Governing Norman Lands

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. 

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[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

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?

 

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[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: When did the Vikings become Norman?

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.

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[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

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.

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[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.

The Normans in Normandy: Recent Historiography 3

Expanding horizons

The revival of rural history in the years since 1990, the exploration of written documents in terms of inventories, description, dating and typology and of critical editions of texts, for example, censuses[1] and terriers[2] has not always received the credit it deserves[3].

Recent work on the role of the Exchequer in Normandy has shown the radical transformation of fiscal administration that occurred in the duchy in the course of the 1190s and underlines the importance of this source for increasing our understanding of towns, of monetary exchange and inflation, the organisation of war and, more generally, the administrative structures of the Norman state. The absence of a modern edition of the twelfth century Norman Exchequer rolls will be remedied by the work of Vincent Moss at the University of Reading[4]. This work will provide an invaluable means for examining Norman society and the Norman state in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries allowing, for example, explanation of the functions of the Exchequer and the administrative geography of the duchy as well as stimulating research on economic and social history by identifying the eight thousand people mentions in the rolls and allowing a scientific examination of the ruling and administrative class of the duchy. On this point, there already exists a database of prosopographical and documentary evidence produced by Katharine Keats-Rohan[5] that contains 95000 names taken from Domesday Book, the Pipe rolls and nearly 5000 English charters.

The range of material that it is necessary to take into account is not unique. To say that a particular witness, such as a charter, cartulary or the workshop of a potter initially has a physical reality is not especially original save to underline the epistemological challenge facing historians of mastering particular methodological tools. From this perspective the reports of the colloquy de Cerisy in October 1999 on the Bayeux Tapestry[6] demonstrates the synthesis possible between different ways of looking at the tapestry from the interpretations elaborated by history, to those of specialists in art and languages. This applies equally well to other iconographical sources like illuminations[7] or the study of medieval inscriptions for which there is now a volume of Corpus des inscriptions de la France médiévale [8]dedicated to Normandy.

The resources of linguistics, in particular areas like the study of dialects and place names have been especially valuable in explaining the nature of the Scandinavian settlement in Normandy. This has highlighted the apparent paradox between the evidence from place names and the almost complete absence of archaeological evidence[9] for the Nordic colonisation of the province of Rouen and its place in the complex movements of population between Northern Europe and the France and Britain[10]. These questions were debated in a comparative perspective at two recent conferences on the maritime heritage of the Vikings in North-West Europe[11] (at Flottemanville-Hague, 30^th September-3^rd October 1999) and on the Scandinavian settlement in the West and the beginnings of the duchy of Normandy (at Cerisy-la-Salle, 25^th-29^th September 2002).

The expansion of available sources is clearly indebted to medieval archaeology. Of central importance was the path finding role played by Michel de Boüard in the blooming of this discipline, the scale of the information now available through annual reports in the scientific journals of the regional archaeological services, the accounts of excavations in Archéologie médiévale and from conferences and meetings. The archaeology of buildings has also seen an impressive number of publications especially two volumes on medieval Norman architecture recently republished with an up-to-date bibliography[12].

The confrontation of texts and archaeology has been especially fruitful in understanding the basis of power in ducal Normandy and its links to urban development. The example of Fécamp has already been recognised. Excavations at Rouen suggest a fundamental reorganisation of urban space at the end of the ninth century, perhaps comparable to the transformation that occurred at Winchester at the same time. This revision of established views has been associated by Jacques le Maho[13] with a change in the functions of the town from being a place of refuse for the mercantile and artisanal population under pressure from the Scandinavian invaders while ports were dispersed along the lower valley of the River Seine to an important expression of ducal power. The town was revitalised after it was captured by Rollo and became his capital and because it also contributed to the reunification of the Nordic settlers in Neustria. In the period between the tenth and the twelfth century, excavations show that the town became an important centre not simply for the growing Norman economy but as an important expression of a developing civil Norman architecture[14] from the reign of Richard I. Its growth was paralleled by the expansion of Caen[15] and a little later by Bayeux and Lisieux[16].

