Part 13

When we reach works like these, the literary history of Normandy merges in that of France, as well as in that of England, which, thanks to the Norman Conquest and the Norman empire, long remained a literary province of France. We must not, however, leave this vernacular literature, as yet almost wholly the work of clerks, with the impression that its dominant quality is romantic or poetical. Its versified form was merely the habit of an age which found verse easy to remember; the literature itself, as Gaston Paris has well observed,[57] was “essentially a literature of instruction for the use of laymen,” fit material for prose and not for poetry. It is thus characteristically Norman in subject as well as in speech--simple and severe in form, devout and edifying rather than mystical, given to history rather than to speculation, and seeking through the moralized science of lapidaries and bestiaries and astronomical manuals to aid the everyday life of a serious and practical people.

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Normandy had also something to say to the world in that most mediæval of arts, architecture, and especially in that Romanesque form of building which flourished in the eleventh century and the first half of the twelfth. The great Norman churches of this epoch were the natural outgrowth of its life--the wealth of the abbeys, the splendor of princely prelates like Odo of Bayeux and Geoffrey of Coutances, the piety and penance of William the Conqueror and Matilda, expiating by two abbeys their marriage within the prohibited degrees, the religious devotion of the people as illustrated by the processions of 1145. The biographer of Geoffrey de Mowbray, for example, tells[58] us how the bishop labored day and night for the enlargement and beautification of his church at Coutances (dedicated in 1056), buying the better half of the city from the duke to get space for the cathedral and palace, travelling as far as Apulia to secure gold and gems and vestments from Robert Guiscard and his fellow Normans, and maintaining from his rents a force of sculptors, masons, goldsmiths, and workers in glass. Nearly forty years later, when the church had been damaged by earthquake and tempest, he brought a plumber from England to restore the leaden roof and the fallen stones of the towers and to replace the gilded cock which crowned the whole; and when he saw the cock once more glistening at the summit, he gave thanks to God and shortly passed away, pronouncing eternal maledictions upon those who should injure his church. Of this famous structure nothing now remains above the ground, for the noble towers which look from the hill of Coutances toward the western sea are Gothic, like the rest of the church; and for surviving monuments of cathedrals of the eleventh and twelfth centuries we must go to the naves of Bayeux and Évreux and the St. Romain’s tower of Rouen. Even here the impression will be fragmentary, broken by Gothic choirs and by towers and spires of a still later age, just as the simple lines of the early church of Mont-Saint-Michel are swallowed up in the ornate Gothic of the loftier parts of the great pile. Edifices wholly of the Romanesque period must be sought in the parish churches in which Normandy is so rich, or in the larger abbey-churches which meet us at Lessay, Cerisy, Caen, Jumièges, and Bocherville. Jumièges, though in ruins, preserves the full outline of the style of the middle of the eleventh century; Caen presents in the Abbaye aux Hommes and the Abbaye aux Dames two perfect though contrasted types of a few years later, the one simple and austere, the other richer and less grand. Freeman may seem fanciful when he suggests that these sister churches express the spirit of their respective founders, “the imperial will of the conquering duke” and the milder temper of his “loving and faithful duchess,”[59] but in any event they are Norman and typical of their age and country. There are elements in the ornamentation of Norman churches in this period which have been explained by reference to the distant influence of the Scandinavian north or the Farther East, there are perhaps traces of Lombard architecture in their plan, but their structure as a whole is as Norman as the stone of which they are built, distinguished by local traits from the other varieties of French Romanesque to which this period gave rise. Not the least Norman feature of these buildings is the persistent common sense of design and execution; the Norman architects did not attempt the architecturally impossible or undertake tasks, like the cathedral of Beauvais, which they were unable to finish in their own time and style. “What they began, they completed,” writes the Nestor of American historians in his sympathetic interpretation of the art and the spirit of _Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres_. In Norman art, as in other phases of Norman achievement, the last word cannot be said till we have followed it far beyond the borders of the duchy, northward to Durham, “half house of God, half castle ’gainst the Scot,” and the other massive monuments which made ‘Norman’ synonymous with a whole style and period of English architecture, and southward to those more ornate structures which Norman princes reared at Bari and Cefalù, Palermo and Monreale. “No art--either Greek or Byzantine, Italian, or Arab--” says Henry Adams,[60] “has ever created two religious types so beautiful, so serious, so impressive, and yet so different, as Mont-Saint-Michel watching over its northern ocean, and Monreale, looking down over its forests of orange and lemon, on Palermo and the Sicilian seas.”

