The Way to Rome in the Medieval Welsh Imagination

Abstract

This article examines how Rome, and the journey(s) to Rome, are represented in two autobiographical accounts of Gerald of Wales De rebus a se gestis ‘On the Things He Has Achieved’ (ca. 1210–1215) as well as in De iure et statu Meneuensis Ecclesiae ‘On the Rights and Status of the Church of St Davids’ (ca. 1218) on the one hand, and in the anonymous medieval Welsh prose tale Breudwyt Maxen Wledic ‘Dream of Maxen Wledic’ (ca. 1215–1217) on the other. The article traces the engagement of these sources with the idea of Rome as centre of power, as well as with their apparent reliance on the contextual knowledge of their intended audience(s). It will be shown that despite the apparent differences between the texts—Latin autobiographical accounts on the one hand and vernacular legendary material on the other—and the different nature of power they engage with—ecclesiastical on the one hand and secular imperial on the other—the approaches to the description of Rome and to the use of geographical and topographical space in the narrative are quite similar.

1 Introduction

Increasing attention has been paid in recent years to the subject of the role of landscape and representation of space in medieval Welsh texts and in particular its contribution to the formulation of ideas of identity and in political discourse more generally.¹ The purpose of the present discussion is to contribute to this field by examining the representation of Rome, and in particular, the way thereto, in a small but not insignificant corner of the medieval Welsh literary tradition. The focus here is on the descriptions of (the journey to) Rome in a set of roughly contemporary accounts.

The first of these is the fictional vernacular prose narrative Breudwyt Maxen Wledic ‘Dream of Maxen Wledic’ (ca. 1215–1217).² Maxen Wledic represents a fictionalisation of the historical character of Magnus Maximus (383–388), a figure prominent in British origin legends and genealogies, highlighting connections with the imperial Roman past.³ The narrative commences with Maxen’s dream of a journey, at the end of which he encounters the woman he falls in love with. Embassies far and wide are subsequently sent in search for her in real life, and she is finally located in Britain, where Maxen ultimately journeys to marry her. This is followed by a brief section which constitutes an antiquarian type of tale recounting the building of Roman roads and fortifications as a wedding gift by Maxen to his wife.⁴ After this, news of the usurpation of Maxen’s throne reach the emperor, upon which his brothers-in-law help him in his campaign to retake the city of Rome. The tale ends with the foundation legend of Brittany, as on their way back to Britain the armies of Maxen’s brothers-in-law settle on that peninsula. While the work is entirely fictional, the world described therein, even in Maxen’s dream, is not, and both the Rome-Britain trajectory and the mode of description correspond to those in the group of accounts of his real-life journeys to Rome by the colourful and vocal cleric Gerald of Wales (Giraldus Cambrensis, 1146–1223), written in Latin in the beginning of the thirteenth century.⁵ These thus form the second focal point of the present discussion. Descriptions of the journeys to Rome survive in Gerald’s autobiography, De rebus a se gestis ‘On the Things He Has Achieved’ (ca. 1210–1215) as well as in De iure et statu Meneuensis Ecclesiae ‘On the Rights and Status of the Church of St Davids’ (ca. 1218), which deals with the claim of St Davids’ to the status of an archbishopric, and Gerald’s pleas for it.⁶ Indeed, Gerald’s multiple visits to Rome were part of his attempts to ensure his appointment to the see of St David’s and to secure archbishopric status for the see itself, a cause he pleaded in person with the pope on several occasions.⁷

Two brief contextual observations are required at this juncture before proceeding to the examination of the texts themselves: one regarding the validity of regarding the vernacular legend (or fiction) alongside the Latin autobiographical text as representatives of the same culture; and one regarding the practicalities of the Wales-Rome trajectory in the Middle Ages. Whilst both observations relate to points that might be regarded by some as by now established in the field, it is worth re-emphasising them, particularly within the context of an interdisciplinary volume, as they are important for our understanding of the potentialities of the texts’ relationship to each other, and to real-world geography.

