The Normans in European History

by Charles Homer Haskins

THE NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY

THE NORMANS IN
EUROPEAN HISTORY

 

BY

CHARLES HOMER HASKINS

GURNEY PROFESSOR OF HISTORY AND POLITICAL SCIENCE
IN HARVARD UNIVERSITY

 

 

BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
The Riverside Press Cambridge

COPYRIGHT, 1915, BY CHARLES HOMER HASKINS

ALL BIGHTS RESERVED INCLUDING THE RIGHT TO REPRODUCE
THIS BOOK OR PARTS THEREOF IN ANY FORM

Published October 1915

TO MY WIFE

PREFACE

THE eight lectures which are here published were delivered before the Lowell Institute in February, 1915, and at the University of California the following July, and it has seemed best to print them in the form in which they were prepared for a general audience. Their purpose is not so much to furnish an outline of the annals of Norman history as to place the Normans in relation to their time and to indicate the larger features of their work as founders and organizers of states and contributors to European culture. Biographical and narrative detail has accordingly been subordinated in the effort to give a general view of Norman achievement in France, in England, and in Italy. Various aspects of Norman history have been treated with considerable fullness by historians, but, so far as I am aware, no connected account of the whole subject has yet been attempted from this point of view. This fact, it is hoped, may justify the publication of these lectures, as well as explain the omission of many topics which would naturally be treated in an extended narrative.

This book rests partly upon the writings of the various scholars enumerated in the bibliographical note at the end of each chapter, partly upon prolonged personal investigations, the results of which have appeared in various special periodicals and will, in part, soon be collected into a volume of Studies in Norman Institutions. When it seemed appropriate in the text, I have felt at liberty to draw freely upon the more general portions of these articles, leaving more special and critical problems for discussion elsewhere.

I wish to thank the authorities of the Lowell Institute and the University of California, and to acknowledge helpful criticism from my colleague Professor William S. Ferguson and from Mr. George W. Robinson, Secretary of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences of Harvard University. My indebtedness to Norman scholars and Norman scholarship is deeper and more personal than any list of their names and writings can indicate.

Charles H. Haskins.

⁠Cambridge, Mass.
⁠August, 1915.

CONTENTS

I.	NORMANDY AND ITS PLACE IN HISTORY	1
II.	THE COMING OF THE NORTHMEN	26
III.	NORMANDY AND ENGLAND	52
IV.	THE NORMAN EMPIRE	85
V.	NORMANDY AND FRANCE	116
VI.	NORMAN LIFE AND CULTURE	148
VII.	THE NORMANS IN THE SOUTH	192
VIII.	THE NORMAN KINGDOM OF SICILY	218
⁠	INDEX	251