THE NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY
THE NORMANS IN
EUROPEAN HISTORY
BY
CHARLES HOMER HASKINS
GURNBY PROFESSOR OF HISTORY AND POLITICAL SCIKNCB
IN HARVARD UNIVERSITY
BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
<$|>e flfoetfi&e preft Cambridge
COPYRIGHT, 1915, BY CHARLES HOMER HASKIN1
ALL BIGHTS RESERVED INCLUDING THE RIGHT TO REPRODUCE
THIS BOOK OR PARTS THEREOF IN ANY FORM
Published Octottr
D
K
HS
TO MY WIFE
PREFACE
THE eight lectures which are here published
were delivered before the Lowell Institute in
February, 1915, and at the University of Cali-
fornia the following July, and it has seemed best to
print them in the form in which they were prepared for
a general audience. Their purpose is not so much to
furnish an outline of the annals of Norman history as
to place the Normans in relation to their time and to
indicate the larger features of their work as founders
and organizers of states and contributors to European
culture. Biographical and narrative detail has accord-
ingly been subordinated in the effort to give a general
view of Norman achievement in France, in England,
and in Italy. Various aspects of Norman history have
been treated with considerable fullness by historians,
but, so far as I am aware, no connected account of the
whole subject has yet been attempted from this point of
view. This fact, it is hoped, may justify the publication
of these lectures, as well as explain the omission of many
topics which would naturally be treated in an extended
narrative.
This book rests partly upon the writings of the various
scholars enumerated in the bibliographical note at the
viii PREFACE
end of each chapter, partly upon prolonged personal
investigations, the results of which have appeared in
various special periodicals and will, in part, soon be
collected into a volume of Studies in Norman Institu-
tions. When it seemed appropriate in the text, I have
felt at liberty to draw freely upon the more general por-
tions of these articles, leaving more special and critical
problems for discussion elsewhere.
I wish to thank the authorities of the Lowell Institute
and the University of California, and to acknowledge
helpful criticism from my colleague Professor William S.
Ferguson and from Mr. George W. Robinson, Secretary
of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences of Harvard
University. My indebtedness to Norman scholars and
Norman scholarship is deeper and more personal than
any list of their names and writings can indicate.
CHARLES H. HASKINS.
CAMBRIDGE, MASS.
August, 1915.
CONTENTS
I. NORMANDY AND ITS PLACE IN HISTORY I
II. THE COMING OF THE NORTHMEN 26
,111. NORMANDY AND ENGLAND 52
IV. THE NORMAN EMPIRE 85
V. NORMANDY AND FRANCE 116
VI. NORMAN LIFE AND CULTURE 148
VII. THE NORMANS IN THE SOUTH 192
VIII. THE NORMAN KINGDOM OF SICILY 218
INDEX 251
THE NORMANS IN
EUROPEAN HISTORY
i
NORMANDY AND ITS PLACE IN HISTORY
IN June, 1911, at Rouen, Normandy celebrated the
one-thousandth anniversary of its existence. Dec-
orated with the grace and simplicity of which only
a French city is capable, the Norman capital received
with equal cordiality the descendants of the conquerors
and the conquered Norwegians and Swedes, Danes
of Denmark and Danes of Iceland, Normans of Nor-
mandy and of England, of Sicily and of Canada. Four
Norwegian students accomplished the journey from
their native fjords in an open Viking boat, having set
ashore early in the voyage a comrade who had so far
fallen away from the customs of his ancestors as to
sleep under a blanket. From the United States bold
Scandinavians, aided by the American Express Com-
pany, brought from Minnesota the Kensington rune
stone, which purports to prove the presence of Norse ex-
plorers in the northwest one hundred and thirty years
before the landfall of Columbus. A congress of Norman
history listened for nearly a week in five simultaneous
sections to communications on every phase of the Nor-
2 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY
man past. There was Norman music in the streets,
there were Norman plays at the theatres, Norman
mysteries in the cathedral close. Banquet followed ban-
quet and toast followed toast, till the cider of Normandy
paled before the champagne of France. Finally a great
pageant, starting, like the city, from the river-bank, un-
rolled the vast panorama of Norman history through
streets whose very names reecho its great figures
Rollo and his Norse companions arriving in their Viking
ships, the dukes his successors, William Longsword,
Richard the Fearless, Robert the Magnificent, William
the Conqueror, the sons of Tancred of Hauteville who
drove the paynim from Sicily, and that other Tancred
who planted the banner of the cross on the walls of
Jerusalem, all with their knights and heralds and men
at arms, followed by another pageant of the achieve-
ments of Normandy in the arts of peace. And on the
last evening the great abbey-church of Saint-Ouen
burnt red fire for the first time in its history till the
whole mass glowed and every statue and storied niche
stood out with some clear, sharp bit of the Norman past,
while its lantern-tower, "the crown of Normandy,"
shone out over the city and the river which are the
centre of Norman history and where this day the dukes
wore again their crown.
In this transitory world the thousandth anniversary
of anything is sufficiently rare to challenge attention,
even in an age which is rapidly becoming hardened to
NORMANDY IN HISTORY 3
celebrations. Of the events commemorated in 1915 the
discovery of the Pacific is only four hundred years old,
the signing of the Great Charter but seven hundred.
The oldest American university has celebrated only its
two hundred and fiftieth anniversary, the oldest Euro-
pean only its eight-hundredth. Even those infrequent
commemorations which carry us back a thousand years
or more, like the millenary of King Alfred or the sixteen-
hundredth Constantinian jubilee of 1913, are usually re-
minders of great men or great events rather than, as in
the case of Normandy, the completion of a millennium
of continuous historical development. So far as I can
now recollect, the only parallel is that of Iceland, which
rounded out its thousand years with the dignity of a
new constitution in 1874. Of about the same age, Ice-
land also resembles Normandy in being the creation of
the Norse sea-rovers, an outpost of the Vikings in the
west, as Normandy was an outpost in the south. Of
the two, Iceland is perhaps the more individual, as it
certainly has been the more faithful to its Scandinavian
traditions, but the conditions which have enabled it to
retain its early characteristics have also isolated it from
the broader currents of the world 's history. Normandy,
on the other hand, was drawn at once into the full tide
of European politics and became itself a founder of new
states, an imperial power, a colonizer of lands beyond
the seas, the mother of a greater Normandy in England,
in Sicily, and in America.
4 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY
At home and abroad the history of Normandy is a
record of rich and varied achievement of war and
conquest and feats of arms, but also of law and govern r
ment and religion, of agriculture, industry, trade, and
exploration, of literature and science and art. It takes
us back to Rollo and William of the Long Sword, to the
Vikings and the Crusaders, to the conquerors of England
and Sicily, to masterful prelates of the feudal age like
Odo of Bayeux and Thomas Becket; it brings us down
to the admirals and men of art and letters of the Grand
Slide, Tourville and DuQuesne, Poussin, Malherbe,
and the great Corneille, to Charlotte Corday and the
days of the Terror, and to the painters and scholars and
men of letters of the nineteenth century, G6ricault
and Millet, Laplace and Leopold Delisle, Flaubert and
Maupassant and Albert Sorel. It traces the laborious
clearing of ancient forests, the rude processes of prim-
itive agriculture, the making of Norman cider and the
breeding of the Norman horse, the vicissitudes of trade
in fish and marten-skins, in pottery, cheap cottons, and
strong waters, the development of a centre of fashion
like Trouville or centres of war and commerce like Cher-
bourg and Havre. It describes the slow building of
monasteries and cathedrals and the patient labors of
priests and monks, as well as the conquest of the Cana-
ries, the colonization of Canada, and the exploration of
the Great West. A thousand years of such history are
well worth a week of commemoration and retrospect.
NORMANDY IN HISTORY 5
To the American traveller who wends his way toward
Paris from Cherbourg, Havre, or Dieppe, the first im-
pression of Normandy is that of a country strikingly
like England. There are the same high chalk cliffs, the
same "little grey church on the windy shore," often the
same orchards and hedges, poppies and roses. There are
trees and wide stretches of forest as in few other parts of
France, placid, full-brimmed rivers and quiet country*
sides, and everywhere the rich green of meadow and
park and pasture, that vivid green of the north which
made Alphonse Daudet at Oxford shudder, " Green
rheumatism," as he thought of the sun-browned plains
and sharp, bare hills of his own Provence. Normandy
is brighter than England, with a dash more of color in
the landscape, but its skies are not sunny and its air
breathes the mists of the sea and the chill of the north.
There is a grey tone also, of grey towns and grey sea,
matched by an austere and sombre element in the Nor-
man character, which, if it does not take its pleasures
sadly after the manner of Taine's Englishmen, is prone
to take them soberly, and by an element of melancholy,
a sense of le glas des choses mortes, which Flaubert called
the melancholy of the northern barbarians. The Nor-
man landscape also gives us the feeling of finish and re-
pose and the sentiment of a rich past, not merely in the
obvious externals of crumbling wall and ivied tower,
but in that deeper sense of a people bound from im-
memorial antiquity to the soil, adapted to every local
6 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY
difference through long generations of use and wont, in
an intimate union of man and nature which makes the
Norman inseparable from his land. All this, too, is
English, but English with a difference. Just as, in
Henry James's phrase, the English landscape is a
landlord's landscape, and the French a peasant's, so
the mairie and the prefecture, the public garden and
the public band, the cafe and the ever-open church, the
workman's blouse and the grandam's bonnet, remind us
continually that we are in a Latin country and on our
way to Paris.
Now the history of Normandy reflects this twofold
impression of the traveller: it faces toward England and
the sea, but it belongs to France and the land. Open to
the outer world by the great valley of the Seine and the
bays and inlets of its long coast-line, Normandy was
never drawn to the sea in the same degree as its neigh-
bor Brittany, nor isolated in any such measure from the
life of the Continent. Where the shore is low, meadow
and field run to the water's edge; where it is high, its
line is relatively little broken, so that the streams gener-
ally rush to the sea down short, steep valleys, up which
wheeze the trains which connect the little seaside ports
and watering-places with the modern world within. In
spite of the trade of its rivers and its ports, in spite of
the growth of industry along its streams, Normandy is
still primarily an agricultural country, rooted deep in
the rich soil of an ancient past, a country of horses and
NORMANDY IN HISTORY 7
cattle, of butter and cheese and cider and the kindly
fruits of the earth ; and the continuity of its history rests
upon the land itself. " Behind the shore and even upon
it," says Vidal de la Blache, "the ancient cumulative
force of the interior has reacted against the sea. There
an old and rich civilization has subsisted in its entirety,
founded on the soil, through whose power have resisted
and endured the speech, the traditions, and the peoples
of ancient times." 1 Conquered and colonized by the sea-
rovers of the north, the land of Normandy was able to
absorb its conquerors into the law, the language, the re-
ligion, and the culture of France, where, as Sorel says,
their descendants now preserve "their attachment to
their native soil, the love of their ancestors, the respect
for the ruins of the past, and the indestructible venera-
tion for its tombs." 2
If the character of Normandy is thus in considerable
measure determined by geography, its boundaries and
even its internal unity are chiefly the result of history.
For good and ill, Normandy has, on the land side, no
natural frontiers. The hills of the west continue those
of Brittany, the plains of the east merge in those of
Picardy. The watershed of the south marks no clear-cut
boundary from Maine and Perche; the valleys of the
Seine and the Eure lead straight to the Ile-de-France,
separated from Normandy only by those border for-
tresses of theAvre and the Vexin which are the perpetual
, J La France, p. 161. * Pages normandes, dedication.
8 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY
battle-ground of Norman history Normandy's Al-
sace-Lorraine ! Within these limits lie two distinct
physiographic areas, one the lower portion of the Paris
basin, the other a western region which belongs with
Brittany and the west of France. These districts are
commonly distinguished as Upper and Lower Normandy,
terms consecrated by long use and representing two
contrasted regions and types, but there is no general
agreement as to their exact limits or the limits of the
region of Middle Normandy which some have placed
between them. Even the attempt to define these areas
in terms of cheese as the land respectively of the
creamy Neufch^tel, the resilient Pont-l'Evque, and
the flowing Camembert is defective from the point
of view of geographical accuracy !
The most distinctive parts of Upper Normandy are
the valley of the Seine and the region to the north and
east, the pays de Caux, fringed by the coast from Havre
to the frontier of Picardy. Less monotonous than the
bare plains farther east, the plateau of Caux is covered
by a rich vegetation, broken by scattered farmsteads,
where house and orchard and outbuildings are pro-
tected from the wind by those rectangular earthworks
surmounted by trees which are the most characteristic
feature of the region. It is the country of Madame Bo-
vary and of Maupassant's peasants. Equally typical
is the valley of the Seine, ample, majestic, slow, cutting
its sinuous way through high banks which grow higher
NORMANDY IN HISTORY 9
as we approach the sea, winding around ancient strong-
holds like Chateau Gaillard and Tancarville or ruined
abbeys like Jumieges and Saint- Wandrille, where
Maeterlinck's bees still hum in the garden, catching
the tide soon after it enters Normandy, reaching deep
water at Rouen, and meeting the "longed-for dash of
waves " in the great estuary at its mouth. Halfway from
the Norman frontier to the river's end stands Rouen,
mistress of the Seine and capital, not only of Upper Nor-
mandy, but of the whole Norman land. Celtic in name
and origin, like most French cities, chief town of the
Roman province of Lugdunensis Secunda and of the
ecclesiastical province to which this gave rise, the politi-
cal and commercial importance of Rouen have made it
also the principal city of mediaeval and modern Nor-
mandy and the seat of the changing political authority
to which the land has bowed. As early as the twelfth
century it is one of the famous cities of Europe, likened
to Rome by local poets and celebrated even by sober
historians for its murmuring streams and pleasant
meadows, its hill-girt site and strong defences, its beau-
tiful churches and private dwellings, its well-stocked
markets, and its extensive foreign trade. In spite of all
modern changes, Rouen is still a city full of history, in
the parchments of its archives and the stones of its walls,
in its stately cathedral with the ancient tombs of the
Norman dukes, in the glorious nave of its great abbey-
church, the florid Gothic of Saint-Maclou, the richly
io NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY
carved perpendicular of its Palace of Justice, and its
splendid facades of the French Renaissance; historic
also in those unbuilt spots which mark the landing of
the Northmen and the burning of Joan of Arc.
Lower Normandy shows greater variety, comprising
the hilly country of the Bocage, the so-called Nor-
man Switzerland, the plain of Caen and the pasture-
lands of the Bessin, and the wide sweep of the Atlantic
coast-line, from the promontory of La Hague to the
shifting sands of the bay of Mont-Saint-Michel. It is
a country of green fields and orchards and sunken lanes,
of dank parks and mouldering chateaux, of deserted
mills and ancient parish churches, of quaint timbered
houses and long village streets, of silent streams, small
ports, and pebbly beaches, the whole merging ultimately
in the neighboring lands of Brittany and Maine. Its
typical places are Falaise, Vire, and Argentan, with their
ancient castles of the Norman dukes ; Bayeux and Cou-
tances, the foundations of whose soaring cathedrals
carry us back to the princely prelates of the Conquest;
provincial capitals of the Old R6gime, like Valognes, or
the new, like Saint-L6; and best of all, the crowning
glories of the marvel of Mont-Saint-Michel. Its chief
town is Caen, stern and grey, the heart of Normandy
as Rouen is its head, an old poet tells us; no ancient
Roman capital, but the creation of the mediaeval dukes,
who reared its great abbey-churches to commemorate
the marriage and the piety of William the Conqueror
NORMANDY IN HISTORY 11
and Matilda, and who established their exchequer in
its castle; an intellectual centre also, the seat of the only
Norman university, of an academy, and of a society of
antiquaries which has recovered for us great portions
of the Norman past.
Fashioned and enriched by the hand of man, the land
of Normandy has in turn profoundly influenced the
character of its inhabitants. First and foremost, the
Norman is a peasant, industrious, tenacious, cautious,
secretive, distrustful of strangers, close-fisted, shrewd,
even to the point of cunning, a hard man at a bargain,
eager for gain, but with the genius for small affairs
rather than for great, for labor and economy rather
than enterprise and daring. Suspicious of novelty, he is
a conservative in politics with a high regard for vested
interests. The possession of property, especially landed
property, is his great ambition ; and since, as St. Francis
long ago reminded us, property is the sower of strife and
suits at law, he is by nature litigious and lawyerly. There
is a well-known passage of Michelet which describes the
Norman peasant on his return from the fields explain-
ing the Civil Code to his attentive children ; Racine, who
immortalized Chicaneau in his Plaideurs, laid the scene
in a town of Lower Normandy. Even in his time this
was no new trait, for the fondness for legal form and
chicane can be traced in the early days of the Coutume
de Normandie, while the Burnt Njal Saga shows us the
love of lawsuits and fine points of procedure full-blown
12 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY
among the Northmen of primitive Iceland. If Nor-
mandy is the pays de gain, it is also the pays de sapience.
Hard-headed and practical, the Norman is not an ideal-
ist or a mystic; even his religion has a practical flavor,
and the Bretons are wont to assert that there has never
been a Norman saint. With the verse of Corneille and
the splendid monuments of Romanesque and Gothic
architecture before us, no one can accuse the Normans
of lack of artistic sense, yet here, too, the Norman
imagination is inclined to be restrained and severe, real-
istic rather than romantic. Its typical modern writers
are Flaubert and Maupassant; its typical painter is
Millet, choosing his scenes from Barbizon, but loyal
to the peasant types of his native Normandy. Indeed
Henry Adams insists that Flaubert's style, exact, im-
personal, austere, is singularly like that of those great
works of Norman Romanesque, the old tower of Rouen
cathedral and St. Stephen's abbey at Caen, and shows
us "how an old art transmutes itself into a new one,
without changing its methods." l In history, a field
in which the Norman attachment to the past has pro-
duced notable results, the distinguishing qualities of
Norman work have been acute criticism and great
erudition rather than brilliant imagination. In science,
when a great Norman like Laplace discovered the neb-
ular hypothesis, he relegated it to a note in the ap-
pendix to his ordered and systematic treatise on the
1 Mont- Saint- Michel and Chartres, p. 55.
NORMANDY IN HISTORY 13
motions of the heavenly bodies. The Norman mind is
neither nebular nor hypothetical !
The land is not the whole of nature's gift to Normandy;
we must also take account of the sea, of those who came
by sea and those who went down to the sea in ships;
and history tells us of another type of Norman, those
giants of an elder day who, as one of their descendants
has said, "found the seas too narrow and the land too
tame." The men who subdued England and Sicily,
who discovered the Canaries and penetrated to the
Mississippi, who colonized Quebec and ruled the Isle
of France, were no stay-at-homes, no cautious lands-
men interested in boundaries and inheritances and
vain strivings about the law. Warriors and adven-
turers in untamed lands and upon uncharted seas, they
were organizers of states and rulers of peoples, and it
is their work which gives Normandy its chief claim
upon the attention of the student of general history.
These are the Normans of history and the Normans of
romance. Listen to the earliest characterizations of them
which have reached us from the south, as a monk of
the eleventh century, Aim6 of Monte Cassino, sets
out to recount the deeds of the southern Normans,
fortissime gent who have spread themselves over the
earth, ever leaving small things to acquire greater,
unwilling to serve, but seeking to have every one in
subjection ; 1 or as his contemporary, Geoffrey Malaterra,
1 Ystoire de li Normant (ed. Delarc), p. 10.
14 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY
himself very likely of Norman origin, describes this
cunning and revengeful race, despising their own in-
heritance in the hope of winning a greater elsewhere,
eager for gain and eager for power, quick to imitate
whatever they see, at once lavish and greedy; given to
hunting and hawking and delighting in horses and ac-
coutrements and fine clothing, yet ready when occa-
sion demands to bear labor and hunger and cold ; skil-
ful in flattery and the use of fine words, but unbridled
unless held down firmly by the yoke of justice. 1 Turn
then to the northern writers of the following century :
William of Malmesbury, who describes the fierce on-
slaughts of the Normans, inured to war and scarcely
able to live without it, their stratagems and breaches of
faith and their envy of both equals and superiors; 2 or
the English monk Ordericus, who spent his life among
them in Normandy and who says:
The race of the Normans is unconquered and ready for
any wild deed unless restrained by a strong ruler. In what-
ever gathering they find themselves they always seek to dom-
inate, and in the heat of their ambition they are often led to
violate their obligations. All this the French and Bretons
and Flemings and other neighbors have frequently felt ; this
the Italians and the Lombards, the Angles and Saxons, have
also learned to their undoing. 3
A little later it is the Norman poet Wace who tells,
through the mouth of the dying William the Con-
1 Historic, Sictda, i, 3. Gesta Regum (Rolls Series), p. 306.
* Ed. LePrevost, HI, p. 474; cf. p. 230.
NORMANDY IN HISTORY 15
queror, of these same Normans brave and valiant
and conquering, proud and boastful and fond of good
cheer, hard to control and needing to be kept under
foot by their rulers. 1 Through all these accounts runs
the same story of a high-spirited, masterful, unscrupu-
lous race, eager for danger and ready for every adven-
ture, and needing always the bit and bridle rather than
the spur.
The contrast is not merely between the eleventh cen-
tury and the twentieth, between a lawless race of pio-
neers and a race subdued and softened by generations of
order and peace ; the two types are present in the early
days of Norman history. Among the conquerors of
England a recent historian distinguishes "the great
soldiers of the invading host . . . equally remarkable
for foresight in council and for headlong courage in the
hour of action, whose wits are sharpened by danger and
whose resolution is only stimulated by obstacles; in-
capable of peaceful industry but willing to prepare
themselves for war and rapine by the most laborious
apprenticeship"; and over against them "the politi-
cians . . . cautious, plausible, deliberate, with an im-
mense capacity for detail, and an innate liking for rou-
tine ; conscious in a manner of their moral obligations,
but mainly concerned with small economies and gains;
limited in their horizon, but quick to recognise superior
powers and to use them for their own objects; indifferent
1 Roman de Rou (ed. Andresen), n, lines 9139-56.
16 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY
for their own part to high ideals, and yet respectful to
idealists; altogether a hard-headed, heavy-handed, la-
borious and tenacious type of men." 1
These contrasting types of life and character it is
tempting to refer to the respective influences of land
and water, to the differences between the peasant and
the rider to the sea. One might even attempt a philoso-
phy of Norman history somewhat on this wise. In its
normal and undisturbed state Normandy is a part of
France, in its life as in its geography, and as such it
shows only the ordinary local differences from the rest
of the French lands. So it was under the Romans, so
under the Franks. At the beginning of the tenth cen-
tury the coming of the Northmen introduces a new
element which develops relations with the sea and the
countries beyond the sea, with Scandinavia and later
with the British Isles. Normandy ceases to be provin-
cial, it almost ceases to be French ; it even becomes ths
centre of an Atlantic empire which stretches from Scot-
land to the Pyrenees. It sends its pilgrims to Com-
postela, its chivalry to Jerusalem, its younger sons to
Sicily and southern Italy. Its relations with the sea
do not cease with its political separation from the lands
across the Channel in 1204. The English come back for
a time in the fifteenth century; the Normans cross the
Atlantic in the sixteenth and settle Canada in the sev-
enteenth. But the overmastering influence of the soil
1 H. W. C. Davis, England under the Normans and Angevins, p. 3.
NORMANDY IN HISTORY 17
prevails and draws its children back to itself. The sea-
faring impulse declines; activity turns inward; the
province is finally absorbed in the nation; Normandy
is again a part of France, and the originality and dis-
tinctness of its history fade away in the life of the
whole.
Philosophy or no philosophy, the history of Nor-
mandy falls for our purposes into three convenient
periods. The first of these extends from the earliest
times to the coming of the Northmen in 911, the event
which created Normandy as a distinct entity. The
second is the history of the independent Norman duchy
from 911 to the French conquest in 1204, the three
splendid centuries of Norman independence and Nor-
man greatness. The third period of seven hundred
years deals with Normandy as a part of France.
The interest and importance of these several periods
vary with the point of view. Many people are of the
opinion that the only history which matters is modern
history, and the more modern the better because the
nearer to ourselves and our time. To such everything
is meaningless before the French Revolution or the
Franco- Prussian War or perhaps the War of 1914. To
those who care only for their own time the past has
no perspective; as a distinguished maker and writer of
history has said, James Buchanan and Tiglath-Pileser
become contemporaries. This foreshortened interest
1 8 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY
in the immediate past starts from a sound principle,
namely, that it is an important function of history to
explain the present in the light of the past from which
it has come. By a natural reaction from the study
which stopped with Marcus Aurelius or the American
colonies or the Congress of Vienna, the demand natu-
rally arose for the history of the day before yesterday,
which was once declared to be the least known period
in human annals. This is quite legitimate if it does not
stop here and does not accept the easy assumption that
what is nearest us is necessarily most important, even
to ourselves. Modern Germany owes more to Martin
Luther than to Nietzsche, more to Charles the Great,
who eleven hundred years ago conquered and civilized
the Saxons and began the subjugation of the Slavs,
than to many a more modern figure in the Sieges-allee
at Berlin. Our method of reckoning time and latitude
by sixtieths owes less to the contemporaries of James
Buchanan than to those of Tiglath-Pileser. If we must
apply material standards to history, we must consider
the mass as well as the square of the distance.
Obviously, too, we must consider distance in space
as well as in time. The Boston fire of 1872 did not rouse
Paris, and our hearts do not thrill at the mention of
the Socialist mayors and Conservative deputies whose
names become household words when the streets of
French towns are rechristened in their memory. The
perspective of Norman history is different for a Norman
NORMANDY IN HISTORY 19
than for other Frenchmen, different for a Frenchman
than for an American.
Now there can be no question that for the average
Norman the recent period bulks larger than the earlier.
His life is directly and constantly affected by the bu-
reaucratic traditions of the Old Regime, by the new
freedom and the land-distribution of the Revolution,
by the coming of the railroad, the steamship, and the
primary school. William the Conqueror, Philip Augus-
tus, Joan of Arc, their deeds and their times, have be-
come mere traditions to him, if indeed they are that.
In all these changes, however, there is nothing distinc-
tive, nothing peculiar, nothing that cannot be studied
just as well in some other part of France. Their local
and specifically Norman aspects are of absorbing in-
terest to Normandy, but they are meaningless to the
world at large. With the union with France in 1204
Norman history becomes local history, and whatever
possesses more than local interest it shares with the
rest of France. From the point of view of the world
at large, the history of Normandy runs parallel with
that of the other regions of France. Normandy will
contribute its quota of great names to the world, in
art and music and literature, in learning and indus-
try and politics; it will take its part in the great
movements of French history, the Reformation, the
Revolution, the new republic; but it will be only a
part of a larger whole and derive its interest for the
20 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY
general student from its membership in the body of
France.
Much the same is true of the period before the com-
ing of the Northmen. Under the Celts, the Romans,
and the Franks, the region which was to become Nor-
mandy is not distinguished in any notable way from
the rest of Gaul, and it has the further disadvantage of
being one of the regions concerning which our knowl-
edge is particularly scanty. A few names of tribes in
Caesar's Gallic War and in the Roman geographers, a
few scattered inscriptions from the days of the empire,
a few lives of saints and now and then a rare document
of Prankish times, this with the results of archaeological
research constitutes the basis of early Norman history.
After all, Normandy was remote from Rome and lay
apart also from the main currents of Prankish life and
politics, so that we should not look here for much light
on general conditions. Nevertheless it is in this obscure
age that the foundations of Normandy were laid. First
of all, the population, Gallo- Roman at bottom, receiv-
ing a Germanic admixture of Saxons and Franks long
before the coming of the Northmen, but still prepon-
derantly non-Germanic in its racial type. Next, lan-
guage, determined by the process of Romanization and
persisting as a Romance speech in spite of Saxon and
Frank and Northman, until in the earliest monuments
of the eleventh century we can recognize the beginnings
of modern French. Then law, the Frankish law which
NORMANDY IN HISTORY 21
the Northmen were to absorb, perpetuate, and carry
to England. Fourth, religion, the Christian faith, tri-
umphing only with difficulty in a land largely rural and
open to barbarian invasion, but established firmly by
the sixth century and already reenforced by monastic
foundations which were to be the centres of faith and
culture to a later age. Finally, the framework of politi-
cal geography, resting on the Roman cities which with
some modifications were perpetuated as the dioceses of
the mediaeval church, and connected by Roman roads
which remained until modern times the great highways
of local communication. A beginning was also made in
the direction of separate organization when, toward the
close of the fourth century, these districts of the north-
west are for the first time set off by themselves as an
administrative area, the province of Lugdunensis Se-
cunda, which coincides with later Normandy. Then, as
regularly throughout Gaul, the civil province becomes
the ecclesiastical province, centring about its oldest
church, Rouen, and the province of the archbishop of
Rouen perpetuates the boundaries of the political area
after the political authority passed away, and carries
over to the Middle Ages the outline of the Roman or-
ganization. In all this process there is nothing particu-
larly different from what took place throughout the
greater part of northern Gaul, but the results were
fundamental for Normandy and for the whole of Nor-
ttian history.
22 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY
A new epoch begins with the coming of the Northmen
in the early tenth century, as a result of which Nor-
mandy was differentiated from the rest of France and
carried into the broader currents of European history.
At first an outpost of the Scandinavian north, its rela-
tions soon shifted as it bred the conquerors of Eng-
land and Sicily. The Normans of the eleventh century,
Henry Adams maintains, stood more fully in the centre
of the world's history than their English descendants
ever did. They "were a part, and a great part, of the
Church, of France, and of Europe.*' The Popes leaned
on them, at times heavily. By the conquest of England
the "Norman dukes cast the kings of France into the
shade. . . . Normans were everywhere in 1066, and
everywhere in the lead of their age." 1 A century later
Normans ruled half of Italy, two thirds of France, and
the whole of England ; and they had made a beginning
on Ireland and Scotland. No one can write of Euro-
pean affairs throughout this whole period without
giving a large place to the Normans and their doings;
while events like the conquests of England and Ire-
land changed the course of history.
Normandy has also its place in the history of Euro-
pean institutions, for the Normans were organizers as
well as conquerors, and their political creations were
the most efficient states of their time. Masterful, yet
legally minded and businesslike, with a sense for detail
1 Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres, p. 4.
NORMANDY IN HISTORY 23
and routine, the Norman princes had a sure instinct
for state-building, at home and abroad. The Norman
duchy was a compact and powerful state before its duke
crossed the Channel, and the central government which
the Normans created in England showed the same
characteristics on a larger scale. The Anglo-Norman
empire of the twelfth century was the marvel of its
day, while the history of the Norman kingdom of Sic-
ily showed that the Norman genius for assimilation and
political organization was not confined to the dukes of
Rouen. Highly significant during the eleventh and
twelfth centuries, Norman institutions remained of
permanent importance, affecting the central adminis-
tration of France in ways which are still obscure, and
exerting a decisive influence upon the law and govern-
ment of England. Normandy was the connecting link
between the Prankish law of the Continent and the
English common law, and thus claims a share in the
jurisprudence of the wide-flung lands to which the com-
mon law has spread. The institution of trial by jury, for
example, is of Norman origin, or rather of Prankish
origin and Norman development.
By virtue, then, of its large part in the events of it^
time, by virtue of the decisive character of the events
in which the Normans took part, and by virtue of the
permanent influence of its institutions, the Normandy
of the dukes can claim an important position in the
general history of the world. In seeking to describe the
24 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY
place of the Normans in European history we shall ac-
cordingly pass over those periods, the earlier and the
later, which are primarily of local interest, and concen-
trate ourselves upon the heroic age of the tenth, elev-
enth, and twelfth centuries. We shall begin with the
coming of the Northmen and the creation of the Nor-
man state. The third lecture will consider the Norman
conquest of England ; the fourth, the Norman empire to
which this gave rise. We shall then trace the events
which led to the separation of Normandy from England
and its ultimate union in 1204 with the French mon-
archy under Philip Augustus, concluding our survey of
the Normans of the north by a sketch of Norman life
and culture in this period. The two concluding lectures
will trace the establishment of the Norman kingdom
of southern Italy and Sicily, and examine the brilliant
composite civilization of the southern Normans from the
reign of the great King Roger to the accession of his
still more famous grandson, the Emperor Frederick II.
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
There is no substantial general history of Normandy. For a review
of the materials, the literature, and the problems, see the excellent
resume of H. Prentout, La Normandie (Paris, 1910, reprinted from
the Revue de synthese historique). For bibliographical purposes this
should be supplemented by the Catalogue des ouvrages normands de
la Bibliotheque municipale de Caen (Caen, 1910-12). For the general
features of Norman geography, see the brief account by Vidal de la
Blache, in the Histoire de France of Lavisse, republished with illustra-
tions under the title of La France (Paris, 1908). The subject can best
NORMANDY IN HISTORY 25
be followed out in J. Sion, Les pay sans de la Normandie orientate
(Paris, 1908), and R. de F61ice, La Basse- Normandie (Paris, 1907).
Various aspects of Norman genius and character are delightfully
treated by Albert Sorel, Pages normandes (Paris, 1907). The pro-
ceedings of the historical congress held in conjunction with the mille-
naire of 191 1 were to have been printed in full, but so far only various
reprints of individual communications have appeared. J. Touflet, Le
millenaire de Normandie (Rouen, 1913), is not an account of the com-
memoration, but an illustrated collection of popular papers. One of
the more notable pamphlets published on this occasion is that of Ga-
briel Monod, Le rdle de la Normandie dans I'histoire de France (Paris,
1911).
II
THE COMING OF THE NORTHMEN
THE central fact of Norman history and the
starting-point for its study is the event so bril-
liantly commemorated by the millenary of
1911, the grant of Normandy to Rollo and his northern
followers in the year 911. The history of Normandy, of
course, began long before that year. The land was there,
and likewise in large measure the people, that is to say,
probably the greater part of the elements which went
to make the population of the country at a later day;
and the history of the region can be traced back several
centuries. But after all, neither the Celtic civitates nor
the Roman province of Lugdunensis Secunda nor the
ecclesiastical province of Rouen which took its place
nor the northwestern pagi of the Prankish empire were
Normandy. They lacked the name that is obvious;
they lacked also individuality of character, which is
more. They were a part, and not a distinctive part, of
something else, whereas later Normandy was a separate
entity with a life and a history of its own. And the
dividing line must be drawn when the Northmen first
established themselves permanently in the land and gave
it a new name and a new history.
It must be said that the date 911, like most exact
THE COMING OF THE NORTHMEN 27
dates in history, is somewhat arbitrary. The Northmen
first invaded Normandy in 841, and their inroads did
not cease until about 966, so that the year 911 falls
near the middle of a century and a quarter of invasion
and settlement, and marks neither the beginning nor
the end of an epoch. It is also true that this date, like
many another which appears in heavy-faced type in our
histories, is not known with entire certainty, for some
historians have placed in 912 or even later the events
commonly assigned to that year. On the whole, however,
there is good reason for maintaining 911 and a thou-
sandth anniversary must have some definite date to
commemorate !
For the actual occurrences of that year, we have only
the account of a romancing historian of a hundred years
later, reenforced here and there by the exceedingly
scanty records of the time. The main fact is clear,
namely that the Frankish king, Charles the Simple,
granted R.ollo as a fief a considerable part, the eastern
part, of later Normandy. Apparently Rollo did homage
for his fief in feudal fashion by placing his hands between
the hands of the king, something, we are told, which
"neither his father, nor his grandfather, nor his great-
grandfather before him had ever done for any man."
Legend goes on to relate, however, that Rollo refused
to kneel and kiss the king's foot, crying out in his own
speech, "No, by God!" and that the companion to
whom he delegated the unwelcome obligation performed
28 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY
it so clumsily that he overturned the king, to the great
merriment of the assembled Northmen. Rollo did not
receive the whole of the later duchy, but only the region
on either side of the Seine which came to be known as
Upper Normandy, and it was not till 924 that the North-
men acquired also middle Normandy, or the Bessin, while
the west, the Cotentin and the Avranchin, fell to them
only in 933.
As to Rollo's personality, we have only the evidence
of later Norman historians of doubtful authority and
the Norse saga of Harold Fairhair. If, as seems likely,
their accounts relate to the same person, he was known
in the north as Hrolf the Ganger, because he was so
huge that no horse could carry him and he must needs
gang afoot. A pirate at home, he was driven into exile
by the anger of King Harold, whereupon he followed
his trade in the Western Isles and in Gaul, and rose to
be a great Jarl among his people. The saga makes him
a Norwegian, but Danish scholars have sought to prove
him a Dane, and more recently the cudgels have been
taken up for his Swedish origin. To me the Norwegian
theory seems on the whole the most probable, being
based on a trustworthy saga and corroborated by other
incidental evidence. Yet, however significant of Rollo's
importance it may be that three great countries should
each claim him as its own, like the seven cities that
strove for the honor of Homer's birthplace, the ques-
tion of his nationality is historically of subordinate
THE COMING OF THE NORTHMEN 29
interest, and at a time when national lines were not
yet drawn, it is futile to fit the inadequate evidence
into one or another theory. The important fact is that
Norway, Denmark, and even more distant Sweden, all
contributed to the colonists who settled in Normandy
under Rollo and his successors, and the achievements
of the Normans thus become the common heritage of
the Scandinavian race.
The colonization of Normandy was, of course, only
a small part of the work of this heroic age of Scandina-
vian expansion. The great emigration from the North
in the ninth and tenth centuries has been explained in
part by the growth of centralized government and the
consequent departure of the independent, the turbu-
lent, and the untamed for new fields of adventure; but
its chief cause was doubtless that which lies back of
colonizing movements in all ages, the growth of popu-
lation and the need of more room. Five centuries ear-
lier this land-hunger had pushed the Germanic tribes
across the Rhine and Danube and produced the great
wandering of the peoples which destroyed the Roman
empire; and the Viking raids were simply a later aspect
of this same Volkerwanderung, retarded by the out-
lying position of the Scandinavian lands and by the
greater difficulty of migration by sea. For, unlike the
Goths who swept across the map of Europe in vast
curves of marching men, or the Franks who moved
forward by slow stages of gradual settlement in their
30 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY
occupation of Roman Gaul, the Scandinavian invaders
were men of the sea and migrated in ships. The deep
fjords of Norway and the indented coast of the North
Sea and the Baltic made them perforce sailors and
fishermen and taught them the mastery of the wider
ocean. In their dragon ships shallow, clinker-built,
half-decked craft, pointed at either end, low in the
middle, where the gunwale was protected by a row of
shields they could cross the sea, explore creeks and
inlets, and follow the course of rivers far above their
mouth. The greater ships might reach the length of
seventy-five feet and carry as many as one hundred and
twenty men, but these were the largest, and even these
offered but a slow means of migration. We must think
of the whole movement at first as one of small and
scattered bands, terrible more for their fierce, sudden,
and skilful methods of attack, than for force of su-
perior numbers or organization. The truth is that
sea-power, whose strategic significance in modern war-
fare Admiral Mahan did so much to make us appreciate,
was in the ninth and tenth centuries, so far as western
Europe was concerned, a Scandinavian monopoly. Mas-
ters of the seas, the Northmen harried the coasts and
river- valleys as they would, and there was none to drive
them back.
Outside of the Baltic, where the Danes ravaged the
southern coast and the Swedes moved eastward to lay
the foundations of the Russian state and to penetrate
THE COMING OF THE NORTHMEN 31
as far as Constantinople, two main routes lay open to
the masters of the northern seas. One led west to the
Orkneys, the Shetlands, and the coast of Scotland, and
then either south to the shores of Ireland, or further
west to Iceland, Greenland, and America. The other
led through the North Sea to England, the Low Coun-
tries, and the coast of Gaul. Both were used, and used
freely, by the Vikings, and in both directions they ac-
complished enduring results: Iceland and the king-
doms of the isles in the north, the beginnings of town
life and commerce in Ireland, the Danelaw in England,
and the duchy of Normandy.
When the great northern invasions began at the close
of the eighth century, Charles the Great ruled all the
Christian lands of the western Continent. By fire and
sword he converted the heathen Saxons of the north to
Christianity and civilization and advanced his frontier
to the Danish border, so that the pious monk of St.
Gall laments that he did not conquer the Danes also
"be it that Divine Providence was not then on our
side, or that our sins rose up against us." And this same
gossiping chronicler not the best of authorities it is
true has left us a striking picture of Charlemagne's
first experience with the Scandinavian invaders:
Once Charles arrived by chance at a certain maritime
town of Gallia Narbonensis. While he was sitting at dinner,
and had not been recognized by the townspeople, some
northern pirates came to carry on their depredations in that
32 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY
very port. When the ships were perceived some thought
they were Jewish merchants, some that they were Africans,
some Bretons. But the wise king, knowing from the shape and
swiftness of the vessels what sort of crews they carried, said
to those about him, "These ships bear no merchandize, but
cruel foes." At these words all the Franks rivalled each
other in the speed with which they rushed to attack the
boats. But it was useless. The Northmen hearing that there
stood the man whom they were wont to call Charles the
Hammer, were afraid lest all their fleet should be taken in the
port, and should be broken in pieces; and their flight was so
rapid, that they withdrew themselves not only from the
swords, but even from the eyes of those who wished to catch
them. The religious Charles, however, seized by a holy fear,
rose from the table, and looked out of the window towards the
East, remaining long in that position, his face bathed in tears.
No one ventured to question him: but turning to his fol-
lowers he said, " Know ye why I weep? Truly I fear not that
these will injure me. But I am deeply grieved that in my life-
time they should have been so near landing on these shores, and
I am overwhelmed with sorrow as I look forward and see what
evils they will bring upon my offspring and their people." l
From the actuality of such an invasion the great
Charles was spared, but in the British Isles it had al-
ready begun. In 787 the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle tells
us there "first came three ships of Northmen out of
Haeretha-land " [Denmark?], whereupon the reeve of
the Dorset port "rode down to the place and would
have driven them to the king's town, because he knew
not who they were; and they there slew him. These
were the first ships of Danishmen which sought the
1 II, 14, as translated by Keary, Vikings, p. 136.
THE COMING OF THE NORTHMEN 33
land of the English nation." Six years later they fell
upon the holy isle of Lindisfarne, pillaged the church
sacred with the memories of Northumbrian Christianity,
and slew the monks or drove them into the sea. In 807
they first landed in Ireland, and "after this there came
great sea-cast floods of foreigners into Erin, so that there
was not a point thereof without a fleet." Then came the
turn of the Continent, first along the coast of Frisia and
Flanders, and then in what is now France. In 841,
when the grandsons of Charlemagne were quarrelling
over the fragments of his empire at Fontenay, the first
fleet of Northmen entered the Seine; in 843 when they
were making their treaty of partition at Verdun, the
Vikings entered Nantes on St. John's Day and slew
the bishop before the high altar as he intoned the Sur-
sum corda of the mass. Within two years they sacked
Hamburg and Paris. Wherever possible they established
themselves at the mouths of the great rivers, often on
an island like Walcheren, Noirmoutier, or the He de
Rh6, whence the rivers opened the whole country to
them Elbe and Weser, Rhine and Meuse, Scheldt,
Seine, Loire, and Garonne, even to the Guadalquivir, by
which the Arabic chronicler tells us the "dark red sea-
birds" penetrated to Seville. One band more venture-
some than the rest, entered the Mediterranean and
reached Marseilles, whence under their leader Hastings
they sacked the Italian town of Luna, apparently in the
belief that it was Rome.
