HISTORY ZONE: The Normans

Governing Norman Lands

Mon, 17 Mar 2008 09:50:39 GMT

How far was there an administrative policy peculiar to Norman rule in Normandy, England, southern Italy and Sicily and Antioch, the crusading kingdom established in the early twelfth century? In 1969, D.C. Douglas stated the case as follows[1]:

“Before the twelfth century was far advanced, monarchies established by the Normans controlled the best organised kingdoms in Europe and a Norman prince ruled the strongest of the Crusading states. This success was, however, not due merely to the facts of conquest or even to the establishment of notable rulers supported by strong feudal aristocracies. It derived from a particular administrative policy which was everywhere adopted by the Normans. In all the states they governed, the Normans at this time were concerned to give fresh vitality to the administrative institutions that they found in the conquered lands and to develop these constructively to their own advantage.”

In Sicily, as in England, historians have implied that the Norman rulers chose the best practices and institutions and incorporated them into the Norman system that their 'genius of adaptation' then developed into one that was more efficient and more successful than its predecessor.

The claims made by Douglas and his predecessors have been strongly challenged for England by James Campbell and W. L. Warren. They suggest that the evidence for Anglo-Norman administration is open to a fundamentally different interpretation[2]. Warren attacked the ‘myth of Norman administrative efficiency’:

“Until the end of the eleventh century, Anglo-Norman England was largely managed by Englishmen. The crisis in continuity emerges not at the Conquest but as the generation personally familiar with pre-Conquest practice dies off and the Normans had to cope for themselves. The critical questions are how far were they able to master the Anglo-Saxon inheritance and how far they understood it. The innovations in administrative practices were...at least in part a response to problems which the Normans themselves inadvertently created and an attempt not so much to improve upon the Anglo-Saxon system as to shore it up and stop it collapsing...Under the Normans, the Anglo-Saxon system became ramshackle. Norman government was a matter of shifts and contrivances. Nevertheless, there is a break in continuity, not at the Conquest itself...but within fifty years. The break occurred not because the Normans did not wish to preserve the Anglo-Saxon inheritance but because they did not know how to...”

What is now clear is that. First, in the immediate post-conquest period, in England and Sicily, the Norman rulers sought to adapt native administrative practices to their own needs. Secondly, in both areas a generation after the conquest, there was a break in continuity caused by a failure of the conquerors to preserve the administrative structure inherited from the previous rulers. Finally, in Sicily, as in England, Norman rulers then introduced administrative innovations to repair the damage done to the pre-conquest system; innovations that underwent rigorous selection through a process of trial and error and rapidly developed in new directions.

There were, however, important differences between the ways in which the Norman rulers of England and Sicily adapted native administrative processes to their own needs. In England, the Norman rulers initially perpetuated the Anglo-Saxon inheritance by employing native administrators. Until 1071, a significant group of English earls and thegns retained power and status and played a significant role in the post-conquest settlement. After 1071, at the level of the shire a small but vital administrative community of Anglo-Saxons survived ensuring the continuity of Anglo-Saxon customs and traditions. After the conquest of Sicily was completed in 1091, no Muslim lords held land in fief from the Normans. Although Sicilian Arabs must have been employed within the early Norman administration, we know the name of only one before 1130 while an entire class of Greek Christian administrators was imported from east Sicily and Calabria to manage and adapt the Arab and Islamic institutions through which the island was administered.

Linguistically, there were parallels between England and Sicily. Both islands had become 'trilingual' as a result of the conquest though it is important to recognise that a concentration on three big languages oversimplifies the complex linguistic structure of the islands. For example, it ignores the linguistic diversity of north and west Britain and the wide variation of Romance vernaculars in the Sicilian kingdom. It also neglects the Scandinavian communities in Britain and the presence of some Normans who still had Norse personal names. In England, although Old English (Anglo-Saxon) was the administrative language before 1066, Latin was already the dominant literary language and soon after the conquest (around 1069) replaced Old English as the language of records, though it retained the unwritten language of local government. French (Anglo-Norman) was introduced after 1066 as the language of the victorious elite, but, except in the king’s court, French-speakers were soon assimilated into English-speaking society. French was soon established as a literary language but it was not until the mid-13^th century that it was widely used as a language of record.

In pre-conquest Sicily, Arabic was the dominant language of administrative at all levels, of literary culture and of religion. Greek was confined to monasteries and to the Greek urban societies of eastern Sicily. Even the non-Muslim minorities (Jews and Greek Christians) seem to have been predominantly Arabic-speaking. After the conquest, Arabic continued to be used in some documents for a generation but was then dropped. Greek was established as the language through which the Normans ruled and rapidly became the dominant language of administration on the island. By 1110-15, the almost complete replacement of Arabic by Greek and of Arab Muslim by Greek Christians in the central administration hastened the collapse of the pre-conquest administrative system far more than the, as yet, insignificant introduction of Latin. The new Greek structure incorporated some things salvaged from the pre-conquest Muslim administration but it was essentially new and foreign. Latin lords and their Arab 'villeins' used, respectively Latin (or a Romance vernacular) and Arabic with Greek Christians acting as intermediaries between the two communities. In post-conquest England, an educated person might read and write Old English, Latin and French but in Sicily, such ‘trilinguism’ was uncommon and confined largely to the Greek Christian community. In the long term, the language of the Norman conquerors enriched English but was replaced by it as English became the dominant language throughout Britain. In Sicily, the Romance vernaculars of the Normans had almost completely ousted Arabic by the end of the 13^th century and medieval Sicilian contained only some three hundred words of Arabic derivation.

The Anglo-Saxon and Muslim inheritances were fundamentally different from each other and the Norman rulers sought to adapt these inheritances in England and Sicily in very different ways. This contrast is reinforced by the ways in which Henry I and Roger II each sought to make good the damage done to the pre-conquest systems. In England, Henry I replaced existing Anglo-Saxon social mechanisms with a series of innovations amounting to a rapid expansion of the early state and the administrative machinery through which it was governed. Roger II sought to preserve and to restore the system inherited from Muslim Sicily by importing administrative practices, institutions and personnel wholesale from the contemporary Muslim world so that the Arabic administrative of Sicily in the mid-12^th century resembled the classical Islamic system as exemplified by contemporary Fatimid Egypt. In England, the existing Anglo-Saxon system was close to collapse. Henry I had little choice but to innovate. In Sicily, Roger II sought to repair the existing native system and gave a new lease of life to previously decaying Arabic and Islamic administrative systems and institutions. At the same time, Roger II and his successors introduced a series of far-reaching innovations in the Greek and, especially in the Latin branches of the administration.

There are important differences in the ways in which the Normans in England and Sicily responded to a common problem: how should they react to the collapse of existing native institutions? ‘Administrative efficiency’ was not the consequence of the conquests but a necessary response to Norman failure to maintain the administrative systems they inherited. Good governance had to be created in England after 1100 and recreated in Sicily after 1120. This was the administrative achievement of the Normans.

[1] D.C. Douglas The Norman Achievement 1050-1100, Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1969, pages 181-182. Douglas was here following the view expressed by C. H. Haskins in his ‘England and Sicily in the twelfth century’, English Historical Review, volume 103, (1911), especially pages 433-5 where he stressed that a ‘genius for adaptation’ characterised Norman government in Normandy, England, Italy and Antioch.

[2] James Campbell ‘Observations on English government from the tenth to the twelfth century’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5^th series, volume 25, (1975), pages 39-54 and W. L. Warren ‘The myth of Norman administrative efficiency’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5^th series, volume 34, (1984), pages 113-132.

The Normans in Normandy: Expanding Normandy

Sun, 16 Mar 2008 10:45:19 GMT

In the 1990s medieval historians were very preoccupied with border studies. English interest in the history of Normandy predates this preoccupation, however, for the events of 1066 gave us an almost proprietorial interest in the emergence of the territorial principality on the other side of the English Channel that had provided the Norman kings and the Anglo-Norman aristocracy. The publication therefore of an important new work by Pierre Bauduin is of some importance[1].

The early history of Normandy is a complex and has focussed on the survival of the Frankish institutions in the area of northern France settled by the Vikings or Northmen and on the assimilation of those Normans into Frankish society. Dominating the debate have been the two great Norman historians of the second half of the twentieth century, Michel de Boüard and Lucien Musset. Boüard saw the arrival of the Normans as a profound ‘discontinuity’ and, using the evidence of political institutions. Boüard restated the traditional interpretation of Norman history that the old Frankish estates had survived the disruption of the Norman settlement echoing the views advanced from 1945 by Musset, based on his detailed archival research. It is this latter view of continuity that was taken up in 1982 in the first British study devoted exclusively to the early history of Normandy by David Bates[2].

The study of the Norman border, where the emerging Norman polity came into contact with its neighbours, clearly has much to contribute to this debate. At the very end of the Second World War, Jean-François Lemarignier published an investigation of feudal homage ceremonies that took place on borders, and Lucien Musset himself has since discussed the frontier. The stimulus for Pierre Bauduin was, however, a series of local studies which looked in detail at border zones. In the late 1980s, Judith Green published a study of the Vexin, but it was the work of Gérard Louise that inspired Pierre Bauduin. Louise spent more than twenty years studying the lordship of Bellême, where Normandy borders the county of Maine, and concluded that it was a ‘fenêtre ouverte’ for the king of France. Bauduin’s ideas were also stimulated by a late intervention in the continuity debate by Eleanor Searle, who stressed the Scandinavian links of the Norman ducal family. Furthermore, in France an anthropological perspective has been used to great effect by Régine Le Jan[3].

Pierre Bauduin has also taken account of much recent work on the text as construct. In this debate the important text is De moribus et actis primorum Normanniae Ducum, the work of Dudo, a canon of Saint-Quentin in Picardy, who was commissioned at the beginning of the eleventh century by Duke Richard II (996–1026) to write a history of Normandy. There is no better description for what has happened to Dudo’s work than the neologism that it has been comprehensively ‘rubbished’. The most damning critique was that of Henri Prentout in the early twentieth century, but, as scholars have come to understand the cultural and literary context in which he operated, Dudo has to some extent been recalled from the depths of historical disapproval[4].