In the first place, as pointed out most recently by Georgia Henley, literary culture in medieval Wales should not be seen in terms of a ‘binary opposition of “Welsh vs Latin”’, but rather in terms of a culture that was fluent in both and where the two interacted.⁸ Gerald and the author of the vernacular narrative text appear to belong to the same culture of Welsh (or Wales-based) literati that Henley so dexterously outlines in her article on Welsh Galfredian translations. It will be shown in the discussion below that they also appear to have belonged to the same culture in terms of real-world routes of travel and that they both demonstrate the same attitude towards the use of space and place in narrative.

Regarding the practicalities of travel—and thus the journeys described and their potential familiarity to and impact on the audience—it is worth keeping in mind throughout the following discussion that Rome was not as distant from the authors and audiences of these early-thirteenth-century Welsh texts as might at first glance appear. Welsh travel to Rome in the Middle Ages was not a particularly unusual phenomenon, although as Kathryn Hurlock points out, it is Gerald who ‘provided the only surviving narrative account produced by a Welshman describing an overseas pilgrimage to Rome’.⁹ Thus, the texts under discussion here should be seen as representative of a culture well exposed to information about the route to Rome, in first-person experience and third-hand accounts, rather than being unique witnesses to a particularly exotic journey. This point will be significant to understanding both authors’ oblique descriptions.¹⁰

Both Gerald’s account and the story of Maxen engage with the idea of Rome as a centre of power, albeit in different ways: as the seat of the papal curia in one instance and as seat of empire in the other. Thus, although the thirteenth-century texts featuring Rome under consideration here deal with the same city, they are concerned with matters ecclesiastical and papal Rome on the one hand, and with matters secular and imperial Rome on the other. Despite this difference in focus, the point of interest here is that these texts illustrate the idea that medieval journeys to Rome can be seen as a category of medieval travel in and of itself, alongside trade-related travel, military campaign, or pilgrimage taken in general terms.¹¹ It will be seen in the discussion below that regardless of the type of Rome under discussion, and regardless of whether the text is vernacular fiction or Latin autobiographical account, the approaches to space and its description in these texts are similar. What characterises the depiction of Rome in both Gerald's accounts and in Breudwyt Maxen is that description is virtually absent, whereas interaction with human inhabitants is central.

The following section of the article sets out some general parameters within which the two representations of Rome will be read, based on the double foundations of Edward Soja’s theories of spatial power and Paul Zumthor’s reading of medieval descriptions of cities, both ultimately harking back to Henri Lefebvre’s influential concept of the ‘production of space’. I then turn to the fictional description of the route to Rome in Breudwyt Maxen, arguing that key to its function within the narrative, and to the text’s own political message, is the connection between the legendary and in appearance fictional spaces described in the text to the audience’s own reality. Against this background, I move to read Gerald’s descriptions of his very real journeys, before concluding with a joint reading of the descriptions (or rather the significance of the obliqueness thereof) of the city of Rome itself in both sources.

2 Negotiating Power in Spatial Descriptions

The obliqueness of spatial description of locations referred to, which shall be shown below to be a major feature of spatial description in the texts under consideration, in which it counterbalances what will be shown to be a striking precision in the provision of geographical and orientational information—corresponds to a broader phenomenon observed for other medieval texts by Paul Zumthor. In his discussion of the medieval perceptions of space, Paul Zumthor has observed of the medieval European literary invocations of cities and towns that ‘Parfois, les mots seuls de cité ou de ville tiennent lieu de description; tant apparement ils sont suggestifs!’¹² This observation at first glance appears to hold true of medieval Welsh references to Rome. While Rome and the Britain-Rome connection were significant to Welsh ideas of history and identity, and Rome as a city had special significance to the medieval mind and was the subject of much description and wonder, as will be shown in the final section of this article, neither Breudwyt Maxen nor Gerald actually describe the city.¹³ Indeed, it also appears that in Gerald’s account of his journey towards Rome place-names appear to be deemed sufficient to evoke the topography of the route. In other words, the spatial information he gives may be oblique, but not miserly.¹⁴