34 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY
About the middle of the ninth century the number of
the Norse pirates greatly increased and their ravages
became more regular and constant, leading in many
cases to permanent settlements. In 855 the Old English
Chronicle tells us "the heathen men, for the first time,
remained over winter in Sheppey," at the mouth of the
Thames, and thereafter, year by year, it recounts the
deeds of the Viking band which wintered in England and
is called simply here, the army. It is no longer a matter of
summer raids but of unbroken occupation. In 878 dur-
ing midwinter "the army stole away to Chippenham and
overran the land of the West-Saxons and sat down there;
and many of the people they drove beyond sea, and of
the remainder the greater part they subdued and forced
to obey them except King Alfred, and he, with a small
band, with difficulty retreated to the woods and to the
fastnesses of the moors." The following year a simi-
lar band, now swollen into "the great army" made its
appearance on the Continent and for fourteen years
ravaged the territory between the Rhine and the Loire.
Year after year "the steel of the heathen glistened";
in 886 they laid siege to Paris, which was relieved not
by the king's valor but by his offering them Burgundy
to plunder instead. A century later the English began
to buy them off with Danegeld. "All men," laments
a chronicler, "give themselves to flight. No one cries
out, Stand and fight for your country, your church,
your countrymen. What they ought to defend with
THE COMING OF THE NORTHMEN 35
arms, they shamefully redeem by payments." There
was nothing to do but add a new petition to the litany,
"From the fury of the Northmen, good Lord, deliver
us."
To the writers of the time, who could not see the
permanent results of Viking settlement, the Northmen
were barbarian pirates, without piety or pity, "who wept
neither for their sins nor for their dead," and their ex-
peditions were mere wanton pillage and destruction.
Moreover, these writers were regularly monks or priests,
and it was the church that suffered most severely. A
walled town or castle might often successfully resist,
but the monasteries, protected from Christian freeboot-
ers by their sacred character, were simply so many oppor-
tunities for plunder to the heathen of the north. Some-
times the monks perished with their monastery, often
they escaped only with their lives and a few precious
title-deeds, to find on their return merely a heap of
blackened ruins and a desolate countryside. Many re-
ligious establishments utterly disappeared in the course
of the invasions. In Normandy scarcely a church sur-
vives anterior to the tenth century. As the monasteries
were at this time the chief centres of learning and culture
throughout western Europe, their losses were the losses
of civilization, and in this respect the verdict of the mo-
nastic chroniclers is justified. There is, however, another
side to the story, which Scandinavian scholars have not
36 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY
been slow to emphasize. Heathen still and from one
point of view barbarian, the Northmen had yet a culture
of their own, well advanced on its material side, notable
in its artistic skill, and rich in its treasures of poetry
and story. Its material treasures have been in part
recovered by the labors of northern archaeologists,
while its literary wealth is now in large measure acces-
sible in English in the numerous translations of sagas
and Eddie poems.
After all barbarism, like culture, is a relative thing,
and judged by contemporary standards, the Vikings
were not barbarians. They rather show a strange com-
bination of the primitive and the civilized elemental
passions expressing themselves with a high degree of
literary art, barbaric adornment wrought with skilled
craftsmanship, Berserker rage supplemented by clever
strategy, pitiless savagery combined with a strong sense
of public order, constant feuds and murders coexistent
with a most elaborate system of law and legal procedure.
Young from our point of view, the civilization of the
Vikings had behind it a history of perhaps fifteen cen-
turies.
On its material side Viking civilization is character-
ized by a considerable degree of wealth and luxury.
Much of this, naturally, was gained by pillage, but much
also came by trade. The northern warriors do not seem
to have had that contempt for traffic which has char-
acterized many military societies, and they turned read-
THE COMING OF THE NORTHMEN 37
ily enough from war to commerce. In a Viking tomb
recently discovered in the Hebrides there were found be-
side the sword and spear and battle-axe of all warriors,
a pair of scales, fit emblem of the double life the chief
had led on earth and may have hoped to continue here-
after! Of trade, and especially trade with the Orient,
there is abundant evidence in the great treasures of gold
and silver coin found in many regions of the north.
The finely wrought objects of gold and silver and en-
crusted metal, which were once supposed to have been
imported from the south and east, are now known
to have been in large part of native workmanship, in-
fluenced, of course, by the imitation of foreign models,
but also carrying out traditions of ornamentation, such
as the use of animal forms, which can be traced back
continuously to the earliest ages of Scandinavian history.
Shields and damascened swords, arm-rings and neck-
rings, pins and brooches especially brooches, if you
find an unknown object, says Montelius, call it a brooch
and you will generally be right all testify, both in
their abundance and their beauty of workmanship, to an
advanced stage of art and handicraft.
This love of the north for luxury of adornment is
amply seen in chronicle and saga. When the Irish drove
the Vikings out of Limerick in 968 they took from them
"their jewels and their best property, and their saddles
beautiful and foreign, their gold and their silver, their
beautifully woven cloth of all kinds and colors satin
38 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY
and silk, pleasing and variegated, both scarlet and green,
and all sorts of cloth in like manner." "How," asks
the Valkyrie in the Lay of the Raven, "does the generous
Prince Harold deal with the men of feats of renown that
guard his land?" The Raven answers:
They are well cared for, the warriors that cast dice in
Harold's court. They are endowed with wealth and with
fair swords, with the ore of the Huns, and with maids from
the East. They are glad when they have hopes of a battle,
they will leap up in hot haste and ply the oars, snapping the
oar-thongs and cracking the tholes. Fiercely, I ween, do they
churn the water with their oars at the king's bidding.
Quoth the Walkyrie : I will ask thee, for thou knowest the
truth of all these things, of the meed of the Poets, since thou
must know clearly the state of the minstrels that live with
Harold.
Quoth the Raven : It is easily seen by their cheer, and their
gold rings, that they are among the friends of the king. They
have red cloaks right fairly fringed, silver-mounted swords,
and ring-woven sarks, gilt trappings, and graven helmets,
wrist-fitting rings, the gifts of Harold. 1
As regards social organization, Viking society shows
the Germanic division into three classes, thrall, churl,
and noble. Their respective characters and occupations
are thus described in the Rigsmal:
Thrall was of swarthy skin, his hands wrinkled, his
knuckles bent, his fingers thick, his face ugly, his back broad,
his heels long. He began to put forth his strength, binding
bast, making loads, and bearing home faggots the weary
long day. His children busied themselves with building
1 Corpus Poeticum Boreale, i, p. 257.
THE COMING OF THE NORTHMEN 39
fences, dunging plowland, tending swine, herding goats,
and digging peat. Their names were Sooty and Cowherd,
Clumsy and Lout and Laggard, etc. Carl, or churl, was
red and ruddy, with rolling eyes, and took to breaking
oxen, building plows, timbering houses, and making carts.
Earl, the noble, had yellow hair, his cheeks were rosy, his
eyes were keen as a young serpent's. His occupation was
shaping the shield, bending the bow, hurling the javelin,
shaking the lance, riding horses, throwing dice, fencing,
and swimming. He began to waken war, to redden the field,
and to fell the doomed. 1
Both churl and earl were largely represented in those
who went to sea, but the nobility naturally preponder-
ated, and it is particularly their exploits which the
sagas and poems celebrate. Viking warfare was no mere
clash of swords; they conducted their military opera-
tions with skill and foresight, and showed great power
of adapting themselves to new conditions, whether that
meant the invasion of an open country or the siege of a
fortified town. Much, however, must be credited to their
furor Teutonicus, to that exuberance of military spirit
which they had inherited from far-off ancestors. Not
all were wolf-coated Bearsarks, but all seemed to have
that delight in war and conflict for their own sakes
which breathes through their poetry:
The sword in the king's hand bit through the weeds of
Woden [mail] as if it were whisked through water, the spear-
points clashed, the shields were shattered, the axes rattled
on the heads of the warriors. Targets and skulls were trod-
1 Corpus Poeticum Boreale, i, pp. 236-40.
40 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY
den under the Northmen's shield-fires [weapons] and the
hard heels of their hilts. There was a din in the island, the
kings dyed the shining rows of shields in the blood of men.
The wound-fires [blades] burnt in the bloody wounds, the
halberds bowed down to take the life of men, the ocean of gore
dashed upon the swords'-ness, the flood of the shafts fell
upon the beach of Stord. Halos of war mixed under the
vault of the bucklers; the battle- tempest blew underneath
the clouds of the targets, the lees of the sword-edges [blood]
pattered in the gale of Woden. Many a man fell into the
stream of the brand. 1
Again:
Brands broke against the black targets, wounds waxed
when the princes met. The blades hammered against the
helm-crests, the wound-gravers, the sword's point, bit. I
heard that there fell in the iron-play Woden's oak [heroes]
before the swords [the sword-belt's ice].
Second Burden : There was a linking of points and a gnash-
ing of edges: Eric got renown there.
Second Stave :The prince reddened the brand, there was
a meal for the ravens; the javelin sought out the life of
man, the gory spears flew, the destroyer of the Scots fed
the steed of the witch [wolves], the sister of Nari [Hell]
trampled on the supper of the eagles [corses]. The cranes of
battle [shafts] flew against the walls of the sword [bucklers],
the wound-mew's lips [the arrows' barbs] were not left thirsty
for gore. The wolf tore the wounds, and the wave of the
sword [blood] plashed against the beak of the raven.
Third Burden: The lees of the din of war [blood] fell upon
Gialf 's steed [ship] : Eric gave the wolves carrion by the sea.
Third Stave: The flying javelin bit, peace was belied there,
the wolf was glad, and the bow was drawn, the bolts clat-
tered, the spear-points bit, the flaxen-bowstring bore the
1 Corpus Poeticum Soreale, i, p. 265 /.
THE COMING OF THE NORTHMEN 41
arrows out of the bow. He brandished the buckler on his
arm, the rouser of the play of blades he is a mighty hero.
The fray grew greater everywhere about the king. It was
famed east over the sea, Eric's war-faring. 1
Or listen to the weird sisters as they weave the web of
Ireland's fate under Brian Boru:
Wide-stretched is the warp presaging the slaughter, the
hanging cloud of the beam; it is raining blood. The gray web
of the hosts is raised up on the spears, the web which we
the friends of Woden are filling with red weft.
This web is warped with the guts of men, and heavily
weighted with human heads; blood-stained darts are the
shafts, iron-bound are the stays; it is shuttled with arrows.
Let us strike with our swords this web of victory!
War and Sword-clasher, Sangrid and Swipple, are weaving
with drawn swords. The shaft shall sing, the shield shall
ring, the helm-hound [axe] shall fall on the target. 2
And those who met their death in battle had reserved
for them a similar existence in the life to come, not
doomed like the ' straw-dead ' to tread wet and chill and
dusky ways to the land of Hel, but I am quoting
Gummere 3 as weapon-dead faring "straightway to
Odin, unwasted by sickness, in the full strength of man-
hood," to spend their days in glorious battle and their
nights in equally glorious feasting in the courts of Val-
halla.
In his cradle the young Viking was lulled by such
songs as this :
1 Corpus Poeticum Boreale, I, pp. 268-70. * /Wd., I, p. 281 /.
8 Germanic Origins (New York, 1892), p. 3057.
42 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY
My mother said they should buy me a boat and fair oars,
and that I should go abroad with the Vikings, should stand
forward in the bows and steer a dear bark, and so wend to the
haven and cut down man after man there.
When he grows up the earl's daughter scorns him as a
boy who "has never given a warm meal to the wolf,"
"seen the raven in autumn scream over the carrion
draft," or "been where the shell-thin edges" of the
blades crossed ; whereupon he wins a place by her side
by replying:
I have walked with bloody brand and with whistling
spear, with the wound-bird following me. The Vikings made
a fierce attack; we raised a furious storm, the flame ran over
the dwellings of men, we laid the bleeding corses to rest in
the gates of the city. 1
And at the end, like Ragnar Lodbrok captured and dy-
ing in the pit of serpents, he can tell his tale of feeding
the eagle and the she-wolf since he first reddened the
sword at the age of twenty, and end his life undaunted to
the ever-recurring refrain, "We hewed with the sword " :
Death has no terrors. I am willing to depart. They are
calling me home, the Fays whom Woden the Lord of Hosts
has sent me from his hall. Merrily shall I drink ale in my
high-seat with the Anses. My life days are done. Laughing
will I die. 2
Politically, Viking society was aristocratic, but an
aristocracy in which all the nobles were equal. "We
have no lord, we are all equal," said Rollo's men when
1 Corpus Poeticum Boreale, I, p. 373. J Ibid., n, p. 345.
THE COMING OF THE NORTHMEN 43
asked who was their lord ; and men thus minded were not
likely to spend their time casting dice in King Harold's
court, even if their independence meant the wolf's lot
of exile. What kind of a political organization they
were likely to form can be seen from two examples of
the Viking age. One is Iceland, described by Lord
Bryce l as "an almost unique instance of a community
whose culture and creative power flourished indepen-
dently of any favoring material conditions,'* that
curiously decentralized and democratic commonwealth
where the necessities of life created a government with
judicial and legislative duties, while the feeling of equal-
ity and local independence prevented the government
from acquiring any administrative or executive func-
tions, a community with " a great deal of law and no
central executive, a great many courts and no authority
to carry out their judgments." The other example is
Jomburg, that strange body of Jom vikings established
in Pomerania, at the mouth of the Oder, and held by a
military gild under the strictest discipline. Only men of
undoubted bravery between the ages of eighteen and
fifty were admitted to membership; no women were
allowed in the castle, and no man could be absent from
it for more than three days at a time. Members as-
sumed the duty of mutual support and revenge, and
plunder was to be distributed by lot.
1 "Primitive Iceland," in his Studies in History and Jurisprudence
(Oxford, 1901), pp. 263 ff.
44 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY
Neither of these types of Viking community was to be
reproduced in Normandy, for both were the outgrowth
of peculiar local conditions, and the Northmen were
too adaptable to found states with a rubber-stamp. A
loose half-state like Iceland could exist only where the
absence of neighbors or previous inhabitants removed
all danger of complications, whether domestic or foreign.
A strict warrior gild like that of Jomburg could arise
only in a fortress. Whatever form Viking society would
take in Normandy was certain to be determined in large
measure by local conditions; yet it might well contain
elements found in the other societies the Icelandic
sense of equality and independence, and the military
discipline of the Jomvikings set in the midst of their
Wendish foes. And both of these elements are character-
istic of the Norman state.
Such, very briefly sketched, were the Northmen who
came to Normandy. We have now to follow them in
their new home.
We must note in the first place that the relations be-
tween Normandy and the north were not ended with
the grant of 911. We must think of the new Norman
state, not as a planet sent off into space to move sepa-
rate and apart in a new orbit, but as a colony, an out-
post of the Scandinavian peoples in the south, fed by
new bands of colonists from the northern home and
only gradually drawn away from its connections with
the north and brought into the political system of
THE COMING OF THE NORTHMEN 45
Prankish Gaul and its neighbors. For something like
a hundred years after the coming of Rollo the key to
Norman history is found in this fact and in the result-
ing interplay of Scandinavian and Prankish influences.
The very grant of 911 was susceptible of being differ-
ently regarded from the point of view of the two parties.
Charles the Simple probably thought he was creating
a new fief with the Norman chief as his vassal, bound to
him by feudal ties, while to Rollo, innocent of feudal
ideas, the grant may well have seemed a gift outright
to be held by himself and his companions as land was
held at home. From one point of view a feudal holding,
from another an independent Scandinavian state, the
contradiction in Normandy's position explains much of
its early history. The new colony was saved from absorp-
tion in its surroundings by continued migration from
the north ; before it became Prankish and feudal it thus
had time to establish itself firmly and draw tightly the
lines which separated it from its neighbors. At once a
Prankish county and a Danish colony, it slowly formed
itself into the semi-independent duchy which is the his-
toric Normandy of the eleventh and twelfth centuries.
Although Rollo was baptized in 912 and signalized
his conversion by extensive grants of land to the great
churches and monasteries of his new territories, his
Christianity sat lightly upon him and left him a Norse
sea-rover at heart till the end, when he sought to ap-
pease the powers of the other world, not only by gifts
46 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY
of gold to the church, but by human sacrifices to the
northern gods. His legislation, so far as it can be re-
constructed from the shadowy accounts of later histo-
rians, was fundamentally Scandinavian in character, and
his followers guarded jealously the northern traditions
of equality and independence. His son, William Long-
sword, was a more Christian and Prankish type, but his
death, celebrated in a Latin poem which represents the
earliest known example of popular epic in Normandy,
was the signal for a Scandinavian and pagan reaction.
We hear of fresh arrivals on the Seine, Vikings who wor-
shipped Thor and Odin, of an independent band at
Bayeux under a certain Haigrold or Harold, and even of
appeals for reinforcements from the Normans to the
Northmen beyond the sea. The dukes of Rouen, says the
Saga of St. Olaf, "remember well their kinship with the
chiefs of Norway; they hold them in such honor that
they have always been the best friends of the Norwe-
gians, and all the Norwegians who wish find refuge in
Normandy." Not till the beginning of the eleventh cen-
tury does the Scandinavian immigration come to an
end and Normandy stand fully on its own feet.
Not until the eleventh century also does the history
of Normandy emerge from the uncertain period of legend
and tradition and reach an assured basis of contempo-
rary evidence. Throughout Europe, the tenth century
is one of the most uncertain and obscure of all the Chris-
tian centuries. To the critic, as an Oxford don distin-
THE COMING OF THE NORTHMEN 47
guished for knowledge of this epoch once remarked, its
delightful obscurity makes it all the more interesting,
but there are limits to the delights of obscurity, and a
French scholar who has tried to reconstruct the history
of this period in Spain finds that all surviving documen-
tary sources of information are fabrications! Matters
are not so bad as that for Normandy, for the forgers
there chose other periods in which to place their prod-
ucts, but there are for the tenth century practically
no contemporary documents or contemporary Norman
chronicles. The earliest Norman historian, Dudo, dean
of Saint-Quentin, wrote after the year 1000 and had
no personal knowledge of the beginnings of the Nor-
man state. Diffuse, rhetorical, credulous, and ready to
distort events in order to glorify the ancestors of
the Norman dukes who were his patrons, Dudo is any-
thing but a trustworthy writer, and only the most cir-
cumspect criticism can glean a few facts from his con-
fused and turgid rhetoric. Yet he was copied by his
Norman successors, in prose and in verse, and has found
his defenders among patriotic Normans of a more mod-
ern time. Not until quite recent years has his fundamen-
tal untrustworthiness been fully established, and with
it has vanished all hope of any detailed knowledge of
early Norman history. Only with the eleventh century
do we reach a solid foundation of annals and charters
in the reigns of the princes whom Dudo seeks to glorify
in the person of their predecessors. And when we reach
48 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY
this period, the heroic age of conquest and settlement is
over, and the Normans have become much as other
Frenchmen.
At this point the fundamental question forces itself
upon us, how far was Normandy affected by Scandi-
navian influences? What in race and language, in law
and custom, was the contribution of the north to Nor-
mandy? And the answer must be that in most respects
the tangible contribution was slight. Whatever may have
been the state of affairs in the age of colonization and
settlement, by the century which followed the Normans
had become to a surprising degree absorbed by their
environment.
It is now generally admitted, says Professor Maitland, 1
that for at least half a century before the battle of Hastings,
the Normans were Frenchmen, French in their language,
French in their law, proud indeed of their past history, very
ready to fight against other Frenchmen if Norman home-
rule was endangered, but still Frenchmen, who regarded
Normandy as a member of the state or congeries of states
that owed service, we can hardly say obedience, to the king
at Paris. Their spoken language was French, their written
language was Latin, but the Latin of France; the style of
their legal documents was the style of the French chancery;
very few of the technical terms of their law were of Scandi-
navian origin. When at length the 'custom' of Normandy
appears in writing, it takes its place among other French
customs, and this although for a long time past Normandy
has formed one of the dominions of a prince, between whom
and the king of the French there has been little love and
1 Pollock and Maitland, History of English Law, I, p. 66.
THE COMING OF THE NORTHMEN 49
frequent war; and the peculiar characteristics which mark
off the custom of Normandy from other French customs
seem due much rather to the legislation of Henry of Anjou
than to any Scandinavian tradition.
The law of Normandy was by this time Prankish,
and its speech was French. Even the second duke,
William Longsword, found it necessary to send his son
to Bayeux to learn Norse, for it was no longer spoken at
Rouen. And in the French of Normandy, the Norman
dialect, the Scandinavian element is astonishingly small,
as careful students of the local patois tell us. Only in
one department of life, the life of the sea, is any con-
siderable Scandinavian influence discernible, and the
historian of the French navy, Bourel de la Ronciere, has
some striking pages on the survivals of the language of
the Norse Vikings in the daily speech of the French
sailor and fisherman.
The question of race is more difficult, and is of course
quite independent of the question of language, for lan-
guage, as has been well said, is not a test of race but
a test of social contact, and the fundamental physi-
cal characteristics of race are independent of speech.
"Skulls," says Rhys, "are harder than consonants, and
races lurk behind when languages slip away." On this
point again scientific examination is unfavorable to ex-
tended Scandinavian influence. Pronounced northern
types, of course, occur, I remember, on my first jour-
ney through Normandy, seeing at a wayside station a
50 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY
peasant who might have walked that moment out of a
Wisconsin lumber-camp or a Minnesota wheat- field,
but the statistics of anthropometry show a steady pre-
ponderance of the round-headed type which prevails
in other parts of France. Only in two regions does the
Teutonic type assert itself strongly, in the lower valley
of the Seine and in the Cotentin, and it is in these re-
gions and at points along the shore that place-names
of Scandinavian origin are most frequent. The termi-
nations bee and fleur, beuf and ham and dalle and tot
Bolbec, Harfleur, Quillebeuf, Ouistreham, Dieppedalle,
Yvetot tell the same story as the terms used in navi-
gation, namely that the Northmen were men of the sea
and settled in the estuaries and along the coast. The
earlier population, however, though reduced by war and
pillage and famine, was not extinguished. It survived
in sufficient numbers to impose its language on its con-
querors, to preserve throughout the greater part of the
country its fundamental racial type, and to make these
Northmen of the sea into Normans of the land.
What, then, was the Scandinavian contribution to the
making of Normandy if it was neither law nor speech
nor race? First and foremost, it was Normandy itself,
created as a distinct entity by the Norman occupa-
tion and the grant to Rollo and his followers, without
whom it would have remained an undifferentiated part
of northern France. Next, a new element in the popu-
lation, numerically small in proportion to the mass, but
THE COMING OF THE NORTHMEN 51
a leaven to the whole quick to absorb Prankish law
and Christian culture but retaining its northern quali-
ties of enterprise, of daring, and of leadership. It is no
accident that the names of the leaders in early Norman
movements are largely Norse. And finally a race of
princes, high-handed and masterful but with a talent
for political organization, state-builders at home and
abroad, who made Normandy the strongest and most
centralized principality in France and joined to it a
kingdom beyond the seas which became the strongest
state in western Europe.
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
The best outline of the beginnings of Normandy is H. Prentout,
Essai sur les origines et la fondation du duche de Normandie (Paris,
1911). For the Prankish side of the Norse expeditions see W. Vogel,
Die Normannen und das frdnkische Reich (Heidelberg, 1906), supple-
mented by F. Lot, in the Bibliotheque de I'Ecole des Charles, LXIX
(1908). Their devastation of Normandy is illustrated by the fate of
the monastery of Saint- Wandrille : F. Lot, Etudes critiques sur I'abbaye
de Saint-Wandrille (Paris, 1913), ch. 3. There is a vast literature in
the Scandinavian languages ; for the titles of fundamental works by
Steenstrup, Munch, Worsaae, and Alexander Bugge, see Charles
Gross, Sources and Literature of English History (London, 1915), 42.
Considerable material in English has been published in the Saga-Book
of the Viking Society (London, since 1895). On the material culture
of the north see Sophus Miiller, Nordische Altertumskunde (Strass-
burg, 1897-98), and the various works of Montelius. The early poetry
is collected and translated by Vigfusson and Powell, Corpus Poeticum
Boreale (Oxford, 1883). Convenient summaries in English are C. F.
Keary, The Vikings in Western Christendom (London, 1891); A.
Mawer, The Vikings (Cambridge, 1913) ; and L. M. Larson, Canute the
Great (New York, 1912).
Ill
NORMANDY AND ENGLAND
AFTER the coming of the Northmen the chief
event in Norman history is the conquest of
England, and just as relations with the north
are the chief feature of the tenth century, so relations
with England dominate the eleventh century, and the
central point is the conquest of 1066. In this series of
events the central figure is, of course, William the Con-
queror, by descent duke of Normandy and by conquest
king of England.
Of William's antecedents we have no time to speak
at length. Grandson of the fourth Norman duke,
Richard the Good, William was the son of Duke Robert,
who met his death in Asia Minor in 1035 while return-
ing from a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. To distinguish him
from the later duke of the same name he is called Robert
I or Robert the Magnificent, sometimes and quite in-
correctly, Robert the Devil, by an unwarranted confu-
sion with this hero, or rather villain, of romance and
grand opera. A contemporary of the great English king
Canute, Robert was a man of renown in the Europe of
the early eleventh century, and if our sources of in-
formation permitted us to know the history of his brief
NORMANDY AND ENGLAND 53
reign, we should probably find that much that was dis-
tinctive of the Normandy of his son's day can be traced
back to his time. More than once in history has a great
father been eclipsed by a greater son. The fact should
be added, which William's contemporaries never al-
lowed him to forget, that he was an illegitimate son. His
mother Arlette was the daughter of a tanner of Falaise,
and while it is not clear that Duke Robert was ever mar-
ried to any one else, his union with Arlette had no higher
sanction than the Danish custom of his forefathers.
Their son was generally known in his day as William
the Bastard, and only the great achievements of his
reign succeeded in replacing this, first by William the
Great and later by William the Conqueror.
Were it not for the resulting confusion with other
great Williams, one of whom has recently been raised
by admiring subjects to the rank of William the Great-
est! there would be a certain advantage in retain-
ing the title of great, in order to remind ourselves that
William was not only a conqueror but a great ruler. The
greatest secular figure in the Europe of his day, he is
also one of the greatest in the line of English sovereigns,
whether we judge him by capacity for rule or by the re-
sults of his reign, and none has had a more profound ef-
fect on the whole current of English history. The late
Edward A. Freeman, who devoted five stout volumes to
the hif.tory of the Norman Conquest and of William, and
who n^ver shrank from superlatives, goes still further:
54 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY
No man that ever trod this earth was ever endowed with
greater natural gifts; to no man was it ever granted to ac-
complish greater things. If we look only to the scale of a
man's acts without regard to their moral character, we must
hail in the victor of Val-es-dunes, of Varaville, and of Senlac,
in the restorer of Normandy, the Conqueror of England, one
who may fairly claim his place in the first rank of the world's
greatest men. No man ever did his work more thoroughly
at the moment ; no man ever left his work behind him as more
truly an abiding possession for all time. ... If we cannot
give him a niche among pure patriots and heroes, he is quite
as little entitled to a place among mere tyrants and destroy-
ers. William of Normandy has no claim to a share in the pure
glory of Timoleon, ^Elfred, and Washington; he cannot even
claim the more mingled fame of Alexander, Charles, and
Cnut; but he has still less in common with the mere ene-
mies of their species, with the Nabuchodonosors, the Swegens,
and the Buonapartes, whom God has sent from time to time
as simple scourges of a guilty world. ... He never wholly
cast away the thoughts of justice and mercy, and in his
darkest hours had still somewhat of the fear of God before
his eyes. 1
I have quoted the essence of Freeman's characteriza-
tion, not because it seems to me wholly just or even
historical, but in order to set forth vividly the im-
portance of William and his work. It is not the histo-
rian's business to award niches in a hall of fame. He is
no Rhadamanthus, to separate the Alfreds of this world
from the Nebuchadnezzars, the Washingtons from the
Napoleons. So far as he deals with individuals, his busi-
ness is to explain to us each man in the light of his time
1 History of the Norman Conquest (third edition), n, pp. 164-67.
NORMANDY AND ENGLAND 55
and its conditions, not to compare him with men of
far distant times and places in order to arrange all in a
final scale of values. It was once the fashion in debating
societies to discuss whether Demosthenes was a greater
orator than Cicero, and whether either was the equal
of Daniel Webster. It is even more futile to consider
whether William the Conqueror was a greater man than
Alexander or a less than George Washington, for the
quantities are incommensurable. So far as comparisons
of this sort are at all legitimate, they must be instituted
between similar things, between contemporaries or be-
tween men in quick sequence. When they deal with wide
intervals of time and circumstance, they wrest each
man from his true setting and become fundamentally
unhistorical.
An able general, strong in battle and still stronger in
strategy and craft, a skilful diplomat, a born ruler of
men, William was yet greater in the combination of
vision, patience, and masterful will which make the
statesman, and the results of his statesmanship are
writ large on the page of English history. To his con-
temporaries his most striking characteristic was his
pitiless strength and inflexible will, and if they had been
familiar with Nietzsche's theory of the 'overman,' they
would certainly have placed him in that class. Stark
and stern and wrathful, the author of the Anglo-Saxon
Chronicle approaches him, as Freeman well says, 1 "with
1 Norman Conquest, n, p. 166.
56 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY
downcast eyes and bated breath, as if he were hardly
dealing with a man of like passions with himself but
were rather drawing the portrait of a being of another
nature." This, the most adequate characterization of
the Uebermensch of the eleventh century, runs as fol-
lows: l
If any would know what manner of man king William
was, the glory that he obtained, and of how many lands he
was lord ; then will we describe him as we have known him,
we, who have looked upon him and who once lived in his
court. This king William, of whom we are speaking, was a
very wise and a great man, and more honoured and more
powerful than any of his predecessors. He was mild to those
good men who loved God, but severe beyond measure towards
those who withstood his will. He founded a noble monastery
on the spot where God permitted him to conquer England,
and he established monks in it, and he made it very rich. In
his days the great monastery at Canterbury was built, and
many others also throughout England; moreover this land
was filled with monks who lived after the rule of St. Benedict;
and such was the state of religion in his days that all that
would might observe that which was prescribed by their
respective orders. King William was also held in much
reverence : he wore his crown three times every year when
he was in England : at Easter he wore it at Winchester, at
Pentecost at Westminster, and at Christmas at Gloucester.
And at these times, all the men of England were with him,
archbishops, bishops, abbots, and earls, thanes, and knights.
So also, was he a very stern and a wrathful man, so that
none durst do anything against his will, and he kept in prison
those earls who acted against his pleasure. He removed
bishops from their sees, and abbots from their offices, and
1 Translated by Giles (London, 1847), pp. 461-63.
NORMANDY AND ENGLAND 57
he imprisoned thanes, and at length he spared not his own
brother Odo. This Odo was a very powerful bishop in Nor-
mandy, his see was that of Bayeux, and he was foremost to
serve the king. He had an earldom in England, and when
William was in Normandy he was the first man in this coun-
try, and him did he cast into prison. Amongst other things
the good order that William established is not to be forgotten ;
it was such that any man, who was himself aught, might
travel over the kingdom with a bosom-full of gold unmo-
lested; and no man durst kill another, however great the
injury he might have received from him. He reigned over
England, and being sharp-sighted to his own interest, he sur-
veyed the kingdom so thoroughly that there was not a single
hide of land throughout the whole of which he knew not the
possessor, and how much it was worth, and this he after-
wards entered in his register. The land of the Britons was
under his sway, and he built castles therein; moreover he had
full dominion over the Isle of Man [Anglesey]: Scotland
also was subject to him from his great strength; the land of
Normandy was his by inheritance, and he possessed the
earldom of Maine; and had he lived two years longer he
would have subdued Ireland by his prowess, and that with-
out a battle. Truly there was much trouble in these times,
and very great distress; he caused castles to be built, and
oppressed the poor. The king was also of great sternness,
and he took from his subjects many marks of gold, and many
hundred pounds of silver, and this, either with or without
right, and with little need. He was given to avarice, and
greedily loved gain. He made large forests for the deer, and
enacted laws therewith, so that whoever killed a hart or a
hind should be blinded. As he forbade killing the deer, so
also the boars ; and he loved the tall stags as if he were their
father. He also appointed concerning the hares, that they
should go free. The rich complained and the poor murmured,
but he was so sturdy that he recked nought of them; they
58 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY
must will all that the king willed, if they would live; or
would keep their lands; or would hold their possessions; or
would be maintained in their rights. Alas! that any man
should so exalt himself, and carry himself in his pride over all !
May Almighty God show mercy to his soul, and grant him
the forgiveness of his sins! We have written concerning
him these things, both good and bad, that virtuous men might
follow after the good, and wholly avoid the evil, and might
go in the way that leadeth to the kingdom of heaven.
This Requiescat of the monk of Peterborough has
carried us forward half a century, till the Conqueror, in
the full maturity of his power and strength, rode to his
death down the steep street of the burning town of
Mantes and was buried in his own great abbey-church
at Caen. And the good peace that he gave the land at
the end came, both in Normandy and in England, only
after many stormy years of war, rebellion, and strife.
William was but sixty when he died ; when his father was
laid away in the basilica of far-off Nicaea, he was only
seven or at most eight. The conquest of England was
made in his fortieth year, when he had already reigned
thirty-one years as duke. Or, if we deduct the years of
his youth, the conquest of England falls just halfway
between his coming of age and his death. I give these
figures to adjust the perspective. William's place in the
line of English kings is so prominent and his achieve-
ments in England are so important that they always
tend to overshadow in our minds his earlier years as
duke. Yet without these formative years there could
NORMANDY AND ENGLAND 59
have been no conquest of England, and without some
study of them that conquest cannot be understood.
If we pass over rapidly, as for lack of information we
must needs do, the dozen years of William's minority, we
find his reign in Normandy chiefly occupied with his
struggles with his vassals, his neighbors, and the king
of France, all a necessary consequence of his feudal
position as duke. The Norman vassals, always tur-
bulent and rebellious, seem to have broken forth anew
upon the death of Robert the Magnificent, and such
accounts as have reached us of the events of the next
twelve years reveal a constant state of anarchy and dis-
order. The revolt of the barons came to a head in 1047,
when the whole of Lower Normandy rose underHthe
leadership of the two chief vicomtes of the region, Ranulf
of Bayeux and Neel of Saint-Sauveur, the ruins of whose
family castle of Saint-Sauveur-le-Vicomte still greet
the traveller who leaves Cherbourg for Paris. William,
who was hunting in the neighborhood of Valognes, was
obliged to flee half-clad in the night and to pick his way
alone by devious paths across the enemy's country to
his castle of Falaise. With the assistance of the French
king he was able to collect an army from Upper Nor-
mandy and meet the rebels on the great plain of Val-des-
Dunes, near Caen, where the Mont-joie of the French
and the Dex aie of the duke's followers answered the
barons' appeals to their local saints of St. Sauveur,
St. Sever, and St. Amand. William was victorious; the
60 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY
leaders of the revolt were sent into exile, but one of
them, Grimoud of Plessis, the traitor, apparently he
who had sought William's death in the night at Va-
lognes, was put in prison at Rouen in irons which he
wore until his death.
With the collapse of the great revolt and the razing
of the castles of the revolting barons, Normandy began
to enjoy a period of internal peace and order. Externally,
however, difficulties rather increased with the growing
power of the young duke. In discussions of feudal soci-
ety it is too often assumed that if the feudal obligations
are observed between lords and vassals, all will go well,
and that the anarchy of which the Middle Ages are full
was the result of violations of these feudal ties. Now,
while undoubtedly a heavy account must be laid at the
door of direct breaches of the feudal bond, it must also
be remembered that there was a fundamental defect
in the very structure of feudal society. We may express
this defect by saying that the feudal ties were only verti-
cal and not lateral. The lord was bound to his vassal and
the vassal to his lord, and so far as these relations went
they provided a nexus of social and legal relations which
might hold society together. But there was no tie be-
tween two vassals of the same lord, nothing whatever
which bound one of them to live in peace and amity with
the other. Quite the contrary. War being the normal
state of European society in the feudal period, the right
to carry on private war was one of the cherished rights
NORMANDY AND ENGLAND 61
of the feudal baron, and it extended wherever it was not
restricted by the bonds of fealty and vassalage. The
duke of Normandy and the count of Anjou were both
vassals of the king of France, but their relations to each
other were those of complete independence, and, save
for some special agreement or friendship, were normally
relations of hostility.
And so an important part of Norman history has to
treat of the struggles with the duchy's neighbors, Flan-
ders on the north, the royal domain on the east, Maine
and Anjou to the southward, and Brittany on the west.
Fortunately for Normandy, the Bretons were but loosely
organized, while the Flemings, compacted into one of
the strongest of the French fiefs, were generally friendly,
and the friendship was in this period cemented by Wil-
liam's marriage to Matilda, daughter of the count of
Flanders, one of the few princely marriages of the time
which was founded upon affection and observed with
fidelity. With Anjou the case was different. Beginning
as a border county over against the Bretons of the lower
Loire, with the black rock of Angers as its centre and
fortress, Anjou, though still comparatively small in
area, had grown into one of the strongest states of west-
ern France. Under a remarkable line of counts, Geof-
frey Grey gown, Fulk the Red, and Fulk the Black, an-
cestors of the Plantagenet kings of England, it had
become the dominant power on the Loire, and now under
their successor Geoffrey the Hammer it threatened
62 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY
further expansion by hammering its frontiers still fur-
ther to the north and east. Geoffrey, William's contem-
porary and rival, is known to us by a striking charac-
terization written by his nephew and successor and
forming a typical bit of feudal biography: l
My uncle Geoffrey became a knight in his father's life-
time and began his knighthood by wars against his neighbors,
one against the Poitevins, whose count he captured at Mont
Couer, and another against the people of Maine, whose count,
named Herbert Bacon, he likewise took. He also carried on
war against his own father, in the course of which he com-
mitted many evil deeds of which he afterward bitterly re-
pented. After his father died on his return from Jerusalem,
Geoffrey possessed his lands and the city of Angers, and
fought Count Thibaud of Blois, son of Count Odo, and by
gift of King Henry received the city of Tours, which led
to another war with Count Thibaud, in the course of which,
at a battle between Tours and Amboise, Thibaud was cap-
tured with a thousand of his knights. And so, besides the
part of Touraine inherited from his father, he acquired
Tours and the castles round about Chinon, L'lle-Bou-
chard, Ch^teaurenault, and Saint- Aignan. After this he had a
war with William, count of the Normans, who later acquired
the kingdom of England and was a magnificent king, and
with the people of France and of Bourges, and with William
count of Poitou and Aimeri viscount of Thouars and Hoel
count of Nantes and the Breton counts of Rennes and with
Hugh count of Maine, who had thrown off his fealty. Because
of all these wars and the prowess he showed therein he was
rightly called the Hammer, as one who hammered down his
enemies.
1 Fulk Rechin, in Chroniques des comtes d'Anjou (ed. Marchegay), p.
378 /; (ed. Halphen and Poupardin, Paris, 1913). PP- 235~37-
NORMANDY AND ENGLAND 63
In the last year of his life he made me his nephew a knight
at the age of seventeen in the city of Angers, at the feast
of Pentecost, in the year of the Incarnation 1060, and granted
me Saintonge and the city of Saintes because of a quarrel
he had with Peter of Didonne. In this same year King Henry
died on the nativity of St. John, and my uncle Geoffrey
on the third day after Martinmas came to a good end.
For in the night which preceded his death, laying aside
all care of knighthood and secular things, he became a
monk in the monastery of St. Nicholas, which his father
and he had built with much devotion and endowed with
their goods.
The great source of conflict between William and
Geoffrey was the intervening county of Maine, whence
the Angevins had gained possession of the Norman
fortresses of Domfront and Alencon, and it was not till
after Geoffrey's death, in 1063, that the capture of its
chief city, LeMans, completed that union of Normandy
and Maine which was to last through the greater part
of Norman history. The conquest of Maine was the
first fruit of William's work as conqueror.
With William's suzerain, the king of France, rela-
tions were more complicated. Legally there could be no
question that the duke of Normandy was the feudal
vassal of the French king and as such bound to the obli-
gations of loyalty and service which flowed from his
oath of homage and fealty. Actually, in the society
of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, such bonds were
freely and frequently broken, yet they were not thrown
off. Here, as in many other phases of mediaeval life,
64 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY
we meet that persistent contradiction between theory
and practice which shocks our more consistent minds.
Just as the men of the Middle Ages tolerated a Holy
Roman Empire which claimed universal dominion and
often exercised only the most local and rudimentary au-
thority, so they accepted a monarchy like that of the
early Capetians, which claimed to rule over the whole of
France and was limited in its actual government to a
few farms and castles in the neighborhood of Paris.
And just as they maintained ideals of lofty chivalry
and rigorous asceticism far beyond the sordid reality of
ordinary knighthood or monkhood, so the constant vio-
lation of feudal obligations did not change the feudal
bond or destroy the nexus of feudal relations. In this
age of unrestraint, ferocious savagery alternated with
knightly generosity, and ungovernable rage with self-
abasing penance.
At such times the relations of the king and his great
feudatories would depend very largely upon personal
temperament, political situations, and even the im-
pulse of the moment, and we must not expect to find
such purpose and continuity in policies as prevail in
more settled periods. Nevertheless, with due allowance
for momentary variations, the relations of Normandy
with the Capetian kings follow comparatively simple
lines. The position of Normandy in the Seine valley
and its proximity to the royal domain offered endless
opportunity for friction, yet for about a century strained
NORMANDY AND ENGLAND 65
relations were avoided by alliance and friendship based
upon common interest. Hugh Capet came to the throne
with the support of the Norman duke, and his successors
often found their mainstay in Norman arms. Robert the
Magnificent on his departure for the East commended
his young son to King Henry, and the heir seems to
have grown up under the king's guardianship. It was
Henry who saved William from his barons in 1047, and
it was William that furnished over half the king's sol-
diers on the campaign against Anjou in the following
year. Then, about the middle of the eleventh century,
comes a change, for which the growing power and in-
fluence of Normandy furnish a sufficient explanation.
Henry supported the revolt of William of Arques in
1053 and attempted a great invasion of Normandy in
the same year, while in 1058 he burnt and pillaged his
way into the heart of the Norman territory. A waiting
game and well-timed attacks defeated these efforts at
Mortemer and at Varaville, but William refused to
follow up his advantage by a direct attack upon his
king, whom he continued to treat with personal con-
sideration as his feudal lord. Even after William him-
self became king, he seems to have continued to render
the military service which he owed as duke. By this
time, however, the subjection had become only nominal;
merely as duke, William was now a more powerful ruler
than the king of France, and the Capetian monarchy
had to bide its time for more than a century longer.
