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Chapter 1

Walter Map, Wales, and Romance

Medieval readers appreciated knowing the pedigree of a story, and medieval authors obliged them, even if their explanations were often well-crafted fiction. It is no wonder then that the Lancelot-Grail Cycle insists that Master Walter Map played an integral role in writing, translating, or discovering these wondrous adventures about ancient Britain.¹ But invoking a source, as the Cycle invokes Walter Map, could do more than satisfy the curiosity of readers; it could also perform important literary work. This chapter begins to ask what kind of literary work the name Walter Map might have accomplished for the Cycle’s author and its first readers. In doing so, it recovers Walter Map’s literary reputation, with particular attention to Wales and to the genre of romance. Both of these topics would be of special concern to writers and readers of the Cycle. Texts dealing with the pre-English, Arthurian past of Britain often established a plausible tie with the British past, usually through Wales or Brittany.² Moreover, early romances tended to position themselves in a larger literary network, sometimes by claiming patronage and sometimes by claiming to be translations or adaptations of earlier romances. Part of the appeal of Walter’s name was that it evoked expertise in both the Welsh and romance. As Chapter 6 shows, these two aspects are not the only reasons that the Cycle claims Walter’s involvement, but they are a good place to begin the investigation.

Walter the Marcher

In November of 1203, Gerald of Wales faced the rather cruel task of nominating candidates to serve as the bishop of St. Davids, a position that he himself had just been denied. Gerald, however, had to follow one important qualification: the candidates must have been born in England, unlike Gerald himself.³ One of the two men he grudgingly suggested was Walter Map, the archdeacon of Oxford. Although Gerald and Walter had known one another for some years, perhaps even since their youth, Gerald was not merely doing a favor for an old friend; Walter was a strategic choice. Part of Gerald’s rhetoric for his own promotion had been that recent bishops of St. Davids, appointed by English kings and Canterbury, had been altogether ignorant of Welsh customs and could not speak Welsh. “We seek a doctor of souls,” Gerald wrote, “not a funeral attendant; we wish to have neither a mute dog, nor a speechless shepherd.”⁴ If they could not have a Welsh bishop who could preach in the language of their diocese, then Walter Map might be a suitable compromise. Not only was Walter witty, learned, and generous, but he was familiar with the Welsh and their customs, since he called the Anglo-Welsh border home.⁵ Conveniently for Gerald, Walter could also claim to have been born in England: while he could call the Welsh his compatriots, England was, in his own words, his mother. Had Gerald’s proposal been accepted instead of ignored, one wonders how Walter’s new diocese would have responded to his trenchant observations that “the glory of the Welsh lies in plunder and theft” and that the Welsh are “completely unfaithful to everyone,” or any number of like remarks that Walter was in the habit of making.⁶ In the end, St. Davids might well have preferred a mute dog to Walter’s sharp tongue.

This tension between Walter’s familiarity with the Welsh and his disparaging remarks toward them, between his creative use of Welsh culture and his status as an English courtier, pervades the De nugis curialium. However, Walter is not alone in having a seemingly vexed opinion of the Welsh. Medievalists commonly group Walter Map with Gerald of Wales and Geoffrey of Monmouth—a trio of roughly contemporary Latin authors who called the Welsh border home. Gerald, never shy in describing his mixed Norman and Welsh heritage, provides the clearest evidence that those like him, of mixed background and inhabiting contested lands, were in the twelfth century perhaps beginning to think of themselves as a hybrid people, as a gens apart from the rest: “Marchers,” or marchiones in Latin.⁷ As for Geoffrey, it is difficult to tell whether he considered himself a Marcher in these terms; he has left behind little biographical information. Nonetheless, his connection with Monmouth allows for a relatively unproblematic designation as a border dweller. Our knowledge of Walter Map lies somewhere in between Gerald’s garrulous self-reporting and Geoffrey’s nearly total silence on biographical matters. Walter provides just enough information about himself to produce confusion in critics. One can read confidently that Walter was “born in Wales” and that “he was not even born in Wales.”⁸ In articles published within a year of one another, Walter the “clerc gallois” becomes Walter the “clerc anglais.”⁹ And although patriotic Welsh scholars in the nineteenth century celebrated Walter as a preeminent Welsh writer and the son of a Welsh princess, in 1940 R. T. Jenkins curtly announced that “the idea that he is a Welshman must be rejected.”¹⁰ Such contradictory statements could easily be multiplied. Yet many scholars, sensing that the evidence itself is contradictory, have remained content to call Walter Anglo-Welsh or simply a Marcher.

It is certainly safe to call Walter a Marcher; indeed, he explicitly declares himself to be one. More interesting, I believe, is that a closer look at some of Walter’s Welsh tales illustrates how he used his identity as a Marcher to his own advantage. This section, in addition to exploring Walter’s identity as a Marcher, also argues that Walter used his status as a border dweller to become, in a way, a foreign policy expert on the Welsh. Many of the Welsh stories in the De nugis curialium anticipate an elite audience of policy makers, including the royal court and the local elite of the Welsh March. Their political import suggests that for his colleagues and peers Walter may well have been seen as an expert on Welsh affairs. This reputation, in turn, helps illuminate Walter’s pseudonymous authorship of the Lancelot-Grail Cycle.

Any discussion of Walter Map’s ethnicity must first grapple with his quirky-sounding name—Map.¹¹ The name has commonly been explained as a version of the Middle Welsh word map (son), which made up the linking element in male patronymic surnames.¹² Dewi map Ceredic, for example, is David son of Ceredig. Given its ubiquity in Welsh names, map, so the theory goes, seems to have been viewed as a token of Welshness by the Normans and English. It was thus duly applied to people of Welsh descent or affiliation in a playful, mocking sort of way. (A good parallel seems to be Maccus, used to designate those with some Gaelic affiliations.)¹³ In support of this view is the fact that when other instances of the cognomen Map occur, they do so in places where English and French speakers would have encountered Welsh and Cornish speakers (the word for “son” in both languages is written map/mab). In the tenth-century Bodmin Gospels, a Godric Map appears in Cornwall, and Domesday Book records an Ælfric Mapesone in Worcester and a Godric Mapeson in Herefordshire during the eleventh century.¹⁴ If Map is indeed a nickname of sorts, it was not heard as too derogatory, since Walter claims it as his own, describing Map as his agnomen—a word that can, frustratingly, mean both “nickname” and “surname.”¹⁵ This agnomen also seems to have been jokingly incorporated into a group of prebends at St. Paul’s that received their names from men of Walter’s generation: Walter’s prebend was called Mapesbury.¹⁶

Yet it is challenging to work out what this nickname may have meant to contemporaries: Was Walter Welsh? Or just Welsh-ish? Testimony from the Welsh side of the border may help in this respect. The Welsh could use the term Sais (lit. “Saxon/English”) for a Welshman who was familiar with either English habits or the English language or even for Welshmen who enjoyed English patronage.¹⁷ Importantly, Welsh evidence shows that the term Sais says little about ethnicity. The son of Rhys ap Gruffudd, a powerful Welsh prince and contemporary of Walter’s, serves as a good reminder in this respect. Rhys’s son Hywel spent thirteen years as a hostage at Henry II’s court, and when he returned to Wales in 1171, he was granted a new addition to his name—Sais.¹⁸ Certainly, Hywel Sais, as a son of a very influential and politically powerful Welsh ruler, had few doubts as to his own ethnicity. Rather, his new nickname, which, one may suspect, may not have been wholly welcome, suggests “how his exile had shaped his attitude and behavior.”¹⁹ Perhaps Map meant something similar: a nickname bestowed upon men of non-Welsh descent who nonetheless had spent time among them or who were familiar with Welsh traits and customs. This description would suit Walter nicely.

