In Our Time - Gerald of Wales

Episode Date: October 4, 2012

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the medieval scholar Gerald of Wales. Born around the middle of the twelfth century, Gerald was a cleric and courtier. For much of his life he was close to Henry II and the Church hierarchy, and wrote accounts of official journeys he made around Wales and Ireland in their service. Both Anglo-Norman and Welsh by parentage, he had a unique perspective on the political strife of his age. Gerald's Journey Around Wales and Description of Ireland are among the most colourful and informative chronicles of the Middle Ages, and had a powerful influence on later historians.With:Henrietta Leyser Emeritus Fellow of St Peter's College, University of OxfordMichelle Brown Professor Emerita of Medieval Manuscript Studies at the School of Advanced Study, University of LondonHuw Pryce Professor of Welsh History at Bangor UniversityProducer: Thomas Morris.

Thanks for downloading the In Our Time podcast. For more details about In Our Time and for our terms of use, please go to BBC.co.com.uk, UK, forward slash Radio 4. I hope you enjoy the programme. Hello, Manabir Castle is a remote and beautiful Norman ruin on the Pembrokeshire coast in South Wales. The earliest surviving description of the building was written in 1191 by a historian who declares it the most delightful spot in the whole country,

although he then admits that he may be biased since he was born there. The writer's name was Gerald of Wales, and the description of his birthplace appears in one of his most famous books, The Journey Through Wales. Gerald is a priest and scholar who worked at the court of the English king, and wrote propagandist and engaging accounts of his travels in Ireland and Wales. He was the first foreigner to describe Ireland, and his vivid, sometimes grotesque and controversial descriptions of animals,

legends and historical events, as well as, and he was also the first known, he also wrote the first known description of a Welsh male voice choir, These make him one of the most important writers of the Middle Ages. Many of his works are still in print, today, more than 800 years after they were written. With me to discuss Child of Wales are Henrietta Liza, Emeritus Fellow of St. Peter's College University of Oxford. Michelle Brown, Professor Emerita, a medieval manuscript studies at the School of Advanced Study, University of London, and Hugh Price, Professor of Welsh History at Bangor University.

Henrietta Liza, we don't know Gerald's exact birth date, but he was born about 1146. Can you give us some idea of the historical background at that time? Well, when he's born, it's actually the period of the so-called anarchy in England when Matilda and Stephen are fighting for the throne, which gives the Welsh a bit of a break because the children, Stephen, are much too busy fighting in England. But of course, by the time he's, well, in adolescence, there's been a dramatic change.

The throne of England is now occupied by Henry II, who is an Angevin who brings with him vast continental possessions, both in his own right and via his wife. And so the scene changes very considerably. Wales again becomes an object of interest. And it must also be said that Henry II's court becomes a very glittering place to be where there are lots of academics, so to say,

or quasi-academics, politicians, theologians, all jostling for a place. So there are lots of bitter rivalries. And it's both an intriguing and interesting place to be and also a very unpleasant place. The court is like hell as somebody, Mortimerick, I think it is, says. The 1066, 1146, there isn't such a gap, is there? Was there still a great overhang from the brutal Norman invasion,

one of the biggest land grabs we've ever seen, take over of official language, take over of institutions, take over of all the primary posts? Was that still vibrant and a sore? Well, it's still a sore, and of course Wales is in a particular case, because to begin with, the idea is that all will be sort of marcher lords who will keep the Welsh in check. But of course this doesn't quite work out

because the marcher lords themselves then think, oh, actually we'll go and conquer a bit of Wales. And then they get, as you might say, overmighty subjects and the king wants to intervene and make Wales his own. And Henry I first has a very aggressive policy towards Wales and even introduces Flemish settlers to try and sort of dilute the native population so that he would have more of a hold. I'm sorry?

You mean genetically? Yes. Really? So that adds to the sort of mix. And of course also, I don't think you can really talk about Wales any more than England as one country. I mean, Wales is also divided itself among a number of warring princes. But a leading Welsh prince gets killed in 1093, and that sets in a train of considerable sort of bitterness.

Gerald was born in Wales. It's a lot of his life working with the English king. in England. Can you just tell us a bit more about the relationship between Wales and England then? I like the word hell. I'd love a bit more about hell. It's caught that's hell.

