The Normans and Their World

by Jack Lindsay

  Lanfranc had studied letters and civil law in the Italian schools, and had roamed about till he settled in Normandy with his own school at Avranches. He had won fame for his skill in argument, in dialectic. But as a monk he rejected secular learning, gave up the pagan writers, and set faith and doctrine, with dialectical skill, beyond the range of the dialectician. He also took up study of the Bible and of canon law; but though his work in the latter sphere had some effects in England, his writings on such matters were soon outmoded. At first he was in conflict with William over his marriage. He attended Pope Leo’s reforming councils at Rome and Vercelli, and took over the negotiations about Matilda, as we said.

  He attacked the views of his old master Berengar on the Eucharist, and thus won much attention, partly through the new method of logical argument he had developed. The attack pleased William. Berengar was protected by Anjou and William gladly persecuted his followers. But Lanfranc’s main importance was as a teacher. When he left Bec in 1063 among his pupils had been the reigning pope, Alexander II, and others who rose to prominence; Anselm, William of Bona Anima (later in the see of Rouen), and two future bishops of Rochester.[204] He sympathized with the moral aspects of the reform movement and was zealous for the dignity of the church; at the cost of a certain amount of strain, he managed to harmonize the claims of the papacy and of William in his attitudes and pronouncements, never quite admitting to himself how far William’s rigid control of the church was already beginning to jar with the positions taken by the reform movement.[205] But William, as we saw, benefited greatly from the alliance with the Normans of south Italy which Hildebrand was forced to make. In the 1060s he was assured of every possible papal support in his ventures; and he was able to call on that support when he turned to England.

  *

  One of the themes of this book is the way in which men kept or regained a sense of personal and social identity in the confused and uprooted world of the period between the tenth and the twelfth centuries. It was a period when the tribal elements carried into the Roman west by the Germanic tribes were in many ways breaking down; the system of matured feudalism was making new demands on people, allotting them new roles in society; money was appearing as an active force, though we have far to go before there was anything like a cash nexus controlling men. Some elements of tribal society, such as the kindred, were being dislocated, yet were finding new forms; certain aspects of village life carried on despite all the changes in land-ownership and social status. At the same time men felt a deep need to adapt themselves to the new structures, not only socially and economically, but also emotionally and psychologically. A complex network of strains and stresses was at work; and one important issue was the way in which men responded to the dominant ideological insitution, the Catholic Church, either accepting it and finding ways of connecting their lives with it, or rejecting it in favour of heresies or the underworld of magical practices, in which many elements of paganism persisted, for instance in the witch-cults.

  Often it was very hard for the man of this epoch to harmonize his secular way of life with the creeds and ethics of the church; he tended to swing violently one way or another. There seems to have been no halfway between a surrender to greed and violence, and a total rejection of the world and a turn to the monastic creed. The nephew of Geoffrey of Anjou, one of William’s great rivals, has left us a brief biography of his uncle, which brings out well how a man who seemed irredeemably identified with violence and agression could hope at the end to turn suddenly into the opposite of what he had always been.

  My uncle Geoffrey became a knight in his father’s lifetime and began his knighthood by wars against his neighbours, one against the Poitevins, whose count he captured at Mont Cotter, and another against the people of Maine, whose count, named Herbert Bacon, he likewise took. He also carried on war against his own father, in the course of which he committed many of the evil deeds of which he afterwards bitterly repented. After his father died on his return from Jerusalem, Geoffrey possessed his lands and the city of Angers, and fought count Thibaut of Blois, son of count Odo, and by gift of king Henry received the city of Tours, which led to another war with count Thibaut, in the course of which, at a battle between Tours and Amboise, Thibaut was captured with a thousand of his knights. And so, besides the part of Touraine inherited from his father, he acquired Tours and the castles round about — Chinon, I’lle-Bouchard, Châteaurenault, and Saint-Aignan. After this he had a war with William, count of the Normans, who later acquired the kingdom of England and was a magnificent king, and with the people of France and of Bourges, and with William count of Poitou and Aimeri viscount of Thouars and Hoel count of Nantes and the Breton counts of Rennes and with Hugh count of Maine, who h ad thrown off his fealty. Because of all these wars and the prowess he showed therein he was rightly called the Hammer, as one who hammered down his enemies.