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

There is no general account of Norman life and culture in any period of the Middle Ages, and no general study of Norman feudalism. For conditions in France generally, see Luchaire, _La société française au temps de Philippe-Auguste_ (Paris, 1909), translated by Krehbiel (New York, 1912); for England, Miss M. Bateson, _Mediæval England_ (New York and London, 1904). On castles, see C. Enlart, _Manuel d’archéologie française_, II (Paris, 1904, with bibliography), and Mrs. E. S. Armitage, _The Early Norman Castles of the British Isles_ (London, 1912). For William the Marshal, see Paul Meyer’s introduction to his edition of the _Histoire de Guillaume le Maréchal_ (Paris, 1891–1901); the poem has been utilized by Jusserand for his account of tournaments, _Les sports et jeux d’exercice dans l’ancienne France_ (Paris, 1901), ch. 2.

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The work of Delisle, _Études sur la condition de la classe agricole et l’état de l’agriculture en Normandie au moyen âge_ (Évreux, 1851), is a classic.

The best studies of Norman municipal institutions are A. Chéruel, _Histoire de Rouen pendant l’époque communale_ (Rouen, 1843); A. Giry, _Les Établissements de Rouen_ (Paris, 1883–85), supplemented by Valin, _Recherches sur les origines de la commune de Rouen_ (_Précis_ of the Rouen Academy, 1911); Charles de Beaurepaire, _La Vicomté de l’Eau de Rouen_ (Évreux, 1856); E. de Fréville, _Mémoire sur le commerce maritime de Rouen_ (Rouen, 1857); Miss Bateson, _The Laws of Breteuil_, in _English Historical Review_, XV, XVI; R. Génestal, _La tenure en bourgage_ (Paris, 1900); Legras, _Le bourgage de Caen_ (Paris, 1911).

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The excellent account of the Norman church in H. Böhmer, _Kirche und Staat in England und in der Normandie_ (Leipzig, 1899), stops with 1154. On Odo and on Philip d’Harcourt see V. Bourrienne’s articles in the _Revue Catholique de Normandie_, VII-X, XVIII-XXIII. The register of Eudes Rigaud (ed. Bonnin, Rouen, 1852) is analyzed by Delisle, in _Bibliothèque de l’École des Chartes_, VIII, pp. 479–99; the _Miracula Ecclesie Constantiensis_ and the letter of Abbot Haimo are discussed by him, _ibid._, IX, pp. 339–52; XXI, pp. 113–39. For the mortuary rolls, see his facsimile edition of the _Rouleau mortuaire du B. Vital_ (Paris, 1909). The best monograph on a Norman monastery is that of R. N. Sauvage, _L’abbaye de S. Martin de Troarn_ (Caen, 1911), where other such studies are listed. See also Génestal, _Rôle des monastères comme établissements de crédit étudié en Normandie_ (Paris, 1901), and Delisle’s edition of Robert of Torigni.

The schools of Bec are described by A. Porée, _Histoire de l’abbaye du Bec_ (Évreux, 1901). Notices of the various Norman historians are given by A. Molinier, _Les sources de l’histoire de France_ (Paris, 1901–06), especially II, chs. 25, 33. For Ordericus and St. Évroul see Delisle’s introduction to the edition of the _Historia Ecclesiastica_ published by the Société de l’Histoire de France, and the volumes issued by the Société historique et archéologique de l’Orne on the occasion of the Fêtes of 1912 (Alençon, 1912). Other early catalogues of libraries, including that of Philip of Bayeux, are in the first two volumes of the _Catalogue général des MSS. des départements_ (Paris, 1886–88). For the vernacular literature, see Gaston Paris, _La littérature normande avant l’annexion_ (Paris, 1899); and L. E. Menger, _The Anglo-Norman Dialect_ (New York, 1904). For the latest discussions of the _Chanson de Roland_ see J. Bédier, _Les légendes épiques_, III (Paris, 1912); and W. Tavernier’s studies in the _Zeitschrift für französische Sprache und Litteratur_, XXXVI-XLII (1910–14), and the _Zeitschrift für romanische Philologie_, XXXVIII (1914). Enlart, _Manuel d’archéologie française_, I, mentions the principal works on Norman ecclesiastical architecture. See also R. de Lasteyrie, _L’architecture religieuse en France à l’époque romane_ (Paris, 1912), ch. 15; Enlart, _Rouen_ (Paris, 1904); H. Prentout, _Caen et Bayeux_ (Paris, 1900); Henry Adams, _Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres_ (Boston, 1913).

