The ''Itinerarium Cambriae'' ("The

Itinerary Itinerary or Itineraries or Itinerarium may refer to: Travel * Itinerarium, an Ancient Roman road map in the form of a listing of cities, villages, and other stops, with the intervening distances * ''Itinerarium Burdigalense'', also known as the ...

Through

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

") is a medieval account of a journey made by

Gerald of Wales Gerald of Wales (; ; ; ) was a Cambro-Norman priest and historian. As a royal clerk to the king and two archbishops, he travelled widely and wrote extensively. He studied and taught in France and visited Rome several times, meeting the Pope. He ...

, written in

Latin Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...

. Gerald was selected to accompany the

Archbishop of Canterbury The archbishop of Canterbury is the senior bishop and a principal leader of the Church of England, the Primus inter pares, ceremonial head of the worldwide Anglican Communion and the bishop of the diocese of Canterbury. The first archbishop ...

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

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

Third Crusade The Third Crusade (1189–1192) was an attempt led by King Philip II of France, King Richard I of England and Emperor Frederick Barbarossa to reconquer the Holy Land following the capture of Jerusalem by the Ayyubid sultan Saladin in 1187. F ...

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

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

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

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

initial In a written or published work, an initial is a letter at the beginning of a word, a chapter (books), chapter, or a paragraph that is larger than the rest of the text. The word is ultimately derived from the Latin ''initiālis'', which means '' ...

s. The work plays a role in the plot of

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

's 1831 novel ''

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

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

External links

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

References

{{Authority control Medieval documents of Wales 1188 in Wales Medieval Welsh literature 12th-century books in Latin Latin historical texts from Norman and Angevin England Travel autobiographies British travel books Texts about the Crusades Third Crusade Works by Gerald of Wales Books about Wales