  In the last year of his life he made me his nephew a knight at the age of seventeen in the city of Angers, at the feast of Pentecost, in the year of the incarnation 1060, and granted me Saintonge and the city of Saintes because of a quarrel he had with Peter of Didonne. In the same year king Henry died on the nativity of St John, and my uncle Geoffrey on the third day after Martinmas came to a good end. For in the night which preceded his death, laying aside all care of knighthood and secular things, he became a monk in the monastery of St Nicholas, which his father and he had built with much devotion and endowed with their goods.[206]

  There was deep fear and superstition in such an act, but more than that: a sort of dream transition from one pole of the strangely cloven world to the other pole. The same sort of dream transition appears in the pilgrimages that so many of the nobles and rulers made. On the corpse of the murdered William Longsword was found the key of the box which held his treasure; we can imagine the mingled disappointment, anger, and bewildered respect in the men who opened the box and found a monk’s gown there. Some individuals in this world could build and rationalize a bridge between the two poles. Herluin did so, in order to return to simple productive labour, outside the tangle of exploitations, without degrading himself in the eyes of the world, substituting God’s watchful eye for that of the manor lord. Lanfranc again did so, so as to be in a position in which he could effectively take in the intellectual tradition and transform it according to his understanding of the world’s needs.

  *

  Finally some words on warfare and weapons. The rise of cavalry in the Dark Ages was connected in part with the need in the eighth century to meet Saracenic horsemen. We see the knights of the eleventh century on the Bayeux Tapestry, horsemen with mailshirts of interlined iron rings covering the body, upper arms and thighs; and when there is a coif, the neck. The head too might be covered. Gaiters were available for the legs, but wrists, hands and feet were unguarded. The iron helmets were conical with an extension across the nose. ‘Thorstein Midlang cut at Bue across his nose, so that the nose-piece was cut in two and he got a great wound.’ Footmen had garments of boiled leather. Horses were unarmoured. The rider had a kite-shaped shield rounded at the top, made of leather over a wooden frame with metal strengthening. War-horses or destriers were much prized, and Normandy had good pastures for them. The knight’s weapons were a long, straight, broad-bladed sword for slashing, a lance or spear, and probably a knife or dagger. Cudgels or maces, often with metal heads, might be used, especially by churchmen, who could thus kill without drawing blood! (Turpin in the Chanson de Roland appears as a baron in council and encourages or leads troops; he cuts the pagans in half and disposes of a host. ‘No tonsured clerk ever sung mass, who bodily so valiant was.’ He preaches, ‘A good vassal is never untrue.’ Odo of Bayeux may have taken him as an example.) Shields were decorated, but not yet with heraldic devices. William probably had many shields with different designs; dragons and geometrical patterns were favoured. Commanders flew flags, gonfalons, from spear staffs.

  The Normans in the South were no doubt much the same as those shown on the Tap
estry. Anna Comnena states that ‘their chief weapon of defence is a coat of mail, ring plaited into ring, and the iron fabric is so excellent that it repels arrows and keeps the wearer’s flesh intact. A further weapon of defence is a shield which isn’t round, but a long shield very broad at the top and running out to a point, hollowed out slightly on the inner side, but externally smooth and gleaming with a brilliant boss of brass.’ She was writing about 1145 at the end of a long life; the boss may be a twelfth century addition. The charge of Norman cavalry was said to be almost totally irresistable, with an impact that ‘might make a hole in the walls of Babylon’.