The topographical descriptions in the texts, the fictional on the one hand and the autobiographical on the other, provide a setting for the action. I would like to argue here that the particulars of the route in question are not merely a setting for the action, but interact with the action and, to an extent, serve to form it. In this I extend the observation Peter Jackson has made regarding historical readings of real-life geography to apply also to fiction: ‘geography is conceived of not as a featureless landscape on which events simply unfold, but as a series of spatial structures which provide a dynamic context for the processes and practices that give shape and form to culture’.¹⁵ These words are used as a guide in the following discussion. Ultimately, this builds on the fundamental concept introduced in the 1970s by Henri Lefebvre: the ‘production of space’.¹⁶ The idea is that space is to some degree conditioned by its uses and the human presence in it—as an existing entity it only has meaning that humans read into it, meaning caused by human interaction.¹⁷

The label of ‘Rome’, and the entity it refers to, in these texts is used to negotiate power. Whilst it is always precarious to draw parallels between medieval and postmodernist phenomena, in this case the words written by Edward Soja in relation to the latter might be usefully applied to understand the former:

The outcomes of […] socio-spatial differentiation, division, containment, and struggle are cumulatively concretized and conceptualized in spatial practices, in representations of space, and in the spaces of representation, for all three are always being profoundly shaped by the workings of power.¹⁸

The socio-spatial differentiation in our case is not one of social, racial, gender, or economic inequalities in urban societies, but of postcolonial medieval reality—the medieval European margin of Wales, in the process of subjugation by the colonial power of the Anglo-Normans, looking back to a colonial Roman past.¹⁹ The representation of this past inverts the power struggle by postulating a British conquest of Rome, and a Roman emperor put on the throne by his British brothers-in-law.²⁰

Reading medieval travel narratives, fictional or autobiographical, explicitly in light of this theoretical framework of spatiality is not in and of itself particularly revolutionary. The importance of the representation of Welsh geography and topography in Breudwyt Maxen has long been acknowledged. It fits within the general pattern of geographic interest and accuracy in detail which is a well-known feature of both medieval Welsh and Irish literary material.²¹ However, the route of Maxen’s messengers, and eventually Maxen himself, from Rome to Wales has not received the attention that has been given to the topographical descriptions of Britain and Wales in the text.²² Yet the journey from Rome to Wales, ‘narrated in detail within the dream sequence and later repeated twice in reality, gives the extant tale its structure and form’, to quote Brewer and Jones, one of the few comments on this geographical section of the text.²³ The following section of the article, therefore, is dedicated to showing that the description of the journey from Rome in Breudwyt Maxen is—despite, or perhaps even because of its oblique nature—rather closely tied to real-world geographical reality. This should not come as a surprise given the political intentions of the text itself, and the high degree of geographical detail and accuracy in its Welsh section.

3 From Rome and Back Again: The Space of Reality in Maxen’s Dream

As Brynley Roberts observes, ‘The author has a firm sense of geography. The route from Rome along the Tiber, across the Alps and the central plain of France along a broad river to the coast is clear in his mind’.²⁴ The description itself is worth revisiting. It runs as follows:

This was his dream, that he was travelling along the river valley to its source until he came to the highest mountain he had ever seen, and he was sure that the mountain was as high as the sky. As he came over the mountain he could see that he was travelling along level plains, the fairest that anyone had ever seen, on the other side of the mountain. And he could see great, wide rivers flowing from the mountain to the sea, and he was travelling to the sea-fords and the rivers. After travelling in this way for a long time, he came to the mouth of a great river, the widest that anyone had seen, and he could see a great city at the mouth of the river, and a great wall around the city with many great towers of different colours. At the mouth of the river he saw a fleet, and that was the largest fleet he had ever seen.²⁵

