The Normans (adapted from the name "Northmen" or "Norsemen") were a people who colonized Normandy, conquered England, and played a major political, military and cultural role in the northern and Mediterranean parts of medieval Europe for centuries. Their most famous achievement was the Norman Conquest of England in 1066.
Originally they derived from the indigenous population of Neustria, Northern France, and a small minority of Vikings originating in Scandinavia. They began to occupy the northern area of France now known as Normandy in the latter half of the 9th century. In 911, Charles the Simple, king of France, granted the invaders the small lower Seine area, which expanded over time to become the Duchy of Normandy. The invaders were under the leadership of Hrolf, who later became known under his latinized name Rollo who swore allegiance to Charles the Simple.
The Norman people adopted Christianity and the Gallo-Romance language and created a new cultural identity separate from that of their Scandinavian forebears, but indistinguishable from French neighbours with whom they interacted. Norman culture, like that of many other migrant communities, was particularly enterprising and adaptable. For a time, it led them to occupy widely dispersed territories throughout Europe.
Norman characteristics
Normans should not be confused with other Viking groups, such as the Vikings known as Danes in England and the Vikings known as Rus in Russia.
Geoffrey Malaterra characterized the Normans as "specially marked by cunning, despising their own inheritance in the hope of winning a greater, eager after both gain and dominion, given to imitation of all kinds, holding a certain mean between lavishness and greediness, that is, perhaps uniting, as they certainly did, these two seemingly opposite qualities. Their chief men were specially lavish through their desire of good report. They were, moreover, a race skillful in flattery, given to the study of eloquence, so that the very boys were orators, a race altogether unbridled unless held firmly down by the yoke of justice. They were enduring of toil, hunger, and cold whenever fortune laid it on them, given to hunting and hawking, delighting in the pleasure of horses, and of all the weapons and garb of war."
That quick adaptability Geoffrey mentions expressed itself in the shrewd Norman willingness to take on local men of talent, to marry the high-born local women; confidently illiterate Norman masters used the literate clerks of the church for their own purpose. Their success at assimilating was so thorough, few modern traces remain, whether in Palermo or Kiev.
Normans and Normandy
Geographically, Normandy was approximately the same region as the old church province of Rouen or Neustria. It had no natural frontiers and was previously merely an administrative unit. Its population was mostly Gallo-Roman with a small Frankish/Germanic people admixture, plus Viking settlers, who had begun arriving in the 880s, and who were divided between a small colony in Upper (or eastern) Normandy and a larger one in Lower (or western) Normandy.
In the course of the 10th century the initial destructive incursions of Norse war bands into the rivers of Gaul evolved into more permanent encampments that included women and chattel. The pagan culture was driven underground by the Christian faith and Gallo-Romance language of the local people. The small group of Vikings that settled in assimilated to the Gallo-Romance majority. After a generation or two, the Normans were generally indistinguishable from their French neighbours. With the zeal of new converts they set forth in the 11th century from their solid base in Normandy. Characteristically it was younger sons like William the Bastard, largely dispossessed at home, who headed the adventurous raiding parties.
In Normandy they adopted the growing feudal doctrines of France, and worked them, both in Normandy and in England, into a logical system.
The Norman warrior class was new and different from the old French aristocracy, many of whom could trace their families back to Carolingian times, while the Normans could seldom cite ancestors before the beginning of the 11th century. Most knights remained poor and land-hungry; by 1066, Normandy had been exporting fighting horsemen for more than a generation. Knighthood before the time of the Crusades held little social status, and simply indicated that a man was a professional warrior and wealthy enough to own a war horse. Many Normans of France and Britain would eventually serve as avid Crusaders.
The Norman language forged by the adoption of the indigenous oïl language by a Norse-speaking ruling class developed into the regional language which survives today.
Normans in England
The Normans were in contact with England from an early date. Not only were their pagan Viking brethren still ravaging the English coasts, but they occupied most of the important ports opposite England across the Channel. This relationship eventually produced closer ties of blood through the marriage of Emma, daughter of Duke Richard II of Normandy, and King Ethelred II of England. Because of this, Ethelred fled to Normandy in 1013, when he was forced from his kingdom by Sweyn Forkbeard. His stay in Normandy (until 1016) influenced him and his sons by Emma, who stayed in Normandy after Canute the Great's conquest of the isle. When finally Edward the Confessor returned from his father's refuge in 1041, at the invitation of his half-brother Hardecanute, he brought with him a very Norman-educated mind. He also brought many Norman counsellors and fighters. He even hired a small number of Normans to train and establish an English cavalry force. This concept never really took root, but it is a typical example of the attitudes of Edward. He appointed Robert of Jumièges archbishop of Canterbury and made Ralph the Timid earl of Hereford. He invited his brother-in-law Eustace II of Boulogne to his court in 1051, an event which resulted in the greatest of early conflicts between Saxon and Norman and ultimately resulted in the exile of Earl Godwin of Wessex.