Although this understanding of Walter’s name has received widespread approval, it is not without problems. First of all, some evidence points to Map having been a family name, rather than a personal nickname. Walter’s nephew Philip carried the Map name, and in the early thirteenth century a “Walter Map son of Walter Map of Wormsley” appears in a series of charters concerning Wormsley church.²⁰ We have no way of knowing for sure that these last two are related to the author of the De nugis curialium, but it is not unlikely, especially because Walter held nearby interests.²¹ If Map is a family name, then it may say more about Walter’s ancestors than Walter himself. Second, a few have doubted that Map is in any way related to the Middle Welsh word map (son).²² A. K. Bate, following studies of English surnames, hesitantly suggests that Map derives from Medieval Latin mappa (cloth; map), which may indicate that Walter’s ancestors held some sort of administrative position.²³ Bate also claims that the distribution of the name in border countries suggests a regional family—not a nickname—and he implies that the desire to have a Welsh or a half-Welsh Walter results from some passé stereotypes of Celtic storytellers.²⁴ This last point undoubtedly has some truth to it, but deriving Map from Latin mappa does not make much sense. Why mappa and not something like *mappator?²⁵ Moreover, the name never unambiguously appears as “Mappa” or “Mappe,” the latter of which would be the expected early Middle English outcome.²⁶ Deriving Map from an Old English borrowing of Latin mappa seems no less problematic than the Welsh explanation.

Another wrinkle does little to clarify matters. Map (son) seems to have been an epithet common in the Brittonic world, with attestations in Wales, Cornwall, and Brittany.²⁷ Out of the dozen or so Welsh occurrences, two instances help explain what map means when used in this way: “Gruffudd Ddu ap Ieuan Fab ap Ieuan Las” and “Gruffudd Fab ap Gruffudd Gŵyr ap Cydifor.”²⁸ (The word fab is merely mab with an expected initial mutation.) Since both Ieuan and Gruffudd have the same name as their fathers, it seems here that the use of map as an epithet parallels the way some British authors use Latin filius (son) to mean “junior” or “the younger.”²⁹ French fitz (son) and English son were also used in a similar manner.³⁰ It is not surprising that Welsh witnesses an analogous development. Nevertheless, this use of map does not seem to have been widespread, and it never overtook the much more common bychan (lit. “little”) in this regard. Nonetheless, the few instances of Map along the border could be explained as borrowings of this Welsh practice, perhaps in mixed families, rather than a nickname that the English and French applied to those of Welsh affiliations. Welsh attestations, after all, outnumber those from east of the border, and the English instances of Map appear only in places where Welsh (or Cornish) speakers were nearby.

Reading Map as “junior” also has the advantage of making the two occurrences of the surname Mappeson more intelligible. The semantic path from the nickname junior to the first name Junior is quite clear, as witnessed by the rise of Junior as a first name in the United States. These Mappesons, therefore, might have had a father whose nickname Map (junior) overtook his baptismal name. Yet such an interpretation remains puzzling given “Walter Map son of Walter Map of Wormsley,” since the entire point of Map was to distinguish father from son. Perhaps the meaning of Map was lost when it passed out of Welsh usage and into an Anglo-Norman context? In any case, even if it is not entirely certain that Map was a nickname bestowed upon those with Welsh affiliations, it does seem reasonable to understand the name as one of the many tokens of the cultural mélange of the Anglo-Welsh borderlands.

Indeed, although we have no sure evidence, Walter’s familiarity with the border strongly suggests that he was a native of the March. He twice refers to the Black Mountain, which straddles southwest Herefordshire and Powys.³¹ He also displays some detailed local knowledge of Ross, Wollaston, Beachley, Aust Cliff, and the Forest of Dean.³² Furthermore, some of the Welsh tales are set in the lordships immediately east of the Black Mountain.³³ And he sets a short exemplum illustrating the hotheadedness of the Welsh at Hay-on-Wye, a strategic border town in the area.³⁴ He also held land, at least later in his life, at Ullingswick in Herefordshire, about fifteen miles west of Offa’s Dyke. Moreover, the patronage of Gilbert Foliot may not have been the only factor in Walter’s election as a canon of Hereford, as the chapter had a strong preference for local sons.³⁵ In light of these facts, the general critical impression has been that Walter’s homeland is “somewhere south of Hereford.”³⁶

One possibility that deserves special consideration is Archenfield, or Ergyng in Welsh, the southwestern portion of Herefordshire, where Walter held the church of Westbury-on-Severn. Although Archenfield lay on the English side of the river Wye and although today it is a thoroughly anglicized part of Herefordshire, during Walter’s time Archenfield was starkly Welsh in character and overwhelmingly populated by Welshmen.³⁷ Even late into the fifteenth century, the area was still regarded as a place “where the king’s writ could not be served.”³⁸ Archenfield fits with all of the available facts of Walter’s life. Here, the Welsh would have definitely been his countrymen, yet he could claim without any evasion that he was born in England. If he did not call Archenfield home, he was nonetheless intimately familiar with the general area—much more so than with any other place mentioned in the De nugis curialium.

Certainly, not all border dwellers were the same, and, as far as can be inferred, Walter’s background differed from that of his colleague Gerald of Wales in a few important ways. In Walter’s case, the scale of English-Welsh identity is tipped toward the English side. Gerald’s birth in Wales and kinship with Welsh princes proved easy targets for his enemies, who managed to thwart his aspirations, in part by making his identity as a Marcher suspect.³⁹ Walter never mentions any persecution of this sort. His royal patronage, it must be said, rested on surer footing. His parents had served Henry II, both before and after he took the throne, and so even if Walter did have some ancestral relationship with Wales, it did not cause unease in either Gilbert Foliot or the king, his two major patrons.⁴⁰ But if Walter was part Welsh, at any remove, he never claimed it, as the De nugis curialium speaks with one voice in describing Walter as a Marcher, but not a Welshman. Walter never once uses the words Cambria and Cambrensis to refer to Wales and the Welsh, but rather the nonnative terms Wallia and Wallenses. (In this respect, however, Walter could merely be an early adopter, as the terms Wallia and Wallenses were being adopted by Welsh writers in the twelfth century.)⁴¹ Moreover, Walter calls the Welsh his “compatriots” (compatriote)—a remark that has at times led readers astray.⁴² But compatriota implies little about ethnicity or culture, meaning only someone from the same district, county, or country as oneself.⁴³ Though he may have lived among the Welsh, he still considered England his country. In a particularly revealing passage, Walter speaks of a promising young man and boasts they are related (“de cuius cognacione glorior”).⁴⁴ When his young relative passes overseas to serve Philip I, Count of Flanders, Walter says that “he left England, his mother and mine” (matrem nostram et suam Angliam exiuit).⁴⁵ A clearer statement of national identity would be hard to find.

