Abstract: The subject of this research is the manuscript “Topography of Ireland” and “Conquest of Ireland”. The object of the body of text of the artefacts “Topographia Hiberniae", "Expugnatio Hiberniae", "Gemma Ecclesiastica", and "De rebus a se gestis" by Giraldus Cambrensis. The author examines such rhetorical aspects of the medieval clerk, as the character and ways of citing classical authors. Special attention is given to the elements of scholastic written narrative. The article sets a goal to determine the correlation between its written and verbal part in works of the Welsh monk, and its impact upon the interrelation of fragments of the digest of the late XII century in the code of the early XIII century (National Library of Ireland MS 600 Giraldus Cambrensis). Among the main conclusion of the conducted research are the following reasoning: 1) “Topography of Ireland” and “Conquest of Ireland” represent the elements of a single body of texts, part of the manuscript digest of the late XII century; 2) At the end of the XII century, Norman administration in the territory of Ireland engaged the local irregular unions for the joint warfare. Authors main contribution lies in collation of the materials of the Norman and Irish chronicles. The scientific novelty consists in the complex approach towards the manuscript and intellectual heritage of Giraldus Cambrensis as a historical source.

Abstract: The subject of this article is the Ancient periphrastic geography tradition, starting from Homer and others to Giraldus Cambrensis, who viewed Ireland's Celtic archaism and mythology inseparably from its physical boundaries through the lens of local histories and legends. The author of this study attempted to track the changes in Ancient descriptive geography as perceived in that genre by Strabo and other classics of the genre. The focus of this study is the reception mechanisms of the Ancient scientific geography paradigm by a cleric of Cambridge-Norman origin at the end of the 12th century. The study's main research methodology is source criticism. This includes the use of the textological tools from the approach of Microhistory and History of Ideas. The aim of the article is to reconstruct the Welsh monk's "living world" during the High Middle Ages in order to identify how and for what purpose he used the legacy of the Ancient world both phenomenologically and epistemologically. The main conclusions of the conducted study are the author's following two deductions: 1) the genre of periphrastic geography had not been preserved in its pure form towards the end of the 12th century; 2) the objective of the author of the “Topographia Hiberniae" was exclusively utilitarian and self-interested (the treatise represents a transitional form of historical sources between political pamphlet, bestiary, geographic treatise and chronicle, annals): in order to legalise the presence of the Anglo-Norman army in the Northern part of Ireland. The author's main scientific contribution is his successful application of the methods from the approach of History of Ideas on the material from Medieval Ireland and South-Eastern Wales. The work's novelty lies in the little-used treatise's introduction into the scientific use of the Russian historiographical community.