Giraldus as Natural Historian: transformations and reception Jason Harris Giraldus Cambrensis believed himself to be a pivotal figure in the history of British literature and attempted to market his work accordingly. Believing that a restoration of classical learning would follow the Norman conquest of the British Isles, he tried to position himself at its head. His earliest writings are thus embedded in the colonial experiences of Ireland. However, Giraldus was never able to attain the recognition that he believed he deserved, and his career, both literary and professional, reads like a litany of failed attempts to secure patronage.1 In his own time, and in subsequent generations, his rhetorical pose as a renovator of British literary culture offended more than it convinced.2 Intemperate, chauvinistic, and arrogant, Giraldus has rarely found an impartial readership willing to assess the technical accomplishments of his literary endeavours. The reasons for this critical ill-favour are clear. Ambitious for patronage, Giraldus positioned himself as the apologist for Norman colonialism, advancing the cause of his own relatives and celebrating their contributions to colonial projects. Because he represented himself and his family as leading figures in the conquest of Ireland, his writings were adopted and promulgated in the sixteenth century by advocates of English colonial enterprises in Ireland.3 Humanists looking for historical accounts of Ireland were not faced with many options until later in the seventeenth century when Irish scholars began to transmit material from vernacular sources into their Latin histories. Hence, for all their faults, Giraldus’ accounts became a standard humanist source of information about Ireland in the first half of the seventeenth century. Numerous Irish authors, offended both by the content of Giraldus’ writings and the agenda behind their dissemination, began to write refutations. Several of the more polemic responses were never published but circulated among the influential Irish exile The best surveys of Giraldus’ career are Michael Richter, Giraldus Cambrensis: the Growth of the Welsh Nation, revised edition (Aberystwyth, 1976); Robert Bartlett, Gerald of Wales, 1146-1223 (Oxford, 1982); Brynley F. Roberts, Gerald of Wales (Cardiff, 1982). The standard edition of his works was produced in eight volumes in the nineteenth century: J.S. Brewer, James Dimock, and George Warner, eds., Giraldi Cambrensis Opera, 8 vols. (London, 1861-1891). Giraldus’ autobiography is also available in translation: H. E. Butler, trans. & ed., The Autobiography of Giraldus Cambrensis (Milan, 1937). For a survey of the literature on Giraldus see Eileen A. Williams, “A bibliography of Giraldus Cambrensis c.1147-1223”, National Library of Wales Journal, 12 (1961), 97-140; and David Walker, “Gerald of Wales: A review of recent work”, Journal of the Historical Society of the Church in Wales, 24 (1974), 13-26. 2 David Knowles, “Some enemies of Gerald of Wales”, Studia Monastica, 1 (1959), 137-141. 3 See W. R. Jones, “Giraldus Redivivus – English Historians, Irish Apologists, and the Works of Gerald of Wales”, Eire-Ireland, 14 (1974), 3-20; John Gillingham, ‘The English Invasion of Ireland’ in Brendan Bradshaw, Andrew Hadfield and Willy Maley, eds., Representing Ireland: Literature and the Origins of Conflict, 1534-1660 (Cambridge, 1993), 24-42; and Hiram Morgan, ‘Giraldus Cambrensis and the Tudor conquest of Ireland’ in idem, ed., Political Ideology in Ireland, 1541-1641 (Dublin, 1999), 22-44. 1 communities abroad. Accompanied by more sober and more erudite domestic scholarship, these publications served to discredit Giraldus as a commentator on Irish affairs. His proposed project to reinvigorate British literature was dismissed as arrogant self-promotion, to which end he was deemed to have sacrificed both historical method, in terms of fidelity to his sources, and literary judgement. In this article I examine Giraldus’ attempt to secure patronage for himself and his work through constant revision of his text to meet the taste of potential patrons. I describe his sense of the literary scene at the beginning of his career and how he attempted to create a niche for himself within it. My focus is primarily on his first work, the Topography, and how its initial design as a natural philosophical study became obscured in the subsequent revisions of the text.4 My argument is that Giraldus expended considerable effort trying to control the dissemination and reception of his own work. He did this in two ways which I consider in turn. First, he presented each work as part of an overall oeuvre of considerable importance in the history of learning. Second, he was drawn to compromise the strict integrity of the literary genres he employed by trying to appeal to all tastes and interests. Ironically, it was these very things that became the target of his critics when his works were first printed. He was criticized for being arrogant in constantly alluding to his own works and their importance, and he was mocked for being ignorant in confusing the genres of natural philosophy, mirabilia literature, and history. The result of Giraldus’ efforts in self-fashioning was that the literary, scientific and historical merit of his work was not appreciated until the latter half of the twentieth century. Giraldus was born into a Cambro-Norman family c.1146, when Wales was not yet fully subjugated to Norman authority. His paternal family was an important and dynamic marcher clan, and his mother’s family was from a leading Welsh dynasty of royal descent that had also gained some prominence within ecclesiastical networks. Giraldus was brought up with an ecclesiastical career in mind and, to that end, he was provided with the best clerical education then available.5 First, he attended the Benedictine Abbey of St. Peter in Gloucester; then in 1162 he was sent to Paris, where he stayed for thirteen years, acquiring familiarity with the latest trends in continental literature, scholarship, and ecclesiastical thought. This was the great period of discovery and translation of Greek, Roman, and Arab texts, which substantially altered the intellectual map of western Europe. A generation prior to Giraldus’ arrival, Paris and northern France had been at the centre of an intellectual movement that has been dubbed “scholastic humanism”.6 The writings of Abelard, Hugh 4 All references to the Topography are to James Dimock, ed., Giraldi Cambrensis Opera, vol.5: Topographia Hibernica et Expugnatio Hibernica (London, 1867). There are several readily-available translations of the Topography. The earliest ‘edition’ in the manuscripts has been published: John O’Meara, The History and Topography of Ireland, (Harmondsworth, 1982). Thomas Forester’s nineteenth century translation is re-printed in Thomas Wright, ed., The Historical Works of Giraldus Cambrensis (London, 1863). 5 In England, he quickly came within the sphere of an important group of ecclesiastical reformers; see E. M. Sanford, “Giraldus Cambrensis’ debt to Petrus Cantor”, Medievalia et Humanistica, iii (1945), 16-32; Bartlett, Gerald of Wales, 27-57. 6 R. W. Southern, Scholastic Humanism and the Unification of Europe, vol. 1 (Oxford, 1995), 17-30. of St. Victor, William of Conches, Thierry of Chartres, and Bernard Silvester transformed intellectual and literary life across the entire range of disciplines, while further leaps forward were made by slightly younger scholars such as Peter Lombard, John of Salisbury, and the two Peters of Blois.7 Giraldus shows the direct influence of only some of these writers, but he clearly gained a great deal from his time abroad and intended to continue to engage with intellectual pursuits on his return to Britain. He writes in a letter to the chapter at Hereford: super artium ac litteraturae fundamenta superaedificare stabiliter, per Dei gratiam, tam theologicas quam canonicas statui disciplinas. Egressus itaque tenore sub isto de scholarum tunc gymnasio, demum reversus in patriam, sciensque quoniam juxta philosophi sententiam, ‘animus si remittitur, amittitur;’ ne forte quiete torpescerem aut desidio, dictam Hiberniae Topographiam cum abditis suis et arcanis, aliisque regnis per orbem universis, valde diversis et prorsus alienis, opus ab alio non attemptatum, ad tractandum aggressus fui.8 Thus, determined to attain fame and its attendant temporal perquisites, Giraldus chose uncharted territory from which to embark on a literary career. His interest in geographical studies appears already to have been established, and he had already composed a poem about cosmography.9 Yet to a large degree his choice of material was fortuitous. In 1169 the deposed king of Leinster, Dermot Mac Murrough, had requested assistance from Henry II to help him regain his position. Henry seized the opportunity to establish a military presence in Ireland and quickly sought to spread his dominion. The bulk of the troops he sent were Welsh; many of them, including several leading figures, were relatives of Giraldus. In February 1183 Giraldus himself travelled to Ireland, and he did so again in 1185 in the company of Prince John. In total he spent about two years in Ireland. During the latter trip, he amassed information pertaining to the history and topography of the island. Within three years, as he says, he had written the Topography, but the final touches were put to the first draft after his return to Wales: 7 For general surveys of intellectual culture in the twelfth century see C. H. Haskins, The Renaissance of the Twelfth Century (Harvard, 1927); E. H. Curtius, European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages (London, 1953); R. W. Southern, Medieval Humanism and Other Studies (Oxford, 1970); idem, Scholastic Humanism; and Antonia Gransden, Historical Writing in England c.550 to c.1307 (London, 1974). 