at times too small, as on fos. 172v, 178r, 182v, and 183v; a rubric is omitted on fo. 166r; and the rubric for chapter iii. 11 is mistakenly repeated before iii. 12 on fo. 182v. There are no rubrics at all on the first five leaves of De gestis, fos. 154–8; the first appears on fo. 159v. Curiously, the final quire of Gerald’s Speculum ecclesie, fos. 144r–153v, is also wholly unrubricated: there is thus a section of fifteen leaves without rubrics, spanning the break between Speculum and De gestis—­evidence that these texts were copied (or at least rubricated) in a single campaign. More curiously still, across the bottom of fo. 144r (the beginning of this unrubricated section) is a large spotty smear of red ink. Perhaps the scribe dropped his pen by accident and never returned to finish the task. Tiberius B. xiii has been damaged several times. At least one quire is missing from Gerald’s Speculum following fo. 31v, and has been since the late Middle Ages (see below). De gestis ends incomplete on fo. 185v, at a quire boundary. This latter part of the text has certainly been missing since the seventeenth century, if not earlier: when Sir James Ware examined it, probably in the 1650s, he described it as mutilatum.64 The notes made by Twyne and Richard James, in 1617 and 1620 × 1634 respectively, contain nothing from the now-­lost portion of the manuscript.65 It seems clear that the bulk of De gestis had been lost before the copy ever came into Cotton’s hands. It is tempting to wonder whether Gerald ever finished the work, but the table of contents and frequent cross-­references in his other works to its lost chapters show clearly that he did. More damage was to come. Early in the morning of Saturday, 23  October 1731, a fire broke out in the aptly named Ashburnham

64  Ware’s notes in BL Add. MS 4787 are printed in Appendix 3 (pp. 247–50). 65  Their notes are printed in Appendix 3 (pp. 238–44).

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House in Westminster, where the Cotton collections were then housed.66 Tiberius B. xiii was badly burnt at its beginning and end. The committee charged with examining the state of the manuscripts reported in the following year that ‘[t]he two first Chapters of this Book [i.e. Gerald’s Speculum] are spoiled’, and that thirteen leaves had been lost at the end of Roger of Ford’s Speculum.67 An epitaph and letter once on the manuscript’s two final leaves were entirely lost. This overstates the extent of the destruction, as some of the leaves then described as lost were later flattened and partially preserved, but the damage was nonetheless substantial. Happily, De gestis, being in the middle of the manuscript, escaped almost entirely unscathed. After initial efforts to dry, separate, and flatten the leaves of damaged Cotton manuscripts, only sporadic progress was made on their restoration for more than a century. On 18 July 1837, Sir Frederic Madden was appointed Keeper of Manuscripts at the British Museum and undertook to extend the work of restoration.68 In response to a request from the Cotton Trustees (prompted by Sir Thomas Phillipps), in December 1838 Madden prepared a report on the state of the damaged Cotton manuscripts and their prospects for repair. Tiberius B. xiii he classed among Those MSS. which by the agency of heat have been compressed and corrugated, with the edges burnt, and in many cases, broken, torn, and dirtied. These are in number 35, all of which, if skilfully flattened, inlaid and repaired, might be protected from further injury, and rendered in a comparatively good condition for general use.69

Despite a fitful start and some notable wrong turnings (most disastrously a fire in the binding room on 10 July 1865), in the next three decades the great bulk of the damaged Cotton collection was repaired and, where necessary, mounted in paper frames to prevent further damage. Writing of Vitellius A. xv (the manuscript containing Beowulf  ), K. S. Kiernan describes the mounting process thus: The binder first made pencil tracings of the separate folio leaves on sheets of heavy construction paper. These tracings are usually quite visible in the MS. [. . .] After the tracings were made, the binder then cut out the center part of the paper, following the outline, but leaving from 1 to 2 mm. of paper within 66  A Report from the Committee, p. 11; Prescott, ‘“Their present miserable state of ­cremation”  ’. 67  A Report from the Committee, pp. 21–2. 68  ODNB, s.n. ‘Madden, Sir Frederic (1801–1873)’. 69  Cited by Prescott, ‘“Their present miserable state of cremation” ’, p. 411.

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the traced line, so that the frame would be slightly smaller than the vellum leaf it was designed to hold. Paste was then applied to this marginal retaining space, and the folio was pressed into place. Finally, transparent paper slips were pasted on like Scotch tape along the edge of the vellum on the recto, thus to secure the mounted leaf from both sides.70

It was precisely this which was done to Tiberius B. xiii and, though some of the seventeenth-­century marginalia are slightly obscured by the pasted strips, the text of De gestis has since survived without further accident. The manuscript’s present binding dates from May 1957.71 In spite of the remounting of the manuscript’s leaves, its former collation can largely be reconstructed. Post-­medieval quire signatures survive on many leaves, probably added when the manuscript was disassembled for rebinding. Those on its first folios are lost or illegible due to fire damage: the first which can clearly be read is E on fo. 24r. Their subsequent progression shows that the section containing Gerald’s works is largely composed of quaternions: F on fo. 32r, G on fo. 40r, and so forth. Not every signature is visible: some have been trimmed or covered by the framing. That E appears on the twenty-­ fourth recto rather than the thirty-­second suggests that eight full leaves have been lost at the opening of the manuscript—­unsurprisingly, given how badly burnt are those which there survive.72 At least one leaf of the preface to the Speculum ecclesie is missing; perhaps the remaining missing leaves of the putative A quire contained a table of contents. At least one further quire of the Speculum went missing before the addition of the quire signatures, likely long before: at the end of quire E on fo. 31v are the catchwords ut eis, which do not correspond to the opening words of quire F on fo. 32r. Beside the catchwords a late-­ medieval hand has written hic deficit, above which an early-­modern (likely s. xvii) hand has added: Desunt sex capita, ut constat ex Summá Cap. prefixa init. Dist. Further traces of catchwords are visible on fo.  55v and it is likely that every quire was formerly finished with ­catchwords. 70 Kiernan, Beowulf and the Beowulf Manuscript, p. 69, cited by Prescott, ‘“Their present miserable state of cremation” ’, p. 424. 71  BL Cotton MS Tiberius B. xiii, unnumbered rear paper flyleaf. 72  It is clear from Hunt’s analysis of the contents (Hunt, ‘Preface to the “Speculum ecclesiae” ’, p. 203) that fo. 1r, at least, is completely lost. Whatever preceded this, however, was unpaginated in the pre-fire pagination, probably by Richard James. Perhaps James did not include a table of contents in his pagination. Hunt’s comparison of Tiberius B. xiii with James’s pagination also makes clear that the lost leaves do not correspond neatly to a single quire—­the present 4r, for example, was once 5r—­but their original state cannot be exactly reconstructed.

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The final quire signature visible in Gerald’s Speculum ecclesie is V on fo. 144r. The text of the Speculum fills ten further leaves, with the table of contents to De gestis beginning on fo. 154r. No quire signature is ­visible on 154r; the first surviving quire signature within the text of De  gestis is Y on fo. 162r. The most likely explanation is that V was a  quinion or a quaternion with a supplementary bifolium appended and that De gestis began with a new quaternion, X, on fo. 154r. This cannot be proven, however, and the precise collation of fos. 144–61 is unknown. The surviving portion of De gestis is otherwise composed entirely of quaternions. If, as is likely, X began on fo. 154r, the text ­covers four quires in total, X, Y, Z, and AA, and breaks off incomplete at the foot of fo. 185v, at the end of AA. The final part of the manuscript, containing Roger of Ford’s Speculum ecclesie, does not appear to continue this series of quire signatures. It has instead two series: C2, D2, E2, F2 in the centre of the bottom margin, and A3, B2, C, D, and E above and slightly to the right. These signatures appear on fos. 186r, 194r, 204r, 214r, and 224r, but the expected G2 from the first series on fo. 224r has been lost. The lower margin of fo. 234r has been badly damaged and no signatures are there visible. This part of Tiberius B. xiii is thus composed of an initial quaternion and at least four quinions; the collation of the manuscript’s last few leaves cannot be reconstructed. Neither series is in the same hand as the quire signatures of fos. 32r–178r. Though this text was manifestly bound together with Gerald’s works in 1731, therefore, the differing early-­modern signatures suggest that their joining was a relatively recent development. There are three post-­medieval series of folio or page numberings in the manuscript. What followed in this edition is the pencilled late-­ nineteenth-­century foliation written on the frames into which the leaves have been mounted. On the leaves themselves is a second fo­li­ ation in black ink. This postdates the fire of 1731—in the Speculum ecclesie the numbers have often clearly been placed so as to avoid fire-­ damaged areas—­and is likely of the nineteenth century as well. It differs from the pencilled foliation by four throughout De gestis (i.e. our fo. 154r is fo. 150r in this older foliation) due to confusion in the earlier part of Speculum ecclesie. Both of these foliations extend continuously across all three texts in Tiberius B. xiii. The last series, a set of early-­seventeenth-­century paginations, covers Gerald’s Speculum and De gestis, restarting at the break between them. It may well have extended to Roger of Ford’s Speculum as well, but the narrow upper margins of that part of the manuscript have been heavily damaged and, if so, the

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numbers cannot be seen. In this series, probably added in the seventeenth century, perhaps by Richard James, De gestis covers pages 1 to 64. In the seventeenth century, too, Brian Twyne added chapter numbers in the margin of De gestis, running continuously across all three parts from 1 to 55 and numbering the proemium as the first chapter.73 Twyne also added running titles to the text: ‘Vita Gyraldi’ on fo. 154r, ‘Gyraldi’ on all subsequent versos, and ‘Vita’ on all subsequent rectos, as well as running titles to Gerald’s Speculum ecclesie.74 The medieval foliation, if ever there was any, has been entirely lost. de gestis giraldi

A M O NG G E RA LD ’S WO RK S

The composition of De gestis is usually dated to 1208 × 1216, following the suggestion of Bartlett in his now-­standard monograph on Gerald.75 Bartlett himself, however, stressed that his datings were ‘convenient summar[ies] of information rather than [ . . . ] the results of exhaustive original research’, and were based on the work of others.76 In the case of De gestis, Bartlett relied in part on the arguments of Richter on the date of Libellus inuectionum, itself partly derived from De gestis. When we explore those arguments in more detail, we see that Bartlett’s caution was not misplaced. Much of this proposed dating is an affair of tunc. The terminus a quo of 1208 derives from the description of Gerald’s cousin Meilyr fitz Henry (d. 1220) as Hibernie tunc iusticiarium (table of contents, iii. 41) and tunc regni iusticiarium (iii. 13). Meilyr ceased to be justiciar in mid-­ 1208: the last writ in which he is addressed as such is dated 19 June 1208.77 On the assumption that Meilyr would only be described as tunc iusticiarium if he had since left office, the writing of these passages might be thought to postdate 1208. The terminus ad quem of 1216 comes from the observation that part six of Libellus inuectionum reproduces the visions which form the close of De gestis. There they are explicitly described as those ‘que quasi in calce libelli de gestis eiusdem [sc. Giraldi] conscripta reperiuntur’.78 That the visions in the Libellus were indeed copied from De gestis is further supported by their common errors: the fourteenth and twentieth 73  These numbers thus do not correspond to those in our edition. 74  The identification of Twyne’s hand is by Hunt, ‘Preface to the “Speculum ecclesiae” ’, p. 190. 75 Bartlett, Gerald of Wales, p. 219 (178). 76 Bartlett, Gerald of Wales, p. 213 (176). 77  ODNB, s.n. ‘Meiler fitz Henry (d. 1220)’. 78  Inuect., vi. 1 (Davies, p. 204).

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visions are omitted in both texts. But when was the Libellus written? Its composition extended over many years: Gerald began the work, he tells us, at the urging of Innocent III himself while in Rome in 1200;79 Bartlett concluded, on the basis of Richter’s introduction to the Speculum duorum, that the Libellus had been completed by 1216.80 If that were the case, De gestis would likewise have to have been completed by 1216, for it must predate the Libellus. But, in fact, Richter argued not that 1216 was the date by which the Libellus must have been completed, but that it was the earliest date at which it could have been completed: not ad quem but a quo once again. And again the argument is tunc-based. In part five of the Libellus, Gerald not only calls Meilyr tunc Hibernie iusticiarius, but he refers to ‘Innocentio Tercio qui tunc prefuit’.81 Richter argues that this ‘strongly suggest[s] that the pope was already dead’.82 Innocent III died at Perugia on 16 June 1216. If Innocent was indeed dead when Gerald wrote part five, and if part six (containing the visions copied from De gestis) was written after part five was finished, then we must conclude not that De gestis was complete by 1216, as Bartlett supposed, but only that it was available to be copied at some point after 1216—must conclude, that is, nothing at all. Indeed, if we look further into the problem of papal tuncs, we find further difficulty. In De gestis itself, Gerald writes of how he came ‘ad pedes pape (scilicet Innocentii Tercii, qui tunc presidebat, et papatus eius anno secundo)’ (iii. 18). Unless we take the clause beginning with scilicet to be a later revision or addition, the same logic which would push the completion of the Libellus beyond 1216 would push that of De gestis as well.83 But perhaps we should not take our tuncs so narrowly. Gerald, composing deathless prose for the eyes of posterity, might well have intended temporal cues such as ‘at that time’ to be understood from the position of his imagined future reader, not that of the writer. A state necessarily impermanent (a justiciarship, a papacy) might attract a tunc not because it had already ended when Gerald wrote, but because he sees it here from the heights of history. In De gestis, for 79  Catalogus brevior (RS i. 422; cf. Davies, pp. 4–9); Spec. duorum, ed. Richter, Lefèvre, et al., pp. xx and 164. 80 Bartlett, Gerald of Wales, p. 219 (178). 81  Inuect., v. 12 (Davies, p. 192) and v. 14 (Davies, p. 194). 82  Spec. duorum, ed. Richter, Lefèvre, et al., p. xxi. 83  One might argue that there is a significant difference between the perfect prefuit of the Libellus and the imperfect presidebat of De gestis, but this seems tenuous in the presence of tunc.

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example, he writes of ‘Cantuariam, cui tunc temporis Meneuensis ecclesia sicut et Wallia tota de facto suberat, lege prouinciali’ (i. 3), not because St Davids’ subjection to Canterbury has ceased, but because Gerald sees that subjection as an innovation and an abuse to be corrected in future—‘at that time’—because the state described had a beginning and will (he hopes) have an end. If we set aside for the moment the implications of tunc, what other evidence exists for the date of De gestis? The final securely datable event in the text’s narrative is Gerald’s resignation of his archdeaconry and prebends in favour of his nephew in November 1203 (iii. 217).84 This is the last narrative chapter of the chronologically arranged De gestis. No reference is made to Gerald’s further trip to Rome in 1206, to the accession of Stephen Langton, to the papal interdict of 1208 to 1214, to the Fourth Lateran Council, or to the reign of Henry III—­to anything, that is, outside the narrative frame of the work itself. What of the outer bound? The work must have been completed before Gerald’s death in 1220 × 1223. It must have been finished before the completion of the Libellus and De iure, but the dating of those works is fluid as well. It must have been completed before the writing of BL Cotton MS Tiberius B. xiii, but the manuscript’s date of 1220 × c. 1250 offers no help here.85 Strictly speaking, De gestis could have been written at any point between November 1203 and Gerald’s death, provided time is allowed for the completion of those of his works which must have followed De gestis. At the end of De iure, Gerald listed the works he had hitherto composed and gave them rough dates: De gestis, together with the Symbolum electorum, Libellus inuectionum, and Speculum duorum, he assigned to ‘anno quasi quinquagesimo’—that is, according to the scheme he there adopted, in his fifties.86 This, placing De gestis in the period c. 1196 to 1206, can only be very approximate. The Libellus was indeed begun in this period but continued long after it; work on the Speculum duorum, too, was carried on into Gerald’s final years.87 It does suggest, however, that work on De gestis might have begun soon after the events it describes: as with the Libellus, he perhaps here assigned De gestis to the period of its conception. But Gerald was not consistent: elsewhere in

84  Spec. duorum, ed. Richter, Lefèvre, et al., pp. xxvii–xxviii. 85  For the date, see above, p. xxx. 86  De iure, vii (RS iii. 372–3); on references to Gerald’s age, see below, p. cxv. 87  Spec. duorum, ed. Richter, Lefèvre, et al.

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De iure, he included De gestis ‘inter ultimos fere labores ipsomet auctore vel adjutore conscriptos’.88 There is no reason to assume that De gestis as we now have it was the product of a single period of effort. Gerald habitually revised his works over the course of many years, typically adding ever more examples, quotations, and proofs to each successive redaction. There are some suggestions (though only that) that the same may be true of De gestis. First, an additional story has been added at the end of i. 1, written in the bottom margin of fo. 158v by scribe A and keyed to the main text by a symbol recalling those in other, extensively revised, Giraldian manuscripts.89 This may be a scribal omission which was rectified immediately or a later addition. Secondly, at the end of De gestis, following the final narrative chapter (iii. 217), Gerald included a chapter entitled ‘That the destinies of suits are uncertain, and that many things happen unexpectedly’ (iii. 218), which might be imagined to have formed a conclusion to the work. Yet there immediately follow twenty-­one chapters on visions and their interpretation. These have the air of an add­ ition or appendix, though that cannot be proved. Finally, the very shape of De gestis, divided into three parts of respectively eleven, twenty-­four, and two-­hundred and thirty-­nine chapters, the last consisting largely of letters and other documentation, brings to mind Gerald’s revising habits, stuffing ever more evidence into the framework of his works. Perhaps, then, Gerald began De gestis, or some part of it, in the years immediately following his final defeat in the St Davids cause. Perhaps he continued to extend and tweak it for a decade or more: on the weak evidence of tunc, the copy which has come down to us may reflect a version revised after the end of Meilyr’s justiciarship in 1208 and after the death of Innocent III in 1216. Beyond such conjectures the evidence does not go. De gestis was the first of three works in which Gerald told the story of the St Davids cause which was the central struggle of his life, and each of these works, written after its end, came to be about that struggle. De gestis, in form a biography, is dominated by this central story but is the only one to deal with the early part of his life. The Libellus is a disparate collection of letters, speeches, and stories, but most relate to the St Davids cause. At last in De iure Gerald told the story on its

88  De iure, vii (RS iii. 334). It is not clear what the implication of adiutor ‘helper’ is. 89  Cf., e.g., BAV MS Reg. lat. 470, fo. 2v, for the same symbol.

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own. That both of the latter works cross-­refer to De gestis indicates that De gestis was conceived of as the first.90 There is in consequence much overlap among these three works. Extant passages of De gestis were rewritten and reused in the later works, such as Gerald’s conversation with his brother Philip (iii. 16), which reappears, reworked, in Inuect., i. 1. Most of the missing chapters of De gestis, too, can be matched with some certainty to parallel passages in the Libellus and De iure.91 The chapter in the midst of which De gestis breaks off (iii. 19) is seamlessly continued in Inuect., i. 1. That the broken end of De gestis corresponds so exactly with the beginning of the Libellus raises the question: was De gestis ever finished? Or did Gerald rather choose to continue the story he was telling in a different place? In fact, it seems clear that De gestis was indeed completed in the form outlined in its table of contents. Gerald makes frequent reference to De gestis in his other works; at no point is it described as incomplete. Cross-­references in both the Libellus and De iure point to sections of De gestis now lost from the manuscript.92 The most that can be said is that the parallel existence of other accounts of the same events perhaps influenced the survival of the latter part of De gestis or the interest of later scribes in copying it. Beyond that possibility, the correspondence appears a coincidence. Not only was much of De gestis reused in Gerald’s later works, but large parts of it were themselves recycled from what he had written before. The account of his sermon at the council of Dublin (ii. 14) was copied wholesale from the Topographia.93 His vision of the Irish church (ii. 11–12) he took from the Expugnatio. The privilege Laudabiliter (ii. 11) he copied either from the Expugnatio or from De principis instructione: its text appears three times in Gerald’s works. An anecdote of St Bernard (ii. 18) he took from the Gemma ecclesiastica. Stories about the families of Welshmen who took up the cross (ii. 19) he reused from the Itinerarium. The description of his visit to the monks of Canterbury and their excessive appetites (ii. 5), on the other hand, was likely written first for De gestis and later reused in the Speculum ecclesie. An artful passage from Gerald’s first discourse in the Paris schools (ii. 2) was reused in the Topographia—­or perhaps written for the Topographia and 90  For examples, see the following discussion. 91 The precise parallels are identified in the footnotes to the table of contents in the Edition below. 92 e.g. De iure, iii (RS iii. 196) and Inuect., vi. 1 (Davies, p. 204; the visions referred to above). 93  For a detailed discussion of this passage, see pp. xcvii–xcviii below.

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then inserted into a re-­imagining of the speech.94 A grouping of clas­ sic­al quotations in a letter to Archbishop Hubert (iii. 5) he used in the Libellus, Speculum ecclesie, and twice in De prin. as well.95 Certain subjects reliably evoked the same thoughts and the same quotations: in De gestis (iii. 13), in the Libellus, and twice in De iure, when the poverty of the church of St Davids arose, Gerald recalled Augustine’s words: ‘hoc uelis quod Deus uult; alioquin curuus es’. There is far less reuse in part one of De gestis, treating of Gerald’s early life, for he had not elsewhere written of those years, and would not do so again. But in the second and third parts of the work, Gerald showed himself a most efficient recycler. G E RA L D O N G E RALD Gerald’s autobiographical efforts have been variously assessed. Butler considered that De gestis ‘has an individuality which makes it one of the most singular and remarkable of autobiographies’ and called it ‘a treasure unique for medieval England—­a full autobiography’.96 Brewer, in contrast, pointed out that its tone is ‘somewhat inconsistent with our modern notions of autobiography’.97 Batchelder wrote that ‘the narrative mode Gerald adopted to tell his story distances the author from the text rather than granting the intimacy we might expect in an “autobiographical” work’.98 What seems not to have been noticed is that De gestis is not an autobiography at all, and would not have been read as such by its contemporary audience. Autobiography, by the end of the twelfth century, had a long history.99 The form’s most famous expression was Augustine’s Confessions: in its first nine books, Augustine gave an inward-­looking account of his conversion to a religious life, examining his experiences and motivations. The external facts of his life are important not in themselves, but for the part they play in his spiritual and philosophical journey from childhood, to Manichaeism, to Catholicism. Indeed, Chadwick wrote,

94  On the possibility that Gerald’s first discourse was an inception lecture, see p. lxxvi below, and the Edition below, n. 273. 95  See below, pp. lxxix–lxxx. 96  Autobiography, ed. Butler, pp. 24 and 22. 97  RS i. lxxxix. 98  Batchelder, ‘The Courtier, the Anchorite, the Devil and his Angel’, p. 24. 99  The fullest discussion is Misch, Geschichte der Autobiographie, Bd. 3, Das Mittelalter, 2. Teil, Das Hochmittelalter im Anfang; Gerald is the subject of ch. 2 ‘Die autobiographische Schriftstellerei des Giraldus Cambrensis’, pp. 1297–1479.

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Augustine understood his own story as a microcosm of the entire story of the creation, the fall into the abyss of chaos and formlessness, the ‘conversion’ of the creaturely order to the love of God as it experiences griping pains of homesickness. [. . .] The autobiographical sections are related as an accidental exemplification of the wandering homelessness of man’s soul in [. . .] the ­material realm.100

Wrapping narrative as it did in layers of cosmic complexity, it is perhaps unsurprising that Augustine’s introspection, though widely influential, found few direct imitators. But the model was there to be followed. In the 1110s, Guibert de Nogent, abbot of Nogent-­sous-­Coucy, wrote three books De uita sua. His debt to Augustine is clear from the work’s first words: ‘Confiteor amplitudini tuæ, Deus, infinitorum errorum meorum decursus [ . . . ]’.101 Like Augustine, Guibert dwells at length on his relationship to his mother (admiring), on his treatment by teachers (harsh), and on the sins of his youth (many and various). He reflects on temptation and his predilection for secular, indeed erotic, literature. He turns, at length, to writing on Genesis, and takes up a position of responsibility, as abbot. Most importantly, he shares Augustine’s focus on a spiritual cursus. Gerald’s De gestis ignores such models entirely. He dispenses with his childhood summarily (i. 1–2); De gestis, like Peter Abelard’s Historia Calamitatum, is ‘career focused’. He names his parents, but says little of his relationship to them.102 He has no period of youthful sin or misdirected wandering. To the minimal extent that he strays as a child from the episcopal path, he points to others as the cause: he was, he says, ‘hindered by the company of his brothers’ and slacked in his studies because ‘character is formed by one’s companions’ (i. 2). There is no conuersio to a religious life because, save for Gerald’s shameful incompetence in Latin declension (i. 2), there is nothing to be converted from. Gerald’s story has no central hinge, no tolle lege, because from beginning to end it drives towards the same (frustrated) goal: his and St Davids’ success. Bartlett rightly described De gestis as teleo­ logic­al, a work in which 100 Chadwick, Augustine, pp. 71–2. 101  Guibert de Nogent, De uita sua, i. 1 (ed. Bourgin, p. 1); Benton, Self and Society in Medieval France, p. 35. 102  Gerald’s mother died when he was relatively young. Acta, ed. Barrow, no. 28, is a confirmation by David, bishop of St Davids, of a grant made by William to the Hospitallers, of land in Devon, pro salute anime sue et uxoris eius Adeliz sororis nostre que iam decessit. As Barrow notes, it seems that Angharad/Adeliz died not long before 1160, probably, therefore, when Gerald was only just into his teens.

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Gerald presented a picture of his career in which his election to St. David’s in 1199 formed a natural culmination. According to this account it was his ‘mani­ fest destiny’ to become the champion of St. David’s, and his activities throughout his life were consistent with this role.103

De gestis lacks an autobiographical shape, that is, but it is not shapeless: no microcosm of creation or exemplification of man’s wandering homelessness in the material realm, Gerald’s account of his life is something else entirely. In form it is an episcopal uita, a biographical genre closely allied to hagiography, and one to which Gerald made other noteworthy contributions.104 This generic choice is visible from the work’s opening words, when he writes that ‘the Greeks of old would commit the deeds of famous men to memory’, preserving tales and images of their ancestors to spur virtuous emulation (prologue). Gerald copies this beginning from his own life of Geoffrey, archbishop of York, another non-­saintly bishop, written in the 1190s.105 They were words he thought appropriate to the beginning of a bishop’s biography. The structure of De gestis, too, is that of an episcopal uita. Gerald’s life of Geoffrey is divided into two books: the first, de promotionibus; the second, de persecutionibus.106 De gestis, much longer, is divided into three; the last, and by far the longest, is ‘laboribus inmensis atque periculis et persecucionibus plena’ (prologue). The first book of the life of Geoffrey ends with his consecration, a common structure in uitae, for the subject’s episcopacy is precisely the τέλος towards which all tends.107 The life of Robert de Bethune, prior of Llanthony and bishop of Hereford, written by William of Wycombe following Robert’s death in 1148, follows the same pattern: two books, divided at the point at which Robert dons the mitre.108 Gerald himself was never consecrated, but the stymied path of his episcopal career still structures De gestis. Its first part ends with the consecration of Peter de Leia as bishop of St Davids, after Gerald himself was nominated, recommended, and rejected (i. 9–11). 103 Bartlett, Gerald of Wales, p. 46 (45). 104  Mesley, ‘The construction of episcopal identity’, pp. 178–315, discusses Gerald’s lives of St Remigius and St Hugh—­but these are saints as well as bishops, and so less to our purpose here; cf. also Plass, A Scholar and His Saints, pp. 161–268. 105  Vita Galf., introitus secundus (RS iv. 361). On its date, see Bartlett, Gerald of Wales, pp. 217 and 218 (177). In his Catalogus brevior (RS i. 422), Gerald describes it as ‘apocriphus’ as he seems not to have affixed his name to it. 106  See, e.g., RS iv. 385. 107  Vita Galf., i. 13 (RS iv. 384–5). 108  Parkinson ‘The life of Robert of Bethune’, pp. 149–52. On Robert, see also The History of Llanthony Abbey, i. 9 (OMT 44–49).

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The first major division of De gestis, that is, falls at the point when Gerald, in his own eyes, ought first to have become a bishop. Its second part ends with Gerald refusing the bishopric of Llandaff, and reiterates that ‘four bishoprics had now been offered to him, two in Ireland and two in Wales, but he spurned all these offers with a mind serene and set on higher things, as he desired no such thing’ (ii. 24). Of course, he was soon to change his mind. As childhood foreshadowings of sanctity are a regular feature of hagiography, so too a bishop’s uita strives from its beginning to show the latent seeds of episcopacy. Families often set their children upon an ecclesiastical path from a young age, so these premonitions may at times be truth as well as trope.109 Wycombe wrote that the young Robert de Bethune so distinguished himself in prayer ‘that he was called “Our Father”, a name indeed happily chosen for one who was to become the  father of so many children not by a physical begetting but by preaching’.110 Gerald’s father, observing him at play, ‘used jokingly to applaud and call Gerald his bishop’ (i. 1). The nickname arose because, when Gerald’s brothers set to building sand-­castles, ‘he himself always worked off by himself with great concentration on raising churches and building monasteries’ (i. 1). The young St Wihtburh, likewise, took her playmates to the beach to gather pebbles, massing materials to build a church. But Wihtburh (unlike Gerald) was a saint, so in her hands the assembled stones miraculously multiplied.111 In a similar division of sibling interests, while the young St Waltheof ’s brother built forts out of sticks and played at being a knight, Waltheof himself built churches and play-­acted at priesthood, miming the Mass and imitating the sounds of chant.112 When at last the chapter of St Davids elected Gerald, they begged him to go to Rome and fulfil the ‘unique and exceptional hope and trust that they had conceived concerning him from his earliest age and his good character as a child’ (iii. 12). The future bishop’s destiny was often revealed in visions, as well. At the end of Bishop David’s life, according to Gerald, a man dreamt of  seeing a great episcopal procession: it accompanied Archdeacon Gerald, revealed as future bishop-­elect decades before the fact (iii. 17). In his life of Geoffrey, archbishop of York, Gerald relates that, long 109 Barrow, ‘The bishop in the Latin west 600–1100’, pp. 46–7, 49–54; also Barrow, ‘Bishops as uncles’. 110  Parkinson, ‘The life of Robert of Bethune’, p. 110. 111  Goscelin of Saint-­Bertin: The Hagiography of the Female Saints of Ely, ed. Love, pp. 86–9. 112  Acta Sanctorum, August i. (Paris and Rome, 1867), 252 (3 August), in the Life of St Waltheof by Joscelin of Furness.

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before Geoffrey’s election to any church, ‘a certain archdeacon’ had dreamt of seeing him standing with one foot above the church of Lincoln and the other above the church of York; Geoffrey-­of-­the-­ vision then settled upon York, as Geoffrey himself later did in life.113 While the young Geoffrey was studying in Northampton, a priest of that town dreamt that he saw Geoffrey tonsured and clerically garbed in white robes; three drops of oil fell from heaven upon his head.114 As a child, St Anselm dreamt of climbing a mountain, coming to God’s court, and eating bread in his presence—­but then he was a saint as well.115 Robert de Bethune’s vision of his episcopal future, in contrast, (mentioned but not described by his biographer) was evidently terrifying, but persuaded him nonetheless to accept the office.116 When Gerald was at last elected bishop he did not wish to serve, we  are told, but ‘at length unwillingly agreed, after much difficulty’ (iii. 13). ‘In the life of a holy bishop,’ Delehaye writes, ‘he never accepts election except under protest; for did he not resist, it would mean that he thought himself worthy of the episcopate, and if he took so complacent a view of himself how could he be held up as a model of humbleness?’117 When St Anselm was chosen for the see of Canterbury, Eadmer tells us, ‘he wore himself almost to death in his objections, and in resisting and fighting against it’. In the end ‘he was seized, and forcibly carried rather than led into the neighbouring church’ to be invested.118 Robert de Bethune, then prior of Llanthony, evaded election to the see of Hereford for a full year until a mandate from Pope Innocent II was procured ordering him to obey the call; only then, his biographer asserts, ‘the prior suffered that which was forced upon him’.119 Gerald did not carry his resistance quite that far.120 The generic expectations of an episcopal uita explain some features of De gestis which have puzzled commentators. The third-­person narration, for example, is not an eccentric choice Gerald made for his autobiography: when once the decision had been taken to structure the story as an episcopal uita, no choice of person was available at all. To write a hagiographically adjacent form in the first person would have 113  Vita Galf., i. 13 (RS iv. 384–5). 114  Vita Galf., i. 13 (RS iv. 385). 115  Vita Sancti Anselmi, i. 2 (OMT 4–5). 116  Parkinson, ‘The life of Robert of Bethune’, pp. 141–4. 117 Delehaye, Legends of the Saints, p. 73. 118  Vita Sancti Anselmi, ii. 2 (OMT 65). 119  Parkinson, ‘The life of Robert of Bethune’, pp. 137–40. 120  Perhaps because, unlike the others mentioned, he did not belong to a regular order.

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been jarring and inappropriate. But Gerald goes beyond simply writing in the third person and creates, too, a fictional author: he writes that De gestis records deeds ‘which I either witnessed with my own eyes or wrote down at his [sc. Gerald’s] telling’ (prologue); he tells a story ‘which the archdeacon used to relate when he spoke about the varied accidents and chance events which befell him’ (ii. 21); and he records, of the advice given Gerald by his brother Philip, that ‘[t]he archdeacon used to attest that these words [ . . . ] had undoubtedly given him much solace’ (iii. 16). Batchelder wrote that ‘[i]t is highly unlikely that Gerald made this choice of narrative mode lightly’, and thought it reflected Gerald’s ‘authorial self-­consciousness and his awareness of the textuality inherent in historical writing’.121 Perhaps, but more simply, it reflects Gerald’s committing fully to the expectations of the genre he has adopted. The prefaces of biographies regularly explain how their authors came to know the (often highly personal) details they relate: as in histories, guarantees were needed of the author’s good faith and accurate knowledge. Wycombe’s preface declares: ‘That which I write another could have written with greater elegance; none with greater truth; since, indeed, my birthplace and his of whom I speak were in the same neighbourhood, our age almost the same, our friendship un­broken and intimate and finally, in our mature years, our companionship undivided’.122 Einhard wrote his life of Charlemagne because ‘no one can describe these events more accurately than I, for I was present when they took place and [ . . . ] saw them with my own eyes’.123 Hagiographers often declared themselves to have been their saint’s particular disciple.124 Gerald simply followed the pattern. Likewise, when he described the emotional effects of Philip’s words of consolation, some framing words were needed: how could our author see into Gerald’s heart? Other intrusions of the imagined author follow the same logic. The story of the missing chamberlain and lost money on the journey to Abbeville (ii. 21) dwells on Gerald’s anxiety and relates the three particular causes of his despair, ‘as he used to relate’; the reassertion of the pseudo-­author’s source adds verisimilitude to these 121  Batchelder, ‘The Courtier, the Anchorite, the Devil and his Angel’, p. 28. 122  Parkinson, ‘The life of Robert of Bethune’, p. 101. 123  Einhardi Vita Karoli Magni, ed. Holder-­Egger, p. 1; Einhard and Notker the Stammerer: Two Lives of Charlemagne, trans. Thorpe, p. 51. Cf. Isidore, Etymologies, i. 41. 1: ‘Apud veteres enim nemo conscribebat historiam, nisi is qui interfuisset, et ea quae conscribenda essent vidisset. Melius enim oculis quae fiunt deprehendimus, quam quae auditione colligimus. Quae enim videntur, sine mendacio proferuntur’. 124 Delehaye, Legends of the Saints, p. 56.

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interior narrations. Perhaps inadvertently, or perhaps to reinforce the conceit of reporting Gerald’s own thoughts and words, the text’s point of view in this story slips briefly into the first person: ‘occasione abscentie nostre (qui tunc longe remote fuimus)’ (ii. 21). De gestis is indeed ‘a treasure unique for medieval England’. Not because it is an autobiography, but because it is something odder: Gerald has the singular distinction of being the only person of the age to have written an episcopal uita of himself. Perhaps Gerald, after his failure to be consecrated, saw that no one else was going to do it and so took matters into his own hands, giving himself the memorial he knew he deserved. TH E HI STO R I C A L C O NT E XT O F

de gestis giraldi

At the time of Gerald’s birth the settlers in Dyfed and Ceredigion were losing ground to the Welsh.125 Gerald made an addition to the first chapter of the De gestis, in which he recalls his response as an infant to an attack on the castle of Manorbier.126 His father was apparently one of the leaders of the defence of Cardigan castle in 1136 against a combined Welsh force from Gwynedd and Deheubarth.127 In 1146, the likely year of Gerald’s birth, a Welsh force led by the sons of Gruffudd ap Rhys—­and thus Nest’s nephews—­allied with Hywel, the eldest son of the king of Gwynedd, Owain ap Gruffudd ap Cynan, and took the castle of Carmarthen; in the same year the sons of Gruffudd ap Rhys on their own took the castle of Llansteffan, which, according to Gerald, was held by his uncle, Maurice fitz Gerald.128 In the following year, 1147, the Welsh were able to profit from dis­ unity among the settlers. One of the principal leaders of the Flemish plantation had been Wizo, after whom Wiston in Daugleddau was named, together with its castle ‘Wizo’s Castle’.129 His son and heir, Walter, was now the lord of Wiston. Wizo’s Castle was attacked by William fitz Gerald and his brothers together with the sons of Gruffudd ap Rhys, their first cousins; they summoned Hywel ab Owain Gwynedd to their aid, ‘and the said barons received him gladly’.130 Conflict 125 Davies, Conquest, pp. 45–51. 126  Below, pp. 40–1. 127  Brut, s.a. 1136 and note on William fitz Odo, p. 174. 128  Brut, s.a. 1146, De gestis, ii. 9. 129 Toorians, ‘Wizo Flandrensis’, pp. 99–118; Murphy, ‘The castle and borough of Wiston’. 130  Brut, s.a. 1147. Lloyd, HW 502. It is also striking that in 1153, Maredudd ap Gruffudd ap Rhys and his brother, Rhys, entrusted to William fitz Gerald the castle of Tenby that they had just taken, only a few miles from Manorbier: Brut, s.a. 1153.

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Table 2.  The feud between the Geraldines and the Flemings of Rhos Gerald of Windsor = Nest, daughter of Rhys ap Tewdwr

William

Gerald killed by Flemings of Rhos 1135 × 1154

David

Odo = d. of Richard fitz Tancred castellan of Haverfordwest

Angharad = William de Barri

d. = Walter s. of Wizo lord of Wiston

Philip = d. of Richard fitz Tancred

between the sons of Gerald of Windsor and the Flemings was ominous for the prospects of English rule in Dyfed. It is possible that this conflict was linked with feud. The men of Rhos killed an earlier Gerald, the son of William and thus Gerald of Wales’s first cousin, at Camros, north of Haverfordwest; in revenge two hundred or more of the Rhos men were killed, an event dated by Gerald to the reign of Stephen.131 It is not impossible, also, that the attack on Manorbier during Gerald’s boyhood was further Flemish revenge rather than a raid by the Welsh.132 Another division was exploited by Anarawd, the eldest son of Gruffudd ap Rhys (Table 4, p. lv). In 1137, shortly after the power built up by Henry I in Wales had begun to dissolve under Stephen, Gruffudd ap Rhys overran the cantref of Rhos. His son, Anarawd, then killed ‘Letardus Litelking, the enemy of God and of St David’, ‘for which Anarawd had the gratitude of all the clergy and people of St Davids’.133

131  Itin. Kam., i. 13 (RS vi. 99–100); Gerald son of William is very likely to be Gerald primeuus, the elder brother of the Odo of De gestis, i. 3. This Gerald and his brother, Odo, were sons of William, himself son of Gerald of Windsor. William was the leader of his brothers in allying with the Welsh against the Flemings in 1147. 132 Lloyd, HW 503, suggests that this event may have been when Maredudd ap Gruffudd and his brother Rhys took the castle of Tenby in 1153, which is entirely possible. Gerald would then have been about seven. 133  AC Brev., s.a. 1137. Letard gave his name to Letterston in the east of Pebidiog, NGR SM 93 29 (Charles, Place-­Names of Pembrokeshire, i. 217; Owen and Morgan, Dictionary of the Place-­Names of Wales, p. 213), which helps to explain the conflict between him and St Davids. Letard’s son, Ivo, inherited Letterston: Acta, ed. Barrow, p. 70, no. 46. Tancredston NGR SM 88 26 was probably named after the father of Richard fitz Tancred, as Round thought (‘Origin of the Carews’, p. 21); but note that Richard’s son was also called Tancard/Tancred. Charles, Place-­Names of Pembrokeshire, i. 203, may have been unaware of Round’s observation: he cites D. 196 from Conway Davies, Episcopal Acts, but that concerns a place in Carmarthenshire.

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The context of all this was a collapse of English royal power in Wales: Stephen (1135–54) left the Marchers to look after themselves. What then happened demonstrated how much they needed royal support. The most powerful figure in south-­east Wales was Robert of Gloucester, an illegitimate son of Henry I, who was lord of Glamorgan and the main backer, along with David, king of Scots, of the Empress Matilda, his half-­sister, in her attempt to dislodge Stephen. He retained power in his own lordship, but he made no recorded effort to help the Marchers further west. In 1148, during this period of English retreat, Bernard, bishop of St Davids, died. In his later years, during Stephen’s reign, when he was a supporter of Matilda, he had taken the case of the metropolitan status of St Davids to the papal court.134 He was, in this cause, Gerald of Wales’s forerunner, and we owe much of the evidence for Bernard’s efforts to the researches of Gerald, who would use the documents to  buttress his own arguments.135 Bernard’s successor as bishop was Gerald’s uncle, David fitz Gerald, previously archdeacon of Ceredigion. However, Theobald, the archbishop of Canterbury, showed a grasp of affairs even in Wales denied to his king, and David was induced to promise subjection to Canterbury and that he would not take up the cause of metropolitan status. Gerald’s early education was in his uncle’s household. He seems to have been fond of Bishop David and is reticent about his uncle’s shortcomings by the standards of ecclesiastical reformers. It is likely that his uncle, the bishop, was the source for several of Gerald’s stories about Welsh history in the first half of the twelfth century.136 In 1148 King Stephen was in no position to prevent a local churchman, and one who was half-­Welsh, becoming bishop of St Davids. With the succession of David to the bishopric and the taking of Wizo’s Castle the previous year, the sons of Gerald of Windsor and Nest achieved a dominant position in Dyfed, in spite of Welsh advances. The new bishop appears to have used his position by helping to make peace between his brothers and Walter son of Wizo: he married his daughter to Walter and allowed him to retain land near Llawhaden previously taken by Walter’s father, Wizo.137

134 Lloyd, HW 480–2. 135  Inuect., ii. 2, 3, 6–12 (Davies, pp. 135–7, 139–54). 136  Pryce, ‘Giraldus and the Geraldines’, p. 66. 137  Black Book of St David’s, ed. Willis-­Bund, p. 138; Vita Dauidis secundi, ed. Richter, ‘A new edition’, p. 248; RS iii. 432; cf. also Spec. duorum, ed. Richter, Lefèvre, et al., p. xxvi and n. 45.

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But  he also enriched his relations by grants of land belonging to St Davids.138 The Dyfed into which Gerald was born in or around 1146 saw at one and the same time a peak in the power of his kinsmen and the nadir of English royal power in Wales. In his early manhood Dyfed acquired a new significance in consequence of the entry of the English in force into Ireland. Initially this was at the invitation of Diarmait Mac Murchada, king of Leinster, but after Diarmait died about 1 May 1171, Henry II collected an army and sailed from Milford Haven, landing near Waterford on 17 October. He remained in Ireland until the following April. Richard fitz Gilbert, earl of Striguil, had been the leader of the English in Ireland and the Children of Nest were among his leading lieutentants, but Richard was not in the royal favour. The prospect of seeing him in power in a province of Ireland was enough to stir royal suspicions and so to cause Henry to seek supremacy in Ireland for himself. Before sailing to Ireland, Henry spent some time at St Davids, ‘having sought the saint’s see and honoured it with devout prayers’.139 He also displayed anger at the great men of South Wales and, in ­particular, Pembroke ‘because they had allowed Earl Richard to cross to Ireland’. The fit of royal anger subsided once he had assigned royal custodians to their castles.140 It was now essential for Henry II to ­maintain his power in Dyfed as the link between Britain and Ireland. As for Gerald’s kinsmen, the Children of Nest, they had, in the eyes of the king, a new importance, and thereby became a new object of suspicion. Robert fitz Stephen, leader of their first expedition to Ireland, had been captured by the men of Waterford shortly before Henry II arrived. He was brought before Henry in chains and was denounced by the king for having led so rash an attempt at the conquest of Ireland and was imprisoned in chains in Raghnall’s Tower in Waterford.141 He was subsequently freed but only on condition that he surrender to the king his lordship over Waterford and the surrounding district. Earlier, Earl Richard had with difficulty made his peace with the king on condition that he surrender to Henry both the city of Dublin and its territory.142 Henry’s plan was to gain direct power over the old Viking trading towns in the east and south-­east of the island and so secure for himself the main entry points into Ireland. This strategy implied a 138  Vita Dauidis secundi, ed. Richter, ‘A new edition’, p. 248; RS iii. 432. 139  Exp. Hib., i. 30 (ed. Scott and Martin, pp. 92–3). 140  Exp. Hib., i. 29 (ed. Scott and Martin, pp. 90–1). 141  Exp. Hib., i. 31 (ed. Scott and Martin, pp. 92–3). 142  Exp. Hib., i. 28 (ed. Scott and Martin, pp. 88–9).

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corresponding control over Dyfed on the eastern side of the Irish Sea. When Gerald returned from Paris c. 1174 and started to be active in Wales as legate of the archbishop of Canterbury, his uncle was still bishop of St Davids, but the royal castellan of Pembroke Castle and sheriff of the county, William Karquit, was hostile and so, too, was Richard fitz Tancred, castellan of Haverford Castle, the leading magnate in Rhos, and father-­in-­law of Gerald’s brother, Philip de Barri, and his cousin, Odo of Carew.143 It may well be that Henry II had taken care that the power of the Children of Nest in Dyfed should be reduced, when he took the castles of the area into royal custody in 1171. The opposition to Gerald from the Flemings, when, in 1174, as the archbishop of Canterbury’s legate, he tried to impose the payment of tithes of wool and cheeses, may also owe something to the feud a generation earlier over the killing of Gerald son of William and the conflict between Walter son of Wizo and the sons of Gerald of Windsor, when they joined with the Welsh to take Wizo’s Castle. The way Gerald tells the story in De gestis distinguishes between his French kinsmen and Roger Bechet, who were prepared to pay the tithes, and the Flemings, who were not and who spent a significant sum in persuading Henry II to subvert Gerald’s authority as legate. Roger Bechet has been taken to be a Fleming of Rhos, apparently because he was heavily involved in sheep-­farming: he owed a wool-­merchant ten stone of wool.144 The assumption behind the story was that the merchant had paid in advance for the ten stone, thus making a loan in cash to Roger—­a useful clue to how the trade in wool was organized. Yet his baptismal parish church was Carew in Penfro, where the castle belonged to Odo, son and heir of William fitz Gerald. Roger sold his wool, not at Haverfordwest in Rhos, but at Pembroke in Penfro. The division along national lines became evident when Richard fitz Tancred, castellan of Haverfordwest, took the side of the Flemings of Talacharn against Gerald, even though Talacharn was a commote to the east of Penfro, well outside Richard’s cantref of Rhos. He had to be pacified by Gerald’s elder brother, Philip, lord of Manorbier, and Odo, lord of Carew, both of whom had married daughters of Richard fitz Tancred, perhaps as a way of healing the feud of Stephen’s reign, just as Odo’s uncle, Bishop David, had married his daughter to Walter son of Wizo. Gerald’s attempt to impose tithes appears to have been in danger of reviving the conflict between Fleming and French. Now that the Children of Nest were so heavily 143  De gestis, i. 3; cf. Spec. duorum, ed. Richter, Lefèvre, et al., pp. 38–9. 144 Davies, Conquest, pp. 159–60.

Table 3.   The de Breus lords of Brycheiniog Judhael, lord of Totnes

Miles of Gloucester earl of Hereford † 1143

sons o.s.p. Bertha 1155–1175 Gerald, Itin. Kam., i. 2

=

Reginald bishop of Hereford

Hugh de Lacy II lord of Ulster

Walter de Lacy lord of Meath

Cf. Gerald, Itin. Kam., i. 2 (RS vi. 22–3) on William III.

=

Philip, lord of Radnor

William II † 1180 lord of Abergavenny and Brecon by right of his wife

William III † 1211 = Matilda 1201, lord of Limerick 1202–7, custodian of Glamorgan and Gower Margaret

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William I de Breus (Briouze, Braose) = O lord of Bramber, Sussex, from Briouze in SW Normandy

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committed in Ireland and Rhys ap Gruffudd had been reconciled, Henry II may have felt able to pursue a policy of divide and rule in Dyfed; and, over the payment of tithes of wool and cheeses, he was, for a consideration, the patron of the Flemings and Gerald of Wales was his immediate target. T HE A RC HDE AC O NRY O F B RYCH E I N I O G In 1175, when he was aged twenty-­nine, Gerald was appointed by his uncle, the bishop, as archdeacon of Brycheiniog. The archdeaconry had two component parts (Map 3). Brycheiniog itself was a marcher lordship, then held by William II de Breus by right of his wife, Bertha, daughter and eventual co-­heir of Miles of Gloucester, earl of Hereford (Table 3). Gerald appears to have been on good terms with William II de Breus. This mattered all the more because his home and his base as archdeacon was at Llan-­ddew, close to the castle of Brecon.145 Soon after Gerald became archdeacon, William was involved in a notorious killing, reported as follows by the Brut:146 Seisyll ap Dyfnwal [of Upper Gwent] was slain through treachery in the castle of Abergavenny by the lord of Brycheiniog. And along with him Geoffrey, his son, and the best men of Gwent were slain. And the French made for Seisyll’s court; and after seizing Gwladus, his wife, they slew Cadwaladr his son. And on that day there befell a pitiful massacre in Gwent. And from that time forth, after that treachery, none of the Welsh dared place trust in the French.

Gerald recounts the same event in his Itinerary.147 The different readings in the successive versions of the text reveal Gerald’s discomfort.148 As for the next generation, Gerald appears to have found support from William III de Breus and especially from his wife, Maud (Matilda) of St. Valery, who would meet a terrible death, starved to death by King John, together with her son.149 The second component of the archdeaconry was the territory known as ‘Between Wye and Severn’ (Rhwng Gwy a Hafren, Gerald’s inter Vagam et Sabrinam). Gerald’s first serious challenge after becoming 145  De gestis, i. 6; for the form of the name, see the Edition below, n. 239. Gerald expressed affection for the place at Itin. Kam., i. 3 (RS vi. 47). 146  Brut, s.a. 1175. On the context, see Lloyd, HW 547–8. 147  Itin. Kam., i. 4 (RS vi. 49–53). 148  Cf. Itin. Kam., ed. Dimock (RS vi. 49, n. 2). 149  Inuect., iv. 9, 10 (Davies, pp. 175–9); v. 17 (Davies, pp. 196–7); Symb. el., ep. 1 (RS i. 208).



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M ap 3.  The archdeaconry of Brycheiniog

archdeacon was to assert his authority over the clergy of the lands ‘between Wye and Severn’.150 His intention to conduct a visitation in 1176 met with resistance, not just from the clergy but also, according to Gerald, from the secular rulers:151 150  De gestis, i. 5. 151 Ibid.

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two clerks came to meet him and announced on behalf of the dean and chapter of that territory that he should not visit their churches himself, but should take care to act and to put into effect what had to be done there through his envoys and officials, and especially through the dean (whom, among themselves, they were even calling ‘the archdeacon’), in the manner of Gerald’s predecessors. And when they heard his response, that he did not wish to imitate the sloth or idleness of others . . . they forbade him to come, on behalf of all the clergy, people, and rulers of that country.

The ruler of much of this area was Cadwallon ap Madog ab Idnerth. His political affinities were complex: on the one hand, he was married to Efa, daughter of Madog ap Maredudd, king of Powys, and he himself belonged to a kindred known as the Iorweirthion, descendants of  a  much earlier king of Powys called Iorwerth Hirflawdd.152 The Iorweirthion were the third of the principal kindreds of Powys listed in a poem by the leading contemporary poet of Powys, Cynddelw.153 In the twelfth century, the Iorweirthion were divided into two branches, one supplying the kings of the upper Severn, Cedewain and Arwystli, and the other the kings of Maelienydd, Gwerthrynion, Elfael, and Buellt, further east and south. The first branch were within the Powys of the twelfth century, while the second branch provided the ruling families of Rhwng Gwy a Hafren. In 1176, the leading figure from this branch was Cadwallon ap Madog ab Idnerth, described in Cynddelw’s elegy for him at his death in 1179 as ‘a strong and proud king’.154 In this elegy the genealogical connection with Powys is covered in some detail, but a link with Deheubarth is also suggested by the reference to Cadwallon as lord of Caron, the district within which lies Tregaron.155 He was pre­sum­ ably allowed by Rhys ap Gruffudd, his first cousin, to hold land in Ceredigion, close to the border.156 Cadwallon, in other words, was 152  ‘Gereuerth regis de Powis, inde dicitur Joruerthiaun’, De situ Brecheniauc (VSBG, 315 (§ 12); Early Welsh Genealogies, ed. Bartrum, p. 15 (§ 12 (10)). 153  Gwaith Cynddelw Brydydd Mawr I, ed. Jones and Parry Owen, poem 10. 32; OP, iv. 605; Early Welsh Genealogical Tracts, ed. Bartrum, pp. 48 (Jesus College MS 20, § 30), 104–5 (Achau y Brenhinoedd a Thywysogion Cymru §§ 11, 13, 14); Guy, Medieval Welsh Genealogy, pp. 343 (§ 30); 372–3 (§§ 31, 33, and 33.2). 154  Gwaith Cynddelw Brydydd Mawr I, ed. Jones and Parry Owen, poem 21.72; he is also termed gwledig, ibid., l. 50. 155  Ibid., l. 7 and note. 156  Brut, p. 1175. Cadwallon’s father had married Gwenllian ferch Rhys ap Tewdwr, Rhys ap Gruffudd’s paternal aunt. In addition, Cadwallon and Rhys had both married daughters of Madog ap Maredudd: Welsh Genealogies, ed. Bartrum, i, Bleddyn ap Cynfyn, p. 3; ii, Elystan Glodrydd, p. 33. Cadwallon, Rhys, and Gerald of Wales were thus all descendants of Rhys ap Tewdwr.

Table 4.   The affinity of the Lord Rhys ap/ab = son of, f. = daughter of (also da.) (a) Through his aunts and sisters

Rhys ap Tewdwr king of Deheubarth d. 1093 Gruffudd = Gwenllian f. Gruffudd ap Cynan d. 1137

Gwenllian = Madog ab Idnerth d. 1140 Cadwallon, Maelienydd, d. 1179

Angharad = William de Barri

Anarawd d. 1143

Cadell Maredudd Rhys Gwladus d. 1175 d. 1155 d. 1197 = (1) Caradog = (2) Seisyll ap Dyfnwal ab Iestyn of Gwent Uwchcoed

Gerald of Wales

Morgan of Morgannwg

Gruffudd d. 1211 of Senghenydd

(b) Through his daughters Gwerful ≈ Rhys = Gwenllian f. Llywelyn f. Madog ap Maredudd

Nest = Ifor Bach

≈ other women

Maelgwn Gruffudd Rhys Gryg Maredudd Margred Gwenllian Hywel Sais Susanna ? Angharad d. 1201 = Gwenwynwyn = (1) Rhodri d. 1204 = Einion = Einion = Will. Martin d. 1231 d. 1201 d. 1234 ap Rhys Cemais = Gwenllian = Matilda of Powys ab Owain ab Einion Clud f. Madog da. of Gwynedd d. 1191 Elfael Gwerthrynion William de Breus III = (2) Ednyfed Fychan seneschal to Brycheiniog Llywelyn ab Iorwerth On Gruffudd ap Rhys ap Tewdwr, see Itin. Kam., i. 2 (RS vi. 34–5).

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Gerald = Nest

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related in one way or another to all the contemporary Welsh rulers of Powys and Deheubarth. By 1176 Cadwallon’s link with his cousin Rhys mattered more than his connection with Powys, even though the latter had been reinforced by his marriage to Efa, daughter of Madog ap Maredudd, king of Powys. Madog had died in 1160 and Powys was never again under a single ruler. In 1176, however, Rhys was the leading Welsh king (Table 4, p. liii), and, moreover, he was now trusted far more by Henry II, having taken his side in the civil war of Henry II against his sons in 1173–5. His authority was well shown by the Brut’s account of the Council of Gloucester in July 1175, after the end of the civil war, when Rhys ‘took with him all the princes of Wales who had incurred the king’s displeasure, namely, Cadwallon ap Madog, his first-­cousin, of Maelienydd, Einion Clud his son-­in-­law, of Elfael, Einion ap Rhys, his other son-­ in-­law, of Gwerthrynion’ and others. Cadwallon ap Madog and his brother, Einion Clud, each had to promise to pay a tribute of 1,000 cattle to have the king’s peace, a tribute to be delivered to William de Breus, lord of Brycheiniog, in his capacity as sheriff of Herefordshire.157 Roger of Howden’s account of the royal council held two years later at Oxford, in 1177, described it as being summoned by Henry II ‘to hold talks with the kings and more powerful men of Wales, who had come there at his command to confer with him: namely Rhys ap Gruffudd, king of South Wales, and Dafydd ab Owain, king of North Wales, and Cadwallon, king of Delwain (= de Elwain = Elfael),158 and Owain of Cyfeiliog, and Gruffudd of Bromfield and Madog ab Iorwerth Goch, and many others of the more noble men of Wales’.159 Here Cadwallon ap Madog is entitled king, a status denied to the three that follow, all rulers of parts of Powys. Since he is said to be ‘de Elwain’, Roger of Howden must also have regarded him as the overlord of his brother, Einion Clud. Immediately after asserting his authority, Gerald had to meet a graver threat from the bishop of St Asaph, who proposed to annex to his diocese the northernmost component of the lands between Wye and Severn, namely the commote, and parish, of Ceri.160 The bishop’s ultimate ambition was said to be to go on to include all the lands between Wye and Severn in his diocese. This threat, according to 157  PR 21 HII (The Great Roll of the Pipe, no ed., pp. 88–9) quoted by Lloyd, HW 546, n. 51. 158  For the form Elwain for Elfael, see Appendix 1 (p. 230). 159 Howden, Gesta Henrici II, i. 162; see Charles-­Edwards, ‘Dynastic succession in medieval Wales’, pp. 82–3. 160  De gestis, i. 6.

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Gerald, also had the agreement of Cadwallon ap Madog. In the course of facing down the bishop at the church of Ceri, Gerald gestured ‘towards the mountains in the diocese of Llanelwy (St Asaph) which stood not far away’. These mountains, or rather hills, were in the cantref of Cedewain, one of the territories of the Iorweirthion. It was from Cedewain that the bishop had come, bringing an ancient book which, so he claimed, proved the justice of his claim. It may well be that this ancient book contained the genealogies of the Iorweirthion, both of Cedewain and of the lands between Wye and Severn. Yet, whatever the book contained, Cadwallon’s kinship with Rhys gave Gerald a trump card. Rhys was a loyal son of St Davids, where, in 1197, he would be buried.161 studium

A ND P U B L I C L I F E

Gerald sometimes saw the shape of his life as an oscillation between involvement in public affairs and study. His habit in the De gestis was to praise studium and deplore entanglement in public business. At the beginning of Part iii, ‘he withdrew completely from the hubbub of the court, that stormy sea, and, following a sounder plan, took steps to go instead to the schools and to study, as to a calm and peaceful port’. This oscillation is visible in the organization of De gestis: chapter 2 of Part i covers his education including his first stay in Paris; chapter 1 of Part ii covers a later stay in Paris; at the beginning of Part iii, as we have seen, Gerald turned again to his studies, intending again to go to Paris. The contrast between peaceful study and hectic public affairs was deeply traditional, whether in the form of otium and negotium or in the different concerns of Martha and Mary as symbols of contemplation versus practical affairs.162 But in Gerald’s case the conflict between the two appears to have been deeply felt. Although studium plays a major role in the De gestis, the chronology of his periods of study is not easy to discern, even with the aid of the occasional reference in other works. One such reference, in De principis instructione, shows that, aged nineteen, he was studying in Paris on the night when Philip Augustus was born, 21/22 August 1165.163 This 161  Brut, s.a. 1234: ‘Rhys Gryg, son of the Lord Rhys, died at Llandeilo Fawr, and he was buried at St Davids, near the grave of the Lord Rhys, his father’. 162  Gerald himself makes the connection with classical otium by quoting Pliny the Younger in De gestis, iii. 1; Hubert, the archbishop, commends him for siding with Mary rather than with Martha in iii. 6. 163  De prin., iii. 25, ‘quasi uicesimum etatis sue tunc annum adimplens’ (OMT 674).

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must have been during the first of three periods of study in Paris mentioned in De gestis.164 One of the other two periods must be the one described in chapters 1–4 of Part ii. This followed the consecration of Peter de Leia as bishop of St Davids, on 7 November 1176, and continued until a date after the Third Lateran Council, which assembled in Lent of 1179.165 During this stay he was studying civil and then canon law. The problem is to identify the remaining stay in Paris. After Gerald resigned his position as a ‘follower of the court’ c. 1193, he intended to return to Paris to study theology and so complete his programme of studies. He was, however, prevented from carrying out this plan by the outbreak of war between Richard I and Philip Augustus and went, instead, to Lincoln to study under William de Monte (usually known as de Montibus), so named ‘because he had taught in Paris upon Mont Sainte-­Geneviève’.166 Yet it seems unlikely that Gerald would have considered this period of study to be one of the three in Paris merely because it was under a former Parisian master. Gerald, however, when writing De gestis, was capable of running together two separate stays abroad: he did so when describing his stay in Ireland (ii. 10–16), when he made no mention of an earlier visit in 1183–4, even though that was when he began work on his Topography of Ireland.167 A similar compression may be the solution to the problem of his remaining stay in Paris. As Gerald described his studies, he returned from Paris and then, not long afterwards, approached the archbishop of Canterbury, Richard of Dover, successor to the martyred Thomas Becket and also papal legate. By him Gerald was sent as the legate’s legate to Wales to enforce the payment of tithes.168 Richard of Dover was consecrated archbishop on 7 April 1174. Gerald’s commission must have been after that date. He had also returned home before the death of his uncle, the bishop, in May 1176. The chronological issue, therefore, is whether the first stay in Paris (the one that we know from De principis instructione included August 1165) extended for not far short of ten years, as suggested by the sequence of chapters in De gestis, or whether, on the other hand, 164  De gestis, i. 2. 165  De gestis, ii. 3, shows that he was still in Paris when Gerard La Pucelle returned from Rome. 166  De gestis, iii. 3; this explanation is unlikely to be correct: see the Edition below, n. 419. 167  For his first visit to Ireland, see Exp. Hib., ii. 20 (ed. Scott and Martin, pp. 188–9), when he probably stayed for about a year (Exp. Hib., ii. 32 (ed. Scott and Martin, pp. 228–9)). 168  De gestis, ii. 3.

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there was a second stay in the early 1170s, perhaps beginning at the end of the 1160s. The terms in which Gerald described his periods in Paris have an odd feature that seems to tilt the balance in favour of the second solution: ‘he crossed thrice to France and dwelt at Paris three times (each time for years) studying the liberal arts, and was at last the equal of his greatest masters, teaching there the trivium with brilliance and earning particular praise in rhetoric’. The oddity here is that the subjects he describes himself as studying do not include those he studied c. 1176–9, namely civil and canon law with some theology. Another aspect of the description is that the duration of each stay appears to be similar (‘tresque status annorum plurium’), so that one would expect that the other two each lasted for a period similar to the one in 1176–9, approximately three years. That would suggest that the first stay could hardly have lasted for nearly ten years.169 Furthermore, the phrase ‘at last the equal of his greatest masters’ comes immediately after the mention of the three stays. The sequence of thought going straight from the mention of the three stays to ‘at last the equal of his greatest masters’ would make reasonable sense if these studies in the trivium included the second as well as the first stay in Paris. The way in which his studies were funded and its limitations are relevant to the chronological problem, but they have an importance of their own. The first stay was funded by the tithes in wool and mills devoted to Gerald’s support by three relatives: his eldest brother, Philip, and his cousins, Odo of Carew and William fitz Hait (Hay).170 Even during his first stay, therefore, Gerald was not a ‘poor clerk’. When he had returned from Paris c. 1174, ‘he began to be promoted to many churches and ecclesiastical benefices, both in England and in Wales, and to prosper’.171 For the stay in 1176–9 he thus had resources of his own: benefices served by chaplains (as were some, at least, of Gerald’s) or by vicars were the normal way of maintaining someone progressing to higher studies in theology or law.172 Teaching itself was, in principle, free. There were ways round this rule, but they were easier for famous teachers, such as Abelard, or at least for those of established reputation, such as the Englishman, Adam of Balsham (Adam of the Petit-­Pont).173 Yet even though he was a beneficed scholar Gerald’s studies in law in 1176–9 were cut short by lack of money. He had intended to 169  In spite of ‘post diutinam in studiis moram’ in De gestis, ii. 4. 170  De gestis, i. 4. 171 Ibid. 172  Paré, et al., La renaissance du XIIe siècle: Les écoles et l’enseignement, p. 75. 173  Ibid., 76.

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go on from Paris to Bologna, the great centre of legal studies.174 Instead, he decided to return home, but even then ‘he had to wait anxiously in Paris long past the appointed day for the messengers who were to come and bring him money’ so that he could pay his creditors.175 Later it would be most unusual to take money across borders: one made arrangements with bankers. But Gerald had to rely on messengers bringing money.176 It might well be necessary to cut short one’s studies, allow one’s resources to recuperate, and then return for another period of residence in Paris. Gerald’s periods of study in Paris were, for the schools, a time of consolidation and relative calm. The great confrontations between St Bernard of Clairvaux and, first, Abelard at the Council of Sens in 1140 and then Gilbert de la Porrée at the Council of Reims in 1148 were now some decades in the past. Peter Lombard had produced, between 1145 and 1158, his Sentences, soon to be the standard textbook in theology. He died in 1160 as bishop of Paris, a few years before Gerald came to the city. Only if Gerald had returned to study theology in the 1190s might he have witnessed the beginnings of the next big upheaval in the schools of Paris, over the new works of Aristotle that became available in Latin translation late in the twelfth century, the physical works, the Metaphysics, and the De Anima, and then over Amaury of Bène and David of Dinant.177 Gerald’s first stay in Paris was also fifty years earl­ ier than the first statutes, those of a former master of theology, Cardinal Robert Curzon.178 As for studies in canon law, the standard textbook, Gratian’s Decretum, is dated c. 1140. The array of authorities quoted by Gratian made it a much-­used resource for theologians, not just canon lawyers, down to and including the Reformation period. Here, too, as with Peter Lombard, Gerald’s periods of study in Paris placed him among the first generations to benefit from these great textbooks. Gerald’s views on the best sequence of study accorded closely with his experience. In a chapter of the Gemma ecclesiastica, ‘On the harm to literature arising from the wrong use of human laws and of logic’, he 174  De gestis, ii. 2. 175  De gestis, ii. 4. 176  Compare the later incident (De gestis, ii. 21) when, in 1189, Gerald was returning across the Channel with important messages from Richard I to the rulers of Wales, and a hastily hired servant was carrying a considerable sum of money on his behalf. 177  Chartularium Universitatis Parisiensis, ed. Denifle and Châtelain, i, no. 11. Gerald shows an awareness of these developments in the preface to Dist. 1 of his Speculum ecclesiae (RS iv. 9–10). 178  Chartularium Universitatis Parisiensis, ed. Denifle and Châtelain, no. 20.

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quotes a triad from Ralph of Beauvais, whom he describes as outstanding in the literature of his time: ‘Among clerics, some are in rags, who by rags and tatters have, in appearance, acquired for themselves branches of knowledge, desiring rather to seem knowledgeable than to be so—­of them we know many. Another group are the “over-­sown” (Mt. 13:25), who may also be called the superficial, who, when they have discarded literature, that is of poets and philosophers and the basis of the arts, presume to take themselves straight from Donatus and Cato not only to human law but to the law of God. At a third level are the solidly based, those properly instructed in literature and the arts, those who have advanced and been promoted from that basis to other branches of knowledge, not by leaps and bounds, but by recommendation and grad­ ual­ly’. And these alone, he used to say, genuinely and properly deserved to be called literati.179

By this standard Gerald could pride himself on being uere literatus. If it was wrong to leave the trivium behind too soon, it was also wrong, within the trivium, to neglect grammar and rhetoric and devote all one’s attention to logic. After citing Ralph of Beauvais, Gerald added some cases when students at Paris, apparently concentrating on  logic, wrote letters begging for extra funds from their fathers but,  since the letters were ungrammatical, failed to obtain the sums requested.180 Yet he admitted that he, too, in his youth (and thus ­probably during his first stay in Paris), had been studying logic ‘with enthusiasm and love of praise’.181 When, however, Gerald described the warm reception given to his lectures on canon law, he explained it by his gifts in rhetoric: so great a crowd—­nearly all the teachers with their students—­came to hear his delightful delivery, that the most capacious hall could scarcely hold all the listeners. For he so supported the lively reasoning of civil and canon law which he presented with rhetorical attractions, so adorned his discourses, both with well-­arranged and beautiful words and with the substance of ideas, and adapted the sayings of philosophers and authorities to fit them to suitable passages with such wondrous artistry, that the more learned and erudite were his attendees, the more eagerly and attentively they set their ears and minds to listening to his words and fixing them in memory.182

179  Gemma eccl., ii. 37 (RS ii. 348–9). 180  Gemma eccl., ii. 37 (RS ii. 349). 181  Gemma eccl., ii. 37 (RS ii. 350). 182  De gestis, ii. 1.

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True, ‘the substance of ideas’ was given a mention, but the qualities of form and style received much more attention. Gerald’s heart was given to rhetoric. EPI SC O PA L E L E C T I O NS, M E T RO PO LI TAN S TATUS , P RO C E E DI NG S I N RO M E 1 8 3 Two issues were in dispute in the Roman curia between Gerald and Hubert Walter, archbishop of Canterbury: the election of Gerald himself as bishop of St Davids and the metropolitan status of that church. They were connected, for if St Davids was rightfully subject to Canterbury, Gratian’s Decretum allowed the archbishop a voice in the election.184 Hubert Walter, however, did not rely simply on his authority as metropolitan. He was a leading royal servant and able to deploy all the weapons of persuasion and coercion given him by his position in the government to prevent Gerald from being consecrated. That, however, raised a further issue: should the king control appointments to bishoprics? In England, from 1066 to 1135, royal control was complete. Initially, it was used to carry through the replacement of Englishmen by bishops from Normandy or elsewhere in Northern France, just as the English lay aristocracy was replaced by Norman (and some Breton and Flemish) tenants-­in-­chief. In the reign of William Rufus, however, it was openly abused, when the king kept bishoprics vacant so that he could continue taking the revenues. This extended even to the archbishopric of Canterbury. Lanfranc died in 1089, but his successor, Anselm, did not receive royal appointment until 1093, and then only when the king appeared to be on his deathbed.185 Even so, royal control was unquestioned: in 1108, for example, Gerard, archbishop of York, died, whereupon ‘[s]ix days later he was succeeded by Thomas, the king’s chaplain, provost of St John’s, Beverley, a nephew of Thomas I. The king had intended to give him the bishopric of London that very day or the next. But at the request of Hugh the dean and some others of our people who were then at 183  On appeals to Rome in this period, including the St Davids case, see Cheney, From Becket to Langton, pp. 51–75. 184 Gratian, Decretum, D. 23 c. 2: an election was to be ‘cum consensu clericorum et laicorum et conuentu totius prouinciae episcoporum, maximeque metropolitani uel auctoritate uel presentia’. Similarly, D. 62 c. 1, ‘Nulla ratio sinit, ut inter episcopos habeantur, qui nec a clericis sunt electi, nec a plebibus expetiti, nec a conprouincialibus episcopis cum metropolitani iudicio consecrati’. For the progressive limitation of the electors to the chapter, see Powicke, Stephen Langton, p. 80 and n. 2. 185  Vita Sancti Anselmi, ii. 2 (OMT 64–5).

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court, he changed his mind and gave him the church of York’.186 From 1125, Henry widened appointments beyond the circle of royal ser­ vants, but royal appointments they remained.187 During the reign of Stephen the climate of opinion shifted. John of Salisbury, who was in Rome in the late 1140s and would serve two archbishops of Canterbury, Theobald and Thomas Becket, has the following verdict on Roger, king of Sicily: ‘the king, after the fashion of tyrants, had reduced the church in his kingdom to slavery, and instead of allowing any freedom of election named in advance the candidate to be elected, so disposing of all ecclesiastical offices like palace appointments’.188 Freedom of episcopal election was now a major element in the freedom of the church. Gratian, whose work is a treasure-­chamber of authorities, and who was writing earlier than John, takes a sic et non approach. In the first chapters of Distinctio 63 he brings forward rulings against lay appointments to bishoprics, but in chapter 9 the involvement of a lay ruler is ac­know­ ledged. This was necessary: in the days of Gregory the Great, for ex­ample, the role of the emperor in permitting the consecration of bishops of Rome who had been elected was taken for granted. Gregory even sought imperial permission to grant the pallium to Syagrius, bishop of Autun, who was not a metropolitan but had been particularly helpful to the English mission.189 Similarly in the Frankish kingdoms, a candidate for a bishopric needed a royal praeceptum before he could be consecrated; there was a standard form for it in Marculf ’s formulary.190 This remained the practice in France in the late twelfth century.191 Even by then a king would not excite much critical comment if he appointed worthy candidates, did not expect to be paid in return for his favour (simony), and sought the opinion of the diocesan clergy.192 The ideal, for many centuries, had been a consensus of clergy, people, ­bishops of the same ecclesiastical province, and ruler in choosing a bishop. Yet the role of kings in episcopal appointments, though allowed 186  Hugh the Chanter, The History of the Church of York, ed. Johnson, p. 15; Brett, The English Church, pp. 104–11. 187 Brett, The English Church, pp. 111–12. 188 John of Salisbury, Historia Pontificalis, ed. and trans. Chibnall, xxxii, p. 75. For ex­amples of the designation of ‘tyranny’ in relation to episcopal elections in Gerald’s works, see his reply to Andrew, Inuect., i. 4 (Davies, p. 98), and De gestis i. 11. 189  Sancti Gregorii Magni Registrum Epistularum, ed. Norberg, viii. 4. 190  Formulae Merowingici et Karolini Aevi, ed. Zeumer, Marculfi Formulae, i. 5–6, pp. 45–6; trans. A.  Rio, The Formularies of Angers and Marculf: Two Merovingian Legal Handbooks, pp. 137–9. 191 Baldwin, Masters, i. 9. 192 Cheney, From Becket to Langton, pp. 19–21.

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by Gratian, was rejected by canonists later in the century.193 It was also criticized by theologians, by Peter the Chanter, by his pupil Robert Curzon (de Courçon), later cardinal and papal legate in France, and by Gerald himself in a work he presented to the pope on his first arrival in Rome.194 Yet another issue lay behind the dispute. Gratian quoted a ruling of Celestine I that a bishop was not to be given to a people unwilling to receive him.195 Yet the diocese of St Davids contained three main ­peoples, as we have seen: the Welsh, the people known to Welsh sources as ‘the French’ but who also considered themselves to be English, and the Flemings. To find a bishop acceptable to all three would have been a serious challenge. Divisions between these peoples were present in the  chapter from the beginning of the dispute and were assiduously exploited by Hubert Walter to break down the support for Gerald. When he was writing about the development of the case, Gerald had a  related difficulty, in that, while his anticipated readership was not Welsh, it seems fairly clear that his main support in the chapter came from the Welsh canons, just as his main early opponents were English or Norman.196 The difficulty was apparent also to the chapter, when, in 1198, they wrote to Gerald, then in Lincoln: ‘Our own opinion, however, (if it seems suitable to you) is that we ought, in order not to seem excessively Welsh or insubordinate, to send to the lord king three of the wiser members of the chapter along with you’.197 From Welsh rulers he received widespread support, including letters to the pope and financial help, just as he received support from his kinsmen in Dyfed and in Ireland.198 Support for Gerald is reminiscent, on a larger scale, of the  temporary alliance in 1147 between the Children of Nest and Maredudd and Rhys ap Gruffudd, their cousins. Gerald had substantial arguments in favour of his election based on the spiritual welfare of the Welsh. An authority often quoted or alluded to in texts concerned with pastoral care is the tenth chapter of St John’s Gospel, contrasting the true shepherd who enters through the gate and 193  Gaudemet, in Lot and Fawtier, Histoire des institutions françaises au moyen âge: Tome III, pp. 170–6 (on the metropolitan’s role, the licentia eligendi, and disputed elections). 194 Baldwin, Masters, i. 170–2; Gemma eccl., ii. 34 (especially RS ii. 338–9). 195  D. 61 c. 13. 196  Cf. the canonici Anglici of De iure, vii (RS iii. 365), and see below, pp. lxix–lxx. 197  De gestis, iii. 10: ‘ne nimis Walenses aut rebelles uideamur’. 198  De gestis, iii. 13 and chapter headings to iii. 138–41; Inuect., iii. 4 (Davies, p. 149), Innocent III to Llywelyn ab Iorwerth and the other princes of Wales, referring to litteras uestras; De iure, iv (RS iii. 197, 226, 244–6); Acts of Welsh Rulers, ed. Pryce, nos. *42, 220, *222, *223 (for chronological problems with no. 220, see pp. 370–1).

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is recognized by his sheep, who respond to his call, and both the thief who gets in by another way and the hireling who runs away when he sees the wolf approaching.199 The letter, composed and taken to Rome by Gerald, from Llywelyn ab Iorwerth and other Welsh princes, had  one main thesis: the subjection of the Welsh church to English kings and to the archbishop of Canterbury, associated with a policy of appointing Englishmen to Welsh sees, was an instrument of dom­in­ ation, not a way to provide good pastoral care.200 Moreover, Englishmen appointed to Welsh sees regarded their flocks as sheep to be sheared, not as souls to be saved.201 And, as he pointed out, how could the Welsh sheep respond to the call of a stranger who knew neither their language nor their customs?202 Gerald had already noted in the first recension of the Expugnatio Hibernica, completed in 1189, some years earlier, how English conquest of Irish kingdoms was accompanied by the spoliation of the Irish church.203 Not until King John’s authority was seriously weakened in 1215 was it possible to elect a Welshman to St Davids and for the election to take effect.204 Gerald’s Welsh was imperfect, but he had some knowledge and appreciation of the language, and he certainly claimed that his Welsh works demonstrated a close acquaintance with their customs. Those considerations pertained to the case over Gerald’s election. It is clear from Gerald’s narrative in De iure that Innocent III was much more favourable to Gerald on the issue of his election than on the other issue, the metropolitan status of St Davids. At the end of his third stay in Rome, after the two elections of Gerald and of the abbot of St Dogmaels had been quashed, Gerald had to work hard to persuade the pope to  appoint judges-­delegate from the province of York on the claim

199  The contrast between the true shepherd and the thief is used in the letter of Owain Gwynedd and his brother Cadwaladr, sons of Gruffudd ap Cynan, to Bishop Bernard (Inuect., ii. 9 (Davies, pp. 142–3)). In a development of the contrast, an unnamed avaricious bishop of St Davids (Peter de Leia) is said not merely to have exposed his flock to the wolves but, instead of being a shepherd, behaved as an even worse wolf himself: De iure, i (RS iii. 150). Instead of entering through the gate like the true shepherd, he broke through the walls like a thief: ibid., p. 159. 200  See below, pp. lxix–lxx. 201  Gemma eccl., ii. 34 (RS ii. 330–1). 202  Inuect., ii. 7 (Davies, pp. 141–2): Geoffrey de Henlaw, the prior of Llanthony, was refused as being ‘utterly ignorant of the language and also the customs of the country’. 203  Exp. Hib., ii. 9 (by Raymond and Meilyr, Gerald’s kinsmen, and others), and 36 (ed. Scott and Martin, pp. 154–7 and 242–3). 204  De iure, vii (RS iii. 361), ‘quoniam et publicam potestatem tunc plurimum eneruatam et ecclesiasticam libertatem per Dei gratiam uiderant augmentatam’.

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of metropolitan status.205 Yet, even on the latter, the broader context in Britain and Ireland offered him some hope. In the time of the first two archbishops after the Norman Conquest, Lanfranc and Anselm, Canterbury hoped to establish its primacy over the whole of Britain and also Ireland.206 By 1199, when Gerald set out for Rome, these ambitions had been comprehensively defeated. First, and most woundingly, by 1125 York had successfully resisted subjection to Canterbury, in spite of Canterbury’s ability to call upon kings to exert pressure in its favour.207 Secondly, by 1152 Ireland had acquired its four metropolitan provinces independent of Canterbury and the arrangement had been confirmed at the Synod of Kells, a synod presided over by a papal legate.208 In addition, the Scots had established the independence of their church from York by papal decisions embodied in bulls of 1176 and 1192.209 All these defeats for the English archbishops of Canterbury and York had been achieved by appeal to papal authority, and all of them in spite of the support of English kings for the ambitions of Canterbury and, in Scotland, York.210 They no doubt gave Gerald hope, but also made Hubert Walter determined not to lose any further ground. Moreover, when Ireland confirmed its ecclesiastical independence of Canterbury in 1152, it was politically distinct from England; when at the end of the century Scotland achieved its independence, everyone knew that Scotland was a kingdom distinct from England. Yet Gerald, in conversation with Innocent III, had readily conceded that Wales was a portion of the kingdom of England.211 These issues were interrelated, both in principle and in practice. More than once, papal legates to Ireland had to travel via Scotland, because the more direct route through England was blocked by order of the king.212 David I was well known for his support for church reform and for the effectiveness of the church in his kingdom. A readi­ ness to facilitate journeys between Ireland and Rome was consistent 205  De iure, iv (RS iii. 270–1). 206 Gibson, Lanfranc of Bec, pp. 116–31; Southern, Saint Anselm: A Portrait in a Landscape, pp. 330–64. 207  Hugh the Chanter, The History of the Church of York, ed. Johnson, pp. 70–126. 208 Flanagan, Irish Society, Anglo-­Norman Settlers, Angevin Kingship, pp. 7–38. 209 Anderson, Scottish Annals from English Chroniclers, pp. 264–5, 299; Duncan, Scotland: The Making of the Kingdom, pp. 263–4 and 275. For Gerald’s awareness of the Scottish case, see De iure, ii (RS iii. 168). 210  For Scotland, see the Treaty of Falaise, 1174, ed. Stones, Anglo-­Scottish Relations, 1174–1328: Some Selected Documents, no. 1. 211  De iure, ii (RS iii. 166); but, for a reason why Gerald might have been happy to make this concession, see Inuect., iv. 2 (Davies, pp. 164–7). 212  John of Salisbury, Historia Pontificalis, ed. Chibnall, c. 2, p. 6.

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with his whole approach. He and other kings who were supportive of reform found their wishes in episcopal appointments readily respected. The contrast between the two kings, David and Stephen, became even more evident when Archbishop Theobald managed to evade Stephen and obey the summons to the Council of Reims in 1148: in order to do so, since Stephen had come in person to Canterbury to prevent him getting away, he had to hire a fishing boat, hide it in a remote bay, and cross the Channel ‘rather as a survivor from a shipwreck than in a ship’.213 More than fifty years later, Gerald would be compelled to use similar tactics.214 It has been observed that the timing of the death of Bernard, Gerald’s predecessor as champion of the metropolitan rights of St Davids, was unfortunate for that cause. He died before the Synod of Kells, yet ‘if the Irish Church had secured papal sanction for its independent diocesan structure in 1140, when first requested by Malachy [archbishop of Armagh], it would have made it more likely that Bernard, bishop of St Davids, might have achieved papal recognition of the independent status of the Welsh Church before his death in 1148’.215 As for principle, certain documents were crucial. In the first rank was the letter of Gregory the Great to Augustine of Canterbury setting out the provincial structure he desired for ‘the new Church of the English’.216 For the canons of York in their case against Canterbury this  letter was powerful ammunition, since Gregory wanted the two metropolitan sees to be of equal status, the only pre-­eminence after Augustine’s lifetime to be by priority of election. It was likewise helpful for the Scots, the Irish, and St Davids: the ‘new Church of the English’ could hardly be taken to include other churches to the west and the north, which were neither new nor English. Yet, at first sight, there is a paradox here: a period in which, through domination and conquest, an English empire was in the making in the British Isles also saw the progressive collapse of English claims to control the churches of their neighbours—­except, that is, for one neighbouring people, the Welsh.217 Gerald’s various accounts of the progress of the case, from the time he accepted election and the chapter decided to appeal to Rome, were all completed more than a decade after it had ended in failure. By then, 213  Ibid., p. 7. 214  De iure, iv (RS iii. 236–9). 215 Flanagan, Irish Society, Anglo-­Norman Settlers, Angevin Kingship, p. 55. 216 Bede, Historica Ecclesiastica, i. 29. 217 Davies, Domination and Conquest; Davies, The First English Empire.

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the only way he could have presented the story was as the triumph of royal and archiepiscopal force and financial muscle over the justice of the case he had presented. As he describes the decision to go ahead with the appeal, it was taken after much hesitation and reflection and after taking advice from his relations in Ireland and from Philip, his eldest brother.218 He refers to his brother’s advice subsequently at more than one point.219 As he describes it, Philip had supported his decision on the basis that it should be accepted from the start that he might well fail: ‘Arduous and toilsome is the business you are undertaking, my brother, as well as extremely expensive and perilous, for it seems to be opposed not only to the archbishop of Canterbury, but also to the king and to all England’. Since all three of these works were completed many years later, it is entirely possible that Gerald sometimes wrote down what he should have said in Rome rather than what he actually did say. His chronology is sometimes more than dubious, as with the letter from Llywelyn ab Iorwerth and other princes of Wales.220 This is presented as if it were handed over to be read, not in the full consistory but ‘in camera coram cardinalibus’, not long after Epiphany 1203, early in Gerald’s third stay in Rome. Yet it is most likely, if authentic, to have been written in 1199 and taken by Gerald on his first visit, although chronology would allow it to have been taken on the second visit in 1201.221 If it belongs to the first visit, it would be the letter to which Innocent III replied, apparently in May 1200, at the time when he referred the two disputes to judges-­delegate.222 This letter was accompanied by others, one a general letter to the clergy and people of Wales urging them to respect and aid the church of St Davids, another to Meilyr, justiciar of Ireland, ‘and others of his kindred’.223 This last letter makes it likely that Gerald, in gaining the support of Meilyr and his other kinsmen when he crossed to Ireland for a fortnight in early July 1199, had asked them to append their seals to a letter of support that Gerald could take to Rome. It is agreed that the extant letter from Llywelyn and others was drafted by Gerald himself; the same would probably be true of the other letters. He could have sent a messenger to the Welsh princes who would have taken with him the text of the letter at the same time as Gerald himself 218  De gestis, iii. 13 and 16. 219 e.g. De iure, iv (RS iii. 225); cf. also De inuect., vi. 25 (Davies, pp. 228–9). 220  De iure, iv (RS iii. 244–6). 221 Lloyd, HW 627 n. 73; Acts, no. 220 (commentary). 222  Inuect., iii. 4 (Davies, p. 149). 223  Inuect., iii. 6 (Davies, p. 150).

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went to Ireland. He would then have had a month and a half to get it back before setting out for Rome on 14 August.224 Since a single letter came from several princes, evidently written by someone with a strong background in the liberal arts, it would be apparent in Rome what had happened. But it is unlikely that the pope and the cardinals would have found it in the least surprising or improper for the intended clerical beneficiary to compose a text to which laymen could append their seals. Gerald’s case had two weaknesses, one of which would help to explain why he might have wished it to seem as though Llywelyn’s letter had been taken on the third, not the first, journey to Rome. The first was the chapter of St Davids. Hugh the Chanter’s History of the Church of York makes it abundantly clear that the canons of York had been solidly behind the defence of the metropolitan status of their church. The issue was not the devotion of the canons to the cause but, rather, whether successive archbishops would show the same commitment and energy that they did. Gerald’s devotion to his cause, at least if his account is anywhere near the truth, lacked nothing in either fervour or energy. Initially, the chapter was behind him, with the exception of Reginald Foliot, who had been among the four nominated candidates and continued to hope that he might become bishop. But there were lines of division on which Hubert Walter could work. The first was that of nationality. Gerald’s brother had expressed the fear that Gerald’s enterprise would seem to be ‘opposed not only to the archbishop of Canterbury, but also to the king and to all England’. Would the English canons maintain their support for a cause opposed to all England? The most important recruit made to the archbishop’s side was an English canon, Osbert, archdeacon of Carmarthen. According to Gerald, Osbert, in succession to another English canon, Reginald Foliot, ‘was playing the double part of corrupter and courier on behalf of the king, the archbishop, and the justiciar as well’.225 In a later work, Speculum duorum, Gerald insinuated that Osbert was the illegitimate son of Geoffrey de Henlaw, Hubert Walter’s preferred candidate and the eventual successor to Peter de Leia.226 The letter composed by Gerald for the Welsh princes is a sustained complaint against English power in 224  In 1201, Gerald spent the Christmas period in Gwynedd and was back in St Davids by 20 January: De iure, iii (RS iii. 196). 225  De iure, iii (RS iii. 196; trans. Autobiography, ed. Butler, p. 220). 226  Richter, in the introduction to Spec. duorum (ed. Richter, Lefèvre, et al., p. xlvii, n. 116), pointed to the evidence of Gerald, ep. 7, in Spec. duorum (ibid., p. 252, ll. 195–7), taken together with ep. 8 (ibid., p. 262, ll. 16–18), as showing that Gerald maintained that Osbert, archdeacon of Carmarthen, was Geoffrey of Henlaw’s illegitimate son.

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the Welsh church, a power imposed and sustained by royal violence. A  particular grievance was the imposition on Welsh bishoprics of Englishmen who were ‘wholly ignorant of the customs of the country and of our language’ and who ‘had no love for our land’.227 When the Welsh were fighting in defence of their country and freedom, they were subjected to excommunication by alien bishops. For Gerald to compose such a text risked that he himself would be portrayed as an enemy of the king—­a fate which indeed befell him. When Gerald wrote that the letters were not read in full consistory but in camera before a group of cardinals, he may have been stating the truth, even though he had shifted the date from 1200 to 1203.228 The second line of division was that of kinship. Gerald was supported by his kinsmen. They were the target when Hubert arranged for the election, a little before Christmas 1199, of Walter, abbot of St Dogmaels, for he was himself a kinsman of Gerald.229 The Welsh ­canons were divided between two kindreds, the descendants of John and the descendants of Jonas.230 The former were kinsmen of Peter, abbot of Whitland.231 When Gerald was returning from Rome in the summer of 1200 with a papal grant of the administration of the diocese, it appeared that the Welsh canons would accept his authority. Archbishop Hubert, therefore, enquired of Archdeacon Osbert and Reginald Foliot if there were any means by which he could subvert the loyalty of the canons. He was told about the two kindreds and summoned the abbot of Whitland, promising him that, if he could detach the chapter from Gerald, he would receive the bishopric, even though Hubert had already procured the election of the head of another monastic house, the abbot of St. Dogmaels.232 In 1203, when the two elections of Gerald and of the abbot of St Dogmaels had been quashed, Hubert exerted no influence on behalf of either abbot but, with the help of Geoffrey fitz Peter, promoted his doctor, Geoffrey de Henlaw, 227  De iure, iv (RS iii. 244). 228 Ibid. 229  Inuect., i. 7 (Davies, pp. 106–7): Hubert Walter has him elected, being ‘de terra nostra, illiteratum prorsus et idiotam, quem scilicet uereri non posset, et consobrinum meum, ut sic mihi generis mei subducere posset auxilium’; see Knowles, ‘Some monastic enemies of Gerald of Wales’, p. 141. 230  De iure, vi (RS iii. 312). 231  Inuect., i. 7 (Davies, p. 107), Walter ‘being born of our church, had very many of his kinsmen who were canons’; Gerald claimed at De iure, iii (RS iii. 198), that ‘almost all the Welsh canons were Walter’s kinsmen or related by marriage’. This implies that the descendants of Jonas and those of John, though distinct kindreds, were often related by marriage. See also Knowles, ‘Some monastic enemies of Gerald of Wales’, pp. 139–40. 232  Inuect., i. 7 (Davies, p. 107).

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prior of Llanthony, so that during the vacancy, Henry de Bohun, the patron of Llanthony and the justiciar’s son-­in-­law, could pursue his plan of separating Llanthony Prima, in Ewyas, and Llanthony Secunda, by Gloucester.233 The abbots had been tools and could now be left in their monasteries. When Gerald arrived in Rome at the end of November 1199, the case could not proceed at once for lack of anyone to represent the other side. About 10 December a courier arrived bringing letters from the archbishop to the pope and the cardinals. At much the same time, the archbishop had summoned at least some canons to London, and had prevailed upon them to elect Walter, abbot of St Dogmaels and Gerald’s kinsman.234 In Rome, Gerald’s reply to the archbishop’s letter was delayed by the Christmas recess, but was presented on 7 January 1200. No further Canterbury representation arrived until between Laetare Sunday, 19 March, and Easter, 9 April. In the meantime, after pre­lim­ in­ary discussion with the pope, Gerald had been asked to write a statement of the case for metropolitan status. This seems to correspond with what in later legal language came to be called the libellus, a necessary starting-­point for legal proceedings. What is presented as Gerald’s text is given in De iure at this point and also separately, in Libellus inuectionum.235 It was dismissed by Butler as ‘a long disquisition on the History of Christianity in Britain, largely mythical’. This was unfair: some of the trimmings are, for us, mythical, but the substance consists of four main elements. The starting-­point is the Lucius story, contained in the Liber pontificalis, taken for more than a millennium as sober history, but now known to be legendary: not in origin mythical but merely a mistake which then took wings and flew. It is in Bede’s Historia Ecclesiastica, but is given extra details from Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regum Britanniae. What this story established was something which is entirely historical, namely that Christianity among the Britons long predated the mission sent by Gregory the Great to the English. A further elem­ ent is what Gerald describes as the ‘Tome of Pope Anacletus, as it is 233  De iure, vi (RS iii. 321). 234  De iure, ii (RS iii. 177). 235  De iure, ii (RS iii. 169–76); Inuect., ii. 1 (Davies, pp. 130–5). The initial sentence in Inuect. lacks the second-person address and the apology for length in the De iure version, but otherwise they present the same text, with the exception that the end is different. De iure, ii (RS iii. 175), Potuit ergo esse, diverges from Inuect., ii. 1 (Davies, p. 133). De iure, ii (RS iii. 175) may well have been the original conclusion, with another second-person address to the pope. After a linking sentence, De iure, ii (RS iii. 175–6 (end)) occurs in the Libellus as a separate text (ii. 5 (Davies, pp. 138–9)).

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contained in the “Pontifical and Imperial Deeds” ’.236 The ultimate source must, however, be the western Notitia Dignitatum, deriving from the early fifth century. It envisaged five British provinces, which could then be compared with the two provinces, no more, of Gregory the Great’s letter to Augustine of Canterbury. The main part of Gerald’s argument consists of a close reading of Bede, including papal letters, most particularly the letter of Gregory the Great setting out his plan for the provincial organization of ‘the new Church of the English’. Although the new title given to Theodore, who arrived in 669 as ‘archbishop of the Island of Britain’, is missed, that is unsurprising: it was obscured by Bede. What is noted is the attendance at the Synod of Hertford, summoned by Theodore, which was confined to English bishops. Where Gerald had more difficulty—­ and here he was in very good company—­was when Bede’s History came to an end. The Life of St David was no help: what Innocent III had requested was an account of when and why St Davids ceased to be an archbishopric.237 If Gerald had read Asser’s Life of Alfred, he could have used Asser’s reference to his kinsman, Nobis, as archbishop. What he in fact used was a St Davids’ version of the story of Samson migrating from South Wales to Brittany and founding Dol, which later claimed, as against Tours, that it was a Breton archbishopric. This was unfortunate, since Innocent had earlier the same year dismissed the Dol claim, a fact of which the chapter of St Davids had been un­aware.238 The ingenious attempt to escape from this difficulty appears to be in an addition to the original text.239 The migration of Samson was already an essential part of the case for the metropolitan status of St Davids when Gerald wrote his Itinerarium Kambrie a decade earlier.240 When he first arrived in Rome, he explained to Innocent III that the archive of St Davids had frequently suffered from being sacked by pirates, with the result that its privileges had been almost entirely destroyed.241 But when he returned to St Davids in the late summer of 1200, he searched the archive and found documents from Bernard’s episcopate, which he subsequently 236  Inuect., ii. 1 (Davies, p. 130) and De iure, ii (RS iii. 169). 237  De iure, ii (RS iii. 166). 238  When Gerald and his companions reached Rome they were ‘prioris quidem ignari prorsus euentus’, Inuect., ii. 5 (Davies, p. 139). 239  For the escape route from the Dol difficulty, see Inuect., ii. 5 (Davies, pp. 138–9) and De iure, ii (RS iii. 169). 240  Itin. Kam., ii. 1 (RS vi. 103), already in the first version represented by Dimock’s MSS R and B. 241  De iure, ii (RS iii. 166).

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took to Rome.242 What purports to be the earliest document in the collection of material from Bishop Bernard’s episcopate in Inuect., ii, is a letter from the chapter of St Davids to Pope Honorius II, whose ­pontificate stretched from 1124 to 1130.243 That contains the story of Samson’s migration, but it also contains in its version of the story of Lucius, king of the Britons, features that derive from Geoffrey of Monmouth, in particular the names of the missionaries, Faganus and Duuianus.244 The Historia Regum Britanniae was known by the time of Bishop Bernard’s campaign in the 1140s, but it is unlikely that it could have been available to the chapter by 1130.245 The letter may have been edited by or for Bernard. Gerald was in a rather stronger position when it came to his own election. For one thing, Innocent III was entirely aware of the defects, from a reforming standpoint, of the English custom of electing ­bishops.246 Not long before the pope made his decision in Gerald’s case, he wrote a letter to King John complaining in the strongest terms about the wrongs committed by John against the church, including those committed in the matter of episcopal elections.247 The archbishop’s first move was to send a courier with a letter denouncing Gerald and the method of his election.248 This arrived in Rome about 10 December 1199, just under a fortnight after Gerald had reached the curia. Gerald’s reply was delayed until 7 January by the Christmas recess, a pause which gave him the time to compose a reply that was quite evidently composed by someone with a rhetorical training markedly superior to that of the clerk who wrote Hubert Walter’s letter. The archbishop’s letter had given Gerald a most tempting target by denouncing Gerald as by birth a Welshman, related to the great men of Wales, and by claiming that his election and, still more, a removal of St Davids from obedience to Canterbury would foment perpetual conflict between the English and the Welsh, since ‘the barbarity of an unrestrained and wild nation’ needed to be checked by subjection to Canterbury. The argument against Gerald thus appeared to be essentially 242  De iure, iii (RS iii. 187–8). 243  Inuect., ii. 10 (Davies, pp. 143–6 (Lucius, p. 143, Samson, p. 145)). 244  The History of the Kings of Britain, iv. 72 (ed. Reeve and Wright, pp. 86–9). 245  That the original dedication was to Robert, earl of Gloucester, and that the dedicatee was only subsequently changed to King Stephen would be consistent with publication before Stephen took the kingship in 1135: The History of the Kings of Britain, ed. Reeve and Wright, pp. vii–xi. 246  On which see De gestis, i. 9. 247  Selected Letters of Pope Innocent III, ed. Cheney and Semple, no. 17 (for the section relevant to Gerald, see pp. 50–1). 248  Inuect., i. 1 (Davies, pp. 83–5).

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political and the justification for the authority of Canterbury over Wales to be itself political. Although Gerald’s reply was, in its own terms, highly ef­fect­ive, if, as seems likely, he had already presented the letter from the Welsh princes, there might well have seemed to be some truth in the claim that Gerald was allied with the rebellious Welsh. Gerald may have realized the difficulty and, for that reason, changed the date of the letter to 1203. Hubert’s second move was to send a Lombard, a clerk of Canterbury, to say that King John had refused to accept Gerald as a candidate for election and that, with the king’s assent, the canons had elected ‘a certain abbot’. He arrived between 19 March and 9 April 1200. When pressed by the pope, he admitted that this happened ‘a little before Christmas’, when Gerald was already in Rome. And he further admitted that these proceedings were agreeable to the archbishop, whereupon Innocent declared them null and void.249 It was not until Gerald’s third stay in Rome that he was confronted with an opponent who was his match in learning—­indeed, in canon law, his superior—­John of Tynemouth.250 Hubert, however, had a practical advantage. The relevant facts of the case over Gerald’s election were much more easily determined in the kingdom of England than in Rome. Witnesses could be summoned from St Davids to a hearing in England. The device which coupled papal jurisdiction and a local hearing was that of the judge-­delegate. This procedure was the one Innocent would adopt in May 1200, by appointing two judges-­delegate, the bishops of Ely and Worcester, both experienced in such work.251 Both of them would later side with Innocent and Stephen Langton over the latter’s succession of Hubert Walter as archbishop. Yet a hearing in England was bound to be open to pressure from the archbishop: when the final hearing took place at St Albans in September 1202, the archbishop positioned himself just a few miles off at Dunstable.252 In 1203 Gerald would secure the nom­in­ ation of judges-­delegate from the province of York to hear the case over the metropolitan status of St Davids.253 Yet, even so, it would have been 249  De iure, ii (RS iii. 176–7). 250  De iure, iv (RS iii. 255 and 265–6); Brundage, Medieval Canon Law, pp. 220–1, summarizes what is known of his career. 251 Sayers, Papal Judges-­Delegate, pp. 54–99 (on how the system worked); The Letters of Innocent III (1198–1216), ed. Cheney and Cheney, p. 293 (the index shows the important role of Eustace, bishop of Ely, in papal dealings with England and Wales). 252  De iure, iv (RS iii. 228). 253  De iure, v (RS iii. 282–4).

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remarkable if they had been immune to the argument that giving such status to St Davids would only encourage the wild and unrestrained nation of the Welsh in rebellion. There were formidable obstacles in Gerald’s path, even if Hubert Walter had not been a ruthless and well-­ funded opponent. Perhaps Gerald had some consolations: when the archbishop died on 13 July 1205, he left the huge debt of £913 1s. Some of that debt must have been Gerald’s doing.254 By the time Gerald wrote De gestis and De iure, Innocent had adopted for Canterbury a similar tactic to the one he employed for St Davids in 1203, quashing the elections both of Reginald, the subprior of Christ Church, and of John de Grey, bishop of Norwich and the king’s favoured candidate. In that case, however, he had a worthy replacement to hand in Rome, Cardinal Stephen Langton. Prefixed to De iure is a prologue addressed to Archbishop Langton. It shows that more than a decade after his own election had been quashed and the case for metropolitan status had run into the sand, Gerald was still thinking of schemes for St Davids and still hoping that something could be retrieved from his campaign, something other than posthumous fame. The scheme proposed to Langton, and which he claimed was offered to Hubert Walter and received the approbation of one of the judges-­delegate, Eustace, bishop of Ely, was based on the distinction between the primacy of the archbishop with his pallium from the pope and mere metropolitan status.255 St Davids would acknowledge the primacy of Canterbury and would not itself seek the pallium. With that concession, the story of Samson taking the pallium to Dol became as redundant in theory as it was obsolete in practice. What St Davids would now assert was what it claimed to have enjoyed before being subjected by Henry I, namely an authority over the other Welsh bishoprics. This Gerald could claim to have been acknowledged by Owain Gwynedd and his brother, Cadwaladr, as ‘the ancient right of the church of St David’.256

254  Gerald’s statement of what the archbishop spent on the dispute is at De iure, iv (RS iii. 264) and Inuect., v. 11 (Davies, p. 191) and vi. 2 (Davies, p. 206) (all 11,000 marks; i.e. £7,333 6s. 8d). 255  De iure, prol. (RS iii. 112–16); the letter to the bishops of Ely and Worcester, making this proposal, is given in Inuect., iv. 1 (Davies, pp. 162–4); the arrangement was approved by Eustace, bishop of Ely, at the hearing at St Albans in September 1202, but refused by the archbishop, according to De iure, iv (RS iii. 231). 256  Inuect., ii. 9 and 12 (Davies, pp. 142–3 and 146–7); for further discussion of this letter, see the Edition below, n. 110.

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in t roduc t ion G E RA L D A S A WR I T E R : HI S LAT I N S TY LE , C I TAT I O NS,   A ND SO U RCE S

In reporting the reception of his lectures in Paris in De gestis, ii. 1, Gerald did not hold back: so brilliant was the rhetoric supported by the appropriate citation of philosophers and authorities that the more erudite his listeners, the more attentively they paid attention to this lecture.257 For good measure, in the next chapter he then presents the opening of his first lecture in a striking combination of the conventional modesty topos and a pyrotechnic display of allusion and q ­ uotation: he quotes from a letter of Sidonius, but also alludes to Seneca, before then in order quoting Augustine (probably from Gratian), alluding to Vergil’s Eclogues, quoting Pliny the Elder, and ending with an allusion to Horace’s Ars Poetica.258 On textual grounds Goddu and Rouse claim that the quotation from Sidonius is more likely to derive from the letter itself than from the Florilegium Angelicum;259 this is borne out by Gerald’s subsequent reference to the five-­year silence practised by Pythagoras’s students that was mentioned by Sidonius in the preceding sentence of the same letter. The reader would need to be familiar with more of the letter than appears in the Florilegium to get the point. This is a feature of Gerald’s style which can be exemplified from elsewhere, that he assumes that ‘the more learned and erudite’ among his audience would be able to place a quotation, whether classical, biblical, or patristic, in context and grasp the broader frame of the allusion being made. Similarly, at De gestis ii. 21, we find Gerald in France distraught at having apparently lost all of his baggage and money. He decides not to stay moping in his room but to join the crowd, taking the advice of Ovid, Remedia amoris, 579: loca sola nocent: loca sola caveto ‘solitude is harmful; beware of solitude’. Alert readers would have known that ten lines later (l. 589) Ovid refers to Pylades, Orestes’s 257  Cf. also the passage quoted on p. lxi above. On the possibility that this was an inception lecture, see the Edition below, n. 273. 258  For details, see the notes to De gestis, ii. 1, below; Sidonius Apollinaris, Letters, vii. 9. 5. For an excellent discussion of Gerald’s style, see Hagen, Gerald of Wales. The Jewel of the Church, pp. xxiv–xxxi; on citations, see De prin. (OMT xxxv–lv). On quotations and how they might be reworked, see Henley, ‘Quotation, revision, and narrative structure’. For the purposes of most of this discussion of style, work by others incorporated into De gestis, such as the Laudabiliter of Adrian IV (ii. 11, repeated in Exp. Hib., ii. 5 (ed. Scott and Martin, pp. 144–7 (RS v. 317–18)), De prin., ii. 19 (OMT 510–13)), and letters from others, are not discussed except for comparative purposes. For Laudabiliter, see Appendix 4 (pp. 253–4); it has been argued by Duggan (‘The making of a myth’, ‘The power of documents’, etc.) that Gerald composed Laudabiliter and so a stylistic analysis might be useful, but that discussion is best had in the context of the Expugnatio. 259  Goddu and Rouse, ‘Gerald of Wales and the Florilegium Angelicum’, p. 507.

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faithful companion: semper habe Pyladem aliquem ‘always have a Pylades’, which of course is precisely what Gerald was currently lacking.260 A failure to identify the further allusion would not have caused serious damage to a reader’s understanding; the quotation would simply have been read as a caution against loneliness, but the realization that the broader context would have enhanced that understanding would have been a bonus for the alert. Such examples suggest that we need to be careful of thinking always that Gerald was drawing on a florilegium; such works do not provide that degree of context.261 The opening of Gerald’s lecture in De gestis, ii. 2 also illustrates how he rewrites and reshapes his own rhetoric: a shorter and arguably earl­ ier version, less interlarded with quotation, occurs in the introitus to Top. Hib. (RS v. 6). There the two sentences eruditis auribus . . . usitata proferre run straight on into the allusion to Vergil’s squawking geese and melodious swans, omitting the quotation from Sidonius. The Sidonian reference may be an addition in De gestis, but both texts postdate Gerald’s lectures in Paris and so it is also conceivable that he removed the quotation as being less relevant for Top. Hib. The introitus is not found in manuscripts of the first recension but may have been used as an introduction to Gerald’s Oxford lectures.262 But given Gerald’s propensity for adding quotations and annotation, the former may seem more likely, even though the alternative cannot be ruled out in some cases. Other features of ii. 1 are worth dwelling on, notably its opening paragraph. Presenting himself in Caesarian mode as proactive and forward-­thinking, he quotes Lucan, De bello civili, ii. 657, where ‘­leaving nothing undone which could be done’ is presented as Julius Caesar’s route to success against Pompey. Gerald travels to Paris and applies himself to more advanced studies; he describes the stages of his education as having a foundation of literature, walls of canon law, and a roof of theology, an image which is reworked from Peter the Chanter’s Verbum adbreviatum.263 Peter would have been teaching in Paris in the 1170s and it is possible that Gerald absorbed the image from his teaching; 260  Cf. the citation of Juvenal, Satires, i. 74, cited at ii. 9: probitas laudatur et alget ‘integrity is praised but still shivers with cold’; Gerald makes this observation when surrounded by the king’s envoys in Hereford, and the reader familiar with the cast of unpleasant characters that Juvenal rolls out in this scene in Satire i would understand that Gerald may be implying that it is not only the good who get on in his world. 261  On the issue of clusters of quotations travelling as a group, see below, pp. lxxix–lxxx. 262  RS v. 2, n. 3. 263  Peter the Chanter, Verbum adbreviatum (textus prior), i (ed. Boutry, pp. 14–15); (textus conflatus), i. 1 (ed. Boutry, p. 9). Cf. Chenu, La thèologie au douzième siècle, p. 261, n. 4; see the Edition below, n. 270. Note too that Gerald quotes at length from the Verbum adbreviatum in

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Gerald has sufficiently distorted the image that he might have reconstructed it from his notes. This opening display is then followed by  a  series of three complex consecutive clauses: ‘he showed such ­ability, . . . so great a crowd turned up that the hall was hardly big enough’; ‘his teaching was so fine that the more learned the audience were the more they were keen to commit his teaching to memory’; ‘so sweet was his speech that they never grew tired’. This is a familiar stylistic trope in Gerald’s work used by him to crank up the rhetoric towards a climax. These two chapters, marking his entry as a lecturer into the legal faculty, provide much rich fare, but before indigestion sets in, it is worth reminding ourselves that Gerald was capable of resetting the dial when he chose. As Hagen has noted, ‘It is evident that Gerald had . . . a clear idea of the ancient idea of the distinction between the ornate and simple style, according as he is dealing with plain narrative or instruction or with more declamatory, rhetorical matter’.264 The preface to De gestis opens with a comparison with the ancients who would commit the deeds of famous men to memory so that later ages could imitate them. But in Gerald’s day people were not moved by yperbolia et impossibilia but rather the idea that virtuous should follow the example of a virtuous man—­in this case Gerald himself. How was that conveyed stylistically? The second paragraph opens with an account of how the inclite gesta of men of our own time are to be recounted. It is developed in an ascending tricolon of clauses each beginning with in + an abstract noun: in laudabilem actionem et actionis emulationem . . . ; in fidei duplicis ecclesie . . . per experimenta cognicionem, et facillimam . . . corruptionem; and then the final clause focuses on the example of St Davids, which needs to be instructed about its own status and to serve as a warning to others in the future: in Meneuensis ecclesie firmam atque fidelem sue dignitatis instructionem et perpetuam . . . premunicionem, and a few lines later as a de futuro cautela. But, before that, the style in which such warnings are to be couched is explicitly described as composed scolastico stilo (simplici tamen et non exquisito) ‘in a scholastic (but simple and not over-­elaborate) style’. Gerald uses this phrase on a number of occasions and it has been well discussed by Bartlett in the context of Gerald’s hagiography.265 The Gemma eccl.; Baldwin, ‘Masters’, i.  42–3, estimates that up to an eighth of the Gemma is derived from it (cf. also Hagen, Gerald of Wales. The Jewel of the Church, p. xxii). 264 Hagen, Gerald of Wales. The Jewel of the Church, p. xxv. 265  Cf. also Itin. Kam., pref. prima (RS vi. 7), Spec. eccl., iii. 1 (RS iv. 142), Vita S. Hugonis, iii. 1 (RS vii. 137), Vita S. David, pref. (ed. Russell, §1; RS iii. 377), and Exp. Hib., introitus

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clearest statement of what this amounts to is made by Gerald in the prologue to his life of St David: Lectionis igitur antique et propemodum iam antiquate, sicut nec uerba, sic neque rerum hic series, nec continentia requiratur. Correctionis quippe lege seruata, Domino inspirante, qui interdum que abscondit a sapientibus reuelat paruulis, et superflua rescindi, et defectiua suppleri, et minus exquisite dicta mutari, in hac presenti pagina lector inueniet.266

While in the context of rewriting a pre-­existing text it is easy to see what Gerald means, the import is less clear when a text is being composed from scratch. De gestis, however, presents slightly different issues in that it is a text which has been a long time in the making: some sections may have been drafted shortly after the events related, others perhaps much later; some letters may well be original, others reworked. All, however, was brought together and edited relatively late in Gerald’s life and career. It is possible then that Gerald conceived of the reworking of the material that went to make up De gestis in the same way that he thought of using an earlier version of the life of St David. We shall return to style later in the discussion but it may be useful first to consider the distribution and use of sources in De gestis as they make an important contribution to the style and flavour of Gerald’s writing. We begin with citations from external sources before turning to cases where Gerald has inserted or reworked material from elsewhere in his own works. Gerald’s use of citations varies considerablely from section to section: for example, in the first part, all of which may have been composed for De gestis, the chapters on Gerald’s childhood and upbringing (i. 1–4) are relatively heavily loaded with citations but the wholly narrative section which follows, on his work as archdeacon of Brycheiniog (i. 5–11), contains none. In Parts ii and iii citations are more sporadic, climbing into significant numbers and density where the rhetoric is amplified, such as his sermon in Dublin (ii. 14) or his letter to Archbishop Hubert (iii. 5). Biblical and patristic citations unsurprisingly outweigh the classical; there are fifteen classical cit­ ations in De gestis as it survives and they cover the expected authors: (ed. Scott and Martin, pp. 4–5 (RS v. 209)); Bartlett, ‘Rewriting saints’ lives’; Russell, ‘Gerald of Wales and the rewriting of saints’ lives’. 266  ‘There should be no need for an old-­fashioned nor even antiquated mode of writing neither in words, the arrangement of the narrative, or in content. But maintaining the rule of correction, with the inspiration of the Lord who sometimes reveals to little children what he keeps from the wise (Matthew 11:25), the reader will find in these present pages that which is superfluous cut back, that which is missing supplied, and that which is less artfully composed revised’ (Vita S. David (ed. Russell, §1)).

