A Colony Writes Back to the Empire: Rome and Constantinople in Medieval Welsh Poetry

We know from their literature that the Welsh were great travellers, whether as soldiers, pilgrims, or migrants. As a colonised people living under the administration of the English crown and Marcher lordships after 1282, the Welsh gentry looked outwards to Europe as the source of spiritual, intellectual, and material examples to inspire their own cultural practices. This paper looks at some examples of Welsh poetic references to Rome and Constantinople from the perspective of a colonised people engaged with a larger imperial world.