Yet for all that, Walter shows a deeper familiarity, and even understanding, of the Welsh than might be expected of someone who calls England his mother. He uses a few Welsh terms: brycan (cloth; blanket) and brenhin (king).⁴⁶ And he has some decent knowledge of southeastern Wales, gained through personal experience, oral culture, and literary sources.⁴⁷ While many of his Welsh stories are tailor-made for relating Welsh stereotypes, others show a more nuanced interest in Welsh history and culture. Walter even knows a bit about Welsh law.⁴⁸ Further testimony of Walter’s knowledge of Welsh culture is found in Gerald’s nomination of Walter for the bishop of St. Davids. When the archbishop of Canterbury asked him to put forward the names of suitable candidates who were born in England (“de Anglia oriundus”), Gerald begrudgingly suggested John of Brancaster and Walter Map in 1203.⁴⁹ John, according to Gerald, is learned and knows Welsh (“linguae nostrae non inscium”).⁵⁰ Walter, whom Gerald celebrates for his eloquence and wit, has knowledge of the mores of both the Welsh and the English in Wales (morumque gentis utriusque terrae), because they are his neighbors (vicinitate locorum) and because he has had repeated dealings with them (frequentia).⁵¹ Since Gerald showed an interest in language surprising for his age, his silence on Walter’s ability to speak Welsh, especially after he has just praised John of Brancaster for knowing it, strongly implies that Walter would not have been able to converse with many residents of his diocese had he become bishop.⁵² Still, Walter was familiar enough with the area’s mores, a term that for Gerald meant the distinctive social practices of a people, though it also could encompass psychological traits.⁵³ Gerald’s description of Walter agrees with the portrait that emerges from the De nugis curialium: familiar with the Welsh, yet born in England; unable to speak Welsh, yet able to catch a few words here and there; a purveyor of Welsh anecdotes; an amateur Welsh historian—all of which fit perfectly with Walter’s own description as a Marcher.

A Welsh Specialist

On one occasion, Walter baldly states that he is “a Marcher to the Welsh” (marchio sum Walensibus).⁵⁴ We are lucky to have such a clear statement of self-identification, but we are even luckier that its immediate context has been preserved, allowing us a glimpse into how Walter deployed his status as a border dweller at court. The remark follows Walter’s discussion of the exceptional welcome Edward the Confessor received from King Llywelyn, who displayed admirable courtesy and humility in greeting his enemy. Walter reports that peace did not last; it was broken soon thereafter, as the Welsh are wont to do (more Walensium).⁵⁵ Llywelyn’s fickleness allows Walter the opportunity to reflect upon a conversation he once had with Thomas Becket during his tenure as royal chancellor (1155–62). The two may have met in Paris, and, if Walter is to be believed, Thomas may well have been contemplating the Welsh campaign of 1157 and approached Walter for advice about how to best deal with the Welsh.⁵⁶ At any rate, he sought out Walter presumably because he, as a Marcher, had some special insight. Walter implies as much: “he asked me, a Marcher to the Welsh, what is their faithfulness and how they can be trusted.”⁵⁷ Walter does not disappoint him, either, as he gives Becket a lively parable (parabolam) in response: Franco, a German knight in exile in France, happens upon King Louis, whose attendants have left him alone to guard a felled stag, after they rush off in pursuit of another. Franco asks to speak to the king, but Louis keeps his identity concealed, saying that he will return shortly. King Louis then helps the knight dismount, and, as he holds the saddle, he spies Franco’s large sword. Taken by the size and the beauty of the sword, the king asks to examine it, and Franco complies. While holding the sword, the king forgets he is in disguise, and in a royal manner orders Franco to bring him a stone to sit on. Fearing the sword, Franco complies, but when he receives the sword back, he tells the king: “Take that stone back to its place!”⁵⁸ The king, likewise fearing the sword, does as he is told. Walter explains this parable to Becket: “And from this incident, I can demonstrate to you the faithfulness of the Welsh: as long as you hold the sword, they will submit; when they hold it, they will command.”⁵⁹ The very threat of violence can move rocks and men.

Walter’s conversation with Becket, even if it contains retrospective embellishment, suggests that being a Marcher at court could be expedient, especially if one is quick with a memorable anecdote. In this regard, Walter’s behavior with Becket has a performative aspect about it; being a Marcher at court means being able to discourse on the Welsh. Becket’s request for insight surely was not the only time Walter was called on to explain the Welsh. Walter knew about the pretentions of the diocese of St. Davids, which he apparently denigrated on numerous occasions.⁶⁰ Moreover, other passages in the De nugis curialium have the polished feel of repeated recitation. The Welsh are scrupulous (probi) only in their unscrupulousness (improbitate).⁶¹ They value hospitality to a fault, so much so that a Welshman once killed his wife for insulting a guest.⁶² Plunder and theft are so important to the Welsh that few grow old willingly: “Die young, or beg old,” as they say.⁶³ So rash and irrational are the Welsh when angry that they will even kill their friends out of spite.⁶⁴ True to form, Walter can furnish an exemplary story for each of these claims. These short stories are crafted to distill the essence of the Welsh into a few pithy words: they show that Walter is a man in the habit of explaining the Welsh.

Walter was not, however, the only Welsh specialist at Henry’s court. Gerald of Wales was rewarded, though not as much as he hoped, for his local knowledge of Wales during his time as a royal clerk.⁶⁵ He often boasts of his usefulness in dealing with the Welsh. Indeed, according to Gerald, he was first summoned to Henry’s aid when the king was “in the borders of the March, for the purpose of pacifying Wales.”⁶⁶ Moreover, Gerald’s Marcher family knew how to counter the military tactics of the Welsh, and their strategies proved successful in invading Ireland as well.⁶⁷ Gerald, ever eager to please, invoked his Marcher expertise to advise Henry and his court on cultural and military matters pertaining to the Welsh. Walter played the same role, and his royal invitation to possess the revenues of the archdeaconry of Brecon in 1202 might attest to the fact that he could parlay his Marcher know-how to his advantage.⁶⁸ There was profit to be had in knowledge of the Welsh, and Marchers seem to have cornered the market.

Gerald’s comments on Walter also speak to the complexity of the March: Walter knows the mores not only of the Welsh but “of both people of the land” (gentis utriusque terrae).⁶⁹ The other people to whom Gerald is referring are, of course, the Anglo-Norman Marcher aristocracy. Walter knew what it was like to live in a frontier society, and he was certainly comfortable in a Marcher milieu. He traded tales with Marcher barons, knights, aristocrats, and bishops.⁷⁰ Several of his stories are rooted in the March, and they respond to the peculiar situation of living on the border, recording dangerous Welsh raids and buttressing contemporary property rights with the misty past of legend. And his church of Westbury-on-Severn lay in an area of southwestern Herefordshire where Welsh presence was strong. This benefice, in effect, made Walter a member of the Marcher gentility, though in a modest fashion.

It is tempting to overstate the importance of Walter’s status as a Marcher. It was, after all, just one of the many identities available to him. He was also English, and a member of the French-speaking English elite at that. And he was at home in the international world of Latin Christendom. He was entertained by Marie de Champagne and her husband, Count Henry, at their chateau in Troyes, and he was one of Henry II’s representatives at the Third Lateran Council.⁷¹ Although Walter’s vocation as a secular cleric caused him less angst than it did Peter of Blois, his day-to-day life as a churchman, both in and out of court, held clear importance to him; the strong moral and didactic overtones of his satire show that he thought both monastic and curial life needed reform.⁷² Yet Walter’s reputed role in producing the Lancelot-Grail Cycle suggests that one of the most salient of these identities was status as a learned intermediary between Wales and England. Walter’s exemplum for Thomas Becket bears this out. It does not end by stating only that threat of violence at the tip of a sword is all that is needed to subjugate the Welsh. Rather, Walter tells us what happens to Franco, the wandering German knight who inadvertently threatened the king of France: “And to let you know what came of Franco when his men had reached him, the king at once held him back, by praising him greatly as he tried to flee in fear, and the king told his men how bravely and courteously he had made him carry the stone back, and he gave him Crépy-en-Valois as his inheritance.”⁷³ Walter has already authorized us to read this parable in terms of Anglo-Welsh relations. Although he leaves this ending unglossed, the meaning is plain to see. The threat of violence, though of utmost importance, cannot on its own fashion a long-lasting political solution. The English must accommodate the Welsh in some manner, allow them some degree of respectability. By identifying Crépy-en-Valois (“Crespium in Valesio”) as the specific site of the Franco’s inheritance, Walter may well be punning off the French word for Wales (attested as Gales, Galeys, Wales, and so on), in effect suggesting that the English king grant the Welsh at least some land to control.⁷⁴ And Henry II did just that when he adopted a strategy of rapprochement in his later dealings with Wales, especially after 1171.⁷⁵ In this regard, Walter’s anecdote mirrors royal policy. To be clear, what Walter is advocating is not a pro-Welsh policy but merely a reflection of the reality of the accommodation and coexistence that obtained throughout the March. Walter, when dealing with the Welsh and border culture in general, shows the savvy and flexibility that one would expect of a Marcher who gladly flaunted his specialist knowledge when requested.

