The Chronicles of Medieval Wales and the March: New Contexts, Studies, and Texts ed. by Ben Guy et al.

Abstract

Reviewed by: The Chronicles of Medieval Wales and the March: New Contexts, Studies, and Texts ed. by Ben Guy et al. Stephen J. Joyce Guy, Ben, Georgia Henley, Owain Wyn Jones, and Rebecca Thomas, eds, The Chronicles of Medieval Wales and the March: New Contexts, Studies, and Texts ( Medieval Texts and Cultures of Northern Europe, 31), Turnhout, Brepols, 2020 hardback; pp. xvi, 455; 6 b/w illustrations, 20 b/w tables; R.R.P. €80.00; ISBN 9782503583495. Based on work undertaken by the Welsh Chronicles Research Group (founded in 2014 and hosted by Bangor University), editors Ben Guy, Georgia Henley, Owain Wyn Jones, and Rebecca Thomas have collated eleven articles as a culmination of the group collaboration, including five new editions and translations of select Welsh chronicles. The articles, from a range of impressive contributors, investigate questions of local and European contexts, reception and integrity, provenance and influences, as well as publishing editions of O Oes Gwrtheyrn, the Cardiff [End Page 217] Chronicle, the Chronicle of Gregory of Caerwent, Blwydyn eiseu, and Brut Ieuan Brechfa. Part I, 'Synopses', begins with Huw Pryce's overview of chronicle writing in medieval Wales. Charting activity from the ninth to the sixteenth centuries, Pryce observes key movements in perspective: the shift from Latin to the vernacular; the continued importance of the 'master narrative' of the Welsh as dispossessed Britons; and the significance of monasticism in the chronicle tradition, particularly the Cistercians. Björn Weiler subsequently places Welsh chronicle writing within a European context. He argues that common tools and traditions connected Welsh chronicle writing to a 'trans-European framework', one where chroniclers were not just copyists but questioners and amenders of annalistic material. The notion of forging history from limited sources then segues into Ben Guy's discussion of forgery in the Welsh chronicle tradition. Noting the importance of these chronicles as historical sources, he charts the problems represented by 'romantic' emendations wrought by eighteenth- and nineteenth-century figures such as Iolo Morganwg and John Williams ab Ithel, and the evolution of robust modern frameworks for interpreting the chronicle tradition. In Part II, 'Detailed Studies', Henry Gough-Cooper examines the three principal Welsh Latin annalistic chronicles: the Harleian (c. 1100), the Breviate (late thirteenth century), and the Cottonian (late thirteenth century). He argues that the Cottonian chronicle, much understudied, is critical to establishing traces of earlier chronicles from the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth centuries. Barry Lewis examines the genealogical tract Bonedd y Saint, and its relationship with the Cistercian abbey of Valle Crucis in north-east Wales. In relating a genealogical entry with a similar entry in the chronicle Brenhinedd y Saesson, he posits that all extant versions of the Bonedd y Saint come from a version copied at Valle Crucis in the second half of the thirteenth century from an older clas church located further west. David Stephenson returns to Valle Crucis to propose the abbey as the site for the continuation of the chronicle of Brut y Tywysogyon in the later thirteenth century and into the fourteenth century. Part III, 'Editions', heralds the publication of five new editions and translations of select Welsh chronicles. Owyn Wyn Jones provides an edition of the O Oes Gwrtheyrn, the only chronicle to survive from medieval Gwynedd. He argues that it was composed in the second decade of the thirteenth century in the Cistercian monastery of Aberconwy and is a notable early example of the shift to the vernacular. Georgia Henley has produced a Latin edition of the early fourteenth-century CardiffChronicle and mapped its relationship with annals produced at Tewkesbury and Neath, providing an interesting map of transmission from the Welsh marches to south and north Wales. Joshua Byron Smith has constructed the first Latin edition of the Chronicle of Gregory of Caerwent, written down between 1237 and 1290 in a Benedictine abbey in Gloucester, and notable for its ambivalence to Edward's conquest of Wales. Rebecca Try has crafted an edition of a vernacular chronicle dated after 1321 (from older material), probably [End Page 218] from the Glamorgan area and termed by her as the Blwydyn eiseu. Ben Guy's contribution is a new edition of the vernacular chronicle Brut Ieuan Brechfa, written...