Page:The Normans in European History.djvu/78

64 we meet that persistent contradiction between theory and practice which shocks our more consistent minds. Just as the men of the Middle Ages tolerated a Holy Roman Empire which claimed universal dominion and often exercised only the most local and rudimentary authority, so they accepted a monarchy like that of the early Capetians, which claimed to rule over the whole of France and was limited in its actual government to a few farms and castles in the neighborhood of Paris. And just as they maintained ideals of lofty chivalry and rigorous asceticism far beyond the sordid reality of ordinary knighthood or monkhood, so the constant violation of feudal obligations did not change the feudal bond or destroy the nexus of feudal relations. In this age of unrestraint, ferocious savagery alternated with knightly generosity, and ungovernable rage with self-abasing penance.

At such times the relations of the king and his great feudatories would depend very largely upon personal temperament, political situations, and even the impulse of the moment, and we must not expect to find such purpose and continuity in policies as prevail in more settled periods. Nevertheless, with due allowance for momentary variations, the relations of Normandy with the Capetian kings follow comparatively simple lines. The position of Normandy in the Seine valley and its proximity to the royal domain offered endless opportunity for friction, yet for about a century strained