The Welsh and the Medieval World

The Welsh and the Medieval World
Author: Patricia Skinner
Publisher: University of Wales Press
Total Pages: 354
Release: 2018-02-07
Genre: History
ISBN: 1786831902

Entry point into Welsh migration by experts: many of the contributors have longer studies that students can then read; Multi-disciplinary: shows how historical and literary sources can be read together, includes new archaeological data Showcases new work by a new generation of Welsh historians.

Celtic Christianity in Early Medieval Wales

Celtic Christianity in Early Medieval Wales
Author: Oliver Davies
Publisher:
Total Pages: 212
Release: 1996
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN:

This first full-length theological study of sources from early medieval Wales traces common Celtic features in early Welsh religious literature. The author explores the origins of the earliest Welsh tradition in the fusion of Celtic primal religion with primitive Christianity, and traces some considerable Irish influence. These specific Celtic spiritual emphases are examined in the religious poetry of the Black Book of Carmarthen, the Book of Taliesin and the Poets of the Princes, and in prose texts such as The Food of the Soul and the Life of Beuno. Many of these Welsh texts appear here in English translation for the first time.

Medieval Welsh Genealogy

Medieval Welsh Genealogy
Author: Ben Guy
Publisher: Boydell Press
Total Pages: 552
Release: 2020-04-17
Genre: History
ISBN: 9781783275137

First in-depth investigation of the genealogies of medieval Wales, bringing out their full significance.

The Economy of Medieval Wales, 1067-1536

The Economy of Medieval Wales, 1067-1536
Author: Matthew Frank Stevens
Publisher: University of Wales Press
Total Pages: 165
Release: 2019-10-01
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1786834855

This book surveys the economy of Wales from the first Norman intrusions of 1067 to the Act of Union of England and Wales in 1536. Key themes include the evolution of the agrarian economy; the foundation and growth of towns; the adoption of a money economy; English colonisation and economic exploitation; the collapse of Welsh social structures and rise of economic individualism; the disastrous effect of the Glyndŵr rebellion; and, ultimately, the alignment of the Welsh economy to the English economy. Comprising four chapters, a narrative history is presented of the economic history of Wales, 1067–1536, and the final chapter tests the applicability in a Welsh context of the main theoretical frameworks that have been developed to explain long-term economic and social change in medieval Britain and Europe.

Land, People and Power in Early Medieval Wales

Land, People and Power in Early Medieval Wales
Author: Rhiannon Comeau
Publisher: British Archaeological Reports (Oxford) Limited
Total Pages: 388
Release: 2020
Genre: Social Science
ISBN:

This study examines the structure of the early medieval Welsh landscape. Using a cantref (hundred) in south-west Wales as a case study, it draws on a multidisciplinary, comparative analysis to overcome the limits imposed by restricted material culture survival and limited written sources. It examines the patterns of power and habitual activity that defined spaces and structured lives, and considers the temporal relationships, both seasonal and longue durée, that shaped them. Four key findings are presented. Firstly, that key areas of early medieval life - agriculture, tribute-payment, legal processes and hunting - were structured by a longstanding seasonal patterning that is preserved in twelfth- and thirteenth-century Welsh law, church and well dedications and fair dates. Secondly it presents, at cantref level, the first systematic survey of assembly site evidence in Wales, and sets it in comparative context. Thirdly, it demonstrates that, though poor material culture preservation and limited written records have hitherto restricted identification and characterisation of key locations in the early medieval Welsh landscape, a multidisciplinary dataset allows effective identification of focal zones through indicators known from other areas of north-west Europe. Fourthly, the widely-used 'multiple estate model' is found to be an inadequate descriptor of the early medieval Welsh landscape. An alternative approach is proposed. Methodologically, it demonstrates the value of a multidisciplinary approach, especially the systematic use of place-names which is novel in a Welsh context. It also provides key resources for other researchers by geolocating pre-1700 place-names from a previously published survey; creating GIS resources (polygons and geolocated databases) from the 1840s tithe map and schedules for parishes in its detailed case study areas; and providing a geolocated database of 16th-century demesne and Welsh-law landholdings in the cantref.

Welsh History in the Early Middle Ages

Welsh History in the Early Middle Ages
Author: Wendy Davies
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2009
Genre: Celts
ISBN: 9780754659716

This volume brings together Wendy Davies's pioneering early studies on the text of the Book of Llan Dâv and later pieces which explore the place of Wales in the wider world of the early middle ages. The Llandaff studies deal with arguably the most significant surviving text for early medieval Welsh history and have provoked much subsequent comment. The later work includes much-cited papers on the Latin charter tradition of the Celtic world and on 'Celtic' women, as well as studies of the so-called Celtic church and of the distinctiveness of Celtic saints - in all of which Welsh evidence makes a particularly important contribution. It also includes recent pieces on the environment and economy of early medieval Wales, which highlight some of the crucial new evidence provided by archaeology.

Law and the Imagination in Medieval Wales

Law and the Imagination in Medieval Wales
Author: Robin Chapman Stacey
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
Total Pages: 344
Release: 2018-09-06
Genre: History
ISBN: 0812295420

In Law and the Imagination in Medieval Wales, Robin Chapman Stacey explores the idea of law as a form of political fiction: a body of literature that blurs the lines generally drawn between the legal and literary genres. She argues that for jurists of thirteenth-century Wales, legal writing was an intensely imaginative genre, one acutely responsive to nationalist concerns and capable of reproducing them in sophisticated symbolic form. She identifies narrative devices and tropes running throughout successive revisions of legal texts that frame the body as an analogy for unity and for the court, that equate maleness with authority and just rule and femaleness with its opposite, and that employ descriptions of internal and external landscapes as metaphors for safety and peril, respectively. Historians disagree about the context in which the lawbooks of medieval Wales should be read and interpreted. Some accept the claim that they originated in a council called by the tenth-century king Hywel Dda, while others see them less as a repository of ancient custom than as the Welsh response to the general resurgence in law taking place in western Europe. Stacey builds on the latter approach to argue that whatever their origins, the lawbooks functioned in the thirteenth century as a critical venue for political commentary and debate on a wide range of subjects, including the threat posed to native independence and identity by the encroaching English; concerns about violence and disunity among the native Welsh; abusive behavior on the part of native officials; unwelcome changes in native practice concerning marriage, divorce, and inheritance; and fears about the increasing political and economic role of women.

The Chronicles of Medieval Wales and the March

The Chronicles of Medieval Wales and the March
Author: Ben Guy
Publisher:
Total Pages: 295
Release: 2020-02
Genre: Electronic books
ISBN: 9782503583495

The chronicles of medieval Wales are a rich body of source material offering an array of perspectives on historical developments in Wales and beyond. Preserving unique records of events from the fifth to the fifteenth centuries, these chronicles form the essential narrative backbone of all modern accounts of medieval Welsh history. Most celebrated of all are the chronicles belonging to the Annales Cambriae and Brut y Tywysogyon families, which document the tumultuous struggles between the Welsh princes and their Norman and English neighbours for control over Wales. Building on foundational studies of these chronicles by J. E. Lloyd, Thomas Jones, Kathleen Hughes, and others, this book seeks to enhance understanding of the texts by refining and complicating the ways in which they should be read as deliberate literary and historical productions. The studies in this volume make significant advances in this direction through fresh analyses of well-known texts, as well as through full studies, editions, and translations of five chronicles that had hitherto escaped notice.