66 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY
Before we can leave the purely Norman period of
William's reign and turn to the conquest of England,
it is important to examine the internal condition of Nor-
mandy under his rule. Even the most thorough study
possible of this subject would need to be brief, for lack
of available evidence. Time has not dealt kindly with
Norman records, and over against the large body of
Anglo-Saxon charters and the unique account of Anglo-
Saxon England preserved in the Domesday survey,
contemporary Normandy can set only a few scattered
documents and a curious statement of the duke's rights
and privileges under William, drawn up four years after
his death and only recently recovered as an authority for
his reign. The sources of Norman history were probably
never so abundant as those of England ; certainly there is
now nothing on the Continent, outside of the Vatican,
that can compare with the extraordinarily full and con-
tinuous series of the English public records. The great
gaps in the Norman records, often supposed to be due
to the Revolution, really appear much earlier. Un-
doubtedly there was in many places wanton destruc-
tion of documents in the revolutionary uprisings, and
there were many losses under the primitive organiza-
tion of local archives in this period, as there undoubt-
edly were during the carelessness and corruption of the
Restoration. Nevertheless, an examination of the copies
and extracts made from monastic and cathedral archives
by the scholars of the seventeenth and eighteenth cen-
NORMANDY AND ENGLAND 67
turies shows that, with a few significant exceptions, the
materials for early Norman history were little richer then
than now, so that the great losses must have occurred
before this time, that is to say, during the Middle Ages
and in the devastation of the English invasion and of the
Protestant wars of the sixteenth century. The cathedral
library at Bayeux, for example, possesses three volumes
of a huge cartulary charred by the fire into which it was
thrown when the town was sacked by the Protestants.
On the other hand, it should be noted that the French
Revolution accomplished one beneficent result for local
records in the secularization of ecclesiastical archives
and their collection into the great repositories of the
Archives Departementales, whose organization is still
the envy of historical scholars across the Channel. One
who has enjoyed for many months access to these admir-
able collections of records will be permitted to express
his gratitude to those who created them, as well as to
those by whom they are now so courteously adminis-
tered.
Piecing together our scattered information regarding
the Normandy of the eleventh century, we note at the
outset that it was a feudal society, that is to say, land
was for the most part held of a lord by hereditary tenure
on condition of military service. Indeed feudal ideas
had spread so far that they even penetrated the church r
so that in some instances the revenues of the clergy
had been granted to laymen and archdeaconries and
68 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY
prebends had been turned into hereditary fiefs. With
feudal service went the various incidents of feudal ten-
ure and a well-developed feudal jurisdiction of the lord
over his tenants and of the greater barons over the less.
In all this there is nothing to distinguish Normandy
from the neighboring countries of northern France, and
as a feudal society is normally a decentralized society,
we should expect to find the powers of government
chiefly in the hands of the local lords. A closer study,
however, shows certain peculiarities which are of the
utmost importance, both for Norman and for English
history.
First of all, the military service owing to- the duke
had been systematically assessed in rough units of five or
ten knights, and this service, or its subdivisions, had be-
come attached to certain pieces of land, or knights' fees.
The amounts of service were fixed by custom and were
regularly enforced. Still more significant are the re-
strictions placed upon the military power of the barons.
The symbol and the foundation of feudal authority was
the castle, wherefore the duke forbade the building of
castles and strongholds without his license and required
them to be handed over to him on demand. Private war
and the blood feud could not yet be prohibited entirely,
but they were closely limited. No one was allowed to go
out to seek his enemy with hauberk and standard and
sounding horn. Assaults and ambushes were not per-
mitted in the duke's forests; captives were not to be
NORMANDY AND ENGLAND 69
taken in a feud, nor could arms, horses, or property be
carried off from a combat. Burning, plunder, and waste
were forbidden in pursuing claims to land, and except
for open crime, no one could be condemned to loss of
limb unless by judgment of the proper ducal or baro-
nial court. Coinage, generally a valued privilege of the
greater lords, was in Normandy a monopoly of the duke.
What the absence of such restrictions might mean is
well illustrated in England in the reign of Stephen, when
private war, unlicensed castles, and baronial coinage
appeared as the chief evils of an unbridled feudal
anarchy.
In the administration of justice, in spite of the great
franchises of the barons, the duke has a large reserved
jurisdiction. Certain places are under his special pro-
tection, certain crimes put the offender at his mercy.
The administrative machinery, though in many respects
still primitive, has kept pace with the duke's authority.
Whereas the Capetian king has as his local representa-
tives only the semi-feudal agents on his farms, the Nor-
man duke has for purposes of local government a real
public officer, the vicomte, commanding his troops, guard-
ing his castles, maintaining order, administering jus-
tice, and collecting the ducal revenues. Nowhere is the
superiority of the Norman dukes over their royal over-
lords more clear than in the matter of finance. The house-
keeping of the Capetian king of the eleventh century was
still what the Germans call a Naturalwirthschaft, an
70 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY
economic organization based upon payment in produce
and labor rather than in money. "Less powerful than
certain of his great vassals," as he is described by his
principal historian, Luchaire, 1 "the king lives like them
from the income from his farms and tolls, the payments
of his peasants, the labor of his serfs, the taxes disguised
as gifts which he levies from the bishops and abbots of
the neighborhood. His granaries of Gonesse, Janville,
Mantes, fitampes, furnish his grain; his cellars of Or-
leans and Argenteuil, his wine; his forests of Rouvrai
(now the Bois de Boulogne), Saint-Germain, Fontaine-
bleau, Iveline, Compiegne, his game. He passes his time
in hunting, for amusement or to supply his table, and
travels constantly from estate to estate, from abbey to
abbey, obliged to make full use of his rights of enter-
tainment and to move frequently from place to place in
order not to exhaust the resources of his subjects."
In other words, under existing methods of communica-
tion, it was easier to transport the king and his house-
hold than it was to transport food, and the king literally
* boarded round' from farm to farm. Such conditions
were typical of the age, and they could only be changed
by the development of a revenue in money, enabling the
king to buy where he would and to pay whom he would
for service, whether personal or political or military.
Only by hard cash could the mediaeval ruler become
1 Luchaire, Les quatre premiers Capetiens, in Lavisse, Histoire de France
(Paris, 1901), II, 2, p. 176.
NORMANDY AND ENGLAND 71
independent of the limitations which feudalism placed
upon him. Now, while the Norman duke derived much
of his income from his farms and forests, his mills and
fishing rights and local monopolies and tolls, he had also
a considerable revenue in money. Each vicomte was
farmed for a fixed amount, and there was probably a
regular method of collection and accounting. If the king
wished to bestow revenue upon a monastery he would
grant so many measures of grain at the mills of Bourges
or so many measures of wine in the vineyards of Joui;
while in a similar position the Norman duke would give
money twelve pounds in the farm of Argentan, sixty
shillings and tenpence in the toll of Exmes, or one hun-
dred shillings in the prevote of Caen. Nothing could show
more clearly the superiority of Normandy in fiscal and
hence in political organization, where under the forms
of feudalism we can already discern the beginnings of the
modern state.
To William's authority in the state we must add his
control over the Norman church. Profoundly secularized
and almost absorbed into the lay society about it as a
result of the Norse invasion, the Norman church had
been renewed and refreshed by the wave of monastic
reform which swept over western Europe in the first
half of the eleventh century, and now occupied both
spiritually and intellectually a position of honor and of
strength. But it was not supreme. The duke appointed
its bishops and most of its abbots, sat in its provincial
72 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY
councils, and revised the judgments of its courts. Liberal
in gifts to the church and punctilious in his religious
observances, William left no doubt who was master,
and his respectful but independent attitude toward
the Papacy already foreshadowed the conflict in which
he forced even the mighty Hildebrand to yield.
I have dwelt at some length upon these matters of
internal organization, not only because they are fun-
damental to an understanding of many institutions of
the Norman empire, but because they also serve to ex-
plain how there came to be a Norman empire. The con-
quest of England has been so uniformly approached
from the English point of view that it is often made to
appear as more or less of an accident arising from a
casual invasion of freebooters. Viewed in its proper per-
spective, which I venture to think is the Norman per-
spective, it appears as a natural outgrowth of Norman
discipline and of Norman expansion. Only because the
duke was strong at home could he hope to be strong
abroad, only because he was master of an extraordi-
narily vigorous, coherent, and well-organized state in
Normandy could he attempt the at first sight impossible
task of conquering a kingdom and the still greater task of
organizing it under a firm government. We must take
account, not only of the weakness of England, but also
of the strength of Normandy, stronger than any of its
continental neighbors, stronger even than royalty itself.
NORMANDY AND ENGLAND 73
That the expansion of Normandy should be directed
toward England was the result, not only of the special
conditions of the year 1066, but of a steady rapproche-
ment between the two countries, in which the active ef-
fort was exerted from the Norman side. By geographi-
cal position, by the Scandinavian settlement of both
countries, and by the commercial enterprise of the mer-
chants of Rouen, the history of Normandy and Eng-
land had in various ways been brought together in the
tenth century, till in 1002 the marriage of the English
king Ethelred with Emma, sister of Duke Richard the
Good, created dynastic connections of far-reaching im-
portance. Their son Edward the Confessor was brought
up at the Norman court, so that his habits and sympa-
thies became Norman rather than English, and his ac-
cession to the English throne in 1042 opened the way
to a rapid development of Norman influence both in
church and in state, which Freeman, with his strong
anti-foreign feelings, considered the real beginning of
the Norman Conquest. As Edward's childless reign
drew near its end, there were two principal claimants
for the succession, Harold, son of Godwin, the most
powerful earl of England, and Duke William. Harold
could make no hereditary claim to the throne, nor until
the eve of Edward's death does he seem to have had the
king's support, but he was a man of strength and force
and was clearly the leading man of the kingdom. Wil-
liam, as the great-nephew of Ethelred and Emma, was
74 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY
cousin (first cousin once removed) of Edward, a claim
which he strengthened by an early expression of Edward
in his favor and by an oath which he had exacted from
Harold to support his candidacy. The exact facts are
not known regarding Harold's oath, made during an
involuntary visit to Normandy two or three years be-
fore, but it enabled William to pose as the defender of a
broken obligation and gave him the great moral ad-
vantage of the support of Pope Alexander II, to whom
he had the question submitted. At Edward's death
Harold had himself chosen by the witan, or national
council, and crowned, so that he had on his side what-
ever could come from such legal forms and from the sup-
port which lay behind them. We must not, however,
commit the anachronism of thinking that he was a na-
tional hero or even the candidate of a national party.
There was in the eleventh century no such thing as a
nation in the sense that the term is understood in the
modern world, and the word could least of all be ap-
plied to England, broken, divided, and harried by Dan-
ish invasions and by internal disunion. Even the notion
of the foreigner was still dim and inchoate, and the
reign of Canute, to cite no others, had shown England
that she had nothing to fear from a king of foreign
birth. The contest between Harold, who was half-
Danish in blood, and William, big as it was in national
consequences, cannot be elevated to the rank of a na-
tional struggle.
NORMANDY AND ENGLAND 75
From the death of Edward the Confessor and the
coronation of Harold, in January, 1066, until the cross-
ing of the Channel in September, William was busy with
preparations for the invasion of England. Such an ex-
pedition transcended the obligation of military service
which could be demanded from his feudal vassals, and
William was obliged to make a strong appeal to the Nor-
man love of adventure and feats of arms and to promise
wide lands and rich booty from his future conquests.
He also found it necessary to enlist knights from other
parts of France Brittany, Flanders, Poitou, even
adventurers from distant Spain and Sicily. And then
there was the question of transport, for Normandy had
no fleet and it was no small matter to create in six
months the seven hundred boats which William's kins-
men and vassals obligated themselves to provide. All
were ready by the end of August at the mouth of the
Dives, as the quaint Hotel Guillaume-le-Conqu6rant
reminds the American visitor, but mediaeval sailors
could not tack against the wind, and six weeks were
passed in waiting for a favoring breeze. Finally it was
decided to take advantage of a west wind as far as the
mouth of the Somme, and here at Saint- Val6ry the
fleet assembled for the final crossing. Late in Septem-
ber the Normans landed on the beach at Pevensey
and marched to Hastings, where, October 15, they met
the troops of Harold, fresh from their great victory
over the men of Norway at Stamfordbridge.
76 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY
Few battles of the Middle Ages were of importance
equal to that of Hastings, and few are better known.
Besides the prose accounts of the Latin chroniclers,
we have the contemporary elegiacs of Guy of Amiens
and Baudri of Bourgueil, the spirited verse of the
Roman de Ron of Master Wace, the most detailed
narrative but written, unfortunately, a century after
the event, and the unique and vivid portrayal of the
Bayeux Tapestry. This remarkable monument, which
is accessible to all in a variety of editions, consists of a
roll of cloth two hundred and thirty feet long and
twenty inches in breadth, embroidered in colors with
a series of seventy-nine scenes which narrate the his-
tory of the Conquest from the departure of Harold on
the ill-fated journey which led him to William's court
down to the final discomfiture of the English army on
the field of Hastings. The episodes, which are desig-
nated by brief titles, are well chosen and are executed
with a realism of detail which is of the greatest impor-
tance for the life and culture of the age. Preserved in
the cathedral and later in the municipal Museum of
Bayeux save for a notable interval in 1804, when Na-
poleon had it exhibited in Paris to arouse enthusiasm
for a new French conquest of England, the tapestry
appears from internal evidence to have been originally
executed as an ornament for this cathedral by English
workmen at the command of Bishop Odo, half-brother
of the Conqueror. There is no basis for the common be-
NORMANDY AND ENGLAND 77
lief that it was the work of Queen Matilda or her ladies,
but efforts to place it one or even two centuries later
have proved unavailing against the evidence of armor
and costume, and the general opinion of scholars now
regards it as belonging to the eleventh century and thus
substantially contemporary with the events which it
depicts.
The modern literature of the battle is also commensur-
ate with its importance. The classic account is found in
the third volume of Freeman's majestic History of the
Norman Conquest, where the story is told with a rare
combination of minute detail and spirited narrative
which reminds us, it has been said, of a battle of the Iliad
or a Norse saga. Splendid as this narrative is, its enthu-
siasm often carries it beyond the evidence of the sources,
and in several fundamental points it can no longer be
accepted as historically sound. The theory of the pali-
sade upon which Freeman's conception of the English
tactics rested has been destroyed by the trenchant criti-
cism of that profound student of Anglo-Norman history,
J. Horace Round, and his whole treatment has been
vigorously attacked from the point of view of the scien-
tific study of military history by Wilhelm Spatz and his
distinguished master, Hans Delbriick, of Berlin. Un-
fortunately the Berlin critics are influenced too much by
certain theories of military organization; they do not
call the English soldier of the period a degenerate, but
they consider him, and the Norman knight as well, in-
78 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY
capable of the disciplined and united action required
by all real strategy, incapable even of forming the
shield-wall and executing the feigned flight described
by the contemporary chroniclers of the battle. While
it is true that mediaeval fighting was far more individual-
istic than that of ancient or modern armies and lacked
also the flexible conditions which lie at the basis of
modern tactics, there is the best of contemporary evi-
dence for a certain amount of strategical movement at
Hastings. On one point, however, the modern mili-
tary critics have compelled us to modify our ideas of
the battles of earlier times, namely, with respect to the
numbers engaged. Against the constant tendency to
magnify the size of the military forces, a tendency ac~
centuated in the Middle Ages by the complete reck-
lessness of chroniclers when dealing with large figures,
modern criticism has pointed out the limitations of
battle-space, transportation, and commissariat. The
five millions with which Xerxes is said to have invaded
Greece are a physical impossibility, for Delbriick has
shown that, with this number moving under normal
conditions, the rear- guard could not have crossed the
Tigris when the first Persians reached Thermopylae.
Similarly the fifty or sixty thousand knights attributed
to William the Conqueror shrink to one-tenth the num-
ber when brought to face with the official lists of Eng-
lish and Norman knights' fees. If William's army did
not exceed five or six thousand, that of Harold could
NORMANDY AND ENGLAND 79
not have been much greater and may well have been
less; though William's panegyrist places the number of
English at 1,200,000, not more than 12,000 could have
stood, in the closest formation, on the hill which they
occupied at Hastings. Small skirmishes these, to those
who have followed the battles of the Marne, the Aisne,
the Vistula, and the San, yet none the less important
in the world's history!
In spite of all the controversy, the main lines of the
battle seem fairly clear. The troops of Harold occupied
a well-defended hill eight miles inland from Hastings on
the London road, the professional guard of housecarles
in front, protected by the solid wall of their shields and
supported by the thegns and other fully armed troops,
the levies of the countryside behind or at the sides,
armed with javelins, stone clubs, and farmers' weapons.
They had few archers and no cavalry, but the steep hill
was well protected from the assaults of the Norman horse
and favored the firm defence which the English tactics
dictated. The Norman lines consisted first of archers,
then of heavy-armed foot-soldiers, and finally of the
mailed horsemen, their centre grouped about William
and the standard which he had received from the Pope.
After a preliminary attack by the archers and foot, the
knights came forward, preceded by the minstrel Taille-
fer, "a jongleur whom a very brave heart ennobled,"
qui mult bien chantout, throwing his sword in the air
and catching it as he sang
8o NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY
De Karlemaigne e de Reliant Of Roland and of Charlemagne,
E d'Oliver e des vassals Oliver and the vassals all
Qui morurent en Rencevals. Who fell in fight at Roncevals.
But the horses recoiled from the hill, pursued by many
of the English, and only the sight of William, his head
bared of its helmet so as to be seen by his men, rallied
the knights again. The mass of the English stood firm
behind their shield-wall and their line could be broken
only by the ruse of a feigned flight, from which the Nor-
mans turned to surround and cut to pieces their pur-
suers. Even then the housecarles were unmoved, until
the arrows of the high-shooting Norman bowmen fin-
ally opened up the gaps in their ranks into which Wil-
liam's horsemen pressed against the battle-axes of the
king's guard. And then, as darkness began to fall, Har-
old was mortally wounded by an arrow, the guard was
cut to pieces, and the remnant fled. "Here Harold was
killed and the English turned to flight" is the final head-
ing in the Bayeux Tapestry, while in the margin the
spoilers strip the coats of mail from the dead and drive
off the horses of the slain knights.
"A single battle settled the fate of England." There
was still grim work to be done the humbling of Exe-
ter, the harrying of Northumberland, the subjection
of the earls, but these were only local episodes. There
was no one but William who could effectively take
Harold's place, and when on Christmas Day he had
NORMANDY AND ENGLAND 81
been crowned at London, he could reduce opposition at
his leisure. The chronicle of these later years belongs
to English rather than to Norman history.
The results of the Conquest, too, are of chief signifi-
cance for the conquered. For the Normans the immedi-
ate effect was a great opportunity for expansion in every
department of life. There was work for the warrior in
completing the subjugation of the land, for the organ-
izer and statesman in the new adjustments of central and
local government, for the prelate in bringing his new
diocese into line with the practice of the church on the
Continent, for the monks to found new priories and
administer the new lands which their monasteries now
received beyond the Channel. The Norman townsman
and the Norman merchant followed hard upon the
Norman armies, in the Norman colony in London, in
the traders of the ports, in the boroughs of the western
border. In part, of course, the change was simply the
replacing of one set of persons by another, putting a
Norman archbishop in place of Stigand at Canterbury,
spreading over the map the Montgomeries and Percies,
the Mowbrays and the Mortimers and scores of other
household names of English history; but it was also a
work of readjustment and reorganization which required
all the Norman gift for constructive work. A certain
ilan passes through Norman life and reflects itself in
Norman literature, as the Normans become more con-
scious of the glory of their achievements and the great-
82 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY
ness of their new empire. England had become an ap-
pendage to Normandy, and men did not yet see that
the relation would soon be reversed.
For England, the Norman Conquest determined per-
manently the orientation of English politics and Eng-
lish culture. Geographically belonging, with the Scandi-
navian countries, to the outlying lands of Europe, the
British Isles had been in serious danger of sharing their
remoteness from the general movements of European
life and drifting into the back waters of history. The
union with Normandy turned England southward and
brought it at once into the full current of European
affairs political entanglements, ecclesiastical connec-
tions, cultural influences. England became a part of
France and thus entered fully into the life of the
world to which France belonged. It received the speech
of France, the literature of France, and the art of
France; its law became in large measure Prankish, its
institutions more completely feudal. Yet the connec-
tion with France ran through Normandy, and the
French influence took on Norman forms. Most of all was
this true in the field in which the Norman excelled, that
of government: English feudalism was Norman feu-
dalism, in which the barons were weak and the central
power strong, and it was the heavy hand of Norman
kingship that turned the loose and disintegrating An-
glo-Saxon state into the English nation. England was
Europeanized only at the price of being Normanized.
NORMANDY AND ENGLAND 83
From the point of view both of immediate achieve-
ment and of ultimate results, the conquest of England
was the crowning act of Norman history. Something
doubtless was due to good fortune, to the absence of an
English fleet, to the favorable opportunity in French
politics, to the mistakes of the English. But the funda-
mental facts, without which these would have meant
nothing, were the strength and discipline of Normandy
and the personality of her leader. Diplomat, warrior,
leader of men, William was preeminently a statesman,
and it was his organizing genius which " turned the de-
feat of English arms into the making of the English na-
tion." This talent for political organization was, how-
ever, no isolated endowment of the Norman duke, but
was shared in large measure by the Norman barons, as is
abundantly shown by the history of Norman rule in
Italy and Sicily. For William and for his followers the
conquest of England only gave a wider field for qualities
of state-building which had already shown themselves
in Normandy.
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
A detailed narrative of the relations between Normandy and Eng-
land in the eleventh century is given by E. A. Freeman in his History
of the Norman Conquest (Oxford, 1870-79), but large portions of this
work need to be rewritten in the light of later studies, especially those
of Round. There is a brief biography of William the Conqueror by
Freeman in the series of "Twelve English Statesmen" (London,
1888), and a fuller one by F. M. Stenton in the "Heroes of the Na-
tions" (1908). For the institutions of Normandy see my articles on
84 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY
"Knight Service in Normandy in the Eleventh Century," in English
Historical Review, xxn, pp. 636-49; "The Norman ' Consuetudines
et lusticie' of William the Conqueror," ibid, xxm, pp. 502-08; and
" Normandy under William the Conqueror," in American Historical
Review, xiv, pp. 453-76 (1909) ; also L. Valin, Le due de Normandie et
sa cour, 912-1204 (Paris, 1910). For church and state, see H. B6hmer,
Kirche und Stoat in England und in der Normandie (Leipzig, 1899).
The dealings of the Norman dukes with their continental neighbors
are narrated by A. Fliche, Le rlgne de Philippe I" roi de France
(Paris, 1912) ; L. Halphen,Le comte d'Anjou auXl e siecle (Paris, 1906) ;
R. Latouche, Histoire du comte du Maine pendant le X e et le XI e sitcle
(Paris, 1910); F. Lot, Fiddles ou vassaux (Paris, 1904), ch. 6 (on the
feudal relations of the Norman dukes and the French kings). There
is a good sketch of France in the eleventh century by Luchaire in
the Histoire de France of Lavisse, II, part 2; a fuller work on this
period is expected from Maurice Prou. For the literature of the battle
of Hastings, see Gross, Sources and Literature, nos. yoya, 2812, 2998-
3000; the most important works are those of Round, Spatz, and Del-
briick, Geschichte der Kriegskunst, in, pp. 147-62 (1907). The Bayeux
Tapestry is most conveniently accessible in the small edition of F. R.
Fowke (reprinted, London, 1913); see also Gross, no. 2139, and Ph.
Lauer, in Melanges Charles Bemont (Paris, 1913), pp. 43-58. Freeman
discusses the results of the Conquest in his fifth volume; see also
Gaston Paris, L' esprit normand en Angkterre, in La poesie du moyen
dge, second series (Paris, 1895), pp. 45~74-
IV
THE NORMAN EMPIRE
THE lecture upon Normandy and England
sought to place in their Norman perspective
the events leading to the Norman Conquest and
to show how that decisive triumph of Norman strength
and daring was made possible by the development of an
exceptional ducal authority in Normandy and Maine
and by the personal greatness of William the Conqueror.
We now come to follow still further this process of ex-
pansion, to the Scotch border, to Ireland, to the Pyre-
nees, until the empire of the Plantagenet kings became
the chief political fact in western Europe. The Norman
empire is the outstanding feature of the twelfth century,
as the conquest of England was of the eleventh.
This great imperial state is commonly known, not as
the Norman, but as the Angevin, empire, because its
rulers, Henry II, Richard, and John, were descended in
the male line from the counts of Anjou. The phrase is,
however, a misnomer, since it leads one to suppose that
the Angevin counts were its creators, which is in no sense
the case. The centre of the empire was Normandy, its
founders were the Norman dukes. The marriage of the
Princess Matilda to Count Geoffrey Plantagenet added
86 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY
Anjou to Normandy rather than Normandy to Anjou,
and it was as duke of Normandy that their son Henry
II began his political career. The extension of his do-
mains southward by marriage only gave Normandy
the central position in his realm, and it was the loss
of Normandy under John which led to the empire's
collapse.
Against the application of the term ' empire ' to the do-
minion of Henry II more cogent reasons may be urged.
It rests, so far as I know, upon no contemporary au-
thority, and even if the phrase could be found by some
chance in a writer of the twelfth century, it would carry
with it no weight. Western Europe in the Middle Ages
knew but one empire, the Holy Roman Empire of the
German Nation from one point of view neither holy
nor Roman nor an empire, as Voltaire long afterward
remarked, yet, as revived by Charlemagne and Otto the
Great, representing to the mind of the Middle Ages
the idea of universal monarchy which they had inherited
from ancient Rome. To the men of the twelfth century
the emperor was Frederick Barbarossa; he could not be
Henry II. Nor will the government of the Norman- An-
gevin ruler square with the modern definition of an em-
pire as "a state formed by the rule of one state over
other states." l His various dominions, if we except
Ireland, were not dependencies of England, or Anjou,
or Normandy. King in England, duke in Normandy,
1 W. S. Ferguson, Greek Imperialism, p. i.
THE NORMAN EMPIRE 87
count in Anjou and Maine, duke again in Aquitaine,
Henry ruled each of his dominions as its feudal lord
very much as if the German Emperor to-day combined
in himself the titles of king of Prussia and of Bavaria,
grand duke of Baden, duke of Brunswick, prince of
Waldeck, and so on throughout the members of the
German confederation. Such a government is not an
empire in the sense of the ancient Roman or the modern
British empires, for it has no dependencies. It is an
empire only in the broader and looser sense of the word,
a great composite state, larger than a mere kingdom and
imperial in extent if not in organization.
That Henry's realm was in extent imperial can easily
be seen from the map. It extended from Scotland to the
frontier of Spain, as the empire of his contemporary
Frederick I extended from the Baltic and the North Sea
to central Italy. And if the kingdoms of Germany,
Italy, and Burgundy which made up Frederick's empire
covered in the aggregate more territory, the actual au-
thority of the ruler, whether in army, justice, or finance,
was decidedly less than in the Anglo-Norman state.
Henry had a stronger army, a larger revenue, a more
centralized government. Moreover, the Norman empire
was less artificial than it seems to us at first sight, accus-
tomed as we are to the associations of the modern map.
There was, especially with mediaeval methods of com-
munication, nothing anomalous in a state which strad-
dled the English Channel: Normandy was nearer Eng-
88 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY
land than was Ireland; it was quite as easy to go from
London to Rouen as from London to York. The geo-
graphical bonds were also strong between Henry's con-
tinental dominions, for the roads of the twelfth century
did not radiate from Paris, but followed mainly the old
Roman lines, and from Rouen there was direct and
easy connection with LeMans, Tours, Poitiers, and Bor-
deaux. In the matter of race, too, we must beware of
being misled by our modern ideas. The English nation
was at most only the vaguest sort of a conception, the
French nation did not exist till the fifteenth century, and
personal loyalty to the lord of many different lands was
a natural expression of the conditions of the age. It is
contrary to our prejudices that a single state should be
formed out of the hard-headed Norman, the Celtic fish-
erman of the Breton coast, the 'P6cheur d'Islande'
of a later day, the Angevin, Tourangeau, Poitevin,
the troubadour of Aquitaine, and the Gascon of the far
south, with his alien blood and non-Aryan language, al-
ready a well-marked type whose swaggering gasconades
foreshadow the d'Artagnan of the Three Musketeers and
the 'cadets de Gascogne' of Cyrano de Bergerac. But it
was little harder to rule these diverse lands from London
or Rouen than from Paris; it was for the time being as
easy to make them part of a Norman empire as of a
French kingdom. Over the various languages and dia-
lects ran the Latin of law and government and the French
of the court and of affairs; while in political matters
THE NORMAN EMPIRE 89
these countries were, as we shall see, quite capable of
united action.
Let us call to mind how the empire of Henry II was
formed. At the death of the Conqueror in 1087 the
lands which he had brought together and ruled with
such good peace were divided between his two eldest
sons, Robert receiving Normandy and William the Red,
England. Save for William's regency over Normandy
during his brother's absence on the Crusade, the two
countries remained separate during his reign, and were
united once more only in 1 106 when William's successor,
his younger brother Henry I, after defeating and depos-
ing Robert at Tinchebrai, ruled as duke of Normandy
and king of England. This was the inheritance which,
after the death of Prince William in the White Ship,
Henry sought to hand down to his daughter Matilda,
but which passed for the most part to his nephew
Stephen of Blois. Stephen, however, never gained a firm
hold in England and soon lost Normandy to Matilda's
husband, Count Geoffrey of Anjou, by whom it was con-
quered and ruled in the name of his son Henry, later
Henry II. Crowned duke of Normandy in 1150, Henry
succeeded his father as count of Anjou in the following
year, and at Stephen's death in 1154 became king of
England. Meanwhile, in 1152, he had contracted a
marriage of the greatest political importance with
Eleanor, duchess of Aquitaine, whose union with the
French king Louis VII had just been annulled by the
90 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY
Pope; an alliance which made him master of Poitou,
Aquitaine, and Gascony and therewith of two-thirds
of France. Apart from certain adjustments in central
France, the only addition to these territories made dur-
ing Henry's reign was the conquest of eastern Ireland
in the years following 1 169. Into these Irish campaigns
and their consequences for the whole later history of the
island we cannot attempt to go. Let me only point out
that the leading spirits were Norman, except so far as
they were Irish exiles, and that the names which now
make their appearance in Irish annals are Norman
names the Lacys and the Clares, the Fitzgeralds and
the de Courcys, as Irish before long as the Irish them-
selves.
Substantially, then, the empire of Henry II remained
in extent as he found it at his accession to the English
throne at the age of twenty-one; it was not created by
him but inherited or annexed by marriage. Accordingly
it is not as a conqueror but as a ruler that he can lay
claim to greatness. But although Henry attempted little
in the way of acquiring new territory, he did much to
consolidate his possessions and to extend his European
power and influence. His daughters were married to
the greatest princes of their time, Henry the Lion, duke
of Saxony and Bavaria, King Alphonso VIII of Castile,
King William II of Sicily. He made an alliance with the
ruler of Provence and planned a marriage with the house
of Savoy that would have given him control of the passes
THE NORMAN EMPIRE 91
into Italy. He took his part in the struggle of Pope and
anti-Pope, of Pope and Emperor; he corresponded with
the emperor of Constantinople, refused the crown of the
kingdom of Jerusalem, and died on the eve of his de-
parture on a crusade. No one could lay claim to greater
influence upon the international affairs of his time.
Occupying this international position, Henry must
not be viewed, as he generally is, merely as an English
king. He was born and educated on the Continent,
began to reign on the Continent, and spent a large part
of his life in his continental dominions. He ruled more
territory outside of England than in, and his continental
lands had at least as large a place as England in his
policy. It is perhaps too much to say, in modern phrase,
that he 'thought imperially,' but he certainly did not
think nationally ; and when his latest biographer speaks
of Henry's continental campaigns as "foreign affairs," l
he is thinking insularly, for Normandy, Anjou, Gascony
even, were no more foreign than England itself. Henry
is not a national figure, either English or French ; he is
international, if not cosmopolitan. Only from the point
of view of later times can we associate him peculiarly
with English history, when after the collapse of the Nor-
man empire under his sons, the permanent influence of
his work continued to be felt most fully in England.
1 Salzmann, Henry II, where the continental aspects of Henry's reign
are dismissed in a brief chapter on "foreign affairs." The heading would
be more appropriate to the account of Henry's campaigns in Ireland.
92 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY
Both as a man and as a ruler, the figure of Henry II
has come down to us distorted by the loves and hates
of an age of the most violent and bitter controversy.
Brilliant though scarcely heroic to his friends, to his
enemies he was a veritable demon of tyranny and
crime, whose lurid end pointed many a moral respecting
the sins of princes and the vengeance of the Most High.
Eminently a strong man, he was not regarded as in any
sense superhuman, but rather as an intensely human
figure, tempted in all points like as other men and yield-
ing where they yielded. Heavy, bull-necked, sensual,
with a square jaw, freckled face, reddish hair, and fiery
eyes that blazed in sudden paroxysms of anger, he must,
in Bishop Stubbs's phrase, "have looked generally like
a rough, passionate, uneasy man." 1 The dominant
impression is one of exhaustless energy accompanied
by a physical restlessness which kept him whispering
and scribbling during mass, hunting and hawking from
morning to night, and riding constantly from place to
place throughout his vast dominions with a rapidity
that always took his enemies by surprise. On one occa-
sion he covered one hundred and seventy miles in two
days. Well-educated for a prince of his time and able
to hold his own in ready converse with the clerks of his
court, his tastes were neither speculative nor romantic,
but were early turned toward practical life. He was pri-
marily "an able, plausible, astute, cautious, unprincipled
1 Benedict of Peterborough, n, p. xxxiii.
THE NORMAN EMPIRE 93
man of business," 1 fond of work and delighting in detail,
with a distinct gift for organization and a mastery of
diplomacy, wise in the selection of his subordinates,
skilful in evasion, but quick and sure in action. Strong,
clear-headed, and tenacious, Henry represents the type
of the man of large affairs, and in another age might have
amassed a large private fortune as a successful business
man. In the twelfth century the chief opportunity for
talent of this sort was in public life, where the king's
household was also the government of the state, the
strengthening of royal authority was the surest means
of attaining national unity and security, and the inter-
est of the king coincided with the interest of the state.
To the present day, with its cry for business men in
public office, this seems natural enough; but we must
remember that feudalism meant exactly the opposite
of business efficiency, and that the problem of creating
an effective government in the midst of a feudal society
turned largely on the maintenance of a businesslike
administration of justice, finance, and the army. By
his success in these fields Henry went a long way
toward creating a modern state, and did, as a matter
of fact, establish the most highly organized and effective
government of its time in western Europe.
Our conceptions of the nature of Henry II 's public
work have been in certain respects modified as the result
of modern research. It has become clear, in the first
1 Benedict of Peterborough, u, p. xxxi.
94 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY
place, that he was an administrator rather than a legis-
lator, and that such of his legislation as has reached us
belongs in the category of instructions to his officers
rather than in that of general enactments. These meas-
ures lack the permanence of statutes ; they are supple-
mented, modified, withdrawn, in accordance with the
will of a sovereign whose restless temper showed itself
in a constant series of legal and administrative experi-
ments. Many of his changes seem to have been effected
through oral command rather than written instructions.
In the second place, Henry's originality has been some-
what diminished by a more careful study of the work of
his predecessors, notably of Henry I, in whose reign it
is now possible to trace at work some of the elements
that were once supposed to have been innovations of
his grandson. As a whole, however, the work of
Henry II stands the test of analysis and gives him an
eminent place in the number of mediaeval statesmen.
Precocious in many ways as was the political organi-
zation of Henry's dominions, it was conditioned by the
circumstances of its time, and we must be careful to
conceive it in terms of the twelfth century and not of the
fifteenth or the twentieth. The Norman sovereign had
at his disposal none of the legal or bureaucratic tradi-
tions which were still maintained at Constantinople and
were not without their influence upon the Norman
kingdom of Sicily. Nor was the time ripe for the creation
THE NORMAN EMPIRE 95
out of hand of a strong central government for his va-
rious territories, such as became possible in the Burgun-
dian state of the fifteenth century and in the Austrian
state which was modelled upon it. Henry was in the
midst of a feudal society and had to make the best of it.
He had to reckon with the particularistic traditions of
his several dominions as well as with the feudal oppo-
sition to strong government, and western Europe was
still a long way from the economic conditions which lie
at the basis of modern bureaucracies.
When we speak of the Anglo-Norman or the Angevin
empire, we must accordingly dismiss from our minds
at the outset any notion of a government with a capi-
tal, a central treasury and judicature, and a common
assembly. A fixed central treasury existed only in the
most advanced of the individual states, and it was
many years before the courts established themselves
permanently at Westminster and Rouen. Government
was still something personal, centring in the person of
the sovereign, and the ministers of the state were still
his household servants. The king had no fixed residence,
and as he moved from place to place, his household
and its officers moved with him. Indeed kings were just
beginning to learn that it was safer to leave their treas-
ure in some strong castle than to carry it about in their
wanderings; it was not till 1194 that the capture of his
baggage train by Richard the Lion-Hearted taught the
French king Philip Augustus to leave his money and his
96 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY
title-deeds at Paris when he went on a military expedi-
tion. We must not be surprised to find that the principal
common element in Henry's empire was Henry himself,
supplemented by his most immediate household officers,
and that many of these officers, such as the seneschals
and the justiciars, were limited in their functions to
England or Normandy or Anjou, and usually remained
in their particular country to look after affairs in the
king's absence. There was, however, one notable excep-
tion, the chancellor, or royal secretary. Regularly an
ecclesiastic, so that there was no chance of his turning
the office into an hereditary fief, the nature of the chan-
cellor's duties attached him continuously to the person
of the sovereign and made him the natural companion
of the royal journeys. He was far, however, from being
a mere private secretary or amanuensis, but stood at
the head of a regular secretarial bureau, which had its
clerks and chaplains and its well-organized system of
looking after the king's business. The study of the his-
tory of institutions goes to show that, on the whole, there
is no better test of the strength or weakness of a me-
diaeval government than its chancery. If it had no chan-
cery, as was the case under the early Norman dukes,
or if its methods, as seen in its formal acts, were irregu-
lar and unbusinesslike, as under Robert Curthose, there
was sure to be a lack of organization and continuity in
its general conduct of affairs. If, on the other hand, the
chancery was well organized, its rules and practices
THE NORMAN EMPIRE 97
regularly observed, its documents clear and sharp and to
the point, this meant normally that an efficient govern-
ment stood behind it.
Now, judged by the most exacting standards, the
chancery of Henry II had reached a high degree of per-
fection. It has quite recently been the subject of an
elaborate study by the most eminent medievalist of
our time, the late Leopold Delisle, who cannot restrain
his admiration for its regularity, its accuracy and finish,
and the extraordinary range and rapidity of its work.
The documents issued in the name of Henry II during
his long reign of thirty- five years, says Delisle, 1 "both
for his English and his continental possessions, are all
drawn up on the same plan in identical formulae and ex-
pressed with irreproachable precision in a simple, clear,
and correct style, which is also remarkably uniform
save for a small number of pieces which show the hand
of others than the royal officers." If the judgment of
this master required support, I should be glad to confirm
it from the personal examination of some hundreds of
Henry's charters and writs. Such uniformity, it should
be observed, is evidence not only of the extent and tech-
nical attainments of the chancery but of substantially
similar administrative conditions throughout the vari-
ous dominions to which these documents are addressed :
officers, functions, legal and administrative procedure
are everywhere very much alike. Moreover, a study of
1 Recueil des actes de Henri II, Introduction, p. I ; cf. p. 151.
98 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY
these charters reveals another fact of fundamental im-
portance. Even more significant than uniformity of
procedure in a chancery is the type of document issued,
for since the strength of government lies not in legisla-
tion but in administration, a sure index of a state's
efficiency will be found in the extent and character of
its administrative correspondence. This test places the
Norman empire far in advance of any of its contempo-
raries. Every payment from the treasury, every allow-
ance of an account, every summons to the army, every
executive command or prohibition, was made by formal
royal writ per breve regis, as we read page after page in
the account rolls. Of the many thousands of such writs
issued in Henry's reign, exceedingly few have come down
to us, but no one can read these, terse, direct, trained
down to bone and muscle, without realizing the keen
minds and the clear-cut administrative methods which
they represent. Take an example: 1
H. Dei gratia rex Anglorum et dux Normannorum et
Aquitanorum et comes Andegavorum R. thesaurario et
Willelmo Malduit et Warino filio Giroldi camerariis suis
salutem.
Liberate de thesauro meo xxv marcas fratribus Cartusie
de illis L marcis quas do eis annuatim per cartam meam.
Teste Willelmo de Sancte Marie Ecclesia. Apud West-
moster.
The purpose of these writs might, of course, vary
seize A of this land; do right to B for that tenement;
1 Delisle, p. 166, from Madox, Exchequer, i, p. 390.
THE NORMAN EMPIRE 99
secure C in his possession; bring your knights to such
a place at such a time ; summon twelve men to decide
D's right; but each has its appropriate form, which
is always crisp and exact. All speak the language of
a strong, businesslike administration which expected
as a matter of course prompt and implicit obedience
throughout its broad dominions.
If such a system be given enough time, it will inevit-
ably exert a strong and persistent influence in favor of
centralization and uniformity, and it would be inter-
esting to know just what was accomplished in these
directions during the half century of the Norman em-
pire's existence. The parting advice which Henry had
received from his father Geoffrey was to avoid the trans-
fer of customs and institutions from one part of his
realm to another, and the wisdom of the warning was
obvious under feudal conditions, if not in all imperial
governments. But there is a difference between the
field of local custom and the institutions of adminis-
tration, and while even in matters of feudal law there is
some evidence of a generalization of certain reforms in
the rules of succession, in the conduct of government it
was impossible to keep the different parts of the empire
in water-tight compartments so long as there was a com-
mon administration and frequent interchange of officials
between different regions. We must remember that
Henry was a constant experimenter, and that if a thing
worked well in one place it was likely to be tried in an-
ioo NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY
other. Thus the Assize of Arms and the ordinance for
the crusading tithe were first promulgated for his con-
tinental dominions, while the great English inquest of
knights' fees in 1166 preceded by six years the parallel
Norman measure. The great struggle with Becket over
the church courts seems to have had a Norman pro-
logue. The chronological order in any given case might
well be a matter of chance; but in administrative mat-
ters the influence is likely to have travelled from the
older and better organized to the newer and more
loosely knit dominions, from England, Normandy, and
Anjou on the one hand to Poitou, Aquitaine, and Gas-
cony on the other.
Of Henry's hereditary territories, Anjou seems the
least important from the point of view of constitutional
influence. Much smaller in area than either Normandy
or England, it was a compact and comparatively cen-
tralized state long before Henry's accession, but the op-
portunity for immediate action on the count's part sim-
plified its government to a point where its experience
was of no great value under Anglo-Norman conditions.
Certainly no Angevin influence is traceable in the field
of finance, and none seems probable in the administration
of justice. In the case of Normandy and England the
resemblance of institutions is closest, and a host of inter-
esting problems present themselves which carry us back
to the effects of the Norman Conquest and even further.
THE NORMAN EMPIRE 101
It is, of course, one of the fundamental problems of
English history how far the government of England
was Normanized in the century following the Conquest.
