Normans in European History

by Charles Homer Haskins Narrated by Pamela Nagami

Overview

Wherever their ships took them, the Normans (Northman) were ruthless conquerors but gifted governors. These eight lectures, given in Boston in 1915 by the eminent Harvard medievalist, Charles Homer Haskins, chronicle the achievements of these descendants of the Vikings, whose genius for assimilation transformed them into French, English, and Sicilian citizens of well-run states. Haskins discusses the great William the Conqueror and Henry II, the impetuous Richard the Lion-Hearted, and the hapless King John. The Normans founded the Kingdom of Sicily in which there was religious toleration and a Saracen bureaucracy, and left us a moving picture of themselves in the Bayeux Tapestry. (summary by Pamela Nagami)

Product Details

BN ID:	2940169306880
Publisher:	LibriVox
Publication date:	08/25/2014

Read an Excerpt

Ill NORMANDY AND ENGLAND AFTER the coming of the Northmen the chief event in Norman history is the conquest of England, and just as relations with the north are the chief feature of the tenth century, so relations with England dominate the eleventh century, and the central point is the conquest of 1066. In this series of events the central figure is, of course, William the Conqueror, by descent duke of Normandy and by conquest king of England. Of William's antecedents we have no time to speak at length. Grandson of the fourth Norman duke, Richard the Good, William was the son of Duke Robert, who met his death in Asia Minor in 1035 while returning from a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. To distinguish him from the later duke of the same name he is called Robert I or Robert the Magnificent, sometimes and quite incorrectly, Robert the Devil, by an unwarranted confusion with this hero, or rather villain, of romance and grand opera. A contemporary of the great English king Canute, Robert was a man of renown in the Europe of the early eleventh century, and if our sources of information permitted us to know the history of his briefreign, we should probably find that much that was distinctive of the Normandy of his son's day can be traced back to his time. More than once in history has a great father been eclipsed by a greater son. The fact should be added, which William's contemporaries never allowed him to forget, that he was an illegitimate son, His mother Arlette was the daughter of a tanner of Falaise, and while it is not clear that Duke Robert was ever married to any one else, his union with Arlette had no higher sanction than the Danish custom of his forefathers. Their son was generallyknown in his day as William the Bastard, and only the great achievements of his reign succeeded...

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