Dudo presented a picture of a separate Norman people, who settled in an area deserted after generations, of Viking attack. After conversion to Christianity, it was the historic mission of the dynasty founded by Rollo, the Viking chief, to lead a new Christian people, the Normans. In their military successes over their hostile Frankish neighbours, the newly Christianised Normans were presented as agents of divine punishment. Here we have the origin of the ‘Norman myth’, discussed by R. H. C. Davis in the mid 1970s, for the work of Dudo informs all the other Norman writers, such as William of Jumièges and Orderic Vitalis, both of whom developed the theme of the military prowess of the uniquely Christian Normans, a notion later translated to the southern Italian and Sicilian experience by Italo-Norman chroniclers such as William of Apulia and Geoffrey Malaterra. The image of Normandy that Dudo constructed has pervaded the historiography and still hangs over the early history of the principality[5].

After setting the historiographical and geographical contexts, Bauduin looks at the origins of the frontiers of upper Normandy. In the ninth century the name of one of the original Merovingian kingdoms, Neustria, had survived and was still applied to the area west of Paris. Its administration had been revamped to counter the power of the Breton rulers and, as Viking raids increased during the ninth century, expedients such as the fortified bridge at Pîtres were devised to prevent the Vikings penetrating the inland areas. This was Marc Bloch’s first feudal age, when the castle is about to develop and defence is becoming localised, with an additional perspective of the territorial strategies, pursued by individual families such as that led by Robert, marquis of Neustria.

Territory was ceded to the Viking leader Rollo by the Carolingian king, Charles the Simple (893–922), in the Treaty of Clair-sur-Epte, conventionally dated to 911, although the earliest contemporary reference to the cession dates from 918. Bauduin sees this act in its Frankish context, as the king strove to maintain his position against the increasing powers of the great lords. The king’s chosen ally, whom Bauduin describes as the “king’s Norman”, was admitted to the circle of Frankish lords, and the marriages of Rollo and his two children, William Longsword and Gerloc, into the families of the most important lords demonstrate that acceptance. The foundation of Normandy was not a sign of Frankish weakness in the face of Viking attack according to Bauduin, but a conscious act of policy, calculated to procure the services of a military leader of proven ability, and those services were as likely to be used in internal power struggles as in repelling external attack.

The precise limits of the land ceded to the Normans are unclear. Dudo indicated that the whole of the area now known as Normandy, together with Brittany was ceded, but there is no contemporary support for this. The annalist Flodoard of Rheims in fact mentions three instances in which territory was ceded in 911, 924 and 933, and Bauduin’s research supports this view. He examines material on the Evrecin, the area around Evreux in southern Normandy and could locate no satisfactory references to Norman influence there until the 980s. However, he does identify coastal Picardy as an area of opportunity for the rulers of Rouen. After the deposition of Charles the Simple in 922, the area was susceptible to rivalries. The counts of Flanders pushed southward and the Norman rulers of Rouen moved east. The prize seems to have been, even at this early stage, the potentially lucrative connection with England. The counts of Flanders already had a family connection through the marriage of Baldwin II (879–918) to Aelfthryth, the daughter of King Alfred, and King Louis IV of France (936–954) was, of course, Louis d’Outremer, since he had been exiled among his mother Eadgifu’s people when his father, Charles the Simple, was deposed. The movement into Picardy was not without setback for the Normans. The second member of Rollo’s dynasty, his son William Longsword (933–42), was killed at Picquigny probably by the agents of the count of Flanders, leaving a young son, Richard I, and a lengthy minority.

For a hundred years from 888, the kingship of the Franks alternated between two families: Charles the Simple’s successors and the descendants of Robert, marquis of Neustria. Count Richard I of Rouen (942–996) developed an alliance with the latter family when he married Hugh the Great’s daughter Emma, but after Hugh’s death in 956 that family lost influence. Some of their extensive property in the former Neustria, particularly the area around Chartres and Châteaudun, slipped from their control into that of another family, whom historians describe as the Thibaudians after the family’s founder, Theobald. Just as the marquises of Neustria had challenged the powers of the king, so now their own power was fragmented. Rivalry between the newly-established Thibaudian family and the barely established counts of Rouen took off in the 960s as the Thibaudians sought the support of the Carolingian kings and the counts of Rouen remained allied with the family of Hugh the Great.

During the 980s and 990s the Evrecin was the site of their battles, and there was to be continued conflict there right up to the 1060s, with Norman influence moving southwards only slowly. Bauduin has measured this southward expansion of the counts of Rouen through claim and counter-claim to the town of Dreux and a meticulous examination of the history of local families and the strongholds they held. He assigns a particularly important role to Ralph, half-brother of Richard I, who held the castle of Ivry-la-Bataille on the River Avre. He suggests that Ralph was established here and at Pacy in the stand-off between the Normans and the Thibaudians at the end of the tenth century. He sees locally established warriors gravitating to Ralph’s service at the castle, and bringing their customs with them.

Ralph of Ivry was among the first of the Norman lords to be given the title ‘count’. In contrast with the title inflation of the rest of northern France, where local lords started to call themselves counts, the Norman counts of Rouen kept the title for their own use until they adopted the style of dukes of Normandy. Thereafter the title of count was sparingly conferred upon close family members, such as Ralph, who were given specific military tasks. The title retained, to some degree, the characteristics of the Carolingian office of count: it was granted by the duke, it was revocable and it held the specific duties of defence and the administration of the duke’s rights. Ralph of Ivry played an important role in consolidating ducal power, both on the southern frontier and further west in lower Normandy, and many of his interests and responsibilities descended to his son-in-law Osbern the Steward, and to his grandson, William fitz Osbern, the companion of the Conqueror. As pressure from the south again heightened in the 1050s, Duke William built a castle at Breteuil, which he entrusted to William fitz Osbern.

In considering the Norman/Picardy border in the eleventh century, Bauduin notes a similar focus of ducal influence at Arques, where William the Conqueror’s uncle William was established from the late 1030s with the title of count. Another ducal cousin was established at Eu and by the second half of the eleventh century a comital dynasty was in place. It was in this area that the Norman dukes made greatest use of the politics of matrimony. A sister of Duke Robert II (1027–35) was married to Baldwin IV of Flanders; a ducal cousin, Godgifu, sister of Edward the Confessor, was married to the count of Boulogne; William the Conqueror married Matilda of Flanders. William’s sister Adelaide became the wife of the Count of Ponthieu, and there is detailed discussion of the emergence of the county of Aumale which she carried to her next two husbands.

As the eleventh century passed, however, the Vexin border became more problematic, and it was a raid across this border that was to cost William the Conqueror his life in September 1087. The River Epte had marked the border of Norman influence since the earliest cession to Rollo, but the authority of the archbishop of Rouen extended further south, and in the early eleventh century numerous Norman religious houses held lands on either side of this frontier. Here the Normans’ neighbours were the counts of Amiens, Valois and Vexin, with whom, from the mid-tenth century, relations were generally cordial, culminating in the joint pilgrimage of Count Walter I and Duke Robert I of Normandy to the Holy Land in 1035. From the 1050s, however, there was a rapprochement between the counts and the kings of France, and William the Conqueror began to fortify this border, just as the others had been fortified. William Crespin was given the castle of Neaufles and Hugh of Grandmesnil was established at Neufmarché. The retirement to a monastery by Simon, Count of Amiens/Valois/Vexin in 1077 gave King Philip I (1060–1107) an opportunity to seize his lands, and brought the king of France into direct contact across the River Epte with William who was now king of England, as well as duke of Normandy.

Bauduin makes observations from the borders of Normandy and from there he discerns that the picture of political and territorial stability within the duchy in the tenth and eleventh centuries is illusory. The congruence of the duchy of Normandy and the archdiocese of Rouen was a product of the second half of the tenth century as the energetic society that emerged there expanded beyond the limits of the original area ceded to Rollo. Bauduin notes that during the eleventh century the dukes had the ability to control the frontiers through castles and the right of exile, but did so in partnership with a newly emerged aristocracy that had territorialised their power, seized the profits of office and built castles. For Bauduin, William the Conqueror’s great achievement was to work with this aristocracy, when these developments were likely to weaken ducal power. Border security was achieved in a different way in each sector, but in the 1060s, as a result of the deaths of King Henry I of France and Geoffrey of Anjou, William was sufficiently confident to capitalise on the links with England that had been developing for two hundred years, and in September 1066 he set sail for England.

So, does Baudiun’s thesis hold water? His analysis of the relationships of family to location is detailed and powerful, and he shows the dynamic of the ducal/aristocratic partnership at work. One lineage might gain through ducal patronage at the expense of another; thus the Gournays benefited from the fall of William of Arques in 1053, and the duke might offer a reliable man an opportunity in an area where he had no landed interests, just as he entrusted Hugh of Grandmesnil with Neufmarché. Bauduin is strong on this ducal direction of the border families, but not every family can have been implanted at ducal behest. As Norman influence expanded from Rouen some locally established families must have been won over and convinced of the advantages of working with the ruler of Rouen or his agent. Just as Roger of Montgomery had to find ways of working with local families when William the Conqueror encouraged him to takeover the lands to the south of Normandy inherited by his wife, Mabel of Bellême, so the Normans must have had to work with locals in earlier periods. Otherwise Musset’s argument about continuing institutions is undermined.

It is not easy to find direct evidence for this. Bauduin comments on the absence of material both for the very early period and for the twenty years or so in which Richard I laid the foundations for Norman polity that is described by Dudo. Much has been deduced from examining the patrimony of Norman religious houses: the policy of Robert, marquis of Neustria is revealed in looking at the property of the abbey of La Croix-Saint-Ouen, while changing political fortunes in the north east are demonstrated by the history of the College at La Ferté-en-Bray. Bauduin is adept at finding the less well known sources; indeed, in her preface Regine Le Jan compliments him on his excellent knowledge of the written sources, but there is, in the final analysis, not much material to be found. Thus might it not be the case that the partnership of the dukes with a territorialised aristocracy that Bauduin sees in the eleventh century could also be found in the tenth century, if we had the evidence? Might Dominique Barthelémy’s observation about revelation rather than revolution be helpful here?