The study of Norman society cannot be concluded without taking into account the importance of castles[17]. The census of the fortified sites has been continued by department and regional archeological service and research departments such as the Centre de recherches Archéologiques et Historiques Médiévales. It was thus possible, for certain departments, like l’Orne, to suggest a comprehensive listing and classification of this mass of documentary material to explain the development of the network of castles. The results of several excavations carried out or started in the 1990s are accessible in various publications. This is the case for the castle of Domfort[18], the ‘Old Castle’ of Vatteville-la-Rue,[19] the motte of Rivray at Condé-sur-Huisne[20], at Bretoncelles[21] and Château-Gaillard aux Andelys[22]. The data collected is important in analysing methods of construction[23], the typology of castle construction and the material aspects of the everyday life at the sites[24]. The research undertaken informs the debate on the fundamental problems of the political and social history of the duchy[25]: the genesis of the castellans, the development of the great territorial domains on the southernmost borders of the duchy, like the seigneurie of Bellême[26] or the county of the Perche[27]. They also provide information on the vast subject of the occupation of the soil, the nature of dwellings and the organisation of the territory. These topics are also at the heart of the debates that have taken place on the genesis of the medieval village, an approach largely renewed by the archaeologists[28]. The 1990s saw major archaeological operations in the neighborhoods of Caen[29] on the sites of Saint-Martin de Trainecourt and at Sente, the resumption of the excavations of the deserted village of Saint-Ursin-of-Courtisigny that led to the excavations at Giberville, at Vieux-Fumé[30] in Tournedos-on-Seine and at Bouafles.

The analysis of decorated and glazed ceramics discovered in Rouen and the comparison with other batches of ceramics of the tenth and eleventh centuries found in North-West Europe, in particular in York, confirmed the importance of exchanges between the principality of Rouen and British Isles from the earliest years of ducal Normandy, already suggested by anthroponymic and toponymic data. Sites of production of ceramics already the scene of excavations has led to several publications like those devoted the work of the pottery at Roche-Mabile[31] (Orne), dating from the end of twelfth century, or papers from a conference organised in Rouen in 1994 on the ceramics of the eleventh to sixteenth centuries in Normandy, Beauvaisis and the Ile-de-France[32]. The centres of this ceramic production are known better and this is particularly the case for the workshops of Molay-Littry, where activity dates from the eleventh century[33]. It still remains necessary to specify the chronology of the development from the workshops of organised potters that can be identified in fourteenth and fifteenth centuries in Bessin[34], in Domfrontais and in Mortainais to the development of skilled artisans in clay[35]. The techniques used, the type of workplaces, the products and the nature of markets are of considerable interest to researchers but they also focus on the organisation of production and on the communities that contributed to the expansion of the industry. These problems that link the analysis of the data provided by archeology and by the texts also relates to other types of activities, like the iron and steel industry, for which Mathieu Arnoux[36] has underlined the importance and the diffusion of community structures of production largely anchored in the rural Norman society, which showed considerable evidence of economic vitality.

It is to be expected that this analysis of recent historiographical and bibliographical advances will quickly becomes obsolete as study of the materials relating to ducal Normandy develops. Research by Veronique Gazeau[37] on the abbots Benedictines, their manuscripts and on the liturgy[38] is a good indication of this process. As historians continue to examine different types of documents and explore the opportunities offered by electronic publication, it is to be expected that new developments will continue to emerge.

---

[1] Denise Angers, Catherine Bebear and Henri Dubois, Un censier normand du XIII^e siècle. Le Livre des Jurés de l’abbaye de Saint-Ouen de Rouen, Paris, 2001

[2] Denise Angers, ‘Terriers et livres-terriers en Normandie (XIII^e-XV^e siècle)’, in Ghislain Brunel, Olivier Guyotjeannin, Jean-Marc Moriceau (eds.) Terriers et plans-terriers du XIII^e au XVIII^e siècle. Actes du Colloque de Paris (23-25 septembre 1998), Rennes-Paris, 2002, pages 19-35 and Thomas Jarry, Terriers et Plans parcellaires de Basse-Normandie (XIII^e-XVIII^e siècle), Caen, 1998

[3] See, Mathieu Arnoux and Ghislain Brunel, ‘Réflexions sur les sources médiévales de ‘histoire des campagnes’. De l’intérêt de publier les sources, de les critiquer et de les lire’, Histoire et Sociétés Rurales, volume i, 1994, pages 11-35. Édith Peytremann Archéologie de l’habitat rural dans le nord de la France du IV^e au XII^e siècle, two volumes, Caen, 2003 is especially important.

[4] Three papers by Vincent Moss are of especial value: ‘Normandy and England in 1180: The Pipe Roll Evidence’, in David Bates and Ann Curry (eds.), England and Normandy in the Middle Ages, London, Hambledon Press, 1994, pages 185-195, ‘The Norman Fiscal Revolution, 1193-98’, in M. Omrod, M. and R. Bonney (eds.), Crises, Revolution and Self Sustained Growth, Oxford, 1999, pages 38-57 and ‘The Norman Exchequer Rolls of King John’, in D. Church (ed.), King John: New Interpretations, Stephen Woodbridge, Boydell Press, 1999, p. 101-116.

