Medieval Wales: Some Crusade Stories

Gerald of Wales, Journey through Wales. Copy, made in the 1200s
© The British Library

Medieval tiles from Neath Abbey, based on a legendary combat between Richard I and Saladin (Muslim governor of Egypt, conqueror of Damascus and Jerusalem)

County of Tripoli. Gold bezant, late 1100s — 1200s, copying a Fatimid dirham of al-Mustansir

Medieval Wales: Some Crusade Stories in the Origins  gallery explores some of the events and attitudes to the Holy Land and Crusades from a Welsh perspective.

For most Christians in medieval Europe, Jerusalem was the centre of the World. It drew many pilgrims to Christ’s tomb and Biblical sites.

Eight hundred and twenty years ago Gerald of Wales wrote his Journey through Wales describing Archbishop Baldwin’s tour in 1188 to gather recruits for the Third Crusade.

A rare 13th-century copy of Gerald’s book, on loan from The British Library until 3 January 2010, now returns to Wales for the first time in 20 years.

Crusades were Holy Wars approved by the Pope. Crusading was also a form of pilgrimage – an expression of Christian devotion.

The First Crusade was unleashed by Pope Urban II in 1095, against the Turks, to recapture the Holy City of Jerusalem. Five hundred years of conflict followed. The people of Wales participated in these far off wars.

Gerald called his book ‘a clear mirror, reflecting the wild and trackless places we passed through … it portrays the country itself, as well as the origins, customs and ways of the inhabitants’.

His account provides remarkable insight into the actions of and attitudes to crusading. Although Gerald did not go on the Third Crusade, he was committed to the crusading ideal.

Another book on loan from the British Library until next January, Gerald’s De Principis Instructione (‘On the education of a monarch’), is devoted to the Crusades and the fate of the Holy Land. This is a unique surviving copy written in Latin, possibly in Wales, in the 1300s.

Crusaders used many different coinages for business and financing the construction of towns, churches and castles.

Some Crusader states, such as the Principality of Antioch, the County of Tripoli and the Kingdom of Jerusalem, produced coinage for their own use, and some of these are displayed in the gallery.

Medieval Wales: Some Crusade Stories coincides with the Fifth International Conference of Military Orders at Cardiff University (3-6 September 2009), which examines the powerful, political medieval orders involved in the Crusades.