"When Dudo of Saint-Quentin's Historia Normannorum first appeared in or around 1015, written for the then Duke of Normandy, Richard II, Dudo created a text without precedent. By committing the lives and deeds of Richard II's ancestors to written memory for the first time since the foundation of Normandy under the Viking Rollo in 911, Dudo provided the Norman court at Rouen with both an official dynastic historiography and a treasured record of their collective past. The Historia Normannorum was conceived, from the outset, as an idiosyncratic text which purported to be both staunchly traditional and remarkably innovative. By means of a pioneering transdisciplinary combination of Historical Studies, Manuscript Studies, Literary Theory and Cultural Memory Studies, this book explores medieval historiography through a unique and highly innovative lens. The analysis showcases the Historia Normannorum's status as one of the most formative historical narratives of the Middle Ages, one which may even provide the earliest surviving example of an illustrated chronicle from the entire Latin West."--Back cover.

This Cambridge Companion offers readers a comparative cultural history of north-western Europe in the crucial period of the eleventh century: the age of William the Conqueror. Besides England, Normandy, and northern France, the volume also explores Scandinavia, the North Sea world, the insular world beyond the English Channel, and various parts of Continental Europe. This Companion features essays designed specifically for those wishing to advance their knowledge and understanding of this important period of European history using a holistic and contextual perspective, deliberately shifting the focus away from William the man and onto the rich and fascinating culture of the world in which he lived and ruled. This was not the age created by William, but the age that created him. With contributions by leading international experts, this volume provides an inclusive and innovative study companion that is both authoritative and timely.

During the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, texts about the recent and more distant past were produced in remarkable numbers in the lands controlled by the kings of England. This may be seen, in part, as a response to changing social and political circumstances in the wake of the Norman conquest of England in 1066. The names of many of the twelfth and thirteenth-century historians are well known, and they include Orderic Vitalis, William of Malmesbury, John of Worcester, Henry of Huntingdon, Gerald of Wales, and Matthew Paris. Yet the manuscripts in which these works survive are also evidence for the involvement of many other people in the production of history, as patrons, scribes, and artists. Illuminated History Books in the Anglo-Norman World focuses on history books of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries to examine what they reveal about the creation, circulation, and reception of history in this period. In particular, this research concentrates on illuminated manuscripts. These volumes represent an additional investment of time, labour, and resources, and combinations of text and imagery shed light on engagements with the past as manuscripts were copied at specific times and places. Imagery could be used to reproduce the features of older sources, but it was also used to call attention to particular elements of a text, and to impose frameworks onto the past. As a result, Illuminated History Books in the Anglo-Norman World has the potential to change the way in which we see the medieval past and its historians.

Writing Normandy brings together eighteen articles by historian Felice Lifshitz, some of which are published here for the first time. The articles examine the various ways in which local and regional narratives about the past were created and revised in Normandy during the central Middle Ages. These narratives are analyzed through a combination of both cultural studies and manuscript studies in order to assess how they functioned, who they benefitted, and the various contexts in which they were transmitted. The essays pay particular attention to the narratives built around venerated saints and secular rulers, and in doing so bring together narratives that have traditionally been discussed separately by scholars. The book will appeal to scholars and students of cultural history and medieval history, as well as those interested in manuscript studies. .

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First full-length study of the use and perception of deceit in medieval warfare. Deception and trickery are a universal feature of warfare, from the Trojan horse to the inflatable tanks of the Second World War. The wars of the Central Middle Ages (c. 1000-1320) were no exception. This book looks at the various tricks reported in medieval chronicles, from the Normans feigning flight at the battle of Hastings (1066) to draw the English off Senlac Hill, to the Turks who infiltrated the Frankish camp at the Field of Blood (1119) disguised as bird sellers, to the Scottish camp followers descending on the field of Bannockburn (1314) waving laundry as banners to mimic a division of soldiers. This study also considers what contemporary society thought about deception on the battlefield: was it a legitimate way to fight? Was cunning considered an admirable quality in a warrior? Were the culturally and religious "other" thought to be more deceitful in war than Western Europeans? Through a detailed analysis of vocabulary and narrative devices, this book reveals a society with a profound moral ambivalence towards military deception, in which authors were able to celebrate a warrior's cunning while simultaneously condemning their enemies for similar acts of deceit. It also includes an appendix cataloguing over four hundred incidents of military deception as recorded in contemporary chronicle narratives.