[5] COEL: Continental Origins of English Landholders, 1066-1166, 2002 to be found on the Internet at www.linacre.ox.ac.uk/research/prosop/dbase.stm from which two books have already appeared: K.S.B. Keats-Rohan Domesday People: A Prosopography of Persons Occurring in English Documents 1066-1166 Volume I, Domesday Book, Woodbridge, 1999 and Domesday Descendants: A Prosopography of Persons Occurring in English Documents 1066- 1166 Volume II Pipe Rolls to Cartae Baronum, Woodbridge, 2002. See David Rolfe ‘The Continental Origins of English Landholders 1066-1166 database and the COEL Database System on CDROM’, Nottingham Medieval Studies, volume xvl, 2001, pages 234-7.

[6] Pierre Bouet, Brian Levy and François Neveux (eds.), La Tapisserie de Bayeux: l’art de broder l’histoire, Actes du colloque de Cerisy-la-Salle, octobre 1999, Caen, 2003.

[7] On this issue see, Pierre Bouet and Monique Dosdat (eds.), Manuscrits et enluminures dans le monde normand (X^e-XV^e siècle), Actes du colloque de Cerisy-la-Salle, octobre 1995, Caen, Presses Universitaires de Caen, 1999, Richard Gameson, The Manuscripts of Early Norman England (c. 1066-1130), Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1999 and Marie-Dominique Nobécourt, ‘L’enluminure dans les manuscrits normands vers l’An Mil, d’après les manuscrits de la Bibliothèque municipale de Rouen’, La Normandie vers l’An Mil, Rouen, Société de l’Histoire de Normandie, 2000, pages 61-70.

[8] Robert Favreau and Jean Michaud (eds.), Corpus des inscriptions de la France médiévale, volume xxii, Calvados, Eure, Manche, Orne, Seine-Maritime, Paris, 2003.

[9] A recent consideration of the issue is Anne Nissen Jaubert, ‘Some aspects of viking research in France’, in Steffen Stumann Hansen, Klaus Randsborg (eds.), Vikings in the West, Copenhagen, Munksgaard, 2000, pages 159-169, especially pages 165-169.

[10] Gillian Fellows-Jensen, ‘Les noms de lieux d’origine scandinave et la colonisation viking de la Normandie. Examen critique de la question’, Proxima Thulé, Revue d’études nordiques, volume i, 1994, pages 63-103.

[11] Elisabeth Ridel (ed.), L’Héritage maritime des Vikings en Europe de l’Ouest, Actes du colloque international de la Hague (Flottemanville-Hague, 30 septembre-3octobre 1999), Caen, 2002.

[12] L’architecture normande au Moyen Âge, published under the direction of Maylis Baylé, 2^nd ed., Presses Universitaires de Caen-Charles Corlet, 1997, 2001.

[13] The most important papers by Jacques Le Maho on Rouen are: ‘Autour d’un millénaire: l’œuvre architecturale à Rouen de Richard 1^er, duc de Normandie (996)’, Bulletin des Amis des Monuments Rouennais, October 1995-September 1996, pages 62-83; ‘Nouvelles hypothèses sur l’église Notre-Dame de Rouen au X^e siècle’, in Sylvette Lemagnen et Philippe Manneville (eds.), Chapitres et cathédrales en Normandie, Actes du XXXI^e Congrès des Sociétés historiques et archéologiques de Normandie, Annales de Normandie, Série des Congrès des Sociétés historiques et archéologiques de Normandie, Caen, II, 1997, pages 295-306; and in Philippe Manneville (ed.) ‘Les destins comparés de deux cités de fond d’estuaire: Rouen et Nantes du VI^e au X^e siècle’, in Des villes, des ports, la mer et les hommes, actes du 124e Congrès des sociétés historiques et scientifiques, Nantes, 19-26 avril 1999, Comité des Travaux Historiques et Scientifiques, 2001, pages 13-25.

[14] On civil architecture see, Bernard Gauthiez, ‘Les maisons de Rouen, XII^e-XVIII^e siècles’, Archéologie médiévale, volume xxiii, 1993, pages 131-217 and Dominique Pitte, ‘Architecture civile en pierre à Rouen du XIe au XIIIe siècle. La maison romane’, Archéologie Médiévale, volume xxiv, 1994, pages 251-299.

[15] On Caen, see Christophe Collet, Pascal Leroux and Jean-Yves Marin (eds.), Caen, cité médiévale. Bilan d’archéologie et d’histoire, Caen, 1996 and Laurence Jean-Marie, Caen aux XI^e et XII^e siècles. Espace urbain, pouvoirs et société, Caen, 2000.

