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 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924027919368 
 
[aMniTBB'^W)M--Em--ltB5SLEsaLAlffiERJ10a.:NaVESIBEB, ISVS^ 
 
 A SCHOLAR OF THE TWELFTH CENTURY. 
 
 By Thomas R. Lounsbuey. 
 
 \ \ 
 
 © 
 
 No RECORDS are more unsatisfactory, at least none have been 
 more unsatisfactory, than those which purport to cast light 
 upon the private lives of eminent men. Especially is this 
 statement true in respect to individuals, no matter how other- 
 wise distinguished, who have not been connected in some way 
 with affairs of state. Little do we know of the greatest men 
 of the past who have had to trust for the perpetuation of the 
 facts of their personal history, not to official documents, but to 
 the distinction they have gained in scholarship or letters, to the 
 interest which the work they have done may have inspired in 
 their contemporaries. Our information in regard to nearly all 
 the celebrated authors of antiquity, who took no part in public 
 affairs, is of the most meagre and unsatisfactory nature. Nor 
 are we much better off when we come down to a period nearer 
 the present. Of most of that brilliant group of dramatists who 
 made the Elizabethan age illustrious, we can scarcely be said 
 to know anything worth knowing. Facts and figures, often 
 uncertain, and usually barren, comprise the principal part of 
 the information contained in what are called their biographies. 
 VOL. I. 46 
 
718 A Scholar of the Twelfth Century. [Nov., 
 
 It is hard for us to realize that this should be so. In the broad 
 glare of light cast by the press of modern times upon the words 
 and acts of the most inconspicuous ; in these days, in particular, 
 when no privacy, however secluded, no obscurity, however pro- 
 found, can be trusted to save any one from the reporter that 
 walks in darkness, or the interviewer that wastes at noon-day, 
 it scarcely seems possible that the life of any man of great emi- 
 nence could escape being known to contemporaries and handed 
 down to posterity. Yet this will not appear so strange when 
 we come to consider how little is the acquaintance most of us 
 have with the details that make up the biography of the most 
 conspicuous living men of letters. How many of the admirers 
 of Tennyson, for instance, who for thirty years has occupied the 
 foremost place in English literature, could give any but vague 
 and fragmentary particulars of his personal history ? 
 
 But however it may be at present, obviously the only cer- 
 tain way for a man of the past to make sure that his acts 
 would be perpetuated was for him to write an account of them 
 himself. Simple as the expedient may appear, it took ages to 
 discover it. Antiquity seems to have known nothing of auto- 
 biography, strictly so called. In works like the Commentaries 
 of Caesar, the personal interest belonging to the man is entirely 
 swallowed up in the more absorbing interest of the events he 
 describes. The former is, irrdeed, so subordinate to the latter 
 that it can scarcely be said to exist at all. In the genuine auto- 
 biography the man himself must be the center about which 
 everything else revolves ; and events that take place in his time 
 are described only as they impart additional interest to his own 
 words or deeds. The practice is now so common that it seems to 
 us as if it must always have existed. Yet the work of which a 
 slight account is to be given here, is perhaps one of the earliest 
 of its kind known to literary history. 
 
 Among the chronicles and memorials of the Middle Ages, 
 pubhshed under the direction of the Master of the Eolls, are 
 several volumes of a scholar of the twelfth century, famous to 
 some extent in his day, but now known by name only to few, 
 and cared for by fewer still. Of his various writings the one 
 that has for us any special interest here is that which goes under 
 the title Be Rebus a Se Gestis. It has unfortunately only been 
 
1878.] A Scholar of the Twelfth Century. 719 
 
 preserved in part. Though the stoiy is told in the third per- 
 son, it is a genuine autobiography ; and the work has even 
 more interest than usually pertains to such productions. This 
 is partly due to the fact that it belongs to a class of writings 
 uncommon in that age, and having in consequence the attrac- 
 tion of rarity. But in addition, the excessive vanity of its author 
 imparts that peculiar fascination which all individual charac- 
 teristics, whether good or bad, exercise when exhibited in the 
 full perfection of their greatness or their monstrosity. More- 
 over, the incidents and details interwoven with the personal 
 narrative give frequently a vivid picture of contemporary life, 
 of which from regular histories we should catch only the 
 vaguest outlines. To some it may be of interest to get even a 
 faint idea of a man, especially from his own point of view, who 
 in his time was far from being an insignificant personage in the 
 eyes of those with whom he came into contact, and in his own 
 eyes was about the most important personage of his age. Full 
 of egregious vanity, full of distorted facts, full of violent invec- 
 tive his statements are. But the very qualities that lower to a 
 certain extent our estimation of the writer, have also the effect 
 of imparting additional interest to what he wrote. For the 
 accuracy of what he says he alone is responsible ; our duty is 
 done when we set forth in another tongue and with far less 
 detail some of the incidents which he records. 
 
 Gerald de Barri was born in the castle of Manorbeer, in South- 
 western "Wales, about three miles from the town of Pembroke. 
 The time of his birth is uncertain. It is, indeed, entirely a 
 matter of inference, from declarations made by himself in his 
 writings, as to his age in particular years. This, it might seem, 
 would furnish information sufficiently satisfactory. Unfor- 
 tunately it is not so. For in all his statements in regard to 
 everybody and everything, Gerald de Barri invariably exhib- 
 ited a generous disdain for mere dates and figures, which have 
 made many of his assertions the despair of editors who have 
 fettered themselves with frivolous habits of accuracy. The year 
 of his birth, however, must have been in the neighborhood of 
 1147. Both on the spear and the spindle side he was of high 
 descent. His father, William de Barri, was an important mem- 
 ber of the Norman nobility. His mother belonged to one of 
 
720 A Scholar of the Twelfth Century. [Nov., 
 
 the most powerful Welsh families. His grandmother, the then 
 somewhat celebrated, or at least notorious Nesta, was the 
 daughter of the prince of South Wales, and before her mar- 
 riage to Gerald de Windsor, the constable of Pembroke, had 
 been the mistress of Henry I. of England : and there is unfor- 
 tunately pretty conclusive evidence that she did not limit her 
 favors either to her royal lover or to her husband. But in 
 those times, and especially among the Welsh, the marriage 
 bond pressed lightly. Eank, in particular, had privileges of 
 its own in this respect, as well as in nearly every other. Nesta 
 was the mistress of a king in days when the immorality of 
 the act was lost in the grandeur of the eminence to which she 
 had attained ; and a portion of her glory shone by a reflected 
 light upon her descendants, both legitimate and illegitimate. 
 Certainly as regards this particular grandson, of whom we are 
 speaking, his relationship with the highest nobility of his native 
 country was the source of much both of the success and of the 
 failure of his life. 
 
 Gerald de Barri is known to modern historians and students 
 almost exclusively by the name of Giraldus Cambrensis (Gerald 
 the Welshman), in accordance with the then common custom 
 of Latinizing proper names. This practice, suitable enough 
 and even necessary in an age when every educated man wrote 
 and spoke Latin, is in a measure preserved for us still in the 
 triennial catalogues of our colleges — there maintaining a linger- 
 ing existence and furnishing a grotesque exhibition of the 
 survival of the unlit. 
 
 He was the youngest of four sons by his father's second wife. 
 His brothers early manifested the fighting tastes of the race to 
 which they belonged ; but he was different. In their childish 
 games they designed towers and castles and fortified towns, 
 while he devoted himself entirely to the erection of churches 
 and monasteries. This peculiarity attracted the attention of his 
 father, who used jestingly in consequence to call the boy his 
 bishop. In numerous other ways did his preference for an 
 ecclesiastical life, his trust in a divine power, manifest itself in 
 his early years. Once while still a child, when the place was 
 threatened with attack and the men on every side were run- 
 ning to arms, and the non-combatants seeking for shelter, he 
 
1878.] A Scholar of the Twelfth Century. 721 
 
 asked to be carried to the church, thereby implying, as he 
 expresses it, that greater security could be found in the house 
 of God than in a town filled with soldiers, and fortified by 
 towers and walls. This feeling, he tells us, he kept through all 
 his life. Yet it may be doubted if the difference between him- 
 self and his brothers, who chose the profession of arms, was 
 not more external than real. Certainly that quiet and repose 
 which is deemed to be so peculiar a characteristic of the reli- 
 gion of Christ, it was never his lot to experience. If in heart 
 he belonged to the church, it was to the church militant. His 
 life, so far as we know about it, was a stormy one, and it was 
 more often stormy from choice than from necessity. The race 
 from which he sprang, both on his father's and mother's side, 
 was not of the kind to give to the boy feelings of long-sufier- 
 ing, patience, meekness, and the charity that endureth all 
 things. He doubtless longed after a fashion for the reign of 
 peace and good-will upon the earth ; but it is doubtful if he 
 would not have been grievously put out if it had actually 
 come in his time : it is certain that like very many others who 
 offer similar petitions, he did not care for its coming until all 
 those to whom he had a special aversion had met with what he 
 conceived to be their just deserts. It was never his fault, 
 indeed, if his enemies did not receive their due. Throughout 
 his whole career, the man, whether layman or ecclesiastic, who 
 smote him on one cheek, was pretty certain to receive blows in 
 return upon both of his own. 
 
 As the tastes of his brothers were exclusively military, it 
 was natural that the young Giraldus, who consorted with them 
 daily, should be influenced by their preferences. His studies 
 in consequence began to suff'er. But from the neglect of these 
 he was recalled by the admonition of his uncle, the bishop of 
 St. David's. The admonition was made still more effective by 
 suggestive remarks of two of the bishop's chaplains. One of 
 them compared for him the Latin adjective for "rough," 
 " uncultured," durus, and the other the word for " stupid,"5<«Z<its. 
 There was a personal application about this method of instruction 
 that did not escape the boy's attention. At any rate it effected 
 its purpose, for it stimulated him to renewed exertions, and he 
 at once devoted himself to his books with great zeal. He soon 
 
722 A Scholar of the Twelfth Century. [Nov., 
 
 surpassed, he tells us, his companions, and having exhausted 
 all that Wales had to furnish in the shape of teaching, which 
 could not have been much, he made three several journeys to 
 Paris for the sake of further prosecuting his studies. There he 
 remained several years. We have his assurances that while 
 there he came in time to equal the best of his instructors. 
 More than that he himself gave lessons in the studies of the 
 Trivium — grammar, logic, and rhetoric — and in the last-named 
 especially distinguished himself. Though these are the words 
 of a man whose admiration for himself never flagged, whose 
 vanity was of a fairly colossal type, it is not unlikely to have 
 been true. All scholars who have examined the works of 
 Giraldus agree that he must have been a hard student, and that 
 his acquaintance, in particular, with the Latin classics and with 
 the Christian fathers was of the most minute and extensive 
 nature. It is much harder to believe his further assertion that 
 he was selected as a sort of representative good boy, that he 
 was invariably pointed out by his teachers as the example for 
 the others to follow. What he tells us on this point may be 
 true ; but if so, the implication as to the amiable character of 
 the students fully bears out the stories in regard to them that 
 have come down from somewhat unfriendly sources. 
 
 In 1172, Giraldus came back from Paris full of a zeal for 
 religion, or at any rate for ecclesiasticism, which it is certainly 
 the exception to find in these days in those who have made 
 that city their place of study. The first thing that struck his 
 eye on his return to his native country was that the dues of 
 the church were not fully collected. Owing to the carelessness 
 of the ecclesiastical authorities throughout the whole of the 
 diocese of St. David's, the tithes of wool and cheese were not 
 paid. Here was an opportunity for enthusiasm to displaj^ 
 itself efficiently and serviceably. The bishop of St. David's was 
 subordinate to the Archbishop of Canterbury. Giraldus 
 accordingly sought out Eichard, who had succeeded Becket 
 in the primacy, and in addition was papal legate. To him he 
 represented the condition of affairs. The primate sympathized 
 fully with zeal of this sort, and the young reformer was sent as 
 commissioner into Wales with power to correct these and 
 similar abuses. It was not a pleasant, nor was it altogether a 
 
1878.] A Scholar of (he Twelfth Century. 723 
 
 safe duty that he had chosen for himself. The population 
 was rude and wild, and the prevalent lawlessness was held in 
 little check by any religious restraint. Indeed, the state of 
 society then existing in Wales, as depicted by Giraldus and 
 his contemporaries, has little about it that is romantic, little 
 that can afford gratification to the lover of mediajvalism. 
 The nobility were constantly engaged in hostilities among 
 themselves, when not engaged in hostilities with England; and 
 all the native inhabitants, without distinction of rank, seem 
 to have lived in general a life of laziness and robbery, the 
 tedium of which was at occasional intervals judiciously relieved 
 by murder. In their mountain fortresses neither the nominal 
 Christianity which they had professed for nearly a thousand 
 years, nor the nominal civilization which they had possessed 
 since the Roman occupation, had ever made any progress worth 
 mentioning. Under an external coating of culture and religion 
 they were still barbarous at heart. Outward conformity there 
 was to the rites of the church, and sometimes, indeed, devotion 
 to what they fancied to be their faith, and still more often a 
 superstitious dread of its penalties. But all the personal 
 details given of that time show that Christianity had little 
 controlling influence over the lives of the men who were sup- 
 posed to be under its sway. Walter Mapes, in a little notice of 
 what he calls the undiscerning devotion of the Welsh, gives as 
 an illustration an account of one of this race, which was 
 told him by William de Braose, a noted military leader in the 
 days of the three first Angevin kings. "I had with me," said 
 this Norman baron, " a certain Welshman of high rank, who 
 every night rose from his bed at the first crowing of the cock, 
 and stretching himself out on the bare ground perfectly naked, 
 spent the time till daybreak in prayer ; and in general he so 
 conducted himself that on seeing him one would fancy him 
 more than mortal, and indeed but little lower than the angels. 
 Whereas in military enterprises he was not only reckless of his 
 own life, but eager to take the life of others; his hands were 
 swift to the shedding of blood ; and so exultant was he in the 
 perpetration of manslaughter or any other crime that one 
 would deem him given over entirely to the devil."* Mapes 
 * De Nugis GuriaUum, Diatinctio, ii, cap. viii. 
 
724 A Scholar of the Twelfth Century. [Nov., 
 
 remarks in reference to this, that among the Welsh, the fear of 
 the Lord was rarely according to knowledge. Yet it may be 
 doubted whether this disposition to condone indulgence in evil 
 by unusual attention to ceremonial rites and observances was so 
 much the characteristic of that race as it was of that time. 
 Giraldus himself in a reference to* the very author of this story, 
 William de Braose, seems to look upon such mere external 
 devotion as a fair offset to the commission of a great deal of 
 wrong-doing. He is speaking of the alleged practice of usurp- 
 ing the property of the church in which Henry II. was a chief 
 offender. In so doing he was naturally imitated by his fol- 
 lowers, and among these William de Braose was in this respect 
 especially conspicuous. But Giraldus adds apologetically that 
 no human being is perfect ; that to have knowledge in all 
 things and to offend in none belongs to God rather than man ; 
 and as in a measure to compound for his robbery of the church 
 he mentions not only this noble's general practice of devotion, 
 but his habit in his conversation of putting the name of his 
 Maker first. Moreover his sentences were constantly garnished 
 with such expressions as these : " In the name of the Lord let 
 this be done ;" With God's will let it be done ;" " If it please 
 God," or " H God consent," or " By the grace of God it shall be 
 so." His letters were also loaded down with such expressions 
 to the great weariness of the scribes who wrote for him and of 
 the men who heard them read. If in journeying he passed a 
 church or a cross, he immediately broke off his talk, no matter 
 with whom it was, and betook himself to prayers ; and when 
 these were finished resumed the interrupted conversation. It 
 is, of course, possible that in all this he may have been sincere, 
 that he was not really the sanctimonious scoundrel and hypo- 
 crite that he appears to be from this account, especially when 
 taken in connection with some of his deeds. Certain it is that 
 he who tells this of him not only beheved in the man, but was 
 content to take this wretched lip-service as proof of real sin- 
 cerity and piety. 
 
 Among such a people Giraldus now started out to begin a 
 work of reform. It was obviously no easy task. In their 
 insubordination and disposition to resist, the lower classes had, 
 * Itinerarium GambricB, Lib. 1, Cap. 2. 
 
1878.] A Scholar of the Twelfth Century. nb 
 
 moreover, the countenance of many of the nobility who were 
 high in authority. In fact at his very first coming, in his 
 capacity of commissioner, he was forced into a contest which 
 marks clearly the peculiar difficulties that lay in the way of 
 practically enforcing those rights which theoretically no one 
 thought of denying. The sheriff of Pembrokeshire, "William 
 Karquist, looked with a good deal of disdain on the attempt 
 of this young man to revive in its full rigor the discipline of 
 the church. To show his contempt for the new officer, imme- 
 diately upon the arrival of the latter at Pembroke, he seized 
 eight yoke of oxen from the priory itself and shut them up in 
 his castle. It was a wanton and unprovoked insult, which, 
 however, in that barbarous age and amid that turbulent people 
 and arrogant soldiery would have been borne by most men 
 with nothing beyond ineffectual remonstrances. But remon- 
 strances were the last thing that Giraldus ever thought of 
 resorting to, provided there was any actually aggressive course 
 that could be followed. He immediately assumed the offensive. 
 Three times the commissioner demanded the return of the 
 property. Three times his messengers were sent back empty- 
 handed. Then Giraldus distinctly informed the sheriff that 
 unless the cattle were restored, sentence of excommunication 
 would be immediately pronounced upon him. It did not enter 
 the mind of the haughty soldier that this young ecclesiastic 
 would dare to launch the thunders of the church against the 
 high sheriff of the county, the direct representative of the 
 king — least of all for carrying off eight yokes of oxen, which 
 he doubtless looked upon as one of the flimsiest of peccadilloes, 
 if it could be termed a peccadillo at all. His knowledge of 
 human nature was, however, to receive a speedy augmentation. 
 On his refusal to make restitution, notice was sent him tfiat 
 when he heard all the bells of the monastery sounded at triple 
 intervals he might have the certain assurance that the decree 
 of excommunication was in the act of being carried into effect 
 It was no empty threat. No sooner had his messenger returned, 
 than in presence of all the monks of the convent, and of many 
 of the neighboring clergy who had assembled to witness the 
 ceremony, the commissioner according to the solemn form then 
 in use, and with lighted candles, pronounced upon the refrac- 
 
726 A Scholar of the Twelfth Century. [Nov., 
 
 tor^' noble the decree which shut him out from the hope of 
 heaven and from the communion of the saints on earth ; and at 
 the same time ordered all the bells to be sounded at once, both 
 for the confirmation of the sentence and for the announcement 
 of what had been done. To be cut off from the eternal com- 
 munion of the saints, at least of the kind with whom he came 
 into personal contact in Wales, would probably have seemed 
 no great hardship to the overbearing soldier. But the decree 
 of excommunication involved consequences of a temporal 
 kind which he was not prepared to meet. On the very next 
 day, this insolent and iniquitous thief, as Giraldus vigorously 
 terms the high sheriff of the county, hastened to make restitu- 
 tion and procure pardon ; and after having received a flogging, 
 the sentence was graciously taken off. 
 