Whilst this description is at first glance one of an imagined dream-world and has indeed been analysed as such by Francesco Benozzo, it continues with Maxen taking the ship across the sea and arriving in Britain where he meets the lady he falls in love with.²⁶ The journey is subsequently repeated in real life by messengers whom the emperor sends to find this lady of his dream, and this time place-names corresponding to the real world are provided.²⁷ Although we only find the place-names in the British part of the description, this indicates that all of the topography is supposed to correspond to the real world. Indeed, as Benozzo points out, the role of the detailed description in Maxen’s initial dream is to make sure that it permits that ‘the dreamt landscape becomes a real place’.²⁸ While in Benozzo’s reading this description, particularly in its use of superlatives constitutes ‘narration that is not interested in describing the real characteristics of a place, and which clearly avoids variants and details of “absolute” forms, in the attempt to create an Ur-landscape’, I would like to suggest that in fact the ‘directionality’ and emphasis on ‘distances and connections between different elements’ Benozzo notes, are in fact an indication that the description functions not as an abstract fictional landscape but as an equivalent of a real-world itinerary-type text, capable of mapping onto not only Maxen’s fictionalised ‘real’ world geography, but on the audience’s (and our) real-world one.²⁹

If we consider the salient features of the description: following a river valley from Rome, going over a high mountain, and crossing wide open fields with many rivers until one arrives at a port, do seem to be shorthand references to the salient features of a real-life route from Rome to the Channel. This similarity between the fictional route and the real-world way to Rome has been noted by the text’s editor Brynley Roberts. To quote Roberts once more, ‘Even if the author had not made the journey to Rome himself, he would have had ample opportunity to know those – pilgrims, churchmen, diplomats – who had done so, or at least to have become acquainted with well-established pilgrim maps’.³⁰ Whilst one could argue about the exact nature of the ‘river valley’, it is worth pointing out that Rome’s river, the Tiber, starts in the Apennines which were then also referred to as the Alps (and seen as an extension of the Alps).³¹ The Alps in turn seem to be a rather obvious reference point for the menyd uchaf o’r a welsei eryoet ‘highest mountain he had ever seen’ (even though menyd ‘mountain’ here is in the singular).³² Once the Alps are crossed, the route North, whether following the Rhine, or going through Burgundy or France, would be primarily through open country. It is particularly instructive to read this description side-by-side with the real-life itinerary described by Gerald of Wales in his autobiography, De rebus a se gestis, composed ca. 1210–1215, similarities with which were originally pointed out by Brynley Roberts.³³ Not only do the itineraries appear to closely correspond, but, as pointed out above, the texts are roughly contemporary.³⁴ Gerald’s descriptions of his multiple real-life journeys to Rome—journeys undertaken specifically within the context of power negotiations as he fought for archiepiscopal status for St David’s—are the subject of the following section.

4 Gerald’s Real Journeys to Rome

Gerald provides a detailed description of the journey taken, including a detour forced by political circumstances, and referring to himself in the third person, as follows:³⁵

But proceeding from Strathflur and hastening through the mountains of Elenydd towards Cwmhir and thence, entering England at Kerry, he sped upon his way and crossed the Flemish sea from Sandwich. For fifteen days and more he waited at St. Omer for his messengers who were to come to him from the market of Winchester…

[…]

Since therefore on account of the great war which had broken out between King Philip of France and Baldwin, Count of Flanders, who had taken sides with John, King of England, he could not go by the direct way through France, he followed a long circuit to the left through the lowlands of Flanders and Hainault; and thence through the great wood of Arden (Ardennes), which are both rough and horrible, he came at last after skirting Champagne and passing through Burgundy to the public causeway, whereon he travelled with pilgrims and merchants.³⁶

[…]

And so crossing the Alps and passing hastily through Italy and Tuscany, he came to Rome about the Feast of St. Andrew…³⁷

A subsequent journey is recounted in detail in Gerald’s De iure.³⁸ This journey was troubled further by war, which made it ‘impossible for Englishmen to land on the sea-coast of Boulogne’, involved crossing the Channel from Dover to Gravelines, thence travelling to Saint Omer, Douai, and Cambrai.³⁹ He was captured, taken to Paris, then going back to resume his route via Troyes, Clairvaux, and Citeaux, ‘and so by long stages, passing through Burgundy, and crossing the Alps, he entered Italy’, where he ‘avoiding Parma’ travelled via Bologna, Faenza, Bagno di S. Maria (presumably referring to the Basilica Santa Maria Assunta in Bagno di Romana), Spoleto, and finally Rome (Fig. 1).⁴⁰