8 “Upon the foundations of the arts and letters I decided, by God’s grace, to construct a stable edifice of theological and canon law. Then, having left the classroom and keeping to the same course, at length I returned to my own country, knowing that, as the philosopher’s dictum goes, “if the mind relaxes it slips away”. So, lest I might perhaps languish or subside into torpor, I started to approach that task never attempted by anyone else, the Topography of Ireland along with its secrets and mysteries that are so different and almost entirely remote from those in every other realm of the earth”: Epist.ad Here., in Brewer, ed., Opera, i, 410. 9 The poem, which Giraldus referred to as his “Cosmographia” has been identified as that entitled “De mundi creatione et contentis ejusdem”, Symbolum Electorum, Brewer, ed., Opera, i, 341-349. See Bartlett, 127-133. Cum itaque magni nominis in insula tunc Giraldus extiterit et famae praeclarae, inter Pascha et Pentecosten de Hibernia in Walliam transfretavit; ubi et Topographiae suae, cujus tractatum jam inchoaverat, consummationi studiosam ex toto mentem applicuit.10 It was presented to the Archbishop of Canterbury Baldwin in early 1188.11 At this time, Giraldus was accompanying Baldwin on his journey through Wales to promote the crusade. The Topography was supposedly well-received, and was read to the archbishop during every day of his seven-eight week progress through Wales. Nevertheless, at this stage in his career, Giraldus already appears to have had somewhat mixed feelings about the intellectual milieu within which he was moving. Henry II had blocked his appointment to the see of St. David when it became vacant in 1176, perhaps because Henry did not trust someone so closely connected to Welsh advocates of independence.12 Giraldus had, however, become archdeacon and administrator to the see from 1179 to 1183 during the bishop’s absence, and he continued to try to position himself for preferment. In 1184 he was summoned to join Henry II’s entourage in Wales as court chaplain, and in the following year he accompanied the king to Ireland, spending just over a year in his company as part of the entourage of Prince John. Then in 1188 he was appointed to accompany Archbishop Baldwin in his mission to preach the crusade throughout Wales. As such, Giraldus was moving in the highest circles and could hope to gain a position of some eminence himself. He was quite explicit about the fact that his literary endeavours were intended to impress and to secure fame and further patronage.13 Despite his continuous efforts, Giraldus never secured for himself the see of St. David. In later years he was bitter about what he saw as his wasted efforts to gain preferment from Henry II and his son Richard.14 Although he claims that he did gain approbation for his literary endeavours, he quickly became convinced that the age was ill-disposed to learning and literature. In his description of Wales, he states that no one pays respect to historians and poets any longer, and that there is no longer any support for literature and scholarship because “our leaders” are no longer literate.15 This is a rather surprising statement from someone who had been exposed to the intellectual fervour of twelfthcentury France, especially in light of the fact that England produced numerous leading scholars during 10 “And so, since Giraldus was then of great renown and outstanding reputation on the island [Ireland], between Easter and Pentecost he sailed across from Ireland to Wales, where he thoroughly applied himself with diligence to completing his Topography, the text of which he had already begun”: De rebus a se gestis, Brewer, ed., Opera, i, 72. Cf. Itinerarium, book 1, chapter 2. [Note that Giraldus refers to himself in the third person throughout his autobiography]. 11 Expugnatio, I, i. 12 On the political background of inter-familial relations in Wales see A. J. Roderick, “Marriage and Politics in Wales, 1066-1282”, Welsh History Review, iv (1968-9), 1-20. 13 See in particular Topographia, 3-5. 14 Itinerarium, preface. There is a great amount written about Giraldus’ pursuit of ecclesiastical patronage. Aside from the biographies mentioned in n.1, see J. Conway Davies, “Causes on the metropolitan status of St. David’s”, Episcopal Acts Relating to Welsh Dioceses, 1066-1272, ii (Cardiff, 1948), 190-232; and I. P. Shaw, “Giraldus Cambrensis and the primacy of Canterbury”, Church Quarterly Review, 148 (1949), 82-101. 15 Gerald of Wales, The Journey through Wales/The Description of Wales, ed. and trans. Lewis Thorpe (Harmondsworth, 1978), 216. the reign of Henry II, such as John of Salisbury, Alexander Neckham, Alfred of Sareshel, Roger of Hereford, Daniel of Morley, and Robert of Chester. While most of these were based abroad during their active careers, England itself contained numerous accomplished scholars (Vacarius, Peter of Blois, William of Malmesbury, William of Newburgh, Henry of Huntingdon, Roger of Hoveden), many of whom were also able poets. Other accomplished authors such as Geoffrey de Vinsauf, Walter Map, and Geoffrey of Monmouth appeared at this time, fostered by a situtation in which leading ecclesiastic patrons could be found in bishoprics such as Norwich, Ely, and Canterbury, as well as in the court itself.16 Giraldus had connections with many of these scholars and did not lack significant figures from whom to seek patronage.17 Not only did he pursue both Henry II and his son Richard, he also approached ecclesiastics such as William de Longchamp, Bishop of Ely; Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln; William de Vere, Bishop of Hereford; and Stephen Langton, the Cardinal Archbishop of Canterbury. None of these seems to have led to any major advance in his position. Nevertheless, at the outset of his career he seems to have retained some sense of intellectual community. Not only was the Topography favourably received by Archbishop Baldwin, but Giraldus also arranged for a remarkable trip to Oxford where over the course of three days he read out the text before a packed audience: Processu vero temporis opere completo et correcto, lucernam accensam non sub modio ponere, sed super candelabrum ut luceret erigere cupiens, apud Oxoniam, ubi clerus in Anglia magis vigebat et clericatu praecellebat, opus suum in tanta audientia recitare disposuit. Et quoniam tres erant in libro suo distinctiones, qualibet recitata die tribus diebus continuis recitatio duravit; primoque die pauperes omnes oppidi totius ad hoc convocatos hospitio suscepit et exhibuit. In crastino vero doctores diversarum facultatum omnes et discipulos famae majoris et notitiae. Tertio die reliquos scolares cum militibus[mulitibus?] oppidanis et burgensibus multis. Sumptuosa quidem res et nobilis, quia renovata sunt quodammodo authentica et antiqua in hoc facto poetarum tempora; nec rem similem in Anglia factam vel praesens aetas vel ulla recolit antiquitas.18 W. Stubbs, “Learning and Literature at the Court of Henry II”, in idem, Seventeen Lectures on the Study of Medieval and Modern History (Oxford, 1886), lectures 6 and 7, 115-155; C. H. Haskins, “Henry II as a Patron of Literature” in A.G. Little and F.M. Powicke, eds., Essays in Medieval History Presented to T.F. Tout (Manchester, 1925), 71-78; J.W. Baldwin, Masters, Princes and Merchants. The Social Views of Peter the Chanter and his Circle (Princeton, 1970); B. Smalley, The Beckett Conflict and the Schools (Oxford, 1973); and P. Dronke, “Peter of Blois and Poetry at the Court of Henry II”, Medieval Studies, xxxviii (1976), 185-235. 17 On Giraldus’ connections with contemporary scholars see A.K. Bate, “Walter Map and Giraldus Cambrensis”, Latomus, 31 (1972), 860-875; and Lewis Thorpe, “Walter Map and Gerald of Wales”, Medium Aevum, 47 (1978), 6-21. 