[1] Pierre Bauduin La première Normandie (Xe–XIe siècles): sur les frontières de la haute Normandie: identité et construction d’une principauté, Caen 2004.

[2] Michel de Boüard ‘De la Neustrie carolingienne à la Normandie féodale, continuité ou discontinuité?’, Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research, volume xxviii (1955), pages 1–14; Lucien Musset ‘Notes pour servir d’introduction à l’introduction à l’histoire foncière de la Normandie: les domaines de l’époque franque et les destinées du régime domanial du IXe au XIe siècle”, Bulletin de la Société des Antiquaires de Normandie, volume xlix (1942/5), pages 7–97; David Bates Normandy before 1066, Longman, 1982.

[3] Jean-François Lemarignier Recherches sur l’hommage en marche et les frontières féodales, Lille, 1945; Lucien Musset ‘Considérations sur la genèse et le tracé des frontières de la Normandie’, Media in Francia: recueil de mélanges offerts à K. F. Werner, Paris, 1989, pages 309-18; Judith Green ‘Lords of the Norman Vexin’ in War and Government in the Middle Ages: Essays in Honour of J. O. Prestwich, ed. John Gillingham and James Holt, Woodbridge, 1984, pages 46–63; Gérard Louise La seigneurie de Bellême Xe–XIIe siècles: dévolution des pouvoirs territoriaux et construction d’une seigneurie de frontière aux confins de la Normandie et du Maine à la charnière de l’an mil, two volumes, Flers, 1992/3, special issues of Le Pays bas-normand; Eleanor Searle Predatory Kinship and the Creation of Norman Power, 840–1066, Berkeley, California, 1988; and, Régine Le Jan Famille et pouvoir dans le monde franc (VIIe - Xe siècles): essai d’anthropologie sociale, Paris, 1995.

[4]Dudo of Saint-Quentin De gestis Normanniae ducum seu de moribus et actis primorum Normanniae ducum, ed. Jules Lair, Mémoires de la Société des Antiquaires de Normandie, volume xxii (1865), translated Eric Christiansen History of the Normans, Woodbridge, 1998; Henri Prentout Étude critique sur Dudon de Saint-Quentin et son histoire des premiers ducs normands, Paris, 1916.

[5] R. H. C. Davis The Normans and their Myth, 1976; qualified by G. A. Loud ‘The Gens Normannorum – myth or reality?’, Anglo-Norman Studies, volume iv (1981), pages 104-16

The Normans in Normandy: William Longsword 2

Sat, 15 Mar 2008 16:51:56 GMT

Normandy and France

In 927, at St Quentin Rollo and William Longsword met Charles the Simple, who had been deposed in 923 and imprisoned at Peronne by Herbert II of Vermandois. The Rollonids were prepared to change their allegiance given four years earlier and support Charles against Ralph, the actual king of France. Charles’ death in 929 put an end to this attempt to restore him to the throne and William Longsword had no reason to remain hostile to king Ralph.

In 931, Hugh the Great, duke of France with whom the Rollonids had been on good terms since 927 seized land at Braine-sur-Vesle, some seventeen kilometres south east of Soissons. The land belonged to the diocese of Rouen and the Normans considered this to be an unfriendly act. Two years later, William Longsword met Ralph at St Quentin and agreed an non-aggression treaty with him. Ralph confirmed William’s sovereignty over the Cotentin and Avranchin and his ‘protectorate’ over Brittany. Between 935 and 939, William was married to Leutgarde, daughter of Herbert of Vermandois. He had no legitimate children and his successor, Richard was the son of Sprota who he had apparently married in 930 ‘more danico’.

In 936, King Ralph died and the Franks were divided over his successor. His brother Hugh the Black succeeded him in Burgundy, but made no attempt to gain the throne for himself; there would be no Burgundian dynasty of West Frankish kings. Once again Hugh the Great was in position to put himself forward, but once again he chose not do so. Instead, he recalled Charles the Simple’s son Louis IV [1] from his exile in England and arranged for his coronation; presumably, he believed that the fifteen-year-old Carolingian would be grateful, and subject to his control. As one of their first acts, Hugh and Louis went to Burgundy and secured the recognition of Louis by Ralph’s brother (as well as territorial concessions to Hugh). But all did not go well for Hugh. In 937, Louis left Hugh’s guardianship and set himself up at Laon. Over the next couple of years, Louis, Hugh the Great, Herbert II of Vermandois, Arnulf of Flanders, and other Frankish magnates began to jockey for position, as short-lived alliances formed and dissolved and minor military actions erupted.

Meanwhile, a group of Lotharingian nobles revolted against King Otto I. King Louis took advantage of this by travelling to Lotharingia and receiving the homage of the rebels. Otto responded by launching large-scale raids into West Francia. Louis did not have the resources to effectively oppose him and appealed for support from Aethelstan of Wessex. I In 939, Hugh the Great, Herbert of Vermandois and Arnulf of Flanders agreed to support Otto against Louis IV. It was not in William Longsword’s interests to allow Francia to become too powerful and too united.

After the death of his leading ally in Lotharingia, Louis IV ended his direct conflict with Otto by abandoning Lotharingia. This did not end the conspiracy against him. In 941, Hugh and Herbert went to the east to meet with Otto. This time, however, William Longsword refrained; instead, he travelled to Amiens for a meeting with King Louis. He ‘committed himself to the king,’ who then conceded to him the lands that King Charles had given to Rollo in 911. This would presumably be the ‘first grant,’ of Rouen and its environs; the legal status of the later grants by Charles’ and Louis’ rivals, the Robertines, is not at all clear. But although William did not take direct action against Louis, when Hugh and Herbert besieged Reims, intending to depose the archbishop who was Louis’ chancellor and staunchest supporter, William joined them. The town was captured and the archbishop expelled; Herbert’s son, who had earlier been archbishop and subsequently deposed, was now restored. But when Herbert and Hugh went on to besiege the royal stronghold of Laon, William did not join them.

Louis succeeded in forcing his foes to abandon their attack on Laon. He and Otto then traded expeditions into each other’s lands; Louis’ vigorous challenge to Otto seems to have intimidated Hugh and Herbert, who stayed out of the fray. But Louis did not succeed at pressing his advantage, and in 941 Hugh and Herbert attacked Laon again, for the first time taking arms directly against the king. This time, their siege was successful, and Louis barely managed to escape. Shortly after, Hugh, Herbert, William Longsword, and Arnulf met; we do not know what they discussed, but if Hugh and Herbert were trying to get William and Arnulf to take a more active stance against the king, they failed. William and Arnulf continued to stay out of the fray. Louis seemed to have taken heart at William’s restraint, and in 942 he sent Roger, count of Douai, to Rouen as a royal envoy. Roger died at Rouen, but not before negotiating a new peace between William and the king. Louis then travelled to Rouen to seal the alliance personally, where he was ‘received in royal fashion.’ William Longsword played a central role in this process. He acted as mediator between Louis IV and Otto I, depriving Hugh and Herbert of their chief foreign supporter and played a major diplomatic role in the internal affairs of Francia. At the Rouen meeting in the autumn of 942, the seven most powerful Norman landowners recognised William’s son Richard as his successor.

Normandy and Flanders

Meanwhile, the detente that seems to have existed between the Rollonid Principality and Flanders since the late 920s suddenly broke. Arnulf had, through the 930s, expanded his power in the area, disinheriting his nephews and seizing the counties of Boulogne and the Ternois for himself. He then made an alliance with Herbert of Vermandois, marrying Herbert’s sister. The flashpoint was the county of Ponthieu, located directly between the two rival states, and its capital of Montreuil.

Conflict between Herluin II, count of Ponthieu and Herbert of Vermandois began a decade earlier. In 929, Herbert and Hugh the Great besieged Montreuil but Hugh changed sides and came to Herluin’s support. Three years later, Herbert of Vermandois was defeated by Herluin but then captured, by surprise the castle of Ham, some twenty kilometres south-west of St Quentin. In 939, Herbert supported by Arnulf of Flanders besieged Montreuil and its capture gave him all of Ponthieu and Vimeu between the rivers Somme and Bresle. Herluin II sought the support of Hugh the Great to regain his lands but Hugh refused because he already had an alliance with Arnulf. Herluin then turned to William Longsword for help. Troops from the Cotentin attacked and recaptured Montreuil, slaughtering most of Arnulf’s garrison. But at a price. Herluin had placed his lands under the protection of the Normans and performed homage to William for his help. The Normans were now assured of a buffer between their borders and those of Flanders.

For Arnulf, Hugh the Great and other Carolingian lords the Normans remained undesirable intruders in France and they decided to eliminate William who was becoming too powerful and was increasingly playing a role in the politics of the French monarchy. It was at this moment that Arnulf sent messengers to William Longsword, saying that he wanted to settle their conflict over Montreuil. William went to the meeting on an island in the river Somme at Picquigny, where he was murdered by Arnulf’s men on 18^th December 942.

William’s career began in danger, as the principality Rollo had built was almost destroyed by Riulf’s revolt against a son seen as tied too strongly to Frankish interests. Barely surviving this revolt, William spent the remainder of the 930s strengthening his western frontiers especially with Brittany. At the end of his life, his conflicts with Arnulf of Flanders over Montreuil quickly drew him into the conflict between King Louis and his greatest nobles, Hugh the Great and Herbert of Vermandois. William was playing at the highest level of the Frankish political world, receiving the friendship of the king. But perhaps this relationship made him overconfident; when he was invited to a meeting with Arnulf, he was too trusting, and this led directly to his death.