  Some of the retainers, especially those of the duke, may have been highly trained and disciplined, but it is hard to imagine any large body of Normans acting in a steadily concerted way in battle. Initiative, fury, and determination would soon take the place of any regular tactics. True, we hear of Gilbert du Pin as the magister militiae of Roger of Beaumont; presumably he was in charge of any training of Roger’s retainers, would ensure their effective presence, and give some orders. But probably it was the shock of the first massive attack, plus the resolute way that individuals or small groups then carried on, which gave the Normans their reputation as warriors. Generally the horsemen were in squadrons under their own feudal lords and captains in a line; they charged, with the general often posted in the rear with a select reserve. Archers might be used first to weaken or demoralize the enemy. William was an expert archer, and there are signs that he built up a contingent of reliable bowmen.

  As the horseman came up, they threw spears, then engaged in hand-to-hand fight. The side with the most coherence and vigour ended by making the other give way and turn. After that came a helter-skelter pursuit. The rider faced what was perhaps the worst moment: he might be thrown, driven into a river, or knocked down at a tightly-packed bridge. William spent most of his days riding in the open; if there were no wars, he hunted in one of the wide forests under special jurisdiction dating from Frankish times. The Normans were clean-shaven with cropped hair. Though they were little given to learning, Malaterra described them in Italy as greedy but eloquent, hardworking, apt at war, and successful because of their imitative capacities; they showed ceaseless enterprise combined with lawless-ness. William of Poitiers says that William tried to bridle the wilder impulses of his troops. No doubt he disliked indiscipline, but for military rather than humanitarian reasons.

  Strategy was mainly based on castles or towns. The commander sought to hold his own and capture those of others. Castles could not normally halt an invader, but he moved on at the risk of sorties, ambushes and attacks from the rear. He could still devastate and loot, however, and loot was the aim of many wars. If the aim was the conquest of territory, then castles or towns would have to be taken and garrisoned. William had no siege engines and few engineers for mining or sapping. The first hope before a defended site was a surprise attack; if that failed, the defenders might be worn down, starved out, or bribed — treachery might let the besiegers in. A town that did not surrender on negotiated terms was sacked. Fire was a possible weapon if there were wooden buildings close inside the walls. In general warfare there were many skirmishes, a few large-scale battles. For the latter a challenge should first be sent and accepted. But customs varied. A defiance might be sent to an enemy about to be attacked.[207]

  Chapter Seven – Anglo-Saxon England

  England had many unique characteristics in the eleventh century, while sharing in the general development of western Europe. Here alone had the Germanic invaders of late Roman times and early Dark Ages been able to develop largely on their own bases. They were pagans, as later the Vikings were. There had been no merging with a Romanized provincial aristocracy. Also the settlements were probably denser than in Gaul. All that is not to say that the Anglo-Saxons were unaffected by what went on on the continent, especially after their conversion; there can have been no period when the ruling classes on both sides of the channel were not in contact with one another to some extent; and there was trade through ports like Quentovic. The chiefs who started governing regions of Britain in the fifth and sixth centuries called themselves kings and must have been acquainted, as were the Franks in Gaul, with the tributum, the later empire’s land tax. With the Romans the unit for assessing this tax had been a caput or jugum; but the provinces used various local terms. In Gaul the unit became the mansus and its occupants were manentes; and the Roman term for the tax was still being used at the end of the seventh century. Since Diocletian the tributum had been, paid, part in money, part in kind. With the invasions the cash payments would have ended among the Britons, and systems of food-rent (met later in Welsh custom) would have been general. Food-rents, feorm, carried on through the Anglo-Saxon era into the Norman. The Anglo-Saxons had a unit of assessment, the hide, but when a king’s grant of land was put into writing, the terms used by the post-Roman successor states were used; and the occupants became manentes, cassati, tributarii.[208]

