Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 17.djvu/594

Rh 548 NORMANS and from Persia, and what they learned they largely deve loped and improved. The Normans did just the same. They adopted the French tongue, and were presently among the first to practise and spread abroad its literature. &quot; They adopted the growing feudal doctrines of France, and worked them, both in Normandy and in England, into a harmoni ous system. From northern Italy, as it Avould seem, they adopted a style of architecture which grew in their hands, both in Normandy and in England, into a marked and liv ing form of art. Settled in Gaul, the Scandinavian from a seafaring man became a landsman. Even in land-warfare he cast aside the weapons of his forefathers ; but he soon learned to handle the weapons of his new land with greater prowess than they had ever been handled before. He welcomed the lore of every stranger. Lanfranc brought law and discipline ; Anselm brought theology and philo sophy. The gifts of each were adopted and bore fruit on both sides of the Channel. And no people ever better knew how to be all things to all men. The Norman power in England was founded on full and speedy union with the one nation among whom they found themselves. The Norman power in Sicily was founded on a strong distinction between the ruling people and the many nations which they kept in peace and prosperity by not throwing in their lot with any one among them. Enter- The quality which Geoffrey Malaterra expresses by the prise, word &quot; effrenatissima &quot; is also clearly marked in Norman history. It is, in fact, the groundwork of the historic Norman character. It takes in one case the form of cease less enterprise, in another the form of that lawlessness which ever broke out, both in Normandy and in every other country settled by Normans, when the hand of a strong ruler was wanting. But it was balanced by another quality which Geoffrey does not speak of, one which is not really inconsistent with the other, one which is very promi nent in the Norman character, and which is, no less than the other, a direct heritage from their Scandinavian fore- Litigious- fathers. This is the excessive litigiousness, the fondness ness, f or j aW) legal forms, legal processes, which has ever been characteristic of the people. If the Norman was a born soldier, he was also a born lawyer. Randolf Flambard, working together the detached feudal usages of earlier times into a compact and logical system of feudal law, was as characteristic a type of the people as any warrior in the Conqueror s following. He was the organizer of an endless official army, of an elaborate technical system of adminis tration, which had nothing like it in England before, but which grew up to perfection under Norman rulers. But nothing so well illustrates this formal side of the Norman character as the whole position of the Conqueror himself. His claim to the crown of England is something without earlier precedent, something as far as possible removed from the open violence of aggressors who have no pretexts with which to disguise their aggression. It rested on a mass of legal assumptions and subtleties, fallacious indeed, but ingenious, and, as the result proved, effective. His whole system of government, his confiscations, his grants, all that he did, was a logical deduction from one or two legal principles, arbitrary certainly in their conception, but strictly carried out to their results. Even Norman law lessness in some sort took a legal shape. In the worst days of anarchy, in the minority of William or under the no-reign of Robert, the robber-baron could commonly give elaborate reasons for every act of wrong that he did. It is perhaps less wonderful that this characteristic should have been left out in a picture of the Normans in Apulia and Sicily than if it had been left out in a picture of the Normans in Normandy and England. The circumstances of their Apulian and Sicilian conquests certainly did not tend to bring out this feature of their character so strongly as it was brought out by the circumstances of their Eng lish conquest. Possibly the same cause may have kept the chronicler from enlarging on their religious charac ter ; yet in Sicily at least they might pass for crusaders. Crusaders in fact they were before crusades were preached. Norman warriors had long before helped the Christians of Spain in their warfare with the Saracens of the Peninsula, and in Sicily it was from the same enemy that they won the great Mediterranean island. Others had done a kin dred work in a more distant field as helpers of the Eastern emperors against the Turks of Asia. All these might pass for religious wars, and they might really be so ; it needed greater ingenuity to set forth the invasion of England as a missionary enterprise designed for the spiritual good of the benighted islanders. The Norman, a strict observer Observ- of forms in all matters, attended to the forms of religion ance of with special care. No people were more bountiful to L ecclesiastical bodies on both sides of the Channel ; the foundation of a Benedictine monastery in the llth cen tury, of a Cistercian monastery in the 1 2th, seemed almost a matter of course on the part of a Norman baron. The Conqueror beyond doubt sincerely aimed at being a reli gious reformer both in his duchy and in his kingdom, while it is needless to say that his immediate successor was exceptionally ungodly, whether among Normans or among other men. But among their countrymen generally strict attendance to religious observances, a wide bounty to religious foundations, may be set down as national characteristics. On the other hand, none were less in clined to submit to encroachments on the part of the ecclesiastical power, the Conqueror himself least of all. We thus see in the Scandinavian settlers in Gaul, after they had put on the outward garb of their adopted country, a people restless and enterprising above all others, adopt ing and spreading abroad all that they could make their own in their new land and everywhere else, a people in many ways highly gifted, greatly affecting and modifying at the time every land in which they settled, but, wherever they settled, gradually losing themselves among the people of the land. The Norman, as a visible element in the country, has vanished from England, and he has vanished from Sicily. The circumstances of his settlement in his The Con- two great fields of conquest were widely different ; his quest of position when he was fully established in his two insular y f. 11 realms was widely different ; but the end has been the ^ gfcjiy same in both cases. Neither island has for ages been in corn- any sense a Norman land, and the tongue which the pared. Norman brought with him into both has not for ages been spoken in either. Norman influence has been far stronger in England than in Sicily, and signs of Norman presence are far more easily recognized. But the Norman, as a distinct people, is as little to be seen in the one island as in the other. His disappearance in both cases is an illus tration of one of the features which we have spoken of in the Norman character, the tendency which in fact made Normans out of Northmen, the tendency to adopt the language and manners of the people among whom they found themselves. But, as far as outward circumstances are concerned, we may say that the same effect has been brought about by different and almost opposite causes. The whole circumstances of the conquest of England con strained the conquerors to become Englishmen in order to establish themselves in the conquered land. In William s theory, the forcible conquest of England by strangers was an untoward accident. The lawful heir of the English crown was driven against his will to win his rights by force from outside. But he none the less held his crown as an English king succeeding according to English law. Moreover every Norman to whom he granted lands and offices held them by English law in a much truer sense