The Normans and Their World

by Jack Lindsay

  Tostig went off from the king and his brother in great wrath and made for Hereford, where Harold had purveyed large supplies for the king’s use. There he butchered all his brother’s servants and enclosed a head or an arm in each of the vessels holding wine, mead, ale, pigment, mulberry wine, and cider, sending a message to the king that when he came to the farm he would find plenty of salt meat and that he would bring more with him. For this horrible crime the king commanded him to be banished and outlawed.

  The tale about the arms and legs has been transferred from Caradoc, son of Gruffyd, who, according to Florence of Worcester (under theyear 1065), was guilty of the butchery.

  There is thus surprisingly little light to be got from the chroniclers. Eadmer’s remark about the hostages and Huntingdon’s about Flanders are plausible; and Malmesbury’s remark about a prolonged sporting trip fits in with the hounds and birds of the Tapestry. But the one point common to all the tales is that a storm came up and Harold was driven off course. The notion then that Harold had been sent by Edward to confirm his position as heir gains no support from any version and is highly unlikely from every angle. What would Harold have been thinking about the accession in 1063-4? He well knew his own strong position; he knew that both Normandy and Denmark would claim the throne as soon as it was vacant. Edward the Aetheling, who would have provided a rallying point for the English cause, was dead. He had been treated in Hungary as a royal prince and had married a lady of the imperial house. He must have hesitated before leaving his assured rank in the empire for the uncertainties of England, for he postponed his return at least two years after it had been negotiated. Soon after he landed in England, before he had reached the court, he died. The Chronicler under 1057 complains that ‘we do not know why it was so arranged that he could not see king Edward his kinsman’. Clearly he and his cause had enemies in England, but we cannot identify them, unless they were the Normans and other foreigners in Edward’s entourage.[155] Harold does not appear to have been unfriendly; his visit to Flanders late in 1056 seems to have been connected with the preparation for the prince’s welcome; and he took no action against his son Edgar, who was, however, too young in 1064-6 to be considered as the king in the dangerous situation of that time. The last step, surely, that Harold would have taken of his own accord in 1064 was to put himself at the mercy of William in Normandy.

  The Tapestry provides by far the most coherent and likely account of Harold’s misadventure. Though putting a Norman viewpoint, it portrays Harold as heroic and does not try to belittle him. Various difficulties are raised. The Tapestry describes the oath as taken at Bayeux; William of Poitiers puts it at Bonneville (a site he knew), and Orderic (well-informed, though writing in the twelfth century) mentions Rouen. Commentators have tried to explain the discrepancy away: William could have made a detour to Bayeux from the road between Mont St Michel and Rouen; or relics from Bayeux might have been taken to Bonneville. But the divergences in tradition remain.[156] The intrusive episode of the Cleric and the Lady may represent the designer who prepared the cartoon for embroidery work and perhaps transferred it to the material; the lady would then be the woman in charge of the embroiderers — we noted an Aelfgyth who taught embroidery in the very year of the Conquest. We can then amend the text to read: ‘Here Duke William comes with Harold to his Palace where [are] a certain Clerk and Aelfgiva.’ The latter may be introduced as eye-witnesses; or there may be an oratio obliqua illustrating what Harold is telling William and his court. (Later, the reason why the deathbed scene follows the funeral may be that two officials are telling Harold that he has been named successor by the dying Edward, who is represented. Hence the use of the term defunctus: Edward has ended his term as king and Harold is to take over.)[157]

  If the Tapestry was made for Odo, as seems fairly certain, we should expect a version of the events close to that current in William’s court. William of Poitiers is explicit about Harold’s pledge:

  First to be the vicarius of the duke at King Edward’s court; second to use all his influence and wealth to confirm the duke in possession of the kingdom after Edward’s death, third to set a garrison of the duke’s knights in Dover castle at his own charge, and fourth to maintain and supply garrisons in other parts of England at the duke’s will and his own charge.

  In return Harold, after paying homage to the duke, was to be confirmed in all his lands and dignities.