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Vergil (2), Ovid (3), Horace (3); references to Pliny’s Letters may in some cases derive from the Florilegium Angelicum.267 There are twenty-­ three biblical citations, a third of which are found in ii. 14 (the Dublin sermon); about half of them are from the gospels and are used to ­support moral points made by Gerald. Patristic citations are equally common but rather more difficult to track down; for example, references to Augustine and Jerome may in some cases derive from Gratian’s Decretum (i. 3, ii. 2). Overall, however, the range of reference and cit­ ation seems broadly consistent with what is found in other works of Gerald.268 Many of these quotations are found at the end of a section, or at a break in the narrative, where they indicate how parallels for Gerald’s actions or sentiments can be adduced in the broader biblical, patristic, and classical framework in which Gerald sees himself as operating.269 A related technique can be found in a few chapters where he points out the moral of a story at the end of a chapter. Notably, he begins a summative sentence with ‘Argumentum’, or ‘Argumentum . . . et indicium’ in a string of successive chapters.270 In two of these (ii. 4 and 5) a quotation is added to the summative sentence to strengthen the point. As has been noted, Gerald was particularly fond of recycling his own work and in some, but not all, cases reworking his own words. In De gestis there are several passages which he has derived from elsewhere; for example, there are two stories in Itin. Kam., ii. 2 (RS vi. 113) found repeated at De gestis, ii. 19 as illustrations of the powerful effect of Gerald’s preaching. In this case, it is clear that Gerald drew them from Itin. Kam. A more complex adaptation is found at De gestis, ii. 14 (an extract from Gerald’s sermon delivered to the council of suffragan bishops in Dublin during Lent 1186); much of the same material is also found at Top. Hib., iii. 27–31 (RS v. 172–8). In the form we have it in De gestis, this is another rhetorical showpiece full of citations from the Bible and Jerome. However, the version in the Topographia is shorter and cast in a different form, simply as a series of chapters on  Irish clerics. One section (precipue . . . imitari uolentes) is found

267  Goddu and Rouse, ‘Gerald of Wales and the Florilegium Angelicum’; cf. De gestis, ii. 24 and iii. 1. For details, see the notes to the Edition. 268  Cf. Bartlett, De prin., pp. cxxv–l; Hagen, Gerald of Wales. The Jewel of the Church, pp. xxiv–xxxi. 269  It is noteworthy that in other works where Gerald makes modifications, one common way he does that is to add quotations at the end of a section. 270  De gestis, ii. 4–7, as well as ii. 22.

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­elsewhere in Top. Hib. in a section on the faults of the Irish (iii. 19 (RS v. 164–5)).271 An interesting aspect of Gerald’s style is its flexibility. It has been noted that Gerald is very sensitive to the use of other languages and there are numerous comments throughout his works about linguistic usage, such as Henry II’s inability to reply to someone speaking to him in English.272 Elsewhere, Gerald is keen to mock other clerics for their poor Latin, pointing out howlers made even by senior churchmen.273 Less often noted is his excellent ear for depicting the speech of others in Latin. This phrasing is appropriate as it is not always clear that the speaker was using Latin in the first instance, but what Gerald may be giving us is his representation in Latin of their speech patterns. De gestis provides two interesting examples worth considering. When the archbishop of Dublin enquires of Felix, bishop of Ossory, what he thought of Gerald’s sermon (ii. 15), the bishop replies with a remarkably clunky Latin sentence in which the conjunction quod is used three times: ‘Certe uix me continui quod statim in ipsum non inuolaui uel saltem quod uerbis talionem reddendo quod acriter ei non responderim’.274 It is an uncharacteristically poor piece of Latin for Gerald unless it is deliberately bad. In this case it is reasonable to suppose that the ori­ gin­al conversation was in Latin and, if so, Gerald may be mimicking Felix’s preference for quod. This tic in Felix’s Latin may have been influenced by his native Irish in which co/go was a very common conjunction which could be used in a variety of syntactic contexts, and the formal similarity led Felix to overuse quod in his Latin. A second example is more complex. When Gerald visits his friend, and perhaps confessor, the hermit of Llywes (iii. 2), he makes a point of characterizing his mode of speech: ‘Talis enim erat ei loquendi modus, s­ emper per infinitiuum nec casus seruabat, et tamen satis intelligi poterat.’275 271  Other sections not found in the first recension of Top. Hib. were also gradually added to it in later recensions; for example, the section ‘Sed utinam post . . . paleas multos’ (iii. 27 (RS v. 172–3)) is found only in the later manuscripts, as is the final sentence of the sermon; see O’Meara, ‘Giraldus Cambrensis in Topographia Hibernie’, pp. 169–70. One sentence, Nec infantes . . . prosequuntur, is not found in the Topographia at all, and its closest parallel is in the second and seventh clauses of the ‘Constitutions of the Council of Cashel’ in Exp. Hib., i. 35 (RS v. 282–3; ed. Scott and Martin, pp. 98–101). For further discussion, see below, pp. 124–35. 272  Cf. Putter, ‘Multilingualism in England and Wales c. 1200’, pp. 83–105; also Russell, ‘Externarum linguarum excellens’, pp. 79–80. 273  Gemma eccl., ii. 35–6 (RS ii. 344–8). 274  ‘“In truth, I barely stopped myself from rushing at him on the spot or, at least, repaying like with like in words and giving him a sharp answer.” ’ 275  ‘For such was his manner of speaking, always with infinitives, and he did not maintain the proper cases, but he could nevertheless be understood easily enough.’

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This is partially exemplified in a segment of speech by the hermit: ‘“Ego”, inquit, “ire Ierosolimam et uisitare sepulcrum Domini mei et, quando redire, ego ponere me in hoc carcere pro amore Domini mei, qui mori pro me et multum ego dolere quod non posse intelligere Latinum neque missam nec euuangelium et multociens flere et rogare Dominum dare michi Latinum intelligere . . . ” ’.276 In fact he manages to get his cases right but the striking feature is the replacement of every finite verb with a present active infinitive, until we get to the final sentence: ‘Et Dominus meus, qui dedit michi Latinam linguam, non dedit eam michi per gramaticam aut per casus sed tantum ut intelligi possem et alios intelligere’.277 By this time in the narrative God has granted him the ability to speak Latin and this may be reflected in the miraculously better grammatical control. As in the case of Felix, it is likely they conversed in Latin, especially as Gerald comments on the form of his Latin. His name, variously spelt Wetheleu, Wecheleu, or Wethelyn in different versions, is probably Welsh.278 Furthermore, although Gerald’s ambition to become bishop of St Davids would have compelled him to acquire enough Welsh to hold a conversation in the language (even if he could not preach in Welsh with anything like the eloquence he could deploy in Latin and, presumably, in French), the subject matter also makes it probable that the conversation took place in Latin. But here we may have another example of Gerald’s keen ear for difference and he may have been picking up on the first-­language interference from Welsh, perhaps exaggerated for effect. The feature he fixed upon may have been the use in Middle Welsh of a verbal noun (unmarked for tense, voice, or mood) in relating successive events. What these two examples illustrate is Gerald’s ability to represent the voices of his interlocutors in clever ways to convey a sense of character. We should perhaps not go as far as to suggest parody, but it certainly allows us to hear different voices. In such cases Gerald has fixed on a particular distinguishing feature. In other cases the stylistic vari­ ation is more subtle. Cases where we have letters sent, for example, by the chapter of St Davids are less useful for our purposes and it would be hard to identify a single voice, especially if we might suspect that 276  ‘“I go to Jerusalem”, he said, “and visit the sepulchre of my Lord, and when I return, I put myself in this imprisonment for the love of my Lord, who died for me. And I grieve much that I cannot understand Latin, or the mass, or the gospels, and many times I weep and ask the Lord to give me to understand Latin”.’ 277  ‘“And my Lord, who gave me the Latin tongue, did not give it me by means of grammar or cases, but only that I might be able to be understood and to understand others.” ’ For a similar description of divinely inspired Latinity, see Hildegard of Bingen, Scivias, protestificatio (ed. Führkötter, i. 4). 278  On these forms, see the Edition below, n. 405.

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Gerald had been involved in their composition. Two examples can be considered where we can see Gerald’s own style set up in contrast to that of others: the reported conversation between Gerald and his brother Philip (iii. 16) and Gerald’s correspondence with Hubert, archbishop of Canterbury (iii. 5–6). In both cases the contrasts may be an artefact of Gerald’s own making but nevertheless Gerald is saying something about the stylistic differences involved. Before his first trip to Rome, Gerald consults his brother about the wisdom of the venture and reports his response in oratio recta. Now presumably this conversation happened in French but Gerald reports it in Latin. After reporting Philip’s words Gerald says that he derived great solace ex uerbis istis uiri boni, laici prorsus et illiterati ‘from these words from a good man, a layman indeed and unlearned’. These words can be taken as a cue as to how Philip’s reply is to be read. Philip’s words are structured as follows: it is a tough matter, because you go against the king and all England. But if it is a question of God and the status of St Davids, and not of ambition, it should be undertaken. Despite good intentions, not all will go well; the devil will set up obs­ tacles and God will let him do it to test you. But do not despair; remember how the apostles suffered. The Latin is simple, the subordination basic, without quotation, and without one of Gerald’s favourite structural devices, hyperbaton; the text can be read easily and linearly. We can contrast it with the relative complexity of the sentence immediately following, where the main verb and associated indirect statement are delayed until the end: Gerald used to say that he derived great solace from his words, where magnum . . . solacium are the opening words of the sentence and separated by twenty-­seven words from the rest of the main clause with which they have to be construed. From there Gerald dives straight into a long quotation from Gregory about adversity being cast in one’s way as a test. In these closing remarks Gerald repeats the gist of Philip’s words so closely that it reads as if we are being offered two versions, Gerald’s preceded by that of an illiteratus (or at least how Gerald imagined an unschooled person might express them). It is also noteworthy that, when Gerald recasts Philip’s words in Inuect., vi. 24 (Davies, pp. 226–8) (and in this case we are given a cross-­reference to the version in De gestis), they become appreciably more elaborate. Furthermore, in the version in the Libellus the introductory and concluding remarks surrounding Philip’s oratio recta are much fuller, with the addition of several more quotations (from Lucan, Vergil, and Cicero). Now in this example we can be sure that, given his obvious affection for his brother, he was not trying to show Philip up in a bad

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light; he was rather making effective use of stylistic effects to portray how a good, unschooled layman would convey these ideas and contrast it with his own, more elevated, Paris-­educated, mode. In the second example, however, we can be less sure of Gerald’s good intentions. In the summer of 1198 Peter de Leia, bishop of St Davids, died and nominations were sought for his successor by Hubert, archbishop of Canterbury, who happened to be in the Marches with an English army (iii. 4). The nominations sent to him included Gerald’s name, which, it was reported to Gerald, gave rise to a volley of abuse from Hubert. All this caused Gerald to write a long letter to him (iii. 5); Hubert’s reply is extremely short. As noted above, the copy of Gerald’s letter preserved in De gestis is full of high-­flown rhetoric and quotations from all the usual sources with the learned parallels piled high at the end of each paragraph, amounting to twenty in total.279 After congratulating Hubert on the defeat of the Welsh at Painscastle, in which he compares it to Harold cutting a swathe through the Welsh,280 the first main point is that Gerald has heard that he is angry with him; good men are hurt by words, but since he, Gerald, is retiring from public life it is hardly worth the trouble to abuse him: ‘it is better to be thought worthy of being a bishop than to be one’. The latter part takes up the theme of the difficulty of having powerful friends, quoting inter alios Horace, Jerome, and Ecclesiasticus several times, and ending with Jerome (though it may be Seneca) that, if one cannot have a powerful lord as a friend, at least it is better if they are not an enemy.281 He perhaps felt he had gone too far and he seems to backtrack by quoting Ps-Vergil on the relationship between Augustus, Maecenas, and Vergil: ‘Though you (sc. Maecaenas) can do anything, being so famous, with so great a friend (sc. Augustus), yet no one felt you could do any harm’, implying that Hubert’s power was benign. Are we to read Hubert as Maecenas, the king as Augustus, and Gerald thus as Vergil? The range of reference in this letter is impressive and all the more striking when compared to Hubert’s laconic reply.We get a strong sense of a busy man who is not willing to engage with all of this noise. Gerald is gently slapped down for presuming that the defeat of the 279  The paragraphs of the Edition mark breaks in the argument and so can reasonably be seen to represent the original. 280  Harold’s army is described as putting the Welsh to the sword ore gladii ‘at sword point’, a frequent phrase in the historical books of the Old Testament (cf. Vita Griffini, ed. Russell, p. 164), suggesting we are to regard Harold’s expedition as parallel to the deeds of Old Testament kings; for details, see the Edition below, n. 429. 281  See the notes on iii. 5 for further discussion.

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Welsh was Hubert’s doing rather than God’s. It is reminiscent of the tone adopted by a later archbishop (John Peckham) when writing to Llywelyn ap Gruffudd about the iniquities of the Welsh;282 at the very least it comes from the same playbook. In short, victory over the Welsh was inevitable with God on our side; he is delighted to hear that Gerald is retiring to his studies and will be more like Mary than Martha (cf. Luke 10: 38–42, the only citation in the letter); it ends with a stern reminder to consider his own conscience about what he has done, and the affirmation that he, Hubert, was not angry with him. The terseness of the letter suggests otherwise. Nothing is said about the long section in Gerald’s letter about friendship, and we might suspect that Hubert does not believe a word of it. Hubert’s letter very much rings true as a display of authority by a superior to an inferior. He does not have the time for long letters from overwrought archdeacons and replies selectively. That said, we might wonder to what extent Gerald reworked his own letter for inclusion in De gestis. A hint of this may be found in that fact that the run of four quotations (Horace, Ovid, Ovid, and Horace) which he uses to buttress his announcement of his retirement is found in a different, but related, context in the Libellus, De principis instructione, and Speculum ecclesie, and in the last the passage is wrongly attributed to De gestis.283 The point is that this group of quotations seems to be travelling as a group (some of the quotations may be derived from Moralium dogma philosophorum), and it is possible that Gerald added them to the letter to Hubert at a later stage.284 If so, was the same kind of ornamentation being applied elsewhere in the letter? This highlights a difficulty in considering the style of De gestis: since much of the material had been drafted at an earlier stage, and some of it already used in some of Gerald’s other works, we cannot be sure to what extent it was reworked later for De gestis. In one sense, that does not matter as we are discussing the 282  Registrum Epistolarum, ed. Martin, i. 77–8 (letter LXVI) and ii. 473–7 (letter CCCLX). 283  Inuect., v. 23 (Davies, pp. 203–4); De prin., first pref. and i. 13 (OMT 26–7 and 154–9), and Spec. eccl., iv. 33 (RS iv. 340–1); in the last the introductory passage (RS iv. 340) matches (with minor differences) that in the Libellus but, although it is attributed to De gestis, it is quite different. 284 For some of these passages, see Moralium dogma philosophorum (ed. Holmberg, pp. 57–9), a text attributed to William of Conches (an attribution rejected by Bejczy, ‘Gerald of Wales on the Cardinal Virtues’, p. 199, n. 7); for discussion, see De prin. (OMT xxiii, xl, and xliv (on Horace)); it has been suggested that the structure of De prin., i, is modelled on Moralium dogma philosophorum (but cf. Bejczy, ‘Gerald of Wales on the Cardinal Virtues’). It  may well be that this group of quotations was first used in De prin. and then recycled ­elsewhere.

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style of De gestis, but it remains important at least to try to gain a sense of whether the form of the text, as we have it, was created in a single act of composition or cumulatively by adding and reworking sections of it at various later points in Gerald’s career. Some passages also appear elsewhere (usually in earlier works) and we can see what has been done to them, though the appearance of a passage in an earlier text may not guarantee that it was composed earlier than what we have in De gestis, as discussed with regard to the Dublin sermon. In others, such as Gerald’s letter to Hubert, we might suspect elaboration. There are also passages, such as those on Gerald’s childhood or his activities as an archdeacon, which are found only in De gestis. We have already considered Gerald’s high-­rhetorical mode but it may be useful to compare it with his more narrative style. Gerald’s exploits in fending off the bishop of St Asaph’s claims on Ceri (i. 6) provide a good example. The action and the Latin are fast-­moving, and we are not invited to dwell on moralistic examples or classical parallels. We may consider one paragraph in detail: surgens sabato . . . celebrari fecit takes us in four sentences from Gerald getting up on a Saturday morning and travelling across Elfael and Maelienydd to spend the night at Llanbister and reaching Ceri on Sunday morning, crucially before the bishop. The first two sentences portray Gerald at his most efficient, organizing the gathering of clerics and then mustering the men of Einion Clud and Cadwallon. The first opens by setting the time frame: it is Saturday morning, and matins and mass have been celebrated, and Gerald is sending messages in all directions. The structure of these two sentences is chiastic: surgens . . . destinavit : . . . misit rogans . . .; the latter appends an explanation of an implicit question (why are armed men needed from the local lords?), namely that the bishop was said (dicebatur) to be coming in manu forti. The third breathless sentence encompasses the whole of Gerald’s journey to Ceri: . . . Melenith transcurrendo . . . nocte illa moram fecit, then on arriving in Ceri on Sunday morning they find that the two clerics have absconded to meet the bishop and have hidden the keys to the church. The final sentence reports the finding of the keys (quesitis . . . et tandem inuentis), Gerald’s entrance into the church, and his immediately having the bells rung (as a symbol of investiture and possession) before celebrating mass. The sentence balances on the fulcrum of the et with an ablative absolute and a main verb on either side. There is no spare verbiage here. The centrepiece of the chapter is the encounter between Gerald and the bishop, each refusing to step back, and excommunicating each

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other in louder and louder voices (alta uoce . . . altiori uoce). The outcome, of course, is never in doubt; with right on his side Gerald’s preparations bear fruit and his early arrival allows him to control the bells, a crucial factor in the outcome; the bishop is depicted as blustering and arrogant, overly confident that his status will carry the day. The core elements of the encounter are set out in oratio recta (not very common in Gerald’s narratives except at key moments). The im­port­ ance of sententia ‘sentence’ (sc. of excommunication) is brought out by the repetition of the word seven times in one paragraph. Gerald even brings the landscape into play: on the northern edge of the diocese he gestures to the mountains further to the north which are within the diocese of of St Asaph on the other side of the Severn but non procul distantes as a way to point out that the bishop had jurisdiction there, but not here in Ceri.285 The encounter and Gerald’s subsequent victory have all the hallmarks of a duel: the challenge, the engagement with fortunes swinging one way and then the other, and the favourable outcome; but it is fought under ecclesiastical rules. The threat of violence is present but never carried out except by the locals, who pursue the retreating churchmen glebis etiam et lignis ac lapidibus. Throughout this episode the Latin maintains its clear lines of exposition: subordination is used in a clear and easy way without the multiple embedding of clauses Gerald favours elsewhere; present participles (often in the nominative) are frequent as a way of indicating closely-packed action; for example, in episcopus et sui equos scandentes . . . abcesserunt the impression is created of a hasty retreat as they ride off with an undignified scrambling into their saddles. There is no quotation and nothing slows the narrative.286 All of this can be contrasted with Gerald’s practice in the more formal set-­pieces discussed above. In sum, Gerald seems able to turn his hand to whatever Latin style is appropriate for his purpose: on the one hand, fast-­moving narrative; on the other, rhetorical fireworks when we are drawn into a world of high style supported by biblical, patristic, and classical authorities. As we have seen, some of these passages may have been reshaped from earlier work, and so it is less clear whether such passages were the product of one sitting. 285  For further discussion of the geography of this episode, see the Edition below, n. 245. 286  Opportunities for quotation are not absent: for example, the opening phrase of i. 6, Peractis igitur hiis qui ibi agenda uidebantur ‘When, then, he had finished what it seemed ­necessary to do there’, could have been replaced by the quotation from Lucan, ‘leaving nothing undone which could be done’, which Gerald uses in a very similar way in the opening of ii. 1, as noted above (and indeed the military connotations would have suited very well).

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The works of Gerald began to be printed in the last quarter of the sixteenth century, but it took a further hundred years before interest extended beyond his Welsh and Irish works.287 De gestis Giraldi was first printed in 1691, when Henry Wharton (1664–95) included twelve hitherto unprinted works under Gerald’s name in the second volume of his Anglia Sacra.288 He knew of no manuscript of the text besides Tiberius B. xiii, and believed it to be the only surviving witness. By that date, its latter part had already been lost: Wharton describes the manuscript as ‘ante medium mutilatus’.289 Had the fire at Ashburnham House in October 1731 damaged the latter part of Tiberius B. xiii, as it did its beginning, Wharton’s text would be an important witness to the manuscript’s earlier state. As it is, however, the damage done to our codex unicus of De gestis occurred before any part of the work made it into print. This is fortunate, for Wharton’s text has many peculiarities. He entirely omits the rubrics preceding chapters, and Gerald’s habit of prolific quotation, particularly in letters, occasionally exhausts his editor’s patience: Wharton omits a passage of fifty-­seven words, Quid communicabit . . . te aduocabit in iii. 5, and another of forty-­eight words, Hoc quoque Gregorii . . . integra stetit in iii. 16. His text is marred, too, by a large number of mistakes (those followed by * in this paragraph are repeated by Brewer; see discussion below). There are many se­man­tic­ al­ly similar replacements, such as magis for the manuscript’s pocius (i. 4*), parumper for manuscript parum (i. 9*), tradere for reddere (ii. 18*), suscepto for concepto (ii. 19*), innotuisse for monuisse (iii. 2*), and advenientibus for aduentantibus (iii. 18*), as well as many swaps such as illi for ei (ii. 13* and ii. 21*), quod for manuscript quia (iii. 7, iii. 10*, iii. 17 (twice), and iii. 18*), and the like. Besides such lapsus mentis, Wharton frequently misreads the manuscript text, for example reading manuscript 287 Gerald’s first appearance in print was in an English adaptation of Exp. Hib., in Holinshed, The First Volume of the Chronicles of England, Scotlande, and Irelande, in the section entitled ‘The seconde Booke of the Histories of Irelande, in which the conquest made by Henry the second of that name, King of Englande, is comprehended’ (paginated as 21ff., but the volume’s pagination repeatedly restarts). The early printings of Gerald’s works are surveyed in Williams, ‘A bibliography of Giraldus Cambrensis’. 288 Wharton, Anglia Sacra, ii. 344 and 373–640. De gestis Giraldi is at ii. 457–513. Lambeth Palace Library MSS 583 and 584 are Wharton’s own copy of Anglia Sacra. They contain notes by Wharton; the few notes on De gestis are antiquarian in nature and unhelpful for understanding how he arrived at his text. 289  See above, p. xxxi.

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archidiaconus as archiepiscopus (table of contents, ii. 23*), in curia as in cuncta (table of contents, iii. 131), inanem as mancum (i. 4*), episcopum as ipsum (ii. 9*), excussit as extorsit (ii. 12*), Gaitedune as Garcedune (ii. 17*), paruulum as puerulum (ii. 19*), obduxit as abduxit (iii. 5*), opime as optimæ (iii. 10*), et Anglicus as ex Anglicis (iii. 17*), and—­perhaps most grievously, for it consigns a man to the grave rather than to his sickbed—­accubuit as occubuit (iii. 17*).290 He accidentally displaces text, printing, for example, est animis appetenda for the manuscript’s animis appetenda est (ii. 24) and pontificis sui for sui pontificis (iii. 5*). He adds words such as autem (i. 6*), hac (i. 6*), and et (table of contents, iii. 11), this last leading him wrongly to join two chapters in the table of contents and rendering incorrect all subsequent numbers in his list of chapters. Besides the large and deliberate excisions mentioned above, Wharton omits much by mistake, for example si (i. 6*), alta uoce (i. 9*), et uulgo dicebatur (i. 9*), laudem (ii. 4*), Dei (iii. 11*—a troubling slip), tam (ii. 14*), a fourteen-­word phrase quia laborem . . . reiterandum (ii. 21, by eye-­skip), si (ii. 22*), et prospiciens (iii. 7), scilicet (iii. 8*), in (iii. 12*), and etiam (iii. 13*). He entirely omits three chapters from his table of contents: iii. 204, iii. 225, and iii. 230, and in his numbering of the table of contents skips over the number iii. 88, but includes the chapter title itself. It is at times difficult to separate Wharton’s errors and misreadings from his emendations, for these latter are not systematically signalled in his text, but all the above are clearly mistakes. Finally, as we have seen, he foists upon the text the title De rebus a se gestis, unattested in Gerald’s frequent references to the work, and which has unfortunately stuck to it ever since. Whether Wharton himself was responsible for these errors is unclear. In the preface to his edition of Gerald’s vita of St Remigius, James Dimock wrote: This Life of Remigius in the Anglia Sacra [. . .] is very badly edited; and so very badly, that I can scarcely imagine it possible that Wharton himself can have had anything to do with it, further than giving it his name.291

290  See iii. 17 with n. 505. This perhaps exaggerated report of Idnerth’s death has confused chronologies in secondary literature, as he is elsewhere attested alive in 1203, after the events here described. Fasti Ecclesiae Anglicanae 1066–1300, ix. 63, for example, erroneously dates the events of De gestis, iii. 17 to 1203, in order to accommodate the mention of Idnerth’s death. The matter is confused for several reasons: Idnerth may in fact have died of his illness, although at this point in the narrative he only took to his bed; it is also possible that over this period there was more than one Idnerth who was a canon of St Davids. 291  RS vii. xlvii.

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Dimock believed that Wharton, to speed the immense labour of the Anglia Sacra, not only employed transcribers but even left the editing of certain texts entirely to others. But there is no overt indication in the Anglia Sacra itself that Wharton’s text of De gestis came from another’s pen; only the volume of copying errors may suggest the hand of a transcriber at work. Against this sloppiness in transcription must be set Wharton’s success in emendation. He was an able Latinist and easily corrected the bulk of the manuscript’s minor slips, as his many appearances in the apparatus criticus of this edition attest. Such emendations as erigere for the manuscript’s eligere (i. 1), tumultum for tumulum (i. 1), quod for qui (i. 3), decimam for demam (i. 3),292 episcopo for ipso (i. 4), ex æquo for ex quo (i. 5), reformidantium for reformantium (i. 5), Episcopum for ipsum (i. 6),293 equo for ego (i. 6), quin for quia (ii. 2), uti for utiter (ii. 5), præferendo for preficiendo (ii. 7), renitens for retinens (ii. 8), proles for plures (ii. 9), nisi for ei (ii. 9), non for nunc (ii. 12), Eleutherius for euthelerius (ii. 14), ipsum for episcopum (ii. 21), tres for res (ii. 21), electionem for lectionem (iii. 4), nec for et (iii. 5), præceps for preces (iii. 14), and circumventi for circumuenienti (iii. 19), along with additions such as commendare (preface), ob (i. 6), non (ii. 2), Episcopus (ii. 5), dignitatibus (ii. 8), grex (ii. 14), me (iii. 5), quod (iii. 5), a (iii. 17), and many more, all show that Wharton, in spite of his many slips in copying, nevertheless read his text with careful attention. He did leave unaltered many wrong readings in the text transmitted by Tiberius B. xiii, but these were, for the most part, readings which presented substantial difficulty.294 In correcting cases and tenses, and in cleaning up the many minor mis-­ steps of the manuscript’s scribe, Wharton did much of the work needed to present a readable (if not correct) text of De gestis. Wharton’s work has remained the basis of the vulgate text of De gestis for more than three hundred years. In 1806, Dom Michel-­Jean-­ Joseph Brial (1743–1828) published short extracts from three chapters (ii. 2–4) in the Recueil des historiens des Gaules et de la France, drawing his text from Wharton.295 He tentatively proposed two emendations, scientiæ for sententiæ (ii. 1) and sibi for Wharton’s ibi (ii. 4, where the 292  The correction is suggested in a marginal annotation in the MS here; to judge from the annotation in Wharton’s own copy of Anglia Sacra (Lambeth Palace Library MSS 583 and 584; cf. Todd, Catalogue, p. 82), these additions were not made by Wharton. 293  The correction is made in the same hand as the previous annotation. 294  See below, p. xcvii. 295  Recueil des historiens des Gaules et de la France, ed. Brial, pp. 484–6.

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manuscript reads ubi), and appended a number of helpful explanatory notes, but it was not until 1861 that recourse was again made to the manuscript itself. In that year John Sherren Brewer (1809–79), professor at the still-­ young King’s College, London, published a new edition of De rebus a se gestis (the name persisted) in the Rolls Series.296 One of the pro­gen­ itors of this series, Brewer was responsible for many of its early volumes, all while teaching and labouring under the great weight of the Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, of the Reign of Henry VIII, which he had agreed to edit and calendar in 1856 at Sir John Romilly’s request.297 David Knowles described Brewer as ‘a man of many parts’ who ‘made sound and useful contributions’ to the series.298 Of the utility of his De rebus there is no doubt, but the competing pressures of his many parts perhaps impaired its soundness. After noting Wharton’s omissions, Brewer declares in the preface to his edition that ‘[t]he whole has been recollated with the original MS., and the omitted portions restored’.299 This is a precise description of his working method, visible in the resulting edition: Brewer read a copy of Wharton’s text against the manuscript and noted the discrepancies which he observed. But he clearly read in haste: all those of Wharton’s errors marked by asterisks above (and many more), he repeated unchanged. To those repeated from Wharton, Brewer added further errors, for example printing aedicari for the manuscript’s edificari (prologue), omitting manuscript ac (i. 1), printing set et for et (i. 7, likely a printer’s error, explained by preceding habuisset), ei for et (i. 9), verbo for uero (i. 11), adjurationis for abiurationis (ii. 3), porrectus for porrectas (ii. 5), videt for uidit (ii. 10), possis for posses (iii. 5), omitting pariter (ii. 6), and doubling a phrase of thirteen words, mitterent eis . . . præfixum (iii. 13, probably by eye-­skip). Brewer regularly—­and deliberately—­deviated from both Wharton and the manuscript in his spelling of proper names, printing, for example, Angarath for Angareth (i. 1), Kerri for Keri (i. 6), and Landeov for Landov (i. 6). But most of his mistakes are simply inherited from Wharton.

296  RS i. 3–122. 297  ODNB, s.n. ‘Brewer, John Sherren (1809–1879)’. 298  Knowles, ‘Great Historical Enterprises IV’, pp. 139 and 148. 299  RS i. xci.

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In spite of these flaws, however, Brewer’s text is a significant improvement on its predecessor. He changed Wharton’s text at more than two hundred points, at most of them simply by reverting to the manuscript reading. For example, he printed the manuscript’s unus in place of Wharton’s alter (i. 2), proinde for Wharton’s postmodum (i. 4), consueverat for assueverat (i. 4), inpositam for oppositam (i. 6), agnomen for cognomen (ii. 3), adjurata for adunata (ii. 7), intra for inter (ii. 14), recitatio for retractatio (ii. 16), impudenter for imprudenter (ii. 19), citius for ocius (ii. 21), impartiret for impenderet (iii. 2), queam for valeam (iii. 5), prius for citius (iii. 9), terra for ecclesia (iii. 10), habebimus for habemus (iii. 12), and sederet for insideret (iii. 12), in every case adopting the manuscript’s reading. As he states in his preface, Brewer rectified most of Wharton’s accidental omissions, as of scilicet (i. 3), conquestus (i. 3), facere (i. 4), ad præparandum . . . solet (i. 5), transvadando . . . Elevein (i. 6), ecclesiæ suæ (i. 11), vero (ii. 5), quia laborem . . . reiterandum (ii. 21), Reges . . . amicos (iii. 5), turbationis . . .  nescia (iii. 5), and quidem et præclara (iii. 7), and filled in Wharton’s deliberate omissions, such as Quid communicabit . . . te aduocabit (iii. 5) and Hoc quoque Gregorii . . . integra stetit (iii. 16). He supplied in his table of contents the three chapters omitted by Wharton, iii. 205, iii. 225, and iii. 230, and restored the rubrics before each chapter which Wharton had left out. Brewer moved the printed vulgate closer to the manuscript’s transmitted text but did little else to emend it. He retained Wharton’s ­classicizing (and, at points, potentially misleading) orthography. He proposed few readings and few of these are adopted in this edition: the addition of de (in both table of contents and rubric of ii. 19), Lanelvensi for manuscript laneluepsi (rubric to i. 6, and thus not printed at all by Wharton), Sui for manuscript Sin (ii. 14, where Sui is the reading of the text as transmitted in Top. Hib.), Gisortium for Giortium (ii. 17), licentiam for licentia (rubric to iii. 2, where the version in the table of contents has correct licentiam), and præcurrere for precurre (iii. 5, in a quotation from Horace). Alongside these straightforward corrections he adopted almost all of Wharton’s emendations, but left the remaining cruces entirely untouched. His edition gives every appearance of having been done quickly. In the century and a half since its addition to the Rolls Series, De gestis Giraldi has appeared in Latin only twice, and only fragmentarily. In 1885, short selections from several of Gerald’s works were included in the Monumenta Germaniae Historica, in the first volume ‘Ex rerum Anglicarum scriptoribus’, completed by Felix Liebermann (1851–1925)

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after the death of his mentor and collaborator Reinhold Pauli in 1882.300 Liebermann edited two pages of extracts ‘Ex libris de rebus a se gestis’, collating the selected passages with Tiberius  B.  xiii and adding, like Brial, a number of explanatory notes. Besides noting that the manuscript read quia where both Wharton and Brewer adopted quin (ii. 2, an emendation with which he agreed), Liebermann’s only intervention in the text itself was to propose Purgundiam for manuscript Purguniam (iii. 17, where Wharton had left the manuscript reading unchanged and Brewer printed Burgundiam). Had the scope of his work allowed Liebermann to examine more of De gestis, many of the text’s outstanding problems might have been resolved, but he touched it only in passing. Thirty years later, in 1918, the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge published a slim volume of Selections from Giraldus Cambrensis in its series ‘Texts for Students’, covering some thirty-­one pages of De gestis Giraldi and seventeen of the Gemma ecclesiastica.301 Caroline Skeel (1872–1951), then head of the history department of Westfield College, London, furnished a brief introduction, notes, and glossary but, while the notes are of some interest, the Latin text itself was drawn from the Rolls Series without change. The last contribution to the text of De gestis came in 1937, when Harold Edgeworth Butler (1878–1951), Professor of Latin at University College London, published The Autobiography of Giraldus Cambrensis, an English translation of De gestis supplemented with passages from those other works of Gerald which describe the same events or periods of time, in particular from De iure.302 Butler collated Brewer’s texts of these books with their manuscripts and in his footnotes pointed out several errors in the previous editions. He corrected three of Wharton and Brewer’s omissions, restoring the manuscript readings alta uoce (i. 9), et uulgo dicebatur (i. 9), and laudem (ii. 4), which had never before appeared in print. Besides the corrections that Butler explicitly noted, he also silently corrected some of Brewer’s lapses in his translation, printing, for example, Archdeacon for Brewer’s archiepiscopus (rubric to ii. 23, where the manuscript has archidiaconus) and Llantony for his latorem (rubric to iii. 15, manuscript lanton’). He reverted Brewer’s porrectus to the porrectas found in the manuscript and in Wharton (ii. 5). He proposed three corrections to place-­names misread by earl­ ier editors: Welfrei for Wharton and Brewer’s Swelfrei (ii. 9), Gattedun 300  Ex Rerum Anglicarum Scriptoribus [ . . . ], ed. Liebermann and Pauli, i. 414–16. 301  Selections from Giraldus Cambrensis, ed. Skeel, pp. 13–43. 302  Autobiography, ed. Butler.

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for their Garcedune (ii. 17), and Buella for Ruella (iii. 17). Of these only Buella is correct, but Butler’s readings of the other two are nonetheless closer than Wharton and Brewer’s had been: the manuscript reads Iwelfrei and Gaitedune. Butler also emended the text, proposing laborarent for manuscript laborent (ii. 7) and expressa similitudo for expressa similitudine (iii. 19), both of which are adopted in this edition. He himself adopted W.  S.  Davies’s compelling suggestion of ecclesie Paterni for the manuscript’s ecclesie patrum (i. 5, where Wharton and Brewer print ecclesiæ partium).303 But though he offered these improvements, Butler also omitted many passages of De gestis, marking their absence with ellipses or not marking them at all—­including some of particularly tricky construction. His translation is useful, but it is not an edition. The history of the printed text of De gestis is thus straightforward but surprising. A defective seventeenth-­century transcript of Tiberius B. xiii, by Wharton’s hand or an assistant’s, lies at its base. Wharton cleaned this up as well as he was able, Brewer brought it some distance closer to the manuscript’s text, and Butler corrected several of its glaring errors. But at every stage the vulgate has been modified, not replaced. The text of De gestis used today is still replete with wrong readings as old as the Glorious Revolution. E DI TO R I A L M E T H O D Tiberius B. xiii contains the only extant copy of De gestis Giraldi, has formed the sole basis for every printed edition of the text, and has not lost significant text from De gestis since it was first printed in 1691.304 The text was not extensively quoted by other authors, nor translated into any modern language until the twentieth century. Apart from those passages of De gestis in which Gerald reuses material from his earlier works, and passages which he repeats in later works, Tiberius B. xiii is thus the only substantive witness to the text of De gestis. Our editorial method is therefore straightforward. The text of De gestis in Tiberius B. xiii has been transcribed and collated against the previous printed editions, in order both to catch our own mistakes and to collect previous editors’ emendations. The orthography of the scribes of Tiberius B. xiii has been followed throughout. If evidence exists elsewhere for Gerald’s own preferred 303  Inuect., p. 13, n. 1. 304  The extensive lost sections were lost already by that date; see above, p. xxxi.

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spellings, we have not yet found it, and the classicizing conventions of previous printed editions obscure any patterns that might appear. In the manuscript, and thus here, the diphthongs ae and oe are near-­ universally collapsed to e, without a cedilla. ae appears only in proper names, such as Kaereu (i. 3), Michaelis (i. 6), Dogmaelis (iii. 4), and Faentie (table of contents, iii. 167). oe appears only as two syllables, as in proemium (ii. 1, where the e itself represents collapsed classical oe) and poetarum (ii. 16), never as a diphthong. The proper name Hoelus (ii. 9) is thus, for its scribe, tri-­syllabic (cf. Welsh Hywel). Where the scribes freely vary in spelling, as with aput/apud, ydoneus / idoneus, or uiridiarium / uiridarium, our edition varies freely as well. The scribes write, and we print, michi rather than mihi, and nichil rather than nihil, though the first of these is often obscured in abbreviation (mi). Certain scribal spellings which may appear surprising, but which reflect contemporary practice, are preserved, such as abcesserunt (i. 6, for classical abscesserunt) and arce (ii. 5, for arte), dilapsus (i. 6, for delapsus) adeserat (iii. 17, for adhaeserat, with loss of aspirate and collapsed ae), or Frantiam (i. 2, where the palatalized sounds of c and t have fallen together). Where the scribes’ spellings run contrary to contemporary practice and pronunciation, in contrast, we have corrected these as errors: for example changing manuscript mecantium to metantium (ii. 12; this probably represents a lapsus calami conflating two similar graphs rather than reflecting the scribe’s pronunciation); manuscript arcum to artum (ii. 12, for arctum, likewise probably a graphical confusion); and manuscript dicipuli to discipuli (iii. 16; the scribes consistently write discipulus elsewhere). Numbers are regularly expressed by Roman numerals in the manuscript. We expand cardinals and small ordinals; larger ordinals and those of ambiguous expansion (e.g. xviiio) are left as numerals. The punctuation of the manuscript has been entirely replaced by punctuation according to modern rules—­though the manuscript’s punctuation has influenced the form that this modern punctuation has taken.305 We have tried to be principled but flexible: applying rules but deviating from them where clarity requires. Ablative absolute phrases, cum clauses, appositional constructions, and non-­restrictive relative clauses (as in English) are set off with commas. Restrictive relative clauses (again, as in English) and coordinate clauses are printed without. Clauses beginning with quia are set off with commas when they 305  On the punctuation of the manuscript, see above, p. xxx.

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express a cause, but not when they are the object of a verb and perform a function like that of an accusative-­and-­infinitive noun phrase.306 Like many Latin authors, Gerald at times builds elaborate periodic and parallel structures (though his are simpler than those of many of his peers) which the uniform weight of the modern comma struggles to capture, and we have made free use of parentheses and dashes to clarify the architecture of passages. Semicolons have been used more sparingly: to separate items in lists, or parallel clauses in multi-­part rhetorical structures, for example. Proper nouns have been capitalized in modern English style. Quoted speech has been placed within inverted commas, and quotation within quotation in double inverted commas, following modern English convention. The scribes of Tiberius B. xiii write punctus interrogativi consistently, and determining whether a sentence is a question or a statement has rarely posed any difficulty;307 in contrast, the exclamation marks we print are entirely editorial and have no ­analogue in the manuscript. Our sentence division and paragraphing are likewise editorial and done according to modern convention. Sentence divisions are consistently marked in the manuscript by a punctus with following littera notabilior, but are on occasion clearly erroneous, whether through omitting a break where one is required, for example at De ferculis and Pereat episcopus (both ii. 5), or through mistakenly adding one, for example at sibique tales immundicias (ii. 13), where the scribe (impossibly) begins a new sentence at sibique. Such mistakes are silently corrected and our sentence division, though often agreeing in fact with that of the manuscript, should not be taken as evidence of it. Paragraphing too is done in accordance with the sense of the text rather than the divisions of the manuscript, which are erratic. The scribes left many litterae notabiliores unwritten, to be completed by the rubricator: the first character of every chapter and an irregularly distributed set of sentence-­initial characters within each chapter. With the exception of a single C on fo. 172v, all remain blank. While those within chapters were likely intended to mark sense-­breaks heavier than the simple combination of punctus and littera notabilior, they are in fact an uneven guide to the sense-­ divisions of the text. In ii. 14, for example, the intended rubrications 306 e.g. respondit quia fessus erat, ‘he replied that he was tired’, and non respondit, quia fessus erat, ‘he did not reply, for he was tired’. 307  Past confusions have been the fault of editors as often as of the scribes: que propinabit? (ii. 2), for example, was misread by Wharton and Brewer as quæ propinabitur, as they took the punctus interrogativus for a mark of abbreviation for -ur.

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closely match our paragraph divisions; in iii. 5, in contrast, there is not a single rubrication within the chapter’s c. 1,250 words of text. The manuscript’s omitted rubrications are printed within < > in our text and can thus be readily compared with the divisions we have adopted. The text of Tiberius B. xiii is not notably corrupt. Where the transmitted text seems unacceptable or un-­Giraldian, however, we have freely emended it. While not achieving Haupt’s Constantinopolitanus,308 we print, for example, susciperetur for manuscript et (i. 3), fill manifest lacunae such as Cui archidiaconus (ii. 9), and abolish from dictionaries the spurious uenta—­attested nowhere else, and an error here (i. 7). Gerald’s habit of prolifically reusing both wording and sense from his own earlier works means that close parallels to problematic passages in De gestis can often be found elsewhere in his opera, as in the case of uenta. The intended final layout and rubrication pattern of  Tiberius B.  xiii, likewise, can be plausibly reconstructed from Giraldian manuscripts of similar form, notably BAV MS Reg. lat. 470, which here supplies the missing rubricated elements in the table of contents and prologue. In contrast to these interventions, at points we defend the transmitted text against criticism, for example showing that notisolitos (iii. 5) is a common twelfth-­century deformation of the Delphic injunction γνῶθι σεαυτόν and not ‘faulty’, as has been suggested.309 Gerald’s reuse of his own work, though frequently helpful, also ­creates the only major difficulty in editing De gestis. When a passage copied from an earlier work differs from its earlier form, are those differences errors or revisions? Are the two passages, in Gerald’s mind, two instances of a single text, or two texts, each adapted to its own context? Textual metaphysics, sadly, provide no general answer, and each case must be considered on the merits. Take, for example, the sermon delivered by Gerald to the Council of Dublin (ii. 14), which he ex­pli­cit­ly states (ii. 13) to have appeared previously in the Topographia Hibernica. There are several problems: the text of the sermon in De gestis does not match that in the Topographia; there is not only one version of the parallel passage in the Topographia, but many, in its several 308  ‘If the sense requires it, I am prepared to write Constantinopolitanus where the MSS. have the monosyllabic interjection o’ (Moritz Haupt, cited by Housman, ‘The application of thought’, p. 142). 309  Review of Autobiography, ed. Butler, in Medium Aevum, 7, 1 (1938), 62–4, at p. 63. Note too that ‘si bene noui notisolitos’ is an example of a phrase in De gestis omitted by Butler, likely because of its difficulty.

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recensions; and in none of them is the text framed as a sermon, instead forming part of Gerald’s general discussion of the state of Ireland and the Irish.310 Interestingly, however, the later recensions match more closely (though still not exactly) the text in De gestis. What appears to have happened is that Gerald delivered a sermon and later, when composing the first recension of the Topographia, incorporated elements of it into that work. In subsequent years he revised and substantially expanded these parts of the Topographia, either by incorporating further passages from a copy of the sermon which he had preserved or simply by adding new material. When composing De gestis, he took the most recent version of the Topographia and copied this expanded text into ii. 14, reframing it once more as a sermon and modifying it still further (perhaps with reference to a copy of the sermon as delivered). But there is further complication. Part way through ii. 14, Gerald steps out of the rhetorical frame of the sermon and, speaking to the reader now as the author of De gestis, adds a passage avowedly taken from elsewhere in the Topographia, to ensure that the treacheries and sins of the Irish are treated at sufficient length. This seems clear enough, but the point elsewhere in the Topographia from which this addition is taken begins with the same words, a tempore Patricii per tot annorum curricula, which begin the passage into which they are here inserted—­and which have begun this passage in every version of the Topographia since its first composition.311 Why do these words, a tempore . . . curricula, appear at two points in the Topographia, and why does Gerald introduce the words which follow them at their first appearance in the Topographia (outside the material drawn from the sermon) into De gestis after their appearance in the sermon text? Perhaps these words did form part of the sermon as delivered and were moved elsewhere when Gerald first composed the Topographia, taking with them (and thus doubling) their prefatory words; perhaps, when writing De gestis and putting the sermon material back into a homiletic frame, Gerald reinserted them whence they had come. We do not have the evidence to know. Can the Topographia, then, be used to correct the slips of Tiberius B. xiii in De gestis, ii. 14? Yes, within limits, with care, and without any assertion that these are two copies of the same text. We have 310  Top. Hib., iii. 27–31 (RS v. 172–8). 311  Top. Hib., iii. 19 (RS v. 164) and 28 (RS v. 174).

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done so, printing the Topographia’s indulgent for our manuscript’s indulgeret, its complent for our compleuit, Sui for Sin, and Eleutherius for Euthelerius, and adding grex where our manuscript omits it. But where both present good sense, we cannot correct one from the other. Happily, not every case of reuse is so complex. In De gestis, iii. 16, for example, Gerald repeats an account of a conversation with his brother, also described in the Libellus.312 Their many minor differences show that these two versions were not intended by Gerald to be identical; nonetheless, the Libellus helps us to fix three clear errors made by the scribe in Tiberius B. xiii: writing credis for credas, and omitting both in aduersitatibus and nesciat. Perhaps the most extensively useful parallel to our text is that provided by De iure and the Libellus for those parts of the table of contents now lost from the body of De gestis. The fragmentary nature of free-­standing capitula and their lack of context make them difficult to edit (and to translate). Fortunately, most of the subjects covered in the lost sections of De gestis were treated elsewhere by Gerald, clarifying many of the table of contents’ obscurities. Our translation follows Gerald’s Latin closely, but not slavishly. It is intended to be both accessible on its own and a help to readers of the Latin who get tangled in the thickets of Giraldian syntax. The freer it is, the better it fulfils the former role; the closer to the Latin, the better it does the latter. We hope we have found a balance. Gerald writes in many registers, and we have happily been pompous and over-­elaborate when he is so (as often in his letters), didactic when he sermonizes, and straightforward when he narrates. At the very least, we print what is, because of Butler’s silent omissions, the first complete translation of De gestis Giraldi to be published in any language. In the translation Welsh names are generally given their modern Welsh form as long as their identification is certain; in cases where there is a standard English form, that form is used, thus St Davids rather than Tyddewi.313 If, however, identification is uncertain, the name is left in italics. For names elsewhere the standard modern English form of the name is used.

312  See above, pp. lxxxiii–lxxxiv. 313  For further discussion of the Welsh names, see Appendix 1 (pp. 229–31).

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L I S T O F DAT E S Late 1145 × early 1147

1146

1147

1150s

Birth of Gerald at Manorbier, De gestis, i. 1. At the birth of Philip Augustus, 21/22 August 1165, he was ‘quasi uicesimum etatis sue tunc annum adimplens’, De prin., iii. 25 (OMT 674–5), trans. ‘at that time completing his twentieth year, more or less’; ‘near the completion of his twentieth year’ (Autobiography, ed. Butler, p. 38). Taken literally, this would suggest late 1145. He was not yet thirty at the death of his uncle David in May 1176, De gestis, i. 9. This is  probably the most reliable indication, since it mattered and was not f­ avourable to Gerald’s ambitions. On the other hand, he needed to be close to being thirty for him to be nominated as his uncle’s successor, since he would then have been thirty by the time he would have been consecrated. A date in June or July 1146 seems plausible, allowing him to be over nineteen in August 1165 but not quite thirty in May 1176. The Welsh took Llansteffan (Brut), a ­castle belonging, according to Gerald, to his uncle Maurice (De gestis, ii. 9). ‘Cadell ap Gruffudd and his brothers, Maredudd and Rhys, and William fitz Gerald and his brothers moved a host to Wizo’s Castle’ (Brut). Wizo had been one of the leaders of the Flemish settlement in Dyfed; by 1147 the castle was held by his son Walter. This siege was led by the c­ ousins, descendants of Rhys ap Tewdwr, both Welsh and French, against a Flemish leader. Boyhood and early youth, studying at St Peter’s Gloucester under Master Haimon (Spec. eccl., ii. 33 (RS iv. 104); Autobiography, ed. Butler, p. 79).

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 1160

1163

August 1165, aged 19

1166

1169

lis t of dat es

ci

Deaths of Madog ap Maredudd, king of Powys, and of his son and heir, Llywelyn. Powys subsequently divided. Death of Cedifor ap Daniel, archdeacon of Ceredigion (before 1148, the arch­ deacon­ry of Gerald’s uncle, David son of Gerald of Windsor); Cedifor was a member of the family of Sulien, former bishop of St Davids, which is thought to have written the Latin chronicle underlying the Brut for the period from c. 1090 until the 1160s (see above, p. xxi and n. 14). In Paris during the first of his three ­periods of study there, this one devoted to the liberal arts: see above, pp. lvii–lxii. Stephen Langton was in Paris about the same time. ‘The French from Penfro and the Flemings came to the castle of Cilgerran, and they strongly laid siege to it’ (Brut). Rhys ap Gruffudd had taken it the previous year and had captured, according to the Brut, Gerald’s kinsman, Robert fitz Stephen. The French and the Flemings attempted to take it a second time later in 1166, but without success. Cilgerran was the key to the cantref of Emlyn, claimed by Gerald as belonging to William fitz Gerald (De gestis, ii. 9). Robert’s release was negotiated by Gerald’s uncles, Bishop David and Maurice fitz Gerald (Exp. Hib., i. 2 (ed. Scott and Martin, pp. 28–31)). c. 1 May: Robert fitz Stephen, Hervey de  Montmorency, and Maurice de Pren­ dergast landed at Bannow Bay (Wexford coast, not far from Waterford). Their party included Gerald’s brother, Robert (Exp. Hib., i. 3 (ed. Scott and Martin, pp. 32–5)).

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cii ?c. 1170–4

1171

1172

1174 × 1176

lis t of dat es Probable period of Gerald’s second stay in Paris (see above, pp. lvii–lx), presumably still funded by the tithes of his relatives, Odo of Carew, William son of Hait, and his eldest brother, Philip (De gestis, i. 4). By 1173 Peter the Chanter was teaching in Paris (Baldwin, Masters, 5–6). c. 1 May: Diarmait Mac Murchada died at Ferns. 17 Oct.: Henry II landed at Crook, near Waterford (Howden, Gesta Henrici II, i. 25; Chronica, ii. 29). 11 Nov.: Henry II at Dublin. c. 1 April: Henry II granted Mide to Hugh de Lacy. 17 April: Henry II sailed from Wexford. ‘As soon as he returned from his studies he began to be promoted to many churches and ecclesiastical benefices, both in England and in Wales, and to prosper’ (De gestis, i. 3). This return may have brought to an end the second of his stays in Paris (see above, p. lix). Approached Richard, archbishop of Canter­ bury and papal legate (cons. 1174), and was sent to Wales to enforce the payment of tithes of wool or cheese, especially in Dyfed and Ceredigion. In the course of this legation he suspended Jordan, archdeacon of Brecon, and was subsequently (1175?), made archdeacon in his stead (De gestis, i. 4). Jordan not named by Gerald, but see Lloyd, HW 557 n. 108; Acta, ed. Barrow, 28. Gerald later felt some remorse, not so much for removing Jordan from office as for the method of effecting the removal, ‘in a sense through violence, because by his power as legate’ (De iure, vi (RS iii. 325)).

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 8 May 1176, aged 29

May × November 1176

7 November 1176 1176–79

1179 × 1183

1183 February

1184 1185–6

lis t of dat es

ciii

Death of David, bishop of St Davids. Gerald was still under the canonical age to be a bishop, but not by much. Gerald was nominated to succeed, cum nec dum tricesimum etatis ageret annum ‘though he was not yet in his thirtieth year’ (De gestis, i. 9). This must mean ‘though he was not yet thirty’, since thirty was the canonical minimum age for a bishop. Attempt of Adam, bishop of St Asaph, to assert his authority over Ceri frustrated by Gerald (De gestis, i. 6). Peter de Leia consecrated bishop of St Davids. Third (?) period of study at Paris, now funded by his own benefices. Legal studies: first civil law, then canon law, De gestis, ii. 1. Time in Paris included the period of the Third Lateran Council, March 1179 (summoned in 1178 for the following Lent). Still in Paris when Gerard La Pucelle returned from the Council (ii. 3). Intended to go on to Bologna (ii. 2), but ran out of money and returned home (ii. 4). In charge of the diocese of St Davids, the bishop having been compelled to leave Wales (De gestis, ii. 6). First visit to Ireland (Exp. Hib., ii. 20 (ed. Scott and Martin, pp. 188–9)). Probably stayed for about a year (Exp. Hib., ii. 32 (ed. Scott and Martin, pp. 228–9)). Began work towards Top. Hib. and a planned Liber Vaticinalis, his Vaticinalis Historia (Exp. Hib.). Became a royal clerk (De gestis, ii. 8). In Ireland between Easter 1185 and Easter 1186 in the company of John, Lord of Ireland, on his first expedition to Ireland.

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civ Lent 1186

Easter × Pentecost 1186 Summer 1186 × March 1188

1187? 1188

April × July 1189 6 July 1189 Summer 1189 1190s 1190s early 1190s–c. 1217 c. 1191

1191–3

lis t of dat es Sermon in Dublin. Council summoned for Laetare Sunday (23 March 1186). Gerald’s sermon was on the third day, namely in the middle of the following week (De gestis, ii. 13). Perhaps Tuesday 25 March, Lady Day. Travelled back to Wales from Ireland. This would be 13 April × 1 June. Completion of Top. Hib., Recension 1 (given to Archbishop Baldwin at the beginning of the journey round Wales: De gestis, ii. 20). It is said that this and Exp. Hib. were written ‘anno quasi tricesimo’, by which he meant ‘in his thirties’ (De iure, vii (RS iii. 372)). Read the Topography at Oxford (De gestis, ii. 16). c. 2 March: Beginning of Archbishop Baldwin’s preaching of the Crusade in Wales (at Hereford around Ash Wednesday (De gestis, ii. 17); reached Chester for Maundy Thursday, 14 April (Itin. Kam., ii. 11 (RS vi. 139)); c. 23 April: return to Hereford. Top. Hib., Recension 2. Death of Henry II. Exp. Hib., α (early version). Exp. Hib., α (developed form). Life of St David. De prin. Itin. Kam., Recension 1 (note the large-­ size writing tablets brought from France in 1189 (De gestis, ii. 21); ‘note-­books’, Autobiography, ed. Butler, p. 114). Period when John had undermined the authority of William Longchamp and the latter had been forced to leave England (De gestis, ii. 24; Autobiography, ed. Butler, p. 121); Gerald offered the bishopric of Llandaff by Prince John but turned it down (John was lord of Glamorgan).

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 1191 × 1194

c. 1194

1195 or 1196?

c. 1197 16 July 1198 12/13 August

Sept. 1198, before Michaelmas 9 November 1198

18 December 1198

c. 1199 14 January 1199 20 January 1199

lis t of dat es

cv

Gerald ceased to be a royal clerk (De ­gestis, iii. 1; Bartlett, De prin., pp. xv–xvi). Richard arrived from captivity early in 1194 and any plots by John collapsed. John fled. Descr. Kam., Recension 1. Gerald said that this was written ‘anno quasi quadragesimo’ (De iure, vii (RS iii. 372–3); these dates are by decades, therefore ‘in his ­forties’). Gerald went to Lincoln, being unable to go to Paris because of war between Richard and Philip Augustus (De gestis, iii. 3). Itin. Kam., Recension 2. Death of Peter de Leia, bishop of St Davids. English army led by Geoffrey fitz Peter, the justiciar, routs the Welsh army be­sieging Painscastle (cf. De gestis, iii. 2, and for the date Lloyd, HW 586). Deputation from St Davids went to Hubert Walter with four or six names (De gestis, iii. 4). Richard I (at Château Gaillard) wrote to the chapter of St Davids commanding them to come to him on the 15th day after the Feast of St Andrew, = 14 December. Letter received ‘about Christmas’ (De gestis, iii. 8), but 21 December in iii. 10. Geoffrey fitz Peter, the justiciar, sends a letter from London to the chapter, instructing them, or four or six of them, to be at Westminster on 20 January. They received it ‘around Christmas’ (De gestis, iii. 10). Symb. el. The canons of St Davids planned to hold a general chapter (De gestis, iii. 10). Canons or 4/6 of them due at Westminster.

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cvi c. 1 March 1199

6 April 1199

18 April 1199

19 × 25 April 1199 25 April 1199

27 May 1199

c. 14 June 1199

29 June 1199

lis t of dat es Gerald got to Westminster shortly before Lent (Ash Wednesday 3 March, therefore c. 1 March) (De gestis, iii. 10). Death of Richard  I.  On the news John went to Chinon, where the Angevin treasury was situated. There the envoys of St Davids, Elidir ab Elidir and a clerk, found him and received an answer favourable to Gerald (De gestis, iii. 10). Then John went to Fontevrault (on the south side of the Loire a little to the west of Chinon) where Richard was buried, Hugh, bishop of Lincoln, officiating. Then with some difficulty to Normandy. Easter Sunday. At Angers the barons of Anjou, Maine, and Touraine declared for Arthur. Gerald, then at Lincoln, received a letter from John (De gestis, iii. 11). John, now safely in Normandy, declared duke and invested with a coronet of golden roses. Coronation of John at Westminster (Feast of the Ascension). After the coronation Gerald, Elidir son of Elidir, and Henry son of Robert met with John, but he was now under the influence of Hubert Walter, ‘on whose nod everything then depended’ (De gestis, iii. 12). He refused to announce his decision at Chinon. Gerald (and pre­ sum­ably Elidir and Henry) left the court and made for St Davids. Gerald and companions having reached St Davids, it was decided to meet on the feast of SS Peter and Paul, 29 June, to elect a new pastor (De gestis, iii. 12). They met and, perhaps the same day, ‘after long discussion the votes of all agreed on Archdeacon Gerald’ (De gestis, iii. 12).

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 30 June 1199

lis t of dat es

cvii

Gerald crossed to Ireland to seek the advice of his kinsman, Meilyr fitz Henry, the justiciar of Ireland, and others. Returned to St Davids before 21 July (De gestis, iii. 13); letters to the pope written (De gestis, iii. 14 and 15). Gerald consulted his eldest brother, Philip, the lord of Manorbier (De gestis, iii. 16; Inuect., vi. 24 (Davies, pp. 226–8)). Before 14 August 1199 Gerald set out for Rome, first to Strata Florida on 14 August, where he deposited his books; then via Cwm-­hir and Ceri into England (De gestis, iii. 17). ?22 August 1199 The canons of St Davids were summoned to appear before the archbishop and the justiciar on the Sunday after the Assumption to elect the prior of Llanthony, Geoffrey de Henlaw. Since the feast of the Assumption was on a Sunday in 1199, this should mean the following Sunday, 22 August (De gestis, iii. 13). c. 30 November 1199 Reached Rome. Gave six books written by himself to Innocent III, including the Gemma eccl. (De gestis, iii. 18). c. 10 December 1199 A courier arrived bringing letters from the archbishop to the pope and the cardinals (De gestis, iii. 18). Shortly before Christmas Chapter, having been summoned to London, elected the abbot of St Dogmaels (De iure, ii (RS iii. 177); Inuect., i. 7 (Davies, pp. 106–7); Autobiography, ed. Butler, p. 189; De gestis, table of contents, iii. 33). 7 January 1200 Gerald presented himself in the papal consistory, saying that he was ready to respond to the archbishop’s letter, which was read aloud in the consistory (De gestis, iii. 18–19). [End of the extant text of De gestis; subsequent references to De gestis are to the list of chapter headings.]

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cviii 19 March × 9 April 1200

5 May 1200

8 May 1200

5 and 12 May 1200

?Late summer 1200

lis t of dat es Archbishop’s messenger, Buongiovanni, reached Rome (De iure, ii (RS iii. 176. 26–32)). Innocent referred the two issues to judges-­delegate, though initially reluctant to grant a commission on the issue of the  metropolitan status (De iure, ii (RS iii.  179–80); Autobiography, ed. Butler, pp. 191–2). Agreed only when shown the letter of Eugenius (De iure, ii (RS iii. 180–1); Autobiography, ed. Butler, pp. 192–5; De gestis, iii. 22–4). Innocent III wrote to Llywelyn and other Welsh princes (Inuect., iii. 4 (Davies, p. 149); De gestis, iii. 27). Innocent wrote to the abbots of Whitland, Strata Florida, and St Dogmaels instructing them to inquire into the grounds for  canonizing Caradog, but it did not happen (De iure, ii (RS 182–3); cf. Inuect., iii. 7 (Davies, pp. 150–1); De gestis, iii. 31). Innocent wrote a letter giving Gerald the administration of the diocese, as well as letters to Llywelyn and the other Welsh princes, to the abbots of Welsh monasteries, and to Meilyr fitz Henry (De iure, ii  (RS iii. 183–4); Autobiography, ed. Butler, p. 196; Inuect., iii. 1 and 4–6 (Davies, pp. 147 and 149–50); De gestis, iii. 26). Gerald reached St Davids, where he found further documents (De iure, iii (RS iii. 186–8); Autobiography, ed. Butler, pp. 200–1; De gestis, iii. 46). Gerald visited the grave of his brother, Philip (De gestis, iii. 50–1; Inuect., vi. 25 (Davies, pp. 228–9); Autobiography, ed. Butler, pp. 201–2).

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 ?Late 1200

20 January 1201

4 March 1201

lis t of dat es

cix

Gerald appeared before the two judges-­ delegate (De iure, iii (RS iii. 188); Autobiography, ed. Butler, pp. 202–3). Took their report to Rome, which he reached by the appointed date (De iure, iii (RS iii. 188); Autobiography, ed. Butler, p. 203; De gestis, iii. 55–63). On the quarrel between John and Hubert Walter between late November 1200 and mid-­January 1201, see Cheney, Hubert Walter, pp. 105–6; it was also reported by Gervase of Canterbury, The Historical Works of Gervase of Canterbury, ed. Stubbs, ii. 410. As Cheney notes, Gerald retracted what he had claimed to be the reason for the quarrel in his Retractationes (RS i. 426). The canons of St Davids appear before Hubert Walter and other bishops and abbots at Gloucester and swear that they had never elected Gerald as bishop. According to Hubert, they swore their oath without compulsion, but according to Gerald under compulsion (English Episcopal Acta 3, Canterbury 1193–1205, ed. Cheney and John, no. 355; Inuect., i. 4 (Davies, p. 98)). Date appointed for hearing the case in Rome. Andrew, a clericus sent a latere archiepiscopi, and Reginald Foliot, inter corruptos corruptissimus, were in Rome for the archbishop. One evening Gerald presented the results of his search in the archive of St Davids. In full consistory Andrew and Foliot presented their letters  appointing Andrew ‘proctor for the archbishop in the case over the election’, and Foliot as ‘proctor both for the abbot of  St  Dogmaels and for the chapter of St Davids’. Andrew had no letter appointing him procurator on the issue of metropolitan

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cx

March to end of June 1201

After 29 June 1201

23 July 1201

lis t of dat es status, claiming that it had been taken from him at Parma (De iure, iii (RS iii. 188–9); Autobiography, ed. Butler, pp. 203–4; cf. De gestis, iii. 66–68). Letter from the pope to the judges-­delegate in England (De iure, iii (RS iii. 189–90)). Gerald remained in Rome for his second stay, during which, on either side of Pentecost (13 May), he pleaded the case for his election before two cardinals acting as auditors, dominus Suffredus and Peter of  Capua (De iure, iii (RS iii. 191–3; Autobiography, ed. Butler, pp. 206–8; De gestis, iii. 66; cf. also Maleczek, Papst und Kardinalskolleg von 1191 bis 1216, pp. 73–6 and 117–24 respectively). Also, before the  same two auditors, he helped the sub-­prior of Aberconwy (De iure, iii (RS iii. 193–4); Autobiography, ed. Butler, pp. 208–9; Inuect., i. 4 (Davies, pp. 93–9); Autobiography, ed. Butler, pp. 209–19; De gestis, iii. 67). Pope went to Segni to avoid the heat in Rome. Gerald followed and spent almost a month there, by the end of which he had all his letters (De iure, iii (RS iii. 190–1; 195); Inuect., iii. 2–3 and 10–16 (Davies, pp. 148 and 152–7); iii. 16 (Davies, pp. 156–7) is dated 29 July 1201; Autobiography, ed. Butler, pp. 204–5; De gestis, iii. 71–9). Andrew died at Segni (De iure, iii (RS iii. 194); De gestis, iii. 80; cf. Inuect., i. 7 (Davies, p. 109)). Innocent III wrote to the clergy and laity of St Davids notifying them that he had given Gerald the administration of the diocese (Inuect., iii. 2 (Davies, p. 147); De iure, iii (RS iii. 190); De gestis, iii. 79).

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 6 × 13 December 1201

Christmastide 1201

January 1202

Not long after Christmas

26 January 1202

26 January × 1 March 1202

1 March 1202

lis t of dat es

cxi

Gerald arrived back at St Davids in the octave of St Nicholas (De iure, iii (RS iii. 196); De gestis, iii. 84). Gerald in Gwynedd (De iure, iii (RS iii. 196 (with a cross-­reference to De gestis); cf. also 200); De gestis, iii. 87–92). Gerald returns south via Cistercian monasteries, from Aberconwy in Gwynedd to  Strata Marcella and Valle Crucis in Powys to St Davids by Octave of Hilary (20 January) (De iure, iii (RS iii. 196 (with a cross-­reference to De gestis), 200); De ­gestis, iii. 92–5). The justiciar, Geoffrey fitz Peter, in Shrewsbury to meet barons and Robert, bishop of Bangor, hears complaints by the latter that Gerald is favouring his opponent, ‘the elect of Bangor’, namely the sub-­prior of Aberconwy (De iure, iii (RS iii. 200)). The context of the justiciar’s presence in the March may be the revolt of Fulk fitz Warin (Painter, The Reign of King John, 48–51). Day appointed by judges-­ delegate at Worcester. Support from Maelgwn, Rhys Gryg, and Llywelyn (De iure, iii (RS iii. 196–7)). Gerald arrives in time: De iure, iii (RS iii. 203 (and proceedings, 203–5)); Autobiography, ed. Butler, pp. 227–30; cf. De gestis, iii. 103. Gerald, after an exchange of letters, followed Geoffrey fitz Peter to Canterbury and soothed his anger; admired by the monks of Canterbury (De iure, iii (RS iii. 205–8); Autobiography, ed. Butler, pp. 230–3; De gestis, iii. 104–7). Gerald in St Davids for the feast of St David (De iure, iv (RS iii. 211); Autobiography, ed. Butler, p. 236; De gestis, iii. 109). Excommunication of Archdeacon Osbert and Reginald Foliot.

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cxii 8 March

Easter 1202

c. 21 April 1202

4 May 1202

10 June 1202

18 June 1202

31 July 1202

1 August 1202

lis t of dat es Letter of John from Verneuil addressed to all (omnibus . . .) against Gerald (given in Haddan and Stubbs, Councils, i. 422). John’s conflict with the Lusignans in Poitou comes to a head: John ordered to appear before a court of the barons of France in Paris, fails to appear, and is sentenced to have lost his fiefs of Aquitaine, Poitou, and Anjou. Note the justiciar’s remark and Gerald’s comment (De iure, iii (RS iii. 207–8)). Letter of Geoffrey fitz Peter to Ralph de Bendeville, sheriff of Pembroke, on the instructions of King John, instigated by the archbishop, commanding him to deprive supporters of Gerald among the canons of all their lay tenements, wards, and escheats, and also their chattels; further, to detain their fornicariae (De iure, iv  (RS iii. 214–15); Autobiography, ed. Butler, pp. 238–9 (but omitting the date)). Day appointed by judges-­ delegate at Newport (De iure, iv (RS iii. 215); Autobiography, ed. Butler, pp. 239–40). Gerald held a synod at Brecon after attempting to hold it at Carmarthen, Pembroke, and St Davids (De iure, iv (RS iii. 215–18); Autobiography, ed. Butler, pp. 240–2; De gestis, iii. 118–22). Day appointed by judges-­ delegate at Brackley (De iure, iv (RS iii. 215, 218–21); Autobiography, ed. Butler, pp. 240, 242–5; De gestis, iii. 130). Capture of Arthur at Mirebeau with the help of William des Roches. John subsequently fell out with William, who then sided with King Philip. Day appointed at Bedford (De iure, iv (RS iii. 221–3); Autobiography, ed. Butler, pp. 245–7).

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 15 August 1202 During late August

9 September 1202

12 September 1202

October 1202

lis t of dat es

cxiii

Gerald at his prebend of Mathry (De iure, iv (RS iii. 224); Autobiography, 247). Goes via Brycheiniog, Elfael, Maelienydd, Ceri, and Cedewain to Gwenwynwyn, then to Gwynedd and Llywelyn at Aberconwy (De iure, iv (RS iii. 226); Autobiography, ed. Butler, pp. 249–50 and 251–2). Llywelyn was now his main financial backer in Wales, and his support was closely tied to the parallel case over Bangor. Then via Whitchurch and Oxford to St Albans (De iure, iv, (RS iii. 227); Autobiography, ed. Butler, p. 252). Gerald reached St Albans. The archbishop was then at Dunstable. He offered Gerald ‘most ample ecclesiastical revenues’ if he would abandon his two suits. Gerald refused and made his counter-­offer to the judges, which was approved by Eustace, bishop of Ely, but refused by Hubert unless all his suffragans agreed (De iure, iv (RS iii. 228–32); Autobiography, pp. 253–7; De gestis, iii. 144–7 (see Edition, pp. 22–3)). Day appointed by the judges. Proceedings take place, but Gerald appeals to Rome (De iure, iv (RS iii. 232–6); Autobiography, pp. 257–61; De gestis, iii. 148–54 (see Edition, pp. 22–3)). Gerald on his way to Rome in spite of numerous obstacles, including war between John and Philip: De iure, iv (RS iii. 236–41); Autobiography, ed. Butler, pp. 263–66; De gestis, iii. 159 (see Edition, pp. 24–5). Friday after 9 October, at Sandwich, servants of Canterbury searched for Gerald (De iure, iv (RS iii. 237); Autobiography, ed. Butler, p.  263). Gerald had to cross to Essex, re-­ cross to Kent, hire a boat, and sail secretly to Gravelines on 2 November (De iure, iv (RS iii. 238–9); Autobiography, ed. Butler, pp. 263–4).

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cxiv 1 November 1202 4 January 1203

Lent 1203 20 February 1203

3 April 1203

15 April 1203

25 May (Inuect.), 26 May 1203 (De iure)

4 June 1203

18 June 1203

lis t of dat es Third hearing appointed. Gerald managed to reach Rome (De iure, iv (RS iii. 241); Autobiography, ed. Butler, p. 266; De gestis, iii. 168 (see Edition, pp. 24–5)). Hearing. Letter of Innocent III to King John: details his misbehaviour, including his interventions in episcopal elections and intimidation of electors (Selected Letters of Pope Innocent III, ed. Cheney and Semple, no. 17). According to the Annals of Margam, John, in a drunken rage, personally killed Arthur and had his body drowned in the Seine. Pope delivers his judgement quashing both elections, that of Gerald and that of Walter, abbot of St Dogmaels (De iure, iv (RS iii. 267–8); Autobiography, ed. Butler, pp. 297–8; De gestis, iii. 184 (see Edition, pp. 28–9)). Pope’s letter to the bishops of Ely and Worcester informing them of the judgement on the election and instructing them to arrange for the canons to make a new election within two months (De iure, v (RS 281–2); De gestis, iii. 196; Inuect., iv. 4 (Davies, p. 172)). Pope’s letter absolving Gerald from his vow to take the cross (De iure, v (RS iii. 284–6); Inuect., iii. 18 (Davies, pp. 158–9)). Commission to the bishop of Durham and  the prior of Holy Trinity, York, to hear the case over the metropolitan status of St Davids (De iure, v (RS iii. 282–4); Autobiography, ed. Butler, pp. 300–1; De gestis, iii. 185).

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 20 June 1203

1200–16

7 December 1203 13 July 1205 17 July 1207

c. 1214 1214 21 June 1215 c. 1215 18–19 October 1216 After 1216 c. 1218 After 1219

lis t of dat es

cxv

Pope’s letter to the bishop of Durham and the prior of Holy Trinity, York, condemning the archbishop to pay half Gerald’s costs (preceded by a hearing before Hugolino as  auditor) (De iure, v (RS iii. 274–7); Autobiography, ed. Butler, p. 304; Inuect., iii. 17 (Davies, pp. 157–8); De gestis, iii. 193–4). The Libellus inuectionum begun in Rome c. 1200, not completed till 1216 or perhaps later (see pp. xxxv–xl). Consecration of Geoffrey de Henlaw. Death of Hubert Walter, owing £913. 1s. Consecration of Stephen Langton by Innocent III at Viterbo after the quashing of both the election of Reginald, the sub­ prior of Christ Church, and that of John de Grey, bishop of Norwich. Itin. Kam., Recension 3. Death of Geoffrey de Henlaw, bishop of St Davids. Consecration of Iorwerth/Gervase, bishop of St Davids. Descr. Kam., Recension 2. Death of King John. Completion of De gestis? De iure. Completion of Speculum ecclesie (envisaged since 1191).

Gerald’s very approximate dates for his works (De iure, vii (RS iii. 372–3)) by decades of his life: 30+ Topographia Hibernica and Expugnatio Hibernica1176+ 40+ Itinerarium Kambriae and Descriptio Kambriae1186+ 50+ Symbolum electorum; De gestis Giraldi; Libellus inuectionum; Speculum duorum.1196+ 60+ Lives of bishops of Lincoln and Gemma eccl.1206+ 70+ De iure; De principis instructione; De ecclesiasticis ordinibus1216+

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Frontispiece: London, British Library, Cotton MS Tiberius B. xiii, fo. 158v (showing that the addition in the bottom margin is to be added at the end of i. 1). Reproduced by permission of the British Library.

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Gerald of Wales On the Deeds of Gerald (De gestis Giraldi )

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RS i. 3 fo. 154r

RS i. 4

||⟨ IN C I PI V N T C A PI T V L A PARTIS P RIM E.⟩ a

⟨i.b D⟩e ortu Giraldi, puericie gestis et adolescencie. ⟨ii. D⟩e discipline defectu in primis et postea profectu. ⟨iii. D⟩e zelo quem in ecclesiasticos profectus statim exercuit. ⟨iiii. D⟩e Giraldi legatione et in archidiaconum promotione. ⟨v. D⟩e inicialibus sue promotionis actionibus. ⟨vi. Q⟩ualiter episcopo Laneluensic aput Keri restitit et ecclesias terre illius omnes uiriliter retinuit. ⟨vii. Q⟩ualiter ad regem facti illius fama peruenerat. ⟨viii. Q⟩ualiter canonici Meneuenses tam regem quam legatum Huguicionem super ecclesie sue dignitate conuenerunt. ⟨ix. D⟩e Dauid episcopo paulo post defuncto et Giraldo principaliter nominato. | ⟨x. D⟩e Giraldi coram rege commendatione. ⟨xi. D⟩e Petri in episcopum promotione et Giraldi ne ius ecclesie Meneuensis abiuraret dissuasione.

⟨SE C V N D E PA RT I S CAP ITVLA.⟩ a

⟨i. De gestis uirilis etatis et robuste.⟩b ⟨ii. P⟩rincipium et quasi proemium cause Giraldi Parisiusc prime. ⟨iii. Q⟩uod canonici Meneuenses in Lateranensi concilio ius dignitatis ecclesie sue sunt protestati.1 ⟨iiii. D⟩e reuersione Giraldi post studium diutinum et hiis que interim ei obiter acciderunt. ⟨v. Q⟩ualiter Cantuariam ueniens ea que aput conuentum principalis ecclesie uidit correctione digna uocauit. ⟨vi. Q⟩ualiter in Walliam ueniens, expulso paulo post episcopo, regimen episcopatus per archiepiscopum suscepit et qualiter illud ob fauorem capituli Meneuensis sponte resignauit. a   Incipiunt capitula partis prime ed.; a blank line left in MS for rubricator. For the likely layout and content of these unfinished rubrics, cf. BAV MS Reg. lat. 470, fo. 1r   b  Numerals omitted in MS, but were probably to have been added by the rubricator: cf. BAV MS Reg. lat. 470, fos. 1r–2r   c Laneluensi ed.; laneuensi table of contents; laneluepsi text rubric a   Secunde partis capitula ed.; a blank line left in MS for rubricator. Cf. BAV MS Reg. 470, fo.  1r   b  De . . . robuste. omitted in table of contents and supplied from text rubric    c  Parisius om. Wharton and text rubric

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H E R E B E G I N T HE C HA PT ERS OF THE FI R ST PA RT. i. On Gerald’s birth and his deeds in childhood and youth. ii. On his early shortcomings in study and later success. iii. On the zeal which he immediately used for the church’s advantage. iiii. On Gerald’s legateship and his promotion to archdeacon. v. On his first acts after his promotion. vi. How he resisted the bishop of Llanelwy in Ceri and manfully retained all the churches of that land. vii. How report of that deed had come to the king. viii. How the canons of St Davids approached both the king and the legate Hugo about the dignity of their church. ix. On the death of bishop David shortly thereafter and the nomination principally of Gerald. x. On the recommendation of Gerald in the presence of the king. xi. On Peter’s promotion to bishop and how Gerald urged him not to forswear the right of the church of St Davids.

TH E C HA PT E R S O F T HE SECOND PART. i. On his deeds at an age of robust manhood. ii. The beginning and, as it were, overture, of Gerald’s first discourse in Paris. iii. That the canons of St Davids made a claim for their church’s rightful status at the Lateran Council.1 iiii. On Gerald’s return after long study, and the things which then happened to him on the way. v. How, coming to Canterbury, he declared that what he saw in the community of the primatial church required correction. vi. How he came to Wales; how, shortly after, the bishop was driven away and Gerald took over management of the bishopric at the  archbishop’s direction; and how he voluntarily resigned it because of his goodwill to the chapter of St Davids.

1  The Third Lateran Council, of 1179.

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4

RS i. 5

de g e s t i s gi r a l di, c a pi t v l a

⟨vii. Q⟩ualiter archidiaconus curie sequela effectusd fuit.2 ⟨viii. D⟩e Resi filii Griffini et archidiaconi Giraldi coram uiris magnis altercatione. ⟨ix. D⟩e discordia inter episcopum Petrum et archidiaconum Giraldum mota et pace tam capituli quam archidiaconi per archidiaconum facta. ⟨x. Q⟩ualiter patriarcha in Angliam uenit et cum Iohanne, filio suo, Giraldum rex Henricus in Hiberniam misit. ⟨xi. D⟩e priuilegio Adriani pape.e ⟨xii. D⟩e uisione Giraldi.f ⟨xiii. Q⟩ualiter duos episcopatus in Hibernia Giraldo comes Iohannes obtulit et qualiter utrumque recusauit. ⟨xiiii. D⟩e sermone Giraldi in concilio Dublinensi.g ⟨xv. D⟩e cleri Hibernici confusione et nostratum exultatione. | ⟨xvi. D⟩e Thopographie Hibernice composicioneh et apud Oxoniam in Anglia recitatione. ⟨xvii. D⟩e generali in Anglia crucis assumptione et tam Petro Meneuensi episcopo quam Giraldo archidiacono cruce signato. ⟨xviii. D⟩e Baldwino Cantuariensi archiepiscopo crucem per Walliam predicante et Giraldo archidiacono comite sibi ad predicandum fideli adiuncto. ⟨xix. Q⟩ualiter archiepiscopus archidiacono apud Meneuiam predicationis officium iniunxit et dei hiis que apud Kemmeis et Kerdigaun,j Venedociam quoque et Powisiam, acta sunt. ⟨xx. T⟩am de Giraldi ab archiepiscopo quam stili ipsius commendatione. ⟨xxi. Q⟩ualiter a comite Ricardo post patris obitum archidiaconus in Angliam et Walliam missus est. ⟨xxii. D⟩e litteris cardinalis absolutoriis.k ⟨xxiii. Q⟩ualiter comiti Iohanni ne tempore communis peregrinationisl desidiosus in Anglia remaneretm suasit archidiaconus nec persuasit. ⟨xxiiii. Q⟩ualiter dignitates ecclesiasticas sibi oblatas archidiaconus amore studii recusauit. d  factus text rubric   e  Priuilegium Adriani pape. text rubric   f Visio Giraldi. text rubric   g  Sermo Giraldi in concilio Dublinensi. text rubric   h composicione text rubric; composione table of contents   i de Brewer; om. MS, here and in text rubric   j Kerdigan text rubric   k cardinalis ed.; et cardinalibus (perhaps corrected from cardinalis) table of contents (Litere cardinalis absolutorie text rubric)   l peregrinationis Wharton and text rubric; peregnationis table of contents   m remaneret Wharton and text rubric; remanent table of contents

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vii. How the archdeacon became a follower of the court.2 viii. On the dispute between Rhys ap Gruffudd and the archdeacon Gerald before important men. ix. On the conflict initiated between the bishop, Peter, and the archdeacon Gerald; and the peace made through the archdeacon’s efforts on behalf of both the chapter and the archdeacon. x. How a patriarch came to England and how King Henry sent Gerald to Ireland with his son, John. xi. On a privilege from Pope Adrian. xii. On Gerald’s vision. xiii. How Earl John offered two bishoprics in Ireland to Gerald and how he refused them both. xiiii. On Gerald’s sermon at the council in Dublin. xv. On the embarrassment of the Irish clergy and the rejoicing of those from our country. xvi. On the writing of the Topography of Ireland and its public reading at Oxford, in England. xvii. On the widespread taking of the cross in England and the marking of both Peter, bishop of St Davids, and Gerald the archdeacon with the cross. xviii. How Baldwin, archbishop of Canterbury, preached the crusade throughout Wales and how Archdeacon Gerald assisted him as his faithful companion in that preaching. xix. How the archbishop assigned to the archdeacon the responsibility of preaching at St Davids and what happened in Cemais and Ceredigion, as well as in Gwynedd and Powys. xx. On the archbishop’s commendation of both Gerald and his writing style. xxi. How the archdeacon was sent to England and Wales by Count Richard after his father’s death. xxii. On the cardinal’s letter of absolution. xxiii. How the archdeacon urged Count John not to remain indolently in England during this time of general pilgrimage but did not persuade him. xxiiii. How the archdeacon refused the ecclesiastical offices offered him, because of his love of learning.

2  The chapters listed here as vii, viii, and ix appear in the text in the order ix, vii, viii.

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6 fo. 154v

RS i. 6

de g e s t i s gi r a l di, c a pi t v l a

|⟨T E RT I E PA RT I S C AP ITVLA.⟩ a

⟨i. D⟩e gestis prouectiorisb etatis et mature. ⟨ii. Q⟩ualiter amicum suum anachoritam de Lotheis adiit eiusque licentiam scolas adeundi et benedictionem expeciit. ⟨iii. Q⟩ualiter, quia Parisius propter guerras ire non potuit, Lincolniam diuertit. ⟨iiii. Q⟩ualiter, defuncto interim Petro Meneuensi episcopoc et Giraldo archidiacono principaliter petito, multi propter cathedram illam laborauerunt. ⟨v. D⟩e litteris ab archidiacono Cantuariensi archiepiscopo directis.d | ⟨vi. D⟩e Huberti Cantuariensis archiepiscopi responsione.e ⟨vii. D⟩e litteris archidiaconi de rato archiepiscopo directis.f ⟨viii. L⟩ittere regis Ricardi capitulo Meneuensi directe. ⟨ix. L⟩ittere iusticiarii Anglie capitulo Meneuensi directe. ⟨x. L⟩ittere capituli Meneuensis Giraldo directe. ⟨xi. Q⟩ualiter, rege Ricardo defuncto, per litteras comitis Iohannis Giraldus est uocatus. ⟨xii. L⟩ittere capituli Meneuensis comiti Iohanni pro Giraldo directe.3 ⟨xiii. Q⟩ualiter fixum Giraldi propositum subito et inopinato est iam mutatum. ⟨xiiii. D⟩ecretum capituli papeg pro archidiacono directum. ⟨xv. L⟩ittere capituli Meneuensis pape contra priorem Lanthonie misse. ⟨xvi. C⟩onsilium et solatium a fratre suo susceptum. ⟨xvii. D⟩e primo Giraldi labore uersus curiam Romanam et fortune statim et quasi pre foribus insultu.4 ⟨xviii. Q⟩ualiter ad papam ueniens libros ei suos eth non libras ­presentauit. ⟨xix. L⟩ittere archiepiscopi contra archidiaconum misse.i5

a   Tertie partis capitula ed.; a blank line left in MS for rubricator. Cf. BAV MS Reg. 470, fo. 1r  provectioris Wharton; prouectioris text rubric; prouectionis table of contents    c   Meneuensi episcopo om. in text rubric and added by later hand in margin, perhaps from table of contents   d  Littere Cantuariensi archiepiscopo directe. Text rubric   e Huberti Cantuariensis archiepiscopi responsio. Text rubric   f Littere archidiaconi de rato archiepiscopo misse. Text rubric   g pape table of contents; domino pape text rubric    h   suos et om. in text rubric   i  An asterisk and line in the left margin mark the point at which the body of the text in the MS breaks off; further to the left, in a s. xvii hand: ⟨c⟩ætera desunt (perhaps ⟨c⟩œtera) or cetera desunt b

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TH E C HA PT E R S O F T HE THIRD PART. i. On his deeds in more advanced and adult years. ii. How he went to a friend, the hermit of Llywes, and asked for his permission and blessing to go to the schools. iii. How, since he could not go to Paris because of the wars, he turned instead to Lincoln. iiii. How, after Peter, bishop of St Davids, had died, Archdeacon Gerald was the principal person sought for the office and many people were occupied with that see. v. On a letter sent by the archdeacon to the archbishop of Canterbury. vi. On the response of Hubert, archbishop of Canterbury. vii. On a letter of ratification sent by the archdeacon to the archbishop. viii. A letter sent by King Richard to the chapter of St Davids. ix. A letter sent by the justiciar of England to the chapter of St Davids. x. A letter sent by the chapter of St Davids to Gerald. xi. How Gerald was summoned by a letter from Count John after the death of King Richard. xii. A letter sent by the chapter of St Davids to Count John in favour of Gerald.3 xiii. How Gerald’s fixed purpose was now suddenly and unexpectedly changed. xiiii. The chapter’s decree, sent to the pope on behalf of the archdeacon. xv. A letter sent by the chapter of St Davids to the pope against the prior of Llanthony. xvi. The advice and consolation which he received from his brother. xvii. On Gerald’s first laborious journey to the Roman curia and fortune’s immediate assault on him, as if on his very doorstep.4 xviii. How he came to the pope and presented him with his books and not pounds. xix. A letter sent by the archbishop against the archdeacon.5

3  The title of this chapter is absent from rubrics within the text and replaced there by a duplication of the title of iii. 11. 4  Gerald set out for Rome shortly before August 1199 and arrived c. 30 December 1199. 5  The full text ends part way through this section.

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8

RS i. 7

⟨xx. D⟩e archidiaconi responsione.6 ⟨xxi. P⟩ape et cardinalium deliberatio. ⟨xxii. Q⟩ualiter in registro Eugenii7 litteras inuenit per quas in causa status citationem obtinuit.8 ⟨xxiii. L⟩ittere Eugenii pape Theobaldo, Cantuariensi archiepiscopo, misse.9 ⟨xxiiii. C⟩ommissio tam super statu Meneuensis ecclesie quam super archidiaconi electione.10 ⟨xxv. Q⟩ualiter archidiaconum ad se nocte uenientem nomine archiepiscopi papa salutauit et quod ea statim occasione registrum suum diligenter inspexit.11 | ⟨xxvi. L⟩ittere super custodia Meneuensis ecclesie Giraldo commissa.12 ⟨xxvii. L⟩ittere commendatoriej principibus Wallie directe.13 ⟨xxviii. L⟩ittere similes abbatibus Wallie super ecclesie Meneuensis commendatione.14 ⟨xxix. L⟩ittere clero et populo Wallie directe.15 ⟨xxx. L⟩ittere commendaticie pariter et ad pacem commonitorie.16 ⟨xxxi. L⟩ittere pape super inquisicione sanctitatis beati Karadoci per operam Giraldi in Walliam misse.17 ⟨xxxii. D⟩e reditu archidiaconi ab Italia uersus Franciam. ⟨xxxiii. M⟩odus eligendi et promouendi abbatem Sancti Dogmaelis.18 ⟨xxxiiii. L⟩ittere iusticiarii et archiepiscopi capitulo Meneuensi misse. ⟨xxxv. L⟩ittere ad decipiendum et deterrendum capitulo misse. ⟨xxxvi. L⟩ittere Willelmi de Breusa19 ad terrendum misse. ⟨xxxvii. L⟩ittere iusticiarii terribiles.  commendatoriæ Wharton; commendatione MS

j

6 Cf. Inuect., i. 2 (Davies, pp. 85–93) and De iure, ii (RS iii. 164–5). 7  Pope Eugenius III, 1145–53. 8 Cf. De iure, ii (RS. iii. 179–82). 9  Theobald was archbishop 1138–61. The date of the pope’s letter to him was 29 June 1147 (Episc. Acts, ed. Davies, i, no. D.128); cf. De iure, ii (RS iii. 180–1) and Inuect., ii. 2 (Davies, pp. 135–6). 10 Cf. De iure, ii (RS iii. 182). 11 Cf. De iure, ii (RS iii. 181–2). 12  Inuect., iii. 1, 12 May 1200 (Davies, p. 147). 13 Cf. Inuect., iii. 4 (Davies, p. 149) and De iure, ii (RS iii. 184–5). 14 Cf. Inuect., iii. 5 (Davies, pp. 149–50) and De iure, ii (RS iii. 184). 15 Cf. Inuect., iii. 6 (Davies, p. 150) and De iure, ii (RS iii. 184). 16 Cf. De iure, ii (RS iii. 185) and Inuect., iii. 8 and 9 (Davies, pp. 151–2). 17 Cf. Inuect., iii. 7 (Davies, pp. 150–1) and iv. 9 (Davies, p. 177); and De iure, ii (RS iii. 182–3). Inuect., iv. 9 (Davies, p. 177) states that Gerald brought a written life of Caradog with him to Rome (presumably that which he himself had written, though that is not

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xx. On the archdeacon’s reply.6 xxi. The deliberation of the pope and cardinals. xxii. How he found a letter in the register of Eugenius7 by which he obtained a summons in the case of his church’s status.8 xxiii. A letter sent by Pope Eugenius to Theobald, archbishop of Canterbury.9 xxiiii. A commission concerning both the status of the church of St Davids and the election of the archdeacon.10 xxv. How the pope greeted the archdeacon by the title of archbishop when he came to see him by night; and that, on that occasion, he immediately and carefully examined his register.11 xxvi. A letter entrusting the custody of the church of St Davids to Gerald.12 xxvii. A letter of commendation sent to the princes of Wales.13 xxviii. A like letter to the abbots of Wales commending the church of St Davids.14 xxix. A letter sent to the clergy and people of Wales.15 xxx. Letters of recommendation and also urging peace.16 xxxi. A letter of enquiry into the sanctity of the blessed Caradog, sent by the pope to Wales through Gerald’s agency.17 xxxii. On the archdeacon’s return from Italy towards France. xxxiii. The manner of electing and elevating the abbot of St Dogmaels.18 xxxiiii. Letters from the justiciar and the archbishop sent to the chapter of St Davids. xxxv. A letter sent to deceive and to deter the chapter. xxxvi. A letter sent by William de Breus19 to scare them. xxxvii. A frightening letter from the justiciar. explicitly said) and read it to the pope; and that it was in response to this that Innocent issued this commission. It may be the current context which triggered Gerald’s composition of the life. It has not survived (though some of the narrative of Itin. Kam., i. 11 (RS vi. 85–7) may derive from it), except for the preface which is preserved in Symbolum Electorum (Cambridge, Trinity College, MS R. 7. 11, fos. 94r–95v); cf. RS i. 395 where it is noted but not printed). John of Tynemouth’s reworking of the life (Nova Legenda Anglie, ed. Horstmann, i. 174) is thought to be based upon Gerald’s version (Marzella, ‘The lives of Welsh saints in John of Tynemouth’s Sanctilogium’; Marzella, ‘Gerald of Wales and the life of St Caradog’). 18  On Walter, Abbot of St Dogmaels, see Knowles, ‘Some monastic enemies of Gerald of Wales’, p. 141. 19  Early manuscripts of Gerald’s works regularly have Willelmus de Breusa, e.g. Inuect., iv. 9 (Davies, p. 175). The spelling appears to reflect the pronunciation in Wales, as in the Brut (both P and R), s.aa. 1208, 1210, Wiliam de brewys, where wy is likely to be a spelling for [u] (as in Gronwy alongside Gronw). Modern historians have spelt the name in various ways: Briouze (after the modern form of the place-name in southern Normandy, south of Caen), Braose, Braiose, Breos.

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10

fo. 155r RS i. 8

de g e s t i s gi r a l di, c a pi t v l a

⟨xxxviii. Q⟩ualiter archidiaconus in ultima fere desperatione constitutus a Domino demum est uisitatus. ⟨xxxix. L⟩ittere pape excusatorie. ⟨xl. L⟩ittere cardinalium excusatorie. ⟨xli. Q⟩ualiterk archiepiscopus per Meilerium, Hibernie tunc iusticiarium, animum archidiaconi ad concordiam minus honestam frustra flectere temptauit. ⟨xlii. D⟩e uerbis inter archiepiscopum et Meilerium super archidiacono et abbate de Kemmeis20 consertis et qualiter abbas de Alba Landa obiterl archidiacono obuiauit. ⟨xliii. D⟩e minis regis in archidiaconum acriter emissis. ⟨xliiii. D⟩ecretum capituli Meneuensis iudicibus pro Giraldo directum. | ⟨xlv. L⟩ittere Elyensis episcopi archidiacono directe.21 | ⟨xlvi. D⟩e obitu fratris optimi et abate de Alba Landa exploratore,22 litteris quoque tam Eugenii pape quam Lucii per industriam archidiaconi repertis.23 ⟨xlvii. L⟩ittere Eugenii pape clero et populo Sancti Dauid directe.24 ⟨xlviii. R⟩esponsio Lucii pape Bernardo episcopo facta.25 ⟨xlix. M⟩odus electionis abatis Albe Domus uel pocius deceptionis et deiectionis. ⟨l. Q⟩ualiter Meneuiam corruptam archidiaconus reliquit et fratris defuncti tumbam adiuit.26 ⟨li. L⟩ittere cardinalis responsales et absolutorie Philippo de Barri directe.m27 ⟨lii. D⟩e presbitero per arboris casum obruto, litteris regis cum ipso inuentis. ⟨liii. L⟩ittere regis contra Giraldum misse. ⟨liiii. L⟩ittere regis propter archidiaconum misse. ⟨lv. D⟩e secundo uersus curiam Giraldi labore.28 ⟨lvi. L⟩ittere Willelmi de Breusa Meneuensi capitulo misse. k   Three dots in intercolumnar space draw attention to mention of Meilyr: see Appendix 3 (p. 248)    l obiter Wharton; obiti MS, followed by erasure    m  Three dots in inter­ colum­nar space draw attention to the name of Philip: see Appendix 3 (p. 249)

20  Another name for the abbot of St Dogmaels. 21  Eustace, elected 10 August 1197 and died 2 × 4 February 1215 (Fasti Ecclesiae Anglicanae 1066–1300, ii. 45). He was one of the judges-delegate in Gerald’s cases from 1200 (De iure, ii (RS iii. 182)) to 1203 (De iure, v (RS iii. 281–2, 284–5); Inuect., iv. 4 (Davies, p. 172)). 22 Cf. De iure, iii (RS iii. 186); and Knowles, ‘Some monastic enemies of Gerald of Wales’, p. 139. 23 Cf. De iure, iii (RS iii. 186–8).

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xxxviii. How the archdeacon, in nearly the final stage of desperation, was at last visited by the Lord. xxxix. Letters excusatory from the pope. xl. Letters excusatory from the cardinals. xli. How the archbishop tried in vain through Meilyr, then justiciar of Ireland, to bend the archdeacon’s will to a less than honourable settlement. xlii. On the words exchanged by the archbishop and Meilyr about the archdeacon and the abbot of Cemais;20 and how the abbot of Whitland went to meet the archdeacon on the way. xliii. On the bitter threats which the king uttered against the archdeacon. xliiii. A decree of the chapter of St Davids sent to judges in favour of Gerald. xlv. A letter sent to the archdeacon by the bishop of Ely.21 xlvi. On the death of his excellent brother and how the abbot of Whitland acted as a spy;22 and on the finding of letters from both Pope Eugenius and Pope Lucius through the archdeacon’s assiduity.23 xlvii. A letter from Pope Eugenius sent to the clergy and people of St Davids.24 xlviii. A response which Pope Lucius made to Bishop Bernard.25 xlix. The manner of electing the abbot of Whitland—­or rather of his deceit and downfall. l. How the archdeacon left a corrupt St Davids and went to the tomb of his deceased brother.26 li. An answering letter of absolution sent by a cardinal to Philip de Barri.27 lii. On a priest crushed by a falling tree and the king’s letters found upon him. liii. A letter from the king sent in opposition to Gerald. liiii. A letter from the king sent on account of the archdeacon. lv. On Gerald’s second laborious journey to the curia.28 lvi. A letter sent by William de Breus to the chapter of St Davids.

24 Cf. De iure, iii (RS iii. 187) and Inuect., ii. 2 (Davies, p. 136). 25 Cf. De iure, iii (RS iii. 187) and Inuect., ii. 3 (Davies, pp. 136–7). 26 Cf. Inuect., vi. 25 (Davies, p. 228). Philip de Barri was buried at Manorbier. 27 Cf. Inuect., vi. 25 (Davies, pp. 228–9). 28 Cf. De iure, iii (RS iii. 188). Gerald was at Rome by 4 March 1201 and remained there for some months.

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RS i. 9

⟨lvii. Q⟩ualiter archidiacono rex super causa status promouenda auxilium promisit set statim, archiepiscopo sibi pacificato, sententiam mutauit. ⟨lviii. Q⟩ualiter archiepiscopus per Gillebertum Roffensem episcopum29 archidiacono, causa status extincta uel etiam ad tempus sopita, pacificari frustra temptauit. ⟨lix. D⟩e examinatione presumptuosa Gloucestrie facta.30 ⟨lx. L⟩ittere domino Roffensi episcopo Gilleberto ab archidiacono misse. ⟨lxi. A⟩bati Waltero Giraldus archidiaconus. ⟨lxii. Q⟩ualiter ad transfretandum properans statim fortune sensit insultus. ⟨lxiii. Q⟩ualiter laboriose pariter et periculose Romam ueniens ad papam accessit et litteras Meneuie repertas tam Eugenii pape quam Lucii coram papa et cardinalibus legi fecit.31 ⟨lxiiii. L⟩ittere conuentus Cantuariensis contra Giraldum misse. | ⟨lxv. R⟩elatio prima. ⟨lxvi. Q⟩ualiter factum utrumque tam abatis Sancti Dogmaelis quam archidiaconi coram auditoribus et uerbo et scripto propositum fuit et qualiter Foliotus32 uariauit.33 ⟨lxvii. Q⟩ualiter ad instantiam Bangorumn electi34 archidiaconus Andree respondit.35 ⟨lxviii. R⟩esponsio contra Foliotum inter alios oblatrantem.36 ⟨lxix. S⟩ententia super causa status.37

 Bangorum MS; Bangorensis Wharton and Brewer

n

29 Gilbert de Glanville, elected 16 July 1185 and died 24 June 1214 (Fasti Ecclesiae Anglicanae 1066–1300, ii. 76). 30  English Episcopal Acta 3, Canterbury 1193–1205, ed. Cheney and John, no. 355; Inuect., i. 4 (Davies, p. 98). 31 Cf. De iure, iii (RS iii. 188–9). 32  Reginald Foliot (cf. De iure, iii (RS iii. 188) and Inuect., i. 12 (Davies, p. 121)), canon of St Davids. ODNB, s.n. ‘Leia, Peter de (d. 1198)’, states that he was a nephew of Bishop Peter. 33 Cf. De iure, iii (RS iii. 191–3; cf. Autobiography, ed. Butler, pp. 206–8); the auditors were dominus Suffredus and Peter of Capua; the former was cardinal-deacon of S. Maria in Vialata in 1182, and cardinal-priest of S.  Prassede (1193–1208/10), the latter cardinal-deacon of S. Maria in Vialata in 1193, and cardinal-priest of S. Marcello (1200–14) (Maleczek, Papst und Kardinalskolleg von 1191 bis 1216, pp. 73–6 and 117–24 respectively). 34 Lloyd, HW 635 n. 119. The form Bangorum is unexpected (Bangorensis might have been expected); in most cases it is written with the abbreviation for a genitive plural, and might have been regarded as an all-purpose abbreviation were it not for one instance (Table of

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lvii. How the king promised the archdeacon that he would help him in promoting the cause of the church’s status, but immediately changed his mind when he was reconciled with the archbishop. lviii. How the archbishop attempted in vain to make peace with the archdeacon through Gilbert, bishop of Rochester,29 because the cause of the church’s status had been extinguished or had at least died down for a time. lix. On the presumptuous examination made at Gloucester.30 lx. A letter sent by the archdeacon to Gilbert, lord bishop of Rochester. lxi. Archdeacon Gerald to Abbot Walter. lxii. How he immediately felt fortune’s assaults as he hurried to cross the Channel. lxiii. How, coming through both toil and danger to Rome, he went to the pope and had the letters of popes Eugenius and Lucius, which had been found at St Davids, read before the pope and cardinals.31 lxiiii. A letter sent by the convent of Canterbury in opposition to Gerald. lxv. The first account. lxvi. How the statements of their cases, both that of the abbot of St Dogmaels and that of the archdeacon, were presented orally and in writing before auditors and how Foliot32 was inconsistent.33 lxvii. How, at the insistence of the bishop-­elect of Bangor,34 the archdeacon replied to Andrew.35 lxviii. A reply against Foliot, who, like others, was railing against him.36 lxix. A decision in the case of the church’s status.37

Contents, iii. 165 (p. 24)) where it is written out in full (cf. also iii. 14 (p. 210 below)). It also occurs nine times in the acta of the bishops of Bangor, and written out in full in one rubric; seven of them occur in the acta of Robert of Shrewsbury, Gerald’s contemporary and adversary. We are grateful to Shaun McGuinness for this information. The bishop-elect in question is identified in a charter as Rawatlan(us), electus de Bangor (Acts, ed. Pryce, no. 216 (pp. 346–7)); and elsewhere called Rotolandus, probably a Latinization of Rhiwallon (cf. Hays, ‘Rotolandus’); cf. also Inuect., iii. 11 (Davies, p. 153), where his name is abbreviated as R. 35 Cf. De iure, iii (RS iii. 193–4) and Inuect., i. 4–5 (Davies, pp. 93–105). Andrew was the archbishop’s proctor in Rome in 1201, Inuect., i. 4, 5, 7, (Davies, pp. 93–105, 106–10); De iure, iii (RS iii. 189, 191, 193), v (RS iii. 274); Andrew died at Segni in July 1201 (De iure, iii (RS iii. 194)). He may be the Master Andrew of Bedingham (Norfolk, south of Norwich) who witnessed some of Hubert’s acts: Cheney, Hubert Walter, p. 167 (Hubert was also from Norfolk); English Episcopal Acta 3, Canterbury 1193–1205, ed. Cheney and John, nos. 601, 602. 36  Cf. perhaps Inuect., i. 6 (Davies, pp. 105–6). 37 Cf. De iure, iii (RS iii. 194).

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⟨lxx. S⟩ententia super causa electionis.38 ⟨lxxi. P⟩ape et curie uersus Signiam recessio.39 ⟨lxxii. C⟩ommissio super statu secunda. ⟨lxxiii. C⟩ommissio super electione secunda. ⟨lxxiiii. L⟩ittere protectionis patentes.40 ⟨lxxv. L⟩ittere commendationis pariter et protectionis clause.41 ⟨lxxvi. S⟩uper custodia Meneuensis ecclesie et perceptorum restitutione littere Cantuarie directe.42 ⟨lxxvii. L⟩itere abati Sancti Dogmaelis super ablatorum restitutione directe.43 ⟨lxxviii. C⟩ommissio super spoliatione per abatem Sancti Dogmaelis et Foliotum facta et abatiso illiteratura.44 ⟨lxxix. L⟩ittere super custodia Meneuensis ecclesie archidiacono iterato commissa.45 ⟨lxxx. Q⟩ualiter reuertens archidiaconus socios suos fere cunctos amisit et dep Andrea Signie defuncto.46 ⟨lxxxi. Q⟩ualiter ad regem in Normannia ueniens uarium ipsum, ‘fortuna uariante uices’, inuenit.47 ⟨lxxxii. D⟩e citacionibus uariis Londoniis a iudicibus impetratis et missis. ⟨lxxxiii. D⟩e grandi inter archiepiscopum et archidiaconum apud Lammeiam altercatione et crucis demum ab archidiacono ­resumptione. ⟨lxxxiiii. Q⟩ualiter in Walliam tendens et Meneuiam ueniens canonicos omnes corruptos inuenit.48 | ⟨lxxxv. D⟩e litteris Sancti Karadoci per inuidiam suppressis.49 | ⟨lxxxvi. L⟩ittere ad impediendumq ab Osberto archidiacono misse. ⟨lxxxvii. Q⟩ualiter archidiaconus in Norwalliam transiens electum Bangorumr reconciliauit et honori restituit.50 o  abbatis Brewer; ablatis MS; [Abbatis dicti] Wharton (in square brackets); the scribe writes abas with a single b throughout the table of contents    p de Wharton; om. MS    q impediendum Wharton; impedum MS    r Bangorum MS; Bangorensem Wharton and Brewer

38 Cf. De iure, iii (RS iii. 195). There Gerald quotes the pope as saying, ‘Si ex conscientia judicare possemus, et non secundum allegata, nulla certe daretur dilatio’. It was precisely this problem that Gerald himself addressed in the Paris lecture whose text is partly given below, ii. 2. 39  A summer retreat in the Lepini Mountains, about one day’s travel south-east of Rome. They left in late June or early July 1201 (De iure, iii (RS iii. 195)). 40 Cf. De iure, iii (RS iii. 190) and Inuect., iii. 11 (Davies, p. 153). 41 Cf. De iure, iii (RS iii. 190–1) and Inuect., iii. 12 (Davies, p. 154).

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lxx. A decision in the case of his election.38 lxxi. The withdrawal of the pope and cardinals to Segni.39 lxxii. A second commission on the church’s status. lxxiii. A second commission on the election. lxxiiii. Letters patent of protection.40 lxxv. Letters close of both commendation and protection.41 lxxvi. A letter sent to Canterbury on the custody of the church of St Davids and the restoration of its revenues.42 lxxvii. A letter sent to the abbot of St Dogmaels on the restoration of what had been seized.43 lxxviii. A commission on the plundering done by the abbot of St Dogmaels and by Foliot and on the abbot’s lack of education.44 lxxix. A letter entrusting the custody of the church of St Davids once again to the archdeacon.45 lxxx. How the archdeacon lost nearly all his companions on his return; and on the death of Andrew at Segni.46 lxxxi. How, coming to the king in Normandy, he found him changeable ‘with fortune’s changing turns’.47 lxxxii. On various summonses obtained from and sent by judges in London. lxxxiii. On the great dispute between the archbishop and archdeacon at Lambeth and how the archdeacon at last took up the cross again. lxxxiiii. How, heading into Wales and coming to St Davids, he found that all the canons had been corrupted.48 lxxxv. How the letter about St Caradog was suppressed out of envy.49 lxxxvi. An obstructive letter sent by Osbert the archdeacon. lxxxvii. How the archdeacon, crossing into North Wales, restored the bishop-­elect of Bangor to peace and honour.50

42 Cf. De iure, iii (RS iii. 190) and Inuect., iii. 13 (Davies, pp. 154–5). 43 Cf. De iure, iii (RS iii. 190) and Inuect., iii. 14 (Davies, p. 155). 44 Cf. De iure, iii (RS iii. 190) and Inuect., iii. 15 (Davies, p. 156). 45 Cf. De iure, iii (RS iii. 190) and Inuect., iii. 2 (Davies, p. 148). 46 Cf. De iure, iii (RS iii. 195). 47 Ausonius, Ordo urbium nobilium, Capua, 3, a tag used repeatedly by Gerald. 48 Cf. De iure, iii (RS iii. 196). 49 Cf. Inuect., iv. 9 (Davies, p. 177) and De iure, ii (RS iii. 183). 50  This trip is summarized in De iure, iii (RS iii. 196): ‘Post hæc autem qualiter Giraldus in Venedociam et Powisiam transiens, a principibus partium illarum cum honore maximo susceptus fuit; et de auxilio sibi liberaliter et large promisso, liber De gestis Giraldi manifeste declarat’.

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⟨lxxxviii. S⟩ermo Giraldi die Natalis in Monia. ⟨lxxxix. S⟩ermo eiusdem exquisitior. ⟨xc. D⟩e honore Giraldo in Venedocia facto. ⟨xci. S⟩ermo Giraldi apud Bangoriam. ⟨xcii. S⟩ermo Giraldi apud Aberconowe. ⟨xciii. S⟩ermo archidiaconi apud Stratmarchel. ⟨xciiii. S⟩ermo archidiaconi apud Vallem Crucis. ⟨xcv. Q⟩ualiter in uispiliones incidit et tandem Meneuiam ueniens fidem in fratribus nullam inuenit.51 ⟨xcvi. Q⟩uod caput corruptionis et exorbitationis abas Albe Domus erat.52 ⟨xcvii. D⟩e terribilibus, quibus tamen terreri non potuit, archidiacono rumoribus allatis.53 ⟨xcviii. D⟩e causis tante contra archidiaconum commotionis.54 ⟨xcix. L⟩ittere regis contra Giraldum misse. ⟨c. L⟩ittere iusticiarii contra Giraldum misse.55 ⟨ci. Q⟩ualiter abas Albe Domus modiss omnibus nocere presumpsit et nocumentum maius ipse suscepit.56 ⟨cii. Q⟩ualiter post rumores terribiles littere sunt ei terribiliores oblate.57 ⟨ciii. Q⟩ualiter archidiaconus Wigorniam adueniens priorem Sancte Trinitatis et clericos archiepiscopi obuios habuit.58 ⟨ciiii. L⟩ittere iusticiarii Giraldo directe.59 ⟨cv. L⟩ittere Giraldi iusticiario directe.60 ⟨cvi. Q⟩ualiter iusticiarium post tot minas in Cantiam sequens ­familiare cum ipso colloquium habuit.61 ⟨cvii. Q⟩ualiter monachi Cantuarienses archidiaconum sunt admirati  et det alis duabus quibus ferebatur et aliis ad laudem ipsius ­pertinentibus.62 |

 modis Wharton; modus MS    t de ed.; om. MS

s

51 Cf. De iure, iii (RS iii. 196–8). 52 Cf. De iure, iii (RS iii. 198–9); Knowles, ‘Some monastic enemies of Gerald of Wales’, pp. 139–40. 53 Cf. De iure, iii (RS iii. 199–200). 54 Cf. De iure, iii (RS iii. 200). 55  Perhaps the letter to the archdeacon of Oxford at De iure, iii (RS iii. 200–1) or that to the abbot of Whitland at De iure, iii (RS iii. 201). 56 Cf. De iure, iii (RS iii. 201–2). 57 Cf. De iure, iii (RS iii. 202–3).