18 “In due course, when the work was finished and edited, he desired not to place his burning light under a bushel but to set it up upon a candelabrum so that it might shine. Hence, he decided to give a recitation of his work before a distinguished audience at Oxford, where the clergy in England was thriving better and excelled in scholarship. Since there were three sections in his book, each one was read out in a day and the recitation lasted for three continuous days. On the first day, he welcomed and gave hospitality to all the poor gathered from the 16 This elaborate occasion is remarkable in many respects.19 In evoking the image of ancient poets commanding a respectful audience for their vatic pronouncements, Giraldus betrays his early penchant for sibylline utterance as the ultimate authority of history, a belief which later led him to add as a subtitle to the Conquest of Ireland the label ‘vaticinalis historia,’ that is, prophetic history. In later years, when publishing an edition of his poems, he was dismissive of his early interest in poetry as being the trivial preoccupation of his youth: paulatim ad prosaica carmina me converti, et maturioribus studiis gravioribusque stylis annos applicare statui maturiores.20 This was not merely a literary trope. Giraldus seems gradually to have lost faith in the prophetic insight of Merlin of Celidon and Merlin Ambrosius whom he originally intended to draw upon for the Conquest of Ireland.21 Nevertheless, in the early stages of his career, Giraldus was considerably drawn to the image of historian as prophet and poet, and there is a hint of this in his extravagant orchestration of the Oxford reading of the Topography. Notwithstanding Giraldus’s habit of exaggeration, and his tendency to use the Welsh literary tropes of enumerating things in threes, the expense accrued in entertaining such a large crowd must have been considerable. Giraldus was clearly eager to impress what he saw as a thriving intellectual community in Oxford. If the manuscript trail constructed by Dimock is accurate, Giraldus’ continuing work on the Topography seems to have ensured that the text recited at Oxford was quite different from that read to archbishop Baldwin, constituting a second edition that was completed before Henry II’s death in July 1189.22 During this period, he began writing the Conquest of Ireland, but he did not leave aside the Topography, continuing to revise it intermittently until his death c.1220. The length of the text more than doubled during the process of redaction and redrafting. The new material is, however, rather different in character from the first edition. It consists of some additional material from ancient authors, but is mostly made up of praise of Henry II, moralising reflections upon the animals found in Ireland, and miscellaneous digressions about theology, music, and ancient authors. This material has often been dismissed as superfluous by editors of the Topography. The nineteenth-century editor of whole town for this event. On the second day, all the professors from each faculty and students of better reputation and esteem. On the third day, the remaining scholars along with the city guard and many citizens. This was a magnificent and noble affair, because by this deed were renewed in a certain way the authentic and antique times of the poets, but nor does the present age or any of antiquity record any similar event occurring in England”: De rebus in Brewer, ed., Opera, i, 72-3. 19 For discussion of the Oxford recitation see Lewis Thorpe, “Gerald of Wales: A public reading in Oxford in 1188 or 1189”, Neophilologus, 62/3 (July 1978), 455-458. 20 “Gradually I turned myself to compositions in prose, and I decided to devote my more mature years to more mature studies and weightier styles”: Symbolum electorum, preface, Brewer, ed., Opera, i, 199. 21 F. X. Martin, “Giraldus as Historian”, A.B. Scott & F.X. Martin, eds., Expugnatio Hibernica (Dublin, 1578), 275-6. 22 Dimock, preface, l-lii. the Latin text, Dimock, commented that it has “about as much to do with Ireland or its people as with the moon and the man in it”.23 It was omitted entirely from the modern Penguin edition, dismissed by the translator as “extraneous matter which to a modern reader can only be tedious”.24 Yet Giraldus spent years crafting the Topography, reworking its contents with a particular, perhaps varying, purpose in mind. This process of self-editing is crucial to understanding how he sought to position his work in relation to potential readers and patrons. The earliest versions of the text had as their preface what is marked in two later manuscripts, and in Dimock’s edition, as “Praefatio secunda”.25 This is a dedicatory letter written to Henry II. It reminds Henry that Giraldus was sent to Ireland in service to the king, and explains that when he arrived there he saw many things that were worthy of note: Ubi cum multa viderem aliis regionibus aliena nimis et prorsus incognita, suique novitate valde miranda; coepi diligens scrutator eruere, quis terrae situs, quae natura, quae gentis origo, qui mores; quoties, a quibus, et qualiter subacta sit et expugnata; quae nova, quaeve secreta, contra solitum sui cursum, in occiduis et extremis terrarum finibus natura recondidit … Quoties quippe, tanquam seriis et veris fatigata negotiis, paululum secedit et excedit, remotis in partibus, quasi verecundis et occultis natura ludit excessibus.26 His emphasis on Ireland as a liminal region where nature is more playful and creates things not seen elsewhere (“contra solitum sui cursum”) evokes a common geographical theory about the edges of the inhabited world. In the body of the text, he expands on this considerably, discoursing at length upon the contrast between the far east and the far west. Yet it is striking that he picks this theme out in the preface to his book, presenting the work as a scientific study of nature as much as a topographicalhistorical study. In later versions of the text two significant changes are made which alter the emphasis slightly. At the beginning of the quotation given above, he adds a sub-clause as follows: 23 Dimock, preface, xiii-xiv. Gerald of Wales, The History and Topography of Ireland, trans. & ed. John O’Meara (Harmondsworth, 1982), 16. 25 Topographia, 20. 26 “There, since I saw many things that are totally alien to other regions, almost unheard of and to be greatly wondered at for their novelty, I, like a diligent investigator, began to draw out the site of the land, its nature, its people’s origins and customs; how often, by whom, and in what way it has been subdued and conquered; what new or secret things, contrary to the norm, nature has hidden in the far western edges of the earth … How many times, indeed, nature, as though tired with serious and true affairs, withdraws a little, disappears, and plays with shy and secret excesses in remote regions”: Topographia, 20. 24 Ubi non tanquam transfugae, sed exploratoris officio fungens, cum in primis multa notarem aliis regionibus aliena …27 The revision emphasizes the deliberate and active approach Giraldus had to seeking out material, rather than the earlier characterisation of his endeavour as being somewhat adventitious. The end of the letter is also altered. Whereas he had previously concluded by comparing his book to the gifts of gold, hawks, and so forth, given by others (suggesting that, unlike those gifts, his book will endure for ever), he later added an entire paragraph to the effect that he had written not just about the characteristics of Ireland but also about the achievements of Henry II: Dignas quoque tam vestras, quam inclitae prolis vestrae virtutes, et victoriarum titulos summatim evolvere, stiloque perstringere, non indignum reputavi.28 This revision points to two things about the later editions: first, that Giraldus had added to his text a final section filled with praise of Henry II and his heirs; and second, that he had almost certainly begun to write the Conquest of Ireland at this point. This is a first indication of his repositioning the Topography to complement the Conquest, a process which involved presenting the first work as a historical preamble to the second. Giraldus’ re-packaging of his work to suit his audience is most visible in the preface associated with his recitation of the text in Oxford, the “Introitus in recitationem,” which is not contained in any manuscript identified by Dimock as belonging to the first edition. It is strikingly different from the earlier preface in that it is littered with classical quotations, particularly from the poets. His style is notably literary, and he skillfully uses rhetorical amplification to pose witty rhetorical questions and to position himself as the heir to ancient learning. He begins this preface by noting that fame and patronage are the prime goals of authors, though the latter is now difficult to obtain. In order to obtain the former, he has chosen an obscure topic (Ireland) not treated by ancient authors, so that his own lustre might not seem dim in comparison to their illustrious authority. Citing Pliny the Elder, he notes that: Ardua res est vetustis novitatem dare, novis auctoritatem, obsoletis nitorem, fastiditis gratiam, obscuris lucem, et dubiis fidem, et omnibus naturam. Aggrediar tamen utcunque novis quibusdam, et quae vel nullis hactenus edita sunt, vel perpaucis enucleata, lectoris “There, not like a deserter, but fulfillng the office of an explorer, since above all I observed many things that are totally alien to other regions …”: Topographia, 20. 