Well, I think it varies very much. But I mean, if you think about what a mixed situation it is, just think about Gerald's grandmother, Nest, who is obviously a very remarkable woman, who is the daughter of this lord or prince who's been killed in 1093. she is then married to a Norman Castan of Pembrokeshire because Henry I tried to turn Pembroke into a sort of English county

but not content with this situation she then is abducted by another Welsh princeling she becomes also mistress of Henry I first she then has another liaison with a Norman constable and she also has a son by... How do the programme about the wrong person? a son by a son by a Flemish, one of these Flemish settlers. So she has altogether, I think, eight children and two daughters.

And so Gerald, because this is his grandmother, whom he knows, Gerald is connected with sort of everybody who's anybody in Wales. And of course this family are then going to go on and be the people who conquer Arnand. So as ever in the Middle Ages, we're talking about families, just as much as we're talking about the Welsh or the English. And he revolves around his family to a great extent, doesn't he? And Nest is obviously quite somebody. I didn't realise she was that quite a somebody. Right. Michelle Brown, can you tell us about his early life and education? Calm the thing down a little.

Well, I think the Helen of Wales, as Ness was known, sets the trend. One of her daughters, Anne Howard is Gerald's mother. And I think he's, from a very early stage, he seems to reflect a whole series of diptics and dichotomies. He's a little, bit like Bernard the Irishman, as George Bernard Shaw was sometimes described. When he's out of Wales and at the English court subsequently, he's known as Gerald the Welshman. And when he's actually at home, he's Gerald the Englishman. And so you begin to pick that tension up from quite an early age. He tells us that he always shone forth in the family and he never quite wanted to engage in his brother's rough and tumble military games. He was the one who was singled out by Anne Howard and her brother, the Bishop of St David's, for greater things. He was going to be the churchman.

He was the one who was surviving the taunts of his peers and cultivating this inner light. He says that while his brothers built sand castles, he built sand churches. That's right. Do we believe that? Joel did. And he's packed off to study with the Benedictines at Gloucester, and he has a few nice things to say about them.

He didn't think they were the most imaginative, but he got a good grounding. And then, of course, he heads off to Paris in his late teens. For quite a while, isn't it? Yeah, about a decade. Imagine spending your 20s in Paris at that time. Yeah, well, this is important because the Benedictians were powerful. We've got a time when the universities and the monisters are coming through with education. There's serious intellectual change going on.

He's there. He could be called one of the centres of it in Paris. He stays for a long time nearly 10 years. He must learn a great deal. There's the trivium there. Can you just flesh that out a bit? Yeah, okay, so this is the time when the cathedral schools, Hugh of San Victoria and others are really beginning to get a little bit of scholastic incision in thinking.

Not empirical thought, but very, very rigorous courses of study that will result in the formation of the universities of Paris, Oxford, etc. And so Gerald is being taught by the leading intellectual figures of the day are not only being taught, but rapidly making claims that he's able to teach as well. Are they claimed substantiated? I mean, can he or are they just claims? No, I think there is enough to actually say that, yes, he is. Certainly at a later stage in his career, when he returns to Paris. He's actually teaching at that point and talks about filling lecture theatres,

people flocking to hear his works and erupting into spontaneous applause and praise at the end of it. It is his book, isn't it? It is his book. So, yeah, we take that with a large pinch of salt, but certainly does seem to have been very well thought of. And we know also that he was buying second-hand book. books on the Paravis in front of Notre Dame de Paris. That's rather touching, isn't it?

Yeah, very proud of his book collection, etc. So, yeah, he is emerging as a known international figure. He would have been recognised. So he'd come back from Paris, Paris, thoroughly and rather thoroughly well-educated, more than most of his peers. We're still in an age of thugs, aren't we, really, who are running things, on the whole. Yeah, I mean, the schools of the monasteries, etc., had a good reputation. But he's cutting edge now, and he'll have acquired.

that sort of veneer of French and Seiquoir as well. So he's going to be quite a sophisticated figure, one would imagine, by this period. So he was destined for, and he destined himself for, because it seems as it was some sort of vacation for the church, but he immediately became, or very soon became engaged with the English court. What drew there, and what did he do? Okay.