Normandy under William Longsword

By 936, Normandy already had defined frontiers. It had already taken the Passais, part of Seois and the Perche. To the east, faced by the principalities of northern France, by the French in the Vexin and Drouais, the final limits of Norman power were already fixed. The Rollonids had occupied the Meresais, the area between the Eure and the Seine as well as the left bank of the river Avre in the early 920s. Normandy was, with the exception of the England, the only state in Europe that already had its boundaries clearly defined. The seven dioceses of the ancient archiepiscopate of Rouen were reunited.

There is little contemporary evidence about how Normandy was governed under William Longsword. It is known that he chose Bot, previously councillor to Rollo as his ‘mayor of the palace’ but it is unclear exactly what this means. It has been suggested that it was simply the title given to the chief councillor or to his role as regent when William was absent from Normandy. Later chroniclers used the term ‘constable’ implying that Bot had an important military function as chief of William’s personal bodyguard. William’s closest advisors consisted of three ‘secretaries’ or ‘counts’ (including Bot) and, with the seven most powerful Norman ‘princes’ formed an Assembly of ten councillors. It is not known whether the seven ‘princes’ corresponded with those responsible for the seven ancient cities of Normandy (Rouen, Bayeux, Lisieux, Coutances, Sees, Avranches and Evreux) and the lands around them. If this was the case, then they would have had a clear military responsibility for those areas. What is certain is that the ‘princes’ were William’s tenants-in-chief. The ten councillors may also have been responsible for the ten ‘pagi’ that existed in Normandy in the 930s: Caux, Talou, Vexin, Roumois, Evrecin, Lieuvin, Hiesmois (including Seois), Bessin, Cotentin and Avranchin.

There are, however, major problems for historians with this administrative structure. First, the words ‘prince’, ‘count’ and ‘councillor’ were Latin terms that did not correspond to the realities of the broadly Scandinavian structures that existed in Normandy in the 930s. Secondly, the Nordic texts do not indicate that Normandy was ‘governed’. This explains why William is always referred to as the ‘jarl’ or leader of the Normans of the Seine or of Rouen and by Frankish writers as the ‘military commander (‘princeps’ or ‘dux’) of the pirates of the Seine’. The jarl, like everyone else, was not above the law or Scandinavian customs.

The lack of contemporary Norman sources make it very difficult to be clear about the administrative structure that William inherited from his father. How far William was a ‘moderniser’ (to use a modern term) is difficult to say. Certainly, his Christianity and role in Frankish politics in the 930s and early 940s led some Scandinavian settlers to accuse him of diluting his Scandinavian past. The rebellion of Riulf was a consequence of this. The problem for historians is how far back it is possible to push the ‘Frankification’ of Norman rule and what that actually means. It is possible to see this process in several important respects. William produced coinage and, unlike the practice in the remainder of France, he had a monopoly over this. Three new ‘pagi’ were established in the Cotentin (Hagi, Saire and Baupt) probably under William: here William was clearly following an existing Frankish model. The existence of ‘sergentries’ (in practice, if not in name) probably dated back to Rollo and almost certainly to William. The sergeants received land in return for the services they performed: maintaining order, judicial and military functions especially guarding their lands. Whether this replicated the increasing ‘feudal’ arrangements in the Frankish kingdom or was simply a practical solution for the need to provide rewards for supporters while also protecting Rollonid lands or both is debatable. Under William, the first restorations of monasteries began. Around 942, monks from Saint-Cyrien de Poitiers arrived at Jumieges. They had been sent by William’s sister Gerloc who had married William III, duke of Aquitaine and count of Poitiers. Martin, the new abbot of Jumieges was briefly William’s adviser on religious matters. William himself restore the abbey at Fecamp. Despite this, with the exception of Rouen and Evreux, there were no bishops resident in the other dioceses. William recognised the importance of Christianity and Christian organisation to the future development of his lands, a process continued by his successor Richard I. Just how far this process had come by 942 is debatable but the murder of William Longsword revealed just how fragile the Rollonid Principality remained.

[1] On Louis IV see, Philippe Lauer, Le règne de Louis IV, BÉHÉ 127, Paris: Émile Bouillon, 1900.

The Normans in Normandy: William Longsword 1

Fri, 14 Mar 2008 09:53:31 GMT

Little is known about William Longsword’s [1] birth and upbringing, though unlike his father, who was always known by the Northmannic name Rollo even after his ‘baptism’ in 912 under the name Robert, William is known only by a Frankish name. Although he was born before the agreement with Charles the Simple in 911, Rollo had either been Frankified sufficiently or was perhaps being politically acute to give his son a Frankish name. There are no contemporary records stating when William was born although the Heimskringla, the saga of Saint Olaf written in the twelfth century, states that he was born in 905 or 906 in Rouen. This differs from both Dudo of St Quentin and the Planctus which both state that William was born ‘overseas’.

Rollo was still living in 928, when he was holding Eudes, son of Herbert of Vermandois, as a captive according to Flodoard, and was probably dead by 933, when his son William was mentioned as leading the Normans by Flodoard. Rollo progressively transferred power to William from as early as 927 and from 928-9 he can be considered as the new leader of the Rollonids. His succession was confirmed by him publicly taking the sword of his father in the cathedral at Rouen. This reinforced his position as a Christian ruler since the Church was seen in take part in the appointment of a new leader through their participation in this communal activity.

Norman expansion into the Contentin and the Avranchin

Between 911 and 931, the Rollonid Normans had played no direct role in Brittany. This has been occupied by the Norman settlements on the River Loire and Rollo maintained close contact with them just as he did with the rest of the Scandinavian world. The Cotentin and Avranchin had been under the theoretical control of the Breton counts of Rennes and Dol since 874. However, after the treaty in 924 between Rollo and Ralph, king of France, the Bessin, Hiesmois and the Seois were accepted as part of the Rollonid sphere of influence and in 927 the counts of Rennes and Dol had little choice but to accept the sovereignty of the Rollonids over the Cotentin and Avranchin. It is also possible that the counts performed homage to Rollo or gave an oath of non-aggression with respect to his borders.

In 930, the Loire Normans attacked the Saintonge, Angoumois, Perigord and Limousin. The French king defeated them at Estresse, near Beaulieu in the Correze and their depleted force returned to their base near Nantes. This weakened the Norman settlements and the Bretons rose up in revolt killing Flekan, one of their chiefs. William Longsword had maintained close contacts with Inkon, the leader of the Loire settlements and supported him against the Breton rebels. The Breton counts of Rennes and Dol, despite their recognition of Rollonid sovereignty over the Cotentin and Avranchin, believed that they could benefit from William Longsword’s youth and inexperience and joined the revolt. They were initially defeated by William who then returned to Rouen but regrouped and invaded Rollonid territories as far as Bayeux. Defeated a second time, the count of Dol accepted the sovereignty of the Normans over Dol and Saint-Brieuc. By the end of 931, Brittany has been subdued from the east by the Rollonids and from the west by the Loire Normans. The Breton leaders were exiled.

By early 932, the Rollonids had progressively occupied the Cotentin, Avranchin and the territories of Dol and Saint-Brieuc. The Cotentin already had stable Scandinavian colonies but they were initially unwilling to accept William’s authority. It was important for William to establish his authority over this area because the Loire Vikings, vulnerable to Breton attack around Nantes, saw the Avranchin as a safer area for colonisation. The only other mention of William’s reign before his participation in the Frankish civil wars near the end of his life is Flodoard’s entry on his meeting with King Ralph in 933 at St Quentin, when William committed himself to Ralph and in return received ‘the land of the Bretons on the coast’. This confirmed that William Longsword had his protectorate over Brittany and possession of the Cotentin and Avranchin. Coinage minted during the rule of William Longsword bore the title ‘duke of Brittany’. By 933, the Rollonids had been given royal approval for their activities in what would later become Normandy. It does not, however, mean that they controlled all this territory, and in fact it would only be in the eleventh century that all Normandy fell under the power of the Rollonids. For example, it was not until 1030 that the bishops of Avranches felt safe returning to their see from Rouen, where they had lived in exile since the Northmannic incursions.

The conquest of these areas took time. The Vikings who occupied the Cotentin and Avranchin, like those of Bessin, remained ‘Scandinavian’ in character: they were pagan and highly independent. It proved difficult to get them to accept the authority of the Rollonid ruler, convert to Christianity and abandon their ‘Scandinavian’ ways. The southern areas of the Cotentin and Avranchin proved the most difficult to pacify and the Bretons in the extreme south of Brittany remained undefeated in 942. To prevent Breton attacks, William constructed fortifications at Pontorson to protect the crossing over the River Couesnon, refortified Avranches (where there was already a Carolingian castrum) and built a castle at Mortain. He also encouraged Scandinavian settlement of the eastern part of Brittany from the Viking colonies in the Cotentin, Britain and Ireland.

The significance of the expansion of the Rollonid territories lay in their increasing dominance (albeit tenuous on occasions as the revolt by Riulf in 934-5 shows) over other independent Scandinavian colonies. William had supported and arguably saved the Nantes settlements from destruction between 930 and 932 and the Contentin and Avranchin settlements had also been brought under his nominal sovereignty, though they were still not entirely secure at the end of his reign. The process of amalgamating separate independent Viking settlements under the control of the Rollonids that Dudo noted later in his chronicle had begun. Normandy, as it was to emerge in the eleventh century, was beginning to be established.

The revolt of Riulf

Dudo is the only source for the revolt of 934-5. Though his account should be viewed with considerable scepticism, it can probably be trusted, at least in its broad outline. The revolt is significant in several respects. It shows that Rollonid control over the Cotentin and Avranchin was far from secure and one of Riulf’s goals was the deposition of William Longsword because he had become too authoritarian in his attitude to other Viking groups. Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, it represented a clash between two different Viking approaches to colonisation. The Cotentin, Avranchin and Bessin retained their adherence to Scandinavian customs and pagan religion. By contrast, the Rollonids were seen as becoming too Frankish in their tastes. Riulf maintained that William Longsword intended to enrich his own relatives (Riulf may have heard that William intended to marry the daughter of the count of Vermandois) and his Frankish friends at the expense of other Vikings and denounced his contacts with the French king.

