#henry bradshaw

[gawrkin]

I FINALLY FOUND THIS AGAIN: LLEON GAWR

(Source: Life of St, Werburgh, by Henry Bradshaw) (LINK)

I vaguely knew there was giant that was associated with the city of Chester, but I needed to look for where I got that idea from.

And it's here with this guy, Henry Bradshaw, a Chester-born clerk from Chester who made a chronicle of the patron saint of the city of Chester, St, Werburgh.

It's in this text, Bradshaw makes an offhand comment that the Polychronicon, by Ranulf Higden, claimed the founder of Chester was this supposed giant. And from what I could gather online, the Polychronicon never makes this claim, and seems to have originate solely from Bradshaw's pen.

It's likely that this purported mythical founder of Chester, is probably a back formation, derived from Chester's old Latin-Brythonic Name* "Caerlleon Vawr" meaning "Great Legion Fort" (which was Chester's strategic role for the Romans).

The reason why this caught my attention not only because is this about a giant named "Leo(n)" but also because of Chester's relative closeness to another location pertinent to Arthurian Legend.

Around ~40 kilometers south of Chester, in Shropshire (a day's ride away from Chester in Medieval Travel) is the Old Oswestry Hill Fort, an Iron age settlement that in local folklore is called Caer Ogyrfan/Caer Ogfran - Ogyrfan being the name of Guinevere's father in Welsh Mythology.

Local Folklore also claims that Caer Ogyrfan/Old Oswestry is the birthplace of Queen Guinevere. (Link) (Link)

Here is an excerpt from Giants of Wales, by Sion Dafydd Rhys

It probably helps that, in the French Vulgate, the kingdom of Cameliard has city called "Carhaix/Carohaise" (after the IRL Carhaix-Plouguer in Brittany, in typical medieval grasp of geography).

*(Chester's other name is Deva Victrix - "Victorious Goddess" - after the River Dee, where it was situatedin, and the it's tutelary goddess)

[gawrkin]

(From Life of St. Werburgh, by Henry Bradshaw)

Leon Gauer, huh...

It seems to be a back formation from "Caer Leon Vawr" (Great Legion Fortress), Chester's roman name.

[musebaz-blog]

The Calendar of St Willibrord: From MS Paris Lat. 10837: Facsimile with Transcription, Introduction, and Notes (Henry Bradshaw Society)

The Calendar of St Willibrord: From MS Paris Lat. 10837: Facsimile with Transcription, Introduction, and Notes (Henry Bradshaw Society) The Calendar of St Willibrord is one of the most important manuscripts to have survived from the early middle ages. The personal liturgical calendar of Willibrord, the English missionary from Yorkshire who, with papal authority, became in 695 the apostle of Frisia and the first bishop of Utrecht, it is one of the earliest surviving examples of this type of liturgical book, and certainly the earliest to have survived from Anglo-Saxon England. The book is elegantly written in a high grade of script, but has been annotated by members of Willibrord's household (and possibly by Willibrord himself). As such, the manuscript provides a lucid index to those saints who were worshipped in Willibrord's own household; strikingly, in addition to commemorations of saints who were widely culted in early eighth-century Europe, the `Calendar' includes little-known saints who were culted in places as far away as Constantinople and Syria, and is thus a crucial witness to an important early phase of English Christianity.A full facsimile of the manuscript itself is accompanied by a detailed introduction and commentary on the saints commemorated by H.A. WILSON (d. 1927), one of the country's outstanding liturgical scholars.