The parable of the armed German knight is not the only story in the De nugis curialium that reads as political commentary on the Welsh. Walter’s story of Cynan the Fearless plays on anxiety over Welsh military raids, anxiety that was very real for Walter and his fellow border dwellers. The story takes place “over the Severn in Glamorgan,” in an area that had been under Anglo-Norman control for the better part of a century, and it describes a raid on a certain “valiant and rich” knight in typical Welsh fashion.⁷⁶ Welsh military resistance in the March most commonly took the form of swift, guerrilla-style attacks, as the Welsh were generally reluctant to be drawn into large-scale military campaigns.⁷⁷ They frequently attacked at night and utilized wooded areas to surprise their enemies, whereupon they would melt back into the forest to escape unharried.⁷⁸ The tactics that Cynan’s band employs are the same: Cynan “left the forest that towers over the whole district by himself, with a large band hidden in it, and he devised a murderous ambush for the innocent man.”⁷⁹ Moreover, Cynan and his band do not attack the knight’s house openly, but try to sneak through a window in secret (furtim).⁸⁰ There can be no doubt that Walter portrays Cynan as a typical Welsh raider; it is a portrait that no Marcher would fail to recognize. And Walter Map himself was clearly familiar with the tactics of Welsh raiders in the March, whether from his acquaintances or firsthand experience, though likely both.⁸¹

In addition to depicting the reality of border skirmishes, the tale presents Cynan not as a powerful scourge but as a humbled and contrite raider.⁸² It does so by emphasizing a Welsh stereotype—the importance of hospitality to the Welsh. Here, the knight whom Cynan and his band are set to attack receives a guest. Cynan, not wanting to breach his people’s reverence for hospitality, beseeches his companions to hold back. Cynan’s speech has strong religious overtones: “for he has received a knight with hospitality who, as is our custom, sought it out in the name of charity, and in him he has God for a guest, and with God any battle is unequal.”⁸³ By echoing Abraham and Sarah’s reception of the three guests who are in fact angels of the Lord, Cynan’s willingness to hold hospitality sacred makes his subsequent violation of it all the more striking.⁸⁴ After his companions browbeat him into acquiescence by mocking his name—“how rightly he is called fearless!”—Cynan leads his crew toward the house, where, alerted by the guard dogs, the guest lies armed and ready.⁸⁵ Two of Cynan’s nephews are caught unaware and killed. The story ends with more religious imagery; as Cynan carries the corpses away, he remarks, “I knew that God was in there, and I know that Judas Maccabaeus, the strongest champion of God, said: ‘For the success of war is not in the multitude of the army, but strength cometh from heaven,’ and therefore I was afraid to prolong this attack; and the Lord did not forget to take vengeance on my nephews for the pride of their abuse.”⁸⁶ With these words the story ends. And Cynan, recognizing his errors, retreats back into the woods.

This tale is a wonderful piece of fantasy for a Marcher audience who is used to dealing with Welsh raids. It creates a mechanism that punishes the Welsh on their own terms. Within this tale Walter Map brings two Welsh “customs” into blunt opposition—their taste for plunder and their respect for hospitality. Not only does rapacity overcome hospitality, perhaps hinting at what really drives the Welsh, but it does so in a way that emphasizes Cynan’s weakness. In short, Welsh raiders—a serious and constant threat to Marchers—are here reduced to somewhat comical characters, subject only to their greed, even to the point of ignoring one of their most cherished mores. Indeed, throughout distinctio 2 the defining characteristics of the Welsh are their reverence for hospitality and their inclination toward rash violence. The religious streak of this tale also has significance in this context. The Welsh were routinely said to have suffered at the hands of the Saxons because of their religious failings. For a Marcher audience, particularly those who had read their Geoffrey of Monmouth, this story would imaginatively defang the persistent threat of Welsh raids. It reduces the shortsighted nature of their raids into parody and elides the failure of Cynan to heed hospitality into the widely held belief that the Welsh people’s military and political stumblings are divine retribution for their sinful behavior.

While the story of Cynan addresses the anxieties of the Marcher elite, those like the valiant knight Cynan attacks, other stories show that Walter was interested in “the problem of the Welsh” on a national level as well. The most detailed portrait of a Welshman in the De nugis curialium is that of Llywelyn ap Gruffudd, king of Wales.⁸⁷ Walter never intends to be a careful writer of history, and it has long been suspected that he has switched the name of the son and father around.⁸⁸ (Those who have worked with Welsh dynastic names will forgive this mistake.) Gruffudd ap Llywelyn (d. 1063), who became king of Gwynedd and Powys in 1039 and gained all of Wales in 1055, is most probably the historical figure who lies behind Walter’s Welsh king.⁸⁹ In addition to being the leading political figure of his day, inspiring one Welsh chronicler to style him the “head and shield and defender of the Britons,” Gruffudd swore fealty to Edward the Confessor in 1056, an event that Walter records, with no small help from his own imagination.⁹⁰ The historical Gruffudd was a dynamic figure who allied himself with Earl Ælfgar of Mercia—an alliance that some English observers cast in a positive light.⁹¹ But Walter’s Llywelyn is much more one-dimensional, termed at the outset a “faithless man, just as almost all his predecessors and successors were.”⁹² This characterization is unsurprising, since Walter’s home country had been on the receiving end of Gruffudd’s success a few generations before. Of all Gruffudd’s campaigns into English territory, the most memorable was his harrying of Hereford in 1055, when he laid waste to the city and its cathedral; in the next year at Glasbury he even slew its bishop Leofgar, several of the cathedral’s canons, and the sheriff Ælfnoth, all of whom had attacked Gruffudd in retaliation.⁹³ The minster lost almost everything. Very few documents survive from before 1055, and the relics of St. Æthelbert were likewise destroyed, thus depriving the chapter of significant spiritual cachet. Moreover, Westbury-on-Severn, whose church Walter held, had also suffered at the hands of Gruffudd in 1053.⁹⁴ It is unsurprising that Walter, himself a canon of Hereford, describes a cruel, jealous, and untrustworthy Llywelyn ap Gruffudd. Even if he did not get the name quite right, he knew that the southern borders had been ravaged by a fearsome Welsh king a century before.

Walter recounts four short anecdotes about Llywelyn; all but the last serve to defame him. Nonetheless, these Llywelyn passages are not merely personal invective—Walter has not bothered to get the name of this Welsh king exactly right, after all—but general illustrations of Welsh backwardness. For Walter’s English contemporaries, these stories would exemplify several distasteful aspects of Welsh culture: their odd legal system, cultivation of prophecy, and extreme political violence.

