SOURCE: Powicke, F. M. “Gerald of Wales.” In The Christian Life in the Middle Ages and Other Essays, pp. 107-29. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1935.

In the following essay, which was originally presented as a lecture at the John Rylands Library in 1928, Powicke traces Gerald's life and career.

The career of Gerald of Wales suggests some striking reflections to the student of our early history.¹ He lives, and lives vigorously, only in his own writings, some of which survive only in one manuscript. If these works had been lost, as so much medieval literature has been lost, we should know almost nothing about him. A troublesome archdeacon, chosen by his fellow canons as bishop of St. David's, a man whose ‘rebel cleverness’ caused much trouble at the papal court to a hard-worked Archbishop of Canterbury—that is about all; he would have been one among many troublesome archdeacons, and...