Well, I think the problems begin to arise when he's sort of identified as a figure who, because of his, connections with the marcher lords of Wales and their increasing activities in Ireland can actually be a useful figure for bridging the diplomatic network that's absent in those delicate relationships at that time. And so he begins to attract a certain amount of attention, first of all from the Archbishop of Canterbury and at a slightly later date in the 1180s from the court. But then those relationships start to become complicated. He gets a good church position. He does that largely by

ferreting around in Wales for abuses on behalf of the Archbishop and he manages to become Archdeacon of Brecon by shopping the poor former incumbent who was an elderly gentleman who was quite happily shacked up with his mistress and Gerald reports him for

this and gets him turned out and gets the living for himself and says that he could quite happily have carried on in that comfortable mediocrity But when he was at the court was he important at the court? Was he important at the court? just added on because he come from a well-connected family? Was he doing anything that matters? I don't think so. Initially he's really just oiling the wheels, as I say, for communications

with the Welsh princes such as Resat Griffiths, very substantially, and the Fitzgeralds and Fitzgeralds and Fitzs in Ireland. But no, it's not until he finally gets a big break when he's given the unenviable task of nursemaid in Prince John on a grand tour of Ireland in 1185. We're not there yet. His uncle was Bishop of St David's Hugh Price and it seems to be in his main ambition

Gerald's main ambition to succeed him to become Bishop of St David and he fought with extremely hard again and again and lost in the end why was he so keen to be Bishop of

St. David's? He was keen at certain stages to be Bishop of St. David's at least one has to remember he also claimed at one point that what he really wanted when he was young was a bishopric in England so there's some ambivalence But I think the family connections, as he said, the fact he's got an uncle who's been Bishop of St. David's, all these family connections through the descendants of his grandmother nest, made him sort of ideally suited in his view,

plus the fact it had this most advanced education in Paris. He felt that he was a committed church reformer. And I think he saw St. David's as a sort of natural focus for his ambitions and talents. And also he was very familiar with the legends and traditions concerning the patron saint, St. David, and traditions that St. David's had once been an archbishopric. And of course, this is one of the problems, General confronts, that he not only wants to be bishop of St. David's, but wants to make St. David's into an archbishopric and to be the head of an independent province from Canterbury.

So he's got all these different connections which I think draw him to St. David's. And he, to be fair, says he did turn down to Bishop Prixian Island and also Landaff and Bangor in Wales. So on balance, I guess St. David's was the sort of big one for him, but whether he consistently wanted that

throughout his life is perhaps more open to question. Well, it does go through his life and from an outsider like myself, it seems to be extraordinary persistent. I mean, he gets, and it's persistent that he doesn't get it. that's the strange thing. He misses it by a touch twice. The people in St David say he's our man.

Lots of people say he's our man. And then he goes to Rome three or four times, goes to Rome to plead his case. He's beaten there by the Archbishop of Canterbury. Is the nub of it that the Archbishop of Canterbury does not want a rival Archbishop in Wales Wales and is backed by the English court in that and is not the block? That's the main block, I think. The first time there's talk of him becoming Bishop of St. David's. It's just after his uncle dies in 1176, but Gerald is only about 30. He learns that the King, Henry II, is against it, and he claims that he didn't want to proceed. But when the opportunity arises again, 1198 after the death of the next bishop, the real opposition is coming from Hubert Walter, Archbishop of Canterbury, who certainly doesn't want the Welsh Church to become independent of Canterbury. One of the achievements of... Well, because Canterbury had succeeded in bringing the Welsh bishops

under its authority during the 12th century, had established that they were part of the province of Canterbury, was getting them to make professions of obedience to the archbishop. And obviously there were also potential political implications in a way that if you have ecclesiastical independence, that might strengthen political independence and weaken the overlordship of the king of. England and John comes to back the archbishop in the second, the major attempt to become

bishop and indeed Archbishop of St David's, you know, between really 1198 and 1203. But he fails and he fails again later. Did the failure to get that particular post, did it sour him and his career, did he make enemies by saying he was determined to turn it into an archbishop, science politically rather inept, to say what you're going to do with a job before you get the job? But there you go. Well, according to Gerald, the canons, you know, the clergy at St. David's wanted him to raise this issue of being an archbishop, of St. David's being an archbishop brick. I think that to begin with, it looked quite hopeful.