Welsh law differed considerably from English practice, a fact that contemporary observers were well aware of and that could present practical problems in places where English and Welsh law were both in use.⁹⁵ Walter, who had himself been an itinerant justice, was familiar with this cultural difference. His first anecdote relates the mechanics of one aspect of Welsh law with surprising accuracy. Llywelyn, overcome with jealously, desires vengeance from a handsome and well-born man who had merely dreamt of having an affair with Llywelyn’s wife the queen; the injured king “said that he had been duped and boiled with rage as if the deed had actually taken place.”⁹⁶ The dreamer is captured, and all his relatives offer themselves as surety so that he can be brought to trial. An insult to the king’s honor must be punished. Although Walter does not use the term, he understands one of the key elements of Welsh law: sarhad, or the compensation owed for harming someone’s honor. This strange case of sarhad vexes lawmen—how does one punish a thought crime? In the end, one exceedingly clever man solves the problem, and in doing so he gives an overview of the legal elements at play:

We should follow the laws of our land, and we cannot, for any reason, do away with the laws that our fathers established as precepts and that have been confirmed by extensive use. Let us follow them and, until they reach any verdict in public at odds with custom, let us suggest nothing new. Our most ancient laws declare that anyone who dishonors the queen of the king of Wales through adultery will depart free and uninjured once he has paid a thousand cows to the king. In the same manner, the penalty was set at a certain amount for the wives of princes and other noblemen according to the honor of each. This man is accused of having sex with the queen in a dream, and he does not deny the charge. Given that he has confessed to the truth of his crime, it is settled that a thousand cows should be handed over.⁹⁷

The ingenious solution is to line up one thousand cows along the shores of the lake of Brycheiniog, and to have Llywelyn gaze upon their reflection. He may then collect his payment in the form of the reflection of the cows, since dreams are merely a reflection of reality. Thus the punishment matches the crime, all while upholding Welsh legal tradition. This passage, in addition to succinctly explaining the basic concept of sarhad, closely echoes a passage in a southern recension of Welsh law.⁹⁸ In the Welsh lawbook known as the Llyfr Blegywryd, one of the three ways a king can be dishonored is by “violating his wife” (kamarueru o’e wreic), the fine for which is set at one hundred cows for every cantref a king controls.⁹⁹ Although stories of escaping legal quandaries while obeying the letter of the law are commonplace in folk literature, Walter’s story is grounded in actual Welsh legal theory. Importantly, Walter does not expect his audience to have a clear understanding of Welsh legal practice, and he therefore provides a brief explanation. The anecdote reads as both informative and entertaining and shows Walter at his best in crafting border tales from his knowledge of Welsh culture. The story also educates, even if derisively, its readers in Welsh legal difference—they do things differently over there.

The next two episodes also discredit Llywelyn, though they do so not by explaining peculiar Welsh institutions but by relying on contemporary Welsh stereotypes. Llywelyn was, according to Walter, an underachieving child, one who “sat beside his father’s ashes.”¹⁰⁰ His sister scolds him, begging him to follow the “custom of the country” (mos huius terre) to venture out on New Year’s Eve to raid, steal, or even to eavesdrop.¹⁰¹ Those who choose to eavesdrop have the chance to hear a prophetic saying about their future. Inspired, Llywelyn creeps up to a house and listens to a cook inside contemplating the beef chunks in his stew: “Here I have found one remarkable piece among the others, since I always send it to the bottom and place it under the others, and right away it reappears above all the other pieces.”¹⁰² Llywelyn takes himself to be this unsinkable chunk of beef, and gladdened by such a “clear omen” (manifesto pronostico), he begins his rise to becoming “the most cunning thief and the most violent raider of the property of others.”¹⁰³ Political prophecy is certainly not unique to Wales, but Welsh political prophecy takes on particular significance when read in an English context.

The Welsh nursed their loss of the island of Britain by cultivating a rich body of prophetic lore that told of a national savior who would come to destroy the English and restore the sovereignty of the island to its rightful holders. Gerald of Wales was not the only one to observe that the Welsh “foretell and boast with the utmost confidence—and their entire populace wondrously holds to this hope—that soon their countrymen will return to the island, and, in accordance to the prophecies of their own Merlin, both the foreign nation and its name will perish, and the Britons will once more rejoice in their old name and privilege in the island.”¹⁰⁴ Walter was familiar with the figure of Merlin as a prophetic figure, and his description of Llywelyn’s omen humorously undercuts Welsh pretensions.¹⁰⁵ Not only is Llywelyn’s prophecy amusingly mundane—a pot of beef stew in the place of dragons and other allegorical beasts—but it fails to produce a great national redeemer. While Llywelyn does become an outstanding Welsh leader, in Walter’s eyes that simply means that he is the best thief and raider in a land full of thieves and raiders. This anecdote speaks to an English perception that plunder, and not noble claims to recovering the crown of the Island of Britain, is what truly motivates Welsh rulers, in spite of what their grand prophecies may say.

Walter’s description of Llywelyn’s reign bears this assumption out. He ruled peacefully, with the sole exception of “the suffering that he inflicted upon his own people.”¹⁰⁶ Llywelyn proceeds to murder and maim any promising young man that he sees, adopting the proverb “I kill nobody, but I blunt the horns of Wales so that they do not harm their mother.”¹⁰⁷ Sensing that his nephew Llywarch will grow to be his rival, Llywelyn finally corners him and, asking why he has fled his presence, he offers to provide guarantors in case he is afraid. Llywarch then proceeds to name as guarantors several promising young men whom his uncle has already slain. Violence and treachery were common aspects of medieval aristocratic life, but Anglo-Norman and Angevin dynastic politics were relatively tame compared to the constant bloodshed of Welsh petty kings.¹⁰⁸ Walter’s Llywelyn therefore embodies two salient aspects of Welsh political life that would have been recognized by English readers: prophecy and violence.

Among Llywelyn’s many acts of wickedness, Walter records one noble and honorable deed. When Edward the Confessor, troubled by Llywelyn’s violent incursions into England, humbly approaches the Welsh king in a boat to discuss the situation, Llywelyn is so moved by his modesty in crossing over to him, rather than the other way around, that he does homage to his English rival. The event is at least partly based in truth, since Gruffudd ap Llywelyn did in fact pay homage to King Edward in 1056.¹⁰⁹ But in Walter’s telling, this rapprochement becomes an opportunity to highlight two opposing myths about who is the rightful heir to the Island of Britain. At Aust Cliff and Beachley on the Severn River, the two kings meet at one of the clearest markers of division between England and Wales. Neither king wishes to cross to the other’s side, and the debate quickly turns to political theory: “Llywelyn claimed greater precedence; Edward equal rank. Llywelyn claimed that his people had taken possession [conquisissent] of all England, along with Cornwall, Scotland, and Wales from the giants, and asserted that he was the heir with the most lawful descent. Edward claimed that his own ancestors had obtained England from those who had taken possession of it [conquisitoribus].”¹¹⁰

Condensed into this short exchange are both Welsh and English claims to the Island of Britain. In particular, Walter relies upon Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History of the Kings of Britain, where a battle against giants lies at the very foundation of Britain.

