Introduction

Summary

THIS is a book about the creation, maintenance, rule, and governance of the duchy of Normandy and the power of the dukes who led that enterprise. It examines not only the structures that the dukes inherited or developed that allowed them to establish their authority across their territory, but also how the dukes won and then kept the loyalties of the lords who resided within their borders, how those lords manifested their loyalty to their ruler, and how they perceived and promoted it, too. In other words, this is a book that aims to look at the authority of the duke both as it was imposed from the top down and as it was recognized and strengthened from the bottom up.

Sources and approach

It is well known that contemporary sources for tenth-century Normandy are seriously lacking. Some information is to be found in the Annals of Flodoard of Reims and rather less in the later, but still tenth-century, Histories of Richer of Reims. There is a brief mention of Rollo and his companions in an authentic act of Charles the Simple of 918 and of Richard I in an altogether more dubious diploma of Lothair V of 966. There are four authentic acts signed by Duke Richard, two of which record his gifts to his own foundations at Evreux and Fécamp, and to which might perhaps be added two eleventh-century acts that preserve grants that are said to have been made by tenth-century dukes. This is not much to go on, and while it might be hoped that archaeological and place-name evidence might provide an additional foundation on which to build, that evidence is just as slight, ambiguous, and misleading as the written sources that purport to inform us of the relevant events.

One result of this absence of evidence is that while this book aims to look at the development of Normandy and of the dukes’ authority from 911, many of the topics and trends explored in Chapters 4 through 11 can only be perceived, and still dimly at that, from the second decade of the eleventh century.