28 “I considered it not inappropriate to describe in summary fashion, and to touch lightly with my pen, the records of your victories, your worthy virtues, and those of your renowned offspring”: Topographia, 21. 27 animum excitare; expressamque Hiberniae topographiam hoc opusculo quasi speculo quodam dilucido repraesentare, et cunctis in commune palam facere.29 The terms of this quotation (which becomes commonplace in descriptive writing about Ireland), and Giraldus’ response to it, require detailed scrutiny. First, the problem of lending authority to matter not discussed by ancient or canonical writers was particularly acute in the case of Ireland. Never colonized by the Romans, Ireland figured only perfunctorily in classical literature. When it was discussed, it was often portrayed as being at the ‘edge of the world’; and while this very fact might have been expected to generate some interest, in fact, as Strabo noted, Ireland’s remoteness from the Mediterranean civilisations meant that writers saw little reason in pursuing the vague accounts from which information could be gleaned: pro/j te ta\j h(gemonika\j xrei/aj ou)de\n a)/n ei)/h pleone/kthma ta\j toiau/taj gnwri/zein xw/raj kai\ tou\j e)noikouVntaj, kai\ ma/lista ei) nh/souj oi)koiVen toiau/taj, ai(\ mh/te lupeiVn mh/t` w)feleiVn h(maVj du/nantai mhde\n dia\ to\ a)nepi/plekton.30 In fact, as Giraldus notes, Ireland did appear in some classical writings (Strabo included), but only in a cursory manner, and adorned with errors and confusions.31 Late antiquity and the Middle Ages provided several authors, notably Isidore and Bede, who could be used to supplement and correct earlier accounts. Giraldus draws upon these to some extent during the course of his description, but his own text is considerably more detailed and extended, so that he is entirely justified in claiming originality within the Latin tradition. The problem of authority was not that Giraldus could not trust his own observations; rather, it was a matter of earning the trust of the reader. How could the reader be sure that Giraldus was a learned and judicious critic when he states that all previous, authoritative writers have been unreliable? His approach is twofold. First, early in his work he outlines “the various opinions of Solinus, Orosius, and Isidore, some right and some wrong,” setting them against Bede’s more “‘It is hard work to give novelty to old material, authority to the new, lustre to the commonplace, charm to the unpleasant, light to the obscure, trust to the doubtful, and to everything its own nature.’ But however it may be, I undertake to stir up the mind of the reader with some new things which either have never been set forth by anyone, or have been summarised by very few; and I undertake to represent and to make known to all alike a well-wrought topography of Ireland in this little work, as though in a perfectly clear mirror”: Topographia, 7. Giraldus’ quotation slightly misquotes Pliny’s, Historia Naturalia, i, praefatio. 30 “For affairs of government there would be no advantage in knowing such places and their inhabitants, particularly if they live on islands that can neither harm nor help us because of their isolation”: Strabo, Geography, 2.5.8. Similar feelings about Ireland were common in Europe as late as the fifteenth century; see Eric Haywood, “Is Ireland Worth Bothering About? Classical Perceptions of Ireland Revisited in Renaissance Italy” International Journal of the Classical Tradition, ii, no. 4 (Spring 1996), 467-486. 31 These are surveyed in J. J. Tierney, “The Celtic Ethnography of Posidonius” Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, no. 60/C (1960), 189-275. 29 accurate account (24).32 In doing this, he uses each authority to show that the others are fallible, indeed often greatly confused. Over the course of the next few chapters, however, he increasingly disagrees with Bede about the Irish landscape, climate, and fauna. Ultimately, he tries to lay concerns about authority to rest before proceeding with the rest of his work: Nec mirum tamen si a tramite veritatis interdum deviaverint, cum nihil oculata fide, nihil nisi per indicem et a remotis agnoverint. Tunc enim res quaelibet certissimo nititur de veritate subsidio, cum eodem utitur relatore quo teste. Ob tantam igitur tam solicitam, et in plerisque certissimam remotissimarum rerum indaginem, debita sunt laude non indigni. Et quoniam nihil humanum omnino perfectum; omniumque habere notitiam, et in nullo peccare, potius divinitatis est quam humanitatis, errores forte, si qua ex parte irrepserint, tam imperfectionis conditio, quam ipsa locorum distantia reddat veniales.33 Giraldus is claiming to offer an eye-witness report to supplant previous accounts relayed second- or third-hand. We might suppose that this approach accords well with his intent to provide a topographical description, yet two things should be noted about this. First, Giraldus does not assume that the landscape, climate and fauna of Ireland have not changed since classical times; indeed he is willing to offer historical change as a means to exonerate the ancients of faulty testimony. For example, he distinguishes between the nine more ancient rivers in the island and those which are of more recent origin. He suggests that Bede may not have been wrong about the presence of vineyards on the island, but that there are certainly none there now; similarly, bees may have been introduced subsequent to the time of Solinus, who claimed there were none in Ireland. The transmission of authoritative information from the ancients is thus rendered somewhat problematic: it is not that their statements are fundamentally wrong, but that they may be out of date. A second aspect worth noting is that Giraldus’ empirical evidence seems to trump the wisdom of the ancients regarding Ireland, irrespective of the rational edifice upon which their conclusions were based. That is to say, the ancients did not merely provide geographical descriptions, but also offered rational systems to explain nature and its patterns. Giraldus does not explicitly contest these, but he shows an awareness of the need to provide a theoretical framework to justify the extent to which his account of Ireland seems aberrant. In doing so, he selectively extends ancient geographical “De variis Solini, Horosii, et Ysidori, sententiis; quibusdam veris, quibusdam erroneis”: Topographia, 24. “But no wonder if from time to time they [previous authorities] have deviated from the path of the truth, since they knew nothing by the evidence of their own eyes, nothing at all except through someone reporting from distant places. For any matter only rests on a sound basis of truth when it is reported by the person who witnessed it. Therefore, they are justly owed praise for such studious and in most cases accurate research into far distant affairs. And since nothing human is altogether perfect, and to have knowledge of everything without failing in anything is rather a divine than a human characteristic, errors (if by chance they creep in somewhere) are rendered negligible both by the condition of imperfection and by the remoteness of the places”: Topographia, 29. 