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l xxxviii. Gerald’s sermon on Christmas Day in Anglesey. lxxxix. A choicer sermon by him. xc. On the honour paid to Gerald in Gwynedd. xci. Gerald’s sermon at Bangor. xcii. Gerald’s sermon at Aberconwy. xciii. The archdeacon’s sermon at Strata Marcella. xciiii. The archdeacon’s sermon at Valle Crucis. xcv. How he happened upon brigands and, coming at last to St Davids, found no faithfulness amongst his brethren.51 xcvi. That the abbot of Whitland was the head of this corruption and transgression.52 xcvii. On the frightening rumours reported to the archdeacon—­by which, nonetheless, he could not be frightened.53 xcviii. On the causes of such agitation against the archdeacon.54 xcix. A letter sent by the king in opposition to Gerald. c. A letter sent by the justiciar in opposition to Gerald.55 ci. How the abbot of Whitland undertook to do harm in every way and himself received greater harm.56 cii. How, after frightening rumours, a letter more frightening still was brought to him.57 ciii. How, as he approached Worcester, the archdeacon met the prior of Holy Trinity and the clerks of the archbishop.58 ciiii. A letter sent by the justiciar to Gerald.59 cv. A letter sent by Gerald to the justiciar.60 cvi. How, following the justiciar to Kent after so many threats, he had a friendly conversation with him.61 cvii. How the monks of Canterbury wondered at the archdeacon; and on the two wings on which he was borne and other things relating to his praise.62

58  That is, the prior of Christ Church, Canterbury, also known as Holy Trinity; pre­sum­ ably Geoffrey, prior 1191–1213. Cf. De iure, iii (RS iii. 203). 59 Cf. De iure, iii (RS iii. 205–6). 60 Cf. De iure, iii (RS iii. 206). 61 Cf. Inuect., vi. 1 (Davies, pp. 204–5); De iure, iii (RS iii. 206–8). The justiciar in question was Geoffrey fitz Peter (appointed 11 July 1198 and remaining in office until his death, 14 October 1213). 62  The ‘two wings’ are, on the one hand, Gerald’s pure intent and clear conscience, and, on the other hand, the praise and glory he receives. See Inuect., vi. 1 (Davies, pp. 204–5) and De iure, iii (RS iii. 208).

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⟨cviii. D⟩e nunciis archidiaconi in Normanniam missis et frustratoria archiepiscopi responsione. ⟨cix. Q⟩ualiter Meneuiam ueniens archidiaconus in festo Sancti Dauid63 clero et populo sermonem in puplico et puplico fecit et sacramentum fidelitatis in crastino a canonicis suscepit.64 ⟨cx. Q⟩ualiter, hoc archiepiscopou sinistre significato, litteras contra archidiaconum terribiles uariis personis mitti fecit.65 ⟨cxi. L⟩ittere regis Iohannis contra archidiaconum capitulo Meneuensi directe. ⟨cxii. L⟩ittere archiepiscopi contra archidiaconum misse. ⟨cxiii. L⟩ittere Willelmi Marescalli66 contra archidiaconum misse. ⟨cxiiii. L⟩ittere iusticiarii contra archidiaconum misse. ⟨cxv. L⟩ittere iudicum ad archidiaconum undique uexandum misse.67 ⟨cxvi. D⟩e appellatione ab archidiaconi clericis legitime interposita et iudicibus ob fauorem archiepiscopi nichilominus procedentibus.68 ⟨cxvii. L⟩ittere iusticiarii contra archidiaconum capitulo Meneuensi misse.69 ⟨cxviii. D⟩e sinodo uariis in locis ab archidiacono conuocata et semper per puplicam potestatem reuocata.70 ⟨cxix. A⟩rchidiaconus abati Sancti Dogmaelis.71 ⟨cxx. L⟩ittere ab officiali archiepiscopi per archidiaconum impetrate.72 ⟨cxxi. L⟩ittere archidiaconi tam capitulo Meneuensi quam uariis personis directe. ⟨cxxii. Q⟩ualiter sinodus etiam apud Brecheniauc conuocata fere impedita fuerat et annulata. ⟨cxxiii. D⟩e sinodo archidiaconi aput Brecheniauc celebrata et litteris archiepiscopi ad clerum auertendum transmissis.73 | ⟨cxxiiii. D⟩e litteris excusatoriis uariis ad sinodum missis et litteris archiepiscopi patentibus illuc transmissis ab archidiacono retentis. | u  archidiacono Wharton, suggesting archiepiscopo in margin; archiepiscopo Brewer; archidiacono MS

63  1 March 1202. 64 Cf. De iure, iv (RS iii. 211–12). The theme of his sermon was ingratitude. 65 Cf. De iure, iv (RS iii. 212). 66  ODNB, s.n. ‘Marshal, William, fourth earl of Pembroke (c. 1146–1219)’; Crouch, William Marshal. 67 Cf. De iure, iv (RS iii. 212–13). 68 Cf. De iure, iv (RS iii. 213–14). 69  What follows in De iure is not a letter from the justiciar to the chapter, but a letter from the justiciar to the sheriff of Pembroke about those members of the chapter who supported Gerald.

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cviii. On the messengers which the archdeacon sent to Normandy and the archbishop’s deceitful and obstructive reply. cix. How, coming to St Davids on the feast-­day of St David,63 the archdeacon gave a sermon openly and in public to the clergy and people and the next day received an oath of fealty from the canons.64 cx. How, when this was related to the archbishop in negative terms, he had frightening letters sent to various people against the archdeacon.65 cxi. A letter sent by King John to the chapter of St Davids against the archdeacon. cxii. A letter sent by the archbishop against the archdeacon. cxiii. A letter sent by William Marshal66 against the archdeacon. cxiiii. A letter sent by the justiciar against the archdeacon. cxv. A letter sent by the judges to harass the archdeacon from every side.67 cxvi. On the appeal lawfully lodged by the archdeacon’s clerks, and the judges who nonetheless proceeded because of their partiality towards the archbishop.68 cxvii. A letter sent by the justiciar to the chapter of St Davids against the archdeacon.69 cxviii. On the synod convoked by the archdeacon in various places and always cancelled by public authority.70 cxix. The archdeacon to the abbot of St Dogmaels.71 cxx. A letter requested and obtained by the archdeacon from the archbishop’s official.72 cxxi. Letters sent by the archdeacon both to the chapter of St Davids and to various people. cxxii. How the synod convoked at Brecon had also nearly been obstructed and quashed. cxxiii. On the archdeacon’s synod celebrated at Brecon and the letter which the archbishop sent to turn the clergy away from it.73 cxxiiii. On various letters excusatory sent to the synod and on letters patent which the archbishop sent there and which the archdeacon kept.

70 Cf. De iure, iv (RS iii. 215–16). 71 Cf. De iure, iv (RS iii. 216). 72 Cf. De iure, iv (RS iii. 216–17). 73 Cf. De iure, iv (RS iii. 217–18), which refers the reader for more detail to De gestis.

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⟨cxxv. Q⟩ualiter diuisus dupliciter immo multipliciter archidiaconus coram quibusdam iudicibus impetebat et coram aliis respondebat. ⟨cxxvi. L⟩ittere archidiaconi iudicibus misse. ⟨cxxvii. C⟩itacio iudicumv archidiacono missa.w ⟨cxxviii. L⟩ittere archiepiscopi capitulo Meneuensi contra archidiaconum misse. ⟨cxxix. D⟩e manu publice potestatis aggrauata et canonicis Meneuensibus archidiacono fauentibus expoliatis.74 ⟨cxxx. Q⟩ualiter apud Brakelegam archidiaconus coram iudicibus apparuit et canonicos Meneuenses ex parte capituli sibi pariter et ecclesie sue contrarios inuenit.75 ⟨cxxxi. D⟩e canonicorum Meneuensium perplexitate et quasi dilemate Folioto in curia facto.76 ⟨cxxxii. Q⟩uod Giraldus beneficium libertatis conferre parabat inuitis et de Walensibus qui libertatem recusabant magis admirandum.77 ⟨cxxxiii. Q⟩ualiter, aggrauata iam persecutione, nec etiam hospicio Giraldus in Meneuensibus partibus recipi potuit et dex terribili iudicum maiorum eidem citatione porrecta.78 ⟨cxxxiiii. C⟩itatio iudicum et edicio.79 ⟨cxxxv. L⟩ittere pape Giraldo directe. ⟨cxxxvi. Q⟩ualiter archidiaconus aduersitatibus frangi non potuit et de canonicis Meneuensibus cunctis apud Sanctum Albanum ire compulsis.80 ⟨cxxxvii. Q⟩ualiter archidiaconus contra diem illum se preparauit sed prius, ne quid per pigriciam ammitteret, in Venedociam ire non ­tardauit.81 | ⟨cxxxviii. L⟩ittere Giraldi amicis et consanguineis suis in Hiberniam misse.y ⟨cxxxix. L⟩ittere Lewelini Giraldo directe. ⟨cxl. L⟩ittere Madoci, principis Pouuisie,82 Giraldo directe. v  judicum Wharton; iudicium MS    w missa Wharton; misse MS    x de ed.; om. MS    y  Three dots in intercolumnar space draw attention to the mention of G.’s family: see Appendix 3 (p. 249).

74  Cf. a letter from the justiciar, included in De iure, iv (RS iii. 214–15). 75 Cf. De iure, iv (RS iii. 218). 76 Cf. De iure, iv (RS iii. 220–1). 77  Gerald’s speech to this effect is in De iure, iv (RS iii. 222–3). 78  De iure, iv (RS iii. 223–4). 79 Cf. De iure, iv (RS iii. 224–5): ‘Qui autem citationem hanc videre voluerit et editiones varias cum nugis suis insertis, necnon et literas papæ super hoc Giraldo directas, De Gestis Giraldi librum inspiciat’.

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cxxv. How the archdeacon was pulled in two—­or rather in many—­ directions: he began his suit before one set of judges and answered the charges before another set. cxxvi. A letter sent by the archdeacon to the judges. cxxvii. A summons sent by the judges to the archdeacon. cxxviii. A letter sent by the archbishop to the chapter of St Davids against the archdeacon. cxxix. How the hand of secular power became more oppressive and how the canons of St Davids who took the archdeacon’s side were despoiled.74 cxxx. How the archdeacon appeared before the judges at Brackley and found there canons of St Davids who opposed both him and their church on the chapter’s behalf.75 cxxxi. On the perplexity of the canons of St Davids and on the dilemma, so to speak, inflicted on Foliot at the curia.76 cxxxii. That Gerald prepared to grant the gift of freedom to unwilling recipients; and that it is still more amazing that the Welsh refused this freedom.77 cxxxiii. How his persecution became harsher and Gerald could not even be received as a guest in the region of St Davids; and how a terrible summons from higher judges was delivered to him.78 cxxxiiii. A summons from the judges and a statement.79 cxxxv. A letter sent by the pope to Gerald. cxxxvi. How the archdeacon could not be broken by misfortunes and how all the canons of St Davids were forced to go to St Albans.80 cxxxvii. How the archdeacon readied himself for that day but first, so as not to lose anything through laziness, hurried to Gwynedd.81 cxxxviii. A letter sent by Gerald to his friends and kinsmen in Ireland. cxxxix. A letter sent by Llywelyn to Gerald. cxl. A letter sent by Madog, Prince of Powys,82 to Gerald.

80 Cf. De iure, iv (RS iii. 225). 81 Cf. De iure, iv (RS iii. 225–6). 82  Madog ap Gruffudd, ruler of northern Powys, died 1236 (Stephenson, Medieval Powys, p. xxi), at this date and when Gerald was writing, an ally of Llywelyn. On the title given here see ibid., p. 82 n. 56 (but Stephenson’s reaction to the title loses much of its force if one considers when he was writing De gestis; Gwenwynwyn, ruler of Southern Powys, died, having lost his territory, in 1216; cf. Stephenson, Medieval Powys, pp. 97 and 108).

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RS i. 14

⟨cxli. L⟩ittere regine Norwallie83 Giraldo directe. ⟨cxlii. Q⟩ualiter in Slopesburie finibus Angliam intrando aggrauatam in suos persecutorum manum per nuntios accepit, in se quoque id ipsum ibidem inuenit.84 ⟨cxliii. Q⟩uod exceptionem spoliationis suorum opponere proposuit.85 ⟨cxliiii. Q⟩uid apud Sanctum Albanum die causarum quinto actum fuit et qualiter archiepiscopus ad pacem ineundam per suos laborauit.86 ⟨cxlv. O⟩blatus ab archidiacono concordie modus et in manus iudicum scripto datus.87 ⟨cxlvi. Q⟩ualiter archiepiscopus de tribus confisus88 concordie tali non adquieuit. ⟨cxlvii. L⟩ittere Wigornensis episcopi Malgeri super hoc Giraldo directe.89 ⟨cxlviii. Q⟩ualiter in litis inicio Elyensisz episcopus uerba iocosa proposuit, quibus archidiaconus serio respondit.90 ⟨cxlix. Q⟩ualiter canonici Meneuenses certatim ad peierandum ­prosilierunt.91 ⟨cl. D⟩e litteris archidiaconi quas canonici omnes timore compulsi falsas esse dicebant; falsi tamen eas acusare ausi non erant. ⟨cli. Q⟩ui fuerunt iuratores illi, tam contra electum suum quam etiam ecclesiasticam libertatem, et quibus nominibus censebantur. ⟨clii. D⟩e abate Sancti Dogmaelis92 tunc primo comparente et solum litteras iusticiarii prohibitorias allegante. ⟨cliii. D⟩e examinatione abatis Sancti Dogmaelis et qualiter tam legere quam exponere coram iudicibus recusauit.93 | ⟨cliiii. Q⟩ualiter propter spoliationem nuper factam archidiaconus nouos archiepiscopi conatus per appellationem elisit et tot aduersarios suos uacuos remisit.94

 Elyensis Wharton; Elyen MS, without mark of abbreviation

z

83  As Pryce notes, Acts, no. 275 (pp. 444–5), this cannot be Joan, illegitimate daughter of King John, since Llywelyn probably married her in 1205, whereas the date of the letter would appear to be during the summer of 1202. The most likely candidate, he suggests, is a sister of Ranulf III, earl of Chester; cf. The Letters of Pope Innocent III (1198–1216), ed. Cheney and Cheney, no. 600. 84 Cf. De iure, iv (RS iii. 227–8). 85 Cf. De iure, iv (RS iii. 227). 86 Cf. De iure, iv (RS iii. 228). The archbishop was at Dunstable, some twelve miles northwest of St Albans along Watling Street. 87 Cf. De iure, iv (RS iii. 229–31). 88  In royal power, in the chapter of St Davids, and in the Roman curia, according to De iure, iv (RS iii. 231).

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cxli. A letter sent by the queen of North Wales83 to Gerald. cxlii. How, entering England at the Shropshire border, he learned from messengers that his persecutors’ oppression of his people had grown harsher, and found the same oppression there himself as well.84 cxliii. That he proposed to make an objection against the despoiling of his people.85 cxliiii. What happened at St Albans on the fifth day of the pleadings, and how the archbishop worked, through representatives, to make peace.86 cxlv. A form of settlement offered by the archdeacon and delivered into the judges’ hands in writing.87 cxlvi. How the archbishop, trusting in three things,88 did not agree to such a settlement. cxlvii. A letter from Mauger, bishop of Worcester, to Gerald about this.89 cxlviii. How at the outset of the lawsuit the bishop of Ely made a joking statement, to which the archdeacon replied in all seriousness.90 cxlix. How the canons of St Davids leapt over one another in their eagerness to perjure themselves.91 cl. On the archdeacon’s letter which all the canons were forced by fear to say was false; but they did not dare to make an accusation of forgery. cli. Who these people were who swore not only against their own bishop-­elect but against the liberty of their church, and what their names were. clii. How the abbot of St Dogmaels92 first appeared in court and how letters prohibitory from the justiciar were the only argument he advanced. cliii. On the examination of the abbot of St Dogmaels and how he refused either to read or to expound in front of the judges.93 cliiii. How, because of the recent despoliation, the archdeacon frustrated the archbishop’s new attempts by making an appeal and sent his many adversaries back empty-­handed.94

89 Cf. De iure, iv (RS iii. 231–2). 90 Cf. De iure, iv (RS iii. 232). 91 Cf. De iure, iv (RS iii. 233–4). 92  See Knowles, ‘Some monastic enemies of Gerald of Wales’, p. 141. 93 Cf. De iure, iv (RS iii. 234). 94 Cf. De iure, iv (RS iii. 235).

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fo. 156v

RS i. 15

⟨clv. Q⟩ualiter Willelmum filium Martini et Nicholaum Auenel,95 spoliatores suos, coram iudicibus sententia anathematis innodauit et archiepiscopo, ut eam confirmaret, denuntiauit.96 ⟨clvi. L⟩ittere archiepiscopi pro spoliatis, ut aliquid facere uideretur, iudicibus misse. | ⟨clvii. Q⟩uod tanta capituli Meneuensis corruptio facta fuit ut propter predictam spoliationem cessare a diuinis detrectarent.97 ⟨clviii. Q⟩ualiter minuti Marchie iudices appellationi non deferentes in summam pecunie grandem archidiaconum frustra condempnarunt.98 ⟨clix. D⟩e tercio Giraldi uersus curiam labore.99 ⟨clx. Q⟩ualiter apud Exsessiam nauigium querens et non inueniens in Cantiam reuersus apud Douoriam transfretauit.100 ⟨clxi. Q⟩ualiter in spoliatores incidit et ad ecclesie refugium uix ­euasit.101 ⟨clxii. Q⟩ualiter obsessus in ecclesia sub conductu tandem exiuit et se pecunia suosque redemit.102 ⟨clxiii. Q⟩ualiter apud Trecas canonicos Meneuenses tres obuios habuit, ubi et Iuorum Landauensem periurii pariter et furti conuicit.103 ⟨clxiiii. Q⟩ualiter apud Clareuallem abati Albe Domus quem meruerat locum renuit104 et qualiter cum archiepiscopo Lugdunensi ibidem locutus fuit.105 ⟨clxv. I⟩ndulgentia domini pape Bangorum electo concessa.106 ⟨clxvi. Q⟩ualiter Alpes transcendens Italiam intrauit et per Parme Bononieque pericula Placentiam contra Natale uix peruenit. ⟨clxvii. Q⟩uam modicam in socio107 et quam magnam in extraneo Faentie liberalitatem inuenit. | ⟨clxviii. Q⟩ualiter ad curiam ueniens a papa in osculo et cum honore susceptus, Bangorumaa electum quoque in osculo suscipi fecit.108  Bangorum MS; Bangorensem Wharton and Brewer

aa

95 William fitz Martin was lord of Cemais; Nicholas Avenel was bailiff of Pembroke (De iure, iv (RS iii. 227)). 96 Cf. De iure, iv (RS iii. 235). 97  The sense of spoliatio here involves loss of rights, privileges, and stipends. 98 Cf. De iure, iv (RS iii. 235–6); Inuect., iii. 19 (Davies, pp. 159–60, 4 June 1203). 99 Cf. De iure, iv (RS iii. 236–41). He reached Rome on 4 January 1203. 100 Cf. De iure, iv (RS iii. 238–9). 101 Cf. De iure, iv (RS iii. 240). 102 Cf. De iure, iv (RS iii. 240). 103  In fact there were two canons of Llandaff: De iure, iv (RS iii. 240), ‘et qualiter ibi duos canonicos Landavenses, quos secum adduxerat, adversariis furtim adhærentes et fraudulenter, Giraldus amisit’. On Ifor, cf. De iure, iv (RS iii. 248). 104 Cf. De iure, iv (RS iii. 240), ‘abbatis de Alba Landa depositionem non immerito procuravit’; and De iure, iii (RS iii. 202), ‘Porro archidiaconus paulo post . . . [sc. abbatem] cum

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clv. How he bound William fitz Martin and Nicholas Avenel,95 his despoilers, with a sentence of excommunication in front of the judges and notified the archbishop so he might confirm it.96 clvi. A letter from the archbishop to the judges in favour of those who had been despoiled, sent in order that he might appear to do something. clvii. That the chapter of St Davids had been so corrupted that they refused to stop divine service on account of the said despoliation.97 clviii. How the low-­ranking judges of the March did not defer to his appeal but vainly condemned the archdeacon to pay a large sum of money.98 clix. On Gerald’s third laborious journey to the curia.99 clx. How, looking for a vessel in Essex and not finding one, he returned to Kent and crossed from Dover.100 clxi. How he happened upon robbers and barely escaped to the safety of a church.101 clxii. How he was besieged in the church, at last emerged under a safe-­conduct, and paid a ransom for himself and his men.102 clxiii. How he met three canons of St Davids at Troyes and there also proved that Ifor, canon of Llandaff, was guilty of both perjury and theft.103 clxiiii. How at Clairvaux he refused the abbot of Whitland the place to which he was entitled,104 and how he spoke there with the archbishop of Lyons.105 clxv. A privilege granted to the bishop-­elect of Bangor by the lord pope.106 clxvi. How he crossed the Alps, entered Italy and, passing through the dangers of Parma and Bologna, barely arrived in Piacenza before Christmas. clxvii. How little generosity he found in his companion,107 and how much in a stranger, in Faenza. clxviii. How, arriving at the curia, he was honourably received by the pope with a kiss, and caused the bishop-­elect of Bangor to be received with a kiss as well.108 dedecore deponi, ac potestate, qua tam temere præsumpsit abuti, justo judicio privari fecit; sicut in sequentibus palam erit’. 105  Rainaldus Forez, archbishop 1193–1226; see Series episcoporum Ecclesiae Catholicae, ed. Gams, p. 571; Hierarchia Catholica medii et recentioris aevi, ed. Eubel, i. 330. 106 Perhaps a safe-conduct permitting him to come to Rome irrespective of his ­excommunication. 107  That is, the bishop-elect of Bangor. Cf. De iure, iv (RS iii. 240–1). 108 Cf. De iure, iv (RS iii. 241).

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⟨clxix. Q⟩ualiter in primo consistorio Giraldus coram papa proposuit et, post propalatas iniurias, ecclesie sue iura non tacuit.109 ⟨clxx. L⟩ittere principum Wallie pape directe.110 ⟨clxxi. I⟩udicum relatio secunda.111 ⟨clxxii. D⟩e attestationibus Sancti Albani in alio consistorio utrimque datis et auditoribus eisdem assignatis.112 ⟨clxxiii. Q⟩ualiter aduersarii ad criminales obiectiones conuersi sunt et testes utrimque suscepti.113 ⟨clxxiiii. Q⟩ualiter equum suum in curia contra falsam trutanni uendicationem per industriam et cautelam exquisitam Giraldus obtinuit.114 ⟨clxxv. D⟩e pape et archidiaconi ad Fontem Virginum collatione.115 ⟨clxxvi. Q⟩ualiter, puplicatis attestationibus utrisque, cum disputare cepissent, Tinemudus116 per pape inquisitionem ore proprio conuictus confusionem incurrit.117 ⟨clxxvii. A⟩llegationes contra obiecta pro archidiacono facte. ⟨clxxviii. Q⟩ualiter in proximo consistorio ad sui defensionem et aduersariorum confusionem archidiaconus exorsus est.118 ⟨clxxix. P⟩ro Bangorumbb electo Giraldi oratio. ⟨clxxx. Q⟩ualiter ad collirium efficax in curia pars aduersa se conuertit et totam contra Giraldum curiam per hoc corrupit.119 ⟨clxxxi. Q⟩ualiter productioni testium contra testes circumuentus archidiaconus renunciauit.120 ⟨clxxxii. D⟩e Giraldi scrupulo et conscientia lesa remedioque contra salubriter prouiso.121 ⟨clxxxiii. Q⟩ualiter in septimana Paschali animum suum archidiacono papa ex parte denudauit.122  Bangorum MS; Bangorensi Wharton and Brewer

bb

109  Gerald’s speech is included in oratio recta in De iure, iv (RS iii. 242–3). 110  The text of the letter is included in De iure, iv (RS iii. 244–6) where the princes are named as Llywelyn ab Iorwerth of Gwynedd, Gwenwynwyn (ab Owain Cyfeiliog) and Madog (ap Madog of Northern Powys), and Gruffudd, Maelgwn, Rhys, and Maredudd, sons of the Lord Rhys; see Introduction, pp. lxiv, n. 198, and lxviii–lxix. 111 Cf. De iure, iv (RS iii. 246): ‘Deinde vero judicum relatio in medium, totam negotii seriem continens, producta utrinque et in publica audientia lecta fuit’. 112  De iure, iv (RS iii. 246) describes this as happening ‘in the next consistory’, and refers the reader back to De gestis. 113 Cf. De iure, iv (RS iii. 246–7). 114 Cf. De iure, iv (RS iii. 249–52); the monk in question, from St Dogmaels, was a Welshman named ‘Golwenus’ (Gollwyn); he also figures as a witness against Gerald (Inuect., i. 13 (Davies, p. 126)). 115  A fountain just to the south of the Lateran: De iure, iv (RS iii. 252). 116  John of Tynemouth (d. 1221), canonist and later archdeacon of Oxford.

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clxix. How Gerald presented his arguments before the pope in a first consistory and, after narrating the wrongs done him, was not silent about the rights of his church.109 clxx. A letter sent by princes of Wales to the pope.110 clxxi. A second account from the judges.111 clxxii. On the sworn testimonies from St Albans presented by both sides at another consistory, and the auditors assigned to hear them.112 clxxiii. How his adversaries turned to criminal charges and how witnesses for both sides were heard.113 clxxiiii. How Gerald retained his horse against a false claim made in the curia by a truant monk, a claim deliberately and craftily devised.114 clxxv. On the conversation of the pope and the archdeacon at the Fons Virginum.115 clxxvi. How, when the sworn testimonies on both sides had been made public and argument had begun, Tynemouth116 was convicted out of his own mouth under the pope’s questioning and fell into confusion.117 clxxvii. Arguments made against the charges, in the archdeacon’s favour. clxxviii. How in the next consistory the archdeacon began to speak, in his own defence and to the confusion of his opponents.118 clxxix. Gerald’s speech in favour of the bishop-­elect of Bangor. clxxx. How the opposing side managed to effectively sweeten the deal in the curia and thereby corrupted the whole curia against Gerald.119 clxxxi. How the archdeacon was misled and gave up on presenting his own witnesses against the witnesses of his opponents.120 clxxxii. On Gerald’s uneasiness and his offended conscience, and the salutary cure for this which was supplied.121 clxxxiii. How in Easter Week the pope partly revealed his thoughts to the archdeacon.122

117 Cf. De iure, iv (RS iii. 255–6). 118  Perhaps the speech given in De iure, iv (RS iii. 257–63). 119  That is, through bribery. Cf. De iure, iv (RS iii. 263–4), where Gerald expands on the figure of collirium, an eye-salve, used to blind the court. 120 Cf. De iure, iv (RS iii. 264–6). 121  Perhaps referring to Gerald’s exchange with the pope at De iure, iv (RS iii. 266). 122 Cf. De iure, iv (RS iii. 267).

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RS i. 16

fo. 157r

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⟨clxxxiiii. Q⟩ualiter feria secunda post clausum Pascha123 electionem utramque, tam archidiaconi scilicet quam abatis, papa sententiando cassauit.124 | ⟨clxxxv. Q⟩ualiter in crastino Giraldus processum cause status peciit et post deliberationem inde factam commissionem impetrauit.125 ⟨clxxxvi. D⟩e partis aduerse graui per hoc confusione.126 | ⟨clxxxvii. Q⟩ualiter archidiaconum in secreto, quasi post offensam, papa uerbis placare parauit.127 ⟨clxxxviii. L⟩ittere cardinalium pro Giraldo directe.128 ⟨clxxxix. L⟩ittere cardinalium iterum ob archidiaconi fauorem misse. ⟨cxc. D⟩e sedicione ciuium, propter quam urbem papa reliquit, et archidiacono per Hostiensis129 auxilium ipsum sequente.130 ⟨cxci. Q⟩ualiter Preneste ueniens mutuum a papa, sicut antecc ab Hostiensi Rome, Giraldus impetrauit.131 ⟨cxcii. Q⟩ualiter a cruce resumpta per papam est absolutus.132 ⟨cxciii. A⟩llegationes archidiaconi contra Tinemudum super expensarum repeticione.133 ⟨cxciiii. Q⟩ualiter expense Giraldo reddende per sententiam sunt ­adiudicate.134 ⟨cxcv. Q⟩ualiter, iterum curia corrupta, forma commissionis in causa status mutata est et uiciata et dedd rationibus contra collectis.135 ⟨cxcvi. L⟩ittere super electione a Meneuensi capitulo de nouo facienda iudicibus136 directe.137 ⟨cxcvii. L⟩ittere super statu Meneuensis ecclesie iudicibus138 directe.139 cc  ante MS (and cf. De prin., ii. 12 (OMT 486)); antea Wharton and Brewer     de Wharton; om. MS

dd

123 In De iure, iv (RS iii. 267), however, it is said to be ‘feria tertia post clausum Pascha’. 124  The sentence is given in oratio recta in De iure, iv (RS iii. 267–8). 125 Cf. De iure, iv (RS iii. 270–1). 126 Cf. De iure, iv (RS iii. 271). 127 Cf. De iure, iv (RS iii. 271–2), where the pope’s words are given in oratio recta. 128 Cf. De iure, iv (RS iii. 272), which refers the reader to De gestis. Perhaps cf. also Inuect., iv. 7–8 (Davies, pp. 173–5), a series of letters from cardinals. 129  Ottaviano, cardinal-bishop of Ostia and Velletri (d. 5 April 1206). See Maleczek, Papst und Kardinalskolleg von 1191 bis 1216, pp. 80–3. 130 Cf. De iure, iv (RS iii. 272): ‘qualiter etiam Octovianus Hostiensis episcopus cardinalis mutuum Giraldo Romæ habere fecit, et ipsum post papam Præneste transmisit’. 131 Cf. De iure, iv (RS iii. 272–3). 132 Cf. De iure, iv (RS iii. 273) and v (RS iii. 284–6); and Inuect., iii. 18 (Davies, pp. 158–9). 133 Cf. De iure, v (RS iii. 274–7). 134 Cf. De iure, v (RS iii. 277). 135 Cf. De iure, v (RS iii. 278–81), where the arguments are laid out at length.

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clxxxiiii. How on the Monday after the close of Easter123 the pope pronounced his sentence and annulled both elections, that of the archdeacon as well as that of the abbot.124 clxxxv. How the following day Gerald asked to proceed with the case on his church’s status and how, after this had been considered, he obtained the commission he requested.125 clxxxvi. On the severe bewilderment of the opposing party as a result of this.126 clxxxvii. How the pope resolved to privately speak placatingly to the archdeacon, as if he had offended him.127 clxxxviii. A letter sent by the cardinals in favour of Gerald.128 clxxxix. Another letter sent by the cardinals because of their approval of the archdeacon. cxc. On the violent discord amongst the citizenry, on account of which the pope left the city, and how, with the help of the cardinal-­bishop of Ostia,129 the archdeacon followed him.130 cxci. How, coming to Palestrina, Gerald asked for and obtained a loan from the pope, as he had before from the cardinal-­ bishop of Ostia in Rome.131 cxcii. How the pope absolved him of the cross which he had taken up again.132 cxciii. The archdeacon’s arguments against Tynemouth on recovering costs.133 cxciiii. How the costs to be repaid to Gerald were adjudged, by judicial pronouncement.134 cxcv. How the curia was again suborned and the form of Gerald’s commission in the case of his church’s status was changed and impaired; and on the arguments which he collected to prevent this.135 cxcvi. A letter sent to judges136 on the chapter of St Davids making a new election.137 cxcvii. A letter sent to judges138 on the status of the church of St Davids.139

136  The bishops of Ely and Worcester: De iure, v (RS iii. 281). 137 Cf. De iure, v (RS iii. 281–2) and Inuect., iv. 4 (Davies, p. 172). In each this letter is given in full, but the date is different in each version. 138 The bishop of Durham and the dean and prior of Holy Trinity, York: De iure, v (RS iii. 282). 139 Cf. De iure, v (RS iii. 282–4).

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⟨cxcviii. L⟩ittere super expensis iudicibus140 directe.141 ⟨cxcix. L⟩ittere super crucis et peregrinationis absolucione.142 ⟨cc. L⟩ittere reuocatorie iudicibus directe.143 ⟨cci. L⟩ittere contra spoliatores et excommunicatos suos laicos ­iudicibus directe.144 ⟨ccii. L⟩ittere contra spoliatores suos clericos et deee administracione Meneuensis ecclesie tercio concessa.145 ⟨cciii. L⟩ittere confirmationis clericis suis perquisite.146 ⟨cciiii. D⟩e grauamine super mutuo perquirendo.147 | ⟨ccv. D⟩e Bangorumff electo spoliato et archidiacono per pueri ­uisionem confortato.148 ⟨ccvi. D⟩e archidiaconi reuersione et cum papa prius confabulatione et ab angustiis Bononie liberatione.149 ⟨ccvii. D⟩e archidiaconi apud Castellionem captione et, Deo opitilante, preter spem liberatione.150 ⟨ccviii. Q⟩ualiter Trecas ueniens et inde Parisius Normannie marchiam penetrans electionem in absentia sua faciendam elusit.151 ⟨ccix. Q⟩ualiter archidiaconus Cantuariamgg properans appellationem coram Eliensi episcopo in Normannia factam etiam coram suffraganeis episcopis renouauit.152 ⟨ccx. L⟩ittere Giraldi archidiaconi Cantuariensi archiepiscopo misse.153 ⟨ccxi. Q⟩ualiter archidiaconus in Walliam ueniens rerum suarum et redicuum turbationem inuentam prudenter elusit.154 ⟨ccxii. L⟩ittere iudicum archidiaconohh citatorie.155 ee  de Wharton; om. MS    ff Bangorum MS; Bangorensi Wharton and Brewer     Cantuariam Wharton; canturiam MS    hh archidiacono ed.; archidiaconi MS

gg

140  The bishop of Durham and the dean and prior of Holy Trinity, York: De iure, v (RS iii. 284). 141 Cf. De iure, v (RS iii. 284) and Inuect., iii. 17 (Davies, pp. 157–8). 142 Cf. De iure, v (RS iii. 284–6) and Inuect., iii. 18 (Davies, pp. 158–9). 143  The bishops of Ely and Worcester and the archdeacon of Buckingham. Cf. De iure, v (RS iii. 286) and Inuect., iii. 19 (Davies, pp. 159–60). 144 Cf. Inuect., iii. 20 (Davies, p. 160). 145  This letter is mentioned, but its text not given, in De iure, v (RS iii. 286). de is likewise absent in one MS of that text: perhaps it is derived from De gestis Giraldi. 146 Perhaps Inuect., iii. 21–3 (Davies, p. 160–2). Cf. perhaps De iure, v (RS iii. 286): ‘literas confirmationis canonicarum duarum Menevensis ecclesiæ et unius ecclesiæ parochialis, quas clericis suis in administratione concessa contulerat’. 147 Cf. De iure, v (RS ii. 286–7). 148  On the robbing of the bishop-elect of Bangor, cf. De iure, v (RS iii. 287–8). A vision is discussed at De iure, v (RS iii. 290), but it is not clear that it is the same.

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cxcviii. A letter sent to judges140 concerning costs.141 cxcix. A letter absolving Gerald from taking the cross and going on crusade.142 cc. A letter of revocation sent to judges.143 cci. A letter sent to the judges against the despoilers and the laymen whom Gerald had excommunicated.144 ccii. A letter against the clergy who robbed him; and on the grant, for the third time, of the management of the church of St Davids.145 cciii. Letters of confirmation obtained for his clerics.146 cciiii. On his financial burden in getting a loan.147 ccv. On the robbing of the bishop-­elect of Bangor and how the archdeacon was comforted by the vision of a boy.148 ccvi. On the archdeacon’s return journey, his discussion with the pope before he left, and his deliverance from his afflictions in Bologna.149 ccvii. On the archdeacon’s capture at Châtillon-­sur-­Seine and his delivery through God’s unexpected help.150 ccviii. How he came to Troyes, from there entered the Norman march through Paris, and frustrated the election which was to have been made in his absence.151 ccix. How the archdeacon hurried to Canterbury and renewed before suffragan bishops the appeal which he had made before the bishop of Ely in Normandy.152 ccx. A letter sent by Archdeacon Gerald to the archbishop of Canterbury.153 ccxi. How the archdeacon returned to Wales and skilfully parried the disruption of his goods and revenues which he found occurring there.154 ccxii. A letter of summons from judges to the archdeacon.155

149 Cf. De iure, v (RS iii. 288–91). 150 Cf. De iure, v (RS iii. 291–7). 151 Cf. De iure, v (RS iii. 297–303). 152 Cf. De iure, vi (RS iii. 304–5). 153 Cf. De iure, vi (RS iii. 305–7). 154 Cf. De iure, vi (RS iii. 307–8). 155  From the priors of Llanthony and Brecon. Cf. De iure, vi (RS iii. 308), where the text of the letter is given.

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RS i. 18

fo. 157v

de g e s t i s gi r a l di, c a pi t v l a

⟨ccxiii. Q⟩ualiter archidiaconus Meneuiam tendens de turbatione ibidem facta et grauiore in breui facienda premunitus per uisionem fuit.156 ⟨ccxiiii. Q⟩ualiter contumeliis affectus et spoliatus nec tamen hiis omnibus a proposito reuocatus.157 ⟨ccxv. Q⟩ualiter archidiaconus laborem prosequens et in Angliam tendens se contra persecutiones quoad potuit premuniuit Deoque et Sancto Dauid totum commisit.158 ⟨ccxvi. Q⟩ualiter apud Westmonasterium electio facta fuit et inter archiepiscopum et archidiaconum concordie dies et compositionis assignatus.159 ⟨ccxvii. Q⟩ualiter et quibus ex causis archidiaconatum suum cum prebenda resignauit et in utroque nepotem suum institui procurauit.160 ⟨ccxviii. Q⟩uod fata causarum ambigua et quia preter spem multa contingunt.161 | ⟨ccxix. D⟩e uisionibus et earum expositionibus.162 ⟨ccxx. V⟩isio prima et uisionis expositio.163 ⟨ccxxi. V⟩isio secunda et uisionis expositio.164 ⟨ccxxii. V⟩isio tercia et uisionis expositio.165 | ⟨ccxxiii. V⟩isio iiii et uisionis expositio.166 ⟨ccxxiiii. V⟩isio v et uisionis expositio.167 ⟨ccxxv. V⟩isio vi et uisionis expositio.168 ⟨ccxxvi. V⟩isiones tres, vii scilicet et viii et ix, quoniam eandem habent expositionem, hic coniuncte.169 ⟨ccxxvii. V⟩isio x et uisionis expositio.170 ⟨ccxxviii. V⟩isio xi et uisionis expositio.171 ⟨ccxxix. V⟩isiones xii et xiii decima sub eadem expositione coniuncte.172 ⟨ccxxx. V⟩isio xv173 et uisionis expositio.174 ⟨ccxxxi. V⟩isiones tres, xvi et xvii et xviii, sub eadem expositioneii coniuncte.jj175 ii  expositione Wharton (and equivalent title in Inuect., vi. 15); compositione MS and Brewer    jj conjunctæ Wharton; coniucte MS

156 Cf. De iure, vi (RS iii. 309–11). 157 Cf. De iure, vi (RS iii. 311–17). 158 Cf. De iure, vi (RS iii. 317–18). 159 Cf. De iure, vi (RS iii. 321–4), where we are told they met on 7 December 1203. 160 Cf. De iure, vi (RS iii. 325–6). 161  Cf. Justinian, Cod. 2. 7. 14: ‘Aduocati, qui dirimunt ambigua fata causarum . . . ’. In Gerald’s own works, cf. Inuect., v. 2 (Davies, p. 184); De iure, prol. (RS iii. 103) and iv (RS iii. 269); Vita Galf., ii. 9 (RS iv. 406): ‘Meticulosa nimirum res est, quoniam ambigua sunt semper fata causarum . . . ’. 162 Cf. Inuect., vi. 3 (Davies, p. 207). 163 Cf. Inuect., vi. 4 (Davies, pp. 207–8). 164 Cf. Inuect., vi. 5 (Davies, pp. 208–9).

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ccxiii. How, as the archdeacon made his way to St Davids, he was forewarned in a vision of the disturbance which was happening there and which would soon worsen.156 ccxiiii. How, robbed and assailed by insults, he was nonetheless not deterred from his purpose by anything.157 ccxv. How the archdeacon carried on in his task and, passing into England, girt himself against attack (as far as he was able) and entrusted all to God and to St David.158 ccxvi. How an election was made at Westminster and how a day was set to make a settlement and peace between the archbishop and the archdeacon.159 ccxvii. How and why he resigned his archdeaconry and prebend and had his nephew appointed to both.160 ccxviii. That the destinies of suits are uncertain and that many things happen unexpectedly.161 ccxix. On visions and their explanations.162 ccxx. The first vision and that vision’s explanation.163 ccxxi. The second vision and that vision’s explanation.164 ccxxii. The third vision and that vision’s explanation.165 ccxxiii. The fourth vision and that vision’s explanation.166 ccxxiiii. The fifth vision and that vision’s explanation.167 ccxxv. The sixth vision and that vision’s explanation.168 ccxxvi. Three visions, that is the seventh, eighth, and ninth, here joined because they have the same explanation.169 ccxxvii. The tenth vision and that vision’s explanation.170 ccxxviii. The eleventh vision and that vision’s explanation.171 ccxxix. The twelfth and thirteenth visions joined under the same explanation.172 ccxxx. The fifteenth173 vision and that vision’s explanation.174 ccxxxi. Three visions, the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth, joined under the same explanation.175

165 Cf. Inuect., vi. 6 (Davies, p. 209). 166 Cf. Inuect., vi. 7 (Davies, pp. 209–10). 167 Cf. Inuect., vi. 8 (Davies, p. 210). 168 Cf. Inuect., vi. 9 (Davies, pp. 210–11). 169 Cf. Inuect., vi. 10 (Davies, pp. 211–12). 170 Cf. Inuect., vi. 11 (Davies, p. 213). 171 Cf. Inuect., vi. 12 (Davies, p. 214). 172 Cf. Inuect., vi. 13 (Davies, pp. 214–15). 173  The fourteenth vision is omitted both here and in Inuect. 174 Cf. Inuect., vi. 14 (Davies, pp. 215–16). 175 Cf. Inuect., vi. 15 (Davies, pp. 216–17).

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fo. 158r RS i. 19

de g e s t i s gi r a l di, proe m i v m

⟨ccxxxii. V⟩isio xix et uisionis exposicio pariter et concordantia.176 ⟨ccxxxiii. V⟩isiones xxi177 et xxii et xxiii simul eandem uel similem habentes expositionem.178 ⟨ccxxxiiii. V⟩isio xxiv et uisionis exposicio.179 ⟨ccxxxv. V⟩isiones xxv et xxvi sub eadem simul exposicione.180 ⟨ccxxxvi. V⟩isio xxvii, scilicet de anacorita de Locheis, et uisio xxviii simul similem habentes expositionem.181 ⟨ccxxxvii. V⟩isio uicesima nonxxix et uisionis expositio.182 ⟨ccxxxviii. V⟩isio xxx et uisionis expositio.183 ⟨ccxxxix. D⟩e litteris anachorite de Niwegal consolatoriis, et uaticinalibus ac ueris eiusdem predictionibus.184 ||

⟨ PRO E MI V M I N L IBRVM DE GE ST I S  GI R A LDI.⟩ a

⟨I⟩nclitorum gesta uirorum quondam Grai ueteres primo per ymagines,185 deinde per scripta tenacius et expressius, memorie commendabant, quatinus exacti temporis uirtutum extantium emula posteritas posset imitatione laudabili ad similia prouocari. Fabulosis enim seu relationibus seu lectionibus, quibus yperbolica promuntur et impossibilia, ad imitacionem nullus accenditur. Sed ubi uera uiri uirtus e­ micat, ibi ad imitandum et uirilia conplexandum mens uirtuosa consurgit.186 ⟨V⟩nde uiri cuiusdam nostri temporis inclite gesta,187 que uel oculis conspexi uel ipso referente notaui, scolastico stilo (simplici tamen et non exquisito)188 perpetue memorie commendareb curaui, quatinus a   Proemium in librum de gestis Giraldi ed. (cf. BAV MS Reg. lat. 470, fo. 2v); a line left blank for rubricator in MS   b commendare Wharton (cf. Vita Rem., xiv (RS vii. 27), Spec. eccl., ii. 24 (RS iv. 70), and Top. Hib., iii. 38 (RS v. 184)); om. MS

176 Cf. Inuect., vi. 16 (Davies, pp. 217–19). 177  The twentieth vision is omitted both here and in Inuect. 178 Cf. Inuect., vi. 17 (Davies, p. 219). 179 Cf. Inuect., vi. 18 (Davies, pp. 219–20). 180 Cf. Inuect., vi. 19 (Davies, p. 220). 181 Cf. Inuect., vi. 20 (Davies, pp. 220–1). 182 Cf. Inuect., vi. 21 (Davies, pp. 221–2). 183 Cf. Inuect., vi. 22 (Davies, pp. 222–3). 184 Cf. Inuect., vi. 23 (Davies, pp. 223–6).

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ccxxxii. The nineteenth vision, that vision’s explanation, and how it corresponded to another.176 ccxxxiii. The twenty-­first,177 twenty-­second, and twenty-­third visions, which together have the same or a similar explanation.178 ccxxxiiii. The twenty-­fourth vision and that vision’s explanation.179 ccxxxv. The twenty-­fifth and twenty-­sixth visions together under the same explanation.180 ccxxxvi. The twenty-­seventh vision (that is, that of the hermit of Llywes) and the twenty-­eighth vision, which have together a similar explanation.181 ccxxxvii. The twenty-­ninth vision and that vision’s explanation.182 ccxxxviii. The thirtieth vision and that vision’s explanation.183 ccxxxix. On a consolatory letter from the hermit of Newgale, and his prophetic and true predictions.184

P R E FACE TO T H E BO O K O N GERALD’S DE E DS. Once upon a time, the Greeks of old would commit the deeds of famous men to memory, first with their likenesses185 and then in writing—­longer- lasting and more precise—­so that ages to come, emulating the virtues which used to exist in by­gone days, might be roused to like deeds, in a praiseworthy spirit of imitation. For no ­one is kindled to imitation by hearing or reading fabulous tales which tell of exaggerated and impossible things. But when the true virtue of a man shines forth, then virtuous minds rise to follow his example and ­emulate his courageous acts.186 Therefore, I have taken care to commit to lasting memory the famous deeds187 of one man of our age, in a scholastic (but simple and not over-­elaborate) style,188 which I either witnessed with my own eyes or wrote down at his telling, so that the usefulness of this work, not for 185  Perhaps statues, or perhaps death-masks. Cf. Top. Hib., pref. secunda (RS v. 21) and Vita Galf., introitus secundus (RS iv. 361). 186  Playing on the words uir, uirtus, uirilis, and uirtuosus. 187  inclite gesta: cf. Itin. Kam., pref. prima (RS vi. 4), Descr. Kam., pref. prima (RS vi. 157); Top. Hib., introitus (RS v. 4) and pref. secunda (RS v. 21). 188 Cf. Itin. Kam., pref. prima (RS vi. 7), Spec. eccl., iii. 1 (RS iv. 142), Vita S. Hug., iii. 1 (RS vii. 137), and Vita S. David, pref. (RS iii. 377), where Gerald also describes his works as being written scholastico stilo. The meaning of the phrase is discussed by Bartlett, ‘Rewriting saints’ lives’, p. 605 and above, pp. lxxvii–lxxix.

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RS i. 20

de g e s t i s gi r a l di, proe m i v m

non in pauca sed plurima189 operis huius diffundantur utilia: in laudabilem actionem et actionis emulationem; in fidei duplicis ecclesie, uidelicet tam Italice quam Walensice, per experimenta cognicionem et  facillimam utriusque, ere operante, corruptionem; in Meneuensis ecclesie firmam atque fidelem sue dignitatis instructionem et perpetuam in posterum contra incommoda similia premunicionem. Quamquam ex hiis instrumentis elici nequeat de preterito medela, contrahi tamen per hec eadem poterit, quod non mediocriter expedit, de futuro ­cautela. Et sicut super fundamentum a Bernardo190 positum egregie Giraldus edificauit, sic super hanc Giraldi struem, si quis um|quam in Meneuensi ecclesia de cetero probus emerserit et fidem in fratribus inuenire ualuerit, ad ecclesie sue dignitatem et Kambrie tocius honorem suis et ipse diebus edificare ac strenue dimicare contendat suisquec posteris materialem arcam appeciat.d191 Magnum quippe est et laude dignissimum fundamentum super quode firmiter edificari queat fideliter extruere et scalam192 per quam sublimiter ascendi possit in altum erigere. ⟨P⟩ars igitur operis huius prima de ortu Giraldi continet, puericie gestis atque adolescencie. Secunda uero de gestis uirilis etatis eiusdem et robuste. Tertia uero de gestis prouectioris etatis et mature, laboribus inmensis atque periculis et persecucionibus plena.193

c  suisque Wharton; suusque MS    d appeciat MS; apperiat Wharton and Brewer  super quod ed. (cf. De Giraldo archidiacono Menevensi (RS i. 398): ‘Magnum est ergo ­fundamentum stabile, super quod ædificari poterit, strauisse, et scalam per quam ascendi posset erexisse’; and in a slightly different form, Inuect., iv. 9 (Davies, p. 177) with poterit for posset); quod MS e

189  Matt. 25: 21: ‘Euge serve bone, et fidelis, quia super pauca fuisti fidelis, super multa te constituam.’ 190  On Bishop Bernard, see the letters gathered in Inuect., ii (Davies, pp. 130–47); Lloyd HW 453–4; Davies, Conquest, pp. 179–80, 182–5, 190–1; ODNB, s.n. ‘Bernard (d. 1148), bishop of St David’s’. 191  Alluding to Augustine, Tractatus in Iohannem, i. 17 (CCSL xxxvi. 10), who uses the example of a box which exists first in the mind of the carpenter and then in reality: ‘Faber facit arcam. Primo in arte habet arcam: si enim in arte arcam non haberet, unde illam fabricando proferret? Sed arca sic est in arte, ut non ipsa arca sit, quae uidetur oculis. In arte inuisibiliter est, in opere uisibiliter erit. Ecce facta est in opere; numquid destitit esse in arte? Et illa in opere facta est, et illa manet quae in arte est: nam potest illa arca putrescere, et iterum ex illa quae in arte est, alia fabricari’. This passage was summarized by twelfthcentury authors in terms close to those of Gerald, e.g. Simon of  Tournai, Disputationes, lxxvi. 2 (ed. Warichez, p. 219): ‘Item Augustinus super illum locum Iohannis, quod factum est in ipso uita erat: que, inquit, differentia inter archam mentalem et materialem?’; and Alan of Lille, Summa Quoniam homines, 5a (ed. Glorieux, p. 127): ‘Unde Augustinus super illum locum ait

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few but for many things,189 may be spread abroad: to spur praiseworthy acts and emulation of those acts; so that the trustworthiness of two churches, both the Italian and the Welsh, may be known from experience, and how easily both were corrupted when lucre did its work; and to teach the church of St Davids resolutely and faithfully about its own dignity and serve it as an everlasting warning against similar harm in the future. Though no cure for past ills may be extracted from these documents, nonetheless something of no small efficacy can be drawn from them: a warning for the future. And just as Gerald built admirably upon the foundation which Bernard190 laid, so too, if in time to come an upright man should ever arise in the church of St Davids—­and if he should be able to discover any measure of good faith amongst his brethren—­so too, I say, let him also strive, on that future day, to build upon this rough structure of Gerald’s, to fight hard for the dignity of his church and for the honour of all Wales, and to attempt to bring that structure into material reality for his own successors.191 For faithfully building up a foundation upon which others can securely build, and raising a lofty ladder192 on which they can climb to great heights, is a great achievement and most ­worthy of praise. The first part of this work, then, treats of Gerald’s birth and his deeds in childhood and youth. The second part, of his deeds at an age of robust manhood. And the third, of his deeds in more advanced and adult years, full of enormous toil, of dangers, and of persecutions.193

quod eadem est differentia inter mundum archetipum et sensibilem que est inter materialem arcam et mentalem’. The point here for Gerald, therefore, is for a successor to make manifest the design for the church of St Davids which Gerald (building on Bernard) has evolved in his mind and laid out in this book. 192 Cf. Inuect., i. 2 (Davies, p. 90): ‘Unde et anno preterito, quasi uiam ad hec aperire et scalam erigere parans [ . . . ]’ and Symb. elect., i. 24 (RS iii. 272) (a letter to Walter Map), discussing the figure of Jacob’s Ladder (Gen. 28: 10–22). On the use and extent of this imagery in the Middle Ages, see Heck, L’échelle céleste. 193  Gerald appears to take his adolescentia as lasting to the canonical age for a bishop, thirty, whereas Isidore, Etymologies, xi. 2. 4, has it as lasting till twenty-eight.

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⟨PARS PRIMA⟩

[ I. 1]  ⟨D⟩ E O RT V G I R A LDI, P VERICIE G E ST I S E T A D O L ES CENCIE. a

⟨G⟩iraldus itaque de Kambria194 oriundus et australi eiusdem parte maritimisque Demecie finibus,195 non procul ab opido principali de Penbroc,196 castello scilicet de Mainarpir,197 ingenuis natalibus prosapiam duxit. Ex matre namque Angareth, filia Neste, nobilis filie Resi, principis Sudwallie scilicet filii Theodori,198 uiro egregio Willelmo de Barri matrimonialiter copulata processit. Qui cum ex fratribus quatuor germanis pariterb et uterinis natu iunior existeret,199 tribus aliis nunc castra nunc opida nunc palacia puerilibus ut solet hec etas preludiis in sabulo uel puluere protrahentibus ac construentibus, modulo suo solus hic simili preludio semper ­ ecclesias erigerec et monasteria construere tota intentione satagebat.200

a   Rubric omitted in text and here supplied from table of contents     erigere Wharton; eligere MS

c

  pariter pariter MS   

b

194 The names in this opening passage follow a sequence from large to small territory: from Wales, to ‘its southern part’, namely Deheubarth, then to the coastlands of Dyfed, the cantref of Penfro/Pembroke, and finally to Manorbier. Kambria is Gerald’s preferred name for Wales, following Geoffrey of Monmouth: Pryce, ‘British or Welsh?’. For the places mentioned in this chapter, see Maps 1, 2, and 4 (pp. xiv, xvi, and 236). 195  Welsh Dyfed was the old kingdom of south-west Wales, bearing a name descended from the Romano-British civitas, Demetae. 196 Cf. Itin. Kam., i. 12 (RS vi. 89). Welsh Penfro ‘end district’ (although Gerald, Itin. Kam., i. 12 (RS vi. 89) translates it as caput maritimæ), angl. Pembroke. This has a double meaning: originally the name of the district, the bro or cantref at the far south-west corner of Dyfed projecting out into the Irish Sea, within which Manorbier was situated; it was also used for ‘(the castle of) Penfro’, the caput of the lordship, and the town, oppidum, attached to the castle. Similarly, (the castle of) Ceredigion, a district, gave the name of the castle and town of Cardigan. Both senses of Penfro are present: the original one, since it was within the cantref that Manorbier lay, but also the castle and town. Gerald uses cantaredus, cantred, or cantref, for the ‘seven cantrefi of Dyfed’, including Penfro at Itin. Kam., i. 12 (RS vi. 93); similarly Descr. Kam., i. 4 (RS vi. 169) for the whole of Wales, where it is correctly explained: ‘cantaredus autem, id est Cantref, a Cant quod est centum et Tref uilla composito uocabulo’. 197  Mainarpir, now Welsh Maenorbyˆ r, angl. Manorbier, a civil parish (NGR SS 06 97). It had been a large ecclesiastical estate annexed to the island monastery of Caldey not far to the east, as shown by the second element, Pyˆ r from Piro, the sixth-century founder and abbot of Caldey (Mainaur Pir, LL 124, 255 (two versions of the same list); La vie ancienne de Saint Samson, i. 20 (ed. and trans. Flobert, p. 178), ‘insula quaedam nuper fundata a quodam egregio uiro ac sancto presbitero Piro nomine’). The first element, maenor, is not from English

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PA RT O N E [ I. 1 ]   O N GE R A L D ’S BI RTH AND HIS D E E D S I N C HI L D H O O D AND YOUTH. Now, Gerald was born in Wales,194 in its southern part, in the coastlands of Dyfed,195 not far from the principal town of Pembroke196—more exactly, in the castle of Manorbier197—and came from a well-­born family. For his mother was Angharad, daughter of Nest (herself the noble daughter of Rhys ap Tewdwr, the prince of South Wales198), and from her marriage to the distinguished gentleman William de Barri resulted Gerald. He was the youngest of four brothers and half brothers199 and, when the three others, playing the usual games of children, used to trace out and build castles, forts, and palaces in the sand and dust, he himself always worked off by himself with great concentration on raising churches and building monasteries, playing along in his own way.200

‘manor’, but an early Welsh territorial unit including a number of townships. Anglo-Norman knights’ fees were quite often established in former church land. Gerald interpreted the name as Mansio Pirri, correctly stating its relationship to Ynys Byˆ r (Itin. Kam., i. 12 (RS vi. 92). 198  For Gerald’s descent on his mother’s side see Introduction, p. xix, and also Table 1 (p. xx). It was not uncommon in Welsh pedigrees to emphasize the maternal descent, if that connected the person concerned with families of high rank; for a particularly elaborate example, see Vita Griffini filii Conani, §§ 4–6 (ed. Russell, pp. 54–9). Princeps was Gerald’s favoured term for a Welsh ruler. In the letter from Owain and Cadwaladr (Inuect., ii. 9 (Davies, pp. 142–3)), the title, provided by Gerald, is Bernardo episcopo Oeneus et Kadwaladerus, principes Norwallie, but in the letter itself the salutation is Bernardo, Dei gratia Meneuensi episcopo, Oeneus rex Wallie et Kadwaladerus salutem et omne bonum. For the date and authenticity of the letter, see Acts, ed. Pryce, no. 192 (pp. 322–3). Gerald both replaced rex with princeps and made the latter plural to include Cadwaladr as the equal of Owain. It was English policy to encourage partible inheritance of Welsh kingdoms or principalities. 199  Philip and Robert were his full brothers, Walter his half-brother by the same father. Walter was killed in Ireland; cf. Exp. Hib., i. 42 (ed. Scott and Martin, p. 118) where Gerald, speaking of Walter, writes ‘germanus namque mihi fuerat, non uterinus’. Philip inherited Manorbier, but also gained the kingdom of Uí Líatháin (now East Co. Cork): Exp. Hib., ii. 20 (ed. Scott and Martin, pp. 188–9); Robert was one of the force led by Robert fitz Stephen that landed at Bannow Bay (Co. Wexford) in 1169: Exp. Hib., i. 3 (ed. Scott and Martin, pp. 30–3). 200  Similar stories are told in the Life of St Waltheof by Joscelin of Furness (Acta Sanctorum, August i. (Paris and Rome, 1867), p. 252 (3 August); and also in the Life of St Wihtburh in Goscelin of Saint-Bertin: The Hagiography of the Female Saints of Ely, ed. Love, pp. 86–9.

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de g e s t i s gi r a l di, i

40 fo. 158v RS i. 22

Quod dum pater eius sepius intuendo cum admiracione | considerasset, ductus ad hoc quasi pronostico quodam ipsum litteris et liberalibus disciplinis applicandum presaga mente decre|uit eumque ludendo et applaudendo suum episcopum uocare consueuit. d ⟨A⟩ccidit autem ut nocte quadam, hostili inuasione terra turbata et iuuentute castri tota certatim ad arma prosiliente, puer hoc intuens et tumultume audiens cum fletu proclamaret querens quonam declinare deberet et petens quatinus ad ecclesiam portaretur,201 miro presagio pacem ecclesiasticam et immunitatemf domus Deo dicate firmissimam atque securam esse debere declarando. Cuncti uero qui hoc ­audierant, cessante tumultu, uerbum illud puerile secum cogitando et inter se conferendo cum admiratione recolebant, quod maiorem scili­cet sibi securitatem in ecclesia remota, uentis et fortuitis euentibus exposita, quam in opido, uiris et armis referto, turribus et muris m ­ unitissimo, promittebat.202 ⟨I⟩dg etiam quociens super dignitate ecclesiastica et libertate, quotiens de iure fori et poli203 inter clerum et populum altercationes audiebat, ecclesie se pro posse protectorem et aduocatum etiam puer opponebat, zelo eodem, Deo inspirante et gratiam de die in diem augmentante, per omnem etatem et usque in finem ei perdurante. Nichil enim adeo in terris sicut ecclesie Christi gloriam amplam, profectum in omnibus, eth honorem quolibet euo statuque suo cupiebat.

[ I . 2]  ⟨ D ⟩E D I SC I PL I NE DEFECTV IN PR I MI S E T PO ST E A P ROFECTV. a

⟨P⟩uer autem in primis fratrum consortio, festiuis diebus colludentium et militaria sue professionis negocia sumopere collaudantium, quoniam ‘a conuictu mores formantur’,204 non mediocriter impeditus

d   The indented passage, from here to the end of this chapter, is a marginal addition, by text-hand, in the MS (see Frontispiece)    e tumultum Wharton; tumulum MS    f immunitatem Wharton; emunitatem MS    g Id Wharton    h et Wharton; etiam MS, it seems

  Rubric omitted in text and here supplied from table of contents

a

201  For suggestions on when this might have happened, see Introduction, pp. xlvi–xlvii. 202  On this use of promittere, cf. Exp. Hib., i. 40 (ed. Scott and Martin, pp. 112–13): ‘Sicut autem comminando vir ille promiserat, sic anno contigit non completo’. 203  Forum here appears to be a secular court as opposed to polus ‘the heavens, heaven’. Contrast Glanvill, xii. 25, where the sense is ‘court’ in general: if a cleric holds in libera

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His father watched this repeatedly with wonder and, after some reflection, decided with notable foresight, as though led by an omen, that he should be set to learn his letters and the liberal arts, and he used ­jokingly to applaud and call Gerald his bishop. It happened one night that their land was attacked and, while the young men of the castle all rushed eagerly to arms, he, seeing this and hearing the uproar, cried out tearfully to know where he should take refuge and asked to be taken to the church.201 With wondrous presentiment he thus made clear that the stablest and securest things must be the peace of the church and the immunity of a house devoted to God. And when the uproar had ceased, all who had heard this thought about, talked about, and recalled with amazement the words of the child: that he predicted202 he would be far safer in a distant church exposed to the winds and chance events, than in a fortress full of men and arms, strongly protected by towers and walls. What is more, whenever he heard of arguments between the clergy and people over the dignity and freedom of the church, or about the rights of civil and divine powers,203 even as a child he would set himself up as the pro­ tect­or and advocate of the church (as far as he could), and that same zeal, which God inspired and increased daily with His grace, lasted all Gerald’s life, right to its end. For at every period of life and whatever his station, he desired nothing on earth so much as the abundant glory of the church of Christ, its success in all things, and its eminence.

[ I. 2 ]   O N H I S E A R LY SHO RTCOM INGS IN S T U DY A ND L AT E R SUCCES S. As a boy, though, he was not a little hindered at first by the company of his brothers, who played together on feast days and enthusiastically approved of the martial business to which they were destined, and was far too slack in progress with his own proposed vocation, for ‘character is formed by one’s companions’.204 However, he was at last taken hold e­ lemosina feodum ecclesiasticum, then, whoever may claim it, the case is heard in foro ecclesias­ tico. Peter the Chanter, to whom Gerald was indebted, used ius fori for the jurisdiction of a court, ius poli for the confessional: Baldwin, Masters, i. 135. The usual term for an ec­cle­si­as­ tic­al court in Glanvill and Bracton is curia Christianitatis. 204  Cf. Peter Lombard, Commentarium in Psalmos, Ps. 17: 30 (PL cxci. 197) and Ps. 25, introductio (PL cxci. 261); and Peter the Chanter, Verbum adbreuiatum (textus prior), lxiii (ed. Boutry, p. 386); (textus conflatus), i. 69 (Boutry, p. 447).

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RS i. 23

de g e s t i s gi r a l di, i

longe segnius in proposita disciplina profecit. Ceterum tandemb ab Meneuensic episcopo pie memorie Dauid205 tunc presidente, qui et auunculus eius extiterat, correptus quidem | et statim correctus clericorumque duorum eiusdem episcopi, quorum unus in suggillationem ipsius declinabat ‘durus’ ‘durior’ ‘durissimus’ et alter ‘stultus’ ‘stulcior’ ‘stulcissimus’, insultatione plurimum adiutus, plus uerecundia deinde quam uirga plusque pudore quam preceptore siue timore quouis ­proficere cepit. Tanta namque studium uehemencia postmodum est amplexatus ut coetaneos omnes et conscolares terre sue infra modicum tempus longe transcenderet. ⟨P⟩rocessu uero temporis,206 causa studii maioris atque profectus ter in Frantiam transfretando tresque status annorum plurium Parisius in liberalibus disciplinis faciendo207 summosque preceptores demum equiparando triuium ibidem egregie docuit et precipuam in arte rethorica laudem optinuit. Adeoque studiis ex toto addictus fuerat, nil ­leuitatisd aut scurilitatis actibus aut animo gerens, ut quotiens de bonis scolaribus doctores arcium exemplificare uellent, Giraldum pre ceteris omnibus nominarent. Sicque scolastici officii precellentis et preelecti in prima etate, meritis id exigentibus bonis, et annis adolescentie non petere exemplum set dare dignus erat.208

[I . 3]  ⟨ D⟩ E ZE L O QVEM IN E C C L E SI A ST I C O S P ROFECTVS STAT I M E XC E RCVIT. a

⟨R⟩euersus autem a studio,209 statim in ecclesiis et ecclesiasticis ­beneficiis tam in Anglia quam Wallia prouehi cepit plurimum et prosperari. Tempore quoque succedente ‘non sibi sed patrie’210 natus et

b   Corrected from tande by another hand in MS    c  ab Meneuen’ corrected from ad Meneuen’ by another hand in MS; a Menevensi Wharton and Brewer    d leuitatis Wharton; lenitatis MS a   Rubric omitted in text and here supplied from table of contents

205  Gerald’s maternal uncle was bishop of St Davids 1148–75. Note also the play on the words correptus and correctus. 206  processu uero temporis and processu temporis are favourite phrases of Gerald, appearing at least sixty times in his works. 207  For when these three periods of study in Paris occurred, see Introduction, pp. lvii–lxii.

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of and straightened out by the bishop of St Davids, David, of blessed memory,205 who then occupied the see, and was also his uncle. Helped along by the mockery of two of the bishop’s clerks, one of whom chastised him by teaching the degrees of the adjective ‘dull’, ‘duller’, ‘dullest’, and the other ‘stupid’, ‘stupider’, ‘stupidest’, he began to make progress, spurred then more by shame than by the switch, by embarrassment rather than by his instructor or by any fear. Indeed, he afterwards seized upon his studies with such intensity that within a short time he far surpassed all his peers and other students of the district. In the course of time,206 seeking higher studies and advancement, he crossed thrice to France and dwelt at Paris three times (each time for several years) studying the liberal arts,207 and was at last the equal of his greatest masters, teaching there the trivium with brilliance and earning particular praise in rhetoric. He was so utterly devoted to his studies, showing no frivolity or coarseness in his actions or his thoughts, that whenever the teachers of arts wished to give examples of good students, it was Gerald they named first of all. And so in the first stage of his life and in his years of adolescence he was worthy not to seek an example of excellent and outstanding scholarly dutifulness, but rather to set one, by his own good merits.208

[ I. 3]  O N T HE ZE A L WHICH HE IM M E D IAT E LY USE D FO R THE CHURCH’S A DVA N TAG E . As soon as he returned from his studies,209 he began to be promoted to many churches and ecclesiastical benefices, both in England and in Wales, and to prosper. And in the time which followed, trying with every effort to be one born ‘not for self but for his country’210 and ‘a good man for

208  For Gerald, pueritia, ‘boyhood’, may combine the first two of Isidore’s aetates hominum (Etymologies, xii. 2. 2–4), infantia and pueritia, which were then followed by the third, adolescentia. 209  Probably 1174 × 1176. 210  Cf. Pliny the Younger, Letters, vi. 10. 4 and ix. 19. 1, in each case quoting the epitaph of  Lucius Verginius Rufus: ‘Hic situs est Rufus, pulso qui Vindice quondam / imperium adseruit non sibi sed patriae’. Gerald perhaps had the phrase from Walter of Châtillon, Alexandreis, i. 195–6, who writes of the young Alexander: ‘Macedo ciuiliter induit arma / non sibi sed patriae’.

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fo. 159r

RS i. 25

de g e s t i s gi r a l di, i

‘in commune bonus’211 | totis nisibus esse proponens, circiter ecclesie profectus eiusque supplendos pro posse defectus indolemb egregiam exercere curauit. Videns itaque per totam fere diocesim Meneuensem, precipue eius Demeticam regionem et Kereticam, ex prelatorum incuria nec lane decimas dari nec caseorum, accedens Cantuariam, cui tunc temporis Meneuensis ecclesia sicut et Wallia tota de facto suberat lege prouinciali, et archiepiscopo Ricardo tunc presidenti (qui et primas Anglie tocius et curie Romane legatus extiterat) defectus istos ostendens statim remissus est ab ipso in Walliam, legatus scilicet a legato, ad hos excessus et alios quos ibi inuenerit emendandos. Monuit etiam archiepiscopus litteris suis et in remissionem peccatorum iniunxit omnibus a quibus hactenus decime predicte date non fuerant utc | darentur. Quibus etiam ad monita sua dare uolentibus terciam partem iniuncte penitentie relaxauit. Obstinatos autem et dare renuentes precepit per ecclesiasticam districte censuram choerceri. Statim uero Walenses omnes, monitis salubribus obtemperantes, decimas illas dandas concesserunt cunctique patrie tocius preter Flandrenses de Ros et complicesd suos.212 Qui, cum tempore non modico sub interdicto conclusi fuissent, per regis Anglorum Henrici secundi, quem ob hoc adierunt, instantiam, sententie date relaxationem ab archiepiscopo predicto, ad instancium pariter et instantis dampnationem, ad tempus impetrarunt. Vnde non multo post tempore, rege defuncto et minus honeste rebus humanis exempto, Walenses qui lane decimam ad monita uiri boni213 sponte dederunt, Rosensem prouintiam214 depredantes ouesque lanigeras, cum reliqua preda hiis qui Deo et ecclesie sue lane decimam dare renuebant omnes abstulerunt et abduxerunt.215 Vbi et illud Augustini in decimarum et rerum ecclesiasticarum detentores dictum et hic completum esse uidetur: ‘Hoc aufert fiscus quode non accipit Christus. Dabis impio militi quod dare non uis sacerdoti’.216 | b   Corrected from in indolem by subpunction in MS    c  ut ut MS     quod Wharton; qui MS

e

d

 coplices MS   

211 Lucan, De bello ciuili, ii. 390 (of Cato the Younger). 212  See Introduction, p. lii, and Davies, Conquest, pp. 99, 159–60. Initially, Gerald fails to specify what attitude was taken by ‘the French’ of Penfro, his own people. Roger Bechet, however, who is put forward as a model in his payment of tithes, belonged to the parish of Carew and thus is likely to have been one of ‘the French’. In i. 4, Gerald will describe how three of his relations had paid tithes to fund his studies in Paris in the 1160s, something which eased their path into normal delivery of tithes to their parish churches. 213  Presumably the archbishop. 214  On Gerald’s use of prouincia, see Appendix 2 (pp. 232–4). 215  For events in south-west Wales after the death of Henry II, see Lloyd, HW 574–82. Rhys ap Gruffudd, according to AC Brev., attacked Rhos and Penfro in 1189. According to

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the community’,211 he worked to exercise his eminent natural talents for the advantage of the church and to compensate (as far as he could) for its failings. Seeing, therefore, that throughout nearly the whole diocese of St Davids, and especially in Dyfed and Ceredigion, tithes of wool and cheese were not paid, owing to the negligence of its prelates, he went to Canterbury—­to which at that time the church of St Davids was subject, as indeed, de facto, was the whole of Wales, according to the canon law of the province. And, showing there these failings to Richard, who then sat as archbishop, and who was both Primate of All England and a legate of the Roman curia, Gerald was immediately sent back to Wales, as the legate’s own legate, that is, to correct those transgressions and others he might find there. The archbishop also sent a letter to all those who had not hitherto paid the tithes in question, warning and enjoining them, for remission of their sins, that the tithes be paid. And for those willing to pay after his warning, he relaxed one third of the penance he imposed. But if they were obstinate and kept refusing to pay, he ordered them to be subject to the strict force of ecclesiastical condemnation. And indeed all the Welsh, submitting to his salutary warnings, immediately consented to give the tithes, as did all the inhabitants of the whole country, except for the Flemings of Rhos and their accomplices.212 They, when they had long been restrained by an interdict, went to Henry II, king of the English and, in time, with the help of his insistence, successfully petitioned the archbishop to relax the sentence he had imposed—­to the damnation of both those who petitioned and him who had insisted. For this reason, shortly afterwards, when the king had died and was (less than honourably) removed from human affairs, the Welshmen who had willingly given tithes of wool following the admonitions of the good man213 plundered the cantref  214 of Rhos and its woolly sheep, and carried them off and led them all away, with the rest of their spoils, from those who refused to give tithes of wool to God and His church.215 And therein what Augustine said about those who withhold tithes and church property seems here too to have been fulfilled: ‘The treasury carries off what Christ does not receive. You will give to an impious knight what you do not wish to give to a priest’.216

the Brut, the episcopal castle of Llawhaden in Daugleddau was taken in 1192 and Wizo’s Castle in the same cantref in the following year, but that chronicle does not mention a raid on Rhos. 216  Ps-Augustine, partially through Gratian’s Decretum, C. 16 q. 1 c. 66. On the origin of this quotation, which Gerald uses also in Itin. Kam., i. 2 (RS vi. 21), see Henley, ‘Quotation, revision, and narrative structure’, p. 35.

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de g e s t i s gi r a l di, i

⟨A⟩ccidit autem diebus eisdem, quod et notabile censui, uirum quendam parcium illarum, cui nomen Rogerus agnomen Bechet, tempore tonsionis creditori suo decem lapides lane debere, qui cum non plures haberet, decimum lapidem (uxore sua dissuadente) ecclesie sue baptismali, scilicet de Kaereu, misit et reliquos nouem creditori suo apud Penbroch, rogans ut pacientiam haberet, quia super defectu decimi lapidis eidem in breui satisfaceret. Creditor autem, cum lanam acceptam ponderaret, decem lapides inuenit et cum iterum et iterum ponderaret, semper decem lapides integros inuenit et sic debitori suo sibi ad plenum satisfactum esse renuntiauit. Hoc igitur exemplo et ad instar olei Elysei lana miraculose multiplicata,217 multi in partibus illis ad decimarum illarum prestacionem tam conuersi sunt quam confirmati. Mirum autem—­sicut Giraldus frequenter dicere consueuerat et hunc uersum recitare: ‘Nitimur in uetitum semper cupimusque negata’218

fo. 159v RS i. 26

—quod tam obstinata semper in illicitum nititur mens humana. Mirum etiam quod, excessu tam temerario tamque nefario et tamquam hereditario, ea que Dei sunt queque sibi in signum dominacionis ipse reseruauit, sicut primi parentes fructum arboris,219 sic sequaces eorum natura consimili decimamf Domini, quam in signum dominationis et ministrorum quoque suorum sustentacionis reseruarig uoluit, in propriam et perpetuam dampnationem, usurpare nituntur. ⟨C⟩umh autem legatione fungens eadem in prioratu de Penbroc (quod propinquum erat) susciperetur,i uicecomes prouincie,220 cui nomen Willelmus Karquit, ob inuidiam aduentus ipsius in tali ­potestate—‘quia nemo propheta susceptus in patria sua’221—iuga bouum octo de prioratu in ipso eius aduentu, tanquam ad dedecus suum et confusionem, per ministros et apparitores suos rapi iussit et in | castellum retrudi.j Sed cum tercio requisitus ea prorsus reddere renueret et etiam deteriora promitteret, | mandauit ei Giraldus quod, nisi boues remitteret, excommunicationis sentencia statim inuolueretur. f  decimam Wharton; demam MS    g scilicet reseruari MS    h  Perhaps ⟨D⟩ um    i susciperetur ed.; et MS    j  Corrected from retrudit by subpunction in MS

217  4 Kgs. (2 Kgs.) 4: 1–7. 218 Ovid, Amores, iii. 4. 17. 219  Gen. 2: 8–3: 24. 220  William Karquit was Henry II’s sheriff of Pembroke, since Richard fitz Gilbert had been deprived of the title of Earl of Pembroke at the beginning of the reign (Flanagan, ‘Strongbow, Henry II and the Anglo-Norman intervention in Ireland’, pp. 63–4).

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Now there happened in those same days another thing which I have thought worthy of note. A certain man of those parts named Roger Bechet owed ten stone of wool to a creditor at shearing time. And since he did not have any more than that amount, against his wife’s advice he sent the tenth stone of wool to the church where he had been baptised, that of Carew, and the remaining nine stone to his creditor at Pembroke, asking him to be patient, for he would shortly make good the missing tenth stone. But when the creditor weighed the wool which he had received, he found there was ten stone of it, and though he weighed it again and again, always he got ten whole stone, and so he replied to his debtor that he had been fully paid. Because of this example of wool miraculously multiplied in the manner of Elisha’s oil,217 therefore, many in those parts were either converted to paying their tithes or confirmed in so doing. It is amazing—­as Gerald used often to say, reciting this verse: ‘Always we strain after what is forbidden, and want what we’re denied’218

—that the human mind strives always so obstinately for the illicit. And it is amazing too with what arrogant, abominable, and seemingly in­herit­ed wrongdoing, just as our first ancestors did with the fruit of that tree,219 so too their offspring, alike in nature, strive to usurp that which belongs to God, and which he has reserved to himself as a sign of his dominion, to their own everlasting damnation: the Lord’s tenth, which he wished to be reserved to mark his rule and to maintain his ministers. Now when he, discharging that same duty as legate, was being welcomed at the priory of Pembroke, which neighbours that town, the sheriff of the district,220 named William Karquit, in his envy at his coming with such great power—‘for no prophet is accepted in his own country’221—ordered his ministers and bailiffs to seize a yoke of eight oxen from the priory just as Gerald was arriving there, as though to disgrace and discomfit him, and to drive them into the castle. But when he had been asked three times and utterly refused to give them back, and even promised greater outrages, Gerald sent him word that, unless he returned the oxen, he would immediately incur a sentence of excommunication. And since he responded (being a proud and wicked man) that Gerald would not be so bold as to excommunicate the king’s constable from his own castle, he in turn replied that, when the sheriff

221  Luke 4: 24.

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Et cum responderet ille (puta qui superbus erat et nequam) quod non tam audax foret ut constabularium regis de proprio castello suo excommunicaret, renunciauit ei quod quando audiret omnes tocius cenobii campanas trino interuallo222 pulsari, tunc se quidem excommunicatum proculdubio scire posset. Statimque, reuersis nunciis, astantibus tam monachis loci illius quam clericis patrie qui conuenerant multis, solempniter in ipsum et candelis accensis auctoritate legationis qua fungebatur excommunicationis sententiam dedit et continuo campanas omnes simul, ut fieri solet uel ad sententie con­firm­ationem uel pocius ad facte denunciationem, pulsari fecit. In crastino uero uersus castellum de Lanwadein predo properans, coram diocesiano episcopo Dauid et tam Giraldo, qui iam aduenerat, quam magistro Michaele collega ipsius, qui comes ei ab archiepiscopo adiunctus fuerat, restitucione facta et satisfactione secuta, uirgis uerberari meruit et absolui. ⟨I⟩n proximo uero comitatu223 de Penbroc, quia uicecomes et constabularius predictus conquestus est in puplico se excommunicatum a Giraldo fuisse, conquesti sunt et alii quod inuestituram ecclesie de Talachar224 Giraldus in manu forti et uiris ac uiribus armatis accipere uenerat. Audiens hec Ricardus filius Tancardi,225 qui tunc temporis in partibus illis magnus habebatur et qui Giraldo totique generi suok  suo Wharton; sue MS

k

222  The phrase trino interuallo occurs twice in De gestis, here and at i. 6 (the confrontation at Ceri), and its sense is uncertain, though it seems to be referring to a distinctive sound. Gerald uses a similar phrase, triplici interuallo, to refer to cocks crowing to signify dawn (Top. Hib., 25 ii. (RS v. 112)). Elsewhere the latter phrase has a technical sense referring to pitch; cf. ex duplici intervallo atque sesqualtero triplex nascitur intervallum ‘the triple interval is born from the duple interval plus the sesquialter’ (Boethius, De instructione musica, iv. 2 (ed. Friedlein, p. 306)). But it is difficult to square that with a cockcrow, and it seems more likely that it means something like three rings, then a gap, and then another three rings. 223  Llawhaden (Lanwadein) was, later at least, an episcopal enclave in the cantref of Daugleddau; see Maps 2 and 4 (pp. xviii and 236). What is not evident is whether Gerald took it to be outside the county of Pembroke because it was an enclave or because Daugleddau as a whole was outside the county. Cf. Itin. Kam., i. 11 (RS vi. 86), ‘totoque comitatu pluuia perfuso’, when the body of St Caradog had reached the beach of Neugol (Newgale, NGR SM 84 22, Newgale Sands from SM 85 19 to 84 22) on its way from Llan Ismael to St Davids. Newgale Sands was close to the boundary between Rhos and Pebidiog, the cantref in which St Davids lay, but the assumption may be that the party taking the body looked back at Rhos, from which they were  coming, and saw it all drenched in rain. William Karquit was a uicecomes, based at Pembroke Castle, whereas Richard fitz Tancred was just castellan of Haverfordwest (see n. 225). This suggests that the authority of the uicecomes extended over more than one cantref, probably excluding the lands attached to St Davids, Pebidiog, and the territory attached to the castle of Llawhaden, and perhaps also the cantrefi of Cemais, the lordship of William fitz Martin, and Emlyn, claimed by Gerald as the lordship of William fitz Gerald. Davies, Conquest, p. 37, describes it as ‘an arc of territory from Haverford through Wiston to Tenby’. In ii. 18, just after the journey of Archbishop Baldwin around Wales, Gerald writes that the comitatus de Penbroc had been given by Henry II to John, count of

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heard all the bells of the whole monastery ring three times at intervals,222 then he might know without any doubt that he had indeed been ­excommunicated. And immediately after his messengers had returned, in the presence both of the monks of that house and of the many clerics of the region who had gathered, he delivered the sentence of excommunication against William, with solemnity, with burning candles, and with the authority of legate which he exercised. He had at once all the bells rung together, as is normally done to confirm a sentence or, more accurately, to announce that it has been confirmed. The very next day that brigand sped to the castle of Llawhaden and there, before his dio­ cesan bishop David and both Gerald (who had already arrived) and Gerald’s colleague Master Michael, whom the archbishop had attached to him as a companion, restitution was made and penance followed: he deserved to be beaten with switches and then absolved. But in the surrounding county223 of Pembroke, since the sheriff and constable complained publicly that he had been excommunicated by Gerald, others then complained too that Gerald had come to receive the investiture of the church of Talacharn224 forcefully with a band of armed men. When he heard these things Richard fitz Tancred,225 who was then considered a great man in those parts, and who was ever envious of Gerald and his family, began to utter bitter menaces against him and Mortain. John reproached Gerald for preaching so effectively at Haverfordwest that he had deprived him of the men who could defend his county against the Welsh, again suggesting that Rhos formed part of the comitatus. This would be after John had been given the lordship of Ireland. ‘Pembrokeshire’ is mentioned three times in The Song of Dermot and the Earl (ed. Mullally, ll. 409, 2496, 2589). It was the home of the Flemish knight, Richard fitz Godipert, the first to go to Ireland with Diarmait Mac Murchada. Richard’s family were settled in Rhos: Song, l. 409, Lloyd, HW 538 and n. 7. From the point of view of Henry II in 1171 and of his son John in 1185, it was crucial that Milford Haven, from which they sailed to Ireland, with Rhos to the north and Penfro to the south, was within the comitatus. There is, however, evidence that its extent varied. In the confirmation of grants to Slebech by Peter de Leia, bishop of St Davids (1176–98), the items are arranged according to the districts in which the relevant lands or churches were situated (Acta, ed. Barrow, no. 46). After covering Pebidiog, Rhos, and Daugleddau, the text then continues, ‘In Pembrochsire’, where Pembrochsire is the cantref of Penfro, excluding Rhos and the lordship of Wiston in Daugleddau. 224 The commote of Talacharn, part of Cantref Gwarthaf, including the modern Laugharne < (Ta)lacharn; see Map 2 (p. xviii). At this period the mother church, Eglwys Gymyn, was apparently the parish church of the entire commote. 225  Castellan of Haverfordwest, the chief centre of the cantref of Rhos. In Itin. Kam., i. 11 (RS vi. 85), said to have been the youngest son, with a story about his relations with St Caradog of Llan Ismael and his father’s attempts to prevent the body of the holy man being taken to St Davids for burial and a miracle at Newgale Sands when the body was in transit. Note also Inuect., vi. 23 (Davies, pp. 223–6); the cross of St Caradog at Newgale Sands was the site of a hermitage, presumably on the site of the miracle. For a castellan of Haverfordwest in Rhos to envy the Geraldines in Penfro would not be unexpected, even though Gerald’s eldest brother, Philip, the lord of Manorbier, was married to one of Richard’s daughters, as was Odo of Carew (De gestis, i. 3; Spec. duorum, ed. Richter, Lefèvre, et al., passim).

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RS i. 27

semper inuidebat, cepit in ipsum et illos qui cum ipso uersus Talachar profecti fuerant, ac sil prescius et premunitus fuisset, minas acerrimas emittere et mortem crudelissimam interminare. Cumque magna ibidem inter magnos contentio super hiis facta fuisset, Odo de Kerreu, consobrinus Giraldi, et Philippus de Barri, frater eiusdem Giraldi, qui uiri probi et magni fuerunt in finibus illis, licet generi predicti Ricardi scilicet filias suas habentes uxores, tamen acerbe dixerunt illi quod taceret et a stultiloquio tem|peraret, quia non tanta uindicta sumpta fuit de alio Giraldo, fratre scilicet Odonis primeuo,226 pro quo dudum a Rosensibus interempto ducenti uiri et plures de eisdem uno die corruerunt, quanta quamque crudelis et cruenta de hoc Giraldo, si per ipsum aut suos forte caderet, sumeretur.

[ I. 4]  DE GI R A L D I L E GACIONE ET IN A RC H I DI AC O N V M PROMOTIONE.

fo. 160r

⟨H⟩oc etiam non pretereundum puto, quod cum intrasset apud Brecheniauc Giraldus diocesim Meneuensem cum legatione sibi iniuncta, inueniens ibi ueteranum quendam archidiaconum227 terre illius concubinam suam secum in domo puplice tenentem, primo monuit eum diligenter, deinde, cum monitis non adquiesceret, precepit ei ­auctoritate archiepiscopi primatis et legati ut ipsam abiceret et a se remoueret nec hiis quibus preerat, quos corripere et corrigere pocius deberet, ipsam tenendo male se habendi et minus honeste uiuendi exemplum daret. Qui non solum hoc facere renuit sed etiam in uirum tantum, personam scilicet archiepiscopi, turpia uerba et contumeliosa proferre fatue nimis et temere presumpsit. Quibus auditis, statim eum Giraldus ab | omni beneficio ecclesiastico suspendit et archidiaconatum suum cum prebenda in manu archiepiscopi, cuius auctoritatem spreuerat et in quem contumeliosus extiterat, suscepit. Vnde, ­legatione completa, cum reuersus esset ad archiepiscopum simul cum episcopo Meneuensi, quem secum duxit, episcopus idem ad   ac si ed.; si MS

l

226  See Introduction, pp. xlvi-xlvii. 227  Jordan, archdeacon of Brycheiniog, mentioned but not named in De gestis, was already archdeacon by the end of Bernard’s episcopate, 1148. He was a witness to Acta, ed. Barrow, nos. 6, 7, 19, 30 (and Introduction, p. cii); see also The Letters of John of Salisbury, i, no. 86, in which it is reported that Jordan was condemned for forging letters from Pope Eugenius.

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against those who had set out with him to Talacharn, as if he had had foreknowledge and forewarning, and to threaten to kill them brutally. And after the strife about this amongst the magnates of that place had become great, Odo of Carew, Gerald’s cousin, and Philip de Barri, his brother (both upright and important men in those lands), even though they were the sons-­in-­law of the said Richard, having married his daughters, nevertheless harshly told him to be silent and cease his foolish talk, for, great as had been the vengeance exacted for the other Gerald—­the eldest brother of Odo,226 that is, who had been killed by the men of Rhos some time before, and in exchange for whom two hundred and more of those men had fallen in a single day—­g reater, crueller, and still more bloody would be that exacted for this Gerald, if he should fall at the hands of Richard or his men.

[ I. 4 ]   O N GE R A L D ’S L E GAT ES HIP AND HIS P ROMO T I O N TO A RC H DEACON. This too I think should not be passed over: that when Gerald had entered the diocese of St Davids at Brycheiniog in the office of legate with which he had been entrusted, he found there a certain arch­ deacon227 of that country, long in office, who openly kept his concubine with him in his home. Gerald first warned him earnestly and then, when he did not submit to these warnings, commanded him by the authority of the archbishop, primate, and legate to renounce her and send her away, and not, by keeping her, give an example of bad behaviour and dishonourable living to those in his charge, whom he should rather be setting straight and reforming. He, however, not only refused to do this, but also, with exceeding foolishness and arrogance, presumed to utter offensive and insulting words against so great a man—­ the personage of the archbishop, that is. When he heard this, Gerald immediately suspended him from every ecclesiastical benefice and took his archdeaconry with its prebend into the hands of the archbishop, whose authority he had spurned and to whom he had been so insulting. Then, when his duties as legate were complete and he had returned to the archbishop along with the bishop of St Davids (whom he brought with him), that same bishop, at the archbishop’s insistence, Since a high proportion of the clergy of St Davids had partners and Gerald’s uncle, David the bishop, had several children, the line taken in this passage was bold.

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52

RS i. 28

de g e s t i s gi r a l di, i

instantiam archiepiscopi predictum archidiaconatum et prebendam Giraldo contulit et ‘inueterato dierum’—sed utinam bonorum!228— archidiacono priori, unde quiete et absque uexatione uiuere posset, redditus alios assignauit. | ⟨H⟩iis autem hoc ordine completis, uidens Giraldus propter mandatum regis et archiepiscopi Rosensibus ad tempus relaxandis totam fere patriam ea occasione corruptam, quia Flandrenses, ubicumque in finibus illis fuerant tam extra Ros quam intra, eadem immunitate gaudere uolebant, et sic laborem suum inanem fuisse considerans, impetrauit ab archiepiscopo litteras ad episcopum Sancti Dauid continentes quod tantum habitantes in cantaredo de Ros et non alios ab interdicto relaxauerat (et illos ad tempus propter regis instanciam) et quod reliquos omnes decimas lane et caseorum dare renuentes sub interdicto priori firmiter concluderet. Quo facto, reuocati sunt sub interdicti sententiam habitantes in cantaredo de Dugledu et illi de Angulo229 qui, licet habitantes in prouincia de Penbroc, tamen, quia Flandrenses erant et simul cum Rosensibus sicut et illi de Dugledu ad immunitatem querendam sumptus fecerant, simili libertate gaudere uolebant. Reuocati sunt et illi de Talachar qui, quoniam Flandrenses ex parte fuerant et ouibus longe pre ceteris habundabant, magis rebelles et renitentes existebant. Proinde non nisi speciali mandato domini pape, postmodum a Giraldo perquisito, domari ad plenum poterant et informari. Facta est igitur in patria turbatio magna et Flandrensium in Giraldum exacerbatio, clericorum autem econtra, quorum honori et commodis inuigilabat, dilectio grandis et affectio. ⟨P⟩reterea inicium et allectorium230 ad et hec decimanduma in Demetica longe ante datum fuerat per Giraldum. Dum enim adolescens in scolis Parisius fuerat, consanguinei ipsius, scilicet Willelmus filius Hay, Odo de Kerreu et Philippus de Barri, frater eiusdem, decimas suas de lanis et molendinis, quoniam indolis ipsum bone sciebant, ei tanquam ex condicto

a   ad et hec decimandum ed.; et hec decimandum MS; et ad haec decimandum Wharton; ad haec decimandum Brewer

228  Alluding to Dan. 13: 52 (Sus. 52): ‘Inueterate dierum malorum, nunc uenerunt peccata tua, quae operabaris prius’. Gerald also uses the same phrase for the lay abbot of Llanbadarn Fawr (Ceredigion) at Itin. Kam., ii. 4 (RS vi. 121). 229  Angle, at the western extremity of Penfro NGR (SM 86 02); see Map 2, item 3 (p. xviii). A Pembrokeshire family that was granted extensive lands in Ireland by Hugh de Lacy, lord of Meath, acquired the name Nangle, in Latin documents ‘de Angulo’, because they were from Angle: Deeds, ed. Mullally, ll. 3140–6; Orpen, Ireland under the Normans, 1169–1216, ii. 84.

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granted this archdeaconry and prebend to Gerald, and assigned other revenues to the former archdeacon ‘grown old in his days’—but would that those days had been good ones!228—with which he could live quiet­ly and untroubled. Now, after these matters had been thus dealt with, Gerald saw that nearly the whole country had been corrupted by the command of the king and archbishop to release for the time being the men of Rhos, or on that pretext, for the Flemings wanted to enjoy that same immunity wherever they were in those lands, whether within Rhos or without. Considering that his labours would thus have been in vain, he asked for and obtained from the archbishop a letter to the bishop of St Davids stating that he had not released the others from the interdict but only the inhabitants of the cantref of Rhos—­and them only temporarily at the king’s insistence—­and that he would resolutely restrain all the ­others who refused to give tithes of wool and cheese under the former interdict. When this was done, the inhabitants of the cantref of Daugleddau were placed once more under sentence of the interdict, and so too were those from Angle229 who, though they dwelt in the province of Pembroke, wished nevertheless to enjoy a like liberty, since they were Flemings and had laid out money to seek this immunity together with the men of Rhos, as had the people of Daugleddau. The people of Talacharn, too, were placed again under interdict and they, because they were partly Flemings and were far richer in sheep than their neighbours, were that much more disobedient and resistant. As a result, they could not be fully tamed and broken in except by a special command of the lord pope, which Gerald afterwards obtained. There was therefore much unrest in the country and bitterness against Gerald on the part of the Flemings; but from the clergy whose honour and advantages he was guarding, on the other hand, there was great love and affection. Moreover, Gerald had long before this been the means to set a precedent to induce230 paying tithes on these things as well in Dyfed. For when he was a young man in the schools of Paris, his relatives William fitz Hay, Odo of Carew, and Philip de Barri (his brother) had long before granted him tithes from their wool and mills, as if by

230  The word allectorium is used repeatedly by Peter the Chanter, but is cited by DMLBS only from Gerald’s works, here and at Gemma eccl., i. 49 (RS ii. 137). Gerald presumably had it from Peter’s Verbum adbreuiatum (textus prior), xxi (ed. Boutry, p. 168); (textus conflatus), i. 20 (ed. Boutry, p. 177): the passage in Gemm. Eccl. is a quotation from that work.

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54 RS i. 29

fo. 160v

RS i. 30

de g e s t i s gi r a l di, i

longe ante contulerant.231 Vnde postmodum, | audita predicatione que per ipsum uenerat et pontificali remissione, ad dandas decimas predictas ecclesiis suis tam ipsi quam alii exemplo ipsorum longe proniores erant et procliuiores. Multum itaque contulit qui et principium dedit et negocium totum opere sequente non mediocriter augmentando ­promouit. ⟨C⟩ontigit autem parrochianos de Angulo, quorum ecclesia Giraldi fuerat, non solum interdictos propter hanc rebellionem set etiam excommunicatos, ad diem certum absolutionis gratiam et Giraldi ­presentiam expetere pariter et expectare. Nocte uero precedente diem  illum proxima iacens simul cum episcopob Sancti Dauid apud Kirreu,c cum mane ad iter se prepararet, licet tempestate maxima ingruente uentoque preualido, pluuia etd grandine permixto, profecturo directe in faciem et oculos perflante, dixit ei episcopus, a cuius thoro non longe iacebat, quod | propter procellam imminentem nimis diem proterminaret et quiesceret. Qui respondens periculosam in hoc casu moram existere, quoniam qui excommunicati fuerant absolucionem expetebant et correctionem promittebant, sice cum eius licencia et benedictione iter incunctanter aggressus est. Presul autem, cum eodem die ad prandium sederet, procella pluuiosa fortius instante et flatus horribiles eructuante, uidens et circumspiciendo notans (ut erat uir prudens ac prouidus) alios epulis et poculis, quosdam uero puellarum ac feminarum affatibus, licencius atque laciuius indulgere, tam unius ad laudem quam aliorum correctionem dixit: ‘Ille, qui hodie iter arripuit et tale tempus non abhorruit, nec propter gulam nec propter laciuiam aut desidiam ullam infecta negocia sua pretermittit’. Dicere namque Giraldus consueuerat quod non erat animi uirilis auram ad agenda uel aggredienda negocia232 aut temporis tranquillitatem in ­terris obseruare. Solum enim mare transeuntibus tollerabilem esse dicebat obseruantiam talem. |

b  Episcopo Wharton; ipso MS    c  sic MS    sicque MS

 et ed.; in MS    e sic ed.;

d

231  PR 21 HII (The Pipe Roll of 21 Henry II, 89 (19 Dec. 1173–18 Dec. 1174)), contains an entry showing that, by 1174, Odo of Carew had lost the cantref of Emlyn: he was granted monetary compensation in Branton, Devon, ‘in escambio castelli et terre de Emelin quamdiu Resus filius Griffin ea habuerit’ (Round, ‘The origins of the Carews’, p. 23).

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contract, for they knew that he was of great promise.231 And so afterwards, because they had heard what he preached and the archbishop’s pardon, both they and others, by their example, were far more prone and inclined to give the said tithes to their churches. Thus Gerald, who had both started the matter and advanced the whole business, moving it on to no small extent by his subsequent efforts, bestowed a great benefit. Now it happened that the parishioners of Angle, whose church belonged to Gerald and who were not only under interdict because of this rebellion but also excommunicated, asked for the grace of absolution and were awaiting Gerald’s presence on a certain day. On the night immediately preceding that day, he was staying with the bishop of St Davids at Carew. When he was readying himself for the journey in the morning, even though a tremendous storm was rising and a fierce wind would sweep a mix of rain and hail straight into his face and eyes on the way he was to travel, the bishop (whose bed he lay near) told him he should postpone the day and rest, given the too-­g reat gale which threatened. He replied that in this case delay was dangerous, for the excommunicated were awaiting absolution and promising to reform, and so with the bishop’s permission and blessing he struck out without delay. That same day the prelate was sitting at his mid­day meal, while the rainy gale blew ever stronger and belched forth fearful gusts; and, looking around him and observing (for he was a wise and provident man) that some were indulging too freely and wantonly in food and drink, and others indeed in conversation with girls and women, he said, both to praise one and to rebuke the others: ‘The man who set out on his journey today and did not shrink from such weather as this, he does not let his business go undone through gluttony, wantonness, or indolence of any kind’. For Gerald was accustomed to say that it was unworthy of a manly disposition to look for a gentle breeze or peaceful weather when undertaking or embarking on business on land232—for, he used to say, such concern was only acceptable in those who were crossing the sea.

232  Note the characteristic alliterating doublet agenda uel aggredienda.

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de g e s t i s gi r a l di, i

[I . 5]  DE I N I C I A LIBVS S VE PRO MO T I O NI S AC TIONIBVS.

⟨I⟩nter ipsa uero sue promotionis in archidiaconum inicialia, inueniens in ecclesia de Haia (que finalis est uersus Angliam diocesis Meneuensis) militem quendam, fratrem persone, tam oblaciones ad altare quam decimas exteriores233 et obuentiones omnes cum persona dimidiantem et ex equoa participantem, statim enormitatem illam, set non tamen absque dificultate et militis multa ac comminacione, deleuit et sic, ecclesia persone redintegrata, militem prorsus expertem fecit. ⟨I⟩tem, cum ad uisitandas quasdam archidiaconatus sui finales et  remotas inter Vagam et Sabrinam fluuios,234 de Eluein scilicet et Melenith, partes accederet, occurrerunt ei clerici duo nunciantes ex parte decani et capituli finium illorum235 quod eorum ecclesias in propria persona uisitare non deberet set per nuncios et officiales suos, precipue uero per decanum (quem et ‘archidiaconum’ secum uocabant), que agenda fuerint apud ipsos more predecessorum suorum agere quidem et effectui mancipare curaret. A quo cum responsum acciperent quod segniciem aliorum siue ignauiam sequi, si qua fuerat, nollet set pocius iure suo et officio se plenius uti uelle, prohibuerunt ei ex parte cleri tocius et populi necnon et principum patrie ne adueniret, crucem quoque Domini, more gentis illius, ne procederet ei proponentes. Cum autem a ceptob itinere propter hec nullatenus retardari posset, in silue cuiusdam grandis ingressu occurreruntc alii denunciantes ei capitales inimicicias hostilitatis antique inter genus suum et quosdam generosos terre illius uiros olim ortas fuisse et, quoniam ea, que quasi sopita iam diu fuerant, nuncd propter famam aduentus ipsius ad memoriam sunt a   ex aequo Wharton; ex quo MS    b  Corrected from accepto by subpunction in MS     occurrerunt ed.; occurrunt MS    d nunc Wharton; non MS

c

233  The phrasing of the sentence suggests that these tithes were ‘exterior’ by contrast with the altar offerings. Cf. Itin. Kam., ii. 4 (RS vi. 120) on the wicked lay abbot at Llanbadarn Fawr leaving ‘solum altaria cum decimis et obventionibus’ to the clergy of the church; cf. also Descr. Kam., i. 18 (RS vi. 203), on the division of the ‘great tithe’ by thirds: two thirds to their baptismal church, one third to the bishop of the diocese. 234  This renders the Welsh phrase, ‘Rhwng Gwy a Hafren’, ‘Between Wye and Severn’ which was then the portion of Gerald’s archdeaconry of Brycheiniog that was under Welsh rule, whereas Brycheiniog, together with Buellt, was a marcher lordship held by William de Breus (Rees, Historical Atlas of Wales, plate 36). For the links of Rhwng Gwy a Hafren to both Deheubarth and to Powys, see above pp. lii–liii, and also p. 233. For the places mentioned in this and the following chapter, see Map 3 (p. liii).

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[ I. 5 ]  O N HI S FI R ST AC TS AFTER HI S  PRO MO T I O N. Amongst the first things to happen after he had been promoted arch­ deacon, Gerald discovered in the church at Hay-­on-­Wye (which is on the border of the diocese of St Davids with England) that a certain knight, brother to the parson there, was, with the parson, dividing up and sharing equally the offerings at the altar, the tithes which came from without,233 and all the revenues; he immediately expunged that wickedness, though not without difficulty and a payment to (as well as threats from) the knight. And so he restored the church to the parson and entirely deprived the knight of his share in it. Likewise, when he was going to visit certain remote districts on the borders of his archdeaconry, between the rivers Wye and Severn,234 districts called Elfael and Maelienydd, two clerks came to meet him and announced on behalf of the dean and chapter of that territory235 that he should not visit their churches himself, but should take care to act and to put into effect what had to be done there through his envoys and officials, and especially through the dean (whom, among themselves, they were even calling ‘the archdeacon’), in the manner of Gerald’s predecessors. And when they heard his response, that he did not wish to imitate the sloth or idleness of others (if indeed this had happened) but wished rather to make fuller use of his authority and responsibility, they forbade him to come, on behalf of all the clergy, people, and rulers of that country, and placing the Lord’s cross in front of him (as is the custom of that people), told him to advance no further. But since he could certainly not be deterred from the journey he had undertaken by such means, others came to meet him as he entered a certain great wood and announced that mortal enmities, born of an ancient feud, had once arisen between his kindred and certain noblemen of that land; and that, since those matters, long laid to rest, had now been brought back to mind by the news of his coming, strong men, drawn from amongst his enemies and furnished with arms, had doubtless laid 235  Later, the area would be divided between two rural deaneries, Maelienydd (which included Gwerthrynion) and Elfael (Rees, Historical Atlas of Wales, plate 33); Taxatio Eccles., p. 274, which has Elfael and Maelienydd as separate deaneries. This passage suggests that in 1175 they formed a single deanery, centred at Llanbadarn, very probably Llanbadarn Fawr, in Maelienydd, NGR SO 08 64, rather than Llanbadarn Fynydd, also in Maelienydd but further north, NGR SO 097 777.

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58 RS i. 31

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reuocata, uiros fortes de hostibus illis et armis munitos insidias ad mortem sibi | et suis in eadem silua, si processerint,e proculdubio posuisse. Quod licet iteratis rumoribus crebrius ei nunciatum esset, dissuadentibus suis omnibus totaque sequela ualde timente, tanquam nil audiens aut penitus audita contempnensf iter agere | non tardabat. Presensit enim et predixit per clericorum illorum, aduentum ipsius reformidantium,g fraudulentam maliciam totum hoc confectum aut confictum fuisse. Vnde si sic in primis et tam facile per minas ipsorum abstereri posset, semper in posterum minoris aput ipsos auctoritatis et reuerentie foret. Cum igitur, hispida trans Vagamh et siluis conserta prouincia de Eleuein transcursa, ecclesie Paternii de Melenith, ubi capitulum tenere et ea nocte iacere decreuerat, quasi per miliare tamen adhuc distans appropinquaret, familiam suam (quam simul cum saginariis suis, cocis  et clitellariis ad preparandum hospicium, ut fieri solet, ante premiserat) fugitiuam et formidine plenam obuiam habuit, lanceis quippe longis et sagittis acutis acriter a uilla propulsatam. Quo uiso, quamquam omnes tam commeantes quam obuiantes ut ocius rediret hortarentur, improperantes etiam pulcrius et honestius ipsum consilio suorum id ante fecisse uirumque discretum ausu prepropero seu temerario seque suosque tam magnis et manifestis exponere periculis non debere, ipse quidem hec omnia respuens tantoque animosiusj uersus ecclesiam iter accelerans aliosque sequi precipiens, cunctis ei uille tocius hostiis clausis et seratis, in ecclesia, quam forte apertam inuenit, quia nec alibi tunc potuit, hospicium suscepit et equos in cimiterio stabiliri fecit. ⟨H⟩iis autem in hunc modum—­uel pocius preter modum—­actis, duos clericos ilico mittens nunciauit principi terre illiusk Cadwallano filio Madoci (cui sanguine iunctus fuerat)236 aduentum suum, suosque e  processerint Wharton; processerunt MS and Brewer    f contemnens Wharton; contempnes MS    g reformidantium Wharton; reformantium MS    h trans Vagam Wharton; transuagam MS, the two elements joined across a line-break by a hyphen    i  Paterni Davies (Inuect., p. 13, n. 1); patrum MS; partium Wharton and Brewer    j animosius Wharton; animosus MS    k  illius illius MS

236  On Cadwallon’s kinship to Gerald, see above, p. lv (Table 4). On Cadwallon’s recovery of Maelienydd from Hugh Mortimer and Cadwallon’s relationship to Madog ap Maredudd, see Stephenson, Medieval Powys, pp. 43–4, who suggests that the recovery occurred at the beginning of Henry II’s reign, when Mortimer, as an adherent of Stephen, was in conflict with Henry II; he further suggests that the recovery of Maelienydd may have been in exchange for Madog giving up Oswestry to the Fitz Alans, supporters of the Angevin cause. Howden, Gesta Henrici II, i. 162, described the Council at Oxford in 1177 as held ‘to hold talks with the kings and more powerful men of Wales, who had come there at his command

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ambushes to slay Gerald and his men in that very wood, if they should go any further. And though he had been told this by increasingly frequent and repeated reports, and though all his men urged against proceeding and his retinue was sorely afraid, he, as though hearing none of this, or utterly despising what he heard, delayed his journey not at all. For he sensed and foretold that all of this had been concocted or invented by the deceitful wickedness of those clerics, who feared his coming. Therefore, if he could be thus deterred by their threats, so easily and at the very beginning, he would ever afterwards be less respected by them and have less authority. When he had therefore crossed the rough and densely wooded country of Elfael beyond the Wye and was approaching Llanbadarn in Maelienydd, where he had decided to hold a chapter and stay the night, but was still about a mile from the place, he ran into his own retinue, whom he had sent ahead together with their palfreys, cooks, and pack-­ horses to prepare the night’s lodgings (as is usually done), returning in flight and full of fear, driven fiercely back from the township by long spears and sharp arrows. When he had seen this, though all his men, both those accompanying him and those they now met on the road, urged him to withdraw swiftly and also rebuked him, saying that he would have acted more fittingly and decently to have followed their advice before and that a prudent man should not expose both himself and his men to such great and obvious dangers through hasty or arrogant presumption, he nevertheless rejected all this, sped on his way still more resolutely towards the church, and commanded the others to follow. Though all the doors of the whole township were shut and barred against him, he found lodgings in the church, which by chance was open (for he could then find nowhere else) and had his horses ­stabled in the cemetery. When these things had been done in this way—­or rather in so unreasonable a way—­he immediately sent two clerics to announce his arrival to the prince of that land, Cadwallon ap Madog (to whom he was related)236 and to tell him that his men had been driven off and he to confer with him: namely Rhys ap Gruffudd, king of South Wales, and Dafydd ab Owain, king of North Wales, and Cadwallon, king of Elfael (Delwain = de Elwain), and Owain of Cyfeiliog, and Gruffudd of Bromfield and Madog ab Iorwerth Goch, and many others of the more noble men of Wales’. What is remarkable in this passage is that Cadwallon is a king, whereas Owain Cyfeiliog and the other great men of Powys are not given that title. See Charles-Edwards, ‘Dynastic succession in medieval Wales’, pp. 82–3. His elegy by Cynddelw is Gwaith Cynddelw Brydydd Mawr, i (ed. Jones and Parry Owen), iii, poem 21. For his death in 1179, while he was under royal protection, at the hands of adherents of the Mortimer heir, see Lloyd, HW 567. Cf. also Appendix 2 on districts (pp. 232–7).

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60 RS i. 32

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repulsos seque in ecclesia circumseptum et obsessum indicauit. Ipse | uero statim, hoc audiens, archidiacono uictualia ad sufficientiam misit, mandans etiam se ad ipsum in crastino uenturum et iniurias ipsius tanquam proprias acriter ulturum. Quibus auditis, solutal est statim obsessio et clericim sex uel septem, more Walensium participes ­ecclesie illius, unus post alterum ad pedes archidiaconi humiliter accesserunt ueniam petentes et impetrantes, digna tamen inobedientien quinimmo contumelie tante satisfactione secuta. In crastino uero ­princeps aduenit cum uxore sua, filia principis Powisie cui nomen Eua,237 et filiis duobus, Mailgone scilicet et Howelo, seque suaque cuncta,o terras et oppida, res et possessiones offerens archidiacono et exponens filiumque suum iuniorem et qui ipsum tueretur dum in patria foret adiunxit (quia primeuum illi nutrierant quos clerici in ipsump concitauerant).