Fig. 1

Gerald's route to Rome (Source Natalia I. Petrovskaia)

The trajectory in itself presents an interesting itinerary for the study of medieval travel logistics, but is made more colourful by the events and individuals that are encountered at every step of the way. The cities and roads are not described, but the events bring the landscape to life. For example, the Italian leg of the journey which I briefly outlined above, runs as follows:

…and so by long stages, passing through Burgundy, and crossing the Alps, he entered Italy, and, being forewarned, escaped the snares laid for him by his enemy by avoiding Parma and unexpectedly going straight to Bologna, were he lost the two Canons of Llandaff whom he had brought with him (for secretly and by guile they clove to his enemies); and how coming to Faenza on the third day before Christmas, he hardly and with much difficulty recovered the twenty gold marks which he bought in obols of Modena from citizens of Bologna at the market of Troyes…⁴¹

The purchase of Modena currency from the Bolognese (presumably merchants) at Troyes is not discussed in the preceding narrative, but it paints a vivid picture of the international bustle and trade, and one that, significantly, appears to have required no comment.⁴² Rome, once Gerald arrives there, is not described either, an important point which shall be explored further in the next, and final section of this article. Whilst it is possible to argue that in this case description is simply not the point—Gerald is telling the story of his heroic efforts to secure the bishopric of St David’s—I would like to propose that in this instance it is rather that the setting is supposed to be provided by the reader. For the impact of the narrative of the journey, discussed above, such knowledge is a prerequisite. This does not mean that Gerald’s intended audience had travelled far and wide across Europe and had actually been to the places he mentions. Nor do I wish to suggest that Gerald necessarily expected his audience to be as well-travelled as he was. I do suggest, however, that Gerald is writing these passages as though he did have such an expectation. Some understanding of the context of the difficulties involved in traversing the Alps, why the stages were long (and what makes a ‘long’ stage of the journey), as well as some image of the cities invoked by name, would be helpful to an audience to appreciate the full extent of Gerald’s travails—the whole point of the narrative. At least Gerald seems to imply knowledge. Whether this was a method for creating a feeling of complicity between author and audience or of brow-beating the less well-travelled audience and establishing the author’s sense of superiority, we are unlikely to ever know. The correspondence between Gerald’s real and Maxen’s fictional itineraries, nearly contemporary as they are, indicates that they represent late-twelfth-/early-thirteenth-century realities of travel and reflect knowledge thereof on the part of intended audiences.⁴³

The imprecise dating of the former text and the existence of a single Latin-vernacular culture in medieval Wales, might open up the possibility that the author of the vernacular text had read Gerald. This might be seen as the most obvious explanation in particular for the similarities between the routes described. However, I would also venture to suggest that this supposition is in essence unnecessary. Gerald’s route was dictated by the political circumstances of the time. Thus, it is possible that the route described in Breudwyt Maxen was based on factual knowledge of real-life travel. In this case, our earlier supposition that Gerald seems to have expected his audience to have some idea of the places he is describing in his texts, is supported by the fact that the author of Breudwyt Maxen, at least, apparently did. As pointed out by Kathryn Hurlock, ‘Gerald of Wales’ accounts of Rome were probably not that well known’ and therefore not necessarily available to pilgrims wishing to undertake a journey or armchair journey.⁴⁴ Thus, although given the current dating of the texts it is remotely possible that the close similarity between the routes to Rome in Gerald’s account and in Breudwyt Maxen is due to the author of the latter, ca. 1215 having access to the former, composed some ten years previously, it is more likely that both independently reflect real-life logistics of travel to Rome.

Gerald, we can tentatively suggest, would have expected his audience to recognise what he was describing without need for excessive detail. Interestingly, this is not only the situation we find in Gerald’s account of his travels, but is also precisely the situation in the fictional representation of Rome in both Gerald’s own texts, and in Breudwyt Maxen. Indeed, I would like to argue that the effect in descriptions of Rome, both Gerald’s and in Breudwyt Maxen, lies in their reliance on the audience’s ability to fill in the picture, outlines of which are provided in only the most general guiding strokes. Both appear to rely, therefore, on external knowledge and experience. Rome is not described, it is hinted at, and the city’s power, as I will argue below, is one of invocation.