Riulf was called ‘count of the Cotentin’ by some later chroniclers though it is unclear whether he was the Viking leader or was acting on his behalf. There is also evidence that the revolt was encouraged by the Bretons and the Flemish count Arnulf, both of whom were threatened by the expansion of the Rollonids. Riulf sought independence for the lands situated to the west of the River Risle (Cotentin, Avranchin and Bessin) and according to Dudo sent an envoy to William demanding ‘all the land up to the Risle.’ William replied that he could not give Riulf the land but he did not say why, but offered to make Riulf in effect co-ruler, subordinate in name only. Riulf responded by moving an army towards Rouen, successfully crossing the Seine and camping outside the city in 935. Rouen was poorly defended and William is prepared to abandon it. Further negotiations occurred and William then offered Riulf the land ‘not only up to the Risle, but all the way to the Seine.’ Riulf, sensing weakness, again refused his offer.

William again contemplated flight to Francia, but is persuaded by his advisers into combat. Later chroniclers specifically mention the role played by Bernard the Dane, probably a leader from Roumois and the ‘old’ Bot, who is anachronistically called the ‘constable’ but who was probably either the leader of William’s bodyguard or his adviser on military matters. In what seems to have been a surprise attack, William fell on Riulf’s camp, scattering the rebel troops, killing many of them, and driving the rest (including Riulf himself) into flight. The Viking army is in no position to continue the revolt and Riulf disappears from the historical record.

As a partisan of the Rollonids, it is important to understand why Dudo told a story that reflected badly on one of his heroes. William here was portrayed as rather cowardly (or, taking a more positive position rather shrewd given his weak political and military position), making accommodations with Riulf at every opportunity, being persuaded to fight because of pressure from his advisers, and achieving victory through what appeared not to be the manliest of strategies. If this account was known widely enough in Rouen in the late tenth century, Dudo could not simply ignore it. This makes sense since Rouen prospered greatly through the Rollonid accommodation of both native Franks and immigrant Northmen, and if the city had been taken by hardcore, anti-Frankish Northmen, that prosperity would have been threatened. Dudo used the revolt to show what William was really made of. It shows, however, that twenty years after the official establishment of the Rollonid principality, control even over the capital city was insecure, and other Northmannic leaders of equal power were nearby, waiting for the chance to overthrow the Frankish-Northmannic regime of the Rollonids.

The Breton rebellion 936-939

In 931, Aethelstan, king of Wessex had welcomed the main Breton exiles, notable Mathedoe and his son Alan ‘Red Beard’ to his court. There were also exiles from the Rollonids and the Vikings of the Loire in Flanders and France and who wished to free their lands. In 936, Aethelstan put a fleet of ships at Alan’s disposal and, with his supporters he landed on the coast of Brittany near Dol, surprised and massacred its Norman garrison before moving to the west. Despite the resistance of the Scandinavian colonists, he moved his increasingly large army and besieged Nantes. Count Even, one of his supporters also had considerable success against the colonists. On 1^st August 939, the joint armies of Alan ‘Red Beard’, count Berenger and count Hugh II of Maine defeated the colonists at the battle of Trans, ten kilometres south-west of Pontorson. This freed Brittany from Norman occupation and Alan was proclaimed duke.

Significantly, Alan did not seek to reclaim the Cotentin or Avranchin where there were strong Norman garrisons unlike in Brittany and in 942, when he made homage of Louis IV of Francia he also solemnly renounced future claims over these areas. He also renounced Breton claims to Mayenne, perhaps as the price of support from Hugh II of Maine in 939. In 942, Harald ‘Bluetooth’, king of Denmark who had temporarily lost his throne obtained William Longsword’s agreement (in the name of Scandinavian solidarity) to settle in the Cotentin with his sixty ships until he was able to regain his throne. His presence, even temporarily reinforced the defences of western Normandy. In addition, during the 940s, a chain of castles was constructed from Tinchebrai to Teilleul to protect against attacks from Brittany. The Breton rebellion and the restoration of independent Breton rule effectively defined the western edge of Norman rule.

[1] The only study of William Longsword is the very dated Jules Lair, Étude sur la vie et la mort de Guillaume Longue-épée, duc de Normandie, Paris: Picard, 1893. Pierre Bouet ‘Dudon de Saint-Quentin et le martyre de Guillaume Longue Épée’, Pierre Bouet and François Neveux (eds.) Les Saints dans la Normandie mediévale, Caen, 2000, pages 237-258 is an important recent study.

The Normans in Normandy: When did the Vikings become Norman?

Wed, 12 Mar 2008 09:39:48 GMT

There are paradoxes in the history of tenth-century ‘Normandy’: violent invasion, but in the longer term a settlement which preserved many essentially Carolingian features… In the end, we must think of a fusion of cultures.”[1] The Viking settlers took up the Frankish customs way of life so completely that within a few generations of their arrival little of their Viking heritage remained. One explanation for this is that the number of settlers was few and that they were quickly absorbed into the local population. Or perhaps there was a brief violent takeover, after which the Vikings adopted the customs of their neighbours out of necessity and political pressure.

Contemporary Latin sources called these settlers Northmanni but this described both the Vikings and, much later, the Normans. It was a general term used to describe the Scandinavians who had become active in northern Francia in the ninth and tenth centuries. But no distinction was made in the tenth century between the Vikings of Neustria and the Vikings in other parts of the rest of Francia and elsewhere. The major problem with uncovering the history of the early Viking settlement of Neustria is the lack of sources from the early decades of the tenth century, when the settlement was formalised. The Vikings recorded their history later and the sources we do have are written by the Franks. The later Norman histories are problematic because of their interest in buttressing and legitimate the infant state[2]. The sources viewed the tenth-century as a violent time. Frankish lords fought for political dominance and, on the fringes of the Frankish kingdom, smaller groups of peoples fought for supremacy against each other and against the Franks. In the ninth-century, mobile Viking forces had often sailed up the Seine and besieged Paris, or simply ravaged areas inside Francia. It is hard to tell where these war-bands wintered, though it becomes clear in the annals that the gains for Viking raiders were so great that they began to winter in Francia instead of returning to Scandinavia.

In the early part of the tenth-century, the Neustrian or Breton March was still regarded as part of the Frankish kingdom by the Franks. The Viking raids reached their height during a period of instability in the Frankish kingdoms. An element of luck had played a part in allowing the Frankish kings to rule over an undivided kingdom for many years, in spite of the custom of dividing lands equally between sons on the death of their father. Peppin the Short, Carloman his son and Charlemagne his grandson ruled over an unbroken kingdom. But on the death of Charlemagne’s son Louis the Pious in 840, Francia was at last split. There was a period of fragmentation, with Francia divided into three kingdoms: West Francia, Lotharingia, and East Francia. Charles the Simple, King of West Francia (later to become France) from 898 to 922, regained pre-eminence in the Frankish lands after this period of struggle, though other factions existed. It was this political instability that Viking leaders exploited as they fought and befriended their Frankish counterparts.

How do the chronicles help?

Historians who attempt to reconstruct the early history of Normandy face a number of problems[3]. The sources are few and, worse still, their accuracy is often to be doubted. Palgrave[4] warned that “if you accept the task you must accept Dudo or let the work alone.” Today, the chronicle of Dudo of St Quentin is viewed with so much suspicion by historians that, even where his account tallies with other contemporary writers, he is still distrusted. But without Dudo we have little evidence. The Frankish historian Flodoard of Reims[5] provides some information about Normandy in the first half of the ninth-century, there are a few references to early Normandy in Scandinavian sources and even a late Welsh source. Later Norman sources for this period do exist, but many of these are based on Dudo’s account, so must be treated with caution. With such a lack of literary material, historians are left with the results of research from archaeology and analysis of place-name. The interpretation of archaeological evidence is difficult and the conclusions that can be drawn from it can be even vaguer than literary sources. The historian’s task in chronicling early Norman history is thus a difficult one, and the conclusions reached are, by necessity, limited in nature.

Dudo of St Quentin was born c. 960 in Vermandois. He wrote De moribus et actis primorum Normanniæ ducum (The Deeds of the Early Dukes of Normandy) from about 996 to the time he became Dean of St Quentin in 1015[6]. The earlier history, including some highly questionable and fictional details, was based on Virgil’s Aeneid and Jordanes’ Getica. His main informant for the details of his history was Count Rodulf of Ivry. Commissioned originally by Duke Richard I, the chronicle ended with the death of Richard in 996[7]. Dudo appears to know a great deal about Rollo[8], and he is the only source for the Treaty of Saint-Clair-sur-Epte, where Charles the Simple granted Rollo the lands around Rouen in 911. Rollo is baptised and, in return, receives the grant of land. The bishops said to Rollo, who was unwilling to kiss King Charles’s foot: “You who receive such a gift ought to kiss the king’s foot.” And he said: “I shall never bend my knees to another, nor shall I kiss anyone’s foot.” Compelled, however, by the prayers of the Franks, he ordered one of his soldiers to kiss the king’s foot. The man immediately seized the king’s foot, put it to his mouth and kissed it while the king was still standing. The king fell flat on his back. This raised a great laugh and greatly stirred up the crowd.” A great story, but almost certainly a legend. Dudo was the official chronicler of the Rollonid dynasty, and he portrays Rollo as the leader of the Vikings in many campaigns and battles, perhaps too many for historians to believe it. The facts of Rollo’s early years as leader of the early Normans are therefore lost in the illusion of later myths. Nonetheless, some of the essential details in Dudo’s story have some validity. Though Dudo is the only source who dates the agreement between Rollo and Charles at 911, this does appear to be a highly plausible date for the agreement.

It is unclear when Viking raiders began to settle in the coastal area, but there is some evidence from the few documents that survive from this period. A Carolingian charter of 905 records Charles the Simple’s grant of two serfs of the Crown from the pagus of Rouen to his chancellor Ernestus. This was the last royal charter in Normandy. Three months later, some idea of the turmoil in the region can be concluded from a charter of 906 that records the transfer of relics from Saint-Marcouf (now in Manche, Basse-Normandie) to Corbény “because of the excessive and prolonged attacks of the pagans.” In 918, Charles the Simple granted the lands of the old abbey of La Croix-Saint-Leufroi to the abbey of Saint-Germanin-des-Prés “except that part of the abbey’s lands that we have granted to the Normans of the Seine, namely to Rollo and his followers, for the defence of the kingdom.” The treaty recording this land grant to Rollo no longer exists, but it is clear that between the dates of these two royal proclamations, Rollo and his followers had established themselves.