He goes to Pope Innocent the Third. Innocent the Third listen to him says, right, you can look in the papal archives to see if there's any historical justification of this. He finds out that a predecessor, a Norman bishop called Bernard, half a century earlier, had got pretty far along the road of getting recognition of St. David. as an archbishopric, but the matter was unresolved on Bishop Bernard's death. So to begin with, he's got a lot of support. But there's two related factors. He's perhaps naive. That's too much of a scholar, not sufficiently politically astute,

and doesn't see that this is just unacceptable, both to Canterbury and to the King of England. And also, there's sort of wider sort of political considerations. In the end, Innocent the Third can't afford to alienate King John, because at the time the Pope is backing King John's nephew to be the Emperor, the Holy Roman Emperor. So there's a wider political context there. Did this, let's call it a failure, and did this affect the rest of his career? And if so, how?

The main effect, I think, is that it gives him more time to write, effectively. We benefit from that. And he kind of relives all this in a number of autobiographical works and in many other writings. for a short time he falls out of favour. He's called a traitor. And it's interesting, though an agreement is made in the end in 1203, that he's allowed to keep some benefits and so on. It's interesting, he goes off to his relatives in Ireland

to let things cool down for a couple of years. Can I come to Ireland with Henriette Eliza? In 1884, he went on a journey to Ireland with Prince John. Yes. And was he regarded as a safe power of hands? to look after this troublesome young man and introduce him to Ireland, which John was then going to get a massive title about being whatever

they called themselves about Ireland in those days. Well, I think so. I mean, he goes to Ireland, of course, he's already been once before, so he knows the country, and he goes because it's his family, basically, who are conquering it. And they've thought,

yippee, this is a chance to build up our own territory outside the orbit of the sort of Anglo-W Welsh problems. We can now go to Ireland and become terribly powerful there. then Henry the second thinks, oh my goodness, I can't miss out on this either. And this is a great opportunity to find something for John to do. So he does go, he doesn't stay very long. And John comes back before he does. But he certainly takes the opportunity to describe the Irish, I'm sorry, as completely barbaric.

And I think he partly does this because these sort of things are being said about the Welsh. And I don't think Gerald really likes that because I think at heart, Gerald is, for all kinds of reasons, very proud of his Welsh ancestry, but he loves being rude about the Irish, because this is the justification for his family going in there and taking control. It's classic propaganda, isn't it? You go to a place, you say they're absolutely terrible, they're barbaric, they're backward, they're primitive,

what they need to change their life is us. And we'll go in and take over, and us will set them right, make them Christian, decent, wash themselves in the morning, and everything will be fine. Absolutely. He strikes me as being wonderfully gullible. He reports a hairy woman of limerick and a fish

with teeth and lion mating. Do you think he listens to the tall tales of the Irish around the bogfires at night? I don't think he is gullible. I think all these stories are little parables. I mean he is as Michelle has said, he's a very well-educated man. And actually, you know, every time he tells you a sort of funny story or a weird story, he will then discover on the same page that quotations from Seneca, Horrors, whoever. Why does it do the silly stories in the first place, then?

Well, I think the silly stories are partly a way of suggesting quite how silly the Irish are. But I don't think that's only it. I think he's really interested in exploring the boundaries between what you can believe and what you can't. And this is a huge problem. But he seems he's asking us to believe these stories about fish with teeth. He is. He says, watch, he quite often, he'll say, well, I don't know whether you believe this or not. not. And I don't know whether I believe it or not. If I don't believe it, then maybe I'm putting

limits on God's power. If I do believe it, you'll just say I'm gullible. I think he's throwing it back all the time to the reader. He's expecting really intelligent readers. After all, this is written in good Latin. These are not just far-side tales. I don't think. I think it's actually very sophisticated. Michelle, Michelle Brown. Yeah, following up from that, I think there are some agendas going on here as well. He's writing, if you like, the marvels of the West as an antidote to the marveils of the East. Everybody's looking eastwards, the Crusades, etc.

And he's saying there are things that are equally marvellous in the Western parts of the known world. And he would like the benign effects of Anjavan rule to both be extended in both directions, but also to recognise that the Celtic peoples have mysteries of their own and cultures of their own that can contribute to

this universal benign Anjavan worldview. And I think when he has, if we think about some of the passages that the more sort of fabulous things, yes, has he just been told a tall tale in the pub when he refers to something which goes right back to the earliest Irish tales, the Ulster cycle, etc. But it's garbled. He says that the King, the High King, Tia Connell, mates with a white mare and then bays in a stew of her flesh which he and his people partake of, and that this affirms his kingship. And that, of course, is a contrast with the civilised god-given kingship of a king near you, Henry II.