 It is pretty certain that it was his birth more than his ofiice 
 that enabled Giraldus to venture safely upon these high- 
 handed proceedings. The annals of the middle ages show 
 conclusively that the habit of the priest was often ineffectual 
 to save him from ill-treatment, if not even from something far 
 worse, at the hands of a reckless and licentious nobility and 
 soldiery. But to attack an ecclesiastic who was not only the 
 son of a Norman baron, but was allied by blood to the men of 
 highest rank in his native country, involved possibilities of sec- 
 ular retribution, which he who cared little for ecclesiastical 
 penalties could not afford to overlook. At the same time the 
 action of Giraldus was in accordance with a nature which was 
 always regardless of consequences. It need hardly be said 
 that he was successful in his mission. A man who had so 
 little hesitation in enforcing the decrees of the church against 
 those high in authority was not likely to meet with much 
 resistance from the common people. It is accordingly no mat- 
 ter of surprise that the Welsh were "persuaded" with little 
 difficulty to pay their tithes. Methods of persuasion like 
 these have been so often and so effectually tried in both 
 spiritual and secular matters that they need here nothing more 
 than a passing allusion. One community, however, stood out 
 against the new commissioner. These were the Flemings, who 
 in 1105 had been planted in the territory of Eoss, and who on 
 account of their loyalty to the crown and their hostility to the 
 
1S78.] A Scholar of the Twelfth Century. 727 
 
 native inhabitants, enjoyed the personal favor and were largely 
 under the personal protection of the reigning king. With 
 these he could do nothing. For in spite of his natural hardi- 
 hood, not to say audacity, Giraldus could not venture to enter 
 into a contest with Henry II. in which he was pretty certain to 
 gain the cross of martyrdom without its crown. So the Flem- 
 ings successfully defied the commissioner. But he tells us 
 with very evident satisfaction of the punishment that fell sub- 
 sequently to their lot after the death of Henry. The Welsh 
 had not looked with favor upon being compelled to sustain the 
 cause of religion while their Flemish neighbors contributed 
 nothing. So to put the support of the gospel upon a more 
 equable basis, they organized a plundering expedition, ravaged 
 the district of Eoss, and carried away all the wool-bearing 
 sheep. So, says our author, the Flemings had to give to an 
 impious soldiery what they were not willing to give to the 
 priest. He seems indeed to have no feelings of reprobation for 
 this marauding foray. If not actually proper in itself, it was 
 in his eyes an illustration certainly of how the wrath of man 
 is made to praise the Lord. 
 
 But it was not alone with a fierce and godless soldiery 
 that the commissioner came into conflict. The clergy of Wales 
 could in many respects hardly be called ornaments to the faitli. 
 In one point in particular, their discipline was of the laxest 
 kind. The effort to enforce celibacy in the English church 
 had been as yet far from successful ; but in Wales much less 
 progress had been made. The new commissioner had to their 
 full extent all the dreadful earnestness and reckless enthusi- 
 asm of youth, its devotion to the impracticable, its aspirations 
 for the impossible. He cared little for consequences. His 
 zeal was tempered by no considerations of prudence, by no 
 disposition to wink at offences which would involve personal 
 trouble or perhaps personal danger to correct. Coming to 
 Brecknock he found the archdeacon of the district living 
 publicly with a woman in his house. It was doubtless his 
 wife. But no such respectable term as that is applied to her 
 by Giraldus: concubine is the only title he has to give. This 
 violation of the canons of the church by one so high in posi- 
 tion could not be overlooked. He first admonished the vet- 
 
728 A Scholar of the Twelfth Century. [Nov., 
 
 eran offender earnestly. Admonition was of no avail. Then 
 he commanded him on the authority of the archbishop of Can- 
 terbury to put away from him the woman, and thereafter set a 
 better example to the flock over which he had been called to 
 preside. Not only did the archdeacon refuse, but he was fool- 
 ish and presumptuous enough, says the writer, to utter base 
 and contemptuous words against the man who in this matter 
 represented the primate of England and the legate of the pope. 
 It may be remarked here in passing, that as a general rule the 
 persons with whom Giraldus came into conflict were, according 
 to his account, very apt to be either imbecile or impudent, and 
 usually both. The reader of his autobiography is always 
 impressed with the existence of the feeling on the part of the 
 author that he has absorbed so much of virtue and sense, that 
 very little has been left for anybody else, and none at all for 
 his opponents. But if Giraldus was not a very lovable charac- 
 ter, he was far from being an insipid one. Above all he had 
 the courage of his convictions. Older men might have hesi- 
 tated about taking extreme measures against one so high in 
 position. Fairer-minded men might have doubted the policy 
 or even the justice of attempting to enforce in a single case 
 a canon which however accepted by the rest of the Catholic 
 world was universally disregarded in that country in which the 
 offender had his home. None of these considerations, how- 
 ever, weighed with the young soldier of the church. He 
 promptly suspended the refractory archdeacon, and placed the 
 ai'chdiaconate in the hands of the primate. It is perfectly fair 
 to assume that in this proceeding Giraldus acted entirely from 
 convictions of duty. But it was followed by a reward which 
 rarely falls to the lot of acts done with any such singleness of 
 purpose. On his return from his embassy the vacant archdea- 
 conship was conferred upon him who had vacated it. 
 
 It is a suggestive commentary upon this attempt to enforce 
 celibacy that Giraldus expressly informs us that other reve- 
 nues were assigned to the archdeacon, and unquestionably as a 
 compensation for the loss of his place. Nothing, indeed, seems 
 to have resulted from this proceeding that tended to change 
 the manners of the clergy in this particular. Of this the 
 author himself indirectly furnishes proof. More than twenty 
 
1878.] A Scholar of tU Twelfth Century. 729 
 
 years after this event took place, he wrote an acco-unt of 
 Wales and the Welsh, under the title of Descnptio Cambrice. 
 In this he not only bears witness to the prevalence of marriage 
 among the clergy, but informs us that sons obtained churches 
 by succession after their fathers, thus by this method of inheri- 
 tance possessing and polluting the sanctuary of God. He adds, 
 moreover, that if by any chance a prelate presumed to appoint 
 any one else than the heir to the holder of the benefice, the 
 whole family of the claimant whose rights had not been con- 
 sidered would seek revenge both upon the person selected to 
 fill the living and the one selecting him.* In another workf 
 in which he refers to this same subject, he tells us that it was 
 the custom for the sons of clergymen to marry the daughters 
 of their fellow-clergymen, in order, doubtless, to make the 
 right to the succession stronger. It looks, indeed, as if the 
 priesthood in Wales had begun to assume almost the character 
 of a caste. This practice of the sons succeeding, as Giraldus 
 expresses it, to the vices and the benefices of their fathers pre- 
 vailed not only in the cathedral seats, but throughout the 
 whole of Wales. The wife designated as focaria (' housekeeper'), 
 was to be found everywhere. Whatever may be thought of an 
 ecclesiastical canon which makes immoral what is moral, the 
 spectacle of priests living in open violation of the decrees of 
 the church, must have had a most injurious effect upon the 
 habits and character of the laity ; and even Giraldus himself in 
 another one of his works, half-approvingly quotes an opinion 
 uttered by his master, Peter Manducator, in the presence of 
 his scholars, that in no particular had the old enemy so effect- 
 ually overreached the church of God as by the imposition of 
 the vow of celibacy.:]: But whether due to the devil or not, so 
 long as the church adopted it, there was no way for an ecclesi- 
 astic honestly to escape from it No sadder situation for many 
 men can well be conceived. No sadder situation, indeed, for a 
 church, than that in which religion had made morality impos- 
 sible. 
 
 In his new position as archdeacon, Giraldus took care to 
 
 * Bescriptio Cambrim, Liber ii., cap. v. 
 
 f De Ja/re et Statu Menevensis Eccleswe, Distinotio 1. 
 
 X Genmna Ecclesiastica, Distinotio ii., cap. 6. 
 
730 A Scholar of the Twelfth Century. [Nov., 
 
 have his authority felt. He was not one disposed to waive the 
 slightest jot or tittle of the rights that sanctions, civil or eccle- 
 siastical, gave him. He was speedily plunged into a sea of 
 troubles, which he may have affected to deplore before others, 
 but for which he must for all that have felt satisfaction in his 
 inmost soul. Some of the incidents that took place he tells; 
 some are worth repeating as throwing light upon practices then 
 prevalent. One of the first abuses he had to put a stop to was 
 the following. At the eastern extremity of the diocese of St. 
 David's, on the very border of England, was the church of 
 Hay. There he found that a certain knight, a brother of the 
 incumbent of the benefice, was in the habit of dividing with 
 the priest not merely the tithes of the church and its regular 
 revenues, but the very gifts of the altar. To this practice he 
 put an end, but not without difficulty and even danger. 
 Indeed, this seems to be no solitiiry instance; for in his volume 
 giving an account of Wales, he declares that there were almost 
 as many sharers in the revenues of the church as there were 
 leading men in the parish. The coming of an archdeacon who 
 clearly had no intention of winking at old abuses, naturally 
 excited the hostility of every one, lay or clerical, who was inter- 
 ested in the continuance of any particular perversion of trust, 
 which had been so long practised that it had lost every savor 
 of iniquity it may have originally had, even if it had not by 
 process of time taken on somethiug of the odor of sanctity. 
 Giraldus gives an account of one of his adventures while visit- 
 ing his diaconate, which is of itself sufficient to show that the 
 ecclesiastics amid this rudest and most turbulent people of that 
 rude and turbulent time, needed weapons more convincing than 
 the sword of the spirit. He set out to inspect the remote district 
 of the diocese of St. David's, between the Wye and the Sev- 
 ern. On the way two clergymen met him. They were mes- 
 sengers on the part of the dean and chapter of the border 
 churches, and came to inform him that he must not visit these 
 churches in his own person, but through official commission- 
 ers, especially through the dean. Such had been the practice 
 of his predecessors, and they warned him to beware of doing 
 what was to be done save in the manner in which it had been 
 done. They probably could not have chosen a more effectual 
 
1878.] A Scholar of the Twelfth Century. 731 
 
 way to confirm the archdeacon in his purpose of examining the 
 condition of that part of the diocese. Nothing is more signally 
 characteristic of the true reformer in all ages than his indisposi- 
 tion to comply with any advice, whether good or bad in itself, 
 whether well or ill meant, the effect of which would have a 
 tendency to cause things to be done peaceably. Giraldus was 
 full to the brim of this spirit. He was by nature one of those 
 men who, not content with simply having their own way, 
 must have their own way in their own way. In this 
 instance, moreover, he must have been conscious that in the 
 real interests of the church it was his duty to resist the claim 
 that had been put forward. His answer was short and decided. 
 He had no intention, he told the messengers, to imitate the 
 slackness or laziness of his predecessors, if slackness or laziness 
 there had been. On the contrary, he purposed to perform the 
 duties and exercise the powers of his office to their full extent. 
 Then on behalf of all the clergy and the people and the nobil- 
 ity of that district the messengers solemnly prohibited his com- 
 ing. At the same time they lifted up the cross, in the manner 
 of that nation, as a warning that he should not venture farther. 
 But the cross in the way of denunciation had been too familiar 
 an implement in the hands of Giraldus himself to occasion him 
 any trouble or anxiety. He kept on his journey. At the 
 entrance of a certain great forest, he was met by still another 
 delegation. Spiritual terrors had failed ; temporal ones were 
 now to be tried. He was informed that enmity up to the very 
 point of death had existed between his family and certain of 
 the nobility of that district. This hostility had long been quiet, 
 had indeed been laid to sleep. But the report of his coming 
 had been sufficient to rouse it into new life. Desperate men 
 among the enemies of his family were certain to lie armed to 
 the teeth, in ambuscade, for him in the woody region in which 
 he was about to enter, and would certainly be satisfied with 
 nothing short of his death. Again and again reports of this 
 kind reached him as he moved through the forest. His whole 
 retinue were in a state of terror. But there was one man 
 whose courage never flinched. It was the archdeacon. This 
 we may be said to know at first hand, for he tells us so him- 
 self. But indeed there is no need of doubting it. Courage was 
 
732 A Scholar of the Twelfth Century. [Nov., 
 
 characteristic of the race to which he belonged — courage so 
 desperate as to be often senseless and sometimes to be sublime, 
 la many incidents of his career Giraldus showed that he was 
 not excessively troubled by timidity of any kind. On this par- 
 ticular occasion he acted in a lofty way, corresponding to his 
 own lofty account of it, and pressed on as if hearing nothing, 
 or inwardly despising what he heard. He had foreseen and 
 foresaid, he tells us, that something of this kind would be 
 framed or feigned — to adopt for once the alliteration which is 
 so marked a characteristic of our author's Latin style. But he 
 had no intention of allowing the respect and authority belong- 
 ing to his position to be annihilated at the very outset by 
 menaces. On the other hand, his opponents did not confine 
 themselves to threats. The attack, which had been announced 
 so many times, came at last. All the circumstances attending 
 it present, indeed, a curious picture of the method pursued in 
 those wilds of settling disputes in regard to the rights and privi- 
 leges of the church. The archdeacon had traversed the rugged 
 district of Elevein, lying beyond the Wye, and covered thick 
 with forests, and had come near to Melenith, where he purposed 
 to lodge. Here he met the foe. He bad sent before him, as 
 was the custom, a part of his retinue to prepare for the night's 
 entertainment. Suddenly he found them driven back upon 
 the main body by a multitude armed with lances and bows. 
 Not only did the flying fugitives implore him to retrace his 
 steps, but those who were with him. Indeed they upbraided 
 him for not having followed their counsels before; they 
 informed him with painful distinctness how much better it 
 would have been had he taken their advice not to move for- 
 ward. All these well-meant entreaties were contemptuously 
 spurned by their leader. He put himself at the head of his 
 retinue, and commanding them to follow, pressed on to the 
 church. The opposing multitude seems to have given way at 
 his approach ; at least of them he says nothing. But the doors 
 in every dwelling of the town he found closed and locked. 
 The church, however, happened to be open. There he at once 
 took up his quarters, directing the horses to be stabled in 
 the cemetery ; and there he speedily found himself in a state of 
 siege. But Cadwalla, son of Madoc, the prince, who bore 
 
1878.] A Scholar of ihe Twelfth Century. 733 
 
 sway in that district, was allied to him by blood. To him he 
 sent information of his coining, of the repulse his attendants 
 had met, and of the fact that he was shut up and surrounded 
 in the church. His relative at once forwarded him plenty of 
 food for his immediate necessities, and along with it assurances 
 that he would come to his relief in person on the morrow, and 
 that every injury done to the archdeacon would be treated as if 
 it was an injury done to himself. This was all that was 
 needed. The siege was incontinently raised, and six or seven 
 clergymen, one after the other, sought pardon from their eccle- 
 siastical superior. They gained it, but not without making 
 full satisfaction for their disobedience and the indignity they 
 had sougbt to put upon him. 
 
 But though Giraldus had succeeded in causing his authority 
 to be respected in this remote district, he was far from being 
 out of his troubles. Indeed that point he never reached. He 
 was a type of the war-horse of scripture. He snuffed the bat- 
 tle afar off. The prospect of a fight not only had no terrors for 
 him, it rather filled his soul with secret pleasure. He had 
 devoted himself to an ecclesiastical profession and to scholastic 
 pursuits; but nature was • constantly proving too strong for 
 education. He was born for the battle and the storm ; and 
 nowhere did he enjoy himself more than in the troublous 
 scenes in which he was called upon to act, and which he usu- 
 ally contrived to create, if they did not previously exist. The 
 next event in which he bore a part gives a clearer conception of 
 the man than would pages of description. The incident is told 
 by himself with a good deal of fullness, and his account of it 
 reads much like that of a battle. 
 
 St. David's was without a bishop, for the incumbent had died 
 in May, 1176, and no successor had as yet been appointed. 
 Encroachments on the diocese, if any, could meet with resist- 
 ance only from the archdeacons, of whom there were and still 
 are four. It so happened at this time that one of these was 
 fully adequate to encounter any attack that was likely to be 
 made. 
 
 Giraldus had returned from his expedition in which he had 
 reduced to subjection the refractory clergy, and was comfortably 
 resting after his labors at his home in Llanddewi. He had not, 
 
 VOL. I. 47 
 
734 A Scholar of the Twelfth Century. [Nov., 
 
 however, been there more than three or four days when messen- 
 gers came to him in hot haste from the very men who had be- 
 fore been so determined that he should not exercise over them 
 the right of visitation. They now besought him to come back. 
 For the territory of the diocese was threatened. Upon the 
 border of it and of the adjoining diocese of St. Asaph stood the 
 church of Keri just a little south of the Severn river. From 
 time immemorial it had been under the jurisdiction of the 
 bishop of St. David's. Thither, however, the bishop of St. Asaph 
 had signified his intention of going on the next Sunday for the 
 purpose of dedicating the church. Apparently its priest was 
 in his interest. This would be the entering wedge for the 
 acquisition of the whole district. Nothing that the local clergy 
 could do had been of any avail : indeed it is clear that they 
 were divided in feeling. An archdeacon was the only one who 
 could venture to cope successfully with one so high in authority 
 as a bishop. The adherents of St. David's naturally turned to 
 their own archdeacon whose acquaintance they had recently 
 made, reluctantly it is true, but very fully. They had just had 
 an opportunity to test his character and were perfectly satisfied 
 with the result. Griraldus was wearied with his previous jour- 
 ney. But the danger to the diocese was too great to allow time 
 for rest; for the delegates assured him that it was the ultimate 
 intention of the bishop of St. Asaph to take possession of the 
 whole region as far as the Wye. He resolved, in consequence, to 
 start at once. All dissuaded him from the expedition, and 
 especially those who had been with him on the previous one. 
 These, indeed, absolutely refused to go. It was not the toil 
 of the journey, Griraldus tells us, that prompted tliem to take 
 this course, but fear. He, as usual, rose superior to any such 
 considerations. On the next day after the coming of the mes- 
 sengers he started, taking with him those whom he had pre- 
 vailed upon to go along. He forded the Wye and passing 
 through the woody districts of Elevein, spent the night in the 
 confines of Melenith. The following day was Saturday. Early 
 in the morning he rose and took measui'cs for the coming con- 
 flict. After the celebration of the mass he sent messengers 
 around the country to the clergy ordering them to assemble 
 and follow him. He dispatched messengers also to the nobility, 
 
1878.] A Scholar of the Twelfth Century. 735 
 
 asking tbem to furnish him with courageous men from among 
 their retainers, to assist him if there were need, and to defend 
 the rights of St. David's; inasmuch as the bishop of St. Asaph 
 was reported to be coming with an armed band. Thus having 
 fortified himself both on the spiritual and the secular side, he 
 moved in the night to the immediate neighborhood of Keri. 
 
 Early on the following Sunday morning the archdeacon pre- 
 sented himself at the church. Here he met his first difficulty. 
 The keys of the building were not to be found. Two of the 
 clergy connected with the churcli had hidden them, and bad 
 then gone off to join the bishop of St. Asaph. After diHgent 
 search, however, the missing keys were discovered and the 
 archdeacon entered in triumph. The bells were immediately 
 rung to signify that he had taken formal possession ; and at 
 the same time he began the celebration of the mass. In the 
 midst of it came the priest of the church along with messengers 
 from the bishop ; these brought an order that the building 
 should be immediately made ready for dedication. There was 
 evidently no thought on the part of the prelate that his com- 
 mands would be disregarded or that even the slightest opposi- 
 tion would be attempted. The archdeacon listened to the sum- 
 mons, but went on to complete the celebration of the mass. 
 When this was finished he sent certain of his own clergy on 
 whose discretion he relied, along with the rural dean to meet 
 the bishop and to assure him, if he came in peace and as a friend 
 and neighbor, that he should be happy to receive him with all 
 respect and honor ; but in no other way save as a friend and 
 neighbor must he think of approaching. Great was the aston- 
 ishment of the bishop at finding the archdeacon back again in 
 this rugged district which he had just left; but he had gone 
 too far in the undertaking to abandon it at that point. Giraldus 
 and he had been fellow-students at Paris, and the former, whose 
 vocabulary never lacked terms of vigorous vituperation, assures 
 us that the latter was a very supercilious and presumptuous 
 man, and indeed in telling the story of this controversy applies 
 to him a number of similar adjectives which could hardly have 
 been inspired by any tender reminiscences of their common 
 school life. To the archdeacon's message the bishop returned 
 the reply that he was not coming as a neighbor and a guest. 
 