The decisive event may have been a battle at Chartres in 911. Later Norman tradition tends to agree with this and places Rollo at the centre of events, though some historians question this. One reading of the sources is that as a result of this battle, the Vikings were appeased with a grant of land in order to contain and control them. Flodoard of Reims tells us that the Vikings had been granted the lands around Rouen “had some time ago been given to the Northmen on account of the pledges of Charles who had promised them the breadth of the country.” Flodoard’s account is important because it appears to give a contemporary view of the period. He was a canon of Reims, and wrote his annals from c. 925 until his death in 966. The only problem is that he was some distance from Normandy, and the history of Normandy was not his principal concern.

It is clear from his account that the Vikings and the Franks were in constant struggle. In 925, Flodoard records that “the Normans of Rouen broke the treaty which they had once made and devastated the districts [pagi] of Beauvais and Amiens. Those citizens of Amiens who were fleeing were burned by a fire for which they were ill-prepared.” The Franks responded by plundering Rouen: “they set fire to manors, stole cattle and even killed some of the Normans.” Count Herbert led another force against the Vikings towards the east, and surrounded them in a camp on the coast. “It was this very same camp, situated on the coast and called Eu that the Franks surrounded. They broke through the rampart by which the camp was surrounded in front of its walls and weakening the wall, climbed all. Once they had won possession of the town by fighting, they then slaughtered all the males and set fire to its fortifications. Some, however, escaped and took possession of a certain neighbouring island. But the Franks attacked and captured it, although with a greater delay than when they had seized the town. After the Normans, who had been preserving their lives by fighting as best they could, had seen what had happened and had let slip any hope of survival, some plunged themselves into the waves, some cut their throats and some were killed by Frankish swords, while others died by their own weapons. And in this way, once everyone had been destroyed and an outrageous amount of booty had been pillaged, the Franks returned to their territory.”

This vivid description gives historians a sense of the violence of the age. The Vikings were marauding all across the northern coastal regions of Francia, though Neustria does seem to be the main area of their settlement. However, they were certainly not confined to this area, or prepared to accept its boundaries. In 937, Flodoard tells us, “The Bretons retreated to their homeland after their long peregrinations fought in frequent battles with the Normans, who had invaded the territory which had belonged to them, next to their own. They ended up the stronger in many of these battles and reclaimed their own territory.” Rollo is mentioned in 925 as princeps (leader) of the Northmen at Rouen. Although not mentioned at the time, evidence from the 918 charter strongly suggests that the Norman chroniclers are correct in saying that Rollo led the army from the start. However, Dudo’s reference to the Treaty of St Clair-sur-Epte is uncorroborated and should be dismissed as unreliable. Dudo was also misleading when describing the terms of the settlement. The granting of “the land from the river Epte” tallies with the other sources, but the granting of Brittany does not. Neither does the scene of the utter wilderness hold true: if the land granted by Charles to the Vikings was “uncultivated by the ploughshare, entirely deprived of herds of cattle and flocks of sheep and lacking in human life”, then why do Scandinavian place-names only form a minority of all place-names throughout Normandy? Entertaining though Dudo’s tale may be, his chronicle, and those of his followers and imitators, cannot be trusted for the early history of Normandy and historians must resign themselves to establishing a few bare facts in the midst of later distortions.

The extension of Normandy’s borders can be seen in Flodoard’s history. King Ralph conceded Bayeux and Maine [Cinomannis et Baiocae] in 925 according to Flodoard, though there are doubts about the concession of Maine. Later in 933, the Normans were given Avranchin and Cotentin. Excluding Maine, this established Normandy in the approximate form that it existed in 1066. The Cotentin peninsula was also settled by Vikings independently of the Vikings under Rollo at Rouen. These early years were violent times. The Normans were constantly warring, fighting with the Franks in 923, but principally concerned with expanding their own sphere of influence. The people of Bayeux revolted against Viking rule in 925, a year after they had been transferred to the control of the counts of Rouen. Dudo recalls a revolt against William Longsword by a certain Riulf: “fiercely filled with infamous perfidy”.

Against all the stresses and the strains, against internal revolt and external threats, Normandy had secured its position by the middle of the tenth-century and, though its security was threatened many times, the Norman territory was strongly governed and able to throw off its enemies. This might perhaps lead us to view the treaties between the Franks and the Vikings as more significant than they were at the time. All the evidence suggests that the boundaries were relatively fluid. Agreements were made, and Vikings baptised, but these baptisms often proved temporary affairs. In the 920s, the archbishops of Rouen and Reims both wrote letters on the subject of Vikings who remained pagan despite having converted. Herveus of Reims asked the Pope: “What should be done when they have been baptised and re-baptised, and after their baptism continue to live in pagan fashion, and in the manner of pagans kill Christians, massacre priests, and, offering sacrifices to idols, eat what has been offered?”

There is little evidence for the widespread introduction of Scandinavian institutions or lifestyle. Although in 1013 Duke Richard II welcomed a group of Vikings at Rouen, too much should not be read into this. The leaders, Richard and Olaf, may have felt some commonality, but this cannot be discovered. Just as Frankish nobles and kings had welcomed Vikings and baptised them as Christians, in the hope of converting them into a friend and not making them an enemy, so Richard did with Olaf and his Vikings. Olaf had ravaged Brittany, but had allowed himself to be converted by Richard. The Normans were really now more Franks than Scandinavians. Dudo claims that at the time of William Longsword, Scandinavian speech was obsolete at Rouen, and it is indeed probable that the native tongue was soon adopted. On the eve of the first Crusade, the Norman knight Bohemond was able to ask, rhetorically, “Are we not Franks?”

How does archaeological and place-name evidence help?

The land divisions in Normandy appear to have remained unchanged from the Frankish to the Norman eras. Jacques Le Maho’s[9] study of the Pays de Caux shows a continuity of seigneurial residences, and it has been argued that there was greater continuity in this region than in other parts of Francia. The Vikings did bring slavery with them, but this did not last beyond the first century of occupation. The Normans seems to have been highly integrated with the Franks. One piece of evidence for this is the Fécamp coin horde, including some coins struck at mints in Cologne, Arles and Pavia. In Scandinavia, Norman coins cease to appear in hordes after the early eleventh century, appearing instead in Francia and Italy. This suggests a continuation of trading links with Scandinavia for a while, but with a steadily increasing Norman emphasis on contacts with the continent. Frankish justice was adopted; the Scandinavian thing did not become established.

The study of place-names provides an insight into early Normano-Viking settlement. The comprehensive study undertaken by Jean Adigard des Gautries[10] tells the story of the Viking influx. Taking all place-names with a possible or definite Scandinavian influence, it can be seen that these are especially numerous in the Cotentin peninsula and along the coast, with another large cluster in the Pays de Caux. They were also numerous “all along the great invasion route that was the Seine” and down the other rivers as well: evidence of the Vikings carrying on their raiding, travelling by ship across sea and along rivers. It seems quite likely that when Rollo had his territorial claims to Neustrian March recognised, he based his administration around a coastal group of settlements already in existence due to the activities of other Vikings over a number of years. However, Scandinavian place-names never formed a local majority over pre-existing Frankish names, even in the areas of highest Scandinavian place-name density. One explanation for this is the swift adoption of the local tongue by the Normans.

Frank Stenton[11] made a good point when he compared place-names in Normandy and the English Danelaw. He pointed out that place-names with Viking personal name elements also had Scandinavian suffixes, for example Grimsby: the Viking personal name Grim and the suffix -by, the Scandinavian word for village. He compared this to Normandy, where place-names that have Viking personal names very often have native endings, for example, Grémonville, the ending of which comes from the Latin villa. The former indicates a large settlement of Vikings, who named places in their own tongue. The latter might only show that while the Viking incomers founded and took over places, it was the local population who actually named these places. This could be an indication of the extent of the Viking settlement in Normandy.

Archaeological evidence can tell us little about early settlement. Patrick Perin[12], examining the evidence found around the lower Seine, admits that the “archaeological documentation is singularly lean.” There is evidence for Scandinavian presence: Viking swords and axes have been found, although Perin points out that despite two finds in the ground that were probably buried as part of a funeral, the arms found were all in the river. While this shows that Vikings were present here, it is not clear whether the finds are mainly from settlements or mainly from marauding hordes before the settlement era. This evidence adds little to our knowledge. It is clear that Northmen were present in Normandy for a long time, but the archaeology is scarce and cannot be pinpointed in time to give a clearer picture of the early years of the Viking settlement. The lack of finds does not trouble David Bates unduly, though. “If an extensive colonisation can be argued for in England despite the absence of significant archaeological finds, then the same conclusion seems feasible for Normandy.” The lack of Viking finds does not automatically discount a sizeable Viking settlement, but if this was the case then the settlers very quickly adopted Frankish customs.

Whatever the size of the settlement, there is another debate on the speed of integration. “Whichever way we turn”, writes Ralph Davies[13], “we have to admit that the Viking society of Rollo and his companions was something quite different from the Norman society of the eleventh century. The one developed from the other, but the development was not effective until the two races had merged and the Northmen had, for all practical purposes, become Frenchmen.” The level of integration is difficult to tell, and David Bates and Eleanor Searle hold different views on this. Bates believes that the Viking incomers quickly became integrated into the native society, so that they had soon adopted Frankish manners and institutions. Searle’s position is that they remained self-consciously Viking until the mid-eleventh century[14].