32 33 theory in a way which shows that he is filling out their picture rather than drawing a new one. Thus, in his dedicatory letter he cites the Plinian topos of nature’s inventive fecundity and infinite variety, blending it with the widespread ancient notion of natural and geographical symmetry.34 He argues that nature grows tired of serious and sober affairs, allowing herself space at the margins of the world to be more whimsical, indulging herself by creating monsters and freaks. Thus, just as the ancients attested to numerous discrepancies in the natural order that occur in the far eastern extremities of the world, so Giraldus says we should expect aberrant creations in the far west – Ireland. The first section of the book therefore concludes with a reflection on the comparative merits of the western edge of the world as against the eastern. Both are filled with rareties and novelties: while the east is more opulent, it is characterized by poisonous superabundance; the west, by contrast, has clear and healthy air, soil that repels or even cures all poisons, and no mean between health and death like the perpetual sickness that was endemic elsewhere, caused by plagues and pestilential vapours. Ireland, Giraldus claims, is how nature was meant to be; in its old age, the world has elsewhere declined into poor health. Ireland may be remarkable in some of its qualities, but it is made comprehensible through this model of nature’s extremes. Giraldus’ invocation of nature’s fecundity and playfulness reflects a widespread medieval notion that is reminiscent of Pliny, yet it is has led one leading scholar to conclude that “his assumptions about the way the natural world behaved did not take the form of rigid laws”.35 In fact, as Giraldus proceeds to amass stories and enumerate specific instances it becomes clear that he is using a three-fold categorization of phenomena that was familiar to his medieval readers: the natural, counternatural, and praeter-natural.36 The first are those which accord with the normal course of nature; the third are those which are supernatural in origin, be they miraculous or demonic. The middle group designates those things contrary to the normal course of nature but not originating outside nature itself – for example, monstrous births, exceptional occurrences, and rareties of natural invention. Giraldus grafts this model on to a biblical framework that parallels the order of creation as described in Genesis. Thus, if the first part of the Topography is devoted to the nature of Ireland (its site, climate, and place in nature’s overall design), the second is devoted to counter-natural wonders and praeternatural miracles. The third part then turns to the human dimension of the island – its inhabitants and their characteristics. Yet this is also, loosely, the sequence in which God created the universe: the waters and lands, its plants and animals, and human beings.37 Giraldus rather successfully, therefore, overlays one cognitive schema upon another, blending natural philosophy with scriptural parallelism. 34 Cf. Pliny, Historia Naturalis, II, § 154-9 and 207-9. The Historia is an encyclopedic effort to convey nature ‘in all her aspects,’ as the concluding valediction states. 35 Bartlett, 138. 36 For a discussion of the distinction between natural and counter-natural see Bartlett, 104-127. 37 I am indebted to Diarmuid Scully of the History Department in University College Cork for this observation. Considerable attention has in the past been given to Giraldus’ powers of observation as a natural scientist.38 The primacy which Giraldus seems, on occasion, to grant to observation needs to be set in the context of the larger theoretical framework used to structure the text as a whole and to shape his understanding of nature. These larger structures can sometimes seem miscellaneous, but this is partly because twelfth-century authors believed, on the basis of limited access to fragments of classical authors, that ancient thought was a more coherent whole than we now know it to have been. What we see now as the transmission of different schools of thought, medieval writers saw as more or less accurate explanations of the truth of nature that must have a coherent theoretical core which was simply not yet fully understood. During Giraldus’ life-time the first efforts to elaborate through logical analysis the intellectual coherence of the classical and Christian corpus had not yet been fully formulated, nor had their fruits been disseminated. Veracity was measured by a combination of authority and observation, not yet full systematic coherence as assessed by Aristotelian logic.39 The variation between medieval and modern ideas of coherence has led one commentator to conclude that “while Gerald did attempt to puzzle out strange phenomena in terms of physical qualities, he did not do so systematically. His nature remained a ‘playful nature’ (natura ludens)”.40 Yet, as we have seen, nature’s playfulness was an ordered part of Giraldus’ universe. It was precisely through its divergence from the norm that the counter-natural was characterized. By placing that divergence within a broader geographical schema of nature’s margins, Giraldus offered a further way of recuperating the model from which his data departed. Bartlett identifies the importance of the fact that Giraldus was writing in a transitional period and thus does not fully belong to the earlier systematic cosmography of William of Conches or Thierry of Chartres, nor to the new Arabic-Aristotelian thought that was just then beginning to emanate from the universities.41 He cites Giraldus’ warm reception of the Parisian condemnations of Aristotle as evidence of the latter and of a broader “retreat from naturalism” evident in Giraldus’ later career.42 The source for this is the preface Giraldus wrote to his Speculum Ecclesiae in which he endorsed the Parisian critique of the Toledo translation of Avicenna’s commentary on De anima, rejecting “subtle discussions and philosophical enquiries into the nature of things” in the hope that people might “turn to saner, more solid, and healthier doctrines”.43 Giraldus had himself ceased to compose natural philosophical treatises over a decade previously, but he continued to edit his existing works, and it is important to establish the precise context in which his comments about Aristotelianism must be understood. The proscription of the teaching of Aristotle’s libri naturales at 38 J. K. Wright, Geographical Lore at the Time of the Crusades (New York, 1925), 194-6; Urban T. Holmes, “Gerald the naturalist”, Speculum, 11 (1936), 110-121; A. Gransden, “Realistic Observation in Twelfth Century England”, Speculum, xlvii (1972), 42-4, 48-50; Bartlett, 134-144. 39 Southern, Scholastic Humanism, II, 72. 40 Bartlett, 140. 41 Bartlett, 149-150. 42 Bartlett, 140, 150-151. 43 R.W. Hunt, “The Preface to the Speculum Ecclesiae of Giraldus Cambrensis”, Viator, 8 (1977), 209. the Council of Sens in 1210 applied only to Paris and related specifically to suppression of the heretical teachings of Amalric of Bène and David of Dinant. The perceived danger was not so much in the Aristotelian texts themselves as in the use to which they were being put, particularly in the light of Averroist doctrines of universal anima.44 It is in this context that Giraldus endorses the condemnation, quoting from Avicenna’s De anima as an instance of the arrogance of over-ambitious curiosity. Giraldus’ comments place him within an almost universal reluctance to consider Aristotle within those elements of natural philosophy that tend towards psyschology, moral philosophy, and metaphysics. He quoted Solomon telling his son: Seek not the things that are too high for you and search not out things above your strength, but think always on what God has commanded and do not be curious concerning many of his works.45 This is standard medieval language to reject scholarly pride and over-ambition, and does not necessarily constitute a rejection of all scientific research. Even after the Paris condemnation, Aristotle’s libri naturales were studied in Toulouse and Oxford, and their influence continued to spread across the British Isles. The intellectual impetus produced by Aristotle’s writings remained pervasive across the whole range of medieval thought, partly as a consequence of its equally pervasive influence on classical thought. Giraldus’ descriptions of natural phenomena, concentrated in his earlier works but also intermittently scattered throughout his later writings, reflect a two-fold impulse to interpret nature. On the one hand, he frequently attempts to explain the causes of phenomena in terms of the physical operations of nature, or special deviations from the norm; on the other hand, he is willing to draw moralising conclusions, whether from the complexity of natural processes, or from the extraordinary deviation from the course of nature. Thus, one of the earliest significant alterations he made to the Topography was to add to his description of Ireland’s climate a discussion of the cycle of precipitation and evaporation, and its pertinence to Ireland’s geographical position. His explanation is ultimately derived from Aristotle, particularly from the recently-translated Meteorology, but his language is not specifically so.46 Even if Giraldus had not yet encountered the Meteorlogy directly, he would have known the source through Seneca’s report of the debate between Anaxagoras and Aristotle.47 Indeed, like Pliny and Seneca, Giraldus frequently took occasion to discuss natural philosophical principles during the course of an encyclopedic survey of particulars. Viewed in the Monika Asztalos, “The faculty of theology”, H. De Ridder-Symoens, ed., A History of the University in Europe, Volume 1: Universities in the Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1992), 420-423; Gordon Leff, “The trivium and the three philosophies” in ibid., 320-323. 