Gerald of Wales

Gerald was born in 1146 at Manorbier Castle on the coast of Pembrokeshire in southwest Wales, a place he later praised in his own writing as the loveliest spot in the country ^[1]. His father, William de Barri, was a Norman knight who held the castle, and his mother, Angharad, descended from Welsh royalty. Through her, Gerald was the grandson of Nest, daughter of Rhys ap Tewdwr, the last king of Deheubarth. This mixed parentage, roughly three quarters Norman and one quarter Welsh, shaped almost everything Gerald wrote and did ^[2].

His family called him Gerald de Barri, though posterity knows him as Gerald of Wales, or in Latin, Giraldus Cambrensis. Even as a boy he was marked out for the church. He recalled in his autobiographical writings that while his brothers built sand castles on the beach, he built sand churches and monasteries, which prompted his father to nickname him his little bishop ^[1].

Gerald received his early schooling from his uncle David FitzGerald, who was Bishop of St Davids, and at the Benedictine abbey of St Peter in Gloucester. He then studied in Paris, the leading intellectual center of western Europe, where he spent several years mastering the trivium of grammar, rhetoric, and logic ^[3]. Paris gave him a polished Latin style and an ambition that never left him.

Returning from Paris around 1172, Gerald threw himself into church reform in Wales. He was appointed a legate of the Archbishop of Canterbury and set about enforcing the payment of tithes on wool and cheese in the diocese of St Davids, a task he pursued with an energy that made him both admired and resented ^[2]. His zeal earned him appointment as Archdeacon of Brecon in 1175, a post he obtained after denouncing the previous holder for keeping a mistress ^[3].

When his uncle David FitzGerald died in 1176, the chapter of St Davids nominated Gerald as his successor. King Henry II rejected the nomination. Gerald believed the king feared that a well connected, half Welsh bishop might revive the old claim that St Davids was an archbishopric independent of Canterbury, and there is good reason to think he was right ^[4]. Peter de Leia was installed instead, and a disappointed Gerald returned to Paris for further study, this time of theology and canon law.

By 1184 his abilities had brought him to royal attention in a different way. Henry II recruited him as a court clerk and chaplain, valuing his knowledge of Wales and his family ties there. Gerald served as a mediator between the crown and Welsh princes, including the Lord Rhys, his own kinsman ^[2]. Royal service opened the door to the journeys that would make his reputation.

In 1185 Henry II sent Gerald to Ireland in the company of the young Prince John. Out of that expedition came the two books that first made his name: the Topographia Hibernica (Topography of Ireland), a description of the island's landscape, wildlife, wonders, and people, and the Expugnatio Hibernica (Conquest of Ireland), a narrative of the Anglo-Norman invasion in which his own FitzGerald relatives had played leading parts ^[4]. The Topographia proved hugely popular, and Gerald gave public readings of it at Oxford around 1188, an event sometimes described as an early landmark in the history of that university ^[3].

His Irish books mix sharp firsthand observation with credulous marvels and harsh judgments on Irish customs. Modern historians treat them with caution, since Gerald wrote partly to justify the invasion his family had helped lead, yet the works remain a major source for twelfth century Ireland precisely because so little else survives ^[5].

In 1188 Gerald accompanied Archbishop Baldwin of Canterbury on a preaching tour through Wales to recruit crusaders for the Third Crusade. The result was the Itinerarium Kambriae (Journey Through Wales, 1191), followed by the Descriptio Kambriae (Description of Wales, 1194) ^[1]. These two books are the achievement on which any fair assessment of Gerald of Wales rests. They record the landscape, languages, music, warfare, and daily habits of the Welsh with a vividness no other medieval writer matched, including the famous observation that the Welsh sang in parts rather than in unison ^[6]. Anyone asking who was Gerald of Wales usually meets him first through these pages.

In total Gerald wrote around a dozen surviving works in Latin, including saints' lives, a manual for princes called De Principis Instructione, attacks on the monastic orders in the Speculum Ecclesiae, and one of the earliest medieval autobiographies, De Rebus a Se Gestis ^[4]. A map of the British Isles associated with his circle also survives, reflecting his geographical interests.

The defining struggle of Gerald's later career began in 1198, when the see of St Davids fell vacant again and the cathedral chapter once more chose him as bishop. What followed was a five year battle that Gerald documented obsessively in his own writings ^[2]. Archbishop Hubert Walter of Canterbury blocked the election, unwilling to see St Davids press its ancient claim to metropolitan status, which would have removed the Welsh church from Canterbury's authority.

Gerald appealed directly to Rome. Between 1199 and 1203 he made three arduous journeys across Europe to plead his case before Pope Innocent III, presenting the pope with copies of his own books and arguing that St Davids had once been an archbishopric in its own right ^[4]. He fought the case not merely for himself but, as he saw it, for the dignity of the Welsh church against English domination.

The campaign failed. In 1203 Innocent III quashed both Gerald's election and that of his rival, and a new election under Canterbury's supervision produced another candidate. Gerald, now in his late fifties, resigned his archdeaconry and formally abandoned the fight ^[3]. He had spent much of his fortune on the case and never received the mitre he believed his talents and lineage deserved.

After 1203 Gerald withdrew from active church politics and devoted himself to scholarship. He revised his earlier books repeatedly, producing successive editions of the Topographia and the Itinerarium with new material and sharper opinions ^[4]. He also wrote his autobiography and compiled accounts of the St Davids case, determined that posterity should know his side of the story.

His later writings grew notably bitter toward the Angevin kings he had once served. In De Principis Instructione, completed in its final form around 1217, he portrayed Henry II and his sons in dark colors and expressed sympathy for the French monarchy ^[5]. The man who had twice been denied a bishopric by royal interference did not forgive easily.

Gerald turned down other opportunities for advancement, reportedly declining several Irish and Welsh bishoprics on the grounds that only St Davids interested him ^[2]. He spent his final years in study, probably based at Lincoln and later at Hereford, where he held a benefice. He died around 1220, in his mid seventies, and tradition holds that he was buried at St Davids Cathedral, where a damaged medieval effigy is traditionally identified as his ^[1].

Among the essential Gerald of Wales facts is this: he is one of very few medieval writers whose personality survives on the page. Vain, quarrelsome, funny, observant, and self promoting, he wrote about himself as readily as about others, and his books preserve details of twelfth century life that would otherwise be lost entirely ^[6]. Historians of medieval Wales and Ireland still depend on him, even while correcting his prejudices.

His reputation has shifted over the centuries. In Ireland his hostile portrait of the native population was used for centuries to justify English rule, and Irish scholars from the seventeenth century onward worked hard to rebut him ^[5]. In Wales, by contrast, he came to be seen as an early voice for Welsh ecclesiastical independence, and his loving descriptions of the country made him something close to a national author. The scholarly edition of his complete works, published in the Rolls Series between 1861 and 1891, runs to eight volumes ^[4].

Any Gerald of Wales biography must reckon with his contradictions: a Norman who championed Welsh causes, a churchman who mocked monks, a courtier who turned on his kings. The list of Gerald of Wales achievements begins with his books, and the best of them, the Journey Through Wales and the Description of Wales, are still read for pleasure in modern translation more than eight centuries after he wrote them ^[1].