baggageâ.
And everywhere they stopped they had to put on a show. The journal tots up the sermons preached, the conversions made, by Baldwin and Gerald himself. The author rather vaunted his own homiletic powers. In Radnor we learn that the Archbishopâs address âwas explained to the Welsh by an interpreterâ. There was no such requirement for the author in Haverfordwest. âMany found it odd and some, indeed, thought it little short of miraculous that when I, the Archdeacon, preached the word of God, speaking first in Latin and then in French, those who could not understand a word of either language were just as much moved to tears as the others, rushing forward in equal numbers to receive the sign of the Cross.â
Whence came Geraldâs tendency to self-promote? He had half an eye on a long literary afterlife â correctly, as it turned out, as his portrait of medieval Wales has been a priceless handbook for students of the country down the centuries. âI hope to please generations yet unborn,â he explained. âHaving won the right to eternal fame, one will always be praised and honoured.â But itâs possible to read his productions as a form of job application. He was born in, itâs thought, the mid 1140s. He was tall with bushy eyebrows and, though he said so himself, was âgreatly distinguished by my handsome physiqueâ as a young man. By 1188 he had already written
The Topography of Ireland
, âmy own far from negligible workâ, which we find him frequently thrusting into the hands of the great andgood. He was appointed to the Archdeaconry of Brecon, where he affected to âpass my time in a sort of happy-go-lucky mediocrityâ. In fact his burning desire was to claim for himself the see of St Davidâs, and then to restore the archiepiscopal status it had lost, so he believed, in the Age of the Celtic Saints six centuries before. He turned down two sees in Ireland, and two more in Wales, in order to make himself available for the position he coveted.
He was an odd mixture. The Welshman in him was vehemently anti-Canterbury, but he was also an ardent keeper of the flame for Thomas à Becket, martyred when Gerald was in his mid twenties. Gerald seemed to take Becketâs awkward-squad king-bothering as a template. He didnât baulk at criticising Henry II or pestering his son John. Welsh royalty also got it in the neck: the marriage of Rhys ap Gruffudd, Prince of South Wales, to his fourth cousin was, Gerald noted, âa regrettable circumstance which happens so often in this countryâ. When the see at St Davidâs fell vacant in 1198, Gerald launched a five-year campaign to secure it for himself. The quest took him back and forth twice between Wales and Rome. His avowed intention to uncouple the Church in Wales made him naturally unattractive to Baldwinâs successor in Canterbury, even when Gerald helpfully pointed out that the other candidates were variously illiterate, illegitimate and given to licentiousness. Gerald was summoned to Lambeth to hear the final verdict in 1203. When the bishopric went elsewhere, he promptly gave up his archdeaconry in Brecon and for the remaining twenty years of his life buried himself sulkily among his books.
In Welsh Level 1, Module 1, not everyone keeps the faith. This is a language that likes to administer a sharp slap to the chops, regularly. Sometimes you have to turn the other cheek. The grammar is impacted, the word orders higgledy-piggledy. But when pushcomes to shove itâs probably the verbs and the mutations, operating a classic pincer movement, which contrive to scare the bejesus out of some of our number. The class size starts to dwindle slightly. For some, anglicisation proves too big a back story. Their Englishness, forced upon them by forebears who once upon a time abandoned hills and valleys to seek employment over the border, runs too deep. It shows mostly in the
And everywhere they stopped they had to put on a show. The journal tots up the sermons preached, the conversions made, by Baldwin and Gerald himself. The author rather vaunted his own homiletic powers. In Radnor we learn that the Archbishopâs address âwas explained to the Welsh by an interpreterâ. There was no such requirement for the author in Haverfordwest. âMany found it odd and some, indeed, thought it little short of miraculous that when I, the Archdeacon, preached the word of God, speaking first in Latin and then in French, those who could not understand a word of either language were just as much moved to tears as the others, rushing forward in equal numbers to receive the sign of the Cross.â
Whence came Geraldâs tendency to self-promote? He had half an eye on a long literary afterlife â correctly, as it turned out, as his portrait of medieval Wales has been a priceless handbook for students of the country down the centuries. âI hope to please generations yet unborn,â he explained. âHaving won the right to eternal fame, one will always be praised and honoured.â But itâs possible to read his productions as a form of job application. He was born in, itâs thought, the mid 1140s. He was tall with bushy eyebrows and, though he said so himself, was âgreatly distinguished by my handsome physiqueâ as a young man. By 1188 he had already written
The Topography of Ireland
, âmy own far from negligible workâ, which we find him frequently thrusting into the hands of the great andgood. He was appointed to the Archdeaconry of Brecon, where he affected to âpass my time in a sort of happy-go-lucky mediocrityâ. In fact his burning desire was to claim for himself the see of St Davidâs, and then to restore the archiepiscopal status it had lost, so he believed, in the Age of the Celtic Saints six centuries before. He turned down two sees in Ireland, and two more in Wales, in order to make himself available for the position he coveted.
He was an odd mixture. The Welshman in him was vehemently anti-Canterbury, but he was also an ardent keeper of the flame for Thomas à Becket, martyred when Gerald was in his mid twenties. Gerald seemed to take Becketâs awkward-squad king-bothering as a template. He didnât baulk at criticising Henry II or pestering his son John. Welsh royalty also got it in the neck: the marriage of Rhys ap Gruffudd, Prince of South Wales, to his fourth cousin was, Gerald noted, âa regrettable circumstance which happens so often in this countryâ. When the see at St Davidâs fell vacant in 1198, Gerald launched a five-year campaign to secure it for himself. The quest took him back and forth twice between Wales and Rome. His avowed intention to uncouple the Church in Wales made him naturally unattractive to Baldwinâs successor in Canterbury, even when Gerald helpfully pointed out that the other candidates were variously illiterate, illegitimate and given to licentiousness. Gerald was summoned to Lambeth to hear the final verdict in 1203. When the bishopric went elsewhere, he promptly gave up his archdeaconry in Brecon and for the remaining twenty years of his life buried himself sulkily among his books.
In Welsh Level 1, Module 1, not everyone keeps the faith. This is a language that likes to administer a sharp slap to the chops, regularly. Sometimes you have to turn the other cheek. The grammar is impacted, the word orders higgledy-piggledy. But when pushcomes to shove itâs probably the verbs and the mutations, operating a classic pincer movement, which contrive to scare the bejesus out of some of our number. The class size starts to dwindle slightly. For some, anglicisation proves too big a back story. Their Englishness, forced upon them by forebears who once upon a time abandoned hills and valleys to seek employment over the border, runs too deep. It shows mostly in the
Similar Books