45 Quoted in Hunt, “Preface”, 210. 46 Topographia, 27; Aristotle, Meteorologica, I, 9-14. 47 Seneca, Naturales Quaestiones, I, 12. 44 light of later, more rigid, demarcation of the genres of scholastic discourse, Giraldus can seem nonscientific. In this respect Bartlett hits the appropriate note with his comment that “Gerald’s works were not scientific treatises, but any account of them must consider his responses to the natural world and his scientific ideas”.48 The genre into which Giraldus moulded his Topography has led to the miscellany of mirabilia swamping the underlying principles that explain his approach to nature, which are only on occasion discussed explicitly. As indicated earlier, the question of genre is particularly complicated with regard to Giraldus’ Topography because he continually re-edited it to gain the approbation and patronage of different audiences. Most of the later additions to the text, so far as this process has been reconstructed by Dimock, are focused on expanding the amount of moralistic reflection, particularly in relation to his descriptions of animals. The reason for this is easy to ascertain from Giraldus’ own words. In his autobiography, he recounts Archbishop Baldwin’s response to the first edition of the text. He claims that not only was the Archbishop very enthusiastic about it, but he also wanted Giraldus to collaborate with his nephew in writing a history of the crusades. Further, he hoped Giraldus would receive royal patronage before long. Giraldus continues, then, to detail the terms of the Archbishop’s approbation: Coepit etiam librum archidiaconi, quem ei in introitu Walliae dederat, et quem ipse jam legereat et perlegerat, sc. Topographiam Hibernicam valde commendare, et stylum ipsius tractandique modum multis laudibus extollere. Potuit etiam in hoc archiepiscopi tam modestia notari quam prudentia; quod nihil in laudem libri istius aut vituperium, donec totum audisset, pronuntiare volebat. Sciens quippe, quod plerumque principium medio, medium quoque discrepat imo. Quaesiverat etiam archiepiscopus ab ipso, utrum evidentiam aliquam ab agiographis et expositoribus nostris habuisset, super allegoriis circa avium naturas assignatis in prima Topographiae Distinctione. Et cum responderet quod nullam, subjecit archiepiscopus, quia revera spiritu eodem quo et illi scripserunt scripta sunt ista.49 He proceeds to recount how the Archbishop went on encourage him to continue to employ this style in future works. The section of the Topography that he alludes to is chapters twelve to seventeen of book one. Here Giraldus relates natural historical lore about ospreys, kingfishers, swans, storks, crows, and birds that migrate in the autumn; yet to each of these accounts he adds a moralising coda. Thus, birds which migrate abroad in autumn are said to be akin to mystics whose souls temporarily depart to higher realms in order to contemplate the divine. Such metaphorical language was typical of 48 Bartlett, 127. “He began then greatly to commend the archdeacon’s [Giraldus] book, which the archdeacon had given to him on his entry into Wales and had himself read and re-read to him. He held up for much praise the style and manner of treatment. … Then the archbishop asked him whether he had found some information from our hagiographers and commentators about the allegories attached to the characters of birds in the first part of the Topography. When he responded that he had not, the archbishop added that these parts were written in the same style as that employed by those writers”: De rebus a se gestis, Brewer, ed., Opera, i, 79-80. 49 bestiaries and the fables found in devotional literature.50 It was precisely this kind of comparison that Giraldus then added in abundance to later editions of the text. As more and more devotional material was added, the overall impression created by the text was somewhat altered. Giraldus initially, it seems, accounted for this by emphasising the natural philosophical principles outlined earlier. Thus, in the revised preface to part two of the book, about the marvels and wonders of Ireland, he added four passages, each of which picks up on the ideas discussed above. In the first, he insisted that even if he had not personally been an eye-witness of all the wonders reported in the text, nevertheless they had been vouched for “a multis et authenticis viris”.51 Secondly, he added the following passage that outlines his understanding of the counternatural: apud quem nihil impossibile; quique naturam, utpote naturae dominus, quo vult inflectit, et quasi de non natura naturam facit. Praeterea, contra primaevam et veram, quae Deus est, naturam, qualiter vere fieri quicquam dicetur, quod ipso constat auctore patratum? Contra naturam igitur usuali sermone quam proprio magis ea sola fieri dicuntur, quae contra ejusdem non potentiam sed frequentiam prodire videntur.52 In a third passage, he adds that in the most remote regions, particularly on islands, nature indulges her creative whim. With repetitive force, he explains: Semper enim, et quasi ex industria, seria sui negotia novis quibusdam natura depingit; ut sic manifeste doceat et declaret, quod licet humanis utcunque ingeniis usualia ejusdem opera valeant attendi, potentialis tamen effectus nequeat comprehendi.53 Finally, then, Giraldus pleads that he be not condemned for including novelties, since (and he quotes Horace as his authority) all knowledge was once novel.54 In like manner, he added a passage in praise of new research to the preface to the third part of his Topography, comparing his own labours to those A useful comparand is Alexander Neckham’s De naturis rerum, an encyclopedic work that exemplifies the allegorical use of animals for moralising. 51 “by many reliable persons”: Topographia, 75. 52 “For [God] nothing is impossible; and he, being the Lord of nature, makes of nature what he wants, as though he were to make nature out of what is not nature. Moreover, how in truth can anything which is agreed to have been accomplished by God himself be said to be contrary to ancient and genuine nature, which is God? Commonly in proper speech, therefore, it is really only those things which seem to be produced contrary to the normal run of nature, but not to its power, that are said to be counter-natural”: Topographia, 75. 53 “For always, as though on purpose, nature presents her serious affairs amid certain novelties, in order to teach us clearly and demonstrate that although her usual works can in some manner by understood by human minds, yet the effects of her power cannot be fully comprehended”: Topographia, 75. 54 Topographia, 76. 50 of the ancients which, he notes, have in many instances only recently come to light.55 These additions reveal something of the response that Giraldus received to his works, particularly the rejection of his references to such things as talking wolves, ox-men, and bearded ladies.56 He needed to defend the inclusion of so many marvels and wonders by recourse on the one hand to natural philosophical theory about the counter-natural, and on the other hand to a historical argument about the epistemological status of novelties. It is this last aspect which came to dominate in Giraldus’ later references to the Topography as he began to associate it more closely with the Conquest of Ireland as a historical companion piece. This is done most clearly in the introduction to the Conquest itself, where he presents the earlier work as a topographical and historical preamble to the new tome, which continues the story of Irish history up to the present day of the Norman conquest: Retroacti siquidem temporis gesta locaque Topographia describit; presencia vero presens hystoria comprehendit.57 Further, he repeatedly made reference to what must have been a remarkably successful launch of the work at the Oxford recitation. Hence, in a catalogue of his own works he refers to it simply as: Topographia Hybernica, liber sc. de situ terrae illius et mirabilibus ejusdem multis exaratus apud Oxoniam per tres dies continuos in publica cleri audientia recitatus.58 Likewise, when he sought patronage from William de Vere, Bishop of Hereford, by presenting him with a copy of the Topography and Conquest of Ireland, he reminded him of the favourable reception that the first work had received at the hands of Archbishop Baldwin thirty years previously, and also made specific mention of the recitation at Oxford.59 These references and reminders served to present the work as an account of some authority, a reliable history that had been vouched for by the scholars at Oxford as well as by Archbishop Baldwin. Yet when it came to recommending the book to particular readers, he seems to have picked out passages that, he felt, were of outstanding literary merit. Thus in a letter to William de Vere which was transcribed at the end of several manuscripts of 55 Topographia, 138. See Giraldus’ own comments on this in the preface to the Conquest: Expugnatio, 4. On Irish mirabilia see Bartlett, 104-127; J. M. Boivin, L’Irlande au Moyen Âge (Paris, 1993), 84-88 and 109-145; and John Barry, “A Wild Goose Chase: Giraldus Cambrensis and natural history” , Gerhard Petersmann (ed.), Grazer Beitraege Supplementband IX , 2005. The Role of Latin in Early Modern Europe: Texts and Contexts (Salzburg, 2006), 1-11. 