After 410 A. D., no written account gives direct evidence of the events in the British Islands. Gildas was the first to break the silence and testify to a world that had lost many of its points of reference. Cut off from the continent, the insular scholars kept their knowledge of the Latin language and of the writings of the Fathers of the Church. Around 500, Gildas relied on the Bible to interpret the wars between Britons and Saxons, and depicted the misfortunes of the Britons on the model of the Hebrews, as a new Chosen People chastened by God for its sins.

But the mission sent by Pope Gregory the Great led to the rediscovery of the continental chronology of events, and eventually to British reintegration into the Providential History of Roman Christendom. From Bede onward, two fundamental elements for recording history in the British Isles during the Middle Ages were thus established: the need for a chronological framework to be constructed at all costs, and the coexistence of contradictory versions of the past illustrating rival claims to be the Chosen People by the Scots, the Britons, the English and the Saxons.

This chapter focuses on narrative texts from Wales largely comprising annals, chronicles and histories composed from the twelfth to the fifteenth century and situates these in their cultural, political and social contexts. After identifying key themes of the historical culture evidenced, for example, by poetry, prose tales and genealogy, the discussion highlights the significance of Geoffrey of Monmouth in the development of medieval Welsh historical writing and compares his work with other Latin histories from twelfth-century Wales. It then considers the vernacular chronicles known as Brut y Tywysogion (The History of the Princes) whose coverage extends from the late seventh century to the eve of the Edwardian conquest of 1282. While based on Welsh-Latin chronicles, these were intended as a continuation of Geoffrey, and from the fourteenth century are associated in some manuscripts with Welsh translations both of his History and of Dares Phrygius’ account of the Trojan War.