[16] François Neveux, Bayeux et Lisieux Villes épiscopales de Normandie à la fin du Moyen Âge, Caen, 1996.

[17] Bruno Fajal (ed.), Autour du château médiéval, Actes des Rencontres Historiques et Archéologiques de l’Orne, Alençon, 5 avril 1997, Alençon, 1998 is a useful summary of developments. See also, Jean Flori, ‘Châteaux et forteresses aux XI^e et XII^e siècles. Étude sur le vocabulaire des historiens des ducs de Normandie’, Le Moyen Âge, volume ciii, 1997, pages 261-273

[18] Gérard Louise, ‘Châteaux et pouvoirs dans le Domfrontais médiéval (XI^e-XIII^e siècle)’, Les conférences d’histoire locale du lycée de Domfront, volume xiii, 1993, pages 11-28.

[19] Anne-Marie Flambard Hericher, ‘Le château des comtes de Meulan à Vatteville-la-Rue, étude comparative d’une demeure aristocratique normande’, Aux marches du palais, Qu’est-ce qu’un palais médiéval? VII^e congrès international d’archéologie médiévale, Le Mans-Mayenne 9, 10 et 11 sept. 1999, Le Mans, 2001, pages 213-221 and ‘La construction dans la basse vallée de la Seine: l’exemple du château de Vatteville-la-Rue (Seine-Maritime), Château-Gaillard, volume xviii, Caen, 1998, pages 93-102.

[20] Joseph Decaëns, ‘De la motte de conquête (XI^e siècle) à la seigneurie châtelaine (XII^e siècle). L’exemple de Rivray à Condé-sur-Huisne’, Château-Gaillard, volume xvi, actes du colloque international tenu à Luxembourg 23-29 août 1992, Caen, 1994, pages 109-120.

[21] Anne-Marie Flambard Hericher, Philippe Bernouis, Joseph Decaëns, ‘La Butte du Château à Bretoncelles. Un exemple de la conquête territoriale des Rotrou’, Château-Gaillard, volume xix, actes du colloque international de Graz (Austria) 22-29 août 1998, Caen, 2000, pages 75-82.

[22] Dominique Pitte, Sophie Fourny-Dargère, Paola Caldéroni (eds.), Château-Gaillard: découverte d’un patrimoine (catalogue de l’exposition, Vernon, Musée municipal A. G. Poulain, 15 novembre 1995-février 1996), Vernon, Musée municipal A. G. Poulain. 1995.

[23] There are three important papers on castle construction by Anne-Marie Flambard Hericher, ‘Méthodes de recherche archéologique sur les châteaux de terre et de bois. L’exemple de la Normandie’, IV European Symposium for teachers of medieval archaeology, volume iv, Séville-Cordoue, 29th september-2nd october 1999, Séville, 2001, pages 99-112, ‘Fortifications de terre et résidence en Norman-die’, Château Gaillard, volume xx, Actes du 20^e colloque international ‘Château Gaillard’, tenu à Gwatt (Switzerland) 2-10 septembre 2000, Caen, 2002, pages 87-100 and ‘Quelques réflexions sur le mode de construction des mottes en Normandie et sur ses marges’, in Mélanges Pierre Bouet, Caen, 2002, pages 123-132.

[24] Annie Renoux, Fécamp, du palais ducal au palais de Dieu, Bilan historique et archéologique des recherches menées sur le site du château des ducs de Normandie, II^e siècle A.C.-XVIII^e siècle P.C., Paris, C.N.R.S, 1991.

[25] Annie Renoux, ‘Palais capétiens et normands à la fin du X^e siècle et au début du XI^e siècle’, in Michel Parisse et Xavier Barral (eds.) Le Roi de France et son royaume autour de l’an Mil, actes du colloque Hugues Capet 987-1987, la France de l’an Mil, Paris-Senlis 22-25 juin 1987, Paris, 1992, pages 179-191.

[26] Gérard Louise, ‘Châteaux et frontière seigneuriale au XI^e siècle: l’exemple du Saosnois aux confins de seigneurie de Bellême et du comté du Maine’, Château Gaillard, volume xiv, 1990, pages 225-239; and La Seigneurie de Bellême X^e-XII^e 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, 1992-1993.

