Search results
In 1202, Gerald was accused of stirring up the Welsh to rebellion and was put on trial, but the trial came to nothing as the principal judges were absent. After this long struggle, the chapter of St Davids deserted Gerald, and having been obliged to leave Wales, he fled to Rome. The ports had been closed against him, so he travelled in secret.
- He was the grandson of Welsh royalty. Youngest son of a Marcher lord, Gerald descended from Normans on his father’s side, and Welsh on his mother’s. As Georgia Henley and A. Joseph McMullen remark, “his grandmother was the Welsh princess Nest, the only legitimate daughter of Rhys ap Tewdwr, who was widely regarded at the time of his death in 1093 as the last king of Deheubarth (a kingdom in southern Wales).”
- He was a clerk under three Plantagenet kings. Because of his good upbringing and even better schooling – Gerald had studied and taught with the best theologians in Paris – he was hired as a clerk by Henry II, then Prince John.
- He had a sense of humour. Although Gerald seems to have become increasingly sour as his ambitions to St. Davids were repeatedly thwarted, he did find time to laugh – at misguided clerics.
- His writings on Ireland were influential into Tudor times. Gerald spent a year in Ireland in the service of the Plantagenets, and his writings on the Irish were not flattering.
Jul 25, 2024 · Gerald of Wales was a 12th-century chronicler whose mixed heritage and thwarted ambitions led him to pen vivid, controversial accounts of Ireland and Wales, forever shaping perceptions of lands on the edge of medieval Europe.
May 14, 2018 · He failed to become bishop of St Davids (a see which an uncle had held) because the strong support given to him by Welsh princes may have alarmed the English. His best-known works were his accounts of Ireland and Wales— Topography of Ireland (1188), Conquest of Ireland (1189), Journey through Wales (1191), and Description of Wales (1194 ...
When elected bishop of St Davids, Gerald was sent by his fellow-canons to Rome to secure his own consecration and metropolitan status for St Davids; ultimately, both cases failed, defeated by the combined power and resources of the English state and church.
The Descriptio aims to give an overview of Welsh history and geog-raphy and sketches the customs and character of the Welsh people. In terms that recall his assessment of the Irish, Gerald suggests that the Welsh can be fickle, lacking in sexual morality, prone to oath-breaking and to in-fighting.
People also ask
Why was Gerald sent to Rome?
What motivated Gerald of Wales?
Who was Gerald of Wales?
How did Gerald describe his countrymen?
No twelfth-century writer is more familiar to English readers than Gerald of Wales - more commonly known by the scholastic form Giraldus Cambrensis.
