Pennod 46 – Llenyddiaeth Gymraeg yr Eidal a Gwasg Anghyfreithlon yng Nghymru

Italy’s Welsh-language Literature and an Illegal Printing Press in Wales

As we’ve been looking recently at the relationship between humanism, Protestantism and the Welsh language, here’s an opportunity to look at the other side of the Reformation’s coin.

In this episode we discuss some of the Welsh-language Catholic literature of the sixteenth century, concentrating on two extraordinary friends, Morris Clynnog and Gruffudd Robert. These two men from north-west Wales had to flee to the continent because of there religion when the Protestant queen Elizabeth I came to the throne.

Publishing Welsh books in Milan, fighting between the Welsh and the English in Rome’s English College, producing a Welsh-language Catholic book on an illegal printing press in a cave in Wales – these Welsh exiles were connected with some of the most amazing chapters in the history of the Welsh language.