Chapter 4 - The customs of Normandy and the Norman frontier

Summary

CUSTOMS AND FRONTIERS

One of the most marked features of Normandy in the later Middle Ages was the Coutume de Normandie, which in many ways came to embody the identity of the province after 1204. In 1315, for instance, it was the provincial privileges of Normandy that Louis X confirmed in the Charte aux Normands. Historians have often taken the customs of Normandy as an embodiment of the province's precocious distinctiveness: ‘crystallised’ at an early date and henceforward conservative, inward-looking and inflexible, the customs are believed to have altered little between the end of Plantagenet rule and the end of the Ancien Régime itself. The most prolific of all historians of Norman law, Jean Yver, characterised the customs of Normandy, along with the other systems of western France, as distinguished by their feudalisation, conservatism and preservation of lineage. For Yver and other historians of Norman law, the customs were primarily a legacy of the ducal era and were infused with ducal authority.

This supposedly distinctive character of Norman customary law imbues the Norman frontier with great significance, for it implies that the borders of the duchy, especially the eastern frontier with Francia, represented a great legal divide. To Lemarignier the contrast between the unitary customs of Normandy and the hotchpotch of surrounding systems of law was one of the most important characteristics of the Norman frontier. The customs of Normandy also have a great relevance for the Norman frontier in basic territorial terms.