itinerary of Archbishop Baldwin through Wales

Giraldus Cambrensis

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pubOne.info thank you for your continued support and wish to present you this new edition. Gerald the Welshman - Giraldus Cambrensis - was born, probably in 1147, at Manorbier Castle in the county of Pembroke. His father was a Norman noble, William de Barri, who took his name from the little island of Barry off the coast of Glamorgan. His mother, Angharad, was the daughter of Gerald de Windsor {1} by his wife, the famous Princess Nesta, the "Helen of Wales, " and the daughter of Rhys ap Tewdwr Mawr, the last independent Prince of South Wales.

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• Publié par: Pub One Info
• Date de parution: 27 septembre 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9782819923510
• Langue: English

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INTRODUCTION
Gerald the Welshman - Giraldus Cambrensis - wasborn, probably in 1147, at Manorbier Castle in the county ofPembroke. His father was a Norman noble, William de Barri, who tookhis name from the little island of Barry off the coast ofGlamorgan. His mother, Angharad, was the daughter of Gerald deWindsor {1} by his wife, the famous Princess Nesta, the “Helen ofWales, ” and the daughter of Rhys ap Tewdwr Mawr, the lastindependent Prince of South Wales.
Gerald was therefore born to romance and adventure.He was reared in the traditions of the House of Dinevor. He heardthe brilliant and pitiful stories of Rhys ap Tewdwr, who, afterhaving lost and won South Wales, died on the stricken fieldfighting against the Normans, an old man of over fourscore years;and of his gallant son, Prince Rhys, who, after wrenching hispatrimony from the invaders, died of a broken heart a few monthsafter his wife, the Princess Gwenllian, had fallen in a skirmish atKidwelly. No doubt he heard, though he makes but sparing allusionto them, of the loves and adventures of his grandmother, thePrincess Nesta, the daughter and sister of a prince, the wife of anadventurer, the concubine of a king, and the paramour of everydaring lover - a Welshwoman whose passions embroiled all Wales, andEngland too, in war, and the mother of heroes - Fitz-Geralds,Fitz-Stephens, and Fitz-Henries, and others - who, regardless oftheir mother's eccentricity in the choice of their fathers, unitedlike brothers in the most adventurous undertaking of that age, theConquest of Ireland.
Though his mother was half Saxon and his fatherprobably fully Norman, Gerald, with a true instinct, describedhimself as a “Welshman. ” His frank vanity, so naive as to be voidof offence, his easy acceptance of everything which Providence hadbestowed on him, his incorrigible belief that all the world took asmuch interest in himself and all that appealed to him as he didhimself, the readiness with which he adapted himself to all sortsof men and of circumstances, his credulity in matters of faith andhis shrewd common sense in things of the world, his wit and livelyfancy, his eloquence of tongue and pen, his acute rather thanaccurate observation, his scholarship elegant rather than profound,are all characteristic of a certain lovable type of South Walian.He was not blind to the defects of his countrymen any more than toothers of his contemporaries, but the Welsh he chastised as one wholoved them. His praise followed ever close upon the heels of hiscriticism. There was none of the rancour in his references to Waleswhich defaces his account of contemporary Ireland. He wasacquainted with Welsh, though he does not seem to have preached it,and another archdeacon acted as the interpreter of ArchbishopBaldwin's Crusade sermon in Anglesea. But he could appreciate thecharm of the Cynghanedd, the alliterative assonance which is stillthe most distinctive feature of Welsh poetry. He cannot conceal hissympathy with the imperishable determination of his countrymen tokeep alive the language which is their differentia among thenations of the world. It is manifest in the story which he relatesat the end of his “Description of Wales. ” Henry II. asked an oldWelshman of Pencader in Carmarthenshire if the Welsh could resisthis might. “This nation, O King, ” was the reply, “may often beweakened and in great part destroyed by the power of yourself andof others, but many a time, as it deserves, it will risetriumphant. But never will it be destroyed by the wrath of man,unless the wrath of God be added. Nor do I think that any othernation than this of Wales, or any other tongue, whatever mayhereafter come to pass, shall on the day of the great reckoningbefore the Most High Judge, answer for this corner of the earth. ”Prone to discuss with his “Britannic frankness” the faults of hiscountrymen, he cannot bear that any one else should do so. In the“Description of Wales” he breaks off in the middle of a mostunflattering passage concerning the character of the Welsh peopleto lecture Gildas for having abused his own countrymen. In thepreface to his “Instruction of Princes, ” he makes a bitterreference to the prejudice of the English Court against everythingWelsh - “Can any good thing come from Wales? ” His fierceWelshmanship is perhaps responsible for the unsympathetic treatmentwhich he has usually received at the hands of English historians.Even to one of the writers of Dr. Traill's “Social England, ”Gerald was little more than “a strong and passionate Welshman.”
