Gerald of Wales

Gerald of Wales, Giraldus Cambrensis, Gerald the Welshman, Gerald the Marcher – his many names reflect the long and multi-faceted career of one of the most fascinating figures of the Middle Ages.

Descended from Norman Marcher barons and Welsh princes, Gerald was by turns scholar, churchman and reformer, courtier, diplomat and would-be crusader; Marcher propagandist, agent of English kings, champion of the Welsh church, hunted outlaw and cathedral theologian. He was also a naturalist, gossip and indefatigable traveller, but above all a most prolific writer and a tireless self-publicist. From his seventeen surviving books, we know a great deal about this determined, irascible, self-righteous and utterly fearless man; more, in fact, than about any other inhabitant of early medieval Wales.

Because Gerald was endlessly curious, and almost obsessively anxious to record for posterity the things he discovered, his books also paint a remarkably detailed and wide-ranging picture of medieval Wales itself. Probably the most revealing is his Journey through Wales, an account of his eventful tour of the country with Archbishop Baldwin in 1188.

In this fascinating study of Gerald's attitudes and intellectual outlook, Robert Bartlett discusses Gerald's tortured sense of nationality as a child of Norman society implanted in Wales, and the delicate political path he had to tread between Norman conquerors, native Celtic society and the English Crown. He analyses Gerald's clear voice in the time in which he lives, and portrays him as a vivid example of the medieval world.