To a French scholar like Boutmy everything begins
anew in 1066, when ''the line which the whole history
of political institutions has subsequently followed was
traced and defined." l To Freeman, on the other hand,
the changes then introduced were temporary and not
fundamental. He is never tired of repeating that the old
English are the real English; progress comes by going
back to the principles of the Anglo-Saxon period and
casting aside innovations which have crept in in modern
and evil times; "we have advanced by falling back on a
more ancient state of things, we have reformed by calling
to life again the institutions of earlier and ruder times,
by setting ourselves free from the slavish subtleties of
Norman lawyers, by casting aside as an accursed thing
the innovations of Tudor tyranny and Stewart usurpa-
tion." 2 The trend of present scholarly opinion lies be-
tween these extremes. It refuses to throw away the
Anglo-Saxon period, whose institutions we are just be-
ginning to read aright; but it rejects its idealization at
Freeman's hands, who, it has been said, saw all things
"through a mist of moots and witans" and not as they
really were, and it finds more truth in Carlyle's remark
that the pot-bellied equanimity of the Anglo-Saxon
1 The English Constitution, p. 3.
* Origin of the English Constitution (London, 1872), p. 20 /.
102 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY
needed the drilling and discipline of a century of Nor-
man tyranny. 1
Whether he was needed much or little, the Norman
drill-master came and did his work, and when he had
finished the two countries were in many respects alike.
He left his mark on the English language and on Eng-
lish literature, which were submerged for three centuries
under the French of the court, the castle, and the town,
and in the process were permanently modified into a
mixed speech. He left his mark on architecture in the
great cathedrals of the Norman bishops and the massive
castles with their Norman keeps. He made England a
feudal society, however far it may have gone in that di-
rection before, and its law, from that day to this, a feu-
dal law. And he remade the central government under
the strong hand of a masterful dynasty which compelled
its subjects to will what the king willed. Whatever per-
manence we may assign to Anglo-Saxon local institu-
tions, and we cannot help granting them this in con-
siderable measure, it is not now held that there was
any notable Anglo-Saxon influence upon the central ad-
ministration. At best England before the Conquest was
a loose aggregation of tribal commonwealths divided by
local feeling and by the jealousies of the great earls, and
its kingship did not grow stronger with process of time.
The national assembly of wise men, whose persistence
Freeman labored in vain to prove, became the feudal
1 Stubbs, Benedict of Peterborough, n, p. xxxv.
THE NORMAN EMPIRE 103
council of the Norman barons, and this council, the
curia regis, and the royal household which was its per-
manent nucleus, became the starting-point of a new
constitutional development which produced the House
of Lords, the courts of law, and the great departments
of the central administration.
Yet in a vigorous state central and local are never
wholly separable, and it is where they touch that re-
cent study has been able to show some continuity of
development between the two periods, namely in the
fiscal system which culminated in the exchequer of
the English kings. Of all the institutions of the Anglo-
Norman state, none is more important and none more
characteristic than the exchequer, illustrating as it does
at the same time the comparative wealth of the sover-
eigns and the efficient conduct of their government. No-
where in western Europe did a king receive so large a
revenue as here; nowhere was it collected and adminis-
tered in so regular and businesslike a fashion; nowhere
do the accounts afford so complete a view of " the whole
framework of society." The main features of this sys-
tem are simple and striking.
In every administrative district of Normandy and
England the king had an agent in England the sheriff,
in Normandy the vicomte or bailli to collect his rev-
enues, which consisted chiefly of the income from lands
and forests, the fees and fines in the royal courts, the
104 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY
proceeds of the various feudal incidents, and the va-
rious payments which there were from time to time
levied under the name of Danegeld, scutage, aid, or gift.
Twice a year, at Easter and Michaelmas, these agents
were required to come to the treasury and render their
accounts to the king's officers. At Easter the sheriff was
expected to pay in half of his receipts, receiving there-
for down to 1826 a receipt in the form of a notched stick
or tally, split down the middle so that there was exact
agreement between the portion retained at the exchequer
and the portion carried off by the sheriff to be produced
when the acounts of the year were settled at Michael-
mas. The great session of the exchequer at Michaelmas
was a very important occasion and is described for us
in detail in a most interesting contemporary treatise,
the Dialogue on the Exchequer, written by Richard the
King's Treasurer, in 1178-79. There the sheriff met
the great officials of the king's household who were
also the great officers of the Anglo-Norman state the
justiciar, chancellor, constable, treasurer, chamberlains,
and marshal, reenforced by clerks, tally-cutters, calcu-
lators, and other assistants. The place and the institu-
tion took their names from a chequered table or chess-
board the Latin name scaccarium means a chess-board
in size and shape not unlike a billiard table, covered
with cloth which was ruled off into columns for pence,
shillings, pounds, hundreds and thousands of pounds. On
one side were set forth in this graphic manner the sums
THE NORMAN EMPIRE 105
which the sheriff was required to pay, on the other he
and his clerk tried to offset these with tallies, receipts,
warrants, and counters representing actual cash. Played
with skill and care on each side, for the stakes were high,
this great match was likened to a game of chess between
the sheriff and the king's officers. Its results were recorded
each year, district by district and item by item, on a
great roll, called the pipe roll from the pipes, or skins of
parchment sewed end to end, of which it was made up.
For England we have an unbroken series of these rolls
from the second year of Henry II, as well as an odd roll
of Henry I, constituting a record of finance and govern-
ment quite unique in contemporary Europe. The series
was doubtless as complete for Normandy, but there sur-
vive from Henry's reign only the roll of 1180 and frag-
ments of that of 1184. For the other Plantagenet lands
nothing remains.
This remarkable fiscal system comprised accordingly
a regular method of collecting revenue, a central treas-
ury and board of account, and a distinctive and care-
ful mode of auditing the accounts. There was nothing
like it north of Sicily, and contemporaries admired it
both for its administrative efficiency and for the wealth
and resources which it implied. Although something
of the sort seems to have existed in all the territories of
the Plantagenet empire and the different bodies seem
to have maintained a certain amount of cooperation,
all our records come from England and Normandy,
106 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY
and there can be no question that it is distinctively
an Anglo-Norman institution. Whether, however, it is
English or Norman in origin and how it came into ex-
istence, are still in many respects obscure questions. The
exchequer is not an innovation of Henry II, for the
surviving roll of Henry I and certain incidental evi-
dence show that it existed on both sides of the Channel
in the reign of his grandfather. In the time of the author
of the Dialogue there was a tradition that it had been
imported from Normandy by William the Conqueror,
but this must be discounted by the fact that certain
elements of the system can be traced in Anglo-Saxon
England. The truth is that the exchequer is a compli-
cated institution, some parts of which may be quite
ancient and the results of parallel development on both
sides of the Channel; at least the problem of priority
has reached no certain solution. Its most characteristic
feature, however, its peculiar method of reckoning, does
not seem either of Norman or English origin, but derived
from the abacus of the ancient Romans, as used and
taught in the continental schools of the eleventh and
twelfth centuries.
One who tries to perform with Roman numerals a
simple problem in addition or subtraction or better
yet, in multiplication or division will have no diffi-
culty in understanding why people unacquainted with
the Arabic system of notation have had recourse to a
counting-machine or abacus. The difficulty, of course,
THE NORMAN EMPIRE 107
lies not so much in the clumsy form of the individual
Roman numbers as in the absence of the zero and the
reckoning by position which it makes possible. This
defect the abacus supplied. By means of a sanded board
or a cloth-covered table or a string of counters it pro-
vided a row of columns each of which represented a
decimal group units, tens, hundreds, etc. by which
numerical operations could be rapidly and accurately
performed. Employed by the ancient Romans, as by
the modern Chinese, the arithmetic of the abacus be-
came a regular subject of instruction in the schools of
the Middle Ages, whence its reckoning was introduced
into the operations of the Anglo-Norman treasury. The
most recent student of the subject, Reginald Lane
Poole, connects the change with the Englishmen who
studied at the cathedral school of Laon early in the
twelfth century. To me it seems somewhat earlier,
brought by abacists who came to England in the
eleventh century from the schools of Lorraine. 1 In
either case its introduction was much more than a
change of bookkeeping. Convenient as such reckoning
was in general, it was the only possible method for men
who could neither read nor write, like the Anglo-Nor-
man sheriffs and many of the royal officers, and its use
made it possible to carry on the fiscal business of the
state on a large scale, in an open and public fashion,
1 Poole, The Exchequer in the Twelfth Century, pp. 42-57; Haskins,
"The Abacus and the King's Curia," in English Historical Review, xxvii,
pp. 101-06.
io8 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY
with full justice to all parties, and with accuracy, cer-
tainty, and dispatch. It was a businesslike system for
busy and businesslike men.
In the history of judicial administration the personal
initiative of Henry II is more evident than in finance.
The king had an especial fondness for legal questions
and often participated in their decision, yet his influence
was exerted particularly to develop a system of courts
and judges which could work in his absence and with-
out his intervention. Although the institution is found
previously both in England and Normandy, it is in
Henry's reign that the system of itinerant justices is
fully organized with regular circuits and a rapidly ex-
tending jurisdiction which broke down local privileges
and exemptions and by its decisions created the common
law. Hitherto chiefly a feudal assembly concerned with
the causes of the king and his barons, after Henry's
time the king's court is a permanent body of profes-
sional judges and a tribunal for the whole realm. It is no
accident that his reign produced in the treatise of Glan-
vill on The Laws and Customs of England the first of the
great series of textbooks which are the landmarks of
English legal development. Henry's reign is also an
important period in the growth of Norman law, the
earliest formulation of which reaches us ten years after
his death in the Trbs Ancien Coutumier de Normandie,
and the reduction of local custom to writing is a process
THE NORMAN EMPIRE 109
which went on in his other continental possessions ; yet,
as in finance, England and Normandy plainly took the
lead in legal literature and in legal development. In-
deed, the distinction between justice and finance is less
sharp than we might at first suppose, for the growth of
jurisdiction meant increased profit from fees and fines,
and heavy payments were necessary to secure the inter-
vention of the royal judges. In this sense Henry has
often been called, and rightly, a seller of justice, but his
latest biographer has pointed out that "if the commod-
ity was expensive it was at least the best of its kind, and
there is a profound gulf between the selling of justice
and of injustice. A bribe might be required to set the
machine of the law in motion, but it would be unavailing
to divert its course when once started." l The wheels of
government are turned by self-interest as well as by
unselfish statesmanship.
Of the many judicial reforms of Henry's reign none
is more significant than the measures which he took for
extending the use of the jury as a method of trial in the
royal courts, and none illustrates better the relation of
Norman to English institutions. Characteristic as the
jury is in the history of English government and of
English law, as at once the palladium of personal lib-
erty and the basis of representative institutions in Par-
liament, it is a striking fact that originally it was "not
popular but royal," not English but Norman, or rather
1 Salzmann, Henry II, p. 176.
I io NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY
Prankish through the intermediary of Normandy. 1
Although it has a history which can be traced for more
than a thousand years, the jury does not definitely make
its appearance in England until after the Norman Con-
quest, and the decisive steps in its further development
were taken during the union of England and Normandy
and probably as a result of Norman experience. It is
now the general opinion of scholars that the modern
jury is an outgrowth of the sworn inquests of neighbors
held by command of the Norman and Angevin kings,
and that the procedure in these inquests is in all essen-
tial respects the same as that employed by the Prankish
rulers three centuries before. It is also generally agreed
that while such inquests appear in England immedi-
ately after the Norman Conquest, the returns of the
Domesday survey are a striking example, their em-
ployment in lawsuits remains exceptional until the
time of Henry II, when they become in certain cases a
matter of right and a part of the settled law of the land.
What had been heretofore a special privilege of the
king and of those to whom he granted it, became under
Henry a right of his subjects and a part of the regular
system of justice. Accomplished doubtless gradually,
first for one class of cases and then for another, this ex-
tension of the king's prerogative procedure to his sub-
jects seems to have been formulated in a definite royal
act or series of acts, probably by royal ordinances or
1 Pollock and Maitland. History of English Law, 1, p. 14?
THE NORMAN EMPIRE in
assizes, whence the procedure is often called the assize.
In England the earliest of these assizes known to us
appears in 1164 in the Constitutions of Clarendon,
followed shortly by applications of this mode of trial to
other kinds of cases. In Normandy repeated references
to similar assizes occur some years earlier, between 1156
and 1159, so that as far as present evidence goes, the
priority of Normandy in this respect is clear. More-
over, Normandy offers two pieces of evidence that are
still earlier. In the oldest cartulary of Bayeux cathe-
dral, called the Black Book and still preserved high up
in one of its ancient towers, are two writs of the duke
ordering his justices to have determined by sworn in-
quest, in accordance with the duke's assize, the facts
in dispute between the bishop of Bayeux and certain of
his tenants. The ducal initial was left blank when these
writs were copied into the cartulary, in order that it
might later be inserted in colors by an illuminator who
never came; and those who first studied these docu-
ments drew the hasty conclusion that they were issued
by Henry as duke of Normandy before he became king.
It was not, however, usual for the mediaeval scribe to
leave the rubricator entirely without guidance when he
came to insert his initials, but to mark the proper letter
lightly in the place itself or on the margin, and an at-
tentive examination of the well-thumbed margins of
the Bayeux Black Book shows that this was no excep-
tion to the rule, and that in both the cases in question
ii2 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY
the initial G had been carefully indicated. G can, of
course, stand only for Henry's father Geoffrey, so that
some general use of the assize as a method of trial in the
ducal courts can be proved for his reign. As no such
documents have reached us for his predecessors, it
would be tempting to assume the influence of Angevin
precedents; but this runs counter to what we know of
the judicial institutions of Anjou in this period, as well
as of the policy of Geoffrey in Normandy, which was to
follow in all respects the system of Henry I. Although
the first general use of the sworn inquest as a mode of
trial thus antedates Henry II, it is still a Norman in-
stitution.
It would carry us too far to discuss the many prob-
lems connected with the use of the jury in Henry's
reign or to follow the many changes still needed to con-
vert the sworn inquest into the modern jury. It is suffi-
cient for our present purpose to mark its Norman char-
acter, first as being carried to England by the Normans
in its older form, and then as being developed into its
newer form on Norman soil. It should, however, be
remembered that its later history belongs to England
rather than to Normandy. With the rise of new forms
of procedure in the thirteenth century, the jury on
the Continent declines and finally disappears; "but for
the conquest of England," says Maitland, "it would
have perished and long ago have become a matter for
THE NORMAN EMPIRE U3
the antiquary." l In England, however, it was early
brought into relations with the local courts of the hun-
dred and the county, where it struck root and devel-
oped into a popular method of trial which was later to
become a defence against the king's officers who had
first introduced it. A bulwark of individual liberty, the
jury also holds an important place in the establishment
of representative government, for it was through rep-
resentative juries that the voice of the countryside first
asserted itself in the local courts, for the assessment of
taxes as well as for the decision of cases, and it was in
the negotiations of royal officers with the local juries
that we can trace the beginnings of the House of Com-
mons. It is no accident that the first employment of
local juries for the assessment of military and fiscal ob-
ligations belongs to the later years of Henry II.
It may seem a far cry from the Prankish inquests of
the ninth century to the juries and the representative
assemblies of the twentieth, but the development is
continuous, and it leads through Normandy. In this
sense the English-speaking countries are all heirs of the
early Normans and of the Norman kings who, all un-
consciously, provided for the extension and the per-
petuation of the Norman methods of trial. At such
points Norman history merges in that of England, the
British Empire, and the United States.
1 Pollock and Maitland, i, p. 141.
114 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
The chief events in the history of the Norman empire are treated
in the general works of Miss K. L. Norgate, England under the
Angevin Kings (London, 1887) ; Sir J. H. Ramsay, The Angevin Empire
(London, 1903); G. B. Adams, History of England from the Norman
Conquest to the Death of John (London, 1905); H. W. C. Davis, Eng-
land under the Normans and Angevins (London, 1905). There is a brief
biography of Henry the Second by Mrs. J. R. Green (London, 1888;
reprinted, 1903) ; and a more recent one by L. F. Salzmann (Boston,
etc., 1914). A notable characterization of Henry and his work is
given by William Stubbs, in the introduction to his edition of Benedict
of Peterborough, n (London, 1867), reprinted in his Historical Intro-
ductions (London, 1902), pp. 89-172. For the continental aspects
of the reign see F. M. Powicke, The Loss of Normandy (Manchester,
1913); and his articles in the English Historical Review, xxi, xxii
(1906-07). Cf. A. Cartellieri, Die Machtstellung Heinrichs II. von
England, in Neue Heidelberger Jahrbucher, vm, pp. 269-83 (1898);
F. Hardegen, Imperialpolitik Konig Heinrichs II. von England (Heidel-
berg, 1905). The fullest account of Irish affairs is G. H. Orpen, Ireland
under the Normans (Oxford, 1911).
The best general accounts of constitutional and legal matters are
those of Stubbs, Constitutional History of England, I (last edition,
Oxford, 1903), corrected by various special studies of J. H. Round, to
be found chiefly in his Feudal England (London, 1895; reprinted,
1909) and Commune of London (Westminster, 1899); and by Pollock
and Maitland, History of English Law (second edition, London, 1898).
The results of recent investigation are incorporated in the studies and
notes appended to the French translation of Stubbs by Petit-Du-
taillis (Paris, 1907); this supplementary material is translated into
English by W. E. Rhodes (Manchester, 1911). There are admirable
studies of the chancery in L. Delisle. Recueil des actes de Henri II con-
cernant les provinces franqaises et les affaires de France, introduction
(Paris, 1909) ; and of the exchequer in R. L. Poole, The Exchequer in the
Twelfth Century (Oxford, 1912). See also Hubert Hall, Court Life under
the Plantagenets (London, 1890; reprinted, 1902). For the more dis-
tinctively Norman side of the government see Haskins, "The Govern-
THE NORMAN EMPIRE 115
ment of Normandy under Henry II," in American Historical Review,
xx, pp. 24-42, 277-91 (1914-15); and earlier papers on "The Early
Norman Jury," ibid., vm, pp. 613-40 (1903); "The Administration-
of Normandy under Henry I," in English Historical Review, xxiv,
pp. 209-31 (1909); "Normandy under Geoffrey Plantagenet," ibid.,
xxvn, pp. 417-44 (1912); Delisle, Des revenus publics en Normandie
au XII* siecle, in Bibliotheque de V&cole des Charles, x-xni (1848-52) ;
Valin, Le due de Normandie et sa cour, supplemented by R. de Fre-
ville, "Iitude sur 1'organisation judiciaire en Normandie aux XII e et
XIIP siecles," in Nouvelle Revue historique de droit, 1912, pp. 681-736.
The best general account of Norman law is still that of H. Brunner,
Die Entstehung der Schwurgerichte (Berlin, 1872).
V
NORMANDY AND FRANCE
IN July, 1189, Henry II lay dying in his castle at
Chinon. Abandoned and attacked by his sons,
driven from LeMans and Tours by Philip of
France and forced to a humiliating peace, sick in
body and broken in spirit, the aged king made his way
to the old stronghold of the Angevin counts in the val-
ley of the Vienne. Cursing the faithless Richard as he
gave him the enforced kiss of peace at Colombi&res, he
had fixed his hopes on his youngest son John till the
schedule was brought him of those who had thrown off
their allegiance. "Sire," said the clerk who read the
document to the fever- tossed king, "may Christ help
me, the first here written is Count John, your son."
"What," cried the king, starting up from his bed,
"John, my very heart, my best beloved, for whose ad-
vancement I have brought upon me all this misery?
Now let all things go as they will; I care no more for
myself nor for anything in this world." Two days later
he died, cursing his sons, cursing the day he had been
born, repeating constantly, "Shame on a conquered
king." Deserted by all save his illegitimate son Geof-
frey, who received his father's blessing and his signet
ring marked with the leopard of England, Henry was
NORMANDY AND FRANCE 117
plundered by his attendants of gold and furnishings
and apparel, just as William the Conqueror had been
despoiled in the hour of his death at Rouen, till some
one in pity threw over the royal corpse the short cloak,
or 'curt mantle,' by which men called him. Two days
later he was laid away quietly in the nunnery of Fon-
tevrault, where a later age was to rob his tomb of all
save the noble recumbent figure by which it is still
marked. Thus passed away the greatest ruler of his
age; thus began the collapse of the Norman empire.
Strikingly dramatic both in its public and private
aspects, the end of Henry II offers material fit for a
Greek tragedy, and we may, if we choose, imagine an
^Eschylus or a Sophocles painting the rapidity of his
rise, the hybris of his splendor, and the crushing nemesis
of his fall. Even the Promethean touch is not lacking in
the withdrawal of Henry's unconquered soul from God,
as he looked back in flight at the burning city of Le
Mans: "My God, since to crown my confusion and in-
crease my disgrace, thou hast taken from me so vilely
the town which on earth I have loved best, where I was
born and bred, and where my father lies buried and the
body of St. Julian too, I will have my revenge on thee
also; I will of a surety withdraw from thee that thing
that thou lovest best in me." l Henry's life needs no
blasphemous closing in order to furnish inexhaustible
1 Giraldus Cambreusis (Rolls Series), vm, p. 283.
ii8 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY
material for moralizing, and in a period like the Middle
Ages, given over as none other to moral lessons, it
served to point many a tale of the crimes and fate of
evil-doers. That vain and entertaining Welshman,
Gerald de Barri, or Giraldus Cambrensis, in whom a
recent writer thinks he has discovered the proto-
journalist, 1 found in Henry's career the basis for a con-
siderable book devoted to the Instruction of Princes.
But whereas the ways of the gods are dark and un-
searchable to the Greek tragedians, they have no mys-
tery for Gerald. Henry's punishment was due to his
violations of religion, first in his marriage with Eleanor,
the divorced wife of his feudal lord Louis VII, second in
his quarrel with Archbishop Becket and the oppression
of the church which followed, and third and worst of
all, in his failure to take part in a crusade. The hammer
of the church, Henry was born for destruction. The
modern world is more cautious in the matter of ex-
plaining the inexplicable, and more prone to seek human
causes when they can be found, yet the collapse of the
Plantagenet empire is not the hardest of the historian's
problems. Something he will ascribe to larger forces of
development, something he can hardly fail to attribute
to the character of Henry's sons and to his policy in
dealing with them.
Henry II is not the only case in history of a king who
could rule every house but his own, of a father who was
1 Salzmann, Henry II, p. 214.
NORMANDY AND FRANCE 119
shrewd and stern in his dealings with the world but
swayed by unrequited affection and ill-timed weakness
in dealing with his children. Knowing other men, he
did not know his sons, and his grave errors in dealing
with them were errors of public policy, since they
concerned the government of his dominions and the
succession to the throne. Even those who had no sym-
pathy for Henry had little to say to excuse the charac-
ter and the unfilial conduct of his sons. "From the
Devil we come, and to the Devil we return," Richard
was reported to have said; and none cared to con-
tradict him. Of the four lawful sons who grew to ma-
turity, the eldest was Henry, crowned king by his
father in 1170, and hence generally known as the Young
King. Handsome and agreeable, prodigal in largesse, a
patron of knightly sports and especially of the tourna-
ments which were then coming into fashion, the Young
King enjoyed great popularity in his lifetime and after
his early death was mourned as a peer of Hector and
Achilles and enshrined as a hero of courtly romance.
Yet for all this there was no substantial foundation.
He was faithless, ungrateful, utterly selfish, a thorn in
his father's side and a constant source of weakness to
the empire. Married at the age of five to the daughter
of Louis VII, he became the instrument of the French
king in his intrigues against Henry II and the rallying
point of feudal reaction and personal jealousy. King in
name though not in fact, having been crowned merely
120 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY
as a means of securing the succession, Prince Henry
craved at least an under-kingdom of his own, and on
two occasions, in 1173 and again in 1183, led serious
and widespread revolts against his father, the evil
results of which were not undone by his death-bed re-
pentance in the midst of the second uprising. In this
revolt of 1183 he had with him his younger brother
Geoffrey, duke of Brittany, 'the son of perdition,'
equally false and treacherous, without even the re-
deeming virtue of popularity. Fortunately Geoffrey
also died before his father.
The death of the Young King left as Henry's eldest
heir Richard, known to the modern world as the Lion-
Hearted. With much of his father's energy, Richard
seems to have inherited more than any of his brothers
the tastes and temperament of his mother, Eleanor of
Aquitaine. Adventurous and high-spirited, fond of
pomp and splendor, a lover of poetry and music, be it
the songs of Provencal minstrels or the solemn chants of
the church, he belonged on this side of his nature to the
dukes of Aquitaine and the country of the troubadours.
He loved war and danger, in which he showed great
personal courage, and in the conduct of military enter-
prises gave evidence of marked ability as a strategist;
but his gifts as a ruler stopped there. The glamour of
his personal exploits and the romance of his crusading
adventures might dazzle the imagination of contempo-
raries more than the prosaic achievements of his father,
NORMANDY AND FRANCE 121
and his gifts to religious houses might even predispose
monastic historians in his favor, but for all this splendor
his subjects paid the bills. In spite of his great income,
he was always in need of money for his extravagances;
and for his fiscal exactions there was never the excuse of
large measures of public policy. Indeed, so far as we can
see, Richard had no public policy. "His ambition," says
Stubbs, "was that of a mere warrior: he would fight for
anything whatever, but he would sell everything that
was worth fighting for." l Self-willed and self-centred,
he followed wherever his desires led, with no sense of
loyalty to his obligations or of responsibility as a ruler.
Made duke of Aquitaine at seventeen, he sought to ride
down every obstacle and bring immediate order and
unity into a region which had never enjoyed either of
these benefits ; and he quickly had by the ears the land
which he should have best understood. He was soon in
revolt against his father and also at war with the Young
King ; for his own purposes he later went over to the king
of France, and jested with his boon companions over his
father's discomfiture and downfall. Even as king at the
age of thirty-two, Richard remained an impetuous
youth ; he never really grew up. Haughty and overbear-
ing, he alienated friends and allies ; inheriting the rule of
the vast Plantagenet empire, he showed no realization of
imperial duty or opportunity. Thus he visited England
but twice in the course of his reign of ten years and
, * Constitutional History, i, p. 551.
122 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY
valued it solely as a land from which revenue might be
wrung by his ministers, nor did his continental domin-
ions derive advantage from his presence. Impetuous
and short-sighted, Richard Yea-and-Nay had to meet
the greatest statesman of his day in deadly rivalry ; and
though panegyrists placed him above Alexander, Charle-
magne, and King Arthur, he went down ignominiously
before Philip Augustus.
Last of all comes the youngest son John, "my heart,
my best beloved." Never did father lavish his affection
on a more unworthy child. False to his father, false to
his brother Richard, John proved false to all, man or
woman, who ever trusted him. He had none of the dash
and courage of Richard, none of his large and splendid
way, and none of his popularity and gift of leadership.
Men saw him as he was, no Charlemagne or Arthur, but
petty, mean, and cowardly, small even in his blasphe-
mies, swearing by the feet or the teeth of God, when
Henry II had habitually sworn by his eyes, and William
the Conqueror by his splendor par la resplendor Del
Always devious in his ways, John's cunning sometimes
got him the reputation for cleverness, and John Richard
Green went so far as to call him "the ablest and most
ruthless of the Angevins." But his ability, particularly
in military matters not inconsiderable, was of the kind
which wasted itself in temporary expedients and small
successes ; it was incapable of continuous policy or sus-
tained efforts; and it everywhere ended in failure. Ger-
NORMANDY AND FRANCE 123
aid the Welshman, the friend of his youth, at the end
can only pronounce him the worst of history's tyrants.
John's whole career offers the most convincing evidence
of the futility of talent when divorced from character,
by which is here meant, not so much private virtue,
for John's private vices were shared with others of his
family and his time, but merely common honor,
trustworthiness, and steadfastness. Even in his wicked-
ness John was shifty and false, and his loss of his empire
was due, not to any single blunder or series of blunders,
but to the supreme sin of lack of character.
It is thus possible to see how largely the collapse of
the Norman empire was bound up with the family history
of Henry II the foolish indulgence of the father, the
ambitions and intrigues of the mother, the jealousies,
treachery, and political incapacity of the sons. A per-
sonal creation, the Plantagenet state fell in large meas-
ure for personal reasons. If it was Henry's misfortune to
have such sons, one may say it was also his misfortune to
have more than one son of any sort, since each became
the nucleus of a separatist movement in some particular
territory. The kings of France, it has often been pointed
out, had for generations the great advantage of having a
son to succeed, but only a single son. The crowning of
the French heir in his father's lifetime assured an undis-
puted succession; the crowning of the Young King left
him dissatisfied and stirred up the rivalry of his younger
brothers.
124 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY
But this is not the whole of the story. The very
strength and efficiency of Henry's government were
sure to produce a reaction in favor of feudal liberties in
which his sons serve simply as convenient centres of
crystallization. Only time could unify each of these
dominions internally, while far more time was required
to consolidate them into a permanent kingdom, and
these processes were interrupted when they had barely
begun. Such a solution of the ultimate problem of con-
solidation was, we have seen, entirely possible and even
natural; but another was possible and also natural,
namely the union of these territories under the king of
France. Geography, as well as history, favored the
second alternative.
The geographical unity of France is one of the most
obvious facts on the map of Europe. The Alps and the
Pyrenees, the Mediterranean and the Atlantic, are its
natural frontiers; only on the northeast are the lines
blurred by nature and left to history to determine.
Within these limits there are of course many clearly
marked subdivisions the valleys of the Rhone, Ga-
ronne, Loire, and Seine, Gascony, Brittany, Normandy,
Flanders, and the rest which formed the great fiefs of
the Middle Ages and the great provinces of later times.
Sooner or later, however, as population increased, as
trade and commerce developed, and as the means of
communication were strengthened, these divisions were
/V3lH
NORMANDY AND FRANCE 125
certain to draw together into a single great state.
Where the centre of the new state would lie was not a
matter of accident but was largely determined by the
great lines of communication, and especially by the com-
mercial axis which runs from the Mediterranean to
Flanders and the English Channel. On this line are sit-
uated the Roman capital of the Gauls, Lyons, and the
modern capital, Paris. This fact, combined with the
central and dominant position of the Paris basin in rela-
tion to the great valleys of the Seine, the Loire, and the
Meuse, established the region about Paris, the Ile-de-
France of history, as the natural centre of this future
nation. Such a state might grow from without toward
its centre, as the modern kingdom of Italy closed in on
Rome, but the more natural process was from the centre
outward, as England grew about Wessex or Branden-
burg about the region near Berlin. In the great contest
between Capetian and Plantagenet the Capetian "held
the inner lines." Shut off from the sea on the side of the
Loire as well as on the side of the Seine, he was in a posi-
tion to concentrate all his efforts to break through the
iron ring, while the Norman rulers had to hold together
the whole of their far-spread territories against reaction
and rebellion at home as well as against the French at
Tours and LeMans and in the Vexin. Meanwhile up
and down these valleys the influences of trade, com-
merce, and travel were at work breaking down the polit^
ical barriers and drawing the remoter regions toward the
126 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY
geographical centre. The rivers in their courses fought
against the Plantagenets.
The personal element in the struggle was weighted
against the Anglo-Norman empire even more strongly
than the physiographic, for the weak links in the
Plantagenet succession ran parallel to the strongest
portion of the Capetian line. Against a knight-errant
like Richard and a trifler like John, stood a great
European statesman in the person of Philip Augustus,
king of France during forty-four years, and more
than any single man the creator of the French mon-
archy.
Philip Augustus was not an heroic figure, and to the
men of his age he was probably less sympathetic than his
adversary Richard. Vigorous and enduring, a generous
liver, quick-tempered but slow to cherish hatred, Philip
was preeminently the cautious, shrewd, unscrupulous,
far-sighted statesman. He could fight when necessary,
but he had no great personal courage and excelled in
strategy and prevision rather than in tactics or leader-
ship in the field, and he preferred to gain his ends by
the arts of diplomacy. The quality upon which all his
contemporaries dwell is his wisdom. Throughout his
long reign he kept before him as his one aim the increase
of the royal power, and by his patient and fortunate
efforts he broke down the Plantagenet empire, doubled
the royal revenue and more than doubled the royal do-
NORMANDY AND FRANCE 127
main, and made France the leading international power
in western Europe.
As we have already seen, Philip had made substantial
headway even during the lifetime of Henry II. Crowned
in 1 1 79 at the age of fourteen, a year before the death
of his paralytic father Louis VII, Philip was naturally
treated as a boy by Henry, who seems, however, to have
acted throughout with due regard to Philip's position as
king and his feudal suzerain. In the complications of
those early years we find Henry constantly arranging
disputes with the king's vassals and more than once
saving him from a tight place. But as time went on this
relation became impossible. Philip openly abetted the
revolts of the Young King and of Richard, and in the
war which broke out at the end Richard fought openly
on his side. As soon, however, as Richard succeeded to
the throne, Philip began hostilities with him, and he
soon used John against' Richard as he had used Rich-
ard against his father. "Divide and rule," was clearly
Philip's policy, and he always had on his side the fact
that he was king in France and the Plantagenets on the
Continent were his vassals.
The first phase of the contest between Richard and
Philip comes as a welcome interlude in the tale of border
disputes and family rivalries which make up the greater
part of the tangled story of Philip's dealings with the
Norman empire. It takes us over the sea to the fair land
of Sicily and on to the very gates of the Holy City. In
128 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY
1187 the capture of Jerusalem had crowned the long
efforts of the great Saladin, and where a century before
Christian knights had ridden " up to their bridles " in the
blood of the slaughtered Moslem, a procession of knights
and priests and poorer folk passed out of the gate of
David and left the Holy Sepulchre to the infidel. To the
Saracens a certain sign that they were the only people
"whose doctrine was agreeable to God," the fall of
Jerusalem killed the aged Pope, plunged Europe into
prayer and fasting, and brought on the Third Crusade,
under the leadership of the emperor Frederick Barba-
rossa, Philip of France, and Richard of England. Rich-
ard, then merely count of Poitou, was the first western
prince to take the cross in this holy war; his father and
Philip soon sealed their crusading vows with a public
reconciliation under a great elm on the borders of Nor-
mandy and France, and the chroniclers tell us that
every man made peace with his neighbor, thinking no
more of tournaments and fine raiment, the lust of the
flesh and the pride of the eye, but only of the recovery
of the Holy City. Such great waves of renunciation and
religious enthusiasm are peculiarly characteristic of the
Middle Ages, but their force was soon spent. Then, as
in other times, there were few who could live as on a
mountain-top. In spite of all that the church could do,
Henry and Philip soon came to open war, and the cause
of Jerusalem was swallowed up in a struggle for the Loire
and for Aquitanian fortresses. Richard, as we have seen,
NORMANDY AND FRANCE 129
was a central point in these conflicts, and his accession
to the throne simply continued the struggle in another
form.
Nevertheless a peace was patched up, and the unwill-
ing Philip was unable to hold aloof from the crusade
which fired the military ardor of his chief vassal and
rival. Large sums of money were raised by every means,
and the two kings made an agreement to divide equally
all the spoil of their expedition. They also arranged to
go by sea to the East after they had assembled their
ships and followers at Messina, thus avoiding the usual
complications with the Eastern Empire and the fatal
march through the barren and hostile interior of Asia
Minor which now claimed another victim in the gallant
German emperor. At the best, however, a crusade was
not an organized campaign under efficient direction, but
merely a number of independent expeditions which
found it convenient to go at the same time and by the
same route. There was no supreme command, and there
was constant jealousy and friction between feudal lords
who were ever impatient of restraint and careful of points
of dignity and precedence. The presence of a king was
of some help, the presence of two only made matters
worse. If the causes of rivalry at home and the slighting
of Philip's sister could have been forgotten, there was still
the fact that Richard was Philip's vassal as well as his
equal, and Richard was not of the type to spare Philip's
susceptibilities. Rich, open-handed, fond of display,
130 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY
Lion-Heart "loved the lime-light/' and his overbear-
ing nature and lack of tact made it impossible for him to
cooperate with others. He characteristically went his
own way, paying scant attention to Philip and acting as
if the leadership of the expedition belonged to himself as
a matter of course. Relations became strained during
the sojourn at Messina and grew worse in Palestine,
where the affairs of the Latin kingdom and the rivalries
of lesser princes added fuel to the flame. " The two kings
and peoples," says an English chronicler, "did less to-
gether than they would have done separately, and each
set but light store by the other." Sick of the whole en-
terprise, after four months in the East, Philip seized the
first excuse to return home, departing in August, 1191.
Richard stayed a year longer in Palestine, yet he never
entered Jerusalem and had finally to retire with a disap-
pointing truce and to spend another year, and more,
languishing in German prisons. The events of these
months do not concern the history of Normandy, but
if we would behold Richard in his fairest light we must
see him as he rushed to the relief of Joppa on the first of
August, 1 192, wading ashore from his red galley with the
cry, "Perish the man who would hang back," covering
the landing of his followers with his crossbow, making
his way by a winding stair to the house of the Templars
on the town wall, and then, sword in hand, clearing the
town of three thousand Turks and pursuing them into
the plain with but three horsemen ; or, four days later,
NORMANDY AND FRANCE 131
repelling a Mameluke attack in force by a most skilful
tactical arrangement of his meagre army, directing the
battle on the beach while he also kept the town clear,
" slaying innumerable Turks with his gleaming sword,
here cleaving a man from the crown of his head to his
teeth , ' ' there cutting off with one blow the head , shoulder,
and right arm of a Saracen emir, his coat of mail and his
horse bristling with javelins and arrows like a hedgehog,
yet "remaining unconquerable and unwounded in ac-
cordance with the divine decree." l
What most concerned the Norman empire was the
king's absence since the summer of 1190, prolonged by
his captivity in Germany until the spring of 1194. Al-
though Philip had taken an oath before leaving Pales-
tine to respect Richard's men and possessions during his
absence, and even to protect them like his own city of
Paris, he sought release from this engagement as soon as
he reached Rome on his homeward journey, and once
back in France he soon began active preparations for an
attack on the Plantagenet territories. With Richard safe
in a German dungeon, he seized a large part of the Nor-
man border and made a secret treaty with John which
secured the surrender of all the lands east of the Seine
and important fortresses in Anjou and Touraine. He
offered huge sums of money to secure Richard's custody
1 See the extracts from the chroniclers translated in T. A. Archer, The
Crusade of Richard I (London, 1888), pp. 285 Jf.
132 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY
or even his continued detention in Germany, and when
early in 1 194 he warned John that " the Devil was loose"
at last, he was besieging the great fortress of Verneuil on
the Norman frontier. When Richard landed at Barfleur
in May, amid the ringing of bells and processions singing
"God has come again in his strength," it is small wonder
that he came breathing vengeance and slaughter, and
that the rest of his life is a record of scarcely interrupted
war against the king of France. For many years he is
said to have refused the sacrament lest he might have to
forgive his enemy. Again and again he had Philip on the
run. Once Philip lost all his baggage and saved himself
by turning aside to hear mass while Richard rode by; on
another occasion Richard drove the French into Gisors
so that the bridge broke under them "and the king of
France drank of the river, and twenty of his knights
were drowned."
Such scenes, however, are only the striking episodes in
a series of campaigns which are confused and compli-
cated and do not lend themselves to clear narration.
Decisive engagements were rare, each side seeking
rather to wear out the other. Money was spent freely
for allies and mercenaries a contemporary called the
struggle one between the pound sterling and the pound
of Tours, and the advantage was on the side of the
pounds sterling by reason of their greater number.
There was usually a campaign in the spring and summer,
ending in a truce in the autumn which the church tried
NORMANDY AND FRANCE 133
to prolong into a lasting peace but which soon broke
down in a new war. The wars were for the most part
border forays, in which the country was burned and
wasted far and wide, to the injury chiefly of the peas-
ants, upon whom the burden of mediaeval warfare
mainly fell. "First destroy the land, then the enemy,"
was the watchword. Booty and ransom were the object
as well as military advantages, so that even the contests
between knights had their sordid side, so definitely were
they directed toward taking profitable prisoners; while
feudal notions of honor might cause Richard to put out
the eyes of fifteen prisoners and send them to Philip
under the guidance of one of their number who had been
left one eye, whereupon Philip blinded an equal number
of knights and sent them to Richard under the guidance
of the wife of one of them, "in order," says his eulogist, 1
"that no one should think he was afraid of Richard or
inferior to him in force and courage."
The brunt of the war fell on Normandy and ulti-
mately on the castles which supplied the duchy's lack
of natural frontiers. To supplement the great interior
fortresses of Caen, Falaise, Argentan, Montfort, and
Rouen, Henry I began the organization of a series of
fortifications on the southern and eastern borders.
Henry II, we are told, improved or renewed nearly all
these strongholds, and especially Gisors, the frontier
gateway toward France, on which fortress the exchequer
1 Guillaume le Breton, Philippide, v, lines 316-27.
134 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY
roll shows him expending 2650 pounds Angevin in a
single year. These castles, remains of many of which are
still standing, were typical of the best military architec-
ture of their age, but they were inferior in strength and
scientific construction to the great fortresses of Christian
Syria, such as Krak or Margat, which seem to have gone
back to Byzantine and even Persian models. A keen
warrior like Richard had not spent his two years in Pal-
estine without gaining an expert knowledge of eastern
methods in the art of war, and we are not surprised to
find that he had Saracen soldiers and Syrian artillery-
men with him in his Norman campaigns, and that he
made large use of oriental experience in strengthening
his defences. His masterpiece, of course, was Chateau
Gaillard, the saucy castle on the Seine controlling the
passage of the river and its tributaries in that region of
the Norman Vexin which was the great bone of conten-
tion between the Plantagenets and the French kings.
Having first expropriated at great expense the lord of
the region, the archbishop of Rouen, he fortified the
adjacent island of Andeli and laid out a new town on the
bank. This he surrounded with water and reenforced
with towers and battlements, protecting the whole with
a stockade across the river and outlying works farther
up. Then on the great rock above he built the fortress,
with its triangular advance work, its elliptical citadel,
and its circular keep surrounded by a "fosse cut almost
vertically out of the rock." There was no dead angle,
NORMANDY AND FRANCE 135
such as permitted sappers to reach the base of rectilinear
walls, but instead a sloping base down which projectiles
might ricochet ; nor was there, as at the corners of square
towers, any part of the surrounding area which could
not be reached by direct fire from within. ''The ap-
proaches and the fosse," says Dieulafoy, 1 "were covered
by the fire of the garrison right up to the foot of the
scarp, and no sapper could touch any point in towers
or walls, provided that the fortress was under the direc-
tion of an experienced commander." This qualification
is important, for the new type of fortification was de-
signed for an active defence, one might almost say an
offensive defence, and not for the mere passive resist-
ance with which the older strategy had been content.
The works at Andeli, carried on largely under Richard's
personal direction, occupied more than a year of labor
and cost nearly 50,000 pounds Angevin, which we find
distributed in the royal accounts over lumber and stone
and hardware, and among masons and carpenters and
stone-cutters and lesser laborers.
By the year 1199 Richard had recovered his Norman
possessions save Gisors and certain castles on the border,
where Philip never lost his foothold, and he had raised
an effective barrier to French advance in the valley of
the Seine. Strong allies were on his side, and the diplo-
matic situation was decidedly in his favor. Never had
1 Le Chdteau-Gaillard, in Memoir -es de VAcadimie des Inscriptions,
xxxvi, I , p. 330.
136 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY
Philip been so hard pressed, and even the friendly legate
of the Pope could secure for him nothing better than
the retention of Gisors in the truce which was then
drawn up. And then a second stroke of fortune, greater
even than the captivity of 1192, came to Philip's aid.
Richard, impetuous and headstrong as ever, spoiled all
by a raid on an Aquitanian rebel in which he lost his
life. His energy, his military skill, and his vivid per-
sonality had concealed the fundamental weakness of his
position against France; his removal meant the swift fall
of the Norman empire.