And there is a sort of reference back in the Ulster cycle. It's not a literal mating. It's a symbolic mating of the king with a symbolic white mare, assuring good fortune and the union of mankind and nature. So there are little things there that he picks up and embroiderers in all sorts of ways. And yes, he talks about the bearded woman of Limerick, who, and I quote, except for her hairy spine and long-flowing beard.

beard was otherwise sufficiently feminine in her attributes. And the cowman of Wicklow, who was the progeny of a local farmer and his favourite cow who becomes the Norman Garrison's pet and is murdered by the locals because he's become too popular. And then you get odd things like Joanna of Paris, princess, who's accused by her royal in-laws of mating with a lion in the rural zoo and is burnt at the stake. Now it's interesting that when subsequently he comes in the conquest of Ireland to talk about the legitimisation of his own family's mercenary activities there as a legitimate political conquest. The papal sanction for that is on grounds of bestiality and gross moral turpitude.

He wrote two books about Ireland and he does talk about topography. I mean, we've dwelt, perhaps my Leeds taken up too enthusiastically, we've built on this part. He is actually trying to describe the countries he sees it, less sympathetically in Ireland and people have been enraged ever since Irish historians with good cause, I think, than in Wales. But that's what we're not. but he is trying to do so. Irish historians, how much they rail against him today, still can find stuff there, which gives them evidence of that particular time, which is useful.

But again, he's still conflicted. He'll say things like, you know, the Irish are the most naturally beautiful people, but any problems with that have come because they haven't behaved morally. Does he say much about the country, choir country, about agriculture, how they're in a living, where they live, that sort of stuff?

Absolutely. He talks about a pastoral, rural economy, me, which hasn't had the benefit of centralised urban society, which isn't true actually because you've got the Viking towns, etc. So all the time he's actually making the counterpoint rather unfavourably with Britain. But then he comes in with the things that he can't resist. Like there is nobody in the world who can play musical instruments more adroitly and adeptly than the Irish, and the Normans don't understand this because basically they ain't got no rhythm. And he talks about the wondrous book at the Shrine of Kildare, which is so intricate and perfect.

in its mysteries and artistry that you would think it was the work of angels, not of man. So again, all of this time, it's the natural gifts of the people and the richness of the place and the landscape and the resources and the need to actually integrate those benefits into a bigger kingdom. Hugh Price in 1888, he went on a journey around Wales with the then Archbishop of Canterbury, and can you tell us the reason for that?

The main reason they went was to preach the crusade. This was all triggered by events in the Middle East, the fall of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem. They're trying to get us to go to war in the Middle East? Yeah, so plenty of contemporary. No, no, we don't do contemporary. So that's essentially what it's about. This is seen as a great shock after almost 90 years,

the loss of power there. And essentially trying to get Welsh soldiers to go and fight. and the Archbishop and Gerald and a few others go in a sort of clockwise direction around Wales, basically around the edges, recruiting. According to Gerald, they got about 3,000 people to sign up for this. Whom Richard I refused to take with him? Well, it was all a bit of a fiasco in as much as Henry II, who said he would go because died, and then after that there was no support for it.

and Richard the Lionheart, of course, went off on his own, but that's another story. Is this escorting of the Archery of Canterbury around Wales, something that he does out of the goodness of his heart, or is he still politicking away here? No, it's part of his job, I think, as Royal Clark. He's at that time in the service of the court. But it's, of course, a good example of why he was useful to the court, as someone with all these connections in Wales,

especially in South Wales. They spend about four weeks in southern Wales, and they rush through North Wales, about eight days. This is a very hostile alien environment. He doesn't have the family connections. I think there's much more resistance up there. But it's because of the connections, really, that Gerald has. I think he can arrange them to have guides to cross. I mean, there's a story of them crossing quicksands at one point in South Wales, and Gerald nearly loses his books, which is about the worst thing that could happen to him from his point of view. And, you know,

he's also got the support of the Lord Hries, Hries-Up-Griffith, the dominant native ruler in South Wales at the time who meets them when they enter Wales and then meets them again at his castle in Cardigan. Henry Eliza, how he describes the Bible of this is yet is another book, and again one of the first books, not the first book written about Wales, the journey through Wales, the first of two books through Wales. Can you give us some idea of that? Well, it's much more than a travel book. I mean, although you can trace the it trinery, and, you know, he does tell you how exhausting it is and indeed problems with quick sounds and so on, but I think it's the sort of asides that are really much more interesting.