736 A Scholar of the Twelfth Century. [Nov., 
 
 but for the purpose of dedicating the church of Keri, and 
 thereby discharging his episcopal duty within his own diocese. 
 There was clearly to be no compromise, and no delay in the 
 opening of hostilities. The strategic preparations of Griraldus 
 at once came into use. A prohibition was instantly issued by 
 the rural dean and his attendant clergy forbidding the bishop 
 of St. Asaph to approach with this object in view and enjoining 
 upon him that he should not presume to dedicate a church of 
 another diocese to which he had not been called or invited. 
 Appeal was also made to the pope. Threats of this kind 
 might have influence upon the laity, but Griraldus was too 
 much in the habit of wielding ecclesiastical thunderbolts, and 
 too well acquainted with their nature and force to expect them 
 to have much effect upon one of his own order. He had wisely 
 taken care to provide certain of his messengers with fast horses 
 with orders to announce to him at the earliest moment the re- 
 sult of the conference. No sooner had he learned that the 
 bishop was approaching than he proceeded to carry into effect 
 the operations already planned. A certain number of his party 
 were left in the church to defend it, and to keep the doors 
 fastened, while the archdeacon himself at the head of the main 
 body of the clergy marched out to encounter the enemy. They 
 met at the entrance of the church yard; and the skirmishing at 
 once began. The bishop commanded the archdeacon to de- 
 part at once and leave to his disposal the edifice and its sur- 
 roundings, otherwise he should be under the necessity of ex- 
 communicating him, though in consequence of their old 
 companionship in study at Paris, he was reluctant to resort to 
 this extremity. The archdeacon in reply was just as affection- 
 ate in referring to the past, but likewise just as determined in 
 regard to the future. For the sake of their ancient companion- 
 ship and friendship, he begged the bishop to depart in peace, 
 and advised him not to be putting his sickle in a portion of the 
 spiritual harvest, which it was not his business to reap. To 
 this the only answer vouchsafed by the bishop was the reading 
 of the commission from the archbishop of Canterbury, confirm- 
 ing him bishop over the diocese of St. Asaph and excommuni- 
 cating all who illegally resisted his authority. Nor was he 
 content with this. He declared that the church of Keri, and 
 
1878.] A Scholar of the Twelfth Century. 737 
 
 the other churches between the Wye and the Severn belonged 
 to his diocese. In evidence of this he produced an old book 
 which he claimed contained the proof of it and caused it to be 
 read: and on the heels of this he declared that if the arch- 
 deacon did not at once desist from his opposition he would 
 incontinently excommunicate him and all his followers. Little 
 effect did these threats have upon his pugnacious antagonist, 
 who replied that the church of Keri and the others between 
 the Wye and the Severn did not belong to the diocese of St. 
 Asaph, but for three hundred years had been a part of the see of 
 St. David's, and that the words of the primate confirming the 
 authority of the bishop had no reference to them, inasmuch as 
 their action was not illegal. " You can write in your books any- 
 thing you please," he added scornfully, in conclusion, " but if you 
 have a charter giving you this right, with a genuine seal, show 
 it ; and if you do not have one, and attempt to excommunicate 
 me for standing up in defence of my own church, I myself will 
 in turn proceed to pronounce a similar sentence upon you." 
 The idea of an archdeacon venturing to excommunicate his 
 ecclesiastical superior was something that had never occurred 
 to the mind of the bishop ; and to the carnal-minded, if any 
 such were then present, the matchless impudence of the propo- 
 sition must have been an attractive feature of the whole perform- 
 ance, as it subsequently was to the court of Henry II. The 
 bishop began to reason with his audacious opponent. He 
 assured him that it was not lawful for an archdeacon to excom- 
 municate a bishop. But Giraldus was not in the least con- 
 cerned for that. Everything about the whole transaction was 
 illegal, as he viewed it, and he had no intention that his side 
 should suffer from any lack of illegality. "If you are a 
 bishop," said he, "you are, at any rate, no bishop of mine. 
 You have no more power to excommunicate me than I have to 
 excommunicate you. Let the sentence of each have all the 
 effect it can, since on both sides it is pronounced without 
 authority." 
 
 The defiance had been given, and the battle was now joined. 
 The rugged Welsh hills never saw a much queerer proceeding 
 going on under the name of religion than that which immedi- 
 ately followed. The bishop, backing his horse a little way. 
 
738 A Scholar of the Twelfth Century. [Nov., 
 
 quickly jumped down from it, put his mitre on his head, and 
 bearing the crosier in his hand advanced upon foot at the head 
 of his followers in order that greater weight might be given to 
 the sentence he was about to fulminate. But he had to deal 
 with an antagonist who had anticipated every possible situation 
 that might arise. At once, at the command of the archdeacon 
 a majestic body of priests, clothed in white stoles and surplices 
 and the other gorgeous vestments of their order, came march- 
 ing from the church in solemn procession with lighted candles, 
 and with the cross uplifted in front. The reading of that old 
 book had allowed time for all these preparations to be made. 
 Giraldus takes occasion to tell us that he knew the nature of 
 his opponent ; that he was not only rash and presumptuous, 
 but also garrulous and verbose. If the bishop was rash and 
 presumptuous, it was pretty certain that in the latter quality 
 he had found his equal, if not his master. As he saw this 
 procession moving toward him, he asked what it was, and for 
 what it was coming. " For this purpose," was the lofty answer, 
 " that if you presume to utter sentence of excommunication 
 against us, we in turn shall pronounce sentence of excommuni- 
 cation upon you and your followers." The situation began to 
 look more serious to the bishop than it had done. He judged 
 it best to temporize, and once more made an affecting allusion 
 to their old-time friendship and companionship in study. 
 Touching reminiscences of this kind, however, are of the class 
 of agencies that are always expected to work great wonders, 
 but never do. " On account of the friendship there was once 
 between us," said the bishop, "and of our fellowship in studies, 
 I will spare your person and the persons of those with you ; 
 nor by name will I pronounce sentence upon any one. Only 
 in general terms will I excommunicate those who venture to 
 encroach upon the rights of St. Asaph, and to convert to their 
 own use what belongs to it." But the archdeacon had little 
 disposition to be spared, and no disposition at all to allow 
 any sucli modified course to be taken. He knew that the 
 glittering generalities of the sentence of excommunication 
 would be applied by the rude people of the country with a 
 particularity that would be inconvenient and unpleasant. It 
 was not within the see of St. David's that a foreign bishop was to 
 
1878.] A Scholar of the Twelfth Century. 739 
 
 assume a right to utter decrees against anybody. He pointed 
 to the mountains of the diocese of St. Asaph, not far distant. 
 "If upon those hills," said he, "you were to keep uttering 
 from morning till night a general sentence of excommunication 
 we should not care about it in the least, for in no wise would 
 it concern us. But there is present here a multitude of people. 
 They would not understand it, but would suppose that your 
 sentence, if pronounced here under any form whatever, was 
 pronounced against us. We are unwilling accordingly to have 
 any sentence of any kind given here." There was no escape 
 from this position for the bishop. Either he must be entirely 
 successful or ignominious failure awaited him. No other way 
 seemed open except to press on. So in a loud tone of voice he 
 proceeded to deliver sentence of excommunication upon the 
 enemies of St. Asaph. No sooner had he begun, however, 
 than the archdeacon in a louder voice, and assisted by his 
 followers in the church-yard, set to work to excommunicate 
 all who presumed to rob St. David's of its possessions, or dis- 
 turb it in its rights. For some time the hurling of these spir- 
 itual thunderbolts went on before the assembled multitude. 
 The result might well seem doubtful. If on the one side was 
 the higher ecclesiastical authority, on the other was actual pos- 
 session of the church. The latter fact gave the archdeacon an 
 opportunity he did not fail to improve. Casting his eyes 
 upward he observed the bells. He knew well the effect that 
 the sound of them had upon the rude population of his native 
 country, when it was known that they were rung against them- 
 selves. He commanded them at once to be tolled simultaneously 
 at triple intervals, both for the confusion of his adversaries and 
 the confirmation of bis own sentence. The effect was instan- 
 taneous. The bishop and his followers could stand the voice 
 of man, but not of metal. Immediately mounting their horses, 
 they hurried away, Giraldus tells us, a good deal faster than 
 they came, leaving their sentence of excommunication broken 
 off in the middle. The religious enthusiasm of the multitude 
 that had come together to witness this novel Sunday service was 
 at once inflamed to the highest pitch in defence of the rights 
 of St. David's. They raised a great cry and followed fast upon 
 the track of the bishop and his train, and gave still further 
 
740 A Scholar of the Twelfth Century. [Nov., 
 
 stimulus to the movemeuts of these by hurling after them 
 stones and pieces of earth and wood. These pressing evidences 
 of the popular feeling were hardly needed, for the discomfited 
 ecclesiastic was already making all the haste he could. He 
 hurried to Melenith to seek Cadwalla, the prince previously 
 mentioned, whose consent to this undertaking he had received 
 before venturing upon it. His troubles were not all over, how- 
 ever, after he left the populace behind. It presents a striking 
 picture of the times, that on his way he met a large body of 
 clergymen mounted upon excellent horses, and armed with 
 bows and lances, who were coming to assist in the maintenance 
 of the rights of St. David's. They demanded what had been 
 done at Keri. The bishop, who was far from feeling safe, 
 replied that he had been unwilling to take any measures 
 against the archdeacon, who had been his good friend and 
 companion of old ; and that he was going in peace to Cadwalla, 
 in order to discuss the matter with him. 
 
 The archdeacon was now left master of the field. His first 
 care was to berate the clergy who had gone over to the enemy, 
 and exact from them an oath of fidelity to the diocese of St. 
 David's and its future head. But upon hearing the news that 
 the bishop had gone to seek Cadwalla, he hastened at once to 
 follow in his footsteps. It was as essential that the princes of 
 the land should be made to profess their allegiance as the 
 clergy. In this he was likewise successful. On arriving he 
 took up his quarters in the church near the place where 
 Cadwalla had received the bishop. Eecognizing himself as the 
 victor, he naturally felt amiably disposed toward the human 
 race in general, but especially so toward the particular man 
 whom he had just worsted. He informs us with great gravity 
 and with a kind of swelling consciousness of a lofty elevation of 
 soul on his part, that he sent the bishop choice dishes from his 
 own provisions and some of his very choicest liquor ; and not 
 content with the gift, he accompanied it with language equally 
 choice. Of the latter he gives the purport. Now that he found 
 his old fellow-student within his jurisdiction and in a pacific 
 frame of mind, he was anxious to show him all respect and 
 reverence. He added that if it were his fortune to i-eceive the 
 bishop in his private home, he would certainly entertain him 
 
1878.] A Scholar of the Twelfth Century. 741 
 
 most hospitably and honorably. He begged also that the 
 ancient friendship they had felt for each other when in private 
 life might continue now that they were in positions of authority. 
 This bland missive probably did uot deceive at all the worthy 
 bishop : it enraged his followers, who were opposed to the 
 acceptance of the gifts. But it is always the non-combatants 
 that keep on fighting after the real battle is ended. If the 
 bishop felt wroth, he was too wise to show it. He assured the 
 archdeacon that he should never think any the less highly of 
 him for what had happened ; that he was deserving of praise 
 for standing up for what he deemed the rights of his church ; 
 and that for his part he would not for this occurrence give up 
 their old friendship. 
 
 So ended the battle of Keri. But the exposed situation of 
 the diocese of St David's, left without a bishop, weighed 
 heavily upon the mind of the archdeacon. It is not improb- 
 able that his own aspirations for the vacant position may have 
 contributed to the earnestness of his defence. At any rate he 
 hastened, as soon as matters were composed, to Henry II., who 
 was then in the neighborhood of Northampton. The news of 
 the adventure had traveled there before him. But unaware 
 of this, he told the story to the king; adding a general com- 
 ment upon the state of society in Wales which proved vastly 
 entertaining to the whole court. "They are all therein alike," 
 said he; "as the laymen of Wales are robbers of other 
 people's property, so their clergy are robbers of churches." 
 The story amused the monarch ; but it is not improbable that 
 it may have had an influence upon his later dt-'cision that the 
 hero of it should not be made a bishop, at least the bishop of 
 St. David's. At any rate, at this point begins a series of events 
 which were destined to have a controlling influence upon the 
 later life of Giraldus. To understand them, however, it will 
 be necessary to go back a little. 
 
 (To be continued in the January Number.) 
 
[Uepeintbd from the New Englander for Januaet, 1879.] 
 
 A SCHOLAR OF THE TWELFTH CENTURY. 
 
 By Prof. Thomas R. Lounsbuby. 
 Second Paper. (Continued from the November Number, 1878.) 
 
 Of the four bishoprics into which Wales was and still is 
 divided, that of St. David's was much the most important. 
 This was not alone due to its size. It had originally been 
 metropolitan in its character, and while the country was inde- 
 pendent, its archbishop exercised jurisdiction over the three 
 subordinate sees. But the political subjection of Wales 
 involved also the ecclesiastical. First went the title of arch- 
 bishop, though the power survived. But in the reign of 
 Henry I. the latter also disappeared, and the see of St. David's 
 was made part of the province of Canterbury. This fact was 
 gall and wormwood to a people impatient of anything that 
 bore the mark of subjugation to a foreign yoke. Many were 
 the efforts made to regain their ancient rights, to restore to the 
 oldest bishopric of Wales its metropolitan character. In a 
 gallant but fruitless struggle to attain this end, no small 
 share of the stormy life of Giraldus was passed. 
 
 The first opportunity he had of displaying his interest in 
 this question was in the general ecclesiastical council which 
 was held at Westminster in the year 1175. Thither all the 
 prominent ecclesiastics of the diocese of St. David's repaired, 
 with the hope of finding redress for their long-standing griev- 
 ance. In this movement, their head, the bishop, could not 
 take any direct part; for at his consecration he had abjured 
 for himself the revival of any such controversy. But this did 
 not affect the action of his subordinates. They first sounded 
 the mind of the king, and sought to secure his favor by argu- 
 ments that in that age were among the most potent at the 
 courts of princes. Giraldus tells us without any hesitation 
 that no small amount of money was given both to the sovereign 
 and to his counsellors to bring about the desired result. The 
 monarch, however, was more inclined to look with favor upon 
 the money than upon the cause it was given to support. He 
 delayed for a long time returning any answer, and when it 
 
1879.] A Scholar of the Twelfth Century. 51 
 
 came it was not very acceptable. He refused to entertain the 
 proposition, though it did not occur to him to restore the 
 money which had failed to influence him. All in consequence 
 that the representatives of the diocese could do was to assert in 
 presence of the papal legate the ancient metropolitan rights 
 and dignity of the see of St. David's. 
 
 The following year witnessed events of a more stirring 
 character. In May, 1176, the bishop of St. David's died. No 
 nomination or election to fill such a vacancy could be made 
 until the king had been formally notified of the death of the 
 incumbent, and had given his assent to the choice of a suc- 
 cessor. But the canons of the diocese, upon whom devolved 
 the nomination, were in a hurry. They immediately assembled 
 and after long discussion unanimously agreed to present the 
 names of their four archdeacons as candidates for the vacant 
 dignity ; but every one assumed that Giraldus would be the 
 one selected. At least he tells us so. So confident were they 
 in the success of their scheme and the wisdom of their course, 
 that on the impulse of the moment they broke forth into a 
 hymn of praise. The populace on the outside, hearing that a 
 bishop had been elected, and that Giraldus was the man, 
 united in confirming the choice with loud acclamations. But 
 a night's rest brought back reflection, at least to the one most 
 interested. The next morning Giraldus, entering the church, 
 renounced the nomination of himself, though he declared he 
 should not be wanting in the effort to uphold the free and 
 legitimate election of his own church. JSTor did he delay tak- 
 ing measures to remedy the blunder which had been made. 
 He hurried to the king of England. But the news of the 
 transaction had already reached the monarch. He was exceed- 
 ingly indignant, and immediately ordered all the canons who 
 had taken part in the proceeding to be deprived of their lands 
 and revenues. But it was against Giraldus that his wrath was 
 mainly directed ; and Giraldus does not neglect to tell us the 
 reason why. The king was afraid of him. Not by any one, 
 save by him, could the recovery of the rights of St. David's be 
 accomplished ; and the ruler of England dreaded to see in a 
 position of power one like the archdeacon of Brecknock, dis- 
 tinguished for his high spirit and allied by blood to the lead- 
 
52 A Scholar of the Twelfth Century. [Jan., 
 
 ing nobility of his native land. Giraldus indeed, had always 
 this one perennial source of comfort, that everybody, kings, 
 prelates, and nobles stood constantly in terror of him and of 
 his surpassing abilities ; and the loss of any position to which 
 he aspired was invariably sweetened by the consciousness in 
 his own mind that he was too great and gifted a man to make 
 it safe for others to let him fill it. E"o one has ever lived who 
 has managed to extract more enjoyment out of his vanity. It 
 gave an added pleasure to prosperity ; it was a never-failing 
 solace to adversity. He tells us that on this occasion the arch- 
 bishop of Canterbury strongly advised the selection of himself 
 for the vacant bishopric. But the king was not to be moved. 
 It was neither to the advantage of the crown of England nor 
 to the see of Canterbury, the monarch asserted, that a man too 
 able and too active should be placed at the head of the oldest 
 diocese of Wales. 
 
 Leaving out of view the self-conceit of the man, which 
 is something almost too stupendous for human conception, 
 there may have been a good deal of truth in his statement 
 of the aversion on the part of so keen-sighted a monarch 
 as Henry II., to have as bishop of St. David's any one pos- 
 sessing the peculiar characteristics of Giraldus. Earlier in 
 his reign the king had made one great mistake. His contro- 
 versy with Becket, and the infinite annoyance and humiliation 
 it had brought him, were not likely to be ever long absent 
 from his mind. He doubtless saw in the uneasy vanity of the 
 archdeacon of Brecknock a disposition under proper encour- 
 agement to become a martyr, and he had no inclination to 
 contribute another name to the list of saints who had died in 
 defence of the rights of the church. At any rate, whatever 
 may have been the motives really influencing the monarch, 
 there was from the outset no chance for the election of Giraldus. 
 The canons, upon whom the choice devolved, saw this plainly ; 
 at least they were subjected to a course of discipline which 
 enabled them to see it. They were dragged from place to 
 place in the train of the monarch, they were alternately cajoled 
 and threatened. A well-considered method of treatment, made 
 up in about equal proportions of bullying and bribing, at 
 length accomplished the end Henry II. had in view. Worn 
 
1879.] A Scholar of the Twelfth Century. 53 
 
 out with travel, eager to recover the revenues of which they 
 had been deprived, fearful of being on ill terms with their 
 sovereign, they at last were in a fit frame of mind to carry out 
 the king's wishes, and select any one he might choose. Griral- 
 dus alone stood out ; but all his efforts were of no avail, not 
 to secure the position for himself, but for some one connected 
 with the diocese, or at least known to the men over whom he 
 was to be ruler, and acquainted with the language of the flock 
 of which he was to be the shepherd. But all his associates, 
 his brother archdeacons, even the papal legate failed him. 
 With voices shaken with fear, the canons, who were supposed 
 to exercise freedom of choice, named for the vacant dignity 
 Peter de Laia, the prior of Wenloc, a monk of the order of 
 Cluny, with whose person or name none of them had been 
 previously acquainted. It was enough for them that he was 
 the candidate of the king. But though defeated, Giraldus tells 
 us that he did not cease to labor earnestly for the honor of his 
 diocese ; and the method he took was supremely characteristic. 
 With that matchless impudence of his, which derives a charm 
 from its apparently being wholly unconscious, he wrote to the 
 bishop-elect, whose face he had never seen and whose choice 
 he had bitterly resisted. In this letter he warned him that he 
 should not presume to do anything against the dignity of the 
 see to which he had been assigned rather than called ; espe- 
 cially should he not abjure the metropolitan claim of St. David's 
 But the newly-elected prelate, the mere creature of the king, 
 paid no heed to his exhortation. He took the oath to acknowl- 
 edge the authority of the archbishop of Canterbury, and in 
 consequence received the consecration. As a member of the 
 secular clergy Giraldus had a professional dislike of the mon- 
 astic orders ; but it was probably this elevation of one of them 
 to the position he coveted that turned his dislike into hatred. 
 