[ I . 6 ]   QVALITER EPISCOPO LANELVENSI a 238 A P V T KE R I R E ST I T I T ET ECCLES IAS T E R R E I L L I V S O MN ES VIRILITER R E T I N V I T.

fo. 161v

⟨P⟩eractis igitur hiis que ibi agenda uidebantur, uersus Brecheniauc lora regirans ad domicilium suum de Landovb239 reuersus est, ubi, cum paucis diebus (quia tantum tribus aut quattuor) moram fecisset, uenerunt clerici duo missi a decano et capitulo partium predictarum cum festinatione nuntiantes | ei Laneluensem episcopum Adam240 ad ecclesiam de Keri241 (que finalis erat inter episcopatus set tamen de eorum capitulo et diocesi Meneuensi ab antiquo fuerat) proxima dominica proculdubio uenturum ipsamque eodem die, ut eam sic cum tota prouincia occupare possit, dedicaturum, asserentes quoque nullatenus l   Corrected from solutas by subpunction in MS    m clerici Wharton; clericis MS     inobedientiae Wharton; in obedientie MS, it seems    o cuncta Wharton; cunctaque MS    p ipsum Wharton; ipsi MS n

a  Lanelvensi Brewer; laneluepsi MS    Landou Wharton; Landeov Brewer

b

 landov MS, with word-final u written thus;

237  Efa ferch Madog ap Maredudd; Madog ap Maredudd had died in 1160. Cynddelw’s poem to her is Gwaith Cynddelw Brydydd Mawr, i (ed, Jones and Parry Owen), iii, poem 5. 238  Llanelwy is the Welsh name for St Asaph’s. 239  Landov (NGR SO 05 30). The spelling indicates a pronunciation ‘Llanddw’. Etymologically it is ‘the Church of God’ (Morgan and Powell, Study of Breconshire Place-Names,

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himself lay hemmed in and besieged within the church. Now as soon as Cadwallon heard this, he sent the archdeacon the provisions he needed, and sent word too that he himself would come the next day and fiercely avenge the insults to Gerald as though they had been done to himself. When this was heard, the siege was at once lifted and the six or seven clerks who shared the church amongst themselves, in the manner of the Welsh, came humbly one after another and asked for and received forgiveness at the archdeacon’s feet—­though an appropriate penance followed for so great an act of disobedience, or rather of insolent abuse. The next day the prince came with his wife Efa, the daughter of the prince of Powys,237 and his two sons Maelgwn and Hywel. He offered himself and all he had to the archdeacon, making available his lands and settlements, properties and possessions; and he attached his younger son to him to protect him as long as he was in that country (for the eldest son had been fostered by those whom the clergy had stirred up against Gerald).

[ I. 6 ]   H OW HE R E SI ST E D T HE BIS HOP OF LL A N ELWY I N C E R I A ND M ANFULLY R E TA I NE D A L L T HE C HURCHES OF T H AT   L A ND.238 After he had finished what it seemed necessary to do there, he turned his reins towards Brecon and returned to his dwelling at Llan-­ddew.239 When he had stayed there a little time (for it was only three or four days), two clerks came in haste, sent by the dean and chapter of the aforesaid district, and told him that Adam, bishop of Llanelwy,240 was without any doubt going to come the following Sunday to the church of Ceri,241 which was on the border of the two bishoprics but nevertheless had from of old belonged to their chapter and to the diocese of St Davids. They said that he would dedicate it that very day, so that he might appropriate it and the surrounding district, and they asserted that

pp. 93–4, under the usual modern spelling, Llan-ddew). Gerald expressed his affection for his house at Llan-ddew at Itin. Kam., i. 3 (RS vi. 47). 240  Bishop of St Asaph 1175–81: Fasti Ecclesiae Anglicanae 1066–1300, ix. 34. 241  The commote of Ceri was the northernmost portion of Rhwng Gwy a Hafren, next to Cedewain, and thus by its position the most exposed to annexation by St Asaph’s (Rees, Historical Atlas of Wales, plate 32). It appears to have been a single parish at this period, Llanfihangel-yng-Ngheri, ecclesia Sancti Michaelis de Keri.

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ipsum ab hoc impediri posse, nisi occurrens ei in propria persona archidiaconus aduentaret. Asseuerabant etiam quod si prouinciam illam sic occupare permissus fuerit, totam quoque ter|ram usque Vagam (scilicet Meilenith et Eleuein), tamquam ad ecclesiam suam de Sancto Asaph pertinentem, firmiter occupare proposuit. Quo audito, quamquam fessus adhuc labore priori, cunctisque suis constanter dissuadentibus et hiis precipue qui secum antea fuerant (plus pre timore tamen quam labore) cum ipso tunc ire recusantibus, in crastino (scilicet feria sexta) cum hiis quos secum ducere poterat iter iterum incunctanter arripuit et, Vage fluuium transuadando siluestriaque de Eluein transpenetrando, in confinio de Melenith pernoctauit. Surgens autem sabato, mane post matutinarum et missarum solempnia nuncios qui clericos undique conuocarent eumque sequi facerent uarias ad partes destinauit. Alios etiam ad principes et fratres (scilicet Eneam Clut et Cadwallanum) misit, rogans quatinus de familiis suis uiros probos cum equis et armis, qui ei, si opus esset, assisterent et iura Sancti Dauit cum ipso defenderent, post ipsum mitterent, quoniam in manu forti cum Powisensibus et de Keddewein episcopus ille uenturus esse dicebatur. Et sic, Melenith transcurrendo, apud ecclesiam de Lanbisterc non procul a Keri nocte illa moram fecit et, cum mane (dominica scilicet) ad ecclesiam Sancti Michaelis de Keri ueniret archidiaconus, clerici duo participes ecclesie qui obuiam episcopo ­perrexerant (cuius etiam aduentui consenserunt) ecclesie claues absconderant. Set, quesitis illis diligenter et tandem inuentis, archidiaconus intrauit et statim, pulsatis campanis tanquam in inuestiture signum et possessionis, missam sollempniter inchoari et celebrari fecit. Interim autem ueniunt nuncii episcopi cum persona ecclesie, precipientes ecclesiam statim ad dedicandum preparari, ac si satis pro imperio fieri debere nec resisti posse constaret. Archidiaconus autem, hoc audito, post missam completam misit quosdam de clericis suis discretos simul cum decano prouincie obuiam episcopo, nunciantes ei ex parte ipsius quod si pacifice ueniret et tanquam amicus | et uicinus, hospicio libenter cum omni honore susciperetur, sed alio modo non accederet. Quod cum ei dixissent, diligenter inquirens si archidiaconus in propria persona iam aduenit et admirans, cum paulo ante de prouincia recessisset, tandem, inito cum suis consilio, ne uinci uideretur (quia superciliosus erat ualde et presumptuosus), sue morem

 Lanbister ed.; lanbist’ MS; Lanbist Wharton; Lanbiste Brewer

c

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there was no way to keep him from doing this, except for the arch­deacon to come and oppose him in person. They declared too that, if he were allowed thus to appropriate that district, he planned as well to occupy irrevocably all the land up to the Wye (Maelienydd and Elfael, that is), as belonging to his own church of St Asaph. When he heard this, though he was still tired from his previous labours, and though all his men strongly tried to dissuade him—­and though those in particular who had been with him before refused then to go with him (more from fear, however, than from their weariness)—Gerald struck out again the next day without delay (on Friday, that is), with what men he could bring with him; and, crossing the Wye and cutting through the forests of Elfael, spent that night on the border of Maelienydd. On the Saturday morning he arose and, after the solemn celebration of matins and masses, dispatched messengers in various directions to assemble clerks from every quarter and have them follow him. He sent others too to the princes and brothers, Einion Clud and Cadwallon, asking that they send after him reliable men from their households, with horses and arms, to stand with him if need be and to defend with him the rights of St David; for it was said that that bishop would come in great force with the men of Powys and Cedewain. Speeding across Maelienydd, he spent that night at the church of Llanbister, not far from Ceri. And when the archdeacon came to the church of St Michael in Ceri the next morning (on Sunday, that is), two of the clerks who shared the church, and who had gone out to meet the bishop (to whose coming they agreed), had hidden the church’s keys. But a careful search was made for them, they were finally found, and the archdeacon entered. He immediately caused the bells to be rung as a sign of investiture and possession and had the celebration of a mass solemnly begun. Meanwhile, however, messengers from the bishop came, together with the parson of the church, directing that the church should be immediately prepared for its dedication, as if it were quite clear that this would be done in accordance with his command and no resistance were possible. The archdeacon, however, when he had heard this and the mass was over, sent certain prudent clerks, together with the dean of the province, to meet the bishop and to tell him on Gerald’s behalf that if he were to come in peace as a friend and neighbour, he would be received gladly as a guest with every honour; but, otherwise, let him not come. When they had told him this, the bishop asked whether the archdeacon had already arrived in person, and was amazed to hear that he had, for he had left the district shortly before. Finally, he took counsel with his men and, so as not to appear defeated (for he was very

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g­ erens arrogancie respondit se non ut hospitem et uicinum sed tanquam episcopum loci illius et ad dedicandum ecclesiam illam et officium episcopale in parrochia sua faciendum continenter accessurum. Decanus autem | et clerici missi, hoc audientes, sicut edocti fuerant, ne in hunc modum propius accederet neue in aliena parrochia dedicationem non uocatus ad hoc nec inuitatus facere presumeret constanter inhibuerunt et ad summum pontificem appellauerunt. Sed, quoniam ipsum per hoc tardare non poterant, quosdam ex suis in equis forcioribus (sicut premuniti fuerant) hoc archidiacono nunciantes cum festinacione premiserunt. Qui cum uenissent, relictis in ecclesia de comitatu suo quibusdam qui eam seruarent interius et hostia serarent, statim exiuit archidiaconus obuiam episcopo uenienti ad introitum cimiterii. Episcopus autem, ut uenit, precepit archidiacono quatinus cum suis festinanter abiret ecclesiamque suam et cimiterium ad faciendum quod disposuit ei relinqueret. Alioquin ipsum, licet inuitus, quia Parisius olim socii fuerant et conscolares,242 excommunicaret. Archidiaconus econtra rogauit episcopum quatinus, causa amicicie et societatis antique, in pace discederet et nichil in iniuriam suam sueque detrimentum iurisdicionis attemptaret. Quod cum facere penitus recusaret, ne dedicationem uel aliquod officium episcopale ibi faciendo ‘falcem mitteret in messem alienam’,243 ex parte Dei dominique pape et archiepiscopi necnon et regis Anglie (in cuius manu et custodia tunc erat ecclesia Sancti Dauit, paulo ante orbata pastore)244 firmiter inhibuit et appellauit. Episco|pus autem, hiis auditis, litteras archiepiscopi Cantuariensis, a quo non longe ante consecratus fuerat, produxit et legi fecit, quibus episcopatum Lanelum cum cunctis pertinenciis suis ei confirmauit et omnes qui aliquid ei iniuste auferrent excommunicauit. Quibus perlectis, subiunxit episcopus ecclesiam de Keri, sicut et omnes ecclesias inter Vagam et Sabrinam, ad ecclesiam suam Laneluensem iure parrochiali pertinere, et in eius rei testimonium librum produxit antiquum, in cuius id fine contineri dicebat. Quod et legi fecit, dicens et asserens quod nisi archidiaconus cito decederet,d incontinenti ipsum et suos d

 decederet ed.; desideret MS; disisteret Wharton

242  Adam, bishop of St Asaph (Llanelwy) (ODNB, s.n. ‘Adam [Adam the Welshman]’); he and Gerald were probably in Paris together in the mid-1160s during Gerald’s first period of study. 243  Cf. Gregory the Great drawing on Deut. 23: 25 in Bede, Historia ecclesastica, i. 27 (ed. Colgrave and Mynors, p. 88) and Gratian, Decretum, C. 6 q. 3 c. 1: ‘Per alienam messem transiens falcem mittere non debes’.

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haughty and overweening), he gave free rein to his arrogance and replied that he would come straightaway, not as a guest and neighbour, but as the bishop of that place, to dedicate the church and perform his episcopal duty in his own diocese. Hearing this, the dean and clerks who had been sent steadfastly enjoined the bishop (as they had been instructed to) not to come closer in this manner nor to presume to dedicate a church in another’s diocese when he had not been summoned or invited to do so, and they appealed to the pope. But since they could not delay him thus, they sent ahead in haste some of their number, who had been provided with more powerful horses, to tell the archdeacon. When they had come, the archdeacon left part of his retinue in the church to guard it from within and lock the doors, and himself immediately went forth to meet the bishop as he came to the entrance to the graveyard. As he arrived, the bishop commanded the archdeacon to take his men and be gone right away and to leave the church and graveyard to him, to do there what he had undertaken to do. Otherwise he would excommunicate him—­though unwillingly, for they had once been companions and classmates in Paris.242 The archdeacon in rejoinder asked the bishop, for the sake of their friendship and former fellowship, to depart in peace and to take no action which would wrong him or harm his jurisdiction. When he utterly refused to go, Gerald resolutely enjoined him not to ‘put his scythe into another’s harvest’243 by performing the dedication or exercising any episcopal function there, appealing to him on behalf of God, the lord pope, the archbishop, and indeed the king of England, in whose hands and custody the church of St David then was, for it had shortly before been deprived of its shepherd.244 Hearing this, however, the bishop produced letters from the archbishop of Canterbury, by whom he had been consecrated not long before, and had them read out. In them, the archbishop confirmed him in the bishopric of Llanelwy with all its appurtenances and excommunicated all who might unjustly rob him of anything. When this had been read out, the bishop added that the church of Ceri—­indeed all the churches between Wye and Severn—­belonged to his own church of Llanelwy by diocesan right and, as witness to this, he produced an old book, whose end he said contained this. He had this read out too, and declared that unless the archdeacon swiftly withdrew, he would forthwith excommunicate him and his men. The archdeacon replied 244  Bishop David fitz Gerald died 8 May 1176 (Episcopal Acts, ed. Conway Davies, i. 285). His successor, Peter de Leia, was consecrated in the following November. Adam, bishop of St Asaph, was taking advantage of the vacancy to push his claim to Rhwng Gwy a Hafren.

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fo. 162v RS i. 36

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excommunicaret. Archidiaconus autem ad hec respondit ecclesiam de Keri et alias inter Vagam et Sabrinam (de Eleuein scilicet et Melenith et Warthrenniaun) nec ad diocesim Laneluensem nec ad archiepiscopi confirmationem illam ullatenus pertinere puta quas trecentis annis et pluribus intra diocesim Meneuensem contentas fuisse dinoscitur. In libro autem suo scribere poterat quod uolebat, sed si cartam inde haberet cum autentico sigillo uel priuilegium, ostenderet, et cum hoc non haberet, si ipsum excommunicare uellet, quia pro ecclesie sue ­stabat defensione, et ipse in eum sententiam simili temeritate precipitaret. Respondit ille se episcopume esse nec licere archidiacono episcopum excommunicare. Cui archidiaconus, ‘Si episcopus’, inquit, ‘es, non es episcopus meus nec potestatem ullam habes sententiandi in me, sicut nec ego in te. Ideoque ualeat sentencia quantum ualere poterit, utrimque temere et indebite data’. Episcopus autem, hiis auditis, se parumper retrahendo, statim equof dilapsus capiti suo mitram imponi fecit et sic mitratusg baculumque pastoralem nudatum manu baiulans, ut maioris auctoritatis eius sententia fore uideretur, | cum turba suorum pedes accessit. Archi | diaconus econtra sacerdotes et clericos plures, albis stolis et superpelliciish ac sacerdotalibus ceterisi indutos, cum cereis accensis et cruce baiula ac preambula in modum processionis de ecclesia exeuntes in faciem procedere iussit. Nouerat enim hominis naturam, quod preceps erat in actibus suis et presumtuosus, ideoque, dum uerbis contendebant (quia garrulus erat ille et uerbosus), hec preparari caute curauerat archidiaconus. Quos cum uideret, episcopus quesiuit quidnam hoc esset et ad quid illi sic uenirent. Cui archidiaconus, ‘Ad hoc’, inquit, ‘ut si in nos et ipsos sententiam dare presumpseritis, et ipsi non minus audacter in uos et uestros uice uersa sententiam donent’. Episcopus autem hoc audiens ait: ‘Propter amiciciam que inter nos olim fuerat et scolasticam societatem, parcemus nunc persone uestre et hiis qui uobiscum sunt nec nominatim in quemquam uestrum sententiam dabimus. Generaliter autem, sicut archiepiscopus in litteris suis, omnes qui iura Sancti Asaph, patroni nostri, nobis auferre et sibi usurpare nituntur sententia excommunicacionis inuoluemus’. Ad hec archidiaconus, ‘Si talem’, inquit, ‘sententiam generalem dederitis in e  Episcopum Wharton; ipsum MS, corrected to episcopum by an early-modern hand     equo Wharton; ego MS    g mitratus Wharton; imitratus MS    h superpelliciis Wharton; suppelliciis MS    i caeteris Wharton; eeteris MS

f

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that the church of Ceri and the others between Wye and Severn (in Elfael, Maelienydd, and Gwerthrynion, that is) had nothing to do with either the diocese of Llanelwy or that confirmation by the archbishop, for it was well known that they had formed part of the diocese of St Davids for three hundred years and more. He could write whatever he wanted in his book, but if he had a charter with an authentic seal or a privilege on the point, let him show it; and since he had no such thing, if he should choose to excommunicate him for standing in defence of his church, Gerald himself would throw down a sentence against him with the same boldness. The other replied that he was a bishop and an archdeacon was not allowed to excommunicate a bishop. To this, the archdeacon said: ‘If you are a bishop, you are not my bishop, and you have no power to pass sentence on me, just as I have no such power over you. So let each of our sentences have what power they can: sentences given, on both sides, presumptuously and improperly’. Now when the bishop heard this, he withdrew for a moment, slipped quickly off his horse, and had his mitre placed on his head. Thus mitred, he unsheathed his crozier and, bearing it in his hand (so that his sentence might seem of greater authority), approached on foot with a crowd of his men. The archdeacon, on the other hand, ordered several priests and clerks, dressed in white stoles and surplices and other priestly garments, to go out of the church with lighted candles and a cross borne before them and to advance in the face of the bishop in procession. For he knew this man’s nature: that he was rash in his actions and arrogant; and therefore, while they were arguing (for he was also talkative and prolix), the archdeacon had prudently taken care that these things be readied. When he saw them, the bishop asked what this could be and why they were thus advancing. The archdeacon replied: ‘For this purpose: so that, if you should presume to pass sentence upon us and upon them, they too may pass sentence, no less presumptuously, upon you and your men in exchange’. Hearing this, the bishop said: ‘On account of the friendship which once there was between us and of our fellowship at school, we shall spare for now you personally and those who are with you, and shall not pass sentence on any of you by name. But without particularizing we shall, like the archbishop in his letter, cover with a sentence of excommunication all those who strive to rob us of the rights of our patron, St Asaph, and to usurp them for themselves’. To this the archdeacon answered: ‘Were you to pass such a general sentence in those mountains over there’, gesturing towards the mountains

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­ ontibus illis’, ostendens montes in parrochia Laneluensi non procul m inde distantes,245 ‘a mane usque ad uesperam, quoniam in nullo nos tangeret, qui tantum iura nostra tuemur, nichil omnino curaremus. Sed propter populum astantem, qui non intelligeret sed pocius putaret sentenciam uestram, si hic daretur sub quacumque forma, in nos quidem aut preiudicium nostrum datam esse, nolumus quod hic aliquatenus fiat’. Et cum episcopus iuraret se predicto modo ibij statim excommunicare uelle, et archidiaconus se sub forma consimili sententiam daturum asseuerauit. Cumque sick episcopus in genere, ne nichil egisse uideretur, excommunicare hostes et aduersarios Sancti Asaph alta uoce cepisset, et archi | diaconus alciori uoce cum suis in cimiterio omnes qui iura Sancti Dauid preripere uel perturbare presumerent excommunicauit et, respiciens campanas que iuxta ipsos ab alto pendebant, precepit quatinus in ignominiam aduersariorum et quasi246 sententiel sue confirmationem simul omnes trino interuallo pulsarentur.247 Quod cum fieret, quoniam Walenses sonum huiusmodi campanarum cum in ipsos pulsantur multum abhorrent, confestim episcopus et sui equos scandentes, interrupta sententia, quam cicius poterant abcesserunt. Populi uero, qui ad hoc spectaculum undique concurrerant, clamorem magnum (ut mos est gentis illius) post ipsos extollentes, glebis etiam et lignis ac lapidibus fugientes a tergo sunt prosecuti. Cumque uersus Cadwallanum, cuius assensum habuerat, aput Melenith episcopus iter ageret, turbam magnam clericorum in equis bonis, lanceis etiam et sagittis, qui archidiaconum sequebantur obuiam habuit. A quibus cum quereretur quim apud Keri actum fuisset, respondit episcopus (quia non securus erat) se contra archidiaconum, qui bonus olim socius suus et amicus extiterat, nichil agere uelle et quia ad Cadwallanum, ut ei loqueretur, pacificus ibat. Archidiaconus autem coram decano et clericis, qui iam aduenerant, personas ecclesie super facto suo (quod episcopum illum adduxerant) acriter arguere cepit. Qui responderunt iurantes | de uoluntate sua numquam id prouenisse sed, ueniam petentes, se de cetero firmos ac fideles fore promiserunt. j  ibi Wharton; ubi MS and Brewer    k sic ed.; si MS; om. Wharton and Brewer     sententiae Wharton; sententia MS    m qui MS and Brewer; quid Wharton

l

245  The hills (montes) he is referring to are on the northern side of the Severn in the diocese of St Asaph. However, Ceri (NGR SO 147 901) is located to the south of the Severn in the valley of the river Miwl, and the low hills between the Miwl and the Severn block the sightline from the church to the north. Gerald is employing geographical licence here to make a rhetorical point. 246  ‘as it were’ because of the fact mentioned earlier (i. 3): that the ringing of bells had itself no force as a confirmation of excommunication but was only a declaration that the sentence had been confirmed.

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in the diocese of Llanelwy, which stood not far away,245 ‘and carry on thus from dawn to dusk, we should not care one bit—­because it would touch us not at all, for we are only protecting our own rights. But, because of the populace who are here present and would not understand, but would rather think that your sentence, if it were passed here in any form, had been passed against us or to our detriment, we do not wish that this be done at all’. And since the bishop swore that he intended immediately and on the spot to excommunicate in the way he had described, the archdeacon declared that he too would pass sentence in the same terms. When the bishop, lest he seem to have done nothing, had thus begun to excommunicate generally the enemies and adversaries of St Asaph, in a loud voice, the archdeacon too, in a voice still louder, with his men in the graveyard, excommunicated all who might presume to snatch away or to disturb the rights of St David. Looking back at the bells which hung nearby above them, so as to shame their adversaries and confirm, as it were,246 the sentence, he ordered that they be rung all together three times at intervals.247 The Welsh shrink with horror from the sound of bells rung thus against them and so, when this was done, the bishop and his men straightaway mounted their horses, cut short their own sentence of excommunication, and departed as quickly as they could. But the populace, who had flocked from all sides to this spec­ tacle, raised a great uproar (as is the custom of that people) as they left and pursued them in their flight with clods and sticks and stones. When the bishop was on his way towards Cadwallon in Maelienydd, whose support he had, he encountered a great crowd of clerks on fine horses, with lances too and arrows, who were following the archdeacon. When they asked him what had happened at Ceri, the bishop replied (for he felt insecure) that he had no wish to do anything against the archdeacon, who had once been his good companion and friend, and that he was going peacefully to talk to Cadwallon. Meanwhile the arch­ deacon, in front of the dean and the clerks who had now arrived, began harshly to rebuke the parsons of the church for having brought the bishop there. They swore in reply that they had never wished it to happen and, asking for his forgiveness, promised that they would henceforth be staunchly loyal to him. 247  Compare the description of the ceremony of excommunication in i. 3, above, where this phrase is discussed (n. 222). In Top. Hib., iii. 33 (RS v. 179), repeated in Itin. Kam., i. 2 (RS vi. 27), Gerald noted the special reverence of the Irish, the Scots, and the Welsh for bells. The church of Glascwm in Elfael (further south in Rhwng Gwy a Hafren) possessed a ­precious relic, the Bangu, believed to be St David’s own bell: Itin. Kam., i. 1 (RS vi. 18).

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Accepto igitur ab ipsis fidelitatis sacramento (scilicet ecclesie Meneuensi et sibi necnon et episcopo futuro), audiens per clericos suos qui episcopo obuiauerant ipsum ad Cadwallanum iuisse in archidiaconatu suo, statim ad partes illas iter arripuit et in ecclesia proxima loco ubi Cadwallanus episcopum susceperat hospicium accepit et hora cene (scilicet in uespera sicut Walensibus mos est248) misit episcopo de pane proprio et potu peroptimo, quos secum | tulerat causa curialitatis, exenium pulcrum.249 Quod et uerbis adornans mandauit quod ei in sua potestate et iurisdictione reperto precipueque pacifico omnem honorem et reuerentiam exhiberet seque in domo sua propria, si sors optulerit, eum libentissime et honestissime suscepturum. Rogauit etiam quod, sicut olim in Francia socii fuerant boni quando pauperiores erant et priuati, sic et nunc uicini boni et amici forent in potestate constituti. Episcopus autem, licet dissuadentibus suis propter dedecus ei factum perpessamque repulsam quod non susciperet, tamen saniori consilio cum gratiarum actione suscepit, dicens se propter hoc factum non minus archidiaconum appreciari, quinimmo magis ab omnibus fore laudandum quod ecclesie sue iura pro posse tueri satagebat, nec ob hoc se dilectionem ipsius et uicinitatem bonam uelle aliquatenus recusare. Cadwallanus uero cum proceribus et bonis uiris suis animositatem archidiaconi et uirilitatem multis laudibus efferebant,n dicentes et asserentes uirum talem honore pariter et potestate dignissimum. In crastino uero, cum recessisset episcopus, Cadwallanus, ab archidiacono conuentus quod episcopo ueniendi licentiam et occupandi parrochiam suam assensum prebuisset, negauit cum iuramento (ne scilicet archidiaconi offensam incurreret) seque de cetero Sancto Dauid et ecclesie sue fidelem fore sacramento firmauit. ⟨T⟩ria igitur istud aggrediendi episcopo occasionem dederunt: quod ecclesia Meneuensis pastore carebat; quod archidiaconum obo hostilitatem sibi inpositam patriam relinquisse nec amplius reuersurum esse pro certo audierat; quod etiam principis illius (licet in contrarium iurauerit) assensum occultum habuerat, propter metump

n  efferebant Wharton; afferebant MS    Wharton; mecum MS, it seems

 ob Wharton; om. MS   

o

p

 metum

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After accepting their oath of fealty—­to the church of St Davids, to himself, and to the future bishop—­he heard from those of his clerks who had encountered the bishop on the road that he had gone to see Cadwallon, within Gerald’s own archdeaconry. He immediately struck out for those parts and there found lodging in the church nearest to the place where Cadwallon had received the bishop. At dinnertime (in the evening, that is, following the custom of the Welsh248), he sent the bishop a handsome gift of his best bread and drink, which he had brought for this purpose.249 He adorned his gift with these words: that he would show the bishop every honour and esteem should he find himself within the authority of Gerald’s jurisdiction (and particularly should he come peacefully); and that he would most gladly receive him with great dignity in his very own home, should the opportunity arise. He asked also that, just as they had once been good comrades in France, when they were poorer and held no public office, so too now they might be good neighbours and good friends, established as they were in positions of power. Though his men urged him not to accept, after the dishonour shown him and the rejection he had endured, nevertheless the bishop followed wiser counsel and accepted with thanksgiving. He said that he esteemed the archdeacon no less after what he had done, but that everyone ought rather to praise the fact that Gerald strove with all his might to protect the rights of his church; and that he himself had no wish at all to refuse him affection and good neighbourliness on account of this. Cadwallon, with his leading men and nobles, extolled and praised the archdeacon’s courage and manliness, saying and declaring that such a man was very worthy both of honour and of power. The next day, when the bishop had departed, the archdeacon confronted Cadwallon for having given the bishop permission to come and encroach upon his diocese. Cadwallon swore he had not (to avoid incurring the archdeacon’s displeasure) and took an oath to be faithful henceforth to St David and his church. Three things thus gave the bishop the chance to make this attempt: that the church of St Davids lacked a pastor; that he had been assured that the archdeacon had left that country due to the hostility there shown him and would not return again; and, finally, that he had had the secret assent of the prince (though he swore to the contrary), for 248  On this custom, see Descr. Kam., i. 9 (RS vi. 182). 249  Such gifts of food or drink were an important part of Welsh court custom (CharlesEdwards, ‘Food, drink and clothing’).

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RS i. 39

scilicet diuorcii celebrandi inter ipsum et uxorem suam Euam sub pretextu tam affinitatis quam consanguinitatis,250 cuius rei se iudicem fore ab archiepiscopo Cantuariensi constitutum per cautelam episcopus procurauerat. Archi|diaconus autem e diuerso, ne Meneuensis ecclesia propter episcopiq defectum in sua iurisdictione lesionem incurreret uel diocesis decisionem neue archidiaconatus de Brecheniauc suo mutilationem tempore seque presidente susciperet aut diminutionem, sub periculo pariter atque labore efficacem operam adhibere curauit.

[ I. 7 ]   QVA L I T E R A D R E GEM FACTI ILLIVS FA MA PE RV E NERAT.

fo. 163v

⟨H⟩iis igitur ita peractis, confestim archidiaconus (et absque mora quam alicubi faceret ulla) ad regem accessit, a quo dies eligendi episcopum in presentia sua sibi et ecclesie sue fuerat constitutus. Quem inueniens in partibus de Norhamtune, in primis | impetum episcopi illius in diocesim Meneuensem ei indicauit et qualiter parrochiam ecclesie Sancti Dauid, que in manu et custodia regis ipsius erat sede uacante, occupare uolebat. Propter quod regem monuit et rogauit quatinus episcopum illum litteris suis et nunciis a tali presumptione choerceret. Subiunxit etiam, undea circumstantes ad risum commouit, quod sicut laici et populi Wallie fures et raptores erant rerum aliarum, sic et episcopi Walenses ecclesiarum. Cui rex ita respondit, ‘Reuera episcopus hoc facere uoluit sed tu uiriliter ei restitisti et ecclesiam tuam contra ipsum optime defendisti’, aduocansque magnates suos qui tunc aderant, cepit eis referre qualiter episcopus ille ecclesiam de episcopatu Sancti Dauid occupare uolebat et dedicare et qualiter archidiaconum istum sibi resistentem episcopus excommunicauit et archidiaconus incontinenti non minus audacter episcopum, omnium

  Corrected from christi in MS

q

 unde ed. (Cf. De iure, v (RS iii. 293): ‘Subjunxit etiam, unde ad risum cunctos commovit, quod . . . ’); uentam quam MS; ventam quam Wharton, with marginal note ‘Locus corruptus’; ventam qua Brewer; Butler translates as though uentam qua and adds the note ‘uentam. An unknown word; but the sense is clear from the context’. a

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Cadwallon was afraid that he would be divorced from his wife Efa because of both kinship and consanguinity,250 and the bishop had arranged, as a precaution, that he himself should be appointed judge in the case by the archbishop of Canterbury. The archdeacon, on the other hand, worked conscientiously and effectively, with danger and with pains, to prevent the church of St Davids from incurring any harm within his jurisdiction or any cutting-­up of the diocese because it lacked a bishop, and to keep the archdeaconry of Brecon from being mutilated or diminished during the time he governed it.

[ I. 7 ]   H OW R E PO RT O F T HAT DEED HAD C O ME TO T HE KI NG. After these things had happened, the archdeacon went immediately and without stopping anywhere to the king, who had set a day for electing, in his presence, a bishop for Gerald and his church. He found him near Northampton and, first of all, informed him of the bishop’s assault on the diocese of St Davids and how he intended to seize a parish of the church of St Davids, which was in the keeping and custody of the king while the see was empty. For this reason, he advised and asked the king to write or send messengers to the bishop to restrain him from such a presumptuous seizure. He moved the bystanders to laughter, too, by adding that just as the lay peoples of Wales were thieves and robbers of others’ goods, so too were Welsh bishops robbers of others’ churches. The king replied thus: ‘In reality, the bishop wished to do this, but you resisted him manfully and defended your church very well against him’. Calling together those of his noblemen who were then present, he began to relate to them how the bishop tried to seize a church from the bishopric of St Davids and dedicate it; and how the bishop excommunicated this archdeacon for resisting him and the archdeacon immediately, with no less daring, excommunicated the bishop. Gales of laughter followed from all who were then at court and heard this. For it had thus been reported to the king: that each of them

250  Efa was the daughter of Madog ap Maredudd † 1160, king of Powys (see Table 1 (p. xx)), and so would, in the eyes of the church, be too closely related to Cadwallon by ties of both blood and marriage.

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RS i. 40

de g e s t i s gi r a l di, i

scilicet qui in curia tunc erant et hec audierant risu maximo subsecuto. Sic enim regi relatum fuerat, quod uterque eorum alterum nominatim excomunicauerat. Vnde admiratus est archidiaconus uehe|menter quod rei illius noticiam rex iam habuisset et quod ad eum quisquam cicius ipso (qui celerrime uenerat) peruenisset—­nisi quoniam reuera ‘fama uolat’251 et ad reges ac principes, quos nichil fere latere potest, semper rerum euentus notabiles sub celeritate feruntur. ⟨S⟩et hec hactenus. Prius autem quam uel de obitu Meneuensis episcopi Dauid uel electioneb aut alterius substitutione dicamus, quedam que paulo ante acciderant non reticenda prosequemur.c252

[ I. 8 ]   QVA L I T E R C A N O NICI M ENEVENS ES TA M R E GE M QVA M LEGATVM HVG V I T I O N E M SV PER ECCLES IE S V E   D I GNI TAT E C O NVENERVNT.

⟨C⟩um circiter clausum Pascha253 Hugutio cardinalis titulo Sancti Angeli fungens in Anglia legatione254 concilium generale regni totius apud Londoniam conuocasset, archidiaconi Meneuenses et canonici discreciores ad protestandum pariter et prosequendum, si liceret, ius dignitatis ecclesie sue (scilicet metropoliticum) coram cardinali Londonias aduenerunt. Episcopus enim ipsorum, quoniam in consecratione sua controuersiam illam abiurauerat, contra sacramentum suum, licet extortum, uenire nolebat. Pretemptantes autem primo regis animum, utrum inclinari posset ad consensum, pecuniamque non modicam tam ipsi quam consiliariis suis ad hoc offerentes, cum plurimum circiter hec laborassent, quia rex ille (scilicet Henricus secundus) morosus erat in responsionibus, tandem responsum hoc acceperunt, quod nunquam id tempore suo rex permitteret nec capud Wallie dando Walensibus archiepiscopum contra Angliam erigeret. Quo audito,

b  electione Wharton; electionem MS (i.e. electione�)    c prosequemur MS; prosequamur Wharton, perhaps correctly

251 Vergil, Aeneid, iii. 121; vii. 392; viii. 554. 252 This sentence is identical to the final words of the surviving text of The History of Llanthony Priory, ii. 7 (OMT xxx, and 86–7).

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had excommunicated the other by name. The archdeacon was greatly amazed by this, that the king had already had news of the affair and that someone had reached him more quickly even than himself, who had come very swiftly—­except, in truth, for the fact that ‘news flies’,251 and noteworthy events are always reported swiftly to kings and princes, whose notice almost nothing can escape. But enough of this. Before we speak either of the death of David, bishop of St Davids, or of the election or appointment of another, we shall pursue certain things which had happened shortly before and which should not be left unsaid.252

[ I. 8 ]   H OW T HE C A NO N S O F S T DAVIDS A PPROAC HE D BO T H T H E KING AND TH E  L E GAT E HUGO A BO UT THE DIGNITY O F T HE I R C H U RCH. When, around Low Sunday,253 Hugo, cardinal of Sant’Angelo and papal legate in England,254 had convoked a general council of the whole ­kingdom in London, the archdeacons and more prudent canons of St Davids came to London to assert and, if it were allowed, to pursue their church’s right to metropolitan dignity before the cardinal. For their bishop, since he had sworn at his consecration to leave that dispute alone, did not wish to come in violation of this oath (even though he had given it under duress). But first they tested the mind of the king, to see whether he could be persuaded to consent, and gave no small sum both to him and to his counsellors to this end. When they had worked much at this, since that king, Henry II, was slow to give answers, they finally received this reply: that the king would never permit it during his reign and would not raise up a leader of Wales against England by giving the Welsh an archbishop. Having heard this,

253 Cf. Exp. Hib., i. 40 (ed. Scott and Martin, pp. 108–13): ‘sabbato primo paschali cum pernoctasset, missaque mane, dominica scilicet que uulgo clausum Pascha uocatur, iam audita . . . ’; and DMLBS s.v. claudere, 8e. Since the council met 14–19 March, Gerald’s ‘around Low Sunday’, namely 11 April in 1176, is quite approximate. 254 On Hugo Pierleone (papal legate a latere 1175–6), see Councils and Synods, ed. Whitelock, et al., part ii, no. 169 (pp. 993–1010; this letter is printed at p. 1000); Tillmann, Die päpstlichen Legaten in England, pp. 73–7.

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RS i. 41

fo. 164r

RS i. 42

fecerunt quod potuerunt. Ius ecclesie sue et pristinam dignitatem coram legato—­cuius tamen concilium per contentiones et pugnas inter | archiepiscopos duos (scilicet Cantuariensem Ricardum et Eboracensem Rogerum) de prima sede et primacie dignitate aborsum255 fecita—­in puplica audientia sunt protestati.

[ I. 9 ]   DE DAV I D E PI SC O P O PAVLO P OS T D E F V NC TO E T GI R A L D O P RINCIPALITER NO MI NATO. |

⟨P⟩arum autem postea, defuncto episcopo suo quasi quindecim diebus ante Pentecosten,256 conuenerunt canonici apud Meneuiam, ut super electione et pastoris subrogacione communiter tractarent. Intrantes igitur ecclesiam suam et capitulum, clausis hostiis et seratis, post diutinum consilium et tractatum prolixiorem tandem in quattuor archidiaconorum suorum nominationem, quia non plures ecclesia illa neque maiores personatus habebat, unanimiter consenserunt, ita ut quem illorum rex uellet assumeret et ille singulariter postmodum atque solempniter eligeretur. Et continenter, tanquam unius electione legittime facta, in canticum laudis impetu magis quam consilio alta uoce proruperunt. Quamquam enim, ut regio deferrent honori, plures nominarent, de uno tamen pre ceteris assumendo, scilicet magistro Giraldo, quoniam alii fame obscure fuerant et fortune, id solum intendentes, id attendentes, spem singularem atque fiduciam omnes habebant populique stantes exterius et canticum audientes Giraldum solum inter alios electum solumque pre ceteris electione dignissimum, cum nec dum tricesimum etatis ageret annum,257 conclamabant. ⟨E⟩adem autem nocte, cogitans Giraldus secum et considerans circa factuma istud prepropere | nimis et inconsulte processum fuisse, cum in regno Anglicano neque nominatio fieri soleat nec electio nisi rege a   aborsum fecit Wharton (cf. Exp. Hib., ii. 31 (ed. Scott and Martin, pp. 220–1) and De prin. instr., ii. 30 (OMT 552), where G. writes that the same council ‘aborsum fecit’); aborsu fecit MS; aborsum fuit Brewer

 factum hypothesized by Wharton in a note and adopted by Brewer; festum MS

a

255 Cf. Councils and Synods, ed. Whitelock, et al., p. 994: ‘The dispute for precedence between the archbishops of Canterbury and York seems to have caused some confusion, and Giraldus Cambrensis may be right in claiming that the council failed of its main purposes in consequence, or at least achieved less than had been hoped’. The editors then quote the reports of Howden and Diceto, pp. 994–6.

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they did what they could: they asserted the right and the ancient dignity of their church in the public assembly before the legate—­but his council was abortive255 due to the disputes and struggles between the two archbishops (Richard of Canterbury and Roger of York, that is) about pre­ce­dence and the dignity of primacy.

[ I. 9 ]   O N T H E D E AT H O F BIS HOP DAVID SH O RT LY T H E R E A FT E R AND THE N O M INAT I O N PR I NC I PA L LY OF GERALD. A little while afterwards, about fifteen days before Pentecost,256 their bishop died, and the canons assembled at St Davids to consider together the election and replacement of their pastor. They entered their church and chapter, shut and locked the doors, and, after long consultation and quite extensive discussion, finally agreed unanimously to nominate their four archdeacons (for the church had only four and had no greater persons than these) in this way: that the king might choose whichever of the four he wished, and that that one alone would afterwards be solemnly elected. And they burst forth at once into a loud song of praise, as though a single man had been lawfully elected, following a collective impulse rather than according to plan. For although they nominated several people in order to defer to the royal dignity, nevertheless everyone had a single hope and confidence, intending and expecting this alone: that one man, Master Gerald, should be picked above the rest (for the others were of obscure repu­ta­ tion and condition). And the populace, standing outside and hearing the singing, acclaimed Gerald alone as elect, not the others, and Gerald alone as worthy of election, not the rest, though he was not yet in his thirtieth year.257 But that same night Gerald thought it over and considered that they had proceeded too precipitately and rashly in this matter, for in the kingdom of England the usual practice is that neither nomination nor election take place without first going to the king or his justiciar, telling him of the bishop’s death, and asking for his agreement. The next morning, he went into chapter and, in front of everyone, renounced the nomination they had made of him, at which all were amazed and 256  8 May 1176 (Episcopal Acts, ed. Conway Davies, i. 285). 257  Probably the best evidence for when Gerald was born. See above, p. xvii, n. 1.

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prius adito uel eius iusticiario et obitu episcopi ei nunciato suoque assensu requisito, mane capitulum intrans coram omnibus nominationi de se facte cum admiratione cunctorum et dissuasione renuntiauit, dicens tamen et asserens quod ecclesie sue, quo minus electionem liberam haberet et legittimam, dum quidem ordine fieret competenti, nullatenus deesse uolebat. ⟨N⟩ec mora, fama facti istius ad regem in Anglia conuolauit258 nuncians ei electionem factam et Giraldum archidiaconum proculdubio electum esse. Rex autem, hoc audito, quia contra regni sui consuetudinem et in iniuriam ipsius magnam id actum uidebatur, multum excanduit et statim canonicos omnes terris suis et redditibus destitui iussit. Iurauit etiam quod sicut ipsum expertem fecerunt electionis seu nominationis, sic eos omnes expertes et exsortes faceret promocionis. Iram tamen precipuam et indignationem in Giraldum archidiaconum conuertebat, tum quia pro electo ab omnibus habebatur et uulgo dicebatur, tum etiam quia rebellionem in ecclesia Meneuensi aut reclamationem a nullo fieri timebat nisi ab ipso, tam propter clericatum eius quob precellebat et animositatem, quam etiam propter generositatem ipsius magnam, qua principes omnes et magnates Wallie contingebat.

[ I. 10]  DE GI R A L D I CORAM REGE C O MME NDAT IONE.

RS i. 43 fo. 164v

⟨I⟩nterim autem, archiepiscopo Ricardo Cantuariensi cum suffraganeis suis fere cunctis coram rege constitutis, consuluit eos rex super episcopo Meneuensi ecclesie preficiendo. Qui cum inquirerent inter se utrum aliquis in ecclesia illa posset idoneus inueniri—­quia | hoc ordine procedendum, ut de ipsa ecclesia sumatur si fuerit in ea dignus | inuentus—­tandem omnes episcopi in Giraldum archidiaconum eiusdem ecclesie, quia litteratus egregie et legittime natus fuerat, concordabant. Archiepiscopus autem, auditis aliis, suum similiter assensum in eundem adhibuit et hoc etiam adiecit, quod simul cuma clericatu eximio

 quo Wharton; que quo MS   Corrected from simul cum simul cum by subpunction in MS

b

a

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discouraged him from this step. He said and affirmed, nevertheless, that he had no wish to fail his church, and so leave it unable to have a free and lawful election, provided it were done by the appropriate ­procedure. Without delay report of these events flew to the king in England,258 informing him that an election had occurred and that the archdeacon Gerald had without doubt been elected. Now, when the king heard this, he blazed with anger, for it seemed to have been done contrary to the custom of his realm and with great insult to himself, and he immediately ordered that all the canons be deprived of their lands and rents. He swore too that, just as they had robbed him of any role in the election or nomination, so too he would take from them any share or role in the promotion. But he turned his anger and indignation chiefly upon the archdeacon Gerald, both because he was considered by every­one as elected and popularly said to be so, and because the king feared that a rebellion or protest in the church of St Davids would come from no one but him, on account not only of his superior scholarship and courage, but also of his high birth, which linked him to all the princes and leading men of Wales.

[ I. 1 0 ]   ON T H E R E C O MME NDATION OF G E R A LD I N T HE PR E SE NC E OF THE KING. Meanwhile, when Richard, archbishop of Canterbury, and nearly all his suffragans had been assembled in the king’s presence, Henry consulted them about appointing a bishop to the church of St Davids. When they asked each other whether anyone suitable could be found in that church—­for this is the procedure which should be followed, that if someone worthy is found in the church itself, he should be ­chosen—­at length all the bishops agreed upon Gerald, archdeacon of the same church, for he was remarkably learned and of legitimate birth. The archbishop, when he had heard the others, likewise gave his own agreement to their choice, and added this as well: that, besides his outstanding scholarship, the man had boundless courage and energy. The king, however, who had listened to all the others patiently and in silence, 258 The phrasing here echoes the penultimate sentence of i. 7 above (  fama volat). The structuring of the narrative in these sections is very artful: the news comes to the king seemingly of itself, but is not accurate in every respect. Gerald, however, has already given us his version of events.

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uir erat animositatis et strenuitatis immense. Rex autem, qui alios omnes tacite et pacienter audierat, ad hec archiepiscopi uerba (quippe quibus uim maiorem et pondus inesse putabat)b sic respondit: ‘Nec regi nec archiepiscopo opus est aut expediens nimis probum aut strenuum, ne uel Anglie corona uel Cancie cathedra detrimentum sentiat,259 in ecclesia Sancti Dauid episcopum esse’. Et sic, dissoluto consilio, rex archiepiscopo et paucis quibus fidem maiorem habebat secretius reuelauit non esse tutum archidiaconum illum, quia Reso principi Suthwallie et aliis fere cunctis Wallie maioribus sanguine propinquusc erat, in cathedra Meneuensi collocari nec expedire per talis uiri promocionem, precipueque tam probi simul et tam generosi, Walensibus uires dare eorumque superbiam augmentare.d Hec autem cum uir bone et laudabilis memorie Rogerus, Wigornensis episcopus,260 archidiacono secreto referret ac reuelaret, dixit et asseruit plus ipsum honorem tanti testimonii in tanta audientia dati quam episcopatum optimum, nedum pauperem illum, diligere debere et approbare.

[ I . 11]  D E PE T R I I N EP IS COP VM PRO MO T I O N E E T GI RALDI NE IVS E C C L E SI E ME NE V E NSIS ABIVRARET D I SSVA SI O NE.

RS i. 44

⟨C⟩um itaque canonici sui cuncti et archidiaconi propter redditus suos recuperandos et in pace tenendos se regie uoluntati omnino supponerent et fiscalia stipendia, ut | de loco ad locum propter electionem faciendam ad nutum regis ipsum sequerentur, in commune susciperent, solus Giraldus, tanquam ‘timens Danaos et dona ferentes’,261 nichil accipere uolebat sed, nunc archiepiscopum nunc legatum adeundo, pro ecclesie sue libertate laborauit, ut si non de corpore ecclesie sue, de membris saltem cum regis assensu uirum probum et non ignotum nec lingue patrie ignarum optinere ualerent. Tandem uero legato,

d

b   Corrected from putabant in MS   c  Corrected from propinquis, it seems, in MS     aggmentare MS, perhaps corrected from aug- or arg-

259  For the use of Cancia, cf. Walter Map (De nugis, v. 6 (ed. James, pp. 464–7)): ‘Anselmo pulso a sede Cancie’.

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gave this response to the archbishop’s words (for he considered these to have greater force and weight): ‘It is not necessary or useful, either to a king or to an archbishop, to have an excessively able or energetic man as bishop in the church of St Davids—­lest either the crown of England or the see of Kent should suffer harm’.259 And so, after the council was dissolved, the king privately revealed to the archbishop and to a few others whom he particularly trusted that it was unsafe for that archdeacon to be placed in the see of St Davids, for he was a close blood relation to Rhys, prince of South Wales, and to nearly all the other great men of Wales; nor was it politic to strengthen the Welsh and add to their arrogance by promoting a man of this kind, and especially one at once so able and so well born. When Roger, bishop of Worcester,260 (a man of good and praiseworthy memory) secretly told the archdeacon this, revealing what had happened, he declared that Gerald ought to enjoy and approve the honour of such testimony, delivered before such an audience, better than the greatest bishopric—­ much less that poor one.

[ I. 1 1 ]   O N PE T E R ’S PRO MOTION TO B ISH O P A ND H OW G E R A L D URGED HIM N OT TO FO R SWE A R T HE R IGHT OF THE C HURC H O F ST DAVIDS. While all his canons and archdeacons submitted themselves wholly to the king’s will in order to recover their revenues and hold them in peace and together received payments from the king’s treasury for following him from place to place to make an election at his will, Gerald alone, as though ‘fearing the Greeks even when they bear gifts’,261 wished to accept nothing; but, going now to the archbishop, now to the legate, he laboured for the liberty of his church, so that with the king’s assent they might obtain, if not someone from the body of their own church, at least an able man, someone known to them and knowing the country’s language, from its wider members. But at length the legate, 260  ODNB, s.n. ‘Roger (c. 1134–79), bishop of Worcester’ (elected March 1163; consecrated 23 August 1164; died on his way to Rome 9 August 1179); see also Cheney, Roger, Bishop of Worcester. Gerald gave a favourable account of him in his Vita S. Rem., xxviii (RS vii. 62–7), and others seem to have shared that view as he was a frequent judge-delegate. 261 Vergil, Aeneid, ii. 49 (adapted).

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fo. 165r

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qui sibi in primis auxilium promiserat, ei ex toto deficiente ecclesiaque sua tota per ignauiam succumbente, constitutis demum coram rege canonicis apud Wintoniam, nominatus est eis et oblatus ex parte regis monachus ordinis Cluniacensis, scilicet prior de Wenelac,262 omnibus et singulis tam fama quam facie prorsus ignotus et tamena ab ipsis ibidem (scilicet in camera regis coram lecto suo, ipso presente cum stipatoribus suis et precipiente, more Anglicane tirannidis263) cum cantico laudis tremulo satis et tremebundo est electus. Cumque Londonias ut consecraretur electus ille (et sic electus!), cui nomen Petrus,264 ad diem statutum accederet, Giraldus, ‘nil ex contingentibus omittens’,265 ad honorem ecclesie sue et securitatem quod potuit fecit. Illi electo, cuius nondum faciem uiderat, ne contra ecclesie dignitatem (ad quam magis assignatus fuerat quam uocatus) professionem | aliquam aut subiectionem nisi in forma communi facere presumeret, litteris et nunciis dissuasit. Precipue uero ne sacramentum aliquod super abiurando iure ecclesie sue faceret,266 ex parte Dei Sanctique Dauid prohibere curauit. Ipse tamen, quoniam regisb plantatio fuerat et creatio, regie uoluntati in nullo contraire disponens,c super iure dignitatis ecclesie Meneuensis contra Cantuariensem non prosequendo sacramentum dedit et sic consecrationem suscepit. |

a  tamen Wharton; tam MS and Brewer   b  regis quoniam MS, corrected with marks of inversion   c disponens Wharton; disponeris MS

262  (Much) Wenlock in Shropshire, NGR SO 62 99, refounded as a Cluniac priory c. 1080–1. Knowles, Monastic Order, p. 719, points out that Gerald regularly uses Cluniacensis to mean Benedictine more generally; Wenlock, however, was indeed Cluniac. 263 On more Anglicane tyrannidis, see above, p. lxxiii. 264  ODNB, s.n. ‘Leia, Peter de’. He was responsible for beginning the building of the present cathedral (AC Brev., s.a. 1182: ‘ecclesia meneuensis diruitur et de nouo inchoatur’), something never mentioned by Gerald. In 1184, he was one of the candidates put forward by the monks of Canterbury to succeed Richard of Dover (Knowles, Monastic Order, p. 318).

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who at first had promised to help, failed him utterly, his whole church faint-­heartedly gave way, and, with the canons assembled before the king at Winchester, a monk of the Cluniac order was nominated and offered to them on the king’s behalf—­the prior of Wenlock,262 that is, entirely unknown to each and every one of them, whether by repu­ta­tion or personally. Notwithstanding this, they elected him right there in the king’s chamber before his bed, while he, there with his attendants, commanded them to do it, after the fashion of English tyranny;263 and they gave forth a rather quavering and trembling song of praise. When the bishop-­elect (and elect in such a way!), whose name was Peter,264 was on his way to London to be consecrated on the appointed day, Gerald, ‘neglecting nothing related to the matter’,265 did what he could for the honour and safety of his church. He urged the bishop-­ elect (whom he had never yet seen) through letters and messengers not to presume to make any public declaration or submission contrary to the dignity of his church (to which he had been assigned rather than called), unless in the common form. And in particular he tried, on behalf of God and St David, to keep him from taking any oath in which he forswore his church’s rights.266 But, since he was planted there and appointed by the king, Peter was not inclined to oppose the royal will in anything. He swore an oath not to pursue the rightful dignity of the church of St Davids against Canterbury, and so received his consecration.

According to Gerald, Symb. el., ep. xxviii (RS i. 299–300), William Wibert promised to secure Peter’s translation to the see of Worcester, from which diocese he originated (Knowles, ‘Some monastic enemies of Gerald of Wales’, p. 138). See also Acta, ed. Barrow, 7–8. 265  This phrase, nihil ex contingentibus omittere (and variants), appears nineteen times in Gerald, as well as frequently in the letters and works of John of Salisbury, in Walter Map, and in the acts of Innocent III. It is derived from the Boethian translation of Aristotle’s Topics, i. 3 (Bekker 101b); see Aristoteles Latinus Topica, ed. Minio-Paluello, p. 8: ‘Sed si ex contingentibus nichil omiserit . . . ’. 266  If this really happened and was reported to the king’s servants or in Canterbury, it would have contributed to the rising tide of hostility, on the part of both church and king, towards Gerald as a possible bishop of St Davids.

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⟨PARS SECVNDA⟩

[ II . 1]  DE GE ST I S V I RILIS ETATIS E T   RO BV STE.

RS i. 46

⟨H⟩iis ita completis, Giraldus ‘nil credens actum cum quid superesset agendum’267 nec retro respiciens268 sed semper se in anteriora protendens269 deque gradu ad graduma incunctanter ascendens, causa maioris et maturioris sententie,b congestis librorum thesauris, in Franciam transfretare seque Parisius denuo studiis elegancioribus totis desideriis applicare curauit, quatinus super arcium et litterature fundamentum, legum et canonum parietes in altum erigere, et sacre scripture theologice tectum a superiori concludere, et sic edificium triplici structura connexum firmissimis stabilire iuncturis preualeret.270 ⟨C⟩um igitur annis plurimis ibidem primum imperialibus constitucionibus deinde pontificalibus271 demum uero sacris apicibus ­studiosum animum applicuisset, tantam in causis decretalibus (que dominicis diebus tractari consueuerant) gratiam optinuit quod, die quo ipsum causari uelle notum in urbe fuerat, tantus ad uocem eius iocundam doctorum omnium fere cum scolaribus suis concursus extiterat quod uix domus amplissima capere poterat auditores. Adeo nempe uiuas legum et canonum rationes introductas rethoricis persuasionibus ­adiuuabat adeoque tam uerborum scematibus atque coloribus quam sententiarum medullis causas adornabat | dictaque philosophorum et auctorum miro artificio inserta locis congruis adaptabat ut quanto a   deque gradu ad gradum Davies (Inuect., p. 13, n. 1); cf. Inuect., vi. 20 (Davies, p. 221)); deque gradum MS; atque gradum Wharton and Brewer    b scientiæ Brial (Recueil)

267 Lucan, De bello ciuili, ii. 657 (where it is rather actum credens; Gerald’s version is also metrical), cited many times by Gerald: twice in De iure, ii and iv (RS iii. 182 and 239), and in De prin., iii. 8 (OMT 598) and Top. Hib., iii. 50 (RS v. 196) (De prin. here being a self-quotation of Top. Hib.). In this (repeated) second case, Gerald pairs it, as here, with se in anteriora pro­ tendens (see n. 269 below). Gerald uses it also in Vita S. Rem., v (RS vii. 20), and Vita Galf., i. 3 (RS iv. 366). 268  Cf. a phrase appearing twice in the letters of St Anselm (italics added): ‘Nullus igitur retro respiciendo penset quam multos in uia caelestis patriae praecedat, sed indeclinabiliter in anteriora intentus sollicite consideret si iam pariter cum iis de quorum electione nemo dubitat incedat’. Letters of Anselm, vol. i (OMT 8 and 128). On the first element of this, cf. Luke 9: 62, ‘Ait ad illum Jesus: Nemo mittens manum suam ad aratrum, et respiciens retro, aptus est regno Dei’. 269  se in anteriora extendere is a common phrase (in Alcuin, Bernard, Richard of St Victor, and John of Salisbury, for example), occurring twice in Gerald (with one of the passages

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PA RT T WO [ II. 1 ]   O N HI S D E E D S AT AN AGE OF RO BUST MA NHO OD. When these things were finished, Gerald, ‘considering nothing done while anything remained to be done’,267 and not looking back268 but always thrusting himself into the van269 and steadily climbing from rank to rank, chose to gather up his hoard of books and cross to France to seek greater and more advanced understanding and to apply himself once more, with all his ardour, to more refined studies; so that he might be able, upon his foundation of arts and literature, to raise up high walls of civil and canon law, to cap them from above with a roof of sacred scripture and theology, and so to establish with the strongest joins a structure bound together by this threefold construction.270 When he had assiduously applied his mind there for several years, first to the imperial constitutions, then to papal ones,271 and finally to holy scripture, he achieved such ability in expounding decretals (which used to be treated of on Sundays) that, on the day when it was known in the city that he intended to lecture on them, so great a crowd—­ nearly all the teachers with their students—­came to hear his delightful delivery that the most capacious hall could scarcely hold all the listeners. For he so supported the lively reasoning of civil and canon law which he presented with rhetorical attractions, so adorned his discourses repeated from Top. Hib., iii. 50 (RS v. 195–6) to De prin., iii. 8 (OMT 598)), who in both instances modifies it to protendens. The precise form and surrounding phrase in which Gerald uses it in Top. Hib., ‘Fortunam siquidem urgens . . . semper successibus instans’ is also repeated in the account of the death in 1201 of Maredudd ap Rhys in Cronica de Wallia (Russell, ‘ “Go and look in the Latin books” ’, p. 219); it has now been argued that Gerald composed this section of Cronica de Wallia (Russell, ‘In the penumbra of the Repertory’). For possible further links between Gerald and the Welsh annals, see Harrison, ‘A note on Gerald of Wales’; Stephenson, ‘Gerald of Wales and Annales Cambriae’. 270  Cf. Peter the Chanter, Verbum adbreuiatum (textus prior), i (ed. Boutry, pp. 14–15): ‘In tribus igitur consistit exercicium sacre Scripture: circa lectionem, disputationem et predicationem [ . . . ] Lectio autem est quasi fundamentum et substratorium sequentium quia per eam cetere utilitates comparantur. Disputatio quasi paries est in hoc exercicio et edificio; quia “Nichil plene intelligitur fideliterue predicatur nisi prius dente disputationis frangatur”. Predicatio uero, cui subseruiunt priora, quasi tectum est tegens fideles ab estu et a turbine uiciorum’ (cf. also Verbum abbreuiatum (textus conflatus), i. 1 (ed. Boutry, p. 9)). 271  Gerald studied first civil law and then canon law. For the importance of Paris as a ­centre of teaching in canon law at this period, see Kuttner and Rathbone, ‘Anglo-Norman canonists’. Gerald’s legal studies are placed in context by Baldwin, Masters, i. 83–4.

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fo. 165v

s­cientiores et erudiciores accederent,c tanto auidius et attencius ad audiendum memorieque figendum aures et animos applicarent. Tanta nempe uerborum dulcedine ducti fuerant et deliniti ut dicentis ab ore tamquam penduli et suspensi, longo licet eloquio et prolixo, cuiusmodi tedium multis afferre solet, nec fatigari possent hunc audiendo nec saciari. Vnde et causas eius omnes uerbo ad uerbum, sicut ab ore ipsius emanauerant, passim scribere scolares et amplecti magno desiderio contendebant. ⟨Q⟩uadam autem die, cum fieret ad ipsum audiendum concursus undique magnus, finito sermone ipsius et murmure multitudinis cum fauore cunctorum et laude subsecuto, doctor quidam egregius qui et Parisius in arcibus legerat et diu Bononie in legibus studuerat, cuius nuncupatio magister Rogerus Normannus (qui et postea Rothomagensis ecclesie decanus extitit),272 palam in huiuscemodi uerba prorupit: ‘Non est sub sole scientia, si fuerit Parisius forte delata, que incomparabiliter ibi et longe excellentius quam usquam alibi proculdubio non preualeat’. | ⟨P⟩rincipium autem cause illius et quasi proemium hic apponere preter rem non putaui. Sic igitur inchoauit.

[ II. 2 ]   PR I NC I PI V M E T QVAS I P ROEM IVM C AV SE G I R A L DI P RIM E.273

RS i. 47

‘⟨P⟩roposueram prius audire quam audiri,a prius discere quam dicere, prius dubitare quam disputare. Eruditis enim auribus summeque eloquentie uiris et minus medullata sentenciis oracio et ieiuna uerborum macies, que propinabit? Superuacaneum enim est et omnino superfluum tam inter eloquentes arida, | quam inter scientes et sapientes usitata proferre. Vnde moralis Seneca noster (et ab ipso Sidonius): “Donec scienciam natura combiberit, non est maior gloria dixisse  accederent Wharton; accenderent MS

c

 audiri Wharton; audiui MS

a

272  Canon of Rouen 1165–99 and dean 1199–1200: Fasti Ecclesiae Gallicanae, ed. Tabbagh, ii. 364 (no. 4382); Spear, The Personnel of the Norman Cathedrals, pp. 204 and 261. See also Kuttner and Rathbone, ‘Anglo-Norman canonists’, p. 289; and Baldwin, Masters, i. 84. 273  It is possible that this lecture was Gerald’s inceptio as a teacher of law at Paris but since we only have the proœmium, it is impossible to be sure: Baldwin, Masters, ii. 78, n. 172; see Spatz, ‘Evidence of inception ceremonies’, pp. 7–10: in the title of ii. 2, she takes principium to be a technical term for an inception lecture and translates (p. 8): ‘Gerald’s principium and as it were an introduction to the first cause [of Gratian’s Decretum]’. The remark of his pre­ ceptor she translates (p. 9): ‘In truth I would not for the pleasure of a hundred solidi (as was the idiom of Bologna) wish that you had not spoken so excellently . . . in such a conventus of

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both with well-­arranged and beautiful words and with the substance of ideas, and adapted the sayings of philosophers and authorities to fit to suitable passages with such wondrous artistry, that the more learned and erudite were his attendees, the more eagerly and attentively they set their ears and minds to listening to his words and fixing them in memory. For they were drawn along and cajoled by such sweetness of speech that, as though hanging suspended from the speaker’s lips (though his speech was long and extensive, such as usually bores many people), they could be neither tired by hearing him, nor sated. For this reason, too, the students strove with great eagerness to write everything down and seize upon all his discourses verbatim, just as they had left his lips. One day, when there was a great crowd come from all around to hear him, when his lecture had finished and been followed by a murmur of praise from the throng and the approval of everyone, a certain outstanding teacher who had both lectured on the arts in Paris and had long studied the law at Bologna (whose name was Roger the Norman, and who was afterwards dean of the church of Rouen)272 burst forth publicly with these words: ‘There is no field of study under the sun which, if it should by chance be brought to Paris, would not be incomparably su­per­ ior there and far more excellent than anywhere else, without a doubt’. I have not thought it irrelevant to include here the beginning and, as it were, overture, of that discourse. This, then, is how it began.

[ II. 2 ]   T HE BE G I NNI N G A N D, AS IT WERE, OV E RT U R E , O F G E R A L D’S FIRS T DI SC O U R SE .273 ‘I had intended first to listen, rather than be listened to; to learn before lecturing; to doubt before disputing. For what sort of refreshment will  a speech lacking in the substance of ideas and a barren poverty of words offer to erudite ears and men of such great eloquence? For it  is  needless and entirely redundant both to present dull things to  the  eloquent and to proffer commonplaces to the learned and wise.  Wherefore our moral philosopher Seneca said (and from him Sidonius): “Until your nature has absorbed knowledge, it is no greater glory to have said what you know, than to have remained silent about scholars’ (jumping over in tanto consistorio); for our translation, see n. 283 below. She claims that a conventus at Paris was simply a meeting of the regent masters, whereas, at Bologna, it was usually an inception ceremony. Her argument, therefore, depends on technical or local senses of principium and conventus.

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quod scias, quam siluisse quod nescias”.274 Veruntamen275 quoniam, Augustino testante, “Turpis est omnis pars suo uniuerso non congruens”,276 ne solus inter uos anomalus uidear neue solus, loquentibus aliis, taciturnitate pre ceteris Pitagoricus discipulus277 inueniar, elegi pocius loquendo ridiculus quam tacendo discolus inueniri. ‘Quam igitur uocem inter olores canorosb clamosus anser emittet?278 Noua nimirum an nota proponet? Frequentata et trica fastidium generant, auctoritatem noua non habent. Quoniam, ut ait Plinius, “Ardua res est uetustis nouitatem dare, nouis auctoritatem, obsoletis nitorem, fastiditis gratiam, obscuris lucem, et dubiis fidem, et omnibus naturam”.279 Questio quam pre manibus habemus uetus est sed nondum inueterata. Lis dudum uentilata sed adhuc sub iudice’.280 Fuerat enim questio proposita utrum iudex secundum allegata iudicare debeat an iuxta conscientiam.281 Ad ultimam autem hanc quasi disiuncte particulam (longeque magis improbabilem) tam urgentes legum et canonum rationes induxit ut cum omnium admiratione, utrum ornatuic uerborum an efficatie sententiarum et racionum maior attribui laus deberet, cunctis in dubium uerteretur. ⟨A⟩deo quidem ut uir nobilis canonicus Parisiensis ecclesie,282 filius scilicet castellani de Monte Mauricii, qui et paulo post in decanum eiusdem ecclesie promotus fuit, quia uir docilis erat et litteralis erudicionis appetitor, in discessu ab auditorio ubi ipse cum aliis multis intererat Giraldum secreto conueniens quesiuit ab eo quot annis apud Bononiam legibus et canonibus studium impendisset, et cum responsum acciperet quod b  canoros Wharton (cf. Top. Hib., introitus (RS v. 6)); canores MS    c ornatui ed.; ornatu MS

274  Sidonius Apollinaris, Letters, vii. 9. 5, via the Florilegium Angelicum (see Goddu and Rouse, ‘Gerald of Wales and the Florilegium Angelicum’, pp. 506–7). This is also cited by Guibert de Nogent, De uita sua, i. 5 ( J. F. Benton, ed., Self and Society in Medieval France (Toronto, 1984), p. 48) and John of Salisbury, Metalogicon, ii. 8. This is not Seneca, but cf. Epist. morales, lii. 10: ‘Tacete, favete et praebete vos curationi; etiam si exclamaveritis, non aliter audiam quam si ad tactum vitiorum vestrorum ingemescatis. Testari vultis adtendere vos moverique rerum magnitudine? sane liceat: ut quidem iudicetis et feratis de meliore suffragium, quidni non permittam? Apud Pythagoram discipulis quinque annis tacendum erat: numquid ergo existimas statim illis et loqui et laudare licuisse?’ Peter the Chanter and Gerald were unusual in the place they gave to quotations from classical authors and to Seneca in particular: Baldwin, Masters, i. 80, 82. 275 The passage from Veruntamen quoniam to omnibus naturam is repeated in Top. Hib., pref. (RS v. 6–7). 276 Augustine, Confessions, iii. 8. 16. This passage of the Confessions is included in Gratian’s Decretum, D. 8 c. 2. Gerald also cites it (without explicit attribution) in Vita S. Rem., xxix (RS vii. 78). 277  Gerald also makes allusion to the Pythagorean practice of five years’ silence in Spec. duorum, i (Richter, Lefèvre, et al., p. 12) and in the appended Letter 4 (ibid., p. 176).

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what you do not”.274 Nevertheless,275 since, as Augustine affirms, “Any part which does not accord with its whole is shameful”,276 lest I seem a lone anomaly among you or be considered a disciple of Pythagoras277 by my solitary silence while others speak, I have elected rather to be thought ridiculous by speaking than rebellious by staying silent. ‘What note, then, will this squawking goose give forth amongst melodious swans?278 Will he indeed present new things, or what is already known? What is repeated and well worn engenders aversion; new things have no authority. Since, as Pliny said, “It is a difficult task to give novelty to what is old, authority to what is new, shine to what is worn out, favour to what is disdained, light to what is dark, credibility to what is doubtful, and a natural manner to all of it”.279 The question which we have at hand is old but not yet decrepit. A dispute aired some time ago, but still before the court’.280 For this was the question proposed: whether a judge ought to judge according to the evidence presented by the parties, or according to his own knowledge.281 He adduced such pressing arguments from civil and canon law in favour of the latter proposition of this dilemma (which is far harder to prove) that all were amazed and did not know whether the beauty of his words or the power of his ideas and arguments deserved greater praise. So much so, that a certain noble canon of the church of Paris282—who was the son of the castellan of Montmorency and was also promoted shortly thereafter to be dean of the same church—­as he was a quick learner and eager for literary learning, privately approached Gerald as he left the lecture hall (where he and many others had been listening) and asked him how many years he had devoted to studying civil and canon law at Bologna. And when he received the answer, that Gerald had never been to Bologna, he wished to know: wherever had he studied law? Hearing in reply that Gerald had spent three years in 278  Cf. Vergil, Eclogues, ix. 35–6: ‘nam neque adhuc Vario uideor nec dicere Cinna / digna, sed argutos inter strepere anser olores’ and Horace, Odes, ii. 20. 13–16 (for a canorus swan). 279  Pliny the Elder, Naturalis Historia, pref. 15 (adapted and omitting the final term, ‘et naturae sua omnia’). 280  Cf. Horace, Ars poetica, 78: ‘grammatici certant et adhuc sub iudice lis est’. 281 An important subject of debate in the period of the Four Doctors and after; see K. W. Nörr, Zur Stellung des Richters; D. Maffei, ‘Il giudice testimone e una “quaestio” di Jacques de Revigny’, pp. 59–66; and Maffei’s review of Nörr, Zur Stellung des Richters. 282  Hervé de Montmorency, on whom see Du Chesne, Histoire généalogique, 106; Baldwin, Masters, i. 84; ODNB, s.n. ‘Montmorency [Mount Maurice], Hervey de (  fl. c. 1135–c. 1189)’ considers it probable that the French house of Montmorency, to which this Hervé belonged, was related to the Anglo-Norman family of the same name, to which belonged another Hervé, one of the leaders of the intervention in Ireland, and himself married to a cousin of Gerald.

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90 RS i. 48

fo. 166r

numquam Bononie fuerat, quesiuit iterum ubinam in iure studuerit et, cum ab ipso audierit quod Parisius tantum operam huic studio | per triennium indulserit, cum admiratione recessit. ⟨P⟩receptor autem eiusdem in ea facultate, quem post prandium uisitauit, tanquam applaudens et discipuli tanti glorie congratulans hoc ei in audientia uerbum emisit: ‘Nollem reuera pro placito centum solidorum’ (ydioma namque Bononicum erat) ‘quind hodie in tanto consistorio tantoque scolarium conuentu tam egregie locutus fuisses’,283 quoniam, ut ait Ieronimus, profectus discipulorum laus est et gloria preceptorum.284 ⟨C⟩on|tigit etiam quod magister Matheus Andegauensis, queme in legibus et decretis tunc audiebat, uocatus a papa Alexandro tertio ad Lateranense concilium285 ut cardinalis fieret,286 a sociis in auditorio suo licentiam accipiens, quatinus magistrum Giraldum loco ipsius auditorem287 et preceptorem haberent cum multa ipsius commendatione288 monuit attencius et suadendo consuluit. Quod cum scolares omnes appeterent et postularent, tamen ipse, quoniam in proximo Bononiam causa maioris in ea facultate profectus ire proposuit, huic peticioni nonf adquieuit. Lectiones tameng duas in hospicio suo289 sociis de decretis Gratiani, unam in distinctionibus et alteram in causis, ad instanciam ipsorum cotidie legit.290

[ II. 3 ] QVO D C A NO N I C I M ENEVENS ES IN LAT E RA N E NSI C O NC I L I O IVS DIGNITATIS E CC L E SI E SV E SV NT P ROTES TATI.

⟨H⟩oc autem et hic inserere dignum duxi, quod in Lateranensi concilio circiter eadem tempora celebrato canonici Meneuenses,a quoniam

d  quin Wharton; quia MS    e quem Wharton; quoniam MS    f non Wharton; om. MS    g tamen Wharton; tam MS

 neneuenses MS

a

283  This passage, as a possible comment on the law school at Bologna, early attracted discussion by Sarti, De Claris Archigymnasii Bononiensis Professoribus [ . . . ], vol. I. 1, p. 271; and by Savigny, Geschichte des Römischen Rechts im Mittelalter, iv. 372, n. 56. Cf. DMLBS s.v. idioma, 2. See also Spatz, ‘Evidence of inception ceremonies’, p. 9, where a translation is provided of this passage; for discussion of which see above, n. 273. 284  Paraphrasing Jerome, Commentary on Ezekiel, xiii. 45. 1–8 (CCSL lxxv. 675): ‘discipulorum salus praemium magistrorum est’. Cf. inversely Jerome, Letters, lxv. 11 (CSEL liv. 629): ‘uictoria domini seruorum triumphus est, magistri eruditio discipulorum profectus’. 285  The Third Lateran Council, of 1179.

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this study, but only in Paris, he departed amazed. Gerald’s tutor in that branch of study, whom he visited after lunch, said this to him, as though applauding and rejoicing in the honour of having so great a student, while others listened round: ‘I should indeed refuse a case worth one hundred solidi’ (a Bolognese expression), ‘in exchange for your having spoken so exceptionally today in so great an assembly and with so great a gathering of scholars’.283 For, as Jerome says, the success of their students is the praise and glory of teachers.284 It happened also that Master Mathieu d’Anjou, whose lectures on civil and canon law Gerald was then attending, was summoned by Pope Alexander III to the Lateran Council285 to be made a cardinal.286 Taking leave of his colleagues in his lecture hall, he earnestly advised, urged, and counselled them to take Master Gerald as their auditor287 and teacher in his place, and recommended him highly.288 And though the students all desired and demanded this, nevertheless he did not agree to their request, since he intended shortly to go to Bologna to advance further in that branch of study. Nonetheless, he did give two series of daily readings on Gratian’s Decretum in his lodgings to his companions,289 at their insistence: one on the first part, the distinctiones, and one on the second, the causae.290

[ II. 3 ]   T HAT T H E C A N O NS OF S T DAVIDS M A D E A C L A I M FO R T H E I R CHURCH’S R IG H T FUL STAT US AT T HE LATERAN COUNCIL. I have decided that this too should be inserted here, that at the Lateran Council which was celebrated around the same time, the canons of St Davids made a synodal proclamation before that great audience and 286  Created cardinal-priest of San Marcello in December 1178: Brixius, Die Mitglieder des Kardinalkollegiums, p. 64, no. 18; see also Kuttner and Rathbone, ‘Anglo-Norman canonists’, p. 289; Baldwin, Masters, i. 84. 287  The term auditor was used for someone in the papal curia appointed to hear sub­or­din­ ate disputes, such as over costs: Brundage, Medieval Canon Law, p. 125. Gerald used it in this sense, as, for example, in De iure, v (RS iii. 274). Here, however, it appears to refer to the teacher when he is hearing his pupils disputing a case. 288  Presumably, since he was about to be made a cardinal, he was not expecting to return. 289  The distinction appears to be between hiring a room large enough to give lectures to a considerable number of students and teaching a smaller group in one’s own lodgings. 290  The first two of the major divisions of Gratian’s text that he himself entitled Concordia discordantium canonum, but was commonly referred to as his Decretum or, as here, Decreta: Brundage, Medieval Canon Law, 191.

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episcopus eorum, licet presens existens, propter sacramentum illud abiurationis pessimum et perniciosum obmutuit, ius ecclesie sue metropoliticum, synodalem in tanta audientia facientes proclamacionem, palam et puplice sunt protestati. Vnde magister Gerardus, cui agnomen Puella, qui | postmodum Couentrensis episcopus erat,291 reuersus in Franciam et urbem Parisiensem a concilio, cui Rome missus ab archiepiscopo Cantuariensi Ricardo intererat, magistro Giraldo inter cetera que ei de concilio retulit et hoc subiunxit, quod ualde arroganter et audacter locuti sunt ibi canonici Meneuenses, metropoliticam dignitatem sibi et ecclesie sue de iure debitam in tanta audientia protestantes et proclamantes, iudicesque sibi super hoc dari et commissionem fieri cum magna instancia postulantes. Sed, quoniam episcopus eorum, qui fuit presens, nullam inde mentionem fecit, negocium tunc non processit.

[ II. 4 ]   ⟨D⟩ E R E V E R SI O NE GIRALDI P OS T ST V D I V M DI V T I N V M ET HIIS QVE IN T E R I M E I O BI T E R ACCIDERVNT. a

⟨V⟩t autem ad rem pariter et materieb cursum reuertamur, Giraldus post diutinam in studiis moram repatriandum ducens, cum nuncios suos longe trans terminos ueniendi et pecuniam ibic ferendi constitutos inaniter expectassetd et creditores quibus obligatus in multis extiterat inportuni et inpatientes de die in diem acrius instarent,292 dolens et  anxius et quasi in extrema iam desperatione constitutus, ad ­capellam  Sancti Thome Cantuariensis apud Sanctum Germanum Autisiodorensem (ab archiepiscopo Remensi, regis Ludouici fratre, nomine ipsius inter ipsa martirii sui inicialia constructam et dedicatam)293 a   Rubric omitted in text and here supplied from table of contents    b materiae Wharton; materne MS    c ibi Wharton; ubi MS; sibi Brial (Recueil)    d expectasset Wharton; expectisset MS

291 Gerard La Pucelle, canonist, consecrated bishop 25 September 1183 and died 13 January 1184, possibly of poisoning: ODNB, s.n. ‘Pucelle, Gerard (d. 1184)’. He is also mentioned in Inuect., v. 8 and vi. 25 (Davies, pp. 189 and 230). Gerard was a distinguished canonist, who had taught at Paris for many years: Kuttner and Rathbone, ‘Anglo-Norman canonists’, pp. 296–303 and Appendix B. At this period, he was a trusted member of the household of Richard of Dover, archbishop of Canterbury. At the end of his life, he was briefly bishop of Coventry, 1183–4.  The Letters of John of Salisbury, ii, nos. 158, 184–6, 277, 297, were addressed to Gerard. Walter Map mentions being in the school of Gerard La Pucelle in Paris (De Nugis Curialium, ii. 7 (ed. James, pp. 142–3)). See also English Episcopal Acta 17,

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openly and publicly laid claim to their church’s rights as metropolitan—­ since their bishop, though present, was silent on account of the terrible and ruinous oath of renunciation he had taken. Wherefore Master Gerard La Pucelle (afterwards bishop of Coventry),291 after he returned to France and to Paris from the council in Rome, to which he had been sent by Richard, archbishop of Canterbury, amongst the other things which he reported to Gerald from the council added also this: that the canons of St Davids had spoken extremely arrogantly and presumptuously there, claiming and proclaiming in that great audience that they and their church were rightfully owed metropolitan dignity and demanding with great insistence that judges be assigned and commissioned to consider this. But, since their bishop was present and made no mention of it, the matter did not then go forward.

[ II. 4 ]   O N G E R A L D’S R E T URN AFTER L O N G S T UDY A N D T HE T HINGS WHICH H A P PE NE D TO HI M O N THE WAY. Now, to return to the course of our subject and story, Gerald decided to return home after a long period spent in study. When he had waited in vain long past the appointed day for the messengers who were to come and bring him money, and the creditors to whom he owed a great deal were persistent and impatient, pressing their demands more urgently each day,292 Gerald, sorrowful, anxious, and in the deepest trough, so to speak, of despair, went with his companions to the chapel of St Thomas of Canterbury in the church of Saint-­Germain-­ l’Auxerrois (built by the archbishop of Reims on behalf of his brother, King Louis, and dedicated to Thomas soon after his martyrdom)293 as though to his final refuge, to beseech with devoted prayer the martyr’s

Coventry and Lichfield 1183–1208 (ed. Franklin, pp. xxiii–v); Franklin notes, p. xxiv, that Gerard’s importance in the household of Richard of Dover is attested by the frequency with which he attests Richard’s acts (for which see English Episcopal Acta 2, Canterbury 1162–1190, ed. Cheney and Jones, nos. 49, 55, 56, 58, etc.). 292  Gerald’s financial embarrassment is cited by Baldwin, Masters, i. 129, who also gives a parallel from Stephen Langton at ii. 88, n. 80. It was apparently caused by a problem over the transmission of funds from Wales rather than a shortage of funds as such. See Haskins, ‘The life of medieval students’, pp. 7–18 on letters asking for money, the assumption, explicit in some, being that it should be brought by a messenger. 293  Henry, brother of Louis VII, died in 1175, a faithful friend to Thomas Becket in the ­latter’s exile in France, 1164–70. For this use of inicialia, cf. Gemma eccl., ii. 27 (RS ii. 304).

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RS i. 51

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tanquam ad ultimum refugium cum sociis suis martiris auxilium deuote deprecaturus et imploraturus accessit—­sciens quippe quoniam, ut ait Philo sapiens, ‘quando | deficit humanum auxilium tunc recurrendum est ad diuinum’.294 Missa igitur de martire solempniter audita et oblatione facta, premio deuocionis sue statim et incontinenti diuinitus dato, nuncios suos eadem hora cum hilaritate pariter et prosperitate suscepit mira Dei disposicione, qui de rebus mundanis suo cursu prouenientibus sanctis | suis laudem elicit et quod ex gratia sua mera dari dinoscitur uult tamen tanquam precibus et meritis optineri. ⟨G⟩iraldo itaque uersus Angliam iter agente, cum Attrabatum ueniret in septimana Pentecostes et iuxta forum hospitatus esset, factus est tumultus in urbe magnus. Comes enim Flandrie Philippus,295 qui tantus erat in hac urbe sua tunc existens, in foro, quod tanquam in urbis medio spatium magnum in quadranguli modo optinebat, quintanam erigi fecerat—­clipeum uidelicet fortem posti firmiter appensum, ubi tirones et robusti iuuenes, equis admissis, militaria negocia preludendo, lanceas frangendo uel obstaculum transpenetrando, uires suas experirentur.296 Giraldus etiam ab alto hospicii sui solio cuncta prospiciens (et utinam tanquam uana despicere ualens!) uidit comitem ipsum totque cum ipso uiros nobiles, tot milites atque barones sericis indutos, tot equos egregios admitti, tot lanceas frangi ut, cum diligencia magna considerans singula, uix satis admirari posset uniuersa. Sed cum hoc quasi per horam unam durasset totumque spacium illud grande tanta nobilitate repletum esset, comite Philippo subito discedente cunctisque dilapsis, ubi tanta pompositas paulo ante uisa fuerat, nec homo nec bestia iam comparuit nec quicquam nisi forum omnino uacuum uideretis. Argumentum quidem et indicium magnum, sicut ipse de hiis et similibus loquens dicere solet: ‘Omnia sub sole uanitati subiecta et quasi fantasmata celerrime pretereuncia et tanquam momentanea ­secularia cuncta’.297 |

294  Philo of Alexandria. Gerald takes the citation from Hugh of Fleury, Chronicon (ed. Rottendorff, p. 49). In De prin., i. 17 (OMT 216), Gerald quotes at length the passage of the Chronicon in which Hugh cites this tag of Philo’s. 295  The patron on whom Chrétien de Troyes bestowed eloquent praise at the beginning of Le roman de Perceval ou Le conte du Graal. Philip, who died in 1191 on the Third Crusade, had at this period brought Flanders to a peak of its power and geographical extent. 296 On equis admissis, cf. ‘Miles quidam, Milo nomine, . . . cum domino suo et commilitonibus suis spatiatum equitans, seque cum aliis, calcaribus equis admissis, militaribus ludis exercens . . . ’ (Vita S. Hug., iii. 5 (RS vii. 142)) where the sense seems to be ‘having been spurred on’.

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aid—­knowing indeed that, as the wise Philo said, ‘when human help fails, then you must fall back on divine’.294 Once he had heard a solemn mass for the martyr and made an offering, the reward for his devotion came from God straightaway, without delay, and he received the awaited messengers at that very hour, bringing him happiness and prosperity. For wondrous is the arrangement of God, who evokes praise for his saints from worldly affairs as they proceed in their course and wishes that that which we know to be given purely by his own grace should nevertheless seem to have been obtained by prayer and by merit. Gerald, then, went on his way towards England. And when he came to Arras in the week of Pentecost and had taken lodgings next to the market-­place, there was a great stir in the city. For Philip, count of Flanders,295 who was such a great man and was then present in this city of his, had a quintain set up in the market-­place, which was a large rectangular space in approximately the middle of the city. A quintain is a strong shield hung stoutly upon a post, where aspirants to knighthood and stalwart young men can put their horses to the gallop and try their strength by rehearsing their military duties, breaking lances, or piercing the target.296 Gerald overlooked it all from the high chamber of his lodgings (and would that he had been able to look down on it as futile!) and saw the count himself, saw so many noblemen with him, and so many knights and barons garbed in silk, saw so many exceptional horses at the gallop and so many lances broken that, scrutinizing each thing with keen attention, he could scarcely marvel enough at the whole. But when this had lasted for perhaps an hour and that whole great space had been filled with such nobility, Count Philip suddenly departed and everyone dispersed and, where shortly before such a ­display had been seen, neither man nor beast now appeared and you would have seen nothing but a market-­place, utterly empty. A significant proof and sign indeed, as he himself is wont to say, speaking of these and similar things: ‘All things under the sun are in futility’s thrall, like spectres which pass swiftly by, and everything in this world lasts but an instant’.297

297  Cf. Augustine, De quantitate animae, i. 33: ‘omnia sub sole uanitas uanitantium’ (ed. Hörmann, p. 224; PL xxxii. 1076), echoing Eccles. 1: 2; and Rom. 8: 20: ‘Vanitati enim creatura subjecta est non uolens, sed propter eum, qui subjecit eam in spe’.

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[ II. 5 ]  QVA L I T E R C A N T VARIAM VENIENS E A QVE A PV D C O N V E NT VM P RINCIPALIS EC C L E SI E V I DI T C ORRECTIONE DI G NA   VO C AVIT.

RS i. 52 fo. 167r

⟨P⟩rocedens298 itaque et, mari Flandrie transnauigato, Cantuariam ueniens in die Sancte Trinitatis cum monachis loci eiusdem et in refectorio requisitus a priore comedit. Vbi sedens cum priore et maioribus in disco principali duo, sicut ipse referre consueuerat, ibi notauit: signorum scilicet superfluitatem nimiam et ferculorum numerositatem.299 Tot etenim, prior ad monachos seruientes et illi e contra ad mensas inferiores exenia ferendo et hii quibus ferebantur gratias referendo, digitorum et manuum ac brachiorum gesticulationibus et sibilis ore pro sermonibus, longe leuius atque licencius quam deceret, effluebant ut quasi ad ludos senicosa aut inter histriones et ioculatores sibi uideretur constitutus. Esset itaque magis ordini consonum et honestati uerbis humanis cum modestia loqui quam muta in hunc modum garrulitate signis et sibilis tam ioculariter uti.b De ferculis et eorum numerositate quid dicam, nisi quod ipsum multociens dicentem audiui quia sedecim aut plura per ordinem (ne preter ordinem dicatur!) sunt apposita ualde sumptuosa. Ad ultimum quoque, loco generalis, olera per omnes mensas sunt allata sed parum gustata. Tot enim uideas piscium genera, assa quidem et elixa, farta et frixa, tot | ouis et pipere cibaria cocorum arce confecta, tot sapores et salsamenta | ad gulam irritandam et appetitum excitandum eorundem arce composita. Ad hec etiam in tanta habundancia uinum hic uideas et ciceram, pigmentum et claretum, mustum et medonem atque moretum ‘et omne quod inhebriare potest’,300 adeo ut ceruisia qualis in Anglia fieri solet optima—­et precipue in Cantia—­locum inter cetera non haberet. Sed hoc ibi ceruisia inter pocula, quod olus inter fercula. Tot, inquam, uideas in cibis et potibus superflua nimis et sumptuosa quod non solum hec fastidium sumenti sed etiam tedium parere possent intuenti. ⟨Q⟩uid autem ad hec Paulus heremita diceret, quid   sic MS   

a

b

 uti Wharton (cf. Spec. eccl., ii. 4 (RS iv. 41)); utiter MS

298 The passage from here to decreuisse uirtutibus, below, is repeated nearly verbatim in Spec. eccl., ii. 4 (RS iv. 40–2). 299  The Rule of St Benedict, c. 38 (La règle de Saint Benoît, ed. Vogüé and Neufville, ii. 576–9), provides for a reader at meals and hence for silence and the use of signs.

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[ II. 5 ]   H OW, C O MI N G TO C A NTERBURY, HE D E C L A RE D T H AT WH AT HE S AW AT THE C O M M U N I T Y O F T HE PR I MATIAL CHURCH RE Q UI R E D C O R R E CTION. Continuing298 on his way and crossing the sea of Flanders, he came to Canterbury on Trinity Sunday and was invited by the prior to dine with the monks of that place in their refectory. And as he sat there with the prior and elders at the high table, he noticed two things, as he used to say: the excessive superfluity of signalling and the large number of dishes.299 For each of them—­the prior to the monks who served him, they in turn to the lower tables as they brought gifts of food, and those to whom they were taken as they gave their thanks—­poured forth so many gesticulations with fingers, hands, and arms, and mouthed so many whispers in place of speech, far more frivolously and freely than was fitting, that anyone would think they had found themselves at a theatrical show or among actors and jesters. It would therefore have been more in accord with order and decency to speak modestly in human speech than to use signals and whispers so jocularly with this sort of mute chattering. Of the dishes and their large number what can I say, except that I heard him say many times that sixteen or more hugely extravagant dishes were served in order (not to say, contrary to all order!). At the last course, too, green vegetables were served at every table instead of the regular daily fare but were barely touched. For you would see so many types of fish, roasted and boiled, stuffed and fried, so many dishes concocted by the cooks’ art with eggs and pepper, so many condiments and sauces mixed by that same art to arouse one’s gluttony and excite the appetite. In addition to this you would also see wine and strong drink in such abundance, spiced wine and clary, must, mead, and blackberry wine, ‘and everything which can intoxicate’,300 to such a degree that the excellent beer which is brewed in England—­and especially in Kent—­had no place amongst the rest upon the table. Nay, in that place beer is rather, among the drinks, as is a vegetable among their dishes. So many utterly needless and lavish things would you see among their foods and drinks, I say, that they might produce not only revulsion in one eating them, but even boredom in one who observed 300  Lev. 10: 9.

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Antonius, quid monastice uite pater et institutor Benedictus? Vt etiam longe propius exempla petamus, quid noster Ieronimus, qui in Vitas Patrum primitiue ecclesie parsimoniam et abstinentiam atque modestiam tantis laudibus effert, dicens ibidem (inter cetera) ecclesiam quidem ex quo creuit possessionibus multum decreuisse uirtutibus.301 ⟨R⟩eferebat etiam quandoque Giraldus, quod et hic apponere preter rem non putaui, qualiter monachi Sancti Swithuni Wintoniensis, cum priore suo coram Anglorum rege Henrico secundo ad terram in luto prostrati, cum lacrimis ac luctu conquesti sunt ei quod eorum episcopusc Ricardus (quem et loco abbatis habebant)302 tria eis fercula subtraxerat et cum, rege inquirente quot eis remanserant, responderent decem, quoniam ab antiquo tredecim habere consueuerant, ‘Et ego’, inquit rex, ‘in curia mea tribus ferculis contentus sum. Pereat episcopus uester nisi ad hunc numerum ferculorum meorum redigat fercula uestra!’ ‘Vt quid ergo perdicio hec?’— precipue uero in uiris religionem profitentibus et habitu preferentibus. ‘Poterant enim uenundari’ hec superflua ‘et dari pauperibus’.303 Hanc autem ra|tionem assignantd et factum suum sic colorant, quod propter elemosinam ampliandam et augmentandam tanta in ordine ipsorum inuenta et admissa est ferculorum numerositas. Melius tamen atque consulcius et scandalum uitari et honestati eorum atque modestie prouideri posset, si paucioribus ferculis contenti forent et de superfluis illis pauperes Christi304 reficerent sicque gulam temperarent et scandalum resecarent et elemosinam suam longe sacius atque salubrius augmentarent. ⟨P⟩rofectus autem hinc uersus Londonias inuenit archiepiscopum Cantuariensem Ricardum in quadam terra sua non procul ab urbe Londoniensie distante a quo, quoniam ei familiaris atque dilectus extiterat, fuit hospicio ea nocte retentus et cum honore receptus. Mane uero nuncio susceptof quod eadem die Londoniasg Wintoniensis episcopus

c  Episcopus Wharton; om. MS    d assignant Wharton; assignauit MS    e London’ MS    f suscepto Wharton; susceptus MS    g  sic MS   

301  Paraphrasing Jerome, Vita Malchi, i. 3 (ed. Gray, p. 78): ‘quomodo et per quos Christi ecclesia [ . . . ] potentia quidem et diuitiis maior, sed uirtutibus minor facta sit’. Gray (p. 111) suggests an echo of Sallust, Catilina, xii. 1: ‘postquam diuitiae honori esse coepere et eas gloria imperium potentia sequebatur, hebescere uirtus, paupertas probro haberi, innocentia pro maleuolentia duci coepit’. 302  Richard of Ilchester, bishop 1174–88 (ODNB, s.n. ‘Ilchester, Richard of ’), and therefore at the date of this reduction in the number of dishes also having the authority of abbot. 303  Matt. 26: 8–9.

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it. And what would the hermit Paul say of this, or Anthony, or Benedict, the father and founder of monastic life? To seek our examples much closer to home, what would our Jerome say, who in his Lives of the Fathers extols with such praise the frugality, austerity, and moderation of the primitive church, saying therein (among other things) that the church, indeed, which has increased in its possessions has also greatly decreased in virtues.301 Gerald also used sometimes to tell—­something else which I have thought it not irrelevant to include here—­how the monks of St Swithuns, Winchester, lying on the ground prostrate in the dirt with their prior before Henry II, king of the English, complained to him with tears and lamentation that their bishop Richard (whom they had as abbot) had taken three courses from them.302 And when the king asked how many dishes remained and they replied ‘ten’, for of old they had used to have thirteen, the king said: ‘Even I am satisfied with three dishes in my court. May your bishop perish if he does not reduce your dishes to this, the number of my own!’ ‘What is the point of this waste?’—especially, indeed, amongst men professing their religion and displaying it in their dress. For these needless things ‘could be sold and given to the poor’.303 They give this reason, alleging as pretext for their actions that having such a great number of dishes in their order was devised and accepted so as to increase and enlarge the alms they give. Nevertheless, they could better and more advisedly both avoid scandal and take care of their own integrity and moderation if they would be content with fewer dishes and with those needless ones instead revive Christ’s poor,304 and thus restrain their gluttony, cut off any scandal, and increase their alms-­ giving in a far better and more healthy way. Setting off then from Canterbury towards London, he came upon Richard, archbishop of Canterbury, in a certain property of his not far from the city of London, and was detained there for a night by his hospitality and welcomed with honour, for Gerald had been a close acquaintance and friend of his. The next morning, there came a ­messenger with the news that on that same day Richard, bishop of Winchester, intended in London to give a judgement of the church

304 Here pauperes Christi refers to the poor, but that for Gerald it is also a specific term for the regular clergy makes this passage all the more pointed.

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Ricardus quandam sororem suam in episcopatu Wintoniensi maritatam a uiro suo ecclesiastica censura separare uolebat,305 consulens super hoc archiepiscopum statim litteras suas impetrauit, quibus ipsum affectuose rogauit quatinus diuortium illud tunc differret et uirum cum uxore sua concordari, si fieri posset, non impediret, et sic Londonias incunctanter accelerans inuenit ibi apud Suwerche in capitulo grandi ad hoc conuocato sororem suam et uirum suum iam coram episcopo stantes et diuortium quod eis statim imminebat expectantes.306 Episcopus autem | uidens ipsum intrantem (cuius noticiam satis habuerat) et socios suos cum signaculis Beati Thome a collo suspensis, admirans quoque subitum eius aduentum quem in Francia tanto tempore fuisse cognouerat et adhuc esse putabat, ipsum in osculo suscipiens ad latus suum apposuit sociosque suos recipi iussit et, cum litteras archiepiscopi porrectas inspexisset, respondit quod si per se archidiaconusi aduenisset et eum absque litteris omnibus sors obtulisset, ipsum in hac peticione libenter audiret, tantoque libentius tamen quod archiepi|scopi mandatum inde susceperat. Sicque soluto capitulo per inopinatum eius aduentum et insperatum hunc euentum, uir et mulier super graui discordia et fere inplacabili, unde pecuniam grandem episcopo propter diuortium dare debuerant, per operam Giraldi paulo post sunt pacificati. ⟨A⟩rgumentum quod prope est Deus in angustiis et quia nemini fideli in Deo confidenti in quocumque articulo seu puncto constituto (nisi merita repugnent) de diuina misericordia est diffidendum et quia plerumque, h

fo. 167v

RS i. 54

‘Grata superueniet que non sperabitur hora’.307

 quandam Wharton; quadam MS    i archidiaconus Wharton; archidiaconum MS

h

305  This sister is likely to be the Nest de Barri who held land in Sussex from the honour of Petworth in 1184–5: PR 31 Henry II (The Great Roll of the Pipe, ed. Green, p. 172), ‘Et de .xiiij.s. et .viij.d. de terra \quam/ Nest de Barri habuit in vadio’. 306  Note that, in this period, Southwark was part of the diocese of Winchester.

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divorcing a sister of Gerald from her husband, whom she had married in the diocese of Winchester.305 Gerald consulted with the archbishop about this and asked for and straightaway obtained a letter from him in which he affectionately asked the bishop to delay the divorce and not to hinder the husband from being reconciled with his wife, if this could be done. And hurrying then on his way to London without delay, Gerald found his sister and her husband there, already standing before the bishop in the great chapter convened for the purpose in Southwark and awaiting the divorce which was just about to be pronounced.306 The bishop saw him enter (he knew him well enough), saw his companions, with symbols of the Blessed Thomas hung about their necks, and was amazed at his sudden return, for he knew that he had been so long in France and thought he was still there. He received him with a kiss, set him by his own side, and ordered that his companions be welcomed. When the letter had been delivered and examined, he replied that if the archdeacon had come on his own account and destiny had proffered him alone unaccompanied by any letter, he would gladly hear his request, but would do so all the more gladly now, as he had received the archbishop’s instruction on the matter. The chapter was thus ­dissolved by his unexpected arrival and this unhoped-­for occurrence and the man and woman were shortly afterwards reconciled, through Gerald’s efforts, and ended their dreadful and nearly unappeasable strife, which would have obliged them to pay the bishop a large sum of money for a divorce. This is a proof that God is near us in our afflictions; that the faithful who trust in God should not despair of divine mercy (unless their actions are incompatible with it), in whatever crisis or position they should find themselves; and that often, ‘Welcome will come the unhoped-­for hour’.307

307 Horace, Epistles, i. 4. 14.

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[ II. 6 ]  QVA L I T E R I N WA LLIAM VENIENS, E XPV L SO PAV L O PO S T EP IS COP O, R E G I ME N E PI SC O PATVS P ER A RC H I E PI SC O PV M SV SC E PIT ET QVALITER I L LV D O B FAVO R E M CAP ITVLI M E N E V E N SI S SPO NT E RES IGN AVIT.

RS i. 55

⟨C⟩um igitur, Anglia transcursa, demum in Walliam peruenisset, contigit in breui postea Petrum, Meneuensem episcopum, qui propter discordiam inter episcopum et Walenses exortam a Wallia expulsus fuerat (uel se pocius expulsum simulauerat), consilio Cantuariensis archiepiscopi magistro Giraldo, archidiacono suo, generalem tocius episcopatus curam et custodiam commisisse, adeo ut per ipsum omnia tam in temporalibus quam spiritualibus preter sacramenta solis episcopis concessa disponerentur. Cum igitur ecclesiam Meneuensem sic aliquandiu sapienter et modeste gubernasset,a episcopus ab Anglia, ubi in quodam monasterio moram faciebat, per litteras suas et nuntios, canonicosb Sancti Dauit et archidiaconos, non uocatos non citatos non conuictos aut confessos, impetuose et inconsulte quosdam suspendere et alios excommunicare presumpsit. Que cum Giraldus corrigere uellet nec | posset sed contra consilium suum et dissuasionem crebram de die in diem acrius in ipsos deseuiret, condolens et compaciens ecclesie sue curam et custodiam sibi commissam episcopo resignauit et capitulo suo firmiter adherendo citra iuris ordinem excommunicatos et suspensos iuste per archiepiscopum absolui fecit et ecclesiam suam contra extraordinaria et impetuosa episcopi grauamina prouide pariter et discrete defendit. Nouum etiam officialem, ad ecclesie Meneuensis et clericorum patrie grauamen ab episcopo missum, penitus a clero repelli fecit et cum dedecore recusari. ⟨A⟩rgumentum dilectionis et deuocionis quam erga ecclesiam suam habuit, maxime qui maluit ei assistere eamque defensare priuatus quam ipsam opprimere uel opprimenti consentire in potestate constitutus.

  gubernasset gubernasset MS   b  canonicos canonicos MS

a

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[ II. 6 ]   HOW H E C A ME TO WALES ; HOW, SH O RT LY A FT E R , T HE BIS HOP WAS D R IV E N AWAY A N D G E R A L D TOOK OVER M A NAG E ME N T O F T HE BI SHOP RIC AT THE A RC H B ISHO P’S DI R E C T I O N ; AND HOW HE VOLU NTA R I LY R E SI GNE D IT BECAUS E O F  H IS GO O DWI L L TO T HE CHAP TER OF ST DAV I D S. Soon after he had crossed England and at last arrived in Wales, it happened that Peter, the bishop of St Davids, who had been driven out of Wales because of the conflict which had arisen between the bishop and the Welsh (or, rather, had pretended to be driven out), had entrusted the overall care and custody of the whole bishopric to his archdeacon, Master Gerald, on the advice of the archbishop of Canterbury; so much so, that he managed everything, both spiritual and temporal, except those sacraments which are allowed only to bishops. When he had thus guided the church of St Davids for some time with wisdom and restraint, the bishop rashly and ill-­advisedly presumed to send letters and messengers from England, where he was staying in a certain monastery, to suspend some of the canons and archdeacons of St Davids and to excommunicate others, who had not been cited or summoned and had neither been convicted nor confessed. And since Gerald wished to put this right but could not, and since the bishop, against his advice and oft-­repeated discouragement, raged every day more bitterly against them, the archdeacon, sympathizing with and sharing in the suffering of his church, handed back to his bishop the care and custody which had been entrusted to him. Sticking firmly by his chapter, he caused those who had been excommunicated and suspended without due process of law to be justly absolved by the archbishop and providently and prudently defended his church against the bishop’s extraordinary and intemperate accusations. He also caused a new official, who had been sent by the bishop to harass the church of St Davids and the clerics of the country, to be entirely spurned by the clergy and rejected in disgrace. This is proof of the love and devotion which he had for his church—­in particular that he preferred to help it and to defend it as a person without office, rather than oppress it or consent to its oppression from a position of power.

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fo. 168r

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de g e s t i s gi r a l di, i i

[II. 7]  DE DISCORDIA INTER EPISCOPVM PETRVM ET ARCHIDIACONVM GIRALDVM MOTA ET PACE TAM CAPITVLI QVAM ARCHIDIACONI PER ARCHIDIACONVM FACTA.|

⟨P⟩rocessu uero temporis et non longe post discordia inter episcopum et archidiaconum orta pergrandi, adeo ut Romam mittendo et episcopum criminaliter accusando totis ad eius depositionem intendere nisibus archidiaconus appeteret et affectaret, tamen, cum de pace inter ipsos formanda magni uiri laborarent,a ipse pacem Meneuensis ecclesie preferendob absque illius pace se uerbum pacis in eundem nullum prorsus admissurum constantissime proponebat. Demum uero, die ad hoc assignato, tam archidiacono quam capitulo apud Meneuiam, in synodo quam tenuit ultimam episcopus Petrus circa Pentecosten, per operam archidiaconi tunc ibidem effectum est ut omnium que uel episcopus capitulo uel capitulum episcopo seu canonicus concano|nico suo iniuste abstulerat per sacramenta undique data statim fieret restitucio. Quo facto, episcopus, ut inter episcopum et archidiaconum pax firmior et stabilis concordia foret, tam terras apud Landu occupatas (scilicet in partibus de Brecheniauc) quam etiam terras quasdam ad prebendam de Martru spectantes ei tunc restituit. ⟨P⟩oncius autem dictus, archidiaconus de Penbroc,308 nondum hoc effectui mancipato, secrecius archidiaconum Giraldum conueniens solum, fratre ipsius archidiaconi, uiro probo et prudenti Philippo de Barri, teste adhibito, cepit ei ostendere mense episcopalis309 in hoc facto, si processerit, lesionem non modicam et reddituum mutilacionem. Proinde ut sibi prouideret in hoc et premunitus esset monuit et in bona fide consuluit. Adiecit enim quod de nemine spes tanta fuit succedendi in cathedram Meneuensem post episcopum istum sicut de persona ipsius. Archidiaconus autem ad hec respondit quia propter  laborarent Butler; laborent MS   

a

 praeferendo Wharton; preficiendo MS

b

308  Already archdeacon by 1174 × 1176 (Acta, ed. Barrow, nos. 32, 33). He was archdeacon of St Davids, Pembroke/Penfro being strictly only one deanery in his archdeaconry: Symb. el., ep. xxxiii (RS i. 319–20). He was subsequently one of Gerald’s supporters among the canons in 1199–1201 (De iure, iv (RS iii. 214)), but abandoned his cause by the time of his third stay in Rome (Inuect., iii. 3 (Davies, pp. 148–9); vi. 23 (Davies, pp. 223–6)). 309  That portion of the bishop’s resources devoted to supplying his household; see Crosby, Bishop and Chapter, pp. 17–19.

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[ II. 7 ]   O N T H E C O NFL I C T INITIATED B E T W E E N T H E BI SH O P, PE TER, AND THE A RC H D E AC O N, GE R A L D ; A ND THE P EACE M A D E T H RO U G H T HE A RCHDEACON’S E F F O RT S O N BE H A L F O F BOTH THE C H A P T E R A N D T HE A RC HDEACON. In the course of time, and not long after, a tremendous conflict arose between the bishop and archdeacon—­so great that the archdeacon desired and strove with every effort to have him deposed, sending to Rome and making criminal charges against the bishop. And though great men were struggling to make peace between them, Gerald nevertheless put first the peace of the church of St Davids and steadfastly affirmed that, without peace for it, he would certainly make no dec­lar­ ation of peace with the bishop. But at length a day was set to deal with the matter, with both archdeacon and the chapter at St Davids around Pentecost, at the last synod which bishop Peter held. And there and then it was settled, through the archdeacon’s efforts, that oaths would be sworn by all to make restitution immediately of everything which the bishop had unjustly taken away from the chapter, or which the chapter had taken from the bishop, or which a canon had taken from his fellow canon. When this had been done, the bishop, so as to make a firmer peace and a solid settlement with the archdeacon, then restored to him both the lands which he had seized at Llan-­ddew (in the region of Brecon) and also certain lands belonging to the prebend of Mathri. But before this was put into effect, a man named Poncius, the arch­ deacon of Pembroke,308 came privately to Archdeacon Gerald when he was alone, bringing along Archdeacon Gerald’s brother, the honest and prudent man Philip de Barri, as witness. And he began to lay out for him the considerable harm to the bishop’s mensal land309 and ­damage to his revenues which would follow if they carried this out. Therefore he warned him and advised him in good faith to provide for his own interests in this matter and to be forewarned. For, he added, no one had as great a hope as Gerald did of succeeding to the see of St Davids after the present bishop. To this, the archdeacon replied that that which had so usefully and rightly been arranged would not remain undone on his account, because of that hope. He was obstinate and steadfast in this opinion, though both archdeacon Poncius and his own

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spem istam quod tam utiliter et recte prouisum fuerat per ipsum non remaneret. Pertinax enim in hoc et constans erat, dissuadente tamen utroque, tam archidiacono Poncio quam etiam fratre suo Philippo. Adeo quidem quod quedam ecclesia sua bona, scilicet de Lanwadaf, tunc inter alia capitulo fuit adiurata sed tamen ad eius instanciam cuidam clerico suo, Martino scilicet de Lanwadein,310 capitulo consentiente et episcopo instituente, in canonicam data fuit—­processu temporis ad usus communes reuersura. Asseruit etiam quia si iam consecratus episcopus esset, hoc ipsum facere non pretermitteret,c quoniam in iacturam ­propriam licet acciderit, communibus commodis longe postponeret. ⟨A⟩rgumentum igitur et indicium hinc certissimum quod zelum habuit Giraldus archidiaconus rectitudinis magnum et ualde incensum ecclesiastice tranquilitatis affectum. |

[ II. 8 ]   QVA L I T E R A RC HI DIACONVS CVRIE SE QV E L A FAC T V S FVIT.311

fo. 168v

⟨C⟩rescente igitur fama Giraldi et de die in diem amplius innotescente, ab Anglorum rege Henrico secundo, in Marchie finibus ad Walliam pacificandam tunc agente, consilio magnatum suorum est uocatus et per regis instantiam magnam, promissiones etiam et preceptiones, quamquam inuitus plurimum et renitens,a quia sicut scolarium uitam pre aliis appreciari sic curialium quoque detestari solet, demum curie sequela et clericus regis estb effectus. Cum ergo pluribus annis curiam sequendo fideliter seruisset et ad Walliam pacificandam et in pace tenendam plurimum profecisset, tamen propter parentelam qua Resum filium Griffini et alios Wallie principes contingebat nichil a rege, qui tot ditabat | et promouebat indignos, preter uacua ueris promissa suscepit. Valde tamen in secreto coram consiliariis suis ipsum rex commendabat, mores eius, modum et modestiam ac fidelitatem (quam expertus fuerat) approbabat, dicens et asserens quod nisi de Wallia natus esset et Wallie magnatibus (precipue quidem Reso) ­sanguine tam  praetermitteret Wharton; premitteret MS  renitens Wharton; retinens MS    b  est est MS

c

a

310  It is not clear whether this Martin is the same person as either of the other Martins mentioned by Gerald: the Martin sent to Rome with Gerald (De gestis, iii. 15), but who fell ill  at St Omer (iii. 17); and the Martin, a Welsh canon, who was a brother of the abbot of Whitland and who came out against Gerald’s election (De iure, iv (RS iii. 219–20); v (RS iii. 300)).

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brother Philip urged him to reconsider. So much so, indeed, that a certain good church of his (that of Llanwnda) had then been assigned by oath, among others, to the chapter, but was nevertheless given at his urging as a canon’s church to a certain clerk of his named Martin of Llawhaden,310 with the chapter consenting and the bishop inducting him. And, in the course of time, the church would return to the common use of the chapter. He declared too that if he had already been consecrated bishop, he would still have done this, since, though it should happen to his own loss, he considered this far less important than their shared advantage. This, therefore, is a very clear demonstration and proof that Archdeacon Gerald had a great zeal for putting things right and a burning devotion to the peaceful condition of the church.

[ II. 8 ]   H OW T HE A RC HDE AC ON BECAM E A F OL L OWE R O F T HE C OURT.311 As Gerald’s fame grew and daily became more widely known, he was summoned, on the advice of the magnates, by Henry II, king of the English, who was then in the lands of the March, busy at pacifying Wales. Through the king’s pressing insistence, his promises, and his commands, Gerald at length became a court-­follower and king’s clerk, though he was extremely unwilling and resistant because, just as he tends to value the life of a scholar above any other, so too he despises the life of a courtier. When he had faithfully served by following the court for several years and had done a great deal towards the establishment and maintenance of peace in Wales, nevertheless, because of the kinship which joined him to Rhys ap Gruffudd and the other princes of Wales, he received nothing but promises devoid of truth from a king who enriched and promoted so many unworthy men. But in private, before his counsellors, the king used to praise him highly and approve of his character, his manner, his modesty, and his loyalty (which he had himself discovered by experience), and declared that if Gerald had not been born in Wales and was not so close by blood to the magnates of Wales (and especially to Rhys), he would certainly promote him within 311  The implication of this chapter is that Gerald’s kinship with the Welsh princes was both the qualification for his employment as Henry II’s envoy charged with working to preserve peace in Wales and his disqualification as a possible bishop of St Davids.

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propinquus existeret, dignitatibusc ecclesiasticis et redditibus amplis copiose quidem ipsum extolleret et in regno suo magnum efficeret.

[ II . 9]  DE R E SI FI L I I GRIFFINI ET A RC HI D I AC O NI GI R A L DI CORAM VIRIS MAG N I S A LT E RCATIONE.