And it's so that I don't think it is primarily about whales. It's primarily about what it is to be human and what it is to be animal. And I think all these stories, which we were talking about already, bring up this again and again. It's this where do you draw the boundary? And where do you draw the boundary between human and animal? And how do you cope with inheritance? For instance, if a dog hasn't got a tail,

He says that means that any puppies that are born as a result of this dog won't have tails either. So you think, okay, he's on the side of inheritance. But then you discover that actually there's a little pig that was suckled by a dog. And lo and behold, this little pig, because it's been suckled by this dog, is actually much better at hunting than all the other little dog. So you think, oh, actually it's sort of, it's not just inheritance. It's something else. It's sort of nurture.

And so. And I think this, you know, he's, again, it's this sort of boundary between human and animal, which also comes up again and again in his work. And I think this all ties in with the intellectual interests of the 12th century elite. They just don't know where to draw boundaries. The world is in a state of flux. It's partly in a state of flux because there's new learning, the new works of Aristotle, I mean the old works of Aristotle have been newly discovered in the West.

and they are having to rethink all their ideas about what God does, what it happens just naturally, and what is animal and what is human. Michelle Brown, there was another book on Wales, the description of Wales. Does he tell us about whales in terms of there were mountains there, there were farms there? I'm trying to be mundane here. Can you help? I mean, it links in with the itinerary where you have a certain amount of. of that obviously and yes it'll talk about again the natural resources of Wales the pattern of life etc but the way in which the description of Wales is structured is if you like it's it's triptych in which

you actually look at the country and its people and then you start analysing the good points about them and then the bad points what is the good points about them the good points about them the good points about them are things like they sing in parts wonderfully coolly they play the heart want beautifully. They shave regularly. They are incredibly hospitable, all of the sort of traditional Celtic virtues, if you like. And then he goes on to the negative side of it, the fact that they love to indulge in intrigue, the fact that they can be rather greedy, especially where land and inheritance is concerned and that they

subdivided their health. No, no. But then he comes down at the end of saying, well, having weighed up both of the pros and the cons of the people, this is a blueprint of how you could successfully govern them. And he then goes on to talk about the importance of the Norman Marcher Lords in actually pinning down the country, creating this sort of buffer zone, etc. And then he goes on to say, and this is how the Welsh could then rebel against this and overcome it. And the wonderful phrase that he says,

if only they were inseparable, they would be insuperable. That if only the Welsh can actually come together, get over themselves and their traditional almost tribal and family alignments and affiliations and actually come together as a nation that they could withstand the Angevans and be independent. And he ends with this encounter between the king and the old man of Pencada, who says that, well, however much you try to take over this country, at the supreme judgment seat at Duma's Day, I would hazard my soul on the fact that it will be the Welsh and the Welsh language that still represent this part of God's creation.

Hugh Price, we have a man who's quite a bit Welsh, a quarter well set, but he feels, at least whatever he feels, he's Welsh and Anglo-Norman. Do you feel in this study, these studies of Wales, do you feel this pool between the two? Certainly, and in the description of Wales, he's trying to give him. impression at least of being even-handed, and he says he's descended from both peoples, therefore he must be just to both. My feeling, though, is originally, when he first wrote that, on the whole he's backing the claims of the marchers, the march of lords in Wales, the English crown. He has a passage which he deletes in later versions there where he says, well, basically the best thing to do with Wales is to get rid of all the Welsh and either colonise it afresh or just turn it into a hunting reserve.

He does pull back from that in a later edition where he's after the St. David's Jago Moore, sort of pro-Welch, if you like. But I think he gives you an idea. And also, just to pick up on what Michelle was saying about the old man of Pencadr, it sounds very rousing. And Welsh patriots have quoted this over the centuries, you know, that the Welsh language and the Welsh will be here till the day of judgment. But in the context of the book, in fact, I think it's highly ambiguous because what he's trying to do is deflate Welsh pretensions that they were. going to recover their status as the Britons, recover Britain, and he's saying, well, they might, with a bit of luck, just hold on to this little corner of Britain.