Geoffrey’s History describes how once the Trojan refugees have landed on the fruitful and promising island, inhabited by nobody “save for a few giants,” they begin to explore the territories, “driving off to mountain caves any giants they [come] upon,” and soon thereafter Brutus names the island Britain and its people Britons after himself.¹¹¹ Corineus, favoring the southwestern portion of the island, chooses Cornwall, since “there were more [giants] to be found there than in any of the districts divided amongst his companions.”¹¹² Eventually, a frighteningly strong giant named Goemagog, leading twenty other giants, attacks Brutus and his men as they hold a feast in Totnes, the spot where they are said to have landed. After reinforcements arrive, the giants are all destroyed, except Goemagog, the last of his kind, who is spared only because Brutus desires to watch Corineus and Goemagog wrestle. It is only after Corineus kills Goemagog that the work of building and settling the island really begins, for immediately afterward Brutus surveys the whole island and decides to build Trinovantum, New Troy, which would later become London. Thus, with the Trojans now settled in their new home, the first book of Geoffrey’s History comes to a close.

As the climax of the first book of The History of the Kings of Britain, Corineus’s defeat of Goemagog cements the Trojan’s control over Britain and marks the point at which Brutus and Corineus divide the island among themselves.¹¹³ This episode is the first of several passages in the History in which divisions of Britain are explained, usually with reference to an eponymous founder.¹¹⁴ These passages famously foreshadow and justify many of the political, legal, and ethnic boundaries of Geoffrey’s day: the kingdoms of Wales, England, and Scotland, for example, reflect how Brutus parceled out Britain among his three sons.¹¹⁵ The Trojans’ skirmish with the giants over supremacy of the island thus becomes the exemplar of how British land is contested and appropriated in Geoffrey’s History. Crucially, Walter’s Llywelyn knows the history of this battle and its meaning.

While Llywelyn cites the beginning of Geoffrey’s History, Edward cites the end. If the Welsh gained Britain by conquering the giants, the English gained their territory by conquering the Welsh. The last books of Geoffrey’s History explain how the Britons lose their former territory on account of their sins. Their future looks bleak: “The Welsh, unworthy successors to the noble Britons, never again recovered mastery over the whole island, but, squabbling pettily amongst themselves and sometimes with the Saxons, kept constantly massacring the foreigners or each other.”¹¹⁶ As far as Edward is concerned, the English hold Britain with just as much right as the Welsh—both had it from previous peoples. This brief exchange nicely encapsulates the debate on the aim of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s work, a debate that has continued into modern scholarship. Walter, typically, refuses to weigh in on behalf of either Edward or Llywelyn, since it is ultimately Edward’s personal charisma, rather than any quasi-mythical claim, that moves Llywelyn. For Walter’s courtly audience, the moral of Llywelyn and Edward’s meeting is simple: argument over English and Welsh claims to the rightful possession of Britain will end in a stalemate. The solution seems to be personal action, rather than principled debate. In particular, Walter suggests that the personal action most effective in dealing with the Welsh is not humility, but rather intimidation. Llywelyn’s peace “was, in the habit of the Welsh, kept only until they had the chance to harm.”¹¹⁷ Walter immediately moves on to his parable delivered to Thomas Becket, which explains how the Welsh can only be coerced into obedience by the threat of the sword. Citing Geoffrey of Monmouth, it would seem, is a poor strategy when dealing with perceived Welsh recalcitrance.

Walter anticipated readers who dealt with the Welsh on a political level and who appreciated his wry insight into the Welsh. Cynan the Fearless addresses the anxieties of the Marcher gentry, dissolving the horror of a Welsh raid into a comedic juxtaposition of Welsh stereotypes, reading their love of violence against their love of hospitality. Elsewhere, I have discussed how Walter supports Hereford Cathedral’s claim to Lydbury North, an important estate that sat along the border, making the bishop, in effect, a Marcher lord.¹¹⁸ Walter kept a close eye on border politics. His portrait of Llywelyn, moreover, demonstrates that his Welsh stories could address national, not merely regional, concerns. Welsh law, Welsh prophetic tradition, and even the Welsh claim to dominion over Britain all coalesce in Walter’s discussion of this Welsh king. Walter’s presentation of these weighty topics would have found eager ears in English courtiers, for whom the Welsh were a constant political headache. Finally, Walter’s Welsh stories have a didactic value. If readers are unaware of Welsh stereotypes, Walter has provided an overview of them in distinctio 2, along with memorable anecdotes. The Welsh are untrustworthy, vengeful, murderous, and hospitable to a fault. Walter teaches you how to view the Welsh through a medieval English lens. These stories mark Walter as a man who was in the habit of leveraging his background as a Marcher to explain the Welsh to people who mattered, to the Marcher gentry, to the English court, and, of course, to Thomas Becket.

Walter and Romance

When Gottfried von Strassburg invokes Thomas of Britain as the best authority on Tristan, or when Layamon names Wace as one of his sources, seasoned readers of medieval romance give an excited, agreeable nod, even if the actual chain of transmission in both instances is more complicated than their authorial claims might appear. After all, there is nothing amiss, especially from a medieval perspective, about one romancer citing another for his source. But a general feeling of critical unease arises from the association of Walter Map with the Lancelot-Grail Cycle.¹¹⁹ Somehow, this claim does not feel quite right. For many, Walter Map seems incongruous in terms of genre: what does a Latin satirist have to do with an Arthurian romance written in French? Nevertheless, Walter’s relationship with the genre of romance is less vexed than his relationship with Wales. While Chapter 6 will address the question of whether or not Walter wrote French romances, this section examines Walter’s engagement with romance as witnessed by the De nugis curialium. It is clear that Walter was a voracious reader of romance, and he even wrote some himself: four short, but skillfully written, romances of his survive in distinctio 3, and these show the influence of a broad range of contemporary romances. Nonetheless, Walter’s modern reputation as a satirist and as a supposed collector of folktales has often overshadowed this aspect of his career. Yet if the contents of the De nugis curialium are even somewhat representative of Walter’s literary output, he spent much of his artistic energy on reading, contemplating, and composing romance.

While glimpses of romance appear throughout the De nugis curialium, distinctio 3 provides the easiest demonstration that Walter had read widely in this popular genre. The entire distinctio—which, as I argue in Chapter 3, should be read as its own independent work—consists of four polished romances, all of which feature a love triangle. These romances seem addressed to a fellow secular cleric, someone who has to recover his breath after “consulting the philosophic or sacred page.”¹²⁰ Naturally, the fact that these romances are in Latin also strongly suggests a clerical audience. Moreover, this anonymous addressee seems to have a specialty in the law, since Walter announces that he will not be touching upon the disputes of the law court (fori lites) or the sober matters of those pleading (placitorum … seria), matters that presumably occupy the time of his addressee.¹²¹ In a nod to current literary debates, Walter opens this work by playing on the topos of sens and matière, of meaning and subject matter. Even though Walter’s stories are, in his own words, “base and bloodless absurdities,” it is nonetheless possible for good men to make good use of them.¹²² Walter’s task is simple; his readers, on the other hand, must do the work of making sense of the matter that has been gathered before them.¹²³

The first romance of the four, Sadius and Galo, is the longest and has attracted the most interest from critics.¹²⁴ In order to appreciate its debt to contemporary romance, a brief overview will be helpful.