Sometimes it was his pleasure to pose as a citizenof the world. He loved Paris, the centre of learning, where hestudied as a youth, and where he lectured in his early manhood. Hepaid four long visits to Rome. He was Court chaplain to Henry II.He accompanied the king on his expeditions to France, and PrinceJohn to Ireland. He retired, when old age grew upon him, to thescholarly seclusion of Lincoln, far from his native land. He wasthe friend and companion of princes and kings, of scholars andprelates everywhere in England, in France, and in Italy. And yetthere was no place in the world so dear to him as Manorbier. Whocan read his vivid description of the old castle by the sea - itsramparts blown upon by the winds that swept over the Irish Sea, itsfishponds, its garden, and its lofty nut trees - without feelingthat here, after all, was the home of Gerald de Barri? “As Demetia,” he said in his “Itinerary, ” “with its seven cantreds is thefairest of all the lands of Wales, as Pembroke is the fairest partof Demetia, and this spot the fairest of Pembroke, it follows thatManorbier is the sweetest spot in Wales. ” He has left us acharming account of his boyhood, playing with his brothers on thesands, they building castles and he cathedrals, he earning thetitle of “boy bishop” by preaching while they engaged in boyishsport. On his last recorded visit to Wales, a broken man, huntedlike a criminal by the king, and deserted by the ingrate canons ofSt. David's, he retired for a brief respite from strife to thesweet peace of Manorbier. It is not known where he died, but it ispermissible to hope that he breathed his last in the old home whichhe never forgot or ceased to love.
He mentions that the Welsh loved high descent andcarried their pedigree about with them. In this respect also Geraldwas Welsh to the core. He is never more pleased than when healludes to his relationship with the Princes of Wales, or theGeraldines, or Cadwallon ap Madoc of Powis. He hints, notobscurely, that the real reason why he was passed over for theBishopric of St. David's in 1186 was that Henry II. feared hisnatio et cognatio, his nation and his family. He becomes almostdithyrambic in extolling the deeds of his kinsmen in Ireland. "Whoare they who penetrated into the fastnesses of the enemy? TheGeraldines. Who are they who hold the country in submission? TheGeraldines. Who are they whom the foemen dread? The Geraldines. Whoare they whom envy would disparage? The Geraldines. Yet fight on,my gallant kinsmen,
“ Felices facti si quid mea carmina possuit. ”
Gerald was satisfied, not only with his birthplaceand lineage, but with everything that was his. He makes complacentreferences to his good looks, which he had inherited from PrincessNesta. “Is it possible so fair a youth can die? ” asked Bishop,afterwards Archbishop, Baldwin, when he saw him in his studentdays. {2} Even in his letters to Pope Innocent he could not refrainfrom repeating a compliment paid to him on his good looks byMatilda of St. Valery, the wife of his neighbour at Brecon, Williamde Braose. He praises his own unparalleled generosity inentertaining the poor, the doctors, and the townsfolk of Oxford tobanquets on three successive days when he read his “Topography ofIreland” before that university. As for his learning he recordsthat when his tutors at Paris wished to point out a model scholarthey mentioned Giraldus Cambrensis. He is confident that though hisworks, being all written in Latin, have not attained any greatcontemporary popularity, they will make his name and fame securefor ever. The most precious gift he could give to Pope InnocentIII. , when he was anxious to win his favour, was six volumes ofhis own works; and when good old Archbishop Baldwin came to preachthe Crusade in Wales, Gerald could think of no better present tohelp beguile the tedium of the journey than his own “Topography ofIreland. ” He is equally pleased with his own eloquence. When thearchbishop had preached, with no effect, for an hour, and exclaimedwhat a hardhearted people it was, Gerald moved them almostinstantly to tears. He records also that John Spang, the LordRhys's fool, said to his master at Cardigan, after Gerald had beenpreaching the Crusade, “You owe a great debt, O Rhys, to yourkinsman, the archdeacon, who has taken a hundred or so of your mento serve the Lord; for if he had only spoken in Welsh, you wouldnot have had a soul left. ” His works are full of appreciations ofGerald's reforming zeal, his administrative energy, hisunostentatious and scholarly life.
Professor Freeman in his “Norman Conquest” describedGerald as “the father of comparative philology, ” and in thepreface to his edition of the last volume of Gerald's works in theRolls Series, he calls him “one of the most learned men of alearned age, ” “the universal scholar. ” His range of subjects isindeed marvellous even for an age when to be a “universal scholar”was not so hopeless of attainment as it has since become. ProfessorBrewer, his earliest editor in the Rolls Series, is struck by thesame characteristic. “Geography, history, ethics, divinity, canonlaw, biography, natural history, epistolary correspondence, andpoetry employed his pen by turns, and in all these departments ofliterature he has left memorials of his ability. ” Without beingCiceronian, his Latin was far better than that of hiscontemporaries. He was steeped in the classics, and he had, asProfessor Fr