The evidence for this period is patchy and often inconclusive. The early history of Normandy can be told authoritatively only in very bare and plain terms. Tempting though it is to use more expansive and colourful Norman documents, these tell us more about the needs of the developing Norman state than about its early history. For the period he records, 923-966, Flodoard of Reims seems to be a reliable source, though his main focus is not Normandy. As for the Scandinavian impact on Normandy, there does not appear to have been an overwhelming upheaval. Scandinavian tongues appear not to have been spoken more than three generations after the settlement. Administrative districts were kept intact, estates seem to have survived, and on the whole the Normans ruled through Frankish-style institutions. But Michel de Boüard[15] warns against the simple assumption of continuity simply because of a lack of institutional change. He talks of the “vigour, the effectiveness of ducal power in Normandy” and warns that we should never forget the “human factor” in all this. Certainly, Normandy grew as a power once the Vikings had taken control. There is evidence here for both continuity and discontinuity. Since the sources tell us so little, it is a debate that will be hard to resolve.

[1] David Bates Normandy before 1066, Longman, 1982, page 38.

[2] Two papers are of particular importance on this issue: Pierre Bouet ‘Les chroniqueurs francs et normands face aux invasions vikings’ and Catherine Bougy ‘Comment les chroniqueurs du XII^e siècle ont-ils perçu les invasions vikings?’, in Elisabeth Ridel (ed.) L’Héritage maritime des Vikings en Europe de l’Ouest, Actes du colloque international de la Hague (Flottemanville-Hague, 30 septembre-3 octobre 1999), Presses Universitaires de Caen, 2002, pages 57-74 and pages 75-100 respectively

[3] David C. Douglas, ‘Some Problems of Early Norman Chronology’, English Historical Review volume 65, (1950), pages 289-303.

[4] Francis Palgrave The History of Normandy and of England, four volumes, 1851-1864.

[5] Flodoard of Reims, Les Annales de Flodoard, edited Philippe Lauer, Collection des textes pour servir à l’étude et à l’enseignement de l’histoire 39, Paris, 1905.

[6] Dudo of Saint-Quentin History of the Normans, translated Eric Christiansen, Boydell, 1997.

[7] Henri Prentout Étude critique sur Dudon de Saint-Quentin et son histoire des premiers ducs Normands, Paris, 1916 remains the most detailed study of Dudo.

[8] Lucien Musset ‘L’origine de Rollon,’ in Nordica et Normannica: Recueil d’études sur la Scandinavie ancienne et médiévale, les expéditions des Vikings et la fondation de la Normandie, Studia nordica 1, Paris: Société des études nordiques, 1997, originally published 1982, pages 383–87 is a useful summary of the evidence.

[9] Jacques Le Maho ‘L’apparition des seigneuries châtelaines dans le Grand-Caux à l’époque ducale,’ Archéologie Médiévale, volume 6, (1976), pages 5-148.

[10] Jean Adigard des Gautries Les noms de personnes scandinaves de Normandie en 911 á 1066, 1954.

[11] Frank M Stenton ‘The Scandinavian Colonies in England and Normandy’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 4^th series, volume 27, (1945), pages 1-12 but also see the more recent study by Gillian Fellows-Jensen ‘Scandinavian Place-Names and Viking Settlement in Normandy: A Review,’ Namn och Bygd, volume 76, (1988), 113-37, updated and translated into French as Gillian Fellows-Jensen ‘Les noms de lieux d’origine scandinave et la colonisation viking en Normandie: Examen critique de la question’, Proxima Thulé, volume 1 (1994), pages 63-103.

[12] Patrick Périn ‘Les objets Vikings du Musée des Antiquities de la Seine-Maritime á Rouen’, in Recueil d’études en hommage à Lucien Musset, Cahier des Annales de Normandie 23, Caen: Musée de Normandie, 1990, pages 161-188.

[13] R. H. C. Davis, The Normans and Their Myth, London, 1976

[14] Eleanor Searle Predatory Kinship and the Creation of Norman Power 840-1066 and ‘Frankish Rivalries and Norse Warriors,’ Anglo-Norman Studies, volume 8, (1985), pages 198-213.

[15] Michel de Boüard ‘De la Neustrie carolingienne á la Normandie féodale: continuité ou discontinuité,’ Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research, volume 28, (1955), pages 1-14.

The Normans in Normandy: Dudo of St Quentin

Tue, 11 Mar 2008 23:33:14 GMT

Who was Dudo?

Dudo, writing in the dedicatory letter to bishop Adalbero of Laon that serves as a preface to the work, says that Duke Richard I of Normandy commissioned a history and, after Richard’s death in 996, other members of the Norman ducal house continued to patronise him in the hopes that he would complete the task. Dudo writes that the commission was completed two years before the death of Richard I. According to the oldest manuscript copies of Dudo’s narrative, this occurred either in 996 or 1002. The former year, 996, is the one that is usually acceptable by scholars. However, it is symptomatic of the difficulties involved in studying the period that the later date, 1002, was preferred by the scribes of the oldest extant manuscript copies of the text (Bern, Bürgerbibliothek, Bongars 390 of the early eleventh century and Berlin, Staatsbibliothek - Preußischer Kulterbesitz, Philipps 1854 of the late eleventh century)[1] and was left ‘uncorrected’ by the owners of the Berlin manuscript, namely the monks of the Norman monastery of Fécamp, where Duke Richard died and was buried. The manuscript was owned, in the twelfth century, by the Norman monastery of Fécamp, also on the Channel coast, and is listed in the twelfth-century library catalogue of that house under the title “Gesta Normannorum” or “Deeds of the Normans”. Dudo’s history of early Normandy, unlike the vast majority of texts written before the age of the printing press, survives in a fairly large number of manuscripts, all of which differ from one another in a variety of ways, but most of which were copied during the eleventh or twelfth centuries, the height of the popularity of the text[2].

If determining the date at which Dudo began to write is difficult, determining the date at which he finished writing is even more problematic. In the author’s dedicatory letter to bishop Adalbero, Dudo called himself the ‘decanus’ (dean) of the community of canons of St. Quentin in the Vermandois. Because Dudo is called simply a ‘canonicus’ (canon) of St. Quentin in a charter of duke Richard II that dates from 1015[3], it is usually concluded that he completed his Norman history late in 1015, after receiving a promotion to ‘decanus’[4] Because the charter survives in the original, and not in some later copy, its own authenticity is not in doubt[5]. Nevertheless, the reasoning behind this particular end-date is not absolutely certain.

Dudo himself wrote the first four lines of the charter of 1015, calling himself the ‘capellanus’ (chaplain) of Duke Richard II. Another scribe wrote the rest of the charter and called Dudo a ‘canonicus’. The title therefore does not have the kind of authority that it would have had had it come from Dudo’s own pen. Yet, even if Dudo did use the title ‘canonicus’ in 1015, that would not preclude his already having become the ‘decanus’ of the congregation[6]. When a canon became dean of St. Quentin, he did not cease to be a canon of the community. This can be seen in a typical charter in the cartulary (collection of charters) of St. Quentin that refers to “the dean and the other canons of the church of blessed Quintinus”[7]. The 1015 charter represents, in a sense, Dudo’s will, whereby he is guaranteed by Richard II that he may bequeath to his monastic family certain benefices that he had been given by Richard I. At this moment, it is understandable that Dudo would have emphasised his status as a member of the community of the monastery, rather than his official position over it. Finally, if Dudo was not the dean of the community at the time of the 1015 charter, there is no reason to assume that he necessarily became dean after drawing up the charter rather than that he had been dean before drawing up the charter. The deanship of a canonry is not a lifetime position from which one cannot abdicate. Indeed, it is precisely the sort of position from which one might resign in order to become the ‘capellanus’ of Richard II, the position that Dudo described himself as holding in the charters of 1011 and 1015.

To complicate matters even more, it is important to consider materials beyond the dedicatory letter and the two ducal charters. Can we be certain that we ought to trust the salutation of the dedicatory epistle when it refers to Dudo as the ‘decanus’ of St. Quentin, whether in 1015 or at any other time? The dedicatory letter does appear in a number of the earlier manuscript copies of the text. However, none of these is separated from the date of Dudo’s own writing by fewer than several decades. On the other hand, the Annals of St. Quentin, written in a ninth-century manuscript from St. Quentin and then updated by tenth- and eleventh-century hands contemporary with the events recorded, describe the rule of ‘abbates’ (abbots) and ‘custodes’ (guardians) throughout the period in question, with no reference to anyone named Dudo, or indeed to any ‘decani’.[8] Against a background of such uncertainty, it is difficult to see how historians can say anything more specific than that Dudo wrote the history during the late tenth and/or early eleventh centuries, while associated in a variety of ways with the ruling family of ducal Normandy.

Issues in Dudo

The origin story

By the beginning of the eleventh century, there was a growing awareness in Normandy that a new people, as well as a new principality, had been formed over the course of the previous century. This consciousness forms an important theme in Dudo’s chronicle. He wrote his tale of Normandy’s past to please an audience that was largely members of the Norman ducal court. According to Dudo, Rollo the tenth century Viking founder of Normandy saw a vision of his future while still a pagan wanderer. Rollo was transported to a mountain in Francia, washed in a clear and fragrant fountain and joined there by thousands of birds who came from every direction to build their nests around the mountain. A Christian, who Rollo had taken captive in battle, interpreted the dream: the mountain symbolised the Christian church; the fountain was the baptism that Rollo would receive; and the birds represented the ‘men of different realms’ who would make their homes with Rollo and accept him as their leader.

Origin stories like this were widespread in medieval Europe. Common to many other cultures and periods, their purpose was to create a viable past that reinforced collective identity and values. To be effective, these stories need to have the ring of truth about them though this point is often overlooked. A common feature of medieval origin stories was the assumption of a single descent: the people who formed the cultural and political unit were generally seen as racially homogeneous and this common ancestry is often the point of the story. Graham Loud[9] argues that Norman historians conformed to the traditional view of common descent: Dudo and his successors do describe Rollo and his followers as Danes/Dacians who descended from the Trojan exile Antenor. But this point seems to miss the broader picture. By recognising the different origins of the people of Normandy, Dudo broke with this tradition.