  It has been claimed that all this rings true in detail, though William and Harold may not have understood the compact in the same way. As here stated, Harold placed himself under oath in the position of an executor in Roman law.[158] But we might more cogently argue that the formulation is suspect because it is all too carefully precise, and that it represents rather the way in which Norman lawyers tried to fabricate a binding oath. Harold certainly did nothing about the garrisons he was supposed to have bound himself to provide. Any steps in such a direction, or any protests by William that they had not been carried out, could hardly have failed to get into the Chronicle; nor did the Normans even claim that protests were made. It seems certain that Edward had long dropped any ideas of a Norman succession and that he expected or wished Harold to succeed him. On this important point William of Poitiers several times makes Edward turn to Harold: the last thing he would have done if there were any chance of denying it. Thus, after telling of Harold’s burial, he utters a final word: ‘Your doom proves how lawfully you were raised up by Edward’s dying gift.’ That is, Harold had been proved a villain in God’s eyes. The Anon of the Life of Aedward and later the English chroniclers agree that Harold received the king’s bequest; and in the Tapestry Harold crowned has the central position, with the words Haroldus Rex. The Normans essentially based their whole case on Harold’s perjury.

  The misadventure of Harold, then, in being driven by a storm or some accident across the Channel in 1064 was crucial for the Norman Conquest of England.

  Chapter Five – The Normans in the South

  As the Viking raids and invasions had been a movement of ‘barbarians’ from outside into the Christian pale of western Europe, so the holy wars, following on the episodes of the Peace and Truce of God, were an outwards movement, of the same restless sort, mainly but not wholly into the infidel regions surrounding the papal west. They had already been foreshadowed in the early tenth century, and the area where the outwards movement began was Spain. Here the enemy were the Moslems who controlled the western Mediterranean from Tunis to Catalonia and threatened Italy, where they sacked St Peter’s in Rome in 846. Pope John in 915, with the Byzantines, helped to form a league of Christian princes for the purpose of ousting the Moslems from their castle on the Garigliano; in 941 the Byzantines joined Hugh of Provence to attack their castle at Fréjus. Hugh let the expedition down, but in 972 a league of Provençal and Italian princes took the castle. In the tenth century the Moslems in Spain were masters of almost the whole peninsular and the main Christian region, Leon, was being battered. The vizier named al-Manzur, the Victorious (known to the Spaniards as Almanzor), sacked Leon in 991, and in 997 he burned the city of St James of Compostella, a pilgrim centre ranking next to Jerusalem and Rome, though he left the shrine standing. In 986 he took Barcelona and was expected to cross the Pyrenees, when he died in 1002. Piratic attacks went on. Corsairs from Africa plundered Antibes in 1003, Pisa in 1005 and 1016, Narbonne in 1020. But largescale hostilities had slackened.

  A counter-attack was planned by Sancho III of Navarre. The effort in 1014 to form a league against the infidels failed through the deaf ear turned by Robert of France. But Sancho won the support of the abbey of Cluny, which as the centre of the monastic reform movement was ready to take up the cause of pilgrims. Cluniac influence may have brought the Normans in, or the latter may have been ready to rush in anywhere where loot and land were to be won. Roger of Tosni went with a strong force to the aid of the Countess Erseline of Barcelona in 1018, only a few years after Normans had started riding to Apulia. William of Gascony joined Sancho in an
attack on the emir of Saragossa. Blessings from Rome as well as from Cluny had gone with the fighters, so the war assumed the character of a crusade. In 1063 the king of Aragon, about to launch a big offensive, was murdered by a Moslem, to the vast indignation of the Christian West. Pope Alexander II promised an indulgence for all who fought in Spain, and began gathering an army. William of Montreuil recruited in north Italy. (Thus the same pope organized a crusade in Spain, blessed the Norman invasion of Sicily, and made William’s invasion of England a sort of avenging crusade.) A brother of the Aragonese queen recruited men in north France. Geoffrey of Aquitaine, bringing the largest contingent, was given command. The crusade did little but sack a town which provided considerable plunder. But the signal had been given. French and Norman knights continued to cross the Pyrenees to kill and loot. Pope Gregory VII called on all Christian princes to lend a hand. Reminding them that the Spanish realm belonged to the papal see, he announced that Christian knights might keep any land they won from the infidels. Expeditions were organized in 1078, under the duke of Burgundy, and in 1080, under the count of Aquitaine. William of Normandy in his deathbed speech is said to have pardoned Baudri fitz Nicholas whom he had imprisoned for foolishly going to Spain ‘without permission’; he admired Baudri’s courage but objected to his wanderlust. (In fact Baudri on returning from Spain had taken advantage of dislocations in Normandy to encroach on his neighbours; and he was said to have remarked that no bastard would ever rule over Normans.)

