"Grenzgänger"

Schneider, Reinhard

"Grenzgänger" (33)

Bibliographic data

Monograph

Persistent identifier:: 1655725092

URN:: urn:nbn:de:bsz:291-sulbdigital-226447

Title:: "Grenzgänger"

Author:: Schneider, Reinhard

Volume count:: 33

Place of publication:: Saarbrücken

Publisher:: SDV, Saarbrücker Dr. und Verl.; Saarländische Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek

Document type:: Monograph

Collection:: Kommission für Saarländische Landesgeschichte

Volume number:: 33

Year of publication:: 1998

Number of pages:: 225 S.

Copyright:: Saarländische Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek

Language:: eng

Digitised pages:: 230

Chapter

Title:: A cross-border career: Giraldus Cambrensis between Wales and England

Author:: Pryce, Huw

Document type:: Monograph

Structure type:: Chapter

Digitised pages:: 16

material resources which Wales lacked.77 The situation had been different in the early Middle Ages; in the late ninth century the Welshman Asser was employed by King Alfred as part of the king’s attempt to revive learning in Wessex, returning to his native church of St David’s for six months of each year, and Welsh books were imported into Anglo-Saxon libraries in the following century.78 However, by the twelfth century Wales was far more peripheral than England to the new intellectual culture centred on the schools of northern France,79 Thus it was that the works in which Giraldus most self-consciously identified himself with Wales, the autobiogra¬ phical De Rebus a Se Gestis, the De Jure et Statu Menevensis Ecclesie, and the De Invectionibus, were written in the English cathedral town of Lincoln. Yet during his years in Lincoln Giraldus’s connections with Wales were not re¬ stricted to writing about the past. He remained in touch with the diocese of St David’s, primarily as a result of the (somewhat irregular) arrangement made in 1203 with the approval of Pope Innocent III, whereby Giraldus had resigned his arch¬ deaconry of Brecon to his nephew, Gerald, younger son of his brother Philip de Barri.80 The nephew, aided and abetted by William de Capella, a tutor provided by Giraldus, was accused by his uncle of betrayal and in particular of depriving Giraldus of various revenues to which, according to the agreement, he was entitled.81 The result was that Giraldus not only wrote to condemn the nephew and his tutor, to¬ gether with Bishop Geoffrey of St David’s, but sent messengers and even agricultural labourers and gardeners to Brecon to try to protect his interests there.82 * Giraldus remained concerned to improve standards in the Welsh Church, and urged Arch¬ bishop Stephen Langton to visit, or send deputies, to Wales every two or three years to eliminate its barbarous mores Even if most of his time was spent in England, Giraldus could not forget about Wales and, above all, sought in his writings to justify his actions as bishop-elect of St David’s. How, in conclusion, should we assess the significance of Giraldus as Grenzgänger? In important respects his career illustrates the kinds of cross-border connections which resulted from Norman settlement and domination in Wales. As a Marcher he was a subject of the English king and identified with English and French culture, even if his family appears to have held no substantial lands in England. In addition 77 Cf. Richter, Giraldus (as n. 6) p. 94. 8 W. H. Stevenson (ed.), Asser’s Life of King Alfred, new impression, Oxford 1959, pp. 64- 5 (c. 79); David N. Dumville, English Square Minuscule Script: The Background and Earliest Phases, in: Anglo-Saxon England 16 (1987) pp. 159-61. 79 Cf. Denis Bethell, English Monks and Irish Reform in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries, in: T. D. Williams (ed.), Historical Studies 8 (1971) pp. 111-35; Davies, Domination (as n. 3) pp. 18-20. 80 Giraldus, Opera 3 p. 325; Lefèvre et al., Speculum Duorum (as n. 20) pp. 256-7. 81 Ibid, passim. 82 Ibid. pp. 2-5. 81 Giraldus, Opera 3 pp. 113-14. 58

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