At Richard's death there were two possible succes-
sors, his younger brother John, whom he had designated
heir, and his nephew Arthur, son of his elder brother
Geoffrey and duke of Brittany. There was enough un-
certainty in feudal law to admit of a plausible case for
either one, but Arthur was only twelve and John quickly
took possession, being crowned at Rouen in April and at
Westminster in May. Arthur, however, had the follow-
ing of his Bretons and, what was more important, the
support of Philip Augustus, who used Arthur against
John as he had used John against Richard and Richard
against his father. Philip confirmed Arthur as count of
Anjou, Maine, and Touraine, and soon brought him to
Paris, where he was betrothed to Philip's daughter.
Nevertheless the course of events at first favored John.
Philip was in the midst of the great struggle with Pope
NORMANDY AND FRANCE 137
Innocent III over the divorce of his queen Ingeborg,
and a treaty was signed in 1200, by which, on giving up
territory in the Norman border and in central France
and paying a large relief of 20,000 marks for his lands,
John was confirmed in his control of Anjou and Brit-
tany, while a visit to Paris, where he was splendidly
received, seemed to crown the reconciliation. In a posi-
tion, however, where all possible strength and resource-
fulness were required, John's defects of character proved
fatal. No one could depend upon him for loyalty, judg-
ment, or even persistence, and he quickly earned his
name of "Soft-Sword."
Meanwhile the legally-minded Philip, while spending
money freely on John's followers and abating nothing
of his diplomatic and military efforts, brought to bear
the weapons of law. The revival of legal studies in the
twelfth century had given rise in western Europe to a
body of professional lawyers, skilled in the Roman and
the canon law, and quick to turn their learning to the
advantage of the princes whom they served. Philip had
a number of such advisers at his court, and they doubt-
less contributed to the more lawyerlike methods of
doing things which make their appearance in his reign ;
but it was feudal custom, and not Roman law, that he
used against John. In law John was Philip's vassal,
indeed, he had just confessed as much in the treaty of
1 200, and as such was held to attend Philip's feudal
court and subject himself to its decision in disputes
138 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY
with other vassals. It might be urged that the king of
England was too great a man to submit to such juris-
diction, and that the duke of Normandy had been in
the habit of satisfying his feudal obligations by a formal
ceremony at the Norman frontier; still the technical
law was on the side of the king of France, and a suzerain
had at last come who was able to translate theory into
fact. In the course of a series of adventures in Poitou
John carried off the fiance of one of his barons of the
house of Lusignan, who appealed to his superior lord,
the king of France. All this was in due form, but Philip
was no lion of justice eager to redress injuries for jus-
tice* sake. He waited nearly two years, John's visit to
Paris falling in the interval, and then, when he was
ready to execute sentence, promptly summoned John
before the feudal court of peers. John neither came nor
appeared through a representative, and the court in
April, 1 202, declared him deprived of all his lands for
having refused to obey his lord's commands or render
the services due from him as vassal. The capture of
Arthur temporarily checked Philip; the boy's murder
by John in the course of 1203 simply recoiled on the
murderer. Whether this crime led to a second con-
demnation by the court of peers, as was alleged by the
French at the time of the abortive invasion of England
in 1216, is a question which has been sharply discussed
among scholars. What has now become the orthodox
view holds that there was no second condemnation,
NORMANDY AND FRANCE 139
but a clever case has recently been made by Powicke,
who, minimizing the importance of the accepted argu-
ment from the silence of immediate contemporaries,
argues, on the basis of the Annals of Mar gam, that
there probably was a second condemnation in 1204.
After all, the question is of subordinate importance, for
Philip's effective action was based on the trial of 1202,
and by 1204 John's fate was already sealed.
The decisive point in the campaign against Nor-
mandy was the capture of Chateau Gaillard, the key to
the Seine valley, in May, 1204, after a siege of six
months which seems to have justified its designer, save
for a stone bridge which sheltered the engineers who
undermined the outer wall. Western Normandy fell
before an attack from the side of Brittany; the great
fortresses of the centre, Argentan, Falaise, and Caen,
opened their gates to Philip; and with the surrender of
Rouen, 24 June, 1204, Philip was master of Normandy.
John had lingered in England, doing nothing to support
the defense, and when he crossed at last in 1206 he was
obliged to sign a final surrender of all the territories
north of the Loire, retaining only southern Poitou and
Gascony. Gascony and England were united for two
centuries longer, but the only connection was by sea.
The control of the Seine and the Loire had been lost,
and with that passed away the Plantagenet empire.
The results of the separation of Normandy from
NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY
England have been a favorite subject with historians,
and especially with those who approach the Middle
Ages from the point of view of modern politics and
modern ideas of nationality. It all seems so natural
that Normandy should belong with France and not
with England. Nationality, however, is an elusive
thing, and many forces besides geography have made
the modern map. England in the Middle Ages had
much more in common with Normandy than she had
with Wales or Scotland, while in feeling, as well as in
space, the Irish Sea was wider than the Channel. From
the English point of view there was nothing inevitable
in the loss of Normandy. On the French side the mat-
ter is more obvious. If Paris was to be the capital, it
must control the Seine and the Loire, and when it
gained control of them, its position in France was as-
sured. The possession of Normandy meant far more to
France than to England. Moreover the conquest of
Normandy cut England and France loose from each
other. The Anglo-Norman barons must decide whether
they would serve the king of England or the king of
France, and they were quickly absorbed into the coun-
try with which they threw in their lot. It was no longer
possible to play one set of interests against another;
turned back on themselves, the English barons met
John on their own ground and won the Great Charter,
so that the loss of Normandy has a direct bearing on
the growth of English liberty. "When the Normans
NORMANDY AND FRANCE 141
became French," concludes Powicke, "they did a great
deal more than bring their national epic to a close.
They permitted the English once more to become a
nation, and they established the French state for all
time." 1
Viewed in this way, the end of Normandy almost
seems more glorious than Normandy itself; as was said
of Samson, "the dead which he slew at his death were
more than they which he slew in his life." But of
course in the larger sense the work of the Norman em-
pire was not ended in 1204. For one thing, the admin-
istrative organization of the Norman duchy could not
fail to exert an influence upon the French monarchy.
In spite of the great progress made by the Capetian
kings of the twelfth century, the Norman government
still maintained its marked superiority as a system of
judicial and fiscal administration, and Philip Augustus
was not the man to neglect the lessons it might have
for him. The nature and extent of Norman influence
upon French institutions is a subject which is still dark
to us and for lack of evidence may always remain dark;
but there can be little doubt that Norman precedents
were followed at various points in the development of
the Parlement of Paris and in the elaboration of the
French financial system. In the main, however, the
influence was inevitably in the other direction, from
France upon Normandy, not from Normandy upon
1 The Loss of Normandy, p. 449.
142 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY
France. There was, it is true, no sudden change. Philip
respected vested interests, both in the church and
among the barons, and preserved Norman customs, so
that the duchy long retained its individuality of law,
of local organization, and of character, and secured its
rights from Louis X in a document of 1315, the Charte
aux Normands, which has sometimes been compared
in a small way to the Great Charter. The Coutume de
Normandie persisted, like the customs of the other
great provinces, until the French Revolution, but it was
a body of custom worked out under the influence of the
central government and gradually absorbing the juris-
prudence of the king's court. If the Norman exchequer
continued to sit at Rouen, it was presided over by
commissioners sent out from Paris. Even that most
characteristic of Norman institutions, trial by jury,
was insensibly modified by the new inquisitorial pro-
cedure of the thirteenth century and silently disap-
peared from the practice of the Continent. As in law
and government, so in culture and social life, the forces
of centralization did their work none the less effectively
because they were gradual, and Normandy became a
part of France.
There was, it is true, a period when Normandy was
once more united to England, this time as a conquered
country. Between 1417 and 1419 Henry V subdued
Normandy in a series of well-conducted campaigns, and
he and his son remained in possession of the duchy un-
NORMANDY AND FRANCE 143
til 1450. During this period of English rule no effort
seems to have been made to restore earlier conditions
which had now been outgrown: law, local government,
fiscal organization continued unchanged. English offi-
cials were, of course, appointed, and English immigra-
tion was encouraged at the expense of the lands of the
Normans who had left the province. The first Norman
university was founded at Caen in the reign of Henry
VI. In the face, however, of all efforts at conciliation
and fair treatment the population remained hostile.
The idea that the Englishman was a foreigner had
grown up during two centuries of absence; it was to
crystallize definitely as the conception of French na-
tionality took form through the work of Joan of Arc.
Lavisse has reminded us 1 that this war "was not a con-
flict between one nation and another, between the gen-
ius of one people and that of another; nevertheless it
continued, and was fierce as well as long. From year to
year the hatred against the English increased. In con-
tact with the foreigner France began to know herself,
like the ego in contact with the non-ego. Vanquished
she felt the disgrace of defeat. Acts of municipal and
local patriotism preceded and heralded French patriot-
ism, which finally blossomed out in Joan of Arc, and
sanctified itself with the perfume of a miracle. Out of
France with the English! They left France, and France
1 General View of the Political History of Europe (translated by Charles
Gross), p. 64.
144 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY
came into existence." In this rapid growth of French
national consciousness Normandy had its full share,
and some of its great scenes are set on Norman soil. It
was at Rouen that Joan of Arc was tried and condemned
by the Inquisition; it was in the old market-place of
this same city that the English soldiers discovered too
late that they had burned a saint.
And so it came about that twenty years later the
Normans welcomed the troops of Charles VII and
passed finally under French sway. Proud of its past,
proud also of its provincialisms and local peculiarities,
Normandy was nevertheless French in feeling and in-
terests, and grew more French with time under the
unifying force of the absolute monarchy, the Revolu-
tion, and the modern republic. It ceased to be a duchy
in 1467; it ceased to be even a political division with
the creation of the modern departments in 1790. Its
last survival as an area recognized by the government,
the ecclesiastical province of Rouen, disappeared with
the final separation of church and state in 1905. The
only unity which its five departments now retain is
that of the history and tradition of a common past
of a petite patrie now swallowed up in the nation.
Only at one point did the old Normandy really main-
tain itself against the forces of centralization, namely
in the Channel Islands, those "bits of France fallen
into the sea and picked up by England," as Victor
Hugo calls them. These were not conquered by Philip
NORMANDY AND FRANCE 145
or his successors, and have remained from that day to
this attached to the English crown. They still have
their baillis and vicomtes, their knights' fees and feudal
modes of tenure. The Norman dialect is still their lan-
guage; the Coutume de Normandie is still the basis of
their law; and one may still hear, in disputes concerning
property in Jersey and Guernsey, the old cry of haro
which preserves one of the most archaic features of
Norman procedure.
After all is said, it is in England that the most perma-
nent work of the Normans survives. They created the
English central government and impressed upon it their
conceptions of order and of law. Their feudalism per-
meated English society; their customs shaped much of
English jurisprudence; their kings and nobles were the
dominant class in English government. Freeman could
never understand those who claimed that, as he declared,
"we English are not ourselves but somebody else." The
fact, however, remains that in a mixed race and all
races are to some extent mixed there is no such thing
as 'ourselves'; and if the numerical preponderance in
the English people is largely that of pre- Norman ele-
ments, the Norman strain has exerted an influence out
of all proportion to its numerical strength. Without
William the Conqueror and Henry II the English would
not be 'themselves,' whatever else they might have
become.
146 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY
For a more specific illustration let us come back once
more to the jury. If the jury died out in Normandy, it
survived in England, where it flourished in the fertile soil
of the popular local courts. It spread to the British
colonies and to the United States; it has in recent times
been reintroduced on the Continent. But it is still the
same fundamental institution, bound by direct continu-
ity with the old Prankish procedure through the Nor-
man inquests of the twelfth century. Wherever the
twelve good men and true are gathered together, we can
see the juries of Henry II behind them. In such matters
the Norman influence is thus as wide as the common
law ; we are all heirs of the early Normans. As Freeman
well says: "We can never be as if the Norman had never
come among us. We ever bear about us the signs of his
presence. Our colonists have carried those signs with
them into distant lands, to remind men that settlers in
America and Australia came from a land which the
Norman once entered as a conqueror." l
Our survey of Norman history might perhaps stop
here; but it needs to be rounded out in two directions.
We have been so busy with the external history of the
Norman empire and with the constitutional develop-
ments to which it gave rise, that we have had no time to
examine the society and culture of Normandy in its
flourishing period of imperialism. And we have been
1 William the Conqueror, p. 2.
NORMANDY AND FRANCE 147
concentrating our attention so exclusively on the do-
minions of the Plantagenets that we have left out of
view that greater Normandy to the south which con-
stitutes one of the most brilliant chapters of Norman
achievement and one of the most fascinating subjects
of European history. These topics will be the themes of
the three remaining lectures.
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
The best account of the downfall of the Norman empire is Powicke,
The Loss of Normandy, where abundant references will be found to
further material. The general narratives of Adams, Davis, and Ram-
say may also be consulted, as well as Miss Norgate, John Lackland
(London, 1902). For the French side see Luchaire, in Lavisse, His-
toire de France, m, i. The fullest treatment of relations between the
Plantagenets and France, down to 1199, is A. Cartellieri, Philipp
II. August (Leipzig, 1899-1910), supplemented by his Richard
Lowenherz im heiligen Lande, in Historische Zeitschrift, ci, pp. 1-27
(1908), and Philipp II. August und der Zusammeribruch des angiovin-
ischen Reiches (Leipzig, 1913). For the controversy concerning John's
condemnation by the court of Philip, see Gross, Sources and Litera-
ture, nos. 2829, 2833. Characterizations of Richard and John by
Stubbs will be found in his Historical Introductions, pp. 315 Jf., 439 jf.
J. Lehmann, Johann ohne Land (Berlin, 1904), is more favorable
to John. The biography of the Young King is traced by P. C. E.
Hodgson, Jung Heinrich, Konig von England (Jena, 1906).
There is no general work on the English occupation of Normandy in
the fifteenth century; the scattered monographs are mentioned in
Prentout, La Normandie, pp. 71-76. Something may be expected from
the continuation of the late J. H. Wylie's work on the reign of Henry V.
VI
NORMAN LIFE AND CULTURE
IN turning from the general course of Norman his-
tory in the eleventh and twelfth centuries to ex-
amine Norman life and culture in this period, we
encounter the difficulties inherent in any attempt to
cut a cross-section of human society in an age which
was not conscious of being a society and has left us for
the description of itself only raw materials of a fragmen-
tary and uneven sort. The chroniclers confine them-
selves almost entirely to external events, the charters
deal chiefly with land and boundaries and rights over
the land, much of the literature is theological commen-
tary or rhetorical commonplace which reflects nothing
of the age in which it was written ; what is lacking in all
is the concrete detail of daily life from which alone social
and economic conditions and even government itself can
be understood. And when we have pieced together as
best we may some notions of Normandy in this period,
our knowledge of the parallel conditions in other regions
is often so inadequate that we cannot be certain how far
our results are characteristic of Normandy, how far
typical of the time, or, because of the scattered nature of
our material, how far they may be merely individual and
isolated. Much of the social history of the Middle Ages
NORMAN LIFE AND CULTURE 149
is still unwritten; for lack of evidence much can never
be written. Until the available sources have been more
fully explored, nothing beyond a provisional sketch can
be attempted.
Fortunately for our purposes, the fundamental struc-
ture of society in the earlier Middle Ages was exceed-
ingly simple. There were three classes, those who
fought, those who labored, and those who prayed, cor-
responding respectively to the nobles, the peasants, and
the clergy. Created by the simple needs of the feudal
age, this primitive division of labor was even declared
an institution of divine origin and necessary to the har-
monious life of man. It seemed right and natural that
the nobles should defend the country and maintain
order, the clergy lead men to salvation, the peasants
support by their labor these two beneficent classes, as
well as themselves. As an ideal of social organization,
this system of classes is open to obvious objections, not
the least of which is the persistent killing and plundering
of the peasants by the class whose function it was to
protect and defend them ; but as a description of actual
conditions, it expresses very well the facts of the case.
With respect to the fighting class, it is characteristic
of the Norman habit of order and organization that the
military service of the nobles was early defined with
more system and exactness in Normandy than in the
neighboring countries of northern France. We have al-
150 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY
ready seen that at a period well before 1066 the amount
of service due from the great lords to the duke had been
fixed in rough units of five or multiples of five, and these
again subdivided among their vassals and attached to
specific pieces of land which were hence called knights'
fees, an arrangement which the Normans carried to Eng-
land and probably to Sicily as well. By 1172, when a
comprehensive list was first drawn up, subinfeudation
had produced about 1500 knights' fees in Normandy,
the largest holders being the bishop of Bayeux and the
earl of Leicester with 120, the count of Ponthieu with
in, and Earl Giffard with 103. From these the class of
fully armed knights reached down to the holders of
small fractions of a knight's fee, all however serving
with the full armor which in course of time came to
mark them off as nobles from the vavassors, or free sol-
diers, whose equipment was less complete and whose
service tended to take the form of castle guard and simi-
lar duties. Quite early also custom had defined other
characteristic features of the feudal service in Nor-
mandy, such as the period of forty days, the limitation
of the obligation to the frontiers of the duchy, and the
incidents of wardship and marriage, deductions from
feudal principles which were here carried to their logical
conclusions.
The symbol of the authority of the military class, the
outward and visible sign of feudalism, was the castle,
where the lord resided and from which he exercised his
NORMAN LIFE AND CULTURE 151
authority over his fief. Originating in the period of
anarchy which accompanied the dissolution of the
Prankish empire and the invasions of the ninth and
tenth centuries, the castle spread over northern France
as feudalism spread, and was introduced into England
by the Normans when they here established their feudal
state. The earliest castles of Normandy and of England
were not, however, the massive stone donjons which
Freeman peopled with devils and evil men. With some
exceptions, of which the Tower of London is the most
noteworthy, these 'hateful structures' were built of
wood and surrounded by a stockade, surmounting an
artificial mound, or motte, thrown up from the deep moat
at its base. A great drawbridge, cleated so that horses
should not slip on the steep incline, led from the farther
side of the moat directly to the second story of the tower,
of which the ground floor, used only for stores and the
custody of prisoners, had no entrance from without.
Fortresses of this type have naturally left nothing be-
hind them save the outlines of their mounds and moats,
but they are well known from contemporary descrip-
tions and are clearly discernible in the Bayeux Tapestry,
which gives rude pictures of the strongholds of Dol,
Rennes, Dinan, and Bayeux, and shows a stockaded
mound in actual process of construction at Hastings.
The heavy timbers of these lofty block-houses offered
stout resistance to battering rams, but they were always
in great danger from fire, and wood was replaced by
152 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY
stone in the course of the twelfth century, to which
belong the 'stern square towers' which still survive in
Normandy and England, as well as the earliest examples
of the more defensible round keeps and square keeps
flanked with round towers. Whether of wood or stone,
the donjon was a stern place, built for strength rather
than for comfort, and bending the life of those within it
to the imperious necessities of defence. Space was at a
premium, windows were few and small, sometimes
only a single window and a single room to each story,
trap-doors and ladders often did the work of stairways,
and from the wooden castles fires were usually excluded.
Nevertheless the donjons were not, as was once sup-
posed, mere "towers of refuge used only in time of war,"
but "were the permanent residences of the nobles of
the eleventh and twelfth centuries." 1 Only toward the
close of this period do the outer buildings develop, so as
to give something of the room and convenience de-
manded by the rising standard of comfort; only in the
thirteenth century do the more spacious castles without
keeps begin to make their appearance.
It is significant of the progress made by the ducal
authority in Normandy that by the time of William the
Conqueror definite restrictions had been placed upon
the creation of these strongholds of local power and
resistance. Except with the duke's license no one could
build a castle, or erect a fortress on a rock or an island,
1 Armitage, Early Norman Castles of the British Isles, p. 359.
NORMAN LIFE AND CULTURE 153
or even dig a fosse in the open country so deep that the
earth could not be thrown out from the bottom without
artificial aid, while palisades were required to be built
in a simple line and without alures or special works of
defence. When the duke desired, he might also place
garrisons in his barons' castles and demand hostages for
their loyalty. These principles, which were applied also
in England, were of course often difficult to enforce, and
they were supplemented in the twelfth century by the
development of a great system of ducal castles, secured
partly by enlarging and strengthening the older for-
tresses of Rouen, Caen, Falaise, and Argentan, partly,
as we have already seen, by new strongholds on the
frontiers. Powicke has shown us how these castles be-
came the chief administrative centres in the reigns of
Henry II and Richard, and how the royal letters and
accounts reveal their many-sided activity in the busy
days of peace as well as in the more strenuous times of
war. 1 Under chdtelains who were royal officers rather
than feudal vassals, with garrisons of mercenaries and
retinues of knights and Serjeants, clerks and chaplains
and personal servants, they foreshadow the ultimate
replacement of baronial donjons by a royal bureaucracy.
It is doubtless because of the dominant position of the
duke that Normandy is less rich than some other parts
of France in picturesque types of feudal lords or vivid
episodes of feudal conflicts. When they go beyond the
1 The Loss of Normandy, pp. 298 ff.
154 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY
affairs of the church, the Norman chroniclers are prone
to concentrate their attention upon the deeds of the du-
cal house, and their accounts of the great vassals tend to
be dry and genealogical. The chief exception is Orderi-
cus Vitalis, whose theme and geographical position lead
him to treat at length the long anarchy under Robert
Curthose and the incessant conflicts of the great lords
his neighbors on the southern border, the houses of
Bellme, Grentemaisnil, Conches, and Breteuil. In the
main it is a dreary tale of surprises and sieges, of treach-
ery and captivity and sudden death, relieved from time
to time by brighter episodes the lady Isabel of
Conches sitting in the great hall as the young men of the
castle tell their dreams; the daily battle for bread around
the oven at the siege of Courcy ; the table spread and the
pots seething on the coals for the lord and lady of Saint-
C6neri who never came back; the man of Saint-Evroul
who, by the saint's aid, walks unharmed out of custody
at Domfront; the marvellous vision of the army of
knights and ladies in torment which appeared to the
priest of Bonneval.
With these episodes of Norman feudalism it is inter-
esting to compare the picture of Anglo-Norman society
a hundred years later which we find in that unique piece
of feudal biography, the History of William the Marshal.
Companion to the Young King and witness of the final
shame of Henry II, pilgrim to Jerusalem and Cologne,
advanced to positions of trust under Richard and John,
NORMAN LIFE AND CULTURE 155
earl of Striguil and Pembroke and regent of England
under Henry III, the Earl Marshal stood in close rela-
tions to the chief men and movements of his day. His
biographer, however, does not let himself wander to tell
of others' deeds, and while his work contains material
of much importance for the general history of the time,
its chief value lies in its reflection of the life of the age
and its faithful portrait of the man himself soldier of
fortune, gentleman-adventurer if you will, but always
loyal, honorable, straightforward, and true, by the
standards of his time a man without fear and without
reproach. Brought up in the Norman castle of Tancar-
ville, the Marshal, like the Young King his master,
became passionately addicted to tournaments, par Emi-
nence the knightly sport of the Middle Ages, which
made hunting and other pastimes seem tame and fur-
nished the best preparation for real war, since, as an
English chronicler tells us, in order to shine in war a
knight "must have seen his own blood flow, have had
his jaw crack under the blow of his adversary, have
been dashed to the earth with such force as to feel the
weight of his foe, and unhorsed twenty times he must
twenty times have retrieved his failures, more set than
ever on the combat." Unknown to England before the
reign of Richard, these manly sports flourished most of
all in France, the country of chivalry and feats of arms,
and for several years we follow the Marshal from combat
to combat through Normandy and Maine, Champagne
156 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY
and the Ile-de-France, so that his renown spread from
Poitou to the Rhine. At one period in his life he tour-
neyed every fortnight. The tournaments of his day,
however, were not the elegant and fashionable affairs of
the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries which the word is
apt to call to our minds, assemblages of beauty as well
as of prowess, held in special enclosures before crowded
galleries, with elaborate rules respecting armor and
weapons and the conditions of conflict. On the contrary,
they were fought like battles, in the open, with all the
arms and methods of war and all its manoeuvres and
ferocity of attack; indeed they differed from war mainly
in being voluntary and limited to a single day. After one
series of such thunderous encounters the Marshal was
found in a smithy, his head on the anvil and the smith
working with hammer and pincers to remove his bat-
tered helmet. In a great tournament at Lagni three
thousand knights are said to have been engaged, of
which the Young King furnished eighty. Knights
fought for honor and fame and for sheer joy of combat ;
they fought also, we must remember, for the horses and
armor and ransoms of the captives. In a Norman tour-
nament the Marshal captured ten knights and twelve
horses. Between Pentecost and Lent of one year their
clerks calculated that he and his companion had taken
prisoners three hundred knights, without counting
horses and harness; yet he seems to have preserved the
golden mean between the careless largesse of the Young
NORMAN LIFE AND CULTURE 157
King and the merely mercenary motives of the large
number who frequented tournaments for the sake of
gain.
Concerning the great agricultural class upon which
the whole social system rested, our information is of a
scattered and uneven sort. The man with the hoe did
not interest the mediaeval chronicler, and he did not
gain a voice of his own in the period which we have un-
der review. The annals of the time are indeed careful to
record the drouths and floods, the seasons of plague, pes-
tilence, and famine of which Normandy seems to have
had its share, but they tell us nothing of the effects of
these evils upon the class which they most directly con-
cerned ; while the charters, leases, and manorial records
from which our knowledge of the peasants must be built
up give us in this period isolated and unrelated facts.
Moreover our information is confined almost entirely to
the lands of churches and monasteries, where agriculture
was likely to be more progressive because of their closer
relations to the world outside. Normandy was a fertile
country, and, so far as we can judge, its agricultural
population fared well as compared with that of other
regions. Certainly there is here, after the eleventh cen-
tury, no trace of serfdom or the freeing of serfs, and
the free position of its farming class distinguished the
duchy from most of the lands of northern France. In
other respects it is hard to discern important differences
158 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY
between the Norman peasants and those of other re-
gions. After the suppression of an insurrection at the
beginning of this century, we do not hear of any general
rising of the Norman peasants, parallel to those risings
which make a sad and futile chapter in the annals of
many parts of Europe in the Middle Ages. It was, how-
ever, a local revolt of the thirteenth century on the
lands of the monks of Mont-Saint-Michel that brought
out one of the best descriptions of life on a Norman
manor, the Conte des Vilains de Verson, 1 and, while it is
a bit late for our purpose, it is confirmed by documen-
tary evidence, and may well serve as an illustration of
the obligations of the agricultural class:
In June the peasants must cut and pile the hay and carry it
to the manor house. In August they must reap and carry in
the convent's grain ; their own grain lies exposed to wind and
rain while they hunt out the assessor of the champart and
carry his share to his barn. On the Nativity of the Virgin the
villain owes the pork-due, one pig in eight; at St. Denis*
day the cens; at Christmas the fowl, fine and good, and there-
after the grain-due of two sellers of barley and three quarters
of wheat; on Palm Sunday the sheep-due; at Easter he must
plow, sow and harrow. When there is building the tenant
must bring stone and serve the masons; he must also haul the
convent's wood for two deniers a day. If he sells his land, he
owes the lord a thirteenth of its value; if he marries his
daughter outside the seigniory, he pays a fine. He must grind
his grain at the seigniorial mill and bake his bread at the
seigniorial oven, where the customary charges do not satisfy
the attendants, who grumble and threaten to leave his bread
unbaked.
1 Printed by Delisle, Etudes sur la classe agricole, pp. 668 ff.
NORMAN LIFE AND CULTURE 159
So long as mediaeval society remained almost en-
tirely agricultural there was no need of adapting its
organization to other classes than those which have just
been described. In course of time, however, the growth
of industry and commerce, very slow before the eleventh
century, but rapid and constant in the period during
and after the Crusades, as may be seen by the large
number of markets and fairs in Normandy, created a
new class of dwellers in towns who demanded recogni-
tion of their peculiar character and status. By reason of
the nature of their occupations they sought release from
the seigniorial system, with its forced labor, its frequent
payments, and its vexatious restrictions upon freedom of
movement and freedom of buying and selling; and as
their economic needs drew them together into industrial
and commercial centres of population, they developed a
collective feeling and demanded collective treatment.
They asked, not, as has sometimes been said, for the
overthrow of the feudal system, but for a place within it
which should recognize their peculiar economic and
political interests; and the result of their efforts, when
fully successful, was to form what has been called a col-
lective seigniory, standing as a body in the relation of
vassal to lord or king, and owing the obligations of hom-
age, fealty, and communal military service. But while
not anti-feudal in theory, this movement was often anti-
feudal in practice, so far at least as the rights and priv-
ileges of the immediate overlord were concerned, and it
160 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY
led to friction and often to armed contests with bishop,
baron, or king. In Normandy, significantly, we find
none of those communal revolts which meet us through-
out the north of France and even as near as LeMans;
the towns are always subject to the ultimate authority
of the duke, whose domanial rights were considerable
even in the episcopal cities and who favored those forms
of urban development which strengthened the military
resources of the duchy. The early history of the Norman
towns is one of the most obscure chapters in Norman
history, but it indicates a variety of influences which do
not fit into any one of the many theories of municipal
origins which have been the subject of so much learned
controversy. Some towns were originally fortified
places, like the baronial stronghold of Breteuil or Henry
I's fortresses of Verneuil, Nonancourt, and Pontorson
on the southern border. Some took advantage of the
protection of a monastery, as in the case of Fecamp or
the bourgs of the abbot and abbess of Caen. The great
ports, like Barfleur and Dieppe, obviously owed their
importance to trade, and it was trade which created the
prosperity of the chief towns of the duchy, Rouen and
Caen. However developed, the Norman municipal type
exerted no small influence upon urban organization : the
laws of Breteuil became the model for Norman founda-
tions on the Welsh border and in Ireland ; the tablisse-
ments of Rouen were copied in the principal towns of
western France, Tours and Poitiers, Angoulme and
NORMAN LIFE AND CULTURE 161
La Rochelle, even to Gascon Bayonne on the Spanish
frontier.
If we take as an illustration of this development the
principal Norman town, Rouen, we find no evidence
regarding its institutions before the twelfth century,
while its organization as a commune dates from the
reign of Henry II and probably from the year 1171. The
fundamental law, or Etablissements, which Rouen then
received and which became the model for communal
government elsewhere in Normandy, constitutes a body
of one hundred peers who meet once a fortnight for judi-
cial and other business and who choose from their num-
ber each year the twelve Schevins, or magistrates, and
the twelve councillors who sit with the Schevins to form
the council of juris. Besides these boards, which are
typical of mediaeval town constitutions, the peers also
nominate three candidates for the office of mayor, but
the choice among these is made by the king, and the
greater authority of the mayor in this system is evi-
dently designed to secure more effective royal control.
It is the mayor who leads the communal militia, receives
the revenues, supervises the execution of sentences, and
presides over all meetings of magistrates and boards.
The administration of justice through its own magis-
trates is perhaps the most valued privilege of the com-
mune, but the gravest crimes are reserved for the cog-
nizance of royal officers, and the presence of the king or
a session of his assize is sufficient to suspend all com-
162 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY
munal powers of justice. In a state like the Norman the
limits of municipal self-government are clear.
The importance of Rouen as a commercial and indus-
trial centre was not, however, dependent upon its form
of government. Its ancient gild of cordwainers had been
recognized by Henry I and Stephen, its trading privi-
leges were confirmed in one of the earliest charters of
Henry II. Save for a single ship yearly from Cherbourg,
the merchants of Rouen had a monopoly of trade with
Ireland ; in England they could go through all the mar-
kets of the land ; in London they were quit of all pay-
ments save for wine and great fish and had exclusive
rights in their special wharf of Dowgate. Later in
Henry's reign they were even freed of all dues through-
out his dominions. Only a citizen might take a ship-
load of merchandise past Rouen or bring wine to a cellar
in the town. Besides the great trade in wine we hear of
dealings in leather, cloth, grain, and especially salt and
salt fish. Under Henry II the ducal rights over the town
were worth annually more than 3,000 limes. Apart
from their share in this general prosperity, the citizens
had special exemptions in the matter of duties and tolls
on goods which they brought in, while the freedom from
feudal restraints which characterized all burgage ten-
ures put a premium upon their holding of property.
Besides the privileged areas belonging to the cathedral
and the neighboring abbeys, a foothold in the city was
valued by others: the bishop of Bayeux had a town
NORMAN LIFE AND CULTURE 163
house ; the abbot of Caen prized a cellar and an exemp-
tion from wine-dues which he owed to the generosity of
William the Conqueror; the clerks and chaplains of the
king's household took advantage of their opportunities
to acquire rents and houses at Rouen, as well as at
London and Winchester.
Unfortunately no one has left us in this period a de-
scription of the busy life of Rouen such as Fitz Stephen
has given of contemporary London, and it is only with
the imagination that we can bring before our eyes the
ships at their wharves with their bales of marten-skins
from Ireland and casks of wine from Burgundy and the
south, the fullers and dyers, millers and tanners plying
their trades along the Eau de Robec, the burgesses
trafficking in the streets and the cathedral close, the
royal clerks and Serjeants hastening on their master's
business. Still more to be regretted is the disappearance
of those material remains of its ancient splendor which
until the last century retained the form and flavor, if not
the actual wood and stone, of the mediaeval city. To-day
scarcely anything survives above ground of the Rouen of
the dukes of its walls and gates, destroyed by Philip
Augustus, of the castle by the river, with the tower from
which Henry I threw the traitor Conan and the great
hall and rooms renewed by his grandson, of the stone
bridge of the Empress Matilda, of the royal park and
palace across the Seine at Quevilly. Only the great St.
Romain's tower of the cathedral and an early bit of the
164 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY
abbey-church of Saint-Ouen still body forth the un-
broken continuity of the Norman past.
The Norman church throughout the period of our
study stands in the closest relation to the general condi-
tions of Norman society. The monasteries and churches
of the region had been almost completely wiped out by
the northern invasions, and while the Northmen soon
adopted the religion of their new neighbors, it was
many years before ecclesiastical life and discipline again
reached the level of the other dioceses of France. As
late as the year 1001 a Burgundian monk reported that
there was hardly a priest in Normandy who could read
the lessons or say his psalms correctly. The prelates led
the life of the great feudal families of which they were
members, distributing the property of the church as
fiefs to their friends or gifts to their numerous progeny ;
and the lower clergy, for the most part married, sought
to pass on their benefices to their children. In the course
of the eleventh century, however, more canonical stand-
ards began to prevail, largely through the influence of
the monks of Cluny. Older foundations like Fecamp
were renewed, and the Norman lords soon began to vie
with one another in the endowment of new monastic
establishments. To the half-century which preceded the
Conquest of England we can trace the beginnings of
twenty important monasteries and six nunneries, not
counting priories and smaller foundations, a movement
NORMAN LIFE AND CULTURE 165
for which contemporaries could find no parallel short of
the palmy days of monasticism in Roman Egypt. In
course of time the monastic ideal reacted upon the secu-
lar clergy, and the monastic schools raised the level of
learning throughout the duchy, until provincial councils
succeeded in establishing the celibacy of the priesthood
and the stricter discipline of Rome. In all this move-
ment for reform the dukes took a leading part, inviting
the reformers to their courts, aiding in the foundation
and restoration of cloisters, and lending their strong
support to the efforts for moral improvement in the sec-
ular clergy. They also asserted their supremacy over
the Norman church, presiding in its councils, revising
the judgments of its courts, appointing and investing its
bishops and abbots. Moreover, while ready to coSperate
with the moral ideas of the Papacy, they resisted all
attempts at papal interference in Norman affairs. When
Alexander II sought to restore an abbot whom William
the Conqueror had deposed, the duke replied that he
would gladly receive papal legates in matters of faith
and doctrine, but would hang to the tallest oak of the
nearest forest any monk who dared to resist his author-
ity in his own land. William's resistance was equally
firm in the case of Gregory VII, who failed completely
in his efforts at direct action in William's dominions.
Nowhere on the Continent, concludes Bohmer, 1 was
there at this time a country where the prince and his
1 Kirche und Stoat, p. 41.
166 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY
bishops were so energetic in the suppression of simony
and violations of clerical vows ; nowhere was the church
so completely subject to the secular government.
The most prominent figure in the Norman church of
the eleventh century, Odo, for nearly fifty years bishop
of Bayeux, was far from fulfilling the stricter ideal of a
prelate's life. Half-brother of the Conqueror through
their mother Arlette, he received the bishopric as a fam-
ily gift at the tender age of fourteen and became thereby
one of the greatest princes of Normandy. His hundred
and twenty knights' fees furnished him a body of power-
ful vassals ; his demesne gave him manors and forests for
the support of his household, fuel for his fires and reeds
and rushes for his hall, rents and tithes at Caen and the
monopoly of the mill at Bayeux, tolls and fines and
market rights which produced a considerable income in
ready money. For the invasion of England he is said to
have offered a hundred ships, and he took an active part
in the battle of Hastings, swinging a huge mace in place
of spear and sword, since the shedding of blood was for-
bidden to an ecclesiastic. In the distribution which fol-
lowed, Odo received large estates in the southeast, as
well as the earldom of Kent and the custody of Dover
Castle, and he seems to have ruled his lands with a
heavy hand both as earl and as regent in William's
absence. It even became his ambition to succeed the
mighty Hildebrand as Pope, and he had already spent
considerable sums at Rome when William, accusing
NORMAN LIFE AND CULTURE 167
him of tyranny and oppression, put him in prison, an-
swering his assertion of ecclesiastical privilege with the
statement that he imprisoned, not the bishop of Bayeux,
but the earl of Kent. There he languished for five years
till William on his death-bed, against his better judg-
ment, released him for ten years more of rule in Nor-
mandy. Yet, though Odo's eulogists admit that he was
given overmuch to worldly ambition, the lusts of the
flesh and the pride of life, they tell us of his vigorous
defence of his clergy by arms as well as by eloquence, of
the young men of promise whom he supported in the
schools of Lorraine and other centres of foreign learning,
of the journey to Jerusalem on which he met his death,
of the great cathedral which he built in honor of the
Mother of God and adorned with gold and silver and
probably with the very Bayeux Tapestry which is the
chief surviving monument of his magnificence.
With the twelfth century the type changes. To the
monastic historian a bishop like Philip d'Harcourt, like-
wise of the see of Bayeux, may appear wise in the wis-
dom of this world which is foolishness with God, 1 but his
wisdom shows itself in frequent journeys to Rome and
persistent litigation in the duke's courts, not in battles
and sieges, and he owes his appointment to his influence
as Stephen's chancellor and not to blood relationship.
Arnulf of Lisieux is another royal officer, versatile, in-
sinuating, shifty, anything but truthful if we may be-
1 Robert of Torigni (ed. Delisle), I, p. 344.
168 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY
lieve his fellow-bishops, but proud of his Latin style and
his knowledge of law and prodigal of letters to the Pope.
Their contemporaries continue to owe their promotion
to service as chaplains or chancellors to the king, but
they also have an eye toward Rome and must be canon-
ists as well as secular officials. The contrast between
Becket the king's chancellor and Becket the archbishop
of Canterbury is symptomatic of the new age, although
the conflict to which it led affected Normandy but indi-
rectly. Relations with the lay power which once rested
on local Norman custom come to be formulated in the
sharper terms of the canon law of the universal church ;
appeals to Rome and instructions from Rome increase
rapidly in volume and importance; the Norman clergy
attend assemblies of the clergy of neighboring lands;
and by the end of the Plantagenet period the Norman
church is ready to be absorbed into the church of
France.
Respecting the daily life and conversation of the ca-
thedral and parish clergy the twelfth century is silent,
save for the condemnations of particular evils in the
councils of the province. From the middle of the thir-
teenth century, however, Normandy furnishes us, in the
diary of visitations kept by the archbishop of Rouen,
Eudes Rigaud, a picture of manners and morals which
for authenticity and fulness of detail has probably no
parallel in mediaeval Europe ; and one is tempted to carry
back two or three generations his description of the
NORMAN LIFE AND CULTURE 169
canons of Rouen wandering about the cathedral and
chatting with women during service, the nuns of Saint-
Sauveur with their pet dogs and squirrels, and those of
other convents celebrating the festival of the Innocents
with dance and song and unseemly mirth, the monks of
Bocherville without a Bible among them to read. It is
hard to believe that there was anything new in the dis-
orders which this upright archbishop chronicles place by
place and year by year ignorance, drunkenness, and
incontinence among the parish and cathedral clergy, lax
discipline, loose administration, and neglect of learning
in the monasteries and nunneries. What was old in the
time of Rabelais was probably old in the thirteenth cen-
tury, and there is abundant evidence of abuses in the
mediaeval church, in Normandy and elsewhere. What
we want most to know is how general these abuses were
and how many there were to counteract them like Chau-
cer's ' povre persoun of a toun,' who taught " Cristes lore
and his apostles twelve," but first "folwed it himselve."
Data of this sort are always lacking in sufficient amount
for any moral statistics, and they must be supplemented
and interpreted by the evidence which has reached us of
popular piety and devotion. Such are the processions of
priest and people throughout the diocese to the cathe-
drals at Whitsuntide, the miraculous cures of disease by
Our Lady of Coutances, and the extraordinary burst of
contrition, religious enthusiasm, and zeal for good works
which broke forth at the building of the spires of Char-
170 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY
tres in 1145 'and spread throughout the length and
breadth of Normandy. Forming associations of those
who confessed their sins, received penance, and recon-
ciled themselves with their enemies, the faithful har-
nessed themselves to carts filled with stone, timber,
food, and whatever might help the churches which they
sought to serve, and drew them long miles until they
seemed to fulfill the saying of the prophet, "the spirit
of the living creature was in the wheels." The abbot of
Saint- Pierre-sur-Dives, to whom we owe our fullest ac-
count of the movement, tells us of these processions : 1
When they halt on the road, nothing is heard but the con-
fession of sins and pure and suppliant prayer to God to obtain
pardon. At the voice of the priests preaching peace hatred is
forgotten, discord thrown aside, debts are remitted, the unity
of hearts is established. But if any one is so far advanced in
evil as to be unwilling to pardon an offender or obey the pious
admonition of the priest, his offering is instantly thrown from
the wagon as impure, and he himself is ignominiously and
shamefully excluded from the society of the holy. There, as a
result of the prayers of the faithful, one may see the sick and
infirm rise whole from their wagons, the dumb open their
mouths to the praise of God, the possessed recover a sane
mind. The priests who preside over each wagon are seen
exhorting all to repentance, confession, lamentations, and the
resolution of a better life, while old and young and even little
children, prostrate on the ground, call on the Mother of God
and utter to her, from the depth of their hearts, sobs a.id
sighs, with words of confession and praise. . . . After the
faithful resume their march to the sound of trumpets and the
1 The text is printed in the Bibliotteque de l'cole des Charles, xxi,
pp. 120 ff.
NORMAN LIFE AND CULTURE 171
display of banners, the journey is so easy that no obstacle can
retard it. ... When they have reached the church, they ar-
range the wagons about it like a spiritual camp, and during
the whole of the following night the army of the Lord keeps
watch with psalms and canticles, tapers and lamps are lighted
on each wagon, and the relics of the saints are brought for the
relief of the sick and the weak, for whom priests and people in
procession implore the clemency of the Lord and his Blessed
Mother. If healing does not follow at once, they cast aside
their garments, men and women alike, and drag themselves
from altar to altar . . . begging the priests to scourge them
for their sins.
