Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 17.djvu/593

N O Jti N O R 547 of Normandy as a European power ends with the Angevin conquest in the 12th century. Since then it has never stood alone, even as it might still be said to stand alone under the Conqueror and under Henry I. The question from that time was whether Normandy should be a de pendency of England or an integral part of France. The latter was in every way the more natural condition. The reunion under Henry V. was a striving against manifest destiny. It shows what a great man can do and what he cannot. (E. A. r.) NORMANS is the softened form of the word " North man," applied first to the people of Scandinavia in general, and afterwards specially to the people of Norway. In the form of "Norman" (Northmannus, Normannus, Normand) it is the name of those colonists from Scandinavia who settled themselves in Gaul, who founded the Norman duchy, who adopted the French tongue and French manners, and who from their new home set forth on new errands of conquest, chiefly in the British Islands and in southern Italy and Sicily. From one point of view the expeditions of the Normans may be looked on as continuations of the expedi tions of the Northmen. As the name is etymologically the same, so the people are by descent the same, and they are still led by the old spirit of war and adventure. But in the view of general history Normans and Northmen must be carefully distinguished. The change in the name is the sign of a thorough change, if not in the people themselves, yet in their historical position. Their national character remains largely the same ; but they have adopted a new religion, a new language, a new system of law and society, new thoughts and feelings on all matters. Like as the Norman still is to the Northman, the effects of a settlement of Normans are utterly different from the effects of a settlement of Northmen. There can be no doubt that the establishment of the Norman power in England was, like the establishment of the Danish power, greatly helped by the essential kindred of Normans, Danes, and English. But it was helped only silently. To all outward appear ance the Norman conquest of England was an event of an altogether different character from the Danish conquest. The one was a conquest by a people whose tongue and institutions were still palpably akin to those of the English. The other was a conquest by a people whose tongue and institutions were palpably different from those of the English. The Norman settlers in England felt no com munity with the earlier Danish settlers in England. In 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 form the main Norman history of the llth century. The 10th century is the time of the settlement of the North men 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 de^p root that the descendants of the Scandi navian settlers were better fitted to be the armed mission aries of all these things than the neighbours from whom they had borrowed their new possessions. With the zeal Character of new converts they set forth on their new errand very of the much in the spirit of their heathen forefathers. If Britain Normans - 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 greedi ness 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 Nor mans 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 cer tainly 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 emi grants from Gaul became English, Irish, Scottish, and what ever we are to call the present inhabitants of Sicily and southern Italy. Everywhere 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 Their 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 Baghdad, or more commonly for those of Cordova, a monopoly of science and art 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 de partment did any Saracen, strictly speaking, invent any thing ; but they learned much both from Constantinople 1 Geoffrey Malaterra, i. 3 " Est quippe gens astutissima, injuriarum ultrix, spe alias plus lucrandi, patrios agros vilipendens, quasstus et dominationis avida, cujuslibet rei simulatrix, inter largitatem et avari- tiam 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, quse quidem, nisi jugo justitiae prematur, effrenatissima est ; laboris, mediae, algoris, ubi fortuna expedit, patiens, venationi accipitrum exercitio inserviens. Equorum, cseterorumque militia? 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. "