VII

THE NORMANS IN THE SOUTH

Of all the achievements of the heroic age of Norman history, none were more daring in execution or more brilliant in results than the exploits of Norman barons in the lands of the Mediterranean. Battling against the infidel in Spain, in Sicily, and in Syria, scattering the papal army and becoming the humble vassals of the Holy See, overcoming Lombard princes and Byzantine generals, the Normans were the glorious adventurers of the Mediterranean world throughout that eleventh century which constituted the great period of Norman expansion. Then, masters of southern Italy and Sicily, they put to work their powers of assimilation and organization and created a strong, well-governed state and a rich, composite civilization which were the wonder of Europe. If one were tempted to ascribe the successes of the Normans in England to happy accident or to the unique personality of William the Conqueror, the story of Norman achievement in the south, the work of scattered bands of simple barons without any assistance from the reigning dukes, would be conclusive proof of the creative power of the Norman genius for conquest and administration.

The earliest relations of the Normans with the countries of the Mediterranean were the outgrowth of those pilgrimages to holy places which play so important a part in mediæval life and literature. Originating in the early veneration for the shrines associated with the beginnings of Christianity and the sufferings and death of the Christian martyrs, pilgrimages were in course of time reënforced by the more practical motives of healing and penance, until the crowds of pilgrims who haunted the roads in the later Middle Ages included many a hoary offender who sought to expiate his sins by this particular form of good works. Sometimes these penitents would be sent to wander about the earth for a definite time, more frequently they would be assigned a journey to a neighboring shrine or to some more famous fountain of healing grace, such as Compostela, Rome, or Jerusalem. Compostela, hiding among the Galician hills the bones of no less an apostle than St. James the Greater, who became in time the patron saint of Spain and spread the name of Santiago over two continents, was early a centre of pilgrimage from France, and claimed as one of its devotees the mighty Charlemagne, the footsteps of whose paladins men traced through the dark defiles of the Pyrenees in the _Song of Roland_, as well as in the special itinerary prepared for the use of French pilgrims to the tomb of the saint. Rome was of course more important, for it claimed two apostles, as well as their living successor on the pontifical throne. It needed no pious invention to prove that Charlemagne had been in Rome and had received the imperial crown as he knelt in St. Peter’s, and men told how in their own time the great king Canute had betaken himself thither with staff and scrip and many horses laden with gold and silver. Already the number of strangers in Rome was so great that guide-books were compiled indicating its principal sights and marvels--“seeing Rome,” we might call them--; and as the processions wound into sight of the Eternal City, they burst into its praise in that wonderful pilgrim’s chorus:--

O Roma nobilis, orbis et domina, Cunctarum urbium excellentissima, Roseo martyrum sanguine rubea, Albis et virginum liliis candida; Salutem dicimus tibi per omnia, Te benedicimus: salve per secula.

Jerusalem was most precious of all, by reason both of its sacred associations and of the difficulty of the journey. No Charlemagne was needed to justify resort to the Holy Sepulchre, where the mother of the great emperor Constantine had built the first shrine; but the great Charles had a hostel constructed there for Frankish pilgrims, and soon legend makes him, too, follow the road to Constantinople and Jerusalem, as we are reminded in the great Charlemagne window at Chartres. There were manuals for the pilgrim to Jerusalem also, but these were chiefly occupied with how to reach the heavenly city, though one of them contents itself with advising the traveller to keep his face always to the east and ask God’s help.

In all this life of the road the Normans took their full share. Michelet would have it that their motive was the Norman spirit of gain, no longer able to plunder neighbors at home, but glad of the chance of making something on the way and the certainty of gaining a hundred per cent by assuring the soul’s salvation at the journey’s end. Certainly they were not afraid to travel nor averse to taking advantage of the opportunities which travel might bring. We find them, sometimes singly and sometimes in armed bands, on the road to Spain, to Rome, and to the Holy City. At one time it may be the duke himself, Robert the Magnificent, who wends his way with a goodly company to the Holy Sepulchre, only to die at Nicæa on his return; or a holy abbot, like Thierry of Saint-Évroul, denied the sight of the earthly Jerusalem which he sought, but turning his thoughts to the city not made with hands as he composed himself for his last sleep before a lonely altar on the shores of Cyprus. In other cases we find the military element preponderating, as with Roger of Toeni, who led an army against the Saracens of Spain in the time of Duke Richard the Good, or Robert Crispin half a century later, fighting in Spain, sojourning in Italy, and finally passing into the service of the emperor at Constantinople, where he had “much triumph and much victory.” In this stirring world the line between pilgrim and adventurer was not easy to draw, and the Normans did not always draw it. Often “their penitent’s garb covered a coat of mail,” and they carried a great sword along with their pilgrim’s staff and wallet.[61] We must remember that Normandy exported in this period a considerable supply of younger sons, bred to a life of warfare and fed upon the rich nourishment of the _chansons de gestes_, but turned loose upon the world to seek elsewhere the lands and booty and deeds of renown which they could no longer expect to find at home. The conquest of England gave an outlet to this movement in one direction; the conquest of southern Italy absorbed it in another.