At the close of the Angevin period there were in Nor-
mandy something like eighty monasteries and convents,
not counting the numerous cells and priories, as, for ex-
ample, the various dependencies of the great abbey of
Marmoutier at Tours. These were chiefly Benedictine
foundations, though the newer movements of the Cister-
cians, Premonstratensians, and Augustinians were well
represented, the only distinctively Norman order, the
Congregation of Savigny, having been early absorbed
by the Cistercians. The oldest of these establishments
were at the two extremes of the duchy, Mont-Saint-
Michel at one end and Jumieges, Saint- Wandrille, Saint-
Ouen and F6camp at the other; but the distribution was
speedily equalized, and the great abbeys of the centre,
Bee and Caen and Saint- Evroul, were soon known
throughout Europe. The conquest of England opened a
new field for monastic influence: twenty Norman mon-
asteries had received lands in England by the time of the
172 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY
Domesday survey, and the number was considerably
greater when the holdings of alien priories were confis-
cated at the beginning of the fifteenth century. Mont-
Saint-Michel, for example, had a priory in Cornwall as
well as one at LeMans, and its lands in Maine, Brit-
tany, and various parts of England did not allay its
desire for more whenever opportunity offered. For a pe-
riod of five years, from 1155 to 1159 inclusive, we have
a record of the activity of its abbot, Robert of Torigni,
in relation to the monastery's property, and a very in-
structive record it is. It takes him to England and the
Channel Islands, to the king's assizes at Gavrai, Dom-
front, Caen, and Carentan, to the courts of the bishops
of Avranches, Coutances, and Bayeux, and to that of the
archbishop at Rouen ; proving his rights, compromising,
exchanging, purchasing, receiving by gift or royal char-
ter; picking up here a bit of land, there a mill, a garden,
a vineyard, a tithe, a church, to add to the lands and
rents, mills and forests, markets and churches and feudal
rights which he already possessed. There are also vari-
ous examples of loans on mortgage, for the monasteries
were the chief source of rural credit in this period, and
as the land with its revenues passed at once into the
possession of the mortgagee, the security was absolute,
the annual return sure, and the chances of ultimate
acquisition of the property considerable. With the
resources of the monastery during his administration of
thirty-two years Abbot Robert was able to increase the
NORMAN LIFE AND CULTURE 173
number of monks from forty to sixty, to enlarge the
conventual buildings, in which he entertained the kings
of England and of France, and to add a great fagade
to the abbey-church, a contribution to the massive pile
of the Marvel which we are no longer privileged to
behold. He also labored for the intellectual side of the
monastery's life, restoring the library and enlarging
it by a hundred and twenty volumes, and composing
a variety of works on historical subjects which make
him the chief authority for half a century of Norman
history.
There is, however, not much concerning monasteries
in Robert's chronicle, and even his special essay on the
history of the Norman abbeys is confined to externals.
Perhaps he was cumbered about much serving; more
probably he saw nothing worthy of the historian's pen
in the inner life of the institution. When the abbot had
a new altar dedicated or renewed the reliquaries of St.
Aubert and St. Lawrence, that was worth setting down,
but the daily routine of observance was the same at
Mont-Saint-Michel as in the other Benedictine foun-
dations, and has remained substantially unchanged
through the centuries of monastic history. At any rate
no monkish Boswell has done for Normandy what Joce-
lin of Brakelonde did for contemporary England in that
vivid picture of life at Bury St. Edmund's which Carlyle
has made familiar in his Past and Present. A monk of
Saint-fivroul, it is true, did a much greater thing in the
174 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY
Historic, Ecclesiastica of Ordericus Vitalis, but he was an
historian, not a Boswell, and his experience of half a
century of monastic life lies embedded deep in the five
solid volumes of this wide-ranging work. One phase of
the religious life of mediaeval monasteries is admirably
illustrated in Normandy, namely the mortuary rolls of
the members and heads of religious houses. It early
became the custom, not only to say prayers regularly
for the departed members and benefactors of such a
community, but to seek the suffrages of associated com-
munities or of all the faithful. To that end an encyclical
was prepared setting forth the virtues of the deceased
and was carried by a special messenger from convent
to convent, each establishment indicating the prayers
which had there been said and adding the names of the
brothers for whom prayers were solicited in return. The
two most considerable documents of this sort which
have come down to us are of Norman origin, the roll of
Matilda, the first abbess of Holy Trinity at Caen, and
that of Vitalis, founder of the Congregation of Savigny,
which belongs to the year 1122 and is the oldest manu-
script of this type extant in its original form, with all the
quaint local varieties in execution. Each of these was
carried throughout the greater part of England and of
northern and central France, reaching in the first case
two hundred and fifty-three different monasteries and
churches, in the second two hundred and eight, and as
the replies were often made at some length in prose or
NORMAN LIFE AND CULTURE 175
verse, they constitute a curious monument of the con-
dition of culture in the places visited.
If the impulse toward religious reform in Normandy
was of Burgundian origin, intellectual stimulus came
chiefly from Italy. The two principal figures in the intel-
lectual life of the duchy in the eleventh century, Lan-
franc and Anselm, were Italians: Lanfranc distinguished
for his mastery of law, Lombard, Roman, and canon,
for the great school which he founded at Bee, and for his
labors in the field of ecclesiastical statesmanship; An-
selm his pupil and his successor as prior of Bee and as
archbishop of Canterbury, remarkable as a teacher, still
more remarkable as one of the foremost theologians of
the Western Church. "Under the first six dukes," we
are told, "there was hardly any one in Normandy who
gave himself to liberal studies, and there was no master
till God, who provides for all, sent Lanfranc to these
shores." Teaching first at Avranches, Lanfranc estab-
lished himself at Bee in 1042, and his school soon drew
students from the remotest parts of France and sent
them out in all directions to positions of honor and in-
fluence. Abbots like Gilbert Crispin of Westminster,
bishops like St. Ives of Chartres, primates of Rouen and
Canterbury, even a pope in the person of Alexander II,
figure on the long honor-roll of Lanfranc's pupils at
Bee. For an institution of such renown, however, we
know singularly little concerning the actual course and
i;6 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY
methods of study at Bee, and its historian is compelled
to fall back upon a general description of the trivium and
quadrivium which made up the ordinary monastic cur-
riculum. We do not even know whether Lanfranc actu-
ally taught the subject of law of which he was past mas-
ter, though we can be sure that theology and philosophy
had a large place under Anselm, and that the school
must have felt the influence of the large part which its
leaders took in the theological discussions of their time.
An important form of activity in the monasteries of the
period was the copying of manuscripts, a sure safeguard
against that idleness which St. Benedict declared the
enemy of the soul. Lanfranc sat up a good part of the
night correcting the daily copies of the monks of Bee;
the first abbot of Saint-Evroul had an edifying tale of an
erring brother who had secured his salvation by volun-
tarily copying a holy book of such dimensions that the
angels who produced it on his behalf at the judgment
were able to check it off letter by letter against his sins
and leave at the end a single letter in his favor! The
monks of Saint-Evroul prided themselves on their Latin
style, especially their Latin verse, and on their chants
which were sung even in distant Calabria; yet the best
example of their training, the historian Ordericus, freely
admits the literary supremacy of Bee, "where almost
every one seems to be a philosopher and even the un-
learned have something to teach the frothy gramma-
rians."
NORMAN LIFE AND CULTURE 177
In the course of the twelfth century the leadership in
learning passes from the regular to the secular clergy,
and the monastic schools decline before the cathedral
schools of Laon, Tours, Chartres, Orleans, and Paris,
two of which, Paris and Orleans, soon break the bounds
of the older curriculum and develop into universities.
As the current of scholars sets toward these new centres,
Normandy is left at one side; no longer a leader, its
students must learn their theology and philosophy at
Paris, their law at Orleans and Bologna, their medicine
at Salerno and Montpellier. The principal Norman phi-
losopher of the new age, William of Conches, the tutor
of Henry II, is associated with Paris rather than with
the schools of Normandy. Perhaps the most original
work of the pioneer of the new science, the Questiones
naturales of Adelard of Bath, is dedicated to a Norman
bishop, Richard of Bayeux, but its author was not a
Norman, nor do we find Norman names among those
who drank deep at the new founts of Spain and Sicily.
For a measure of the intellectual activity of the Nor-
man monasteries and cathedrals nothing could serve
better than an examination of the contents of their
libraries, where we might judge for ourselves what books
they acquired and copied and read. This unfortunately
we can no longer make. The library of Bee, partly de-
stroyed by fire in the seventeenth century, was scat-
tered to the four winds of heaven in the eighteenth, and
while the legislation of 1791 provided for the transfer of
178 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY
such collections to the public depositories of the neigh-
boring towns, the libraries of Avranches, Alenc.on, and
Rouen, reenforced by the Bibliothque Nationale, have
garnered but a small part of the ancient treasures of
Mont-Saint-Michel, Saint-Evroul, and the establish-
ments of the lower Seine. Works of importance as well
as curiosities still survive autograph corrections of
Lanfranc, the originals of the great histories of Robert
of Torigni and Ordericus Vitalis, service-books throwing
light on the origins of the liturgical drama, cartularies of
churches and abbeys, but for a more comprehensive
view of the resources of the twelfth century we must
turn to the contemporary catalogues which have come
down to us from the cloisters of Saint-Evroul, Bee, Lire,
and Fecamp, and the cathedral of Rouen. After all, as
that delightful academician Silvestre Bonnard has re-
minded us, there is no reading so easy, so restful, or so
seductive as a catalogue of manuscripts; and there is no
better guide to the silence and the peace of the monastic
library, as one may still taste them in the quiet of the
Escorial or Monte Cassino. Let us take the most specific
example, the collection of one hundred and forty vol-
umes bequeathed to Bee by Philip, bishop of Bayeux, at
his death in 1164, or rather the one hundred and thir-
teen which reached the monastery, twenty-seven having
fallen by the way and being hence omitted from the
catalogue. Like the other libraries of the time, this con-
sisted chiefly of theology the writings of the Fathers
NORMAN LIFE AND CULTURE 179
and of the Carolingian and post-Carolingian commenta-
tors and theologians, ending with Philip's contempo-
raries, St. Bernard, Gilbert de la Porree, Hildebert of
Tours, and Hugh of St. Victor, and his metropolitan,
Hugh of Amiens. Wise in the wisdom of this world, the
bishop possessed the whole Corpus Juris Civilis in five
volumes, as well as the leading authorities on canon
law, Burchard, St. Ives, and the Decretum of Gratian.
He had none of the Roman poets, although they were
not unknown to Norman writers of his age, but a fair
selection of prose works of a literary and philosophi-
cal character Cicero and Quintilian, Seneca and the
Younger Pliny, besides the mediaeval version of Plato's
Timaus. There is a goodly sprinkling of the Roman
historians most in vogue in the Middle Ages, Caesar,
Suetonius, Valerius Maximus, Florus, Eutropius, and
the Latin version of Josephus, besides such of their
mediaeval successors as came nearest to Anglo-Norman
affairs. Science was confined to Pliny's Natural History
and two anonymous treatises on mathematics and as-
tronomy, while the practical arts were represented by
Palladius on agriculture and Vegetius on tactics. On the
whole a typically Norman library, deficient on the imag-
inative side, but strong in orthodox theology, in law, and
in history; not in all respects an up-to-date collection,
since it contained none of those logical works of Aristotle
which were transforming European thought, and, save
for a treatise of Adelard of Bath, showed no recognizable
i8o NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY
trace of the new science which was beginning to come in
through Spain ; strikingly lacking also, save for a volume
on Norman history, in products of Normandy itself,
even in the field of theology and scriptural interpreta-
tion, where, for example, Richard abbot of Preaux had
written marvellous commentaries upon Genesis, Deu-
teronomy, Ecclesiastes, the Song of Songs, and the
Proverbs of Solomon, and had "discoursed allegorically
or tropologically in many treatises upon obscure prob-
lems of the Prophets." l
After all, works on the history of Normandy were the
most Norman thing a Norman could produce, and it
was in this field that the duchy made its chief contribu-
tion to mediaeval literature and learning. All the usual
types appear, local annals, lists of bishops and abbots,
lives of saints, biographies of princes, but the most
characteristic are the works in which the history of
NormaiAdy is grasped as a whole: the half-legendary
account of the early dukes by Dudo of Saint-Quentin,
the confused but valuable Gesta of William of Jumieges,
at last restored to us in a critical edition, 2 the Chronicle
of Robert of Torigni, and especially the great Historia
Ecclesiastica of Ordericus Vitalis, the chef-d'ceuvre of
NoJtnan historiography and the most important his-
torical work written in France in the twelfth century.
Born in 1075 near Shrewsbury, Ordericus was early
* Ordericus Vitalis (ed. LePrevost), in, p. 431.
* Guillaume de Jumieges, Gesta Normannorum Ducwn (ed. Marx),
1'Histoire de Normandie, 1914.
NORMAN LIFE AND CULTURE 181
devoted to the monastic life, and lest family affection
might interfere with his vocation and the sure hope of
Paradise held out to the sobbing boy, his sorrowing
parents sent him forever from their sight to spend his
days at Saint-Evroul near the southern border of Nor-
mandy. Tonsured at ten, ordained a deacon at eighteen
and a priest at thirty-two, he bore the burden and heat
of the day under six successive abbots, until as an old
man of sixty-six he laid down his pen with a touching
peroration of prayer and thanksgiving to Him who had
disposed these years according to His good pleasure.
During this half century of poverty and obedience Or-
dericus had little opportunity to leave the precincts of
the monastery, although on rare occasions we can trace
him in England and at Cambrai, Rheims, and Cluni,
and the materials of his history had to be gathered al-
most wholly from the well-stocked library of the abbey
and from conversation with those who passed his way.
These facilities were, however, considerable, for, remote
as Saint-Evroul may seem in its corner of the pays
d'Ouche, it was in constant relations with England,
where it possessed lands, and with southern Italy,
whither it had sent its members to found new convents ;
and like all such establishments it was a place of enter-
tainment for travellers of all classes, priests and monks,
knights and jongleurs, even a king like Henry I, who
brought with them accounts of their journeys about the
world and tales of great deeds in distant Spain, Sicily,
182 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY
and Jerusalem. There were few better places to collect
materials for the writing of history, and there was no
one who could make better use of them than Ordericus.
He was fully launched in his great work by 1123, and he
kept at it throughout the remaining eighteen years of
his life, putting it aside in the winter when his fingers
grew numb with the cold, but resuming it each spring
in the clear round hand which meets us in many a manu-
script of Saint-fivroul, and offering it at the end to fu-
ture generations, a monument more lasting than the
granite obelisk erected to his memory in 1912. His
original purpose was limited to a history of his monas-
tery, but the plan soon widened to include the principal
movements of his time and finally grew to the idea of a
universal history, beginning, indeed, with the Christian
era instead of with the more usual starting-point of the
Creation. Nevertheless, even in its final form the work
of Ordericus is not a general history of the Christian
centuries, for the general portion is chiefly introductory
and comparatively brief; his real theme is Norman his-
tory, centring, of course, round the vicissitudes of his
convent and the adjacent territory, but also giving a
large place to the deeds of the Normans in that greater
Normandy which they had created beyond the sea, in
England, in Italy, and in Palestine. He is thus not only
Norman but pan-Norman. The plan, or rather lack of
plan, of his thirteen books reflects the changes of design
and the interruptions which the work underwent ; there
NORMAN LIFE AND CULTURE 183
is some repetition, much confusion, and a distinct ab-
sence of architectonic art. These defects, however, do
not diminish the prime merit of the work, which lies in
its replacement of the jejune annals of the older type by
a full and ample historical narrative, rich in detail,
vivid in presentation, giving space to literary history
and everyday life as well as to the affairs of church and
state, and constituting as a whole the most faithful and
living picture which has reached us of the European
society of his age. Neither in the world nor of the world,
this monk had a ripe knowledge of men and affairs, in-
dependence of judgment, a feeling for personality, and
a sure touch in characterization. He had also a Latin
style of his own, labored at times rather than affected,
ready to show its skill in well-turned verse or in well-
rounded speeches after the fashion of the classical his-
torians, but direct and vigorous and not unworthy of
the flexible and sonorous language which he had made
his own.
Latin, however, was an exclusive possession of the
clergy, and not of all of them, if we can argue from
the examinations held by Eudes Rigaud, and by the
middle of the twelfth century the Norman baronage
began to demand from the clerks an account of the
Anglo-Norman past in a language which they too could
understand. History in the vernacular develops in
France earlier than elsewhere, and in France earliest in
Normandy and in the English lands which shared the
184 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY
Norman speech and produced the oldest surviving
example of such a work, the Histoire des Engles of Gai-
mar, written between 1147 and 1151. The chief centre
for the production of vernacular history was the court
of that patron of ecclesiastical and secular learning,
Henry II, and his Aquitanian queen, to one or both of
whom are dedicated the histories of Wace and Benoit
de Sainte-More. Wace, the most interesting of this
group of writers, was a native of Jersey and a clerk of
Caen who turned an honest penny by his compositions
and won a canonry at Bayeux by the most important of
them, his Roman de Rou. Beginning with Rollo, from
whom it takes its name, this follows the course of
Norman history to the victory of Henry I in 1106, in
simple and agreeable French verse based upon the
Latin chroniclers but incorporating something from
popular tradition. Such a compilation adds little to our
knowledge, but by the time of the Third Crusade we
find a contemporary narrative in French verse prepared
by a jongleur of Evreux who accompanied Richard on
the expedition. If we ignore the line, at best very faint,
which in works of this sort separates history from
romance and from works of edification, we must carry
the Norman pioneers still further back, to the Vie de
Saint Alexis which we owe probably to a canon of
Rouen in the eleventh century, and to the great national
epic of mediaeval France, the Chanson de Roland, pre-
Norman in origin but Norman in its early form, which
NORMAN LIFE AND CULTURE 185
has recently been ascribed to Turold, bishop of Bayeux
after the death of the more famous Odo and later for
many years a monk of Bee. There is, one may object,
nothing monastic in this wonderful paean of mediaeval
knighthood, whose religion is that of the God of battles
who has never lied, and whose hero meets death with
his face toward Spain and his imperishable sword be-
neath him ; but knights and monks had more in common
than was once supposed, and we are coming to see that
the monasteries, especially the monasteries of the great
highways, had a large share in the making, if not in the
final writing, of the mediaeval epic as well as the medi-
aeval chronicles.
When we reach works like these, the literary history
of Normandy merges in that of France, as well as in
that of England, which, thanks to the Norman Con-
quest and the Norman empire, long remained a literary
province of France. We must not, however, leave this
vernacular literature, as yet almost wholly the work of
clerks, with the impression that its dominant quality is
romantic or poetical. Its versified form was merely the
habit of an age which found verse easy to remember;
the literature itself, as Gaston Paris has well observed, 1
was "essentially a literature of instruction for the use
of laymen," fit material for prose and not for poetry.
It is thus characteristically Norman in subject as well as
in speech simple and severe in form, devout and
1 La literature normande avant I'annexion, p. 22.
186 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY
edifying rather than mystical, given to history rather
than to speculation, and seeking through the moralized
science of lapidaries and bestiaries and astronomical
manuals to aid the everyday life of a serious and practi-
cal people.
Normandy had also something to say to the world in
that most mediaeval of arts, architecture, and especially
in that Romanesque form of building which flourished
in the eleventh century and the first half of the twelfth.
The great Norman churches of this epoch were the
natural outgrowth of its life the wealth of the ab-
beys, the splendor of princely prelates like Odo of Bay-
eux and Geoffrey of Coutances, the piety and penance
of William the Conqueror and Matilda, expiating by
two abbeys their marriage within the prohibited de-
grees, the religious devotion of the people as illustrated
by the processions of 1145. The biographer of Geoffrey
de Mowbray, for example, tells 1 us how the bishop la-
bored day and night for the enlargement and beautifi-
cation of his church at Coutances (dedicated in 1056),
buying the better half of the city from the duke to get
space for the cathedral and palace, travelling as far as
Apulia to secure gold and gems and vestments from
Robert Guiscard and his fellow Normans, and main-,
taining from his rents a force of sculptors, masons,
1 Gallia Christiana, xi, instr., coll. 219-23; Mortet, Recueil de textes
relatifs a I'histoire de I' architecture (Paris, 1911), pp. 71-75.
NORMAN LIFE AND CULTURE 187
goldsmiths, and workers in glass. Nearly forty years
later, when the church had been damaged by earth-
quake and tempest, he brought a plumber from England
to restore the leaden roof and the fallen stones of the
towers and to replace the gilded cock which crowned
the whole ; and when he saw the cock once more glisten-
ing at the summit, he gave thanks to God and shortly
passed away, pronouncing eternal maledictions upon
those who should injure his church. Of this famous
structure nothing now remains above the ground, for
the noble towers which look from the hill of Coutances
toward the western sea are Gothic, like the rest of the
church; and for surviving monuments of cathedrals of
the eleventh and twelfth centuries we must go to the
naves of Bayeux and Evreux and the St. Romain's tower
of Rouen. Even here the impression will be fragmen-
tary, broken by Gothic choirs and by towers and spires
of a still later age, just as the simple lines of the early
church of Mont-Saint-Michel are swallowed up in the
ornate Gothic of the loftier parts of the great pile. Edi-
fices wholly of the Romanesque period must be sought
in the parish churches in which Normandy is so rich,
or in the larger abbey-churches which meet us at Les-
say, Cerisy, Caen, Jumieges, and Bocherville. Jumieges,
though in ruins, preserves the full outline of the style of
the middle of the eleventh century; Caen presents in
the Abbaye aux Hommes and the Abbaye aux Dames
two perfect though contrasted types of a few years
188 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY
later, the one simple and austere, the other richer and
less grand. Freeman may seem fanciful when he sug-
gests that these sister churches express the spirit of
their respective founders, "the imperial will of the con-
quering duke" and the milder temper of his "loving
and faithful duchess," 1 but in any event they are Nor-
man and typical of their age and country. There are
elements in the ornamentation of Norman churches in
this period which have been explained by reference to
the distant influence of the Scandinavian north or the
Farther East, there are perhaps traces of Lombard
architecture in their plan, but their structure as a whole
is as Norman as the stone of which they are built, dis-
tinguished by local traits from the other varieties of
French Romanesque to which this period gave rise.
Not the least Norman feature of these buildings is the
persistent common sense of design and execution; the
Norman architects did not attempt the architecturally
impossible or undertake tasks, like the cathedral of
Beauvais, which they were unable to finish in their own
time and style. "What they began, they completed,"
writes the Nestor of American historians in his sym-
pathetic interpretation of the art and the spirit of Mont-
Saint-Michel and Chartres. In Norman art, as in other
phases of Norman achievement, the last word cannot
be said till we have followed it far beyond the borders of
the duchy, northward to Durham, "half house of God,
1 Norman Conquest, in, p. 109.
NORMAN LIFE AND CULTURE 189
half castle 'gainst the Scot," and the other massive
monuments which made ' Norman ' synonymous with
a whole style and period of English architecture, and
southward to those more ornate structures which
Norman princes reared at Bari and Cefalu, Palermo
and Monreale. "No art either Greek or Byzantine,
Italian, or Arab " says Henry Adams, 1 "has ever
created two religious types so beautiful, so serious, so
impressive, and yet so different, as Mont-Saint-Michel
watching over its northern ocean, and Monreale, look-
ing down over its forests of orange and lemon, on Pa-
lermo and the Sicilian seas."
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
There is no general account of Norman life and culture in any pe-
riod of the Middle Ages, and no general study of Norman feudalism.
For conditions in France generally, see Luchaire, La societe frangaise
au temps de Philippe-Auguste (Paris, 1909), translated by Krehbiel
(New York, 1912) ; for England, Miss M. Bateson, Medicsval England
(New York and London, 1904). On castles, see C. Enlart, Manuel
d'archeologie franc,aise, II (Paris, 1904, with bibliography), and
Mrs. E. S. Armitage, The Early Norman Castles of the British Isles
(London, 1912). For William the Marshal, see Paul Meyer's intro-
duction to his edition of the Histoire de Guillaume le Marechal (Paris,
1891-1901); the poem has been utilized by Jusserand for his account
of tournaments, Les sports et jeux d'exercice dans Vancienne France
(Paris, 1901), ch. 2.
The work of Delisle, Etudes sur la condition de la classe agricole et
Vital de V agriculture en Normandie au moyen age (Evreux, 1851), is a
classic.
1 Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres, p. 4.
190 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY
The best studies of Norman municipal institutions are A. CheVuel,
Histoire de Rouen pendant Vepoque communale (Rouen, 1843); A.
Giry, Les ktablissements de Rouen (Paris, 1883-85), supplemented by
Valin, Recherches sur les origines de la commune de Rouen (Precis of the
Rouen Academy, 1911); Charles de Beaurepaire, La Vicomte de VEau
de Rouen (fevreux, 1856); E. de Freville, Memoir e sur le commerce
maritime de Rouen (Rouen, 1857); Miss Bateson, The Laws of Bre-
teuil, in English Historical Review, xv, xvi ; R. Gnestal, La tenure en
bourgage (Paris, 1900) ; Legras, Le bourgage de Caen (Paris, 1911).
/
The excellent account of the Norman church in H. Bohmer, Kirche
und Staat in England und in der Normandie (Leipzig, 1899), stops
with 1154. On Odo and on Philip d'Harcourt see V. Bourrienne's
articles in the Revue Catholique de Normandie, vii-x, xvm-xxm.
The register of Eudes Rigaud (ed. Bonnin, Rouen, 1852) is analyzed
by Delisle, in Bibliotheque de ikcole des Charles, vni, pp. 479-99; the
Miracula Ecclesie Constantiensis and the letter of Abbot Haimo are
discussed by him, ibid., ix, pp. 339-52; xxi, pp. 113-39. For the
mortuary rolls, see his facsimile edition of the Rouleau mortuaire du
B. Vital (Paris, 1909). The best monograph on a Norman monastery
is that of R. N. Sauvage, Uabbaye de S. Martin de Troarn (Caen,
1911), where other such studies are listed. See also Genestal, Role des
monasteres comme etablissements de credit etudie en Normandie (Paris,
1901), and Delisle's edition of Robert of Torigni.
The schools of Bee are described by A. Poree, Histoire de Vabbaye
du Bee (fivreux, 1901). Notices of the various Norman historians are
given by A. Molinier, Les sources de Vhistoire de France (Paris, 1901-
06), especially II, chs. 25, 33. For Ordericus and St. Evroul see
Delisle's introduction to the edition of the Historia Ecclesiastica pub-
lished by the Societe de 1'Histoire de France, and the volumes issued
by the Societe historique et archeologique de 1'Orne on the occasion of
the Ftes of 1912 (Alencon, 1912). Other early catalogues of libra-
ries, including that of Philip of Bayeux, are in the first two volumes
of the Catalogue general des MSS. des departements (Paris, 1886-88).
For the vernacular literature, see Gaston Paris, La litterature normande
avant Vannexion (Paris, 1899); and L. E. Menger, The Anglo-Norman
Dialect (New York, 1904). For the latest discussions of the Chanson
de Roland see J. Bedier, Les legendes epiques, in (Paris, 1912); and W.
Ta vernier's studies in the Zeitschrift fur franzosische Sprache und Lit-
NORMAN LIFE AND CULTURE 191
teratur, XXXVI-XLII (1910-14), and the Zeitschrift fur romanische
Philologie, xxxvm (1914). Enlart, Manuel d" archeologie fran$aise, I,
mentions the principal works on Norman ecclesiastical architecture.
See also R. de Lasteyrie, L 'architecture religieuse en France a Vepoque
romane (Paris, 1912), ch. 15; Enlart, Rouen (Paris, 1904); H. Pren-
tout, Caen et Bayeux (Paris, 1900) ; Henry Adams, Mont-Saint-Michel
and Chartres (Boston, 1913).
VII
THE NORMANS IN THE SOUTH
OF all the achievements of the heroic age of
Norman history, none were more daring in
execution or more brilliant in results than the
exploits of Norman barons in the lands of the Mediter-
ranean. Battling against the infidel in Spain, in Sicily,
and in Syria, scattering the papal army and becoming
the humble vassals of the Holy See, overcoming Lom-
bard princes and Byzantine generals, the Normans were
the glorious adventurers of the Mediterranean world
throughout that eleventh century which constituted
the great period of Norman expansion. Then, masters
of southern Italy and Sicily, they put 'to work their
powers of assimilation and organization and created a
strong, well-governed state and a rich, composite civili-
- zation which were the wonder of Europe. If one were
tempted to ascribe the successes of the Normans in
England to happy accident or to the unique personality
of William the Conqueror, the story of Norman achieve-
ment in the south, the work of scattered bands of simple
barons without any assistance from the reigning dukes,
would be conclusive proof of the creative power of the
Norman genius for conquest and administration.
THE NORMANS IN THE SOUTH 193
The earliest relations of the Normans with the coun-
tries of the Mediterranean were the outgrowth of those
pilgrimages to holy places which play so important a
part in mediaeval life and literature. Originating in the
early veneration for the shrines associated with the be-
ginnings of Christianity and the sufferings and death of
the Christian martyrs, pilgrimages were in course of
time reenforced by the more practical motives of healing
and penance, until the crowds of pilgrims who haunted
the roads in the later Middle Ages included many a
hoary offender who sought to expiate his sins by this
particular form of good works. Sometimes these peni-
tents would be sent to wander about the earth fora defi-
nite time, more frequently they would be assigned a
journey to a neighboring shrine or to some more famous
fountain of healing grace, such as Compostela, Rome,
or Jerusalem. Compostela, hiding among the Galician
hills the bones of no less an apostle than St. James the
Greater, who became in time the patron saint of Spain
and spread the name of Santiago over two continents,
was early a centre of pilgrimage from France, and
claimed as one of its devotees the mighty Charlemagne,
the footsteps of whose paladins men traced through the
dark defiles of the Pyrenees in the Song of Roland, as
well as in the special itinerary prepared for the use of
French pilgrims to the tomb of the saint. Rome was of
course more important, for it claimed two apostles, as
well as their living successor on the pontifical throne.
194 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY
It needed no pious invention to prove that Charlemagne
had been in Rome and had received the imperial crown
as he knelt in St. Peter's, and men told how in their own
time the great king Canute had betaken himself thither
with staff and scrip and many horses laden with gold
and silver. Already the number of strangers in Rome
was so great that guide-books were compiled indicating
its principal sights and marvels " seeing Rome," we
might call them ; and as the processions wound into
sight of the Eternal City, they burst into its praise in
that wonderful pilgrim's chorus:
O Roma nobilis, orbis et domina,
Cunctarum urbium excellentissima,
Roseo martyrum sanguine rubea,
Albis et virginum liliis Candida;
Salutem dicimus tibi per omnia,
Te benedicimus: salve per secula.
Jerusalem was most precious of all, by reason both of
its sacred associations and of the difficulty of the jour-
ney. No Charlemagne was needed to justify resort to
the Holy Sepulchre, where the mother of the great em-
peror Constantine had built the first shrine; but the
great Charles had a hostel constructed there for Prank-
ish pilgrims, and soon legend makes him, too, follow the
road to Constantinople and Jerusalem, as we are re-
minded in the great Charlemagne window at Char-
tres. There were manuals for the pilgrim to Jerusalem
also, but these were chiefly occupied with how to reach
the heavenly city, though one of them contents itself
THE NORMANS IN THE SOUTH 195
with advising the traveller to keep his face always to
the east and ask God's help.
In all this life of the road the Normans took their full
share. Michelet would have it that their motive was the
Norman spirit of gain/no longer able to plunder neigh-
bors at home, but glad of the chance of making some-
thing on the way and the certainty of gaining a hundred
per cent by assuring the soul's salvation at the journey's
end. Certainly they were not afraid to travel nor averse
to taking advantage of the opportunities which travel
might bring. We find them, sometimes singly and
sometimes in armed bands, on the road to Spain, to
Rome, and to the Holy City. At one time it may be
the duke himself, Robert the Magnificent, who wends
his way with a goodly company to the Holy Sepulchre,
only to die at Nicaea on his return; or a holy abbot,
like Thierry of Saint-fivroul, denied the sight of the
earthly Jerusalem which he sought, but turning his
thoughts to the city not made with hands as he com-
posed himself for his last sleep before a lonely altar on
the shores of Cyprus. In other cases we find the mili-
tary element preponderating, as with Roger of Toeni,
who led an army against the Saracens of Spain in the
time of Duke Richard the Good, or Robert Crispin
half a century later, fighting in Spain, sojourning in
Italy, and finally passing into the service of the em-
peror at Constantinople, where he had "much triumph
and much victory." In this stirring world the line be-
196 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY
tween pilgrim and adventurer was not easy to draw,
and the Normans did not always draw it. Often "their
penitent's garb covered a coat of mail," and they carried
a great sword along with their pilgrim's staff and wal-
let. 1 We must remember that Normandy exported in
this period a considerable supply of younger sons, bred
to a life of warfare and fed upon the rich nourishment
of the Chansons zfe gestes^ but turned loose upon the
world to seek elsewhere the lands and booty and deeds
of renown which they could no longer expect to find at
home. The conquest of England gave an outlet to this
movement in one direction; the conquest of southern
Italy absorbed it in another.
In the eleventh century, as in the early nineteenth,
Italy was merely a geographical expression. The unity
of law and government which it had enjoyed under the
Romans had been long since broken by the Lombard
invasion and the Prankish conquest, which drew the
centre and north of the peninsula into the currents of
western politics, while the south continued to look upon
Constantinople as its capital and Sicily passed under
the dominion of the Prophet and the Fatimite caliphs
of Cairo. Separated from the rest of Italy by the
lofty barrier of the Abruzzi and the wedge of territory
which the Papacy had driven through the lines of com-
munication to the west, the southern half followed a
1 Delarc, Les Normands en Italic, p. 35.
THE NORMANS IN THE SOUTH 197
different course of historical development from the days
of the Lombards to those of Garibaldi. Nature had
thrust it into the central place in the Mediterranean
world, to which the gulfs and bays of its long coast-line
opened the rich hinterland of Campania and Apulia and
the natural highways beyond. Here had sprung up
those cities of Magna Graecia which were the cradle of
Italian civilization; here the Romans had their chief
harbors at Pozzuoli and Brindisi and their great naval
base at Gape Miseno; here the ports of Gaeta, Naples,
Amain, and Bari kept intercourse with the East open
during the Middle Ages. And if the genius of Hamilcar
and Hannibal had once sought to tear the south and its
islands from Italy to unite them with a Carthaginian
empire, their close relations with Africa had again been
asserted by the raids and conquests of the Saracens,
while their connection with the East made them the last
stronghold of Byzantine power beyond the Adriatic.
In the long run, however, it has been pointed out that, if
the culture of this region came from the south, its mas-
ters have come from the north ; l and its new masters
of the eleventh century were_tojmify and consolidate
it at the very time when the rest of the peninsula was
breaking up into warring communes anclprincipalities.
In the year 1000 the unity of thesouth was largely
formal. The Eastern Empire still claimed authority,
but the northern region was entirely independent under
1 Bertaux, L'art dans V Italic mtridionale, p. 15.
198 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY
the Lombard princes of Capua, Benevento, and Sa-
lerno, while the maritime republics of Naples, Gaeta,
and Amalfi owed at best only a nominal subjection.
The effective power of Byzantium was limited to the
extreme south, where its governors and tax-collectors
ruled in both Apulia and Calabria. Of the two dis-
tricts Calabria, now the toe of the boot, was the more
Greek, in religion and language as well as in political
allegiance, but its scattered cities were unable to defend
themselves against a vigorous attack. The large Lom-
bard population of Apulia retained its speech and its
law and showed no attachment to its Greek rulers,
whose exactions in taxes and military service brought
neither peace and security within nor protection from
the raids of the Saracens. There was abundant material
for a revolt, and the Normans furnished the occasion.
The first definite trace of the Normans in Italy ap-
pears in or about the year 1016, when a band returning
from Jerusalem is found at Monte Gargano on the east-
ern coast. There was here an ancient shrine of St.
Michael, older even than the famous monastery of St.
Michael of the Peril on the confines of Normandy with
which it had shared the red cloak of its patron, and a
natural object of veneration on the part of Norman
pilgrims, who well understood the militant virtues of
the archangel of the flaming sword. Here the Normans
fell into conversation with a Lombard named Meles,
who had recently led an unsuccessful revolt in Apulia
THE NORMANS IN THE SOUTH 199
and who told them that with a few soldiers like them-
selves he could easily overcome the Greeks, whereupon
they promised to return with their countrymen and as-
sist him. Another story of the same year tells of a body
of forty valiant Normans, also on their way home from
the Holy Sepulchre, who found a Saracen army besieg-
ing Salerno and, securing arms and horses from the na-
tives, defeated and drove off the infidel host. Besought
by the inhabitants to stay, they replied that they had
acted only for the love of God, but consented to carry
home lemons, almonds, rich vestments, and other prod-
ucts of the south as a means of attracting other Nor-
mans to make their homes in this land of milk and
honey. Legend doubtless has its part in these tales,
the good Orderic makes the twenty thousand Saracens
in front of Salerno flee before a hundred Normans !
but the general account of the occasion of the Norman
expeditions seems correct. Possibly a Lombard emis-
sary accompanied the pilgrims home to help in the re-
cruiting; certainly in 1017 the Normans are back in
force and ready for business. There was, however,
nothing sensational or decisive in the early exploits, of
the Normans on Italian soil. The results of the first
campaigns with Meles in northern Apulia were lost in a
serious defeat at Canne, and for many years the Nor-
mans, few in number but brave and skilful, sought
their individual advantage in the serviceoTtKe various
parties in the game of Italian politics, passing from one
200 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY
prince to another as advantage seemed to offer, and
careful not to give to any so decisive a preponderance
that he might dispense with them. The first Norman
principality was established about 1030 at A versa, just
north of Naples, where the money of Rouen continued
to circulate more than a century afterward; but such
definite points of crystallization make their appearance
but slowly, and the body of the Normans, constantly
recruited from home, lived as mercenaries on pay and
pillage. Their reputation was, however, established,
and when the prince of Salerno was asked by the Pope
to disband his Norman troop, he replied that it had cost
him much time and money to collect this precious
treasure, for whom the soldiers of the enemy were "as
meat before the devouring lions." 1
Among the Norman leaders the house of Hauteville
stands out preeminently, both as the dominant force in
this formative period and as the ancestor of the later
princes of southern Italy and Sicily. The head of the
family, Tancred, held the barony of Hauteville, in the
neighborhood of Coutances, but his patrimony was
quite insufficient to provide for his twelve sons, most of
whom went to seek their fortune in the south, an elder
group consisting of William of the Iron Arm, Drogo,
and Humphrey, and a younger set of half-brothers, of
whom the most important are Robert Guiscard and
Roger. At the outset scarcely distinguishable from
1 Aime, Ystoire de li Normant, p. 124.
THE NORMANS IN THE SOUTH 201
their fellow-warriors, li fortissime Normant of their his-
torian Aim, the exploits of these brothers are cele-
brated by the later chroniclers in a way which reminds
us less of sober history than of the heroes of the sagas or
the chansons de gestes. William of the Iron Arm and
Drogo seem to have arrived in the south about 1036
and soon signalized themselves in the first invasion of
Sicily and in the conquest of northern Apulia, where
William was chosen leader, or count, by the other Nor-
mans and at his death in 1046 succeeded by Drogo, who
was soon afterward invested with the county by the
Emperor Henry III. It was apparently in this year
that Robert Guiscard first came to Italy. Refused as-
sistance by his brothers, he hired himself out to various
barons until he was left by Drogo in charge of a small
garrison in the mountains of Calabria. Here he lived
like a brigand, carrying off the cattle and sheep of the
inhabitants and holding the people themselves for ran-
som. On one occasion he laid an ambush for the Greek
commandant of Bisignano whom he had invited to a
conference, and compelled him to pay twenty thousand
golden solidi for his freedom. Brigand as he was, Rob-
ert was more than a mere bandit. His shrewdness and
resourcefulness early gained him the name of Guis-
card, or the wary, and his Byzantine contemporary, the
princess Anna Comnena, has left a portrait of him in
which his towering stature, flashing eye, and bellowing
strength are matched by his overleaping ambition and
202 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY
desire to dominate, his skill in organization, and his
unconquerable will. Allied by marriage to a powerful
baron of the south, he soon began to make headway in
the conquest of Calabria, and while Drogo and his
brother Humphrey were jealous of Robert's advance-
ment, at Humphrey's death in 1057 he was chosen to
succeed as count and leader of the Normans. Leaving to
the youngest brother Roger, just arrived from Haute-
ville, the conquest of Calabria and the first attempts on
Sicily, Guiscard gave his attention particularly to the
affairs of Apulia, and after a series of campaigns and
revolts completed the subjugation of the mainland by
the capture of Bari in 1071. Five years after the battle
of Hastings the whole of southern Italy had passed un-
der Norman rule. The south had been conquered, but
for whom? Robert was no king, and a mere count must
have, for form's sake at least, a feudal superior. And
this part, strangely enough, was taken by the Pope.
The relations of the Normans with the Papacy form
not the least remarkable chapter in the extraordinary
history of their dominion in the south. This period of
expansion coincided with the great movement of re-
vival and reform in the church which was taken up with
vigor by the German Popes of the middle of the century
and culminated some years later in the great pontificate
of Gregory VII. So far as the Italian policy of the Pa-
pacy was concerned, the movement seems to have had
two aspects, an effort to put an end to the disorders
THE NORMANS IN THE SOUTH 203
produced by simony and by the marriage of the clergy,
evils aggravated in the south by the conflicting author-
ity of the Greek and Latin bishops, and a desire to ex-
tend the temporal power and influence of the Pope in
the peninsula. In both of these directions the conquests
of the Normans seemed to threaten the papal interests,
and we are not surprised to find the first of this vigorous
series of Popes, Leo IX, interfering actively in the ec-
clesiastical affairs of the region and acting as the de-
fender of the native population, which appealed to him
and, in the case of Benevento, formally placed itself
under his protection. Finally, with a body of troops
collected in Germany and in other parts of Italy, he met
the Normans in battle at Civitate, in 1053, and suffered
an overwhelming defeat which clearly established the
Norman supremacy in Italy. The Normans could not,
however, follow up their victory as if it had been won
over an ordinary enemy; indeed they seem to have felt
a certain embarrassment in the situation, and after
humbling themselves before the Pope, they treated him
with respect and deference which did not prevent their
keeping him for some months in honorable detention at
Benevento. Plainly the Normans were not to be sub-
dued by force of arms, and it soon became evident to
the reforming party that they would be useful allies
against the Roman nobles and the unreformed clergy,
as well as against the dangerous authority of the Ger-
man emperor. Accordingly in 1059, the year in which
204 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY
the college of cardinals received its first definite constitu-
tion as the electors of the Pope, Nicholas II held a coun-
cil at the Norman hill-fortress of Melfi, attended by the
higher clergy of the south and also by the two chief
Norman princes, Richard of Aversa and Robert Guis-
card. In return for the Pope's investiture of their lands,
these princes took an oath of allegiance and fealty to
the Holy See and agreed to pay an annual rent to the
Pope for their domains; in Robert's oath, which has
been preserved, he styles himself "by the grace of God
and St. Peter duke of Apulia and Calabria and, with
their help, hereafter of Sicily." As duke and vassal of
the Pope, the cattle-thief of the Calabrian mountains
had henceforth a recognized position in feudal society.
