The ''Itinerarium Cambriae'' ("The Itinerary Through

Wales Wales ( cy, Cymru ) is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is bordered by England to the Wales–England border, east, the Irish Sea to the north and west, the Celtic Sea to the south west and the ...

") is a medieval account of a journey made by

Gerald of Wales Gerald of Wales ( la, Giraldus Cambrensis; cy, Gerallt Gymro; french: Gerald de Barri; ) was a Cambro-Norman priest and English historians in the Middle Ages, historian. As a royal clerk to the king and two archbishops, he travelled widely and w ...

, written in

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...

. Gerald was selected to accompany the

Archbishop of Canterbury The archbishop of Canterbury is the senior bishop and a principal leader of the Church of England, the ceremonial head of the worldwide Anglican Communion and the diocesan bishop of the Diocese of Canterbury. The current archbishop is Justi ...

Baldwin of Forde Baldwin of Forde or FordSharpe ''Handlist of Latin Writers'' pp. 66–67 ( – 19 November 1190) was Archbishop of Canterbury between 1185 and 1190. The son of a clergyman, he studied canon law and theology at Bologna and was tutor to Pop ...

, on a tour of Wales in 1188, the object being a recruitment campaign for the

Third Crusade The Third Crusade (1189–1192) was an attempt by three European monarchs of Western Christianity (Philip II of France, Richard I of England and Frederick I, Holy Roman Emperor) to reconquer the Holy Land following the capture of Jerusalem by ...

.The Itinerary of Archbishop Baldwin through Wales
Vision of Britain, accessed February 3, 2015 His account of that journey, the ''Itinerarium Cambriae'' (1191) (later followed by the ''

Descriptio Cambriae The ''Descriptio Cambriae'' or ''Descriptio Kambriae'' (''Description of Wales'') is a geographical and ethnographic treatise on Wales and its people dating from 1193 or 1194. The ''Descriptio''’s author, variously known as Gerald of Wales or ...

'' in 1194) remains a very valuable historical document, significant for the descriptions – however untrustworthy and inflected by ideology, whimsy, and his unique style – of Welsh and Norman culture. Gerald's biases, according to Llewelyn Williams, were well balanced. He writes that in the ''Itinerarium'', and its companion ''Descriptio'', Gerald was "impartial in his evidence, and judicial in his decisions. If he errs at all, it is not through racial prejudice. 'I am sprung,' he once told the Pope in a letter, 'from the princes of Wales and from the barons of the Marches, and when I see injustice in either race, I hate it.'" Manuscript copies of the text are held by the British Library, Bodleian Library, and the University Library, Cambridge.British Library, Royal MS 13 B VIII; Bodleian Library, MS Rawlinson B 188; University Library, Cambridge, MS Ff i 27/ff. 253-471

/ref> The British Library manuscript has some large coloured foliate

initial In a written or published work, an initial capital, also referred to as a drop capital or simply an initial cap, initial, initcapital, initcap or init or a drop cap or drop, is a letter at the beginning of a word, a chapter, or a paragraph that ...

s. The work plays a role in the plot of

Thomas Love Peacock Thomas Love Peacock (18 October 1785 – 23 January 1866) was an English novelist, poet, and official of the East India Company. He was a close friend of Percy Bysshe Shelley and they influenced each other's work. Peacock wrote satirical novels, ...

's 1831 novel ''

Crotchet Castle ''Crotchet Castle'' is the sixth novel by Thomas Love Peacock, first published in 1831. As in his earlier novel '' Headlong Hall'', Peacock assembles a group of eccentrics, each with a single monomaniacal obsession, and derives humour and socia ...

'', where the medieval enthusiast Mr. Chainmail proposes to retrace the steps of "Giraldus de Barri".

External links

* Digitised version of the British Library manuscript o
Itinerarium Cambriae
* Full text o
Gerald of Wales's ''The Itinerary of Archbishop Baldwin through Wales''
as translated into English in 1806 by Richard Colt Hoare, on ''A Vision of Britain through Time'', with links to the places named. * Latin text of ''Itinerarium Kambriae'' (sic) i
''Giraldi Cambrensis Opera: Volume VI'' (1868)
with a scholarly preface in English by the editor, James F Dimock.

References

Medieval documents of Wales 1188 in Wales Medieval Welsh literature 12th-century Latin books Historical writing from Norman and Angevin England Travel autobiographies British travel books Crusade literature Third Crusade Works by Gerald of Wales Books about Wales {{Wales-stub