From the British Isles to Italy and Spain: how the Normans reshaped Europe

How then are we to explain the impact of relatively small numbers of knights from northwestern France on European history? Should their activities in different theatres be seen as part of a single, essentially Norman, enterprise? Do they confirm the impression that the movers and shakers in the middle ages were usually men: where were the women in the Norman world?

How are we to explain the impact of relatively small numbers of knights from northwestern France on European history?

The first question may be addressed by thinking about timing and context. In the early 11th century it can be argued that both England and Italy presented tempting targets for armed aggression, for different reasons. England, ruled by a wealthy king, succumbed to Danish rule in 1016 after decades of attack. The Norman dukes were not disinterested onlookers: sometimes they allied with the Danes, sometimes with King Æthelred, who had married Emma, daughter of Duke Richard I. Harthacnut, the last Danish king of England, died without an heir and so did his successor, Edward the Confessor.

Invasion of England

During Edward’s reign the young duke of the Normans, William, had fought his way to maturity establishing a network of kin and allies, and was looking to extend his power beyond Normandy. The death of Edward without an heir, the lack of a clear line of succession in England, the fact that William was a kinsman of King Edward (and may have had some kind of pledge over the succession from him) provided him with justification to gather a force, which invaded in 1066. This included not just his core supporters from Normandy but also Bretons and Flemings who saw the chance for glory and riches.

The resulting army, possibly as many as 8,000, was led by the duke himself and aimed at the throne. Even allowing for luck, William was outstandingly successful and relatively quickly was able to establish his followers in southern England and the midlands. The north was a tougher nut to crack, but over time the Normans penetrated the whole of the region south of the Solway and Tweed.

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The situation in Italy presented different challenges, but here too was the possibility of wealth. In southern Italy, Lombard princes competed with Byzantine and Holy Roman emperors and the pope, while Sicily was under Arab rule. There were contacts with northern Europe. Visitors included pilgrims to the famous shrine of St Michael at Monte Gargano in Apulia or on their way to Jerusalem, and it was pilgrims, according to one tradition about the arrival of the Normans, who first took up arms for a rebel leader against the Byzantine emperor.

Then different groups began to trickle south, fighting for those who would employ them. They were soldiers of fortune, men from the middling or lower ranks of the aristocracy who had been trained as warriors but for whatever reason, political disfavour or too many brothers to provide for, had taken the road south. In 1030 one of them, Rainulf, had been given Aversa, a newly founded town north of Naples, and his nephew Richard, who came from the neighbourhood of Dieppe, established a principality centred on Capua.

The most famous of the newcomers came from a village near Coutances in the west of Normandy, Hauteville-la-Guichard. These were the sons of Tancred de Hauteville. Tancred had married twice, and had no fewer than twelve sons, of whom several made their way to Italy. Two of the sons of the second marriage, Robert Guiscard, ‘the wily one’ and Roger (later Roger I of Sicily), achieved spectacular success. By dint of force and persuasion they began to extend their rule over Apulia and Calabria.

Pope Leo IX grew so alarmed at the threat that he gathered a coalition including forces of the Holy Roman emperor, Henry III. It went into battle against the Normans at Civitate in 1053. It was defeated and the pope was captured. From that time, although relations between papacy and Normans were sometimes fractious, both benefitted from their resulting alliance: the popes with support for extending their authority, and the Normans in the legitimisation of conquest in southern Italy and then Sicily.

In both areas, England and Italy, the Normans proved the capability of their forces on the battlefield, and both at Civitate and at Hastings used heavy armed cavalry – knights. They also used castles in the process of extending their power. In the British Isles these took a variety of forms but at their simplest, earth and timber motte and bailey castles, they could be thrown up relatively quickly. At their grandest they were large and built in stone.

The Norman leaders were not prepared to restrict their territorial ambitions. In England William the Conqueror inherited claims to an imperial rule over the Welsh and Scots, later extended to Ireland. His followers showed little respect for the borders between English and Welsh territories, extending their rule in south Wales, along the valleys, and in the north.

In Scotland, William Rufus had the chance to intervene in support of the sons of Malcolm III and Queen Margaret, and then under David I Normans were granted large estates in Scotland. Later in the 12th century a Norman based in Wales, Richard FitzGilbert, married Aoife, daughter of the king of Leinster, and so entered a new theatre of military intervention.

Byzantine adventures

In Italy the experiences of Robert Guiscard and his brothers had brought them up against the Byzantine empire which, by the later 11th century, was also coming under increasing pressure from the east. By the 1080s Robert was looking across the Adriatic to the Byzantine territory. He launched two naval expeditions, the first against Dyrrhachium (modern Durrës in Albania). He died during the second expedition, in 1085.