RS i. 58

⟨C⟩ontigit autem circiter hec tempora Resum filium Griffini, principem Suthuuallie, nunciis regis Balduuino Cantuariensi archiepiscopo (qui iam successerat Ricardo) et Rannulfo de Glanuilla, iusticiario Anglie,312 ad colloquium aput Herefordiam obuiam uenisse.313 Qui cum | sederet ad prandium in domo episcopi Herefordensis, scilicet Willelmi de Ver,314 a quo cum honore magno susceptus hospicio fuerat et exibitus—­inter episcopum scilicet et Walterum filium Roberti,315 baronem nobilem, qui de genere Clarensium erat, sicut et episcopus—­ accedens Giraldus archidiaconus et astans coram ipsis, mensa tantum interposita, Resum in hec uerba satis curialiter et facete conuenit: ‘Gaudere potes, O Rese, et letus existere, quod inter duos Clarenses, quorum hereditatem tenes, et de maioribus duos in hoc prandio sedes’. Tenebat enim tunc terram de Kerdigan totam, quam super comitem de Clara, Rogerum,316 recuperauerat. Resus autem, ut erat optimia uir ingenii et precipue promtulus in responsionibus bonis, incontinentib respondens,c ‘Verum est’, inquit, ‘quod hereditatem nostram per Clarenses multo tempore perdidimus sed, ex quo perdere debuimus, leti sumus et esse debemus quod non per ignauos aliquos et obscuros  dignitatibus Wharton; om. MS  optimi Wharton; optim or optini MS    b incontinenti Wharton; in continent MS, perhaps followed by erasure; incontinenter Brewer    c respondens Wharton; respondetis MS c

a

312  Chief Justiciar, 1178/9–17 September 1189. 313  The date of this meeting (on which see Lloyd, HW 569–70 and nn. 170 and 171) must, to judge by the participants, be within the limits, 1186 × 1189, perhaps before Rhys’s eldest son, Maelgwn, ‘ravaged the town of Tenby and burned it’ (Brut, 1187). Lloyd, p. 570, suggests a connection with Henry II’s desire to recruit Welsh troops for warfare against Philip Augustus, which Ranulf succeeded in doing for a campaign of 1188 (Howden, Gesta Henrici II, i. 355–6 and ii. 40, 46–7, 50). 314  Bishop of Hereford, 1186–98 (ODNB, s.n. ‘Vere, William de’), in which Barrow dates this meeting to December 1186; cf. also Barrow, ‘A twelfth-century bishop and literary patron’. William de Vere was a son of Aubrey II de Vere (d. 1141) and his wife Alice, daughter of Gilbert de Clare, which explains why Gerald includes him within the Clare family.

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the church, grant him abundant and ample revenues, and make him a great man in his kingdom.

[ II. 9 ]   O N T H E D I SPUT E BE TWEEN RHYS A P G RU FFU D D A N D T HE ARCHDEACON G E R A L D BE FO R E I MPO RTANT MEN. Now it happened, around the same time, that the prince of South Wales, Rhys ap Gruffudd, had gone to Hereford to meet the king’s messengers, Archbishop Baldwin of Canterbury (who had now succeeded Richard) and Ranulf de Glanville, justiciar of England,312 and to confer with them.313 When he was sitting at his lunch in the house of the bishop of Hereford, William de Vere,314 who had received him as his guest and entertained him with great honour—­sitting, that is, between the bishop and Walter fitz Robert,315 a noble baron who was of the family of Clare, as indeed was the bishop—­Archdeacon Gerald approached and, standing before them with only the table in between, greeted Rhys wittily in a very courtly manner with these words: ‘You can rejoice, Rhys, and take pleasure from the fact that at this lunch you are sitting between two men of the family of Clare, whose inheritance you hold, and two of the greater members of that family’. For he then held the whole land of Ceredigion, which he had recovered from Roger, earl of Clare.316 But Rhys, being an extremely clever man and, in particular, swift in apropos replies, straightaway responded: ‘It’s true that we were long deprived of our inheritance by the Clares, but since we had to lose it, we are happy (and ought to be) that we lost our lands for so long not 315  Walter fitz Robert’s father was a younger son of Richard de Bienfaite, the founder of the Clare family, who died c. 1090, and a brother of Gilbert fitz Richard, who was granted Ceredigion in 1110: see Round, Feudal England, p. 475 and the pedigree of the house of Clare facing p. 473. Walter, died 1198, dapifer regis, was the father of Robert fitz Walter, the leading rebel of John’s reign. They were lords of Dunmow in Essex, not far from Clare. 316  Richard fitz Gilbert, son of the Gilbert granted Ceredigion in 1110, was ambushed and slain on his way back to Ceredigion in 1136 by the Welsh of Gwynllŵ g, whereupon Owain and Cadwaladr of Gwynedd conquered Ceredigion (Itin. Kam., i. 4 (RS vi. 47–8); Brut, s.a. 1136; Lloyd, HW 471). It was not until 1151–3 that the sons of Gruffudd ap Rhys recovered Ceredigion from Hywel ab Owain Gwynedd (Brut, s.aa.1151, 1153; Lloyd, HW 504–5). By 1165, the last remnant of the Clare lordship of Ceredigion was the castle of Cardigan, held by Robert fitz Stephen, but in that year the castle and Robert were captured by Rhys: Brut, s.a.; Exp. Hib., i. 2 (ed. Scott and Martin, pp. 28–31). For a recent discussion of the Clares in  Ceredigion, see Smith, ‘Princes, lords and English monarchy: Ceredigion 1081–1197’, pp.  254–61 (on the Clare lordship), pp. 261–7 (on the Clares vs. Welsh of Gwynedd and Deheubarth), pp. 272–7 (on Rhys in secure power after 1171/2).

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sed per uiros tam claros et tam illustres terras nostras tam diu perdidimus’. Subiecit etiam episcopus: ‘Et nobis quoque multum placet, ex quo terras quas tanto tempore possedimus perdere debuimus, quod uir tam probus et tam nobilis ut Resus ipsas nunc tenet’. ⟨P⟩ost sompnum uero meridianum, die iam inclinata, cum uiridiarium quoddam intrassent episcopus et uiri magni Resum secum ducentes, facto ibidem consessu et Giraldo archidiacono intrante cum aliis et sedente, Resus resolutus in uerba iocosa et ludicra deque Giraldo loquendi materiam sumens et tanquam ei de sermone in prandio dicto uicem reddere uolens ait: ‘Archidiaconus iste et illi de genere suo, qui Giraldini dicuntur,317 de amita mea, Nesta scilicet sorore Griffini patris mei, descenderunt et uiri magni quidem et probi sunt sed non nisi in angulo quodam Wallie, cantaredo scilicet de Penbroc’. Cui archidiaconus:d ‘Quinimmo septem | cantaredos Demecie filii Neste in Wallia optinuerunt:318 primeuus scilicet Willelmus filius Giraldi, Penbroc et Emelin; Robertus filius Stephani, Kerdigan et Kemmeis; Henricus filius regis, Nerberd et Penbidiauc; Mauricius, Landesteffan; Willelmus Hay, Sanctum Clarum; Hoelus et Walterus, Lanpeter et Iwelfrei319 cum terris aliis. Due uero filie Neste, scilicet Hangaret, mater mea, et Gladewis, duobus baronibus de Ros et Penbroc nupte fuerant. Preter hos sex aut septem barones Dauid, Meneuensem episcopum, qui | toti fere Suthwallie pontificali iure presidebat, filium habuit. Preterea, licet de Wallia tantas portiones et tam largas habuissent, tamen, crescente propagine et pullulante progenie, filii Neste Robertus et Mauricius cum nepotibus suis Reimundo et Meilero necnon et filiis atque cognatis mare Hibernicum transuolantes conquestui regni illius sua principium dederunt animositate et triginta cantaredos uel plures sibi et suis de regno Hibernico retinuerunt cunctarumque terrarum que ab Anglicis ibidem possidentur per aggressum suum occasio fuerunt. Cum ergo septem fere cantaredos Neste successio de Wallia habuerite (preter Kerdigan quoque, cuius partem maiorem quandoque possedit) cumque triginta uel plures in Hibernia conquisierit, nec uere dici potest nec serio dici debet quod prolesf Neste

d  Cui archidiaconus ed.; om. MS; Brewer marks a lacuna; Wharton prints a full stop     habuerit Wharton; habuit MS    f proles Wharton; plures MS

e

317  It is striking that the Giraldini here are the descendants of Nest rather than of Gerald of Windsor. Cf. Exp. Hib., ii. 10 (ed. Scott and Martin, pp. 156–9), Generis commendacio. The list of their lands bears some relation to reality, enough to sustain the contrast with ‘non nisi in angulo quodam Wallie, cantaredo scilicet de Penbroc’.

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to anyone faint-­hearted and obscure, but to men so famous and ­distinguished’. And the bishop added: ‘And it is a great pleasure to us that, since we ourselves had to lose lands which we had so long ­possessed, a man as able and noble as Rhys now holds them’. After their midday nap, the bishop and noblemen went into a certain orchard as the day was already drawing to a close, bringing Rhys with them, and sat down there together. As Gerald the archdeacon was coming in with the others and sitting down, Rhys started to jest and joke, taking Gerald as his target and, as though intending to repay him for his speech at lunch, said: ‘That archdeacon over there and the men of his family, who are called “Geraldines”,317 are descended from my aunt Nest, the sister of my father Gruffudd, and they are certainly noble and able men, but only in a particular corner of Wales, the cantref of Pembroke’. To which the archdeacon answered: ‘No, the sons of Nest held the seven cantrefi of Dyfed in Wales:318 the eldest, William fitz Gerald, had those of Pembroke and Emlyn; Robert fitz Stephen held Ceredigion and Cemais; Henry fitz Roy, Narberth and Pebidiog; Maurice had Llansteffan; William Hay held St Clears; and Hywel and Walter held Llanbedr and Efelffre,319 along with other lands. Two daughters of Nest, my mother Angharad and Gwladus, were married to two barons, those of Rhos and Pembroke. Besides these six or seven barons, she also had a son David, bishop of St Davids, who exercised the rights of bishop over nearly all of South Wales. Moreover, even though they held such great and wide tracts of Wales, nevertheless, as the family stock was growing and shooting forth new branches, Nest’s sons Robert and Maurice sailed across the Irish Sea with their nephews Raymond and Meilyr and their sons and relatives, and courageously began the conquest of that kingdom. They kept thirty cantrefi of the Irish kingdom, or more, for themselves and their men and they were the reason, through their enterprise, that the English possess all the lands they do there. And so, since Nest’s heirs held nearly seven cantrefi in Wales (besides Ceredigion, too, of which they once held the larger part) and since they conquered thirty or more in Ireland, neither can it be truly said nor should it be seriously stated that the offspring of Nest

318  For the places mentioned in this section, see Maps 2 and 4 (pp. xviii and 236). 319  Gerald’s coupling of Llanbedr and Efelffre is odd, in that Efelffre was a ­district that included Llanbedr Efelffre as well as Llanddewi Efelffre: WATU, p. 64.

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RS i. 60

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nisi in angulo de Penbroc uiuere non possit. Sed uerissime dici potest filios Griffini extra Suthwallie portiunculam modicam nullatenus uiuere posse uideri. De qua cum septem cantaredos uel octo tantumg adhuc optineant, totum sibi residuum quasi iure hereditarioh uendicantes nec ad exteras regiones transeunt nec hereditatem suam adhuc conquirunt’. Resus autem, quoniam in magna audiencia hec dicta fuerant | (quia coram archiepiscopo et iusticiario necnon et episcopis atque baronibus qui iam superuenerant non paucis), uerecundia parumper et rubore perfusus, quia tamen uir sapiens erat et discretus, satis modeste respondit in hunc modum, dicens quia reuera uiri probi et strenui fuerunt et sunt qui de Nesta prouenerunt et quia conquestum magnum in Hibernia fecerunt, si tamen eis remanere posset.320 Propter hoc autem istud adiecit, quia naciones hee due, Walensica scilicet et Hibernica, terras omnes ab Anglicis sibi ablatas semper recuperandi spe pascuntur. ⟨N⟩unciis igitur ad regem reuersis, cum inter cetera uerba tam prandii quam uiridarii responsa ei fideliter relata fuissent, risu grandi secuto, cepit rex coram omnibus personam archidiaconi Giraldi, probitatem eius atque prudentiam comendare plurimum et magnificare, dicens, nii Walensis esset, excellentij dignum honore. Sed quoniam ‘probitas laudatur et alget’,321 licet excercitus Resi plurimos (preter alia seruicia magna) a terra regis, quam impetere parabat, ipse solus per operam suam et diligenciam auertisset, nichil tamen a rege preter laudes huiusmodi uanas et adulationes cum promissis magnis accepit. Sicut ergo a pluribus ei dictum fuerat consiliariis regis in uita ipsius et post mortem a plurioribus, nichil illi impedimento fuit promocionis magne nisi solum nacio ipsius et cognatio.

g  tantum conjectured by Wharton in a note; tamen MS    h haereditario Wharton; heredita- MS, with hyphen but nothing on the following line    i ni ed.; nisi Wharton; ei MS    j excellenti Wharton; excellent with blot, MS

320 Gerald’s unusual sequence of tenses here (Wharton amended to fecerant) perhaps arises because, while the words following dicens are formally a species of oratio obliqua, Gerald’s vivid remembrance slips into recta and so into the tense of Rhys’s actual speech.

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are only able to live in a corner of Pembroke. But it can very truly be said that the sons of Gruffudd seem completely unable to live outside of a limited little part of South Wales. And though they now hold just seven or eight cantrefi of that country, they claim all the rest of it by hereditary right, but they neither cross over to foreign lands nor do they yet try to conquer their own inheritance’. Now Rhys, since this had all been said before a large audience (before the archbishop and justiciar, as well as not a few bishops and barons who had now arrived), briefly blushed with shame and embarrassment but, being a wise and prudent man, replied entirely temperately in this way, saying that in truth the descendants of Nest had been and were still able and energetic men, and that they had conquered much land in Ireland—­if only they could keep it.320 And, on this point, he added also that these two peoples—­the Welsh and the Irish—­were forever nourished by the hope of recovering all the lands which have been taken from them by the English. When the king’s envoys had returned to him and faithfully reported these replies, amongst the other things said at lunch and in the orchard, he laughed heartily and, in front of everyone, started to praise highly and extol the character, integrity, and prudence of Gerald the arch­ deacon, saying that, if he were not Welsh, he would be worthy of a high honour. But, since ‘integrity is praised but still shivers with cold’,321 even though Gerald (besides the many other services he rendered) had single-­handedly, by his efforts and care, warded off many of Rhys’s armies when he was preparing to attack the king’s land, nevertheless he received nothing from the king except this kind of empty praise and flattery, and promises of great things. And so, as many of the king’s counsellors had told him while Henry was alive, and more still told him after he was dead, there was no obstacle to his receiving a major promotion except his birth and his kinship alone.

321 Juvenal, Satires, i. 74.

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[ II. 10]  QVA L I T E R PATRIARCHA IN A N G L I A M V E NI T E T C V M IOHANNE FILIO SVO G I R A L DV M R E X HENRICVS IN HI BE R NI A M MIS IT.322

RS i. 61

fo. 169v

⟨H⟩iis autem diebus, patriarcha ⟨H⟩eracliusa de Ierosolimis in Anglie fines aduenit et claues urbis Ierosolimitane regi optulit, postulans humiliter (sedb non impetrans) ut uel ipse ad terre Ierosolimitane defensionem ue|niret uel unum filiorum suorum (quoniam adhuc tres extabant) illuc mitteret.323 Ipse uero nec hoc nec illud faciens sed nuntium tantum spernens et spretus ob hoc ipse Deumque deserens et desertus | a Deo, quia que semper hactenus creuerat ex tunc uersa est in ignominiam gloria ipsius, filium suum natu minorem Iohannem cum magno apparatu in Hiberniam misit, magistrum quoque Giraldum, quia de primis expugnatoribus gentis illius magnum in Hibernia genus habebat et quia probus ipse ac prudens extiterat, cum ipso transmittens. Cum ergo Paschali tempore, de Penbroc in Wallia et Portu Miluerdico classe soluta, Iohannes in Hiberniam transfretando apud Waterfordiam applicuisset, propter causas in libro expugnacionis Hibernice a Giraldo conscriptas non profecit.324 Quarum etiam tres urgentissimas et hic inserere dignum duxi. Prima fuit quod, cum in Saracenos pocius ad Terre Sacre subuentionem mitti deberet, missus est in Christianos. Secunda quod iuuenis et puer ipse iuuenum quos secum duxit, qui ibi ignoti fuerant penitus et ignari, consiliis utens, probos uiros et discretos ibi repertos, qui mores et modos gentis et patrie cognoscebant, tanquam extraneos et indignos repellebat. Tercia uero, que quidem omnium pessima fuerat, quod Deo et ecclesie sue nullum in partibus honorem facere disponebat, sicut ex uisione quamc tunc uidit Giraldus et in predicto expugnacionis Hybernice libro325 posuit palam apparuit.d a   Either the scribe meant this to be spelt eraclius or he intended the large initial H, which was never added, to function as the initial letter of this word as well as of Hiis on the preceding line    b sed Wharton; si MS    c quam Wharton; quia MS    d apparuit Wharton; apperuit MS

322  For discussion of this event, see Bartlett, ‘King John and Gerald of Wales’. 323 Cf. De prin., ii. 24, 27–8 (OMT 522–6, 532–40); Exp. Hib., ii. 26–7 (ed. Scott and Martin, pp. 200–7), where the juxtaposition of a failure to help the Kingdom of Jerusalem in 1185 with the sending of John to Ireland was deliberate, as shown by the first of the reasons for John’s failure given in Exp. Hib., ii. 36 (ed. Scott and Martin, pp. 236–45).

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[ II. 1 0 ]   HOW T H E PAT R I A RCH CAM E TO E N G LA ND A ND H OW KI NG HENRY S ENT G E RA L D TO I R E L A N D WITH HIS SO N  J O H N.322 In those days, the patriarch of Jerusalem, Heraclius, came into the land of England and offered the king the keys to the city of Jerusalem, humbly requesting (but not obtaining) either that he himself should come to the defence of the land of Jerusalem, or that he should send one of his sons there (for three were then still living).323 Henry, however, did ­neither one thing nor the other but, spurning so great an envoy and himself spurned because of it, abandoning God and by God abandoned (for his fame, which had hitherto been ever-­g rowing, from that point onwards turned into disgrace), instead sent his younger son John, richly equipped, to Ireland. He sent Master Gerald, too, along with him, both because he had a large family in Ireland, who were among the first conquerors of that people, and because he himself was able and prudent. And thus, though the fleet set sail from Pembroke and Milford Haven in Wales at Eastertide and John crossed to Ireland and landed at Waterford, he was unsuccessful, for the reasons set out in Gerald’s book on the conquest of Ireland.324 Of these reasons, I have decided that the three most pressing ought to be inserted here as well. First, that though he should instead have been sent against the Saracens to bring relief to the Holy Land, he was sent against Christians. Second, that as a young man—­really, a boy—­ himself, he took the advice of the young men he brought with him, who were entirely unknown in Ireland and knew nothing of the place, and he rejected, as unworthy foreigners, the able and prudent men he found there, who understood the customs and manners of that people and country. Third (which was indeed the worst of all), that he decided not to honour God and his church in those parts, as was plainly evident from the vision which Gerald saw at that time, and which he included in the book on the conquest of Ireland already mentioned.325

324 Cf. Exp. Hib., ii. 36 (ed. Scott and Martin, pp. 236–45). 325  Perhaps referring to the vision recounted in Exp. Hib., ii. 36 (ed. Scott and Martin, pp. 242–3) and repeated below, ii. 12. This introduces the central theme of the next three chapters. Cf. Exp. Hib., ii. 32 (ed. Scott and Martin, pp. 226–9). In De gestis, Gerald does not mention that he had been in Ireland before (Exp. Hib., ii. 20 (ed. Scott and Martin, pp. 188–9)).

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Quamquam tamen propter hoc precipue, ut ecclesiam Hibernicam extolleret et exaltaret et denarium Sancti Petri sicut in Anglia sic in Hibernia dari faceret, pater ipsius intrandi Hiberniam sibique subiugandi ab ecclesia Romana licentiam impetrauit, quemadmodum ex priuilegio Adriani pape, et sub hoc obtentu,e aperte declaratur. Cuius transcriptum, sicut in expugnationis libro illius est positum, simul cum uisione illa uerbis eisdem hic apponere preter rem non putaui. Hoc autem priuilegium fuit. |

[ II. 11]  PR I V I L E GI V M A DRIANI PAP E.326 ‘⟨A⟩drianus episcopus, seruus seruorum Dei, karissimo in Christo filio, illustri Anglorum regi, salutem et apostolicam benedictionem. ‘Laudabiliter satisa et fructuose de glorioso nomine propagando in terris et eterne felicitatis premio cumulando in celis Tua Magnificentia cogitat,327 dum ad dilatandos ecclesie terminos, ad declarandam indoctis et rudibus populis Christiane fidei ueritatem et uiciorum plantaria de agro dominico extirpanda,328 sicut catholicus princeps intendis etb ad id conuenientius exequendum consilium apostolice sedis exigis et fauorem. ‘In quo facto, quanto alciori discretione procedis, tanto in eo feliciorem progressum te, prestante Domino, confidimus habiturum, eo quod ad bonum exitum semper et finem soleant attingere que de ardore fidei et religionis amore principium acceperunt. Sane Hiberniam et omnes insulas quibus sol iusticie Christus illuxit et que documenta fidei Christiane ceperunt ad ius Beati Petri et sacrosancte Romane ecclesie, quod Tua etiam Nobilitas recognoscit, non est dubium pertinere. Vnde tanto in eis libencius plantacionem fidelem et germen e   et sub hoc obtentu ed.; et super hoc obtentu MS, perhaps corrected to obtento; super hoc obtento Wharton

 satis Exp. Hib. and De prin.; om. MS   

a

 et Exp. Hib. and De prin.; om. MS

b

326 On Laudabiliter, see Appendix 4 (pp. 253–4). 327  Our translation of the opening sentence of Laudabiliter differs from Bartlett’s, but agrees in substance with the one by Orpen, Ireland under the Normans, 1169–1216, i. 294–5, and followed in English Historical Documents, 1042–1189, ed. Douglas and Greenaway, p. 776, and Irish Historical Documents, 1172–1922, ed. Curtis and McDowell, p. 13. The issue is how much force to attach to the parallelism between the two gerundive phrases, de glorioso nomine propagando in terris et eterne felicitatis premio cumulando in celis. Since premio cumulando plainly refers to Henry, the other should be taken as having the same reference unless it is clearly signalled in the text that the reference is different.

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But it was nevertheless for this purpose in particular, to raise up and improve the Irish church and to cause Peter’s Pence to be paid in Ireland in the same way as in England, that his father obtained permission from the Roman church to go into Ireland and to bring it under his dominion, as is openly declared in the privilege from Pope Adrian, issued on this pretext. I have thought it not irrelevant to include here its text, just as it is included in his book on the conquest, together with that vision, in the same words. Now, this was the privilege:

[ II. 11]  T HE PR I V I L E GE FROM PO PE   A D R I A N.326 ‘Bishop Adrian, servant of the servants of God, sends his greetings and apostolic blessing to his most dear son in Christ, the illustrious king of the English. ‘In an entirely laudable and fruitful way, Your Magnificence is considering how to bring about the growth of your glorious reputation on  earth, and how to amass the reward of everlasting happiness in heaven;327 while, as a catholic prince, you intend to extend the territory of the church, to make clear the truth of the Christian faith to untaught and uncultivated peoples, and to uproot the seedlings of vice from the Lord’s field;328 and in order to accomplish this more fittingly you request the advice and the approval of the Apostolic See. ‘And in undertaking this, we are sure that the more prudent you are in proceeding, the happier will be the success you achieve, with God’s help, for that which has taken its beginnings from the ardour of faith and love of religion is ever wont to attain a good outcome and end. Certainly, there is no doubt that Ireland and all the islands upon which the sun of Christ’s justice has shined, and which have received the teachings of the Christian faith, belong by right to St Peter and to the Holy Roman Church, a right which Your Nobility, too, acknowledges. And all the more willingly do we sow the seed of faith and a crop pleasing to God in those islands, for we see clearly by inward reflection that this is required of us. Now, you have informed us, dearest son in Christ, that you wish to go into the island of Ireland in order to subject that

328  Cf. Matt. 13: 24–30, the Parable of the Tares.

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fo. 170r

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RS i. 64

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g­ ratum Deo inserimus, quanto id a nobis interno examine districtius prospicimus exigendum. Significasti siquidem nobis, fili in Christo karissime, te Hi|bernie insulam ad subdendum populum illum legibus et uiciorum plantaria inde extirpanda uelle intrare et de singulis domibus annuam unius denarii Beato Petro uelle soluere pensionem et iura ecclesiarum terre illius illibata et integra conseruare. ‘Nos itaque pium et laudabile desiderium tuum, cum fauore congruo prosequentes | et peticioni tue benignum impendentes assensum, gratum et acceptum habemus, ut pro dilatandis ecclesie terminis, pro uiciorum restringendo decursu, pro corrigendis moribus et uirtutibus inserendis, pro Christiane religionis augmento, insulam illam aggrediaris et que ad honorem Dei et salutem illius terre spectauerint exequaris et illius terre populus honorifice te recipiat et sicut dominum ueneretur—­iure nimirum ecclesiarumc illibato et integro permanente et salua Beato Petro et sacrosancte Romane ecclesie de singulis domibus unius denarii pensione. Si ergo quod concepisti animo effectu ­duxeris prosequente complendum, stude gentem illam bonis moribus informare et agas tam per te quam per illos quos ad hoc fide, uerbo, et uita idoneos esse prospexeris ut decoretur ibi ecclesia, plantetur et crescat fidei Christiane religio, et que ad honorem Dei et salutem pertinent animarumd taliter ordinentur ut a Deo sempiterne mercedis cumulum consequi merearis et in terris gloriosum nomen ualeas ine seculis optinere.’ ⟨V⟩isionem quoque Giraldi cum quibusdam ab ipso premissis, ut euidentior uisio fiat, suis ipsius uerbis hic apposui. Cum enim causas incomodi et infortunii, quas dolens ipse notauerat, plurimas assignasset, tandem et hanc quasi ualidiorem aliis et urgentiorem assignauit. ‘⟨A⟩ccessit329 et incommodum omnium maius, quod ecclesie in nouo principatu nostro nichil de nouo conferentes, non tantum principali largicione debitoque dignam honore non iudicauimus quinimmo, terris statim sublatis et possessionibus, pristinas eidem dignitates et antiqua priuilegia uel mutilare contendimus uel abrogare.’ |

c  ecclesiarum Exp. Hib. and De prin.; econtrarium MS; e contrario Wharton    d  Some MSS of Exp. Hib. add per te after animarum    e in Exp. Hib. and De prin.; et in MS

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people to laws and to uproot from there the seedlings of vice, and that you wish to pay from every house an annual render of one penny to St  Peter, and to preserve whole and undiminished the rights of that country’s churches. ‘Therefore do we forward with fitting favour your pious and praiseworthy wish, grant a kind assent to your petition, and consider this to be both acceptable and accepted: that you go to that island in order to extend the territory of the church, check the flow of vice, reform ­morals and implant virtues, and increase Christian worship; that you carry out those actions which relate to the honour of God and the salvation of that land; and that the people of that land receive you with honour and respect you as their lord—­provided, clearly, that the rights of churches remain whole and undiminished and that a payment of one penny from each house be reserved to St Peter and the Holy Roman Church. Therefore, if you decide to carry out and give effect to what you have planned in your mind, take pains to teach that people good morals; and act, both personally and through those whom you have selected as suitable in their faith, their words, and their manner of ­living, in such a way that the church is glorified there, that the practice of the Christian faith is planted and grows, and that what relates to the honour of God and the salvation of souls is managed in such a way that you may deserve to attain a rich measure of God’s everlasting reward, and that you are able to have on this earth a glorious reputation forever.’ I have also added here, in his own words, the vision of Gerald, together with certain prefatory remarks which he added to clarify his vision. For when he had specified the many reasons, which he had himself sorrowfully observed, for that trouble and misfortune, finally he specified this reason, as being stronger and more pressing than the rest. ‘There329 happened, in addition, a misfortune greater than the ­others: that, granting nothing new to the church in our new principality, not only did we decide that it was unworthy of princely largesse and of its due honour, but rather, immediately taking away its lands and possessions, we strove either to curtail or to repeal its former dignities and long-­established privileges.’

329  This passage and the vision below, down to sompnum excussit, are repeated from Exp. Hib., ii. 36 (ed. Scott and Martin, pp. 242–3).

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[I I . 12]  V I SI O GIRALDI.

fo. 170v

RS i. 65

‘⟨C⟩um igitur super uniuersis que nobis acciderant mecum non mediocriter anxius extiterim et precipue super hac Saluatoris iniuria suspiriose michi multociens cogitaciones in animum ascenderint, nocte quadam in sompnis ex reliquiis forte cogitationum uisionem uidi, quam et in crastino statim uenerabili Dublinensium archipresuli Iohanni nona absque utriusque admiratione propalaui.330 Visus sum enim michi uidere filium regis Iohannem in uiridi quadam planicie tanquam ecclesiam fundaturum. Cumque metantiumb more cespitem undique signando terre faciem linealiter apperuisset, fabricam archetipam sensili quodam modoc circumponens, tandem corporis ecclesie signacio, ­posterior aliquantulum capax, presbiterium autem enormiter artumd apparuit et informe, tanquam laicorum in insula partem non modicam, cleri uero minimam, efficere disposuisset. ⟨C⟩umque satis ibidem, ut uidebatur, super eidem adicienda tam amplitudine maiore quam forma digniore frustra tamen disputauerim, ipsa tandem contentionis anxietas experrecto sompnum excussit.’ | ⟨S⟩icut autem in sompnis ‘ex habundancia cordis’331 ymaginarie, sic multociens non sompniando sed uigilando comitem (licet incassum) simili suasione conuenit. |

[ II. 1 3]  QVA L I T E R DVO S EP IS COPATVS IN H IB ER N I A G I R A L DO C OM ES IOHANNES O BT V L I T E T QVA L I T ER VTRVM QVE R E C V SAV I T.332

⟨P⟩rocessu uero temporis, duorum episcopatuum qui tunc uacabant, Wesefordensis scilicet (qui et Fernensis dicitur) et Lechelinensis, archidiacono comes optionem dedit et, cum utramque recusaret, optulit a  non Wharton and Exp. Hib.; nunc MS    b mecantium MS    c  quodam modo Wharton; quodam-modo MS, across line break with hyphen    d artum ed.; arcum MS; arctum Wharton

330  This is John Cumin (ODNB, s.n. ‘Cumin [Comyn], John’), who figures in Exp. Hib., ii. 24–5, 36 (ed. Scott and Martin, pp. 196–9, 242–3 (the dream recounted here)); the force of the anecdote depends on a criticism of the English in Ireland being more pointed when expressed by one Englishman to another. Elsewhere Cumin is treated sympathetically by Gerald: described twice as literatus and discretus (Inuect., i. 5 (Davies, p. 101); Spec. eccl., iii. 9

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[I I . 12]  G E R A L D’S V IS ION. ‘And when I had become not a little distressed in thinking over all the things which had happened to us, and especially when sorrowful thoughts of this wrong done to Our Saviour came to my mind, as they often did, one night in my sleep I saw a vision, perhaps coming from the remnants of those thoughts, which I also related the very next morning to the venerable archbishop of Dublin, John, and which amazed us both.330 For I seemed to see the king’s son John upon some green plain, as though laying the foundations for a church. And when he had, by marking the turf all around, exposed the bare earth in a series of lines, like a surveyor, and placed round himself the plan of the structure in a perceptible way, finally the marking which traced out the body of the church became clear. The after part was somewhat spacious, but the presbytery was bizarrely shrunken and misshapen, as though he had decided to make the laity’s portion in the island significant, but that of the clergy very small. And when I had argued with him for quite a while, it seemed, about making it both bigger and more nobly proportioned (but in vain), in the end the very distress of that dispute shook me awake from my dream.’ And just as he had done in his dreams in imagination, expressing ‘what his heart was full of ’,331 so too he went to the count many times with like arguments when he was not sleeping but wide awake (though to no avail).

[ II. 1 3 ]   HOW C O U N T J O H N OFFERED TWO B ISH O PR I C S I N I R E L A ND TO GERALD AND H OW HE R E FU SE D T HE M BOTH.332 After some time had passed, the count gave the archdeacon the choice of two bishoprics which were then vacant, Wexford (which is also called Ferns) and Leighlin, and when he refused them both, he offered to turn

(RS iv. 179–80)); he lends Gerald money when he is caught short on his travels (De iure, v (RS iv. 297)); and he was clearly a purveyor of entertaining anecdotes (Gemma eccl., ii. 36 (RS ii. 346)). 331  Matt. 12: 34 and Luke 6: 45. 332  Although John was not created Count of Mortain until 1189, four years after his first expedition to Ireland, Gerald, writing many years later, gives him the title by anticipation.

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ei duas ecclesias illas et dioceses in unum conuertendas, si regimen ipsarum suscipere uellet.333 ⟨A⟩d quod respondit quod si animum ipsius ad hoc datum uideret, ut ecclesiam Hibernicam extollere uellet et sublimare, se forsan, ut ad hoc cooperari et quo adiuuare posset, oblatum honorem suscepturum. Sed, quoniam hoc non attendit, maluit esse priuatus quam inutiliter in potestate constitutus nec aliquatenus ibi preesse uoluit ubi prodesse non potuit.334 ⟨V⟩idens ergo quod comes ibi nil proficeret sed de die in diem deteriorem per eius aduentum terra statum haberet, considerans etiam multa ibidem noua et notabilia, aliis aliena regnis et prorsus incognita, ut uel ipse questum aliquem aut conquestum suo saltem labore faceret,335 primum Thopographie sue deinde Expugnationis Hibernice materiam ibi colligere studio grandi et diligentius inquisicione curauit. Cum itaque comes, per estatem totam et hyemis partem mora in Hibernia inutili facta, remenso pelago, in Walliam et Angliam remearet, Giraldus cum senescallo Hybernie, Bertranno de Verdun, socius et rerum gerendarum testis relictus, ut studio predicto plenius indulgeret,336 non solum congerendo sed etiam digerendo usque ad Pasca sequens moram in insula fecit. ⟨A⟩ccidit autem quod,a cum in media Quadragesima (scilicet ad Letare Ierusalem)337 Iohannes Dublinensis archiepiscopus, conuocatis suffrageneis episcopis Dublinensibus, in | ecclesia Sancte Trinitatis concilium teneret, primo die sermonem fecit ipse de sacramentis ecclesie.338 Secundo die abbas de Balkinglas, Albinus (qui et postea Fernensis episcopus erat),339 de continencia clericorum sermonem texens prolixiorem, totam in clerum qui de Wallia et Anglia in Hyberniam aduenerant denique culpam refudit, docens mundiciam cleri Hybernie quanta fuerat, donec ex contagio aduenarum, quoniam ‘a conuictu  quod ed.; om. MS

a

333  Moody, et al., A New History of Ireland, ix. 311, has Joseph Ua hÁeda, bishop of Ferns, dying in 1183 (and the obit is in AFM, s.a.) and his successor Ailbe Ua Maíl Muaid succeeding c. 1186 (i.e. after his run-in with Gerald); also, p. 315, Dúngal Ua Cáellaide, bishop of Leighlin, dying in 1181 (also in AFM, s.a.); his successor, Johannes I, just has a floruit 1192. Cf. Fryde, et al., A Handbook of British Chronology, pp. 335 and 364. The offer of the bishoprics seems then to have been made in a window of three years (1183 × c. 1186). 334  Note the play on words between preesse and prodesse; this is a common trope: cf. ‘sciatque sibi oportere prodesse magis quam praeesse’, The Rule of St Benedict, c. 64 (La règle de Saint Benoît, ed. de Vogüé and Neufville, ii. 648–53, at p. 650); ‘Qui preesse non prodesse desiderat non debet episcopari’ (Gratian, Decretum, C. 8 q. 1, rubric to c. 11). 335  Note the play on words between questum and conquestum. 336  On Bertram, see ODNB, s.n. ‘Verdon [Verdun], Bertram de’. Gerald did not exercise an administrative role; he was at best an informal adviser to Bertram, who was a royal administrator.

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those two churches and dioceses into one, if Gerald would undertake to govern them.333 To which Gerald responded that, if he should see that the count had turned his mind to exalting and elevating the Irish church, then he would perhaps take up the honour offered him, in order to be able to cooperate and help him in this. But since he did not expect this to happen, he preferred not holding office to being uselessly in power; and he had no wish at all to be in charge where he could not be of any use.334 Seeing therefore that the count made no progress there, but that his coming caused the land’s condition to worsen every day, and contemplating the many new and notable things in that place, foreign to other kingdoms and entirely unknown, he took great pains and made careful enquiry to collect material there, first for his Topography, then for his Conquest of Ireland, so that he at least might make some sort of profit —or conquest—­by his own efforts.335 And so, when the count, having uselessly stayed in Ireland for a whole summer and part of the winter, re-­crossed the sea and returned to Wales and England, Gerald was left behind as associate to the seneschal of Ireland, Bertram de Verdun, and as witness to his management of affairs, and so could indulge more fully in the study just mentioned.336 He remained on the island until the following Easter, not only collecting material but also putting it into order. Now, it happened that when, in the middle of Lent (specifically, on Laetare Sunday),337 John, the archbishop of Dublin, summoned the suffragan bishops of Dublin together and held a council in the church of the Holy Trinity, on the first day he himself delivered a sermon on the sacraments of the church.338 On the second day the abbot of Baltinglass, Ailbe, who was later the bishop of Ferns,339 composed a rather long-­winded sermon on the continence of clerics, and in his conclusion cast all the blame upon the clergy who had come to Ireland from England and Wales. He spoke of how great the purity of the Irish clergy had been until they caught the rot from contact with

337  In 1186, Easter was 13 April and Laetare Sunday 23 March. 338  On this provincial synod, see Flanagan, Transformation, pp. 112–13. 339  Ailbe Ua Maíl Múaid, a member of the ruling kindred of Fir Chell. On his sermon, see Flanagan, Transformation, pp. 91, 113.

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mores formantur’340 et ‘qui picem tangit coinquinabitur ab ea’,341 corruptelam contraxerunt. ⟨A⟩d cumulum quoque confusionis, finito sermone ipsius, clerici nostrates de Wesefordie finibus se inuicem super concubinis publice ductis domumque traductis et nuptiis solenniter factis coram archiepiscopo et uniuerso concilio constanter accusarunt et accusatos incontinenti testium productione pariter et susceptione, instigante ad hoc archiepiscopo Giraldi consilio, ut ­statim  puplice iusticia sequeretur, cum magna cleri Hibernici tam ­irrisione quam insultatione conuicerunt. Archiepiscopus autem, ut Hibernicorum insultationem reprimeret sibique tales immundicias et enormitates displicere probaret, in conuictos ilico sententiam dedit et ipsos omni tam officio ecclesiastico quam beneficio suspendit. ⟨D⟩ie uero tercio | archiepiscopus Giraldo archidiacono sermonem iniunxit, qui de pastorali officio materiam sumens in primis que ad laudem cleri Hibernici uere dici poterant non suppressit, deinde de uiciis eorum et excessibus (precipue uero de ebriositatis incommodo) cunctos in commune notando, demum ad prelatos ipsorum se conuertens eos super incuria et negligentia pastorali irrefragabili racione conuicit. Vnde et sermonis eiusdem partem hec continentem uerbis eisdem, que etiam in Topographia Hibernica ultima distinctione reperies, hic interserere preter rem non putaui. |

[ II. 14]  SE R MO G I R A L DI IN CONCILIO DV BL I NE N SI.342 ‘⟨E⟩st autem terre istius clerus satis religione commendabilis et inter uarias quibus pollet uirtutes castitatis prerogatiua preminet et precellit. Item psalmis et horis, lectioni et orationi, uigilanter inseruiunt et, intra ecclesie septa se continentes, a diuinis quibus deputati sunt officiis non recedunt. Abstinentie quoque et parsimonie ciborum non mediocriter indulgent,a ita ut pars maxima cotidie fere, donec cuncta a  indulgent Wharton and some MSS of Top. Hib.; indulgeret MS; indulget other MSS of Top. Hib.

340  Cf. above, i. 2, n. 204. 341  Eccles. 13: 1. Gerald also puts these two tags together at Top. Hib., iii. 24 (RS v. 168), there using them to support the opposite argument to that here: that newcomers to Ireland are quickly infected by the vices of the inhabitants. 342  This sermon is repeated nearly verbatim from Top. Hib., iii. 27–31 (RS v. 172–8), with slight changes and the addition of material on the faults of the Irish from Top. Hib., iii. 19 (RS v. 164–5). See above, Introduction, pp. lxxx–lxxxi.

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the in­comers, since ‘character is formed by one’s companions’340 and ‘he who touches pitch will be contaminated by it’.341 And to increase the disorder, when his sermon was over our own clerics from the area of Wexford forcefully accused one another, in front of the archbishop and the whole council, of publicly keeping concubines, bringing them home, and solemnly marrying them. And they straightaway produced and heard witnesses—­ the archbishop following Gerald’s advice in this, so that justice might be immediately and publicly pursued—­and convicted the accused, with great mockery and jeering on the part of the Irish clergy. The archbishop, in order to quash the jeering of the Irishmen and to demonstrate that he disapproved of such sins and outrages, passed sentence upon the convicted on the spot, suspending them from every ecclesiastical office and benefice. On the third day, the archbishop ordered the archdeacon, Gerald, to deliver the sermon. Taking as his subject pastoral responsibility, he first of all did not withhold those things which could truthfully be said in praise of the Irish clergy; then, accusing all in common of the vices and transgressions they practised (and especially of the defect of drunkenness), he finally turned his attention to their prelates, and convicted them with irrefutable logic of carelessness and negligence in their pastoral duties. And therefore, I have thought it not irrelevant to insert here that part of the sermon which contains these things, in his  own words, which you will also find in the final distinctio of the Topography of Ireland.

[ II. 1 4]  G E R A L D’S SE R MON AT THE C O UNC I L I N DUBLIN.342 ‘Now, the religious devotion of the clergy of the country is entirely praiseworthy, and amongst the various virtues in which they abound, chastity may be singled out as being first and foremost. Likewise, they devote themselves keenly to psalmody and the keeping of the hours, to biblical readings and to prayer; and, keeping themselves within the bounds of their church, they do not quit the sacred duties to which they have been assigned. They devote themselves, too, in no small measure to austerity and frugality with their food, to such an extent, indeed, that most of them fast nearly every day until they have fulfilled all the day’s offices of the hours, right up until dusk. But would that,

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diei compleuerint horarum officia, usque ad crepusculum ieiunent. Sed utinam post longa ieiunia tam sobrii fuerint quam seri, tam ueri quam seueri, tam puri quam duri, tam existentes quam apparentes! Inter tot enim milia uix unum inuenies qui, post iugem tam ieiuniorum quam orationum instantiam, uino uariisque pocionibus diurnos labores enormius quam deceret nocte non redimat. Diem itaque naturalem tanquam ex equo diuidentes lucidaque spiritui tempora, nocturna quoque carni dedicantes, sicut de luce lucis operibus indulgent, sic et in tenebris ad tenebrarum opera conuertuntur. Vnde et hoc pro miraculo duci potest, quod ubi uina dominantur, Venus non regnat. Vix autem hoc Ieronimo persuaderi posset dicenti quia “uenter mero estuans fa­cile despumat in libidinem”.343 Vix et Paulo, qui ait: “Nolite inebriari uino, in quo est luxuria”.b344 ‘⟨S⟩unt tamen non nulli inter hos optimi et sine fermento sincerissimi. Est enim gens hec cunctis fere in actibus inmoderata et in omnes affectus uehementissima. Vnde et, sicut mali | deterrimi sunt et nusquam peiores, ita et bonis laudabiliores non reperies. Sed inter auenas et lolia triticum rarum. “Multos nimirum uocatos” inuenies, “paucos electos”, grana rarissima, paleas multas.345 ‘⟨I⟩n episcopis uero et prelatis hoc precipue reprehensione dignum inuenio, quod in populi tam enormiter delinquentis correctione desides nimis sunt et negligentes. Quod igitur nec predicant nec corripiunt, hinc ipsos predico corripiendos. Quod non arguunt, hinc arguo. Quod reprehendere negligunt, hinc reprehendo. Quoniam, ut ait Gregorius, “preconis officium suscipit quisquis ad sacerdocii gradum ascendit. Sacerdos ergo si predicationis est nescius, quam clamoris uocem daturus est preco mutus?”346 Si enim prelati a tempore Patricii per tot annorum curriculac predicationi et instructioni, item increpationi et correptioni, pro officii debito uiriliter institissent, et enormitates gentis nimias aliquatenus extirpassent et aliquam | in eis proculdubio formam honestatis et religionis impressissent, precipued quidem ubi adeoe prelatis bonis et predicatoribus opus esset.’ b   These quotations are found in only some MSS of Top. Hib., iii. 27 (RS v. 173), and with a dif­ ferent phrasing and order    c  On the phrase a tempore . . . curricula, see Introduction, p. xcviii    d   The passage precipue . . . imitari uolentes, below, is omitted from the sermon in Top. Hib, but the latter part of it, gens hec spurcissima . . . imitari uolentes, is included in an earlier section of Top. Hib., iii. 19 (RS v. 164–5)    e adeo Wharton; a deo MS

343 Jerome, Letters, lxix. 9 (CSEL liv. 696), with cito for facile and libidines for libidinem; perhaps via Gratian, Decretum, D. 35 c. 5. 344  Eph. 5: 18. 345  Matt. 22: 14 (adapted). For the same pairing of this quotation with the comment on grains and chaff, see Inuect., vi. 27 (Davies, p. 236), taken from Gemma eccl., ii. 38 (RS ii. 362).

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after their long fasts, they were as sober as they are late to eat, as honest as they are austere, as pure as they are hardy, as good in reality as they are in appearance! For amongst all their thousands scarcely one will you find who, after the continuous pressure of their fasting and prayers, does not make up for their daily labours with wine and sundry drinks at night, more excessively than is appropriate. And so, as though dividing nature’s day into two equal parts and dedicating the hours of daylight to the spirit and the hours of night to the flesh, just as in the light they devote themselves to the works of light, so too in the darkness they turn to the works of darkness. Wherefore, too, it can be considered a miracle that where wine is master, Venus does not reign. Now you could scarcely have persuaded Jerome of this, for he said that “a belly seething with unmixed wine, easily settles down into lust”.343 Nor Paul, who said: “Do not become drunk on wine, for therein lurks licentiousness”.’344 ‘There are, nevertheless, some among them who are excellent and unblemished by any taint. For this people is excessive in nearly all it does and extremely passionate in all its feelings. And thus, just as the bad amongst them are terrible and you will nowhere find worse, so too you will find no ­one more praiseworthy than the good there are here. But amongst the wild oats and tares, the good wheat is rare. You will certainly find “many who are called, but few who are chosen”; rare indeed are the grains, and abundant the chaff.345 ‘Now, the chief thing worthy of rebuke which I find in their bishops and prelates is that they are far too lazy and remiss in setting straight a populace which is grossly delinquent. That they thus neither preach nor correct; hence I myself preach that they must be corrected. That they do not blame; for this I blame them. That they fail to rebuke; for this I rebuke them. For, as Gregory said, “whosoever rises to the rank of priest takes upon himself the duty of herald. If, therefore, a priest does not know how to preach, to what cry is he to give voice, this mute herald?”346 For if the prelates had manfully striven, through all the ages since the time of Patrick, to preach and instruct, and also to reprove and rebuke, as their duty demands, they would have thus (to some extent) uprooted the extreme outrages committed by this people and doubtless impressed upon them some pattern of integrity and good religious practice—­especially, indeed, in a place where there was such a need for good prelates and preachers.’

346  Adapted from Gregory the Great, Regula Pastoralis, ii. 4 (SC ccclxxxi. 190) and Letters, i. 24 (CCSL cxl. 26). The passage of the Regula Pastoralis is repeated by Gratian, Decretum, D. 43 c. 1.

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⟨V⟩t enim de periuriis eorum et prodicionibus, de furtis et latrociniis (quibus totus hic populus prope modum, immo preter modum, indulget), de uiciis uariis et inmundiciis nimis enormibus quas Topographia declarat ex toto non omittamus: ‘gens hec gens spurcissima, gens uiciis inuolutissima, gens omnium gentium in fidei rudimentis incultissima. Nondum enim decimas uel primicias soluunt, nondum matrimonia contrahunt, non incestus uitant, non ecclesiam Dei cum debita reuerentia frequentant’. Nec infantes ante fores ecclesie sacerdotes eorum more debito catecizant nec mortuorum corpora ad ecclesiasticam sepulturam debitis obsequiis prosequuntur.f ‘Quinimmo, quod detestabile ualde est et non tantum fidei sed et cuilibet honestati ualde contrarium, fratres pluribus per Hyberniam locis fratrum defunctorum uxores non dico ducunt sed traducunt, immo uerius seducunt, dum | turpiter eas et tam incestuose cognoscunt, Veteris in hoc Testamenti non medulle sed cortici adherentes ueteresque libentius in uiciis quam uirtutibus imitari uolentes.’347 ‘Non ergo prelatus in ipsis fueratg qui “tanquam tuba uocem ­exaltaret”,348 non fuit qui “ex aduerso ascenderet et murum pro domo Israel opponeret”,349 non fuit qui usque ad exilium—­nedum usque ad sanguinem—­pro ecclesia Christi dimicaret, quam ipse sibi suo precioso sanguine adquisiuit. Vnde et omnes sancti terre istius confessores sunt et nullus martir, quod in alio regno Christiano difficile erit inuenire. Mirum itaque quod, ubi gens crudelissima et sanguinis sitibunda, fides ab antiquo fundata et semper tepidissima, pro Christi ecclesia corona martirii nulla. Non igitur inuentus est in partibus istis qui ecclesie surgentis fundamenta sanguinis effusione cementaret, non fuit qui faceret hoc bonum, non fuit usque ad unum. Sunt enim pastores qui non pascere querunt sed pasci. Sunt prelati qui non prodesse cupiunt sed preesse.350 Sunt episcopi qui non omen sed nomen, non onus sed honorem amplectuntur. Huius itaque terre prelati, intra ecclesiarum septa de antiqua consuetudine se continentes, contemplacioni solum fere semper indulgent, ubi et Rachelis pulchritudine sic delectantur ut Lie lippitudinem fastidio ducant.351 Vnde accidit ut nec f   The sentence Nec infantes . . . prosequuntur appears nowhere in Top. Hib, but cf. the consti­ tutions of the synod of Cashel, Exp. Hib., i. 35 (ed. Scott and Martin, pp. 98–9)    g  In place of the phrase Non ergo . . . fuerat is Sed non fuit in ipsis in Top. Hib.

347  For this practice, see Deut. 25: 5–10, opposed in Lev. 20: 21. 348  Isa. 58: 1 (adapted). 349  Ezek. 13: 5 (adapted). 350  On this common word-play, see n. 334 above.

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And so as not wholly to omit what the Topography sets out about their false oaths and betrayals, their thefts and robberies (in which nearly—­nay, absurdly—­this entire people engages), their many vices and outrageous excesses in sin, let us say this: ‘this people is a most filthy one, a people deeply ensnared by vice, a people less instructed than any other in the very basics of their faith. For as yet they pay neither tithes nor first-­fruits, they do not as yet get properly married, they do not avoid incest, they do not attend God’s church with the reverence they ought’. Their priests do not instruct children in religion before the church doors, as they ought to, nor do they accompany the bodies of the dead to a church burial with the proper rites. ‘But what is particularly loathsome, and totally contrary not only to faith but to any sort of integrity, is that, in many places throughout Ireland, brothers take the wives of their deceased brothers in what I shall not call marriage, but pseudo-­marriage, or rather, more truthfully, no marriage at all, but a betrayal, and lie with them foully and so incestuously—­in this conforming not to the true marrow of the Old Testament teaching but to the husk of its superficial meaning, and imitating the ancients more eagerly in their vices than in their virtues.347 ‘And so, there was no prelate amongst them to raise up his voice like a trumpet,348 none to rise in opposition and set up a wall before the house of Israel,349 none to battle until they were exiled—­let alone until they shed their own blood—­on behalf of Christ’s church, which He won with His precious blood. Therefore, too, all the saints of that land are confessors, and none is a martyr, a situation which would be difficult to find in any other Christian kingdom. It is amazing that, where the people are so cruel and blood­thirsty and where the faith was established long ago and has always been so warm, no one has won a martyr’s crown for the church of Christ. No ­one has thus been found in those parts to shed their blood to cement the foundations of the church as it rose, none to do this good work, not even one. For there are shepherds who aim not to feed, but to be fed. There are prelates who desire not to be of use, but to be in charge.350 There are bishops who embrace not the substance of authority, but its empty name; not the burden of their office, but only its rank. The prelates of this land keep themselves, by ancient custom, shut within the bounds of their churches and nearly always devote themselves to the contemplative life alone; and there they are so delighted by Rachel’s beauty that they turn with distaste from the inflammation of Leah’s eyes.351 Thus it comes about that they 351  Gen. 29: 17. Rachel represents the contemplative life and Leah the active life.

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­ erbum Domini populo predicent nec scelera eorum eis annuntient u nec in grege commisso uel extirpent uicia uel inserant uirtutes’. ‘⟨C⟩um enim omnes fere Hibernie prelati de monasteriis in clerum electi sint, que monachi sunt sollicite complenth omnia, que uero clerici uel prelati fere pretermittunt uniuersa. Suii autem tantum curam agentes et tanquam sibi solliciti, pro grege commisso sollicitari negligenter omittunt et postponunt, illud Ieronimi ad Rusticum monachum uel prorsus ignorantes uel dissimulantes: “Sic uiue in monasterio ut clericus esse merearis. Longo tempore disce quod postmodum doceas et | inter bonos | semper sectare meliores et, cum in clerum electus fueris, age ea que clerici sunt”.352 Et illud ad eundem: “Si clericatus titillat desiderium, disce prius quod possis docere, ne sis miles ante quam tiro, ne magister ante quam discipulus”.353 Sed male sibi prouident, male sui curam agunt, cum hiis q ­ uorum custodie ex suscepti regiminis officio sunt deputati per incuriam et negligentiam curam et prouidentiam subtrahunt et subducunt. Se ipsos enim multo grauius quam illos et dampnabilius seducunt. ‘⟨S⟩cire igitur debent quod, sicut Ieronimus ad Eleutherium354 ­testatur, cum “alia sit causa monachi, alia clerici, et clerici oues pascant, monachi pascantur”,355 sic se habent monachi respectu clericorum tanquam grexj respectu pastorum.356 Monachus enim tanquam unius custos uel singularis dictus, sui solius curam agit, clericus uero circa multorum curam sollicitari tenetur. Est itaque monachus tanquam granum tritici solum manens. Est autem clericus tanquam ­g ranum germinans et in horrea Domini multum fructum afferens.357 ⟨B⟩ipertiti ergo huiusmodi prelati quedam contrahant ex monacho et quedam ex clerico. Ex monacho contrahant columbinam simplicitatem, ex clerico uero serpentinam prudentiam;358 hinc sapientiam, inde eloquentiam;

h  complent Wharton and Top. Hib.; compleuit MS    i Sui Brewer and Top. Hib.; Sin MS and Wharton    j grex Wharton and Top Hib.; om. MS

352 Gratian, Decretum, C.  16 q. 1 c. 26, derived with substantial changes from Jerome, Letters, cxxv. 17–18 (CSEL lvi/1. 136–7). 353 Jerome, Letters, cxxv. 8 (CSEL lvi/1. 127), likely via Gratian, Decretum, C. 16 q. 1 c. 27. 354  Correctly Heliodorus. 355 Jerome, Letters, xiv. 8 (CSEL liv. 55) (adapted), perhaps via Gratian, Decretum, C. 16 q. 1 c. 6. 356  Cf. Isidore, Etymologies, vii. 13 and Jerome, Letters, xiv. 6 (CSEL liv. 52). 357  This passage, ad Eleutherium . . . afferens, is also found in Top. Hib., iii. 30 (RS v. 176), and in The History of Llanthony Priory, ii. 7 (OMT 78–9).

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neither preach God’s word to the people, nor proclaim to them their sins; and they neither uproot vices from the flock entrusted to them, nor sow in it virtues. ‘For since nearly all the prelates of Ireland have been elected to the clergy from monasteries, they carefully fulfil every responsibility relating to monks, but that which relates to clerics or to prelates, they more or less entirely neglect. Taking care only of themselves and as though anxious on their own behalf, they negligently elect not to trouble themselves about the flock committed to their care and put their own interests first, either entirely unaware of, or choosing to ignore, what Jerome wrote to the monk Rusticus: “Live in a monastery in such a way that you deserve to be a cleric. Spend long in learning what you are afterwards to teach; amongst the good, follow always the better; and when you are elected to the clergy, do what is fitting for a cleric”.352 And this, to the same man: “If the status of clergyman excites your desire, learn first what you can teach, lest you be a soldier before you are a raw recruit, or a teacher before you are a student”.353 But they provide poorly for themselves and care badly for their own interests, when through carelessness and negligence they take away and withhold their care and provision from those whose safekeeping is assigned to them under the duties of a responsibility to govern which they have undertaken. For they lead themselves astray far more seriously and more damnably than they mislead others. ‘Thus ought they to know, as Jerome affirms to Eleutherius354 that since “the purpose of a monk is one thing, that of a cleric another, and since clerics feed their sheep, while monks are fed”,355 the position of monks in relation to the clergy is like that of a flock in relation to its shepherds. For a monk is so named because he is the guardian of one person or a solitary individual and takes care of himself alone, but a cleric is obliged to be concerned with the care of many.356 A monk is thus like a single grain of wheat which remains a single grain; while a cleric is a grain which germinates and brings a rich crop to the Lord’s granary.357 Two-­sided prelates of this kind, therefore, should derive some qualities from monks and some from the clergy. From the monks, let them take a dove-­like simplicity, and from the clergy, a snake-­like prudence.358 From one, wisdom; from the other, eloquence. From one, words; from the other, works. From one, conscience; from the other, knowledge. Because of one, let them become fertile; because of the 358  Cf. Matt. 10: 16 and Jerome, Letters, lviii. 6 (CSEL liv. 536), perhaps via the Florilegium Angelicum (Goddu and Rouse, ‘Gerald of Wales and the Florilegium Angelicum’, p. 499).

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hinc uerba, inde opera; hinc conscientiam, inde scientiam. Hinc fecundi fiant, inde facundi. Et sic utrumque compleant officium ut inter sacerdotes ingredientes tabernaculum eorum uestimenta tintinnabulis ambiantur et in ore ipsorum tam instructionis quam increpationis ­uerbum resonans audiatur. Fatuos enim et elingues prelatos et plus monachi quam clerici preferentes manifeste redarguit Ieronimus dicens: “Innocens et absque sermone conuersacio, quantum exemplo prodest, tantum silencio obest. Latratu namque canum et baculo pastorum lupi sunt arcendi”.359 Similiter et in primo Bibliotece prologo: “Sancta | quippe rusticitas sibi solum prodest et, quantum ex uite merito edificat ecclesiam Dei, tantum nocet, cum destruentibus non resistit”.360 “Error enim”, ut ait Innocentius, “cui non resistitur, ­approbatur et ueritas, cum minime defensatur, opprimitur”.361 Item Eleutherius:k “Negligere, cum possis perturbare peruersos, nichil est aliud quam fouere. Nec caret scrupulo societatis occulte qui manifesto facinori desinit obuiare”,362 presertim cum ad hoc ex officio teneatur. ‘⟨M⟩irum autem, cum omnino tam desides officii, tam subditorum salutis negligentes semper extiterint, quod tot ex ipsis in terra pro sanctis habentur et ab accolis tanquam sancti tam deuote coluntur et uenerantur. Vnde et unum duorum ineuitabile est non euitari. Aut enim ab agiographis nostris tam circa pastoralis officii debita quam aliarum quarumlibet rerum instructionem multa ad terrorem constat emissa et, quoniam “misericordia Domini plena est terra”,363 magis sperandum de clementia quam timendum de iusticia; aut pocius ecclesia militans in multis decipitur, triumphans uero non irridetur.364 Vnde et non nullos quos recipit hec, despicit illa; quos predicat hec, ab|dicat illa; et e diuerso. Illa quoque inter electos non inmerito multos honorat quos ista tamen prorsus ignorat. Quidam enim intus esse uidentur qui foras missi sunt et quidam foras mitti qui tamen intus k  Eleutherius Wharton and Top. Hib.; euthelerius MS; ad Eleutherium Brewer, copying an emendation made by Camden to Top. Hib., in the mistaken belief that this, like the passage above, comes from Jerome’s fourteenth epistle

359 Jerome, Letters, lxix. 8 (CSEL liv. 696). 360 Jerome, Letters, liii. 3 (CSEL liv. 447), with contradicentibus for destruentibus; and Gratian, Decretum, C. 2 q. 7 c. 56 (with destruentibus). In Gratian, this comes immediately after the passage from Eleutherius which Gerald cites below. 361 Gratian, Decretum, D. 83 c. 3. 362  Not from Jerome, as Camden and Brewer thought (amending to ad Eleutherium), but the latter part of the same passage of Innocent III, from Decretum, D. 83 c. 3. In the modern (s. xix) edition of Gratian, the whole is ascribed to Innocent III. But the words from negligere to obuiare come from a Pseudo-Isidorian decretal of Pope Eleutherius and were perhaps

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other, fluent in their speech. And let them fulfil both roles in such a way that, as they enter the tabernacle amongst the priests, their vestments are ringed round with bells, and from their mouths let resounding words of both teaching and reproof be heard. For Jerome clearly criticizes foolish and tongue-­tied prelates, who prefer the role of monk to that of cleric, when he says: “A manner of life that is virtuous and without speech does as much harm by its silence as it does good through its example. For wolves must be kept away by the dogs’ barking and the shepherds’ crooks”.359 Likewise, too, in his first prologue to the Bible: “For a holy rustic simplicity benefits only itself and, as much as it builds God’s church by the virtue of its life, it damages that church just as much when it offers no resistance to those who try to destroy it”.360 For, as Innocent says, “He who does not oppose error thereby approves of it, and truth is crushed when it is so little defended”.361 And again, Eleutherius: “To ignore the wicked when you can hinder them is nothing other than encouraging them. And he who fails to oppose obvious crime will not fail to be suspected of being secretly associated in it”,362 especially when his office makes it his duty to oppose it. ‘It is amazing, though, that although they have always been utterly lazy in their duties and careless of the salvation of their subjects, so many of them are considered saints in their own country and are so devotedly honoured and venerated as saints by its inhabitants. From this one cannot avoid drawing one of two conclusions. For either it is clear that our holy writers have said many things just to frighten us, both about the responsibilities of pastoral duty and in teaching about all sorts of other matters and, since “the earth is full of the Lord’s mercy”,363 we ought to hope for his clemency instead of fearing his justice; or, on the other hand, the Church Militant is misled about many things, but the Church Triumphant is not deceived.364 And so, many whom the one church welcomes, the other scorns; those whom one church proclaims its own, the other repudiates, and vice versa. The latter also deservedly honours many among the elect, of whom the former is nevertheless entirely unaware. For certain people seem to be within the fold who have been put out, and certain others to have been put out who nevertheless remain within, “because what is raised up

identified as such in Gerald’s text. The passage also appears separately at C. 2 q. 7 c. 55 and is there identified as being by Eleutherius. 363  Pss. 32 (33): 5 and 118 (119): 64. 364  Cf. Gal. 6: 7.

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existunt, quia “quod altum est hominibus abhominabile est aput Deum”365—sicut et e diuerso plerumque contingit.’l |

[ II. 1 5 ]  DE C L E R I H I BE R NICI CONFVS IONE E T N O ST R AT V M E X VLTATIONE.

⟨F⟩inito uero sermone et fauorabili nostratum murmure subsecuto, non hodie quod heri sed uice uersa grandi clero Hibernico confusione perfuso, multa in aduersarios insultacione pariter et exultatione capita nostrates erexerunt. Eodem die, cenante cum archiepiscopo Ossiriensi episcopo Felice (qui monachus erat mutilatus, ut uidebatur, et eunucatus), cum quesisset ab eo archiepiscopus quid ei uisum fuisset de archidiaconi sermone, respondit ille quia multum bene dixit mala: ‘Vocauit’, inquit, ‘nos potores. Certe uix me continui quod statim in ipsum non inuolaui uel saltem quod uerbis talionem reddendo quod acriter ei non responderim’.366

[ II. 16]  D E T OP OG R A P HIE HIBERNICE C OMPO SI C I O N E E T A PVD OXONIAM IN A NGL I A R E C I TATIONE. Cum itaque magni nominis in insula tunc Giraldus extiterit et fame preclare, inter Pascha et Pentecosten367 de Hibernia in Walliam transfretauit, ubi et Topographie sue, cuius tractatum iam inchoauerat, ­consumationi studiosam ex toto mentem applicuit. ⟨P⟩rocessu uero temporis, opere completo et correcto, lucernam accensam non sub modio ponere sed super candelabrum ut luceret erigere cupiens,368 aput Oxoniam, ubi clerus in Anglia magis uigebat et clericatu precellebat, opus suum in tanta audientia recitare disposuit369 et, quoniam tres   In place of sicut . . . contingit, Top. Hib. has only et e diuerso

l

365  Luke 16: 15 (slightly altered). 366  The Latin of this oratio recta, with its repetition of quod, seems deliberately bad; for discussion, see Introduction, p. lxxxi; cf. the depiction of the Latin of the hermit of Llywes (iii. 2). 367  Between 13 April and 1 June 1186. 368  Matt. 5: 15, Mark 4: 21, and Luke 11: 33. 369  With its detail on the doctores diuersarum facultatum as well as their discipuli and the reliqui scolares, this is the first definite evidence that by the end of Henry II’s reign the

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among men is abhorrent to God”365—as frequently happens the other way around, as well.’

[ II. 1 5 ]   O N T HE E MBA R R A SSMENT OF THE IR ISH CL E RGY A ND T H E R EJOICING OF T H O SE FRO M O UR C OUNTRY. The end of this sermon was followed by murmurs of approval from the men of our country. And this day the tables were turned from the previous one: the Irish clergy were covered with much confusion as our own people raised up their heads to mock their adversaries and exult. That same day, the bishop of Ossory, Felix (who was a monk and, apparently, mutilated and a eunuch) was dining with the archbishop. When the archbishop asked him what he had thought of the arch­ deacon’s sermon, he replied that he had said wicked things with great eloquence. ‘He called us drinkers’, he said. ‘In truth, I barely stopped myself from rushing at him on the spot or, at least, repaying like with like in words and giving him a sharp answer’.366

[ II. 16]  O N T H E WR I T I NG OF THE T O P OG R A P HY OF I R E LA ND AND ITS PU BL I C R E A DI N G AT OXFORD, I N   E N G L A N D. After acquiring great fame and a brilliant reputation upon that island, between Easter and Pentecost367 Gerald sailed from Ireland to Wales, where he turned his learned mind wholly to the completion of his Topography, which he had already begun to compose. And in the course of time, once the work had been completed and corrected, wishing not to place his lighted lamp beneath a bushel but to set it up upon a candle­stick so it might shine,368 he decided that at Oxford, where the English clergy most flourished and excelled in learning, he should read out his work, before such an audience.369 And since there were three

schools at Oxford had evolved into a university (Southern, ‘From schools to university’, pp. 13–14).

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erant in libro suo distinc|tiones, qualibet recitata die, tribus diebus continuis recitacio durauit: primoque die pauperes omnes opidi tocius ad hoc conuocatos hospicio suscepit et exhibuit; in crastino uero ­doctores diuersarum facultatum omnes et discipulos fame maioris et noticie; tercio die reliquos scolares cum militibus opidanis et burgensibus multis—­sumptuosa quidem res et nobilis, quia renouata sunt quodammodo antiqua et autentica in hoc facto poetarum tempora nec rem similem in Anglia factam uel presens etas uel ulla recolit antiquitas.370

[ II. 1 7]  DE GE N E R A L I I N ANGLIA CRVCIS ASSV MPT I O NE E T TAM P ETRO M E NE V E N SI E PI SC O PO QVAM GIRALDO A RC H I DI AC O N O C RVCE S IGNATO.

fo. 173r

⟨C⟩irca dies istos terra Ierosolimitana, peccatis urgentibus, paganis et Parthis, Saladino duce, subacta, rex Henricus, exemplo Ricardi filii sui, comitis Pictauie, cisalpinoruma principum primo cruce signati, una cum Philippo, Francorum rege, apud Gisortium,b presente Tirensium archiepiscopo et persuadente, crucem susceperat.371 De Normannia, ubi moram diutinam fecerat, circa Kalendas Februarii in Angliam uenit et, statim conuocato in Norhamtunae partibus apud Gaitedunec quasi concilio,372 predicante Baldewino Cantuariensi archiepiscopo et crucis signum preferente necnon et Gilleberto Roffensi episcopo | sermonem ad hocd faciente, ipso quoque rege operam ad hoc prebente, maiores Anglie, tam de clero quam de populo, crucem ibidem in humeris assumpserunt.

a  cisalpinorum Wharton; alpinarum MS, corrected from cisalpinarum by erasure     Gi[s]ortium Brewer; Giortium MS    c Gaitedune MS; Garcedune Wharton and Brewer; Gattedun Butler, in note    d  Ad hoc ed.; ad huius MS

b

370 Gerald’s description of the readings at Oxford, with the phrase ‘the ancient and authentic times of the poets’, makes it conceivable that, though Gerald was presumably thinking of Antiquity, he may also have been stimulated to lay on the performance by remembering the ‘special feast’ given by his kinsman Rhys ap Gruffudd at Christmas 1176. In his discussion of that event, Williams compared the Puy d’Arras, which reminds one that Gerald had passed through Arras in 1176 (above, ii. 4), though the festivities he saw there consisted of a competition in tilting at a quintain, not in poetry: ‘Yr Arglwydd Rhys a’r “Eisteddfod” Aberteifi 1176’, p. 117. 371  The taking of the cross at Gisors took place on 21 January 1188 (Howden, Gesta Henrici II, ii. 29; Howden, Chronica ii. 337).

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distinctiones in his book, he read one each day and the reading lasted for three consecutive days. And on the first day he invited all the poor of the whole town and entertained and fed them; on the next day he entertained all the teachers of the various faculties, along with their better known and better reputed pupils; and on the third day, the remaining students, with the knights of the town and many burgesses—­a lavish and noble affair, for, in so doing, the ancient and authentic times of the poets were in a sense renewed, and neither the present age, nor any former one, can recall anything like to have been done in England.370

[ II. 1 7 ]   ON T H E WI D E SPR E AD TAKING OF TH E C RO SS I N E NGL A ND AND THE M A R K ING O F BO T H PE T E R, BIS HOP OF ST   DAV I DS, A N D GE R ALD THE A RC HDE AC O N WI T H T HE CROS S. In those days, the land of Jerusalem, assailed by sin, was overcome by pagans and Parthians, with Saladin at their head. King Henry, following the example of his son Richard, count of Poitou, who was the first prince north of the Alps to be marked with the cross, took up the cross himself at Gisors together with Philip, king of the French, in the presence, and at the urging, of the archbishop of Tyre.371 He returned to England from Normandy, where he had made a long stay, around the first day of February, and immediately called a sort of council to  be  held near Northampton, at Geddington.372 The archbishop of Canterbury, Baldwin, preached and showed forth the sign of the cross; Gilbert, bishop of Rochester, made a sermon to the same effect; the king, too, exerted himself in the cause; and the great men of England, both among the clergy and among the people, there took the cross upon their shoulders.

372  Geddington is Butler’s identification, but he slightly misreads the manuscript (it is Gaitedune rather than Gattedun). The council at Geddington took place on 11 February 1188 (Gervase of Canterbury, i. 409–10 (with date); Howden, Gesta Henrici II, ii. 33 (only ap­proxi­ mate­ly dated but consistent with Gervase); Howden, Chronica, ii. 338). See Eyton, Court, Household and Itinerary of King Henry II, p. 285, which gives details of a tax of a tenth on the rents and movables in England for the recovery of Jerusalem and two charters issued by Henry II at Geddington.

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⟨V⟩t autem Wallie sicut et Anglie probos uiros ad crucis obsequium rex alliceret et obligaret, Cantuariensem archiepiscopum Baldewinum ad Wallie fines transmisit. Qui cum circa | caput ieiunii simul cum Rannulfo de Glanuilla ei adiuncto Herefordiam ueniret et apud Radenouram Walliam intraret ibique Resum filium Griffini et principales Wallie uiros plures obuios haberet, facto ab archiepiscopo sermone de crucifixi negocio, primus omnium Giraldus archidiaconus, aliis exemplum prebens, ad instantiam regis que precesserat magnam et archiepiscopi quoque ac iusticiarii ex parte ipsius plurimam, tam deuocione propria quam tantorum uirorum exhortatione, archiepiscopo imponente, crucem suscepit. Et statim Meneuensis antistes Petrus, archidiaconum tam sequendo quam imitando, cum aliis multis, signo crucis humeris assuto et assumpto, crucifixi obsequiis sunt astricti. Sicut in Itinerario Giraldi, quod ipse conscripsit, singulorum gesta dierum per Wallie circuitum et rerum euentus, tam antiqui quam moderni, luculento relatu depromuntur.373

[ II. 18]  DE BA L DWI N O CANTVARIENS I A RC HI E PI SC O PO C RVC E M P ER WALLIAM PR E DI C A N T E E T GIRALDO A RC HI D I AC O NO C O MITE S IBI AD P R E D I C A NDV M FI DE LI ADIVNCTO.

RS i. 75

⟨P⟩rocedens igitur archiepiscopus et archidiaconum Giraldum indiuiduum sibi ad predicationis officium comitem assumens, Walliam quasi laterando et per australem maritimam et episcopatum Landauensem uersus Meneuiam tendendo, crucem et crucifixi obsequium ubique locis congruis predicabat. Demum uero, cum iam Demetiam intrasset et Meneuie partibus appropinquasset, apud Hauerfordiam tanquam in medio prouincie sitam conuocato parcium illarum clero et populo, ­primum ipse sermonem fecit, deinde Giraldo archidiacono uerbum Domini faciendum iniunxit. Cui tantam loquendi et persuadendi gratiam eadem hora | contulit Deus quod tocius terre illius de ordine militari iuuentutis electe pars potissima crucem susciperet, de populo

373  Itin. Kam., i. 1 (RS vi. 13–14). Cf. also Councils and Synods, ed. Whitelock et al. i, part ii. 1022–9, no. 173; English Episcopal Acta 2, Canterbury 1162–1190, ed. Cheney and Jones, p. 281 (itinerary of Archbishop Baldwin); Gervase of Canterbury, ed. Stubbs, i. 409–10.

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In order to attract and to bind the men of standing in Wales to the service of the cross, as he had those of England, the king sent Baldwin, archbishop of Canterbury, to the land of Wales. And when, around Ash Wednesday, he came to Hereford with Ranulf de Glanville (who had been assigned to accompany him), entered Wales at Radnor, and there met with Rhys ap Gruffudd and many of the chief men of Wales, the archbishop delivered a sermon about this undertaking on behalf of the crucified Christ. Archdeacon Gerald set an example for the others by being the first to take up the cross, fixed upon him by the archbishop, following thus the strong urging of the king earlier on, and the still stronger urging of the archbishop and the justiciar on the king’s behalf, but acting as much from his own devotion as from the encouragement of such great men. And straightaway the bishop of St Davids, Peter, both followed and copied his archdeacon, and he and many others took up the sign of the cross, had it sewn upon their backs, and were thus bound to the service of the crucified Christ. And this and other things are splendidly narrated in Gerald’s Itinerary, which he himself ­composed: their actions each day as they made their circuit of Wales, and what happened there both in ancient and in modern times.373

[ II. 1 8 ]   HOW BA L DWI N, A RCHBIS HOP OF C A N TE RBU RY, PR E AC HE D THE CRUS ADE TH RO U G H O UT WA L E S AND HOW A RC H D E AC O N GE R A L D A SS IS TED HIM A S   H IS FA I T H FU L C O MPANION IN T H AT   PR E AC H I NG. Thus the archbishop set off and took Archdeacon Gerald as his inseparable companion in the business of preaching. As though keeping to the edge of Wales, he made his way through the southern coastlands and the bishopric of Llandaff towards St Davids, and preached the crusade and the service of the crucified Christ at every suitable stop. At length, when he had already entered Dyfed and was approaching the area of St Davids, he called together the clergy and people of those parts at Haverford, being situated in the middle of the province. First, he delivered a sermon himself, then tasked Gerald the archdeacon with delivering the word of the Lord. And on that occasion, God gave him grace to speak so well and persuasively that the best part of the youth of that whole land, the picked men of the knightly order, took up the

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uero non numerati. Cum autem archiepiscopus ad uerbum suum de tanta multitudine paucos crucem sumpsisse uideret, quasi condolens et admirans ait: ‘Deus, quam dura gens est hec!’ Cumque crucem suam portatilem ad tenendum eique innitendum archidiacono tradi iuberet et archidiaconus episcopo suo Petro, qui ad latus archiepiscopi sedebat, uerbum iniungi moneret, subiunxit archiepiscopus quia non attendi dignitas ad hoc debet sed cui gratiam dederit Deus. Distinxerat autem sermonem suum archidiaconus in tres particulas, tanquam uim uiolentam persuasionis in fine singularum constituendo. Vnde et ter tanta uenientium et crucem rapientium pressura fiebat ut uix archiepiscopus ab inpressione turbarum nimia defendi posset et archidiaconum loquentem silere diucius et pausare pre tumultu singulis uicibus illis oporteret. Miles autem cui nomen Philippus Mangunellus, qui et cognatus erat archidiaconi, eidem pridie dixerat, serio quidem et non ludicro, coram | multis quod nullus uir probus patrie propter suam uel ­archiepiscopi predicacionem crucem sumeret et quia sic pro nichilo uenerunt.374 Cui archidiaconus paucis sic respondit, quoniam in Deo erat hoc et non in homine. Accidit autem ut militem illum in prospectu ipsius sedentem, quociens sic pausando silebat, totum flendo lacrimis effluere uideret. Qui postea, finito sermone, cum quinque uel sex commilitonibus, uiris probis ac strenuis, ad archiepiscopum accelerantes crucis signaculo sunt insigniti. Ex quo patet quod ‘spiritus ubi uult spirat et quando uult spirat’.375 Vnde et archiepiscopus pluries in illo itinere dicebat nusquam se tot lacrimas quantas apud Hauerfordiam uiderat uno die uidisse. Ieronimus autem in libro epistolari dicit quod ‘lacrime populorum laudes sunt predicatorum’.376 | Preterea pro re miranda multi ducebant et obstupebant, cum archidiaconus lingua tantum Gallica loqueretur et Latina, quod non minus uulgares qui neutram linguam nouerant quam ceteri ad uerbum ipsius flebant innumeri et ad crucis signaculum plures quam ducenti

374  Gerald tells a story involving a William Mangunel, a Fleming of Rhos, in Itin. Kam., i. 11 (RS vi. 85); a Walter Mangunel is Phillip de Barri’s son-in-law (Inuect., vi. 18 (Davies, pp. 219–20)). Another William Mangunel occurs in De prin., ii. 5 (OMT 462–3); more usually Mangot, Mangat, Maingot, he is lord of Surgères and joint-seneschal of Poitou (463, n. 80). See also Stephenson, ‘Gerald of Wales and Annales Cambriae’, p. 33. The spelling of the second vowel in this name is variable. 375 John 3: 8. The addition of et quando uult spirat derives from Gregory the Great, Dialogues, ii. 21 (SC cclx. 200).

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cross; and of the people, a number beyond counting. When the archbishop saw that few, from so great a multitude, had taken up the cross in response to his own speech, he said, as though with regret and astonishment: ‘Lord, how hard-­hearted a people this is!’ He ordered that his portable cross be handed to the archdeacon to hold and be supported by, and the archdeacon then suggested that his own bishop, Peter, who was sitting at the archbishop’s side, be given the role of speaking, but the archbishop added that, in this matter, it was not rank which had to be considered, but the question of to whom God had granted grace. The archdeacon had divided his sermon into three sections and placed his most forcefully persuasive passages at the end of each one. And thus at three points the throng of people coming to take the cross was so great that the archbishop could scarcely be protected from the extreme crush of the crowds; and the archdeacon was forced by the uproar, on each occasion, to pause and stop speaking for a long while. Now, a knight named Philip Mangonel, who was also a kinsman of the archdeacon’s, had told him the preceding day in front of many people, earnestly and not in jest, that no o­ ne of status from that country would take the cross because of his preaching or the archbishop’s, and that therefore they had come for nought.374 To which the arch­ deacon briefly replied thus: that this was up to God and not man. Now, it happened that whenever he thus paused and stopped speaking, Gerald saw that this knight, who was sitting in full view of him, was completely reduced to tears and weeping. And afterwards, when Gerald had finished his sermon, the knight rushed to the archbishop along with five or six able and vigorous fellow knights and they were marked with the sign of the cross. From which it is clear that ‘the Spirit breathes where it will, and breathes when it will’.375 For this reason, too, the archbishop said many times during their journey that he had nowhere seen in a single day as many tears as he had seen at Haverford. Jerome says, in the book of his letters, that ‘the tears of the people are the commendations of its preachers’.376 Moreover, many considered it a wonder and were astounded that, though the archdeacon spoke only in French and in Latin, those of the common people who knew neither language would weep at his words no less than the rest, in numbers beyond counting, and more than two

376 Jerome, Letters, lii. 8 (CSEL liv. 428) (adapted).

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concurrebant.377 ⟨S⟩imile contigit in Alemannia de Beato Bernardo,378 qui uerbum Domini Teutonicis faciens lingua Gallica, quam penitus ignorabant, tantam eis deuocionem incussit et compunctionem ut et ab oculis eorum lacrimarum affluentiama et ad cuncta que suadebat uel facienda uel credenda facillime cordium eorum duriciam emolliret, cum tamen ad interpretis sermonem eis lingua sua singula fideliter exponentis nichil omnino moti fuissent. Ex quo patet uirtute diuina, spiritu interius operante et corda perlustrante, tam hic quam ibi, rebus quoque plus quam uerbis, actum fuisse. Vnde et, finito sermone, cum archidiaconus, qui stando locutus fuerat, se in sessione reciperet, uir quidam hospitalaris qui prope consederat dixit ei uerbum istud: ‘Vere, Spiritus Sanctus hodie manifeste locutus est ore uestro’. ⟨C⟩omes uero Moritonie Iohannes (qui fratri Ricardo postea successit in regnum), quia tunc temporis comitatum de Penbroc donatione patris habebat, quam cito postea Giraldum archidiaconum in Anglia uidit, acriter ei coram multis improperauit quod terram suam toto robore suo totisque uiribus, per quas contra Wallenses se tuebatur, per suam predicationem euacuauerat et quia non adeo propter terre Ierosolimitane subuentionem sicut propter terre sue destructionem, ut eam scilicet sic uiris uacuam parentibus suis Walensibus reddere posset, illud fecerat.379 Ad quod archidiaconus breuiter respondit in hunc modum, quia intentionem suam in hoc facto scrutator cordium et intentionum380 nouit Deus et ille diiudicet. |

  sic MS and Gemma eccl.

a

377  Cf. the similar passage on the same events in Itin. Kam., i. 11 (RS vi. 83) (the third recension of that text). 378  St Bernard of Clairvaux, 1090–1153, canonized 1174. This story is repeated in the same words in Gemma eccl., i. 51 (RS ii. 152). Cf. Vita Prima Sancti Bernardi Claraevallis Abbatis, iii. 7 (CCCM lxxxix B, p. 138) and Acta Sanctorum, August iv. (Paris and Rome, 1867), p. 193 (20 August). 379  It is difficult to gauge the force of this ‘rebuke’; perhaps John was joking but Gerald in his pious response seems to have taken him seriously. 380  Cf. Wisd. 1: 6 (cordis . . . scrutator), Dan. 13: 42 (absconditorum . . . cognitor), and Heb. 4: 12 (discretor cogitationum et intentionum cordis); and also verbal phrases, e.g. 1 Chron. 28: 9 (omnia corda scrutatur Dominus); Rom. 8: 27 (qui autem scrutatur corda), Ps. 7: 10 (scrutans corda et renes Deus); note also scrutator alme cordium (Early Latin Hymns, ed. Walpole, xciii. 5 (p. 320)). Much closer parallels, like ‘ille plenius novit, qui scrutator est cordium et cognitor

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hundred flocked to the sign of the cross.377 A similar thing happened to Blessed Bernard in Germany.378 Bringing the word of the Lord to the Germans in French, a language of which they were entirely ig­nor­ant, he provoked in them such great devotion and remorse that he both brought floods of tears to their eyes and very easily softened the hardness of their hearts, so that they did or believed whatever he urged. On the other hand, they were entirely unmoved by the words of the translator who faithfully explained each point in their own language. From which it is evident that this was done by divine power, the Spirit working within and moving through their hearts, and, in both instances, it was the reality and not the words which counted. For this reason, too, when the archdeacon had finished his sermon, which he had delivered standing upright, and was sitting down again, a certain Hospitaller who had sat nearby said this to him: ‘Truly, it is clear that the Holy Spirit spoke through your mouth today’. But because John, count of Mortain (who afterwards succeeded his brother Richard on the throne) at that time held the earldom of Pembroke by his father’s gift, he harshly rebuked Gerald in front of a large group as soon as he saw him afterwards in England, on the grounds that he had emptied his land of all the troops and strength which protected it from the Welsh through his preaching, and that he had done this not so much to aid the land of Jerusalem, as to destroy his land; for once it was thus empty of men, he could return it to his Welsh kinsmen.379 To which the archdeacon briefly replied in this manner: that God, who searches hearts and motives,380 knew his purpose in doing this and that he would be the judge.

secretorum’ appear repeatedly, as a set phrase, in letters of Innocent III; cf. Die Register Innocenz’ III, ii. 130 (ep. 72), viii. 166 (ep. 89 (88)), ix. 41 (ep. 25), x. 280 (ep. 169). For ­variations on this expression, cf. also below iii. 5 and Inuect., i. 13 and vi. 2 (Davies, pp. 123 and 206).

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[ II. 19]  QVA L I T E R A RCHIEP IS COP VS A RC HI D I AC O NO A PV D M ENEVIAM a PR E DI C AT I O N I S O FFI CIVM INIVNXIT E T  D E b H I I S QV E A PV D KEM M EIS ET KE R DI G A N, V E NE D O CIAM QVOQVE E T   POWI SI A M, ACTA S VNT.

fo. 174r

RS i. 78

⟨P⟩rocedens autem archiepiscopus et inde Meneuiam ueniens, quoniam ad Resum, principem Suthwallie, ipsum apud Aberteiui expectantem iter accelerabat, Giraldo archidiacono super uerbo Domini ibidem seminando uices suas iniunxit. Vbi multi quidem | ipsum ­audientes ad crucis signaculum cum magna deuotione acucurrerunt,c multo uero plures ad uerbum ipsius ualde moti certumque propositum suscipiendi crucem habentes ad interpretis uocem, que non adeo or­din­ate uel graciose processit, statim a uoto concepto resilierunt381–– quoniam, ut ait rethor Appollonius, ‘Lacrima nichil arescit cicius’.382 ⟨I⟩n crastino uero apud Kemmeis, non procul tamen a ponte de Aberteiui, conuocato populo parcium illarum coram principe Reso, primum ad archiepiscopi, deinde ad archidiaconi uerbum uirorum allecta est copia multa. Vnde et eodem die uir quidam iocosus qui simulata stulticia et lingua dicati magnum curie solatium prestare solet, cui nomen Iohannes Spang, dixit Reso: ‘Multum diligere debes, O Rese, cognatum hunc tuum archidiaconum, quia centum homines uestros et plures ad Christi obsequium hodie misit et, si lingua Walensica locutus fuisset, non credo quod unus uobis de tota multitudine uestra remansisset’. ⟨C⟩ontigit383 autem eodem die quod, uiro quodam cruce signato quamquam unico filio et unico matris senio iam confecte solatio, eundem statim mater intuita et diuinitus, ut uidebatur, inspirata subiecit: ‘Gratias tibi, | karissime Domine Christe, intimas ago, quod talem michi filium quem tuo dignareris obsequio parere concessisti’. Fuit et a  Meneuiam table of contents; meneun’ text rubric    b de Brewer; om. MS, both here and in table of contents    c acucurrerunt MS, with initial a and c written over one another; accurerunt Wharton

381  Otherwise interpreted: many were moved by Gerald’s speech, but recoiled on learning what his words meant—­and, perhaps, what taking the cross entailed. 382 Cicero, De inuentione, i. 109: ‘quemadmodum enim dixit rhetor Apollonius, “lacrima nihil citius arescit” ’, perhaps via a florilegium.

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[ II. 1 9 ]   H OW T H E A RC HBI SHOP AS S IGNED TO T H E A RC HDE AC ON THE R E S PO NSI BI L I T Y O F PR E ACHING AT S T DAV IDS; A ND WHAT H A PP ENED IN C E M A IS A N D C E R E DI G I O N, AS WELL AS IN  GWY N E DD A ND P OWYS. The archbishop carried on and came thence to St Davids, but since Rhys, prince of South Wales, was awaiting him at Aberteifi, he hastened on his way and assigned Archdeacon Gerald to sow the Lord’s word there in his stead. Many, indeed, who heard him there rushed with great devotion to the sign of the cross, but many more, greatly moved by his words and having firmly decided to take the cross, drew back from the vow they had framed as soon as they heard the interpreter’s speech, which was not as well structured or pleasingly de­livered.381 For, as the rhetorician Apollonius said, ‘Nothing dries more quickly than a tear’.382 The following day, the people of those parts were called together before Prince Rhys in Cemais—­not far, however, from the bridge at Aberteifi—­and a great multitude of men were recruited, first by the archbishop’s speech, then by the archdeacon’s. And therefore that same day a witty man named John Spang, who provides much entertainment for the court with his feigned foolishness and sharp tongue, said to Rhys: ‘Rhys, you ought dearly to love this kinsman of yours, the archdeacon, for he has today sent off a hundred of your men and more into Christ’s service. And if he had spoken in Welsh, I don’t think you would have a single man left, out of all your multitude’. It happened383 that same day that a certain man took the cross, despite being the only son and only solace of his mother, now worn out by age. His mother saw him do so and straightaway added, seemingly by divine inspiration: ‘Most heartfelt thanks, dearest Lord Christ, for allowing me to bear a son whom you have allowed to submit himself to

383 This and the following story (down to armo uirili inserente) are repeated from Itin. Kam., ii. 2 (RS vi. 112–13).

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de g e s t i s gi r a l di, i i

alia ibidem mulier, matrona scilicet de Abertheiui, animo a priore longe dissimili, que uirum suum, ne ad archiepiscopum iret neue crucem susciperet, per pallium et zonam firmiter tenens coram cunctis impudenter retrahebat. Sed eadem, tertia post nocte, terribilem hanc in sompnis uocem audiuit: ‘Seruientem meum michi abstulisti, quamobrem et a te quoque quod plurimum diligis auferetur!’ Qua uisione uiro cum utriusque tam admiratione quam terrore relata, cum iterum obdormisset, filium paruulum, quem secum in thoro materna plus dilectione quam diligentia iacentem habebat, non minus infeliciter quam insuauiter oppressit. Et statim uir, diocesano episcopo384 tam uisionem referens quam uindictam, crucem suscepit, uxore fauente ipsaque signum sponte propriis manibus armo uirili inserente. ⟨P⟩ost hec autem per amplam de Kerdigaun prouinciam euntes et trans fluuium Deui Venedociam intrantes, cum toto Quadragesimali tempore crucis obsequiis indulgerent, ubique sermo Giraldi incomparabiliter graciosus extiterat. Tandem uero, cum apud Album Monasterium et Osewaldestrue Powisiam lateraliter ambientes Paschalibus diebus Solopusburiam peruenerunt, cum ad archiepiscopi ceterorumque uerba perpauci, ad suasibilem Giraldi sermonem allecta uirorum fuit copia multa.385 Vnde cum, finitis sermonibus, turbe que conuenerant dissoluerentur, dixit matrona quedam ad conuicaneasd matres suas in discessu, audientibus clericis archiepiscopi ipsoque Giraldo, qui tunc eas e uestigio forte sequebatur: ‘Nisi archidiaconus ille,’ loquens scilicet de Giraldo, ‘tam lenibus uerbis et tam simplici uultu uiros nostros circumuenisset et incantasset, bene propter omnes alios euasissent’. Dixit etiam uir quidam qui intererat opidi illius: ‘Non est huic archidiacono curandum in quo | loco aut coram quibus loqui debeat’. |

d

 conuicaneas ed.; conuicaneas et MS

384  In the context, the diocese must be that of St Davids, and the bishop, Peter de Leia. 385 Partly contradicting Gerald’s statement in Itin. Kam., ii. 12 (RS vi. 144) that at Shrewsbury, ‘tam ad archiepiscopi monita, quam gratiosos quoque archidiaconi Menevensis sermones, ad crucis obsequia multos alleximus’.

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your service’. There was also another woman there, a matron from Aberteifi, of very different character from the preceding one, who, in order to keep her husband from going to the archbishop and taking the cross, grabbed him firmly by the cloak and belt and, in the sight of all, shamelessly dragged him away. But on the third night following, this same woman heard a terrifying voice in her dreams: ‘You have taken my servant from me, wherefore that which you love most will be taken from you as well!’ She told her husband of this vision, which amazed and terrified them both. When they had gone back to sleep, she crushed their young son, whom she had lying in the bed with her (with more maternal affection than care)—a result as unfortunate as it was unpleasant. Straightaway, the husband told the bishop of his diocese384 of both the vision and this retribution, and took the cross with his wife’s blessing, while she herself willingly sewed the sign of the cross to her husband’s shoulders with her own hands. After this they travelled through the broad province of Ceredigion and, crossing the river Dyfi, entered Gwynedd, spending the whole period of Lent in the service of the cross, and everywhere Gerald’s sermons were well received beyond compare. And eventually, skirting round the side of Powys via Whitchurch and Oswestry, they came at Eastertide to Shrewsbury and there, though very few were drawn in by the archbishop’s words or those of the others, Gerald’s persuasive sermon convinced a great many men.385 And so, when the speeches were over and the crowds which had assembled were dispersing, a certain matron said to the mothers of her neighbourhood as they left, in earshot of the archbishop’s clerks and of Gerald himself, who happened to be following close behind them at the time: ‘If that archdeacon there’, speaking of Gerald, ‘hadn’t tricked and enchanted our men with such smooth words and so guileless an expression, they would have got well away, given how all the others spoke’. A certain man of the town who was present said, too: ‘This archdeacon doesn’t need to worry about where or in front of whom he has to speak’.

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[I I . 20]  TA M DE a G IRALDI AB A RCHI E PI SC O PO QVA M S TILI IP S IVS C O MME NDAT IONE.

RS i. 80

⟨F⟩inita sic igitur legatione laudabili, cum ad Angliam de Wallie ­finibus tenderet archiepiscopus, quidam de clericis suis pariter iter agentes et de peregrinatione Ierosolimitana coram ipso loquentes interrogabant eum quis nobilem historiam illam de terre Palestine per principes nostros restauratione et Saladini ac Saracenorum per eosdem expugnatione digne tractare posset. Quibus ipse respondens ait se bene prouidisse et promtum habere qui historiam illam egregie tractaret et, cum instarent illi querendo quisnam esset, uertens se ad archidiaconum Giraldum, qui ad latus ipsius equitabat, ‘Hic est’, inquit, ‘qui prosaice tractabit et nepos meus Ioseph metrice,386 quem et archidiacono adiungam, ut ei seruiat et inseparabiliter adhereat’. Sperabat enim archidiaconum promouendum a rege plurimum et sublimandum. Cepit etiam librum archidiaconi, quem ei in introitu Wallie dederat et quem ipse iam legerat et perlegerat, scilicet Thopographiam Hibernicam, ualde commendare et stilum ipsius tractandique modum multis laudibus extollere. Potuit etiam in hoc archiepiscopi tam modestia notari quam prudentia, quod nichil in laudem libri istius aut uituperium, donec totum audisset, pronuntiare uolebat, sciens quippe quia plerumque principium medio, medium | quoque discrepat imo.387 ⟨Q⟩uesiuerat etiam archiepiscopus ab ipso utrum euidentiam aliquam ab agiographis et expositoribus nostris habuisset super allegoriis circa auium naturas assignatis in prima Thopographie distinctione et, cum responderet quod nullam,388 subiecit archiepiscopus quia reuera spiritu eodem quo et illi scripserunt scripta sunt ista. ⟨A⟩d hec autem iniunxit ei archiepiscopus ut gratiam stili egregii sibi a Deo collati uacuam esse non permitteret sed, ea semper utendo et aliquid scribendo,  de table of contents; om. text rubric

a

386  Joseph of Exeter, author of the epic Ylias of c. 1185; only fragments of his crusade epic survive. See ODNB, s.n. ‘Exeter [Canterbury], Joseph of ’; Rigg, History of Anglo-Latin Literature, pp. 99–102. 387  Gerald elsewhere attributes this point to the archbishop himself in oratio recta (De libris a se scriptis (RS i. 411)): ‘Opus tuum, archidiacone, quod jam perlectum audivimus, quoniam uniformiter tam verborum flosculis quam sententiarum medullulis adeo convenienter et competenter cunctis ex partibus exornatur, quod nec primum medio, medium nec discrepet imo, dignum commendatione plurima judicamus’.

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[ II. 20]  O N T HE A RC HBIS HOP ’S C O M M E NDAT I O N O F BO TH GERALD A ND  H I S WR I T I NG S TYLE. When their praiseworthy embassy was thus completed and the archbishop was making his way from the land of Wales into England, certain of his clerics who were accompanying him on the journey and talking, in his presence, of the pilgrimage to Jerusalem asked him who could worthily write the noble history of our princes’ restoration of the land of Palestine and their conquest of Saladin and the Saracens. In reply, he told them that he had given careful thought to the question and that he had ready to hand someone who would write that history outstandingly. And when they pressed, asking him who this was, he turned to the archdeacon Gerald, who was riding at his side, and said: ‘Here’s the one who will write of it in prose, and my nephew Joseph will do so in verse.386 I shall attach him to the archdeacon as his as­sist­ ant and inseparable aide’. For he hoped that the archdeacon would be amply promoted and elevated by the king. Also he began to recommend strongly the archdeacon’s book, the Topography of Ireland, which Gerald had given him when they entered Wales and which he had already read, and read right through, extolling and highly praising his style and manner of writing. In this, too, the archbishop’s moderation and also his good sense could be observed: that he wished to make no pronouncement praising or criticizing the book until he had had the whole thing read to him, for he knew that very often the beginning differs from the middle, and the middle also from the end.387 The archbishop had also asked him whether he had taken any proofs from our holy writers or exegetes in discussing the allegorical natures of birds in the first distinctio of the Topography. And when he replied that he had not used any,388 the archbishop added that that part of his work was really written in the same spirit as was the work of those authors. In addition, the archbishop enjoined him not to allow the grace of the excellent style which God had granted him to remain idle but constantly to use it and, by writing something, not to waste time in inactivity. He should rather, by continuous activity and laudable labour,

388  Gerald declares his independence of euidentia drawn from earlier authors at Top. Hib., introduction (RS v. 8).

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tempus ocio non amitteret sed studio continuo laudabilique labore nominis sui memoriam in euum extenderet et perpetuam sibi tam presentium liuore carentium quam futurorum gratiam et fauorem compararet, dicens etiam et asserens ipsum longe plus quamb diuicias aliquas terrenas, in breui perituras, aut seculares dignitates, cito pretereuntes, talem stili graciam a Deo datam diligere debere et ualde gratumc389 existere, cuius quippe nec preterire possunt opera nec perire sed, quanto longeuiora fuerint et antiquiora, tanto per euum omne cunctis cariora et preciosiora futura.390

[ II. 21]  QVA L I T E R A C O MITE RICARDO PO ST PAT R I S O BI T V M A RCHIDIACONVS IN   A N G L I A M E T WA L L I AM M IS S VS ES T.

RS i. 81 fo. 175r

⟨I⟩nterea, werra inter reges transmarinis in partibus orta pregrandi, Pictauensium comite Ricardo occasionem prestante, transfretantibus quoque Cantuariensi archiepiscopo et Ranulfo de Glanuilla regni iusticiario, consilio eorundem et archidiaconus transfretauit. Sed rege Henrico in breui post defuncto filioque suo comite Ricardo ei subrogato, missus est ab eo, consilio Cantuariensis archiepiscopi, ad seruandam pacem in Wallie finibus propter regum mutationem Giraldus archidiaco|nus cum litteris multis.391 ⟨C⟩ontigit autem, cum apud Depam transfreta|turus accederet nec, uento in contrarium flante, transfretare posset, quod,a relictis ibi saginariis et oneribus suis, ipse et milites quidam, quorum similiter erant acceleranda negocia, iter uersus Flandriam per maritimam, ut cicius ibi transnauigare possent, expedite et absque sarcinis arripuerunt. Vnde et quiddam quod archidiaconus, quando de uariis casibus et fortuitis euentibus suis loquebatur, referre consueuerat hic interserere preter rem non putaui. ⟨A⟩ccidit enim quod per generalem illam temporis intemperiem que tunc imminebat, qua non solum de populo innumeri uerum etiam rex   plus quam Brewer; plusquam MS    c gratum ed.; gratus MS  quod ed.; om. MS

b

a

389  The MS reading of gratus (emended here to gratum) seems to have arisen from a misunderstanding of the syntax of this complicated sentence: the first part is structured as an indirect command triggered by iniunxit, but the latter part from dicens et asserens is in indirect statement.

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make the memory of his name last for eternity and win the everlasting esteem and good­will both of those of this age who are untainted by envy, and of those of future ages as well. He declared, too, that Gerald ought to esteem the gift of such a style, given by God, far more than any earthly riches, which quickly perish, or worldly dignities, which swiftly pass away, and that he should be deeply grateful389 for it, since its works could neither pass away nor perish, but the longer-­lasting and more ancient they became, the dearer and more precious they would be to all in every future age.390

[ II. 2 1 ]   H OW T HE A RC H D E ACON WAS S ENT TO E N G L A N D A N D WA L E S BY COUNT R IC H A R D A FT E R H I S FAT HER’S DEATH. Meanwhile, as a huge war between kings arose across the sea (for which Richard, count of the Poitevins, furnished the cause), the archbishop of Canterbury and Ranulf de Glanville, justiciar of the kingdom, crossed the Channel; and, on their advice, the archdeacon crossed as well. But when shortly afterwards King Henry died and his son Count Richard took his place, Gerald the archdeacon was sent by him, on the advice of the archbishop of Canterbury, with many letters to preserve the peace in the land of Wales, on account of this change of rulers.391 Now, it happened that when he came to Dieppe to make the ­crossing, a contrary wind was blowing. Unable to put to sea, he left his pack-­horses and baggage there and, together with some knights whose business was similarly urgent, struck out lightly laden and with no luggage towards Flanders along the coast, so that they might cross more swiftly there. On which note, too, I have thought it not irrelevant to insert here something which the archdeacon used to relate when he spoke about the varied accidents and chance events which befell him. It so happened that through the generally extreme weather which then loomed over everything—­because of which not only did numberless

390 Cf. De libris a se scriptis (RS i. 411–12), where the sentiments of this passage too are expressed by the archbishop in oratio recta. 391  Henry II died on 6 July 1189.

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RS i. 82

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ipse cum baronibus multis rebus humanis exempti fuerant, seruientes archidiaconi fere cuncti uel egroti repatriassent uel in partibus illis morbo decubuissent. Vnde puero quodam (qui solus ei de suis sanus et superstes extiterat) cum saginario clitellisque apud Depam relicto, de quodam extraneo, quem numquam antea uiderat, camerarium suum fecit eique rerum suarum quas cariores habebat et quas secum tunc ferebat custodiam dedit. Mane uero, fluuio Depensi a boreali latere392 transuadato (de quo mare influens portum facit), cum in colle quodam, a quo uillam a tergo relictam et classem in portu prospicere poterant, se recepissent et stetissent, querentes ad inuicem, ut uiatores solent, utrum socios suos omnes et res quas tunc ferre uolebant secum haberent, defuit nouus ille archidiaconi cliens. Cumque diucius ibidem ipsumb expectassent et nusquam compareret, cepit archidiaconus (nec mirum!) de ipso hesitare, ut pote qui ignotus omnino fuerat et de quo securitatem nullam habebat, recolens etiam ipsum aliquando dixisse quod nisic ei tunc adhesisset, ad quendam fratrem suum qui in Vngaria fuerat querendum iret. Audientes autem milites qui in comitatu fuerant quod extraneus esset et quia pecuniam non | modicam ferebat, archidiacono ut rediret eumque tam aput Depam quam etiam Rothomagum, ubi ad ipsum primo uenit, sollicite quereret consuluerunt. Archidiaconus autem, quia solus erat et absque sequaci, de inuentione illius diffidens omnino, si aufugisset, pocius una cum illis iter agere quod iam ceperat totumque Deo committere preelegit. Cum igitur Augum transiret, in Marchia Normannie uersus Flandriam constitutum, ind colle quodam iterum diu expectantes eumque non uidentes, omni spe destituti tunc fuerunt, quoniam et si sequeretur per terras de Vimmou et Sancto Walerico latronibus et uispilionibus plenas, cum solus esset, nullatenus euadere posset non spoliatus. Et cum, inquirentibus militibus, summam eorum que ferebat illis archidiaconus exposuisset, tunc instancius ut reuerteretur adhuc et quereret commonuerunt. Erat enim summa pecunie quam ferebat in auro et argento, ciphis et coclearibus, marcarum quasi quadraginta, preter palefridum quem equitabat bonum et uestes archidiaconi quas portabat, preter capsam quoque litteris comitis plenam et preter tabulas grandes

 ipsum Wharton; episcopum MS    c nisi ed.; si nisi MS   

b

 in ed.; et in MS

d

392  The winding course of the River Arques in the last few miles of its course to the sea creates a natural harbour such that crossing over from the left to the right bank, as Gerald needed to do to travel further up the coast, involved moving southwards; for a 1662 map, see Zeiller, Topographia Galliæ, between pp. 14 and 15.

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common people pass from this world, but so too did the king himself and many of his barons—­nearly all the archdeacon’s servants either returned home sick or lay stricken with disease in that region. So, leaving one of his young servants (the last healthy one who remained) with his pack-­horse and baggage at Dieppe, he took as his chamberlain a stranger, whom he had never seen before, and gave into his keeping the more valuable of the belongings which he was then bringing along. The next morning they crossed the river at Dieppe from the northern bank,392 where the inflowing sea makes a port. And when they had gathered on a certain hill from which they could look back over the town they had left and the fleet in its port, and were standing there asking one another (as travellers are wont to do) whether all their companions and the things which they intended to bring along were present, the archdeacon’s new attendant was missing. And when they had awaited him there for a long time and he did not appear anywhere, the archdeacon began to have some doubts about him (and no wonder!), as he was someone wholly unknown to him and for whom he had no surety, and he remembered too that the stranger had once said that if he had not attached himself to Gerald, he would be going to seek a certain brother of his who was in Hungary. When the knights who were accompanying him heard that this man was a ­foreigner and was carrying no small sum of money, they advised the archdeacon to go back and make a careful search for him both in Dieppe and also in Rouen, where he had first come to Gerald. But the archdeacon, being alone and without his retinue, utterly despaired of finding him if he had fled and chose rather to carry on with them on the journey he had already begun and to entrust everything to God. When they were crossing Eu, which is on the Norman march towards Flanders, they once again waited for him on a certain hill for a long time but did not see him, and at that point lost all hope, since even if he were to follow them through the lands of Vimeu and Saint-Valery, these were full of robbers and brigands and he, being alone, would surely not escape un-­plundered. And when the knights had asked and the archdeacon had revealed what the value was of the things he was carrying, they then urged him still more insistently to go back, even then, and search for the man. For the sum of money which he was carrying, in gold and silver, goblets and spoons, came to about forty marks; besides the good palfrey he was riding and the archdeacon’s clothes he wore; besides the case, too, full of letters from the count; and besides the large writing tablets containing Gerald’s Itinerary, the labour of a

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154 fo. 175v

RS i. 83

de g e s t i s gi r a l di, i i

Itinerarium suum et laborem annuum nusquam adhuc alibi scriptum continentes. Cum igitur, | ipso reuerti nolente sed totum Deo committente, iter accelerantes Abeuillam uenissent et hospitati fuissent, archidiaconus cameram quandam solus intrauit super hiis que sibi acciderant sollicite cogitans et contristans. Sicut enim ipse referre solebat, cause cogitandi et contristandi tres fuerunt:e prima quidem de pecunia perdita non nulla fuit sed respectu aliarum modica, quia pecuniam frequens est amittere et aliam recuperare; secunda de litteris comitis perditis et prima legacione sibi ab eo iniuncta sic euacuata, maior sed, quia litterarum tenorem nouerat, per litteras iusticiarii Anglie similes remedium aliquod habere potuit; tertia uero de tabulis perditis maxima, quia de libro non edito set edendo, | tabulis comprehenso et cum ipsis perdito, dampnum dicebat non recuperandum, quia laborem illum (unde plus dolebat) nec a se nec ab alio unquamf ­reiterandum. Cumque mestus ibi plurimum et anxius esset, demum cogitans et recolens illud amantis remedium, ‘Loca sola nocent; loca sola caueto’,g393 statim ad aulam se conferendo nunc militum nunc seruientiumh se ­turbis inseruit, ut aliud et aliud audiendo, aliud interdum cogitare et doloris instantis uehementiam uel sic mitigare ualeret. Nec mora—­ quoniam prope est Deus in angustiis394—ecce puer de foro ueniens quesiuit cuiusmodi equum haberet ille archidiaconi cliens et, cum audiret quod ferrandum, dixit se quendam talem equitantem in foro uidisse cum magno trussello, qui hospicium archidiaconi querebat. Et cum ilico missum esset propter illum, ad hospicium ductus est idem ille et cum gaudio susceptus est ab uniuersis. Et cum quereret archidiaconus utrum salua essent omnia, respondit, ‘Salua’. Causam autem more, quia non nisi post prandium assignari milites permiserunt, tunc assignauit in hunc modum, dicens quod, fluuio transuadato, descendens ad equum suum stringendum et inuolucrum suum, quod grande fuerat, equandum et firmandum, comperit se corrigiami uiginti

e  tres fuerunt ed.; cum tres fuissent Wharton and Brewer; cum res fuissent MS    f unquam ed.; aquam MS; quoquam Brewer; om. Wharton, along with rest of phrase    g caveto Wharton; cauero MS    h servientium Wharton; seruientum MS i  corrigiam Wharton; corrigam MS

393 Ovid, Remedia amoris, 579. This brief quotation well illustrates the expectations Gerald had of his readers; it invites them to remember some subsequent lines (589–90) where Ovid advises his reader semper habe Pyladen aliquem, qui curet Oresten ‘always have a Pylades who can look after an Orestes’, emphasizing the importance of having a trustworthy companion and seeing himself as an Orestes to the Pylades of his reliable servant.

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whole year which had not yet been written down anywhere else. But he refused to go back and trusted all to God, so they hurried on their way. And when they had come to Abbeville and there found lodgings, the archdeacon went alone into a room, anxiously thinking of and lamenting the things which had happened to him. For, as he used to relate, the causes of his worry and grief were threefold. First, the loss of the money was not nothing, but compared to the others of little im­port­ ance, since one frequently loses money only to regain some from elsewhere. Second, the loss of the count’s letters and the consequent frustration of the first mission with which Richard had entrusted him were a greater concern, but since Gerald knew the content of the letters he could find a partial remedy by getting like letters from the justiciar of England. But third was the loss of the writing tablets, and this was the greatest problem, for he said that the damage of losing the book which the tablets held, unpublished but which he had intended to publish, was irreparable, since the work of writing it (for which he grieved the most) would never be repeated by himself or by anyone else. And as he stood there, deeply sorrowful and worried, at last he recalled that bit of a Lover’s Cure, ‘Solitude is harmful; beware of ­solitude’,393 and immediately went to the hall, where he joined in the throngs, now of knights and now of servants, so that hearing now one thing and now another, he could think of something else in the meantime, and thus at least soften the intense grief which pressed on him. But without delay—­for God is near us in our afflictions394—lo! a boy came from the market-­place asking what kind of horse the arch­deacon’s attendant had. And when he heard that it was an iron-­g rey horse, he said that he had seen someone riding just such a horse in the market ­place, carrying a large bundle and asking after the archdeacon’s lodgings. The boy was straightaway sent to get him and the attendant was brought to the lodgings and received joyfully by all. And when the archdeacon asked whether all his things were safe, he replied, ‘They are safe’. The cause of the delay, the telling of which the knights insisted be put off until after lunch, he then explained in this way, saying that after he had crossed the river, he dismounted to tighten his horse’s harness and level out and re-­fasten his baggage covering, which was quite large, and then discovered that he had lost a purse containing twenty marks and more, which had slipped from beneath the covering.