 The deed, however, was done. Not in a church, but in a 
 chamber ; not in a cathedral city, but in a fortified town ; not 
 near the chancel, but before the throne, a trembling band of 
 clergymen had elected as their head one whom then they did 
 not even know by sight, and had not known before by name. 
 The bishopric of St. David's had fallen into the hands of a 
 contemptible monk, who cared nothing for its interests and 
 
54 A Scholar of the Twelfth Century. [Jan., 
 
 would make no effort to restore it to its ancient dignity. The 
 metropolitan see of the "Welsh church would now be under the 
 sway of a supple tool of the English court, who was a stranger 
 to the people he had come to rule and ignorant of the language 
 they spoke. No result could well have happened more dis- 
 tasteful to Giraldus. He determined to leave a country where 
 all had proved cowardly if not false, where nothing but disap- 
 pointment rewarded the most earnest labors for the restoration 
 of the primitive honors of the church and the primitive purity 
 of its discipline. To that city he turned his eyes wherein so 
 many of his school days had been passed. Paris had then as 
 now that marvelous attraction so hard to define, to persons of 
 every taste, whether of the highest or lowest kind. But in 
 particular its university was then celebrated for the very things 
 that Giraldus desired to study. It was at Bologna that the 
 civil law was most efficiently taught; Salerno was famous for 
 her school of medicine ; but to Paris superiority in theology and 
 the seven arts was generally accorded. Thither therefore the 
 disappointed archdeacon prepared to bend his steps. He 
 gathered together his books, and to use his own words, with 
 a mind directed always to the highest aims, passed over to 
 France. His object was to still further pursue his studies, or 
 as he more elegantly states it, he set out to build upon the 
 foundation of literature and the arts the walls of the civil and 
 canon law, and to crown the completed structure with the 
 sacred roof of scriptural theology ; that thus the edifice of his 
 learning, firmly fastened by a triple construction, might stand 
 unshaken. It is in some such way as this that he expresses it 
 in that ornate Latin diction of his, after which our panting Eng- 
 lish toils in vain. Every age has its so-called liberal education, 
 the possession of which justifies any one in looking upon every 
 one who has not gone through the prescribed training, as hav- 
 ing somehow not quite come up to the mark. At this time 
 the correct thing was to go through with the seven liberal arts, 
 as they were called, constituting the Trivium and Quadrivium 
 — the former including grammar, logic, and rhetoric, the latter 
 arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music. It is to be 
 remarked that the same educational commonplaces, which the 
 profane term cant, were in fashion then as at present. The 
 
1879.] A Scholar of the Twelfth Century. 55 
 
 Trivium, we are informed by a writer contemporary with 
 Giraldus, gives the man power {poiestas), whereas the studies 
 of the Quadrivium impart discipline (disciplma). We seem, 
 indeed, in reading these old middle-age authors, to find our- 
 selves in the same familiar region, where counsel is darkened 
 by words, where phrases are made to do duty for ideas, and 
 where we examine with much dimness of vision and discuss 
 with much bitterness of speech the nature and desirability of 
 sweetness and light. 
 
 To erect the above-mentioned gorgeous superstructure — to 
 continue the architectural simile of Giraldus — according to the 
 light of that age, Paris was, as has already been remarked, the 
 best place. It is almost needless to say, that, according to our au- 
 thor's own assertions, he made the most astonishing proficiency. 
 He devotes several pages to giving an account of the success 
 which attended his lectures. Whenever he was to speak, so 
 great was the throng that the largest house could scarcely hold 
 the crowd that came. Matter and manner were so richly joined 
 in his discourse, that all hung with rapt attention upon his 
 sayings. Scholars strove to write down his words precisely as 
 they fell from his lips. He gives us the subject of his first public 
 discussion. It was on the question, whether a judge ought to 
 decide according to what is alleged, or according to his con- 
 science. His treatment of it, however, he does not set forth, so 
 that we are unable to form any opinion as to the intellectual 
 elevation of the men who, according to his own account, were 
 so carried away by his performance. 
 
 After a long stay in Paris — though precisely how long, our 
 author, with his usual indifference to dates, neglects to tell us — 
 Giraldus set out to return to his native country. On his way 
 back he stopped at Canterbury. There, at the invitation of the 
 prior of the monastery, he dined with the monks in their refec- 
 tory, and' whatever may have been his appetite, he did not fail 
 to fulfill that portion of the duty of a guest, which consists in 
 criticising the manners and meals of his host. Giraldus, as we 
 have said, as a member of the secular clergy, felt a professional 
 dislike to the monastic order; and this professional dislike had, 
 in his case, been aggravated into a personal one, by the selec- 
 tion of a member of the order to fill the most important bishop- 
 
56 A Scholar of the Twelfth Century. [Jau., 
 
 ric of his native land. What he saw at the dinner he necessa- 
 rily saw with jaundiced eyes ; but not on that account is what 
 he says any the less interesting. 
 
 There is, at the present time, a very general impression that 
 intemperance is, with us, very largely on the increase ; that as 
 compared with our forefathers, we bestow much more attention 
 upon the gratification of our appetites than they ; and that, in 
 consequence of this steadily increasing indulgence, the race is 
 exhibiting everywhere marks of deterioration, or, at least, is in 
 special danger of becoming deteriorated. It is safe to assert that 
 he who so believes is not very familiar with the life of the past. 
 Bad enough we doubtless are ; but, as compared with the gen- 
 erality of our ancestors, we are more than temperate, we are 
 abstemious. In proof of this statement it is not necessary to 
 go back to those earliest times, in which heathenism prevailed. 
 A race, whose conception of the future life was that of a monot- 
 onous eternity of gorging and guzzling, diversified at regular 
 intervals by fighting and murder, was not likely to be distin- 
 guished for self-restraint while existing upon earth. But the 
 same disposition to intemperance in eating and drinking pre- 
 vailed almost as powerfully after the conversion of the Eng- 
 lish to Christianity. The annals of the middle ages, whenever 
 they touch upon social or domestic habits at all, are full of 
 references to excesses, in which he alone failed to share who 
 had not opportunity. "Wasteful extravagance and abject 
 poverty flourished side by side. But though feasting on an 
 enormous scale abounded at times in the courts of kings and 
 nobles, it was not in the castle or the palace that cooking at- 
 tained to the dignity of a science. In them certainly great cul- 
 inary triumphs were occasionally achieved ; but it is elsewhere 
 that we must look for steady progress toward an ideal perfec- 
 tion in the preparation of food. Much praise has been given, 
 and most deservedly given, to the monastic system for its 
 preservation of the masterpieces of antiquity. Had it not 
 been for the scriptorium, with its band of copyists, its anti- 
 quarii and librarii, little of the literature of the past, which the 
 present cherishes, would have come down to modern times. 
 There is, indeed, scarcely any doubt that the bitter dislike felt 
 by Griraldus for the monks, is the main reason why so many of 
 
1879.] A Scholar of the Twelfth Century. 57 
 
 his works exist in only a single manuscript, and that often in a 
 mutilated condition, as is the case with this particular autobi- 
 ography. It was hardly a congenial task for the copyists to per- 
 petuate writings which were largely filled with denunciations 
 of the order to which they belonged. But though full justice 
 has been done the monks for what they did for literature, due 
 credit has never been given them for what they did for cook- 
 ing. All remarks upon this matter invariably take the shape 
 of praise for their generous hospitality and bountiful alms-giv- 
 ing, or, on the other hand, of fierce denunciation for their sen- 
 sual self-indulgence. Naturally, the truth lies between the two 
 extremes ; for it would be equally incorrect to judge them, as a 
 class, by the rigorous asceticism sometimes practiced, or the 
 riotous excess into which they sometimes fell. 
 
 These two extremes, indeed, are always to be considered in 
 judging of the monastic system. There is certainly nothing more 
 striking in the religious life of the middle ages, than the steady 
 uprising of new spiritual forces, when the old ones no longer 
 continued to satisfy the demands of the higher nature. No 
 sooner did one institution manifestly decline from the lofty ideal 
 with which it set out, no sooner did formalism take the place 
 among its members of genuine feeling, than another institution 
 arose to fill the post left vacant, and do the work either done per- 
 functorily or not done at all. The human mind, once made con- 
 scious of a higher destiny, never after loses sight of it wholly. 
 No sensuality, however degrading, no skepticism, however chill- 
 ing, spread far and wide as they may be, can for a hmg period 
 keep down the aspiration of the heart for a nobler creed and a 
 purer life. The earliest monastic system sprang up to supply 
 spiritual wants, which men felt keenly, though in the intel- 
 lectual darkness in which they lay, they may have used mistaken 
 means to satisfy the cravings of the soul. That the elevated 
 aim which characterized its beginnings too often degenerated 
 into the gratification of purely physical wants, and sometimes 
 of purely physical pleasures, is true enough ; but the original 
 motive that led to its creation was pure and high, whatever 
 may be said of the wisdom of the agency employed to carry it 
 into effect. And when the fiery zeal that had set one religious 
 organization in motion, flagged or failed altogether, another 
 
58 A Scholar of the Twelfth Century. [Jan., 
 
 speedily came forward to assume the duty that had been left 
 undone. The light may at times have become dim, but it 
 never went out altogetber. Human imperfection was the cause 
 that the monastic system failed for any length of time to real- 
 ize anywhere the ideal which its founders had contemplated. 
 But though, in some instances, it fell away entirely from its 
 original type, and wrought little but what was evil, none the 
 less can we refuse to admit the great good it has accomplished. 
 But it is not with the spiritual side of monastic life that we 
 have to do here ; it is almost wholly with the purely physical. 
 It was the monk alone who fully appreciated the fact, that 
 whether men lived or died, whether the world were saved or 
 lost, the business of eating and drinking must continue to go 
 on ; and so long as the work of preparing for it had to 
 be done, he saw no reason why it should not be done well. 
 To the monks, more than to any other class, we owe the preser- 
 vation and development of the culinary art. For this they 
 were fortunately situated. They had large landed estates to 
 fall back upon for supplies ; and with the means of securing 
 the best food, they had in the monastery all the appliances for 
 preparing it in the best manner. But more important even 
 than this, they had plenty of leisure to devote to the matter; 
 in fact, they were almost forced by the circumstances of their 
 situation to -give it extraordinary attention. In a life of 
 enforced monotonous idleness — and this is what practically the 
 monastic life came very largely to be — when there is nothing to 
 interest or to occupy the mind, the question of eating and drink- 
 ing is certain to assume an unnatural prominence. This is con- 
 spicuously seen in camps amid the lull of active military 
 operations ; in times of peace few who have frequented places 
 where large companies of men and women meet together, with 
 little or nothing to afford diversion or occupation, can have 
 failed to notice how speedily the dinner comes to be the main 
 event of the day. Influences such as these were not occasion- 
 ally, but to all intents and purposes, were always in operation 
 in the monastery. Attention to eating and drinking was the 
 inevitable result of the manner of life then prevalent, so 
 soon as the special religious impulse, which first called the 
 whole system or the individual monastery into being, had 
 
1879.] A. Scholar of the Twelfth Century. 59 
 
 spent its force. And in addition, the monk was specially 
 enabled, in the matter of preparing food, not merely to pre- 
 serve the fine traditions of the past, but to improve upon them : 
 for the daily routine was not only never entirely destroyed, it 
 was rarely even subject to interruption. In castles and "courts 
 the excitement of other pursuits, and especially of political 
 intrigues, constantly interfered with the regular course of 
 living; military operations, from the very nature of things, 
 broke it up absolutely. From all these disturbances the mon- 
 astery was comparatively exempt ; and the same freedom from 
 disquietude which enabled it to save for modern ages so much 
 of the literature of the past that bad escaped the wreck of the 
 ancient civilization, enabled it also to preserve and perpetuate 
 cooking as a fine art 
 
 But it was hardly to be expected that our author would 
 look upon the feast to which he was invited in this philosophi- 
 cal spirit. He sa^^■ in the excess indulged in only a scandal to 
 the church ; and even had he believed that any good results 
 whatever could iiow from the luxury and prodigality exhibited 
 before his eyes, he would have been the last to consent that the 
 religion he professed should receive even temporary reproach 
 for this cause, in order that the way might be kept smooth for 
 future times to enter into a culinary paradise. It is possible, 
 also, that in the matter of profusion and excess Canterbury 
 may have been especially noted, even in that time. It is the 
 abbot of that particular monastery, who in the old English 
 ballad excites the envy of King John by the magnificence of 
 his house-keeping and the number of his attendants ; and 
 Giraldus on this occasion may perhaps have seen the worst 
 specimen of monastic life, though he himself clearly did not 
 think so; for though this particular meal served often in his 
 writings to point a moral, he does not seem to regard it as 
 exceptional. 
 
 Certainly, the dinner of which he partook on this occasion 
 made far more of an impression upon his mind than upon his 
 body. Two things in particular drew the attention of our 
 scholar, as seated with the prior and one or two other dig- 
 nitaries, he watched the monks at their meal. One was their 
 behavior, as the dishes passed from the higher to the lower 
 
60 A &holar of the Twelfth Century. [Jan. 
 
 tables. The pointing of fingers, the waving of hands, the ges 
 ticulations of various kinds, the whistling instead of calling 
 by word, all these signals made the worthy archdeacon fancj 
 himself in the midst of a troop of stage-players or professiona 
 jesters, rather than in a grave and worsbipful company of th( 
 saints. It is evident that he did not see, or was unwilling t( 
 admit, that this behavior was a necessary result of the ruh 
 which made silence one of the principal duties of a monk — t 
 silence which was not only demanded during the performance 
 of divine service, but during the time devoted to eating. I 
 might have been very safely predicted that in process of tim( 
 the spirit of the regulation would be broken while the lette: 
 remained intact. Such, certainly, turned out to be the cas( 
 as soon as the discipline became less strict. A sign-languagt 
 of a fairly complete kind was developed and handed dowr 
 from generation to generation in the monasteries. Ducange 
 under the word signum, gives a curious list of more than on( 
 hundred of these methods of asking by movement of the arms 
 or hands, or lips, for various articles; and of these, full thirty 
 are devoted to calling for various kinds of food. 
 
 But this was far from being the worst. It was not the geS' 
 ticulations and whistlings, unbecoming and even disgracefu" 
 as they were, that most scandalized the archdeacon ; it was the 
 general sumptuousness of the repast, and especially the numbei 
 of dishes. When he comes to mention these, his feelings are 
 altogether too profoundly stirred to find relief in words ol 
 denunciation. It must be owned there was some reason foi 
 such a result. Sixteen elaborate courses followed one anothei 
 in regular order, and as Giraldus adds, against all order 
 Flesh of land animals there does not seem to have been ; a1 
 any rate, it is not mentioned, and it was usually prohibited ir 
 the monastery because the beasts that live upon the earth were 
 supposed to share in the curse that fell upon the earth itself as 
 the punishment for the disobedience of the first pair. But o: 
 fish of every kind, cooked in every way, there was more thar 
 enough. The sea appears to have been ransacked to furnisl: 
 forth the tables of the men who had consecrated themselves 
 to lives of labor, contemplation, and prayer, who had solemnlj 
 vowed to abstain from all pleasures of the sense, and to mortifj 
 
1879.] A Scholar of the Twelfth Century. 61 
 
 the flesh till it became dead to the delights of the world. 
 And not only were all sorts of food, prepared by the skill of 
 the cooks, set before them, but all sorts of relishes and condi- 
 ments that would add zest to the taste or stimulate the jaded appe- 
 tite. At the very end of these courses of fishes, roasted, and 
 boiled, and stuffed, and fried, vegetables were also distributed 
 generally to the tables ; but our author remarks that they were 
 little tasted. This, however will not seem so surprising to the 
 modern reader, when he reflects on the number of courses by 
 which they had been preceded. The liquid food was likewise 
 supplied in just proportion to the solid, and in variety enough 
 to suit every taste. There was mead, the great, original, uni- 
 versal drink of the Aryan race. Among the several kinds of 
 wine, Giraldus especially mentions pigmentum, claretum, mus- 
 tum, and moretum, some of which were made from the juice of 
 the grape mixed with honey and spices, and prepared in accord- 
 ance with certain peculiar processes. But there seems to have 
 been everything in the liquid form, from the beverage that 
 simply gladdens the heart, to the potent drink that bewilders 
 the brain. Cider (sicera) is included in the list, but cider at 
 that time embraced almost everything of an intoxicating na- 
 ture that was not wine or malt liquor. Beer was likewise to be 
 had ; but in spite of the fact that the best beer then made was 
 brewed in England, and particularly in Kent, the very county in 
 which the dinner was taking place, the monks were unpatriotic 
 enough to prefer the wine, so that the home-made drink stood 
 in the same relation to the imported, that the vegetables did to 
 the skillfully prepared dishes of the regular courses, and was 
 evidently held in about the same estimation. Indeed, the din- 
 ner abounded in so much that was superfluous, as well as 
 sumptuous, that the partaker lost his relish for what was set 
 before him, and even the looker-on suffered weariness. So, at 
 least, Giraldus assures us, for whom language is clearly not 
 sufficiently abusive to do justice to the subject. For once vi- 
 tuperation fails him. He is forced to content himself with 
 simple exclamation. What, he asks almost pathetically, would 
 Paul, the eremite, have said to this ? Or Antony ? Or Bene- 
 dict himself, the father and founder of the monastic system ? 
 Along with his account of the dinner, Giraldus tells us the 
 
62 A Scholar of the Twelfth Century. [Jan., 
 
 story of the interview which took place between the monks 
 of St. Swithin's, Winchester, and Henry II. The latter was 
 staying at Gruildford, in Surrey. One day he had just returned 
 from hunting, when the prior of St. Swithin's, and thirteen of 
 its monks, presented themselves before him, evidently in great 
 distress. They threw themselves on the ground at his feet, 
 and as it was very muddy, the extremity of their suf- 
 ferings was, by this proceeding, rendered still more conspic- 
 uous. With voices full of sorrow they laid before the king 
 their complaints of the great wrong that had just been done 
 them. It was this. Their bishop, who stood in respect to them 
 in the place of abbot, had taken away from their meals three 
 courses, and the full number was necessary to their support in 
 carrying on the offices of religion. The king asked them how 
 many courses still remained to them. " Only ten,'' was the 
 mournful answer, "while from the time of St. Swithin him- 
 self, we have been wont to have, on festival days, thirteen." 
 The monarch was somewhat astounded. He turned to the lords 
 in his retinue. "Do you see these monks?" said he; "I 
 thought their abbey must have been totally destroyed by fire, 
 or some other heavy calamity have fallen upon them, when I 
 found them rolling in the mud; whereas their only complaint 
 is that three courses have been taken away out of the thirteen 
 which they have been accustomed to have." Turning around 
 and addressing the monks, he said, "I, in my own court, am 
 content with three courses." Here he swore an oath, which it 
 is not necessary to translate, and added, " May your bishop 
 perish if he do not reduce the number of your courses to that 
 of mine." The story is certainly good enough to be true. But 
 it is much easier to believe of the monks that they were glut- 
 tons than that they were fools ; and the story, as told here, 
 would prove them far more of the latter even than of the former. 
 But whether the tale be true or not, its existence is proof of 
 the opinion held of them by their enemies, and of the reputa- 
 tion for good living they had generally acquired. They 
 might justly complain, indeed, of the punishment to which 
 they were subjected, if their table was made to resemble the 
 king's ; for if contemporary accounts are to be trusted, the food 
 furnished to the attendants at the court was far from palatable. 
 