Sadius and Galo, two noble knights, are peers in almost every manner. Sadius is the beloved nephew of the king of the Asians, while Galo is intensely desired by the queen. Foreseeing trouble, Sadius attempts to cool the queen’s illicit desire by implying that Galo does not have masculine genitals: “Although he could acquire everything from women, he has confessed—but only to me—that he is completely unable to perform that act.”¹²⁵ This plan, true to fashion, goes awry when the queen decides to test Galo to make sure that he truly is unable to perform. She sends one of her servants to investigate matters. The queen instructs her “how to slide into Galo’s embrace, how to unite her naked body to his naked body, and orders her to lay her hand on his privates and to report whether he can or whether he can’t, all while remaining pure.”¹²⁶ The servant goes out and stays gone much too long, stirring up worry and envy in the queen. When the servant returns, she tells the queen, “I almost pleased him, and I felt him to be all man and ready for the occasion, if he had only perceived you. But when he realized that I was smaller than you, that I was harder to handle, and that I was not as suited to him, I was cast out at once!”¹²⁷ The queen realizes this is a lie—she has, after all, never been with Galo—and she becomes furious and vengeful.

At the king’s birthday feast, she seizes an opportunity for revenge. When the king grants the queen the opportunity to have whatever present she wants, she pounces upon Galo, who has been sitting at the banquet clearly nursing some internal anguish. The queen demands that Galo admit to the entire court what is causing him such harm. Reluctantly, he recounts a marvelous adventure, stopping at times, but always forced to continue by the merciless queen.

Galo tells how a year ago on Pentecost, while recovering from a fever, he had gone out in arms to test his strength. His horse led him through a dark forest until he entered a palace without any inhabitants, except for a maiden sitting under a tree. Despite his attempts to greet her, she remained silent. Galo admits that he tried to rape her, but Rivius, a giant, came to the maiden’s aid and pinned Galo to a tree. Another maiden appeared and begged Rivius to relent, persuading the giant to grant Galo a year’s truce before the two should enter into single combat.

Galo laments that today is the day on which he must fight Rivius. He leaves the banquet, but Sadius catches him and requests that he fight the giant in place of Galo. Galo counters that they should exchange armor, making it only appear that Sadius is the one fighting the giant. They switch armor and the battle begins. Galo, disguised as Sadius, fights valiantly, getting the best of the giant on several occasions, only to grant him mercy. All the while, the queen berates Galo, though it is actually Sadius in disguise. Finally, Galo triumphs over the giant, and the two friends slip away to exchange armor. They reveal their ruse to the court, and Galo is praised while the queen is vilified.

This brief summary makes it clear that Walter knew his romance motifs: intractable male friendship; banquet speeches; a rash boon; a knight errant wandering through a dark forest into a strange land; the importance of Pentecost; a desolate city; a maiden under a tree; a hostile giant; and an exchange of identities. Studies of analogues to Sadius and Galo show that Walter’s romance has many close similarities to Gawain and Bran de Liz, Guerehés, Amis and Amiloun, Eger and Grime, Tristan and Isolde, the Lai de Graelent, Petronius Rediuiuus, and perhaps some of Chrétien’s work.¹²⁸ Stylistically, Walter takes part in the new twelfth-century vogue of writing inner monologues for his characters, of describing “the subtleties of inner debate and the scenes of emotional see-sawing.”¹²⁹ While the queen in Sadius and Galo is the clear villain, she is without a doubt the most compelling character, an effect largely created by her wonderfully impassioned inner monologue. “I am my own deception,” she laments at one point, “my own betrayer; I’ve caught myself in my own net.”¹³⁰ In these long inner monologues, Walter reveals that he has absorbed not only the motifs of romance, but its stylistic innovations as well.

The question of exactly what romances Walter had read is not particularly important for my purposes. Rather, I merely wish to draw attention to the fact that Walter had read broadly in contemporary romance, a fact that Sadius and Galo easily demonstrates. That said, the other three romances in distinctio 3 have received considerably less critical attention than Sadius and Galo. Yet all four romances are thematically linked and respond to one another, indicating that Walter thought about romance in a sophisticated manner, on par with the best romancers of his age. All four romances in Walter’s collection concern problematic love triangles that eventually reach some resolution, destroying the original triangle in the process—a plot structure that has much in common with Marie de France’s Lais. Marie’s Eliduc suggests that religious sublimation is the only acceptable way to disentangle the love triangles of romance. Walter, on the other hand, prefers another strategy. Every romance reasserts what we might call traditional male values, usually at the expense of women.¹³¹

The second romance, which the chapter heading calls On the Variance Between Parius and Lausus (De contrarietate Parii et Lausi), contrasts the perfect friendship of Sadius and Galo with the poisonous one of Parius and Lausus.¹³² The two men are chamberlains of King Ninus of Babylon, and their friendship is broken when Parius grows envious of Lausus. He murders Lausus and covers up any evidence of the murder, thus committing homicide, as well as what Walter playfully calls morticide.¹³³ However, King Ninus soon grows fond of Lausus’s surviving son, which stirs up Parius’s jealously once again. Parius devises a plan to remove the boy from the king’s favor. He tells the boy that his breath stinks so badly that he should take care not to offend the king with his stench. In turn, Parius tells the king that the boy, now reluctant, has been avoiding him because he has compared the king’s own breath to sewage water. Incensed, the king plans to murder the boy during a public celebration. Lausus, however, convinces the boy to yield his place of honor to him, and thus when the murderer attacks, he kills Lausus—not the boy. After some confusion, the truth comes out and King Ninus restores the boy to his high position in court.

The homosocial love triangle of Parius, Lausus, and Ninus is the only romance from distinctio 3 not to feature a woman in any prominent role. Nevertheless, the beginning of the romance dwells on the feminized allegorical figure of Invidia (Envy). We read that Invidia was born in the heart of Lucifer and crept into Paradise to cause the fall of man. A conqueress (victrix), but expelled from heaven, she now makes her home with us, attacking everyone, regardless of station.¹³⁴ Invidia is explicitly made the cause of the outbreak of jealousy at the Babylonian court: “She secretly entered the seat of proud Babylon.”¹³⁵ Thus, this romance begins with a feminine allegorical figure attacking the Babylonian court. Moreover, Parius murders Lausus in a way that invokes female deceit. While trying to discover a way to murder Lausus, he finally calls to mind Hercules and Deianira and the poisonous sheet that she almost inadvertently kills him with.¹³⁶ For Walter, this classical example is a memorable act of female betrayal, one that he also recounts in his antimatrimonial treatise, the Dissuasio Valerii.¹³⁷ While no female characters exist in this romance, Walter still manages to give the story’s betrayal a feminine veneer.

The next romance features Raso, Raso’s wife, and an emir. Chaucer’s Wife of Bath would have approved of Raso’s approach to his marriage, since, moved by classical examples, he decides to grant his wife control over herself: “and so he released the horse from the bridle, so that she could seek fodder wherever her hunger directed her, and he praised her voluntary chastity to the stars.”¹³⁸ Her appetite, however, leads her to the emir, whom Raso has captured and placed in confinement. Eventually, she helps the emir escape, and Raso is himself captured in the counterattack. Raso’s son saves his father and kills the emir, but Raso’s wife escapes with a knight whom she intends to take as yet another lover. Before the two can flee the city, Raso kills this knight, puts on his clothes, and travels in disguise with his estranged wife. The pair are attacked by hostile forces, but Raso’s son again appears and saves his father, killing his stepmother in the process.