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In the eleventh century, as in the early nineteenth, Italy was merely a geographical expression. The unity of law and government which it had enjoyed under the Romans had been long since broken by the Lombard invasion and the Frankish conquest, which drew the centre and north of the peninsula into the currents of western politics, while the south continued to look upon Constantinople as its capital and Sicily passed under the dominion of the Prophet and the Fatimite caliphs of Cairo. Separated from the rest of Italy by the lofty barrier of the Abruzzi and the wedge of territory which the Papacy had driven through the lines of communication to the west, the southern half followed a different course of historical development from the days of the Lombards to those of Garibaldi. Nature had thrust it into the central place in the Mediterranean world, to which the gulfs and bays of its long coast-line opened the rich hinterland of Campania and Apulia and the natural highways beyond. Here had sprung up those cities of Magna Graæcia which were the cradle of Italian civilization; here the Romans had their chief harbors at Pozzuoli and Brindisi and their great naval base at Cape Miseno; here the ports of Gaeta, Naples, Amalfi, and Bari kept intercourse with the East open during the Middle Ages. And if the genius of Hamilcar and Hannibal had once sought to tear the south and its islands from Italy to unite them with a Carthaginian empire, their close relations with Africa had again been asserted by the raids and conquests of the Saracens, while their connection with the East made them the last stronghold of Byzantine power beyond the Adriatic. In the long run, however, it has been pointed out that, if the culture of this region came from the south, its masters have come from the north;[62] and its new masters of the eleventh century were to unify and consolidate it at the very time when the rest of the peninsula was breaking up into warring communes and principalities. In the year 1000 the unity of the south was largely formal. The Eastern Empire still claimed authority, but the northern region was entirely independent under the Lombard princes of Capua, Benevento, and Salerno, while the maritime republics of Naples, Gaeta, and Amalfi owed at best only a nominal subjection. The effective power of Byzantium was limited to the extreme south, where its governors and tax-collectors ruled in both Apulia and Calabria. Of the two districts Calabria, now the toe of the boot, was the more Greek, in religion and language as well as in political allegiance, but its scattered cities were unable to defend themselves against a vigorous attack. The large Lombard population of Apulia retained its speech and its law and showed no attachment to its Greek rulers, whose exactions in taxes and military service brought neither peace and security within nor protection from the raids of the Saracens. There was abundant material for a revolt, and the Normans furnished the occasion.

The first definite trace of the Normans in Italy appears in or about the year 1016, when a band returning from Jerusalem is found at Monte Gargano on the eastern coast. There was here an ancient shrine of St. Michael, older even than the famous monastery of St. Michael of the Peril on the confines of Normandy with which it had shared the red cloak of its patron, and a natural object of veneration on the part of Norman pilgrims, who well understood the militant virtues of the archangel of the flaming sword. Here the Normans fell into conversation with a Lombard named Meles, who had recently led an unsuccessful revolt in Apulia and who told them that with a few soldiers like themselves he could easily overcome the Greeks, whereupon they promised to return with their countrymen and assist him. Another story of the same year tells of a body of forty valiant Normans, also on their way home from the Holy Sepulchre, who found a Saracen army besieging Salerno and, securing arms and horses from the natives, defeated and drove off the infidel host. Besought by the inhabitants to stay, they replied that they had acted only for the love of God, but consented to carry home lemons, almonds, rich vestments, and other products of the south as a means of attracting other Normans to make their homes in this land of milk and honey. Legend doubtless has its part in these tales,--the good Orderic makes the twenty thousand Saracens in front of Salerno flee before a hundred Normans!--but the general account of the occasion of the Norman expeditions seems correct. Possibly a Lombard emissary accompanied the pilgrims home to help in the recruiting; certainly in 1017 the Normans are back in force and ready for business. There was, however, nothing sensational or decisive in the early exploits of the Normans on Italian soil. The results of the first campaigns with Meles in northern Apulia were lost in a serious defeat at Canne, and for many years the Normans, few in number but brave and skilful, sought their individual advantage in the service of the various parties in the game of Italian politics, passing from one prince to another as advantage seemed to offer, and careful not to give to any so decisive a preponderance that he might dispense with them. The first Norman principality was established about 1030 at Aversa, just north of Naples, where the money of Rouen continued to circulate more than a century afterward; but such definite points of crystallization make their appearance but slowly, and the body of the Normans, constantly recruited from home, lived as mercenaries on pay and pillage. Their reputation was, however, established, and when the prince of Salerno was asked by the Pope to disband his Norman troop, he replied that it had cost him much time and money to collect this precious treasure, for whom the soldiers of the enemy were “as meat before the devouring lions.”[63]