5 What’s in a Name? Maxen and Gerald in the City of Rome

As in the first journey recounted in De rebus a se gestis, once in Rome, both the narrator and the narrative head directly for the Pope. There is no distracting description. A glimpse is provided of the city’s topography only in the context of the reference to Gerald’s lodgings:

When, therefore, the Archdeacon had found a lodging in the Lateran not far from the Court, the Elect of Bangor, who had plenty of money, would not any longer lodge with him as had been his wont, but dwelt by himself. For he knew that the Archdeacon had been robbed in Flanders and that the money left him would soon be exhausted, and he feared that, if he lived with him, he might have to lend him money.⁴⁵

The assumption here, and in the rest of Gerald’s account, seems to be that the spatial context of the action is sufficiently provided with the sparse sprinkling of place-names. Whilst one can argue about the importance of having a visual image of the area around the Lateran for the appreciation of the passage, the effect would be much more striking if the reader had first-hand (or at least second-hand) knowledge of the topography of Papal Rome, and possibly an idea of what kind of lodgings could have been gotten on the Lateran by one pressed for cash as Gerald apparently was.⁴⁶

In this reliance on experiential context Gerald’s representation of the city echoes Zumthor’s conclusions of medieval representations of cities generally, through representations of their citizens: ‘Le discours que tiennent les poètes sur cette humanité urbaine fait partie de l’hyperbole globale – il enseigne que ce fragment d’espace, la ville, se définit en termes impliquant de façon essentielle la présence active de l’homme’.⁴⁷ Ultimately, according to Zumthor, city structures such as doors, walls, and towers are only present in the accounts insofar as people interact with them. We are ultimately back to Lefebvre’s created spaces. It is also worth keeping in mind—although time and space do not permit a full exploration of all the potential implications here—Edward Soja’s emphasis on the interrelation between the development of city, state, and politics.⁴⁸ Soja’s study relates specifically to the real-world city, and its symbiotic relationship with real-world political formations, but his observation that much of this relationship is visible in urban-related vocabulary, opens up a way of reading the Rome of Gerald and Maxen.⁴⁹ Whilst it is not described in detail, as I have pointed out above, the selection of terminology used for the city itself and the components which come into focus in the selective descriptions, intersects with the action that the city is the subject to within the narratives, creating what one might describe as vincula of meaning.

During Maxen’s siege of Rome, the city is referred to multiple times either as the extent of his activities, or as the object of the siege: ‘Then Maxen travelled with his host to Rome, and conquered France and Burgundy and all the countries as far as Rome. And he laid siege to the city [caer] of Rome’.⁵⁰ The use of the term caer ‘fortress/stronghold/castle’ for the fortified city, appears enough to invoke the notions of fortification and impregnability.⁵¹ No description of the city is given at this point, however. The city’s means of withstanding the siege—its walls—are only referred to once Maxen’s brothers-in-law had devised a plan to capture the city for which the walls play a crucial role: ‘Then by night they measured the height of the walls [caer], and they sent their carpenters into the forest, and a ladder was made for every four of their men’.⁵² The fact that this fictionalised representation of Rome has walls is no surprise, but these walls only emerge in the text once their presence becomes relevant. Until that point, they, as every other feature of the city, are assumed, and left to the audience’s imagination.

The city is taken by the Britons the next day, when they climb over the walls while Maxen (and the besieged emperor) are busy eating their lunch at noon.⁵³ Again, the walls are referred to in the context of interaction with the humans who climb over them. This is followed by further detail of the city, again in the context of human interaction: ‘They spent three nights and three days overthrowing the men who were in the city and overcoming the castle, while another group of them guarded the city [caer] in case any of Maxen’s host should enter before they had brought everyone under their control’.⁵⁴ The extra information of the city’s having a ‘castle’ [kastell] is provided at this point. Finally, the ‘gates of the city of Rome’ are referred to only when they are opened to welcome Maxen the emperor. Again, it is almost as if the features of the city come into focus only at the point at which they are needed for the action.