In 1066, the most famous Norman leader, Duke William II of Normandy, conquered England. The invading Normans and their descendants replaced the Anglo-Saxons as the ruling class of England. After an initial period of resentment and rebellion, the two populations largely intermarried and merged, combining languages and traditions. Normans began to identify themselves as Anglo-Norman; indeed, the Anglo-Norman language was considerably distinct from the "Parisian French", which was the subject of some humour by Geoffrey Chaucer. Eventually, even this distinction largely disappeared in the course of the Hundred Years war, with the Anglo-Norman aristocracy increasingly identifying themselves as English, and the Anglo-Norman and Anglo-Saxon languages merging to form Middle English.
Normans in Wales
Even before the Norman Conquest of England, the Normans had come into contact with Wales. Edward the Confessor had set up the aforementioned Ralph as earl of Hereford and charged him with defending the Marches and warring with the Welsh. In these original ventures, the Normans failed to make any headway into Wales.
Subsequent to the Conquest, however, the Marches came completely under the dominance of William's most trusted Norman barons, including Roger of Montgomery in Shropshire and Hugh Lupus in Cheshire. These Normans began a long period of slow conquest during which almost all of Wales was at some point subject to Norman interference. Norman words, such as baron (barwn), first entered Welsh at that time.
Normans in Scotland
One of the claimants of the English throne opposing William the Conqueror, Edgar Atheling, eventually fled to Scotland. King Malcolm Canmore of Scotland married Edgar's sister Margaret, and came into opposition to William who had already disputed Scotland's southern borders. William invaded Scotland in 1072, riding as far as the Firth of Tay where he met up with his fleet of ships. Malcolm submitted, paid homage to William, and surrendered his son Duncan as a hostage, beginning a series of arguments as to whether the Scottish Crown owed allegiance to the English King.
Normans came into Scotland, building castles and founding noble families who would provide some future kings such as Robert the Bruce as well as founding some of the Scottish clans in the Highlands. King David I of Scotland was instrumental in introducing Normans and Norman culture to Scotland, having spent time at the court of Henry I of England who was married to David's sister Maud of Scotland, the process was continued under David's successors. The Norman feudal system was applied to the Scottish Lowlands, but the influence on Lowland Scots language was limited.
Normans in Ireland
The Normans had a profound effect on Irish culture, history and ethnicity. While initially the Normans in the 12th century kept themselves as a distinct culture and ethnicity, they were quickly subsumed into Ireland, and it is often said that they became more Irish than the Irish themselves. The Normans settled mostly in an area in the east of Ireland, later known as the Pale, and also built many fine castles and settlements, including Trim Castle and Dublin Castle. Both cultures intermixed, borrowing from each other's language, culture and outlook.
Normans in the Mediterranean
Opportunistic bands of Normans successfully established a foothold far to the south of Normandy. Probably the result of returning pilgrims' stories, the Normans entered the Mezzogiorno as warriors in 1017 at the latest. In 999, according to Amatus of Montecassino, pilgrims returning from Jerusalem called in at the port of Salerno, when a Saracen attack occurred. The Normans fought so valiantly that Prince Guaimar IV begged them to stay, but they refused and instead offered to tell others back home of the prince's request. William of Apulia tells that, in 1016, pilgrims to the shrine of the Archangel Michael at Monte Gargano were met by Melus of Bari, a Lombard freedom-fighter, who persuaded them to return with more warriors to help throw off the Byzantine rule, and so they did.
The two most prominent families to arrive in the Mediterranean were the descendants of Tancred of Hauteville and the Drengots, of whom Rainulf Drengot received the county of Aversa, the first Norman toehold in the south, from Duke Sergius IV of Naples in 1030. The Hautevilles achieved princely status when they proclaimed Prince Guaimar IV of Salerno "Duke of Apulia and Calabria". He promptly awarded their elected leader, William Iron Arm, with the title of count with his capital of Melfi. Soon the Drengots had attained unto the principality of Capua and the Emperor Henry III had legally ennobled the Hauteville leader, Drogo, as dux et magister Italiae comesque Normannorum totius Apuliae et Calabriae in 1047.
From these bases, the Normans were eventually able to capture Sicily and Malta from the Saracens under the famous Robert Guiscard, a Hauteville, and his young brother Roger the Great Count. Roger's son, Roger II, was crowned king in 1130 (exactly one century after Rainulf was "crowned" count) by Pope Anacletus II. The kingdom of Sicily lasted until 1194, when it fell to the Hohenstaufens through marriage.