  The expeditions went on till 1085, when Toledo was captured. This city remained a strong seat of Islamic scientific culture; a school of Christian translators was formed there and their works were of the utmost importance in transmitting texts to the West and stimulating scientific interests and activities. After 1085 came something of a Moslem revival, but knights from northern France, including Normandy, kept roaming into Spain. Pope Gregory VII gave absolution to those dying in battle. According to the papacy, the conquered land was to be held under ultimate papal suzerainty; and this principle was held by the pope to apply to the Norman war against Harold of England.[159]

  *

  In the early eleventh century Norman knights began to go off to south Italy as adventurers and freebooters. These men were very different from their ancestors of a few generations back who had irrupted into Normandy. The tribal element had quite gone. Moving with a few retainers, they were fully feudalized in outlook. It seems that Normans going on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem kept a piratic eye open for regions that could be plundered or seized. One tale says that in 1016 such a group (forty men according to William of Apulia) was at the pilgrim shrine of Monte Sant’Angelo (Monte Gargano) and was met by a Lombard noble from Bari, Meles. The Normans had a special veneration for the fighting archangel Michael and may well have frequented this shrine. Meles had led a revolt in 1009 against the Byzantines; the revolt was not crushed till 1018, but after some success Meles had to leave Bari. Now he asked the Normans for help; they promised to return with reinforcements next spring. Another tale says that homing pilgrims in 999 were at Salerno when a Saracen raid occurred; they rallied the people and defeated the raiders. Gaimar II, the ruler, asked them to stay, and they too said that they would soon return, with friends. (We know of no raid in 999, but there was one in 1016.)

  Certainly round 1017 a body of Normans was in south Italy. They joined Meles at Capua and by early 1018 had driven the Byzantines from a wide area; but in June the central government had organized its forces and the Normans were badly defeated near Canne by the catapan Basil Boiannes. Meles escaped, wandered about, and soon died at Bamberg, at the German emperor’s court. Gilbert, the Norman leader, was killed and his brother Rainulf was elected in his place. The Normans had lost Meles and his cause; but that was a minor matter. They could always find or make more causes. The first site they chose as headquarters was plagued with frogs; they found a better place, but soon moved on. Some sources attribute their migration to other reasons than a wish to help Meles. Leo of Ostia (writing near the end of the century, with earlier material at his disposal in the monastery of Monte Cassino) declares that forty Normans came to Capua: ‘They had fled from the anger of the count of Normandy; and they were now with many of their fellows wandering about the countryside in the hope of finding someone ready to employ them.’ Adémar of Chabannes merely says they came to Rome under Rodulf, ‘and afterwards with the encouragement of pope Benedict [VIII, 1212-34] they attacked Apulia and laid everything waste.’ Glaber states that Rodulf ‘had incurred the displeasure of count Richard [II]’ and ‘came to Rome to state his case before pope Benedict’. The pope complained of ‘the invasion of the Roman empire by the Greeks’ and Rodulf offered to attack the latter ‘as long as he had the support of the Italians’. So the pope ‘addressed himself to the magnates of the region of Benevento, bidding them put themselves under Rodulf’s orders’. Rodulf then attacked the Byzantines, ‘killed many of them and took much booty’.[160] Rodulf was apparently Rodulf II of Tosny, head of a leading family in central Normandy. It seems clear that whether or not other Norman adventurers had come into south Italy to fight for Meles or on the mere chance of loot, the invasion began seriously with Rodulf and was instigated by the papacy for the purpose of upsetting the Byzantine dominion in the south.