394  Cf. above, pp. 100–1 (ii. 5).

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RS i. 84

fo. 176r

de g e s t i s gi r a l di, i i

­ arcarum et plurium ab inuolucro dilapsam amisisse. Vnde reuersus m ilico ad uillam et hospicium unde exierat, quesiuit undique diligenter intus et extra nec inuenit. Sicque reuertens et aquam iam tercio transiens, ut sequeretur, ex toto spe fraudatus, oculos tamen uia qua primum iueratj in littore petroso deorsum trahens, uidit et inuenit corrigiam suam inter lapides iacentem non extensam sed complicatam, ut antea fuerat, et constrictam. ⟨C⟩asus igitur hic multiplex erat et multipliciter admirandus. Primus quod corrigiam sic perditam inuenit. Secundus quod, ipsa inuenta, occasione abscentiek nostre (qui tunc longe remoti fuimus) cum | rebus omnibus quas gestabat non recessit, presertim cum extraneus esset. Tercius quod sequens solus et tam honustus per uiam uispilionibusl et predonibus plenam integer et indempnis aduenit. Patet ergo quod graues interdum tribulationes et angustias hiis quosm diligit et dirigit immittit Deus et tamen, maiore | urgente molestia, propinquum interdum se propiciumque demonstrat. ⟨V⟩enientibus igitur ipsis ad mare Flandrie et transfretantibus, archidiaconus Londonias accelerans, reperto ibidem puero suo cum saginario apud Depam relicto traditisque litteris comitis iusticiario sibi directis, statim ad Wallie fines festinauit. Datisque litteris comitis quibus fuerant destinate, patriam pre morte regis ualde turbatam plurimum aduentu et interuentu suo pacificauit. ⟨C⟩omes autem Ricardus paulo post in Angliam ueniens Londoniis in regem coronatus est sed nullam in Anglian moram faciens, ut una cum Philippo, Francorum rege, Ierosolimitanam peregrinationem arriperet, in Normanniam transfretauit, cancellario suo Willelmo de Nunchamp,395 cui archidiaconum adiunxit, iusticiario in Anglia relicto. ⟨V⟩idens autem archidiaconus regem Henricum, ad cuius instantiam crucem susceperat, iam defunctum, accedens ad cardinalem et legatum Iohannem Anagninum, qui tunc recedens ab Anglia Douorie fuerat, sibi et episcopo suo senio confecto (nil tamen requisitus ab illo) absolutionis gratiam et cartam talem impetrauit.

j  iverat Wharton; iuera MS    k absentiæ Wharton; abscientie MS    l vespilionibus Wharton; uispilionis MS    m quos Wharton; quod MS    n  nullam in Anglia moram ed.; parvam in Anglia moram Wharton; angliam moram MS

395  William de Longchamp or Nunchamp (ODNB, s.n. ‘Longchamp, William de (d. 1197)’) was Royal Chancellor 1189–97, bishop of Ely (same dates), and papal legate from June 1190 to spring 1192 (see n. 398 below).The Latin has Nunchamp (also Inuect., v. 14 (Davies, p. 193)) which seems to be a variant of the more common Longchamp; note also the same form in

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He therefore immediately returned to the town and the lodgings he had set out from and searched carefully everywhere, inside and out, but could not find it. And so, turning back and re-­crossing the water (now for the third time) to follow the others, he was utterly devoid of hope; but, still casting his eyes down and searching the route he had followed before, on the rocky bank he spotted his purse, finding it lying amongst the stones, not opened but folded up and fastened as before. This was in many ways a chance event and in many ways amazing. First, that he thus found the lost purse. Second, that when he found it he did not take advantage of our absence (for we were then far away) to go away with all the things he was carrying—­especially since he was a stranger. Third, that, following us alone and thus burdened along a route full of brigands and robbers, he arrived whole and unharmed. It is clear therefore that God sometimes inflicts grievous trials and afflictions on those whom he loves and guides, but nonetheless at other times, when a greater trouble presses, he shows that he is near and that he favours them. They came to the sea of Flanders and crossed over, and the arch­ deacon then sped to London and there found the boy whom he had left with his pack-­horse at Dieppe. He delivered the letters which the count had sent for his justiciar and straightaway hastened to the land of Wales. And, delivering the count’s letters to those to whom they were addressed, by his arrival and his intervention Gerald did much to pacify that country, which had been thrown into great disarray by the king’s death. A little while afterwards, Count Richard came to England and was crowned king in London. But he did not stay in England and crossed to Normandy to set out on pilgrimage to Jerusalem together with Philip, king of the French, leaving his chancellor William de Longchamp as justiciar in England,395 to whom he attached the arch­deacon. Seeing that King Henry, at whose pressing he had taken up the cross, was now dead, the archdeacon went to the cardinal and legate John of Anagni, who was then at Dover on his way out of England, and obtained the grace of absolution and a document in this form for himself and for his bishop, afflicted by old age (though his bishop had not asked him to do this).

Gervase of Melkley’s Ars poetica (ed. Gräbener), p. 145, l. 22, of similar date to these works of Gerald, and also, as a manuscript variant, in Howden, Chronica, iii. 35, n. 3.

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[I I . 22]  L I T T E R E C ARDINALIS A BSO LV TO R IE.396

RS i. 85

RS i. 86

‘⟨V⟩enerabili in Christo patri Baldwino, Dei gratia Cantuariensi archiepiscopo, et omnibus ad quos littere presentes peruenerint Iohannes Anagninus, eadem | gratia titulo Sancti Marci presbiter cardinalis, Apostolice Sedis legatus, eternam in Domino salutem. ‘Veniens ad nos Giraldus de Sancto Dauid archidiaconus ex parte sua et uenerabilis fratris nostri Petri Meneuensis episcopi nobis proposuit quod, cum eis ex parte Henrici Anglorum regis spes, si Ierosolimam secum uellent adire, in expensis quas in predicta uia facerent non modica facta esset, predicto siquidem rege sublato de medio, uotum preconceptum, cum eis expense non suppetant, peragere minime possunt. ‘Nos igitur paupertati tam predictorum episcopi et archidiaconi quam aliorum Walensium qui ad uotum preconceptum peragendum per se non sufficiunt taliter duximus consulendum quod, si in propriis personis ire non possunt, de bonis diuinitus sibi collatis Ierosolimam euntibus tribuant et ad reparationem ecclesie Meneuensis operam impendant et auxilium. Prefatos quoque episcopum et archidiaconum propter etatis defectum uel paupertatem a pretaxato itinere Ierosolimitano auctoritate nobis concessa sub eadem dispensatione duximus absoluendos et penitus denuntiamus absolutos, ita tamena quod Ierosolimam accedentibus auxilium prebeant et adiutorium. Illud idem de populo sibi comisso facimus.’ ⟨P⟩aucos autem archidiaconos hodie uidemus qui non pocius episcoporum suorum quererent aut appeterent elongationem. Argumentum itaque fuit et manifestum indicium archidiaconum istum ad episcopi sui parum hanelare uel aspirare successionem. ⟨I⟩nterim autem, defuncto Bangorensi episcopo Wiano,397 oblatum ei a iusticiario predicto et Apostolice quoque Sedis tunc legato398 episcopatum illum archidiaconus omnino recusauit. |

  ita tamen ed.; ista tamen MS; ista tamen conditione Wharton

a

396 Cf. Inuect., iii. 18 (Davies, pp. 158–9). 397  Gwion was bishop 1177–1190 ✕ 1191 (Fasti Ecclesiae Anglicanae 1066–1300, ix. 2).

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[ II. 2 2 ]   T HE C A R DI NA L’S LETTER OF A BSO LUT I O N.396 ‘To the venerable father in Christ, Baldwin, by God’s grace archbishop of Canterbury, and to all those to whom this letter may come, John of Anagni, by that same grace cardinal-­priest of St Mark and legate of the Apostolic See, sends greetings and wishes for their everlasting salvation in the Lord. ‘Archdeacon Gerald of St Davids, coming to us on his own behalf and on behalf of our venerable brother Peter, bishop of St Davids, explained to us that although Henry, king of the English, had given them great hopes, if they wished to accompany him to Jerusalem, concerning the expenses which they would incur on that journey, the said king was in fact taken from our midst and they are quite unable to carry out the vow they had previously intended, for they lack the funds. ‘We have decided, therefore, to provide for the poverty both of the said bishop and archdeacon and of all the Welshmen who do not have of themselves the means to carry out their vow, as follows: that if they are unable to go in person, let them bestow part of the goods which the Lord has granted them upon those who are going to Jerusalem and let them devote their efforts to the repair and support of the church of St  Davids. We have decided also, on account of their weak age or ­poverty, to absolve by the same dispensation the said bishop and archdeacon from the obligation to make the aforesaid journey to Jerusalem, by the authority granted to us, and we pronounce them entirely absolved, provided that they provide support and aid to those going to Jerusalem. And we do the same for the populace under their care.’ We see few archdeacons in these days who would not instead seek or desire the distant absence of their bishops. This was, therefore, evidence and a clear proof that the archdeacon was hardly panting after or longing to succeed to his bishop’s position. But meanwhile Gwion, bishop of Bangor, died,397 and, though the archdeacon was offered that bishopric by the afore-­mentioned justiciar, then legate of the Apostolic See,398 he refused it out of hand.

398 William de Longchamp, papal legate for England from June 1190 to spring 1192 (Fasti Ecclesiae Anglicanae 1066–1300, ii. 45); cf. n. 395 above.

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fo. 176v

RS i. 87

de g e s t i s gi r a l di, i i

[ II. 23]  QVA L I T E R C O MITI IOHANNI NE TE M PO R E C O MMV N I S PEREGRINATIONIS D E S I DI O SV S I N A NGL IA REM ANERET SVA SI T A RC H I DI ACONVS NEC PE R SVA SI T. |

⟨C⟩omes uero Iohannes, qui fratri regi iurauerat priusquam discederet quod Angliam per triennium proximum non intraret, iactans archidiacono (quem familiarem habebat)—clam tamen et secreto—­quod absolutus a sacramento tali per cancellarium erat, dixit in hoc ei plurimum successisse, quod Anglicanis deliciis et diuiciis uacare non poterat. Cui archidiaconus respondit dicens magis honori ipsius et fame competere ut absens esset in fratris absentia quam presens, ne, principibus aliis fere cunctis in expedicionem Ierosolimitanam profectis, solus ipse domi residens desidie et ignauie dari uideretur; pocius autem in Hiberniam iret et pleno conquestui regni illius interim et incastellationi uiriliter indulgeret, multiplex inde comodum consecuturus: quod in primis rem suam sic emendaret et non solus inter principes ocio uacaret; quod suspicionis notam uitaret et laudem hominum multam adquireret; quod fratris etiam reuertentis gratiam sibi eo ipso plurimam compararet, quia nec mortem ipsius obseruare nec ad successionem uel surreptionem aspirare uideretur. Comes autem non gratanter uerbum suscipiens respondit quod non adeo Hiberniam sicut archidiaconus diligebat, quia nec tantam in ea quantam et ipse cognationem ­habebat. |

[ I I . 24]  QVA L I T E R DIGNITATES EC C L E SI A ST I C A S SIBI OBLATAS A RC H I DI AC O N V S A M ORE S TVDII R E C V SAV IT.

⟨P⟩rocessu uero temporis, cancellario iam deiecto et ab Anglia per comitem expulso, cum comes ipse quasi uices regis tunc optineret, episcopatum Landauensem, cuius ecclesia cathedralis cum maiori parte diocesis in terra ipsius de Wlatmorgan erat, optulit archidiacono, quem et simili solitaque constantia recusauit.399 ⟨P⟩reter ecclesiam 399  The offer of Llandaff dates to the period between the fall of Longchamp as chancellor on 5 October 1191 (he surrendered the seal on 10 October) and the consecration of Henry of Abergavenny to Llandaff on 12 December 1193.

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[ II. 2 3 ]   HOW T HE A RC H D E ACON URGED C OUNT J O HN N O T TO REM AIN IN D OL E NT LY I N E NGL A ND DURING THIS T IM E O F G E NE R A L PI LGR I MAGE BUT DID N O T PE R SUA DE HIM. Count John, who had sworn to his brother the king before he had departed that he would not enter England for the next three years, boasted to the archdeacon (with whom he was on friendly terms, in his  household)—though secretly and in private—­that he had been absolved of that oath by the chancellor and said that this had turned out extremely well for him, as he could not be without the pleasures and riches of England. To this the archdeacon replied that it better befitted his honour and his reputation that he be absent in his brother’s absence than present, lest, with nearly every other prince having departed on the expedition to Jerusalem, he, the only one to remain at home, should seem to have turned to indolence and sloth. He should instead go to Ireland and devote himself manfully, during this time, to the complete conquest and fortification of that kingdom. And he would win many advantages by so doing: he would, firstly, thereby improve his own situation and not, alone amongst princes, give himself over to inactivity; he would avoid any mark of suspicion and get great praise from other men; and he would thereby win the heartfelt thanks of his brother, too, on his return, for he would seem neither to be watching for his death nor aspiring to succeed to or usurp his place. But the count was not grateful to hear this advice and replied that he did not care for Ireland as much as the archdeacon did, for he did not have as many kinsmen there as Gerald.

[ II. 2 4 ]   HOW T HE A RC H D E ACON REFUS ED T H E E C C L E SI A ST I C A L O FFICES OFFERED H IM, BE C AUSE O F H I S LOVE OF L E A R N I NG. In the course of time, after the count had deposed the chancellor and expelled him from England and then took himself the place of the king, as it were, he offered to the archdeacon the bishopric of Llandaff (of which the cathedral church and the greater part of the diocese lay in his own lands of Glamorgan) but Gerald refused this bishopric with his accustomed firmness, as he had those before.399 Thus, besides the

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fo. 177r RS i. 89

de g e s t i s gi r a l di, i i i

itaque Sancti Dauid—­ad quam in adolescentia sua nominatus fuerat et precipue uocatus—­quatuor ei episcopatus, duo in Hibernia et duo in Wallia, oblati iam fuerunt, quas tamen oblationes omnes, nil tale ambiendo, secura quidem et alta mente calcauit. Nichil enim tunc ambiebat, nichil amplius habere uolebat quod studium ipsius, in quo fere semper assiduus et continuus erat, impediret. Mirum enim de ipso quod curias sequendo nichilominus historias scribebat et post longas dietas more curialium et laboriosas ad lucem uigilabat et lucubrabat noctesque diebus, tanquam in scolis existens et nichil aliud agens, studendo continuabat. Legerat enim illuda Plinii: ‘Nulla tibi temporis asperitas studii tempus eripiat, nam perit omne tempus quod studiis non inpertitur’.400 ⟨C⟩aput itaque desiderii sui fuerat ut statum adhuc unum ad studii complecionem et absolutam precipue theologice discipline consummationem in scolis facere posset et sufficientiam ad hoc faciendum et librorum ac scriptorum copiam (sicut expetit illa facultas) perquirendum et tenendum honestam haberet. Talis enim, ut dicere consueuerat ipse, studiosis animis appetenda est sufficientia que studium nutriat, non impediat, que nobilis opere diligentiam non opulentia suffocet sed mediocritate sustentet. |

⟨PARS TERTIA⟩

[ III . 1] DE GE ST I S PROVECTIORIS E TAT I S  E T MATVRE.

⟨C⟩onsiderans autem Giraldus uanam ex toto curie sequelam, uanas omnino promissiones, uanas et indignas nec iuxta merita promotiones,401 quod olim mente conceperat et paulatim iam inceperat, a curie strepitu tamquam tempestuoso pelago penitus se retraxit et ad scolas ac studium tanquam portum quietum et tranquillum salubriori consilio se transferre curauit, illud Plinii secundi sepius ad animum reuocando: ‘Strepitus inanesque discursus et ineptos labores, ut primum occasio   illud Plinii Wharton; plinii MS

a

400  Pliny the Younger, Letters, iii. 5. 15–16 (adapted, via the Florilegium Angelicum: see Goddu and Rouse, ‘Gerald of Wales and the Florilegium Angelicum’, p. 501). 401  Gerald elaborates this contrast of court and study in the original preface to De prin. (OMT 3–33).

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church of St Davids—­to which he had been nominated in his youth and to which he was most particularly called—­four bishoprics had now been offered to him, two in Ireland and two in Wales, but he spurned all these offers with a mind serene and set on higher things, as he desired no such thing. For he desired nothing at that time, wished to have nothing more which would hinder his study, to which he was nearly always consistently and continuously devoted. It was indeed an amazing thing about him that, when following the courts, he used nonetheless to write his histories and, after a long and laborious day’s work, as courtiers’ days are, he would stay awake working by lamplight until dawn and joined his nights to his days in study, as though he were still in the schools and had nothing else to do. For he had read that saying of Pliny’s: ‘Let no difficulties of time rob you of time for your studies, for all time vanishes which is not devoted to study’.400 And so his chief desire was to be able to make one further stay in the schools to concentrate on his studies, and especially for the complete attainment of theological learning, and to have an honourable and adequate income to allow him to do this and to acquire and keep the large number of books and authors which that branch of study requires. For, as he himself used to say, studious minds should seek such sufficient means as will nourish study, not hinder it, and which will not stifle the effort of that noble occupation with riches but sustain it with moderation.

PA RT T HR E E [ III. 1]  O N H I S DE E DS IN MORE A DVA NC E D A N D A D U LT YEARS. Now Gerald concluded that following the court was utterly empty, that its promises were completely empty, and that its preferments were empty, unbecoming, and not made according to merit.401 So he did what he had long thought of and had already begun to do, little by ­little: he withdrew completely from the hubbub of the court, that stormy sea, and, following a sounder plan, took steps to go instead to the schools and to study, as to a calm and peaceful port, calling often to mind that saying of Pliny the Younger: ‘Leave behind commotions, the empty hurrying to and fro, and senseless tasks as soon as you can and

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fuerit, relinque teque studiis trade, quia dulce honestumque ocium ac pene omni negotio pulcrius est studere’.402 Et illud eiusdem: ‘Humilesa et sordidas curas aliis manda; ipse te in arduo sublimique secessu ­studiis asseras’.403

[ II I . 2]  QVA L I T E R A M ICVM S VVM A NAC HO R I TA M D E L O THEIS 404 ADIIT E IV S QV E L I C E N T I A M a SCOLAS ADEVNDI ET BE NE D I C T I O N E M EXP ETIIT.

RS i. 90

⟨I⟩n hoc itaque proposito firmiter constitutus ad amicum suum anachoritam de Locheis apud Eleuein in archidiaconatu suo, non procul a Vage fluuio, cui no|men Wetheleu,405 uirum bonum et sanctum, licentiam et benedictionem suam accepturus accessit.406 Quem cum inter cetera rogaret attentius ut oraret pro ipso quatinus sacram scripturam, cui indulgere uolebat, scire salubriter et intelligere posset, respondit uir sanctus manum archidiaconi manu sua tenens et stringens, ‘Och, och, noli dicere “scire” sed “custodire”! Vana, uana est scire nisi custodire’. Talis enim erat ei loquendi modusb semper per infinitiuum nec

 Humiles Wharton; Humilem MS

a

 licentiam Brewer and table of contents; licentia MS, here    ­raodus MS, it seems a

b

 modus Wharton;

402  Pliny the Younger, Letters, i. 9. 6–7, via the Florilegium Angelicum (see Goddu and Rouse, ‘Gerald of Wales and the Florilegium Angelicum’, p. 500). Gerald cites this also at Symb. el., ep. xxiv (RS i. 280–1). Pliny is playing with the sense of otium as ‘leisure’ (and by extension the leisure to study) in contrast to its etymological negative negotium ‘business, public life, etc.’; for Gerald this rings particularly true in his preoccupation with finding time for his studies and at the same time being dragged away from them to fight the cause of St Davids. On the question of Gerald’s retirement from court, see De prin., introduction (OMT xv–xvi). 403  Pliny the Younger, Letters, i. 3. 3, via the Florilegium Angelicum (see Goddu and Rouse, ‘Gerald of Wales and the Florilegium Angelicum’, p. 500). Gerald cites this also at Symb. el., ep. xxiv (RS i. 281). 404  Llywes (Ordnance Survey spelling Llowes) at NGR SO 19 41. 405  The manuscript form is Wetheleu (Brewer prints Wecheleu (RS i. 90), Butler Wechelen (p. 123; thus also Lloyd, HW 217–18)); in Inuect., vi. 20 the form is printed as Wedhelen in RS i. 175, but the manuscript has Wedheleu (as printed by Davies, p. 221). The precise form of the name is uncertain, but it seems to be relatively secure as similar forms of the name, Hwetheleu, Whethley (or Whedhelen) are attested in Brycheiniog in the mid- and late thirteenth century (Morgan and Morgan, Welsh Surnames, p. 115, s.n. Gwyddelan). The variation between -eu and -en is very common, arising from a confusion of minims; either would be

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devote yourself to studies, for study is a sweet and honourable leisure and finer than almost any employment’.402 And that other saying of Pliny’s: ‘Consign your base and lowly concerns to others; you should liberate yourself for study in lofty and exalted seclusion’.403

[ III. 2 ]   HOW H E WE N T TO A FRIEND, THE H E R M IT O F L LY WE S,404 A N D AS KED FOR H IS P E RMI SSI O N A ND BL E S S ING TO GO TO T H E SC HO O LS. And so, having firmly resolved on this plan, he went to a friend of his, the hermit of Llywes in Elfael in his archdeaconry, not far from the river Wye, a good and holy man whose name was Wetheleu,405 to receive his permission and blessing.406 And when Gerald asked him earnestly (among other things) to pray for him, that he might, for the benefit of his soul, know and understand Holy Writ, to which he wished to devote himself, the holy man replied, grasping and squeezing the arch­deacon’s hand in his own: ‘Och, och, don’t say “know”, but rather “keep to it”! Empty, empty is knowing without keeping’. For such was his manner of speaking, always with infinitives, and he did not maintain the proper cases, but he could nevertheless be understood easily enough. For this reason it was more to be wondered where a simple and unlettered man

possible in a name form. The -dh- spelling beside -th- suggest we have to do with an internal -/ð/(-ch- would then be a trivial miscopying of -th-). Initial W- can be an Anglo-Norman spelling for Welsh Gw-; alternatively, but perhaps less likely, W- could represent Welsh Chw-/Hw-. We can find no Flemish or Norman names which would match these forms, and in light of the other forms from the area it is likely that the name is Welsh; if so, the spelling may represent later Welsh Gwyddelyn or Gwyddelan (if we read -en or -an); cf. also Guithelinus, a very early bishop of London in Geoffrey, and Gwythelin, Gwyd(d)elyn, the name of a dwarf, in Trioedd Ynys Prydein (ed. Bromwich), pp. 61 and 395 (see also Sims-Williams, ‘Shrewsbury School MS 7’, p. 53). Given the uncertainty over the precise form of the name it has been left in its manuscript form in the translation. 406  Gerald’s reverence for the eremitic life is also demonstrated by his support for the cult of St Caradog of Llan Ismael: above, Table of Contents, iii. 31 and 85; Inuect., iii. 7; iv. 9 (Davies, pp. 150–1, 177); De iure, ii (RS iii. 182–3). It contrasts with his frequent criticisms of cenobitic monastic communities. On the role of hermits in the twelfth century, see MayrHarting, ‘Functions of a twelfth-century recluse’ (mainly on Wulfric of Haselbury); Leyser, Hermits and the New Monasticism, ch. 3, ‘The new hermits’, pp. 18–28, who sets out the context and cites, as an example, Gerald’s description of Llanthony in Ewyas (Itin. Kam., i. 3 (RS vi. 37–8); cf. also perhaps The History of Llanthony Priory, i, intro. (OMT 8–13), if we accept this is by Gerald; The Life of Christina of Markyate, ed. Talbot, p. 102.

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fo. 177v RS i. 91

de g e s t i s gi r a l di, i i i

casus seruabat et tamen satis intelligi poterat. Quare magis admirandum unde uiro simplici et idiote scientia talis: quod uana sit scientia non custodienti, quin etiam et periculosa, quia qui sciens et prudens peccat grauiter peccat. Cui nimirum plus committitur, merito et ab ipso plus exigitur.407 Quo enim quisque melius sapit, eo deterius delinquit; et ubi maius donum scientie, ibi transgressor maiori subiacet culpe.408 Vnde Ysaias: ‘Qui uides multa, non custodies?’409 Non igitur ab homine ei sententia talis siue scientia sed a Deo, cuius reuera spiritu plenus erat. Archidiaconus autem, hoc audito, correctus plurimum et ad lacrimas commotus supplicauit ei tunc attentius ut oraret quatinus sacram scripturam diuinam non solum scire sed etiam summopere custodire ualeret. Requirenti uero archidiacono unde ei uerba Latina, cum non didicerit, respondit in hunc modum (sua enim ipsius uerba ponam, sicut ea libenter archidiaconus et frequenter retractare et recitare ­consuerat):410 ‘Ego’, inquit, ‘ire Ierosolimam et uisitare sepulcrum Domini mei et, quando redire, ego ponere me in hoc carcere411 pro amore Domini mei, qui mori pro me et multum ego dolere quod non posse intelligere Latinum neque missam nec euuangelium et multociens flere et rogare Dominum dare michi Latinum intelligere. Tandem uero, cum uno | die hora comedendi uocare ad fenestram serui|entem meum semel et iterum et pluries et non uenire, propter tedium simul et famem ego dormire et, quando uigilare, ego uidere super altare meum panem iacere et accedens benedicere panem et comedere et statim ad uesperas ego intelligere uersus et uerba Latina que dicere sacerdos et mane similiter ad missam, sicut michi uidebatur. Et post missam ego uocare presbiterum ad fenestram cum missali et rogare ipsum legere euuangelium illius diei et ipse legere et ego exponere et dicere sacerdos quod recte et postea loqui cum presbitero Latinum et ipse mecum et ab illo die ego sic loqui. Et Dominus meus, qui dedit michi Latinam linguam, non dedit eam michi per gramaticam aut per casus sed tantum ut intelligi possem et alios intelligere’. 407  Cf. Luke 12: 48: ‘Omni autem cui multum datum est, multum quaeretur ab eo: et cui commendaverunt multum, plus petent ab eo’. 408  The first part of this sentence is based on Gregory the Great, Regula Pastoralis, iii. 22 (SC ccclxxxii. 404–5). The latter part of this sentence (also in Gemma eccl., ii. 6 (RS ii. 190)) derives from the Glossa Ordinaria to both Matt. 12: 10 and Luke 6: 6, perhaps derived from Bede, though various authors make other attributions. 409  Isa. 42: 20. 410  On the hermit’s form of Latin, see Introduction, pp. lxxxi–lxxxii.

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got such knowledge from: that knowledge is hollow to one who does not keep to it—­nay rather, it is even dangerous, for he who sins, though he knows and is wise, sins grievously. Certainly, from one to whom more is entrusted, more also is deservedly demanded.407 For the better one understands, the worse one offends; and where there is a greater gift of knowledge, there a wrongdoer is exposed to greater blame.408 Wherefore Isaiah said: ‘You who see many things, will you not keep them?’409 He had not therefore acquired such an opinion or such knowledge from man, but from God, of whose spirit, in truth, he was full. When he had heard this, the archdeacon, strongly chastised and moved to tears, begged him then more earnestly to pray that he might be able not only to know the divine Holy Writ but also, as much as possible, to keep to it. And when the archdeacon asked him where he had got his Latin words, for he had not learnt the language, he replied in this way (for I shall quote his very own words, in the form in which the  archdeacon used most willingly and frequently to recollect and recite them):410 ‘I go to Jerusalem’, he said, ‘and visit the sepulchre of my Lord and, when I return, I put myself in this imprisonment411 for the love of my Lord, who die for me. And I grieve much that I cannot understand Latin, or the mass, or the gospels, and many times I weep and ask the Lord to give me to understand Latin. But at length, when one day at mealtime I call my servant to the window, once and again and many times, and he come not, for weariness as well as hunger I sleep. And when I awake, I see bread lying upon my altar. And, going to it, I bless the bread and I eat. And immediately at vespers I understand the verses and the Latin words which the priest say, and in the morning likewise at mass, as it seemed to me. And after mass I call the priest to the window with his missal and I ask him to read the gospel reading for that day. And he read and I expound, and the priest say that I do it correctly, and afterwards I speak Latin with the priest, and he with me. And from that day I speak thus, and my Lord, who gave me the Latin tongue, did not give it me by means of grammar or cases, but only that I might be able to be understood and to understand others’.

411  Carcer is used for a room in which a hermit was confined in The Life of Christina of Markyate, ed. Talbot, p. 102. In that example, entrance or exit was prevented by a large block of wood placed in front of the door. The normal word for the room inhabited by a hermit was cella, the term used in such classic texts as Cassian’s Institutes and Conferences. Thus the Life of Wulfric of Haselbury uses cella and cellula, e.g. Wulfric of Haselbury by John of Ford, ed. Bell, c. 25, p. 44 (cellula) and c. 43, p. 59 (cella).

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RS i. 92

de g e s t i s gi r a l di, i i i

⟨T⟩ale fuit et illud Esdre prophete, qui de se sic scribit: ‘Dixitc Dominus michi, “Aperi os tuum”, et aperui os meum. Et ecce calix plenus aqua, cuius color similis igni, et, cum bibissem, eructauit cor meum intellectum et in pectus meum introiuit sapientia’.412 ⟨C⟩ontigit autem Walenses castellum Pagani in Eleuein413 paulo ante constructum obsedisse et, cum multitudo Anglicani exercitus apud Haiam et circa partes illas collecta fuisset, uenit ad eos mulier quedam quasi sub specie monialis et tanquam ab anachorita predicto transmissa monens illos ex parte ipsius et consulens quatinus cum Walensibus secure congrederentur, certam eis uictoriam promittendo. Et, quoniam fides habebatur ei tanquam uiro sancto, ita factum est et ceciderunt uno die de Walensibus circiter tria milia. Cum autem diuulgatum esset uerbum istud per totam prouinciam illam, uenit archidiaconus amicum suum anachoritam uisitare, quod libentissime nacta oportunitate faciebat, qui statim inter cetera retulit | ei de uerbo illo et quia multum dolebat tale uerbum de ipso disseminatum fuisse, iurans etiam se nunquam tale quid Anglicis mandasse uel monuisse. Dicebat enim, sicut et decebat, se pocius talem conflictum inter Christianos, unde sanguinis effusio proueniret, dissuadere uelle quam monere. Dicebat autem Diabolum, propter perditionem multorum quam inde preuidit et lucrum animarum magnum sibi uenturum ex hoc conflictu, tale mandatum tanquam ab ipso, cui fides habebatur, Anglicis ut ueniret procurasse et, ut ipsum etiam quasi cedis auctorem et instigatorem diffamaret, angelum Sathane se tanquam in lucis angelum transformasse. ⟨D⟩iligebat autem archidiaconum tenerrime, adeo ut uisiones suas et reuelationes414 sibi diuinitus factas ei secreto proponeret et, cum absens atque remotus esset, grandi dilectionis affectu cuncta uolens ei communicare scriptas in rotulis destinaret. Multis itaque signis et uirtutibus in uita sua multoque pluribus post obitum ipsius fuerat

 antethema added in margin by a later hand with maniculus

c

412  4 Esd. (2 Esd.) 14: 38–40 (adapted). Gerald earlier used this adapted form at Descr. Kam., i. 16 (RS vi. 195). 413  Gerald here elides two separate meetings with the hermit: Gerald visited him in 1195/6, but the siege of Painscastle by Gwenwynwyn was in 1198, beginning around the Feast of Mary Magdalen (22 July), as noted by Brut P, s.a. 1198. Butler’s precise date (p. 125, n. 2) of 13 August 1198 for the retaliatory massacre by the English (Saeson in the Brut) is that given by Lloyd (HW 586) and comes from Diceto, whereas, as Lloyd notes, the Annals of Chester have 12 August.

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Such too was the saying of the prophet Ezra, who writes thus of himself: ‘The Lord said to me, “Open your mouth” and I opened my mouth and, lo!, there was a cup full of water, whose colour was like fire. And when I had drunk, my heart spewed forth understanding and wisdom entered my breast’.412 Now it happened that the Welsh were besieging Painscastle in Elfael,413 built shortly before. And when a multitude of the English army had been gathered at Hay and in the lands around, a certain woman came to them in the guise of a nun, acting as though she had been sent by the afore­mentioned hermit. She advised and counselled them, on his behalf, to join battle with the Welsh without fear and promised them a certain victory. And since they trusted him as a holy man, so it was done, and in a single day there fell around three thousand Welshmen. Now when word of this had spread throughout the whole province, the archdeacon came to visit his friend the hermit, which he used to do most happily when he found the op­por­tun­ ity. And the hermit straightaway told him, among other things, about that report and that he was very upset that such a report should have been broadcast about him, and swore too that he had never sent any such message or counsel to the English. For he said, as indeed was fitting, that he wished rather to discourage such a conflict amongst Christians, which would lead to the shedding of blood, than to advise it. He said that the Devil had arranged that such a message should come to the English as though from him, whom they trusted, on account of the many deaths which he foresaw would result and the great harvest of souls which would come to him from this conflict, and that the angel of Satan had even transformed himself into the guise of an angel of light to defame him as being the origin and instigator of this slaughter. Now he loved the archdeacon most tenderly, so much so that he privately shared with him the visions and revelations414 which came to him from heaven and, when Gerald was absent and far away, the hermit sent him accounts of his visions written on rolls, wishing to share everything with him and moved by his great love. The holiness and bliss of this man, beloved and chosen by God, were demonstrated by many signs and miracles from heaven during his lifetime

414 e.g. Inuect., vi. 20 (Davies 220–1); and cf. the Table of Contents, iii. 236 (p. 34 above).

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fo. 178r

RS i. 93

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diuinitus uiri Deo dilecti et electi sanctitas atque felicitas declarata. ⟨Q⟩uesiuerat autem aliquando ab archidiacono consilium: utrum claudos et cecos uariisque languoribus afflictos ad ipsum uenientes | utd manus per fenestram eis inponeret et curaret a se repelleret, sicut monachi quidam Cisterciensis ordinis ei suaserant, nec ne.415 Qui responsum accepit quod gratiam curationum sibie a Deo datam non supprimeret sed petentibus et indigentibus eam caritatiue pocius inpertiret. Verumtamen ne quid inde sibi superbie surreperetf aut arrogantie summopere caueret. Illud etiam euuangelicum ad mentem ei reuocauit exemplum de discipulis reuertentibus ad Iesum et gloriantibus dicendo quod etiam demonia eis fuerant subiecta, quibus ad arrogantiam deprimendum respondit Iesus: ‘Nolite gaudere quod spiritus|uobis subiciuntur’ sed pocius inde ‘gaudete, quod nomina uestra scripta sunt in celis’.416 ⟨S⟩ed hec hactenus de uiro sancto, a quo difficile discedimus, sicut et archidiaconus ipse de eo loquendo uix ab ea materia discedebat. Nunc autem ad rem reuertamur.

[ II I . 3]  QVA L I T E R , QVIA PARIS IVS PROPT E R G V E R R A S I R E NON P OTVIT, L I NC O L N I A M DIVERTIT.

⟨C⟩ollectis itaque librorum undique thesauris, ad consumandam sacrorum apicum disciplinam—­non solum in hiis morari uerum etiam mori dulce dicebat et delectabile417—Parisius iter incunctanter arripiendo tendebat. Sed mari appropians, quia werram inter reges Philippum et Ricardum, quam per treugam quinquennalem sopitam ad tempus audierat, resuscitatam iterum cercius suscepit,418 propter quod eundi in

d   There is a change of hand in the MS at this point    e sibi Wharton; igitur MS     surreperet Wharton; surreperit MS

f

415 The Cistercians had a tradition of distancing themselves from healing miracles; cf. Bartlett, Why Can the Dead Do Such Great Things?, pp. 345–6. 416  Luke 10: 17–20 (adapted).

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and by many more after his death. He had once asked the archdeacon for advice: whether he should drive off (as certain monks of the Cistercian order had urged) the lame, the blind, and those stricken with various diseases who came to him so that he would lay his hands on them through his window and cure them, or not.415 To which he received as answer that he should not suppress the gift of healing which had been given him by God, but rather charitably share his gift with those who requested and needed it. However, he should take great care lest any pride or arrogance creep into him. Gerald reminded him, too, of that example from the gospels in which the disciples return to Jesus exultantly saying that even demons have been subjected to them, and Jesus replied, to check their arrogance: ‘Do not rejoice that spirits submit to you’ but rather ‘rejoice in this: that your names are written in the heavens’.416 But enough about this holy man, whom we leave with difficulty, just as the archdeacon too used to leave that subject with difficulty when he spoke about him. Let us now return to our story.

[ III. 3 ]   H OW, SI N C E H E C O ULD NOT GO TO   PA R I S BE C AU SE O F T HE WARS, HE T U R N E D I NST E A D TO LINCOLN. Gathering up stocks of books from wherever he could, he struck out  without delay towards Paris to perfect his knowledge of Holy Scripture—­he used to say that not only passing time in such subjects, but even dying among them, would be a sweet and delightful thing.417 But as he neared the sea, because it was confirmed to him that the war between King Philip and King Richard, which he had heard had been put to sleep for a time by a five-­year truce, had been reawakened once again,418 on account of which no safe way of going to France was open

417  Cf. Horace, Odes, iii. 2. 13. 418  See Gillingham, Richard I, 283–300: there were several truces in the relevant period, 1194–7, and so the precise date cannot be established.

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RS i. 94

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Franciam securitas ei nulla patebat, nec temporis iacturam, qua nulla grauior, amplius sustinere uolebat, ubi sanius atque salubrius in Anglia theologicam scienciam uigere cognouit, sub doctore peroptimo, magistro Willelmo de Monte,419 dicto quoniam in monte Sancte Genouefe Parisius legerat, quem et ibi archidiaconus tunc nouerat, studii causa Lincolniam adiuit. ⟨V⟩bi continuato plurium annorum studio, quoniam nil in terris stabile, nil in mundo non mutabile, nil in uita non uariabile, Petro Meneuensi episcopo interim rebus humanis exempto,420 litteris et nuntiis crebris tam capituli Meneuensis quam baronum patrie quatinus regem, cuius patri et sibi multum seruierat, statim adiret et, quoniam fauorem omnium et assensum habebat, episco|patum Sancti Dauit peteret et obtineret sollicitatur. Sed, quoniam ex toto studiis addictus fuerat nec aliam in mundo uitam quantum istam affectabat, non semel sed sepius et semper eis litteris et nuntiis respondebat uirum episcopalem non petere sed peti debere, quia eo ipso, si episcopatum peteret, indignum episcopio se probaret,421 et, quoniam sufficiebat ei quod habebat, a studio et statu optimo ac tranquillissimo in quo tunc erat nullatenus discedere uolebat. ⟨A⟩ccidit autem circiter eadem tempora quod,a fame ingruente in finibus illis ualida, cum archidiaconus in camera sua more solito studiis indulgeret, audiuit pauperes et inopes ad fores et fenestras hospicii sui clamantes et elimosinarum beneficia postulantes. Quorum misertus incontinenti, cum respiceret penulas in palliis et capis suis ac pellicia de peregrinis murium pellibus nec non et cuniculorum perticis appensa, precepit ut statim quicquid ibi de uario et grisio atque cuniculis inuentum fuerit uenderetur et in usus pauperum partiretur. Quod et factum illico fuit. Ab illa autem archidiaconus hora penulis agninis contentus erat.

 quod ed.; om. MS

a

419  Commonly known as William de Montibus (d. 1213), chancellor of Lincoln Cathedral, on whom see Goering, William de Montibus (c. 1140–1213); Presbiter, Notes from the School of  William de Montibus, ed. Dunning; MacKinnon, ‘The Life and Works of William de Montibus’; Gerald’s form of his name is less well authenticated. He taught at Lincoln from 1188 until his death in 1213. He very probably came to know Gerald during the latter’s stay in Paris, namely when Gerald was studying canon law and theology. Gerald’s choice to go to  Lincoln to study with William is discussed by Southern, ‘From schools to university’, pp. 21–3, who suggests a probable date of the summer of 1195 and observes: ‘It is unlikely that Gerald, an important man of fifty, was looking for regular lectures in theology. Probably

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to him, and because he did not wish to endure any further loss of time—­he could think of nothing worse!—he went instead to Lincoln, the place in England where he knew theological scholarship to be flourishing most healthily and soundly, to study under that most distinguished teacher Master William de Monte,419 so called because he had taught in Paris upon Mont Sainte-­Geneviève, and indeed the archdeacon had known him there. When he had remained there in study for several years, because there is nothing on this earth which is stable, nothing in the world not subject to change, nothing in life invariable, Peter, the bishop of St Davids, was meanwhile taken from this world,420 and Gerald was then urged by frequent letters and messengers, both from the chapter of St Davids and from the barons of that country, immediately to go to the king, to whom and to whose father he had been of great service, and to ask for and obtain the bishopric of St Davids, since he had everyone’s approval and assent. But since he was wholly devoted to his studies and desired no life in the world as much as the one he had, he replied to them, not just once but often and always, by letters and messengers, that a man suitable to be a bishop ought not to ask but to be asked, since by the very fact of asking for a bishopric he would prove himself unworthy of the office of bishop;421 and, since what he had was sufficient for him, he had no wish at all to leave the study and the condition, so excellent and so calm, in which he now found himself. Now it happened around the same time that a great famine was arising in those lands and the archdeacon, while he was in his chamber intent upon his studies (as he usually was), heard the poor and indigent outside the doors and windows of his lodgings shouting and demanding gifts of alms. He was immediately filled with pity for them and, when he looked around at the trimmings upon his cloaks and capes, at the mantles made from ermine and rabbit hung up upon racks, he immediately ordered that whatever might be found there made of vair, of grey fur, and of rabbit should be sold and the money shared out for the benefit of the poor. This was done straightaway and from that day forth the archdeacon was content with cloaks trimmed with lambskin.

he wanted only the company and conversation of a learned friend’. Elsewhere Southern gives a date range of autumn 1194 × summer 1195 (Southern, Robert Grosseteste, p. 65). 420  16 July 1198. 421  For further discussion on the qualities of a bishop, see Introduction, p. lxxxiv and n. 446 below.

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[ III. 4]  QVA L I T E R , DE FVNCTO INTERIM P E T RO ME NE V E NSI EP IS COP O a ET G IR A L DO A RC HI D I AC O N O P RINCIPALITER PE TI TO, MV LT I PRO PT ER CATHEDRAM I L L A M L A BO R AVERVNT.

fo. 178v

RS i. 95

⟨C⟩um igitur episcopus Meneuensis quasi in principio auctumni422 defunctus fuisset, duo archidiaconi et quattuor canonici Meneuenses parum ante festum Sancti Michaelis ad archiepiscopum Cantuariensem Hubertum, tunc | Anglie iusticiarium, per districtum eiusdem mandatum cum litteris capituli de rato ad electionemb faciendam accesserunt et tres personas eic nominauerunt, has scilicet: principaliter et primo loco Giraldum archidiaconum de Brecheniauc; | secundo Walterum abbatem Sancti Dogmaelis;423 tercio Petrum abbatem de Alba Domo.424 Quartum etiam, ut numerum augerent nominatorum et Anglicos penitus excludere non uiderentur, Reginaldum Foliot, qui Anglicus fuit et de quo tamen spes essed nulla potuit, quasi per cautelam adiecerunt.425 Sed ea que caute et prouide fieri creduntur, in contrarium uergere plerumque uidentur, sicut ex sequentibus palam erit. Archiepiscopus autem primo nominatum primo recusauit et constanter abnegauit et, cum quererent canonici quare uirume discretum ac literatum, generosum et legittime natum, recusaret, respondit quia rex nullum Walensem, presertim autem illum qui principes Wallie sanguine contingat, episcopum in Wallia habere uolebat. Aliud tamen quam pretenderet in causa fuit. Verebatur enim de archidiacono, cuius tam eruditionem quam animositatem optime nouerat, quasi mente presaga, quod postmodum accidit ei.426 ⟨A⟩liud etiam in causa fuit. Circiter enim id ipsum temporis quo defunctus erat episcopus Petrus, archiepiscopus in Marchia Wallie tanquam iusticiarius existens cum

a  .P.  text rubric, with an early-modern hand adding Episcopo Meneuens. in margin; .P.  Meneuensi episcopo table of contents   b electionem Wharton; lectionem MS    c  ei Wharton; eis MS   d esse Wharton; e⟨ . . . ⟩ MS, damaged   e virum Wharton; urum MS

422  Peter de Leia died on 16 July 1198. For the Welsh, August was the first month in autumn, while the name of July was, and is, Gorffennaf, ‘the end of summer’. Quasi in principio auctumni, ‘about the beginning of autumn’ was not as far from the true date as it may seem. 423  See Knowles, ‘Some monastic enemies of Gerald of Wales’, p. 141.

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[ III. 4 ]   HOW, A FT E R PE T E R, BIS HOP OF ST DAVIDS, HAD DIED, ARCHDEACON GERALD WA S T H E PR I N C I PAL P ERS ON S O U G HT FO R T HE O FFI C E AND MANY PE OPL E WE R E O C C U PI E D WITH THAT S EE. So when the bishop of St Davids had died, around the beginning of autumn,422 two archdeacons and four canons of St Davids went, shortly before Michaelmas, to the archbishop of Canterbury, Hubert, who was then the justiciar of England, following his strict instructions, with letters of authority from the chapter, to make an election. And they nominated the following three people for him: first and foremost Gerald, archdeacon of Brecon; secondly Walter, abbot of St Dogmaels;423 and thirdly Peter, abbot of Whitland.424 They nominated a fourth, too, so as to increase the number of nominees and not to seem entirely to exclude the English: they added, as a precaution, Reginald Foliot, who was English but who had no hope of being elected.425 But things which are thought to be done cautiously and prudently seem often to tend towards the opposite effect, as will be clear from what follows. The first person nominated was the first whom the archbishop refused, and he steadfastly rejected him. When the canons asked why he refused a man who was prudent and educated, of high and le­git­im­ ate birth, he replied that the king wished to have no Welshman as a bishop in Wales and especially not one who was a blood relation of the princes of Wales. But something other than the pretext he offered was the cause. For he feared from the archdeacon, with whose learning and courage he was very familiar, the very thing which afterwards happened to him, as though by foreknowledge.426 There was another cause, as well. For around the same time that Bishop Peter died, the archbishop was in the March of Wales in his capacity as justiciar with the

424  See Knowles, ‘Some monastic enemies of Gerald of Wales’, pp. 139–40. 425  On Reginald Foliot, see English Episcopal Acta 7, Hereford 1079–1234, ed. Barrow, index, s.v. Foliot, Master Reginald. 426  It is likely that Gerald is here suggesting that Hubert, as archbishop of Canterbury, feared Gerald would be an effective champion of the metropolitan status of St Davids in Rome.

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exercitu Anglie quem contra Walenses in Eleuain misit, ubi strages illa grandis apud castellum Pagani facta fuit, de obitu episcopi predicti nuncium suscepit et, cum inquireret quisnam ecclesiam et episcopatum dum uacaret custodire posset et responderent qui missi fuerant quod Giraldus archidiaconus, qui tunc in scolis fuerat, statim archiepiscopus in personam Giraldi archidiaconi turpia uerba proferens et inhonesta dixit quod nunquam ei uel episcopatum uel episcopatus ­custodiam in uita sua committeret. Erat enim offensus archidiaconof tunc plurimum propter abbatem de Bedlesdene, scili­cet Willelmum Wibertum,g monachum Cisterciensis ordinis trutannissimum,427 per operam archidiaconi, quem grauiter offenderat, paulo ante depositum. Fuerat enim archiepiscopo familiaris et ut | nuncius eius tam in Walliam quam in Scociam fieret et ad uarias partes, ipso mittente, discurreret se frequenter inferebat. Vnde et litteras quas archidiaconus archiepiscopo super hiis misith simul cum litteris archiepiscopi responsoriis nec non et litteris archidiaconi de rati habitione hic inserere dignum duxi.

[ I I I . 5]  L I T T E R E C A NTVARIENS I A RC H I E PI SC O PO DIRECTE.a ‘⟨R⟩euerendo domino et patri karissimo Huberto, Dei gratia Cantuariensi archiepiscopo, tocius Anglie primati, Giraldus archidiaconus de Sancto Dauid salutem in auctore salutis. ‘ “Benedictus Deus qui docuit manus uestras et digitos uestros ad bellum.”428 Benedictus Deus qui tam gloriosam in manu Christi sui uictoriam de hostili populo fecit. Et benedictum nomen eius sanctum qui tam strenua sui pontificis et primatis industria, utraque milicia uigente et utroque gladio dimicante, miro moderamine temporum uicissitudini se coaptante, regni amplitudinem et legibus regi statuit et armis pacificari. A tempore namque quo rex Haroldus Walliam pedestri expeditione tam fortiter inuasit totamque fere nationem illam in ore

f  archidiacono Wharton; archidiaconus MS   g Wibertum added in margin by scribe   mi misit MS, across line break, with the first mi subpuncted; immisit Wharton and Brewer

h

  ⟨D⟩e litteris ab archidiacono Cantuariensi archiepiscopo directis table of contents

a

427  That is, one who has broken his vows of stability; see Knowles, ‘Some monastic enemies of Gerald of Wales’, pp. 138–9; Golding, ‘Gerald of Wales and the Cistercians’, pp. 10, 20–1.

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English army which he sent to Elfael against the Welsh, where that terrible slaughter took place at Painscastle, when he received the news of the said bishop’s death. When he asked who there was who could take charge of the church and bishopric while they were vacant and those who had been sent to him replied that Gerald the archdeacon, who was then in the schools, could do it, the archbishop immediately uttered vile and disgraceful things about the character of Archdeacon Gerald and said that he would never in life entrust either a bishopric or the keeping of one to him. For he was then extremely hostile to the arch­deacon on account of the abbot of Biddlesden, William Wibert, an extreme example of a vagabond Cistercian monk,427 who had been deposed shortly before at the archdeacon’s instigation, having ser­ ious­ly offended him. This William was a close associate of the archbishop’s and regularly put himself forward to go as his messenger to Wales and to Scotland, and to range about various places as his envoy. Consequently I have also considered it worthwhile to include here the letter which the archdeacon sent to the archbishop on these matters, together with the archbishop’s letter in response and the archdeacon’s letter of ratification, as well.

[ III. 5 ]   A L E T T E R A D D R E S S ED TO THE A RC H BI SH O P O F C A NTERBURY. ‘To the reverend lord and dearest father, Hubert, by God’s grace archbishop of Canterbury and Primate of All England, Gerald, archdeacon of St Davids, sends greetings in the name of the author of our ­salvation. ‘ “Blessed is God, who has trained your hands and fingers for ­battle.”428 Blessed is God, who gave so glorious a victory, by the hand of his Christ, over a hostile people. And blessed is the holy name of him who established that the breadth of the kingdom be both governed by laws and pacified by arms, through such active effort by his bishop and primate, who is strong in both spiritual and secular warfare, who fights with both swords, who with wondrous adeptness adapts himself to the twisting demands of the times. For since the time that King Harold so forcefully invaded Wales with his army of foot-­soldiers and utterly

428  Ps. 143 (144): 1 (adapted).

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gladii429 funditus | deleuit et exterminio dedit, tantam gentis inimice stragem per ducem aliquem aut principem uno congressu factam fuisse nullius antiquitatis memoria tenet.430 Ergo, ut Liber Sapientie docet, “Melior est sapientia quam uirtus et uir prudens melior quam fortis”.431 ‘Sed, quoniam mundanis semper mala sunt uicina bonis, semper amaro dulce respersum, semper mella mixta uenenis, semper tristia letis inherent et saltem extrema gaudia luctus occupat, tam clari euentus serenitatem in pectore meo nubes incontinenti et nebula sinistri rumoris | obduxit. Significatum namque est michi—­quod non equanimiter ferre preualui—­g rauem me domini mei nuper offensam incurrisse, sicut quidam ex uerbis uestris minus circumspecte quam uel famam meam uel etiam uestram deceret magnificentiam in meb iaculatis perpenderunt. Quod quidem tanto molestius tuli tantoque maiori admiratione dignum estimaui quanto simplicius et innocentius, elapso iam biennio, diuinis ex toto addictus studiis neminem in mundo uel dicto uel facto uel etiam scripto ledens me gessi per omnia sine querela. Cui igitur rei hoc inputem, quod tantamc erga me ut etiam conuiciis in proximum et inuectionibus sacrum os polluat preter merita domini mei indignationem incurrerim, prorsus ignoro. Porro, cum causa non subsit nec culpa suppetat, forte, ut fieri solet, “Incuciuntd antiqua nouum peccata pudorem”.432

Grauius enim uir bonus uerbis leditur quam uerberibus. Ingenua nimirum ingenia magis uerba timent quam uerbera longeque molestius ferunt famam lacerari quam substantiam distrahi uel dissipari. “Que uiderunt oculi tui ne proferas in iurgio cito, ne postea emendare non possis, cum dehonestaueris amicum tuum.”433 Item in Ecclesiastico: b   in me Wharton; in MS    c  hoc inputem quod tantam ed.; hanc inputem tantam MS    d Incutiunt Wharton; Incuciut MS

429  in ore gladii is a common phrase in the Old Testament: Exod. 17: 13; Num. 21: 24; Deut. 13: 15, 20: 13, and 20: 17; Josh. 6: 21, 10: 30, 10: 32, 10: 35, 10: 37, and 10: 40; Judg. 1: 8, 1: 25, 4: 15, 18: 27, and 20: 37; 1 Kgs. (1 Sam.) 15: 8 and 22: 19; 2 Kgs. (2 Sam.) 15: 14; Judith 7: 17 and 15: 6; 1 Macc. 5: 51; Jer. 21: 7; and in the New Testament, Luke 21: 24. Cf. also Inuect., i. 2 (Davies, p. 92). 430  Gerald discusses Harold’s adoption of the tactic of fighting on foot, his victories in Wales, and the stone monuments recording his triumphs in Descr. Kam., ii. 7 (RS vi. 217). 431  Wisd. 6: 1 (reading uires not uirtus). 432  Adapted from Horace, Epistles, i. 18. 77: ‘incutiant aliena tibi peccata pudorem’, where the context has to do with being careful whom you sponsor in case they cause you embarrassment and shame. Gerald’s adaptation turns it to a new use: apart from removing the subjunctive

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annihilated nearly the whole of that nation at sword-­point,429 giving it over to destruction, the memory of no past age records that any leader or prince has wrought so great a slaughter of a hostile people in a single encounter.430 Therefore, as the Book of Wisdom teaches, “Wisdom is better than force, and a wise man than a strong one”.431 ‘But since evils are always near to the good things of this world, the sweet is always interspersed with bitterness, honey is ever mixed with poison, there is always sadness attached to our happiness, and grief invades even our greatest joys, the clouds and mist of adverse rumour have immediately obscured in my heart the fair weather brought by so bright an occurrence. For I have been told—­something I have not been able to bear calmly—­that I have recently incurred the severe displeasure of my lord, as certain people have concluded from words which you spoke against me less discreetly than befitted either my reputation or your magnificence. And, indeed, I was all the more bothered by this and thought it all the more astonishing, because for the last two years now I have behaved so artlessly and innocently in all things, giving no cause for complaint, entirely absorbed in holy studies and harming no one in the world by my words, my actions, or even my writings. Thus I am totally at a loss to know to what I should ascribe this, that I have incurred such great and unmerited indignation from my lord that he even befouls his sacred mouth with insults and reproaches against his neighbour. Rather, since no reason lies behind it nor does any fault support it, perhaps (as tends to happen), “The sins of old excite a new shame”.432

For a good man is more deeply harmed by words than by blows. Noble characters, indeed, fear words more than blows and are far more ­troubled to see their reputations mutilated than their possessions pillaged or scattered. “Do not hastily make known in an altercation that which your eyes have seen, lest, having disgraced your friend, you are  unable then to put things right”.433 Likewise in Ecclesiasticus:

as he is using it as a main clause, he has substantially adjusted the middle of the line to move away from the ‘sins of another’ to ‘sins of the past’. Gerald’s point is that he has kept himself to himself for the last few years but Hubert is criticizing him for what may have happened in the past. However, in the context of the original, it is difficult to think that Gerald is not also criticizing Hubert for causing unnecessary ‘new shame and embarrassment’ out of past events. For the original of this quotation, see also Moralium dogma philosophorum (ed. Holmberg, p. 58. 17); for discussion, see Introduction, p. lxxxv. 433  Prov. 25: 8.

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RS i. 98

“Mittens lapidem in uolatilia deicit illa et qui conuiciatur amico dissoluit amiciciam”.434 Et paulo post: “Homo assuetus in uerbis improperii in omnibus diebus non erudietur”.435 Super quod expositor: “‘Cuius os’ scilicet ‘maledictione et amaritudine plenum est’436 non prosperabitur”.437 ‘Magnos igitur et magnanimos talia non decent, modicos etiam et pusillos non promouent. Sed, quoniam leporem persequi non est laus magna leoni, ira hec quacumque occasione | concepta, quoniam humiliari paratus sum in omnibus domino meo et, si in aliquo deliqui (cum tamen in nullo, Deum testem inuoco, conscius michi sim),e ad nutum satisfacere, si non dum plene resedit, utinam in breui, Deo dante, resideat et euanescat. Et sicut placabilem tanti pontificis animum atque modestiam decet, indignatio sole oriente exorta ante solem occidat occidentem.438 Quoniam, ut ait Ieronimus: “Irasci quidem hominis est sed iracundie finem inponere Christiani”.439 ‘Verum si, peccatis urgentibus, nondum hanc animi placationem ualeam optinere quam opto, uerbis parcat, in res ac redditus ultrix ira deseuiat, substantiam ad libitum distrahat et famam non ledat. Igitur latitare michi et libris ac litteris quod residuum est dierum absque molestia liceat indulgere. Nimium temporis, unde michi plus dolendum est, ambitioni hactenus et perditioni dedi. Proinde et hanc poete Oracii sententiam, Deo annuente, de cetero sequar:440 “Sit michi quod nunc est, etiam minus, ut michi uiuam Quod superest eui, si quid superesse uolunt dii; Sit michi librorum et prouise frugis in annum | Copia, ne dubie fluitem spe pendulus hore”.441

fo. 179v

 sim Wharton; sum MS

e

434  Eccles. 22: 25 (20). 435  Eccles. 23: 20 (15). 436  In the Septuagint and thus in the Vulgate this is part of Ps. 13 (14): 3, and was quoted from the Septuagint in Rom. 3: 14. It is not in the Hebrew Bible’s version of the psalm, but this verse also occurs elsewhere in the Hebrew as well as in the Septuagint and the Vulgate, at Ps. 9 (10): 7, so the expositor might have been commenting on the Vulgate text of either psalm or Romans, or even Ecclesiasticus. 437  The interlinear Glossa ordinaria to Eccles. 23: 20, reads ‘hereticus cuius os maledictione et amaritudine plenum est’ (i.e. Ps. 13 (14): 3 and Rom. 3: 14, as above). Perhaps Gerald’s copy added the comment ‘non prosperabitur’ to summarize the subsequent passage: ‘veloces pedes eorum ad effundendum sanguinem. Contritio et infelicitas in viis eorum, et viam pacis non cognoverunt’. 438  Cf. Eph. 4: 26. 439 Jerome, Letters, xii (CSEL liv. 42) (adapted).

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“Throwing a rock at birds, one knocks them down; and he who rails against a friend dissolves that friendship”.434 And a little later: “A man accustomed to words of reproach will never learn better, in all the days of his life”.435 On which a commentator writes: “That is, ‘he whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness’436 will not prosper”.437 ‘Therefore, for great and generous men, such things are unsuitable, and for the humble and petty, they bring no advantage. But since chasing a hare brings no great praise to a lion, I sincerely hope that this anger, whatever be its cause, may quickly subside and disappear, by God’s grace, if it has not yet fully subsided, for I am prepared to humble myself in all things before my lord and make whatever satisfaction is commanded, if I have offended in any way (though I myself am aware of none, as God is my witness). And as befits the forgiving heart and moderation of so great a bishop, may the anger born with the sun’s rising set before the sun itself sets.438 For, as Jerome said: “To become angry is human, but to put an end to one’s anger is Christian”.439 ‘But if, due to the weight of my sins, I cannot yet obtain that appeasement of your heart which I wish for, let it be sparing with its words, let avenging anger rage rather against my goods and my rents, let it seize my possessions at will but leave my reputation unharmed. And so let me be allowed to hide and to devote myself untroubled to books and literature for the rest of my days. I have until now devoted too much time to ambition and to my own ruin, which is a source of even greater grief to me. For that reason, I shall henceforth follow these words of the poet Horace, God willing:440 “Let me have what I now have, or even less; and let me live out What remains of my life—­if the gods grant that any remain. Let me have of books and stored-­up corn a good supply To last the year; and may I not live in doubt, hanging on the hope Of an hour which may not come”.441

440  The following run of quotations appears also in Inuect., v. 23 (Davies, p. 203); Spec. eccl., iv. 33 (RS iv. 340–1); and De prin., first preface (OMT 26–9) and i. 13 (OMT 154–5). In Spec. eccl., it is said to be taken from De gestis, but in fact there it more closely matches Inuect. A number of the classical quotations also occur in Moralium dogma philosophorum (ed. Holmberg, pp. 57–9). 441 Horace, Epistles, i. 18. 107–10 with two variations from the now-standard text of Horace: ut mihi for et mihi is the reading in the α group of Horace manuscripts (in about half the early copies) and so the reading is probably derived from Gerald’s copy of Horace; sit mihi for sit bona is a simple repetition from two lines earlier but may also have been in Gerald’s copy.

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182 Et illud Ouidii:

“Crede michi, bene qui latuit bene uixit et infraf Fortunam debet quisque manere suam”.442

Et illud eiusdem: “Vsibus edocto si quicquam credis amico, Viue tibi et longe nomina magna fuge”.443

Et illud Flacci: RS i. 99

“Fuge magna: licet sub paupere tecto Reges et regum uita precurrereg amicos”.444 |

Vnde, si ad digniorem cathedram Anglie uel Francie uacantem canonica iam electione uocarer, nouit Deus—­qui scrutator est cordium et interiorum conscius secretorum,445 quemh grauissimum etiam si mentior ultorem habeam—­quoniam,i ut illam optinerem, sacrarum litterarum studium cui totis nisibus, Deo uires inperciente, deseruio non desererem inperfectum. Maius est enim, ut ait Ieronimus, episcopalem uirum esse quam episcopum, maius episcopio dignum quam in cath­ edra collocatum.446 Illud enim uirtutis est, hoc fortune. Illud bonorum tantum, hoc commune. Vnde in eodem libro epistolari: “Minus est tenere sacerdocium quam mereri”.447 ‘Vt quid igitur uerbis roditur aut conuiciis laceratur qui nec amplius querit nec plus appetit et id etiam modicum quod habet casibus aduersis equanimiter amittit? Iuxta ueterem statum, quo me mundus captiuum tenuit et ambitus eius, multa in me reuera fuisse fateor reprehensione dignissima. Iuxta presentem autem statum, cui me per Dei gratiam nunc applicui, non me quidem a peccato, cum nemo sine crimine uiuat, cum septies eciam in die cadat iustus,448 et quoniam in

f  infra MS; intra Ovid    g praecurrere Brewer (following Horace); precurre MS; all other versions of these verses quoted by Gerald have precurrere.    h quem Wharton; quoniam Brewer; qm’ MS    i quoniam Brewer; tamen Wharton; Qm’ MS

442 Ovid, Tristia, iii. 4. 25–6; Gerald also quotes this passage in four other places: Inuect., v. 23 (Davies, p. 203); De prin., first pref. (OMT 26–7), i. 13 (OMT 155–6), where in both cases et infra is part of the quotation rather than the linking phrase; and Spec. eccl., iv. 33 (RS iv. 340). All five instances read infra for Ovid’s intra, and this reading is retained here as it may have been in Gerald’s copy or source. That reading is also in one of the manuscripts of the Tristia (BAV MS Pal. lat. 1668); see Ovid, Tristia, ed. Luck, ii. 187. 443 Ovid, Tristia, iii. 4. 3–4. 444 Horace, Epistles, i. 10. 32–3; see Moralium dogma philosophorum (ed. Holmberg, p. 56. 12–13).

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And these of Ovid: “Believe me, he who has remained well hidden has lived well, And every man should be happy with his lot”.442

And these, from the same poet: “If you’ll trust at all a friend who has learned from experience, Live for yourself, and stay well away from celebrities”.443

And these, from Flaccus: “Stay away from greatness: beneath a poor man’s roof You can live a better life than kings and friends of kings”.444

Therefore if I were called now by canonical election to a vacant see of higher status in England or in France, God knows—­he who searches our hearts and knows our innermost secrets, and who shall be my fiercest punisher if I lie445—that I would not, to obtain it, abandon incomplete the study of Holy Writ to which, for as long as God gives me strength, I devote all my efforts. For it is greater, as Jerome said, to be a man suitable to be a bishop than to be one; better to be worthy of a bishopric than to be placed upon its throne.446 For the former reflects one’s virtue, the latter only one’s luck. The former is something characteristic only of good men, the latter open to all. Wherefore in the same book of his letters: “Holding the priesthood is a lesser thing than deserving it.”447 ‘Why, therefore, is one who seeks nothing further, desires nothing more, and calmly loses to adverse chance even that little which he has, so gnawed by others’ words and mangled by their insults? In my former condition, when the world and its desires held me captive, I confess that many things in me were indeed most worthy of rebuke. In the present condition to which now, by God’s grace, I have devoted myself, I would not say, indeed, that I am untouched by sin, since no o­ ne lives without transgressing, even the just man falls seven times each day,448 and we all offend in many things. But I confidently assert and declare with certain truth that I do not remember being aware of any fault so outrageous, so notorious, that I should have so deeply offended so 445  On this phrasing, see above ii. 18, n. 380. 446  Cf. Jerome, Letters, xiv. 9 (CSEL liv. 57–8): ‘Non omnes episcopi episcopi. Adtendis Petrum, sed et Iudam considera. [ . . . ] Non facit ecclesiastica dignitas Christianum’. The previous section, xiv. 8 (CSEL liv. 56), enumerates the qualities required of a bishop. Gerald repeats these tags in Inuect., v. 14 (Davies, p. 193); De iure, vii (RS iii. 337); and Spec. eccl., iv. 33 (RS iv. 341). 447 Jerome, Letters, xlviii (xlix). 4 (CSEL liv. 349). 448  Prov. 24: 16.

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multis offendimus omnes, inmunem dixerim. Hoc tamen fiducialiter assero et secura ueritate protestor, quod nullius tam enormis, tam notabilis excessus, unde tantam maiestatem in tantum offendere debuerim, me conscium esse recordor. Secundum hunc itaque statum, cum sibi sit sane mentis quilibet plus quam alii notus—­si bene noui “notisolitos”449—michi subtilius et diligentius in me cuncta rimanti huius tante causa culpe nequit occurrere, nisi propter id fuero culpandus, quia uehementi sacre doctrine studio datus. Ambiant igitur alii, curiam sequantur, sicut et ego quandoque uitio laborans eodem curie sequela fui, quamquam inutilis. Cupiant, inquam, et currant et cath­ edras scandant;450 michi solum latere liceat et sacris | apicibus indulgere, in quorum doctrina non solum morari uerum etiam salubriter mori desiderabile duxi.451 Preterea, quamquam “principibus placuisse uiris non ultima laus sit”,452 satius tamen et longe satius esset potentis amici nunquam noticiam habuisse quam ab eiusdem familiaritate semel habita facile et preter merita decidisse. Vnde Demetrius: “Non opto ut eos qui diuites sunt amicos habeam”.453 Item Horacius: “Dulcis inexpertis cultura potentis amici; Expertus metues”.454

Item in Ecclesiastico: “Longe abesto ab homine potestatem habente”.455 Et in eodem: “Pondus super se extollit qui honestiori se communicat et ditiori te ne socius fueris. Quid communicabit cacabus ad ollam? Quando enim se colliserint confringetur.j Diues iniuste egit et fremebit. Pauper autem etiam lesus tacebit. Si largus fueris, assumet te; et si non

 confringetur ed. (following Vulgate); confringentur MS

j

449 A deformation of the Delphic injunction γνῶθι σεαυτόν, which appears in Juvenal, Satires, xi. 27; and in Macrobius, Somnium Scipionis, i. 9. 1 and Saturnalia, i. 6. 6. Misreading of Α as Λ led to a variety of forms in twelfth-century Latin writers. John of Salisbury, Policraticus, iii. 2 (ed. Keats-Rohan, p. 176) writes ‘noti seliton’. The manuscripts of Hugh of St Victor, Didascalicon, i. 1 (ed. Buttimer, p. 4) read ‘tnoti celicon’. ‘-liton’ led in turn to confusion with λίθος: see Bischoff, ‘Das Griechische Element in der abendländischen Bildung des Mittelalters’, pp. 53–4. Alain of Lille writes ‘notys elittos’ (Alain de Lille: textes inédits (ed. M.-Th. d’Alverny, p. 259) and ‘Nothis elitos’ (ibid., p. 267). Bernard Silvestris, Commentum super Sex Libros Eneidos Virgilii (ed. Jones and Jones, p. 3), writes ‘nothis elitos’. By the end of the Middle Ages the form ending in ‘s’ dominates. A seal of Raoul de Reims used in 1213 bears the motto ‘O Radulfe Noti Selitos’ (Archives nationales de France, J 232 n° 1 and J 232 n° 2 (I)). The editio princeps of the Policraticus (Brussels, 1476 or 1479 × 1480 (variously dated)) prints ‘gnothosolitos’. In the fifteenth century, Arnold Gheyloven entitled a work Gnotosolitos (see Arnoldi  Gheyloven  Roterodami Gnotosolitos parvus, ed. Weiler, pp.  xxi–xxii on the title). On the history of the sentiment and the slogan, see Courcelle, Connais-toi toi-même de Socrate à saint Bernard.

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great an eminence. So in this latter condition, since any man of sound mind knows himself better than another knows him—­if I have properly understood the injunction “Know thyself ”449—I examine everything about myself minutely and carefully but can find no cause for so great an offence as this, unless I should be faulted for this: that I have devoted myself to an intense study of theology. Let others, therefore, be ambitious and follow the court, just as I too was formerly a court-­ follower, struggling under the same vice, though to no end. Let them chase after their desires, I say, and clamber onto their bishops’ thrones;450 only allow me to stay hidden and devote myself to Holy Scripture. And I have decided that not only spending my days in this learning, but ending my days in it, for the good of my soul, would be welcome.451 Moreover, though “pleasing those in charge is not the lowest glory”,452 it would be better—­indeed far better—­never to have had the acquaintance of a powerful friend, than to have fallen readily and undeservedly from his friendship once possessed. Wherefore Demetrius said: “I do not wish to have rich men as friends”.453 Likewise, Horace: “Pleasant seems the attention of a powerful friend To those who have not had it; once you’ve had it You’ll fear it instead”.454

And in Ecclesiasticus: “Stay far from a man who wields power”.455 And in the same book: “He who associates with someone of higher status takes a burden upon himself. Do not mix with those richer than yourself. How can the earthen pot associate with the kettle? For when they strike one another it will be broken. If a rich man has acted unjustly, still he will complain; but a poor man will stay silent even when wronged. If you are generous, he will take you as a companion; and if you have nothing, he will abandon you. If you have anything, he

450 Cf. Inuect., v. 23 (Davies, p. 203) where the same sentiment is expressed, but without the references to Gerald’s own position: ‘Ambiant igitur alii, cupiant et currant et curiis adherendo cathedras scandant’. The translation treats cupiant and currant as a hendiadys. 451  Cf. above, iii. 3, for the same thought. Note the word-play on morari and mori. 452 Horace, Epistles, i. 17. 35; see Moralium dogma philosophorum (ed. Holmberg, p. 59. 12). 453  Perhaps from Ps-Caecilius Balbus, De nugis philosophorum (ed. E. Wölfflin, p. 40). 454 Horace, Epistles, i. 18. 86–7 (reading metuet not metues); see Moralium dogma philoso­ phorum (ed. Holmberg, p. 58. 3–4). 455  Eccles. 9: 18 (13) (omitting occidendi).

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habueris, derelinquet te. Si habes, conuiuet tecum et euacuabit te et ipse non dolebit super te”.456 Et paulo post: “Aduocatus a potentiore, discede. Ex hoc enim magis te aduocabit”.457 Item Ieronimus: “Potentes amicos habere operosum est; satis inimicos non habere”.458 ‘Vtinam autem et hoc michi detur, quod, si dominum meum amicum, ut solet, habere non possim, saltem non | habeam inimicum. Vices ergo potentum et uexationes satis olim et plus quam satis expertus, sic apud illos esse nunc cupio quasi non essem, tanquam exinanitus scilicet et incognitus, necl bonum ab illis sperans nec malum expectans. Det itaque pius pater et misericors Deus quatinus preteriti iacturam temporis redimendo utcumque et deflendo procul a curie curis et ambitionibus (que semper corda sauciant et numquam saciant, numquam sanant) popularique strepitu cuncto dulci quiete modicum id quodm restat eui ducere queam et alternis | sacre lectionis et orationis uicibus animum diuidens et distinguens ad illam toto cursu uitam hanelem ubi nec uices uariant nec uicia uexant, ubi nec prelatio premit nec dominatio domat aut dampnat, ubi quies et pax perpetua ac lux continua, ubi gaudia uera turbationis omnis ac tristicie nescia et finis ignara. ‘Valeat in Domino multis profutura per euum et paucis nocitura pia et placabilis Paternitas Vestra, illi egregio Maronis ad Mecenatem eulogio se conformans: k

fo. 180r

RS i. 101

“Omnia cum posses tanto tam clarus amico, Te sensit nemo posse nocere tamen”.’459

[ III . 6]  HV BE RT I C A NTVARIENS IS A RC HI E PI SC O PI R E S P ONS IO.a 460 ‘⟨H⟩ubertus Dei gratia Cantuariensis archiepiscopus, tocius Anglie primas, dilecto filio magistro Giraldo, archidiacono de Sancto Dauid, salutem et benedictionem. k  derelinquet ed. (following Vulgate); derelinquit MS, it seems; derelinquent Brewer     nec Wharton; et MS    m  id quod Wharton; id MS

l

  ⟨D⟩e Huberti Cantuariensis archiepiscopi responsione. table of contents

a

456  Eccles. 13: 2–6 (2–5). 457  Eccles. 13: 12 (9). 458  Cf. Seneca, Epist. morales, xiv. 7: ‘Hos omnes amicos habere operosum est, satis est inimicos non habere’. Also cited as Jerome in De prin., first pref. (OMT 28–9). 459 Ps-Vergil, Elegy for Maecenas, i. 15–16 (reading carus for clarus); the amico to whom Maecenas was carus was Augustus.

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will live with you and leave you bare, and he will not be sorry for you”.456 And a little afterwards: “If you are invited by someone more powerful, leave, for on that account he will invite you more”.457 Likewise, Jerome: “Having powerful people as friends is hard work; it is enough not to have them as enemies”.458 ‘But would that even this be granted to me: that if I cannot have my lord as my friend, as often happens, at least I may not have him as my enemy. Therefore, having experienced enough (and more than enough) the vicissitudes and vexations of the powerful, I now wish to seem to them as though I did not exist, as though, that is, I were empty and unknown, neither hoping for any good from them, nor anticipating any evil. So may you, pious father, and a merciful God grant that I, making up (to some extent) for the time I once wasted and mourning its loss, may be able to spend what little remains of my life in pleasant peace, far from the court’s cares and ambitions (which ever wound the heart and never satisfy or heal it), far from all popular hubbub; and that, dividing my spirit between reading scripture and praying, I may ardently desire evermore a life in which there are no varying vicissitudes, no vexing vices, where no prelacy presses and no lordly coercion subdues or condemns, where there is calm and perpetual peace and everlasting light, where there are true joys which know no worry or sadness, and know no end. ‘And may your Pious and forgiving Paternity prosper in the Lord, benefitting many for a long time to come and harming few, matching Maro’s admirable elegy for Maecenas: “Though you could do anything, being so famous, with so great a friend, Yet no ­one felt you could do any harm”.’459

[ III. 6]  T HE R E SPO NSE OF HUBERT, A RC HBI SHO P O F C A N T ERBURY.460 ‘Hubert, by God’s grace archbishop of Canterbury and primate of all England, sends his greetings and his blessings to his beloved son Master Gerald, archdeacon of St Davids. ‘You credited us with the destruction of the Welsh who fell the other day through their own pride, though in truth their destruction ought to 460  English Episcopal Acta 3, Canterbury 1193–1205, ed. Cheney and John, no. 353, dates this letter to ‘late 1198’. It is clearly after, but not very long after, the battle at Painscastle, given the phrase ‘the other day’, die altera, although Gerald’s letter, to which Hubert is replying, was also written soon after Painscastle, but also probably after Hubert had been presented with the list of four nominees and had made disparaging remarks about Gerald, and that was in September before Michaelmas. The letter, therefore, does not date before October.

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RS i. 102

‘Ascripsisti nobis destructionem Walensium qui die altera per suam superbiam ceciderunt, cum non nobis sed Deo pocius, qui superbos deicit et humiliat,461 eorum sit destructio asscribenda. Tantum enim obscuratum erat per superbiam insipiens cor eorum ut, cum plurimum et instanter quod a proposito suo desisterent et uiam eligerent saniorem a nobis et ab aliis magni nominis uiris et religiosis rogati fuissent et comoniti, nec consilium salutis intelligere nec suam possent stulticiam, que eos ad perditionem trahebat, preuidere. Et ex hoc quidem, quod manus solius Dei et non nostra siue alterius hominis hec operata sit, poteris euidenter attendere et intelligere quod, cum ibi conflictus esset et congressio, hasta uel arcus eorum non potuit quemquam ex nostris letaliter uulnerare. ‘Super hoc uero quod | dicis, quia sacris litteris intendis et de cetero omnino intendere decreuisti, ualde te commendamus, attendentes ex hoc quod tucius iudicas et intelligis sedere et audire uerbum Dei cum Maria quam ministrare cum Martha.462 Ad hoc autem, quod asseris te nullum lesisse nec ut ab aliquob ledereris et inproperium sustinereris promeruisse, respondemus quod tu nosti an id feceris quod te dicis non fecisse. Nos uero nec inde te acusamus nec tibi uel alicui alii, in quantum meminimus, succensemus. Valete.’ ⟨H⟩anc autem clausulam propter abbatem prenotatum per operam archidiaconi nuper (ut dictum est) depositum adiecit, per quam animi rancorem et conceptam amaritudinem declarauit.

[ III. 7]  L I T T E R E A RC HIDIACONI DE R ATO463 A RC HI E PI SC OP O MIS S E.a ‘⟨Q⟩uoniam morbo diutino et graui nuper afflictus et ricidiuum iterato iam passus nondum plene sanitatis uigore conualui, ad diem nobis in presentia uestra comparendib prefixum uenire non potui. Verum ne unius absentia tantam utilitatem et ecclesie nostre uacantis necessitatem inpedire preualeat, in quamcumque personam ydoneam assensu

  ⟨D⟩e litteris archidiaconi de rato archiepiscopo directis. table of contents     comparendi Wharton; comparandi MS, perhaps corrected to comparendi   ut ab aliquo ed.; aliquem ut ab MS; aliquantum ut ab alio Wharton and Brewer

b

a

b

461  Cf. Luke 1: 52. 462  Luke 10: 38–42.

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be ascribed not to us but to God, who casts down and humbles the proud.461 For so darkened were their foolish hearts by pride that, though often and urgently asked and warned by us and by other men of great fame and piety to refrain from their intentions and choose a sounder path, they could neither understand this salutary counsel nor foresee that their foolishness was dragging them to their ruin. And indeed, from the fact that these things were done by the hand of God alone and not by our hand or that of any other man, you can clearly anticipate and will understand that, when the clash and battle happened there, their spears and bows were unable to wound fatally any of our men. ‘But as to your saying that you are applying yourself to Holy Writ and have decided henceforth to apply your energies wholly in that direction, we strongly approve, and consider from this that you judge and understand it to be safer to sit and hear the word of God like Mary than be occupied in serving him like Martha.462 Now as to your maintaining that you have harmed no o­ ne and have not deserved to be harmed or insulted by anyone, we answer that you know whether you have done what you say you have not done. We, however, neither accuse you of this nor are we angry with you or with anyone else, as far as we recall. Farewell.’ He added this closing remark on account of the afore­mentioned abbot, who had recently been deposed at the archdeacon’s instigation (as has been said), and with these words made clear the animosity he harboured and the bitterness he had conceived.

[ III. 7 ]   A L E T T E R O F R AT IFICATION463 SE N T BY T H E A RC H D E ACON TO THE A RC H BI SH O P. ‘Since I have lately been afflicted with a long and severe illness, have now suffered another relapse, and have not yet fully recovered my strength of health, I was not able to come on the day which had been set for us to appear in your presence. But in order that the absence of a single person may not have the effect of obstructing work of such bene­fit and the needs of our vacant church, may Your Holiness know that I will certainly consider valid and acceptable any suitable person whom our chapter of St Davids has agreed upon by canonical election 463  A letter of ratification, however, only in the sense that, within the field of persone ydonee Gerald specifies, he will agree to the chapter’s choice.

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RS i. 103

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domini re|gis et uestro capitulum nostrum Meneuense canonica electione consenserit, me proculdubio ratum et gratum Vestra nouerit Sanctitas habiturum. Personam autem ydoneam dicimus si, concurrentibus aliis que pontificem decent, paupertati patrie pia et pura uoluntate condescendat et gentis utriusque mores ac modos agnoscat;464 queque pastorali officio pontificaliter intendat et non per Anglie girum in ecclesie nostre olim autentice, licet nunc paupercule, obprobrium non | modicum et confusionem assidue mendicando discurrat; et que ad Anglicanas etiam opulentias per translationemc uel adiectionem iugiter aspirare uile et contemptibile ducat. Excipimus autem omnem nigre cuculle beluam. A monachis enim cunctis et precipue nigris omnique huiuscemodi peste uoraci ecclesiam nostram miseram, ne miserior immo miserima fiat et funditus euacuata depereat, inperpetuum amodo defendat Deus. “Iniuriose nimirum”. ut ait Ieronimus, “Neptunum acusat qui iterum naufragium fecit”.465 Valeat in Domino cara nobis Paternitas Vestra.’ ⟨Q⟩uoniam enimuero episcopus qui nunc ultimo decessit monachus fuerat ordinis Cluniacensis466 nec episcopalem auctoritatem pontificaliter exercuerat nec monachalem honestatem digne pretulerat, monachos omnes et precipue ordinis illius cunctos excepit. ⟨Q⟩ui uero litteras domini archidiaconi contra Willelmum Wibertum abbati Cisterciensid missas et litteras responsorias legere uoluerit, qui Simbolum Electorum467 inscribitur libellum querat. Sed ad rem reuertamur. ⟨S⟩icut autem archidiaconum, sic et abbates duos necnon et omnes de Wallia oriundos archiepiscopus tunc recusauit. Obtulit autem eis Anglicos duos: monachum scilicet Cisterciensis ordinis, Alexandrum nomine, qui et comensalis et cubicularius eius fuerat et per operam ipsius in abbatem paulo ante promotus;468 et priorem Lantonie, Galfridum, qui propter artem medicinalem qua precellebat cum archiepiscopo, cuius curam frequenter agebat, et familiaritatem multam contraxerat, propter quod etiam custodia Meneuensise episcopatus dum uacaret

c  tranlationem MS    MS

 Cisterciensi Wharton; cisterciensis MS    e meneueuensis

d

464  gentis utriusque implies that Gerald here conceives of the Normans, Flemings, and English as a single people, contrasted with the Welsh. 465  Probably Publilius Syrus (see Reynolds, Texts and Transmission, pp. 327–9), quoted by Macrobius, Saturnalia, ii. 7. 11 and others. Gerald perhaps took it from the Florilegium Angelicum: see, e.g., BAV MS Pal. lat. 957, fo. 100v. 466  Again, specifically Cluniac rather than Benedictine; cf. above, i. 11, n. 262.

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with the agreement of the lord king and yourself. By a suitable person we mean one who, in addition to the other things which befit a bishop, condescends with pious and pure goodwill to the poverty of our country; who is acquainted with the customs and habits of both peoples;464 who devotes himself, as suits a bishop, to his pastoral duties; who does not constantly scurry begging around England, to the great disgrace and shame of our church, which, though now poor, had once such authority; and who also considers it foul and despicable endlessly to long for English riches, through translation or through adding them to what he already has. We except, however, any black-­cowled monster. For may God ever henceforth defend our poor church from all monks, especially from black ones, and from every devouring pestilence of this kind, lest it become poorer still, nay rather as poor as can be, and be utterly emptied out and perish. “Wrongly indeed”, as Jerome says, “does he blame Neptune who has suffered a second shipwreck”.465 May Your Paternity, who is so dear to us, fare well in the Lord.’ For since the bishop who had now most recently died had indeed been a monk of the Cluniac order466 and had neither exercised his episcopal authority in the way a bishop ought nor worthily displayed the integrity of a monk, he excepted all monks and especially any of that order. Let anyone who wishes to read the letter of the lord archdeacon to a Cistercian abbot against William Wibert and the letters sent in reply look for the book entitled Symbolum electorum.467 But let us return to the matter in hand. Now the archbishop, just as he then rejected the archdeacon, also rejected the two abbots, and indeed all those born in Wales. He offered them, however, two Englishmen: a monk of the Cistercian order named Alexander, who was both his dining companion and his chamberlain and who had been, on the archbishop’s initiative, promoted to abbot shortly before;468 and Geoffrey, prior of Llanthony, who had also become, on account of his skill in the art of medicine, a close friend of the archbishop, whom he often treated. For this reason, too, the archbishop afterwards entrusted the custody of the bishopric of St Davids to him when it was vacant. But since the canons who had been sent did not wish to abandon their own nominees or to accept the new nominees without their chapter’s agreement, and since they were unsure of the

467  Symb. el., i. 1–6 and 28 (RS i. 203–18 and 291–307); cf. also Knowles, ‘Some monastic enemies of Gerald of Wales’, pp. 138–9. 468  Alexander was abbot of Meaux (1197–1210), previously a monk of Ford.

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RS i. 104

fo. 181r

RS i. 105

de g e s t i s gi r a l di, i i i

eidem postea per archiepiscopum commissa fuerat. Sed quoniam canonici qui missi fuerant nec a suis nominatis discedere neque nouos citra capituli sui consensum admittere uolebant neque de regis assensu, qui in Normannia fuerat, (sine quo negotium, iuxta | regni consuetudinem, perfici non poterat) eis constabat, archiepiscopo per mandatum regis ad ipsum transfretante, infecto negotio, reuersi sunt. ⟨A⟩udiens autem hec Reginaldus Foliot, qui Herefordensis episcopi Willelmi de Ver notarius erat, et se (preter spem omnem) inter alios nominatum et Giraldum archidiaconum (de quo spes maior extiterat) sicut et alios omnes de Wallia oriundos recusatum, quoniam et Anglicus erat et tamen Meneuensis ecclesie canonicus—­utpote quem auuncu­ lus eius, scilicet proximo defunctus episcopus, canonicauerat—­ex hiis omnibus spem concipiens et, licet inberbis adhuc et immaturus et in nullo prorsus ad hoc ydoneus, iam cornua sumens469 uel in breui sumenda nimis presumptuose confidens, ad regem Anglie Ricardum in Aquitanie finibus tunc agentem, ut clericus eius et curie sequela fieret et hac saltem uia et hac scala cathedram auunculi scandere posset, alis ambitiosis transuolauit. ⟨A⟩d hec etiam | abbas Adam de Dora, uir fame non incognite, statim defuncto episcopo predicto statimque post stragem illam Walensium apud Eleuein magnam, que circa id ipsum temporis facta fuerat, ut quasi recentes regi super hoc rumores ferret et eo ipso ei gratus existeret, cum litteris magnorum uirorum et baronum Marchie propter eius promotionem in ecclesia Meneuensi regi scribentium et suadentium transfretauit.470 Qui ut regi, quem cupidum et pecunie sitibundum nouerat, per hoc placere et faciliorem ad uota complendum aditum habere posset, siluam Triuerensem domui sue proximam,471 que regum foresta fuerat pulcra quidem et preclara et tam proceris arboribus ad spectaculum usque speciosa quam etiam ferarum copia fecundissima, a rege, loci illius atque prouintie prorsus ignaro, ad extirpandum, data pecunia grandi, comparauit. Vnde, nisi rex ille citius in transmarinis occubuisset, presertim quia facilis erat et preceps ad | queuis pro libitu complendum et precipue indignos promouendum, magna proculdubio Meneuensi ecclesie per duorum istorum ambitiones et altercationes tribulatio prouenisset. ⟨A⟩rchiepiscopus autem, quamquam in transmarinis partibus remotus 469  Cf. Ovid, Tristia, iv. 9. 27–8, nondum cornua sumpsi / nec mihi sumendi causa sit ulla uelim ‘I have not yet taken up arms, and I wish I had no cause to take them up’ (with a reference to a bull in an arena). Gerald takes Ovid’s martial image of ‘taking up horns’ and punningly applies it to the twin horns of a bishop’s mitre as well. 470  See Knowles, ‘Some monastic enemies of Gerald of Wales’, pp. 140–1.

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assent of the king, then in Normandy, (without which, according to the custom of the realm, the business could not be completed) the archbishop by the king’s command crossed to see him and the canons returned home with the business unfinished. Reginald Foliot, a secretary of William de Vere, bishop of Hereford, heard of these things, heard that he had (contrary to all expectation) been nominated along with the others, and heard that Archdeacon Gerald (for whom there had been higher expectations) had been rejected along with all the others born in Wales. And since he was both an Englishman and nevertheless a canon of St Davids—­seeing as his uncle, the late bishop, had given him a canonry—­he took hope from all these things and, though still beardless, immature, and in no way suitable for a bishopric, already took up horns469 or trusted, with excessive presumption, that he shortly would. He flew on wings of ambition to Richard, king of England, who was then busy in the land of Aquitaine, to become his cleric and a follower of his court, so that by this route, at least, and by this ladder, he might climb up onto his uncle’s seat. On this, too, Abbot Adam of Dore, a man of no small reputation, crossed the sea immediately after the said bishop’s death—­and immediately after that great slaughter of the Welsh in Elfael, which happened at around that same time—­as though to carry the latest news on the matter to the king and thereby gain his favour, but in truth to carry letters from the chief men and barons of the March, writing to urge upon the king Adam’s own promotion to the church of St Davids.470 And so that he might thereby please the king, whom he knew to be greedy and craving money, and pave the way to fulfilling his own desires, Adam bought, in order to raze it, the wood at Treville471 near his own house, which had indeed been a beautiful and splendid royal forest, made a truly magnificent sight by its noble trees and extremely fertile in its abundance of game, from the king for a large sum of money, for the king knew nothing at all of the place or of that province. And so, if that king had not soon after died while overseas, great trouble would doubtless have arisen for the church of St Davids through the ambitions and arguments of those two men, especially as the king was easily swayed and hasty in carrying out whatever he felt like, and especially in promoting undeserving men. The archbishop, however, though far away across the sea, was nevertheless greatly afraid concerning the said nomination and, on his guard and looking out for 471  Treville Forest, north-east of Abbey Dore, Herefordshire.

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existens, propter nominationem tamen predictam plurimum timens sibique precauens et prospiciens litteras regis capitulo Sancti Dauid sub hac forma mitti procurauit.

[ I I I . 8]  L I T T E R E R E GIS RICARDI C API T V L O ME NE V E NS I DIRECTE.

RS i. 106

‘⟨R⟩icardus, Dei gratia rex Anglie, dux Normannie et Aquitanie, comes Andegauie, dilectis sibi capitulo Meneuensis ecclesie salutem. ‘Sciatis quod bonum animum et bonam uoluntatem habemus consulendi ecclesie uestre, que pastore desolata est. Vnde ad petitionem domini Cantuariensis archiepiscopi ei secundum Deum prouidere uolumus. Et ideo uobis mandamus quod mittatis ad nos in Normanniama quattuor de discretioribus capituli uestri, ita quod sint ad nos in xv die post festum Sancti Andree472 cum litteris de rato ad eligendum ydoneum pastorem secundum Deum et dignitatem ecclesie uestre. Teste me ipso apud Rupem Andeleie nono die Nouembris.’ ⟨S⟩ed, quoniam hee littere propter inpedimenta plurima, tam maris scilicet quam Marchie et asperioris per Walliam uie, tardius Meneuiam uenerunt, eodem procurante et stimulante, litteras iusticiarii tales canonici Meneuenses circa Natale susceperunt. |

[ III. 9]  L I T T E R E I V ST I CIARII ANGLIE C API T V L O ME NE V E NS I DIRECTE. ‘⟨G⟩alfridus filius Petri dilecto sibi in Domino Meneuensis ecclesie capitulo salutem. ‘Noueritis quod, quoniam ad dominum regem in Normanniama ad statutum terminum propter eligendum pastorem ecclesie uestre non transfretastis, nobis dedit in mandatis quod uos citari faciamus quatinus ad hoc faciendum in partes transmarinas ad eum accedatis. Mandamus itaque uobis quod, omni occasione postposita, sitis apud Westmonasterium

 normann’ MS; Normanniam Wharton and Brewer  norma’ MS; Normannia Wharton and Brewer

a a

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his own interests, arranged for a letter to be sent from the king to the chapter of St Davids in the following form.

[ III. 8 ]   A LE T T E R SE NT BY K ING RICHARD TO TH E C H A PT E R O F ST DAVIDS. ‘Richard, by God’s grace king of England, duke of Normandy and Aquitaine, and count of Anjou, greets his beloved chapter of St Davids. ‘Know that we are well disposed and willing to take thought for your church, bereft of a pastor. Wherefore we wish, on the petition of the lord archbishop of Canterbury, to provide for it in accordance with God’s will. And therefore we command you to send to us in Normandy four of the wiser men of your chapter, so as to be with us on the ­fifteenth day after the feast of St Andrew,472 bringing with them letters of authority to elect a suitable pastor in accordance with God’s will and the honour of your church. Witnessed by myself at the Rock of Andelys on the ninth day of November.’ But since this letter came too late to St Davids, on account of many hindrances at sea and in the March and of the rough roads through Wales, the canons of St Davids received the following letter around Christmas from the justiciar, once more at the archbishop’s instance and prompting.

[ III. 9 ]   A L E T T E R SE NT BY THE JUS TICIAR OF E NG L A N D TO T HE C HAP TER OF ST   DAV I D S. ‘Geoffrey fitz Peter sends greetings to the chapter of the church of St Davids, beloved to him in the Lord. ‘Know that, since you did not cross the sea to the lord king in Normandy at the appointed time to elect a pastor for your church, he has commanded that we cause you to be summoned to go to him across the sea, in order to do this. Therefore we order you to set aside any

472  14 December 1198 (i.e. an inclusively counted quindene after 30 November). Butler (Autobiography, p. 150) counting exclusively has 15 December.

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fo. 181v

de g e s t i s gi r a l di, i i i

in octabas Sancti Hylarii473 parati transfretare ad dominum regem uel quattuor siue sex de discretioribus capituli uestri ad ipsum in Normanniamb transmittere. Teste me ipso apud turrim Londoniensem xviiic die Decembris.’ ⟨I⟩lli uero, super hoc inito consilio, quattuor canonichos Londonias miserunt, mandantes etiam Giraldo archidiacono litteris et nunci|is apud Lincolniam eumque per fidem quam ecclesie sue debuit firmiter obtestantes et adiurantes quatinus concanonicis suis ad iusticiarium missis Londoniis occurreret et ecclesie sue in tali articulo tantoque negotio saltem non deesset. ⟨P⟩rius tamen litteras ei tales miserunt.

[ III. 1 0]  L I T T E R E C A PI T VLI M ENEVENS IS G I R A L DO DI RECTE.

RS i. 107

‘⟨D⟩omino et amico in Christo dilecto Giraldo, archidiacono de Brecheniauc, capitulum Meneuensis ecclesie salutem in Domino. ‘Hucusque per litteras et inter|nuntios locuti fuimus; amodo autem nos urget necessitas ut presentes loquamur, ut, communicato consilio, ecclesie nostre profectui pariter et honori intendamus. Inde est quod uobis mandamus et in fide consulimus quatinus, statim uisis litteris istis, omni occasione et excusatione postposita, ad ecclesiam uestram ueniatis. Consilium etiam omnium amicorum uestrorum est ut ueniatis. Valete in Domino.’ Item et paulo post tales: ‘⟨D⟩ilecto in Domino fratri et amico Giraldo, archidiacono de Brecheniauc, capitulum Meneuensis ecclesie salutem et amorem caritatis glutino connexum. ‘Nouerit Discretio Vestra quod xii Kalendas Ianuarii, quaa uidelicet die litteras uestras suscepimus, mandatum domini regis in hac forma suscepimus: “⟨R⟩icardus Dei gratia” ’ (et cetera, ut paulo ante). ‘Item litteras iusticiarii Anglie circa Natale tales: “Galfridus filius Petri” ’ (et cetera, ut ante). ‘⟨S⟩uper huiusmodi mandato tam expresso quid nobis agendum sit amodo consilium uestrum expectamus. Consilium nostrum namque est (si uobis expedire uidebitur), ne nimis Walenses

b  normann’ MS; Normanniam Wharton and Brewer    c .xvii. corrected with different ink to .xviii. MS, it seems

 qua Wharton; quas MS

a

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excuse and to be at Westminster on the octave of St Hilary,473 prepared to cross the sea to the lord king or to send to him in Normandy four or six of the wiser men of your chapter. Witnessed by myself at the Tower of London on the eighteenth day of December.’ Now they, taking counsel on the matter, sent four canons to London and also sent letters and messengers to Archdeacon Gerald in Lincoln, strongly entreating and adjuring him, by the allegiance he owed his church, to hurry to London to meet his fellow canons who had been sent to the justiciar, and at least to be present and not fail his church at so critical a moment and in such important business. But first they sent him letters in the following form.

[ III. 1 0 ]   A L E T T E R SE N T BY THE CHAP TER O F ST DAV I D S TO G ERALD. ‘The chapter of the church of St Davids sends greetings in the Lord to our beloved lord and friend in Christ, Gerald, archdeacon of Brecon. ‘Up until now we have spoken through letters and intermediaries, but henceforth necessity presses us to speak in person, so that we may exchange counsel and strive for the profit of our church and for its honour. It is for this reason that we direct and counsel you, on your fealty, to come to your church as soon as you have seen this letter, setting aside all pretexts and excuses. The advice of all your friends, too, is that you should come. Farewell in the Lord.’ And little later, likewise, in the following form: ‘The chapter of the church of St Davids sends its greetings and its love, joined by the bond of charity, to its brother and friend Gerald, archdeacon of Brecon, beloved in the Lord. ‘May Your Discretion know that on the twenty-­first of December, the day, that is, on which we received your letter, we received a command from our lord the king in this form: “Richard, by the grace of God” ’, (and so forth in the form just above). ‘Likewise, around Christmas, a letter from the justiciar of England, in the following form: “Geoffrey FitzPeter” ’, (and so forth as above). ‘We now await your advice on what we ought to do about so explicit a command. Our own opinion, however, (if it seems suitable to you) is that we ought, in order

473  20 January 1199.

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RS i. 108

fo. 182r

de g e s t i s gi r a l di, i i i

aut rebelles uideamur,474 mittere ad dominum regem tres de discretioribus capituli uobiscum, ut pro quarto existatis, tres quidem cum litteris de rato qui uos constanter petant et eligant. Si uero dominus rex aliquomodo (quod absit) in hoc non consenserit, et sciatis pro certo quod neque scismata neque dissensiones orte sunt inter nos sed omnes concordes sumus et unanimes (quantum in nobis est) ad uos eligendum nichilque nobis deest nisi expensarum facultas. Preces autem et petitiones siue ad dominum regem siue ad iusticiarium, qualescumque ydoneas noueritis, ad nos transmittite et nos easdem sigillabimus. ‘Valete et faciatis nos habere responsum consilii uestri in crastino Sancti Hylarii,475 quia tunc, Deo uolente, generale capitulum habituri sumus.’ | ⟨E⟩x hiis autem litteris patet quantum affectum ipsum pre ceteris habendi in pastorem tunc habebant. ⟨I⟩pse uero hec audiens et secum recolens quia non minus ecclesie paupercule sue debuit quam si canonicus et archidiaconus esset opime, ad diem statutum, parum scili­ cet ante Quadragesimam,476 Londonias accessit. ⟨I⟩usticiarius autem canonicis qui ante aduentum archidiaconi coram ipso fuerant obtulit instanter duos illos, abbatem scilicet et priorem, quos archiepiscopus eis primitus optulerat, ut utrum illorum uellent in episcopum sussciperent. Pronior tamen uoluntas eius in priorem erat. Alioquin precepit eis quatinus ad regem quantocius transfretarent. Ipsi uero responsum usque ad aduentum archidiaconi differentes demum, inito cum ipso consilio, responderunt quod a suis nominatis discedere uel alios suscipere consilium a capitulo suo non habe|bant et, quia pauperes erant et de paupere terra ac remota, sibi ad transfretandum expensas non suppetere nec unquam ecclesiam suam uel aliquam ecclesiam Wallie propter electionem faciendam transmarinas ad partes mittere consueuisse. Obtulerunt tamen ei quod duos de clericis suis cum litteris ipsius, si uellet, ad regem mitterent propter assensum ipsius de pastore sibi preficiendo expresse sciendum et ut electionem suam eis in Anglia facere liceret. Quo concesso, tumb quia iusticiarius pauperes ipsos nouerat tum etiam quoniam ipsis expensas quas pecierant, si necessitas eis incumberet transfretandi, propter exemplum aliis ecclesiis cathedralibus de expensis petendis dandum inuenire  tum Wharton; q tum MS

b

474  See above, p. lxiv. 475  14 January 1199.

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not to seem excessively Welsh or insubordinate,474 to send to the lord king three of the wiser members of the chapter along with you, you being thus the fourth; and with the three others carrying letters of ratification which firmly request and elect you. But if the lord king should somehow (heaven forfend!) not consent to this, know also with certainty that no disagreement or discord has arisen amongst us: we are all in unanimous agreement (as far as we can be) to elect you, and we lack nothing except the means to pay the necessary expenses. Send us prayers or petitions, whether to the lord king or to the justiciar, in whatever terms you consider to be appropriate, and we shall seal them. ‘Farewell, and let us have a response containing your advice on the day after the feast of St Hilary,475 for then, God willing, we shall be holding a general chapter.’ From these letters it is clear how great their desire was to have him as their pastor, rather than any other. Now he, hearing these things and recollecting that he owed his poor church no less than if he had been canon and archdeacon of an opulent one, went to London at the appointed time, a little before Lent.476 To the canons, who appeared in front of him before the archdeacon’s arrival, the justiciar insistently offered two choices: either the abbot or the prior, that is, whom the archbishop had offered them in the first place, to take as their bishop whichever they wished. His own wishes, however, were more inclined towards the prior. Otherwise, he ordered them to cross the sea to the king as quickly as possible. But they put off their reply until the arch­ deacon’s arrival and at last, having taken counsel with him, replied that they had no warrant from their chapter to abandon their own nominees or to accept others; and that, since they were poor and from a poor and distant land, they did not have enough money to cross the sea, nor had their church or any Welsh church ever been used to send to lands across the sea to make an election. They proposed to him, however, that they should send two of their clerics to the king with letters from himself, if he wished, to know expressly if they had the king’s assent to appoint a pastor for their church and to have permission to make the election in England. And when the justiciar granted this, both because he knew them to be poor and also because he did not wish to cover the expenses which they had asked for if they were obliged to cross (on account of the example this would set for other cathedral churches 476  In 1199 the first Sunday of Lent fell on 7 March.

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RS i. 109

de g e s t i s gi r a l di, i i i

nolebat,477 unum ex illis quatuor,c Elyodorum nomine, filium Elyodori, cum clerico quodam ecclesie sue transmiserunt.478 Qui, suscepto negotio, transfretantes et tam Normanniam quam Andegauiam et Aquitannie partem transcurrentes, suscepto rumore de regis obitu in Limouicensi prouincia ubi expeditionem agebat interempti,479 statim post dietas longas (non absque timore periculoque) apud Chinonense castrum in Andegauia comiti Iohanni, | fratri suo, super negotio Meneuensis ecclesie primo litteras iusticiarii Anglie, demum capituli Meneuensis et tam baronum patrie quam etiam abbatum et priorum, multis sigillis apensis, Giraldum archidiaconum communiter posttulantium in pastorem ei porrexerunt. Quibus susceptis et diligenter auditis coram regina Alienor, matre sua, et regina Berengaria, nuru sua, et secretariis suis, ualde benignum ei comes cum multa quoque commendatione Giraldi archidiaconi, dicens ipsum patri suo et sibi diu ac fideliter seruisse, statim eis responsum dedit. Vnde et in crastino, scilicet feria tertia, litterarum comitis tria paria susceperunt:480 litteras scilicet Giraldo archidiacono quibus ei mandauit quod petitionem capituli Meneuensis et consilium baronum patrie nec non et cleri super ipso sibi in pastoremd preficiendo exaudierat et quod ad ipsum, uisis litteris illis, cum tribus canonicis ecclesie sue uel quattuor qui eum eligere possente uenire non tardaret; et alias capitulo Sancti Dauid continentes quod petitionem suam benigne audierat et quod tres canonicos suos uel quattuor cum litteris de rati habitione ad eligendum Giraldum archidiaconum ei transmitterent; litteras quoque iusticiario Anglie continentes quod canonichos Meneuenses super electione facienda non uexaret sed totum in respectum poneret quousque Giraldus archidiaconus, quem propter hoc ad se uocauerat, ab ipso rediret.

c  quatuor Wharton; quatuor .iiiior. MS     possent Wharton; possint MS

e

 pastorem Wharton; pastore MS   

d

477  The two phrases, propter assensum sciendum in the previous sentence and propter exemplum dandum in this, are noteworthy as examples of a construction (propter + noun + gerundive) not used frequently by Gerald. It is possible that he is quoting administrative language used by the justiciar to the canons. 478  Elyiodorus, namely Elidir, is attested as a witness in Acta, ed. Barrow, no. 69. The clericus is identified in iii. 11 as Henry son of Robert (son of Jonah), namely the Welsh canon who stuck by Gerald to the end, De iure, vi (RS iii. 316).

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asking for expenses),477 they sent one of the afore­mentioned four, named Elidir ap Elidir, together with a cleric from their church.478 They took up the task and crossed the Channel but, as they hurried across Normandy, across Anjou, and across part of Aquitaine, they received report that the king had died, killed in the province of Limoges, where he was leading an expedition.479 Straightaway they went, by long days’ travel (and not without fear and danger), to the castle of Chinon in Anjou and there delivered to his brother, Count John, their letters on the matter of the church of St Davids: first, one from the justiciar of England; then one from the chapter of St Davids; and then those from the barons of their country and from its abbots and priors, with many seals affixed, asking all with one voice to have Archdeacon Gerald as their pastor. When these letters had been received and carefully read out in the presence of Queen Eleanor, his mother, Queen Berengaria, her daughter-­in-­law, and his secretaries, the count gave them at once a reply most favourable to Archdeacon Gerald, commending him greatly and saying that he had long and faithfully served both his father and himself. And the following day (the Tuesday) they also received from the count a set of three letters.480 The first, to Archdeacon Gerald, informed him that he had heard out the petition of the chapter of St Davids and the counsel of the barons of that country, as well as its clergy, about appointing him their pastor, and ordered him to come to John without delay when he had seen this letter, bringing with him three or four canons of his church who could elect him. The second, to the chapter of St David, stated that he had heard their petition favourably and that they should send him three or four of their canons with letters conferring the authority to elect Archdeacon Gerald. And lastly a letter to the justiciar of England directed him not to trouble the canons of St Davids in making their election but to adjourn all this until Archdeacon Gerald, whom John had summoned on this matter, should return from seeing him.

479  Richard I died on 6 April 1199. 480  Gerald uses paria litterarum to create plural forms of the already-plural littere. Cf. DMLBS s.v. par, 15a. Presumably Gerald was in a position to take these letters to Rome and thus to show Innocent that John initially gave his consent, before Hubert got hold of him.

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[ III. 11]  QVA L I T E R , R EGE RICARDO D E F V N C TO, PE R L I T T ERAS COMITIS IOH A N N I S GI R A L DV S ES T VOCATVS.

RS i. 110

fo. 182v

⟨I⟩n octauis itaque Pasche sequentis481 apud Lincolniam littere comitis archidiacono porrecte sunt, quibus de|mum susceptis et lectis, consilio magnorum uirorum Lincolniensis ecclesie (a quibus dilectus erat) cum libris et sarcinis suis, scolam quidem sed non studium deserens, in quo continuus erat, cum duobus canonicis Sancti Dauit, prescripto scilicet Elyodoro et Henrico Roberti filio, litteras capituli de rato comiti iuxta mandatum suum | deferentibus ad ipsum adeunduma se preparauit. Erant autem littere tales.

[I I I . 12]  ⟨ L⟩ I T T E R E CAP ITVLI M E NE V E NSI S C O MI T I IOHANNI P RO G I R A L DO DI R ECTE.a

RS i. 111

‘⟨K⟩arissimo ac desideratissimob domino suo Iohanni, domino Anglie et Hybernie, duci Normannie et Aquitannie, comiti Andegauie, ca­pit­ ulum Meneuense salutem et orationes in Christo. ‘Gratias Vestre Sublimitati referrimus tam cumulatas quam affectuosas, quod petitionem nostram necnon et baronum patrie clerique tocius super pastore nobis preficiendo tam benigne exaudistis. Nouerit igitur Excellentia Vestra quod magistrum Giraldum, archidiaconum de Sancto Dauid, precipue et pre aliis cunctis postulamus et eum per istos duos uel tres canonicos nostros has litteras nostras uobis presentantes eligimus et electionem quam ipsi pro nobis de eo canonice fecerint ratam habebimus et gratam.’482 ⟨N⟩otandum hic autem quod, quia nondum rex fuerat, ‘dominum’ eum uocant et, ne forte canonici missi ad alium eligendum peruerti possent, dicunt se Giraldum archidiaconum iam elegisse, per quod et  affectus ipsorum ipsum sibi preficiendic in pastorem maximus ­indicatur. | ⟨C⟩omes autem interim cito ac subito in Angliam ueniens   ad ipsum adeundum Brewer; ad ipsum ad eundem MS; ad eundum ad ipsum Wharton

a

  Chapter title taken from the table of contents. In the rubrics to the text, this title is replaced by Qualiter, rege Ricardo defuncto, per litteras comitis Iohannis Giraldus est uocatus, ­mistakenly repeated from the previous chapter    b desideratissimo Wharton; desideratissimum MS   c preficiedi MS a

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[ III. 1 1 ]   HOW GE R A L D WA S S UM M ONED B Y A L E TT E R FRO M C O U N T JOHN AFTER T H E DE AT H O F KI N G RICHARD. And so, on the octave of the Easter following,481 a letter from the count was delivered to the archdeacon at Lincoln. And when he had at last received and read it, on the advice of the great men of the church of Lincoln (by whom he was beloved), Gerald took his books and baggage and quit the schools—­but not his studies, in which he was assiduous. Together with two canons of St Davids, the afore­mentioned Elidir and Henry son of Robert, who were carrying a letter of proxy from their chapter for the count in accordance with his instructions, Gerald readied himself to go to John. The letter was in this form.

[ III. 1 2 ]   A L E T T E R SE N T BY THE CHAP TER O F ST DAV I D S TO C O UNT JOHN IN FAVO UR O F G E R ALD. ‘The chapter of St Davids sends greetings and prayers in Christ to its dearest and most beloved lord John, lord of England and Ireland, duke of Normandy and Aquitaine, and count of Anjou. ‘We return thanks to Your Highness, thanks as oft-­repeated as they are heart­felt, for having so favourably heard our petition, and indeed that of the barons of this country and of all its clergy, on appointing a new pastor for us. May Your Excellency know, therefore, that first and before all others we nominate Master Gerald, archdeacon of St Davids; that we elect him through the two or three of our canons who will present this letter to you; and that we shall consider valid and pleasing the election of him which they will have made on our behalf according to canon law.’482 Now it should be remarked here that they call him ‘lord’, since he was not yet the king, and that they state that they have already elected Archdeacon Gerald, so that the canons they sent to elect him should not by chance be able to be turned from the right course and elect another—­which shows too their very great desire that he be appointed

481  25 April 1199 (Easter being 18 April). 482  The end of the letter is omitted.

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die Ascentionis in regem Londoniis apud Westmonasterium coronatus est.483 Quo facto, cum concanonicis suis ad regem, sicut mandauerat, archidiaconus accessit. Et audita uoluntate ipsius, quam tamen propter archiepiscopi Cantuariensis dissuasionem (cuius ad nutum tunc cuncta fiebant) in puplicum propalare nolebat, archidiaconus curiam et Angliam post terga relinquens in Walliam reuersus est. Accedens itaque Meneuiam et ecclesiam Sancti Dauid uisitans, quam annis antea non uiderat plurimis, a canonicis et clericis totoque populo simul et clero cum gaudio magno susceptus est. Cum ergo super pastore sibi preficiendo diutius et diligentius tractaretur omniumque menti sederet ut archidiaconus ipse preficeretur, tandem, ut melius atque maturius cuncta procederent, usque ad festum apostolorum Petri et Pauli484 (quinto die, scilicet, post natiuitatem Sancti Iohannis Baptiste) quasi per quindecim dies, ut omnes canonici ecclesie conuocari possint, negotium electionis est prothelatum. Cumque ad diem illum conuenirent omnes per se uel litteras rati habitionis aut procuratores, post diutinos tractatus in Giraldum archidiaconum cunctorum uota consenserunt ipsumque statim unanimiter eligentes supplicauerunt obnixe quatinus Romam adeundo et pernitiosam illam iuris ecclesiastici abiurationem euitando consecrationem suam a summo pontifice susciperet et, iuxta singularemd ac precipuam quam de ipso spem et fiduciam a primeua eiusdem etate et indole bona conceperant, dignitatem ecclesie sue metropoliticam Rome laudabili conamine uendicaret. |

[ III . 13]  QVA L I T E R FI XVM GIRALDI P ROPO SI T V M SV BI TO E T INOP INATO ES T I A M MV TATVM.

fo. 183r

⟨C⟩ogitans igitur archidiaconus grauem ecclesie sue ex pastorali defectu desolationem et eiusdem ius antiquum perpetuo fere longa tacitur|nitate deperditum; considerans quoque cleri tocius ac populi uota communiter in ipsum concurrentia; attendens etiam quia ‘uox populi uox Dei’485 et illud recolens, ‘hoc uelis quod Deus uult; alioquin  singlarem MS

d

483  27 May 1199. 484  29 June 1199. 485  A maxim apparently first attested in the letters of Alcuin (Letter 132 (MGH Epp. 4, 199)), where it is already proverbial. Gerald uses it also at Top. Hib., ii. 9 (RS v. 92) and Inuect., vi. 2 (Davies, p. 206).