Study of the Norman World's borders, frontiers, and boundaries in Europe, shedding fresh light on their nature and extent. The Normans exerted great influence across Christendom and beyond in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Figures like William the Conqueror and Robert Guiscard subdued vast territories, their feats recorded for posterity by chroniclers such as Orderic Vitalis and Geoffrey Malaterra. Through travel and conquest, the Normans encountered, created, and conceptualised many borders, with the areas of Europe that they ruled and most affected often being grouped together as the "Norman World".This volume examines the nature, forms, and function of borders in and around this "Norman World", looking at Normandy, the British-Irish Isles, and Southern Italy. Three sections frame the collection. The first concerns physical features, from broad frontier expanses, to rivers and walls that were both literally and metaphorically lines of division. The second shows how borders were established, contested, and negotiated between the papacy and lay rulers and senior churchmen. Finally, the third highlights the utility of conceptual frontiers for both medieval authors and modern historians. Among the subjects covered are Archbishop Anselm's travels across Christendom; the portrayal of borders in the writings of William of Jumièges, Orderic Vitalis, and Gerald of Wales; and the limits of Norman seigneurial and papal power at the edges of Europe. Overall, the essays demonstrate the role that the manipulation of borders played in the creation of the "Norman World", and address what these borders did and whom they benefited.and negotiated between the papacy and lay rulers and senior churchmen. Finally, the third highlights the utility of conceptual frontiers for both medieval authors and modern historians. Among the subjects covered are Archbishop Anselm's travels across Christendom; the portrayal of borders in the writings of William of Jumièges, Orderic Vitalis, and Gerald of Wales; and the limits of Norman seigneurial and papal power at the edges of Europe. Overall, the essays demonstrate the role that the manipulation of borders played in the creation of the "Norman World", and address what these borders did and whom they benefited.and negotiated between the papacy and lay rulers and senior churchmen. Finally, the third highlights the utility of conceptual frontiers for both medieval authors and modern historians. Among the subjects covered are Archbishop Anselm's travels across Christendom; the portrayal of borders in the writings of William of Jumièges, Orderic Vitalis, and Gerald of Wales; and the limits of Norman seigneurial and papal power at the edges of Europe. Overall, the essays demonstrate the role that the manipulation of borders played in the creation of the "Norman World", and address what these borders did and whom they benefited.and negotiated between the papacy and lay rulers and senior churchmen. Finally, the third highlights the utility of conceptual frontiers for both medieval authors and modern historians. Among the subjects covered are Archbishop Anselm's travels across Christendom; the portrayal of borders in the writings of William of Jumièges, Orderic Vitalis, and Gerald of Wales; and the limits of Norman seigneurial and papal power at the edges of Europe. Overall, the essays demonstrate the role that the manipulation of borders played in the creation of the "Norman World", and address what these borders did and whom they benefited.eurial and papal power at the edges of Europe. Overall, the essays demonstrate the role that the manipulation of borders played in the creation of the "Norman World", and address what these borders did and whom they benefited.

This Companion to the Abbey of Le Bec in the Central Middle Ages (11th–13th Centuries) offers the first major collection of studies dedicated to the medieval abbey of Le Bec, one of the most important, and perhaps the single most influential, monastery in the Anglo-Norman world. Following its foundation in 1034 by a knight-turned-hermit called Herluin, Le Bec soon developed into a religious, cultural and intellectual hub whose influence extended throughout Normandy and beyond. The fourteen chapters gathered in this Companion are written by internationally renowned experts of Anglo-Norman studies, and together they address the history of this important medieval institution in its many exciting facets. The broad range of scholarly perspectives combined in this volume includes historical and religious studies, prosopography and biography, palaeography and codicology, studies of space and identity, as well as theology and medicine. Contributors are Richard Allen, Elma Brenner, Laura Cleaver, Jean-Hervé Foulon, Giles E.M. Gasper, Laura L. Gathagan, Véronique Gazeau, Leonie V. Hicks, Elizabeth Kuhl, Benjamin Pohl, Julie Potter, Elisabeth van Houts, Steven Vanderputten, Sally N. Vaughn, and Jenny Weston.

In around 911, the Viking adventurer Rollo was granted the city of Rouen and its surrounding district by the Frankish King Charles the Simple. Two further grants of territory followed in 924 and 933. But while Frankish kings might grant this land to Rollo and his son, William Longsword, these two Norman dukes and their successors had to fight and negotiate with rival lords, hostile neighbours, kings, and popes in order to establish and maintain their authority over it. This book explores the geographical and political development of what would become the duchy of Normandy, and the relations between the dukes and these rivals for their lands and their subjects' fidelity. It looks, too, at the administrative machinery the dukes built to support their regime, from their toll-collectors and vicomtes (an official similar to the English sheriff) to the political theatre of their courts and the buildings in which they were staged. At the heart of this exercise are the narratives that purport to tell us about what the dukes did, and the surviving body of the dukes' diplomas. Neither can be taken at face value, and both tell us as much about the concerns and criticisms of the dukes' subjects as they do about the strength of the dukes' authority. The diplomas, in particular, because most of them were not written by scribes attached to the dukes' households but rather by their beneficiaries, can be used to recover something of how the dukes' subjects saw their rulers, as well as something of what they wanted or needed from them. Ducal power was the result of a dialogue, and this volume enables both sides to speak. Mark Hagger is a senior lecturer in medieval history at Bangor University.

Writing circa 731 CE, Bede professes in the introduction to his Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum that he will write his account of the past of the English following only vera lex historiae. Whether explicitly or (most often) implicitly, historians narrate the past according to a conception of what constitutes historical truth that emerges in the use of narrative strategies, of certain formulae or textual forms, in establishing one's own ideological authority or that of one's informants, in faithfulness to a cultural, narrative, or poetic tradition. If we extend the scope of what we understand by history (especially in a pre-modern setting) to include not just the writings of historians legitimated by their belonging to the Latinate matrix of christianized classical history writing, but also collective narratives, practices, rituals, oral poetry, liturgy, artistic representations, and acts of identity - all re-enacting the past as, or as representation of, the present, we find a plethora of modes of constructions of historical truth, narrative authority, and reliability. Vera Lex Historiae? will be constituted by contributions that reveal the variety of evental strategies by which historical truth was constructed in late antiquity and the earlier Middle Ages, and the range of procedures by which such narratives were established first as being historical and then as "true" histories. This is not only a matter of narrative strategies, but also habitus, ways of living and acting in the world that feed on and back into the commemoration and re-enactment of the past by communities and by individuals. In doing this, we hope to recover something of the plurality of modes of preserving and reenacting the past available in late antiquity and the earlier middle ages which we pass by because of preconceived notions of what constitutes history writing.