  Still, the English kingdoms had marked differences from the barbarian kingdoms on the mainland as well as affinities with them. There was an organic element in the society, a strong binding element, which was not to be found elsewhere. Despite tribal divisions, which finally took a large-scale form in the provinces of Northumbria, Mercia and Wessex, there was a movement towards unification, a slow, shifting and complex process largely brought about by wars, though sustained by other forces, social and economic. The church facilitated but did not initiate this movement. Already when Augustine landed, the king had the function of interpreting tribal custom or folk-law in consultation with the witan. Probably influences from Merovingian Gaul furthered the process, which came to a head in the period of Mercian supremacy in the eighth century when Aethelbald called himself Rex Britanniae. His cousin Offa deposed or executed kings of neighbouring states, degraded sub-kings to the status of royal officials, and incorporated newly gained areas into his Regnum Anglorum. This was a premature development, though none the less significant. The idea was not lost and was later taken up by the Wessex kings. The church’s role was to make propaganda for authority, help in the breakdown of kindred groups, give kingship a semi-divine aura, and afford some sort of a model of centralized government by its own system, which most of the time monopolized literacy. As early as 787 Offa’s son was anointed as king while his father was still alive.[209]

  The king was seeking to transfer to himself all the old bonds and loyalties, those developed in tribal days through the comitatus and the kindred, and the new forms developed through commendation. The fyrd or host was essentially a royal force, and the ideal was expressed in a doom of King Edmund (942-6) which commands that:

  all in the name of God shall swear fealty to king Edmund as a man should be faithful to his lord with neither objection nor treachery, both publicly and privately, loving what he loves and shunning what he shuns, and henceforth no one shall evade this oath for the sake of his brother or kinsman any more than for the sake of a stranger.[210]

  Fealty to the king was thus conceived as fealty to the lord raised to a new level; the lesser sets of bonds were seen as merging harmoniously to create the great unifying bond of fidelity to the king. The peace of the king (his person and residence) was a basic feature of English law and contained elements of the old ideas about the sacrificial priest-king.[211]

  In the earliest code, that of Aethelberht of Kent, a double compensation is assessed for an offence committed at a gathering of the ruler’s leod summoned by the king or at a feast where he is present.[212] Early west Saxon laws consider violence against the king’s person in connection with fights in his house or hall; later laws, reflecting the extension of royal jurisdiction, grow less localized and deal with plots against the king. The king’s peace spread beyond his immediate neighbourhood to wider areas of jurisdiction, embracing the whole realm.[213]

  But there was still a vital link with the sacral character of the kingship, stressed as it was afresh in the tenth century. This link app
ears further in the dooms concerning asylum; and indeed it affected the whole relationship of lord and man, strengthening its sanctions and the whole emotional nexus surrounding it. The first law that explicitly mentions plots is one from Alfred’s reign. ‘If anyone plots against the king’s life, on his own account or by har-bouring outlaws or men belonging to the king himself, he shall forfeit his life and all he possesses.’ Death, unless the accused is cleared ‘by the most solemn oath determined upon by the authorities’, is also the penalty under Aethelred for plotting against the king. It appears again in another law of Aethelred and in Cnut’s laws.[214] The king had been thought to descend from a god, and we find the pagan system adapted to fit in with Christian idioms. The Welsh prince Howel the Good was descended from ‘Amalech, who was the son of Beli the Great and his mother Anna, who was the sister of the Virgin Mary’. Anna is Danu the Celtic earthmother and Beli the god Belinus. The Chronicle under 855 traces King Aethelwulf’s ancestry back to Baeldaeg son of Woden and on to ‘Sceldwea, son of Heremod, son of Itermon, son of Hrathra who was born in the Ark: Noah, Lamech, Methuselah, Enoch, Jared, Mahalaleel, Cainan, Enos, Seth, Adam the first man, and our father who is Christ. Amen.’ Another version has ‘...Hathra, son of Hwala, son of Bedwig, son of Sceaf, who is son of Noah was was born in Noah’s Ark...’ A passage from William of Malmesbury shows how the Sceaf-Noah connection came about: