RoIIo: Pounder of Normandy
Rollo, whose actual name may have been Hrolfr, was a Viking chief probably from present-day Norway. Most of his followers, however, were said to be Danes, Vikings who set out on their raiding and trading expeditions from territory that is now Denmark, also the homeland of the majority of Vikings who settled the British Isles.
Sometime in the early 10th century C. E. Rollo led a band ofVikings to the mouth of the Seine in present-day northwestern France and established a settlement there that became a staging area for raids upriver, including on Paris and Chartres. In 911 to stop the raids King Charles III the Simple of the Franks agreed to cede Rollo the land around the mouth of the Seine and present-day Rouen. Part of the agreement was that Rollo accept Charles as his king and convert to Christianity. He reportedly was baptized in 912, assuming the Christian name Robert.
Although nominally a duchy of France, the territory was ruled by the Norman dukes as an independent kingdom. Rollo and subsequent dukes gained additional lands. By the 11th century the Duchy of Normandy had become one of the most powerful regions in western Europe, and it helped shape the history of other lands, including the British Isles and Sicily.
Rollo was succeeded by his son, William Longsword, at least by 933, according to the historical record. William the Conqueror, who led Normans to the British Isles, was a direct descendant. A century later Dudo of Saint-Quentin wrote a chronicle of the dukes of Normandy, De moribus et actis pimorum Normanniae ducum (completed c. 1015—26).This work is considered historically unreliable, and the facts around Rollo’s life remain clouded. Yet it helps to convey the notion that by that time Rollo had achieved legendary status as the founder of Normandy and the first Norman duke.
Celtic influence, suggesting that Irish-Norse immigrants, and perhaps others from British Orkney and the Hebrides, may have relocated in Normandy In any case the colony seems to have received repeated influxes of immigrants from all over the Viking world.
The Normans adopted many of the customs of the Franks. The few pagan Viking graves found in Normandy imply either a rapid adoption of Christianity among the Vikings or an imitation of Frankish burial customs.
The Normans soon expanded southward into what became known as Lower Normandy. Over the next centuries Norman counts or dukes sought to expand territory beyond Normandy.
The military conquest of England was led by William (William the Conqueror), duke of Normandy (see sidebar, p. 562). William believed he had been named as heir to the English Crown by Edward (Edward the Confessor). Edward was connected to the Norman ruling class through his mother, Emma, the daughter of Richard II le Bon of Normandy. He and his parents had been exiled in Normandy after the Danish invasion of 1013; Edward formed many ties there and on ascending to the throne angered many ANGLO-Saxons by surrounding himself with Normans. In the end—whatever promise he had made to William—on his deathbed in 1066 he named Harold (Harold Godwinson), the powerful earl of Wessex, as his heir.
On Harold’s coronation William (now called William I) began assembling an army. He received a stroke of good luck in his bid for the kingdom when Harold was faced with an invading army led by Harold III Sigurdsson, king of Norway Harold managed to defeat Sigurdsson at Stamford Bridge on September 25, 1066. Two days later some 5,000 knights under William crossed the English Channel and landed at Pevensey Bay on September 28. The force headed for Hastings. Harold’s troops marching southward, although numbering some 7,000, were poorly trained and armed (at least by Norman standards). At dawn on October 14 William led a surprise attack, with effective cavalry charges. In what is known as the Battle of Hastings Harold’s army was routed, and he was killed by an arrow.
William then moved on London and forced a surrender. He was soon crowned king of England. Over the next years he suppressed a number of revolts by the Anglo-Saxon nobility, including one in Northumbria in 1069-70. He had a number of castles built in the English countryside to establish his rule, which, by 1071, was complete.
With time the Normans extended their rule over much of Scotland. The king of the Scots, David I, encouraged Norman settlement there. King William II (William Rufus) captured the city of Carlisle in 1092 and had Carlisle Castle built.
No other people in the British Isles posed as much of a challenge to the Normans as did the Welsh. Before the conquest Ralph, the Norman nephew of Edward the Confessor, twice tried to invade Wales and was twice repelled by the counterattacks of Llewlyn ap Gruffudd, king of Gwynedd and Powys, who was attempting to unify Wales under his rule. Although Harold of England had inflicted a decisive defeat on Llewlyn in 1063, William’s victory over Harold at Hastings seems not to have inspired him to take on the Welsh, whom Harold had bested. William dealt with the Welsh by setting up
William I: Conqueror and Reformer
William, called “the Bastard” because he was the illegitimate son of Robert I and Arletta, a tanner’s daughter, was born in 1027 C. E. at Falaise in northwestern France. At the age of eight upon his father’s death he received the Duchy of Normandy. A council consisting of noblemen and William’s guardians ruled Normandy for a number of years, during which a number of barons revolted. In 1047 the 20-year-old William with the aid of his feudal lord, France’s King Henry I, pacified rebel forces, then proceeded to consolidate his strength through further military action and diplomacy.
William may have visited England in 1051 or 1052; at that time his cousin, King Edward the Confessor, may have promised to name him as his successor. William reinforced his claim to the throne by marrying Matilda, daughter of Baldwin, count of Flanders, and a descendant of the Anglo-Saxon king Alfred the Great. William’s army included some 7,000 soldiers, including infantry armed with crossbows and cavalry. His growing power threatened King Henry of France, who unsuccessfully led armies against the Normans in 1054 and 1058. Upon the death of Edward (who had named his successor on his deathbed) the royal council elected Harold Godwinson, earl ofWessex, as king. William raised an army and transport fleet and sailed for England, where he defeated Harold at the Battle of Hastings in 1066. He then led his army to London, forcing a surrender, and was crowned king on Christmas Day. He had to suppress a number of Anglo-Saxon revolts over the next years, which he did with utmost ruthlessness in a scorched-earth policy.
William, in addition to being a great military strategist, carried out extensive political, economic, and religious reforms. Under the Anglo-Saxons the earls had independence and regional power. William dissolved the earldoms and distributed the lands to his Norman knights. He reorganized the feudal system to make it similar to that in Normandy, in which landholders swore greater loyalty to him than to their separate lords. At the same time he recognized the value of some Anglo-Saxon governing institutions and retained them. He ordered an economic survey of England, which created the Domesday Book, which determined what revenues to collect from his subjects. And he established separate ecclesiastical courts.
In 1087 during a campaign against King Philip I of France William was injured in a riding accident at Maintes. He died at Rouen and was buried in the abbey of Saint Stephen’s at Caen, which he and his wife had founded as penance for marrying without the pope’s permission. As he had instructed, his son Robert succeeded him in Normandy and his son William (William II) in England.
In this bust portrait from 1732, William the Conqueror holds a sword; a vignette shows Britannia in supplication to him. (Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division [LC-USZ62-i20673])
Earldoms in the Welsh Marches, a border buffer zone between England and Wales. For 200 years after the conquest Welsh leaders carried
On a guerrilla war with the Marcher earls and repeatedly thwarted Anglo-Norman attempts at conquest. During this period the Welsh experienced the fullest flowering of their culture. Finally in 1282 Edward I accomplished the annexation of Wales. In an effort at diplomacy that gives a sense of the importance of Wales at this time, Edward had his son—later Edward II, who had been born at Caernarvon Castle— made Prince of Wales in 1301; the English custom of entitling the king’s eldest son Prince of Wales has lasted to the present day.
The Normans first invaded Ireland in the 12th century. By that time the Vikings who had settled in Ireland in the ninth century were no longer in power and lived under the rule of native Irish. A dispute arose over royal succession, with the Viking population supporting Roderic (Rory O’Connor) of Connaught in his attempt to seize the throne from Dermot MacMurrough, the king of Leinster. MacMurrough offered Richard FitzGilbert de Clare (Strongbow), earl of Strigoil, a share of his kingdom in return for Norman military help. Normans landed at Bannow Bay in Ireland in 1169 and soon sacked the Viking town of Wexford. De Clare, or Strongbow, led a larger force to Ireland the next year and captured the Viking city of Waterford. He then married Dermot’s daughter, Aoife. After the Normans also captured Dublin Rory O’Connor withdrew his forces. The king of England at the time, Henry II, soon traveled to Ireland to affirm his sovereignty, threatened by the growing power of Richard FitzGilbert de Clare. Dublin became the capital of the Lordship of Ireland.
The Normans continued their expansion, seizing coastal settlements, then building castles and founding towns inland. As in France the Normans adopted native customs and intermarried with the native population.
The first Normans of any numbers arrived in Sicily and southern Italy early in the 11th century as mercenaries serving the local nobility in battle against Arabs and Byzantines. Some of them eventually established their own principalities. Among these were a number of sons of Tancred de Hauteville: William Iron Arm, Drogo de Hauteville, and Humphrey de Hauteville. In 1053 Humphrey defeated Pope Leo IX, who attempted to enforce papal rights in southern Italy. In 1059 Humphrey’s brother
The Norman Gate stands at Windsor Castle in New Windsor, Berkshire, England. (Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division [LC-USZ62-83898])
And successor, Robert Guiscard (Robert de Hauteville), was invested by Pope Nicholas II with the duchies of Apulia and Calabria and the island of Sicily, although Sicily remained unconquered. Although in feudal terms this meant that Robert was a vassal of the pope and had sworn fealty to him, as a practical matter Robert had freedom to do as he liked. In 1085 Pope Gregory VII called on Robert for assistance against Byzantine forces marching on Rome. Robert, however, used this as an excuse to let his knights sack the city, and Gregory found himself a virtual prisoner of the Normans. The importance of the papal grant of Italian lands lay rather in the imprimatur or seal of approval it placed on the Normans’ legitimacy, upstart foreigners though they were, giving them respectability in the eyes of the international community. Robert completed the Norman conquest of southern Italy. Still another brother, Roger I, conquered Sicily. In 1130 Roger’s son, Roger II, founded the kingdom of Sicily, which included Norman possessions in southern Italy. The reconquest of Sicily, which had been in Muslim hands since the ninth century, further enhanced the reputation of the Normans as being in the vanguard of the knights of Christendom and the champions of the true faith.
The Normans soon adopted Italian speech and customs. Medieval Normans were notable
For the great authority given their dukes, their enthusiasm for conquest, and their control of the economic and social aspects of conquered areas. Italy, which had not yet recovered from the devastation brought about by the sixth-century campaigns of the Byzantines of the Eastern Roman Empire to retake the Western Roman Empire, actually benefited from the economic and social organization the Normans created.
The ambitious plans of the Italian Normans against the Byzantines were a factor that led to the Crusades from the late 11th century through the late 13th century, to recover the Holy Land in the eastern Mediterranean in the Near East from Muslim Arabs. When Pope Urban successfully called for the First Crusade in 1095, the Normans were among the first to respond and contributed some 10,000 knights to the enterprise. However, Roger I of Sicily took no part in the crusade; Bohemond I of Taranto played the leading role among Norman Sicilians in the crusade, after the city of Antioch had fallen, winning a dispute with the Frankish leader, Raymond IV de Saint-Gilles, for sole possession. Bohemond refused to hand over the city to the Byzantines, to whom the Frankish crusaders had sworn fealty in the previous winter in return for military support. Bohemond declared the alliance null and void because the Byzantine emperor had begun withdrawing his troops from Antioch. Apparently regarding this as no more than a strategem (had they known it, worthy of a descendant of Odin the Cunning), the Byzantines regarded Bohemond and Westerners in general as potential enemies who could not be trusted. Robert II of Normandy, on the other hand, left the Holy Land with his knights, among the most battle-tested of the crusaders, as soon as Jerusalem was taken. Ultimately Godfrey de Bouillion, the Frankish duke of Lower Lorraine, became king of Jerusalem, and his Frankish vassals played the most important role in keeping the Holy Land safe for Christendom.
The last independent ruler of Normandy was a son of Henry II of England, John Lackland, who lost Normandy in 1202, when Philippe Auguste, a king of the French, invaded the duchy to avenge John’s murder of his nephew, Arthur of Brittany. (With the accession of Henry II to the throne of England in 1154 the rule over Normandy of the descendants of
Rollo ended, because Henry was a Plantagenet from Anjou in France.) After 1204 Normandy was under French rule, first as a duchy and later as a province with its own governing body at Rouen. Normans were drawn increasingly into the French sphere of influence.
In England the end of the Normans as a distinct cultural group can be distinguished in different ways. In a strict sense the Norman dynasty of English kings ended when King Stephen, the last descendant of William I to rule, was forced in 1153 to accept as his heir Henry Plantagenet of Anjou, who became Henry II; Stephen died the next year. The use of the French dialect known as Anglo-Norman is another marker for the continued existence of the Normans. For the English aristocracy, most of whom were of Norman descent, the use of Anglo-Norman became a test of gentility. (On the other hand contemporary accounts indicate that some Anglo-Normans, even of the second generation after the Norman Conquest could no longer understand their original language.) It was introduced into Wales and Ireland and used to a limited extent in Scotland. The latest literary works in Anglo-Norman were written in the reign of Henry IV in the early 15th century. Alienation against France during the Hundred Years’ War (1337-1453) sparked an increasing use of English and an increasing sense of separateness from the French. Many English people today recognize their Norman roots; the strong admixture of words of French origin in the English language contributes much to its richness and complexity, and the Norman heritage is an indelible part of the distinctive character of England.
In 1198 Frederick II von Hohenstaufen, a descendant of the last Norman king of Sicily through a female line, became king of Sicily as Frederick I. But Frederick identified more with Germany and spent little time in Sicily Sicilian independence ended with the defeat of the last Hohenstaufen at the Battle of Benevento in 1266. The Angevin dynasty of France ruled the island from Naples until 1282, when a bloody uprising, the War of the Sicilian Vespers, expelled Angevin troops and nobles from Sicily.
CULTURE (see also Germanics) Economy
Domesday Book The Normans, as were the Vikings, were as deeply involved in trade as in war; their first approaches to France during the eighth century had been as fur and silver traders. A remarkable document created by the Normans in England 20 years after the Norman conquest was the Domesday Book, a survey, incredibly detailed for the time, of the economic resources of Norman England. It provides an invaluable window on life in 11th-century England. It is also a tribute to the energy and perspicacity of the Normans, and their understanding that economic and mercantile success depended on reliable information.
The Domesday Book was commissioned in December 1085 by William the Conqueror. The first draft, completed in August 1086, contained records for 13,418 settlements in English counties south of the Ribble and Tees Rivers (the border with Scotland at the time) and recorded population, acreage, type and value of land, buildings, plows, income, and taxes.
The manors were diverse in size but of the same type—compact, centered around a church, and separated by open land. Instead settlements in most areas of late-11th-century England followed an ancient pattern of isolated farms, hamlets, and tiny villages interspersed with fields and scattered over most of the cultivable land. As in the Iron Age over time the settlements gradually shifted or were abandoned or reclaimed.
Legislative Measures Further evidence of the efforts of the Normans to promote economic activity are laws that were enacted by the monarchy. Beginning with the reign of Henry I (1100-35), who realized the importance of a reliable monetary system, and continuing with that of Henry II (1154-89), English coinage was regulated in terms of its physical size and shape.
Henry I and his advisers believed in granting tax relief to stimulate economic activity, as evidenced by a law recognizing the city of London’s potential as an economic powerhouse. Previously the city had been taxed by the royal sheriff; now its citizens were to choose their own sheriff. Sweeping exemptions from many taxes were also granted.
Growth through Warfare The appetite for wealth of the nobility also resulted from the increasing sophistication—and as a result, cost—of warfare: the panoply of the Norman knight, specially bred warhorse and heavy armor, and the Normans’ program of castle building. Warfare probably also affected the economy, even as it does today, through the technological advances it fostered in working metal for armor and weapons and building cas-ties, and through the employment it provided to builders and metalworkers.
As had happened earlier with the Germanic groups who overthrew the Roman Empire (see Romans), the Vikings’ invasion of new territories caused the breakup of tribal groupings and allegiances rooted in the rural, relatively unstratified communities of Scandinavia. In a further development of the process by which the Viking warrior class first arose during the last centuries of the Roman Empire the social instability accompanying expansion into foreign lands fostered the emergence of new, more powerful war leaders whose attraction transcended tribal and national identities, such as the Norwegian Rollo, who led Danish warriors, who was able to gain followers through his success as a war leader and the award of the spoils of war and land. For such leaders to remain in power, more or less continual warfare was necessary, leading to an increased militarization of society and increased stratification, as warriors and war leaders differed more and more from farmers and traders. It also led to the Normans’ further expansion beyond Normandy in search of new military horizons.
By the 11th century Normandy had become one of the most highly feudalized states in western Europe. The Norman dukes were notable for the persistence and tenacity with which they demanded and eventually won a very high degree of feudal control over the lords who owed them allegiance (called vassals).
From the earlier time of Rollo, however, the dukes of Normandy, called in Rollo’s time jarls, endured repeated crises in their relations with both Frankish kings, their overlords, and their own vassals. In 1035 and again in 1047 there were rebellions among the Viking settlers, who remained fiercely loyal to their tradition of independence and to paganism, countering the efforts of the Norman leaders since Rollo to promote Christianity. Later ducal authority under William the Conqueror finally triumphed and the vassals of the duke were under his control. As had happened in Scandinavia, this consolidation of power caused many Norman lords to seek their fortunes abroad, either hiring themselves out as mercenaries or engaging in wars of conquest.
The Normans combined a ready ability to imitate foreign customs and institutions with a boundless self-confidence, which allowed them to adapt to their own purposes the institutions they found in newly won territories. Thus in southern Italy and Sicily, although their control was based on faith in their own military superiority, their strategic use of castles and harbors, and their importation of feudalism, they also adopted the highly advanced and largely literate techniques of governing, including the use of bureaucracies, developed by the Byzantines and the Muslims. In England the Normans imported their own style of feudalism and their own ideas of strong personal government, fiscal, and religious institutions. But there, too, they adopted many of the existing Anglo-Saxon institutions and customs, such as a centralized and powerful monarchy, a king’s council, a royal seal and writing office, the shire system, sheriffs, and a revenue system of cash payments from the produce of royal estates and of a direct tax on the landowning class. The Normans introduced the exchequer, itinerant justices, and the practice of sworn inquests. They also reorganized the church in England. William the Conqueror’s archbishop of Canterbury, Lanfranc, established a system of ecclesiastical courts separate from civil courts and raised the standards of monasteries.
Although fighting on horseback was not native to the seagoing Scandinavians, the Normans soon mastered cavalry warfare as it was then practiced in continental Europe. Mounted on a large and powerful horse, wearing the heavy mail hauberk that was standard among the warriors of northwestern Europe, protected by a conical helmet and a kite-shaped shield, and armed with a long, broad-bladed sword and a slender lance, the Norman knights proved on countless occasions that their effectiveness in turning the tide of battle far exceeded their actual numbers. The critical inventions that made the knight so formidable were the saddle with high sides front and back, which held the rider firmly on his horse, and stirrups, both of which enabled him to incorporate the full weight and momentum of his horse in the thrust of his spear. The skill of Norman knights was due to the importance that the Norman knightly class attached to the training of young warriors.
One reason for the Normans’ drive for wealth was their building program of castles, cathedrals, and abbeys. Castle building was not a Norman invention, but the Normans became expert in the use of the simple yet extremely effective motte-and-bailey castle, constructed of a steep-sided, roughly circular mound, partly constructed with soil from its surrounding ditch, topped by a timber palisade and tower, surrounded by a ditched and palisaded enclosure (bailey). These small and easily made fortifications, which complemented warfare conducted in open country by small units of cavalry, became the hallmark of Norman penetration and conquest. Castles were not just defensive structures because, in conjunction with cavalry, they could be part of offensive efforts as their garrison ranged out by day to strike their enemies and retired for the night or for recuperation from battle. Throughout Normandy were castles of dukes and vassals; such a network of fortifications gave the Normans a military supremacy that may be compared to the air supremacy of the modern age.
In England after the Norman Conquest the new manorial lords put their physical mark on the landscape in part by rebuilding the parish churches in the Norman style. The earliest architectural feature in the church in a town called Holt, an opening in the bell tower wall, may have been constructed within 10 years of the conquest. Its Saxon characteristics probably indicate that it was built by native stonemasons under orders from the Norman lord. The nave was constructed about 1100 to 1110, and the chancel arch in 1120. The font was carved by the same mason as the arch.