[27] Kathleen Thompson, Power and Border Lordship in Medieval France: The County of the Perche, 1000-1226, Woodbridge, Boydell Press, 2002 is the best study available in English. There are several important articles on the Perche: Joseph Decaëns, ‘Les Châteaux de la vallée de l’Huisne dans le Perche’, Anglo-Norman Studies, volume xvii, 1995, pages 3-20 and ‘La motte comme moyen de conquête du sol et comme instrument de la seigneurie châtelaine (XI^e-XIII^e siècle): l’exemple de quelques châteaux à motte du Perche’, in Elisabeth Magnou-Nortier (ed.), Aux sources de la gestion publique, volume iii, Hommes de Pouvoirs, Ressources et lieux de Pouvoir (V^e-XIII^e siècle), Actes du colloque du 26 et 27 janvier 1997, Lille, 1997, pages 263-281.

[28] There are several important papers on this subject: Vincent Carpentier, ‘Un cas d’occupation du sol à l’époque carolingienne: le site du ‘Mesnil’, à Plomb’, Revue de l’Avranchin et du Pays de Granville, volume lxxvii, 2000, pages 177-18 and ‘Un habitat des XI^e-XII^e siècles dans la campagne d’Argentan (Orne)’, Archéologie médiévale, volume xxxii, 2002, pages 69-103 and Claire Hanusse, ‘L’habitat rural du haut Moyen Âge (VI^e-X^e siècle) de ‘la Sente’ à Grentheville (Calvados): premiers éléments de synthèse’, Actes du III^e Colloque Européen des Professeurs d’Archéologie Médiévale (Caen, 11-15 septembre 1996), Caen, 1999, pages 85-93.

[29] Claude Lorren, ‘Le village en Gaule du Nord pendant le haut Moyen Âge. Quelques remarques et hypothèses suscitées par l’observation des résultats des fouilles archéologiques récentes’, Actes du III^e Colloque Européen des Professeurs d’Archéologie Médiévale (Caen, 11-15 septembre 1996), Caen, 1999, pages 116-132.

[30] Vincent Hincker, Christophe Maneuvrier, Guy San Juan and Denis Thiron, ‘Des vestiges d’habitats des XI^e-XII^e et XIII^e-XV^e s. sur le site de la déviation de Vieux-Fumé (Calvados)’, Histoire et traditions populaires du canton de Saint-Pierre-sur-Dives, volume lxviii, pages 7-18 and ‘L’habitat des XI^e-XII^e siècles de Vieux-Fumé (Calvados)’, in Dominique Pitte and Brian Ayers (eds.) La maison médiévale en Normandie et en Angleterre, Actes des tables rondes de Rouen (16-17 octobre 1998) et de Norwich (16-17 avril 1999), Rouen, 2002, pages 123-130.

[31] Philippe Bernouis, Daniel Dufournier, Bruno Fajal, , ‘Un atelier de potier de la fin du XII^e siècle à la Roche-Mabile’, Revue archéologique de l’Ouest, volume x, 1993, pages 129-139.

[32] Xavier Delestre and Anne-Marie Flambard Héricher (eds), La céramique du XI^e au XVI^e siècle en Normandie, Beauvaisis, Ile-de-France, Actes de la table ronde organisée à Mont-saint-Aignan, 12 février 1994, Publications de l’Université de Rouen, 1995.

[33] Anne-Marie Flambard Héricher, ‘L’organisation de la communauté de potiers du Bessin au bas Moyen Âge’, in L’artisan au village dans l’Europe médiévale et moderne, Actes des XIX^e Journées Internationales d’Histoire de l’Abbaye de Flaran (5-7 sept 1997), Toulouse, 2001, pages 149-168.

[34] Anne-Marie Flambard Hericher, Potiers et poteries du Bessin. Histoire et archéologie d’un artisanat rural du XI^e au XX^e siècle en Normandie, Caen, 2002.

[35] On this point see, Bruno Fajal, ‘Une communauté de potiers normands du XV^e au XIX^e siècle (Manche): statuts et règlements du centre de Ger’, Histoire et Sociétés Rurales, volume x, 1998, pages 239-263.

[36] Mathieu Arnoux, Mineurs, férons et maîtres de forge. Études sur la production du fer dans la Normandie du Moyen Age, XI^e-XV^e siècle, Paris, 1993.

[37] Véronique Gazeau, Recherches sur l’histoire de la principauté normande (911-1204), I Les abbés bénédictins de la principauté normande (911-1204), II Prosopographie des abbés bénédictins (911-1204), Mémoire d’habilitation, Université de Paris I-Panthéon-Sorbonne, 2002.

[38] On this point see, David Chadd, The Ordinal of the Abbey of the Holy Trinity, Fécamp (Fécamp, Musée de la Bénédictine, Ms 186), part I, Woodbridge, Boydell Press, 2000.