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their pastor. The count, meanwhile, came swiftly and unexpectedly to England and was crowned king in London at Westminster on Ascension Day.483 Afterwards, the archdeacon went with his fellow canons to the king, as he had commanded. And having heard the king’s wishes—­ which, however, John did not wish to make publicly known due to the discouragement of the archbishop of Canterbury (on whose nod everything then depended)—the archdeacon left the court and England behind him and returned to Wales. On reaching St Davids, then, and visiting the saint’s own church, which he had not then seen for many years past, he was welcomed with great joy by the canons and clerics, and by all the people and clergy too. When, therefore, they had long and carefully discussed the matter of appointing a pastor and it suited everyone that the archdeacon himself should be appointed, at last, in order to take every step correctly and with proper deliberation, the business of electing him was deferred until the Feast of the Apostles Peter and Paul484 (the fifth day, that is, after the Nativity of St John the Baptist), about fifteen days thence, so that all the canons of the church might be called together. And when all had assembled on the appointed day, whether in person, by letters of proxy, or by proctors, after long discussion the votes of all agreed on Archdeacon Gerald. Immediately and unanimously electing him, they earnestly begged him to go to Rome and, avoiding any ruinous renunciation of their church’s rights, receive his consecration from the Supreme Pontiff and by his praiseworthy efforts reclaim in Rome the metropolitan dignity of their church, fulfilling thus the unique and exceptional hope and trust that they had conceived concerning him and his good character as a child from his earliest age.

[ III. 1 3 ]   HOW GE R A L D ’S FI XED P URP OS E WA S NOW SU D D E NLY AND U NE X PE C T E DLY C HANGED. The archdeacon, therefore, reflected upon the dreadful desolation of his church through its loss of a pastor, and how its ancient rights had nearly been lost for ever through long silence; he considered, too, how the wishes of all the clergy and people agreed by common consent upon him; he recognised, as well, that ‘the voice of the people is the voice of God’485 and recalled the saying that ‘you should want what God wants, for

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RS i. 113

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curuus es’;486 sciensque diuine uoluntati ac dispositioni sueque uocationi tam unanimi (licet ad pauperculam cathedram et sollicitudinem nimiam atque laborem animo uirili non portabilem) resistere quidem tutum non esse; contra propositum quod tam fixum mente conceperat studiique statum electissimum487 uix tandem et inuitus adquieuit. Statimque sibi in ipso agressu tantum animositatis pariter et cordis accreuit ut ad reformandum ecclesie sue statum pristinum patrieque tocius honorem tanquam propter hoc natus et a Domino datus se totum indubitanter et incunctanter applicaret. ⟨V⟩nde et in crastino (scilicet proxima post electionem die), Euro flante nauigioque parato, in Hyberniam est transuectus, ubi cognatos suos, Meilerium scilicet, tunc regni iusticiarium,488 aliosque proceres patrie magnos, consulens et conueniens, multam super agressu suo laudem a cunctis et maximam manus auxiliatricis in re tanta promissionem suscepit. ⟨T⟩ercia uero septimana post nauigationem non completa, remenso mari Hybernico, Meneuiam est reuersus et, cum in crastino mane capitulum intraret, accepit a canonicis se litteris archiepiscopi et iusticiarii Anglie mandatum interim suscepisse ut proxima dominica post Assumptionem Beate Marie489 coram ipsis uenirent electionem facturi et episcopum suum, priorem scilicet Lantonie,490 suscepturi—­quem etiam, etsi non | uenirent, mitterent eis consecratum. Super hoc itaque deliberantes miserunt literas capituli ad diem prefixum prohibentes oficialibus archiepiscopi (Londiniensi scilicet et Rofensi, quoniam archiepiscopus ipse post regem in Normanniam transfretauerat) et appellantes ne citra electionem canonicam quemquam ipsis preficere uel consecrare presumerent; et alias priori Lantonie et conuentui prohibentes eis, tanquam menbris ecclesie Sancti Dauid et intra ipsius diocesim consistentibus,a ne talibus et tam temerariis ausibus citra electionem omnem se inmiscerent.491 Duo quoque litterarum paria tunc fecerunt summo pontifici per electum suum dirigenda, ­scilicet decretum capituli super electione facta in hunc modum.  consistentibus Wharton; consistententes MS

a

486 Augustine, Enarrationes in Psalmos, xxxvi. 1. 12 (ed. Dekkers, p. 346, ll. 32–4); reprised by Peter Lombard, Commentarium in Psalmos, 36: 39 (PL cxci. 377); cited by Gerald also at Inuect., v. 15 (Davies, pp. 194–5) and De iure, i (RS iii. 134) and vii (RS iii. 339)—in every case talking about the poverty of the church of St Davids. 487  Alluding perhaps to Luke 10: 38–42. 488  On the implication of tunc, see Introduction, pp. xxxv-xlvi. 489  22 August 1199. 490  Geoffrey de Henlaw, for whom see Acta, ed. Barrow, 8–10. 491  For changes in both opinion and practice concerning episcopal elections, see Introduction, pp. lxii–lxiv. In this case, the chapter takes it for granted that it may nominate candidates, but

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otherwise you are crooked’;486 he knew that it was indeed not safe to resist divine will and authority, nor so unanimous a summons (though it was a summons to a poor see, to excessive anxiety, and to labour beyond a strong mind’s capacity to bear); and so, contrary to the plan which he had so fixedly conceived in his mind and to that state of study which he had most firmly chosen,487 he at length unwillingly agreed, after much difficulty. And immediately, in this very act of taking up the charge, his courage and his heart so grew that he devoted himself utterly, without hesitation or delay, to restoring his church’s former state and the honour of his whole country, as though he were born and given by God for this purpose. And so the next day (the day, that is, following his election), as a south-­ east wind was blowing, a ship was prepared and carried him to Ireland, where he met his kinsmen and sought their advice—­of Meilyr, that is, who was then justiciar of the kingdom,488 and of other great noblemen of that country. He received congratulations from all on taking up his new charge and a firm promise of a helping hand in so great a matter. But before three weeks had passed from this sailing, he re-­crossed the Irish Sea and returned to St Davids. And when on the following morning he entered the chapter, he learned from the canons that while he was away they had received letters from the archbishop and the justiciar of England commanding that the canons come before them on the Sunday following the Assumption of the Blessed Mary,489 to make an election and to receive their bishop, the prior of Llanthony,490 and telling them that, even if they did not come, they would send him to them already consecrated. After deliberating on this, then, the chapter sent a letter on the appointed day to the officials of the archbishop (those of London and Rochester, that is, since the archbishop himself had crossed to Normandy after the king) making a strong appeal to them not presumptuously to appoint or consecrate anyone over them without a canonical election. They sent another letter to the prior and convent of Llanthony telling them, as members of the church of St Davids and inhabitants of its diocese, not to involve themselves in rash ventures of such a kind, without any election of the prior having taken place.491 They then prepared a set of two letters, as well, to be delivered to the Supreme Pontiff by their own bishop-­elect. Firstly, the chapter’s decree on the election which they had made, in the following form.

that the king or his justiciar can reject any or all of those nominated. They might also induce the chapter or their representatives to elect the person preferred by the king, as happened in the election of Walter, abbot of St Dogmaels, shortly before Christmas 1199: De iure, ii (RS iii. 177); see Knowles, ‘Some monastic enemies of Gerald of Wales’, p. 141.

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[ III. 14]  DE C R E T V M C A PITVLI DOMINO PA PE PRO A RC H I DI AC O NO DIRECTVM.a

fo. 183v RS i. 114

‘⟨R⟩euerentissimo patri et domino Innocentio, Dei gratia summo pontifici, capitulumb Sancti Andree492 Sanctique Dauid salutem et debite deuotionis obsequium. ‘Sanctitati Vestre notum facimus nos magistrum Giraldum, archidiaconum nostrum, post uarias postulationes, quibus ipsum pre aliis tam ab Anglorum rege quam ab archiepiscopo Cantuariensi comuni assensu tam cleri patriec quam populi tocius postulauimus, tandem in ecclesia nostra canonice et concorditer elegisse. Vnde, quoniam predictus archiepiscopus cum regis officialibus nobis extraneum aliquem lingue nostre et morumd patrie prorsuse ignarum contra electionem nostram et priuilegia nostra uiolenta intrusione preficere uolebant et quoniam uoluntatem archiepiscopi nobis omnino contra|riam ex | recusatis multociens postulationibus nostris experti eramus nec ad ipsum nobis propter insidias undique positas patebat accessus, precipue uero ne illicitum sacramentum ab electo nostro in preiudicium iuris ecclesie nostre, sicut aliquociens a prelatis nostris factum fuerat,493 extorqueretur, presentiam uestram appellantes uobis prenominatum electum nostrum, uirum litteratum, discretum et honestum, legitime natum et generosum, ecclesie nostre tam in temporalibusf quam etiam spiritualibus (sicut pro certo credimus) perutilem futurum, unanimi consensu confirmandum transmisimus et consecrandum, rogantes attentius et supplicantes quatinus, manum ei consecrationis inponere dignantes, hiis que tam ipse quam clerici nostri cum ipso transmissi super pristina dignitate et libertate ecclesie nostre, per laicam potestatem peccatis urgentibus494 olim deperdita, Vestre Sanctitati ex parte nostra significauerint fidemg habeatis et remedia paterna pietate adhibeatis. Valeat in Domino per tempora longa Paternitas Vestra.’

a   ⟨D⟩ecretum capituli pape pro archidiacono directum. table of contents    b  ca­pit­ ulum Wharton; capituli MS    c patriæ Wharton; prie MS    d morum Wharton; morem MS    e proprsus MS    f teporalibus MS    g fidem Wharton; fide MS

492  On the dedication to St Andrew, cf. Itin. Kam., ii. 1 (RS vi. 107) and Cowley, ‘The ­relics of St David’, p. 275.

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[ III. 1 4 ]   T H E C H A PT E R ’S DECREE, S ENT TO TH E L O R D PO PE O N BE HALF OF THE A RC H D E AC O N. ‘The chapter of St Andrew492 and St David sends its greetings and its obedience in due devotion to its most respected father and lord, Innocent, by the grace of God the Supreme Pontiff. ‘We inform Your Sanctity that, after divers requests in which we requested, both from the king of the English and from the archbishop of Canterbury, our archdeacon, Master Gerald, in preference to all other candidates, by the common agreement of both the clergy of our country and all its people, we have at last elected him according to canon law and by common agreement in our church. Wherefore, since the said archbishop and the king’s officials wished by violent intrusion, in spite of our election and our privileges, to appoint a foreigner over us, someone entirely ignorant of our language and the customs of our country; and since we learned from the many times that he refused our requests that the archbishop’s wishes were wholly against us, and no means of approaching him was open to us, due to the snares laid on every side, especially lest an unlawful oath be extorted from our bishop-­elect, to the prejudice of our church’s rights (as has sometimes been done to our prelates);493 for these reasons we appeal to you in ­person and have sent you, by unanimous agreement, our said bishop-­ elect, a man learned, prudent, and honourable, of legitimate and high birth, who will be of great advantage to our church, we are sure, both in temporal and in spiritual matters, so that you may confirm and ­consecrate him. And we ask and beseech you most earnestly to deign to lay your hand in consecration upon him; to trust those things which both he and these clerics of ours whom we have sent with him may tell Your Sanctity on our behalf about the former privilege and liberty of our church, which were destroyed some time ago by lay powers driven by sin;494 and to grant, with fatherly compassion, remedies for those things. May Your Paternity fare well in the Lord for long ages.’

493  Bishops Peter de Leia and David, that is. Cf. i. 11, above. 494  peccatis urgentibus occurs sixteen times in Gerald and in no other author; cf. also above ii. 17 and iii. 5. Its occurrence here is an argument in favour of Gerald’s authorship of this letter.

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Tunc propter cominationem archiepiscopi de consecrando eis priore predicto (quia precepsi esse solebat in talibus, sicut et de Roberto Bangorum episcopo patuit, citra electionem omnem ab eodem ­consecrato) domino pape scripserunt ad cautelam sub hac forma. h

[III. 15]  LITTERE CAPITVLI MENEVENSIS PAPE CONTRA PRIOREM LANTONIE MISSE.

RS i. 115

‘⟨R⟩euerentissimo domino et patri Innocentio, Dei gratia summo pontifici, capitulum Meneuense salutem et fidelitatis obsequium. ‘Si forte ad audientiam ues|tram peruenire contigerit priorem de Lantonia episcopum ecclesie nostre a Cantuariensi archiepiscopo consecratum et prefectuma esse, contra electionem nostram omnem et uoluntatem id proculdubio factum esse noueritis. Ab initio namque sede nostra uacante, magistrum Giraldum archidiaconum nostrum, quem in ecclesia nostra canonice iam elegimus, et postulauimus et adhuc a Paternitate Vestra postulamus consecrandum, in nullum alium per Dei gratiam et uestram consentire uolentes.b Ne quid etiam in preiudicium ecclesie nostre et electionis huius, comuni tam populi patrie quam cleri assensu tam canonice facte, fieri presumeretur, presentiam uestram sicut ab initioc sic continue quidem et constanter appellauimus. Valeat in Domino toti fidelium orbi profutura per euum Paternitas Vestra.’ ⟨D⟩uos etiam de ipso ecclesie gremio, magistrum scilicet Martinum canonicum et Idenardum decanum prouincialem et uicecanonicum,495 Romam cum archidiacono et electo suo tam propter ecclesie sue ius metropoliticum quam propter electionis negocium destinarunt.

 T’ MS; Iidem Wharton and Brewer    i præceps Wharton; preces MS

h

 præfectum Wharton; perfectum MS    seems    c abinito MS a

b

 uolentes Wharton; nolentes MS, it

495  The reference to Idnerth as ‘vice-canon’ is puzzling. Hereditary succession was widespread in major Welsh churches, including St Davids, as shown by De iure, vi (RS iii. 312), and compare Itin. Kam., ii. 4 (RS vi. 120–1) on Llanbadarn Fawr (Pryce, ‘Church and society

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Then, because of the archbishop’s threat to consecrate the said prior as their bishop (for he was wont to be over-­hasty in such things, as was clear also in the case of Robert, bishop of Bangor, consecrated by the archbishop without any election taking place), as a precaution they wrote to the lord pope in the following form.

[ III. 1 5 ]   A L E T T E R SE N T BY THE CHAP TER O F S T DAV I DS TO T HE PO PE AGAINS T THE PR I O R O F L L A NT HONY. ‘The chapter of St Davids sends its greetings and faithful devotion to its most respected lord and father, Innocent, by the grace of God the Supreme Pontiff. ‘If by chance it should happen to reach your hearing that the prior of Llanthony has been consecrated and appointed bishop of our church by the archbishop of Canterbury, know that it has without doubt been done wholly contrary to our election and to our will. For from the beginning of our see’s vacancy we have requested, and still request from Your Paternity, that our archdeacon Master Gerald be consecrated, whom we have already elected in our church in accordance with canon law, and we are unwilling to agree to anyone else, by God’s grace and your own. And lest anyone presume to act to the prejudice of our church and of this election, done thus in accordance with canon law and with the common agreement of both the people of our country and its clergy, just as we have done from the beginning, persistently and steadfast in our determination, so too now we have appealed to you in person. May Your Paternity ever fare well in the Lord, to the benefit of the whole world of the faithful.’ They also dispatched two men from the very bosom of their church, the canon Master Martin and Idnerth, a rural dean and vice-­canon,495 to go to Rome along with their archdeacon and bishop-­elect, to work both for their church’s metropolitan right and on the business of the election. in Wales, 1150–1250’, pp. 38–40; Evans, ‘The survival of the clas as an institution in medieval Wales’; Palmer, ‘The portionary churches of mediaeval North Wales’). One might therefore suppose that Idnerth, as ‘vice-canon’, might be next in line to succeed to a canonry, were it not that he is attested as a canon as early as 1173 × 8 May 1176: Acta, ed. Barrow, no. 33 (assuming, of course, that it is the same Idnerth).

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[ III. 16]  C O NSI L I V M E T S OLACIVM A FR AT R E SVO SV SCEP TVM .496

RS i. 116 fo. 184r

RS i. 117

⟨H⟩iis ita dispositis, accedens ad fratrem suum, uirum probum et discretum Philippum de Barri, uiamque suam et uie causam, pure scili­cet propter Deum ecclesieque sue profectum, secretius eidem aperiens uerba huiuscemodi ab ipso et monita suscepit. ‘Arduum est negocium quod, frater, agrederis et laboriosum, sumptuosum quoque nimis et periculosum, quia non solum contra archiepiscopum Cantuariensem sed etiam contra | regem | et Angliam totam esse uidetur. Si tamen Deus in causa est, ut nobis asseris, et ecclesie Sancti Dauid dignitas, quam reuocare contendis et intendis, et non terrene pompositatis ambitio, secure laborem hunc assumas, quia reuera uel hic inde premium assumes uel in futuro. Quamquam etiam bona intentione uerseris et uexeris, ne credasa quod omnia tibi statim ad uota succedant, quin immo multa tibi hostis ille antiquus, semper bonis uotis inuidens, inpedimenta pretendet et Deus id uel ad probationem tuam uel purgationem fieri permittet. Ideoque, cum aduersa tibi multa concurrerint et occurrerint, ne desperes sed pocius ad animum reuoces qualiter apostoli, discipulib Domini qui Christi fidem salutisque uiam mundo predicabant, tantis tamen aduersitatibusc afflicti fuerunt, uincula, uerbera, carceres497 ac uulnera, mortem quoque demum pro Christo sustinentes.’ Magnum itaque solacium ex uerbis istis uiri boni, laici prorsus et illiterati, ex dilectione pariter et discretione magna prouenientibus, in aduersitatibusd suis crebris quas graues et grandes in hoc agone sustinuit archidiaconus se proculdubio suscepisse testari solebat.e Hoc quoque Gregorii dictum, instante forcius tribulatione et aduersante fortune cursu, frequenter recolebat: ‘Aduersitas que bonis uotis obicitur probatio uirtutis est et non indicium reprobationis. Quis enim nesciatf quam prosperum fuit quod Paulus ad Italias uergebat et tamen uehemens naufragium pertulit? Sed nauis cordis in maris fluctibus integra stetit’.498 | a  credas Inuect. and Wharton; credis MS    b dicipuli MS    c aduesitatibus MS     in aduersitatibus Inuect.; om. MS; Wharton and Brewer instead add afflictionibus after sustinuit    e  Wharton silently omits the remainder of this chapter    f nesciat Inuect., Gregory, and Gratian; om. MS d

496  On Philip de Barri, see Introduction, pp. xvii, xxi, xxxix, xlv, lix, lxviii, lxxxiii–lxxxiv, and Exp. Hib., ii. 20 (ed. Scott and Martin, p. 188). Gerald accompanied his elder brother to Ireland in February 1183.This chapter, including Philip’s oratio recta, is reworked and expanded in Inuect., vi. 24 (Davies, pp. 226–8); for discussion, see Introduction, pp. lxxxiii–lxxxiv. 497  Cf. Heb. 11: 36–7.

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[ III. 1 6 ]   T HE A DV I C E A ND CONS OLATION W H IC H HE R E C E I V E D F ROM HIS BRO T H E R .496 When these things had been thus settled, he went to his brother Philip de Barri, an able and prudent man, and, privately explaining to him his journey and the reason for that journey—­solely for God, that is, and for the advancement of his church—­he received from him the following words of advice. ‘Arduous and toilsome is the business you are undertaking, my brother, as well as extremely expensive and perilous, for it seems to be opposed not only to the archbishop of Canterbury, but also to the king and to all England. But if, as you declare, it is a question of God and the honour of the church of St Davids, which you are striving and aiming to reclaim, and not of some desire for earthly ostentation, you can take up this work without fear, for truly you will have your reward for it either here on earth or in the life to come. And though you busy yourself and toil with good intentions, do not think that everything will immediately go according to your wishes, but rather the ancient enemy, ever hating good intentions, will put many obstacles in your path—­and God will allow this to happen, either to test you or to purify you. Therefore, though many things combine against you and block your path, do not despair, but rather remember how the apostles, disciples of our Lord, who preached to the world the faith of Christ and the path to salvation, nevertheless suffered such great misfortunes, enduring chains and lashes, imprisonment497 and wounding, and at last death itself for the sake of Christ.’ The archdeacon often attested that these words from a good man, a layman indeed and unlearned, but coming from his love and his great wisdom, had undoubtedly given him much solace in the frequent, grievous, and severe misfortunes which he himself endured in this struggle. He used frequently to recall this saying of Gregory’s, too, when his afflictions pressed him more strongly and the course of fortune turned against him: ‘Adversity cast in the way of good intentions is a test of virtue, not a sign of rejection. For who does not know how prosperous an event it was that Paul made his way to Italy? And in spite of that he suffered a violent shipwreck. But the ship of his heart stood unharmed amidst the billows of the sea’.498 498  Gergory the Great, Letters, ix. 229 (ed. Norberg, p. 807), but ix. 228 (MGH edition, Gregorii I Papae Registrum Epistolarum (ed. Ewald and Hartmann)); perhaps via Gratian, Decretum, C. 7 q. 1 c. 48.

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[ III. 17]  D E PR I MO GI RALDI LABORE V E R SV S C V R I A M RO MA NAM ET FORTVNE S TAT I M E T QVA SI PR E FORIBVS INS VLTV.

⟨I⟩ter igitur archidiaconus arripiens et Deo se Sanctoque Dauid, cui militabat, ex toto committens, uigilia Assumptionis Beate Marie499 ad monasterium Strate Floride500 cum sociis suis et sequela tota peruenit ibique librorum suorum et bibliotece thesaurum de Anglia apud Brecheniauc et illuc inde extra potestatem Anglorum, quicquid contingeret, allatum eodem die suscepit.501 In crastino uero Assumptionis502 Ithenardus decanus, missus ab archidiacono uersus Brecheniauc cum parte pecunie sue et equis qui libros portauerant propter Anglorum insidias quas per Angliam timebat, in montanis de Buella aa Walensibus, quos non timebat,503 est spoliatus uitansque Scillam quasi Caribdim incidit, ‘non expectato uulnus ab hoste ferens’.504 Et, quia non sola uenire solent incomoda, reuersus Ithenardus sic spoliatus pre confusione forsan infortunii sui graui statim morbo correptus accubuit.505 Sic itaque Giraldus ilico et quasi pre foribus, scilicet in ipso uie aggressu, tam pecunia priuatus quam sequela fortune didicit inpetus et aduersitatis insultus equanimiter sustinere. ⟨P⟩rocedens autem de Strata Florida et per montana de Elenit ­uersus Cumhir accelerans et inde apud Keri Angliam intrans, properans apud Sandwich mare Flandricum transfretauit506 et nuntios suos de nundinis Wintonie uenturos per quindecim dies et plures apud

 a Wharton; om. MS

a

499  14 August 1199. 500  Strata Florida was initially founded, on a site close to the later abbey, by Gerald’s own kinsman, Robert fitz Stephen, in 1164, just before Ceredigion was conquered in that same year by Rhys ap Gruffudd, who took over the patronage of the community (Spec. eccl., iii. 5 (RS iv. 152), and cf. Brut, s.a. 1165); at the date of this visit in August 1199, the church on the later site was still under construction (Brut, s.a. 1201; Cowley, The Monastic Order in South Wales, pp. 25–6; Williams, ‘The Cistercians’). 501  On Gerald’s books, see Harrison, ‘A note on Gerald of Wales’; Stephenson, ‘Gerald of Wales and Annales Cambriae’, pp. 28–30. In Spec. eccl., iii. 5 (RS iv. 152–6), Gerald complains of being defrauded of his books by the monastery. 502  16 August 1199. 503  Note the balancing quas . . . timebat and quos non timebat. 504 Ovid, Heroides, vi. 82 (adapted).

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[ III. 1 7 ]   O N G E R A L D’S FI R ST LABORIOUS J OU R N E Y TO T H E RO MA N CURIA; AND F ORT UNE ’S I MME D I AT E AS S AULT ON H IM , AS I F O N HI S V E RY DOORS TEP. The archdeacon therefore struck out on his journey, entrusting himself entirely to God and to St David, whose soldier he was, and on the eve of the Assumption of the Blessed Mary499 arrived with his companions and all his retinue at the monastery of Strata Florida.500 And there, that same day, he received his treasured library of books, brought there to Brecon from England and thence out of the power of the English, whatever might happen.501 But on the day following the Assumption,502 Idnerth the dean, whom the archdeacon had sent towards Brecon with part of his money and the horses which had carried his books to Wales (because of the treachery of the English which he feared throughout England), was robbed in the mountainous lands of Buellt by the Welsh, of whom Gerald had had no fear503—as though avoiding Scylla he had fallen on Charybdis, ‘wounded by an unexpected enemy’.504 And since misfortunes do not usually come one at a time, Idnerth returned from this pillaging and, perhaps undone by his misfortune, immediately took to his bed, stricken by a serious illness.505 And so Gerald, instantly deprived of both riches and retinue, as if on his very doorstep, at the very beginning of his journey, learned to endure with equanimity the onslaughts of fortune and the attacks of adversity. Continuing on his way from Strata Florida and hastening through the mountainous lands of Elenid towards Cwmhir, he passed into England at Ceri and hurried to Sandwich.506 He crossed the Flemish Sea and then waited at Saint-­Omer for fifteen days and more for his

505  Inuect., vi. 15 (Davies, p. 217), tells the story of a vision experienced by David son of Idnerth, David being described as a canon of St Davids. If this was the son of the rural dean and canon, Idnerth, and David had inherited his father’s canonry, it would support the notion that Idnerth died of his sickness. On the other hand, Inuect., iii. 22 (Davies, p. 161), is a confirmation, dated 4 June 1203, by Innocent III of Gerald’s grant of a prebend of St Davids to a deacon Idnerth made when, by a papal grant, Gerald was administering the diocese. A canon could be a deacon, but this may be a different Idnerth. In Acta, ed. Barrow, Idnerth, the canon, is attested as a witness to nos. 33 and 47. In the inspeximus, no. 69, referring to nos. 33 and 47, Idnerth only occurs among the witnesses to grants inspected, not among the witnesses to the inspeximus itself, dated 1203 × 1214. 506  On Gerald’s itinerary, see Stephenson, ‘Gerald of Wales and Annales Cambriae’, pp. 28–9.

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216 fo. 184v RS i. 118

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Sanctum Audomarum expectauit.507 Vbi et alterum soci|um suum, scilicet magistrum | Martinum, Meneuensem canonicum, graui morbo ­correptum secundo fortune insultu remittere oportuit. Duos autem iuuenculos ecclesie sue (quorum et alter canonicus Meneuensis erat) in partibus illis scolares inuentos, qui saltem pro iure ecclesie sue m ­ etropolitico cum ipso stare possent, secum duxit. ⟨C⟩um itaque, propter werram grandem que inter regem Francie Philippum et ­comitem Flandrie Baldewinum (qui regi Anglie Iohanni tunc adeserat) orta fuit, recta uia per Franciam ire non poterat, longo circuitu per Flandriam profundam a sinistris et Henou, per Ardenie grandis siluas hyspidas et horrendas Campaniam laterans et Purgundiamb penetrans,c ad puplicam demum stratam cum peregrinis et mercatoribus itinerando peruenit. ⟨M⟩irum autem quod uiginti sex annis ante preuisus fuit a quodam in sompnis labor iste. Videbatur enim ei circa dies extremos Dauid Meneuensis episcopi quod processionem uidit Meneuie magnam cum campanarum omnium pulsatione et, cum inquireret quid nam hoc esset, dictum est ei quod erat electus Ardenie magne, qui ad ecclesiam ueniebat, et, cum diligentius inspexisset, uidebatur ei quod Giraldus archidiaconus esset cum tanto ibi pro electo Ardenie magned honore susceptus. Putabant autem aliqui uisionem hanc audientes post obitum Dauid episcopi, quia nominatorum primus et precipuus erat Giraldus, quode Ardenia magna uocata in uisione Wallia fuerit, quia terra siluestris est ut illa. Sed uerius tempus istud quo uere et precise electus fuerat uisio prospexit et, quia per Ardeniam magnam, uiam inuiam et indirectam, uispilionibus et latronibus plenam, tam periculose laborem tantum fuerat agressurus, Ardenie magne dictus electus erat. |

b  Purgundiam Liebermann (Ex Rerum Anglicarum Scriptoribus, p. 415), purguniam MS and Wharton; Burgundiam Brewer    c penetrans Wharton; penetras MS    d   Ardenie magne qui ad ecclesiam ueniebat et cum diligentius ins. here repeated in MS, with the words qui . . . ins. deleted by underlining by the scribe as dittography; Wharton and Brewer print the repeated phrase    e quod ed.; quidem MS

507  They are coming to bring him money. The St Giles Fair at Winchester was at its peak in the Angevin period, with merchants coming from the Low Countries, France, and elsewhere: Biddle, Winchester in the Early Middle Ages, pp. 286–8; Page, ed., The Victoria County History of Hampshire, pp. 36–44. The chronology fits, since Gerald had set out from

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messengers to come from the fair at Winchester.507 There his other companion, too, Master Martin, canon of St Davids, was seized by a grave illness and had to be sent back—­a second outrage at the hands of fortune. He found, however, that two young men from his church (of whom one was a canon of St Davids) were then in that region as students, who could at least stand up for their church’s rights as metropolitan alongside him, and he brought them with him. And since he could not travel by the direct route through France because of the great war which had broken out between King Philip of France and Count Baldwin of Flanders (who was then on the side of King John of England), he took a long detour to the east, deep into Flanders and Hainault and through the rugged and terrifying forests of the great Ardennes. He skirted Champagne and, entering Burgundy, at last arrived at a public highway where he could travel with pilgrims and merchants. Now it is a marvel that this toil of his had been foreseen twenty-­six years earlier by a certain man in a dream. For in the last days of Bishop David of St Davids, he dreamt that he saw a great procession at St Davids, accompanied by the ringing of all the bells. And when he asked what this might be, he was told that it was the bishop-­elect of the great Ardennes who was coming to the church; and when he had observed more closely, he dreamt that it was Archdeacon Gerald who was received there with such great honour as the bishop-­elect of the great Ardennes. Some, hearing of this vision after the death of Bishop David, thought that, since Gerald was the first and the chief of the nominees, what was called ‘the great Ardennes’ in this vision was Wales, as it is covered in forests like the Ardennes. But more correctly this vision foresaw the time when he had truly and categorically been elected; and, since he was to undertake that great effort so perilously through the great Ardennes, a trackless and winding journey, full of brigands and robbers, he was called the bishop-­elect of the great Ardennes.

St Davids shortly before 14 August and would have crossed to the continent about 1 September, just when the Winchester St Giles fair was beginning. The greatest fairs in north-western Europe at this period were in Champagne, and Gerald would visit Troyes on the way back from Rome in 1203 for the purpose of meeting his messengers, who were bringing money to enable him to pay his debts (De iure, v (RS iii. 290)). Spufford, Money and its Use in Medieval Europe, pp. 214–24, discusses the use of silver bars by travellers from one country to another at this period.

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[ III. 18]  QVA L I T E R A D PAPAM VENIENS LIB RO S E I N O N L I BR A S a P RES ENTAVIT.

fo. 185r

⟨A⟩lpes itaque transcendens et Italiam508 ac Tuscuniam transcurrens circa festum Sancti Andree Romam peruenit509 et accedens ad pedesb pape (scili­cet Innocentii Tercii, qui tunc presidebat, et papatus eius anno secundo) sex libros suos510 quos ipse studio magno compegerat ei presentauit, dicens etiam inter cetera, ‘Presentantc uobis alii libras sed nos libros’. Libros autem illos papa, quia copiose litteratus erat et litteraturam dilexit, circa lectum suum indiuisos per mensem fere secum tenuit et elegantia ac sententiosa uerba cardinalibus aduentantibus ostendebat. Deinde uero singulis cardinalibus singulos precario concessit.511 Gemmam autem sacerdotalem pre ceteris dilectam a se separari non permisit. ⟨N⟩ec mora sed quasi quindecim diebus ante Natale cursor quidam litteras archiepiscopi Cantuariensis ad curiam portauit, quas clericus quidam in eodem comittatu ueniens et contra Giraldum missas esse presentiens furto sublatas ei secreto uenales obtulit. Erant autem duodecim paria tam domino pape quam cardinalibus missa. Giraldus autem hec audiens res|pondit clerico quod litteras uni cardinalium missas ei prius ostenderet, ut uidere posset utrum pro se an contra misse fuerint. Quo facto, litteras ostendit Petro Placentino missas,512 quas cum, fracto sigillo, Giraldus inspiceret, inuenit eas inuectionibus plenas, tam personam suam scilicet quam electionem grauiter acusantes. Sciens itaque per hoc alias simili tenore compositasd accessit ad dominum Albanensem episcopum, Iohannem,513 quem pre ceteris tunc a   libros ei suos et non libras table of contents    b pedes corrected by subpunction from pedesis MS    c presentant corrected by subpunction from presentauit MS    d copositas MS

508  Italy here is the core of the Kingdom of Italy between the Alps and the Apennines; Tuscany was distinct geographically, as being south of the Apennines, and politically, because ‘the Matildine lands’, the former territory of the Margravine Matilda, were semi-detached from the kingdom. The context was the sudden death of the Emperor Henry VI in September 1197. He had given Tuscany to his younger brother, Duke Philip of Swabia, who was now one of three candidates to succeed Henry, the others being Otto of Brunswick, allied with King John, and the young Frederick (II), king of Sicily and ward of the pope. Imperial Italy was thus distinct from Tuscany. 509  30 November 1199. 510  It is probable that he took the two Irish and two Welsh books and we know he took the Gemma, as the pope declared it his favourite of Gerald’s works; the issue is what the sixth book was. J. Conway Davies suggested it was his Life of St Caradog (‘Giraldus Cambrensis’, p. 261). But, while Gerald certainly did bring his Life of St Caradog to Rome and even read it to the pope (Inuect., iv. 9 (Davies, p. 177)), it may not have been one of the six; if it had

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[ III. 1 8]  HOW HE C A ME TO THE P OP E A N D PR E SE NT E D H I M WITH BOOKS, NO T PO U N D S. Crossing the Alps and passing swiftly through Italy508 and Tuscany, he arrived in Rome around the feast of Saint Andrew.509 Coming to the feet of the pope (Innocent III, that is, who was then in the second year of his papacy), Gerald presented him with six of his own books,510 which he had taken great pains to compile himself, and said, amongst other things, ‘Others present pounds to you, but we give books’. And the pope, because he was an abundantly learned man and loved literature, kept that set of books close to him by his bed for about a month and used to show well-­written and significant passages from them to the cardinals who came to see him. In the end, though, he lent511 each of the books to cardinals. But the Gemma sacerdotalis he liked most of all and would not suffer to be parted from. Soon after, perhaps fifteen days before Christmas, a courier brought letters from the archbishop of Canterbury to the curia. A certain clerk arrived in the same company and, sensing that the letters had been sent to oppose Gerald, stealthily took them and offered to sell them to him. It was a set of twelve letters, addressed both to the lord pope and to his cardinals. Now Gerald, when he heard this, replied by asking the clerk to show him first a letter addressed to one of the cardinals, so that he might see whether they had been sent in his favour or to oppose him. The clerk then showed him the letter sent to Peter of Piacenza.512 When he broke the seal and inspected it, he found it full of invective, bitterly denouncing both his person and his election. Knowing thus from this letter that the others had been written in the same vein, he went to John, lord bishop of Albano,513 (whom he knew best of those

been, it is surprising that he does not mention reading it to the pope at this point in De gestis. Politically more relevant would have been his Life of St David, and this has been suggested as a likely candidate by Richter, ‘The Life of St David’, p. 385 (cf. also Plass, A Scholar and his Saints, pp. 114–15). 511 For precario concessit, cf. De prin., i. 17 (OMT 214). 512 Probably Pietro Diana, created cardinal in 1185 and died 1208, who was born in Piacenza (Maleczek, Papst und Kardinalskolleg von 1191 bis 1216, pp. 85–6). 513 Giovanni, cardinal-bishop of Albano 1199–1210/11 (Maleczek, Papst und Kardinalskolleg von 1191 bis 1216, pp. 94–5).

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cardinalibus magis familiarem habebat, ipsumque super hoc consulens responsum accepit quod nil propter illas litteras daret nec etiam si gratis habere posset acciperet, quia in iniuriam domini pape et cardinalium, quibus littere misse fuerant, hoc fieret, | pociusque uelle debere quod aduersarium haberet quam absque aduersario diutinam in curia moram faceret. Clericus autem, cum a Giraldo nichil habere posset, conuersus ad cursorem litteras ei precio dato restituit.e ⟨P⟩apa uero litteras archiepiscopi sibi porrectas archidiacono Giraldo ad se uocato statim ostendi iussit. Quibus perlectis, respondit: ‘Domine, scripsit magis ut archiaduersarius quam ut archiepiscopus homo iste, quippe nec ueritati parcensf ut ledere possitg nec uerecundie.’ Cui papa: ‘Vis ergo litteris istis respondere?’ At ille: ‘Volo, si placet Excellencie Vestre.’ Et papa: ‘Placet utique et litteris ad litteras post Natale r­ espondeas.’ Iminebant enim iam dies Natalis, quibus abstinentes a curia studio uacare uolebant. ⟨I⟩n crastino uero Epiphanie,514 quia non diucius ibi feriatur, procedens archidiaconus in pleno consistorio proposuit se litteris archiepiscopi Cantuariensis contra se missis respondere paratum. Cui papa: ‘Legantur ergo littere archiepiscopi primum et postea respondeas’. Lecte sunt igitur coram omnibus, quarum et tenorem hic inserere non superfluum reputaui.

[ III. 1 9]  L I T T E R E A RC H I EP IS COP I CONTRA A RC H I DI AC O N V M MIS S E.515 ‘⟨S⟩anctissimo in Christo patri ac domino Innocentio, Deia gratia summo pontifici, Hubertus, diuina permissione Cantuariensis ecclesie

e  restituit Wharton; restituat MS    f parcens Wharton; parce⟨.⟩s MS, damaged     possit Wharton; poss followed by punctus eleuatus, MS, perhaps intending instead a semi-colonshaped mark of abbreviation, and thus posset a  Dei Wharton; di MS g

514  7 January 1200, Epiphany being the 6th.

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who were then cardinals) and, asking his advice, received the reply that he should give nothing for the letters and should not even accept them if he could obtain them for free, since doing so would be to wrong the pope and the cardinals to whom the letters had been sent; and that he should rather prefer to have an opponent than to make a lengthy stay at the curia without one. The clerk, seeing that he could get nothing from Gerald, went back to the courier and returned the letters to him, for a price. Now, when the archbishop’s letter had been delivered to the pope, he ordered that Archdeacon Gerald be summoned and the letter be immediately shown to him. And when Gerald had finished reading it he replied: ‘My Lord, that man has written more as an archenemy than as an archbishop, for he spares neither truth nor modesty in order to injure me.’ ‘Do you wish, then, to respond to this letter?’, asked the pope. ‘Yes, I do, if it pleases Your Excellency’, answered Gerald. ‘It does indeed, and you may respond to this letter with a letter of your own after Christmas’, said the pope. For Christmas­tide was already close at hand, when they wished to leave the curia and have leisure for study. So on the day after Epiphany,514 since there the holidays last only to that feast, the arch­ deacon came and presented himself in full consistory, ready to reply to the letter sent by the archbishop of Canterbury against him. ‘Let the archbishop’s letter be read first and after that you may reply’, said the pope to Gerald. So it was read in front of everyone, and I have thought it not irrelevant to insert its content here.

[ III. 19]  A L E T T E R SE NT BY THE A RC HBI SHO P AGA I N ST THE A RC H D E AC O N.515 ‘To his most holy father and lord in Christ, Innocent, Supreme Pontiff by the grace of God, Hubert, by God’s leave the lowly minister of the

515  This letter appears also in Inuect., i. 1 (Davies, pp. 83–5) in its complete form; see also English Episcopal Acta 3, Canterbury 1193–1205, ed. Cheney and John, no. 353 (listed with references to the MS and to the Rolls Series but not printed; dated late 1198). It was presented to the pope, with Gerald’s reply, in January 1200 (De iure, ii (RS iii. 164–5)). Gerald’s reply to the archbishop’s letter is given at Inuect., i. 2 (Davies, pp. 85–93).

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minister humilis,516 salutem et tam deuotam quam debitam patri et domino obedienciam et reuerentiam. ‘Ad hoc diuine prouidentie dispositio uos super gentes et regna constituit, ut iuxta merentium diuersitatem discretio Vestre Sollicitudinis euellat, destruat, dissipet, et disperdat, edificet et plantet,517 ut “omnem plantationem quam non plantauit pater celestis”518 per uos, cui uices suas commisit in terris, Altissimi filius eradicet et explantet et disperdat eos qui dispergunt, eo quod cum ipso | colligere non elaborent.519 Ideo namque uobis desuper data est plenitudo potestatis, ut quod per nos qui in partem uocati sumus solicitudinis corrigi non potest, ad regulam redigat et reducat520 uestra, cui resisti non poterit, magestatis amplitudo. ‘Non ignorare uos arbitror, Pater Sanctissime, quod Meneuensis ecclesie et ceterarum ecclesiarum totius Wallie mater et metropolis est ecclesia Cantuariensis, sicut predecessorum uestrorum pie recor|dationis Adriani, Eugenii, Alexandri, et Celestini confirmationes et scripta testantur et nuper a uobis missa pagina uestre confirmationis ostendit. Nuper tamen, sicut certa relatione didici, quidam Meneuensis ecclesie archidiaconus, Giraldus nomine natione Walensis521 plerosque Wallie magnates uel sanguine uel affinitate contingens, fiducia forsan sanguinis animatus (cum deceat uirtute magis quam sanguine niti) a tribus tantum canonicis, quos (ut dicitur) aliter quam decebat uel debebat ad consensum illexerat, in Meneuensem se eligi episcopum procurauit, aliis omnibus canonicisb nequaquam fauorem prestantibus uel assensum. Ille tamen tali nominatione suffultus con­firm­ationis a me (ad quem primo recurrere debuerat) munus nec expetens nec expectans sed mox electi nomen pariter et auctoritatem usurpans, canonicum qui sigillum capituli Meneuensisc custodiebat, quem precibus inflectere non potuit, usque adeo cruentis deterruit comminationibus quod idem sigilli custos sigillum predictum super altare episcopalis ecclesie posuit. Prius tamen appellauerat ne quis preter communem capituli b  concanonicis Inuect., i. 1 (Davies, p. 83), there added in margin    c Meneuensis capituli Inuect., i. 1 (Davies, p. 83–4)

516  Cheney suggests (English Episcopal Acta 2, Canterbury 1162–1190, ed. Cheney and Jones, p. lvi) that Gerald may here have deliberately omitted the additional title ‘totius Anglie primas’ when copying the letter. 517  Jer. 1: 10. 518  Matt. 15: 13 (adapted). 519  Cf. Matt. 12: 30, ‘He that is not with me, is against me; and he that gathers not with me, scatters’. 520  For language evoking an image of the pope as shepherd, see the letter from the chapter of St Davids to Honorius (Inuect., ii. 10 (ed. Davies, p. 143)).

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church of Canterbury,516 sends his greetings and the loyal obedience and reverence due to his father and lord. ‘The disposition of divine providence has set you over peoples and kingdoms to the end that Your Solicitude’s judgement may, according to the diverse merits of each, tear up, demolish, scatter, and destroy, or build up and plant,517 so that through you, to whom he has entrusted his duties on earth, the son of the Most High may uproot and “eradicate every plant which the Heavenly Father has not planted”518 and ruin those who scatter, because they do not labour with him in the gathering.519 It is for this reason, indeed, that a plenitude of power has been granted you from on high: so that those things which cannot be corrected by us, who have been called to share in your responsibility, may be rounded up and brought back to order520 by the grandeur of your authority, which nothing can resist. ‘I do not think you are unaware, Most Holy Father, that the church of Canterbury is the mother and metropolitan of the church of St Davids and of all the other churches of Wales, as the confirmations and writings of your predecessors Adrian, Eugene, Alexander, and Celestine, of blessed memory, bear witness, and as the document of confirmation which you recently sent shows. But lately, as I have learned from reliable sources, a certain archdeacon of the church of St Davids, Gerald by name and Welsh by birth,521 a kinsman to many powerful men of Wales either by blood or by marriage, perhaps inspired by reliance on those blood ­relations (when one ought to rely on virtue rather than blood), arranged to be elected bishop of St Davids by only three canons, whom (it is said) he had induced to consent by means neither seemly nor right, and though none of the other canons gave their approval or assent in any way. This man, however, propped up by such a nomination, neither sought nor awaited the grant of a con­firm­ ation from myself (to whom he should first have had recourse) but quickly usurped both the title and the authority of bishop-­elect. When he could not bend the canon responsible for the seal of the chapter of St Davids with his entreaties, he so terrified him with bloody threats that the keeper of the seal put the said seal upon the altar of the cath­ edral church. But first he made an appeal: let no one presume to take it or remove it from there without the common consent of the chapter. This archdeacon, however, having no more respect for this appeal than

521  On ‘natio’ and ‘cognatio’, see Bartlett, Gerald of Wales, pp. 17–18 (22–3) and De prin., first pref. (OMT 4).

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consensum illud inde tollere uel asportare presumeret. Ille tamen non magis appellationem reuerensd quam horruerat intrusionem sigillum sustulit et sic abstulit ut, quociens et qualia uelit, patrocinii uel testificationis possit instrumenta conficere. ‘Nouit Deus, ante quem sto et quem nullum latet secretum, quod, si eum ydoneum et ad tante | dignitatis apicem, canonica electione preeunte, euocatum credidissem, munus confirmationis sed et consecrationis, si a me uel alterum uel utrumque petere uoluisset, benigne inpendissem. Verumtamen ille de electionis qualitate minime confidens, me minus licite minusque canonice neglecto, ad sedem apostolicam (sicut fama est) festinum iter arripuit, ut uos, cuie nondumf de forma electionis sue innotuit, falsis circumueniat testimoniis. Sed nostis, Pater Peritissime, quod testibus non testimoniis credi oportet, presertim cum plura efficere possint et soleant quod testimoniis eorum qui testes nominantur uoluntates non consonent,g sicut ueri sigilli uel furtiua surreptio uel ablatio uiolenta uel inpressionis adulterine cum uero sigillo, sicut plerumque fit, expressa similitudo.h522 ‘Hec uobis, Sanctissime Pater, non odio persone (nouit Deus) sed zelo iusticie, castigatius forsan et temperantius quam expediret uel rei ueritas exigeret, significanda duxi, ne quoquomodo circumuenti,i ueritate prius non intellecta, manum ei consecrationis (si placet Sanctitati Vestre) uel imponatis uel faciatis imponi. Sed et hoc uellemus Vestre innotescere Sanctitati, quod sepedictus archidiaconus, obtento forsan a uobis (quod absit) consecrationis munere, non foret hoc fine contentusj523 sed, iuxta quod spes improbissimas amplectuntur insperata consecuti, ad ulteriora et deteriora conatus extenderet et exemtionem a iurisdictione Cantuariensis ecclesie—­quam tamen Deo

d  reuerens corrected from reuerans MS    e cui MS and manuscript of Inuect.; qui Inuect., i. 1(Davies, p. 84); quibus Butler    f necdum Inuect., i. 1 (Davies, p. 84)    g   uoluntates non consonent Inuect., i. 1 (Davies, p. 84); uoluntes non consonent MS; voluntas non consonet Wharton and Brewer    h  expressa similitudo ed., following a suggestion by Butler (cf. Inuect., i. 2 (Davies, p. 89), G.’s reply to this letter: ‘Item enumerat modos falsitatis multos, quos nunquam ante audiuimus, “Uel furtiuam surreptionem, uel ablationem uiolentam, uel impressionis adulterine cum uero sigillo expressam similitudinem”, etc.’); expressa similitudine MS and Inuect., i. 1 (Davies, p. 84)    i circumuenti Inuect., i. 1 (Davies, p. 84), Wharton, and Brewer; circumuenienti MS    j  Our MS ends incomplete with contentus, at end of folio and quire. An earlymodern hand writes, at the foot of the page, ‘D⟨ . . . . . . mu⟩lta : immo plura quam 100. capitula. V.  Indicem. ⟨ . . . .⟩o monumenti tam præclari iactura’. This is transcribed in Hoare, Itinerary of Archbishop Baldwin, p. lix, (1806) as ‘Desunt multa immo plura quam 100 capitula (vide indicem) gravi profecto munumenti tam præclari jactura’; more was evidently legible at that date. The remainder of the letter is printed here from the MS of Inuect., BAV MS Reg. lat. 470, fo. 3r

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he had had fear of usurpation, has taken and stolen the seal, with the result that he can make up letters of protection or attestation whenever and however he wishes. ‘God, before whom I stand and from whom no secret is hidden, knows that, if I had believed him to be suitable and to have been summoned to such a crowning dignity following an election according to canon law, I should graciously have granted the gift not only of my confirmation but also of consecration, if he had wished to ask me for one or for both. Nevertheless, he himself trusts very little in the nature of his election and, still more unlawfully and uncanonically disregarding me, has hastened (as report has it) to set out to the Apostolic See, so that with false proofs he may deceive you, who have not yet learned the form of his election. But you know, Most Expert Father, that one ought to believe witnesses over written testimony, particularly since many things can and often do cause the real intentions of those named as witnesses to differ from their written testimony, such as the secret theft or violent removal of a true seal, or sealing with a copy of an impression counterfeited upon a true seal, as is often done.522 ‘I have decided, Most Holy Father, that you ought to be told these things, not because of any personal hatred (God knows) but led by zeal for justice—­and indeed perhaps to tell you with more restraint and moderation than is right or the truth of the matter demands—­lest you be somehow deceived and, not yet knowing the truth, either lay your own hand upon him in consecration (if it please Your Holiness) or cause another to do so. But we should also like to tell Your Holiness that, if this oft-­mentioned archdeacon should perchance obtain from you the gift of consecration (God forbid), he would not be satisfied with this outcome523 but, as those who attain what they had not expected then embrace the wickedest aspirations, he would expand his efforts to further and to darker things; he would impiously affect, on the pretext of the consecration granted him by you, an exemption from the jurisdiction of the church of Canterbury—­an exemption which by God’s grace and by Your Prudence’s constant refusal he will never obtain;

522  That is, using a soft material to copy a seal’s pattern from a sealed document, and then creating a new seal matrix in order to seal something else. Cf. Walter Map, De nugis curialium, v. 6 (ed. James, pp. 494–5): ‘Artifex subtilis expresserat sigillum regium bitumine, ­formaueratque cuprium tam expresse similitudinis ad illum, ut nemo differenciam uideret’; and Bishop and Chaplais, Facsimiles of English Royal Writs, pp. xix–xxiii. 523  The remainder is preserved in Inuect., i. 1 (Davies, pp. 84–5) and given here for completeness.

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uolente et Vestra semper Prudentia denegante numquam impetrabit—­ sub pretextu consecrationis sibi a uobis indulte irreuerenter affectaret et inter Anglicos et Walenses de cetero pro posse suo perpetue dissensionis iaceret seminarium. Walenses enim, a prima Britonum prosapia continua sanguinis successione deducti, tociusk Britannie dominium sibi de | iure deberi iactitant. Vnde, si non effere ­gentis et effrene barbariem districtionis ecclesiastice censura coercuisset facta per ­ Cantuariensem (cui gens illa lege prouinciali hactenus subiecta fuisse dinoscitur), a rege suo uel continua uel crebra rebellione discessisset, sequentel neccessario tocius Anglicane regionis inquietudine. Vitam et incolimitatem uestram conseruet Altissimus in tempora longa.’

k  anglie deleted by subpunction, BAV MS Reg. lat. 470, fo. 3r    l  se corrected to sequente by interlinear addition, BAV MS Reg. lat. 470, fo. 3r

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and he would, to the best of his abilities, sow the seeds of everlasting discord henceforth between the English and the Welsh. For the Welsh, descended in unbroken bloodline from the first stock of the Britons, boast that the rule of all Britain ought by right to be theirs. Therefore, if the barbarity of that savage and unbridled people had not been restrained by the stern ecclesiastical authority brought by Canterbury (to which that people has hitherto been recognised as subject, by provincial law), they would have forsaken their king by either constant or, at least, frequent rebellion, and the disturbance of the whole area of England would have inevitably followed. ‘May the All-­Highest preserve your life and your health for a long time to come.’

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APPENDIX 1 The Forms of Welsh Names in De gestis Names of places and people in Wales in De gestis take a variety of forms and spellings depending on their importance and the extent to which they were already familiar in Anglo-­Norman England.1 Generally, the larger areas and districts of Wales and the more significant individuals have a Latin version of the Welsh name, one that was already in use: thus, Venedocia, Powisia, Resus filius Griffini, Lewelinus, Cadwallanus, etc. Significant monasteries also have Latin names, e.g. Strata Florida, Alba Landa (also Alba Domus), etc., but the important churches and dioceses are usually referred to with a Latin adjective agreeing with ecclesia or capitulum, e.g. Meneuensis, Landauensis, Laneluensis, etc. The focus of the early part of De gestis on Dyfed and Brycheiniog involves referring to a large number of small places, and most of these are given the Welsh form of the name, occasionally with a Latin ending, e.g. Buella (modern Buellt), but usually the simple Welsh form is used as an indeclinable Latin noun: Ros (Rhos), Llocheis (Llywes), Kemmeis (Cemaes), Kirreu (also Kaereu) (Carew), Aberteiui (Aberteifi), Elenit with t for /d/ fixed by rhyming examples (Elenid),2 Worthrenniaun (Gwerthrynion), Brecheiniauc (Brycheiniog), etc. These are usually spelt in one of the forms of medieval Welsh orthography used in south Wales in the late twelfth century and early thirteenth;3 for example, the  spelling of the suffixes -aun and -auc (for later -on and -og) is ­dis­tinct­ive­ly Welsh. In other cases, while the name is Welsh in form, the s­pelling has Anglo-­Norman features, e.g. Kerdigan, Kerdigaun (Ceredigion), Pembroc, Penbroc (Penfro), Melenith (Maelienydd) (with the reduction of the diphthong and th for /ð/).4 A distinctive feature of Anglo-­Norman spellings of Welsh names is the use of an epenthetic vowel to break up consonant clusters, e.g. Aberconowe (Aberconwy), 1  Further details can be found in the notes to the forms in the text. For forms of names in Pembrokeshire, see Charles, Place-­Names of Pembrokeshire (cited under the modern form of the name); see also more generally AMR, the online database of Welsh place-­names, where early forms of the names are listed. 2  See Thomas, Enwau Afonydd a Nentydd Cymru, pp. 65–6. 3  For details, see Russell ‘Scribal (in)consistency’; Russell, ‘What did medieval Welsh scribes do?’ 4  Russell, ‘Some neglected sources’.

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Llandesteffan (Llansteffan),5 Emelin (Emlyn); similar forms can be found in other documents of the period.6 Some, however, seem to be unique to Gerald, such as Llocheis (Llywes); Eleuein, Eluein (Elfael) is also found once in Roger of Howden.7 A form like Penbidiauc (Pebidiog) is attested elsewhere but only in documents associated with St Davids; the added nasal may be due to analogy with Pembroc, etc.8 Welsh personal names are fewer in number but the same categories can be found. In addition to the Latin forms noted above, some reflect Anglo-­Norman spellings, thus Idenardus (Idnerth), and perhaps Wetheleu (or Wethelen), the hermit of Llywes. The form of the latter is problematic, but it probably shows th for /ð/.9 The name of Gerald’s mother, spelt Angareth and Hangaret (Angharad), shows two different spellings of the final /d/, the former Anglo-­Norman, the latter Welsh. An interesting category, which has no parallel in the place-­names, is where the Welsh name is replaced by something more familiar to an Anglo-­Norman audience. In some cases, like Griffinus (Gruffudd), it may be to avoid having to spell an unfamiliar consonant or cluster, but in Theodorus (Tewdwr) and Elyodorus (Elidyr) the less familiar is ­converted into the more familiar.10 A striking instance is Eneam Clut (Einion Clud), where the similarity to Aeneas has been exploited ­perhaps with a cultivated non-­Welsh reader in mind; in this instance the fact that the name was functioning as an accusative might have encouraged the correspondence, but Clut (spelt with a t for /d/) would be exactly as a contemporary Welsh text would spell the name. In short, names familiar to a non-­Welsh audience tend to be in Latin, but names of more local places and individuals are Welsh in form; Anglo-­Norman spellings are used in some cases but not others, and it may be that they were used when Gerald was familiar with them, but otherwise he defaulted to the Welsh spellings.

5 The d-spelling suggests that the first element might have been understood as English land rather than Welsh llan. 6  Cf. also a form like Lanwadein (Lawhaden) which is consistent with other medieval spellings of the name (Charles, Place-­Names of Pembrokeshire, ii. 420). 7  See Introduction, p. lvi, n. 158. 8 Charles, Place-­Names of Pembrokeshire, i. 197, ‘Some forms have inorganic -n-, -m-’; cf. OP ii. 388 where it is suggested less plausibly that it may be an error for Peuliniog (see Appendix 2, p. 236). 9  See Edition, n. 405, for further discussion. 10  On the use of Griffinus for Welsh Gruffudd, perhaps as a way of avoiding the Welsh fricatives such as /ð/, see Vita Griffini filii Conani, ed. Russell, pp. 125–6; Pryce, ‘Uses of the vernacular’, who discusses the use of Gervasius for the Welsh name Iorwerth.

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A final point to note is that Gerald is not consistent in how he spells names across his works: for example, in De gestis he uses Elenit, but in his Welsh works (RS vi. 119, 170) Elennith and Elennyth (with Anglo-­ Norman -th for -/d/); the river Wye in De gestis is Vaga, but elsewhere in his works it also appears as Waia. In this case the variation could be orthographical as a g-spelling between vowels can represent -/y/- in Anglo-­Norman spelling.

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A PPEN DI X 2 Gerald and the Districts of Wales Gerald’s most systematic discussion of Welsh territorial div­isions was in Descriptio Kambrie, written more than twenty years before the completion of De gestis.1 In writing the latter, Gerald did not assume that his readers would be familiar with the earlier work or, indeed, with Wales. In De gestis Gerald’s narrative mentions Welsh districts in three main places: in his account of his attempt to impose the payment of tithes in i. 3 and 4; in his actions when newly promoted to be arch­deacon of Brycheiniog in i. 5 and 6; and in his description of the lands held by his kinsmen, the Children of Nest, in ii. 9. Since Gerald was not writing for a readership all of whom were familiar with Wales, he used standard Latin terms such as patria, prouincia, terra, pars, and finis. Cantaredus, Gerald’s Latin version of the Welsh term cantref, was used in De gestis, i. 4. In the earlier works, the Itinerarium Kambrie and Descriptio Kambrie, Gerald had already explained cantaredus as Latin for cantref (pl. cantrefi), and the latter as cant ‘100’ and tref ‘uilla’.2 Gerald’s occasional use of the Latin version of cantref, cantaredus would have reminded those readers who were familiar with Wales that cantref belonged in a sequence: from large unit to small, it went from gwlad, for territories such as Dyfed or Ceredigion, to cantref, for ex­ample, Penfro or Rhos; and to cwmwd or cymwd ‘commote’, for example, Talacharn. When Gerald used prouincia instead of cantaredus for Penfro or Rhos, the well-­informed reader would have been able to interpret, while the less well-­informed could rest content with the notion that it was a district within a larger whole. The commote, a div­ ision of a cantref, is not used in De gestis, but in the Itinerarium Gerald remarked that Gruffudd ap Rhys (his mother’s uncle) was left with only a single kemmotus, namely Caeo in Cantref Mawr. Caeo, according to Gerald, was a quarter of the cantaredus, Cantref Mawr.3 In De gestis, Gerald does refer to a commote in i. 3, but only by name, Talachar[n]. Cantref Mawr is reckoned to have contained seven commotes, although it is true that Caeo was a particularly large one. An even smaller unit 1  See also Maps 1–4 (pp. xvi, xviii, liii, and 236 respectively). 2  Itin. Kam., ii. 7 (RS vi. 127); Descr. Kam., i. 4 (RS v. 169). 3  Itin. Kam., i. 2 (RS vi. 34).

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was the maenor, but in De gestis this only appears in the name of the family castle, Manorbier. Archdeaconries in the diocese of St Davids tended to get larger as they were further east and thus further from St Davids itself. When Gerald became archdeacon of Brycheiniog, he was anxious to assert his authority over Rhwng Gwy a Hafren, the land between the Wye and the Severn.4 This, however, was termed a patria in the final sentence of i. 5, just as Dyfed was a patria (as well as a regio, both in i. 3). In i. 6 it becomes clear that the land between Wye and Severn was the territory ruled by Cadwallon ap Madog, although his brother, Einion Clud, had a subordinate authority in Elfael and Einion ap Rhys similarly in Gwerthrynion. Its status as a distinct patria and kingdom helps to explain why the dean of Maelienydd in 1175 was calling himself the archdeacon. The westernmost archdeaconry in the diocese was that of St Davids, also called by Gerald the archdeaconry of Pembroke (as in De gestis, ii. 7). The south-­eastern part of Dyfed, however, was part of the archdeaconry of Carmarthen, of which Gerald’s particular enemy in the chapter, Osbert, was archdeacon. Whereas the archdeaconry of St Davids was only part of the patria of Dyfed, the archdeaconry of Brycheiniog included two patriae, both that of Brycheiniog itself, a marcher lordship called a terra in De gestis, i. 4, and that of Rhwng Gwy a Hafren. The rural deaneries of south-­west Wales were, very probably, established in the early twelfth century during the episcopate of Bernard. This is shown by several indications: in the Taxation of Nicholas IV, the deaneries of Cemais and Emlyn belonged to the archdeaconry of Cardigan, presumably because they lay within the area then dominated by Cardigan castle; Daugleddau was part of Rhos, which would make sense after the Flemish settlement in Rhos and the creation of the Flemish lordship of Wiston in Daugleddau.5 Two reasons may be given to explain why the commote is relatively unimportant in De gestis. The first is that the three western cantrefi of Dyfed, Penfro, Rhos, and Pebidiog seem not to have been divided, for Gerald at least, into commotes, whereas they were numerous further east, in Cantref Gwarthaf, and the northern cantrefi of Cemais and

4  De gestis, i. 5. 5  Taxatio Eccles., 272; this explains why, in Rees, An Historical Atlas of Wales, plate 33, Cemais and Emlyn are in an anomalous position, it being unclear to which archdeaconry they belonged.

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Emlyn were both divided into two commotes.6 The second reason is that commotes were much less important than cantrefi for ecclesiastical divisions. In Dyfed, rural deaneries often corresponded with cantrefi, while an archdeaconry sometimes corresponded to a patria or gwlad: Gerald’s uncle David, for example, had been archdeacon of Ceredigion before he became bishop of St Davids.7 The match between cantref and rural deanery was by no means perfect: in De gestis, i. 4, both Rhos and Daugleddau are cantaredi, but the deanery of Rhos, as we have seen, included Daugleddau. Prouincia was a term used by Gerald both as an equivalent to cantref, as with Penfro in i. 4, and as an equivalent to ‘commote’, as with Ceri (at that period apparently a single parish) in i. 6. One term used by Gerald, comitatus, lies outside the series of counterparts to Welsh terms. Yet this, too, can be referred to by the ordinary Latin word, prouincia. In De gestis, i. 3, William Karquit is described as uicecomes prouincie, but his prouincia was also named as the comitatus de Penbroc. For its extent, see the note to in proxima uero comitatu (i. 3). Its origins go back to the reign of Henry I, as shown by the 1130 Pipe Roll: ‘Hait Uicecomes reddit Compotum de firma de Pembroc’.8 Among those mentioned in that section of the Pipe Roll were Walter son of Wizo, son of the Flemish settler who gave his name to Wiston. He owed money ‘so that he may have the land of his father’, which suggests that Wizo had recently died. Another was Gerald’s father, William son of Odo of Barri, who similarly owed money ‘for the land of his father’, and Godepert the Fleming, probably the father of the Richard’ son of Godipert, who was the first to accompany Diarmait Mac Murchada when he returned to Leinster from exile. These man were settled, respectively, in Wiston in Daugleddau, Manorbier in Penfro, and probably Roche in Rhos. The county of Pembroke was quite distinct from the other main royal centre in south-­west Wales revealed by 6  In the list in BL Cotton MS Domitian A. viii, printed in Evans, Report on Manuscripts, pp.  940–3, and later lists, Daugleddau is divided between two commotes, Llawhaden and Castell Gwŷs, but this must be later than the Flemish settlement; Penfro is divided between the commote of Manorbier and the commote of Penfro, yet Gerald never refers to Manorbier as the name of a commote. Pebidiog is divided between the commote of Mynyw, St Davids, and the commote of Pencaer. Charles, Place-­Names of Pembrokeshire, i. 253, rejects the notion that Pencaer was a commote, but, according to WATU, it was a lordship embracing parishes in the north-­east of the cantref; Rees, An Historical Atlas of Wales, plate 28, puts Mynyw and  Pencaer in brackets and does not show the division of Penfro and Daugleddau into ­commotes. 7  For a map showing both archdeaconries and rural deaneries, see Rees, An Historical Atlas of Wales, plate 33. 8  PR 31 HI (The Great Roll of the Pipe, ed. Green, p. 107).

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the same pipe roll, Carmarthen.9 At Carmarthen there was no uicecomes, only a series of named debtors. These, however, included Walter ‘de Guher’, namely Gŵ yr, Bleddyn of Mabudrud (a commote in Cantref Mawr), and ‘the men of Cantref Mawr’ as a group. The entry on Bleddyn of Mabudrud records that one of his sureties was ‘Stephanus de Cameis’, presumably (as we shall see) the father of Robert fitz Stephen, a partner of Gerald’s maternal grandmother, Nest. Another entry records that Bernard, bishop of St Davids, owed £8 16s. 4d. ‘for the debts of the men of the honour of Carmarthen’, presumably the bishop’s lands including those at Abergwili, Llangadog, and ­elsewhere. In De gestis, ii. 9, Gerald told the story of a debate between himself and his cousin, Rhys ap Gruffudd, over the political standing of the Children of Nest, in which Gerald claimed that ‘the sons of Nest held the seven cantrefi of Dyfed in Wales: the eldest, William son of Gerald, had those of Pembroke and Emlyn; Robert son of Stephen held Ceredigion and Cemais; Henry son of the king, Narberth and Penbidiauc; Maurice had Llansteffan; William Hay held St Clears; and Hywel and Walter held Llanbedr and Efelffre, along with other lands’ (see Map 4 overleaf). The debate took place at Hereford between 1186 and 1189. Gerald’s claim can to some extent be checked against other evidence. That William at one period held Emlyn as well as his lands in Penfro seems to be true.10 Robert was castellan of Cardigan, though he never held Ceredigion in his own right. His authority in Cemais, the cantref just to the south of Cardigan, is unclear. As we have just seen, the person referred to in the 1130 Pipe Roll as ‘Stephen of Cemais’ was probably his father and predecessor as castellan of Cardigan; on the other hand, Robert fitz Martin was the founder of St Dogmael’s c. 1115 as a monastery of the Tironian observance, and he is normally regarded as the lord of Cemais.11 If, however, Robert fitz Martin were the ‘Robertus de quercu’ who is mentioned as acting, along with ‘Stephen of Cemais’, as a surety for Bleddyn of Mabudrud in the 1130 Pipe Roll, they would be attested as working together.12 Henry fitz Henry is claimed as holding Narberth and Penbidiauc. The latter looks as if it might be for Pebidiauc, 9  This appears earlier in the roll, pp. 89–90 of the printed edition. 10  See the reference in PR 21 HII (The Pipe Roll for 21 Henry II, no ed., 89), ‘in escambio castelli et terra de Emelin quamdiu Resus filius Griffin ea habuerit’; Round, ‘The origins of the Carews’, p. 23; Lloyd, HW 542 n. 78 for the loss of Emlyn by his son Odo of Carew. 11  Lloyd, HW 431. 12  They were named together in the Brut, s.a. 1136, ‘Stephen the constable and Robert fitz Martin’.

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Map 4.  The seven cantrefi of Dyfed

Pebidiog. That was episcopal land, the later ‘Dewisland’. However, according to Egerton Phillimore, Penbidiauc was an error for Peuliniauc.13 Yet, that emendation also poses problems, since Peuliniog should have been attached to St Clears and should thus have been held by William Hay. For that reason we have preferred to understand Penbidiauc as Pebidiog. Maurice was undoubtedly active in the east of Cantref Gwarthaf, since he had to be warned by Bishop Bernard (therefore no later than 1148) not to intervene in the lands of Pentywyn which Bernard had given to Carmarthen Priory.14 Narberth was assigned by Gerald to Henry fitz Henry, and Efelffre (of which Llanbedr is one parish), was assigned to Hywel and Walter; these were two relatively small territories adjacent to each other but in different rural deaneries, Narberth in Penfro and Efelffre in Carmarthen.15 We are not sure of the identity of Hywel and Walter; perhaps, judging by the sequence of the list and by the territories mentioned, they were further sons of Hait by Nest, brothers of the William Hay, namely son of Hait.16 This would have given the sons of Hait the whole of the western half of Cantref 13  OP iii. 343; cf. also Appendix 1, p. 230. 14  Acta, ed. Barrow, no. 6. If Maurice’s lordship of Llansteffan included the commote of Penrhyn, of which it was effectively the caput, the Pentywyn at NGR SN 29 19 was in the neighbouring commote of Ystlwyf. 15  Efelffre is shown to belong to Cantref Gwarthaf in the early twelfth century by LL 255, ll. 1–2. 16  Complete Peerage, vii. 200.

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Gwarthaf. By the date of De gestis, ii. 9, however, Efelffre had been lost to Rhys ap Gruffudd.17 In general, what is striking about the list is, first, that the western and northern cantrefi of Dyfed remained intact, while Cantref Gwarthaf was fragmented.18 This may have been a consequence of the division of Dyfed by Henry I into two zones, one attached to Pembroke, the other to Carmarthen, as well as the large number of commotes into which Cantref Gwarthaf was divided. The other striking aspect is that it reflects the Dyfed lands of the Children of Nest at their most extensive, probably at the end of Henry I’s reign. By the date of the meeting at Hereford, those days were far in the past, as Rhys ap Gruffudd would have known better than anyone.

17  Brut, 1171. 18  It is, however, mentioned as one of the territories granted to Maelgwn ap Rhys ap Gruffudd by Llywelyn ab Iorwerth in 1216: Brut, s.a. For a map and discussion, see Davies, Conquest, p. 228.

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A PPEN DI X 3 Early-Modern Notes on De gestis T HE NOT E S O F B R I A N TW Y N E In 1617, Brian Twyne made notes and extracts from manuscripts belonging to Henry Parry, including Tiberius B. xiii. These notes are preserved in Oxford, Bodl. Lib. MS Twyne 22, and we print them below. Extracts from the text of De gestis are printed in italics and abbreviated, as the passages (some quite extended) may be found elsewhere in this volume. Twyne’s notes on De gestis are interspersed with notes on the Speculum ecclesie and on other manuscripts of Parry’s. Omissions of these other notes and abbreviations of passages from De gestis are ­indicated by [ . . . ]. Illegible words and letters are indicated by 〈 . . . 〉 Interlinear additions are indicated \thus/. Twyne’s marginal cross-­ references to other sources in his notebooks are not reproduced. * fo. 99

r

fo. 100r

fo. 104r

| Excerpta ex quibusdam Manuscriptis Lantoniensis coenobii prope Glocestr: que uidi apud Magistrum Henricum Parry. 1617 [ . . . ] | Gyraldus recusauit episcopatum Meneuensem ad quem electus erat post Dauidem auunculum suum, et episcopatum Bangorensem post obitum Wiani, ut in Vita Gyraldi f. 45,1 et Landauensem, ibidem f. 46.2 [ . . . ] | In altero MSo qui continet opera quaedam Syluestri Gyraldi, uidelicet eius Distinctiones libris 4.3 Vbi in praefatione ad librum primum distinctionum suarum sic loquitur Gyraldus. Proinde etiam uerbum [ . . . ] reuera nec faciam,4 ita is.5 Loquitur enim de saltu scholarium a bonis litteris ad studium iurisprudentiae. Hinc liquet Syluestrem Gyraldum in tenera aetate Oxoniae studuisse; et circa tempora Henrici Regis Angliae 2i. \studuit etiam prius Glocestriae in Abbatia cui tum 1  Tiberius B. xiii, fo. 176r. In spite of Twyne’s ‘f.’, this early-­modern series is a pagination, not foliation. 2  Tiberius B. xiii, fo. 176v. 3  i.e. the Speculum ecclesie. 4  Hunt, ‘Preface to the “Speculum ecclesiae” ’, p. 205. 5  Twyne thus indicates a direct quotation from Gerald.

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praefuit Abbas Amelinus Francigena, sub Haimone Magistro, Serlonis illius egregii uersificatoris socio et aequali, Syluester rudimenta perdidicit, ut ipse testatur ibidem p. 105./6 Quinetiam ad finem libri 4i Distinctionum Syluestri Gyraldi extat illius Vita Gyraldi, uel a seipso (uti stilus indicat) uel ab aliquo familiari ipsius conscripta, cuius initium hoc est, Inclitorum gesta uirorum &c:7 ubi de recitatione topographiae Hyberniae apud Oxoniam, sic scribit. Cum itaque magni nominis [ . . . ] recolit antiquitas,8 haec ille. hoc fuit tempore Henrici 2i, posteaquam Gyraldus aliquo tempore in Hybernia commoratus fuisset cum Ioanne secundo Henrici 2i filio. Mirum itaque quod alibi idem illius uitae Author alio in capite scribit, his uerbis de Gyraldo. Collectis itaque librorum undique [ . . . ] | et obtineret, sollicitatur &c:9 \et capitulo 40 ibidem sic: Hubertus Cantuariensis Archiepiscopus cum apud castellum Pagani ubi grandis illa caedes Walensium facta est de obitu Petri Meneuensis episcopi nuntium accepisset10 et cum inquireret quisnam ecclesiam [ . . . ] in uita sua committeret,11 haec ille. inde patet de tempore scholas Lyncolniae 〈 . . . 〉isse nam ibi de tempore agebat Gyraldus./ [ . . . ] Vita Gyraldi c. 47. In octauis itaque Paschae sequentis apud Lyncolniam [ . . . ] se praeparauit,12 haec ille. Vbi fit mentio scholae apud Lyncoln ubi Gyraldus studuit pene per triennium ante electionem suam ultimam in episcopum Meneuensem post Petrum. [ . . . ] | Ex Vita Syluestri Gyraldi M.S. que sic incipit Inclitorum gesta uirorum &c:13 Adiungitur Distinctionibus Gyraldi Vbi agitur de puerili aetate Gyraldi, c. 3, sic: Tanta namque studium uehementia [ . . . ] dare dignus erat,14 ita in libro illo. Nam Gyraldum etiam Oxoniae studuisse superius probatum est, p. 164.15 Deinde Angliam rediit et fit Archidiaconus Brecnauc missus est16 legatus a 6  Tiberius B.  xiii, fo. 52v. On Amelinus, see Hamelin, abbot of St Peter’s, Gloucester, 1148–79 (Knowles, et al., Heads of Religious Houses, i. 53); on Serlo, see Rigg, ‘Serlo of Wilton’ and ODNB, s.n. ‘Wilton, Serlo of (c. 1105–1181)’. 7  De gestis, prologue. 8  De gestis, ii. 16. 9  De gestis, iii. 3. 10  This first, unitalicized, passage is a paraphrase rather than a quotation. 11  De gestis, iii. 4. 12  De gestis, iii. 11. 13  De gestis, prologue. 14  De gestis, i. 2. 15  Twyne 22, fo. 104r. 16  Perhaps in, MS (?).

fo. 104v

fo. 128r

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Richardo Cantuar: Archiepiscopo in Walliam pro quibusdam ecclesiae negotiis et in illa legatione ab auunculo suo Dauido Meneuensi episcopo fit Archidiaconus de Brecnauc; post legationem finitam iterum Parisiis se contulit c. 13,17 quatenus studiorum suorum cursum absolueret uiz: in iure canonico, cui operam dedit per triennium ibidemque publice ius canonicum praelegit magna cum laude et admiratione auditorum. Iterum repatriauit, et rursus iterum Parisiis proficisci intendens, cum metu belli imminentis hoc facere tuto non possit, Lyncolniam studendi causa adiit. c. 39.18 Item in Vita Gyraldi uidelicet c. 41, in epistola ipsius ad Hubertum Cantuariensem Archiepiscopum et Angliae Iustitiarium super electionem suam et nominationem ad episcopatum Meneuensem post obitum Petri sic scribit. Si ad digniorem cathedram [ . . . ] non desererem inperfectum,19 ita is. sed tunc Gyraldus studuit Lyncolniae, ut ex aliis  circumstantiis satis patet. ergo20 ibi uiguit studium Theologiae. V. p. 16521 Ibidem c. 13. Cum igitur annis plurimis [ . . . ] capere poterat auditores.22 Et eodem capitulo ibidem. quadam autem die [ . . . ] proculdubio non praeualeat.23 T HE NOT E S O F R I C HA RD JAM E S In the 1620s or 1630s, Richard James made extensive extracts from Tiberius B. xiii, by then in the collection of Robert Cotton.24 These are now preserved in Bodl. Lib. MS James 2, pp. 11–55. Most were drawn from the Speculum ecclesie.25 We print below the passages from De gestis copied by James on pp. 45–54, abbreviated and identified. The notes in another of James’s notebooks, Bodl. Lib. MS James 18, often identified as coming from Tiberius B. xiii (including by a modern marginal annotation in the notebook itself), in fact derive not from the Speculum ecclesie but from the Symbolum electorum.26 17  De gestis, ii. 1. 18  De gestis, iii. 3. 19  De gestis, iii. 5. 20 go MS. 21  Twyne 22, fo. 104v. 22  De gestis, ii. 1. 23 Ibid. 24  The Bodleian Summary Catalogue (no. 3839) dates the notebook in question, Bodl. Lib. MS James 2, to ‘about 1620–34’. 25  MS James 2, pp. 11–45. 26 Tite, Early Records, p. 108.

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The Goliardic verses on pp. 54–5 of James’s notebook are described as appearing ‘in fine MS Cottoniani Giraladi [sic]’. As the end of De gestis seems already to have been lost, this most likely refers to the end of Roger of Ford’s Speculum ecclesie, with which Gerald’s works would thus already have been bound. The end of this text was badly damaged in the fire of 1731 and the verses James quotes, if they appeared there, are no longer extant. The first epitaph appears also in Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, MS 450, fo. 31r. The second, on eels, is said to have been composed after the death of Martin IV, pope 1281–5 (cf. Dante, Purgatorio, xxiv. 22–4); if so, it long postdates Gerald’s text.27 James added marginal labels summarizing the content of his extracts. We print these as headings. Extracts from De gestis are italicized. * | Legendae Fabulosis enim seu relationibus [ . . . ] uirtuosa consurgit.28 Vita Giraldi, 9.29 Flandri in Wallia. Videns itaque per totam fere [ . . . ] | Hoc aufert fiscus quod non accipit Christus.30 11.31

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Bechet Accidit autem diebus eisdem [ . . . ] olei Elizaei etc.32 11.33 Virgis caesi ut absoluantur. Vicecomes penbrochiae Willelmus Karquitt propter 8o iuga boum abrepta de prioratu de penbroc quamuis regis constabularius esset excommunicatus erat a Giraldo34 — restitutione facta et satisfactione secuta uirgis uerberari meruit et absolui.35 12.36 Ad Meneuensem Episcopatum Giraldum eligere uoluissent cum nec dum 30 aetatis annum ageret.37 21.38 | 27  Francesco Pipino, Chronicon, iv. 21 (in Rerum Italicarum Scriptores, i, col. 726). 28  De gestis, prologue. 29  Tiberius B. xiii, fo. 158r. 30  De gestis, i. 3. 31  Tiberius B. xiii, fo. 159r. 32  De gestis, i. 3. 33  Tiberius B. xiii, fo. 159r. 34  This first part of the passage is a paraphrase rather than a quotation. 35  De gestis, i. 3. 36  Tiberius B. xiii, fo. 159v. 37  De gestis, i. 9 (paraphrase). 38  Tiberius B. xiii, fo. 164r.

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Regum potestas in electionibus episcoporum Cum in regno anglicano [ . . . ] dicens tamen et asserens etc.39 2140 Decretalia Cum igitur parisius [ . . . ] capere poterat auditores.41 2342 Signacula Thomae Videns ipsum intrantem [ . . . ] a collo suspensis.43 28.44 Vide Ciceronem Tom. 4 pag. 207. Propter hoc autem istud [ . . . ] recuperandi spe pascuntur.45 3146 Walli inuadunt Hiberniam Tamen crescente propagine [ . . . ] suum occasio fuerunt.47 3148

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p. 49

Priuilegium Adriani pro Hibernia. Tertiam causam quare in expeditione Hibernica Ioannes non profecerit hanc refert. tertia uero inquit quae quidem omnium pessima [ . . . ] | facere disponebat. [a sentence omitted by James] quamquam tamen propter hoc [ . . . ] super hoc obtento aperte declaratur.49 32.50 \Vide hoc priuilegium apud Ioann. Anglic. lib. 19 cap. 6.51/ Donatio Constantini Sane Hiberniam et omnes insulas [ . . . ] non est dubium pertinere52 32.53 in priuilegio Adriani Accidit autem cum in media [ . . . ] | quam beneficio suspendit.54 35.55 Est autem terrae istius clerus [ . . . ] Venus non regnat. — [three sentences omitted by James] Est enim gens haec [ . . . ] laudabiliores non reperies.56 35.57 39  De gestis, i. 9. 40  Tiberius B. xiii, fo. 164r. 41  De gestis, ii. 1. 42  Tiberius B. xiii, fo. 165r. 43  De gestis, ii. 5. 44  Tiberius B. xiii, fo. 167v. 45  De gestis, ii. 9. 46  Tiberius B. xiii, fo. 169r. 47  De gestis, ii. 9. 48  Tiberius B. xiii, fo. 169r. 49  De gestis, ii. 10. 50  Tiberius B. xiii, fo. 169v. 51  Not identified. 52  De gestis, ii. 11. 53  Tiberius B. xiii, fo. 169v. 54  De gestis, ii. 13. 55  An error for ‘34’, that is, Tiberius B. xiii, fo. 170v. 56  De gestis, ii. 14. 57  Tiberius B. xiii, fo. 171r.

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Religio Hibernensium Gens omnium gentium [ . . . ] | sed cortici adhaerentes.58 3659 Mirum itaque quod ubi gens [ . . . ] effusione cementaret. Vnde et omnes sancti [ . . . ] difficile erit inuenire.60 36.61 Eodem die caenante cum Archiepiscopo [ . . . ] ei non responderim.62 38.63 Processu uero temporis opere completo [ . . . ] | ulla recolit antiquitas.64 38.65 Praedicantes66 lingua ignota Praeterea pro re miranda [ . . . ] nihil omnino moti fuissent.67 40.68 Vnde et eodem die [ . . . ] | multitudine uestra remansisset.69 41.70 Finita sic igitur legatione [ . . . ] inseparabiliter adhaereat.71 42.72

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Willelmus de Longo-­campo. Processu uero temporis Cancellario [ . . . ] per comitem expulso. 46.73 cum comes ipse quasi uices regis tunc obtineret74 — Comes autem Ricardus [ . . . ] iusticiario in Anglia relicto.75 4576 Studium uiget Lincolniae Propter quod eundi in Franciam [ . . . ] | plurium annorum studio etc.77 49.78 Qui tunc in scholis fuerat79 scilicet Lincol. 50.80 58  De gestis, ii. 14. 59  Tiberius B. xiii, fo. 171v. 60  De gestis, ii. 14, where the sentence ‘Vnde et omnes sancti [. . .] difficile erit inuenire’. precedes that beginning ‘Mirum itaque quod’. James places it at the end instead. 61  Tiberius B. xiii, fo. 171v. 62  De gestis, ii. 15. 63  Tiberius B. xiii, fo. 172v. 64  De gestis, ii. 16. 65  Tiberius B. xiii, fo. 172v. 66  or perhaps Praedicentes. 67  De gestis, ii. 18. 68  Tiberius B. xiii, fo. 173v. 69  De gestis, ii. 19. 70  Tiberius B. xiii, fo. 174r. 71  De gestis, ii. 20. 72  Tiberius B. xiii, fo. 174v. 73  Tiberius B. xiii, fo. 176v. 74  De gestis, ii. 24. 75  De gestis, ii. 21. James here places together two passages from separate chapters (ii. 24 and ii. 21) and inverts their order. 76  Tiberius B. xiii, fo. 176r. 77  De gestis, iii. 3. 78  Tiberius B. xiii, fo. 178r. 79  De gestis, iii. 4. 80  Tiberius B. xiii, fo. 178v.

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Furrurarum usus Accidit autem circitem eadem tempora [ . . . ] agninis contentus erat.81 49.82

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Archiepiscopus iustitiarius Angliae. Ad Archiepiscopum Cantuariae Hubertum tunc Angliae iustitiarium.83 50.84 Illud etiam in causa fuit [ . . . ] de obitu episcopi nuncium suscepit.85 50.86 de hac uictoria Archiepiscopi sic literae Giraldi ad ipsum. Benedictus Deus qui docuit manus [ . . . ] | melior quam fortis.87 50.88 Monachos omnes detestatur In literis de electione noui episcopi Meneuensis, sic ait ad Hubertum Archiepiscopum. Excipimus autem omnem [ . . . ] a modo defendat Deus89 5490 Studium et schola Lincolniae Quibus demum literis a Ioanne susceptis et lectis [ . . . ] in quo continuus erat.91 5792 Et accedens ad pedes papae [ . . . ] libras nos libros.93 62.94

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Epitaphium Goliae95 Qui iacet hic plenus fuit ingenio sed egenus En serie morum flos cleri, fons uiciorum. Ventris seruus erat si quis de nomine quaerat Nomen Goliae tenuit flos philosophiae Quem tamen armatum uitiis nec morigeratum Nouimus. Hunc gratum Deus accipe, tolle reatum. | Item Epitaphium eiu[s]dem Gaudent anguillae quia mortuus hic iacet ille Qui quasi morte reas mortificauit eas. Haec habentur inter alia eiusmodi in fine MS Cottoniani Giraladi.96 81  De gestis, iii. 3. 82  Tiberius B. xiii, fo. 178r. 83  De gestis, iii. 4. 84  Tiberius B. xiii, fo. 178v. The quoted phrase begins on fo. 178r. 85  De gestis, iii. 4. 86  Tiberius B. xiii, fo. 178v. 87  De gestis, iii. 5. 88  Tiberius B. xiii, fo. 178v. 89  De gestis, iii. 7. 90  Tiberius B. xiii, fo. 180v. 91  De gestis, iii. 11. 92  Tiberius B. xiii, fo. 182r. 93  De gestis, iii. 18. 94  Tiberius B. xiii, fo. 184v. 95  Apocalypsis Goliae. in margin. 96  sic.

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T HE NOT E S O F JA M E S WARE Two sets of extracts from De gestis are found in the notebooks of the Irish antiquary Sir James Ware (1594–1666), each attesting to a different mode of working. The British Library catalogue description of Tiberius B. xiii currently describes it as containing ‘one of the two extant copies of Gerald’s autobiography’. The other copy referred to is BL Additional MS 4787, a collection of notes by Ware which includes passages from De gestis Giraldi. Tite, in his survey of the Cotton collection, described these as ‘Extracts, perhaps from this manuscript [sc. Tiberius B. xiii]’.97 Rooney points out that the reading festum in i. 9, shared with Tiberius B. xiii but generally agreed to be an error for factum, suggests that Ware’s text indeed derives from the Cotton manu­script.98 A heading before the start of Ware’s notes declares them to be ‘Sub Tiberio B. XIII’ (though this is written in a different hand from the text itself). On the other hand, Ware’s text diverges from that of Tiberius B. xiii at many points. Does it come entirely from Tiberius B. xiii, or did Ware have another source for his text of De gestis? Born in Dublin in 1594, Ware first travelled to England in 1629 and returned permanently to Ireland following the Restoration of 1660. If his notes are derived from Tiberius B. xiii, any date between 1629 and 1660 is thus possible for their production, but the 1650s, when Ware lived in London, appear the most likely time.99 There are no indications within the text itself for closer dating of the notes: they must postdate the 1616 publication of the Latin edition of Francis Godwin’s De Præsulibus Angliæ Commentarius, but this does not further narrow the possibilities.100 The text, printed below, is written in multiple current cursive hands of the s. xvii. It is unclear, however, whether these represent multiple scribes or multiple ‘campaigns’, done by a single scribe at different times, with different pens, and with different degrees of haste and ­formality. The hand changes not only between text but within texts, sometimes only for the length of a single word, as for example preproperè (fo. 245r). In some cases, it is clear that the new hand is introducing

97 Tite, Early Records, p. 108. 98  Rooney, ‘The manuscripts of the works of Gerald of Wales’, p. 111. 99  ODNB, s.n. ‘Ware, Sir James (1594–1666)’. 100  The page number cited makes clear that it is to the Latin, and not the earlier English, edition that Ware refers.

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corrections, as with interlinear Cluniacensis and itinerarij (fo. 245r). Distinctive letter-­forms which might be thought to be diagnostic, such as the hands’ highly divergent forms of p, are at times found together in a single word, as in propter (in the phrase propter quod etiam, fo. 256r). In short, while the different stints which compose the text are readily apparent, how many people were involved in its production is much less so. The text has many crossings-­out and interlinear corrections by the text hands, most done at the time of writing. These corrections have been silently incorporated.101 Much text has been lost, both by over-­ eager trimming of the outside margin and by excessively tight binding causing text loss in the gutter. Text supplied to fill these missing line-­ endings is printed within 〈 〉. The text’s irregular capitalization, punctuation, and orthography, including diacritical marks, have been preserved. Certain words of doubtful identification are pointed out in the footnotes. Passages (of more than one or two words) identical to the text of Tiberius B. xiii are printed in italic type. Where two passages identical to passages in Tiberius B. xiii appear in immediate succession in Ware’s text but are not contiguous to one another in Tiberius B. xiii, the boundary between them is marked by ||. On close examination, many points make clear that Ware’s text is, in fact, wholly derived from Tiberius  B.  xiii, and that he had no independent source for the text of De gestis. The passages which are not verbatim quotations of Tiberius B. xiii are manifestly summaries. No text or summarized content appears which does not also appear in Tiberius B. xiii—­there is nothing, for example, from the hundreds of chapters of part three now missing in the Tiberius manuscript. As Rooney saw, Ware’s text shares the error festum with Tiberius B. xiii. At one point at which he diverges from the text of Tiberius  B.  xiii, at Giraldus itaque (fo. 245v), Ware places the modified text in square brackets. The incomplete physical state of Tiberius B. xiii is explicitly referred to (Opus illud . . . summaria, fo. 246r). The notes are, as mentioned, headed by the title Sub Tiberio B. XIII and, given the variety of hands appearing in the text, it cannot be conclusively shown that this title postdates or is not associated with their copying. Finally, traces of Ware’s copying appear in Tiberius B. xiii itself. Three dots arranged in a triangle appear in the intercolumnar space of the table of contents in Tiberius B. xiii, on fos. 154v, 155r, and 156r. In each case, the ca­pit­ulum thus marked appears in Ware’s notes, on fo. 246r. The same mark, 101  The text beneath the crossings-­out is frequently illegible.

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moreover, appears in Add. 4787: on fo. 246 the words vid. pag. præced. not., followed by the triangular dots, have been crossed out. These interventions in Tiberius B. xiii are therefore clearly Ware’s work. The second shorter set of extracts is found in BL Additional MS 4783, fo. 54r–v, written in a seventeenth-­century hand.102 The manu­ script contains a collection of material on Irish matters, and the extracts from De gestis relate to Gerald’s birth and his time in Ireland.103 Again it is clear that they derive from Cotton Tiberius B. xiii: not only do they use the consecutive chapter numbering written in the margins of that manuscript, but they also reproduce the same scribal error at ii. 13, where a conjunction is omitted. Unlike the extracts in Add. 4787, where text is quoted and the gaps filled with summaries, there are no summaries in Add. 4783, but simply sentences from De gestis with omissions marked by ‘&c.’. In the text below the range of the omitted text is indicated in the apparatus. The text is largely complete with only a few letters lost in the right margin; they are marked by 〈 〉. * r

BL Additional MS 4787, fos. 245r–246v | Sub Tiberio B. XIII. Eo104 defuncto quasi 15 diebus ante Pentecosten Canonici Menevenses Capitulum intrantes, Giraldum solum inter al〈i〉os electum solumque præ cæteris electione dignissimum, c〈um〉 necdum tricesimam ætatis ageret annum, conclamabant. || Eâdem autem nocte cogitans Giraldus secum et Considerans ci〈rca〉 festum istud præproperè nimis et inconsultè processum fuis〈se,〉 (cum in Regno Anglicano neque nominatio fieri soleat nec electio nisi Rege prius adito vel eius Iusticiario, et obitu Episcopi ei nunciato,105 suoque assensu requisito). Mane Capitulum intrans, coram omnibus ­nominationi de s〈e〉 factæ, cum admiratione cunctorum et dissuatione renunt〈i〉avit. || Rex autem hoc audito, quia contra regni sui consuetudinem et in iniuriam ipsius magnam id actum videbatur, multùm excanduit, et statim canonicos omn〈es〉 terris suis et redditibus destitui iussit. Hæc

102  These are not noted by Tite, Early Records, p. 108. 103  For the general details of the manuscript, see O’Grady and Flower, Catalogue of Irish Manuscripts in the British Museum, ii. 519–20; since he is interested in the Irish-­language content of the manuscript, he says nothing about these Geraldian extracts. 104  〈 . . . 〉ide episcopo Menevensi in margin. 105 nuciato MS.

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Giraldus in vita sua lib. 1. Cap. 10106 qui etiam capitulo107 12o108 addit, a Rege constitutum Episcopum Petrum priorem de Wenelac monachum ordinis Cluniacensis, cuius etiam in 1o itinerarij sui libro meminit,109 cap. Io. (pag 820) et lib. 2o ca〈p.〉 item io (pag 856.)110

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Ex Giraldi libro 2o de vita suá. Dum Giraldus continuato plurium annorum studio Lincolniæ111 degeret (sub Willielmo de Monte insigni theologo) sub initium autumni defunctus est Petrus Menevensis episcopus quo tempore Hubertus Cantuar. Archiepiscopus (tum Angli〈æ〉 Iustitiarius existens) || in marchiâ Walliæ || cum exercitu Angli〈æ〉 erat : ubi ceciderunt uno die de Wallensibus circiter tria millia dum obsiderunt castellum Pagani in Elevein.112 Episcopo defunct〈to〉 canonici113 Menevenses parùm ante festum sancti Michaelis ad || Hubertum accesserunt. Richardus Rex literas Cap〈i〉tulo de electione faciendá direxit, datas apud Rupem Andel. in Normannia 9o die Novembris. Ricardo Rege defuncto, Capitulum literas Iohanni eiu〈s〉 fratri remittunt, quibus Geraldum archidiaconum de Sancto David a se electum significánt quarum initium Carissimo ac desideratissimo Domino suo I.  Domino Angliæ et Hiberniæ, Duci Normaniæ et Aquitaniæ, Comiti Andegaviæ Capitulum Menevense Salutem et orationes in Christo. Notandum hic autem quod quia nondum Rex fuerat ante coronationem Dominum suum vocant. || Comes autem (Iohannes) interim cito ac subito in Angliam veniens | die Ascensionis in Regem London’ apud Westmonasterium coronatus est, Huberto deinde electioni a〈s〉sistente, Giraldus concordi Canonicorum Meneuensi〈um〉 Calculo114 iterum est electus, in festo Apostolorum Pe〈tri〉 et Pauli, quinto die scilicet post natiuitatem Sancti Iohan〈nis〉 Baptistæ, et in literis Capituli Romam ab Innoce〈ntio〉 iijo Consecrandus et pro iure metropolitico115 Menev〈ensis〉 ecclesiæ disceptaturus, missus, vnde || in Crastino ­scilicet proxima post electionem die, Euro flante nauigioq〈ue〉 parato in Hiberniam est transvectus, vbi cogna〈tos〉 suos Meilerium scilicet tunc regni Iusticiarium, aliosque 〈pro〉ceres Patriæ magnos consulens et 106  In our edition, i. 9. 107 Cape MS. 108  In our edition, i. 11. 109 Meinit MS, apparently, with a mark of abbreviation omitted. 110 Camden, Anglica, Hibernica, Normannica, Cambrica, a Veteribus Scripta, pp. 820 and 856. 111  scola tum 〈 . . . 〉tur Lincolniæ in margin. 112  Perhaps corrected to Elevain. 113 1198. in margin. 114  29 Iunij 1199. in margin. 115 Metropolitice MS, it seems.

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conveniens 〈mul〉tám super aggresu suo laudem a cunctis et 〈max〉imam manus auxiliatricis in re tantá prom〈missi〉onem suscepit. Tertia vero septimáná post n〈avi〉gationem non completa, remenso mari Hib〈ern’〉 Meneviam est reversus, et cum in Crastino man〈e〉 Capitulum intraret, accepit a Canonicis se litteris 〈Arch〉iepiscopi et Iusticiarij Angliæ mandatum interi〈m〉 suscepisse, vt proxima Dominica post Assumpti〈onem〉 B.  Mariæ coram ipsis venirent, electionem fact〈uri〉 et episcopum suum Priorem scilicet Lanton’ su〈scep〉turi : quem || etsi non venirent, mitterent eis consecratum.



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[Giraldus itaque]116 Alpes || transcendens et Italiam 〈ac〉 Tuscuniam transcurrens circa festum Sancti Andreæ R〈omam〉 pervenit et accedens ad pedes papæ scilicet Innocentij 〈ter〉tij qui tunc presidebat et papatus eius anno se〈cundo〉 sex libros suos (quos ipse studio magno compege〈rat)〉 ei præsentauit ; dicens etiam inter cetera præse〈n〉tant vobis alij libras, sed nos libros. Libros autem illos papa 〈quia〉 copiosè litteratus erat et litteraturám dilexit, circa lectum suum indivisos per mensem117 fere se〈cum〉 tenuit, et elegantia ac sententiosa verba Car〈di〉nalibus adventantibus ostendebat. Deinde verò sing〈ulis〉 Cardinalibus singulos precario concessit. Ge〈m〉mám autem sacerdotalem, præ ceteris118 dilectam a se seperari non permisit. | Opus illud quod Giraldus de vita sua scripsit mutilatum est. ibi tamen inter alia sunt sequentia Capitulorum summaria.

Qualiter Archiepiscopus per Meilerium Hiberniæ tunc Iustic. animum Archidiaconi ad concordiam minus honestam frustra flectere temptavit. De verbis inter Archiepiscopum et Meilerium super Archidiacon〈o〉 et Abbate de Kemmeis. || Litteræ Cardinalis responsales et absolutoriæ Philippo de Barri directæ. || De 2do versus Curiam Giraldi Labore. || Literæ Willielmi Marescalli contra Archidiaconum missæ. || Litteræ Giraldi amicis et consanguineis suis in Hib. missæ. || De 3o Giraldi versus curiam Labore. || Qualiter apud Westmonasterium electio facta fuit, et inter Archiepiscopum et Archidiaconum concordiæ dies et compositionis assignatus. Qualiter et quibus ex causis Archidiaconatum suum cum præbendâ resignavit, et in utroque nepotem suum institui procurauit.

116  These two words in square brackets in MS. 117 Mensen MS. 118 certeris or similar, MS.

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Hæc ex illis vitæ eius capitulis. Quis verò post tam longam contentionem Petro in Menevensi episcopatu successerit ostendit idem Gir. Lib. 2. Cap. 1. Itiner. Cambriæ. Quartus his succeda〈neus〉119 temp. R. Io. nomine Galf. Lanthon’ prior et Canoni〈cus〉 per operam Huberti Cant. Archiepiscopi in eadem sede promotus et ab eodem consecratus. De quo etiam idem, in libro 2o de vita sua : propter artem medicinalem, qua præcellebat, cum (Huberto) Archiepiscopo cuius curam frequenter agebat et familiaritatem multam contraxerat, propter quod etiam custodia Meneuens〈is〉 episcopatus, dum vacaret eidem || per Archiepiscopum commissa fuerat.120 Errat igitur Godwinus in Menevensium episcoporum Cat〈a〉logo, pag. 607 cum Galfridum hunc anno 1198 obiisse scribit, et Siluestrem Giraldum vel potius (vt ille ait) Giraldidem illi successisse.121 Illo enim anno non obiit ille sed anteces〈s〉ore eius Petro tunc obeunte contra Giraldum Cambrens〈em〉 | (quem hîc Silvestrem, et Giraldidem , quasi Muaricij G〈iral〉dini122 filium, perperam appellat :) a Capitulo Meneven〈si〉 nominatum, ab Huberto Cantuar. ex123 parte Regia Menevensis episcopus electus. unde longa illa lis orta : quá Giraldus tandem cessit, neutiquam vero Galf〈rido〉 (vt Godwino visum fuit) successit. * BL Additional MS 4783, fo. 54 | Ex Giraldi Cambrensis Vitá cap 2.124 Giraldus itaque de Cambria oriundus et australi eiusdem par〈te〉 maritimisque Demetiæ finibus non procul ab opido principali de Penbroc castello scilicet de Mainarpir ingenuis natalibus prosapiam duxit. Ex matre namque Angareth filia Nestæ nobilis filiæ Resi principis Sudwalliæ scilicet filii Theodo〈ri〉 viro egregio Willelmo egregio Willelmo de Barry matrimonialiter copulata processit125 &c.

119  Cf. Camden, Anglica, Hibernica, Normannica, Cambrica, a Veteribus Scripta, p. 856. 120  Commissa fuerat is followed by vid. Pag. Præced. Not., struck out, and by three dots arranged in a triangle. 121 Godwin, De Præsulibus Angliæ Commentarius, p. 607. 122  This is a speculative reconstruction of the text here lost in the margin. 123 Et MS, perhaps deliberately. 124  De gestis, i. 1. The chapter numbers provided in the left margin match those in Tiberius B. xiii. In the following transcription text omitted within a passage is identified in the apparatus, but not text preceding or following the passage. 125  Abbreviation for pro subpuncted.

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cap 22.126 filium suum natu minorem Iohannem cum magno apparatu in Hiberniam misit magistrum quoque Giraldum qui de primis expugnatoribus gentis illius magnum in Hibernia genus habebat et quia probus ipse ac prudens extitera〈t〉 cum ipso transmittens. &c. 25.127 Qualiter 2 episcopatus in Hibernia Giraldo comes Iohannes obtulit et qualiter utrumque recusauit.128 Processu vero temporis 2 episcopatus129 qui tunc vacabant Wesefordensis130 scilicet qui et Fernensis dicitur et Leichlinensis Archidiacono Comes optionem dedit et131 duas ecclesias illas et dioceses in unum convertendas si regimen ipsarum suscipere vellet &c.132 Cum itaque Comes per estatem tota〈m〉 et hyemis partem mora in Hibernia inutili facta remen〈so〉 pelago in Walliam et Angliam remearet. Giraldus 〈cum〉 senescallo Hiberniæ Bertranno de Verdun socius et rerum gerendarum testis relictus &c.133 Accidit autem134 cum in med〈ia〉 Quadragesimæ scilicet ad letare Ierusalem Iohannes Dublinensis archiepiscopus convocat〈is〉 suffrageneis episcopis Dublinensibus in ecclesia Sancte Trinitatis concilium tenere〈t〉 primo die sermonem fecit ipse de sacramentis ecclesie. Secundo die Abbas de Baltinglas Albinus qui et postea Fernensis episcopus erat de continentia clericorum sermonem texens prolixiorem, totam in clerum qui de Wallia et Anglia in Hiberniam aduenerant denique culpam refudit. docens mundiciam cleri Hiberniæ quanta fuerat donec ex contagio aduenarum &c.135 corruptelam ­contraxerunt. Sermo Giraldi in concilio Dublinensi.136 26. Est autem terræ istius clerus satis religione commendabilis et inter ­varias quibus pollet virtutes castitatis prerogativa preeminet137 et ­precellit &c.138 Sed utinam post longa ieiunia tam sobrii fuerint quam seri tam veri quam severi tam puri quam duri tam existentes quam apparentes &c. |

126  De gestis, ii. 10. 127  De gestis, ii. 13. 128  Heading added above the line. 129  Corrected from episcopatu. 130 1185 added in left margin. 131  cum utramque recusaret, optulit ei om. 132  〈A〉d quod respondit quod . . . et diligentius inquisicione curauit. om. 133  ut studio predicto . . . moram in insula fecit om. 134 quod om. as in MS. 135  quoniam ‘a conuictu . . . coinquinabitur ab ea’ om. 136  De gestis, ii. 14. 137  Second e added as insertion. 138  Item psalmis et horis, lectioni et orationi, . . . usque ad crepusculum ieiunent om.

fo. 54v

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De cleri Hibernici confusione et nostratum exultacione. 27.139 Eodem die cenante cum archiepiscopo Ossiriensi episcopo Felice qui monachus erat mutilatus ut videbatur et eunucatus, cum quesisset ab eo archiepiscopus quid ei visum fuisset de archidiaconi sermone,140 quia multum bene dixit mala, vocauit inquit nos potatores.141 certe vix me continui quod statim in ipsum non involavi142 vel saltem quod ­verbis talionem reddendo, quod acriter ei non responderim. Desunt multa143

139  De gestis, ii. 15. 140  respondit ille om. 141 at added above. 142  Corrected from involavit. 143  The implication of this remark may be that there are many gaps in the text or that there is material missing at the end. During the final stages of production, Gruffudd Antur kindly drew our attention to an extract from De gestis ii. 9 in Cardiff, Central Library, 4.38, pp. 93–7 and 133–9 (s. xvii1), which seems to derive from Tiberius B. xiii and cites its early-modern pagination. It is merely noted here.

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A PPEN DI X 4 A Note on Laudabiliter (De gestis, ii. 11) This note considers the context within his writings in which Gerald placed Laudabiliter. It appears twice elsewhere in Gerald’s works: Exp. Hib., ii. 5 (RS v. 317–18; ed. Scott and Martin, pp. 144–7) and De prin., ii. 19 (OMT 510–12). It also appears in Radulfi de Diceto . . . Opera historica (RS i. 300–1). It is edited by Sheehy, Pontificia Hibernica, no. 4. References to the main contributions to the discussion since 1890 are given in the bibliography and include: Norgate, ‘The bull Laudabiliter’; Round, The Commune of London, 171–200; Orpen, Ireland under the Normans, 1169–1216, i. 287–318 (one vol. reprint, 107–19). O’Doherty, ‘Rome and the Anglo-­Norman invasion of Ireland’; Sheehy, ‘The Bull Laudabiliter: a problem in medieval diplomatic and history’; Richter, ‘Giraldiana’; Duggan, ‘Totius christianitatis caput’; Haring, ‘Laudabiliter: text and context’; Duggan, ‘The making of a myth’; Duggan, ‘The power of documents’. Gerald was interested in the conditional character of the papal grant and in the failure of Henry II, John, and the settlers, his kinsmen among them, to abide by the conditions (cf. Exp. Hib., ii. 9 (ed. Scott and Martin, pp. 154–7), on Meilyr fitz Henry). This theme is con­ tinued in the next two chapters. Since the text given in Exp. Hib. appears to be the source of other copies, the controversy over its authenticity will need to be considered in any future edition of Exp. Hib. De prin., ii. 19 (OMT 508), refers to Exp. Hib. as its source for the papal privileges ‘authorizing the conquest of Ireland’. De gestis, ii. 10, in its discussion of why John’s expedition to Ireland in 1185 failed, refers to Exp. Hib. as its source, namely ii. 36. It then gives Exp. Hib. as its source for the Privilege of Adrian IV, Laudabiliter, which is repeated in ii. 11. A textual argument that the version in De gestis is later than the one in De prin. is the way that, in Exp. Hib., Laudabiliter is coupled with a privilege said to have been obtained from Adrian’s successor, Alexander III, Quoniam ea. In Exp. Hib., Laudabiliter is cited after we have been told that Henry II obtained Quoniam ea from Alexander by setting out the deficiencies of the Irish in the practice of the Christian religion, deficiencies detailed in the proceedings of the Synod of Cashel (for which Gerald is our sole source). After Quoniam ea had first been read

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out in public at a subsequent synod at Waterford, Laudabiliter is then said to have been publicly recited as a further support for Quoniam ea. In giving the texts, however, Gerald gave Laudabiliter first, before Quoniam ea, on the grounds that it was obtained earlier. In De prin., ii. 19, the same sequence is followed, but Quoniam ea is prefixed by the sentence, ‘The content of the second privilege is as follows’ (so far quoting Exp. Hib., but Gerald then added), ‘just as it was sought, as some assert or feign, although others deny it was ever sought’ (Bartlett’s translation, p. 513). As Bartlett notes (De prin., n. 225), Quoniam ea ‘has been almost universally judged a forgery’ and was omitted from the revised β version of Exp. Hib., ‘and Gerald did not include it with Laudabiliter in the De rebus’. The context of Laudabiliter in De gestis is evidence of Gerald’s increasingly critical attitude to the conquest on the grounds that the conquerors had not, as Laudabiliter said Henry had promised, entered Ireland ‘to preserve the rights of the churches of that land complete and unimpaired’ but had, on the contrary, despoiled Irish churches. In De gestis, this criticism is made by referring to an account of Gerald’s vision in a dream described in ii. 12, derived from Exp. Hib., ii. 36 (ed.  Scott and Martin, p. 242), but here immediately following the chapter containing Laudabiliter, which itself followed ii. 10 containing an ex­plan­ation of why John’s expedition of 1185 was a failure. The concluding sentence in De gestis, ii. 11, also derives from Exp. Hib., ii. 36. Laudabiliter and Quoniam ea are there given at ii. 5, but this concluding criticism is borrowed from ii. 36, in the chapter on why John’s ex­ped­ition to Ireland in 1185 was a failure. Whereas, in Exp. Hib., the papal privileges in ii. 5 were immediately followed in ii. 6 by ‘The fivefold right’ [of the kings of the English to rule over Ireland], in De gestis it  was immediately followed by reasons why papal support for the ­invasion had been obtained on false pretences or, at least, on claims that were contradicted by the behaviour of the invaders. The text of Laudabiliter thus sustains two quite different arguments in the two works. In Exp. Hib. it vindicates Henry II’s expedition to Ireland, but in De gestis it is the basis of a criticism of the English invasion of Ireland. In De prin., the context is relatively neutral, part of an account of the reign of Henry II that portrays it as a turn of the wheel of fortune, early success and later failure. The early success included the immense extension of his lands, exemplified in Ireland.

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BIBLIOGR A PH Y Pr i m a ry sou rc e s Acta Sanctorum quotquot toto orbe coluntur, ed. Societas Bollandiensis (Antwerp, Tongerloo, Paris, Brussels, 1643–). The Acts of Welsh Rulers, 1120–1283, ed. H. Pryce (Cardiff, 2005). Alain de Lille: textes inédits, ed. M.-Th. d’Alverny (Paris, 1965). Alan of Lille, Summa Quoniam homines; ‘La somme Quoniam homines d’Alain de Lille’, ed. P. Glorieux, Archives d’histoire doctrinale et littéraire du moyen âge xx (1953), 113–364. Alcuin, Letters: Epistolae Karolini Aevi, Tomus ii, ed. E. Dümmler, MGH, Epistolae iv (Berlin 1895). Anglia Sacra, ed. H. Wharton (2 vols., London, 1691). Anglo-Scottish Relations, 1174–1328: Some Selected Documents, ed. E.  L.  G. Stones (Edinburgh and London, 1965; repr. OMT, 1970). The Annals of the Four Masters: Annála Ríoghachta Éireann: Annals of the Kingdom of Ireland by the Four Masters from the Earliest Times to the Year 1616, ed. J. O’Donovan (Dublin, 1851). Aristoteles Latinus v. 1–3: Topica, ed. L.  Minio-Paluello (Brussels/Paris, 1969). Arnoldi Gheyloven Roterodami Gnotosolitos parvus e codice Seminarii Leodiensis 6 F 18, ed. A. G. Weiler, CCCM ccxii (Turnhout, 2008). Augustine, De quantitate animae: Opera, Section 1, Part 4: Soliloquiorum Libri Duo; De Inmortalitate Animae; De Quantitate Animae, ed. W.  Hörmann, CSEL lxxxix (Vienna, 1986). —— Enarrationes in Psalmos, ed. E.  Dekkers, CCSL xxxviii–xl (3 vols., Turnhout, 1956). Ausonius: Decimi Magni Ausonii Opera, ed. R. P. H. Green (Oxford, 1999). Bede, Historia ecclesiastica: Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People, ed. B. Colgrave and R. A. B. Mynors (OMT, 1969). Bernard Silvestris, Commentum super Sex Libros Eneidos Virgilii, ed. J. W. Jones and E. F. Jones (Lincoln, Nebraska, and London, 1977). Bibliotheca hagiographica latina, antiquae et mediae aetatis, ediderunt socii ­bollandiani (Brussels, 1898–1901). Black Book of St David’s, ed. J. W. Willis-Bund (London, 1902). Boethius, De instructione musica libri quinque, ed. G. Friedlein (Leipzig, 1867). Brenhinedd y Saeson or The Kings of the Saxons, ed. and trans. T. Jones (Cardiff, 1971). Brut y Tywysogyon or The Chronicle of the Princes, Peniarth MS. 20 Version, trans. T. Jones (Cardiff, 1952). Brut y Tywysogyon or The Chronicle of the Princes, Red Book of Hergest Version, ed. and trans. T. Jones (Cardiff, 1955).

