The standing description of Wales a decade before 1200: the cantrefs and their lords, the castles of the March, the bishoprics, the Welsh way of fighting and living, and Gerald's advice on how the Welsh might be conquered and how they might resist. The Journey follows Archbishop Baldwin's crusade preaching of 1188 through the lands of the Lord Rhys, Gwynedd and Powys and names the princes and families whose sons hold them in 1200. Opinionated, but the only such survey.
About this source
- Title
- Itinerarium Kambriae; Descriptio Kambriae
- Author
- Gerald of Wales (Giraldus Cambrensis)
- Author's dates
- about 1146 to about 1223
- Written
- Itinerarium 1191, revised to about 1214; Descriptio 1194
- Language
- Latin
- Covers
- Wales in 1188 and the 1190s
- Kind
- Geography
In 1200 Gerald himself was fighting for the see of St Davids at Rome; his De rebus a se gestis and De invectionibus (Rolls Series 21 vols 1 and 3) tell that story and are not separately listed here.
Where to read it
Editions
Translations
- R. C. Hoare, The Itinerary through Wales and The Description of Wales (1806), English; Everyman edition of 1908
- Hoare's translation in T. Wright (ed.), The Historical Works of Giraldus Cambrensis, Bohn (1863)
- L. Thorpe, The Journey through Wales and The Description of Wales, Penguin (1978), not free (not freely online)
Read it online
- Latin text, Rolls Series vol. 6, at the Internet Archive
- Hoare's English translation (Everyman) at the Internet Archive