1879.] A Scholar of the Twelfth Century. 63 
 
 Peter of Blois, who for a long period acted as chaplain to 
 Henry II., draws a vivid picture of the culinary discomforts to 
 which he was subjected. " I wonder," he says, " how any man 
 of education can endure the vexations of a court. In their 
 meals, their rides, their attendance, no order, no method, no 
 moderation, is observed. Bread not kneaded or properly fer- 
 mented, and made with the dregs of beer, is set before a court 
 chaplain or a knight. The bread is as heavy as lead, mixed 
 with cockle, half baked ; the wine acid or mothery, muddy, 
 greasy, rancid, pitchy, and vapid. I have sometimes seen wine 
 set upon the tables of the great so full of sediment that it could 
 not be drunk except with closed eyes, and it was necessary to 
 grind it rather than drink it. The beer in the coui-t is 
 horrible to the taste and abominable to the sight. In conse- 
 quence of the crowds at court, the meat sold here is scarcely 
 sound, the fish four days old, but none the less dear on that 
 account."* 
 
 Giraldus never forgot this dinner, and his autobiography is 
 not the only place in which he tells of it. But as it, like every- 
 thing else, came to an end, he proceeded on his journey back to 
 Wales. When he arrived there, he found a bitter state of feel- 
 ing existing between Peter de Laia, the new bishop, and his 
 subordinates. It came at last to an open ruptare, which ended 
 for the time being in the prelate being driven from the coun- 
 try. Griraldus insinuates that the expulsion was a pretence 
 rather than a reality. It was certainly far preferable for a man 
 who loved his comfort to spend the revenues of his diocese in 
 a more congenial society than could be found amid the turbu- 
 lent clergy and laity of Wales; and many of the prelates who 
 have been appointed over the dioceses of that country have in 
 this respect followed in the footsteps of Peter de Laia, and 
 this too within a comparatively recent period. Many will 
 recollect the picture drawn of Dr. Watson, who at the begin- 
 ning of this century was bishop of Llandaff, but resided in the 
 midst of the lake country of England. In his case neglect of 
 every duty and lack of every requirement had been almost 
 formulated into system. He was a prominent theologian in 
 * Hardy's Descriptive Catalogue of Materials relating to British History, vol. ii, 
 p. xxxviii. 
 
64 A Scholar of the Twelfth Century. [Jan., 
 
 the church of his native land ; yet not content with privately 
 disbelieving the creed he publicly professed, he may almost be 
 said to have denounced it, and was so utterly out of sympathy 
 with the spirit which even common decency requires it to be 
 approached, that he explained the miracles of the New Testa- 
 ment as tricks of chemistry or slight-of-hand. He was a mem- 
 ber of the House of Lords, and he never attended its delibera- 
 tions. He was professor of ^divinity in Cambridge University, 
 yet he delivered no lectures, and indeed performed no pul^lic 
 exercises of any kind. He was a bishop of the church of Eng- 
 land, yet he lived three hundred miles from his diocese, and 
 would not have recognized many parts of it if by chance he 
 had come upon them — an accident which never took place. 
 
 At the same time, in spite of the insinuations of Giraldus to 
 the contrary, Peter de Laia may have been led to choose a resi- 
 dence outside of his diocese, by a regard for his personal safety 
 rather than for his personal comfort. An incident that took place 
 in 1197 brings into very clear light the difficulties of the position 
 in which the bishop of St. David's was placed, and shows that 
 a reluctance to reside in the territory of which he was the spirit- 
 ual head, was no mere freak of fancy, or suggestion of unworthy 
 fear. At that time the troubles between himself and his peo- 
 ple seem to have been settled ; and as Ehys, the ruler of 
 South Wales, was threatening rebellion, he went to him and 
 besought him not to disturb the peace of the church and the 
 country by going to war with England. The bishop not only 
 failed of success in his mission, his advice was rejected with in- 
 sult. Nor was this all. On the night following, a number of 
 the followers of the Welsh prince seized upon the prelate while 
 he was sleeping, forced him from his bed, and dragged him, 
 while dressed only in his under-garments, through the wood 
 near his residence ; and from the indignity of his situation he 
 was not relieved till rescued by William de Braose.* When 
 the leading prince of a country could venture to bestow atten- 
 tions of such a kind upon its leading prelate, a man in this case 
 advanced in years, safety and security from bodily injury could 
 not well be assumed for the latter, while his relations with the 
 clergy as well as the laity were on a hostile footing. 
 
 * Annaks de Wmtonia, A. B.Ud1,m Annates Monastici, vol. ii, 
 
1879.] A Scholar of the Twelfth' Century. 65 
 
 The bishop, by the advice of the primate, appointed Giral- 
 dus to act for him during his absence from his see ; and the lat- 
 ter, with his usual frankness, informs us that he governed for 
 a long time the church of St. David's, with wisdom and moder- 
 ation. Nor, though the statement rests on his word alone, is it 
 unlikely to have been true. He possessed all the influence that 
 is derived from high birth aod^powerf iil connections. To this was 
 added great learning, which is sdlsiething that is always far more 
 apt to impress contemporaries than the very highest wisdom ; 
 and along with his learning, and in spite of his vanity, there 
 was in his nature a certain elevation of soul which freed him 
 from sordid views, or from any willingness to tolerate abuses 
 of any kind for the sake of his own comfort. Executive 
 ability he was, moreover, likely to have inherited. There is 
 really not much reason to doubt that his management was a 
 benefit both to the bishop and the diocese ; and to both it is 
 equally probable that it must at times have been offensive ; 
 for his nature was such that no duty was more cheerfully done 
 than that which gave him an opportunity to make himself disa- 
 greeable. To the bishop, indeed, he must have seemed both un- 
 endurable and indispensable. This double distinction of being 
 both a nuisance and necessity, Giraldus has not been the first 
 to attain ; but from the very nature of things it was not a po- 
 sition he could long hold. If the account that he gives of his 
 bishop's acts and character be true, a good understanding could 
 not by any possibility exist between men of views and feel- 
 ings so opposite. Open war broke out at last between them, 
 and G-iraldus threw up his commission as legate, so as thereby 
 to put himself at perfect liberty to attack his superior. The 
 contest went on for a long time ; and though he does not say so, 
 it is not hard to believe that while it lasted Giraldus enjoyed 
 his life. Ardently as he had longed to preside over the see of 
 St. David's, it is doubtful if he were not far happier while he 
 was annoying the bishop than he would have been if occupy- 
 ing the bishop's place. And he had the blessed consciousness 
 throughout the whole of the controversy, that he was abso- 
 lutely and unqualifiedly right, while his opponent was abso- 
 lutely and unqualifiedly wrong. No doubt ever shook the 
 confidence of his soul that he was acting in obedience to the 
 
 VOL. II. 5 
 
66 A Scholar of the Twelfth Century. [Jan., 
 
 loftiest calls of duty. Nor had he any hesitation in expressing his 
 feelings freely. One of his letters, addressed to the bishop, 
 with the nominal intent of defending himself from attack, man- 
 ages, under an air of outward respect, to convey an insult in 
 almost every line. He discourses quite fully on the incompe- 
 tence of members of the monastic orders to hold high positions 
 in the church. He thinks it wonderful that an indiscreet 
 monk, ignorant of both divine and human law, should with 
 confidence and rashness presume impudently and imprudently 
 to perform the duties of the clergy. In support of his views 
 he makes an incursion into the realm of etymology, and brings 
 back as spoil a derivation of the Grseco-Latin word for 'monk,' 
 which is certainly a striking one for a man whom a prominent 
 English historian has lately styled " the father of modern phi- 
 lology." Monachus, he says, comes from monns, which means 
 "solitary," and acos, which means "sorrowful." The legiti- 
 mate inference is not left to the imagination, but directly ap- 
 plied. Let the monk give up his offices in the church, let him 
 stay in his solitary cell and sorrow for his sins. But freely 
 as Giraldus talked to his bishop, he was far more free in talking 
 of him. His language, when it came to abuse, could never un- 
 der any circumstances be accused of lacking definiteness and 
 precision ; and these qualities are particularly conspicuous in 
 the terms he applies to his superior. Still it is curious to ob- 
 serve, how with him the ecclesiastical feeling is apt to prevail 
 over the purely moral. He brings many charges against the 
 prelate ; but alienation of the church property seems to be regard- 
 ed as the most grievous crime ; absenteeism, oppression of the 
 inferior clergy, even incontinence are, to all appearance, treated 
 as of comparatively inferior importance. Nor did he confine 
 himself to words in this controversy, or refrain from acts. 
 That indeed would have been impossible for him ; for by na- 
 ture, he was as vigorous as he was verbose. Among other 
 things, he even accused the bishop to the pope, and sought to 
 secure his deposition. Nor in spite of the difference of posi- 
 tion were the two parties unequally matched. At length peace 
 was made between them ; but, according to Giraldus, it was not 
 until at a synod held at St. David's, the bishop restored the 
 property of which the church had been unjnstlv despoiled. 
 
1879.] A Scholar of the Twelfth Century. 67 
 
 How much truth there is in the particular charges made against 
 Peter de Laia by his subordinate, it is of course impossible to say ; 
 but there is no reason to doubt the account given by the latter 
 of the practices of episcopal extortion which were then prevalent. 
 Of this he tells, in another work, some stories, which, looked at 
 from one point of view are amusing ; from another point they 
 are apt to arouse a different feeling. Most of these stories re- 
 late to the exaction of domestic animals, especially hogs, a mat- 
 ter of no slight importance amid the swine-fed population of 
 "Wales. One of them is the following : A bishop noticed that 
 a priest under his jurisdiction was the owner of a number of fat 
 hogs. He summoned him to his presence, and informed him 
 that Christmas was near at hand. " Before that day," he 
 added, "let me have ten of your hogs." "My lord," was 
 the reply of the priest, " I have but few hogs, and those are 
 very necessary to me and to my family." "For that reason," 
 was the reply of the bishop, "you shall now give me 
 twenty." The priest fancied this to be a joke, and was at 
 first rather flattered at the condescension of his spiritual ruler. 
 " I am pleased," said he, " that my hogs furnish matter for 
 laughter and jest to my lord." On this point he was speedily 
 undeceived. " Before you leave me," replied the bishop, "you 
 will find that this is a serious matter, and anything but a joke ; 
 now you shall make me a gift of thirty." Here the priest became 
 thoroughly alarmed, and begged piteously that he would have 
 compassion on him, since in no way he had offended. To this 
 supplication the only answer was a demand for forty hogs, and 
 along with the demand, was conveyed the assurance that with 
 every refusal the number required would be increased by ten. 
 The priest saw there was no hope, and, in accordance with the 
 advice of certain by-standers who knew the character of the 
 prelate well, agreed to give up to the bishop forty fine, well-fed 
 hogs, lest greater injury should befall him ; and this was done 
 accordingly. There was no reason at all for this extortion, 
 adds G-iraldus, beyond the possession by the subordinate of a 
 number of fat swine which the superior wanted. 
 
 Another of these stories introduces a nobler animal. A cer- 
 tain bishop was holding a council of his diocese; and while so 
 doing, it wasannounced to him that a particular church, of which 
 
68 A Scholar of the Twelfth Century. [Jan., 
 
 he was patron, had become vacant by the death of the incum- 
 bent. The news was the occasion of joy and not of sorrow to 
 the worthy prelate. " Thank God," said he, " from this loss 
 comes my gain ; for certainly he who gives the most to me shall 
 have that benefice." This remark was made, Giraldus tells us, 
 not in secret, but in the hearing of the whole chapter. The son 
 of the dead priest, to whose ears it came, took occasion that day 
 to meet the bishop, and for the gift of twelve large and beauti- 
 ful oxen, received his father's church. But he had some other 
 difficulties to overcome before he was enabled to take formal 
 possession. He was leaving, at night, the bishop's chamber 
 with the paper appointing him to the position he sought, when 
 he met his archdeacon, who seems to have been lying in wait 
 for him. This oflicer snatched from his hands the important 
 document and would not give it back until the new priest had 
 promised him, also, six fine oxen, and had given likewise am- 
 ple security for carrying out his pledge.* 
 
 Many stories of oppression of his subordinate clergy Giral- 
 dus tells of Peter de Laia, who, if his account is to be trusted, 
 was a shepherd who thought a great deal more of fleecing his 
 flock than of feeding it. But from the turmoils into which this 
 controversy brought him, he was, in some measure, relieved by 
 being made chaplain to Henry II., in 1184, and being sent the 
 following year by that monarch, to accompany, as a sort of 
 confidential adviser, his son Prince John, whom he had de- 
 termined to make the ruler of Ireland. Giraldus had, in 1183, 
 paid a visit to that island in company with his brother Philip 
 and appears then to have remained in it nearly a year. It is 
 to be kept in mind that in the conquest of Ireland the immedi- 
 ate relations of our author had borne a prominent, if not the 
 most prominent, part ; and in that country he would find him- 
 self at once in the society of his personal friends. The time 
 which he spent there at first, he tell us, was occupied by him 
 in studying the characteristics of the country and the origin of 
 its inhabitants. The idea of writing a work on the subject was 
 then clearly in his mind, and there is little doubt that the pros- 
 pect of being enabled to still further prosecute his investigations, 
 led him to welcome gladly the prospect of joining the expe- 
 * Be Jure et Statu Menevensis Ecclesice, Distinctio I. 
 
1879.] ^ Scholar of the Twelfth Century. 69 
 
 dition which was about to proceed, under the conduct of 
 Prince John, to the full establishment of the supremacy of the 
 conquerors. 
 
 The English government of Ireland has never been widely 
 celebrated for wisdom. From the very beginning the foreign 
 administration brought little but additional misery to the al- 
 ready miserable inhabitants ; and their discontent, their secret 
 or open hostility, has always been a source of weakness and 
 sometimes of danger to the ruling power. In dealing with 
 Ireland, the counsels of the wisest of English statesmen and 
 rulers seem to have been turned into foolishness. Henry II. 
 was an able monarch ; he had several sons, all of them bad 
 enough, to be sure : but to rule Ireland — overrun rather than 
 really conquered— he sent John, the weakest and most worthless 
 of all. The first misfortune indeed that befell this unhappy 
 country, was to have this prince given the sovereignty of it. 
 j^mong all the monarchs who have sat upon the English throne, 
 John claims a special preeminence as being not comparatively 
 but utterly despicable. If in the list of qualities that went to 
 make up his character there was one single virtue, history has 
 not merely neglected to enlarge upon it, it has failed even to 
 allude to it. In him were blended in perfect union all the 
 mean traits, in their meanest form, that distinguished each indi- 
 vidual member of the royal house to which he belonged, and 
 no alloy of excellence of any kind marred the complete sym- 
 metry of his worthlessness, the various and varying qualities 
 of which nature and education had worked together in blend- 
 ing into a harmonious and homogeneous and utterly contempt- 
 ible whole. It hardly needs to be said that an expedition un- 
 dertaken with such a man as leader resulted in ignominious 
 failure. John returned to England in December, 1185, leaving 
 the country in a much worse condition than when he came. 
 Griraldus, however, continued to remain in Ireland until about 
 May, of the following year, collecting the materials for his ac- 
 count of the topography of the island, and of its conquest, if 
 that term can properly be used. The facts thus got together 
 wei-e subsequently digested and put in order in the midst 
 of the many cares which encompassed him while attend- 
 ing the English court ; and the works thus prepared furnish. 
 
70 A Scholar of the Twelfth Century. [Jan., 
 
 he tells us, reading for posterity, objects of malice and envy 
 to contemporaries ; an occasion of delight to some, of detraction 
 to others.* His boast is not altogether untrue. It is by these 
 writings, and those which describe Wales, that the name of 
 G-iraldus has been kept alive, so far as it can be said to have 
 vitality at all. They are, indeed, important enough to warrant 
 all the attention which has been bestowed upon them. 
 
 It goes without saying that Giraldus was not long in Ireland 
 without getting into a controversy. The materials in that coun- 
 try are always ready ; and a man like our author, who seemed to 
 wander about the earth with a metaphorical chip on his shoulder, 
 was not likely to remain long without finding some one to 
 knock it off, or fancying that some one had been doing so, 
 which as regards his feelings and acts was just the same. In 
 the middle of Lent in the year 1186, the archbishop of Dublin 
 was holding a council in that city ; and here the occasion of a 
 quarrel was presented. The prelate himself preached the first 
 day on the sacraments of the church. On the second day he 
 was followed by an abbot, whose sermon was not of a kind to 
 produce peace and good will between the native clergy and the 
 foreign ecclesiastics whom the conquest had brought into the 
 country. The discourse of the abbot, which was a long one, was 
 upon continence. The character of the Irish priesthood has in 
 this respect always stood high in more modern times ; but it was 
 of a high type from the very beginning. It was naturally a 
 subject of just pride to the preacher who paid a lofty tribute to 
 the purity of his brethren in the past ; but he went on to lament 
 the steady decline in morality then going on before their eyes. 
 For this he saw plainly the reason, and had no hesitation in 
 assigning it. They had been corrupted by the foreign clergy 
 with whom they came into contact ; for they could not touch 
 pitch and not be defiled. Nor was this aggressive discourse all. 
 The confusion that followed the delivery of the sermon was 
 further increased by the accusation immediately brought against 
 certain of the foreign clergy, that they had contracted marriage, 
 or to use the language of our author, concubinage, and had pub- 
 licly taken their wives to their homes. "With any such proceed- 
 ing on their part, Griraldus would naturally have no sympathy. 
 * Expugnatio Hib^rnica, Liber ii. Ohap. xxxiii. 
 
1879.] A Scholar of the Twelfth Century. 71 
 
 In his eyes matrimony was for the soldiers of the church noth- 
 ing but that primrose path of dalliance which led directly to 
 the gates of spiritual death. At his instigation the archbishop 
 ordered an immediate investigation. The accused were tried 
 and found guilty and suspended at once from their functions 
 and deprived of the incomes they had been enjoying. Great 
 was the exultation of the native clergy at the result ; indeed it 
 assumed a derisive and almost insulting character. But their 
 turn was now to come. There was something to be said on the 
 other side, and the archbishop invited Giraldus to say it. No 
 more pleasing duty could have been assigned him. To preach 
 to a people in regard to their particular imperfections was a 
 task from which most men would have shrunk ; but no such 
 feeling found place in the heart of our author. To be able to 
 say distasteful and offensive things to the men he disliked and 
 at the same time to feel that he was simply discharging his duty 
 was a combination of choice and circumstance which is rarely 
 given to men in real life. Griraldus did not fail to improve it 
 to the uttermost. He furnishes a pretty full summary of the 
 address he made to the Irish clergy at the Dublin council ; and 
 indeed he was so pleased with it that he inserted it almost word 
 for word in his account of the island. His hearers had certainly 
 no reason to complain of any want of frankness on his part. 
 He began with rather a glowing tribute to their piety, to the 
 care and zeal with which they performed the regular duties of 
 their profession ; in particular, he paid the highest praise to 
 their continence, a virtue in which he could not but admit they 
 excelled. But unfortunately they did not keep up in other re- 
 spects to this severe standard. They fasted and prayed during 
 the day ; but they made up for it by getting thoroughly drunk 
 during the night. The hours of light were given to the works of 
 the spirit ; but the hours of darkness to the works of the flesh, so 
 far as these are represented by excessive and unbecoming pota- 
 tions. On this drunkenness of the Irish clergy Griraldus has in- 
 sisted strongly in other places ; and it is no wonder that as an 
 author he has not found much favor with the priestly writers of 
 that nation. This, however, was but one item of the general con- 
 demnation which he visited upon them all, both clergy and 
 laity, in the course of this sermon. There were good men 
 
72 A Scholar of the Twelfth Century. [Jan., 
 
 among them, he condescendingly assured them, nowhere, 
 indeed, any better ; but the bad were very bad, nowhere, indeed, 
 any worse ; and unfortunately most of them were bad. Among 
 the oats and tares — -which two, somewhat strangely to our ears, 
 he joins together — there was wheat to be sure, but there was 
 very little of it ; little grain, but an exceeding deal of chaff. 
 The higher clergy neglected their duty in not preaching to the 
 people, and reproving them for their sins. If they had done as 
 they ought, he went on to say in his usual conciliatory manner, 
 the population would not have been in the brutal and degraded 
 state in which it was. The nation, he told them, was vile 
 almost beyond description. As regards morals, it was wrapped 
 up in vices like a garment ; as regards religion, it was ignorant 
 of the very rudimentary principles of the faith. Petty thefts, 
 highway robbery, perjury, treason were the common practices 
 of all. Neither the tithes nor the first fruits were paid ; mar- 
 riages were not contracted ; incest was not shunned ; the church 
 of Grod was not frequented with reverence ; the dead were not 
 buried with proper rites. There is often a ludicrous anti-olimax 
 in the roll of vices which Griraldus denounces, which reminds 
 one of De Quincey's complaint that the man who indulges in 
 murder will soon come to think little of robbing ; and that from 
 robbing he will inevitably go on to drinking and Sabbath -break- 
 ing, and finally wind up his miserable career with incivility 
 and procrastination. It is indeed a striking illustration of the 
 revolution through which the human mind has gone in little as 
 well as great things, that the particular sin which Griraldus 
 inveighed against most bitterly on this occasion will not to the 
 majority of men seem now a sin at all. What he spoke of as being 
 especially detestable, what was contrary not only to the faith but 
 to common decency, was the custom widely prevalent in many 
 parts of Ireland, of men marrying the wives of their deceased 
 brothers. 
 