Dudo would, given his education and training, have been fully aware of this tradition. However, he chose to offer a truer account that underlined the message of inclusion that was central to his patrons. The Norman achievement and this was recognised by Dudo, was the successful incorporation of various peoples from different backgrounds into one community and, as a result, created a new people, a new ethnicity and a new identity. The dominant theme in Dudo’s work is that Normandy was the product of a difficult but ultimately successful union between newcomers and natives[10].

Fact and fancy

Despite Dudo’s willingness to subordinate fact to fancy, his work represents the beginning of Norman historiography[11]. Written at the express command of the duke, his work sheds light on how early eleventh century Normans interpreted the first century of their rule, or at least how Dudo imagined they did. Had his version not rung true in the ears of later Normans, it would not have been so widely plagiarised by later historians. The message of Rollo’s dream was repeated again and again by historians and summarised in the late eleventh century by a monk of the abbey of Saint-Wandrille[12] who simply wrote that Rollo reconciled “the men of all origins and different professions in little time, and he made one people out of different races”.

The problem is that the view Dudo expressed of a new people born of the synthesis of several groups has been lost in the historiographical debate on the origins of the duchy. The debate can be seen as one of two polarised positions: one that sees discontinuity in the Viking heritage of the Normans and one that stresses continuity by stressing the Norman capacity to assimilate and absorb Frankish culture. Again, this obscures the broader picture: discontinuity at the upper levels of society did not mean discontinuity at the lower levels. Dudo recognised that the important issue was not whether Normandy was more Viking or more Frankish at a given date but rather how it evolved through combining these divergent traditions into a new and dynamic society.

The people who seized control of the region were opportunists and this represented their Viking heritage. However, Rollo and his successors quickly recognised the importance of broadening the basis of their support internally and externally. This was essential as there were many people who still saw them as the scourge of God. Although the Vikings were not engaged in a deliberately anti-Christian crusade, to their victims they appeared both as ‘the rod of God’s wrath’ and ‘the people of God’s wrath’ and Carolingian charters often refer to them as the enemies of Christianity. The assassination of William Longsword in 942 and the attack on Rouen that followed it showed that the position of the Normans was by no means secure or permanent. Opportunities were taken by the Normans from the 940s to strengthen their position. They preserved and, to a significant degree maintained Carolingian legal and administrative institutions that helped to centralise their rule. They expanded their network of alliances and neutralised potential threats through the practive of selective marriage, internally and externally. They increased their wealth by controlling the currency, collective revenue based on Carolingian taxes and encouraged economic growth under their authority. They used the church to reshape their advantage and there is little doubt of the centrality of the role played by the Church in the establishment of Normandy before 1066.

Dudo placed considerable emphasis on the theme of predator to patron and protector of the Church. A contrast is drawn between ‘bad’ Vikings who attacked the church and those ‘good’ Vikings who rebuilt it. As patrons of the church from Rollo onwards, the Normans were able to throw off their bloodthirsty image and, more importantly, the church provided an infrastructure for the Norman rulers to expand their authority geographically and socially. Dudo claimed that Rollo received all his lands in Normandy, as well as in Brittany, from the Frankish king in 911. In reality, Rollo’s rule was far more limited and it was not until the late tenth century that his successors were able to claim effective control over the area that later became lower Normandy.

Dudo’s chronicle provides a justification for the position of the Normans in Normandy and a legitimacy for their rule based on a combination of fact and fabrication. Latin models such as Dudo of Saint-Quentin and Guillaume de Jumièges largely inspired Benoît de Sainte-Maure as he fulfilled King Henry II Plantagenêt’s request to write a history of the dukes of Normandy. Yet his perspective was different. Besides reporting military deeds and conquests, Benoît also allowed himself religious and political comments. He showed how the Norman dukes, who were said to be Henry II’s ancestors and descended from the Danes, themselves allegedly descendents of the Trojans, built the foundations of a harmonious civilisation as they combined their military role and their worldly power under the sway of the Roman Church. Their patria, Troy and the splendid civilisation Benoît had conjured up in his Roman de Troie, might have disappeared, but the history of the Danes who became Dukes of Normandy and Kings of England was an ongoing affair. Reaching its high point under Henry II, as Benoît claimed, it illustrates how they could retrieve and develop ‘Trojan’ virtues such as how to guide and rule their people in the light of the Christian faith, and how they founded the Trojan civilisation again, this time on the boundaries of the Western world.

[1] Gerda Huisman ‘Notes on the Manuscript Tradition of Dudo of St. Quentin’s Gesta Normannorum’, Anglo-Norman Studies volume 6 (1984), page 122; J. J. G. Alexander Norman Illumination at Mont St.-Michel, 966 - 1100, Oxford, 1970, pages 40, 235.

[2] Gerda Huisman ‘Notes on the Manuscript Tradition of Dudo of St. Quentin’s Gesta Normannorum’, Anglo-Norman Studies volume 6 (1984), pages 122-136.

[3] Recueil des chartes des ducs de Normandie, 911 - 1066 ed. Marie Fauroux, Mémoires de la Société des Antiquaires de Normandie 36; Caen, 1961, no. 18, pages 100 – 102.

[4] Leah Shopkow ‘The Carolingian World of Dudo of St. Quentin’, Journal of Medieval History, volume 15 (1989), pages 19-37.

[5] Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, Collection de Picardie 352 no. 1.

[6] He also wrote, as ‘capellanus’ another extant charter of Richard II (Recueil des chartes ed. Fauroux no. 13, pages 86 - 89), which also survives in the original: Rouen, Archives Départementales, Seine-Maritime ms. 14 H 915A.

[7] “...ecclesie beati quintini decanus ceterique canonici”: Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, Ms. Latin 11.070 no. 74 folio 86r.

[8] Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica ms. latinus 645 ed. L. Bethmann, Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptores, volume XVI, Hannover, 1859, coll. 507 - 508. The Benedictines of St. Maur, by contrast, present the governance of the house to have involved lay abbots and deans throughout the period; however, they provide no source for “Vivianus”, said to have been the ‘decanus’ in the late tenth and early eleventh centuries, before Dudo: Gallia Christiana volume ix, Paris, 1751, coll. 1038 - 1054).

[9] Graham Loud ‘The “Gens Normannorum”: Myth or Reality?’, Anglo-Norman Studies, volume 4 (1982), pages 104-116.

[10] On this see, Cassandra Potts ‘Atque unum ex diversisgentibus populam effecit, Historical Tradition and the Norman Identity’, Anglo-Norman Studies, volume 18, (1996), pages 139-152.

[11] Dudo’s historicity was savaged in Henry Howorth, “A Criticism of the Life of Rollo as Told by Dudo of St Quentin,” Archaeologia volume 45 (1880): pages 235-50, and Henri Prentout, Étude critique sur Dudon de Saint-Quentin et son histoire des premiers ducs Normands, Paris: Picard, 1916. Despite defences such as Lair’s introduction to his edition of Dudo and Johannes Steenstrup, Normandiets Historie under de syv første Hertuger, 911-1066, Mémoires de l’Académie royale des sciences et des lettres de Danemark, 7^me série, Section des Lettres 5.1, Copenhagen: Andr. Fred. Høst & Søn, 1925, Dudo’s critics have largely held the field as even his harshest critics seem to hold to a largely Dudoesque early Normandy. In recent years, however, Dudo has enjoyed a significant resurgence. At Caen, a “neo-Dudonist” school is emerging, seeking to rehabilitate Dudo as historian, led by Pierre Bouet and François Neveux; see François Neveux, La Normandie des ducs aux rois (X^e-XII^e siècle), Rennes: Ouest-France, 1998 and L’Aventure des Normands, Perrin, 2006. Further, some historians have come to appreciate Dudo as a source not for the history of the 10^th century, but for the intellectual climate of Normandy and the Carolingian world in the 11^th century. See, M. Arnoux ‘Before the Gesta Normannorum and Beyond Dudo: Some Evidence on Early Norman Historiography’, Anglo-Norman Studies, volume 22 (2000), pages 29-48, important for evidence as to the early development of Dudo’s text; Eleanor Searle ‘Fact and Pattern in Heroic History: Dudo of Saint-Quentin’, Viator volume 15 (1984), pages 119-37; Leah Shopkow ‘The Carolingian World of Dudo of Saint-Quentin’, Journal of Medieval History volume 15 (1989), pages 19-37; Pierre Bouet ‘Dudon de Saint-Quentin et Virgile: L’Enéide au service de la cause normande’, in Recueil d’études en hommage à Lucien Musset, Cahier des Annales de Normandie 23, Caen: Musée de Normandie, 1990, pages 215-36; Victoria B. Jordan ‘The Role of Kingship in Tenth-Century Normandy: Hagiography of Dudo of Saint-Quentin’, Haskins Society Journal volume 3 (1991), pages 53-62; Emily Albu (Hanawalt) ‘Dudo of Saint-Quentin: The Heroic Past Imagined’, Haskins Society Journal volume 6 (1994), pages 111-18; Felice Lifshitz ‘Dudo’s Historical Narrative and the Norman Succession of 996’, Journal of Medieval History volume 20 (1994), pages 101-20; Claude Carozzi, ‘Des Daces aux Normands, le mythe et l’identification d’un peuple chez Dudon de Saint-Quentin’, Claude Carozzi et Huguette Taviani-Carozzi (eds.), Peuples du Moyen Âge. Problèmes d’identification, Séminaire Société, Idéologies et Croyances au Moyen Âge, Publications de l’Université de Provence, 1996, pages 7-25; and the articles in Dudone di San Quintino: Sono qui raccolte le relazioni tenute dagli intervenuti al Convegno su Dudone di San Quintino, organizzato a Trento dal Dipartimento di scienze filologiche e storiche dell’Universita atesina il 5 e 6 maggio 1994, edited by Paolo Gatti and Antonella Degl’Innocenti, Labirinti 16 (Trent: Universita degli studi di Trento, 1995).

[12] Jean Laporte (ed.) Invention et miracula Sancti Vulfrani, Rouen, 1938, page 21.