Guiscard, however, was not the man to rest content
with the position he had won, or to interpret his obliga-
tion of vassalage as an obligation of obedience. He was
soon in the field again, pushing up the west coast to
Amain and up the east into the Abruzzi, taking no great
pains as he went to distinguish the lands of St. Peter
from the lands of others. The Pope began to ask himself
what he had secured by the alliance, and a definite
break was soon followed by the excommunication of the
Norman leader. By this time the papal see was occu-
pied by Gregory VII, who as Hildebrand had long been
the power behind the throne under his predecessors, the
greatest, the most intense, and the most uncompromis-
ing of the Popes of the eleventh century; yet even he
THE NORMANS IN THE SOUTH 205
failed to bend the Norman to his will. Fearing a com-
bination with his bitterest enemy, the Emperor Henry
IV, he finally made peace with Guiscard, and in the re-
newal of fealty and investiture which followed, the
recent conquests of the Normans were expressly ex-
cepted. No great time elapsed before the Pope was
forced to make a desperate appeal for Norman aid.
After repeated attempts Henry IV got control of Rome,
shut up Gregory in the Castle of Sant' Angelo, and in-
stalled another Pope in his place, who crowned Henry
emperor in St. Peter's. Then, in May, 1084, Guiscard's
army came. The emperor made what might be called ' a
strategic retreat ' to the north, the siege of Sant' Angelo
was raised, and Rome was given over to butchery and
pillage by the Normans and their Saracen troops. Fire
followed the sword, till the greater part of the city had
been burned. Ancient remains and Christian churches
such as San Clemente were ruined by the flames, and
quarters like the Caelian Hill have never recovered
from the destruction. The monuments of ancient Rome
suffered more from the Normans than from the Van-
dals. Unable to maintain himself in Rome without a
protector, Gregory accompanied his Norman allies
southward as far as Salerno, now a Norman city, where
he died the following year, protesting to the last that he
died in exile because he had "loved justice and hated
iniquity." The year 1085 also saw the end of Robert
Guiscard. Sought as an ally alike by the emperors of
206 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY
the East and of the West, he had begun three years
earlier a series of campaigns against the Greek empire,
seizing the ports of Avlona and Durazzo which were
then as now the keys to the Adriatic, and battling with
the Venetians by sea and the Greeks by land until his
troops penetrated as far as Thessaly. He finally suc-
cumbed to illness on the island of Cephalonia at the age
of seventy, and was buried in his Apulian monastery of
Venosa, where Norman monks sang the chants of
Saint-fivroul over a tomb which commemorated him as
"the terror of the world":
Hie terror mundi Guiscardus; hie expulit Urbe
Quern Ligures regem, Roma, Lemannus habent.
Parthus, Arabs, Macedumque phalanx non texit Alexin.
At fuga; sed Venetum nee fuga nee pelagus. 1
With the passing of Robert Guiscard the half-century
of Norman conquest is practically at an end, to be fol-
lowed by another half-century of rivalry and consolida-
tion, until Roger II united all the Norman conquests
under a single ruler and took the title of king in 1130,
just a hundred years after the foundation of the first
Norman principality at Aversa. Guiscard 's lands and
title of duke passed to his son Roger, generally called
Roger Borsa to distinguish him from his uncle and
cousin of the same name. The Norman possessions in
Calabria and the recent acquisitions in Sicily remained
in the hands of Guiscard's brother Count Roger, nomi-
1 William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regum, p. 322.
THE NORMANS IN THE SOUTH 207
nally a vassal of the duke of Apulia, while the northern
principality of Capua kept its independence, to be sub-
sequently exchanged for feudal vassalage. Roger of
Apulia, however, was a weak ruler, in spite of the good
will of the church and his uncle's support, and the re-
volt of his brother Bohemond and the Apulian barons
threatened the land with feudal disintegration. Want
of governance was likewise writ large over the reign of
his son William, who succeeded as duke in 1 1 1 1 and ruled
till 1127. Guiscard's real successor as a political and
military leader was his brother Roger, conqueror and
organizer of Sicily and founder of a state which his
more famous son turned into a kingdom.
Once master of Calabria, Count Roger had begun to
cast longing eyes beyond the Straits of Messina at the
rich island which has in all ages proved a temptation to
the rulers of the south. No member of the house of
Hauteville, their panegyrist tells us, ever saw a neigh-
bor's lands without wanting them for himself, and in
this case there was profit for the soul as well as for the
body if the count could "win back to the worship of the
true God a land given over to infidelity, and administer
temporally for the divine service the fruits and rents
usurped by a race unmindful of God." * The language
is that of Geoffrey Malaterra; the excuse meets us
throughout the world's history six centuries earlier
when Clovis bore it ill that the Arian Visigoths should
1 Geoffrey Malaterra, H, p. i.
208 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY
possess a fair portion of Gaul which might become his,
six centuries later when Emmanuel Downing thought
it sin to tolerate the devil-worship of the Narragansetts
"if upon a Just warre the Lord should deliver them"
to be exchanged for the "gaynefull pilladge" of negro
slaves; 1 nor is the doctrine without advocates in our
own day. We may think of the conquest of Sicily as a
sort of crusade before the Crusades, decreed by no
church council and spread abroad by no preaching or
privileges, but conceived and executed by Norman en-
terprise and daring. Like the greater crusades in the
East, it profited by the disunion of the Moslem; like
them, too, it did not scruple to make alliances with the
infidel and to leave him in peaceful cultivation of his
lands when all was over.
The conquest of Sicily began with the capture of
Messina in 1061 and occupied thirty years. It was
chiefly the work of Roger, though Guiscard aided him
throughout the earlier years and claimed a share in the
results for himself, as well as vassalage for Roger's por-
tion. The decisive turning-point was a joint enterprise,
the siege and capture of Palermo in 1072, which gave
the Normans control of the Saracen capital, the largest
city in Sicily, with an all-anchoring harbor from which
it took its name. The Saracens, however, still held the
chief places of the island: the ancient Carthaginian
strongholds of the west and centre, Eryx and 'inex-
1 Massachusetts Historical Society Collections, fourth series, vi, p. 65.
THE NORMANS IN THE SOUTH 209
pugnable Enna,' known since mediaeval times as Cas-
trogiovanni; Girgenti, "most beautiful city of mortals,"
with its ancient temples and olive groves rising from the
shores of the African Sea; Taormina, looking up at the
snows and fires of Etna and forth over Ionian waters to
the bold headlands of Calabria ; and Syracuse, sheltering
a Saracen fleet in that great harbor which had wit-
nessed the downfall of Athenian greatness. To subdue
all these and what lay between required nineteen years
of hard fighting, varied, of course, by frequent visits to
Roger's possessions on the mainland and frequent ex-
peditions in aid of his nephew, but requiring, even when
the great count was present in person, military and
diplomatic skill of a high order. When, however, the
work was done and the last Saracen stronghold, Noto,
surrendered in 1091, Count Roger had under his do-
minion a strong and consolidated principality, where
Greeks and Mohammedans enjoyed tolerance for their
speech and their faith, where a Norman fortress had
been constructed in every important town, and where
the barons, holding in general small and scattered fiefs,
owed loyal obedience to the count who had made their
fortunes, a sharp contrast to the turbulent feudalism of
Apulia, which looked upon the house of Hauteville as
leaders but not as masters. Roger was also in a position
to treat with a free hand the problems of the church,
reorganizing at his pleasure the dioceses which had dis-
appeared under Mohammedan rule, and receiving from
210 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY
Pope Urban II in 1098 for himself and his heirs the dig-
nity of apostolic legate in Sicily, so that other legates
were excluded and the Pope could treat with the Sicilian
church only through the count. This extraordinary
privilege, the foundation of the so-called 'Sicilian mon-
archy' in ecclesiastical matters, was the occasion of
ever-recurring disputes in later times, but the success
of Roger's crusade against the infidel seemed at the
moment to justify so unusual a concession.
At his death in 1 101 Roger I left behind him two sons,
Simon and Roger, under the regency of their mother
Adelaide. Four years later Simon died, leaving as the
undisputed heir of the Sicilian and Calabrian domin-
ions the ten-year-old Roger II, who at the age of sixteen
took personal control of the government. During the
regency the capital had crossed the Straits of Messina
from the old Norman headquarters in the Calabrian
hills at Mileto, where Roger I lay buried; henceforth it
was fixed at Palermo, fit centre for a Mediterranean
state. When his cousin William died, Roger II was
quick to seize the Apulian inheritance, which he had to
vindicate in the field not only against the revolted
barons but against the Pope, anxious to prevent at all
cost the consolidation of the Norman possessions in the
hands of a single ruler. Securing his investiture with
Apulia from Pope Honorius II in 1128, Roger two years
later took advantage of the disputed election to the
Papacy to obtain from Anacletus II the dignity of king;
THE NORMANS IN THE SOUTH 211
and on Christmas Day, 1130, he was crowned and
anointed at Palermo, taking henceforth the title "by
the grace of God king of Sicily, Apulia, and Calabria,
help and shield of the Christians, heir and son of the
great Count Roger." What this kingdom was to mean
in the history and culture of Europe we shall consider
in the next lecture.
Meanwhile, in order to complete our survey of the
deeds of the Normans in the south, we must take some
notice of the part they played in the Crusades and in
the Latin East. A movement which comprised the
whole of western Europe, and even made Jerusalem-
farers out of their kinsmen of the Scandinavian north,
could not help affecting a people such as the Normans,
who had already served a long apprenticeship as pil-
grims to distant shrines and as soldiers of the cross in
Spain and Sicily. Three Norman prelates were present
at Clermont in 1095 when Pope Urban fired the Latin
world with the cry Dieu le veut, and they carried back
to Normandy the council's decrees and the news of the
holy war. The crusade does not, however, seem to have
had any special preachers in Normandy, where we hear
of no such scenes as accompanied the fiery progress of
Peter the Hermit through Lorraine and the Rhineland,
and of none of the popular movements which sent men
to their death under Peter's leadership in the Danube
valley and beyond the Bosporus. Pioneers and men-at-
212 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY
arms rather than enthusiasts and martyrs, the Normans
kept their heads when Europe was seething with the
new adventure, and the combined band of Normans,
Bretons, and English which set forth in September,
1096, does not appear to have been very large. At its
head, however, rode the duke of Normandy, Robert
Curthose, called by his contemporaries ' the soft duke,'
knightly, kind-hearted, and easy-going, incapable of
refusing a favor to any one, under whom the good peace
of the Conqueror's time had given way to general dis-
order and confusion. Impecunious as always, he had
been obliged to pawn the duchy to his brother William
Rufus in order to raise the funds for the expedition.
With him went his fighting uncle, Odo of Bayeux, and
the duke's chaplain Arnulf, more famous in due time as
patriarch of Jerusalem. It does not appear that Robert
was an element of special strength in the crusading
host, although he fought by the side of the other leaders
at Nicaea and Antioch and at the taking of Jerusalem.
He spent the winter pleasantly in the south of Italy on
his way to the East, so that he reached Constantinople
after most of the others had gone ahead, and he slipped
away from the hardships of the siege of Antioch to take
his ease amidst the pleasant fare and Cyprian wines of
Laodicea 1 Robert was always something of a Laodi-
cean! When his vows as a crusader had been fulfilled at
the Holy Sepulchre, he withdrew from the stern work of
1 Laodicea ad mare, not the Phrygian Laodicea of the Apocalypse.
THE NORMANS IN THE SOUTH 213
the new kingdom of Jerusalem and started home, bring-
ing back a Norman bride of the south for the blessing of
St. Michael of the Peril, and hanging up his standard in
his mother's abbey-church at Caen. Legend, however,
was kind to Robert: before long he had killed a giant
Saracen in single combat and refused the crown of the
Latin kingdom because he felt himself unworthy, until
he became the hero of a whole long-forgotten cycle of
romance.
The real Norman heroes of the First Crusade must be
sought elsewhere, again among the descendants of Tan-
cred of Hauteville. When Robert Curthose and his
companions reached the south on their outward jour-
ney, they found the Norman armies engaged in the
siege of Amain under the great Count Roger and Guis-
card's eldest son Bohemond, a fair-haired, deep-chested
son of the north, "so tall in stature that he stood above
the tallest men by nearly a cubit." The fresh enter-
prise caught the imagination of Bohemond, who had
lost the greater part of his father's heritage to his
brother Roger Borsa and saw the possibility of a new
realm in the East; and, cutting a great cloak into
crosses for himself and his followers, he withdrew from
the siege and began preparations for the expedition to
Palestine. Among those who bound themselves to the
great undertaking were five grandsons and two great-
grandsons of Tancred of Hauteville, chief among them
Bohemond's nephew Tancred, whose loyalty and prow-
214 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY
ess were to be proved on many a desperate battle-field
of Syria. Commanding what was perhaps the strongest
contingent in the crusading army and profiting by the
experience of his campaigns in the Balkans in his fa-
ther's reign, Bohemond proved the most vigorous and
resourceful leader of the First Crusade. His object,
however, had little connection with the relief of the
Eastern Empire or the liberation of the Holy City, but
was directed toward the formation of a great Syrian
principality for himself, such as the other members of
his family had created in Italy and Sicily. As the centre
for such a dominion Antioch was far better suited than
Jerusalem both commercially and strategically, and
Bohemond took good care to secure the control of this
city for himself before obtaining the entrance of the
crusading forces. He showed the Norman talent of con-
ciliating the native elements Greek, Syrian, and Ar-
menian in his new state, and for a time seemed in
a fair way to build up a real Norman kingdom in the
East. In the end, however, the Eastern Empire and
the Turks proved too strong for him ; he lost precious
months in captivity among the Mussulmans, and when
he had raised another great army in France and Italy
some years later, he committed the folly of a land ex-
pedition against Constantinople which ended in disas-
ter. Bohemond did not return to the East, and his
bones are still shown to visitors beneath an Oriental
mausoleum at Canosa, where Latin verses lament his
THE NORMANS IN THE SOUTH 215
loss to the cause of the Holy Land. Tancred struggled
gallantly to maintain the position in Syria during his
uncle's absence, but he fought a losing fight, and the
principality of Antioch dwindled into an outlying de-
pendency of the kingdom of Jerusalem, in which rela-
tion it maintained its existence until the line became
extinct with Bohemond VII in 1287.
Two other Norman princes appear as leaders in the
course of the later Crusades, Richard the Lion-Hearted,
whose participation in the Third Crusade we have al-
ready had occasion to notice, and Frederick II, who
succeeded to the power and the policy of his Norman
ancestors of the south. For each of these rulers, how-
ever, the crusade was merely an episode in the midst of
other undertakings; the day of permanent Frankish
states in Syria had gone by, and neither made any
attempt at founding a Syrian kingdom. The Fourth
Crusade was in no sense a Norman movement, so that
the Normans did not contribute to the new France
which the partition of the Eastern empire created on
the Greek mainland, where Frankish castles rose to
perpetuate the memory of Burgundian dukes of Athens
and Lombard wardens of the pass of Thermopylae. In
the Frankish states of Syria we find a certain number of
Norman names but no considerable Norman element
in the Latin population. The fact is that the share of
the Normans in the First Crusade was out of all pro-
portion to their contribution to the permanent occupa-
2i6 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY
tion of the East. The principality of Antioch was the
only Norman state in the eastern Mediterranean, and
its distinctively Norman character largely disappeared
with the passing of Bohemond I and TanrrpH JTrjike
their fellow-Christians of France and Italy, the Nor-
mans were not drawn by the commercial and colonizing
sideofjjie crusacTTt^'g niovement. The Norman lands in
England and Italy offered a sufficient field for colonial
enterprise, and the results were more substantial and
more lasting than the romantic but ephemeral creations
of Prankish power in the East, while the position of the
Syrian principalities as intermediaries in Mediterranean
civilization was matched by the free intermixture of
eastern and western culture ii
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
The annals of the Norman conquest of southern Italy and Sicily
are best given by F. Chalandon, Histoire de la domination normande
en Italic et en Sidle (Paris, 1907), i. O. Delarc, Les Normands en Italie
(Paris, 1883), is fuller on the period before 1073, but less critical. The
Byzantine side of the story is given by J. Gay, L 1 Italie meridionale et
1 J empire byzantin (Paris, 1904); the Saracen, by Michele Amari,
Storia dei Musulmani di Sicilia (Florence, 1854-72), in. There is
nothing in English fuller than the introductory chapters of E. Curtis,
Roger of Sicily (New York, 1912). Interesting historical sketches of
particular localities will be found in F. Lenormant, La Grande-Grece
(Paris, 1881-84); an d F. Gregorovius, Apulische Landschaften (Leip-
zig, 1877). On the sanctuary of St. Michael on Monte Gargano, see
E. Gothein, Die Culturentwickelung Sud-Italiens (Breslau, 1886), pp.
41-111.
No study has been made of the Normans in Spain; for the pilgrim-
THE NORMANS IN THE SOUTH 217
ages to Compostela, see Bedier, Les legendes epiques, HI. For the
Normans in the Byzantine empire see G. Schlumberger, " Deux chefs
normands des armees byzantines," in Revue historique, xvi, pp. 289-
303 (1881).
There is nothing on the share of the Normans in the Crusades
analogous to P. Riant, Les Scandinaves en Terre Sainte (Paris, 1865).
The details can be picked out of R. Rtfhricht, Geschichte des Konig-
reichs Jerusalem (Innsbruck, 1898), and Geschichte des ersten Kreuz-
zuges (Innsbruck, 1901). There is no satisfactory biography of Rob-
ert Curthose; the legends concerning him are discussed by Gaston
Paris in Comptes-rendus de rAcademie des inscriptions, 1890, pp.
207 /. For the Norman princes of Antioch, see B. Kugler, Boemund
und Tankred (Tubingen, 1862); and G. Rey's articles in the Revue
de I' Orient latin, iv, pp. 321-407, vm, pp. 116-57 (1896, 1900).
VIII
THE NORMAN KINGDOM OF SICILY
OF the widely separated lands which made up
the greater Normandy of the Middle Ages,
none have drifted farther apart than Norman
England and Norman Sicily. Founded about the same
time and not greatly different in area, these states have
lost all common traditions, until the history of the
southern Normans seems remote, in time as in space,
from their kinsmen of the north. With the widening
of the historical field, southern Italy and Sicily no
longer occupy, as in Mediterranean days, the centre of
the historic stage, and the splendor of their early his-
tory has been dimmed by earthquake and fever, by
economic distress, and by the debasing traditions of
centuries of misrule. Neither in language nor race nor
political traditions does England recognize relationship
between the country of the Black Hand and the ' mother
of parliaments.' Yet if the English world has lost the
feeling of kinship for the people of the south, it has not
lost feeling for the land. It was no mere reminiscence
of ' Vergilian headlands ' and the thunders of the Odys-
sey that drew Shelley to the Bay of Naples, Browning
to Sorrento, or, to take a parallel example elsewhere,
THE NORMAN KINGDOM OF SICILY 219
Goethe to the glowing orange-groves of Palermo. And
it is not alone the poet whose soul responds to
A castle, precipice-encurled,
In a gash of the wind-grieved Apennine ;
or
A sea-side house to the farther South,
Where the baked cicala dies of drouth,
And one sharp tree 't is a cypress stands.
No land of the western Mediterranean has burnt itself
so deeply into the imagination and sentiment of the
English-speaking peoples. Twice has this vivid land of
the south played a leading part in the world's life and
thought, once under the Greeks, of ' 'wind-swift thought
and city-founding mind," as we may read in the mar-
bles of Paestum and Selinus and in the deathless pages
of Thucydides; and a second time under the Norman
princes and their Hohenstaufen successors, creators of
an extraordinarily vigorous and precocious state and a
brilliant cosmopolitan culture. If our interest in this
brief period of Sicilian greatness be not Norman, it is
at least human, as in one of the culminating points
of Mediterranean civilization.
It must be emphasized at the outset that the history
of this Norman kingdom was brief. It had two rulers
of genius, Roger II, 1130-54, and his grandson Fred-
erick II, 1198-1250, separated by the reigns of William
the Bad and William the Good, contemporaries of
Henry II of England, and neither so bad nor so good
220 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY
as their names might lead us to suppose, Tancred of
Lecce and his son William III, and Constance, Roger's
daughter and Frederick's mother, wife of the Hohen-
staufen Emperor Henry VI. It is usual to consider the
Norman period as closing with the deposition of William
III in 1194 and to class Constance and Frederick II
with the Hohenstaufen. In the case of Constance there
seems to be no possible reason for this, for she was as
Norman as any of her predecessors and issued docu-
ments in her own name throughout the remaining three
years of her husband's life and during the few months
of 1197-98 by which she survived him. With their son
Frederick II, half Norman and half Hohenstaufen, the
question is perhaps even, and the science of genetics
has not yet advanced far enough to enable us to classify
and trace to their source the dominant and the recessive
elements in his inheritance. No one, however, can
study him at close range without discovering marked
affinities with his Norman predecessors, notably the
second Roger, and the whole trend of recent investiga-
tion goes to show that, in the field of government as in
that of culture, his policy is a continuation of the work
of the Norman kings, from whom much of his legisla-
tion is directly derived. Half Norman by birth, Fred-
erick was preponderantly Norman in his political herit-
age. It was in Sicily that he grew up and began to rule,
and in Sicily that he did his really constructive work.
To judge him as a Hohenstaufen is only less misleading
THE NORMAN KINGDOM OF SICILY 221
than to judge him as a German king, for the centre and
aim of his policy lay in the Mediterranean. In Fred-
erick's sons, legitimate and illegitimate, the Norman
strain is still further attenuated, and as they had no
real opportunity to continue their father's work, it
matters little whether we call them Normans or Ho-
henstaufen. The coming of Charles of Anjou ends this
epoch, and his victory at Tagliacozzo in 1268 seals the
fate of the dynasty. We may, if we choose, carry the
Norman period to this point; for all real purposes it
ends with the death of Frederick in 1250. The preced-
ing one hundred and twenty years embrace the real
life-history of the Norman kingdom. Brief as this is, it
is too long for a single lecture, and we must limit our-
selves to Roger and the two Williams, touching on the
developments of the thirteenth century only in the
most incidental fashion.
Throughout this period the territorial extent of the
realm remained practically unchanged, comprising Sic-
ily, with Malta, and the southern half of the Italian
peninsula as far as Terracina on the western coast and
the river Tronto on the eastern. There were of course
times when the royal authority was disputed within and
attacked from without, feudal revolts, raids by the
Pisans, expeditions of the German emperor, diplomatic
contests with the Pope, but it was not permanently
limited or shorn of its territories. There were, on the
other hand, moments of expansion, particularly by sea,
222 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY
for Sicily was of necessity a naval power and early saw
the importance of creating a navy commensurate with
its maritime position. The occupation of Tripoli and
Tunis by Roger II seized the Mediterranean by the
throat; the possession of Corfu threatened the freedom
of the Adriatic; but neither conquest was permanent,
and in the main the Greek empire and the powers of
northern Africa succeeded in keeping the Sicilian kings
within their natural boundaries.
In area about four-fifths the size of England, the
southern kingdom showed far greater diversity, both in
the land and in its inhabitants. Stretching from the
sub-tropical gardens of Sicily into the heart of the high-
est Apennines, it was divided by mountain and sea into
distinct natural regions between which communication
continues difficult even to-day the isolated valleys
of the Abruzzi, the great plain of Apulia, the 'granite
citadel' of Calabria, the rich fields of Campania, the
commercial cities of the Bay of Naples and Gulf of Sa-
lerno, the contrasted mountains and shore-lands of Sic-
ily itself. The difficulties of geography were increased
by differences of race, religion, and political traditions.
The mass of the continental population was, of course,
of Italian origin, going back in part to the Samnite
shepherds of primitive Italy, and while it had been
modified in many places by the Lombard conquest, it
retained its Latin speech and was subject to the au-
thority of the Latin church. Calabria, however, was
THE NORMAN KINGDOM OF SICILY 223
now Greek, in religion as in language, and the Greek
element was considerable in the cities of Apulia and
flowed over into Sicily, where the chief foreign constit-
uent was African and Mohammedan. Politically, there
was a mixed inheritance of Lombard and Roman law,
of Greek and Saracen bureaucracy, of municipal inde-
pendence, and of Norman feudalism, entrenched in the
mountain-fortresses of upper Apulia and the Abruzzi;
while the diverse origins of the composite state were ex-
pressed in the sovereign's official title, "king of Sicily,
of the duchy of Apulia, and of the principality of
Capua." The union of these conflicting elements into
a single strong state was the test and the triumph of
Norman statesmanship.
Plainly the terms of this political problem were quite
different from that set the Norman rulers of England.
Whatever local divergences careful study of Anglo-
Saxon England may still reveal, there were no differ-
ences of religion or of general political tradition, while
the rapidity of the conquest at the hands of a single
ruler made possible a uniform policy throughout the
whole country. The convenient formula of forfeiture
and regrant of all the land, for example, created at once
uniformity of tenure and of social organization. More-
over, as we have already seen, back of the Norman con-
quest of England lay Normandy itself, firmly organized
under a strong duke, who took with him across the
224 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY
Channel his household officers and his lay and spiritual
counsellors to form the nucleus of his new central gov-
ernment, which was in many respects one with the cen-
tral government of Normandy. In the south none of
these favoring conditions prevailed. A country com-
posed of many diverse elements was conquered by
different leaders and at different times, so that there
could be no question of uniformity of system. Indeed
there could be no system at all, for the Normans came
as individual adventurers, with no governmental or-
ganization behind them, and the instruments of govern-
ment which they used had to be created as they went
along. Whatever of Norman tradition reached the south
could come only in the subdivided and attenuated form
of individual influences. Furthermore, the Norman in-
gredient in the population continued relatively small.
The scattered bands of early days were of course reen-
forced as time went on, but there was never any general
migration or any movement that affected the mass of
the population in town and country. If we. had any
statistics, we should doubtless find that some hundreds
or at most a few thousands would cover the entire Nor-
man population of Italy and Sicily. These brought with
them their speech, their feudal tenures, probably some
elements of Norman customary law; but, given their
small numbers, they could not hope to Normanize a vast
country, where their language soon disappeared and
their identity was ultimately lost in the general mass.
THE NORMAN KINGDOM OF SICILY 225
Under such conditions there could be no general trans-
plantation of Norman institutions. The rulers were
Norman, as were the holders of the great fiefs, but, to
speak paradoxically, the most Norman thing about their
government was its non-Norman character, that is to
say, its quick assimilation of alien elements and its
statesmanlike treatment of native customs and institu-
tions. The Norman leaders were too wise to attempt
an impossible Normanization.
The policy of toleration in political and religious
matters had its beginnings in the early days of the Nor-
man occupation, but it received a broad application
only in the course of the conquest of Sicily by the Great
Count, and was first fully and systematically carried
out by his son Roger II. In religion this meant the full-
est liberty for Greeks, Jews, and Mohammedans, and
even the maintenance of the hierarchy of the Greek
Church and the encouragement and enrichment of
Basilian monasteries along with the Benedictine foun-
dations which were marked objects of Norman generos-
ity. In law it meant the preservation of local rights and
customs and of the usages of the several distinct ele-
ments in the population, Latin and Greek, Hebrew and
Saracen. In local administration it involved the reten-
tion of the local dignitaries of the cities and the Byzan-
tine offices of the strategos and the catepan, as well as
the fiscal arrangements established by the Saracens in
Sicily. And finally in the central government itself, the
226 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY
need of dealing wisely and effectively with the various
peoples of the kingdom necessitated the employment
of men familiar with each of them, and the maintenance
of a secretarial bureau which issued documents in
Greek and Arabic as well as in Latin.
It was in the central administration that Roger II
faced his freshest problem, which was nothing less than
the creation of a strong central government for a king-
dom which had never before been united under a single
resident ruler. His method was frankly eclectic. We
are told that he made a point of inquiring carefully into
the practices of other kings and countries and adopt-
ing anything in them which seemed to him valuable,
and that he drew to his court from every land, regard-
less of speech and faith, men who were wise in counsel
or distinguished in war, among whom the brilliant ad-
miral George of Antioch is a conspicuous example.
Nevertheless we should err if we thought of him as
making a mere artificial composite. The Calabria of
his youth had preserved a stiff tradition of Byzantine
administration, and the Mohammedans of Sicily had
an even stronger bureaucracy at work. Roger's capital
was at Palermo, and it was natural that the Greek
and Saracen institutions of Sicily and Calabria should
prove the formative influences in his government as it
was extended to the newly acquired and less centralized
regions of the mainland. There was free adaptation and
use of experience, but the loose feudal methods of the
THE NORMAN KINGDOM OF SICILY 227
Normans were profoundly modified by the bureaucratic
traditions of the East.
The central point in the government lay, as in the
states beyond the Alps, in the curia of feudal vassals and
particularly in its more permanent nucleus of house-
hold officials and immediate advisers of the king. But
whereas in the other parts of western Europe the feudal
baronage still prevailed exclusively and gave way but
slowly before the growth of specialized training and
competence, the professional element was present in the
Sicilian curia from an early period in the logothetes and
emirs which Roger II had taken over from the earlier
organization. The chancery, with its Latin, Greek, and
Arabic branches, was inevitably a more complicated
institution than in the other western kingdoms, and its
documents imitated Byzantine and papal usage, even
in externals. At one point, however, it shows close par-
allelisms with the Anglo-Norman chancery, namely in
the free use of those mandata or administrative writs
which are still rare in the secular states of the twelfth
century; and if we remember that their employment
constitutes the surest index of the efficiency of a mediae-
val administrative system, we must conclude, what is
evident in other ways, that the most vigorous govern-
ments of the period were the two Norman kingdoms.
In judicial matters the parallel is also instructive.
Here a professional class had existed in the south from
the outset as an inheritance from the Byzantine period,
228 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY
and it early makes its appearance in the curia in the
person of a group of justices who in time seem com-
pletely to absorb the judicial functions of the larger
body. At the same time the Norman barons were util-
ized for the royal justiciars which King Roger estab-
lished throughout all parts of his kingdom. Parallel to
these provincial justices ran provincial chamberlains,
and over them there were later established master jus-
tices and master chamberlains for the great districts of
Apulia and Capua, all subject to the central curia.
The fiscal system was especially characteristic.
Roger's biographer tells us that the king spent his spare
time in close supervision of the receipts and expendi-
tures of his government, and that everything relating
to the accounts was carefully kept in writing. Begin-
ning with his reign we have documentary evidence of a
branch of the curia, called in Arabic diwan, in Greek
<reicpTov, and in Latin either duana or secretum, and
acting as a central financial body for the whole king-
dom. It kept voluminous registers, called in Arabic
defttir, and as its officers and clerks were largely Sara-
cens, it seems plainly to go back to Saracenic anteced-
ents. There are, however, some traces on the mainland
of careful descriptions of lands and serfs like those
which it extracted from its records in Sicily under the
name of platea, so that Byzantine survivals should also
be taken into account in studying the origin of the in-
stitution. Indeed this whole system presupposes elabo-
THE NORMAN KINGDOM OF SICILY 229
rate surveys and registers of the land and its inhab-
itants such as were made in the Egypt of the Ptolemies
and, less completely, in the Roman empire, and such as
meet us, in a ruder and simpler form, in that unique
northern record, the Domesday survey of 1086, itself
perhaps suggested by some knowledge of the older sys-
tem in Italy. No one can fail to note the striking analo-
gies between the Sicilian duana and the Anglo-Norman
exchequer, but the disappearance of all records of the
southern bureau precludes any comparison of their
actual organization and procedure. The only parallel
records which have reached us are the registers of feudal
holdings, which exhibit noteworthy similarities in the
tenures of the two kingdoms.
Such feudal institutions were evidently a matter of
common inheritance, but any connections indicated by
similar administrative arrangements were doubtless
due to later imitation from one side or the other. Roger
II in Sicily and Henry I and Henry II in England were
at work upon much the same sort of governmental prob-
lem, and Roger was not alone in looking to other lands
for suggestions. Among the foreigners whom Roger
drew into his service we find Englishmen such as his
chancellor, Robert of Selby, and one of his chaplains
and fiscal officers, Thomas Brown, who later returned
to his native land to fill an honored place in the ex-
chequer of Henry II. There was constant intercourse
between the two kingdoms in the twelfth century, and
230 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY
abundant opportunity to keep one government in-
formed of the administrative experiments of the other.
In general, however, the Sicilian monarchy was of a far
more absolute and Oriental type than is found among
the northern Normans or anywhere else in western
Europe. The king's court, with its harem and eunuchs,
resembled that of the Fatimite caliphs; his ideas of
royal power were modelled upon the empire of Con-
stantinople. The only contemporary portrait of King
Roger which has reached us, the mosaic of the church
of the Martorana at Palermo, represents him clothed in
the dalmatic of the apostolic legate and the imperial
costume of Byzantium, and receiving the crown di-
rectly from the hands of Christ ; and a similar portrayal
of the coronation of King William II shows that the
scene was meant to be typical of the divine right of the
king, responsible to no earthly authority. Theocratic
in principle, the Sicilian monarchy drew its inspiration
from the law-books of Justinian as well as from the liv-
ing example on the eastern throne. The series of laws
or assizes issued by King Roger naturally reflects the
composite character of the Norman state. The mass of
local custom is not superseded, the feudal obligations of
the vassals are clearly recognized, influences of canon law
and Teutonic custom are clearly traceable, indeed the
northern conception of the king's peace may have been
their starting-point; but the great body of these de-
crees flows directly from the Roman law, as preserved
THE NORMAN KINGDOM OF SICILY 231
and modified by the Byzantine emperors. The royal
power is everywhere exalted, often in phrases where the
king is substituted for the emperor of the Roman origi-
nal, and the law of treason is applied in detail to the
protection of royal documents, royal coins, and royal
officers. Even to question the king's ordinances or de-
cisions is on a par with sacrilege.
The test of such phrases was the possession of ade-
quate military and financial resources. Of the strength
of King Roger's army his long and successful wars offer
sufficient evidence; the great register of his military
fiefs, the so-called Catalogue of the Barons, indicates
that the feudal service could be increased when neces-
sity demanded, while contingents of Saracen troops
were as valuable to him as they had been to his father.
Much the same can be said of his navy, for the safety of
the Sicilian kingdom and its position in Mediterranean
politics depended in large measure upon sea power, and
Roger's fleet has a distinguished record in his Italian
and African campaigns. Army and navy and civil ser-
vice, however, rested ultimately upon the royal treasury,
and among its contemporaries the Sicilian kingdom en-
joyed a deserved reputation for great wealth. Its re-
sources consisted partly in the products of the soil, such
as the grain and cotton and peltry which were exported
from Sicily itself; partly in manufactures, as in the case
of the silk industry which King Roger developed in
Palermo ; and partly in the unrivalled facilities for trade
232 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY
which were presented by its many harbors and its ad-
vantageous location with respect to the great sea routes.
Under the Norman kings the commerce of the southern
kingdom was passive, rather than active, that is to say,
it was carried on, not mainly by its own cities, such as
Bari and Amalfi, which had enjoyed great prosperity
in the Byzantine period and lost their local independ-
ence under the Normans, but by commercial powers
from without Pisa, Genoa, and Venice. The relative
importance of each of these varied with the vicissitudes
of Italian politics, but among them they shared the ex-
ternal trade of the kingdom. We find the Venetians on
the eastern coast, the Genoese and Pisans at Salerno
and the chief ports of Sicily, where they had special
warehouses and often considerable colonies; and the
earliest commercial records of Genoa and Pisa, notably
the register of the Genoese notary, John the Scribe,
enable us to follow their business from merchant to
merchant and from port to port. Sicily served not only
as a place for the exchange of exports for foreign prod-
ucts, the cloth of northern Italy and France and the
spices and fabrics of the East, but also as a stage in
the trade with the Orient by the great highway of the
Straits of Messina or with Africa and Spain by way of
Palermo and the ports of the western and southern coast.
From all this the king took his toll. Without foregoing
any of their feudal or domanial revenues or extensive
monopolies, Roger and his successors tapped this grow-
THE NORMAN KINGDOM OF SICILY 233
ing commerce by port dues and by tariffs on exports
and imports, thus securing their ready money from that
merchant class upon which the future monarchies of
western Europe were to build. The income from Pa-
lermo alone was said to be greater than that which the
king of England derived from his whole kingdom.
It is evident, even from this brief outline, that the
Sicilian state was not only a skilful blending of political
elements of diverse origin, but also that it stood well in
advance of its contemporaries in all that goes to make
a modern type of government. Its kings legislated at a
time when lawmaking was rare; they had a large in-
come in money when other sovereigns lived from feudal
dues and the produce of their domains ; they had a well
established bureaucracy when elsewhere both central
and local government had been completely feudalized;
they had a splendid capital when other courts were still
ambulatory. Its only rival in these respects, the Anglo-
Norman kingdom of the north, was inferior in financial
resources and had made far less advance in the develop-
ment of the class of trained officials through whom the
progress of European administration was to be realized.
Judged by these tests, it is not too much to call the
kingdom of Roger and his successors the first modern
state, just as Roger's non-feudal policy, far-sightedness,
and diplomatic skill have sometimes won for him the
title of the first modern king. This designation, I am
well aware, has more commonly been reserved for the
234 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY
younger of Sicily's "two baptized sultans,'* 1 Freder-
ick II stupor mundi et immutator mirabilis, "the won-
der of the world and a marvellous innovator." No one
can follow the career of this most gifted and fascinating
figure without feeling the modern elements in his char-
acter and in his administration of the Sicilian state.
His government stands ahead of its contemporaries
in the thirteenth century as does that of Roger in the
twelfth, and the more recent naturally seems the more
modern. It is not, however, clear that the relative su-
periority was greater, and recent studies have made
plain, what was not at first realized, that considerable
portions of Frederick's legislation and of his adminis-
trative system go back to his Norman predecessors,
some of them to Roger himself. After all it is not the
historian's business to award prizes for being modern,
especially when it is not always plain in what moder-
nity consists. The main point is to recognize the striking
individuality of the Sicilian state in directions which
other states were in time to follow, and to remember
that this individuality was a continuous thing and not a
creation of the second Frederick. Moreover, as we shall
shortly see, what is true in the field of government is
also true in the field of civilization : the brilliant cos-
mopolitan culture of the thirteenth century is a di-
rect development from similar conditions under King
Roger.
- * The phrase is Amari's: Storia dei Musulmani di Sicilia, HI, p. 365.
THE NORMAN KINGDOM OF SICILY 235
The culture of the Norman kingdom was even more
strikingly composite than its government. Both his-
torically and geographically Sicily was the natural
meeting-point of Greek, Arabic, and Latin civilization,
and a natural avenue for the transmission of eastern art
and learning to the West. Moreover, in the intellectual
field the splendor of the Sicilian kingdom coincides
with that movement which is often called the renais-
sance of the twelfth century and which consisted in
considerable measure in the acquisition of new knowl-
edge from the Greeks of the East and the Saracens of
Sicily and Spain. Sicily was not the only channel
through which the wisdom of the East flowed west-
ward, for there were scholars from northern Italy who
visited Constantinople and there was a steady diffusion
of Saracen learning through the schools of Spain. No-
where else, however, did Latin, Greek, and Arabic civ-
ilization live side by side in peace and toleration, and
nowhere else was the spirit of the renaissance more
clearly expressed in the policy of the rulers.
The older Latin culture of the southern kingdom had
its centre and in large measure its source at Monte Cas-
sino, mother of the Benedictine monasteries through-
out the length and breadth of western Christendom.
Founded by St. Benedict in 529, this establishment still
maintains the unique record of fourteen centuries of mo-
nastic history and of more than forty generations of fol-
lowers of the Benedictine rule, keeping age after age
236 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY
their vigils of labor, prayer, and fasting, but feasting
their uncloistered eyes per gV occhi almeno non v' &
clausura! upon the massive ranges of the central
Apennines and the placid valley of the Garigliano,
" the Land of Labor and the Land of Rest." Its golden
age was the eleventh and early twelfth centuries, when
its relations with the Normans and the Papacy kept it
in the forefront of Italian politics, when two of its ab-
bots sat upon the throne of St. Peter, and when the
greatest of them, Desiderius as Pope known as Victor
III built a great basilica which was adorned by
workmen from Constantinople with mosaics and with
the great bronze doors which are the chief surviving
evidence of its early splendor. Men of learning were
drawn to the monastery, like the monk Constantine the
African, skilled in the science of the Greek and Arabic
physicians, whose works he translated into Latin.
Manuscripts of every sort were copied in the character-
istic south-Italian hand, the Beneventan script, which
serves as a sure index of the intellectual activity
throughout the southern half of the peninsula in this
period sermons and service-books, theological com-
mentaries and lives of the saints, but also the law-books
of Justinian and the writings of the Latin poets and
historians with their commentators. Indeed without
the scribes of Monte Cassino the world would have lost
some of its most precious monuments of antiquity and
the early Middle Ages, including on the mediaeval side
THE NORMAN KINGDOM OF SICILY .237
the oldest of the papal registers, that of John VIII, and
on the classical, Varro, Apuleius, and the greater part
of the works of Tacitus. Nowhere else is the work of
the monasteries as the preservers of ancient learning
more manifest.
The home of Greek learning in Italy was likewise to
be found in monasteries, in those Basilian foundations
which had spread over Calabria and the Basilicata in
the ninth and tenth centuries and now under Norman
protection sent out new colonies like the abbey of San
Salvatore at Messina. Enriched with lands and rents
and feudal holdings, they also set themselves to the
building up of libraries by copies and by manuscripts
brought from the East; but so far as we can judge from
the ancient catalogues and from the scattered frag-
ments which survive their dispersion, these collections
were almost entirely biblical and theological in charac-
ter, including however splendid examples of calligraphy
such as the text of the Gospels, written in silver letters
on purple vellum and adorned with beautiful minia-
tures, which is still preserved in the cathedral of Ros-
sano.
Meanwhile, and largely as a result of the constant
relations between southern Italy and the Greek East,
learning had spread beyond monastery walls and ec-
clesiastical subjects, and had begun to attract the at-
tention of men from the north. An English scholar,
Adelard of Bath, who visited the south at the beginning
238 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY
of the twelfth century, found a Latin bishop of Syracuse
skilled in all the mathematical arts, a Greek philosopher
of Magna Graecia who discoursed on natural philoso-
phy, and the greatest medical school of Europe in the
old Lombard capital at Salerno, early famed as the city
of Hippocrates and the seat of the oldest university
in the West. A generation later, another Englishman,
the humanist John of Salisbury, studies philosophy
with a Greek interpreter in Apulia and drinks the
heavy wines of the Sicilian chancellor; while still others
profit by translations of Greek philosophical and mathe-
matical works from the Italian libraries. The distinc-
tive element in southern learning lay, however, not on
the Latin side, but in its immediate contact with Greek
and Arabic scholarship, and the chief meeting-point of
these various currents of culture was the royal court at
Palermo, direct heir to the civilization of Saracen
Sicily.
