fact the Normans met with the steadiest resistance in a part of England which was largely Danish. But the effect of real, though unacknowledged, kindred had none the less an important practical effect. There can be no doubt that this hidden working of kindred between conquerors and conquered in England, as compared with the utter lack of all fellowship between conquerors and conquered in Sicily, was one cause out of several which made so wide a difference between the Norman conquest of England and the Norman conquest of Sicily.
These two conquests, wrought in the great island of the Ocean and in the great island of the Mediterranean, were the main works of the Normans after they had fully put on the character of a Christian and French-speaking people, in other words, after they had changed from Northmen into Normans. The English and the Sicilian settlements Charter of the Normans. form the main Norman history of the 11th century. The 10th century is the time of the settlement of the Northmen in Gaul, and of the change in religion and language of which the softening of the name is the outward sign. By the end of it, any traces of heathen faith, and even of Scandinavian speech, must have been mere survivals. The new creed, the new speech, the new social system, had taken such deep root that the descendants of the Scandinavian settlers were better fitted to be the armed missionaries of all these things than the neighbours from whom they had borrowed their new possessions. With the zeal of new converts they set forth on their new errand very much in the spirit of their heathen forefathers. If Britain and Sicily were the greatest fields of their enterprise, they were very far from being the only fields. The same spirit of enterprise which brought the Northmen into Gaul seems to carry the Normans out of Gaul into every corner of the world. Their character is well painted by a contemporary historian of their exploits[1] He sets the Normans before us as a race 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, he adds, were specially lavish through their desire of good report. They were, moreover, a race skilful 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. Several of these features stand out very clearly in Norman history. The cunning of the Normans is plain enough; so is their impatience of restraint, unless held down by a strong master. Love of imitation is also marked. Little of original invention can be traced to any strictly Norman source; but no people were ever more eager to adopt from other nations, to take into their service and friendship from any quarter men of learning and skill and eminence of every kind. To this quality is perhaps to be attributed the fact that a people who did so much, who settled and conquered in so large a part of Europe, has practically vanished from the face of the earth. If Normans, as Normans, now exist anywhere, it is certainly only in that insular fragment of the ancient duchy which still cleaves to the successor of its ancient dukes. Elsewhere, as the settlers in Gaul became French, the emigrants from Gaul became English, Irish, Scottish, and whatever we are to call the present inhabitants of Sicily and southern Italy. Every where they gradually lost themselves among the people whom they conquered; they adopted the language and the national feelings of the lands in which they settled; but at the same time they often modified, often strengthened the national usages and national life of the various nations in which they were finally merged.
But Geoffrey hardly did justice to the Normans if he meant to imply that they were simple imitators of others. Their position was very like that of the Saracens. Hasty writers who forget the existence of the eastern Rome are apt to claim for the Saracens of Bagdad, or more commonly those of Cordova, a monopoly of science and art Their faculty of adaptation. at some time not very clearly defined by dates. In so doing they slur over the real position and the real merit of the Saracens with regard to science and art. In neither department did any Saracen, strictly speaking, invent anything; but they learned much both from Constantinople and from Persia, and what they learned they largely developed and improved. The Normans did just the same. They adopted the French tongue, and were presently among the first to practise and spread abroad its literature. They adopted the growing feudal doctrines of France, and worked them, both in Normandy and in England, into a harmonious system. From northern Italy, as it would seem, they adopted a style of architecture which grew in their hands, both in Normandy and in England, into a marked and living form of art. Settled in Gaul, the Scandinavian from a seafaring man became a landsman. Even in land-warfare he cast aside the weapons of his forefathers; but he soon learned to handle the weapons of his new land with greater prowess than they had ever been handled before. He welcomed the lore of every stranger. Lanfranc brought law and discipline; Anselm brought theology and philosophy. The gifts of each were adopted and bore fruit on both sides of the Channel. And no people ever better knew how to be all things to all men. The Norman power in England was founded on full and speedy union with the one nation among whom they found themselves. The Norman power in Sicily was founded on a strong distinction between the ruling people and the many nations which they kept in peace and prosperity by not throwing in their lot with any one among them.
The quality which Geoffrey Malaterra expresses by the word “effrenatissima” is also clearly marked in Norman history. It is, in fact, the groundwork of the historic Norman character. It takes in one case the form of ceaseless enterprise, in another the form of that lawlessness which ever broke out, both in Normandy and in every other country settled by Normans, when the hand of a strong ruler was wanting. But it was balanced by another quality which Geoffrey does not speak of, one which is not really inconsistent with the other, one which is very prominent in the Norman character, and which is, no less than the other, a direct heritage from their Scandinavian forefathers. This is the excessive litigiousness, the fondness for law, legal forms, legal processes, which has ever been characteristic of the people. If the Norman was a born soldier, he was also a born lawyer. Ranulf Flambard, working together the detached feudal usages of earlier times into a compact and logical system of feudal law, was as characteristic a type of the people as any warrior in the Conqueror’s following. He was the organizer of an endless official army, of an elaborate technical system of administration, which had nothing like it in England before, but which grew up to perfection under Norman rulers.[2] But nothing so well illustrates this formal side of the Norman character as the whole position of William the Conqueror himself. His claim to the crown of England is something without earlier precedent, something as far as possible removed from the open violence of aggressors who have no pretexts with which to disguise their aggression. It rested on a mass of legal assumptions and subtleties, fallacious indeed, but ingenious, and, as the result proved, effective. His whole system of government, his
- ↑ Geoffrey Malaterra, i. 3 “Ext quippe gens astutissima, injuriarum ultrix, spe alias plus lucrandi, patrios agros vilipendens, quaestus et dommationis avida, cujuslibet rei simulatrix, inter largitatem et avaritiam quoddam medium habens. Principes vero delectatione bonae famae largissimi, gens adulari sciens, eloquentiis in studiis inserviens in tantum, ut etiam ipsos pueros quasi rhetores attendas, quae quidem, nisi jugo justitiae prematur, effrenatissima est; laboris, inediae, algoris, abi fortuna expedit, patiens, venationi accipitrum exercitio inserviens. Equorum, caeterorumque militiae instrumentorum, et vestium luxuria delectatur. Ex nomine itaque suo terrae nomen indiderunt. North quippe Anglica lingua aquilonaris plaga dicitur. Et quia ipsi ab aquilone venerant terram ipsam etiam Normanniam appellarunt.”
- ↑ This view of Ranulf Flambard’s work, which on Freeman’s authority superseded the older view, which attributed the feudal organization of England to the Conqueror himself, was subjected to a destructive criticism by Mr J. H. Round in his Feudal England. (Ed.)