 Griraldus went on to reiterate the charge that the blame for 
 this state of things and for the condition of the laity fell 
 mainly upon the clergy. None of them had lifted up his voice 
 like a trumpet to warn the people of their transgressions. 
 Eather had they all looked on in silence, if not with indiffer- 
 ence. No word of remonstrance came from them. By them 
 
1879.] A Scholar of the Twelfth Century. 73 
 
 no protest was uttered against practices degrading to the body 
 and deadly to the soul. Therefore he added in conclusion, you 
 have confessors among you, but no martyrs ; a state of things 
 for which no parallel could be found in any other Christian 
 country. No Irish prelate had gone into exile rather than 
 abandon the duty he owed his church ; none of them had shed 
 his blood in defence of its rights and privileges. The nation 
 was brutal and blood-thirsty. But opportunities so favorable 
 had never been improved. The zeal of the ministers of God 
 had never been sufficient in a single instance to gain for one 
 of them the crown of martyrdom. 
 
 This point Giraldus seemed to think absolutely convincing 
 as to the negligence and sloth of the Irish clergy. The death 
 of Becket, murdered at the foot of the altar to which he was 
 clinging, had for him a fascination which shows itself constantly 
 in his writings, and had the conditions been favorable would 
 doubtless have inspired him to run cheerfully the risk of a 
 similar fate. Apparently in his eyes no church could prove 
 the purity and divinity of its teachings until some of its mem- 
 bers had been murdered. He had, however, appreciation enough 
 of a good retort not to omit one which was made to himself by 
 the archbishop of Cashel, while talking with him on this same 
 subject. To him he uttered his old charge of the criminal 
 slothfulness of the Irish clergy, and the convincing proof of it 
 that was seen in the fact of their possessing no martyrs. The 
 prelate probably had a hearty dislike for the invaders : but his 
 reply was as courteous as it was suggestive. "True," said he 
 "it may be that our people is, as it seems to be, barbarous and 
 uncultivated and cruel. Nevertheless it has always been wont 
 to hold its religious teachers in great honor and reverence, and 
 never on any occasion to stretch out a hostile hand against the 
 saints of God. But now a race has come into the island which 
 both knows how to make martyrs, and has been accustomed to 
 make them. From this time on, Ireland, like other countries, 
 will have its martyrs."* 
 
 The invective under the name of a sermon which Giraldus 
 delivered on the occasion here referred to, may be said indeed 
 to mark the feelings which from the beginning prevailed in the 
 * Topographia Hibernica, Distinotio III., Chap, xxxii. 
 
74 A Scholar of the Twelfth Century. [Jan., 
 
 conquering race toward the conquered. It is no wonder that 
 the government was from the first a failure. Little good admin- 
 istration could be expected from men who talked and acted as 
 if it had been a positive misfortune that St. Patrick, instead of 
 converting the natives and destroying the reptiles, had not, on 
 the contrary, spared the latter and annihilated the former. 
 The general state of feeling on both sides Giraldus incidentally 
 lays bare in his writings which treat of Ireland ; and with a dis- 
 cussion of these works and of one or two others, upon which 
 his reputation now mainly rests, carrying the notice nearly to 
 the end of the autobiography that has been preserved, we shall 
 finish this account of his life. 
 
[From the New ENflLANDEE foe Jantjaet, 1880.] 
 
 A SCHOLAR OF THE TWELFTH CEJJTURY. 
 
 By Thomas R. Lounsbubt. 
 
 Third Article. ( "^^ 
 
[From the 'Sew ENaLANDBR for Januaet, 1S80.J 
 
 A SCHOLAR OF THE TWELFTH CENTURY.* 
 By Thomas R. Lounsbuet. 
 
 m. 
 
 It was in May, 1186, as has been said, that Griraldus came 
 back to England. Once there he seems to have devoted him- 
 self, so far as tbe distractions of court-life would permit, to the 
 business of completing his work describing the country he had 
 left behind. For this, while in Ireland, he had spared sufficient 
 time from his quarrels to collect materials ; and the next year 
 or two after his return were given to the task of putting 
 them into proper shape. It was as early, certainly, as March, 
 1188, that the Topographia Hibernica was finished, at least in its 
 original and shortest form. This always remained a favorite 
 production of the author. Up nearly to the time of his death 
 he was at work upon it, and with such results that his latest 
 editor is disposed to look upon the existing manuscripts of it 
 as belonging to at least three and possibly five editions. His 
 regard for it seems to have been largely based upon the fact 
 that he had succeeded in writing a, long treatise purporting to 
 describe a country which though near at hand was still little 
 known, and had been enabled to refrain almost wholly from 
 pandering to a depraved taste seeking for secular knowledge, 
 by communicating the least possible amount of information. 
 The proportion of valuable matter contained in the work be- 
 came constantly smaller with every new revision ; though it is 
 hardly proper to speak of anything that Griraldus ever com- 
 posed as having undergone any such process as revision. For 
 whatever had once been written by him seemed to him there- 
 after incapable of improvement, at least from the literary point 
 of view. He added constantly ; but he never altered, and he 
 never struck out, unless from personal or political considera- 
 tions. 
 
 *The first and second Articles of this series appeared in the numbers for No- 
 vember, 1878, and January, ISM, respectively. Owing to unezpeoted circum- 
 stances the third has been delayed till the present time. 
 
1880.] A Scholar of the Twelfth Century. 71 
 
 The Topography of Ireland is divided into three books or 
 Distinctiones as they are specifically termed. The first of these 
 sets out to give the geography and natural history of the island ; 
 the second, the wonders of nature that are found in it, and the 
 miraculous events that had taken or were still taking place 
 there ; and the third is devoted to a brief account of the inhabit- 
 ants from the time of the arrival of Cassara, a grand-daughter of 
 Noah, shortly before the flood, down to the invasion under 
 Henry II. The work is throughout a curious mixture of fact 
 and fiction, in which the former, however, plays, on the whole, a 
 pretty inconspicuous and contemptible part. The first book 
 which treats of the topography and productions of the island is 
 naturally far the most valuable ; though even in, this the mod- 
 ern reader is struck by nothing so much as wonder that a man 
 could spend so long a time in a country and manage to see so 
 little. Still in this, when he tells us what he has personally 
 witnessed, Griraldus condescends to impart some knowledge. 
 Like many other men, however, he never learned the desira- 
 bility of stopping when he had finished. He could not be 
 satisfied with simply stating the information he had collected. 
 In the conventional style prevalent in his day, he felt himself 
 under the necessity of drawing moral lessons from it ; and the 
 spiritual reflections so exceed in number and space the facts 
 upon which they are founded, that in the complete form which 
 the work finally assumed, one seems to be reading a treatise 
 for the edification of the soul rather than the instruction of the 
 mind. Everything is emblematic. For instance, the cranes, 
 he tells us, are birds of such wary habits that they take turns 
 in keeping watch ; and those assigned this duty stand on one 
 foot and hold a stone in the other, so that if by chance they fall 
 asleep the dropping of the stone may awaken them to renewed 
 attention. These birds are a type of the bishops of the church, 
 who are to be kept eternally vigilant by holding in their mind 
 some sacred care like a suspended stone. This is a short speci- 
 men, given merely as an illustration of what makes up the 
 greatest portion of the work. The analogies, to be sure, in all 
 these cases never run upon four legs, rarely upon three, and 
 frequently find difficulty in hobbling along upon one ; but the 
 goodness of the motive was in such cases regarded as an ample 
 
72 A Scholar of ike Twelfth Century. [Jan., 
 
 apology for the poorness of the performance. Throughout this 
 whole book, indeed, Griraldus followed the practice of his 
 predecessors who wrote on natural history only for the sake of 
 "improving" it, in the technical language of homiletics, and 
 he goes constantly out of his way to insert long sermons which 
 are tacked to the main matter he is discussing by the flimsiest 
 of fastenings. The controversial argaments he occasionally 
 employs are likewise curiously characteristic of methods of 
 reasoning prevalent in his time. He repeats, for instance, the 
 story universally accepted in the middle ages, of the geese 
 which spring from barnacles attached to wood in the sea ; and 
 he adds a remark which is historically of some value as show- 
 ing the desire on the part of many to evade the restriction 
 which forbade, at particular times, the use of meat. In certain 
 parts of Ireland, he tells us that the flesh of the barnacle-goose 
 was eaten on fast-days by bishops and by religious men gener- 
 ally. It was looked upon by them as being a sort of allowable 
 food, on such occasions, because though it was itself flesh, it 
 was not born of flesh. Griraldus was too determined a stickler 
 for the observances of the church to be led away by any such 
 argument. He never thinks, to be sure, of doubting the fact, 
 from which these lax observers of the ecclesiastical law had 
 drawn their inference that this kind of food was permissible. 
 But for all that he has no hesitation in asserting that they are 
 entirely in error. " If any one had eaten the thigh of our first 
 parent," he says triumphantly, " as being flesh not born of 
 flesh, could he look upon himself as being free from the guilt 
 of eating flesh?" To this argument he felt that it would be in 
 vain for them to attempt a reply. 
 
 Along with some facts derived from acute personal observa- 
 tion, this first book contains many marvellous statements, such 
 as, to be sure, are common in nearly all the writers of that 
 age. Still as in his learning Griraldus surpassed most of his 
 contemporaries, so he did in his capacity for swallowing the im- 
 possible. Little limit apparently existed to his credulity : and, 
 educated man as he was, there was nothing too monstrous or 
 miraculous for him to disbelieve. He is not simply content 
 with statmg that no venomous reptiles are to be found in Ire- 
 land ; he goes on to assure us,' though upon the authority of 
 
1880.] A Scholar of the Twelfth Century. 73 
 
 otters, that serpents shipped to that country die as soon as they 
 come under the influence of its air ; that poison loses there all 
 its mortal qualities ; that toads accidentally transported to that 
 island in vessels and thrown upon the shore immediately rec- 
 ognized the situation, and paid a proper respect to the virtue 
 of the climate by throwing themselves upon their backs in the 
 presence of admiring spectators, and then bursting in two. 
 As if this was not enough, he farther assures us that the soil of 
 Ireland carried to other lands and sprinkled upon any place is 
 suificient to drive away any venomous reptiles. In fact this 
 characteristic quality was used to decide the question whether 
 the isle of Man belonged to England or to Ireland. Poisonous 
 serpents were taken thither. They survived ; and there was a 
 general agreement that this fact settled all disputes as to own- 
 ership. 
 
 But it was in the second book that Giraldus gave free rein to 
 his faith in the marvellous. The wonders he there recounted 
 were, indeed, so extraordinary, that in the preface to this 
 portion of his work he felt it necessary to defend himself from 
 the charge of undue credulity. He recognizes the fact that 
 some of the things which he is about to mention might seem to 
 the reader either impossible or ridiculous ; but he asserts with 
 the utmost positiveness that nothing could be found in the 
 book which he himself had not seen with his own eyes, or had 
 learned with great care from the evidence of men of the most 
 trustworthy character, familiar with the facts of which they 
 had given him information. Some of them are worth mention- 
 ing as specimens of the facts which men of high reputation for 
 veracity were then in the habit of communicating to strangers 
 possesse<i of an inquiring turn of mind. In Munster, Giraldus 
 tells us, there is a lake containing two islands ; in the larger 
 one no woman, or no animal of the female sex could enter 
 without immediately dying ; even the female bird would not 
 accompany its mate thither. In the smaller island nobody 
 ever died by a natural death ; and the unfortunate man who 
 was groaning under the burden of years had to be rowed to 
 the main land in order to pass away from a Hfe which had 
 become too painful to endure. In like manner he tells us 
 stories of islands which float ; of fish with golden teeth ; of 
 
74 A Scholar of the Twelfth Century. [Jan., 
 
 a mill that will not run on Sunday, nor grind stolen grain ; of 
 a bell that has a perverse habit of going every night from the 
 church in which it is hung to the church from which it had 
 been taken, unless solemnly enjoined by its keeper to stay at 
 home ; and of fountains with peculiar qualities, one turning 
 the hair gray, another keeping it from turning gray. No small 
 portion of the book is taken up with a choice collection of 
 miracles performed by the saints of the Irish Church. Giral- 
 dus, indeed, is forced to admit that the saints of the island 
 were apt to display a very vindictive temper, a characteristic 
 which he notices elsewhere as belonging also to those of Wales. 
 He is rather puzzled to account for the exhibition of this 
 quality on the part of these men in their heavenly home. But 
 he gives an explanation which is eminently satisfactory. Both 
 in Ireland and in Wales the country abounded in robbers, and 
 lacked places of refuge ; and fugitives, accordingly, were 
 largely in the habit of seeking safety, not in castles or fortified 
 towns, but in the various ecclesiastical establishments. It 
 became necessary, therefore, for its own protection, that the 
 church should inflict severe punishment upon all who sought 
 to violate its sanctuary. Enemies of this kind were doubtless 
 numerous. The saints, in consequence, got into a bad habit, 
 during their mortal life, of laying the rod upon the back of 
 those who offended them with an unsparing hand. This dis- 
 position they carried with them to the other world ; and the 
 result was that their punishment of evil-doers often seemed to 
 be almost of a revengeful kind. 
 
 The third book, which treats of the inhabitants of Ireland, 
 begins with an account of its earliest settlement. This was by 
 Csesara, the grand-daughter of Noah. She had heard that 
 there was to be a deluge, and accordingly set out to seek an 
 uninhabited island in some remote part of the world ; hoping 
 that a place wherein sin had not been committed would be 
 spared from the punishment of sin. But she might better 
 have stayed at home. All the ships were lost except the one 
 in which she herself sailed. Though she landed on the island, 
 though the very mound which marked her burial-place was still 
 visible, she was not able to escape the common fate that over- 
 took the children of a fallen race. At this point Griraldus is 
 
1880.] A Scholar of the Twelfth Century. 75 
 
 fairly perplexed. No survivor of the ruined world had been 
 left to tell the tale that befell the Irish colonists. If every one 
 perished in the deluge, how could the memory of this event be 
 handed down ? Still his resources are equal to every emer- 
 gency ; indeed, out of this difficulty he gets very easily. To 
 wrestle with problems such as these is something that he does 
 not feel himself called upon to do. The event it is his duty to 
 narrate ; to discuss the truth of it, to explain the unexplainable, 
 is a matter out of his province. "Let those who first write 
 history see to that," he says. " My business is to state facts, 
 not to call them in question." This is a broad and comfortable 
 basis upon which to stand in writing history ; and it yields 
 frequently as satisfactory results as the modern practice of de- 
 vising a theory to account for what is unaccountable. 
 
 Still Giraldus in the composition of this work hit pretty 
 accurately the taste of the times ; and the number of manu- 
 scripts of it still extant show that it was by no means an un- 
 popular production, though he often complained subsequently 
 that neither this nor his other works had brought him either 
 remuneration or preferment. Nor did it escape some strictures. 
 Reviewing, to be sure, was not then carried on, at least on any 
 organized scale. Nevertheless it existed ; for the critical fac- 
 ulty has never been lacking at any period ia the history of the 
 human race, no matter in what condition may have been the 
 creative. As in the case of many greater writers, however, we 
 should never have known of the attack, had it not been for 
 the pains that the author himself took to notice and thereby 
 preserve it. In his preface to the history of the Conquest of 
 Ireland he takes the opportunity to put the wretched scribbler 
 who had assailed him into a pillory where he was forever to 
 remain as an object at which time could point its unmoving 
 finger of scorn. In this preface he tells us in his own grand 
 style that envy had been striving bard to guaw at and to 
 mangle his treatise on the Topography of Ireland, a work, he 
 adds parenthetically, by no means to be looked upon with 
 contempt. All scholars, he asserts, were in perfect agreement 
 as to the peculiar elegance of its style. Malice itself, personi- 
 fied in the reviewer, was ashamed or afraid to rail at the sur- 
 passing excellence of the first and third books. But the evil 
 
76 A Scholar of the Twelfth Century. [Jan., 
 
 nature of the critic would not suffer him long to act a feigned 
 part, and the inborn depravity of the man burst out in a furi- 
 ous attack upon the second book, the plain object of which was 
 to discredit the whole work by showing the falsity of a part. 
 Who this lineal ancestor of the able editor of modern times 
 was, Giraldus does not tell us ; but he lets us know that his con- 
 temptible objections were directed against the marvellous char- 
 acter of the stories contained in the Topography. The critic 
 found fault with speciiic statements made in the work, such as 
 that of a wolf talking with a priest ; of a man with the extrem- 
 ities of an ox ; of a goat and of a lion in love with a woman. 
 To petty cavils like these, Giraldus could make a triumphant 
 reply. "You," he says, addressing this miscreant, who had 
 presumed to criticise him, " you who profess to be so disgusted 
 with these stories, have you not read in the book of Numbers 
 the conversation that took place between Balaam and his ass?" 
 He then goes on to hurl at the presumptuous critic the work 
 of the Fathers, with all the marvels and miracles contained in 
 them. These certainly were full of facts wonderful enough to 
 crush utterly the unbelief of any ordinary doubter. But not 
 content with these, Giraldus appealed likewise to classical 
 writers, and left not a particle of ground for the unhappy scep- 
 tics to stand on either in the Christian or pagan world. 
 
