Success Quote by Giraldus Cambrensis

A medieval cleric doesn’t often sound like he’s writing a cover letter, but Giraldus does exactly that here: a self-portrait staged as modesty while quietly demanding advancement. “Inconsiderable attempts” is classic clerical humility on paper, the kind expected in a culture where overt self-praise risked looking sinful or socially crude. Yet the sentence is built to reverse the humility as you read it. He invites the audience to judge his “success,” then hints that bigger assignments are merely waiting on “Fortune” to provide the opening. Translation: I have already demonstrated competence; if the right patronage comes along, I will excel at higher-stakes work.

The subtext is a neat blend of ambition and caution. By attributing the next step to Fortune rather than to his own pushiness, he keeps his hands clean while still angling for promotion. In the twelfth century, “Fortune” also signals a literate, Latinate sensibility: the wheel turns, courts change, bishops fall in and out of favor. Giraldus knew that careers in the Church and the Anglo-Norman administration ran on networks, timing, and political weather as much as on holiness.

Context sharpens the line’s purpose. Giraldus Cambrensis was a prolific writer and a chronicler of Ireland and Wales, often circling patrons and power centers. This sentence reads like a calculated bid to convert literary output into institutional authority: treat these pages as proof-of-work, and when the opportunity arrives, give me the serious commission. It’s not just confidence; it’s strategy disguised as virtue.