57 “My Topography describes the events and scenes of time past. But the present history describes contemporary events”: Expugnatio, 2. 58 “The Topography of Ireland; that is, a book written about the position of that land and its many marvels, which was read out before a public audience of the clergy in Oxford for three days continuously”: Catalogus brevior, Brewer, ed., Opera, i, 421. 59 Epistola ad capitulum Herefordense de libris a se scriptis, Brewer, ed., Opera, i, 409-410. 56 the Topography, Giraldus encouraged his potential patron to focus on particular passages that would delight him, such as the accounts of mirabilia, the contemplative passages about birds, the comparison of east and west, and so forth. The underlying literary criteria for these selections are made clear by his recommendation that his reader seek out the marginal notes which identify the most notable statements and opinions, and he adds that “Prae omnibus autem titulis, meo judicio, de musicis instrumentis et arte musica tractatus pro sui captu laudabilior; quanto ibidem et materia inusitatior et stilus elegantior invenitur”.60 There can be no doubt that the concern with literary style is prominent in all of Giraldus’ assessments of the merit of his own works. As mentioned earlier, he believed himself to be part of a restoration of polite letters in Europe as a whole, but particularly in Britain. To write in an elegant and polished style was, for him, the same thing as to be learned, because it required considerable education in the authors of classical antiquity and their treatises on rhetoric. A knowledge of appropriate style was essential to the presentation of any kind of treatise, historical or otherwise, as he emphasized in the prefaces to the Conquest of Ireland, the Journey through Wales, and the Ecclesiastical Gems. For Giraldus, style was an essential determinant of transmission – eloquence ensured the survival of the text for posterity. Although it did not negate the need for historical accuracy, it granted authority to the ideas presented. While Giraldus does appear to have received some positive reception for his literary endeavours during his own lifetime and immediately thereafter (particularly when the large number of manuscript copies is considered), his bitterness about lack of career advancement came increasingly to the fore in his writings, and subsequent generations of readers would associate his sharp criticism of contemporaries with the pointed style of his prose. Giraldus wrote in an era which held in particularly high regard the snappy well-turned phrases of ‘silver’ Latin authors such as Seneca and Pliny the Elder, along with Lucan and the later poets. Yet the period in which his works were printed and first reached an international audience (to the embarrassment of the Irish) was precisely that in which such acerbity of style, outside of its classical sources, seemed barbarous and poorly polished. In 1602 the English antiquarian William Camden published an edition of medieval texts that included several writings by Giraldus Cambrensis (Gerald of Wales, c.1146-1220), including two treatises about Ireland, the Topography of Ireland (Topographia Hibernica) and The Conquest of Ireland (Expugnatio Hibernica).61 This publication made Giraldus’ works widely available to a European audience for the first time. Prior to the Camden edition, Giraldus’ writings were only well known in England and Ireland, where manuscript copies proliferated. Nevertheless, their influence has been detected in the works of several major English historians in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries; because of the dissemination of these works, Giraldus was known abroad before he was “But in my opinion the best of all these sections, on account of its power, is the tract on musical instruments and the art of music, for in that place the subject-matter may be found less familiar and the style more elegant”: Printed in Dimock, Topographia, 204. 61 William Camden, Anglica, Hibernica, Normannica, Cambrica, a veteribus scripta (Frankfurt, 1602). 60 known in detail.62 In the 1570s, the Flemish cartographer Abraham Ortelius acquired (through Camden or the antiquarian Daniel Rogers) a copy of extracts from the Topography, which he printed to accompany the map of Ireland in his popular atlas, the Theatrum Orbis Terrarum. In 1584, the precocious young Irishman Richard Stanihurst, returned to Dublin fresh from his education in Oxford, wrote an adaptation of Giraldus’ Topography and Conquest.63 Stanihurst’s goal was twofold: to demonstrate his own (remarkable) proficiency at crafting Ciceronian Latin, and to position his own kinsmen (of Norman descent) within the context of the first Norman conquest, rejecting the inexperienced administrative meddling of new English immigrants to Ireland in the latter half of the sixteenth century. Crucially, Stanihurst wrote in the language of international scholarship and published in Antwerp. The European public had, therefore, been somewhat prepared for the full appearance of Giraldus’ writings in 1602. The Irish, by contrast, were not happy for Giraldus’ vituperative remarks about Irish culture to reach a foreign audience from which they sought patronage in their struggle against the English conquerors whose ancestors Giraldus heralded in such propagandistic fashion. Numerous Irishmen wrote refutations of his works in the seventeenth century, including such prominent scholars as John Lynch, Stephen White, Geoffrey Keating, and Philip O’Sullivan Beare (all but the last, ironically, being descendants of the Norman settlers).64 It is quite clear that these men rejected Giraldus’ works primarily on account of his supposed misrepresentations of Irish history, and particularly of Gaelic culture. Nevertheless, his style of writing, his express concern with patronage and securing fame for himself, and his continual reshaping of the Topography to meet the interest of his potential patrons, provided ample material for his critics to feed upon. That is to say, the very things which Giraldus did to ensure the positive and lasting reception of his work were what nourished its harsh reception at the hands of humanist readers. The earliest of these refutations was written by the Irish Jesuit Stephen White. He criticized Giraldus in particular for his irreligious tales about the Irish clergy, and the way in which he criticized those who failed to offer him patronage. Giraldus, says White, frequently praised himself even though he was despised by his contemporaries, who could not bear “propter mores minus modestos et linguae calamique intemperiem,” which produced text filled “nugis Milesiis, fabulis maximis, plurimis Hiram Morgan, “Giraldus Cambrensis and the Tudor conquest of Ireland” in idem (ed.), Political Ideology in Ireland, 1541-1641 (Dublin, 1999), 22-44. 63 On Stanihurst’s adaptation of Giraldus see John Barry, “Richard Stanihurst’s De Rebus in Hibernia Gestis”, Renaissance Studies, xviii, no.1, 1-18. 64 Some of these works were edited in the nineteenth century, and I have cited these editions. For Stephen White see Matthew Kelly, ed. Apologia pro Hibernia adversus Cambri Calumnias…auctore Stephano Vito (Dublin, 1849); for John Lynch see Matthew Kelly, ed., Cambrensis Eversus, seu potius Historica fides in rebus hibernicis Girald Cambrensi abrogata, 3 vols. (Dublin, 1848-52); for Geoffrey Keating see Geoffrey Keating, Foras Feasa ar Éirinn. The History of Ireland, 4 vols., ed. and trans., David Comyn and Patrick S. Dinneen, Irish Texts Society (London, 1902-13). Most of Philip O’Sullivan Beare’s writings remain in manuscript, but see Thomas J. O’Donnell, ed., Selections from the Zoilomastix of Philip O’Sullivan Beare (Dublin, 1960). 