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Formulae Merowingici et Karolini Aevi, ed. K. Zeumer, MGH, Legum Sectio v (Hanover, 1882–6). Geoffrey of Monmouth, The History of the Kings of Britain, ed. M. D. Reeve, trans. N. Wright (Woodbridge, 2007). Gerald of Wales (Giraldus Cambrensis), The Autobiography of Giraldus Cambrensis, trans. H. E. Butler (London, 1937; reissued, with a guide to further reading by J. Gillingham, Woodbridge, 2005). —— Catalogus brevior librorum suorum, ed. J. S. Brewer, in Giraldi Cambrensis Opera, RS 21, i (London, 1861), pp. 421–3. —— De instructione principum, ed. J. S. Brewer (London, 1846). —— Giraldus Cambrensis: De invectionibus, ed. W. S. Davies (Y Cymmrodor xxx; London, 1920); ed. J. S. Brewer, in Giraldi Cambrensis Opera, RS 21, iii (Books i–iv) (London, 1863), pp. 1-96; i (Books v–vi) (London, 1961), pp. 123–96. —— De iure et statu Menevensis ecclesiae, ed. J. S. Brewer, in Giraldi Cambrensis Opera, RS 21, iii (London, 1863), pp. 99–373. —— De principis instructione, ed. R. Bartlett (OMT, 2018); ed. G. F. Warner, Giraldi Cambrensis Opera, RS 21, viii (London, 1891). —— De rebus a se gestis, ed. J. S. Brewer, in Giraldi Cambrensis Opera, RS 21, i (London, 1861); Anglia Sacra, ed. Wharton, ii. 457–513. —— Descriptio Kambriae, ed. J. F. Dimock, in Giraldi Cambrensis Opera, RS 21, vi (London, 1868), pp. 153–227. —— Expugnatio Hibernica: The Conquest of Ireland, ed. A.  B.  Scott and F. X. Martin (Dublin, 1978); ed. J. F. Dimock, in Giraldi Cambrensis Opera, RS 21, v (London, 1867), pp. 205–411. —— Gemma ecclesiastica, ed. J. S. Brewer, in Giraldi Cambrensis Opera, RS 21, ii (London, 1862); for translation, see Gerald of Wales. The Jewel of the Church, trans. J. J. Hagen. —— Gerald of Wales. The Jewel of the Church. A Translation of Gemma ecclesiastica by Giraldus Cambrensis, trans. J.  J.  Hagen, Davis Medieval Texts and Studies 2 (Leiden, 1979). —— Itinerarium Kambriae, ed. J. F. Dimock, in Giraldi Cambrensis Opera, RS 21, vi (London, 1868), pp. 1–152. —— Speculum Duorum or the Mirror of Two Men, ed. Y. Lefèvre (ed. Spec. Duorum), R. B. C. Huygens (ed. Letters), trans. B. Dawson, M. Richter (Introduction), (Cardiff, 1974). —— Speculum ecclesiae, ed. J. S. Brewer, in Giraldi Cambrensis Opera, RS 21, iv (London, 1873). —— Symbolum electorum, ed. J.  S.  Brewer, in Giraldi Cambrensis Opera, RS 21, i (London, 1861), pp. 197–395 (only Books I–II; Books III–IV in ­synopsis, pp. 391–5). —— Topographia Hibernica, ed. J. F. Dimock, in Giraldi Cambrensis Opera, RS 21, v (London, 1867), pp. 1–204. —— Topographia Hibernica (first recension): ‘Giraldus Cambrensis in Topographia Hibernie. “Text of the First Recension”’, ed. J. J. O’Meara, Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy: Archaeology, Culture, History, Literature, lii (1948–50), pp. 113–78.

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—— Feudal England: Historical Studies on the XIth and XIIth Centuries (London, 1909). —— ‘The origins of the Carews’, The Ancestor, v (1903), pp. 19–53. —— ‘The origins of the FitzGeralds, II’, The Ancestor, ii (1902), pp. 91–8. Russell, P., ‘Externarum linguarum excellens: the rhetoric and reality of the languages of Gruffudd ap Cynan, ruler of Gwynedd († 1137)’, in J. A. Jefferson and A.  Putter, eds., Multilingualism in Medieval Britain (c. 1066–1520): Sources and Analysis (Turnhout, 2013), pp. 73–87. —— ‘Gerald of Wales and the rewriting of saints’ lives: the hagiographical fragments in London, British Library, Cotton Vitellius E vii’, Journal of Medieval Latin, xxxii (2022), pp. 209–39. —— ‘ “Go and look in the Latin books”: Latin and the vernacular in medieval Wales’, in R.  Ashdowne and C.  White, eds., Latin in Medieval Britain, Proceedings of the British Academy 206 (London, 2017), pp. 213–46. —— ‘In the penumbra of the Repertory: medieval manuscripts in Wales’, Studia Celtica lvii (2023), pp. 151–64. —— ‘Scribal (in)consistency in thirteenth-century South Wales: the ­orthography of the Black Book of Carmarthen’, Studia Celtica, xliii (2009), pp. 135–74. —— ‘Some neglected sources for Middle Welsh phonology’, Études celtiques, xxix (1992), pp. 383–90. —— ‘What did medieval Welsh scribes do? The scribe of the Dingestow Court manuscript’, Cambrian Medieval Celtic Studies, xxxvii (1999), pp. 79–96. Sarti, M., De Claris Archigymnasii Bononiensis Professoribus [ . . . ], vol. 1, part 1 (Bologna, 1769). Sayers, J. E., Papal Judges-Delegate in the Province of Canterbury, 1198–1254: A Study in Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction and Administration (Oxford, 1971). Sharpe, R., Titulus: Identifying Medieval Latin Texts (Turnhout, 2003). Sheehy, M. P., ‘The Bull Laudabiliter: a problem in medieval diplomatic and history’, Galway Archaeological and Historical Society Journal, xxix (1961), pp. 45–70. —— ed., Pontificia Hibernica (Dublin, 1962). Sims-Williams, P., ‘Shrewsbury School MS 7 and the Breton lays’, Cambrian Medieval Celtic Studies, lx (2010), pp. 39–80. Smith, J. B., ‘Princes, lords and English monarchy: Ceredigion 1081–1197’, in G.  H.  Jenkins, R.  Suggett and E.  M.  White, eds., Cardiganshire County History, ii: Medieval and Early Modern Cardiganshire (Cardiff, 2019), pp. 241–77. —— ‘The kingdom of Morgannwg and the Norman conquest of Glamorgan’, in T. B. Pughe, ed., Glamorgan County History, iii, The Middle Ages (Cardiff, 1971), pp. 1–43. Southern, R. W., ‘From schools to university’, in T. H. Aston (gen. ed.), A History of the University of Oxford, i: The Early Schools, ed. J.  I.  Catto (Oxford, 1984), pp. 1–36.

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—— Robert Grosseteste: the Growth of an English Mind in Medieval Europe (2nd edn., Oxford 1992). —— Saint Anselm: A Portrait in a Landscape (Cambridge, 1990). Spatz, N.  K., ‘Evidence of inception ceremonies in the twelfth-century schools of Paris’, History of Universities, xiii (1994), pp. 3–19. Spear, D. S., The Personnel of the Norman Cathedrals During the Ducal Period, 911–1204 (London, 2006). Spufford, P., Handbook of Medieval Exchange, Royal Historical Society, Guides and Handbooks, 13 (London, 1986). —— Money and its Use in Medieval Europe (Cambridge, 1988). Stephenson, D., ‘Gerald of Wales and Annales Cambriae’, Cambrian Medieval Celtic Studies, lx (2010), pp. 23–38. —— Medieval Powys. Kingdom, Principality and Lordships, 1132–1293 (Woodbridge, 2016). Thomas, R. J., Enwau Afonydd a Nentydd Cymru (Cardiff, 1938). Thomson, R.  M., A Descriptive Catalogue of the Medieval Manuscripts of Corpus Christi College, Oxford: Western Manuscripts (Cambridge, 2011). Tillmann, H., Die päpstlichen Legaten in England bis zur Beendigung der Legation Gualas, 1218 (Bonn, 1926). Tite, C. G. C., The Early Records of Sir Robert Cotton’s Library: Formation, Cataloguing, Use (London, 2003). Todd, H.  J., A Catalogue of the Archiepiscopal Manuscripts in the Library at Lambeth Palace (London, 1812). Toorians, L., ‘Wizo Flandrensis and the Flemish settlement in Pembrokeshire’, Cambridge Medieval Celtic Studies xx (1990), pp. 99–118. von Savigny, F.  K., Geschichte des Römischen Rechts im Mittelalter (7 vols., Heidelberg, 1815–51). Walker, R., Pembrokeshire County History, vol. II (Haverfordwest, 2002). Williams, D. H., ‘The Cistercians’ in G. H. Jenkins, R. Suggett, and E. M. White, eds., Cardiganshire County History, ii. 197–202. Williams, E. A., ‘A bibliography of Giraldus Cambrensis c. 1147 – c. 1223’, The National Library of Wales Journal, xii (1961), 97–140. Williams, J.  E.  C., ‘Yr Arglwydd Rhys a’r “Eisteddfod” Aberteifi 1176’, in N.  A.  Jones and H.  Pryce, eds., Yr Arglwydd Rhys (Cardiff, 1996), pp. 94–128. Zeiller, M., Topographia Galliæ, oder, Beschreibung vnd Contrafaitung der vornehmsten, vnd bekantisten Oerter, in dem mächtigen, vnd grossen Königreich Frankreich, 8 (Frankfurt am Main, 1665).

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LIST OF M A N USC R I P TS C IT ED Cardiff Central Library 4.38252 London British Library Additional 4783 247, 250–2 4787 xxvi, xxxi, 245, 247–50 6018xxviii Cotton Julius D. x xxvii Tiberius B. xiii passim

Lambeth Palace Library 236xxx 583 lxxxviii, xc 584 lxxxviii, xc Oxford Bodleian Library James 2 240–4 Twyne 22 xxvii, 238–40 Rome Bibliotheca Apostolica Vaticana Pal. lat. 1668 182 Reg. lat. 470 xxiv, xxxviii, xcvii, 2, 6, 34, 224, 226

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I N D E X O F C I TAT I O N S A N D A L L U S I O N S Note: The following index collects not only citations and allusions in the edited text itself, but also those discussed and referred to in the Introduction and notes. In cross-­references to Gerald’s other works, page references to the RS and other editions are provided as the chapters are often very long and it is not easy to locate a precise reference.

A .   B I B L I C A L C I TAT I O NS A N D ALLU S I O N S Genesis 2: 8–3: 24 28: 10–22 29: 17 Exodus 17: 13 Leviticus 10: 9 Numbers 21: 24 Deuteronomy 13: 15 20: 13 20: 17 23: 25 Joshua 6: 21 10: 30 10: 32 10: 35 10: 37 10: 40 Judges 1: 8 1: 25 4: 15 18: 27 20: 37 1 Kings (1 Samuel) 15: 8 22: 19 2 Kgs. (2 Sam.) 4: 1–7 15: 14 4 Esdra (2 Esd.) 14: 38–39 Judith 7: 17 15: 6 Psalms 7 (8): 10 9 (10): 7 13 (14): 3

46 37 129 178 97 178 178 178 178 65 178 178 178 178 178 178 178 178 178 178 178 178 178 178 178 168 178 178 180 180

32 (33): 5 118 (119): 64 143 (144): 1 Proverbs 24: 16 25: 8 Wisdom 6: 1 Ecclesiastes 1: 2 9: 18 (13) 13: 1 13: 2–6 (2–5) 13: 12 (9) 22: 25 (20) 23: 20 (15) Isaiah 42: 20 58: 1 Jeremiah 1: 10 21: 7 Ezekiel 13: 5 Daniel 13: 52 (Sus. 52) 1 Maccabees 5: 51 Matthew 5: 15 10: 16 12: 30 12: 34 13: 24–30 15: 13 22: 14 25: 21 26: 8–9 Mark 4: 21 Luke 1: 52 4: 24

133 133 177 183 179 178 95 185 124 126 186 180 180 166 128 222 178 128 52 178 134 131 222 121 117 222 126 36 98 134 188 47

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 6: 45 9: 62 10: 17–20 10: 38–42 11: 33 12: 48 16: 15 21: 24 John 3: 8 Romans

inde x of citations and allusions 121 84 170 lxxxv, 188, 206, 134 166 134 178 140

3: 14 8: 20 8: 27 Galatians 6: 7 Ephesians 4: 26 5: 18 Hebrews 11: 36–7

273 180 95 142 133 180 126 212

B.  C LA SSI C A L A ND M E DI EVA L C I TATI O N S A ND A L LU SI O NS (An asterisk * marks texts cited definitely or probably from the Florilegium Angelicum rather than directly) AC Brev. s.a. 1182 82 s. a. 1137 xlvii Acta, ed. Barrow 6 50, 236 750 1950 28 xix, xli, cii 3050 32104 33 104, 211, 215 46 xlvii, 49 47215 69200 78xxiv 148xxiv Acta Sanctorum 3 August xliii, 39 20 August 142 Alain de Lille textes inédits184 Summa Quoniam homines 5a36–7 Alcuin Letters 132204 Aristotle Topics (tr. Boethius) i. 3 83 Augustine Confessions iii. 8. 16 88 De quantitate animae i. 33 95 Enarrationes in Psalmos xxxvi. 1. 12 206

Tractatus in Iohannem i. 17 36 Ausonius Ordo urbium nobelium Capua, 3 15 Bede Historia Ecclesiastica i. 27 64 Bernard Silvestris Commentum super Sex Libros Eneidos Virgilii184 Brut s.a. 1108 xxi s.a. 1136 xix, xlvi, 109, 235 s.a. 1146 xlvi, c s.a. 1147 xlvi, c s.a. 1151 109 s.a. 1153 xlvi, 109 s.a. 1165 109, 214 s.a. 1166 xxi, ci s.a. 1171 237 s.a. 1175 lii, liv s.a. 1187 108 s.a. 1192 45 s.a. 1201 214 s.a. 1216 237 s.a. 1234 lvii Brut P s.a. 1146 xix s.a. 1136 xix s.a. 1189 168 s.a. 1208 9 Brut R s.a. 1146 xix s.a. 1208 9

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274 

inde x of citations and allusions

Cicero De inuentione i. 109* 144 Einhardi Vita Karoli Magni 1xlv Francesco Pipino Chronicon241 Gervase of Canterbury, The Historical Works of Gervase of Canterbury ii. 409–10 cix, 137, 138 Gervase of Melkley Ars poetica p. 145, l. 22 157 Glanvill Treatise on the Laws and Customs of the Realm of England xii. 25 40 Gratian Decretum lx, lxii, lxxx, 91 C. 2 q. 7 c. 56 132 C. 6 q. 3 c. 1 64 C. 7 q. 1 c. 48 213 C. 8 q. 1, rubric to c. 11 122 C. 16 q. 1 c. 6 130 C. 16 q. 1 c. 26 130 C. 16 q. 1 c. 27 130 C. 16 q. 1, c. 66 45 D. 8 c. 2 88 D. 23 c. 2 lxii D. 35 c. 5 126 D. 43 c. 1 127 D. 83 c. 3 132 Gregory the Great Dialogues ii. 21 140 Letters i. 24 127 viii. 4 lxiii ix. 229 (228) 213 Regula Pastoralis ii. 4 127 iii. 22 166 Guibert de Nogent De uita sua i. 1 xli i. 5 88 Gwaith Cynddelw Brydydd Mawr i poem 5 60 poem 10 10. 32 liv poem 21 59 21. 50 liv 21. 72 liv

Horace Ars poetica 7889 Epistles i. 4. 14 101 i. 10. 32–3 182 i. 17. 35 185 i. 18. 77 178 i. 18. 86–7 185 i. 18. 107–10 181 Odes ii. 20. 13–16 89 iii. 2. 13 171 Howden Gesta Henrici II i. 25 cii i. 162 lvi, 58 i. 355–6 108 ii. 29 136 ii. 33 137 ii. 40 108 ii. 46–7 108 ii. 50 108 Chronica ii. 29 cii ii. 338 137 iii. 35 157 Hugh of Fleury Chronicon94 Hugh of St Victor Didascalicon, i. 1 184 Isidore Etymologies i. 41. 1 xlv vii. 13 130 xi. 2. 4 37, 43 Jerome Commentary on Ezekiel xiii. 45. 1–8 90 Letters xii180 xiv. 6 130 xiv. 8 130 xiv. 9 183 xlviii (xlix) 4 183 lii. 8 141 liii. 3 132 lviii. 6* 131 lxv. 11 90 lxix. 8 132 lxix. 9 126 cxxv. 8 130 cxxv. 17–18 130 Vita Malchi i. 3 98

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inde x of citations and allusions

John of Salisbury Historia Pontificalis xxxii, p. 75 lxiii ii, pp. 6 and 7 lxvi Letters i, no. 86 50 ii, no. 158 92 ii, no. 184–6 92 ii, no. 277 92 ii, no. 297 92 Metalogicon ii. 8 88 Policraticus iii. 2 184 John of Worcester iii, s.a. 1111 xxi John Peckham Registrum Epistolarum i. 77–8 (letter LXVI) lxxxv ii. 473–7 (letter CCCLX)lxxxv Justinian Cod. 2. 7. 14 32 Juvenal Satires i. 74 lxxvii, 113 xi. 27 184 La vie ancienne de Saint Samson i. 20 38 Letters of Anselm vol. i, pp. 8 and 128 84 The Life of Christina of Markyate (ed. Talbot) 102 165, 167 Life of St Waltheof  by Joscelin of Furness AS, August i. 252 (3 August) xliii, 39 Life of St Wihtburh Goscelin of Saint-Bertin, pp. 86–9 xliii, 39 Lucan De bello ciuili ii. 390 44 ii. 657 lxxvii, lxxxviii, 84 Macrobius Saturnalia, i. 6. 6 ii. 7. 11* 184, 190 Somnium Scipionis i. 9. 1 184 Moralium dogma philosophorum 56.12–13182 57–9 lxxxv, 181 58.3–4185

275

58.17179 59.12185 Ovid Amores iii. 4. 17 46 Heroides vi. 82 214 Remedia amoris 579 lxxvi, 154 589–90 lxxvi–lxxvii, 154 Tristia iii. 4. 3–4 182 iii. 4. 25–6 182 iv. 9. 27–8 192 Pedeir Keinc y Mabinogi 1xv 27xv 49xv 67xv Peter Lombard Commentarium in Psalmos, Ps. 17: 30 41 Ps. 25, introductio41 Ps. 36: 39 206 Peter the Chanter Verbum adbreuiatum (textus prior) i lxxvii, 85 xxi53 lxiii41 Pliny the Elder Naturalis Historia pref. 15 89 Pliny the Younger Letters i. 3. 3* 164 i. 9. 6–7* 164 iii. 5. 15–16* 162 vi. 10. 4 43 ix. 19. 1 43 Ps-Caecilius Balbus De nugis philosophorum, p. 40 185 Ps-Vergil Elegy for Maecenas i. 15–16 186 Radulfus de Diceto . . . Opera historica RS i. 300–1 253 The Rule of St Benedict c. 38 96 c. 64 122 Sallust Catilina xii. 1 98

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276

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Seneca, Epistulae Morales lii. 10 88 xiv. 7 186 Sidonius Apollinaris Letters vii. 9. 5* lxxvii, 88 Simon of Tournai Disputationes lxxvi. 2 36 The Song of Dermot and the Earl (ed. Mullally) 40949 249649 258949 Vergil Aeneid ii. 49 81 iii. 121 74

vii. 392 viii. 554 Eclogues ix. 35–6 Vita Griffini filii Conani §§ 4–6 Vita Prima Sancti Bernardi Claraevallis Abbatis iii. 7 Walter Map De Nugis Curialium ii. 7 v. 6 Walter of Châtillon Alexandreis i. 195–6 Wulfric of Haselbury by John of Ford c. 25, p. 44 c. 43, p. 59

74 74 89 39 142 92 225 43 167 167

C.   C RO SS-­R EFER E NC E S TO G E RALD ’S WO RK S (Since some of Gerald’s chapters and distinctiones are very long, references to edited texts are provided to give precision to the reference) Catalogus brevior librorum suorum RS i. 423 xxvi De Giraldo archidiacono Meneuensi RS i. 398 De iure prol. (RS iii. 103) 32 prol. (RS iii. 112–16) lxxv prol. (RS iii. 113) xxii i (RS iii. 134) 206 i (RS iii. 150) lxv ii (RS iii. 164–5) 8, 221 ii (RS iii. 166) lxvi, lxxii ii (RS iii. 168.4–6) lxvi ii (RS iii. 169) lxxii ii (RS iii. 169–76) lxxi ii (RS iii. 175) lxxi ii (RS iii. 175–6) lxxi ii (RS iii. 176. 26–32) cviii ii (RS iii. 176–7). lxxiv ii (RS iii. 177) lxxi, cvii, 207 ii (RS iii. 179–80) cviii ii (RS. iii. 179–82) 8 ii (RS iii. 180–1) cviii ii (RS iii. 181–2) 8 ii (RS iii. 182) 8 ii (RS iii. 182. 23–183. 31) cviii ii (RS iii. 182–3) 8 ii (RS iii. 183) 15 ii (RS iii. 183–184) cviii

ii (RS iii. 184) 8 ii (RS iii. 184–5) 8 ii (RS iii. 185) 8 iii (RS iii. 186) 10 iii (RS iii. 186–8) cviii, 10 iii (RS iii. 187) 11 iii (RS iii. 187–8) lxxiii iii (RS iii. 188) xxvi, cviv, 11, 12 iii (RS iii. 188–9) cx, 12 iii (RS iii. 189) 13 iii (RS iii. 189–90) cx iii (RS iii. 190) cx, 14, 15 iii (RS iii. 190–1) cix, 14 iii (RS iii. 191) 13 iii (RS iii. 191–3) cx, 12 iii (RS iii. 193) 13 iii (RS iii. 193–4) cx, 13 iii (RS iii. 194) cx, 13 iii (RS iii. 195) cx, 14, 15 iii (RS iii. 196) xxvi, xxxix, lxix, cxi, 15 iii (RS iii. 196–7) cxi iii (RS iii. 196–8) 16 iii (RS iii. 198) lxx, 16 iii (RS iii. 198–9) 16 iii (RS iii. 199–200) 16 iii (RS iii. 200) cxi, 16 iii (RS iii. 200–1) 16 iii (RS iii. 201) 16 iii (RS iii. 201–2) 16

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inde x of citations and allusions iii (RS iii. 202) iii (RS iii. 202–3) iii (RS iii. 203) iii (RS iii. 205–6) iii (RS iii. 205–8) iii (RS iii. 206) iii (RS iii. 206–8) iii (RS iii. 207–8) iii (RS iii. 208) iv (RS iii. 211) iv (RS iii. 211–12) iv (RS iii. 212) iv (RS iii. 212–13) iv (RS iii. 213–14) iv (RS iii. 214) iv (RS iii. 214–15) iv (RS iii. 215–18) iv (RS iii. 215) iv (RS iii. 215–16) iv (RS iii. 215–18) iv (RS iii. 216) iv (RS iii. 216–17) iv (RS iii. 217) iv (RS iii. 217–18) iv (RS iii. 218) iv (RS iii. 218–21 iv (RS iii. 219–20) iv (RS iii. 220–1) iv (RS iii. 221–3) iv (RS iii. 222–3) iv (RS iii. 223–4) iv (RS iii. 224) iv (RS iii. 224–5) iv (RS iii. 225) iv (RS iii. 225–6) iv (RS iii. 226) iv (RS iii. 227) iv (RS iii. 227–8) iv (RS iii. 228) iv (RS iii. 229–32) iv (RS iii. 231) iv (RS iii. 231–2) iv (RS iii. 232) iv (RS iii. 232–6) iv (RS iii. 233–4) iv (RS iii. 234) iv (RS iii. 235) iv (RS iii. 235–6) iv (RS iii. 236–41) iv (RS iii. 236–9) iv (RS iii. 237) iv (RS iii. 238–9) iv (RS iii. 240) iv (RS iii. 240–1)

24 16 cxi, 17 17 cxi 17 17 cx 17 cxi 18 xxvi, 18 18 18 104 cxii, 20 cxii cxii 19 cxii 19 19 215 19 xxvi, 20 cxii 106 20 cxii 20 20 cxiii 20 xxvi, lxviii, 21 21 cxiii cxiii, 22, 24 22 lxxiv, 22 cxiii, 22 lxxv, 22 23 23 cxiii 23 23 23, 24 24 cxiii, 24 lxv cxiii cxiii, 24 24 25

iv (RS iii. 241) iv (RS iii. 242–3) iv (RS iii. 244) iv (RS iii. 244–6) iv (RS iii. 246) iv (RS iii. 246–7) iv (RS iii. 247) iv (RS iii. 248) iv (RS iii. 249–52) iv (RS iii. 252) iv (RS iii. 255) iv (RS iii. 255–6) iv (RS iii. 257–63) iv (RS iii. 263–4) iv (RS iii. 264) iv (RS iii. 264–6) iv (RS iii. 265–66) iv (RS iii. 266) iv (RS iii. 267) iv (RS iii. 267–8) iv (RS iii. 269) iv (RS iii. 270–1) iv (RS iii. 271) iv (RS iii. 271–2) iv (RS iii. 272) iv (RS iii. 272–3) iv (RS iii. 273) v (RS iii. 274) v (RS iii. 274–7) v (RS iii. 277) v (RS iii. 278–81) v (RS iii. 281) v (RS iii. 281–2) v (RS iii. 282) v (RS iii. 282–4) v (RS iii. 284) v (RS iii. 284–6) v (RS iii. 286) v (RS iii. 286–7) v (RS iii. 287–8) v (RS iii. 288–91) v (RS iii. 290) v (RS iii. 291–7) v (RS iii. 292–3) v (RS iii. 293) v (RS iii. 297–303) v (RS iii. 300) vi (RS iii. 304–5) vi (RS iii. 305–7) vi (RS iii. 307–8) vi (RS iii. 308) vi (RS iii. 309–11) vi (RS iii. 311–17) vi (RS iii. 312)

277 xxvi, cxiv, 25 26 lxx lxviii, 26 xxvi, 26 26 xxvi 24 26 26 lxxiv 27 27 27 lxxv 27 lxxiv 27 27, 28 cxiv, 28 32 lxvi, 28 28 28 28 28 xxvi, 28 13, 91 cxv, 28 28 28 29 10, 29 29 lxxiv, cxiv, 29 30 cxiv, 10, 28, 30 30 30 30 31 30, 217 31 xxiii 72 31 106 31 31 31 31 32 32 lxx, 210

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vi (RS iii. 316) 200 vi (RS iii. 317–18) 32 vi (RS iii. 321) lxxi vi (RS iii. 321–4) 32 vi (RS iii. 325) cii vi (RS iii. 325–6) 32 vii (RS iii. 334) xxvi, xxxviii vii (RS iii. 337) 183 vii (RS iii. 339) 206 vii (RS iii. 361) lxv vii (RS iii. 365) lxiv vii (RS iii. 372) civ vii (RS iii. 372–3) xxvii, cv, cxv vii (RS iii. 373) xxvi De libris a se scriptis RS i. 411 148 RS i. 411–12 151 De prin. first pref. (OMT 3–33) 162 first pref. (OMT 4) 223 first pref. (OMT 4–5) xxv first pref. (OMT 26–7) lxxxv, 182 first pref. (OMT 26–9) 181 first pref. (OMT 28–9) 186 i. 13 (OMT 155–6) lxxxv, 181, 182 i. 17 (OMT 214) 219 i. 17 (OMT 216) 94 ii. 5 (OMT 462–3) 140 ii. 12 (OMT 486) 28 ii. 19 (OMT 508) 253, 254 ii. 19 (OMT 510–13) lxxvi, 253 ii. 24 (OMT 522–6) 114 ii. 27–8 (OMT 532–40) 114 ii. 30 (OMT 552) 76 iii. 8 (OMT 598) 84, 85 iii. 25 (OMT 674–5) xvii, lvii, c Descr. Kam. i. 2 (RS vi. 166–7) xvii i. 4 (RS vi. 169) 38, 232 i. 9 (RS vi. 182) 71 i. 16 (RS vi. 195) 168 i. 18 (RS vi. 203) 56 ii. 7 (RS vi. 217) 178 Epistola ad capitulum Herefordense RS i. 415 xxvi Exp. Hib. (ed. Scott and Martin) introitus (pp. 4–5) lxxviii–lxxix i. 2 (pp. 28–31) ci, 109 i. 3 (pp. 30–3) ci, 39 i. 3 (pp. 32–5) xix i. 28 (pp. 88–9) xlix i. 29 (pp. 90–1) xlix i. 30 (pp. 92–3) xlix i. 31 (pp. 92–3) xlix

i. 35 (pp. 98–9) 128 i. 35 (pp. 98–101) lxxxi i. 40 (pp. 112–13) 40 i. 40 (pp. 108–13) 75 i. 42 (pp. 116–19) xix i. 42 (p. 118) 39 ii. 5 (pp. 144–7) lxxvi, 253 ii. 9 (pp. 154–7) lxv, 253 ii. 10 (pp. 156–7) xxiii ii. 15 (pp. 168–71) xix ii. 10 (pp. 156–9) 110 ii. 20 (p. 188) 212 ii. 20 (pp. 188–9) lviii, ciii, 39, 115 ii. 24 (pp. 196–9) 120 ii. 26–7 (pp. 200–7) 114 ii. 31 (pp. 220–1) 76 ii. 32 (pp. 226–9) lviii ii. 32 (pp. 228–9) ciii ii. 36 (pp. 236–45) 114, 115 ii. 36 (p. 242) 254 ii. 36 (pp. 242–3) 115, 119, 120 Gemma eccl. i. 49 (RS ii. 137) 53 i. 51 (RS ii. 152) 142 ii. 6 (RS ii. 190) 166 ii. 27 (RS ii. 304) 93 ii. 34 (RS ii. 330–1) lxv ii. 34 (esp. RS ii. 338–9) lxiv ii. 35–6 (RS ii. 344–8) lxxxi ii. 36 (RS ii. 346) 121 ii. 37 (RS ii. 348–9) lxi ii. 37 (RS ii. 349) lxi ii. 37 (RS ii. 350) lxi ii. 38 (RS ii. 362) 126 Inuect. (ed. Davies) i. 1 (p. 83–4) 22 i. 1 (p. 84) 224 i. 1 (pp. 83–5) lxxiii, 221 i. 2 (pp. 85–93) 8, 221 i. 2 (p. 89) 224 i. 2 (p. 90) 37 i. 2 (p. 92) 178 i. 4 (p. 98) lxiii, cix, 12 i. 4 (pp. 93–9) cx i. 4–5 (pp. 93–105) 13 i. 6 (pp. 105–6) 13 i. 7 (pp. 106–10) lxx i. 7 (pp. 106–7) cvii i. 7 (p. 109) cx i. 12 (p. 121) 12 i. 13 (p. 126) 26 ii. 1 (p. 130) lxxii ii. 1 (pp. 130–5) lxxi ii. 1 (p. 133) lxxi

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inde x of citations and allusions ii. 2 (pp. 135–6) 8 ii. 2 (p. 136) 11 ii. 2–3 (pp. 135–7) xlviii ii. 3 (pp. 136–7) 11 ii. 5 (pp. 138–9) lxxi, lxxii ii. 5 (p. 139) lxxii ii. 6–12 (pp. 139–54) xlviii ii. 7 (pp. 141–2) lxxv ii. 9 (pp. 142–3) lxxv ii. 10 (p. 143) 222 ii. 10 (pp. 143–6) lxxiii iii. 1 (p. 147) 8 iii. 2 (p. 148) 15 iii. 2–3 (pp. 148–9) cx iii. 3 (pp. 148–9) 104 iii. 4 (p. 149) lxiv, lxviii, cviii, 8 iii. 5 (pp. 149–50) 8 iii. 6 (p. 150) lxviii, 8 iii. 7 (Davies pp. 150–1) cviii, 8, 165 iii. 8–9 (pp. 151–2) 8 iii. 9 (p. 152) xxiv iii. 10 (pp. 152–3) xxiv iii. 10–16 (pp. 152–7) cx iii. 11 (p. 153) 13, 14 iii. 12 (p. 154) 14 iii. 13 (pp. 154–5) 15 iii. 14 (p. 155) 15 iii. 15 (p. 156) 15 iii. 16 (pp. 156–7) cx iii. 17 (pp. 157–8) xxiv iii. 18 (pp. 158–9) cxiv, 28, 30, 158 iii. 19 (pp. 159–60) 24, 30 iii. 20 (p.160) 30 iii. 21–3 (p. 160–2) 30 iii. 22 (p. 161) 215 iii. 22–3 (pp. 161–2) xxiv iv. 1 (pp. 162–4) lxxv iv. 1 (p. 164) xxvi iv. 2 (p. 167) xxvi iv. 4 (p. 172) cxiv, 10, 29 iv. 7 (p. 173) xxiv iv. 7–8 (pp. 173–5) 28 iv. 9 (p. 175) 9 iv. 9 (p. 177) 8–9 iv. 9–10 (pp. 175–9) l v. 2 (p. 184) 32 v. 11 (p. 191) lxxv v. 12 (p. 192) xxxvi v. 14 (p. 193) 156, 183 v. 14 (p. 194) xxxvi v. 15 (pp. 194–5) 206 v. 17 (pp. 196–7) lii v. 23 (p. 203) 181, 182, 185 v. 23 (pp. 203–4) lxxxv

vi. 1 (p. 204) vi. 1 (pp. 204–5) vi. 2 (p. 206) vi. 3 (p. 207) vi. 4 (pp. 207–8) vi. 5 (pp. 208–9) vi. 6 (p. 209) vi. 7 (pp. 209–10) vi. 8 (p. 210) vi. 9 (pp. 210–11) vi. 10 (pp. 211–12) vi. 11 (p. 213) vi. 12 (p. 214) vi. 13 (pp. 214–15) vi. 13 (p. 215) vi. 14 (pp. 215–16) vi. 15 (pp. 216–17) vi. 16 (pp. 217–19) vi. 17 (p. 219) vi. 18 (pp. 219–20) vi. 19 (p. 220) vi. 20 (pp. 220–21) vi. 20 (p. 221) vi. 20 (RS i. 175) vi. 21 (pp. 221–2) vi. 22 (pp. 222–3) vi. 23 (pp. 223–6) vi. 24 (p. 226) vi. 24 (pp. 226–8) vi. 25 (p. 228) vi. 25 (pp. 228–9) vi. 27 (p. 236) Itin. Kam. pref. prima (RS vi. 4) pref. prima (RS vi. 7) i. 1 (RS vi. 13–14) i. 2 (RS vi. 21) i. 2 (RS vi. 27) i. 2 (RS vi. 34) i. 3 (RS vi. 37–8) i. 3 (RS vi. 47) i. 4 (RS vi. 47–8) i. 4 (RS vi. 49–53) i. 6 (RS vi. 66) i. 11 (RS vi. 83) i. 11 (RS vi. 83–4) i. 11 (RS vi. 85) i. 11 (RS vi. 85–7) i. 11 (RS vi. 86) i. 12 (RS vi. 89) i. 12 (RS vi. 89–91) i. 12 (RS vi. 89–99) i. 12 (RS vi. 92) i. 12 (RS vi. 92–3)

279 xxvi, xxxv, xxxix 17 lxxv, 204 32 32 32 33 33 33 33 33 33 33 33 xxvi 33 33 34 34 34, 140 34 34 34, 84 164 34 34 34, 49, 104 xxvi lxxxiii, cvii, 212 xxvi, 11 lxviii, cviii, 11 126 35 lxxviii, 35 138 45 69 232 165 lii, 61 109 lii xvii 142 xxi 49, 140 9 48 38 xix xvii 39 xxiii

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i. 12 (RS vi. 93) 38 i. 13 (RS vi. 99–100) xlvii ii. 1 (RS vi. 103) lxxii ii. 1 (RS vi. 107) 208 ii. 2 (RS vi. 112–13) 145 ii. 4 (RS vi. 120) 56 ii. 4 (RS vi. 120–1) 210 ii. 4 (RS vi. 121) 52 ii. 7 (RS vi. 127) 232 ii. 11 (RS vi. 139) civ ii. 12 (RS vi. 144) 146 Retractationes RS i. 426 xxvi, cix Spec. duorum (ed. Richter, Lefèvre et al.) passim49 2xxiv 36–9 xxi, l 164xxxvi ep. 4 (p. 176) 88 ep. 7 (pp. 142–3) xxiv ep. 7 (p. 252) lxix ep. 8 (p. 262) lxix Spec. eccl. ii. 4 (RS iv. 40–42) 96 ii. 4 (RS iv. 41) 96 ii. 24 (RS iv. 70) 34 ii. 33 (RS iv. 104) xxiii, c iii. 1 (RS iv. 142) lxxviii, 35 iii. 5 (RS iv. 152–6) 214 iv. 33 (RS iv. 340) xxvi, lxxxv, 182 iv. 33 (RS iv. 340–1) lxxxv, 181 iv. 33 (RS iv. 341) 183 Symb. el. i. 1–6 (RS i. 203–18) 191 i. 24 (RS iii. 272) 37 i. 28 (RS i. 291–307) 191 ep. 1 (RS i. 203) xxiv ep. 1 (RS i. 204–5) xxiii ep. 1 (RS i. 208) lii ep., xxiv (RS i. 280–1) 164

ep., xxiv (RS i. 281) 164 ep., xxviii (RS i. 299–300) 82–3 ep., xxxiii (RS i. 319–20) 104 Top. Hib. introitus (RS v. 4) 35 introitus (RS v. 6) lxxvii, 88, 89 introitus (RS v. 6–7) 88 introitus (RS v. 8) 149 introitus secundus (RS v. 21) 34 ii. 9 (RS v. 92) 204 ii. 25 (RS v. 112) 48 iii. 19 (RS v. 164) xcviii iii. 19 (RS v. 164–5) lxxxi, 124, 126 iii. 24 (RS v. 168) 124 iii. 27 (RS v. 172–3) lxxxi iii. 27 (RS v. 173) 126 iii. 27–31 (RS v. 172–8) lxxx, xcviii, 124 iii. 28 (RS v. 174) xcviii iii. 30 (RS v. 176) 130 iii. 33 (RS v. 179) 69 iii. 38 (RS v. 184) 34 iii. 50 (RS v. 196) 84–5 Vita Dauid (ed. Russell) pref. lxxviii, lxxix, 35 Vita Davidis Secundi (ed. Richter) 248 (cf. RS iii. 432) xlviii, xlix De uita Galfridi introitus secundus (RS iv. 361) xlii, 34 i. 3 (RS iv. 366) 84 i. 13 (RS iv. 384–5) xlii, xliv ii. 9 (RS iv. 406) 39 Vita Hugonis iii. 1 (RS vii. 137) lxxviii, 35 iii. 5 (RS vii. 142) xxiv, 94 Vita S. Remigii v (RS vii. 20) 84 xiv (RS vii. 27) 34 xxix (RS vii. 78) 88 xxviii (RS vii. 62–7) 81

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GEN ER A L INDEX Note: Names of persons are given under the first name if they lived before 1500, for example Peter Abelard rather than Abelard, but in that case with a cross-­reference under Abelard. Names of Welsh persons and places are normally in a standard Modern Welsh spelling, with a few exceptions such as Abergavenny (anglicized spelling) and Abergefenni, a corresponding Welsh spelling, the standard modern name, Y Fenni, being too far from any form used by Gerald. Abbeville, Gerald and others took lodgings at  155 re-united with his luggage and his chamberlain at  155–7 Abelard, see Peter Abelard Aberconwy, Cistercian abbey, visited by Gerald in January 1202  cxi, cxiii, 17 subprior of, bishop-elect of Bangor, assisted by Gerald  13, 15, 25, 27, 31; name of  13n. Abergavenny/Abergefenni castle of, place where Seisyll ap Dyfnwal of Upper Gwent was killed by the French lii Aberhonddu/Brecon, Gerald succeeds in holding a synod there on 10 June 1202 cxii Aberteifi, bridge at  145 matron from, tries to prevent her husband from taking the cross 147 Adam, abbot of Dore, a candidate for the bishopric of St Davids, supported by the chief men and barons of the March 193 Adam, bishop of St Asaph, a ‘companion and classmate’ of Gerald at Paris  65, 67, 69 had arranged to be appointed judge in the matter of Cadwallon’s marriage to Efa  73 hoped to take all Rhwng Gwy a Hafren into his diocese  lvi–lvii, 63 the ‘old book’ of  65–7 supported, according to Gerald, by Cadwallon ap Madog  69, 71–3 taking advantage of a vacancy at St Davids, attempted to incorporate Ceri in his diocese but was frustrated by Gerald  71–3

made peace with Gerald in the presence of Cadwallon ap Madog  71 Adrian IV, pope  223 his privilege to Henry II (‘Laudabiliter’)  117–19, 253–4 Ailbe, abbot of Baltinglass (later bishop of Ferns), his sermon on the second day of the council of Dublin in Lent 1186 123–5 Alexander, Cistercian monk offered by Hubert Walter to the chapter of St Davids 191 Alexander III, pope  223 his ‘Quoniam ea’  253–4 summoned Mathieu d’Anjou to the Third Lateran Council to be made a cardinal 91 Alfred, king, and Asser  xxii Alps, crossed by Gerald on his way to Rome 219 Amaury of Bène  lx Anacletus, pope, supposed Tome of  lxxi–lxxii Anarawd son of Gruffudd ap Rhys  lv (Table 4) killed ‘Letardus Litelking, the enemy of God and St David’  xlvii Andelys, Rock of  195 Andrew, a clerk of Hubert Walter, sent to Rome in 1201 to oppose Gerald  cix–cx, 13 died at Segni in July 1201  cx, 15 Angharad daughter of Nest, mother of Gerald of Wales  xix, xx, xxiii, xli, xlvii, lv, 39 married ‘a baron of Pembroke’  111 Angle, parish of, settled by Flemings  xxi demanded but failed to secure protection against the interdict imposed on those who refused to give tithes  53 requested absolution from Gerald for their refusal to pay tithes  55

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Anselm, archbishop of Canterbury, and the primacy of Britain  lxvi dream of  xliv only appointed when Rufus was thought to be dying  lxii Anthony, as a model of monastic life  99 Ardennes, Gerald on his way to Rome in 1199 forced by war between Baldwin, count of Flanders, and Philip Augustus to make a detour through 217 c.1176 Gerald had a vision of ‘the bishop-elect of the great Ardennes’ 217 Arnulf, younger son of Roger de Montgomery, and the conquest of Dyfed in 1093  xvii entrusted Pembroke Castle to Gerald of Windsor xix Arras, scene in the market-place of  95 Arthur, grandson of Henry II and duke of Brittany, supported against John in 1199 by the barons of Anjou, Maine, and Touraine  cvi captured by John on 31 July 1202  cxii murdered by John on 3 April 1203 according to the Annals of Margam cxiv Arwystli, cantref of, ruled by a branch of the Iorweirthion  liv Asser, member of the community of St Davids, and King Alfred  xxii his Life of Alfred mentioned an archbishop of St Davids  lxxii Augustine of Canterbury, letter of Gregory the Great to  lxvii, lxxii Augustine of Hippo, Confessions of  xl–xlii, 89 Baber, Francis, chancellor of Gloucester cathedral, gave Llanthony manuscripts to Trinity College, Oxford xxviii Baldwin, archbishop of Canterbury  xx, cii present at Hereford with Ranulf de Glanville to confer with Rhys ap Gruffudd 109 preached at the Council of Geddington 137 sent by Henry II to preach the crusade in Wales, accompanied by Gerald  5, 139 preached the crusade throughout Wales 139–51

entered Wales at Radnor, where he met Rhys ap Gruffydd  139 after traversing the diocese of Llandaff, reached Haverford, where he and Gerald preached  139–43 reached St Davids  145 hurried on to Aberteifi to Rhys ap Gruffydd, meeting him in Cemais 145 spent Lent (1188) preaching the crusade in Gwynedd  147 reached Shrewsbury at Eastertide  147 praised Gerald’s eloquence, fitting him to write the history of the third crusade 149 praised Gerald’s Topography of Ireland, enquiring whether he had used earlier writers on the allegorical natures of birds  149 hoped that the king would promote Gerald 149 advised Richard, after the death of Henry II, to send Gerald to Wales 151 Baldwin, count of Flanders, at war in 1199 with Philip Augustus, forcing Gerald to make a detour through the Ardennes  217 Bangor, after death of Bishop Gwion Gerald refused the bishopric of  159 Robert, irregular appointment as bishop of 211 Rotolandus (Rhiwallon?), bishop-elect of, see Aberconwy, subprior of Barrow, Julia  xxv Barry Island, land in, held by the de Barri family xvii Bartlett, Robert, dated De gestis Giraldi 1208 × 1216  xxxv–xxxvi Bede, Historia Ecclesiastica, Gerald’s close reading of, crucial for the metropolitan status of St Davids  lxxii Bedford, hearing appointed before the judges-delegate on 1 August 1202 cxii bells, use of by Gerald: against Adam, bishop of Llanelwy/ St Asaph  lxxxvii, 63, 69 against William Karquit  49 Benedict ‘the father and founder of monastic life’  99 Berengaria, Queen, at Chinon when Elidir ab Elidir arrived  201

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Bernard, bishop of St Davids (1116–1148)  11 documents from his episcopate discovered at St Davids by Gerald lxxii–lxxiii Gerald built upon ‘the foundation which Bernard laid’  37 supported the Empress Matilda  xlvi timing of his death unfortunate for St Davids lxvii took the case of the metropolitan status of St Davids to the papal court xlviii Bertram de Verdun, left by John in 1185 as seneschal in Ireland  123 ‘Between Wye and Severn’, see Rhwng Gwy a Hafren Biddlesden, Cistercian abbey of  177; see also William Wibert Bologna, 25, 31; the great centre of legal studies lix before he ran out of money in 1179, Gerald intended to study at  ciii, 91 an expression used at  91 Gerald asked by Hervey de Montmorency how many years he had studied at  89 Bourchier, Henry, later fifth earl of Bath, borrowed Tiberius B. xiii  xxviii Brackley, hearing at, appointed on 18 June 1202 before the judges-delegate  cxii, 21 Brecon, see Aberhonddu Breus (Braose, Briouze), family of  li;  see also William de Breus, Maud/ Matilda of St Valery Brewer, John Sherren, edition of De gestis by xci–xcii Brial, Dom Michel-Jean-Joseph, published extracts from De gestis xc–xci British Museum, acquired the Cotton collection at its foundation (1753) xxviii–xxix Brycheiniog, archdeaconry of  lii–lvii, cxiii, 51–3 Brycheiniog, archdeacons of, first, Jordan, suspended by Gerald of Wales as legate of the archbishop  51–3; second, Gerald of Wales  51–3; third, his nephew Gerald son of Philip 33 lordship of  lii in 1199 Gerald’s books not safe ‘from the power of the English’ in 215

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Buellt, in a mountainous district in, Gerald’s envoy, Idnerth, robbed by the Welsh ‘of whom Gerald had had no fear’  215 Buongiovanni (Bongiovanni), a Lombard clerk of Canterbury sent by Hubert Walter to oppose Gerald in Rome cviii told the curia that King John had refused to accept Gerald’s election and that ‘a certain abbot had been elected’ lxxiv Burgundy, where Gerald, on his way to Rome in 1199, rejoined a public highway 217 Butler, H. E.: collated Brewer’s texts with the manuscripts xciii corrections by  xciii–xciv entitled De gestis Giraldi ‘The Autobiography of Giraldus Cambrensis’ xxv on the value of the De gestis Giraldi xl Cadwallon ap Madog ab Idnerth, ruler of Rhwng Gwy a Hafren: afraid that he would be divorced from his wife, Efa  73 belonged to a kindred called the Iorweirthion liv described by Howden as attending the Council of Oxford, 1177, as ‘king of Elfael’ lvi had to promise 1,000 head of cattle as tribute to be delivered to William de Breus lvi induced by Gerald to support him against the bishop of Llanelwy/ St Asaph  63 initially opposed but then supported Gerald’s authority in Rhwng Gwy a Hafren as archdeacon  71 first cousin of Rhys ap Gruffudd, ruler of Deheubarth, and kinsman of Gerald  liv, 59 lord of Caron in Ceredigion  liv married to Efa daughter of Madog ap Maredudd, king of Powys  xx, liv, lvi said by Gerald to have supported the ambitions of Adam, bishop of St Asaph lvi–lvii swore to be faithful to St David and his church 71 the subject of an elegy by Cynddelw  liv

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Camros, place where Flemings killed Gerald, son of William fitz Gerald xlvii canon law as studying ‘the papal constitutions’ 85 studied by Gerald, 1176 × 1179, at Paris lviii–lix at Paris Gerald lectured on  lxi, 85–91 see also Gratian, Decretum of Canterbury, archbishops of: aimed for primacy over Britain and Ireland lxvi claimed by Hubert Walter to be ‘the mother and metropolitan of the church of St Davids and of all the other churches of Wales’  223 elections of Reginald and John de Grey to, quashed by Innocent III in 1206  lxxv, cxv failed to subject the archbishops of York lxvi failed to subject the Irish church  lxiv primacy of, distinguished by Gerald from metropolitan status lxxv quarrelled with archbishop of York over primacy 77 see also Baldwin, Hubert Walter; Richard of Dover; St Thomas; Stephen Langton; Theobald Canterbury cathedral priory, extravagance of  xxxix, 97–9 preferred wine to ‘the excellent beer’ brewed in Kent  97 use of signals during meals at  97 Caradog, hermit of Llan Ismael, papal canonization sought by Gerald  cviii, 9, 15 Carew (Caeriw), castle of, held by Odo of Carew, son of William fitz Gerald  xx, l David, bishop of St Davids, and Gerald, stayed at  55 Caron (district in Ceredigion including Tregaron), Cadwallon ap Madog held lordship of  liv Cedewain, cantref of, ruled by a branch of the Iorweirthion  liv Gerald, faced with the bishop of St Asaph, gestured towards the hills of lvii men of, accompanied Adam, bishop of Llanelwy/St Asaph  63 traversed by Gerald  cxiii

Cedifor ap Daniel, archdeacon of Ceredigion ci Celestine I, pope, ruled that a bishop should be acceptable to his people lxiv Celestine III, pope  223 Cemais, where Archbishop Baldwin met Rhys ap Gruffydd after visiting St Davids  145 Ceredigion, conquered by Roger de Montgomery and his younger son Arnulf xvii crossed by Archbishop Baldwin when preaching the crusade  5, 145 in Henry I’s reign held by the Clares, but in 1180s by Rhys ap Gruffudd  109 Ceri, church of commote of, scene of Gerald’s confrontation with the bishop of St Asaph  lvi, ciii, 3, 61–9 church of, see Llanfihangel-yng-Ngheri Gerald, on his way to Rome, passed into England from  cvii, 215 Champagne, skirted by Gerald on his way to Rome  217 Children of Nest, see Nest, Children of Chinon, castle of, location of the Angevin treasury, sought by John after the death of Richard  cvi Elidir ab Elidir, envoy of the chapter of St Davids, went to Count John at  cvi, 201 Church councils: Reims 1148  lx, lxvii Sens 1140  lx Third Lateran 1179  lviii, ciii, 3, 91–3 Cilgerran, castle of, besieged by the French and the Flemings in 1166  xxi, ci captured by Rhys ap Gruffudd in 1165 ci the key to the cantref of Emlyn, belonging to William, eldest son of Gerald of Windsor  ci Cistercians urge the hermit of Llywes to drive away the sick coming to him for healing  171 civil law as studying ‘the imperial constitutions’ 85 Clare family, William de Vere, bishop of Hereford, and Walter fitz Robert members of  109 Corpus Christi College, Oxford, Brian Twyne, Henry Parry (both father and son), and Richard James all fellows of  xxvii–xxviii

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received several Llanthony manuscripts from Henry Parry, the younger xxviii Cotton, Sir Robert, acquired Tiberius B. xiii by 1621  xxviii Cotton Tiberius B. xiii, see manuscripts Crook near Waterford, where Henry II landed c crusade, as ‘the pilgrimage to Jerusalem’ 149 preached in Wales by Archbishop Baldwin, accompanied and assisted by Gerald  5, 137–51 curia, see papal curia Cwmhir, abbey of, on Gerald’s route from Strata Florida into England  215 Cynddelw, principal poet of Powys, his elegy for Cadwallon ap Madog  lii; his poem on the principal kindreds of Powys  liv Dafydd ab Owain, ‘king of North Wales’, attended Council of Oxford (1177)  lvi Daugleddau, cantref of, partly settled by Flemings  xxi, xlvi, 53; see also Wizo, Wizo’s Castle David I, king of Scots, backed the claims of the Empress Matilda  xlviii a contrast with Stephen in his attitude to the church  lxvi–lxvii David of Dinant  lx David fitz Gerald, bishop of St Davids and previously archdeacon of Ceredigion  xlviii, 111, 234 aimed to make peace between the sons of Gerald of Windsor and the Flemings by marrying a daughter to Walter son of Wizo  xxi, xlvii appointed Gerald archdeacon of Brycheiniog at the insistence of the archbishop of Canterbury  51–3 maternal uncle of Gerald  43 succeeded Bernard but was induced by archbishop Theobald to promise not to pursue his predecessor’s claim to metropolitan status  xlviii Gerald first made progress in his studies when in his household  41–3 died ‘about fifteen days before Pentecost’ 77 de Barri, name derived from Barry Island in Glamorgan  xvii De gestis Giraldi, title used by Gerald  xxvi anticipated readership of  lxiv

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as an episcopal biography  xl–xliv date of  xxxv–xxxix entitled ‘The Autography of Giraldus Cambrensis’ by H. E. Butler  xxv known as De rebus a se gestis libri tres from the date of Wharton’s edition, 1681 xxv method of editing  xciv–xcix omits any reference to dates outside its narrative frame  xxxvii one of three interrelated works that told the story of Gerald’s election and his defence of the metropolitan status of St Davids  xxxviii–xxxix previous editions of  lxxxviii–xciv shape of  xxxviii, xli–xliii third-person narrative of  xliv–xlvi Deheubarth/South Wales: Rhys ap Tewdwr prince of  39 Rhys ap Gruffudd prince of  109 Delwain, Howden’s form of de Elwain, namely Elfael  lvi Diarmait Mac Murchada, king of Leinster, died 1171  cii aided by Robert fitz Stephen  xvii–xix invited the English into Ireland  xlix Dieppe, Gerald prevented by a contrary wind from taking ship to cross to England from  151 Gerald took a stranger as his chamberlain at  153 boy left with a pack-horse at, reached London before Gerald  157 northern bank of the river at  153 Dol, and the migration of St Sampson from Wales to Brittany  lxxii, lxxv claim to metropolitan status dismissed by Innocent III early in 1199  lxxii dreams, see visions Dublin, council of the province of, in Lent 1186, summoned by Archbishop John Cumin  123 Ailbe’s sermon on the second day of 123–5 clerics from England and Wales accuse each other of incontinence at  125 Gerald’s sermon on the third day of  5, 125; text of  125–34; as example of Gerald’s elevated style lxxix–lxxx; text of recycled xxxix Dunstable, where Hubert Walter stayed when the final hearing before the judges-delegate took place at St Albans  lxxiv, cxiii

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Durham, bishop of, see Philip of Poitiers Duuianus, see Faganus Dyfed  xvii, xviii became a land of several peoples, ‘French’, Flemings, and Welsh  xxi Gerald born in  xxiii, xxv, xlix, 39 north of, less fertile and more Welsh than the south  xxi seven cantrefs of, claimed by Gerald as having been held by the Geraldines 111 Dyfi, river marking the southern boundary of Gwynedd  147 Efa, daughter of Madog ap Maredudd, king of Powys, wife of Cadwallon ap Madog  liv, lvi, 61, 73 Einhard’s Life of Charlemagne  xlv Einion ap Rhys, ruler of Gwerthrynion  liv, 233 Einion Clud, ruler of Elfael  liii, 233 approached for support by Gerald  lxxxvi, 63 had to promise 1,000 head of cattle as tribute to be delivered to William de Breus lvi Eleanor, Queen, at Chinon when Elidir ab Elidir arrived  201 Elenid (Pumlumon/Plymlimon range), crossed by Gerald on his way from Strata Florida to Cwmhir  215 Elfael, cantref of, part of Rhwng Gwy a Hafren  liv, lvi Adam, bishop of Llanelwy/St. Asaph, hoped to include within his diocese  63, 67 forest in  59, 63 Gerald threatened with ambush in  57–9 Llywes in  165 Painscastle, battle of, in  169, 177, 193 Elidir ab Elidir, envoy of St Davids to Richard, after his death went to John at Chinon  cvi, 201 met John at Westminster  cvi, 203, 205 Emlyn, cantref of, claimed by Gerald as having been held by William fitz Gerald  ci, 111, 235 rural deanery of, belonged to the archdeaconry of Ceredigion  233 England, kingdom of, episcopal elections in  lxii–lxiii, 175–7; Wales a part of  lxvi English, in Ireland  xxii one of the identities of the settlers in Dyfed xxii

episcopal consecration, resistance to, expected of a holy man  xliv episcopal elections, royal control of  lxii–lxiv, lxxiii attitudes to, changed during Stephen’s reign lxiii criticized by theologians in the late twelfth century  lxiv English practice in making  77; ‘after the fashion of English tyranny’  83 rejected by canonists in the late twelfth century lxiii–lxiv in 1203 John’s interventions in, criticized by Innocent III  lxxiii Ernaldus Rheting, a Flemish knight, spoke Flemish with Philip de Barri  xxi Eu, on the Norman march towards Flanders, crossed by Gerald in 1189  153 Eugenius III, pope (1145–53)  11, 13 letters of, found in Rome and shown to Innocent III by Gerald  cviii, 9; found by Gerald at St Davids  11 Eustace, bishop of Ely, experienced as a judge-delegate, appointed by Innocent III in 1200 to hear, with the bishop of Worcester, the case over the St Davids election  lxxiv said by Gerald to have approved his proposed compromise over the metropolitan status of St Davids  lxxv, cxiii instructed by the pope in May 1203 to arrange a new election to St Davids  cxiv, 29 Faganus and Duuianus, the pair of missionaries inserted by Geoffrey of Monmouth into the story of Lucius, king of the Britons  lxxiii Felix, bishop of Ossory, disliked Gerald’s sermon at Dublin  135 Latin style of  lxxxi Ferns, bishopric of (also termed bishopric of Wexford) offered by John to Gerald but he refused  121 John offered to combine it for Gerald with Leighlin  121–3 later had Ailbe (Ua Maíl Múaid) as bishop 123 Ferns, Diarmait Mac Murchada died at  cii feud between the sons of Gerald of Windsor and the Flemings of Rhos xlvi–xlvii

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Flanders, Gerald forced by war to make a detour eastwards into  217 counts of, see Baldwin and Philip sea of, Gerald’s name for the English Channel by Kent  97, 157, 215 Flemings of Rhos, secure Henry II’s help against Gerald’s imposition of tithes of wool and cheese  l, lii, 45 sheep of, taken by the Welsh  45 settle in Rhos and elsewhere in Dyfed xxi Flemings other than in Rhos, demand to have the same protection against interdict as those of Rhos  53 Flemish, spoken by Philip, Gerald’s eldest brother xxi Florilegium Anglicum, used by Gerald  lxxvi, lxxx French of Dyfed, intermarried with the Flemings  xlvii, l Fulk fitz Warin, revolt of  cxi Geddington, near Northampton, council at 137 Geoffrey, archbishop of York, Gerald’s Life of  xlii–xliv Geoffrey de Henlaw, prior of Llanthony and then bishop of St Davids, consecrated 7 December 1203, died 1214  cxv the favoured candidate of the archbishop and the Chief Justiciar lxx–lxxi may have been the father of Osbert, archdeacon of Carmarthen  lxix offered to the chapter of St Davids by Hubert Walter  cvii, 191 skilled in medicine and had treated Hubert Walter  191 letter of the chapter of St Davids to Innocent III against the appointment and consecration of  211 Geoffrey fitz Peter, Chief Justiciar, father-in-law of Henry de Bohun and supporter of Geoffrey de Henlaw, prior of Llanthony  lxx–lxxi anger of, soothed by Gerald at Canterbury in 1202  cxi, 17 in Lent 1199, offered the chapter either Alexander or Geoffrey de Henlaw 199

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sent letter to the chapter of St Davids ordering it to be at Westminster on 20 January 1199, ready themselves or their representatives to cross to Normandy  cv, 7, 195–7 sent letter in June or early July 1199 to the chapter of St Davids commanding them to arrive on 22 August to elect the prior of Llanthony 207 Geoffrey of Monmouth, Historia Regum Britanniae, used by Gerald  lxxiii Gerald of Wales (Gerald de Barri the elder): as a writer: excellence as a writer of Latin prose praised by Archbishop Baldwin 149–51 habitually revised his works  xxxviii his description of the confrontation with the bishop of St Asaph  lxxxvi–lxxxvii the only person of his age to write an episcopal biography of himself  xlvi other works of: De iure et statu Meneuensis ecclesie  xxxvii–xxxix, lxv, lxxi, lxxv, xcic, cviii–cxv De principis instructione  xxv, xl, c, civ 253–4 Expugnatio Hibernica, material gathered by Gerald in 1185–6 for 123 Gemma ecclesiastica  xxx, xxxix, lx–lxi, xciii, cvii, cxv, 219 Itinerarium Kambrie  xxxix, lxxii, cxv, 139, 153–5, 232 Libellus inuectionum xxxv–xl, lxxi–lxxiii, lxxxiii, lxxxv, cviii, cxv Retractationes cix Speculum duorum xxxvii Speculum ecclesie  xxvii, xxx–xxxv, xl, lxxv, cxv Symbolum electorum  xxxvii, cxv, 191, 240 Topographia Hibernie  ciii, civ, 5; Dublin sermon also in  125; material gathered by Gerald in 1185–6 for  123; on the vices of the Irish  129; praised by Archbishop Baldwin  149; writing and Oxford recitation of  135–7 Vita Galfridi archiepiscopi Eboracensis xlii–xliv

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Gerald of Wales  (cont.) Vita sancti Remigii lxxxix recycled text  xxxix–xl use of quotations by  xxxviii, xl, lxxv– lxxx, lxxxiii–lxxxv use of ‘scholastic style’  lxxviii–lxxix, 35 career of: date and place of his birth  xvii, 39 youngest of the sons of William de Barri 39 descent of  39 early studies of  41–3 at Paris, studied the liberal arts and taught the trivium, especially rhetoric 43, a ‘companion and classmate’ of Adam, later bishop of Llanelwy/St Asaph  65, 67, 69 studied logic at Paris ‘with enthusiasm and love of praise’  lxi funding of his study at Paris  lix–lx, 53–5 benefices received by  43 as legate of the papal legate and archbishop of Canterbury, sought to impose payment of tithes of wool and cheese in Dyfed and Ceredigion 45–51 went to absolve the parishioners of Angle from interdict and excommunication in spite of gale and wind  55 made archdeacon of Brycheiniog  51–3 established his authority over the clergy of Elfael and Maelienydd  57–61 succeeded in resisting the attempt of Adam, bishop of Llanelwy/ St Asaph, to incorporate Ceri, and even all Rhwng Gwy a Hafren, into his diocese  61–73 on good terms with William de Breus (both II, father, and III, son) and with Maud of St Valery, wife of William de Breus III  lii went straight to Henry II at Northampton after the confrontation with the bishop of Llanelwy/St Asaph  73 not yet thirty in May 1176  77 refused nomination to St Davids in 1176 77–9 report of his election in 1176 reached Henry II  79 Welsh kinsmen of, especially Rhys ap Gruffudd, were, for the king of England, a bar to his promotion  79, 107–9, 113, 175

studied civil and canon law in Paris, 1176–9  lvii, lix, 85–91 lectured at Paris with acclaim on canon law  85–7, 89–91 lectured in his lodgings on Gratian’s Decretum 91 the overture of Gerald’s ‘first lecture’ on canon law, perhaps his inception lecture  xl, lxxvii, 87–91 intended to go on from Paris to Bologna, 91, but ran out of money 93–5 chronology of his three periods of study at Paris difficult  lvii–lix sister of [Nest], divorce of, put off by the bishop of Winchester to allow reconciliation 99–101 administered the diocese of St Davids 1179 × 1183  3, 103 resigned his custody of the diocese of St Davids rather than consent to Bishop Peter’s oppression  103 sought by appeal to Rome to have Peter de Leia deposed  105 became a royal clerk, ‘a follower of the court’, in 1184  107 as royal clerk, active in maintaining peace in Wales, 107, warding off many of Rhys’s armies  113 visited Ireland, first in 1183–4, then in 1185–6, a third time (briefly) in 1199  lviii, ciii–civ, cvii reasons why sent to Ireland by Henry II with Prince John in 1185 115 visions about the Irish church  121 sermon on Laetare Sunday 1186, delivered in Dublin by  125; text of  125–35; met with approval from ‘the men of our country’ 135 claimed, in response to Rhys ap Gruffudd, c.1186, that his family held the seven cantrefs of Dyfed as well as land in Ireland  111 described as Welsh by Henry II, this being a barrier to promotion  113 Oxford lectures of  135–7 Archbishop Baldwin’s ‘inseparable companion’ in preaching the crusade in Wales  139 took up the cross at Radnor  139 preached the crusade after the archbishop at Haverford in Latin and French with great effect  139–41;

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sailed to Ireland after being elected to St Davids to seek the support of his kinsmen 207 his election, arguments in favour of  lxiv–lxv, lxxiii, 201 support from the Welsh for his election and the case for the metropolitan status of St Davids  lxiv, lxv, cxi, cxiii when Master Martin fell ill at SaintOmer, found some students from the church of St Davids, one a canon, to accompany him  217 went to Llywelyn ab Iorwerth around Christmas 1201  cxi, 15–17 in September 1202 offered Hubert Walter a compromise on the metropolitan status of St Davids  23 made peace with Hubert Walter and resigned his archdeaconry in favour of his nephew Gerald  33 character and opinions of: attitude to study, studium, as opposed to public life  161–5, 181–5 chapter of St Davids had high expectation of  xliii, 173, 199–201, 205 devotion to St Davids  105 his conception of a suitable person to be bishop of St Davids  191 his knowledge of languages and sensitivity to forms of speech  xxii, lxv, lxxxi, lxxxvi letters quoted, about Gerald: from Cardinal John of Anagni to Archbishop Baldwin  159; from Hubert Walter to Innocent III  221–7 letters quoted, from Gerald to Hubert Walter, archbishop of Canterbury  lxxvii, 177–87, 189–91 letters quoted, to Gerald, from Hubert Walter  lxxxiv, lxxxv, 187–9 from the chapter of St Davids  197–9 letters about Gerald, mentioned, from Innocent III  cviii on the best sequence of study at Paris lx–lxi perhaps knew enough Welsh to carry on a conversation but not enough to preach in the language  xxii, lxv, lxxxii see also De gestis Giraldi; St Davids, election of Gerald to

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Gerald of Windsor, castellan of Pembroke and maternal grandfather of Gerald of Wales  xix married Nest to put down roots in Dyfed xix sons of, dominant among the settlers in Dyfed in the later years of Stephen xlix; in 1147 ally with the sons of Gruffudd ap Rhys against the Flemings  xlvi–xlvii, l Gerald, son of William fitz Gerald, killed by Flemings of Rhos at Camros  xlvii, 51 ‘Geraldines’, term used by Rhys ap Gruffudd for the descendants of Nest daughter of Rhys ap Tewdwr 111 Gerard, archbishop of York  lxii Gerard La Pucelle, later bishop of Coventry, sent by Richard, archbishop of Canterbury, to attend the Third Lateran Council in 1179 93 reported to Gerald that ‘the canons of St Davids had spoken extremely arrogantly and presumptuously’ in Rome 93 Gilbert, bishop of Rochester, an intermediary between King John and Gerald  13 preached at the Council of Geddington 137 Gilbert de la Porrée, attacked by St Bernard at the Council of Reims  lx Gillingham, John, on the name Gerald de Barri xxiv–xxv Gisors, Henry II and Philip Augustus take up the cross at  137 Gloucester, Council of (1175), to which Rhys ap Gruffudd took the rulers of Rhwng Gwy a Hafren  lvi Gerald taught by Master Haimon at St Peter’s  c Henry Parry, bishop of, and Tiberius  B. xiii  xxviii where the canons of St Davids met Hubert Walter and other bishops and abbots, 20 January 1201, and declared on oath that they had never elected Gerald as bishop  13 Gratian, Decretum of  lx allowed an archbishop a voice in episcopal elections  lxii

as a source for theologians as well as canonists  lx; a source for Gerald lxxvi Gerald lectured in his lodgings on both the Distinctiones and the Causae of 91 on lay appointments to bishoprics  lxiii–lxiv Gregory the Great, and the authority of the emperor in the church  lxiii his letter to Augustine on the provincial structure of ‘the new Church of the English’ critical for the metropolitan status of St Davids  lxvii, lxxii words of, frequently recalled by Gerald 213 Gruffudd ap Rhys, sons of, according to Gerald, held no lands outside part of South Wales, unlike the Children of Nest  113 brother of Nest  111 in 1147 overran the cantref of Rhos  xlvii sons of, in 1146 ally with Hywel ab Owain Gwynedd to take Carmarthen castle, and then go on to take Llansteffan  xlvi see also Anarawd, Rhys ap Gruffudd Guibert of Nogent, his De uita sua xli Gwenwynwyn, ruler of Southern Powys, visited by Gerald in 1202  cxiii Gwerthrynion, cantref of, part of Rhwng Gwy a Hafren  67 Gwion, bishop of Bangor, died  159 Gwladus, Gerald’s aunt, married ‘a baron of Rhos’  111 Gwynedd extended south to the Dyfi  147 Gerald’s sermons well received in  147 Haimon, Master, Gerald’s teacher at St Peter’s Gloucester  c, 239 Hainault, Gerald, on his way to Rome, forced to make a detour eastwards into 217 Hait, sheriff of Pembrokeshire in 1130  xix, 234 father of William son of Hait/Hay  xix, xx Harold, king of England, invading Wales, Archbishop Hubert Walter compared with  lxxxiv, 177–9 Hart, Richard, the last prior of Llanthony Secunda, left books to Thomas Morgan xxviii

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Haverford (Haverfordwest), Richard fitz Tancred castellan of  l Archbishop Baldwin and Gerald preached the crusade at  139 Hay-on-Wye, the last parish in St Davids, all the tithes of, previously shared with a knight, the brother of the parson, restored to the parson by Gerald 57 English army for the relief of the siege of Painscastle gathered at  169 Henry I, king of England (1100–35): father of Henry fitz Henry by Nest daughter of Rhys ap Tewdwr  xix, xx responsible for Flemish settlement in Rhos xxi subjected St Davids to Canterbury  lxxiii took Pembroke into his possession after the Montgomery rebellion  xix Henry II, king of England (1154–89): and the civil war of 1173–5  lvi angry with the men of South Wales for allowing Richard fitz Gilbert to cross to Ireland  xlix declared in 1176 that he ‘would not raise up a leader of Wales against England by giving the Welsh an archbishop’ 75 helped the Flemings of Rhos against Gerald’s interdict for failure to pay tithes  l, lii, 53 needed, after 1171, to control Dyfed, with royal castellans in its main castles xlix–l on the number of dishes consumed by the monks of St Swithuns  99 refusal to go to the aid of Jerusalem the turning-point of his reign  115 sent his son John to Ireland instead of Jerusalem 115 succeeded by his son, Richard, with whom he had been at war  151 summoned Welsh rulers to the Council of Oxford in 1177  lvi took an army to Ireland after the death of Diarmait Mac Murchada  xlix, cii visited St Davids  xlix when Jerusalem had been conquered by Saladin, followed the example of his son, Richard, and took up the cross at Gisors with Philip Augustus  137 Henry, archbishop of Reims, on behalf of his brother, Louis VII, built the

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chapel of St Thomas of Canterbury in the church of Saint-Germainl’Auxerrois in Paris  93 Henry fitz Roy/Henry fitz Henry, claimed by Gerald to have held Narberth and Pebidiog  111 Henry son of Robert, an envoy of St Davids, met John at Westminster in 1199  cvi, 203 Heraclius, patriarch of Jerusalem, came to England offering to Henry II the keys to the city of Jerusalem  115 Hervey de Montmorency, one of the leaders of the English expedition to Ireland ci Hervey de Montmorency, canon and then dean of the church of Paris, asked Gerald how long he had studied at Bologna 89 Honorius II, pope, latter from the chapter of St Davids to  lxxiii Horace, quoted by Gerald  lxxx, lxxxiv– lxxxv, 181, 185 Hubert Walter, archbishop of Canterbury: as a leading royal servant, could seek to control the election to St Davids by royal power as well as by his authority as metropolitan  lxii, lxxiv at Dunstable at the time of the hearing before the judges-delegate at St Albans  lxxiv, cxiii claimed that Gerald was elected by only three canons  223 courier from, bringing twelve letters addressed to the pope and the cardinals, reached Rome about 10 December 1199  219 denounced Gerald to the pope as a Welshman by birth, related to Welsh rulers  lxxiii, 223 denounced the Welsh to the pope as ‘that savage and unbridled people’, needing to be ‘restrained by the stern ecclesiastical authority brought by Canterbury’  227 did not accept the compromise offered by Gerald at St Albans  cxiii died in debt 13 July 1205  cxv Gerald’s letter to  177–87; Hubert’s reply 187–9 in the Marches when Peter de Leia died  lxxxiv, 175–7 Latin style as represented by Gerald  lxxiii, lxxxiv–lxxxv

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Hubert Walter  (cont.) letter to Gerald  7, 187–9 letter to the pope, shown by Innocent to Gerald 221; text of 221–7 petitioned Richard I to order the chapter of St Davids to send four representatives to elect a new bishop 193–5 refused the nomination of Gerald to St Davids, saying that the king wanted no Welshman as a bishop in Wales 175–7 summoned representatives of the chapter to make an election to St Davids 175 used divisions in the chapter of St Davids to break down support for Gerald  lxiv, lxix, lxx with the justiciar, summoned the chapter to elect the prior of Llanthony 207 Hugh, bishop of Lincoln, officiated at the burial of Richard I  cvi Hugh de Lacy, granted Mide (Meath) by Henry II  cii Hugh the Chanter, History of the Church of York lxix Hugo (Pierleoni), cardinal of Sant’Angelo, papal legate in England, convoked a general council of the kingdom at London 75–7 failed to help to secure a successor to David fitz Gerald who knew St Davids and the Welsh language  81–3 Hungary, Gerald’s chamberlain had a brother in  153 Hywel and Walter, members of the Geraldines/Children of Nest, held Llanbedr and Efelffre  111, 235, 236 Hywel ap Cadwallon ap Madog, attached to Gerald by Cadwallon  61 Idnerth, ‘a rural dean and vice-canon’, sent by the chapter to accompany Gerald to Rome ‘to work both for their church’s metropolitan right and on the business of the election’ 211 sent by Gerald to Brycheiniog with money and horses, robbed ‘in the mountainous lands of Buellt’ and then falls ill  215

Innocent III, pope, ‘an abundantly learned man and loved literature’  219 aware of the defects, for reformers, of the English custom of appointing bishops lxxiii date of his death (1216) as a clue to the dates of De inuectionibus and De gestis  xxxvi, xxxviii gave Gerald the administration of the diocese of St Davids in 1200 and again in 1201  cviii, cx in 1199 given six books written by Gerald  cvii, 219 in the spring of 1200 declared the election of Walter, abbot of St Dogmaels, null and void  lxxiv instructed the abbots of Whitland, Strata Florida, and St Dogmaels to examine the case for the canonization of Caradog, the hermit of Llan Ismael  cviii much more favourable to Gerald’s election than to the metropolitan claims of St Davids  lxv replied to a letter from Llywelyn and other Welsh princes  lxviii quashed the elections of Gerald and the abbot of St Dogmaels 15 April 1203 cxiv sent a letter to King John, 20 February 1203, detailing his misbehavour cxiv Iorweirthion, a kindred divided into two branches, the ruling families of Rhwng Gwy a Hafren and those of Cedewain and Arwystli  liv listed by Cynddelw as the third of the principal kindreds of Powys  liv Iorwerth/Gervase, bishop of St Davids, consecrated 1215  cxv Iorwerth Hirflawdd, ancestor of the Iorweirthion liv Ireland, along with all the islands of Christendom, belongs ‘by right to St Peter and to the Holy Roman Church’ 117 clerics who came from England and Wales to, accused of incontinence by Ailbe at the council of Dublin, Lent 1186  123–5 in 1185, John, accompanied by Gerald, sent by Henry II to  115 in 1185 young men accompanying John to, ignorant of the country  115

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two bishoprics in, Ferns and Leighlin, offered to Gerald  121–3 when Richard I was on crusade, John urged by Gerald to complete the conquest of  161 Irish church, English spoliation of, noted by Gerald  lxv failure of its bishops to provide good pastoral care  127–33 John’s failure to promote, the gravest reason for his failure in 1185  115, 123 papal legates to, obliged to travel via Scotland lxvi promotion of, the reason why Henry II obtained permission from Rome to enter Ireland  117 remarkable for the chastity of its clergy 123–5 Italy, referring to the Kingdom between the Alps and the Apennines, crossed by Gerald on his way to Rome  219 Itinerary of Wales, the only copy of, in the summer of 1189, on ‘large writing-tablets’ 153–5 Ivo, son of Letard ‘Litelking’, inherited Letterston  xlvii n. James, Richard, may have paginated Cotton Tiberius B. xiii  xxxv Jerome, Lives of the Fathers 99 Jerusalem 143 keys to the city of, offered by the Patriarch Heraclius to Henry II  115 land of, conquered by ‘pagans and Parthians’ led by Saladin  137 pilgrimage to, a description of the crusade  149, 153 Wetheleu went to  lxxxii, 167 John, descendants of, among the Welsh canons of St Davids were kinsmen of Peter, abbot of Whitland  lxx John, king of England (1199–1216): when still just Lord of Ireland accompanied by Gerald to Ireland in 1185–6  115 reasons why his expedition was unsuccessful 115–17 his treatment of the Irish church in 1185 the subject of a vision seen by Gerald 121 when count of Mortain and earl of Pembroke, rebuked Gerald for emptying the earldom of troops by

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his preaching of the crusade, so as to enable his Welsh kinsmen to reconquer it  143 swore to Richard I that he would stay out of England for three years  161 urged by Gerald, without success, to go to Ireland to complete the conquest 161 deposed the chancellor, William de Longchamp 161 offered Gerald the see of Llandaff  161 in  1191–3 undermined the authority of William Longchamp civ went to Chinon, the Angevin treasury, when Richard I was killed  cvi at Chinon gave a favourable reply to the St Davids envoys requesting his assent to Gerald’s election  cvi, 201 letter of chapter to  203 letter to Gerald from Chinon, ordering Gerald to come to him with three or four canons who could elect him  201 letter to the chapter from Chinon  201 letter to the justiciar from Chinon directing him not to trouble the canons of St Davids in making an election 201 crowned king at Westminster on Ascension Day, 27 May 1199  205 having been discouraged by Hubert Walter, refused to make public the decision about St Davids made at Chinon  cvi, 205 letter against Gerald 8 March 1202  cxii when summoned before the barons of France in 1202 in the dispute with the Lusignans, failed to appear and was judged to have lost his fiefs of Aquitaine, Poitou, and Anjou  cxii captured Arthur of Brittany  cxii said to have murdered Arthur of Brittany, his nephew  cxiv John Cumin, archbishop of Dublin, Gerald recounted his vision to  121 held a council of the province in Holy Trinity church, Dublin  123 John of Anagni, cardinal and papal legate, absolved Gerald, and also Peter de Leia, of their crusading vows  157, 159 John, lord bishop of Albano, cardinal (Giovanni, cardinal-bishop of Albano), Gerald sought advice from 219–21

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John of Salisbury, verdict on the control of the church in the kingdom of Sicily lxiii John of Tynemouth, leading canonist, sent to oppose Gerald on his third visit to Rome in 1203  lxxiv, 27, 29 John Peckham, archbishop of Canterbury, letters to Llywelyn ap Gruffudd from lxxxv John Spang, on Gerald’s sermon in Cemais 145 Jonas, descendants of, one group among the Welsh canons of St Davids  lxx Jones, Thomas  xxv Jordan, archdeacon of Brycheiniog, suspended by Gerald  cii, 51 Joseph of Exeter, nephew of Archbishop Baldwin, considered by his uncle fit to compose a verse history of the crusade 149 judges-delegate, essential to the operation of church courts  lxxiv see also Eustace, bishop of Ely; Mauger, bishop of Worcester; Philip of Poitiers, bishop of Durham Kells, Synod of, gave the Irish church a provincial structure independent of Canterbury  lxvi, lxvii Kent, excellent beer of  97 Knowles, David, on Brewer’s contributions to the Rolls Series  xci Lanfranc, archbishop of Canterbury, claim to primacy  lxvi languages, Gerald sensitive to use of lxxxi–lxxxiv Lateran Council (Third, 1179), attended by Gerard La Pucelle 93 Mathieu d’Anjou summoned to  91 canons of St Davids raised the issue of metropolitan status at  91–3 ‘Laudabiliter’, text of  117–19; see also Ireland, Irish church law, civil and canon, studied by Gerald in Paris 1176–9  85–91 Leighlin, bishopric of, offered by John to Gerald with the option of combining it with Ferns/ Wexford 121–3 ‘Letardus Litelking, the enemy of God and St David’, killed by Anarawd in 1137 xlvii Letterston, named after Letard and inherited by his son, Ivo  xlvii n.

Liebermann, Felix, edited extracts from De gestis xcii–xciii Lincoln, chapter of St Davids sent letters and messengers to Gerald at  lxii, 197, 197–9 famine in the area of  173 Gerald went to, to study theology ‘for several years’ with William de Montibus, when prevented by war from going to Paris  171–3 theological study flourished most soundly at  173 Llanbadarn in Maelienydd, very probably Llanbadarn Fawr (Radnorshire), reached by Gerald on visitation  59 Llanbister in Maelienydd  63 Llandaff, diocese of, Archbishop Baldwin travelled through on his way to St Davids 139 offered to Gerald by Count John but refused 161 Llan-ddew (Landov, Landu), Gerald’s home as archdeacon of Brycheiniog  lii, 61 lands attached to, seized by Peter de Leia but returned at his last synod  105 Llanelwy/St Asaph, bishop of, see Adam, bishop of St Asaph Llanfihangel-yng-Ngheri/Ecclesia Sancti Michaelis de Keri  61–9 confrontation at the entrance to the graveyard of  65–9 parson and clerks of, had consented to the plan of Adam, bishop of Llanelwy to dedicate their church  63; also ‘parsons’ in the plural 69 Llansteffan castle, held by Maurice fitz Gerald  xlvi 111, 235 captured by the Welsh in 1146  xlvi, c Llanthony (subsequently Llanthony Prima), Henry de Bohun, patron of lxx–lxxi Geoffrey de Henlaw prior of  lxxi, 191, 207, 211 the scheme to divide it into two Augustinian houses, Llanthony Prima and Llanthony Secunda linked with the succession to the see of St Davids  lxx–lxxi Llanthony Secunda, Augustinian priory of, likely original home of BL Cotton Tiberius B. xiii  xxvii–xxviii Llanwnda, one of Gerald’s churches, assigned to the chapter but given, at

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Gerald’s urging, to Martin of Llawhaden 107 Llawhaden, episcopal castle of  49 Lloyd, J. E. (Sir John)  xxiv Llywelyn ab Iorwerth, ruler of Gwynedd, leading Welsh supporter of Gerald’s two cases in Rome  cxi, cxiii his letter to Gerald  21 letter to the pope sent from him and other princes  lxv, lxviii–lxix,, 27 visited by Gerald at Aberconwy in 1202  cxiii, 17 Llywelyn ap Gruffudd  lxxxv Llywelyn, son and heir of Madog ap Maredudd, king of Powys, killed shortly after his father’s death  ci Llywes, in Elfael, hermit of  lxxxi–lxxii, 7, 165–71 his name, Wetheleu  lxxxii, 164–5, 230 his use of Latin conveyed by Gerald  lxxxi–lxxxii, 165–67 miracle enabled him to understand Latin 167 upset at slaughter of Christians by Christians 169 urged by Cistercians to drive away the sick who came to him for healing 171 woman pretends to have been sent to the English army at Hay by  169 London, general council of the kingdom convoked by Ugo at  75–7 Gerald urged by the chapter of St Davids to hurry to  197 Louis VII, king of France  93 Lucius, king of the Britons, story of his conversion, part of the case for metropolitan status in the Liber Pontificalis, in Bede’s Ecclesiastical History, and, elaborated, in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History of the Kings of Britain  lxxi, lxxiii Lucius, pope, letter of  11, 13 Lusignan family in Poitou, come into conflict with John  cxii Maecenas, elegy for  lxxxiv, 187 Maelgwn ap Cadwallon ap Madog, had been fostered by opponents of Gerald 61 Maelgwn ap Rhys ap Gruffudd, supported Gerald in 1202  cxi Maelienydd, cantref of li Map 3)  63, 67, 69; see also Rhwng Gwy a Hafren

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Malachy, archbishop of Armagh  lxvii Manorbier/Maenor Bŷr, de Barri castle  xvii, xxi–xxiii, xlvi–xlvii, c, 39, 234 attacked when Gerald was a child  41 for Gerald, ‘the loveliest part of Penfro’ xxiii manuscripts: BL Cotton Tiberius B. xiii collation of  xxxiii–xxxv damage to  xxxi–xxxii date of  xxxvii description of  xxvi–xxix early modern annotations to  xxvii–xxviii entered the possession of Sir Robert Cotton by 1621  xxviii not an authorial copy of De gestis xxvii present binding of  xxxiii punctuation of  xxx scribes of  xxx Sir Frederic Madden responsible for the restoration of  xxxii March of Wales, chief men and barons of, supported the candidacy of Adam, abbot of Dore, to be bishop of St Davids  193 Hubert Walter in  175–7 Marculf ’s formulary, included a formula for a royal precept allowing episcopal consecration  lxiii Martin, Master, a canon of St Davids sent by the chapter to accompany Gerald to Rome ‘to work both for their church’s metropolitan right and on the business of the election’ 211 fell gravely ill at Saint-Omer, from where he was sent home  217 Martin of Llawhaden, one of Gerald’s clerks, given Llanwnda, one of Gerald’s churches  107 Mathieu d’Anjou, lectured on civil and canon law at Paris  91 summoned to the Third Lateran Council to be made a cardinal, recommended Gerald to take his place 91 Mathri/Mathry, Gerald’s prebend: lands of, seized by Peter de Leia but returned at his last synod  105 Maud/Matilda of St. Valery, wife of William de Breus III  li starved to death by King John  lii supported Gerald  lii

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Maud/Matilda, daughter of William de Breus III, married Gruffudd ap Rhys lv Mauger, bishop of Worcester, experienced as a judge-delegate, appointed by Innocent III in 1200 to hear, with the bishop of Ely, the case over the St Davids election  lxxiv instructed by the pope in May 1203 to arrange, with the bishop of Ely, a new election to St Davids  29 letter to Gerald from  23 Maurice fitz Gerald, held Llansteffan  111 with Robert fitz Stephen, Raymond and Meilyr, ‘began the conquest’ of Ireland 111 Meilyr fitz Henry: accompanied Robert fitz Stephen and Maurice fitz Gerald to Ireland  111 and the archbishop  11 as justiciar of Ireland, his support for Gerald’s cause in Rome secured by Gerald’s visit in July 1199  cvii, 207 overlapping identities of  xxii Miles fitz David  xx, xxii Milford Haven in Penfro, John’s expedition sailed from  115 Montgomery family, rebellion of  xix Mont Sainte-Geneviève, where William de Montibus had taught  lviii, 173 Narberth, according to Gerald, held by Henry fitz Roy/Henry fitz Henry 111 Nest daughter of Rhys ap Tewdwr, maternal grandmother of Gerald of Wales 39 Children of  xx, Table 1 after the English intervention in Ireland more important and more suspect in Henry II’s eyes  xlix lands in Wales and Ireland held by 111 took their courage from the Trojans, their skill in arms from the Gauls xxiii supported Gerald’s election as bishop of St Davids  lxiv may have had a son by Hait, sheriff of Pembrokeshire  xix, xx mistress of Henry I  xix mistress of Stephen, constable of Cardigan xix Nest, Gerald’s sister, divorce of  99–101

Newport, hearing before the judge-delegate 4 May 1202  cxii Nobis, described by Asser as archbishop lxxii nominations as bishop, in English practice not before getting the consent of the king or justiciar  77 Normandy, the chapter of St Davids ordered to send four to cross to, in order to elect a new bishop  195 Northampton, Gerald went to Henry II at 73 Odo de Barri, grandfather of Gerald of Wales, established in Penfro before 1130 xvii Odo of Carew: helped to fund Gerald’s studies at Paris 53–5 married a daughter of Richard fitz Tancred 51 pacified Richard fitz Tancred over payment of tithes  51 son and heir of William fitz Gerald  xx Osbert, archdeacon of Carmarthen, English canon of St Davids: ally of Hubert Walter against Gerald  lxix, lxx may have been the illegitimate son of Geoffrey de Henlaw  lxix Oswestry, visited by Archbishop Baldwin when preaching the crusade  147 Ovid, quoted by Gerald  lxxvi–lxxvii, lxxx the Lover’s Cure of, remembered by Gerald 155 Owen, Henry  xxv Oxford, Council of (1177), summoned by Henry II to hold talks with Welsh rulers lvi ‘the teachers of the various faculties’ at 137 ‘where the English clergy most flourished and excelled in learning’ 135 where Gerald read his Topographia Hibernica over three days  135–7 Painscastle, in Elfael, besieged by the Welsh 169 Welsh defeated at, with the loss of 3,000 men  169, 177–9 papal curia, Christmas holidays of lasted until the day after the Epiphany 221

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Paris, enjoyed a period of consolidation when Gerald studied there  lx Gerald’s periods of study at  lvii–lix Gerald prays in the chapel of St Thomas of Canterbury in the church of Saint-Germain-l’Auxerrois in 93–5 Gerald, pressed by his creditors in 1179, decides to leave  93 Gerald prevented from returning to in order to study theology by the outbreak of war  171–3 Gerald’s second period of study at, probably in early 1170s  lix Gerald taught the trivium at  43 Gerald went to study civil and canon law, and also theology, at  85 question proposed in Gerald’s lecture at 89 sequence of Gerald’s studies at, 1176 × 1179 85 Parry, Henry (the elder), bishop of Gloucester and then Worcester, bequeathed his books to his son, Henry xxviii Parry, Henry (the younger), when Cotton Tiberius B. xiii was in his possession Twyne saw the manuscript xxvii–xxviii pastoral care, and chapter 10 of St John’s Gospel lxiv–lxv Paul the Hermit  99 Pebidiog: according to Gerald, held by Henry fitz Roy/Henry fitz Henry  111 St Davids at western end of  xxii Pembroke Castle, first building of  xvii, and William Karquit  l, 47 Pembroke, comitatus of  48–9 n. earldom of, given to his son John by Henry II  143 Pembroke priory, Gerald, when acting as the archbishop’s legate in 1174, stayed at  47 Pembroke, town of, close to Manorbier  39 had a market for wool  47 sheriff of, see William Karquit Penfro, cantref of, held by William fitz Gerald 111 Peter, abbot of Whitland: chief corruptor of the chapter of St Davids 17 a kinsman of one group among the Welsh canons lxx

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the third of those nominated in 1198  175 used by Hubert Walter to weaken support for Gerald  lxx–lxxi Peter Abelard  lvii; attacked by St Bernard at the Council of Sens  lx Historia Calamitatum of  xli Peter the Chanter, criticized royal involvement in episcopal elections lxiv his Verbum Abbreuiatum, Gerald’s use of lxxvii was lecturing in Paris by 1173  cii Peter de Leia, bishop of St Davids: previously prior of Wenlock  83; a Cluniac  83, 191 election of  83 first part of De gestis ends with his consecration xlii in spite of Gerald’s persuasions, took an oath not to pursue metropolitan status for St Davids  83 when driven out of Wales, entrusted Gerald, on the advice of the archbishop of Canterbury, with the administration of the diocese 103 suspended some canons and archdeacons and excommunicated others 103 his last synod resolved the conflict with Gerald and the canons  105 took up the cross at Radnor  139 suggested by Gerald as the right person to preach at Haverford after the archbishop 141 death of  lxxxiv, 173, 175 Peter Lombard, Sentences of  lx Peter of Piacenza (Pietro Diana?), cardinal, letter from Hubert Walter to, shown to Gerald by a clerk  219 Philip Augustus, king of France, born when Gerald was studying in Paris  xvii n., lvii, c at war with Richard I c.1196, so preventing Gerald from returning to Paris  lviii, cv, 171 at war with Baldwin, Count of Flanders, in 1199 compelling Gerald to travel through the Ardennes on his way to Rome 217 took up the cross at Gisors with Henry II  137 with Richard I ‘set out on pilgrimage to Jerusalem’ 157

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Philip, Count of Flanders, ‘such a great man’, present in Arras in 1179  95 Philip de Barri, lord of Manorbier and eldest brother of Gerald of Wales xvii gave wise advice to Gerald in 1199 on pursuing his cause at Rome  xxxix, xlv, lxviii, lxxxiii, cvii, 213 grave of, visited by Gerald in 1200  cviii, 11 helped to fund Gerald’s studies at Paris  lix, cii, 53–5 joined with Poncius, archdeacon of Pembroke, to warn Gerald that his plan to reconcile Peter de Leia with his chapter would do harm to the bishop’s mensal lands  105–7 married a daughter of Richard fitz Tancred  xxi, xlvii, l pacified Richard fitz Tancred over payment of tithes  51 spoke Flemish  xxxi Philip Mangonel, a knight related to Gerald, took the cross at Haverford 141 Philip of Poitiers, bishop of Durham, appointed by the pope in June 1203 to hear the case over the status of St Davids and costs  cxiv, cxv, 29, 30 Pipe Roll of 1130  xvii, xix, 234–5 Pliny the Elder  89 Poncius, archdeacon of Pembroke, joined with Philip de Barri to warn Gerald of the harm to the bishop’s mensal land that would be caused by Gerald’s plan to make peace between Peter de Leia and his church 105–7 popes, see Adrian IV; Alexander III; Celestine I; Celestine III; Eugenius III; Honorius II; Innocent III Powicke, F. M. (Sir Maurice), used the name ‘Gerald of Wales’  xxiv Powys, division of  lvi, ci men of, expected to accompany Adam, bishop of Llanelwy, into Ceri  63 see also Adam, bishop of Llanelwy/ St Asaph; Cynddelw; Llywelyn ap Madog; Madog ap Maredudd links with Rhwng Gwy a Hafren  liv Prise, Sir John  xxiv Pythagoras, five-year silence of his students 89

quintain, tilting at, in the market-place at Arras 95 ‘Quoniam ea’, forged papal privilege, omitted from De gestis 253–4 quotations, in De gestis biblical and patristic outnumber classical  lxxix–lxxx Radnor, Archbishop Baldwin entered Wales and met Rhys ap Gruffudd at  139 Ralph de Bendeville, sheriff of Pembroke, ordered in April 1202 to deprive Gerald’s supporters among the canons of their possessions and their fornicariae cxii Ralph of Beauvais, on the kinds of students at Paris  lxi Ranulf de Glanville, ‘justiciar of the kingdom’ 151 accompanied Archbishop Baldwin when preaching the crusade in Wales as far as Radnor  139 advised Gerald to accompany him and Archbishop Baldwin across the Channel 151 with Archbishop Baldwin, a royal envoy to confer with Rhys ap Gruffudd  109, 113 Raymond le Gros, younger son of William fitz Gerald, went to Ireland with Robert fitz Stephen and Maurice fitz Gerald  111 Reginald Foliot, English canon of St Davids 193 ‘flew on wings of ambition’ to King Richard in Aquitaine  193 in Rome for the archbishop  cix nephew of Peter de Leia  193 one of the four nominated by the chapter in 1198  lxix, 175 secretary to William de Vere, bishop of Hereford 193 worked against Gerald’s election  lxix–lxx Reims, Henry, archbishop of, built chapel on behalf of his brother, Louis VII, in honour of Thomas Becket  93 rhetoric, Gerald’s best subject as a teacher at Paris  43 Rhos, cantref of, settled by Flemings  xxi, xxii 200 of the men of, killed in revenge for the killing of Gerald son of William fitz Gerald  xlvii, 51 resist the payment of tithes and are plundered by the Welsh  45

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secure a temporary immunity from king and archbishop from the interdict imposed by Gerald  53 Rhwng Gwy a Hafren (inter Vagam et Sabrinam, Between Wye and Severn) 233 Adam, bishop of St Asaph, hoped to incorporate into his diocese  63, 65 Cadwallon ap Madog ab Idnerth the ruler of  liv, 59, 61 dean and chapter of, resist visitation by Gerald as archdeacon  57–61 dean of, sent by Gerald to meet the bishop of Llanelwy/St Asaph  63 included Maelienydd, Elfael, Gwerthrynion, and Ceri  67 one of the two main components of the archdeaconry of Brycheiniog  lii–liv (rural) dean of, called the archdeacon  57 Rhygyfarch, on Dyfed in 1093 overrun by ‘the French’  xxi Rhys ap Gruffudd, ruler of Deheubarth, affinity of  lv (Table 4) allowed Cadwallon ap Madog the lordship of Caron  liv attended the Council of Gloucester, July 1175 lvi attended the Council of Oxford, 1177, as ‘king of South Wales’  lvi disputed with Gerald at Hereford  109–13 for Henry II, Gerald’s kinship to, a bar to his election as bishop of St Davids in 1176  81; or any promotion  107–9 in 1176 the leading Welsh king  lvi loyal to St Davids, where he was buried in 1197  lvii met Archbishop Baldwin at Radnor  139; and then in Cemais near the bridge at Aberteifi 145 relationship to Henry II  lvi took the castle of Cilgerran in 1165  ci witty response to Gerald at Hereford 109–11 Rhys ap Tewdwr, king of Dyfed, Gerald’s great-grandfather  xix, xxiii, 39 Rhys Gryg, supported Gerald in 1202  cxi Richard I, king of England (1189–99), crowned king in London  157 approached by Adam, abbot of Dore, and Reginald Foliot, both hoping to be bishop of St Davids  193 at war with Philip Augustus, preventing Gerald from returning to Paris c.1196  cv, 171–3

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after the death of his father sent Gerald to Wales, with letters, to maintain peace 151 the cause of war between Henry II and Philip Augustus  151 returned from capitivity early in 1194  cv summoned four canons of St Davids in 1198 to come to him in Normandy  cv, 195 when count of Poitou, ‘the first prince north of the Alps to be marked with the cross’  137 Richard fitz Gilbert, earl of Striguil, the leader of the English in Ireland xlix only with difficulty made his peace with Henry II on condition of surrendering Dublin to the king xlix Richard fitz Tancred, castellan of Haverfordwest, father-in-law to Odo of Carew and Philip de Barri  xxi, l hostile to Gerald’s family  l, 49 hostile to Gerald in 1174  49–51 supported the Flemings of Talacharn in their opposition to tithes on wool and cheese  l, 49–51 Richard of Dover, archbishop of Canterbury, 1173/4–1184, and papal legate: appointed Gerald as legate to Wales  45 failed to help to secure a successor to David fitz Gerald in 1176 who knew St Davids and the Welsh language 81–3 induced by the Flemings of Rhos, supported by Henry II, to relax the interdict 45 recommended, with his suffragan bishops, Gerald as successor to David in 1176  79 sent Gerard La Pucelle to attend the Third Lateran Council  93 welcomed Gerald in 1179 and gave him a letter to the bishop of Winchester 99–101 Richard of Ilchester, bishop of Winchester, intended to divorce Gerald’s sister from her husband but persuaded to delay by the archbishop’s letter brought by Gerald  99–101 reduced the number of dishes consumed by the priory of St Swithuns 99

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Richter, Michael, and the date of De gestis Giraldi xxxv–xxxvii Robert, bishop of Bangor, consecrated by Archbishop Hubert Walter without any election  211 Robert Curzon, Cardinal, criticized royal involvement in episcopal elections lxiv gave the first set of statutes for the university of Paris  lx Robert de Barri, brother of Gerald of Wales, went to Ireland with Robert fitz Stephen  xvii–xix Robert de Bethune, prior of Llanthony and bishop of Hereford, Life of  xlii–xlv Robert fitz Stephen: according to Gerald, had held Ceredigion and Cemais  111 ‘began the conquest’ of Ireland  111 called on St David in battle  xxii captured by Rhys ap Gruffudd at Cilgerran in 1165  ci denounced by Henry II for attempting to conquer Ireland  xlix his release from imprisonment by Rhys ap Gruffudd negotiated by David, bishop of St Davids, and Maurice fitz Gerald  ci imprisoned in Raghnall’s Tower, Waterford xlix led a party to the aid of Diarmait Mac Murchada, king of Leinster  xvii– xix son of Stephen, constable of Cardigan, by Nest  xix–xx Robert of Gloucester, illegitimate son of Henry I, lord of Glamorgan, supported the claims of the Empress Matilda  xlviii Roberts, Brynley F.  xxiv Roger, archbishop of York, quarrels with the archbishop of Canterbury over precedence 77 Roger Bechet: baptismal church was Carew  47 owed ten stone of wool to his creditor at Pembroke 47 Roger de Montgomery, earl of Shrewsbury, and the conquest of Ceredigion and Dyfed xvii Roger of Ford, Speculum ecclesie, also in Cotton Tiberius B. xiii  xxvii may have been bound together with Gerald’s works by Sir Robert Cotton xxviii

Roger of Gloucester, bishop of Worcester, told Gerald about Henry II’s reaction to the advice that Gerald would be the best candidate to be bishop of St Davids in 1176  81 Roger the Norman, had lectured on the arts at Paris and studied canon law at Bologna 87 praised Gerald’s lecture on canon law 87 Roger of Howden, on the Council of Oxford lvi Rome, Gerald sought the deposition of Peter de Leia by appealing to  105 Gerald’s visits to: in 1199–1200 (aduentus primus), Gerald arrived around 30 November 1199 219 in 1201 (aduentus secundus) cix in 1203 (aduentus tertius) cxiv in 1206–7 xxxvii Rouen, Gerald took a stranger into his household at  153 St Albans, place where the final hearing before the judges-delegate took place in September 1202  cxiii where Gerald offered a compromise in the dispute over the metropolitan status of St Davids  lxxv, 23 St Anselm, reluctant to be consecrated archbishop xliv St Asaph/Llanelwy, bishop of, see Adam, bishop of St Asaph St Bernard, confronted Abelard at the Council of Sens  lx confronted Gilbert de la Porrée at the Council of Reims  lx preached in French to Germans who knew no French to great effect 143 St Clears, according to Gerald, held by William son of Hait/Hay  111 ‘St David’, as the battle-cry of the English in Ireland  xxii St Davids: bishops of, see Bernard; David fitz Gerald; Peter de Leia; Geoffrey de Henlaw; Iorwerth canons/chapter of: after the death of Bishop David, nominated the four archdeacons  77 claimed to be too poor to cross the sea to Normandy to make an election 199

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location of, at western end of Pebidiog xxii metropolitan status of, important in deciding the chapter of St Davids to elect Gerald  205 students belonging to, found by Gerald to replace Master Martin 217 Welsh canons of, divided between two kindreds lxx where Rhys ap Gruffudd was buried in 1197 lvii St Davids, elections to: complicated by divisions between the three peoples of Dyfed  lxiv St Davids, Gerald’s election to: Gerald urged by letters and messengers from the chapter and from the barons of Dyfed to go to the king and ‘to ask for and obtain’ the bishopric 173 two archdeacons and four canons summoned by Hubert, archbishop and also justiciar, nominate first Gerald, second Walter, abbot of St Dogmaels, third Peter, abbot of Whitland, and add a fourth, Reginald Foliot  175 deferred until 29 June 1199  205 the chapter, after electing him, begged him to go to Rome, seek consecration from the pope, and thus avoid being required to renounce any pursuit of metropolitan status  205 together with the pursuit of metropolitan status, the cause of the election judged by Philip de Barri ‘to be opposed not only to the archbishop of Canterbury, but also to the king and to all England’  213 St Davids, metropolitan status of: cause of, partially favoured by the context lxvi Gerald asked by the pope to present a written case in support of  lxxi Saint-Omer, Gerald, on his way to Rome, waited at for his messengers from the fair at Winchester  215–17 St Peter’s Gloucester, abbey of, where Gerald was taught by Master Haimon  c, 239 St Peter’s Pence  117, 119

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St Samson of Dol and the loss of the pallium of St Davids  lxxii, lxxv St Swithuns, see Winchester: St Swithuns St Thomas of Canterbury, chapel of, built in the church of Saint-Germainl’Auxerrois in Paris by Henry, archbishop of Reims on behalf of his brother, Louis VII  93 symbols of, hung about the necks of Gerald and his companions coming from Canterbury  101 St Valery, a land between Normandy and Flanders, ‘full of robbers and brigands’ 153 St Waltheof  xliii, 39 n. St Wihtburh  xliii, 39 n. Sandwich, Gerald ‘crossed the Flemish Sea’ from  215 Saracens, John sent by Henry II not against them but against the Christian Irish 115 Satan, angel of, in the guise of a nun  169 Seisyll ap Dyfnwal of Upper Gwent, killed by French of Brycheiniog in 1175  l Selden, John, may have borrowed Cotton Tiberius B. xiii  xxviii Seneca ‘our moral philosopher’  87 Sidonius Apollinaris, quoted Seneca and quoted by Gerald in his lecture at Paris 87–9 Shrewsbury, reaction to Gerald’s sermon at 147 Skeel, Caroline, wrote the introduction to a volume of Selections from Giraldus Cambrensis xciii Stephen, king of England, English power in Wales much reduced during his reign xlviii Stephen Langton, archbishop of Canterbury, appointed by Innocent III when a cardinal in Rome  lxxv, cxv in Paris about the time of Gerald’s first stay ci preface to De iure et statu Meneuensis ecclesie addressed to  lxxv Strata Florida, Cistercian monastery, Gerald, on his first journey to Rome, arrived at on 14 August 1199 215 where Gerald on his way to Rome in 1199 deposited his library  cvii; ‘brought to Brycheiniog from England and thence out of the power of the English’ to  215

Strata Marcella, visited by Gerald in January 1202  cxi styles of writing, plain and ornate, distinguished by Gerald  lxxviii Sulien, bishop of St Davids, family of  ci Talacharn, church of, Gerald invested with 49 Talacharn, commote of, partially settled by Flemings and rich in wool  53 and Flemish resistance to tithes of wool and cheese, supported by Richard fitz Tancred  l Tancredston, probably named after Tancred, the father of Richard fitz Tancred  xlvii n. Theyer/Theare, John, grandson of Thomas Theare and a book collector through whose hands Llanthony books may have passed xxviii Theare, Thomas, an executor of the will of Richard Hart  xxviii Theobald, archbishop of Canterbury, evaded King Stephen in order to get to the Council of Reims  lxvii induced David fitz Gerald to swear that he would not pursue the case for the metropolitan status of St Davids  xlviii Theodore, archbishop of the Island of Britain lxxii and the Synod of Hertford  lxxii Thomas I, archbishop of York  lxii Thomas II, archbishop of York, nephew of Thomas I, king’s chaplain before his election  lxii Thomas Becket, archbishop of Canterbury, see St Thomas of Canterbury tithes of wool and cheese imposed by Gerald on Dyfed and Ceredigion in 1174, accepted by the Welsh  45; but resisted by the Flemings  l, 45 tithes paid by his kinsmen to fund Gerald’s studies in Paris  lix, cii Treville, royal forest of, bought by Adam, abbot of Dore  93 trivium, studied and then taught by Gerald at Paris  43 Tuscany, crossed by Gerald on his way to Rome 219 Twyne, Brian: added running titles in Cotton Tiberius B. xiii  xxvi

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in 1617 copied extracts from Cotton Tiberius B. xiii, labelling them ‘Excerpta ex quibusdam Manuscriptis Lantoniensis coenobii prope Glocestr’  xxvii, 238–40 knew the De gestis as ‘Vita Gyraldi’  xxvi Tyre, archbishop of, Henry II and Philip Augustus took up the cross at Gisors in the presence of  137 Valle Crucis, Cistercian abbey, visited by Gerald in January 1202  cxi Vergil, quoted by Gerald  lxxx, lxxxiii Vimeu, a land between Normandy and Flanders, ‘full of robbers and brigands’ 153 visions 33–5 experienced by the hermit of Llywes or by Gerald, shared with each other 169 Wales, admitted by Gerald to be a portion of the kingdom of England lxvi Walter, abbot of St Dogmaels, the second of those nominated to St Davids in 1198 175 elected to the see of St Davids shortly before Christmas 1199  lxx, lxxi, cvii, 9 election quashed by Innocent III in 1200 and again in 1203  lxv, lxx, lxxiv, cxiv a kinsman of Gerald  lxx, lxxi Walter fitz Robert, a member of the Clare family, present at a meeting at Hereford between Archbishop Baldwin and Ranulf de Glanville, for the king, and Rhys ap Gruffudd 109 Walter, half-brother of Gerald of Wales  39 n.199; killed in Ireland  39 n. Walter son of Wizo: in 1147 attacked by the sons of Gerald of Windsor in alliance with the sons of Gruffudd ap Rhys  l married a daughter of David, bishop of St Davids  xxi, xlviii, l mentioned in the Pipe Roll of 1130  234 Ware, Sir James: called the De gestis Giraldi ‘Liber de vita sua’ xxiv notes of  245–52

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Tiberius B. xiii already damaged when he examined it, probably in the 1650s xxxi Waterford: 17 October 1171, Henry II landed near xlix about Easter [1185], John disembarked at 115 men of, capture and imprison Robert fitz Stephen xlix Welsh, as latter-day Trojans  xxiii denounced by Hubert Walter to the pope as ‘that savage and unbridled people’, needing to be ‘restrained by the stern ecclesiastical authority brought by Canterbury’  227 like the Irish ‘nourish the hope of recovering all the lands taken from them by the English’  113 Welsh language, Gerald had some knowledge of  xxii, lxv, lxxxii a knowledge of, Gerald argued in 1176 to be required in a bishop of St Davids  81 Welsh rulers, supported Gerald’s election as bishop  lxxiv–lxv, lxvi–lxix, 17, 21, 27 Wenlock, Cluniac priory of, Peter de Leia prior of  83 Westminster, Gerald and other canons of St Davids summoned to  cv, 195–7 Geoffrey de Henlaw elected at  33 Wetheleu, see Llywes, hermit of Wexford, Henry II sailed from  cii English and Welsh clerics from the district of, accuse each other of keeping concubines  125 see of, offered by John to Gerald  121–3 Wharton, Henry: his edition of De gestis lxxxviii–xci responsible for the title De rebus a se gestis xxiii Whitchurch, visited by Archbishop Baldwin when preaching the crusade 147 Whitland, abbot of, see Peter, abbot of Whitland William de Barri, father of Gerald of Wales 39 called Gerald, when a child, his bishop 41 in 1136 one of the leaders defending Cardigan castle against the Welsh xlvi

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William de Breus (II), lord of Brycheiniog, and the killing of Seisyll ap Dyfnwal of Upper Gwent and others  lii as sheriff of Herefordshire received tribute from neighbouring Welsh princes lvi on good terms with Gerald  lii William de Breus (III), lord of Brycheiniog, supported Gerald  lii William de Longchamp, left by Richard I as justiciar in England  157 Gerald attached by Richard I to  157 William de Monte/de Montibus, chancellor of Lincoln Cathedral: c.1196–99 Gerald studied with  lviii had taught in Paris  lviii, 173 said by Gerald to be called de Monte because he had taught on Mont Sainte-Geneviève 173 William de Vere, bishop of Hereford, hosted a meeting between Rhys ap Gruffudd and the king’s envoys, Archbishop Baldwin and Ranulf de Glanville 109 Reginal Foliot his secretary  193 William des Roches, switched from supporting John to supporting Philip Augustus  cxii William fitz Gerald (of Windsor), according to Gerald held Penfro and Emlyn 111 William Karquit, castellan of Pembroke and royal sheriff, hostile to Gerald 47–9 sheriff of Pembroke  47 William of Wycombe, wrote Life of Robert de Bethune  xlii William son of Hait/Hay, kinsman of Gerald of Wales  53 according to Gerald, held St Clears  111 helped to fund Gerald’s studies at Paris 53

William Wibert, abbot of Biddlesden, deposed at the behest of Gerald as ‘a vagabond Cistercian monk’, but a close associate of Hubert Walter 177 Gerald’s letter against, contained in Symbolum electorum 191 Winchester, bishop of, see Richard of Ilchester fair of, Gerald waited at Saint-Omer for his messengers from  215–17 St Swithuns, the cathedral priory of, number of dishes consumed at dinner by  97–9 Wizo, one of the leaders of the Flemish settlement in Dyfed c.1110 xlvi, xlviii, 234 Wiston and Wizo’s Castle named after him xlvi Wizo’s Castle, besieged by the sons of Gerald of Windsor in alliance with the sons of Gruffudd ap Rhys  xlvi, c Worcester, hearing before the judges-delegate on 26 January 1202 at  cxi, 17 bishops of, see Mauger, Roger writing tablets of large size used by Gerald, in the summer of 1189 contained the only copy of the Itinerary of Wales 153–5 York, archbishops of: failed to subject the Scottish church  lxiv province of, judges-delegate from, the dean and prior of Holy Trinity, York, appointed by Innocent III in 1203 to hear the case over the metropolitan status of St Davids  lxv, lxxiv, cxiv resisted subjection to Canterbury  lxvi, lxvii, lxix see also Geoffrey; Gerard; Roger; Thomas I; Thomas II