The Sicilian court, like the kingdom, was many-
tongued and cosmopolitan, its praises being sung alike
by Arabic travellers and poets, by grave Byzantine
ecclesiastics, and by Latin scholars of Italy and the
north. A Greek archimandrite, Neilos Doxopatrios,
produced at King Roger's request a History of the Five
Patriarchates directed against the supremacy of the
Pope of Rome; a Saracen, Edrisi, prepared under his
direction the greatest treatise of Arabic geography,
THE NORMAN KINGDOM OF SICILY 239
celebrated long afterward as "King Roger's Book."
Under William I the chief literary figures are likewise
connected with the court: Eugene the Emir, a Greek
poet thoroughly conversant with Arabic and deeply
versed in the mathematics and astronomy of the an-
cients; and Henricus Aristippus, archdeacon of Catania
and for a time chief minister of the king, a collector of
manuscripts, a translator of Plato, Aristotle, and Dio-
genes Laertius, and an investigator of the phenomena
connected with the eruption of Etna in a spirit which
reminds us less of the age of the schoolmen than of the
death of the younger Pliny. Such a literary atmosphere
was peculiarly favorable to the production of transla-
tions from the Greek and Arabic into Latin, and we can
definitely connect with Sicily the versions which made
known to western Europe the Meno and Ph&do of
Plato, portions of the Meteorology and of certain other
works of Aristotle, the more advanced writings of Eu-
clid, and the Almagest of Ptolemy, the greatest of an-
cient and mediaeval treatises on astronomy. In a very
different field we have from Roger's reign a Greco -
Arabic psalter and an important group of New Testa-
ment manuscripts. "While we Germans were in many
respects barbarians," says Springer, "the ruling classes
in Sicily enjoyed the almost over-ripe fruits of an
ancient culture and combined Norman vigor of youth
with Oriental refinement of life." 1
1 Bilder aus der neueren Kunstgeschichte, i, p. 159.
240 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY
There were lacking in the twelfth century the poetic
and imaginative elements which flourished at the court
of Frederick II, but on the scientific and philosophical
sides there is clear continuity in the intellectual history
of the south from Roger II and William to Frederick II
and Manfred. At one point it is even probable that an
actual material connection can be traced, for the collec-
tion of Greek manuscripts upon which Manfred set
great store seems to have had its origin in codices
brought from Constantinople to Palermo under the first
Norman kings; and as Manfred's library probably
passed into the possession of the Popes, it became the
basis of the oldest collection of Greek manuscripts in
the Europe of the humanists. Within its limits the
intellectual movement at the court of King Roger and
his son had many of the elements of a renaissance, and
like the great revival of the fourteenth century, it owed
much to princely favor. It was at the kings' request
that translations were undertaken and the works of
Neilos and Edrisi written, and it was no accident that
two such scholars as Aristippus and Eugene of Palermo
occupied high places in the royal administration. In
their patronage of learning, as well as in the enlightened
and anti-feudal character of their government, the
Sicilian sovereigns, from Roger to Frederick II, belong
to the age of the new statecraft and the humanistic
revival.
The art of the Sicilian kingdom, like its learning and
THE NORMAN KINGDOM OF SICILY 241
its government, was the product of many diverse ele-
ments, developing on the mainland into a variety of
local and provincial types, but in Sicily combined and
harmonized under the guiding will of the royal court.
Traces of direct Norman influence occur, as in the tow-
ers and exterior decoration of the cathedral of Cef alu or
in the plan of that great resort of Norman pilgrims, the
church of St. Nicholas at Bari; but in the main the
Normans, in Bertaux's phrase, contributed little more
than the cement which bound together the artistic ma-
terials furnished by others. 1 These materials were
abundant and various, the Roman basilica and the
Greek cupola, the bronze doors and the brilliant mosa-
ics of Byzantine craftsmen, the domes, the graceful
arches and ceilings, and the intricate arabesques of
Saracen art; yet in the churches and palaces of Sicily
they were fused into a beautiful and harmonious whole
which still dazzles us with its splendor. The chief ex-
amples of this 'Norman' style are to be found at
Cef alu, King Roger's cherished foundation, where he
prepared his last resting-place in the great porphyry
sarcophagus later transported to Palermo, and where
Byzantine artists worked in blue and gold wonderful
pictures of Christ and the Virgin and stately figures of
archangels and saints of the Eastern Church ; at Mon-
reale, the royal mount of William II, commanding the
inexhaustible wealth of Palermo's Golden Shell and
1 L'art dans I'ltalie mtridionale, p. 344.
242 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY,
serving as the incomparable site of a great cathedral,
with storied mosaics of every color covering its walls
and vaulted ceiling like an illuminated missal, and with
cloisters of rare and piercing beauty; and between them,
in space and time, the palaces and churches of Palermo
the church of the Martorana, built in the Byzantine
style and endowed with a Greek library by Roger's ad-
miral George of Antioch, the Saracenic edifices of San
Cataldo and San Giovanni degli Eremiti, and the un-
surpassed glories of the Cappella Palatina all set
against the brilliant background of the Sicilian capital,
which owes to the Norman kings its unique place in the
history of art.
Welcoming merchants and strangers of every land
and race, containing within itself organized communi-
ties of Greeks, Mohammedans, and Jews, each with its
own churches, mosques, or synagogues, the Palermo of
the twelfth century was a great cosmopolitan city and
the natural centre of a Mediterranean art. Midway
between Cordova and Constantinople, between Africa
and Italy, it laid them all under contribution. Travel-
lers celebrated the luxuriant gardens of the city and its
surrounding plain, with the vast fields of sugar cane and
groves of orange, fig, and lemon, olive and palm and
pomegranate, its commodious harbor and its spacious
and busy streets, its gorgeous fabrics and abundance of
foreign wares, its walls and palaces and places of wor-
ship. "A stupendous city," says the Spanish traveller,
THE NORMAN KINGDOM OF SICILY 243
Ibn Giobair, 1 "elegant, graceful, and splendid, rising
before one like a temptress" . . . and offering its king
"may Allah take them from him! every pleasure in
the world." An artist's city, too, distinguished by the
qualities which Goethe saw in it, "the purity of its
light, the delicacy of its lines and tones, the harmony
of earth and sea and sky."
From the highest point in the capital rose the royal
palace, which still retains, in spite of the transforma-
tions of eight centuries, something of the massiveness
and the splendor of its Norman original, of which it
preserves the great Pisan tower, once the repository
of the royal treasure, the royal chapel, and one of the
state apartments of King Roger's time. Its terraces and
gardens have long since disappeared, with their marble
lions and plashing fountains which resembled the Al-
hambra or the great pleasure-grounds of the Moham-
medan East; but we can easily call them to life with
the aid of the Saracen poets and of the remains of the
other royal residences which surrounded the city "like
a necklace of pearls." Here, amid his harem and his
eunuchs, the officers of his court and his retinue of
Mohammedan servants, the king lived much after the
manner of an Oriental potentate. On state occasions he
donned the purple and gold of the Greek emperors or
the sumptuous vestments of red samite, embroidered
1 His description is translated by Amari, Biblioteca arabo-sicula (Tu-
rin, 1888), i, pp. 155 ff.; and by Schiaparelli, Ibn Gubayr (Rome, 1906),
pp. 328 ff, Cf. Waern, Mediaeval Sicily, pp. 64 ff.
244 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY
with golden tigers and camels and Arabic invocations
to the Christian Redeemer, which are still preserved
among the treasures of the Holy Roman Empire at
Vienna. And when, on festivals, he entered the palace
chapel, Latin in its ground-plan, Greek and Arabic in
its ornamentation, the atmosphere was likewise Orien-
tal. As described at its dedication in 1140, with the
starry heavens of its ceiling and the flowery meadows
of its pavement, the chapel preserves its fundamental
features to-day. Dome and choir are dominated by
great Byzantine figures of Christ, accompanied by
Byzantine saints and scenes with Greek inscriptions, all
executed with the fullest brilliancy of which mosaics
are capable, while the stalactite ceiling, "dripping with
all the elaborate richness of Saracen art," seems "to
re-create some forgotten vision of the Arabian Nights. 11
Harmonious in design yet infinitely varied in detail,
rich beyond belief in color and in line, reflecting alike
the dim rays of its pendent lamps or the full light of the
southern sun, the Cappella Palatina is the fullest and
most adequate expression of the many-sided art of the
Norman kingdom and the unifying force of the Norman
kings.
Brilliant but ephemeral, precocious but lacking in
permanent results such are the judgments com-
monly passed upon the Sicilian kingdom and its civili-
zation. At best the kingdom seems to reach no farther
THE NORMAN KINGDOM OF SICILY 245
than Frederick II, and of him Freeman has said that,
though qualified by genius to start some great move-
ment or begin some new era, he seemed fated to stand
at the end of everything which he touched the medi*
aeval empire, the Sicilian kingdom, the Norman-Ho-
henstaufen line. 1 In the field of government these
statements are in the main true: the rapid changes of
dynasties and the deep political decline into which the
south ultimately fell destroyed the unity of its political
development and nullified the work of Norman state-
building, so that the enduring results of Norman states-
manship and Norman law must be sought in the north
and not in Italy. That, however, is not the whole of the
story, and in the field of culture influences less palpable,
but none the less real, flowed from the Norman stream
into the general currents of European civilization. So
long as the Renaissance of the fourteenth and fifteenth
centuries was looked upon as simply the negation of the
Middle Ages by a return to classical antiquity, figures
such as King Roger and Frederick II were merely
'sports,' isolated flashes of genius and modernity with-
out any relation to their own times or to the greater
movement which followed. Since, however, we have
come to view the Renaissance in its larger aspects as
far more than a classical revival, its relations to the
Middle Ages are seen to have been much more intimate
1 "The Emperor Frederick the Second," in Historical Essays, first
series, p. 291.
246 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY
and important than was once supposed. The evolution
is at times rapid, but the Trecento grows out of the cen-
turies which preceded as naturally as it grew into the
Quattrocento which followed. The place of Italy in this
process is universally recognized ; the place of southern
Italy is sometimes overlooked. We are too prone to
forget that Niccola Pisano was also called Nicholas of
Apulia; that Petrarch owed much to his sojourn at the
Neapolitan court; that Boccaccio learned his Greek
from a Calabrian; that the first notes of a new Italian
literature were sounded at the court of Frederick II.
Many phases of the relation between south and north
in this transitional period are still obscure, but of the
significance of the southern contribution there is now
reasonable assurance. Moreover, the continuity be-
tween the intellectual movement under Roger and
William I and that under Frederick II and later can be
followed in some detail in the history of individual
manuscripts and authors. When humanists like Pe-
trarch and Salutati read Plato's Ph&do or Ptolemy's
Almagest, their libraries show that they used the Latin
versions of the Sicilian translators of the twelfth cen-
tury. The learning of the southern kingdom may have
been a faint light, but it was handed on, not extin-
guished.
For our general understanding of the Normans and
their work, it is well that we should trace them in the
lands where their direct influence grows faint and dim,
THE NORMAN KINGDOM OF SICILY 247
as well as in those where their descendants still rule.
Only a formal and mechanical view of history seeks to
ticket off particular races against particular regions as
the sole sources of population and power; only false
national pride conceives of any people as continually in
the vanguard of civilization. Races are mixed things,
institutions and civilization are still more complex, and
no people can claim to be a unique and permanent
source of light and strength. ^Outside of Normandy the
Normans were but a small folk, and sooner or later they
inevitably lost their identity. They did their work pre-
eminently not as a people apart, but as a group of lead-
ers and energizers, the little leaven that leaveneth the
whole lump. Wherever they went, they showed a mar-
vellous power of initiative and of assimilation; if the
initiative is more evident in England, the assimilation
is more manifest in Sicily. The penalty for such activity
is rapid loss of identity ; the reward is a large share in
the general development of civilization. If the Nor-
mans paid the penalty, they also reaped the reward,
and they were never more Norman than in adopting
the statesmanlike policy of toleration and assimilation
which led to their ultimate extinction. Plus $0, change,
plus c'est la mtme chose!
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
The best general account of the Norman kingdom is that of Cha-
landon, who carries its history to 1194 and gives also a provisional
248 NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY
description of its institutions and an unsatisfactory chapter on its
civilization. E. Caspar, Roger II (Innsbruck, 1904), is the best book
on the reign; Curtis, Roger of Sicily, is convenient. G. B. Siragusa, II
regno di Guglielmo I (Palermo, 1885-86), and I. La Lumia, Storia delta
Sicilia sotto Guglielmo il Buono (Florence, 1867), need revision. For
Constance, T. Toeche, Kaiser Heinrich VI (Leipzig, 1867), is still
useful.
The treatment of Sicilian institutions by E. Mayer, Italienische
Verfassungsgeschichte (Leipzig, 1909), is too juristic. There is an ex-
cellent book on the chancery by K. A. Kehr, Die Urkunden der nor-
mannisch-sicilischen Konige (Innsbruck, 1902); and on the duana
there are important monographs by Amari, in the Memorie dei Lincei,
third series, II, pp. 409-38 (1878); and by C. A. Garufi, in Archivio
storico italiano, fifth series, xxvn, pp. 225-63 (1901). For local ad-
ministration see the valuable study of Miss E. Jamison, The Norman
Administration of Apulia and Capita, in Papers of the British School at
Rome, vi, pp. 211-481 (1913). See also H. Niese, Die Gesetzgebung der
normannischen Dynastie im Regnum Siciliae (Halle, 1910); Haskins,
"England and Sicily in the Twelfth Century," in English Historical
Review, xxvi, pp. 433-47, 641-65 (1911); W. Cohn, Die Geschichte der
normannisch-sicilischen Flotte (Breslau, 1910); R. Straus, Die Juden
im Konigreich Sizilien (Heidelberg, 1910); F. Zechbauer, Das mittel-
alterliche Strafrecht Siziliens (Berlin, 1908) ; and various studies in the
Miscellanea Salinas (Palermo, 1907) and the Centenario Michele Amari
(Palermo, 1910). The commerce of the Sicilian kingdom is described
by A. Schaube, Handelsgeschichte der romanischen Volker (Munich,
1906).
For Monte Cassino in this period see E. A. Loew, The Beneventan
Script (Oxford, 1914), with the works there cited; R. Palmarocchi,
L'abbazia di Montecassino e la conquista normanna (Rome, 1913). On
the Greek monasteries, see Gay, L'ltalie meridionale; P. Batiffol,
L'abbaye de Rossano (Paris, 1891); K. Lake, "The Greek Monasteries
in South Italy," in Journal of Theological Studies, iv, v (1903-04);
and F. LoParco, Scolario-Saba, in A tti of the Naples Academy, new
series, I (1910). The best account of Saracen culture in Sicily is still
that of Amari. On the south-Italian and Sicilian translators, see O.
H^twig, " Die Uebersetzungsliteratur Unteritaliens in der norman-
THE NORMAN KINGDOM OF SICILY 249
nisch-staufischen Epoche," in Centralblatt fur Bibliothekswesen, in,
pp. 161-90, 223-25, 505 (1886); Haskins and Lockwood, The Sicilian
Translators of the Twelfth Century and the First Latin Version of Ptol-
emy's Almagest, in Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, xxi, pp.
75-102 (1910); Haskins, ibid., xxm, pp. 155-166; xxv, pp. 87-105.
On the Sicilian origin of the Greek MSS. of the papal library, see J.
L. Heiberg, in Oversigt of the Danish Academy, 1891, pp. 305-18; F.
Ehrle, in Festgabe Anton de Waal (Rome, 1913), pp. 348-51. The con-
nection of the intellectual movement of the twelfth century with the
renaissance under Frederick II is well brought out by Niese, "Zur
Geschichte des geistigen Lebens am Hofe Kaiser Friedrichs II," in
Historische Zeitschrift, cvui, pp. 473-540 (1912). In general see F.
Novati, Le origini, in course of ' publication in the Storia letteraria
d' Italia (Milan, since 1897).
The development of art in the south in this period is treated by A.
Venturi, Storia dell' arte italiana (Rome, 1901 jf.), n, ch. 3; in, ch. 2.
See also C. Diehl, L'art byzantin dans I'ltalie meridionale (Paris,
1894). For the continental territories there is an excellent account in
E. Bertaux, L'art dans I'ltalie meridionale (Paris, 1904). There is
nothing so good for Sicily, although there are monographs on particu-
lar edifices. Diehl, Palerme et Syracuse (Paris, 1907), is a good sketch
with illustrations; Miss C. Waern, Mediceval Sicily (London, 1910), is
more popular. Freeman has a readable essay on "The Normans at
Palermo," in his Historical Essays, third series, pp. 437-76. See also
A. Springer, "Die mittelalterliche Kunst in Palermo," in his Bilder
aus der neueren Kunstgeschichte (Bonn, 1886), I, pp. 157-208; and
A. Goldschmidt, "Die normannischen Konigspalaste in Palermo," in
Zeitschrift fur Bauwesen, XLVIII, coll. 541-90 (1898). Interesting as-
pects of twelfth-century Palermo are depicted in the Bern codex of
Peter of Eboli, reproduced by Siragusa for the Istituto Storico Ita-
liano (1905) and by Rota for the new edition of Mura tori (1904-10).
Surviving portions of the royal costume are reproduced by F. Bock,
Die Kleinodien des heiL-romischen Reiches (Vienna, 1864).
THE END
INDEX
Abacus, io6/.
Abruzzi, 196, 204, 222 /.
Adams, Henry, quoted, 12, 22, 188 /.
Adelaide, countess, 210.
Adelard of Bath, 177, 179, 238.
Africa, 196 /., 222, 232.
Aime of Monte Cassino, 13, 200 /.
Alencon, 63, 178.
Alexander II, Pope, 74, 79, 165, 175.
Alfred, king, 34.
Alphonso VIII, king, 90.
Amain, 197 /., 204, 213, 232.
Amari, M., 216, 248; quoted, 234.
Anacletus II, Pope, 210.
Andeli, 134.
Angers, 61-63.
AngoulSme, 160.
Anjou, counts of, 61, 85; relations
with Normandy, 61-63, 85, 100,
112, 131, 136 /.
Anna Comnena, quoted, 201.
Anselm, 175-78.
Antioch, 212; principality, 214-16.
Apulia, 186, 197-211, 222 /., 228,
238, 246.
Aquitaine, 87/., 90, 100, 120 /., 136.
Arabic elements in Sicilian state,
226-30, 235, 238-44.
Architecture, Norman, 9-12, 102,
186-89; Sicilian, 189, 241-44.
Archives, Norman, 9, 66/., 105, 178.
Argentan, 10, 71, 133, 139, 153.
Arlette, mother of William the
Conqueror, 53, 166.
Arnulf of Chocques, patriarch, 212.
Arnulf, bishop of Lisieux, 167.
Arthur, duke of Brittany, 136-39.
Assizes, Anglo-Norman, 94, 100,
in/., 161; Sicilian, 230 /., 234.
Aversa, 200, 204, 206.
Avranches, 172, 175, 178.
Avranchin, 28.
Avre, 7.
Bailli, 103, 145.
Barfleur, 132, 160.
Bari, 189, 197, 202, 232, 241.
Baudri of Bourgueil, 76.
Bayeux, 10, 46, 49, 67, 76, 150 /.,
162, 166, 172, 187; Black Book, in.
See Odo, Turold, Richard, Philip
d'Harcourt.
Bayeux Tapestry, 76/., 80, 84, 151,
167.
Bayonne, 161.
Bee, 171, 185; schools, 175 /.; li-
brary, 177-80.
Becket, 4, 100, 118, 168.
Belleme, 154.
Benevento, 198, 203.
Benoit de Sainte-More, 184.
Bertaux, E., quoted, 197, 241.
Bessin, 10, 28.
Bibliographical notes, 24/., 51, 83/.,
H4/M 147, 189-91, 2i6/., 247-49.
Bisignano, 201.
Bocage, 10.
Boccaccio, 246.
Bocherville, Saint-Georges de, 169,
187.
Bohemond I, prince of Antioch, 207,
213-16.
Bohmer, H., quoted, 165.
Bonneval, 154.
Bordeaux, 88.
Boutmy, E., quoted, 101.
Breteuil, 154, 160.
Brittany, 6-8, 10, 57, 61, 75, 88,
136-39.
Bryce, James, Viscount, quoted, 43.
Buchanan, James, 17 /.
Bury St. Edmund's, 173.
252
INDEX
Caen, 10 /., 71, 133, 139, 143, 153,
160, 166, 172, 184; abbeys, 12,
58, 160, 163, 171, 174, 186-88, 213.
Calabria, 176, 198, 201-11, 222, 226,
237, 246.
Caliphs, Fatimite, 196, 230.
Campania, 197, 222.
Canada, Normans in, 3/., 13, 16.
Canaries, Normans in, 4, 13.
Canne, 199.
Canosa, 214.
Canterbury, 56, 81, 175.
Canute, king, 52, 54, 74, 194.
Cappella Palatina, 242-44.
Capua, 198, 207, 223, 228.
Carentan, 172.
Carlyle, Thomas, quoted, 101, 173.
Castles, Norman, 68/., 102, 133-35,
139, 150-53.. 163, 209.
Castrogiovanni, 209.
Caux, 8.
Cefalu, 189, 241.
Cerisy, 187.
Chancery, of Henry II, 96-99; of
Sicilian kingdom, 226 /.
Channel Islands, 144 /., 172, 184.
Charlemagne, 18, 3i/., 80, 86, I93/.
Charles VII, king of France, 144.
Charles of Anjou, king of Naples,
221.
Charles the Simple, 27, 45.
Charte aux Normands, 142.
Charter, Great, 140, 142.
Chartres, cathedral, 169-71, 186,
194; school, 177.
Chateau Gaillard, 9, 134 /., 139.
Chaucer, his 'povre persoun,' 169.
Cherbourg, 4/., 59, 162.
Chinon, 116.
Chronicle, Anglo-Saxon, quoted, 32,
34. 55-58.
Church, Norman, 67, 71 /., 81,
ioo, 164 ff.; the Greek, 198, 203,
209, 223, 225, 237, 241.
Civitate, 203.
Classics, Latin, in Norman libraries,
179; at Monte Cassino, 235-37;
Greek, in Sicily, 239 /., 246.
Clermont, 211.
Clovis, 207.
Cluny, 164.
Colombieres, 116.
Commerce, Norman, 4, 73, 8l,
160-63; Sicilian, 231-33, 242; Vik-
ing, 37-
Compostela, 16, 193, 217.
Conan, 163.
Conches, 154.
Conquest, Norman, of England, 72-
81; its results, 81-83, ioo ff., 145
/. ; of Italy, 198 ff. ; the two com-
pared, 223-25.
Constance, empress, 220.
Constantine the African, 236.
Constantinople, 194-96, 212, 214,
235 /., 240.
Corneille, 4, 12.
Cotentin, 28, 50.
Courcy, 154.
Coutances, 169, 172, 200; cathedral,
10, i86/. See Geoffrey de Mow-
bray.
Coutume de Normandie, n, 48 /.,
108, 142, 145.
Crusades, Normans in, 2, 89, 91,
ioo, 127-31, 184, 208, 211-17.
Curia regis, 103, 108, 227 /.
Danegeld, 34, 104.
Danelaw, 31.
Daudet, Alphonse, quoted, 5.
Davis, H. W. C., quoted, 15.
Delarc, O., quoted, 196.
Delbriick, H., quoted, 77 /.
Delisle, L.,4, 114, 1 89 /.; quoted, 97.
Dieppe, 4/., 160.
Dieulafoy, quoted, 135.
Dives, 75.
Domesday, 66, no, 172, 229.
Domfront, 63, 154, 172.
Dover, 166.
Downing, E., 208.
Drogo of Hauteville, 200-02.
Duana, 228 /.
Dudo of Saint Quentin, 27, 47, 180.
Durham, 188.
INDEX
253
Edrisi, 238-40.
Edward the Confessor, king, 73-75.
Eleanor of Aquitaine, queen, 89,
118, 120, 123, 184.
Emma, queen, 73.
Empire, Angevin, 85; Eastern, 91,
94, 129, 197-99, 201 /., 206, 214-
17, 222, 226-31, 243; German,
87; Holy Roman, 64, 86, 244;
Norman, 85-113; its destruction,
116-39.
England, Normandy compared with,
5/.; Northmen in, 32-34; before
the Normans, 101-03, 223; Nor-
man Conquest, 52, 72-83; results,
22/., 100-13; H5 / 151 /; loss
of Normandy, 139-44.
Enna, 209.
Eryx, 208.
Escorial, 178.
Ethelred, king, 73.
Etna, 209, 239.
Eudes Rigaud, archbishop of Rouen,
i68/., 183.
Eugene of Palermo, emir, 239 /.
Eure, 7.
Evreux, 184, 187.
Exchequer, n, 103-08, 142, 229.
Exmes, 71.
Falaise, 10, 53, 59, 133, 139, 153.
Fecamp, 160, 164, 171, 178.
Feudalism, 60, 64, 93, 133, 136-38,
233; Norman, 67-69, 82, 145, 149-
57; in southern Italy, 209, 223-31.
Finance, Anglo-Norman, 69-71,
103-08; Sicilian, 225, 228 /., 232 /.
Flanders, 61, 75.
Flaubert, G., 4, 8, 12; quoted, 5.
Fontevrault, 117.
France, Normandy as a part of, 6 /.,
1 6, 18-24, 48; feudal relations
with Normandy, 63-66; govern-
ment compared with that of Nor-
mandy, 64, 69-71; geographical
unity, 124-26; how it conquered
and absorbed Normandy, 126-44;
Norman influence on, 23, 144.
France, Anatole, quoted, 178.
Franks, Normandy under, 16, 2O/.,
26.
Frederick Barbarossa, emperor, 86
/., I28/.
Frederick II, king of Sicily and
emperor, 24, 215, 219-21, 240,
245 /
Freeman, E. A., 83; on William the
Conqueror, 53-56; on the Norman
Conquest, 73, 83, 101, 145 /.; on
the battle of Hastings, 77; on
Norman castles, 151; on the
abbeys of Caen, 188; on Freder-
ick II, 245.
Fulk Rechin, quoted, 62 /.
Gaeta, 197 /.
Gaimar, 184.
Gascony, 88-91, 100, 139, 161.
Gavrai, 172.
Genoa, 232.
Geoffrey, duke of Brittany, 120.
Geoffrey Malaterra, quoted, 13, 207.
Geoffrey Martel, count of Anjou,
61-63.
Geoffrey de Mowbray, bishop of
Coutances, 10, i86/.
Geoffrey Plantagenet, count of
Anjou, 85, 89, 99, 112.
Geoffrey, illegitimate son of
Henry II, 116.
George of Antioch, admiral, 226, 242.
Gilbert Crispin, abbot of West-
minster, 175.
Giobair, Ibn, quoted, 243.
Giraldus Cambrensis, quoted, II7/.,
123.
Girgenti, 209.
Gisors, I32/., I35/-
Glanvill, 108.
Goethe, 219, 243.
Greek influences in southern Italy
and Sicily, 198, 209, 219, 223,
225-31, 235, 237-46.
Green, J. R., quoted, 122.
Gregory VII Pope, 72, 165 /., 202,
204 /.
254
INDEX
Grentemaisnil, 154.
Grimoud, 60.
Guernsey, I44/.
Gummere, F. B., quoted, 41.
Guy of Amiens, 76.
Hamburg, 33.
Haro, 145.
Harold, king of England, 73-80.
Harold Fairhair, 28, 38.
Hastings, battle of, 75-80, 84, 151,
1 66, 202.
Hastings, Viking leader, 33.
Hauteville, house of, 2, 200-02, 207,
209, 213. See Robert Guiscard,
Roger.
Havre, Le, 4/.
Henricus Aristippus, 239 /.
Henry I, king of England, 89, 94, 105
/., 133, 160, 162 /., 181, 184, 229.
Henry II, king of England, 49, 85,
133. 219; empire, 86-90; Euro-
pean position, 87, go/.; character,
92-94, 114, ii-7/. ; government,
93-1 13, 153, 227-30; death, Ii6/.,
154; sons, 118-23; relations with
Philip Augustus, 127 /.; privi-
leges to Rouen, 161-63.
Henry V, king of England, 142.
Henry VI, king of England, 143.
Henry the Young King, 119-21, 123,
127, I54-57-
Henry I, king of France, 62/., 65.
Henry III, emperor, 201.
Henry IV, emperor, 205.
Henry VI, emperor, 220.
Henry the Lion, duke of Saxony, 90.
Historians, Norman, 47, 154, 180-84.
Hohenstaufen, in Sicily, 220 /.
Honorius II, Pope, 210.
Hugh Capet, 65.
Hugh of Amiens, archbishop of
Rouen, 179.
Hugo, Victor, quoted, 144.
Humphrey of Hauteville, 200-02.
Iceland, 3, 12, 31, 43 /.
Ile-de-France, 7, 125.
Innocent III, Pope, 137.
Ireland, 22, 31, 33, 57, 8s/., 88, 90,
1 60, i62/.
Italy, influence on Normandy, 175;
Normans in, i8i/., 192, 198-211,
218-49; political condition ca.
1000, 196-98; relation to Renais-
sance, 246.
James, Henry, quoted, 6.
Jersey, 144 /., 184.
Jerusalem, Normans at, 128, 130,
167, 193-95, 198 /., 212, 214.
Jews, in Sicily, 225, 242.
Joan of Arc, 10, 19, 143 /.
Jocelin of Brakelonde, 173.
John, king of England, 85 /., 116,
i3i/- 1 54; character, I22/., I26/.
struggle with Philip Augustus,
136-39; loss of Normandy, 139 /.
John VIII, Pope, 237.
John of Salisbury, 238.
John the Scribe, 232.
Jomvikings, 43 /.
Joppa, 130.
Jumieges, 9, 171, 187.
Jury, Anglo-Norman, 23, 109-13,
142, 146.
Justices, Anglo-Norman, 108; Sicil-
ian, 227 /.
Kensington rune-stone, I.
Kent, i66/.
Knights' fees, 68, 78, 100, 145, 150,
229, 231.
Krak, 134.
Lanfranc, 175-78.
Laon, school of, 107, 177.
Laplace, 4, 12.
La Rochelle, 161.
La Ronciere, Bourel de, quoted, 49.
Lavisse, E., quoted, 143.
Law, Norman, n, 20, 23, 48/., 69,
82, 108-13, 145 /., 224; Roman,
137, 175-77, 179, 230 /., 236;
canon, 137, 168, 175-77, 179, 230.
INDEX
255
LeMans, 63, 88, 116 /., 125, 160,
172.
Leo IX, Pope, 203.
Lessay, 187.
Libraries, Norman, 177-81; south-
Italian and Sicilian, 236-40, 242,
246; papal, 240.
Limerick, 37.
Lindisfarne, 33.
Lire, 178.
Loire, relation to Plantagenet em-
pire, 125, 128, 139 /.
Lombards, 175, 188, 192, 196-99,
222 /., 238.
London, 81, i62/.
Lorraine, schools of, 107, 167.
Louis VII, king of France, 89, n8/.,
127.
Louis X, king of France, 142.
Luchaire, A., quoted, 70.
Lugdunensis Secunda, 9, 21, 26.
Luna, 33.
Lusignan, 138.
Luther, 18.
Lyons, 125.
Magna Grsecia, 197, 238.
Mahan, A. T., 30.
Maine, 7, 10, 57, 62 /, 85, 87, 136.
Maitland, F. W., quoted, 48, no,
Malta, 221.
Manfred, 221, 240.
Mantes, 58.
Margam, Annals of, 139.
Margat, 134.
Marmoutier, 171.
Matilda, abbess of Caen, 174.
Matilda, empress, 85, 89, 163.
Matilda, queen, n, 61, 77, 186-88.
Maupassant, 4, 8, 12.
Mediterranean, Northmen in, 33;
Normans in, 192 ff.
Meles, I98/.
Melfi, council of, 204.
Messina, 129 /., 208, 237; Straits of,
207, 210, 232.
Michelet, quoted, n, 195.
Mileto, 210.
Millet, 4, 12.
Monasteries, plundered by North-
men, 35, 164; Norman, 81, 164 /.,
171-75; their lands, 157 f., 171 /.;
schools, 175-77; libraries, 177-80;
as centres of historical writing,
180-83; relation to mediaeval
epic, 185; their churches, 186-89;
south-Italian, 176, 181, 225, 235-
37-
Monreale, 189, 241 /.
Mont-Saint-Michel, 10, 171; peas-
ants, 158; property, 172; build-
ings, 158, 173, 187, 189; library,
173. 178. See Robert of Torigni.
Monte Cassino, 178, 235-37.
Monte Gargano, 198, 216.
Montelius, O., quoted, 37.
Montfort, 133.
Montpellier, 177.
Mortemer, 65.
Mosaics, in Sicily, 241 ff.
Nantes, 33.
Naples, 197 /., 222, 246.
Napoleon, 76.
Neel of Saint-Sauveur, 59.
Neilos Doxopatrios, 238, 240.
Nicaea, 52, 58, 195, 212.
Niccola Pisano, 246.
Nicholas II, Pope, 204.
Nietzsche, 18, 55.
Normandy, millenary of, 1-4, 25/.;
compared with England, 5 /.;
general features, 6-8; Upper and
Lower, 8-n; inhabitants, 11-16;
periods in its history, 17-22;
general importance, 2224; con-
quered by Northmen, 26-48; how
far Scandinavian; 48-51; under
William the Conqueror, 59-61,
66-72, I52/.; its archives, 66/.;
relations with Anjou and Maine,
61-63; with France, 63-65; with
England, 73-83; centre of Plan-
tagenet empire, 85-88; influence
on England, 100-13; conquered
256
INDEX
by Philip Augustus, 131-41;
occupied by English in fifteenth
century, 142-44; final union with
France, 17, 19, 144; influence on
France, 23, 141; dialect, 49, 145,
224; life of lords, 149-57; of
peasants, 157 /.; of towns, 159-
64; church, 71 /., 81, 164-71;
monasteries, 171-75; their schools,
175-77; libraries, 177-80; histori-
ans, 12, 47, 180-84; vernacular
literature, 184-86; architecture,
186-89; the 'greater Normandy,'
147, 182.
Normans, characteristics, 1 1-16, 192,
225, 247; conquest of England,
52, 72-83, 223 /.; in southern
Italy and Sicily, 2-4, 13 /., 16,
22-24, 94, 150, 177, 181, 189, 192,
198-211, 218-49; in Spain, 16,
181, 192, 195; as pilgrims, 193-96,
198 /., 241; on the Crusades, 2,
16,91, 127-31, 182, 184, 211-17;
in Syria, 2 1 5 /. See Normandy.
Northmen, 12, 16 /.; invasion of
Normandy, 26 ff.\ causes and
course of migrations, 29-31; in
Prankish empire, 31-35; in Eng-
land, 31-34; their culture and
organization, 35-44; influence on
Normandy, 48-51; as Crusaders,
211.
Noto, 209.
Odo, bishop of Bayeux, 4, 57, 76,
i66/., 185 /., 212.
Ordericus Vitalis, his History, 154,
174, 178, 180-83; quoted, 14, 176,
1 80, 199.
Orleans, schools of, 177.
Ouche, 181.
Palermo, Normans at, 189, 208
2io/.,226,23i/., 238^".; churches,
230, 241 /.; palace, 242-44.
Palestine, 128, I3O/., 134, 212-16.
Papacy, Normandy and the, 22, 72
74, 79, 91, 136, 165, 168; relations
with southern Normans, 192, 200,
202-05, 210, 221, 238.
p aris, 33 /., 76, 96, 136-38, 140;
basin, 8, 125; Parlement of, 141 /.
university of, 177.
Paris, Gaston, quoted, 185.
Peasants, Norman, I57/.
Peers, court of, I38/.
Perche, 7.
Peter the Hermit, 211.
Petrarch, 246.
Pevensey, 75.
Philip Augustus, 19, 24, 95, 116,
122; character, 126; struggle with
Plantagenets, 127-29, 131-39;
on the Third Crusade, 128-30;
policy in Normandy, 142, 163.
Philip d'Harcourt, bishop of Bay-
eux, 167; his library, 178-80.
Picardy, 7 /.
Pilgrims, Normans as, 193-96, ig8f.,
241.
Pisa, 221, 232.
Plantagenets, origin of, 61, 85, 89.
See Henry II, Richard, John.
Platea, 228.
Poitiers, 88, 160.
Poitou, 62, 75, 88, 90, 100, 128, 138/.
Pontorson, 160.
Poole, R. L., 114; quoted, 107.
Powicke, F. M., 147; quoted, 139,
Hi, 153.
Prentout, H., 24, 51, 147.
Provence, 90.
Quevilly, 163.
Rabelais, 169.
Racine, n.
Ragnar Lodbrok, 42.
Ranulf, vicomte, 59.
Raven, Lay of the, 38.
Renaissance, of twelfth century,
235-40, 245 /.
Rhys, J., quoted, 49.
Richard the Lion-Hearted, king, 85,
95, n6, 153-55; character, 120-
22, 126, 129 /.; Crusade, 127-31,
INDEX
257
215; struggle with Philip Augus-
tus, 127-29, 131-36; death, 136.
Richard of Aversa, 204.
Richard, abbot of Preaux, 180.
Richard, bishop of Bayeux, 177.
Richard Fitz-Neal, author of Dia-
logus, 104, 1 06.
Richard the Good, duke, 52, 73, 195.
Rigsmal, quoted, 38.
Robert Crispin, 195.
Robert Curthose, duke, 89, 96, 154,
212 /.
Robert the Devil, 52.
Robert Guiscard, 186, 200-08.
Robert the Magnificent, 52 /., 65,
195-
Robert of Selby, 229.
Robert ofTorigni, 167, 172 /., 178,
1 80.
Roger I, the Great Count, 200, 202,
206-11, 225.
Roger II, king of Sicily, 24, 206,
210 /., 219-22, 225-34, 238-49.
Roger Borsa, duke of Apulia, 206 /.,
213-
Roger of Toeni, 195.
Roland, Song of, 80, 184 /., 193.
Rollo, duke, 26-29, 42, 45/.; 184.
Romanesque, Norman, 12, 186-89.
Romans, Normandy under, 16, 2O/.,
26; southern Italy under, 197.
Rome, pilgrimages to, 194 /. ; Nor-
mans at, 205.
Rossano, 237.
Rouen, i /., 9/., 21, 26, 46, 60, 73,
88, 95, 117, 133 /., 136, 139, 142,
144, 153, 172, 175, 178, 200; de-
scribed, 9, 162 /.; churches, 2, 9,
12, 162 /., 169, 171, 187; Etablisse-
ments, 160-62; commerce, 160,
162; libraries, 178. See Eudes Ri-
gaud.
Round, J. H., 77, 83, 114.
Russia, 30.
Saga, Burnt Njal, n; of Harold
Fairhair, 28; of St. Olaf, 46.
Saint-Ceneri, 154.
Saint-vroul, 154, 171, 173, 176, 178,
181-83, 195,206. See Ordericus.
Saint-L6, 10.
Saint-Pierre-sur-Dives, Abbot Hai-
mo, 170.
Saint-Sauveur, convent, 169.
Saint-Sauveur-le-Vicomte, 59.
Saint- Valery-sur-Somme, 75.
Saint-Wandrille, 9, 51, 171.
St. Alexis, Life of, 184.
St. Francis, quoted, II.
St. Gall, Monk of, quoted, 31.
St. Ives, 175, 179.
St. James, 193.
St. Michael, 198. See Mont-Saint-
Michel.
Saintonge, 63,
Saladin, 128.
Salerno, 198-200, 205, 222, 232;
university, 177, 238.
Salutati, 246.
Salzmann, L. F., quoted, 91, 109, 1 18.
Saracens, of Syria, 128-31, 192,
212-14; of Sicily, 192, 196, 198 /.,
208 /., 223, 225; of Spain, 192, 195.
Savigny, Congregation of, 171, 174.
Savoy, 90.
Schools, Norman, 175-77.
Seine, 7-9; relation to Plantagenet
empire, 125, I34/., I39/.
Seville, 33.
Sheriff, Anglo-Norman, 103-05, 107.
'Sicilian monarchy,' 210.
Sicily, Normans in, 2-4, 13 /., 16,
22-24, 75, 127, 177, 181, 189, 192,
201 /., 204, 206-11; Norman
kingdom of, 94, 105, 150, 2IO/.,
216, 218-49.
Simon, count, 210.
Sorel, A., 4, 25; quoted, 7.
Spain, 75, 181, 232; schools of, 177,
180, 235 ; Normans in, 192, 195,
211.
Spatz, Wilhelm, 77.
Springer, A., quoted, 239.
Stamfordbridge, 75.
State, beginnings of modern, 93,
233 /
258
INDEX
Stephen, king, 69, 89, 162, 167.
Stubbs, William, 114; quoted, 92/.,
102, 121.
Syracuse, 209.
Tagliacozzo, 221.
Taillefer, 79 /.
Tancarville, 9, 155.
Tancred, Crusader, 2, 213-16.
Tancred of Lecce, king of Sicily, 220.
Taormina, 209.
Thibaud, count of Blois, 62.
Thierry, abbot of Saint-Evroul, 195.
Thomas Brown, 229.
Tiglath-Pileser, 17 /.
Tinchebrai, 89.
Touraine, 62, 88, 131, 136.
Tournaments, 154-57, 189.
Tours, 62, 88, 116, 125, 132, 160,
177.
Towns, Norman, 81, 159-64.
Translators, Sicilian, 238-40, 246.
Trouville, 4.
Turks, I3O/.
Turold, bishop of Bayeux, 185.
Urban II, Pope, 2io/.
Val-des- Dunes, 54, 59.
Valognes, 10, 59 /.
Varaville, 54, 65.
Vavassor, 150.
Venice, 206, 232.
Venosa, 206.
Verneuil, 132, 160.
Verson, Conte des vilains, 158.
Vexin, 7, 125, 134.
Vicomte, 69, 71, 103, 145.
Victor III, Pope, 236.
Vidal de la Blache, quoted, 7.
Vikings, see Northmen.
Vire, 10.
Vitalis, founder of Savigny, 174.
Voltaire, quoted, 86.
Wace, 76, 184; quoted, 15.
Warfare, mediaeval, 68 /., 77-79,
133-35, 152-54.
Westminster, 56, 95, 136.
William the Conqueror, 10, 14, 19,
163, 192; descent, 52; character,
53-59, 83, 85, 188; early years,
59 /.; relations with Anjou and
Maine, 61-63; with France, 63-
65; Normandy under, 66-72, 106,
151 /.; relations with the church,
71 /., 165, 186-88; invasion of
England, 73-75; battle of Hast-
ings, 76-80; crowned king, 81;
death, 58, 117.
William Rufus, king of England, 89,
212.
William I, the Bad, king of Sicily,
219, 221, 239 /., 246.
William II, the Good, king of Sicily,
9O, 219, 221, 23O, 241.
William III, king of Sicily, 220.
William, duke of Apulia, 207, 210.
William of Arques, 65.
William of Conches, 177.
William, prince, son of Henry I, 89.
William of the Iron Arm, 200 /.
William of Jumieges, 180.
William Longsword, duke, 46, 49.
William of Malmesbury, quoted, 14.
William Marshal, 154-57.
Winchester, 56, 163.
Witan, 74, 102.
Writs, of Henry II, 98, III /.; of
Sicilian kings, 227.
Xerxes, size of his army, 78.
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