So, you know, you can look at it from both ways, and I think he is deeply conscious of the tensions, and of course people exploited it. I mean, after Henry II's death, he was accompanied to Wales by a Cistercian monk from England who claimed he had supported his Welsh kinsfolk in rebellions against English. And it was Eliza, can we talk about Gerald Starris?

Well, in these numerous books, many of which have survived, which is in itself a bit of a miracle for eight centuries, and are still read. Can describe his style, his intellectual, and where he was in the times, what he thought of as a European writer at that tape? He could use the word Europe. Well, there's a great vogue at the time for writing these sort of stories, these wonder stories. He's not the only one at all, the Gervais of Tilbury,

who also has stories of extraordinary things that are happening and who's exploring, say, not only the boundaries between human and animal, between what's actually going on in an underworld. Is there another world to which you can have access? There's a story of a boy who sort of escapes and has a sort of secret life. And every now and then he comes and talks to his mum, and then he goes back again. Of course, his mum and does it all because she asks for a golden ball.

And so that, of course, is the end of that particular story. But this interest and exploration in other worlds are partly to do with actually, I think travelling to actual other worlds but I think also to the intellectual discoveries of the 12th century and he quotes Horace at one point in joking we joke and joking tell the truth

and I think there's a lot of that in Gerald and he is searching for certainties that he knows he will never find just trying to get a centre here because he wrote quite a lot of books and yet we talk quite a bit about trying to be bishops and David's and showing people around Ireland and taking out shoes around there

and cleaning up the morals when he was Archdeacon and so and so forth. But do you feel that his centre was, and he felt that one of his main purposes was to write? Oh, yes, he said so. These were not knocked off stuff along the way. No, no, no, he revises them, I don't know how many times, he revised them constantly, and he says, this is the one thing, I will die, but my works will go on. And whatever disappointment he may have had, as far as the bishop or archbishop of St. Davis is concerned, never mind.

he thinks that he has made it as an intellectual and he does, after all, move in intellectual circles and his last years have spent it with a very important figure in Lincoln, William De Montepus. And I think he definitely sees himself as a top scholar, which is why I think everything he says, we need to take seriously, even if it appears to us slightly ludicrous.

Even the fish. He would have been wonderful on Radio 4. Too late, too late, I read it. Michelle, one feature of his manuscripts is the illustrations and a number of them, and also if we can double this up with his skill as a cartographer. So we not only have these manuscripts in Latin, probably dictated, probably written by somebody else, written out by somebody else, handwritten by somebody in the scriptorium.

So can you just briefly tell us about the illustrations and the cartography? Yeah. I think Gerald prides himself on his rhetorical style, and he likes to be very visual in the verbal metaphors that he uses, the picture poems that he summons up. So it's almost a natural thing for him to then want to use imagery to expand this even further, to increase his vocabulary and his communication skills. It's almost like inventing the after-dinner slideshow or the PowerPoint presentation.

and especially in the latter part of his life after 1206 when he's retiring to Lincoln and is overseeing the publication of his works, I think, there, you find that he increasingly wants to build in the visual element. So watcher, can you give a listen to idea what sort of visual? Yeah, the one that attracts most of the visuals out of the surviving manuscripts. There are about 30 sort of early manuscripts

of the topography and ex Pignatio of Ireland, and that's a lot for a comparative. sample of how much would have spike. What were they? And so you have marginal illustrations that depict the bearded woman of Limerick that depict the work of angels being produced by a scribe, that depict the King of Tier Connell bathing

in the mayor's stew, that depict a whole little procession of bestiary animals and that make sort of little mistakes in scholarship en route like Gerald thinks that barnacle geese are actually, they grow on trees because he's confused barnacles growing on rocks with the bird

and that enters into the bestry mainstream. So it's, if you like, the little vignettes and the things that are most sort of racy or most intriguing in his narrative then become the subject of visual enhancements as well. And then you have the maps, which again illustrate the itinerary and cite Wales and Ireland within a European cartographic worldview.

