Page:The Normans in European History.djvu/59

Rh Frankish Gaul and its neighbors. For something like a hundred years after the coming of Rollo the key to Norman history is found in this fact and in the resulting interplay of Scandinavian and Frankish influences. The very grant of 911 was susceptible of being differently regarded from the point of view of the two parties. Charles the Simple probably thought he was creating a new fief with the Norman chief as his vassal, bound to him by feudal ties, while to Rollo, innocent of feudal ideas, the grant may well have seemed a gift outright to be held by himself and his companions as land was held at home. From one point of view a feudal holding, from another an independent Scandinavian state, the contradiction in Normandy's position explains much of its early history. The new colony was saved from absorption in its surroundings by continued migration from the north; before it became Frankish and feudal it thus had time to establish itself firmly and draw tightly the lines which separated it from its neighbors. At once a Frankish county and a Danish colony, it slowly formed itself into the semi-independent duchy which is the historic Normandy of the eleventh and twelfth centuries.

Although Rollo was baptized in 912 and signalized his conversion by extensive grants of land to the great churches and monasteries of his new territories, his Christianity sat lightly upon him and left him a Norse sea-rover at heart till the end, when he sought to appease the powers of the other world, not only by gifts