It is also worthwhile pointing out that the term used in the Welsh for the ‘city’ of Rome is caer, which has the primary meaning of ‘fort, fortress, enclosed stronghold, castle, citadel, fortified town or city’, and a secondary meaning of ‘wall, rampart, bulwark’.⁵⁵ The text’s translator, Sioned Davies, chooses to translate the word referring to the ‘city of Rome’ as ‘city’ but the object measured for the ladders as walls. However, it is worth noting that the term used in the Welsh is the same for both. I do not mean to suggest by this that the translation is erroneous, but rather to point out that the city in this instance is identified with its walls. Rome is a walled stronghold, in this text, and it is taken when its height measured and is tamed by means of wooden ladders. This is a very different Rome from that of Gerald, upon whose arrival its ‘description’ is limited to the author’s interaction with the Pope, cardinals, lodging near the Lateran, and visits to churches. Gerald’s Rome has no walls (except metaphorical ones separating him from the achievement of his dream) because there is no physical siege. Whilst Maxen’s Rome is a centre of political and military power—in tune with the political statement being made by the text itself—Gerald’s is a religious stronghold, in line with his main theme of ecclesiastical hierarchy and ecclesiastical power.

The fact that the object description of the city seems to be rendered—to borrow a metaphor from the digital world—only once the human players interact with that particular aspect of it, not only echoes the observations of Paul Zumthor, quoted above, of the ‘city defined in the active presence of man’ (I paraphrase slightly in translating), but also very distinctly invokes Lefebvre’s fundamental concept of the ‘production of space’.⁵⁶ Space acquires meaning and significance, as time does, only through the actions of humans. In the case of Breudwyt Maxen, it also acquires existence within the texts only in the interaction with the characters. The caer of Rome is present only when it is besieged.

6 Conclusion

Both sources examined here use the real world as starting point and as reference point to elaborate their individual messages to achieve most impact. In the case of Breudwyt Maxen, the emperor’s dream journey from Rome to Britain, though equipped with the generalities and trappings of a fantasy landscape is in fact a close approximation to the itinerary traced in Gerald’s account of his very real journey. The contrast between the two lies primarily in Gerald’s elaboration of his account through addition of mundane elements of human interaction (e.g. references to dangers he runs, to exchanging money, encountering individuals).

Although neither describe Rome itself in detail, both show the same techniques when their texts feature the city: its main features are shown through the action and interaction within the narrative. In both cases, this definition of the city through action forms the audience’s impression of the nature of the city’s power. The road to Rome is made visible when it is travelled, and the city made visible when it is interacted with. In Breudwyt Maxen Rome itself in this case is a caer, or stronghold, rather than an urban, civilian centre, with a kastell ‘castle’ at its heart, wherein the nifer (lit. ‘number’ but also meaning ‘host’, ‘retinue’, ‘troop’ and ‘crowd’) offer resistance to the British arms. Vocabulary use is one crucial part of this—and important part, as Edward Soja reminds us—and one we have seen in particular illustrated in the use of terminology related to military architecture in Breudwyt Maxen.⁵⁷ It should not be forgotten, however (and here Soja’s emphasis on the real-world cities’ active role in the political and social processes relating to creation and transfer power is relevant), that these texts reflect back at the audience the real-world associations of the landscapes they describe.

The imperial Rome of Breudwyt Maxen is political and military because it reflects the political and military associations with imperial Rome, used in discourses of power in Britain (most famously by Geoffrey of Monmouth), and crucial to the central theme of the text. The papal Rome of Gerald’s accounts, by contrast, is ecclesiastical—the Rome of the papal court, a landscape of churches populated by pilgrims and the papal curia. This reflects Gerald’s main interests, political but not military. The authors, and thus their audiences, construct the spaces of Rome according to their needs. Thus, paradoxically, while the routes to Rome described in the texts under discussion here appear to reflect the same rough itinerary, Emperor Maxen and Archdeacon Gerald seem to have arrived at two quite different Romes.