But they're not so for the time, good, weren't they? Incredibly good, yeah, and very unusual at that time. There had been a world map, first world map produced, Canterbury in the 1030s and it's almost as if he's citing his part of the world within that indigenous cartographic tradition which in turn is indebted to that of Ptolemy

and some of the ancient cartographers and picking up where they left off and this is a very new thing that feeds into the whole Mapamundi tradition he goes on to influence in this Matthew Paris who again picks up on the cartographic elements, the itinerary, the linear

journey and how you map that and transpose that onto a projection, if you like. Just to briefly, Hugh Price, give the listeners an idea that he wasn't just stuck in Wales and Ireland, wonderful as both those places are, but he did write other books, including concerning the instruction of a prince,

with those a tradition growing up and grew and grew and grew. How good was his instruction of a prince? Well, his instruction of a prince is a sort of mixture of the conventional and, if you like, the original. The first book is giving you a sort of, if you like, more conventional mirror. of princes how the good ruler should be. But then the rest of the book is, in fact,

a very hostile account of the rise and fall of Henry II and a condemnation of the Angevin dynasty. It's a bit of a turnaround, isn't it? It is, and it shows, I mean, this was a book that he kept going, I mean, he started writing it more or less when he was still with the court or just at the end of that time, but he doesn't finish it till the time when some of the English barons have invited the priest Louis the son of the King of France

to be their king instead of King John at the end of John's reign and I think it taps into the sort of wider disillusion with the Angevins which you see in Magna Carta and so on. Sorry, excuse me. Would it be too cruel to say he's getting on the side of the King of France in case he does come over and you can have another crack at being bishop of...

Well, I think by that stage perhaps he thought that his days of doing that were over he claims he turned it down when the time came just before that. But I think there's also a certain sort of sentimental attachment to Paris. The 12th century Kings of France are really good at PR. They get really good

write-ups from a lot of scholarly writers like Gerald's because of their support for the church and scholarship. He said come over and had his little moment on the throne and then got sent back when whoever they were decided that we would revert to Henry's. Henry's, can you give us some idea

of his influence and his place? Are we talking about a man who's almost wholly remembered for these dozen or so books, or I were talking to a man who really had an influence on court politics, really had an influence on the way Wales and Ireland were taken into account. Well, I think he has an influence on how people thought about Ireland as a country that was totally barbaric and in need of civilisation. And I think his work there has a long and extraordinarily harmful effect.

But I think in general I would go back, I would think I'd rather go back to Michel's point about his sort of bestiary style, because I think that's what's very striking. There's, in a sense, he is in this tradition of best, bestries are sort of newish in England in the 12th, 13th century, and they describe the natural world not only as it is, but also allegorically. And this is, after all, how most scholars see everything. They see it actually as it is, and then they add the allegorical interpretation. And his description of beavers is taken absolutely from a best,

and it combines both looking at beavers, seeing how they build their dams, seeing how long they stay underwater, and then having this extraordinary story about how actually their testicles are very prized, and they know this, and so they cut them off and chuck them in, chuck them away on. Just a second, just a second. You're going too fast. You're styled with Helen and you're now, who cuts them off? The beavers themselves? The beavers themselves. The beavers cast straight themselves so that they won't get killed for their testicles. It's all so much. And this comes in the bestry

and it comes in Gerald of Wales. And I think it's a clue to the word in which he belongs. Beaver's testicles tells you all. Because he's also described to begin with how beavers make their dams, how they're down to water, and you think you know exactly where you are. And then it flips over into this sort of

magical world. Michelle, can you just, can you give us a roundup of where you, what influence you think he had, if any, in politics? in politics and high places by self-gustration. Well, I think looking at Gerald's own words in his autobiography, I think what he does, he becomes a desktop publisher. He's the first to actually illustrate his own works

and have a say over how you integrate that, which is a very modern thing to do. It's a new genre that he's really helping to bring forward of travel writing rather than history per se and doing it through a sort of ethnographic studies, however flawed. I'm very sorry, really sorry, but your eyes were closed, so I couldn't catch your attention. You were concentrating so hard.

Thank you very much. Michelle Brown-Henry at Eliza and Hugh Price. And next week it'll be the Carthaginian General Hannibal. On we go. Thanks for listening. If you've enjoyed this BBC podcast, why not try others such as the Forum, the discussion programme about global ideas? To find out more, visit BBCworldservice.com slash forum.