62 superstitionibus, non infrequentibus in coelites blasphemiis”.65 White excoriated Giraldus’ style and the way in which he mingled mirabilia and superstitions with what was purported to be historical fact. Later critics identified many of the same faults. Thus, Geoffrey Keating began his history of Ireland with an attack upon Giraldus. At the outset he noted: Cibé duine ‘san mbioth chuireas roimhe Seanchus nó Sinnseardhacht críche ar bioth do leanmhain nó do lorgaireacht, is eadh dhligheas cinneadh ar an slíghe is soiléire nochtas fírinne stáide na críche, agus dáil na foirne áitigheas í, do chur go soléir síos.66 According to Keating, Giraldus not only failed to establish the appropriate method, but in his tendency to follow hearsay and to fail to root out the source of references he was followed by many subsequent English commentators who sought to malign the Irish nation. Thus even simple errors could be perpetuated. For example, Keating describes the transmission of a double error made by Giraldus in using the name ‘Roanus’ instead of ‘Ronanus,’ a name which Giraldus had mistakenly used to denote the mythical Irish revenant Fintan mac Bóchra: scríobhaidh gach aon do na Nua-Ghallaibh scríobhas ar Éirinn ‘Roanus’ ar lorg Chambrens mar ainm ar Fhionntain, do brígh gurab é, Cambrens, is tarbh tána dhóibh le scríobhadh saoibh-sheanchusa ar Éirinn, as an adhbhar nach fuil a mhalairt do threoraidhe aca.67 What was particularly aggravating to Giraldus’ critics was the manner in which he arrogated authority to himself by referring to his work in terms which they felt were inappropriate. Thus, John Lynch, referring to those who promise mountains but bring forth a mouse, castigated Giraldus in the following terms: In hanc classem Giraldum referrendum esse censeo, qui lucubrationibus suis speciosa nomina tanquam vino non vendibili haederam appendit, ut fucum incauto lectori faciat, et e tenui labore non tenuis ipsi gloria exoriatur.68 “his immodest manners and intemperance of tongue and pen”; “with Milesian nonsense, the greatest load of waffle, plentiful superstitions, and not infrequent blasphemies against the heavenly hosts”: White, Apologia, i. 66 “Whosoever proposes to trace and follow up the ancient history and origin of any country ought to determine on setting down plainly the method which reveals most clearly the truth of the state of the country, and the condition of the people who inhabit it”: Keating, Foras Feasa ar Éirinn, I, 2. 67 “Every one of the New English who writes on Ireland writes ‘Roanus’ in imitation of Cambrensis as a name for Fionntain, because it is Cambrensis who is their ring-leader in writing false histories of Ireland, since they had no alternative guide”: Keating, Foras Feasa ar Éirinn, I, 152. 68 “I think Giraldus ought to be included among this class of people, who doles out specious names for his lucubrations as though ivy for unsellable wine, so that he produces a smoke-screen for the incautious reader, and so that not inconsiderable glory might spring up for him from inconsiderable labour”: Lynch, Cambrensis Eversus, I, 112. 65 In a compact metaphor, Lynch pinpoints Giraldus’ attempt to secure for himself the ivy-garland of the poet, which was associated with Bacchus and awarded for a poet’s ability to offer the wine of ancient learning that matures with age. In other words, Giraldus is trying to sell his specious poetry as true learning. He continues to specify what the misleading terms were: in ipso enim limine, in scopulum erroris impingit, qui descriptionem totius Hiberniae moliturus, operi suo Topographiae non Chorographiae nomen indidit. In qua re, vel malevolentiam suam, vel ignorantiam prodidit; ignorationem [sic], quod chorographia cujusvis amplae regionis; topographia loci cujuscunque descriptionem denotari nesciverit; malevolentiam, si ditiunculae cujuspiam vocabulo Hiberniam ideo exprimere statuerit, quod vel appellationis proprietate, Hiberniae descriptionem honestare dedignatus fuerit, sed ut magis obscuraretur, in pratorum, hortorum, viridariorum, portuum, aut ejusmodi arctioris spatii locorum classem indignabundus rejecerit. Caeterum quamvis topographiae nomen scriptis Giraldus apposuerit, notionem tamen ac rem, topographiae vel chorographiae subjectam, in illis nequaquam expressit.69 He proceeds to castigate Giraldus for his failure to observe geographical principles in the arrangement and disposition of his work, concluding with the quesiton, “Cui amabo usui Topographia illa deserviet, in qua insigniora descriptae regionis loca nusquam occurrent?”70 To a humanist, the geographic disciplines were the ‘eye of history,’ a suitable framework in which to pursue rigorous antiquarian research.71 They did not consider the idea that Giraldus might have been engaged in a primarily natural philosophical study of the manifestations of nature’s inventiveness at the margins of the inhabited world – in this, they set the pattern for most of his readers down to the present day. While he sought to present himself as a leading figure in a renaissance of literature and learning, in the eyes of his humanist critics Giraldus failed to meet any of the criteria for generic fidelity that were at the heart of the notion of literature that characterized the early-modern Renaissance. Their judgement of his efforts were, doubtless, anachronistic, but they were accurate in identifying the “For he rushes upon the threshold or the rock of error who, about to set forth a description of the whole of Ireland, gave to his work the name of Topography rather than Chorography. In this respect he shows his malevolence or, if you like, his ignorance. Ignorance, because he did not know to call the description of any large region ‘chorography,’ and of any particular place ‘topography’. Malevolence, if he indeed decided to label Ireland with the name of some kind of small territory because he scorned to dignify the description of Ireland with its due name, but rather, so that it might be further obscured, to cast it indignantly among the class of meadows, gardens, arbours, ports, or similar places of more confined space. Moreover, although Giraldus imposed on his writings the name of topography, he never explains in these the notion, matter, or subject of topography or chorography”: Lynch, Cambrensis Eversus, I, 112-4. 70 “For what use, pray tell, does that Topography serve in which the more notable parts of the described region never occur?”: Lynch, Cambrensis Eversus, I, 114. 71 See Gerald Strauss, “Topographical-Historical Method in Sixteenth-Century German Scholarship” in Studies in the Renaissance, v (1958), 87-101; and Jason Harris, “Reading the First Atlases: Ortelius, De Jode and TCD volume M.aa.9”, The Long Room, il (2004), 28-53. 69 variation in form and goals that derives from Giraldus’ mixed concept of the purpose of his literary output and the taste of its audience – in other words, his conscious self-fashioning was regarded as inconsistency, arrogance, and ignorance of true literary form. To conclude, then, it seems that Giraldus’ intentions for the Topography vacillated somewhat over time. In the first instance he seems to have intended a scientific study in the tradition of Pliny and Strabo. Yet even in the earliest redactions, he did not limit himself entirely to descriptions of geography/climate, flora/fauna, and ethnography. His goal was always to present his research in literary guise through Latin that was the fruit of a widespread restoration of classical eloquence and learning. In his later redaction of the text, in response to the interest of Archbishop Baldwin, he expanded on those parts of his text that introduced a more contemplative, devotional approach to animals and nature. In later writings, still attempting to divine wells of patronage, he seems to recast the genre again, presenting it as a historical work, a prelude to the Conquest of Ireland. Insofar as it presented the geography and significant features of Ireland and its people, the Topography had indeed originally been conceived in a form that was appropriate as a prelude to a historical study of the Norman invasion, but this did not mean that the work was itself primarily historical; nor, in the eyes of the humanists, did it merit the truth-claims of thorough historical research. As Giraldus integrated further devotional material into his later redaction, the composite character of the text came more to the fore – a hybrid of classical geography, natural science, and ethnography, blended with medieval literature on mirabilia. As a case study in transmission and transformation, the Topography is thus of particular interest. Giraldus sought to blend a geographical and scientific study with the mirabilia of standard medieval encyclopedic works and the truth claims of historical research. He explicitly discusses the difficulty of reporting novelties and of creating points of reference to aid interpretation despite the limitations of the standard authorities, and he was remarkably inventive in his mining of classical and medieval genres in order both to render his material accessible and to control its interpretation. Later humanist critics, with their aesthetic requirement for purity of genre and form, honed in on precisely these features of Giraldus’ texts, demarcating the parameters within which his literary endeavours are still judged. In many ways, therefore, Giraldus formed, transformed, and attempted to disseminate his own writings in a manner which subsequently happened to be that most likely to offend against humanist demands for consistency of discourse.