The Norman buildings in England and France were largely Romanesque, in the style of the Romanesque architecture of Lombardy in Italy, which became influential in northern France and Germany in the 11th century. Initially inspired by Roman building, the driving force in the development of the Romanesque was the importance of vaulting. In contrast to earlier styles, Romanesque buildings often had massive barrel vaults, making the reinforcement of load-bearing walls necessary to bear the lateral outward thrust. The frequent presence of galleries above the aisles, sometimes with half-barrel vaults, probably solved this problem of abutment. The limited number of wall openings grew out of the same concern; it contributed to the sense of massiveness and the sober yet somberly impressive light. Churches, abbeys, and castles, the principal works of the Normans, have massive proportions, sparsely adorned masonry, and frequent use of the round arch. The development of the style took place chiefly during the period from 1066 to 1154, a time of great building activity
In England this style superseded that of the Anglo-Saxons.
Plows of the early Middle Ages had hardwood cutting edges, which necessitated a number of passes to break up the soil sufficiently. In the 12th century the iron plow became widely used. In addition to its iron plowshare, or blade, it had a moldboard that turned over the soil as it was plowed upward. The harness collar, which enabled horses and other animals to pull heavier loads without being strangled, also made farming more efficient.
A distinctive body of literature was written in England by Normans in the French dialect known as Anglo-Norman from about 1100 to 1250 and initiated at the court of Henry I. The most frequent literary forms composed were histories, sacred and secular biographies, and homilies. Romance and fiction were relatively rare. Geoffrey Gaimer wrote a two-part history of England, Histoire des Bretons and Estorie des Engles (c. 1140-50), in verse. Philippe of Thaun, the earliest known Anglo-Norman poet, wrote the moral allegory the Bestiaire (c. 1121).
Just as the Normans fully embraced and promoted feudalism and were masters of cavalry and castle warfare, so they also became champions of Christianity and religious orthodoxy, and they underwent a great religious and ecclesiastical revival in the 11th century. The Normans’ faith became central to their identity; Deus Aie (God help us) became their battle cry. A carryover from paganism was the belief that one should make sacrifice and offerings to win God’s favor; they built monasteries in part to house monks who would pray for them and absolve them of the sin of killing in war that was such an integral part of their life. Some of these monasteries became renowned centers of Benedictine life and learning.
Another expression of religious fervor was the pilgrimage to Rome and the Holy Land. This enthusiasm for pilgrimages was one of the factors that led to both the Norman conquest of southern Italy and participation in the Crusades.
The exploits of the Normans, like those of their Viking forebears, were made possible by conditions at a particular moment in history, a window of opportunity between the fall of the Roman Empire and the emergence of powerful and organized states in the 12th and 13th centuries. The disorder in Europe let loose by the disappearance of the Roman center of gravity allowed highly organized groups such as the Vikings and the Normans to have an impact far greater than their actual numbers. The Carolingian Empire was too backward-looking, having been founded on political principles that had become irrelevant, to survive the demise of Charlemagne for long. The principle of political organization that would allow the aggregation of power in the future was to be that of feudalism; it is ironic, and yet unsurprising, that the Normans themselves did so much to promote and deploy this principle, which, in the end, would draw the independent Norman barons into orbit around the monarchies of England (in the case of England held by royal dynasties of Norman descent) and France and cause them to lose their separate identity.
Further Reading
G. W S. Barrow. The Anglo-Norman Era in Scottish History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980). R. J. Bartlett. England under the Norman and Angevin Kings, 1075-1225 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003).
David Bates and Anne Curry, eds. England and Normandy in the Middle Ages (London: Hambledon, 1994).
Marjorie Chibnall. Anglo-Norman England: 1066-1166 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1986).
-. The Normans (Oxford: Blackwell, 2001).
David Douglas. William the Conqueror (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1964).
Brian Golding. Conquest and Colonisation: The Normans in Britain, 1066-1100 (Basingstoke, U. K.: Palgrave Macmillan, 2001).
Kathleen Gormley and Richard Neill. The Norman Impact on the Medieval World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997).
John Hudson. Land, Law, and Lordship in Anglo-Norman England (Oxford: Clarendon, 1997). Eleanor Searle. Predatory Kinship and the Creation of Norman Power, 840-1066 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988).
David Walker. The Normans in Britain (Oxford: Blackwell, 1995).
Anne Williams. The English and the Norman Conquest (Woodbridge, U. K.: Boydell & Brewer, 1997).
Norsavi See Semnones.
Norse See Vikings.
Norsemen See Vikings.
Norwegians See Norwegians: nationality; Vikings.
World History