The Normans left their mark however in the many castles, such as the Iron Arm's fortress at Squillace, and cathedrals, such as Roger II's at Cefalù, which dot the landscape and give a wholly distinct architectural flavour to accompany its unique history. Institutionally, the Normans combined the administrative machinery of the Byzantines, Arabs, and Lombards with their own conceptions of feudal law and order to forge a completely unique government. Under this state, there was great religious freedom, and alongside the Norman nobless existed a meritocratic bureacracy of Jews, Moslems, and Christians, both Catholic and Orthodox.
Architectural heritage
Rulers
- List of Counts and Dukes of Apulia and Calabria
- List of Counts of Aversa
- List of Princes of Capua
- List of Dukes of Gaeta
- List of Princes of Taranto
- List of Kings of Sicily
Other famous Normans of the South
Normans in the East
Soon after the Normans first began to enter Italy, they entered the Byzantine Empire and soon thereafter Armenia against the Pechenegs, Bulgars, and especially Seljuk Turks. The Norman mercenaries first encouraged to come to the south by the Lombards to act against the Byzantines were soon fighting in Byzantine service in Sicily. They were prominent alongside Varangian and Lombard contingents in the Sicilian campaign of George Maniaches of 1038-40.
One of the first Norman mercenaries to serve as a Byzantine general was Hervé in the 1050s. By then however there were already Norman mercenaries serving as far away as Trebizond and Georgia. They were based at Malatya and Edessa, under the Byzantine duke of Antioch, Isaac Comnenus. In the 1060s, one Robert Crispin led the Normans of Edessa against the Turks. Roussel de Bailleul even tried to carve out an independent state in Asia Minor and had the support of the local population, but he was stopped by the Byzantine general Alexius Comnenus. From 1073 to 1074, 8,000 of the 20,000 troops of the Armenian general Philaretus Brachamius were Normans led by Raimbaud. They even lent their ethnicity to the name of their castle: Afranji, meaning "Franks."
Normans on Crusade
The legendary piety of the Normans was exercised in religious wars long before the First Crusade carved out a Norman principality in Antioch. They were major foreign participants in the Reconquista in Spain. In 1018, Roger de Tony travelled to Spain to carve out a state for himself from Moorish lands, but failed. In 1064, during the War of Barbastro, William of Montreuil led the papal army and took a huge booty.
In 1096, Crusaders passing by the siege of Amalfi were joined by Bohemond of Taranto and his nephew Tancred with an army of Italo-Normans. Bohemond was the de facto leader of the Crusade during its passage through Asia Minor. After the successful Siege of Antioch in 1097, Bohemond began carving out an indepenedent principality around that city. Tancred was instrumental in the conquest of Jerusalem and he worked for the expansion of the Crusader kingdom in Transjordan and the region of Galilee.
Bibliography
- David Bates, Normandy before 1066, London 1982
- Chalandon, Ferdinand. Histoire de la domination normande en Italie et en Sicilie. Paris, 1907.
- Chibnall, Marjorie. The Normans, The Peoples of Europe, Oxford 2000
- Crouch, David. The Normans: The History of a Dynasty. Hambledon & London, 2003.
- Gillingham, John. The Angevin Empire, end ed., London 2001.
- Gravett, Christopher, and Nicolle, David. The Normans: Warrior Knights and their Castles. Osprey Publishing: Oxford, 2006.
- Green, Judith A. The Aristocracy of Norman England. Cambridge University Press, 1997.
- Harper-Bill, Christopher and Elisabeth Van Houts, eds. A Companion to the Anglo-Norman World Boydell Press. 2003
- Haskins, Charles H. Norman Institutions, 1918
- Maitland, F. W. Domesday Book and Beyond: Three Essays in the Early History of England. 2d ed. Cambridge University Press, 1988. (feudal Saxons)
- R. Mortimer, Angevin England 1154—1258, Oxford 1994.
- Muhlbergher, Stephen, Medieval England (Saxon social demotions)
- Norwich, John Julius. The Normans in the South 1016-1130. Longmans: London, 1967.
- Norwich, John Julius. The Kingdom in the Sun 1130-1194. Longman: London, 1970.
- Robertson, A. J., ed. and trans. Laws of the Kings of England from Edmund to Henry I. AMS Press, 1974. (Mudrum fine)
- Painter, Sidney. A History of the Middle Ages 284−1500. New York, 1953.
Primary Sources
- Elisabeth van Houts, ed. The Normans in Europe Manchester Medieval Sources, Manchester 2000.
- Medieval History Texts in Translation from Leeds University.
External links
- Dudo of St. Quentin's Gesta Normannorum, English translation
- The Normans, a European People, by the European Commission
- Breve Chronicon Northmannicum (Latin).
- The Normans Jersey heritage trust (pdf)
- Wales History — The Norman Wars.