At a similar time, the Byzantine emperor, as a Christian, appealed to Rome for assistance against the Turks. In 1095 Pope Urban II preached the need for a crusade, a call which was answered by two groups of Normans, the first led by Robert II, Duke of Normandy, and the second by Bohemond of Taranto, a son of Robert Guiscard. The motives of the two leaders have often been contrasted. Duke Robert joined his kinsmen and neighbours in northern France on what many thought of as a perilous but pious pilgrimage. Bohemond was an opportunist who was already on the lookout for territorial gains at the expense of the emperor, Alexius Comnenus. In fact most crusaders joined for a mixture of motives, secular and religious.

Robert proved to be an excellent warrior, staying with the main crusading force all the way to Jerusalem and attacking opposing armies head-on. Bohemond was a leading figure at the siege of Antioch (now Antakya in southern Turkey), but he then refused to hand the great fortress over to the emperor on the grounds that Alexius had broken his promises. While Robert returned to Normandy, to defeat and lifelong imprisonment at his brother’s hands, Bohemond went on to establish a principality centred on Antioch.

He was not the only crusader to create an independent lordship: Baldwin of Boulogne established the principality of Edessa in Turkey. Nor was Bohemond’s subsequent career one of unalloyed success, for he was captured, and freed (it was said) by a Muslim princess. He evidently possessed great charisma, for when he returned to France in 1106, he married a daughter of the king of France, and we are told that many sought him as godfather for their sons, and that his name became common in France as a result.

So how far were all these exploits the work of Normans? The chroniclers who wrote about them constructed a concept of Norman identity which could be adapted to suit different circumstances. They were seen as a people, the inhabitants of Normandy, descendants of a Viking leader, Rollo, and his band. In practice, of course, the newcomers were outnumbered by the native Franks. Then in Italy, while the leaders were Normans, they remained few in number.

There were more Normans in the army of William the Conqueror, but again there was no mass migration from Normandy in the 11th or 12th centuries. The question of the strength of identity between Normans settled outside the duchy and Normandy has been much debated in recent years. Some writers were obviously much more aware of a wider Norman diaspora than others. The early 12th-century chronicler Orderic Vitalis writing in Normandy, for instance, was particularly well informed about the

Normans in Italy as well as in Normandy and England. On the other hand, those who wrote about the first crusade tended to describe the crusaders simply as Franks, without distinguishing the Normans.

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Norman identity

So should these activities in different theatres be seen as part of a single, essentially Norman, enterprise? The question of identity depends on time and place: the description ‘Norman invasion of Ireland’ is still sometimes used of the late 12th-century intervention, though contemporaries tended to call the invaders ‘the English’. The 12th-century rulers of Sicily were of Norman extraction, but the population was mixed. Latin, Greek, and Arabic were all in use.

King Roger II in particular was both able and cosmopolitan in outlook, and the royal court and its glittering culture drew elements from every quarter. The architecture of the cathedrals of Cefalù and Monreale, and the palaces in and around Palermo – the work of craftsmen skilled in both Byzantine and Arab techniques – speak volumes about wealth and status, as they were intended to do.

A question I posed at the start of this article was about what seems to be the strong gender bias in Norman history. Was it all about men? In fact, women were crucial to the story of the Normans, usually as wives and mothers. Marriages were a key way of making alliances. Some of the early arrivals in Italy married into Lombard families, for instance. High-status women transmitted territory as heiresses and, as the mother of young sons, could act as regents. So although this was a man’s world, high status women were no mere spectators.

Women were crucial to the story of the Normans, usually as wives and mothers

The Normans were more than brutally effective soldiers. They reshaped political geography both in Italy and in the British Isles. In Italy they created a united kingdom of South Italy and Sicily which lasted for centuries. By controlling Sicily they were able to send expeditions to north Africa, to access sub-Saharan gold, and to facilitate trade in the eastern Mediterranean and transport for the crusades. Greater contact with scholars familiar with Arabic and Greek texts enriched learning in both northern and southern Europe, to the benefit of philosophy, mathematics, and science.

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In England the Norman Conquest caused a political and cultural reorientation away from the Scandinavian world. Although there remained a substantial number of families of Scandinavian descent, especially in eastern England, the ability of the Normans to resist Scandinavian expeditions meant that, in effect, the era of Viking attacks came to an end. Instead, the ruling elite in England came to be more closely linked with northern France.

The conquest of England also had profound consequences for England’s relations with her neighbours in the British Isles, most immediately for Wales, then for Scotland and Ireland. Here, as in many other parts of Europe, the Normans were, above all, catalysts for change.

This article was first published in the Normans Special Edition, created by the team behind BBC History Magazine and first published in July 2016

Judith Green is emeritus professor of medieval history at the University of Edinburgh