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 NORMANDY

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NORMANDY

wrote in Latin half verse, half prose, a history of the family according to the traditions and accounts trans- mitted to him by Raoul, Count of Ivry, grandson of Rollo and brother of Richard I Alinea. Duke Robert the Devil (1027-35) was already powerful enough to inter- fere efficaciously in the struggles of Henry I of France against his own brother and the Counts of Champagne and Flanders. In gratitude the king bestowed on Robert the Devil, Pontoise, Chaumont en Vexin, and the whole of French Vexin. It was under Robert the Devil that the ducal family of Normandy first cast covetous glances towards England. He sent an em- bassy to Canute the Great, King of England, in order that the sons of Ethelred, Alfred and Edward, might recover their patrimony. The petition having been denied he made ready a naval expedition against England, destroyed by a tempest. He died while on a pilgrimage to the Holy Sepulchre.

It was reserved for his son William the Bastard, later called William the Conqueror, to make England a Norman colony by the expedition which resulted in the victory of Hastings or Senlac (1066). It seemed, then, that in the second half of the eleventh century a sort of Norman imperialism was to arise in England, but the testament of William the Conqueror which left Normandy to Robert Courte-Heuse and England to William Rufus, marked the separation of the two countries. Each of the brothers sought to despoil the other; the long strife which Robert waged, first against William Rufus, afterwards against his third brother Henry I Beauclerc, terminated in 1106 with the battle of Tinchebray, after which he was taken prisoner and brought to Cardiff. Thenceforth Normandy was the possession of William I, King of England, and while forty years previous England seemed about to become a Norman country, it was Normandy which became an English country; history no longer speaks of the ducal family of Normandy but of the royal family of England. Later Henry I, denounced to the Council of Reims by Louis VI of France, explained to Callistus II in tragic terms the condition in which he had found Normandy. "The duchy", said he, " was the prey of brigands. Priests and other servants of God were no longer honoured, and paganism had almost been re- stored in Normandy. The monasteries which our ancestors had founded for the repose of their souls were destroyed, and the religious obliged to disperse, being unable to sustain themselves. The churches were given up to pillage, most of them reduced to ashes, while the priests were in hiding. Their pa- rishioners were slaying one another." There may have been some truth in this description of Henry I; however, it is well to bear in mind that the Nor- man dukes of the eleventh century, while they had prepared and realized these astounding political changes, had also developed in Normandy, with the help of the Church, a brilliant literary and artistic movement.

The Abbey of Bee was for some time, under the direction of Lanfranc and St. Anselm, the foremost school of northern France. Two Norman monaster- ies produced historical works of great importance; the "Historia Normannorum", written between 1070-87 by Guillaume Calculus at the monastery of Jumieges; the "Historia Ecclesiastica" of Ordericus Vitalis, which begins with the birth of Christ and ends in 1141, written at the monastery of St. Evroult. The secular clergy of Normandy emulated the monks; in a sort of academy founded in the second half of the eleventh century by two bishops of Lisieux, Hugues of Eu and Gilbert Maminot, not only theological but also scientific and literary questions were discussed. The Norman court was a kind of Academy and an active centre of literary production. The chaplain of Duchess Matilda, Gui de Ponthieu, Bishop of Amiens, composed in 1067 a Latin poem on the battle of Has- tings; the chaplain of William the Conqueror, WilUam

of Poitiers, wrote the " Gesta" of his master and an ex- tant account of the first crusade is due to another Norman, Raoul de Caen, an eyewitness. At the same time the Norman dukes of the eleventh century restored the buildings, destroyed by the invasions of their barbarian ancestors, and a whole Romance school of architecture developed in Normandy, ex- tending to Chartres, Picardy, Brittany, and even to England. Caen was the centre of this school; and monuments like the Abbaye aux Hommes and the Abbaye aux Dames, built at Caen by William and Matilda, mark an epoch in the history of Norman art. In the course of the twelfth century the political destinies of Normandy were very uncertain. Henry

I of England, master of Normandy from 1106-3.5, preferred to live at Caen rather than in England. His rule in Normandy was at first disturbed by the par- tisans of Guillaume Cliton, son of Robert Courte- Heuse, and later by the plot concocted against him by his own daughter Matilda, widow of Emperor Henry V, who had taken as her second husband Geoffrey Plan- tagenet, Count of Anjou. When Henry I died in 1 135 his body was brought to England; his death without male heirs left Normandy a prey to anarchy. For this region was immediately disputed between Henry Plantagenet, grandson of Henry I through his mother Matilda, and Thibaut of Champagne, grandson of William the Conqueror through his mother Adele. After nine years of strife Thibaut withdrew in favour of his brother Stephen who in 1135 had been crowned King of England. But the victories of Geoffrey Plantagenet in Normandy assured (1144) the rule of Henry Plantagenet over that land, which being thenceforth subject to Angevin rule, seemed destined to have no further connexion with England. Sud- denly Henry Plantagenet, who in 11.52 had married Eleanor (Alienor) of Aquitaine, divorced from Louia VII of France, determined to assert his rights over England itself. The naval expedition which he con- ducted in 1153 led Stephen to recognize him as his heir, and as Stephen died at the end of that same year Henry Plantagenet reigned over all the Anglo-Nor- man possessions, his territorial power being greater than that of the kings of France. A long series of wars followed between the Capetians and Plantag- enets, interrupted by truces. Louis VII wisely fa- voured everything which paralyzed the power of Plan- tagenet, and supported all his enemies. Thomas 3, Becket and the other exiles who had protested against the despotism which Henry exercised against the Church, found refuge and help at the court of France; and the sons of Henry in their successive revolts against their father in Normandy, were supported first by Louis VII and then by Philip Augustus.

The prestige of the Capetian kings grew in Nor- mandy when Richard Coeur de Lion succi-cdcd Henry

II in 1189. Philip Augustus profited by tlic enmity between Richard and his brother Jolin Lackl.-iud to gradually establi-sh French domination in Norniandy. A war between Richard and Philip Augustus resulted in the treaty of Issoudun (1195) by which Philip Augustus acquired for the French crown Norman Vexin and the castellanies of Nonancourt, Ivry, Pacy, Vernon, and Gaillon. A second war between John Lackland, King of England in 1199 and Philip Augustus, was terminated by the treaty of Goulet (1200), by which John Lackland recovered Norman Vexin, but recognized the French king's possession of the territory of Evreux and declared himself the "liege man" of Philip Augustus. Also when in 1202 John Lackland, having abducted Isabella of Angou- leme, refused to appear before Philip .Augustus, the court of peers declared John a felon, under which sen- tence he no longer had tire right to hold any lief of the crown. Philip II Augustus sanctioned the judrment of the court of peers by invading Normandy which in 1204 became a French possession. The twelfth