GIRALDUS CAMBRENSIS (GERALD DE BARRI)
he is the author published in the language and writ-
ings of every nation, no new geography, no history
of the world, no work on the manners and customs
of different nations appearing in which his calumni-
ous charges against the Irish are not chronicled as
undoubted facts... and all these repeated again and
again until the heart sickens at the sight.Gerald was born circa 1146 at Manorbier on the
coast of Dyfed, a place he described as “by far the
most beautiful spot in all Wales.” From Manorbier
Castle, he wrote, “you can see ships scudding before
the east wind on their way to Ireland.” His father was
the Anglo-Norman lord of Manorbier, William de
Barri; his mother was Angharad, daughter of Gerald
of Windsor, the first Norman castellan of Pembroke,
and of a celebrated Welsh princess, Nest. In the 1190s
he described the men of his family as marcher lords
“winning south Wales for the English” and his own
descent as “one part Trojan [i.e., Welsh] and three parts
English and Norman.”
In De rebus a se gestis, the autobiography he wrote
when in his sixties, he recalled building sand churches
on Manorbier beach while his elder brothers built sand
castles, towns, and palaces. His father called him “my
bishop” and sent him to school, first with his uncle
David FitzGerald, bishop of St. David’s (1148–1176),
and then to St. Peter’s abbey at Gloucester. Between
1165 and 1179, he spent a dozen years at Paris, receiv-
ing the best education that the finest schools in Europe
could offer. He studied the liberal arts, especially rhet-
oric, then canon and civil law, and made a start on
theology. He also gave lectures on rhetoric and law,
later claiming that his eloquence, and the pleasure of
listening to the voice of a handsome man, made him
a highly successful teacher.
From 1174 to 1176, he interrupted his studies,
returned home, and—though only his own account is
available—made heroic efforts to reform the Welsh
church, in particular to enforce both the payment of
tithes and the celibacy of the clergy. An archdeacon of
Brecon who kept a mistress was deposed, and at the
instance of the archbishop of Canterbury, his uncle
gave him the archdeaconry; in later life he usually
referred to himself as “the archdeacon.” According to
Gerald, had it not been for Henry II’s refusal to coun-
tenance a bishop in Wales who had Welsh connections,
he would have succeeded his uncle at St David’s in
- However it seems to have been those same Welsh
connections that led Henry to take him into service
circa 1184 as a royal clerk. He remained in government
service for about ten years, and received an annual fee
from the exchequer from 1191 to 1202.
He made three trips to Ireland. He went there first
in February 1183 with his brother Philip, who had just
been granted three cantreds (two as yet unconquered
from the Irish) by their uncle, Robert FitzStephen. He
went again when Henry II assigned him to the expe-
dition that landed at Waterford on April 26, 1185,
under his son John’s command. Gerald was highly
critical of John’s conduct in Ireland, in part because
the king’s son disregarded the advice of Gerald’s
kinsmen, the Geraldines. Despite this John offered
him, at least according to Gerald, a choice of Irish
bishoprics: Leighlin, Ferns, or even the two combined.
But at this stage of his life, only an English bishopric
would do. After John’s departure, Gerald stayed on
until the early summer of 1186. In his own view, he
won great fame by accusing the Irish clergy of drunk-
enness and neglect of their pastoral duties in a sermon
he preached at a Lenten Council at Dublin in 1186.
More importantly, he continued to collect material and
began to draft his two Irish works. The Topographia
he divided into three books: in the first, he described
Ireland’s situation, climate, flora, and fauna; in the
second, he dealt with marvels and miracles; in the
third, he covered Irish history from its mythical begin-
nings until the moment that he called the coming of
the English (adventus Anglorum). It was here that he
made explicit his view of the Irish as a barbarous,
primitive, and savage people, Christian in name only.
In the Expugnatio he composed a narrative of events
from the 1160s to the 1180s, a chronicle in which his
own kinsmen, the Geraldines, were the conquering
heroes, fighting to bring civilization to a benighted land.
As soon as the Topographia was finished, he set
about publicizing it. Not content with the convention-
ally sycophantic—dedicating it to King Henry and
praising him as “our Alexander of the West”—he also
put on a one-man literary festival at Oxford in 1188.
He staged readings of its three parts over three days,
and paid for three book launch parties. It was, he
boasted, a magnificent and expensive achievement, the
like of which had not been seen since antiquity. When
ordered by the king to accompany Archbishop Baldwin
of Canterbury in preaching the crusade in Wales in
1188, Gerald took the opportunity to give Baldwin a
copy of the book and make sure he read it. He completed
the Expugnatio in 1189 and dedicated it to Richard I,
offering his services as a historian to the new king.
Richard, however, preferred to employ him as an
expert in Welsh affairs. Still in government service, he
received and rejected offers of Welsh bishoprics, while
writing two more remarkable and innovative books,
Itinerarium Kambriae (a narrative of the Welsh preach-
ing tour) and an ethnographic monograph, Descriptio
Kambriae (The Description of Wales). In both he crit-
icized barbarous Welsh mores, but also found more to
praise than he had in Ireland.
Another book written at this time, his Life of Geoffrey,
Archbishop of York, was in effect propaganda on behalf