 But our author was not one to be satisfied merely with neg- 
 ative efforts to defend the veracity of his work ; he took a pe- 
 culiar measure of his own to extend its reputation. Lucian 
 has preserved or invented a tale in regard to Herodotus ; how 
 the Father of History, anxious to make known the results of 
 his labors, had seized upon the occasion furnished by the 
 Olympic games. There in the lower part of the temple he had 
 recited in the presence of assembled Greece the story of the 
 Persian war. There he had been crowned with the admiration 
 of all ; there his books had been honored with the names of 
 the nine Muses. This was an incident calculated of itself to fire 
 the heart of a man like Giraldus, and he resolved to reproduce 
 in the modern world a counterpart to the famous scene which 
 antiquity had presented. He tells us that when his work had 
 been completed and corrected, he made up his mind that his 
 light should no longer be hid under a bushel, but should be 
 
1880.] A Scholar of the Twelfth Oentury. 77 
 
 set upon a candle-stick lofty enough to send a good deal of 
 light into the darkness which still surrounded him and his 
 writings. Therefore he determined to recite himself his trea- 
 tise at Oxford, and to do this in the presence of the assembled 
 inhabitants. That place he fixed upon because of the number 
 of the clergy dwelling there, and because of their great supe- 
 riority in learning. As his work was divided into three 
 books, so the recitation of it was spread over three successive 
 days. On the first he called together all the poor of the town 
 to the reading ; and to be sure of their taking to the intellect- 
 ual food furnished to them, he supplied them also with food of 
 a more substantial nature. It is not hard to believe that under 
 such circumstances the recitation was numerously attended, 
 and the production itself met with unqualified praise. Cer- 
 tainly no surer method could be taken to stop the mouth of 
 adverse criticism than filling it with meat. On the second day 
 he received all the instructors in the various departments, and 
 scholars of greatest knowledge and reputation. On the third 
 day the rest of the students were invited, with the soldiers of 
 the town and many of the citizens. The whole afiair, accord- 
 ing to his statement, was noble and magnificent, and recalled 
 the memory of the ancient time of the poets, when the world 
 paid homage to its intellectual rulers as well as to its temporal 
 ones. Nothing like it had ever taken place in England in his 
 age ; nor did history recall any such proceeding in the past. 
 
 It was but a short time after the publication of the Topo- 
 graphy of Ireland, that the History of its Conquest — the 
 Expugnatio Hibernica — appeared. Of this, he does not speak, 
 however, in his autobiography ; and it may possibly be that 
 he did not regard it as a work redounding to his credit. Cer- 
 tainly in one of the prefaces to it, he gives incidentally a 
 curious picture of the view that was taken during his time of 
 literature in general, and in particular of historical writings. 
 He seems to see the reader, he tells us, when he finds every- 
 thing clear and simple, turning up the nose of derision, pro- 
 truding the lip of contempt, and making that general disarrange- 
 ment of his features which would be most highly representative 
 of disgust ; and finally giving still more visible expression to 
 his mean opinion of the work by hurling the book away. It 
 
78 A Scholar of the Twelfth Century. [Jan., 
 
 was clearly regarded as something to an author's discredit that 
 he should write anything easy of comprehension. Giraldus 
 takes some pains to vindicate himself for having followed a 
 course so derogatory. His history, he says, was intended for 
 laymen, for princes that had received little education. It, 
 therefor, had to be composed in a plain and perspicuous style. 
 Indeed he did not stop with this apology for being intelligible. 
 He daringly went so far as to claim that it was justifiable to 
 use the words of the people when the acts of themselves and 
 of their rulers were to be recounted. In fact as he became 
 warm in the discussion of this matter, he assumed the offensive. 
 In the case of all the subjects upon which he had written, he 
 assures us, that abandoning and even spitting upon the hard 
 and austere style of certain authors, he had labored with the 
 greatest zeal to make what he said clear to the comprehension 
 of all, free from doubtful meanings and involved constructions ; 
 though he is careful to add that in the pursuit of this object 
 he had not refrained from adding to the weight of matter the 
 ornament of elegant expression. Yet it is plain that in spite of 
 his courageous words he felt that in writing a treatise giving an 
 account of the Irish expedition, he was derogating a little from 
 the dignity of letters. In the dedication to Richard I., then 
 Count of Poitou, he makes a half apology for having under- 
 taken at all a work of this kind. He had been desired by 
 friends to write the famous deeds of his time, which he had 
 seen with his own eyes or learned from the mouths of trust- 
 worthy witnesses. So at their request and for the sake of 
 posterity he had determined to put into permanent form the 
 account of their doings; though amid the duties and distrac- 
 tion of court-life it was hard for him to find leisure to compose 
 a work which he himself would have time to revise before it 
 should fall into the hands of unseen and envious critics. The 
 theme selected was, he admitted, narrow in extent, was dry in 
 its nature ; it dealt with matters that did not belong to cultiva- 
 tion and refinement. Still he could adorn it, barren as it 
 was, with the graces of his style, and there was for writing it 
 this compensation, that it furnished, as it were, a field of prac- 
 tice upon which his unskilled pen could disport and make 
 trial of itself. 
 
1880.] A Scholar of the Twelfth Century. 79 
 
 This is not the only place where Giraldus throws light 
 unconsciously upon the sentiment, prevalent in his time in 
 regard to the subjects about which the highest class of minds 
 could most worthily occupy themselves in writing. The view 
 is so different from the modern one that it will bear further 
 exemplification. In the preface to a later production — the 
 Description of Wales, addressed to Stephen Langton, arch- 
 bishop of Canterbury,— he enumerates the historical or topo- 
 graphical treatises he had previously written, and he remarks 
 that those who had affection for him had remonstrated with 
 him for spending his time and talents in the production of 
 works that misemployed the one and brought no credit to the 
 other. It is the same, they tell him, as if a great painter such 
 as was Zeuxis, from whom the world waited in anxious 
 expectation for the representation of some magnificent palace 
 or temple, should put forth all the resources of his art to 
 depict a mean hovel or some object contemptible in its very 
 nature. When, therefore, so many illustrious objects existed 
 worthy of his pen, what right had he to adorn with the flowers 
 of rhetoric, and to celebrate with the charm of letters corners of 
 the earth so remote as Ireland, and Wales, and Britain. Others 
 attacked him on a different side. Great powers had been con- 
 ferred upon him by the gift of the Creator. These should not 
 be spent in treating of earthly objects, but should be directed 
 exclusively to those loftier topics connected with the spiritual 
 world. From God we have received our faculties ; therefore to 
 the celebration of him alone should these faculties be exclusively 
 devoted, and not indirectly but directly. Giraldus did not deny 
 the general truth contained in these remonstrances. But vain as 
 he was, he was a good deal less of a fool than most of his con- 
 temporaries who were men of letters ; at least gleams of sense 
 often lighted up his conduct, though they did not always give 
 a remarkable illumination to his words. He remembered that 
 the fame of Troy, of Thebes, of Athens, and of Eome had been 
 widely celebrated in history. He reflected that to their story 
 it was not in his power to add anything, while he might be able 
 to hand down to posterity the memory of events that were 
 taking place in his time, might rescue noble deeds from the 
 darkness of oblivion ; above all he could counterbalance the 
 
80 A Scholar of the Twelfth Century. [Jan., 
 
 meanness of his subject by the majesty of his style. This he 
 felt to be no worthless nor unpraiseworthy undertaking. He 
 did not disguise from himself or his readers that these were 
 topics which were far beneath his abilities. But he looked 
 upon them as the exercise of his youth, by which his mind 
 should first try its powers before venturing upon any more 
 daring venture. And when these sparrow-flights, as it were, 
 of composition should give him strength of wing and confi- 
 dence in himself — which last to the modern reader seems hardly 
 necessary for him to have waited for — then he would proceed 
 to wing his way to that upper air of speculation in which 
 reason swoons and faith alone can bear up the soul. His, then, 
 should be the treasure of that science of sciences, of that science 
 that alone deserves the name, the efSuence of the divine, upon 
 whom the other so-called sciences wait as handmaids, and the 
 very prints of whose feet they with reverent hearts adore. 
 
 Even more fortunately for himself than for posterity Griraldus 
 thus came to the conclusion to compose works, which ordinary 
 men could understand before devoting himself to the composi- 
 tion of that most excellent treatise on that most sacred of 
 sciences upon which be expected to rear a permanent name. 
 Were it not for these works which he professed to hold in such 
 slight estimation, it is pretty safe to say that his name would 
 not even have attained to the position it now holds among the 
 illustrious obscure. And it must be acknowledged that his 
 qualifications for writing the history of the invasion of Ireland, 
 or conquest as he called it, were of an exceptional character. 
 He was contemporary with the events which he described. It 
 was in 1169, when he was about one and twenty years old, that 
 the first expedition set sail from Great Britain for Ireland. Its 
 leader was his uncle Robert Fitz-Stephen, and among those 
 who belonged to it were his own brother Robert de Barri, and 
 his cousin Meiler Fitz-Henry. Besides these, many of those 
 that were concerned in this and in later expeditions must have 
 been intimate friends of his own, or at least acquaintances! 
 for the first levies for the Irish invasion were all raised in 
 Wales. But in addition he had in abundance those qualities 
 which make history readable. He was entirely one-sided in 
 his opinions and prejudiced in his feelings, and whatever he 
 
1880.] A Scholar of the Twelfth Century. 81 
 
 believed he believed so thoroughly that he could see little 
 sense ia any other view, and no sense at all in those holding it. 
 The violence of his language was naturally proportioned to the 
 strength of his faith. An impartial account of any event was 
 one of the last things he troubled his head about. Whatever 
 made for his own side, he accepted without hesitation ; what- 
 ever went against it he denounced with the same unscrupulous- 
 ness. The consequence is that one always knows precisely 
 where to find him, and is never misled by that affectation of 
 weighing evidence which ia so many modern histories imparts 
 dullness to the narrative without adding anything, when one 
 carefully examines it, to our confidence in its accuracy. At any 
 rate, the method of writing history followed by Giraldus, if 
 not the most trustworthy, is certainly much the most interesting. 
 The judicial mind is doubtless in its element in deciding the 
 evidence for or against the truth of a given fact, or in settling 
 the claims of rival statements to the throne of probability, to 
 which in the end it often turns out that neither one of them is 
 entitled. But it is apt to be tedious in narration ; it does not 
 often express itself entertainingly. Decisions of courts on 
 the most exciting topics are rarely lively reading ; while the 
 speeches of counsel on the dullest not unfrequently are. 
 
 Still, in spite of these natural advantages on the part of 
 Griraldus, the account of the Irish invasion is not what might 
 have been fairly expected. In fact it was never really com- 
 pleted ; and some part of it, moreover, is devoted to a narration 
 of things that never happened in Ireland, and to reports and 
 speeches that were never made anywhere. Yet, imperfect as it 
 is, it is the leading authority on the events that took place 
 during the original invasion. Many of its statements must, 
 however, be taken with a much larger number of the grains of 
 allowance than the quantity we feel obliged to swallow with 
 most so-called historical facts. He naturally saw to it that his 
 relations should receive their due, and he omits no opportunity 
 to expatiate upon the merits and services of his brother Eobert 
 and his cousin Meiler. In imitation of the classical writers he 
 introduced the leaders on both sides as making speeches to 
 their soldiers ; and their orations contain frequent references to 
 personages and events which, if genuine, would prove that these 
 
 VOL. III. 6 
 
82 A Scholar of the Twelfth Century. [Jan., 
 
 barbarians had been studying for a sort of civil-service 
 examination in history. They likewise abound in those 
 swelling sentiments, to give vent to which on all occasions 
 delighted the heart of Giraldus. That the Irish were 
 nncivilized enough, he lets us know without perhaps intend- 
 ing it. One suggestive incident is worth recounting. It 
 was to reinstate Dermot McMurchard in his principality of 
 Leinster that the expedition was originally undertaken. In 
 one of the first battles in which the invaders were victorious, 
 two hundred heads of the defeated and slain were cut off 
 and laid at the feet of this chieftain. As he turned them 
 over one by one and recognized who they were, he raised his 
 hand on high and exultingly gave thanks to the Creator for his 
 goodness. Not content with this act of piety he found on 
 further examination the face of one whom he particularly 
 hated. Lifting the head to his mouth by the hair and ears, he 
 bit off the nose and lips with his teeth. After reading such an 
 account as this, it is delicious to find a little further on this 
 amiable prince represented as making a speech to his soldiers, 
 in which he tells his troops that on their side they have' 
 humility to oppose to the pride of the enemy, right and justice 
 to oppose to wrong, and mildness and moderation to oppose to 
 arrogance and violence. 
 
 Before either of the works on Ireland appeared, however, a 
 series of events had taken place which appealed powerfully to 
 the two feelings which exercised the most sway over the heart 
 of Giraldus — his desire for the glorification of the church and 
 for the display of himself. Henry of England and Philip 
 Augustus of France, had met at Gisors, in 1186, and pledged 
 themselves to take the cross. The nobility of England fol- 
 lowed in the wake of their master. To secure the cooperation 
 of the people of Wales also, the king sent Baldwin, arch- 
 bishop of Canterbury, to that country in 1188, in order to 
 preach the crusade. With him went Giraldus on this mission 
 to persuade the inhabitants of his native land to volunteer in 
 the war which had for its object the expulsion of the infidels 
 from Palestine. It was on Ash Wednesday that the arch- 
 bishop reached Radnor and began his work. Here. our author 
 himself took the vow to enter upon the crusade, and in this 
 
1880.] A iScholar of the Tioelfth Century. 83 
 
 was followed by his old antagonist, Peter de Laia, bishop of 
 St. David's. It was entirely in accordance with the fiery and im- 
 pulsive nature of Giraldus that he should devote all his ener- 
 gies to the effort of making the mission successful ; and fortu- 
 nately it was equally in accordance with his disposition to write 
 a full account of it. This work, which he called Ilinerarium 
 Camhrwe, is not only a valuable contribution to our knowledge 
 of the country at that time ; it gives incidentally a most vivid 
 picture of the methods employed to raise recruits for the 
 crusades. 
 
 The party entered "Wales, as has been implied, from Here- 
 fordshire. They went first through the Southern counties, and 
 after making their way to the North along the Western coast, 
 turned eastward, crossed the Dee near Chester, and after pass- 
 ing through Shropshire reached finally Hereford, the place 
 from which they had set out. It was a hard journey ; for 
 their course led through some of the most difficult portions of ' 
 that mountainous country ; and in addition to the ruggedness 
 of the roads, if roads they could be called, their path lay fre- 
 quently over foaming torrents and in the dangerous neighbor- 
 hood of quicksands. The archbishop beguiled the tediousness 
 of the journey by reading or having read to him every day the 
 treatise on the Topography of Ireland, which its author pre- 
 sented to him when the party arrived at Llanddewi, the resi- 
 dence of the archdeacon of Brecknock. Everywhere they 
 preached the duty of joining the expedition which was to set 
 out in order to deliver Jerusalem which, after nearly a hundred 
 years of Christian rule, had again fallen under the dominion of 
 a non-Christian power. While Giraldus does not fail to let us 
 know of the efl'ect wrought by his own persuasive exhortations, 
 it is simple justice to him to say that in the Itinerary he takes 
 to himself no undue proportion of the credit for the success 
 which attended the mission. He is always careful to let the 
 archbishop have an equal share of the honors with the arch- 
 deacon. One thing that struck him with astonishment — 
 though it may not seem so surprising to us — was that addresses 
 delivered in the Latin or the French tongue were apparently full 
 as effective in stirring the multitude as those delivered in the 
 language which the men of the country could understand. 
 
84 A Scholar of the Twelfth Century. [Jan., 
 
 But set speeches were only the occasion, not the cause of the 
 breaking out of enthusiasm with which this great popular 
 movement was welcomed. Multitudes of men meeting to- 
 gether for a common object inflamed one another with a com- 
 mon fanaticism. The moral pressure brought to bear upon all 
 who could go was such as great monarchs, the most averse to 
 the enterprise, like Philip Augustus of France, were not able 
 to resist. Naturally, therefore, it was not likely to be with- 
 stood by men inferior in rank. Tears and entreaties were of little 
 avail to dissuade the ardent and warlike from pledging them- 
 selves to this holy cause ; and Giraldus tells of garments cast 
 aside and left behind in the hands of friends and relatives 
 seeking to hold back the enthusiastic soldier of the cross from 
 pressing forward to sign his name. It is very clear from the 
 account given by our author that it was the women who in 
 most cases sought to keep husbands or sons from joining 
 the expedition ; an expedition, which the sure forecast of love, 
 unaffected by appeals to religious obligation or military glory, 
 saw would be profitless to all and fatal to most. It was they 
 who were most successful in counteracting the influence of the 
 exhortations to duty pronounced in the name and with all the 
 authority of religion, and to the full as fascinating appeals to 
 the prospect of distinction to be achieved in war. Instances of 
 this are common. Ehys, the prince of South Wales, was in- 
 tendiag to take the cross, but was prevented from carrying out 
 his purpose by the entreaties of his wife. Giraldus tells us on 
 one occasion when the party were journeying from Aberga- 
 venny to Usk, a certain nobleman of that region named Arthe- 
 nius, came to meet them, and apologized for his delay in not 
 having presented himself sooner. He was asked if he pur- 
 posed to take the cross: " Such a thing," he answered, " ought 
 not to be done without the advice of friends." The archbishop 
 saw at once the hidden danger, and went straight to the mark 
 by appealing to his victim's masculine vanity. " You are then 
 intending," said he, " to take counsel with your wife." The coun- 
 tenance of the nobleman fell, and he replied in a shamefaced 
 way that it was not meet when entering upon the work to be 
 done by a man to ask the advice of a woman ; and he suf- 
 fered himself at once to be signed with the cross. If he 
 
1880.] A Scholar of the Twelfth Century. 85 
 
 actually went on the expedition little doubt need be enter- 
 tained that he had plenty of both leisure and reason to repent 
 those few moments of masculine folly. 
 
 But this conduct on the part of the female portion of the 
 population evidently deepened the dislike which the stern sol- 
 dier of the church felt for that perverse sex whose fascinations 
 proved so often superior to the attractions of the gospel he 
 preached. To his low opinion of them he had pretty uni- 
 formly given vent, previously, on the slightest opportunity or 
 provocation. This is, indeed, a sentiment which he shared 
 with many of the clerical order both of his own and of later 
 times ; and curious illustrations of it crop out in all of his 
 writings. Thus in his Topography of Ireland he comments in 
 this wise upon a somewhat striking fact in natural history : 
 " la nearly all kinds of living beings," he remarks, " nature 
 has made the male the stronger ; but in these birds, (i. e. 
 falcons), and in all others which live by prey, the boldness 
 and strength of the female is greater." From this he draws the 
 inference that this sex in the human species also is far more 
 disposed to violence and wickedness than the male. Philo- 
 sophical observation^ of a nature akin to these enliven the 
 pages of the Itinerary, and account very satisfactorily for the 
 perversity of the conduct of the feminine multitude. It is 
 nothing remarkable, he says in one place, that women should 
 carry out into practice their habits of inborn iniquity ; and he 
 quotes liberally from sacred and profane writers to prove the 
 natural depravity of the sex. Still these wayward creatures, 
 who seem to have had more sense, individually, than the 
 whole of the male population combined, could do but little 
 against the enthusiasm awakened by this solemn procession 
 moving through the wilds of Wales, which in its triumphal 
 progress carried everything before it. By the time the mission 
 was finished three thousand had volunteered. They were not 
 always ideal soldiers of the church that were collected into 
 this holy band. At Usk, Griraldus remarks with naive sim- 
 plicity that a large number of the most notorious robbers and 
 murderers living in that neighborhood were converted; and 
 much to the surprise, and doubtless much more to the gratifi- 
 cation of the spectators, took the sign of the cross. Yet, after 
 
86 A Scholar of the Twelfth Century. [Jan., 
 
 all, the entreaties of women and the invectives of Giraldus 
 might have been spared, so far as coDcerns the particular expe- 
 dition proposed by Henry II. That monarch never lived to 
 carry out his intention of going to the Holy Land. In conse- 
 quence of the delay that took place many were absolved from 
 their vow of joining the crusading army ; and among these 
 was our author. But the Welsh mission did at least this good 
 service, that it prompted Giraldus to write an account of it ; 
 and to it we are indebted in consequence for a life-like picture 
 both of the country and of the times. 
 
