Dr David Thomson – Elementary education in the late mediaeval Marches: exploring the manuscripts

What can the surviving manuscripts tell us about how Latin was learnt in the late mediaeval Marches? This talk will look at the physical nature of some of those books, their makers, contents and users, from a country parish to a cathedral chancery to the abbeys of mid-Wales, visiting Gerald of Wales and Robert Grosseteste along the way.

Dr Rhun Emlyn
The Middle Ages saw the establishment of Europe’s first universities which transformed learning and scholarship throughout the continent. This talk will provide an introduction to life at medieval universities and focus on scholars from Wales and the Marches who travelled to Oxford, Cambridge, Paris and further afield to study. We will meet some of the brilliant intellectuals who contributed to Europe’s academic world, as well as some colourful characters who made an impression – both good and bad – on their fellow students. We will consider how universities influenced Wales and the Marches and how Wales and the Marches contributed to European university life in return.

Dr Katharine Bader
This talk will describe the circumstances that made the southern Welsh Marches important to the history of science and the introduction of Arabic astronomy. It will argue that this was one of the first regions in the Latin West where observational astronomy took hold. It is here that we have the first recorded use of the astrolabe for an astronomical event; it is here that sunspots are first diagrammed; and it is here that an auroral event is described as an atmospheric phenomenon, not only as a prophetic one. The backdrop for this breakthrough is a compelling one of place, politics, and people.

Professor Chris Given-Wilson
This talk will investigate the life and chronicle of Adam Usk, born a Welshman but whose education was supported by the Mortimers and who pursued an initially successful career as an archiepiscopal and royal clerk in England. His misfortune was that, just as he came close to the top of his profession, the revolt of Owain Glyn Dwr erupted, causing suspicion of Welshmen at the English court and eventually persuading him that in order to pursue his career he needed to make his way to the papal court at Rome, where he spent four years from 1402 to 1406. His adventures thereafter took him back to France, where he sought a bishopric from the Avignon papacy, then to Wales for three years, and eventually, in 1411, back to England, where he spent the last twenty years of his life. Yet the conflicting loyalties between his Welshness and his ambition meant that in the end he had to betray one side or the other, although he says as little about this as he can in his chronicle. In many ways, it is what he does not say in his chronicle rather than what he does say which defined his life and legacy.

Dr Sara Elin Roberts
One manuscript of the laws, in a section discussing learning, states: ‘Ny bydd ynad neb heb ddysc’ (‘Nobody shall be a justice without learning’). The lawtexts themselves were the product of extensive legal learning and are scholarly texts, created for lawyers by lawyers. They also give some details on the role of the justice in medieval Wales, although they often raise as many questions as they answer. This talk will look at lawyers in medieval Wales, bringing together what we know about their work, and their training; it will draw on the lawtexts, naturally, and various sections will be examined in detail to show how the lawyers learnt their craft, and how the learning was applied.

Dr Georgia Henley
Gerald of Wales (also known as Giraldus Cambrensis or Gerald de Barri) was an influential twelfth-century cleric and author of a range of Latin works addressing contemporary politics, monastic life, his own biography, and perhaps most famously, the ethnography and history of Wales and Ireland. This talk addresses Gerald’s background, education, reception, and significance, focusing in particular on how his writings have influenced our understanding of twelfth-century life applied.

Dr Rhun Emlyn
Walter Brut is one of the most intriguing figures of the Marches in the later Middle Ages. Raised in Herefordshire, he studied at Oxford, is the likely author of an astronomical textbook, fought on a naval expedition, was tried for heresy and ultimately executed for his involvement in the Glyndŵr Rebellion. This talk will delve into his life and place him within the context of the scientific, theological and political debates of his day. He was also clearly proud of his Welsh ancestry, and we will consider what this says about identity in the Marches in the later medieval period.