  But the Norman adventurers were always ready to change sides or allegiances according to the fortunes of war and the lures of loot. For many years they were involved in all sorts of petty conflicts and robberies as well as playing their part in the major struggles of the region. They entered the services of the princes of Salerno, Capua, Naples, Amalfi, Gaeta; some even served under the Byzantines. They thus helped to worsen the disorder and confusion of south Italy until the time came when they could change from mere mercenaries into the ruling lords.[161]

  The region was torn by many conflicting forces: the various local princes, the Lombards and the Byzantines, and soon the Papacy and the Germans. The Lombards invaded north Italy and settled extensively in the mid-sixth century, with Pavia their capital; but some went south and set up dukedoms there. After Charlemagne took Pavia, the Lombard centre shifted south; and by 1000 there were three strong rulers: at Capua, Benevento and Salerno. The dominating power was the eastern empire, which claimed to control Italy south of Rome (south of a line running roughly from Termoli to Terracina); but inside this area were the Lombard principalities, and sea-based city-states had grown up at Naples, Gaeta and Amalfi. The main Byzantine official, a catapan, was located at Bari; and in Calabria and the area round Otranto Greek was normally spoken. Even the Lombard cities were saturated with Byzantine culture. In the half-century before 1025 the Byzantines had made the Adriatic fairly safe for Christian ships, and thus had made possible the rise of the mercantile city-states. They were challenged however by Islam. The Byzantines had failed to retake Sicily, and Sardinia and Corsica also remained in Moslem hands. And to the north they had to face continual pressure from Rome. The Latin rite prevailed in most of Apulia, among the Lombards, and in city-states like Naples, Gaeta and Amalfi; and there were the two important pilgrim sites of the Latin church, Monte Cassino, the home of Benedictine monasticism, and Monte Sant’Angelo. Soon the German emperors, often at odds with the papacy and attempting to control it, were to become another important political force in Italy. Otto the Great claimed south Italy as part of the dowry of his wife, a Greek princess, but was thwarted by Moslems and Byzantines.

  The papacy had long been in a degraded condition, with disputed elections and puppet-popes fighting one another. But the reform movement had been gathering strength. Reform had two ecclesiastical meanings. For the monasteries it meant the ending of many abuses, a revival of ascetic self-dedication; for the papacy it meant the throwing off of secular controls and the elevation of the pope above all kings and princes. The assertion of papal power centered on the question of investiture, with the popes fighting to take from secular rulers the right to invest church-dignitaries. The new energies and demands of the chur
ch came from the general productive advances of the last few centuries. The forces that built up the secular state had also strengthened the church, with its great landed estates and treasures, its virtual monopoly of literacy and all the organizing possibilities that went with that. The theocratic compromise which had carried on since Charlemagne was nearing its end. By that compromise the ruler had defended the Christian faith as a sort of semi-divine or priestly figure anointed by the church, while the church accepted his role as long as he gave support to its privileges and properties. But now the church was beginning to react against some of the rulers’ controls and their tendency to equate lay barons and high ecclesiastics as vassals. It was the revived and jealous church that was now seeking to assert itself all over Italy.

  In explaining the exodus of knights from Normandy to Italy, Amatus says that at home ‘the people had increased so greatly that the fields and forests were not long enough to provide for them’.[162] The younger sons of large families were tempted by the chance to seize land and valuables. There was certainly some truth in that; and it clearly applied to a man like Tancred of Hauteville in the Cotentin, a small landlord with at least twelve sons and several daughters. But as well as economic pressures there were the bitter political struggles going on in Normandy. Many of the first migrants to Italy seem to have belonged to families who had suffered in the redistribution of landed estates that went on as feudal tenures and relationships grew stronger. Discontented lords or knights of this kind must have supplied many of the rebels who increased as the years went on; others of them, like Rodulf, ‘fled from the anger of the duke’ which their recalcitrancy had aroused. In Italy they watched for every local embroilment in which they might play a part. Thus in February 1027 the death of Gaimar IV produced disputes over the succession at Salerno; and later that year Pandulf III of Capua attacked Sergius IV of Naples and forced him into exile. Sergius apparently got help from a Norman, Rainulf, and won back Naples in 1029. Besides whatever wages had been paid during the war, Sergius in 1030 gave Rainulf and his comrades the hill-fortress of Aversa with its dependencies. Now at last some of the Normans had land and lordship in south Italy; and Aversa was well situated for warriors who wanted to play a part in the affairs of Naples, Capua, even Benevento and Salerno. The services of the Normans were ever more in demand, and they sold themselves to the highest bidder. Rainulf left Naples and went over to Capua, then left Capua for Salerno. In 1040 the Emperor Conrad II, who had come down into Italy, combined the territories of Capua and Salerno, giving a stronger position to Rainulf, who was count of Aversa and duke of Gaeta when he died in 1045. Before long his nephew Richard was to be accepted as prince of Capua.