 The Itinerary of "Wales was dedicated to Stephen Langton, 
 who had succeeded Baldwin as archbishop of Canterbury. It 
 was doubtless due to this fact that in this work Giraldus did not 
 assume to himself all the credit for the success of the mission. 
 He graciously allowed the head of the English church some little 
 influence in bringing about the result for which they were both 
 working. For any failure, however, to set forth in the Itine- 
 rary the surpassing excellence of his own services he took care 
 to make up amply in the autobiography. Here he lets us 
 know distinctly how great was the effect produced by his per- 
 sonal influence and eloquence. It was at Haverford, in the 
 county of Pembroke, at a gathering of tbe clergy and laity, 
 that he made his first speech. The archbishop of Canterbury 
 had previously addressed the multitude ; but to his urgent 
 appeals to join the crusade few were found to respond. In sur- 
 prise and sorrow he exclaimed : " Lord, what a stiff-necked 
 generation is this !" But the scene underwent an entire change 
 as soon as the archdeason of Brecknock had spoken. Giraldus 
 informs us that on that occasion God had inspired him with so 
 all-conquering a persuasiveness, so resistless an eloquence, that 
 the very choicest representatives of the arms-bearing population 
 hurried forward with eagerness to be signed with the sign of 
 the cross. He divided his address into three parts ; and the 
 close of each he wound up with a powerful and impassioned 
 appeal. Three perorations of this kind were too much for 
 any audience to stand. So violent was the pressure to hasten 
 and be enrolled among the soldiers of the church that the arch- 
 bishop himself was scarcely able to keep off the crowd from 
 his own person. A fever of enthusiasm had taken possession of 
 
1880.] A Scholar of the Twelfth Century. 87 
 
 the multitude. Men wept under the intense excitement. Often 
 afterward did the archbishop declare that never on any one day 
 had he seen so many tears shed as on this occasion at Haver- 
 ford. Though Giraldus asserts that this was all the Lord's 
 doing, he likewise lets it plainly be inferred that the whole 
 transaction was a particularly convincing evidence of the wis- 
 dom displayed by the divine agency in selecting the instruments 
 best adapted to accomplish its work. It is made clear by this, 
 he remarks, that the Spirit gives its inspiration where it pleases 
 and when it pleases ; and he quotes with evident satisfaction an 
 assertion of St. Jerome that the praises of the preacher are the 
 tears of his auditors. It is to be added that these effective 
 orations were all delivered in the French or the Latin tongue, 
 neither of which languages few if any of the hearers could un- 
 derstand. His excessive vanity does not allow Giraldus to see 
 the inference as to the actual influence of the oratory that would 
 naturally be drawn from such a fact ; and he recounts with 
 great gravity a speech made to his kinsman, Ehys, the prince 
 of South Wales, by a certain John Spang, a professional fool. 
 "You ought," said the jester, "to be much in love with 
 your relative, the archdeacon, because he has sent to-day a 
 hundred or more of your people to the sepulchre of Christ ; 
 and I believe if he had spoken in the Welsh tongue not a sin- 
 gle one of the whole multitude would have remained a subject 
 of yours." 
 
 In numerous other places Giraldus does not suffer his 
 modesty so to prevail over his love of the precise fact as to 
 conceal from us the effect produced by his incomparably elegant 
 addresses. Nor does he deny that the whole mission would 
 have failed of success if it had been obliged to depend upon 
 the tame appeals of others instead of his own finished and 
 fervent oratory. According to him the archbishop was so 
 impressed by his transcendent abilities, that he had selected 
 him as the one to write the account of the expedition which 
 was to recover the Holy Land from the grasp of Saladin and 
 the Saracens. It is certainly to be regretted that this plan was 
 never carried out. A history of a crusade, as told by Giraldus, 
 in which he himself would have been almost certain to be the 
 central figure about which kings and princes and minor per- 
 
88 A Scholar of the Twelfth Century. [Jan., 
 
 sonages resolved, ^would have been a contribution to litera- 
 ture unique in its character and inexpressibly entertaining in 
 its details. For Baldwin's judgment our author naturally had 
 a great respect. He tells us how the archbishop read and 
 re-read the Topography of Ireland which had been presented to 
 him on his first entrance into Wales. The spiritual lessons 
 which had been drawn from the facts of natural history, 
 were in particular the subjects of special praise and almost 
 indeed of reverent admiration. Giraldus takes occasion to 
 glance aside at his critics in commenting upon the singular 
 modesty and discretion of his ecclesiastical superior. Nothing 
 would Baldwin say either in praise or blame of the work until 
 he finished the whole of it; for well he knew how often the 
 beginning differs from the middle and the middle from the end. 
 But having read it through his praises were poured forth in 
 profusion. He enjoined upon its author that the gift of this 
 matchless style granted him by the Creator, should not be 
 buried in a napkin ; that his time should never be wasted, but 
 should be spent in study and in writing, whereby his name 
 might be handed down to after ages. For himself, the arch- 
 bishop said he would gladly cherish such marvellous elegance 
 of expression, did he possess it, more than earthly riches which 
 were sure to perish or worldly dignities that would soon pass 
 away. These, indeed, were vanity ; whereas the works of our 
 author were of the kind that never faded from the memory of 
 man, but as time rolled on became dearer and more precious 
 to the generations to come. It is in some such language as 
 this that our author records the opinion of his superior, though 
 his words are abbreviated. Indeed self-interest, to say nothing 
 of inability, would be sufficient to prevent any wise man from 
 undertaking the task of rendering literally into English any- 
 thing reported by Giraldus in praise of himself. The most 
 vigorous efforts of the translator would always seem tame and 
 spiritless when contrasted with the enthusiasm and glow which 
 pervade the commendations to be found in the original. 
 
 Let us return for a while from the autobiography to bibliog- 
 raphy. The first edition of the Itinerary of Wales appeared, 
 according to its latest editor, in the spring or summer of 1191 ; 
 the second with numerous additions which have no particular 
 
1880.] A Scholar of the Twelfth Century. 89 
 
 reference to the subject, about 1197 ; the third after the sum- 
 mer of 1213. Among the writings of Giraldus this has conspic- 
 uous claims to attention. It is far from being a perfect work 
 looked at from the purely literary point of view ; for in the 
 editions after the first the author managed to lug in any 
 quantity of matter that had no particular connection with the 
 account of the progress through "Wales. It was not to be 
 expected, indeed, that Giraldus should ever surrender an oppor- 
 tunity to adorn his narrative with a marvellous tale ; and in 
 particular, in the first of the two books of which this treatise is 
 composed, we have the usual complement of monstrosities 
 and miracles with which he was wont to regale his readers. 
 He tells us of a spring running with milk ; of a river flowing 
 with wine ; of fields suddenly ripening in the most obliging 
 way, a month before the proper time, in order to supply the 
 destitute with food ; of a soldier, who not only went through 
 the pains of labor, but gave birth to a calf; of unclean spirits 
 infesting houses, throwing dirt on the occupants, cutting holes 
 in their garments, and, worse than all, taunting the dwellers 
 with the mean things of which they had been guilty. In 
 particular he tells us of one demon in the shape of a red-haired 
 young man, who gave his name as Simon. This one entered a 
 mansion, dispossessed the steward, and proceeded to discharge 
 the duties of the office himself, which he did in the most 
 skillful manner. Indeed Giraldus gives such a glowing 
 account of the conduct and management of the intruder, that 
 one is disposed to sympathize with the spirit when he is turned 
 away simply because he is discovered holding secret conversa- 
 tions at night in the neighborhood of a mill and a pool of 
 water ; for one feels that he is far from being the first or the 
 last red-haired but worthy young man who has been accus- 
 tomed to spend the hours after dark in a similar way. 
 
 But in spite of the marvellous tales which he inserted into 
 his writings, this treatise was a most important one; and per- 
 haps is surpassed in value only by another treatise which 
 came out about 1194, treating of the Topography of Wales. 
 This last work is remarkable for being free, comparatively 
 speaking, from all extraneous matter. It is divided into two 
 books, the first of which gives some account of the country 
 
90 A Scholar of the Twelfth Century. [Jan., 
 
 and of the character and virtues of the inhabitants, especially 
 of their courage, their quickness of understanding, their gener- 
 osity, and their devotion to the faith. But Giraldus was not 
 one of those patriotic souls who loved his country and his 
 countrymen so fervently that he could not see anything but 
 their good qualities. In his own opinion he dwelt pretty near 
 the serene summits of intellectual and moral elevation ; and 
 from these heights could look with a good deal of composure 
 and critical skill upon the faults and follies of his fellow-beings, 
 including his friends, who were painfully threading their way 
 through the mazes of right and wrong on the plains below. 
 If, therefore, he enlarged upon their virtues, he was equally 
 eloquent upon their vices ; and indeed, discusses his own 
 people with that cosmopolitan impartiality which characterizes 
 in so marked a degree the modern ideal citizen of the world. 
 According to him the men of this nation were of the most 
 fickle character. They were always ready to begin any new 
 undertaking; and on the other hand they were just as ready 
 to abandon it after it had once been begun. Constant in noth- 
 ing but their inconstancy, they were upon the whole more tena- 
 cious in iniquity than in anything else. As they had no 
 reverence for the truth, they did not pay the slightest deference 
 to an oath. If anything could be gained by swearing to a lie, 
 they were always ready to perjure themselves. No matter 
 whether the cause was a civil or ecclesiastical one, each party 
 was always prepared to swear to what was deemed expedient 
 for its own side ; and the only disgrace that could befall any 
 one concerned in the transaction resulted not from the disposi- 
 tion manifested to tell a lie, but from the lack of skill that 
 suffered any one to be caught iu telling it. In addition to 
 their deceitfulness, they were the most inveterate robbers im- 
 aginable. Every method of violating the eighth commandment, 
 from petty thieving to grand larceny, was familiar to them ; 
 and they were equally impartial in exhibiting their accomplish- 
 ments in this line not only upon strangers and enemies but 
 likewise upon their personal friends. In battle at the first 
 charge they were terrible in their impetuosity, their cries, 
 and their appearance ; but if the onset failed, they were easily 
 thrown into disorder ; and once really worsted they had no 
 
1880.] A Scholar of the Twelfth Century. 91 
 
 resource but the most disgraceful flight. This, however, was 
 attended by the advantage that they were thus enabled to live 
 to fight another day ; and accordingly, undiscouraged by past 
 failures, they were always ready for new enterprises ; and as a 
 result of this characteristic, while they were easily conquered 
 in battle, they were with difiiculty conquered in war. Seldom, 
 indeed, have the military qualities of the Celtic races been 
 described more accurately and impartially than by this church- 
 man of the twelfth century who had devoted himself to scho- 
 lastic studies. But there are plenty of passages scattered 
 through the volumes on both Ireland and Wales which give 
 the reader a high idea of the justness of the views of Giraldus 
 whenever he comes to speat of the method of dealing with 
 turbulent and discontented populations. His administrative 
 qualities, so far as they find expression in his writings, must 
 have been of a high order. Had he been placed in a position 
 of responsibility, he might have acted the part of a politician ; 
 but the views to which he gives utterance are almost invariably 
 the views of a statesman. 
 
 Our author, who noticed everything and introduced every- 
 thing, whether related to his subject or not, in both of the 
 treatises on Wales, calls attention to the close resemblance 
 existing between words of different languages, especially 
 between the Latin, the Greek, and the Welsh. The similarities 
 in the two last he can account for easily. Though Giraldus 
 speaks contemptuously of the fabulous history of Geoffrey of 
 Monmouth, yet he was clearly a full believer in the Trojan 
 descent of the Britons, and that part of the story wliich repre- 
 sents the ancestors of the latter people as having been long 
 resident in Greece was not doubted by him in the slightest. 
 As their forefathers had dwelt in that country so long, it was 
 not unnatural that they should have picked up many Greek 
 words. But it was by no means to these two tongues that our 
 author confined his observations. He traces the word salt 
 through the Greek, Welsh, Irish, Latin, French, English, and 
 what he calls the Teutonic language, which seems here to mean 
 the Low-Dutch. It is apparently on the strength of one or two 
 statements of this kind that Mr. Freeman calls Giraldus "the 
 father of comparative philology."* If this be the reason, no 
 * Contemporary Review, September, ISTS, p. 216. 
 
92 A Scholar of the Twelfth Century. [Jan., 
 
 one ever founded a new science with more ease. But it is pos- 
 sible there may be another explanation for giving him this 
 title, which will, at any rate prevent the work of Bopp from 
 being entirely anticipated, even if the laurels of that scholar are 
 to be stripped from his brow. There may be a better reason 
 for ascribing to our author the paternity of the science of com- 
 parative philology than the fact that he found that the word 
 denoting salt bore a close resemblance in half-a-dozen different 
 languages. This is the manly stand which he took in regard to 
 the name that belonged by right to his native country. Men 
 persisted in calling it Wales ; whereas its real and only proper 
 designation was Cambria. On this point Giraldus was very 
 earnest. He recurred to it again and again. In his eyes he 
 wbo styled Cambria Wales was but little better than one of the 
 wicked ; though there is no evidence that such a one was to 
 him so completely enveloped by that atmosphere of depravity 
 which clothes as a garment the ignorant, the stupid, and the 
 iniquitous wbo still speak of the oldest form of our language 
 as Anglo-Saxon. 
 
 It is not to be supposed that while writing these treatises 
 Giraldus was resting from other occupations. He continued 
 to be employed in public affairs, and it is by no means improb- 
 able that his advice and assistance were both needed and 
 sought in dealing with the unquiet and refractory population of 
 Wales. According to his own account he refused two bish- 
 oprics in his native country, which fell vacant, that of Bangor 
 and that of Llandaff. We may suspect, however, that the 
 offers if seriously made were not pressed upon him with the 
 most irresistible urgency. Four in all, of such offers, be tells 
 us, he had now refused ; two in Ireland and two in Wales : for 
 as he assures us, striving for nothing of that kind, he had with 
 a serene and lofty mind scornfully trodden under foot every 
 proposal of that nature ; for at that time he neither desired nor 
 sought for anything further. To his studies his whole heart 
 was given ; and though a follower of the court he nevertheless 
 found leisure to write histories. His labors did not cease with 
 the hours of the day ; for at night he was poring over his 
 books and preparing his works by the light of the lamp. Still 
 for some cause he was not altogether satisfied ; and the reasons 
 
1880.] A ikholar of the Twelfth Century. 93 
 
 which he gives are not in absolute harmony with that love of 
 calm and undisturbed study which he asserts to have been then 
 the ruling feeling of his life. For it, to be sure, he left the 
 court ; but he gives as the considerations which induced him 
 to leave it, that all hopes from it were at an end ; that its 
 promises were kept to the ear only ; that no promotions took 
 place in it according to merit. It seems, in fact, that like many 
 who start out with the idea of leading their lives in accordance 
 with the theory that virtue is its own reward, he had come in 
 process of time to be dissatisfied with the wages he was to 
 receive. At any rate, for the reasons given above, he tells us 
 in his own grand style that he determined to quit the court, to 
 abandon the tumult of its stormy seas, to retire within himself, 
 and to seek the seclusion of the schools as a secure and tran- 
 quil haven for his tempest-tossed soul. He could not go to 
 Paris because war was then going on between Eichard and 
 Philip Augustus ; so to Lincoln he betook himself, where the 
 famous scholar, William de Monte, was teaching theological 
 science. There he remained for several years pursuing his 
 studies. 
 
 But as Giraldus pathetically and parenthetically remarks, 
 nothing upon earth is stable, nothing in the world immutable, 
 nothing in life invariable. No amount of scholastic theology, 
 no investigation of points of spiritual casuistry could ever 
 smother the fire in his nature which was ever ready to burst 
 forth into flame. In 1198, Peter de Laia, bishop of St. David's 
 died. From this point began a controversy which made the 
 next few years of our author's life anything but tranquil and 
 studious ones ; though with his constitutional enjoyment of a 
 quarrel it is not impossible that those years were as happy in 
 their way as any he spent. 
 
 The story is a long one to tell, and it is told very fully in 
 another work ; but the autobiography breaks off almost as soon 
 as it is begun. The essential part of it is that Giraldus was 
 elected to the vacant see by the canons of St. David's, and 
 yielding either to the persuasions of others or to the prompt- 
 ings of his own vanity determined to insist upon its metropoh- 
 tan rights, and secure the recognition of these from the pope. 
 By this course of conduct he necessarily placed himself in open 
 
94 A Scholar of the Twelfth Century. [Jan., 
 
 hostility to both the court and the church of England. To Rome 
 he joarnejed in 1199, in order to prove the independence of 
 St. David's to the head of the Christian world, and to receive 
 directly from him the investiture. Innocent III., the greatest 
 of the successors of St. Peter, was at that time in the second 
 year of his pontificate. To him Giraldus presented six of his 
 books, accompanying the gift with a play upon words, for 
 which English furnishes no precise equivalent, to the effect that 
 while others made their offerings in the form of hbras, he made 
 his in the form of libros. The pope was, as is well known, a 
 learned man and a lover of literature ; and Giraldus is careful 
 to let us know how profoundly he was impressed with the 
 value of the gift. The books he kept constantly by his bed 
 for about a month, and was never weary of pointing out to the 
 cardinals, who came to see him, the elegance of the style found 
 in them "fend the excellence of the matter. The competition for 
 their possession was naturally great. To five different card- 
 inals the pope presented five of these books at their earnest 
 entreaty. But there was one, the work entitled Gemma 
 Sacerdotalis that he fancied most of all; and this he could not 
 be persuaded to give up. In the meanwhile a letter came to 
 Rome from Hubert, archbishop of Canterbury, the determined 
 enemy of Giraldus, giving to Innocent the view of the contro- 
 versy held by the English court and church. 
 
 In the very middle of a sentence in this letter the autobiog- 
 raphy abruptly breaks off. Whatever else was written has 
 been lost, to all appearance irrecoverably. The details of the 
 great controversy for the restoration of the rights and privileges 
 of St. David's, into which Giraldus plunged with his whole 
 heart, which took up several years of his life, which involved 
 him in troubles and difiiculties without end, and which resulted 
 at last in failure, all these are told, as has been said, in another 
 of his works. The story is a most curious and even fascinating 
 one that he relates of his trials, his adventures, his escapes, 
 his perils by land and by sea, in pursuit of this phantom 
 which always eluded his grasp ; but to recount it lies outside 
 of the province of these papers. The result of it gave a death- 
 blow to any hopes he may have had of further ecclesiastical 
 
1880.] A Scholar of the Twelfth Century. 95 
 
 advancement ; and after this he fades from our sight. He was 
 the writer of many other works besides those which have been 
 mentioned, all marked by the peculiarities of a personal vanity 
 always entertaining, of constant quotation from himself, and of 
 excessive credulity. In this last respect it was possible for 
 him to have been worse. He believed everything ; he might 
 have believed nothing. As has been intimated, he repeats 
 again and again what he has himself said elsewhere. But he 
 has one advantage over most writers of this kind, that he 
 repeats himself in precisely the same words, so that the con- 
 scientious student is saved the necessity of going through 
 twice what is essentially the same thing in order to be abso- 
 lutely certain that he has not been bored with it once. But 
 after the settlement of the controversy with the archbishop of 
 Canterbury we hear but little more of him, though he seems 
 to have lived on nearly twenty years. In the period which 
 intervened between the close of his struggle for St. David's and 
 the time of his death, he doubtless had many bitter quarrels 
 and controversies which, however trivial in themselves, were 
 important enough in his own eyes ; but the record of them, if 
 such there were, has followed the fate which has fallen upon 
 the memory of the brave men who lived before Agamemnon. 
 He appears to have died somewhere in the neighborhood of 
 1220. Let us hope he found that rest in the grave which 
 was denied him upon earth ; that in the life beyond, that peace 
 was furnished him in abundance, which it was rarely his 
 fortune to have in what we know of his life here. 
 
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