Those unfortunate enough to have read even a small selection of medieval misogynistic texts will be able to see from this bare summary that Raso’s wife exhibits several stereotypical traits: she abuses her freedom, betrays her husband, and recklessly jumps from man to man. This story, however, is not a simple retelling of the unfaithful wife motif. Given the conventions of romance, one could imagine this story focusing on the bond of father and son, or even on a grudging, mutual respect between Raso and the emir. Walter, however, introduces an element that brings this romance close to parody. Raso’s true love turns out to be his horse. The emir flees Raso’s city “on Raso’s favorite horse” (equo Rasonis carissimo).¹³⁹ The loss of this horse causes him the greatest grief when he learns his wife’s deception: “He sobs without restraint, but not because of the loss of the emir, or his wife, or what they had taken from him—only from the loss of his horse. Neither his son’s nor his household’s consolation lifts his spirits.”¹⁴⁰ When the lady evades Raso’s counterattack, she escapes on “this excellent horse” (optimum equum).¹⁴¹ Later, when Raso is disguised as his wife’s new lover, the two exchange horses, and so he finally gains what he has most desired. As they travel, Raso eventually falls asleep from exhaustion on his beloved horse. The horse proves to be a trustworthy companion, since it warns Raso of an impending attack: “Just as the men are drawing near, Raso’s horse, who was not used to remaining idle in battle, lifts his head, neighs, and paws the sand with his feet to protect his lord from death.”¹⁴² Raso awakes, and in the ensuing battle he bursts through the enemies and “is carried wherever he wants thanks to his horse’s speed.”¹⁴³ Raso’s horse becomes a better companion than his wife, and readers are implicitly invited to compare the two, since Raso’s initial misguided laxity toward his wife has already been described in bestial terms: “he released the horse (iumentum) from the bridle that she could seek fodder (pabula) wherever her hunger directed her.”¹⁴⁴ With the wife dead and Raso’s son restored to his rightful place in the household, the romance suggests that keeping a bridle on female agency will help one avoid a cheating wife, hostile capture, and even horse theft.

The love triangle in the final romance in distinctio 3 consists of the nobleman Rollo, Rollo’s wife, and a young knight named Rhys.¹⁴⁵ Rhys pines for Rollo’s wife, but she scorns him, forcing Rhys to recognize that he has little renown, especially when compared to Rollo. Chastised, he sets out to make a name for himself in the world of chivalry. Guided by “Master Love” (magister amor), Rhys becomes famous and gains a name for himself.¹⁴⁶ Rollo takes note of his accomplishments and he praises the knight in conversation with his wife. Trusting Rollo’s opinion, the wife decides she has been too proud and agrees to a tryst with Rhys. She then tells Rhys why she changed her mind: “Rollo was the cause,” she baldly states.¹⁴⁷ Rhys is shocked. “Rhys will never repay Rollo’s good will with wrong,” he says, “since it is uncourtly of me to stain his bed, which all the world denied me and he himself granted me.”¹⁴⁸ The romance ends by invoking Ovid, claiming that he was wrong when he stated that a lady cannot be made a virgin again.

It is tempting to read Rhys’s love as ennobling, as the driving force making him into a superb knight, but that is not the case.¹⁴⁹ Walter describes Rhys’s chivalric education in a thoroughly scornful manner. Outwardly, he appears a great knight, but inwardly he is, in Walter’s opinion, one of the worse things a man can become—a woman.

He conquers ranks of iron, walls, and towers, and the spirit [animus] that led him to all his victories makes itself womanly [a seipso effeminatur], but he becomes a woman [sed infeminatur], because his spirit changes into feminine weakness [in femineam transit impotenciam], so that he runs after his desires without a thought like women do—a lamb inwardly, but outwardly a lion—and the one who levels the castles of foreigners becomes castrated [castratus] by domestic concerns; he grows soft, weeps, begs, and cries. She, like neither a virgin nor a virago, but like a man, renounces, scorns, and shoves him into despair in every way she can.¹⁵⁰

Like Chrétien’s Erec, Rhys’s devotion to love, to Magister Amor, has made him womanly. Moreover, Rollo’s wife maintains control of her emotions and her restraint, making her more of a man than her suitor. When it comes to gender, Walter is an assuredly unsubversive writer, and this story’s ending, which restores normative gender roles, is unsurprising given the three romances that have preceded it. Male order and control is reasserted, and female variability is scorned once again.

The four romances in distinctio 3 all explore love triangles, and they all praise homosocial male friendship, even if that friendship is, in one instance, with a horse. Each romance, moreover, introduces an element of inconstancy at a different point in the triangle, creating a series of romances that speak to one another. These romances are also notable for what they lack—courtly love. But this does not mean that Walter was not aware of the concept. Indeed, this sequence of romances seems to delight in being as opposed to courtly love as possible. Trysts are thwarted; Master Love leads knights astray; and by the end of the stories women are dismissed altogether. The fact that Walter consistently teases readers’ expectations by setting up familiar courtly love situations, only to dash them, shows that he was very familiar with this popular literary concept. Tony Davenport, speaking specifically of the story of Rollo and Rhys, finds acknowledgment of courtly love in “its reference to Ovid and its obvious awareness of contemporary interest in debating degrees of honor and love.”¹⁵¹ Walter’s romances are meant as a clerical satire of, or remedy to, courtly love in popular vernacular romances. Walter Map, like Marie de France and Geoffrey Chaucer, enjoys generating debate by asking readers to compare and contrast similar stories and by subverting generic expectations. The interconnected themes of Walter’s romances demonstrate that he could approach the genre with a high deal of sophistication and expertise.

Walter Map knew contemporary romance, and he wrote romance himself; in spite of some misguided suggestions otherwise, nothing should be controversial about this.¹⁵² Latin literature in the twelfth century, especially that associated with Henry II’s court, found a fruitful partner in French-language literature. In terms of genre and style, influence sometimes flowed from French to Latin, in reverse of the normal medieval pattern.¹⁵³ And Latin literature could easily become a vehicle for romance or for other genres more closely associated with the vernacular.¹⁵⁴ Even though Walter wrote his romances in Latin, they display a consistent and unmistakable engagement with contemporary vernacular literature.

Reconstructing a Literary Reputation

Literary reputations are admittedly difficult to reconstruct, with opinions shifting depending on geography, chronology, and audience. Even so, the reputation that the Lancelot-Grail Cycle imagines for Walter—a writer with connections to Wales (thus ancient Britain) and to romance—agrees with several facets of Walter’s own work. He presented himself as an expert on the Welsh, and he wrote romances. These two elements alone would have been enough to make Walter a plausible auctoritas for the Cycle, but another factor doubtlessly helped to cement his inclusion: his presence at the court of Henry II. It may be that Henry II’s patronage of Arthurian literature was in reality less than has been commonly thought, but regardless of the king’s actual involvement (or not) in the literary culture surrounding his court, the numerous references to Henry and Eleanor as patrons of literature show that, in the popular imagination at the very least, they are strongly associated with romance.¹⁵⁵ The compilers of the Lancelot-Grail Cycle believed this association to be important: twice, the Cycle invokes Henry II alongside Walter Map.¹⁵⁶ Thus, for an early thirteenth-century reader, invoking Walter Map could call to mind at least three elements strongly linked to Arthurian literature: Henry II’s court, romance, and Wales.

Walter Map may not have written a true Arthurian romance—at least one that survives—but that does not mean that he had no interest in ancient Britain. Chapters 4 and 5 demonstrate that Walter made use of Welsh literary material and that he could also write imaginative and clever literature set in ancient Britain. However, before exploring these aspects of Walter’s work, this book must address a larger critical problem looming over Walter Map—his reputation for carelessness. Indeed, the incongruity of Walter’s modern reputation as an unfocused author with the extended narrative of the Cycle has been one of the major reasons that critics believe Walter Map to be a poor or ironic choice for an auctoritas. He seems to have lacked the attention to detail necessary to complete such a long work. The next two chapters show that this view of Walter is mistaken.